WfJRIlERS '.II',.RI) 25¢ ~X.623 No. 568 ~~ 29 January 1993

ay New imperialist chief Clinton celebrates at inaugural ball. Desperate Haitian refugees risk their lives in small boats seeking to escape terror and sta Clinton Dances As Haitians Drown,lraqis Die While president-elect Bill Clinton and munications center. The hotel has been his yuppie claque were carousing under on Bush's hit list ever since it served as pre-inaugural fireworks displays in the base for journalists like CNN's Peter Washington, George Bush lit up the skies Arnett, whose factual reports about over Baghdad with his own counter­ American atrocities like Amiriya or the inaugural, raining death down on the bombing of a baby formula factory dur­ Iraqi people. It was "the mother of all ing the Gulf slaughter exposed Pentagon unfinished business," quipped one news­ lies, and earned him wrathful denuncia­ paper cartoon, as the Republican sore tions as a "dupe of Saddam Hussein." loser with state power ordered three White House spokesmen conceded bombing raids against Iraq in his last that it was "unique" for a lame duck pres­ week in office. A bogus Iraq "crisis" was ident to be bombing other countries days manufactured to lend plausible implau­ before leaving the Oval Office. Then sibility for what everybody knew was again, Bush never did seem too recon­ Bush lashing out at the Iraqi strongman ciled to last November's "popular man­ for outlasting him. In the streets of Bagh­ date." All Republican appointees were dad, demonstrating schoolgirls taunted, ordered to quit before Clinton was sworn "Bush is gone but Saddam remains." in-leaving key government positions But Clinton had no qualms aboufpick­ vacant-and those who hesitated were ing up where Bush left.off, as American denounced by Bush aide Kevin Moley fighter planes l}lasted Iraqi facilities as "disloyal" and "traitorous." Explain­ three times in as many days after he took ing the White House action, Moley office. Speaking amid the grotesque railed, 'That's what the American people splendor of a $30 million inauguration voted for Nov. 3. Now the consequences rite, Clinton's thankfully brief incoming will come home to roost" (New York address was an uninterrupted exhortation Times, 16 January). Indeed, when former for "sacrifice"-to working people and secretary of state James Baker gloated minorities already reeling from two dec­ in self-congratulation about a "peaceful" ades of plummeting living standards. transition of power after Clinton's Desperate Haitians had their illusions of inauguration, it made you wonder just imminent salvation crushed even, before uters what else the Bush/Quayle team might the new president was sworn in-Clin­ Sore loser Bush bombs Iraq. Grieving woman holds photo of her sister, killed have been thinking about. ton not only continued Bush's racist in AI Rashid Hotel by U.S. missile. The outgoing administration openly exclusion of Haitian refugees, but defied two court orders against erasing ordered a naval blockade of the island gon claims of a "pinpoint strike" in the like all the others, had been visited ump­ White House computer files. They finally country to keep them imprisoned in their first attack on January 13, over a hundred teen times by United Nations "inspec­ promised to hand over copies of every­ police-state hellhole. jets armed with high-tech "smart bQmbs" tors"). Pentagon flacks first claimed the thing they erased, but who would notice Bush: The Mother of All hit only one of four missile batteries hotel had been hit by Iraqi anti-aircraft if, in the end, they copied only 98.2 Sore Losers targeted. They did succeed in killing 19 fire, then allowed that some of the mis­ percent of the files-or perhaps 92.8 per­ people and bombing a residential area siles might have passed near the hotel, cent? Bush also handed over a personal If Nixon used the IRS and gusano in the southern province of Basra. and finally admitted that all 45 of the diary of the Iran/contra scandal kept hid­ Watergate "plumbers" to go after his A second attack four days later did low-flying cruise missiles had been pro­ den from investigators for five years. "enemies list," one-time CIA chief Bush achieve a "pinpoint strike," as a Toma­ grammed to fly over the city. Predictably, the diary as released, was relied on more formidable means, seiz­ hawk cruise missile exploded right at So now the bombing of the hotel is hardly competition for True Confessions. ing his last chance to "bloody the nose" the entrance of Baghdad's AI Rashid deemed an "accident." We remember a But where the Washington Post (16 Jan­ of Saddam Hussein-and anybody else Hotel (which happened to be hosting similar "accident" two years ago, when uary) reported, "Diary Says Bush Had who'd crossed him. But despite Penta- an Islamic conference at the time), kill­ laser-guided "smart bombs" pierced the 'Details' of Iran Arms Deal," the ever ing two women, and bloodying a Ger- roof of Baghdad's Amiriya air raid shel­ "responsible" New York Times ran a - man journalist. The nominal target­ ter with surgical precision, incinerating cover-up of the cover-up, headlining, eight miles away-was also destroyed, hundreds of sleeping women and chil­ "Entries Suggest He Did Not Know I II 05 another of those supposedly Ubiquitous dren. We also recall how the Pentagon Details of Scandal." Before exiting, Bush Iraqi nuclear facilities (this one turned threatened to target the AI Rashid at the freely dispensed presidential pardons to o 74470 81030 • ~ out to be a tool and die factory, which, time, labeling it a secret military com- continued on page 2 7 January). Secretary of State Warren around on admitting Haitian refugees. Cuba! Down with the racist blockade Clinton ... Christopher presided over army spying Denouncing Bush's policy as "inhu­ of Haiti! (continued from page 1) on left and antiwar groups when he mane" and "appalling" during the cam­ served under Lyndon Johnson during paign, Clinton promised that even those Fight for a Workers Party! Caspar Weinberger and five others who the Vietnam War. New CIA chief Jim Haitians who were not deemed "political While Clinton has gone out of his way faced Contragate criminal charges. The Woolsey is "the Republicans' favorite refugees" would be given "temporary to snub labor and minorities, the fake­ question, asked Daniel Schorr in the New' Democrat" (New York Times, II Janu­ asylum" until deposed president Jean­ left is gaga over the Democrats, seeking York Times (29 December 1992), was ary), while Zoe Baird, Clinton's nominee Bertrand Aristide was restored to power. to be the new administration's "socialist" "Will Bush Pardon Himself?" for top cop who was shot down for hiring When it became clear that upwards of _ conscience. A pacifist rally in Washing­ If Bush didn't, it was only because he undocumented workers, was hailed by 150,000 Haitians were preparing a des­ ton against the bombing of Iraq on Jan­ could be damn sure the Democrats had the Wall Street Journal (13 January) as perate exodus in time for the inaugura­ uary 13 pleaded outside Democratic no intention of going after him. Leading "An Attorney General Quayle Could tion, Clinton began furiously backped­ Party headqoarters: "Bill, Gore-Stop Congressional Democrats endorsed the Love." aling, asserting that Bush's racist the War!" The rad-lib Nation (l Febru­ Weinberger pardon, and a: House panel The Clinton team came in vowing to interdiction policy had to be maintained ary) carried a front-page "Memos to investigating the "October Surprise" keep the death row assembly line running "for the time being" to assure a "smooth Bill," which begged him to_listen to issued a- whitewash report exonerating at full speed and to slash "entitlement" transition." Then he went Bush one fur­ "some different voices" than "hordes of Reagan/Bush of charges that they stole programs like Medicaid and Medicare. ther, mounting a full-scale Coast Guard policy wonks, bureaucrats, office seek­ the 1980 elections by cutting a deal with And aside from his lukewarm support blockade, "Operation Able Manner," of ers, pundits, economists, corporate lob­ Khomeini to delay the release of Amer­ to liberalizing Bush's draconian anti­ Haiti's northern coast and the Windward byists," etc.-as though Clinton were a ican hostages until after Reagan came to abortion policies, Clinton pulled back on Passage. well-meaning innocent being misled by power. The hostages were released as most of his other campaign promises even For all of Clinton's "humanitarian" his advisers! The social-democratic In Reagan took the oath of office, and arms before taking office. The middle-class tax rhetoric, this brazenly racist act has These Times enthused in a January 11 shipments started flowing to Iran via cut and promised investment in public nothing to do with saving Haitian lives. article, "It's been a long time since any­ Israel. But Democrat Lee Hamilton in­ works and infrastructure were zapped. Over 40,000 Haitians have fled since one in power spoke our language." toned there was "no credible evidence." The "commitment" to issue an immediate Aristide's overthrow in 1991, and they Gus Hall's Communist Party long­ Election Promises Are executive order banning discrimination will continue to seek refuge from abject ingly harked back to the heady popular­ Made to Be Broken against homosexuals in the armed forces poverty and the terror of the military front days of Roosexelt's "New Deal," has turned into an evanescent rumor of regime. Last December 21, 392 people advising that "With enough 'street heat' The Democrats never went after Rea­ undefined action at an indefinite time. drowned when the 70-foot Vierge gan/Bush, because they fully share the Clinton can be forced down the path Meanwhile, the scale of officially sanc­ Miracle sank off the Bahamas (a Cuban taken by FDR" (People's Weekly World, ambition of imposing a "New World tioned bigotry in the military was indi­ ship rescued the handful of survivors). Order" of U.S. imperialist hegemony 9 January)-does Gus want to declare cated by the killing of gay sailor Allen Hundreds of HIV-positive Haitians­ World War II again? Meanwhile the CP's around the world. Clinton's new war sec­ Schindler, who was found bludgeoned who hav qualified as political refu­ retary Les Aspin is a diehard Democratic r more overtly social-democratic splitoff, to death after reportedly being subjected gees-remain imprisoned in danger­ the Committees of Correspondence, hawk who counsels more military adven­ to continual harassment aboard his ship ously unsanitary conditions on the U.S. tures as a way to ward off pressure to hailed "a milestone defeat for the right based in Japan. Guantariamo base in Cuba. Those who wing" (Corresponder, January 1993). cut the defense budget: "It may be that do make it to the U.S. are thrown into to maintain a military for the extreme Desperate Haitians Face Right in there with the pack was veteran Racist Blockade dungeons like Miami's notorious Krome Stalinoid Sam Marcy, whose Movement contingencies, it will be necessary to Avenue Detention Center, where Hai­ show that it is useful in lesser con­ But what has met with the greatest for a Peoples Assembly solemnly ad­ tians are imprisoned, many for more than vised Clinton that he "has the power" to tingencies" (Financial Times [London], outrage is Clinton's 180-degree turn- a year. Yet when a Cuban pilot hijacked issue an executive order "that this coun­ a plane loaded with 47 (white) passen­ try's corporations stop laying off and gers on December 29 and landed in start rehiring." Sure, and while he's at The Haitian Revolution and the Miami, they spent all of one night at it, he might as well raise the red flag Struggle for Black Freedom Krome and were released without over the White House! charges. Infuriated, the Haitian prisoners Twelve years of Reaganism and bour­ The Haitian people today live under a started a hunger strike demanding asy­ geois hoopla over the "death of Com­ neocolonial regime ofdire poverty and terror. lum, which was suppressed by prison munism" have driven the fake-left to But at one time Haiti was a beacon of libera­ guards. such desperation and disorientation that tion to black slaves in the U.S. The Haitian Haitian-born basketball star Olden even an outspoken advocate of the racist Revolution of 1791 -1804 led by Toussaint Polynice pointedly asked: "A Cuban death penalty and untrammeled imperi­ L' Ouverture created the first black republic guy hijacked a plane, and he's a hero .... alist aggrandizement like Clinton looks and had a profound impact on the struggle How about the people who risk their good to them as a "lesser evil." Bush for emancipation. On the occasion of Black lives on 50-foot boats?" The U.S. ruling may have tried to rain on Clinton's TROTSKY History Month, we present these remarks LENIN class couldn't care less about black parade, but politically this really is a by the great American abolitionist Frederick people ground down by a brutal military "smooth transition." Capitalist politics Douglass from a January 1893 speech. Appointed U.S. emissary to Santo Domingo in dictatorship, despite Aristide's fulsome is a shell game, and never more so than 1889, Douglass resigned in protest after two years, exposing and denouncing America's support for Clinton. And no less than the today when, as Gore Vidal put it, there's colonialist actions. Republicans, the Democrats are dead set one "property party" with two right From the beginning of our century until now, Haiti and its inhabitants, under one on strangling the Cuban deformed work­ wings. Only when a fighting workers aspect or another, have, for various reasons, been very much in the thoughts of the ers state. Clinton strongly backed last movement, leading the class-conscious American people. While slavery existed among~t us, her example was a sharp thorn October's Democrat-sponsored "Cuban proletariat along with the black and His­ in our side and a source of alarm and terror. She came into the sisterhood of nations Democracy Act," aimed at tightening panic poor, seizes power from the capi­ through blood .... the economic embargo around Castro's talist rulers will there be a prospect of We should not forget that the freedom you and I enjoy to-day; that the freedom that Cuba. But the Cuban people are pre­ salvation from oppression and poverty. eight hundred thousand colored people enjoy in the British West Indies; the freedom pared to fight to the dea.th to resist Break with the Democrats-Fight for a that has come to the colored race the world over, is largely due to the brave stand U.S.-inspired counterrevolution. Defend workers party! • taken by the black sons of Haiti ninety years ago. When they struck for freedom, they builded better than they knew. Their swords were not drawn and could not be drawn simply for themselves alone. They were linked and interlinked with their race, and striking for their freedom, they struck for the freedom of every black man ih the world .... Yuppie Baird Sets Up Former Until Haiti struck for freedom, the conscience of the Christian world slept pro­ foundly over slavery. It was scarcely troubled even by a dream of this crime against Servants for Deportation justice and liberty. The Negro was in its estimation a sheep-like creature, having no rights which white men were bound to respect, a docile animal, a kind of ass, capable Perhaps best personifying the yup­ done is usefully work for various fam­ of bearing burdens, and receiving stripes from a white master without resentment, and pie arrogance of the New Age Clinton ilies-unless they "voluntarily" leave without resistance. The mission of Haiti was to dispel this degradation and dangerous gang was his failed nominee for the country. delusion, and to give to the world a new and true revelation of the black man's attorney general, Zoe Baird, a high­ Fostering racist protectionism, the character. This mission she has performed and performed it well. flying insurance executive whose bourgeois media calls undocumented -Frederick Douglass, "Lecture on Haiti" (January 1893) posh' New Haven neighborhood re­ workers like the Corderos "illegal cently excluded a foster home for aliens," as if they were some kind black and Hispanic disabled chil­ of criminals. Caught in the spotlight dren. Baird withdrew her nomina­ by Baird's ambition to be top cop, tion when revelations that she had the Corderos have already had their hired two foreign-born undocu­ lives grievously disrupted. Just before mented workers as chauffeur and the nomination, Baird fired Lillian !!lw!.!!!!YOr..~!!~!!.~/!.! ~ babysitter provoked a scandal. The Cordero after more than two years DIRECTOR OF PARTY PUBLICATIONS: Liz Gordon bourgeois media anxiously fretted on the job, hoping (vainly) to head EDITOR: Jan Norden over whether the incident would off embarrassing questions. And Cor­ PRODUCTION MANAGER: Joan Parker affect her $507,000-a-year job at dero's estranged husband Victor was CIRCULATION MANAGER: Karen Valdez Aetna Life and Casualty (it won't), forced to leave his present employer EDITORIAL BOARD: George Foster, Frank Hunter, Jane Kerrigan, Len Meyers, James Robertson, and she had to shell out a trifling (for last week after journalists tracked him Joseph Seymour, Alison Spencer, Marjorie Stamberg her) $14,900 in fines and back taxes. down; he left a note saying that he The Spartacist League is the U.S. Section of the International Communist League (Fourth But the real victims of this Clinton was returning to Peru. Internationalist). lMJrkers Vanguard (USPS 098·770) published biweekly, except 2nd issue August and with 3-week interval December, "transition" fiasco are Victor and Whatever the idiosyncrasies of the by the Spartacist Publishing Co., 41 Warren Street, New York, NY 10007. Telephone: (212) 732-7862 (Editorial), Lillian Cordero, the Peruvian couple bourgeoisie's inherently racist immi­ (212) 732-7861 (Business). Address all correspondence to: Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116. Domestic subscriptions: $7.00/24 issues. Second-class postage paid at New York, NY. POSTMASTER: Send address changes who worked for her for wages of gration laws, the Corderos made it to to Workers Vanguard, Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116. $1,000 a month. Now the INS says the U.S. and they should be allowed Opinions expressed in signed articles or letters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint. the Corderos face possible deporta­ to stay! Full citizenship rights for tion proceedings-when all they've foreign-born workers! No. 568 29 January 1993

