Hansen, Who Died in New York City January 18 After Forty-Five Years of Service to the Revolu Tionary Movement

FEBRUARY 2, 1979 50 CENTS VOLUME 43/NUMBER 4

A SOCIALIST NEWSWEEKLY /PUBLISHED IN THE INTERESTS OF THE WORKING PEOPLE

A 20, launched to publish works by Joseph Hansen, who died in New York City January 18 after forty-five years of service to the revolu tionary movement. Plans for the J o seph Hansen Pub lishing Fund were announced by Reba Hansen and by the -PAGE 7 contributing editors of the magazine Intercontinental J>ressllnprecor--- Fourth Interna Militant reporter in Tehran tionalleaders Pierre Frank, Livio Mai A revolution is unfolding in Iran. of the struggle, and reports on the activities of tan, Ernest Mandel, and George No The workers, peasants, soldiers, and students Iranian revolutionists. vack. Hansen was the founding editor of that country have already put one of the Jacquith, a member of the Socialist Workers of the magazine sixteen years ago and world's most brutal tyrants to flight. Now, by the Party National Committee, joined the Militant millions, they are still staff in 1972. She was a frequent visitor to the served in that capacity until his death. on strike, still in the Kentucky coalfields during the Brookside United An initial collection for the fund will streets battling for their Mine Workers organizing drive portrayed in the be taken at Joseph Hansen Publishing rights and for social ju's movie Harlan County. An active feminist, she Fund meetings that will be held in tice. covered the historic march of 100,000 for the Revolutions are not Equal Rights Amendment in Washington, D.C., Continued on page 8 everyday . occurences. last July 9. And she regularly shares major And the Militant is de editorial responsibility for the Militant. termined to provide our Twenty years ago, when the Cuban revolution ~An example for readers with the best toppled the hated Batista dictatorship, the Mili possible coverage of these inspiring events. tant went there to counter the lies of the big That's why we've sent staff writer Cindy business press and get out the truth to American youth to learn from' Jacquith to Iran. Beginning next week, the workers and students. · -PAGE 8 Militant will carry on-the-spot coverage of politi We owe no less today to our readers, or to the cal developments there, interviews with leaders courageous people of Iran. CARTER'S lUll: AUSTERITY bJ BUDGET 20 J8II'S Banes of revolutioD

~£ :1 i Workers foot the bill for bigger war budget -PAGES 2, 4 In Our Opinion VOLUME 43/NUMBER 4 FEB. 2, 1979 CLOSING NEWS DATE-JAN. 24

sponsible for inflation, and working people the shah of Iran-who was forced out despite Carter escalates shouldn't pay for it. Carter's best efforts-to the dictator Somoza in Such a program would include: Nicaragua. austerity drive ... • escalator clauses on all wages and dis Far from guaranteeing our safety, the U.S. The real message in Carter's state of the ability and pension payments to keep workers military machine threatens us with new Viet union address was clear: working people must fully abreast with the real rise in the cost of nams and endangers the very survival of settle for fewer jobs, lower real wages, reduced living; humanity. public services, cuts in Social Security benef • a thirty-hour workweek with no loss in The entire defense budget should be junked its, and further decay of the cities. pay, to provide jobs for all; _ and the money used to meet the needs of Carter's guns-instead-of-butter budget is a • an end to the war budget, the single working people. further step in the ruling-class campaign to biggest cause of inflation-use those funds for drive down the living standards of American jobs and human needs; workers. The aim is to fatten profits, streng • free medical care for all; then the competitive standing of U.S. industry • an end to all taxes on working people-tax Behind ~peace' talks in world markets, and prop up the dollar-all the rich, who can afford to pay. As the Camp David accords on the Mideast at the expense of working people. Measures such as these won't be forthcom continue to unravel, the Israeli regime has The big-business press claims that Carter is ing from the big-business-controlled govern begun to strike out more violently against the merely bowing to public opinion by cutting ment or from the capitalist parties. They will Palestinian people. social services and imposing wage guidelines. be won by mobilizing the power of the in Using high explosive and incendiary phos That is a lie, and Carter knows it. His tended victims of the bosses' offensive-the phorus shells, Zionist forces have carried out promise of "additional support" to some social union ranks, the Black community, women, the most intensive shelling of towns, villages, programs and his attempt to pass off cuts as youth, and the unemployed. and Palestinian refugee camps in southern increases in "efficiency" and "competence" Working people need our own political in Lebanon since the massive Israeli invasion testify to how gingerly he is trying to tread. strument to speak out and fight for our last March. This cautious approach reflects fear in ruling interests-a mass, independent labor party The shelling, which reached a peak January circles that the growing resistance and resent based on a militant and democratic union 23, was accompanied by a January 19 attack ment among working people may reach an movement. on three Lebanese villages. This was the explosive point. deepest penetration of Israeli ground forces Thus, Business Week editorialized, "The into Lebanon yet. crucial test will come later this year or perhaps ... and arms race Israeli Defense Minister Ezer Weizman op not until 1980. It will come when the economy Carter's speech included a pitch for congres enly threatened January 23 to escalate attacks begins to slow down and unemployment shows sional backing of the impending SALT II on civilian targets in Lebanon. The same day, a distinct rise." agreement with the Soviet Union. As his Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan threatened the At that point, the magazine opines in arguments showed, such pacts have nothing to Palestinians living under Israeli rule with another article, "Demands will arise do with disarmament. Instead, they set the expulsion if they continue protesting their especially from labor and blacks-for in stage for further escalation in the arms race. oppression. creased spending." This big-business mouth "Just one of our relatively invulnerable Continuing military aggression, collective piece advises: "To keep both his economic Poseidon submarines," boasted Carter, "com punishment of civilians, attempts to terrorize a strategy and his political credibility alive, prising less than 2 percent of our total nuclear whole people, and suppression of the most Carter must say 'No.'" force of submarines, aircraft, and land-based basic democratic rights-that is what is really The emergence of Sen. Edward Kennedy as missiles, carries enough warheads to destroy behind the facade of "peace" talks being a critic of some of Carter's proposed budget every large and medium-sized city in the pushed by Carter. cuts is another sign that the rulers don't Soviet Union.'' And to keep the Zionist regime armed to the believe their own propaganda about where Far from decrying such overkill as madness, teeth, Carter's 1980 budget sets aside $1.8 working people stand on the cutbacks. Carter promised that SALT II would mean billion for aid to Israel, with the explanation Kennedy's goal is to keep all opposition to even more armaments: "Our deterrent is over that another billion or so may be forthcoming these attacks bottled up in the two-party whelming, and I will sign no agreement unless in supplemental requests. system-while both Democrats and Republi our deterrent force will remain overwhelming." It is the Israeli state that makes peace in the cans proceed with the bosses' offensive. Carter backed up his words by proposing a Middle East impossible. Established at the Not one of the Republican or Democratic record $135 billion arms budget. That includes expense of the Palestinian people, who were politicians is entitled to an ounce of confidence funds to move full-speed ahead with the latest turned into homeless refugees, Israel must from working people. They speak and act for in weapons of mass murder: the cruise and MX continually renew its agression simply to the rich. missile systems. maintain itself. Instead, we need a program that can provide According to Carter, this arsenal enables tl).e Peace in the Middle East requires the estab real protection from unemployment and infla U.S. government to act as the "world's peace lishment of a Palestinian state where Jews tion. Such a program would start from the maker." In fact, the bloodstained beneficiaries and Arabs will be able to live together as recognition that working people are not re- of U.S. military "peacemaking" range from equals.

The Militant Militant Highlights This Week Ed1tor MARY-ALICE WATERS Manag1ng Ed1tor STEVE CLARK Bus1ness Manager: ANDREA BARON 3 Newport News strike Women mark 1973 abortion victory Editorial staff: Peter Archer. Nancy Cole, Fred 4 Carter budget On the sixth anniversary of the historic Supreme Court decision Feldman. David Frankel, Osborne Hart, Cindy 5 Abortion rights the right to choose is under attack. Protests took place Jaquith, Shelley Kramer, Ivan Licho, Omari Musa, Harry Ring, Dick Roberts, Andy Rose, Priscilla 6 Turkish upsurge this month in New York, New Jersey, and other areas. Page 7. Schenk, Arnold Weissberg, Matilde Zimmermann. 7 Iranian revolution Published weekly by the Militant. 14 Charles Lane, 8 Joe Hansen New York, NY 10014. Telephone Editorial O-ffice 10 Hansen on Cambodia (212) 243-6392: Busmess Office (212) 929-3486 23 Marroquin case Correspondence concerning subscriptions or 24 Pulp & Paperworkers' strike changes of address should be addressed to The Militant Business Office, 14 Charles Lane, New 32 Nuclear cover-up York, N.Y. 10014. 2 In Our Opinion Second-class postage pa1d at New York. N.Y 25 National Picket Line Who killed Orlando Letelier? Subscnpt1ons: U.S. $15.00 a year. outs1de US $20.50. By f~rst-class mall: U.S . Canada. and Mex 28 In Brief Did Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet (left) get a helping hand from ICO $42.50. Wnte for surface and a~rmail rates to all What's Going On the CIA in the 1976 bombing murder? A trial now under way in other countnes 29 The Great Society Washington is putting a spotlight on that question. Page 27. For subscnpt1ons a1rfre1ghted to London then Union Talk posted to Bnta1n and Ireland: £2.50 for ten ISSues: £5.50 for SIX months (twenty-four ISsues): £10 for 30 Our Revolutionary Heritage one year (forty-e1ght 1ssues) Posted from London Letters to Continental Europe £4 for ten issues. £8 for s1x 31 Learning About Socialism months (twenty-four ISSues): £13 for one year If You Like This Paper ... (forty-e1ght ISsues) Send checks or International WORLD OUTLOOK money orders (payable to lntercontmental Press 26 Life in Soweto account) to: Intercontinental Press (The Militant). P 0 Box 50. London N1 2XP. England 27 Letelier murder Roots of rebellion S1gned art1cles by contnbutors do not necessanly represent the Militant's v1ews These are expressed 11-22 International An eyewitness report on the giant Black South African ghetto of Socialist Review Soweto three years after the student upsurge. Page 26. m ed1tonals 2 Virginia shipyard workers fight for union rights Steel local sets January 31 strike date By Shelley Kramer years have fought for and in many If you're a member of United Steel cases died for," he says. workers Local 8888 at Newport News "The only alternative is to strike." shipyard in Virginia, there's a number Virginia's unions ar(l beginning to you can call for up-to-date news on the rally to Local 8888. Those that service year-long struggle for union recogni the shipyard-Communication tion. This week's message is what Workers, Teamsters, Operating Engi everyone has been waiting to hear. neers, Seafarers-have vowed to honor "Our strike for freedom shall take the union's picket lines. The state AFL place on January 31, 1979," says the CIO, United Auto Workers, and United voice of Jack Hower, USWA staff rep Rubber Workers have also pledged resentative. their support. Nationally, unions have January 31 is exactly one year after raised more than $5 million for the a majority of the shipyard's 17,500 strike. production workers voted to join the Leaders of the Hampton Roads Steelworkers. Local 8888 now has Black Ministers Alliance have offered signed up more than 13,000 members. church aid to strikers. A sister USW A local, composed of At William and Mary College in 1,200 shipyard designers, has been on neighboring Williamsburg, students strike for twenty-two months to win its are forming a strike support coalition. first contract. Steelworkers have signed up more than 13,000 Newport News shipyard workers The group's first meeting was held Low wages-averaging only $5.90 an January 23. hour-as well as unsafe working condi "Students will be out in the working tions have spurred support for the the union is denying it a "democratic to fire and discipline union militants. world sooner than they think," ex union organizing drive. day in court." Months in which bribes can be passed plains Blaine Coleman, one of the Tenneco, the oil conglomerate that The USW A is supposed to wait to well-placed politicians, a practice meeting's organizers. "Everyone in the owns the shipyard and scores of other quietly until after the courts hear Ten Tenneco has been convicted for in the Tidewater area is hurt by the low industries throughout the South and neco's suit charging the Steelworkers past. wages Tenneco pays." Southwest, has pulled every dirty trick with "irregular election practices." One But the Steelworkers don't intend to Working people all across the coun in the book to drive the USW A out. of the practices Tenneco didn't like wait for their rights any longer. "We try are hurt by the miserable wages "Tenneco's trying to become the J.P. was inviting prominent Black com have been patient," says Hower. "But and working conditions forced upon Stevens of the shipbuilding industry." munity speakers to a preelection union still you are denied representation, nonunion labor. Unionists, Blacks, is how many workers tell it. rally! About half of the shipyard justice, dignity, and a voice in your women, students-we all have a stake They are particularly galled by the workers are Black. workplace." in the battle for union rights in New company's latest maneuver. In full Tenneco's case, which goes to court "The time has come for shipyard port News. We all have a stake in the page ads and television and radio March 5, could drag out for months. workers to stand up for the very things victory of USW A Locals 8888 and broadcasts, Tenneco complains that Months in which the company is free which our forefathers through the 8417. Protests force Peru junta to free USLA leader By Fred Murphy Peru and the detention of its executive tary of the seamen's union. 20036. Send copies to USLA, 853 An international campaign of pro secretary, USLA launched an emer Two prisoners, Luis Olibencia and Broadway, Suite 414, New York, N.Y. test has won the release of American gency campaign. A picket line was Guillermo Bolanos, journalists for Re 10003. human-rights activist Mike Kelly from held January 17 at Peru's UN mission voluci6n Proletaria (newspaper of the the jails of the Peruvian military dicta in New York. Efforts on Kelly's behalf Revolutionary Marxist Workers torship. were also made by U.S. Senator Paul Party-POMR) will be tried under De Tsongas and by Lawrence Brins, cree Law No. 22339. This new measure, Kelly, executive secretary of the U.S. chairman of the U.S. Council on He imposed by the military last fall, Committee for Justice to Latin Ameri mispheric Affairs. is designed to intimidate the press and can Political Prisoners (USLA), was Kelly reported after his release that is being invoked for the first time. It is released from the State Security prison word of the protests in the United opposed by all political parties in Peru. in Lima on January 19. He was then States reached the prisoners in Lima Olibencia and Bolanos have been handed an "invitation to leave Peru," and bolstered their morale. He said questioned about their .activities in the which he had little choice but to ac everyone felt that USLA's campaign Workers, Peasants, Students, and Peo cept. But he was not formally expelled had been key in securing the release of ple's Front (FOCEP) and their ties from the country, and there will be no most of the prisoners. with Hugo Blanco. Blanco, the Trot charges pending against him in Peru. As of January 19 twenty-seven per skyist leader and FOCEP deputy to the Kelly was arrested January 9 while sons were still being held at State Constituent Assembly, has been tar taking photographs in downtown Security in Lima. At least fifteen of geted by the government as one of Lima. He was held at the State Secur these were expected to be transferred to those "responsible" for the general ity prison along with some 700 Peru the jails of the Callao Military Zone-a strike in Peru. vian trade unionists, political activists, branch of the armed forces notorious USLA urges that telegrams or letters and journalists arrested between J anu for the torture of prisoners. demanding the immediate release of ary 6 and 11. In all, more than 1,000 Olibencia and Bolanos and the other persons were detained as the military Among those still being held were remaining prisoners, and the dropping Militant/Nancy Cole sought to head off a three-day general Alfonso Barrantes Lingan, president of all charges against them, be sent to NEW York pickets January 17 de- strike. of Democratic People's Unity (UDP) the Peruvian Embassy, 1700 Massa manded freedom for Mike Kelly and Upon learning of the mass arrests in and Herrera Montalvo, general secre- chusetts Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C., other political prisoners in Peru.

) S2 for ten issues (new readers only) Special offer ) 58.50 for six months ( ) S15 for one year ) New ( ) Renewal to new readers Name The Militant-10 weeks/SI Address OUT NOW: A review of Fred Halstead's City ------Solidarity with southern Africa freedom fighters, book about the movement that helped end defense of affirmative action, the drive to ratify the State ------Zip ______the Vietnam War and still has Washington's Equal Rights Amendment, trade-union struggles, 14 Charles Lane. New York. New York 10014 hands tied today. · international news-read about these every week in the 'Militant.' Subscribe today so that you don't NEWPORT NEWS STRIKE: On-the-spot miss an issue. coverage on the beginning of this important Subscribe today battle in the fight to unionize the South.

THE MILITANT/FEBRUARY 2, 1979 3 Carter~ austerity budget Workers foot the bill for war spending By Andy Rose tere" budget. Interest up, and unsafe working conditions. In his election campaign three years To pay for past, present, and future ago, Carter made a lot of promises. Military wars the federal government borrows Social services They have been steadily whittled Carter proposes $135.5 billion in money from the banks, to be repaid Instead of the massive increases in down. Now there is just one. spending authority for the Pentagon with interest year after year after year. funding needed to provide decent medi Carter promises that if the American (which includes commitments for fu These interest payments alone are cal care for all, improve education, people will accept the austerity and ture outlays), of which $122.7 billion is one of the biggest expenses in Carter's open child-care centers, end malnutri sacrifices he demands, they will be to be spent in fiscal year 1980. budget: a staggering total of more than tion, and abolish poverty, Carter con rewarded with some relief from infla· Depending on which figures you $46 billion. tinues to chip away at all useful social tion. compare, it's about a 10 percent hike Imagine a large factory with 5,000 programs. The budget allots some $16 Like all the other promises, this one from the year before. workers each making eight dollars an billion less than would be required just is a fraud. Some of the top items on the war hour, forty hours a week, fifty-two to keep services at their present mis The heart of Carter's budget for hawks' shopping list are: weeks a year. It would take more than erably inadequate level. fiscal 1980-which takes billions of • $2.4 billion for one Trident subma 550 years for those workers to receive Carter says he is "developing" a dollars away from human needs in rine and its nuclear-tipped missiles; wages equal to the amount the banks national health plan ... but with no order to boost Pentagon spending-is • $1.62 billion for one aircraft ear will siphon out of our pockets next year funding until at least 1983. In other his warning that "real sacrifices must ner; in interest on the federal debt. words, forget it. be made if we are to overcome infla • $675 million for accelerated devel tion." opment of the MX missile (eventual Jobs Farmers But will it be easier for working cost, $35 billion). The administration projects a rise in In a slap in the face to thousands of people to cope with inflation if there This incredible drain on society's the official unemployment rate from farmers who have protested his poli are fewer jobs? Less public health resources is projected to increase even 5.9 percent to 6.2 percent by the end of cies, Carter refuses to appr9priate care? Worse schools? Fewer hot more sharply in the years to come, the year. The jobless figure is generally funds to meet their basic demand-to lunches for children? with outlays rising to $133.7 billion in expected to go much higher, especially be assured the full cost of production Of course not. 1981 and $165.7 billion in 1984. given the likelihood of a new recession for their crops, including a decent Carter says the burden of these But the announced "defense" budget this year or next. standard of living for them and their sacrifices will be spread "fairly and is only part of Washington's war Yet Carter proposes to cut 158,000 families. objectively." spending. It turns out that all funds for public service jobs and 250,000 summer But are the rich to sacrifice any of development and production of nuclear youth jobs. Nukes their tax shelters? Are the arms manu warheads are listed in the Energy There could be no clearer statement Instead of admitting the danger facturers to sacrifice their cost-plus Department budget. Still more military that permanent joblessness for mil nuclear reactors pose to all humanity contracts? Are the corporations to sac spending is squirreled away under the lions is now official government policy. and shutting them down immediately, rifice any of their bloated profits? heading of "research." And much of It also guarantees-despite Carter's Carter proposes $655 million for "effec Of course not. the money listed as "foreign aid" ends pronouncements to the contrary-that tive measures to deal with nuclear Carter's budget cutbacks will make up as arms purchases. Blacks will continue to suffer an unem waste." That is a scientific impossibil economic inequality worse, not better. Nowhere listed is the CIA and other ployment rate nearly two-and-a-half ity. He also wants $564 million to They will. make it harder, not easier, spy agencies' budget for worldwide times higher than for whites. continue work on the most dangerous for working people to protect their spying, assassinations, torture schools, The prospect of even more misery nuke of all, the breeder reactor. living standards against rising prices. and so on. This secret fund was esti from unemployment is welcomed by Here are some of the highlights of mated at $10 billion a year by the 1976 the employers, since it puts pressure on Environment what Carter calls his "lean and aus- House Intelligence Committee report. workers to accept lower wages, speed- With the country suffering an epi- British strikers take on wage controls By Nancy Cole ours, just like the next lads." In this country, it's Carter's "war The truckers-member of the on inflation." Transport and General Workers In Britain ·they call it the "social Union-are demanding a modest contract." basic wage of $130 for a forty-hour Or at least they used to. For more week. Now they make about $106. than three years, British workers The low-paid public service have been saddled with so-called workers have a basic wage of about voluntary 5 percent wage guidelines, $85 a week. They are demanding a devised by the procapitalist Labour hike to $120. Faced with strike ac Party government. Now they're say tion, the government offered those ing they've had enough. on the very lowest pay level a $7-a It is the "most severe concentra week raise. It wasn't good enough. tion of labor unrest in Britain" since Transport union officials have the coal miners brought down the agreed to keep essential goods mov Conservative Party government in ing. But reports are that many on 1974, declared the New York Times the picket lines have balked at some January 23. of these "essentials." Food for older Since early in January, 100,000 people and children and medicine is striking truck drivers have tied in one thing, said a picket, "but when ne-and million public workers struck they ask us to let through five con dustry in knots, demanding a 22.5 Thousands (above) marched on Parliament. percent pay increase. Some 26,000 tainer loads of rotting grapes, we locomotive engineers on the refused." steered clear of declaring a "state of government-run railroad have Such forecasts indicate a real fear The Economist observes about top emergency," as was done during the staged three one-day strikes in eight on the part of Britain's rulers. The transport union officials that 1974 miners' strike. This would al days, with another scheduled for chill cannot help but be felt across "neither Mr. [Moss] Evans nor Mr. low soldiers to try to perform the January 25. the Atlantic in the White House and [Alex] Kitson is much in control of strikers' jobs. For similar reasons, he Congress. anything in this strike. Real power And on January 22, an estimated doesn't think he can get away with Much of the news coverage in this is in the hands of unofficial strike 1.5 million government workers, imposing a mandatory wage freeze. country of the growing strike wave committees up and down the coun from nurses to garbage collectors, Instead, government officials are has focused on the "ordinary" Brit try." walked off the job for twenty-four pleading with union officials for on's "alienation" from the strikers. Shades of last winter's U.S. coal hours. In London, 30,000 of the restraint. A phony bill to "stiffen" Scenes of "umbrella-wielding female strike! strikers rallied and marched to Parli price controls is being rushed workers" attacking picketing In standing up to the government ament, chanting, "All-out strike!" through Parliament. truckers (Time magazine) have hit and refusing to accept a cut in their Other public workers are just be Conservative Party officials are the spotlight. living standards, the British unio ginning to bargain, including the pushing for legislation to curb Such selective reporting is more nists are doing all working people in miners in the nationalized coal in union rights. In Britain, unlike the akin to whistling past the graveyard their country a much-deserved ser dustry. United States, the labor movement than it is to accurate news coverage. vice. This all follows the eight-week has won the right for striking unio The widening scope and power of the They're also providing an example strike by 57,000 Ford workers that nists to picket firms not directly strikes are proof enough of the sup and inspiration for workers across smashed the 5 percent wage limit. involved in the labor dispute. port they have among the country's the Atlantic. The auto strikers returned to work "The [5 percent] pay policy is dead working class. Some 4.2 million U.S. unionists last November with a 16.85 percent in both the private and public sec "You see, the government goes on face contract battles this year under increase. tors," moaned the British magazine about inflation, but that's rubbish," Carter's 7 percent guidelines. British Fearing a bigger response from the Economist. "But the govern said a striking truck driver. "We unionists are showing what it takes the country's unionists, Prime Minis ment's industrial troubles are only suffer from the rising prices too. So to bust through such anti-working ter James Callaghan has thus far just beginning." all we're doing now is trying to get class schemes.

4 Actions mark date of 1973 abortion victory "No one is going to take this right away from us." That determination marked activities across the country commemorating the January 22, 1973, Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion. Taking away abortion rights is exactly what the enemies of women have in mind. Most states have virtually ended Medicaid payments for abortions. Some cities and states have passed laws designed to make it nearly impossible to obtain an abortion. Anti-abortion amendments to the U.S. Constitution have been introduced in Congress. Growing numbers of women are looking for a way to defend this precious right. Below are reports on two recent abortion rights actions.

demic of cancer largely caused by Second, the U.S. rulers' determina industrial wastes and toxic chemicals, tion to police the world for corporate Carter proposes all of $70.4 million for investment and profits-reflected in a program to test and control these the mammoth war budget-makes it chemicals. That nearly equals the price impossible for them to reduce the tag for two P3 submarine-hunting air budget deficit enough to bring infla At New York teach-in, Ruth Gilbert (above) reminded audience of pre planes from Lockheed at $36 million tion to a near-standstill. apiece. Carter's war budget guarantees that when women were forced to get unsafe, back-alley abortions. A grand total of $148.1 million will inflation will continue and even be spent to enforce strip-mine regula worsen. tions (which the administration is growing concern about workplace stalling announcement of) and to re Behind austerity drive New York health and safety," she said. claim land devastated by strip-mining. If Carter is not actually trying to By Matilde Zimmermann Feminist authors Alix Kates Shul That is less than one-fourth of this halt inflation, then what are his eco NEW YORK-"Things are begin man, Kate Millett, and Ellen Frankfort year's cost overrun on the Trident nomic policies all about? ning to turn around in the fight for also spoke. Frankfort described the last days and hours of Rosie Jimenez, submarine ($668 million). The Democratic administration's reproductive freedom," was how the the first woman to die as a result of the "anti-inflation" demagogy is merely a chairwoman opened a teach-in on cutoff in Medicaid funds for abortion. Who pays? mask for continuing the anti-working abortion here January 19. Other speakers included State Sen. Where the money goes is just one class offensive launched under the It certainly looked like she was side of Carter's attempt to reorganize Republican administrations of Nixon right-with 500 abortion rights sup Carl McCall and Janet Benshoof of the American Civil Liberties Union. the federal budget for the "new era" of and Ford. porters crowded into a room set up for Forty different organizations spon austerity. The other side is who foots The real purpose of this bipartisan half that number. The size and enthu sored the teach-in. Chairwomen at the the bill. austerity drive is to increase the prof siasm of the audience showed the rally represented the New York chap As recently as 1967, corporate in its, military might, and economic pre growing sense of emergency created by ter of the National Organization for come taxes provided 23 percent of dominance of U.S. capitalism-at the escalating attacks on the right to abor Women; the Committee for Abortion federal revenue. In Carter's 1980 expense of the working class at home tion. Rights and Against Sterilization budget the corporate share is only 13 and abroad. Twenty literature tables lined the Abuse; percent. The budget shifts are just one aspect back of the room. Most of the groups and Catholics for a Free Choice. Last year Congress drastically in of this austerity campaign. Others in active in the pre-1973 fight for legal creased Social Security taxes, which clude: abortion were represented, as well as fall heaviest on low-paid workers. But • the 7 percent wage limits; new allies such as the antinuclear it cut taxes on corporate profits by $3.6 • the "drive less, heat less, pay movement. New Jersey billion and cut capital gains taxes by more" energy policy; and Ruth Gilbert from the Women's Div By Alice Conner $2.1 billion (a giveaway that nearly all • the "tight money" course signaled ision of the United Methodist Church TRENTON, N.J.-Chapters of the goes to people with incomes over last November 1 to prop up the dollar described the situation women faced National Organization for Women $50,000). in world money markets even at the before 1973: "Those of us who had to around New Jersey, as well as from cost of a recession. go to a before-unknown address in Philadelphia and New York City, sent Inflation fighter? Cruel as these measures are for Harlem, pretending we were going to a delegations here January 20 to march Despite the obvious inequities of his American workers, from the stand party-We say 'Never again!'" and rally in support of abortion rights. budget proposals, Carter argues that point of the needs of the capitalist Rhonda Copelon, an attorney from Nearly 500 demonstrators gathered workers and the poor will really benefit system they are still not nearly the Center for Constitutional Rights, at the Trenton Motor Lodge for a rally the most if Washington succeeds in enough. called the new wave of anti-abortion addressed by NOW national Vice curbing inflation by cutting the federal "One searches in vain in the Carter laws and lawsuits "the establishment president Arlie Scott, New Jersey state deficit. Is this true? budget for genuinely significant prop of a 'morality' that makes a fetish out assemblywoman Barbara McConnell, In the first place, when Carter points osals for spending cuts," complained of the fetus over and above everything Dr. Helen Rodriguez-Triaz, and others. to federal deficit spending as the real the editors of the Wall Street Journal. else. This is just a cover for tremend Scott took issue with a recent Wash cause of inflation-which it is-he is But to achieve the qualitative in ous disdain for women." ington Post article admonishing implicitly admitting that it is false to crease in profit rates the capitalists are Also speaking was Rubye Jones, women to stick to the issue of the put the blame for inflation on workers' desperately seeking, more than budget president of the New York Coalition of Equal Rights Amendment. She wages. The truth is that wages have cuts-even deep ones-is required. Labor Union Women and an official of pledged that NOW would not put aside been falling behind prices for at least Productivity must be significantly ILGWU, Local 91, representing this crucial fight. five years, by the government's own boosted, eliminating thousands of jobs workers in New York's garment dis The majority of those at the rally statistics. · and brushing aside safety and health trict. then marched to the State House for a So if Carter had any real concern considerationa. "What we have to do," Jones said, picket to protest the anti-abortion with helping workers cope with infla The industrial working class must be "is what the trade unions do all the Maressa-Deverin bill currently before tion, he wouldn't be using the club of forced to accept a drastically smaller time-unite, march, demonstrate. We the legislature. The bill is patterned "voluntary" wage guidelines to try to share of the wealth it produces. all represent different groups, but it is after highly restrictive laws passed in hold wage increases to 7 percent-a Neither Carter nor the capitalist time for all our different organizations Akron, Ohio, and in Louisiana. figure that makes sure wages will fall class he represents feels confident to get together. ·The Trenton action was endorsed by even further behind. (His "real wage about how fast they can proceed or "The trade unions are out there a broad spectrum of groups, including insurance" nlan, devised as window how far they can go without provoking picketing all the time," Jones pointed the state Women's Council of the Uni dressmg for this wage-cut plan, has an explosion. But this much is certain: out. "We can learn a thing or two from ted Auto Workers. Leaflets were posted already been pronounced dead-on The assault will continue and escal the trade unions." in auto plants around the state. Other arrival in Congress.) ate, with more and bigger class battles Explaining how the right to choose endorsers included the Coalition of The government's real attitude can on every front as the workers try to is related to women's fight to break Labor Union Women, the YWCA, the be seen in its hostility to cost-of-living defend themselves. And they will be into new industrial jobs, pediatrician Socialist Workers Party, Local 1082 of escalators for wages-the one measure able to do so successfully only through Helen Rodriguez-Triaz spoke about five the Communication Workers of Amer of protection some workers do have independent and uncomprom1smg women at a Cyanamid plant who were ica, the National Council of Jewish and its attempt to roll back the limited struggle against the government and recently blackmailed into getting ster Women, and locals 1437 and 3052 of cost-of-living protection for Social Se the parties that are implementing the ilized to keep their jobs. the American Federation of State, curity recipients. austerity drive. "This is industry's answer to the County and Municipal Employees.

