No 207 SUMMER 2009 40p Newspaper of the Spartacist League

Forge a multiethnic revolutionary workers party! if" publish helow an edited alld Depression wasn't Roosevelt's New .~~ -'--- __ .1. ~_ •• ~.~. ___ ...... ___ •• ' f (}n~'&8'&W UJ (P. MONI',_ Deal, but World War 11. It was when . gil'cll h)' cOlJlrade Julia Effie,}' at a the imperialist governments In Spartacist League public meeting ;n Britain and the US mobilised their London on 4 April. economies for WWlI that they fully The ongoing world capitalist reces­ adopted Keynes's programme of sion is having a tremendous impact on deficit spending for "public works" the British economy and inflicting -- battleships, bombers, tanks and severe hardship on working people. finally atomic hombs. Thc lahour Across Britain the rate of home repos­ movement must oppose protec­ sessions is rising while the nllmber of tionism and fight fur international job losses is cnonnolls. The working~class solidarity. crisis has demonstrated quill..' Production itself is socialised openly the hmlkruptcy and irra~ Unions must defend immigrant workers! and international in scope tionality of the capitalist sys~ and the international working tem and what the leaders of all class must he mohilised capitalist countries agree on is Down with chauvinist construction strikes! across national and other that working people will be divisions. made to pay for it. It also confinTIs the Marxist understanding that ultimately Reactionary strikes tht..:rc is no answer to the boom-and-bust Since January a series of reactionary cycles of capitalism short of proletarian and virulently chauvinist strikes and socialist revolution that takes power out protests havc taken place on building of the hands of the capitalist ruling class sites at Britain's power stations and oil and replaces it with a planned, refineries. Building workers at Lindsey socialised economy. Only the achieve­ oil refinery in Lincolnshire went on ment of a world socialist order can strike against the fact that foreign con~ eliminate the age~old problems of tractors hired workers in their home poverty, scarcity and want. We seek to country to work in Britain. This spark cd build a multiethnic revolutionary work~ widespread protests at other sites cen­ ers party to overthrow capitalist rule. tred on the demand "British jobs for OUf starting point is the understanding British workers", a protectionist slogan that the working class cannot wield the long identified with the fascists and capitalist state for its own interests, that recently used by Gordon Brown. Thesc the state must be smashed and replaced protests were in contrast to the occupa­ hy a workers state, the dictatorship of London, 28 March: contingents at mass trade union protest against capitalist tions at Visteon plants in Belfast and the proletariat. economic crisis, In the face of chauvinist campaign for "British jobs", Italian London in April whcrc workers fought At the U20 summit in London, world trade unionists (centre) march for jobs alongside British trade union for better redundancy packages when leaders underscored "the critical impor­ contingents (top and bottom), the factory closures were announced. tance of rejecting protectionism", ie The Lindsey strike was not intend­ measures that are designed to give pref­ pie proposed that in rcturn for a govern~ ers and immigrants while building ed to secure more jobs, but to redi­ erence to the industry of one's own ment bailout, French car makers should illusions in the benevolence of one's vide jobs in favour of British work~ country. But .in thc face of world rcces~ shut down plants in Eastern Europe and "'own" capitalists, who are responsi­ ers. In such situations we demand the sian, protectionism is increasing. produce in France. blc for the destitution of the working highest rate of pay and benefits no Obama included a "buy American" For the bourgeoisie, "free trade" class. Protcctionism ultimately leads matter who does the work, and equal clause in his "rescvc" package for and protcctionism arc options they to trade wars laying the basis for war pay for equal work. Thc settlemcnt at American industry and tensions can debate, but for the working class between imperialist powers for con~ Lindsey pledged that 102 jobs prcvi~ between capitalist govcrnments within protectionism is poison. It serves to trol of markets and spheres of influ~ ously expected to go to Italian workers the European Union (EU) have been channel discontent over job losses ence. It's worth recalling that what would be offered to British workers. exacerbated. Nicolas Sarkozy for exam~ into hostility towards foreign work~ got the world out of the Great cuntinued un page 8 April 23 marked 30 years since the Eyewitnesses reported seeing the SPG British state killed anti-fascist activist pour out of two vans and wade into the J~\.\. \'\j'" , "ERS Blair Peach during a demonstration fleeing demonstrators. No fewer than ten > against the National Front (NF) in witnesses reported seeing Blair Peach l\\~n1\~1,.. ~ .... Southall. He was killed by cops un­ attacked by one ofthese SPG thugs. But BLAiR rt"~ .1*30; leashed that day by the James Cal­ no cop was ever charged with any crime. laghan Labour government to defend When the coroner's inquest 13 months Southall, April the fascist NF who were staging a after the killing announced its verdict of ANt> 1979: Asian provocation in an area heavily populat­ death by "misadventure", we wrote: workers honour "But it was not a 'misadventure' which ed by Asian working-class families. GURDID Sill,. anti-fascist fig hter Hundreds of anti-fascists were arrested; cracked Blair Peach's skull in half. It was Blair Peach (inset) dozens were injured by the police. Blair a police truncheon, or similar weapon, and victim of Peach's skull was fractured by vicious wielded with fatal effect by one or sev­ racist murder blows from the notorious Special Patrol eral of the more than 3000 cops who Gurdlp (Gurdid) Group (SPG), the police unit that spear­ rioted outside Southall Town Hall to Singh Chaggar. headed the bloody assault. protect the future would-be guardians of

gas chambers and concentration camps Nazi regalia." In fact, the doctor who from the wrath of their intended vic­ carried out the second post-mortem on tims" (Spartaeist Britain no 22, June behalf of the Peach family suggestcd A salute to Charles Darwin 1980). that the weapon used had becn "a lead This year marks the 150th anniversary In the late 1970s, when the NF was weighted rubber 'cosh' or hosepipe 01 the publication 01 On the Origin of canying out racist terror on the streets, filled with lead shot". Species by Charles Darwin and the 200th the Asian community of Southall The capitalist state protects and cov­ anniversllIY oIDarwin:, hirth. Through his became a symbol of resistance to these ers for its hired thugs. Repeated efforts theory olevolution through natural selec­ attacks. The racist murder of Gurdip to press for an enquiry into the cop tion, 0/; as he pn~/erred to call it, "descent Singh Chaggar in 1976 called forth a killing of Blair Peach-which the statc with modUication ", Darwin unshackled militant youth revolt which took up the would certainly whitewash - have biological science.linm the chains ofreli­ Sikh battle cry, "We shall fight like failed. Twenty years after Pcach was gion and metaphysics by providing a mate­ lions". Militant trade union struggle in killed, in again ruling out an investiga­ rialist explanation for the evolutiun oflife the area including at Heathrow Airport tion, Labour minister Paul Boateng TROTSKY LENIN Oil this planet through careful, meticu- drew support from the local popUlation. said, "Lessons have been learncd from lously recorded studies (?j'variation within Blair Peach, a member of the Socialist the circumstances of his death about the species. Yet, el'l'n as itforms the has is o/modl.!rn hi%f{Y, evolution continues to be a Workers Party, was respected as a dedi­ policing of public order incidents and the constant target qj" the fundamentalist Christian right and reactionaries, including cated teacher and anti-racist. Five days importance of good police-community hecQuse it eliminates an.t' scient(/ic hasisfhr racism. after he was killed, some 10,000 rclations" (bbc.co.uk, 13 April 1999). In thefallowing excerptFom an article (written in 1919 and revised in 1922) on marched in defiant tribute, raising Fast forward ten years: Ian Tomlinson the renegade Fom Marxism Karl KautsJ..y, revolutionary leader Leon Tmtsky compared clenched fists as they passed the spot was killed at the hands of the Territorial thc historic hrcadth (~rDarwin:~ ...·cient(jic studies to Marx:'l study qj'human society, where he was killed. Support Group, which in 1987 replaced pointing Ollt that hoth reveal that long periods (d~\'eeming equilihrium arc p('riodi('a/~J' The findings or a police enquiry into the SPG as a Metropolitan Police spe­ interrupted hy tUrrlultuous pcriods (!lrupid. rev()/utioIlW:I' change. Peach's death were never published, but cial unit for "disorder" as well as "anti- . a few·.·.fIW\ d.·.·, ,1 AI pre ._ 'p"," "cOtlip' .<---_ ...•. ,___ H(·· The Darwinian theory ofthc origin of species encompasses the entire span of devel­ wrote in the 1980 article, "When the ·-·--:We ren~lber a;d honour Blair Peach. opment of the plant and animal kingdoms. The struggle for survival and the processes ClD team did a search of SPG lockers Nine years after his death we wrote of natural and sexual selection proceed continuously and uninterruptedly. But if one for 'unauthorised weapons', they wcre (1t(Jrkers Hammer no 98, May/June could observe these processes with ample time at one's disposal- a millennium, say, diverted long enough for the lockers 1988): "Vengeance for his dcath will only as the smallest unit of measure "-one would undoubtedly discover with one's own eyes to be sanitised. Even so, the array come with victorious socialist revolution. that there are long ages of relative equilibrium in the world of living things, when the of 'unauthorised' weapons discovered Along the road to that revolution, the laws of selection operate almost imperceptibly, and the different species remain rcl­ included metal truncheons, lead­ workers movement will honour its mar­ atively stable, seeming the very embodiment of Plato's ideal types. But there are also weighted coshes, crowbars, axe-handles tyrs and its heroes. And Blair Peach was ages when the equilibrium between plants, animals, and their geophysical environment and a rhino whip. One locker contained certainly both of these.". is disrupted, epochs of geobiological crisis, when the laws of natural selection come to the fore in all their fCrocity, and evolution passes over the corpses of entire plant and animal specics. On this gigantic scale Darwinian theory stands out above all as the theory of critical epochs in the plant and animal development. Marx's theory of the historical process encompasses the entire history of human social organization. But in ages of relative social equilibrium the fact that ideas depend upon class interests and the property system remains masked. The age of revolution is Marxism's school of advanced study. Then the struggle of classes resulting from Immediate release of the North West 10! systems of property assumes the character of open civil war, and the systcms of gov­ No deportations! ernment, law, and philosophy arc stripped bare and revealed as instruments in the serv­ ice of classes. Marxist theory itself was first formulated in a prerevolutionary period, We reprint below a 27 May letter still being held pending their appeal when the classes were searching for a new orientation, and it achieved its final form sent to the Home Secretary by the against thc deportation order. through the experiences of revolution and counterrevolution in 1848 and the follow­ Partisan Defence Committee, a c1ass­ Like other cases - including 15 mg years. struggle non-sectarian legal and social Muslim men rounded up and interned defence organisation associated with as suspected "terrorists" after 9111, - Leo,n Trotsky, "Karl Kautsky" (1922), reprinted in Portraits Political & the Spartaeist League. whose lives have been ravaged by gov­ Personal (Pathfinder Press, 1977) We demand the immediate release of ernment "control orders" for fictional the Pakistani students arrested on unnamed crimes - these arrests and 8 April in draconian "anti-terror" raids intended deportations amount to in northwest England. The police out­ British state terror aimed at justifying rageously seized and arrested twelve the ever expanding repressive powers men '-- one British and eleven Pak­ of the capitalist state. The Labour gov­ WORKERSIlAMMER~ istani - with the usual justification of ernment currently wields these powers thwarting a gigantic and sinister "terror against "terror suspects", which in the Marxist newspaper of the Spartacist LeaguelBritain plot ". But there was never any plot; state's racist lexicon today means first For a federation of workers republics in the British Islesl thirteen days of cop searches pre­ and foremost Muslims. The "war on For a Socialist United States of Europel dictably unearthed no "bomb factory", terror" is the domestic corollary to the no "AI Qaeda links", no evidence of British and US bloody imperialist wars The Spartacist League is the British section of the International Communist League anything, mercly photos the students and occupations of Iraq and Af­ (Fourth Internationalist). had taken of one another at public loca­ ghanistan. Now as the US has broad­ EDITOR: Eibhlin McDonald tions such as the Trafford Centre. ened its killing fields to bombing PRODUCTION MANAGER: James Palmer CIRCULATION MANAGER: Mick Connor Finally released without charge on 21 Pakistan, the British government rails April, cleven of the men were immedi­ against that country's "insufficient" Spartacist Publications, PO Box 42886, London N19 5WY E·mail: [email protected] ately incarcerated by the UK Border actions against terrorism. Subscriptions: £3 for 1 year, Europe outside Britain & Ireland £5, overseas airmail £7 Agency under immigration legislation, Release the North West 101 No Opinions expressed in signed articles do nol necessarily 8Kpress the editorial Viewpoint. and slated for deportation on bogus deportations! Down with the racist The closing date for news in this issue is 30 May 2009. Pnnted by Newsfax Intemationalltd (trade union) ISSN 0267·8721 "national security" grounds. Ten are "war on terror"!

