soC!:

No. 706 ..,.XQ3 5 February 1999 Imperialists Mobilize for Occupation of losovo U.S./UN/NATO Hands Off the Balkans!

JANUARY 31-The United States and other imperialist powers threatened yes­ terday to launch massive air strikes against the Serbs if the Yugoslav govern­ ment does not accord "substantial auton­ omy" to that country's Albanian-majority province of Kosovo. Hundreds of planes, mainly American, and dozens of ships under NATO command are poised for attacks against Serbia. The U.S.-imposed diktat requires that both Yugoslav presi­ dent Slobodan Milosevic and the ethnic Albanians in Kosovosend representatives .to a "peace" conference in France later this week. The imperialists threaten terror bombing of Serbia if the negotiations are not "satisfactory." The rebels in land­ Clinton locked Kosovo would also be "punished" threatens by the blockading of Albanian ports in Serbia with order to cut off their arms supplies. NATO air strikes The imperialists are also planning to to impose send a U.S'/NATO force of some 30,000 imperialist ground troops to Kosovo to enforce any diktat over "peace" agreement. The Clinton adminis­ Kosovo. tration is promising to contribute some 5,000 ground troops. The German Fourth Gamma Reich under Social Democratic chancel­ forces out of the Balkans! least eleven civilians dead. Tens of thou­ imperialist terror bombing! Down with lor Gerhard SchrOder also wants to be The same day the imperialists deliv­ sands were slaughtered in 1991 by U.S.­ imperialist sanctions against Serbia and part of any NATO occupation force in ered their diktat to Milosevic, waves of led forces acting under a United Nations Iraq! U.S. get your bloody hands off the Kosovo. German imperialism has hitherto American warplanes attacked Iraqi fig leaf. Today, the blood of the Iraqi world! been restrained by the memory, seared installations near the northern city of people is still being spilled to cement For years, Washington denied Iraqi into the consciousness of the Balkan peo­ Mosul in the largest air offensive against U.S. control over vast oil and natural gas accusations that UN "weapons inspec­ ples, of the orgy of mass murder carried that country since the U.S. and Britain resources which are vital to Ametica's tors" were part of an American spy oper­ out under the Nazi occupation ofYugosla­ launched a four-day missile assault in imperialist rivals, Germany and Japan. ation. But last month it was revealed that via during World War II. Whether or not December. Such attacks have become an Over a million children and hundreds of the search for supposed "weapons of the U.S.-dominated NATO alliance car­ almost daily occurrence in recent weeks, thousands of other Iraqis have died from mass destruction" provided U.S. intelli­ ries out its threats, the Spartacist League including the bombardment of a residen­ malnutrition and disease resulting from gence with information used to plan the forthrightly declares: All imperialist tial quarter of Basra last week that left at the imperialist embargo. Down with U.S. continued on page 8

and promising free health care to preg­ nant women and their children-all these legal provisions amount to a cruel hoax. Far from improving the lives of Brutal Murder 01 the impoverished masses, the ANC regime, acting as front men for the white capitalists, has laid off thousands of workers, kept education as a privi­ South Alrican AIDS Activist lege for the children of a few ANC cro­ nies and the white racist ruling class, JOHANNESBURG-After announcing to talk about her disease, to talk about that causes AIDS. By current statis­ and shut down many hospitals. This that she was HIV-positive on World her sexual life in a society where tics, more than a fifth of the South Afri­ capitalist government cannot and will Aids Day last December, Gugu Dla­ women live under patriarchal practic~s can black working class-the bedrock not deliver on promises of quality mini, a mother and AIDS awareness such as polygamous marriages, female of the capitalist economy-are HIV­ health care for women, housing, jobs, activist, was beaten senseless by a rabid genital mutilation and lobola (bride positive. In KwaZulu-Natal, some 5,000 education or anything else the popula­ mob claiming to be "cleaning the area." price)-"traditions" upheld by tribal HIV cases emerge every month, includ­ tion desperately needs. She died of her wounds a few weeks reactionaries in league with the capital­ ing 1,000 babies whose life expectan­ South Africa is an' extreme case of later. Dlamini lived in eastern Kwa­ ist rulers. cies are between two and five years. what Marxists call combined and Zulu-Natal, a province at the centre of The killing of Dlamini near the city While the African National Congress­ uneven development. A large-scale, the AIDS epidemic in South Africa. of purban illuminates the immense led bourgeois-nationalist government of modern industrial base and mining She was lynched for having the courage social backwardness and material dep­ Nelson Mandela has put on paper some . complex were built through the super­ rivation underlying the spiralling AIDS of the broadest liberal democratic exploitation of the black toilers by the pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa, where laws-striking down prohibitions on white capitalist class. Yet the black over 22.5 million carry HIV, the virus homosexual sex, legalising abortion masses remain mired in "Third World" conditions of extreme poverty, super­ stition and vestiges of tribalist loyalty 7".'25274 "81030 fIr a Leninist Partl, tribune olille Pellle! continued on page 7 Ian Donovan Is a Dangerous Lunatic! Condemn ,Violent Assault by Pro-Imperialist "Socialist" at Bloody Sunday Demonstration We reprint below a February 2 state­ British Army which carried out the Donovan's thuggery was witnessed by ary Polish Solidarnosc, outright apolo­ ment by the Spartacist League/Britain, Bloody Sunday massacre. many demonstrators. Dismayed that an gists for Ukrainian fascism in World War section . of the International Commu­ English male had battered an Irish II and supporters of "Workers Aid for nist League, protesting a cowardly thug At the 30 January* * demonstration * in woman at this demonstration, several Bosnia," which has run point for imperi­ attack on a Spartacist comrade at a Lon­ London commemorating Bloody Sunday, demonstrators shouted at Donovan, alist intervention in the Balkans. In the don rally marking the anniversary of Ian Donovan of Revolution & Truth vio­ "You're a nutter!" Representatives from same time period, a leading member of the 1972 Bloody Sunday massacre of lently assaulted Spartacist League cotp­ other leftist organisations carne forward the IBT's American group scabbed on a 14 Catholic marchers in Derry, North­ rade Eibhlin McDonald, an Irish woman. to denounce the attack. The despicable strike of New York City building mainte­ ern Ireland. Our comrade was bloodied Ian Donovan is currently the chair of the exception was Workers Power, whose nance workers in 1996 (see "The IBT: by one Ian Donovan, a recent ex-member London Socialist Alliance, a group which representative on the spot said our com­ Social Chauvinists Looking for Labour­ of the dubious International Bolshevik is politically dominated by the Socialist rade brought it on herself, which is in ite Host," Workers Hammer No. 166, Tendency. Donovan is now chairman of Party. Unable to politically defend the keeping with their own record of vio­ January/February 1999). the London Socialist Alliance, a group Socialist Party's support to the Royal lence and exclusion of the Spartacist The IBT is led by a sexual sociopath dominated by the Labourite Socialist Ulster Constabulary in Northern Ireland, League. and massive liar, Bill Logan, who was ex­ Party (formerly the Militant tendency). Donovan responded by driving his fist Hugh Stephens of the Campaign pelled from our organisation in 1979 for Donovan assaulted our comrade into McDonald's face, in the midst of a Against Sanctions and War on Iraq sent a gross crimes against communist morality after she exposed the Socialist Party's 500-strong protest against British oppres­ written statement which, while express­ and its substrate, elemental human chauvinist support to the Protestant­ sion in Northern Ireland. When McDon­ ing political differences with the Sparta­ decency. One account from a survivor of dominated Royal Ulster Constabulary ald shouted that she had been hit, demon­ cist League, declared: "I have discussed Logan's organisation, Phil Ferguson, (RUC), British imperialism's police force stration stewards came quickly, found the this with my own comrades and we wish notes: "His behaviour is the textbook case in Northern Ireland. As the statement cowardly bully Donovan and cautioned to express our solidarity with your de­ of the little ratbag in a private boys school notes, the Socialist Party also sponsors a him. Dripping blood from the gash over fence of your democratic rights, and our who gets to be head boy or head of some member of the sectarian Loyalist Ulster her right eye, McDonald was taken to a disgust that violence should have marred little gang;' and adds that "every bone in Volunteer Force (UVF) and refuses to nearby hospital where she was x-rayed the otherwise very successful demonstra­ his body is alien to the working class" demand withdrawal of the occupying and given stitches. tion. We have never used violence against (Internet posting, 21 December 1998). other comrades as you know, and we have A Spartacist League statement issued always found your comrades to be princi­ on the day of Donovan's assault said: pled in discussions even with us who have "We refuse to involve the capitalist state Black Liberation Through very different views, a fact which we in the affairs of the workers movement Socialist Revolution! appreciate and which we endeavour to and made clear to the cops on site that we Since the defeat of Radical Reconstruc­ reciprocate." Ian Donovan is a danger to will not press any charges against Dono­ tion in the decades following the Civil War, the workers movement. This attack must van." We also made clear our intention to black people have faced brutal and system­ be exposed and condemned. widely expose and condemn his thuggery, atic segregation, constituting an oppressed In the argument which preceded the as an act of principle and a service to the race-color caste in American society. But as attack, comrade McDonald cited the left. We call on others in the workers a strategic component of the proletariat, Socialist Party's grotesque line on the movement to do likewise. Donovan is black workers are slated to playa leading RUC, whom they described in the wake mentally unhinged and dangerous. Polit­ role in the American socialist revolution of the Omagh bombing as "a bunch of ically he is a Labourite toady and apolo­ TROTSKY which will eradicate the material basis of LENIN scared young men, thrown into a horror gist for British imperialism, in the tradi­ racial oppression. In two 1953 lectures cen- they couldn't cope with." She suggested tion of [former Labour leader] Arthur tered on the fight against Southern Jim Crow segregation, American Trotskyist Richard Donovan should form a contingent with Henderson who led the cheering in par­ S. Fraser put forward the perspective of revolutionary integration-the fight for the the Socialist Party and write on their ban­ liament when [Irish revolutionary] James assimilation of black people into an egalitarian socialist society. The Spartacist ner "'Socialists' for the RUC!" Donovan Connolly was shot by a British firing League carries forward Fraser's pioneering work in our struggle to forge a multiracial is a former member and perpetual hanger­ squad. The Labourite Socialist Party revolutionary workers party in the U.S. on of the dubious "International Bol­ which Donovan defends upholds this shevik Tendency" (IBT) who have an chauvinist tradition-they are notorious The racial division of society was born with capitalism and will die only with the obsessional hatred of the Trotskyist Spar­ for refusing to call for British troops out death of this last system of exploitation. Before capitalism there was no race concept. tacist League. The IBT are social chau­ of Northern Ireland and for sponsoring There was no skin color exploitation, there was no race prejudice, there was no idea of vinists conspicuous for their arrogant fascistic Loyalist Billy Hutchinson in superiority and inferiority based upon physical characteristics. indifference to the oppressed, not least their meetings. Hutchinson's Loyalist It was the advent of Negro chattel slavery in the western hemisphere which first the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland. Ulster Volunteer Force has connections to . divided society into races. In a measure the whole supremacy of western capitalism'is Not surprisingly, therefore, they are a cul­ the British fascists, who routinely stage founded upon this modem chattel slavery. The primary accumulation of capital which ture mediumfor violent misogynist, anti­ provocations against the annual Bloody was the foundation of the industrial revolution was accrued largely from the slave communist nutters like Donovan. Sunday demonstration in London and did trade .... Just before he lunged at her with his so again on Saturday, where Donovan The "Negro Question" in the United States exists because of the failure of the capi­ fist, Donovan ranted that comrade had earlier staged his provocative attack. talist class to solve the most elementary problems of the democratic revolution in the McDonald acted as a "cop" towards .him Our statement concluded: South: the problems of land tenure and democratic rights. Thereby it has left the social and other IBT supporters, suppose-ctly "Political debate is necessary to clarify heritage of color slavery intact as a malignant feature of social life. "fingering them" to the leadership of the what programme and leadership the But .capitalism, even in the southern United States, has created the conditions neces­ Socialist Labour Party (SLP). In fact, we working class needs to fight for its inter­ sary for its own destruction: It has disrupted the old agrarian pattern, undermined the exposed the IBT for being to the right ests: we oppose the imperialist 'peace' privileged white middle class, thus weakening the whole .fabric of social repression. It deal in Northern Ireland which is prem­ of [SLP leader Arthur] Scargill's left ised on the continued rule of bloody has created great industries, proletarianizing white, urbanizing black. This process has Labourite reformism. The outfit which British imperialism, and the continued centralized the Negro community in positions of great strategic advantage in large city today calls itself the IBT was founded by presence of British troops maintaining communities, whereas before they were dispersed over the countryside. Capitalism has embittered and hostile ex-members who the oppression of the Catholic minority. We demand the immediate, uncondi­ likewise created the conditions for the overthrow of race prejudice by working class individually quit our organisations in_ the solidarity. tional withdrawal of the British troops! U.S. and Canada in the early 1980s in Not Orange against Green, but class -R. S. Fraser, "The Negro Struggle and the Proletarian Revolution," the face of the escalating imperialist anti­ against class! For an Irish workers In Memoriam-Richard S. Fraser (Prometheus Research Series No.3, 1990) Soviet war drive. It had no sooner set republic as part of a voluntary federation foot in the SLP than the IBT was form­ of workers republics in the British Isles! "We repeat: acts of violence such as Ian ing electoral slates with virulently anti­ Donovan's against political opponents communist elements, including those on the left have no place in the workers who had cheered on counterrevolution- movement!". !~~!!..!!or..~!~!!.~f!.! ~ EDITOR: Len Meyers EDITOR, YOUNG SPARTACUS PAGES: Jacob Zorn PRODUCTION MANAGER: Susan Fuller CIRCULATION MANAGER: Mara Cadiz 'n Memoriam EDITORIAL BOARD: Ray Bishop (managing editor), Bruce Andre, Helene Brosius, George Foster, Liz Gordon, Jane Kerrigan, James Robertson, Joseph Seymour, Alison Spencer Richard S. Fraser The Spartacist League is the U.S. Section of the International Communist League (Fourth ~ Internationalist)...... -.., ... ..'-100 Workers Vanguard (ISSN 0276-0746) published biweekly, except skipping three alternate issues in June, July and - August (beginning with omitting the second issue in June) and with a 3-week interval in December, by the Spartacist - Publishing Co., 299 Broadway, Suite 318, New York, NY 10007. Telephone: (212) 732-7862 (Editorial), (212) 732-7861 (Business). Address all correspondence to: Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116. E-mail address:[email protected]. Domestic subscriptions: $10.00/22 issues. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Workers Vanguard, Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116. Opinions expressed in signed articles or letters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpOint. The closing date for news in this issue is February 2.

