+ __Australasian
Number 207 Summer 2009/10 50 cents Asylum for Tamil Refugees Now! Full Citizenship Rights lor All Immigrants!
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For months the bourgeoisie, politicians and media have waged an hysterical cam paign against desperate refugees seeking asylum by boat. Demonised as "illegal," many are Tamils fleeing the imperialist backed Sri Lankan regime's merciless repression. Since the regime's military offensive ended in May, some 300,000 Tamils have been interned in horrific prison camps and interrogation centres. V nderscoringthe~'i,ti~,k,~, .• these. n:fygee.S face, in early November twelve Tamils drowned when their boat sank almost 650 kilometres from the Cocos Islands. Months earlier, five refugees died and Desperate Tamil asylum seekers on armed scores were injured when their boat Australian Customs vessel Oceanic Viking in exploded after it was seized by the Aus November this year. We need a class-struggle tralian navy. fight to mobilise the multiracial working class in Refugees intercepted on the high seas defence of immigrants and refugees. by heavily-armed Australian navy ships Roy Rubianto are turned back or redirected to Indonesia must be fought by the organised workers tralia's racist "border protection" meas of the Tamil mini-state and the execution Those captured in "Australian waters" movement. Giving a taste of the power ures, including incarcerating refugees in of the leader of the Liberation Tigers of are incarcerated behind razor wire in the the working class can wield, in 1998 Australian-funded detention centres there. Tamil Eelam (LITE). We stand for the remote Christmas Island detention centre, union action in Perth saved a Somali man For the Australian imperialists, strength right of self-determination for the Tamil an overcrowded hellhole likened to Guan from being deported to certain death ening ties with Indonesia is of key eco people and stood for the military defence tanamo Bay. Rudd's federal ALP govern when the pilots refused to fly the plane nomic and geo-strategic importance. The of the LITE against the army assault. At ment enforces mandatory detention of and ground crew refused to refuel it. Rudd government has been working to the same time we give no political sup "illegal" refugees, first iI~posed by the Mobilising the workers movement in strengthen military co-operation with port to the bourgeois nationalist LITE Keating ALP government in 1992. Once defence of immigrant rights is crucial to Indonesia, and continues training the who, carrying out the logic of national "processed," for those refugees deported, the defence of the multiracial working blood-soaked Kopassus special forces, ism, have staged attacks on Sinhalese it can be a death sentence. We demand: class as a whole, to forging the necessary whose role is to suppress any opposition to villagers, expelled Muslims from the his Close the detention camps! No depor unity and strength to fight the bosses' war the repressive Indonesian regime. toric Tamil city of Jaffna and employed tations! For the right of asylum for on working people. Far from helpless vic As a jackal imperialist power allied to murderous violence against other Tamil Tamil refugees and all victims of right tims, immigrants are a vital component of ,the V.S., Australia seeks to impose nationalist groups. wing terror! Full citizenship rights for the working class, the force capable of regional "stability," i.e., ensure its flow of The banning of the LITE as a "terror all who have made it here! destroying this decaying capitalist sys profits from imperialist exploitation, by ist" organisation by governments' in Capitalist governments from Europe to tem. Only by sweeping away capitalist shoring up semicolonial regimes that will numerous countries effectively gav~' the North America to Australia have been rule through workers revolution and do their bidding. Australian imperialism's Lankan regime a green light to carry out waging a vicious war on the millions of building a classless socialist soCiety can recent spate of military and other agree its murderous offensive. We in the Intet' refugees forced to flee the immiseration there be an end to racism. ments with regimes from the Philippines national Communist League denounced caused by imperialism. This brutality to Indonesia also occurs in the context of these bans and called for the defence of occurs in the context of the biggest capi ALP's Anti-Refugee, "Anti increased imperialist concern over the Tamil organisations against state repres-, talist economic crisis since the Great Terror" Regional "Security" growing political and economic influence sion, just as we have defended individual Depression. Millions of workers have lost In mid-October, at Rudd's behest, the of the Chinese deformed workers state in Tamils arrested and charged under the their jobs across the globe. As the ongo Indonesian navy intercepted a boat carry the Asia-Pacific region. We stand for the "anti-terror" legislation (see "Drop the ing crisis continues to threaten the liveli ing 260 Tamil asylum seekers. Taken to a unconditional military defence of China Charges Against Tamil Activists!", ASp hoods of working people, the Rudd Labor port in Java, the refugees refused to leave against imperialist attack and internal No. 199, Spring 2007). government targets immigrants and mi their boat fearing they would be detained capitalist counterrevolution and for prole Using the criminal attack on the World norities with increased state repression there in limbo for years. The Rudd tarian political revolution to oust the Stal Trade Center in 2001 and subsequent and violence. This in turn has generated government then brokered a deal with inist bureaucracy (see article, page 12). attacks such as the Bali' and London racist attacks on the streets such as the Indonesia for the latter to take 78 Tamil The Rudd government is also provid bombings as a pretext, capitalist rulers wave of murderous terror against Indian asylum seekers picked up by the Aus ing resources and training for the Sin around the world have used the "war on and Chinese students (see "Racist Terror tralian Customs ship, the Oceanic Viking. hala-chauvinist Sri Lankan government terror" to whip up racism, jack up state Sparks Indian Student Protests," ASp No. This turned into a month-long stand-off including to beef up the regime's crack repression at home and regiment the popu 206, Spring 2009). after the refugees refused to disembark down on Tamils attempting to flee the lation, criminalising political dissent and Anti-immigrant racism is a time-worn until given a written guarantee of quick island. The Sri Lankan government's restricting the civil liberties of all. The method of the capitalist rulers to divide resettlement in Australia. bloody 26-year war against the Tamils in "anti-terror" frenzy is also used to justify the working class and paralyse it in the The Rudd government has increased the North and East of the island ended in imperialist marauding abroad, including face of the capitalists' attacks. It can and 'funding to Indonesia to help police Aus- May with the destruction of the remnants continued on page 11
J T Stop Vendetta Against Roman Polanski! Free. Him Now! No Extradition!
The following article is reprinted from lose in gunning for Polanski. Wells now also include gambling, prostitution, drug Workers Vanguard (No. 944, 9 October), ludicrously claims that he lied on camera use and pornography). Government out of newspaper of the Spartacist League/U.S. and assumed the film would not be shown the bedroom! Free Roman Polanski! Suddenly reviving its 32-year-old ven in the U.S. In response, Marina Zenovich, At the time of Polanski's original per Roman Polanski at closing ceremony detta against world-renowned film director who made the documentary, noted that secution, we were virtually alone on the of 2008 Cannes Film Festival. Roman Polanski, the Los Angeles County Wells had in fact "corroborated the left in defending him. We reprint below district attorney's office, backed by the account of events that he gave in my film" our article, "Stop the Puritan Witchhunt the case as part of his general "law-and Feds, orchestrated his arrest in Zurich on to the New York Times in an article printed Against Roman Polanski!" which first order" campaign. September 26. The 76-year-old Polanski, on 17 July 2008. appeared in WV No. 192, 10 February The national press has covered the case now in Swiss custody, awaits possible The motives of the lying and vindictive 1978. The political points in that piece with a mixture of pious outrage and extradition to the U.S. to be sentenced for American prosecutors and judges are are as relevant today as they were then, amused contempt as another typical "Hol having had consensual sex with a preco clear enough, but the Swiss government's over three decades ago. lywood scandal." Time (28 March 1977) cious 13-year-old one day back in 1977. sudden willingness to kowtow to U.S. sneeringly referred to the director's Roman Polanski committed no crime. authorities has raised some eyebrows. * * * "tawdry troubles," while the New York Facing a Hollywood show trial with multi Polanski, after all, has for many years Internationally acclaimed film director Post (2 February) devoted a full-page ple felony charges hanging over him, he owned a home in Switzerland that he fre Roman Polanski has been driven out of the spread to the "new Hollywood" and pled guilty to "unlawful sexual inter quently visited. Rumors abound that U.S. by a vicious and vindictive official Polanski's "rat pack" of sexually swinging course" with a minor. Threatened with throwing Polanski to the wolves is a bid witchhunt. His legal tribulations began last friends, making him out to be some kind more prison time after having already for leniency in the IRS investigation of March 11 when he was arrested in the of exotic, neurotic freak. This is not the served six weeks in state prison for "diag the Swiss banking giant UBS on charges lobby of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel by Los first time that the state, gleefully cheered nostic testing," Polanski, a French citizen, of assisting American citizens in tax Angeles police, responding to a woman's on by the sensation-mongering press, has fled to Paris in 1978 to escape the puritan evasion. "The government is so trauma charge that he had screwed her 13-year-old driven prominent figures out of Holly witchhunt. Despite the sta,nding threat of tized by the IRS and whole UBS scan daughter. Ever since, Polanski's nightmar wood. Errol Flynn, by all accounts an ami extradition, Polanski has persevered in dal," commented former Swiss Socialist ish persecution-which included 42 days able man who never hurt anyone, was the face of the American judicial fatwa parliamentarian Jean Ziegler. "If any in the Chino, California state prison for endlessly being dragged through the and managed to pursue his film career in American authority asks for anything in degrading "psychiatric observation"-has courts on account of his well-known pref Europe with artistic success, until now. Switzerland, they get it in 24 hours" (AP, escalated. erence for young women. Many are asking the obvious question 29 September). Polanski was recently released from Ingrid Bergman was even denounced about Polanski's sudden arrest: why now? Whatever machinations the govern Chino upon completion of the "psychiatric in Congress at the height of the McCar The events occurred over three decades ment is employing against Polanski, we diagnosis," which was reportedly "favor thyite witchhunt for her nerve in defiling ago, Polanski is in his 70s and there is no oppose this outrageous witchhunt, as we able." However, Superior Court judge Rit her saintly "Joan of Arc" screen image by "victim" to avenge. The woman involved, have from the outset. In the -U.S., the tenband immediately called the report a bearing a child out of wedlock to the Ital Samantha Geimer, now in her 40s with morality police are howling for Polan "whitewash" and informed the director's ian filmmaker Roberto Rosselini. Charlie three children, has long opposed the con ski's blood, including the New York Times lawyer that he intended to sentence Polan Chaplin too was driven out of the "land tinued prosecution of Polanski. And, until in a 30 September editorial. In France, ski to an additional 48 days in prison, to be of opportunity"-largely for political rea recently, the U.S. has not really turned the after officials in the French government followed by "voluntary deportation." "He sons, of course, but with a good dose of screws trying to extradite him. objected to Polanski's arrest, they were doesn't belong in this country," proclaimed nasty sexual innuendo thrown in. The But, as noted by author Robert Harris in met by howls of indignation from other this state-empowered guardian of the news-starved press runs periodic "expo a 30 September op-ed piece in the New politicians demanding that Polanski face nation's morals. Polanski, who holds ses" of glamorous Hollywood in order to York Times, that changed after the release "justice" in the U.S. French citizenship, fled to Paris on Febru simultaneously titillate the public-for of the 2008 documentary, Roman Polan At the same time, Polanski has received ary 1, where he remains while the prosecu the most part trapped in deadly dull, poor ski: Wanted and Desired. The documen support from other filmmakers like Mar tion plans ways to extradite him. and restricted lives-and channel their tary includes an interview with David tin Scorsese and Woody Allen, who him Rittenband, known locally as a "hang resentment against the rich and famous Wells, who brags how he, as a then self was the target of an anti-sex ing judge," obviously intends to make into satisfying but empty moral outrage. deputy district attorney, coached Judge witchhunt (see "Woody Allen Crucified Polanski into an example. Douglas Dal What is genuinely "tawdry" and sordid Laurence Rittenband (now deceased) on on 'Family Values'," WV No. 558, 4 Sep ton, the defendant's attorney, has pointed about the Polanski case is not the actual the case, in particular to ensure prison tember 1992). But among those who out that of the 44 people convicted in Los incident itself, but the vile official perse time for Polanski. Based on the film defend him, many accept that Polanski Angeles County on similar charges in cution and the hideous hypocrisy of it all. and other evidence, Polanski's attorneys committed a "crime" in 1977. And since 1976, none ever spent any time in jail. The national press has carefully "omitted" filed a motion to dismiss the case, which that time, "sexual tolerance has shriveled," Former state attorney general Younger the real facts of the case. The director had was denied in February by Los Angeles as noted by Alexander Cockburn in Coun also sought to make political hay out of continued on page 5 Superior Court judge Peter Espinoza. terPunch (2-4 October), with increasing With perverse logic, Espinoza acknow hysteria over "pedophilia" and the attend ledged that there was "substantial miscon ant mushrooming of reactionary laws. CORRECTION the image illustrates the horror often duct," but refused to consider dismissal We demand an end to reactionary "age A photo used in the article "Down visited upon women in Iran by the theo unless Polanski personally showed up in of consent" and "statutory rape" laws, With the Clerical Regime! No Support cratic regime, it has been brought to the his court to face certain arrest. which falsely conflate consensual sex to 'Reform' Mullahs!" in Australasian attention of our comrades in the U.S. by With the frame-up story out-including with violent crimes. We oppose all laws Spartacist No. 206, Spring 2009 (re a subscriber that the picture, which was in court-the prosecutors had nothing to against "crimes without victims" (which printed from Workers Vanguard No. incorrectly credited to Amnesty Interna 939, 3 July) was incorrectly identified tional, was a still from the 1984 Dutch as an "Iranian woman being prepared film De Steen (The Stone). We apolo for execution by stoning, 2004." While gise to our readers for the error. SPARTAC'IST ~ For a workers republic of Australia, part of a socialist Asia! Spartacist League of Australia Marxist newspaper of the Central Committee of the Spartacist League of Australia, Web site: www.icl-fi.org section of the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist). EDITOR: Margaret Rodda Melbourne Sydney YOUNG SPARTACUS EDITOR: D. van Scheveningen GPO Box 2339 GPO Box 3473 CIRCULATION MANAGER: Mike Wallace Melbourne Vic 3001 Sydney NSW 2001 PRODUCTION MANAGER: Phil Newman Phone: (03) 96544315 Phone: (02) 9281 2181 Printed by trade-union labour. Published quarterly by Spartacist ANZ Publishing Co., GPO Box 3473. Sydney NSW 2001. E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected]. Subscriptions: $5 for 4 issues; overseas $7. Opinions expressed in signed articles or letters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint. Printed by Spotpress Pty Ltd. 24-26 Lilian Fowler Place. Marrickville. ISSN 0311-3264 International COl1Jmunist League No. 207, Summer 2009/10 Date of issue: December 2009 Box 7429 GPO, New York, NY 10116, 'USA