2 WORKERS HAMMER o vole 10 02EUI

On the ballot lor the 4 June elections Down with the bosses' EU signed to conceal the fact that fascists to the European Parliament is a new For a Socialist United States of Europe! arc paramilitary forces that seck to political formation called "No2EU realise their programme in action on the Yes to Democracy". Backcd by the 'British jobs for British workers'" "Fairness for British workers" and streets. The fascists ft:ed off the eco­ RMT union and headed by its general (Weekly Wiwker, 26 March). For its part :.'British jobs for British workers" were nomic misery and mass unemployment secrctary Bob Crow, N02EU is an the Alliance for Worker\ Liberty (AWL) again in evidencc. Speaker after speaker wrought by decaying capitalism by alliance between the Socialist Party, the hailed what they called a "substantial bemoaned thc "'discrimination" against scapegoating foreign workers for Communist Party of Britain (CPB) and industrial victory" at Lindsey. "British" workers, while Bob Crow ful­ unemployment. other smaller groups, including Tommy In May the Socialist Party once again minated: "what they want to do is, say Fascist provocations must be stopped Sheridan's Solidarity in Scotland and proclaimed a "big victory" at Milford there's a Chinese worker I who J wants to by trade union/minority mobilisations. the Indian Workers Association (IWA). !laven in South Wales when another work for a bowl of rice, then you've got However such a perspective is anathe­ N02EU says it is standing in "opposi­ ma to Labourite bureaucrats like Crow, tion to the Lisbon Treaty, against the who as leader of the RMT -a strategic EU-Ied privatisation of our public ser­ union of white, black and Asian work­ vices, for workers' rights and in protest ers - sits on top of enormous potential at the corrupt EU gravy train", as well social power that can hit the capitalists as "setting out a clear, socialist alterna­ where it hurts. Instead, with the N02EU tive to the poison and hatred of the BNP campaign, Crow is helping to put wind [British National Party]". References to in the fascists' sails hy supporting "workers' rights" and "socialism" arc strikes organised on the BNP's central there merely to provide camouflage for slogan of "British jobs lor British work­ the n.:actionary agenda of No2EU ers"! Fascism is endemic to the capital­ which attacks the ElJ, not from the ist system and the fascist danger can perspective of internationalist work­ only ultimately be eliminated by social­ ers solidarity against the bosses but ist revolution. on the basis of protectionism and "lit­ Echoing the arguments of right-wing tle-England" nationalism. Tory "Eurosceptics" and the UK The real content of N02EU's cam­ Independence Pal1y (UKIP), No2ElJ paign is chauvinist protectionism, as directs all its fire at the European Union can be seen from this stakmcnt on its which it criticises as an "undemocratic website: superstate" while calling for "the repa­ '"The cconomi(.; term for undercutting triation of dcmonati(; powers to mem­ wages hy using cheap foreign labour is ber states"-a touching appeal for 'social Jumping'. This process was restoring sovcn:ignty to the Mother of recently played out the Guardian website (21 A Socialist Party leaflet for the rally what's needed as an answer to mass tweak iog the EU posted workers directives May) the strike was settled when "the called "to force the government to with­ uncmployment, the privatisation of would solve the problem. Both seem to be public services and the ever-worsening happy to ignore the events of the last 30 Dutch-based employer, Hertel, agreed draw from or amend the EU directives years where elected governments have to withdraw 40 Poles and replace them and court rulings that legalise the bos­ economic conditions that have pau­ been stripped 0 f democratic powers to with UK staff at the tenninal owned by ses' exploitation of cheap foreign non­ perised millions. control the mov-cml:nt of capital, goods, ExxonMobil and Total". The Socialist union labour to the exclusion of local As Marxists we stand in implacable services and labour." Party admits that "Hertel faxed the unioniscd workers", "Local" here is a opposition to the European Union, an As a 22 May article on BBC News media that the Polish workers [had] euphemism for "British", a fact empha­ imperialist trade bloc and a vehicle lor online put it: "N02EU was born out of been removed from the site", blithely sised by the racist storm whipped up by the European capitalists' co-operation thc 'British jobs lor British workers' adding "but this was never a demand of the London Hvcnhlg 5;tandard against against the working class and against protests at the Lindsey oil refinery and the union". They go on to say that the foreign-born workers who are regis­ immigrants. Our opposition is based on its aim is to provide working class vot­ striking British workers "were not tered as "local" working on the proletarian internationalism which is ers and trade union members with a left opposed to laggers from Poland getting Olympics site. The Socialist Party has counterposed to the nationalist protec­ wing alternative to the British National work on the site as long as local laggers worked overtime to cover up the chau­ tionism pushed by trade union bureau­ Party". No2EU boasts that its electoral were given the opportunity of the work vinist character of the reactionary strike crats like Crow. In common with Lenin, list comprises candidates who played a first as under the union agreement" movement, dismissing as marginal or we believe that it is impossible to leading role in those reactionary protests (Socialist, 2S May-3 June). Putting irrelevant the Union Jacks, the calls for t:ohere a stable European bourgeois on construction sites and participation in British workers first, is what these "British jobs for British workers" and "'superstate" because capitalism is the allian(;e is conditional on having chauvinist strikes -- and indeed the the presence of the BNP at the protests. organised on the basis of nation-states. supported them. This in itself is enough Socialist Party-arc all about. Originally established as an economic for Marxists to reject any support what­ The Spartacist League opposed the Protectionism benefits BNPI adjunct of NATO as the US sought to ever to this outfit. We say: No vote to chauvinist strikes against foreign work­ The N02EU campaign claims to be strengthen Western Europe against the N02EU in the European elections! ers and called lor full union pay f(,r all fighting the BNP, but in reality this Soviet Union, the EU is today a trade According to Weekly Worker (19 work and for the unions to defend boils down to competing with the fas­ bloc dominated by (iennany, the most March) a leaked internal memo from immigrant workers. We noted that the cist scum on their own racist terrain in powerful European imperialist country. the CPB states: "Whilst this is a very outcome of the Lindsey strike "will an attempt to win over would-be BNP The EU exists to f~lCilitate competition broad campaign, SWP, AWL, Weekly reverberate against foreign and immi­ voters. N02EU says "the BNP has no with the rival US and Japanese imperi­ Worker and other ultra-left groups have grant workers. not least on building answers". In fact fascists do have alists. The capitalists' drive for new not been considered eligible, these hav­ sites such as the 2012 Olympic projects an "answer" to the crisis of capital­ markets and raw materials inevitably ing sharply criticised the Lindsey strike where over a third of the workers arc ism-their programme is genocide of leads to attacks on the living standards movement" (quoted in Weeklv Wi>rker, immigrants and where in recent months blacks, Asians and other minorities as and conditions of the working class as 19 March). In fact, the "ineligible" some 200 Romanian workers were well as the destruction of workers the capitalist ruling class of each nation organisations all supported the Lindsey removed during a clampdown on 'ille­ organisations. seeks advantages against its rivals. With strike, albeit with criticisms. The gal' foreign labour" (Workers Hammer Fascists are guard dogs of capitalism the counterrevolutionary destruction of reformist Socialist Workers Party no 206, Spring 2009). Sure enough, this who are held on a leash during times of the Soviet Union and the deformed (SWP) opposed the "British jobs for was graphically confirmed at a 6 May relative capitalist "stability", to be let workers states of Eastern Europe, the British workers" slogan but supported protest at the 2012 Olympics construc­ loose during periods of crisis when the pennanent imperialist rivalries which the Lindsey settlement anyway. The tion site in Stratford, London, which capitalist order is threatened by workers were kept in check by shared anti­ Communist Party of Great Britain was used as a platform to build support revolution. Retormists like the SWP Sovietism have been sharpened greatly, (CPGB) gave "critical support" to the for the N02EU campaign. The demon­ have persistently spread the lie that the posing the question of trade wars lead­ Lindsey strikers and claimed: "SP com­ stration was an orgy of nationalist pro­ way to "stop the BNP" is to vote ing to shooting wars. Like Lenin's rades played a generally positive role tectionism. Many of the workers present Labour, or some other "democratic" Bolsheviks we insist that the only way in winning the Lindsey strikers to a pro­ had been bussed in from sites like alternative at election time. But, unlike out· of the impasse is international gressive, internationalist set of demands, Lindsey and Staythorpe where the Labourite reformists, fascists arc not workers revolution to expropriate the and in opposing the nationalist slogans protests against migrant workers characterised by parliamentarism - the capitalist classes and lay the basis for spontaneously adopted by some, such as had taken place. Signs demanding BNP's electoral campaigns are de- socialism .•

