WORKERS ,,1N(JIJl1ftlJ 25¢ No. 330 .~~.:~ X_-523 20 May 1983 Reagan's Butchers Shakioo

6~'" DID

MAY 17-A leftist guerrilla in central EI Salvador recently declared, "We are moving the war along as fast as possible now, so the people don't have to suffer so much. We are coming to the final stage. We now have the capacity to launch a definite insurrection" (Wash­ ington Post, I May). In recent weeks the insurgent forces of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) have kept the U.S.-backed army reeling. The much-touted "new" military strategy (nothing but Vietnam­ \ era counterinsurgency) has gotten no­ 1 where as each army sweep is met by fierce resistance and devastating coun­ terattacks by the rebels. The FMLN-_ iorces have IT,,,intained and accelerated the military momentum which they seized last October, striking targets at will across the country. Six months ago, the opposition Democratic Revolution­ ary Front (FOR) declared that the rebels were entering "a more offensive and defining phase of the revolutionary war" with the "creation ofconditions for the general insurrection of the masses" (FDR/FMLN, Boletin £1 Salvador Libre, October 1982). This has certainly been accomplished. What now? In the United States, all sectors of the ruling class are worried about the "fire in America's front yard," vividly recall­ ing the Vietnam debacle. Reagan wants to escalate, the liberals want to nego­ tiate. Now various reformists are joining with the Democrats to call an "emergen­ cy" demonstration (on July 2!) for "No Vietnam War in Central America." The Spartacist League (SL) says: Vietnam ~ was a victory-Two. three, many .. . No Negotiatecl Sellout! . defeats for U.S. imperialism! And the ill bourgeoisie has good reason to be worried. With Central America already successful the guerrillas are against the while the workers and peasants defy cutting the link to Honduras and aflame, there is now rumbling in the army, the more insistent their leaders blood and fire in a struggle to rid southern Central America at the border. Southern Cone of South America. One are in offering to sell out what has been themselves of a rapacious oligarchy and And while the sizable FM LN "areas of thousand arrested for demonstrating won on the battlefield in exchange for its kill-crazed death squads. Ungo and control" are expanding, the government against the Pinochet dictatorship in some :cabinet seats and promises of the rest of the phantom bourgeois army is crumbling as a result of mass Chile, general strikes against the gener­ reform (the so-called "political solu­ politicians in the FOR ply tb? cocktail surrenders to the guerrillas: als in Argentina, workers confront the tion")" This pattern has again been circuits hoping to rally liberal support • March 27-Capture of 114 sol­ 1M F austerity policies of the popular dramaticaliy confirmed. A week after and thus stave off social revolution. The diers in a rebel attack on San Esteban front in Bolivia. And to the north Reagan's war on Communism in Cen­ SL says: No negotiated sellout! Military Catarina, 29 miles from the capital. Mexico is in deep crisis. Now is the time tral America speech to Congress, FOR victory to leftist insurgents! Take San • April 17-Capture of 71 soldiers to strike for victory on the battlefield in leader Guillermo Ungo came to Wash­ Salvador! and their commander. overrunning an El Salvador. A leftist military victory ington to hold a press conference in army post near Chichontepec volcano could open the door to workers revolu­ which he announced: "The United Reagan's Butchers On the Run (La Paz province). tion that could spread throughout the States has the right to stop the spread of • April 18-Capture of 80 govern­ continent. communism. That's true. We agree on After the "Heroic January 1983" ment soldiers on the San Vicente Yet as we have noted before, the more that" (Ballimore Sun. 3 May). Indeed. F\1U\ offensive. which resulted in the volcano. rebel occupation of the town of Berlin In addition, in what was described as and attacks inside the capital itself. the one of the biggest FM LN victories of the guerrillas have kept up the pressure. UAW: From Sitdowns to war. on March 31 guerrillas ambushed pre\enting the army from taking back and destroyed two companies of the the Chrysler Board Room the initiative oreven regainingequilibri­ crack U.S.-trained Ramon Belloso urn. The rebels responded to Reagan's battalion in the northeastern Morazan .Fraser"~.· ;~.·; threats by occupying the key border province. And in mid-April the govern­ Doug .• ... town of Santa Rosa de Lima in eastern ment made its 14th attempt to dislodge La Union province on April 29. They rebels from Guazapa volcano just Company CCJP •• ~~, ,. also destroyed five bridges along the . . "-''--:,- - --~:::-:\:.~;T,'!;:\:/-c.t~· .;- ;_._.:·-~;~:~~/~/i}{ Pan American highway, including continued on page 4 La Migra's Racist Roundups in Chicago

CHICAGO-With the push on to pass the "community" petty merchants­ the Simpson-Mazzoli immigration "re­ who fatten themselves off the blood and form" bill, they're trying to whip up a sweat of poor immigrants-do without chauvinist frenzy against foreign work­ "illegal aliens"? (CP fellow traveler Ray ers, During the month of March alone, Romero remarked: "Employers look at some 1,000 "illegal aliens" were rounded things in terms of profits, what happens up here by the racist squads of the when you eliminate the undocumented Immigration and Naturalization Serv­ workers and reduce the margin?") At the ice (INS), known by its victims as fa 1982 May Day march, the Spartacist migra, The crackdown is part of a League (SL) contingent had the only nationwide pattern-the Border Patrol signs demanding "Full Citizenship announced it picked up an unprecedent­ Rights for Foreign Born Workers and ed 107,997 people along the Mexican Their Families! Stop the Deportations!" border in March, more than any month "Asylum for Refugees of Salvadoran in history and an increase of 43 percent Junta Terror!" and "Military Victory to over last year (Chicago Tribune, 24 Leftist Insurgents in EI Salvador!" For April). this we were jumped by a goon squad of And while fa migra spread its dragnet, these nationalists and Stalinists seeking the Tribune spewed out a racist propa­ to keep out opposition to their popular ganda barrage in a six-part series front with the Democrats. entitled "The Illegals." The press ac­ These popular frontists, whose call counts did bring to light the desperate for a "negotiated solution" in Central conditions faced by Chicago's countless America would lead to new massacres of thousands of undocumented workers: Salvadoran leftists. and who in Mexico from their perilous entry into this have for decades sought to tame all country, creeping through holes in the opposition to the ruling PRI. now seek chain link fences of the "Tortilla to tie Hispanics in Chicago to the Curtain," hiding in the brush from the Democrats' "reform" mayor. Yet this Border Patrol \",ho stalk their quarry same Democratic Party and the same with an arsenal ranging from helicopters liberals are some of the biggest to infrared nightscopes. At the mercy of pushers of anti-immigrant legislation. the "coyotes" (smugglers), they pay Carter/Chicago Tribune The Stalinists along with the class­ Immigration cops raid factories in Chica~o, April 1982. hundreds of dollars to be packed into collaborationist labor tops call for vans and car trunks, arriving in Chicago protectionist legislation against runa­ to wash dishes, sew garments or work in and addresses on file, and could be for the garment sweatshops of the way shops (run away to Juarez, for grimy metal shops. deported at any moment. Northeast and the foundries in Chicago. example) and support protectionist The latest sweep was called "Opera­ The Reagan-backed Simpson­ Now with the financial and economic demonstrations against buying foreign­ tion Repeater," a follow-up on last Mazzoli bill now pending in Congress, if crisis in Mexico, in addition to the made steel (such as from Monterrey). In year's "Operation Jobs," Reagan's fully enforced, would lead to a South normal attraction of making a better life contrast to this reformist racist poison, vicious attempt to make foreign workers African-style internal passport system, for themselves, hundreds of thousands the Spartacist League calls for interna­ scapegoats for skyrocketing U.S. unem­ strengthening the police powers of the more are being driven across the border tional class struggle. The SL points out ployment. In last year's ten-city sweep, INS and expanding the Labor Depart­ looking for any kind of work. . that everyone in this country came from Chicago was a particular focus of the ment's role as a labor contractor. Under Moreover, many Mexicans and somewhere else (except the Indians and INS: 1,295 out of a total of 5,000 arrests the vaguely worded "amnesty provi­ Central Americans meet death in their look how they were slaughtered). We nationwide took place·here. We report­ sions" ofthe Senate bill, applicants must attempt to make it to the "land of the say that anyone who is here has a right ed how INS local chief H.A. Palmer show'tlrey entered the country before free." There are accounts of"wetbacks" to stay with full citizenship rights. murdered by Ku Klux Klan' mobs raided factories and warehouses, swept 1977 and that they won't become More than a century ago Karl Marx waiting for them to· cross the Rio through the barrios separating families "public charges"-impossible to prove pointed out that capitalism maintains Grande, of bodies ofteenage boys found and slamming terrified people into in depression-ravaged USA. Job­ an "industrial reserve army" of the floating in the river in Juarez, shot by holding pens at O'Hare Airport. The trusting union misleaders, who were unemployed to hold down wages. In the border policemen. From the KKK imperialist epoch this reservoir ofcheap ~ "border patrols" to their failed march < labor has been transferred in part to the "U against "illegal aliens" in Washington :;y countryside of the "Third World" which o last November 27 (which was stopped o supplies millions of workers to the by the 5,000-strong Labor/Black Mobi­ advanced capitalist economies, only to lization initiated by the Spartacist be expelled during the inevitable depres­ League), this is the fascistic fringe of the sions: Turkish and Yugoslav workers in anti-Soviet war drive supported by both West Germany, Africans in France and capitalist parties. Democrats and Re­ an estimated six million Mexicans in the Stalinists/ publicans also join hands in pushing the nationalists United States. Under capitalism the racist Simpson-MazzoIi bill, along with backward regions of Latin America, attack SL sellout labor bureaucrats whose answer contingent Africa and Asia will never be trans­ protesting to unemployment is the chauvinist formed into modern industrial coun­ INS roundup poison of protectionism and anti­ tries, The possibility of eradicating in Chicago's immigration legislation. hunger from the face of the earth can be Mexican In Chicago, leaders of the Mexican realized only through the collectiviza­ Pilson community have traditionally tied the tion of the means of production and an district, May working people to the ethnic patronage Day 1982. international planned economy. Under system of the Democratic Machine. In socialism, in a classless society, national the recent mayoral elections, marked by borders will disappear and no one will a racist hysteria campaign, the Mexican call you "illegal alien.". racist anti-Communist nature of these among the earliest pushers of Simpson­ district of Pilsen went heavily for Mayor terror raids was clear: some 50 Polish Mazzoli, are now complaining that the Jane Byrne in the primary, then, faced immigrants picked up in the sweep were "penalties" against employers for hiring with the choice of black Democrat granted special refugee status by the "illegals" have been watered down. Washington or racist Republican Ep­ WfJRKERS State Department because of "martial Meanwhile the Reagan administration ton, many opted for Washington. Since law" conditions in Poland. No such luck has taken up the issue as part of its the Hispanic vote became a decisive VANGUARD for Salvadorans or Haitians, of course. campaign to "secure our borders," factor, the Latino wheeler-dealers are Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of The vast majority of the estimated -supposedly against a "Communist now declaring that Washington's victo­ the Spartacist League of the U,S, 500,000 undocumented workers in the threat" from the south. ry "marks the beginning of a new era for EDITOR: Jan Norden Chicago area are Mexicans. In Febru­ To generate support for Simpson­ Hispanics," as Chicano reformist leader PRODUCTION MANAGER: Noah Wilner ary, many of them became particularly Mazzoli, they're screaming about how Rudy Lozano said (Chicago Sun- Times, CIRCULATION MANAGER: Linda Jarreau vulnerable as more than 100,000 pre­ the foreign workers are allegedly steal­ 15 April). But a token deputy mayor and EDITORIAL BOARD: Charles BurroughS, dominantly Mexican immigrants, who ing Americanjobs, spinning horror tales a "commission on Hispanic affairs" will George Foster, Liz Gordon, Mary Jo McAllister, James Robertson, Reuben held "Silva letters" giving them tempo­ about "illegals" swelling the welfare not do much for Latin Americans in this Samuels, Joseph Seymour. Marjorie Stamberg rary immunity from deportation, had rolls, packing the schools. This is a pack city-all they will get from Washington Workers Vanguard (USPS 098-770) published their status canceled by the INS. They of lies: undocumented workers living & Co, is a big dose of the austerity that biweekly. skipping an issue in August and a week in December, by the Spartacist were those affected by a federal court under the threat of deportation are not he's already begun to announce. Publishing Co., 41 Warren Street, New York, ruling in the case of Mexican immigrant about to voluntarily undergo welfare Last year's May Day march in Pilsen NY 10007. Telephone: 732-7862 (Editorial), 732-7861 (Business). Address all corres­ Refugio Silva which held that the investigation. As for schools, foreign came at the height of /a migra's pondence to: Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY government had illegally awarded thou­ workers pay taxes like everybody else­ "Operation Jobs" dragnet. Yet while 10116. Domestic subscriptions: $5.00/24 issues. Second-class postage paid at New sands of immigrant visas to anti­ withheld from their paychecks. The Casa Aztlan, a group of nationalists and York. NY. Communist Cuban refugees at the undocumented workers come here in fellow-travelers around the reformist Opinions expressed in signed articles or expense of other Western Hemisphere the first plaee because the American Communist Party (CP), were chanting letters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint. applicants. Now the "Silva letter" capitalists want low-wage labor for "Raza si. Migra no," they refused to call for full citizenship rights for our foreign people are in a dangerous situation, backbreaking stoop-labor jobs in the No. 330 20 May 1983 since they have already put their names fields of California and the "Sunbelt," class brothers! After all, what would all 2 WORKERS VANGUARD UAW: From Sitdowns to the Chrysler Board Room Doug Fraser: Company Cop

