WfJRIlERS VANIIIARD 25¢ No. 32 9 November 1973 ixon! or 1I

NOVEMBER 5-If the U,S, labor movement were to­ ary trade union bureaucracy which stands at the masses, which they have either acquiesced to and/or day under revolutionary leadership, Richard Nixon leadership of the organized labor movement and has heartily endorsed (such as Nixon's policy of im­ would Ion g since have been ousted as president cravenly acquiesced to every phase of Nixon's state perialist slaughter of the workers and peasants of through a general strike against state wage controls wage control poliCies, Southeast Asia). These traitors to the working-class and the imperialist war in Indochina, and a sharp The recent decision of the AFL-CIO bureaucrats movement place their confidence in the bourgeois struggle would have begun to decide the fundamental to come out for the impeachment of Nixon should be U.S. Congress to get rid of Nixon who has become question of our time: which class shall rule? Instead, seen as nothing more than rats deserting a sinking an embarrassing liability to both themselves and while the Nixon government totters, with influential ship. These misleaders of the labor movement oppose their imperialist masters, And this Congress, itself bourgeois newspapers such as the New York Times Nixon for the same reasons as do their bourgeois a den of thieves, is only now moving ponderously calling for Nixon's resignation or impeachment, even masters, because of Nixon's "high crimes and mis­ and with great reluctance to consider the question simple struggles to maintain wage levels in the face demeanors" , •. against the proprieties and niceties of impeachment, projecting a report by March of of violent inflation are effectively suppressed, Chiefly of bourgeois democracy. Nowhere do they hold him next year, responsible for this state of affairs is the reaction- responsible for his crimes against the working Dump the Bureaucrats-For a Labor Party Based on the Trade Unions: Key to the removal of Nixon, of Congress, and of the whole capitalist state order which exists to en­ - sure the continued exploitation of the working class, is the removal of the reactionary misleaders of labor, -- How to accomplish this task? The response of the -=- ostensIbly socialist left to the Watergate crisis is -=-~ indicative of their respective orientations, The over­ whelming majority seeks to deal with the pro-capital­ -iiiiiiiii ist bureaucracy by ignoring it, playing up to reformist - out-bureaucrats or mystically transforming it into an instrument of the working class. The ex-Trotskyist, reformist Socialist Workers Party, which by now has devoted many tens of pages and thousands of words continued on page 14 - Nlx~n w;th 8rezhnev (!eft) iostJl:r,e. Soviet commen!otor~ backed Nixon, CPUSA called for irnpe:lchment.

NEAR EAST CEASEFIRE: More War Ahead! The continuing war between Israel vention to police Israel should disabuse and the surrounding Arab states has everyone (even the vicarious Arab been temporarily halted by a ceasefire nationalists so abundant on the U,S, imposed by the U.Se and USSR Even left) of the notion that the Arab states more so than in the previous wars, were struggling against American im­ this ceasefire guarantees the continua­ perialism. In fact, a major aim of tion of bloodletting in the Near East. the Arab states in going to war was Because of Israeli intranSigence, par­ to create a situation in which the U.S, ticularly its desire to force the sur­ would be pressured by the Soviet Union render of the Egyptian III Army after and West European powers into curbing the ceasefire, war could break out Israeli expansionism. "''{jt. again any day. Both sides were reluctant to accept the first ceasefire of October 22, Is­ U.S./USSR Detente Buried in rael only quantitatively more so than the Sands of Sinai Trucks with UN ceasefire observers entering the city of Suez. Egypt and Syria, The Meir government With Sadat's appealfor direct great­ tried hard to get a three-day postpone­ power intervention, Brezhnev saw an ment in order to expand its conquests opportunity to maneuver the U,S, into . on the west bank of the Suez CanaL a j oint action against Israel and appar­ When the U,S, refused to accede to ently applied some pressure to that ·SL Polarizes Toronto " this, the Israeli command simply ig­ effect, Nixon reacted by dramatically nored the UN ceasefire and continued reminding Brezhnev that Israel was Wom~n's~- Conference ..... 4 , - fighting, in what has become something after all an ally of the U ,So against the of a Zionist military tradition, harking Soviet Union, not vice versa: on October back to the innumerable ceasefires of 24 he ordered a full military alert. the 1948-49 waL Contrary to Kissinger's pious protests, ,How Arab Regimes Crushed the With the Israeli military advances of the alert was in good part for domestic October 22-24, the attitude of the consumption, a reassertion of Nixcil1' s ~ ",'Resistance ...' . Palestinia,.n~ . - 5,: ' Egyptian government toward continuing posture as the tough Commander-in­ the war changed; it launched a diplo­ Chief. The most that the U.S, govern­ matic offensive to pressure the great ment could subsequently claim in justi­ powers into enforcing the ceasefire on fication of its world-wide "Condition 3" the original October 22 lines. Sadat's military alert was the "ambiguity" of appeal for direct U.S, military inter- continued on page 10 -letters ______The· Tortll Sputters 25 October 1973 fluenced by the restrictive McCarran­ When we reSigned from the Class Walter Immigration Act of 1952. A Struggle League we stated in our res­ Dear Comrades, Special Mobile Force of the Border ignation statement (which the Comrades The reason we bother to print below The article, "No U.S. AidtoIsrael!" Patrol was put into action throughout of the SL Political Bureau no doubt a fairly unimportant letter requires (Workers Vanguard No. 31), contains a the barrios as far north as Chicago have access to as a Comrade in Chicago some explanation. Our letter, dated 13 statement requiring explanation. The and Spokane-called "Operation Wet­ resigned from the CSL to join the SL October 1973, was in direct reply to article says that "Abdullah of Jordan back." In this short period, 1,910,282 after our resignation statement was one, dated 5 October, from Sy Landy even had a secret meeting with Golda were deported but within a few years p r i n ted in the CSL Dis c u s s ion of the Revolutionary Socialist League. Meir to see if they could reach agree­ the proj ect was dropped and once again Bulletin): Comrade Landy's letter, regarding the ment on carving up Palestine." hundreds of thousands of Mexican citi­ setting up of SL-RSL public debates, While Meir and King Abdullah did zens migrated to the U.S. "This [critical support to Arnold Miller together with a statement that "to date have a meeting (on 30 April 1948), no in the UM W election, among other we have not received a reply, " was then Mexican nationals represent an un­ things-D.R.] is a further repudiation agreement was reached as Abdullah's limited source of cheap labor that the of a trade union strategy and program printed in the November issue of the proposal-a bi-national Palestine and capitalists w 0 u 1 d rather hire over which represented a strong left impulse RSL's monthly Torch. Transjordan ruled as a constitutional American workers who cause too much in trade union work. It is a clear eluci­ Presumably an early press dead line monarchy-was unacceptable to the trouble with union organizing, which is dation of the CSL to Sink into trade un­ precluded acknowledgement of our let­ Jewish Agency. not a problem with "illegals" who dare ion opportunism. Arnold Miller! While ter and thereby facilitated the RSL's Later, however, Abdullah and the not speak out lest they be deported. This we will wait for the facts as to whether resounding assertion (under the proud or not David Fender called the cops in former Prime Minister of Israel, Ben­ situation has created a real SOurce of head line /I Where We Stand ") that our St. Louis, we know for a fact that Arnold Gurion, signed an agreement which gave resentment particularly am 0 n g un­ "refusal to respond" reflects our "fear" -- Israel fifty percent more territory than Miller called the cops (the govt.) into and demonstrates our "shrill, infantile skilled workers who blame the "for­ the United Mineworkers. It is to this was granted it by the U.N. Hence the eigners" for taking their jobs. In the agent of the bourgeoisie that the CSL posturing. " episode's significance as one of the interest of proletarian internationalism leadership gives its critical support!" So, perforce, we print the letter our­ first acts of Israeli expansionism. these national Chauvinist tendencies -CSL Disc. Bul., Vol. II, No.2, p. 1 selves, though with little expectation of must be fought against. AlthoughMexi­ thereby shifting the RSL leadership off Comradely, can nationals do not represent as large The Spartacist League has in the past its macho New Left hangover-its who­ Andy S. a section of the U.S. working class as attacked the Workers League for claim­ is-and-isn't-chicken game-playing. New York City do the blacks or are as large in pro­ ing "only the Workers League ..• " when The RSL's ultimately intolerable portion to the West European foreign in fact the SL and at times other groups internal political contradictions, re­ called for the same thing that the #ork­ flected in its present conduct, are in­ o workers, they are indeed a significant force, particularly in the Southwest, ers League was claiming sole rights to. deed sufficientjustificationfor our dis­ and the tasks of building a base in the Also in your 3 August 1973 issue you cussing revolutionary Marxist, i.e., October 31, 1973 working class must necessarily include corrected a statement in which you at­ Trotskyist, politics with this group • •• organizing foreign labor. The "full tributed support of a particular strike to the purpose that some among its WV Editor: rights for foreign workers" outlined in only to yourselves and the NCLC, point­ several score supporters might be won In WV No. 31 the article on "West the WV article on West Europe's im­ ing out in the correction that the #ork­ to the work of building the genuine and Europe's Imported Labor: A Key to ported labor are indeed applicable to ers League and the Socialist Party also consistent Leninist party which they Revolution" was all in all excellenL A the domestic conditions in this country supported the strike. now abstractly proclaim and concretely comparison was made in passing to the as well. We hope that we are Simply dealing deny. blacks in this country. Although certain with an oversight and not an attempt to parallels can be drawn here, much more BolShevik Greetings, lump us (through omission of our prin­ Susan Spector cipled stand vis-a-vis bourgeois state striking are the outstanding similar­ 13 October 1973 - ities between West Europe's foreign Chicago intervention in the trade unions) with ~ workers and the Mexican nationals in various opportunist organizations. #e Sy Landy, National Secretary expect a public correction. the U.S. As super-exploited sections of o Revolutionary Socialist League the working class they share a lack of Dear Comrade Landy, any democratic rights, are not union­ Comradely, October 25, 1973 With reference to your letters of ized and speak a foreign language. DaVid Ross Org. Sec., RWG 14 September and 5 October, we hope In Mexico farm workers earn 15 Dear Comrades, Chicago that your express willingness to have cents an hour. Corporations like Litton In the September 14, 1973 issue of additional debate with us does not re­ Industries, Fairchild Camera, Hughes Workers Vanguard the next to last para­ duce itself merely to one more "nation­ Aircraft who have factories south of the graph of the art i c 1 e "Government o al" debate in a locality. As you know border pay their workers as little as Breaks Canadian Rail Strike" states the it has been our express desire to have $2.00 a day, so naturally many Mexican following: public debates on outstanding issues October 31, 1973 between us in each locality where we citizens are glad to come to this coun­ "Only the Spartacist League has cor­ try-"land of opportunity"-in order to rectly opposed on principle all forms of both have local organizations, and the make 50 cents more an hour to send state intervention in the unions. " Dear Editor: Spartacist League has been seeking. back to their families in Mexico. It is - Workers Vanguard, Congratulations on your recent arti­ such confrontations. Ps noted in the estimated that on an ordinary day more 14 September 1973, p. 10 cle, "No U.S. Aid to Israel." In addition current Workers Vanguard we held such than 150,000 Mexicans "offiCially" We are extremely upset by this to an intelligent appraisal of Arab and a debate with your comrades on 28 come and go across the border. These statement. For it is either a sign of Israeli positions, it offers good criti­ September in Cleveland; and our Los figures do not include the millions who sloppy journalism or outright lying. The cism of the Palestinian Resistance and Angeles comrades wrote to your local cross "unofficially" every year or the Revolutionary Workers Group stands in its admirers on the American Left. I organization on 20 September seeking braceros (laborers contracted for work absolute opposition to any intervention would like, however, to point out two a similar event without, to our know­ in the fields). Statistically these men by the bourgeois state into the workers' technical errors, and then to comment ledge, having yet received a reply. We and women are not aliens, even though trade unions. This has come out in many on the content of the article. would also like to have such public they are brought across the border out­ discussions with your Comrades, par­ On p. 1, column 3, in the sentence confrontations in Detroit, New York side of the quotas. Agreements between ticularly in Chicago, and also in our beginning, "The land cannot simply be and for a second time in Chicago (only the U.S. and Mexican governments ren­ press. In the June issue of Workers' given back to the fellahin," fellahin a small handful of your Chicago com­ der the m 1 ega 1 even though "non­ Truth we stated in the article "Which should probably be replaced by the Otto­ rades having attended the first), statistical." It is estimated that as many Way for the Trade Unions?": man term for landlord, effendi(s), and It would be extremely convenient as 40,000 Mexican citizens migrate fedayeen should be replaced by fellahin for us to have the "public debate be- "*lNDEPENDENCE OF THE TRADE (peasants). Fedayeen are martyrs, and yearly to Los Angeles alone; the popu­ UNIONS FROM THE STATE-The trade lation of San Antonio is estimated to by extension res i s tan c e fighters. On unions are mass organizations of work­ p. 5, column 3, next to last paragraph: increase by 50,000 each year. ing class defense. As capitalism con­ The Mexican national must accept tinues to decay, the state, that is, the I believe the organization mentioned is the lowest jobs, live in the worst barrio instrument of the capitalist collective, usually called the Popular Democratic Soviet Union: and is hated by both the Chicano and plays more and more of a direct role Front for the Liberation of Palestine, white sections of the working class. In in all aspects of the worker's life. The but this is a trivial pOint. trade unions can not even begin to de­ State Capitalist the farm work force alone, out of a total fend the working class if they are sub­ In the first sentence of the third of 1. 6 million in this country, "illegals n ordinated to the capitalist state. As long paragraph in the article, there is some ace ou n t for at least 20%. Growers as the trade unions remain under the stormy rhetoric about Zionist illusions or Degenerated knowingly employ these "illegals," let control of the present bourgeois clique that may be suitable for the "Guardian n them harvest the crops, then report of Meany, Abel, Woodcock, Fitzsim­ or the "Militant," but is not on your Workers State them to the border patrol so they can mons, etco the trade unions will be usual literary and intellectual leveL In be arrested before they pay them their pushed more and more into the state the next column the "interesting paral­ apparatus. The so-called working class JUDITH SHAPIRO wages. This is also true wherever leI" between Zionism and Nazism is at Spartacist League Mexican nationals are hired throughout leaders who sit on the various state commissions belong thereo The trade this late date a crashing bore. There is industry-when production is low the unions do not. In struggling for trade nothing wrong with a reference to Deir ERIC OLSEN capitalists call in the immigration union independence from the state the Yassin, but an explanation of this sig­ Revolutionary Socialist League department and deport all those who workers must stri ve to throw these rep­ nificant event and its consequences don't have papers. Of course this pro­ resentatives of the capitalist class out might be worth the trouble. Finally, the Friday November 16 cess is not restricted to the local of the trade unions. Let them stay on the sections on oil and Balkanization would 7:30 p.m. levels but is instituted systematically Pay Boards! Get them out of the un­ make an excellent future article. by the U.S. government in collusion with ions! The state is not above classes, Notwithstanding the above criti­ 1910 South Vermont the capitalists according to the fluctu­ it is the instrument of the capitalist Los Angeles, California class. Trade union affairs must not be Cisms, I hope to see more of the same. ating state of the economy. For instance handled by the state, they must be han­ in the period of economic recession dled by trade unionists." Fraternally, following the Korean War, 1953-1954, - Workers' Truth, June 1973, Larry Cohen Los Angeles there was a wave of deportations in- pp. 13-14 Ann Arbor, Michigan 2 WORKERS VANGUARD tween the principal spokesmen of our two groups" in Detroit on the evening Workers League Evades Political Debate: of either Friday, 23 November or Satur­ day, 24 November (i.e. assuming that the bulk of your membership will not be at home with their parents, as this What Really Happened at the Jack Tar Hotel is Thanksgiving weekend). These are the only early dates for which we could guarantee a rather· large, regional, audience of SL supporters. But we also and Why Wohlforth Calls the Cops continue to set considerable store by the debates we want in the other areas so that the whole of your membership Continuing in the tradition of the crats, fearful of having their rotten when he pub 1 i c 1 y denounced this and a goodly part of ours may see our 0 0 sellouts exposed before the ranks, who outrage. two viewpoints actively counterposed. Healy s c h 1 of falsification, Tim suppress workers democracy in the While the Workers League's ex­ While you in your letter of 5 October Wohlforth's fake-Trotskyist Workers unions, kicking out reds and militants, clusionist t act i c s may enable its have suggested polemically-and no League has slanderously accused the rigging elections and preventing the leaders to avoid answering questions doubt jocularly in the old Shachtmanite Spartacist League of being responsible for the calling of the cops at two recent sale of socialist and labor newspapers about their constant political zigzags, tradition-that our comrades in locali­ they sometimes reveal in a sharp ties have presented in argument with WL meetings, According to the 30 Oc­ at plant gates. The WL's practice in this regard is no different from that of manner to WL supporters the coward­ you "six or seven distinct and often tober Bulletin art i c 1 e, "Spartacist liness of their leadership. The SL had contradictory viewpoints", we ha ve a Brings in the Police, " SL supporters at­ these labor lieutenants of capital it con­ recently challenged the WL to a debate real disadvantage in our debates with tempted to break up the twice-weekly­ stantly tails after. / in Portland Oregon, while Lucy St. you-one which we would like to remedy Bulletin-greeting meetings held at the Wohlforth Supports Cops John, ostensible Bulletin editor, was in before assigning a reporter for the "of­ Jack Tar Hotel in San Francisco and town, The Workers League, of course, ficially national" debate that we pro­ the Embassy Hotel in Los Angeles. By Moreover, calling on the cops to re­ refused. When the only people to show pose for Thanksgiving weekend in De­ supposedly "attempting to provoke a move SL supporters not only shows the up at the meeting to "greet the twice­ troiL I well recall when you and I fight and creating a disruption" at the Wohlforthites' eringing fear of political weekly Bulletin" turned out to be sev­ debated in Chicago, my having to face door, SL supporters are held respons­ debate, but is also consistent with their eral SL supporters and friends, st. an opponent the great bulk of whose ible for the hotel management's calling 1971 call for expanding the New York John not only refused again to debate programmatic positions consisted of the pOlice and threatening to close pOlice strike into a general strike. but, unable to exclude the SL, simply "we don't know yet; we are extremely down the meeting. No, the cops are not our class brothers, walked out of the meeting! Several creative people; you will see, we will In actuality the SL did not attempt but rather the armed fist of the class WL supporters present openlyex­ work out very creative positions." I to provoke a fight or disrupt in either enemy: Presumably if the WL is willing pressed their disgust with this pOlitical believe that since then, you have had a incident. Rather, all SL supporters to call the pOlice to avoid debating cowardice. At another "greet-the­ national convention and that some