No. 706 5 February 1999

2 WORKERS VANGUARD If you're looking for heroes by the cri­ ingly, we also find on the SEP Web site a teria of the SEP why not pick Karl full-blown apologia for Orwell under the Donitz, admiral of the World War II Ger­ 'byline of eternal toady Fred Mazelis man submarine fleet. In the First World ("George Orwell and the British Foreign War, he commanded a submarine that Office," 9 September 1998). sank. In the next, he lost two sons. The It came out last summer that Orwell, U-boat crews under his command were General George S. Patton the British author of Animal Farm and George Orwell also heroic, because they kept fighting 1984 and coiner of the phrase "Big even when 90 percent were gone. The Brother is watching you," was doing a lit­ Longtime political bandits and rene­ problem here is that bravery is not a tle watching of his own. In 1949, Orwell ation in hearings of the House Un-Amer­ gades from Trotskyism, the Socialist social, or class, criterion. This is made turned a list of some 35 people he con­ ican Activities Committee, no prison sen­ Equality Party (SEP, formerly Workers very clear in the movie Das Boot; -sidered to be in the orbit of the Stalinists tence looming. Unlike those who ratted League) has now descended to actively One would never know from the over to a unit of the British Foreign Office because they couldn't stand up to the ter­ saluting imperialism's war chiefs. When . Northites that the Trotskyists opposed all set up to disseminate anti-Soviet prop­ rorizing witchhunts, Orwell finked volun­ Clinton carried out his terror bombing of the imperialist powers in World War II aganda. Rising from Orwell's snotty tarily. Nevertheless, Mazelis posits that Iraq in December, the Spartacist League while calling for the unconditional mili­ comments on "crypto-Communists and "there is no way of knowing exactly where forthrightly declared: "Defend Iraq! De­ tary defense of the degenerated Soviet fellow travelers" is a nasty whiff of anti­ he would have ended up politically if he feat U.S. Imperialism Through Workers workers state. In 1939, James P. Cannon, gay and anti-St;mitic bigotry. By Charlie had lived another two or three decades." Revolution!" In stark contrast, a "World in the c,ourse of his great battle to pre­ Chaplin's name, Orwell writes "Jewish?" Well, we have a pretty good idea. After Socialist Web Site" piece by Martin serve Trotskyism in the U.S. on the eve- in parentheses. The powerful black Amer- all, "My country, right or left," Orwell McLaughlin and SEP national secretary , David North, dated 19 December 1998, describes the attack as "a shameful chap­ ter in American history" and explicitly counterposes the supposed glories of yes­ teryear's imperialist war-making: "This much is certain: 50 years from now no one will be making films like Patlon, The Longest Day or Saving Pvt. Ryan about their exploits. "One need not agree with the politics of such World War II-era commanders as Eisenhower, Bradley, Patton, and Nimitz to acknowledge that they, at least, led their armies against an enemy fully capable of firing back." Like a newsreel from Hollywood's World War II propaganda mill, North and McLaughlin carefully omit the atroc­ ities committed by the U.S. military in that interimperialist war as they list Asahi Shimbun "searing images that profoundly influ­ Allied firebombing of Dresden, February 1945, killed over 100,000 German civilians. Six months later, some 200,000 Japanese and Koreans were incinerated in American A-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Northite paean to U.S. enced the political consciences of several World War II exploits disappears such atrocities. generations": "Next to those produced by the opening of the war, summed up the program of ican singer and actor Paul Robeson, he famously commented, and he meant it. of the Nazi death camps, the most un­ the then-revolutionary Socialist Workers forgettable images were those of the charges, is "very anti-white." Poet Ste­ During World War II, Orwell spent time German Luftwaffe raining bombs on de­ Party (SWP): phen Spender gets the remark, "Very in the British Home Guard and put in a fenseless populations .... "1. The main enemy is in our own coun­ unreliable. Easily influenced. Tendency good two years, from 1941 to late 1943, "The manner in which Japan initiated try-expose and fight the Roosevelt­ towards homosexuality." And on and on. broadcasting for· the BBC as part of Hoover combination. hostilities-bombing Pearl Harbor with­ Yet here Mazelis finds evidence of Britain's propaganda effort toward its res­ out warning--outraged millions. For "2. Defend the Soviet Union in spite of decades to come, the phrase 'sneak Stalin against Stalin." Orwell's dignity, opining: tive colonial possession, India. As Clive attack' was synonymous with the basest - The Struggle for a Proletarian "On one level, Orwell's action in turn­ James puts it in his glorification of form of treachery." Party (1943 edition) ing over these comments was flot the Orwell in the New Yorker (18 January), What happened to the "searing images" Eighteen leaders of the SWP and Min­ same as those of the political cowards Orwell told his Indian audience "that they neapolis Teamsters union were sentenced who sought to save their careers during had a better chance with the British than of the nightly pounding of German cities the McCarthyite witch-hunt by 'naming by U.S. and British bombers and the fire­ to Sandstone federal penitentiary for names' of prominent figures who had with the Japanese." This from one who bombing of Dresden? What about !he opposition to the imperialist war. In a been in or around the Communist Party was fomlerly a bitter critic of British U.S. government rounding up Japanese May Day 1945 speech, his first after serv­ years earlier. In Orwell's case, there was imperialism in the East. So it's not illog­ Americans into concentration camps for ing 13 months in prison, Cannon reiter­ no cowardice or personal opportunism ical that he went that next, dirty step, involved. He was never a man to curry the duration of the war? What about the ated the revolutionaries' position: favor with .the establishment, and the sneaking his vindictive comments to his indelible image of the mushroom clouds "We said from the very beginning: It isn't political characterizations on his list British imperialist masters. produced by American atom bombs drop­ a war for democracy against fascism; it were by and large similar to sentiments And where will David North's SEP isn't a war for justice and freedom. That he had expressed publicly." ping on already defeated Japan, incinerat­ is not true. It is a war of imperialist end up? It's hard to predict the exact ing Hiroshima and Nagasaki? "Down the rivals; it is a war for profits to be coined If anything, in Orwell's case it was trajectory of such an unsavory and un­ memory hole," as another current hero out of the blood of the people of Europe worse than "cowardice" and "opportun­ stable outfit. But as the author of Animal of the Northites, George Orwell, would and Asia, and eventually for the enslave­ ism." Nobody even had to threaten Or­ Farm might have put it, "in the end you ment and degradation of the workers well. There was no subpoena. There was have said. here at home .... couldn't tell the Northites from the "What can they show, the masters of no wrecking of career, no public humili- pigs.". / the world, but ruined cities, mounds of corpses, and millions of starving people? Spartacist League ' That is the auspices under which Ameri­ can imperialism enters its day of glory as Public Offices the master of the world." - "The End of the War in Europe," -MARXIST LlTERATURE­ The Struggle for Socialism in Bay Area the "American Century" (1977) Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of the Spartacist League Saturday: 1-5 p.m. The obscene, gagging patriotism with 1634 Telegraph, 3rd Floor (near 17th Street) which North & Co. embrace the miliritry Oakland, CA Phone: (510) 839-0851 0$10/22 issues of Workers Vanguard 0 New 0 Renewal commanders of U.S. imperialism in Saturday: 2-4 p.m. (includes English-language Spartacist and Black History and the Class Struggle) 123 Townsend St. (near 2nd St.) WWII finds its reflection in alibis for international rates: $25/22 issues-Airmail $10/22 issues-Seamail those who served in the postwar anti­ Dial #826 for entry o $2/6 introductory issues of Workers Vanguard (includes English-language Spartacist) San Francisco, CA Phone: (415) 777-9367 Communist crusade. As we commented in "David North's 'Left' McCarthyism" o $2/4 issues of Espartaco (en espanol) (includes Spanish-language Spartacist) Chicago Tues.: 5-9 p.m. and Sat.: 12-3 p.m. (WV No. 702, 4 December 1998): "The Name ______------______328 S. Jefferson St., Suite 904 heritage North defends is not that of Trot­ Chicago,lL Phone: (312) 454-4930 skyism, which was embodied through the Address ______-- New York City 1950s in the now-reformist SWP, but of Apt. # Phone ( __ ) ______Tues.: 6:30-8:30 p.m. and Sat.: 1-5 p.m. anti-Communist renegades like Irving --_____ Zip ____-=-= 299 Broadway, Suite 318 (north of Cnambers St.) Howe and George Orwell, who spied for City State New York, NY Phone: (212) 267-1025 .706 His Majesty's secret service against Make checks payable/mall to: Spartaclst Publishing Co., Box 13n GPO, New York, NY 10116 'Soviet totalitarianism'." Not surpris- 5 FEBRUARY 1999 3 Report from Russia The Grim Face of Capitalist Counterrevolution We print below excerpts from a 5 December 1998 report by a visitor to the Russian Far East (RFE) recounting the devastating effects in this region of the capitalist counterrevolution which destroyed the Soviet degenerated workers state in 1991-92. As the mass of working people in the former USSR are plunged into deepening misery, the new capitalist exploiters and the Yeltsin regime which serves them have sold off, looted or driven into the ground the country's mas­ sive industrial infrastructure. In August 1998, after years of economic disintegra­ tion, Russia experienced a total financial meltdown which further ground down the mass of the population and sowed panic in world financial markets (see "Chaos in Russia, Depression in East Asia-Wall . Street Bubble Bursts," WV No. 696, 11 September 1998). We recently published a brief account Vyacheslav Voyakin photos of political activities during the fall in Vladivostok today: pensioner rummages through garbage. Unpaid workers blocking Trans-Siberian Railroad tracks carry placard reading: "We can no longer look into the eyes of our hungry children. We have nothing left to lose." Moscow and St. Petersburg ("Report from Russia," WV No. 703, 25 Decem­ At the moment, there is a "corridor" sail by way of Africa. Japan would dom­ Vladivostok has its geographic advan­ ber 1998). The report below centers on war over how to link up Russia's Trans­ inate both Asian trade with Europe and tage: it is the trade crossroads for Japan, Vladivostok and Khabarovsk, key cities Siberian Railroad to provide a fast land Pacific access to northern China. South Korea and China. These factors of the RFE which serves as a crossroads connection between East Asia and Eu­ According to Ekspert, only the U.S. resulted in a boom in port trade in 1992- for Pacific Rim trade. In the aftermath of rope. This war is developing alongside has the money for such grandiose proj­ 93, when many Soviet-era restrictions the power struggle over Caspian Sea oil ects, and the U.S. is pushing for an alter­ were dropped. and has particular importance for East nate rail link: through a reunified Korea to In addition, Vladivostok is the admin­ Part One Asia. The 9 November 1998 issue of the Vladivostok, which would deny China its istrative center of the Primorsky Krai counterrevolution, the economic links of Russian-language Ekspen magazine lays own direct link to Europe. "Russia must (Maritime Region). And here it is worth this area with the capitalist economies of out a thoughtful perspective on this ques­ become a buffer between China· and mentioning some characteristics of the South Korea, the U.S. and Japan pave tion from the vantage point of a Russian Europe," Zbigniew Brzezinski, who in the Primorsky Krai as a whole. While Vladi­ increased, while the European powers . would-be imperialist. It points to Japan's late 1970s was U.S. president Carter's vostok's population is estimated between. also view the area with avid interest. As concern that China, having come through national security adviser, is quoted as 650,000 and 800,000, the krai has 2.2 well, the RFE has economic ties with the current Asian depression intact, is saying. The South Korean rulers also seek million people (1.7 million urban). The the bordering Chinese bureaucratically increasingly seen as the rising power of the destruction of the North Korean gross regional domestic product for 1997 deformed workers state, where the threat Asia and could form a new axis with deformed workers state and its assimila­ was $3.5 billion, which dropped 8 per­ of capitalist restoration looms ever larger. Europe. Chinese trade with Europe in the tion into the capitalist South. In the words cent in the first half of 1998. This is of These factors underscore the crucial need last six months has increased by 25 per­ of Choo Kang Soo, president of the new course the official economy; the black­ for forging Trotskyist parties to reawaken cent, and China has promised to place a $100 million Hotel Hyundai in Vladi­ market economy is many times greater. in the shattered working class the prole­ part of its gold reserves in the new euro vostok: "We expect' that Korea will be I found that the biweekly Vladivostok tarian internationalist consciousness that currency. united in the near future .... We hope that News provided an excellent source of animated the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution .. It is against China that Japan has in the near future, the resources of Russia information and window into the area's sought not only to upgrade the Russian will reach Korea by land" (Russia political life. * * * port of Zarubino but to build a bridge and Review, November 1998). The Primorsky Krai's industrial centers The Russian Far East does indeed "chunnel" (channel tunnel) rail link, via European powers, for their part, have are Ussurisk (pop. 162,000) and Arseniev seem to be a "once and future place," the Kuril Islands and Sakhalin island, to projected a rail link to China that circum­ (pop. 71,000). The latter is where military like a boom town that has gorre-bust. But the Russian mainland city of Kornsomolsk­ vents Russia altogether, using circuitous aircraft such as the Black Shark heli­ in spite of its current state, the region's