50C!:
No. 740 ....un 25 August 2000
Democrats, Republicans: Enemies 01 Labor, Blacks
This summer's Republican obscure the fact that the capital National Convention in Phila ist state is an instrument of delphia and Democratic Na organized force and violence tional Convention (DNC) in Los consisting at its core of the Angeles, although separated cops, the military, the courts geographically by thousands of and the prisons-for maintain miles, were virtually identical ing capitalist property and prof political circuses. Both capitalist its through the suppression of parties converged on a right-wing the working class and the • "center" of welfare-slashing, th~ oppressed. death penalty, fundamental Outside the DNC, the few ist "morality" and increased po thousand predominantly white, li~e repression at home and im middle-class protesters got perialist war and intervention something of a taste of the cop abroad. terror which is the daily reality The Republican ticket consists in the inner cities. The notori of the nation's leading execu ous LAPD, which was caught tioner, Texas governor George on videotape beating black W. Bush, and former Penta motorist Rodney King to within gon war chief Richard Cheney, an inch of his life in 1991 and who as a Congressman opposed is now under investigation for freedom for imprisoned South running a systematic frarne-up African bla~k· leader Nelson and assassination machine, Mandela in the 1980s. The Re buzzed the protesters with heli publican leaders tried to give copters, sprayed them with pep this "compassianate conserva Reuters per gas and fired rubber bullets tism" an aura of ethnic "diver LAPD rampage against protesters outside Democratic National Convention gave taste of at them. Praising the work of sity" and "outreach" by staging .terror meted out by cops in ghettos and barrios every day. the LAPD, a top Gore aide said, what was rightly perceived by "We knew what they were minorities as a humiliating doing, and we supported them." "minstrel show." In Philadelphia, only weeks The Democratic Party shifted Break with All Capitalist· ~arties! before the Republican conven further toward the right than tion opened, cops were video the Clinton/Gore candidacies taped pummeling a black man in 1992 and 1996. Gore even Nader: Shill for the Democrats who they shot five times. Pro moved to play down the one testers swept off by the police significant policy difference . dragnet outside the convention between the two parties-the Demo toral politics as expressed over 80 years percent of the population, whose property were thrown into jail, some held on bail crats' support to abortion rights-by ago by V. I. Lenin, leader of the Russian and profits derive from the exploitation of of up to $1 million for exercising their inviting Los Angeles archbishop Roger October Revolution of 1917, in The State those who labor. This capitalist class runs' First Amendment rights of assembly and Mahoney to give an invocation in which and Revolution: the Republican and Democratic parties, free expression. he predictably condemned abortion. "To decide once every few. years which whose main difference is· not what they The massive cop mobilizations against It would have been difficult for Gore to member of the ruling class is to do but how they do it. The Republicans the relatively small protests in Philly and pick a running mate more insulting to repress and .crush the people through make no bones about being the party of L.A. are a measure of the bourgeoisie's parliament,-that is the real essence of labor and blacks, the party's core constit bourgeois parliamentarianism, not only "big business" in viciously going after the fear that any eruption of social discontent uencies, than Connecticut Senator Joseph in parliamentary-constitutional monar working class, blacks, immigrants and the could get mit of hand. Having accrued Lieberman. A cofounder along with Clin chies, but also in the most democratic poor. The Democrats lie and do the same fabulous wealth over the past two decades ton and Gore of the "moderate" Demo republics." thing. America is ruled by the dictator through slashing the living standards of cratic Leadership Council which dumped The wealth of .~his country is over ship of a single class, the bourgeoisie. working people and dismantling social the party's cynical posture toward "spe whelmingly concentrated in less than 1 The fa~ade of democracy is designed to continued on page 12 cial interests"-i.e., trade unions and minorities-Lieberman is an ally of right wing Republican William Bennett in the crusade against "sex and violence" in the media, has repeatedly opposed affirma tive action for blacks and Latinos, sup ports school voucher programs aimed at gutting public education and was the most prominent Democrat at the head of the pack howling over Clinton's consensual sexual affair with a White House intern. Even more so than in the past, the recent conventions graphically demon strate the true nature of bourg~ois elec-
