NUMBER 51 MARCH 1978 TWENTY CENTS "Reformed'" or not - down wit" ASIO/Special Branc'" Labor, Fraser unite. for stronger secret police South Australia's ex-top cop Harold Salisbury.

After four weeks of unwanted public scru­ mous phone tip warned police shortly before tiny and scandal, ASIO and the state Special the blast). Branches were finally off the hook. The bomb which rocked Sydney's Hilton Hotel shortly The only victims claimed by this at best inex­ after mi dni ght, 13 February, 01 so bl ew away cusably stupid action were two council workers the flap over indiscriminate Special Branch blown to shreds as they emptied the bomb­ spying and ASIO activities which had spread laden bin into their garbage truck. (A cop in­ from South Australia to NSW, pursued by the jured by shrapnel also subsequently died in Labor premiers of both states, Don Dunston hospital.) Nonetheless if such an act were and Neville Wran .. For the bourgeoisie and genuinely a misguided attempt to avenge the its own gangs of professional terrorists, the legion crimes of the assembled rulers against "t4;!rro ri st" bombi n9 cou Id I']ot have been more the oppressed, -it could call for proletarian de­ "c6fjverii ent hadi f been one ot ASIO's own . fence of Its authors, .though nc;>t their futile "di rty tri cks". methods, against the bourgeois stat e. But despite the media hysteria against the Ananda Who did plant the bomb,and why, remains a Marga rei igious cult, allegedly out to avenge mystery: The presumed "target" was the Com­ the impri sonment of its I iving god, Baba, in monwealth Heads of Government Regional India, pol ice have admitted that they have Meeting (CHOGRMt a diplomatic plaything of neither suspects, motives nor clues. No "ter­ Fraser's which brought together twelve of Her rorist gang" has claimed credit for the act- Majesty's minor Pacific island vassals, ·reac­ a most dubious sort of "political terrorism". tionary bandits and tinp9t dictators,includ- But this did not stop Fraser and the media ing Indi a's octogenarian Morarji Desai and from quickly escalating the "security" frenzy Singapore's brutal Lee Kuan Yew. However, to ludicrous proportions. Taking "direct con­ the dignitaries on the 36th floor were in danger trol" of secu ri ty arrangements, Fraser made of nothing worse than having their sleep dis­ some of his CHOGRM colleagues feel at turbed by the bomb left in a rubbish bin on the home by call ing out t he army for the fi rst p!lvement in front of the bui I di ng. I t may not The army "secures" Bowral in aftermath of Hilton bomb. even have been intended to go off (an anony- Continued on page seven

Minersfig"t COPS, defy bureaucrats US rocked by coal strike

Since 6 December the 175,000 soft-coal miners of been the one focus of sustai ned I abour mil i tancy as 'Eo· the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) have repeated wildcats (strikes unauthorised by the union ~ c: '"o been on strike against the giant energy conglom­ leadership) sweep the coal fields. In the first > erates who dominate this key industry_ Win or lose, eight months of 1977 alone, wildcat strikes cost the ~ the hard-bitten miners concentrated in the bleak iso­ industry an estimated 21.8 million tons of coal and .; lated Appalachian mountain region of the US - pri­ 2.3 million man-days of work, a lost-time rate that is .; marily West Virginia and Kentucky - have waged the ten times the average for all US industries. most significant class battle in the US in at least the lost decode. In instance after instance, the de­ The coal operators grouped in the Bituminous Coal termined miners have demonstrated that they would Operators Associ ation (BCOA) are absolutely ada­ not be cowed by company gun thugs, cops, govern­ mant that "labour discipline" must be restored to ment threats,or their own misleaders. As the the coal fields and have demanded an explicit no­ bosses wring their hands, the miners' class brothers strike clause and financial penalties for miners who and sisters are learning a lesson they will not soon engage in wildcats. The UMWA.has become a forget: mass pickets can s.top strikebreaking, anti­ serious hindrance to the BCOA, which anticipates union legislation can be defied. A victory would massive new profits with the projected expansion of threaten to set off an exp los ian at the base of the US president Carter's energy program - if the tra­ American labour movement which has been brew- ditional militancy of the miners can be tamed. The key issue in the strike is thus the right to strike i ng since the onset of the recession in the early itself - a life-and-death matter in the seventies. A defeat would open a union-bashing notorious~y unsafe coal pits. offensive against the entire US labour movement. Wi th careful preparati~n, ·the op4;!rators entered The UMWA is the oldest industrial union in the this strike intent on decisively humiliating, if not US. Despite the absence of a leadership which smashing, ·the UMWA. Before the strike began coal­ could provide any sort of direction - in fact de­ fired electricity companies, which purchase over 70 spite the presence of one which has openly sab­ percent of American soft coal, had amassed stock- otaged struggl es - for the I ast three years it has Continued on page two sand bogs and bullet-riddled picket signs. they could run out of coal in early February. On the US -- just as today they support the Arnold Miners 14 February Carter threatened to invoke the anti­ ~iller of the steel workers, Ed Sadlowski -- in­ • • • union Taft-Hartley act, which would force the cluding the Healyite Workers League and the like­ Continued from page one miners back to wOTk for an 80-day "cooling off" named co-thinkers of the workerist International (and stockpiling) period. But as one Labor De­ Socialists and the reformist Socialist Workers piles estimate~ to last from 80 to over 100 days. partment official admitted, "the major problem Party. The outstanding exception was the SLjUS. The companies also expected to be able to augment with Taft Hartley is that nobody will obey it" While the fake, lefts lauded Miller for his lip these'supplies from scab mines, which produce (Wall St~et Journal, 13 February). Another service to "rank-and-file democracy", the SL/US nearly half of US coal. government option mooted about -- riationalisation pointed out that Miller's election on the coat­ But after three massive wildcats in as many of the mines and the deployment of troops to tails of a federal court suit against the union years to defend the right to strike and beat off force t~e. miners back -~ could, have such incendi­ was a victory not for workers democracy but for BCOA attacks on health benefits and safety con- ary po11t1cal repercuss10ns throughout the labour "the Labor Department/liberal Democrat cabal ditions (another issue in the strike), the miners movement t~at ~art~r is understandably nervous which installed him at the head of the UMW" (WV were no less intent on defending their union. about cons1denng 1 t. no 17, March 1973). Thousands of UMWA militants fanned out through Not that the bloodthirsty coal operators have In an article enti tIed "Throw Back the Sell­ the coal fields, shutting down nearly half of all waited quietly for "legal" action by their out" (WV no 192, 10 February), the SL/US warned ~ government. The coal fields are traditionally the miners not to fall for any of Miller's deadly ~ notorious for strikebreaking violence by company games and emphasised the importance of a victory ~ gun thugs and scabherders as well as the cops. in this strike -- not just for the miners but for ~ Hundreds of miners have been arrested for picket­ all their class brothers and sisters: ing and one died in mysterious circumstances when ~ he was shoved in the path of an onrushing truck "COAL MINERS! In spite of the total lack of on an interstate highway near Morgantown, West leadership from the International in organiz­ Virginia. On 3 February another miner was killed ing the strike, in spite of Miller's betrayals by a scab when 35 militants attempted to shut at the bargaining table, VICTORY IS POSSIBLE! down an Indiana pit which has operated throughout You can win this strike by sticking to your the strike. guns and demanding that there be.no settlement without unlimited right to strike, fully But the most brutal incident thus far was the funded health fund and a big wage inc~ase. cold-blooded murder on 6 January of 65-year-old DON'T GIVE IN NOW 1HAT 1HE BOSSES' BACKS ARE retired miner Mack Lewis, gunned down by a AGAINST THE WALL! Redouble your efforts to company guard in Pike County, Kentucky. Accord­ shut down scab mines. Send mass delegations ing to a Pike County miner interviewed by WV, to steel plants, power stations, rail and four elderly unarmed union men were picketing the truck terminals urging the workers not to gate at the time of the murder. A few minutes handle scab coal .... "The miners have suffered plenty through this Black ban coal to the US! bitter strike and they have fought hard. There hasn't been such a display of militant According to the Financial Review (24 February) and picketing in years. And your demands are the Australian (25 February), at least two Australian urgent necessities, not only for all workers firms - Coalex Pty Ltd and RW Miller (Holdings) Pty­ but particularly for coal mine workers. Give are contracted to ship coal to the US. Such shipments up the right to strike and the UMWA health can serve only one purpose at this time - st rikebreaking. plan and the~ wi II be mo~ widows standing at Kentucky miners protest against harassment by state cops. International labour solidarity demands that all Aust­ the pi t heads mourning their dead. The way to ralian unions involved in the handling of coal- includ­ non-union operations. Car caravans of 500 or reduce the suffering is not by knuckling under more miners have travelled the highways in ing the Miners Federation, the Seamen's Union, the to the companies and the government. but by Kentucky and Tennessee to shut down scab oper­ Watersiders, and the Federated Engine Drivers - black using your strong position to win a decisive ations and make sure they stay shut. One made ban all coal intended for the US as long as the miners victory. sure at least five truckloads of scab coal were strike continues. "Now is the time to teach