of were prevented from attending these the SL at pub 1 i c meetings it would twice-weekly" meeting in Cleveland on your positions have been condensed public meetings called by the WL. have no compunction about calling the 27 October, a number ofthe ghetto youth from ectoplasm onto the mundane print­ The Simple presence of the SL dis­ cops to remove opponents from a union attending expressed confusion about the ed page. For example, it is rumored tributing literature outside the meeting, meeting as welL This policy is like­ that you take a defeatist ("Third Camp") much less trying to attend it, was all wise consistent with the poliCies of the exclusion of the SLo position toward Stalinist Russia and the WL needed to demand action from WL's English mentors, the Socialist In terms of hypocrisy where ques­ presumably toward Stalinist China, Cu­ the hotel management, i.e., that the po­ Labour League, which in 1967 beat up tions of workers democracy are con­ cerned, it is interesting to note that ba and North Vietnam in these coun­ lice be called. In San Francisco when a socialist opponent, Ernie Tate, out­ while the WL excludes Spartacists from tries' military struggles against im­ SL supporters pressed the point to side an SLL meeting and then threat­ perialism, but that you have a "self­ WLers that they were, in effect, calling ened to sue him in the capitalist courts continued on page 13 determina tionist" de fen sis t policy the cops on us, they initially tried to toward the Stalinist Viet Cong (which blame the hotel manager. He, however, is popular among domestic radicals)o snapped in response, "Don't try to load We would very much appreCiate re­ this on me:" It was quite clear to Life in Wohlforth's Workers League ceiving as soon as possible any material witnesses and even to the cops who the containing the adopted views of your complainant was. The plainclothes se­ In its sneering contempt for workers democracy the Workers organization on matters of fundamental curity guards who told the SL to leave League more closely resembles a mini deformed workers state than a principle and basic program. the driveway entrance of the hotel revolutionary Trotskyist organization. This is shown not only by the explained that we were "disturbing the WL's shameless exclusionist antics toward the SL, but also by a look Fraternally, patrons" of the WL. at the internal life of the WL itself. James Robertson for the Spartacist League Below we reprint a motion of the Political Committee of the Workers Picket WL's Anti-Communist League (Internal Discussion Bulletin, Vol. 6, No.2) that will give mili­ Exclusionism tants a good idea of what life looks like inside the WL. The motion self­ admittedly indicates that the WL is in the midst of a far-reaching, Wohlforth's ire was raised by the political crisis that has provoked "the most fundamental discussion in its 5L/R[Y incident in Los Angeles, where the SL history," The motion calls for the fullest discussion of perspectives, picketed ttJ,e WL meeting protesting method and tasks, noting that such a discussion "brings forward all the the anti-communist act of excluding questions raised in the 20-year struggle against Pabloism. " But then, in PubliE OlliE!S Spartacist supporters from a public the style of Enver Hoxha, Wohlforth and Co. conclude that the discussion meeting. Picket signs called for the has an "objective character" so they "cannot tolerate any factionalism defense of workers democracy, This of any sort." Ominously they add: "We want no diSCiplinary threats or BAY AREA was not the first time such an incident actions. " had occurred. Earlier this year, on So here is Wohlforth's Workers League facing "the most fundamental wednesdaYt March 24, members and supporters of discussion in its history" and banning factions: Like Stalin and the and \ 1:00-6:00 p,m, the SL/RCY attempted to attend a public Pope in RDme, Wohlforth has discovered he can dispense with "any fac­ Thursday . meeting of the WL/YS in Los Angeleso tionalism of any sorL" But for a serious Trotskyist organization the When we were refused admittance, as Saturday 2:30-6:00 p.m. right to factional struggle is elementary. Ultimately, there is no other has been standing WL practice through­ means of resolving fundamental political differences within the frame­ 330-4Oth Street out the country, a picket line was im­ work of a common organization. (near Broadway) mediately set up. Some 60 SL support­ Externally, of course, Wohlforth is very concerned about workers Oakland, California ers marched with signs proclaiming democracy and principled political struggle when it suits his purpose. Phone 653-4668 "W 0 r k e r s League Excludes Reds," Thus, the WL can practice the most shameless exclusionism toward the "What is the Y.S. Afraid Of?" and SL, while condemning Stalinist assaults upon itself, such as the recent "Defend Workers Democracy." In an­ attacks it has suffered at the hands ofthe RU. Likewise, to make history other incident on June 30, Dennis fit his interpretations, Wohlforth can be very solicitous about the BOSTON Brehm of the Los Angeles WL not alleged organizational abuses poor Shachtman suffered at the hands only excluded SL/RCYers from a pub­ Wednesday I 00 of Cannon. But internally, in the heat of pOlitical struggle Wohlforth 1: -5:00 p.m, lic meeting but asked the manager of an d . shows himself to be the petty bureaucrat and political bandit he really is. Friday \ 7:00-9:00 p.m, the Embassy Hotel to have us removed from the building. Arguing lamely that Saturday 11 :00 a.m.-3:00 "you b r 0 ugh t this on yourselves," POLITICAL COMMITTEE MOTION 7/26/73 Brehm replied "yes" when asked di­ 1. The Workers League has placed itself in the past period in opposi­ 639 Massachusetts Avenue rectly if he realized that the threat Room 335 of the management to call the cops tion to the International Committee. This is the meaning of the May Cambridge, Massachusetts resulted from his complaint. 28th article in the Bulletin on the Spartacist discussion. These are the opposites and it is these opposites which must now be held fast and Phone 492-3928 These incidents are indicative ofthe fought outo Workers League's sneering contempt ------for the principle of workers democracy. 2. It is for this reason that the current discussion within the Workers When asked by SLers last spring why League is the most fundamental in its historyo There must now be the NEW YORK the WL!YS should be allowed to attend fullest discussion of perspectives, the idealist method of pragmatism Monday I public meetings of opponent groups and the tasks we face in turning to the working class. such as the S WP, Wohlforth' s cynical through· 3:00-7:30 p.m, 3. This'discussion is brought about by the development of the working Friday \ response was, "We shouldn't neces­ sarily. But if they're dumb enough to class itself, created by the crisis of capitalism and the necessary pre­ paratory tasks for the next period of massive class struggle here and in Saturday 1:00-6:00 pom. let us, we'll attend." Marxists, in contrast, support the principle of work­ Europe. It brings forward all the questions raised in the 20 year history 260 West Broadway of struggle against Pabloism, It is this objective character of the dis­ Room 522 ers democracy not just when it is con­ venient, not out of liberalism or fet­ cussions which must predominate at every point. New York, New York ishism. The fullest possible opportunity 4. This is why we cannot tolerate any factionalism of any sort. There Phone 925-5665 for political struggle, without threats of are no good guys and bad guys. We want no diSCiplinary threats or physical violence, enables the labor actionso There is only the absolutely necessary task of objectively movement to achieve the necessary confronting this new situation and the fundamental crisis it provokes [fa [gW lID uJlDu ~ lID [f!J ~~1 V clarity concerning the program which in the League. defends its true interests. It is no acci­ [L~u~[fa&u[ill[fa~ CARRIED UNANIMOUSLY dent that it is the reactionary bureau- '------.------~-.-.--- 9 NOVEMBER 1973 3 Feminists Flee, LSACringes as ... SL Polarizes Toronto Women's Conference TORONTO-Under a banner urging "Women-Unite!" the Ontario Confer­ ence of Women convened on Friday, October 26 at the University of Toronto. The week-end conference, which was formally sponsored by the Ontario Fed­ eration of Students, actually took place largely under the leadership of the League for Socialist Action (LSA)­ Canadian section of the so-called United Secretariat-whose brand of reformist politics parallels that of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in the United States. Despite the leadership's estimate that 900 women would attend (men were excluded from all but two public ses­ sions), the actual number was about 300, of who m the vast majority was unaffiliated and new to politics. Aside from the .LSA and its youth section, the Young Socialists (YS), the only osten­ sibly revolutionary tendencies repre­ sented at the conference were the Revolutionary Marxist Group (RMG), an organization which split from the LSA and which now plays the role of its loyal opposition, and the Spartacist League. (Notably absent were the alleg­ •• .-'.5P..,~TRCI)r UAGU£JU) edly Trotskyist Canadian W0 r k e r s --- League and Labor Action Committee, whose abstention from the struggle for women's emancipation is a reflection of their tailing after the labor bureauc­ racy.) The SWP was also represented in the opening session in the person of the key speaker, Linda Jenness, who was billed as "a feminist and socialist." Despite this spurious attempt at dual identity, however, it was clear that when she said, "We have to build up our own independent power," it was not "we WV PHOTO socialists" to whom she was referring. SL contingent marching in Toronto demonstration to defend Dr. Henry Morgentaler, charged with performing illegal abortions. Jenness never once identified her­ geois women's groups such as NOW, view was expressed by the Resurgent well~~kJlOwn women's liberation activist self as a leader of the SWP. The LSA which opposes socialized medicine!) Feminists who distributed a leaflet who, although not affiliated with any also displayed this aversion to political Speaking for the Spartacist League entitled" Abortion-Yes, Morgentaler­ organization, had been specially invited identification, an aversion growing out at the rally, Helen Cantor took the No!" This leaflet, a logical and con­ to speak at the conference. Dixon is a of its terror of alienating any of the principled position of declaring support sistent expression of feminist ideology, left Maoist. "sisters." LSA members seemed to for Dr. Morgentaler's de fen s e and argued that all males, including Mor­ choke On the word" socialism" on those pledging a financial contribution to the gentaler, thrive on the oppression of Socialism or Feminism rare occasions when they had recourse Toronto Committee to Defend Dr. Mor­ women and must never be supported The presentations were initiated by to it and they did not identify them­ gentaler. However, she also pointed under any condition. Its slogans were the woman from the Mayor's Task selves in the public sessions or in the out the abysmal failure of the single­ "Women are dying! Don't support the Force who, after what appeared to be workshops they attended. It was not issue anti-abortion-law campaign built enemy!" until the very last hours of the last by the SWP in the U.S., which did not a monumental struggle to stay awake, session of the conference, after re­ Although the Spartacist League had correctly summed up her presentation raise mass consciousness of the need contacted conference leaders a week peated challenges by the Spartacist to overthrow capitalism one iota. Can­ with the ad m iss ion, "I have no League on this pOint and after the de­ ina d van c e and had speCifically strategy. " tor called for free abortion on demand requested room to hold a workshop and parture of nearly all the non-aligned and free quality health care for all, She was followed by the represen­ women, that LSA speakers began to to have a speaker in the panel discussion tative of the LSA/YS who put forward not because it is a "better" reform scheduled for Sunday evening, we were identify themselves as such. It was at demand, but because it is an attack all those familiar positions which have this point that an LSA woman, still denied both-the w 0 r k s hop on the long been advanced by the SWP in the on the system of production for profit grounds that there were no rooms avail­ attempting to justify the practice of and pOints to the need for socialist United States: our strength is in our apologetically hiding one's support to able; the speaker initially 0 nth e numbers, we are feminists and so­ revolution. grounds that the RMG speaker would what feminists call "male-dominated" Saturday afternoon was reserved for Cialists, we must take women where organizations, declared petulantly, "If adequately represent our pOSition and they are at and not alienate them, workshops on such topics as: women later on the grounds that this was, I go quack-quack, you can tell I'm a in pOlitics (i.e., explicitly bourgeois women must create anautonomous duck," arguing by analogy that even after all, a Canadian women's con­ movement around a single, winnable politics-one of the designated work­ f€rence and we were not Canadians! without explicit identification her poli­ shop leaders was "a woman from the issue, etc. ad nauseam. Not once did tical positions identified her as a mem­ Canadian nationalism was, in fact, the LSA/YS representative refer to the Toronto Mayor's Task Force on extensive, and several women chal­ ber of the LSA-as indeed they did. The Women"), human sexuality anddaycare. need to link the fight against women's rotten, reformist pOlitics which she lenged the right of the SL to take oppression to the struggle for so~ proceeded to put forward were un­ part in the conference at all. cialism through raiSing transitional mistakably the quackings of the LSA. Feminists: "Men Are Enemies" The SL delegates sought to counter demands. these attempts of the LSA to silence Instead of limiting the program to them by announcing their own work­ Free Abortion on Demand The workshop leaders were virtually the most minimal reforms, which leave all bourgeois feminists and the work­ shop in the corridor and by waging a the basic structure of capitalist SOCiety Saturday morning was devoted to a shops generally reflected their inter­ successful struggle for a speaker on untouched, Trotsky put forward the special session and rally for the de­ ests and viewpOint. The unidentified the panel. Other women, including the Transitional Program of de man d s fense of Dr. Henry Morgentaler, a LSA members who attended certainly RMG representatives, also argued which cannot be fulfilled without re­ Montreal phYSician who has bee n did nothing to challenge this viewpoint. against nationalism and for the SL's placing the rule of the bourgeoisie charged under Canada's Criminal Code In a workshop dealing with campus democratic right to address the body by the rule of the working class. Thus on thirteen counts of performing and organizing, for example, the LSA put and express its point of view. Even~ demands such as free quality health conspiring to perform illegal abortions. forward the position that even in co­ tually, the LSA capitulated to this care for all (including free abortion His trial, which has already begun, educational schools the women students pressure and the body voted over­ on demand); the socialization of house­ could result in a sentence of life im­ a 1 0 n e should be organized to fight whelmingly in favor of the SL's right work through state-financed free 24- prisonment. The defense of Dr. Mor­ budget cuts, because women are more to a speaker. hour childcare faCilities, dining rooms gentaler has been the LSA's single~ oppressed by them than men. Speakers were given ten minutes and laundry facilities; and the full inte­ issue substitute for politics. Limiting One of the leaders in the workshop each to present their views on the gration of women into social production its slogans to "Free Dr. Morgentaler, on gay women was a representative theme "Which Way Forward for the must be combined with demands re­ Drop the Charges!" the LSA has opposed of the Lesbian Feminist Collective who Women's Movement?" and three min­ lating to broader class struggles, such even linking this campaign to demands initiated the session by stating that all utes for summaries. In addition to as a sliding scale of wages and hours, for the repeal of abortion laws. (Not men are the enemy and that while representatives of the YS, RMG, and expropriation of industry u n d e r work­ to mention calling for free abortion, it was not necessary to exterminate SL, there were also the woman from the ers control, and for a workers gov­ a demand which the.LSA and SWP con­ them all at this time, extermination Toronto Mayor's Task Force; Eileen ern men t (see "Our Program" in sistently refuse to raise, even though might well become necessary at some Gregory, a hard-core feminist; a rep­ Women and Revolution No.4, Fall it is supposedly part oftheir programs, time in the future in order to ensure resentative of "A Woman's Place," 1973). For the LSA/YS, however, on the grounds that it would make im­ the continued existence of women! which houses various service facilities raiSing such "divisive" demands is possible their desired bloc with bour- A more or less similar point of for women; and Marlene Dixon, a continued on page 12

4 WORKERS VANGUARD union movement, the General Union of ranks of educated Palestinians who Workers in Jordan (GUWJ) which had were flocking to join the burgeoning 20,000 members, in order to consoli­ technocracies of the oil-rich Persian date the monarchist September victory. Gulf countries. Arafat went to Kuwait, Even more incisive and damning is where his brother got him the job of the DPFLP's critique of the resistance r 0 a d engineer in the government's How Arab Regimes position toward the Jordanian army Department of Public Works. After and the interlocked agrarian question. two years of working for the govern­ The DPFLP pamphlet, "September: ment, Arafat opened a private con­ Counter-Revolution in Jordan," states: tractor's office and amassed a modest "The September Campaign attested to fortune. Crushed the the cohesiveness of the State institu­ Kahlil el- Wazir, mentioned in the tions as an effective instrument in the New York Times (12 October 1972) hands of imperialism and monarchic as a possible leader of the Black reaction." The pamphlet goes on to September group, was at Alexandria recall how each resistance group, in­ University at the same time Arafat Palestinian Resistance was at Fuad I. They both worked to­ cluding the DPFLP, expected the army to split, with a section coming over to gether in the Union of Palestinian stu­ Ever since 1948 the Arab states able to attain the objectives of national the resistance. The pamphlet proceeds dents and the Moslem Brothers, and have piously proclaimed their support democratic liberation" ("September: to a class analysis of the composition both met again in Kuwait. Most of the for the right of the Palestinian people Counter-Revolution in Jordan"). of the Jordanian army and, noting the future leaders of the Palestinian re­ to regain their territory from Zionist In a speech before the General Union rural origins of the ranks, concludes sistance movement ended up in Kuwait, aggression. At the same time, the of Palestinian Students in Iraq in March that the road to winning over a viable a motley crew of wealthy contractors Arab regimes have given every indi­ 1971, DPFLP head Nayef Hawat­ section of the monarchist army is and merchants, with comfortable lives cation that they would in fact simply meh at t a c ked the s log a n of "non­ through "a democratic program for the but embittered at being politically dis­ proceed to carve up Palestine among interference" as leading to the resis­ rural areas." However, possessed of their "rightful" place as themselves in case of military victory tance movement's "the conspicuously sectionalist policy the ruling class of a Palestinian state, over Israel. They have all refused to "turning its back to the developments of the Resistance and the exploitation an ambition of which their nationalism in the region and to the masses of of this tendency on the part of the re­ is the ideological expression. integrate the Palestinian refugees in gime, pushed the village into the lap of their economies, relegating them to the the East Bank and the Arab region .... Paralleling the career of Arafat, Thus the East Bank masses frankly its national and class enemy (reaction miserable existence of beggars and although several years his senior, felt they had no interest in the struggle. and imperialism) and made it fight on PFLP leader George Habash was born recipients of UN relief rations in the Their unoccupied land suffered from their side .•.. " huge refugee camps. In order to keep at Lydda-site of the PFLP's 9 May the relatively well-educated and poli­ 1972 hijacking and airport massacre tically conscious Palestinians from two weeks later. After studying medi­ causing too much trouble, their "host" cine at the American University in governments occasionally arrest the Beirut, Dr. Habash graduated the same suspected resistance leaders and strafe year Arafat entered Fuad I University, the camps. in 1951. Like Arafat, Habash laid the The most brutal and vicious demon­ foundations for his organization-which stration of the hostility of the Arab was called the Arab Nationalist Move­ states to resurgent Palestinian nation­ ment (ANM)-among university stu­ alism was given by the butcher Hussein dents. The ANM was more Nasserite in the 1970 Jordanian civil war. In a than Nasser, more Pan-Arab than the matter of days the U.S.