34 vs. Bourgeois Nationalism II Page Four 7".'25274 11 81030 7 the Iraqi population over the past decade are aimed at asserting U.S. imperialism's dominance in the Near East and control Down With U.S.fUN Blockade! ling the region'S oil supplies at the expense of America's imperialist rivals. During the Gulf War and the subse quent attacks against Iraq, the Spartacist League forthrightly called for the defeat Starving Iraq· for Ten Years of U,S, imperialism and for military defense of Iraq while giving not one iota In the decade that Iraq has suffered malnutrition. This includes, according to "oil for food" program. of political support to the bloody capital under a starvation blockade, imposed by the United Nations Children's Fund The London Economist (8 April) ist regime of Saddam Hussein. From the the U.S. imperialists in August 1990 (UNICEF), approximately half a million described the deadly effects of the sanc outset, we have opposed the imperialist under the auspices of -the United Nations, children under the age offive. tions against Iraq: starvation blockade of Iraq, U.S.!Britain: that country has been reduced to an The devastation of Iraq has been com "The tap-water causes diarrhoea, but few Hands off Iraq! All U.S.!UN troops out impoverished and disease-ravaged hell. pounded by repeated imperialist terror can afford the bottled sort. Because the of the Persian GUlf! Defeat U.S. imperi sewers have broken down, pools of Essential foods and medicines are bombing campaigns carried out since alism through workers revolution! stinking muck have leached through to A growing number of liberals in - unavailable or priced out of reach, the 1991. Targeting heavily populated areas the surface all over town .... country's infrastructure-already largely supposedly containing military sites, "Iraq's health services, like its schools, the U.S. are now pushing for an end to destroyed in the U.S.-led Persian Gulf these raids have destroyed schools, hos were once the best in the region. Now the embargo, arguing that the sanctions War in 1991-is almost nonfunctional, pitals and housing. Since December most hospital lifts have ceased to func "haven't worked" in getting rid of the tion, so trauma patients have to be car and health care is practically unavailable 1998, when the U.S. and its British ally Saddam Hussein regime, Liberal aca ried up and down the stairs .... Whole demic Noam Chomsky, who postures as for lack of medicines and equipment. under Labour prime minister Tony Blair wards of children with leukaemia go The imperialists are carrying out a delib stepped up the savage aerial war, some unattended, since the different drugs an "anarchist" opponent of imperialism, erate policy of mass murder that hits 300 civilians have been killed and 900 needed to treat them are rarely available today decries the murderous effects of hardest the most vulnerable sectors of wounded. After a pause this summer, at the same time. The senior gynaecolo the UN blockade. But in 1991 he was gist explains that 90% of the pregnant calling for sanctions against Iraq as the population: children, the aged and the almost daily bombing raids were women he cares for are anaemic because the poor. In addition to the tens of thou renewed this month as U.S. and British of malnutrition, Diseases such as cholera "the peaceful means prescribed by inter sands of Iraqis massacred in the 1991 warplanes destroyed, among other tar and typhoid, which had been eradicated national law" (Z Magazine, February "Desert Slaughter," some 1.5 million gets, a warehouse used for storing food before 1990, have reappeared," 1991). Liberals like Chomsky agreed people have perished from disease and obtained under the UN's extortionate The consequences of the sanctions are with the rulers in Washington on deploy so hars,h that several senior. UN offi ing the power of U,S, imperialism to cials responsible for implementing them make Hussein bend to their dictates; they have resigned, including former Assistant simply wanted an imperialism "with a Secretary-General Denis Halliday who human face," The Fraud of quit last year as relief coordinator in Iraq Today, American left organizations Bourgeois "Democracy" and