the bosses a lesson, the enormously profitable coal-steel-oil mon­ dumped alongside eastern Kentucky highways as it after Lewis arrived at the site with sandwiches covered that state, Ohio and West Virginia. This opolies who make millions out of disasters for his union brothers, the guard "walked up, like the Farmington and Scotia mine tragedies. particular contingent also made a stop at the didn't exchange three words till the guy was shot Justus mine in Steams, Kentucky, where 150 If the UMWA wins the unlimited right to strike -- five times -- with a .44". "They were peace­ it can quickly go on the offensive to sign up miners have been on strike for nearly 17 months ful old men, and one'of them got shot by being seeking a UMWA contract. ' A hundred riot-equipped miners at the non-union pits who will have peaceful", the miner said angrily. "We're going seen how militant action can win. The entire police were rushed to the scene. But unlike last to be prepared th~ next time." October, when the cops beat and arrested over 100 U.S. labor movement will be invigorated to re­ strikers and union supporters for trying to stop Militancy without leadership sist job-slashing "austerity" attack_s from New,_ .._ scabs, this time the outnumbered cops made no York to San Francisco. And then the miners attempt to remove the pickets. But for the militancy and fighting spirit of will not have to fight alone, as they have re­ the miners the strike would have been scuttled by peatedly and militantly done so far .... Following the Christmas holidays the roving their "leader" days after it started. UMWA "Remember that during World War II Roosevelt picket squads began to take the strike beyond the president Arnold Miller reportedly caved in on threatened to callout federal troops to crush coal fields to combat the crippling effects of the decisive issue of the right to strike as a UMWA strike against the wartime wage freeze. coal stockpiling and transportation by other early as 14 December. Miller officially sanc­ UMWA president John L. Lewis told FDR, 'You industries. In one instance hundreds of miners tioned scabbing right from the start of the can't mine coal with bayonets!' His words are blocked the entrance to a Pittsburgh steel mill strike by signing separate agreements forcing still true today. Successfully defying Taft­ for several hours. Extending the strike through Western US strip miners to continue, working. Hartley would change this noose around labor'S solidarity bans on coal in related industries "People feel suspicious; people feel Arnold neck into a dead letter arid open the door to like steel, auto and transportation remains a Miller really is trying to betray them", the Pike unionization of millions of unorganized crucial but still unfulfilled task. According County miner commented. An Ohio miner told WV, workers through militant tactics (such as to the 3 February issue of Worker'S Vanguard (WV "Miller's acting like he doesn't want none of labor boycotts) declared illegal by these -- weekly paper of the Spartacist League/US this scab coal shut down". laws. [SL/US]), class-struggle unionists in at least What doubts might have lingered among the "It could pave the way to unioni zing, textile, one major United States Steel mill in Chicago the key to breaking open the South; it could have campaigned for a joint nationwide coal/steel militant ranks regarding Miller's treachery were dispelled as rumours of a tentative agreement be the spark for a drive that would bring in strike. Such solidarity actions cannot of course the women working for the minimum wage in be confined to the US proletariat but must be "which would spell disaster for the union if accepted" (WV no 192, 10 February) circulated in small shops around the country; blacks and extended to all countries which handle coal to or other minorities constantly threatened with from the US, including Australia. early February. After a dramatic confrontation in Washington 10 February, when hundreds of unemployment; the illegal immigrants con­ Nobody wi 1/ obey Carter strikebreaking angry miners stormed UMWA headquarters and a stantly worried that the employer will have frightened Arnold Miller stayed in hiding, the them deported. All these sectors -- amounting As the stockpiles which they expected would to tens of millions of workers, far more than see them comfortably through to a victory over UMWA Bargaining Council voted 30 to 6 to reject the proposal. Faced with a unanimous cry of out­ the unionized working class -- are kept from the miners began to dwindle, electricity company Continued on page seven executives began frantically scurrying to rage from the coal fields, a rising chorus Washington to demand strikebreaking action by the calls for Miller's resignation and a stack of federal government. Large utilities in Illinois, telegrams demanding rejection which one council Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York began crying that member said was "twelve feet high", every dis­ trict president and International Executive Board '~ ~ member present voted no. Only Miller, the union's vice president and secretary-treasurer a monthly organ of revolutionary Marxism for the re­ Defend Body Politic ! and the three-man negotiating committee voted for birth of the Fourth International published by Sparta­ the sellout. The depth of Miller's own unpopu­ cist Publications for the Central Committee of the On 30 December cops from the Toronto Morality Squad larity was underscored by the widespread popu­ Spartacist League of Australia and New Zealand, raided the offices of Body Politic, a Canadian gay liber­ larity of a recall petition, unusual in itself in section of the international Spartacist tendency ation magazine, seizing records, documents, subscrip­ US unions and all the more so that it was circu­ tion lists and personal mail. Pink Triangle Press (the lating in the midst of a strike. non-profit publisher of Body Politic) and members of the EDITORIAL BOARD: Chris Korwin Body Politic collective were later charged with pos­ Such sentiments are the fruit of five years of Len Meyers (managing editor) David Reynolds ~ session and distribution of "obscene" material. This Miller's pro-capitalist leadership, during which raid and other recent attacks against homosexual rights union coal has fallen below 50 percent of the Inga Smith (production manager) David Strachan (Melbourne in Canada are the spearhead of a generalised right-wing national total. Unless hundreds of new and old correspondent) offensive against democratic rights. The Spartacist non-union pits are brought under UMWA contract, scab operations will sahotage strikes and League sent the following telegram to the Canadian High CIRCULATION MANAGER: Roberta D' Amico threaten the union's existence altogether. ~ut Commission: Miller's record in organising is as painful as "We condemn Ontario government's criminal raid on the history of , broken wildcats which he helped to GPO Box 3473, Sydney, NSW, 2001 Body Politic. ,No censorship. Stop police victimis­ defeat. (One miner in Cabin Creek, West Virginia (02) 235·8115 ation - drop all charges. Full democratic rights for told WV that some of the non-union pits could be homosexuals. " organised in 15 minutes if the leadership SUBSCRIPTI:):-.lS: Three dollars for eleven issues would take the time to sign the workers up.) (one year). We urge our readers 10 send donations to help defray the inevitable heavy legal costs to "The Body Politic When Miller first got elected to the presi­ AUSTRALASIAN SPARTACIST is registered at the GPO, Sydney for Free the Press Fund", C/- Melbourne Gay liberation, dency in 1973 under the aegis of "~1iners for posting as a publication - Category B. PO Box 35, Fitzroy, Vic, 3065. Democracy", his candidacy was supported by vir­ Printed by Maxwell Printing Company Pty Ltd, \.. ' ..J tually every ostensibly socialist organisation in 862 Elizabeth Street, Waterloo, NSW 2017. Page Two AUSTRALASIAN SPARTACIST March 1978 "Revolutionary reformism'"

When the Communist Party's (CPA) Tribune, out of the What's red about blue, drops a little piece of slander concerning arr organ­ isation 12,000 miles away, an organisation of the kind it normally refuses with disdain to recognise, there must be a special reason. The organisation is the Spartacist League/US (SL/US), and the reason is the Significance of its recent fusion with the Red Flag Union (RFU), Scarlet· Woman? a group which had developed from the radical gay­ The movie Harlan County> USA, shown recently Lobby (WEL). The difference certainly does not liberationist Lavender and Red Union (L&RU) to Trotsky­ in Australia, portrays with gripping impact the lie in their attirudes toward the bourgeois ism. leading role women can play in the class state, for SW assures us that the achievement of The Tribune (25 January) piece is even geographi­ struggle, as it follows the militant wives of the reforms during the Whi tlam government "required cally garbled, having the RFU a Canadian group. More striking Harlan County coal miners into pitched cooperation with a government that is both capi­ central is its nauseating attempt to discredit this rev­ battles with gun-toting cops and scabs. The same talist and male". What then? WEL is "avowedly olutionary Trotskyist fusion through simultaneously point was illustrated here recently when the reformist" while SW is ... "revolutionary reform­ red-baiting and homosexual-baiting it, quoting from the wives of the LaTrobe Valley power workers began ist"! In other words the only fundamental dif­ Canadian gay paper Body Politic the comment: "fruit organising in support of what was the most im­ ference between WEL and SW is that WEL is more and nut fusion". portant strike since Fraser came to power. A honest -- it makes no pretence that the bourgeois pI'Oletaz>ian women's movement could intersect such reforms it desires, if accumulated in sufficient The Socialist Workers Party (SWP), on the other hand, opportunities to break down the pervasive sexism quanti ty, wi 11 somehow total "socialism". Dec­ doggedly refuses even to acknowledge it. But the among male workers and draw politically more ades ago, Rosa Luxemburg ruthlessly exposed the SWPcannot simply ignore the RFU comrodes' long his­ backward women who are not part of the workforce treachery of the first "socialist" reformist, tory