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Number 101 April 1983 30 cents Defend Vietnam/USSR! US Bases Out! o , I r SpiraHingmass tinemployment and the elections were over, Hawke a plummeting economy routed. the shelved Labor policy to resume LiberaT/Nationlil Party cOalition 'of economic aid 'fb "ViefiiUh,~once'agath Malcolm Fraser in last mOnth's federal promising to "consult" fully with the election. Fraser's anti-red, anti-union US and ASEAN before taking precipi­ scare campaign about Labor's "social­ tous action. Then there is Labor's ist manifesto" hardly corresponded to opposition, to Indonesia's bloody Bob Hawke's program for "national annexation of East Timor, demanding reconciliation" backed up by an ALP­ an end to military aid to Australia's ACfU accord which promised to con­ main ASEAN ally, which the new tinue Fraser's wage freeze. And while Prime Minister denounced as "an the elections were chiefly fought embarrassment" . Meanwhile, joint around domestic questions, centrally Australian-Indonesian naval exercises the state of the economy, Hawke continue. There can be 110 question: wasted no time ,in adjusting Labor Hawke's Labor government, no less policy to the. dictates of the American than the despised Fraser government, alliance and Cold War anti-Sovietism. will be a government of capitalist Even before the election Hawke austerity and Cold War. squashed long-standing Labor policy The Labor Party offered not even to withdraw Australian troops from the minimal reforms to its working class US-led "peacekeeping" force in the base, but a "solution" of chauvinist Sinai which acted as border guards for protectionism, wage cuts and con­ Israel's genocidal invasion of Lebanon. tinued mass unemployment coupled A Begin fan from way back, Hawke with bipartisan support to Reagan's Top: The CIA's top-secret Pine Gap spy station, crucial for the US and Its promised to "consult" with the Zionist anti-Soviet war preparations. To Australian partner's anti-Soviet war alms. Defence of Vietnam, USSR butchers and, no doubt, the US envoys Washington they pledged loyalty to begins In Pine Gap, Diego Garcia and Trlncomalee. Bottom: North Viet­ who armtwisted Fraser into sending ANZUS and no interference with the namese Army troops following the liberation of Saigon In 1975. Vietnam the troops in the first place. As soon as continued on page two was a victory: two, three, many defeats for Imperialism! Free Gallagher! Defend the BlF! Labor Kniles BLF lor Social Contract One week after Fraser called his ill­ the main reason for the court changing ing class action which challenges the a favorite issue for back-stabbing fated snap election the High Court re­ their mind", said Gallagher, simply bosses' courts and laws. Gallagher is craftist bureaucrats. Then Labor fused Norm Gallagher, the Maoist stating the obvious truth that bour­ still in jail under Labor. The more than Premier Cain sent his cops against general ,secretary of the Builders geois "justice" merely reflects the re-· one-year-Iong ruling class campaign to BLF pickets at scissor-lift hire com­ Labourers Federation (BLF), his right lationship of class forces. break the BLF is being continued by panies (the demarcation dispute they to appeal a three-month jail sentence The jailing of Gallagher is an attack Labor as a public demonstration of its were expelled for). Over 80 picketers for "contempt of court". A day later on the entire working class. It should intention to subordinate the unions to were arrested, forcibly photographed, Gallagher was behind bars in Mel­ have been, and still.must be, met by a the capitalist state, with the complicity finger-.printed and refused bail unless bourne's Pentridge jail. His "crime" mobilisation of working class power. ofthe entire trade union bureaucracy. an undertaking was given not to return was the statement that BLF walkouts Th~ imprisonment of the BLF leader Two days after Gallagher was locked to the picket line. Next the em­ had reversed an earlier jail sentence for "contempt of court" is undisguised up, the Victorian Trades Hall Council, boldened building industry bosses for contempt. "I believe that by their union-busting, and sets a dangerous with full support from the CPA/ALP announced that BLF members en­ actions in' demonstrating, in walking precedent for state repression against "lefts", expelled the BLF, ostensibly gaged in a campaign for a 36-hour off jobs ... I believe that that has been anyone advocating any form of work- over a demarcation dispute - always continued on page two

Registered by Australia Post - Publication no NBF0710 The fight for independence from the topped the ballot - considerably less Just compare the 1980s "peace BLF ... capitalist state and to smash its than the CPA, SLL and Socialist movement" to the movement against Arbitr&tion system, for industrial Party (SPA) where they competed.) the Vietnam war. To be sure, the continued from page one unionism to break through divisive Only the pro-Moscow SPA was more heterogenous mass of the Vietnam week and $40 pay rise would be stood craft lines - these questions will be subdued, no less capitulatory to the anti-war movement never broke from down, to be applauded by ACTU head crucial to forging the necessary necessities of "restraint", but fully the bourgeois defeatism and "little Cliff Dolan, who roundly denounced alternative leadership that can in­ aware that a Hawke-led Labor govern­ Australia" nationalism of Whitlam's the BLF for "breaching" the ALP­ deed transform th'e trade unions, in ment will be strongly pro-Reagan. Labor Party. But today we have a Trotsky's words, into "the instru­ "peace movement" which fails even to ACTU "prices and incomes" accord. Drive Out US CIAI Military It could hardly be clearer that even the ments of the revolutionary move­ oppose US imperialism in those areas most elementary defence of the trade ment of the proletariat" . Free Bases! where the Cold War rages hottest - unions· requires a hard struggle Gallagher! Defend the BLF! Down Labor's triumphant return to the especially where Australian imperi­ against the Labor traitors who pres­ with Labor's wage freeze! Break the Canberra treasury benches was pre­ alism is involved as in the Near East, ently "lead" the working class. ALP-ACTU stranglehold! For a class­ pared by continued disavowel over the where the Sinai force represents the last seven years of the 1972-75 first concrete example of US­ When Gallagher was jailed Hawke struggle workers party to fight for a workers government! Whitlam Labor government. The Australian military collaboration said, "The law has run its course", Whitlam government left a legacy of involving troops since Vietnam. and then refused to withdraw the resentment and deep distrust of Labor Labor government as a co-respondent Most telling, the recent demon­ in Washington. Whitlam was an im­ strations on March 27 (Palm Sunday) in the Federal Court's deregistration Labor ... perialist politician par excellence, but proceedings against the union. By in Melbourne and Sydney quite continued from page one from the outset of his government the consciously refused to take a stand knifing the BLF the high priests of links of the Labor lefts, particularly Labor officialdom hope to seal their us military and CIA bases in Aus­ against US bases in Australia, instead tralia, and likewise promised the anti-Vietnam Moratorium leader and raising the slogan, "US bases make sacred "social contract". The ALP­ deputy PM Jim Cairns, to Stalinist or ACTU "prices and incomes" accord is Australian ruling class that ALP Australia a nuclear target" and calling populist-nationalism and its links to CPA-influenced trade unions was seen for "Disarmament East and West". a program for suppressing union as highly dubious by the Nixon admin­ militancy in the context of the worst the trade union bureaucracy could And who are the "Peace Chiefs'" more effectively serve to implement istration, its CIA spooks and their in 1983? None other than Bob Hawke's depression since the 30s and intense Australian ASIO apprentices. The imperialist preparations for anti-Soviet the "sacrifices" necessary to revive ruling Labor Party, which while not profits and exports. And what they mount4in of evidence confirming CIA openly endorsing the demonstrations, war, codifying and deepening the involvement in the ouster of Whitlam already existing ties, principally via promised they intend to deliver. assured their political character. In In these elections the Spartacist in the 1975 constitutional "coup" is Melbourne the march was led by a the ALP, between the trade union tops still growing. But it was Whitlam's and the capitalist state. For the new League refused to call for a vote to donkey, Labor Premier Cain and Labor (see Australasian Spartacist, meddling with CIA operations at the ACTU head Cliff Dolan, who made PM as with the last, it's "free trade super-secret Pine Gap base at Alice unions" in Poland and union-busting no 100, February/March 1983). With clear his support for the ANZUS a soli4 ALP-ACTU stranglehold on Springs that finally brought down the alliance and US bases just prior to the at home. axe. Only now, the election over, are union militancy and Labor running on demo in an interview printed in the the BLF tops organising even the an openly pro-imperialist and anti­ Above all it was Bob Hawke, then Age. In Sydney the "peace festival" mildest protest, appealing· only to working class program, even the most ACTU President, who along with began with a church service in Hyde "freedom of speech" in the hope of critical electoral support could only Whitlam was centrally responsible for Park where thousands of ecologically­ "uniting" with their Laborite witch­ have been an endorsement of defeatist derailing the militant, spontaneous minded citizens littered the area with hunters. We can't remember when "better than Fraser" lesser-evilism, a strike movement that erupted in leaflets warning of the "spiritual" we've heard so much "unity" talk capitUlation t6 the betrayals and response to the ruling class plot that threat posed by nuclear war and from the Maoists - other than unity demoralisation on which Labor's threw Labor out. Concerning relations balloons carried the message: "Blow with anti-Soviet "freedom fighter" wage-cutting, strike-breaking Cold with its American imperialist god­ up Balloons, not People". Fully half Fraser, that is. The pro-Peking War "alternative" was built. father, Labor has today assimilated an hour after the front of the church­ Vanguard (17 March) even carried a For the workers, immigrant min­ what Whitlam never fully grasped led march reached the Domain, the photo reduction of the back page of orities and youth who face decaying (and what comes naturally to Tory relatively tiny left contingents still Direct Action headlined, "Free imperialism's future of economic parties): a lackey may be a junior hadn't left the park. partner, but is always a lackey. As it Gallagher!" with a caption reading, depression, racism and war the only The CPA called for "international­ "unity is certainly needed these alternative is the road of independent was with Fraser, Australian imperial­ ism under Labor will be the US's ising" the US bases (ie. Reagan days". class struggle and socialist revolution. should ask Bob Hawke before .they While Gallagher tells reporters at What is urgently n~ssary is· the slavish junior partner in Southeast Asia iti the service of regional reaction nuke 'em) and proclaimed, "If'you've Pentridge that Hawke's summit is a building of a Leninist-Trotskyist seen one nuclear war, you've seen "con oftheAustralian working class", vanguard that can lead the working and global anti-Sovietism. Capitalist White Australia is strategically critical them all". They ought to know. The the now Labor-loyal Vanguard headed class, as champion of all the CPA supported the US bombing of its ·17 March issue with the following oppressed, to the setting up of to US war plans, and not only for its spy/communications and refuelling/ Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the last gem: "People's hopes will be a del­ its own power, a workers government. war, the one instance in which nuclear egate at economic conference". Sure But this strategy requires from the maintenance bases. Increasingly Washington is demanding a more weapons have been used thus far. And they will, along with Hawke's already very beginning a clear political break the SWP, which along with its front aggressive role for Australian im­ openly stated plans to extend Fraser's from the class collaboration and groups got bounced from the Nuclear wage freeze another six months while national chauvinism of the Labor perialism as its proxy in Southeast Asia, using its ANZUS links to help Disarmament Coordinating Committee thousands of sackings continue at traitors. Smash the wage freeze! (NDCC) last year precisely over the build ASEAN into a fully-fledged GMH, BHP's steel plants and in the Down with Labor's "social contract" question of US .bases 'and ANZUS, coal industry. Apart from wage cuts - break the ALP-ACTU stranglehold! military alliance. And the central tar­ get of imperialism's stepped up war changed their old slogan, "Stop Hawke's only promise is that the Not chauvinist protectionism but mass Reagan/Fraser War Drive" to "Stop government will give its "full sup­ strikes and sit-ins to fight sackirr-gs! plans in Asia is Vietnam, the Soviets' toughest ally, which militarily Reagan's War Drive", carefully port", ie, its courts and cops, to the 30for40! omitting any reference to the new boss ACTU to discipline any "recalcitrant" Predictably the deeply Laborite left humbled the US imperialists and their Australian ally only a decade ago. The ofthe Australian imperialist state. unions who don't co-operate with greet Hawke's election as a great In general the left-Laborites like Labor's "national reconciliation". victory. The "Euro"-Communist Party Spartacist League says: Defence of the _USSR and Vietnam begins in Alice Tom Uren (or the CPA), under­ As the Russian revolutionary leader of Australia (CPA), which hailed the standing the "responsibilities" im­ Leon Trotsky wrote in the 1930s, iR the ALP-ACTU "social contract" as a Springs, Diego Garcia and Trincom­ alee! Smash ANZUS and ASEAN! US posed by power, have made their epoch of imperialist decay the trade "historic step forward", called it a peace with the ANZUS alliance and bases out'of Australia and the Indian unions can either serve as the ve­ "Strong Vote for Reform" (Tribune, 9 US bases, once a favourite target of hicles "of imperialist capitalism for March). The Qaddafiite Socialist Ocean! Australian and all imperialist troops out ofthe Near East! Australian left-Laborite opposition. But while the subordination and disciplining of Labour League (SLL) say that this fully endorsing (and sometimes military out ofSoutheast Asia! workers" or instruments of revolu­ government will be worse than the surpassing, as. over Poland) ALP anti­ tionary