labeled the blockade "a policy that universally denounce the sanctions Every four years, the American working satisfies the definition of genocide" (see against Iraq. But in 1990-91, most self class is offered the chance to vote for which "Down With Starvation Blockade and avowed "socialist" groups tailed lib representative of the capitalist class, Demo Bombing ofIraq!" WVNo, 735, 5 May), eral bourgeois public opinion by giving cratic or Republican, will preside over this The death and destruction rained on continued on page 1S system of wage slavery and oppression. Tail ing the pro-capitalist trade-union bureauc From outset, racy, the reformist left acts to reinforce Spartacist League illusions in bourgeois "democracy" and opposed imperialist TROTSKY electoralism, acting as pressure groups on LENIN embargo which has the Democratic Party. Bolshevik leader Leon killed some 1.5 million IraqiS, Trotsky exposed the fraud of bourgeois democracy in his polemic in defense of the Rus mainly children sian October Revolution of 1917 against German revisionist Karl Kautsky, Terror and the aged, ism and Communism. We fight for new October Revolutions to overthrow the capital since 1990. ist order and usher in a regime of proletarian democracy based on workers soviets (councils ). Natural law, which developed into the theory of democracy, said to the worker: "all men are equal before the law, independently of their origin, their property, and their position; every man has an equal right in determining the fate of the people." This ideal criterion revolutionized the consciousness of the masses in so far as it was a con demnation Qf absolutism, aristocratic privileges, and the property qualification. But the longer it went on, the more it sent the consciousness to sleep, legalizing poverty, slav
ery and degradation: for how could one revolt against slavery when every man has an ------~----~~----..... u.s. Oil Pirates Out of the Persian Gulf! equal right in determining the fate of the nation? --~-----~--- - - ~-~ Rothschild, who has coined the blood and tears of the world into the gold napoleons Break Blockade 01 Iraq! of his income, has one vote at the parliamentary elections. The ignorant tiller of the ;:;:;::::E'':''~= ,;: ;';;::;.:';' "-:.",' 'f;c--;=~,.? "'---," _._. soil who cannot sign his name, sleeps all his life without taking his clothes off, and wanders through society like an underground mole, plays his part, however, as a trustee of the nation's sovereignty, and is equal to Rothschild in the courts and at the elec tions. In the real conditions of life, in the economic process, in social relations, in their Spartacist/SYC~Events way of life, people became more and more unequal; dazzling luxury was accumulated at one pole, poverty and hopelessness at the other .... For the ignorant day-labourer, who all his life remains a beast of burden in the service of the bourgeoisie, the ideal right to influence. the fate of the nations by means of the parliamentary elections remained little more real than the palac.e which he was promised in the kingdom of heaven .... The root problem of the party, at all periods of its struggle, was to create the condi tions for real, economic, living equality for mankind as members of a united human com monwealth. It was just for this reason that the theoreticians of the proletariat had to expose the metaphysics of democracy as a philosophic mask for political mystification. -Leon Trotsky, Terrorism and Communism (1920) Wednesday, August 30, 6:30 p.m. YWCA at UC Berkeley 2600 Bancroft Way (at Bowditch) For more information: . BAY AREA (510) 839-0851 or (415) 395-9520
Saturday, September 16, 3 p.m. Harvard University !.'l6.l1.!/!!yJ!.4/!~!!.~l!.l!.. ~ . Science Center, Lecture Hall E EDITOR: Len Meyers BOSTON For more information: (617) 666-9453 EDITOR, YOUNG SPARTACUS PAGES: Anna Woodman PRODUCTION MANAGER: Susan Fuller Saturday, August 26, 4 p.m. Mt. Hollywood Congregational Church CIRCULATION MANAGER: Mara Cadiz 4607 Prospect Ave., Hollywood EDITORIAL BOARD: Barry James (managing editor), Bruce Andre, Ray Bishop, Jon Brule, LOS ANGELES For more information: (213) 38Q-8239 George Foster, Liz Gordon, Walter Jennings, Jane Kerrigan, James Robertson, Joseph Seymour, Alison Spencer The Spartacist League is the U.S. Section of the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist). Workers Vanguard (ISSN 0276·0746) published biweekly, except skipping three alternate issues in June, July and August (beginning with omitting the second issue in June) and with a 3·week interval in December, by the Spartacist Pub· lishing Co., 299 Broadway, Su~e 318, New York, NY 10007. Telephone: (212) 732·7862 (Editorial), (212) 732·7861 (Business). Address all correspondence to: Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116. E·mail address: [email protected]. Domestic subscriptions: $10.00/22 issues. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Workers Vanguard, Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116. Saturday, Aug~st 26, 7 p.m. Opinions expressed in signed articles or letters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint. University of Illinois, Chicago The closing date for news in this issue is August 22. CCC Building, Room 713 CHICAGO 750 S. Halste9 No. 740 25 August 2000 For more information: (312) 454-4930
2 WORKERS VANGUARD Labor Reformists Scramble IGs
Like much of the fake left, the tiny the next shyster. We wouldn't, so they liquidationist conclusion by LAC's "gro ILWU's endorsement of the principled, Internatiorialist Group (IG) wants to tried to slander the PDC as "sectarian." tesque" .resolution begging delegates at united-front slogans for the rally: "Save expl0it widespread support for the fight They were in the tow of the fake left the DNC to give their party-and the Mumia Abu-Jamal! Abolish the Racist to free Mumia Abu-Jamal and growing reaching out to the "mainstream" (i.e., the bourgeois state apparatus-a facelift by Death Penalty!" .SL and PDC speakers opposition to the death penalty in order to Democratic Party) by begging for a "new appointing a new DNC chairman. (This presented our revolutionary Marxist pro further its own brand of opportunist poli~ trial" for Mumia instead of demanding went a little too far for the IBT, which had gram, including the need to break the tics. Thus, in a July election supplement his immediate freedom. . supported an earlier motion just to "con labor movement from the partner parties of its Internationalist, the IG advises the Reflecting support at the base of the demn Rendell's appointment"-i.e., the of capjtal, especially the Democrats, and mainly white petty-bourgeois youth who union for Jamal's cause, the ILWU called IBT only wanted a facial.) to forge a party like the Bolsheviks which turned out for the "anti-globalization" stop-work meetings in his defense last The latest Internationalist (June 2000) will emancipate all the oppressed by lead protests in Seattle and Washington, D.C.: April 24. Heyman hoped to deceive contains yet another paean to the 24 April ing the working class to power. "The fight for the freedom of Mumia Abu-Jamal can powerfully cut across this , racial divide, but only if it is fought on a clear class basis." But here the IGlets have a big problem. Later in the same article, the IG intones: "The fight to free Mumia directly inter sects the struggle for working-class po litical independence from the capitalist parties. Labor reformists at a May 12 ILWU Local 10 conference in Oakland initiated by bureaucrat Jack the Labor Action Committee to Free Heyman speaking Mumia Abu-Jamal called on unions to at 24 April 1999 pressure their delegates at the Demo cratic convention to ask for a 'new trial' San Francisco for Jamal and to oppose former Philadel "Millions for phia D.A. and mayor Rendell as Demo Mumia" rally. cratic National Committee chairman! IG centrists lied How grotesque!" to cover up How grotesque indeed! The Labor Heyman's support Action Committee (LAC) is a motley for class crew of enemies of revolutionary Marx collaborationist "new trial" ism, including the "International Bol demand. shevik Tendency" (IBT,. whose founders quit the Spartacist League over our hard July 2000 Supplement Soviet-defensism during the Reagan years) and Bay Area International LORgshore ILWU workers by tacking the "free 1999lLWU work stoppage that "Showed At the April 24 "Millions for Mumia" and Warehpuse Union (ILWU) Local 10 Mumia" slogan onto the union resolution ,Labor's Power in Fight to Free Mumia." demonstration McWilliams made a "left" bureaucrat Jack Heyman. When endorsing the pro-Democratic Party April But now, a year later, the IG admits, albeit speech lauding the ILWU's refusal to we nailed Heyman and his LACkeys 24 demonstration for a "new trial," which whiningly, what it had hitherto categori load scrap iron to Japan in 1938, and for providing "left" cover for the "new Heyman personally, the LACkeys and the cally and vehemently denied: ''The ILWU Norden's man Heyman, speaking later trial" slogan at the center of last year's ILWU all officially endorsed. IG chief motion's call to 'support' the April 24 from the same platform, said nothing April 24 "Millions