No 135 May/June 1993 30p Newspaper of the Spartacist League

Surge of class struggle across Europ~ Dump the LabournUC sell-outs! Forge a revolutionary workers party!

After years of mounting depression conditions and sackings, class struggle is f noticeably sharpening. On 2 April miners, a. railway workers and London busworkers struck, crippling economic activity in the capital. Significant numbers of workers stayed away from work, and sympathy for Dundee, 22 those battling for jobs was pervasive. On March: Angry the same day in Italy, some 13 million Timex strikers workers stopped work for four hours, confront scabs paralysing transport and mail networks. being bussed into Millions of trade unionists not only in factory. Timex Italy but in Germany, Greece, Portugal struggle has and Eastern Europe took to the streets galvanised in a "day of action" called by the Con­ workers federation of European Unions. The movement by day before some 100,000 metal workers defying bosses' in eastern Germany struck against the strike-breaking arrogant bosses who have ripped up laws in face of agreed pay increases while in the coal sabotage by and steel-producing region of the Ger­ STUC/AEEU man Ruhr there have been massive misleaders. protests against job losses. And as we go to press, east German workers have cOlltillued Oil page 10 Chris Hani gunned down in right-wing plot South Africa: black outrage over apartheid assassination

"Power Sharing" fraud exposed

On 10 April, Chris Hani, leader of the Six million blacks stayed away from South African Communist Party and jobs on 14 April. Apartheid rulers an­ former head of the African National swered with tear gas and pistol shots. Congress' armed wing, Spear of the Police who were lined up in front of the Nation (Umkhonto we Sizwe - MK), police station in Soweto shot directly into was gunned down by an emigre Polish the crowd of thousands, killing three. At fascist with links to South African state a march in Johannesburg, police stood by intelligence. Hani was shot four times while Nazis jumped out of a car and shot about 10.15am as he stepped out of the three protesters. With Hani's murder, car he had just parked in the driveway of black youth in their outrage took to the his home in a newly integrated neigh­ streets in dozens of cities. Windows were bourhood in Boksburg, a staunch right­ smashed, vehicles and government offices wing suburb of Johannesburg. As news burnt, grenades thrown at soldiers. On of the assassination spread through the the day of his funeral thousands filled a impoverished townships, black anger Soweto stadium while bands of angry exploded in the streets from Cape youths threw stones at the police "hip­ Town to Soweto. Millions participated pos" (armoured cars) patrolling the area. in mass protests, funeral processions A few days earlier in the Cape Town and perhaps the biggest general strike area, protesters blocked a highway with Township youth take to the streets 14 ApriJ in anger over murder of in South African history. continued Oil page 11 Communist Party leader Chris Hani. Waco Holocaust Clinton and FBI mass murderers!

We print below the text of the press death sentence meted out to the black release issued by the Spartacist League/US MOVE commune in Philadelphia, immediately after the Waco massacre on bombed by the Philadelphia police on 19 April. Mother's Day (May 13) 1985, using C-4 The charred corpses of 87 men, women plastic explosives donated by the FBI. and children who perished in the fire­ Eleven black people were murdered storm resulting from the FBI's barrage of there, including five children, and an CS gas, flash-grenades and battering rams entire black neighborhood was laid to are the direct responsibility of the White waste. "Like the racist cop beating of House. President Clinton gave the green L.A. black motorist Rodney King," said light, Attorney General Janet Reno Spartacist spokesman Marjorie Stamberg, personally supervised the plan, and the "the Waco holocaust is the domestic FBI's storm troopers moved in to carry image of America's 'New World Order.' out the government's "final solution" This is u.s. imperialism's Desert against the small, integrated Branch Slaughter in Iraq brought home." Davidian religious sect in Waco, Texas. A banner outside the compound of the After a 1.1Urderous raid by federal racially integrated Branch Davidian Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents religious sect said, "Rodney King- We armed to the teeth and a 51-day siege, Understand." It is no accident that the al!llost a hundred people have now been feds' onslaught in Waco came two days subjected to a flaming apocalypse for the after the slap-on-the-wrist verdict for two sole "crime" of being a non-conformist racist cops in L.A. With troops poised to religious sect which dared to defend itself occupy the inner cities coast to coast, against government assault. amid a massive police-state mobilization, The Spartacist League/U.S. and the racist rulers breathed a collective sigh Partisan Defense Committee have called of relief that the urban ghettos and emergency demonstrations of protest and barrios did not explode in outrage over New York City, 19 April: Spartacist-called emergency demonstration in outrage, at 5:00 p.m. today, Monday, another outright racist acquittal. They protest over Democrat Clinton/FBI massacre of Branch Davidians. April 19, outside the Federal Building in seized the moment to incinerate the Manhattan, New York City and at federal Waco commune. out or exterminate the 70 adults and 25 holocaust against another religious minor­ offices in other cities around the country In the gray light of dawn, the FBI children still inside the wooden structure. ity who evidently have "no right to exist" to denounce the government mass moved in the heavy artillery-M-60 The whole area had already been ringed in this racist capitalist society. The murder in Waco. An SL spokesman, in Combat Engineering Vehicles, Bradley with razor-sharp concertina wire. Elec­ Clinton administration has carried out its condemning this outrage, noted that the fighting vehicles and heat -seeking re­ tricity and water were cut off. The intent own Operation Prairie Slaughter, igniting Branch Davidians received the same connaissance planes - in a bid to drive was to create a firetrap with no escape. a massive firestorm against its perceived Naturally there were no fire-fighting domestic "enemies," a small group who vehicles present to put out the flames. did no harm to anyone. Now the government wants to blame the The Spartacist League spokesman victims, but the Waco assault was noted, "From Republican Bush to Karl Marx on the permanent deliberate mass murder, decided at the Democrat Clinton, the racist rulers show revolution White House. what they have in store for anyone who On Sunday, Vice President AI Gore dares to defy the state. The murder of wept tears for those who died 50 years these innocent people, burned at the The situation in South Africa today ago in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. But stake by this bloodthirsty government, cries out for a proletarian solution, for the the methodical burning down of the millions strong black working class to lead cries out for vengeance. It will take a Waco commune, carried "live" on all the oppressed and exploited in a struggle socialist revolution to mete out real television, recalled nothing so much as to smash apartheid capitalism. The theory justice to the police torturers of Rodney the Nazis' razing of the Warsaw ghetto. of pemlallellt revolution - that in backward King, to the FBI arsonists in Waco, to the Clinton-Gore have carried out their own countries even the tasks of the bourgeois U.S. military bombers of Baghdad.". TROTSKY revolution can be solved only by the prole- LENIN tariat in power-was the achievement of Leoll Trotsky. But the concept was first introduced by Karl Marx in 1850. In his address to the Central Committee of the Communist League, Marx made a powerful polemic Spartacist ~ Public Forums against those, like the petty-bourgeois ANC and Stalinist SACP, who seek to shackle the German Spartakists fight for workers mobilisation power of tile working class to ''power-sharing'' wilh the apartheid rulers. to smash the fascists It is our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent until all more or less possessing classes have been forced out of their position of dominance, until the Class struggle in the proletariat has conquered state power, and the association of proletarians, not only in one country but in all the dominant countries of the world, has advanced so far that Fourth Reich competition among the proletarians of these countries has ceased and that at least the decisive productive forces arc concentrated in the hands of the proletarians. For us the issue eannot'be the alteration of private property but only its annihilation, not the Speaker: Renate Dahlhaus, member of the Central Committee of the smoothing over of class antagonisms but the abolition of classes, not the improvement Sparta kist Workers Party of Germany (SpAD), German section of the of existing society but the foundation of a new one. International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist). - Karl Marx, "Address to the Central Committee of the Communist .' League", 1850 In January 1990, when our comrades initiated a rally at Treptow Park, in East Berlin, protesting the fascist desecration of the Red Army war memorial, Renate Dahlhaus spoke before the 250,000 who turned out to protest the fascist scum and to honour the role of the Red Army in smashing Hitler's counterrevolutionary hordes. The SpAD and the ICl uniquely stood against the capitalist reunification of Germany and fought against the restoration of capitalism throughout Eastern Europe and the USSR. Recently the Fourth Reich was forced to drop the charges against Dahlhaus and others who ripped down a Nazi swastika flag hung near the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. Today, when there is a wave of workers' struggles across WORKERSIIAMMER Europe, we Trotskyists seek to mobilise the power of the working class to smash cop and Nazi terror through worker/immigrant mobilisations, for full citizenship rights for all immigrants, For a federation of workers republics in the British Islesl ~ against the attacks on women's rights, and for the Socialist United States of Europe. Comrade For a Socialist United States of Europel Dahlhaus is making a tour of a number of European countries as part of the ICl's internationalist struggle to reforge Trotsky's Fourth International, world party of socialist Newspaper of the Spartaclst League, British section of the International revolution. Communist League (Fourth Internationalist). EDITORIAL BOARD: Bonnie Bradley (Editor), Jon Branche, Ralf Eades, Alec Gilchrist, Eibhlin DUBLIN GLASGOW lONDON McDonald, Alan Mason, len Michelson, Ellen Rawlings, David Strachan, Jay Tregellis 8.00 pm 3.00 pm 4.00 pm PRODUCTiON MANAGER: Jay Tregellis Thursday 6 May 1993 Saturday 8 May 1993 Saturday 15 May 1993 CIRCULATION MANAGER: . Suzy Driscoll Ha'penny Bridge Inn City Halls, Candleriggs Room 119 Published by Spartacist Publications, PO Box 1041, London NW53EU Wellington Quay (Albion Street entrance) Lambeth Town Hall Subscriptions: £3.00 for 1 year, overseas airmail £6.00. Glasgow G1 1NQ Brixton Hill SW2 Opinions expressed in signed articles or letters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint. Printed by AmelSham Offset (TU). ISSN 0267·8721 01-4783674 041-3320788 071-485 1396