on-Amur and then down to Khabarovsk, but existing lines through the Carpath­ copter and navigational equipment are role as a central trade link for Pacific' linking up with the Trans-Siberian Rail­ ians, Ukraine, the Caucasus and Central or were produced. The Kavalerovo­ Rim powers is sure to increase in the road. For Japan and South Korea, a rail Asia to the northwest border of China, Dalnegorsk mining center turns out tin, near future. Before going into the partic­ link to Europe would mean that their where there is only one last stretch to lead, zinc and boron. Of particular inter­ ulars, I think it is helpful to step back products could -reach stores in France in connect to the Chinese rail terminus in est for foreign exploitation are the neigh­ and look at the international setting. ten days instead of the month it takes to Urumqi. So it is not just from the position boring. Sakhalin Island Shelf Oil Projects WVMap of a social and economic basket case­ One, Two and Three, which represent the albeit possessing natural resources and largest concentration of foreign invest­ military hardware-that Russia bargains ment in all of Russia. There are an esti­ with West and East. It can also use its mated 2.5 billion barrels of oil and 15 strategic geographic importance and its trillion cubic feet of natural gas that transport infrastructure as bargaining Exxon, with a series of Russian consor­ chips in the context of rising international tiums and the Japanese company Sodeco, trade wars. seeks to extract. Vladivostok is expected to provide machine-building and other The Looting of Vladivostok support services-if the project ever From just about any vantage point in manages to cut through frozen seas and Vladivostok, the first city I visited, you the frozen Russian bank accounts. get a breathtaking panorama, the dra­ With the destruction of the Soviet Union matic sweep of the harbor naval base, and subsequent implosion of military/ transport and fishing docks. Several stra­ industrial production, the Primorsky Krai tegic assets remain in spite of the devas­ has been devastated. The industrial col­ tation wrought by capitalist counterrevo­ lapse is probably even greater there lution. Besides the terminus of the than the national average, which New Trans-Siberian rail line, which uniquely York University professor Steven Cohen links the Russian Pacific coast to E.uL9pe, recently estimated to be 50 to 83 percent there is a vast natural harbor that is home in ihe post-Soviet period. Unemployment to the Russian Pacific Fleet, the Far East­ for the RFE as a whole is actually 1.5 ern Shipping Company and some of times the national average-and given Russia's largest fishing-industry facil-. the state of Russia, that is saying some­ ities. Until recently, Vladivostok also had thing. An American think tank recently the RFE's largest ship repair and con­ estimated real unemployment in Russia struction enterprises. But above all, at a minimum of 18 million out of a total 4 WORKERS VANGUARD working population of 68 million. apartment in the center of town. But they What does remain viable in the Pri­ are cash-strapped and barely able to pro­ morsky Krai is, in the first place, fishing­ vide for their teenage daughter. related industry. Annual catch is still two Something like 90 percent of the pop­ million tons-half the total for the RFE. ulation in Vladivostok lives in poverty. But processing is down from 1.5 million The outskirts look more like Kiev than to 200,000 tons. The workforce on the Moscow: there are many long-established Vladivostok fishing docks has been family dachas and fewer of the strip-gar­ reduced to 2,000, half of its former size, den plots that provide subsistence farm­ because federal taxes have driven much ing outside Moscow for the ex-proletariat of the processing overseas or into the there. My host noted that this season domestic black market. As the father of mushroom-picking areas looked like they the family I stayed with described, fish­ had been thoroughly trampled by people ing factory ships that come into port are foraging for food. Nonetheless, Vladi­ required to pay tax on their haul in cash 'vostok's black market and construc­ even before it is sold. But in the cash­ tion have actually attracted immigration. strapped Russian economy that is impos­ And not many people leave Vladivostok; sible. So a major part of the catch is sold most people simply have nowhere better directly to ports in South Korea and to go. America. It is only the government quota for domestic sale of fishing hauls that Industrial Ruin and keeps the fishing industries of the Vladi­ Black Market Enterprise vostok port alive. The Pacific Fleet is still stationed in According to the son of my host fam­ Vladivostok, but shipbuilding and repair ily, there remains a constant demand for are at a complete standstill. I overheard workers on the fishing docks, but for mis­ from local businessmen on my flight back erable pay, certainly not enough to raise a to Moscow that the fleet is slated to be family. He is indignant that the Far East . moved out of the city harbor. It is not just Veron Publishing exports timber, oil, coal, ferrous metals, the implosion of the Russian military that Top: Port of Vladivostok was center of maritime industries before ravages of fish, submarines and whole factory assem­ has devastated the shipbuilding and repair capitalist restoration. Below: As shipbuilding and repair have halted, wrecked bly lines, and in return imports soft drinks industry of the region. The lack of class ships spill oil and industrial waste into harbor. and chicken legs. Timber extraction also cohesion within Russia's loo~ing elite remains important at three million cubic and the parasitism of the central govern­ meters annually.-second only to the ment have driven this work to foreign neighboring Khabarovsk Krai. Coal was countries. Moscow has set up 44 different important, but it is undergoing the same taxes that claim 85 percent of the profits drastic contraction that is taking place from local enterprises. It is cheaper to throughout Russia. The nearby coal town repair fishing factory ships in South of Partizansk, which ten years ago em­ Korea or Alaska than in Russia! ployed 12,000 miners, shut all four of its There is a secondary factor: indus­ primary shafts this spring. Of the 3,162 try directors and workers prefer post­ miners who stayed in town, 250 now sew ings abroad to exploit channels for black­ T-shirts for a South Korean-owned firm, market trade. But the main thing is that a subcontractor for Gap stores. with the destruction of a centralized econ­ Just up the coast from Vladivostok is omy, in this area based on the high-tech the town of Nakhodka, where Russia's military-industrial complex, gang war­ first Free Economic Zone (FEZ) was fare over looting the industrial sector for established in 1991. The idea was to primitive accumulation has taken over. employ highly skilled, low-paid Russian This loot is what fills the cargo bays of up workers to assemble computer compo­ to 75 percent of the port's outgoing ships. nents and so forth. After receiving $90 And this is the main source of income for its grip on Vladivostok by fostering a thrown out of production jobs. million in investment, the failure to come the young racketeer types hanging out in really nasty war between the governor of Potentially far more important as a through with federal tax privileges for front of casinos in their dark-windowed the Primorsky region, Evgenny Nazdra­ regional port is the town of Zarubino, just the 450 South Korean-, Japanese- and sports utility vehicles. tenko, and the Vladivostok mayor, Viktor south of Vladivostok where Russian ter­ American-registered enterprises resulted An example of what has happened to Cherepkov. In contrast to the single­ ritory tapers off along the Chinese border in the FEZ going to the brink of bank­ Vladivostok's ship repair facilities can be handed control of Moscow's mayor and meets North Korea. It is slated for a ruptcy this year, even before the August seen in the case of a facility in the center Luzhkov, their fight over federal and $200 million investment from Japan financial crisis hit. So instead of being of town. I had a chance to visit it briefly local budgets and business kickbacks has aimed at creating a shipping corridor superexploited at Third World levels, the and to observe the workforce coming and wreaked havoc on the region'S infrastruc­ to northern China. China's own closest bulk of the highly skilled industrial prole­ going. While they did not look as impov­ ture. But other aspects of life in Vladivo­ deep-sea port, Dalian (Dairen), is to .the tariat there, too, has been thrown into a erished and demoralized as in many stok reminded me of Moscow. 1992-95: southwest, on the other side of the Korean struggle for survival through trade, petty plants in Moscow, it was reminiscent of much is done under the table, in dark cor­ peninsula, and far from the center of business and subsistence farming. that. I saw only one stumbling drunkard, ridors of buildings owned by no one China's northern market, the city of Har­ Many skilled workers are like the but there were very few people in general knows who. bin (population 3.5 million). The final father in my host family, an engineer now on this cold Monday. The facility has In 1994, of the half billion dollars decision on the Japanese inve'stment is on "unpaid vacation" for over a year. He been sold to a commercial group that of trade going through RFE ports·,' Japan due by March 1999, but last week the first survives by tourism and subsistence farm­ plans to demolish it to make way for a accounted for 44 percent, while China stage was given a go-ahead. The U.S. also ing. "You can shout down the barns of our dock to off-load profitable foodstuffs. But and South Korea each accounted for has a keen interest in the Zarubino proj­ silent factory and hear your echo. It is like Moscow regulations stipulate that pur­ 15 percent.' The trade boom continued ect. American trade with northern China a ghost town," he lamented. This family is chased enterprises cannot change their through the first half of 1998 when it has far outweighed its trade with the RFE. not nearly as poor as many, but nonethe­ "specialty" for a period of five years. So, reached $820 million, but by midyear it Even the used car trade has frozen for less speaks of how much comes "from while they are waiting, space has been hit a sharp downturn. Even before the the moment, as is evidenced by the Cus­ our own garden." They eat fish they catch rented out for business oft:ices. They are pivotal crisis of August 17, U.S. trade toms Point Parking Lot next to the Sea and even bake their own bread in a mod­ liquidating the trade-union library to was down 50 percent from the previous Passenger Terminal that is full of cars em bread cooker. In fact, they are rela­ make way for this. year.' After the August ruble devaluation, waiting to be sold. Ninety percent of all tively well-off: two cars, all modem With the disintegration of national eco­ imports into the RFE went down another cars on the roads of Vladivostok and appliances, a home computer and an nomic links, Moscow has sought to keep 50 percent. There is still a trickle of Khabarovsk are secondhand Japanese imported foodstuffs and construction models, with steering on the right, which materials, but cargos that brought 500 to are relatively cheap and high quality. 1,000 containers before the Augustcrisis One of the few remaining productive now bring in 10 percent of that. Exports industrial sectors in Russia as a whole is of timber, seafood products and ferrous auto manufacture; 70 percent of all cars metals continue, but at a fraction of the are domestically produced. But even so, 1994 volume. That is to say, trade at the these Russian cars are inferior to and moment is at a virtual standstill. more expensive than used foreign cars. This is evident on the Vladivostok So, many Russians had been coming to container cargo docks, where there is but Vladivostok to buy cars and ship them a handful of ships in port. When my home by train. Many hustlers made their hosts and I stood on "Krestovaya Hill" start-up capital traveling by passenger overlooking the docks, tliey commented boat to South Korea or Japan, bringing that just a few years ago there were hun­ back up to 20 cars using a sailor's duty­ dreds of ships lined up outside the bay free privileges. These cars would sell for waiting their tum to offload. Here we are $3,500 to $6,000. As in Khabarovsk, the talking about official trade; in 1994, Vladivostok auto parts open-air market is according to the Russian Far East Direc­ another place that the ex-proletariat has tory (AutumnlWinter 1996-97), "Unoffi­ gone to ~ake a living as petty traders. cial statistics indicate trade is two to three times greater" than the official fig­ The Chinese and Korean ure. This includes the looting of whole Minorities