2 AUSTRALASIAN SPARTACIST + German Trotskyists in 1989 on Opening of Berlin Wall: "Workers Soviets Must Rule In• All Germany!" The/ollowing is reprinted/rom Workers regime over the future of the DDR. While Vanguard (No. 948, 4 December), news we were calling for a government of workers councils, the Stalinists were con paper 0/ the Spartacist League/U.S. sciously acting to prevent a workers This November the imperialist rulers insurrection by demobilizing all army celebrated the 20th anniversary of the units that had formed soldiers councils as opening up of the Berlin Wall in the for a result of our early propaganda. Although shaped by the disproportion of mer East Germany (DDR). The bourgeois forces, there was in fact a contest rulers falsely portray this event and its between the ICL program of political aftermath as an expression of the long revolution and the Stalinist program of ings of the East German masses for the capitulation and counterrevolution .... supposed joys of capitalism and an "The workers of the world, and we unqualified rejection of socialism and among them, suffered a grave defeat with the victory of the Fourth Reich. But we communism. The reality was very dif fought." ferent, as powerfully described in the statement by our comrades of the Trotz * * * kistische Liga Deutschlands (TLD-now Workers throughout the world seeking Spartakist photos• the Spartakist-Arbeiterpartei Deutsch East Berlin, 3 January 1990: Spartakist the rebirth of genuine communism are lands) that we print below. Republished speaker addresses ICL-initiated 250,000· watching the dramatic events in East Ger from Workers Vanguard No. 490 (24 strong rally in Treptow Park against many. "Russia was the spark-Germany November 1989), this statement was fascist desecration of memorial to Red will be the flame," proclaimed a banner, a issued days after the Berlin Wall came Army soldiers and in defence of DDR. slogan from the KPD [German Commu down on 9 November 1989 and over ni~t Party] of the '20s, in the massive 200,000 copies were distributed. capitalist counterrevolution in the DDR, November 4 East Berlin demonstration. The DDR was a bureaucratically de the rest of East Europe and the Soviet The developments in the DDR [German formed workers state that we Trotskyists Union. In contrast, the bulk of the left Democratic Republic] pose pointblank defended against imperialist attack and cheered it on, serving as junior partners in proletarian political revolution. This internal counterrevolution. Capitalism the imperialists' drive for capitalist resto means ousting the Stalinist bureaucracy had been overthrown in the DDR, as in ration and standing openly with the forces and erecting in its place real workers much of East Europe, in the wake of the of "democratic" counterrevolution. Many soviets, like those established in the Octo Soviet Red Army's defeat of Nazi Ger of the same groups today bemoan the ber Revolution, based on collectivized many in World War II. But the DDR was poverty of East Europe while burying property. This in tum can be the spark for ruled by a parasitic Stalinist bureaucracy. their own roles in helping to bring about socialist revolution in the capitalist West. On the basis of their dogma of "socialism this catastrophe. East Berliners flooded across the bor in one country," the Stalinists opposed We were very conscious that our inter der into West Berlin on the night of the extension of proletarian revolutions vention in the DDR was integral to the November 9. Except for a handful all internationally while suppressing any struggle for proletarian political revolu went back. Kohl tried to address a "vic independent political expression of the tion in the USSR as well. So, too, the tory rally" in West Berlin but was working class at home. the growing impact of our political views. defeat in the DDR paved the way for the drowned out with boos and whistles. The late 1980s and early '90s saw the At Treptow, for the first time in 60 years, ascendancy in 1991-92 of counterrevolu When he tried 'to strike up a chorus of unraveling of Stalinist rule in East Europe Trotskyists addressed a mass audience in tion in the Soviet Union, homeland of the "Deutschland, Deutschland tiber alles," and the Soviet Union. In the DDR, signifi a workers state. Participants and those lis 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. An unparal Brandt, Momper & Co. sang along, but cant protest rallies began in October 1989, tening on radio and TV heard two coun leled defeat for working people all over the boos and whistles drowned them out. growing larger week by week. That terposed programs: that of the Stalinist the world, counterrevolution devastated And an attempted Nazi march on the month, hardline ruler Erich Honecker, SED, and that of the Trotskyist ICL. Over the working classes of the former Soviet Brandenburg Gate led by Republikaner head of the Socialist Unity Party (SED), hostile Stalinist interjections, the TLD's Union and the rest of East Europe, bring Fuhrer Schonhuber was turned back by was ousted from power. November 4 saw Renate Dahlhaus declared, "Our economy ing grinding poverty, mass unemploy crowds shouting "Nazis out!" East Ger a million-strong demonstration in East is suffering from waste and obsolescence. ment and fratricidal wars. Nor were the man workers are jubilant that the Wall is Berlin. Contrary to today's capitalist The SED party dictatorship has shown catastrophic results confined to the for coming down, but they don't want a mythology, it included many pro-socialist that it is incompetent to fight this." We mer Soviet bloc. On the ideological level, revanchist capitalist reunification. banners and slogans such as "For called for the forging of an egalitarian the consciousness of workers around the One placard on November 4 read: Communist Ideals! No Privileges!" The communist party and for the rule of work world has been thrown back, albeit un "Hungary '56, China '89," and the spectre choices posed for the workers of the DDR ers and soldiers councils. evenly, to the point where politically haunting the bureaucracy was the 17 June were proletarian political revolution-i.e., The Treptow mobilization posed the advanced workers no longer identify their 1953 East German workers uprising, the the working class ousting the bureaucracy possibility of organized workers resist struggles with the goals of socialism. first in East Europe against Stalinist and taking political power into its own ance to the imperialists' drive for capital The collapse of bureaucratic rule and bureaucratic rule. West German revan hands-or capitalist counterrevolution, ist annexation of the DDR. For that triumph of counterrevolution confirmed chists have tried to usurp June 17, and the i.e., the West German bourgeoisie taking reason it became a key turning point, as Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky'S warning East German bureaucracy spread the over the DDR. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev pulled that the political bankruptcy of Stalinism same lies about the uprising. But it In struggling to effect a workers politi the plug on the DDR, vastly speeding up was a mortal danger to the historic gains belongs to the German working class. On cal revolution, part of the fight for the the timetable for capitalist reunification, of the working class. Following Marx, that day East German workers appealed revolutionary reunification of Germany and the East German Stalinists began to Trotsky emphasized that an isolated to their class brothers and sisters in the under the rule of the working class, the organize a stampede into counterrevolu workers state could not survive in the West to rise up against their capitalist ICL undertook the largest and most sus tion. In their counterrevolutionary blitz long run since its level of economic pro masters. At the train station in Halle, tained intervention in our history. In early krieg, the German bourgeoisie threw ductivity could not rise above that of the workers greeted a train from the West December we began publishing the daily billions of deutschmarks into East Ger powerful advanced capitalist-imperialist with a banner proclaiming, "We're clean Arprekorr, Workers Press Correspond many. Under the impact of the bourgeois states committed to its destruction. The ing house in Pankow [East Berlin], now ence. Groups of youth and workers in the offensive, the March 1990 Volkskammer preservation of proletarian power in the you sweep out the crap in Bonn." DDR began to distribute Arprekorr, many (East German parliament) elections be Soviet Union and East Europe required Ulbricht was saved only by Soviet tanks. of whom we organized into the Spartak came a referendum on capitalist reunifi its international extension through world In any case, what was required then as ist-Gruppen, or Spartacist groups. cation. Demoralized and disorientated by wide socialist revolution. well as today is fraternization with the The high point of struggle was the the abject betrayals of the Stalinist As we wrote in the main document Red Army. As Siberian and Silesian min 3 January 1990 united-front demonstra bureaucracy, 85 percent of the population adopted at the ICL's Second Internation ers strike against the ravages of "market tion against the fascist desecration of a voted for either the Christian Democratic al Conference in 1992, "For the Com reforms," the East German workers can Soviet war memorial and in defense of the or Social Democratic coalitions. Counter munism of Lenin and Trotsky!" (reprinted make common cause with their class DDR workers state that brought out some revolution had won, a bitter defeat not in Spartacist [English-language edition] comrades and be the springboard for pro 250,000 people to East Berlin's Treptow only for the East German working class No. 47-48 [Winter 1992-93]): letarian political revolution throughout Park. Our call for this protest was taken up but internationally. "From the beginning we were in a politi East Europe and the Soviet Union. by the ruling Stalinist party, which feared The ICL alone fought to the end against cal struggle with the abdicating Stalinist continued on page 10 SUMMER 2009/10 3 +
The following article is reprinted from which includes numerous ex-Stalinists, is Workers Vanguard (No. 946, 6 November), the most prominent in the yellow-shirted newspaper of the Spartacist League/U.S. political milieu. Its political predecessors ; ····.P'.".'. }/,{ ...... '. b.······· . ".\11.. ·.I'·.·.·· ~. ' .. • ...... " '" ·...... •...... ;. ·I'~n·)''., •..... '.' ,"...... •. On August 1, the Philippines woke to ·IS cheered Cory Aquino's rise to power in the news that former president Corazon ...... '.p,·· .... 1986. Today, they are loyal drumbeaters "Cory" C. Aquino succumbed to colon for the Liberal Party of Senator Benigno cancer. Aquino, who was catapulted to "Noynoy" Aquino III, who has emerged the presidency of this Far Eastern U.S. as Liberal presidential standard-bearer in neocolony by "peaceful revolution," is the wake of the massive turnout and deeply revered in bourgeois circles that media hype during his mother's funeral. have elevated her to near cult status as an Aquino Funeral Akbayan has since formed a bloc with icon of "democracy and freedom." smaller bourgeois opposition parties and The late Cory Aquino was a member so-called "civil society" organizations to of the old landed aristocracy which has support "Noynoy," whom these reformists dominated Filipinos for centuries, both describe as "a symbol to a nation yearn under Spanish and American colonial rule ing for unity and greatness." and following independence in July 1946. The Communist Party of the Philip She assumed office in February 1986 dur and the Left pines (CPP)-through the National Demo ing the so-called "People Power Revo cratic Front (NDF)-eulogized Aquino lution," a misnomer for the combination as "an outstanding and inspiring figure in of a U.S.-engineered military revolt and the anti-fascist alliance" who was "will massive street demonstrations encouraged ing to join up with the patriotic and pro by the Roman Catholic hierarchy and big gressive forces of the people in mass business to send the hated dictator Ferdi protest actions." The CPP-led guerrilla nand Marcos packing. insurgency by the New People's Army It is hardly surprising that Aquino's (NPA) is in its 40th year. Ever since supposedly nonviolent "People Power" Aquino became president, the NDF movement serves as a blueprint for the umbrella political arm has been engaged "color-coded revolutions" spawned by in on-and-off peace negotiations with the Washington from the Ukraine to Lebanon. government. When the U.S. pulled the plug on Marcos, Born to the Cojuangco clan, Cory who had become a liability to stability in Aquino promised to make the family the country, we said "Beware of coups owned Hacienda Luisita sugar estate a 'Made in U.S.A.'" ("Reagan Pulls Plug on model of land reform, but she later Marcos," WVNo. 398,28 February 1986). reneged. Upon taking power, Aquino Cory Aquino's "revolution" did not bring responded to popular expectations and the Philippine working masses any closer enormous social turmoil with bloody to power. Instead, it was, as described repression. She presided over the military's by Der Spiegel (7 July 1986) journal mass killing of peasants in Lupao in ist Tiziano Terzani, "the reinstatement of Nueva Ecija province and outside the the old aristocratic oligarchy of Spanish Malacaiiang presidential palace itself. descent, with which Marcos clashed and She then unleashed rural death squads which he partly replaced by his own like the Alsa Masa (Mass Uprising) in Manila, 5 August: Funeral proceSSion of former Philippine president Corazon a "total war" against the CPP and other clique of relatives and hangers-on." For Aquino. Philippine reformist left obscenely mourned "lita Cory." example, when the wealthy and powerful leftists. In November 2004, Hacienda Lopez family dynasty fell out of Marcos's Luisita again captured headlines when favor, it was stripped of most of its politi · ...... heavily armed police and soldiers, backed cal and economic assets. Following Aqui by armored personnel carriers, attacked no's rise to power, it got back its television ./N ·.Gh...USIQ8.~\~;,.; IU ... strikers affiliated with the Kilusang Mayo stations and ownership stake in the coun Uno (KMU), a labor federation aligned try's largest power utility. with the reformist left Bayan Muna A devout Catholic, Aquino promulgated (Nation First) party, killing seven, includ the 1987 Constitution, which includes one BOUfg~pi$. L.tls~ . ing a child, and wounding hundreds. of the most severe anti-abortion laws in '" ~ . "" 4 '/'.))' ~~ Despite having borne the brunt of the world. A hard anti-communist, Aquino repression, the CPP has absolved Aquino was a staunch supporter of a strong Ameri of the string of atrocities committed