DETROIT-United Auto Workers Q.« (UAW) president Doug Fraser is retir­ ing and to crown his "achievements" he has declared that the attempt by General Motors/Toyota to smash seniority and reopen the Fremont, California GM plant without a union contract is not a strikable issue! Four years earlier, Chrysler's announcement of the closing of the historic Dodge Main plant signaled an assault by the Big Three on several decades of industrial unionism in auto. Since 1979, with the active collaboration of Solidarity House, auto workers have lost $5 billion in wages and benefits, the industrywide contract Fraser breaks has been smashed, and close to half a wildcat at Chrysler's million auto workers have been perma­ Lynch Road nently unemployed. From Dodge Main plant In to Fremont, Fraser has hacked away at Detroit, 1973. the achievements of the UAW to the point where the future of this once proud union is at stake. Indeed 1979 will go down in UAW history as an infamous year. That was of union independence. In a polemic and denounced the SL's "utopian" class­ protectionist frenzy, blaming Japanese the year Doug Fraser purchased a seat against such reformist misleaders in the struggle tactics. Well, the balance sheet workers for the massivejob losses he has on the Chrysler board ofdirectors at the 1930s, Leon Trotsky wrote: is in on the surrender strategy of Fraser rammed through. This has resulted in price of hundreds of thousands of auto "The trade unions of our time can either & Co.: the total Chrysler/Ford/GM racist terror and even murder of Asian­ workers' jobs. As Chrysler workers serve as secondary instruments of profit for thejirst quarter of 1983 was $1 American workers (see "Jail the Killers repeatedly said during the wildcats imperialist capitalism for the subordi­ billion-stolen out of the pockets of of Vincent Chin!" on page 12). against the company and the UAW nation and disciplining of workers and thousands of UAW members. Today traitors last fall, the UAW was being led for obstructing the revolution. or, on Now, with most auto workers in the contrary, the trade unions can every single Chrysler plant is on over­ by a "double agent." The Fraser gang Detroit unable to get any job, Fraser has become the instruments of the revolu­ time, with the one-third of the work­ represented the company board of lined up /hree in addition to his union tionary movement of the proletariat." force left working under substandard directors in the union. Having retired as -"Trade Unions in the Epoch of pension. As an outside director for contract to give Chrysler its largest UAW chief, Fraser plans to stay on as a Imperialist Decay" Chrysler, he'll be entitled to $15,000 a quarterly profit in history! Chrysler boss for at least another year. Now Reuther's disciple Fraser has year with another $12,000 in special fees The UAW is one ofthe main unions in carried the tradition to its treacherous Fraser: Once a Cop, (for committee and board meetings), this country which has been led by social conclusion: a labor/capitalist "partner­ Always a Cop plus two cars a year. (And this year's democrats. One can compare Fraser's ship" to dismantle fundamental gains in Fraser trained long and hard for his Chrysler proxy report doesn't contain Fraser's pious 1982 declaration that he joining the Chrysler board with the order to prop up the U.S. profit system. union-busting. After starting in the old German Social Democrats' voting for With Fraser on the board and the DeSoto plant in the 1930s he became plans on donating his Judas money to scholarship funds.) There's another war credits on August 4, 1914. At that UAW in a straitjacket, Dodge Main and president of Local 277 in 1943 as part of $12,000 or so for a part-time Labor point the Social Democrats became not other historic centers ofunion militancy the Reuther wing of the UAW bureauc­ Studies professorship at Wayne State just sellouts but direct agents of the going back to the 1930s sit-down strikes racy. He was appointed to the Interna­ University. and he'll also be the Helen Kaiser who sent their workers to kill were liquidated without a fight. A tional staff in 1947, as Reuther's purge DeRoy Visiting Professor in Honors at their brother workers in the imperialist membership imbued with decades of of the Communist Party in the service of the University of Michigan, teaching slaughter of World War 1. In the same union consciousness was thrown to the the Cold War entered high gear. After "the organization of work in the coming way, Fraser (and his leadership clique) winds: most pathetic and symbolic of 25 years as assistant to Reuther and an decades" (or, "how to wreck a union in has been a loyal member ofthe Chrysler Fraser's defeatism was the whimper of International Executive Board member, four years or less"). and finally as head of the UA W's Chrysler Department, Fraser became The UAW isn't even saying how much infamous as an open strikebreaker. As dues money auto workers will have to head of the UAW's Chrysler Depart­ give this traitor for a pension. Like his ment. he helped the company beat back predecessor Leonard Woodcock (who the black rebellion of 1968-69, embod­ became Jimmy Carter's ambassador to ied by the League of Revolutionary China), the real payoff might come from Black Workers. In 1973 he gained Washington from his friends in the national infamy by leading 1,000 bu­ Democratic Party, At one of the series reaucrats wielding baseball bats in of "thank you Doug" benefits organized breaking a wildcat strike at Chrysler's for this traitor. former vice president Mack Avenue Stamping plant. When Mondale "hinted he has plans to put Fraser sworn in militants at the Jefferson Avenue plant Fraser in high office if elected president as Detroit successfully occupied an electrical cage in 1984" (De/roit Free Press. 4 police February). commissioner, and drove out a racist foreman. Fraser 1974. came out against the company's promise As Doug Fraser leaves the UAW even of amnesty: "If you surrender to this the strike fund is being raked to pay the type of blackmail, there is no end to it." salaries of the International and local Fraser had become a cop for the henchmen who aided him in ripping up board of directors, directly destroying the Dodge Main local bureaucrats at the companies. And in 1974 he literally the gains of more than 40 years of the most basic gains of the union and 1980 convention, displaying a banner became one of Detroit's five top cops, industrial unionism. The social­ slaughtering the livelihoods and lives of which read, "With a Book Full of accepting newly elected mayor Coleman democratic, bureaucratic machine that the workers. Memories and a Heavy Heart, Dodge Young's appointment to the new police has translated UAW into "U Ain't The UAW's complete prostration Local 3 Says Good-bye to the UAW." commission, which was responsible for Working" smoothly passes the top job before the auto companies is a direct Over and over again Fraser rammed overall control ofthe police department. to Owen Bieber. while auto workers result of the social-democratic Walter giveback contracts down the throats of Fraser served on the "reform" police from Fremont to Detroit face crucial Reuther tradition which Fraser contin­ the UAW ranks. working in tandem commission. helping Young and the class battles to defend their livelihoods. ued. Reuther and his henchmen throt­ with company threats to close plants. Democratic Party machine in Detroit The housebroken "oppositionists" who tled the class-struggle tactics which and all in the name of"savingjobs." The reestablish the authority of Detroit constantly appeal to the "Reuther enabled the LJ AW to organize the open only job "saved" was Fraser's seat on the police in the face of the widespread tradition" will never be able to fight the shop bastions of the Midwest. He used Chrysler Board: two-thirds of Chrysler hatred of the cops among the city's black stranglehold of Solidarity House. In red-baiting and anti-communist purges. workers and almost half a million UAW population. And the killer cops of the February. 57 out 0(58 local presidents support for the imperialists' Second members in all have been written off by infamous STR ESS unit. who gunned and shop chairmen at Chrysler appealed World W"r and slavish subordination the Big Three and Solidarity House. down black workers and youth at will in to Fraser to stay on the board! It will to the Democratic Party to weld the In 1979 the Spartacist League (SL) the early 1970s, were set loose. take a class-struggle leadership to win LAW to the gO\ernment. Reuther's and our supporters in auto agitated for Fraser has been the fireman for the the coming battles. Sitdowns. not soup­ goal. dra\\ n from the program of the sit-down strikes against layoffs. while Detroit bosse'. denouncing busing for lines' Break from the Democrats. build reformist Second IntcrnatlCna!..',d'. 'C the fake-left trailed after Fraser. cailing :ntcgrallof] because it "is a losing issue a workers party to fight for a workers integrate the hbor n1O\emcnt in!U the for "nationalIzation" (a disguised form ['oj1ticall\" (f)efroi/ Free PrcS\', 30 government' Oust the traitorous UA W capitalist state. \\ iping out ani' 'cmnant pi subsldv w the bosses) to "savejobs." \O\ember 1975) and \\.hlpping up a bureaucracy! • 20 MAY 1983 3 Roberto D'Aubuisson is calling for a solution" of 1954 before the heroic Dodd warned that the U.S. is "once EI salvador... war to the death-200,000 dead to be workers and peasants finally drove out again on the losing side." Even Reagan specific. And now the death squads are the imperialists and their puppets. must pay homage to the "Vietnam (cantinued from page 1) running full blast again, massacring The conditions for leftist military syndrome." In his April 27 speech to peasants on land reform settlements, victory in El Salvador are ripe. But this Congress, he declared: "Let me say to outside San Salvador, a major opera­ assassinating the chairman of the victory clearly poses the need for an those who invoke the memory of tion involving 3,000 troops and air force Salvadoran Human Rights Commis­ urban insurrection of the working class. Vietnam: There is no thought ofsending bombing, but without success. sion, Marianela Garcia. The proletariat must place itself at the American combat troops to Central Recently the Salvadoran govern­ The FDR/FMLN leaders claim that head of the insurgent masses if the America." But in 1964, we recall, ment, prodded by the Reagan if "our people achieve victory by the smashing ofthe old regime is to open the Lyndon Johnson ran as the "peace administration, has launched a rural candidate" against Barry Goldwater, "pacification" campaign, combining declaring: "We seek no wider war." large-scale military operations with Under Democrats Kennedy and John­ stepped-up economic aid. The plan calls son, and Republican Nixon, Vietnam for setting up fortified "strategic ham­ became the longest, dirtiest, and only lets" in the lowlands provinces, a losing war in the history of American strategy reminiscent of the CORDS imperialism. From Central America to (Civil Operations and Revolutionary southern Africa, the oppressed masses Development) program in Vietnam. were inspired by the Vietnamese victory, Coupled with Operation Phoenix, a while in the U.S. fear of "another campaign of assassination of suspected Vietnam" was a major barrier to new Viet Cong sympathizers, CORDS was imperialist military adventures. an attempt to isolate the guerrillas from The American bourgeoisie has tried the general populace. So far it has been to overcome the "Vietnam syndrome," no more successful in El Salvador. beginning with Jimmy Carter's anti­ When FMLN troops attacked San Soviet "human rights" campaign. Rea­ Miguel, the country's third-largest city, gan came to power vowing to "draw the 2,000 government security force troops line against Communism" in Central were ordered to stay in their barracks America, hoping for a victory on the rather than risk defeat by the rebels, cheap, in the U.S.' "front yard," to fuel who sabotaged machinery intended for the war drive against the USSR. But that province's pacification program. these imperialist dreams are shattering The country is literally falling apart. on the determined resistance of the The gross national product is down by FMLN Central American masses. Sandinista Salvadoran guerrillas turn over captured soldiers to Red Cross. Government Nicaragua is grinding up the counter­ 25 percent since 1979. According to the troops are surrendering en masse. U.S. embassy, damages to the infra­ revolutionary mercenary invaders. Sal­ structure have passed a billion dollars, armed road" it will be with "greater road to socialist revolution. And this vadoran leftists are making mincemeat while another billion have been sent out social costs" than if there is a "negotiat­ requires above all the building of of the 9-to-5 U.S.-backed army. The by local capitalists hedging against a ed solution" with the Yankee imperial­ revolutionary Trotskyist parties in El Democratic "doves" believe that imperi­ guerrilla victory. In the middle of the ists and their Salvadoran flunkies Salvador and throughout Central alist interests would be better served by war, after a second military rebellion (Venceremos, March 1983). On the America, sections of a reforged Fourth negotiations with the pro-capitalist against General Garcia (this time by the contrary, the guerrilla coalition and its International. leaders of the Salvadoran popular front air force), the ineffectual defense minis­ popular-front allies are now holding and a modus vivendi with the Sandinis­ ter was removed and the entire top back the armed struggle, giving the Two, Three, Many Defeats for tas. But they, like Ungo, agree with command reshuffled. The phony con­ government forces a chance to recuper­ U.S. Imperialism Reagan on his strategic goals. ("We will stituent assembly is split down the ate, in order to have something left to As Reagan seeks to escalate military oppose the establishment of Marxist middle between right-center and ultra­ negotiate. In the long run this will cost intervention in Central America, a states in Central America," said Dodd.) rightist forces. Ex-junta president Jose far more lives than an all-out drive to section of the U.S. ruling class fears that While boasting of slashing Reagan's Napoleon Duarte, a Christian Demo­ win the war, as the example of Vietnam a "new Vietnam" is in the making. request for military aid to his Salvador­ crat, is calling for "dialogue" with the shows, where it took 20 years and one Appealing to the "lesson of the painful an butchers, the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives votes almost rebels while fascistic assembly president million dead after the "negotiated past," liberal Democratic Congressman unanimously to triple arms aid over the authorized 1982 levels. A negotiated sellout of the Salvadoran civil war would be a defeat for the workers and peasants of Central America, and a signal for a massive new Spoltoc;st Compo;gn bloodbath. If the U.S. succeeds in crushing leftist insurgency in the isth­ mus, its next target will be Cuba and the imperialists will be enormously embold­ ened in their program of reconquering Drows Well ;n Block Ooklond the Soviet Union for capitalism. It is in OAKLAND-For WVreaders famil­ student and aging New Leftist popula­ our election brochures were distrib­ the urgent interests of the world work­ iar with the reformist, ultra-electoralist tions. In contrast, in overwhelmingly uted by comrades and supporters ing class for the USSR to send guns to Socialist Workers Party (SWP), the black and working-class East Oak­ of our campaign. Many of those who the Salvadoran leftists and MIGs to accompanying map should be interest­ land, we outpolled the SWP nearly worked on the campaign also joined Nicaragua. Reagan's claim that this is ing and satisfying. It shows (in black) three to one. Similarly in the 90 the newly formed LaborI Black already happening is, unfortunately, a the areas in which Spartacist candidate percent black areas of West Oakland League for Social Defense. Our lie. The shameful appeasement of U.S. Martha Phillips outpolled SWPer Jan we solidly beat the SWP. Bolshevik campaign centered on mili­ imperialism by the Kremlin over Gangel in the recent Oakland City The latest Militant's only mention of tant labor and black struggle clearly Central America constitutes a grave Council elections. While the SWP re­ their campaign is a report of Jan struck a chord in the black and danger to the Soviet Union itself. And ceived 1,906 votes to our 1,548, over Gangel's "ground-breaking" sale at working-class districts of Oakland. the treacherous reformists who call for 600 of their votes (more than they beat the power plant where she works, And just as clearly the tepid pale-pink "no more Vietnams" are spitting on the us by citywide) came from the predom­ which netted five (!) Militants sold. In reformism of the SWP found its blood of the Vietnamese people in order inantly white, petty-bourgeois Rock­ the last two weeks of the Spartacist response among petty-bourgeois liber­ to make a bloc with the Democrats. We ridge area of north Oakland and pre­ campaign alone, 499 Workers Van­ als. For us, the Phillips campaign was say: Vietnam was a victory! Smash U.S. cincts bordering Berkeley with large guards were sold and nearly 15,000 of a solid success. imperialism in Central America! For workers revolution!.