class struggle (Trade Unions Scullin government of the 1929-31 Smash Reagan I Hawke Anti· Sovietism, groups like the SWP in the Epoch of Imperialist Decay). depression, yet proclaimed the Soviet War Drive! currently maintain a commitment to election " A Victory For The nationalist anti-Americanism, which The Whitlam period was something Working Class" (Workers News, they try to pass off as "anti­ of a transitory aberration, a domestic 8 March). And typically, the Polly­ imperialism". In this the SWP reflects (?ARTACIST ~ J annaish reformists of the Socialist reflection of "detente" as US· imperi­ the "little Australia" nationalism on Workers Party (SWP) queried, alism and its junioJ; Australian which they cut their teeth during the Marxist monthly of the Spartacist League of partners withdrew from defeat in Australia and New Zealand, section of the "Labor's choice: profits or jobs" Vietnam anti-war movement. The (Direct Action, 8 March). (The SWP's Indochina, .an interlude between Cold problem is: if you want to hate the international Spartacist tendency. War I and the bellicose anti­ 48 (I) candidates were a spectacular Russians, you've got to love the Sovietism of Jimmy ("Human EDITORIP.L BOARD: Greg Blythe, Darlene flop polling less than one percent Americans, as the SWP found out Carlson, Doug flynn, Andrew Giannakis, of the vote except where their names Rights") Carter and now _Reagan. from the NDCC. Steve Hooper (editor) What Brezhnev hailed in 1972 as PRODUCfION: Jenny Maclaughlin "the era of detente" is long dead, The notion that Australian imperi­ CIRCULATION: Brian Shannon alism can pursue an "independent" Printed by trade union labour. Registered having provided US imperialism crucial time to rearm. Now the course from its US patron is a at GPO, Sydney for posting as a publication - Spartacist League grotesque myth, fanning only the Category B. SUbscription $3 for 11 issues; Reaganite nuclear madmen are openly overseas airmail $10 for 11 issues. Address Melbourne ... (03) 654-4315 planning a nuclear first strike against ·flames of jingoist nationalism, which all corresPondence to: Spartacist Publications, GPO Box 2339, Melbourne the state which issued from the in this white imperialist outpost in GPO Box 3473, Sydney, NSW, 200t. Tele-' VIC, 3001 Asia is necessarily racist and any­ phone (02)264-8115. October Revolution and where, despite Opinions expressed in signed articles or thing but anti-militarist. World War III Sydney . . . (02) 264-8195 the subsequent Stalinist degeneration, letters do not necessarily express the editorial collectivised property and the planned means global nuclear holocaust, and viewpoint. GPO Box 3473, Sydney it will take victorious workers revol- Printed by Eastern Suburbs, Waterloo, NSW. NSW, 2001 economy represent historic gains that must be defended. continued on page four 2 Australasian Spartacist ~~artacist League/ ANZ Greetings to "Women and Revolution"

The Spartacist League of Australia textile industry are especially vulner­ and New Zealand (S1I ANZ) joins our • able. Social services are being comrades in the international Sparta­ ravaged, among them remnants of cist tendency in celebrating Inter­ concessions from days gone by such as national Women's Day, a proletarian' aRe childcare centres and women's holiday. In deeply chauvinist "White refuges, often the last recourse for Australia", anti-Soviet war prep­ women in a country where wife and arations and economic depression • child-beating are a "normal" part of have fuelled nationalist-racism and life. Meanwhile the craftist Laborite social reaction reinforcing the bour­ union tops have not lifted a finger geoisie's "sacred" nuclear family - to save these women's - or anyone the central pillar of women's op­ else's - jobs, instead joining the pression under capitalism. And it bosses in enforcing wage cuts and the was Labor premier Neville Wran's four-day week. The fight for industrial cops that raided a Sydney gay club last unionism, sit-in strikes to fight sack­ month, charging six people under ings, a political break with the Labor sections of the Crimes Act prohibiting Enclave traitors, the forging of an internat­ consensual homosexual acts and a ionalist class-struggle workers party sixteen-year-old under the "age-of­ - these are among the critical issues consen(' laws. Unlike Australian facing the woman worker today. feminists and the fake-lefts who In this penal settler-colony outpost preach class collaboration and anti­ in Asia, first of British and now Sovietism, mainly through their American imperialism, "little Aust­ political commitment and ties to the ralia" social-democratic nationalism is Australian Labor Party (ALP), we not only white racist, but proud of its understand that the fight against brutally male chauvinist and self­ domestic reaction cannot be separated indulgent parochial philistine "nat­ from revolutionary defence of the ional character" - best described as Soviet Union against imperialist the culture of white pigs. Just as an war plans. index, in this land of "sport and Australia is a weak, vulnerable drink", less than a decade ago women imperialist power, with a very modest were still banned from drinking in military capacity. Capitalist Aust­ hotel public bars. It is not surprising ralia's protection is afforded by the that the feminist movement of the ANZUS military alliance with the mid-'70s, a direct product of revulsion United States, with the Australian at this male chauvinist culture, took ..c::~ bourgeoisie playing the role of most "'" on a mass character. Yet the reform­ cravenjtlniorpartnerto Reagan's anti­ ~ ists and feminists who claim to Soviet war drive. Australian troops < .. champion women's rights do not in lend "international" credibility to the Sydney, May Day 1982: Smash ANZUSI US Bases Out! For a Workers any way challenge the white racist pro­ US military bridgehead in the Sinai, Australia, Part of Socialist Aslal imperialism of the labour bureaucracy, while in this region Australia is nal. ... The nationalists' attempt to particularly the mainly immigrant which thoroughly identifies with playing an increasingly aggressive role maintain Australia as a privileged women concentrated in unskilled ruling-class privilege. as US proxy in Southeast Asia, white outpost against Asia must be factory labour. Racist reaction is on the The Australian working class has bolstering counterrevolutionary al­ mercilessly combatted; it is com­ rise, not only in the country towns historically been militant in pursuing liances such as ASEAN, whose main pletely counterposed to our program where black unemployment runs at its economic interests, but remains target is the Vietnamese deformed of a racially integrated Australia, part 90 percent, but in the industrial cities,' dominated by the reformist Labor workers state. The fate of Australia is of socialist Asia. " Party bureaucracy. In November 1975 - "The Main Enemy Is At Home I" , like the coal and steel towns of Woll­ nonetheless indissolubly bound to that ongong and Newcastle, where un­ there was an enormous working­ of Asia; as we have insisted: Australasian Spartacist no 90, employment stands at 20 percent and class response to the ruling-class "The deadly fear of the massively Summer 198111982 offensive that deposed the Whitlam exploited, starving masses of Asia in protectionist poison is fueling anti­ With the international recession Asian racism. Women - especially government, the first Labor govern­ their hundreds of millions to the ment in 23 years. But the union tops north has similarities with apartheid devastating Australia's highly vulner­ youth and migrants, unskilled and South Africa, except here the racial able manufacturing industries, women poorly educated - in the most menial refused to channel it in the direction threat to white supremacy is exter· have been among the hardest hit, jobs and sweatshops of the dying continued on page four

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SPECIAL OFFER I With each new subscription a free copy of a Spartacist pamphlet - L • "EI Salvador: Military Victory i- ,,",""2i. to Leftist I nsurgents I" I NAM E Australasian SpartlClst - Women and Revolution - I • "Solidarnosc: Polish Company I 0 $3/11 Issues 0 $3/4lssues I Union for CIA and Bankers" I ADDRESS (Includes Spart.cll') I • Spartaclst no 33, "Power Bid II Workers Vanguard - Malll Make cheqlies payable: I Spiked" 0 $20/24 I (I II) Spartaclst Publications, I . " . I ssues a rma GPO Box 3473 • Spartaclst no 34, It IS Desper- I PHONE 0 $5 (seamail) Sydney, NSW, 2001 I I ately Necessary to Fightl" I ______..:. ______J April 1983 3 Menzies' Liberals was agitated and apart the ruling class's smug imperi­ prepared for by Labor. alist arrogance and "yellow peril" anti-communism, but the SUbjective Anti-Klan Videos Success Labor Under Whitlam - radicalism of the generation of leftists Australia's Imperialist "Doves" that the war threw up was mostly If there continue to be illusions squandered by a left that tailed Labor in Labor's "independence" rhetoric or was" diverted into the deadend of they are rooted in the Whitlam period, Maoist Stalinism. particularly Labor's opposition to a In hard opposition to the imperialist· continued Australian military involve­ social-patriotism of the Laborite ment in US imperialism's long, dirty left we stress that Australia's future and losing war in Vietnam. But lies with the working masses of Asia. fundamental to the bourgeois defeat­ The struggle for an Australian workers ism that Labor under Whitlam republic must go hand-in-hand with a represented was the 1965 CIA-abetted perspective of social revolution holocaust by the Indonesian generals throughout Southeast Asia. For only under Suharto that annihilated the workers revolution can break the "millions-strong pro-Peking Indonesian bloody yoke of imperialism that stands Communist Party (PKI). More than behind the military juntas and despots half a million workers and peasants that stretch from the Indonesian died in the bloodbath and more than archipelago to the Indian sub­ 100,000 today still rot in concentration continent. Above all this means camps on the outer islands. The building internationalist communist Indonesian masses were left defence­ (Trotskyist) parties in Australia and less before imperialist and Islamic across Asia, the struggle for the re­ birth of" the Fourth International, J ~ ~. ,"\ ~:m'- 'tt:¥f®:1 :g. ~, !::;t" ~ reaction by the PKI Stalinists' Over eighty people in Sydney and Melbourne attended showings of the subordination of the class struggle to world party of socialist revolution. For powerful and moving video of the Labor/Black Mobilisation which stopped the the nationalist demagogue Sukarno, a racially-integrated workers Aust­ Ku Klux Klan cold when it tried to march in Washington DC last November 27. then allied to Maoist China. ralia, part of socialist Asial Reforge Many who attended donated money towards the costs of the mobilisation, and The 1965 counterrevolution was the Fourth International! • we are pleased to announce that so far nearly $1900 has been raised in Aust­ welcomed with relief in Australia by ralia. But big victories cost big bucks, and donations are stJll urgently required. Labor no less than Menzies' Liberals. The Australian government had run Send direct: or care of: Labor/Black Mobilisation, Spartacist League, guns secretly to the CIA/British­ Women and PO Box 99, Canal Street Station, GPO Box 3473, backed "outer islands" rebels in 1958, and came close to war with Indonesia New York, NY 10013, Sydney, NSW 2001. Revolution ••• USA. over its "confrontation" with Malaysia" in 1964. Earlier in 1962 ALP leader continued from page three subservience, given its military Calwell, a visceral racist neanderthal, of independent class struggle. The Labor weakness, to a stronger imperialist had called for war over Indonesia's pompous, elitist Whitlam, who found continued from page two power as its protector. takeover of West New Guinea from the out the hard way over Pine Gap that Dutch. Calwell's line was that the you~ don't mess with the CIA's ution in the imperialist centres to stop The Cold War alliance with US Dutch colonial remnant was what it. Anti-imperialism means class strategic spy stations, was no more a imperialism, including policing South­ stood between Australia and the friend of the working class than any struggle at homel As the German east Asia against revolution, has Dutch but he was overruled when US other ALP bureaucrat; he just hap­ revolutionary Karl Liebknecht said: always been a truly bipartisan policy. imperialism sided with Indonesia. the main enemy is at home I It was the Labor government of pened to be Prime Minister during The generals' savage slaughter Hawke's hero Curtin which in the a period of relative economic stability Labor - Cold War Social decisively stabilised Southeast Asia when the workers could be a bit more crisis of World War II transferred for imperialism. Not long after, it Imperialists in Asia Australia's allegiances from British effectively bought off. The early became apparent that American '70s feminist movement got its crumbs to American imperialism. In the wake "I said it in 1914, and in recent imperialism was losing the war in too, many organisations directly of the nuclear holocaust at Hiroshima years", that this country, with its Indochina despite massive' commit­ dependent on funding from the Labor­ and Nagasaxi American imperialist resources of manpower, cannot ments of troops and firepower. But administered capitalist state. hegemony replaced the Japanese afford to be a policeman in Europe. it was the 1965 coup, together with I now say it in 1943 and for all the occupation forces across Southeast The rapid decline of the years to come that this land may the development of the Sino-Soviet "autonomous" feminist movement Asia. But the nationalist and revol­ split, that laid the basis for the remain free only by Australia utionary ferment sparked amongst the actually began in its refusal to organ­ remaining the policeman in the emergence of a wing of American ise women along class lines and Asian masses by the defeat of their imperialism that wanted to end the Pacific. " colonial overlords generated an effectively intervene in the 1975 running sore of Vietnam, cut its losses - John Curtin, quoted in Humphrey il)creasingly hysterical anti-commun­ "political crisis". By the late '70s McQueen, "Living Off Asia", and withdraw the troops. This pro­ sections of the moribund women's Arena no 26 (1971) ism within the Australian ruling class. Anti-communism and anti-Asian gram was carried out in part by Rich­ movement were emulating the chauv­ During the election campaign ard Nixon - his policy of "strategic inist, bourgeois leaders of the 20th Hawke continually identified his racism fused in common fear of the spectre of soCial revolution in Asia, withdrawal", "Vietnamisation" of the century suffragette movement, while future government with the 1941-45 war and "detente" allowed the imper­ others were marching in utterly Curtin Labor government that ran particularly after the victory of Mao's Red Army in China in 1949. ialists to rearm and laid the basis for reactionary anti-pornography mobili­ Australia for the Allied imperialists an anti-Soviet alliance with Peking. sations to "reclaim the night". The during World War II. "In very The postwar Chifley Labor govern­ The ALP under Whittam became the Eurocommunist Communist Party of different times, in a very different sort ment aided the British in Malaya spokesman for bourgeois defeatism, Australia (CPA), reformist to the core, of crisis, the task and the challenges against guerrillas led by the Malayan which was perfectly in accord with the played a dominant role in the remain the same - to bring Aust­ Communist Party, despatched war­ "Nixon doctrine". Both Labor "lefts" feminist movement - and in fact ralia together in a united front until ships to run supplies and relief up the like Cairns and the US imperialist the CPA broke its back on the woman victory" (Age, 17 February). But in Yangtze to Chiang Kai-shek in "doves" saw it as a more effective question in Australia. An entire layer Cold War II the times are not so Nangking while, closer to home, it long-term strategy for counterrevol­ of older CPA women cadre turned to different; Labor under Hawke in the attempted to sell fraudulent "self ution abroad and social peace at home. feminism in bitter reaction to male 1980s is only reverting to type. government" under continuing Dutch Much of Whitlam's "new national­ chauvinism, and the CPA's own The ALP historically has always rule to the Indonesian nationalists. At ism" , promoting more "~depend­ adaptation to the feminist movement been one of the world's most right­ the same time Chifley's foreign minis­ ence" from the US and so-called figured importantly in its break toward wing social-democratic parties. Its ter H V Evatt was obsessively "anti-racialist, anti-colonialist" poli­ social democracy. For the CPA there White Australia racism kept it out of pressing Washington fora formal US­ cies,. was a purely cosmetic clean-up is no inconsistency in claiming to fight the Second International until 1965, Australian military pact. But the of Australia's image for a more for women's rights and being a strike­ when it formally dropped white ' ANZUS alliance was not signed until aggressive regional role, or merely a breaker for "sisterhood". Its bureau­ racial homogeneity from its platform. 1951 under Menzies as one of a series continuation of what the Liberals had crats are typified by then CPAer and Its populist nationalism expresses the of "containment" pacts across Asia. begun. By 1972 the main Australian imperialist xenophobia of the Aust­ Victorian State Secretary of the In part it was bought with Australian forces had already. been withdrawn ralian ruling class which maintains metal workers union (AMFSU) John acquiesence to a "soft" peace treaty from Vietnam; Whitlam merely Australia as a privileged white imperi­ with Japan, who the US, as with Halfpenny. His most grotesque removed the rem,aining "advisors" . betrayal in a long list since is probably alist enclave against Asia through postwar Germany, sought to rebuild that of women workers at the Everhot racial exclusionism, chauvinist econ­ as an anti-communist bastion. What Vietnam, a poor country of some 40 factory outside Melbourne in 1975 - omic protectionism and necessary was consummated and codified by million people, fought alone II-gainst the greatest - military power in the all members of the AMFSU, all world, and won, while the treacherous sacked illegally on the basis that Russian and Chinese Stalinist bu­ "women's place is in the home". spartacist Public Class Series reaucracies stOod back in the name of Halfpenny refused to defend them and "peaceful coexistence". While the covered for the male scabs that Trotskyism: The Revolutionary Marxism of our Time workers state that resulted from the replaced them. The "consistent Melbourne Sydney victory of the Stalinist-led peasant feminists" dismissed the betrayal by Begins: 16 April Next class: 9 April armies was bureaucratically deformed reference to the "male-dominated 2pm, alternate Saturdays. 2pm, alternate Saturdays. and nationally limited, Vietnam's trade unions". Today the CPA debates 258 Flinders Lane, Third Floor, 112 Goulburn St, 2nd Floor, revolutionary victory was a victory for the virtues of the central institution Melbourne. Sydney. all proletarian internationalists. In oppressing women - the bourgeois For more information phone: 654-4315 For more information phone: 264-8195 this country it exposed and cracked nuclear family - in it~ press, as it 4 Australasian Spartaclst Free Class-War Prisoners in Turkey I In the thirty months since the, last April with "illegally" striking (Revolbtionary Way) are still on Turkey. In late January the Kohl NATO junta of General Evren seized the Yeni Celtik mine five months trial', 184 of them facing the death government outlawed two left-wing power in Turkey, vowing to crush before the generals' coup. The death penalty. In a trial in Eastern Turkey , Turkish organisations, Dev Sol and political terrorism and end economic sentence has been demanded for 99 of the 578 members of the Halk Der, staging dark-of-night chaos, an intensified reign of terror 64 of them, including the chairman Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in police raids against their offices on and brutal torture has been un­ of Yeralti Maden"Is (Underground the dock also face the threat of the same day as a visit by the Turkish leashed against workers, the op­ Mine Workers Union), the union execution. foreign minister. pressed Kurdish minority and which organised the occupation/ Even outside Turkey - in Aust­ German minister of the interior leftist organisations. Torture of strike of the mine to counter a ralia, Lebanon and elsewhere - the Friedrich Zimmermann didn't mince political prisoners has been so closure threat in April 1980. On the murderous junta has spread its words in justifying his terrorist ac­ widespread and savage that even day of the coup, the army moved in tentacles to hunt down left~wing tion: "Activities threatening secur­ West European bourgeois govern­ to arrest the strikers, gunning down militants. In both Sydney and Mel­ ity" by groups like Dev Sol were ments that originally hailed the coup any who tried to escape. The torture bourne anti-junta Turkish and "increasingly" directed "against began telling the generals to clean aspects of German policy . . . against up their act if they wanted to keep the Federal Republic as NATO­ getting their loans. Partly in an partner of Turkey, against German attempt to establish international military and economic aid to Ankara, credibility, last November Evren and against its foreign policy" (Sud­ stage-managed a referendum to deutsche Zeitung, 10 February). Our rubber-stamp a new constitution . comrades of the Trotzkistische Liga which "legalises" the repression Deutschlands have actively com­ of workers and national minorities The NATO gen­ batted these vile attacks against left­ and suppression of virtually all erals' military ists from Turkey, demanding: "Down political dissent. In the five months coup resulted with the ban! Defend Dev· SollHalk since, eighteen people have been In savage re­ Der through class action! Stop the executed by the now" constitutional" preSSion against witchhunt against foreigners! Full junta butchers. And immediately workers, Kurds, citizenship rights for foreign workers after the referendum, cheered as !ft .. leftists. and their families! German workers, a "step towards democracy" by their foreign workers: same class, same NATO patrons, the junta reopened to . which the imprisoned workers Kurdish militants received letters struggle!" (see Spartakist no 46, the mass show trial of 72 leaders of were subjected before their trial from the Turkish consulate threaten­ March 1983). the outlawed Confederation of was so brutal, in many cases re­ ing their Turkish citizenship rights It is only through class struggle in Revolutionary Trade Unions (DISK), sulting in severe paralysis, that the while in Sydney their names were who face execution alongside hun­ Turkey and international class junta did not even attempt to deny. prominently printed in the leading solidarity abroad that the NATO dreds of other class-war prisoners. the defendants' courtroom protests right-wing Turkish-language daily junta will be defeated. For NATO Begun in December 1981 with 52 that their "confessions" had been paper. The labour movement must defendants, the DISK trial was imperialism, Turkey is strategic as exacted under torture·. Instead, all protest all such harassment and a military bastion on the Baltic flank delayed because the military auth­ those who had protested in court intimidation, particularly in this of the USSR. The left and labour orities tried to gather evidence were taken back to the military period of growing anti-immigrant movement internationally must linking DISK with the pro-Moscow barracks and tortured by other chauvinism. Turkish Communist Party (TKP) , means: their families were brought to In WesJ Germany, where the two demand immediate release of the DISK leaders and all prisoners which itself has been outlawed since the prison and beaten before their million Turkish workers and other 1923. Jailed for over a year with eyes; their wives, sisters and daugh­ foreign workers face racist victimis­ opposed to the junta and the ultra­ virtually no legal rights before the ters raped in front of them by pris()n ation, deportations and all-sided rightist gangs. Trade unions must trial began, the DISK leaders are guards. attacks,· collaboration with the black all military aid to the junta as charged with seeking to "overthrow Turkish regime has been particularly as act of international solidarity In another mass trial, 759 people with the workers and peasants of the established constitutional order" . are being charged with having invidious. Despite occasional mutters In April 1982 the former chief de­ participated in a· left-controlled against the junta's "excesses", Turkey under the gun. Free all class­ fence lawyer for the DISK defendants municipal government in the town of particularly over its treatment of war prisoners - Unchain DISK! was also arrested. Fatsa, which was smashed by the bourgeois luminaries like RPP leader Down with NATO! Down with the Among the many other trade­ army even before the coup. The Bulent Ecevit, the West German NATO junta! For a workers and union activists and Kurdish leftists death sentence is being demanded regime is firmly committed to peasants government in Turkey! currently in the hands of the military for 261 of them. In addition, 572 suppressing any threat to the stab­ - adapted from Spartaclst Britain butchers are 689 miners charged members of the Guevarist Dev Yol ility of its massive investments in no 48, March 1983

moves rightward toward liquidation Polish women. The historic role of the Shah! Down with the Mullahs! The bureaucratic deformations represents into the Labor Party, dropping even its church as a political institution for Workers Must Rule in Iran!" and a tremendous historic victory for the pretence of opposition to US bases fomenting anti-communism, and per­ especially "Hail Red Army in Afghani­ working class throughout the world. andANZUS. . petuating the nuclear family, enslav­ stan!" drew the class line against the America has ten military installations Our perspective is diametrically ing women in the horne and ensuring reformist left which, capitUlating to in Australia, including the CIA's Pine opposed: to break the working class they stay barefoot and pregnant, has anti-Sovietism; covered for religious Gap and the Darwin B-52 refuelling from its treacherous, nationalist not changed. This tour was a victory reaction and the barbaric oppression of base, en route to Diego Garcia in the misleaders, and to mobilise working Indian Ocean. The Australian working women in united class struggle to class must break with its pro­ bring down the capitalist system of imperialist misleaders - defence of racism, economic depression and war. the USSR and of our class brothers

The liberation of women can only corne "'tifIi"" ·'N'."f"'.ti~ and sisters throughout Asia means through socialist revolution, led· by a Heroic Viet· opposition to imperialist military communist (Trotskyist) vanguard that I namese woman installations from Darwin to Diego .,: .. will truly serve as the tribune of all captures US Garcia to Trincomalee! the oppressed. 8·52 pilot. We salute International Women's .'.'., .....•., .. ' JiII""" .", , Defend Vietnam Day in the knowledge that powerful The connection between internaf­ ional counterrevolution and domestic against US and fuel for the revolutionary movement reaction was made absolutely clear last Its Australian will corne from the specially oppressed ;.;r in September, when the National Civic Junior partner's sectors of the working class, particular the women. As Trotsky said Council (NCC) , whose leadership for war threats! decades has worked closely with the I in the Transitional Program: CIA against "atheistic communism", for the NCC in its campaign to reforge women in the East. The historic "The sections of the Fourth Inter­ and which represents the bastion of its Cold War II alliance with the main­ advances against feudal backwardness national should seek bases of support and against the degradation of women among the most exploited layers of organised Catholic reaction in the stream Labor bureaucracy, who joined the working class; consequently working class, sponsored a tour of these dangerous forces of imperialist­ in Soviet Central Asia made possible among the women w.orkers. Here they two Solidarnosc reps. It was a natural clerical reaction in hailing Reagan's by the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution will find inexhaustable stores of de­ alliance. The NCChas been waging its favorite Polish "freedom fighters". inspire us and show the only road votion, selflessness and readiness holy war to save Australia from The Spartacist League/ ANZ has forward for the desperately oppressed to sacrifice. " communism for 41 years through anti­ recruited and trained a layer of women and exploited women of Asia and the We look forward to the future Aust­ union sabotage and anti-communist cadres in political combat with Pacific - the dictatorship of the ralian section of a reborn Fourth witchhunting, subversion on the feminism and the reformist left. And proletariat. International where· communist campuses and in the anti-abortion the woman question continues to be As Australian communists we have women will stand with their comrades movement - backed by the authority central to our recruitment to the a particular responsibility to combat as leaders of the Australian workers of the bourgeois state. Solidarnosc, the internationalist communist program, our own ruling class, American revolution. For women's liberation company union for Western imperi­ as shown around Iran and Afghani­ imperialism's proxy in Southeast Asia, through international proletarian alism, with its umbilical cord to the stan. The international Spartacist and to defend the USSR and the revolution! Forward to a worlers Catholic h.erarchy, is no liberator of tendency's line of "Down with the Vietnamese revolution, which despite Australia, part of socialist Asia!. April 1983 5 ...... ,.,.,.,.. SWP Whitewashes ' .. ~