2· WORKERS HAMMER But, as Guardiall correspondent, Martin Rescue America terrorists target Britain Walker noted: "Britain is not alone as a target; Mr Treshman and his supporters are planning to move on to France and to a Germany where the easy abortions of the old east­ ern half have provoked social tensions with the restrictive provisions in largely Catholic Bavaria. The power of the Cath­ Defend abortion clinics! olic Church in tightening the restriction on abortion in Poland suggests that Eu­ rope's own cultural wars are under way." On 10 March, abortion doctor David Gunn, courageous fighter for women's Rescue America and the larger Operation rights, was gunned down by Rescue Rescue which plans a foray in September America supporter Michael Griffin as he are out to galvanise the same type of arrived for work at the Women's Medical terroristic bigotry they foment in the Services Clinic in Pensacola, Florida. they intend came with the flying demon­ Rescue America's Pensacola leader is one strations of intimidations and pray-ins John Burt, a "former" Ku Klux Klansman Rescue America and its Rescue Britain who took part in lynch mob violence cohorts staged at abortion clinics from against school integration in the 1960s. Essex to Birmingham to Aberdeen. And Two weeks later Donald Treshman, a their targeting of smaller private clinics is leader of Rescue America, and a number no accident, since these are often the of supporters arrived in Britain to spread places that women from Ireland are their right-wing terror campaign against forced to come to, in their thousands, abortion clinics across the Atlantic. each year because abortion is banned in Before leaving the United States Tresh­ the South and the North. Contrary to man had brazenly defended the murder some pro-abortion demonstrators who of David Gunn, saying: "While we think shouted "Go back to America" we see the death is unfortunate, the fact is that a the necessary successful mobilisations to number of mothers would have been put halt these bigots here as also assisting the at risk today and over a dozen babies struggle in the United States and as a would have died at his hands." Shortly part of a broader internationalist struggle thereafter he had made similar state­ London, 30 March: Cops wade into demonstration protesting Rescue against the impact of counterrevolution in ments on the BBC's Newsnight pro­ America "right-to-life" reactionaries' provocation at International Planned Eastern Europe. gramme. These rigllt-willg tllugs sllould be Parenthood Federation offices. Organisations like NAC - as well as met witll mass, militallt mobilisatiolls alld the SWP - have not even fought to onstration, consisting mainly of sup­ not by maneuvers in the courts or lobby­ sellt packillg - defelld tile abortioll clillics! ing Democrats in Congress. extend the 1967 Abortion Act to Northern On 29 March Treshman was arrested porters of the National Abortion Cam­ Ireland. In this they are capitulating both paign, Socialist Workers Party and the and given two weeks to appeal. against "The SYC says 'Labor: Defend the Oi­ to the prejudices of the Green nationalists deportation on the grounds that his Spartacist League. Eighteen protesters nics!' What's needed are large, organized and to the Labour Party whose leader presence in Britain was "not conducive were arrested and held for several hours contingents of unionists and all supporters "voted consistently" for David Alton's bill to the public good". In an editorial until released without charge. of abortion rights mobilized to stop the and backs a reduction in the legal limit entitled "Chuck them both out", Momillg The Spartacist League in the United right-wing thugs" (Workers Vanguard, 9 for abortions to 22 weeks. While the April). Star (6 April), complains that Treshman States has joined in clinic defences and Spartacist League fights for free abortion and another anti-abortion bigot were not other mobilisations against attacks on Internationally, abortion rights have on demand and free quality health care put straight back on the plane. Unlike abortion rights. Recently when anti-abor­ become a key battleground in the struggle for all, these organisations simply raise Momillg Star or the Socialist Workers tion bigots planned to hold a meeting on between social progress and social reac­ "A Woman's Right to Choose", which ad­ Party who want the state to ban the fas­ the University of California campus at tion. The advance of counterrevolution dresses the issue of a legal right but not cists in Bexley, we oppose the call for . Berkeley our comrades of the Spartacus across Eastern Europe has meant in­ how poor and working-class women can state bans. The same "public order" bans Youth Club took the lead to mobilise a creasing attacks on women and minor­ exercise this right. And all the "socialists" have been used to keep radicals out of picket line demonstration. Their report ities. Notably in Germany and Poland, who supported Polish Solidarnosc, callcd the country, like the then Black Panther notes: the question of abortion rights is a crucial for the victory of the CIA mujahedin cut­ leader, Stokely Carmichael. "The Bible-thumping, women-hating fight. It's no accident that Operation throats in Afghanistan, and backed Yel­ Indeed, on Tuesday 30 March the squads of Right to Life and Operation Rescue's director Keith Tucci, brags of tsin's countercoup in August 1991, helped police balllled pro-abortion demonstrators Rescue should be run off campus, and their influence in Poland, Romania and pave the way for the "New World Ordcr" who had gathered outside the headquar­ everywhere else they dare to stage their Russia. attacks on women. ters of the International Planned Parent­ provocations. Since losing the overtly sym­ While the capitalist media gave the We say: Capitalist counterrevolution pathetic ear they had in the ReaganIBush hood Federation in Regent's Park to White House, they have escalated their small Rescue America contingent plenty means misery for women! From Pensa­ protest a planned press conference by campaign of intimidation, terrorism and of publicity, the deportation order placed cola to Dublin to Warsaw- fight for the Rescue America. No sooner had the murder. Abortion rights will be won on Treshman is indicative of some con­ right to free abortion on demand! Fight placards gone up than a large contingent through struggle against the anti-abortion siderable bourgeois consensus in Britain for women's liberation through socialist of cops waded into the forty-strong dem- terrorists at the clinics and on the streets, in favour of the present laws on abortion. revolution! •

____ Prometheus Research Library Book ____ JUST OUT! P 1\ ( ) \ II I I I I I " R I "I \ I, ( I I S I I, II" j The book includes: Includes the 1972 Spartacist article • Extensively documented introduction "Genesis of Pabloism" as well as several rare • Explanatory footnotes for 1948 documents on the Cannon's text Yugoslavia, East Europe and Fourth International's • 16 pages of rare historical flawed response to the the Fourth International: photographs Tito-Stalin split. The Evolution of • Glossary of names and terms with Pabloist Liquidationism over 200 entries

• Biblography of Cannon's works, by Jan Norden 1912-1928 £4 (includes postage) • Index 70 Pages £10 paperbackISBN 0-%33828-1-0 plus £2 postage Make cheques Order from/make payable to: Spartadst Publications, PO Box 1041, London NWS 3EU. payable/post to: Spartacist Publications, Phone (071) 485 13% "00 PO Box 1041, L... """'''",m ""~" u~" Mu<:h 199~ London NW5 3EU

MAY/JUNE 1993 3 Women, apartheid and the permanent revolution Presentation to South African students Workers Hammer prints below the text state. In what became Soviet Central Asia of a presentation given by Spartacist women were treated as virtual slaves, League spokesman Cheryl Myal/ to a subjected to the bride price and the veil. gathering of SOllth African stlldents in But despite the glaring democratic tasks Leeds on 27 March. that remained to be achieved, the Bolshe­ viks defeated the Menshevik notion that Good afternoon, comrades. The Spar­ revolution would come in stages - first tacist League/Britain, part of the Interna­ would come the democratic stage, then tional Communist League (Fourth Inter­ later socialism. The Bolsheviks were nationalist) is glad to have this opportu­ uncompromising in their opposition to nity to address a national gathering of class-collaborationist popular fronts, that South African students in Britain. is, an alliance with the liberal bourgeoisie. We of the International Communist It was because of the political hardness of League do not believe that communism is the Bolsheviks that the proletarian revo­ dead-Stalinism dies, but communism lution triumphed. The great Russian rev­ lives: And South Africa is one of the few olutionary and Red Army organiser Leon places in the world where the masses Trotsky noted that the Russian Revolu­ identify with communism, insofar as they tion was an example of permanent rev­ understand it. Apartheid capitalism is olution: that in countries whose bourgeois based on the super-exploitation of black development has been belated, especially workers. Thus, there can be no democ­ colonial and semi-colonial countries, ra<)', no end to brutal racism, sexual and genuine democracy and national emanci­ social oppression as long as capitalism South African women commemorate slain SACP leader, Chris Hani. Leninist­ pation can be achieved only under the continues to exist in South Africa. Trotskyist party will be constructed with strong component of women in dictatorship of the proletariat. "Power sharing" deals, coalition govern­ leadership of struggle to smash apartheid capitalism. The position of women made great ments with the apartheid masters - this strides forward in the young Soviet will prove to be a cruel hoax for the solidarity. Ruth First was a leader of the disciple of Steve Biko, expressed the view workers republic. Divorce and abortion black masses of South Africa, and not ANC and the South African Communist that there are minor differences among were legalised, while repressive laws least for the millions of doubly and triply Party who was murdered in the front line the different tribal groups in South Afri­ against homosexuals. were abolished. oppressed women who will continue to of the anti-apartheid struggle. In January ca. But then she went on to include Child care facilities were made available languish in the bantustans or be forced to 1986 some 20,000 blacks flooded into the female genital mutilation among these so that women could be integrated into live in backyards and back bedrooms in white areas of Port Elizabeth to attend "minor" differences, saying "The Pedes the workforce. Although the early Soviet wealthy white suburbs, paid a pittance to the funeral of Molly Blackburn, a leader circumcise their women and the Xhosas Union was much more backward eco­ take care of other people's children. of Black Sash, who was killed allegedly in do not." This is a shocking attitude from nomically than Western Europe and the Urgently needed in South Africa is the a car accident. There was opposition someone who aspires to lead the struggle USA, Soviet advances in the treatment of forging of a Bolshevik party, modelled on from some white youth to being con­ for the emancipation of women in South women put to shame the so-called demo­ the party of Lenin and Trotsky that led scripted as occupying forces in the black Africa. Female genital mutilation is an cratic "civilised" countries. the only successful workers revolution in townships. inhuman crime and is one of the most Although Stalin's gang usurped politi­ history. In opposition to black nationalists we barbaric means for the subjugation of cal power from the Soviet proletariat in women. The early French socialist 1924, the Trotskyists considered that the Charles Fourier was fond of saying that USSR remained a workers state, albeit you can measure the level of any given degenerated. Trotskyists unconditionally society by the degree in which women are defended the Soviet Union against im­ emancipated. perialism and internal counterrevolution, The tsarist empire that was shattered while calling for a political revolution by the Bolshevik Revolution was a largely against the Stalinist bureaucracy. In 1979 peasant, backward country, with a small we forthrightly championed the Soviet but significant proletariat. The tsarist intervention in Afghanistan. (We also empire was a virtual prison house of supported Cuban troops in Angola nations; anti-Semitism was rife; the peas­ against the apartheid army and the CIA­ antry was maintained in a semi-feudal backed Savimbi.) In Afghanistan we

NO 42SPflINGISUMM~R 1993 JUST OUT! No. 42 w..menund~ Spring/Summer 1993 Revolution 75p (48 pages)

Includes: • From East Berlin to Tashkent: Capitalist Counterrevolution Tramples on Women • Stephen Jay Gould and the Mlsmeasure of Marx London, 14 April: Spartacist contingent at protest over Hani's assassination • Mobilize Now to Save raises red banner of the International Communist League. Mumla Abu-Jamall

• Murderous Bigotry Murderous Bigotry Against Gays The women of South Africa are des­ welcomed the lifting of the ban on inter­ Against Gays In Mexico In MeXICo-Stop the Killingsl tined to playa crucial role in the South racial sex and marriage. We pointed out Torture of Native Women In Canada. 14 -Stop the Kllllngsl Australia" CapItalist Attacks Target African workers revolution, just as the simple fact that a breakdown of resi­ • Torture of Native Women Immtgrant Women Workers USA ImmIgrant Women Workers women were key to the Russian Revolu­ dential segregation would mean that the In Canada Expose RaCIst Abuse tion of 1917. During the 1950s, when the white supremacist rulers could not • Australia: Capitalist Clinton Bows to AnII·Gay Hysterta Defend NAMBLAt Pass Laws were extended to women, unleash their bombs and cordon off areas Attacks Target Immigrant there was a massive mobilisation of black, without affecting any whites. Further­ Women Workers Indian, "coloured" and white women more, organisers of a racially integrated • Clinton Bows to Anti-Gay communist party, blacks and whites, men Hysteria from all over South Africa. They gathered • Pro-Death Penalty 2O,000-strong in Johannesburg and sang and women, would find it easier to meet Clinton: No Friend of the freedom song: "Now you have or travel together. Working Women touched the woman, you have struck a In South Africa some of the urgent rock, you have dislodged a boulder, you bourgeois democratic tasks are very basic. Subscription -3 issues £2.00 will be crushed." In 1984 Thenjiwe Mtintso, a former Make cheques payable/post to: Spartacist Publications, PO Box 1041 ,London NW53EU And there were examples of interracial "Black Consciousness" woman leader and

