No 198 SPRING 2007 40p Newspaper of the Spartacist League
------.; [I, (III J; Ell 1iIa! [I] i,,11'------Down with US/British war moves against Iran!
Navy Above: USS John C Stennis has been sent to Persian Gulf, part of US war provocations against Iran. Right: British checkpoint near Iranian border in southern Iraq, February.
almost three years of inspections in which is said to indicate that "Iran will shares marking their greatest losses which the International Atomic Energy be able to develop enough weapons since markets were reopened after the Imperialists Agency (lAEA) found no evidence of a grade material for a nuclear bomb September 11, 2001 attacks. While the nuclear weapons programme. and there is little that can be done to sell-off was triggered by a large drop in out of Iraq, The British Labour government is prevent it" (Financial Times online, Shanghai's stock index, the Financial acting as Bush's "hard cop" against 12 February). Times online (28 February) reported Afghanistan now! Iran. Foreign secretary Margaret UN sanctions are having a marked that "concerns over Iran, worries about Beckett insisted "it was clear Iran was impact on the Iranian economy, espe the US subprime mortgage market and a still enriching uranium" (Guardian cially on oil production, its lifeline. A warning from Alan Greenspan, former The following article is adapted and Unlimited, 22 February), while prime number of oil fields are in dire need of chairman of the Federal Reserve, about abridged from Workers Vanguard no minister Tony Blair said: "the tougher modem technology to reverse their nor a possible US recession punctured 887, 2 March. we in the international community are, mal decline (such as by reinjecting nat recent market optimism". Having already reduced Iraq to a the more likely we are to get the result ural gas to flush out more oil), for which living hell under the US and British we want. Any sign of weakness is Iran needs foreign technical expertise. Iran needs nuclear weapons occupation, the Bush administration is lethal" (Guardian Unlimited, 27 US officials have warned oil companies As revolutionary opponents of carrying out one provocation after February). According to the Observer that they risk financial sanctions if they British imperialism, the Spartacist another against Iran while steadily beef (25 February), a Foreign Office official help promote Iran's oil development. League opposes any economic sanc ing up military forces in and around the said that the key now is "to 'ratchet up Imperialist military threats are also hav tions against Iran. No one should be Persian Gulf. Two US aircraft carriers the pressure' by getting the toughest ing an economic impact. "Oil compa lulled by government claims that sanc have been positioned near the Iranian possible new UN resolution capable of nies are simply assessing risk, including tions are an alternative to a military coast. BBC News online (20 February) winning not only American and EU what some see as the real risk of a mili attack: sanctions are acts of war. Both reports that the US has readied plans for support but that of a more sceptical tary strike against Iran," said a former the 1991 and 2003 wars against Iraq attacks on Iran, to be triggered either by Russia and China as well". As for the State Department official. "Some are were preceded and prepared by UN "confirmation that Iran was developing EU, its foreign policy chief Javier deciding it's not worth it" (New York imposed sanctions. In the event ofmili a nuclear weapon" or "a high-casualty Solana, who last year spearheaded Times, 13 February). tary attack against Iran by US/British attack on US forces in neighbouring talks with Tehran on behalf of the EU In February, stock markets around imperialism or by Israe1-the only Iraq .. .if it were traced directly back to and the UN, commissioned a report the world took a huge hit, with US continued on page 2 Tehran". A US bombing campaign "would target Iranian air bases, naval bases, missile facilities and command Worn ..n and r-~~ and-control centres". ------IIRevolution ~I-I------At Washington's behest, the UN Security Council in Dccember demand In honour of International Women's Day ed that Tehran halt its uranium enrich ment programme and imposed a first round of sanctions on Iran, barring tech The SuHragenes, the Russian nology sales that could be used for nuclear or missile development. Washington imposed additional sanc Revolution and women's liberation tions targeting specific Iranian banks and other companies. This came after [Page 61 of nuclear anus has become the only real Iran ... measure of national sovereignty." (Continued from page 1) It takes some chutzpah for the US and British rulers to complain about Iranian nuclear-armed country in the Near East interference in Iraq. The destruction of - or by any other force operating on Iraqi society under imperialist occupation behalf of the imperialists, our stand as has engendered the horrors of mass mur Marxists is one of revolutionary de fen der and population expulsions. Almost sism: for the military defence of Iran daily, scores of civilians die in the ethnic against imperialist attack without giv and communal slaughter unleashed by the ing an iota of political support to the war and occupation. Bodies, often show reactionary Tehran regime. The Iranian ing signs of hideous torture, turn up con regime says that its nuclear energy pro stantly in sewers and garbage dumps, vic gramme does not include plans to tims of murderous militias and death develop the bomb. The biggest menace squads that often overlap with the police to the working people and oppressed of and military. The flight of Sunnis and the world is US imperialism and its Shi'ites from once-mixed neighbour loyal British ally. As we wrote last year in hoods has turned into the greatest refugee Iranian uranium conversion facility near Isfahan. "USlBritain hands off Iran!" (Workers crisis in the Near East since the Zionists' ties are threatened with being eradicated editor Andrew Grice wrote an article (7 Hammer no 194, Spring 2006): 1948 expulsion of Palestinians and the cre ation ofIsrael. According to the UN, two from their homeland. February) titled "Blair's defence of spe "The fact of the matter is that in the con million Iraqis - about eight per cent of the Blair made his long-awaited an cial relationship with US has hollow text of threats by the nuclear-armed impe nouncement about troop reductions in ring", while Claire Short, who resigned as rialists, Iran desperately needs nuclear pre-war population - have fled the coun weapons and adequate delivery systems to try, mostly to Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Iraq, amounting to withdrawal of about Blair's international development secre defend itself. In today's world, possession Iraq's smaller Christian and other minori- 1600 troops out of a total of7100 (fewer tary over Iraq, claimed the govemment than previously indicated) even as he was "humiliating" Britain by being an also made it clear that British forces in "echo" of US foreign policy in the region Afghanistan are to be beefed up. A report (Guardian Unlimited, 28 February). The by Patrick Cockburn in the Independent reformists couple this with time-worn The Russian Revolution and the (23 February) contradicts the rosy pic calls for money for schools and the liberation of women ture painted by Downing Street of National Health Service, not Trident British troops handing over power to the nuclear missiles, absurdly demanding The bourgeoisie and its supporters Iraqis, saying: "southern Iraq has, in that the rulers of the capitalist profit condemned the Bolshevik Revolution effect, long been under the control of the system serve the interests of those they of October 1917 for having, among Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution exploit and oppress. other things, violated democracy. On the in Iraq (Sciri) and the so-called 'Sadrist' As the SWP's description of Her second anniversary ofSoviet rule, Lenin factions". The Financial Times online Majesty's government as "our" govern wrote that, despite the famine and all (22 February) describes the partial with ment shows, the reformist left's funda the suffering caused by the imperialists' drawal of troops as "the beginning of the mental allegiance is to bourgeois democ invasion, soviet or socialist democracy TROTSKY LENIN end to a damaging and discredited enter racy: the political shell for the dictatorship swept away such "pompous but false prise", noting that in large part it means of the capitalist class. Fostering illusions words" declared war on this hypocrisy "leaving swaths of the south under the in the "Mother of Parliaments", Socialist and granted rights to women far in advance of the capitalist world. control of Shia paramilitaries and an Worker (17 February), in an article mobil The status of women makes clear in the most striking fashion the difference between assortment of local clans and bandits ising for the 24 February demonstration bourgeois and socialist democracy and furnishes a most effective reply to the ques even if they are wearing crisp new Iraqi for "No Trident/Troops Out of Iraq" com tion posed. uniforms". plained that "the complicit House of Com In a bourgeois republic (i.e., where there is private ownership of land, factories, In the leadup to the USIBritish invasions mons gives no voice to the majority feel shares, etc.), be it the most democratic republic, women have never had rights fully of Afghanistan and Iraq, we called for the ing in Britain against the war", adding that equal to those of men, anywhere in the world, in anyone ofthe more advanced coun military defence ofboth countries without "we want no more Bush wars against Iran tries. And this despite the fact that more than 125 years have passed since the great giving any political support to the reac or anyone else". Andrew Murray, chair of French (bourgeois-democratic) Revolution. tionary Taliban cut-throats or the bloody StWC argued: "it is past time to bridge the In words bourgeois democracy promises equality and freedom, but in practice not capitalist regime of Saddam Hussein, gulf between parliament and people that a single bourgeois republic, even the more advanced, has granted women (half the which had slaughtered thousands of Com the Iraq war has opened up. The people human race) and men complete equality in the eyes of the law, or delivered women munists, trade unionists, Kurds and others. will be on the streets once more next Sat from dependence on and the oppression of the male. Today, we call for the immediate and urday, demanding that our troops come Bourgeois democracy is the democracy of pompous phrases, solemn words, lav unconditional withdrawal of all US and home from Iraq, that we abandon our ish promises and high-sounding slogans about freedom and equality, but in practice British troops from Afghanistan, Iraq and nuclear weapons folly and disengage from all this cloaks the lack of freedom and the inequality of women, the lack of freedom Central Asia. As we did when Bush and George Bush's rolling war. Since no MP and the inequality for the working and exploited people .... Blair launched these wars under the rubric seems to have a better idea, let the people's In the course of two years of Soviet power in one of the most backward countries of the "war on terror", we call on the British will prevail" (Guardian, 17 February). of Europe more has been done to emancipate woman, to make her the equal of the proletariat to wage class struggle against For Marxists, the British imperialist "strong" sex, than has been done during the past 130 years by all the advanced, enlight the capitalist rulers at home. troops are not "our troops". Moreover, mass slaughter is not due to a misguided ened, "democratic" republics of the world taken together. Reformists advocate "little Education, culture, civilisation, freedom - all these high-sounding words are accom foreign policy but is the concentrated England" policy for British expression and ultimate logic of the panied in all the capitalist, bourgeois republics ofthe world with incredibly fouL dis imperialism gustingly vile, bestially crude laws that make women unequal in marriage and divorce, "normal" brutal workings of the capital that make the child born out of wedlock and the "legally born" child unequal and that When the US invaded Afghanistan ist system. The atrocities visited on the give privileges to the male and humiliate and degrade womankind .... and Iraq, reformist groups such as the peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan, the The Soviet Republic, the republic of workers and peasants, wiped out these laws Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and pounding attacks on the lives and liveli at one stroke and did not leave standing a single stone of the edifice of bourgeois lies Socialist Party did not even raise the hoods of working people and minorities and bou.rgeois hypocrisy. elementary call for the military defence in Britain, the US and around the globe of those countries. In the face of impe - this is the face of imperialism, of the .-VI Lenin, "Soviet power and the status of women", 6 November 1919, printed in' rialist nuclear blackmail against Iraq, irrational, anarchic, profit-driven capital VI Lenin Collected Works, Volume 30 (Lawrence & Wishart, 1976) they do not mention the fact that Iran ist system in its epoch of decay. The only needs nuclear weapons to defend itself road to putting an end to the horrors against attack. The Stop the War engendered by this system is that of Coalition (StWC), built by the SWP, socialist revolution. British imperialism bases its policy on pleading with the -which ran the world with racist, mili British imperialist rulers to reorient taristic brutality when it had the where WORKERSIlAMMER~ their priorities and to end the "special withal to do so-~is today weak and relationship" with US imperialism. As a decrepit and therefore dependent on the Marxist newspaper of the Spartacist League/Britain Socialist Worker article (12 August US to defend its interests abroad. To lead For a federation of workers republics in the British Isles! 2006) put it: "The main task of the anti the British proletariat in smashing the For a Socialist United States of Europe! war movement in Britain is to force our imperialist order requires a revolutionary The Spartacist League is the British section of the International Communist League government to break with George workers party, forged through the strug (Fourth Internationalist). Bush's imperial project." The call for gle to break the working class from its British imperialism to distance itself allegiance to Labourite reformism, EDITOR: Eibhlin McDonald PRODUCTION MANAGER: James Palmer from the US -long upheld by "little which has always served the interests of CIRCULATION MANAGER: Mick Connor England" Labour "lefts" such as Tony British imperialism at home and abroad. Spartacist Publications, PO Box 42886. London N19 5WY Benn-does not oppose British imperi E-mail: [email protected] alism as a system, but merely demands War lies, and more Subscriptions: £3 for 1 year, Europe outside Britain & Ireland £5, overseas airmail £7 a change in its foreign policy. This view In January, Bush threatened that US Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint. is widely supported in the bourgeois forces would "seek out and destroy" The closing date for news in this issue IS 14 March 2007. Printed by Newsfax International Ltd (trade union) ISSN 0267~8721 press, thus the Independent's political continued on page 9