Sparfacisf League Forum

Smash Racist Terror from Greensboro to Gravesend Finish The Civil War! SNCC, "Black Power," and the Democrats­ A Marxist Analysis of the Civil Rights Movement Speaker Marjorie Slamberg • SL Central Committee Special Guest Speaker: Ed Kartsen NYC Transit Worker Saturday, June 4, 7:30 p.m. 310 W 43rd St (District 1199) Black areas in map of Oakland "A" train to 42nd St show where SL's Martha Phillips J (above) outpolled SWP. L' mom m~~; ';~~~'''25

4 WORKERS VANGUARD Workers Fight Austerity Italy: Battle Over the Scala Mobile

Since the following article was writ­ the "internment" plants at FIAT and ten, a one-day general strike of Italian dozens of other factories where mili­ industry was calledfor April21 to back tants were kept isolated from other union demands in key contract negotia­ workers as the prelude to getting fired; tions. However, fearing vvorkers' mili­ the splitting of the labor movement and tancy the labor bureaucrats on April20 the founding of"free" trade unions, etc., rushed through an agreement covering etc. metal workers in state-owned compa­ In the latter part of the '60s the nies, thereby undermining the national working class recovered and turned the strike. Meanwhile, the continuing par­ tables. In 1968-69, it seriously under­ liamentary instability ofItalian politics mined the bureaucratic apparatuses' was signalledby thefalllast monthofthe grip on the working class, forming Fanfani government, the 43rd cabinet elected, recallable factory councils in since the end of World War //. General place of the corrupt and ossified elections have been called for June 19, commissioni interne. At the same time highlighted by the Eurocommunists' the workers' struggle rallied sectors of califor a "democratic alternative." that more backward workers to its side and is, to refurbish the bourgeois regime won over petty-bourgeois students who with an anti-working-class, anti-Soviet in previous years were dominated by the popular front. liberal and fascist right wing. In 1969 the prerevolutionary situa­ tj,Ji,'/)"i;'JR'epbHJfOffi',' ..• ~.'·.1 tion did not produce a revolutionary th~ Interstampa movement because the reformist leaders Lega Trotskistad'ltalJa Italian metal workers fight for sliding scale of wages. succeeded in derailing the immense potential for struggle in an exhausting MILANO-During the month ofJanu­ position) labor leaders it was decreed "more" means declaring a permanent and sterile "fight for reforms" in ary, the Italian working class mobilized that this would be a "silent" demonstra­ strike, with the petty bourgeoisie housing, education, health as well as to defeat the Confindustria [employers' tion with no rally at the end. Union growing increasingly desperate. Pro­ progressive measures in the South. The federation] over the scala mobile ["slid­ militants ironically mocked this bureau­ longing this impossible situation will results are plain to see: the government ing scale," a cost-of-living adjustment] cratic measure by wearing a gag over only generate a sizable fascist move­ is imposing a charge (the so-called and the government's economic decrees. their mouths. ment, with the capitalists asserting an "ticket") on drugs and medical services, Facing a deadly inflation rate that has The union leaders, truly the "labor imperative need to break out of the the educational system continues to lack raised the prices of staple items almost lieutenants of the bourgeoisie," rushed bourgeois-democratic restraints in or­ schools and teachers (and those who do 500 percent over the last 12 years, the to sell out the workers by signing a der to stabilize profits. This situation teach are badly underpaid), the housing government led by the old Christian rotten agreement on January 22. Hence­ today poses urgently the need to forge crisis is chronic. And as far as the South Democratic warhorse and aspiring forth the scala mobile would only cover an authentic Bolshevik party to fight for is concerned, after two earthquakes and bonapartist Amintore Fanfani is trying 80 percent of inflation. This betrayal is a revolutionary workers government a cholera epidemic, the masses in the to push the whole burden of capitalist all the more excruciating in that the based on workers councils (soviets). All South rem~in. under the heel ..Qf the irrationality onto the workers' backs. forces mobilized by the workers were the attempts to bring the Ethocl'immu­ mafia (Sicily), camorra (Naples) and The workers' rage exploded in able to defeat the bosses and the nist traitors of the Italian Communist 'ndrangheta (Calabria), gangs who rule militant demonstrations from one end government, thereby opening the road Party (PCI) into the bourgeois govern­ unhindered thanks to their connections of the country to the other, from the to a proletarian counteroffensive. In ment, whether advertised as a "historic with the local and government powers­ industrial triangle of Milano-Torino­ several large plants the sellout was compromise," the "democratic alterna­ that-be. Genova in the north to Bologna, Rome, rejected, while in other plants a high tive" or a "left government" will only But the 1968-69 struggle was also Naples and Palermo. In Genova in percentage of votes went against the serve to prop up the faltering capitalist derailed by the illusion assiduously particular onJanuary 13 a general strike agreement. system. What Leon Trotsky wrote in the fostered by the PCI that everything occurred when the FLM [Federation of In Italy the forging ofa revolutionary 1930s is still true today: '''People's depended on the Christian Democrats' Metal Workers, strongest union in the Trotskyist leadership is a burning Fronts' on the one hand-fascism on the refusal to allow the "party of the an~ country] and other unions called sector­ necessity. A strong, organized, combat­ other; these the last political re­ working class" into the government. al strikes against the explicit wishes of ive proletariat has been on battle footing sources of imperialism in the struggle While the PCI upped its votes in every the CGIL/CISL/UIL trade-union fed­ almost continuously for the last 15 against the proletarian revolution." election from 1968 to 1976, attaining a erations not to have a general strike. years. Today the only way the capitalists significant 34 percent of the total vote, Over 100,000 workers took to the streets can pull themselves out of the economic Social Democracy and Stalinism: the main bourgeois party, the Christian in one of the largest demonstrations crisis is through wholesale dismantling A History of Betrayal Democracy (DC), lost votes, dropping seen in the postwar period. of the gains of the workers movement to a low of 38 percent. This led to the On January 18 there was a virtual won in the "autunno caldo" (hot In 1948, in 1960, in I969-every time formation ofvarious "left governments" nationwide general strike, involving 8 autumn) of 1969. To counter the the Italian proletariat has showed its in the principal Italian cities and million workers. In Milano, more than economic chaos and destruction pro­ willingness to carry the fight against the widened the so-called "red belt" to a full 300,000 workers from all over the region duced by capitalism in its death agony capitalists through to the end, the six regions. of Lombardy filed by for several hours requires a planned economy based on Stalinist and social-democratic leaders Nevertheless the DC did not allow the in the largest union demonstration ever collectivized property. Yet the workers have proven in action to be in the service PCl into the central administration, held in this city. Elsewhere in the movement remains imprisoned in a of the Agnellis, the Pirellis, the Costas instead merely accepting its parliamen­ countrv estimates indicate no less than syndicalist version of militant refor­ [leading Italian industrialists], of the tary support from outside, with the so­ half a- million workers carne out in mism, held back from a struggle for Christian Democrats, the Vatican and called "national unity" governments dozens of demonstrations. But in order state power by bureaucratic misleaders NATO. These betrayals have a history. under Andreotti. From 1976 to 1979 the to avoid incidents between the Socialist in "communist" and "socialist" colors. Even at the time of the "glorious" anti­ PCI was used to put across the anti­ (pro-government) and Communist (op- Constantly demanding simply fascist Resistance and in the immediate working-class policy of "sacrifices" and postwar period, the reformists demon­ "austerity," and to launch an anti­ » strated by their deeds their usefulness to communist/"anti-terrorist" witchhunt ""tJ Italian imperialism. In 1945-47 the PCI that led thousands of left-wing militants and PSI aided the bourgeoisie in into "democratic" jails (and torture). disarming the partisans, evicting the With the sharpening of the new Cold peasants from occupied lands in the War stirred up by Washington, the South and persuading the workers to bourgeoisie realized that the PCI had work harder with promises of pie in the done its job and once again dismissed its sky, doing what no bourgeois party "Communist" servants. could have accomplished. Proletarian revolution was aborted, From the Defeat at FIAT to the Bosses' General Offensive January 18: thus providing the basis for the subse­ During one- . quent so-called "economic miracle," a When the politics of "national unity" day general phase of expanding production and a were at their height, [PCl head] Enrico strike militants broadening internal market (the infa­ Berlinguer proclaimed that "austerity is wear gags to mous "consumer society" which accord­ an opportunity to renew and transform protest ing to some two-bit "Marxists" should Italy." With this criminal attack on bureaucrats' have "bourgeoisified" the workers) workers' gains, the PCI showed it was order for based on intensified exploitation of a ready to pay whatever price was silence. workforce made powerless by their necessary to encourage the DC to allow leaders' betrayals. This cleared the way it a share of the ministerial portfolios for the anti-Communist witchhunts of and government posts. In 1979, at the the sharpest period of the Cold War- continued on page 10

