- , W,/i/(EltS ''''''(JIlt' 2se No. 458 29' July 1988 Jackson Fronts for Dukakis and, the Dixiecrats Democrats'· Racist~~Unity"

Eve;y four years, according to the rituals of American capitalist "democ­ racy," millions of voters are trooped to the polls to pull the lever for one or the other of the bosses' parties. Through art elaborate yearlong process of caucuses, primaries and conventions, with end­ less star-spangled hoopla, they try to sell to the workers, poor people, blacks and other minorities the illusion that they are deciding which ofthe bourgeois pol­ iticians is going to run the country (that is, to rule over us on behalfof the ruling class). So last week the Democrats named their standard-bearers: Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis for pres­ ident and Texas Senator Lloyd Bentsen ' for veep. The technocrat and Dixiecrat will now square off against the Repub­ licans-i-George Bush and X-In what is being touted as' the war of the nerds. (Despite all the glitz for TV, half of America switched off the networks dur­ ing the weeklong yawn in Atlanta.) And from now until November we will be bombarded by the spectacle of the candidates trying to outdo each other in saber rattling and pandering to racism. Dukakis laid it out in his acceptance speech: "We'regoing to build the kind of America that Lloyd Bentsen has been fighting for for the past' 40 years." Bentsen's America is one where agri­ business barons like his daddy built their fortunes from the sweat of Mexi­ can farmhands. With 50,000 acres of . P.F. Bentley , crop land and citrus groves, 'where un­ Boston/Austin racist axis-Dukakis and Bentsen (left) and their front man Jesse Jackson. ions have been kept out for the past 50 years, "Big Lloyd," the grandee ofthe get the. oppressed to vote'for their and working-class anger ihto.capitalist plain, brown wrapper." In the last 20 Rio Valley, is today estimated to be oppressors, But Jackson's hype maynot politics and blocking militant mass years, the Democrats have lost every worth $50 to $100 million. Bentsen .be enough to pull out the black vote this struggle, the popular front paves the presidential election except one, when Country is where a black man like Loyal .time around. When Dixiecrat plutocrat way to bloody defeat. Jesse Jackson. Jimmy Carter barely beat Gerald Ford Garner, Jr. gets bludgeoned to death in Bentsen was nominated by acclamation may be plenty annoyed at Dukakis' (who couldn't chew gum and walk at the an east Texas jail arid the killer cops go there were angry shouts of"no!"around snub. But that's nothing compared to same time). So this time they were deter­ free. the hall. what happened to Salvador Allende, mined to shake off their image as the The Democrats' "Southern strategy" After nearly eight years of Reagan­ who played out the popular-front sce­ party of "special interests" (labor, is an attempt to "out-Reagan" Reagan. Ism, there's a lot of people in this coun­ nario to the end in Chile, and was the minorities) and heighten the "comfort When Dukakis' managers picked a run­ try who are fed up with the "new greed" first victim ofthe 1973 Pinochet coup. level" of the Democratic campaign. ning mate to the right of George Bush, and Rambomania. But then, after the During the primaries, we wrote: But swilling Bentsen-style "Southern and didn't bother to inform runner-up Vietnam War and Watergate, people "Now there's a Iot of energy going into comfort" may not go down well in N0­ the Jesse Jackson campaign. Young Jesse Jackson, the "perceived insult" .to had had it with the Nixon Republicans. vember. Black people in particular have <, the black Democrat was no accident. It­ black college students and ghetto youth So in '76 they voted inDemocratJimmy alike are proud to see a black man for been the bedrock support of the Dem­ was a message to the several million peo­ Carter, and what did they get? Carter the first time ever as a serious con­ ocratic Party, and this ticket is pretty ple who voted for Jackson in the pri­ went after the miners strike with Taft­ tender for president.... But come this hard for blacks to swallow. In 1981; the maries. It was intended to tell them who Hartley injunctions, presided over the summer and fall, there are going to be a first year ofthe Reagan administration, was running things, that blacks and 1979 Greensboro massacre of blacks lot of upset people around when they the Congressional Quarterly rated Bent­ figure out that 'Jackson action' means labor would have to "eat it." Dukakis & and leftists, initiated Cold War II being herded to the polls as voting cat­ sen the Democratic Senator most sup­ Co. are'banking on the"lesser evil" shell against the Soviet Union over Afghani­ tle for the same old Democratic Party of portive of the president. This multimil­ game of the partner parties of racist stan and with his "human rights" rhet­ strikebreaking, racist terrorand imperi­ lionaire "Texas Tory" has received more American capitalism. oric. set. up the death squad junta' in· EI alist war." funding from the corporate political . Yet they still have' to get them to the -"Jesse Jackson, Racism Salvador. and the Democratic Party," action committees than any other mem­ polls. So Jesse Jackson "made up" and The Democrats pose as the "people's WV No. 451, 22 April ber of Congress. And for good reason. got his spot on network TV for a party" of American capitalism, the We told the truth while the reformist left Lloyd Willard Bentsen, Jr. has been "unity" appeal. All his talk about "com­ phony "friends" of labor and blacks. one of the chief cover-up artists for the was stumpingfor Jackson. So now there mon ground," about the patches of his From the FDR New Deal coalition in area lot ofupset people who feeljobbed, Reagan White House. In his book Veil: grandmother's quilt, his rhyming rhet­ the '30s to Jackson's "Rainbow Coali­ The Secret Wars ofthe CIA, 1981-1987, and the key task is, as we wrote then, "to oric about going from the outhouse to tion" today, it's the Americanversion of break the chains that bind the black Bob Woodwatd writes that as a mem­ the White House, is just sucker bait to the popular front. By channeling black masses and workers to their capitalist ber of the Senate Intelligence Commit­ masters through the Democratic Party." tee, the wealthy businessman Senator Bentsen covered for CIA chief and Wall Street lawyer-profiteer Bill Casey, "Nuke 'em" Duke squashing an investigation into Casey's and the Dixiecrats illegal stock-trading. . Ronald Reagan, in his weekly radio Bentsen is a real Cold Warrior, a die­ address, tweaked the Democrats after hard supporter of aid to the contras in their convention: "You'll never hearthat Nicaragua and to South African pup­ 'L' word-liberal-from them. They've pet Savimbi in Angola, and of military SEE PAGE SIX put on political trench coats and dark sales to the bloody Pinochet junta in glasses and slipped their platform into a continued on page 4 Pa..ti§du Defeu8e' £o...... ittee CLASS-STRUGGLE DEFENSE NOTES Lexington Women

Win Case Against Alejandrina Torres Susan Rosenberg Silvia Baraldini ing white fluorescent. lights 23 hours a day. Mandatory prison garb is bleaehed '~Hellhole Prison colorless. The prisoners are forbidden to hang pictures to cover the glaring white Underneath the Federal Correction­ surveillance follows their every step­ walls and three of them report seeing al Institution in Lexington, Kentucky is even to the shower stalls. Every private black spots on those barren walls. the female High Security Unit (HSU), a . act is monitored by a guard. Officials Susan Rosenberg reported how the barbaric dungeon designed to quaran­ restrict prisoners to one 15-minute HSU was "designed to destroy those tine, tormentand degrade political pris­ phone call with their lawyers each week who are in it, psychologically and oners. In a lawsuit brought by inmates and one family visit per month. Inmates physically.... They are trying to drive us Silvia Baraldini, Susan Rosenberg and are denied access to the prison library, completely out of our minds." Not Sylvia Brown, in Washington, D.C., and reading material is censored By surprisingly, each of the women has federal district judge Barrington Parker prison officials. To providea 20th cen­ manifested severe medical and psy­ on July 15 ruled authorities could not tury veneer to this medieval torture chological problems including marked use prisoners' political beliefs as the chamber, the prisoners are provided a weight loss, loss of appetite and inabil­ basis for placement in the HSU, and television set. ity to keep food down, dehydration, ordered Baraldini and Rosenberg trans­ Lexington's human guinea pigs are heart palpitations, insomnia and ob­ ferred to regular prison cells. subjected to high-tech barbarism using sessive anxiety. The Lexington HSU, like its coun­ "Clockwork Orange" behavior mod­ Silvia Baraldini describes, herself as terpart at Marion, Illinois, is a proto­ ification methods, foremost being' ananti-imperialist activist. Shewas con­ type psychological torture chamber, sensory deprivation. The five women WV victed on RICO conspiracycharges aris­ designed for political opponents. The prisoners at Lexington are confined to International Women's Day demon­ ing from the. 1981 Brink's armored car Gestapo would have approved. Video subterranean white tombs under glar- stration In NYC, March 5. robbery in Nyack, New York. Susan Rosenberg, long a target ofthe FBI and double jeopardy grounds-the consti­ cops, is serving 58 years on charges of tutional right not to be twice placed on possession of arms and explosives. Pre­ trial for the same charges. This dem­ Break With the Bosses' Parties! viously she was indicted on conspiracy ocratic 'tight is one of many severely In the U.S., where there is no mass labor charges fer alleged participation in the eroded by the Burger/Rehnquist Su­ party, the popularfront tying the workers 1979 prison escape of Black Liberation preme Court. Using conspiracy and to their class enemy is embodied above all Army member Assata Shakur (Joanne RICO laws Reagan and Meesearemak­ in the support by the left and the labor Chesimard), and in the 1981 Brink's ing multiple prosecutions for the same bureaucracy to the Democrats. From the robbery.·the charges were dismissed for "crimes" routine. FDR New Deal coalition of the 1930s to lack of evidence. This practice is integrally tied to the Jesse Jackson's "Rainbow Coalition" to­ Another of those held in the Lexing­ revival of the labor frame-up system. day, the Stalinist Communist Party has ton dungeon is Alejandrina Torres, Big Bill Haywood, Tom Mooney, Joe spouted "fight the right" rhetoric to sup­ allegedly a member ofthe Puerto Rican Hill,Sacco andVanzetti, and the Hay­ nationalist FALN, who was convicted market martyrs were victims of com­ TROTSKY port the. Democratic Party as a "lesser LENIN evil." In a 1954 speechrfollowing a in 1985 of seditious conspiracy and pos­ pany finks, government spies and liquidationist split from the then-Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party, SWP leader session ofweapons and explosives. Tor­ union-busting laws and courts. From , James P. Cannon explained that revolutionaries callfor a workers party as an ex­ res, who considers herself a prisoner of the PATCO leaders dragged to jail in pression ofthe fight for political independenceoftfie working class, key to victory war.did not join the lawsuit because she chains to the threatened government in the struggles of workers and oppressed minorities against the capitalist class. refuses to acknowledge the jurisdiction takeover of the powerful Teamsters of the American courts over her. She using RICO laws and massive drug Our slogan for a laborparty is a propaganda slogan at the present time .... The real remains in the HSU. testing at the workplace, this labor­ principle that we are explaining and fighting for is the principle of the class struggle, The governmerit' has not announced hating government, both Democrats the principle of the political independence of the workers as a class.... That used to be whether it will appeal, Lexington's H~U and Republicans, is out to smash the taken for granted in the radical movement of this country. The class struggle was was already scheduledxoclose with the unions and intimidate the workforce as what we were raised on in the old days. All revolutionary activity proceeded from opening ofa larger versionin Marianna, part of its drive toward war. that basic premise. Florida. These barbaric institutions The PDC has again donated to the In the socialist and radical movement of the twentieth century, from the first must be shut down and plowed under. defense of these five miners and written presidential candidacy of Debs in 1900 up until more recent times, all fa~tions in the The Partisan Defense Committee has to the court demanding the dismissal of socialist movement-e-rightcteft, and center-all of them were committed to the sent a donation, to support the continu­ all. charges against Paul Smith, who principle of independent political action. The support of a capitalist political party ing legal fights against these monstrous with his four union brothers is the tar­ was anathema. The IWW, which was more radical than the Socialist Party, didn't cages, noting: get of a vicious company/government vote for its candidates only because they had a mistaken idea that elections were a "These hideous products of the govern­ vendetta: "In slamming the prison doors ,waste of time. But the preamble ofthe IWW began with these words: "The working ment's phony drive against domestic on these courageous men the govern­ 'terrorism' have only one purpose: to class and the employing class have nothing in common"; and proceeded to say: ment seeks to finish the job left undone ."Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world terrorize political opponents' of gov­ ernment policies.... Like the resurrec­ by Massey's gun-toting thugs." organize as a class, take possession of the earthand the machinery of production and tion of sedition prosecutions, increas­ These five miners are victims ofa gov- abolish the wage system".... ing-use and expansion oftheseprisonsis .ernment campaign to make labor crawl integral to the government's intensified It comes around to the point that we are the only party, faction, tendency, or group before givebacks and union-busting. in the whole labor movement that stands on the old-fashioned, simple, fundamental efforts to illegalize left wing political opposition, the domestic component of The mighty UMWA must not spend one program of the class struggle in politics. And that certainly is a good place to stand. its anti-Soviet war drive." more day watching idly as the capitalist -James P. Cannon, "Speech at the Sixteenth Convention" of the SWP courts chain and lock up its most mil­ , (November 1954) * ** itant fighters. Free the five Kentucky Kentucky miner Paul Smith con­ miners now! Letters and telegrams tinues to fight against a company/state demanding that charges against Paul conspiracy to lock him up for lif~. In Smith be dismissed can be sent to: Judge January miners Darryl Smith, David Charles E. Lowe,' Jr., Pike Circuit Thornsbury, Donnie Thornsbury and Court, Pikeville, KY 41501. Contribu­ Arnold Heightland were railroaded on tions for the miners' defense are urgently !~A!!.'t!,yf~l!!]J~~!.s~ federal charges of interfering with inter­ needed. Send to: Citizens for Justice, DIRECTOR OF PARTY PUBLICATIONS: Liz Gordon state commerce, conspiracy and fire­ Box 8, Canada, KY 41519. EDITOR: Jan Norden arms violations in connection with the PRODUCTION MANAGER: Noah Wilner * CIRCULATION MANAGER: Jon Lawrence 1985 shooting death ofa scabcoal truck ** EDITORIAL BOARD: George Foster, Liz Gordon, Frank Hunter, Jane Kerrigan, driver near a struck mine owned by We encourage WV readers to con­ Len Meyers, Jan Norden, James Robertson, Reuben samuels, Joseph Seymour, Samoyed Energy, and are serving 35 to tinue to support and build the Partisan Alison Spencer. Marjorie Stamberg. Noah Wilner (Closing editor) 40 years in the federal pen. Their cases Defense Committee. Senda donation of Workers Vanguard (USPS 098-770) published biweekly, except 2nd issue August and with 3-week interv~1 December, are on appeal. In a separate trial thejury $5 or more and receive a subscription to by the Spartacist Publishing Co., 41 Warren Street, New York, NY 10007. Telephone: 732-7862 (edItorial), 732-7861 (Business). Address all correspondence to: Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116. DomestIC subSCriptIons: $5.00124 acquitted Smith,of the same charges, Class-Struggle Defense Notes. For a issues. Second-class postage paid at New York, NY. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Workars Vanguard, but before he could leave the court­ Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116. . single copy send $1 to: Partisan Defense Opinions expressed in signed articles or letters d6 not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint. house he was arrested on state murder Committee, P.O. Box 99, Canal Street charges. He now faces a lifetime in jail. Station, New York, NY 10013. Sendfor No. 458 29 July 1988. Smith's trial awaits the court's ruling additional newsletters. Be a PDC sus­ on his motion to dismiss the charges on tainer! Build the PDC!. 2 WORKERS VANGUARD formed readers that the leaders of the RPRS had "largely fabricated the real­ ity of their group" and "requested aid for trade union and political activity Solidarnosc' Dirty Dollars that was largely fictional. The group functioned with criteria which had It's finally up-front and official-s-the campaign demanding, "Stop Solidar­ Afghanistan, Poland had become' a nothing in common with those of a U.S. government finances counterrevo­ ity's Counterrevolution!" We told the casus belli for Western imperialism's workers' political organization." Lick­ lution in Poland through the so-called truth about Solidarnose because we Cold War II against the Soviet Union, ing its wounds, the USec moaned they "free trade union," Solidamosc, Read­ base o.Y..rselves on the program of Trot­ and the left jumped on the bandwagon. "were victims of this dupery." Just who ers of Workers Vanguard have known skyism,' not social-democratic Stalino­ Today Weinstein is a leader of Social­ and what J/Vere Ernest Mandel and the this for years, but it's worth noting when phobia. The perspective put forward by ist Action, a split from the SWP in USec running with anyway? a major bourgeois mouthpiece lays bare Trotsky in relation to defense of the 1982-83 and one of four American Thus far, mum's the word from the imperialists' dirty work in its own pages. 'On July to the New York Times reported, "over the last three years, the United States has provided more than $5 million in cash assistance toSolidar­ ity and other groups opposed to the Warsaw Government." After Congress voted a $1,000,000 appropriation for them in July 1987, Solidarnosc' leader­ ship claimed that they would use the money for ambulances and health clinics. But according to the Times, last year alone the U.S. paid for 10,000 pounds of printing presses, cameras, microfiche . and microfiche readers, radios and electronic equipment, 'and smoke grenades. Some health clinic! Some ofSolidarnosc' dirty dollars are funneled through the National Endow­ ment for Democracy, a CIA front set up by Reagan which the Nation (19 March) reports is'also funding anti-Communist . no crediti dissidents in the USSR as well as the Lech Walesa flaunts money from Western backers (left); Socialist English-language edition of the Soviet Action leader Nat Weinstein unites with anti-Communists at 1981 rally dissident magazine, Glasnost. The NED for counterrevolutionary Solldarnosc. also bankrolls La Prensa, the voice of the internal contras in Nicaragua, Soviet Union in 1940 applies equally to affiliates of Ernest Mandel's pseudo­ Socialist Action on the Times' reve­ fascistic student groups in France and the Polish deformed workers state: "We Trotskyist dis-"United Secretariat," and lations of who pays Solidarnose, and counterrevolutionary causes through- mustnot lose sight for a single moment still an ardent backer of Solidarnesc. calls the tunes. At least the more forth­ out the world. . of the fact that the question of over­ They even adopted the Solidarnose logo right "third campists" don't plead While the August J980 Baltic coast throwing the Soviet bureaucracy is for the masthead of their newspaper. ignorance-"Should Solidarnose take general strike that heralded the birth of for us subordinate to the question of (Back in the heady days of the "broad­ U.S. money?" was the headline over Solidarnosc stemmed from legitimate preserving' state property in the means based movement" for "Solidarity with an article in the Revolutionary working-class grievances against 35 of production in the USSR; that the Solidarity," buttons bearing the Soli­ Socialist League's Torch (January 15­ years of Stalinist misrule, the workers' question of preserving state property in darnose logo were also peddled by the February 14). In a guilty stage struggles were quickly commandeered the means of production in the USSR Moonies.) . Socialist Action has an­ whisper to Polish friends the RSL by the forces of clerical nationalism. is subordinate for us to the question of nounced a meeting "celebrating50 years says this "was a mistake" but hastens Solidarnose draped itself in every Cold the world proletarian revolution" (In of the Fourth International" to which it to add, "sometimes insurgent organ­ War code word from "free elections" to Defense of Marxism). has invited one Zbigniew Kowalewski, a . izations have no choice but to take "free trade unions." By the time of its The same fundamental reformism prominent propagandist for this "un­ 'tainted' money from abroad" and first national conference a year later, that led "State Department socialists" ion" which last year greeted George points to Reagan's Afghan "freedom Solidarnose had consolidated around a into the lap of the CIA to fight Bush in Poland with chants of "Long fighters" as worthy examples of who program of pro-imperialist counterrev­ "totalitarianism" in the '50s and '60s live Bush! Long live Reagan!" should be funded! The aid these spine­ olution-for the abolition of central once again led self-styled socialists to Solidarnose made strange bedfel­ less "socialists" applaud went toward planning and for Western-style "democ­ embrace Solidarnose, an imperialist­ lows...and some of them woke up killing .Russian and Afghan soldiers racy" under the aegis of the Catholic financed tool for anti-Communist roll­ short-sheeted. Look at the saga ofthe fighting the CIA's reactionary feudal church. They even invited notorious back in Eastern Europe. As Reagan pro­ "Workers' Party of the Self-Managed mullahs. . CIA "labor" agent Irving Brown to their nounced Solidarnosc "the beginning of Republic (RPRS-Polish section of the Solidarnosc has allied itself with confab. When we characterized Soli": the end" of Communism, fake-Trotsky­ Fourth International)," whose forma­ imperialism against the Soviet Union, darnosc as a "company union for the ists in France marched together with tion was trumpeted in the January 1987 against the struggles of the working CIA and Western bankers," it flew in the fascists against General Jaruzelski's visit issue of Socialist Action. According to class internationally, and against the face of the anti-Soviet consensus- in the in January 1982. In San Francisco, SA, the RPRS had branches "in many socialist interests of Polish workers West extending from Reaganite reac­ members of the Socialist Workers p'ar­ factories and cities across Poland." Not themselves. Socialist Action wants the tionaries to liberals to pseudo-leftists, ty, including Nat Weinstein, marched much more was heard about the group American franchise for this anti-red As Solidarnosc prepared a counter­ together-with the right-wing Libertar­ until in April 1988 a terse "commu­ front. As Cervantes said in Don Quixo­ revolutionary coup, the international ian Party whose signs read "Smash nique" buried way in the back of the te, "Tell me what company you keep, Spartacist tendency organized a protest the Communist Tyrants!" Along with USec's International. Viewpoint,' in- and I'll tell you what you are.".

from Connecticut unions. But there were Democratic Party politicians crawling all over it, including the Groton Ship-lard Workers state's top cop, Attorney General Joseph Lieberman. The union tops' phony "friends of labor" came to scavenge for votes, and divert strik­ ers' anger into voting for the Dem­ Shut It Down­ ocratic Party of war and racism. It will take more than the empty "solidarity" speeches heard today to win this strike. Even as the crowd was Win the Strike! singing "if the scabs get in the way, we're gonna roll right over them," a GROTON,' Connecticut, July 25­ top pay for journeymenat "the Boat" block away hundreds of manage­ Eight hundred shipyard workers and is.$J2.02 per hour. One striker told ment personnel, draftsmen and scab supporters from a dozen area unions WV he was making almost as much MTC members were streaming into rallied at the gates of the Electric working during the strike at Dom­ 'the yard! A spokesman for the Boat shipyard here, as the strike by ino's Pizza! Even before the strike, Marine Draftsmen Association, a the Metal. Trades Council (MTC) General Dynamics was scouring the UAW affiliate whose 1,500 members against General Dynamics enters its country looking for skilled machin­ are crossing the picket lines, had the fourth week. Strikers are prepared to ists and welders willing to work for nerve to brag about their financial stay out. They are outraged at Elec­ these wages. But this arrogant, cor­ support to the strike. - tric Boat's "offer" of a wage freeze, rupt Pentagon supplier, which gets The MTC must enforce the'princi­ paltry lump-sum payments and mas­ away with charging hundreds of dol­ pIe that "picket lines mean don't sive cuts in medical benefits. lars for a hammer, is playing hard­ cross!" Mobilize Connecticut labor, The nuclear submarine workers in ball against the MTC. including the embattled Colt strikers the ten unions which make up the , Billed as a "display ofsolidarity" and the thousands .of Pratt & Whit­ . WV Photo MTC are among the most highly by the state AFL-CIO, the march and ney machinists facing layoffs, to shut July 5-Strikers· picket EI~tric Boat skilled craftsmen in the U.S., yet the rally drew only token attendance .Electric Boat down tight! shipyard.