for Mumia" demon Jan Norden flew out to the West Coast demo undercut the impact of the first-ever about this chauvinism. Instead he praised stration in San Francisco (see "Labor to march with Heyman and the small union work stoppage demanding his free the ILWU's "long history of taking Opportunism, the Democratic Party and ILWU contingent. The IG then wrote a dom, not least by aiding WVs slander stands for social justice." Of course, the Defense of Mumia Abu-Jamal," WV long and passionate lawyer's brief for mongers." Alas, ye inveterate liars ofthe Heyman uttered not one word in criti No. 714, 28 May 1999), we noted that the Heyman in which his endorsement of the IG: Truth may be blamed, but can never cism of labor's ties to the Democrats LAC "obscures the class nature of the pro-Democratic Party mobilization was be shamed. and absolutely nothing critical of his capitalist state" and "deep-sixes any men simply denied. But, as we wrote in our Noting that the Bay Area Spartacus pro-Democratic Party "new trial" fake tion of the Democratic Party." The IG exchange last year: Youth Club organized a "Revolutionary socialist hosts. Norden and the IG, in then appointed itself the lead attorney for "Tacking the slogan 'Free Mumia' onto Contingent" for this year's May 13 turn, deep-sixed any mention' of Mc Heyman and the IBT took up the general the call fora 'new trial' is not warning the demonstration for Jamal, whose central Williams' and Heyman's speeches. workers about illusions of justice in the defense for the LAC opportunists. capitalist courts, it is deceiving the work slogan was also for a "new trial," the IG Dumping Japanese iron in 1938 was a As its first act, the LAC sought to dis ers with such illusions in the service of claims: "By the Spartacist League's 1999 chauvinist act of· support for American credit the long, honorable history of the the Democratic Party. It is just a cover for standards, the SL 2000 is a bunch imperialism's war mobilization to domi SL and the Partisan Defense Committee endorsing a demonstration organized on of opportunist capitulators, effectively nate the Pacific. It began with trade war in struggling to mobilize the power of the basis of deliberately opposing calls to 'endmsing'the 'new trial'-demonstration and economic boycotts, and ended only free Mumia and abolish the racist death the international workers movement for penalty, instead substituting the appeal ('All out on May 13!'), its claims to call with the nuclear annihilation of Hiro Mumia's freedom. Time and again, the for a 'new trial' in an expression of polit for Mumia's freedom being nothing but shima and Nagasaki. Let's be clear about PDC has sought and won the support of ical confidence in the capitalist courts!' a 'fig leaf' and 'camouflage'!" We did this: McWilliams, in the service of his the ILWU for that cause. The LAC Now all the IG's efforts to white not and do not endorse the "new trial" capitalist masters and aided by his "left demanded that the PDC turn over a list of wash Heyman an_d the LAC have blown demand. But the ILWU bureaucracy ist" LACkeys and Norden, obscenely trade-union endorsers of PDC-initiated up in its face. On the eve of the Dem including Heyman and its LACkeys did used the Mumia mobilization to support united-front efforts to free Mumia to their ocratic National Convention (DNC) in endorse last year's "new trial" demo. the bloody wars of U.S. imperialism. hitherto unheard-of group, as if it were a L.A., the class-collaborationist "new Our SYC contingent-marching behind In their efforts to defend their favorite direct marketing mailing list for sale to trial" maneuver is carried to its inevitable, the banner "There Is No Justice in the American "class struggle"union fraud, Capitalist Courts! Free Mumia Abu Norden & Co. may not have noticed Jamal! Abolish the Racist Death Pen~ Heyman's·overt support for McWilliams alty!"-was instead simply another tactic in the recent ILWU elections. In a June to augment the same politics with which 15 letter Heyman wrote to the Journal we intervened last year. It was built to win of Commerce and posted on the Inter a new generation of left-wing youth to net, he declares: "Defend ILWU's Proud National Office: Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 • (212) 732-7860 our revolutionary proletarian program in Record-Vote for McWilliams." Web site: www.icl-fi.org • E-mail address:·[email protected] direct counterposition to those who, by As we wrote last year: demanding a new trial, try to chain "In Heyman, Norden sees a kindred Boston Los Angeles Oakland Mumia's cause to refurbishing