SUMMER 2009 3 We reprint be/ow. in slightly edited every socialisi rejoicing" (The Socialist, /hrm, an artide from Au~tralasjan September 1991). Spartacist no 204 (Autumn 2009). news­ paper of the Spartaeist League or SAlt: Haunted by the Australia, section (~l the International spectre of Marx Communist League (Fourth Interna­ As if to justify their anti-Marxist tionalist). conciliation of religion, SAlt quote Karl Marx, who explained: "Religious suflering is at one and the same SPA"RTACIST ~ time the expres!,ion of real suffering and a and religion protest against real suffering. Religion is For youth repelled by the exploita­ the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart tive capitalist system and beginning to of a heartless world and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people." explore socialist ideas, organisations tion of religion and state! In fact, the full Party. Thus, in the 2007 c1eetions they claiming the mantle of Marxism might separation of religion and state has championed a vote for the bourgeois SAlt piously claim, "Those who wish to seem a bewildering assortment. Reading nowhere been fully realised by the bour­ Greens (an act of class treachery) as a present Marx as anti-religious trot out an article in Socialist Alternative (Oct­ geoisie for the simple reason that reli­ means to apply pressure on Rudd's only the last sentence." One only need Nov 2008) titled "The real story of what gion has great value for the ruling class Labor Party. For our part we Spartacists quote Marx's very next lines to expose Marxists think of religion", you could in its struggle against the proletariat. declared the elections a bipartisan war this self-serving lie: forgive such potential revolutionaries With its deep social roots, religion serves on workers and minorities, and called "The abolition of religion as the illwwry their confusion. Eulogising religion as to buttress the institution of the family, for "No vote to ALP! No vote to bour­ happiness of the people is the demand for having the potential to be a "platform the main source of women's oppression. geois Greens!" their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition for resistance to oppression", Socialist and ruling-class authority. All modem Under the cover of fighting against Alternative (SAlt) contend that Marx­ is to call on them to give up a condition religion acts as an instrument of capital­ the "war on terror", SAlt poisonously that requires illusions." ism isn't opposed to religion at all! ist reaction that defends exploitation and insinuate that any criticism of Islam "What!?" such youth might exclaim, - "Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of befuddles the working people. equals support for racist anti-Muslim Right" (1 X44) "What happened to Marxism being sci­ Our goal is to build a revolutionary persecution. In fact, from their written Declaring "'Marx was a democrat before entific and atheist?" party that can lead the working class in repudiation of the Marxist attitude he became a socialist", SAlt do their best, Perhaps it was one such individual its historic task of overthrowing eapital- towards religion to braying about their who wrote to 5i'odalist Alternative through selective quoting, to devolve him (November 200R), calling on SAlt to into a "hannless" modem-day bourgeois­ SlOP sugar-coating religion and observ­ liberal democrat. ing that "Islam like Judaism and To expunge the taint of atheism trom Christianity are tools of the oppres­ their fake brand of "Marxism", under sors". The letter provoked a venomous the heading "Islamophobia" SAlt pick response. Three replies, including from on two prominent authors who arc sc1f'­ SAlt cadre, published in thc "Dec OR­ identified atheists. First they cite reac­ Jan 09" issue denounced the correspon­ tionary journalist Christopher Hitchens dent as on the "elitist, atheist 'God as "living proof that being an atheist Delusion' bandwagon" and "filled with docs not make you more left-wing". In Islamophobic shit" having "sucked fact lIitchens' pro-imperialist wannon­ up ... the anti-Muslim mind poison, gering over Iraq owes more to the class­ sugar-coated in leftism fed to you by the less rOlltificating ahout "tyranny" ver­ ruling class", While we arc not uncriti­ sus "democracy" fundamental to SAlt's cal of the original (edited) letter and worldview than to his non-Marxist cri­ have no way of knowing fully what the tique of religion. Hitchens, once a mem­ writer stands for, SAlt's unhinged ber of SAlt's forebear, the anti-commu­ response, like their article penned by nist Cliffite International Socialists, Patrick Weiniger, is a bald-faced repudi­ long ago took the logical step to bour­ ation of Marxism. geois reaction. As Marxist revolutionaries who want The other target of SAlt's anti-atheist to change this world and end human vitriol is Richard Dawkins, evolution­ exploitation and oppression, we're ary biologist and writer of popular sci­ firmly on the side of science, which Bolshevik leader Alexandra Kollonlai with Central Asian women, drinking wine ence. SAlt quote from The God studies the natural world and validates in defiance of teachings of Koran. Delusion where Dawkins gives a theories by observation and experiment, straightforward list of atrocities com­ as opposed to religion which asserts ism and replacing it with socialism. attendance at Muslim prayer meetings, mitted in the name of religion, includ­ blind faith in an unreal, supernatural Only then will religion, which enforces SAlt foster backward consciousness ing the Crusades and the Spanish power controlling events. We are, in the mindless subordination to "higher among the masses, conciliating both Inquisition. SAlt assert, "Dawkins words of Russian revolutionary leader authority" and is responsible for so religion and religious leaders such as argues that religion is to blame for war. VI Lenin, "absolutely atheistic and pos­ much guilt and misery, quickly wither the Muslim clerics involved in recent This patently false idea provides a cover itively hostile to all religion". At the through education once its state props protests against Israel's murderous for imperialism." Never mind the fact same time we oppose all fomas of reli­ are kicked away. attacks on Gaza. This is no surprise as that Dawkins protested Britain's gious persecution and oppression. Thus they and their forebears have long por­ involverflent in the invasion of Iraq. our comrades in the US have opposed Down with anti-Muslim racism I trayed· Muslim fundamentalism as False consciousness like religion and the arrest of Mormons for practising We Marxists have been forthright in "anti-imperialist" and even "revolution­ nationalism certainly is a powerful tool polygamy (see Workers Vanguard our opposition to the racist "war on tcr­ ary". Their outlook is both a product of to inspire division in the working and no 916, 6 June 2008). Comrades in ror", opposing thc bloody occupations their liberal opportunism and a direct oppressed masses, and in this epoch of France and ,elsewhere have protested of Iraq and Afghanistan abroad and the outgrowth of their anti-communist hos­ imperialist reaction often provides the government moves to ban the Islamic vile racist seapegoating of Muslims at tility to the former Soviet Union and trip wire for the bloodiest conflicts. hijab or headscarf in schools, noting home. Struggling in the interests of other societies where capitalism has Indonesia 1965-66 is but one chilling that such persecution can only reinforce the whole working class, and against been overthrown. It has led them to illustration. More than a million Com­ the grip of religion by driving women Laborite nationalism, we are for a class­ politically embrace such vile reactionary munists, workers, peasants and ethnic out of secular society. struggle fight to defend the rights of forces as the Vatican-backed Polish Chinese were massacred when the We stand opposed to the imperialist Muslims and all immigrants and Solidarnosc (Solidarity) and the Islamic Indonesian generals unleashed Islamic impoverishment and exploitation of the minorities. As for SAlt, for all their fundamentalist Afghan m~;ahedin. fundamentalist reactionaries to crush masses of the neocolonial world, but "militant anti-racist" posturing, come To the extent that SAlt have influ­ the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). this does not mean that we are cultural election day they fall into line behind ence, their programme has actually In the face of this terror, the workers relativists who prettify the horrible sta­ the Labor Party rALP) and racist capi­ helped create today's post-Soviet reac­ and peasants of Indonesia were politi­ tus quo in such countries. Thus we talist rule. For example, in the 2001 tionary political climate marked by all­ cally, organisationally and militarily oppose hideous "customs" such as elections SAlt advocated to "grit our sided capitalist brutality and heightened disarmed by the PKl programme of"na­ female genital mutilation or the head­ teeth" and vote for the ALP, even as the religious obscurantism. In August 1991 tional unity", a popular-frontist alliance to-toe veil. While recognising that peo­ ALP was demanding "security abroad, when Boris Ycltsin's impcrialist-baeked of bourgeois nationalists, Islamic groups ple should be able to hold their religious security at home" and trying to outdo forces of counterrevolution staged a and the PKI (see "Lessons oflndonesia beliefs without interference from the the then-Howard government in support countercoup in Moscow, evcry capital­ 1965", Spartacist [English-language state, we oppose religion dictating the for the war on Afghanistan and the war ist ruling class around the world cele­ edition) no 55, Autumn 1999). The policy of the state. on refugees. brated. Then part of the International Australian and US imperialists were up Upholding the liberating ideals of the In fact SAlt's "socialist alternative" Socialists, SAlt cadre joined in the jubi­ to their necks in these atrocities, pro­ Enlightenment and Marxism, we revolu­ has never extended beyond trying to lation declaring that" 'Communism is moting the mobilisation of Islamic reac­ tionaries fight for the complete separa- pressure the pro-imperialist Labor dead' .... It's a fact that should have tionaries against "godless communism"