29 JULY 1988 3 Democrats ... (continued/rom page 1) Chile. He's agung ho militarist, sup­ porting production of the MX missile, Star Wars, the neutron bomb and the B-1 bomber. On "social issues" he's for mandatory prayer in public schools, against federal financing of abortions for poor women, against school busing, for the death penalty and mandatory AIDS testing. In short, he's an all-round - reactionary. In fact, as-a Congressman in 1950 Bentsen told Harry Truman to nuke North Korea, the line of General Mac­ Arthur, the "American Caesar." But that .didn't pose any problems for "nuke 'em" Duke. Dukakis was landed New York rrnes Vuich/Gamma-Liaison on in the primaries for stating openly Popular front paves road to reaction: Chilean president Salvador Allende (left) moments before his death in 1973 what has been NATO policy from the Pinochet coup. Jesse Jackson at labor rally.(right): popular front American-style. start, that he was prepared to launch a nuclear first strike against the Soviet preserve a 'separate but equal' school deal often at the expense ofthose whose militant black struggle. Today Jesse Union. In the platform debate at the . system in Boston, his answer was 'yes'" cause he coopted." . Jackson is trying to pull out the black convention, Dukakis forces defeated the (Boston Globe, 17May 1974). And Jack­ For his prime time TV slot, Jaekson vote, with his sermonizing about "a Jackson campaign's call for "no first son also opposes school busing. In Nor­ cynically made his entrance with Rosa rainbow-the sons and daughters of use" of nuclear weapons by a 2-to-l folk, Virginia when black unionists were Parks, whose refusa"l. to sit at she back of slavemasters and the sons and daugh­ vote. marching for busing in 1983, Jackson the bus sparked the 1955 Montgomery ters of slaves sitting together around a The Democrats are trying to sell said he was "not marching for busing, bus boycott, the opening shot of the civil common table." But black people, poor Dukakis/Bentsen as a remake of the I'm marching for the voter registration rights movement. Jackson began by people, working people, have never Kennedy/Johnson ticket in 1960: the boost." .. addressing his delegates, saying "youare gotten more than crumbs from the Boston/Austin axis. Maybe they plan to seated, but you're really standing on capitalist slavemasters' table. Instead of repeat the escalating competition be­ Jesse Jackson and the someone's shoulders." In fact, the 3,000­ bogus "empowerment" by voting Dem­ tween Kennedy and Nixon in the '60 Democrats' Plantation Politics plus black elected officials and 300 black ocrat, what's needed is a real strug­ campaign over who could make the mayors are standing on the backs of the gle for working-class power with more bloodcurdling threats against "Hands that once picked cotton now 20 million black people in this country, black workers, the most class- and race­ Fidel Castro. Already Bush has chal~ pick the president" has been the slogan who are still terrorized and forcibly conscious, in the lead. lenged the Democrats to put up orshut of the black Democrats who are mak­ ghettoized at the bottom of American up in the "war on drugs" by calling for ing their careers out of selling the black society. Popular Front Chains Jackson's "If I can make it, you can Blacks, Labor make it" rhetoric is a lie. In the first Jesse Jackson's "Rainbow Coali­ place, he didn't make it. Whether he's tion" and the Democrats' "Southern brokering black franchises from Coca­ strategy" are part of the same opera­ Cola or black votes for the Democrats, tion. Jackson. made this clear from the Jesse Jackson isjust a front man for rac­ outset by courting arch-segregationist ist capitalism. There was much talk former Alabama governor George Wal­ about "how far" blacks had come since lace. Jackson's role was to "broaden the the 1964 Democratic convention in At­ party's base," and here they had some Berkeley, lantic City. The head .of the Mississippi success. There were more black and His­ February 1: delegation this year was stopped at the panic delegates in Atlanta than ever Spartacus door in '64 as part of the Mississippi before at a Democratic convention. A Youth Club Freedom Democratic Party delegation. thousand delegates, over 20 percent, demo against, But the MFDP was an outgrowthofthe were union members, and Jackson's fascist fUhrer, Kennedy/ Lowenstein strategy to chan­ name was placed in nomination by Democrat nel black anger away from mass strug­ Machinistsr(IAM) president William Tom Metzger. gle and into the bourgeois two-party Winpisinger. trap. At the convention, the union bureau­ The most radical period of black crats did everything possible to stay out history since Reconstruction got under of sight, so no one could pin the "spe­ way when black radicals broke from cial interest" label on the Democrats. the Democrats. SNCC's 1965 Lowndes Dukakis (who said the word "black" bombing foreign "drug factories." The vote to the highest bidder. Stung by the County, Alabama independent voter once, as part of a statistic) only men­ last time around, this kind of cam­ Dukakis-Bentsen slap, Jackson accused registration project was a re~ponse to tioned labor to exhort it to "work paign rhetoric led to the Bay of Pigs Dukakis of "plantation politics" and the bitter lessons of the MFDP:Jheir together" with business. All he "prom­ fiasco and the Cuban missile crisis, the protested: "I cannot be asked to go out symbol was the black panther,' fore­ ised" to working people was "the kind of closest the world has come to nuclear into the fields, pick up voters, bale them shadowing the Black Panther Party America that provides American work­ Armageddon. up, deliver them up to the big house ... for Self-Defense formed in California a ers and their families with at least 60 Malcolm X used to say, "Ifyou're vot­ and, not be part of the equation." So year later. Unfortunately, the "black days' notice when a factory or a plant ing for the Democrats, you're votingfor who's playing plantation politics? Bal­ power" radicals never found the road to shuts down"! But even that campaign the Dixiecrats." Southern .conservative ing up the black vote is exactly what workers power, to link the ghetto with promise didn't do lAM members at Bentsen opposes busing for the integra­ Jackson has been doing. As black News­ the factory. Isolated and powerless, the Eastern Airlines any good. The day the tion of the schools. Northern liberal day editor Les Payne wrote (24July) in a best were gunned down and jailed, the convention closed, union-buster Frank Dukakis ran for Massachusetts gover­ perceptive column: others bought off as the "black power" Lorenzo announced 4,000 layoffs, cen­ nor in 1974 in the midst of the Boston "Jackson has never really scared white movement hardened into the dead end tering on Miami and Atlanta. power brokers. Instead, the civil rights busing crisis, calling for "community leader has mastered the art of confis­ of nationalism. . The reformist left which has been control" of neighborhood schools. cating the weapons from protesting For almost two decades, there has beating the drums for Jesse Jackson will Asked if his plan "was a system to blacks ...and finally striking a personal been a glaring vacuum of leadership for now be rounding up votes for Dukakis/

Free Union L"eader Eliseo Cordoba From the Death Sguadsl EI Salvador: 10,000 March Against Anti-Strike Law= Ten thousand Salvadoran workers, touched off a running battle through country was thrown into crisis by an. party makes a "negotiated settlement" students and peasants took to the the downtown area in which marchers electrical workers strike that left 70 of this civil war ever more clearly a streets of San Salvador on July 21 burned government vehicles as barri­ percent of the country without elec­ program for an anti-worker blood­ to protest the seizure of a union cades against the police attacks. tricity for weeks. Two weeks ago air bath. Andwhile the Salvadoranwork­ leader and anti-labor emergency leg­ The government of U.S. puppet force troops used clubs and tear gas to ers have repeatedly shown their islation. The march, called by the Jose Napoleon Duarte has proposed disperse some 300 workers and peas­ courage and will to fight in the most " National Unity of Salvadoran Work­ an emergency law to militarize public ants who were passing food to strikers dangerous circumstances, tliey need ers (UNTS), aimed to free hospital services in response to militant strikes in Soyapango. a proletarian-internationalist leader­ workers union leader Eliseo Cordoba and work stoppages. But with the As the U.S.' bipartisan counterrev­ ship, a Trotskyist party fighting for -seized last week by a death squad....:­ Christian' Democratic government olutionary program in El Salvadorfal­ workers re:volution throughout the from the dungeons of the notoriously drifting due to Duarte's terminal can­ ters under the blows ofthe Farabundo region, from Managua to Mexico. brutal Treasury Police. As demon­ cer, an exploding corruption scandal Marti National Liberation Front Class-conscious militants in the strators neared the police barracks, lind violent intra-party divisions, rest­ (FMLN) guerrillas and the combative U.S. must take the side of our strug­ cops opened up with automatic rifle less military officials have vowed to working class, the eight-year-old war is gling Salvadoran brothers. Free Eliseo . fire and teargas grenades, seriously maintain "public order" with or entering a decisive period. The elector­ Cordoba and all class-war prisoners! wounding at least four people. This without a state-of-emergency law. The al victory of the fascistic .ARENA Workers take San Salvador!

WORKERS VANGUARD KKK Gets Hot Reception in Atlanta ATLANTA, July 17-As Dukakis and, the Dixiecrats were celebrating the so­ called "New South" and preparing their racist "unity" fete inside the Dem­ Racist Lynchers Stopped ocratic convention' here Sunday, the KKK and neo-Nazi skinheads figured they'd march outside flaunting their banners of genocidal violence against blacks, Hispanics and homosexuals. Liberals' from Atlanta black mayor Andrew Young to the ACLU had vowed to let the lynchers and Hitler-lovers stalk the streets. of this majority black city. But they were thwarted at every turn. The KKK's obscene plan to match down Martin Luther King Drive flying the Confederate flag of racist terror was spiked as some 1,500 demonstrators, many in town to lobby the Democratic Party, blocked their way, then bottled up the Klansmen in an underground parking garage and burned their fascist symbols. WV hoto This act, which all working people Planned Klan march outside Demo-' must applaud, stands in contradiction cratic convention spiked by anti­ to supporting the capitalist party whose fascist protesters. leaders, including Jesse Jackson, have opposed any struggle to stop the racist also a direct physical threat to the "Klan must go" and the cops had to res­ last-ditch defense of racist American terrorists. The main concern of the integrated Fannie Lou Hamer Con­ cue him. capitalism. And the Marcyites and other national and local'Democratic Party vention being held in a church across the .When two skinheads approached the popular-frontists who tail the Dem­ bigwigs was to keep things quiet so they street. But a thousand anti-fascist pro­ pen, the' anti-fascist protesters hurled ocratic Party via the, "Rainbow Coali­ wouldn't have another "Chicago'68" on testers surrounded the area where the rocks and bottles, leaping over retain­ tion" do their bit to keep blacks and their hands. With the city in the national Klan march was supposed to start. The ing walls to get at them and landing working people chained to their oppres­ spotlight, they were careful throughout police tried to establish a .perimeter some blows before the cops pulled them sors. It was under Jimmy ("ethnic the day not to arrest a single person. So and protect the white-supremacists. But off. Barrett's pickup truck was discov­ purity") Carter that in 1979 the KKK/ faced with a confrontation, the police when riot cops ordered people to move ered, and racist placards and flags were Nazi scum assassinated five leftist then canceled the fascists' 'permit to and pummeled their way through, bust­ removed and burned in a heap. When a organizers in Greensboro, ushering in march. Local director of the American ing heads in the process, the crowd just bunch of fascists in paramilitary uni­ the Reagan years by giving a green light Civil Liberties Union Gene Guerrero sifted around and filled in behind the forms started to march up with Confed­ to racist terror. The Klan nightriders grotesquely declared it "shameful" to let line of cops. erate flags, protesters drove the scum and the war on blacks arid labor are·the leftist protesters "interrupt freedom of After blocking the lynchers at the cap­ back into the entrance of a basement car domestic side of the bourgeoisie's speech" of the racist. terrorists, and itol, when reports circulated that the garage protected by rings of cops. With bipartisan war drive against the Soviet offered to get a court orderforthe KKK cops were-going to bus the fascists to the the fascists holed up in their- rathole, Union. to stage a future provocation. (These Omni, many of the anti-Klan protesters the crowd rapidly grew, as police lines To crush these racist terrorists, what's liberal civil libertarians are also defend­ headed across town. The All-Peoples alternately collapsed and reformed: needed is to mobilize the heavy guns of ing Contragate criminal Oliver North.) Congress (of Sam Marcy's Workers When the cops pulled up a prison bus to labor-the only force with the social The KKK-linked Forsyth County WorId) contingent gathered in the remove the trapped Klansmen, they had power to sweep away the fascist threat. Defense League and Mississippi-based "protest pen," while the "No Business as to fight their way aboard as protesters In Atlanta, the heavily black city and Nationalist Movement had planned to Usual" front of Bob Avakian's Revolu­ closed in and rocked the bus. transit workers unions must be prepared gather at the Georgia Statehouse and tionary Communist Party plus assorted The KKK terrorists are a clear and to use their muscle to deal a crushing march to the "free speech" pen at the anarchists and independents refused to present danger to all minorities and blow against the murderous KKK and Omni.Convention Center: Fascist hon­ enter the "protest ghetto." People milled labor and to the democratic rights of all. neo-Nazi scum. Such labor/black mobi­ cho Richard Barrett denounced "spe­ around in Marietta Street adjacent to But the Democratic Party of Dukakis lizations are integrally linked to the cial treatment" of blacks and Hispan­ the Ornni, joined by a number of gay and Bentsen and Jackson, of "Mr. Seg­ struggle to politically break the work­ ics, called to "quarantine queers" and rights activists waiting for a scheduled regation" George Wallace and fascist .ing class from the stranglehold of the called for purging the Democratic Party AIDS demonstration. Stormtrooper Tom Metzger who ran for Democratic . partner parties of American capitalism. of black candidate Jesse Jackson. The Barrett showed up in fatigues, but he nomination for Congress, protect these Labor and blacks: Break with the Dem­ Klan presence at the state capitol was was grabbed by the crowd chanting killers, who are kept inreserve as the ocrats-For a workers party!. \ .'