2 WORKERS HAMMER Down with the racist "war on terror"!
The racist "war on terror" contin Amin, a Muslim student at SOAS was but this will hardly make amends for that "All publicity must be in English", ues to be a deadly reality for Muslims viciously witch-hunted for an article he the damage done to his life and his supposedly to "ensure that the Equal in Britain. On 31 January police con wrote in the March 2005 issue of cam studies. Opportunities Policy is adhered to". ducted a series of dawn raids on Mus pus magazine SOAS Spirit advocating It is in the vital interests of students, Scandalously, Clare Solomon of the lim homes in Birmingham, arresting Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and nine men under the anti-terrorism Respect, who is part of the SOAS laws on the pretext of a supposed plot Student Union bureaucracy, tried to to kidnap and behead a British enforce this policy against the Muslim soldier. Abu Bakr, one of the Spartacus Youth Group table at the arrested men who was released after a September 2006 Freshers Fair. We week for lack of evidence, aptly vehemently opposed this attempt at described Blair's Britain as a "police anti-communist censorship at the time state for Muslims". Previous "anti and have campaigned against the 'poli terrorism" raids by the cops have cy ever since, noting that it is aimed resulted in the killing of Brazilian primarily at Muslims and will be electrician Jean Charles de Menezes SYG lit table at used to target anyone who opposes in Stockwell Tube station in July 2005 SOAS, 7 March, British imperialism. SYG members and the shooting of Mohammed with placard have intervened into campus events Abdul Kahar in Forest Gate, East against "English and held regular sales of our literature London in June 2006. only" policy. (including in Arabic, Chinese, Turkish, The US government is seeking the Tagalog and other languages) and extradition of former School of fought to overturn this threat to all Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) students. student and human rights campaigner As part of our fight against the "war Syed Talha Ahsan, together with Babar on terror" at SOAS and in defence of Ahmad, a former technician at students who will be targeted, the SYG Imperial College London. Ahsan was the Palestinian people's right to defend lecturers and campus workers to oppose drafted a motion for the 20 February arrested on 19 July 2006, accused of themselves against murderous Israeli the "war on terror" on campuses. At Union General Meeting, stating: "conspiracy" to provide "material sup terrorism. He fought for and obtained SOAS this means fighting to overturn "That this 'English-only' rule has nothing port and resources to persons engaged an apology from former SOAS Prin the chauvinist "English-only" rule for to do with 'equal opportunities' and every in acts of terrorism in Afghanistan, cipal Colin Bundy, who falsely claimed societies' literature upheld by the SOAS thing to do with enforcing the so-called Chechnya and elsewhere". The Free that Amin had been reprimanded, Student Union Clubs and Societies 'war on terror' on campus. All students and Talha Ahsan campaign stated on 21 July and received £5000 in compensation, Guide which outrageously demands continued on page 11 2006, "Although the police have not charged him with any crime and have not found any criminal activity on his Mumia Abu-Jamal is an innocent man! part, he is to face extradition to the US despite not having committed any criminal acts there" (www.freetalhaah san. com). Under the conditions of the Mumia's life is in danger: Extradition Act 2003 between the US -- and Britain, no prima facie evidence is mobilise now! required for any "terror suspect" to be extradited, only that the US govern ~ Mumia Abu-Jamal is an innocent man. A former Black Panther Party ment provide documentation of the spokesman, supporter of the MOVE organisation and an award-winning appearance of guilt. This is an out journalist known as "the voice of the voiceless", Mumia was framed up in rage! o 1982 on false charges of killing a Philadelphia police officer. Sentenced to The fact that both Ahsan and Ahmad death explicitly for his political views and activities, Mumia has spent 24 years studied or worked at a university under z on death row for a crime he did not commit. The frame-up of Mumia Abu lines the ominous purpose of the Jamal shows what the death penalty is all about: a legacy of chattel slavery, November 2006 government guidelines the lynch rope made legal. The racist rulers see in Mumia the spectre of black issued to universities "to tackle violent revolution, a voice of defiant opposition to the oppression of black people extremism in the name ofislam". These that is a cornerstone of American capitalism. guidelines aim to reinforce the witch c:c hunt against Muslim students and soci Mumia's case is now before the US Third Circuit Court of Appeals. A deci eties on campus by urging university sion could come within weeks or months; the outcome could be life impris staff to police student societies' activi - onment, further legal proceedings, or upholding the death sentence and an ties, "sharing information" on student execution warrant. Understanding that there is no justice in the capitalist :E courts, we need to re-mobilise internationally now the millions who have groups. Reporting on an earlier, leaked version of the guidelines, the Guardian taken up Mumia's.tight for freedom, in the trade unions, on the campuses (16 October 2006) revealed this to :) and in the streets, to demand: Freedom now for Mumia Abu-Jamal! mean campus staff should "share" information with Special Branch, "and not wait to be contacted by detectives". RALLY! As we wrote in "Anti-Muslim witch :E hunt on universities" (Workers Hammer no 197, Winter 2006-2007): Sponsored by til. Partisan Defence Committee "These 'guidelines' amount to a state Speakers include Rachel Wolkenstein, Partisan Defense Committee staff counsel sponsored witch hunt of Muslim societies. w and former member of Mumia's legal team Make no mistake, this is an attempt to silence or purge any student, campus organisation or lecturer who speaks out w Saturday 5 May, 1.00 pm against the brutal colonial occupation of Ira'] or Afghal,istan, or defends the Pales University of London Union, Room 3C&D, Malet Street, London WCi tinians against murderous assault by the Zionist state, by branding them as poten a: Nearest Tube: Russell Square or Goodge Street tial 'terrorists'." For more information and to help build the campaign: On campuses, Zionists have been I&. Tel; 020 7281 5504 E·mail: [email protected] acting as auxiliaries of the US and British imperialists and the state ofIsrael, targeting the lecturers union, Muslim stu dents and Palestinian activists. Nasser Abolish the racist death penalty!
SPRING 2007 3 Social chauvinists under the skin Dubious BT hawks its wares to Socialist Partv
Last November, at the Socialist the Taaffeites, what you see is what you took up Logan's case at its foundation ence from the cops is a demand which Party's "Socialism 2006" weekend the get-old Labour reformism pure and sim and later declared him its leader. Over Marxists can support" ("Cops, Crime & so-called International Bolshevik ple. But with the BT, what you see is not the years this outfit has engaged in all Capitalism", 1917 West, October 1992). Tendency (BT) sponsored a fringe meet what you get. manner of lies, smears and provocations The notion that the police-the front ing entitled "Why the Socialist Party is Taken at face value, the BT could be against us, which stands in stark contrast line enforcers of capitalist state repres not socialist", featuring a former mem mistaken for just another group let that to its fawning over Labourite reformists. sion against workers and minorities ber of the Socialist Party, Michael rightfully belongs in the Labourite can be made accountable, is the essence Wainwright, as a speaker. The Socialist swamp. But unlike most other groups Fawning social chauvinists of reformism. The call for civilian Party, led by Peter Taaffe, sometimes at on the left, politics is not primarily what As our comrades argued in the BT review boards or for police accounta least nominally appeals to "socialism" defines the BT. Mainly its purpose is meeting, the Socialist Party's record on bility is a standard ploy by reformists to or the working class. However its antecedent, the Militant tendency, spent decades as an organic part of the old Labour Party. Today, despite its denunci ation of New Labour as a bourgeois L~~-l party, what the Socialist Party offers is Militant labour's tOUChing faith merely "Clause IV"-styie old Labourism. in the capitalist state This programme was upheld by suc ~ cessive Labour governments in the past as they served the interests of "demo cratic" British imperiiilism, including sending British troops to Northern Ireland in 1969; introducing grotesque racist measures such as "virginity tests" for Asian women immigrating to Britain in the 1970s, and strikebreaking against the unions at home. The Taaffeites too have a record of lining up on the side of "democratic" imperialism and of refus ing to call for the withdrawal of British troops from Northern Ireland.