4 WORKERS HAMMER and providing the Indonesian generals were forbidden to handle political cases or the status of women --the tribal chiefs wide proletarian revolution can lay the with a hit list of some 5000 Com­ any cases in which both parties to the dis­ and mullahs went to war when the basis for the end of material want, the munists to exterminate. In helping to pute had not agreed to use the kadi rather Afghan govemment attempted to open foundation of religious superstition. orchestrate this massacre the imperial­ than the parallel Soviet court system. As up education for girls and to reduce the The Marxist programme aims at the the Soviet courts became more accepted, ists were applying an imperative noted criminal cases were eliminated from the bride price. Standing upon our uncondi­ eradication of religion, not by force of in 1950 by then-US Secretary of State kadis' sphere. Next the government invited tional military defence orthe USSR, the arms or law, but scientific mastery of John Foster Dulles: "The religions of dissatisfied parties to appeal the kadis' deci­ Spartacist League took the side of social nature. This is not a recipe to tolerate thc East arc deeply rooted and havc sions to a Soviet court. In this manner the progress. We said: "Hail Red Army' ignorance or superstition, but on the many preciolls values. Their spiritual Soviets earned the reputation of being par­ Extend social gains of the October Rev­ contrary an obligation to a<:tively beliefs canl10t be reconciled with tisans urthe oppressed, while the kmil:'1 were olution to Afghan peoples'" expose and refute religion as all ohsta­ exposed as delendcrs orthe status quo." ('o!11munist atheism and materialism. Drivcn by their hostility to the Soviet cle to the satisfaction of human needs. That creates a cOlllmon bond between After only a few years the /({utis were Unioll, SAlt also hailed Polish ekrical­ As Lenin wrote: LIS, and our tusk is to find it and develop forbidden to enforce any Muslim law reactionary, anti-woman, anti-Semitic "The dialecticalmah:riaiisill of Marx and it" (cited in Paul A Baran, The Political which contradicted Soviet law. Soviet "unil'll" Soliciamosc, backed to the hilt Engels ... applies the lnaterialist philosuphy Economy oj Growth), representatives attendcd ·aM kadi pro­ by the CIA and the Catholic Church, to the domain of history.... We must COIll­ Hostile to the lessons of Indonesia ceedings ano their approval was throughout its rise in the 1980s. When bat religion- -that is the ABC of all mate­ 19h5, the anti-communist opportunists required for all court decisions. In the ill September I <)X I Solidarnosc came out rialism, and consequently ofMarxislll.l~llt of SAlt criminally encourage workers mid-lnOs, whell the walks (endow­ for capitalist restoration we said: "Stop Marxism is not a materialism which has ment properties), which had supported stopped at the AU( '. Marxism goes lilrthcr. down the same blood-drcllchcu popu­ Solidarity's Counterrevolution!" Later It says: Vic must Imow how lo combat rell­ lar-frontist path. A Ictter by Weiniger the kadis, were expropriated and redis­ Solidamosc's programme triumphed in giun, and in ordcr to do so \\'c must explain and Colleen Bolger published in tributed among the peasantry, the k"dis the form of the devastating 1989 capital­ the source of raith and rdigion alllong the Socialist Alternative (Dec 08-Jan 09) disappeared completely. ist counterrevolution in Poland, which masses ;11 a mat£'r;ali~;1 way." excitedly reported on the "'Socialism Scandalously, in 2005 SAlt's political ushered in mass unemployment and the "The Attitude of the Workers Party and Islam" session they attended at a cothinkers in Canada, the International brutal rollback of women's rights, partic- to Religion" (1404) Socialist Party of Malaysia (PSM)-hosted It will take a prnletariaJl revolution to conference last November. Enthusing smash the power of capital and open the that "we got to debate how the Left ~ road to the egalitarian socialist society should relate to Islamic parties in a it 1;" based on the material abundance need­ largely Muslim country", they lauded i ed to sweep away the basis of religion. the PSM for "eschewing sectarian dis­ This requires the building of a Leninist missal of Muslim political fotees". No Gdansk, Poland: vanguard party which can lead the doubt they also support the PSM stand­ Lech Walesa working class at the head of all the ing in the Malaysian elections last year ,,' , J, being blessed in oppressed. lts cadres will be the most 1980 by under the banner of the main bourgeois 1 ' ..' advanced fighters, including in defence ~'.:.' Solidarnosi: opposition, which includes Islamic fun­ of science and in opposition to religious damentalists. "spiritual superstition. Lenin explained: adviser", anti .. SAlt slander the Bolsheviks Semitic priest "So far as the Party of the socialist prole­ Henryk tariat is concerned, religion is not a private SAlt would have us believe that their affair. Our Party is an association of class­ Jankowski. chasing of religious "allies" has the en­ conscious, advanced fighters for the dorsement of the Bolshevik party that led emancipation of the working class. Such the October 1917 Russian Revolution an association cannot and must not be establishing the world's first workers indifferent to lack of class-consciousness, Socialists, supported govemment propos­ ularly abortion rights. ignorance or obscurantism in the shape of state. In a September 2006 article, "Why als to establish "haria tribunals for fami­ Weiniger's article concludes by de­ religious beliefs." Socialists Fight for Religious Freedom", ly law, as part of the capitalist state. Our nouncing a July 2008 Sydney demo -"Socialism and Religion" (1905) cadre Diane Fieldes writes: "In some of comrades of the Trotskyist LeaguelLigue protesting homophobia and opposition the southern republics of the USSR in the This Leninist perspective stands diamet­ trotskyste actively protested against to effective birth control by the Catholic early 1920s as many as 15 per cent of rically opposed to SAlt's accommodation these moves. Such cout1s could only Church. This demonstration, which we party members werc helievers in Islam" to organised religious movements as deepen the isolation and oppression of Spartacists attended, was called by the and declares, "Muslims were cncoui'agcd allies-in-waiting. Muslim women (see Sparlflcist Canada reformist Democratic Socialist Per­ to join the Communist Party." Addressing the French public III no 147, Winter 2005/2006). spective in response to the visit of Pope Far from conciliating religion, Soviet 1767, Voltaire wrote, "Anyone who has Benedict during "World Youth Day", policy in Central Asia recognised that Support to counterrevolution the power to make you believe absurdi­ = which saw hundreds of thousands 0 f the path to overthrowing the entrenched ties has the power to make you commit support to anti-woman reaction "pilgrims" descend on the city in a "cel­ power of religion, in lands almost injustices." SAlt oppose Marx's pro­ Despite the Soviet Union's degenera­ ebration" of religious obscurantism. entirely devoid of a working class, man­ gramme, not out of ignorance, but as a tion under a nationalist parasitic Unable to utter a word of protest against dated admitting a fraction of the most consequence of their anti-communist bureaucratic caste, which usurped polit­ the reactionary, anti-woman Catholic conscious members of society, outside programme, which rejects the Marxist ical power limn the Soviet proletariat in Church, SAlt instead arc outraged that the Europeanised elite, into the Com­ principle that only the working class a political counterrevolution beginning some protesters ''"thrust'' condoms at munist parties. As Russian revolution­ has both the interest and the social in 1923-24, the proletarian collectivised pilgrims en route to pray at the Pope's ary Leon Trotsky explained: power to overthrow capitnlism and property forms created by the 1917 feet, lamenting that this could only build a classless society. "We will admit into our ranks those com­ October Revolution remained until cap­ serve to "isolate" the left from these rades who have yet to hrcak rrom religion The Spartacist League and Spartacus not in order to reconcile Marxism with italist counterrevolution in 1991-92. It "potential allies". While SAlt wring Youth Club arc dedicated to freeing the Islam, but rather tactfully but persistently to was the elementary duty of revolution­ their hands about the sensibilities of oppressed from religion's yoke. As we frcc the backward members' consciousness aries to defend the gains of the revolu­ Catholic pilgrims, we Marxists say: say in the article "Marxism and Reli­ of superstition, which in its very essence is tion by fighting for the unconditional Free contraception and abortion on gIOn", reprinted in our pamphlet the mortal enemy of communism." military defence of the Soviet degener­ demand for all! For the separation of Enli~htenmcnt Rationalism and the 'Tasks of Communist Education" ated workers state and for proletarian church and state! Origins (~lM(lf:"'(ism: (1923) in Prahlems a/Everyday Li/e political revolution to oust the Stalinist "In order to win over a new generation to SAlt lyingly infer that thc Bolsheviks misleaders who paved the way for cap­ For a multiracial Leninist vanguard party! the struggle for socialism, based on a abandoned the bourgeois-democratic italist restoration. We apply the same materialist conception of society, socialists separation of church and state by claim­ programme to the deformed workers Religion at best serves to propagate must ceaselessly combat religion and ing the young Soviet state accommodat­ states of China, North Korea, Vietnam and enshrine mind-numbing delusions, other forms of idealism which look to the ed sharia law, the 1300-year-old body and Cuba today. to lessen the pain of existence. Reli­ supernatural, explaining that freedom of Muslim canon law regulating every SAlt's political origins go back to the gious institutions help enforce the worst from oppression lies in this world, not another.". aspect of life including enforcing capi­ late Tony Cliff and his followers who prejudices, oppression of women, and tal punishment for homosexuality and bowed to the pressure of anti-communist subjugation of youth and, along with "honour killings" of women and girls Cold War hysteria during the Korean the institution of the family, serve as a accused of "improper" relations with War. Capitulating to the British bour­ prop for the capitalist system of private Moving? men. According to Fieldes: "A parallel geoisie and the then-ruling British property. Often, where material want is court system was created in 1921, with Labour Party, they refused to defend the greatest, such as societies based on sub­ Islamic courts administering justice in Soviet Union, China and North Korea sistence agriculture, organised religion To receive Workers accordance with sharia law alongside against imperialist attack and broke from exercises a monopoly over social wel­ Hammer or Workers the soviet system. Thousands of Muslim Trotsky's Fourth International, reneging fare. For example, Catholic medical Vanguard without interrup­ schools were set up with govenunent on their revolutionary duty. centres throughout regions of Africa, encouragement." In truth, as we wrote in Motivated by hostility towards the Asia and South America are often the tion please let us know at "Early Bolshevik Work Among Women Soviet Union, throughout the 1980s, as sole provider of healtheare services, but least three weeks before of the Soviet East" (Women and then-members of the Cliffite Interna­ they use their resources to implement you move. Send your new Revolution no 12, Summer 1976): tional Socialist Organisation, SAlt cadre the Vatican's prohibition of the use of " ... the Soviet government waged a cam­ supported the CIA-bankrolled Islamic condoms, an elementary public health and old address to: paign to build the authority of the Soviet Afghan mujahedin cut-throats against measure in societies ravaged by AIDS. legal system and civil courts as an alter­ Spartacist Publications, native to the traditional Muslim kadi the Soviet Red Army, alongside Wash­ The historic task of the international courts and legal codes. Although the kadi ington and its union-busting Hawkel working class is to make the productive PO Box 42886, courts were pennitted to function, their Keating Labor government ally in resources of the world available to all, London N19 5WY powers were circumscribed in that they Canberra. This was a war directly over based on need, not profit. Only world-

SUMMER 2009 5 Charter 08: programme for "democratic" counterrevolution

The follmving arhc/e is reprinted defence of the gains of the Revolution, Jimn Workers Vanguard no 933. 27 is diametrically opposed to the counter­ A/arch 2009, adapted tu Workers revolutionary machinations of outfits IIuI11l1lcr s~vl('. like Charter 08. In December, a document titled Charter 08 appeared on the internet in "Human rights" and China. Signed by some 300 individuals, "democracy" in the service largely intellectuals and academics, it of counterrevolution has since garnered another 8000 signa­ Charter 08 takes its name from tories. An English translation was Charter 77, a document put out by dis­ quickly circulated abroad and then pub­ sidents in Czechoslovakia in 1977. This lished in the N('~v Yo!'k Rn'ieH' (?tBooks and similar groups werc encouraged (15 January). The capitalist media in and promoted by the "human rights" the US and elsewhere has heaped praise campaign launched by then US on Charter OR. An editorial in the Democratic president Jimmy Cm1er as London Fil/al/cial Times (7 January) a way of politically undermining the saluted it as "a powerfully written anir­ Soviet Union and its East European Illation of universal human rights". 1\ bloc partners. It is, as they say, no acci­ Washington Post editorial (30 January) dent that Vaclav Havel, a Icading figure called it China's "ncw democracy in Charter 77, later played a central role movement" . in the imperialist-backed counterrevo­ Charter 08 is an explicit progrannne lution in Czechoslovakia in 1989-90. for capitalist counterrevolution in the Far more openly than Havel & Co in Chinese deformed workers state, 1977, the group around Charter 08 wrapped in the envelope of "democra­ George Bush in May 2006 hosts Chinese anti-Communist "human rights" brandishes the watchwords of "human cy". Its initiators seek to emulate the dissidents Li Baiguang, Wang Vi, Yu Jie (left to right), later signatorIes to rights" and "democracy" to attack the imperialist-backed "human rights" dis­ Charter 08. rcvolutionary overthrow of capitalist sidents in Eastern Europe who spear­ rule. The Charter statcs: "Where is headed the counterrevolutions in the formed from its inception under the rule "socialism in one country" has meant China headed in the twenty-lirst centu­ former Soviet bloc in 1989-92. The of Mao Zedong's CCP regime, a nation­ accommodation to world imperialism ry'! Will it continue with 'modemiza­ Charter calls for "free elections" as a alist bureaucratic caste resting atop the and opposition to the perspective of tion' under authoritarian rule, or will it political mcchanism for capitalist­ workers state. Unlike the Russian international workers revolution that is embrace universal human values, join rcstorationist partics to attain govern­ October Revolution of 1917, which was esscntial for thc advancc to socialism. thc mainstream of civilized nations, mental power. It demands the privatisa­ carried out by a class-conscious prolc­ As Trotskyists, we stand for the and build a democratic system?" tion of the collectivised core of the tariat guided by the Bolshevik interna­ unconditional military detencc of China Concretely, it demands: "We must abol­ Chinese economy -- the state-owned tionalism of Lenin and Trotsky, the against imperialism and counterrcvolu­ ish the special privilege of one party to enterprises~-as well as the land. In Chinese Revolution was the result of tion. In answer to the aspirations of the monopolize powcr and must guarantee short, this is a programme to reverse the peasant guerrilla war led by Mao's Chinese workers and rural toi lers for princip1cs of free and faif competition social gains of the 1949 Revolution Stalinist-nationalist forccs. Patterned democratic rights and a governmcnt among political parties." that, if realised, would plunge China after the Stalinist bureaucracy that had that represents thcir needs and interests, There is no such thing as a classless back into imperialist subjugation and usurped power in the USSR, Mao and we stand for proletarian political revo­ "dcmoeracy". Western-type parliamen­ exploitation. his successors, including today's Hu lution to oust the nationalist Stalinist tary government elected through uni­ Charter OX retrospectively snpports Jintao regime, have preached the pro­ bureaucracy and establish a govern­ versal suffrage is a disguised political the imperialist-backed Guomindang foundly anti-Marxist notion that social­ ment based on elected workers and fonn of the dictatorship of the capital­ (Nationalist Party) of Chiang Kai-shek ism - a classless, egalitarian society peasants councils and committed to ist class. In such a system the working against the Chinese Communist Party based on material abundance - could revolutionary proletarian international­ class is politically reduced to atomised (CCP) during the civil war of the late bc built in a single country. In practice, ism. This perspective, premised on individuals. The bourgeoisie can cffec­ 1940s: "Victory over Japan in 1945 tively manipulate the electorate through offered one more chance for China to its control of the media, the education move toward modern government, systcm and thc other institutions shap­ but the Communist defeat of the ing puBlic opinion. In all capitalist Nationalists in the civil war thrust the "democracies", government officials arc nation into the abyss of totalitarianism. " bought and paid for by the banks and The 1949 Chinese Revolution was a large corporations. As Lenin explained progressive social revolution of world­ in his 1918 polemic The Proletarian historic siglulicance. lIundreds of mil­ Revolution and the Renegade Kallfskv: lions of peasants rose up and seized the "'Even in the most democratic bourgeois land on which their forebears had been state the oppressed people at every step exploited from time immemorial. The encounter the crying contradiction creation of a centrally planned, collec­ between the formal cquality proclaimed tivised economy laid the basis for enor­ by the 'democracy' of the capitalists and mous social progress. The revolution the thousands of real limitations and enabled women to advance by magni­ subterfuges whieh turn the prolctarians tudes over their previous miserable sta­ into wage-slave,II." tus rooted in the old Confucian order in While the demand for pure "democ­ such practices as forced marriage and racy" might playa certain role in mobi­ concubinagc. A nation that had been lising the forces of counterrevolution in ravaged and divided by foreign powers China, their victory would not bring a was unified and freed from imperialist stable bourgeois parliamentary-type subjugation. regime. Rather China would be subjugat­ However, the Revolution was de- Workers at Baosteel plant In Shanghai, part of China's collectivlsed industry. ed and perhaps torn apart by American,