4. WORKERS HAMMER Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams called Warrington on nationalists and Republicans to join the "Peace '93" days of action, "raising bombings .•. demands for inclusive dialogue as part of (Continued from page 12) a genuine process towards a lasting peace" (An Phoblacht, 1 April). Toeing illusions in the very forces of imperialism this line Troops Out Movement sup­ which are engaged in hunting down and porters attended the 4 April rally in Lon­ killing their own members. But it is also don, whining that "It is regrettable that graphically revealing of the truth that at the many condemnations of the IRA at bottom their strategy is essentially to the rally were not matched by condemna­ pressure imperialism. For example, adap­ tions of the British state's appalling role ting to the so-called "New World Order" in the conflict" (An PllOblacht, 8 April). the IRA and Sinn Fein have dropped The two largest leftist groups in both their "socialist" talk and enthused over Ireland and Britain are Militant Labour US president Clinton's "even-handed" and the Socialist Workers Party/Socialist campaign rhetoric on Ireland. In the Workers Movement. British Militant (26 aftermath of Warrington, the Catholic March) advises that "The trade union church, backed by the Dublin govern­ and labour movement and community Dublin, 28 March: Spring/Robinson's pro-imperialist "peace mnVAmAnl" ment, pushed talks between the SDLP's organisations must combine opposition to John Hume and the IRA - "no long terrorism with steadfast opposition to on 8 April was "even-handedly" entitled of the myriad by-products of the implosion term solution without talks with Sinn state repression." But the minimum pre­ "Stop the bombings! Get the British of Gerry Healy's WRP - an organisation in Fein" being the motto. The talks took requisite for steadfast opposition to state Army Out!" This is perhaps some im­ the pay of various Middle Eastern despots place; Adams at least is accepting invita­ repression is the demand for the immedi­ provement on "More repression is not - the Northites know plenty about bemg tions to dance. Nevertheless there are ate and unconditional withdrawal of the the answer" (Socialist Worker, 27 March). pawns. The siek and sinister message is that divisions and tensions over the appetites British Army from Northern Ireland, The same issue also said "socialists the struggle of the IRA and other Republi­ of some elements of the IRA and Sinn something the Militant opposes. And for always argue for troops out now". BlIt not cans contains no legitimate and defensible Fein to trade dropping the bombing and all its eloquence against "individual ter­ the SWP, who supported the troops going component, and is simply no different from military campaigns for doing business rorism", Militant never distinguishes in, in 1969! The presentation at the 8 the aetions of the Loyalist paramilitaries or with the British government at the negoti­ between defensible and indefensible April Dublin meeting which had a strong the British Army. ating table. Meanwhile IRA units con­ terrorism, thus absolving themselves of pacifist tone, made no mention of the calI Amidst the heightened intercommunal tinue to be active in Britain. On Saturday ever having to defend nationalist struggles for troops out now. And why shouldn't poison and bloodletting in Northern 24 April, a large bomb was detonated and groups like the IRA or the Tamil the SWP /SWM have people who are Ireland in the last period, there are also outside the Natwest Tower in the City, Tigers in Sri Lanka against the state. And tempted to join the "peace movement". signs of· the willingness of the working causing millions of pounds of damage and Militant prettifies the "Peace '93" move­ After all, the SWP plumped hard for the class to struggle together across the com­ killing a newspaper photographer. ment. Emmet Farrell (Militant, 2 April) pro-imperialist "starve them, don't bomb munal divide, including in opposition to One IRA spokesman is reported as waxes eloquent about how "Thousands of them" peace movement over Iraq. sectarian attacks. But such openings .. saying (Independent, 13 April) that "The working-class Dubliners turned up to Workers Power's inability to separate cannot be taken forward simply on the tragedy and suffering are all the same", show their disgust" and demanded "the the defensible from the indefensible leads basis of trade unionist or economic whether it was Marie Wilson, Ian Gow or end of the IRA's military campaign", adding it - as it did over Enniskillen - to an­ demands as envisaged by the Militant and Julie Livingstone. From the standpoint of a mild concern that "some df the rally nounce its "unconditional" support of the the SWP /SWM. In the context of inter­ a nationalist looking for imperialist favour organisers have been one-sided in their IRA. To be sure, Workers Power laces its penetrated peoples and communalist that may be so. But not from ours. Marie condemnation of violence". Irish Militallt usual vicarious tailing of petty-bourgeois hatred there can be no solution short of Wilson was the victim of the indefensible (April 1993) frets about the "weaknesses" of nationalism here with concern about proletarian revolution. Capitalist re­ IRA Enniskillen bombing. Julie Living­ the peace movement, proposing a "mass "tragic deaths". In another league, there unification poses only the reversal of the stone was a 14-year-old killed by a British movement of workers to stop the ki1\ings", are the unsavoury political bandits of terms of oppression for the distinct Army plastic bullet, a victim of imperialist naturally without even mentioning the ques­ David North's Intemational Worker. Its Protestant community. We oppose forc­ repression. But Ian Gow was Margaret tion of withdrawal of the British Army. And editorial entitled "The Warrington ible reunification and call for an Irish Thatcher's parliamentary private secre­ none of the Militant's papers has seen fit to bombing: The reactionary logic of workers republic as part of a socialist tary, an imperialist master for whom we report that the 3000-strong Relatives for bourgeois nationalism" (3 April) gro­ federation of the British Isles. Above shed no tears. Justice rally was ten times larger than the tesquely writes that "The IRA's only all this perspective requires the con­ . Obscenely, Sinn Fein has tried to join "Peace '93" rally on the same day in Belfast. role in this can be as a pawn of one or struction of revolutionary parties in the pro-imperialist "peace" movement. Similarly an SWM meeting in Dublin other of the imperialist powers". As one Ireland and Britain .•

declared: "Hail Red Army in Afghanistan rule by the IMF means starvation. The The power-sharing deal will leave Mugabe's Patriotic Front government has - Extend Social Gains of October to destruction of the Soviet workers state power in the hands of the apartheid broken strikes, arrested union leaders and Afghan Peoples!" As soon as the PDPA has not only been a catastrophe for masters, spelling continued enslavement brutally repressed student demonstrations government which came to power in 1978 Soviet working people, but has given the of the vast non-white majority of South as it imposes IMF starvation policies, attempted to implement reforms in the imperialists a green light to rampage and Africa. The blood-drenched army and while refusing to expropriate the white countryside, particularly education for girls, despoil the peoples of the Third World. security apparatus will remain intact, capitalist farmers. PAC/AZAPO may the lowering of the bride price, and encour­ The war in the Persian Gulf, in which along with the rest of the racist capitalist aspire to set up a black capitalist regime agement to women to throwaway their 100,000 Iraqis were butchered, was the state. This pact marks a historic betrayal that exploits its own working class, but in stifling veils, it was confronted by a CIA­ opening campaign of the "New World of the aspirations of the black toilers of South Africa the best the nationalists can backed counterinsurgency of landlords, Disorder". At the time we of the Interna­ South Africa, who for generations have hope for is to be black front men for the tribal chieftains and mullahs. Soviet with­ tional Communist League said: "Defeat struggled, endured prison and died by the neo-apartheid regime. drawal from Afghanistan in 1989 marked a imperialism! Defend Iraq!" Wc demand thousands to win their freedom. Anyone Leon Trotsky pointed out in his theses decisive turning point by the Gorbachev "Imperialist troops out of Somalia!" who stands for the liberation of the black, on permanent revolution that in the im­ regime to sell out to the imperialists. Comrades, it is suicidal to appeal to "coloured" and Indian masses of South perialist epoch even the basic democratic In 1981, when many who falsely call the blood-drenched, racist imperialists for Africa, including whites who don't want tasks require the conquest of power by themselves Marxist were hailing Polish justice against the apartheid regime. It to spend the rest of their lives in a per­ the proletariat, under the leadership of a Solidarnosc, Thatcher and Reagan's fav­ was the British imperialists in the first manent garrison state, must reject this multiracial Leninist-Trotskyist party, ourite union, we said "Stop Solidarnosc place who instituted many of the laws and grotesque "deal". proceeding forward to socialist tasks. The Counterrevolution!" Capitalist restoration structures which were later used by the There are those who claim to be Randlords of South Africa and their state in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union apartheid butchers to terrorise and opposed to the sell-out by the ANC and cannot be phased out with a "sunset has unleashed unemployment, impover­ repress the black popUlation. That is why the South African Communist Party. But clause", they must be overthrown, their ishment, fascist and communalist viol­ we never supported the ANC's call on the the PAC poses no alternative to the power smashed, their state dismantled, ence, as well as attacks on abortion imperialists to impose sanctions on the bourgeois nationalist programme of the their property expropriated, if the black rights. In the former DDR (East Ger­ apartheid bosses in Pretoria. It is no ANC, and has set up its own negotations popUlation is to be emancipated and begin many) our comrades fought uniquely and accident that the US imperialists today with De Klerk and the apartheid masters. the construction of an egalitarian society. unequivocally against capitalist support the De Klerk/ ANC "government Others like AZAPO talk of a "patriotic The people of Soweto and Sharpeville reunification. We initiated a 250,000 of national unity" schemes, because they popular front", in particular looking to cannot be free as long as Anglo American strong anti-fascist demonstration at Trep­ see this as the best means to cheat the the example of Mugabe's Zimbabwe. holds sway .• tow Park in Berlin, where Nazis had working masses and to prop up the brutal defaced a Soviet war memorial. Now with rule of the Randlords and Anglo Ameri­ capitalist restoration, unemployment in can mining magnates. Spartacist League/Britain eastern Germany is close to 50 per cent, The black working class has enormous and the immigrant population in Ger­ power and has demonstrated it in strike Glasgow PO Box 150 London PO Box 1041 many lives in fear for their lives. We seek after strike. But as black labour emerged as Glasgow G3 6DX London NW5 3EU to mobilise the power of the trade unions the motor force of the anti-apartheid 041-3320788 071-485 1396 and minorities to smash the fascist scum. struggle, it has been straitjacketed by the In August 1991 we were for popular-front policies of the ANC/SACP. Dublin Spartacist Group mobilising Moscow workers to clean out To win the confidence of capital, the PO Box 2944 Dublin 1 will the counterrevolutionary rabble on Yel­ ANCjSACP police the black prole­ 01-4783674 tsin's barricades. Market economy and tariat, politically and otherwise if necessary.