Moscoop _ Veron Publishing factory and military complexes. This One neighborhood in Vladivostok is Deadly outgrowth of capitalist counterrevolution: rally of Russian National black-market looting has increased, if still called the "Chinese Millions.",Thisis Unity faSCists; Cossack rides in Vladivostok main square near monument anything. In the freight ports, it provides a block of buildings where Chinese had celebrating Bolshevik victory in Civil War. low-paid work for many who have been continued on page 6 5 FEBRUARY 1999 5 Russia ... (continued from page 5) lived and worked in service trades before, as one local resident casually put it, "they were driven out." In some ways, the treat­ ment of Chinese in Vladivostok is even worse than the racism Caucasians and Central Asians experience in Moscow. At least Moscow allows its 600,000 Azeris to live, work and trade throughout the city. But in Vladivostok, only a small number of Chinese are allowed in at all, Trukhanenko and those seem to be segregated in certain Chinese market in Vladivostok. Imprisoned Chinese market areas and housing compounds. nationals await deportation. Chinese and Korean In contrast to Khabarovsk, I rarely saw traders and workers are victims of intenSifying any Chinese in the rest of the city. Russian chauvinism. Throughout the Primorsky Krai, Chinese WV Photo workers were rounded up in trucks for rail line to Khabarovsk (and 60 kilome­ Japanese occupation of Korea before the point, in either Vladivostok or Khaba­ mass deportation in a campaign known ters from the Chinese border). In this 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and achieved rovsk, did I ever encounter a sentiment as "Operation Foreigner" that officially industrial town the Chinese market has legal status in tsarist Russia. In the main, such as that expressed by the 2,500 Rus­ "ended" in February 1997. up to 2,000 traders who never leave the they fought on the Soviet side of the Civil sian residents of the South Kuril Islands There is all economic basis for this dif­ walled-off compound where they cook War against Japanese and other imperial­ who petitioned for Japan to take over ference. In Moscow, few Russians would and sleep inside shipping containers, ist intervention forces. But in 1937 Stalin control of the area along the lines of try to take on the miserable social niche working 16 hours a day. The ruble deval­ deported all 171,781 of them on charges British rule in Hong Kong. Just the of the vegetable traders from the Cauca­ uation has seriously cut into their profit of "spying for Japan." As of last year, opposite. I heard only: 'Td sooner starve sus and Central Asia. In the Russian Far margins and many are now struggling to 26,000 ex-Soviet Korearis had returned to than see Russia cut apart." East-from Magadan down to Vladivos­ sell off what they have-even at a loss­ the RFE from Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and I was told in Vladivostok that the tok-ex-proletarian Russians seek sur­ and return to China. other points, from which they were KPRF (the so-called Communist Party vival by taking over the small stalls of the The state of siege that the Chinese expelled by nationalist pogroms. Russian of the Russian Federation, really a Chinese. This is reminiscent of the market traders feel in both Vladivostok derzhqva (strong state) chauvinists today bourgeois-nationalist party) has only two revanchist drive by the fascistic regime of and Khabarovsk is so heavy that they cut fear that the Korean minority will concen­ local Duma deputies who enjoy little general :losef Pilsudski in Poland during off conversation with me the moment I trate and press for regional autonomy or support. They appear somewhat isolated, the 1930s to have ethnic Poles take over tried to talk about anything beyond sim­ even territorial unification with Korea at as they are in moneyed Moscow and St. the social niche of the poorest Jews there. ply bargaining over prices. The goods on some point, so Koreans are discouraged Petersburg, arid less popular than they The Vladivostok "Chinese Market" was sale are strictly clothing and simple from returning to the RFE through racist are in the industrial wasteland of Siberia. in fact formerly predominantly Chinese household materials-no electronics that discrimination. In contrast to Moscow, I did not see a but there are now only about 200 Chinese would have to be tested and covered by An indicator of the level of anti-Japa­ single opposition paper in any of the traders there; today Russians, who sell warranty. The goods in city electronic nese paranoia is the case of environmen­ kiosks or bookstores and practically the same wares from China, predominate. stores that I saw were all Japanese and talist, journalist and navy captain Grigory nothing on Soviet history. Yeltsin carried In a chauvinist drive against the Chi­ Korean. Pasko, who was jailed by federal author­ both the Primorsky and Khabarovsk nese, the Primorsky Krai Duma voted In addition to the traders, there are Chi­ ities in November 1997 in Vladivostok. Krais during both rounds of the 1996 $11 million this summer to establish a nese laborers who are often highly skilled He was charged with treason for allegedly presidential elections. string of 60 Cossack hamlets, just as in and work for wages even lower than those providing Japanese media with informa­ It is indicative of the character of tsarist times, along a stretch of the for the notoriously undisciplined Russian tion about the navy's dumping of radio­ the Federation of Independent Unions sparsely populated border with China, construction workers. I caught a glimpse active waste into the Sea of Japan. (FNPR) and the KPRF that, despite the allowing 73,000 local Cossacks to patrol of some Chinese construction workers on As for other minorities, I heard from relatively high level of spontaneous labor alongside conventional border guards. a site in the Vladivostok city center, but one businessman that there are 30,000 actions recently, neither seems to have This is an obscene resuscitation of Rus- that was the only instance. A Chinese Moslems in Vladivostok, about 5 percent much of a presence. As one Vladivos­ tok resident told me: "People have long Soviet Encyclopedia photos of the official population. There is great religious diversity in Vladivostok-a leg­ stopped turning to the union with any acy of its long and complex history as a illusions that they'll get anything out of port. Protestant, Lutheran and Catholic it." I only saw a couple of leaflets calling churches are being renovated today no for a demonstration in the city square on less noticeably than Russian Orthodox Revolution Day, November 7, signed by ones. There is a mosque, a Buddhist and the "Trudovaya Primorye" (Toiling Mari­ even a Hare Krishna shrine, but there are time) movement. More numerous were no listings for Jewish synagogues or the leaflets posted for the fascist Russian Confucian temples. National Unity (RNE) led by Alexander Barkashov. I passed a hangout on a pier, Signs of Polit~cal Life which was plastered with them, and There is a real "wild west" feeling there was a clot of young punks outside here, with, for example, a very high rate who looked like lumpen RNE types. of contract killings in commercial dis­ The family I stayed with, which had putes. In contrast to Moscow, where big been working class but is now declasse or money is more firmly and officially in integrated into the petty bourgeoisie, is the saddle, here one feels that the degree part of a politically volatile layer, moving Red Korean partisan unit of economic collapse, the thinness of the in a reactionary direction. My hosts made in Soviet Far East, 1922. frail upper crust, the large black-market repeated anti-Chinese comments which Alexandra Kim, Korean component all contribute to an atmos­ I of course objected to. One of the first Bolshevik organizer in Khabarovsk. Moscow phere of volatile social hatred that sooner things that my host said to me was, "What newspaper reports or later is going to arc down in a bolt of we need is an army of the working peo­ formation of Chinese­ violence against somebody. ple to wipe out all this scum," by which Bolshevik Red Army The fumes of mass discontent are he meant not just Russia's new rob­ battalion in 1918. explosive, but the explosion can go more ber barons but certain foreigners and ways than one. Over the past year, Vladi­ minorities as well. Over dinner one night sian chauvinist traditions, harkening back construction company has bid to build a vostok has seen several labor actions by he argued that someone like ex-general to the Cossacks' rape and pillage of Korea bridge over one of the coves of Vladivo­ coal miners, teachers, defense, oil, medi­ Alexander Lebed or ex-Chilean dictator and China in tsarist times. stok harbor. In Khabarovsk, they have cal and scientific research workers, to Augusto Pinochet was what the country Illegal Chinese entry into the Primor­ built whole modern office complexes. demand wages unpaid for over a year. needed. I asked him if he knew that sky Krai is minuscule, considering the Economic links of petty trade with China These included sit-ins, demonstrations in Pinochet had killed 10,000 workers. Of vast border, and in the RFE'there are only are stilI vital but immediately and directly the central city square and sensational course, he didn't know anything of it. about 100,000 undocumented Chinese affected by the ups and downs of Russia's highway/rail occupations. The freeze in It really sent a shiver up my spine when workers and traders. In all of August, short-term problems. Larger-scale trade spending on social services, in part com­ my host said that he was glad that the only 17 "iIIegals" were arrested in Pri­ such as timber is actually on an upswing. ing out of the war between the governor liberal "democrat," State Duma deputy morsky. With increased patrolling, arrests Russian protectionism and chauvinism and the mayor, provoked protests over Galina Starovoitova, was killed. "She was of immigrants in the southernmost Rus­ make the border far from open from the the unprecedented collapse of social the richest woman in Russia," he said. He sian Pacific coastal town of Khasan Russian side, but if trade routes to China services. These actions were dramatic did not care who killed her or for what, have dropped from 137 per month to through the RFE are opened up, the eco­ and very popular but, in keeping with the and that's dangerous. But I don't want to three. But the sorry mentality of the Rus­ nomic weight of the Chinese as well as national pattern, they did not lead to paint them in one color; my host is very sian petty-bourgeois and lumpenized the Korean minority in the RFE is bound independent or ongoing movements, they proud of his family's heritage of fighting population leads them to believe that the to grow. were desperate appeals that evaporated. for the Reds in the Civil War, for exam­ rising tide of China's regional strength Near Zarubino south of Vladivostok, The fumes linger and will yet ignite, but ple. As with many, they might well be can be abated by sweeping back petty just where Russian territory along the there is no class organization or axis. attracted to a communist pole in the event traders and laborers. Chinese border ends at the North Korean In the summer, there wasa.. :~red­ ,of proletaria~ class struggles, but that In Khabarovsk, the main Chinese mar­ border, lies the town of Khasan where brown" demonstration, which echoed pole does not now exist. What they need ket seemed about three times as large as there is a large Korean diaspora. There Russia's own would-be imperial ambi­ above all is the proletarian international­ Vladivostok's. In Nakhodka, there is a were other concentrations of Koreans (in tions, against joint exercises with the . ist program of Lenin and Trotsky to unite Chinese market street that is a kilometer Khabarovsk and other Siberian towns), American navy in the port of Vladivos­ the cause of the ex-Soviet working class long. The largest Chinese market in the but 95 percent of today's 112,000 ethnic tok. Its popularity succeeded in moving with the class struggle of the region and region is in the city ofUssurisk, about 90 Koreans in Russia are in the Primorsky the action some distance outside of the the world. kilometers outside of Vladivostok on the Krai. As many as 250,000 had fled the port, but the maneuvers did go on. At no [TO BE CONTINUED] 6 WORKERS VANGUARD rights. Sexual bigotry and racism in the South Africa ... - U.S. have meant indifference to the (continued from page 1) deadly disease, which is seen as the problem of marginalised groups like and enmity. This is starkly demonstrated homosexuals and the ghetto poor. In by the spread of the AIDS epidemic from South Africa today, blaming immigrants, central Africa through southern Africa women and gays for the spread of AIDS and now to South Africa, where it is dev­ and other social ills can mean murder, as astating the black population. At the shown by the cases of Dlamini and the same time, the privileged white minority Mozambicans. T4.e fate of women and continues to enjoy living standards com­ the struggle for their full emancipation is parable to the wealthiest enclaves in tied to the proletarian class struggle North America and West Europe, includ­ against capitalism. For women's libera­ ing the best medical care money can buy. tion through socialist revolution! In 1994, open white-supremacist rule was replaced with the dismantling of Criminal Negligence of the apartheid, legalised segregation, and the ANC/SACP Regime election of Nelson Mandela as the Last fall, in a public relations move the country's first black president. Mandela's giant Glaxo-Wellcome pharmaceutical "tripartite alliance" with the misnamed Government fired 60,000 nurses after September 1995 wildcat in which company offered free three-day kits of the South African Communist Party (SACP) strikers carried signs reading ''Away with Mandela." anti-AIDS drug AZT to health care work­ and the Congress of South African Trade ers who had been exposed to the HIV Unions (COSATU) is a nationalist popu­ Africa. Among the enormous gains of 700 rand a month. virus. Yet the Department of Health crim­ lar front in which the black working class the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia On the streets of Durban, purveyors inally refused this offer, presumably is chained to its exploiters and oppressors were bringing literacy, basic education, of muthi (tr~ditional medicines) offering because the government was unwilling through the bourgeois-nationalist ANC. modern medical care and women's equal­ mystery powders and ground bones as to spend the money to continue treat­ The pro-capitalist COSATU leadership ity to the backward, Turkic-speaking and cures for the ravages of AIDS are found ment after the three-day supply was used periodically pays lip service to the causes traditionally Islamic peoples of Soviet side by side with the advanced technol­ up. Although more than 20 percent of of the working class, while brutally Central Asia. Ultimately, overcoming the ogy and technique necessary to operate pregnant women ~re estimated to be HIV­ enforcing capitalist austerity. hideous impoverishment and cultural the world's ninth most-active industrial positive, the government also scuttled a The black and also Indian and coloured backwardness of sub-Saharan Africa re­ port. Inyangas (traditional healers) are multimillion rand pilot programme to (mixed race) working class has resisted quires an internationally planned social­ more often than not called upon to provide them with AZT, which has been these attacks by the white Randlords and ist economy based on proletarian revolu­ "throw the bones" to diagnose the dis­ shown to reduce by at least 50 percent the their ANC/SACP front men, and South tions in the advanced capitalist countries ease. Worse still, "some healers end likelihood of a mother's passing the AIDS Africa is now experiencing a major of North America, West Europe and up sucking the blood from the infected virus to an unborn child. Some govern- upsurge of labour struggle. However, Japan. popular disillusionment with the ANC regime and its broken promises has also AIDS Epidemic in taken reactionary forms: the scapegoating Neo-Apartheid South Africa of AIDS victims and activists and the The AIDS crisis in South Africa is lynching of immigrants from Mozam­ compounded by dangerous, widely held bique and other neighbouring