6 WORKERS HAMMER West European and Japanese imperial­ become a great power by integrating While chiding Charter 08 for its eco­ organisers, is president of the US-based ism, transformed into a giant sweatshop. into the world capitalist market via for­ nomic proposals, the CWI positively "lndependent Chinese PEN Center", The People's Republic of China is a eign investment and the export of identifies with its calls for "democra­ which receives regular NED funding. bureaucratically deformed expression cheap manufactured goods to the US cy". This is nothing new for the Two other prominent Charter spokes­ of the dictatorship of the proletariat. and Western Europe. But now that Taaffeites, who have hacked all manner men, Li I3aiguang and Teng Biao, were The class rule of the capitalists has been economIc strategy has been de­ of anti-Communist forces in the degen­ . given the NED's "Democracy Award" smashed and the economy collcc­ railed -- spectacularly· hy the glohal erated/deformed workers statcs. In the at a ceremony in Washington last year. tivised, but the proletariat is deprivcd of capitalist economic crisis. final tumultuous years of the USSR, To date, the CCP regime appears to direct political power. What is needed is The dominant weight of the statc- they supported the capitalist-restora­ have treated these pro-imperialist dissi­ tionist "democratic" camp of Boris dents with untypically mild repression. o o Yeltsin. In August 1991, Yeltsin, openly While taking steps to block the Charter ,o backed by then US president George frolll the internet, it has arrested only Bush Sr, staged a successful counter­ one (~harter spokesman, Liu Xiaobo, -r . , coup against the remnants of the disin­ while briefly detaining others or putting tegrating Kremlin oligarchy. The them under surveillance. This is in con­ T'1 1 Taaffeites joined YeUsin's reactionary trast to the severe repression that has rabble on the Moscow barricades. In been inflicted on leaders of workers People's sharp contrast, our comrades in strikes and other protests. Liberation Army Moscow distributed a leaflet in the tens While sharply opposing Charter OX's marching of thousands with the urgent call: politics, we do not at this time support through Beijing, "Soviet Workers: Defeat Yeltsin-Bush the repression of its initiators and sign­ June 1949. Counterrevolution!" Capitalist counter­ ers. These right-wing ideologues arc Revolution revolution brought mass unemploy­ clearly not leading a movement that smashed ment, falling life expectancy and threatens the existence or the Chinese landlord/capitalist social degradation to the peoples ofthe workers state, as was the 'case with rule but was lormer USSR and Eastern Europe, Polish Solidarnose by the fall of 198 l. deformed from its while emboldening the imperialist At that time, we wrote: "The threat of a inception by exploiters in attacking working people counterrevolutionary thrust for power is nationalist and minorities. now posed in Poland. That threat must Stalinist Today, the CWI publicises the work he crushed at all costs and by any bureaucracy. of the Hong Kong-based China Lahour means necessary" ("Stop Solidarity's Bulletin (CLIl). While masquerading as Counterrevolution!" r,yorkers Vanguard a workers organisation championing no 289, 25 September 198 I). When the "independent trade unions", the CLB is Stalinists moved to suppress Soli­ a fight for proletarian democracy. The owned enterprises and banks has pre­ a counterrevolutionary group with damosc in Decemher 1981, we suppOli­ workers and rural toilers need their own vented China from being dragged into direct connections to US imperialism. ed this. At the same time, we indicted class-based governing institutions, the the kind of deep economic crisis that is Its leader lIan Dongfang has long had a the bureaucracy for its nationalism, soviets (the Russian term for councils), ravaging most capitalist countries. programme on the CIA's Radio !'ree economic mismanagement and decades which would be open to all parties Nonetheless, major sedors of its econo­ Asia and is vice-chair of the World of capitulation to the Catholic church defending the workers state. my have been hard hit. In Guangdong Movement for Democracy, an outfit and other pro-capitalist forces, which province, the centre of China's export founded and run hy the National drove workers fr0111 the historically Charter 08 pushes industry, shipments plummeted over 50 Endowment lor Democracy (NED), a socialist-minded proletariat of Poland "free market" capitalism per cent in the first two months of this notorious CIA front. Han has been into the arms or reaction. called the "Chinese Lech Walesa", after With their hosannas to the "free mar­ Charter 08's call for capitalist year. Already over 20 million migrant the leader of Poland's Solidarnose. In kets" that are wreaking havoc around restoration is unambiguous: workers have been laid off, mainly the 1980s, Solidamo'':, the only "union" the globe, the right-wing intellectuals of "We should establish and protect the right from factories owned by foreign and supported by Reagan, Thatcher and the Charter 08 arc highly unlikely to gain to private property and promote an eco­ offshore Chinese capitalists that pro­ Vatican, led the drive to bring capitalist any traction among China's working nomic system of free and fair markcls .. duce consumer goods for export. exploitation in "democratic" guise back people, lor whom the "magic of the We should eSlablish a Committee on This. has precipitated an upsUf/le of State-Owned Property, reporting to the to the Soviet bloc, with full support from market" has meant .savage exploitation national legislature, that will monitor the defensive labour struggle that has seen transfer of state-owned enterprises to pri­ angry workers, demanding back payor vate ownership in a fair, competitive, and severance pay, fighting pitched battles orderly manner." with the police. The CCI' regime has It's more than a little ironic that this responded with a mixture of repression, demand for "free market" capitalism is cash handouts to some of the newly being raised at the very moment when unemployed and the reversal of some of the destructive irrationality of the capi­ its privatisation measures. "So much for Communist talist system - the anarchy of the mar­ capitalism", headlined the Economist (5 Party leader in ket -- is more evident than at any time March) in an article on China's latest Mianzhu begs in the past several decades. World cap­ economic moves, which noted ruefully enraged parents italism is in the throes of a deepening that the "opening up" of China's econo­ my appears to be going "into reverse". of victims of last financial/economic crisis centred in thc year's Sichuan imperialist countries of North America, earthquake to Westem Europe and Japan. Desperate Anti-Communist social democrats laud Charter 08 stop their to stanch the bleeding, the govern­ protest of ments of these countries are nationalis­ It is to be expected that leading or­ shoddy school ing banks, subsidising key industries gans of Western bourgeois opinion construction, and engaging in other fonns of state would praise Charter 08. But so do a May 2008. intervention in the economy. At the number of groups claiming to be social­ same time, many US po1iticians, espe­ ist, indeed Trotskyist. In reality, these cially around the Democratic Obama groups reject Trotskyism in favour of a administration, have been pushing an programme of "democratic" capitalist increasingly protectionist stance against counterrevolution. the Taaffeites and the lJSce. and growing unemployment. Three China. A recent article by the Hong Kong­ Like Charter OS's demand for "free decades ago, even as it promoted bour­ One might think the authors of based O"tohcr Review group, linked to elections", calls for "free trade unions" geois "democracy", Charter 77 did not Charter 08 had taken their nco-liberal the take-Trotskyist United Secretariat on the Solidamosc model arc a reac­ call for the restoration of a capitalist economic programme of privatising (USee), supports Charter 08 without the tionary trap for the working class. The economy because at the time such a industry and commerce from editorials slightest criticism ("The State of struggle for unions free of bureaucratic demand would have repelled most in the Wall Street Journal or London Human Rights in China", 31 December control, important for China's emhat­ Czechoslovak intellectuals, not to speak Economist of two or three years ago. 2(08). Saluting "the el101is of the peo­ tied working people, must be based on of the workers. Actually the roots of their ideas arc ple for democracy and human rights", defence of the workers state that issued The programme of "democratic" probably closer to home. Despite the article has not a single reference to from the 1949 Revolution. This strug­ counterrevolution pushed by the likes Charter 08's hostility to the CCP capitalism, socialism or the working gle, as well as the fight for the right of of Charter 08 must be defeated p(/liti­ regime, in a sense it has taken thc CCP class! assembly and freedom of the press, will cally-and that is something that the leaders' doctrine of "market socialism" For its part, the British-based unfold as part of the fight for soviet nationalist CCP burcaucracy is mani­ to its logical conclusion. For decades, Committee for a Workers' International democracy, for the formation of work­ festly incapable of doing. In meting out the Beijing Stalinists have extolled mar­ (CWI) led by Peter Taaffe writes: ers councils opposing the bureaucratic repression, thc Stalinist rulers do not ket mechanisms and competition as parasites and suppressing counterrevo­ differentiate between counterrevolu­ "This manifesto, now with over 7,000 sig­ superior to centralised planning and natures, calls for an end to one-party rule lutionary elements. tionaries and those who politically management. They have wielded the oppose bureaucratic rule from the and for basic civil liberties-things that Witting tools of US imperialism whip of the market in an attempt to socialists also fight for (many 'charter 08' standpoint pf the historic interests of resolve the problem of stagnant produc­ signatories, however, are liberals who Charter 08 's leaders arc not naive the proletariat. After the smashing of tivity inherent to the bureaucratic com­ favour a faster pace of capitalist 'economic ingenues; many among them also have capitalist class rule in 1949, hundreds mandism that prevailed under Mao. refonn')." open associations with US imperialism. of Chinese Trotskyists who fought in Their claim has been that China can ~chinaworker.info, 16 Jannary Liu Xiaobo, one of the Charter's main continued on page 11