Bentsen in order to "Beat Bush." In the ultimate'expression of. class collabora­ ian revolution." Today, the bourgeoisie the overthrow of the bourgeoisie can name of "rejecting the right," the Com­ tion, the polar opposite of class strug­ keeps the popular front in reserve, and open a road out." The only road to the munist Party is not even running' a token gle. By tying-labor and blacks to their also the fascists. Jackson is used to emancipation of the working people is presidential campaign this ye~r. The class enemy, it blocks independent round up labor and black votes, then socialist revolution: led by arevolu­ CP's Gus Hall hails the Jackson"cam­ struggle against the exploiters, and thus discarded;' the Klan/Nazi bands raise tionary workers party at the head of paign as "a broad-based, all-people's .prepares the road to defeat. Jackson their heads as a warning. But as Trotsky and championing the cause of all the movement," and offers a four-point 'herds votes for Dukakis/Bentsen, who wrote 50 years ago, "Nothing short of oppressed.• agenda for "where we think this move­ promise nothing but union-busting, ment can go" (People's Daily World, race-terror and imperialist war. The 1 July). Hall even talks hypocritically American version of the popular front of "political independence." Yet Jack­ may appear pale in comparison to its SPARTACIST LEAGUE/U.S. LOCAL DIRECTORY son's campaign is notany kind of social counterparts elsewhere; but the conse­ National Office: ~ New York movement, but bourgeois constituency quences for the peoples of the world are Box 444. Canal St. .Sta. politics; and the fight for working-class all the greater. Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 (212) 732-7860 New York. NY 10013 political independence means warning In the Spanish Civil Warofthe 19)08, (212) 267-1025 ' against illusions in the popular "front. the People's Front smashed the Barcelo­ Another dubious outfit on the fringes na workers only to be itself defeated by Atlanta Detroit Norfolk of the Jackson campaign is the New Franco's legions; in France, the parlia­ Box 4012 Box 441794 Box 1972. Main PO Alliance Party, running black psy­ mentary leader of the Popular Front,. Atlanta. GA 30302 Detroit, MI 48244 Norfolk, VA 23501 chologist Lenora Fulani for president. Leon Blum, headed.off the 1936general Boston Ithaca Oakland With over half a million dollars in fed­ strike and ended up in a Nazi concen­ Box 840. Central Sta. Box 6767 Box 32552 eral matching funds already, Fulani tration camp. In Chile in the '70s, Cambridge, MA 02139 Ithaca, NY 14850' Oakland, CA94604 describes herself as "the spare tire" to Allende's Popular Unity wore down the (617) 492-3928 (415) 839-0851 carry the "rainbow agenda" into the workers' struggles and then fell victim to Chicago - Los Angeles San Francisco November elections. To support Fulani Pinochet'svconstitutional" army. To­ Box 6441. Main PO Box 29574, Los Feliz Sta. Box 5712 would be an eccentric act, irrelevant to day in Mexico, a new popular front has Chicago. IL 60680 Los Angeles. CA 90029 San Francisco. CA 94101 the future of the American proletariat. formed around Cuauhtemoc Cardenas (312) 663-0715 (213)380-8239 (415) 863-6963 At a July)9 rally, the NAP offered its to divert mass unrestover IMF-dictated platform to anti-labor, pro-Lorenzo starvation policies into the parliamen­ Cleveland Madison Washington, D.C. forces fighting unionization at Conti­ tary framework, and already rightist Box 91037 Box 2074 Box 75073 Washington, D.C. 20013 nental Airlines! Even more ominous are gunmen are at work, shooting down Cleveland. OH 44101 Madison, WI 53701 (216) 881-3700 . (608) 251-6431 (202) 636-3537 NAP ties to sinister black Muslimdem­ Cardenas' aides. agogue Louis Farrakhan, the man who As Leon Trotsky wrote in the found­ . wanted Malcolm X dead and said Hit­ ing program of the Fourth Interna- Toronto ler was a "great man"! ~ tional, '''People's Fronts' on the one· TROTSKYIST LEAGUE Box 7198, Station A The coalition politics of the Jackson hand-fascism on the other; these are Toronto, Ontario M5W'" X8 campaign and its fake-left tails are bour­ the last political resources of imperial­ OF CANADA (416) 593-4138 geois politics. The popular front is the ism in the struggle against the proletar- 29 JULY 1988 5 . . '.' '." . .

Perils. of Peres.troika. For decades the stage-managed con­ the conservative apparatchiks want gresses of the Communist Party of the above all to defend the rigid control of Soviet Union were viewed as non-events the bureaucratic elite (the nomenkla­ both in Russia and abroad. But for a few tura) over all aspects of social life. The days in late June political people.around Soviet proletariat is too socially power­ the world wereengrossed by the 19th ful, the' issues at stake affect it too CPSU conference ..!t was the first spe­ directly for the working class to remain cial conference in 47 years. Moscow passive. News (17 July) headlined, with more For all the rhetoric about "open­ than a little overstatement, "Four Days ness," "soviet power" and "revolution­ That Shook the World"-recalling ary change," what all wings of the John Reed's book on the Russian Rev­ bureaucracy seem to be squabbling olution of October 1917. After six about is who gets more from whom, decades of heavy-handed' suppression, completely lacking any sense of the this clash of contending viewpoints in internationalist foundations of the So­ full view of the Soviet population viet state. The technocrats want to screw .must seem like a revolution. But al­ the workers, the petty profiteers want though "bureaucracy" was endlessly some easy rubles, the workers and col­ condemned, CP leader Mikhail Gorba­ lective farmers rightly want to hold on chev's program of glasnost (openness) to the far-from-extravagant living stan­ and perestroika (restructuring) is no dards they already have. Within the answer to the deepening crisis of Soviet Soviet proletariat there is a deep reser­ society engendered by Stalinist misrule. voir of egalitarianism, legacy of the 1917 A few weeks before the conference, Revolution. But "socialism in one coun­ the editor of the official Communist try"-the program of Stalin and Bukha­ Youth publication Young Guard, who rih (as, well as Khrushchev, Brezhnev had been named a delegate, addressed a and Gorbachevj-i-is a cruel hoax. The meeting of his supposed constituents. interests of the Soviet masses can only But it was not a happy occasion for be advanced through a program of Anatoly Ivanov, who was raked over the world socialist revolution, creating the coals mercilessly as an unreconstructed basis for an international planned Stalinist and opponent of perestroika. economy and eliminating the deform­ At one point the 59-year-old "youth TASS ing pressure exerted on the Soviet state editor" exclaimed, "I am near retire­ Soviet leader Gorbachev (bottom, right) with p-erestroika point man Yakovlev through imperialist encirclement. ment. Don't worry." When Ivanov and "hardliner" Ligachev (left) at CPSU 19th Party Cooferimce, June 1988. Rather than a return to the soviet finally fled the meeting in his black democracy and revolutionary interna­ Volga sedan, an older worker who hap­ in the delegate elections. In Yaroslavl, government and technocratic bureauc­ tionalism of the Bolsheviks under Lenin pened to be there said, "You know, after marchers carried banners declaring, racy. But with thousands protesting in and Trotsky', Gorbachev's bureaucratic such a meeting in the Stalin period, half "Comrade regional committee: We're the streets, vociferously debating what "reform" aims in the opposite direction, of them would have gone...." And for perestroika! How about you?" In were previously closely guarded "affairs toward greater concessions to the he whistled in the direction of Siberia. Omsk, 7,000 jammed the Dynamo soc­ of state," this could awaken expecta­ imperialists abroad and undermining This encounter between the hidebound cer stadium to protest local party lead­ tions that the Kremlin rulers cannot socialist gains at home. What's needed is bureaucrat and his glasnost-minded ers imposing their candidates. In Mos­ fulfill. And if behind the "Leninism" a genuine political revolution of the pro­ "comrades" says a lot about the sharp­ cow's Pushkin Square, the unofficial preached by the bureaucracy as the ide­ letariat of all the Soviet peoples to oust ening tensions in Gorbachev's Russia ... clubs Civic Dignity and Commune ological straitjacket of Stalinist rule the the stultifying bureaucratic caste whose and the widespread fear of a return to staged a demonstration carrying red Soviet working people rediscover what continued domination endangers the the dark, not-so-distant past. flags with the hammer and sickle and the living Lenin really fought and stood homeland of October. Above all, that When Gorbachev originally called the chanting"All Power to the Soviets!" for, the result will be explosive. requires the leadership of a Leninist­ conference over a year ago, it was These are not the anti-Communist Yet amid all this ferment the decisive Trotskyist party capable of defending expected to be a triumph for "political protests of a few hundred pro-Western social force in the Soviet Union-the and extending the gains of the first perestroika" with his people replacing "dissidents" trumpeted by the imperial­ working class-has not yet entered the workers revolution in history. the holdovers from the Brezhnev era on ist press. Yet neither do they represent a political fray. And this is 'not acci­ the Central Committee. But the con­ revolutionary opposition to the ruling dental. Perestroika is an anti-w6rking­ Turmoil at the Top, servative apparatchiks counterrnobi­ Stalinist bureaucracy. The "soviets" class program, aiming to overcome the Fraying at the Fringe lized effectively. Many prominent intel­ that the Gorbachevites want to "em­ "years of stagnation" under Brezhnev lectual supporters of perestroika were power" have nothing to do with the rev­ through speedup, mass layoffs, infla- ­ The fissures in the Kremlin oligarchy conspicuously not selected as delegates. olutionary workers councils of 1917; tion and cutbacks in social programs. were displayed quite openly at the con­ The Gorbachevites were- enraged and today these are simply rubber-stamp For the most part the Gorbachevite ference. Gorbachev lashed out at his embittered. Across the USSR, from legislative bodies. As Business Week intelligentsia-Russia's yuppies-deep­ conservative opponents for their "un­ Leningrad to Magadan, thousands (27 June) put it, "Gorbachev Plots an ly resent the working class with its disguised attempts at perverting.the marched in front of Communist Party End Run Around the Party Bureau­ egalitarian values and commitment to essence of the reform." A delegate from headquarters crying "we was robbed" crats," by giving greater weight to the economic security. On the other hand, theUralscaused an uproar by calling for

:.~~,.. &liWi New York imes Podlesnov oscow News Pro-Gorbachev demonstrators mobilize outside party headquarters In Irkutsk (left) and Moscow City Soviet protesting selection of delegates for party conference and demanding green light for glasnost. 6 WORKERS VANGUARD f--