THE MILITANT/FEBRUARY 2, 1979 5 Iranian Trotskyists Def.Y._ martial law appeal to ranks of army One of the key aims of the mass The soldiers are reminded of the movement in Iran has been to win way they have always been treated Turkey: one million over the ranks of the shah's con by the officers and authorities. They script army. One of the appeals are reminded of the small allowan addressed to the troops was issued ces they get by comparison with the protestrighUstterror by the Iranian Trotskyists. amounts stolen by the officers. "Brother soldiers," it began, "the The leaflet calls on the soldiers to By Gerry Foley start to think for themselves: "We The first indication of the readiness people, who for years have suffered oppression and torture at the hands say that soldiers should have a right of Turkish workers to defy the martial to their own opinions, the right to law regulations banning all strikes of the government, have gained their freedom .... vote ....They should not be used as and political meetings came on Janu a police force. . . . ary 5, when a reported one million "Do you remember how on the 14 "You should have the right to ask workers took part in a five-minute of Shahrivan ... and on the 17 of why you must drown your brothers silent work stoppage to protest rightist the same month [early and mid and sisters in blood." terror. October] we embraced each other? The concluding appeal is as fol The action, called by the left-wing Do you remember how for two days lows: union federation DISK, took 'place less not a pane of glass was broken? ... "Brother soldiers, the people place than two weeks after the declaration of Do you remember all the flowers we their hopes in you. If you join them the state of "emergency." Constitu showered on you?" our criminal rulers will have no tional guarantees were suspended in The leaflet counters accusations other force that can keep them in thirteen provinces December 26, on the that the demonstrators were out for power. If you join us the workers, pretext of countering a rightist pogrom loot by citing a report on the real peasants, and poor people will be that claimed at least 100 lives in the "looters" issued by striking bank victorious. Victory to the Iranian city of Kahraman Maras. workers. This document listed large revolution! Fight for a workers and An indication of the militancy of the sums of money taken from the public peasants republic!" protest was given by the Istanbul daily till by top military officers. From Intercontinental Press/lnprecor Cumhuriyet, which carried on the front page of its January 6 issue a picture of protesting workers, standing by their machines giving the clenched-fist sa lute. The DISK organizers faced military repression in building their action. In Shah cushions exile neofascists Diyarbakir, for example, which is in demand free hand for military the largely Kurdish eastern part of the country, representatives of DISK and with $25 billion thirty other organizations were pre Being a "king of kings" may not be vented by police from holding a news the sort of events that martial law was secure work, but it certainly pays well. conference. The union representative supposedly instituted to stop. When the shah of Iran had to flee the was held in administrative detention. Demirel and Turkes were obviously country he took with him what an aide The representatives of the other or taking the ball that Ecevit had handed described as a "modest number of ganizations were "manhandled" by to them and trying to run with it. suitcases, only about forty." the police, the union leadership said in After his meeting with the neofascist Although the shah had to leave a protest. leader, Demirel issued a statement behind his royal palace, with its fur The January 7 Cumhuriyet carried saying: "The government must not nishings worth, in the words of one an ad placed by DISK announcing interfere in the application of martial palace retainer, "many millions of that strikes that had been under way law." Thus, he was joining with the dollars," he and the rest of the royal in twenty-four workplaces would be neofascists to demand that the right family will be able to set themselves up continued and that workers in ninety wing military leaders be left a free in style wherever they spend their ex one other workplaces had decided to go hand to do as they pleased. ile. on strike. There was no comment on An Iranian economist estimated the this by Cumhuriyet on either January Such moves by the rightist leaders assets of the royal family at more than 7 or 8. are a warning to the workers and the $20 billion, while the Time-Life News Despite the resistance of the DISK left parties that they have to begin Service put the figure at $25 billion. leadership to the military's attempt to now to organize broad struggles to The extent of this wealth can be seen SHAH: Left behind trinkets worth 'many demobilize the workers movement, the prevent the military from putting them from the observation that Argentina, a millions of dollars.' federation leaders have not denounced in a straitjacket, in which it and the country of 26 million people, has a the declaration of martial law as such fascists can cut their throats at their Gross Domestic Product of about $22 venues were routinely transferred by or called for a campaign to have it leisure. billion. the National Iranian Oil Company to lifted. In these circumstances, there seem to The main repository of the royal the shah's bank accounts abroad. In general, the DISK leaders have be relatively few illusions about the family's wealth is the Pahlavi Founda The royal family's business ventures confined themselves to saying that the meaning of the martial-law declara tion, organized as a "charity" but in were quite varied. According to Iran military regulations must not be app tion. fact an, investment 'house managing ian sources quoted by the January 17 lied to the detriment of the democratic For example, in a news conference the royal family's assets in Iran and Washington Post, the. shah's twin sis rights of the Turkish masses-as if January 7, Behice Boran, chairman of abroad. Members of the royal family ter Ashraf was deeply involved in big they were likely to be applied in any the Turkish Workers Party, probably were as a matter of course given shares time drug smuggling. "Ashraf," they other way. the most broadly supported left party, in the new businesses established in noted, "was into anything that smelled The conservative labor federation sharply condemned the Ecevit govern Iran, and there are indications that as of money." Turk-Is, traditionally closely linked to ment for its decision to suspend consti much as $2 billion a year in oil re- From Intercontinental Press/lnprecor the government and to bourgeois na tutional guarantees: tionalism, took the occasion of the "Terrorist actions must be sup declaration of martial law to reaffirm pressed. But the free exercise of demo cratic rights and freedoms must not be r- its class-collaborationist principles. I In a statement issued December 29, obstructed. There is no justification for EDUCATION FOR SOCIALISTS the Turk-Is leadership said: banning strikes. In striking and mobil "One of the aims of this federation is izing in other ways, the workers are by ... to prevent the deepening of class no means engaging in terrorism. The conflicts and to establish a policy of government must realize that you can Workers and Farmers Governments harmony, peace, fraternity, and solid not defend democracy by banning How did socialist arity among the classes. . .. democratic rights and freedoms." Since the Second World War revolutions take place in "Today is not the time for useless Boran also warned that in order to Yugoslav1a, Cuba, and actions, it is a time for uniting." continue to administer a capitalist China? Why did the Nonetheless, the organizers of the system in crisis, Ecevit was going to Algerian revolution fail to January 5 work stoppage said that move toward using more repression overturn capitalism? What their action had drawn in large sec against the workers movement. role have workers and By Robert Chester farmers governments tions of workers belonging to unions However, since neither the Turkish played in these struggles? affiliated to Turk-Is. Workers Party nor the DISK leader Robert Chester's study The unconcealed satisfaction of the ship has yet called for a campaign helps answer these and right-wing and neofascist leaders at against martial law as such, it remains other questions. the declaration of martial law has to be seen whether the forces yet exist made it absolutely clear that this mea that can provide the sort of organiza sure is aimed against the workers tion and leadership necessary. movement and the left. Nonetheless, the work stoppage of 40 pages, $1.35. On December 29, rightist former one million shows that a considerable Premier Suleyman Demirel met openly section of the Turkish working class $1 35 Order from Pathfinder with Colonel Alp Arslan Turkes, orga already understands the threat repre Press, 410 West Street, New nizer of the rightist terror gangs that sented by the declaration of martial York, New York 10014. staged the pogrom and massacre in law and is ready to fight against it. Kahraman Maras on December 22- From Intercontinental Press/lnprecor

6 As mass upsurg!_gains momentum Generals set sta e for showdown in Iran By David Frankel Clinging to the rags of "legality" left behind by the fugitive dictator who appointed him, Prime Minister Shahpur Bakhtiar declared January 21: "I am the legitimate ruler of Iran and will continue to defend my post." On January 24, Bakhtiar made his move, sealing off Tehran's Mehrabad Airport behind a ring of tanks and troops in an attempt to prevent the return of exiled opposition leader Ayatollah Ruhol lah Khomeyni. With Khomeyni scheduled to return to Iran Janu ary 26, the stage is set for a showdown. Even if Bakhtiar tries to be,ck down now it is questionable whether he can control the shah's officer corps. The generals know that their forces are melting away day by day, and they may be convinced that they must try a takeover quickly to cut their losses. The shah's flight from the country, the evident weakness of the Bakhtiar regime, and the continued appeals of the Iranian people are winning over large sections of the ranks of the army to the side of the opposition, while eroding the confidence of soldiers loyal to the shah. In a January 23 article, New York Times corres pondent Eric Pace cited the fact that "discipline had been crumbling at some bases." He quoted one source who predicted that "a substantial number of noncommissioned officers and junior officers ... would not relay or carry out any orders from senior officers to shoot at Iranian civilians." Gen. Abbas Gharabaghi, the chief of staff of the Iranian armed forces, felt it necessary to appeal for discipline and steadfastness in the military in a broadcast over the state radio January 22. Of course, there are still forces who could be used in a coup. This was underscored the day after the shah's flight, when army units in Ahwaz and Dezful went on a rampage, killing about forty people and wounding hundreds. holding pictures of Khomeyni, joined celebration when shah fled. Who would win? On the other hand, an unsuccessful coup attempt could be a disaster for the Iranian ruling class and the shah on the throne was illegal. With a popular organized through the democratic election of a its backers in Washington. In 1974, a similar referendum the shah has been overthrown. With constituent assembly. Such a representative body attempt by rightist officers to choke off the mass pressure from the people we will take power." would serve as an arena where the various propos upsurge that followed the fall of the Portuguese Meanwhile, his residence ringed by tanks, Bakh als for Iran's future could be debated before the eyes dictatorship unleashed a mass mobilization that tiar insisted: "I cannot give up the government of of the whole people. came close to toppling capitalism in Portugal. the country to the people because they have been The best way to guarantee democratic rights in Moreover, even if the military temporarily seized pursuaded by a religious personality." Iran and to organize the masses to counter any power in Iran, it would not solve the basic problem attempts at a military coup is through the struggle facing the ruling class-how to crush the mass Evaporating support for a popularly elected constituent assembly. movement. To attempt a head-on assault against Although Bakhtiar has received support for this the masses in this situation could split the army stand from the White House, members of his own and provoke civil war. government have begun to buckle. Huge protests held January 19 made it clearer Sayed Jalaleddin Tehrani, who was sent as Socialist view of than ever that the mass movement is still on the Bakhtiar's personal envoy to plead for support from upswing. In Tehran alone, a throng estimated at 1.5 Khomeyni, indicated his judgment of the situation to 4 million took to the streets against the Bakhtiar January 22 by handing Khomeyni his resignation Iranian revolution government. UPI reported that the Tehran march as head of the regency council appointed prior t9 Revolutionists in the Socialist Workers Party stretched for twenty miles, while Time magazine the shah's departure. and Young Socialist Alliance are on a campaign admitted that "it was undeniably the largest peace Pointing to the growing politicalization of the to answer the lies of the big business-controlled ful demonstration Iran had ever seen.... " masses, Newsweek reported in its article on the media about the Iranian revolution, to explain its Calling the huge protests, which took place January 19 demonstration in Tehran: "Banners importance for U.S. working people, and to get throughout the country, "the legitimate referendum identified various factions of Islamic Marxists, out the socialist perspective for advancing that of the streets," Khomeyni declared: "The arrival of Turkish [Azerbaijani], Baluchi, and Arab revolution. As part of this campaign, SWP and separatists-and even one pocket of anti-Zionist YSA chapters are organizing public meetings Jews." around the country. An editorial in the January 21 issue ofthe Tehran Doug Jenness, a member of the SWP National Clark blasts U.S. daily Kay han International noted that "the enlight Committee, spoke to 250 people in New York ened clergy and opposition figures have already City January 12. Sixty people heard Mark Har started a campaign to stem the tide of radicaliza ris of the YSA and George Sayad of the SWP in policy in Iran tion." San Francisco on January 19. NEW YORK-Former U.S. Attorney General According to Newsweek, marshals in the January Peter Buch of the SWP and Mark Harris will Ramsey Clark, Princeton University Prof. Ri 19 march tried to stop communist groups from speak on the Iranian revolution in Berkeley, chard Falk, and Don Luce of Clergy and Laity displaying their banners. But after shedding their California, January 26. The meeting will be at 8 Concerned spoke at a well-attended news confer blood for freedom, the Iranian masses are not likely p.m. at 3264 Adeline Street (phone 653-7156). ence here January 22 about their just-completed to go along with such tactics for long. Kate Daher of the SWP will speak in Seattle on fact-finding trip to Iran. They blasted Washing Newsweek reported the statement of Sheik Mus February 9 at 8 p.m. at 4868 Rainier Avenue, ton's support for the shah's dictatorship and the tafa Rahnama, a leader of the Islamic Socialist South Seattle (phone 723-5330). government of Prime Minister Shahpur Bakh Party, who declared: "Democracy means that every Socialists in Baltimore are organizing a Feb tiar. body has the right to express his views. Our ruary 2 meeting, to be held at 8 p.m. in Remsen I, "The Iranian people have shown us what a movement must stand firmly against authoritarian- at Johns Hopkins University (phone 454-4758). people living under a tyranny-a regime with all ism." Meetings are planned in Albuquerque for the power of a modern army-could do," said This sentiment was also reflected in a January 17 February 9; Chicago for February 17; and in Clark. "The overwhelming majority of the Iran statement by Sadegh Ghotbezadeh, one of Khomey other areas. For information in your area, check ian people said, 'enough,' and simply brought the ni's top aides. He told Washington Post correspond the directory on page 31. economy of that country to a halt. ent Ronald Koven that the Iranian Communist New Yorkers should also take note of an "If you want to know where the violence came (Tudeh) Party, which Bakhtiar is trying to keep Iranian film festival to be held at the Thalia from, it came from the government." illegal, should be free to run in elections. theater, (Ninety-fifth Street and Broadway, Feb Calling for an end to U.S. intervention in Iran, ruary 25-27. For information and tickets, contact Clark said: "I hope for our own well-being we'll Constituent assembly the Committee for Artistic and Intellectual Free learn the lesson of Iran and stop supporting Iranian Trotskyists, meanwhile, are organizing to dom in Iran, 853 Broadway, Suite 414, New York, dictators." -D.F. bring their ideas to the masses. They call for a New York 10003; 673-6390. government based on pop-qlar sovereignty, to be

THE MILITANT/FEBRUARY 2, 1979 7 Joe Hansen: 'an mple By George Novack Joseph Hansen, veteran leader of the Fourth International and Socialist Workers Party and editor of Interconti nental Press/ Inprecor since its founda tion, died on January 18 in New York City at the age of sixty-eight. Although he bore a sizable load of journalistic and organizational responsibilities up to the end, he had suffered from dia betes for some years and succumbed in a few days from infectious complica tions. * * * When Evelyn Reed and I were driv ing cross-country from Los Angeles to New York in 1965, we stopped at Richfield, a small town in Utah, at tracted by a cowboy rodeo being staged that night. Some months later, when I told Joe Hansen how much we had enjoyed the spectacle of the Old West, known only from movies and T.V., he exclaimed, "Why, that's my home town!" Joe was born June 16, 1910. He was the oldest of fifteen children in a poor working-class family and became the only one to go to college. The rugged life of this semirural territory in which he grew up made a lasting mark on his makeup. He had a sturdy physique and felt thoroughly at home in wilderness ways. He was a crack shot, a skill that was handy when he later served as a guard in the Trotsky household. He and his com panion, Reba, whom he married in 1931, were most happy when they With Trotsky in Coyoacan, Mexico. Hansen sought to live up to the high standards Trotsky set. could backpack through the mountains and woods of their native state on their vacations, breathing in the pure air nent poets and literary critics, con This was Joe's initial immersion in his arch~adversary in 1940. and hunting for unusual rock speci vinced him of the necessity for a social the mass workers movement, which Trotsky preferred to have the cool mens. ist revolution and the correctness of remained the breath of his existence. headed Joe chauffeur his car on out How did this young fellow from a the ideas and program of Trotskyism. He was the finest sort of revolutionary ings. According to the recently pub backwoods Mormon community be Joe joined the party in 1934 and never intellectual, who placed his talents and lished memoirs of Jean van Heijenoort, come an outstanding Marxist, re wavered in his convictions and affilia education at the service of the socialist who was a secretary for seven years, spected the world over as a political tions. cause and wholeheartedly identified Trotsky felt closer to Joe than to any strategist and theoretician of the Trot He majored in English and edited with the aims and aspirations of the other of the American comrades who skyist movement? From adolescence, the campus literary magazine, Pen. multimillions who produce the wealth assisted the household. he once told me, he had been intrigued Before graduating Joe moved in 1936 of the world. He was on guard duty when the by the personalities and promise of the to the San Francisco area, where, as a Within the party, Joe at first fell murderer drove his pickaxe into Trot Russian revolution, which took a stand party activist, he plunged into the under the influence of a group domi sky's skull, and helped pin the assas for the poor against the rich. chilly waters of maritime unionism, nated by Martin Ahern, one of the sin to the floor until the police arrived. However, it was the campus of the which was then going through turbu movement's pioneers. This induced University of Utah in Salt Lake City lent internal and class battles. To him to distrust the leadership qualities Responsibility no burden that provided the springboard for his gether with Barney Mayes, he helped of Cannon and to keep him at arm's Joe esteemed the training he re political career. Just as it had affected edit the Voice of the Federation, the length. "I can truthfully say," he later ceived in the company of the "Old thousands of other students of that organ of the Maritime Federation of wrote in the admirable summation of Man," as Trotsky was called, and tried generation, the Great Depression the Pacific, representing all the mari that experience entitled "The Ahern in every respect to pattern his own turned his thoughts in an anticapital time unions. He also wrote for Labor Clique," "that I was never more suspi political conduct upon that of his ist direction. Action, the weekly of the California cious of any man than I was of teacher. He more than fulfilled that Socialist Party edited by James P. Cannon-and this susp1c10n was commitment. Once in a while amongst Joined Trotskyists Cannon, the founder of American wholly the result of Abernism." ourselves, we would smile affection There fortunately he met up with Trotskyism. Cannon had transferred His Abernite origins did not prevent ately at the immoderate rigor he im Earle Birney, a professor who had to the West Coast from New York him from being chosen to go to Mexico posed upon himself-and set for broken with Stalinism in 1933 and following the entry of the Trotskyist in September 1937 to act as a secretary others-in pursuit of that ideal. started a branch of the Communist forces into the Socialist Party of Nor for the exiled Russian revolutionist Yet this self-assumed responsibility Left Opposition. Birney, who later man Thomas. Joe took charge of that Leon Trotsky. Joe served in that capac was not a burden for Joe; it was a became one of Canada's most promi- paper from Jim. ity until after Stalin's assasination of pleasure. The record of his participa- $20,000 Hansen Publishing Fund Continued from front page row, Ernest Tate, Leon Trotsky's 1820. several cities to honor Hansen's grandson V sevelod V olkof, and There will be a meeting in the San accomplishments and contributions Mary-Alice Waters. Francisco Bay Area on February to the Socialist Workers Party and Hansen wrote extensively on a 11 at 3:00 p.m. at the Unitarian Fourth International. wide range of topics, including: the Church on the corner of Franklin The aim is to obtain the entire post-World War II overturn of capi and Geary in San Francisco. Addi $20,000 by March 31, so that the talism in Eastern Europe; the Cuban tional information can be obtained the trotskyist view selection and preparation of the first revolution; revolutionary strategy in by calling (415) 824-1992. by joseph hansen volume can begin without delay. Latin America; the myth of overpop Meetings have also been scheduled Reba Hansen, Joseph Hansen's ulation; American fascism; and Stal for Seattle, New Orleans, and San companion and collaborator for inist "science" in the Soviet Union. Diego. forty-eight years, will serve as treas The New York meeting to launch To contribute, please send the urer of the fund. George Novack, the Joseph Hansen Publishing Fund coupon below to: Joseph who had worked closely with will take place January 28 at 3:00 Hansen Publishing Fund, 14, Hansen in literary projects for four p.m. at the Marc Ballroom, 27 Union Charles Lane, New York, decades, will serve as chairperson. Square West (between Fifteenth and New York 10014. Among the project's initial spon Sixteenth streets). For more informa tion, call (212) 982-8214. sors are: Tariq Ali, Robin Blackburn, r~:;: ;-;:: -c:n7r~;;el First volume of Hansen's writings, Hugo Blanco, Ken Coates, Pierre A Los Angeles meeting is sche 'The Dynamics of the Cuban Revolu Broue, Tamara Deutscher, Pierre duled for February 4 at 2:00 p.m. at I Name I tion,' is available from Pathfinder Frank, Tom Gustafson, Al Hansen, the Community Service Organiza I Address I Press, 410 West St., New York, New Quintin Hoare, Pierre Lambert, Li tion Hall, 2130 East First Street (at York 10014, for $5.45. Fund will make vio Maitan, Ernest Mandel, N ahuel First and Chicago) in Boyle Heights. possible the publication of additional Moreno, Louis Sinclair, Ray Spar- For more information, call (213) 482- L~~S~t.::~- ----J writings.

8 for youth to learn from' tion in the revolutionary socialist of the workers and farmers govern movement on both the national and ment as a transitional instrument in international arenas shows how well the transformation of the state. he lived up to the standards of his For the first decade, Joe followed mentor. every step in the progress of the Cuban Joe returned to New York from Mex revolution in the pages of the Trotsky ico following Trotsky's death and the ist press. He grasped its historic impor split in the Socialist Workers Party tance as the breakthrough and paceset occasioned by the outbreak of the ter of the socialist revolution in the Second World War. He became indis Western Hemisphere. In 1960 he vi pensable as a journalist because of the sited Cuba, together with Farrell shortage of qualified personnel. Very Dobbs, presidential candidate of the few of· us could match his literary party, and helped launch the Fair Play output. As a member of the National for Cuba Committee. The last words he Committee, he then served his appren wrote were a message to the Young ticeship in the central leadership of the Socialist Alliance convention this De Socialist Workers Party. cember, saluting the twentieth anni As a result of his discussions with versary of the victory of the Cuban Trotsky in Mexico and his deeper people. understanding of the stakes in the While solidarizing with the aims of factional struggles of the party, Joe's the revolutionary leadership and de attitude toward Cannon and his asso fending its achievements against U.S. ciates changed into its opposite. He imperialism and its apologists, Joe came to appreciate Jim's exceptional plainly set forth his criticisms of the capacities at their true value. The. two manifest shortcomings of Castro's re men grew to be steadfast friends and gime, both in its domestic and foreign intimate collaborators. policies, from the standpoint of the This relation was so readily recog Marxist program. Numerous articles Hansen contributed to Marxist understanding of postwar social transformations in nized that when news came of Can and polemics of his on Cuba can be Eastern Europe, China, and Cuba. non's sudden death at the age of studied in the just-published book Dy eighty-four in the midst of a party namics of the Cuban Revolution. It educational conference in the summer offers ample insight into the progres heartened many of our former co platform for overcoming the nine-year workers. Joe was a tower of strength split. of 1974, it was entirely natural that Joe sive thrust and contradictions of the be called upon to deliver the main Cuban experience to date. throughout those difficult years, espe The launching of Intercontinental speech at the memorial meeting. cially in the bitter faction fight that Press (then named World Outlook) was Joe had so many accomplishments 'Old Guard' culminated in the breakaway of the one of the most important products of to his credit that only the most note Joe belonged to the "Old Guard" of Cochran group from the SWP in 1953 the unification. From 1963 to 1965 it and the split in the Fourth Interna worthy of his contributions to the American Trotskyism who had to en was put out in mimeographed format tional inspired by Michel Pablo. movement can be mentioned here. dure the hard times inflicted by the by Joe and Reba with the help of Unexpected developments in Eastern cold-war witch-hunt from 1948 through Joe never lost confidence in the Pierre Frank to serve as a weekly news Europe arising from the Soviet victory the early 1960s. He was a seaman prospects of the working class or the service to the international movement over Nazism in the Second World War during the Second World War and decisive role of the proletarian party in and provide its cadres with informa tion and timely analyses of events that posed challenging theoretical problems could have resumed that occupation 1 bringing about a socialist America in a to the Fourth International. How were except that Truman's loyalty purge socialist world. He carefully analyzed could help orient their thinking and the transformations that took place in barred him and scores of other party the phenomenon of McCarthyism and activities. the countries occupied by the Red members from maritime employment helped elaborate a policy to counter its If an institution can be, as Emerson says, "the lengthened · shadow of a Army to be analyzed and appraised? because of their political views and threat. During the darkest days of the man," that was certainly the case with Joe was among the first to recognize affiliations. 1950s he taught classes on Marx's that capitalist property relations had In late 1953, when the party leader Capital at the Trotsky School. We were IP. The universal scope of its coverage been eliminated in these countries by ship decided to send Joe to the upcom then so short-handed that our theoreti and its exceptionally high technical and political quality have given it an the end of the 1940s, giving rise to a ing World Congress in Europe as the cal monthly, the International Social series of deformed workers states ruled person best able to explain the opportu ist Review, could not be produced in enviable reputation in radical circles on all continents. by bureaucratic castes. nist and liquidationist character of the New York; Joe and I, assisted by He explained that while the Stalinist Cochran faction in the SWP and our Frank Graves, had to publish it for a At one time or another Joe edited the bureaucrats had restricted, repressed, differences with the Pablo grouping while in Los Angeles. principal publications of the Socialist and choked off workers' struggles in internationally, the American political Workers Party, the Militant and the occupied East Europe, they had none police directly intervened to deepen the World-historical outlook International Socialist Review. He was theless been compelled by Truman's split in the Fourth International. Transcending his upbringing in a an extremely exacting editor who de war drive to launch a distorted form of Joe's application for a passport was provincial place, Joe managed to ac tested slipshod work in any endeavor, whether in preparing a meal, repairing civil war against the remaining capi rejected on political grounds by the quire a world-historical outlook on all talist forces, even mobilizing the State Department. No central leader of questions. He had assimilated the"-ih a motor, or polishing an article. I workers to some degree to accomplish our party was able to travel abroad to ternationalism at the basis of Marxism sometimes marveled at his punctilious insistence on checking a quotation or this. This conclusion accorded with the directly discuss our political views into the marrow of his bones. He verifying a fact. He set very high method of analysis of the government, with our co-thinkers in the Fourth carried this into practice as an envoy standards for his staff. Yet he asked no state, and economy Trotsky employed International until Farrell Dobbs re of the Socialist Workers Party in prom more of them than of himself. in his last writings on Stalinism and ceived a passport in the late 1950s. In oting the unification of the Trotskyist Joe was guided in all his political the Soviet Union. · Joe's case, it was not until January forces that had been divided since work by the method of the Transitional 1961 that he was able to obtain his 1953, and consolidating that unity Program, elaborated as the charter of Workers and farmers gov't right to a passport . early in the 1960s before the new wave the Fourth International while he was This basic analysis was further This prolonged period of persecution of radicalization began. He helped tested and refined in the crucibles of and isolation bore down on and dis- draft the documents that provided the with Trotsky in Coyoacan, as well as the Chinese, Cuban, and Algerian by the Leninist strategy of party build revolutions. In analyzing events in ing. He was constantly preoccupied Cuba, Joe put special emphasis on the with the grand problems of political role of the "workers and farmers gov . strategy in the emancipatory struggles ernment" established in the latter part of the proletariat whether these took of 1959. Such a government, indepen place in Portugal, China, Chile, or an dent of the capitalists and based on the advanced capitalist country. workers and peasants movements, can Joe mustered all the knowledge he arise in the midst of a mass revolution had gleaned from his teachers in the ary upsurge. However, it finds itself in polemics over Latin American policy conflict with the capitalist property connected with the factional align relations that still dominate the econ ments in the Fourth International omy. from 1969 to 1977. He was most proud Thus, a workers and farmers govern of these writings. His contributions not ment can lead relatively quickly to the only clarified the issues at stake but formation of a workers state through helped set the tone of objective exposi the establishment of a qualitatively tion in the debate. This facilitated the new socioeconomic foundation (as hap eventual resolution of the major differ pened in China and Cuba). Or, if the ences between the contending factions, upsurge is misled or aborted, such a 'which were dissolved in late 1977. He, government can lead to a relapse into ··-as much as anyone else, was responsi a rehabilitated capitalist regime (as ble for the fact that this most pro occurred in Algeria). The concept of a longed struggle of tendencies in the workers and farmers government, orig history of the labor Internationals inally advanced by the Communist ended not in separation, but in a International in Lenin's and Trotsky's better-grounded ideological · homoge day, was made an integral part of the neity. founding program of the Fourth Inter He did not feel that the task of national. unifying the dispersed Trotskyist ca Joe's incisive commentaries en dres had been completed with the hanced our understanding of the role Continued on page 24