SUMMER 2009 7 ,'01(;11 state, and became a tribune of the Protectionism ... I.' oppressed layers of society, including .' 'OI'{.11 (Continuedji-om p"lf,e 1) , women, black and Asian minorities as well as gay and lesbian organisations Similar protests at Staythorpe power sta­ which recognised that they were flght­ tion in Nottinghamshire and at the Isle of ing the same enelny. In contrast to the ;:~,yf\ (,rain in Kent against Spanish and Polish * vile nationalism <.it Lindsey and workers have featured placards saying 1 Stay thorpe, the miners strike inspired "British jobs for British workers" as well magnificent displays of proletarian as "Stop excluding British workers" and ;, intemationalisl1l rrol11 workers around "rairness for British workers", Derek 1 the world: french trade unions ..gave Simpson, co-leader of the Unite union, money as well as practical assistance to supported these protests and was pho­ jj miners' families, and unions elsewhere tographed beside the Union Jack, thc including apartheid South Africa and racist emblem of the Empire in colonial the Soviet Union sent material aid. limes, symhol of thc subjugation of The workers movc.:ment has seen Catholics in Northcm Ireland today and several examples of trade union solidar­ of the bloody occupations of Iraq and ity against the capitalists' attempts to Afghanistan. usc low-wage immigrant workers as a These reactionary protests, which club against the unions. In Dublin in have been enthusiastically supported by 2005 workers demonstrated against the BNP, can only fan the flamcs of Irish Ferries - and in solidarity with racism and help drive inmligrant work­ Protest at Staythorpe, February, awash with Union Jacks and slogans against immigrant workers - when the bosses ers off the building sites. The campaign immigrant workers. tried to hire East European workers at a has sent a chilling message to all fraction of Irish workers' wages. As our immigrants and minorities: during the comrades said in a leaflet calling for the Lindsey strike, racist strikers told the Down with reactionarv strikes working class to defend immigrants: Italian workers to "'"go back to your own "Unions must organise immigrant country" and there has been an outcry against foreign workersl workers! Full wages and benetits for in the London Eveninlf, Standard immigrants!" Another example was the against foreign workers working on the British workers" but goes on to say "we aims to place the whole burden of mili­ Heathrow strike in 2005 when, in Olympics construction sites in London. tarism, the crisis, the disorganization of the support the demands of the Lindsey Oil response to the sacking of low-paid What's needed is to mobilise the multi­ monetary system and all other scourges Refinery strike committee". This is a catering workers and replacing them ethnic working class in a fight against stemming from capitalism's death agony huge concession to social-chauvinism. with immigrants at even lower wages the Labour government. This requires a upon the backs of the toilers." Other groups such as the Alliance for (which did not happen in the construc­ political fight to replace the Labourite -111(' death agony ofL'apitalism and the Workers Liberty, Permanent Revolution task.. ofthe Fourth international tion sites at power stations), the work­ union misleaders with a class-struggle and the Communist Party of Great To tight unemployment, a c1ass­ force at British Airways staged an leadership. Such a leadership in the Britain likewise claim to oppose the slo­ struggle leadership in the unions would immensely powerful wildcat strike that trade unions would oppose the racist gan "British jobs for British workers" "war on terror" and fight for full citi­ but support the demands of the strike. zenship rights for all immigrants. For the Labourite left, support to pro­ Labourites whitewash tectionism is not new. When BMW chauvinism announced it was pulling out of Birmingham in 2000, the trade union Scandalously, Peter Taaffe's Socialist bureaucrats organised a demonstration Party played a leading role in the based on vile anti-German slogans such Lindsey strike and hailed the Lindsey as "Save British manufacturing indus­ settlement as a victory, while working try!" and "Save Britishjobs". The demo overtime to peddle the lying claim that was welcomed by the SWP as the the strikes were not anti-immigrant, "great jobs revolt", and the Union Jack even though at one Stay thorpe protest new prominently on the march which in February a section of the workers also featured grotesque slogans such as could be heard chanting "foreigners "We won two world wars let's win out" on a You Tube video. The Taaffe­ the third." ites made a lot of the fact the RNP had The Socialist Party and SWP follow been excluded from the protests. But the political tradition of the social UNftWS MUST why did the BNP want to join them in democrats of the Second Intemational the first place? The Socialist Party, who lined up behind their own bour­ W£NV whose member Keith Gibson was on geoisies at the outbreak of World War I JMt11GKANT the strike committee, wrote the strike in 1914. We stand in the tradition demands, which merely replaced the of Lenin who fought to win over the WORKERS! .0' slogan "British jobs for British work­ working-class base of these parties J ers" with a call for "union controlled to the Bolshevik programme of prole­ , registering of unemployed and locally tarian revolutionary internationalism skilled union members". In other Placard at Spartacist League literature table on 28 March London demonstra­ through a political break from the tions reads "Down with reactionary strikes against foreign workers'" words, jobs would be filled by "local", social-chauvinist eamp in the workers ie British, workers. movement. demand jobs for all through a shorter crippled BA's international operation. The Taaffeites' uncritical enthusing Any meaningful fight against the work week at no loss in pay: divide all But the union leadership under Tony over the strikes was shared by the massive job losses we face today must available work among the entire work­ Woodley ended the strike without Morning Star and by George Gallo­ be based on Trotsky's 1938 1/'al1sitionai force, not only at equal pay but with a obtaining the reinstatement of the way's Respect coalition. The Socialist Programme. the founding document of sliding scale of hours and wages. The sacked workers. Workers Party (SWP) at tirst criticised the Fourth Intemational, which outlined unions must organise all non-union While the Socialist Party played a the Lindsey strike as being based on the a strategy for revolutionary leadership workers, especially immigrants. The leading role in the Lindsey strike for wrong slogans and targeting the wrong of the proletariat in the face of tremen­ struggle against unemployment, pover­ "British jobs for British workers", people, but it didn't take them long to dous defeats, stating that: capitulate to the Socialist Party and the ty and worsening conditions must be which had the backing of the bourgeois "The Fourth International declares uncom­ trade union bureaucracy. They began linked to the overthrow of the capitalist press, they are not so militant when it promising war on the politics of the capi­ order and the conquest of state power comes to organising strikes in the civil circulating a petition to the TUC which talists which, to a considerable dCbrrec. like opposes the slogan "British jobs for the politics of their agents, the refomlists. by the proletariat. servants union PCS, where they occupy leading positions. The Taaffeites in the Workers of the world, unite! PCS were instrumental in accepting a Significantly, both the General Con­ rotten deal that meant workers joining [I Contact Addresses II federation of Italian Workers (CG1L) the civil service will have to work five and the Spanish Metal, Construction and more years to qualify for their pen­ Spartacist Group Ireland Allied Workers Federation (MCA-UOT) sions. With the world's largest carmak­ Spartacist League/Bri~ PO Box 2944, Dublin 6, Ireland issued statements of protest at the ers announcing tens of thousands of PO Box 42886, London N195WY International impact of these strikes on their mem­ redundancies around the world, the Communist League bers working in Britain. This shows the Unite union bureaucracy is calling on Tel: 020 7281 5504 need for international collaboration the British govemment to bailout the [email protected] Box 7429 GPO, New York, between construction workers across car manufacturers in Britain. As New York 10116, USA European countries. The contrast be­ Marxists we are opposed to a bailout of ... tween the great miners strike of 1984- the auto bosses, which will be pur­ Visit the ICL website:' Www.spart~cistorg 85 and today's construction strikes chased through the further destruction IC couldn't be clearer. The miners came up of the jobs and livelihoods of work­ against the full force of the capitalist ing people as we are seeing with the

8 WORKERS HAMMER bailouts of the banks. ists" ought to support better pay for the opposed the eastward expansion of the Union's victory over the Nazis in The Unite union launched a "Unite cops to carry out their job! EU to include the former deformed WWll. These states were qualitatively for Jobs campaign" at a press confer­ The Socialist Party refuses to call workers states of Eastern Europe which the same as the Soviet Union after its ence in March, featuring union leaders for British troops out of Northern was designed to open up those coun­ political degencration. We stood for Tony Woodley and Derek Simpson as Ireland and in March took part in a tries to further imperialist penetration unconditional military defence of these well as Digby Jones, former chief of pro-imperialist march in Northern and provided the West European bour­ workers states against imperialist attack the Confederation of British Industry Ireland organised to condemn the geoisies with a vast supply of cheap and internal counterrevolution; at the and government minister (who knows Republican killings of two British labour. At the same time we're opposed same time we fought for proletarian more than most about grinding down Army soldiers and a cop. These killings to all work restrictions by West political revolution to replace the British manufacturing) and the CEO of of members of the forces of the British European governments on workers Stalinist bureaucratic caste with a gov­ the Society of Motor Manufacturers state and the Orange statelet were not from the recent accession countries. ernment of workers soviets committed along with Labour MP John Cruddas. crimes from the standpoint of the work­ Our programme has nothing in com­ to proletarian internationalism. This is This campaign seeks to bring together ing class and as such we defelld the per­ mon with the opposition to the EU what we fight for today in the remain­ "leading figures in business, politics petrators against state repression (see expressed by Labourite "little England" ing deformed workers states of China, and academia with the country's "Defend Irish Republicans against state nationalists. The latter is represented by Cuba, North Korea and Vietnam. biggest union" to propel Britain "out repression!", Workers Hammer no 206, the "N02EU" coalition founded in In a historic gain for the working of recession" (unitetheunion.com). Spring 2009). March to contest the June elections to class internationally, capitalism was This is the essence of Labourism­ The Socialist Party, SWP and all of the European parliament. Headed by overthrown in China by the 1949 class collaboration with the capitalist the reformist left adhere to old Labour RMT leader Bob Crow, with the active Revolution which led to the building of bosses, rather than class struggle reformism, based on the myth that participation of the Socialist Party and a collectiviscd economy. Despite the against them. For the time being, socialism can be achieved by legisla­ the Morning Star, this campaign is "market reforms", China's economy is British industry belongs to the blood­ tion in parliament nationalising indus­ based on support for the reactionary still dominated by the state-controlled sucking capitalists. The working class try without smashing the capitalist construction workers strikes. The banks, the core elements of the econo­ has no country! state. The commitment to "common N02EU platform rails against EU legis­ my remain collectivised I and state­ ownership of the means of production" lation that curbs civil liberties, but owned enterprises are still dominant in What kind of workers party? enshrined in Clause IV of the Labour makes no mention whatsoever of the the strategic sectors. However China is Labour's track record in office Party's constitution (and abolished by "war on terror" or the draconian restric­ by no means insulated from the crisis in since 1997 doesn't stop the reformist Tony Blair in 1994) was introduced tions on civil liberties by the Labour the capitalist world and large numbers left from voting Labour in elections: amid a revolutionary tide sweeping government in Britain. The N02EU of workers have lost their jobs since the in last year's London mayoral elec­ Europe in the aftermath of the campaign's claim to oppose the BNP start of the economic crisis. tion, the AWL, Permanent Revolution, Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917. has to be taken with a grain of salt The reformist left supported every Workers Power and the SWP all voted The Labour leaders adopted this clause given that the "British jobs for British counterrevolutionary force th3t con­ either first or second preference for to dupe the working class into thinking workers" crusade on building sites, tributed to the restoration of capital­ Labour's Ken Livingstone who fully socialism could be achieved through which the component parts of No2EU ism in the USSR and Eastern Europe, backed the racist "war on terror" parliament without the need for a revo­ support, has given an enormous boost from Solidarnose in Poland, the muja­ and ostentatiously backed the Met­ lution. to the fascists. hedin in Afghanistan in the 19XOs to ropolitan Police following the execu­ As for nationalisations under capital­ A statement on the No2EU website Yeltsin in the Soviet Union. The SWP tion of Jean Charles de Menezes on ism, they're not by any stretch of the calls on people to: "Votc No2EU Yes to described the counterrevolution as a the Tube. As top boss of the Tube net­ imagination a step towards socialism. Democracy to resist the EU turning "fact that should have every socialist work, Livingstone also called on RMT In the context of British imperialism's human beings into commodities to be rejoicing", while the Socialist Party members to cross their own picket decline after WWII, the extensive shunted around Europe while local and Workers Power werc on Yeltsin's lines in a Tube strike. nationalisations of coal, steel and other workers arc excluded from being able barricades. Today they support provo­ The Socialist Party's role in the industries by the Clement Attlee Labour to provide for their families." Once cations against the Chinese deformed Lindsey strike gives a pretty accurate govcmmcnt were in reality giant capi­ again, for "local workers", read "British workers state waged under the slogan picture of what the new mass workers talist bailouts designed to help British workers". "Free Tibet", which means they arc party they call for would look like. capitalism to compete in the world mar­ The eastward expansion of the EU for a Tibet dominated by the imperial­ Thcij~ programme includes support t()r ket. In that sense the post-WWllnation­ resulted from the capitalist counterrev­ ists and the Dalai Lama's feudal counterrevolution in the runner Suviet alisations were no more "socialist" than olution that swept Eastem Europe and theocracy. Union and loyiilty to "democratic" the bailout' of the hanks beirig carried the Soviet Union between 1989 and The US imperialists are bent on British imperialism and its state. In out today by New Labour (and for that 1992, creating massive unemployment restoring capitalist rule in the Chinese August 2007, the Socialist Party hailed matter by the Bush/Obama regimes in and social immiseration in those coun­ bureaucratically deformed workers a strike of prison officers over pay and the US). tries and amounting to an enormous state, and for this they have a two­ conditions; in January 2008 they sup­ defeat for the working people and pronged strategy: military encirclement ported a London march by some 20,000 Revolutionary internationalism oppressed of the entire world. As combined with capitalist economic pen­ cops demanding better pay. Prison offi­ v "little England" nationalism Trotskyists who uphold the programme etration. Obama wants to extricate US cers and the police arc not part of the As proletarian internationalists, of the Russian Revolution of 1917, we troops from the Iraq quagmire in order working class, but of the armed fist of we're opposed to the EU, which origi­ arc the only tendency on the left that to aim the US military at more strategic the capitalist state. Strikes by the nated in the 1950s as rival European fought to the end for defence of the and long-term targets, not least China. repressive forces ofthe state are for bet­ imperialist powers sought to consoli­ Soviet Union. In spite of its degenera­ At the same time, the Democrats, ter pay and conditions to carry out their date their alliance against the Soviet tion under the rule of the Stalinist backed by the pro-capitalist trade union job, which for prison guards is to Union through closer economic co­ bureaucracy that usurped political bureaucracy, have been in the forelront repress and brutalise the prison popula­ operation. Today the EU is an imperial­ power starting in 1924, the Soviet of pushing anti-China chauvinist pro­ tion; for the pol icc it means arresting ist consortium designed to improve the Union remained a workers state based tectionism. Obama is completely com­ and brutal ising black and Asian minori­ competitiveness of the European bour­ on the collectivised economy that mitted to continuing Bush's "war on ties and breaking strikes. Try telling the geoisies against their American and issued out of the revolution, the greatest terror", including sending 1lll additional families of the dozens of blacks and Japanese rivals at the expense of the achievement of the working class to 17,000 US troops to Afghanistan, Asians who have died in police custody, working class in Europe, including its date. We applied the same programme where Gordon Brown has pledged to or any miner who was at the battle of minority component, and of the neo­ to the workers states created in Eastern increase the number of British troops. Orgreave during the strike, that "social- colonial peoples elsewhere. We also Europe in the wake of the Soviet continued on page 10