the resignation of longtime Soviet­ ence.:But when the conference.failed to organized a mass rally of 150,000 ship has become a hardening rift. The leader Andrei Gromyko, who as chair­ satisfy the Armenian demands, the around the demand for complete eco­ evident differences between Gorbachev man of the Presidium of the Supreme protests resumed with even greater fury. nomic autonomy. Originally proposed and Ligachev are narrow. The No.2 Soviet is the titular head of the USSR. One person has been killed and over 30 by sociologist Tatyana Zaslavskaya, a party leader does not criticize Gorba­ The influential "reform" economist injured in violent clashes between Soviet leading intellectual light of perestroika, . chev's appeasement of Western imperi­ Leonid Abalkin asked rhetorically, army troops and demonstrators trying such organizations caneasily slip out of alism, from disarmament to Afghani­ "Can we, while retaining the Soviet to shut down the airport of Armenia's the control of the Kremlin. In reality, stan to Angola. He has repeatedly organization of society and one-party capital, Yerevan. In response, an emer­ the People's Front is a front for resur­ declared his support for market­ system, insure a democratic organiza­ gency session of the Presidium of the' -gent nationalism. They march behind oriented economic reforms, though per­ tion of social life?" In response, Gorba­ Supreme Soviet of the USSR was called the flag of the interwar Estonian re­ haps less sweeping and rapid than Gor­ chev chastised his adviser for lack of which on July 18 rejected the Armenian public, which outlawed Communists, bachev would have it. The battle lines faith in the Communist system. claim for Nagorno-Karabakh. barred Jews from the universities with have been drawn instead over glasnost. The delegates were also treated to the The decision was announced in a the numerus clausus, and was a bastion It is here that Ligachev has set the terms long-awaited. political fistfight between three-hour TV broadcast of the Su­ of White Guard reaction. of engagement. Yegor Ligachev is no Boris Yeltsinand Yegor Ligachev, dar­ preme Soviet debate, with Gorbachev That resurgent nationalism in the Bal­ old-line Stalinist, .nor a stodgy hold­ ling of the conservative apparatchiks. reading the riot act to the Armenian and tic republics and also Armenia drapes over from the Brezhnev era. Like Gor­ The pugnacious Yeltsin was ousted as Azerbaijani leaders forfostering nation­ itself in the mantle ofperestroika is not bachev, he was elevated into the Krem­ Moscow party boss last fall for pushing al rancor. In response, more than .simply protective coloration. The Bal­ lin hierarchy from the provinces in the the reform line too far, too fast. When 200,000 protesters flooded the center of tic region 'and Armenia are the most early '80s by the lateYurfAndropov. Reagan visited Moscow this May, Yerevan, shouting down Armenian CP economi9atty.and .culturally advanced Ligachev won favor' with the austere Yeltsin called a press conference and leader Suren Arutyunyan every time he regions istthe Soviet Union. In the past, Andropov because he was reputedly the told Western reporters that Ligachev, tried to speak. As we go to press, tens of centralization from Moscow (despite only party first secretary in amajor city head of the partyapparatus, was a closet thousands continue to demonstrate Great Russian chauvinism) has tended (Tomsk, in Siberia) who did not take opponent of perestroika and should be bribes. dumped. Yeltsin appealed to the con" Ligachev is worried that glasnost ference: "Rehabilitation after 50 years could go-is going-too far. Beginning has now become habitual, ... I am ask­ early last year he began hammering at ing for political rehabilitation while I historians who were exposing Stalin's am alive" (New York Times,2July). For monstrous crimes: "We are for an hon­ now, he didn't get it. Ligachev hit back, est and open look back, but we are deci­ calling Yeltsin a "destructive force" who sively against the falsification of our considers "the work of the partyand the glorious past and against the portrayal people is in vain." . of our history as a series of continuous Overall, Gorbachev performed a mistakes and disappointments." Accen­ careful balancing act, seeking to raise tuate the positive, he instructed Soviet himself in bonapartist fashion above the historians: "the 70 years since the contending bureaucratic factions. As it October Revolution have been above all turned out, the conference was not a a period of the triumph of socialist con­ triumph for the conservatives, nor was it struction" (New York Times, 24 March a setback for Gorbachev. The main 1987). Last fall he publicly criticized proposals coming out of the conference the two most vocal advocates of Gor­ are for a new "strong" president 'on the bachev's line, Moscow News and American or Fzench Gaullist model and Ogonyok: for a mammoth super-parliament com­ The boldest move by Ligachev's peo­ bining the bureaucratic "soviets" with ple to scuttle glasnost was the"Andreye­ representatives of (presumably pro­ va letter." In mid-March a lengthy tract, Gorbachev) mass organizations. The ostensibly written by a Leningrad chem­ stated purpose is to provide some istry teacher but reportedly edited by mechanism to energize or sidestep the Ligachev.appeared in the official news­ notoriously sluggish party apparatus. paper of the Russian republic, Sovet­ While the top levels of the party and Sipa skaya Rossiya. The "Andreyeva letter" state bureaucracies (the nomenklatura) Armenians demonstrate in Moscow. Program of p-erestroika heightens national tensions in USSR. was a hysterical diatribe denouncing closely overlap, lower down many "Glasnost, openness, the disappear­ government officials are non-party in;: every night. Nagorno-Karabakh, which to act as a national equalizer. Now these ance of zones off limits to criticism," as tellectualsand technocrats who are "'prompted' in one degree or another by Gorbachev's people. was paralyzed by a general strike for two regions hope to use economic decentral­ months, is under virtual martial law, ization and market competition as a Western radio stations or by those of No doubt, Gorbachev is also seeking our fellow countrymen who are not to protect himself from Khrushchev's with Soviet troops searching cars and lever to gain at the expense of more trucks for weapons. Typesetters for the backward areas. When the Armenia cri­ steadfast enough in their understand­ fate, that is, being ousted by his col­ ing of the essence of socialism." It leagues in the party leadership; (Liga­ paper Sovetsky Karabakh refused to sis erupted, we wrote: publish the central government's deci­ "Except where it serves as a cover for defended Stalin as one of the "trail­ chev pointedly reminded the confer­ capitalist counterrevolution, we sup­ blazers of socialism" worthy of "honor ence that Gorbachev was installed with sion. At the same time, Moscow ordered the deportation of Paruir Airikyan, a port the ri,ht of' national self­ and dignity." Ligachev's supporters in his and Gromyko's support.) But set­ determination for the various Soviet the apparatus made sure the "Andre­ ting up a bonapartist president and a prominent Armenian nationalist agita­ peoples-i.e., the right to-secede and tor, who was simultaneously stripped of form a separate state. And we.do not yeva letter" was reprinted in every parliament aping the corrupt bourgeois regional newspaper in the USSR. (The talk-shops of West Europe is hardly a Soviet.citizenship. regard as sacrosanct the internal nation­ Nationalist agitation has also hit the al boundaries of the USSR, which the East German Stalinists also printed step toward genuine soviet democracy. Kremlin bureaucracy has arbitrarily it.) . The turmoil at the top ofthe Kremlin Baltic .republics. The CIA's "Captive fixed." hierarchy has spread to the intelligentsia Nations" crowd has long dreamed of -·~Behind the Armenia Crisis," Not coincidentally, both Gorbachev and national republics of the Soviet counterrevolutionary .dismemberment WV No. 450, 8 April and his chief -lieutenant, Aleksandr Union. In the weeks leading up to the of.the Soviet Union. Last month thou­ But by intensifying national divisions Yakovlev, were out of the countryat the conference, the 'tiny self-styled Dem­ sands marched throughRigasingingthe and inequalities, Gorbachev's pere­ time. For three weeks the Gorbachevite ocratic Union (some of whose leaders Latvian. national anthem and carrying stroika is stoking the fires of nationalist intellectuals were paralyzed by this .are funded bythe notorious CIA con­ flags of the bourgeois independent antagonism: attack on them, orchestrated from the Latvian state of the interwar years. In Kremlincorridors of power. When Gor­ duit, the National Endowment for The Andreyev8 LeUer Democracy) stageddemonstrations in neighboring Estonia the Gorbachevite bachev returned from abroad, he moved central Moscow raising the slogans intelligentsia has set up a non-party What a year or soago seemed a shad­ quickly and effectively to defend 'his "Down with tyranny!" "Down with "People's Front," which on June 17 ing of opinion within the Soviet leader':' continued on page 8 the KGB!"· On one occasion another "unofficial" group also turned up, carrying portraits of Marx, Lenin and Gorbachev and a large banner saying "Socialism, Not Stalinism." The police couldn't figure out who they were and so let them alone. Meanwhile, in the Georgian town of.Gori-Stalin's birthplace-copies of- Anatoli Ryba­ kov's Children ofthe Arbat, a powerful novel about the onset of Stalin's terror, are being burned by youthful Stalin­ worshippers. Autoworkers The most dramatic and explosive meeting in political unrest has been in the Caucasus VAZ auto plant and Baltic regions. In February violent in Togliatti,· national conflict erupted between Ar­ Perestroika menians and Azerbaijanis over the means speedup, status of the Nagorno-Karabakh Au­ layoffs for working class. tonomous Region. Since then scores of people have been killed in communalist rioting, while Armenia was paralyzed by mass protests and strikes. Theseprotests were suspended for the party confer- 29 JULY 1988 7 Soviet workers were guaranteed a job Perils 01­ .and a modest standard of living with­ out havingto workvery hard for it. Now all this is threatened. A piece in the New. Perestroika ... York Times (10 May) noted how work­ (continued from page 7) ers see the effect of perestroika as base. Ligachev was called onto the attacks on their basic rights to housing, carpet and stripped of his position as job security and medical care. It de­ ideological overseer. A reply to the "An­ scribed a recent "Soviet-style layoff" at dreyeva letter," reportedly written by the port of Ilyichevsk on the Black Sea: Yakovlev, was printed in Pravda and complaining it could only be carried out. reproduced with ritual self-criticism in "according to the rules of the social con­ Sovetskaya Rossiya. Now the Soviet tract, keeping the people who needed .. press officially declared: "Democratism the jobs, not the people the company is impossible without the freedom of needed most." Soviet workers find mass thought and speech, without an open unemployment so inconceivable that and broad clash of opinions...." many literally do not believe the condi­ The core ofthe "Andreyeva letter" is tions of homelessness and despair which the question of Stalin. And for good rea­ are. rampant in American and other son. ExposingStali~ as a psychopathic Western cities.. mass murderer, an enemy of socialism Now, to overcome the economic stag­ and the Soviet people, calls into ques­ nation, the Kremlin bureaucracy under tion the legitimacy of his heirs, the Gorbachev wants to use the whip of present Kremlin bureaucracy. To date, market competition on the workers. To most of the attacks on Stalin come from . Taubman/NY Times date, Soviet workers appear perplexed neo-Bukharjaite intellectuals and out­ Demonstrators in Tallinn raise flag of interwar bourgeois Estonian republic, and frustrated. Perestroika, they are right' supporters of "Western-style viper's nest of anti-Semitism and fascism. .. told, will overcome the "years of stag­ democracy," rather than' from parti­ nation," leading to increased productiv­ nomic and social weight of the intelli­ in 1941 decreed: sans of authentic Bolshevism. The Gor­ ity and Westernized economic condi­ gentsia at the expense not only of the "We must liquidate completely the bachev regime tries to distinguish the tions. Yet economic growth is now party apparatchiks but also the work­ rotten practice of egalitarianism in "good" Stalin of the 1920s-early '30s slower and the supply of consumer ing class. It means raising the incomes of ;' wages and must.achieve the objective from the "bad" Stalin thereafter. Thus of making out of the piecework and goods, especially food, is perhaps worse the educated pelty bourgeois, shifting at the recent partyconference top Krem­ bonus system the 'most important fac­ than in the last Brezhnev years. (And economic power-to. factory managers tor of the struggle for increased labor lin aide Georgi Arbatov, arguing for a economic parasitism, from the black and technocrats in the name ofmarket productivity...." . ten-year limit on holding high party market to prostitution, has reached competition, promoting a new class ~uoted in Zakonodatelstvo office, opined that if only Stalin. had o trude:kommentarii epidemic proportions, reminiscent of retired in 1934-before the Kirov assas­ of petty entrepreneurs, and even de­ (Moscow, 1947) collectivizing agriculture. the profiteers who flourished in the late sination, which triggered the bloody Compare thiS with the principal archi­ NEP period.) As a result of "self­ purges of all the Old Bolsheviks, loyal tect of perestroika, Abel Aganbegyan: financing," many enterprises are not Stalinists included-Russia would have - Stalinism, Perestroika and. "we want to start now to end the gen- able to meet their payrolls on time. A been spared so much suffering! the Working Class , The Gorbachevite intelligentsia looks • back not to the Russia of Lenin and the Alongside the Ligachev offensive October Revolution, but to the Russia against glasnost in the press and intel­ of Bukharin and .Stalin and the New ·lectuallife, there is passive resistance to Economic Policy (NEP), when the bu­ perestroika in the economic sphere. The reaucratic degeneration had already reforms in the name of enterprise "self­ reversed the revolutionary course of the financing" have been undercutand even Soviet state. They identify themselves sabotagedt'by the bureaucracies ofthe with the "red professors," spetsy (tech­ industrial ministries who use state nocrats) and Nepmen (petty entrepre­ orders (which have priority) to try to neurs) of the 1920s. They see both retain their old