as a tendency within the radical gay movement onto the terrain of social struggle. Eduard Bernstein. which sought for the class line even before decisively breaking from the New Left sectoralism of the gay The proletarian-communist Spartacist League Communists recognise that to seize power the milieu. Thus, without mentioning the RFU or its fusion (SL) actively supported those strikes and our working class must be purged of the predominating with the SL/US, a piece in Direct Action's "Forum" comrades stood -- literally -- alongside the influence of bourgeois consciousness and imbued column (9 February) - observing that the L&RU "has had class-conscious women of the LaTrobe Valley. But with a revolutionary class consciousness, mani­ not 'so "socialist feminists" like the Scarlet some experiences with the issue of hiring gays for the fested in the struggle for an alternative revol­ police force and the role of the police" - quotes a long Woman collective (SW). While Communist Party utionary leadership to replace the pro-capitalist (CPA) union bureaucrat John.Halfpenny was busily passage from ",Gays vs Police", a 1975 L&RU article labour bureaucracy. SW, however, castigates the explaining that cops are definitively in the camp of the selling out the LaTrobe strike, his "sisters" in SL for "advocat ring] that women be actively iri­ the CPA-influenced SW were undoubtedly agonis­ class enemy, the front-line defenders of bourgeois prop­ volved in politics ... only [I] as a way of rais­ erty and morality. It does not, however, quote the ing over "the correct feminist line when starv­ ing women's class consciousness". This is not ing coal miners' wives try and force their men good enough, you see. For SW the working article's attack on the call for community control of the back to work" (SaarZet Woman, March 1977). At class -- though "a decisive force for revol­ police - a demand long supported by the US SWP - as the very time these "correctly feminist" scab utionary change" -- is relegated by its backward "very regressive"! Nor does Direct Action see fit to mention the US SWP's habit of standing candidates for apologists first posed this "question", they conscious~ to being "at best [!] a latent were also spearheading an unsuccessful anti­ f-orce". Like the trade-union bureaucracy which sheriff! communist purge campaign against SL supporters justifies its wretched misleadership by pointing So, leaving aside the sectoralist approach of the SWP in Sydney Women's Liberation. to the apathy and backwardness inculcated in the article, why is the SWP, of all people, printing solemn The purge attempt was decisively, humiliat­ workers by'its betrayalS, SW defines class con­ denunciations of trusting the bourgeois cops? Well ingly defeated. But recently, the first issue of sciousness to exalude working-class unity around hypocrisy, as they say, is the tribute vice pays to virtue. Saarlet Woman (October-November 1977) to appear the special needs of women, belittles the For those interested in why the RFU opted for the revol­ since then includes a long self-justification struggle for class consciousness, and then dis­ utionary Trotskyism of the Spartacist League, the fusion ("Expulsions: the Sparticist [sic] debate") misses the proletariat as a "latent" force. 5W issue of its paper, Red Flog, and other literature on gay which sets out to rehash the now stale distor­ Con ti nued on page six \.. oppression and bolshevism is available from the SL. tions (eg that we are "opposed ... to the very ~ existence of the autonomous women's movement"; or, still more outlandish, that we "are in fact opposed to women organIsIng around their felt needs as women") propagated in the exclusion at­ tempt (though it discreetly ignores SW's own AUSTRALASIAN SPARTACIST apologia for strikebreaking, mentioned above, which figured in the original debate). In the Australas1an process the article recognises not only that we SUBSCRIPTION DRIVE SPARTACIST are indeed a part of the women's movement, but ACTuCon;;;;;;;"~'----;O-'­ that we -- as opposed to SW and such sister Understand the world in order to change it. Take this trBcks vifftl claSS iSSUBS "socialist feminists" as the Socialist Workers opportunity of -our first public subscription drive to become The uranium Party (SWP) -- are the genuine Marxist pole a regular reader of Australasian Spartacist. within it. And it confirms what we said last diversion year: "Scarlet Woman's argument for the separate Simmering revolt in Spain ... Fascist mobilisations in organisation of women is necessarily an argument Britain .. , Block resistance in South Afr ica ... Critical analy­ for a reformist, non-revolutionary program for sis and factual reportage revealing the social forces the liberation of women" ("Women's liberation: shaping international events. Autonomy is not an option", 27 March 1977; re­ Leninism and workers control." Keynes vs Marx ... The printed in Revolutionary Communist Bulletin no 8 closs nature of the USSR ... Basic theoretical questions, ex­ part 2, "The crisis in the women's movement"). amined with historical depth and sci entific rigour.

Unable to challenge our programmatic consist­ The uranium diversion ... Clique warfare in AUS ... Fake ency, SW decries "theoretical purity at the ex­ Trotskyists and the politics of capitulation ... Sharp, pol­ pense of alienating the masses". Yet in the same emica I, honest - in contrast to those who seek the popu­ issue it is repeatedly forced to acknowledge fem­ larity of the moment. inists' consistent failure even to form "links" with working-class women, much less lead the The LaTrobe Volley power workers' strike ... Crisis and masses. All too eager to slander the SL and controversy in the women's movement ... ASIO infiltration in Marxism, SW can lay claim to neither the masses the left ... Chilean militants rescued from the grip 'of the iunta ... nor "theoretical purity" -- they are even "unable We are a revolutionary factor in the world, using our pro­ to clearly articulate their socialist feminist gram to intervene in social struggles, seeking to shape perspective". "We have been asked by readers their direction. what is 'socialist' about our magazine", an edi­ torial confesses. The scarcely surprising reply: "To face reality squarely; not to seek the line of least "we have obviously felt more confident' about our resistance; to call things by their right names; to speak feminism than our socialism". the truth to the masses, no matter how bitter it may be; IH.iIitant ~r 'fl'ik. betrHjte(/1I8 not to fear obstacles; to be true in little things as in F,OSe, colis election In fact 5W's facade of professed confusion big ones; to base one's program on the logic of the class on "n;on bashing veils a program -- confining the struggle against struggle; to be bold when the hour for action arrives­ women's oppression to reform under the inherently these are the rules of the Fourth International." (Leon oppressive capitalist system. Along~ith its in­ Trotsky) sistence on the spurious "autonomy" of the femin­ ists the article puts forward a list of demands And that is why Australasian Spartacist is the uniquely (free 24-hour child care, free abortion on demand Marxist publication in Australia. etc) which it says "form the essence of our pol"' itical principles". With the exception of the Quotas: Sydney -140 Melbourne - 60 SWP, which usually argues against the call for free abortion on demand as maximalist, virtually everyone who stands for the liberation of women can agree with most of them. But a program lim­ Subscribe now! ited to such minimal reforms (which do not even NAME ______------o Australasian Spartacist 11 issues (1 year) - $3 raise the questions of socialisation of household ADDRESS ______duties and replacement of the nuclear famili, as overseas rates: surface mail - $3 for 11 issues even avowedly non-socialist radical feminists ainnail-$5 for 11 issues (except Europe/North America). WOUld) is necessarily reformist, and this is the $10 for 11 issues (Europe/North America) CITY ______program which 5W posits as the true "political STATE _____ basis" of their women's movement. POSTCODE ______o Women and Revolution 4 issues (1 year) - $3 So overtly reformist is 5W's approach that it must painfully attempt to distinguish itself from Mail to/make cheques payable to: the openly bourgeois-feminist Women's Electoral Donation $ , Spartacist Publications, GPO Box 3473. Sydney. NSW. 2001 AUSTRALASIAN SPARTACIST March 1978 Page Three Leninism and workers control

The following is the first part of an article Trotskyists sometimes confuse these two qualitat­ conceptions of workers control are the European reprinted from Workers Vanguard no 162 (17 June ively different concepts: For example, Felix Pabloites. In Britain, the best-known left-wing 1977). It is based on a talk by Comrade Seymour, Morrow in his Revolution and Counterrevolution in advocates of workers control are two freelancing a member of the central Committee of the Spain uses "workers control" to describe what was independent Pabloites, Ken Coates and Tony Topham Spartacist wague/US, at a West Coast Spartacus actually workers management of nominally of the Institute for Workers' Control. The very Youth League educational in mid-M::l1'ch of last nationalized enterprises. name reveals a reformist conception. Think of year. The second part wi II appear in a forth­ A third area of confusion centers on workers the Institute for Revolutionary Dual Power in coming issue of ASp. management, which is neither identical with nor Industry! The purely social-democratic nature of necessarily occurs under the dictatorship of the the Coates/Topham project is spelled out openly: proletariat. Our program is not workers manage­ by Joseph Seymour "The aims of the Institute for Workers' Con­ ment, but rather the managemen~ or administration by a workers government of a centrally directed trol shall be ... to assist in the formation There is probably no question in contemporary and planned economy. of Workers' Control groups dedicated to the left-wing politics where greater confusion, both development of democratic consciousness, to substantive and terminological, reigns than over It is possible for generalized workers manage­ the winning of support for Workers' Control in "workers control". Of the several forms of con­ ment or, more precisely, self­ fusion, the most dangerous is a stagist concep­ management to exist as another, tion of workers control as the link between day­ distinct form of dual power. to-day trade-union militancy and revolutionary Workers control is dual power dual power, as the necessary, firs t step toward wi thin the production uni t; the seizure of state power. Workers control is management'is still trying to not a demand which communist trade unionists agi­ reassert its traditional auth­ tate for and seek to implement every day in every ori ty. In Italy 1969 there were way. It is only appropriate to a qualitatively pitched battles of Fiat workers different, higher level of class struggle. against Fiat foremen and company goons -- that's what we mean by Workers control -- dual power at the point of workers control or dual power. production -- is an aspect, usually secondary, of Workers management, by contrast, a generalized revolutionary crisis. With one ex­ occurs when the bourgeois man­ ception -- Italy in 1969 -- workers control has agement abandons the productive emerged only after, not before, the government units to the workers, while the was overthrown and the repressive state apparatus latter are not subject to econ­ was in disarray: Russia 1917, Germany 1918, omic administration by the Spain 1936, Portugal 1974-75. And in Italy's state. It is obvious that such "Hot Autumn" in 1969, workers control was a sub­ an extraordinary situation can ordinate aspect of a mass strike wave centered on occur only when a proletarian economic demands. state power has not yet consoli­ There are four characteristic kinds of con­ dated its rule (Bolshevik Russia fusion. The most important is an attempt to ex­ in late 19l7-early 1918) or in a ploit terminological ambiguity in the service of civil war under a weak bourgeois a reformist programmatic conception. This is the "popular front" government trade unionization of workers control. In the (Spain 1936-37). Workers man­ conventional sense, trade unions normally exer­ agement is then a situation of cise some control over the conditions of pro­ dual power between the pro­ duction, job standards and the like. Trotsky, ductive units and the govern­ who was very precise in his programmatic formu­ ment, which may be either pro­ lations, always speaks of "workers control of letarian or bourgeois. The production" or "of industry" to distinguish this government's monopoly over the concept from the kind of control that trade mechanisms of finance is in­ unions normally exercise. variably the Achilles heel of workers .management. In a recent article, "Nuclear Power and' the Workers Movement" (WV no 146, 25 February), we A fourth point of confusion demanded "trade-union control of safety cond- concerns "workers control" as an i tions in all industrial situations". This is institution under a demo­ not a call for generalized dual power at the in­ cratically governed workers dustrial level. Rather it is a strong trade­ state with a centralized planned Russian Revolution, 1917: factory meeting led by Bolshevik workers. union demand. Many unions in many countries have economy. The terminological forced management to adhere to a thick rulebook identity of this concept with "workers control" all existing organizations of Labour, to the specifying safety standards. This is not in a revolutionary, dual-power situation is codi­ challenging of undemocratic actions wherever "workers control of production". Of course, it fied in the Transitional Program and reflects the they may occur, and the extension of demo­ is in the interests of reformists and centrists political language of the Russian experience. cratic control over industry and the economy to blur the distinction between this type of That the same term refers to two fundamentally itself .... " (Bulletin of the Institute for trade-union control of working conditions and different programmatic concepts is inherently Workers' rontrol, vol 1, no 1 [no date]) generalized dual power at the point of production confusing and ideally should be avoided. How­ A far more sophisticated exponent of a reform­ ever, it would be ineffectual scholasticism for signalling a revolutionary situation. ist, stagist position on workers control than the us to invent and use different terms. A second source of confusion is more purely "industrial democrat" Coates is Ernest Mandel. terminological. "Control" is a word which exists Nevertheless, comrades must understand the Labelling workers control an "anti-capitalist in many Indo-European languages with similar but di fference. Workers control under socialist structural reform", he presents it as an insti­ not identical meanings. In European languages economic planning is an authoritative consulta­ tutionalized aspect of trade-union bargaining: tive voice at the point of production. It. is other than English, "to control" means to check "Workers' control is the affirmation by the or monitor the actions of another. For example, absolutely not counterposed or antagonistic to the managerial hierarchy of the workers govern­ workers of a refusal to let the management the functionary who checks tickets on French dispose freely of the means of production and trains is called the controleur de billets. How­ ment. The notion that "workers control" has the selfsame character during a revolutionary of­ labour power ...• It is a refusal to enter ever, in English the term "control" means to ad­ discussions with the management or the govern­ minister or direct. While in other languages fensive against capitalism and in a workers state is an economist or syndicalist deviation. ment as a whole on the division of the "workers control" is distinct from and weaker national income, so long as the workers have than "workers management", in English the two are Workers control is not a demand made upon the not acquired the ability to reveal the way the usually identified. Thus English-speaking employer or state; it is a condition of struggle. capitalists cook up the books when they talk Workers control cannot be incorporated into a of prices and profits." ("Lessons of May", trade-union contract [counterpart of award] or New Left Review, November-December 1968) otherwise institutionalized. By its very nature Mandel simply trivializes workers control as an workers control posits open-ended struggle be­ appendage to every kind of social struggle Subscribe to tween workers and management .. Comrade Douglas' Workers document captures well the difference between Vantuard strong trade unionism and workers control; Putting assembly-line speed in the contract is a strong trade-union demand; workers control means Marxist determining line speed against management's will. working-class A union hiring hall is a strong trade-union de­ weekly of the mand; workers control is forCing management to Spartacist hire more people than it wants to employ. These are real and significant differences. League/US Pabloite revisionism Because workers control cannot be insti­ tutionalized, it is wrong to call for workers One year control in a particular firm or industry as a (48 issues)­ programmatic norm. In a revolutionary situation, $20.00 (oi r) of course, certain fi~ms and industries are in $5.00 (surface) the vanguard of workers control struggles -- the ~ Putilov metalworks in St Petersburg in 1917, Fiat in Turin in 1969, the Lisnave shipyards in Lisbon in 1974-75. However, a call to action on a par­ ticular firm in a revolutionary period is di ffer­ Order from/pay to: Spartacist Publishing Co, ent from a programmatic norm. Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY, 10001 USA Paris unions rally to support Lip watch factory "work-in". The leading exponents of reformist and stagist Revisionists hailed Lip, UCS struggles as "workers control". Page Four AUSTRALASIAN SPARTACIST March 1978 norm'aUy occurring in capitalist society: workers control over all production .. , . "The struggle for workers' control -- with "These commi ttees shou ld which the strategy of anti-capitalist struc­ decide which enterprises tural reforms, the struggle for a transitional would begin operating programme, is largely identified -- must ... again, and to what end -­ keep close to the preoccupations of the that is, exclusively to masses, must constantly arise from the every~ fill the needs of the day reqlity experienced by the workers, their working population. They wives, the students and revolutionary intel­ should have veto power lectuals." (our emphasis -- Ibid) over every investment pro­ The anti-revolutionary nature of Mandel's ject." (our emphasis -­ position is clear when he attempts to inject "From the Bankruptcy of workers control into the French May r968 general Neocapitalism to the strike. I read the following passage several Struggle for the Socialist times because I didn't understand it. This is Revo lution", in Revolt in because it's inherently confused and confusing, France -- 1968) grafting a reformist, stagist concept of workers The French 1968 general control onto a revolutionary dual power situ­ strike is a perfect example ation: of when a stagist concept of "The general strike of May 1968 ... offers us workers control is dangerous. an excellent example of the key importance of Workers control would have this problem. Ten million workers were out meant a lowering of the level on strike. They occupied their factories. of class struggle. It would If they were moved by the desire to do away have been equivalent to aban­ with many of the social injustices heaped up doning a major battle on the by the Gaullist regime in the ten years of verge of victory and retreat­ its existence, they were obviously aiming ing into guerilla war. The beyond simple wage scale demands." correct revolutionary demand for the French May events was It is significant that Mandel does not see the the unification and central­ strikers as having a revolutionary anti- Poffuguese workers hold strike meeting at Lisnave shipyards, Lisbon, 1975. ization of the strike commit- capi talis t impulse, mere ly w.anting to eliminate tees as embryonic soviets, "many" (sic) of the social injustices associated bypassing a distinct period of workers control. with the Gaullist regime. He goes on: "But if the workers did not feel like being Trotsky on Germany 1931 satisfied with immediate demands, they