20 MAY 1983 5 For Workers' Soviets to Smash the Gangster MilitaryJ Bolivian Labor Shakes Popular Front

After seven months of popular-front always in "golpilandia" (coup-land), based on soviet power can put an end to for revolutionary upheaval throughout government, a social explosion is and the UDP is doing its bestto keep the the cycle of coups and popular fronts. Latin America been so favorable, and building in Bolivia. The powerful working people "united" with their And for once Bolivia is not alone. the dangers of betrayal by the national­ Central Obrera Boliviana (COB­ exploiters, what is remarkable about Throughout the Southern Cone of ist and reformist popular frontists so Bolivian Workers Federation), domi­ this crisis is the depth of the miners' South America the dictatqrs are totter­ great. What is lacking is the key element nated by the highly combative and distrust of the "democratic" regime ing. The Argentine generals, discredited of all, a reborn Fourth International historically class-conscious tin miners, from the moment it was installed in by the failure of their Falklands! forged on the program of permanent has entered into open conflict with the office. Siles' not-very-popular popular Malvinas adventure and haunted by the revolution that could lead the working coalition government of President front today finds itselfconfronted with a "disappeared" victims of their dirty war masses to victory throughout the conti­ Hernan Siles Zuazo. On April 19 the rebellion by the very workers movement at home, are on the brink of collapse. nent and take the battle to the imperial- mine workers union, backed by the COB, seized the offices of the Bolivian Mining Corporation (COMIBOL-the government-owned tin trust) in the nation's capital, La Paz. Already in March the government of Siles' Unidad Democnltica Popular (U 0 P) was facing a strike wave. Now the peasant unions offered to supply the mining centers with food, bank and government work­ ers unions offered to help administer COMIBOL (whose white collar workers opposed the takeover), engineering and medical students formed brigades to come to the aid of the miners. The dramatic union actionsoon had a snowball effect as workers of the state oil company struck demanding the resignation of top management. Mean­ while, peasant unions blocked the roads leading to three cities, cutting off the capital. in support of the miners and Armed tin miners oppose demanding higher prices for their military coup, produce; and peasants of the Cocha­ August 1971. bamba region seized government­ owned lands. Siles responded by de­ nouncing the miners as "anarchists" and "ultras," warning that their occupation is "illegal" and threatening to restore order by force. On May Day, 60,000 workers-a huge number in this pre­ dominantly peasant country-marched in La Paz in support of the COB's it was supposed to be taming. The Chile's Pinochet has brought on the ist heartland itself. This is the task which demand for "majority workers co­ extremely unstable situation could lead worst depression in the country's histo­ the international Spartacist tendency management" of the mines nationalized to a revolutionary situation of dual ry, lining up not only the workers but (iSt), and it alone, proclaims on its after the 1952 "National Revolution." A power with the overthrow of the most of the petty bourgeoisie and the banner. week later police attacked hundreds of bourgeois Siles government by workers' bourgeoisie against him as even pro- government employees demonstrating mobilizations; to an even more right­ _government unions go into action. The From the "Coca9Q!p-e" in the capital for the right to unionize. wing "democratic" regime; or to another Uruguayan military has been repudiat­ to the Popular Front As we go to press, WV has learned that coup by the constantly conspiring ed in its own rigged elections; in Brazil a the miners of the key Huanuni camp officer caste. The urgent need is for a powerful industrial proletariat is gain­ Siles, the 190th president in the 158 have declared themselves against any genuinely Trotskyist vanguard party to ing political consciousness. And to the years since Bolivia won its independence participation by the capitalist state in raise an action program of transitional north, Central America is aflame with from Spain, took office last October the management of COMIBOL. demands mobilizing the Bolivian prole­ revolt against decades of bloody rule by after 18 years of virtually uninterrupted Bolivia is in the throes of a pre­ tariat for the conquest of power before a rapacious oligarchy and its death military rule. Siles' UDP coalition won revolutionary situation rapidly ap­ the popular front leads to a new squads, while Mexico with its many­ a plurality in the 1980 elections, as it had proaching the flash point. While the bloodbath for the toilers. Only a millioned working class is near bank­ twice before, in 1977 and 1978, only to uniformed gangsters are plotting as workers and peasants government ruptcy. Never have the possibilities be prevented from taking office by the

class and middle class .... The regime shot to hell. It's hard not to see the gives the impression of a rather possibility of a highly explosive con­ unstable walk on needles. frontation looming on the horizon. Bolivia: "The popular front is extremely "Furthermore, this is the first unstable. The army, while faction­ country I have been in where the ridden and somewhat burnt out from government is underground, literally. Even the Government the experience, is still intact. The After I had been there two days and major sources of financial capital, the had not been able to ... even find the Is Underground U.S., Argentina, Brazil and Peru, are government newspapers, I. ..tried to hardly in a situation to go in shooting. get the number in the phone book or The working class is in a state of from the operators for the government We print helowan eyewitness report working class] is not controlled by any cockiness that is left over from the parties. There is none. The govern­ on the situation in Bolivia early this of the parties in the popular front. The strikes that brought down the govern­ ment parties do not have a phone year. COB ... has in fact adopted an attitude ment. The population is far from being number. Then I found a newspaper *** * * of critical expectancy, i.e., maybe if a spectator, they are actually involved, stand which hidden away had a "Since the fall of the military regime you deliver on some of the things we as seen in the people huddled on the number of newspapers of the govern­ last year, the governing coalition ... want we won't make trouble for you. street corners to read the latest ment coalition. I saw them by chance has been trying to deal with the mess in "So the popular front ... faces an newspaper reports on the MIR-MNRI and bought the lot. None of them had which the Bolivian economy was left. economic situation that they cannot governmental crisis. the painted walls an address at which they could be This has proven to be intractable while solve short of mass pauperization, with slogans which only appeared after contacted. At which point I began to at the same time the working class has unemployment and brutal attacks on September. The campuses, I am told, wonder if they knew something I not given it a blank check. In fact [the the standard of living of the working are highly politicized. And inflation is didn't."

6 WORKERS VANGUARD extraordinarily brutal cocagotpe (co­ caine coup) of General Luis Garcia and his jackbooted friends and Bolivi­ Meza organized with the aid of the Klaus Barbie and the Bolivian Navy an gorita patrons. Argentine junta. The Garcia Meza The issue of a Bolivian corridor to dictatorship pushed Bolivia's economy the sea did not die with Barrientos. A over the brink ofcollapse. Even by Latin decade later. the Banzer dictatorship American standards. the regime set a Who Protected Nazi tried to whip up patriotic fervor and record for corruption, with the top army proposed an exchange of territory brass openly trafficking in cocaine and between Chile and Bolivia. The re­ semi-precious stones, and an elaborate Butcher in Bolivia? sponse of Guillermo Lora's POR was system of kickbacks from phony "devel­ the most disgusting nationalism, ac­ opment" projects. Bolivia was already Klaus Barbie, the l'iazi Butcher of paign for "donations" from all sectors cusing Banzer of violating "the territo­ the second most impoverished country Lyons directly responsible for the of the populace begun with maximum rial integrity of Bolivia." "The great in Latin America, Haiti being the first. murder of more than 4.000 French fanfare. Patriotic marches, meetings national task of the access to the sea Underpopulated, with only 5.5 million Jews, and later mentor of Bolivian and all the effluvia of chauvinism passes into the h,mds of the proletari­ inhabitants~most of whom are Que­ death squads. was once entrusted with ensued. In 1968 Barbie created the at." proclaimed Masas (30 September chua (Inca-descended) or Aymara a special mission by the Bolivian "Bolivian Transmaritime" company­ 1977) in stentorian tones. It added, Indians-in an area the size of Texas military: launching a navy. Bolivia lost in a country with no maritime coast. incredibly, "The sea is transformed and California combined, the country its seacoast in the War of the Pacific Fifty-one ,percent of the capital was into a revolutionary and anti­ has a 65 percent illiteracy rate, an (1879-1884) and has been landlocked invested by the Bolivian "naval forc­ bourgeois slogan," and, in short, average life expectancy of37 for miners, since. The Bolivian bourgeoisie, tailed es," the rest by private citizens, and "Struggling for the sea is to struggle a per capita income of $510 a year as of by the entire left, cherishes the re­ Barbie was director-general (Le Figaro against goritaism and imperialism"!! 1978, and an inflation rate ofalmost 300 vanchist dream of reconquering "the magazine, April 23). $350,000 was The "ship for Bolivia" swindle has percent. sea." Periodic orgies of national collected from the citizenry for "a ship become legendary in Bolivia­ Garcia Meza's corruption was chauvinism over the "maritime ques­ for Bolivia" and turned over to Barbie without, unfortunately, inoculating matched only by his brutality. At least tion" are useful to both garita generals & Co. Needless to say, every penny the Bolivian left against chauvinist 500 were killed and 2,500 wounded in and "democratizing" bourgeois politi­ vanished into the pockets of Barbie agitation for "the sea." the July 1980 coup, as tanks demolished cians to distract the masses from the United Mine Workers Federation bankruptcy of the alternating military