The BT offered some orthodox !·"~IN""U!itoo'.fJlYset(l'l.. ) sounding criticism of the Socialist Party but this was limited to the Taaffeites' most blatant reformism on the state: the London, July 2005: armed cops, front line of racist "war on terror" (left). Spartacist pamphlet refutes Socialist Party's call for the "commanding heights" of the reformism on the state, including the absurd notion that police are "workers in uniform". economy to be nationalised through an "enabling act" in parliament; for com the drive to destroy the International the "war on terror", the cutting edge of foster illusions that the institutions of munity control of the police and the claim Communist League. It was created in racist terror in this country, is rotten. "democracy" can be used to curb the that the police are "workers in uniform". 1982 - originally calling itself the The BT was silent on this, which stems "excesses" of the police. Wainwright also exposed the fact that the External Tendency (ET) of the interna from their own indifference to racist During the Israeli invasion o.f Public and Commercial Services union tional Spartacist tendency - by a hand oppression. Following the criminal Lebano.n last year, the Taaffeite organi (PCS), whose leadership is dominated by ful of embittered quitters who fled from London Tube and bus bombings in July satio.n in Israel published a leaflet Socialist Party members, includes immi our hard Soviet-defensist politics in the 2005, amid a wave of racist anti that had not a single slo.gan address gration police. This is a scandal. The face of renewed Cold War in the early Muslim hysteria over "terrorism", the ing the defence of the Lebanese or police are a core part of the capitalist 1980s. But unlike other people who quit Taaffeite newspaper repeatedly ran a the Palestinian peoples (see "Israeli state and are deadly enemies of the - some of whom remained friendly, banner headline that said "No to terror Taaffeites Capitulate to Zionism Over workers movement and the oppressed. others went their separate ways - the ism, no to war". This was a gross capit Lebanon", Workers Vanguard no 879, We demand: Immigration police out of BT coalesced into an outfit that slanders ulation to those like Labour MP Alice 27 October 2006). Yet the BT raises a thePCS! our organisation as a maniacal "politi Mahon and London mayor Ken howl about social chauvinism o.ver Today's old Labour reformists cal bandit operation" and an "obedience Livingstone, who oppose the occupa Lebanon - not against the Taaffeites cult". As we wrote: tion of Iraq (out of concern for British but against the ICL. They lyingly We have decisively refuted the "Altho.ugh they carne to.gether as a fo.nna imperialism's image abroad) but sup accuse us o.f "social patriotism", based Taaff¥ites' positions on the state in our tio.n largely mo.tivated by subjective mal port the "war on terror" at home. The on the fact that in 1983 we did not cheer 1994 pamphlet "Militant Labour's ice, o.n a political level they were the ctts loathsome Livingstone pledged his as an act of "anti-imperialism" the touching faith in the capitalist state", tallized reflectio.n o.f the pressure o.f backing for the police, after they killed deaths of 241 US Marines in Beirut based on Lenin's understanding that the anti-co.mmunist public o.pinio.n. Inso.far as Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de blown up by a car bomb-planted by state "is an organ of class rule, an organ the BT claims to. present a versio.n o.f Spartacist Po.litics it is a co.unterfeit o.ne: Menezes in cold blood. persons and forces unknown amid a of the oppression of one class by anoth alo.ng with their anti-So.vietism go.es an Spartacist speakers also exposed the squalid, multi-sided communal civil er" (State and Revolution, 1917) that indifference-at best-to. the necessary BT's efforts to pose as opponents of war. We conjuncturally raised the slogan cannot be reformed or pressured into link between the struggle fo.r black free "community control of the police". The "Marines Out of Lebano.n, Now, Alive!" acting on behalf of the working people dom and the struggle fo.r wo.rking-class BT raised its very own version of "com to intersect a moment of Po.Pular revul and the oppressed, but has to be shat emancipatio.n in the United States." munity control of the cops" in the US. sion in the US against Reagan's Lebano.n tered by workers revolution. - The International Bolshevik Tendency Against the background of a multi adventure, coupled with "U.S. Out of As our comrades pointed out, the BT's - What Is It? (1995) racial explosion in Los Angeles in 1992, Grenada, Dead or Alive!" (Workers "discovery" that the Socialist Party is The BT is led by one Bill Logan, a when the racist cops who sadistically Vanguard no 341, 4 No.vember 1983). reformist is hardly a shocking revelation man we expelled in 1979 as a "proven, and repeatedly beat and tortured black Little do.es it matter to the BT that we on the British left. Moreover the BT fully massive liar and a sexual sociopath who motorist Rodney King were acquitted, used both slogans precisely to underline embraces the wretched politics that define manipulated the private lives of com the BT threw itself into a California out the fact that unlike in Lebano.n, we did the Socialist Party more broadly-pan rades for reasons of power politics and fit called "Copwatch" whose stated aim have a side in Grenada with the Cuban dering to backward consciousness, anti his own aberrant appetites and compul was to "reduce police violence and allied nationalist regime against the communism and Labourism. Thus BT sions". In a party trial, Logan was found harassment through accountability". imperialists. As we noted at the time, the speakers in the meeting were silent about guilty of inhuman torture of one com While pretending to uphold the Marxist ET's vicarious blo.odthirstiness was the Taaffeites' blatant chauvinism regard rade whom he rendered suicidal in his position on the state, the BT also argued directly proportional to. their distance ing Northern Ireland, their support to attempt to force her to have an abortion that, "depending on the political com from where the bloo.d was being shed. counterrevolution in the USSR and East and, failing that, to give up her baby for position and effective powers given to On numerous occasio.ns our comrades ern Europe, and their gross capitulation to adoption. Knowing .his history, the it, establishing a civilian police review have challenged BTers to get up in meet the racist ''war on terror". However, with organisation that today calls itself the BT board with a real measure of independ- ings of the Socialist Party and argue that
4 WORKERS HAMMER British troops in Northern Ireland should working class and oppressed can be seen with ammunition was not the BT's only same time we fight for a proletarian "live like pigs, die like pigs"; as they said in the campaign to free American black service to those who would like to see political revolution to sweep away the about Marines in Lebanon, but this outfit political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal. In Mumia Abu-Jamal dead. Today the BT Stalinist bureaucracy and replace it with wouldn't dream of it. Its venom is 1995, the Wall Street Journal, mouthpiece postures as defenders of Mumia, who is a government based on workers and reserved exclusively for the ICL. for the American capitalist rulers, tried to a former Black Panther and supporter of peasants councils. When it comes to conciliating nation undercut the growing international protest the MOVE organisation. In May 1985, At a meeting on China presented by al chauvinism, the Socialist Party and in defence of Jamal who was then under the Philadelphia police in collusion Peter Taaffe during the "Socialism the BT are not fundamentally different. 2006" weekend, the BT meekly sug Taaffe's organisation is particularly gested there might be a case for defend egregious on Northern Ireland-an ing China, if it were attacked by imperi acid test for socialists in Britain - hav alism. But if the Chinese deformed ing refused for decades to call for workers state faced the immediate immediate withdrawal of British troops. threat of counterre\lOlution, there is no It also has a history of making common question Taaffe would take a side cause with anti-Catholic Loyalist scum, with the forces of counterrevolution. As such as in 1995 when the Taaffeite group Spartacist comrades pointed out, in in Northern Ireland invited Loyalist 1991 in Moscow, Taaffe's supporters paramilitary leader Billy Hutchinson to were present on Yeltsin's barricades of its meetings. Today it campaigns for the counterrevolution. Moreover, Taaffe "democratic rights" of the Orange has already taken the side of the "demo Order to march - ie to stage anti cratic" imperialists against China over Catholic provocations. =11T""'lF~"~~~~I- for a baby Taiwan. Taaffe says: In a similar vein the BT's flagship "Nevertheless, the Chinese regime is a group in Canada - where the oppres dictatorship. Moreover, from the stand sion of Quebec is a dividing line ~' Jl =~,,;•. ,: ,':::
SPRING 2007 5 In honour of International Women's Day The Suffragettes, the Russian Revolution and women's liberation
We print below an edited and tion of the Labour Representation expanded version of a presentation Committee and affiliated to the Labour given by comrade Julia Emery at a Party when it was formed in 1906. The Spartacist dayschool in London on 15 Labour Party was what Lenin termed a April 2006. Other presentations includ bourgeois workers party, having a pro ed "Class struggle, Labour betrayal capitalist programme and leadership but and the fight for Irish independence" a mass working-class base. Emmeline and "France: Workers, students defeat Pankhurst and her husband Dr Richard CPE" which were published in Workers Marsden Pankhurst joined the ILP in Hammer no 195, Summer 2006. 1894. The Women's Social and Political For many activists around the world, Union (WSPU) was formed in October the British Suffragette movement repre 1903 by Emmeline Pankurst and other sents one of the high points of women's ILP women as a male-exclusionist struggles, bringing women out on the Sylvia Pankhurst group to campaign on the single issue streets in large numbers for militant and addressing a crowd of women's right to vote "on the same even heroic actions in support of the in Bow Road, East terms as that agreed or may be accord right of women to vote. Today, those London, where she ed to men". Thus it upheld the class who want to fight for women's libera moved in 1912 and bias of the Third Reform Act of 1884 tion would do well to study the lessons worked among which contained a property qualifica of the fight for women's suffrage in the working-class tion, leaving roughly a third of men, early 20th century. The story of the suf women. predominantly from the working class, frage movement is the story of a disenfranchised. movement which split into two The WSPU engaged in a crescendo camps - feminist and revolutionary of protests, ranging from marches, socialist-in the face of social crises, speeches, and breaking windows to centrally the wave of class struggle in arson and martyrdom. Their members Britain known as the "great unrest", fol suffered constant police harassment, lowed by World War I and the Russian beating, imprisonment, brutal force Revolution. Before I talk about the f~eding and even death in the fight for articles under Women and Revolution Suffragette movement, I want to say a sex". Under capitalism the family serves parliamentary reform that would allow word about our attitude to the fight for as the instrument for raising the next mastheads in our quadrilingual journal women the elementary right to vote. generation of wage slaves and for incul Spartacist and also in the press ofICL sec women's liberation. The WSPU broke with the ILP in 1907 tions. I recommend comrades read the We differ from feminists in that they cating bourgeois moral values, training when Emmeline and her daughter youth to obey authority and to accept early Women and Revolution articles we consider the main division in society to Christabel insisted that WSPU mem wrote about the Pankhursts, who were be that between men and women. For us the social order. bers could not support any other party Marxists the fundamental division in The proletariat alone has the potential prominent leaders of the Suffragette until women had won the vote. In par society is the class division. Under power to overthrow the system of capi movement ("The Pankhursts: Suffrage and ticular, they were keen to win the sup talism, because of its organisation and its Socialism", in Women and Revolution no capitalism the division is between the port of rich conservative and upper-class 12, Summer 1976 and "Sylvia Pankhurst bourgeoisie, owners of the means of role in production. Women's participation women. This class prejudice meant and the Workers Movement", in Women production, and the working class who in the proletariat gives them the social that WSPU members were prohibited sell their labour power. Winning libera power to fight alongside their male co- and Revolution no 17, Summer 1978). from campaigning for the ILP, which tion for women requires a workers mobilised manual labourers and which socialist revolution to overturn capital many in the WSPU had actually worked ist property relations. While we fight to to build. Sylvia Pankhurst, also the defend every gain won from the ruling daughter of Emmeline, in 1912 found class through hard struggle, our per ed the East London Federation of spective is to build a revolutionary Suffragettes, which was affiliated with workers party that champions the inter the WSPU but based on the working ests of all the oppressed based on the class constituency of East London. It understanding that the entire capitalist was founded in the context ofthe "great system must go and workers states must unrest" from 1910 to 1914, a period be established internationally. Only the marked by major industrial struggles advance to a