control over the enter­ Trotsky and Stalin disturbing their prises. The result of'this turf war has - peace, comfort and social advantages. been a kind of bureaucratizedeconomic Leon Trotsky, Trotsky represented the proletarian in­ anarchy. At the conference, the director co-leader of October ternationalist response to the pressures of a machine building factory was Revolution and of world imperialism on the weak Soviet heavily applauded when he attacked the foUnder of Red state-seeking to optimize what they endlessforms and reports, demagogical­ Army, waged had through industrialization while pro­ ly thundering: "You've got to' kill the internationalist moting workers revolution in the cap­ people producing them." He also illus­ fight against italist West. Stalin; under the watch­ trated how perestroika threatens cen­ Stalin's' "socialism word of "socialism in one country," tral planning and the state monopoly of in one country." represented the bureaucratic-national­ foreign trade-s-fundardental conquests ist response to the pressures ofworld of the October Revolution-a-remark­ capitalism. ing: "To tell you the truth, we don't need The Bukharinite Right tried to ignore ministries. We earn our own feed. We and deny those pressures, and so advo­ ..earn our own hard currency. What can catedaprogram that would have led-to they give us? Nothing." the destruction en'the USSR (though In terms of their economic impact -, this was not theirintent). Howcould the on the working class, Gorbachev's poli­ erallevelling process which developed in working-class delegate at the recent Soviet 'Union have defeated ·Nazi des represent riot de-Stalinization but the past and to introduce well-founded party conference exclaimed: Germany. if. industrialization' had pro­ in many respects a re-Stalinization->­ differentials in wages dependent on "Where is perestroika? The situation ceeded, in Bukharin's phrase, "at a widening income' differentials between results" (The Economic Challenge of with food has not changed, except now snail's pace"? Of course, history cannot managers/technocrats and workers, be­ Perestroika [1988]). . . there are coupons for sugar. Meat isstill unavailable, industrial goods have dis­ simply be reversed: today the Soviet tween skilled and unskilled labor; re­ Wheri Stalin died in 1953 practically Union is a greafindustrial and mnitary introducing piece rates. The labor appeared in some places. Understand the entire industrial proletariat was on me correctly. I do not say all this to power. What. ..then does a ··rteo­ policies of perestroika are 'strikingly piece rates and almost a third, on build up tension but to express to the Bukharinite program mean in the late reminiscent of Stalin's anti-egalitarian "progressive" piece rates.' This meant. delegates the pain that tortures all the workers." . '80s? An attempt. to increase the eco- campaigns. The 18th Party Conference that their wages increased and decreased \ . more than their output. The harsh labor How much longer will Soviet workers discipline and extreme inegalitarian­ endure, that pain without protest? ism of the Stalin era fueled potential­ 'Not all (only most) Gorbachevite ly explosive working-class discontent. intellectuals are gung ho for "market Thus Stalin's heirs moved to rapidly socialism" and hostile to the interests of improve thecoridition of Soviet work­ the working class. Boris Kagarlitsky, Marxist Working-Class'. Blwe~kly of the Spartaclst League ers. Investment was shifted from heavy' principal organizer ofthe Federation of industry to' consumer goods. Income Socialist Clubs, has polemicized against differences between production work- the "free market" economists like Niko- $5/24 issues of Workers vanqiard . 0 $2/4 Issues o bf . ers and managers/technocrats were nar­ , lai Shmelyev. In an article appearing (includes Spartacist) International rates: Wom~n and Revolution rowed considerably. By the end ofthe in the West German Arbeiterkampf o N~w!·.O Renewal $20/24 issues-Airmail...... •... $5/24ill$lJ8S-5eamaii 0 $2110 introductory i$Sues of Khrushchev period in the mid-1960s, (2 May) he argues: "Certain situations 0$2/4.1$$'188 of SpaHacist Workers Vanguard , little more than half of production are such that the methods ofthe market (ediCio/i: en. ~$panol) (includes Spartacist) workers were still on piece rates, while . not only don't solve existing problems . , "progressive" piece rates had been elim­ but conjure up even catastrophic re­ N8me_.__-,..------inated completely, suits." Kagarlitsky's own solution is a Address_, "'--__.....,..-_ While the Brezhnev regime cracked confused amalgam of liberal Stalinism down on dissident intellectuals, it con­ and syndicalism: ____--'----_-_-Phone" (__)_._~ _ tinued and deepened the "soft". line "The democratic character of planning toward the workers. JIf fact, this was can, on the one hand, be attained City ., I . State ~iP & .through a developedsystemof workers probably the major factor accounting Make checkl ptyable/llNllI to: Spartaellt PublIlhIngCo., Box 1317 GPO, New York, NY 10116 self-management in production-more­ , ,\ for the exceptional internal stability of over, not only at the factory level but Brezhnev's 18-year reign. By the late '70s also at the levelof factory associations, 8 WORKERS VANGUARD entire 'firms,' and branches of the rin's) misleadership which derailed the economy-it can, on the other hand, be secured bya democraticstructureofthe Chinese Revolution in the mid-1920s; state itself." the strangling of the Spanish Revolu­ On the one hand, planning is incom­ tion in the late 19305 for the sake of patible with'self-management, whether friendship with British and French of individual enterprises or entire imperialism; the disarming of Com­ branches of the economy. Ifenterprises munist partisans in France, Italy and totally control their own inputs and Greece as part of the Cold War division investment funds then they can relate to of Europe. .. other enterprises only through the The deep faith in socialist interna­ exchange oftheir products on the mar­ tionalism which animated their grand­ ket. On the other hand, a democratic parents is totally missing in today's structure can only be secured through Soviet intellectuals. This is true even for the Soviet working class reasserting its those who claim to oppose Stalinism in political power through organs of the name of genuine Marxism, from soviet democracy as in October 1917. Kagarlitsky to Roy Medvedev. Medve­ But in the absence of a revolutionary­ dev has gone from outcast to "Prophet internationalist perspective counter­ with Honor" (Newsweek, 4 July) under posed to all variants of Stalinism, strikes Gorbachev. In his book On Stalin and and workers protests could be diverted Stalinism (1979), Medvedev dismisses into support for the Gorbachev re­ Trotskyism as "ultraleftism" and the formers promising "democratization" Fourth International as a quixotic sect. His neo-Bukharinite outlook excludes or even for old-line Stalinists using Nickelsberg/Time populist demagogy. Gorbachev's "self­ Soviet troops pulling out of Afghanistan (above), paving the way for the possibility of proletarian revolution reform" is an illusion; the bureaucratic bloodbath by· CIA-backed Islamic fanatics. Below: SOViet Afghan war in any Western country. The October Revolution is for Medvedev a histor­ apparatus must be shattered, and it is veterans at memorial for comrades who fell doing their internationalist duty.' not excluded that in the course ofa ically and nationally unique event, its main value being to lay the basis for the political revolution sizable sections of modernization of Russia. Such a the bureaucracy would split and go over nationalist view can only strengthen the to the side of the proletariat. ideological hold of imperialism over its Smash Imperialism Through own working classes. World Revolution! For Lenin as well as Trotsky, the Bol­ The current crisis of Stalinist rule in shevik Revolution was the first great Russia is directly linked to the increas­ victory in the world socialist revolu­ ing pressure of u.S. imperialist milita- . tion. Soviet workers resisting the effects rism-Cold War II. The Gorbachev of perestroika, those who distrust Gor­ regime has responded to that pressure bachev's appeasement of imperialism, with a policy of global appeasement, those who fight against Great Russian demonstrated most strikingly in the' chauvinism in the name of proletarian withdrawal of Soviet troops from internationalism, will find in Trotsky­ Afghanistan. This betrayal poses.a ter­ ism their own class answer to the rible bloodbath as the CIA's Islamic corruption, economic stagnation and cutthroats are out to kill every unveiled political cynicism engendered by bu­ woman, leftist and modernizing intellec­ reaucratic rule. That answer is proletar­ tual in that country. There are, however, ian political revolution to oust the people in the Soviet Union, especially Kremlin oligarchy and restore soviet veterans of the Afghan war, who under­ democracy and socialist economic plan­ stand this and do not like Gorbachev's ning. That answer is the Trotskyist per­ sellout. The afghantsy are an increas­ spective of "permanent revolution," Fagel-ArmandlAFP ingly vocal force, demonstrating'in the including the extension of the Russian streets and reportedly' being taken into "Mr. Da." But the Kremlin's policy of admits, Washington funnels millions to October to the advanced capitalist the Communist Party in large numbers. appeasement has only emboldened counterrevolutionary Polish Solidar­ countries of North America, West Now, even Brezhnev is being present­ Western imperialism to push forward in nose (see article, page 3). Europe and Japan. ed as some kind of ultraleft adventurer its ultimate goal of destroying the Soviet For its part, the Kremlin -bureauc­ For a' planned economy based on in international affairs. The Gorbachev Union. Harvard Cold War ideologue racy, forged under Stalin, opposes any soviet democracy! Soviet history be­ regime isechoing the Reaganite line that Adam Ulam writes triumphantly that perspective for proletarian revolution to longs to the Soviet peoples-Open the Soviet aggressiveness, not the intransi­ the Soviet evacuation of Afghanistan destroy Western imperialism from archives! For unconditional defense of gence of American imperialism, was represents "what has been a cardinal within. Indeed, the ideological triumph the USSR against imperialism and responsible for Cold War II. This is goal of American foreign policy at least of Stalin is so complete that the present­ internal counterrevolution! Taking up spelled out in a recent article in Lite­ since 1947-containment andeven 'roll­ day Soviet intelligentsia take "social­ the banner of the Bolshevik-Leninist raturnaya Gazeta by one Vyacheslav back' of Soviet imperialism" (Los Ange­ ism in,one country" for granted (except Left Opposition, fighting for a Soviet Dashichev, a leading ideologue in Mos­ les Times, 25 May). Believing they have for those who are for the restoration of section of a reforged Fourth Interna­ cow's 'Institute for Socialist World successfully "rolled back" Soviet power capitalism). All the attacks on Stalin's tional, is the only realistic course which Economics: in Afghanistan, U.S. rulers will inten­ crimes now being made in the Soviet can ,save the Soviet peoples and all of "We are convinced that the crisis was sify their efforts to roll back Soviet press and literary works are focused on humanity from a nuclear holocaust caused mainly by the miscalculations power in East Europe. To this end, as the national terrain. There is no interest launched by the decaying capitalist and incompetent approach ..of the even the New York Times (10 July) now or concern over Stalin's (and Bukha- order.