,JEOI:W_'~'f'- ••• <1)f )?:'?~" ' ",,,' ",-,.,t.:;'" ,;;.:Jlt-, , ,;¥'." d" ,,'f i;1" hItllhi. against the working people during her six can imperialist military presence in the Philippines. In the face of domestic politi year term in office. The bloodiest of these cal opposition, she unsuccessfully tried at president, a vocal opponent of the current consolidate her hold on political power. attacks was the suppression of the 22 Jan the end of her presidency to maintain U.S. regime, passed away while the highly The announcement of Aquino's death uary 1987 demonstration for land reform, operation of the huge Subic Bay naval unpopular right-wing president Gloria touched off a massive emotional outpour when Filipino cops and Marines fired base. But the American military remains a Macapagal-Arroyo was in Washington to ing, even among the plebeian masses of pointblank into the march, killing 18 peas potent combat force and continuous pres curry favor from President Barack Manila and key cities around the country. ant protesters and their leftist supporters ence in the Philippines through rotating Obama. The highly publicized refusal by Business ground to a halt as the capitalist and wounding nearly a hundred, just out military exercises. All U.S. troops out of the Aquino family of a state-sponsored bosses joined white-collar employees in side the presidential palace. The CPP and the Philippines! funeral and the cold reception given Presi the Makati financial district to salute the its allies in the leftist umbrella group The Philippines was seen by imperialist dent Arroyo during the wake laid bare to funeral cortege in a blizzard of yellow con Bayan initially denounced Aquino. But in planners as an unsinkable aircraft carrier the population the deep factional divisions fetti streaming down from surrounding their pursuit of class collaboration, they in the Cold War offensive against the within the Filipino bourgeoisie, as the high rises. A quarter million Filipinos soon began to alibi her. Bayan declared former Soviet Union and in the hot war country prepares for national elections in waving yellow flowers, chanting "Cory" she was not "directly" responsible for this against the Vietnamese Revolution, as it May 2010. Arroyo, the daughter of a and flashing the thumb and index finger massacre by the military and police. is in a strategic location to serve as a mili former Philippine president, has been sus "L" sign (for "Laban," meaning "Fight") For the likes of Satur Ocampo, a Rep tary staging ground and supply base as pected of rigging the 2004 election in her came out for the funeral procession, which resentative in the Philippine Congress weB as to guard the sea lanes along the favor. Her husband Mike, a member of the took nine hours to wind through the storm who was once a senior cadre of the NDF, western Pacific Rim. It still serves a simi oligarchy, has been accused of amassing drenched streets of Manila. These televised it's all just comrades' blood under the lar purpose today, with the current U.S. kickbacks for state-sponsored projects and scenes, exclusively carried by the Lopez bridge. In 2001, Ocampo's Bayan Muna military encirclement and provocations showering cronies with perks, much to the owned ABS-CBN network, were eerily party mobilized the warm bodies for the aimed chiefly at China and North Korea. displeasure of the Makati-centered bour reminiscent of the funeral march for Cory military-backed "People Power II" coup. As part of our struggle against imperial geoisie, sections of the clergy and the gen Aquino's husband, Benigno "Ninoy" Jr., a They supported President Arroyo's "Peo ism and in defense of working people and eral popUlation. millionaire bourgeois politician with close ple Power Coalition" senatorial slate, the oppressed around the globe, we stand As Cory Aquino lay in the hospital, the ties to the CIA, who was assassinated by even while the blood of ousted popUlist for the unconditional military defense of powerful Roman Catholic church and agents of the Marcos regime in August president Joseph Estrada's plebeian sup the Chinese, North Korean, Vietnamese Aquino supporters in the media were ex 1983. That event sparked the bourgeois-led porters, gunned down at the gates of and Cuban bureaucratically deformed horting Filipinos to join in prayers for her "People Power" movement that brought Malacaiiang, had barely dried. More workers states against imperialist attack recovery while yellow ribbons-the sym Cory Aquino to power a few years later recently, the "Honorable" Congressman and capitalist counterrevolution. At the bol of Cory's "People Power" movement with U.S. backing. Ocampo, a cothinker of exiled CPP same time, we fight for proletarian politi -festooned the major avenues ahd build founder and NDF political consultant cal revolutions to oust the Stalinist ings around the capital, Manila. From her Acid Test for the Philippine Left Jose Maria Sison, was prominently flash bureaucracies and establish regimes based sickbed, Aquino gave a final statement in Like the first Aquino funeral over 25 ing the "Laban" sign at Aquino's funeral on workers democracy and revolutionary support of thousands of demonstrators years ago, the second Aquino funeral procession .. He is now reportedly being internationalist policies. gathered in the nearby Makati Central graphically displayed the Philippine ref considered for a guest senatorial slot on Business District, many of them mobi-. ormist left in the political tow of the the ticket of multimillionaire Manny The Persistence of "Yellow Fever" lized by the Philippine left, to protest bourgeoisie. Obscenely, the Philippine Villar's Nacionalista Party. According to bourgeois observers in the Arroyo's attempts to get the Philippine left in general has lined up behind the For their part, the ex-Stalinist splinters Philippines, Cory Aquino's death could Congress to rubber-stamp her proposed ghost of "Tita (Auntie) Cory." from the CPP, likeSanlakas, Alab Kati not have been more timely. The former changes in the constitution that would The social-democratic Akbayan party, punan and the newly formed "socialist" 4 AUSTRALASIAN SPARTACIST Il.. Partido Lakas ng Masa (PLM-Masses
daughter rather lamely as "precocious in from the cruel feudal "right of the first His prosecution, like the furor over "kid Polanski ... the midst of growing up." Even Judge Rit night" through the Catholic church's die porn," feeds into the sanctimonious (continued from page 2) tenband in his probation report was forced intensely detailed rules on various sexual "Save Our Children" crusade epitomized to admit the blatantly obvious sexual ma sins to the Victorians' complete denial of by Anita Bryant's anti-homosexual witch pleaded gUilty on August 8 to unlawful turity of the girl: "the prosecutrix was a the sexuality of women and children and hunt-a reactionary offensive which hides intercourse with a minor in return for dis well-developed young girl, who looked their artificial prolongation of childhood. behind the "innocence" of children to missal of other sex and drug charges older than her years, and regrettably not The sexual "norms" which the American enforce bourgeois morality through the against him, including rape, child moles unschooled in sexual matters." state upholds today reek with hypocrisy in vindictive persecution of "deviants." tation, oral copulation, sodomy and pro The incident occurred in the home of a society where scientific research into The victimization of those held to viding drugs to a minor. However, movie star Jack Nicholson, and it was human sexuality is only now beginning to threaten the prevailing norms of family statements at the trial make it clear that partially on the testimony of Nicholson's be published on a mass basis; where sci life often takes the most extreme forms. In what happened was hardly a case ofrape! current roommate Angelica Huston, who entific breakthroughs in contraception November a 23-year-old princess and her The 13-year-old whom Polanski was had returned home later that evening, that have removed the legitimate fear of preg commoner husband were executed in accused of raping was described in the Los Polanski was charged. Of course, her nancy, which for ages stood as a barrier to Saudi Arabia as "sex criminals." By the Angeles Times (20 August 1977) as "an eager cooperation with the police could sexual pleasure; and where rigid taboos traditions of her tribe, which is simultane aspiring actress," whose mother had have had something to do with the fact based on ignorance have lost much of ously the Saudi ruling class, shooting her known Polanski for over a year and given that detectives searching the place for their force. and hacking off her husband's head by permission to photograph her daughter for "evidence" found a vial of cocaine in her All those laws which define "sex sword in the public market of Jidda were the French edition of Vogue magazine. room. crimes" in America today are fundamen socially quite "moral." Judge Rittenband One of those photography sessions with Sexual and social life in southern Caij tally aimed at glorifying and propping up was not able to have Polanski beheaded in the celebrated director turned into an even fornia, with its thriving drug culture and the obscene and repressive prison of the order to protect the "American Way ing of sipping champagne, nude bathing in troupes of precocious and sexually active family, for centuries the main institution of Life," but the principle that the state has a Jacuzzi whirlpool bath and consumption groupies hanging about the fringes of the for the oppression of women and children. the right to enforce a "norm" o~ private by the girl of part of a Quaalude (a fash entertainment industry, produces thou The reactionary sentiment whipped up by sexual activity is equally held by the ionable sedative). Following this there was sands of "aspiring actresses" (and young the persecution of "sex deviants" is fueled U.S: bourgeoisie and the Bedouin sheiks. sexual intercourse (translated in the press male would-be "rock stars") like the one also by recognition that the family is the Their methods simply vary a bit. as "drugging and raping"). Polanski had the misfortune to run into. individual's shelter in a hostile world. There are indeed very real and perva It came out in court, however, that the Regardless of what one thinks of the scene Only a broader social vision of the even sive sex crimes committed in America girl had been "experimenting" with Quaa as a whole, its all-too-obvious reality tual replacement of the family as part of today, but they are not only nor neces ludes since the age of 10 or 11, and had a makes absurd Rittenband's attempts to the transition to a classless society can sarily the ones splashed across the pages 17-year-old boyfriend with whom she had force rigid morality of the Victorian era defuse these fears that lumpenization and of the tabloid press. Fear, gUilt and repres had prior sexual intercourse. A police into L.A. freeways and bedrooms. social collapse are the only alternative to sion are loaded on the very young for even detective on the case described her as look Official repression and enforced stand bourgeois morality. having sexual thoughts. Adolescent youth ing to be "between 16 and 18," while the ards of sexual activity have brought The media's exploitation of the Polan are inhumanly and artifically segregated girl's mother at one point described her oppression and pain throughout history, ski case is more than mere sensationalism. continued on page 10 SUMMER 2009/10 5 ~ '. -~-----~ --
imprisonment in China of Rio Tinto exec revolution, led by the Bolshevik party The only way to satisfy the longings of utive Stern Hu on charges of bribery and under V.1. Lenin and Leon Trotsky. The the poor peasants for land, was to break China ... obtaining commercial secrets. While there socialist revolution of October 1917 con the power of the imperialists who were (continued from page 12) is strong nationalist prejudice against Chi firmed the correctness of Leon Trotsky'S intertwined with the local capitalists and while threatening one of China's main oil nese investment in Australia, the Aus theory of permanent revolution against the large landholders who made their lives a suppliers, Iran. And the Beijing StaJinists tralian bourgeoisie are somewhat divided Mensheviks' theory of "two-stage revolu misery. Thus it was only the proletariat have also helped orchestrate talks aimed over what measures are in their best inter tion," which directed the workers to first organised in the factories who could sat at disarming North Korea. Any weaken ests. The chairman of BHP-Billiton, Don fight for capitalist democracy and then isfy the demands of the peasants and ing of North Korea would weaken the Argus, recently warned the Melbourne some time in the future, i.e. never, there oppressed masses through doing away defence of China. Mining Club against selling off "the would be socialism. As 20th century his with capitalist property relations and Particularly since capitalist counter farm." Yet in September Queensland tory has proven repeatedly, the so-called establishing the dictatorship of the prole revolution in the Soviet Union in 1991-92, based mining magnate, Clive Palmer, "second stage" is in fact the massacre of tariat. In carrying out the democratic the U.S. imperialists, supported by their tasks of the revolution, the proletarian jackal Australian imperialist ally, have state must inevitably make "despotic escalated military pressure against China. inroads into the rights of bourgeois prop The imperialist powers have constructed a erty" and thus the revolution would military chain extending from South directly pass over to the implementation Korea to the former Soviet lands of Cen of socialist tasks. It was based on this tral Asia. In 2005 the U.S. and Japan program that the so-called democratic strengthened their security agreement revolution would then grow over directly issuing a joint policy statement avowing into the socialist revolution and thereby that Taiwan was "a mutual security con become a permanent revolution. Con cern." Their backing of this brutal capi quest of power by the proletariat, Trotsky talist bastion, including placing anti explained, did not complete the revolu ballistic missile systems in the region, tion but only opened it on an international was an open provocation against China. scale because the completion of the In protest, our comrades in the U.S. and socialist revolution within national limits Japan produced a joint statement which is unthinkable. demanded: "Down With U.S./Japan Above: U.S. Pine Gap spy In April 1917, following the February Counterrevolutionary Alliance! Defend base, part of military/intelli Revolution that overthrew the Tsar, Lenin the Chinese and North Korean Deformed gence network targeting returned to Russia to wage a fight in the Chinese deformed workers Workers States!" (see Workers Vanguard state. Right: Queensland, Bolsehvik party against the then-leader No. 844, 18 March 2005). Likewise we July 2009,30,000 troops ship of Stalin and Kamenev who were denounced a subsequent 2007 Japan-Aus join U.S.