-equipped and Ba'athists and always more adventu­ British-trained Arab Legion managed rist than any of the commando groups. to murder several thousand refugees When Arafat was still an unknown and thoroughly smash the guerrilla re­ Palestinian student activist, Habash was the head of sistance groups. In the last two years resistance a large underground movement spread both the Lebanese and Syrian govern­ commandos throughout the Arab world, which was ments have followed the Jordanian ex­ putting into practice its modification ample (with a little "urging" from FREE PALFSTI'iE of the Ba'athist slogan ("Unity, Lib­ Israel) by prohibiting any act ion s reprisal strikes and they had no demo­ Hawatmeh's March 1971 speech also eration, Socialism") into the slogan of against Israel by the guerrillas and cratic, social or class interests in the contains a rather accurate description his group: "Unity, Liberation, Re­ integrating them (i.e., subordinating revolution because the revolution did of the petty-bourgeois nat ion ali s t venge." When Fatah began its terror­ them) into their own military. The les­ not deal with their problems against regimes ist operations in 1965, Habash, finan­ sons of this tragic history must be the reactionary regime and the ruling cially backed by Nasser, set up a "which call themselves socialist in assimilated if militants of the various forces of imperialism. Nor did it deal spite of the fact that they have emptied competing sabotage organization: the ostensibly socialist resistance groups with democratic and social issues to Heroes of the Return. The very name solve the problems of the countryside socialism of all its democratic, poli­ are to find their way to the Marxist tical and organizational content, as well recalls Trotsky's condemnation: program of united proletarian revolu­ or the urban areas. The resistance t urn edits back completely to the as all that this implies in terms of "Individual terrorism in our eyes is tion in the Near East. masses and the masses had to look economic, military and agricultural inadmissible precisely for the reason for some other refuge for fear that programs. They make the masses see that it lowers the masses in their Lessons of the 1970 Jordanian this situation might continue or worsen. in socialism an ugly face that does own consciousness, reconciles them to not belong to it. They make them see impotence, and directs their glances Civil War Unfortunately, they ended up rallying around the lackeys ruling Amman, and it as oppression and repreSSion, a and hopes towards the great avenger Bonapartist rule (of a small group and emancipator who will some day The Jordanian civil war was only for the first time in the history of Jordan, the Hashemite throne came to from a specific class, i.e. the petty come and accomplish his mission." the culmination of the struggle that have a popular base, thanks to our bourgeoisie, which claim to represent Another organization em erg i n g every Arab regime has waged in the 'Palestinian' policies, those of turning all the classes in society) •... prior to the June War was the Pales­ Near East to subordinate Palestinian our back to the problems of the East " ••. by taking radical, economic, mili­ tinian Liberation Front, led by Ahmed tary, political and cultural stances, the self-determination to its own national­ Bank masses and refusing to build a Jibril, a graduate of Sandhurst (the istic appetites. Only the left wing of united patriotic front opposing the un­ petty-bourgeoisie would have had to tighten its belt. But it was not ready British military academy) and a for­ the Palestinian resistance movement, patriotic front represented by the gov­ mer officer in the Syrian Army. Fol­ ernment, Parliament, and all the state to tighten it because of its class in­ the Democratic Popular Front for the terest••.. Actually, its ambition and lowing the June war the PLF fused Liberation of Palestine (DPFLP) led by apparatus of repression." -Palestinian Resistance Bulletin, ad m ira t ion of b 0 u r g e 0 i s life was with the Heroes of the Return and Nayef Hawatmeh, has been able to draw Vol. II, No. 11 endless. " another Habash organization, the youth any of the correct lessons from the Hawatmeh extends his analysis of the of Revenge, to form the PFLP. How­ Jordanian civil war. While providing a In his speech, Hawatmeh points out that petty-bourgeois nationalist regimes to ever, Jibril was still closer to the scathing indictment of the Palestinian the nationalist parochialism of the the equally petty-bourgeois nationalist Syrian Ba'ath than to Habash, and whten resistance leadership, its strategy and resistance was carried so far that leaderships of the resistance move­ the latter was arrested by the Syrian ideology, the DPFLP is unable to trans­ exclusionist Palestinian trade unions ment, but only in a partial manner. government at the beginning of 1968, cend the Menshevist-Stalinist "t w 0- and student organizations were set up For it can be said equally of men like Jibril split. During Habash's imprison­ stage revolution" theoretical frame­ in the East Bank: "Given a school with Arafat, leader of Fatah, and even those ment, Hawatmeh, (who had been an work of that leadership. three teachers, two Palestinians and like Habash, leader of the Popular ANM activist since his youth) organ­ The DPFLP sharply attacks groups one East Jordanian, the two Pales­ Front for the Liberation of Palestine ized a left faction within the PFLP like Fatah for taking an ostensibly tinians got accepted in the Palestinian (PFLP), who mouth "Marxist-Leninist" which captured the leadership of that agnostic position on ideology and pro­ Teachers Union while the third stayed rhetoric that their "ambition and ad­ group at its August 1968 convention. gram, thus simply subordinating the out; the same was true of workers miration of bourgeois life is endless." Habash launched a campaign against resistance movement to bourgeois ide­ and students." Hawatmeh culminating in shoot-outs in ology. It attacks the Fatah slogan that Although not eXl?licitly stated, it is Bonapartists Out of Power the Amman suburbs. Hawatmeh was the "primary contradiction is with clear from the DPFLP literature that forced to split and set up the DPFLP. Zionism, the struggle against Arab re­ the June 1967 war created such a deep Yasir Arafat's career was typical action is secondary," which completely economic crisiS (the West Bank ripped of most of the leadership of the Pales­ Petty-Bourgeoi s Frenzy disarmed the resistance movement be­ off by Israel produced one third of tinian resistance movement. Fro m fore "Arab reacUon" which consid­ Jordan's gross national product) and up p e r-c 1 ass Palestinian parentage, and Mass Terror ered the liquidation of the resistance so badly discredited the monarchy that Arafat along with the other children Both Fatah and the PFLP drew their movement primary and the struggle a pre-revolutionary crisis existed in of formerly rich Palestinian families own conclusions from the September with Zionism secondary. The DPFLP Jordan. The inability of the Pales­ disenfranchised by the 1948 war went war-"relying on the Arab regimes also attacked the slogan of "non-inter­ tinian resistance movement to pre­ on to study engineering at Fuad I (now rather than the Arab masses," to para­ ference in the internal Arab affairs." sent a revolutionary program meant Cairo) University. There Arafat organ­ phrase the DPFLP critique. Following This, the DPFLP explained, led groups that when the final showdown came ized the Union of Palestinian Students the Hashemite slaughter of hundreds of like Fatah "to practice a demagogic and between the resistance and the Hash­ in Eygpt, through which many of the commandos and 5,000 Civilians, Arafat misleading relation with the Palestinian emite army, the Jordanian masses, future leaders of the Palestinian re­ flew off to embrace both Nasser and and Arab masses and to give deeds of including the Palestinians who make up sistance movement passed. D uri n g Hussein and sign the "Cairo Agree­ absolution to the reactionary regimes the majority of the population, sided their student days, Arafat and many ment," which essentially marked the in return for their handful of subsidies. with the king against the guerrillas. of his future colleagues fell under the end of Fatah's commando operations. It also led these groups to cover up for However, the situation was still so influence of the extremist Moslem Instead of an "armed struggle" which the programs of the nationalist re­ unstable that Hussein was forced to Brothers. After graduating with their Arafat realizes he can never win, he gimes, regimes which have been un- liquidate Jordan's embryonic trade- engineering degrees they joined the continued on page 11 9 NOVEMBER 1973 5 CHIC AGO TRIBUNE Mass picketing during recent strike at Ford's Chicago Heights Stamping Plant. Score Three lor Woodcock! Harvester Strike Called Off

CHICAGO, November 3-The UAW bu­ workers interviewed after the ratifi­ Woodcock leadership forced into au­ Party. TUAD support of class collabor­ reaucracy's treacherous policy of one­ cation meeting, Local President Roth thorizing a strike. But afraid of the ation is demonstrated by its uncritical company-at-a-time "pattern bargain­ opposed the settlement, but was careful possibility of a militant struggle in support of McGovern in the 1972 elec­ ing" (as 0 p po s e dto industry-wide to avoid sparbng a drive for rejection which the ranks might get "out of tions and its physical exclusion of left­ bargaining) is currently being used and to assure the International of his hand," the bureaucracy consistently wing opponents at the June 1972 TUAD to extend the defeat at Chrysler to the willingness to play ball with the W'ood­ ran the strike in a consciously sloppy, conference. Roth proposed at a recent other union divisions. Thereby Ford, cock bureaucracy. low key fashion, keeping the ranks com­ membership meeting that Local 6 en­ GM and agricultural implements work­ The agricultural implement section pletely in the dark about the status of dorse the program of Jesse Jackson's ers will be restricted to the sellout of the UA W has long been a strong the negotiations. and Woodcock's Coalition for Jobs and terms of the Chrysler contract, so that section of the union, conSistently win­ Picketing was poorly organized at Economic Justice, which consists of a even hard-won past gains are to be ad­ ning higher wages, better working con­ the IH Melrose Park works near Chi­ call to lobby Congress for a series of justed downward. Woodcock now faces ditions and fringe benefits for the cago, reportedly inspiring the company legislative reforms, thoroughly con­ the difficult task of convincing angry un­ membership. The wages at John Deere, to call people to report to work on sistent with the continued existence ion members throughout the industry leading U.S. manufacturer of farm Friday, the second day of the strike, of capitalism. Roth's failure toprovide that the new contract is not the complete equipment, are among the highest in saying that there were no picket lines, leadership to the IH strike accords sellout of the ranks that it is, and the UA W, about $1.00 an hour higher There was no at t e m p t at mass pick­ fully with his ref 0 r m i s t pOlitics, avoiding by all possible means a mili­ than the average auto worker's wage; eting, while some truckers and shared by the CP, and exposes once tant strike that might spark a UAW­ overtime has been voluntary at IH workers for outside contractors were again the bankruptcy of Stalinist class wide explosion. since 1941. These gains are the result forced to enter the plant against their collaboration. In spite of all his efforts, there has of militant struggle against the em­ will be c a use the UftW local issued The syndicalist Workers VOice been widespread rej ection of the Chrys­ ployers and in large part a product of them passes, putting their jobs in Committee at the Melrose Park works ler pattern by auto workers. Spontan­ the tradition of militancy established jeopardy if they refused to cross picket has occupied the position of left pres­ eous wildcats and unauthorized strikes by the old Farm Equipment Workers, lines! Salaried personnel were freely sure group on Roth since his election over local issues swept through Ford a Stalinist-supported union which was allowed to enter the plant and do bar­ last summer. Workers Voice as well plants around the country on the con­ partly destroyed by the post-war witch­ gaining unit work. At the IH plant in as Roth endorsed ReverendJesse Jack­ tract deadline day (26 October) despite hunt and the Reutherite UAW. The San Leandro, California, this led to a son's government-financed PUSH coa­ Woodcock's announcement of a settle­ remnants of the FEW merged with the police charge to break a mass picket lition, although with some criticisms ment and ban on local strikes "until UAW in the 1950's. set up when workers learned that of its program. Workers Voice has they are authorized. ff W 0 r k e r s at When contracts for all three major salaried workers we r e performing called for rejection of any settlement Ford's Chicago Heights Stamping plant agricultural implements companies ex­ union work. that does not meet five conditions, (Local 588) were among many who pired on 1 October, the UAW chose which include a wage increase of $1.25 walked out in a body amid complete Deere as a "pattern" company for the Fake Lefts in Local 6 an hour; reinstatement of the right of and justifiable disbelief about the pos­ division and negotiated a settlement the union to impose an overtime ban; sibility of Woodcock's International virtually identical on all major issues Responding to widespread rank-and­ racial equality in hiring, placement pro d u c i n g anything but one more with the Chrysler pacL The settlement file sentiment, newly elected Local 6 and upgrading; and access to skilled sellout. The feeling was so widespread was announced only hours before the (IH Melrose Park) president Norman trades. Workers Voice (embarrassed that the Solidarity House gang made no strike deadline, and ratification was Roth called the Chrysler pattern a in the last contract period when its attempt to discipline the Local 588 lead­ rammed through before any opposition "two-bit offer" and called for its wage demand turned out to be the ership, which was acting under tremen­ to the new contract could be organized. rejection by ~hrysler workers. In an same as the bureaucrats') has followed. dous pressure from the ranks over Typical of the bureaucratic manipula­ article in the local's paper (Union a policy of Simply demanding "more" mounting safety, noise-level and other tion used by Woodcock to suppress Voice, 28 September 1973) Roth focuses than the International leadership. The working-conditions grievances, opposition from the disgruntled ranks his criticism on government wage con­ result is spontaneous trade-union mil­ was the ratification meeting for the trols: "Just so long as our Union and itancy substituting for a program ex­ Historic Gains Threatened local at Deere's largest plant in Water­ the rest of the Labor Movement tol­ preSSing the necessity of sweeping loo, Iowa, where union members were erate the Nixon Wage Controls will we away the decaying capitalist system The Ford workers' rebellion came not even informed of the specific pro­ be robbed in our demands. No one in in its entirety. The condition for achiev­ d uri n g the International Harvester visions of the contract they were voting his right mind would want to play in a ing even these limited demands is an strike, which began on 18 October on! Militants demanding a new ratifi­ card game in which the deck was industry-wide strike, the elimination because the company demanded a re­ cation meeting set up a picket line stacked against him. That is what we of pattern bargaining and a political versal of a major historic gain of IH the following day, shutting down the are doing: The purpose of the Nixon struggle to replace Woodcock/Great­ workers-voluntary overtime-on the plant completely on the second and programs is to guarantee profits for house with a union leadership commit- basis of the Chrysler settlement! The third shifts. An emergency meeting his big business buddies." But Roth's continued on page 13 strike continued when local leaders was called at which an International failure to organize a militant strike rej ected a proposed settlement nego­ Representative claimed that since the is a total capitulation to Woodcock and tiated personally by Woodcock and contract had already been "ratified" Greathouse; and his failure to call ------Class Series agricultural imp 1 e m.e n t s head Pat no new meeting could be held. for industry-wide bargaining and for G rea tho use (Chicago Tribune, 29 The strike at IH was quite in line the ouster of the Woodcock leadership Toward the October). As we go to press the UAW with the Deere "pattern." It was pro­ reveals his militant-sounding stand to has announced a settlement with Har­ voked by the company which-in line be empty rhetoric. International vester which retains voluntary over­ with what the other bosses in the in­ Roth represents more than oppor­ time but commits the union to disci­ dustry had been given in the Chrysler tunist trade-union militancy; he ad­ Proletarian Revolution plining members who" conspire" to use settlement-demanded a complete re­ heres to a broader program of social the right to ref'Jse overtime as a weapon turn to compulsory overtime. For IH reform, which does not challenge the Every Thursday 7:30 p.m. against the company. (This completely workers, who alone among UAW mem­ capitalist system (1f wage slavery but George Sherman Union, Room 312 instead relies on a political coalition arbitrary clause enables the company bers had voluntary overtime, Wood­ Boston University to take action even against workers who cock's much touted "victory" of "vol­ with sections of the employers them­ try to organize a group to attend a untary overtime" (after 54 hours a selves. Roth's caucus, the Solidarity Saturday ball game!) The members of week!) would be a giant step backward. Caucus of Local 6, supports Trade BOSTON Only because the Chrysler pattern Unionists for Action and Democracy Local 6 (Melrose Park, Illinois), a key for information call: IH plant, ratified the agreement today led to an attack on a long established (TUAD), a bur e au c rat i c pan-union (617) 492-3928 by a vote of 780 to 270. According to gain for Harvester workers was the grouping backed by the Communist

6 WORKERS VANGUARD up minority populations against the union. Rather than fronting for fakers "Community' Control" in NYC District 1- of the Fuentes/Shanker stripe, the task of socialists must be to expose the slogan of "community control" as a reactionary, divisive, union-busting capitalist hoax as well as to struggle within the union against the reactionary Shanker leadership. School Board vs. Fuentes: Community control is at best useless and at worst a reactionary scheme which, if it could really be carried out, would slice up the cities into iso­ lated ethnic ghettoes, relegating the Cesspool of Ethnic Politics oppressed groups to the worst schools and hOUSing, freezing them into a permanent sub-subsistance welfare­ rolls existence, further than ever from NEW YORK-The current dispute be­ full integration into the American pro­ tween the white-racist local school letariat which represents their only board and the anti-union pro-commu­ hope of liberation from the racist op­ nity-control district superintendent in pression of bourgeois society. Under School District 1 on the Lower East capitalism, community control means Side is a demagogic fight over ad­ nothing more than the illusory freedom ministrative spoils in which neither of ghetto residents to manage their own - side offers anything to working people. poverty, On both sides the intent is to inflame Community control itself was a racial hostilities in order to divert conscious plot on the part of the bour­ attention from the continuing crisis geOiSie, particularly Rockefeller and of the school system and the need for the Ford Foundation (under its presi­ a program of united working-class dent McGeorge Bundy, the man who struggle to answer it. invented "Vietnamization" as a cover The fact that the United Federation for U.S. aggression in Indochina), to of Teachers backs the school board, throw a sop to ghetto militancy while while several ostensibly revolutionary lining up unemployed pop u 1 at ion s organizations are mobilizing forces against the teachers' union in a period behind Fuentes (the superintendent) is when the ruling class was faced with only another proof of the reactionary an upsurge of municipal strikes. The impliCations of support for reformism 1969 school dec entralization law (which and nationalism. While the lines of the c rea ted 31, now 32, decentralized dispute accurately reflect the pOlitical school districts in ~ew York City) blocs which have dominated the city followed close on the heels of the 1968 in recent years (the conservative lead­ teachers' strike. ership of the organized labor movement vSo the oppressed minorities, with big­ Unlike 1968, when nationalist poli­ business-backed liberals playing the tical ide 010 g y in the ghettos was mediating role), the task of revolution­ Luis Fuentes aIm 0 s t universally dominant, today ary socialists is to shatter this pattern there exists an opening for a decisive district school board had changed its and polarize the situation on class, not shattering of nationalism among the composition from a white to a Puerto racial lines. The fight over who con­ black and Puerto Rican minorities, as Rican majority. trols the patronage of a few appOinted well as illusions in community control administrative posts must be trans­ as a solution to racial oppression. New York has now experienced four years cended by the struggle for worker­ Ethnic Pol itics and the Schools teacher-student control of the schools of "community control" of the schools, complete with separate elections and and for a class-struggle leadership of During the 1968 city-wide teachers' the unions. separate local budgets, the only result strike Fuentes had been a vociferous being the continued degeneration of critic of the "Jewish" UFT and now School Board vs. Superintendent the material situation of the black and continues to carefully cultivate his Puerto Rican populations, Opposing each other in District 1 image as the embodiment of the hopes The reading achievement rate for and desires of the doubly oppressed are the UFT-backed school board elect­ New York City students has been drop­ Puerto Rican and black population in ed last May and the district superin­ ping steadily for ten years with 66.3 the city for improvement of their tendent, Luis Fuentes, who was sus­ percent of elementary pupils and 71.3 pended indefinitely and without pay" on present intolerable conditions by ma­ percent of junior high and intermediate October 16 by the school board and then neuvering within the present system. students reading below grade level. In this respect he is no different from reinstated following a six-day boycott With the additional burden of language other demagogic bourgeois ethnic poli­ of the district's schools. The UFT cam­ difficulties, some 86 percent of Puerto ticians such as Herman Badillo, Adam paigned for the election of the new Rican students are reading below grade Clayton Powell and, in an earlier per­ school board for the express purpose of level (New York Times, 17 March 1973). iod, Boss Tweed or Carmen DiSapio. ousting Fuentes (New York Times, 15 The drop-out rate in New York City A necessary part of this game is skill­ July), whom the UFT correctly char­ schools was 57 percent for Puerto Ri­ ful maneuvering to maintain ethnic acterizes as an anti-union demagogue. Albert Shanker cans, 46 percent for blacks, 29 percent identifications and hostilities at a high But the UFT -backed s c h 0 0 1 board for others (May 1972), as opposed to level among all sections of the working hire members of his union. That's seems less concerned with Fuentes' 11.1 percent for blacks and 7.4 percent class. Fuentes has several times been patronage!'