MAY/JUNE .19~3 5 The American press has painted the and militarist vice president Rutskoi­ standoff between Russian president Yel­ draws its support from the country's tsin and the Russian Congress as a battle basic commodities,· the working masses 1.5 per cent, but many workers are sent factory managers. Appealing to the old between capitalist "free marketeers" and have been plunged into unprecedented home on "forced vacation" on as little as "military-industrial complex", Volsky & recalcitrant "Communists". In fact, both impoverishment. one-fifth of their normal wage. Co vow to maintain a strong Russian the Yeltsinites and their opponents Three . months later, the government And the hardest hit have been women, state and demand the continued flow of denounce each other for "Bolshevism". statistical agency reported that 90 per cent who formerly made up 51 per cent of the government subsidies to the country's key Yeltsin press secretary Vyacheslav Kos­ of workers in Russia were earning below workforce. Yeltin's labour minister Meli­ heavy industries. tikov railed that the Congress' decisions the then subsistence wage of 1500 roubles kyan declaims, "I seriously don't think Last summer Volsky, who heads the in early March signalled a "slide back to a month. Per capita income in real terms women should work while men are doing Union ofIndustrialists and Entrepreneurs Soviet communist power", while parlia­ at the start of 1993 was 43 per cellt of nothing." Many women are being driven and was a former adviser to Gorbachev, mentary leader Ruslan Khasbulatov what it was two years ago, and even this into prostitution to support themselves declaimed that Yeltsin's "democrats have attacks Yeltsin's "pathological" desire to figure disguises the Third World poverty and their children. ABC News' Prime already shown they are unable to ensure eliminate the parliament as a "genetic facing millions of the most downtrodden. Time Live (18 March) reported on a a decent existence for the people 80 per link with Bolshevism". More importantly, both sides are for a capitalist market economy, which means utter impoverish­ ment for the working people of the form­ er Soviet Union. The restoration of capitalist rule has put the very existence of the Soviet pro­ letariat at stake. If the Yeltsinites have their way, it will lead to a shut-down of vast sections of industry. Following dic­ tates of the IMF, government plans call for privatising over 5000 medium and large-scale enterprises, employing seven million workers, in 1993 alone. Part of Korneyev/AFP the purpose is to cut these plants off from state credits, which would mean that most would go under (unless they can get foreign financing). The industrial man­ agers grouped around Arkady Volsky (allied with Russian vice president Alek­ sandr Rutskoi) denounce the Yeltsinites' plans for "Kuwaitisation" of the economy, in which Russia would only produce raw materials like oil for export to the West. The Volskyites demagogically appeal to workers' legitimate concern for their livelihooqs. Marxists fight to defend the industrial base of the country, and thus oppose the wholesale "privatisation"­ meaning shut -down - of productive Left: old-age pensioner begging in Red Square. Above: capacity. We are outraged at the tearing Moscow stock exchange, where yuppie entrepreneurs down of a modern industrial economy dream of becoming junior partners of Wall Street, and military powerhouse built up through Frankfurt bankers and Japan Inc. decades of sacrifice by the multinational Soviet working people. Despite the warp­ ing influence of Stalinist bureaucratic arbitrariness, in many areas Soviet tech­ nology and science - especially in basic research and military-related fields - is as good as or better than anything in the West. The MIG-29, for instance, is superior to the planlled next -generation Russia's European fighter jet. Today major scien­ tific institutions are being dismantled and sold off for a song to Western firms. But the national-"patriotic" forces around Volsky/Rutskoi are no less com­ mitted to capitalist restoration than are the Yeltsinite "democrats". They too are new exploiters subordinate to the laws of the capitalist world market, and they (along with the yuppie "entrepreneurs") are massively looting state property in cahoots with A handful of speculators have become doctor in Moscow who became a prosti­ cent of whom today live below the pov­ Western imperialists. All the contending overnight dollar millionaires (or rouble tute because it was the only way to pro­ erty line" (Moscow New Times, July factions derived from the disintegrated billionaires!), and certain sectors of the vide for her seven-year-old son. 1992). Vladimir Ovchinnikov, general Stalinist bureaucracy are the ellemies. of proletariat, like miners and transport Yeltsin's opponents point to the wide­ director of the Aleksandrov Radio Fac­ th,e working people. The key to saving workers, have been granted wage spread devastation his policies have tory, Russia's largest producer of TV sets, industry and the proletariat is a struggle increases to keep up with the gaUoping wrought on the entire Russian economy, declared that "real power is in the hands for state power - socialist revolution to inflation. But the average worker in warning that this level of immiseration of directors because the livelihoods of establish effective centralised planning in Russia today receives two-thirds of the could set off a social explosion that would tens of millions of people depend on a reforged Soviet federation based on 6000 roubles a month considered the bare sweep away the fledgling "market econ­ them, and their workers believe in them." proletarian democracy and socialist inter­ survival minimum. Even Time magazine omy". Inflation has climbed to nearly 50 This was not mere demagogy. Many nationalism. (22 March) concedes: per cent a month, with the price of a fearful workers now look to the managers "Yeitsin and his team of shock therapists standard basket of goods having increased - most of them derived from the former have been at the task since the Soviet almost a hUlldredfold in the past two lIomellklatura (Stalinist bureaucratic elite) Yeltsin's "shock therapy": Third Union collapsed in December 1991, pro­ years. Production dropped by 24 per cent - to restore a semblance of the "good World immiseration ducing few successes and much turmoil, last year alone. Yeltsin's scheme to old days" under Brezhnev, when Soviet What is behind the political crisis in hardship and anxiety." privatise the entire economy in one quick enterprises provided their workforce with Russia is not a struggle between socialism Today Russian workers can survive fix by distributing 10,OOO-rouble share­ low-rent housing, inexpensive meals in and capitalism, nor between democracy only by also engaging in petty trade and holding vouchers to the population has the factory cafeteria as well as meat to and totalitarianism, but the utter failure deal-making or, if they have a dacha been a scam from start to finish. In Feb­ take home, summer vacations on the of Yeltsin's economic policies and, more (house in the country), by growing food ruary, angry protesters blocked the streets Black Sea, etc. As one woman who now broadly, the dilemma of a counterrevolu­ crops in their backyard. An engineer of Leningrad to demand their money makes 3000 roubles a month as a cook in tionary regime seeking to impose capital­ recently quit his job at a Moscow nuclear back from fly-by-night con artists who a children's hospital said, "We worked ism without capital. Acquiescing to Wash­ power station in order to protect the ripped off at least 350,000 vouchers by hard, and now we have nothing. With ington's diktat in the futile hope of secur­ potato crop on his dacha from thieves! promising an instant return on their pleasure, I would go back to the old ing a massive infusion of Western aid and An 84-year-old pensioner stands on the "investment" . days" (Washillgtoll Post, 27 January). investment, the Yeltsinites imposed an freezing streets to sell a carton of milk or While the Yeltsinites' social base is in But the factory managers are no less economic "shock treatment" crafted by a pack of cigarettes at a mark-up to the new "robber baron" entrepreneurial intent than Yeltsin's yuppies on being the Harvard boy Jeffrey Sachs. Since Yeltsin's people who don't want to wait two hours elite, the opposition - centred on the new exploiters of Russia's proletariat in I,anuary 1992 decree "freeing" prices on on line. The official unemployment rate is Civic Union bloc of "industrialist" Volsky collaboration with international capital.

6 WORKERS HAMMER Where the Volskyites differ with Yeltsin will lead to a new regime that will confis­ is in how to develop Russian capitalism. cate their ill-gotten wealth. As a self­ They look to Deng's China as a model, mal or not, in many industries just a few ran the printing presses overtime. described "middleman" in Leningrad put where the bureaucracy maintains firm factories supplied vital inputs for scores of In other words, Yeltsin deliberately it: "Everything we do is aimed at a quick political control and continues to cultivate enterprises from eastern Siberia to the sabotaged the Soviet economy and then profit. We buy, we sell, and we get out. a strong heavy industry and military sec­ Baltic republics. For example, 70 per cent exploited popular discontent over rising Only a fool would invest his money in a tor while gradually shifting vast chunks of of all the different types of machine tools prices and shortages to push through the long-term business in Russia" (Washing­ the economy over to capitalism. But made in the USSR were produced in one counterrevolution. By the summer of tOil Post, 30 September 1992). Wall Street where China remains a deformed workers enterprise and in no other. 1991, most working people were indiffer­ and Frankfurt bankers, German and state, Russia has a (weak) capitalist state. Clearly, such a system could work only ent to the fate of the Gorbachev regime. Japanese industrialists, and Texas oilmen Volsky & Co argue that, particularly in under centralised direction where a given Many believed falsely that things could are not fools. And they aren't investing the absence of significant Western invest­ enterprise was ordered to supply other not get worse. And some bought the line their money in Russia either. ment, it is necessary for the new state to enterprises at a set price. Otherwise man- that only a rapid move to a full-fledged On the contrary, there has been mas- directly oversee the development of a capitalist economy through a corporatist policy not dissimilar to that carried out by Mussolini in Italy in the 1920s and '30s. This policy was already advanced in the waning days of the Gorbachev era by "black colonel" Viktor Alksnis, who called for the introduction of capitalism through a Pinochet-style regime. In 17le Revolution Betrayed (1937), Trot­ sky noted: "Stalinism and fascism, in spite of a deep difference in social foundations, are symmetrical phenomena. In many of their features they show a deadly similarity." In effect, the corporatist wing of the counter­ revolution seeks to resurrect Stalin's heavy­ handed bonapartist regime on capitalist social foundations, maintaining a stream­ lined state sector as a motor force for a new capitalist economy. No less than the Yeltsinites, the corpo­ ratists see the need to use the whip of repression to discipline the proletariat in Women in La Paz, Bolivia (above) and Moscow (right) protest desperate order to facilitate the primitive accumula­ conditions on International Women's Day. Western imperialism seeks to tion of capital. To make Russian indus­ reduce Russia to status of neocolonial Latin America. trial goods cheap enough to compete on world markets, such a regime would lay off millions of "redundant" workers, while those who remained on the assem­ bly lines would be subjected to harsh agers could ruthlessly exploit their mo­ market system could restore the health of sive looting of the Russian economy in speed-up. The slashing of real wages nopoly position, selling to the highest the economy. the past couple of years. One out of every brought about under the Yeltsin/Gaidar bidder while enterprises which could not three barrels of oil and one out of every "shock treatment" would be maintained afford to pay would have to cut back two tons of nickel leaving Russia is IMF orders surgery without and likely intensified by police-state regi- their output. That is exactly what hap­ smuggled out, while fully 80 per cent of anaesthesia . .. pened when Gorbachev scrapped cen­ the raw materials ticketed for the Baltic tralised planning in January 1988 and The collapse of the industrial supply port of Kaliningrad never arrives there. decreed that all Soviet enterprises were system, which began under Gorbachev, Marc Rich, the strike-breaking owner of to become self-financing on the basis of was greatly accelerated with the break-up Ravenswood Aluminum in the US (cur­ khozraschet (cost accounting). Consumer of the USSR formalised in December rently living in Switzerland to evade tax goods managers cut back shipments to 1991. A month later, Yeltsin lifted con­ and fraud charges), boasts trading rev­ state shops, where prices were still fixed,· trols on consumer prices, implementing enues of $2.5 billion per year in natural diverting output to private "co-opera­ the IMF "shock therapy" under his eco­ resources from the former Soviet Union. tives" where mafia-like entrepreneurs nomic "expert", the obscure academic Everything in Russia is for sale for practised price extortion. Producers of Yegor Gaidar. A year after Yeltsin seized hard currency these days, from religious industrial and intermediate goods likewise power in the August 1991 countercoup: icons peddled by Orthodox priests to jacked up their prices. • Industrial production in Russia had high-tech weaponry supplied by financially By 1990-91, as inflation was eroding fallen 27 per cent. strapped arms factories. Iran is rumoured the value of the rouble, the industrial • Investment in plant and equipment had to have acquired two Soviet-made nuclear supply system degenerated into crude fallen 55 per cent. warheads. Last year as much as $15 bil­ barter deals negotiated on the basis of • Prices had increased 1560 per cent. lion in hard currency was siphoned out of economic blackmail. For example, the • Real wages had fallen 32 per cent. Russia into private bank accounts in the managers of the Sverdlovsk transformer While working people are struggling to US and West Europe. This is more than factory refused to deliver transformers to survive in an increasingly ugly and violent twice the $7 billion in net aid and credits the huge Uralmash engineering complex society, the new entrepreneurs flaunt which the Yeltsin regime got from Bush's unless the latter provided them with a list their wealth: "Representatives of the New America, Kohl's Germany and its other of items including piping, scrap metal, Class can be seen waving their gold cards imperialist godfathers. Meanwhile, the kitchen fittings, rest home passes and a in Western-style grocery stores, dining at scramble for dollars which can. be safely telephone for the apartment of the doctor hard currency restaurants, and driving stashed in foreign bank accounts con­ Der Spiegel looking after the director's wife! Man­ around town in Mercedes and BMWs" tinues to drive down the value of the Would-be Tsar Boris with Ruslan agers were no longer concerned about (Washington Post, 1 February). rouble at Moscow's limited currency KhasbulatoY, speaker of Russian their enterprises' long-term development The New York Times (2 August 1992) exchange. In the past six months, the parliament and former Yeltsinite. because they doubted whether they had a painted a glowing portrait of a typical exchange rate has gone from just over 200 new entrepreneur, Natalya Maloletneva, mentation of the labour force. Trade future themselves. roubles to the dollar to nearly 800, figures Growing nationalist disintegration a manager of a Moscow clothing store unions would be permitted only as pliant wildly out of kilter with the actual state of added another element to the economic who bought a controlling interest when the Russian economy. tools of the corporatist state, and strikes chaos, as factories dependent for parts the shop was privatised last spring. She would be suppressed as "unpatriotic". and supplies upon warring republics like claims she purchased her share for 60,000 Notably, it was Rutskoi, Volsky's main Armenia and Azerbaijan ground to a halt. roubles from personal "savings". The ... but refuses to pay the bill political ally, who played hard cop in National republics also imposed export Times' glorification of Mrs Maloletneva Yeltsin, Gaidar & Co expected to be smashing the Russian air controllers provoked a biting letter to the editor strike last summer. restrictions on goods in short supply, rewarded with $24 billion in IMF aid as especially if they could be sold on the from an emigre Soviet academic, who a first instalment for torturing the work­ world market for hard currency. Simulta­ pointed out that as a highly paid univer­ ing masses through economic shock Gorbachev's perestroika: first neously, the new nationalist regimes, sity professor he would have had to save treatment. But the IMF demanded as a stage of descent into chaos spearheaded by Yeltsin as president of every last kopek of his salary for ten condition for disbursing funds that Russia The Soviet economy was intcgrated on the Russian republic, started refusing to years to amass 60,000 roubles. Clearly raise its internal price of oil to world­ an all-Union basis and enterprises were turn over the central government's share Maloletneva was skimming off the profits market levels while exporting more to designed to take maximum advantage of of tax collections, causing the burgeoning of the enterprise she was entrusted to repay its foreign debt. This would mean economies of scale. In some cases, to be inflation of the final Gorbachev period. manage on behalf of the Soviet working instant bankruptcy for most of Russia's sure, the Stalinist technocrats indulged in Less than 30 per cent of all taxes collected people. No wonder Russia's new capital­ industrial enterprises, which were geared industrial gigantism for its own sake, in the first nine months of 1991 went to ists are known as the mafia. to consuming energy for a small fraction going beyond the limits of economic ra­ the central government. To make up the But the new "bizllez" barons and "bro­ of the cost extorted by the Seven Sisters tionality. But whether economically opt i- shortfall of roubles, the Gorbachev regime keri" fear that the hatred of the masses cOlltillued 011 page 8