{Australian war misusing Lenin's "revolutionary demo tralia security agreement in the pages of games in Operation cratic dictatorship of the proletariat and Australasian Spartacist. Talisman Saber. the peasantry" slogan to conciliate the We stand opposed to demands pushed new capitalist Provisional Government by the likes of the DSP upholding "inde branded prejudicial treatment against Chi the revolutionary masses. and its war moves. Consigning those pendence" for capitalist Taiwan. Since nese investment in Australia as "racist," In the theoretical debates leading up to promulgating this slogan to the archive of ancient times Taiwan has been a part of which it undoubtedly is. 1917 the Mensheviks insisted that, in a '''Bolshevik' pre-revolutionary antiques" China. We would stand with China in any While the ALP government seeks to country such as Russia, the proletariat and threatening to split with those concili military conflict with imperialist-backed avoid jeopardising Australia's booming could only be an appendage to the liberal ating the Russian capitalists, Lenin, in his Taiwan. Opposed to the Chinese govern trade with China it simultaneously fo bourgeoisie, which was supposedly striv famous April Theses, argued that power ment's perspective to reunify with bour ments racist nationalism while acting to ing to establish a democratic republic. must pass into the hands of the proletariat geois Taiwan based on "one country, two militarise Australia's north. This includes Lenin, however, had fought to unite the and poorest sections of the peasantry. systems," we stand for the revolutionary the police/military occupation of Aborigi workers and poor peasants in Russia Thus Lenin came over to the program reunification of China, based on workers nallands in the Northern Territory and the against the liberal bourgeoisie by calling matic conclusions of Trotsky'S theory of political revolution on the mainland and a development of training grounds for the for the "revolutionary democratic dicta permanent revolution. Soon after, Trotsky socialist revolution in Taiwan. Likewise U.S. military. The U.S. satellite tracking torship of the proletariat and the peas was won to Lenin's insistence on the need we are for the expropriation of the Hong device at Geraldton in Western Australia antry." While irreconcilably opposed to for a complete break with opportunist Kong capitalists. and other U.S. spy bases especially Pine the Mensheviks' tailing of the bourgeoisie, groupings and the necessity for a van Alongside their unequivocal support for Gap, which was first established as part of Lenin accepted that the struggle for politi guard party of professional revolutionists. the bloody U.S.-led occupations of Iraq the military/spy network that targeted the cal freedom and the democratic republic Based on agreement on the decisive ques and Afghanistan, the Australian imperia former Soviet Union, are now part of a in Russia was a necessary stage that tions of the party and the class character of lists play an aggressive military role in sophisticated network linked to facilities would not undermine "the domination the revolution, Lenin and Trotsky's Bol Southeast Asia under the U.S. umbrella. in Hawaii enabling U.S. military machi ofthe bourgeoisie" (Two Tactics ofSocial sheviks led the Russian proletariat, leaning This includes joint military exercises with nations in the Pacific and East Asia Democracy in the Democratic Revolution, on the peasantry, to overthrow capitalist the U.S., military agreements with blood against China. 1905). His algebraic formula was by no rule in October 1917, opening the road to drenched capitalist regimes in Indonesia In fighting for a workers republic of means terms for class peace but a battle world socialist revolution. and the Philippines, and Australia's own Australia, part of a socialist Asia, we plan for class war extending to the inter As proletarian internationalists, the neocolonial military occupations of the Trotskyists say: Down with the counter national arena. Lenin envisaged the Bolsheviks looked to successful socialist Solomon Islands and East Timor. Earlier revolutionary U.S./Australia alliance! destruction of the Tsarist regime would revolutions in the European industrial this year the Rudd Labor government U.S. bases out now! We call for Aus inspire European workers to take state powerhouses, especially Germany, be released a Defence white paper which tralian troops and cops to get out of Iraq, power. They would in turn support the cause they knew that the young Soviet openly targets China while projecting the Afghanistan, East Timor and the Sol proletariat in Russia doing the same. But Republic-in one of the most backward biggest build-up of the Australian military omon Islands and demand: Not one per Lenin's formula was inherently contradic countries in Europe--could not survive since World War II. son, not one cent for the Australian tory in that it projected a dictatorship of long on its own. Revolutionary upheavals At the same time, increasing economic imperialist military. A key aspect of our two classes with conflicting interests. did follow allover Europe and beyond, but reliance on China tempers the imperial opposition to Australian imperialism is Trotsky's theory of permanent revolu none of them resulted in the working class ists' anti-China military brinkmanship. our unconditional military defence of the tion was distinct from those of both the coming to power. By 1924 control in This can be seen in the Australian govern bureaucratically deformed workers states Mensheviks and Lenin, but far closer to Soviet Russia had increasingly fallen to a ment's muted response to the arrest and of China, North Korea, Vietnam and the latter. Like Lenin, Trotsky understood conservative privileged bureaucracy as Cuba-countries which have all over that the Russian liberal bourgeoisie had no Stalin formally adopted and pushed the thrown capitalism through social revolu revolutionary capacities, but in contradis anti-Leninist policy of building "socialism Chinese-Language Pamphlet No.8 tions-against imperialist attack and tinction to Lenin, Trotsky correctly argued in one country." In economically back i i internal capitalist counterrevolution. At that the peasants could not play the role of ward Russia, this signalled the beginnings JfiB~1UlllsPARTACJSTI~ ~ the same time we fight for proletarian an independent partner, let alone leader, in of a political counterrevolution, which had 2OO'''$}I political revolution against the Stalinist the revolution. In sharp contrast to the its material basis in the destruction of bureaucracies, whose bureaucratic mis Mensheviks, and drawing lessons from the industry and the death of many of the most management and appeasement of imperi 1905 revolutionary upheaval in Russia politically advanced workers during the alism paves the way for capitalist and studies by Marx and Engels, who in civil war, combined with the defeat of counterrevolution. We in the ICL are 1848-49 had raised the formulation "revo revolutionary opportunities abroad, espe committed to building internationalist lution in permanence," Trotsky explained cially the 1923 German Revolution. The Leninist-Trotskyist parties in order to in his 1906 work Results and Prospects developing political counterrevolution in lead the working class to victory on the that in Tsarist Russia, which had the most the Soviet Union was fought by support road to world socialist revolution. On this concentrated industry in Europe sur ers of Trotsky'S Left Opposition, many of 60th anniversary of the Chinese Revolu rounded by the most backward agricul whom were arrested and ultimately mur tion we say: Defend, extend the gains of ture, the Russian workers could come to dered by Stalin's police. the 1949 Chinese Revolution! power without an extended "democratic" China's "Market Reforms": stage of capitalist class rule. Stalinist Menshevism leads to A Trotskyist Analysis Permanent Revolution Vs. Trotsky explained that in Russia basic Bloody Counterrevolution The Russian Revolution and the Menshevik Theory of Stages democratic rights, including national The first Chinese Revolution took place Emancipation of Women The defining event of the last century, emancipation, could only be obtained in 1911. The Qing Dynasty was over $1.25 (28 pages) and indeed that of all human history so far, through the dictatorship of the working thrown by a bourgeois-nationalist Repub Order from/pay to: Spartacist ANZ Pub. Co. was the 1917 Russian Revolution-the class as the leader of the subjugated hcan movement. But the tasks of the GPO Box 3473, SydneY NSW 2001 first and so far only successful proletarian nation, above all of its peasant masses. bourgeois-democratic revolution such as 6 AUSTRALASIAN SPARTACIST the national liberation and unification of China, agrarian reform or democratic rights for women to choose a husband or to own property could not be achieved. China's native bourgeoisie was too weak, corrupt and dependent on imperialism, too connected to the rural landlords and too fearful of the working class and the peas ant masses. The 1911 Revolution was carried out with the assistance of the im perialist powers and left China divided under the rule of the warlords and im perialists. The bourgeois-nationalist GMD was founded a year later. By the end of World War I the Chinese proletariat had grown to 1.5 million including significant concentrations of women. China became a prime example of a country of combined and uneven devel Winstar opment, similar to Russia before 1917 but Left: Workers take control of Shanghai as Guomindang forces approach city, 1927. Right: Ordered to their graves. even more economically backward and Having laid down their arms on Stalin's orders, tens of thousands of Communists and militant workers were massacred with a smaller proletariat. On the one hand following Chiang Kai-shek's bloody 12 April coup. there existed advanced industry in the expanding Chinese cities, while on the Chiang Kai-shek's bourgeois nationalist revolution to countries of combined and of the peasantry, leading to the concili other the vast countryside remained a sea GMD. Trotsky opposed entry into the uneven development. Trotsky's later cri ation of the rich peasants. By September of feudal misery. GMD and voted accordingly in the tique of Stalin and Bukharin's "Draft Pro 1930 the so-called "Kiangsi Provincial In 1919 China politically exploded Russian Politburo in 1923. The rise of gram" for the Communist International, Soviet," a besieged CCP-controlled area with the May 4th Movement, a student the Soviet Stalinist bureaucracy and its including its section on China, are con in south-central China, adopted a new centred upheaval against the imperialist politics of "socialism in one country" tained in his 1928 work The Third Inter land law that even allowed the rich peas carve-up of China. The new and vibrant led to selling out revolutions abroad. In national After Lenin. This book not only ants to retain their own good land rather Chinese proletariat, inspired by the 1917 October 1926, in order to maintain the armed the future cadres of American than requiring them to exchange it for the Russian Revolution, quickly began to bloc with Chiang's misnamed "Revolu Trotskyism, but also Chen Duxiu and less fertile land of the poor peasants. It is make its presence felt. For example, tionary Army," Stalin ordered the CCP to other communists in China who rejected no accident that all guerilla movements workers mobilised in a nationwide gen call off a peasant revolt and forbade the Stalinism and founded the Trotskyist opt for a middle- or rich-peasant policy eral strike to back student protests against formation of soviets (workers and peas Communist League of China (CLC) on rather than taking the class struggle into Western approval of Japanese imperialist ants councils). Trotsky later remarked in May Day 1931. the village; this is another reason why spoils following the Versailles Confer The Permanent Revolution (1928): revolutionary Marxists oppose guerillaism ence. By this stage, disillusionment with "The official subordination of the Com Mao Embraces Chiang and insist that the proletariat is the only Western capitalist "democracy" prompted munist Party to the bourgeois leadership, Kai-shek ... Again consistently revolutionary class. and the official prohibition of forming important groups of intellectuals and soviets (Stalin and Bukharin taught that A period of bourgeois terror and reac Not long after Mao's forces had re students to look to the Soviet Union and the Kuomintang 'took the place of' tion followed the defeat of the second treated from Southern China in the Long communism for a solution to imperialist soviets) was a grosser and more glaring Chinese Revolution. The trade unions and March, beginning in 1934, the Seventh domination of China. betrayal of Marxism than all the deeds of other legal workers organisations were Congress of the CI, under Stalin's leader Out of this intellectual ferment and the Mensheviks in the years 1905-1917." smashed or forced underground. Mean ship declared that the threat of fascism social upheaval, the CCP was formed in To justify this class-collaborationist while the majority of the many-millioned demanded that the proletariat ally itself to 1921 under the leadership of Chen Duxiu. betrayal, Stalin lauded the GMD as a poor peasantry continued to have almost the so-called anti-fascist sections of the Chen, a talented linguist, had broken with "workers and peasants party." The bloc no rights. Peasant women were so down bourgeoisie in a vast "People's [or popu China's traditional feudal-derived culture with Chiang Kai-shek left the Commun trodden that many were not even given lar] Front." In 1931, Japan had invaded and became a Marxist who struggled to ists and their supporters politically and names at birth. and occupied Manchuria. As it became militarily disarmed. In April 1927, The CCP turned away from the work increasingly. clear that Japan was threat against criticisms of Trotsky's Left Oppo ing class, shifting focus from the cities to ening to invade the rest of China from its sition and only a few days before Chiang the countryside, i.e., from the proletariat base