· union-busting tactics than with his for whites nationwide (June 1973). accused of being anti-Semitic and anti­ tolerance toward the use of nationalist In fact, union control of hiring and Such abysmal statistics reflect the Italian, and the American Jewish Con­ and radical texts in the schools and the expansion of the teachers' union to increaSing financial crisis in the pub­ his associations with black and Puerto gress and Anti-Defamation League have include all school personnel below the lic sector besetting the advanced capi­ Rican political organizations. been pushing for his removal for a long administrative level (paraprofession­ talist countries, particularly the U.S. The board itself is a racist and con­ time. Last year Fuentes was charged als, custodial and service employees, On the one hand, essential services are with making anti-Semitic statements servative bunch, largely white although etc.) is a powerful weapon against just limited by budget cuts. Thus last June while he served as principal in Ocean the school population and parents are that kind of pork-barrelling patronage $27 million was cut from the school Hill-Brownsville. A city hearing sub­ not. This is in part a reflection of the that Fuentes dispenses. At the same lunch program necessitating the firing sequently ruled that there were insuf­ changing racial composition of the area. time there must be a struggle with­ of 665 employees and eliminating hot ficient grounds to dismiss him from About 95 percent of the elementary and in the UFT a g a ins t the bankrupt lunches for the students. On the other office because the remarks had been junior high students in District 1 are Shanker b_ureaucracy on a class­ hand, widespread crime and violence made too long ago to be considered as Spanish-surnamed, black or Chinese, struggle program which pOints beyond in the schools led to a doubling of the with Puerto Ricans making up a large evidence. the limiting confines of capitalism, and number of armed security guards (cops) Fuentes strives to maintain his majority. But half or more of the adult for educational programs dealing with in the schools last January. population is white, many of them popularity-and thereby his $37,000/ the special needs of oppressed sectors To the manifest crisis in the city's year job-by posing as the champion elderly people who have no children in of the pop u 1 at ion (blacks, Puerto schools, whose root cause is the capi­ of • community control," pushing the the public schools (New York Times, Ricans, etc.) who make up a majority talist system itself, Fuentes' only pro­ idea that the major barrier toPuerto 25 October). All registered voters as of the city's students. Such an approach gram is to channel the anger of Lower well as parents are eligible to vote in Rican and black advancement is the could transcend the present internecine East Side residents against the UFT, pOlitical power and high wages de­ the school elections. racial-ethnic warfare with a united And when the pathetic results of com­ manded by organized labor. UFT Presi­ class s t rug g 1 e for worker-student­ munity control could now be easily ex­ Fuentes, who is a pork-barrel pa­ dent Albert Shanker charges Fuentes teacher control of the schools. posed, the left (such as El Comite, the tronage politician in the hallowed with opposing union contracts because Puerto Rican Revolutionary Workers they provide "good paying jobs for American traditions of ethnic pOlitics, Community Control: A Capitalist Organization-formerly Young Lords became the first Puerto Rican princi~ suburban middle-class professionals" Plot Party-and the SWP) not only tails after pal in New York City when he received and "make change extremely difficult" but today provides the main organi­ an apPOintment in 1967 in the Ocean (New York Times, 8 July 1973). The Fuentes, a hollow demagogue whose zational mom e n tum for community Hill-Brownsville experimental district shrinking school budget is blamed on program does not even call for such control. in Brooklyn. His first bid for the yearly increases in teacher salaries. minimal reformist demands as "more District 1 superintendency was turned In an interview with the SWP'sMilitant schools," C.£l.n maintain his posture as Community Control as a Means of (27 April 1973) Fuentes stated: down in 1968 when it was discovered the champion of oppressed minority Union-Busting that a letter of recommendation on his ·'1 have a commitment to hire com­ populations only because of the left behalf had been forged. He later won munity people who will be responsible cover provided him by radical groups The state administration is now the post in 1972 after a series of ap­ to that community and respect its prob­ and because of the UFT leadership, seeking to extend the union-smashing pointments to fill vacancies on the lems. Shanker would like me to only which does everything possible to line continued on page 14 9 NOVEMBER 1973 7 Ii- -.. New Left Maoism: Long Marc • opposite pole to the syndicalist So­ the same turf soon sobered up the OL, - journer Truth Organization (Chicago) Enough of such "ultra-leftism"! Thus - on the question of the party. In a while the fusion statement of the OL - May 1971 document, "The Vanguard had stated that the "new communist - THE OCTOBER LEAGUE Party: Invincible Weapon of the Work­ party" must be built around the slogan --= ing Class," the GCL noted: "workers of all countries, unite," the "In reviewing the practice of our group OL sharply opposed P L' s attempts to - and that of other collectives and or­ have this slogan adopted by the Atlanta In the early months of its existence alism and socialism. The position, -~ ganizations, we have found that oppor­ the October League attempted to pose therefore, is simply a carefully veiled Coordinating Committee, a local anti­ - tunism has manifested itself prinCipally - as a left opposition to the openly right­ resuscitation of the CPUSA(R) anti­ war coalition. The OL's preference: -= monopoly coalition, the "two sta ge" in the form of the reformist theory of "People of the World, Unite"! (Against ---= Maoist Revolutionary Union, The sub­ spontaneity and its practice of ~ theory of the American revolution. ,. sequent evolution of the OL, however, tailism .... whom-the Martians?!) ... -Marv Treiger for the LA RYM-II On the question of party-building ... revealed the differences between the collective to the RU executive "This ltailism] was the predominant two organizations to be at most quanti­ committee, September 1969 view in our group for the first 6 months the ex-GCLers are now quite apolo­ -- tati ve and temporary. United by the of existence. During that time we de­ getic for their earlier emphaSis on the --' reformist logic of their Stalinist poli­ veloped the theory and practice of centrality of the struggle for the Lenin­ -~ 'gazing with awe upon the posteriors' ist vanguard party. At a conference of tics, their desired roles as running (quote from Pleka nov [s ic 1 printed in the NCLC in North Carolina in October dogs of the Chinese bureaucracy and What Is To Be Done?) of the working - their iron determination to tail after 1972, James Skillman of the OL re­ -- class to a high degree .... -=-- pented: "[we] wanted to build a party, -= every available left-talking faker in "Our shop work was considered to be the unions and elsewhere, the RU and the most important part of our work." and thought we were building a party, but we saw party building in isolation OL are today separated only by the In response to the RU's "strategic from mass struggles and in isolation organizational ambitions of their re­ united front" and platonic reference to from the united front. You can't build spective leaders. Nevertheless, these the deSirability of a party in the great a party without taking part in the United ambitions are quite ferocious, and we by and by, the GCL wrote: will undoubtedly soon see new "theo­ Front Against Imperialism," So much retical" justifications for the continued "On the other hand, it is not simply for the "fundamental" OL-RU differ­ separate existence of two right-Maoist a matter of 'uniting all who can be ences on this point! This retreat from united' around the need to build a national organizations. In the ensuing earlier "leftism" has reached the point party .... that last spring the OL could declare, competition the OL is likely to come "Specifically, a new party must not just - in an article on "Building a New Com­ ---= off the worse, partly because of the be a collection of revolutionaries, but RU's larger size, and partly because a clearly defined and solidly united munist Party in the U,S.": -= organization. This unity must be built --. of the inherent irrationality of trying "However, while modern revisionism, to build a tendency around the politi­ around a political program, based on or right opportunism is the main ideo­ ~ cally footloose Mike Klonsky. these fundamental principles of sci­ logical enemy which confronts the world --~ entific socialism applied to the par­ revolutionary movement, within the ~ ticular situation for revolution in the .... Los Angeles: Left Maoism? neWly-emerging communist movement Mike K lonsky United States." here, the main danger is 'leftism' and ~ sectarianism. " ..... The present October League is the Treiger, one of the founders of LA -The Call, Ppril 1973 -~ OL Turns to the Right result of a fusion in May 1972 of RYM-II, split from Klonsky in late Klonsky's Los Angeles October League 1969. While the latter formed the OL The early militancy of the GCL -- and the Georgia Communist League OL-RU on the Woman Question: -=: in the fall of 1970, Treiger joined the and the Los Angeles OL was reflected -~ headed by Lynn Wells. Both of these - California Communist League (CCL), in their fusion statement, Thus while Share the Housework local collectives originated in the now the Communist League, which was the RU quotes Lin Piao's statement that RYM-II section of 1969 SDS (see article emerging at the time. Treiger and a "the contradiction between the revolu­ One of the areas where sharp differ­ •-= on the RU in WV No. 31, 26 October number of comrades soon split from tionary peoples of Asia, Africa, and -= ences betweftn the two major right­ ~ 1973 for more details). Klonsky, sonof the CCL over the question of Stalin's Latin America, and the imperialists Maoist organizations supposedly exist a CP bureaucrat, was earlier an anar­ crimes and joined with ex~RUers to headed by the United States is the is On the struggle for the emancipation - chist, then head of pre-split SDS and fl form the Communist Working Collec­ principal contradiction in the contem­ of women. In a recent issue of The the leading RYM-II spokesman in 1969. tive. The OL's development generally porary world" (Red Papers No, 2), the Call (July 1973) the OL levels the pro­ Wells was a leader of the Southern tailed the CWC until the two collectives OL tries to make a fundamental dis­ found accusation that the RU is "down Student Organizing Committee. set up a joint study group on Lenin­ tinction between the backward coun­ on the women's movement." The article In the course of his elaborate ma­ Trotsky~Stalin in early 1971. Klonsky tries and the U,S., claiming that in summarizes the discussion among var­ • neuvers to "Stop PL" at all costs, and family dropped the project after the latter "the contradiction between the ious Maoists at the May 25 Guardian Klonsky became a leading spokesman the first seSSion, however, where they proletariat and the bourgeoisie is the forum on the Equal Rights Amendment •~ for the RYM-II fetish of "white skin - insisted on studying Maothought as a principal contradiction /I (" Statement of as showing two attitudes toward the privilege." According to this remark­ precondition to studying anything about Political Unity of the Georgia Commu­ women's movement, one (the OL's) I; able "theory," first put forward by Ted the history of the international COmmu­ nist League [M - L] and the October "that it is aprogressive movement" and Allen (leader of the Harpers Ferry nist movement. If 600 million Chinese League [M-L]," May 1972), Conse­ the other (presumably the RU's) "that Organization), white workers, although think Mao is right, they argued, that's quently, while two-stage revolution was it is a hopelessly confused middle- - not directly part of the camp of the class enemy, as Weatherman argued, -­~ are a labor aristocracy. Consequently, - they could be won to class conscious­ ness only after somehow metaphysi­ cally "renouncing" this privilege. Just --= how this would be accomplished in - practice was never explained, although ---"' in his inimitable "dumb-worker" style - Klonsky would declare that anyone who didn't recognize the existence of a - black nation was a "mother-f---in' ra­ ----= cist": Klonsky solved the problem of how to "give up" this privilege for -=- himself by dropping the theory a few .:II months later, along with his youth­ -=- van g u a l' dis t "revolutionary youth --- movement" strategy, in favor of more ---= orthodox Maoism, -= Noted in SDS for his Mafia-style - organizational techniques, Klonsky re­ organized his closest clique partners from SDS days (i.e., his wife, sister­ I in-law and brother-no wonder the OL - defends the family as a "fighting unit for socialism":) into the Los Angeles RYM­ •- II collective. LA RYM-II attacked the - Revolutionary Union from the left by claiming (accurately) that Avakian's Lynn Wells THE CALL - "strategiC united front against imper­ - 0 - ialism" was in fact a cover for a two­ good enough for us: (The C WC went correct for Mao it is wrong for Klonsky, class m v e men t which should be stage l' e vol uti 0 n theory essentially on to break decisi vely with Maoism and, The unity statement goes on to proclaim opposed." - after consolidating around Trotskyism, that "the creation of a new communist The Revolutionary Union opposes the identical to the reformist Communist ... to fuse with the Spartacist League.) party-one of a Leninist type-has be­ ERA as allegedly "part of the attack - Party's "anti-monopoly coalition": come the principal task for all commu­ on the proletariat" while the OL cor­ "The 'Statement of Principles' [of the --... Atlanta: Party-Bui Iding nists in the U.S." To the RU's empha­ rectly supports it, calling for struggle - RU, in Red ?apers No. I] separates - sis on "united-front work" the OL to preserve gains represented by some -= imperialism from monopoly capitalism instead of recognizing imperialism as The other prinCipal component of counterposed "party-building," of the special protective laws for women - the monopoly stage of capitalism, as the OL is the Georgia Communist But the right zigzag of Mao inter­ workers, However, in typical fashion, .-- the highest stage of capitalism, with League, Among the various remnants nationally and the necessity of com­ the OL takes this stand because "mil­ - no intermediate rungs between imperi- of RYM-II, the GCL represented the peting domestically with the RU for lions of working women and men have - 8 WORKERS VANGUARD - to Peaceful Coexistence even sub-reformist, such proposals to support special demands around are utterly apolitical. If the. sole prob­ discrimination against blacks, The OL lem lay in con v inc i n g men to do makes a show of recognizing these er­ housework, the millions of women now rors, calling for black-white unity, chained to home and family could pre­ stating that it is not anti-union, etc, sumably be liberated simply by en­ But it ignores two of the principal rolling husbands and wives in en­ reasons for the racial divisions which counter groups! ultimately scuttled the strike. In line with this defense of the In the first place, the OL did not family, the OL relates that in Mao's fight black nationalism, instead trying China one factory worker "told me to combine "soul power" with "workers that all her housework was done by power." Despite the undoubted justice of her children, two daughters and a son, the complaints against racial discrim­ because both parents worked" ("Women ination, a strike built around the slogan Hold Up Half the Sky," 1972). What a of soul power will not enlist the sup­ stunning achievement! Of course, the port of most white workers. Admittedly OL neglects to mention that this is it is difficult to overcome centuries of (unfortunately) already the situation raCism, but it is for this reason that for many working-class families under it is crucial to place the struggle capitalism, Marx and Engels, at least, against racial discrimination in the were not so pusillanimous when faced framework of a class~struggle program with the widespread bourgeois ideali­ which defends the interests of the zation of the family among backward entire working class. Instead of tailing workers: after the greater militancy of the black "The bourgeois family will vanish as a workers, the OL should have fought to matter of course when its complement win the most advanced black workers to [prostitution] vanishes, and both will such aproletarianprogram as the mini­ vanish with the vanishing of capital. mum condition for a successful strike. "Do you charge us with wanting to stop Secondly, the 0 L tried to implement the exploitation of children by their pa rents? To this crime we plead guilty. " its new enthusiasm for the "anti-im­ - "The Communist Manifesto" perialist united front" by appealing to and working closely with the SCLC. Black-power demagogue Hosea Wil­ Soul Power or Workers Power? liams was extremely effective in chan­ neling the struggle into racial lines, as Lacking any strategy for proletarian well as trying "to influence the workers revolution in the U.S" the OL leaders towards reformism and relying on a (like the RU, IS and various ostensibly few leaders instead of their own ini­ Trotskyist groups~SWP, WL, RSL, tiative. [The SCLC has] also fostered CSL, etc,) have instead tailed after pacifism and a totally negative, one­ lo, , the dominant trends of petty-bourgeois sided attitude toward the whole union" ,'f(/ ' , " +f opinion. In 1969 Klonsky and Wells were (The Call, October 1972). Despite this spouting youth vanguardism and white indictment the OL still insists that -;/ race-guilt; in 1970, at the height of _L.,~ __t" ' "SCLC's support has been helpful"­ Top: Picketers at support demonstration for 1972 Mead strike. Bottom: the feminist movement, Los Angeles yet the subsequent effective dispos­ Sherman Miller, head of strike committee and a member of the OL. RYM-II was calling for exclusionist session of the OL from leadership of women's caucuses. With the upsurge the strike toward its conclusion by the struggled [for these gainsJ"-Le., be­ to the struggle for socialism. The con­ of working-class militancy in recent SCLC with its reformist-nationalist cause this is a popular position, The cept of a transitional program of de­ months, the OL has distinguished itself demagogy was a main factor in the Spartacist League, in contrast, sup­ mands which would further the eman­ in the labor movement chiefly through defeat that ensued! Again the OL dis­ ports the ERA as a general democratic cipation of women-the call for the its capitulation to black nationalism plays the wisdom of hindsight: "The right, while calling for struggle to socialization of housework (and thereby and reformist out-bureaucrats. workers are learning that to insure maintain beneficial protective legisla­ for an end to centuries of female The former is especially evident in success they must win allies in the tion and extend it to cover men (see bondage to the home), for full and the OL's misleadership of the wildcat