socialist society willliber including by miners, railwaymen and ate women from their oppression and other transport workers. This period lay the basis for full integration and also saw protests for women's suffrage equality for women in society. as well as agitation for Home Rule in As Marxists we recognise that the Ireland which was then under British special oppression of women is rooted rule. in the institution of the family. Friedrich NATIONAL In Britain, trade union membership Engels in The Origin of the Family, had increased threefold since the 1889 Private Property and the State (1884) SOCIAL dockers strike while wages had A'on traced the origin of the institution of the decreased by ten per cent between 1910 .4IIIrl _ • family and the state to the division of .,n I .... and 1912. The capitalists tried to main society into classes. When human Suffragettes wearing prison clothing on release from prison, 1908. tain their profit rates by decreasing society developed the capacity to pro wages, provoking massive outbursts of duce a social surplus beyond what is workers for revolutionary change in soci At the beginning of the 20th century, class struggle. It's very common among needed for basic subsistence, a ruling ety. In a socialist society the institution of it was still relatively uncommon for reformists on the left to argue that the class was able to form based on private the family as we know it will be replaced women to continue in paid employment history of the Suffragettes, and particu appropriation of that surplus. With the and household labour will be performed after marriage. A woman once married larly of Sylvia Pankhurst, shows that emergence of private property the fam by collective institutions. The emancipa was considered the property of her hus feminism and socialism are very close ily became the necessary instrument to tion of women is the task of the working band and her primary role was to look ly intertwined. A leading exponent of ensure that property would be inherited class as a whole and to this end, we inter after the household and raise children. this view during the 1970s was by the true biological heir, requiring vene into the working class and social The origins of the Suffragette move Sheila Rowbotham of the International women's sexual monogamy and social struggle with our programme, fighting for ment lay in the Independent Labour Socialists, precursor to the Socialist subordination. Engels called this the women's liberation through socialist Party (ILP) which was founded in 1893. Workers Party (SWP). Rowbotham's "world historical defeat of the female revolution. Our press regularly publishes The ILP was instrumental in the forma- book Hidden from History (1973)
6 WORKERS HAMMER ______Women and ~------ Revolution ~ .. ~ argues that "there was a close connec (quoted in The Suffragette Movement by the bourgeoisie: in 1915, they toured the treachery of the official "socialist" tion between feminism and socialism in Sylvia Pankhurst, 1931). Therefore in areas of great industrial militancy, par parties signified the need for a political the early years of this [20th] century, March 1914, the East London Federation ticularly in the north of England and the split with social democracy, as an and the divorce between the two was began publishing its own newspaper mining areas of South Wales, to essential part of building parties that long, painful and protracted". Three called Woman s Dreadnought. At the denounce "Bolshevism". would lead the working class to the decades later the SWP's Paul Foot time Sylvia Pankhurst was opposed to the Sylvia Pankhurst, by contrast, was overthrow of their own bourgeoisie. He wrote that "the division among many split. Despite her misgivings about some not caught up in the outbreak of jingo concluded that a new, revolutionary WSPU supporters can be exaggerated. of the WSPU's tactics, particularly arson, ism that followed the start of the war. international had to be built. These les In many cases, support for the WSPU what distinguished the East London Fed She consistently attacked the war, sons were tested and confirmed by the overlapped with a growing conversion to eration from the WSPU was its class com demanded peace and denounced the Bolshevik Party's struggle to success socialist organisation" (The Vote, 2005). position and sympathy, but its programme WSPU's bloodthirstiness. She contin fully lead the October Revolution. was not substantially different. Sylvia had ued to campaign for adult suffrage, but In fact, nothing could be further from Bolshevik Revolution laid the in reality created a proletarian auxiliary to as her political outlook moved to the the truth: the Suffragette movement basis for women's liberation confirms that the ideology and social a bourgeois feminist movement. left she embraced broader questions, programme of feminism is counter particularly poverty and class oppres The Bolshevik Revolution proved Feminism turns to jingoism posed to the perspective of socialist sion. Her paper Woman s Dreadnought definitively that the road to women's revolution. Both may have seemed However, things changed very fast was renamed Workers' Dreadnought emancipation was through socialist revo compatible at the beginning of the with the outbreak of World War I. Mary and carried articles dealing with a wide lution. The greatest victory for the work 20th century, when there was relatively Davis, who wrote a biography of Sylvia range of social issues, including inade ing class and oppressed masses to date, the revolution smashed tsarist/capitalist little social struggle. But the sharpening Pankhurst, said that "the outbreak of • quate allowances for servicemen's rule and the Bolshevik-led soviets of class antagonisms and the outbreak the First World War in 1914 propelled wives and poor working conditions. (workers and peasants councils) seized of imperialist war, followed by the the WSPU away from feminism in Many of her followers were amon$st power. Land was taken from the land Russian October Revolution in 1917 the direction of patriotism" (Sylvia the poorest women in East London, Pankhurst, 1999). This is not the case. where starvation was rife and so there lords; industry was soon collectivised exploded this myth and forced all those and the new workers state took steps to fighters for women's liberation to Feminism is perfectly compatible with was relatively little flag:waving com patriotism. Because feminists see the pared to the country as a whole. She led establish a planned economy. The revo choose: feminism or the programme of lution sought to bring women into full socialist revolution. The impact of these participation in economic, political and tumultuous events was reflected in the social life, and brought enormous gains Pankhurst family and Sylvia was won to to working women. The new workers communism as a result of the October state gave women a level of equality and Revolution. freedom unparalleled anywhere in the The polarisation within the Suffragettes world at that time - sweeping away cen over whether to take the side of the work turies of patriarchal and religious power. ing class was evident in 1912 when troops Civil marriage was established, divorce were sent to break a strike in London was allowed at the request of either part docks, in which the strike leaders had been ner and all laws against homosexuality jailed for calling on troops not to shoot the were abolished. However the Bolsheviks workers. In the WSPU's paper Votes for also understood that emancipation of Women Christabel Pankhurst attacked women, and indeed of the toiling mass the right of workers to strike and said ''we es, requires an end to scarcity and pover would ask the Government if they propose ty and therefore could not take place to make the organisation of strikes pun within the confmes of an impoverished ishable by law". The WSPU protested that workers state. Rather it necessitated a "this offence was more serious than any vast leap in the development of the pro committed by the Suffragettes and should ductive forces, which in tum required the have been more seriously punished". In extension ofthe revolution international contrast Sylvia Pankhurst's East London ly, particularly to the more advanced Federation displayed increasing sympathy capitalist countries such as Germany. towards the workers movement. Above: Women's demonstration in Lenin's Bolsheviks attached great In 1913 the working class of Dublin, Petrograd, 19 March 1917. Banner importance to the establishment of the led by socialist leaders James Connolly -..- ... says "As long as the woman is a slave Third International, which was founded and Jim Larkin, were locked out by the -~.----- there can't be freedom -long live in 1919 for the purpose of building women's equality". Bolshevik Irish bourgeoisie in an attempt to smash communist parties in all countries. The Revolution in October wiped out all the transport union. Sylvia Pankhurst's 4.1 • • Bolsheviks: revolutionary experience -~!;:!:--'" laws enshrining the oppression of was generalised and codified in the 21 solidarity with the embattled workers ',...-'" women. Left: 1919 Manchester leaflet in Ireland caused a split in the "Conditions of Admission to the \ 'p~:~mme for "Hands Off Russial" campaign. Communist International" which aimed Suffragettes. On 1 November 1913 HAN. os OFF ROSS.IA I "•• Mass workers' protests in Britain she spoke on the platform at a meeting Dl!jI\ONSTI!I<'fION. for hard spJits from the social patriots JIi~';';;' tbDacfW04 forced capitalist rulers to call off \ ...... ,....,.,-.I.'M•. and reformists among the parties seek in London's Albert Hall, alongside military intervention to crush "-"fiI---'--~""'" ing affiliation to the Communist Inter left-wing ILP representative George ...... -~- ---- Bolshevik Revolution. national. Lansbury and James Connolly. Connolly ~~~~-.. ~ ...... --. ~...... Under the impact of the Russian and Larkin campaigned for concrete Revolution, the positions of those on acts of solidarity by the unions in fundamental division in society as demonstrations and deputations to the either side of the split in the Suffragette Britain, as opposed to simply providing being between men and women they government to protest working condi movement were carried to their logical money and fine speeches, but their seek to build a movement to fight for a tions, but also pioneered neighbourhood conclusions. After the February Rev demands were rejected by the social better position for women within the relief programmes, which included olution, Emmeline Pankhurst, with chauvinist Labour and trade union lead existing capitalist order. It therefore fol maternity and infant clinics providing Prime Minister Lloyd George's agree ers in Britain and the Dublin workers lows logically that when that order is free medical care and milk, a day care ment, travelled to Russia to persuade were defeated. As a consequence of threatened, feminists loyal to bourgeois centre, a toy factory and a "Cost Price" the Provisional Government leader Sylvia Pankhurst's appearance at this society will mobilise to defend it. restaurant. The strength of her organisa Kerensky to honour the tsarist commit meeting she was immediately sum When World War I broke out, tion, the East London Federation, lay in ment to the Triple Entente and stay moned to the WSPU headquarters in Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst the fact that she tied the question of in the war. After the Bolshevik exile in Paris and told by Christabel that immediately suspended all activities of wartime working conditions to a cam Revolution, she called on the British the East London Federation must the WSPU and called on members to paign against the war itself. government to intervene militarily become a separate organisation at once. serve "their" country. Feminists in other When on 4 August 1914 the German against the workers state. The existing legislation excluded man belligerent countries lined up in the Social Democratic Party (SPD)'s parlia Not so Sylvia Pankhurst, who called ual workers - who were the base of the same way with their "own" bour mentary fraction voted for war credits on workers to support the Soviet form Labour Party - from voting and Christa geoisies. The WSPU changed the name for the German government, Lenin con of government and strongly welcomed bel Pankhurst shared the British ruling of its paper from Suffragette to cluded that the Second International the October Revolution. In 1916 the class's contempt for manual workers and Britannia and it bore a dedication, "for was dead as a force for socialist revolu East London Federation of Suffragettes didn't want any taint of association with King, for Country, for Freedom". It also tion. The majority of the social-demo had been renamed the Workers' Lansbury, who campaigned not just for took to the streets to hand out "white cratic parties including the British Suffrage Federation. In 1918, follow votes for women householders but for all feathers of cowardice" to any able Labour Party had taken the side of their ing the Russian Revolution, it was men and women. Christabel considered bodied men found on the streets. The "own" bourgeoisie. Exceptions to this renamed the Workers' Socialist the East London Federation's working WSPU actively called for national serv were the Bolshevik Party, as well as Federation (WSF) and its stated aim class base a liability and said that work ice for women and conscription for men socialists such as Ka~l Liebknecht in was the formation of workers soviets ing women were "the weakest portion of even before the government introduced Germany, while in Scotland workers and international working-class revolu the sex", adding: "Surely it is a mistake it in 1916. This was not the first time leader John Maclean was imprisoned tion. The WSF paper reported on the to use the weakest for the struggle" these feminists took a clear side with for agitating against the war. For Lenin, continued on page 10
SPRING 2007 7 '-"'-"-.--. --".'-". --.---.. ---., ..---.,~-.--.-.-.-- .. --.--",------.