2 WORKERS VANGUARD letters

Drawn together over the dubious Big AI and the Feds Tawana Brawley case, they used and pro­ moted each other. While fawning over Brooklyn, NY is one of the biggest. Sharpton finked "Hitler was a great man" Farrakhan, 10 December 1992 for the feds when the NYPD red squad the NAP "recruited" Sharpton and gave was reborn under the racist Koch admin­ him a column in their paper. Now that Dear Comrades, istration as Police Commissioner Ward's Sharpton has gone "respectable" and his Your review of Malcolm X echoed my "black desk" for the systematic surveil­ appetites have grown bigger than the own thoughts as I left the theatre. lance and harassment of black activists NewmanIFulani cult, relations seem to Howev.er, I object [to] your charac­ in New York City. have cooled. Today the NAP and Sharp­ terization of Al Sharpton as a "fat fink." As a service for the FBI, Sharpton car­ ton are rivals in the filthy back alleys of Sharpton's bulk is not the issue. At best, ried a concealed microphone, escorted Democratic Party politics. this epithet insults all people of obesity. "wired" agents to meetings, and had an Describing themselves as the "spare You have alluded a number of times FBI tap installed on his phone to record tire" to Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coali­ to Sharpton's role as a stooge for the conversations with other prominent tion, Lenora Fulani's supporters rallied FBI, assuming that it is common knowl­ blacks. Sharpton has never denied his outside the Democratic National Con­ edge. It isn't. You might reach more of service to the FBI, the government vention in Atlanta in 1984 and gave their Sharpton's growing following-he fin­ agency responsible for the COIN TEL­ platform over to stooges for Frank ished third in the Democratic senatorial PRO frame-ups and murders of leftists, Lorenzo's union-busting campaign at primary-by reiterating the details. especially the Black Panther Party. These Continental airlines. In 1990, while also Might I also suggest that you address outrageous and undisputed facts were running in Democratic Party primaries, Sharpton's relationship to the New Alli­ exposed in a January 1988 bombshell in Fulani and the NAP sued the Socialist ance Party, as well as do an analysis of Newsday. Finks come in all shapes and sizes. Workers Party over their ballot place­ the latter, whose social-dem politics' Sharpton has also been named as a ment (the NAP lost) and used the capi­ have had appeal for many would-be contract agent for the CIA, involved in no purpose that would be served by a talist state to knock independent black Marxists. A debate between the Sparta­ destabilizing the Manley regime in debate with this political aberration. candidates off the ballot. cists and Lenora FulaniIFred Newman Jamaica. Sharpton also gave his services Despite occasional left-liberal posturing, Fighting dirty against other leftists is would be enlightening. Branding Sharp­ to the dubious Roy Innis, a recruiter for the NAP has no political principles. nothing new for the NAP. They fused ton a fink and. NAP a cult-as you have the racist South African army's UNITA Founder/leader/shrink Fred Newman with the mad Lyndon LaRouchites done in the past-with no explanation, forces in Angola. In 1986, while stump­ runs the NAP as a front for his psycho­ before LaRouche's "Operation Mop simply echoes the rad-lib press. ing for Senator Alfonse D' Amato, a man babble "therapy" cult. What the New Up"-a campaign of physical violence Comradely greetings, who called black people "animals," Alliance Party and Al Sharpton have against members of the Communist Jerry E. Sharpton launched a campaign against in common is that they are both always Party-and never disavowed that gang­ Arab shopkeepers as part of the racist on the prowl for a hustle-any anti­ sterism. As we've said before, "with the WV replies: True enough, finks come in "war on drugs." working-class scam that gains them cold New Alliance Party, hold on to your wal­ all shapes and sizes ... and Al Sharpton As to the New Alliance Party, we see cash or hot limelight will do. let, and watch your back."

play into the hands of the craft union tops. It would make it easier for the pie­ A Dual Union for Drywaleros? cards to isolate the combative dry­ Nashville, Tennessee wallers, not only from the rest of the 12/12/92 Carpenters and building trades unionists, but from the combative sections of the To the Editor: heavily minority proletariat of Los Ange­ Your recent article [WV No. 565, 11 les as well. And the rest of L.A. labor December 1992] on the settlement of the could learn from some of the drywaleros' drywallers' strike in Southern California hardball tactics. examines the role of the AFL-CIO craft In the early years of this century, the union misleaders in the strike. In par­ revolutionaries of the Industrial Workers tially subverting the strike, these labor of the World-the Wobblies-were able, bureaucrats acted pretty much true to with small numbers, to lead some key form. battles which taught a generation of You also point out that this area, as labor militants some of the lessons which well as the construction industry in this paved the way for the mass struggles area, is one in which the union move­ that forged the industrial unions of the ment is weak. Correspondingly, it is an CIO. But the Wobblies' refusal on prin­ area and an industry where the Latino ciple to work within the larger AFL proletariat is at once concentrated and unions because they were dominated by militant. a pro-capitalist bureaucracy, and the In an abstract sense, the presence (or IWW's rejection of the necessary polit­ absence) of all the foregoing elements ical struggle to construct a revolutionary raises the question of a call for a "dual workers patty, made them, in James union" in this industry and area: - Cannon's words, "neither a union nor a I would greatly appreciate any effort WV Photo .Striking San Diego drywaUers protest pOlice repression at rally on January 23. party ... but something of both, with some by you to address arid to clarify this parts missing. It was an uncompleted question. was noteworthy for th~ militancy of the But the cynical AFL-CIO bureaucrats anticipation of a Bolshevik party, lacking Comradely greetings, Latino strikers, whose roving pickets and made a virtue out of their own sabotage its rounded-out theory, and a projection Bill Francis courage in the face of Orange County of solidarity action in defense of the of the revolutionary industrial unions of sheriffs, la migra immigration cops and drywallers, cynically clai~ing the strik­ the future, minus the necessary mass WV replies: The six-month-Iong strike the LAPD was an example for all labor. ers were better off "organizing alone." membership" ("The I.W.W.-The Great by Southern California drywall workers They refused to play by the bosses' rules. To call for a "dual union" here would Anticipation").

punctuational change"-whose lineage variation-"random" in the sense of un­ is directly traceable to the study of nat­ directed or unbiased towards adaptive More' on Gould's ural selection and speciation-to "the solutions to a changing environment; vagaries of human history." Gould second, natural selection of those with should know better, in fact Gould used greater reproductive success for a given M,ismeasure of Marx to know better than this. In the essay 'environment from this substratum of "Shades of Lamarck" (reprinted in The pre-existing variants. 11 December 1992 religious men of whatever paI1icular Panda's Thumb [1982]), Gould makes a J.B. Lamarck, French biologist and faith. In contrast, Gould always seemed very powerful argument for the role of early evolutionist, believed that in evolu­ Dear comrades: particularly aware of his surroundings directedness as opposed to randomness tion nature climbs a ladder of complexity I really liked the article in answer to and quite conscious of applying strict in human cultural evolution. motivated by a "force" which operates Stephen J. Gould ("Punctured Equilib­ scientific standards and scholarship, not As Gould explains it the difference through the creative response of organ­ rium: Stephen Jay Gould and the just to the snails of his immediate pro­ between human cultural evolution and isms to their "felt needs." Lamarck's Mismeasure of Marx," WV No. 563, 13 fessional interest but to matters of every­ natural evolution is also the crucial mechanism, later bastardized by reduc­ November 1992). I have always been day life, witness his wonderful contri­ difference between Darwinism and tion to the passive "inheritance of ac­ struck by the extent to which scientists butions on the flight dynamics of Lamarckism, two alternative mecha­ quired characteristics," proposed a direct of rather good calibre seem to be quite baseballs and on the sociology of the nisms for the appearance of adaptations adaptation to the changing environment: capable at one and the same time of game. within a homogeneous population. an organism perceives changes, responds determinedly refusing any deus ex It was therefore particularly disap­ Darwin's contribution, and his great in 'the "right" way and passes the infor­ machina in their own understanding of - pointing to see his essay in Natural insight, was a mechanism based on two mation directly to its offspring, As Gould particular physical or biological ques­ History (October 1992). Gould now steps: first, the appearance within a notes: "this is the essential difference tions, while at the same time being active seems bent to apply "modern views of homogeneous population of "random" continued on page 11 29 JANUARY 1993 3 Young Sparlacus NYC Curriculum BaIlie Flashpoinl for Anli-Gay Bigolry