community but keep their own indepen­ "ERA and the Struggle for .vomen's equal integration of women into the work strike by workers at the Mead Pack­ dence and insure that control of the Equality," WV No. 24, 6 July 1973), force (and into the trade unions)-is aging Corp. in Atlanta. Begun during struggle rests in their hands." Not Despite occasional differences the totally foreign to Stalinists raised on the summer of 1972, the strike lasted surprisingly, these battle-tested lead­ RU and OL are essentially united in the reformist methodology of a mini­ for seven weeks and involved several ers conclude that "the strike was a offering nothing but pious pro-worker, mum and maximum program. Thus hundred black workers in a struggle victory in several ways"-mainly be­ men~and~women-must-unite homilies, when the OL and RU speak of "tactical" against racial discrimination, The cause 700 workers stuck it out for failing to raise a revolutionary prole­ alliances with NOW, they do not mean strike ended with a victory for the com­ seven weeks before returning to work. tarian program which offers a class­ a demonstration to legalize abortion but pany, which refused to grant the work­ With "victories" like this, who needs struggle road for women's liberation, an ongoing political bloc on the basis ers' demands and fired some 40 mili­ defeats? Neither the RU nor OL carries on the of 11 democratic" (i. e., non-socialist) tants. Throughout the struggle, the Possibly as a result of sobering up crucial and necessary political fight demands. biggest weakness was the scabbing by after this fiasco, the OL has since against the divisive bourgeois ideology Like the opportunist ex-Trotskyist white workers, which the OL strike flipflopped to a policy of wholeheartedly of feminism, nor do they seek to follow SWP, which has already followed NO W leaders could not combat with their em­ endorSing every left-talking bureaucrat the early Comintern in calling for a down the primrose path to bourgeois phasis on "soulpower" and alliance with who promises to win a few more cents communist women's movement. Instead feminism, the RU and OL will reserve the black-capitalist Southern Christian an hour while mouthing empty phrases their philistine comments about homo­ their platitudes on socialism for ob­ Leadership Conference. about "democracy." Thus The Call sexuals and abortion amount to a capitu­ scure passages in their turgid pamph­ The union (Local 527 of the Interna­ recently criticized the RU sharply for lation to the present backward con­ lets on the joys of raising children in tional Printing Pressmen) had a typical giving Arnold Miller of the Miners for sciousness of many women workers: China, while in their political practice history as little more than a dues­ Democracy only "critical support" in "Because of its narrow emphasis on limiting themselves to what is accept­ collecting agency. In early August of last December's UMW elections! The abortion and often on homosexua lity, able to the capitalists. The SL, in last year OL members in the plant many people have gotten the idea that fact that Miller and the MFD were contrast, has consistently fought in the called together militants to form the relying on the courts and Labor De­ the movement for women's liberation women's movement for free abortion Mead Caucus of Rank and File Workers is just an anti-children, anti-family partment officials to win the election on demand and free quality health care whose demands centered on "unfair and anti-social movement, n was naturally not mentioned. Even -The Call, March 1973 for all and has opposed such mini­ treatment and oppression of the black more directly this policy was seen in While correctly criticizing the limi­ popular fronts as WONAAC, which workers." When management refused the October League's enthusiastic sup­ tations of the SWP-led WONAAC and seeks to build a class-collaborationist to meet the demands, a wildcat strike port, along with the RU, for the oppor­ the single-issue campaign to legalize alliance of ostensibly socialist groups was proclaimed only 12 days after the tunist Brotherhood Caucus at the Fre­ abortion, the OL simply calls for a and bourgeois politicians such as Rep­ caucus was formed, This in itself was mont, California GM plant. If there multi-issue reform movement focusing resentative Bella Abzug and the Wo­ a stupid, adventuristic action, for a suc­ is any difference between the OL's on childcare" And on the question of men's Political Caucus. cessful strike reqUires a recognized, uncritical support and the RU's "criti­ alliances with bourgeois feminists such Perhaps the most disgusting aspect capable leadership and strong organi­ cal" support for fake militants, this as NOW, the OL accuses the RU of of the RU-OL workerist pandering to zation of the ranks. can be only in the former's closer ties "rul[ing] out any alliance between work­ the present backward consciousness of As the strike continued it was seen to the out-bureaucrats who dominate ing women and such organizations as the working class is their back-handed by white workers as solely a "black the caucus, However, when their erst­ NOW, even though it is presently fight­ defense of the bourgeois family. Instead affair." Even the OL recognized that while allies decide to turn on these ing for many democratic women's of showing how socialization of house­ "only a small minority of the white embarraSSing "radical" cheerleaders, rights •..• " The RU replied to OL at­ hold work and childcare would liberate workers [have] taken part in the strike both the OL and RU will be given tacks by mouthing a few words about women from the slavery of unpaid while most have scabbed" (The Call, an object lesson in the price of capitu­ "tactical alliances" with NO W, while labor and domestic bondage, and why November 1972). In an interview with lation to reformism. denying it a place in the RU's "united this requires a united proletarian revo­ OL member Sherman Miller who headed Faced with the increasing combat­ front against imperalism." lution, the RU comes up with the stun­ the caucus, it is admitted that lack tiveness of the U.S, working class, the In their efforts to show that as good ning proposal that "we have to en­ of work among white employees was OL and RU appear to be reacting in Maoists they would not refuse to ally courage sharing household work at partially responsible for the sharp different directions, Thus the former with the "democratic" NOW, the OL home, especially if the wife, as well racial division, as was the widespread pretenders to "left-Maoism" of the OL and RU fail to pose the struggle for as the husband, is working outside opinion that the caucus was trying to are trying to get as close to the bu- women's liberation as necessarily tied the home" (Red Papers No.3)! Not break the union and hesitancy of whites continued on page 13 9 NOVEMBER 1973 9 geoisie, even at the risk of threatening and a weakened U.S. imperialism could torted by the Significant Jewish pop­ Continued from page 1 the basic achievements of the October well transform the British and French ulation in the U.S., which possesses Revolution. This is a logical conse­ diplomatic intervention into direct mil­ a certain weight in the bourgeoisie quence of their role as the transmitters itary involvement. proper and a disproportionate influence of the pressure of imperialism and of in the cultural establishment. The their Stalinist ideology of class colla­ The U.S. Protects and Polices widespread pro-Zionist sentiment of MoreWar boration. The Chinese Stalinists are, Israel American and European Jews in part of course, no better, although they have reflects an insecurity stemming from conflicting national interests. T h us Sadat's appeal for U.S. forces to their emplacement in a historically Ahead! Chou En-lai sees only "great-power police Israel should have convinced hostile gentile society, an insecurity ambitions" dividing the USSR and the even political idiots (even the Socialist greatly strengthened by the Nazi ex­ U.S. and goes so far in a bid for a Labour League's Gerry Healy and the perience. Thus the Zionism of non­ Brezhnev's messages-so ambiguous, U.S.-Chinese alliance as to openly Workers League's Tim Wohlforth, the Israeli, overwhelming petty-bourgeois in fact, that not even the Administra­ endorse NATO as a weapon against only people in the world who believe Jews is in part the chauvinism of the tion's usual apologists could come up "Soviet social imperialism" (New York the Arabs were victorious in this war) oppressed, albeit of a vicarious and with "leaked" accounts of the nature of Times, 30 October). Thus both Russian that Israel is something other than an projective sort. the supposed Russian threats. and Chinese bureaucracies have backed American base in the Near East. That The vocality and visibility of the Nor was the direct "hot line" con­ Nixon just as Moscow backed Johnson Israel is today entirely dependent on American Zionist lobby should not nection between the White House and before him, as a supposed force for the U.S. for heavy military hardware is blind one to the fact that the American the Kremlin used in the alleged "worst peace. The October 24 U.S. world-wide not open to question. As Israeli Defense ruling class is not composed of Jewish crisis since the 1962 Cuban missile military alert unmasks the Moscow­ Minister Moshe Dayan said in the nationalists. In fact, the hysterical showdown." That the Soviet government Peking dreams of peaceful coexistence Knesset last week, "anyone advocating desperation of American Zionists aris­ had no intention of unilateral military as the dangerous-and deadly-illusions we run the war in a state of rupture es from an awareness that the pro­ intervention in the Near East was they are. with the United States is advocating we Israel policies of the U.S. government clearly demonstrated when, on the same The fundamental hostility of U.S. can't possibly win ...• I'm not sure the are contingent, not fundamental. Even day as the U.S. alert, it voted for the imperialism to the Russian degener­ soldiers know it but the shells they are more so than their American support­ UN resolution barring inclusion of con­ ated workers state tends to drive them firing today were not in their possession ers, Meir and Dayan understand the tingents from the major powers in the into military conflict, even in situations a week ago" (New York Times, 31 limited and brittle nature of U.S. im­ forces poliCing the ceasefire. Even where the leaders of the two nations October). But while Israel is now act- perialism's commitment to Israeli na- hard line cold warriors are now openly want to avoid such confrontations. For wv PHOTO nervous about Nixon's finger on the that reason, it is necessary for revo­ button which could set off nuclear world lutionary socialists faced with the local war. wars, such as the present Arab-Israeli Immediately after Brezhnev's visit conflict, to warn the working masses to the U.S. last June, when U.S.-Soviet of the danger of World War III and. the relations could not h a v e appeared need to defend the Soviet Union. At rosier, a ,Iov/,?ers Vang1wrd (6 July' the same time, the Brezhnev regime's headline proclaimed "U.S./USSR De­ unashamed support for bourgeois and tente Doomedo" A scant four months feudal Arab nationalism and its lack of later, the American government orders any sense of proletarian international­ a world-wide military alert to "fore­ ism are major obstacles to mobillzing stall Russian aggression." But even the American working class in defense before the latest Arab-Israel war the of the Soviet Union should there be a detente had been heavily eroded, in part direct clash with the U.S. in the Near because a section of the American East. ruling class was trying to strengthen Israel by encouraging massive emi­ gration of Russian Jews, in part due NATO~or the U.S.-Portuguese to evidence of significant advances in Alliance Russian military technology (the Soviet MIRV tests). With the Arab-Israel war, Not the least important result of the the Meany-Lovestone leadership of the fourth Arab~Israel war is that it dem­ AFL/CIO did its bit to revive the Cold onstrated and reinforced the weakening War by threatening a maritime boycott of American world power through inter­ imperialist rivalry. U.S. imperialism of Russian trade, attempting to black­ SL/RCY demonstrate in Boston against U.S. aid to Israel, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. mail the Soviet government into ceasing expected and is temporarily reconciled to the pro-Arab neutrality of France arms shipments to the Arabs. (In the ing as a client state of the U.S., in tionalism. Thus when some American and Britain; it was unsettled by the entire trade-union movement, only the reality, the alliance between the Amer­ Zionists wished to attack Nixon for his Militant-Solidarity Caucus of the Na­ rigid neutrality of its most important ican ruling class and Zionism is com­ insufficiently pro-Israel stance, the and loyal ally, West Germany; and it tional Maritime Union sought to organ­ plex and breakable. Meir government instructed them not to was humiliated by the presumptuous ize workers to oppose the anti-Soviet The U.S. first supported Israel in risk antagonizing the president: neutrality of the two-bit generalissi­ boycott [see IVV No. 31, 26 October].) the late 1940's as a counter to the mos running Spain, Greece and Turkey. "Until now, according to the sources, And recently the Nixon administration British c Ii e n t states of Abdullah's the Israeli Embassy has made a special Twenty-five years after the founding has gone back on its pledge to support Transjordan and Farouk's Egypt. With effort to deter Americans from lobby­ of NATO, the U.S.' only dependable lower tariffs on imports from the USSR, the rise of Ba'athism and Nasserism ing the Nixon administration. The fear European ally in this conflict of world making tariff cuts conditional on Brezh­ in the 1950's the U.S. looked to Israel is that public pressure would displease importance is that great sixteenth­ nev's "behaving himself" in the Near as a military ally against a possible the President and Mr. Kissinger .... East, century imperial power, Portugal. American businessmen called Israeli alliance between Arab nationalism and officials in Jerusalem to ask whether While conditioned by the particular The objectively pro~Arab neutrality the Soviet Union. In the most general they should place calls to senatorial irrationality and vulnerability of the of the European bourgeoisies reflects sense U.S. support for Zionism is friends. According to the two [sources J Nixon administration (which are by no both oil diplomacy and more fundamen­ part of the standard imperialist policy they were told to be qUiet and raise means unrelated to capitalist society), tal imperialist conflict. In the long of Balkanizing ex-colonial areas, in­ money." the events of October 24 reveal the run, the attempts of the militarily, flaming local nationalisms in order to -New York Times, 1 November thin edge preventing the American SOCially and politically weak-but oil­ divert mass struggles away from prole­ Dayan is certainly aware of the fact bourgeoisie from plunging humanity rich-sheikhdoms at economic black­ tarian socialism. that one of Israel's few "Third-World" into a nuclear inferno. The Kremlin mail of the capitalist powers will be However, with the passage of time supporters, Chiang Kai-shek, could de­ bureaucracy , however, has repeatedly met with force, probably in the form Israel has become a handicap to the liver a fin e lecture on the fate of shown its inability to understand this of the Iranian army. However, given objective interests of U.S. imperialism. U.S. client states, like Taiwan, which and the basic class contradictions in the present balance of forces, the While the Zionist-Arab conflict has become a serious hindrance to the the world today. Its vain hopes to con­ European powers are prepared to con­ certainly arrested revolutionary class s t rat e g i c interests of Arne ric an tinue the wartime alliance of the U.S., ciliate Arab nationalism. From the struggle in that area, the state of Is­ imperialism! USSR, Britain, France and China led bourgeois standpOint there is no reason rael has also served as a pole for to the American Communist Party's why West Europe should freeze this Arab unity and Soviet diplomatic gains. Return to the 1949 Truce Lines call for a permanent no-strike pledge winter because Dayan wants to control Israel's value as the gendarme of the after World War II; the French and ten more miles of Sinai desert. Near East is effectively offset by the As communists, in both the 1967 Italian CPs' participation in bourgeois The prO-Arab policies of Britain profound hatred it inspires among the and present wars we called for a popular-front governments, their dis­ and France reflect far more than a Arab masses, The U.S. is clearly policy of revolutionary defeatism on arming of the anti-Nazi partisans and means of securing fuel supplies for the grooming Shah Reza Pahlevi's Iran as both sides-the Hebrew and Arab peo­ initial failure to oppose the Marshall next few months. The Near East has the cop of the oil fields. And as Kis­ ples have nothing to gain from these Plan; Stalin's agreement at Yalta to been the only major colonial area Singer rightly said, the U.S. ruling wars! We demand that the Israelis cede Greece to the British; and his where these old imperialist powers class really has no desire to pull the give up the fruits of their armed con­ opposition to the drive to power by seriously competed with the U.S. in nuclear trigger simply because Dayan quests and return to the 1949 truce Tito's Yugoslav partisans and the Chin­ the post-war period. After the fiasco and his generals want five more miles lines. But the demand that the Israelis ese guerrillas led by Mao. In the Near of their 1956 Suez invaSion, France on the Golan Heights. For these rea­ unilaterally yield the territory con­ East the Russian leaders have for and Britain sought to take advantage sons, in 1967 and even more so in the quered in the 1967 war in no way years acquiesced in the suppression of of the political vacuum produced by the present war, the U.S. has acted as Isra­ justifies the Arab side in the present the local Communist parties by their U.S.' pro-Israel policy on the one hand el's military ally while simultaneously war. Egyptian, Iraqi and Syrian all i e s, and the reluctance of the Arab bour­ curbing the dangerously inflated ambi­ Unlike 1967, when the Arab regimes with the excuse of a supposed anti­ geois nationalists (not to mention the tions of the Zionist regime. This was openly boasted about destroying the imperialist alliance with the nationalist feudal reactionaries like Faisal) to the essence of the 1970 U.S.-proposed Zionist state, in the present war they bourgeOisies of the backward capitalist excessive dependence on the Soviet and Soviet-backed Rogers Plan, calling proclaimed the more modest war aims countries. More recently, Brezhnev's Union. In presenting the Arab regimes on Israel to return to the pre-1967 of only recapturing their "lost" terri­ illusions in detente have led the Russian with a third option between accepting borders. The Arab regimes are well tories. However, in most wars between government to openly support Nixon the Zionist state and a full-blown al~ aware of this dual role of the U.S. in bourgeois states one side claims it is even while the American CP was call­ liance with the Soviets, Britain and regard to Israel, hence their calls for seeking "only" to reverse the defeat it ing for his impeachment. France have sought a sphere of influ~ U.S. intervention in the current battle. suffered in the previous war. For rev­ The parasitic bureaucrats in the ence in the Near East by essentially The strategic interest of U.S. i'm­ olutionary SOCialists, the claims of Kremlin are constantly lOOking for al­ diplomatic methods. However, the com­ perialism in the state of Israel is at Egypt and Syria that they are fighting liances with the "peace-loving" bour- bination of a lengthy Arab-Israeli war once powerfully reinforced and dis- to recover conquered territory no more