also Trotsky's 1931 article, "Workers' Control of Courts out of BLFI did not have any exact idea of what they did Production", is absolutely unambiguous that A challenge by Brian Rix of the NSW "Builders want. Had they been educated in the preceding workers control is not a reform, but a manifes­ Labourers for Democratic Control", a "rank -and -fi Ie" years and months in the spirit [sic] of tation of dual power in a revolutionary situ­ group in the Builders Labourers Federation (BLF), on workers' control, they would have known what ation: 23 January led to the Federal Court voiding the recent re­ to do: elect a committee in every plant that "Control can be imposed only by force upon the election of Norm Gallagher, the Maoist federal secretary would begin by opening the company books; bourgeoisie, by a proletariat on the road to of the BLF, and ordering a new government-controlled calculate for themselves the various the moment of taking power from them, and then ballot. The Gallagher leadership had bureaucratically in- companies' real manufacturing costs and rates also ownership of the means of production. of profit; establish a right of veto on hiring Thus the regime of workers' control, a pro­ and firing and on any changes in the organiz­ visional, transitional regime by its very es­ ation of the work." ("The Debate on Workers' sence, can correspond only to the period of Control", International Socialist Review, May­ the convulsing of the bourgeois state, the June 1969) proletarian offensive, and the falling back of The 1968 general strike in France the bourgeoisie, that is, to a period of the proletarian revolution in the fullest sense of But for there to be "workers control of pro­ the word." duction" there must be production. A functioning workers control committee during a general strike However, taken out of historic context and read would be scabbing! Workers control and a general superficially, Trotsky's article could be inter­ strike are two mutually exclusive economic­ preted as positing workers control as a necessary Builders Labourers mili'taty tactfcs;- ~w1ii chuStiall'y'llrtse'in very''''' Ol'l' normal early stage of a revolutionary crisis. federal Amid Trotsky's voluminous writings on revol­ secretary, utionarY'strategy and tactics, there is only one Maoist Norm substantive article on workers control -- con­ Gallagher. cerning Germany in 1931. Why did Trotsky bring to the' fore the .demand for workers control at that particular place and time? Why did he con­ sider factory committees rather than soviets as validated Rix's nomination for federal secretary on the the most likely form of dual power? Why did he spurious grounds that it was "late" and that Rix and regard workers control rather than a mass strike his supporters had refused to pay an eight-dollar levy wave or street fighting as the probable initial which Gallagher had imposed to finance his wrecking op­ form of confrontation with bourgeois authority? eration against the old NSW branch, led by Communist First, the economic conditions militated Party (CPA) members Joe Owens and Jack Mundey. against the strike tactic. Given a sharp and Gallagher and his sleazy and corrupt leadership worsening depression, the tasks of the workers were to prevent plant closures, lock-outs and in­ clique are notorious throughout the labour movement for creased unemployment. their gangsterism and their g~oss class collabor­ alionism ~ notably, their intimate collusion with the Mas­ Apart from economic conjunctural consider­ ter Builders Association in destroying the democratically Clydeside workers march during UCS "work-in", 1971, ations,Trotsky's position on workers control was elected NSW leadership. But by bringing the bosses governed by the relations of the Communist Party courts into the union Rix and his supporters are be­ different situations. As we shall see, workers (CP), which he considered bureaucratic centrist traying the ranks no less grotesquely than Gallagher. control is usually an attempt to maintain pro­ with a potential for revolutionary renewal, to duction in the face of employer sabotage, the the Social Democrats on the one hand and to the Yet virtually every left organisation in the country has disruption of war or severe economic crisis. Nazis on the other. In most circumstances the lined up behind Rix. Except the Maoists of course who, The call for workers control during the French strength of the workers movement against the em­ three years after Gallagher's own threats of court action May events would not merely have been wrong and ployers is roughly in line with its strength against Mundey/Owens, are having a field day hypocriti­ confusionist, but dangerous and liquidationist. against the state. Try having a work action in cally denouncing their opponents as "bosses stooges". Under those conditions, the French ruling class Brazil, Iran or South Korea. However, in Germany "We'll get you this time, Gallagher" (Bottler, 4 Feb­ would have promised considerable concessions 1931 the power of the workers in the shops was ruary) crowed the philistine-workerist International toward workers control -- open books, union veto far greater than in the streets. The Communists Socialists (IS) .. When one troubled IS supporter asked, on firing, the right to beat up foremen and all alone, a minority of the proletariat, could not' "Are 'WE' of the I.S. now to be identified with the Fed­ kinds of good things -- if only the workers ended overcome the Nazi stormtroopers; the CP's sec­ eral Court?" (Bottler, 18 February), the reply ("Why we the generai strike and defused the political tarianism and the Social Democrats' legalism pre­ used joe courts") in the same issue was a clear-cut yes, crisis. vented united military action against the lauding the bosses' court for "forcing proper elections to fascists. However, the Nazi writ did not run take pi ace" . . Mandel himself drew out the liquidationist into the factories so that in military terms re­ consequences of his call for workers control sistance to workers control was far less than to The absolute precondition for trade-union democracy, during the French May-June 1968 events in an other forms of a proletarian offensive. as Trotsky noted in "Trade unions in the epoch of imperi­ article published at that time: The German Social Democrats associated soviets alist decay", is "the complete and unconditional inde­ "It is here that the strategy of 'anticapi tal­ with Communist rule and would have opposed them pendence of the trade unions in relation to the capitalist ist structural reforms,' transition demands, as a united-front form. The "Third Period" state". The courts are not neutral. They are insti­ assumes all its validity. The masses cannot Stalinists refused to work in the Social tutions of the bourgeois state aimed at suppressing the Democratic-dominated trade unions. The factory seize power in the factories and neighbor­ working class. Those like Rix, the CPA, the IS and committees were the only existing common organiz­ hoods; that calls for a new and centralized his other so-called socialist supporters who look to revolutionary leadership that does not as yet ations of Social Democratic and Communist workers. Thus Trotsky saw in the factory com­ the bosses to get them into office can be relied on to re­ exist. But the fact that the masses are not pay their sponsors once they get in. Arnold Mi lIer, th1! yet in a position to seize power does not at mittees and workers control the path of least re­ all imply the impossibility of winning, right sistance for a united proletarian offensive. His man who is today trying might and main to sell out the now, demands over and above wage increases. advocacy of workers control was not a universal most militant class battle in the US in years, was also "The workers hold the factories and nerve tactical schema, but a concrete form for a wlited elected through a court suit to "democratise" the union. centers of the nation .... They must immedi­ front of a deeply divided workers movement The BLF membership must repudiate this attack on their ately establish a de facto power that the against the growing fascist threat. If one ab­ union. Gallagher must be swept out by the ranks whom he bosses and the state cannot cancel out once stracts Trotsky's position from the concrete con­ misleads and replaced by a revolutionary leadership. 'calm' has been restored .... juncture and political alignment in Germany 1931, Courts out of the BLF! No state intervention in the "This de facto power consists in demo­ one is liable to project a false tactical schema labour movement! cratically elected committees which establish involving the fetishization of workers control .• AUSTRALASIAN SPARTACIST March 1978 Page Five

.1" might have created the conditions for a more gen­ eralised upsurge against the government's budget­ fake·left red·baiting at AUS council slashing attacks on education and other social services -- the SYA and CPA both responded with a "do nothing policy". They were too busy standing ll in AUS elections, they claimed. They may soon find themselves with no AUS in which to stand for Student Ilunion elections. Even in the case of labour unions, which have the social power to force concessions from the bosses, pure-and-simple unionism stands program­ matically counterposed to the only means whereby the workers can secure their interests -- the shifts right seizure of power. But AUS is not a labour union -- students are a heterogeneous layer with no social power in their own right and only According to the Nation Review (2-8 February), officer positions this year. The Maoists have ephemeral or secondary common interests. In any Sydney University Communist Party (CPA) member been virtually routed from office. After a serious social crisis, the "bread and butter cam­ Gary Nicholls posed the main question facing the series of sharp government/right-wing attacks pus issues" which the fake lefts in AUS so Australian Union of Students (AUS) at its recent which met with practically no organised resist­ single-mindedly pursue will be overwhelmingly annual January Council as follows: ''Was AUS ance from the predominantly "Left Caucus" AUS buried as the student population polarises, going ... to play bankroller to the revolution at leadership last year, AUS finds itself threatened taking sides in the class struggle. The reform­ home and abroad? Or was it ... to direct itself with the possibility of complete disintegration. ists who so contemptuously dismiss the struggle away from what outgoing president Peter O'Connor for "revolution at home and abroad" have nothing called 'esoterica' and being an 'alternative A recent Supreme Court decision by one Justice Kaye in Victoria invalidated compulsory AUS mem­ to offer students. We do -- a struggle for a world government' towards the bread and butter world free of exploitation and oppression, in campus issues?" bership and ruled "uncons ti tutional" AUS funding to such "non-educational" causes as the Timor In­ the ranks of the proletariat and its communist van,guard, the revolutionary Trotskyist party .