"Children of the Rainbow," a multi­ ',.,;iit cultural public school curriculum, is the focus of a white-hot anti-gay backlash in New York City. The curriculum, October rally championed by NYC schools chancellor (left) in support Joseph Fernandez, aims to instill respect of multicultural for different races, nationalities and eth­ curriculum. nic groups. It also aims to promote Anti-gay bigots awareness and sensitivity about families in Brooklyn headed by adults of the same sex-sug­ District 15 (right). gested readings for kids include Heather Has Two Mommies and Daddy's Room­ mate-and tolerance of gays and les­ bians generally. School district meetings "::r-; in Queens have' combusted in shrieks ,,'" of "faggot" and "lezzie." In Brooklyn's Sunset Park neighborhood, posters ap­ peared stating, "If you want to wipe out AIDS, wipe out the gays," and parents marched on their school board to force the removal of references to homosexu­ ality from the curriculum. The opening shots of this ahti-gay witchhunt were fired in November by District 24 school board member Ninfa Segarra and school board president M'ary Cummins, who formed the "Family Defense Council" to mobilize parents against gays. Big guns and big money back these big-mouthed bigots. Organ­ was overruled by the citywide Board of the supposedly "natural" gender roles are but hatreds fueled by economic insecur­ izing from the pulpit of St. Patrick's Education, which is seeking to compro­ drilled into children relentlessly. Those ity and manipulated by reactionaries in Cathedral, the reactionary Cardinal John mise. Meanwhile, only eight of the city's who don't conform are made to feel targeting scapegoats. Liberal politicians O'Connor praised Segarra's "courage." school districts have approved the Rain­ like outcasts, fearing rejection and vio­ who preach "tolerance" while imposing The Family Defense Council receives bow Curriculum as proposed; many lence. Gays and lesbians who grow up budget cuts and austerity in the interests "materials and logistical support" from have postponed references to gays until in working-class, black and Hispanic of the capitalist class (like Dinkins and ultraright televangelist Pat Robertson's the fifth or sixth grade. And surveys communities often have the hardest time Fernandez) are part of the problem, not "Christian Coalition." Pat Robertson's show that very few teachers are using of all. A 1989 federal study found that the solution, no matter how personally unholy bigots plan to help finance and this optional curriculum. Yet, according 30 percent of teenage suicides are les­ sincere their "pro-gay" views. organize elections for anti-gay candi­ to a just-released poll, 94 percent of bian or gay youth. And outrageously, the Socialists see the fight for gay rights dates in all 32 city public school districts New Yorkers polled favor AIDS edu­ Department of Human Services refused as part of the class struggle. We not only this May. cation in public schools, 65 percent to officially release this report because demand full democratic rights for homo­ it was deemed an affront to "family sexuals, we put forward a broad social This battle also intersects city politics, support the distribution of condoms in values." Certainly this curriculum is an program that addresses the needs of all in that key opponents of the Rainbow schools (another focus of right-wing Curriculum are supporters of Rudolph opposition to Fernandez), and 72 percent attempt to address a real need. the oppressed: for jobs, education and housing; for an end to material want Giuliani, the mayoral candidate for the favor teaching about gay and lesbian But liberal attempts to u.se public through a planned economy. A revolu­ racist "law and order" backlash. Mean­ families. education to eliminate bigotry against tionary perspective for a socialist future while, Mayor Dinkins' close ally Carl One needn't agree with the liberal homosexuals, or racism, or sexism, are based on the fallaey that these evils are of equality and abundance is key to McCall, president of the NYC Board of premises of the curriculum's proponents Education, attacked Fernandez for intro­ to understand the need to defend it caused by mere ignorance. In fact, it is defeating the anti-gay witchhunters who ducing the curriculum in grade schools. against the bigots' assault. In this society not ignorance that causes gay-bashing, prey on insecurity.• Dinkins is backing way off out of fear of losing black and Hispanic votes in the '93 elections. Though the drive against the curric­ Berkeley, Columbia Protests Against Imperialist Attack on Iraq ulum has been spearheaded by an all-white Queens school board (many of whom send their children to paro­ chial schools!), many black and His­ panic parents have been suckered by ~~u.s. Hands Off the World!" the bigots' campaign. Cummins rails: "I will not demean our legitimate minori­ Spartacus Youth Club (SYC) members opened the ties, such as blacks, Hispanics, and new semester at UC Berkeley and Columbia University Asians, by lumping them together with with protests against the terror bombing of Iraq and homosexuals in that curriculum" (Village racist neocolonial intervention in Somalia. At Columbia Voice, 22 December 1992). Using the on January 21 student protesters chanted, "U.S. Out of Big Lie tactic that met with success the Persian Gulf! U.S. Out of Africa!" ... while a few in Colorado, where an anti-gay rights "Democratic Socialists" who stumped for new imperi­ amendment to that state's constitution alist commander in chief Clinton sheepishly cowered passed last November, New York's anti­ at a lit table. An SYC spokesman nailed the Democrats gay bigots appeal to the economic resent­ as a "party of war, from the atom-bombing of Hiroshima ments of struggling working-class and and Nagasaki, to the colonial war which slaughtered minority families by portraying gays as two million Vietnamese, to the Bay of Pigs!" a privileged elite who already wield too The next day, the Berkeley SYC held a lively rally much power. Akin to the anti-Semitic on Sproul Plaza. Recalling that the beating of Rodney portrayal of Jews as "privileged" money­ King occurred just days after the Gulf slaughter over lenders, this poison leads to pogroms­ two years ago, SYC member Karen Lawrence said, and violent gay-bashing has dramatically "This is the domestic side of Bush and Clinton's New increased in New York. World Order. .. gunning down blacks in the streets all Schools chancellor Fernandez has over the country, just as they rain bombs down in Iraq refused to back down in the face of the if! order to establish themselves as cops of the world." bible thumpers. He suspended the anti­ Anti-imperialism abroad means class struggle at us gay Queens District 24 school board, but home! Join the Spartacus Youth Clubs!. Spartacus Youth Club rally at Columbia University, January 21. 4 WORKERS VANGUARD '" ~"\) "~~i1~il~ ~~~~~ ~,."",.'-b"\),..,\in"",,\),,\)ih "t.... "\)\"t~\"t~ Columbia University: Hands Off Harlem!

Student protest erupted at Columbia into the occupied building to get to Brother" at Columbia. Refusing the stu­ Jack, that's why we honor Malcolm X University last month over the universi­ classes! Meanwhile, Dean of Students dents' demand for amnesty, Greenberg and reject all that "turn the other cheek" ty's plan to build a biotechnology lab on Jack Greenberg, a liberal who litigated pompously lectured that Martin Luther crap!) the site of Harlem's Audubon Ballroom, the landmark 1954 Brown desegregation King taught him that "protesters should In a meeting the next day, CO,alition where MaJcolm X frequently spoke and case, today relishes his role as "Big always accept their punishment." (Right, leader Peter Wilson turned on the ISO where he was assassinated. On Decem­ with gross redbaiting and threats "to kick ber 14, an integrated group of 150 stu­ them out personally." The ISO, which dents chanting "Malcolm X!" seized and has a history of submerging themselves occupied Hamilton Hall, which houses in liberal feminist (e.g., WAC) and pac­ the office of the dean of students. ifist coalitions-only to end up the butt Spartacus Youth Club supporters partic­ of anti-communist exclusions-predict­ ipated in this sit-in. Now, using police ably sat on their hands. In contrast, Spar­ videotapes, the arrogant and vindictive tacus Youth Club members denounced university administration has fingered this junior McCarthyism, and openly black and leftist protesters and threat­ fought to win students to a socialist per­ ens star chamber "hearings" that could spective. We think a worthwhile monu­ result in suspensions and expulsions. ment to Malcolm X would be a fighting We demand: Drop the charges! No repri­ youth movement for black equality. Wil­ sals against the Audubon Ballroom son threatened to throw us out too, but protesters! was forced to back down. Up on a hill, behind iron gates, Colum­ The Audubon has stood abandoned bia University has always been a privi­ and decaying for 20 years, more a sym­ leged bastion of racism and an arrogant bol of urban blight than the legacy of bully of neighboring black Harlem. In Malcolm X or the Puerto Rican inde­ 1968, the miiitant student revolt at pendentistas who spoke there in its hey­ Columbia was sparked by the univer­ day. Still, the protests have forced the sity's refusal to allow the black com­ university to pledge that they will incor­ munity access to a gymnasium Columbia Peter porate some memorial to Malcolm X and planned to build in Morningside Park. Demonstrators honor Malcolm X at February 1990 protest to save Audubon open a public health clinic on the site. Columbia continues this tradition to Ballroom (above). Protests against Columbia's plans to build a gym in The value of this promise remains to be Morningside Park (below) fueled 1968 student strike. this day as slumlord of Morningside Liberation News Service seen, coming from the racist slumlord Heights, routinely evicting black and Columbia administration. Hispanic tenants. A black high school The racist hell Malcolm X so elo­ honors student, Edmund Perry, was quently denounced will not be elimi­ gunned down outside Columbia's gates nated without uprooting the capitalist in 1985 by a New York City cop patrol­ system. Today, blacks in Harlem and ling the "border"-effectively a color Dominicans in Washington Heights face line-between Columbia University and rampant cop terror, like the police Harlem. execution of Jose Garcia last year, The "Barnard/Columbia Save the and prison-like educational facilities, Audubon Coalition" is dominated by while conditions of mass unemployment leaders of the Black Student Organiza­ and nonexistent health care have caused tion, with the fake-socialist International diseases of poverty like tuberculosis to Socialist Organization (ISO) playing the reach epidemic proportions. Anti-racist role of cringing water boys. When police students need to link up with the power surrounded the dean's office during the of the working class in a fight for so­ occupation of Hamilton Hall, the ISO cialist revolution. Capitalist Columbia hilariously waffled between spouting should be nationalized and put under "anti-pig" rhetoric, and repeatedly call­ student/campus worker/faculty control, ing for (and losing) votes to end the with open admissions and free tuition! occupation so as not to "alienate" right­ No reprisals against the Audubon Bal/­ wing students who were trying to bust room protesters!.