the racist spirit. Norden and his clot broke with Box 390840, Central Sta. Box 29574, los Feliz Sta. Box 29497 Democratic Party and the imperialist state us when we moved to break fraternal relations with a group in Brazil which Cambridge, MA 02139 los Angeles, CA 90029 Oakland, CA 94604 apparatus of repression it administers. (617) 666-9453 (213) 380-8239 (510) 839-0851 proved to be more interested in holding According to the IG: "Both when onto union office in a cop-riddled union Public Office: PubliC Office: Chicago they're zigging and zagging, the SL than in building the revolutionary party. Sat. 2-5 p.m. Sat. 1-5 p.m~ is politically capitulating to the pro Why shouldn't the IG alibi appeals by Box 6441, Main PO 3806 Beverly Blvd., Room 215 1634 Telegraph, 3rd Floor capitalist labor bureaucracy. In the case trade-union opportunists to the justice Chicago, Il 60680 of the capitalist courts? The IG has spent (312) 454-4930 New York San Francisco ofthe ILWU, the SL has been notable for much of the last three years trying Public Office: Box 3381, Church St. Sta. Box 77494 its kid-gloves treatment of ILWU Inter to cover up for the fact that this Brazilian Tues. 5-9 p.m. New York, NY 10008 San FranCisco, CA 94107 national president Brian McWilliams. group which is now its affIliate, the Liga and Sat. 12-3 p.m. (212) 267-1025 (415) 395-9520 WV No. 714 baldly declared that 'Hey Quarta-Internacionalista do Brasil (LQB), 328 S. Jefferson St. Public Office: PubliC Office: man is a lot worse than McWilliams,' has dragged the SFPMVR municipal Suite 904 workers union in Volta Redonda through Tues. 6:30-8:30 p.m. Tues. 6-8 p.m. because Heyman 'pretends to be some the capitalist courts three times as part of and Sat. 1-5 p.m. 564 Market St., Suite 718 thing different, a left-talking friend ofthe a squalid fight for control of the union 299 Broadway, Suite 318 workers who is more radical than Mc against an eqUlilly unprincipled bureau~ Williams'." As "evidence," the IG notes cratic faction." that McWilliams spoke at a June 1995 In its own furtive way, the IG has con PDC-initiated united-front emergency' firmed our basic point that the LAC's Toronto Vancouver protest when Mumia faced the threat of strategy is to rely on the bourgeois state Box 7198, Station A - Box 2717, Main P.O. imminent execution. and the Democrats-and that the IGlets Toronto, ON M5W 1X8 Vancouver, BC V6B 3X2 When McWilliams spoke at that labor abandoned the Trotskyist program in (416) 593-4138 (604) 687-0353 centered protest, it was on the basis of the order to be lawyers for opportunism._ 25 AUGUST 2000 3 Stalinist Class Collaboration: A Legacy of Revolutions Betrayed Near East, 1950s Permanent Revolution~ vs. Bourgeois Nationalism
The Near East is marked by abject and supporters, the Communist par poverty, benighted enslavement of ties of the Near East helped install women, the dispossession of the Pal bourgeois-nationalist regimes which estinian people by Israel and the then crushed the left and workers oppression of numerous other nation movement and persecuted national al minorities by Arab and Iranian and ethnic minorities. How and why nationalist regimes. This legacy of did this come about? social backwardness and oppression At root, the explanation lies in the is reinforced by the domination of Stalinist degeneration of the Soviet the region by the imperialist powers. workers state and the replacement of Ongoing imperialist intrigues and Bolshevik internationalism with the depredations like the U.S.lBritish nationalist dogma of "socialism in terror bombing of Iraq are impelled one country" and its corollary, class by a strategic concern: control of the collaboration. The Left Opposition supply of oil, the source of more than of Leon Trotsky, co-leader with V. I. 40 percent of the world's energy. Lenin of the October Revolution, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the sheik fought down the line against the Sta doms of the Arabian peninsula hold linist degeneration of the Soviet three-quarters of the world's proven Union and the Communist Interna tional. Stalinist bureaucratic rule ulti mately opened up the floodgates to ~PartOne- capitalist counterrevolution, which oil reserves. Ever since the 1920s, destroyed the Soviet Union in 1991- control over the Persian Gulf oil 92. As part of our struggle to reforge fields has given American and Brit the Trotskyist Fourth International, ish imperialism an enormous strate the International Communist League gic advantage over their main rivals, seeks to win a new generation of rev Germany and Japan. olutionary proletarian