• Despite the implication in Nicholls' loaded formation Centre, the Black Resources Centre and "question" that AUS had in fact been "bankrolling the Malaya News Service. Rather than attempt a the revo lution", the truth is that the CPA and student mobilisation combined with a calIon the the other fake lefts (most notably the Socialist labour movement to defend it against such attacks Youth Alliance [SYA] and the Maoist Students for by the bourgeois state, the AUS "lefts" simply Australian Independence [SAl]) in the AUS hier­ caved in. The council dutifully recognised its "Boat people'" • commi tment to "bread and butter campus issues" • • archy have steered as clear of any hint of revol­ Continued from page eight utionary politics as possible. After a year of and the sagacity of the judge's decision by vot­ bitter, essentially apolitical clique-fighting ing to cut off funds to any such groups -- in­ cluding ass and the National Aboriginal and demand, whatever its motivation, protest against between the SAl and the Maoist-influenced Over­ anti-communism becomes a cover for racism. seas Student Service (aSS) on the one hand and Torres Strait Islanders Student Union the "Left Caucus" swamp of social democrats (in­ (NATSISU) -- and devising their own scheme to Following the collapse of the Thieu regime in cluding the CPA, SYA and independents) on the eliminate compulsory membership through a "con­ 1975 the US imperialists airlifted their collab­ other, AUS finds i tsel f wi th an increasingly apa­ scientious objection" loophole (which the momen­ orators and cowardly professional torturers to thetic if not hostile student membership. With tarily more militant SYA refused to go along safety, hastening to rescue these anti­ the fake lefts tearing each other to shreds the with). As for the ass, its own flouting of communist hitmen for possible future use in the main victor has been the right, as witnessed by financial accountability to AUS won it little service of the CIA. "No Asylum for Indochinese its success in winning a number of executive and support. And although the cutting off of its War Criminals" was the demand raised by the funds was motivated by both clique hos ti li ty and Spartacist League/US: "These vicious pro­ capitulatory cowardice, the ass with its own fessional anti-communist killers should not be class-collaborationist line and bureaucratic allowed to escape punishment for their heinous practices is no better. crimes against the workers and peasants of Viet­ nam and Cambodia" (Workers Vanguard no 68, 9 May Scarlet Woman And as though to provide irrefutable evidence 1975). The same holds true today for any high­ • • • that social democrats can he just as ruthlessly Continued from page three ranking military officers of the old regime or anti-communist as the right, long-time "Left other war o-riminals among the "boat people". Caucus"-type and Victorian regional organiser thus places itself in the same boat as the labour Sandy Thomas gave even the Liberal students the But to demand that the "boat people" be fakers who are directly responsible for perpetu­ opportuni ty to denounce the "lefts" -- with shipped back en bZoc can only be racist .. By and ating the backwardness of the proletariat (male stomach-churning hypocrisy -- for setting up large these refugees (who may not necessarily all and female) played up by SW as a rationale for Asian students for assassination. And that is be cOllJ.mi tted right wingers) appear to be rela­ reformism. precisely what this worthless scum Thomas did! tively small-time components of the ancien regime Though they dismissed the proletariat as a In an outrageous fingering operation picked up by -- businessmen, entrepreneurs and the like -- or force for social change, the earlier radical fem­ and widely reported in the bourgeois press, he trained professionals such as doctors, engineers, inists were at least imbued with a healthy dis­ accused the ass of funnelling funds to the under­ professors and students, as well as the ubiqui­ ground Malayan Communist Party. This was tous brothel keepers and drug pedlars. There is gust for the rottenness of bourgeois ~ociety and its institutions (eg the nuclear family). Those nothing less than an open invitation to the a sense in which the "boat people" are dispos­ who, compelled by the obvious irrelevance of or­ Fraser government to deport the Asian student sessed -- deserted by their own ruling class and thodox feminism in the light of the recession and members of ass and to his bloody colleagues in its US imperialist paymasters. They were part of the fall of Whi tlam to face the question of Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and the other the arti ficially bloated "middle class", created class, simply allow themselves to get sucked into rightist regimes in Southeast Asia, to line them and made wealthy through corruption and its ser­ SW-' s feminist-tinged labour reformism will up for the torture chambers and the firing vices to the imperialist army of occupation. The thereby find themselves reconciled to the main­ squads. And what have Thomas' ostensibl~' commu­ fall of the Thieu regime meant an inevitable, tenance of bourgeois society. nist colleagues in the CPA and SYA had to say? dramatic drop in the living standards of this Nothing, absolutely nothing! They stand con­ thin layer and also posed the threat of being There is no revolutionary aspect to Scarlet demned tacit enciorsers of this set-up. Their packed off to a so-called "New Economic Zone" to Woman's "revolutionary reformism"; there is no hands will be stained with the blood of any ass boost agricultural production. socialist side to its "socialist feminism". Even member who meets a brutal death in his native Of course, many of the refugees have arrived had Scarlet Woman won the day in Sydney Women's country as a result. Liberation last year, it will never win the day complete with gold bars and in some cases their in Harlan County or the LaTrobe Valley. Victory Thomas' treachery was extreme, but it was riot own servants! Others have sold their supposedly in the class struggle, in the fight against inconsistent with the politics of the "Left unseaworthy boats and acquired expensive houses Caucus". Throughout the past year they have con­ (AustraZian, 3 August 1977). But while decidedly women's oppression requires above all the commu­ unenthusiastic about the arrival of such well­ nist program of the Spartacist League .• sistently opposed shifting AUS from its liberal, narrow "student unionism" toward any attempt to oiled "refugees", we do not join in the link up with the social power of real unions -­ chauvinist-motivated clamour for their expulsion. workers' unions -- or to broaden the struggle against cutbacks in education into a generalised Defend the Berlin Wall struggle against recession austerity and unem­ While we support the democratic right of ployment. They actively resisted any attempt to citizens of the bureaucratically degenerated and go beyond simple defence of TEAS stipends to deformed workers states to emigrate, such rights fight for opening the universities up to working­ are subordinated to our unconditional class de­ class youth through open' admissions and for re­ fence of the workers states against imperialism. placing the administration -- the bourgeoisie's Thus we defend the right of the Vietnamese representatives on campus -- with democratic government to prevent the departure of those student-staff-campus worker control. Red-baited whose technical or medical skills are needed for by the bourgeois media, the "Left Caucus" re­ reconstruction of the country after the ravages sponded with even more virulent red-baiting. Re­ of the imperialist war, or those who are privy to fusing to allow full poli tica'l debate on the secret military information. Similarly, unlike crisis in AUS, their squabbling with their all varieties of West European pseudo­ equally bureaucratic Maoist rivals earned the Trotskyists, including the West German United contempt of students. Secretariat group, we defend the Berlin Wall. At the time of its construction in 1961, East Last year, when its relations with the rest of Germany was suffering from a massive, economi­ the "left" bloc were somewhat cosier, the SYA cally destructive hemorrhage of its skilled called AUS "one of the most democratic, pro­ workforce. While the East German Stalinists' gressi ve and militant unions in the country" (Di­ bureaucratic policies made the wall's construc­ rect Action, 4 August 1977). Now it bemoans the tion necessary, and recognising that in a Germany victory of "a 'do nothing' policy" (Direct Ac­ reunited under a healthy workers state it would tion, 9 February). But by this theSYA means be to,rn down, it neverthe less represents a de­ only that it can no longer re lyon AUS for its fence of the proletarian property forms against favoured method of recrui tmen t -- reformist resurgent West German capitalism. single-issue "mass mobilisations". When Spartacist League supporters at Sydney University Certainly many of the "boat people" are simply last October approached members of the SYA and refugees from a social revolution. However, the CPA to join it in united-front support work economic mismanagement of the Stalinist bureauc­ around the most important strike in Australia racy not only undermines the revolutionary gains since Fraser's rise to power -- the LaTrobe Val­ but exacerbates such disaffection. A healthy ley power workers' strike, which if victorious workers state in which all policies were deter- Page Six AUSTRALASIAN