10 WORKERS VANGUARD sanctify their war effort than the French this elementary necessity is as de­ the U.S. Socialist W 0 r k e l' s Party claim to have been fighting for Alsace­ Continued from page 5 bilitating as the "sectionalism" of Fatah praises the Fatah to the skies, Gerry Lorraine in World War I or Hitler's which could not see the need for Healy's Socialist Labour League in claim in World War II that he "only" Palestinian-Jordanian class unity, England for many years chased after wanted to undo the Versailles Treaty. The guerrilla groups, from Begin's the PFLP and the French Ligue Com­ The Arab states' demand that Israel Zionist Irgun (which carried out the muniste showered its favors on the return tlleir territory rings particu­ Palestinian infamous DeiI' Yassin massacre of DPFLP. larly hollow since the population oc­ Arab villagers in the 1948 war) to the The DPFLP, however, has seen cupying that territory (in the Gaza Palestinian nationalist "Black Septem­ through this vicarious Arab nationalism Strip and the West Bank) is composed ber" (responsible for last year's in­ and, in a crude way, captured the overwhelmingly of Palestinians, who Resistance defensible terrorist kid nap pin g of essence of the Pabloist liquidationism have suffered national oppression for Is-raeli athletes at the Munich Olym­ of these fake Trotskyists: abandoning years at the hands of these same looks to the diplomatic agility of his pics), represent bonapartism out of the struggle for the Fourth International Arab regimes, Thus in the 1948 war Moslem brothers in Cairo and Amman power. Other groups like the Syrian and its program of working-class inde­ and again in 1967 their war aims were to solve the Palestinian problem, Sa'ika or Iraq's "Arab Liberation pendence and instead acting as cheer­ not to liberate but to carve up among The PFLP, on the other hand, started Front" are simply the armed extension leaders and left pressure groups for themselves the former Palestine, A up its campaign of terrorist spectac­ of the Ba'athist regimeS-i.e" bona­ various petty-bourgeois forces. Re­ precondition for the present war was ulars: hijacking airplanes and holding partism in power. No matter how spar­ sponding to the Ligue' s enthusiastic the physical destruction by these re­ the passengers as ransom for PFLP tan the guerrilla experience, no matter hosannahs, the DPFLP wrote: "These gimes of the Palestinian resistance prisoners~ publicity and of co u r s e how self-sacrificing the individual movements find no justification for movement in Jordan, Syria and Leba­ cash, to supplement its share of SaUdi cadres, the guerrillas in power would their existence, but to quickly adopt non. Not a few of the Palestinian com­ Arabian, Kuwaiti and Lybian oil royal­ constitute a conservative privileged the developing revolutionary move­ mandos fighting in this war were re­ ties. But the Lydda airport massacre, elite whose "ambition of and admira­ ments in different regions of the world, leased from .Arab jails. where three Japanese sympathizers of tion for bourgeois life is endless." and project them as if they were new the PFLP indiscriminately machine­ Currently the Egyptians and Syrians Trotskyist currents" (Palestine Resis­ do not even make a pretense of fighting gunned airline passengers, killing 26 Guerrillaism and Socialist tance Bulletin, June 1971). Instead of for the Palestinians' right of national and wounding 72, demonstrated that Revolution challenging the nationalism, guerrilla­ self-determination and instead simply PFLP terrorism has another objective: ism and Maoist two-stage revolution Guerrillaism is no strategy for call for the return to the 1967 boun­ rekindling the Arab-Israeli war, In such theories of the DPFLP and other Pales­ socialist revolution, as the Guevarists daries. (In other words the Gaza ref­ a confrontation, the PFLP believes, tinian left-nationalists, the Pabloists and Maoists would have us believe. The ugee camps would be administered by either Israel will be destroyed or the simply aid their present confusion by experience of the colonial revolutions Egypt rather than IsraeL) Jordan, on Arab regimes will be discredited and uncritically tailing after them, the authority of the resistance groups the other hand, shows no eagerness S\'E:\ S1110::-'; to recapture the West Bank, since enhanced, as was the case following For a Bi-National Palestinian the June 1967 defeat, Palestinians already constitute a ma­ Workers State: jority of its population and the addition All the resistance groups, including of several hundred thousand more would the DPFLP, write off the Israeli work­ . The democratic solution to the Pal­ directly threaten the viability of the ing class as a force for revolutionary estinian question begins with the rec­ Hashemite monarchy. The military de­ change in this period. But groups like ognition that there exist two nations feat of Israel, today as in 1967, would the PFLP and "Black September" ac­ with equal rights to the same land: mean for the Palestinian people nothing tually desire to shore up Zionist chau­ both the Palestinian Arabs and the but the replacement of one national vinism and drive the Israeli working Hebrew-speaking population of pres­ oppressor by another. class straight into the arms of right­ ent-day Israel have nowhere else to wing Zionists like Menachem Begin and And that is the central reason why go. Most of the resistance move­ his Herut Party, Begin and Habash the Arab side is not supportable, The ment, including the DPFLP and Fatah, represent the most extreme expres­ only genuine national liberation strug­ recognizes that there are two nations sions of their respective nationalisms, gle against Israel, one that revolution­ which must share the same land; what most eager to embrace the genocidal ary socialists can support, would be an they deny is that both nations have conclusions which follow from national­ upriSing of the Palestinian masses equal rights, Socialists must stead­ ist ideology, The extreme Arab nation­ themsel ves. However, such an uprising fastly put forward the need for a bi­ alist believes that all Israelis must be could hardly succeed unless linked to national workers state in Palestine as Zionists, just as ultra-Zionists be­ an internationalist movement among a part of a socialist federation of the lieved that all non-Jewish Germans had workers in the neighboring territories. Near East. But this cannot be achieved to be Nazis. By whipping up Zionist A victory by the existing .A ra b regimes by forcing a single state on peoples chauvinism within the Israeli working would mean the forcible subordina­ divided by decades of communal strife class and reinforcing popular support tion of the Hebrew people to the Arab and national conflict. It must be freely within Israel for the expansionist and majority-Le., simply the reverse of Yasir Arafat, head of Fatah. After the chosen, To guarantee this, proletarian revanchist pOlicies of the Zionist gov­ the present unjust situation. More than 1970 massacre of Palestinian resist­ internationalists must recognize the ernment, PFLP adventurism renders a anywhere else in the world today, the ance fighters by Jordan's King Hussein, right of self~determination both for struggle between Arab and Hebrew na­ valuable service to the Israeli rulers. Arafat signed Cairo Agreement shut­ Palestinian Arabs and the Hebrew­ tionalisms demonstrates the impossi­ ting down Fatah guerrilla operations, speaking population, their right to fOrIn bility of achieving genuine national The DPFLP preferring instead to hold onto his sub­ separate states, emancipation on a truly democratic sidies from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Of course we should argue that the basis except by united proletarian rev­ The DPFLP properly con d e ill n s other reactionary Arab regimes. decision to form such a separate state olution. those "forces whose programs and would be foolish, impracticable, even practices are in fl u e n c e d by petty­ reactionary, Of course we demand that For a Bi-National Palestinian bourgeois adventurism," even though attests to the fact that while the guer­ any such state must be democratic, Workers State: For a Socialist they espoused Marxist, socialist and rillas in power may, in exceptional not semi-theocratic as is present­ Federation of the Near East: progressive slogans. But the DPFLP circumstances, be forced to expro­ day IsraeL Of course such a state can offer no alternative to Fatah's priate the bourgeoisie and _replace would occupy far less territory than The total domination of Hebrew and capitulation to the butchers of the re­ capitalist with working-class property Israel currently does, But nonetheless, Arab nationalisms in the Near East sistance movement or to PFLP and relations (although with considerable to deny the Hebrew nation the right over the vast 25 years has effectively "Black September" adventurism. The reluctance both in China and Cuba), to say no to a merger of peoples is suppressed revolutionary proletarian DPFLP claims to recognize the limi­ the economic expropriation of the capi­ not a democratic solution. To shove struggle in that area. (Significantly, the tations of the resistance movement talist class takes place within the con­ a bi-national solution down the throats only country in the area which exper­ "with a subjective structure that con­ text of the political expropriation of of the Jewish workers in Israel is i e n c e d revolutionary working-class tained all the class and ideological the working class. The trade unions to push them into the arms of the struggle has been Iraq, which is not contradictions present among our peo­ are stripped of their independence Dayans, the Meirs and even the Begins, involved in direct military confronta­ pIe." But its own call for a "patriotic" and subordinated to the bonapartist But when equal rights are con­ tion with Israel.) Only a proletarian or "national united front" can only be bureaucracy and, likew:'se, the workers ceded, the burden of proof of good­ socialist revolution can produce a gen­ a call for a similar class-collabora­ parties are either merged with the will rests with the Israeli worker, uinely democratic solution to the na­ tionist formation which is either sub­ state (as was the case with the Cuban for it is the Israelis who have acqui­ tional conflict in the Near East-a bi­ ordinated to the "patriotiC" bourgeoisie Stalinists) or suppressed (the Cuban, esced to the oppression of the Pales­ national Palestinian workers state, with (who, as Hawatmeh himself pointed out Chinese and Vietnamese TrotSkyists), tinian Arabs by the Israeli bourgeoisie, full guarantees of the rights of both in the same speech in Iraq, are them­ Trotsky's theory of the permanent The Palestinian Arabs, driven off their Hebrew and Arab peoples, as part of selves tied to imperialism like revolution-confirmed positively by the land and into refugee camps to receive a socialist federation of the Near East. "brokers") or else destined to tear Russian Revolution and negatively since their seVEn cents a day in UN rations While this is at all times our funda­ itself apart in its first confrontation in scores of cases from China to or to be used as coolie labor in Is­ mental program, we must also oppose with the reality of the class struggle. Bolivia-demonstrates that the demo­ raeli industries, are the oppressed genocide or national oppression on Unlike the PFLP and Fatah, the cratic tasks of the bourgeois­ nation. Unlike the guilt-ridden U,S, either side. Thus it is obligatory for DPFLP knows better than to rely on democratic revolution can be consum­ New Left, we are not moralists who socialists to uphold the right of both the Arab regimes to fight its battles. mated only when the revolutionary would punish the Israeli worker for Palestinian Arabs and the Hebrew­ But it is unable to recognize the proletariat, supported by the peasantry, the sins of history by depriving him speaking population to self-determina­ Israeli working class as a potential seizes state power for its own, of his national rights, But all the same tion-that is, to secede and form their ally in the struggle for Palestinian socialist, aims, The just and democra­ the Israeli worker must demonstrate own separate states-no matter how s elf-determination through socialist tic solution of the Palestinian question, to his oppressed class brothers that difficult the res u 1 tin g territorial revolution, as the "Trojan horse" with­ a bi~national Hebrew and Arab state, he will fight his government poli­ division. in the Israeli state. The DPFLP is entails the victory of the proletarian tically-that he will fight its colonial­ Only the working class-Arab and incapable of seeing that if the Zion­ revolution in the Near East led by a ism, its raCism, its clericalism, its Hebrew alike-can overcome the end­ ist state is to be smashed-not in a multi-national vanguard party. expansionism, Such a fight reqUires less cycle of war, oppression and re­ reactionary and genocidal fashion by Most of the ostenSibly Trotskyist the construction of a multi-national venge through united class struggle some revanchist Bonapartist Arab re­ organizations today have in fact aban­ vanguard party, which can be built and the creation of the proletarian gime, but as a step toward the socialist doned the proletarian internationalist only through the struggle to assimilate van g u a l' d, a unified multi-national federation of the Near East-then the program of the Fourth International, the theory of the permanent revolu­ Trotskyist party whose program would burden necessarily falls to the working, Instead they chase after various petty­ tion, and on that theoretical and pro­ uniquely express the most general people of Israel under the leadership bourgeois nationalists in the name of a grammatic basis to regroup the best and historic interests of the working of the Arab-Hebrew vanguard party. mythical "Arab Revolution." They all militants from organizations like the class •• The DPFLP's failure to recognize have their favorites, of course, Thus DPFLP .•

9 NOVEMBER 1973 11 and Trotskyism it claims to espouse, four-point resolution demanding: 1) De­ and misleading women as to where Continued from page 4 among whose fundamentals is impla­ fend Dr. Morgentaler! 2) Break with their real interests lie and who their cable opposition to male exclusion, single-issuism; for a class line, not a real enemy is, she warned, then the class collaboration and feminism. How­ sex line in the women's movement! res p 0 n sib iIi t Y for the subsequent ever if the LSA women were in fact 3) End male ex c 1 us ion ism! 4) Free working-class defeats and the delay in __ _Women's sincere in their adherence to these quality health care for all, including the genuine emancipation of women will anti-Marxist positions, then perhaps free abortion on demand, free distribu­ be yours. The Spartacist League does they were not even cynical opportunists, tion of contraceptives, no forced not intend to share that responsibility. but merely incredibly ignorant reform­ sterilization! These sen tim e n t s were closely Conference ists, tot a 11 y divorced from their This motion was defeated with the echoed in the summary of Marlene ostensible political heritage. LSA opposing it and the RMG abstain­ Dixon who, in addressing herself to the sectarianism. Reissner also pOinted out that the ing on the vote. Many friends of the women of the LSA, remarked that 40,000 The LSA traitor to Trotskyism was absurd SWP contention that "the most RMG who were present, however, sup­ workers presently lie dead in Chile and followed by Eileen Gregory, who criti­ consistent feminist must be a socialist" ported the motion. that it was incumbent upon the LSA cized the preceding plenary session has been very clearly exposed in the In the general discussion which fol­ comrades to read their own press and for having followed Roberts' Rules oj much-discussed writings of Mariarosa lowed the presentations the SL was rethink their political positions in order' Order-since Roberts was a man-and Dalla Costa and Selma James. These roundly condemned for its "sectarian­ to understand the responsibility which who declared that women need their women are nothing if not consistent ism" by the LSA and the RMG, both of they bear for these deaths. (The LSA­ :lwn Marx and their Own Lenin. feminists and their consistent feminism which lamented the departure of the supported United Secretariat's Chilean When during her presentation a two­ has led the m not to socialism, but anti-communist, man-hating feminists. affiliate fa i 1 e d to oppose Allende's {ear-old boy wandered into the audi­ straight to the most blatant and vicious The RMG explained that its concern popular-front government.). 0 i x 0 n's torium, she denounced him from the anti-communism and anti-trade union­ forthe departed "sisters" was based on solidarization with the SL' s position on podium in obscene language and, al­ ism in recent feminist literature. the fact that an opportunity to recruit Chile also implied a counterposition to though even the feminists in the audi­ In discussing the Bolshevik approach these feminists to socialism had been the line of the RMG, which likewise ence protested that he was only a baby, to work among women, Reissner quoted lost. In contrast to these hypocritical supports the USec. insisted that it was necessary for wom­ a Bolshevik speaker who on Interna­ lamentations, the SL delegates seized Turning to the non-aligned women, en to recognize their enemies-at any tional Women's Day, 1914, had said this excellent opportunity to politically Dixon defined herself as the "unhappiest age! The "enemy" was quickly carried that the women's movement must not confront the remaining women (who Marxist-Leninist in North America," out of the room. bring about any split in the proletarian were ostensibly socialists and the most because she was a Marxist-Leninist The next speaker was Marlene Dix­ front, but must rather reinforce it: "If advanced women at the conference), without a party. She stressed the ab­ on, who was angry. She confessed that the workers movement is a mighty engaging them in sharp and vigorous solute necessity of constructing a revo­ she had come to the conference with flowing river, the women's movement floor debates. lutionary vanguard party and the re­ the intention of being "Miss Cool," but is a tributary stream increasing and sponsibility of serious women militants that she had found it impossible to enriching jt with new forces. " For many Socialism or Barbarism to struggle for socialism and women's maintain her equanimity in the face of of the hard-core feminists in the audi­ liberation as part of such a party. She the atrocious positions being put for­ ence who had been restive throughout The LSA position of peaceful co­ urged the audience to read the press of ward. She then launched into a clear the Spartacist presentation, this quote existence between feminism and so­ the various ostensibly revolutionary :md convincing delineation of the es­ was absolutely the final, unendurable cialism was stated most graphically by organizations and to begin the arduous ,ential differences between socialism blow. They shouted and hissed and about a woman who said that if the feminists but necessary process of political edu­ 3.nd feminism and the necessity of 25 of them stomped angrily out of the proved to be correct they would earn cation preparatory to making a decisive Jreaking with feminism and drawing a hall. As they left, Reissner observed the right to gloat over the socialists­ revolutionary commitment. ::lass line. It was evident from her that the SL's Bolshevik practice of and vice-versa~but in the meantime The remaining speakers (with the 'emarks that she was in agreement preSt)

12 WORKERS VANGUARD That, of course, is aperfect description have shown above, this sharp distinction international, for policies of intransi­ Continued from page 9 of the Brotherhood Caucus leadership, is a hoax, since the OL has for all gent proletarian internationalism to And no one can deny that they received practical purposes adopted the same spread socialist revolution throughout a little help from their Maoist friends line as the more consistent RU in the world. Instead the agents of the in riding into office on a wave of rank­ tailing after reformist labor bureau­ Peking bureaucracy must follow a OCTOBER and-file militancy! The RU may, like the crats' black nationalists and just about strategy of peaceful coexistence, fun­ OL after the Mead strike defeat, some any other popular movements or lead­ damentally identical to that of the apolo­ day make apretense of "self~criticism" ers that present themselves. gists of the Kremlin, not simply in LEAGUE for supporting the Brotherhood, But the Rather than engaging in obscure the case of the tinpot despots of Ceylon, reaucracy as possible, while the RU fact remains that at the crucial point semi-polemical shadow-boxing over Indonesia or Pakistan, but even toward the arch-imperialist U,S, bourgeoisie. is making a mini~left turn by suddenly these Stalinist policies led the RU to issues whose only purpose is to mask discovering the danger of "uncritically" capitulate to the same "Triple-O's" the basic cliquist appetites dividing the From the failure to fight feminism supporting out-bureaucrats, RU leader denounced in the abstract months later equally cynical, equally reformist RU by advanCing any but the most minimal Bob Avakian could thus remark in a in their press, and OL leaderships, those struggling reform demands in the struggle for recent speech: to crystallize a revolutionary vanguard women's liberation to the iailure to fight Right-Maoist Fusion? party must grasp the fact that the U,S, for a class-struggle opposition to the ftWe've also seen a number of caucuses Maoists' class collaboration, like their pro~capitalist bureaucracy of the un­ that have developed around the spon­ Earlier this year there were rumors repeated capitulation to the reformists, ions to the a polo g i e s for Mao/ taneous struggle of the workers, but the Brezhnev's various "deals" with sec­ leaders of these things often have of impending fusion of the RU and OL; is simply the expression of their Sta­ degenerated into opportunism-not be­ however, during the summer the two linist poliCies. A real understanding of tions of the imperialist bourgeoisie, cause they started off dishonest, but right~Maoist organizations appeared such betrayals as the support to the Stalinism stands directly counterposed because they don't have a broader po­ to be moving apart for reasons that Brotherhood Caucus at Fremont GM or to the interests of the world prole­ litical perspective. have not been explained, As a prin~ the capitulation to the SCLC in the Mead tariaL In contrast, the Trotskyist pro­ ft And we have to beware of what we in cipled-sounding cover for this petty strike can be gained only by under­ gram of independence of the working the Revolutionary Union call the 'Triple maneuvering the RU is now claiming standing the origin of the far more class from the capitalists and their 0' s' in the unions-that is, the 'Oppor­ that its strategy of building the united costly capitulation by the Indonesian agents stands revealed as not merely tunists Out of Office,' These people front (in reality a strategiC popular­ the direct continuation of the Marxist­ within the unions who are looking for Maoist CP to Sukarno, which prepared a way to get into union positions, and front-from-below) is "diametrically the way for the massacre of 500,000 Leninist tradition but as in fact the they feel that rank and file militancy opposed to the [OL J line that says that Communists in 1965. The Stalinist only program which can rescue mankind is the way to ride their way in, , , , " the central task is party building"." doctrine of "socialism in one country" from the horrors of nuclear war and -Revolution, September 1973 (Revolution, September 1973), As we denies the need for a revolutionary barbarism, _