ist leadership to that incipient political rev ment - by 1999 he was deputy prime sions, while at the same time clearly IT... olution, fighting for a red Germany of minister; he supported the govern counterposing our Leninist-Trotskyist (Continued from page 5) workers councils. We initiated the ment on the bombing of Afghanistan programme to the SLP's reformism. 250,000-strong united-front protest in and now leads the Progressive Party, Inside the SLP, the BT opposed Scargill imperialists. Again the ICL stood out East Berlin's Treptow Park on 3 January which is not even a working-class for from the right, arguing in favour of prominently. We were unique in our 1990, which was taken up by the ruling mation. supporting the Socialist Party in the efforts to mobilise Soviet workers, mass Stalinist party, that was called to protest Inside Anderton's New Labour Party, 1997 election. The Socialist Party's distributing our leaflet headlined "Soviet the fascist desecration of a memorial to the PRG formed a loyal opposition. campaign was totally subordinate to Workers: Defeat Yeltsin-Bush Counter Soviet soldiers who died liberating Ger (See "Strange things under Wellington's voting Labour (or anyone) to "get the revolution!" throughout the Soviet Union. many from Hitler's Nazis. The BT spits on rocks", Australasian Spartacist no 155, Tories out". While we recognised that the state power this pro-Soviet rally, which was premised Summer 1995-96). The PRG boasted had been decisively fractured by Yeltsin's on defence of the workers states, com- that: "We were quite open that we sup- Bill Logan-a sinister minister countercoup in August, we attempted to spark working-class action against the We have documented the BT's record counterrevolutionary forces and for pro as a walking provocation against the letarian political revolution in defence of ICL and exposed the manipulative collectivised property forms. Only when sociopath, Bill Logan, it embraces as its it was clear over the course of the next leader (see "BT: Renegades for Hire", year that the working class was not going Workers Vanguard no 807, 1 August to move against Yeltsin, who was rapidly 2003 and "BT: A Walking Provocation", consolidating a capitalist state apparatus, Workers Vanguard no 808, 29 August did we conclude that the Soviet workers 2003). We do this not simply for the state had been defmitively destroyed. purpose of elementary political sanita The BT cynically called for a mili tion, but because a new generation of tary bloc with the pathetic coup plotters leftists must be made aware that the - although there was no military likes of Logan have no place in the engagement and not a single shot was workers movement. fired-only to unburden themselves of We took the unusual step of publicly any nominal claim to being Soviet releasing our three internal bulletins "On defensists, proclaiming that the Soviet the Logan Regime" after we expelled degenerated workers state had been him from our international organisation destroyed the moment Yeltsin defeated (then the international Spartacist tend the coup plotters. Thus they gladly ency) in 1979. The Spartacist League of wrote off in advance (from a distance) AP Australia and New Zealand Central any possibility of working-class resist White House, May 2001: US president George Bush hosts "god-king", the Committee charged Logan "with sys ance, which could have swept away Dalai Lama. BT would have imperialist-backed forces run Tibet. tematic and conscious violations of Yeltsin and his forces and opened the communist morality during his tenure as road to proletarian political revolution plaining that we did not offer a platform ported the New Labour Party and want national chairman of the SLANZ against the Stalinist bureaucracy who to the anti-Soviet, pro-capitalist West Ger ed to build it" and added that: "We made between the years of 1972 and 1977" were selling the Soviet Union to the man Social Democratic party (SPD). In it clear that we saw this attempt at estab and "with repeated, conscious interven capitalists. denouncing our Treptow demonstration lishing a democratic workers' party tion into comrades' personal lives as part The BT's positions are fully imbued the BT is taking a stand against the open to all tendencies - including revo of a pattern of calculated personal and with the anti-communist stereotype that defence of the DDR and the Soviet Union; lutionaries - as a good thing" (Against sexual manipulation, passing off inti against the incipient political revolution Centrism/An Exchange of Documents "Stalinist totalitarianism" has reduced mate managing of comrades' personal and for the SPD, the Trojan horse for between the Permanent Revolution the working class in the deformed lives as a legitimate and central function counterrevolution in East Germany. Group and the Communist Left, 1991). workers states to mindless automatons. of the national chairman" (see "On the Following its expulsion a year later, the This is at the root of their insistence that Logan Regime Part III", International Wedded to Labourite social PRG swore its continuing fealty to New there was no possibility of a revolution Information Bulletin no 16, November democracy Labour's "principles and objectives" ary outcome in East Germany in 1989- 1983). and rhapsodised about its "potential to 90. This is combined with bitter hostili Following his expUlsion from our Today Logan advertises his services as ty to the one organisation that fought to organisation, Bill Logan resurfaced in be a voice of ordinary working people, of the oppressed and disadvantaged" a professional "counsellor, narrative ther realise this - the ICL. Having accepted his native New Zealand as leader of the . apist and celebrant" on his website the triumph of capitalist counterrevolu "Permanent Revolution Group" (PRG), (PRG leaflet, "Violence, Democracy & Jim Anderton MP ", 26 April 1990). (bl.co.nz). The man who tried to force a tion in advance, the BT sneered in an an outfit that has much in common with young woman communist to have an article headlined "Robertsonites in the Taaffeites when it comes to Such rapturous praise for a "dem ocratic workers' party open to all tenden abortion now provides sample texts for Wonderland" that we had invented an Labourism. In 1989-90 Logan's PRG funerals for babies and boasts, "I've done "imaginary political revolution" (J 917, liquidated into the New Labour Party cies", which Logan considers to be "a good thing", reeks of the Labourite ideal ceremonies for Hindus and atheists, Third Quarter 1991). There was nothing when it was founded by Jim Anderton Christians and Buddhists, followers of imaginary about the fact that hundreds as a split from the Labour Party. In the of a mass reformist party that acts as a "broad church", meaning it should toler Khrishnamurthy and Christian Science". of thousands of workers took to the context of an extremely right-wing Under the heading "Ceremony & Cele streets of East Germany to demand an Labour government, Anderton's party ate fake leftists within it. Far from being a voice of the "oppressed and disadvan brancy", Logan intones: "Ceremony is egalitarian socialist society. was founded in the "real" spirit of the important to our lives, from the dinner The BT was contemptuous of the fact original Labour Party. To say he repre taged", such parties are inevitably social chauvinist, reflecting the prejudices of table to a coronation or presidential that we mobilised our resources interna sented no political break from Labourite inauguration". The man who aped the tionally in the effort to provide Trotsky- politics is something of an understate- their "own" ruling class. Not long after setting up a group in attitudes of the British ruling class and London, Logan's organisation political manipulated the internalised oppression ly liquidated into Arthur Scargill's of working-class youth, women and Socialist Labour Party (SLP) in early those from the "colonies", now offers a · ....111"181:_ .... IIfTERNATIONALIIISCUSsIoN BUWlItf ...... ,.,...... 1996. While the SLP was based on old "secular grace" gushing with conde " ,Labour reformism, it did represent a scending thanks to "those who planted On lhelOlln Regime partial break from New Labour and the crops ... those who gathered the har (Three parts) ON THE lOGAN RfDlME unlike most of the "socialist" organisa vest ... to those who prepared it and those In 1979, Bill Logan was expelled from the PART. tions in Britain, including the Taaffeites who served it". international Spartacist tendency for crimes - it drew a line by refusing to call for That this man is the anointed leader "against communist morality and its substrate "Run, nm, nm, nm, nm, votes to Blair's New Labour. For that of a putatively Marxist organisation nm, l11li ••• CIIop." elementary human decency·. Logan is now the reason, we extended critical support to should tell you just about all you need leader of the "International Bolshevik SLP candidates on a number of occa- to know about the BT.. Tendency". As a service to the workers move- ment we have made our international bulletins documenting Logan's crimes publicly available. tntemat;onaf Communist L~
8 WORKERS HAMMER occupiers, such acts coincide with the was one of the few genuinely progres the Shah! Don't bow to Khomeini! For Irao ... interests of the international proletariat. sive acts by the Soviet Stalinist workers revolution in Iran!" After tak (Continued from page 2) However, we do not imbue these forces bureaucracy, offering the possibility of ing power, the mullahs enslaved with "anti-imperialist" credentials and extending the social gains of the 1917 women in the veil, slaughtered thou Iranians supposedly anning and train stand in intransigent opposition to the Russian Revolution to the oppressed sands of leftists and trade unionists and ing insurgents in Iraq. In a calculated murderous communal violence that is peoples and women of Afghanistan. intensified repression against Kurds provocation, American troops the next often carried out by the very same The Kremlin's treacherous withdrawal and other minorities. day seized five Iranians who even Iraqi forces fighting the occupation armies. of Soviet forces in 1988-89 was the The current regime has continued the officials maintained were diplomats. Should the Iraqi proletariat raise its opening for the victory of imperialist murderous repression. On 24 February, US officials then upped the ante by head, it would face not only the sav- backed counterrevolution throughout Iranian soldiers near the Turkish border revealing that Bush had authorised the killed 17 militants associated with the military to "kill or capture" Iranian Party of Free Life of Kurdistan, an off agents in Iraq. A New Yorker online arti shoot of the Kurdistan Workers Party cle (25 February) by Seymour Hersh based in Turkey. Iranian president quotes a former senior intelligence offi Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who says that cial saying that "the word went out last Israel should be "wiped out from the August for the military to snatch as map of the world", has called the many Iranians in Iraq as they can" and slaughter of six million Jews in the Nazi that ''they had five hundred locked up at Holocaust a "myth" and last year organ one time". A former National Security ised a conference with Holocaust Council official told Hersh: "This is all deniers from around the world, includ part of the campaign of provocative ing outright fascists. steps to increase the pressure on Iran. In one significant way, Iran is, in this The idea is that at some point the period, an anomaly in the Near East. Iranians will respond and then the The growing opposition in'that country Administration will have an open door to the current regime appears to have a to strike at them." significant secular compopent, as many Hersh noted that with the two carrier aspire to free themselves from stifling strike groups near Iran due to be relieved religious rule. Ahmadinejad took the in the spring, there is worry within the mil presidency in June 2005 having prom itary that the two groups "may be ordered ised to provide more jobs, fight corrup to stay in the area after the new carriers tion and redistribute wealth. However, arrive". The former intelligence official inflation has exploded, with the price of told him that contingency plans "allow for staples like bread and meat rising as an attack order this spring". Many com much as 25 per cent, students are disaf mentators have said that the US is look Workers Hammer fected, workers' strikes have been ing for a new "Tonkin Gulf" incident, SUSYG lit table at 24 February anti-war demo. growing and the Kurdish and Azeri referring to the cooked-up 1964 "attack" north, the Arab southwest and the on a US warship by North Vietnamese agery of the imperialists but also the Eastern Europe and within the Soviet Baluchi southeast are simmering. In forces that provided the pretext for a mas brutality of the reactionary Islamic fun Union itself. The restoration of capital December's municipal elections, the sive escalation of American forces in damentalists and bourgeois nationalists ism in Eastern Europe and the former president's political allies suffered an Vietnam. that dominate the "resistance". Soviet Union --a historic defeat for the embarrassing defeat. To bolster Washington's claims that In