.s ··~o.c Sinister Croatian p.. p.. til Nationalists < In World War II, Ante Pavelic's Pavelic's envoy to Hitler. Srecko Ustasha turned the Axis satellite state Rover, notorious head of the Aus­ Melbourne, 19 of Croatia into a vast slaughteryard, its tralian HNQ (Croatian National February 1983: atrocities even surpassing those of the Resistance) once wrote to the Com­ Top, HDPdemo. occupying Germans and Italians. As munist Party (CPA) protesting he was Slogans read the Red Army advanced across East­ a "socialist". His organisation was "Stop Terror, ern Europe in 1945, the communist­ founded by Ustasha chief of concen­ Dissolve led partisans in Yugoslavia swept tration camps, General Luburic, and Yugoslavia" , away the Ustasha fascists and their Rover is himself wanted in Yugoslavia ,. Dismembering .c~ Nazi overlords in a social revolution. for war crimes I Behind the HDP's of Yugoslavia p.. Their defeated remnants fled to the "left-wing" pretensions could well be Is a Must", ~ imperialist "free world", including simply another USlasha front. "Croat Socialists < Australia where, protected by the HDP contingents began appearing are Dying In Fascist Yugo-Jalls". Below, SWP/HDP member (on the left, bourgeoisie and its state, these at left demonstrations in 1981. They looking at camera) leaflets the demo while SWP leader Jim Mcilroy fascists have used their hegemony were chased away from an Irish (to the left of the Croatian national flag) takes notes. over the Croatian immigrant com­ defence demonstration, then at the munity as a base for anti-Yugoslav 1982 May Day they carried Croatian The SWP has entered into extensIve man. If this explicit statement doesn't . terror in preparation for launching flags and a banner reading "Death to organisational relations with the HDP. sink in it is only because of the wilful, bloody counterrevolution to destroy the fascist regime of Tito's Yugo­ The HDP boasts membership in the scandalous and dangerous opportun­ the Yugoslav workers state. slavia". Yugoslavs protested this and SWP's CISCAC front group for a ism ofthe SWP leadership. Recently a new Croatian nationalist marshal Jim O'Neill tried to liberal imperialist "negotiated settle­ Worse is to come. The 1941-45 outfit has appeared on the scene, the remove them (Tribune,S May 1982). ment" in EI Salvador and at last year's HDP (Hrvatski Drzavotvorni Pokret The SWP'sDirectAction (2 June 1982) Pavelic regime was, relative to the size 13 June EI SiJ.lvador demonstration of the country, the most genocidal - Croatian Movement for Statehood), printed HDPer. Yure Lasic's letter in in Melbourne comprised almost half regime in modem European history. which seeks to present a "democratic" response, which protested that "we the demonstration. At least one Yet it is' telling that the HDP docu­ and even "left-wing" face of Croatian had nothing to do with the Ustasha, HDPei: is also a member of the nationalism. It eschews open identifi­ that we were socialists and opposed to ments neither repudiate its record nor Melbourne SWP branch and the 9th even criticise it but obviously cation with Ustasha tradition and to the right wing" and cfaimed to SWP National Conference in January symbolism, and ostensibly "strongly sympathise with the Ustasha's stand for "independent socialist states was addressed by Stipe Suto from the "Independent State of Croatia": rejects the use of force or any other in Croatia and the Balkans" and to editorial board of. the HDPpaper illegal undertaking" , ie, terrorism, oppose "Australian imperialism: and Hrvatski Tjednili (Croatian Weekly), .... '.'the Croatian people used the "on the territory of other countries" world-wide imperialism". Others were touted by the SWP as the most widely­ opportunity brought about by the (HDP Declaration and Introductory suspicious. Dave Davies of the CPA, a read Croatian paper. Direct Action war situation and proclaimed the Statement). This is but a thin veneer Independent State of Croatia. This long-time anti-Ustasha campaigner, (24 February) favourably reported was short-lived. however, because for the same reactionary Croatian denounced the HDP's "dubious recent HDP protests on behalf of Yugoslavia was again established in nationalism avowed by the open views" (Tribune, 8 September 1982), imprisoned Croatian nationalist Dr 1945. against the will of the people. Marko Veselica - without mentioning The renewel of Yugoslavia brought slogans raised like "Dismemberment with it the continuation of the of Yugoslavia is a MUSTI" In return planned genocide of the Croatian the HDP obligingly reprints the SWP's nation" (Interview with SWP. 8 July laudatory articles in English and 1982). Serbo-Croat, as well as Suto's speech The same document further on justi- . at the SWP conference with Jim Percy fies the Pavelic regime: speeches and ads for the SWP election "The right-wing movement ... ac­ campaign thrown into the bargain. cepted the inevitablility of the Axis power and did what it could to estab­ HOP - Defenderaof Pav.lle lish a separate Croatian state (which Genocide was only possible by collab9rating Available HDP documents in with the Germans and Italians), Ustasha sur­ while the left-wing movement. led by English make abundantly clear the . the Communist Party. decided to veying their reactionary Croatian natiollalism be- gruesome work fight the occupying force, with the . hind the "democratic" trappings. emphasis on class war and building at man ex­ Based in Sweden, its stated aim is a a new Yugoslavia. which they hoped &Cutlon at Brod "free, independent and sovereign would be more just. democratic and In early 1941. state of Croatia" through the disin­ socialist. The greatest majority of the tegration of Yugoslavia, which it Croatian people supported the right­ Ustasha organisations. Scandalously, noting its identification with and denounces in terms like "the fascist wing Government •. however. because however, the sinister HDP, in its bid Belgrade regime" , accusing it of it represented the long-awaited refusal to criticise the bloody Pavelic Independent State of Croatia.. The to clean up the image of Croatian regime. "Great-Serbian imperialist terror" nationalism, has found an ally on the The SWP responded by deepening and "g~ocide". Its "socialist" left·: the reformist Socialist Workers its scandalous apologetics. An article pretensions are strictly reserv~d for Party (SWP) , which has leapt to the by SWP leaders Jamie Doughney and dealings with the Australian left. defence of the HDP's "left-wing" Jim Mcllroy headed "Yugoslavia is The HDP itself declares it will unite credentials. defaming socialist ideals" claims the with anyone against Yugoslavia. Even We warn the left and labour move­ HDP's "progressive anti-imperialist Direct Action (24 February) calls it ment to beware this sinister political stands on many crucial inter­ "a militant current within the Croatian outfit. Its history is murky, its national issues indicate its strong left­ national movement". Suto told the purported "break" from, and organis­ ward evolution" (Direct Action, SWPthe HDPis "not a political party, ational relations with, what the SWP 5 October 1982), without mentioning but a very broad national liberation The Black refers to as "the previous right-wing­ the Ustasha (I) or attempting to clarify movement" including not only emigre Legion, guilty controlled umbrella Croatian organis­ the origins of these sinister Croatian "socialists" but also what he of such bestial ation" is at best unclear. The Croatian "progressives". A second article coyly termed "non-socialists". atrocities that fascists have been known before to claims the SWP aims "to help over­ "Everybody who is willing to work for 'the Nazis dis­ pose as "democrats" and even come" the "prejudice within the the establishment of the independent armed It and , 'socialists' , to suck in liberals and labour movement th,at all Croatian and neutral state of Croatia is welcome arrested Its social democrats. For example, a West migrants have a right-wing political to our ranks, reg~rdless of the commander. German-based "Croatian Democratic outlook" (Direct Action, 20 October political views one might have" Committee" was set up in the 1950s by 1982). In reality the SWP is (Hrvatski Tjednik, 25 January), he a self-styled pro-Soviet "socialist", Dr whitewashing pro-Pavelic Croatian said, ie, every fascist war criminal, Branko Jelic, who in 1941 was counte"evolutionaries. every Ustasha terrorist and standover 6 Australasian Spartaelst movements of the left in Croatia lost most oftheir popular support" . There is not a word against the Spartacist/SWP Exchange Ustasha horror! Instead the only "massacre" the HOP documents complain about is that ofthe retreating Ustasha butchers who got their just SWP Threats and deserts when they were handed over to the partisans by the British on the February 22,1983 several occasions blocked the entrance display of Labor-loyal parliamentary Austrian border in 1945. to your public George Street bookshop. cretinism. Yet after quoting mQch of the above, The Spartacist League Take February 26 for example, four Contemptible as your macho bully- Direct Action (20 October) still con­ days after the date on your letter (and boy antics are, past experience cludes that "the HDP doesn't trace its GPO Box 3473 Sydney NSW 2000 prior to our receipt of it), when two demonstrates that not just petty traditions to the Pavelic regime" and Spartacists sold outside a publicly­ bureaucratic harassment, but also politely disagrees with the HOP claim Dear Comrades, advertised Resistance forum on unem­ calculated viciousness characterises that the Ustasha was "not a fascist ployment. In a consummately puerile the conduct of your organisation. Thus movement in any sense". "It is our at an EI Salvador protest in June 1981 The Socialist Workers Party protests act of SWP-style harassment, one of view that the overthrow of this govern­ your members drew two parallel lines the SWP and its CISCAC front drew a ment .. . was in the interests of at the increasing incidents of harass­ bloodline against our call for "Military ment carried out by your organisation in chalk across the George Street working people" says the SWP, as pavement to "protect" the doorway to Victory to Salvadoran Leftist Insur­ ifthis could conceivably be a debatable against our party's political activity. gents!" and "Defence of Cuba, USSR Two incidents are- clear examples of your premises, threatening to attack question among supposed partisans of the one Spartacist salesman then begins in EI Salvador!" by orches­ the working class, let alone so-called this. trating a thug attack against the SL­ One was the harassment of a Direct present if he stepped across. "socialists"! To appreciate the full On, the same day in Melbourne, initiated Anti-Imperialist Contingent. enormity of the SWP's pimping for Action seller in Glebe on February 19 More recently, at a Sydney demon­ for an extended period of time. All outside an SWP election fund-raiser the HDP, a review of what happened held at the YWCA, one of your mem­ stration in September: 1982 protesting in Croatia in 1941-45 is necessary. efforts by him to avoid the verbal the Zionist holocapst in the Sabra­ abuse and obstruction to press sales bers dashed out of the building towards our salesman and invited him Shatila Palestinian camps, SWP Croatia Under the Ustasha - by moving several times - was provocateurs joined the notorious met by continued obstruction and "around the corner" for a fight. Jackboot Qaddafi-Ioving Healyite outfit in , abuse. We find this ploy of your mem­ Shortly before, when entering the slandering the SL as "Zionist", bers intolerable. venue along with SWP National The invading Germans brought in peddling the lie that the SL called for The second incident concerns your Committee member Jamie Doughney, Ante Pavelic's Ustashi bands from "crushing" the petty-bourgeois paper sales outside our bookshop. this same individual threatened our Italy to set up the puppet state of nationalist PLO in order to cover your Whilst we consider that you have the salesman and, expressing the worst Croatia on 10 April, 1941. -In the sort of bigotry, baited him over the suppport for the US-led imperialist following years of horrific butchery , right to sell your press in George force that disarmed the defenders of Street any time of the day or night, we SL's defence of a small US group of the Ustasha in collaboaration with the West Beirut. cannot accept the situation where homosexual activists, the North Nazis and Italian fascists slaughtered Your attempt then to set up a bloody every person attending our meetings American Man/Boy Love Association, an estimated 750,000 Serbs, 60,000 clash, thereby threatening the entire, or visiting our shop must walk through which is currently the target of a Jews, 26,000 Gypsies and a large heavily immigrant demonstration with a "picket" of Spartacist League mem­ vicious state vendetta in defence of number of Croats. Its nationalism cop intervention, was - fortunately bers and be subjected to harassment reactionary age-of-consent laws aimed reached its genocidal extreme in the unsuccessful thanks to the warm and abuse with your "sellers" actually at reinforcing the oppressive morality Croatian versions of Auschwitz and reception with which our militant blocking our doorway. of the bourgeois nuclear family. protest against imperialist/Zionist Treblinka. Jasenovac, south of Zag­ We l:!elieve that these activities by The one "incident" that you do cite butchery and proletarian opposition to reb, was its most infamous concen­ the Spartacist League are an infringe­ a date for concerns the "harassment of tration camp. Indefatigable anti­ ment of our democratic rights to dis­ a Direct Action seller in Glebe on PLO leader Arafat's betrayal was Ustasha campaigner Marijan Jurjevic, tribute our press, hold meetings and February 19". Your letterfails to note greeted by scores of protesters. Finally in his book, Ustasha under the South­ conduct political activities. We have no that the Direct Action seller allegedly there is your support, along with other ern Cross, said: "its slaughteryard intention of relinquishing our demo­ subjected to "abuse and obstruction" • assorted "democratic socialists", to worked hardest from 1941 to 1942 cratic rights _in these areas because of by an SL woman salesman was SWP the NCC-Liberal witchhunt against the when 200,000 were killed, some with Spartacist