MAY/JUNE 1993 7 New Exploiters ... (Continued from page 7) cartel and the Arab oil sheiks. The Economist (24 October 1992), the house organ of international financiers, argued half seriously that "Russia would be economically better off if every Russian worker, except those in the country's min­ ing, oil and transport industries (who would be needed to ship raw materials to the West) simply stopped working"! Western bankers are demanding that Yeltsin reduce the post-Soviet Russian economy to condi­ tions strnctural/y more primitive than that of tsarist Russia, where foreign capital pro­ Arkardy Volsky (above), head of Former acting prime minister moted heavy industry. the "party of managers", and The Kohl regime initially rewarded Yegor Gaidar, architect of IMF­ Gorbachev for selling out East Germany Aleksandr Rutskoi, Russian Vice dictated "shock treatment", was to the Deutsche Bank in early 1990 with president (right), leaders of sacked in December, Signalling nationalist-corporatist forces. crisis of Yeltsin regime. $47 billion in "aid", promising more to come. The rulers of the Fourth Reich envisioned their own neocolonial empire '.'""#- .. - in the former Soviet bloc, extending from regime any yen at all unless it gets back sary to be a stockholder." all contending factions seek to erect a Siberia to the Balkans. But with its vin­ the Kuril Islands, which the Red Army While many factory managers de­ strong state capable of crushing popular dictive destruction of the East German took at the end of World War II. But for nounced Gaidar as the arch-enemy, bent unrest before it gets out of hand. What economy following capitalist reunification, Yeltsin to sell Russian territory to an on bankrupting their enterprises on exists today, in Russia as in the other the Bonn government went heavily into imperialist power and historic enemy orders from the IMF, the main benefici­ former Soviet republics, is not a coun­ debt as millions of unemployed East would enormously intensify nationalist aries of the "shock treatment" were in terrevolutionary order but rather coun­ Germans were put on the dole. Last and popular opposition to him. In any fact the managers in consumer goods and terrevolutionary chaos. The restorl!tionist spring Kohl announced, "we Germans case, while Tokyo might cough up $5 or food processing. Since their prices were forces-both the pro-Western "demo­ have reached the limit of our capacity to $10 billion to grab the strategic Kurils, increasing 50 per cent faster than the crats" around Yeltsin and the nationalist­ help" Russia and the other former Soviet Japan Inc. is not presently interested in wages they paid, they were swimming in corporatist camp of Volsky /Rutskoi­ republics. Since then Germany has making Russia as such a subsidiary. profits. Managers in heavy industry and are weak and internally strained. There is entered a deepening recession, widening Japan's empire-building ambitions remain munitions got around Gaidar's attempt at no cohered capitalist class. The armed its budget deficit and making large-scale focused on the Far East, above all the tight money by granting open-ended forces are rife with discontent, and it is aid to Russia even less likely. reconquest of China. credit to one another. In the first five uncertain that they could be used effec­ As for Washington, Reagan/Bush The bottom line is that Yeltsin did not months of 1992, inter-enterprise debt tively to suppress mass struggle. transformed the US into the world's get the deutschmarks, dollars and yen he increased from forty billion to two trillion The consolidation of the counterrevo­ largest debtor to pay for the massive was counting on. roubles. The managers also wielded the lution therefore depends on the continu­ military build-up against the Soviet threat of massive social unrest should a ing passivity, paralysis and misleadership Union. Now Clinton is pushing to cut-off in industrial subsidies lead to of the working class. The Stalinist "patri- subsidise high-tech industry while raising Factory managers ignite hyperinflation widespread lay-offs, arguing that only ots" join hands with outright fascists in a taxes and cutting social programmes for they could contain workers' anger. As the poor and elderly. Aside from a $1.5 Yevgeny Yasin, a prominent economist "red" -brown coalition, while giving a left Volsky put it, "they keep the people from cover to the Voisky/Rutskoi corporatists. billion credit to buy US grain and other in the "industrialist" camp, described taking to the streets." goods in 1992, what Washington has Russian society under Yeltsin as well as This is expressed, for example, in their So that the managers would keep on call for "workers' privatisation". Thus allocated to promoting capitalism in in Gorbachev's last years as a pyramid keeping the people from taking to the Russia is truly peanuts. Even a relatively with the top broken off. Power descended Vladimir Isakov of the Russian Commu­ streets, Yeltsin abandoned any attempt to nist Workers Party demanded that parlia­ control the money supply. In April he ment pass legislation "so that work col­ offered an additional 200 billion roubles lectives can become the owners of their in enterprise credits. The following month workplace". Boris Kagarlitsky's Labor three stalwarts of the "industrialist" party Party, a social-democratic outfit deliber­ were appointed to key economic minis­ ately modelled on its British namesake, tries. In June the managers placed their likewise calls for the "transfer of property man, Viktor Gerashchenko, in charge of to the work collectives" - which in the the central bank. Gerashchenko in tum mouths of these "leftists" includes man­ extended 1.5 trillion roubles in credit to agers having a majority of the shares (see the managers, an amount greater than the "Stalinist Has-Beens: Left Wing of Na­ entire money supply generated by all Soviet tionalist Counterrevolution", Workers govemments over the previous 40 years. Vanguard no 561, 16 October 1992). The resulting hyperinflation has all but The main trade-union federation, the destroyed the rouble as a medium of FNPR led by Brezhnev-era Stalinist hacks exchange. Increasingly, Russians speak of now reinforced by social democrats like two classes in their country: those who Kagarlitsky, also supports the corporatist have access to dollars or other hard faction. Meanwhile, the CIA-sponsored .currencies, and those who earn roubles. "free" trade unions, embracing a section Only socialist revolution can of the coal miners as well as air control­ save the Soviet working class lers and railway engineers, have sup­ ported Yeltsin under the illusion that In the present conditions of counter­ capitalist restoration will lead to living revolutionary chaos, curbing inflation standards comparable to those in the means first of all slashing enterprise imperialist West of which they have an payrolls through mass lay-offs. This is, idealised picture. Strikes and threats of already beginning to happen. In Ivanovo, work stoppages by coal and oil workers a textile centre northeast of Moscow have in recent years focused on securing Workers at huge Vaz auto plant in Togliatti, where old Stalinist managers known as the "city of single women" for better selling conditions for "their" prod­ want to become new capitalist owners. its predominantly female labour force, ucts. But while these workers are for the output has been cut in half by the short­ moment better off, the counterrevolution modest shift of 10 per cent of US imper­ to the next highest level, mainly made up age of cotton due to the breakdown in has already reduced Russia to conditions ialism's Cold War military budget would of managers in big enterprises. The vice the transport system and the civil war in of neocolonial degradation comparable mean some $35 billion a year in aid to general director of the huge Vaz Auto the Central Asian republic of Tadzhikis­ to, say, Mexico or Brazil. Russia. But with the American rulers Works in Togliatti-which produced 60 tan. On paper 6500 are still employed by With the collapse of Stalinist rule in intent on maintaining their military hege­ per cent of all cars in the USSR - states: the Frolov textile factory, but only 2000 of the Soviet bloc, most of the left inter­ mony at any expense, no less a White "Management, in a sense, has become them come to work. The other 4500 are nationally has bought the bourgeois line House crook than Richard Nixon today the owner of Vaz ... we run the company told to stay home, where they receive that centralised planning is inherently appears as about the only farsighted as if we owned it, although we don't 1035 roubles a month, about $1.50 at the inefficient and bureaucratic, and that a representative of this ruling class in argu­ really." But as Trotsky wrote in Tile rapidly depreciating exchange rate. market system is the only viable way to ing for aggressive aid to Russia. Revolution Betrayed of the capitalist Such desperate conditions can easily organise an economy. In Latin America, Japan - the only major imperialist aspirations of sectors of the Stalinist and suddenly produce an angry explosion petty-bourgeois nationalists out of power, power with a large financial surplus­ managerial bureaucracy: "It is not enough among the toiling masses. To prevent like the Nicaraguan Sandinistas, are now has not and will not give the Moscow to be the director of a trust; it is neces- this, the capitalist-restorationist forces of calling for worker participation in