• Brezhnev leadership towards foreign , policy.... For the West, the expansion of .the Soviet sphere of influence reached a criticalpoint when the USSR sent troops into Afghanistan." -Manchester Guardian Weekly, 29 May JUST OUT! The Gorbachevites are denouncing Spartacist Pamphlet and moving to reverse the few instances . when the Brezhnev regime materially supported national liberation and pro­ A reprint in pamphlet form of Workers Vanguard's gressive struggles in the so-called Third recent three-part series on the economics of the East World. Beginning with the abandon­ European deformed workers states. Written by Joseph ment of Afghanistan, Moscow is now Seymour, wV's ieading contributor on economics and the pressuring the left-nationalist govern­ author of numerous articles and pamphlets on the Soviet ment in Angola to agree to the removal bloc including Why the USSR Is Not Capitalist, "Market of the Cuban troops sent there when the Socialism" in Eastern Europe analyzes the economic The Bankruptcy of the South African army invaded that coun­ situation of Yugoslavia, Hungary and East Germany in the Yugoslav Model ------PAGE2 _ try in 1975-76. Moscow has also offered context of Gorbachev's perestroika, discusses the history of to cut off all military aid to Sandinista the ruling bureaucracies' efforts to combat stagnation Hungary: Nicaragua if Washington stops funding through decentralization and "market-oriented" reforins, . "GOUlash CQmmunism" the contras. And to placate Washington and counterposes the Trotskyist program for centralized Goes Bust and Peking, Gorbachev's Kremlin is economic planning based on workers democracy. ------PAGE 9 _ pressuring Vietnam to withdra~ its Included in this pamphlet is "The Bukharin Dossier," For Central Planning forces from Kampuchea, whose people reviewing the career of the Right Opposition leader Nikolai Through SOViet Democracy it saved from the unspeakable horror of Bukharin, today frequently presented in the Soviet press as . _'6 Pol Pot. To this end Moscow is threat­ the "godfather ofperestroika." The article also discusses the ening to cut back its pitifully inade­ "rehabilitation" of "Old Bolsheviks" purged and murdered . *4::: quate aid to the Vietnamese, whose by Stalin's counterrevolutionary terror. incredible heroism and sacrifice inflict­ _ .: ." ',; ''''. ' ed upon U.S. imperialism the greatest defeat in its history. Order from/make checks payable to: PAGE32 $1.00 Spa~acist July 1968 ..._ Spot Publishing Co. ,_It Publishing Co.. Bo. 13n GPO, _ Yorle,N.Y. ,dllS Where Gromyko was widely known (32.paqes) Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 in Western diplomatic circles as "Mr. Nyet," now they're calling Gorbachev 29 JULY 1988 Racism. and Anti-Semitism in Chicago CHICAGo.:-The furious power strug­ which white politicians regularly com­ Cokely's perspective of anti-Semitism integrated mass labor mobilization) .gle that erupted upon the death of black mit racist atrocities, like Ed Koch's bar­ and race war is a trap for black people. such "art" would come down and its mayor Harold Washington last Decem­ rage against Jesse Jackson during the , Alderman Alan Streeter, one of "connoisseurs" would-be dispersed. ber fueled a recent outpouring of anti­ New York State primary. But by say­ ,Cokely's defenders, was' among those Racist mobilizations are not a matter of Semitism, racism and blatant hypocrisy ing,"We are tired ofapologizing," Bar­ who censored the painting of Washing­ tree speech, but a rallying point for on the Chicago political scene. Early in row is alibiing Cokely's anti-Semitic ton on the grounds that "the law of deadly violence. Indeed, the "presti­ May, theB'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation filth-as well as letting Koch off the decency transcends the First Amend­ gious" School of the Art Institute of League released .to thepress tapes of'. hook for his cop terror against blacks mtnt~~SUn-l'imes, 22 May). Streeter Chicago has not been immune to the "lectures" given at meetings of Louis and, .other .minorities in NYC. Racist ils.o':disgustingly (and inaccurately) resurgence of racist bigotry that has hit Farrakhan's Nation ofIslam headquar­ pigs likeKoch must be brought down by baited the' painter, David Nelson, as a American campuses. in recent years. ters by black nationalist bigot Steve In this rigidly segregated city the Cokely, in which he fulminated about a potential for ferocious racist mobiliza­ Jewish conspiracy' .to ,,' take over the tions is an ongoing threat to the world and charged 'that the AIDS oppressed black and Hispanic popula­ epidemicisa result of "Jewish doctors" tions. With a mayoral election sched­ who "inject the AIDS virus in blacks." uled for. next April, the racist drive to Cokely was an .aide to black mayor install a white mayor-s-whatever jhe Eugene Sawyer, who was put in office cost-will unleash the same rabid big­ last December by the bloc of racist ots who terrorized blacks in the unsuc­ aldermen representing the white wards cessful attempt to stop Washington in on the City .Council, joined by a few '83. Recently black families living in defectors from Washington's "reform white bastions of the Northwest Side group." have been terrorized by 8 Klan-style Amidst the uproar ignited by Coke­ cross-burning, shots fired at their homes Iy's anti-Semitic ravings, a group of and acts of vandalism-their lives are in black aldermen marched a phalanx of danger! The black Democratic Party cops into a private exhibit atChicago's politicos celebrate the newly forged .Art Institute to arrest (for "incitingto "unity" they achieved in the "struggle" riot") a painting entitled "Mirth and against the Nelson painting, yet they are Girth," which depicts Harold Washing­ Chicago cops, black aldermen "arrest" paintingot late black ~ayor Harolfi part of the apparatus enforcing grind­ ton in a bra, panties and garter belt. Like Washington at Art Institute. ' ing poverty and unemployment, segre­ any black citizen of Chicago, the paint­ gation, cop terror and racist attacks on ing was abused (slashed) while being massive labor/black struggle, not held Jew. After a long meeting with the the black masses. taken into custody. In the aftermath of up as legitimate •models for demented mayor,the Art Institute school apolo­ Both Sawyer and alderman Timothy these events there was a grotesque role "leaders" like Cokelyto emulate. gized in a full-page newspaper ad "for Evans, his main black mayoral com­ reversal, with 'several black aldermen Inc fact, Cokely's anti-Semitic fanta­ the distress andconcem that this paint­ petitor, claim the mantle of Washing­ and political heavies 'simultaneously sies were picked up by some of those ing caused to the community" while' ton's "reform movement." Washing­ defending the "rights" of an' outright who defended him. 'Lu Palmer, a well­ disapproving ofthe "method" used by ton's 1983 election fueled the hope of bigotICokely) and attackingfreedom of known Chicago blackpolitical activist, the City Council to remove. the paint­ blacks for at least a fair shake. But expression, while the cultural Babbitts defended Cokely down the line on TV, ing. Nelson, a graduating senior at the Harold Washington was a bourgeois of the white racist aldermanic bloc saying, "I think it is certainly possible school, is being represented by the politician who loyally administered cynically postured as opponents of ra­ that Jews, not just Jews but whites, are ACLU in a $100,000 civil rights lawsuit Chicago on behalf. of the capitalists. cism and champions of the First in a conspiracy to rule the world" and against three of the aldermen who Despite Washington's popularity in Amendment. , said he wouldn't be surprised at "doc­ removed the painting (Streeter, Rush defeating the racist Democratic Ma­ Before coming under Sawyer's wing tors injecting AIDS in black children" and Dorothy Tillman) along with un­ chine in 1983, his five-year administra­ Cokely worked the black neighbor­ (Washington Post,9 May). When, after named police officers. tion betrayed the aspirations of black hoods of the 10th Ward under former much waffling, Mayor Sawyer finally By all accounts Nelson does not seem Chicago-as we warned from the begin­ Democratic Party county chairman fired Cokely, the black Chicago De- a racist and fancies himself an "icono­ ning that it would. Washington's de­ (now a Republican) Edward Vrdolyak, 'fender (l June) saw it as the result Of clast." We won't pass judgment on the fense of the racist status quo was most who led the racist City Council opposi­ "Jewish pressure," even though some artistic merit of his "Mirth and Girth" clearly expressed on 28June 1986,when tion to Harold Washington. Cokely is a black politicians and plenty of other painting (evidently a takeoff on the the Ku Klux Klan mobilized up to 3,000 sinister demagogue who echoes the non-Jews were outraged by Cokely's "Girth and Mirth" gay men's clubs). Itis virulent racists in Marquette Park. Even pogromist "theories" of Lyndon La­ speeches. certainly insensitive, but art is often at though Washington himself was a prime Rouche. He is a dangerous man-to The black misleaders apparently its best when it offends existing social target of these hooded terrorists, he told blacks as well as Jews. He aims to pro­ think they can buy a few crumbs off convention and hypocrisy. Still, this black people to stay home and give the voke race war, and in this deeply racist , the table of racist American capitalism painting seems at best obnoxious and at Klan the "silent treatment," while his country, blacks and all minorities can by scapegoating Jews. They are dead worst bigoted. It's not that black elected cops attacked and arrested leftists and only lose. Not surprisingly, Cokely's wrong. Cokely labeled Harold Wash­ officials like Washington don't deserve blacks Wh9 attempted to protest the best defender was Louis ("Hitler was a ington a "nigger" for visiting North Side to be disparaged for acting as overseers Klan mobilizations. . great man") Farrakhan. After Cokely Jewish businesses after they were van- on Reagan's plantation. But the Nelson There is an answer to racist terror­ was fired, Farrakhan quickly offered _ dalized by Nazi punks on the anniver­ painting seems merely to pile homo­ militant labor/black struggle. Six years him a large hall in which to spout his sary of Hitler's Kristallnacht pogrom phobia onto virulent American racism. ago on 27 June 1982, the Nazis threat­ anti-Semitic garbage. last November. Yet'the nightriders who An iconoclast, dedicated to knocking ened to rally against Gay Pride Day. But sinister anti-Semites like Farra­ carried out this attack are the same scum down society's prejudices, he's not. They were stopped. Thousands turned khan weren't the only ones-jumping to who firebomb black homes on the Black. Democratic politicians like out-blacks from the SouthSide, Cokely's defense. Some black leaders Southwest Side! The only way to defeat Bobby Rush would have us believe that Jewish concentration camp survivors like alderman Bobby Rush and Opera­ these genocidal fascists is class struggle the police department which carted the from Skokie, leftists, gays, unionists­ tion PUSH president Willie Barrow that unites all their intended victims­ painting off to jail can be used to pro­ to a labor-backed mobilization initiated tried to get Cokely off the hookby rail­ blacks, Jews, leftists, gays, etc. behind tect blacks from bigotry and racist by the Spartacist League and directed at ing against racist "double standards" by the power of the integrated unions. oppression. No way! Twenty or so years smashing the Nazi threat. Not one ofthe ago Bobby Rush was a Black Panther, black elected officials was present that and this same Chicago police depart­ day: the Democratic Party instead sent a ment, armed fist of the capitalist ruling large contingent of cops who defended' class, blew away Rush's comrade Fred the Nazi scum. Last year when the rac­ Hampton in his, bed because he was ist cops invaded the home of black bus black, militant and some kind of social­ driver Cassandra Seay and family, beat­ ist. The right of artistic expression, and ing them up and then outrageously the right of free speech in general, are charging them with the assault, 'her historic achievements of the bourgeois­ ATU union brothers and sisters mo­ democratic revolution over medieval bilized and stopped the racist cop obscurantism, gains which today are frame-up. under full-scale attack by capitalism in Today while the Reagan machine is its decline. grinding down, racist attacks are ram­ But art exists in the real world. It is pant. And black politicos like Jesse not surprising that some white alder- Jackson spread the word: Don't strug­ • men were rumored to have requested gle, vote Democrat. The Democratic copies of the Nelson painting for their Party of war and racism, which still offices. We remember as well that dur­ maintains the allegiance of black and ing Washington's first election cam­ working people, is the main roadblock paign against Bernard Epton in 1983, to revolutionary struggle in this coun- . racist caricatures of Washington hung try. Urgently needed is a revolutionary in every police precinct in town. It is workers party to fight all oppression quite conceivable that Nelson's picture and exploitation and consign the racist , Southwest News-Herald could quickly become placardsat a Klan American ruling class to.the dustbin of Segregation City powder keg. White racist punks threaten anti-Klan march- rally. In that case, given the appropri­ history. Break with the Democrats­ ers at Marquette park, June 1986. ' ate social power (for example, an For a.Workers Party! • 10 WORKERS VANGUARD Angola ... (continued from page 12) helicopters and SAM antiaircraft bat­ teries. In a series of battles in the early months of this year they made mince­ meat of the apartheid forces. The last South African attack was repulsed on March 23, sending Pretoria's army scur­ rying out of Angola into Namibia. In May, reportedly reinforced with another 8,000 troops, the Cubans went after the retreating South African forces, leading to another confronta­ tion in late Juneat Calueque, only seven milesfrom the Namibian border. Ajoint Angolan/Cuban force of 600 infantry, 35 tanks and a dozen MIGs flown by Cubans, augmented by Namibian . . Lopez! . <.