SPARTACIST March 1978 mined by the toiling masses through. demo­ sacked his troglodyte police commissioner, stances. But ASIO's distrust of a party led by cratically elected soviets would be far more Harold Salisbury, for misleading parliament re­ loyal capitalist lackeys is not simply stupid capable of enlisting the support of professionals garding Special Branch liaison with ASIO, and paranoia. Behind the Whitlams and Dunstans and the middle classes. Only workers political declared he would "disband" the Special Branch stands the ALP's working-Class base. However in­ revolution to oust the bureaucratic parasites can (which was in fact merely reduced in size). competent, ASIO knows that the labour movement is open the road to the fullest use of all the re­ Amidst a storm of reactionary indignation, the the mortal enemy of its masters. Thus it is sources, human and material, of the workers furore spread to NSW when Dunstan quoted in par­ Labor governments which tend to bring out most states. liament testimony from the recently released Hope the bonapartist appetites of the political Commission report on ASIO, implicating the NSW police, and it is this, not hostility to their Marxism and immigration policy leader of the Liberal opposition, Peter Coleman, existence (after all, Labor created ASIO) , that The ALP's current moves toward complete oppo­ in ASIO dirty tricks to discredit antiwar rad­ generates ALP reformists' preoccupation with en­ sition to immigration because of the unemployment icals in the early 1970s. Seizing on this long­ suring their loyalty to the "elected government". crisis -- "left-winger" Moss Cass, the Labor known, seven-year-old incident to embarrass the spokesman on immigration, is now calling for im­ reactionary Coleman, Wran had launched a judicial Cops out of the unions! migration to be "cut to the bone" -- is inquiry. Backed by the Liberal OPPOSItIon and confront­ thoroughly reprehensible to proletarian inter­ ing Dunstan with the most serious challenge yet nationalists. "White Australian" opposition to Now, two days after the bomb, Dunstan emphati­ immigration expresses only the chauvinist protec­ cally stressed the need for a police agency con­ to his government, the reactionary mobilisation tionism of the labour bureaucracy. On the other cerned with matters of genuine (!) "security", to reinstate Salisbury was a mobilisation in hand we do not raise the demand for "open bor­ especially "political terrorism" (Australian, 14 favour of cop bonapartism. Salisbury, a commit­ ders". The miserly standard of living of the February). A day later Wran quietly announced ted right-wing ideologue who rails agains the Asian masses will not be raised if they all go the Coleman inquiry had been dropped. "Security" "agents of darkness" plotting to destroy marriage elsewhere. Not only is such a "solution" is a "bipartisan" issue; the reformist ALP falls and the family way of life (Sydney Morning utopian; on a sufficiently large scale immi·· right in line behind Fraser to make the secret Herald, 25 January), openly defended Special gration flows only exacerbate national antagon­ political police of capitalism both more ef­ Branch's virtual subordination to big brother isms and in extreme cases could even wipe out the ficient and more "respectable". ASIO -- and not the state government to which it national identity of smaller countries. Only is nominally responsible -- on the grounds that ASIO has not had a very good press in recent their work "is or should be secret and its mem­ after the triumph of international socialism, years, and growing talk of "reform" preceded eliminating the age-old problem of scarcity, can bers sworn to secrecy .... " The SA Police As­ Dunstan's move to rein in the Special Branch. sociation, affiliated to the TLC, stood solidly the state, and therefore borders and immigration Compared to their American big brothers in the laws, be abolished. behind Salisbury, manifesting a consciousness CIA, ASIO et al are small-time, amateurish out­ among cops of their common class position as de­ While aggressively opposing all forms of fits. But in the course of the Hope Commission fenders of capitalism, disdainful of "political racially and nationally discriminatory quotas, inquiry into ASIO (originally set up by Ivhi tlam) control" -- illustrating once again an important communists do not advise capitalist governments and Dunstan's White Commission on the South lesson: cops are not workers, police associ­ on their necessarily chauvinist and exploitative Australian Special Branch, some of their more ations are not unions and these thugs have no immigration policy, which opens and closes its sneaky, paranoid and legally shady practices have place in the ranks of organised labour. Throw portals in line with economic and political ex­ come to light. In addition ASIO spying on the them out! pediency. \lie intransigently defend the rights of left has been exposed several times, most re­ migrant workers -- "legal" or not -- against cently when ASIO agent Janet Langridge's con­ Such bonapartist appetites of the political chauvinist persecution and deportation. We de­ fession of her job as a plant in the Spartacist police to go beyond the limits of bourgeois mand full citizenship rights for all migrants. League gained nationwide attention last June democracy can pose an immediate threat to exist­ (see ASp no 44, July 1977). The Whi te report re­ ing democratic rights under capitalism, as does We care little for the anti-communist Viet- vealed that the South Australian Special Branch Fraser's impending legislation to widen ASIO's maintained dossiers and file cards on over 40,000 powers. But while opposing such attacks and sup­ people, from antiwar clerics and ALP parliamen­ porting all genuine restrictions on police power, tarians through to New Left radicals, riddled unlike the ALP, CPA and the bourgeois reformers wi th glaring inaccuracies. we are not interested in streamlining the so­ called "security" agencies to make them more ef­ Communists - "always legitimate subjects" ficient in their task of tracking down prolet­ But at the .same time White makes it clear he arian militants. accepts that "communists are always legitimate ASIO does not hound the workers movement sub:iects for surveillance and stored security in­ simply to gather information to be deposited in telligence information" (Australian, 19 January). dusty files nor to prevent Hilton bombings. ASIO And Hope defines subversion so broadly that it and its satellites in Special Branch are the real can encompass almost anything, declaring that secret terrorist conspirators, who carry out ASIO has a duty to "watch over" even those merely their spying in order to harass and attack the ideologically prone to become "potential subver­ workers movement and, ultimately, to set up its sives" (Fourth RepoY't. vol I)! militants for assassination. In the process it By purging ASIO/Special Branch of its obvious ooes indeed violate the democratic rights not political bias and making it more accountable to only of working-class militants·, but of many who the elected authorities, the reformers hope only pose no danger to capitalism whatsoever. We de­ to make the secret police more palatable as well mand the immediate return of all ASIO/Special as more efficient. The same is true of the CPA. Branch fi les to their subj ects. We demand that /'.7:--- 03 -;;- ... ~ .o:;;~.'- In an obsequious sermon against "sense less ter­ all spying on left-wing and working-class organ­ ror" following the Hilton bombing, the CPA echoes isations cease immediately. And we demand that 7.r '~M·~. , - __l~.s ·c,.-c-. .r-.",' -~/'-i~-==i .A .:> ~. ,[WAf,>'~-- . . c. ~~ ...... -=r' the Whi te report, scandalous ly call ing in effect all the bosses' secret police be abolished. But for better cops. Accusing them of "incompetence" we say openly that that can come about only in the Hilton incident, the "Communist" Tribune through the establishment of a genuine workers Reformist racism: Cartoon from the Worker, Brisbane, .1901. (15 February) explains: "The real reason they government to destroy the brutal system of ex­ are incompetent is that they are politically mo­ ploitation they are paid to protect. • nam0se who are currently the darlings of the tivated ... against the left". Australian bourgeoisie; we are on the other hand vitally concerned with the fate of our class Bosses will not abolish ASIO brothers and sisters who seek to escape from Like the ALP reformists, the CPA hopes to make under the thumbs of right-wing dictatorships ASIO and the Special Branches subordinate to the around the world. But we understand as well that institutions of bourgeois democracy. But bour­ Miners • • • the plight of the exploited masses can be re­ geois democracy is a fraud. When capitalist rule Continued from page two lieved only through their mobilisation in a is directly threatened the ruling class will struggle against their exploiters -- the bour­ abandon the democratic, constitutional facade in joining the ranks of organized lab9r above all geoisie -- and for the international dictatorship order to defend their wealth with the methods of through fear. The power of a militant union of the proletariat .