(FSTMB) headquarters in La Paz and dictatorships and popular fronts. ~_'!'!~$'C1'~~_II·__,~~T~ l U , ... , .. ~-,.. a. nl paramilitary gangs in plainclothes, set In 1966 the regime of right-wing /r.;i--~~~.~~~_.~=---~--_.--'_._- ~, _at ,,~ dU "" ~ "O '" ~" up with the aid of the Argentine secret populist general Barrientos began a ~~:~.:f~~~~.~:~:::.:::.~.: police and European Nazis, assassinat­ campaign for "a ship for Bolivia." .... .__ '-,"~_.~'-'''~ ~-,at_" ,~,,_,," .1 """"". no· ed leftists and workers' leaders en masse. Where would the warship go? On Lake ..!!.,-,,=:cc:.~...c---C: •.:...•..•_..__ ..._.....- - Death squads with names like the Titicaca, of course (elevation: 12,507 -_.-_..---_..-.- .------~~~-=.:-:=~_""'J~''''~'~'''''''''''''''"...::.-­ "Black Eagles" and "Fiances of Death" feet above sea level). And who would ~~~.,.",-"""",""'''cl'''O''''.,,_""" ",.,.:.". '... announced themselves in newspaper be better suited to handle the arrange­ ~:-:7:::'::',:';:~~·'~"'~'-·'~':.~··";~· ads. Carter's Secretary of State Vance ments than Klaus Barbie, alias Alt­ ~_:QJ_UJ_I wagged his finger in disapproval, and mann, the CIA-protected SS mass ,...... _ •.<1....- ...'Lo$.--""·"""·= • the regime proved a bit much even for murderer who had arrived in La Paz in ....-.- ---=-."'_ ..."'_. __41<'''''- r>-~~J_olL""----""""c~ ~ gangster Garcia Meza, his drug kingpin Zuazo in 1957, and had already begun a.1oa __t1IIl'~a..--=."'=="""=S"'-=-"-"'----_"':.------.•-- -- .-- interior minister Arce Gomez and their to make himself useful to Bolivia's __....$.u--.-~....._,.~~~.eLo.pat'·-"'to ok t.r" thugs as "moderate authoritarians." rulers. With plenty of international 3ii~~!!:f:~?!S;~~~::::~'~~:~'~<'- The final straw for thejunta came last connections, adept at every type of September when the workers of the scam (the arrest which led to his recent traditionally militant Huanuni mining expulsion to France was ostensibly for camp forced the COB leaders to call a defrauding the Bolivian Mining Cor­ nationwide general strike for a return of poration). but specializing in the the elected government and against the provision of arms for B01ivia's rightist dictatorship's International Monetary killers hoth in and out of uniform, Barbie was the perfect choice. If Fund-inspired austerity plan. Mean­ Sygma I while, the regime missed a $10 mil­ So the "Maritime Action" civic Klaus Barbie (above) got his citi­ I association was launched and an I lion interest payment on the $4 bil­ zenship papers from popUlar l lion foreign debt. The country was intensive government-sponsored cam- \ ~"e~---- Le Figaro' front head SUes. I bankrupt; military rule was utterly discredited and decayed, increasingly unable to control the masses. Rather exploiters. (Even the name evokes pains to emphasize his loyalty to the against Siles' measures and for a than see the unrest turn into an Allende's Unidad Popular which held bourgeois state. While various officers "minimum living wage" with full cost­ insurrection, the international bankers office in Chile during 1970-1973.) The were retired or transferred in a highly of-living adjustment. The COB bu­ and key sections of the weak Bolivian UDP consists primarily of Siles' bour­ publicized "cleanup" of the armed reaucracy, with the Stalinists in the lead, bourgeoisie were ready to play the card geois Revolutionary Nationalist forces, Siles' commander of the armed desperately sought to put the lid on, of popular frontism. So in desperation Movement-Left (MNRI), the pro­ forces is none other than General agreeing to impose a 100-day "social they brought in the civilians. Moscow Communist Party (PCB) and Alfredo Villarroel, defense minister truce" from Novemberto February with Siles Zuazo took office on October 10 the Revolutionary Left Movement under the butcher Vildoso, while the Siles. as "compafiero presidente." Defining (MIR), a rightward-moving middle­ chief of the army was Vildoso's chief of itself grandiloquently as a "popular, class group derived from the Christian staff. Vice president Jaime Paz Zamora Popular Front Means Workers Blood national, anti-imperialist and revolu­ Democracy (not to be confused with the of the M'IR emphasized that the tionary front," the UDP is a classical leftist Chilean MIR). Siles' cabinet also government "docs not accept socialism In 1970 the Spartacist tendency wrote popular front: a bloc of workers parties includes an air force general and and our program will not contain of the election of Allende's UP in Chile: and bourgeois parties constructed to members of the Christian Democratic anything that is foreign to our country" "It is the most elementary duty for make the workers' leaders share respon­ Party. (Washington Post, II October 1982). revolutionarv Marxists to irreconcila­ sibility in the oppression of the masses Siles, whose regime's "moderation" is "We can control the Communists," he bly oppose the Popular Front in the election and to place absolutely no and to tie the proletariat directly to its lauded by the bourgeois press, took vowed while Siles explained to News­ confidence in it in power. Any 'critical week that PCB participation in the support' to the Allende coalition is class government was necessary to rein in the treason, paving the way for a bloody unions. U0 P spokesmen stressed their defeat for the Chilean working people when domestic reaction, abetted by commitment to "respect the structures" international imperialism, is ready." - of the armed forces, and Siles forswore -"Chilean Popular Front," "vengeance against the military." For its Spartacist No. 19 (November­ ~ ~ part, the PCB pledged that it Would not December 1970) ~ seek to "redden" the government and This warning, which was tragically t that it would support negotiations with borne out bX the bloody Santiago coup the 1M F (La Opinion [Los AngelesJ, 4 of II September 1973, is no Ie~s true of and 5 October 1982). . the Bolivian UDP today. Trotskyists Siles promptly announced an eco­ warn the masses against any confidence nomic package for a "war ecouomy" of in this bourgeois government; we seek to austerity and sacrifice for the workers break the powerful workers organiza­ I and peasants: cutting subsidies ofsugar, tions from the popular front and rice, cooking oil and other staples; mobilize them in struggle for soviets, raising the price of bread and gasoline democratic organs of revolutionary 150 percent while freezing wages after a struggle not only against the military paltry 30 percent raise (i n the face of300 mafia but against the capitalist system percent inflation!); drastic currency of misery and oppression; for soviets devaluation plus budget cuts and which can be the basis of a workers and layoffs. This "paquetazo" (package peasants government, a dictatorship of 1: coup) provoked widespread indignation the proletariat supported by the poor , among trade unionists. The transport peasantry, which for the first time will union shut down the main cities with a bring real democracy to the masses of International Viewpoint.. two-day strike, while the miners union the exploited in Bolivia. I f Bolivian trade-union federation COB demonstrates its power. Workers must of southern Bolivia decreed an indefi­ In fact this is an especially dirty f break with popular frontism. nite general strike on November 9 continued on page 8 I ! -I 20 MAY 1983 7 .,~ ;& member that the PCB, while today Secretariat [USec]) are busily tailing working class cannot join the bourgeois Bolivia ... lauding the fall of the military dictator­ Lechin and Siles. These former arch­ government of Siles." However, Lora's (continued from page 7) ship as "a result of the people's guerrillaists, creatures of the USec alternative is his own (so far only struggle," actually opposed calling the leaders who in years long past dreamed fictitious) popular front, the FRA: popular front. Hernan Siles Zuazo is unlimited general strike that toppled the of their "own" guerrilla war in Bolivia, "Against bourgeois unity counterpose one of the two historic leaders of the junta. now call for "a majority for the workers the unity of the oppressed nation under bourgeois Movimiento Nacionalista Every class-conscious Bolivian work­ in the comanagement boards," de­ the leadership of the proletariat (FRA)" Revolucionario (MNR), which came to er must understand that the crux of the nouncing as "ultraleftist notions" the (Masas, 8 October 1982). The reference power in the popular uprising of April current conflict is state power. If the demand for workers control (Interna­ to proletarian leadership serves about 1952. Siles-at that time the leader of confrontation drags on, the military tional Viewpoint, 18 April)! The Man­ the same function as Lechin's talk of an the right wing of the MNR-was vice guard dogs of capitalism will certainly delites call for "mass pressure on the anti-imperialist program. With Siles president from 1952 to 1956 and intervene again, either against the UDP UDP government," stating that the barely tolerating the wretchedly refor­ president from 1956 to 1960. Siles or at Sites' invitation. But there are "strategic objective" of the POR-C mist PCB, there are no current popular­ rebuilt, with Yankee advisers and tremendous opportunities for revolu­ "does not involve all-out opposition to front openings for centrists like the dollars, the bourgeois army all but tionary action in this situation. Al­ the government, but a strategy of Trotskyoid POR. But should there be a destroyed in 1952-an army which has though Siles & Co. have tried to get the pressuring it and exposing the capitula­ slight shift to the left, should some since carried out some of the bloodiest unions to agree to draconian "sacrifices" tionist leadership" (International View­ "progressive" bourgeois politician or massacres in all Latin America. Then­ with the classic popular-front argument point. I November 1982). Calling the "patriotic" officer be willing to sign an president Siles was also the principal that this is the "government of the UDP government "part of the demo­ empty statement recognizing the "he­ author of the infamous Huanuni massa­ workers," from Day I of the UDP cratic process that we are determined to gemony of the proletariat," Lora is cre of January 1960, when at least 12 regime the workers have been skeptical. deepen" through "a broader policy of willing to play ball. miners were machine-gunned to death According to one observer, "the miners, alliances" with "authentically democrat­ Even Lora's references to preserving and 32 wounded when they protested who remain the social vanguard of the ic sectors" (International Vie l,1, point, 21 "class independence" and refusing to the MNR's attempt to take over their country, freely remark that 'they don't March), these anti-Trotskyists would join the bourgeois government have union. recognize themselves in the present align themselves against the miners more to do with Menshevism than with Last October Siles had offered the government'" ("Front populaire sur occupying COMIBOL who are clashing Bolshevism. Behind the posture of COB "co-management" of state !'Altiplano," Le Monde, 2 February). head-on with the bourgeois starvation passive "independence" lies the policy of enterprises-in other words, labor Particularly in Bolivia, where genera­ government of mass murdererSiles! liberal tailism. In the Russian Revolu­ representatives on managing boards­ tions of miners have identified Trotsky­ While the betrayals of the Mandelites tion of 1905 the Mensheviks adopted a also inviting the union federation to join ism as the most radical expression of are noteworthy mainly for exposing the resolution on tactics warning against the cabinet. Perennial COB leader Juan working-class struggle, there is a crucial USee's ever-dwindling Trotskyist pre­ "losing its identity in bourgeois democ­ Lechin Oquendo replied that he would opening today to lead the proletariat in tensions. it is Guillermo Lora's POR racy," and rather than "seizing or only agree to enter the government if it action guided by a transitional program (also referred to as POR-Alasas, after sharing power in a provisional govern­ had a majority of labor ministers and an for socialist revolution. the name of its paper) that has the ment" (as Lenin's Bolsheviks advocat­ "anti-imperialist" program. Siles While Lechin speaks of 51 percent mantle of ostensible Trotskyism in ed) the Social Democrats should "re­ promptly refused, whereupon Lechin workers co-management of COMIBOL Bolivia. Like the POUM in the Spanish main a party of the extreme adopted a posture of critical toleration in cooperation with the capitalist state, Civil War of 1936-39, Lora's POR is the revolutionary opposition" (The Men­ toward the government. Later, in Trotskyists must fight for a tQoth­ key obstacle to the construction of a sheviks in the Russian Revolution). supporting the miners' seizure of the and-nail defense ofthe workers manage­ Leninist vanguard. This classically What this meant concretely was to let COMIBOL offices, Lechin reiterated ment which has been established by the centrist outfit, which has periodically the bourgeois liberals, the Cadets, that he was only seeking "majority miners' bold action, and for seizure of been influential among the militant tin govern in peace. In the same spirit, the workers co-management." But through the privately owned mines. The combat­ miners, wrecked a promising opportuni­ neo-Menshevik POR said not one word their militant takeover the miners have ive miners cannot win by just holding ty for proletarian revolution in 1952 by about struggle against the UDP regime already imposed full workers manage­ out, turning Siglo XX, Catavi and subordinating the working class to the or for a workers and peasants govern­ ment, under a union administrative Huanuni into revolutionary citadels. bourgeois MNR, through the instru­ ment in the crucial moments when Siles council that has expanded production The struggle must spread throughout ment of movimentista union bureaucrat & Co. were being installed with the and swept out the inflated parasitic the country. In the urban industrial Lechin. Again in 1970-71, through the consent of the butchers in uniform. supervisory apparatus. Class-conscious sectors it is necessary to impose workers same instrument and using the same Lora's POR bombastically proclaims militants must demand: no giving back control of production,' through the device of"critical support" to bourgeois nationalism, Lora capitutatedbefore "proletarian revolution and dictator­ of the COM IBOL to the capitalist state! formation ofjactory committees. These ship" and even discusses "What Will the left-bonapartist General Torres-and The Communist Party, meanwhile, is conquests must be defended by the Insurrection Be," but what is striking Bolivian workers were defenseless, carrying out an open strikebreaking formation of armed workers militias about Masas' propaganda is the com­ militarily and politically, against the policy. Anxious to demonstrate its everywhere. And the masses must be plete absence of any transitional de­ brutal repression by right-bonapartist reliability and "fitness to govern" to the mobilized in revolutionary struggle mands leading to the struggle for power. through the formation of soviets, not a General Banzer (see "Centrist Debacle bourgeoisie and imperialism by a hard­ The only concrete demands raised by replay of the "People's Assembly" of in Bolivia," WVNo. 3. December 1971). line stand against labor "excesses," the the POR as "tasks of the moment" at a 1971, set up by Lechin et al. as a Lora's lame "excuse" is a self­ PCB has launched a battle against the time when the miners were on strike sounding'board for nationalist general indictment: "There wasacommon view, Miners Federation of the COB over the against the military regime were those Juan Jose Torres, but genuine organs of which we Marxists shared. that the occupations. They have only succeeded raised by the Lechinista bureaucrats of workers power. ruling military group would hand out in further discrediting themselves, both the COBjFSTMB: "minimum living with the bourgeoisie and the workers. arms ...... After Banzer's victorious coup, the wage with a sliding scale," "withdrawal On April 25 the Communist ministers of For an Authentic Trotskyist Party POR-Masas formed a so-called Anti­ of the army troops from the mines," mines and labor, the ones directly in Bolivia "unemployment insurance," etc. What affected by the takeover, were called on Imperialist Revolutionary Front (FRA) to support General Torres. The FRA about workers management of COMI­ the carpet by the rightist-dominated These class-struggle policies, the BOL, workers control of industry, Congress. And the same day PCB policies of Lenin's Bolsheviks in 1917, included the "Revolutionary Armed Forces" of bourgeois nationalist offi­ workers militias, and above all soviets? delegates in an expanded national are decidedly not the program being Nothing. As for Lechin's class­ cers, the Stalinists and assorted petty­ council meeting of the miners union carried out by those who falsely pro­ collaborationist scheme of "majority were unanimously condemned for claim themselves Trotskyists in Bolivia bourgeois forces, plus Lechin ofcourse, on a program of"fighting unity ofall the workers co-management," back in 1971 supporting the government proposal of today. The Partido Obrero Revo­ Lora praised "the struggle to impose co­ revolutionary democratic and progres­ "parity co-management" of COMI­ lucionario-Combate (POR-C, Bolivian participation" as "the real channel of sive forces ... for a popular and national BOL. Militant Bolivian workers re- sectioJl of Ernest Mandel's United mobilization towards power" (Bolivia: government" (Masas No. 403, Novem­ de la Asamblea Popular al golpe ber 1971). Lora hardly bothers to jascista). SPARTACIST LEAGUE LOCAL DIRECTORY disguise his call for a popular front with the "progressive" officers, writing in his Only proletarian revolution will put National Office Cleveland New York book on the 1971 events: "At a certain an end to the cycle ofcoups and popular Box 1377, GPO Box 91954 Box 444 point the nationalists with epaulets fronts in Bolivia. This is also the only New York, NY 10116 Cleveland, OH 44101 Canal Street Station (212) 732-7860 (216) 621-5138 New York, NY 10013 become allies of the working class and way the miners' current struggle to wrest (212) 267-1025 not its sworn enemies" (Bolivia: de la control from a parasitic capitalist state Ann Arbor Detroit Asamblea Popular al golpejascista). In bureaucracy can obtain victory. Such a c/o SYL Box 32717 P.O. Box 8364 Detroit, MI 48232 Norfolk contrast, Leon Trotsky wrote on the revolution, if it is to survive and open Ann Arbor, MI 48107 (313) 961-1680 P.O. Box 1972 Spanish POUM's illusions of purging the way to a socialist future for the (313) 662-2339 Main P.O. the army: "The officers' corps, in which impoverished workers and peasants of Houston Norfolk, VA 23501 Berkeley/Oakland Box 26474 (804) 543-4300 is concentrated the centuries-old tradi­ Bolivia. must be extended far beyond P.O. Box 32552 Houston, TX 77207 tion of enslaving the people, must be the borders of this landlocked Andean Oakland, CA 94604 country. But at bottom, Lora & Co. are (415) 835-1535 Los Angeles dissolved, broken, crushed in its entire­ San Francisco ty, root and branch" ("The Lesson of nationalists. not very different from Box 29574 Box 5712 Los Feliz Station Boston San Francisco, CA 94101 Spain," 30 July 1936). their more unscrupulous counterpart to Box 840. Central Station Los Angeles. CA 90029 (415) 863-6963 Cambridge. MA 02139 (213) 663-1216 Today. Lora's POR affects a left­ the south, Argentine adventurer Nahuel (617) 492-3928 sounding posture toward the UDP Moreno. Twice already the POR's Madison regime. no doubt reflecting Lechin's support for bourgeois nationalism has Chicago c/o SYL Washington, D.C. Box 6441. Main po. Box 2074 P.O. Box 75073 hostility toward his old MNR rival helped wreck potential workers revolu­ Chicago. IL 60680 Madison, WI 53701 Washington, D.C 20013 Siles, .llmas proclaims from its mast­ tions. Moreover. Lora's "international" (312) 427-0003 (608) 251-3398 (202) 636-3537 head: "Proletarian revolution and dicta­ is almost exclusively South American torship (workers and peasants govern­ and the POR's maximum slogan is fora TROTSKYIST LEAGUE Of CANADA ment)." Two days before Siles took Socialist United States of Latin Ameri­ Toronto Vancouver office, it listed under the front-page ca. In contrast, the Trotskyists ofthe iSt Box 7198. Station A Box 26, Station A headline "Tasks of the Moment": seek to forge an authentic Leninist Toronto, Ontario M5W 1X8 Vancouver, B.C, V6C 2L8 "Preserve class and union independence (416) 593-4138 (604) 681-2422 vanguard party to lead the working class from the UDP government," and "The in struggle for socialist revolution from