Spartacist Forums u.s. Out of Somalia, Persian Gulf Imperialist America's Spartacus Youth Club Class Series "New World Order" Starves Africa Black History and the Class Struggle Down with the Racist U.S. Blockade of Haiti! Guest Speaker: Bernard Branche, Saturday, Feb. 6, 7:30 p.m. Member of ATU Local 308 Ramada Inn-Hyde Park For Black Liberation Through Socialist Revolution! Chair: Mary Vaughn, Spartacist League 4900 S. Lakeshore Drive For more information: (312) 663-0715 Tuesdays, 4 p.m. February 2: Superior Room (in the Guest Reservation Building) City College of New York Slavery and the Civil War 138th St. and Convent Ave., February 9: ·.·••.. C·MIC4dQ. Free parking available Manhattan Black and Red: the Class-Struggle Road Room to be announced to Black Freedom UN: Fig Leaf for U.S. Imperialism u.S. Bloody Hands Off the World! Fundamentals of Marxism Defend Iraq! U.S. Out of the Persian Gulf! Alternate Tuesdays, 7 p.m. February 9: Douglas Fir Room, Imperialism and the Struggle for U.S. Out of Africa! International Socialist Revolution MLK Student Union Speaker: Cindy Nicholas, Spartacus Youth C~ub, Spartacist League UC Berkeley February 23: -For more information: (415) 777-9367 For more information: (510) 839-0851 Race and Class in Capitalist America­ Thursday, February 4, 12 Noon Black Liberation Through Student Union, Room B112 ··IEttKELIV········ Socialist Revolution San Francisco State University

29 JANUARY 1993 5 he following article is - fist salute as he entered Room 700 adapted from Spartakist of the Moabit Courthouse where I T No. 100 (January 1993), this show is being played, he read published by the Spartakist Work­ out an hourlong statement before ers Party of Germany (SpAD) , the court. Honecker noted that "I section of the International Com­ and my comrades ... are led before munist League. On January 12, a the public just as the Roman Cae­ constitutional court in Berlin or­ sars once paraded their captured dered the charges dropped against adversaries." John Kennedy, Lyn­ the cancer-stricken 80-year-old don Johnson and Richard Nixon Honecker, on the grounds that a were not tried for sending U.S. continuation of the trial would troops to Vietnam, he pointed out, constitute a violation of "human nor Ronald Reagan for seizing dignity." Honecker is now in Chile Grenada and bombing Lioya, nor with his"family. The show trial of George Bush for invading Panama. Honecker's codefendants is con­ "The persecution of tens of thou­ tinuing. We demand their immedi­ sands and possibly hundreds of ate release! thousands of DDR citizens, of which the prosecution has already PART ONE OF TWO spoken, is the purpose of this trial," noted Prisoner 244/92. It was billed as "the trial of the This "court of the victors over century," or at least the most spec­ the vanquished," said the former tacular one in Germany since the East German leader, hopes to Nuremberg Trials of former Nazi "totally discredit the DDR" and leaders in the late 1940s. Only this criminalize Communists. "Social­ time Communism would be put on ism, already pronounced dead, is trial and declared a criminal sys­ to be killed again." "The victory tem. Instead, it has turned into a of the market economy (as capi­ spectacle of victor's justice, meted talism is today euphemistically out by the masters of reunited Ger­ called) and the defeat of socialism many; of capitalist class justice, are to be total. They want to say, against the leaders of the former as Hitler once did before Stalin­ East German deformed workers grad, that 'this enemy will not arise state; of revenge justice of the again.' The German capitalists Fourth Reich of German imperi­ always had a tendency toward the alism, still smarting over the total." "The trial is to lay the basis defeat of the Third at the hands of for branding the DDR as a 'state the Soviet Red Army in 1945. of injustice' ," he went on. "A state And, as predicted even by the that was ruled by such 'criminals' Guardian [London] accomplished witchhunters of Der Former East German leader Erich Honecker being arrested by vindictive West German as ourselves, by 'killers,' can only Spiegel, it has turned into a "judi­ bourgeoisie in 1991. be a 'state of injustice.' Whoever cial farce." stood by it, whoever was a dutiful The long-awaited trial was sup­ citizen of the DDR, is to be posed to serve as a morality play, branded with this mark of Cain." as a "reckoning" with the DDR Defending the DDR Was No Crime, The capitalist rulers are not and a "reappraisal" and "overcom­ brought before courts for produc­ ing" of its history. In the dock, ing joblessness and homelessness, as the proceedings opened on Selling It Out Was Honecker noted, citing the victori­ November 12, were five leaders ous bourgeoisie's attacks on day­ of the former German Democratic care centers, working conditions, Republic (DDR), led off by Erich attack. As "Stasi" chief Mielke sat "The revolutionary working class in health care and equality for women. Honecker, former chairman of the DDR slumped in the courtroom, his case was power will have its own score to settle Today, while he and his comrades, long­ with the Stalinists for their crimes time anti-fascists, are on trial, and Jews Council of State, the National Defense separated so he could be tried on 60- against the working class, including seIl­ Council and the Socialist Unity Party year-old charges against him first raised ing out the DI?R. But that isn't the con­ are arrested for protesting the pogrom in (SED); Erich Mielke, former minister of in a Nazi court. In this political show cern of the bourgeoisie and their Social Rostock, Nazi mobs are running wild in state security; and Heinz Kessler, former trial, the courtroom has become a public DemocratiC' flunkeys." the streets, attacking and killing immi­ minister of defense. The bigwigs were torture chamber. Today, more level-headed elements of grants, as in Molin. "I lived for the hauled into court in order to open the On the first day of the trial, the the bourgeoisie like Der Spiegel, and ref­ DDR," Honecker summed up. "It sig­ way for going after all "the little Erichs." Spartakist Workers Party demonstrated ormists like the PDS (Party of Demo­ naled that socialism was possible and Just to make sure, already half a dozen outside the court, where we were cratic Socialism-successor to the SED, can be better than capitalism. It was an DDR border guards have been sentenced eventually joined by supporters of the former ruling party of the DDR), want experiment that failed." After finishing to lengthy prison terms for supposedly Erich Honecker Solidarity Committee. to call off the Honecker trial before the his indictment of his persecutors, the carrying out an "order to shoot" suppos­ Our chants of "Down with the anti­ "state of law" is further discredited. The prisoner said to those who sit in judg­ edly issued by the big Erichs. Communist witchhunt! Nazis out! Free­ "alternative" redbaiters of tai suggested ment over him: "Do what you feel you But the "state of law" has been re­ dom for Honecker and Mielke!" were bringing in a parade of experts in order have to do." duced to a laughingstock. As Honecker's widely reported by the media, and heard to "cultivate this still necessary trial." Furious that the former DDR lawyer Friedrich Wolff ironic.ally re­ inside the courtroom. The SpAD carried The defendants are accused of homicide leader was allowed to attack their state, marked, "Agenda point I: Carry'in the signs declaring "The Red Army Smashed in 13 cases of individuals killed while the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (4 Politburo. Agenda point 2: Turn on the the Nazi Regime" and "Stalinism Is trying to cross the border to the West. December 1992), mouthpiece for the pacemakers." Honecker, terminally ill . Dead, Con"lmunism Lives." Our press They're supposed to be "desktop crimi­ Frankfurt bankers, complained that "the with liver cancer, threw back at the court: release linked this persecution-trial with nals," the masterminds who ordered the head of the court at least should have "The sentence that you obviously intend the Nazi pogroms in' Rostock and the killings. But after two years of ransack­ kept him to the straight and narrow." for me will never touch me." In a race scheduled mass deportation of Roma ing DDR archives, the prosecution has Erich Honecker was not the only with death, the "trial" grows more maca­ (Gypsies) as the hideous face of coun­ not come up with an order to shoot, much defendant to stand up to the black-robed bre from day to day. Repeatedly, judge terrevolution, the product of capitalist less a shoot-to-kill order. capitalist inquisitors. Former defense and prosecutor discuss the growing size reunification led by Kohl together with Worried that they couldn't make this minister Heinz Kessler declared, "I of Honecker's tumor, only to repeatedly the Social Democrats: charge stick, on December 21 the pros­ never ordered the shooting of defectors," declare the 80-year-old man fit for trial. "For the 'crime' of defending the DDR, ecutors handed Honecker a new charge and "I have not ,committed any of the SPD justice minister Jutta Limbach has sheet accusing him of diverting $3.3 mil­ crimes listed by the prosecution." While On the first day, former DDR chief of thrown Honecker into Moabit prison, government Willi Stoph had, to be where he was previously jailed as a resis­ lion for luxurious living quarters for the charges speak of the Wall as an dropped from the case because of a heart tance fighter by the Gestapo .... the SED leadership. With true German "inner-German barrier," Kessler noted thoroughness, the authorities evidently that this was the front line of the Soviet aim to keep the Honecker trial going bloc (Warsaw Pact) against NATO. "All even after he is dead! Yet despite all the measures were carried out according to media hoopla, a large part of the popu­ our responsibilities to the alliance," he lation is opposed to the trial. Today said, adding: "As long as my strength East Germans, as the London Guardian holds, I will defend the dignity and honor (11 November 1992) noted, "are more of being a citizen of the former DDR." concerned about their lost jobs and rising The rulers of the Fourth Reich have a rents, and many consider Chancellor special hatred for Kessler, because he Kohl and other western politicians to be fought with the Red Army against Hit­ the 'real criminals'." ler's Wehrmacht. To us that is a mark of honor. Honecker Indicts His But while Honecker refused to bow Persecutors to the judges, and told home truths about In the face of his persecutors, Ho­ the capitalist system they represent, this Gestapo mug shots of Erich Honecker in December 1935. Honecker was necker has shown dignity and defiance. unrepentant Stalinist showed that, like imprisoned for ten years by the Nazi&-. On December 3, after giving a clenched- the Bourbons, he had "forgot!en nothing