countries, superstitions and backward social beliefs, who are often blamed for transmitting the stemming particularly from the oppres­ AIDS epidemic to South Africa. sion of women, and the effects of The post -1994 neo-apartheid setup in mass poverty-prostitution, illiteracy, South Africa is fragile and deeply contra­ lack of education. The AIDS virus is dictory. It cannot last. The future of transmitted through semen or other secre­ South Africa depends critically on the tions during unprotected sex, through construction of a multiracial proletarian intravenous drug use and blood transfu­ vanguard party based on the Trotskyist sions, from a pregnant woman to a programme and perspective of perma­ fetus, or through breast milk to a baby. nent revolution. In West Europe and Though there is no cure at present, the North America, social and economic spread of the disease could be reduced modernisation was brought about by the through condom use, the distribution of bourgeois-democratic revolutions of the sterile needles for drug users, drug thera­ 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. But pro­ pies for pregnant women and providing gressive bourgeois revolutions are not infant formula. Because good medical Mendel/Matrix possible in the backward countries of care and especially drug therapies are Volunteer instructs South African high-school students on AIDS prevention. Asia, Africa and Latin America in the extremely expensive, AIDS has increas-. Over 22.5 million in sub-Saharan Africa are already infected with HIV. present epoch of capitalist imperialism. ingly become a disease oj poverty around Social and economic modernisation as the globe, from Southeast Asia to the person" (The Star [Johannesburg], 1 ment officials obscenely argued that "if well as national liberation can be black ghettos of the U.S. The AIDS pan­ December 1998). Some AIDS sufferers the baby does not have HIV, it will live, achieved in these countries only through demic in southern Africa is so acute that are led to believe that they are bewitched and the mother will die of AIDS. Who proletarian revolution. the rate of new infections is over ten by a girlfriend or wife. will look after the orphans?" (Sunday A proletarian revolution in South times that of West Europe and the U.S. In KwaZulu~Natal and "throughout Times [Johannesurg], 24 January). Africa, by expropriating the Randlords, Most medical insurers refuse HIV treat­ South Africa, immigrants from Mozam­ There is no way that the mass of South would liberate resources to alleviate des­ ment, which costs from 1,500 rand bique and elsewhere "north of the Lim­ African blacks infected with HIV can perate social conditions both in that . (roughly U.S. $250) to 4,500 rand per popo" are increasingly being used as afford the expensive, life-prolonging drug country and throughout sub-Sah_aran day, while the average black llliner earns scapegoats for the vast spread of AIDS. treatments called "AIDS cocktails." But In early January in Tembisa, northeast of even the effective use of condoms to pre­ Johannesburg, six Mozambicans were vent infection, literally a matter of life "necklaced"-burned alive-by a 400- and death, is blocked by the negligence of strong "street committee" mob run by the the South African regime. The govern­ ANC, as a direct consequence of the gov­ ment imports large quantities of condoms ernment campaign of blaming immi­ from East Asian factories, which are sup­ grants for escalating crime born of des­ posedly inspected for quality control by perate poverty. Spartacist South Africa South African medical officials. Yet a demands: full citizenship rights for all large fraction of these condoms turn out immigrants! to be old, inferior or otherwise defective, With elections impending after four splitting apart when used. Even the years in power, ANC deputy presi­ Johannesburg correspondent for the New dent Thabo Mbeki took pains to kiss HIV­ York Times wrote, "Government officials positive babies at AIDS Day photo-ops, were using a procurement system that hypocritically donned red ribbons and almost invited manufacturers to ship their pontificated on the "African renaissance." castoffs here" (27 December 1998). Mbeki launched an 80 million rand While doing little to prevent the spread "awareness" campaign, which has as its of AIDS, the ANC-Ied government is LeUer to the New Unity Movemenl: Two Letters 10 lila Workers Orgaf'lIsalion lor Socialist Action main theme a call on youth to refrain using this terrible medical tragedy to pro­ T'-ing the ANC'$ Neo-Aparthetd Nationalism Lett8l' to the Workers Interroall()Oal to Rebuild the Fourth International from sex until marriage. This "family val­ mote reactionary social values. Thus Greetings to WOSA ConlCfence . a. ues" crusade is part and parcel of the KwaZulu-Natal health minister Zweli .a'''en'Ij''¥'IIiiiAffltan ReVO!!UtlOnarIU 1 --~.= ANC campaign for "moral renewal," Mkhize warned parents and communities which is meant to camouflage the "not to exploit young women for labour," Polemics on the Hate Trotskyism, regime's manifest inability to deliver real claiming women are "vulnerable to sexual South African Left Hate the Spartacists No.1 improvements for the masses. Bourgeois­ abuse" in industry-an order for women letters and articles presenting the A Reply to the Workers International nationalist politicians, the church and to stay jobless, at home and pregnant. Marxist position on key questions Vanguard league other institutions push the lie that sex The left face of the MandelalMbeki of debate on the South African left. Publication of Spartacist South outside marriage is "dangerous" and regime' is provided by the refor­ Publication of the ICl, April 1997 Africa, July 1998 "immoral" in order to shore up the insti­ mist South African Communist Party $1 (40 pages) $2 (36 pages) tution of the family, the key prop of which also exercises leadership over women's oppression under capitalism. the COSATU union federation. Linking In the advanced capitalist countries, AIDS to the left's "globalisation" shib­ those with HIV are stigmatised and often boleth, the SACP wrote: "The lack of denied care or even simple democratic continued on page 8 5 FEBRUARY 1999 7 NATO occupation will produce yet more Balkans ... bloodshed, while further hardening (continued from page 1) nationalist hatreds among the South Slav peoples" (WV No. 634, I December "Desert Fox" December bombing. The 1995). Today, with hardline Serbian Washington Post (17 January) specified: nationalists viscerally opposed to auton­ "The heart of the Desert Fox list (49 of omy for the Albanian Kosovars and the the 100 targets) is the Iraqi regime itself: UCK equally opposed to any solution a half-dozen palace strongholds and their short of independence, imperialist inter­ supporting cast of secret police, guard vention can only lay the basis for further and transport organizations." As with bloodshed. Clinton's terror bombing of Sudan and The machinations in the Balkans are a Afghanistan last August, the continued harbinger of escalating interimperialist death and devastation being inflicted on rivalries, whose logic ultimately points Iraq-and the threats of renewed bomb­ toward a nuclear third world war. Despite ing against the Serbs-underline that the conjunctural show of unity among the imperialism is not merely a "policy" car­ Western powers, all are pursuing their ried out by a particular wing of the bour­ own interests in the region. Britain and geoisie. Imperialism is, in the words of France were the main big-power allies of Bolshevik leader V. I. Lenin, the "highest Serbia against Germany in both world stage of capitalism," a rapacious system wars and are trying to restore influence in based on the exploitation and oppression the region. Bonn's drive to restore its pre­ of the workers and semicolonial masses. World War I sphere of influence in the Since the counterrevolutionary de­ AFP northern Balkans is aimed at the region's struction of the Soviet Union in 1991-92, Iraqi victims of U.S. missile attack near Basra in January. wealth of minerals which have strategic the rulers of U.S. imperialism feel they importance to German industry. As a have a free hand to carry out invasions or are trying to crush a secessionist insur­ the issue of self-determination would recent study pointed out, Kosovo "con­ launch terror-bombing campaigns a:gainst gency by the Kosovo Liberation Army be subordinated to our military defense tains the greatest concentration of min­ semicolonial countries from Haiti to (UCK). But this is the most abject cyni­ of Serbia against U.S.INATO forces" eral wealth in the whole of south-eastern Somalia to Iraq. These repeated acts of cism. No less than their West European (WV No. 693, 3 July 1998). This is pre­ Europe." During Hitler's occupation of terror by U.S. imperialism are aimed at counterparts, the U.S. rulers are categor­ cisely what has come to pass. Today, to Yugoslavia, Kosovo's mines produced enforcing the subjugation of the semi­ ically opposed to self-determination for call for self-determination for the Kosovar massive amounts of lead, zinc, nickel and colonial peoples of the world and demon­ Kosovo's Albanian population because Albanians can only be a cover for support other strategic minerals for the Third strating' to its capitalist rivals that the they fear that further break-up of the Bal­ to imperialist intervention. Reich's war industries (Noel Malcolm, American bourgeoisie remains top dog. kan states along national lines could We also defend the right of the Serbian Kosovo: A Short History [1998]). From the nuclear incineration of Hiro­ ignite a conflagration throughout the minority to live in Kosovo on the basis While the U.S. has no such strategic shima and Nagasaki in 1945 to the long, whole region. This is fully understood in of full equality. In contrast, liberals and stake in the Balkans, it seeks to wield losing war against the heroic Vietnamese Belgrade. As Serbian government offi­ the reformist left, who divide the world the military power of NATO, which it people, U.S. imperialism is the main cials indicated to the New York Times into "progressive" and "reactionary" peo­ dominates, as a means of furthering force of oppression in the world. This (31 January), "Kosovo is a political and ples, dismiss with a wave of the hand the Washington's global interests. With inter­ system cannot be "reformed'? or pres­ financial drain for Belgrade, and if rights of the Serbs. In fact, the Serbian imperialist rivalry incrt;:asingly coming sured into becoming more "humane" but NATO is willing to take responsibility for minority in Croatia has already been to the fore following the destruction of must be overthrown through socialist restraining the rebels and keeping Kosovo almost enti'rely driven out through "eth­ the Soviet Union, the U.S. fears that revolution. The Spartacist League fights from independence for three years, Mr. nic cleansing" there.· The Serbs in the European powers may conduct inde­ to forge an internationalist proletarian Milosevic may see that as an advantage." Kosovo, like the Jews of pre-World War II pendent military operations, bypassing vanguard party modeled on Lenin's If so, it is a highly dangerous gambit. The Poland, make up some 10 percent of the NATO. TQday, there are more than 25,000 Bolshevik party, which led the workers - U.S. is fully prepared to unleash untold population. With the Albanian Kosovars U.S.-commanded troops under UN aus­ to power in the Russian Revolution of destruction on any semicolonial country about to become the pawns of the imperi­ pices stationed in Croatia and Bosnia. October 1917. whose leaders are not 100 percent under alist occupation force, the stage is set for Two thousand more soldiers occupy Mac­ their thumb, as the Iraqi people can attest. reversing the terms of oppression. edonia, including 350 Americans who Imperialist Hypocrisy and When the U.S. threatened air strikes The Kosovo "peace" process being help police the border with Kosovo. Military Terror against Serbia last summer, we wrote: brokered by Washington is modeled on Washington also worries that the con­ As usual, the imperialists couch "We defend the right of the Albanian­ the NATO-imposed Dayton accords, flict in Kosovo could spread to Mace­ their threats of military terror against the populated areas of Kosovo to self­ signed following imperialist air strikes donia, where ethnic Albanians constitute Serbs in the name of "humanitarian" con­ determination-that is, the right to secede against Bosnian Serbs in the summer of over 25 percent of the population. The cerns-in this instance, the murderous from the Serb-chauvinist regime in Bel­ 1995 and policed by an imperialist occu­ breakup of Macedonia could well trigger oppression of Kosovo's Albanian major­ grade. However, should the imperialists pation force in Bosnia. As we warned at a war involving Albania as well as Bul­ ity by Milosevic's security forces, which stage a military intervention over Kosovo, the time: "The U.S.-imposed pact and garia and Greece, which both have claims