there, the devoutly nationalist Mao Kai-shek was to stage a bloody counter to the peasantry. Their perspective be quickly adopted the CI's "people's front" revolutionary coup against Chinese work came one of mobilising the peasant line to push an "anti-Japanese united ers, Stalin defended him as a "reliable masses to close in on the cities. This is front" with the GMD. ally." This prostration before Chiang borne out by CCP membership figures. In By 1 August 1935 the CCP had issued resulted in the second Chinese Revolu 1927,58 percent of the ranks of the CCP an appeal to all "patriotic classes" to join tion being tragically drowned in blood as were from the working class. In 1931, the the Communists' fight against Japan. In Chiang's forces turned on the CCP and figure amounted to less than one percent. doing so they issued new guidelines to butchered the best of the Chinese prole 1930s the CCP had become a moderate agrarian policies in order to win tariat in Shanghai. Under directions not By the early support from rich and middle peasants. to fight back, some 25,000 CCP members peasant party with a declassed petty By 1936 orders had been issued to CCP were slaughtered in 1927 alone. bourgeois leadership. cadre to ban the use of the name "Com Initially all five Central Committee In contrast, true to the theory of perma munist Party" at the sub-district level and members of the CCP opposed the entry nent revolution, the CLC remained in the replace it with into the GMD. But Stalin's bureaucratic cities, understanding that it was only the "Anti-Japanese National clique in the Soviet Union kept this oppo proletariat, leaning on the poor peasant Salvation Association." sition secret from Trotsky and his sup masses, who could throw off the imperia The Japanese invasion of central China porters. Nevertheless Trotsky did initiate list yoke, offer land to the tiller and win in 1937 saw the beginning of the Sino a fight against Stalin's policy, and unlike basic democratic rights through the expro Japanese War and a second "united front" the CCP leaders, did not back down to priation of the capitalists and the estab between the CCP and Chiang'S GMD. In Stalin and Bukharin (see "The Origins of lishment of a proletarian dictatorship. October 1938 Mao would grovel that, Explaining this revolutionary perspective, "Without the Kuomintang it would be RGASPI Chinese Trotskyism" Spartacist No. 53, Chen Duxiu, leader of May 4th Move Summer 1997). In 1929 Trotsky summed Trotsky drove home the difference be inconceivable to undertake and pursue the ment and then Chinese CPo New up the defeat of the second Chinese tween the class position and training of War of Resistance ... it has had two great Youth Journal, founded by Chen, Revolution: the workers and the peasants. He wrote: leaders in succession-Mr. Sun Yat-Sen" became an organ of early Chinese "The Chinese Communist Party entered a "The worker approaches questions from and Mr. Chiang Kai-shek" (Stuart Schram Communism. bourgeois party, the Kuomintang, while the socialist standpoint; the peasant's [ed.] The Political Thought of Mao Tse the bourgeois character of this party was viewpoint is petty bourgeois. The worker Tung, 1969). But the alliance between the strives to socialize the property that is disguised by a charlatan philosophy about CCP and GMD was more on the order of orient the party toward the working class. a 'workers' and peasants' party' and even taken away from the exploiters; the peas Li Ta-chao, another co-founder of the about a party of 'four classes' (Stalin ant seeks to divide it up. The worker a very unstable non-aggression pact, with CCP, represented a different political Martynov). The proletariat was thus de desires to put palaces and parks to com Chiang's forces staging repeated attacks tendency. Emphasising the nationalist, prived of its own party at a most critical mon use; the peasant, in so far as he can on the Communist-led peasant armies. period .... The responsibility falls entirely not divide them, inclines to burning the While Mao agreed (on paper) to disband anti-imperialist aspect of the workers on the ECCI and Stalin .... palaces and cutting down the parks. The movement, Li developed a view that in the "soviet" governments that the CCP "Never and under no circumstances may worker strives to solve problems on a China all classes had been turned into the party of the proletariat enter into national scale and in accordance with a had set up in areas under its control and "proletarians" by imperialist superexploit a party of another class or merge with plan; the peasant, on the other hand, to share administration with the GMD, in approaches all problems on a local scale ation. By 1926 Li, whose views became it organizationally. An absolutely inde practice the Communists maintained ex pendent party of the proletariat is a first and takes a hostile attitude to centralised increasingly race-based, projected an anti planning, etc." clusive control over these areas. and decisive condition for communist In the war between imperialist Japan imperialist socialist revolution based sole politics." -"Peasant War in China and the lyon the peasantry! Thus fundamental -"The Political Situation in China Proletariat," September 1932 and semicolonial China, the Trotskyists characteristics of Maoist peasant-based and the Tasks of the Bolshevik With the fall of its membership base in adopted a policy of military support to nationalism appeared in the CCP even be Leninist Opposition," June 1929 the cities, the CCP became increasingly China, while opposing Chiang Kai-shek fore the defeat of the second Chinese Rev- As a result of the political fight around stamped by their peasant environment and politically. But when the GMD's war 01ution in 1925-27 and the rise of Mao. China, Trotsky confirmed there was no financially dependant on their rural sup effort became subordinated to U.S. im The Communist International (CI) di "anti-imperialist" wing of the bourgeoisie porters. This in turn made them reliant perialism following U.S. entry into the rected the CCP to ally with and enter and generalised the theory of permanent upon merchants and the wealthier sections continued on page 8 SUMMER 2009/10 7 decided to strike out for state power. This peasant girls into concubinage. The revo tralia. Such a program was anathema for China ... decision to carry through a military vic lution rapidly expanded literacy levels and the nationalist Mao Zedong. Instead, the tory occurred in the context of special vastly improved health care. Internation (continued from page 7) politics of Mao and subsequent leaders conjunctural developments. The U.S. im ally the victory of the Chinese Revolution such as Deng Xiaoping and the current Pacific War in December 1941, and with perialist rulers had become so discouraged represented a huge defeat for the U.S. and bureaucratic leadership are to appease American general Joseph Stillwell taking by the GMD government that they essen other imperialist powers (including Aus imperialism and try to maintain the world command of the GMD armed forces, tially withdrew backing in the period tralia). This was driven home by the inter status quo. Hostile to a working-class cen military support to Chiang's forces was 1948-49. Meanwhile the Communist vention of China's PLA in the Korean War tred program, the Stalinist bureaucracy in no longer appropriate as it would have army, which had previously been deprived of 1950-53, which helped prevent North China has oscillated between idealist meant support to U.S. imperialism in the of weapons was suddenly supplied with Korea being overrun by the U.S. imperia peasant-based adventures such as the wider interimperialist conflict. However, large quantities of Japanese armaments lists and their capitalist South Korean pup Great Leap Forward (1958-60), and the given that Mao's Red Army continued to following the Russian occupation of pet regime. crazed intra-bureaucratic power struggle wage an independent struggle against the Manchuria. These factors led to the rout Notably the political origins of the of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) Japanese occupiers and was not militarily of the GMD forces and the toppling of deeply anti-Communist SAlt and Solidar while selling out worker and peasant subordinate to U.S. imperialism, revolu Chiang's regime. ity groups go back to the Korean War. struggles abroad. tionary Marxists would have given mili The declaration of the People's Repub Bowing to anti-Communist Cold War In the 1960s, while under the gun of tary support to Mao's Red Army against lic of China in October 1949 marked the hysteria, the late Tony Cliff (SAlt and U.S. imperialism, Mao's regime put for the Japanese, seeking to rally the urban ward a fake "anti-imperialist" posture, OJ workers while denouncing the Stalinists c which attracted youth around the world. for suppressing social struggle. ~ This amounted to promoting and concili ~c: The leading role played by Mao's "leD' ating bourgeois nationalist regimes in forces for national independence greatly neocolonial countries, leading to tragic enhanced the CCP's authority and influ results. Based on the same class-collabor ence and expanded the area under its con ationist politics that led to the crushing of trol by the end of WWII. At the same time the 1925-27 Revolution, Mao backed the Mao held religiously to his commitments Indonesian Communists' support to the to the "patriotic" capitalists and landlords capitalist Sukarno government. This sub in Red Army territory throughout the ordination of the oppressed masses to the period of the "united front." With Victorious bourgeoisie paved the way for the crush the onset of WWII, he proposed the Men People's ing of the Indonesian Communist Party shevik pro-capitalist demand for "new Liberation and the slaughter of up to one million democracy." Under "new democracy" the Army enters Communists, workers, peasants, ethnic Beijing, CCP guaranteed bourgeois class rule. In January 1949. Chinese and other minorities in 1965-66. January 1942 the peasants were "advised Some years after the Sino-Soviet split to pay rent and interest as well as to pro between the nationalist Stalinist bureauc tect the civil, political, land and econom racies of China and the Soviet Union, Mao ic rights of the landlord" (Decision of sought and obtained an alliance with U.S. the Central Committee on Land Policy in imperialism against the Soviet Union at the Anti-Japanese Base Areas). In April birth of a bureaucratically deformed work Solidarity's theoretical godfather) capitu the height of the imperialist war against 1945 Mao was even more explicit, stat ers state. With the victory of Mao's forces lated to the British bourgeoisie and the the heroic Vietnamese workers and peas ing that "the program of the revolution is the bulk of the Chinese bourgeoisie fled to then-ruling Labour Party. Cliff and his ants in 1972. Disgustingly at the same not to abolish private property" and that Taiwan with the GMD, eliminating the supporters refused to defend the Soviet time as U.S. warplanes were carpet bomb "reasonable profits of state, private and crucial bourgeois element of "new democ Union, China and North Korea against ing Vietnam, Mao was shaking hands with cooperative enterprises" would be "guar racy." By October 1949 power was com imperialist attack. Tony Cliff broke from U.S. president, and war criminal, Richard anteed" (On Coalition Government). The pletely in the hands of the CCP and the the Trotskyist Fourth International along Nixon in Beijing. This alliance was deep anti-Japanese popular front remained CCP state power was based on the military with some of his followers while others ened under Deng Xiaoping. In 1979, act policy until 1945. To maintain a bloc with dominance of the PLA. With Soviet aid, were expelled. Cliff's anti-Marxist "the ing as a cat's paw for U.S. imperialism, the landlords, the agrarian program was the CCP then set about building up a state ory," which asserted the Soviet Union Deng ordered the PLA to invade Vietnam, watered down to nothing: no land confis sector of heavy industry. This was accel was "state capitalist," was used as a justi the main Soviet ally in East Asia. The cation was permitted and land reform erated with the onset of the Korean War fication for their class betrayal, just as battle-hardened Vietnamese forces resis became rent reduction. when measures were taken against the this "theory" is used today by SAlt to jus ted effectively and delivered a stinging remaining domestic capitalists beginning tify their refusal to defend the remaining defeat to the PLA. Military Victory of PLA Results in 1952. However, the ideology of this deformed workers states against imperial In the 1980s the Deng regime supported in Deformed Workers State new CCP regime reflected the provincial ism. In contrast we Marxists stand for the imperialist-backed Islamic fundamen In January 1946 Mao concretised the consciousness characteristic of the peas the unconditional military defence of talist Afghan mujahedin against the Soviet CCP's class-collaborationist perspective antry. The CCP acted to ensure that the the North Korean and Chinese workers Red Army. From Australia, to Britain, to at a "Political Consultative Conference" working class was not a factor in 1949. It states, including their need to have and America the Cliffites pushed the same line where he outlined the make-up of a bour responded to worker uprisings, of which test nuclear weapons, in the face of the and despicably sided with their own geois coalition government down to there were a few in Shanghai and other nuclear-armed imperialist madmen in imperialist rulers against the 1979 Soviet including 90 Nationalist army divisions cities, by banning strikes. Mao's anti Washington and their junior partners in intervention. In contrast we said "Hail and 18 CCP army divisions. This deal internationalism and hostility to mobilis Australia. We also fight for the revolu Red Army!" and called to extend the gains wasn't consummated because of anti ing the working class was highlighted by tionary reunification of Korea through of the October Revolution to the Afghan Communist hostility amongst elements of the fact that in December 1952 up to 1,000 workers political revolution in the North people. We saluted the progress brought the GMD military who, in an attempt to Trotskyists and their sympathisers were and socialist revolution in the capitalist by this intervention especially for Afghan decisively crush Mao's forces, escalated rounded up by Mao's police. Many served South. women. We also recognised that it was the war against the PLA. That Mao's decades and/or died in jail. better to fight against imperialism in liquidationist course did not lead to a The Chinese Revolution, deformed as it Maoist Bureaucratic Rule: Kabul than in Moscow. The withdrawal of repeat of the tragic counterrevolutionary was, proved there is no third road between Adventurism and Betrayal Soviet troops from Afghanistan by the events of 1926-27 was also due to the fact the dictatorship of the proletariat and the Marxists define socialism as the lowest Soviet bureaucracy was a betrayal of the that the GMD government was so corrupt dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. The whole stage of a classless egalitarian, i.e., com Afghan and Soviet peoples. that Chiang couldn't afford to risk a course of