8 WORKERS VANGUARD imperialism which sees its way out sledgehammers smashing cars to base­ out two foremen who dared to put on Jail Killers of through a nuclear war drive against the ball bats murdering an Asian brother, KKK hoods in the Dearborn Assembly Soviet Union. It is aimed squarely at the Fraser gang says its hands are clean! Plant. There are a lot of workers in blacks and Latins as well. The demonstration was dominated by UAW Local 140 who have a score to Vincent Chin ... While labor/black Detroit has been the popular front which lords it over the settle with Ebens, who is known at (continuedfrom page 12) gutted by plant closings and multi­ desperate masses of Detroit: speakers Truck for firing black workers. billion-dollar givebacks to the auto from the city council, Mayor Coleman Vincent Chin's father immigrated to with three years probation and a $3,800 bosses, for nine years the pro-company Young's office, the big business cabal of America when Vincent was six years fine for "manslaughter." Vincent Chin's UAW bureaucrats have pounded away New Detroit, Inc., Robert Blackwell, old, and worked his whole life in brutal death wasn't manslaughter-it with their racist poison: "Love U.S. auto mayor of Highland Park, and the laundries and restaurants. Chin worked was cold-blooded racist murder. Chin bosses, hate Japanese workers," they NAACP. The Democratic Party politi­ two jobs and was the sole support of his was set up to be killed by the poisonous say. They plaster the union halls with cians gave lip service to the ACTs widowed mother. He was murdered racist campaign of anti-Japanese pro­ "Buy American" banners, and their demand "Justice for Vincent Chin" in four days before his wedding. His tectionism. The auto bosses. the Demo­ Cadillacs and Continentals with bump­ order to make sure the outrage at this fiancee cried out in anguish, "They crats and especially their flunkies in the er stickers that read "Datsun, Toyota ... racist murder stays in "the channels of ruined my life, my future. How can you United Auto Workers (UAW) leader­ Pearl Harbor." The sign on the guard the law" (Detroit city council resolu­ commit murder and get away with ship are scapegoating foreign workers shack at Solidarity House reads tion). But it is the same capitalist nothing? It's not fair. All I can do is for the massive layoffs. As the club o owner described the scene: o .c "We got 16 percent unemployment in Q. town. There's lots of hard feelings. In > my opinion. these people come in. they ~ see a man. supposedly Japanese. They look at this guy and see Japan~'the reason all my buddies are out ofwork'." Ebens swung the bat, and it was the traitorous UAW bureaucrats in Solidar­ ity House who told him where to aim it! Protectionist poison: Sign on Fraser & Co.-the blood is on your Solidarity House, hands! smashing a Judge Kaufman's "sentence" of Ebens Toyota. UAW and Nitz is an invitation to more racist tops incite anti­ murder. Kaufman accepted a plea Asian violence. bargaining agreement with the Wayne County prosecutor's office and set the killers back on the street because they "weren't the kind of people you send to "300,000 laid-off UAW members don't politicians, largely inhabiting the Mon­ scream to myself, for him and for me." jail." Not under racist American "jus­ like your import. Please park it in dale wing ofthe Democratic Party, who Vengeance for Vincent Chin will not tice"! Kaufman, who is trying to parade Tokyo." Last year in Milwaukee UAW have been the most rabid anti-Japanese come at the hands of the capitalist his liberal credentials and complain of members slashed and stomped on a protectionists. Justice will not come politicians and their labor lackeys. who "vilification" to counter the outrage at Japanese flag, and there have been through reliance on the capitalist courts, whipped up the racist protectionism his decision, thinks that a white Chrysler obscene publicity stunts where auto or faith in the "investigation" the FBI that murdered him. foreman is not "the kind" to be sent up dealers in Detroit take sledgehammers has launched into violation of Chin's Unfortunately, many workers, white to Jackson. Trade unionists in Detroit to Japanese cars. The UAW tops' "civil rights." The courts and cops are and black. buy the chauvinist poison remember who Kaufman does think favorite Democrat, Walter Mondale, instruments of capitalist class rule, and that imports rather than the profit should go to jail-he imprisoned strik­ practically called for war on Japan: exist to defend the bosses who whip up system cause unemployment. The work­ ing suburban Garden City teachers in "We've been running up the white flag. this protectionist poison. ing class must be broken from protec­ 1974. when we should be running up the Black and white auto workers in tionism and won to a program of Over 500 people demonstrated in American flag! ... if you try to sell an Detroit must demand that the racist intransigent proletarian class struggle Detroit's Kennedy Square on May 9, American car in Japan. you better have killers Ebens and Nitz be jailed! Send and internationalism! It's the KKK and the United States Army with you when organized by the American Citizens for they land on the docks!" them to Jackson prison and throwaway Nazis who feed off the "Buy American" Justice (ACJ) to demand that Kauf­ the key! Ebens, however. a foreman for poison. as when they tried to march in man's sentence be overturned and the After weeks of silence Solidarity 17 years at Dodge Truck in Warren, says Washington, D.C. last November 27 racist killers Ebens and Nitz be jailed. House finally issued its first statement­ he will file suit to get his job back against so-called amnesty provisions for ACJ spokesman Kim Yee told the UAW Director of Fair Employment (Chrysler fired him for committing a undocumented foreign workers. It was crowd that Ebens was consumed with Practices Joe Davis denied there was an felony). If this racist killer tries to crawl in defense of all the oppressed that the race-hatred for all Asians, blaming them anti-Asian backlash! The union officials back into Truck or any other plant. or Spartacist League mobilized 5,000 for the ills of the American auto did not even support the call for a civil tries to pick up his pension, auto workers and blacks to stop the KKK in industry. "They just wanted to get an rights investigation. The social­ workers must organize to run him out! the streets of Washington, D.C. It's that Asian, any Asian." The rally and march, democratic labor traitors have whipped Chrysler workers remember back in power in Detroit which must be organ­ largely Asian, drew some black workers up the "yellow peril" racism and 1973 when two militants, protected by ized to break the stranglehold of the who were outraged at the judge and warmongering to defend their "own" 200 other workers. shut down the labor bureaucrats and to fight on behalf prosecutor's deal to let the killers go bourgeoisie and escape the wrath of the electrical power at Jefferson Assembly of all the oppressed! free. The racist hysteria whipped up by hundreds of thousands of auto workers and ran out a notoriously racist fore­ Full citizenship rights for foreign­ protectionism and hatred of "foreign­ thrown on the scrapheap of capitalist man. And in 1979 class-struggle mili­ born workers! Jail the racist killers ers" is part of the crisis of American depression. And when it goes from tants at Ford's River Rouge plant drove Ebens and Nitz!.

the Southern Cone to the heart of North for a programmatic split is to say, and politicalization of a very isolated. groups fighting for the program of America. "Cabron. I screw your wife. And you concentrated proletariat, the harsh permanent revolution against the popu­ The struggle to forge genuinely steal party funds." And of course they realities of the class struggle work lar front. nationalism and the cynicism bolshevist parties in Latin America is an blame everything onyanquiCIA agents, against the pseudo-socialist swindlers. and corruption which accompany them. arduous task, requiring a clear political to amnesty their own rulers. Throughout the continent the "leftist" Under the acute social and economic break from nationalism and from the Lenin's Bolsheviks were able to build intelligentsia partakes deeply of the conditions of Latin America, an authen­ social values of a nationalist left that an internationalist communist party in values that extend throughout the upper tic proletarian socialist movement could imitates its own rulers, embracing the tsarist Russia. Behind them lay a reaches of Latin American societies. mature very rapidly. FroP.1 the roof of values that have led to every mass­ century of profound alienation of the Sharp revolutionary struggles interna­ the Andes to the tropical jungles of murdering bourgeois caudillo. Nahuel entire intelligentsia from the social tionally will be necessary to build mass Central America. the road to liberation Moreno, the Argentine pseudo­ values and morals of the tsarist autocra­ communist parties in Latin America. is the struggle to reforge Leon Trotsky's Trotskyist political bandit, is an arche­ cy and the landed aristocracy. (Lenin We must now create revolutionary Fourth International as the world party typical Latin American "revolution­ admired Chernyshevsky and took the internationalist Trotskyist propaganda of socialist revolution.• ary." This would-be /ider maximo hails title of his novel. What Is To Be as a kindred spirit every blood-drenched Done?) Under the conditions of Russia's Third World strongman from General tumultuous political history. out of all Peron to the Iranian feudalist Khomei­ this-the intelligentsia's pervasive ascet­ ni. Lora. who wants to be the labor wing icism and rejection of Great Russian of a Latin American Kuomintang. chauvinism (Russia was itselfan imperi­ Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of the Spartacist League curiously mistranslates Trotsky as alist oppressor power). together with the saying the proletariat must be the political struggle of the Marxists against 0$2/10 introductory issues of caudillo (German: Fuhrer) of the the populists O\er the proletariat vs. the Workers Vanguard (inclUdes Spartacist) oppressed nation. Both Lora and peasantry as the driving revolutionary SUBSCRIBE 0$5/24 issues of Workers Vanguard Moreno naturally defend the "national force. and the struggle within the (includes Spartacist) sovereignty" of their respective mini­ proletariat over reform vs. revolution­ NOW! o New 0 Renewal fatherlands against neighboring Chile. the Bolsheviks were able to crystallize as International Rates 24 Issues-$20 airmail/$5 seamail (Bolivar failed to unify the ex-Spanish a mass party. linking a small fraction of Name _ colonies on a bourgeois basis. as the this purified intelligentsia with a great. imperialists. especially the British. set raw. yearning. militant working class Address _ regional leaders against each other. But half a generation away from serfdom. _____ Phone ( the international proletariat will suc­ These subjective preconditions do not 330 ceed where Bolivar failed.) For the obtain in a mass way anywhere in Latin City State Zip imitative macho pigs of the petty­ America today. although in the Andean Make payable/mail to: Spartaeisl Publishing Co.. Box 1377 GPO. New York, New York 10116 bourgeois nationalist "left." what goes altiplano. because of the unionization 20 MAY 1983 9