8 WORKERS .HAMMER. Trade-union tons threaten strikers with exp-ulsion Build mass pickets to shut down Imex!

"Timex workers in all their glory, I:{:!;: On picket duty that's the story." .. - allOIl, Timex picket line :I: en Q; .>: ~ GLASGOW - A 400-strong picket on the morning of Monday 22 March, in answer to a "cordial invitation" by Timex strike leaders at Saturday's mass demon­ stration in Dundee, defied the bosses' anti-union laws, blockaded the factory and for two hours kept the scabs out. It was a taste of the hard class struggle Trade unionists needed to smash Timex bosses' vicious demonstrate in union-busting offensive. Pickets broke solidarity with through police lines and charged down to Timex strike. the scab-carrying buses in a demon­ Workers stration of some well-organised and movement has imaginative union militancy. the power to Sixteen people were arrested, including shut down Timex! Tommy Sheridan of Scottish Militant La­ bour and Tam Dean Burn of the "CPGB" group, charged and barred from the picket. Eleven were even barred from Dundee. We demand: Drop the charges now! Comes next the knife in the back: Campbell Christie of the STUC and Gavin Laird of the AEEU immediately drawn from all over Britain. From as far then sacked, and remain defiant and this was a long, drawn-out "Kneel Kin­ appeared on television to denounce "out­ away as Ford Dagenham, travelling determined: Timex will either reinstate nock strike" which was "led" into miser­ siders" and violence-bait the picket for through the night, militant trade unionists the strikers and the union or it will close able failure. Print workers and their allies doing what they're supposed to do-stop joined their sisters and brothers in Dun­ forever. Morale is high. But so are the mobilised in the thousands, but, respect­ scabs. One anonymous "AEEU steward" dee. Later, thousands of workers marched stakes and the bosses know it. The truth ing the six-man picket rule and other was quoted as blaming the police for not past the factory gates, many of them is that the bosses and their rotten capital­ union-busting laws, the workers were held having enough officers at hand! Workers having downed tools-Lee Jeans, Na­ ist system cannot be pressured, petitioned back as the scab lorries ran through the Hammer supporters were shown letters tional Cash Registers, Bulk Bags, hospital or negotiated into surrender - that's why Wapping gates with impunity. As for dated 24 March sent to Timex strikers laundry workers. But despite the show of the strikers are still outside those gates. Militant and the SWP, they voted for from the AEEU brass which read: strength, despite the evident militancy, What's necessary is to oust the boot-lick­ Kinnock in 1987 and again in 1992. The "Actions must be wholly within the Crim­ the scab buses were not delayed by as ing STUC bureaucrats with elected strike SML even wants to recruit the cops into inal and Civil Law.... Failure to obey the much as a single minute. Why? Because committees that don't play by the bosses' the unions! At least the SWP has figured instructions of the Executive Committee the STUC tops are determined to police and the TUC rules, to shut Timex down that the STUC is not flavour of the will render you liable to expulsion from the workers movement in the interests of tight by all means necessary, to bl~k all month with strike militants - they issued the Union." And withdrawal of strike capitalist rule. What's needed is a revo­ scab goods and to mobilise the whole a local leaflet saying "Don't Trust the benefits. John Kydd, the Timex convener, lutionary leadership of the workers move­ workers movement to win the strike. STUC" to strikers. Meanwhile, back at is facing official "disciplinary action" by ment-a real communist party-to lead The reformist politics of outfits like the STUC conference which opened in the AEEU brass while the bureaucrats the struggle against the bosses, not just Scottish Militant Labour (SML) and the Glasgow on 19 April, Socialist Worker (17 try to stitch up the strike in secret negoti­ on this battleground but forward to the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) are part April) demanded that "Airlie and the ations with the Timex bosses. Scn:w overthrow of the wholc capitalist system of the problem, not part of the solution. STUC deliver deeds, not words". them! Don't play by the bosses' mles! and the establishment of workers rule. All along their "strategy" has been to The TUC and Labour traitors are the Remember - the only "illegal" st/ike is A strike leader recently told a public pressure, petition, lobby the STUC­ kiss of death to workers in struggle. As a olle that loses! For mass picket lines that meeting that "There's onc place where that is, rogues like Christie, Laird and widely circulated WOIkef.l" Hammer leaflet nothing alld 1I0-one crosses.f women do enjoy equality and that's on Airlie - to "act", to "call a one day (31 March) put it: "The biggest obstacle to Easter Monday, 12 April, was a work the picket line where they get the boot general strike in Scotland". At the end of workers struggles are the reformist Ieader­ day in Dundee and the STUC's official just as much." The mainly women strikers the day they want to replace the Tories ships of the mass workers parties and trade "day of action". The picket line at Timex have been on the gates here for three with another strike-breaking Labour unions. A genuinely COlll1l1lUlist leadef.l"hip was swollen to lOOO-strong with workers months solid, after being locked out and government. "No Wapping in Engineer­ mllst be forged 011 a TCvolutionary illtema­ ing" they like to repeat, but remember tiona/ist progralll1l1e to fight for wOIkef.l" ntle." the Wapping dispute in 1986 when News Dump the Labour /TUC/STUC sell-outs! International sacked its print workers: Victory to Timex strikers! • privatised factories and farms, ie the We want a modern economy in place utopia of a "people's capitalism". for the Soviet working people to take While historically associated with over when they regain power. But that anarcho-syndicalism, calls for giving economy will not be preserved through property rights to work collectives in corporatist capitalism in the epoch of imperialism's decay. A few hard-fought WORKERSIIAMMER Russia today are not merely utopian but Marxist newspaper of the Spartacist League are above all intended to give pseudo­ strikes where the workers win something populist legitimacy to a nationalist­ would do much to reverse the de­ corporatist regime. Volsky himself pro­ moralisation and atomisation of the poses "to encourage collective ownership Soviet proletariat and provide an opening [] 1-year subscription to Workers Hammer for £3 by workers" (Izvestia, 30 September for revolutionary intervention. The situ­ (Overseas subscriptions: Airmail £6.00) 1992), and the government even refers to ation cries out for a genuinely Bolshevik [] 1-year subscription to Workers Hammer PLUS 24 issues of Workers Vanguard, this as a "fourth variant of privatisation". party, based on the principles of Lenin and Trotsky, to lead the multinational Marxist fortnightly of the Spartacist League/US for £8.00 In many large enterprises, such as the All above subscriptions include Spanacist, organ of the International Vaz Auto Works, 25 per cent or more of working class of Russia and the other Communist League (Fourth Internationalist) the stock has already been given to the former Soviet republics against the work collectives under the Yeltsin/Gaidar mafioso entrepreneurs, the managers who C 3 issues of Women & Revolution for £2 would be stockholders, and their imperi­ regime in order to make privatisation Name ______more palatable. This translates into zero alist godfathers. influence on enterprise policy, which Down with Yeltsin and the Russian Add~" ______remains firmly in the hands of the old parliament - For a workers government management. In any case, what would based on soviet democracy as in October Postcode Telephone ______"workers' privatisation" mean under 1917! For a planned, collectivised econ­ conditions of hyperinflation, economic omy based on a reforged Soviet Union! Make cheques pllyable/poat to: Sputaclat PubIIcIIIIona, PO Box 1041, London NWS 3EU disarray, mass unemployment and nation­ Reprinted from Worlcer.r Vanguard alist fratricide? no 572, 26 March 1993.

MAY/JUNE 1993 9 After months of stalling, the NUM union laws". Inefficient and failing industries were and RMT -joined by London bus­ A Labour (or coalition) government nationalised, and their continued oper­ Labour/TUC ... workers-took industrial action, which would implement capitalist austerity at (Continued from page 1) ation was in effect subsidised through low was carefully limited to a one-day least as viciously as Major's or That­ wages and by more productive sectors of voted overwhelmingly to strike: "A stoppage. Millions of other workers saw cher's Tories, using the same capitalist the economy. In fact, at the time of the strike will be a political warning, not this as an opportunity to strike a blow state - the courts and cops - against 1984-85 miners strike, some pits were still only to employers but also to Bonn." at the redundancies and cutbacks, and the unions. Remember the army and paying compensation for the coal The crisis of decrepit British capital­ were looking for a leadership to call police strike-breaking against the nationalisations of 1947. ism, now exacting such hardship on the them out as well. The craven TUC, Glasgow dustmen in 1975, Grunwick The AttIee government did however workers, is part and parcel of the interna­ fearing any show of working-class workers and the firemen in 1977 and establish a National Health Service and a tional crisis of imperialism. Capitalist power, did everything it could to the ambulancemen in 1979~all under comprehensive system of social provisions restoration has meant untold misery for demobilise for 2 April. It was no 'acci­ the Labour governments of Wilson and in housing, education and welfare. These the working masses of Eastern Europe dent that the Fire Brigades Union Callaghan. social reforms were in part underpinned and the ex-Soviet Union. Europe-East called off its planned London rally that Indeed the Tories are only emboldened by financing from the American bour­ and West-faces massive unemploy­ day. Union tops in the CPSA and Lon­ by the craven policies of the Labourite geoisie as Attlee received substantial ment, the ominous rise of anti-Semitism, don Nalgo sent letters to branches trade union tops. Now Employment Min­ amounts of aid from the Marshall Plan. racist and fascist terror, attacks on wom­ planning to strike on 2 April-with ister Gillian Shephard is threatening to In exchange the Labour Party became a en's rights-specifically the right to copies to management - warning that introduce new legislation banning any staunch ally of the American imperialists abortion from eastern Germany to they would not defend victimised strikers. strike action against "a specific statutory in their global "war against communism". Poland. Far from ushering in a peaceful Scargill & Co lined up miners to join duty". Directed explicitly against the Thus the Labour government was firmly ,"new world order" the collapse of Norman Willis' impotent lobby of Parlia­ teachers unions' boycott of new school behind NATO, fought a dirty colonial Stalinism and the end of the Cold War ment just days prior to 2 April. For all tests, this represents a sweeping threat war in Malaya, and sent British troops to has led to an intensification of inter-im­ that, the potential for working-class soli­ against the right to strike of all public fight against the North Korean and Chi­ perialist rivalries. Overextended by the darity was demonstrated by the fact that sector workers and other trade unionists. nese deformed workers states. And the costs of its counterrevolutionary swallow­ there were strikes and rallies of govern­ A class-struggle leadership in the unions Labour Party, with its International ing up of the DDR and its appetites to ment workers in Yorkshire, south Wales is desperately needed, but this cannot be Department manned by the likes of the East, the dominant German bour­ and Liverpool. achieved without a political stntggle Denis Healey, played a key active role geoisie had to pull the economic plug on Again on 16 April, the railworkers and against Labourism. A revolutionary fronting for the imperialist spy agencies' its capitalist "allies" in the West. miners struck, joined by ASLEF drivers. workers party must be forged by splitting attempts to shore up opposition to the The capitalist thieves are falling out Now Jimmy Knapp of the RMT, over the the working class base of the Labour consolidation of the deformed workers with each other, while simultaneously years touted by fake leftists as a "pro­ Party from the pro-capitalist leadership, states in Eastern Europe as well as tightening the screws on the working gressive", is actively working to sell out "left" and right. fomenting right-wing splits from trade masses at home, thereby impelling the railworkers as he did London Under­ unions and working-class parties, such as proletariat into struggle. To put an end to ground workers not long ago. Knapp has that in the Italian Socialists in 1948. Cold Rolling back the "Welfare State" unemployment, to racist and fascist ter­ also made it perfectly clear that he will War politics were hardly the exclusive ror, to the threat of imperialist war sign a separate agreement for his union, In the immediate aftermath of the province of Tory politicians like Churchill leaving miners and others out in the cold. means th~ struggle for proletarian power. Second World War, the European bour­ or Thatcher. Capitalism cannot be reformed, lobbied, And what of Arthur Scargill seen by geoisies were forced to grant substantial Margaret Thatcher was simultaneously legislated into providing a decent living many as an alternative? Last autumn social benefits like health care and pen­ Reagan's chief ally in Cold War II and wage and life for the working people: it is Scargill and other NUM leaders were sions because they feared social revo­ waged war on the unions at home. The necessary to smash the profit system, root sharing platforms with the open class lution. That fear was accentuated by the heroic miners strike of 1984-85 sharply and branch! To break the stranglehold of enemy, including the Liberal Democrats, very existence of the Soviet Union which demonstrated the connection between the reformist misleaderships of the mass CBI and dissident Tories. Particularly had just acquired new legitimacy and defence of the trade unions here and workers parties and trade unions a genu­ since the prospect of an alliance with prestige from its victory over the Nazis. defence of the Soviet Union. On the eve inely communist leadership must be forged Tory rebels has faded, and through their The bourgeoisie felt they had to concede of the strike Scargill was viciously red­ on a revolutionary intemationalist pro­ auspices, of winning an illusory victory on the "welfare state" in order to pacify the baited by the TUC bureaucracy, aided gramme to fight for workers ntle. some parliamentary vote, he has talked working masses, and the Stalinists and and abetted by Gerry Healy's WRP, for more out of the left side of his mouth, social democrats were glad to enlist in his correct statement that Polish Solidar­ calling for "solidarity action", but Scargill such a project. nose was anti-socialist. The same Labour Class struggle sharpens has done nothing to mobilise his mem­ Before reunification, West Germany bureaucrats who attacked Scargill for not Last autumn accumulated anger over bership to bring other unions out on was held up as a model of prosperity and cheering on counterrevolution in Eastern the mounting job cuts and attacks on strike. His more militant-sounding re­ labour-capital friendship by social-demo­ Europe assumed the role of scabherders workers' living standards boiled over with formism represents no fundamental break cratic bureaucrats and industrialists alike. during the strike, forcing the miners to the announcement of the pit closures. At with the policies of the Labour In exchange for industrial peace, the take on the capitalist state alone. Today that time we called for a strike of miners, Party/TUC misleaders. German bourgeoisie was prepared to pay Scargill claims we need the same kind of rail, transport and power workers and for If miners, railworkers, power and relatively high wages. A key political "people power" that has "transform[ ed] workers action committees to stop the pit transport workers, firefighters and other reason for this was its desire to politically a system of society in Eastern Europe", closures and to ntn the country. Instead, key unions were mobilised in solid strike subvert the East German deformed work­ adopting the chauvinist anti-communism the potential for hard class struggle was action - and not one-off "protests"­ ers state. During the 1980s, had the Kohl of the likes of Norman Willis. derailed into a cross-class popular front this country would come to a screeching regime followed the Reagan/Thatcher encompassing everyone from Arthur halt. For elected strike committees to line of breaking strikes, imprisoning For proletarian internationalism! Scargill to Tories like Winston Churchill coordinate the struggles! Dump the union militants, driving down wages and minor. Endless court suits, demands for Labour sell-outs! For a fighting pro­ Intensified inter-imperialist rivalries slashing social programmes, this would "public inquiries", Saturday parades and gramme to get what we need, not what have led to a sharpening of class antago­ have greatly strengthened popular opposi­ lobbies of Parliament accomplished noth­ nisms, but have as well produced a wave the capitalists say they can afford: smash tion to Western capitalism in the DDR. ing, except a reprieve for the bosses. the privatisation schemes and cuts in of nationalism. Within the labour move­ Already 8000 miners have been driven social spending, no sackings, jobs for all German capitalism not only had a ment this is reflected in the growth of into redundancy while Heseltine's bill through worksharing at full pay! Smash compelIingpolitical reason to buy off the protectionist sentiment. Scargill's "plan docs not guarantee a single coal mining the government's 1.5 per cent public Social Democratic-led unions, but suffi­ for British coal", centred on pressuring job. Meanwhile the dole queues continue sector pay limit - for a big pay boost cient resources to do so prior to the British bourgeoisie to exclude foreign to lengthen, pay restraints have been and full cost-of-living protection! Such a reunification. Such is no longer the case. imports, is a reactionary call for trade impQsed on public sector workers, hospi­ programme of transitional demands As the German bourgeoisie takes off the war-and trade wars lead to shooting tals continue to close, and new fuel taxes points the way from the felt needs of the gloves and jacks up the rate of exploita­ wars. For their part, German trade union were announced in a country where working masses to the struggle for prole­ tion, even social-democratic union bu­ bureaucrats attempt to divert the anger of hundreds of elderly pensioners literally tarian power. reaucrats-who avidly supported the German workers by leading marches on freeze to death each year. To wage a fight against capitalism, the counterrevolutionary swallowing up of Bonn demanding that the government But the popular front diversion didn't workers movement must be mobilised in­ East Germany-can see the connection produce more Gennan coal and steel. stop outbreaks of struggle. Even the bour­ dependently of, and against, the capitalist between the collapse of the Soviet bloc On the heels of their "death of com­ geois press-which a year ago was sneer­ state. The trade union bureaucracy's and the bosses' harder line on the labour munism" cant, the bourgeoisie announce ing that class struggle was extinct - have refusal to challenge the anti-union laws is front at home. Last May Day the head of the "end of the welfare state" and seek to begun to take note of "a growing mood of not simply a matter of cowardice­ IG Metall, the largest trade union in pit workers of different countries against industrial militancy in the face of cut -backs, although there is plenty of that. Organi­ Germany, asked rhetorically "whether the each other in a dog-eat-dog competition closures, job losses and pay restraint in the cally linked to the Labour Party tops­ social provocateurs will succeed in drasti­ to save a dwindling number of jobs by public sector" (Independent, 20 March). who steadfastly refuse to call for repeal cally weakening the trade unions after the working harder for less pay. A case in Carworkers at Ford, shipyard workers at of the anti-union laws-the bureaucracy rival system has fallen away". point is Hoover, where engineering union Yarrow's in Scotland, local government shackles its members to six-man pickets In post-war Britain, the economy was bureaucrats "saved jobs" at the expense workers and others have staged strikes and and the rest of the strike-breaking laws. on the verge of bankruptcy, the empire of French workers and by accepting a walk-outs, and the teachers too are now And it's a measure of the wretched was disintegrating, there was unrest in the massive cutback package. And the Labour talking about industrial action. The mainly Labourite tail ism of the Socialist Workers armed forces. Millions of workers had Party's talk of the Maastricht "social women Timex strikers in Dundee have Party, Workers Power, Workers Interna­ enormous illusions that Altlee's Labour chapter" as a means of defending living galvanised the workers movement with their tional League et al that they back the government would usher in "socialism". standards is pure hogwash - the only courageous defiance of the bosses' anti­ candidacy of Mark Serwotka (a supporter Contrary to the myths fostered by the way to save jobs is through hard class union laws enforced by the Labour mis­ of Socialist Organiser) in the elections for Bennite left, the post-war nationalisations stntggle across national boundaries! leaders (see article, page 9). If the bureauc­ CPSA president, despite, in Workers did not make inroads on the power of Protectionism plays into the hands of the racy's stranglehold can be broken, this could Power's own words, "Socialist Organise,>s capital, but were carried out with the bourgeoisie's racist campaigns against immi­ be ~ hot "summer of discontent". refusal to countenance breaking anti- broad consensus of the capitalist class. grants and minorities. "British jobs for