revolutionary events proved the munist, society based on material abun In so many ways the Beijing bureauc coalition government. revisionist character of Mao's theories. dance and on the highest possible level of racy aided the U.S. and Australian im It was only after Chiang refused to There was and could be no extended technology. It can only be built on the perialists to fulfill their goal of destroying make a deal with the CCP that Mao put democratic stage under capitalist class basis of international planning. Crucially the Soviet Union. By its appeasement of forward a radical land reform program, rule. While the CCP repeatedly sought to this requires the overthrow of capitalist imperialism the Stalinist bureaucracy in including confiscation of landlord prop set up a "democratic" bourgeois regime, rule in the advanced imperialist centres China has shown itself to be an obstacle erty. This ignited support from the peas the property relations that resulted were such as the U.S., Japan, Europe and Aus- to the defence of the Chinese Revolution ants. As Chiang'S brutal and despotic those of a workers state. Given the com army ruthlessly plundered the areas they plete powerlessness of the Chinese bour controlled, the peasant masses, often at geoisie, absence of the working class as an the point of starvation, flocked to join the independent force, the predisposition of CCP's Eighth Route Army. Across China, the CCP cadre for a state modeled on peasant uprisings broke out spontaneously Stalin's Russia and objective pressures against the vicious repression of Chiang's towards centralised economic planning, While U.S. forces. Indeed amid economic and social the collectivisation of the economy flowed rained bombs chaos from 1946-1949 China was in a inevitably from the PLA victory in 1949. on heroic classic pre-revolutionary situation. The smashing of capitalist class rule Vietnamese However, it wasn't until October 1947 and the ensuing collectivisation of the workers and that Mao even raised the slogan for the economy laid the basis for a vast growth peasants, Mao overthrow of the GMD regime. The in social production and living standards. greeted then GMD's occupation of the CCP base in The new regime swept away much of the U.S. president Yenan finally made it clear that no com feudalist garbage. The gains of the Chi Nixon in China promise was possible and that a coalition nese Revolution brought progress espe in 1972. government of a "new democratic type" cially for women. This included stamping was a pipe dream. Thus, and in violation out arranged marriages, female infan of Stalin's explicit orders, the CCP ticide, foot binding and the selling of 8 AUSTRALASIAN SPARTACIST .: and to the necessary international work any and all Han chauvinist discrimination (forebears of SAlt and Solidarity), worrying trend of companies taking their ers revolution. against China's minority peoples. cheered for capitalist "democracy" and work off-shore to places like China for A proletarian political revolution in sided with Boris Yeltsin's counterrevolu cheaper unregulated labour." In blaming Workers Political Revolution or 'China, based on defence of the collec tionary forces in Moscow, we intervened workers overseas for job losses, such pro Capitalist Counterrevolution tivised economy, would re-establish a in Russia distributing tens of thousands tectionism not only serves to divide work In 1978 when Deng Xiaoping came to centrally planned economy and with it a of leaflets calling for "Soviet Workers ers, it also fuels racist scapegoating of power he introduced "market reforms" state monopoly of foreign trade and Defeat Yeltsin-Bush Counterrevolution!" immigrants and refugees and foments which he called building "socialism with ensure basic economic security for all Fighting against capitalist counterrevolu vicious racist attacks on minorities, such Chinese characteristics." This was an workers. However, even the most far tion in the former Soviet Union we pub as the murderous spate of bashings of attempt by the Chinese bureaucracy to use sighted communist leadership would not lished and distributed Trotsky's Third Indian and Chinese students. Targeting the whip of the market to overcome stag be able to overcome the limits facing International After Lenin for the first China, such protectionism is particularly nating productivity caused by nationally China in a world dominated by powerful time in Russian. We fought to bring destructive because it lines workers in narrow bureaucratic commandism. Over imperialist states. The establishment of a authentic Marxism back to the homeland Australia up behind their own capitalist time, the regime abolished the so-called revolutionary government in China would of the October Revolution. Our comrade rulers against the Chinese deformed work "iron rice bowl" which was premised on spark revolutionary upsurges beginning in Martha Phillips was murdered in the ers state. guaranteed employment. It opened the Korea and Japan through to the oppressed struggle to do so. Capitalist counterrevo Against the chauvinism of the union country to imperialist investment, gave up masses of Southeast Asia and here in lution was a catastrophic defeat for work tops, and the ALP to which they are con the state monopoly of foreign trade and Australia. Only through the overthrow of ing people in the former Soviet Union nected, it is necessary to build a new substituted market mechanisms for a capitalist class rule internationally, par and throughout the world. leadership in the trade unions, one which planned economy, including decollectivis ticularly in the imperialist centres of begins with the understanding that the in ing agriculture. North America, West Europe, Japan and For an Internationalist terests of the working class and the inter It is true that, under Mao, China built a Australia, can the material basis be laid Revolutionary Workers Party! ests of the capitalists are irreconcilably substantial industrial base. But without for the all-round modernisation of China Our aim is to build internationalist counterposed. We stand for international massive aid from abroad there could as part of a socialist Asia. revolutionary workers parties. In this class-struggle solidarity in defence of never be sufficient industrial development The social contradictions in China are country such a party will be built in jobs and say: Down with all protectionist to revolutionise the countryside. At the growing and, when they blow, either political struggle against the ALP and the poison! The ALP is a bourgeois workers time of Mao's death China remained a capitalist counterrevolution or workers trade-union misleaders of the working party, bourgeois in its outlook and pro predominantly rural country and the low political revolution will be posed. The class. The ALP's anti-communist and gram but based on the trade unions. An agricultural productivity was a barrier to potential for workers political revolu racist roots run very deep. In 1949, the internationalist revolutionary workers industrial growth. It was on this basis of tion was shown in the events around same year the Chifley Labor government party will be built by splitting the work low productivity, including inefficiency, Tiananmen Square in 1989. Student sent troops to smash the powerful ing-class base of the ALP away from its that Mao promoted mythical self-suffi demonstrations against bureaucratic cor coalminers' strike, it also dispatched war pro-capitalist leadership. ciency based on generalised scarcity. ruption were joined by worker protests ships to take supplies up the Yangtze Such a Marxist party, based on the prin It is incontestable that over the last few against the effects of high inflation. River to Chiang Kai-shek's forces. The ciples of scientific socialism and histori decades "market reforms" have resulted in cal (i.e., dialectical) materialism, would economic growth. This has had the effect fight to impart to the proletariat the dearly of proletarianising tens of millions of for bought lessons from the international mer peasants, many of them women. workers movement including the neces Today over 50 percent of labour is em sity to defend the gains that the working ployed in manufacturing, construction, class has already won. Winning workers transport and the service sector. Forty per from Australia to Japan, to the U.S. and cent of the population is urbanised. These May 1989: Europe to an understanding of the historic are developments of significant historical Workers arrive at significance of the Chinese Revolution, progress from a Marxist standpoint. But Tiananmen Square including defending the gains which "market reforms" have also massively to join mass issued from it in the form of the core col student protests. widened the gap in living conditions and Entry of workers lectivised economy, is integral to winning have created a wealthy new class of capi signalled incipient them to a revolutionary perspective to talists with links to CCP officials and the proletarian wards overthrowing capitalism at home. offshore Chinese bourgeoisie. Under the political Only when workers revolutions put the "reforms" millions have lost their jobs revolution. industrial capacity and technologies of from the state-owned sector and been the advanced imperialist countries to use forced to work in the private sector for in an international planned economy lower pay and none of the benefits pro Workers began to protest, hold mass ALP has backed every war and every under the rule of the working class will vided by the state enterprises. And 150 meetings and form assemblies in cities dirty colonial adventure by Australian the basis be laid for a socialist society of million migrant workers have moved to across China, which could have led to the imperialism. Backed by the reformist left, material abundance pointing to a commu the cities, where they are labouring under formation of workers councils or soviets. one of the ALP's greatest crimes against nist future for all. This is what the desperate conditions while being looked The Chinese bureaucracy was initially the working class was its loyal service to Spartacist League of Australia, section of down upon by workers with urban resi paralysed when the first army units sent the imperialists' drive to restore capital the International Communist League dence permits. in failed to suppress the demonstration. ism in the Soviet Union, leading to the (Fourth Internationalist) is fighting for: These factors have resulted in an For two weeks the regime could not destruction of the world's first workers For the communism of Lenin and Trot upsurge in defensive labour actions by implement its own martial law decree. state. sky's Bolsheviks and the reforging of the workers that have seen attacks on corrupt Ultimately the regime was able to It was no surprise then, that earlier this Fourth International, world party of managers and even pitched battles with mobilise loyal army units which savagely year the capitalist Rudd Labor govern socialist revolution. _ the police. Meanwhile the CCP regime crushed the protesters. The massacre ment fueled a xenophobic anti-China has responded with a mixture of repres overwhelmingly targeted the workers. We backlash, preventing a Chinese state sion and cash handouts to the more called to "Oust the Bureaucrats-For owned company from investing in the recently unemployed and the reversal of Lenin's Communism! Workers and Sol moribund Australian company OZ Min some privatisation measures. The Chinese diers Soviets Must Rule!" After the mas erals on "security" grounds. The racist bureaucracy is also aware of what hap sacre, Workers Vanguard, the paper of and anti-Communist hysteria that was pened in the Soviet Union and suppresses our U.S. section headlined: "Defend whipped up was designed to line the all political debate and opposition. Chinese Wo'rkers! Stop the Executions!" population up behind the counterrevolu The Chinese workers and peasants Months later, amidst significant demon tionary aims of the Australian and Ameri have waged many struggles in the past strations in the East German deformed can rulers against China. The invention of ten years, but they are atomised and with workers state, the ICL intervened to fight a Chinese "threat" was then used to jus out a leadership whose perspective is to for the revolutionary reunification of Ger tify the government's proposed military overthrow the political rule of the bureau many. This meant a proletarian political build-up, which will be used to enforce crats and place power in the hands of revolution in the East and socialist revolu Australian imperialism's exploitation in Marxist Principles workers, soldiers and peasants soviets. tion in the imperialist West, for a red Ger the region and hawkishly targets China. and Electoral Tactics The powerful Chinese proletariat stand many in a socialist Europe. As part of this The Laborite trade-union misleaders P""'QE~ ing at the head of the peasants and urban struggle, in January 1990, we initiated a back the bourgeoisie's anti-China cam Against Apologists for the Treachery of the PDUM, Then and Now poor need a Leninist-Trotskyist party to united-front demonstration to protest the paign. We all know that the bourgeoisie direct struggles to the seizure of political fascist desecration of a Soviet war memo have been escalating attacks on the work Trotskyism ¥s. Popular Frontism in the Spanish Civil War power. A workers political revolution, rial in Treptow park in East Berlin. The ing class, cutting jobs and conditions. M"!l~ establishing a regime of workers and then-ruling Stalinist party, feeling pres Rather than engaging in a class-struggle "om.-n and R.", .. lufion peasants councils, would seek to take sure from their base, took up our call and fight against the capitalist rulers, the Women Workers and the advantage of the international division of some 250,000 East Germans came out in union tops join with the bourgeoisie and labour by promoting a high level of solidarity with the Soviet Union against whip up "buy Australian" nationalist pro exports and imports, and would renegoti the fascists. From the platform of this tectionism, pushing the lie that workers Spartacist (English edition) Theoretical journal of the ate ec'onomic agreements with U.S. and demonstration there were two counter overseas are stealing the jobs of workers International Communist League other imperialist powers in the Chinese posed political programs, that of the Stal in Australia. (Fourth Internationalist) workers' favour. It would struggle to inists and that of revolutionary Trotskyism For years this nationalist protectionist No. 61, Spring 2009 unify all sectors of the Chinese working presented by us (see article on page 3). poison has particularly targeted China. $2.00 (64 pages) class in alliance with the rural toilers, it In August 1991, when most of the For example last year, in response to a loss would fight to ensure migrant workers fake-Trotskyists internationally, and the of 600 jobs at South Pacific Tyres, the Order from/pay to: Spartacist ANZ Publishing Co, all the rights accorded to legal urban reformist left in Australia, including the manufacturing workers union in Victoria GPO Box 3473, Sydney NSW 2001 residents and take up the fight against DSP and the International Socialists declared "the decision demonstrates a SUMMER 2009/10 9 :.