ghetto youth how the Workers League Continued from page 3 hailed the 1971 New York City police strike. Perhaps oppOSitionists in the IASI[ TROTSKYiSm SWP / YSA would be interested to hear 330 40th Street • Nov. 12 The Party WLers publicly defend their sometime Oakland, Calif. line that "the road to the American • Nov. 19 The Degeneration of the Russian Jack Tar Hotel 7:00 p.m. working class" is through the rotten, Revolution its meetings, it criticizes the Stalinists reformist YSA, Rank-and-file union • Nov. 26 Permanent Revolution vs. Socialism and their S WP partners (Bulletin, 26 militants, likewise, would no doubt be in One Country October) for throwing the SL out of a interested in hearing Wohlforth's fake • Dec. 3 United Front vs. Popular Front forum on Chile, recently heldin Cleve­ dialectics explain how calling on the • Dec. 10 The Founding of the Fourth International land, featuring liberal academic apol­ arch-reactionary cold·,warrior George for information call: ogists for the Chilean popular fronL • Dec. 17 The Struggle for the Fourth International ("I've never walked a picket line") (415) 653-4668 The WL supporter present at the meet­ Meany to form a labor party can advance in the Post War Era ing, however, failed to criticize the the class struggle, With positions like Chilean CP /SP pOlicies and further­ these it is no wonder that Wohlforth more did nothing to fight the exclUSion refuses to debate the SL, Only once in of the SL, the last seven years has the WL dared to Continued from page 6 debate the SL on an equal-time basis, Political Bandits in Los Angeles (see WV No. 22, 8 June 1973). The Spartacist League in ten d s The 30 October Bulletin article con­ Harvester Strike to con tin u e exposing these fake­ cludes with a hardly veiled threat: "The Trotskyist poseurs who are afraid to actions of the Spartacist League are ted to pursuing the class struggle. for breaking the unions politically from defend their own past political pOSitions anti-communist in character and are As syndicalists opposed to struggling this commitment to the preservation of and even their current line before open provocations. This is why the for the leadership of the unions, Work­ the system can only serve to regen­ opponents. We will point out that the Spartacist League is barred from all ers Voice in practice falls prey to erate confidence in the fundamentally Stalinist organizational practice of ex-' our public meetings." The facts are just reformism and is thus incapable of pro­ insufficient program of simple trade cl\lding opponent tendencies from meet­ the opposite. It is the WL's anti­ viding an alternative to that of Roth unionism. Roth, while he continues to ings otherwise open to the public is Leninist practice of excluding oppo­ and TUAD/CP. mouth a militant line, offers no real necessary only for groups who have nents from public meetings which de­ alternative to Woodcock on the critical something to hide. Let Wohlforth defend nies the p r inc i p 1 e of workers democ­ The United National Caucus (UNC), issues and thus merely perpetuates now his earlier praise of Huey New­ racy and is responsible for the SL' s an op po r tun i s t grab-bag of bureau­ the bureaucracy in which he himself ton as a g rea t dialectician while picketing. Such Protest, including the cratic hopefuls s u c h as Roth and is trapped. Newton is now defending black capital­ t act i c of picketing exclusionist meet­ Jordan Sims (Local 961, DetrOit) A class-struggle opposition in the ism, the black church and the Demo­ ings, is not anti-communist, but a de­ has flickered into some renewed ac­ UPoW can and must be built, but not cratic Party, Let him explain to the fense of communist prinCiples, _ tivity with the contract betrayals. The with the apolitical and tailist methods UNC is activated by its bureaucratic of "radicals" such as Workers Voice leaders only when they feel it serves and the: International SOCialists, both their purposes, not when it gets in the of which caved in to bureaucrats of the wayo Thus neither Sims, a UNC co­ Roth/Sims ilk during the last elec­ chairman, nor Roth, who merely sup­ tions (see WV No. 25, 20 July 1973), ports it occaSionally, raised it or its Militant caucuses must be based on a alleged "program" during their recent full political program leading to strug­ successful campaigns for local presi­ gle against the system, including UA VJ­ dencieso It is the fake leftists such as wide mass strikes; a shorter workweek the International Socialists who try to at no loss in pay ("30 for 40") with give the UNC a facade of legitimacy full cost-of-living protection; strikes as a "radical" grouping to fool would­ against the wars and foreign adventures be oppOSitionists looking for a serious of imperialism as well as against lay­ group. Thus UNC leaflets appearing offs, p 1 ant closures, etc.; struggle at Melrose Park have no alternative to against all forms of racial and sexual Roth's reformism, despite the supposed discrimination; proletarian in t e r na­ "radica lism" of their authors, One such tionalist opposition to protectionism leaflet on the Chrysler settlement was in trade war; workers control of pro­ completely apolitical, failing even to duction at all levels; expropriation of call for UAW-wide solidarityo Instead, major industries; and a workers party it merely urges, ", 0 • let's put Har­ based on the trade unions, to break the vester workers back out in front of grip of the two capitalist parties and SL supporters picket WL exclusionism in Los Angeles, March 1973. WV FHOTO the Big 3 by voting down the contract." fight for a workers government. Simple trade unionism, without the struggle For a Class-Struggle Union for these goals of the working class as ------Forum Leadership a whole, is merely a struggle for the illusion of "partnership" in capitalist Simple, militant trade un ion ism exploitation, Militant caucuses based Program for Power: The UAW Contract and the based on cheap "fight the bosses" on a full working-class program are rhetoric, such as represented by Roth an expression in the unions of the International Working-Class Struggle and his "leftist" supporters, is not struggle to emancipate the working enough to replace Woodcock's bureau­ class and all the oppressed. Pond the cratic class collaborationism. Merging fight to replace the present sellout Speaker: GENE GOLDENFELD P lace to be announced ever more closely with the bourgeois union bur e a uc ra c y with a class­ SL Central Committee For information call: state apparatus, reformist union lead­ struggle leadership is a crUCial and (415) 653-4668 Sunday November 18 - 7:30 p.m. erships have become a central prop of necessary part of the struggle to build the entire capitalist system in the the revolutionary van g u a r d party, SAN FRANCISCO imperialist period. Fake leftists and to which the Spartacist League is militants who lack a complete program dedicated. _

9 NOVEMBER 1973 13 left-talking bureaucrats to form a la­ that socialists should support a con­ Continued from page 1 bor party in a period of mass upsurge gressional move to impeach the Continued from page 7 when their power could be easily shat­ president (WV No. 31, 26 October). tered by an awakened rank and file,) But this is different from a campaign DumpNixon! calling for his impeachment. In fact, Watergate and the Workers the call for impeachment is counter­ School Board Movement posed to the call for new elections, in its press to detailing "Watergate since the impeachment process accepts crimes and corruption" hardly men­ We are presently in a situation in the structural framework of the present vs. Fuentes tions the labor bureaucracy and only which the ostensibly socialist left can bonapartist Constitution, vVe seek, provlslOns of the decentralization law. inadvertently slips in vague references respond only in an essentially propa­ rather, to remove this criminal in a The "Fleischmann Commission Report to a labor party. This is hardly sur­ gandistic manner to the Watergate cri­ manner which to the maximum extent on the Quality, Cost and Financing of prising considering its years'-old Sis, indicating the main tasks ahead and disorganizes the bourgeois state and Elementary and Secondary Education in practice of uncritically tailing after the means of accomplishing them, Far organizes the proletariat as a class New York State" released last fall liberal bureaucrats who will make an from ignoring questions of bourgeois in struggle for a workers government. s u g g est s that community districts occasional antiwar press statement democratic rights, we must utilize the A class-conscious labor leadership should run their schools with the power and its refusal to permit its members opportunities provided by the revela­ would organize a general strike to to hire and fire personnel, determine to organize anti-bureaucratic caucuses tions about Nixon's illegal, Gestapo­ force new elections, an end to the wages and decide curriculum, vesting in the unions, like methods to press for full disclosure wage freeze and cessation of V.S. aid great power in school principals. De­ The fake-Trotskyist political ban­ of the Watergate events, for the elim­ to Israel in the current Near East war. spite the miserable condition of the dits of the Workers League, on the ination of the secret political police It is crucial to forge a working­ schools and its own findings on the other hand, continue their time­ (FBI and CIA), for the abolition of the class political alternative to the rule high correlation of academic failure to honored policy of calling on the bu­ standing army and its officer corps of the two capitalist parties. This is poverty, the Commission recommends reaucracy to make the revolution, and for immediate presidential elec­ embodied in the propaganda demand of that the teachers should be held ac­ thereby capitulating to the illusions of tions. Given the need of the leading im­ a workers party based on the unions. countable for students' test scores militant trade unionists as to the nature perialist power for a "strong state," in­ The principal means for working toward with pay raises and continuing employ­ of their present leadership. The cur­ sulated from the pressures ofthe shift­ the formation of such a party remains ment dependent on this. Class sizes rent WL tactic (amid hysterical an­ ing domestic political balance of for­ the struggle to build caucuses in the would be raised from 20 to 22 stUdents nouncements that Nixon has abolished ces, the defense of democratic rights, trade unions based on the transitional (taking into account the use of non­ the executive branch of government and even for the bourgeoisie, has a power­ program (see "The Only Choice: Build teaching personnel the actual class established a one-man dictatorship), is ful thrust against the stability of capi­ a Workers Party!" WV No. 13, No­ size in New York City schools is 30- to call on the Meany bureaucracy to talist rule-which is why Congress has vember 1972). 35 students). call a "Congress of Labor" to build a been so hesitant to do anything about And while the slogan of a workers The Commission suggests four new labor party. At a time when there is no Nixon, even when it is itself the object party based on the unions is a key tac­ categories of teachers: interns, class­ powerful opposition to the pro-capital­ of his attacks, tic in the struggle to break the strangle­ room teachers, special teachers and ist policies of the existing union leader­ The call for impeachment is another hold of the reactionary labor bureauc­ master teachers. Interns would be ship, such a program can only mean democratic demand of obvious impor­ racy, it must not be confused with the newly-graduated teachers who would calling for a reactionary, anti-com­ tance at the present time, When this struggle to build the Trotskyist van­ be required to teach for two years with munist "labor party" dominated by the guard party which is at all times our demand was repeatedly raised by the full responsibilities at below-union­ same Meanyite filth. CP and WL during last May~June, we strategic orientation andprincipal task, level wages. If performance (based on In the absence of mass reformist pointed out that in the absence of a Thus if the Trotskyist vanguard were "accountability" schemes) was held workers parties in the V,S, (unlike mass upsurge of the working class, a successful in winning leadership of an satisfactory, the intern would then be­ France, Britain, Germany, Italy, etc.), campaign for impeachment expressed embryonic mass labor party, basing it­ come a classroom teacher. But if the the struggle to build a labor party the desire for another bourgeois ruler self on the trC>!1sitional program of locally controlled school system chose based on the unions is a key tactic in and in effect to restabilize bourgeois working-class independence from the not to rehire the intern, it would sim­ breaking the workers from the two democracy (WV No. 22, 8 June). As the bourgeoisie and successfully smashing ply hire another, ready to begin his capitalist parties and a necessary com­ bourgeoisie has itself moved hesi­ the bureaucracy, it would immediately two-year stint at reduced wages. The plement to the struggle within the unions tatingly toward removing Nixon, we in­ seek to transform the labor party move­ plan provides for the expanded use of against the pro-capitalist Meany­ dicated in August and again following ment into a Leninist vanguard party, the paraprofeSSionals, volunteers and even Woodcock bureaucracy. The call for a necessary instrument for socialist Nixon's dramatic firing of Special students in the classroom. The report workers party" serves to emphasize the Watergate Prosecutor Cox last month, revolution. _ also found teacher pensions "unaccept­ essentially political character of the a.bly high." struggle in the unions. The goal is not Fuentes supports the state's decen­ to create militant shop-floor commit­ tralization schemes and charged that tees (although these may appear as the UFT precipitated the recent events mass formations at a certain point in in District 1 to discredit decentraliza­ the struggle), which in themselves tion at a time when the state legisla­ represent nothing more than simple Sub-Drive Success! ture is considering changes in the trade unionism, but to achieve a revo­ decentralization law. lutionary, communist leadership of the The success of the just concluded of plants and campuses where the SL The UFT condemns the Fleishmann organized workers movemenL Workers Vanguard subscription drive press had never previously been avail­ report, pOinting out that its support for We do not seek a reformist workers is a tribute to the revolutionary deter­ able, resulting in doubled and tripled community-control forces is simply a party in the firm grip of the present mination and hard work of the cadres sales of individual copies in virtually cover for vicious union-busting. But parasitic misleaders of labor. Rather of the Spartacist League/Revolutionary every local area. ironically, the Shanker leadership, we call for a workers party based on Communist Youth. By the conclUSion On behalf of the SL 'RCY, the WV which campaigned for the present Dis­ the transitional program, i.e., tobreak of the six-week sub drive, which ended Editorial Board would like to thank the trict 1 school board on a get-Fuentes with capitalism in favor of representing November 1, every area had over­ members and supporters whose hard program, accomplished exactly the op­ the historical interests of the working fulfilled its quota. The Editorial Board work made the sub drive a success and posite of what it intended. The net re­ classo Thus, in contrast to the Workers of WV wishes to extend special thanks to welcome our new readers. sult has been to generate anti-unionism, League, we do not call on the arch­ to the Buffalo local organization (which lining up the Lower East Side behind reactionary Meany bureaucracy to cre­ triply fulfilled its quota) and to the Buf­ Percent Fuentes. ate a labor party in its own image. falo sub drive coordinator, as well as Quota Sold of Quota Nor do we call for a workers party to the individual comrades. The indi­ Buffalo 100 318 318CC Not Cops-But Worker-Teacher­ based on the rank and 111e, a slogan vidual leader in sub drive points is Detroit which seeks to "solve" the problem Comrade David C. of Buffalo, with 69 120 294 245CC Student Control of the Schools Chicago of the bureaucracy by ignoring the points; the runner up, with 64 points, 90 218 242'0 187c~ New York City schools can hardly existing mass workers organizations, is Susan S. of Chicago. Boston 140 262 Bay Area be called schools at all, but are largely the unions, under its control. Instead, In addition to expanding the regular 210 377 180'0 Cleveland 173CC day-time prisons whose conditions trap we demand "dump the bureaucrats, rea de r s hip of Harkers Vanguard, 100 173 New York- 421 140CO both students and teachers in a debili­ for a workers party based on the Young SpartacHs and Women and Rev­ 300 Los Angeles 90 122 136CO tating atmosphere of fear, crime and unions." This expresses the correct olution, the sub drive included re­ At Large 50 64 128'0 racial oppression. The number of as­ relation of the fight for a labor party gional tra il-blazing tours to many cities saults on teachers rose to 634 in 1972 as a tactic to break the stranglehold in the U.S. and Canada. The drive in­ ~VV Total 1200 2249 187CC and assaults on pupils to 511. Despite of the bureaucracy over the organized troduced to new readers at dozens contemptible playing on the popular labor movement. (This does not pre­ image of "black crime" by UFT lead­ clude the tactic of calling on reformist ers, violence and crime in the schools is a serious problem. Its main victims ------are, in fact, the oppressed students. Ac­ Rey Forum cording to Board of Education statis­ tics, stUdents are the most frequent victims of robberies, shakedowns and WfJRI(ERI assaults by strangers entering school buildings. Safer schools would benefit Building a Lenini st everybody. Also, demands to improve teachers' working conditions like smaller class Youth Movement Size, new schools and better equipment "MIII'RIJName ______are the same as demands for better Speaker: LIBBY SCHAEFER education for students. Yet instead of a RCY National Secretary Address ______program to unite students and teachers, the UFT has only one solution: more Friday November 9 7:30 p.m. City/ State/ Zip, ______32 cops. Last year Shanker criticized the Stiles Hall board's planned allocation of $6 mil­ Bancroft and Dana o Enclosed is $3 for 24 issues lion to hire more guards as insufficient Berkeley includes SPARTACIST o Enclosed is $1 for 8 issues and called for a minimum of 4,000 to 5,000 aides merely to regulate the flow Donation BERKELEY order from/pay to: Spartacist Publishing Co./Box 1377, GPO/NY,NY 10001 of outsiders. Bringing the cops into the schools, 14 WORKERS VANGUARD turning the schools into armed camps, Although the lineup of forces in We fully support their demands: union-dump the Shanker bureaucracy, only increases racial hostility. A class­ District 1 is baSically the same as "-The reversal of the suspension of for a class-struggle leadership of the struggle union leadership would instead that in Ocean Hill-Brownsville in 1968, Fuentes ... UFT! raise demands that could really unite the current dispute is essentially dif­ "-Removal of the present board, which Despite the tactical centrality of teachers and students around a program ferent. In 1968 the "community con­ does not represent the parents of the labor unions as the only existing the community and was ill ega 11 y of worker-teacher-student control of trol" demonstration school board, the elected.•.