League harassinent. - National SecretJlty,Jim Percy~ by no campus Spartacist Oub at Melbourne hammers, mallets and axes and the The Socialist Workers Party calls on means a small man in terms of physi­ University early last year - but then, rest were burned in a furnace, you to cease this harassment before a cal stature. Percy was not averse to especially over Poland, your group has especially constructed to consume the serious incident develops. In the using his considerable size in an been more than happy to join with the living". Ustasha victims were buried meantime we will take what measures attempt to bully our comrade, twice NCC and worse in defence of the alive, eyes gouged out, limbs slowly are necessary to stop your disruption grabbing her paper and the second Vatican's favourite "union". hacked off - "a good Ustasha is he of our political activity. time crumpling it up before storming The above is hardly an exhaustive who can use his knife to cut a child off and screaming from the midst of account of SWP violations of workers from the womb of its mother", Fuhrer Glebe Point Road that his "rights" democracy, but does sufficiently Comradely, Pavelic told his henchmen. had been violated. Percy's boorish and illustrate the multi-faceted political Peter Anderson Such bestial atrocities even turned hysterical behaviour when politically opportunism that necessitates your National Executive the stomachs of the German and challenged by our salesman was resort to Stalinist-style political Italian officers, who several times Socialist Workers Party. witnessed by two apparently amused suppression. Those-rare occasions on intervened to halt them, realising members of the Communist Party, which the SWP does choose to pay lip they were fuelling support for the including Brian Aarons, which no service to the norms of"workers democ­ partisans. Jurjevic (op cit) wrote: doubt fuelled your leader's highly racy inevitably coincide with -your "The Ustasha 'Francetic' regiment, *** irrational outburst. being under the gun from some force known also as the Black Legion, was 13 March 1983 Evidently these latest incidents, or another. Jim Percy's mealy­ disarmed by German field police in including your letter, are the SWP's mouthed objection to an attempt to June 1942 ... and in August 1943 Socialist Workers Party, "answer" to our polemical tracking of stifle an SL speaker at last November's the Germans had to threaten to use POBoxK208, your group's ever more "bold" moves "Australian Marxist Forum" is a case military force against one Ustasha Haymarket, to social-democratic "independence", in point, following as it did the SWP's regiment to halt, some massacres." NSW,2000 posing a break along national­ falling-out with the badly descredited Not so the Catholic church, the major reformist lines with your long-time FIA bureaucracy in Port Kembla and social support of the regime. Many Dear Comrades, mentors in the eccentric and shrinking the purge of SWPers from the "peace Catholic bishops and priests helped Barnesised US SWP while, like movement". Or take your short-lived run its government, its army and its We have received your letter dated _ Barnes, aggres!jively ditching your lifting of the anti-Spartacist ban from death camps. Pope Pius XII blessed 22 February. It is itself a provocation, always badly misplaced claim to the SWP "public" meetings some years continued on page eleven intended to justify in advance the program of Trotskyism. Oearly you ago, when in 1976 you sought to enlist threatened "serious incident" you so hope to provoke a "serious incident" our support in a campaign against transparently want to set up, ie, in time to justify an anti-Spartacist Healyite thuggery. Of course, our attempted violent suppression of the exclusion from your upcoming Karl principled opposition to all forms of Spartacist League and/or the use of Marx centenary conference, featuring political suppression in the workers the bourgeois police authorities none other than Ernest Mandel, that movement - the mortal enemy of struggle for proletarian .class con­ towards that end. Still, given your centrist for all seasons and the leader organisation's chronic practice of of your erstwhile factional opponents sciousness - mandates our defence of the legitimate rights of all left violence, exclusionism and limitless in the USec's parody of Trotsky's slander against the SL, we could not Fourth International. Moreover, your tendencies, including yours, should but be amused at your "protest" al­ pretentious eft:orts to replace the cr A they be threatened by any quarter. leging that' 'activities of the Spartacist as the left social-democratic formation Needless to say, it is with no less vig­ League are an infringement of our in this country are bound to generate our that we will continue to defend our democratic rights to distribute our something of a crisis of expectations in own democratic rights, including the press, hold meetings and conduct - the SWP, giving greater urgency to sale of our press at every and any political activities" . _ the usual attempts to seal off your public venue. Aside from the Orwellian logic that membership and periphery from the SLers are violating your rights in si's authentic Trotskyism. Witness Fratern~lly, . selling outside SWP "public" events the dismal results of your (481) candi­ Darlene CarisoR from which we are excluded, it is your dates in the recent federal elections, Central Committee members, not ours, who have on surely the SWP's most ambitious Spartacist League

April 1983 7 For Workers Revolution in Central America ! continued from page twelve out a proletarian insurrection estab­ Blanquist in its tactics, strategically lishing a workers and peasants govern­ Guevarism comes down to peasant ment and extending the revolution war: internationally. That can only be a "The guerrilla is above all an agrarian Trotskyist party following the road of revolutionary. He interprets the desire October 1917, the road of permanent of the great mass of the peasants: to revolution. be the owners of their land, of their means of production, of their animals, ,..: of all that they have yearned for for 1M Guerrilla Road to Disaster years." ">'1: - Ernesto Che Guevara, There are, of course, many different Guerrilla War (1962) .':.Mass trade union demonstration In Mexico. Proletarian revolution In EI brands of guerrillaism. In Latin Ameri­ As the mass of petty-bourgeois Salvador would have a powerful Impact on the millions-strong Mexican ca during the '60s the dominant theme proletariat. was Guevarism, also known as "foco­ small commodity producers, the' ism". In contrast to Maoist "people's peasantry does not have the collective conscious tin miners to leave the mines course of discussions in 1974-76 which war", which seeks to build up a strength and the independent class and join them in the jungles! This led to the fusion of the international peasant army led by a bonapartist interest of the proletariat. There is would have meant giving up their Spartacist tendency (iSt) with the officer corps calling itself a Commu­ no characteristic peasant mode of tremendous social power which time Chilean Organizacion Trotskista Revo­ nist Party, Guevarism relies on a small production, much less a "socialist and again has enabled the miners to lucionaria (OTR). The OTR, while nucleus (or foco) of guerrilla fighters peasantry", and therefore the defeat counterrevolutionary on­ rejecting Guevarist focoism and who are supposed to·act as the deton­ peasantry cannot lead a social revolu­ slaughts. The shameless Debray went Tupamaro-style urban guerrillaism, ator to ignite the masses. In his how­ tion. But the vast peasant masses are even further and condemned the entire had advocated "irregular war" by the to-do-it manual on Guerrilla Waifare, driven bya thirst for land, and to get it Bolivian proletariat for the "hypertro­ working class. This was the application Guevara gave as the first lesson of the they will even follow a guerrilla band, phy of class consciousness" (Che's of guerrillaist conceptions (in this case Cuban Revolution that "it is not or the revolutionary working class, if Guerrilla War) because the workers derived from Ernest Mandel's pseudo­ necessary to wait until all the con­ these forces can demonstrate the were convinced that they must lead the Trotskyist United Secretariat) to their ditions for making the revolution ability to defeat the oligarchy and its peasants!! particular milieu of miners, where exist" ,guerrilla struggle would create army. Once they have their plots that Programmatically practically all the skirmishes with the police and army them. The second. was that in Latin' will end the peasants' role as a revol­ Guevarist guerrillas were not socialist, were a regular occurrence. The "Dec­ America "the countryside is the basic utionary factor.. For instance, in but called only for "national liber­ laration of Fraternal Relations" area for armed struggle". His volun­ Bolivia, where the peasants became ation" through armed struggle to between the iSt and OTR established tarist/ militarist theory was further landowners in 1952 as the result of an establish a "democratic" regime. As that: extensive land reform, they became elaborated by the French cafe guerrilla we explained in our "Theses on "The proletariat cannot sustain guer­ Regis Debray (Revolution in the Revol­ allies of the army against the workers Guerrilla Warfare": rilla war, for the very concept implies ution?), who proclaimed that "the in the so-called "military-peasant "One of the reasons that a guerrilla the absence of a revolutionary situ­ people's army will be the nucleus of pact". Peasant militias were even sent movement is forced to represent the ation and the kind of irregular fighting the party". into the mines to massacre the comba­ interests of segments of the 'patriotic' which requires an ability to retreat rapidly. In addition to its clear class In the first instance, Guevarism is tive tin miners. Thus a peasant-based bourgeoisie is its own concomitant guerrilla war, although directed property-hungry peasant base .... On interest, it is the organization of the an updating of the pre-Marxian petty­ proletariat which gives it political bourgeois revolutionism exemplified initially against a landlord-capitalist· different occasions, the guerrilla lead­ oligarchy, contains within it the seeds ership will have to rely on the financial superiority over the atomized peasant­ by August Blanqui - adapted to a backing of 'patriotic' bourgeois and ry. This organization is the result of rural setting and in an entirely differ­ of a restabilized capitalist regime. But the position of the working class in even though numerically small, the landlord sectors." ent social and historical framework. - Spartacist no 11, the structure of capitalist society; to Even the peasantry is not to be trusted urban working class in backward capi­ retreat into the hills would eventually talist countries as in Central America March-April 1968 but rather used by roo~less petty­ destroy the class or the class character can become the revolutionary van­ The Guevarists were fully aware of of its vanguard .... bourgeois heroes ("a prestigious this. Debray wrote that "ff it is more leader" is necessary, said Guevara, guard, by placing itself at the head of a "The revolutionary party must, of difficult, after Cuba, to integrate any course take an active role in organ­ who was later canonized by Castro as stormy agrarian revolt in the struggle sizable fraction of the national bour­ izing the self-defense of the working "the heroic guerrilla") in direct armed for a workers and peasants govern­ ment, for the dictatorship of the geoisie in an anti-imperialist front, this masses, and the 'use of guerrilla tactics conflict with the state. At the begin­ latter can and must be the prime objec­ is often vital as a subordinate civil war ning, the guerrillafoeo is deliberately proletariat. tive". And in the one case where a tactic. However, the road to power for isolated from the masses; and in The petty-bourgeois Guevarists had Latin American peasant guerrilla the proletariat is through mass insur­ almost every case, this was the stage only disdain for the urban proletariat. rection against the bourgeois state; when it was crushed. The most famous "The city is a cemetery of revolution­ movement adopted a socialist plat­ the central military organization of the example was Guevara himself, tracked aries", proclaimed Castro. Debray form, the Guatemalan MR-13, it was uprising must be an arm of and down in the Bolivian rain forest many denounced the Trotskyist conception met with a vitriolic anti-Trotskyist on­ directed by the mass organization of miles from the nearest villages. When of permanent revolution, working­ slaught not only by the Moscow-line the working class, led by the Leninist the guerrillas did get some support class armed self-defense and prolet­ Stalinists but from Castro himself at party." from the peasantry such as in arian insurrection as a "provocation". the 1966 Tricontinental Congress (see - Workers Vanguard no 111, All that Guevarism offered the "Posadas in the MR-13", Spartacist 28 May 1976 Guatemala, counterinsurgency experts no 9, January-February 1967). just "removed the water from the working class was to "liberate" them­ fish" by rounding up campesinos in selves by abandoning the factories. All this is not to say that Leninists The Spartacist tendency was born in fortified camps. What failed in Indo­ Thus in Bolivia, Communique no 5 of can never resort to forms of guerrilla the discussion over the nature of the china with its vast rural masses, Guevara's National Liberation Army struggle, but only as a secondary civil Cuban Revolution. From our inception worked in Guatemala. (ELN) called on the historically class- war tactic. The issue was posed in we have held that guerrillaism rep­ Russia following the defeat of the -1905 resents a petty-bourgeois reaction to Revolution, when the Mensheviks the absence and delay of proletarian (along with Trotsky and Rosa Luxem­ revolution. Following the long string of {i' burg) criticized the Bolsheviks' bank defeats after the Bolshevik Revolution "expropriations". Lenin misestimated of 1917, many impressionistic leftists the pace of events, expecting a new seized on the Chinese and Cuban revolutions, declared themselves Mao­ upsurge ~oon, but he correctly pointed out that guerrilla warfare is an inevi­ ists or Fidelistas and discovered the table form of struggle in certain peasant vanguard. In our first inter­ periods, particularly "when fairly national document, "Toward Rebirth large intervals occur between the 'big of the Fourth International", written engagements' " ofthe revolution. But two decades ago by the Revolutionary he added, "the party of the proletariat Tendency in the once-Trotskyist can never regard guerrilla warfare as Socialist Workers Party (SWP) , we the only, or even as the chief, method noted that although under exceptional of struggle", and that it must be sub­ circumstances the petty-bourgeois ordinated to other methods, particu­ . guerrilla leadership can be forced to larly the mass insurrection (' 'Guerrilla expropriate the capitalists, at best this Warfare.''