6 WORKERS VANGUARD and learned nothing" from the collap-se stand in the way of a good witchhunt! of Stalinist rule. Socialism is not an As for the amounts supposedly "em­ "experiment," but the outcome of the bezzled," this is downright laughable. class struggle. And the DDR was not The big uproar during 1989-90 was over socialism, but a workers state bureau­ Wandlitz in the Brandenburg forest, cratically ruled by a privileged caste where the SED tops lived. Przybylski which sought, not to extend the revolu­ reports that, according to investigations tion internationally, but to achieve by the DDR state attorneys, approxi­ "peaceful coexistence" with imperial­ mately six to eight million hard-currency ism. What failed was not the "socialist marks yearly were spent on Wandlitz. experiment"; the nationalist lie of build­ Yet this was to cover the needs of at ing "socialism in one country," all the Honecker clinks least 280 people! In contrast, in the more so in a third of a country, was a glasses with United States last year, 278 heads of the perversion of internationalist Marxism West German top thousand companies "earned" more and doomed to failure-or to a political Chancellor, than $1 million apiece (Business Week, revolutionary upheaval of the proletariat. Helmut Kohl in 12 October 1992). Turncoat Przybylski For the capitalists, any kind of workers 1987, pursuing sneeringly refers to the "milk-and-honey state is a mortal threat. Stalinist estate," overflowing with Western ster­ Honecker is so blinded by peaceful pipe dream of eos, TVs and VCRs, noting that the elite coexistence that the only time he referred "peaceful could buy them at the exchange rate of coexistence." to the class struggle in his defense 1 DDR mark for 1 deutschmark. But they speech for "the ideas of socialism" was paid for these consumer goods. And at to accuse the bourgeoisie of reverting to the rate of one to one Helmut Kohl "the old class struggle strategy of the linism, as Trotsky said long ago, is the used'." This is also the central "proof' bought a whole country! '30s"! This conception comes to a head gravedigger of the revolution. in the trial charges. But in the minutes Perhaps the lowest blow in this smear over the question of the Berlin Wall. there is no such statement. What the job is the attack on Honecker's reputa­ While Honecker devoted much of his Tried by the Wrong Class prosecutors have is some private notes, tion as an anti-fascist resistance fighter. courtroom statement to defending the for the Wrong Crimes which have no official standing, were For Tatort Politburo is a vile character Wall, his basic line was that it made We have noted before that in the case not distributed and are denied by both assassination in the style of Bild-Zeitung, detente possible, by preventing the Cold of Honecker & Co., "The Stalinists are Honecker and Kessler. Beyond that, using Gestapo reports to slander its vic­ Warriors from touching off nuclear being tried by the wrong class for the what the inv,l;!stigators have "turned up" tim. Basing himself on documents found world war. For all his complaints about wrong crimes" (Spartakist No. 94, are nothing but the normal regulations in a "red suitcase" among Mielke's hold­ his Politburo colleagues who stabbed March-April 1992). While the Springer for use of arms by border guards, which ings in the cellar of the Stasi headquar­ are hardly different than those of any ters in Normannenstrasse, Przybylski (fl D country in the world, including West accuses Honecker of "betrayal to the ~ Germany. . OJ Gestapo." Similarly, the Frankfurter A Moreover, Przybylski himself notes ~ Allgemeine Zeitung (16 November 1990) that the border law in force from 1982 declared that the contents of the red on required that when weapons were suitcase "shatter the 'anti-fascist legiti­ used, "the life of persons is to be spared mization' of the former DDR," and show as far as possible"! that Honecker, far from being an anti­ The second set of charges, for "embez­ fascist hero, "did everything to save his zlement" and enrichment from state skin," including "incriminating fellow property, are no less absurd. In the first prisoners. " place, as with the deaths on the border, Przybylski alleges that during interro­ . Honecker et al. are being tried under the gation by the Gestapo after he was DDR law then in force. (This fundamen­ arrested in December 1935, "Honecker tal legal principle is respected in Ger­ incriminated his chief," Bruno Baum, many, if only because otherwise', present and also his Czech courier, Sarah Spartakists at federal laws could also be applied to the Fodorova, who had passed him a suitcase Tegel Airport, bloody Nazi judges who were taken over with clandestine materials. But Bruno Berlin, July 1992, wholesale from the Third Reich to staff Baum was held in the same Brandenburg as Honecker is the courts of the federal republic.) But prison as Honecker, where there was a brought back for since Honecker didn't steal anything, all Communist resistance in which they trial. Sign reads: they could do was accuse him of break­ were both active. And after the war, "Fourth Reich: ing the law concerning "breach of trust" Baum was a leading Berlin official of Hands Off Erich by officials who appropriate state prop­ the SED. If there had been any indication Honecker!" erty for their own use. However, in order that Honecker was a traitor, Baum was to pave the way for privatization, that in a position to ensure that he would law was abrogated by the DDR the day have been executed, before or after before the currency union with West Ger­ liberation. many came into force. As for Sarah Fodorova, Przybylski him in the back, this ultimately leads press prattles about "Wall murderers," In order to get around this little prob­ says the "trail of the Czech woman was Honecker to backhandedly support cap­ what they are accused of is defending lem, the Volkskammer (East .'German lost," suggesting she was executed. But italist reunification, saying at the trial: the borders of a workers state against parliament) passed a special "Lex in fact the Jewish courier was freed for "In my view, there would never have economic sabotage by imperialism, Honecker" declaring that the old law was lack of proof, and is living today been either the Helsinki Treaty or Ger­ which threatened to bleed dry the East still applicable for crimes committed in Israel. In an interview last fall she man unity if the Wall wasn't built then, German economy. This defense is no before that date. This law, which was told the ADN news agency, "I thank or if it had been torn down befor~ the crime from the standpoint of the working end of the Cold War." specially written into the unification Honecker for my life. He exonerated cJass. And it is positively obscene for treaty, contradicts both the DDR and fed­ me before the People's Court." In fact, Elsewhere, in his 1992 booklet Zu the bourgeoisie of Auschwitz, which is eral German constitutions. But the "state said Fodorova, when she was freed, a dramatischen Ereignissen (On Dramatic guilty of the murder of six million Jews, of law" doesn't let such legal niceties continued on page 8 Events), Honecker writes: "The attempt of millions of communists, Slavs, Roma to achieve the inner unity of Germany and Sinti, and of more than 20 million must not be burdened with the campaign Soviet citizens, to try to wipe off the of the 'victors' over the 'defeated'." bloodstains of its genocide by putting In contrast, we Trotskyists have noted the leaders of the DDR on trial for alleg­ that the Wall was a bureaucratic measure edly issuing orders that led to the death to defend the socialized gains of the of 187 people over 28 years! deformed workers state. That's why the That is an average of seven people per bourgeoisie hated it, and why the, Spar­ year. Meanwhile, in the United States, takists defended it against imperialism, in 1990 alone, the racist Los Angeles while supporting its opening as the prod­ police and sheriff's deputies routinely uct of a nascent political revolution in gunned down 120 people, according to the DDR in 1989. And since we fought a recent Amnesty International report. for a revolutionary reunification of Ger­ And the trigger-happy Bundesgrenz­ many, for a "red Germany of workers schutz (German federal border police) councils" in the framework of a Socialist killed 59 people at the border in~ the United States of Europe, we fought tooth period up to 1968. and nail against capitalist reunification. And the "order to shoot"? The widely Today we stand on the same communist publicized 1991 book by Peter principles, fighting to mobilize the work­ Przybylski, Tatort Politburo: Die Akte ing class and oppressed against the rav­ Honecker (The Politburo Case: The ages of counterrevolution. Honecker File), claims: "The minutes of In bowing before the imperialist drive the 45th meeting of the National Defense for Anschluss, Honecker's successors Council of 3 May 1974 show that the Krenz, Gysi and Modrow only took their chairman Honecker literally stated: 'As predecessor's Stalinist program to its before, with attempts to break through Nazi skinheads in Halle, November 1991. For worker/immigrant defense against counterrevolutionary conclusions. Sta- the border, weapons must be ruthlessly fascist terror! '

29 JANUARY 1993 7 » "1J Actually, the June 1945 manifesto Honecke: ... called for a "parliamentary-democratic republic." And what Honecker doesn't (continued from page 7) say is that this had to be rammed through Gestapo man reviled her, "You can thank by the Moscow emigre leadership Honecker and his whole Communist against resistance from the underground mob that you came out of here alive" KPD cadres in Germany. In a 14 May (Neues Deutschland, 20 October 1992). 1945 letter to Pieck, Ulbricht reported Meanwhile, Erich Honecker's month­ that "the majority of the comrades have ly pension as an anti-fascist resistance sectarian inclinations," and "clarifying fighter has been canceled by the legal disputes were necessary, because many successor state to Hitler's Third Reich. still hung on to conceptions from the Racist cops time before 1933. The red workers and The Real Crimes ·of Stalinism . of capitalism peasants army stood in the country­ While Honecker was-sitting in Hitler's gunned down didn't that mean that the establishment jails in the late 1930s, Walter Ulbricht '120 people in of soviet power and the construction of was living in the Hotel Lux in Mos­ Los Angeles socialism was on the order of the day?" in 1990 alone. cow, handing over German Communists Ulbricht put out the watchword, "We to Stalin's executioners, and even to will do without a Communist youth the Gestapo. These are some of the group, because we want a unitary, free real crimes of Stalinism against the youth movement to arise." As Ulbricht's revolution. protege, Honecker pushed for what Hermann Weber, a leading historian Pieck, virtually the entire KPD leader­ talists supported the purges. In 1943 became the FDJ (Free German Youth). of the Communist Party of Germany ship (two-thirds of the CC) was Stalin finally liquidated the Comintern, He was initially opposed by the Saxon (KPD), brought together the available destroyed, just as Stalin murdered not founded on the program of world social­ party youth secretary Robert Bialek, who information on the KPD victims of Sta­ only Lenin's comrade-in-arms Leon ist revolution which was its reason for argued for a proletarian youth organiza­ lin's purges in his 1989 book "Weisse Trotsky but every remaining member existence. And he desperately tried to tion of the KPD and SPD. "Naturally I Flecken" in der Geschichte ("Blank of the Bolshevik Central Committee of keep the national-Stalinists Tito and Mao would prefer a socialist youth organiza­ Spaces" in History). Among those "liq­ 1917 (the general staff of the Octo­ from overthrowing capitalism in Yugo­ tion, but that doesn't correspond to the uidated" were seven Politburo members: ber Revolution) save one (Alexandra slavia and China. The corollary of build­ present requirements," Honecker is Hugo Eberlein, Leo Flieg, Heinz Neu­ Kollontai), and decimated the general ing "socialism in one country" at home quoted as saying. Those "traditionalists" mann, Hermann Remmele, Hermann staff of the Red Army under Marshal was opposition to revolution abroad. who set up KJVD (Communist Youth Schubert, Fritz Schulte and Heinrich Tukhachevsky. Stalin also executed That was particularly true for Ger­ League) groups were labeled left sectar­ SUsskind. Also killed were the leader of almost all the leaders of the Polish CP many, the key to Europe. And while ians, ultralefts and Trotskyists. Thus the the Rotfrontkiimpferbund (Red Front and dissolved the party; over 800 Yugo­ Erich Honecker was not personally Free German Youth were founded, and Struggle League), Willi Leow; the leader slav Communists were "liquidated," and responsible for the purges, he did help later the German Democratic Republic. of Rote Hilfe, Willi Koska; the editor of more than 100 Italian CP officials. It is carry out Stalin's policy of preventing a Stalin and his satrap Ulbricht did not Rate Fahne, Werner Hirsch. Among the important to understand why these Com­ socialist rising by the German proletariat intend to build up the DDR as a workers estimated 1,000 Germans turned over to munists were purged. upon the defeat of Hitler. In his official state, but the imperialists' Cold War Nazi Germany during the period of the Stalin's bureaucratic rule was threat­ autobiography, From My Life (a title pre­ intransigence forced their hand, and cap­ Hitler-Stalin pact was Heinz Neumann's ened by the living memory of the Bol­ sumptuously copied from August Bebel), italism was expropriated from above. As wife, Margarete Buber-Neumann. Of 68 shevik Revolution, and by the possibility Honecker notes that after meeting their pipe dreams of a "neutral, peace­ leaders of the KPD living in the Soviet of workers revolution elsewhere. Just as Ulbricht in Berlin in May 1945, "I loving Germany" dissipated, the Stalin­ Union in the late 1930s, only 18 the GPU/NKVD beheaded the Spanish started building a united antifascist dem­ ist tops enforced their bureaucratic rule, remained free, while 41 were killed. proletariat in order to head off revolution ocratic youth movement," comprising against the working class and against Altogether Weber lists some 350 KPDers in the name of the Popular Front, the . young people "from all classes" and "all opposition inside the SED. Honecker victimized by Stalin's purge. Moscow purges were a blood offering political and ideological persuasions." nearly went down with "the Goatee" While they were accused of aiding the to the bourgeoisie, proof of Stalin's He also praised the KPD Central Com­ Ulbricht in the wake of the 1953 workers "Trotskyite-Zinovievite criminals," they "sincerity') in denouncing the "export of mittee manifesto of 11 June 1945, which revolt, and his road to the top was as were not just former "deviationists" (the revolution." That is why, far from de­ "pointed the way for all antifascist dem­ hatchet man against pro-socialist oppo­ actual Trotskyists were long gone). nouncing Stalin's Russia as a "state ocratic forces ... to overcome the rule of sitionists and dissidents. Rather, except for Ulbricht and Wilhelm of injustice," by and large the capi- monopoly capital." [TO BE CONTINUED]

James RCannon Prometheus Research Library Book


B








B








B








B








B





1IIIiIIIIIIII aDdtbeE~tly'Yea,s James P. Cannon and the Early Years j! '" .... :'.:" .... :.: ... of American Communism Selected Writings and Speeches, 1920-1928 624 pages, smyth-sewn binding in paper and cloth, the book includes: • Extensively documented introduction • Glossary of names and terms • Explanatory footnotes for with over 200 entries Cannon's text • Bibliography of Cannon's works, 1912-1928 • 16 pages of rare historical photographs • Index

Please send: Manto:

__ copies of Cannon and the Early Name ______Years ofAmerican Communism, cloth, at $22.50 each Address __ copies of Cannon and the Early Years ofAmerican Communism, paper, at $14.50 each ______Apt, # ______New York State residents add 8,25% sales tax to book price listed above City ______Shipping and handling ____ 1·2 copies: $3.50 each, 3-10 copies: total $10.00 State Zip ______(inquire about bulk orders) Total enclosed ____ Phone( ____ ) ______