• civil war. The secret political police are an demonstrated by a miners victory could change essential part of the repressive apparatus which this dramatically. forms the real core of the bourgeois state. The "Not for a long time has a section of the U.S. ruling class will never allow them to be done working class been in a position to deal such away with through parliamentary means. a stinging defeat to the bosses ~d their Yet the "Trotskyists" of the Socialist Workers state. Coal miners, aided by solidarity A510 • • • Party (SWP) cal.l for the abolition of ASIO/ action from rail, trucking and steel, must Continued from page one Special Branch as if it were simply a question of seize this opportunity to push ahead to democratic rights. Aiming to achieve a parlia­ victory." time in peacetime since 1949. Over a thousand mentary "abolition", they fall in step behind the It is seemingly paradoxical that the American troops, complete with armoured personnel car­ social-democratic deception that the state's ma­ workers, one of the most militant sectors of the riers, inundated the countryside to patiently chinery for repression can be peaceably done away world proletariat, should also be among its most look out for "terrorists" lurking in the bush with. Wedded to capitalism, the labour fakers politically backward. Tied by its hidebound along some 200 km of train track over which the who head the ALP are neither willing nor able to class-collaborationist bureaucracy to the CHOGRM party was to travel to the scheduled stint disband the police. Wedded to ALP reformism, the bosses' Democratic Party, the US working class at a health resort in tiny Bowral. It turned out SWP upbraids Wran for not doing his social­ does not even have a party it can call its own . . that this was merely a clever feint by strategist democratic duty: "we find it deeply disturbing But as the current miners strike attests, when Fraser, who foiled the "terrorists" by flying the that you have not acted immediately in defence of the US workers move into action, the most blood­ conference to Bowral in helicopters. democratic rights" by abolishing the NSW Special thirsty imperialist power in the world shakes in Branch ("Open letter to Neville Wran", Direct Ac­ its boots. When the militancy and determination !)unstan/Wran rush to join ASIO boosters tion, 26 January)! And the SWP joins the CPA and exemplified by the miners is finally linked to a The sometimes farcicial furore over the other secret police "reformers" by implicitly ac­ revolutionary Trotskyist leadership instead of dreaded "international disease of terrorism and ceptIng the validity of appeals to "national se­ being held back by the Millers, the Sadlowskis violence" (Sydney Morning Herald, 14 February) curi ty", ie the safety of capitalist property. and the Meanys, the US imperialist ruling class was calculated for a serious purpose: to clear They lecture Wran that "It is not the 'national will have precious few days left to count .• the way for a strengthening of the political security' which is threatened by nonexistent police agencies. "Stop knocking the securi ty left-wing terrorists ... " and, without further , services", warned the following day's editorial comment, leave the conclusion to be drawn: if Spartacist League "'" in the Australian. Heeding the call, erstwhile "national securi ty" really were threatened, the MELBOURNE ...... (03) 62-5135 Special B-ranch/ASIO critics Dunstan and Wra:l Special Branch would be justified! fell over themselves proclaiming their "anti­ GPO Box 2339, Melbourne, VIC, 3001 terrorist" credentials. The mutual distrust of the ALP and ASIO gener­ ates more or less constant friction between them, SyDNEy ...... (02) 235-8195 The trendy libertarian Dunstan had started Lionel Murphy's "raid" on ASIO and Dunstan's row \.. GPO Box 3473, Sydney, NSW, 2001 the Special Branch ro~ on 17 January when he with Salisbury being the most spectacular in- ~ AUSTRALASIAN SPARTACIST March 1978 Page Seven Racism, anti-communism and the Ilboat people"

For a few weeks at the end of last year it hind 'Captive Nations Week''', April seemed that scarcely a day would go by-without a 1968). While barring victims of boatload of Vietnamese slipping into Darwin har­ Franco's rightist terror, the govern­ bour, waving anti-communist banners and demanding ment welcomed supporters of various to be treated as political refugees. The bour­ East European fascist movements and geois media had a field day, of course, abounding veterans of Hi tIer's extermination with "human interest" stories about these "boat squads. people" -- forced by "ruthless communist tyranny" If, following the 1965 rightist to become "desperate refugees" in search of bloodbath in Indonesia in which some "freedom" and a "new life". In sympathetic in­ 500,000 workers and peasants were terviews the refugees described, often in impec­ slaughtered, any Indonesian "boat cable English, their "harrowing" escapes, their people" had attempted to land in "nightmarish" journeys through storm-racked, Darwin we have no doubt they would shark-infested seas and their gratitude at being have been either blown out of the in a "free country". water by the Australian armed forces The Fraser government, discovering it had a or immediately shipped back to face "moral and humanitarian" obligation to "ease Suharto's death squads. The then human suffering", welcomed the "boat people". At Menzies government, along with the the other extreme, the Darwin branch of the mainstream of the Labor Party, was Waterside Workers Federation called a two-hour frankly appreciative of the anti­ protest strike against the arrival of these communist coup and ever since has "phoney refugees" from a "friendly country", de­ been anxious to express its gratitude nouncing "a double standard by the government in to the Indonesian generals. dealing with illegal migrants to Australia" But as valuable to the bourgeoisie (Northern Territory News, 25 November 1977). The for anti-communist propaganda as the wharfies also raised several hundred dollars to "boat people" are, they are still aid six crewmen kidnapped during the hijacking of Asians; and official policy or not, the trawler Song Be who demanded to be returned this is sti 11 "White .Australia". to Vietnam and took industrial action to prevent Fraser was uncomfortably aware that their harassment by the Fraser government. The their descent upon Darwin would re­ ,OJ Stalinist-influenced wharfies demanded not only vi ve the fears of "invading ye 11 ow that the crewmen be repatriated, but that those hordes" and acute anti-Asian racism ..a. ~ who had seized the boat to flee Vietnam be sent Arrival of "boat people" on Song Be sparked Darwin.. wliarfies' protest strike. pervasive throughout Australian so­ back as "pirates" as well. ciety and might damage his prospects in the Even Whitlam's official revocation of "White "Double standard" is hardly adequate to de­ December elections. The government quickly dis­ Australia" several years ago was largely fraudu­ scribe the government's attitude tbward the Viet­ patched Immigration Department officers to the lent -- only a few thousand highly skilled Asians namese refugees. Less than a year ago this refugee camps in Malaysia and Thai land to per­ were allowed in each year. Tne logic of Labor's "moral and humanitarian" government literally ab­ suade prospective "boat people" to awai t process­ historic reformist chauvinism is stark: far' ducted Italian Communist Party member and migrant ing through "normal channe Is". (Some 5000 such better to allow Indonesian workers to be mass­ organiser Ignazio Salemi to whisk him out of the officially screened refugees have been flown to acred by the butcher Suharto in 1965 than to have country on a deportation writ and forced Australia since 1975.) The bourgeois pres's agon­ them land on Australia's shores. ised over the dangerous precedent being set if Malaysian student leader Hishamuddin Rais into Because of this context of traditional anti­ hiding in order to avoid deportation to the tor­ the threat of instant deportation of any and all Asians landing "illegally" in the country were de Asian chauvinism wi thin the labour movement, any ture chambers of the reactionary Malaysian blanket opposition to the arrival of the Viet­ government. Like its predecessors, Labor or Lib­ facto removed (see Sydney Morning Herald, 29 December 1977). namese must be viewed with suspicion. All the eral, this governmen t has maintained a vi rtua 1 more so when it comes from the Maoist Communist closed door to the hundreds of thousands of left­ Hypocritical as the bourgeoisie's welcome has Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) (see Van­ ist Latin American refugees fleeing savage mili­ been, the indignant opposition of labour's guard, 9 February) which in pursuit of its viru- tary regimes. What persecuted leftists do manage "leaders" has been simply disgusting. A spokes­ lent strain of Australian patriotism opposes to get into the country are, like the sizable man for the Darwin public. bus services dri vers, foreign-language instruction for migrants in Asian student population, subject to relentless ci ting the "danger" of exotic diseases, Australian schools (Vanguard, 20 October 1977), surveillance and intimidation by ASIO and other threatened stop-work action if the buses carrying and furthermore, given its current line-up with secret-police agencies. Vietnamese were not thoroughly fumigated before Cambodia in the nationalist border war, is well and after use! A tri fle more circumspect, Hawke on the way to characterising Vietnam as "dark The "boat people" and "White Australia" denounced Fraser for "inviting Vietnamese refu­ fascist". Similarly the Healyi te Socialist This is nothing new. When, after World War gees to simply row a boat ashore and stay in Labour League -- which is notorious for its adap­ II, the then Labor government opened Australia to Australia" (Sydney Morning Herald, 2 December tation to backward consciousness in the working large-scale immigration by non-English-speaking 1977). Such racist rubbish expresses the tra­ class -- following the Darwin strike demands Europeans, it was official policy that "under no ditionally chauvinist policy of the ALP/ACTU bu­ that all the Vietnamese be shipped back (Workers circumstances are refugee Spaniards from the reaucracy, resurrecting the central planks of News, 1 December 1977). In the case of this Franco regime to be included in the immigration Australian social democracy's founding program: program" (quoted in John Playford, "The Truth Be- "Whi te Australia" and virulent protectionism. Continued on page six

Intemational

"They say in Harlan County, .Women's There are no neutrals there. Day 1978 You'll either be a union man Or a thug for JH Blair. Which side are you on?" - Florence Reese a proletarian 1932 ,holiday

International Women's Day belongs to the proletarians of the world-male and female-those who are combatants in the class struggle, who understand that picket lines are not to be crossed, that strikes are not to be broken, that women's emancipation demands the strongest bonds of proletarian unity. Claim it though they will as their own, it does not belong to the bourgeois feminists who Harlan County: Brookside miners' wives led picketing in preach sex war and class collaboration, who iustify strikebreaking in the name of sisterhood.

Page Eight AUSTRALASIAN SPART.~CIST March 1978