capitalist system. This requires combat­ South Africa ... ing reactionary prejudices such as hostil­ (continued from page 7) ity to immigrants and AIDS victims which pervade large sections of the pro­ autonomy that accompanies poveny is letariat. As Lenin insisted, a revolution­ a major contributor to the spread of ary party must be a tribune of the people, HIV / AIDS" and blames policies "advo­ Mozambicans fighting for the democratic rights and awaiting cated by the World Bank/IMF" (Umse­ interests of all the oppressed. benzi, NovemberlDecember'1998). The deportation in South African SACP has some nerve! It's these social­ AIDS and the South African Left jail. ANC democratic ex-Stalinists who help admin­ regime's ister the starvation, poverty and death of Standing to the· left of the ANC/SACP policies fuel capitalist rule in South Africa. regime are a number of groups identified violent attacks The SACP/COSATU bureaucrats' anti· with or claiming to be in the Trotskyist on immigrants labour, anti-woman, anti-health-care pro­ tradition which act as left tails of the who are blamed gramme was underscored when they nationalist popular front. The Interna- for AIDS and branded one of the earliest labour strug­ . tional Socialist Movement (ISM), a split other social ills. gles against the regime, the 1995 nurses from the tendency- led by Tony Cliff's strike, "counterrevolutionary." The strike British Socialist Workers Party, recently of these women workers, who are on wrote in an article titled "Socialists and issued a 1999. election manifesto which the parasitic capitalists can cut through the front lines of the fight for decent the AIDS Epidemic": "Obvious steps to barely mentions health care and com­ the hatreds born of superexploitation health care, was smashed by the ANC/ counter this problem would be to launch pletely omits any mention of AIDS and and the divide-and-rule policies of the SACP/COSATU alliance. In the after­ an international campaign featuring pres­ women! While the WIVL likes to sound bourgeois masters. A victorious proletar­ math, 6,000 nurses were dismissed by idents, general secretaries, archbishops "left" compared to the reformists and ian revolution in South Africa would lay the Eastern Cape provincial government and even the Pope talking openly about nationalists, they similarly capitulate to the basis for smashing imperialist domi­ headed by then SACP national chairman sex and sexual practices; it would involve the pervasive social backwardness in nation throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Raymond Mhlaba. the mass, free distribution of condoms as this society and reject the fight to At the same time, it would immediately The black South African working class well as ensuring that drug addicts would break the working class from bourgeois face the military might of world imperial­ continues to defy and challenge the mas­ have access to clean needles" (Revolu­ nationalism, including by t~iling the ism, especially the U.S. This underscores ters of tr~ Jo'burg stock exchange, their tionary Socialist, New Year 1999). One reactionary communalist vigilantes of the burning urgency ofa revolutionary ANC junior partners and SACP hench­ might rightly wonder what world the ISM People Against Gangsterism and Drugs internationalist programme and perspec­ men. Last year, three million working inhabits thinking that"the religious and (see the Spartacist South Africa pam­ tive. Spartacist South Africa fights for days were lost by strikes in transport, . political leaders of capitalist reaction are phlet Hate Trotskyism, Hate the Sparta­ new October Revolutions as the precon­ auto, chemical, garment and other indus­ about to hand out condoms and give drug _ cists No.1). dition for an egalitarian socialist soci­ tries-the highest level of strike activity users clean needles. But these reformists The killing of Dlamini and the recent ety which will marshal the world's since Mandela became president. What have long tailed such forces, from cheer­ anti-immigrant lynchings are sympto­ resources in eradicating hunger and is needed is a revolutionary party which ing counterrevolutionary Solidarnosc in matic of an escalation of ethnic/tribalist poverty and advancing the struggle can channel the raw militancy of the Poland to supporting the woman-hating, hostilities. Only the forging of a revolu­ against deadly disease. For a Leninist­ working class, and its growing disillu­ anti-Soviet mujahedin in Afghanistan. tionary proletarian party that fights for Trotskyist workers partx! Reforge the sionment with the ANC/SACP regime, Meanwhile, the centrist Workers Inter­ a black-centred workers government to Fourth International, world party of into a struggle against the neo-apartheid national Vanguard League (WIVL) has expropriate the Randlords and all of socialist revolution!. 8 WORKERS VANGUARD on Macedonia. The Balkan Wars of 1912-_ this plan would significantly augment the 13, which were mainly fought to deter­ repressive powers of the capitalist state. mine which Balkan states would get Mac­ The plan met with immediate opposition edonia and Kosovo as the Ottoman from a range of civil libertarians. In Empire fell apart, were the prelude to the response, one Pentagon official claimed First World War. that the measure would avoid such "over­ The endless cycle of ethnic slaughter reactions" as the locking up of some in the Balkans underscores the fact that a 120,000 Japanese Americans in concen­ democratic resolution of the conflicting tration camps during World War II. Yet national claims in that region can only be concentration camps have been an inte­ achieved under the rule of the proletariat, gral part of the repressive apparatus in the only class without an interest in pur­ the U.S. as elsewhere, especially during suing and exacerbating national claims. war time. This was demonstrated by the 1917 Rus­ During and immediately after Wmld sian Revolution which laid the basis for War I, thousands of German Ameri­ the numerous nationalities which had cans, antiwar socialists and anarchists been under the boot of the tsarist empire were rounded up and imprisoned, while to achieve self-determination. The Bol­ foreign-born radicals were deported. shevik Revolution opened the road to Currently empowered to carry out such genuine national equality by expropriat­ mass roundups of "undesirables" is the ing the capitalists and landlords and WV Photo Federal Emergency Management Agency fighting to extend proletarian power December 1995 Spartacist demonstration outside UN headquarters in New (FEMA). Originally charged with over­ internationally. York City protests imperialist occupation of Bosnia. seeing disaster relief, FEMA was trans­ formed by Republican president Reagan Left Face of Imperialist most active agency on the left promoting Solidarnosc, the fake "union" backed by into an apparatus to put down urban Warmongering imperialist military intervention against the Pope, the CIA and Western bankers, insurrection. A top-secret master plan, It is striking that the most virulent anti­ the Bosnian Serbs was the "Workers Aid" and hailing the forces on Yeltsin's barri­ Rex 84, called for the detention of up to Serb warmongering in the Western impe­ . campaign, dominated by the Slaughter­ cades of counterrevolution. From Yugo­ 100,000 political dissidents and immi­ rialist countries often comes not from the ites and the USec. Under the guise of pro­ slavia to the former Soviet Union, capi­ grants in several concentration camps in right wing of the political spectrum but viding humanitarian aid for the "multi­ talist counterrevolution has meant mass the event of "social unrest." from liberals, social democrats and even ethnic" working class in Bosnia, Workers privation, continual nationalist bloodlet­ Liberals have opposed Clinton's pro­ the "far left." In the U.S., rad-lib nota­ Aid was in reality a pressure group on the ting and socia! disintegration. However posal on the basis of the Posse Comitatus bles like Susan Sontag and Christopher imperialists to attack the Serbian forces limited their influence, those "leftists" law, which bars the U.S. military from Hitchens were. prominent in calling besieging the cities controlled by the who championed the forces of capitalist engaging in domestic police activity. for bombing Serbian forces in Bosnia, Muslim regime. restoration bear their share of responsibil­ But this law, enacted in 1878 to prevent while the liberal Nation (30 March The centrist Workers Power (WP) ity for these horrors. Union soldiers from enforcing the right of 1998) has called for a "U.S. military reac­ group in Britain, one of the boosters of blacks to vote in the post-Civil War tion" against the Serbs in Kosovo. In the "Workers Aid for Bosnia" campaign, .Imperialist War Moves Abroad, South, has repeatedly been ignored by the Europe, fake-Trotskyist groups like Cliff scandalously refused to defend the Serbs Escalating Repression at Home government. The militarization of the Slaughter's Movement for Socialism in in the face of imperialist attack. In a 5 The imperialist military intervention in U.S.-Mexico border, which resulted in Britain and the West European-centered September 1995 statement, WP declared the Balkans and the Near East is carried the Marines gunning down a Hispanic United Secretariat (USec), tailing the that "each side's strategic goals are reac­ out by the same racist American ruling youth in Texas two years ago, was made mass social-democratic parties, call for tionary," repudiating the Leninist position class that has ruthlessly driven down the possible by an exception to the Posse Western governments to act against Ser­ of military defense of small nations and living standards of working people in the Comitatus law allowing troops to be used bian "aggression." semicolonial peoples against imperial­ U.S., that brutally oppresses blacks, His­ in the racist "war on drugs." And accord­ The left's support for bloody imperial­ ist aggression. Marxists understand that panics and immigrants, that has con­ ing to the New York Times (28 January), a ist terror cloaked in "humanitarian" garb imperialism is not a question of one or demned millions to homelessness and "little-noticed" bill passed by Congress goes back to the 1991 Persian Gulf War another "strategic. goal" but a system of starvation through the axing of welfare some years back already "gives the Pen­ against Iraq. At that time, the Spartacist domination over the vast masses of the and other social services. Seeking to con­ tagon power to step in domestically in the League, U.S. section of the International world's people by a handful of powerful tain the explosive contradictions between event of chemical and germ attacks." Communist League, called for defeat of capitalist classes. a handful of filthy rich and those at the As Marxists in the belly of the imperi­ the U.S.-led onslaught and defense of That WP, the USec et· al. genuflect bottom, the parties of capital-Demo­ alist beast, we seek to mobilize the multi­ Iraq while appealing to the Iraqi prole­ before the imperialists' "democratic" pre­ crats and Republicans-join in ratcheting racial proletariat against the rapa­ tariat to lead the Kurds and other tensions harks back to their support to up capitalist repression. This has trans­ cious, bloodsoaked capitalist rulers. oppressed peoples in the overthrow of the Cold War campaign against the lated into an explosion of the prison pop­ This requires a political struggle inside the despot Saddam Hussein. But many Soviet Union. As Trotskyists, the ICL ulation, mounting racist cop terror in the the labor movement against the class­ liberals and leftists, echoing the imperi­ stood for unconditional military defense ghettos and barrios, and the grisly collaborationist AFL-CIO bureaucracy, alist hue and cry over "poor little of the USSR, a degenerated workers state, speedup on death row. which chains workers to the capitalist Kuwait," donned yellow ribbons in soli­ and the deformed workers states of East Most recently, in an interview with the Democratic Party and embraces the aims darity with the imperialist troops and Europe against capitalist counterrevolu­ New York Times (22 January), Clinton of the imperialist rulers. In opposition to backed the starvation blockade of Iraq as tion and for proletarian political revolu­ revealed a Pentagon proposal to appoint the Democratic and Republican parties a "peaceful alternative" to bombing. tion against the Stalinist bureaucracies. a high-level military commander for of war and racism, we fight to build a By the time it came to "poor little Bos­ Groups like WP and the USec, on the defense of the continental U.S. against revolutionary workers party as the essen­ nia" a couple of years later, many of these other hand, bought into the imperialists' "terrorists" using chemical or, biological tial instrument in the struggle for socialist types were among the most bellicose drive to restore capitalism in the name of weapons. Veiled as a means ofeijsuring revolution to sweep away this system of advocates of imperialist intervention. The abstract "democracy," supporting Polish transport of medical supplies and such, exploitation and imperialist oppression .•

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.1!;,()e·alld'9'a~"IJ$~g~~gatlo'!clti:H;:(I)':!!ik I -Black History l Tbe .Class,:StruggI8 •• Rij~d·.·IO·····8.lack,:L'a'raiIQ .. :'i' .<. :. ,.. ": ..•".,~ ':'"i I ~!~.~~~ I Saturday, February 20, 7 p.m_ CHICAGO University of Chicago Reynolds Club, South Lounge For more information: (312) 454-4930 IlJa~e~Sel:@II~.~"~.:'II.~a)Ji~a~ist4mitriQ@; Thursday, February 18, 7:30 p.m. New York University School of Law NEW YORK CITY Vanderbilt Hall, Room 214 For more information: (212) 267-1025 Order copies of Black History and ihe Class Struggle All forums will include an update on the No.2 $.75 (32 pages); No.5 $1 (32 pages); No.12 $1 (48 pages); No.15 $1 (48 pages) fight to free Mumia Abu-Jamal. Make checks payable/mail to: Spartacist Pub. Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116

5 FEBRUARY 1999 9 / Plan! Extend Busing into the Suburbs! BOstOD ••. ;/}/ Integrated Quality Education for All!" (continued from page 12) and agitated for the key integrated '\. unions-including teachers, bus drivers and meatpackers-to organize laborlblack a state-paid living stipend for all! defense of black schoolchildren. We Our program is revolutionary integra­ declared: tionism-the struggle to smash the color "A victory for the racists would represent line once and for all through the assimila­ an enormous defeat for the oppressed. tion of black people into an egalitarian black masses in this country. The busing socialist society. of schoolchildren, which represents a step toward ensuring black people's Boston: Hardcore Segregation democratic right of equal access to public educational facilities, mu§t be imple­ in the "Deep North" mented this fall and, moreover, extended In Boston, where racist mobs attacked throughout Boston and into the suburbs. black schoolchildren during the fight to "The development of an organized labor/ black defense force to intimidate and implement school busing in the 1970s, demoralize the racist vigilantes, to ensure the white bourgeois rulers today feel con­ the implementation of busing, to protect fident that they can drop even the pre­ black people and especially the school­ children threatened with racist attacks, to tense of school integration and take back WVPhoto the few crumbs thrown to the city's channel the just rage of black youth away from random retaliation into an effective, besieged minority schoolchildren. In organized counteroffensive, this remains November, the federal First Circuit Court the urgent need of the hour!" of Appeals declared tQe affirmative action Boston: - Young Spartacus No. 35, admissions policy of prestigious Boston Spartacist September 1975 Latin High School unconstitutional. contingent at Of the many leftist groups in Boston at Boston Latin is one of three "examina­ 1974 the time, the SUSYL was unique in our demonstration tion" schools-virtually the only decent perspective of labor-centered defense of public schools in Boston-which had calls for labor/black busing. Some "leftists" opposed busing reserved a certain number of seats for defense of black outright, most outrageously the Maoist minority students. Long seen as a gate­ schoolchildren. Revolutionary Union (RU), forebears of way to success, Boston Latin has been RaCist anti­ the Revoilltionary Communist Party. the target of choice in a series of attacks busing mob Catering to backward white workers, the against school integration in the last few attacks blacks RU paper Revolution (October 1974) years. In the 1995 McLaughlin case, a in the streets, capitulated to the racist mobs, declaring: white yuppie lawyer successfully sued 1976. "People Must Unite to Smash Boston the city to get his daughter into the Forman/Boston Herald American Busing Plan"! The International Social­ school, contravening the quota system. ists (I.S.), predecessors of today's Interna­ Pending a Supreme Court appeal of the busing riots. Joining him is Councilor at who would never send their kids to over­ tional Socialist Organization, also capitu­ First Circuit Court ruling, the Boston Large Albert L. "Dapper" O'Neil, who whelmingly minority schools would lated to white racist backlash on the School Committee has. announced that lauds the Council of Conservative Citi­ like to get "their schools" back. Hence, busing question while claiming to support "all students invited to the city's three zens-a Southern group that is the direct the calls for a return to "neighborhood the right of black children to attend any exam schools for next September will heir to the Klan-infested White Citizens schools." school they wanted. The I.S. railed be admitted strictly on merit, without Councils which fought against school against "two-way" busing because white considering race" (Boston Globe, 3 desegregation in the 1950s-as "a good The Battle Over Busing kids might be sent to ghetto schools, December 1998). Two months after the group" (Boston Globe, 15 January). in Boston while its paper Workers Power (10 Novem­ ruling, Mayor Thomas M. Menino To this day, racist politicians and The defeat of busing in Boston, a ber 1972) denounced "the 'pro' -busing pledged to construct five "neighborhood newspaper pundits heap scorn on the quintessential Democratic Party strong­ and 'anti' -busing forces, both of whom schools"-long the code word for school busing program and the judge who hold, foreshadowed its defeat nation­ use racism to further their own ends." segregation. ordered it, Arthur Garrity Jr. Menino's wide. During the first year of the plan, The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) ini­ Whatever its pretensions to academic caB for neighborhood schools coincided the only neighborhoods affected were tially opposed busing out of its appetite to poor, black Roxbury and poor, heavily tail black nationalists who sought "com­ Irish Catholic South Boston. When a fed­ munity control" of the schools, i.e., seg­ eral court implemented a limited busing regated ghetto schools presided over plan to desegregate Boston's schools in by black administrators. However, when 1974, it was immediately met with a pro-busing protests swelled, the SWP white boycott of South Boston High reversed itself. Joining with liberals School which rapidly escalated into city­ like the NAACP, the SWP preached reli­ wide racist mobilizations and lynch mob ance on the forces of the capitalist state terror. Frenzied mobs roamed the streets to stop the racist mobs, calling for "fed­ intimidating ~nd assaulting blacks, eral troops to Boston" and denouncing shooting at black housing projects and our call· for labor/black defense as firebombing the NAACP headquarters. "unrealistic ." The Spartacist League and Spartacus In their appeal to the armed forces of Youth League immediately mobilized in racist American capitalism, the. SWP con­ defense of busing, despite the severe lim­ sciously rejected the basic Marxist under­ itations and bureaucratic implementation standing that the capitalist state is the of the desegregation plan. The busing defender of the bourgeois order. The program was consciously designed to police, army and state bureaucracy can­ provoke racial polarization by busing not be pressured to serve the interests of black children from deteriorating inner­ the exploited and oppressed. The capital­ WVPhoto city black schools to decrepit inner-city ist state machinery must be smashed 1,500 turned out for integrated united-front protest initiated by the Partisan white schools-the "Brahmin bourgeoi­ through a socialist revolution placing the Defense Committee against Klansman David Duke in Boston, 1991. SYCs call sie" made sure that no black kids would multiracial working class in power. The for youth to ally with labor in fight against racist terror. be bused to swanky suburban schools. reformist SWP promoted the illusion that Nevertheless, busing was a step against the racist capitalist government, which in liberalism, Boston has always been a hub with Garrity's donation of his papers the rigid segregation of the schools. We 1973 pulled its troops out of its dirty, los­ of hardcore urban segregation and nasty documenting the implementation of bus­ raised the call, "Implement the Busing ing war against the Vietnamese workers Deep North racism. For the past 25 ing to a local university. This touched off years, the political leadership of the city a flurry. of anti-Garrity and anti-busing has been a veritable rogues' gallery of tirades in the press, with right-wing those who built their careers' on the racist Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby denouncing mobilizations against busing. Late City Garrity as "the Most Hated Bostonian" SPARTACIST LEAGUE/U.S. LOCAL DIRECTORY Council president Louise Day Hicks, and "a megalomaniac, intoxicated with National Office: Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 • (212) 732-7860 who threw herself in front of buses car­ his own power and blinded by self­ rying black' schoolchildren, rode her importance" (Boston Globe, 4 January). Boston los Angeles Oakland demagoguery into a Congressional seat. Vehemently opposing t~e desegrega­ Box 390840, Central Sta. Box 29574, Los Feliz Sta. Box 29497 Raymond Flynn, cofounder of ROAR tion program, even in its re~ent vestigial Cambridge, MA 02139 Los Angeles, CA 90029 Oakland, CA 94604 ("Restore Our Alienated Rights"), the forms, many white parents nave sent their (617) 666-9453 (213) 380-8239 (510) 839-0851 reactionary umbrella group that organ­ children to either private or parochial Chicago New York San Francisco ized the racist anti-busing mobs, went on schools. This has given the Boston public Box 6441, Main PO Box 3381, Church St. Sta. Box 77494 to become the city's "liberal" mayor and education system a rather peculiar charac­ Chicago, IL 60680 New York, NY 10008 San Francisco, CA 94107 then Clinton's ambassadorto the Vatican. ter considering the racial demographics (312) 454-4930 (212) 267-1025 (415) 777-9367 Carrying on the fight for segregation is of the city. While Boston is almost 53 per­ James M. Kelly, who has just been re­ cent white according to the 1990 census, elected Boston City Council president the school system is now 49 percent TROTSKYIST LEAGUE OF CANADA/LiGUE TROTSKYSTE DU CANADA for the sixth time. Kelly began his career black, 26 percent Hispanic, and 9 percent as leader of the South Boston Informa­ Asian (Boston Globe, 1 December 1998). Toronto Vancouver tion Center, the front for the fascistic Ironically, South Boston High School, a Box 7198, Station A· Box 2717, Main P.O. Vancouver, BC V6B 3X2 South Boston Marshals-paramilitary center of the anti~busing racists during Toronto, ON M5W 1X8 gangs that showered rocks on buses of the 1970s, is now largely black. But paro­ (416) 593-4138 (604) 687-0353 black schoolchildren during the anti- chial schools cost money, and racists 10 WORKERS VANGUARD organization, his searing indictments of Mumia ... cop terror further enraged the police. (continued from page 12) After years of surveillance, the police were unable to charge Jamal with even force notorious for vIctImIzmg black the most minor offense. But on the night motorists, which was brought home in of 9 December 1981, the cops saw the the hail of bullets fired into a van carry­ perfect opp'0rtunity for a frame-up when ing black and Hispanic college students they found Jamal slumped on the curb last April. New Jersey governor Christine bleeding profusely from a bullet wound Whitman, who has placed a bounty on to his stomach, with Philadelphia police the head of exiled former Black Panther officer Daniel Faulkner lying shot nearby. Assata Shakur, is calling for people to Five different witnesses from five dif­ demand refunds for their tickets. ferent vantage points told the police that The fight to free Mumia Abu-Jamal is they had seen another man flee the urgently posed! The sinister and orches­ scene of the shooting. These witnesses trated campaign against him and his sup­ were bribed, coerced or terrorized by the porters has one clear purpose: to prepare police into changing their true eyewitness public opinion for his legal lynching. The accounts. The cops claimed that the bul­ machinery of lies went into high gear lets which killed Faulkner came from Shadd/Philadelphia Inquirer after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court Jamal's gun. But there is no evidence that COpS screaming for Mumia's execution in 1995 besiege Philadelphia hospital announced its rejection of Jamal's appeal his gun was even fired that night! As for workers union hall, site of planned fund-raiser for Jamal. last October 30. In December, ABC-TV's the much-touted "confession" Jamal sup­ 20120 portrayed Jamal as a depraved cop posedly uttered as he lay near death in the pions cases and causes in the interests of tial to become battalions in the strug­ killer, retailing evidence manufactured hospital, this fabricated story didn't sur­ the whole of the working people. This gle against racism and exploitation and by the prosecution and secured through face until two months after the event, fol­ purpose is in accordance with the politi­ to shake the foundations of this decay­ police intimidation and terror. The many lowing a meeting called by the District cal views of the Spartacist League, a ing capitalist system. A mobilization of who have spoken out in his defense Attorney's office to orchestrate the cops' revolutionary Marxist organization. We the union movement, drawing in youth, were depicted as simply a small band testimony. None of this came out in the understand that the cops, courts and minorities and all the oppressed in the of "duped" Hollywood liberals and iso­ sham 1982 trial presided over by "hang­ prison system which have persecuted and fight to free Jamal and abolish the racist lated ra~ical crazies. With this lie once ing judge" Albert Sabo' who, during his seek to kill Mumia are at the core of an death penalty, would be a' giant step in again punctured by the many thousands tenure, sent more people to death row apparatus of repression which protects this direction. who have bought tickets for the sold-out than any sitting judge in the U.S. the rule and profits of a tiny minority. 26 January 1999 Meadowlands <;oncert, the media, cops The frame-up of Murnia Abu-Jamal is The death penalty is at the pinnacle of and other forces of the capitalist state are a case study in the nature of the racist this system of capitalist repression-the * * * in a frenzy. American '1ustice" system. This was lynch rope made legal. Join the tight to free Mumia Abu­ In the eyes of the ruling class of brought home to high-school students in The social power to fight for Jamal's Jamal! Contact the PDC. In New this country, Jamal is a black revolution­ the heavily black city of Oakland, Cali­ freedom lies in the hands of the multi­ York: PDC, P.O. Box 99, Canal ary. Above all, the capitalist rulers are fornia in early January when a scheduled racial working class. For this social Street Station, New York, NY 10013- deathly afraid of the combination of black teach-in on Jamal's case was canceled power to be unleashed, labor must be 0099; phone (212) 406-4252; E-mail: and red, the spectre of social revolution. amid an outpouring of racist vitriol independent of the capitalist political [email protected]. In Chi­ As we wrote in our call for a N.ovember against "cop killers." The purpose of parties-the Democrats and Republi­ cago: PDC, P.O. Box 802867, Chicago, 21 Chicago laborlblack mobilization in education under capitalism is to incul­ cans-and state agencies of the enemy IL 60680-2867; phone (312) 454-4931. Mumia's defense: cate bourgeois values and discipline .. The class. That means ridding the unions of In the Bay Area: PDC, P.O. Box 77462, "This is a fight for more than the life and clamor against the proposed teach-in the cops and opposing all state interven­ San Francisco, CA 94107-0462; phone freedom of one courageous man. They expressed the fear that exposing the tion into the labor movement. As is (510) 839-0852. want to kill Mumia because of what he black and Hispanic ghettoized poor in only further underlined by the escalating Urgently needed contributions for represents: defiance of this racist system Oakland's public schools to the facts of cop mobilization against Jamal and his Mumia's defense, which are tax­ which saps the lifeblood from the many millions to ensure fabulous profits for a Jamal's case would explode the myth of supporters, unions infested with these deductible, should be made payable to wealthy few. All of labor must mobilize American "democracy." Similarly, the deadly enemies of labor and blacks can­ the Bill of Rights Foundation, ear­ now to demand: Free Mumia! Abolish rulers seek to stop youth from attending a not effectively defend themselves much marked "Mumia Abu-Jamal Legal the racist death penalty!" concert promoting Jamal's defense. The less the victims of the state's frame-up Defense:' and sent to the Committee Jamal was in the gun sights of the same cops who threaten the Meadow­ machine. to Save Mumia Abu-Jamal, 163 Am­ police and FBI since the time he was a lands concert and its mainly youthful The capitalist rulers are mobilizing sterdam Ave., No. 115, New York" NY 15-year-old spokesman for the Black audience roam school corridors and gun their forces for Jamal's death. We must 10023-5001. If you wish to correspond Panther Party, which was targeted for down minority youth with impunity. mobilize ours to free him. Based on with Jamal, you can write to: Mumia destruction by the FBI's COINTELPRO The Partisan Defense Committee is a the only significant integration in racist Abu-Jamal, AM8335, SCI Greene, terror operation. As an award-winning non-sectarian, class-struggle legal and America-the workplace and the factory 1040 E. Roy Furman "wy., Waynes­ journalist and supporter of the MOVE social defense organization which cham- floor-the trade unions have the poten- burg, PA 15370~.