< ..•. • •• , WV 010 guerrillas of SWAPO (South West CIA/South Africa flunkey Savimbi meets with Reagan. Spartacist League protests Savimbi appeagnce at"Freedom Africa People's Organisation), report­ House," February 1986. '. edly bombed the Calueque dam and "the U.s.-backed rebel forces led by UNITA has increasingly moved its sup­ Cabinda oil fields. From the moment inflicted what the NATO house organ Jonas Savimbi." port bases to American-backed Zaire in they came to the aid of black Angola in Jane's Defence Weekly (9 July) de­ the north. And Washington now says 1975, we have supported the Cuban scribed as "one of the heaviest losses The Angola accords are a spin-off of troops fighting the CIA/South African­ experienced by the South African the Reagan-Gorbachev summit in Mos­ that since it is not a signatory, it intends cow. Suc-h deals only encourage the to continue arming UNITA. backed forces-without giving political Defence Forces ...during the 13-year­ imperialists to more aggression, ulti­ While the pressure to capitulate is' support to the petty-bourgeois nation- long war." mately threatening the gains of the coming from the Kremlin, the Luanda alistsin Luanda. . When Pretoria reported that 12white Bolshevik October Revolution. But it regime has been pleading with Washing­ Today, after more than ten years of soldiers died, it sent shock waves may not be so easy for Moscow to ton for a- while. Despite its "socialist" civil war, Angola is in ruins and the through South Africa. (As usual they "extinguish" the "regional hot spot" in . coloration, adopted by virtually every poverty-stricken regime-like all the so­ did not mention casualties among the southern Africa. South Africa-and "Third World" nationalist movement, called "front line" black states from black troops who are the overwhelming the U.S.-wants the Cubans to get out the MPLA (which now calls itself the Mozambique to Zimbabwe-can see no. majority of South African forces in immediately so it can have a free hand in Party of Labor) has sought all along to solution except to batgainaway the Angola.) Like Zionist Israel, white­ the region, while Cubaand Angola have build up a bourgeois state. Critically de­ country to imperialism; Genuine social supremacist South Africa is stunned insisted first on guarantees for Angolan pendent on the Gulf Oil complex for and national emancipation of the post­ when even a single white soldier is killed security and independence for Namibia, hard currency, the Luanda regime has colonial states of southern Africa, rent incombat by blacks. This battle ranks as both of which require the withdrawal of deployed nearly half the Cuban garri­ by tribal divisions within borders arbi­ an unprecedented military defeat for the South African troops. In recent months son in the north, many protecting the trarily drawn by their former imperial­ apartheid regime. The South African ist masters, is inextricably tied to prole- army, strained by continuing black , tarian revolution by the overwhelmingly unrest in the townships and a growing black working class of South Africa, the draft refusal movement among liberal industrial powerh.ouse of the region. whites, has been compelled to call up Yet it is precisely this perspective reserves. Now even the conservative which the Moscow and Havana Stalin­ Afrikaner Dutch Reformed Church is ists oppose. Soviet "experts" have calling for withdrawal from Angola. recently advised the African National Castro claimed that "the history of Congress to clamp down on any talk of Africa will have to be written before and "socialism" and even questioned major­ after Cuito Cuanavale." Yet Granma ity rule, proposing instead a "bicameral headlined its report of the impressive parliament that would give the white Cuban triumphs in Angola: "We Don't minority an effective veto" (Los Ange­ Want a Military Victory Over South les Times, 5 February)! But just as the Africa, We Want a Fair Solution.". The 1976 defeat of the South African Cuban Stalinists are' ready to throw incursion into Angola helped inspire the away hard-won battlefield gains as a Soweto uprising, a genuine communist bargaining chip to cut a dealwith the party in South Africa oould use the Washington/ Pretoria axis because, like shock of the recent military defeats to their Soviet mentors, they are commit­ push forward a revolutionary struggle ted to "peaceful coexistence" with the against apartheid by the powerful black imperialist warmongers in the White proletariat which holds the promise of House. Now the Los Angeles Times liberating all of black Africa from the (14 July) reports that part of the deal .A imperialist chains. includes forming a "new government of Cuban and Angolan forces near Cuito Cuanavale, where they smashed No sellout in Angola! For workers national unity" in Luanda including South African offensive in March 1988. revolution in South Africa!.

denied and the trial is set to begin on as soon as they can and move to and South, whether isolated backwater Loyal Garner... August 8. . Shreveport, Houston-anywhere isbet­ or cosmopolitan center, the cops will It is not surprising that the jury of ter than this. Some hellholes are so / blow you away without notice because (continued from page 12) eleven whites and 'one black, drawn irremediably backward and racist that it you are black, or Hispanic. or anyone their mother, Mrs. Sarah Garner, when from the pool of registered voters in a will take the equivalent of Sherman's else who doesn't "look right." Willis was released. After the white­ town like Hemphill, Texas, would' march to the sea to make them fit for From the LAP D's racist "drug war" wash verdict in the "civil rights" case, acquit the racist killers of a black man habitation. The wanton killing of Loyal dragnet that is rounding up thousands attorneys for cops Thomas Ladner, Bo from "outside." The county seat of Garner-described by a white friend as of black and Hispanic youth.. to the Hyden and Bill Horton filed a motion to Sabine County, a town of 1,500, half "one of the finest men I ever metin my NYPD's SQ-blockchase and execution dismiss the murder charges which were black, Hemphill is nestled in the pine life, white or black"-puts Hemphill of Lidia Ferraro, the cops carry out New eventually filed in Tyler, on the grounds forests sloping down to the old Sabine high up on that list. < York police chief Ben Ward's admoni­ of double jeopardy. The motion was River bottom, now flooded to make a But this murder is no fluke. It is sim­ tion: "Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em reservoir. It' is a poor, backwoods ply distilled racist state violence, like out." And after the cops kill, they walk. Southern town, probably little changed some bootleg swamp swill, made in the Just last week, Manhattan D.A. Mor­ from the '20s and '30s. The surrounding "piney woods" of East Texas. The genthau's grand jury cleared Ferraro's spartacistleague countryside is not planted in cottonany­ county cops who murdered Loyal Gar­ killers of any wrongdoing. He used Rea­ more; the economy, what there isof it, is ner differ from the big city police only in gan's Iran Airbus defense: so it was a Public Offices a mix of livestock raising, dirtfarming, the technological sophistication and mistake, tough; we shoot first and ask leasing mineral rights and a Ii~tle tour­ quantity of'weapons attheir disposal. questions later, and we have the guns. ism (selling worms and minnows as bait As we wrote in "Cop Terror Stalks The cops are given the green light by to anglers who come to fish at Toledo Black America": their bosses, from the White House to Bend reservoir). "Black people inAmerica receive mixed the governors and mayors-and from In Hemphill, pickup trucks sport the signals. Thereare someareasofformal Texas to New York City, that means the equality.... Jim Crowissupposed to be Confederate flag of slavery on. bumper dead. And in some circumstances, Democratic Party of racism and war. stickers almost like a second license you're allowed to. act like the formal Loyal Garner's family will not get plate. For blacks, there are few jobs in equalityis real. Untilyoufind yourself "justice at the bar," whether in Hemp­ town save as domestic "help" for the in a situation where the realracistrules hill, Texas or Washington, D.C. The better-off whites. The civil rights move­ apply. Loyal Garner made a horrible murder of Loyal Garner will only be mistake. Hethoughthehadrights; after ment for the most part missed this East being arrested, he thoughthecouldask avenged at the hands of the revolu­ Texas backwater. Sabine County to makea phonecall.That mistake was tionary' working class, black, brown schools are integrated, it's about the fatal." and white, led by an, integrated, only place .where blacks and whites -wv No. 444, 15 January class-struggle workers party marching meet. Black kids get the hell out of town On the streets ofAmerica's cities, North to victory.• 29 JULY 1988 11 W'IIKEIIS "II'(J'II'

AF Cuban troops and Soviet arms, such as antiaircraft missile battery (left) have been key in stopping South African invasion (right). Bitter Fruilof. Gorbachev's "Peaceful Coexistence" 'Angola: Rotten Deal with Apartheid Terror On July 13 representatives of SOuth (Southwest Africa) and UN-sponsored only weeks after South African troops South African troops moved against Africa, Angola and Cubaannouneed in elections there.. . got'their asses whipped by combined Cuito Cuanavale, a vital government New York that they had reached an But Cuban troops and Soviet arms Cuban and Angolan forces. supply base in southern Angola, and by . accord on tlie "essential principles" ofa have been the decisive military factor in A year ago South African forces January they were hurling some 200 plan to end the 13-year-old war in thwarting Pretoria's designs of'trans­ reinvaded Angola in a bid to shore up its artillery shells a day onto the town, Angola. Brokered by Reagan's hatchet forming black Angola into a neocoloni­ puppet Jonas Savimbi and his UNITA In response, according to the official man for African affairs, Chester Crock­ al vassal state ever since South African mercenaries in their war against the Cuban newspaper Granma (12 June), er, during asecret three-day meeting on troops invaded that newlyindependent Soviet/Cuban-allied Angolan nation.. Cuban president Fidel Castro offered Governor's Island in New York harbor, country in 1975. Coming in the wake of alist regime. Savimbi has also been the Luanda regime reinforcements in­ the "principles" commit Angola 'and the Soviet pullout from Afghanistan, receiving "covert" aid from the CIA to cluding "the best Cuban MIG-23 pilots Cuba to a "staged and total withdrawal . ·this rotten deal is one more product the tune of at least $15 million a year until air and antiaircraft superiority of Cuban troops" from. Angola. In of Mikhail Gorbachev's conciliation of since 1985. The U.S. aid now includes over the enemy was achieved." The exchange, South Africa agrees toimple­ U.S. imperialism. If implemented, it Stinger antiaircraft missileswhich were first .contingent of Cuban reinforce­ ment a ten-year-old United Nations res­ offers up resource-rich Angola on a sil­ used toshoot down an Angolan passen­ ments arrived in Cuito on December 5, olution calling for reducing the number ver platter to the apartheid regime. And ger plane, killing over a hundred. Late along with Soviet tanks, MI-24 attack of South African troops in Namibia it's all the more galling because it comes last year more than 6,{)()O heavily armed continued onpage 11

Loyal Garner Was Victim of Racist Murder! On July 15,the three East Texas cops asked to make a phone call to his wife, Willis was pulled out of the courtroom who six.months ago beat the life out of the cops worked him over and dumped aad taken to jail "after a local woman Loyal Garner, Jr. were acquitted by a him back in his cell, his head bloody and complained he was breathing on her Hemphill, Texas jury-of violating his battered. He lay there until morning, neck from the seat behind her" (New civil rights. Garner was the black when he was flown to a hospital in Tyler, York Times, 10 July). Even the sug­ Louisiana government· worker and . Texas, where he diedon December 27. gestion of a breach of the South's prime father of six who last Christmas night "It was," we wrote at the tim~;"a chem­ taboo, physical contact between a black drove across the Texas line to retrieve a ically pure case of the violence against . man and a whitewomali, was enough friend's car. After he was-stopped by black people which' permeates this rac­ to set the cops in motion again. "I've Hemphill cops and refused a breath­ ist country." lost one son in Sabine County and alyzer test, the police hauled Garner The "trial" of the killers of Loyal Gar­ I'm not going through this again," said Loyal Gamer, Jr., beaten to death in and his two friends in. When Loyal ner proved it again. His younger brother , continued on page 11 jail by racist cops. 12 29 JULY 1988