L... ______Order from/~ake checks payable to: Spartacist Publishing Company, Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 _ Cloth: ISBN 0-9633828-0-2 Paper: ISBN 0-9633828-1-0

Avallable at all Spartacist public offices and these bookstores:

Piedmont Book Co., Book Sou}' Madison, WI St. Mark's Bookshop Oakland West Hal ywood People's Bookstore Tower Books Portland, OR Toronto London Dublin Socialist Action Dutton's Brentwood Rainbow Bookstore Co-op Washington, D,C. Laughing Horse Books Bookstore, Books College Books Bookmarks Connolly Books Bicks' Books Powell's City of Books San Francisco Boston, MA DEC Bookroom Chicago Borders Bookshop Compendium Bookshop Bay Area Walden Pond Books, Lucv Parsons Center Oakland Barbara's Bookstores, (Red Book), Jamaica Plain Pathfinder Bookstore Housmans Bookshop Oldtown and Newtown Politics and Prose Melbourne Cody's Books, Berkeley Bookstore U of T Bookroom Los Angeles New York City Index Books Centres International Bookshop Diesel Books, S 7 th Street Books Vertigo Books Emeryville The Black and Cooper Square Books Vancouver New World Resistance Bookshop Latino Multicultural Papyrus Books Octopus Books Green Apple Books, Book Center, Pasadena Resource Center Sydney San Francisco Revolution Books People's Co·op Books On The Edge, Twenty·First Tokyo Glasgow Gould's B,ook Arcade, Pegasus Books, Berkeley Santa Monica Centuty Books Shakespeare's, Downtown Kitazawa Bookstore Spartacus Books Clyde Books Newrown

8 WORKERS VANGUARD marched right through a "Rally Against Racism" that was held at the Art Gallery. Vancouver ... TL supporters sought to mobilize dem­ (continued from page 12) onstrators to defend themselves against minorities in Vancouver. The race­ these fascist thugs. But the rally organ­ terrorists have firebombed the homes of izers-the I.S. and CUFO-let the Nazis East Indian and Chinese Canadian fam­ parade with impunity! The social­ democratic I.S. is not guided by such ilies and burned a cross outside the house Militant of Iranian immigrants. A Jewish syna­ protesters routed Gandhian pacifism when it comes to gogue and a cemetery were defaced Nazi thugs who anti-communist exclusions, launching a with Nazi slogans and swastikas, and a tried to stage savage physical assault to keep Trotsky­ gay bookstore was bombed. Metzger's "secret meeting" ist League members out of a "public "White Aryan Resistance" skinheads at Century Plaza debate" in Toronto last August. Hotel. brutally murdered an Ethiopian man in The Cold War "socialists" of the I.S. Oregon in 1988. Now the' fascists an­ urged solidarity with every imperialist­ nounced a provocation at the Art Gallery, backed counterrevolutionary force aimed the traditional site for leftist and labor at destroying the former workers states demonstrations in this city. in East Europe and the Soviet Union. Stop the Fascists" and "Join the Trotsky­ if they dared show their faces in the The result has been a tidal wave of In response, the PDC, the legal and ist League/Partisan Defense Committee vicinity of the Art Gallery. reactionary nationalism and fascist ter­ social defense organization associated Contingent!" (while repeating the Labour Although the BCOFR rally was de­ ror which is the cutting edge of capital­ with the Trotskyist League, issued an Council tops' plea that the government signed to head off any genuine mobi­ ist restoration. Those who cheered urgent appeal on January 11 to labor and stop Metzger). Asolid crew oflongshore­ lization to stop the fascists, militant these forces in East Europe and the ex­ minority organizations, calling for a men turned out, as did truckers and tug­ and serious unionists representative of USSR are hypocrites when they claim "massive, disciplined display of labor boat workers from two locals ofthe Cana­ the powerful B.C. labor movement to want to "fight fascism" at hom~. power mobilizing minorities and all the dian Brotherhood of Railway, Transport meant business, and they kept the fas­ fascists' intended victims-when and The class-collaborationist appetites that and General Workers Union. Saying they cists out. Trotskyist League spokesman underpinned the reformists' virulent anti­ where the fascists say they intend to came "to make a point here," one union Oliver Stephens was widely applauded Sovietism can be seen in their supine he .... Stopping this Nazi provocation is . official expressed the widespread deter­ when he said from the rally podium: response to the fascist terrorists here .. a matter of basic survival." This struck mination to make short shrift of the "The fascists want to destroy us and a real chord in Vancouver-a solid union Nazis: "We'll stop them if they show." ours! They want to split us apart, to open Forge a Revolutionary town, with tens of thousands of East Other labor contingents came from us up for attack, to poison any kind of Workers Party! Indian and other Asian workers. International Woodworkers of America­ integrated struggle, like winning strikes. They are tlfe shock troops of the racist After 16 years of union-busting rule Two days later, the British Columbia Canada Local 1-357, Canadian Union of ruling class. They can and must be under the ultraright racist yahoos of the Organization to Fight Racism (BCOFR) Public Employees Local 391, Telecom­ stopped, and the organized working class Social Credit Party, the powerful B.C. put out a press release calling for an munications Workers Union Local I and has the power." labor movement thought it would get a "Anti-Racism Rally" at the Art Gallery the International Brotherhood of Electri­ There were two countelposed political break under an NDP government. But to "Say no to W.A.R." The BCOFR rally, cal Workers. Some of these workers programs on how to respond to the fas­ since their election in 1991, the NDP endorsed by the Vancouver and District joined the TLjPDC contingent, supply­ cist threat in Vancouver. The policy of social democrats have imposed even fur­ Labour Council tops, was not called to ing the main body of our marshals squad. the reformists and labor bureaucrats, stop the Nazi terrorists, but billed only ther austerity, jacking up taxes and slash­ Official trade-union banners were which comes straight from the ministerial ing social services, while alibiing racist as an "alternative to the advertised visit" everywhere to be seen outside the Art offices of the social-democratic NDP, by Metzger. cop terror against minorities. This is Gallery on Friday night. People from the was to preach reliance on the capitalist hardly new-the last NDP government Intent on assuring that outrage against city's Japanese, Chinese, black, Iranian state and its police. In practice, this meant in 1975 launched the most massive fascist terror was not diverted into an and other communities were there, as allowing the fascist provocation to go strikebreaking assault in the province's impotent talkfest, TL and PDC support­ well as women's groups and gays, arid ahead. Against this the TL leaflet argued: history. The social democrats serve as ers distributed 30,000 copies of a mobi­ a Jewish peace group carried a sign in "Reformists believe that the capitalist the labor lieutenants of capitalist class lizing leaflet, addressing trade-union Hebrew, Arabic and English. The pros­ state is 'neutral' and can be pressured to rule-"Ieft" guardians of the decaying meetings and immigrant communities pect of having to face a united front of 'ban' the fascists. As Marxists we under­ system that breeds fascist terrorists. In across the city. "All Out to Stop the Fas­ stalJd that this state enforces the rule of organized labor, minorities and other the course of class struggle, the NDP cists!" said the TL leaflet, insisting: capItal and that the fight against fascism anti-fascists sent the Nazis scurrying to is the road of class struggle leading to must be split, its working-class base won "Official union contingents, under their find a new meeting site at a planetarium the forging of a revolutionary workers to a revolutionary party. union banners, together with East In­ a couple of miles away. Tony McAleer, party and socialist revolution." dians, Chinese, Japanese, blacks, Native While small in numbers now, the fas­ Indians, Jews, gays and socialists, can the would-be fUhrer of Canadian Liberty At a BCOFR marshals meeting on Jan­ cists are the mortal enemies of all work­ see to it that this Nazi 'rally' never hap­ Net, and a few skinheads strutted around uary 20, spokesman Alan Dutton made ing people and must be crushed in the pens, and that these scum are swept off for the bourgeois media and bragged perfectly clear their intention that any egg before they grow. When the capital­ the streets." about how they were going ahead with Nazis outside the perimeter of the rally ists feel their rule is being threatened by East Indian shopkeepers postered the their "secret meeting." would be left alone to spew their racist the working class-as in Germany and leaflet in their windows. Students at the At the Art Gallery, the BCOFR and filth. A representative of the Coalition Italy in the 1920s and '30s-the bour­ University of British Columbia, Simon others wanted to contain opposition to United to Fight Oppression (CUFO), a geoisie will finance the fascist killers and Fraser University and Langara Commu­ the fascists by trying to lull the crowd rad-lib sandbox which includes the Free­ grease their rise to power in order to nity College took stacks to distribute. with music and insipid "love thy neigh­ dom Socialist Party and the International smash the workers organizations. With­ The Vancouver local of the Canadian bor" speechifying-including in their Socialists, argued that if the skinheads out revolutionary leadership the working Union of Postal Workers voted unani­ roster a Tory MP who spoke as the rep­ showed up and tried to march through class of Europe paid a terrible price, as mously to endorse the TL/pDC call, issu­ resentative of the racist, labor-hatiIlg the rally they should just be "ignored"! the Nazi Holocaust devoured tens of mil­ ing a leaflet calling for labor/minority federal Conservative government! The A speaker for the I.S. advised the mar­ lions of Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, leftists and mobilization, and sent a capable squad New Democratic Party loyalists of the shals not to remove known fascist pro­ others. As the TL leaflet concluded: of union members to the demonstration. BCOFR never intended to mobilize the vocateurs from the demonstration but "Unionists, minorities and a lot of others The International Longshoremen's and battalions of labor to crush the fascists. just "keep an eye" on them! who oppose everything the fascists stand for are looking for a way to fight back Warehousemen's Union Local 500 put They refused to call for union contin­ These reformists tried to put their out their own leaflet as well, which was gents, and at a January 19 Labour Coun­ against a system that has condemned them wimpy program into action at the demo. to poverty, degradation, homelessness, postered all over the waterfront, call­ cil meeting BCOFR spokesman Paul Gill As marchers headed off for the Century broken unions and broken lives. A gen­ ing on longshoremen to go "All Out to explicitly opposed going after the Nazis Plaza Hotel to get the skinhead thugs, uine class-struggle mobilization to stop the fascists of 'Canadian Liberty Net' CUFO marshals first tried to slow the would give a taste of the power that must protesters down and then they (including be brought to bear in the fight for a social­ the I.S.) linked arms in front of the hotel ist revolution to overthrow the decrepit SPARTACIST LEAGUE/U.S. LOCAL DIRECTORY to bolster the line of cops who were rule of the capitalist bosses which finds National Office: Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 • (212) 732-7860 shoving the crowd back. its degenerate expression in Metzger's Nazi-lovers, and bring to power the work­ Atlanta Detroit Norfolk Last March, a gang of half a ing people who built all the wealth of Box 4012 Box 441043 Box 1972, Main PO dozen skinheads waving swastika flags this country.". Atlanta, GA 30302 Detroit, MI 48244 Norfolk, VA 23501 Boston Los Angeles Oakland Box 390840, Central Sta. Box 29574, Los Feliz Sta. Box 29497 Cambridge, MA 02139 Los Angeles, CA 90029 Oakland, CA 94604 (617) 492-3928 (213) 380-8239 (510) 839-0851 Chicago San Francisco Madison Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of the Spartacist League Box 6441, Main PO Box 77494 Chicago, IL 60680 Box 1492 San Francisco, CA 94107 : (312) 663-0715 Madison, WI 53701 (415) 777-9367 D $7/24 issues of Workers Vanguard D $3/3 issues of (includes English-language Spartacist) Women and Revolution Cleveland New York Washington, D.C. D New D Renewal Box 91037 Box 444, Canal St. Sta. Box 75073 international rates: D $2/4 issues of $25/24 issues-Airmail $7/24 issues-Seamail Espartaco (en espana!) Cleveland, OH 44101 New York, NY 10013 Washington, D.C. 20013 (includes Spanish-language (216) 781-7500 (212) 267-1025 (202) 872-8240 D $2/10 introductory issues of Workers Vanguard Spartacist) Name ______TROTSKYIST LEAGUE OF CANADA/LiGUE TROTSKYSTE DUCANADA Address ______Toronto Montreal Vancouver Box 7198, Station A C.P. Les Atriums, Box 2717, Main P.O. ______Apt.# Phone ( __ ) ______Toronto, ON M5W 1X8 B.P.32066 Vancouver, BC V6B 3X2 City State Zip ____---;-= (416) 593-4138 Montreal, QC H2l 4V5 (604) 687-0353 568 (514) 849-6540 Make checks payable/mail to: Spartacist Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116