#' t in the East. Because of the strategic East Germany... { weight of Germany in Europe, reunifica (continued from page 3) tion, if it is not to recreate an imperialist behemoth, a Fourth Reich, can only be ,0 The Red Army crushed the Nazi '1" as part of a Socialist United States of regime and established a bureaucratically Europe. deformed workers state east of the Elbe. The huge protest demonstrations, im But the resurgence of German national pressive in their discipline, remain domi ism and fascist terror has not been nated by petty-bourgeois forces like restricted to the West German successor Neues Forum and the Social Democrats state of the Third Reich. There, the first (SDP). On November 4, Neues Forum victims of fascist terror are immigrant called for "free elections" supervised by workers. And now similar attacks, for the UN, i.e., by imperialism, while the example on Vietnamese workers, are tak SDP, just like Helmut Kohl, called for a ing place in East Germany. Hostility to return to a "market economy." When the immigrant workers such as the Poles has [West German] SPD and their hangers-on been expressed even in the mass protest talk about "democratic socialism" they demonstrations, as in Dresden. Instead, as mean "democratic" counterrevolution, of a banner on November 4 declared, "For which the SPD intends to be the general Communist Ideals! No Privileges!" This staff. While Kohl was booed down, means: Full citizenship rights for im Brandt and Momper were cheered. The migrant workers East and West! Spartacists raise banner "For a Red Germany of Social Democrats are the main danger for Today a wing of the East German secu Workers Councils in a Socialist Europe" at demon East German workers. rity forces shows its support for revan The International Communist League stration in honour of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Fur em Arbeiterritedeutachland! chist capitalist restoration under the Luxemburg, East Berlin, 14 January 1990. Spartakist and its German section, the Trotzkistische Spartaki&l-Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands watchword of German nationalism by Workers Party poster for March 1990 elections __.;,'"'_ ..... ,_._ ..... ~ .... ""-,.- "a?~~."...... "",",'. Liga Deutschlands, uphold the Trotskyist cloning a new generation of fascist terror declares, "No to Capitalist Reunification!" • position of unconditional defense of the ist skinheads and scum, the existence of social gains of the October Revolution which the bureaucracy has done its best Communist "free union" have fizzled. tivized property and to attack the world and its extension from East Berlin to to deny. A banner of an anti-fascist con Workers in the DDR have followed market, East Germany needs a stable, Havana against imperialism and internal tingent at the November 4 demonstration attentively the strikes against perestroika readily convertible currency (e.g., based counterrevolution. In contrast, the social read, "Weimar: 160 Nazi Skinheads Or of Soviet miners. The factory committees on the gold standard like the Soviet cher democrats faking as Trotskyists such as ganized a Manhunt." Even the perimeter the miners have organized are the core of vonets in 1923). However, an isolated Ernest Mandel and the Bund Sozialistis of this massive demonstration was real workers soviets, which are the key if revolutionary East German workers state cher Arbeiter [followers of the dubious infested with fascists from West and East. economic planning is to be controlled by would still be threatened by the power of David North] surrender these gains at Just as Russian workers must smash the working class. Although tremendous cheap commodities, as Marx warned. every point they are challenged. They Pamyat, workers/minorities in East and ferment exists in the plants, the working There can be no genuine socialism in backed SolidarnosC' counterrevolutionary West Germany had better organize to class remains politically atomized, e.g., half a country facing an economically far bid in 1981 and opposed the Soviet inter crush these vermin now! there have as yet been no strikes, which more powerful imperialist neighbor. From venti on in Afghanistan against imperia A demonstration of, 50,000 SED would immediately be political. Workers the podium of the massive November 4 list-backed clerical reaction in 1979. [Socialist Unity Party] members in East councils must be established at the point demonstration writer Stefan Heym was To date no left opposition has surfaced Berlin on November 10 demanded "No of production with control over quantity enthusiastically received when he said, within the SED. Yet there have been sellout of the DDR," for "real plans," and and quality. Computerized input-output "Socialism, not Stalinist but the real thing, expressions of support for real commu "return to Lenin." Stalin gave central plan analysis (developed by Russian-born which we want to finally build, for our nism in the DDR, such as the signs on ning a bad name. The East German econ economist Leontiet) can permit invest benefit and that of all Germany, is November 4 calling "for a new communist omy is the most successful in Eastern ments in line with the democratically unthinkable without democracy." The party." As in 1953, what is lacking today Europe. Workers may chant "Gorby, Gor controlled growth of investment and con defense of collectivized property in East is a proletarian internationalist vanguard by, help us." But by and large they reject sumption. Germany requires its extension to the party fighting for power. Forging such a Gorbachev's "perestroika" and "market When the Wall started coming down on West. That means the expropriation of the party requires returning to the Bolshevism socialism," which have bred increasing Friday [November 9], the West German Frankfurt bankers by proletarian revolu of Lenin and Trotsky! Hail Rosa Luxem misery and national conflict from the stock market went up, because Frankfurt tion in the West-to which immigrant burg, the greatest founder of German Balkans to the Baltic and Caucasus. East bankers and their SPD [social-demo workers are key. We Trotskyists call for Communism, murdered by the Freikorps German workers are not about to surren cratic] front men are dreaming of bleed the revolutionary reunification of Ger at the behest of the SPD leadership! The der the social gains they have won. ing East Germany dry the way they have many through socialist revolution in the German Revolution, East and West, needs Attempts to form a Solidarnosc-style anti- Poland and Hungary. To defend collec- West and proletarian political revolution a Leninist-Trotskyist workers party! _
In ignorance and shame thousands of ual mistreatment. Rape and these other hospitals, the director would already be Polanski ... poor young women are forced into dan very real crimes, along with the prostitu high on the list of Jimmy Carter's "human (continued from page 5) gerous abortions without Medicaid, while tion which is the eternal companion of rights" campaign.) the wealthy manage as they always have. enforced monogamy, are the sordid reality Yet to the state of California Polanski is from one another in schools and colleges. The more unfortunate must either bear behind "public morality." a "sex criminal" and it threatens more The religious strictures of the Catholic their unwanted children or else be steri Polanski has been made the latest pub prison. It is no wonder why the victim church and other religious sects, includ lized permanently in government hospi lic target in the state's vindictive attempts chose to leave America. As he rightly ing orthodox Judaism, keep thousands of tals while great debate rages as to whether to uphold the puritan myth and hide observed, "They spent 42 days trying to women trapped in an endless cycle of the young should be "exposed" to contra this reality. Even his brilliant and often drive me bizarre, but thank god I'm smart poverty, pregnancy and ever more mouths ceptives and birth control information. powerful films, like "CuI de Sac," "Knife and rich ... " (New York Post, 7 February). to feed. The aged, are locked into grim There is also the hideous frustration and in the Water," "Repulsion," and more He went on: and tiny rooms to die as their wardens sexual tension built up within the family recently "Rosemary's Baby" and "China "In America, California, I lose my wife, debate "Should sex be allowed in old age itself, with attendant beatings and bru town," have been used against him. As my baby, my friends, perhaps my sanity homes?" talization of children, including their sex- one Columbia Pictures executive moaned, and almost my freedom, No, I say, no! The Nazis couldn't take it away from me, "Roman's got such a bad reputation for nor could the grief of my losses. And this being a pervert film maker, he's going to little whore and the California laws won't be judged guilty by his work" (Time, either. I have given much and they have 28 March 1977). taken too much from me," Workers VanguardlAustralasian Spartacist What emerges from the director's life, Good for him. We are cheered to see that Marxist working-class biweekly of the Spartacist League/U,S. and quarterly however, is a pattern of successful cre this ordeal of puritanical witchhunting Marxist newspaper of the Spartacist League of Australia ative achievement in the face of a pattern has not broken Roman Polanski's spirit. of violence and tragedy. As a young boy The Polanski case has stirred up the 0$20 for 22 issues WV'and 4 issues ASp Polanski saw his parents ripped away (to poisonous fears and vicious repression OR 0 $5 for 4 issues, overseas: $7 Australasian Spartacist only disappear permanently in the concentra which underlies bourgeois morality. As o $15 for 22 issues Workers Vanguard only tion camps) by Nazi stormtroopers. At 15 communists we oppose attempts to fit All subscriptions include English-language Spartacist. Workers Vanguard he was beaten almost to death with an human sexuality into legislated or decreed subscriptions include Black History and the Class Struggle. iron bar by a maniac. After achieving a "norms." The guiding principle for sexual reputation as a talented filmmaker in Sta relations between people should be that of I would like to contribute $ __ to the production of Australasian Sp'artacist. linist Poland, he emigrated to the West effective consent-that is, nothing more Name______where his pregnant wife, the actress than mutual agreement and understanding Sharon Tate, was hideously slaughtered as opposed to coercion. We hold that any Address ______at home along with the couple's friends and all consensual relations between indi by the crazed Manson family. And now viduals are purely their own concern, and Suburb State P'code___ _ Polanski has had the humiliation and tor the state has no business interfering in ture of spending over a month in prison human sexual activity. Phone E-mail ______=_=_ 207 for "psychiatric observation." (If this had Drop the charges against Roman Polan Mail/make cheques payable 10: Sparlacisl ANZ Publishing Co" GPO Box 3473, Sydney NSW 2001 occurred in the Soviet Upion, where dissi ski! No extradition! Stop the puritanical dents are barbarously locked up in mental witchhunt! _ 10 AUSTRALASIAN. SPARTACIST -t- .:
Manifesto: "Workers of the World, Unite!" role in Whipping up anti-immigrant chau listnespecially "their own"), whose dep Immigrants ... Howes, a darling of the Murdoch press, vinism and directly helping to enforce redations around the globe are responsible (continued from page 1) received much media coverage recently fortress White Australia on behalf of the for the horrific plight of refugees. when he criticised the government's pol capitalist rulers and their government. These reformists call for refugees to be the growing and bloody occupation of icy on refugees. Stating that "This is an The CFMEU, with its large multiracial allowed to "live in freedom in Australia Afghanistan, where under the banner of issue about leadership," the staunchly membership, have episodically taken up while their claims are processed," i.e., the "war on terror" thousands of civilians Labor-loyal and deeply anti-communist the defence of deeply exploited "guest until this racist government decides to have been maimed and slaughtered. Howes declared, "Malcolm Fraser turned workers." However, alongside this, deport them or not. SA, SAlt and SP all While particularly targeting Arab, public opinion around to accepting the CFMEU leaders such as Andrew Fergu endorsed a 5 December Melbourne rally Asian and Muslim people, the "anti-ter Vietnamese boat people. Arthur Cal well , son rail against "illegal" construction organised by RAC, "Let the refugees into ror" laws are ultimately aimed against the the immigration minister in the Chifley workers "taking away the jobs of Aus Australia," which deep-sixes even the entire working class. Today, the Construc government, taught the people about what tralian workeRS" (Australian, 16 October). usual reformist opposition to mandatory tion Forestry Mining and Energy Union immigration means for Australia, about Despicably, the CFMEU tops have also detention in order not to offend the Labor (CFMEU) is targeted by the witchhunting the benefits" (Age, 7 November). Lining boasted of reporting "illegal" workers to Party, who they helped put in power at the Australian Building Construction Com up to applaud Howes' stance on refugees the cops for arrest and deportation ("Lib last elections. In contrast to these groups, mission (ABCC) of the Rudd government. were a gamut of trade-union bureaucrats erals go soft on illegals," Unity, Decem we Marxists do not seek to advise capital The ABCC's ASIO-style powers to spy and their "left" tails. Tim Gooden, Gee ber 2000). ist governments on more "progressive" on, secretly interrogate and prosecute long Trades Hall Council secretary and The MUA misleaders have also long immigration policies. All laws in defence militant workers, are patterned on the pin-up boy of the Democratic Socialist pushed nationalist protectionism, for of the nationally-based bourgeoisie's rule "anti-terror" laws. CFMEUer Ark Tribe Perspective's Socialist Alliance (SA), example demanding "Australian crews for are necessarily racist and chauvinist. faces a jail sentence of up to six months added his own whitewash of the Chifley Australian ships." In late October, in the Of a piece with building illusions in for allegedly failing to attend a compul Labor government, declaring it "helped midst of the desperate effort by the 78 White Australia capitalism, SA, SAlt and sory ABCC interrogation. We say: Defend build this country by welcoming people Tamil asylum seekers aboard the Oceanic SP also promote the "humanitarian:': the unions! Down with government union fleeing war and persecution" (Green Left Viking to win asylum in Australia, the credentials of the United Nations, an busting including the ABCC! It is neces Weekly, 28 October). MUA tops issued a statement that gave imperialist den of thieves, their victims sary to organise a proletarian-centred fight Immigration policies under capitalism support to the government's anti-refugee and intended victims. Sowing illusions in against all the reactionary "anti-terror" serve not only the economic but also the "border protection" frenzy. Referring to Australian imperialism and the United and anti-union laws. political interests of the bourgeoisie. With the 13 MUA seafarers on board the armed Nations is not new for these "little Aus the xenophobic White.Australia capitalist government Customs vessel, the union tralia" reformists. In 1999 they marched White Australia Racism rulers desperate for more workers after bureaucracy crowed, "The central role in lock-step with the ALP and trade and Laborism World War II, the slogan of the post-war played by Australian seafarers is crucial in union bureaucrats in demonstrations that One of the very few notes of public Chifley Labor government was "Populate complementing defence and border secu screamed for Australian imperialist dissent by ALP politicians against Rudd's or Perish." Directed against the Japanese rity arrangements" (30 October MUA troops to go to East Timor. The Aus racist war on refugees came from retiring in particular and the Asian masses in gen media statement). tralian-led UN occupation there has federal backbencher Julia Irwin, who eral, it meant populate Australia with Notwithstanding the fact that the MUA meant racist state terror and brutal im aptly labelled Rudd's "Indonesian solu white immigrants. Thus innumerable fas and CFMEU tops subsequently an perialist exploitation. We say: Australian tion" worse than the previous Howard cist war criminals were welcomed, while nounced a union donation of $10,000 to troops out of Afghanistan, East Timor, government's "Pacific solution." Aus their victims-Jews and communists the refugees on board the Oceanic Viking, and the Solomons! For a class-struggle tralian capitalism's immigration laws are were not, as immigration officials were the role of these pro-capitalist misleaders fight for refugee and immigrant rights! designed to ensure that only those who instructed to comb the displaced persons of the unions is to push the class-collabo In its attempts to maximise profits, the have the desired skills, money or anti camps looking for "Aryans." When not rationist lie that workers have an interest capitalist class shifts production to low communist credentials-and preferably enough "Anglo-Celtics" could be per in defending the borders of Australian wage neocolonies while seeking out the the "right" skin colour-are allowed in. suaded to migrate, others from Eastern capitalism. A class-struggle leadership in cheapest sources of labour at home: for Thus, while demonising Tamil and other and, later, Southern Europe were declared the unions, in fighting to forge interna eign-born workers, women and youth. refugees, Rudd simultaneously peddles to be "white enough" to qualify. tional proletarian unity, would stand New layers of immigrants bring into the the view of a wing of the capitalist rulers Deeply committed to "White Aus intransigently opposed to such pro-capi multiracial working class valuable experi who worry that Australia's current popu tralia," the Chifley government at the talist nationalist bile. ences from struggles abroad. A class lation base is insufficient to compete eco same time was determined to deport all Customs, along with the military, struggle fight in defence of refugees and nomically against their rivals. Asians who had ended up in Australia police, <:ourtc~.)