THE MILITANT/FEBRUARY 2, 1979 9 'Treated like class --enemies~ Hansen on '75 evacuation of Cambodia's cities Among Joseph Hansen's lasting Pnompenh, was denied within a day "Perhaps as many as three or four The Cambodian people have a right contributions to the socialist by the doctor. million people [out of a population of to determine their own fate. This ap movement in this country and in There were two take-overs on April seven million] ... have been forced plies just as much after their victory ternationally are his many articles 17. The first was carried out early in out of the cities and sent on a mam over the foreign imperialist invaders on subjects from the Cuban revolu the morning by a small force led by moth and grueling exodus into areas as before. Everyone who has fought for tion, to the myth of overpopula one Hem Keth Dara. For a few hours deep in the countryside where, the this right must continue to uphold it. tion, to American fascism. He was he ruled the city as Lon Nol's troops Communists say, they will have to We must be particularly alert to any a revolutionary journalist and po laid down their arms, and the popu become peasants and till the soil. ... new imperialist attempt to intervene in lemicist of the first order. lace, at first fearful, poured into the "The old economy of the cities has the internal affairs of the Cambodian The following article by Hansen streets to celebrate the victory. been abandoned, and for the moment people. The slogan remains, "Hands first appeared in the May 16, 1975, The holiday mood evaporated when money means nothing and cannot be off Cambodia!" issue of 'Intercontinental Press,' the main forces arrived about noon. spent. Barter has replaced it." Nonetheless revolutionary Marxists which he edited, and in the May They disarmed Hem Keth Dara. In the For the Washington propagandists, are duty bound to voice their concern 30, 1975, 'Militant.' We are May 9 issue of the New York Times, Cambodia's "peasant revolution" was over the program that is being fol reprinting it now both because it Sydney H. Schanberg offers a vivid a windfall. They pounced on it. The lowed by the national liberation forces provides invaluable background eyewitness account of what happened reactionary columnist William Safire, in Cambodia. It is not a communist material on the -recent events in next: for instance, said, ". . . this is no program. Cambodia and because it is a "Using loudspeakers, or simply Cambodian aberration, but the path model of Hansen's clear, honest, shouting and brandishing weapons, always taken by new Communist par Cities' class composition and probing Marxist explanation they swept through the streets, order ties as they take power." Calling it the Consider the class composition of the of world events. . ing people out of their houses. At first "decapitation of a capital city," he cities and towns. The very thin layer of Those who learned revolution we thought the order applied only to averred that "Communism is by its capitalists or would-be capitalists, left ary journalism from Hansen, the rich in villas, but we quickly saw nature anti-city, anti-civilization, anti Cambodia before the collapse of Lon know that one of his uppermost that it was for everyone as the streets freedom." Nol. About 5,000 or 6,000 persons were rules of thumb was this: behind a became clogged with a sorrowful exo involved. While a few individual trai lack of clarity on paper lies a lack dus." U.S. responsibility tors decided to remain and take their of clarity on the topic under dis And what precipitated the process chances, they no longer constitute a "In Phnom Penh two million people cussion. that led to these results? It was Nix serious danger. The fact is that the suddenly moved out of the city en on's incursion in 1970. B-52s carpet bulk of the city population in Cambo masse in stunned silence-walking, By Joseph Hansen bombed Cambodia. The countryside dia consists of workers and artisans bicycling, pushing cars that had run Pnompenh fell to the People's Na was cratered. About 600,000 Cambodi and their families. out of fuel, covering the roads like a tional Liberation Armed Forces of ans were killed. Another 600,000 were To view them as potential, if not human carpet, bent under sacks of Cambodia on April 17, but accounts of wounded. This was the "civilizing mis actual class enemies is not Marxist. belongings hastily thrown together what happened did not become availa sion" directed from Washington, the And to drive them into the countryside when the heavily armed peasant sol ble in the world press until May 8. The capital city of the United States. for "reeducation" does grave injury to diers came and told them to leave journalists who witnessed the take Is it any wonder that the peasants of the Cambodian revolution. The same immediately, everyone dispirited and Cambodia came to view cities as evil over were barred from sending out frightened by the unknown that await layers, in alliance with the peasants, dispatches. After reaching Thailand in incarnate? Behind those untouchable ed them and many plainly terrified constitute the key force required to a convoy of refugees May 3, they pilots in the giant bombers who sho because they were soft city people and move toward a socialist society. wered their country with fiendishly agreed to hold up their reports until were sure the trip would kill them. It cannot be excluded, of course, that several hundred additional refugees destructive devices, they saw the city the new authorities had good reasons had crossed the border. "Hospitals jammed with wounded of Washington. And within closer for deciding that the first major action The accounts of the more responsible were emptied, right down to the last reach they saw the cities and towns following the victory should be the journalists must be taken as generally patient. They went-limping, crawling, where dirty puppets did everything evacuation of the cities. Perhaps they accurate, particularly in view of the on crutches, carried on relatives' they could to help Washington destroy will eventually say that a forced march fact that neither the new Cambodian backs, wheeled on their hospital them and their families. was required to plant crops, or that authorities nor the governments in beds.... Despite this completely justifiable transport was not available to feed the Hanoi and Peking have issued specific "A once-throbbing city became an hatred of the foreign power that sought cities. But this would not explain why denials. echo chamber of silent streets lined to bomb them back into the Stone Age, the evacuation was ordered in such a First of all-and this strengthens with abandoned cars and gaping, one of the leaders in the new Informa summary way on the very day of the their credibility-the reporters deny empty shops. Streetlights burned eerily tion Ministry told Schanberg: "We victory, or why it was undertaken at that any "bloodbath" occured. They for a population that was no longer would like you to give our thanks to such high cost in human suffering. also deny finding any evidence, or there." the American people who have helped Why wasn't it explained to the popu being able to locate any eyewitnesses, "Traveling across the country on the us and supported us from the begin lace? Why weren't they given more of the "executions" that the Ford ad way to Thailand, Schanberg noted ning, and to all people of the world time? Why weren't they consulted and ministration claims to have learned that other cities and towns had been who love peace and justice. Please give brought into the planning? Why were about through "hard intelligence," i.e., similarly evacuated. He came to the this message to the world." they handled like enemies? the CIA. following conclusion: Evidently the liberation forces are The answers are tied in with the A sensationalistic account of atroci "The victorious Cambodian Commu able to distinguish between the White pattern of the Cambodian revolution. ties presumably witnessed by Bernard nists . . . are carrying out a peasant House and the antiwar movement that As in China, the most massive force is Piquart, who was chief surgeon at the revolution that has thrown the entire played such a key role in bringing the composed of rebel peasants. Again as French-run Calmette Hospital in country into upheaval. imperialist aggression to an end. in China, this force created an army in the countryside. The peasant army, in turn, created a command structure. Here we find the key element. In former times, the commanders led similar peasant armies against a cor rupt, decayed regime. Toppling the old regime and carrying out a number of progressive measures permitting a new expansion of agriculture, the army command would mark the beginniJ;lg of a new dynasty. This ancient Asian pattern helped shape the revolutionary process that brought Mao to power. In modern times, of course, the com mand structure of a peasant army created in this way is subject to inter national influences that block the old pattern from being merely repeated. In the case of China, it placed in power a Chinese variant of Stalinist bureau cratism. What the outcome will be in Cambodia remains to be seen. The degree of influence Hanoi and Peking may have with the new author ities in Cambodia is not clear. Mos cow's standing is very low. A rocket was fired through the Soviet embassy in Pnompenh, the building was looted, and the seven Russians there were ordered to leave the country with the final convoys of foreigners. On May 11 the Pnompenh radio said: "The victory of the Cambodian people is the same as the victory of the Chinese. The strategic unity between Cambodia and China, which is the base of our friendship, will last forever. Continued on page 24 10 MONTHLY MAGAZINE SUPPLEMENT TO THE MILITAIT

FEBRUARY 1979

Barnes

Trotsky's Centennial and the Iranian Revolution order becomes no longer endurable to the of the masses, he also insisted that the masses, they break over the barriers excl ud struggle for socialism was international in ing them from the political arena, sweep aside character. Till I10ftll their traditional representatives, and create by Until the power of imperialism is shattered their own interference the initial groundwork on a world scale, none of the gains made by for a new regime .... the masses in Iran or any other country are IIDDBW "The history of a revolution is for us first of really secure. all a history of the forcible entrance of the The imperialists themselves see their coun masses into the realm of rulership over their terrevolutionary efforts in completely interna own destiny." tional terms. They intervene in other coun lrotskr's Centennial and Revolutions such as the one in Iran are tries all the time. Right now, they are openly inevitable, Trotsky explained, because capi complaining about the implications of the the Iranian Revolution talism stands in the way of human progress. Iranian revolution for their prospects in the 1979, which opened with the shah of Iran's The economic exploitation, enforced back Middle East, the Horn of Africa, southern downfall and new demonstrations of millions wardness, and political barbarism that the Africa, and elsewhere. in Iran's cities, marks the centennial of the Iranian masses are rebelling against is one Socialists also see the Iranian revolution as birth of Leon Trotsky. manifestation of this. part of a worldwide struggle over the future of Born in a small farming community in the On a wider scale, world wars, world depres humanity. Success for the oppressed in any Ukraine in November 1879, Trotsky (named sions, environmental destruction, and the struggle helps the fight for human liberation Lev Davidovich Bronstein by his parents) creation of weapons capable of destroying in every part of the world. became one of the giant figures in the strug our planet are among the ways humanity is For example, the long struggle of the gle for human liberation. paying for the maintenance of a social system Indochinese peoples against the U.S. military Trotsky played a major part in the Russian that has outlived its useful ness. machine, and the mass movement against the revolution in 1905. His role was second only But Trotsky did more than predict the Vietnam War inside the United States, have to that of Lenin in the workers' revolution led inevitability of revolution. As a result of the had a profound impact on the struggle in by the Bolshevik Party in November 1917. experience of the Russian revolution of 1905, Iran. U.S. imperialism was unable to intervene Along with Lenin, Trotsky was the prime Trotsky explained the underlying dynamics of militarily to prop up the shah's regime be exponent of and contributor to the ideas of the I rani an revolution taking place today. cause of deep antiwar sentiment among the revolutionary socialism in our century. Trotsky showed that capitalism was not American people-sentiment that took root Today the ideas that Trotsky fought for are only a barrier to progress in highly industrial during the Vietnam War. being tested again-and confirmed again-in ized countries such as the United States. And now the Iranian revolution is making the crucible of the Iranian revolution. Even in mainly agricultural countries such as its mark on American politics. The spectacle Millions of ordinary lranians-workers, pea Russia, where many tasks formerly accomp of "human rights" Carter trying-and failing sants, students, lished by bourgeois revolutions had not yet to ram the shah down the throats of the shopkeepe~. and been achieved, capitalism acted as a road Iranian people has further undermined the soldiers-have de block to economic development and social government's credibility. fied death again and progress. American working people are watching the again to fight for In Iran today-as in tsarist Russia-it is inspiring struggle of their Iranian brothers their freedom. necessary not just to smash the monarchy and sisters with increasing attention, and the" These are the kind and ensure political democracy. It is neces lessons they draw will affect the future course of people Trotsky sary to end the plundering of the peasants by of the class struggle in the United States. was certain would landlords and money-lenders, to liberate Although Trotsky had boundless confi someday remake women and the oppressed nationalities, to dence in the power, courage, and creativity of the world. end illiteracy, and to develop a modern the oppressed, he also knew that victory is The U.S. ruling class and its strategists economy capable of meeting the most basic not automatic, even when millions have gone have contempt for the masses. That is why needs of the country. into action. the experts at the State Department and CIA No capitalist regime can accomplish these The key to the victory of the Iranian revolu were sure the shah's throne was secure. They tasks. This proved to be the case not only in tion, as in the Russian revolution, is the thought that demagogic pretenses of prerevolutionary Russia, but throughout the forging of a mass revolutionary socialist party "prosperity," "land reform," and "moderniza colonial and semicolonial world. capable of winning the confidence of the tion" would placate some. But above all, they To accomplish their goals, Trotsky ex working people and leading them to power. believed the masses would never be able to plained that the workers and peasants would Trotsky knew that the future of humanity defy the vast army and secret police appara have to smash the old regime through their hinged on the building of such parties tus that the U.S. imperialists built for their own mass actions and go forward to establish throughout the world. That is why he devoted royal puppet. a workers and peasants government that his last years to building the Fourth Interna In the preface to The History of the Russian would defend the interests of the oppressed tional. Revolution, Trotsky described the process against the exploiters. This is what the work Because of his experience in the Russian that the U.S. ruling class believed would ing people of tsarist Russia, led by the revolution, Trotsky was confident that even a never happen in Iran: Bolshevik Party of Lenin and Trotsky, did in handful of revolutionists, armed with a cor "The most indubitable feature of a revolu 1917. . rect program, could rapidly win masses to tion is the direct interference of the masses in Trotsky foresaw that the working class- their banner during the kind of upheaval now historic events. In ordinary times the state, be few in numbers though it might be compared shaking Iran. it monarchical or democratic, elevates itself to the peasantry-would play the leading role And he firmly believed that under the above the nation, and history is made by in the revolution. The role of 67,000 Iranian leadership of such revolutionary parties, the specialists in that line of business-kings, oil workers in the struggle that forced the working people of the world will end the ministers, bureaucrats, parliamentarians, shah out provides a striking example of this. descent into barbarism that marks decaying journalists. Just as Trotsky insisted that only a socialist capitalism, and open a new era of progress, "But at those crucial moments when the old revolution could successfully meet the needs equality, and human solidarity.

COl TilTS

Cuba: Twenty Years of Revolution Editor: Fred Feldman By Jack Barnes ...... 5 Editorial Board: George Breitman, Catarina Garza, Cindy Jaquith, The Month Leon Trotsky Bruce Levine, Omari Musa, George In Review . ·'-...... 2 Black Nationalism and Novack, Dick Roberts, Cathy Sed Self Determination wick John Brooks Reviewed by The International Socialist Review ap Wheelwright: Fred Feldman ...... 12 pears in the Militant that is published the Poet and Revolutionary first week of every month. By Alan Wald ...... 3 Letters ...... 12 Copyright ©1978 The Militant

12 (FEBRUARY 1979) (PAGE 31 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW) lobo Brooks Wheelwrl1ht: Poet and Bevolutlonarr The poet John Brooks Wheelwright (1897-1940) was one of the artists who were radicalized by the events of the 1930s. He became a revolutionary socialist and a member of the Socialist Workers Party. His evolution from religion to Marxism can be traced In his poetry. Among the most likely candidates for belated tor to the Greek Anthology: the next, he wrote as By Alan Wald recognition as the outstanding revolutionary though he were a latter-day William Blake gone poets of the 19~l0s is John Brooks Wheelwright Agit-Prop." The history of modern poetry repeatedly dem (1897-1940), a rebel Boston Brahmin and hereti It is true that Wheelwright felt at home in onstrates the attractiveness of revolutionary cal Christian who turned against his class and classical Greek and Roman literature; it is like politics for many of the most dedicated poets. its hypocritical ethics. Wheelwright devoted the wise true that William Blake was the primary Testimony for this affinity can be found in the last eight years of his life to revolutionary figure influencing his poetic self-concept. careers of William Blake, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Marxism and the working-class movement. At This painter and poet of the late eighteenth Lord Byron, and William Morris, who blended the time of his premature death-he was struck and early nineteenth centuries was a mystic as rebel social thought with seminal verse. down by a drunken driver in Boston at the age of well as the intimate friend of the radicals Tho The magnetism has worked in reverse as well, forty-three-he was a member of the Socialist mas Paine and Marry Wollstonecraft. To both for the poetic muse hovered over the pioneers of Workers Party. Blake and Wheelwright, spiritual exploration scientific socialism throughout their lives. As a and revolutionary politics became the essence of first year student at the University of Bonn, Karl Proof of the enduring vitality of Wheelwright's their lives. Marx devoted most of his time to gatherings of work came in 1972 when his collected poems were The contradiction that the critic suggests be reissued in one volume. Not a single book of his tween classical culture (the Greek Anthology) had been in print for more than thirty years. Yet and revolutionary writing (Blake and Agit-Prop) Collected Poems of John Ashbery, who is perhaps the most cele did not exist for Wheelwright. It was precisely brated of the younger generation of American through a defiant "Agit-Prop" stance that John Wheelwright poets, praised Wheelwright's "North Atlantic Edited by Alvin H. Rosenfeld, Wheelwright felt he could best sustain and ad Passage" and other poems as "classic American" vance the cultural legacy of humankind. He with an introduction by Austin in the New York Review of Books. Warren. New York, New Di fervently believed that the assimilation and rections, 1972. 278 pp. $12.50. Wheelwright was compared favorably with creation of artistic culture was an indispensable John Berryman, Robert Lowell, Ezra Pound, aspect of the struggle of the oppressed and Sylvia Plath, and A.R. Ammons in leading outcast of society to gain control over their lives. the poets club that held readings in local taverns. literary journals. In the New York Times Book "One can never be premature in arousing the Both Marx and Frederick Engels published verse Review, John Malcolm Brinnin judged that be masses to their cultural duties and to the joy of in their youth, and in mature years their circle of cause of the relatively small quantity of Wheel- living," he wrote in the "Argument" of his book friends and collaborators included the poets wright's work, "He cannot be accorded major Political Self-Portrait (1940). Heinrich Heine, George Herwegh, and Ferdinand status; yet, had he lived to expand the achieve However, Wheelwright did not believe a poet Freiligrath. ment of this volume, he would very likely share should "arouse the masses" in the area of culture In the United States, prior to World War I, rank and status with his close contemporaries by paternalistically lowering standards or de poetry and socialism were frequent companions Allen Tate, E.E. Cummings and Hart Crane." forming natural means of artistic expression for in the salons and studios of Greenwich Village, the sake of increased popularity. In his poem as well as in the pages of the Masses magazine A New England Blake "Redemption," Wheelwright urges the "Workers (edited by the poet-revolutionaries Max Eastman, At first reading perhaps two-thirds of Wheel of Hand" to "Work your brain." Floyd Dell, and John Reed). In the decades wright's poems seem to be unfathomablycomplex. The difficulty of Wheelwright's poems should following the 1917 Russian revolution, however, They include a half-dozen long religio-mythic not be exaggerated, although some require attempts to marry poetry to the new center of works, a "novel in sonnets," and a "masque" knowledge of Greek and Christian mythology left-wing political activity-the American Com (which usually means court entertainment) in and the Marxist classics. But there are a good munist Party-met with only episodic success. tended to be performed before audiences of revo number that resemble the mystical and prophetic A good measure of the blame for this unsatis lutionary workers. Some critics have responded works of Blake-such as The Book of Thel (1789) factory union must be attributed to the theories with adjectives such as "obdurate," "elliptical," and Jerusalem (1820)-in employing what ap decreed by the Soviet Communist Party in the "abstruse," "arcane," and "gritty and gnarled." pears to be an obscure and at times incompre late 1920s, in the aftermath of Joseph Stalin's But one insightful reviewer said: "One moment, hensible personal mythology. consolidation of power through the defeat of his he wrote as though he were a laurelled contribu- Still, Wheelwright did not believe that William opponents Leon Trotsky and Nikolai Bukharin. The Communists' slogan of the early 1980s, "Art is a class weapon," had two major liabilities for poetry: it fostered the judgment of the worth of literature by political criteria, and it created a suspicious attitude toward the poetic achieve ments of the 1920s-one of the richest decades in K11 rDaHCPHIMll PocciJL history for the advancement of literary forms. Yet British radicals can point to the achieve ments of major figures such as W.H. Auden, ~IIDDDI Upurrmma aomma. racy;p· Stephen Spender, and Christopher Isherwood, whose development as writers was intimately meau aum uepanw. D'L PYRE apraa na,pa. bound to their left-wing experiences in the De pression Decade. Is it possible that no parallel rp~ Coa1mP~am'L 1CoJI;TCKm ~auym·. phenomenon existed among poets in the United States during the social dislocation and class battles of the 19i30s? m Baeaa·Paaama~aaaro K~mTCTa, CTO~ra A new generation of Marxist scholars will have to answer this question by resurrecting literary DO rzaft Uftpa~?tpara upa~eTapiaTa Brapm01a. figures neglected or misrepresented by the elitist critics who became entrenched in academia Jitno. :m KlmliiE OOJ)OJICH HaOOJI'h: HBMenneHBIIl IIIEll· during World War II and the cold-war years. mHie neMDKP8mooKarn MHua, OTMtHa ~ However, there is already increasing evidence through the appearance of several anthologies ~ 83 :EMJUO. pa[i)lfiA KDH'I'IIl1lh 83Jl'b IIIIIl'Blt that the 19:)0s radical poetry of figures such as Horace Gregory, Richard Wright, Muriel Ru ~e Dm1ircm llDaBH'leJ11£1'8a - m keyser, Kenneth Patchen, and Kenneth Fearing has been undervalued. 1 1IA 31IP W'BYm PEBOlllOUIH PABOIIKX'b, llliiJlATb 1. See, for example, the new collection Social Poetry of HKPfL'IDHH'hl Boe,••·Pe-..acl•••.,. Ke•..,..• the 30s. editPd by Jack Salzman and Leo Zander (New •,.. Derper,...,.ao:... C•••n ll"a-.~ • c._. ... __ .ll_,....._..._ York: Rurt Franklin and Company, lmH). 2:5 .n.u. 1111 r. 10 .. na. Alan Wald, a frequent contributor to the ISR, is Wheelwright sympathized with the Russian revolution. But working-class power as displayed by the the author of James T. Farrell: The Revolution Great Depression of the 1930s made him a revolutionary socialist. Left, October 1917 proclamation ary Socialist Years, published by New York announcing that the soviets had taken power in Russia; right, textile workers on strike in Gastonia, North University Press. Carolina. (INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW/PAGE 4)