A Sparlacist Pamphlet JUST OUT! idfHRi

Marxist Newspaper of the Spartacist League Spartacist o 1-year subscription to Workers Hammer: £3.00 (Overseas subscriptions: pamphlet, May 2009 Airmail £7.00; Europe outside Britain and Ireland £5.00) £1.50 (56 pages) o 1-year sub to Workers Hammer PLUS 22 issues of Workers Vanguard, Marxist fortnightly of the Spartacist League/US for £10.00 All subscriptions include Spariacist, organ of the International Communist Order from/make League (Fourth Internationalist). All subscriptions to Workers Vanguard include Black History and the Class Struggle. cheques payable to: Name ______Spartacist Address __-, ______~--~------Publications, PO Box ______Postcode ______42886, London E-mail Phone ______-,;;;; e- N195WY Make cheques payable/post to: Spartacist Publications, PO Box 42886, London N19 5WY'"

SUMMER 2009 9 For trade union protest auainst state repressionl , COP rampage at 020 protest killed Ian Tomlinson W(> print helow a Spar/acisl League trying to help Tomlinson were pushed their business, as millions of workers are G20 summit plotting how best to shore pmtest leaflet issued Oil I () April fi!l­ away by the cops. Witness statements being thrown 011 the scrap heap, to use up their crumbling capitalist economics lowing the death of Ian Tomlinson at the printed in the Guardian (8 April) indi­ riot shields, dogs and truncheons when a on the backs of the working people and hands oj' the police during the G 20 cate that Tomlinson was attacked twice, protest assembles outside the Bank of send more imperialist troops to protests in London on I April, which "both times from behind and as he was England. Contrary to the Labourite driv­ Afghanistan. State repression such as was puhlished in Workers Vanguard walking away". Press photographer el of so-called "socialist" organisations was meted out in the City of London ulti­ 110 935. 24 April 2009. Anna Branthwaite gave a detailed state­ who say cops arc part of the working mately targets the working class. And it's The killing of TomhnsOl1 and other ment of one of the ass~lUlts, in which class, they are a key component of the the trade-union movement _. the orga­ wide~v photographed police vio/cHcc she saw a riot cop grab Tomlinson: "It capitalist state. The state is no neutral nised working class .__ . that must be has hroughl./iJrth calls for n~f(Jrrn .F(nn was a very forceful knocking-down arbiter. it is at its corc "ann~lLbodies of mobilised in self-defence which means hourgeois quarters prompted hy CON­ cerns /iJf' Britain \. "humall righls" pretences. The Indepcndent Police Complaints Commission (11'CC) Iza.\' reportedly received somc 185 com­ plaints (~l police hrutalily al the protests. III (idditiol/ to the IPCC etlquiries, the Metropolitan Police are "investigating" IJwltlsc/ves, in 11 r('l'inr (~( pulicc tactic's launched hy ller A1(~ies~)' :~'lnspeclorale q{Constahul(if~v. 5'peahng o/Illis rcvicl-v ill tile 110/15(' 0/ Lortis, Ilome Qlfin' minislcr Lord 1'Vesl of Spithead exposed the gm'crnfllcnt \. other ("ollcerns .lin' the proh/cm (~j" "order ": "I do 1/01 like the thoughl oj" ~l'atL''' cannon, haton rounds or shooting people, all o{ which seem to occllr in SOniC other ('oul1trics: 1 om jolly glad Ihat I live in this one. f1()WCVet: all (~l Jasper Jackson Ihose things will, quill.' rif(htly. be Left: London cops attack demonstrators at G20 protest, 1 April. Right: Ian Tomlinson, walking home from work, suffered looked at" (puhlicatiofls.parliament. uk, lethal beating by police. 21 April). The killing o{TiNnlinson and beating from behind. The officer hit him twice men" comprising police, courts, prisons also the defence of all the oppressed, qj" G20 protesters tuirror the treatment with a baton when he was lying on the and military that exist to maintain the of immigrants, blacks and Asians, meted out to Britain:S black and Asian floor." She continues, "It became an capitalist system of exploitation of the Muslims witehhunted under the "war on minorities on a daily hasis. Black assault. And then the officer picked him working class by the bourgeoisie. It terror", and of those who protest the bar­ deaths in ('usto(fv accumulate year 011 up from the back, continued to walk or cannot be reformed through parliamen­ barism of capitalism. The necessary year like a deadly plaguE' and are harE'­ charge with him, and threw him. lie tary claptrap, investigations, or moral instrumentality for the uprooting of the Zv reported, much less punished. Ti) was running and stumbling. He didn't pleadings; it must be smashed through capitalist system is a revolutionary party, "rein in" Ihe cops requires mohilising turn and confront the officer or anything socialist revolution and replaced with a like the Bolshevik party of Lenin and the workillX class in a .light .fhr its mVf1 like that." workers statc. Trotsky which led the 1917 October state po wet: This demands .first and This is of a piece with the cops' con­ The cops were detennined that no Revolution in Russia. It is the building of /'oremost shattering illusions in capital­ duct throughout the protests: the 3 April "disruption" would mar the perrect such a party to which the Spartaeist ist 'justice" and "democra(y" which Guardian 4uotes protester Ashley obscenity of Ohama and Brown at the League is committed .• exist in reali(}·' for fi.~w other than the Parsons describing the police conduct at l.ord Wests of this world. the "climate camp" protest in Bishops­ ••• gate as "siekening and terrifying": The cops were out for blood at the "Without warning, from around mid­ class to the capitalist exploiters for (;20 protests last week in London, and night, the police repeatedly and violent­ Protectionism ... over a ccntury. A Leninist vanguard they got it. Weeks of press articles omi­ ly surged forwards in full riot gear, (Colltillucd.tinm page 9) party will be built on the understanding nously predicting widespread destruc­ occasionally rampaging through the that workers can defend their own tion and violence by 020 protesters set protest line and deliberately destroying We call for all US/British troops out or interests :>nd those of all the oppressed the stage for an enormous cop presence protesters' property, some officers open­ Iraq and.Afghanistan! only through the mass mobilisation of which then terrorised the protesters, ly screaming in pumped-up rage." British imperialist crimes were often the working class, independent from cracking heads and corralling or "ket­ An investigation into Tomlinson's conducted under old Labour govern­ all capitalist parties and their agencies, tling" thousands in a virtual mass deten­ death is underway by the Independent ments, such as the horrific communalist which culminates not in another ver­ tion for hours. Ian Tomlinson died at the Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), slaughter that accompanied the partition sion of parliament, but in Soviets or hands of the c~ps in the City of London but recall the 2005 police killing of Jean of' India in 1947 and the sending of workers councils. Our perspective is on I April. A video clip posted on the Charles de Menezes: pointblank execu­ British troops to Northern Ireland in that the bourgeoisie must be expropri­ Guardian website (7 April) shows tion on the London Tube in the name of 1969. The present bloody mess in the atcd in favour of a planned economy Tomlinson, a 47-year-old who lived in the "war on terror" followed by a bliz­ Ncar Fast is the legacy of the carnage, which will open the road to a socialist the area, walking home from work zard of lies from the Met about the savagery and divide-and-rule machina­ future. through the City and getting caught up innocent Brazilian electrician's "terror­ tions of British imperialism when it was The working class, in the course of in the police corral. The video shows ist" behaviour. The jury at the de the dominant world power. Recent struggles and through the intervention him being clubbed with a baton from Menezes inquest last year were instruct­ claims that MIS was complicit in the of a Leninist-Trotskyist party, must be behind by a cop wearing a balaclava. ed not to returo a verdict of unlawful rendition of "terrorism" suspects arc won to the programme of Marxism. We Seconds later, the cop violently pushes killing, the police were exonerated, and hardly surprising: the British capitalist don't base our programme on the exist­ Tomlinson to the ground. Minutes later the clear message was the cops can. kill state has rOlJtinely used torture, from ing level of consciousness but on the he was dead. and they will get away with it. India to Africa, to Northern Ireland. material needs and historical interests of Even before the video came to light, The IPCC is no "independent" body Today in Iraq the British Army boasts the working class, and on the experi­ a growing body of witness statements committed to establishing the truth. about its expertise in "'counterinsur­ ence of the workers movement at the showed the cops' story to be a tissue of Funded by the Home Office with its gency" obtained during four decades of high points of revolutionary struggle. lies: that Tomlinson simply dropped chair "appointed by the Crown following subjugation of the oppressed Catholics Our model is the Russian Revolution dead of a heart attack, unprovoked; that recommendation by the Home Secre­ in Northern Ireland. of October 1917, led by Lenin and protesters intentionally blocked the tary" (IPCC.gov.uk), it exists to defuse We fight to build a multi ethnic rev­ Trotsky, when the Russian workers took police medics' access to Tomlinson and outrage at cop brutality; to whitewash olutionary workers party, forged in power into their own hands, expropriat­ hurled "missiles" at them. In fact, wit­ the police and thereby facilitate their vio­ political struggle against Labourism, ing the bourgeoisie and establishing a nesses told how protesters who were lent, racist business as usual. And it is which has served to tie the working workers state .•