29 JANUARY 1993 9 court, in the same complex of build­ ings-so as to take vengeance for the Spartakists victory of the Red Army. And the PDS cooperates in the witchhunt in which on Trial ... it is itself being devoured. Freedom for Erich Honecker and all the repre­ (continued from page 12) sentatives of the DDR deformed workers other minorities, of communists and state, where the system of the swastika anti-fascists." This is the murderous flag was destroyed! of the cowardly Nazi bands from MolIn Toralf Endruweit said: "We are proud to Rostock and Berlin. to have ripped down the Nazi flag. But as of 4:30 on the afternoon of We will show in this trial what the June 23 there was no longer a swastika swastika means, in the Third and in near the Br.andenburg Gate. Courageous the Fourth Reich. We will show 'what anti-fascists seized this bloody symbol this flag of murder means to anti­ of genocide and burned it. Immediately fascist survivors of the Third Reich, afterward a Spartakist banner with the to Jews, Roma, communists, gays, to words, "The Red Army Smashed the the heroic Germans who fought in the Nazi Regime," was unfurled from the Red Army against the barbarism of roof of the gallery. their own bourgeoisie, as well as to A representative of the gallery called the Vietnamese workers from Rostock the police, and the four Spartakists were who nearly fell victim to a new holo­ briefly arrested. But after the energetic caust, to the friends, family members protest of many supportive onl03kers and colleagues of those slain in the past and passers-by from different countries, few years, from Amadeu Antonio to Silvio Meier and the Arslan family, all including supporters of the Kurdish 30 April 1945: Red flag raised over the Reichstag as Soviet troops vanquished victims of the brownshirt rabble. Their PKK, they were released. Now, fol­ Nazi Third Reich. lowing the racist pogrom in Rostock deaths spur us on, and we will avenge and the Nazi murders in MolIn, the four Democratic Socialism) reformists and union bTV organized the occupation of them, as we will all the victims of the anti-fascists are being brought up on their ilk, through which they link up with a courtroom. From Augsburg to Halle, Nazis and, before them, of the Freikorps charges for their act of hygiene: Werner the racist all-party coalition in Bonn, is massive cop assaults supplement the that murdered Liebknecht and Luxem­ Brand, Ronald Kri.iger (photographer for so dangerous. And our case demonstrates, Nazi terror. ' burg under the sign of the swastika. To the newspaper Spartakist), Renate Dahl­ this yet again. Capitalist reunification, The workers movement must defend eliminate the fascists once and for all haus and Toralf"Endruweit (both Sparta­ welcomed by the SPD (Social Demo­ the right to asylum. The present situation we need a workers revolution that will kist spokesmen at the mammoth anti­ cratic Party) and PDS altd their "left" cries out for massive workers united­ avenge the victims of the Nazi Holo­ fascist rally in Treptow in January of tails, prepared th~ soil for the fascists. front mobilization, to demonstrate the caust. That is what the Spartakist Work­ 1990, and candidates in the last Bundes­ Now the Christian Democrats and Social social power of workers and immigrants ers Party is fighting for." tag elections). Democrats are acceding to the murder­ against the Nazis and to defend the ref­ Let's turn the trial of the anti­ According to the bourgeoisie's penal ous "Foreigners Out" slogans, by closing ugees. This is the program Leon Trotsky fascists into a trial of the flag of code, the swastika is banned. But who the borders and carrying out mass fought for at the beginning of the '30s, Nazi genocide and the racist state would expect the self-proclaimed suc­ deportations. while the Social Democrats and Stalin­ that incites and protects its fascist cessor state to the Third Reich to take The true face of the ruling class was ists allowed Hitler to march unhindered bands! Support the campaign, mobi­ action against Nazi symbols? In reality recently revealed by Karl Dersch (exec­ to power. lize among your friends, in your its police protect the Nazis in their utive board member of the aviation and The Fourth Reich wants to rehabili­ trade unions, in your schools and assaults on refugee hostels, while the space firm Deutsche Aerospace, on the tate the Third Reich: this was the aim organizations. Send your anti-swastika victims of the Nazis are either deported presidium of the Federal Association of of Kohl and Reagan's obscene obeisance statements to the Tiergarten District or made out to be criminals. Behind the German Industry, etc., etc.), when he in Bitburg to SS graves. The bourgeoisie Court, Turmstrasse 91, W-I000 Berlin outcry against "violence" and "extrem­ 'said that he flew his own "private" Reich of Auschwitz is again stretching out 21, fax: (030) 3979 20 10. Send copies ism of the right and the left" stands the war flag. In SPD-governed Nordrhein­ its hands to rule over Europe. Their to and ask for additional information racist persecution of refugees and immi­ Westfalen, with its large proportion of henchmen from the SPD stand in the from the PDC. Send donations to: grants as well as expanded police repres­ immigrant workers, the courts are so vanguard of the anti-communist witch­ Partisan Defense Committee, P.O. Box sion against anti-fascists. This is why heavily infiltrated with Nazi judges, hunt-whose high point is the present 99, Canal St. Station, New York, New the call for "more police" and for ban­ among them the notorious NPD leader show trial of Erich Honecker, which York 10013, earmarked "No Nazi ning the fascists by the PDS (Party of Peter Markert, that the public employees is taking place in the Tiergarten state Flag." • Statements of Solidarity with Anti-Nazi Four Never Again Fascism! marched with torches and swastika flags One asks himself, who should really They kept silent as six million Jews were Down with Swastikas! through the Brandenburg Gate, a gigan­ be standing trial: those who have bitter driven into the ovens in Auschwitz. They tic swastika flag is hung up. memories of the time 50 years ago, kept silent when the Jews of the Warsaw Karl Kielhorn is a member of the PDS I understand the righteous anger of when they themselves and ritany others Ghetto rose up in their last, unequal who, with Gerhard Bo[?elein, was put on the four young people who pulled down were unjustly hauled into court, when battle. trial last year on char[?es that in 1947 and burned this flag. Toralf Endruweit they were chased from house and And today, 50 years after the Holo­ they executed a Nazi military jud[?e who and his three comrades are now supposed home, and murdered-or those who caust, opponents of the Nazis are to be had sent hundreds to their deaths under to answer for this as defendants in placed the swastika as symbol of their condemned by a German court, while a the Third Reich. Kielhorn was relea"Sed, February 1993 at the Tiergarten District inhuman tyranny on their insignia and swastika flag is declared to be an "art but Bo[?elein was sentenced to life Court. flags? object." imprisonment. With this statement I raise my protest! This is just the way things started a Is history going to repeat itself? The only swastika th~t I like is the half century ago: anyone who coura­ Eva Bri.ick The order for my arrest, dated 4 June one crushed beneath the boots of the geously expressed an opinion displeas­ Berlin, 30 December 1992 1940 (IV c2 Haft Nr. 2503/1273/40g.), Soviet soldier with a child on his arm, ing to the Nazis or acted against their signed by Heydrich, bears the seal of which stands atop the memorial for the wishes was ostracized, fired from his the Gestapo with the cursed swastika fallen Soviet heroes in Treptow Park. job, robbed of his property and often What Happened eagle. Karl Kielhorn, PDS murdered. Then the condemned were to Justice? My via dolorosa through concentra­ Member of the Presidium of called "kikes, red swine, vandals," tion camp and penal battalion was Atiye Eksi is the mother of a Turkish the Dachau Camp Association etc.; today undesirable elements are accompanied by swastika flags. youth whose murder by fascists a year Berlin, 7 January 1993 stamped "former Stasi agents"-whether And then in the midst of Berlin, where they in fact were or not (see Prof. a[?o sparked mass protests. 60 years ago the brown SA columns Fink, Stolpe ... ) and then discriminated Displaying a swastika flag is not per­ Are Victims Again to against; exposed, without any rights, mitted; in another sense, it cannot be to "justice" that is neither "based on allowed to wave as a work of art. Be Seen as Criminals? the rule of law" nor-much less­ All Nazi flags are an expression of "democratic. " Spartacist .League Eva Bruck is a writer and n:pre­ inhumanity. They are a violation of the Public Offices sentative of the East Berlin Jewish l-i(om­ Then a Senator Ehrhard simply asserts dignity of humanity. They serve to incite en's Group who fled the Nazi Holocaust that the witnesses exonerating Prof. Fink racial hate. -MARXIST L1TERATURE­ with her parents. were "not believable"-and his dismiss­ My son Mete Eksi was slain a year Bay Area al as rector of Humboldt University, Ber­ ago by racist youths. They have not yet Four Germans from the East and West Thurs.: 5:30-8:00 p.m., Sat.: 1 :00-5:00 p.m. lin, already repeatedly proved to be been placed on trial. They were set at 1634 Telegraph, 3rd Floor (near 17th Street) are to be condemned because they "ille­ unlawful, had to proceed, without argu­ liberty. Oakland, California Phone: (510) 839-0851 gally" destroyed ... "art objects." ment. Just like that. And swastika flags But those who on 23 June 1992 Chicago What were these "art objects"? may be publicly exhibited as "art destroyed the Nazi flag are to be hauled Tues.: 5:00-9:00 p.m., Sat.: 11 :00 a.m.-2:00 p.m. What they were was a large swastika objects" in the center of Berlin, but out­ into court on 17 February 1993. Are we 161 W. Harrison St., 10th Floor flag exhibited in a flag installation at raged democrats and opponents of the still living in the Third Reich? Has Chicago, illinOis Phone: (312) 663-0715 Pariser Platz in the summer of this year. Nazis that remove them are to be placed Germany not yet overcome that per­ New York City Not only the people who are now on trial! iod?· Every day foreigners, hostels for Tues.: 6:30-9:00 p.m., Sat.: 1 :00-5:00 p.m. being brought up on charges but also Fifty years ago the public kept silent. asylum-seekers, apartment houses for 41 Warren St. (one block below Chambers St. near Church SI.) many passers-by were outraged at this They kept silent as the Nazis worked immigrants are set on fire. People of New York, NY Phone: (212) 267-1025 "shocking diversion into history" (see human beings to death, insulted them, different skin color are injured and Berliner Zeitung, 29 May 1992). beat them up before everyone's eyes. killed. But the murderers are either not 10 WORKERS VANGUARD an amnesty for all those who are in exile or underground is morally justified. All of my actions I did in the interest of the American and Vietnamese peoples. To Vietnam I can go whenever I please Exiled Antiwar Activist Calls for Amnesty however to the United States my birth­ place I cannot return. However I would like to come to the destruction of tons, yes hundreds of Today I have a little farm in the north­ point of my letter. thousands of files for people facing the ern part of Sweden quite near the polar Letter to Clinton It has been reported here in the media draft during that period. I take still circle. I live in a little village along that one of the last things the Bush responsibility for the destruction of Dow with 12 families. I raise vegetables, We print below a letter sent to Presi­ Chemical 'sdata banks in Washington administration did before leaving town sheep, and bulls and work part time dent Clinton by Bob Malecki, an anti­ was to pardon some people in the so­ D.C. These actions led to both the end with retarded children and grownups. I Vietnam War activist who has been living called "Iran Contras Affair." These peo­ of the draft and that Dow Chemical certainly like the life I have now and in exile in Sweden. The letter has stopped its production of napalm and ple, all close friends or with contacts will never go back to the st,ates to.\ive. received widespread attentipn in Europe, with the Bush administration, have been Agent Orange used against the Viet­ and was pr.inted in almost every daily However I have a daughter who goes pardoned and are free. namese people. to college in the U.S. and will become newspaper in Sweden. Malecki was not Now I cannot argue all the points These actions however I am not a supporter of the Spartacist League at a lawyer and another daughter who either for or against this last goodwill accused of; what I have been accused of is a typical teenager. I certainly would the time of the actions he took against gesture by the Bush administration to is conspiracy to bomb public buildings military and war contractors like Dow like to be able to visit them in my older these people. But the point is that these in Ohio, conspiracy to take out B-52s days. Chemical. He subsequently became a people are free! on Guam in the Pacific, among other I know, Bill, that the question of Viet­ longstanding supporter and remains a Now if the Bush administration can conspiracies. nam is still extremely a question that a friend who has suffered more than two draw a line over the Iran Contras Affair, The funny thing about these above decades of exile because he fought I think that your administration certainly mentioned crimes is that they never took lot of people have feelings about. One against the crimes of U.S. imperialism. can take up the question of amnesty for place! Conspiracy was the way the state of the biggest questions during your election campaign was, what was Bill all of those people who still are in exile and Federal authorities tried to make us January 20, 1993 Clinton doing? However you handled it or underground because of the Vietnam look like terrorists or maniacs. They To: Bill Clinton War. accused us of planning to do something pretty well. Now I think that the question President, U.S.A. of amnesty should be handled in the I have been living in exile for over that was never done. They never accused same way. From: Robert Malecki twenty years and still wanted by Fed­ us of doing things that we said we were Robertsfors, Sweden eral authorities and state authorities for responsible for. The war is over in Vietnam. However Dear Bill, crimes against the government. I per­ Bill, I think it's time that we draw a for us who still live in exile it is not! First I should say congratulations sonally do not regret anything that I line over this -period. None of us, espe­ Hoping to hear from you soon. on being elected to the presidency and did during this period. Still today I can cially myself, will ever forgive or forget Warm regards to you and family now taking office. say that I take responsibility for the what happened, nor should we. However Robert Malecki