Blake was obscure, nor did he consider himself to include ''Twilight" in Rock and Shell and "Even be so. In one of his last articles, which appeared ing" and "Morning" in Dusk to Dusk. These in Partisan Review in March 1938, he warned works are distinguished from "Forty Days" in that "in our age, when economic contradictions that they reflected Wheelwright's study of apo are charged with many meanings and society is crypha, lost gospels, and other religious mate confronted with a choice of futures, obscurity is a rials excluded from the Old and New Testaments. natural characteristic of literature which wise These texts are usually considered to be of writers must work against, and most especially questionable authorship and heretical content. in social revolutionary subject matter.... Leave The basic method used by Wheelwright is to the timid their obscurity. Confront communica· "correct" the legend of St. Thomas by retelling or tion. It devolves upon us to rediscover clarity." paraphrasing it and introducing vanous But Wheelwright believed that if a work op changes. posed obscurity and strived to communicate it In two such changes, Wheelwright presents the would not necessarily be simple. He pointed out argument for sexual chastity as a false and that an authentic revolutionary poem might dangerous perversion of Christian thought and recognize "mysteries and wrestle with them, contends that upholders of morality must name which is a different matter from willful mystifi the true enemies of humanity more specifically cation, although indistinguishable to persons as a preparation for action. who have stultified their interior resources. Poets The thirty-five poems that comprise Mirrors of need care little if they be called obscure by Venus: A Novel in Sonnets also invoke a spirit Philistines." ual journey, using dualisms in· a central figure. Wheelwright genuinely believed that the most (Once more the main character is a Wheelwright allusive of his passages would become intelligible persona-here called "Z.") The background of the if the reader were truly open and responsive. If sonnet sequence is more explicitly Wheelwright's that occurred, the reader would then be changed own-the death of his architect father, World in some way: "The main point is not what noise War I, the boarding school and Harvard days, poetry makes," he wrote at the end of Political Bohemian life in New York, and his religious Self-Portrait, "but how it makes you think and ordeals. act-what it makes of you." To achieve this end, The stated theme of the sequence is the transi Wheelwright's Partisan Review article suggests tory nature of human friendship. Wheelwright that the revolutionary poet should "find exam juxtaposes memories of and fantasies about a ples in no academic bourgeois decay, but in friend who dies (and whose friendship thereby experimental masters of all rising classes that becomes immortalized) with a narrative about a struggled throughout the centuries for mastery." friend who lives (but whose friendship grows For Wheelwright, the primary exemplar was estranged). Blake. But his sensibility and outlook were also The list of dedications in the sequence indi shaped by the cultural history of New England, a cates that the friend who died was Ned Couch, a region to which he was. bonded by birth and Harvard student who was close to both Wheel upbringing. His poetry drew sustenance from the wright and S. Foster Damon. Couch was killed in works of rebels from the colonial and pre-Civil an accident in a training camp during World War War eras. I, and the poem suggests that he may have been a pacifist. Wheelwright links Couch with the JOHN BROOKS WHEELWRIGHT Rebel Ancestors memory of his own dead father, also called Ned. The poet John Wheelwright was tenth in direct The intense experience described in this poem descent from the most famous of these pioneers: at Harvard. At the time of the Russian revolution culminates in a repudiation of Wheelwright's the Rev. John Wheelwright (1592-1679), for whom he was sympathetic to the overthrow of Tsarism. belief in an afterlife-startling for an avowed the poet was named. Three hundred years earlier, In the later 1920s, while he studied architecture Christian. The sonnet sequence turns to four between 1636 and 1638, the Reverend Wheel at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he was elegies aimed at discrediting a blind optimism wright had joined Anne Hutchinson in leading a outraged by the legal lynching of the anarchists that Wheelwright associates with the Romantic rebellion of radical Puritans against the rulers of Sacco and V anzetti. poets. He criticizes Shelley in particular for his the Massachusetts Bay Colony. He was charged However, as much as he railed against the belief in the immortality of the individual self-a with "sedition and contempt" and banished to immorality into which New England society had view that fosters a false perception of human the wilderness. The poet's evolution is not with fallen, Wheelwright could not conceive of the existence. out· some notable similarities to that of his uneducated and uncultured proletariat as a force In "Autumn," the third elegy, Wheelwright namesake. In his poem "Bread-Word Giver," the for change. Instead, he believed in a revival of rejects the analogical proofs of immortality for poet expresses his admiration for and desire to poets as a priestly caste who could provide warded by the Greeks and others. In "Winter," emulate his persecuted ancestor. ethical guidance. the last elegy, he concludes that after death the His mother, a remarkable deaf woman noted Many of Wheelwright's religio-mythic poems human body is not immortalized at all but is for her skill at lip-reading and aristocratic from the volumes Rock and Shell (1934) and merely a shell, not much different from an bearing, was the great granddaughter of Peter Dusk To Dusk (in preparation at the time of the inorganic rock. Thus human existence is only a Chardon Brooks-the wealthiest of Boston's poet's death and now published by New Direc delicate, transitory phase of human nature. The famous colonial "merchant princes." She was tions for the first time), as well as the entire ending is emotional in tone but stoical in perspec connected by marriage with other old New Eng sonnet sequence in Mirrors of Venus (1938), have tive, as he rejects his former idealizations of his land lineages such as the Saltonstall and Adams Wheelwright's philosophical and emotional con dear friend and father: families. flicts as their subject. These were especiaJ!y Our bold-voluted immortality, fallen is only His father was Edmund March ("Ned") intense during his late adolescent and student rock Wheelwright, an architect who designed many of years and persisted through the 1920s when he -though proud in ruin, piteous in price-Ned. Boston's most imaginative buildings. Ned was torn by the contending claims of his elitist Ned. Wheelwright was an intense idealist. training and his passionate hatred of injustice. Snow on a dome, blown by night wind. "North Atlantic Passage," usually noted for its The Doubting Apostle surrealist technique, is in fact an attack on those The Rebel Poet A decisive event in Wheelwright's life occurred poets who adulate surrealism, Dadaism, or other The Thomas poems and sonnet sequence show when he was a student at St. George's prepara art forms when they are divorced from philoso how Wheelwright divested himself of Christiani tory school in Rhode Island. The young poet was phic substance. Wheelwright states that tht• ty's romantic belief in an afterlife, as well as the profoundly shaken by his father's mental break basic "enigma" in life is the relationship of the ordination of some of its adherents against down in 1910~ After two years of confinement in individual to the rest of humankind. In the poem sensual living and participation in the world of a sanitarium, Ned Wheelwright committed sui he refutes various solutions others have proposed action. Thus Wheelwright was psychologically cide in 1912. to resolve this problem-solutions that rise and and philosophically prepared to assimilate Marx Soon afterwards young Wheelwright expe dissolve like waves. His conclusion is that a ism. He began to do this at the start of the Great rienced a religious conversion. He repudiated the belief in "external Authority·· (religion) iH a Depression when the working class emerged as a Unitarianism of his ancestors and became an necessity but that the achievement of an "intl·r· visible agent of effective change. At that time Anglican, pledging to become a priest. nal Authority" (belief in himself) muHt come first. Wheelwright concluded that he had a distinct However, as a Harvard student (1916-1920), Wheelwright tried to achieve this "internal role as a poet: to assist in the cultural develop Wheelwright found that his natural sympathies Authority" through two major literary projects. ment of the revolutionary movement. clashed with the dogma of that church. He One was a series of poems about Thomas, the Although he first joined the Socialist Party of became a central figure in the circle of "Harvard "Doubting Apostle" who is supposed to have Massachusetts in 1932, he was not an opponent Aesthetes," which produced poets such as S. questioned the resurrection until he was permit· of Russian Bolshevism. To the contrary, from Foster Damon, Robert Hillyer, E.E. Cummings, ted to touch Christ's wounds. The other was the 1934 on he was openly sympathetic to the ideas John Dos Passos, and Malcolm Cowley. After sonnet sequence Mirrors of Venus. He referred to of Leon Trotsky. He believed that Trotsky expulsion from Harvard for irregular attendance both of these efforts as "novels." This was in whom he compares to Prometheus in his poem at classes and examinations, Wheelwright had part a response to the new conceptions of the "Titanic Litany"-sought to continue the age-old many close connections with Lost Generation novel genre engendered by the literary experi· struggle to develop humanity to its fullest poten writers in New York and in Europe. But even ments of the 1920s. But calling the works novels tial, and that Stalin's triumph represented a though he engaged in the "decadent" lifestyle of was also a way of emphasizing that the two retrogression from that goal. these Bohemians, his need for belief in the Christ groups of poems concerned character develop In the Socialist Party, Wheelwright's main myth remained ardent. ment. And in each of the works, the main activities centered on education: he was in Politically, Wheelwright was much attracted to character was actually Wheelwright himself. charge of literature distribution, he gave classes, the English expatriate and Fabian socialist represented by various personae. he was poetry editor of Arise (the Socialist Harold Laski, with whom he studied government The published sections of the actual nowl Continued on page /SR/11

14 (FEBRUARY 1979) (PAGE 5/INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW) a: wentJ

the American bourgeoisie, or any of its wings or The internationalism that had been the hall parties. mark of the Bolshevik Party under Lenin and By Jack Barnes In France, twenty years after 1793, the crest of Trotsky was destroyed. Stalin opposed the at the French revolution, Napoleon's rule had wiped tempts of the colonial people to liberate them The following talk was given by Jack out the democratic gains .of the movement. All selves from imperialism if their fight was against Barnes to a rally in Pittsburgh, Pennsylva the popular leaders of the revolution had been the "democratic" imperialist powers with whom nia, on December 31, 1978. The gathering murdered, suppressed, or had made their peace Stalin was seeking alliances. Twenty years after of more than 600 peo with reaction. And Napoleon's reign ended the Russian revolution Stalin was consciously ple celebrated the shortly thereafter with the outright restoration of and cold-bloodedly knifing in the back the twentieth anniver the Bourbon monarchy. workers' revolution in Spain. sary of the victory of The general staff of the once-mighty Red Army the rebel forces led by Betrayal of the Russian Revolution had been beheaded, gravely weakened, and virtu Fidel Castro over It is not just these bourgeois revolutions whose ally immobilized. The entire bureaucracy prayed Fulgencio Batista's twentieth anniversaries have been less than that they would never have to use it even to dictatorship. The joyous occasions. This is equally true of the defend their own privileged caste rule. rally was a highlight proletarian revolutions of our period. Far from there being any internationalism left, What was the twentieth anniversary of the the policy of the leadership could be-and was of the eighteenth na- ~-...... :....::~~~oo. tional convention of the Young Socialist Chinese revolution like? What was the state of summed up in one phrase: "Socialism in one Alliance. affairs in China in 1969? country." The bureaucracy had no desire to Jack Barnes is the national secretary of Now the world is learning part of the truth extend the revolution. Just the opposite: their the Socialist Workers Party. He visited about the arrests and exile of hundreds of thou sole desire was to extend relations with the Cuba in the summer of 1960, as the revolu sands by the Stalinist bureaucracy in Peking. We bourgeoisie in powerful countries, and they were tionary regime was instituting the sweep are }?eing told of the murder of oppositionists, the willing to carry out any betrayal to accomplish ing nationalizations that transformed Cuba holding down of the standard of living of the this. into a workers state. masses, and the sending of the youth by the Far from telling the truth to the Soviet people The speech has been edited for publica millions to forced exile in the countryside. The about the needs of the revolution, Stalin institu tion in the 'ISR.' regime was following a foreign policy aimed at tionalized the lie. A privileged caste, one of the one, and only one, objective: to maneuver to get most rapacious ruling groups in the history of close to Nixon, to open up relations with U.S. humanity, was in total power. Far from a beacon This celebration of the twentieth anniversary imperialism. And to do that they were-and to revolutionists round the world, as the Leninist of the Cuban revolution is a unique occasion. In are-ready and willing to help imperialism regime had been, the Soviet government was a the course of modern history, twentieth anniver crush revolutions. center of conscious counterrevolution. saries of revolutions have not often been joyous What about the twentieth anniversary of the Those were some of the facts that had to be occasions. Just the opposite. Russian revolution, the mightiest revolution in stated on the tragic twentieth anniversary of the Twenty years after the first American revolu history? Russian revolution. tion was won, this country was in the grip of the By 1937, the entire leadership of the Bolshevik alliance between the slaveholders and the mer revolution had been murdered or was on the A Living Revolution cantile capitalists. They had imposed their con verge of being murdered by those who had So this is a unique occasion. What can we say stitution on the country and consolidated their betrayed the revolution. Stalin's monstrous Mos twenty years after the victory of our revolution in rule. cow trials and the massive purges were in full Cuba? Twenty years, a generation, after the second swing. The Gulag had come into being and was Far from the revolution devouring its leaders American revolution-the Civil War and its growing, imprisoning the best proletarian fight and children, the revolutionary leadership that aftermath-Radical Reconstruction had been ers. brought the revolution to victory remains intact, completely smashed. Reconstruction, in which Relations between the countryside and the city with the exception of Camilo Cienfuegos, who Blacks had fought for and won a large measure were at a low point. The regime brutalized the was killed in an airplane crash and Che Gu of equal rights and political power, was over peasants. Far from having pride in the national evara, who died on the field of battle in Bolivia. thrown by force and violence. The Black leaders diversity of the Soviet Federation and respect for Far from turning toward Stalinist-style "peace who had emerged were suppressed. Jim Crow the oppressed nationalities, there was the rise of ful coexistence" and detente, the Cuban leader was being enforced and institutionalized. Ameri national oppression and crass Great Russian ship says openly, we will never trade away our can imperialism was raising its ugly head. The chauvinism. support for the Puerto Rican independence strug labor movement in the United States had been The Soviets, the organs of workers democracy, gle; we will never bargain over our sovereign driven back. This period in our history marked existed only in form. Stalin ruled through terror rights; and we will never trade away our right to the end of any progressive role whatsoever for and police-state tactics. respond to revolutionary opportunities around

15 (INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW/PAGE 6)

the world with any means necessary-including the Cuban armed forces if we are asked. Far from devastating the countryside and beheading the proletariat, the revolutionary al liance between the workers and peasants that has been key to the Cuban revolution remains on solid foundations. The alliance of the proletariat and the peasantry in Cuba is the firmest on the face of this earth. Far from fostering the development of a privi leged caste, a distinct, consciously counterrevolu tionary grouping lording it over the rest of society, the Cuban revolution continues to ad vance an egalitarian consciousness, although serious bureaucratic deformations and privileges haunt the revolution. Far from having gigantic concentration camps and spreading Gulags, Cuba is the only workers state that allowed a delegation from Amnesty International to tour the country. The delegation visited the prisons and was allowed to talk with the prisoners. And they received the full coopera tion of the Cuban government. They did have some criticisms-such as the Cubans shouldn't have executed so many of Batista's torturers. They also had some criti cisms that seem correct-for instance, that there should be clear rules on how a sentence can be reduced for good behavior, to avoid arbitrariness. But the Amnesty International team reached an extremely important conclusion: they did not challenge the Cuban government's classification of political prisoners as counterrevolutionaries who are imprisoned for specific acts against the revolution or their membership in armed counter revolutionary organizations. Amnesty Interna tional does not consider these people "prisoners of conscience." And now Castro has told Carter point-blank: These criminals are your pupils. If they want to live in the United States, you take them! Extend the Revolution! And why are the Cubans in Africa? They are in Africa because they are attracted by the Black African revolution-just like every other revolu tionist and everyone of African descent through out the world. They sense the coming showdown in Black Africa, and they are determined to be a part of it and to aid it. The Cubans responded enthusiastically to the Ethiopian revolution. The scope and significance of the events that have unfolded in Ethiopia are misunderstood by all kinds of socialists in this country. But the Cubans are not making that mistake. They identify with the Ethiopian revolution down to the marrow of their bones. They know that the land reform, the elimination of feudal ism and slavery in one of the last empires of that kind, the breaking of the tie between church and state, the beginning of the eradication of illiter acy, the nationalizations-all this marks a deep going revolution in process, one of the most profound upheavals that continent has seen. The Cuban revolutionaries have responded to these revolutionary acts. But above all, the Cubans are in Africa for one Che's slogan, 'Create two, three, many Vietnams,' was not just rhetoric. simple reason: They are there because for them stood that only by extending their revolution . . . could they defend v there is one law above all others: Extend the revolution. What is it that explains the unique character of \ this revolution and this revolutionary leader In order to lead a revolution, the Castro team coup in 1952, Fidel went to court. He said Batista ship? We have never seen a revolutionary leader had to find a way around these obstacles. And had violated the constitution. ship in power for this length of time. We have they did. We demand some relief, said Fidel. Namely, seen only one greater revolutionary leadership in The second thing that we have to note is the throw Batista out of office and jail him. And if power-the central core of the Bolshevik Party. political character of the Cuban leadership. this court doesn't take this elementary step, it There is a great myth that the Cuban revolution means that this court is totally corrupt and Bypassing Stalinism ary leadership was simply the barbudos in arms, entitled to no respect as a court of law. It means The first thing is that the Castro leadership the guerrilla army. This was the image projected that the masses will have to take things into led their revolution over the objections and by people like the French journalist Regis De their own hands, and this court will not be fit to opposition of the Cuban Communist Party. They bray. pass judgment on the actions we must take. In bypassed the Stalinists and bypassed Stalinism. But this was not the most important aspect. this way, they established before the masses the They acted as revolutionists and in doing so The Castro leadership were political people, just legal and political legitimacy of the struggle they proved to the whole world that the Stalinists are like we are political people. They think politically were preparing to undertake. not fated to stand at the head of revolutionary right to the very end. Military tactics were And they went forward from there. They were upsurges. They proved that the Stalinists are always subordinated to political strategy and always willing to act-above all with the gun. obstacles in the way of a revolutionary leader aims. From the beginning, there was an inter That's what set them apart from those who . ship and have to be dragged along by the nape of play at each step of the revolution between merely talked revolution. the neck. political initiatives by the Castro leadership and But they were always thinking politically. This was completely conscious on the part of initiatives in the streets, in the factories, and on They always explained to the Cuban people what the Cuban leaders. They built the July 26 Move the land by the Cuban masses-back and forth, they were doing and why. In 1956, Fidel an ment in opposition to all other existing organiza driving the revolutionary process forward. nounced from Mexico that they were going to tions in Cuba. The bourgeois liberals had their return to Cuba to start the fight again before the own formations, which the Fidelistas broke from How Batista Was Defeated end of the year. They were considered fools for decisively. The Stalinists and the standard The Castro leadership began their gtruggle not doing this. It was viewed as silly military tactics. American-type corrupt trade-union bureaucrats by taking up arms, but by doing something we But they rarely did things for reasons of military had a stranglehold on the Cuban labor move emulated twenty years later-they filed a suit tactics. They did things for reasons of political ment. against the government. When Batista made hie strategy.

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set back the worldwide fight for socialism. It will change the whole relationship of class forces on a world scale. It will be the green light for reaction to drive ahead in the Americas, in Asia, in Africa, all over. The yanqui imperialists are absolutely ruthless, they will not hesitate to use their power to incinerate our small country. The one way we can probably stop it this time for certain is to get nuclear weapons. That's exactly what they did. And that was the heart of the Cuban missile crisis. But Kennedy backed off. Kennedy and Khrushchev made a deal-without consulting the Cubans-that the United States would not invade Cuba and the Russians would pull the missiles out. That was the end of the immediate threat of nuclear war, and the end of the immediate threat of the destruction of the Cuban revolution by a U.S. invasion. The Cubans never forgot this lesson. Their greatest grievance against the Stalinists in Moscow and Peking was their refusal to come to the defense of the Vietnamese revolution against the imperialist onslaught earlier and with more arms. The Cubans published and spread far and wide in many languages the speeches of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara in which they fervently argued that aid must be given the Vietnamese revolution. Che explained that if Vietnam was declared an "inviolable part of socialist territory" where any attack would be treated as an attack on the Soviet Union, there would be no Vietnam War and there would be an end to the horrible brutalization of the Vietnamese people. Because of their response to historic tests like this, Uncle Sam knew the Cubans were not counterrevolutionary Stalinists-even if some so called socialists in this country couldn't figure that out.

Role of Soviet Aid The fourth thing for us to note is the role of the Russian revolution in making it possible for the Cuban revolution to survive. Economic aid, oil, a market for sugar, and finally arms-this assistance was essential to the Cuban revolution. Without these things it would not have been able to withstand the war of aggression, the blockade, the invasion organized by Washington. Now you notice that I said the role of the Russian revolution-not the Soviet bureaucrats. The aid was available because of the victory of the Russian masses in 1917, a victory that remains alive despite the Stalinist bureaucracy that rules in the Kremlin today. However, the Stalinist bureaucracy controls this aid, and the aid isn't given freely to Cuba. The Moscow traitors demand a political price be paid for every barrel of oil, for every machine gun, for every credit granted. This put continuing pressure on Cuba. It led the Cubans to take many wrong positions, posi tions with which we strongly disagree. It led to silence about all sorts of crimes of the Stalinists was the conscious line that the Cubans always held. They under around the world. It contributed to Fidel's de fense of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. at they had won and extend it further. It was inevitable, given the relationship of forces, that the Cubans would be forced to pay a political price. Some price would have to have been paid by the best and most conscious revolu In the mountains they did not primarily carry way to Havana. tionary leadership. out brilliant military tactics. In fact, there was They accomplished all this by acting as revolu What was inevitable was the price, and the never a pitched battle between the Rebel Army tionists, by telling the truth to the workers and damage resulting from paying this price. What and Batista's army. The fall of Batista was not peasants of Cuba. They knew that arming the was not inevitable was the Stalinization of the primarily the result of military action. people with the truth was decisive to the victory revolutionary leadership. That has not occurred. The Rebel Army carried out propaganda in of the revolution. The final thing we should note is that the every way possible. They talked to peasants, and And on this basis they went so far as to political stance of the Cuban leadership has they set up Radio Rebelde in the mountains to establish the first workers and peasants govern remained constant since the beginning. It has transmit their program all over the island. They ment, the first workers state, the first successful not changed. published newspapers. They would fight to get socialist revolution, in the Western Hemisphere. interviews in the New York Times. They fought A third thing for us to note is the capacity of Strengths and Weaknesses to organize the urban working class. They even the Cuban revolutionary leadership to stand up ·Everything I was taught when I was down in seriously considered sending Che to Santiago to to the might of American imperialism. Cuba is a Cuba twenty years ago remains the basic politi lead the urban resistance. The July 26 Movement small country with a population of 6 million at cal line. They haven't changed either the had underground operations in cities throughout the time of the revolution, no great strategic strengths or the weaknesses of their line. Cuba. resources, no great military leverage-yet it has They believe that the only real revolutionists They didn't defeat Batista militarily. They won defied American imperialism for two decades. are those who act to advance the revolution. the hearts and minds of the Cuban masses, and They defeated Kennedy's invasion at the Bay They don't really care much about what you say. this totally demoralized the Batista army. In the of Pigs in April1961. A year later, they made one They care about what you do. end, it was no longer an effective fighting force. of the boldest political moves of the century. Now, on the whole, this is not a bad approach. Twenty years ago, the Rebel Army walked into They talked the Russians into giving them It is much better than the opposite stance. But Havana unopposed, after having called a suc nuclear arms, because they knew that another there is a political weakness in it, because it cessful general strike that tore away the last massive American-organized invasion was being tends to ignore theory, to downgrade the impor shreds of the Batista regime. They arrived in the prepared. They had an important decision to tance of the hard-earned accumulated political capital after a leisurely political stroll across make. lessons and experiences of the workers move Cuba lasting almost a week. They mobilized This is what they thought: An invasion that ment. thousands as they went from city to city on their destroys and crushes the Cuban revolution will Another aspect of their outlook is their belief

17 (INTERNATIONAL SOCL4L1STREVIEWIPAGE 8)

We were always convinced that everything that helped strengthen the YSA and SWP also helped strengthen the Cuban revolution, and that every thing that aided the Cuban revolution aided the party and the YSA. We also learned the difference between real-life politics and textbook politics. We learned to recognize real forces and real processes and real revolutionary contradictions when they were messy and didn't live up to the letter of our norms. We learned a lot about Stalinism and Trotsky ism by watching the way the Stalinists try to subvert the Cuban revolution and the way the Trotskyists defended it and tried to extend it. We discovered that the real line to be drawn is the line between the revolutionists-meaning Castro and those around him, including us-and the counterrevolutionaries on the other side, including the Stalinists and the so-called "Third Camp" social democrats.

Petty-bourgeois Socialists We also learned that we had to get rid of any kind of fatalism, which in politics is just another Castro and other guerrilla fighters greet peasants joining the Rebel Army to fight Batista word for cowardice. You have all heard this attitude: "Well, Cuba is just a little island, it doesn't have a Trotskyist leadership, so it's only a matter of time before they are swamped, that the revolution in the advanced imperialist We Trotskyists have learned quite a few things overthrown, or degenerate and become Stalinists. countries is far, far off in the future. They simply from the Cuban revolution and from its leaders. So why bother ourselves too much about defend do not believe it is possible to think seriously I realize now that I oversimplified it when I ing the Cuban revolution? It's only a matter of about victorious revolutions in France, Britain, was younger. If people responded positively to time." West Germany, Japan, or the United States. the Cuban revolution, I thought they were poten That sounds sickening to us, but that is the They do not believe it is possible in their life tial members of the Young Socialist Alliance. If standard line of group after group of petty times, or their childrens' lifetimes. They don't they responded negatively, I didn't think they bourgeois socialists. believe in it, don't think about it, and conse were worth much, and, frankly, didn't want them I had read, in Lenin's writings, about petty quently don't do many things they could do to in the Young Socialist Alliance. bourgeois socialists. I used to think it was some advance it. Now I have learned that you can't organize kind of curse word, an epithet. But I sure found Another weakness we have to recognize is that that way because every once in a great while you out what petty-bourgeois socialists were, what the Cuban leadership never developed a Leninist miss someone who might have made it as a petty-bourgeois revolutionary phrasemongering type organization, with the right of minorities to revolutionary. But I still think it's not a bad is. We all learned that in the struggles to defend argue for their point of view in front of the entire method, in general. We used the same approach the Cuban revolution. membership. This did not change with the insti with the rise of Malcolm X, and the new wave of There were quite a few people who considered tutionalization of the party. feminism, and the beginning radicalization of themselves socialists but didn't recognize the The Cuban revolution occurred without the the American working class, and it didn't turn Cuban revolution as a socialist revolution. I creation of large-scale democratic committees of out too bad. assume many of you here tonight. have never the working masses-what the Russians called What we learned to do was to recognize a heard of them. They were known as the Young "soviets"-that could organize the society effec revolution and to recognize a revolutionary lead People's Socialist League (YPSL). They have tively, settle differences in the most efficient way, ership. Now, that sounds simple. Any fool should modern day clones like the Spartacist League, and mobilize the masses to do everything possi be able to do it. wings of the Maoists, people you run into today. ble to extend the revolution to other countries. But many people who considered themselves In the early days of the Cuban revolution, the not only progressive-minded, but even socialists The party and the government got all mixed up YPSL had quite a bit of influence on a number of and revolutionaries, were incapable of that. campuses. In some cases we had to argue for and together as a result. Fidel acts at one moment as Faced with the living reality of a revolution, with physically defend our right to carry picket signs the head of state, another as the foreign minister, all its contradictions and imperfections, some in demonstrations that said, "Hands Off Cuba!" another as the head of the party, and another as people couldn't recognize reality for what it was. The YPSLs tried to tell us that signs had to say the guerrilla trainer. It didn't match exactly the schemas they had "All Hands Off Cuba." They drew an equals sign From the beginning, they would remain silent learned from books. between the Soviet aid for the Cuban revolution about reactionary actions of some governments, Jim Cannon, the founding leader of the Social and Kennedy's attempt to invade Cuba and such as Mexico's, that maintained friendly diplo ist Workers Party, considered it the number one crush the revolution. matic relations with Cuba. They have often test of our movement that we take the right To them, the Russian revolution was dead, the taken an uncritical stance toward governments stance toward the Cuban revolution. Soviet Union was not a workers state. There was that take some anti-imperialist stands or actions, no socialist revolution in Cuba, nor was there as in Chile under Allende and Peru under V e In letters to Farrell Dobbs and Joe Hansen, he any revolutionary leadership there, and that was lasco. expressed the judgment that the leadership of.the that. They fail to understand and take the right line party had proved it not only knew how to on questions like the Eritrean national liberation recognize a revolution when it happened before struggle. Fortunately, the Cubans have sharply our eyes, but we had recognized a revolutionary Meany's New Anti-Cuba Move differentiated themselves from the all-out support leadership and had shown how to fight shoulder A few days ago, George Meany made a big offered by the Kremlin to the Dergue's war to shoulder with them against our common ene announcement that the AFL-CIO was going to against the Eritreans. However, they have failed mies. boycott Chilean goods. This was presented as a to come out in favor of the right of Eritrea to progressive step. He was congratulated in editor ials by the Washington Post and the New York independence. A Bloc Against the Stalinists So these are some of the weaknesses of Castro Times explaining that this was an unfortunate We made a bloc with the Castro team against but necessary step to secure human rights in ism. They have been there from the beginning of the Stalinists from the beginning. We did that the Cuban revolution. And they have not been Chile. But when you read Meany's statement because the Stalinists have been the number one more carefully, you discover that his action is surmounted yet. internal enemy of the Cuban revolution. But beneath all these weaknesses is something really an attempt to tighten the imperialist There have been, and are today, two basic blockade of Cuba. much mightier-the tremendous egalitarian wings inside the current Cuban Communist thrust of the revolution; the uncompromising Meany is sending delegations to meet with Party: the Castroist wing and the Stalinist wing. counterparts of the AFL-CIO bureaucracy all belief on the part of the entire leadership that We made a bloc with Castro against the Cuban over this hemisphere and in Europe to make the made the revolution that one must act on revolu Stalinists in the fight against the bureaucratic final plans for the hemispheric boycott of Chi tionary beliefs; their willingness to tell the truth course of Anibal Escalante in the early 1960s, lean and Cuban trade. So the boycott of Chile is to the world as they see it; and, most important, and later in the conflict with the Stalinists just a fake cover for the Cuban boycott. their refusal ever to give up the fight to extend internationally over defense of the Vietnamese I mention this here because some of Meany's the revolution as the key to everything. revolution and the Cuban leadership's efforts to speechwriters were leaders of YPSL in the late Never for one minute have the leaders of the extend the revolution to Latin America. 1950s and early 1960s, whom we in the YSA Cuban revolution been interested in the line of We learned how to bloc with Castro against the battled over Cuba. Their line during the Bay of "peaceful coexistence," that is, the total subordi Stalinists in the fight to defend and extend the Pigs invasion was very simple: they defended it nation of the interests of the world revolution to revolution. And that conflict between the Castro publicly. They urged socialists to align them seeking diplomatic and economic deals with ists and the Stalinists is still going on. selves with the "democratic trade-union" wing of imperialism. None of the leaders of the Cuban So we learned quite a bit. And we were fortu the invading army! revolution have ever gone for this. nate, because revolutions led by revolutionary We also learned how to combine understanding They have known from the beginning that the leaderships haven't come along very often. of reality and our norms. Reality was very rich only hope they have in the long run is the Everything the Socialist Workers Party and and complicated in Cuba. successful extension of the Cuban revolution. the YSA did in defense of the Cuban revolution You didn't have cardboard figures such as you And that helps to explain the uniqueness of this was done from the point of view of building our find in allegorical novels-figures like Betty anniversary celebration. movement. This is not a contradiction. Not at all. Good, Bobby Bad, Willie Wise, Lucy Lustful, and