10 WORKERS HAMMER was killed to head off negotiations. This ibility among the young to rein in the rad­ the bitter anger of people who thought they Chris Hani ... was self-evidently true. As we have noted, icals." And South African journalist Anthony were getting "Amalldla" (power) and now (Continued from page 1) Hani and his close ally Winnie Mandela Hazlitt Heard noted that Hani was "a cru­ have been robbed of even the illusion of it. traded on their militant reputations to cial cog in the peace machinery": Today there is no one of the stature of burning barricades and massed outside position themselves as the pseudo-radical "Hani was the person most suited to Chris Hani who can galvanise yet control President F W De Klerk's official. resi­ opposition to a future Mandela/De Klerk taming the excesses of the masses, par­ the township youth, the ANC's plebeian dence. "No Peace. War, War", youths government. Hani in fact insisted he had ticularly the impoverished and embittered base-which is why he was killed. ANC chanted in the streets. Black "moderates" no fundamental disagreement with youth. And he did this with a gusto and Youth League leaders adopt militant pulled out all the stops to quell the jus­ "power sharing", only bickering over sincerity that surprised many of his oppo­ posturing, and the Pan Africanist Con­ tified rage. Bishop Desmond Tutu praised timing and the small print of the deal. As nents. He had made the quantum leap gress will doubtless pick up followers for from fostering class revolution to all­ the conduct of the police and denounced we wrote last month: its indiscriminate terror bombings of the violence of the "lunatic fringe", refer­ around stability." "Hani/[Winnie] Mandela are expressing -Los Angeles Times (13 April) restaurants and golf courses frequented ring to the ANC's "young lions". the frustrations of the lumpen-plebeian by whites. Outrage may degenerate into Soweto wa! the site of a dramatic supporters of the ANC, who unlike the After all, it was Hani who argued for random attacks by roving bands of lump­ political confrontation. At the 14 April black would-be yuppies around ANC the "integration" of the MK forces into enproletarian youth who could direct protest, as ANC leader Nelson Mandela secretary general Cyril Ramaphosa and the apartheid army. While as a military their rage at an}'thing from Zulu hostels addressed the 20,000 who rallied in a Thabo Mbeki would gain no benefits guerrilla force, the MK was no threat at to individual whites or black workers. from the 'power sharing' deal.... The sports stadium, the crowd erupted in boos all to the South African army, to liquidate A 16 April Associated Press article by when Mandela said "I don't like the ANC needs both to be in the government it into the repressive apparatus of the and to be in opposition to it. If Mandela Barry Renfrew summed up the imperial­ National Party, but I'm prepared to work is president, then Hani will be the 'mili­ present regime is a betrayal of would-be ists' calculations of the effect of Hani's with F W De Klerk to build a new South tant oppOsition' waiting in the wings." . liberation fighters and a sinister threat to murder on the "peace negotiations". Africa." Yells came from the crowd, "We - "South Africa 'Power Sharing' black workers and township youth. At the Renfrew writes that under threat of a hate them, we hate them!" Others said of Swindle", Workers Vanguard no 571, same time, Hani sought to counter De descent into chaos, the white rulers and Mandela, "He's too old and he doesn't 12 March Klerk's Zulu Gauleiter, Gatsha Buthelezi, the ANC tops are being pushed into a want to fight." by playing the Xhosa tribalist card. Thus tighter embrace. Noting that further By channelling the mounting disaffection • he sought an alliance with ANC-allied unrest is likely, he writes that the "vio­ Hani and the bantustan chiefs in Venda and the Trans­ "power sharing" deal of the township youth, we noted, these lence that erupted in the wake ''of Hani's critics "are key players in making sure kei. Lately, he had been trying to death was comparatively modest in a Leaders of the ANC and the apartheid the deal goes down". organise "community defence" patrols as country where dozens of people are killed rulers worried about the impact on the We were the only ones to state this obvi­ part of the phoney "peace" negotiations. every week in political violence", and current "power sharing" negotiations. In ous truth, at a time when nobody, either in Hani not only fostered illusions in the "much of the anger is likely to abate in fact, the assassination of Hani exposed the bourgeois media or the left press, would "democracy" of a "new" South Africa, coming weeks.... Without organization, the reality of the "new" South Africa­ say it. They instead united in building Hani's but apparently shared some of them strong leadership and resources, such not post-apartheid but neo-apartheid. reputation as an uncompromising Commu­ himself. This is tragically evident in his unrest could not be sustained." Now Mandela is using the spectre of nist leading militant opposition to Mandela's reported decision to dismiss his body­ Renfrew observed that while many massive violent upheaval in the townships sell-out. But today Hani's role in the ''nego­ guards on Easter weekend, and travel "question Mandela's ability to control to push through the deal with the white­ tiations" waltz is being discussed by all. Thus alone in the right-wing white enclave of angry young blacks, the ANC has always supremacist regime. in th.e New Yolk Times (11 April), Bill Boksburg, where the fascists operate with had radical black rivals to which it has For young black militants, Hani was the Keller wrote that "With his credentials as impunity. lost militant black youths for decades". personification of "armed struggle" against the anti-apartheid guerrilla leader and his This is quite true, and the real key to the the hated apartheid regime. Yet following charismatic appeal to angry young blacks, The assassination plot future of South Africa does not lie in the the assassination, Nelson Mandela cited Mr. Hani gave the congress credibility The assassin was one Janusz Walus, a militant township youth, although they Hani's "central role in the effort to arrive among its most disaffected constituents." fanatical anti-communist Polish fascist can playa valuable role, but in the mil­ at a negotiated settlement" and said Hani Tutu said of Hani that "He had the cred- who emigrated to South Africa in 1981 on lions-strong proletariat in the factories, the eve of the suppression of the mines, railways and docks who make the counterrevolutionary bid for power by wheels of apartheid capitalism turn ... or British workers" is the watchword of fascists counterrevolution down the line in East­ Solidarnose, the Polish nationalist move­ stop. in Britain just as German Nazis call for ern Europe and the Soviet Union: from ment backed by the US and the Vatican. There is an urgent need for the black, "German jobs for German workers" while Walesa's Solidarnosc, to Boris Yeltsin in In South Africa, Walus joined the Afri­ "coloured" (mixed race) and Indian incinerating the hostels of the Turkish and August 1991. kaner Weerstandsbeweging (A WB­ masses to organise self-defence units, with Vietnamese workers. Marxistrevolutionaries For our part, the International Com­ Afrikaner Resistance Movement), a Nazi a proletarian axis. They can incorporate seek to mobilise the trade unions and mi­ munist League, of which the Spartacist paramilitary organisation, and was involved the young fighters of the impoverished norities to crush the fascist menace. We in League is the British section, fought with other white-extremist action groups. townships, but must be built on a multi­ the International Communist League unconditionally against capitalist restora­ The "single deranged fascist" line spun ethnic working-class basis including (Fourth Internationalist) have initiated tion, while fighting for proletarian politi­ by the government collapsed almost coloureds, Indians and anti-racist whites. several such successful actions, including cal revolution in the deformed and de­ immediately when it was revealed the This must be part of a strategy of prole­ recently in Vancouver, where a trade-union­ generated workers states. We warned that pistol which killed Hani came from a tarian revolution. centred mobilisation of 3000 anti-fascists put counterrevolution would mean a big 1990 fascist raid on a South African air The key is building a genuine commu­ the Nazis on the run (see Wolker.\' Hammer defeat for workers in the USSR and force arsenal in Pretoria. The heist, in nist, Trotskyist party, where the red star no 134, MarchiApril 1993). Such a class Eastern Europe and throughout the which more than 70 weapons and thou­ and the hammer and sickle are not hol­ perspective is counterposed to suicidal world. In 1981, we said: "Stop Solidar­ sands of rounds of ammunition were low symbols of some long-forgotten days appeals to the racist capitalist state to ban nose counterrevolution!" In Germany, we taken, was an inside job. Guards at the but the heart of a fighting programme for the fascists, such as the Socialist Workers uniquely and unambiguously opposed the installation were among more than 50 workers revolution. The modern-day Party-led Anti Nazi League's recent call on capitalist reunification of that country. rightists charged in the plot. wage slaves who produce the fabulous Bexley Council to ban the BNP. We initiated in January 1990 the massive On 17 April, police arrested "for profits of the Anglo American mining Capitalist counterrevolution in the anti-fascist demonstration of 250,000 in questioning" a senior member of the magnates must not be chained to a party USSR and Eastern Europe has provoked East Berlin's Treptow Park after fascist Conservative Party, Derby Lewis, who has of bourgeois nationalism, manipulated by the dissolution-or recomposition into scum defaced a memorial to the Red connections to a number of right-wing the black front men for refurbished apart­ neo-social-democratic outfits - of almost Army soldiers who liberated the country extremist groups. And an article by John heid capitalism, but rather must struggle for all the Stalinist parties. At the same time, from the Nazi scourge. And it was the Carlin in the London Independent (16 a black-centred workers republic. notwithstanding their yeoman services in ICL in August 1991 who called on the April) reports on fresh evidence defini­ Reprinted from Wotkell" Vanguard no disciplining the working class, the social Soviet working masses to sweep away the tively linking Walus to South African 574, 23 April 1993 democracies are seen as increasingly counterrevolutionary Yeltsinite forces. intelligence. Walus also belongs to the dispensable by the bourgeoisie. In Britain, We fight to win subjectively revolutionary "Afrikaner National Socialist Movement" class-conscious workers and youth who elements to genuine communism, (ANS), whose leader, Koos Vermeulen, want to be socialists are rightly repelled recognising the need for revolutionary said it would pay Walus' legal costs. by the craven right-wing Labour Party. regroupment, a process of splits and fusions Vermeulen was closely associated with Grasping this, both the SWP and Militant of existing organisations based on program­ two men charged with carrying out a -which has recently extended its "Scot­ matic criteria by which the core of a van­ bombing at a black taxi stand in Pretoria tish turn" to Ireland, England and Wales, guard party can be forged. Without a revo­ in 1990, and with the murder of an ANC standing its own candidates in elections lutionary party, there can be no workers supporter in Durban that year. The two -posture as alternatives to the Labour revolution - and what this country dearly jumped bail and fled to Britain, where Party. The reality is otherwise: these needs is proletarian revolution. Under they announced that they were South reformists call on the bankrupt TUC­ conditions of decaying British capitalism, African military intelligence operatives. the hangmen of the miners strike-to social-democratic reformism and trade lead a general strike. Their calls to "sack union economism - premised on getting a For a black-centred Major" and "Kick the Tories Out" are "fairer piece of the cake" - is a sick joke. workers republic! nothing more than a call for an anti­ We need workers rule and the establish­ The mood of the ANC's "young lions" working-class Labour government. Both ment of a planned, collectivised economy was expressed by Thabo Morudu, 21. the SWP and Militant supported the vile and a five-year plan or two. Not a call for "When Mandela was released, we thought Neil Kinnock in the last general election. new elections to install an anti-working-class things would get better overnight. Since Standing shoulder to shoulder with the Labour government, but revolutionary class then it's been delay, delay, delay- three Make cheques payable/post to: imperialists and their social~democratic struggle opening the road to a federation of years of delay. And now they're murdering 75p Spartacist Publications, lackeys, these organisations, along with workers republics in the British Isles, as part our leaders. The only answer is insurrec­ PO Box 1041, London NW5 3EU numerous other fake leftists, supported of a Socialist United States of Europe!. tion" (Washington Post, 18 April). This is