"Cultural evolution has progressed at for Lamarck himself. Moreover, many him his own rendition of Pasteur's quip rates Darwinian processes cannot begin of these self-styled 'neo-Lamarckians' about the role of luck in the creative Letters ... to approach. Darwinian evolution con­ tinues in Homo sapiens, but at rates so abandoned Lamarck's cardinal idea that process: "fortune favors the prepared (continued from page 3) slow that it no longer has much impact evolution is an active, creative response [conscious] mind." on our history. This crux in the Earth's by organisms to their felt needs. They Gould faults Marx for holding to the between Lamarckism and Darwinism­ history has been reached because La­ preserved the inheritance of acquired "conviction that directions of change are for Lamarckism is, fundamentally, a the­ marckian processes have finally been characters but viewed the acquisitions progressive, predictable, and well-nigh ory of directed variation .... Lamarckism unleashed upon it. Human cultural evo­ as direct impositions by impressing envi­ inevitable." holds that genetic variation originates lution, in strong opposition to our bio­ logical history, is Lamarckian in charac­ ronments upon passive organisms." Against this he raises the all-powerful preferentially in adaptive directions" ter. What we learn in one generation we (Gould's emphasis). Yet in his October 1992 essay Gould bugaboo of contingency: "the unpre­ transmit directly by teaching and writing. rereads his own work, elevates one dictability Until the beginning of this century, Acquired characters are inherited in of the nature of future stabil­ Lamarckism was indeed considered a technology." aspect of its mechanics-contingency­ ity." Having thus reduced Marx to a potential explanation for some, if not all, The bourgeoisie attempts to ensure its and abandons' the cardinal idea that (in "neo-Lamarckian" caricature of himself, phenomena of natural selection. It was survival through the use of its massive cultural evolution) punctuation (revolu­ he reduces in the concrete instance of not until the decade of the '30s, with the control of society, its technology, its aca­ tion or counterrevolution) is an active, modern Russia the unimpeachable state­ "modern synthesis" of natural history demic think tanks, etc.; ultimately, the creative response by man (organized in ment that "accidents happen in history" and Mendelian genetics, that Darwin's massive use of force by armed bodies of classes) to felt needs. Instead, he simply into "history is an accident." Yet com­ mechanism won the day and random men. Against the bourgeoisie the prole­ reduces it to the passive expectancy that pare the quote you reproduce from Marx genetic mutation was recognized as the tariat can count on two major weapons, "perhaps we will punctuate to a better and Engels about class struggles ending mechanism for the appearance of unbi­ socialist theory and organization-the place." "either in a revolutionary reconstitution ased variation within a population. In fusion of these two in the consciousness He allows the power of "contemporary of society at large, or in the common "Shades of Lamarck" Gould noted: of the proletariat and in its vanguard, events and personalities to shape and ruin of the contending classes," with "Thus Lamarckism, so far as we can the revolutionary party, are the means direct the actual path taken among myriad Gould's own words at the end of the judge, is false in the domain it has always for the victory of the proletariat, usher­ possibilities," while noting that "mo~ern paragraph on cultural evolution quoted occupied-as a biological theory of ing in a new dawn for humanity as a punctuationalism" as it is applied to above: genefic inheritance. Yet, by analogy only, whole. human cultural evolution "emphasizes "Lamarckian evolution is rapid and ac­ it is the mode of 'inheritance' for another In the 1982 essay quoted above, Gould contingency." But he gives the "last word cumulative. It explains the cardinal and very different kind of 'evolution'­ difference between our past, purely human cultural evolution. Homo sapiens bemoans the bum rap that Lamarck has about modern Russia" to To'lstoy, who biological mode of change, and our cur­ arose at least 50,000 years ago, and we gotten from many evolutionists who said: "Why did it happen in this and not rent, maddening acceleration toward have not a shred of evidence for any "reread Lamarck, cast aside the guts of some other way? Because it happened something new and liberating-or genetic improvement since then .... All toward the abyss." that we have accomplished, for better it and elevated oQe aspect of the mechan­ so!" Thus contingency is reduced to or for worse, is a result of cultural ics-inheritance of acquired charac­ random, unknowable and unpredictable Comradely, evolution. ters-to a central focus it never had luck. To this one can only quote back to Jorge Ramirez

punished or get very mild punishments. concern for the four anti-fascists who Reich. This is also demonstrated by the speak: so never again fascism, no matter I ask you, where is justice!!! put an end to the base pn?vocation! provocation with the swastika flag in what forms it assumes! Never again war! The mother of Mete Eksi, One is, after all, used to a fair bit of West Berlin! Let us ward it Off jointly, there's not Atiye Eksi megalomania and perversion of justice Note as well: people of our generation much more time! 6 January 1993 by West Berlin (in)justice and it would bore the main burden of the fascist war. I wish all of you a good 1993, that be good to chase these people away as We survivors were used up in the facto­ won't give us anything for nothing! The Undigested Past of quickly as possible! But the arguments ries by the West German "economic mir­ With socialist greetings! Fascism Is the Present they dragged in to haul the four anti­ acle." Hence the great number of people Ernst Duschinski fascists into court really fill the cup to on early retirement! I know whereof I Kiel, 30 December 1992 of the Fourth Reich overflowing! As a German soldier in World War II, And this much more: I was born in Ernst Duschinski went over to the 1921 and I well recall what disasters fas­ side of the Red Army to fight against cism and German monopoly capital the Nazi scourge. In the late 1950s, caused: from the raucous brownshirt he was imprisoned by the West Ger­ hordes who passed through the Branden­ man state for being a member of the burg Gate on 30 January 1933 (almost banned Communist Party. 60 years ago!) down to the end of the Second World War with 50 million dead. To the KfsV The Soviet Union bore the main bur­ Dear Friends: den. of this war, and Soviet Sergeant Swastikas stand This morning I gratefully received Kontariya and his comrades were able for anti-Semitic your letter with the flyer, "Defend the to place the Red Flag of victory atop the genocide: Anti-Fascists of the Brandenburg Gate: Berlin Reichstag not far from the Bran­ 1935 banner in We Ripped Down the Nazi Flag!" denburg Gate. In doing so, they freed German town square says, My agreement in our phone conver­ the German people from fascism and "The Jews Are sation yesterday evening has thus been extended their hands to us for a new Our Misfortune." overtaken by events. I couldn't have beginning! What the top dogs in the later written anything different from what was Federal Republic of Germany made of in the flyer. trus is well known: the undigested past Only this much: my sympathy and of fascism is the present of the Fourth 29 JANUARY 1993 11

'~ .... ,.,., I _'... .. WfJII/(EIiS "/1"'111) Vancouver Labor/Minority Mobilization , Drive Fascist kinheaos

VANCOUVER-The Nazis of "Cana­ tion to sweep the fascists from the dian Liberty Net" and their gang of skin­ streets." After the two-bit Hitlers fled, head punks were put on the run here the TL led part of the crowd downtown Friday night, January 22. The Hitler­ to a victory party, chanting "Off with lovers had boasted they were going to the hoods! Off with the sheets! We drove rally in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery the fascists from the streets!" at 7 p.m., and organize a "secret meeting" The Vancouver Sun headlined "White to "welcome" infamous American Nazi Supremacist Skinheads Flee Hotel," Tom Metzger. What happened instead reporting: "As thousands of anti-racists was no secret. The Nazis' intended site demonstrated outside the Century Plaza was occupied by 3,000 anti-racist pro­ Hotel, a small group of white suprema­ testers-organized contingents of trade cist skinheads escaped like terrified unionists. youth, minorities, gays and prey out a side entrance." The cops other opponents of fascist terror. took their revenge by arresting two anti­ When word ran through the crowd, as fascist protesters, threatening them with the rally was winding down, that skin­ charges including "weapons" possession a phot8's heads had been sighted at the Century Unionists, minorities, students massed at Vancouver Art Gallery. Spartacists and wearing a mask! Drop all charges Plaza Hotel, hundreds took to the streets, had called for massive labor-based mobilization to stop the fascists. against the anti~fascist demonstrators! joining with the Trotskyist LeagU€ _of Canada and Partisan Defense Committee the handful of fascists cowered in a side "This was a victory," PDC spokesman "All Out to Stop the Fascists" in chanting, "Stop the Nazis, this is the alley. Pursued by the demonstrators, the Miriam Scribner declared. "What hap­ The attempted "Liberty Net" rally was hour! Labor, minorities have the power!" Nazis jumped walls, scrambled over pened tonight was a vindication of our a deadly threat aimed at all labor and As the 500 marchers neared the hotel, fences and fled into the darkness. call for a mass union-centered mobiliza- continued on page 9 Witchhunt Scandal in Germany Spartakists on Trial for Tearing Down Nazi Flag The following article is translated from Spartakist "German Spartakists Tear Down Nazi Flag," WV No. No. 100 (January 1993), newspaper of the Spartakist 555, 10 July 1992]. By this act they put an end to an Workers Party of Germany. outrageous provocation that horrified thousands and constituted a direct slap in the face to the survivors of On February 17, four supporters of the Spartakist Nazi terror and all decent human beings. Workers Party of Germany (SpAD) and'the Committee The swastika is no "art object," as it is described in for Social Defense (Kfs V) are to be put on trial at the indictment of the four anti-fascists. As KfsV spokes­ the Berlin-Tiergarten district court for "trespassing." man Werner Brand stated, "We won't tolerate this! The Their "crime"? On 23 June 1992 they removed a gigan­ swastika stands for the gruesome murder of six million tic swastika flag that had been hanging since May near Jews, of Roma and Sinti [Gypsies], homosexuals and 23 June 1992: Our comrades rip down swastika the Brandenburg Gate at the G~lerie Pariser Platz [see continued on page 10 flag near Berlin's Brandenburg Gate. 12 29 JANUARY 1993