18 (FEBRUARY 1979) (PAGE 9/INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW)

people like that. These are not human beings but And that is the way the Cubans will learn prominent of the Black nationalist intellectuals, cardboard figures representing an idea or pas about those questions. The only way. They won't poets, and musicians in this country. sion or tendency. listen to anybody who sits on the sidelines and Robert F. Williams, a revolutionary-minded That's how most petty-bourgeois socialists look flaps their gums. They watch. And the time will Black nationalist and civil rights leader from at a revolution. But we knew the Cuban revolu come when they will listen to revolutionists who North Carolina, and Socialist Workers Party tion, we knew the Cuban revolutionists, and we show in deeds that they are worthy of respect leader Ed Shaw carried out joint tours in defense knew the Cuban workers. We knew they were and worth listening to. of Cuba and of the Black struggle. real flesh-and-blood people and a lot more compli· It would be faster and better if there were So this was the first stage of our defense of the cated than Betty Good and Bobby Bad. another way-but there is not. That's the only Cuban revolution. It was an exciting stage. We We learned that reality came first. Our task way the Cubans-not just the leaders but the printed Castro's speeches. We published The was not simply to understand reality but to Cuban revolutionists as a whole-will be con Truth About Cuba by Joe Hansen. We cam participate in it and try to change it, move it vinced. paigned for Farrell Dobbs-the only presidential forward, working with everyone moving in a candidate who told the truth about Cuba and revolutionary direction. How Trotskyists Defended Cuba socialism. It really came down to understanding the most We picketed and marched. We fought with Revolutionists of Action important fact of all: the Cuban revolution is our those spineless YPSLs. We held meetings at The Cuban leaders were revolutionists of ac revolution. Our fate and their fate are totally churches. We had forums. We sold the Militant tion. In one of Trotsky's discussions with intertwined. and the Young Socialist everywhere. And we members of our party at the end of the 1930s, he The YSA wrote several genuinely heroic chap recruited to and strengthened the SWP and the predicted that the next great revolutionary lead ters in defense of the Cuban revolution. YSA. ers would not be great theoreticians like Marx, The first stage is one I'm sure most of you There is a second stage that more of you are writing things like Capital. We are in an epoch know about. That was building the Fair Play for familiar with, although you might not think of it now where we will see great revolutionists of Cuba Committees and turning the YSA into the this way. This was the period of the Vietnam action come forward, and we must come forward propagandists and tribunes of the Cuban revolu War. This is a side of our defense of the Cuban and meet them. tion. revolution that we don't talk about enough. That's what we saw in Cuba: an installment on We did everything we could. We showed slides. Everything that we did to oppose the U.S. war of that promise by Trotsky. At the 1961 convention We walked picket lines. We sold pamphlets. A genocide in Vietnam was a concrete fight to of the SWP, Morris Stein, one of the experienced few of us wore militia hats and committed one or defend and extend the Cuban revolution. The veteran leaders of the party, explained to a two ultraleft excesses. We went to the workers Cuban leadership understood their stake in Viet minority grouping inside the SWP that was and farmers of the United States with the mes nam completely. opposed to recognizing the realities of Cuba that sage of the Cuban revolution. That was harder to Che's slogan, "Create two, three, many Viet the Castro leadership team was superior to the do then than it is today. The country was not nams," was not just rhetoric. This was the Bolshevik leadership, once you leave aside Lenin, that far out of the McCarthy era. The radicaliza conscious line that the Cubans always held. Trotsky, Sverdlov, and people like that. tion was at its bare beginning with the sit-ins They understood that only by extending their That was what we were dealing with histori against segregated lunch counters in the South. revolution, only by having heroic people like the cally, that is what our responsibilities were, and We went to a lot of churches. We discovered Vietnamese standing up and fighting, only by are. that if you got the use of a church and showed putting everything on the line, could they defend On the other hand, we also learned the great slides about this island and how the conditions what they had won and extend it further. That is value, irreplaceability, and strategic importance of the people had been improved as a result of the what they believe. And so do we. of our norms. It is only by having the right revolution, some workers came, some students Che Guevara gave his life as much in .defense strategy and the right norms, only by absorbing came, and in Minnesota some farmers came. of the Vietnamese revolution as of the Bolivian theory politically, that we can successfully de We figured that any student or worker or revolution. And what you accomplished, along fend and extend the revolution. farmer who was interested in Cuba was a prime with millions more like you who marched and In the very first report that Joe Hansen candidate for recruitment to the revolutionary rallied against the war, was to buy time for the gave on Cuba for the SWP Political Committee, movement. Cubans while we fought-successfully-to win we pointed to three central political questions: We also learned about Black nationalism from over the American people to oppose that war. First. Over time, it is absolutely necessary for the Cubans. We learned about it even before we forms of proletarian democracy to be developed learned from Malcolm X and from the changes The Vietnamese revolution bought the Cuban in Cuba if the revolution is to continue to ad going on in the Black Muslims. Of course it was revolution some crucial time, a breathing space, vance. only with the rise of Malcolm X and the split in to overcome some of their economic problems, to Second. The fight to construct a revolutionary the Nation of Islam that we really were able to combat the blockade, and to be ready to move party along Leninist lines on a national and grasp completely what Trotsky had tried to teach into Africa in solidarity with the battle against international scale is crucial to this process. us a long time ago about Black nationalism. apartheid and imperialism when the opportunity And, third, the key to everything is to partici But the Cuban revolution played a big role in opened up. pate in the fight to extend the Cuban revolution opening the doors for us. From the beginning, the Now we are in a third stage. We have to take and to defend it against American imperialism. Cuban revolution had an Afro-Cuban side that the lead in direct defense of the Cubari revolution This third point is also the key to helping the was deep-going and had a big impact in this and in defense of the emerging Black African Cubans to understand the first two points. country among Black people. revolution. It is the same fight. Maybe I can explain what I mean by telling you This is the continuity in our defense of this how I became a Trotskyist. Impact on Black Community revolution going back twenty years. When I first met our movement, I didn't tho Of course the colonial revolution, the upsurge Cuba is right at the center of world politics. It roughly understand the role of soviets, the exact of the nonwhite masses against their oppression, has been from the day the revolution triumphed, character of workers democracy, the nature of a struck a deep chord among Afro-Americans. But and it will be until that revolution is defeated or workers state. These were all somewhat abstract Cuba had a special impact because it was a we prevail. It is at the center of everything, questions. successful revolution, because of the role that. because the existence of a workers sfate with a I didn't fully understand the role of a Leninist Afro-Cubans played in it, and because of the revolutionary leadership poses a permanent chal party, a Trotskyist party. I don't think most of us determination with which the revolutionary gov lenge to all that is reactionary, all that exploits do when we first come around. ernment abolished race discrimination. and oppresses, and to all the privileged bureau But I understood one thing. I knew there was When Castro came to New York in 1960 for the crats in the world. no one in this country like the SWP and YSA for session of the United Nations General Assembly defending the Cuban revolution-a real socialist and moved from a midtown hotel to the Hotel Cuba and U.S. Politics revolution-and fighting to extend it right into Theresa in Harlem, it had an impact on the The Cuban revolution and the attitude we take the United States. And I said, that's my party, entire Black population. toward it remains the acid test for revolutionists. that's my organization. After that, I learned the The founding supporters of the Fair Play for And because the fate of the revolution in this other things as I went along. Cuba Committee included some of the most country is so intertwined with the Cuban revolu-

The basic core of Cuba's revolutionary leadership has remained intact over twenty years. Above are pictured (from left to right) Juan Almeida, deputy prime minister; Osvaldo Dorticos, president; Raul Castro, head of the armed forces; Celia Sanchez, secretary to the presidency; and Che Guevara, who died fighting to extend the revolution in Bolivia.

19 !INTERNATIONAL SOCIAtJST'REV1EW! PAGE 10)

tion, we should realize thoroughly how horrible a defeat in Cuba would be for us. A defeat of the Cuban revolution, or the Stalinization of Cuba, would be a terrible blow to the world revolution. For twenty years we have understood the interpenetration of the Cuban revolution and the coming American revolution. We can see this growing more concrete every day~ Think about the overtures Castro is making to the Cuban Americans and the significance of this. This is a bold, audacious, political move against the Carter administration's hypocrisy about human rights. But more than that even, it is a small but important move into American politics-a first for the Cuban revolution. At the very beginning, the Cubans had the idea that maybe someone in the United States would go up into the Appalachians or somewhere and do it here like they did it in Cuba. They gave Robert F. Williams-who lived in exile in Cuba for many years after being framed up on kidnap ping charges in this country-a radio station to beam messages to Mississippi and Alabama. They were ready to help train guerrilla fighters, but of course nothing ever came of this. The Cubans never tried to use their strength and leverage to influence the U.S. labor move ment. They wrote it off. But times have changed. The current dialogue with the Cuban commun ity in the United States involves thousands of U.S. ships blockading Cuba in October 1962. Soviet nuclear missiles helped block a new U.S. invasion. Cubans who are in this country to stay. They are divided by class. Many work in factories, they go to schools, and they are moved by the same ~ng in action what revolutionary Marxist politics for Latin America that does provide correct things in the class struggle that affect you and lS. answers to the questions the Cubans were weigh The world Trotskyist movement must accept every other worker. They also find Iatinos aren't ing. But valuable time was lost in this process. the responsibility for missing two great oppor treated equally in the land of Carter's human But now we have opportunities like we never tunities to influence the Cuban leadership. The rights hypocrisy. had before. We have opportunities because the first was right after the victory over Batista. The new relationship emerging between one thing above all is that the Cubans watch Unfortunately, in Cuba Trotskyism was misre Cuban-Americans and the Cuban revolution is politics, they watch revolutionists, and they presented by a group that followed a cult leader going to mean a change in the attitude of a watch revolutionary activity. named Juan Posadas. Their specialty was pass section of the American working class to the The changes coming in this country are a great ing out leaflets demanding a march on the Cuban revolution. opening for deeply influencing the Cuban revolu Guantanamo naval base, while the Cubans were And a new stage is opening up in the Cuban tion. The rise of working-class struggle in this trying to consolidate the revolution. revolution's relations with Afro-Americans. Afro country and the role Trotskyists will be playing They denounced the leaders of the revolution Cubans are fighting in Africa, and they are in it is going to spark some new thinking in Cuba for not being socialists. watched and cheered on by Afro-Americans. If about the revolutionary prospects in the imperial I will always remember one night in that an upheaval takes place and Cuban troops are ist countries. summer of 1960 in Havana. A few nights earlier called on to help and do battle for the freedom of Fidel had spoken to a gigantic meeting in Ha Zimbabwe, Namibia, and South Africa, I am vana. He had announced that they were going to Learning from the Cubans convinced that Afro-Americans and other Ameri nationalize every piece of American-owned prop So this is a unique, happy anniversary for the can workers will go over there to join the fight. erty in Cuba. Cuban revolution, and for the twenty years we You will see international brigades fighting for On this particular evening there was a big have been fighting shoulder to shoulder with the the liberation of Africa. meeting at the Blanquita Theatre. There Che Cubans. Just use your imagination and think what will Guevara told a gathering of thousands of stu The Cubans have done a few things for us and happen when those battles begin-the attitudes dents from all over Latin America that this was are still doing some things for us. and feelings this will inspire in millions of peo the beginning of the socialist revolution in our They have inspired us with confidence in the ple. hemisphere. This was the first time a central power of the proletarian revolution. Think about So we don't change a single, fundamental leader of the Cuban government had described the powerful forces that are actively working, thing in our position after twenty years. We the revolution in those terms. and have been actively working for twenty years, celebrate. We defend this revolution with all our The Posadistas were out there again, denounc to crush that revolution. Think of what they have heart. And we fight to extend it. ing the Cuban leadership for not being revolu stood up against-and what they are still stand We recognize the revolutionary character of its tionary enough. ing up against. leaders, and we make a bloc with them against Fortunately, there were people like Peter Buch, A little island, a superexploited country a few their enemies abroad and against the Stalinists Pedro Camejo, Eva Chertov, and Suzanne Weiss miles away-opened the socialist revolution in at home. The Socialist Workers Party, the Young in Cuba at the time, so I learned that there was our hemisphere! Socialist Alliance, and the Fourth International quite a difference between Trotskyism and the They taught our generation that our class can will influence the Cuban revolutionists by show- Posadista insanities. take over and run this society. They taught us But the Fourth International lost an opportun that you should be proud of your African herit ity to influence the Cuban leadership as much as age, your Iatino heritage, because it deserves it could have because of the chara-cter of the pride. Cuban organization that called itself Trotskyist. They showed us that the mobilization of the This resulted, in part, from an unnecessarily long working class and its allies, under a leadership and brutal split in the Fourth International. This that is conscious, that tells the truth, is more split, which wasn't healed until 1963, weakened powerful than the mightiest economic and mil the world movement, and blocked the interna itary power that has ever existed on the face of tional leadership from using its full strength to the earth. influence the Cuban Trotskyists. They demonstrated in practice that the Stali nists are not ordained to be at the head of every New Openings revolution, to smother it, derail it, betray it. We There was a second missed opportunity. This are in the epoch of revolution, not counterrevolu was the period from about Hl67 to a little more tion. than a year ago. During this time a majority of At the Bay of Pigs, in Bolivia, and in Africa the leadership of the Fourth International them the Cubans have taught us how to fight, how to selves turned toward a strategy of guerrilla live, and if necessary, how to die for the libera warfare. The Cuban leadership was trying to tion of humanity. And they showed us that Che think out how to move forward in the aftermath was absolutely right when he said that the of the collapse of the guerrilla orientation in uncompromising revolutionist is motivated by Latin America, symbolized by the defeat in great love. Bolivia and the death of Che. At that very And they taught even those of us who are moment, several sections of the Fourth Interna ignorant of Spanish the meaning of one word in tional were speeding right past the Cubans in the Spanish that we must know-Venceremos, we opposite direction. ' shall win. The Trotskyist movement was giving the Cu In exchange for all this, we only owe them one bans an outmoded answer that the Cubans small thing. That is to organize a revolutionary themselves were trying to move beyond. movement capable of leading the American Cuban troops in Angola pushed back South It took some years and much discussion, but workers to do exactly what the Cubans did. And African invasion, advanced liberation struggle in the Fourth International has now rejected these that is what we will do. all of southern Africa. errors and puts forward a revolutionary strategy

'20 (FEBRUARY 1979) (PAGE 111INTERNATI6)NAL SOCIALIST REVIEW)

In 1938 Mangan moved to Paris and remained an active figure in the Fourth International until his death in 1961." ~,:;:~!.elwright As a member of the Boston branch of the Party's cultural journal) and a leading member Socialist Workers Party, Wheelwright continued of the Rebel Arts Society (which was affiliated his literary and educational activities. He also with the party). But he also participated in did public speaking on soapboxes. The rebel demonstrations and was arrested on picket lines; Brahmin made a rather startling sight with his he ran for local office in elections on the Socialist bowler hat, full-length raccoon coat, and walking Party ticket; he worked in defense of political stick. . prisoners and in antiwar organizations of the Wheelwright was also active in the League for 1930s. Cultural Freedom and Socialism, an organiza Wheelwright's several poems against the tion of revolutionary writers in the United States threatening imperialist war indicate that his inspire~ by a manifesto signed by Trotsky, the socialist views were not based on mere sentimen surrealist author Andre Breton, and the painter tal feelings; they stemmed from his understand Diego Rivera. In 1939-1940, during the dispute ing of the class basis of war. "You-U .S.-US" is a between the followers of Max Shachtman and satire underscoring "the chief difficulty in prole James P. Cannon over the defense of the Soviet tarian revolution, the subservience of the masses Union, Wheelwright supported Cannon and to war-hysteria.... " "Skulls as Drums" is· an wrote him that the view of Shachtman's faction answer to the Civil War poetry of Walt Whitman, "leads logically to surrender to democratic which Wheelwright felt was na'ive about the chauvinism in the U.S.A." Wheelwright was killed on September 14, 1940. S~erry Mangan, a revolutionary journalist and nature of the conflict. His philosophic "Train fnend of Wheelwright. Ride," dedicated to Horace Gregory, uses as its An obituary in the Trotskyist newspaper Social· refrain a slogan attributed to Liebknecht: "Al ist Appeal remarked on his "firmness and loyalty to the revolutionary movement" and concluded: ways the enemy is the foe at home." the end of the poem, Wheelwright uses the "The revolutionary party is rooted in the In 1934 Wheelwright initiated a new project Kronstadt uprising of 1921, which Lenin and working class but it draws to itself the best from called "Vanguard Verse," which sponsored 'the Trotsky believed threatened to throw the fragile all classes. Among them was John Brooks publications Poems for a Dime and Poems for young workers state into the hands of the White Wheelwright." Two Bits, as well as a correspondence course on Guard, as a symbol of the coming political revo "The Form and Content of Rebel Poetry." Assist 'The Permanent of Rebellion' lution. ing Wheelwright in this venture were Kenneth However, in a note at the beginning of the One disadvantage of the publication of all of Porter, a Christian socialist poet who later be book, Wheelwright apologizes for the fact that Wheelwright's poems together in one volume is came a labor historian, and Sherry Mangan, a some of his poetic expressions might mislead the that even with the introductory material the book friend from the Harvard Poetry Society. reader into a false understanding of his political Although Mangan had edited several maga gives an unclear picture of Wheelwright's politi outlook: cal, philosophical, and poetic development. For zines and published a novel and collection of "The author regrets that such references as example, much of "Dusk to Dusk," which ap poems in the early 1930s, financial necessity those to Krondstadt and to 'Red Fascism' pass pears as the fourth section, was written before forced him to work as a printer. He designed beyond poetic ·license towards political license· Wheelwright's first two books as well as the many poems in "Political Self-Portrait," which but is unable to find apter language." ' appears as the third section. Vanguard Verse publications, and he soon came "Redemption" is a poem about Marxist aesthet But even "Political Self-Portrait" does not fully under Wheelwright's political influence. Wheel ics. In the first sections he defends the thesis of wright refers to his relationship with Mangan in present Wheelwright's evolution. In his final Trotsky's Literature and Revolution that the aim the poem "Resurge from Descresence,'' in which phase, he renounced Anglicism and then Chris of the socialist revolution is to produce a higher tianity altogether-a not-unexpected conclusion Mangan and "M" (the nickname for Marguerita form of culture based on a classless society, and Landin, Mangan's second wife) review a complex to the course he had been following. Many of the not a "proletarian culture": theological argument that had occurrPd between poems in this volume reflect stages in that transi What do you want, you who form our Army? the two poets. tion. As Wheelwright continued his study of Marx "The Word is Deed," first published in 1938, is More bottled Mayonnaise? D'y' want ham ism, the positions of the Trotskyists became clearly an attempt to reconcile his waning faith burger? increasingly attractive to him. After the Trotsky in Christ with scientific socialism. Wheelwright More beefsteak (like your boss)? More baseball ists of the Workers Party were admitted into the argues that Engels was incorrect in Anti bleachers? Socialist 'Party in June 19;.!6, Wheelwright joined Dil.hring when he changed the statement of St. Shorter (but duller) jobs; longer (but duller) their caucus and developed a close relationship John to read that the deed preceded the Word. loafing? with local Boston leaders such as Antoinette Nevertheless, Wheelwright says, both he and While Wheelwright does not feel that revolution Konikow and Larry Trainor. Engels agree that humanity transforms itself ary poets can force their concern with culture In late 19:{6 Sherry Mangan also joined the through its deeds, and therefore he and Engels onto the proletariat, he warns about what might Trotskyist caucus, and the two poets collaborated can share a common strategy for liberation. happen to the course of the proletarian revolution in cultural activities and in work on behalf of the In "Lanterns of Time,"· a poem dedicated to if the poets are not heard: American Committee for the Defense of Leon Kenneth Patchen, Wheelwright discusses the degeneration of the Russian revolution and the ... make sure not to board the wrong train for Trotsky during the Moscow Trials. When the Beulah [the future paradise] Trotskyists were expelled from the Socialist rise of Stalinist gangster rule. Putting forward the view ·that the main hope for proletarian -(it may land you up in Englewood, New Party in the fall of 19:{7, both poets became Jersey). founding members of the Socialist Workers revolution now lies in the activation of the Party. proletariat in the West, his analysis resembles After satirizing various schools of literary Trotsky's ideas at the time. Yet at one point criticism, Wheelwright explains the Marxist view Wheelwright utilizes the term "Stalin's Red of the evolution of art from its origins in labor, 2. Complete biographical information can bP found in Fascism"-likening the degenerated workers the essay "The Pilgrimage of Sherry Mangan: From and he looks forward to the day when class state in the Soviet Union to Nazi Germany, a society's bifurcation of a high culture for the rich Aesthete to. Revolutionary Sodalist" (Pembroke Mawz· superficial equation that Trotsky rejected. And at zine, no. 8, 1977, pp. 85-99). and a so-called lowbrow culture for the masses will be as obsolete as war and dinosaurs: ... (soon soon) work and play be recreate and {shadow souls in worlds of shadow fires) intellectual highbrow, lowbrow proletariat Leon 71-otsky forgot with battleship and mastodon. Wheelwright's devotion to art and literature stems from a perspective very much at odds with the scholasticism of bourgeois academic critics and the general tendency of capitalist society to transform culture into a commodity used for on Literature~Art escape or status. Wheelwright regarded the cul ture of the world from a revolutionary perspec t~ve as a potential treasure to be shared, appre Ciated, and transformed by all humankind. But above all Wheelwright believed he had a A collection featurirrg Trotsky's polemics against Stalinist censorship special obligation to understand and interpret of literature and art and against the theories of 'proletarian culture' from a revolutionary point of view the culture of that were used to defend this censorship. The volume also contains New England, his own region. Even his studies essays on Leo Tolstoy, Jack London, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Louis of rebel divines and their theological disputes Ferdinand Celine, and others. The most complete collection of were not undertaken for an abstract purpose. His Trotsky's writings on art and literature. intentions were made clear in his poem celebrat ing his radical Puritan ancestor, the Rev. John Wheelwright: Keep us alive with your ghostly disputation 252 pp. $14 cloth; $4.45 paper. make our renunciation of dominion mark not Order from Pathfinder Press. 410 West Street, New York, New York 10014. Please enclose $.50 for the escape, but the permanent of rebellion. postage and handlmg, $. 75 if order for more than one book.

21 (INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW/PAGE 12)

When the Socialist Workers Party responded enthusiastically to the rise of Black nationalist ideas and struggles in the early 1960s, more than a few white liberals and radicals were taken aback. James Leon Trotsky on Pathfinder's Gholee for rebruarr Black Nationalism and Self Determina tion. !rotsii:J on Black lationalism Edited by George Breitman. New York. Pathfinder Press. 96 pp. and Self-Determination lem, part of the struggle between Wechsler, a liberal Democratic jour· the workers and the capitalists; nalist, wrote of the collaboration nothing could be done about the the SWP established with Malcolm special problems of discrimination X: "It was hard to believe that and equality this side of socialism.' Leon Trotsky had ever anticipated In practice, Cannon says, this such an alliance would be welded turned out to be 'a formula for in his memory." And more than a inaction on the Negro front... .'" few ultraleft sectarians-who im· With the formation of the Com agined they stood at the opposite munist Party in 1919, the leaders of pole from Wechsler-reacted the the Bolshevik Party began to re same way. educate American Communists on As George Breitman writes in an this issue. Lenin, Trotsky, and editorial introduction to this collec· others brought their experiences in tion, "Despite the air of knowing combating the national oppression ness he sought to convey, in tsarist Russia to bear in examin [Wechsler] was quite ignorant of ing the special problems of Blacks Malcolm X addresses 1963 Harlem rally what Trotsky thought about the in America. American Negro struggle. Mal Progress was made, but further colm, the self-educated man, knew of the right of self-determination a revolutionary way to the develop advances were . blocked for a time more than the politically sophisti for Blacks as a means of educating ment of the Black struggle, includ by the Stalinist degeneration of the cated Wechsler about Trotsky's white workers and forging revolu ing the rise of Malcolm X. Soviet regime. The American CP views on the Negro; he knew they tionary unity in the working class: The deepening of the Black strug split in 1928 between revolutionary were revolutionary, not liberal, be gle and the rise of the Chicano Marxists, who supported Trotsky, "Ninety-nine point nine percent cause he had read, in 1963, Trot movement demonstrated that the and the Stalinists. A few years of the American workers are chauv sky's four discussions with his American revolution would have a later, Trotsky moved to renew and inists. In relation to the Negroes American comrades.'' combined character. It would be deepen the discussion among they are hangmen as they are also These discussions are reprinted both a working-class struggle for American revolutionists of the na toward the Chinese, etc. It is neces in this volume together with intro socialism and a struggle of the ture and importance of the Black sary to make them understand that ductory material placing the ex oppressed nationalities for libera struggle. the American state is not their changes in historical and political tion. Trotsky and his cothinkers ap state and that they do not have to context. The discussions took place The discussions and documents proached these discussions from be the guardians of this state. in 1933 and 1939 between Trotsky published here, together with reso the standpoint of seeking to unite Those American workers who say: and leaders of the Communist lutions . subsequently adopted by the working class against the capi 'The Negroes should separate if League of America and its succes the .Socialist Workers Party, richly talist rulers and win new members they so desire, and we will defend sor organization, the Socialist deserve study by anyone seeking a to the revolutionary party. them against our American Workers Party. consistently revolutionary view of Pointing to the especially intense police-these are revolutionists, I the Black struggle. In large part as a result of these have confidence in them." exchanges, the Socialist Workers oppression Black people face, Trot This volume also includes selec Party voted at its 1939 convention sky predicted that "they are con The evolution of the revolution tions from Trotsky's writings on to call for the right of self voked by the historic development ary socialist view of the Black the struggles of oppressed national to become a vanguard of the work determination for Black people. struggle did not stop with the dis ities. Of special interest at this time ing class. . . . If it happens that we This put the SWP on record in cussions ·with Trotsky and the reso is "The National Character of a support of the right of Black people in the SWP are not able to find a lutions adopted in 1939. But the Social Revolution" in which he to form their own separate state in road to this stratum, then we are advance they represented made it argues for Black majority rule in not worthy at all. The permanent the United States, if they so decide. possible for the SWP to respond in South Africa. -Fred Feldman revolution and all the rest would be In addition, the SWP adopted the only a lie." perspective of fostering an indepen He predicted that Black workers dent Black struggle against racial would be the best fighters for the oppression as a vital component of right of self-determination: "When the struggle for socialism. The reso 25°/o Discount Offer . . . the Negroes say 'we want lutions embodying these decisions autonomy,' then they take a posi are also included in Leon Trotsky tion hostile toward American impe Leon Trotsky on Black Nationalism and Self-Determination is on Black Nationalism and Self De rialism. At that stage the [Black] available at a special discount rate of $1.50. The regular price is termination. workers will be much more deter $1.95. Order from Pathfinder Press, 410 West Street, New York, New This decision marked a qualita mined than the petty bourgeoisie." York 10014. Send check or money order or return this coupon to one tive advance for American revolu The claim that the fight of of the socialist bookstores listed on page 27. Offer expires March 31, tionary socialists. Breitman quotes Blacks for the right of self 1979. an essay by James P. Cannon (a determination would split the work founding leader of the SWP), to ing class was "an adaptation to the Name ------point out that before the Russian ideology of the white workers," in revolution of 1917, American revo Trotsky's view. Address ------ lutionists tended to view Black Far from dividing Black and City, State, & ZiP------oppression as "'an economic prob- white workers, Trotsky saw defense

traffic. While these were all welcome You also claim that the ruling know, none of the larger or more and progressive events, they seem class has been cautious in its move sensible of these agree with your to be no more evidence of a massive to the right because it sees the assessment. None of the nonorgani LITTIBS radicalization than were similar working class moving massively to zational socialist working people events during the 1950s. the left. But their caution could be that I have spoken to on this point You also see evidence in the slight explained as simply the fear of prov can see any basis for your assess upturn in the Black liberation strug oking a reaction among workers ment, either. Nonexistent radicalization? gle, even though a lot of this new where not much class-struggle ac So, could it be that you are mis In the editorial, "Why 'Guardian' activity appears to be campus tivity now exists. taking currently successful member Misreads the 1978 Elections," in the based. ship recruitment for a massive radi ISR section of the November 10 Your best evidence seems to be In the end, you seem to rely most calization that doesn't really exist? Militant, you claim that there is a the July 9 pro-ERA demonstration heavily on your claim that you know This idea came to me when I re "massive radicalization now taking together with the unmentioned gay what is going on because Socialist called the Militant article from some hold among working people." rights activity that has manifested Workers Party members are rooted time ago that claimed workers were To support this startling claim, itself over the past several months. in "the factories and communities more open to socialist ideas now you cite the coal miners' strike, the But by themselves they do not con where the oppressed and exploited than at any time during "this cen postal workers' rejection of the first stitute more than a hope for a gener live, work, and struggle." However, tury." contract they were handed, and the alization of massive, militant devel this is the case with most left politi Arthur Mag/in rail unions' shut down of most rail opments. cal organizations and, so far as I New York, New York