., September 1906). Any will lead to a bureaucratically de­ strategy of guerrilla warfare is utterly formed workers state as occurred in anti-Marxist and anti-Leninist because Cuba. Adoption of the so-called it is not based on the mobilization of "peasant guerrilla road to socialism", the revolutionary class, the proletariat. we wrote, would be "a suicidal course Petty-bourgeois guerrll'lalsts took to the hills, refused to organise for for the socialist goals of the move­ proletarian Insurrection. , This same point was made in the ment, and perhaps physically for 8 Australasian Spartaclst the adventurers" (Spartacist no 1, Cayetano Carpio, Punto Final Interna­ FPL leader Cayetano Carpio later insurrectional possibilities". But "the February-March 1964). cional, October 1982). Later in the maintained that, "From the start we explanation for why we didn't achieve '70s when the so-called "politico­ ruled out the guerrilla foco theory", our objectives is to be found in the Tragically, this last warning proved deterioration of the mass struggle in to be true indeed. While the Spartacist military" organizations appeared, on the basis of "the experience of they were still imbued with Guevarist some guerrilla movements in Latin the last months due to the terror League (SL) was one of the few tend­ imposed on the cities... What hap­ encies to swim against the guerrillaist conceptions. Since Che had said you America and in other countries that had to have mountains for a guerrilla were removed from the people ... pened is that we lost the appropri­ current in the early '60s, we noted in a ate moment". He notes that general Political Bureau meeting (12 October, struggle, and El Salvador had none, and that succumbed to militarist 1967) not long after Che Guevara was they coined the slogan, "the people designs" (Granma [weekly edition], strikes repeatedly paralyzed the country during 1980, and "it took the assassinated by Bolivian army and CIA are our mountains" . 30 March 1980). The other "politico­ The 'original "armed struggle" military" organizations also reject enemy a year to wear down this move­ operatives that "the passing of ment and ... exhaust its insurrec­ Guevara is regrettable, as he strived, group was:set up in 1970 by the former "focoism", as has virtually the entire general secretary of the PCS, Latin American left following the tional possibilities". All very true. He within the limits of his own concep­ places the key moment at March-April tions, to be a genuine revolutionary". Cayetano Carpio. It was so under­ tragic finale of Guevara's adventure at groundist that for the first two years Nancahuazu (Bolivia). But funda­ 1980, particularly around the time of PB member Harry Turner had argued the assassination of Archbishop that it was no loss, comparing Guevara it didn't have a name; Cayetano mentally the entire FMLN coalition is Romero. The Salvadoran prelate hac1 to Adam Qayton Powell, the dema­ refused to wage a struggle inside the guerrillaist, lacking a belief in the CP, or even to talk with sympathetic ability of the working class to make the protested the government's r~ gogic black Democratic politicol Today pression, and his murder touched ot Turner is with the one-time Guevarists former party members I Instead it was revolution and advocating policies Ii. massive protest in the capital an" and sometime guerrilla-posing Nahuel totally conspiratorial, preparing the diametrically opposed to proletarian heroic gesture of the defiant guerrilla insurrection. This is seen most clearly local rebellions to the battle-cry ( Moreno outfit - a strange marriage "Viva Monsignor Romero I" indeed. We also pay our respects to a sounding a clarion by picking up the in the FDR/FMLN popular-front But what is most significant is wh. courageous reformist like Salvador Villalobos picks this point: .. At tha: Allende. The pictures of him in front of time there were even sectors of tht': the burning La Moneda palace bourgeoisie willing to establish carrying a Kalashnikov automatic rifle .\ alliances with us and we had political given to him by Fidel Castro give the ~, weight" (Punto Final Internaciona/, lie to all the Pinochet propaganda """'..iI," ~.'·-'.7 November-December 1982). Thus the about Allende committing suicide. At ERP leader hinges successful insurrec­ the end of the "peaceful road" some tion on support from the bourgeoisie of the popular-fronters end up in the - making it clear that their slogan of enemy camp, while others pay the '1iA\ "armed people's insurrection" refers supreme price. ;:I.\~" not to a proletarian uprising establish­ But if we have respect for these ~." ing a workers and peasants govern­ martyrs, that is more than one can say. Castro In the ment but to the installation of a new for the likes of Debray, an un­ Sierra Maestra capitalist regime. And what about the principled literary camp follower who In 1957. The future? At the end of the lengthy first enthused for Guevara, therr publi­ peasant· interview, Villalobos remarks: "So cized Allende, and now as an official of guerrilla road what will be the form in which the the French government of social to power can at masses participate in the final phase of democrat Mitterrand gets a former best lead to a the war? It's hard to predict .... Batista cop, the phony "wheelchair bureaucratically Whether they will appear at that poet" Armando Valladares, released deformed moment in an insurrectional form or from Castro's prisons. The ease with workers state. in the form of a general strike, or by which Debray switched from the massively joining the revolutionary "guerrilla road" to the "peaceful gun and galvanizing the masses with alliance and its program for reforming army, we will have to see." Who road" makes the description of cynical his example. The results were predict­ Salvadoran capitalism. Carpio, for knows, who cares - that is his personal careerist a compliment. ably negative. Later this became the example, wrote an article last year position. In fact, the title of Villalobos' Popular Forces of Liberation "Fara­ calling explicitly for a "democratic interview, "EI Salvador: From the The "Guerrilla Road" bundo Marti" (FPL). In 1972-74 came revolutionary government, not for a Insurrection to Revolutionary War", In EI Salvador the Revolutionary People's Army Socialist government", in which there perfectly expresses the anti­ El Salvador is hardly suited for (ERP) recruited from Catholic sectors, would be room for everyone from revolutionary strategy of guerrillaism. Guevara-style focoism. It is a tiny particularly the Christian Democratic '''large businessmen to small farmers They have it exactly backwards: country the size of Massachusetts with youth, Catholic-led peasant unions and merchants" (New York Times, a proletarian insurrection must be the the highest population density in Latin and the so-called "grass-roots com­ 9 February 1982). But this opposition crowning moment. But they're not America. Even most of the rural munities" of the church which were to proletarian revolution can also be talking about wor~ers revolution. areas are semi-urban and there are no spreading in the rural areas. The seen in the nature of the armed ERP was rent by a vicious faction fight struggle which they carry out. Let's take another of the FMLN mountains, at most rugged hilis and commanders, Ferman Cienfuegos of dozens of volcanos (which have now in 1975, in which a minority accused the leadership of "militarism", While the FMLN has made an the RN and their Armed Forces of become guerrilla base camps). So impressive showing on the battlefield, there was no guerrilla movement in whereupon the minority leaders were National Resistance (FARN). Cien­ the 1960s, only an abortive attempt by shot I The remaining ERP dissidents the leftist insurgents have suffered a fuegos admitted in an analysis of the the Salvadoran Communist Party formed the National Resistance (RN). number of reverses - and in each January 1981 offensive that, during (PCS) to set up an "armed branch" The two other members of the FMLN case it has been because of their the previous year, "there were just in case ... which in three years guerrilla coalition today are the small failure to rouse the urban masses to situations in which it was possible to of existence didn't carry out a single Central American Workers Party struggle. That was what happened in carry out a general strike that did the junta's phony elections of March action (interview with Salvador (PRTC) and the PCS. not develop into an insurrection .... 1982, which the guerrillas did not The general strike ran ahead of us; we effectively disrupt, handing' the didn't implement the insurrection, nor government a propaganda victory at was the structure of our army prepared home and abroad. The so-called for it." He notes that there were three "final" I general offensive of January general strikes during 1980, but 1981 failed to achieve its announced excuses the fact that they were not goals, in particular because there was transformed into insurrection by no rising in San Salvador. An attempt­ referring to "an imbalance in the ed general strike in August 1980 also development of the power of the collapsed, and it was in the wake of masses and military power" I How­ that defeat that the Salvadoran left ever, by the next January the masses abandoned the cities en masse. But had been intimidated and therefore, even earlier, in October 1979, a key he concludes, "it was an error to have revolutionary opportunity was missed resorted to the classic form of calling when the so-called "human rights for a strike" (Commander Ferman junta" took over from General Romero Cienfuegos Speaks, March 1982). with the aid of the US State Depart­ So Cienfuegos, who bombastically ment ... and the Salvadoran left. proclaimed the ' 'final" offensive in And as the struggle nears a con­ the first place, concludes that there clusion, the battle for San Salvador will should have been no attempt to raise loom large. Then once again guer­ up the masses I rillaism and popular frontism threaten Cienfuegos, too, emphasized the to strangle the potential for proletarian importance of "alliances" with the revolution. bourgeoisie, trying to develop a new Take the case of the January 1981 ideology of "Farabundismo". This, he offensive. In a recent interview, says, allows for an alliance of the Joaquin Villalobos, commander-in­ workers and peasants with the petty chief of the ERP, talked about why, bourgeoisie "and the small and there was no urban insurrection. He medium business sectors". He rails complains that "the development' of against "some authors" who "try to Salvadoran workers stage one-day political general strike on 17 March the mass movement. .. obviously portray the Salvadorean struggle as 1980 against murderous Junta. generated expectations about the continued on page ten April 1983 9 in the higher interests of the Salvador­ mounted in the streets. The formation peasant youth and some former Workers Rev .••• an bourgoeisie. For liberals like him of the Revolutionary Mass Coordi­ workers. Built out of mass organizing and FDR leader Guillermo Ungo, nating Committee, the nucleus of the in the l~te '70s, particularly by two continued from page nine calls for a "political solution" are no later FMLN, was greeted in a January Catholic-led peasant unions, it can the classic struggle of the proletariat compromise. ,The destruction of the 22 mass march of 200,000 which was unleash a powerful storm against the against the bourgeoisie". In Fara­ genocidal army, the core of the fired on by the security forces leaving murderous landlord/ capitalist/ army bundismo, according to Cienfuegos, Salvadoran state, would remove the 100 dead. In March there was a one­ oligarchy that has run El Salvador as "there also exists the distinctive form very basis of their plans for a "demo­ day general strike that shut down its fiefdom for half a century and more. of incol'Jloration of the Christian cratic, pluralist" capitalist regime. urban transport. In April tens of But it can also be used against the movements". In another pamphlet We understand on the basis of Marx­ thousands poured into the streets to . working class. (El Salvador: La revolucion inevitable) ism, and Zamora grasps out of an mourn the slain Archbishop Romero: Trotsky raised this possibility in the he remarks that, "Our process is very acute sense of defending his class the toll, 40 killed by government case of China during the 1930s, when similar to that in Nicaragua but our interests, that there is no "middle snipers. In June a second general Mao's Communist Party had trans­ policy of alliances will be much way" such as the Sandinistas are strike paralyzed the capital: nothing formed itself into the leadership of a broader", including "private enter­ attempting. In El Salvador, where the moved in San Salvador for two days. peasant "Red Army". Should the prise, sectors of the army, democratic classes are far more polariZed than in Finally, the leftist coalition called a Stalinist-led peasant troops occupy the forces not yet in the FDR" and others. Somoza's Nicaragua, the life of such three-day general strike for mid­ industrial centres and come face-to­ Call it what you may, this conception, a precarious interregnum could be August. But instead of waging an face with the workers, he wrote, it is common to all the sectors of the measured in weeks rather than offensive struggle, they told the quite likely that it will be used to FMLN.. has nothing to do with the months. Yet a social revolution would workers to stay at home or in the repress the proletariat, particularly in actual program of Salvadoran Commu­ provoke a confrontation with US plants. At most some barricades were the name of crushing "counter­ nist leader Farabundo Marti, who led imperialism which, from the stand­ built in the working-class suburbs revolutionary Trotskyites". He wrote: the 1932 insurrection that was brutally point of tiny El Salvador, the and militias took pot shots at the "The peasant movement is a mighty suppressed in the infamous Matanza. nationalist-reformists feel they cannot police. The strike; was a failure as revolutionary factor, insofar as it ~s His program was: win. So the guerrillaists and "demo­ petty-bourgeois layers, mini-bus directed against the large landowners, owners and shopkeepers, buckled militarists, feudalists and usurers. But "The Communist Party calls all the cratic" politicians of the FDR/FMLN join hands to stave off a military under to government repression. in the peasant movement itself are poor workers and peasants of El very powerful proprietary and reac­ Salvador to bloody struggle against victory. But the fighters in the field The year of mass mobilization dissi­ pated because the