and peasants, could be made to deploy its licans. These schools, now spreading raci~t capitalist repression, pouring bil­ raci:>t capitalist rulers. But at the same armed forces on the side of Boston's with the approval of local governments lions into new prison construction, put­ time, black workers continue to occupy a besieged black population. throughout the U.S., are meant to cir­ ting thousands more cops on"the streets, strategic place in the integrated labor What reliance on the forces of capital­ cumvent the constitutional separation of criminalizing an entire generation of movement. It is here that the power ist law and order meant in Boston was church and state, dismember public edu­ black and Hispanic youth through the resides to carry out a socialist revolution displayed at Carson Beach near South cation and lessen the power of the teach­ racist "war on drugs." to overthrow racist capitalist rule and cre­ Boston in August 1975, when a march of ers unions. This development has found There are enormous resources in this ate a society which will free the resources 2,000 blacks was attacked by twice as resonance among a section of the black society to provide a quality education for necessary to meet the needs of all. To many racists hurling ro~ks and bottles. population for whom quality education, all. But under capitalism, the ruling class unlock this power requires the forging of Eight hundred cops kept the black demon­ 4'5 years after the Brown v. Board of spends only what it can realize back in a multiracial revolutionary workers party strators confined to a narrow strip of the Education decision against Jim Crow profit. Today the ghettoized population is which champions the cause of all the beach, enforcing this with brutal clubbing segregation, remains a cruel hoax. Their increasingly seen as "expendable" by the oppressed .• and motorcycle and horse charges. The despair was reflected in the decision sev­ racist mobs cheered, "Let the cops do eral years ago by the national NAACP­ the job!" whose lawyers argued the historic Brown In the wake of the racist mobilizations, case-to debate dropping its opposition the busing plan became more symbolic to segregation. :P'l;tJ!:s~ir~lJlb:i?/~~.~!~~~:~ftr;fJl';'(t.. than real. The defeat of busing in Boston In fact, "public education" itself is CHICAGO TORONTO led to the reversal of school desegregation largely a misnomer. Schools are mostly plans across the country. As we wrote in funded by property taxes. And since Revolutionary Marxism Today Capitalism, Communism an article in WV No. 175 (30 September housing is deeply segregated by both race Next classes: February 10, The Marxist and the Fight for Revolution 1977): "The simple truth is that it was the and class, there are actually two "pub­ Theory of the State; February 17, Next classes: February 9, Labor vs. Proletarian Revolution liberals, not the racist mobs, who actually lics": those of affluent white neighbor­ Capital in the Epoch of Capitalist killed busing. And those in the left and hoods, whose schools get more resources, Wednesdays, 7 p.m. Decay; February 23, Racism and Capitalist Oppression workers movement who capitulated to and poor working-class and minority Cobb Hall, Rm, 104, Univ. of Chicago 5811 S. Ellis liberalism share the blame." neighborhoods. Although money might Alternate Tuesdays, 7 p.m. Information and readings: (312) 454-4930 International Student Centre, not be the answer to every problem p{)sed or [email protected] 33 St. George St. (North of College St.) Education and Racist , by public education, in the ghetto schools American Capitalism Information and readings: (416) 593-4138 it would surely go a long way toward NEW YORK or [email protected] Public education is a historic gain of updating facilities, purchasing modern Revolutionary Marxism: the working class won through hard textbooks and equipment and the other VANCOUVER struggle. It is a sign of the utter decay of prerequisites to a meaningful education. The Fight for a Socialist Future capitalism that conditions are being But the bourgeoisie is not about to spend Next classes: February 9, Marxism: Capitalism, Communism rolled back to the 19th century, when more money on educating working-class, A Guide to AcUon; February 23, and the Fight for Re.voJ~tion Marx and Engels called for public educa­ black and Hispanic youth when there are Anti-Labor Attacks, Cop Terror and Next ch:isses: February 10, Free tion as a vital democratic demand aimed no jobs for them. Instead, they slash edu­ the Capitalist State , Mumia Abu-Jamal! Abolish the at breaking the old aristocratic private cation budgets while launching union­ Alternate Tuesdays, 8 p.m. Racist Death Penalty!; February 24, school system and the hold of the busting attacks, such as imposing "com­ , Loeb Student Center, Room 511 or 517, . Labor Must Defend Imigrant Rights! church. Currently in vogue are "charter -petency" tests on teachers. Meanwhile, New York University Alternate Wednesdays, 7 p.m. schools," which are being touted by both the Democrats and Republicans join in Information and readings: (212) 267-1025 UBC, Buchanan Building, Room 8330 capitalist parties, Democrats and Repub- massively strengthening the arsenal of or [email protected] Information and readings: (604~ 687-0353 5 FEBRUARY 1999 11 WfJllllEIlS """'11' New Jersey' Meadowlands Concert Thousands Defy Cop Campaign Against Jamal Benefit

In the face of police threats, denuncia­ After a push to stop the event fizzled tions by state officials and a rabid media because the state had lost previous suits campaign, a capacity crowd of some over attempts to ban concerts, New Jer­ 18,000 packed the Meadowlands arena sey governor Christine Whitman launch­ for a January 28 concert benefiting the ed the drive for a boycott. A state trooper cause of Mumia Abu-Jamal, an innocent policing the event railed, "Everybody man framed up for the 1981 killing of a who buys a ticket should have blood on Philadelphia police officer. Area newspa­ their hands" (New York Post, 29 January). pers had run daily bloodcurdling dia­ The media featured interviews with rela­ tribes while rock DJs called to boycott tives of the dead policeman in an attempt the event and ban the artists' records to whip up public sentiment behind the from their stations. Undaunted by the cops. But while some hundreds report­ WVPhoto storm against the concert, the young, edly demanded refunds, the tickets were Youth rally outside Meadowlands arena as capacity crowd turns out for largely white fans cheered as the concert immediately resold. We publish below a January 28 Mumia benefit concert. initiators, the popular leftist band Rage January 26 Partisan Defense Committee Against the Machine, led the chant "Free statement, headlined "Ominous State Racist "shock jock" Howard Stern kicked concert, all the cops going to the scene Mumia!" Vendetta Against Jamal Targets Meadow­ off a rabid campaign to silence publicity would observe the traffic light laws." Guitarist Tom Morello noted that their lands Concert," which was distributed for the concert which features Rage . Setting the stage for a police provoca­ concerts "have been protested by the Ku on site. Against the Machine, the Beastie Boys tion against those who go to the concert, Klux Klan, and Rage concerts have been and Bad Religion. The New York Post the head of the New Jersey State Police protested by neo-Nazi groups. And now, * * * (19 January) weighed in with a chilling bristled at assigning state troopers to the a Rage Against The Machine concert is In a sinister escalation of the drive to article headlined "Concert Benefits a c<;>ocert, declaring: "We're putting our being protested by the Attorney General execute an innocent man, a lynch mob of Cop-Killing Vermin." Volunteering to troopers in with a hostile crowd, and my of New Jersey." A statement by Mumia cops, district attorneys and capitalist "squeeze the needle" to end Jamal's life, people are going to be there trying to saluted those who "continue to stand up politicians is trying to shut down a Janu­ the Post columnist quoted Philadelphia maintain law and order" (Daily News, for the right to read what they want to ary 28 benefit concert for black death Fraternal Order of Police (F.O.P.) presi­ 23 January). This is no small threat read, say what they want to ~ay, and sup­ row political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal dent Richard Costello, who openly threat­ coming from the top cop of a police port what they want to support." at New Jersey's Meadowlands complex. ened: "I hope if there is a 911 call to that continued on page II

mative action is increasingly under attack by racists who want to deprive 25 Years After Defeat of Busing black people of even this minimal gain, . . which at best offers access for a small percentage of minorities and women while leaving intact the class, race and sex bias of education under capital­ ism. The struggle for black rights and social equality is now dubbed "reverse Boston Schools: racism." The 1960s goal of racial inte­ gration in education, at least on the college level, has now been replaced with "diversity" and "meritocracy"­ code words for admission of token Separate and Unequal minorities only. Last week, in an openly racist appeal, advertisements by the In this deeply racist society, premised struction following the Civil War, for­ public education is more segregated right-wing "Center for Individual on the forcible segregation of the black mer slaves strove to build schools to than at any time since the civil rights Rights" in several university newspa­ population at the bottom, the fight for teach their children to read as part of the movement began. Black students in pers railed against using affirmative decent education has long been at fight to gain full access to American large cities attend schools overwhelm­ action "to promote racial diversity." The society. And a key component of the ingly made up of minority youth. With meaning of these attacks can be s.um­ civil rights movement of the 1950s and overcrowded classrooms, outdated text­ marized as: "No blacks need apply." l'j'l\' it: iJ ·Ei; 6'd \til early '60s was opposition to "separate books, antiquated lab facilities and often The Spartacist League and Spartacus but equal" Jim Crow school systems, even lacking paper, these "schools" are Youth Clubs fight for free, quality the center of the struggle against black which condemned -black students to little more than holding pens for youth and integrated education for every­ oppression. Under the Southern slave­ miserably substandard education. who are offered no future outside of body, through the highest level. We holders, teaching blacks to read or write Today, as the minimal gains made in unemployment, prison or early death in defend affirmative action and demand: was a crime often punishable by death. the struggle against segregation con­ this decaying capitalist society. Open admissions and no tuition, with During the period of Radical Recon- tinue to be eroded, what passes for In the colleges and universities, affir- continued on page 10 Iree, QualitJ, Integrated Education for All!

12 5 FEBRUARY 1999