Nos. 17 & 18, August-September, 1970

NUMBER 17·18 AUGUST ·SEPTEMBER 1970 25 CENTS AMERICA FACES CRISIS The U.S. bourgeoisie is facing a widespread and deep student radicals, having tried everything else from paci ening political and economic crisis. All sections of so fism to street "confrontations," have willy-nilly re ciety are polarizing ever more widely and bourgeois discovered workers. These young radicals, and militant "law and order" is threatened on many fronts-out rank and file workers, provide the objective basis for the raged students, militant workers, racial violence, etc. development of anti-war activity based on class con The American economy is faced with the seemingly sciousness. But in the absence of principled leadership, impossible situation of a stock market crash and grow the entry of the union bureaucrats into the anti-war ing unemployment combined with runaway inflation. movement will simply provide a vehicle to bring the This situation, considered a contradiction in terms by anti-war activists back to the old "lesser evil" Demo bourgeois economists, was predicted by the Spartacist cratic Party trap which most of them had rejected years League exactly a year ago. In "Development and Tactics before. The "progressive" union bureaucrats are not of the SL" (August 1969), we foresaw "the likelihood and cannot be the basis of a class-conscious anti-war of an economic downturn in early 1970. Such a down strategy; their role within their own unions is to fight turn may slow down, but not end, the current inflation." militancy and blunt consciousness by tying the labor The major cause underlying the present economic insta movement to "establishment" politics and the capitalist bility is the Viet Nam war, which is no longer an ad Rtate. The anti-war misleaders embrace their labor justable economic factor fitting neatly into the "govern faker brothers in the hope they can serve this same ment sector" of "defense" spending, military stockpiles, function for the anti-war movement. etc., but has mushroomed to unmanagable proportions. Pop Front Co~ference The liberal capitalists and their politicians are now The June conference in Cleveland of the Student Mo raising a hue and cry in favor of wage-price controls bilization Committee, captive anti-war front group of to bring the economy back to "health." But the "health" of the economy is by no means identical to the well being of its working people. For example, a controlled high rate of unemployment is considered essential to economic "health." The purpose of wage-price controls is ultimately ,to enable American imperialism to con tinue the brutal Viet Nam war and "stabilize" the status quo. Their effect is to hold down the living standards of the workers by restricting wage raises-including those of the most oppressed whose present wages are miserably insufficient to provide a decent life (and whom the same liberals always invoke in painting themselves as "friends of the people") -and to provide yet another OUR SLOGAN Won Militants' Cheers. ideological justification for the bosses' constant strug the Socialist Workers Party-Young Socialist Alliance, gle to deprive the workers of the right to stTike, to de should have served to convince even the most naive that fend their own living standards instead of relying on the anti-war movement will not purge itself of its un "their friends" in government. principled Popular Front nature of its own accord. The The economic situation combined with the Cambodian conference, run with an iron hand by the SMC leader invasion and the massacres of students in Ohio and ship, continued implacable in its sellout orientation. The Mississippi (and now Kansas) provided renewed im SMC prides itself on its "independence" from the capi petus to the anti-war movement, which had been slowly talist political parties; yet it voted down the proposal running itself into the ground with endless Iiberal to cease including liberal pro-imperialist politicians in pacifist demonstrations. A rift has opened up in the its anti-war rallies and reacted with horror and disbe labor movement, extending even up to prominent union lief to the SDS motion to expand the anti-Agnew picket officials, between the Meanyite "hawks" and the "pro to include a protest against Cleveland's liberal Black gressives." The latter are rapidly becoming integrated mayor, Stokes, a Democrat. There is no such thing as into the middle-class anti-war movement on the basis of "independence" without a class basis; classless organi- the same old tired liberal politics. At the same time (Continued on Pa.ge 2) On Left-Wing Terrorism . .. Page 4 2- SPARTACIST ... CRISIS zations and politics in a class society must inevitably be filled by class content: either clearly proletarian or bour ois by default. The SMC's belated response to the increas SPARTACJS1 ing