MAY/JUNE 1993 11 WORKERS

Warrington bombings: pretext for pro-imperialist "peace" fraud

On Saturday, 20 March, two bombs death squads such as those from the March more than 10,000 attended a of people killed by the British Army and placed in litter bins in a crowded shop­ Ulster Defence Association/Ulster Free­ peace rally at the Dublin GPO, where the RUC they were jostled, abused and ping centre in Warrington exploded kill­ d9m Fighters and the Ulster Volunteer Sinead O'Connor and the Dubliners sang. jeered by "peace" campaigners. A picture ing two boys, three-year-old Johnathan Force who operate in line with the slogan Bathed in bourgeois press publicity, this of a 14-year-old girl killed by a British Ball and twelve-year-old Tim Parry, and "ACWD"-"Any Catholic Will Do". In "peace" movement was touted as a Army plastic bullet was spat upon. Four injuring more than fifty other people. the week after the Warrington bombings "spontaneous" outpouring of "ordinary supporters of Relatives for Justice were What followed was an imperialist-orches­ six Catholics were murdered, and grenade people" like "reluctant leader" Susan Mc­ later arrested by the Gardai, who also trated campaign intended to justify Brit­ and firebomb attacks launched on the Hugh. But irrespective of any sentiments confiscated a book of condolences for the ish imperialism's rule in Northern Ireland homes and families of Sinn Fein and of decent disgust at the Warrington kill­ six Catholics killed in the week after and the murderous suppression of the SDLP politicians. At Castle rock, four ings, this movement was quickly revealed Warrington. Irish Republican Army (IRA) and other Catholic workmen (one of whom was as pro-imperialist, anti-Republican and This "peace" movement dovetails neat- opponents of British rule. The bourgeois later identified as an IRA supporter) press engaged in a chauvinist orgy over were butchered by UDA gunmen, who the deaths of innocent children, a concern got clean away, despite the proximity of notably lacking during the Gulf War security force bases. The British govern­ when British and American bombers ment's attempts to broker a settlement were wantonly slaughtering tens of thou­ have alienated diehard Loyalists, but the sands of Iraqi civilians, men, women and fact remains that the Loyalist death children, and also absent when any of the squads are routinely abetted from within 42 youth and children under the age of the state repressive forces. And the Brit­ eighteen killed by the British Army and ish Army, with its de facto "shoot-to-kill" the RUC in Northern Ireland since 1969 policies, has murdered Republicans with died. New pro-imperialist "peace" move­ impunity. Current Northern Ireland min­ ments were spawned and an orchestrated ister, Patrick Mayhew, gained notoriety as and ominous red scare started against the Thatchcr's Attorney General when in Red Action group and other unnamed 1988 he refused to prosecute eleven RUC left and "Trotskyist" groups. And prime officers named by John Stalker as having minister John Major, Irish president Mary been involved in shoot-to-kill incidents Robinson and the Duke of Edinburgh against Irish Republicans in South joined together with sundry clergymen de­ Armagh. We demand: For the immediate nouncing the IRA at a memorial service in and unconditional withdrawal of the Warrington. British Army from Northern Ireland! The Warrington bombings were an act Smash the RUC and the Royal Irish of indiscriminate te'rrorism, which no Regiment! For a programmatically based Marxist can defend. The terrorist strategy anti-sectarian workers militia to combat pursued by petty-bourgeois nationalists Orange and Green terror and imperialist Face of state terror: occupying British Army patrols Belfast. like the IRA is antithetical to our rampage! Leninist-Trotskyist perspective of the The British fascists have stepped up not so spontaneous to boot. We exposed ly with the aspirations of most of the Irish mobilisation of the working class for their race-hate provocations in the after­ the pro-imperialist, conservative core of ruling class to find a settlement to the socialist revolution. At the same time we math of the Warrington bombing. Under the "Peace Women" phenomenon in "troubles" in Northern Ireland that is draw a distinction between those blows protection from the cops, BNP scum 1976, and this new movement looks to acceptable to British imperialism. One of directed against the imperialist oppressor, rallied in London on 25 April with signs have a lot of similar characteristics. (See the first acts of the new Dick Spring such as attacks on the British Army or calling for hanging the IRA. While anti­ "'Peace Women' in Bloody Ulster", Labour coalition government was to make the likes' of Airey Neave and Lord fascist protesters remained on one side of • WOlllen and Revolution, no 15, Summer conciliatory gestures towards Loyalists Mountbatten, the perpetrators of which Victoria station, the BNP was able to 1977.). over the Irish Constitution's Articles 2 we will defend, and acts that are indis­ march unmolested and spew its racist One of today's principal organisers is and 3 which outline the nationalist claim criminate, such as Enniskillen, Teebane filth. Ominously, reports in the bourgeois one Michael Nugent, the chairman of to Northern Ireland. As Marxists we and Warrington, public transport, shop­ media and anti-fascist Searchligllt maga­ New Consensus, a formation associated oppose forcible reunification of Ireland. ping centre and pub bombings. The ratio­ zine point to increasingly close links with the reformist Workers Party, Pro in­ We therefore do not uphold the Green nale of such bombings is ultimately sim­ between the UDA/UVP Loyalist paramili­ sias Dc Rossa's Democratic Left and the nationalist claim that Dublin has an in­ ply genocidal nationalism, and they arc taries of Northern Ireland and the BNP. bourgeois Progressive Democrats. Like alienable right to rule the whole island. indefensible from the standpoint of the And on 22 April, an 18-year-old black the Peace Train, brainchild of the openly However, Spring is out to stitch up a deal working class and revolutionary Marxism. youth, Stephen Lawrence, was the fourth pro-imperialist Workers Party, New Con­ with Britain; in the present context any Those ostensible Marxists who do not victim of racist murder in south-east Lon­ sensus has made a name for itself over Anglo-Irish bourgeois "peace" will be at make this distinction render themselves don since Rolan Adams. The fascist thugs the last couple of years as rabid cam­ the expense of the oppressed Catholics in apologists either for the nationalists or must be crushed by mass, trade union/ paigners against Sinn Fein and the IRA Northern Ireland. The drive to break the for the imperialists or in some cases for minority mobilisations! while at the same time alibiing British back of the IRA and cow the Northern both, and thereby abandon the perspec­ In the days after the Warrington state terror in Northern Ireland. On 27 Catholic population into submission tive of the independent revolutionary bombing a "peace" movement burgeoned, March at St Stephen's Green, a Dublin remains at the heart of the British govern­ mobilisation of the working class. notably in the Republic. A book of con­ New Consensus rally was addressed by a ment's efforts to broker a settlement. The main victims of British imperialist dolences initiated by the Peace Train representative of the Ulster Unionist Both the IRA and Sinn Fein have been rule and communalist outrage in North­ organisation was signed by tens of thou­ Party, and wreaths were turned ovor to a wringing their hands over the "tragedy" ern Ireland are the Irish Catholic popula­ sands, and similar books were circulating British charge-d'affaires. of Warrington. The IRA's lament about tion. In the last eighteen months the in schools and work places. "Peace '93" When supporters of the pro-Republi­ the British authorities ignoring their largest number of killings have been was launched at a meeting of one thou­ can Relatives for Justice sought to join phone warnings smacks of ridiculous carried out by Protestant paramilitary sand at Trinity College. On Sunday, 28 the 28 March demonstration with pictures colltillued 011 page 5

12 MAY/JUNE 1993