• mass organizations of the class, Marx­ the schools which could easily solve parents, the New Left, the Communist "The parents are fighting for the edu­ ists do n:. myopically limit their focus the problem of violence and crime in Party and the ex-TrotSkyist S WP were cational survival of their children and to the struggle in an arena which rep­ the schools through joint efforts of the lined up behind the bourgeOisie in a must be fully supported by teachers resents a minority and relatively priv­ union and students. In the process, campaign to smash the teachers' union. who are interested in the children.' ileged section of the working class. A these two forces could be united against The UFT in District 1 is not under -Daily World, 24 October revolutionary vanguard party, together the school administrations ("commu­ direct attack except in the sense that, As long as the just aspirations of with its youth section, would fight for nity" and city-wide), who are respon­ given a shift in the balance of forces, the doubly oppressed minority popu­ a working-class program in all arenas sible for the present ghastly conditions Fuentes would undoubtedly like to do lations are channeled into the dead­ of the oppressed in order to win poli­ in the schools, and the bourgeois poli­ away with the UFT. end "solutions" of ethn~c pOlitics, the tical hegemony of the entire class as ticians who foster racial antagonisms Both sides in the fight demonstrate bourgeoisie will be guaranteed the con­ a prerequisite to the seizure of power. as the lifeblood of their careers. depravity to a s i mil a r extent. In tinued racial division of the working As against the di visi ve and impotent fact it is hard to tell w h e the r the class and ready pools of unskilled, s c hem e s of "community control," "Get Fuentes" board/UFT/ JDL coalition at anyone unemployed workers. ThiS is the logical Marxists must seek to polarize the In its drive to oust Fuentes and his moment is being more racist than the consequence of the nationalist and existing struggles on class rather than supporters the UFT-backed s c h 0 0 1 Fuentes/SWP /poverty buzzards gang ghetto-particularist politics pushed by racial lines by calling for worker­ board has undertaken a series of heavy­ is being anti-union. Class-conscious the CP, SWP, El Comite, the PRRWO stUdent-teacher control of the schools. handed "junta-style" maneuvers guar­ workers must give no support to either and other fake-lefts in the District 1 Such a program provides the only real anteed to win the hatred of practically side! We stand against the wilfully dispute. "Community control" repre­ possibility of fig;.cing crime and vio­ everybody. Its first act since taking undemocratic operating procedures of sents only the self-administration of lence in the schools, and must be com­ power in May was to put forward a the school board, oppose all cutbacks, poverty, the isolation of the most op­ bined wEll struggle against racial abuse motion to move the district office out oppose the election rigging which no pressed sections of the proletariat in and discrimination, and for educational of the Puerto Rican neighborhood to a doubt went on, but in no way can this economically depressed pockets and improvements (smaller classes and Jewish one. The board was forced to indicate support for the Fuentes slate. the complete dependence of these op­ work loads; training and hiring, under back down after a wild melee broke Despite the anti-democratic way the pressed sections on liberal politicians union control, of more teachers;bi­ out at the July meeting between the board is going after Fuentes, his hiring and occasional crumbs from the bour­ and tri-lingual courses of instruction parents, the board, the cops and the as well as his firing is a routine con­ geoisie. Rather than a fight over who where linguistic minorities constitute Jewish Defense League. Next the board sequence of a shift in political machines a significant percentage of the I?tudent threatened to cut back the budget by in the manner in which administrators RCY CLASS SERIES population; etc.) which could transform $1-1/2 million which would have vir­ in bourgeois politics tend to come and the schools from day-time prisons tually eliminated all the staff jobs and go. In fact, the UFT argues that the into instruments for the cultural eman­ special programs, but backed down be­ only reason that Fuentes is superin­ What is Spartacist? Cipation of the working class. cause many of the coordinators were in tendent now is because the outgOing To hope that such a program could various municipal unions. board bureaucratically extended his An introduction to revolutionary succeed under capitalism is ludicrous. The school-board rules call for contract by two years to ensure one of Trotskyism, and to the unique con­ The schools in urban ghettoes are board meetings to be public, a regula­ its supporters' remaining in power. tributions of the Spartacist League vastly inferior not because of inad­ tion which the new board observes in The support for Fuentes comes from in carrying it forward today. vertent neglect, but because of the gross bureaucratic fashion by refusing contradictory desires. On the one hand real need of the bourgeOisie for an to call on anyone from the floor. One it reflects the appetites of a petty­ Alternate Sundays 6:00 p.m, industrial reserve army of uneducated, member said the board couldn't call bourgeois layer within the oppressed beginning November 4 unskilled workers. Thus the struggle on the opposition because it would have strata-the "poverty pimps" and hus­ against the existing misleaders of the been "murdered" by the audience if it tlers, who look to the preservation unions and 'minority populations, and had. This is true. The board is so and extension of the "special minority Los Angeles for worker-teacher-student control of unpopular that to carry out its last programs" as tickets to a few comfort­ the schools, must be directly linked public meeting on October 16 it had to able jobs. On the other, it reflects in for location and information call: (213) 467-6855 to the political struggle to build a meet in the glass-walled projection a distorted way the legitimate aspira- revolutionary vanguard party uniting booth in the school auditorium, further tions of the population for the decent will receive a handful of administrative the entire working class and all the protected from the parents by a line of education, bilingual teaching and spe­ patronage positions, a struggle for oppressed. As the most advanced ele­ cops! At this meeting the board fili­ cial training programs necessary to working-class power is required. ments of the most exploited and op­ bustered until midnight, then took up an enable blacks and Puerto Ricans to The Shanker-style union bureauc­ pressed sectors of the working class, unannounced agenda point and voted to integrate into American SOCiety. young militants among Puerto Rican, suspend Fuentes on 31 r-harges of in­ racies and Fuentes-style ethnic patronage politicians are today princi­ black and other minorities have a vital subordination, incompett:;f,cy and soft­ Community Control or Class pal instruments by which the capitalists role to play in the construction of this ness on anti-Semitism. party. The attempt to suspend Fuentes Struggle ensure the continued dominance of false consciousness among the workers and In the U.S. today a key task is to provoked a six-day boycott which was Along with the Maoists (RU) and about 60 percent successful throughout oppressed as to their true interests. struggle to build a workers party based black and Puerto Rican nationalists The first demand of socialists must be on the trade unions, as an integral the district. The boycott was called off (EI Comite and the PRRWO), the So­ after Fuentes' supporters succeeded in the ousLng of these agents of the bour­ part of the fight against the bureau­ cialist Workers Party and Communist geOisie and the transformation of the cratic misleaders of the unions. To obtaining a temporary restraining or­ Party strive to further the illusion that der against his suspension, pending unions from the chief means of dis­ carry the class struggle forward, such "community participation" in school ciplining the work force in the interests a party must break sharply with capi­ decision on a suit filed in federal court affairs is sufficient to reform the by the NAACP and the SWP-inspired of the capitalists into the instruments talist pOlitics and adopt a transitional system. The SWP not only uncritically of a class-struggle program of the program in the interests of all the and dominated Committee for Demo­ supported Fuentes but actively cam­ cratic Election Laws (CoDel) to de­ entire working class, including its workers and oppressed. At the same paigned to put him in office. Having specially oppressed ethnic/raCial mi­ time, the struggle to unite all the op­ clare the May elections illegal. The lost NP AC to the Vietnam "peace suit charges that campaign literature norities: Fight the special oppression pressed around the leadership of the treaty" and WONAAC after the Supreme of minorities-no budget cuts-for a organized and class-conscious prole­ was not available in Spanish and Chi­ Court's abortion ruling, the SNP is nese, and that the polling places were shorter workweek at no loss in pay to tariat would have as a direct conse­ currently building an even more re­ smash unemployment! Turn the unions quence the elimination forever of the not properly equipped and were changed formist (if that is possible!) mini­ at the last minute. into instruments of working-class inde­ racialist fakers of the Fuentes ilk and popular-front group, the Committee pendence: unconditional defense of the the i r reformist/racist!pro-capitalist for Democratic Election Laws, whose unions against the employers and bour­ counterparts in the union bureaucra­ sole function in District 1 is to tail geois state-organize all school work­ cies. Not community control but work­ WfJliltEIiS after Fuentes' opportunism. ers into a single educational workers ers power!. The SWP seeks to build CoDel on VANfifJAli1J two issues only: rescind Fuentes' sus­ pension and declare the board elections illegal. After pointing out that even Marxist .Working-Class Bi-weekly prominent community-control advocate of the Spartacist league Kenneth Clark opposes Rockefeller's ~~rn~©oo~rnl~ Young latest schemes, without a single word of criticism the 27 April 1973 Militant Editorial Board: printed the following statement by Fu­ Liz Gordon (chairman) Jan Norden (managing editor) entes on decentralization: "To rej ect ChriS Knox (labor editor) it now would be like criticizing a baby Karen Allen (production manager) at six months for not being able to run. Sp,,!~~~~~~, But with the right encouragement, and youth section of the Spartacist League Joseph Seymour enough time, the baby will mature." Circulation Manager: Anne Kelley The SWP thus gives back-handed sup­ port to the union-busting Fleischmann Formerly the Rey NEWSLETTER West Coast Editor: Mark Small New England Editor: George Foster report, which comes as no surprise from these scabs of the 1968 teachers' The RCY has changed the name of its press in accordance with its stabilization Southern Editor: Joe Vetter as a regular bi-monthly paper, reflecting the RCY's growth and increaSing in­ Midwest Editor: David Reynolds strike and long-time touters of com­ munity control. fluence as a vital, interventionist Leninist youth movement. In taking the name The position of the Com m u n i s t Young Spartacus, the RCY links itself to the revolutionary traditions of the Published by the Spartacist Spartacus youth League, youth group of the early U.S. Trotskyist opposition. Publishing Company, Box 1377, Party-supported Teachers Action Cau­ Name ______G. P. 0., New York, N. Y. 10001. cus in the UFT is indistinguishable Telephone: 925-8234. from the SWP' s, i.e., wholehearted sup­ Address ______port to Fuentes and the community $1 control forces. A resolution adopted by City /State/Zip______Opinions expressed in signed 6 ISSUES articles or letters do not neces­ TAC stated: sarily express the editorial "The Teachers Action Caucus (TAC) Make payable/mail to: RCY Newsletter Publishing Company viewpoint. whole-heartedly supports the parent Box 454, Cooper Station, New York, N.Y. 10003 boycott of the schools of District 1.

9 NOVEMBER 1973 15 W'ftI(EftS"""'ftlJ

accepts Spartacist' s defense of the WL's right to sell. At the same time, in Condemning RU Attacks on Left Salesmen at Plant Gate ... a futile attempt to justify its cowardly exclusion of SL supporters from meet­ ings advertised as public, it conducts a vicious, lying slander campaign against the SL, in its maliciousness stooping even to deliberate fabrication of the Fremont UAW Upholds charge that the SL was responsible for the calling of the cops to break up a WL meeting (Bulletin, 30 October and 2 November).

Official Goon Squads Workers Democracy! It was to smash militant opposition to their sellout, class-collaborationist A sharp reply has been made by an through denouncing Whipple as a racist pol i c i e s-which res u It e d in the important Local of the United Auto for having fired a black staff member! "pattern~setting" Chrysler betrayal­ Workers to the recent wave of physical UAW LOCAL 1364 that Woodcock and Co, initiated the wave assaults on left-wing paper salesmen RU Atrocities: "Kick Ass" of goon-squad attacks. After a series outside auto plants. By an overwhelming RESOLUTION of wildcat strikes in August, one month vote, against only isolated opposition, After Whipple finally escaped from before the contract expiration, the Local 1364 (Fremont, California GM) hostile workers' questions, which No member of this union leadership formed a 1,000-member defended the right of all "labor­ detained him longer than he would shall attempt to prevent the goon squad of local officials in Detroit socialist" groups to sell and distribute have wished, the question of attacks on sales or distribution outside to break the Mack Avenue strike and to literature at the plant. The motion was paper salesmen was brought up in con­ beat up left-wing paper salesmen, A raised by rank-and-file militants at the nection with an incident in September the plant of the I iterature of special denunciation of reds was pub­ regular monthly meeting on October 28 when, according to the Bulletin (24 Sep­ the various labor- social ist lished in UA W Solidarity, and similar in response to assaults by the Maoist tember) RU supporters assaulted its groups, since this violates local goon squads began to spring up Revolutionary Union 'RU) on salesmen salesmen with tire irons and other all over the country, It was in this con­ of socialist newspapers at the Fremont lethal weapons. But this was just the the basic traditions of this text that on 27 September Workers Van­ plant. Iforkers Vanguard salesmen had latest in a long series of such attacks. union of free and open dis~ guard salesmen were brutally assaulted been attacked 0 n June 12, while the Impelled by the basest opportunism, the cussion within the labor by a standing 18-man goon squad out­ latest instance of the RU's Stalinist RU has repeatedly attempted to demon­ movement. side the Chevrolet plant in Parma, Ohio gangsterism was an assault on sales­ strate its fealty to one or another left­ -the SL being the fourth group to be so men of Workers League's BHlletin. The ist emanation from the trade-union bu­ -October 28, 1973 attacked in two weeks (see WV No, 30, motion is clearly counterposed to the reaucracy (the Brotherhood, Cesar 12 October). entire Woodcock bureaucracy, which Chavez and their likes) by practiCing Aping the bureaucracy's violence has been encouraging a wave of goon­ physical gangsterism on such prin­ work at the time of the incident then against the left, the RU fronts for re­ squad attacks on left-wing paper sales­ cipled opponents as dare to criticize its got up to denounce the RU story as a formism by denouncing the bureauc­ men in an attempt to intimidate the bureaucratic allies or for that matter lie, saying that the Bulletin salesmen racy's worst enemies-those who criti­ membership and silence criticism dur­ seem in any fashion to pose a political were not interfering with collections, cize class collaboration and betrayal­ ing the contract period. threat. Thus last June; supporters of the but had kept their distance, She said as "antie>union" 0 u t sid e r s with no Il V reporters verified the motion Bay Area Worker, a reformist local that she had overheard an RU sup­ legitimate voice in the labor movement, with Shop Chairman Earlie Mays and paper supported by the RU, attacked porter making threats, whereupon she That the RU fails to distinguish between rec ei ved a copy of it from the local's Workers Vangtwrd salesmen. outside had warned him against any assault, the Marxism of Workers Vang1iilrd and recording secretary, According to the plant. When the SL mobilized to pro­ She then pointed out that although she the hypocritical "reformist garbage" of workers interviewed by Workers tect its salesmen, attacks on them considered the Bulletin to be "reform­ the Bulletin is immaterial: Woodcock, Vangiwrd, an amendment made by ceased, though salesmen of the fake­ ist garbage," no 0 n e had the right Chavez and Co. seek to label all their defenders of the RU, to the ef­ Trotskyist Bulletin remained targets, to deprive her of the right to buy opponents illegitimate "outsiders," By fect that "if these groups interfere the Workers League's own established it. such actions the RU is however digging with union business they will be pre­ opportunism and tail-ending of trade­ Several additional members of the its own grave, since such McCarthyite vented from their sales and distribu­ union bureaucrats notwithstanding. local also spoke in favor of the motion, treatment of reds as illeg'itimate out­ tions," failed for lack of a second. The After the September incident the SL The one local supporter of the Trade siders weakens the position of all mili­ passage of the motion represented a informed the RU that further attacks Union All ian c e for a Labor Party tants and oppositionists in the unions, split among supporters of the Brother­ on Workers League salesmen would be (TUALP), the reformist trade-union leaving the field clear for a general hood Caucus, since the handful of RU treated as attacks on the SL Despite grouping backed by the Workers purge of both real and pretended com­ supporters broke from the leaders of lack of cooperation from Bulletin sales­ League, chimed in hypocritically to munists. To bureaucrats like Chavez the Brotherhood to oppose the motion. men, the SL mobilized to protect their support the motion~ in defense of the and Mays the RU is useful so long as The RU has in the past been uncritical next sale, appearing at the plant with a rights of all labor-socialist groups~ it is capable of Siphoning off rank-and­ in its support for the Brotherhood, large sign reading "Workers Vangiiard despite the exclusionism and physical file militancy, but as a potential pole which emerged victorious in the last Defends Bulletin's Right To Sell" (see gangsterism practiced by the Workers of criticism and opposition it will be local elections. WV No. 30, 12 October 1973), This League/TUALP against their opponents discarded as soon as it is nO longer The meeting was attended by UA W demonstrated defense of the principle on the lefL Despite an occasional pre­ needed. Already the RU has been the Western Regional Director Jerry Whip­ of the right of all tendencies to exist tense to principle in its press in prac­ victim of the same bureaucratic goon ple, whose introduction at the outset and freely propagate their views with­ tice the WL supports only its own right squads (such as the Parma, Ohio gang) of the meeting occasioned a chorus of in the labor movement did not go un­ to existence. Thus in the case of the which have attacked other radicalso boos and hisses, His attempts to defend noticed by either the RU or the work­ Workers Vangiwrd salesmen beaten in It is indicative that in the discussion the recently-signed Chrysler and Ford ers entering the plant. Thus when the Parma, OhiO, the WL failed to respond of the motion Mays at first withheld contracts, which "set the pattern" for issue came up at the October meet­ to the Spartacist League's call for a support on just this pretext that only what the Woodcock gang is now trying ing, the defenders of the RU were united-front picket of UA W SOlidarity "outsiders" were involved, trying ac­ to do to GM workers, only increased totally isolated, Eouse in Detroit. The WL (of course cording to reports to create the im- his unpopularity. Lambasted with criti­ The RU supporters claimed that without acknowledgement in its press) continued on page 12 cism from all sides, Whipple was also the BHlletin salesmen had been inter­ attacked by the local leadership, headed fering with their collections of money by Earlie Mays. The Brotherhood Cau­ for the United Farm Workers union. A Spartacist Local Directory cus has reportedly voiced the intention defender of the RU's actions reportedly of expanding to other locals and is, threatened to "kick ass" if anyone inter­ BERKELEY- LOS ANGELES ...... (213) 467-6855 despite its own do-nothing policies, fered with his performance of "union OAKLAND ... , '0' , ., (415) 653-4668 Box 38053, Wilcox Sta. attempting to build support by using the business." This self-righteous bombast International as a scapegoat. Box 852, Main PoOo Los Angeles, CA 90038 met with boos and catcalls. (Such sanc­ Berkeley, CA 94701 This is the age-old policy of would­ timoniousness is typical of the RU, MILWAUKEE be bureaucrats: attack the incumbents, especially in regard to the UF W where BOSTON .. , ..... , .... (617) 492-3928 Box 5144, Harbor Sta. regardless of program, prinCiple or it functions as the pacifist, sellout Box 188, 1\'1,1. To Sta. Milwaukee, WI 53204 one's own record. Ex- Western Regional Chavez bureaucracy's chief apologist Cambridge, MA 02139 Director Paul Schrade is also report­ on the left. Thus a second RU sup­ BUFFALOo., ...... (716) 837-1854 NEW ORLEANS ..... o. (504) 866-8384 edly attempting to make a comeback by porter reportedly attacked as "anti­ Box 412, Station C Box 51634, Main P.O. New Orleans, LA 70151 getting into the act against Whipple. union" a I~orkevs Vangiwrd leaflet on Buffalo, :\Y 14209 Despite his own clear record of down­ the Farm Workers, which had circu­ CHICAGO, ...... (312)728-2151 NEW yORK ...... (212) 925-2426 the~line support for every traitorous lated widely in the plant. This charge, Box 6471, 1\bin P.O. Box 1377, G.P.O. policy of the Reutherite bureaucracy too, fell on deaf ears, since the SL Clucago, IL 60680 New Yurk, :\Y 10001 (including calling on the cops to crush leaflet had very clearly supported the the militancy of Fremont workers in UFW against the Teamster/grower al­ CLEVELA'\l) .. " '" (211;) (;0ri-4043 SAN DIEGO, ...... (714) 272-2286 the 1970 strike), despite having sabo­ liance, criticizing only the bureauc­ Box 22052, lini\'. CIty SLl. taged the struggle for the shorter work racy's substitution of impotent con­ Cll\'vlalld. OH 44101 San Die'go, CA 92122 week and other demands in the interests sumer boycotts for labor boycotts, self­ DETHOlT ...... (313) 8.,2-4020 SA'\ FRA:\CISCO ...... (415) 653-4668 of black w 0 I' k e r s and unemployed, defense of picket lines and other mili­ Bux lili3:'1., Gt'llt'Lt! P.U. Box 1757 Schrade is now supposedly attempting tant strike policies.) DetrOIt, 1\11 482:12 San Fralll'is('(l, Co\. 94101 to establish his leftist credentials A worker who had been going into

9 NOVEMBER 1973