-- ..- ..,>---~~--~- government of the day, opening the White House, the PCI's entry into the in the PDUP/ II Manifesto there is also road to the overthrow of the rotting government was unthinkable. Its for­ the Democrazia Proletaria, which has naly ... mula for betrayal was then dubbed "the (continued from page 5) capitalist system. With unemployment made itself the standard-bearer for a running above the two million mark, or historic compromise." Now, with the "government of the left parties"-the time when scores of combative workers ten percent of the entire workforce, it's 16th PCI National Congress, the Euro­ PCI's "democratic alternative" with a from FIAT were fired as a prelude to the clear that the fight against attacks on the communists have come out with a new little rouge makeup to entice combative 1980 attack, the PCI's Giorgio Amendo­ scala mobile had to put the full strength version of a class-collaborationist capi­ workers. As for the pseudo-Trotskyist la expressed the depths of PCI hostility of the working class-employed and talist government, the so-called "demo­ groups, whose highest aspiration is to be toward the working class: unemployed-onto the battlefield, with cratic alternative." This is the latest recognized by the reformists as useful " ...demands have grown out ofcontrol a program capable of mobilizing all the attempt to revive the authority of ... wages (of employed sectors) have advisers, they have nothing valid to risen faster than the cost of living.... layers ofthe proletariat and the exploit­ corroded bourgeois-democratic institu­ offer to class-conscious militants-who Salary levels have been maintained at a ed to launch a counteroffensive. The tions with the "clean hands" of the have no use for people who go around high level ... yet no substantial modifi­ January 22 sellout agreement was a cold popular front. repeating from dawn to dusk "PCI-PSI cations have been made in the scala shower for the workers' mobilizations, In a lead article by Berlinguer, /'Un ita Unity!" "PCI-PSI Government!" "Uni­ mobile The increase in the number of strikes makes self-regulation ofthe but did not change the main conclusion: (26 January) commented on the sellout ty Against the DC!" etc. right to strike necessary.... Remember the situation in Italy is serious and accord of the 22nd, clearly revealing From the Lega Comunista Rivolu­ it was the frequency of strikes that demands drastic solutions. what is at stake for the PCI: zionaria (LCR), Italian section of opened the road to fascism." [our The struggle didn't come to an end on "As far as we are concerned, the fights Ernest Mandel's United Secretariat emphasis] January 22. In the first place, Confin­ we will be engaged in and the initiatives which fraudulently claims to be the -Rinascita, 9 November 1979 we will take will be aimed at solving dustria did not succeed in beating the "Fourth International"; to the reformist But the betrayal didn't yield the the question of changing the political working class, in spite of all the efforts Lega Socialista Rivoluzionaria (LSR), expected results, especially given height­ framework. offinally giving the country of its labor lieutenants. Also, contract the orientation, the revitalizing and which has now abandoned its mentor, ened international tensions, and the PCI struggles involving several million innovative leadership necessary for it the Argentine adventurer Nahuel More­ tops' attempts to offer themselves up for workers are still going on (metal not to go to pieces." no; to the smaller Lega Operaia Rivolu­ NATO's anti-Soviet warmongering workers, construction workers, school This proposal addressed by the PCI to zionaria (LOR, formerly GBL), linked campaign were all for naught. The PCI's workers and teachers, state and local the Socialists (PSI) and the "enlight­ to the scab "interna-tional" of Alan response was to further reinforce its government employees, etc.), strikes ened" sectors of the bourgeoisie is Thornett, that is seeking fusion with the anti-Soviet alignment, trying to gain the and demonstrations continue unabated. directly counterposed to the workers' LCR, the various formulas these people sympathies of the White House-highly Contrary to the defeatism of the New needs, and can only help the capitalists concoct at each turn only wind up improbable given Reagan's visceral Left and the fake-Trotskyists, who are buy some time until they have the calling on the reformists to do some­ anti-communism-and embraced coun­ already holding funeral services for the strength to deal the workers a severe thing. They have nothing in common terrevolutionary Solidarnosc, this workers movement, the final whistle in defeat. with the revolutionary program and bosses' "union" in the service of the CIA this round of the class struggle has not The Italian bourgeoisie has consid­ struggle of Trotsky's Fourth and the Western bankers. This did not yet been blown. A national contract ered many times since 1945 the possibili­ International. sit well with Italian workers, who are strike by one of the affected sectors ty of putting in the saddle a "strong" The LCR, which offers itself up as a rightly suspicious of any enterprise could spark a movement to restore the government capable of imposing the endorsed by the anti-Communist pope doormat for the "trade-union left wing" full scala mobile. With the bourgeoisie will of finance capital upon the workers. (see "'We Won't Strike for the Madonna and as a tail for the Democrazia attempting to throw the working class In the 1960s and '70s there were several Proletaria, is now banking everything of Czestochowa!'" WV No. 296, 8 back 30 years, this would require a reported coup plots with the active January 1982). on the "left alternative," calling for a mobilization of the labor movement in a participation of generals, ministers and Simultaneously the PCI tried to sell "government of workers parties" (Ban­ general strike for a sliding scale ofwages presidents of the republic. The so-called itself nationally as a party that sides with diera Rossa, 27 February). These and hours, to bring down the Fanfani "strategy of tension" by fascist terrorists pseudo-Trotskyists refuse to call for a the workers. At the time of the 1980 government and its Cold War austerity connected to the secret services led to a FIAT strike, it even placed itself at the real workers government. Yet the plans. number of killings. The last and bloodi­ revolutionary dictatorship of the prole­ head of the workers' protest. Speaking A general strike of this kind would est was the August 1980 massacre at the at FIAT's Mirafiore plant, Eurocom­ tariat will not emerge from some begin with a mainly defensive character, Bologna railway station when 84 people electoral combination or any bourgeois munist leader Berlinguer threatened: "If but action on such a scale would were killed by a fascist bomb. And parliament. The workers government negotiations fail, we'll have to resort to inevitably pose the question: who's in certainly a lot still remains in the dark slogan can be concretized in moments harsher methods of struggle, including charge here, the bosses or the workers? regarding the aims of the Masonic like the Hot Autumn of 1969, when occupation." But both before and after A working-class victory-a real possi­ Lodge P2 headed by Licio Gelli, among embryonic forms of dual power ap­ Berlinguer's demagogic speech, the PCI bility, given the divisions in the Italian whose almost 1,000 members are many peared in the factories. At that time it tops did everything possible to prevent bourgeoisie-would open up a wide­ of the most prominent 1~>politi7" would have been possible for revolu-_ the occupation ofFIAT. Agnelli and the ranging political and social crisis, cians, high military officers in active tionaries to call for a PCI/PSljPSIUP/ entire Italian bourgeoisie won a victory directly posing the question of state service and personalities of the industri­ trade-union government based on the by throwing 23,000 workers out of the power. Obviously, the reformists would al and financial world. The PSI of factory councils and responsible to plants. The trade unions and working­ try their best to send the strikers back Betino Craxi (dubbed by many PCI them, to carry out the expropriation of class parties called it a "success" at the home, probably calling for new parlia­ members "Benito" in an obvious refer­ the bourgeoisie. time, but now two and a half years later mentary elections. But the workers, ence to Mussolini) has indicated its This call would have shown clearly when the terms of the accord say they availability to undertake steps in the encouraged by their success, could take how the workers government slogan should be rehired, the workers still have direction of bonapartism, on the condi­ the offensive, creating workers councils means breaking with parliamentarism not been called back to work! tion of being its main beneficiary. all over the country, imposing workers and governing on the basis of organs of The bosses pursued their offensive However there is a big problem for a control in the plants and extending dual soviet power. In a situation of sharp­ throughout 1981 and 1982 at the Alfa would-be Italian de Gaulle: the organ­ power throughout society, winning to ened class conflict, such a slogan can be Romeo state-owned auto company, at ized proletariat, which has not been their side in the heat of struggle the a fundamental tactical instrument by Italsider [the state-owned steel concern] crushed since World War II and which unemployed, students, peasants, house­ which Trotskyists aim to split the and then with Confindustria's unilateral over the last 15 years has waged many wives and all the exploited and op­ bourgeois workers parties along class rescinding of the 1975 agreement on the militant struggles. From June-July of pressed. This is the only perspective the lines-the proletarian ranks that want scala mobile. It must be clearly stated 1960-when hundreds of thousands of Italian proletariat has for fighting and socialist revolution on the one side, the that the bosses' aim was not and is not workers and left-wing militants fought winning, and it is in the course of this pro-capitalist tops on the other. But primarily an immediate reduction of against the police ofthe short-lived DC; struggle that it will forge the cadre and raising the slogan of a "PCI-PSI workers' wages with a corresponding neo-fascist coalition led by Tambroni, the party capable of leading the socialist government" or a vague "left-wing increase in profits. The capitalists' goal revolution. leaving a dozen comrades on the is much more far-reaching. They want alternative" under conditions of the ground-to the powerful show of normal functioning of a bourgeois to reestablish the conditions ofthe 1950s No to the Popular Front! working-class strength in January 1983, in the plants, with workers toiling in parliamentary regime simply means it's been made clear to the bosses that capitulating to illusions in the Stalinists silence and whoever dares protest is For decades the PCI has betrayed the they won't have an easy time imposing a "Out!" Then they can raise their profits working class' interests, both historic and social democrats. And at a time bonaparte. So in the meantime they rely when the reformists themselves are outlandishly without running any risks. and immediate, seeking to conciliate the on the reformists and their popular­ Beginning last spring, therefore, the bourgeoisie. In the '70s Botteghe Oscure projecting a "left-wing" government, front projects to do their dirty work for this slogan by the LCR and its buddies, need was posed for a real general strike [PCI headquarters in Rome] came to them. of the whole working class to defeat the the conclusion that short of a stamp of if it were to be realized, would simply be A current example of a popular-front a waiting room for the popular front. bosses' offensive and toss out the approval from the Vatican and the government of reformist workers par­ ties (allied with token bourgeois person­ Counterposing itself to these oppor­ alities as guarantors of capitalist stabili­ tunistic maneuvers and conciliationist, reformist lines, the Lega Trotskista A -... Pamphlet 25< ty) is that of Mitterrand's France. Mitterrand's Union ofthe Left offers the d'italia (LTd'I), sympathizing section of workers austerity, repression, anti­ the international Spartacist tendency, ~"~I~ Soviet war hysteria-and includes the seeks to construct an authentic Bolshe­ French Communist Party that the vik vanguard, a Leninist-Trotskyist communist party, to lead the workers' WllAr S'IJtAnsy "Cossuttiani" [Kremlin-loyal elements ..--lJ8fU1'JIJN? !I in the PCI] take for a model. The struggles forward to the taking of htskrtsm I power, "arming the proletariat to win, 81ac1t~ Eurocommunists' new collaborationist I proposal has already helped them cut to expropriate and disarm the bourgeoi­ ! the ground from under their left critics. sie." The task for Trotskyists is to win Ii At the recent PCI Congress. the over the most advanced workers Ii "Cossuttiani" were effectively isolated. through intransigent political struggle against the pel's class-collaborationist ~-,- "':"'~~'~~II the inevitable result of their inability to .....- :: _/,' offer any real alternative program and politics. including refusmg electoral perspectives. support to the reformists engaged in this $1.00 25¢ $2.50 betrayal. Build a Leninist-Trotskyist Party! Enough of popular-front collabora­ Make checks payable/mail to: To the left of the Eurocommunist tion! For a Trotskyist party to fight for a Spartacist Publishing CO" Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 PCI. aside from its reformist hangers-on workers government! • 10 WORKERS VANGUARD the Pilot editorial the next day called Norfolk ... Jackson's comments "a vast improve­ NORFOLK, May 13-At the dem­ (continued from page 12) ment over the finger pointing ... that has onstration today, Spartacist com­ marked the busing debate in recent rades sold 656 pieces of literature, pass federal desegregation orders. Signs weeks...." including 450 copies of Workers reading "Don't Turn Back the Hands of At a speech at the National Press Vanguard and 147 pamphlets on Time" showed that Southern blacks Club in Washington, D.C. on May 10, "Black History and the Class know it is not too far from the death of . Jackson mapped out his grand electoral Struggle," showing that black work­ busing to thc back of the bus. That is strategy with fulsome praise for "this ers are open to this perspective. why one out ofevery ten black people in dynamic democracy [which] has made People came up to WVsalesmen with Norfolk took to the streets. room for us." His electoral appeal to quarters in their hands, sometimes The largest and most impressive cool out "explosions" and black struggle buying several copies for their contingent, a 200-strong group from the was quite explicit: " ... we can change friends. Workers here know that WV International Longshoremen's Associa­ the nation's course through elections told the truth about the November 27 tion (ILA) carried a union banner, and without going through a revolution." Labor/Black Mobilization that signs reading "ILA All the Way Against But without a revolution, the funda­ stopped the KKK in Washington, Segregated Schools." This shows the mental conditions for blacks in America D.C., which included a busload of potential in the Tidewater area for can only get worse. How can electing trade unionists, the "Nat Turner massive labor struggle in defense of Democrats alleviate grinding poverty Brigade," from the Tidewater area. It black rights. Hundreds of high school and black oppression? For the Rev. is these militants, and not black WV Photo students joined the march defying the Jesse Jackson, no problem: "The poor Democratic Party hustlers like the breaking the chains of racial oppres- threat of one school to prevent students are suffering," he intones, "but I believe ReYerend Jackson, that show the sion and exploitation once and for all who took offschool that day from going that suffering breeds character." way to smashing KKK terror and through workers revolution. "The spirit of Chicago has come to to their prom. At City Hall workers on I ""'''''"'''-, _ their lunch breaks swelled the crowd to Norfolk." proclaimed Jackson, but what is that spirit and why should black its largest size, more than doubling the tions of the capitalist order. Instead, ton. D.C. The Labor/Black Mobiliza­ people struggling for equality want any expectations of the march organizers, they made room for some black politi­ tion. initiated by the Spartacist League, part of it" Chicago now has a black the Ad Hoc Committee of Concerned cos, the better to keep the lid on the received much support and endorse­ mayo!'. but it is the most viciously Citizens headed by Bishop L. E. Willis, a explodmg ghettos, And the black ment from the TidewJter [,lbor move­ scgrcgated city in America, as the recent black minister, and other representa­ mislcaders \vere quick to make a deal for ment. Militants from :\orfolk-area election campaign showed, Chicago, tives of the local black middle class. separate-but-never-equal as part of unions participated as the ";'\ at Turner which is run by the Democrats Jackson While thousands of Norfolk blacks Democratic ethnic pressure politics. Brigade."' Here was an example of the is hustling for. has a more successful were demanding integrated education, Thus the grand strategy today is to fight against racist terror that worked. record in resisting desegregation than the march organizers had brought in divert black anger and political struggle We stopped the Klan because blacks, a any Southern city over the past 20 years. superstar demagogue Jesse Jackson against the increasing misery of segment of labor and revolutionary And for the mass of Chicago blacks, the who had a very different idea of what it blacks-the mass unemployment. the socialists stood against the policies of election of Machine Democrat Harold was all about. Jackson announced that cutbacks in what little social welfare the twin capitalist parties which en­ Washington will only mean Reaganite he was coming to Norfolk for a there is, the declining literacy and rising courage the growth of KKK and Nazi "Southern Crusade" to get black voters austerity administered by a black infant mortality-with one answer: race-terr.or. for the Democrats, and he made his blame Reagan, vote Democratic in '84. Unlike Jesse Jackson, blacks voter registration campaign a condition And to make sure that the Democrats throughout the South know that sepa­ of his appearance at the march. He have something to sell to blacks, rate can never be equal in racist carried a banner reading, "Someone Jackson is touting himself as a black America. In this they follow the tradi­ Paid for Your Right-Register/Vote presidential candidate. It is in the tion of black struggle for equality since Democrat." It was the only sign or abhorrent vacuum of black leadership the Civil War. But as every rotting banner at this large march which said that a hustler like Jesse Jackson can ghetto shows, capitalist society can nothing about busing. At a breakfast make his bid to be a national leader. never integrate the black masses, Thus meeting before the march, Jackson This man spells danger for black the path taken by the Norfolk black outrageously declared: "I am not in Americans, establishment treads the same failed town marching for desegregation. I am During the Reagan years, black ground as Martin Luther King, and it marching for the voter registration Democratic mayors in Atlanta, Detroit, too leads into the Democratic Party and boost" (Virginian-Pilot, 14 May)!! Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. the betrayal of black aspirations. To have proven to be local hatchetmen for Defend Busing- win, the fight for integration must be the Reagan program of cutbacks, linked up with the class struggle. The Break with the Democrats R racism and the imperialist war drive ILA marchers must know that to "go all l Jackson speaks about busing in the against the Soviet Union. The answer to the way against segregated schools" in same language as the anti-busing forces attacks on school busing and the threat racist America demands a fight against across the country: "Voluntary plans are of KKK terror is not more Andy Youngs capitalism itself. best," he said in Norfolk. Everyone and Marion Barrys, and certainly not In Norfolk, the neo-segregationist knows "voluntary" is a codeword for WV Photo Jesse Jackson trying to pressure the School Board has created 35 "neighbor­ Jesse Jackson addresses Norfolk getting rid of "forced" busing for racial Democrats into some platform conces­ hood schools" of which a third are 95 rally: "I am not in town marching for ~ integration. Such statements were music desegregation." sions, but mobilizing the powerful percent black. They make the excuse to the ears of the Norfolk bourgeois integrated labor movement on the that this will help to prevent "white establishment. Earlier, Mayor Vincent flunkey. There will be no program of streets and in the plants to fight for flight" from Norfolk. This is always the Thomas, a ringleader of the racist integrated schools or integrated housing black freedom and workers rights. appeal of "sophisticated" opponents of opposition to busing, had lauded the in Segregation City, nor did Washing­ busing. In the Tidewater area, what was School Board and complained that ton promise any. For Revolutionary the coastal resort town of Virginia "Our black leaders have invited [Jack­ In part the sharply divergent motives Integrationism Beach, for instance, has become the son] here to condemn and protest an of Jackson and the marchers on the state's largest city. But to eliminate attempt by that school board to preserve streets of Norfolk represent the differ­ For Jackson, 10,000 Norfolk blacks busing will only make segregation, and over the long run the racial integrity [!] ence in the busing issue North and on the streets demanding integration is therefore black education, worse. What of our school system" ( Virginian- Pilot, South. In fact, it was in Chicago that the not at all what he wants. He wants them is needed is the extension of busing to 13 May). But at a midnight private civil rights movement came North and at the voting booth pulling the lever for the suburbs and Virginia Beach. But this meeting with the mayor, Jackson died on the streets at the hands of racist Mondale. So Jackson told the march­ demands a powerful fight by the praised this dyed-in-the-wool racist for reaction. Jackson along with the rest of ers: "The reason you are demonstrating working class. "his statesmanship" and actually called the black misleaders gave up on the is that you have committed the deadly What we need is a revolutionary the mayor "courageous"! No wonder struggle for black equality long ago. He sin of doing less than your best political­ workers party with a strong component is interested in traditional ethnic poli­ ly." For Jackson, strength is to be of black leadership. Such a party could tics, a place at the Democrats' porkless behind closed doors "negotiating," that have called a one-day general strike on Spartacist League/ porkbarrel. is, accommodating the racist status quo. Friday. From the Norfolk longshore­ Spartacus Youth League But in the South the issue of busing They were demonstrating, he said, men to the Portsmouth naval shipyard Public Offices goes back to the struggle against Jim because "you're on the outside." Jack­ to the shipbuilders at Newport News, Crow. The liberal-led civil rights move­ son explained that none ofthis march­ class-struggle action would put a -MARXIST L1TERATURE­ ment under Martin Luther King found ing was necessary because "when you're screeching halt to the School Board's Bay Area that after the Supreme Court's Brown on the inside, you negotiate" ( Virginian­ racist schemes and open the road to Fri. 5:00-8:00 p.m., Sat: 3:00-600 pm. vs. Board ofEducation decision in 1954 Pilot, 14 May). But he is negotiating union organizing drives throughout the 1634 Telegraph, 3rd Floor (near 17th Street) ~ Oakland, California Phone (415) 835-1535 the federal government was prepared to away the struggle for black equality. South. ditch some of the most flagrant exam­ After a string of defeats, blacks are It took a social revolution to free Chicago ples of formal segregation in the South. looking for answers, for a way to fight blacks from the shackles of slavery. But Tues: 5:30-900 pm., SaL 2:00-530 pm 523 S Plymouth Court, 3rd Floor Southern blacks fought for integration and win. It is criminal that the Norfolk the promise of liberation was broken by Chicago. Illinois Phone (312) 427-0003 on the streets. And after much racist march committee and Jesse Jackson a political counterrevolution after the New York City resistance, some successful busing pro­ exploit that will to struggle, turning it Civil War. Now it will take a third Tues 600-900 pm, Sat. 12 00-4 00 pm grams were established which signifi­ into passive marches and votes for the American Revolution-a proletarian 41 Warren St. (one block below cantly integrated some Southern school Democrats which can only accomplish revolution-to free black people at last Chambers SI near Church SI) New York, NY Phone (212) 267-1025 districts such as Charlotte-Mecklenburg the opposite of black aspirations. from the chains of a capitalist society in in North Carolina. In the North, blacks Instead, concrete struggle is urgently which they are a color caste segregated Trotskyist League for the most part had formal equality needed which can begin to tap the power at the bottom. For revolutionary inte­ of Canada under the law, but remained segregated of labor and blacks in this proletarian grationism! For labor/black mobiliza­ Toronto in the ghettos. heartland of the upper South. An tions to defend school busing in Nor­ SaL 1:00-5:00 pm. There could be no real improvement example of such struggle was demon­ folk! Extend busing to Virginia Beach! 299 Queen SI W, Suite 502 Toronto, Ontano Phone (416) 593-4138 in the situation of black people in the strated on November 27 when 5,000 Finish the Civil War-For a workers North without attacking the founda- stopped the Ku Klux Klan in Washing- government! • 20 MAY 1983 11 WfJRIlERS ",1NIUI1R' Jesse Jackson Steers Protest Into Democrat's Trap- Thousands March Against Jim Crow in Norfolk

