Smash Reagan Reaction! for a Workers Partyj
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WfJRNERS ",1N(JUI1IIJ 25¢ ~_ ...." ... No. 312 ......... )(!)2'3 3 September 1982 Smash Reagan Reaction! For a Workers PartyJ II r II I I raw The Mayors: All Democrats r All Strikebreakers All Enemies of Blacks I r II When half a million workers marched on Washing labor, anti-black offensive. For sit-down strikes ton on "Solidarity Day" last September 19, you could against layoffs and plant closings! For concrett: labor feel the potential power of the U.S. labor movement. solidarity-picket lines mean don't cross! For mass Sure, the union bureaucrats just wanted to worry labor(black defense against racist terror! Bring Reagan a little while letting their memberships blow Reagan down through strike action! off stenm. Thev deliberatelv failed to mobilize heavilv But the fat-cat union tops are more afraid of a among Midwestern industrial unions-the hard-hit, fighting perspective than they are of Ronald Reagan. heavily black concentrations of workers likely to be So they are presenting Labor Day 1982 outright to the most vividly aware that a march would not solve their Democratic Party. Lane Kirkland and all the other problems. The AFL-CIO tops even tried to make giveback artists are once again peddling their "alterna Solidarnosc, the Polish "free trade union" for the CIA tive" to the class struggle: the Democrats. Preaching and imperialist bankers, a major focus of "Solidarity the defeatist line that labor cannot fight for its own Day." But the union ranks who came out were looking survival, the bureaucrats now bring us as saviors for ways to fight back through their unions against Walter Mondale, Teddy Kennedy and the rest of austerity, unemployment and union busting. labor's Democratic enemies. The striking air controllers union (PATCO) was on When a Democratic president is in office, the AFL the line. Blacks, workers and the poor were directly CIa doesn't plan Labor Day marches at all. This year, targeted by the Cold War budget ax. Workers were marches are being organized, from New York to San angry and looking for fighting solutions. That's why Antonio. But in San Francisco, the planned Labor more than 8,000 marchers bought copies of Workers Day event has been canceled in favor ofa more explicit Vanguard with the headline: "Bust Union-Buster election rally on October 24 titled "Vote labor Reagan: Shut Down the Airports! Unchain Labor!" (meaning vote Democratic) for jobs and justice." The fighting program of the Spartacist League was Perhaps the Bay Area labor fakers are remembering what was needed to turn "Solidarity Day" into real last September 19, when thousands roundly booed working-das~ soltdarity agdinst the bosses' offensive. Carter's VP Mandale at the S. F. rally. When he The Machinists and Teamsters, in particular, could appealed for solidarity with Solidarnosc, Mondale was have shut the airports down tight and won not only for drowned out by chants of "PATCO! PATCO!" PATCO, but for the whole labor movement. Today more than ever, it is desperately necessary to It will take sharp class struggle to turn back the anti- continued on page 8 ~ < -0 ::r o Coleman Young "Solidarity Day," 19 Septem ber1981: ,. Real labor solidarity would have shut down the airports and won. DSA: Braintrusters to Labor Bureaucracl for War on Russia Jay Lovestone's Bastard Grandchildren SAN FRANCISCO, August 27-Sixty carnage in Indochina. Who would buy supporters ofthe Spartacist League held war criminal LBJ as the "left wing ofthe a spirited 40-minute demonstration • possible"? It was only as Jimmy Carter, outside the West Coast regional confer Dt9R __ defender of feudalism in Afghanistan, ence of Michael Harrington's Demo tried to morally rearm American impe cratic Socialists of America (DSA). ::CrfifJecl I rialism after the Vietnam debacle with With banners, signs and chants the SL \' -;- I his anti-Soviet "human rights" crusade comrades displayed their vigorous v~.a,"L~;lI that Harrington could plausibly sell his political opposition to Harrington's pep (;4!lnl)"'J'eF;"JJ Genocide ..• ". realignment scheme. Now with all wings rally for the capitalist Democratic r '~~llz" of the bourgeoisie engaging in a biparti Party. Chants ranged from the starkly . J 71 I Deftnd thf~= san crusade against the Soviet Union, of programmatic, like "No to Gun Con ... JUortlDft.lm-cJfS course the social democrats march to tro/" and "Hail Red Army in Afghani the orders of their capitalist masters. stan," to the all but unpronounceable: ~TnelsT Thus, as Reagan revs up the war "Not Ebert, Scheidemann and Noske machine, the DSA calls for "genuine But Marx, Lenin and Trotsky!" The national security" while DSAer Ron DSA was frisking everyone going Dellums calls for a Pentagon budget of inside, resulting in a bottleneck at the "only" $200 billion! door and a long, slow-moving line When the DSA talks about "labor -a captive audienc~ for the SL support," they mean endorsing the demonstration. pressure tactics and sellouts of the Featured speakers at the rally in betrayers of the American proletariat. cluded Machinists union bureaucrat The Trotskyists ofthe SL/SYL offer the William Winpisinger and Salvadoran only program showing a way out for FDR spokesman Guillermo Ungo. workers and the oppressed-a class Significantly, only a handful of Latins struggle workers party to fight for turned outfor this rare u.s. appearance socialist revolution. Not government by Ungo, although tens ofthousands of WV Photo bailouts, but the workers must seize and San Francisco, August 27: SL protests the party of the murderers of Salvadorans reside in the Bay Area and Luxemburg arid Lelbknecht. expropriate industry without a penny of many have participated in protests compensation to the capitalists. Not against U. S. imperialistpolicyin Central here tonight against the Democratic dragon" Tom Metzger. endless pressuring of the bankrupt America. Socialists of America (DSA), Michael • Last March DSA called for capitalist state, but the working class Indeed the audience ofover 1,000 was Harrington's latest anti-eommunist continued American aid to Israel. taking full power in its hands to sweep virtually all-white and appeared to front for the Democratic Party. In Today the Zionist butchers slaughter away the capitalist state! And that consist mainly of middle-aged school Reagan's racist America, millions of thousands in Lebanon with U,S.-sup power must be defended by depriving of teacher types-people who lived workers and blacks, their backs to the plied cluster bombs and U,S. jet political power all who would bring through the Vietnam War andknowfull wall, are realizing it is desperately fighters. back the capitalist order of racism, well what the imperialist Democrats are necessary to fight. But the DSA wants to • Harrington's "democratic social unemployment and war! all about. The cynicism was as marked get them "ready for Teddy," to herd ists" make common cause with the Wall While the rest of the "left" is as the anti-Sovietism. One old guy told them back into the capitalist party Street Journal, Ronald Reagan and supporting the Kennedy "nuke freeze" us: "So we have blood on our hands, so which brought Hiroshima, the Bay of Margaret Thatcher in trying to "roll (i.e., more conventional weapons what? Everybody has blood on their Pigs, Vietnam and paved the way for back Communism" in Poland via Soli against the Soviet Union in Europe), the hands.... " These "State Department Reagan. darnose, company union for imperialist SL/SYL stands foursquare for the socialists" are terrified of Reagan and • While Reagan ~lilashed PATCO, bankers and the CIA. military defense of the bureaucratically his "nukes," but don't much care ifthe DSA's Winpisinger stabbed air con • Harrington was a leader of the deformed and degenerated workers Democrats want to bomb the colonial trollers in the back by refusing to pull Socialist Party while it supported U.S. states, above all the USSR, against the masses back into the Stone Age with the lAM out in a solidarity strike to shut holocaust in Vietnam; now he wants to imperialists. While the Stalinists unite "conventional" weapons, napalm or down the airports. prevent "another Vietnam tragedy" in with the social democrats to spread anything else they think won't pollute • Halfa million auto workers are laid El Salvador. DSA supports negotia illusions in detente with rapacious U.S. the air over San Francisco. off as DSA hails UAW chief Fraser's tions with Reagan and with death squad imperialism, we call for political revolu We reprint below the Spartacist billion dollar "giveback" to auto bosses. leader Roberto d'Aubuisson to head off tion to oust the bureaucratic usurpers, leaflet distributed at the event. • Blacks and other minorities face military victory of leftist rebels. who undermine the gains ofthe October •• • • • racist/fascist terror. DSA's "answer": There is a long history of such anti Revolution. The Spartacist League/Spartacus the Democratic Party of Jimmy "eth communist social democrats who act as The social democrats are the sworn Youth League (SL/SYL) is protesting nic purity" Carter and KKK "grand the labor lieutenants of "democratic" enemies of workers revolution since imperialism, Ex-Communist Jay Love World War I, social imperialists who stone, the CIA's main labor operative, supported their "own" capitalist butch was George Meany's right-hand man in ers, tried to strangle the Bolshevik busting militant unions around the Revolution, and drowned the 1919 It i world. Harrington's mentor, Max German revolution in blood. We Shachtman, went from refusing to Trotskyists, Spartacists, who fight for tIItJlJ/(fl$ militarily defend the Soviet Union the rebirth of the Fourth International. against imperialism in 1940 to support are the party ofthe Russian Revolution.