22 Delegation meets INS official Detroit picket demands_ Marroquin asylum By Nan Bailey Anne's Church, whose congregation is DETROIT-At noon on January 18, overwhelmingly Spanish-speaking; Paul McKinnon, District Director of and Monsignor Clement Kern. the U.S. Immigration and Naturaliza Williams read a protest statement tion Service here, looked out of his signed by members of the delegation office window. He saw a picket line of along with two Detroit City Council twenty-five protesters carrying signs members, Clyde Cleveland and Ma demanding, "Justice for Hector Marro ryann Mahaffey, who were unable to quin." "Reverse the INS decision!" and attend. "Political asylum for Hector Marro quin!" "We call on our government to honor Pickets were protesting the INS's its stated commitment to human recent decision to deny Marroquin's rights," the statement said. "Our go request for political asylum in the vernment's obligation hl accept politi United States. If he is deported to cal refugees can no longer be limited to Mexico, as the United States govern those escaping regimes out of favor ment is seeking to do, Marroquin will with the U.S. State Department.... face certain police persecution on Human rights cannot take a back seat frame-up murder charges. These to international diplomacy." charges were lodged against him when McKinnon claimed he had never he was a Mexican student leader in the heard of Marroquin's case before. He early 1970s. promised to forward the protest letter Twenty minutes after McKinnon's to the INS in Texas, where the hearing first glance out his window, he met on deporting Marroquin will be held. with a delegation of prominent Detroit Protest messages demanding asylum ers: E. Faye Williams, vice-president of for Marroquin, along with needed fi the Michigan Education Association; nancial contributions, should be sent Maurice Geary of the Detroit Hector to: Hector Marroquin Defense Marroquin Defense Committee; Carole Committee, P.O. Box 843, Cooper King from the office of U.S. Rep. John Station, New York, New York Delegation demanding asylum for Marroquin included (left to right): Fr. Robert Conyers; Father Power, pastor of St. 10003. Power, Maurice Geary, E. Faye Williams, Carole King, Clement Kern. GE workers discuss rightist harassment on job The following is an article by has been dropped on him from grenade attack against me and my When I'm not around, a few co Jim Burfeind about some recent catwalks, and threats have been party. workers have started arguing with incidents of right-wing harass posted on shop bulletin boards. Many workers have gone out of their those responsible for the harassment. ment on the job at General Elect way to make me feel welcome in the Some of them have drawn small repri ric's Appliance Park in Louisville, By Jim Burfeind shop by helping me out. One man sals, such as having Prussian Blue Kentucky, where he has worked I have responded to the right-wing approached me and said, "I just Dye put on the handles of their tool for more than two years as an harassment by doing two things. First, wanted you to know that some of us boxes. (The dark blue dye cannot be apprentice tool and die maker. along with my shop steward, I went to were talking and wanted to make it washed off.) Burfeind, a member of Interna GE officials and told them I held them clear that not everyone supports this." Almost without exception, the tional Association of Machinists responsible. I demanded that GE put a Another journeyman told me, "There workers most active in the union are Lodge 2409, was the 1978 Socialist stop to the harassment. are only a couple of people doing this." the ones most opposed to the harass Workers Party candidate for Con Second, I began to talk about the He was disgusted by it. He thought my ment. On January 11 I found a piece of gress from Louisville's Third C.D. harassment with my co-workers. About support of busing in Louisville was a literature from "The Review of the fifty people work on three shifts in my major reason for the harassment. He News" on my tool box. This is a right On January 3, Burfeind was said he considered busing for Blacks a transferred to a new shop at the shop, the Building a Tool Room. All wing outfit that supports so-called are white males, mostly over thirty. simple question of equal education but right-to-work laws, opposes most job giant GE plant. The next day the Everyone I talked to was absolutely that some people just couldn't see past safety laws, and attacks congresspeo harassment campaign began. It opposed to any violence against me. their prejudices. ple who vote for prolabor legislation. had continued for eleven of thir "These people talk a lot about Amer teen days when Burfeind wrote But at first, most of them said I should This literature illustrates how the cam ica and our freedoms," he went on to this article. just laugh off the incidents. This was paign against me is in the interest of say. "But as soon as they run up GE and against the union. Burfeind had also been the vic just everyday horseplay, they said. against someone who disagrees with In the course of discussing the ha tim of right-wing incidents last I disagreed. I explained that this them, they don't think the other person fall in his previous workshop. And harassment benefited only the com rassment, I've found that people are has any rights." a gas grenade had been tossed into pany and threatened everyone's rights. eager to talk about everything from Another worker said he opposes bus an SWP campaign rally where he I said I was being threatened for my inflation to pollution. Every day it is ideas, and that it was part of an ing. But then he pointed out that many clearer that a few people are attacking was speaking November 4. atmosphere of intimidation of defend people used to think slavery was right, me with the growing disapproval of During the most recent harass ers of unions, civil rights, and women's while now almost everyone looks back the rest. ment campaign, Burfeind's work rights in Louisville. and says it's good we got rid of it. He What is needed now is for the major area has been repeatedly painted I pointed out that our lAM lodge said we would probably look back and ity of my co-workers to make it known with hammers and sickles, wa~er voted last fall to condemn the gas- say busing was a good thing. that this harassment must stop. SWP runs steelworker for Salt Lake mayor By Dave Hurst Burchett advocates abolition of formed on Mormons, despite the stand SALT LAKE-Pam Burchett will be Utah's antilabor "right to work" law; of the Mormon church hierarchy the Socialist Workers Party candidate taxing the rich and eliminating all against abortion and birth control. for mayor of this city in the November taxes on working people; shortening 1979 election. Burchett is thirty-two the work week with no cut in pay to Burchett will also speak out on the years old, works at Eimco Tunneling provide jobs for the unemployed; and a possibility of a police cover-up or in and Mining Machinery Division as a guaranteed cost-of-living adjustment volvement in the murder of SWP leader template operator, and is a member of on wages and social benefits. Tony Adams last November. "One of the United Steelworkers of America my first acts as a mayoral candidate Local 4208. Burchett will also campaign for pas will be to join a delegation of con At a press conference here January sage of the Equal Rights Amendment cerned citizens who will address a City 17, Burchett explained why she is and the right of women to have access Commission meeting later this month running. "As a working person I am to abortion and birth control. to insist on a full investigation of the keenly aware of the problems faced by Burchett responded to a reporter's events surrounding Tony Adams's other working people in this city," she question on whether she would get a murder," she said. said. "I think the Republicans and "hostile reaction" in Salt Lake to her Other issues Burchett will be raising Democrats are responsible for these position on abortion. She answered are opposition to nuclear power and problems." that growing numbers of people in the death penalty. "Workers here are caught in a three Utah agree with her view that every way squeeze between inflation, unem woman should have the right to decide The press conference announcing ployment, and taxes. This is made for herself whether or not to have a Burchett's campaign was covered by worse by the fact that wages in Salt child. She pointed out that of the both Salt Lake dailies, the local CBS Lake are among the lowest in the BURCHETT: defends right to choose, 10,000 abortions performed in Utah and ABC television affiliates, and a country." opposes 'right to work.' since 1973, 40 percent have been per- number of radio stations.

THE MILITANT/FEBRUARY 2, 1979 23 Strike enters sixth month Ore. paper workers battle company and courts By Joel Shapiro in. By the time it was over, twelve ~. _ , TOLEDO, Ore.-Striking workers at member~ ?f L?cal 13 .were a:re~~ed, the Georgia-Pacific paper plant will a~d an InJUnctwn was tssued hmtbng LOC.\L 13 soon enter their sixth month on the ptckets to four per gate. picket line. The union inv~stigated th~ in~ident As with other striking locals of the and produced evtden~e showmg 1t was A WP P W Association of Western Pulp and Paper a compan~ provocatiOn. Cameras and Workers, little progress has been made sound eqmpment had been placed. on in negotiations. Ten locals settled ear- the b~ses t~ :ecord ~he. scab-runm~g. r;\ '-THlhJ lier in the strike and one in December. Georgta-Pactftc had mststed on usmg But since Carter's wage guidelines the. main gate even though t~e local -\ ( r \ l \ \ 'l were announced, Georgia-Pacific has pohce urged the~ to use a side g~te insisted it has no choice but to stick that was not picketed. And umon with its "final" offer made last No- members say there were people among vember. the pick~ts that no o~e rec?gnized. To the members of Local 13 in In spite of all this evidence, the Toledo however it is not a question of injunction against mass picketing re- ' ' mains in effect. Teams of striking unionists have picketed G-P lumber mills throughout For more coverage of the striking Oregon and northern California, shut pulp and paper workers, see 'Union ting them down. In Portland, A WPPW Talk' on page 25. members picketed the Georgia-Pacific headquarters. On October 28, Local 13 organized a what the company is offering, but march through the streets of Toledo. what it is trying to take away. Accord Union members and their families, ing to Chuck Ritz, Local 13 financial along with other townspeople and local secretary, the most serious is the com longshore unionists, joined the demon pany's demand to eliminate the right stration. to strike and the right to honor picket Many Toledo merchants have lent a lines. hand. The G-P plant of some 550 Another important issue is the ab workers has a big impact on a town of sentee policy. Currently the company 3,000 people. The local cafe has do allows excused absences only for funer nated food and coffee to the pickets. A als. Now it wants to take away Labor sign in the front window reads, "Frank Day as a holiday when the plant is and Judy Are 150% Behind Local13- shut down. Where Are You?'' Amnesty for the strikers is also at But the mill still operates. Materials issue here. "Georgia-Pacific plans on are brought in, and paper is shipped firing some of our people when we go out. Although Teamsters are not cross The issue is what Georgia-Pacific is trying to take away Militant/Joel Shapiro back," says Ritz. "It doesn't matter if ing the picket lines, they allow scabs to it's 1 or 100, there must be no reprisals drive their rigs into the mill. against any member of Local 13." Construction workers were entering On August 24, about sixty strikers the mill to do repair work, but the Now a picket line is up at the construc tant thing needed to win this strike is were picketing the main gate of the National Labor Relations Board ruled tion gate. "support from all the other unions, so mill when buses of scabs were brought they were doing the work of strikers. According to Ritz, the most impor- no one will go in the mill."

tion over the succeeding decades. bodily frame looked. He never fully remains spotless; the results of his We worked together on the editorial regained his health from that time on. forty-five years of service are enduring. ... Hansen boards of the ISR, the Militant, and IP. Just as we joined forty years ago in He was the trusted confidant of Leon Continued from page 9 We also drafted countless resolutions exposing the Moscow Trial frame-ups Trotsky and James P. Cannon for good fading of the factional situation in the and theses for the movement over the against Trotsky and the Old Bolshev reasons. At the moment of his death he leadership of the United Secretariat. years. I had the habit of submitting iks, so I stood by Joe's side when he was one of the most respected leaders He looked forward to the next steps in much of what I wrote to his discerning became the target of a pettier but no and influential theoreticians of the that process whereby the comrades of judgment, and he rescued me, as he did less perfidious and shameless slander Fourth International. the Organizing Committee for the Re so many others, from committing er campaign engineered by Gerry Healy, We commend his career to younger construction of the Fourth Interna rors, large and small. leader of the Workers Revolutionary revolutionists as an example to learn tional, who had refused to go along We had dissimilar temperaments but Party of Britain, who had broken from from and emulate. As he said in his with the 1963 reunification, would be were of like mind in our conceptions of the Fourth International in 1963. The message to the Young Socialist Al brought together with us in a single philosophy, politics, and methods of Healyite poison penmen accused liance this New Year's: organization. He did what he could in organization. We had learned from Hansen of being an·agent of the GPU "At some point in life, youths are these last years to accelerate this con Trotsky and Cannon the indispensable and the FBI and of conspiring in confronted with a crisis of vergence, which has still to be consum necessity of teamwork and spurned the Trotsky's assassination. They have orientation-that is, to what course mated. "star system" so rife in bourgeois dumped buckets of dirty lies week after should they dedicate themselves for society and among intellectuals that week since October 1975, designed to the rest of their lives? My choice was elevates considerations of personal discredit Joe and compromise the SWP Trotskyism, a choice I have never re * * * prestige and individual accomplish and the Fourth International. gretted. My own association with Joe goes ment above the collective needs of the Healy's vengefulness is traceable to "I hope this will be the occasion for back to the grim days of the Moscow movement. his rage at Joe's effectiveness in con others to make a similar choice. Trials in 1937-38 when we collaborated Joe was skilled at shorthand and a summating the 1963 unification and "For the Fourth International! with Trotsky to unmask these frame paragon of industriousness. We never preventing him from blocking it. He "For the Socialist Workers Party! ups to the world. He, as part of the worried whether he would fail to meet ~as infuriated by Joe's scathing in "For the Young Socialist Alliance!" secretarial staff in Coyoacan; myself a deadline. This highly versatile man dictment of his sectarian politics and January 20, 1979 as national secretary of the American had wide-ranging interests. He was an hooligan organizational practices. Committee for the Defense of Leon assiduous student of Freud, of botany Joe remained unflappable amidst Trotsky in New York. and geology, and of the latest develop these unremitting provocations. He Our first joint literary venture was ments in the physical sciences and neither ignored the false charges nor the writing of the introduction to Trot theories of artistic creativity. His ac became entangled in answering them .... Cambodia sky's last work, In Defense of Marx quaintance with rather esoteric sub bit by bit to the detriment of carrying Continued from page 10 ism. jects and his skills in handicraft often out other tasks. Taking his cue from We warmly respect each other's cause Felix Morrow had made a draft that amazed me. Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky, who both internally and internationally." focused exclusively on the political Joe sometimes impressed people as were likewise victims of slanders in The decision of the Cambodians to issues posed by the conflict with the being taciturn. Though he was conviv their day, he set subjectivity aside and evacuate the cities may have been petty-bourgeois opposition of Burn ial enough among close friends, he was took the occasion of Healy's vendetta done in emulation of the Maoists, who ham, Shachtman, and Ahern and im riot given to chitchat. He grew more to show its political motivation as the have sent hundreds of thousands of permissibly omitted the underlying and more reserved in that respect in expression of sectarianism gone ber dissidents or potential dissidents, par philosophical and methodological as later years, as though he was husband serk and the bankruptcy of that type of ticularly among the youth, into the pects. We, like Trotsky, considered the ing his energy for priority matters. anti-Marxist politics. countryside for "reeducation." Does fundamental questions of Marxist the He came of sturdy stock (his father is His articles refuting the allegations, Peking consider the Cambodians to ory involved of greater long-term im still living at ninety-five) and was assembled in an educational bulletin have been overzealous? So far the portance than the immediate issues physically vigorous and active up to entitled "Healy's Big Lie," can serve as writers for Hsinhua have maintained a that had precipitated the factional dis 1965, . when he suffered a massive a textbook on how Marxists handle the - discreet silence. putes. peritonitis attack in Paris that brought most despicable attacks by enemies of The lineaments of the Cambodian The Political Committee rejected him close to death's door. When their movement. · revolution are beginning to emerge. It Morrow's treatment as inadequate and Evelyn and I and Farrell met him and Joe was one of the twelve plaintiffs should not take long until a more turned the assignment over to us. Our Reba at the airport upon their return to in the landmark suit of the SWP concrete assessment can be made. agreement on basic matters provided a the United States, we were shocked against government harassment. However, it is still too early to accu durable basis for intimate collabora- and dismayed to see how frail his Joe's reputation as a revolutionist rately forecast its coming stages. 24 Newark school board National picket line

to lay off 1,100 workers St. Louis teachers defy court order bears no responsibility for the cuts, the By Richard Ariza Striking St. Louis teachers have closed down the city's schools in NEWARK-At a tumultuous meet mayor appoints the members of the defiance of a court order prohibiting their walkout. ing of 1,300 school employees, stu school board. Members of American Federation of Teachers Local 420 struck January dents, and parents on January 20, the In a leaflet distributed at the Janu 16 over wages, class size, and preparatory time. The school board Newark School Board voted to proceed ary 20 meeting, members of the Social immediately obtained a temporary antistrike injunction. with mass layoffs. ist Workers Party called for taxing the Despite court threats and the arrest of five AIT pickets, the strikers Firing more than 1,100 school em banks and corporations to pay for the ployees is the way the board has school deficit. have held firm. Before classes were canceled January 18, only 644 out of some 4,000 teachers reported for work, and only 23 percent of the system's chosen to close the district's $4.6 mil The $4.6 million needed is a drop in lion budget deficit. 74,000 students attended classes. the bucket compared to the $60 million A permanent injunction is expected January 24. But in two spirited The angry reaction of the audience the state pays out annually in interest mass rallies this past week, the teachers voted to press on with their fight. forced the board to suspend the read payments on its bonds, the SWP said. ing of their school "restructuring" plan Moreover, 60 percent of Newark's and move directly into discussion. One Court breaks steel haulers' strike property-all of it owned by private Threatened with the imprisonment of their leadership and crippling after another, teachers, parents, and corporations and the Port Authority students voiced their opposition to the fines, 300 striking members of the Fraternal Association of Steel Haulers is not taxed at its assessed value. More (FASH) voted overwhelmingly at a January 19 meeting in Pittsburgh to cutbacks. than $30 million could be raised by Many speakers complained that art end their nine-week shutdown. taxing the Port Authority alone. and music are especially hard hit and Federal District Judge Louis Rosenberg ordered the strikers back to that the entire after-school recreational work after ruling that as a "business organization" FASH does not have program is being dismantled. the right to strike. The "antitrust" suit was hypocritically filed by U.S. Amiri Baraka received cheers when Steel and six other Pittsburgh-area steel companies. he said, "These cuts will make Ne "It was the unfair ruling by the court that broke the strike and made us wark's third-rate schools tenth rate." discontinue our fight at this time," said FASH leader Bill Hill. Layoff votes taken at two previous The independent truckers were striking to gain union recognition for meetings were invalidated in court F ASH and to win better pay and decent working conditions. Out of some because the board failed to comply :10,000 steel haulers, 10,000 are Teamsters. But even they are denied the with the state's "sunshine" law, requir right to vote on their contracts. ing adequate public notice of such The steel haulers' shutdown slowed steel shipments anJ forced a few meetings. smaller plants to close. But with the aid of the Teamster bureaucracy, Alonzo Kittrels, the superintendent state police, and courts, the big steel companies were able to make most of schools, now claims that the delay deliveries. in the layoffs will necessitate an addi According to Hill, FASH will continue to fight to reinstate some 200 tional cut of 200 jobs unless the Ne strikers who have been fired. Citing the establishment of new FASH wark Teachers Union agrees to various chapters and increased pressure by the steel haulers on negotiators for give-back demands. These include for going several days' pay and assuming the Teamsters Master Freight Agreement, Hill concluded, "FASH has the cost of health insurance through come out of the strike much stronger.... This has just been one battle in next September. our struggle to represent ourselves and direct our destiny." NTU President Carole Graves has BRAC contract settlements warned Mayor Kenneth Gibson that Three days before their January 18 deadline, officials of the Brother there will be a "thorough shut down of Newark Mayor Gibson, who pretends to hood of Railway and Airline Clerks reached a tentative thirty-nine-month the school system" if he doesn't inter 'stand above' school layoffs, appoints vene. Despite Gibson's pretense that he school board members. pact with the major U.S. railroads. According to BRAC President Fred Kroll, the new contract includes a 36 percent wage increase and "significant" improvements in health and welfare benefits. The 'wage and benefit package exceeds Carter's 7 percent guidelines. NY doctors strike to But negotiators expect the BRAC contract will be okayed by Carter because eleven other rail unions had already agreed to a similar settle ment before the imposition of the government's wage guidelines. protest hospital cutbacks BRAC members will vote on the agreement by mail ballot-with one By Vivian Sahner "When the city proposes to cut from catch. Under the union's ratification procedure, workers who do not cast a NEW YORK-The Committee of In health care, it is a disgusting and sad vote are counted as voting for approval. terns and Residents staged a one-day situation ... a class and race situa The national BRAC settlement followed the January 8 announcement strike here January 17 to protest hospi tion," Roberts said. of a local union agreement with the Norfolk and Western Railway. Last tal cutbacks and closings planned by The one-day action occured despite summer BRAC members struck the N&W line for eighty-two days, Mayor Edward Koch. The job action at an injunction against it by the state eventually causing a national work stoppage when their pickets spread to nine of the seventeen municipal hospi supreme court and threats by city railroads engaged in a mutual-aid pact with the N&W. The rail strike was tals was the first ever by doctors officials to penalize leaders of the quickly broken by presidential injunction. against the city's hospital system. strike under the New York State Tay The main strike issues were union jurisdiction and job security. More than half the CIR, a bargain lor Law. According to the January 22 Business Week, the N&W settlement ing unit for some 2,000 doctors, took Solidarity pickets were held at sev prohibits the removal of jobs covered by the union contract and restores part in the walkout. Others, under the eral voluntary hospitals. The largest to BRAC 400 jobs previously removed. direction of the CIR, remained on duty was in front of Montefiore Hospital in BRAC did not win its demand for a union veto over technological work to cover for the demonstrators outside. the Bronx, which is headed by Koch's changes and for extending the union's jurisdiction to nonclerical workers. CIR President Michael Schoolman adviser, Cherkasky, the reputed archi Worst of all, BRAC officials agreed to a wage scale that assigns new tect of the cuts. told the Militant that his organization workers second-class status. They will be paid only 85 percent of full believes the one-day action was "an Among the groups that issued state wages their first year and 95 percent their second. - unqualified success." ments of support for the striking doc Referring to news coverage that dis tors were the NAACP Metropolitan Judge rules against Stearns miners missed the action as ineffective be Council, AFSCME District Council 37, Kentucky Judge J.B. Johnson, Jr., has once again shown whose side cause hospital services were uninter Licensed Practical Nurses of New York he's on in the confrontation between Stearns miners and the Blue rupted, Schoolman said, "The papers State, New York State Nurses Associa Diamond Coal Company. The miners have been on strike for a United just want to smear us for putting the tion, Brooklyn Medical Society, and Mine Workers contract since July 1976. spotlight on the proposed cutbacks. Doctor's Council. On January 15, Johnson rejected the UMWA's request that the First they said that we would kill Three days after the protest, Koch's company be found in contempt of Johnson's own court order. He also patients if we went out on strike. Now latest "money saving" scheme was denied the union's request that the number of court-allowed pickets be they say that the strike failed because disclosed. He is now trying to give increased at the mine entrances. we didn't kill patients. But killing away the recently completed $200 mil It took six months for the UMW A to make it to a court hearing to air patients was never our goal. The cut lion Woodhull Hospital in Brooklyn to backs will kill people, and that is what their charges. At that hearing last September, the union submitted the U.S. Justice Department. The feds evidence to prove that Blue Diamond is exceeding Johnson's limit on the we are protesting." could convert it, city officials say, into The biggest municipal demonstra number of private guards on duty inside the mine. And the union a prison or a detention center for so contended that state police are refusing to enforce the order against tion was at Harlem Hospital Center. called illegal aliens. Dr. Jonathan House, head of the CIR carrying weapons across the picket line into the mine. strike committee, told 200 physicians, The evidence included a tape recording of one side of a radio-telephone hospital employees, and community conversation between a guard and his head office. The guard talked of members on the picket line that "the bringing the outlawed guns into the mine, and of how the head of the mayor and [City Health Advisor] Cher state police had told him it was okay as long as the guns were not visible. kasky are trying to balance the city's In delivering his all-out rejection, Johnson said the union's charge that budget on the backs of the poor." police and the security outfit were conspiring to smuggle wt>apons inside "We're outraged that more and more the mine "bordered on utter ridiculousness." the right to health care, which is the ,Johnson-who has closed his eyes to mass beatings and arrests of right to life, is not a priority in this strikers, steady gunfire aimed at pickets from Blue Diamond's hired city," Lillian Roberts told the crowd. thugs, and countless other criminal violations of miners' rights-declared Roberts is associate director of District that to search the cars of guards entering the mine, as the union Council 37 of the American Federation District Council 37 leader Lillian Roberts requested, would violate their Fifth Amendment rights. of State, County and Municipal Em speaking to January 17 demonstration -Shelley Kramer ployees. at Harlem Hospital Center.

THE MILITANT/FEBRUARY 2, 1979 25 World Outlook News, analysis, and discussion of international political events

Life in a South African ghetto Inside Soweto today By Ernest Harsch white authorities have refused to con- SOWETO-Fully two years after the struct enough housing. In fact, the massive political upheavals that swept number of new houses built each year this Black township, little, if anything, has steadily declined since the mid- has been done to improve the de- 1960s. During 1978, no houses what- pressed conditions here. soever were put up by the West Rand A visit through a number of the Administration Board (WRAB), which townships that make up Soweto* re- runs Soweto. veals a sprawling urban ghetto, a As a result, 25,000 Soweto families- segregated residential area for "Afri- more than 100,000 persons-are now cans only." on the official waiting list for new For more than a million and a quar- houses; many others have not even ter Blacks, Soweto is home. Although bothered to apply, since they are in it is not officially designated as a city, Soweto illegally or are ineligible to it is the largest urban area in South obtain houses (a category that includes Africa in terms of population size, and widows, deserted or divorced wives, among the five largest in Africa south and unmarried mothers). of the Sahara. It lies over thirty-three But they must live somewhere. So square miles of generally level terrain, they squeeze in with friends or rela- southwest of the "white" city of Johan- tives. nesburg, from which it is separated by A mere 15 percent of Soweto's houses a wide cordon sanitaire of open fields. have bathrooms; almost all toilets are Unlike Johannesburg, with its mod- out in back. Two-thirds lack hot run- ern apartment complexes, office build- ning water. Most are without electric- ings, and skyscrapers, Soweto is flat. ity and are lighted only by candles and Only a handful of buildings in Soweto paraffin lamps. Some areas of Soweto are · more than one-story high. The have only one bed for every three

skyline is interrupted only by the two occupants. Three-fourths of the houses lntercontrnental Press-I nprecor/Ernest Harsch huge cooling towers of the Orlando lack ceilings; since most have roofs of Soweto residents live six and seven to a house power station on the outskirts of the corrugated iron sheeting, they are township, and the rows of almost quite hot in the summer, and chilly in identical houses stretch on for mile winter. Soweto has one of the highest crime stayed away from the polls during the after mile. No security rates in the world. Apartheid, a system "elections" to the council in early 1978. One is immediately struck by the The residents of Soweto have almost of institutionalized violence against The regime's claims aside, Sowetans bleakness of Soweto: the unpaved red no security and cannot own their land Blacks, produces violent reactions. have no control over their conditions of dirt roads scarred by mammoth pot- they live on; it is owned by the WRAB, The problem of crime is intensified life. Those are dictated by the white holes, the absence of any sidewalks, to which they must pay up to a quarter by widespread alcoholism, for which minority regime. the litter in the streets and the open of their incomes in rent. The ownership the white authorities are directly re Just as Blacks in Soweto itself have fields, the wrecks of old cars, the of houses is prohibitive to all but a sponsible. The WRAB has a monopoly no real rights, they are totally excluded uniform rows of unadorned red or gray privileged few: around R6,600 on all legal sales of alcoholic beverages from the franchise on a national level. brick houses, the lack of any malls or (US$7,590) for the newer type of in Soweto, selling, according to a They have no say over the laws downtown areas. houses, a figure a number of times WRAB official, 160 million barrels of adopted by the all-white parliament, Soweto has few of the social ameni- higher than the average family income beer a year, at 9 cents a liter. nor can they legally object to the ties usually associated with urban life. for an entire year. Many beer halls and liquor stores in implementation of Pretoria's racist pol It has only three cinemas, one hotel, A few of the houses in Soweto, espe- Soweto were put to the torch during the ICies. three banks, three post offices, one hos- cially in Dube township, are large and 1976 rebellions, as symbols of the pita!, and few stores that sell anything impressive, with well-manicured flow- regime's attempts to keep Soweto sub Reflects oppression more than groceries or the commonest erbeds and exteriors that speak of missive. Soweto reflects, in microcosm, the household items. There are no super- affluence. They belong to Richard Ma- The material conditions of life in kinds of oppression that Blacks are markets or shopping centers, and only ponya, Ephraim Tshabalala, and other Soweto are made that much worse by subjected to through out the country. one produce market. Most sports fields Soweto "millionaires," who are favored the severe political and social oppres Sowetans cannot own the land on are bare stretches of dusty land. Tele- by the authorities for their collabora sion every Sowetan faces daily. which their houses stand; on a na phones are rare, and street lighting is tionist roles. Every African ovel" sixteen years of tional level, they are excluded from absent in most of the township. For the vast bulk of Soweto's popula- age must carry a reference book land ownership in 87 percent of the tion, however, poverty is the norm. It commonly called a pass-which in country. Africans in Soweto are segre Heavy pall of smoke can be seen in the unpainted walls and cludes information on the individual's gated residentially within the town In both summer and winter, a heavy old furniture in countless houses, in personal background, employment re ship along ethnic lines; nationally they pall of grayish smoke emanating from the worn and faded clothes of children cord, tax payments, and authorization face a divide-and-rule policy that seeks coal and wood stoves hangs over and adults alike, and in the skinny to live in Soweto. to fragment them as Zulus, Xhosas, Soweto for much of the morning. limbs and short stature of many young Because of the regime's rigid system Sothos, Pedis, Vendas, and so on. "The health services are terrible," Sowetans. of "influx control," which limits who Just as Blacks throughout South says Dr. Nthato Motlana, chairperson Fully 80 percent of all Soweto house can legally live in Soweto, it is very Africa are viewed as rightless laborers of the Soweto Committee of Ten, a holds live below the semiofficial Min difficult for anyone not born in Soweto for the white businessmen and entre broad-based community group. "I ha imum Effective Level, a common pov and actively employed in the area to preneurs, Soweto is considered an eco ven't seen roads being tarred in the erty indicator. That level, currently at obtain permission to live there with nomic appendage to Johannesburg, last ten years and there's barely any about R200 a month, is supposed to be their family. But many Blacks from the industrial and financial hub of the street lighting. And as for housing, just enough to keep a family of six in a other townships or from the rural South African economy. Soweto is, in thousands have no hope of ever having state of subsistence. In practice, how areas go to Soweto anyway, either to effect, little more than a dormitory for their own homes." ever, even those families who earn that be with relatives or in hopes of finding Johannesburg's Black work force. Those who are lucky enough to get .much have trouble making ends meet. a job. Since they lack the proper signa The reality of this situation is strik houses have little to brag about. The Hunger is constant. A recent study tures in their passes, they live in fear ingly apparent. Every morning some houses themselves are tiny cubicles, found that protein malnutrition is a of being stopped on the street for a 350,000 Black workers in Soweto crowd most with only four rooms. Sowetans "major clinical problem" among pass check or of being caught in the onto the township's train platforms call them "matchboxes." Blacks in the Johannesburg area. nighttime police swoops for pass "of and bus stops, pile into the dilapidated Aside from the large single-sex bar Some 45 percent of all ten-to-twelve fenders." transport, and within a few minutes racks that Soweto's 100,000 migrant year-olds suffer from it. In a half-hearted attempt to lessen whisk off to their jobs in Johannes contract workers must live in, all of the Disease is also prevalent. Tuberculo South Africa's image as a police state, burg. Every night they are hauled back houses in Soweto are officially allotted sis is among the most common. Soweto and to provide a slight fiction of Black to Soweto, their presence in the to families only. schoolchildren have the highest known political representation, the authorities "white" city being tolerated only dur These "matchboxes" are grossly incidence of rheumatic heart disease in have installed a Black-staffed Com ing working hours. overcrowded, with around six or seven the world, a disease in which nutri munity Council in Soweto. It is com The same goes for their residency persons living in each one. Despite tional and socioeconomic factors play posed of prominent collaborators with "rights" within Soweto itself. Blacks Soweto's expanding population, the an important part. the regime. Though it is claimed that it are allowed to live there only as long "runs" the township, it has no real as they fulfill their assigned function High crime rate powers. Its members are considered as cheap and docile laborers. As soon *Greater Soweto is divided into twenty as they are thought to be negligent in eight townships. The ones this correspond Given the overcrowding and government stooges by most Sowetans. ent visited were Orlando East, Orlando poverty-combined with the frustra It is regarded as such a fraud by the that role, they can be unceremoniously West, Dube, Mofolo, White City, Moletsane, tions generated by white supremacist township's inhabitants that fully 94 booted out, no matter how long they Tladi, Jabavu, Mapetla, Zola, and Jabulani. society-it IS not surprising that percent of the eligible voters in Soweto may have lived in Soweto. And while