NORFOLK, May l4-1t was the largest march in the South since the mid-'60s, as 10,000 poured into the streets yesterday to protest the threatened elimination of school busing here. The marchers­ almost entirely black and predominant­ ly working class-are fighting the Norfolk School Board's February rul­ irtg which restores "neighborhood" elementary schools, the old Jim Crow "separate but unequal" standard, and dumps Norfolk's II-year-old busing program. But while the demonstrators were showing mass support for integra­ tion among blacks in the Tidewaterarea of Virginia, the march was presided over by black capitalist hustler Jesse Jack­ son, who made it crystal clear his only interest was to channel black discontent into the Democratic Party. Thousands marched from Lafayette Park to City Hall chanting: "Two-four­ six-eight-We don't want to segregate!" And resegregation is the issue in Norfolk where the attack on busing is part of a nationwide assault on black people-from astronomical ghetto un­ employment to the rise of KKK terror. In the South the fight for integrated schools is understood as part of a historic struggle for black equality. Norfolk is the city where they closed the "Two, four, six, eight-We don't want to segregate," high schools in 1958 in order to by- chanted 10,000 protesting school board attempt to continued on page f f eliminate busing. ILA contingent (left).

Protectionist Fren~ Fuels Anti-Asian Racism Jail the Killers of Vincent Chin! DETROIT-"It's not fair." Those were the dying words of Vincent Chin, a 27­ year-old Chinese-American engineer who was brutally bludgeoned to death last June outside a Highland Park McDonald's. Chin and three friends were in a local nightclub celebrating his upcoming marriage when Chrysler foreman Ronald Ebens and his stepson Michael Nitz started a fight with Chin, saying, "Because of you, little mother­ fucker, we're out of work" (Detroit Free Pren, 9 May). Ebens and Nitz hunted May 9 Chin down after he left the bar, payinga protest in third man $20 to help find "those chink Detroit's guys." While Nitz held Chin down, Kennedy Ebens shattered his skull with four two­ Square after handed swings of a baseball bat, as two judge let Highland Park cops looked on. racist :\ine months later a storm of protest murderers go free. has ignited in Detroit's small Asian community after Wayne County Judge Charles Kaufman set these killers free- continued on page 9 12 20 MAY 1983