awareness of the need for workers' anti-war struggle was to fall right into the "progressive" trap. The SMC An Organ of Revolutionary Marxism put forward accomodation to the sellout union bureau EDITORS: David Cunningham; Managing, Elizabeth Gordon; West crats as the way to.reach workers. A working-class anti Coast, Christopher Kinder; Southern, John Sheridan. war strategy must be based not on the "labor lieuten BUSINESS MANAGER: Elaine West. ants of the capitalist class" but on a class-struggle pro Subscription: $1 for ten issues. Bundle rates for 10 or more copies. gram. Needless to say, proposals for such a program were Main address: Box 1377, G.P.O., New York, N.Y. 10001. Tele· rejected; the conference voted down motions for work phone: WA 5-2426. Western address: P.O. Box 852, Berkeley, Calif. ers' political strikes against the war and for a political 94701. Telephone: 525-5243. Southern address: P.O. Box 8165, U.T. party of the working class, raised by Spartacist League sta., Austin, Texas 78712. Telephone: 476-9714. supporters. The responsibility for the SMC's wretched line lies, Published by the Central Committee of the spartacist League. of course, at the door of the ex-Trotskyist SWP, whose Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent youth group, the YSA, has grown over the past few an editorial viewpoint. years and is now the largest nation-wide "socialist" Number 17-18 ~1I8 Aug.-Sept. 1970 youth organization. The SWP-YSA plays the political role earlier perfected by the Communist Party and its successive front groups--class collaboration with a "so including Workers Action, the Workers Power Caucus, cialist" cover. They pride themselves on being the main International Socialists and Spartacist League-put for builders of a Pop Front anti-war movement and in re ward four oppositional motions: for internal democracy cent years they have learned to play to perfection the and minority rights at the conference; for militant rank role of cement between would-be radicals and liberal and file control of the unions-no compromise with "pro bourgeois fakers by subordinating politics in the name gressive" bureaucrats; for a working-class political of "unity," a unity across class lines. Because of their party based on class struggle; for immediate labor Trotskyist past, they seek to pass off their anti-war' political action on the basis of these demands. Their coalition as a "u;nited front." But the precondition for a statement was endorsed by militants from the CW A, united front, as Trotsky made clear, is a break-in form NMU, SEIU and District 65. and content-from the bourgeois parties, not a bloc with a section of them! SDS Crumbles Best kIiown for their political sellouts and organiza The Progressive Labor-based section of SDS which tional maneuvering in the anti-war movement, these emerged from the original SDS split as the left wing ex-Trotslfyists function similarly in other arenas. In is visibly crumbling. Largely bypassed by the spon Atlanta the YSA was a main organizational force in taneous upsurge of student outrage following the Cam bunaing a "RaUy Against Repression" for the Southern bodia-Kent State events, SDS has done nothing to pro Christian. Leadership ConferEmce, Rev. Martin Luther vide political direction. The organization has moved King's old pacifist civil rig}rts_gxoUp, at which the prom sharply to the right in an attempt to be "less sectarian" inent speaker was Senator McGovern; As might be ex and appear more like the same old student radicals we pecteil, no representatives of any "socialist" organiza all remember from the days of a flourishing if politically tion, including the SWP-YSA, were permitted to speak. nebulous New Left. The PL-SDS cadres who once At a time when vigorous, principled leadership could chanted "Power to the Workers" at the original SDS mobilize more people than ever before behind a class split now intone "Power to the People" and enthuse struggle perspective, the so-called "socialists" of the about "third world" movements, like any RYMer. While SWP-YSA, and the SMC, only know how to push class still refusing to let left oppositionists such as the Rev collaboration. olutionary Marxist Caucus in SDS be represented at SDS actions (e.g., the SDSrally at Cleveland) or in New Old Garbage in New Pails Left Notes, they went so far as to invite Mike Klonsky The "Rank and File National Conference" held the -the absolute worst of the old "National Collective" weekend of 26 June in Chicago was a gross demonstra which split from SDS a year ago-to speak at an ~DS tion of the nature of the so-called "progressive" trade rally in the Bay Area. union bureaucracies who manipUlate their memberships For its own petty factional advantage, PL-SDS has in the interests of the bosses and their ,politicians.

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