26 Black workers are permitted to live in the area, they receive only the barest minimum-and in many cases not Trial puts spotlight on CIA link even that-to keep them going. Soweto's basic function as an urban labor reservoir for the white-owned factories and mines 1s repeated to Letelier and Moffitt murders throughout the country in the By Arnold Weissberg woulcl give it to the United States." hundreds of Black townships and Who killed Orlando Letelier and Townley testified January 18 that shantytowns that are clustered around Ronni Moffitt? the orders for the killings came from every "white" city. Visits to Lamont, The answer, slowly coming to light, Chilean Lieutenant Colonel Pedro Es KwaMashu, and Ntuzuma near Dur takes us to the highest levels of the pinoza in the summer of 1976. Espin ban and to Diepriver, Retreat, Grassy U.S. government via the secret rooms oza was then DINA's operations chief. Park, and Crossroads near Cape Town of the CIA and its client, the bloody Townley testified that he made his revealed conditions similar to-and in Pinochet regime that rules Chile. way into the United States under a some cases worse than-those in Letelier was an official in Salvador false name and contacted members of Soweto. Allende's Popular Unity government the Cuban Nationalist Movement, a terrorist outfit. Soweto, of course, is much better that was overthrown by the Chilean The defendants claim that Townley known than the other townships, military in 1973. Letelier lived in exile set up the Letelier bombing on orders partly because of its sheer size, but in Washington and was an outspoken from the CIA. "CIA traitor" they most of all because of the way in which opponent of the butchers who run his shouted at him as he entered the the people of Soweto stood up against country. On September 21, 1976, he courtroom to testify. the racist system of apartheid. It was and Moffitt were killed in Washington, The CIA admitted last month that it the focus of the 1976 rebellions. when a remote-control bomb destroyed the car in which they were riding. sought a security clearance for Town The signs of those uprisings are still A trial now in progress has shed new ley in 1971 in order to use him "in an visible today: the burned-out remnants light on responsibility for the double operational capacity." The agency of liquor stores and WRAB offices, the murder. not noted for its honesty-claims it has broken windows in many high schools The defendants are three anti-Castro no record that it ever employed Town resulting from protests against the Cubans. The chief prosecution witness ley, however. racist educational system, the small, is a confessed participant in the Meanwhile, the U.S. government has metal grave markers for the victims of murders, Michael Townley. Townley asked Chile to send Espinoza and he also work for CIA? the police terror. worked for Pinochet's secret police General Manuel Contreras, former head of the Chilean secret police, to The bristling police stations still the DINA. In return for his testimony, President John Kennedy-an outright the U.S. government agreed to seek testify at the trial. stand in Soweto, surrounded by heavy invasion of the island. parole for him after he serves forty A growing body of evidence links the barbed-wire fences, like outposts in an Washington has also employed anti CIA to the Letelier and Moffitt occupied territory. The cars of the months of a ten-year term. Castro terrorists in violent operations murders. DINA was trained and orga security police still converge on houses Trial proceedings January 23 re against opponents of government poli nized under CIA auspices. Washing in Soweto at any time of the day or vealed a secret deal signed by the U.S. cies in this country, too. ton's efforts to topple the Allende re night, to round up real or suspected and Chilean governments to keep the As the pact of secrecy between the gime were carried out by the CIA. political activists for the terrifying ride lid on explosive findings that might U.S. and Chilean governments shows, And the U.S. government has to John Vorster Square, the main surface in the Townley investigation. the full story of the Letelier murder Explaining the agreement to Federal worked hand in glove with anti-Castro police headquarters in Johannesburg. and the dozens of other crimes like it Judge Barrington Parker, U.S. prosec terrorists in its unending effort to The newspapers in Soweto still carry will not be uncovered at the current utor Eugene Propper said, " ... We restore capitalism in Cuba against the the virtually daily reports of political trial. That will happen only when the would not spread it to the press, and wishes of the Cuban people. These arrests and trials, and every now and CIA is forced to open for public scrut Chile, it turn, said if it came up with terrorists have used sabotage, bombs, then of yet another death in detention. iny all its files on ties to the Chilean and-under air protection provided by The massive repression of the past any information in the Letelier case it butchers and right-wing Cuban outfits. two years has imposed an uneasy calm on Soweto. But the population has not been beaten into submission. Political activists are cautious, but their contin ued willingness to resist is reflected in the activities of groups like the Soweto Students League, the Soweto Action Meany's boycott and Carter's blockade cial explaining that the Chile boy- So Meany and his cronies will give Committee, and others that are trying By Steve Clark Last fall AFL-CIO President cott was canceled because "We don't Pinochet "more time," while they to give some focus to the discontent George Meany announced plans to want to give Pinochet an excuse for figure out how to make the blockade through the few open and legal chan participate in a "human rights" calling off the reforms." He also said of Cuba "more effective." Just by nels left to them. Some activists are boycott of Chile, Nicaragua, and the Nicaragua boycott had been coincidence, the Carter administra organizing clandestinely. Cuba. The boycott had been called deferred pending a possible plebis- tion, too, is now trying to make the In the wake of the initial Soweto by the AFL-CIO-dominated Inter- cite on the future of the Somoza uprisings, the authorities tried to de blockade more effective in retalia American Workers Organization government-a ploy to keep the dic- fuse some of the anger by promising tion for Cuba's stubborn refusal to (ORIT). tator in power that has·been rejected improvements in Soweto's conditions. withdraw its support to liberation struggles in Africa. But two years later, few things have Since Washington and its closest by most opposition groups in Nicara- changed. In the words of one Soweto Latin American allies already main- gua. ORIT made its decision to drop the resident, "Soweto's even deteriorated, tain a blockade against Cuba, some What about the Cuba boycott? Chile boycott after negotiations in if that's possible." people initially greeted Meany's ac- It's been deferred, too. December with the military junta The uneasy calm that now hangs tion as a welcome initiative to put Why? "It was also felt that more carried out by Peter Grace. Who is he? over Soweto can be easily broken. Life the U.S. labor movement behind the time was needed to plan an effective A rank-and-file unionist? Cer under apartheid makes that inevitable. fight for democratic and trade-union boycott against Cuba, which has no tainly not. From Intercontinental Press/lnprecor rights in Chile and Nicaragua. trade with the United States," ac The Cuban newspaper Granma, cording to the Times. A trade-union official, then? Not however, expressed a different view even that. in its December 31 issue. Pointing to Grace is president of the huge the hypocrisy of the AFL-CIO's W.R. Grace and Company, a U.S. charges of human rights violations sugar monopoly with major holdings in Cuba, Granma said: in Latin America and the Carib "This criminal [U.S.J blockade ... bean! He, along with Nelson Rocke is the most serious violation of hu- feller, is a board member of the AFL . man rights this century. Deep down, CIO-inspired American Institute for this campaign of the imperialists Free Labor Development, which is and their trade union agents is not notorious for fronting for the CIA. intended to boycott either Pinochet The AIFLD is closely linked to or Somoza. Wait a few more weeks ORIT. and see." A few weeks was all it took. Grace is a close friend of the new On January 16 ORIT and the Chilean labor minister, Jose Pinera, AFL-CIO dropped plans for their according to the January 17 Wash boycott of Chile, after concluding ington Post. Piiiera promised Grace that. the bloody regime there is "to allow collective bargaining, mending its ways with regard to union dues checkoff and other activi union rights. ties demanded by the unions. How According to a Chilean embassy ever, strikes 'against the national official in Washington, "The deci /~···· interest' are prohibited and some of sion was to give Chile time to do the other concessions are not to take what it has promised." 1Hi ~'-11A~f effect until June." The January 17 New York Times MEANY: Wants to give junta 'more No wonder Granma headlined its Intercontinental Press-lnprecor/Ernest Harsch quotes an unnamed U.S. labor offi- time' article, "Boycott imperialist-style." Soweto children

THE MILITANT/FEBRUARY 2, 1979 27 In Brief

Brabham was armed. But U.S. ing the Trident submarine base under federal laws. ters union pension fund. He Attorney Peter Schlam charged at nearby Bangor last spring. This leaves millions of e~pected a $400 monthly pen Quote unquote that Walker "went into a They were charged with ille workers unfairly deprived of siOn. crouch, pointed -his gun at gally entering the base. their pensions with no legal But the fund wouldn't pay, recourse. "This kind of situa John Brabham's head, lined The Trident sub and missile because he had been laid off for tion is a learning expe him up in his sight, and calmly system costs $2 billion each. If the court had ruled differ four months in 1960. Therefore, ently, billions of dollars in rience." and cooly pulled the trigger." Each sub carries twenty-four he had failed to work the pension payments would have -A spokesperson for Testimony from Walker's missiles with 17 warheads. All twenty consecutive years nec been collectible. Workers could · Bay Area Rapid Transit partner bore out Schlam's 408 warheads are five times as essary to qualify. after an explosion and charge. powerful as the atom bomb have sued pension fund man fire in which one fireman No decision has been made dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. agers for failing to tell them Daniel's case is all too typi was killed and fifty-one on a retrial for Walker again. The navy wants thirty Trident that they had only a slim cal. Pension funds-both union passengers injured. subs. chance of ever collecting a and corporate-take in billions Two hundred sixty-six people dime. and pay out peanuts. NUKE TRIALS: had been arrested at the pro The decision came in the Every worker has the right to ONE WIN, ONE LOSS test. Charges were dropped case of John Daniel. Daniel a secure, federally funded re KILLER COP Twenty-five anti-nuclear against 85, and the rest retired as a truck driver in 1973 tirement. And the employers, OFF THE HOOK power protesters were freed in pleaded guilty. after more than twenty-two not working people, should foot An all-white federal court Indiana after a six-member After the trial, the defend years as a member of a Teams- the bill. jury was unable to reach a jury was unable to reach a ants turned in a petition signed verdict in the trial of William verdict in their trespassing by thousands of supporters Walker, a former New York trial last month. The support who declared their solidarity City cop who shot and killed ers of the Paddlewheel Alliance with the protest. an unarmed Black student in were arrested October 7 after Vets seek discharge upgrading 1973. Walker was charged with climbing a fence onto the Mar violating the civil rights of ble Hill, Indiana, reactor site PENSION NO SECURITY Some 1.3 million veterans also want the names of all John Brabham. He had earlier near Louisville. A January 16 Supreme Court have received less-than vets who have received less been acquitted in state court of Prosecutor Merritt Alcorn an ruling on pensions has both honorable discharges from than-honorable discharges. murder. nounced he would not try corporate bigwigs and trade the U.S. armed forces. A Under a 1978law, vets have The prosecution charged that another trial, but asked the union bureaucrats smiling. disproportionate number are only until the end of this \\ alker had tossed a toy gun defendants to plead guilty. The court ruled that workers Blacks and Latinos, many of year to have less-than n•·xt to Brabham's body to Meanwhile, on January 2, who have been cheated out of whom were penalized for honorable discharges re ju .tify the shooting. 176 people were convicted in their hard-earned pensions anti-Vietnam War activities viewed for upgrading. 'Jalker claimed he thought Seattle federal court for protest- have no legal right to sue or protests against racist "Receipt of a less-than treatment. honorable discharge stig Two veterans groups have matizes its recipient," de now sued the government to clares the court brief filed by end arbitrary and illegal the groups, "impairs his or less-than-honorable dis her social and economic op charges. The two groups, the portunities in civilian life Veterans Education Project and engenders substantial U.S. INTERVENTION IN NICARAGUA and the National Associa prejudice against him or her NO TO THE U.S. SPONSORED PlEBISCITE tion of Concerned Veterans, in civilian life." DEMONSTRATE SAT. FEB. 3AT 1:00PM NICARAGUAN CONSULATE-51st ST & 6th AVE.

SPONSORED BY: Coalition for a Free Nicaragua For more information call: (211) 675-9158 or 926-73;]1 or 876-2992

Partial list of endorsers: As.'-IK'latmn for I Iuman R.l~hb Ill ~H·ara)lua: ('omltt' dt• ('t•ntroa!llt'l'lt"anu:- l'nh!o:--: l'unllllltlt•t• 111 Sol~dar1ty with tht• P(•op!t>of :-;i{'ara~a: ('omltl' ( 'hill'no Antifa~l'l~la: :\t•\\ York ( 'ummlttt•t•on ;\•('ara)!ua: I hrigt•ntt•:-SI~ldtt·alt·~( 'hilt·nn:-.t•n Exdio; Host<>S Community Collt•)Ct' ~Studt•nt ( ~()n·rnmt•nu: S'.:\.1'.1'.: :\L\.I'.l ·.-Chdt·. El Comllt'":\1.1.:\'. P.: .·\nt1-l mpt•nah:-.t :\lm·t·nwnt for Socialism in Ar)Ct'ntina !~1.A.S.A.I: l'm·rto Hl{'an I>t•mot-ratlt' l'nion: ('aribb.·an \'illa)Ct'. <'t•rltt•r for Cullan SttHllt'S. :\nwri('an lndmn ~ovt•rTa•nt-lntt•rnational Ind1an Tn•aty ( 'ouneil: Suranwrit·anos t "n Jdo..;: Ht•lwl(adt• llnus1 nl( :\loHrnt•nt: F.t · .S.I': \l.I.I..l..: \1t•xJcan Brotht'rhnnd: \'t•n('t•rt•mo:-. Hri)Catlt·: ( 'n1tt'(l Tn·nwnt Tradt•s: S' .I.C.II. 1S'on-lnll'rvt•ntJon in l 'hdt•J: Thd ;uardian: :\" ..-\.<".L.A.: llnnwfrnnt: Commission fortht• Eliminatum of Racism. \1arlln l.utht·r 1-\Jnl(.lr. Frt•t•dom .-\.-.sot·iation for( 'omnHI!llt~· :\t'tJon.( 'ount·ilof( "hurt·hto:-.( 'it.\" of ~f>W York. JU•,·. I>r. H.oht.•rt ~~- Kmlot:k. S't•w York ( "1t~· ('Jwrnployt·d and \\'l'lfart• ( 'ount·d: \taril.vn ( 'lt•mnwn:-.. ( 't•ntt·r for ( 'onstitut1onal Rights: Ir~nian Studt•nts Asstx-iatJon ~ Ldt Platform I:< 'oal1tion of ( ;rassrtN•L" Wonwn: [ ·.s. E~hi~lpJ:m Frit•ndsh 1p ( 'omm1ttt>~·: Fl)Chtb:u·h:: Black Act1on CommJttt•t•: Pt'Op!t'!' lh·rald-1\•oplt•:-. IJPrnt){"ratw Assn.: Workt•r!'> \'it•wpoint: S!Jt'lahst Worh:t•rs Party: Put>rto H.1l·an Stwlali:-.t Party (PSPl: Youth AJ>t"ainst War and Fa.-.ci:-.m: Wurkt•rs Wnr!d Party: Poor an1l Work in!( i 1PnJllt•s Part.\'lS't•w York< 'ityl: l'rol(n•s:-.l\"t' Iran Jan Committee. racism? What•s Going On

CALIFORNIA ocratic Party. Speakers: Andrew Pulley, HOW THE TRADE UNIONS WERE tional Committee; David McReynolds, member of United Steelworkers Local BUILT. Speaker: Harry DeBoer, partici MISSOURI staff member, War Resisters League. Fri.. LOS ANGELES: SOUTHEAST 1066, Socialist Workers Party candidate pant in the historic 1934 Minneapolis ST. LOUIS Feb. 2, 8 p.m. Marc Ballroom, 27 Union WOMEN"S STRUGGLE IN U.S. HIS for mayor of Chicago; Fred Halstead, Teamster strike. Fri., Feb. 2, 7:30 p.m. EUGENE V. DEBS AND THE AMERI· Sq. West. Donation: $1.50. Ausp: Militant TORY. Speaker: Stephanie Coontz. pro leader of the anti-Vietnam War move Carpenter's Hall, 307 1st St. N .. Virginia. CAN MOVEMENT. A film. Speaker: Joe Forum. For more information call (212) fessor of history in women's struggles ment, 1968 SWP presidential candidate; Donation: $1.50. Ausp: Iron Range Mili Henry, Socialist Workers Party. Sun., Feb. 982-8214. and coordinator of women's studies. Thabo Ntweng, SWP candidate for mayor tant Labor Forum. For more information 4, 7 p.m. 6223 Delmar Blvd. Donation: $2. Evergreen College. Washington. Fri., Feb. of Cleveland, member of United Auto call (218) 749-6327. Ausp: Militant Forum. For more informa 2, 8 p.m. 2554 Saturn Ave. Huntington Pk. Workers Local 217. Sat., Feb 3, 7 p.m. tion call (314) 725-1570. Donation: $1.50. Ausp: Militant Forum. Shoeworkers Hall, 1632 N. Milwaukee. For more information call (213) 582-1975. Donation: $2. Ausp: Socialist Workers OHIO Mayoral Campaign. For more information CLEVELAND SANTA MONICA call (312) 939-0737. MINNESOTA NEW MEXICO THE CLEVELAND CRISIS. Speakers: CONFERENCE ON NO NUKES. Speak Ernest Harris, Bell Neighborhood Center; ers: Daniel Ellsberg; Helen Caldicott, ST. PAUL ALBUQUERQUE Steve Tormey, United Electrical Workers; physician. Sat.-Sun. Jan. 27-28, 10 a.m. MICHIGAN HOW TO FIGHT NAZI ATTACKS. EDUCATION AND THE CHICANO Thabo Ntweng, Socialist Workers Party Santa Monica College. Ausp: Alliance for Speakers: George Latimer, mayor of St. COMMUNITY. Speakers to be an mayoral candidate; others. Sun., Feb. 4. 7 Survival. For more information call (213) DETROIT Paul; Charles Breese, president of St. nounced. Fri., Feb. 2. 8 p.m. 108 Morning p.m. Room 346 University Center. Cleve 839-0240. THE MILITANT: FIFTY YEARS OF Paul NAACP; Yusef Mgeni, coordinator of side NE. Donation: $1.50. Ausp: Socialist land State University. Donation: $1. Ausp: STRUGGLE. Speakers: Larry Seigle, Malcolm X Pan Afrikan Nationalist Insti Workers Party. For more information call Militant Forum. For more information call former editor of the 'Militant'; David Her tute; Jim Kendrick, Socialist Workers (505) 255-6869. (216) 991-5030. resnoll, Wayne State prof. of English; Liz Party. Thurs., Feb. 1, 7:30p.m. 373 Uni COLORADO Ziers, United Auto Workers Local 600 versity Ave. Donation: $1.25. Ausp: St. DENVER Women's Committee, member of Socialist Paul Militant Forum. For more informa HECTOR MARROQUIN'S FIGHT FOR Workers Party; Jim Lafferty, former na tion call (612) 222-8929. NEW YORK WASHINGTON POLITICAL ASYLUM. Speakers: Silvia tional coordinator of National Peace Ac NEW YORK CITY SEATTLE Zapata, Denver coordinator of Marroquin tion Coalition; Mac Warren, UAW Local CHILE TODAY: THE LETELIER AS· CHINA AFTER MAO. Speaker: Chu-lai Defense Committee; others. Fri., Feb. 2, 600. member of SWP National Commit MISSOURI SASSINATION. Film, 'Chile"s Watergate'; Lee. Socialist Workers Party. Fri., Feb. 2, 7:30p.m. 126 W. 12th Ave. Donation: $1. tee. Sun .. Jan. 28, Cocktails 6:30 p.m.; Speaker, Jose Letelier, son of Orlando 8 p.m. 4868 Rainier Ave., South Seattle. Ausp: Militant Forum. For more informa classical guitar music, 7 p.m.; program, KANSAS CITY Letelier. Thurs., Feb. 1. 7:30p.m. Earl Hall Donation: $1. Ausp: Militant Forum. For tion call (303) 534-8954. 7:30 p.m. 6404 Woodward. Donation: BENEFIT DINNER FOR HECTOR Auditorium, Columbia Univ., 118th St. & more information call (206) 723-5330. $2.50. Ausp: Militant Forum. For more MARROQUIN. Full Mexican dinner. Sat., Broadway. Ausp: Columbia University information call (313) 875-5322. Feb. 3, 7-9 p.m. Guadalupe Parish Center, Committee for Human Rights in Chile. THE REVOLUTION IN IRAN. Speaker: ILLINOIS 1015 W. 23rd St. Donation: $2.50. Ad Kate Daher, Socialist Workers Party. Fri., vance tickets available from Parish Cen HOW TO STOP NUCLEAR POWER Feb. 9, 8 p.m. 4868 Rainier Ave., South CHICAGO ter or at Fool Killer, 2 W. 39th St. Ausp: AND NUCLEAR WEAPONS. Speakers: Seattle. Donation: $1. Ausp: Militant Fo CHICAGO: THE CITY THAT WORKS? MINNESOTA Hector Marroquin Defense Committee. Fred Halstead, author of 'Out Now!', rum. For more information call (206) 723- Hear the socialist alternative to the Dem- MESABI IRON RANGE For more information call (816) 753-4356. member of Socialist Workers Party Na- 5330. 28 The Great Society Compiled by Arnold Weissberg Harry Ring· Truong and codefendent Ro CONVICTED 'SPY' nald Humphrey were sentenced APPEALS to fifteen years in prison. Both David Truong, a Vietnamese are free on bail pending appeal. student convicted last spring The wheels of justice-Joseph Sta ing one in Beverly Hills that he resold, on trumped-up espionage CARCINOGEN, bile, the first FBI agent sentenced to netting a cool $1 million profit. Com charges, has challenged that MEDIUM RARE prison, admitted filing false documents to mented Rader: "Buy low, sell high. I don't verdict on the grounds that the Fourteen percent of the meat obstruct a grand jury investigation of take 'stupid pills,' you know." government obtained evidence and poultry sold in super charges that he took a $10,000 bribe from by illegally wiretapping and markets contains illegally a bookie. The sentence? A year and a day. Union elves?-From an Xmas essay bugging his home. large amounts of dangerous Which means that with time off he should by a second-grader in Atlanta: "Santa Truong's phone was tapped chemicals, a federal study has be back on the street before you can say told the elves to make toys. So the elves and hidden microphones were revealed. The chemicals this is one country where everyone gets went to work. They made lots of toys, but installed in his home for eight including drugs, pesticides, treated the same. the next day the elves didn't work. Santa months without a court order. and arsenic-are capable of was very mad! He told the elves they were President Carter personally ap causing cancer and birth de Reverse rigging?-South African po fired. The elves were very sad. . . . Santa proved the bugging. The gov fects. lice confiscated a game called, "South could not make toys by himself, so he told The General Accounting Of ernment claims that the presi Africa-The Death of Imperialism." The the elves to come back." dent has the power to order fice report explained that it game pits white government troops warrantless electronic surveil was impossible to keep contam Let 'em eat canned stringbeans lance in cases involving "na inated meat off the market. By against Black guerrillas. And, the cops tional security." the time the tests on slaughter complain, it's weighted so Blacks always The president of the Green Giant Com The Carter administration house samples are completed, win. Declared one minion of the law, "It pany was appointed a member of the has sought to use the case in the meat is already in the store. was politically biased." Presidential Commission on World its efforts to justify Watergate No federal agency has the Hunger. style tactics that have been power to remove dangerously Like a cleaner bomb-President Car exposed and discredited over tainted meat from the market, ter says he favors pointing out the The march of science-Researchers the past several years. the GAO report noted. dangers of smoking, but intends to con have abandoned efforts to develop a feath tinue federal tobacco subsidies because erless chicken because of the physical and "we now have safer cigarettes ... with emotional problems involved (for the less nicotine and tar." Sure. And when it's chickens, we assume). But they are mov diluted a bit, cyanide is safer, too. ing ahead with plans for a powdered Freedom of the press? martini. Which should go nicely with the By Jeff Powers increase before the Public Blessed wit-Stanley Rader, treasurer pizza of the future, topped with sausage CLEVELAND-The Cleve Utilities Commission of of the Worldwide Church of God, was made from soy flour and mozzarella fabri land Plain Dealer that hit Ohio. given three homes by the church, includ- cated from vegetable fat. the streets January 16 had At an emergency meeting no reporter bylines or photo of the Newspaper Guild unit credits on any local news at the paper January 12, stories. reporters decided to demand The reporters were protest Holden's reinstatement on Union Talk ing management's decision the utilities beat, to withhold to prohibit one of their ranks all credit lines and bylines from writing any more sto until that demand was met, ries on the Cleveland Elec and to hold an informa tric Illuminating Company. tional picket line January pany. 13. Grinch Pacific couldn't do it During the past year Bob Two days after the byline The following column by Judith "The major TV stations are giVmg Holden wrote a series of in protest began, management Menschenfreund was written after a about 20 percent coverage to the strikers, depth articles detailing CEI and the Guild worked out a visit to striking pulp and paper and about 80 percent to G-P," says Nel policies. Apparently these compromise, assigning workers during the holidays. son. "As far as the newspapers are con revealing stories so rankled Holden to the book beat cerned, GP is a big advertiser. They can't the giant utility's executives while collaborating with the TOLEDO, Ore.-The sign by the plant afford not to favor their side. We haven't that they pressured the utilities reporter. gate said it: "Grinch Pacific Stole Christ had a chance to give our side." Plain Dealer to get Holden But on January 22, mas." At least they tried to. But for the When asked what forced overtime off their backs. He was re Holden told the news media families of striking pulp and paper mill meant for her husband, she said, "My moved from the utilities beat that two articles on the CEI workers in Toledo, Oregon, Christmas husband's a pipefitter. They can require with the excuse that he within the past week had happened anyway. him to work up to si~teen hours, seven might be "unfair" to CEI. been tampered with by man Toledo is a town of 3,000 people, and days a week. After sixteen hours, they're CEI currently has a re agement and that the issue prior to August 1978, more than 500 of required to send him home for eight hours. quest for a $65 million rate remained unresolved. them were employed in the Georgia But after that, they can put him to work Pacific paper mill. In July a strike by the for another sixteen. It's great for the Association of Western Pulp and Paper paycheck but not so great for the human Workers (A WPPW) began, and it spread to being." more than thirty mills in the Northwest. Many Toledo strikers feel that the com Tractorcade on D.C. With jobs scarce and the union's strike pany is trying to wreck their union. They According to the Ameri tion already on the books fund depleted, Christmas might well not are particularly angry that the company can Agriculture Movement, that benefits small farmers. have been celebrated here if Toledo resi has flown in scabs from as far away as more than 1,500 farmers Tractorcade processions dents had not demonstrated their solidar Miami, Florida, to run the mill. with their tractors-are en from different parts of the ity by contributing everything from mo The strikers say they will not give up route to Washington, D.C., country have been on the ney to tree tinsel for a children's party. their fight until G-P becomes reasonable for a tractorcade demonstra road for several weeks For example, one tavern owner traveled or, as one striker put it, "G-P becomes a tion in early February. The despite snowy weather in up and down the coast collecting dona AAM sponsored widely pub many areas-and support duck swamp again," like the area used to tions from other taverns. be. licized tractorcade protests rallies have taken place in Another local of the A WPPW sent a in Washington and other So on Christmas Eve in Toledo, picket Kansas, Missouri, South Da pickup truck filled with wrapped toys. cities last year. kota, Georgia, and Tennes ing strikers stood in the pouring rain and Despite Grinch G-P, the AWPPW Locall3 see. sang union solidarity songs along with The AAM is calling on the The AAM has set up a union hall became the center of Christmas Christmas carols. A generator lit up the Carter administration to national telephone hot-line festivities for more than 550 children. Christmas tree and illuminated the sign guarantee family farmers a for daily reports on weather Mary Nelson, coordinator of the Christ below it: "We're home for Christmas, decent standard of living in conditions, progress of the mas party and the wife of a striker, told scabs, where are you?" the face of rising production tractorcade, and other news. me, "For some of these kids it's the best costs, and to enforce legisla- Phone (202) 544-5750. Christmas they've ever had. "And it's important for our morale to be able to do this," she continued. "The strike hasn't been easy. Let's face it, when you're losing ·your home and your furni ture, you've got problems. Twenty percent of the strikers have been forced to leave. Georgia-Pacific runs so much of this town that when you need a job, there's not much else. "What keeps us going is that we know we're right. I honestly don't think that 17,000 of us are wrong. We have people in Oregon, Washington, Canada, and Cali fornia, and we're all fighting for the same thing. What's at stake here is the working man's right to defend himself." The company has demanded that the next contract include pension cuts, no strike clauses, and unlimited, forced over time.