leaders of the tionary tendencies and at a certain the national bourgeoisie, who are will pay the price. For them it is stage it can become hostile to the unconditionally allied to Yankee literally a choice of revolution or death. Salvadoran left held back the struggle workers, and sustain that hostility Imperialists. . .. Down with the im­ The Trotskyists have a fundamen­ in the name of their guerrillaist, already equipped with arms. He who perialist oppressor and his national tally counterposed strategy, based on popular-frontist programs. Instead of forgets about the dual nature of the dogs!" the theory and program of permanent placing themselves at the head of the peasantry is not a Marxist." Stalin's Comintern condemned the revolution. In the epoch of imperialism workers and leading them to prolet­ - Leon Trotsky, "Peasant War in 1932 Salvadoran uprising as "ultra­ the weak bourgeoisies of the backward arian insurrection, they worried about China" (September 1932) left", and with all its phony talk of capitalist countries are unwilling and an "imbalance in the development Thispossibility has already occurred "Farabundismo", so would the FMLN incapable of carrying out even the of the power of the masses and the in neighboring Nicaragua. During the today. democratic tasks of the bourgeois military power". Marxists understand last moments of the Nicaraguan civil Thus the ERP and F ARN openly say revolution. Their intimate ties to that in a revolutionary situation the war, when the Sandinistas had tem­ that they are not for socialist revol­ imperialism and domestic reaction, COurse of events takes on its own porarily retreated from the capital, ution and seek an alliance with large combined with their fear of a militant rhythm. Thus Lenin stressed that in the workers and slum dwellers took sectors of the bourgeoisie. What of working class and the huge landless the Russian 1905 Revolution by over Managua the day lifter Somoza - Cayetano Carpio's FPL, which calls for peasantry, places them in the camp of December an uprising was absolutely fled. They sacked the barracks and a "prolonged people's war". A small counterrevolution. On the agrarian essential: "A general strike could no military headquarters, obtaining many pamphlet entitled "Chalatenango question, for instance: the Trotskyists longer take the government unawares: arms. It took the Sandinistas months Heroico" (distributed by the Casa El call for the revolutionary seizure of the it had already organized the forces of to get the guns back. They began by Salvador "Farabundo Marti") gives estates, the peasants should take the counterrevolution and they were ready arresting the members of the "Simon an idea of what the FPL's line looks land. No section of the Salvadoran for action" ("Lessons of the Moscow Bolivar Brigade", led by the pseudo­ like in the field of battle. It reports bourgeoisie advocates this program, Uprising", August 1906). But in Trotskyist Moreno tendency, after it that the local militias were demanding for there is no separate industrial and Moscow the Bolsheviks attempted to staged a demonstration, for "workers "industrial arms", that the masses agricultural bourgeoisie: _they are an lead such an insurrection, setting the power" in August 1979. They shut "who have been hearing for years the same families. It is significant that pattern for-t917, while in Sm Salvador down the Maoist paper EI Pueblo about armed struggle, who have been the land reform advocated by the FDR the guerrillaist/popular-frontist left after it called for peasants to occupy dreaming for years about having a is no more advanced than that enacted was able to prevent it. (As for the level haciendas of the "anti-Somoza gun, are not going to be content with a by the Christian Democratic/military of military power, at the time of the bourgeoisie". They arrested leaders of machete". Yet, says the article, junta two years ago. And they are all Moscow uprising the workers militias the Frente Obrero group and of the "at the level of the, masses and the tied to imperialism. FDR leader had only 80 rifles going up against dissident Communist Party of Nicar­ militias, we'll never see weapons of Zamora was installed in the October machine guns.) agua, as well as local ostensible war, not even after the victory". This 1979 junta at the behest of the US This is the logic of guerrillaism, not Trotskyists. They broke several strikes is the logic of guerrillaism, which State Department. Today he goes just in EI Salvador but everywhere, for higher wages and workers control, relies not on the mobilization of the around vituperating against a leftist whether it is called focoism or the sacking the offices of the CAUS union working masses but on a "pro­ military victory . "armed struggle road". The guer­ federation. And when workers at one fessional" party/army. No wonder Leninists base themselves on the rillaists have no faith in the revol­ textile factory (F ABRITEX, the largest there is discontent. utionary power of the working class. in Nicaragua) could not be intimidated And on .negotiations, according to proletariat, and a Central American wor-king class exists, especially in El They believe that only a "pro­ in any other way, they brought in the the pamphlet: "If you tell them to put Salvador, which in turn can have a fessional" party/army is capable of Sandinista People's Army to dismantle down their arms, these people would powerful impact on the millions-strong waging military struggle. In Chile this the factory, removing the raw ma­ probably shoot anyone who came to Mexican workers movement. The was the program of the MIR (Revol­ terials and machines I Should the tell them that.... In Guazapa the majority of all industrial workers in the utionary Left Movement), the largest people have made it clear that it cost Salvadoran army collapse before a isthmus are located in this' tiny left organization outside of Allenpe's "negotiated solution" is worked blood for them to get those guns country. They are employed by US Unidad Popular (UP). The MIR had out, the FDR/FMLN leaders promise and they are not going to give them multinationals such as ARCO, Phelps considerable influence among sectors to dO' the same. Whether they can up." Good. But in fact, the FDR/ Dodge, Westinghouse, Maidenform of workers, peasants and students; succeed is another matter. FMLN are calling for precisely that. Bras, Texas Instruments, and in the it talked of armed struggle and carried TIie "guerrilla road" of the Sal­ Concretely, in FDR spokesman Free Trade Zone at San Bartolo where pictures of Guevara. But it "critically" Zamora's Washington press confer­ vadoran left is an expression of they are paid $4 a day to assemble supported the UP to the end, and ence during the January offensive he petty-bourgeois forces opposed to semi-manufactures for the US market. never called for arming the masses. called for a ceasefire to achieve the Leninist-Trotskyist program of And they have a recent history of Instead the MIR created artificial negotiations. (Later he tried to cover workers revolution. It is no accident militant struggle. In March 1979 groups, the so-called comandos that Castro's models on military mat­ up by claiming he was only advocating workers at two bottling plants won comunales, which didn't get off the laying down arms "in the context" ters were not Marx, Engels and Lenin their demands when the electrical ground. And when the bloody end (or Trotsky, the founder of the Red of negotiations.) And he made clear workers union (STECEL) cut off power came, it could offer no serious resist­ why the FDR/FMLN tops reject a Army), but Jose Marti and Simon for an hour nationwide in solidarity ance. Bolivar - leaders of the bourgeois "military solution". According with the bottlers' strike. A week later to the Guardian, Zamora said that, Following the defeat of the August national independence movements. STECEL occupied the power plants 1980 general strike, the Salvadoran This corresponds to the Castroites' "To win only in a military sense, could again, electrifying the surrounding left abandoned the cities to build a "democratic" program and orien­ mean 'to lose in the end' . One purpose fences with high voltage and· blacking of military pressure is to insure that "people's army" in the hills. PartIy tation to the peasantry. They reason out the country for a day in support that in the "Third World" the bour­ the US administration eventually of their own demands. The govern­ in response to repression, partIy geoisie is so weak that it must rule will accept a negotiated solution that ment utility company was forced to obeying the dictates of their "politico­ through a praetorian guard army, gives the rebel forces a share of the give in. And in September 1979, military" strategies, hundreds of militant workers left San Salvador for which in fact acts as a political party; power." workers struck five factories along San nearby Guazapa volcano to build a their answer is to counterpose their Salvador's strategic Army Boulevard, "people's army". Elsewhere the own army/party, a left version of a For Workers Revolution occupying the plants and taking man­ composition of the guerrilla forces is , military coup. But for communists who Throughout Central Amerlcal agers hostage in order to forestall a overwhelmingly peasant in origin. seek to lead the proletariat, followed military intervention. And this exodus to the countryside by the oppressed masses of the city So who is it that "loses in the end" For the first half of 1980 there was a will inevitably have an impact on the and country, in a socialist revolution, if the leftist insurgents win on the constant stream of mass protests. As class outlook of the leftist insurgents. what is necessary is to build a Bol­ battlefield? Zamora, a dissident the liberals were slowly eliminated The FMLN has created a peasant army shevik vanguard party of the working Christian Democrat, is speaking here from the ruling junta, opposition led by declassed intellectuals, ex- class and soviet organs of worker$ 10 Australasian Spartaclst power. This will also lay the basis for attempting to maintain resistance itions are equally spurious, always tinued this when the ALP won office, the exercise of genuine workers when Pavelic fled. nationalist, and indeed appear to be to the point in 1973 when its non­ democracy, including bringing to carefully tailored to suit the SWP. co-operation with Labor Attorney­ justice the criminals responsible for Defend the Gains of the General Murphy's urgent requests for the murder of Salvadoran leftist poet Yugoslav Revolution! The Ustasha in Australia information necessary to the protec­ Roque Dalton, leader of the "anti­ Josip' Broz Tito's guerrillas were tion of the visiting Yugoslav Prime Minister forced Murphy to launch his militarist" faction of the ERP in victorious precisely because they alone For decades the US protected war famous raid on ASIO headquarters, an 1975 who was shot on phony charges of stood above the bloody national con­ criminals like Pavelic's secret police action which drove the CIA up the wall being a" CIA agent". flicts, enabling them to extend their chief, Artukovic, from justice. So too in and thus contributed to the ALP's base to the non-Serb nationalities, Australia. The slogan of the post-war downfall in 1975. For the bourgeoisie, including the Croats, and forge an all­ ALP-initiated immigration scheme was For a Trotskyist Party! the Ustasha are useful as a reserve Yugoslavia resistance. Advocating "populate or perish". It was motiv­ fascist force domestically and also for equality between nations and smash­ ated by White Australia racism and Summarizing the experience of the all manner of imperialist, dirty work ing the old state apparatus in the not just the demand for cheap factory Russian Revolution and the first internationally - the HOP (Croatian liberated areas, the CPY was able to fodder. It meant populate Australia years of the Communist International, . Liberation Movement, founded by Leon Trotsky wrote: "Without a lead the peasant masses of the various with white immigrants or perish at the nationalities to victory in a prolonged hands of the" Asian hordes". Whites Pavelic and led in Australia by influen­ party, apart from a party, over the tial Liberal Fabian Lovokovic) re­ and bitter struggle against not only the only, no reds, but fascistic refugees head of a party, or with a substitute portedly offered the Government 1000 Germans but also native fascists like from the East European social revolu­ for a party, the proletarian revolution men for the Vietnam war - just as US cannot conquer" ("Lessons of Oct­ the Ustashi and the anti-communist tions were welcome. John Playford's pamphlet, "The Truth behind 'Captive iInperialism has put the Cuban ober"). A Trotskyist party must be Serbian monarchist Chetniks. The gusanos to work. built in struggle against the guerrilla­ common endeavour of this struggle Nations Week''', exposeS" some of ism, popular-frontism and nationalism and of reconstructing Yugoslav society these creatures who rose to political Only a deeply Laborite oufit like the of the Salvadoran left. Workers on a new social axis went a long way prominence during the Cold War, eg, SWP could discern "leftward move­ revolution in the Central American toward defusing the murderous the Hungarian Laszlo Megay, whose ment" because the HDP campaigned area must be international from the national hatreds that had plagued pre­ brutal supervision of the deportation of for the ALP in the 1982 Victorian elec­ beginning. A workers insurrection war Yugoslavia. The international thousands of Jews to Auschwitz in tions. The Croatian reactionaries were in San Salvador must not only combine proletariat must defend this historic 1944 earned him the sobriquet "the badly burned by the experience of the with a peasant war throughout the gain, embodied in the Yugoslav mass murderer of Ungvar", and who Whitlam government, Murphy's raid country, but also with proletarian workers state, against the bloody capi­ later became an influential figure in on ASIO etc, having before 1972 put all revolution from Nicaragua to Mexico. talist restorationist/ separatist designs the Liberal party. their eggs in the Liberal basket. With For it's not a' question of tiny El of Croatian nationalism. Organised Ustasha terror has Cold War II driving Labor hard to the Salvador taking on the Yankee The bureaucratically deformed flourished in Australia since World right, the HDP's orientation to Labor colossus to the north by itself. Right' Yugoslav workers state, a product of War II. The HDP ostensibly renounces represents no more than a division of next door is the sleeping giant of the peasant guerrilla war, has of course terrorism outside Yugoslavia (while labour within the "Croatian national Mexican proletariat, now facing a been unable to achieve a lasting and reserving , 'the possibility of using movement" . government that has imposed drastic complete 'solution to the