regard to the hysteria over Iranian world proletariat--has brought devas- It is the task of the working class in "the highest levels of the Iranian gov nukes, as the UN Security Council con , tation to the working people of those Iran, leading women, national and eth ernment" were targeting US forces in sidered imposing further sanctions, the societies and emboldened the imperial nic minorities and all the oppressed Iraq, American officials pointed to cap Guardian (23 February) reported: ists in their attacks globally while behind it, to overthrow the Persian tured armour-piercing explosives that "Much of the intelligence on Iran's fuelling the resurgence of religious chauvinist Islamic regime. Key to this they said were fabricated in Iran. But nuclear facilities provided to UN reaction throughout the world. perspective is the forging of a Marxist attempts to whip up anti-Iran sentiment inspectors by American spy agencies workers party. Such parties must be are falling flat. First it was revealed that has turned out to be unfounded." In the For a Socialist Federation of the Near Eastl built throughout the Near East to a press conference originally scheduled 1980s, when Washington and London unite the proletariat-Arab, Persian, for late January had been repeatedly post were funnelling vast quantities of arms The Iranian clerical regime would be Kurdish and Hebrew, Surmi and Shi'ite, poned because the "evidence" was so and money to the Islamic fundament perfectly amenable to a reconciliation Muslim and Christian-in struggle dubious that no official in Washington alists fighting Soviet troops in with Washington, if conditions permit against imperialism and against the would take responsibility for it. (The Afghanistan, the CIA sought to cover ted. The Iranian mullahs observed a tact Zionists, mullahs, colonels, sheiks and briefmg was finally presented off-camera its tracks by supplying the mujahedin ful silence during the 1991 Gulf War all the other capitalist rulers. The fight by anonymous officers in Baghdad.) with Russian guns purchased from against Iraq. They strongly encouraged for workers rule in the Near East cru Then the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs international arms merchants. Imper the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 cially includes shattering the Zionist of Staff contradicted the "revelations", ialist support to religious reaction in and played a key role in the negotiations garrison state from within through insisting that he saw no evidence of Iran Afghanistan demonstrated how US that set up a quisling government in Arab/Hebrew workers revolution. ian government involvement. Bush had and British imperialism fostered the Kabul under Hamid Karzai. Since then, This is the Trotskyist perspective of to admit that he did not really know if growth of Islamic reaction during the Tehran has arrested hundreds of suspect permanent revolution, which vitally attacks ''were ordered from the top ech Cold War as a counterweight to ed Al Qaeda fighters streaming into Iran includes the fight to extend working elons of the government" in Tehran (New Communism and secular nationalism from Afghanistan, turned them over to class rule to the imperialist centres, York TImes, 15 February). in the Muslim world. Saudi Arabia and other countries and not least through the struggle for As revolutionary opponents of While the bulk of the "left" howled provided names, photographs and fin socialist revolution in Britain and the British and US imperialism, we recog along with the imperialists against the gerprints to US intelligence officials. US. In the struggle for a socialist fed nise that when the insurgents in Iraq Soviet intervention, we said, "Hail Red According to a number of press eration of the Near East, Marxist carry out strikes against the imperialist Army in Afghanistan!" We noted this reports, Tehran offered in 2003 to end workers parties are essential to break its military support for Hezbollah and the proletariat of the region from fun Hamas and to help the US "stabilise" damentalism, nationalism and illu Iraq in return for Washington lifting sions in imperialist "democracy". The sanctions and dismantling the Muja Stalinised Communist parties of the I ~ rOil :iijjHll'41141UIj) hedin Khalq, an Iranian opposition Near East, which made a mockery of group with bases in Iraq. The offer was this revolutionary perspective with Marxist newspaper of the Spartacist League reportedly rejected out of hand by vice their support to various bourgeois 1:1 1-year subscription to Workers Hammer: £3.00 (Overseas subscriptions: president Cheney. forces, share responsibility for the Airmail £7.00; Europe outside Britain and Ireland £5.00) The reactionary 1979 Iranian "Islamic growth of Islamic fundamentalism Revolution" that overthrew the CIA among the working and oppressed 1:1 1-year sub to Workers Hammer and 4 issues of Spartacist Ireland: £5.00 backed Shah was supported by the bulk masses. 1:1 1-year sub to Workers Hammer PLUS 21 issues of Workers Vanguard, ofthe left internationally in the name of Marxist fortnightly of the Spartacist League/US for £10.00. Sub includes "anti-imperialism". This included the Down with British imperialism I Black History and the Class Struggle pro-Moscow Tudeh (Masses) party in As further sanctions loom, the Iranian 1:1 1-year sub to WH, WV, and 4 issues of Spartacist Ireland: £12.00 Iran, which had a base among the coun government has taken the just stand that try's strategic, heavily Arab oil work it will defy UN strictures against its All subscriptions include Spartacist, organ of the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist) ers. Uniquely on the left, the Inter nuclear development. While Russia national Communist League (then the accommodated the US by voting for UN Name ______~ ______international Spartacist tendency) gave sanctions, it has also provided Iran with Address ______~ ______no political support to Ayatollah $700 million worth of TOR-Ml anti ______Postcode ______Khomeini's forces. We warned that aircraft batteries, "whose likely target in E-mail Phone ______-;;:;; absent a decisive break by the work the event of conflict would be American 198 ing class with the Islamic forces, the fighters and bombers" (New York TImes, Make cheques payable/post to: Spartaclst Publications, PO Box 42886, London N19 5WY 1978-79 upheaval would have a disas 18 February). Russian leaders were trous outcome. We said: "Down with continued on page 11
SPRING 2007 9 to maintain control of this upsurge. Congress (TUC) had declared an indus itics to await the second coming of Sonragenes ... They established a national council of trial truce during the war, while sup Christ while her mother became a staunch (Continued from page 7) action and threatened a general strike to porting military recruitment as well as Tory. Neither had to break with a single stop military intervention against Soviet measures like the Treasury Agreements one of their feminist positions. 1916 Easter uprising in Dublin and Russia, which forced the British ruling and the Munitions of War Act. These As a revolutionary party capable of Sylvia Pankhurst, who was sympathet class to call it off. included no-strike agreements and hir challenging the capitalist order, the ic to the Irish liberation struggle, was ing of semi-skilled and women workers CPGB was stillborn. The sterility of the very saddened by the execution of The need for communist parties at lower wages. Communist Party and the absence of a Connolly by the British imperialist Despite the failure of revolutions in real Leninist tradition in Britain have rulers. The Workers' Dreadnought had the rest of Europe with the receding of Tactics towards Labour been key negative conditions enabling frequent articles and speeches by Lenin the post-war revolutionary wave of While seeking to exclude the social Labourite reformism and illusions in and reports from the Russian 1918-19, there were continuing politi chauvinists, the Communist International parliamentarism to maintain hegemony Revolution, including many by the cal crises and outbreaks of tremendous sought to win over subjectively revolu in the workers movement. Unlike in the American communist John Reed, which class struggle in Europe. In Germany in tionary leftists, particularly syndicalists, early American Communist Party, there were run under a series called "Red March 1920, the right-wing Kapp and to convince them of the need for rev was no faction fight against Stalinism in Russia". The paper was internationalist putsch against the SPD government was olutionary parties dedicated to taking the CPGB, which in tum accounts for in scope, reporting on the labour move defeated through a nationwide general power. Sylvia Pankhurst founded her the subsequent absence of a strong ment in Germany as well as the impor strike with the armed mobilisation of own Communist Party (British section of Trotskyist tradition in Britain. Trotsky tance of the anti-colonial struggle, the workers. 1920 was a year of mas the Third International) in June 1920, a ism, in fact, had to be imported. including in India. sive strikes in Italy culminating in fac move that was strongly rebuked by Lenin We trace our revolutionary continuity A Franchise Bill was introduced in tory occupations in August and who was critical of her for placing tacti through James P Cannon and the Britain in 1917 and signed into law in September. Also the Red Army had just cal considerations above the formation of American Socialist Workers Party. early 1918. The Russian Revolution, repulsed Pilsudski's forces in the a united communist party. Lenin's "Left Cannon was a leader of the early which was welcomed by millions of Ukraine and was advancing towards Wing" Communism - an lrifantile Disor American Communist Party who was workers across Europe, played a deci Warsaw, posing the possibility of revo der (1920), an extension of his arguments won over to Trotskyism from the time of sive role in the achievement of votes for lution in Poland and the direct linking with Sylvia Pankhurst, argued that com the Sixth Congress of the Comintern in women in Britain. The bourgeoisie up with the German proletariat. The munists should advocate critical support to 1928. He struggled to crystallise a granted this concession in the face of Communist International anticipated the Labour Party in the upcoming elections Trotskyist party, initially from within the the Russian .Revolution and massive continuing revolutionary opportunities and also affiliate to the Labour Party, to ranks of the Communist Party which, like class struggle between 1917 and 1920. and a major task of its Second Congress win over its working-class base to form a the rest of the Comintern, succumbed to According to Sylvia Pankhurst herself: in July and August 1920 was the forma communist party. Several million workers the bureaucratic degeneration of the "Undoubtedly the large part taken by tion of effective communist parties to had become members of the Labour Soviet Union that began in 1923-24. women during the War in all branches of take advantage of them. Party as a consequence of joining trade This degeneration was conditioned social service had proved a tremendous British capitalist rule was profoundly unions which were affiliated to Labour. by the failure of revolutions elsewhere, argument for their own enfranchisement. shaken at the time. In 1919 the country Lenin argued for communist propa particularly in Germany in 1923, the Yet the memory of the old militancy, and the certainty of its recurrence if the claims was on the verge of a general strike; ganda and tactics, including participation isolation of the impoverished workers of women were set aside, was a much however the capitalist order was in the Labour Party and in parliament state with a predominantly peasant pop stronger factor in overcoming the reluc assured by the treachery of the among other arenas, as a necessary step to ulation and the decimation of the prole tance of those who would again have post Labourite leaders of the rail, coal and dispel those illusions and to win the work tarian vanguard in the civil war. The poned the settlement. The shock to the steel unions - the Triple Alliance ing class over to an understanding of the bureaucratic caste led by N Stalin foundations of existing social institutions who refused to undertake a revolution need for the dictatorship of the proletariat. came to power, which rolled back many already reverberating from Russia across ary confrontation with the government. This debate continued at the Second Con gains of the Bolshevik Revolution, not Europe, made many old opponents desire to enlist the new enthusiasm of women That same year Belfast experienced a gress of the Communist International least for women who were encouraged voters to stabilise the Parliamentary near-general strike that united Catholic which was attended by both Sylvia back into the family and the home. But machine." and Protestant workers. Shortly after Pankhurst and Willie Gallacher. Lenin's despite this political degeneration the - The Suffragette Movement wards troops were sent to Glasgow to intervention was decisive and at its foun Soviet Union remained a workers state. While Emmeline Pankhurst supported quell massive workers' protests there. dation the Communist Party of Great Even at the time of its destruction