THE MILITANT/FEBRUARY 2, 1979 29 Our Revolutionary Heritage Letters Luxemburg on economics Likes Iran coverage An outstanding interpreter of Sixty years ago, on January 15, I've thoroughly enjoyed your the works of Duke Ellington, 1919, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl articles on Iran. I can see that such as "Sophisticated Lady," Liebknecht were murdered. The two you recognize the Iranian "All Too Soon," and "Mood were leaders of the German Sparta situation as a history-making Indigo," his own most cue League, which led an insurrection event and a step forward for outstanding compositions against the German capitalist state in working people the world over. include "Meditations on 1919. The revolution failed, and the I've also really enjoyed the Integration," "Good-Bye Pork German government, led by the So articles by Dick Roberts. Pie Hat," and "Orange Was the cial Democrats, launched a bloody Thomas Jacobs Color of Her Dress, Then Blue wave of repression against the de San Francisco, California Silk." feated workers. It was as part of this A comprehensive repression that Liebknecht and Lux introduction to Mingus's music emburg were murdered. may be found in The Great Rosa Luxemburg was . for many U.S. political prisoners Concert of Charles Mingus years a leader of the German Social It is extremely unfortunate (Prestige 34001). ist Party. She wrote extensively on that United Nations Walter Lippmann economic and political questions. The Ambassador Andrew Young Los Angeles, California following excerpt from her pamphlet has failed to define in specific 'What Is Economics?' shows her at terms America's political her best as a Marxist educator. The prisoners. full text of the pamphlet is available A terrible stain Political prisoners are I can only express dismay at in 'Rosa· Luxemburg Speaks' (Path individuals, groups, or finder Press, 1970). your otherwise fine coverage of organizations that have the Young Socialist Alliance committed no crimes, although and Socialist Workers Party Today, a person can become rich or poor they have been designated for without doing anything, without lifting a ...... support for the Cuban extermination by whatever revolution, which has just finger, without an occurrence of nature ROSA LUXEMBURG method workable by the taking place, without anyone giving celebrated its twentieth establishment's clandestine anniversary. I, too, look to the anyone anything, or physically robbing operations. anything. Price fluctuations are like secret Cuban revolution as the event The ability and skill of the that radicalized me. But, as a movements directed by an invisible responsible for the fact that the economy establishment to suppress the agency behind the back of society, caus of human society produces results which revolutionary socialist facts and distort and confuse homosexual, I cannot join the ing continuous shifts and fluctuations in are mysterious and unpredictable to the the truth serve as major adulatory praise expressed by the distribution of social wealth. . . . people involved. Its anarchy is what techniques to divert public various writers in your And yet commodity prices and their makes the economic life of mankind some attention away from the movement manifestly are human affairs thing unknown, alien, uncontrollable-the January 19, 1979, issue. predicament of a totally This year, the Cuban and not black magic. No one but man laws of which we must find in the same innocent person. himself-with his own hands-produces manner in which we analyze the pheno government adopted a new It is the ruling elite that penal code, which places Cuba these commodities and determines their mena of external nature-the same hides behind the banner of the in the shameful category of prices, except that, here again, something manner in which we have to attempt to people enforcing its oppressive being the country with perhaps flows from his actions which he does not comprehend the laws governing the life of and exploitative programs. By the most antihomosexual intend nor desire. . . . the plant and animal kingdom, the geo their absolute control over the How does this happen, and what are the logic formations on the earth's surface, legislation of any on earth. judicial system, it provides a Hardly an encouraging black laws which, behind man's back, and the movements of the heavenly bo lethal weapon no poor citizen lead to such strange results of the eco dies. Scientific analysis must discover ex development, it is one that can defend against. This is seems to servilely ape the nomic activity of man today? These prob post facto that purposefulness and those why Ambassador Andrew lems can be analyzed only by scientific rules governing human economic life Soviet penal code in this area Young should strenuously act and even to go beyond it in its mvestigation. It has become necessary to which conscious planfulness did not im to aid political prisoners whose heterosexist harshness. solve all these riddles by strenuous re pose on it beforehand. only crimes were being too poor I know that the Militant does search, deep thought, analysis, analogy It should be clear by now why the to defend themselves. Then, not support the Cuban to probe the hidden relations which give bourgeois economists find it impossible to and only then, will justice and Stalinist position on rise to the fact that the result of the point out the essence of their science, to human rights be preserved in homosexuality. But it is economic activity of man does not corres put the finger on the gaping wound in the America. extremely misleading, to say pond to his intentions, to his volition-in social organism, to denounce its innate J.B. the least, to brush over and short, to his consciousness. In this infirmity. To recognize and to acknowl Joliet, Illinois ignore this terrible stain on tlte manner the problem faced by scientific edge that anarchy is the vital motive force Cuban revolution, as you did in investigation becomes defined as the lack of the rule of capital is to pronounce its your January 19 issue, and as of human consciousness in the economic death sentence in the same breath, to Mingus's death the entire American left has life of society.... assert that its days are numbered.... With the death January 5 in done by ignoring this new • 'l • . At the very first step over the threshold Where the bourgeoise is at home, Cuemavaca, Mexico, of fifty penal code. free competition rules as the sole law of of economic understanding, even with the six-year-old Charles Mingus, It must be stated, frankly, first basic premise of economics, bour economic relations and any plan, any Afro-2\merican music has lost that the Cuban position on geois and proletarian economics expe organization has disappeared from the one of its most renowned and homosexuality is the single rience a parting of the ways. With the economy.... most uncompromising greatest obstacle to winning In the entity which embraces oceans very first question-as abstract and as exponents. American homosexuals to an and continents, there is no planning, no impractical as it might seem at first Born in Nogales, Arizona, enthusiastic support for this consciousness, no regulation, only glance in connection with the social strug the and raised in Los Angeles, great revolution and its gles blind class of unknown, unrestrained taking place today-a special bond is Mingus began studying bass at impressive accomplishments in forces playing a capricious game with the forged between economics as a science age sixteen, becoming a full many other areas. economic destiny of man. . . . and the modem proletariat as a revolu time professional musician in David Thorstad And it is precisely this anarchy which is tionary class. the 1940s, performing with top New York, New York musicians including Charles Parker, Art Tatum, and many others. Wants socialist info Mingus's compositions have I came across your paper for become internationally the first time on November 11, acclaimed. His working band, at the antinuke protest the Jazz Workshop, was a caravan that began in Miami. school through which As a result of many numerous subsequent leaders discouraging incidents that I and innovators passed, such as have observed recently, I have Eric Dolphy and Charles slowly but definitely become McPherson. disgusted with today's world. I Known as an exacting and am therefore interested in demanding teacher, Mingus becoming informed of other literally forced the other possible forms of government, musicians in his bands to play such as socialism. their best. I would appreciate it if you Mingus earned the enmity of could help me in any way by many by his readiness to referring me to places where I denounce the racism of this could write for information on country. This was reflected by radicalism, anarchism, the fact he found his greatest socialism, communism, etc. appreciation, like many jazz T.B. musicians, outside the United Leisure City, Florida States. Mingus's autobiography, Beneath the Underdog, was published in [In reply-We are sending 1971. you a copy of Pathfinder 30 Learning About Socialism Press's catalog of books, pam phlets, tapes, and Education for Socialist bulletins. Other readers of the Militant can request this free catalog from The special role of industrial workers Pathfinder Press, 410 West Why do socialists single out industrial workers as the or steelworkers are brought together in one plant, it magni Street, New York, N.Y. 10014. most powerful and politically decisive sector of the working fies their social weight and makes it easier for them to [There is also a socialist class? organize for collective action. bookstore in your area (Miami) As this column explained last week, the vast majority of This aspect of the power of the industrial working class listed below, which carries a the American people are wage workers, who must sell their has been furthered by the historical fact that basic industry wide variety of books and pam labor power in order to live. Socialists aim to win the tends to be more heavily unionized than other sectors of the phlets.] majority of the working class to our ideas and to organize economy. them in a mass revolutionary party. Another point is that industrial unions such as the United Urgent prison message But in the political struggle against capitalism, certain Mine Workers and the United Auto Workers wield decisive The Black inmates here at sections of the working class have greater power than influence not only within specific industries but also within Georgia State Prison at others. Oil workers, for example, have far more leverage whole regions of the country. Reidsville are trying our best to than teachers-a point that is evident from recent events in During the coal miners' strike last year, for instance, all bring about conditions that Iran. Although millions of workers took part in the strike of Appalachia was directly involved in one way or another. were ordered by the District wave there, it was the action by 38,000 oil workers that had There was hardly a person in Kentucky, West Virginia, or Court for the Southern District by far the biggest impact. Western Pennsylvania who didn't have a direct personal of Georgia. From a purely economic point of view, there are two stake in the outcome of that strike. Experience has shown an aspects to the great power exercised by industrial workers. Developments in the steel industry affect the future of escalated rate of violence and The first is that without the operation of certain basic whole cities-Chicago, Gary, Pittsburgh, Birmingham, tension, commensurate with industries, the economy of any modern country will rapidly Youngstown, and so on. the increased racial imbalance grind to a halt. Similarly, the organizing drives of the United Farm in the open-dormitory area. All Among industries that fall into this category are: agricul Workers affect the politics and social relations of whole parties agree that the prison ture; energy-coal, oil, and electricity; raw materials states-California, Arizona, Texas, and others. must be reintegrated. rubber, mining and refining of metallic ores, plastics, As the reintegration deadline Of course, there is nothing new about the strategic weight draws near, some white chemicals, lumber, cement, etc.; transportation-rail, ship of the industrial working class in capitalist society. Marx inmates, with the help and ping, and trucking; and finally, production of things such as and Engels pointed to this more than a century ago. machine tools, major electrical components, and automotive organization of the racist In our epoch, the working class plays a central role in guards, are trying by every equipment. These are the things that enter into the earliest stages of politics not only in the industrialized countries but also in available means to see that the predominantly peasant societies, as we have seen in Iran. order is not carried out. production. Without them everything else comes to a stop. Historically, this was shown by the experience of the During the present cooling Moreover, these basic industries also represent the single Russian revolution, where the working class led the pea off period, the food has gotten biggest source of profits for the American ruling class. They worse and the work has gotten are the ultimate source of all those revenues that are used to sant masses in overthrowing capitalism. heavier. It is our belief that the keep the government, service, and "professional" sectors of Here in the United States, capitalism is no longer promis Black inmates are the only the economy going. ing American workers the prospect of gradually increasing ones going out in subfreezing Because of this, as the ruling class seeks to increase its prosperity. Instead, we are told that continuing unemploy temperatures and working in profits and to improve its competitive position on the world ment, cutbacks in social services, lower wages, and worse rain without raincoats during market by driving down wages, the brunt of its attack must working conditions are necessary if American industry is to the months of December 1978 increasingly be directed against the industrial workers. compete successfully with its foreign challengers. and January 1979. And the Assaults on the wages and working conditions of workers in This same line is being pushed by governments through guards are helping the white the service sector represent only the preliminary skirmishes out the capitalist world. And just as the crisis of capitalism inmates gain access to all kinds in the class battle that is shaping up. has forced the employers and their governments to turn on of knives and weapons. But just as the industrial workers represent the main the workers, the world working class is being forced to We are asking that all target of the ruling class, they are also in the best position defend itself. concerned citizens join together to resist. This is true not only because of their economic That is why new opportunities to win a hearing for and look into this matter. The outcome will affect all our weight but also because of political considerations. socialist ideas are opening up among industrial workers lives. For example, workers in basic industry tend to be concen around the world. And that is why Trotskyist parties We pray, beg, and plead that trated in huge factories to a greater extent than workers in around the world are turning toward these opportunities in everyone will share this urgent other sectors of the economy. When 18,000 electrical workers the fight for socialism. -David Frankel message with their churches, schools, newspapers, local TV and radio stations, and so on. In struggle. A prisoner Georgia If You Like This Paper, Look Us Up My first 'Militant' Where to find the Socialist Workers Party, Young Socialist Alliance, and socialist books and pamphlets

I hope things are going ALABAMA: Birmingham: SWP, Box 3382-A. Zip: St. Zip: 21218. Tel: (301) 547-0668. College Park: SWP, YSA, 970 E. McMillan. Zip: 45206. Tel: (513) smooth with you and the 35205. YSA, c/o Student Union, University of Maryland. 751-2636. Cleveland: SWP, YSA, 13002 Kinsman struggle. I just wrote to let you ARIZONA: Phoenix: SWP, YSA, 314 E. Taylor. Zip: Zip: 20742. Tel: (301) 454-4758. Rd. Zip: 44120. Tel: (216) 991-5030. Columbus: know that I have received my 85004. Tel: (602) 255-0450. Tucson: YSA, SUPO MASSACHUSETTS: Amherst: YSA, c/o Rees, 4 YSA, Box 106 Ohio Union, Rm. 308, Ohio State 20965. Zip: 85720. Tel: (602) 795-2053. Adams St., Easthampton 01027. Boston: SWP, Univ., 1739 N. High St. Zip: 43210. Tel: (614) 291- first Militant paper. All of the CALIFORNIA: Berkeley: SWP, YSA, 3264 Adeline YSA, 510 Commonwealth Ave., 4th Floor. Zip: 8985. Kent: YSA, Student Center Box 41, Kent articles are very unique. The St. Zip: 94703. Tel: (415) 653-7156. Los Angeles, 02215. Tel: (617) 262-4621. State University. Zip: 44242. Tel: (216) 678-5974. paper seems to really give me Eastside: SWP, YSA, 2554 Saturn Ave., Hunting MICHIGAN: Ann Arbor: YSA, Room 4321, Michigan Toledo: SWP, 2507 Collingwood Blvd. Zip: 43610. ton Park, Zip: 90255. Tel: (213) 582-1975 Los Union, U of M. Zip: 48109. Detroit: SWP, 6404 Tel: (419) 242-9743. strength. Being incarcerated is Angeles, Westside: 2167 W. Washington Blvd. Tel: Woodward Ave. Zip: 48202. Tel: (313) 875-5322. OREGON: Portland: SWP, YSA, 711 NW Everett. a struggle itself. Thanks for my (213) 732-8196. Zip: 90018. Oakland: SWP, YSA, MI. Pleasant: YSA, Box 51 Warriner Hall, Central Zip: 97209. Tel: (503) 222-7225. paper. 1467 Fruitvale Ave. Zip: 94601. Tel: (415) 261- Mich. Univ. Zip: 48859. PENNSYLVANIA: Bethlehem: SWP, Box 1096. Zip: 1210. San Diego: SWP, YSA, 1053 15th St. Zip: MINNESOTA: Mesabi Iron Range: SWP, P.O. Box 18016. Edinboro: YSA, Edinboro State College. A prisoner 92101. Tel: (714) 234-4630. San Francisco: SWP, 1287, Virginia, Minn. Zip: 55792. Tel: (218) 749- Zip: 16412. Philadelphia, SWP, YSA, 5811 N. YSA, 3284 23rd St. Zip: 94110. Tel: (415) 824- Kentucky 6327. Minneapolis: SWP, YSA, 23 E. Lake St. Zip: Broad St. Zip: 19138. Tel: (215) 927-4747 or 927- 1992. San Jose: SWP, YSA, 942 E. Santa Clara St. 55408. Tel: (612) 825-6663. St. Paul: SWP, 373 The 'Militant' special pri - 4748. Pittsburgh: SWP, YSA, 5504 Penn Ave. Zip: Zip: 95112. Tel: (408) 295-8342. University Ave. Zip: 55103. Tel: (612) 222-8929. 15206. Tel: (412) 441-1419. State College: YSA. COLORADO: Denver: SWP, YSA, 126 W. 12th Ave. soner fund makes it possi MISSOURI: Kansas City: SWP, YSA, 4715A Troost. c/o Jack Craypo, 132 Keller St. Zip: 16801. Zip: 80204. Tel (303) 534-8954. ble to send reduced-rate Zip: 64110. Tel: (816) 753-0404. St. Louis: SWP, RHODE ISLAND: Kingston: YSA, P.O. Box 400. Zip: DELAWARE: Newark: YSA, c/o Stephen Krevisky, YSA, 6223 Delmar Blvd. Zip: 63130. Tel: (314) 02881. Tel: (401) 783-8864. subscriptions to prisoners 638 Lehigh Rd. M4. Zip: 19711. Tel: (302) 368- 725-1570. TEXAS: Austin: YSA, c/o Mike Rose, 7409 Berkman who can't pay for them. To 1394. NEBRASKA: Omaha: YSA, c/o Hugh Wilcox, 521 Dr. Zip: 78752. Dallas: SWP, YSA, 5442 E. Grand. FLORIDA: Miami: SWP, YSA, 8171 NE 2nd Ave. Zip: 4th St., Council Bluffs, Iowa. 51501. help out, send your contri Zip: 75223. Tel: (214) 826-4711. Houston: SWP, 33138. NEW JERSEY: Newark: SWP, 11-A Central Ave. Zip: YSA, 6412-C N. Main St. Zip: 77009. Tel: (713) bution to: Militant Prisoner GEORGIA: Atlanta: SWP, YSA, 509 Peachtree St. 07102. Tel: (201) 643-3341. 861-9960. San Antonio: SWP, YSA, 112 Frede Subscription Fund, 14 Cha NE. Zip: 30308. Tel: (404) 872-7229. NEW MEXICO: Albuquerque: SWP, 108 Morning ricksburg Rd. Zip: 78201. Tel: (512) 735-3141. rles Lane, New York, New ILLINOIS: Champaign-Urbana: YSA, 284 lllini Side Dr. NE. Zip 87108. Tel: (505) 255-6869. York 10014. Union, Urbana. Zip: 61801. Chicago: City-wide NEW YORK: Binghamton: YSA, c/o Larry Paradis, UTAH: Logan: YSA, P.O. Box 1233, Utah State SWP, YSA, 407 S. Dearborn #1145. Zip: 60605. Box 7261, SUNY-Binghamton. Zip: 13901. Capital University. Zip: 84322. Salt Lake City: SWP, YSA, Tel: SWP-(312) 939-0737: YSA-(312) 427-0280. District (Albany): SWP, YSA, 103 Central Ave. 677 S. 7th East, 2nd Floor. Zip: 84102. Tel: (801) Chicago, South Side: SWP, YSA, 2251 E. 71st St. Zip 12206. Tel: (518) 463-0072. Ithaca: YSA, 355-1124. Zip: 60649. Tel: (312) 643-5520. Chicago, West Willard Straight Hall, Rm. 41A, Cornell University. WASHINGTON, D.C.: SWP, YSA, 3106 Mt. Pleasant The letters column is an Side: SWP, 3942 W. Chicago. Zip: 60651. Tel: Zip: 14853. New York, Brooklyn: SWP, 841 Clas St. NW. Zip: 20010. Tel: (202) 797-7699. open forum for all view (312) 384-0606. son Ave. Zip: 11238. Tel: (212) 783-2135. New WASHINGTON: Olympia: YSA, The Evergreen points on subjects of gen INDIANA: Bloomington: YSA, c/o Student Activities York, Lower Manhattan: SWP, YSA, 7 Clinton St. State College Library, Rm 3208. Zip: 98505. Tel: Desk, Indiana University. Zip: 47401. Indianapolis: Zip: 10002. Tel: (212) 260-6400 New York, Upper (206) 943-3089. Seattle: SWP, YSA, 4868 Rainier eral interest to our readers. SWP, 4163 College Ave. Zip: 46205. Tel: (317) West Side: SWP, YSA, 786 Amsterdam. Zip: Ave., South Seattle. Zip: 98118. Tel: (206) 723- Please keep your letters 925-2616. Gary: SWP, P.O. Box M218. Zip: 46401. 10025. Tel: (212) 663-3000. New York: City-wide 5330. Tacoma: SWP, 1306 S. K St. Zip: 98405. Tel: brief. Where necessary they KENTUCKY: Lexington: YSA, P.O. Box 952 Univer SWP, YSA, 853 Broadway, Room 412. Zip: 10003. (206) 627-0432. sity Station. Zip: 40506. Tel: (606) 269-6262. Tel: (212) 982-8214. WEST VIRGINIA: Morgantown: SWP, 957 S. Univer will be abridged. Please in Louisville: SWP, 1505 W. Broadway, P.O. Box NORTH CAROLINA: Raleigh: SWP, Odd Fellows sity Ave. Zip 26505. Tel: (304) 296-0055. dicate if you prefer that 3593. Zip: 40201. Tel: (502) 587-8418. Building, Rm. 209, 19 West Hargett St. Zip: 27601 WISCONSIN: Madison: YSA, P.O. Box 1442. Zip: your initials be used rather LOUISIANA: New Orleans: SWP, YSA, 3319 S. Tel: (919) 833-9440. 53701. Tel: (608) 255-4733. Milwaukee: SWP, Carrollton Ave. Zip: 70118. Tel: (504) 486-8048. OHIO: Athens: YSA, c/o Balar Center, Ohio Univer YSA, 3901 N. 27th St. Zip: 53216. Tel: (414) 445- than your full name. MARYLAND: Baltimore: SWP, YSA, 2117 N. Charles sity. Zip: 45701. Tel: (614) 594-7497 Cincinnati: 2076.

THE MILITANT/FEBRUARY 2, 1979 31 TH£ MILITANT • ov' m1 nuc ear cover-u By Arnold Weissberg The last leg holding up the tottering argument that nuclear power plants are safe has been kicked out. On Janu ary 19, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission admitted that a pronu clear study it published in 1975 is virtually worthless. This admission underlines the ur gency of the antinuclear movement's demand to shut down all atomic power plants immediately. Known as the Rasmussen Report, after its main author, MIT Prof. Nor man Rasmussen, the 1975 document asserted that a reactor accident killing 1,000 people was possible but could only happen once in 1 million years per plant. The NRC now confesses that Ras mussen's probabilities are meaning less. A sometime consultant to the nu clear industry and an outspoken advo cate of nuclear power, Rasmussen was hired by Washington in 1972 after two previous reactor safety studies showed that an accident could kill tens of thousands of people. Rasmussen's study, carrying the stamp of government approval, pro Deepgoing opposition to nuclear power forced government to admit 1975 'safety study' was a fraud Militant/Richard Rathers duced a soothing antidote, eagerly seized by the nuclear industry and peddled to the public. near active earthquake faults. Panel member Dr. Harold Lewis problems of nuclear waste disposal The Union of Concerned Scientists Caught between thorough scientific commented, "[Rasmussen] was driven and reactor decommissioning. produced a meticulous rebuttal to the criticism and the rapidly growing an to make numerical assessments for the The government has again been report, showing it to be riddled with tinuclear movement, the NRC decided sake of public policy." caught lying to the American people in statistical errors, unproven assump in 1977 to have a panel of experts Despite these admissions about the order to protect corporate profits. They tions, and errors of method. investigate the Rasmussen Report. The Rasmussen Report, however, the NRC lied to us about Vietnam. They lied to For example, in calculating the pos panel concluded that Rasmussen's re still hasn't shut down the nukes-or us about Watergate, the FBI, and the sibility of serious reactor accidents, sults "should not be used uncritically even called a halt to the construction CIA. Rasmussen virtually ignored earth either in the regulatory process or for of new ones. It continues to ignore the And they're lying to us about nuclear quakes. Several reactors are built on or public policy purposes." grave dangers posed by the unsolved power. New Orleans unions, Blacks say 'Overturn the Weber decision!' NEW ORLEANS-Support is grow Kaiser Gramercy were held by Blacks. Hotel and Motel Workers Local 166, guest at a meeting of the AFL-CIO ing here for the fight to defend affirma There were no women in skilled jobs. and several other unions. The Laborers organizing committee for Louisiana, tive action and defeat Brian Weber's Nevertheless, two lower courts have union has donated its hall at 400 speaking to leaders of twenty key "reverse discrimination" lawsuit. agreed with Weber that the plan was Soniat Street for the March 4 rally. unions. At its January 14 statewide meeting, "reverse discrimination" against white For more information, contact the the Louisiana NAACP added its en males. Last December the U.S. Su The committee has printed literature New Orleans Committee to Overturn dorsement to the efforts of the New preme Court agreed to rule on the case. on the Weber case and is providing the Weber Decision and Defend Affir Orleans Committee to Overturn the A press release from the New Or speakers to unions and community mative Action at 2803 Martin Luther Weber Decision and Defend Affirma leans committee states: "This suit not groups. In early January a representa King, Jr., Boulevard, New Orleans, tive Action. The committee was also only poses the gravest threat to affir tive of the committee was an invited Louisiana 70113. recently endorsed by the New Orleans mative action to date, it also attacks chapter of the A. Philip Randolph the entire trade union movement. Institute, an organization of Black "It questions the right of a union to Weber pamphlet out Feb. 1 union leaders. contract an affirmative action pro The Weber Case: New Threat to The Socialist Workers Party is The New Orleans committee 1s or gram on behalf of its membership, and Affirmative Action will be published launching a campaign to get out to ganizing a rally March 4 . threatens to divide the unions and February 1 by Pathfinder Press. working people the facts on the Weber, a white lab technician for cripple them." Kaiser Aluminum in Gramercy, Louisi This pamphlet by Militant staff Weber case. Socialists plan to make ana, is seeking to outlaw an Other organizations participating in writer Andy Rose presents the truth a special effort to sell thousands of affirmative-action agreement nego the New Orleans committee include the about Weber's assault on the rights copies of the new pamphlet to co tiated by the United Steelworkers United Teachers of New Orleans; the of Blacks, women, and the entire workers on the job. union. That agreement, which applies National Organization for Women, union movement. It takes up key issues posed by the to Kaiser plants across the country, New Orleans chapter; and the Na Individual copies of the pamphlet case: provides that half of the training posi tional Association of Black Social are seventy-five cents. Discount of 25 tions for skilled jobs go to Black or Workers. Is affirmative action "reverse dis percent on orders of five or more. crimination" against white males? Order from Pathfinder Press, 410 women workers. Also active in the committee are What about seniority? Before the affirmative-action agree individual members and leaders of West Street, New York, New York How can the labor movement win 10014. ment was won in 1974, less than 2 Steelworkers Local 13000, Longshore Please include fifty cents for jobs and better conditions for all? postage. percent of the skilled crafts jobs at men's Local 1419, Laborers Local 689,

Hansen, Who Died in New York City January 18 After Forty-Five Years of Service to the Revolu­ Tionary Movement

Hansen, Who Died in New York City January 18 After Forty-Five Years of Service to the Revolu Tionary Movement