?;isol1~, ~£l.2..-.•A~tention for immigrant rights would help build a Australia was established as a white during the war-some of whom had mar camps, are part or the armed fist of the bridge to the struggles of workers from imperialist enclave in Asia-a British ried Australian citizens. However an capitalist state whose purpose is to protect Indonesia to the Philippines who are penal colony built on the bloody dispos exception was made following the 1949 capitalist rule and the private ownership of heavily exploited by Australian imperial session and mass murder of the Aborigi Chinese Revolution. In the name of anti the means of production. The navy is the ism. We stand on the all too rare examples nal people, pogroms against the Chinese Communism, there would be no deporta frontline in Rudd's "border control" of international working-class solidarity, people and a racist colour bar to keep out tions to "Red China." against refugees, while the police and such as waterfront workers' actions in anyone not "Anglo-Celtic" enough. While SA's Tim Gooden praises military enforce the government's take solidarity with Indonesia's struggle for "White Australia" racism was a founding Chifley's racist "immigration" program, over of Aboriginal communities in the independence in the late 1940s and with pillar of the ALP. The exclusion of the virulent anti-communists of Socialist Northern Territory and are used against the fight of the Vietnamese workers and "cheap" Asian labour was the basis of the Alternative (SAlt) paint a rosy picture of workers' pickets. In 1989, the Hawke peasants against U.S.JAustralian imperial Labor Party's chimera of bringing pros the Fraser government's "acceptance" of Labor government used air force pilots in ism in the 1960s and 70s. perity to its white Australian working thousands of Vietnamese in the late 1970s a strike-breaking operation to smash the If the trade unions are to become class base through domestic capitalist (Socialist Alternative, December 2009). pilots' union and in 1949 the Chifley weapons of struggle in the interests of the ownership and the exploitation of Aus Under intense pressure from the U.S., Labor government called in the troops to working class and oppressed, a leadership tralia's natural resources. While the Fraser's acceptance was premised on sav smash the coalminers' strike. The capital must be built in political opposition to the White Australia policy has been formally ing members and supporters of the impe ist state apparatus cannot be wielded in fetid Laborite nationalism and obeisance abolished and Australia is no longer lily rialists' brutal puppet regime in South the interests of the working class and to the capitalist state pushed by the current white, Australia is nevertheless a viru Vietnam following the defeat of U.S. and oppressed. It must be smashed through trade-union misleaders and their "left" lently racist minor imperialist power. And Australian forces by the heroic Viet working-class revolution. tails. Fighting for the unity and integrity the ALP, wedded to the rule of capital, namese workers and peasants. While the of the working class against chauvinism continues to identify with the xenophobic Vietnamese arrivals were nevertheless A Revolutionary Perspective and racism, such a leadership, linked to a fears of its own ruling class. subjected to vile White Australia racism, Vs. Laborite Reformism revolutionary party, would fight to organ The ALP is a bourgeois workers many were also used by the state to In response to a reactionary backlash ise the unorganised. It would fight to bring party-thoroughly bourgeois in its pro physically suppress expressions of soli over the announced union donation to the undocumented workers and exploited gram, outlook and leadership while based darity here with the Vietnamese Revolu Tamil refugees on the Oceanic Viking, SA women outworkers into the unions with on the trade unions. Through the instru tion. In 1985, rightist Vietnamese mobs and SAlt cadre rushed to laud the MUAI full union rights and conditions, as part of ment of the Laborite trade-union bureauc were unleashed by the Hawke Labor gov CFMEU tops without a word of criticism a class-struggle fight for jobs for all. It racy, the "labour lieutenants of capital," ernment against meetings celebrating the of these bureaucrats' willing service to would mobilise the multiracial working the bourgeoisie's "values" are transmitted 10th anniversary of the revolution. "defending Australia's borders." In this class in struggle against all the govern to the working class. Pushing nationalism For their part, the reformists of Solidar they illustrate their role in the Laborite ment's racist immigration laws, demand and "protection" of Australian industry, ity, particularly through their Refugee chain that binds workers to the capitalist ing full citizenship rights for all, asylum the trade-union bureaucracy instils in the Action Coalition (RAC) , have for years system. The reformists serve as a cover for rights for all those fleeing right-wing re proletariat the lie that workers and their used the refugee issue to push anti-com the "left" union bureaucrats who in turn pression and a halt to racist deportations. capitalist bosses have fundamental inter munism and loyalty to capitalist "democ cover for the ALP, whose role in govern The indispensable instrument to trans ests in common. Earlier this year, the racy." In 2007, Solidarity turned a refugee ment is to administer Australian imperi form the political consciousness of the leader of the right-wing Australian Work rights rally into a platform for the bour alism on behalf of the capitalist rulers. working class from a class in itself to a ers' Union, Paul Howes, railed against geois Greens and the counterrevolutionary SA, SAlt and the Socialist Party (SP) class for itself, conscious of its historic taxpayers' money "supporting the jobs Falun Gong and "Free China" crowd to have joined a dozen organisations from role in sweeping away the whole rotting of Indian steelmakers or Chinese steel vituperate against the Chinese deformed Malaysia to New Zealand in signing a capitalist system, is a Leninist vanguard makers or Brazilian aluminium-makers" workers state. 5 November statement protesting the party. Such a party will champion the (Australian, 3 February). Such wretched treatment of Tamil refugees. It appeals to cause of oppressed minorities, immi class collaboration is intended to blind the Protectionist Poison and the capitalist regimes in the region and grants and Aborigines, exposing all the proletariat to the irreconcilable conflict "Border Security" demands that racist Australian imperial capitalist tyranny and injustice, winning between labour and capital, poisoning While the CFMEU and Maritime ism "take a leading role in helping reduce the advanced layers of the proletariat to international working-class solidarity. Union of Australia (MUA) tops have also the misery of the world's millions of its banner in the struggle for socialist rev Against such nationalist trash we counter expressed some concern for refugees, this refugees." With this demand, SA, SP and olution. For a workers republic of pose the clarion call of the Communist is thin gruel compared with their ongoing SAlt push deadly illusions in the imperia- Australia, as part of a socialist Asia!. SUMMER 2009/10 11 :. +
~ustralasjan ______~ SPARTACIST Defend, Extend the Gains of the 1949 Chinese Revolution! The following is based on capitalist countries, China's forums given by comrade Ralf stimulus program is centred Neuer in Melbourne and Syd on investment in infrastructure ney in October. by state-owned enterprises Sixty years ago China ex and government bodies, and perienced a profound social expanding loans by state revolution as the peasant-based controlled banks has offset the People's Liberation Army massive decline in export (PLA) led by Mao Zedong's Communist earnings. While almost all capitalist Party (CCP) overthrew the imperialist economies have been shrinking, China's backed bourgeois-nationalist regime of rate of growth is about eight percent. Chiang Kai-shek's Guomindang (GMD). Indeed a comparison between China The victory of Mao's PLA destroyed the and India since 1949 shows the immense Chinese capitalist state, smashed the rule advantage of an economy whose motor of the Chinese bourgeoisie and landlords force is not production for private profit. and ripped the country out of the clutches At the time at which capitalist India gained of the imperialist powers. The 1949 Chi national independence shortly before the nese Revolution brought enormous social Chinese Revolution it was on a par with gains to China's workers, peasants and China both economically and in terms of especially deeply oppressed women, and human misery. Today, India's per capita further ignited anti-colonial and revolu gross domestic product is only half that of tionary struggles across Southeast Asia. China, while China's poverty rate is half However, unlike the 1917 Russian that of India. The malnutrition rate of chil Revolution, which was made by a class dren in China is one quarter that of India. conscious proletariat guided by the inter In China, almost 90 percent of women are nationalism of Lenin and Trotsky's literate, roughly twice that of India. Bolshevik party, the Chinese Revolution, To the extent that the CCP regime has based on the peasant masses, was shaped opened up sections of the country to capi by the absence of the Chinese workers talist investment, it has acted as a labour BusinessWeek struggling for power in their own right. Above: China State Shipbuilding Corporation, part of China's collectivised contractor for the imperialists and off Thus the People's Republic of China was industry. Below: Beijing, this year, Chinese workers protest threatened layoffs shore Chinese capitalists. But this does from its inception a bureaucratically de at Panasonic factory. Twenty million Chinese workers have lost jobs, mainly in not equate to the rule of capital. As was formed workers state with a nationalist export industry, since onset of capitalist global economic crisis. the case in the former Soviet Union, petty-bourgeois bureaucratic caste resting the decisive arena in which a capitalist atop the proletarian property forms issu counterrevolution would have to triumph ing from the revolution. The CCP estab is at the political level, in the conquest lished a regime patterned on the Stalinist of state power. The imperialists under bureaucracy in the Soviet Union which stand this very well. Seeking to reimpose had usurped political power from the unbridled capitalist exploitation, the im Soviet proletariat in a political counter perialists aim to promote an anti-Commu revolution beginning in 1923-24. nist political opposition tied to domestic Against opponents of revolutionary and foreign capital. This is why they are Marxism such as the Democratic Socialist constantly harping about "political liberal Perspective (DSP), who argue that China isation" and pushing China to open up its has become capitalist, or others such as banking sector and privatise the core of its Socialist Alternative (SAlt) or Solidarity, state-owned industry. It is also why they who assert that China never ceased to be back reactionary religious-based move capitalist, we in the International Commu ments, led by the likes of the Tibetan Dalai nist League (ICL) argue that despite Lama, and promote the rabidly nationalist decades of "market reforms" and the de World Uighur Congress leader Rebiya velopment of a sizable class of capitalist Kadeer. As part of our defence of China entrepreneurs (many of them former gov we stood opposed to the counterrevolu ernment functionaries and their children), incremental privatisations and administra China's state-owned enterprises and banks tionary riots in Tibet last year and have the core of the Chinese economy continues tive measures by the bureaucracy. This has prevented it from being dragged into written a fine article on the communalist to be based on collectivised property constitutes a fundamental revision of the the spiraling economic crisis that has rav outbreak in Xianjing earlier this year (see forms. State-owned enterprises remain Marxist view of the state. It complements aged most capitalist countries. Ongoing Workers Vanguard No. 941, 28 August). dominant in strategic industrial sectors the reformist myth that the capitalist control over the financial system has en Ever since the revolution the imperia such as steel, nonferrous metals, heavy state, such as exists in Australia, could abled the Beijing regime to shield China lists' strategic aim has been to return machinery, shipbuilding, telecommunica transform itself into a workers state by from speculative money-capital, which China to the subjugation, exploitation and tions, electric power, oil extraction and gradual nationalisations and' parliamen often causes havoc in neocolonial count misery that existed prior to 1949. This refining. The nationalisation of the land tary acts. Such "analysis" noFonly eradi ries. However, China is by no means they hope to achieve through a combina has prevented the emergence of a class of cates the need for workers revolution but totally insulated from the destructive irra tion of economic penetration and military agrarian capitalists socially dominating the also the necessity for a Leninist-Trotskyist tionality of the world capitalist market. pressure. For their part the nationalist countryside. The state that issued out of party to lead that struggle. It is nothing Over 20 million migrant workers have Chinese bureaucracy, seeking "peaceful the 1949 Revolution has not been over but a cover for capitulating to the Aus lost their jobs since the onset of the world coexistence," are ever ready to collabo thrown and replaced by armed bodies of tralian ruling class and its drive to smash economic crisis, mainly from factories rate with the imperialists. In recent years men committed to the private ownership of the Chinese deformed workers state. owned by foreign and offshore Chinese they have supported the U.S.-led "war on the means of production. That China is not capitalist can be seen capitalists who produce for export. ,terror" under which banner the imperia In contrast, the DSP argue that China in the context of today's world capitalist In contrast to the stimulus programs lists have occupied Iraq and Afghanistan gradually became capitalist as a result of economic crisis. The dominant weight of designed to bail out the bosses in many continued on page 6 12 SUMMER 2009/10