10 WORKERS HAMMER China ... (ConlinuedFom page 7) defence of the Revolution were round­ ed up and thrown in prison or shot. Following the worker and student upheavals centred 011 Beijing's Tianan­ men Square in 1989, the regime execut­ ed workers. We oppose the institution of capital punishment on principle, in China --where thousands are executed each year-no less than in capitalist countries. The US group known as the Party of Socialism and Liberation (PSL) makes correct criticisms of Charter 08 in its 10 February internet posting, "The Truth Behind China's Charter 08 Manifesto - Liberal Language Cloaks Global capitalist economic crisis has slowed Chinese Counterrevolutionary Aims". But the growth, hit export industry hard. Left: Massive jobs fair PSL looks to the Stalinist bureaucracy in Shaanxi province, 1 March. Above: Laid-pff workers in as the key barricr to counterrevolution: Harbin stage workplace sit-in on 18 March demanding "The CCP government, in spite all of its reinstatement of insurance and retirement benefits. contradictions, remains the most impor­ tant obstacle to the return of China to its the proletariat" - ie, to protect its priv­ workers. At the same time, the increas­ previous state of semi-colonial slav­ bureaucracy (see "The Spectre of ileged position as a parasitic caste atop ing antagonism between the bureauc­ ery." While criticising the CCP leaders' Tianamnen and Working-Class Struggle the workers state. Sooner or later, by racy and China's toiling masses is also "market reforms", the PSL hopes that in China Today", Workers Vanguard one political path or another, the preparing the ground for a proletarian lIu Jintao & Co will see the light and nos 836 and 837, 12 and 26 November Stalinist regime will bring China to the political revolution to oust the parasitic return to the "socialist road": 2004). brink of capitalist counterrevolution, ruling Stalinists. The crucial missing clement, during "Faced with an intensified imperialist posing pointblank the fate of the most The potential for a pro-socialist offensive, the CCP leadership could COUIltry the Tiananmen events as well as today, populous on earth. workers uprising was shown in the change course, turning to the working It is instructive to look back at the is an authentic Bolshevik-ie, Leninist­ class for support and reinstituting social­ May-June 1989 Tiananmen upheaval. Trotskyist-party to rally the working ist measures. social and political dynamics of coun­ In its articie on Charter 08, the PSL terrevolution in the Russian core of the masses around the banner of workers "However unlikely. the path to a renewal endorses the line of the Chinese former USSR. This was not led by anti­ democracy and conununist internation­ or strengthening of socialist methods is Stalinists on these events, calling them alism. Such a party would be forged in possible as long as the CCP retains its hold Communist dissident intellectuals anal­ on state power." ogous to China's Charter 08 but by major elements deri yed from the The PSL contrasts the CCP's "mar­ 'II I I decomposing nomenkllllura, the Soviet ket reforms" to "the path followed by bureaucratic elite. A few years before the Communist Party during the Mao or Boris Yeltsin took power and an­ era". However, Mao-style national nounced the dissolution of the USSR, '" "sel f-sufficiency" (economic autarky) he was a senior leader in the Kremlin. alli.1,~~llark(..'l-O Box 42886. London N19 5WY " tion, drowned in blood by the Stalinist Revolution.•

SUMMER 2009 11 WORKERS

----~ ------Delend the Tamil people! The j()lIowing article \ovas written hy comrades (?l the Trotskyist Leaguc/ LiRue trotskysle oj' Canada, section (~l the international Communist League (Fourth Internationalist). The savage 26-ycar war waged by the Sri Lankan govcnlmcnt in the North and East of the Indian Ocean island ended on I g May with the destlUetion of the rem­ nants of the Tamil mini-state and the exe­ cution of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eclam (LTTE) leader Velupillai Prab­ hakaran. Bui if the goals of the blood­ drenched Sinha la-chauvinist regime have been achieved. its merciless repression of the Tamil people and their national rights continues. Since January, at least XOOO Tamils and perhaps as many as 20,000 have been killed in a war that had already taken at least 70,000 lives. Cutting through the wall of press censorship, 300,000 Tamil refugees are imprisoned in hellish prison camps and interrogation centres such as Menik Farm. reports arc emerging that an estimated 300,000 Tamils 40 per cent nf them sands of angry Tamils choking major a1 and social liberation, As we wrotc in mountable at least in the short run". children --- arc now imprisoned in a net­ Toronto streets in a sea of Tamil Eelam Spartacis/ Canada no 160 (Spring 2009): Thus we raised the call for the ri1:ht of work of prison camps and interrogation /lags (which resemble the flag of the "We have long upheld the right of sdf­ Tamil Eelam: centres. Particularly chilling was a LTTE) sparked howls of outrage from dcterrnination for the Tamil people - i.e., ''The hloody communal struggle argues 23 May account by the Toronto Globe bourgeois politicians and journalists. tll~ir right to form an independent state in that even with proletarian revolution in and Mail's Doug Saunders, who report­ The US, Britain, the European Union the largely Tamil North and East. We stand C ey Ion and South Asi.a generally, a feder­ for the military defense of the LTTE ed that the detainees "arc not just those and C'analla had all banned the Tigers atetl soci~list republic III Ceylon will he against the anny assault and demand the who have fled the violence, but the earlier, declaring them a "terrorist" necessary to a<.:hi<.:ve the unity of Tamils immediate and unconditional withdrawal and Sinhalese on a basis of justice and entire civilian population of the north­ organisation. In doing so. the imperial­ of the Lankan army from the area. cquality (and to take into account Sin­ eastern conflict area, which is being ist powers effectively gave the green "At the same time. we give no political halese /Cars or vengeance at the hands of swept clean of inhabitants by the light to the Lankan regime in its mur­ support to the LITE - bourgeois nation­ thc millions of Tamils in south India)." military". Those in the camps will be derous army offensive. This under­ alists who. carrying out the logic of At the same time, we noted that the "screened" as a precondition to release. scores that the repeated calls on the nationalism. have staged their own prospects for an indepcndent Tamil cap­ a process which a government spokes­ Canadian, US and other imperialists to interethnic attacks on Sinhah:se villagers and expelled Muslims from the historic italist state in the arid and underdeveloped man says could take up to two years. intervene on behalf of the Tamils could Tamil l:ily of JafTna, the capital of the North were not good. Nor would the for­ Against the bloody vengeance of the only be in vain, for they have over­ northern region, while employing mur­ mation of such a state t:nsure the national Lankan govemment, the intemational whelmingly supported the Lankan derous violence against other Talllil survival of the Tamils, who were (and working class must rally to the defence government's war against the Tamil nationalist groups." remain) interpenetrated with the Sinhalese of the Tamil people. Tamil cmib'fCS in people. From the start we denounced In the wake of the devastating blood­ majority throughout much of the island. Canada. Blitain and elsewhere now watch the bans on the LTTE, which signalled bath, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party On the other hand, the establislU11ent of a in helpless agony. knowing their f~lmilics the repressive attacks on exile Tamil (SLFP) regime of Mahinda Rajapaksa federated sociahst republic of Eel am and cnuld he dead or held in the anny's camps. nrganisatiolls that continue to this Jay. staged grotesque chauvinist rallies in Lanka would be a beacon to the oppressed We stand with them demanding asylum It is in the clear interest of all working Colombo and declared a national and subjugated masses throughout the now for Tamil refugees! people to defend Tamil organisations holiday. Meant to further degrade an subcontinent, including among the 65 mil­ In the months leading up to this catas­ against state repression. already defeated Tamil population, this lion Talnils across the Palk Strait in the trophe, in cities around the world Tamils The Trotskyist League/Ligue trots­ sickening triumphalism underscores Indian state of Tamil Nadu. have carricd out protcst after massive kyste and other sections of the Inter­ that the communal divisions fostered by The struggle of the Tamils is today at protest. In Toronto, where the 200,000- national Communist League have joined the regime and its predecessors arc its most desperate pass. Drawing the strong Tamil community is one of the in the Tamil protests, distributing litera­ deeper than ever. What we wrote at the lessons from a bitter history is difficult but largest outside South Asia, the demon­ ture in solidarity with the besieged time of the government-orchestrated necessary for pro-working-c1ass c1cments. strations wl're among the biggest in the Tamils and putting forward our proletar­ anti-Tamil pogroms in 1983 rctains all Tamil and Sinhalese alike. The onee­ city's history. Thc sight of tens of thou- ian-revolutionary perspective for nation- , its force and more today: Trotskyist Lanka Sama Samaja Pm1y "The government-orchestrated Sinhala­ abandoned the interests orthe proletariat chauvinist bloodbath against the Tamil and the defence ofthe Tamil people when people in the small Indian Ocean island nation of Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon) has it entered the Sinhala-ehauvinist govem­ catastrophically altered ror the roreseeable ment of the SLFP in 1964. future the prospects for common class Today the struggle to forge a Trots­ struggle between the Sinhalese working kyist party in Lanka must begin with class and the oppressed Tamil minority." the understanding that the eradication "Massacre in Sri Lanka", Spartacist of national oppression and true social no 35 (Autunm 1983) , . progress for the peoples of Lanka and London, 11 April: Our organisation had always upheld the region will come when the barbaric 100,000 march the right to Tamil self-determination IUle of capital and the divisions inherit­ against slaughter while counselling against its exercise, ed from imperialist domination arc of Tamils in Sri arguing in favour of united working­ overturned through socialist revolution. Lanka. class stlUggle for Tamil freedom and Lasting national and class justice for the socialist revolution in Lanka and its Tamil working people will be secured extension through the Indian subconti­ through permanent revolution-lUlc by nent. But, as we wrote, "in the wake of the workers and peasants in a socialist the mass killing of Tamils, the bitter­ federation of South Asia, and the exten­ ness and hostility between the peoples sion of proletarian revolutions into the of Ceylon has evidently become insur- imperialist centres .•

12 SUMMER 2009