by the Franchise Bill, the WSF opposed it Workers leaders John Maclean and Britain (CPGB) adopted his position. counterrevolution in 1991-92, the because it only gave the vote to women Willie Gallacher were arrested and the Sylvia Pankhurst agreed to join the new Soviet Union provided many advan over the age of thirty and included a troops were not tested out. CPGB and argue for her positions inside. tages for women, such as state-support property qualification. These restrictions In this context the Labour Party posi However, she insisted on continuing the ed childcare institutions, full abortion were not lifted until 1928 when women tioned itself to derail the growing, publication of her own newspaper Work rights, access to a wide range of trades got the vote at the age of 21 on the same upsurge of working-class struggle ers ' Dreadnought and refused to bring it and professions and a status in many terms as men. inspired by the Russian Revolution and under party control. She printed articles ways far ahead of many advanced capi to channel it into support for parliament. critical of the party and Comintern policy talist societies today. We fought for "Hands Off Russia!" To this end, in 1918 the Labour Party and by taking differences outside the party unconditional military defence of the Sylvia Pankhurst was a member of adopted "Clause IV", a nominal commit she only served to make the fledgling Soviet Union against imperialist attack the steering committee of the Hands Off ment to "common ownership of the Comintern more vulnerable. She was and against capitalist restoration from Russia Committee, a mass campaign for means of production" as a deliberate ploy expelled because she refused to accept this within, and for proletarian political rev defence of the fledgling Soviet state. to deceive the working class into believ elementary requirement of democratic olution to oust the Stalinist bureaucracy. The campaign was particularly effec ing socialism could be achieved through centralism, after which she drifted away The Spartacist LeaguelBritain and the tive in the East London docks. There is parliament. Historically, the strategic task from communism. Workers' Dreadnought Spartacist Group Ireland are the British a story that I like. In 1920 there was a for revolutionaries in Britain has been to ceased publication in 1924 and Sylvia and Irish sections of the International rumour that some ships were being split the Labour Party, winning its work Pankhurst ended up a follower of Communist League (Fourth Inter loaded with weapons destined for the ing-class base to the programme of Emperor Haile Selassie in Ethiopia, nationalist) and we seek to reforge the Polish front against Soviet Russia. authentic communism. During 1919-20, where she died and is buried. While this Fourth International as part of the strug The WSF and the Hands Off Russia unity negotiatigns took place between meant breaking with communism, her sis gle for international proletarian revolu Committee were very active in cam those groups in Britain who supported the ter Christabel on the other hand quit pol- tion worldwide .• paigning against this and when they call to form a communist party and to found out that munitions were being affiliate to the Communist Interna loaded they ''went down to the docks to tional-the British Socialist Party, the argue with the dockers not to load these Socialist Labour Party, the South Wales weapons. They didn't seem to be get Socialist Society, and the WSF. Sylvia ting much of a response and Harry Pankhurst was one of those whom Lenin The first bound volume of Pollitt, who at the time was a member described as ''ultra-lefts''. These also Women and RevolutIon, of the WSF (and went on to become a included Willie Gallacher, leader of the journal of the leader of the Communist Party of Great Scottish shop stewards' movement and of Women's Commission of the. Britain) says an old dock worker tapped militant workers' struggles on Clydeside Spartacist League/US him on the shoulder and said, don't during World War I. It quickly became No 1 (May/June 1971) to No 20 (Spring 1980) worry, we have this situation in hand. clear that their disagreements were one of Indexed and available on microfilm Shortly thereafter, the rope broke and the main obstacles to forming a united Includes: communist party in Britain. the entire cargo ended up sinking into • CI Third Congress Theses on Methods of the North Sea. Sylvia Pankhurst, after campaigning Work Among the Women of the Communist The Hands Off Russia campaign led for women's suffrage, had come to Party to strikes by London dockers, who believe that revolutionaries should refused to load the Jolly George ship in refuse on principle to participate in par • How the Bolsheviks Organised Working 1920 with munitions bound for liamentary activities like voting or run Women: History of the Journal Rabotnitsa Pilsudski's nationalist forces in Poland ning for parliament, nor should they • Planning for Collective Living in the Early to fight against the Soviet army. affiliate to the Labour Party. Lenin Soviet Union: Architechture as a Tool of Social Dockers and railway unions throughout understood that some of the best fighters Transformation Britain also refused to load munitions. in Britain shared these positions. In £18 (includes postage) As some 350 "councils of action" large part this was conditioned by the sprang up throughout the country, the betrayals of social democracy Order from/make cheques payable to: Labour and trade union leaders sought the Labour Party and Trades Union Spartacist Publications, PO Box 42886, London N19 5WY
10 WORKERS HAMMER detailed global topographic data-a move Now it is reported that in February limiting China's capabilities and protect China ... apparently aimed at sharing information the US and Japan will discuss a "joint ing the American advantage. Edward (Continued from page 12) specifically on North Korea and China". operation plan for their troops" for Markey, Democratic co-chair of the Japan is also planning to launch a fourth defence of Taiwan (Japantoday.com, 4 House Nonproliferation task force, in 1997 broadened the Pentagon's list of spy satellite this month that will complete January). . declared on 20 January: "American satel nuclear targets in China. Since issuing a its system of global coverage. Beijing extends a hand to the bour lites are the soft underbelly of our national Nuclear Posture Review in 2001 that The point at which imperialist military geoisie in Taiwan by pushing for its security, and it is urgent that President included China among seven countries pressure bears down most directly on Bei reunification with China under the for Bush move to guarantee their protection targeted for possible nuclear attack, the jing is capitalist Taiwan, where the defeated mula, "one country, two systems". The by initiating an international agreement to Pentagon has moved into the Pacific bourgeoisie under the command of the nationalist Stalinist regime thus pledges ban the development, testing, and deploy five nuclear submarines carrying an butcher Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek to maintain capitalism on the island, as ment of space weapons and anti-satellite estimated 720 warheads, including fled the 1949 revolution. In February it has done in Hong Kong following the systems." some with advanced Trident II missiles, 2005, the US and Japan issued a joint pol reversion of the former British colony To defend and extend the gains of according to the Federation of American icy statement declaring Taiwan a "mutual to Chinese control in 1997. In opposi social revolution in China, North Korea, Scientists. security concern" and moved to reposition tion to the Stalinists and to the reac Vietnam and Cuba requires fighting for In pursuit of their own ambitions, the their military forces, including the regional tionary forces calling for Taiwanese proletarian revolution in the imperialist Japanese imperialists, who brutally deployment of antiballistic missile systems. independence, the ICL calls for the rev centres. Defence of the remaining work colonised Korea in 1910 and occupied In response to these dangerous provoca olutionary reunification of China: for ers states against imperialism and coun much of China before World War II, have tions, the Spartacist League/US and the socialist revolution to expropriate the terrevolution is critical to mobilising the embarked on a programme of military Spartacist Group Japan declared in a joint Taiwanese capitalists and a workers proletariat in Britain as well as in the US expansion whose principal targets are statement: political revolution to oust the Beijing and Japan against their own exploiters. North Korea and China. On 9 January, the "Since the 1949 Chinese Revolution, from bureaucracy, establishing a regime of Every advance in the workers states' government of Shinzo Abe re-established which the Chinese deformed workers workers democracy and revolutionary military capabilities buys more time for a fully fledged "defence" ministry for the state emerged, Taiwan has been an outpost internationalism. the international proletariat. Only when first time since World War II, with author for U.S. imperialism's counterrevolutionary' Washington's current space policy workers revolutions put the advanced ity to deploy the military overseas. This is schemes, military threats and interference opposes treaties proposed by China and technology and industrial capacity of the in Chinese internal affairs through the pup Russia banning the ''weaponization' of developed countries to use in an inter a significant step towards junking Article pet Chinese bourgeoisie. Taiwan has been Nine of the US-imposed postwar consti since ancient times a part of China, and we space". Clearly the US administration's national planned economy will the tution - long flouted in practice - ban Trotskyists will stand with China in the intent is to put a lot more weapons there. basis be laid for a socialist society of ning Japan from maintaining military event of any military conflict with impe The Democrats, the other party of US material abundance. To this end, the forces. According to the Japan Times (22 rialism over Taiwan." imperialism, and such bourgeois mouth ICL fights to build revolutionary Trot December 2006), Japan and the US signed - Workers Vanguard no 844, pieces as the New York Times advocate a skyist parties as part of a reforged an agreement in December ''to exchange 18 March 2005 space weapons treaty as a better means of Fourth International..
pursue their threats against both neo Pyongyang's testing and development of with US imperialism forms the dead Iran ... colonial Iran' and the North Korean nukes as a deterrent against imperialist liest terrorist force on the planet. As (Continuedfrom page 9) deformed workers state, and to pursue blackmail and hailed China's successful we wrote in "Imperialists Escalate as well their strategic goal of capitalist anti-satellite weapons test in January. Bloody Iraq Occupation" (Workers already furious over the eastward counterrevolution in China, the most Beijing's aid to the effort to disarm Vanguard no 884, 19 January): "It is expansion of NATO which, having powerful of the remaining societies North Korea-an expression of the the road of class struggle that points signed up the former Soviet republics of where capitalism was overthrown. It is ,Stalinist policy of "peaceful co-exist the way toward smashing imperialism Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, is now particularly criminal that representatives ence" with imperialism - undermines from within, through socialist revolu making overtures to Georgia and of the Chinese deformed workers state China's own defence. We fight for tion. If there is to be a future for com Ukraine. At a security conference in voted on the UN Security Council to workers political revolutions to oust the ing generations of working-class and Munich in February, Russian strongman impose sanctions on Iran. The Chinese Stalinist bureaucracies and replace minority youth other than one of Vladimir Putin lashed out at the US Stalinist regime has also collaborated them with regimes based on workers grinding exploitation, joblessness, over its plan to install a missile defence with the imperialists in the ongoing democracy. Such revolutionary regimes mass imprisonment or use as cannon system - supposedly directed against "negotiations" aimed at stoppmgNorth must be guided by a programme of rev fodder, if the impoverished masses of intercontinental missiles launched by Korea's development of nuclear olutionary internationalism, fighting to the world are to have a future other Iran! - in Poland and the Czech weapons. We stand for the unconditional extend proletarian rule through interna than starvation and slaughter, this Republic. military defence of the Chinese, North tional socialist revolution. whole system must be tom up by its Today, extricating their military Korean, Cuban and Vietnamese deformed In Britain, we seek to mobilise the roots and replaced by a rational, forces from the Iraq quagmire could workers states against imperialism and proletariat in struggle against its planned economy under workers rule give the imperialists more flexibility to domestic counterrevolution. We support "own" ruling class - which together internationally. ".