national force against force" within the The SWP will have to answer for austerity llJeasures which (together question. Bureaucratic rule, standing country), to better appeal to "demo­ its scandalous conduct in building up with a push from events in Central for "socialism in one country" and cratic" imperialism. Yet the HDP the "left" pretences of this sinister America) can take millions onto the peaceful coexistence with imperialism mentions (barely) the well-known group. Certainly the SWP's "con­ path of revolutionary struggle. internationally, constantly regenerates history of Ustasha terror only to alibi sistent nationalism equals socialism", nationalist-inspired conflict thereby it: "The Yugoslavs organise many their "democratic socialist" hostility The Salvadoran struggle can also nurturing dangerous capitalist­ terrorist acts through their agents in to Stalinist "totalitarianism" and a have a tremendous impact on the restorationist forces. Thus the post- order to cause adverse public reactions classless reformist Alice-in-Wonder­ United States far exceeding that of the 1965 economic decentralisation policy aga~st Croatian activists. Neverthe­ land worldview which sees political liberal-led El Salvador protests. The of "market socialism" (a more ex­ less it is true that some such acts have power in terms of peacefully altering matter of working-class solidarity is treme version of which was advocated been committed by young Croatians "public opinion" makes them perfect not at all abstract. Thus the Spartacist by the counterrevolutionary Polish out of despair" (interview with SWP). suckers for an outfit like the HDP. Nor League and class-struggle unionists Solidamosc) had by the 1970s re­ As the SWP knows, the history of is the SWP a novice at painting up the have fought for a labor boycott of all kindled Croatian separatism, ex­ Ustasha terror in Australia is well blackest reaction in· "progressive" military goods to Central American pressed in the bureaucracy, at the -documented, . including repeated colours. Look at Khomeini's Iran for rightist juntas. And this is part of an expense of the poorer republics, bombings and other attacks on Yugo­ example. Or Poland, where the SWP overall struggle for the American leading to a sharp crackdown by slav consulates and embassies, travel demonstrated with the "Captive revolution - for labor/black mobiliz­ Tito. The HDP's "democratic" postur­ agencies, community social functions, Nations" gang outside Sydney's ations against racist terror, for sitdown ing is undoubtedly calculated to inter­ Serbian churches, as well as numerous Polish consulate in December 1981 strikes against mass layoffs and so on. sect this - thus it defends victims of murders and attacks on political against Jaruzelski's counter-coup. Because the only way to secure the post 1971 Croatian purges like opponents. The late Marijan Jurjevic, Percy's announcement to the revolutionary gains for the people of ex-party member Veselica and former who waged a long and courageous Sydney Morning Herald (13 January) El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, partisan general/self-styled Euro­ campaign against them, was the target that the SWP "was the most closely Mexico and the rest of Latin America communist Franjo Tudjman. To of repeated murder attempts. The aligned to Solidarity in Australia" is through socialist revolution in the defend the gains of the revolution from Ustasha have also used Australia as a surely was bombastic (as the SWP United States itself. capitalist restoration, which could well major base for terrorist training and unhappily discovered, Santamaria's The reformists call for agrarian be cloaked in the form of a "national attacks on Yugoslavia. The secret NCC has the Solidarnosc connection), reform, a mixed economy, purging the liberation" struggle, a Trotskyist party terrorist outfit HRB (Croatian Revol­ but it did convey the very real political army and a non-aligned foreign policy, must be built to lead a political revol­ utionary Brotherhood) was founded in identity between anti-Soviet SWP carried out by a revolutionary demo­ ution to oust the bankrupt Titoite Australia in 1962, and Australian­ social democracy and Solidarnosc cratic government of a "free El Salva­ bureaucracy. trained HRB terrorists were a large brainstrusters like Polish social demo­ dor" . The Trotskyists fight for component of HRB raids in 1964 and crat Jacek Kuron. The HDP, however, agrarian revolution, expropriation of HOP: Disillusioned with Reagan 1972, the latter killing 13 Yugoslav is hardly a social-democratic forma­ the bourgeoisie, destruction of the citizens before being wiped out. In tion. And unlike Poland or, at least in present butcher army and the creation The SWP claims the HDP is "anti­ 1963 Ustasha terrorists were dis­ the early period, Iran, the SWP's of a proletarian red army, and uncon­ imperialist" by citing its "strong covered undergoing joint military scandalous apologetics for the HDP is ditional defense of the degenerated/ identification with the revolutionary training with Australian army units. likely to place it at odds with much, if deformed workers states, through Cuban leadership". This is only be­ For decades the Croatian com­ not all, of the left-Laborite milieu military victory by the leftist. insur­ cause it clashed with Tito at the 1979 munity has been dominated by groups which is its raison d' etre. gents and a proletarian insurrection non-aligned conference. For Croatian glorifying Pavelic and the Ustasha, Gross organisational opportunism is installing a workers and peasants nationalists there is only one main centrally through the Croatian Catholic a major motivation for the SWP. While government, as part of a soviet enemy - Yugoslavia. As for oppo­ Churches, a domination maintained it promises its membership big things federation of Central America in a sition to Reaganite imperialism a HDP through intimidation, murder, extor­ and short cuts to mass influence, the Socialist United States of Latin document, "The Irony of 'the Ameri­ tion rackets, as well as control of rightward-moving Cold War political America. As Trotsky wrote of Spain in can Dream' ", begins: "Croatians in cultural and sporting clubs. These climate presents a different reality. the early '30s: "For a successful America welcomed the election of fascists have only been able to conduct The Percy clique uses the HDP to solution of all these tasks, three con­ Ronald Reagan". Why? Because years their activities with impunity because bolster its pretensions to be the ditions are required: a party; once ago he proclaimed the 10th of April of the protection afforded by the bour­ left social-democratic umbrella, for more a party; again a party. " "Croatia Day" in California. They geois state. Prior to 1972, leading which they have little else to show hoped Reagan would target Yugo­ Liberal politicians who defended apart from a few trade union electoral - reprinted from Workers Vanguard slavia, along with the USSR, Poland, the Ustasha and patronised functions campaigns. no 325, 11 March 1983 Cuba, Vietnam etc in his imperialist like 10 April celebrations included The Per~y clique is deeply compro­ war plans. But they were disillusioned Attorney-General Ivor "there is no mised by its apologetics for the HDP when the US anti-Soviet warmongers Ustasha in Australia" Greenwood, and, to judge from the SWP member­ supported as "a positive factor of Philip Lynch, rabid anti-communist ship's sensitivity, there is' not total HDP ••• security in Europe" the Yugoslav W C Wentworth, ex-Prime Minister indifference to relations with this bureaucracy's treacherous anti-Soviet McMahon and many others. highly sinister group. But whatever policy of "non-alignment". Or there's And of course there are the connec­ the motivations for this scandalous continued from page seven the Falklands war, where the HDP tions with ASIO. Joan Coxsedge's et al opportunism, it should be understood Pavelic as he was departing Italy in supported Argentina which, after all, book Rooted in Secrecy documents the that reactionary Croatian nationalism, 1941 and the primate of Croatia, has been very good to the Ustasha, deliberate obstruction, by the pre-1972 with its inextricable links to the Cardinal Stepinac, was an active eg, harbouring war criminals like Liberal governments and ASIO, of Ustasha and the secret police/spy leader of this clerical-fascist regime, Pavelic's deputy'Stjepan Hefer. The attempts to find' out information and agencies. is a deadly threat to the excusing its atrocities and even rest of the HDP's "progressive" pos- act against the Ustasha. ASIO con· international working class movement. April 1983 11 J Australasian ~

5 PARTACIST --- Permanent Revolution vs the Guerrilla Road or rs • In ra merica!

In the three years that a civil war has 'if been raging in El Salvador, a curious . . ·················:;"-:, ;/:. .•.• ···;; phenomenon has been observed. The harder the leftist guerrillas fight, the M, .". more successful they are militarily, the more insistent their leaders are in offering to exchange what has been won on the battlefield for some cabinet seats and promises of reform. At the height of the recent fighting a Salva­ doran opposition spokesman held a press conference in Washington to call for immediate negotiations and offer a cease-fire. According to the rad-lib Guardian (S February), "[Ruben] Zamora cautioned that the FMLN [Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front] is not trying to achieve a mili­ tary victory in El Salvador, because the country's problems must be 'solved through dialog, through nego­ .~.... '.. ~.'!Ii"' . ,., "ii,- . "." "'"',' ~ ...... tiation, and not;.. a military sol­ .... ---- ution' ". Meanwhile, in the US El Combative Salvadoran trade unions played kev rqleln repeated mall moblllsationssuch as the 200,OOO-strong Salvador protests exclude the Sparta­ protest In San Salvador, January 1980. cist League for carrying our slogan, gram of land reform and return to the "Military victory to leftist insur­ 1940 constitution. But not long after gents!" Why? If the guerrillas defeat the rebel victory, the hostility of the the government army, in class­ US Hands Off Nicaragua! United States and a massive departure polarized El Salvador it could unleash of Cuban capitalists forced the guer­ a mass uprising and social revolution. rillas in power to expropriate the But if the butcher army is not imperialists and the entire domestic smashed, a cease-fire will just mean Military Victory to Leltist Rebels! bourgeoisie simply in self-defense. giving a free rein to the death squads Even in this exceptional case, how­ and the massacres will continue. ever, the result was a bureaucratically . Another curious fact: in this region Delend Cuba, USSR! deformed workers state rather than of mini-countries smaller than most US the soviet democracy of the Bol­ states, the leaders of the Central sheviks. (The usual result of such American left do everything possible Salvadoran rebels in blood, over­ gunned - their guerrilla road could a guerrilla war would be the consoli­ to keep the struggle within narrow throwing the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, not lead to socialist revolution. dation of a nationalist-bonapartist national bounds while the right-wing then rolling back the gains of revol­ bourgeois state, as in post­ dictators aid each other constantly and utions from Cuba to Poland and the Now we are witnessing a new round independence Algeria.) Constant US are openly supplied by the United Soviet Union. of guerrilla warfare, and would-be aggression also explains the more States. Neither the 'Sandinistas, the For the last 20 years, ever since the revolutionaries must look to the militant tone of the Cuban leaders, Cubans or the Soviets provide substan­ Cuban Revolution, the Latin American lessons of the past as well as the compared to the cautious Kremlin, and tial amounts of weapons to the Salva­ left has been dominated by two main events of today. Guerrillaism seems their sometime support (more ideo­ doran rebels, and the FMLN refuses to currents: first in the 1960s the "guer­ very militant, even adventurist, while logical than material) to guerrilla war­ call for international brigades. More­ rilla road" inspired by Castro and an Allende-type popular front ex­ fare elsewhere in Latin America. over, even though the various "armed Guevara, and then in the early '70s the plicitly aims at holding back the The guerrilla episodes of the '60s struggle" organizations all grew out of so-called '''peaceful road" of Allende's masses from "going too far" by tying mostly ended in defeat within a few the Cuban Revolution, when the popular front in Chile. The Chilean them to a section of the bourgeoisie. months, or else degenerated into Trotskyists of the SL proclaim debacle is still fresh in people's minds Yet politically guerrillaism and popu­ banditry. But in Central America the "Defense of Cuba, USSR begins in El with its tens of thousands of workers, lar frontism are not necessarily contra­ Nicaraguan Sandinistas managed to Salvador" their American supporters peasants and students massacred in dictory by any means. In El Salvador, defeat Somoza's mercenaries, and the start screaming ··provocation". These cold blood. However, guerrillaism was for instance, the FMLN coalition of Salvadoran FMLN has the upper hand five "politico-military', organizations groups which were inspired by Che no less a road to disaster. A whole against the army, National Guard, Guevara and the Vietnamese struggle generation of leftists throughout the is allied with the Revolutionary Treasury Police, death squads and now raise as an official slogan "No continent picked up the gun and Che's Democratic Front (FDR), including their American "advisers". However, more Vietnams" , while the Spartacists handbook and headed into the hills, several marginal liberal parties and there is another factor: the combative say: "Vietnam was a victory: two, only to be ruthlessly slaughtered by politicians. And all sectors of the Salvadoran working class, which has FDR/FMLN popular front are commit, three, many defeats for imperial­ Pentagon-trained counterinsurgency not been defeated but has been politi­ ted to a program for a "revolutionary ism!" But Ronald Reagan has placed squads. Guevara himself, the most cally misled and abandoned.. What Central America in the front line of his heroic advocate of guerrilla warfare, democratic" governme.nt - that is, is needed is above all a communist global war against Communism, like it tragically was murdered by the CIA for a reformed Salvadoran capitalism. vanguard to lead it at the head of or not. And he has his own "domino" and its local flunkies in Bolivia in 1967. In Cuba, Fidel .Castro originally put the urban and rural masses, to carry theory, beginning with drowning the But the Guevarists were not just out- forward a bourgeois-democratic pro- continued on page eight 12 Australasian Spartaclst