her name to our motion to bolster her decrepit. As revolutionary Marxists, who threw acid in the faces of unveiled SOAS ... credentials among the multiethnic we understand that imperialism is not women and shot school-teachers who (Continued from page 3) student population. However, her sup simply a foreign policy and the capi dared to teach girls to read. We said port for the motion doesn't amount to talist system cannot be reformed to "Hail Red' Army!" and "Extend the staff should be allowed to read and dis much; she let it drop off the end of the serve the exploited and oppressed. gains of the October Revolution to tribute material in any language regardless agenda at the meeting. The SWP is incapable of telling you Afghan peoples!" The Soviet with ofwhether it is translated. The 'war on ter the fundamental truth that racism, drawal from Afghanistan in 1989 was ror' is a classic 'divide and rule' ploy, stig Reform v revolution imperialist war and the violent repres the opening shot in counterrevolution in matizing Muslims as an excuse for a The SWP's reformist programme sweeping reduction in the legal rights of sion of workers and minorities are the USSR itself, which found the SWP the entire population and a racist, imperi can be seen fairly clearly through the intrinsic to the capitalist system and rejoicing at Yeltsin's 1991 countercoup alist 'war' of military adventures abroad. perspectives of the Stop the War cannot be eradicated short of a social heralding the destruction ofthe workers The 'war on terror' targets immigrants, Coalition (StWC). A BBC news online ist revolution led by the working state. This was a world historic defeat minorities and ultimately the working report of the 24 February anti-war class. We fight to build a multiethnic of the proletariat and ushered in the class." demonstration quotes leading SWPer revolutionary workers party with the reactionary period that we live in today. Members of the SWP and Respect and StWC convener Lindsey German programme to sweep away this system Although bureaucratically degenerated on campus are in an excruciating con stating that "we must intensify our call once and for all and replace it with a and undermined by Stalinist misrule, tradiction over this question: on the for all troops to be withdrawn now and workers state where those who pro the Soviet Union continued to embody one hand they present themselves as for Britain to break the link with duce the wealth of society will rule. gains for the working class achieved defenders of Muslims; on the other George Bush's foreign policy". This is through the overthrow of capitalist rule hand as good reformists when elected what the programme of the StWC For new October Revolutions! by the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. to office in the student union they amounts to: pressuring the capitalist As for defending Muslims, the We stood for unconditional military enforce the "war on terror" measures rulers of Britain to break from US SWP's opposition to Islamophobia is defence of the Soviet Union against on behalf of the university adminis imperialism and change their priorities couched in a wholesale capitulation to imperialist attack and capitalist restora tration and the bourgeois state, to delivering "welfare not warfare". Islam which, like all religions tion and for proletarian political revolu including the "English-only" policy. We call for: US/British troops out including Christianity, the established tion to oust the Stalinist bureaucracy and Thus with student union elections of Iraq and Afghanistan now! religion in this country - is a tool for establish the rule of democratically pending, Clare Solomon's election However our opposition to imperial the oppression and subjugation of elected workers councils; just as today leaflet claimed "The rise in ism in these countries has nothing in women. The SWP's capitulation to we fight for the same programme for the Islamophobia-with proposals to spy common with social-patriotic calls to Islamic forces is nothing new. During deformed workers states in China, Cuba, on Asian students" is "very worrying" bring "our boys" home. British impe the 1980s the SWP supported the US Vietnam and North Korea. We are proud and said. "I've organised to fight rialism - which once possessed the and British imperialists against the to be the party of the Russian Revolution. Islamophobia". But her role in most powerful empire in the world Soviet Union in Afghanistan, where the If you want to see a world rid of impe enforcing the "English-only" policy is no less savage and brutal than US Red Army was fighting anti-woman rialist war, cop brutality, poverty and flatly contradicts this claim so she put imperialism, simply weaker and more CIA-backed mujahedin reactionaries oppression, join us! •
SPRING 2007 11 WORKERS
Imperialists stung by Chinese weapons test For unconditional militarv delence 01 Chinal The following article is adapted from Japan, Russia, Israel and Europe". China's technological Workers Vanguard no 885, 2 February Moreover, according to a US official, development is crucial for its 2007, newspaper of the Spartacist China recently "painted" US satellites military defence. Right: League/US. with a ground-based laser, a potentially Shenzhou spaceship, part of On 11 January, a Chinese missile disabling capability. At considerably manned space programme. smashed to bits an aging Chinese weath higher orbits are the Pentagon's vital Below: Army parade in er satellite more than 500 miles above netwonn:rr Glo~ Positioning' System Tiananmen Square. the country's Xichang space facility. The satellites and other' spacecraft. exercise marked a significant advance in The International Communist League, the ability of the Chinese deformed of which the Spartacist LeaguelBritain is workers state to defend itself against a a section, stands for the unconditional nuclear first strike by US imperialism. military defence of China and the other The threat of such an attack has grown bureaucratically deformed workers with Washington's plans to deploy a states, North Korea, Vietnam and Cuba, "missile defence system" in the Asian against imperialist attack and internal Pacific, which would rely on satellite counterrevolution. We support China technology. and North Korea's development of The US, British and Japanese gov nuclear weapons and the means to' ernments raised a hue and cry over the deliver them as essential to the defence successful test. This is rich coming of those workers states. The Chinese from the British government which nuclear force, on the order of 200 war is currently seeking parliamentary heads with an estimated 20 deployed approval to acquire a new generation of ICBMs capable ofreaching the US, acts nuclear submarines to maintain Trident, as a deterrent against the US mass mut the missile system acquired in the derers who reduced Nagasaki and DPA 1980s as part of NATO's arsenal aimed Hiroshima to irradiated rubble in 1945. at the Soviet Union. With consummate China has been a target of the US tary relations with Indonesia. In lution and instead pursue the futile chutzpah, a spokesman for Bush's nuclear arsenal, currently consisting of Australia, long instrumental as a junior quest for "peaceful coexistence" with National Security Council intoned: some 10,000 warheads, since the imperialist partner to the Pentagon's imperialism. A glaring case in point is "China's development and testing of Korean War. For decades, the Soviet global operations, huge US bases are Beijing's treacherous partnership with such weapons is inconsistent with the Union's nuclear force forestalled the under construction at Bradshaw and the US, Japan and others in the attempt spirit of cooperation that both countries imperialists from unleashing their Yampi Sound. to disarm North Korea. Following aspire to in the civil space area." The deadly nukes. Since the counter North Korea's successful nuclear test in China in imperialists' October, China criminally voted for US rulers' overwhelming military revolutionary destruction of the Soviet cross-hairs might, far exceeding that of their impe degenerated workers state in 1991-92, sanctions against Pyongyang in the UN rialist rivals, not to mention China, Washington has shifted much of its The 1949 Chinese Revolution over Security Counci1. includes extensive militarisation of strategic forces to target China, the threw capitalistllandlord rule and ripped The Chinese Stalinist bureaucracy space. In October, the administration most powerful of the remaining coun the world's most populous country out played no small part in the destruction released a new "National Space Policy" tries in which capitalism has been over of the, clutches of the imperialist powers of the Soviet Union, which had been the (signed by Bush two months earlier) thrown. The Pentagon's space forces that had long held China in their grip. industrial/military powerhouse of the declaring Washington's unilateral right are designed to ensure its first-strike Although deformed from its inception non-capitalist world. In the wake of a to "deny, .,if necessary, adversaries the capability by suppressing any counter by the rule of a parasitic Stalinist falling-out between Moscow and use of space capabilities hostile to U. S. strike. • bureaucracy, the Chinese Revolution Beijing that began in the late 1950s, national interests". In fact, this policy is It is notable that the recent Chinese laid the basis for collectivising the Mao Zedong pursued an alliance with principally aimed at preventing China and North Korean weapons tests were economy, resulting in enormous social American imperialism against the from developing anti-satellite weapons. carried out with the US bogged down in progress for workers, women and peas Soviet Union. This was sealed when Behind the imperialist hype about its murderous occupation of Iraq. ants. Smashing the Chinese workers Mao met with US Republican president mythical Chinese "aggression" lies a Indeed, the Democratic Party's princi state is a strategic goal for the capitalist Nixon in 1972 as American bombs genuine military problem. The US war pal objection to Bush's Iraq policy is powers, who seek to turn China into a rained down on Vietnam and Cam machine has become heavily reliant on that it diverts resources away from vast field for untrammelled exploitation bodia. In 1979, only four years after the a vast network of satellites for intelli more strategically important targets like and super-profits. In pursuit of counter victory of the heroic Vietnamese w6rk gence, communications, navigation and China. revolution, the imperialists are both ers and peasants, China under Deng weapons targeting. The US owns or At the same time, the US has pursued increasing their military pressure Xiaoping invaded Vietnam, acting as operates more than half of the 845 cur the encirclement of China under cover against China and furthering their eco US imperialism's cat's paw. The rently active commercial and military of fighting "terrorism". Treacherously, nomic penetration of the mainland by alliance allowed the US under Reagan satellites in orbit. Dozens operate in low Beijing has embraced the imperialists' taking advantage of Beijing's "market to add to its anti-Soviet arsenal the bulk orbits similar to that of the destroyed "war on terror" in the interest of its eco reforms". of the nuclear weapons it had aimed at Chinese Fengyun lC satellite. Accord nomic relationship with the US. The US Defence of the workers states against China, at the same time tying down sig ing to Aviation Week and Space now has military installations in Central imperialism is undermined by the rule nificant Soviet forces in the Far East.
'~ ~ Technology (21 January), which broke Asia on China's western flank and has of the nationalist Stalinist bureaucra Following the demise of the USSR, the story of the anti-satellite test, the enhanced its military presence in the cies, whose policies are encapsulated in China was placed once again in Chinese military can now "credibly Philippines. The Bush administration the dogma of "building socialism in one Washington's cross-hairs. A directive threaten imaging reconnaissance and last year sealed a nuclear pact with country". The Stalinists oppose the signed by Democratic president Clinton other satellites operated by the U.S., India and in 2005 resumed open mili- fight for international proletarian revo- continued on page 11
12 SPRING 2007