militants in the The development of the oil indus AP Near East to the banner of authentic try has also led to the creation of a Teheran, 1953: Revolutionary working-class upsurge which swept Iran was chanl')eled Leninism. proletariat in the region in whose by Stalinists into support for "progressive" bourgeoisie, then crushed by Iranian hands lies the power to lead all of military backed by CIA. "Two-Stage Revolution": the oppressed in revolutionary strug- Road to Defeat gle against imperialist subjugation. For Socialist Federation the Near East! The history of the Near East in the Repeatedly betrayed by left-talking a of secon<;l half of the 20th century dem petty-bourgeois nationalists and Sta onstrates that even the most "left" linists and.chafing under brutal bourgeois it the country's vast oil reserves. Tudeh tions could "result in the complete elimi bourgeois-nationalist regimes-"social regimes, many anti-imperialist youth and (Masses), the pro-Moscow Communist nation of Western influence in the Middle ist" pretensions and "anti-imperialist" the most downtrodden layers of the Party, exercised political hegemony over East." In the ensuing period of revolu rhetoric notwithstanding-act as agents masses have turned to the fool's gold of the proletariat and had a broad follow tionary turbulence, the Iraqi Communist of imperialist domination and therefore Islamic fundamentalism. But in the ing among the urban petty bourgeoisie Party, with its solid base among the Arab perpetuate the social and economic back 1950s, this region was a hotbed of revo and intellectuals. Then CIA chief Allen and Kurdish oil workers and substantial wardness of their countries. As Trotsky lutionary working-class struggles which Dulles insisted that the U.S. had to install support within the military itself, could wrote following the defeat of the Second offered a real prospect for ending imperi . a government in Teheran "which would indeed have taken state power~ Chinese Revolution in 1927, when the alist SUbjugation, social reaction and bru reach an equitable oil settlement. .. and Throughout the Near-East, the Com "left" nationalist Guomindang drowned tal exploitation. which would vigorously prosecute the munist parties attracted the most class the Communist-led working class in A few months ago, the New York Times dangerously strong Communist Party." conscious workers and radical intellectu blood: (16 April) ran a lengthy pie~e on the CIA A year earlier in Egypt, a popular up als. In this patchwork of myriad national, "Everything that brings the oppressed organized coup in Iran in-' 1"953, at the rising had led to the toppling of the Brit ethnic and religious minorities, the CPs and exploited masses of the toilers to height of U.S. imperialism's Cold W,ar ish puppet, King Farouk, and the rise to were about the only organizations with a their feet inevitably pushes the national bourgeoisie into an open bloc with the against the Soviet Union. Nationalization power of the Free Officers Movement base which cut across national and relig imperialists. The class struggle between of the Anglo-Iranian Oil monopoly had of Gamal Abdel Nasser. There, too, the ious lines: Jews played a major role in the the bourgeoisie and the masses of work impelled the country on a collision course dominant and most militant sections of Egyptian Communist movement, Kurds ers and peasants is not weakened, but, on with the imperialists, leading to a deep the working class looked to the Commu in the Iraqi. The Communist militants the contrary, it is sharpened by imperial ening revolutionary crisis. The Times nists for leadership. A few years later in sought to identify with the proletarian ist oppression, to the point of bloody civil war at every serious conflict." wrote, "Anti-Communism had risen to Iraq, as a 1958 coup by left-wing military internationalism of the Bolshevik Revo - "The Chinese Revolution and a fever pitch in Washington, and officials officers ousted the British-installed Hash lution (albeit refracted and perverted by the Theses of Comrade Stalin," were worried that Iran might fall under emite monarchy, U.S. president Dwight Stalinism). They saw in the Soviet Union in Problems of the Chinese the sway of the Soviet Union," and with Eisenhower warned that leftist revolu- a beacon of liberation from imperialist Revolution (1932); reprinted in SUbjugation and a model for economic Leon Trotsky on China (1976) development. As a result of the 1917 Bol When the USSR existed, Soviet financial shevik Revolution, the Muslim regions of and military aid gave the Arab bourgeois the former tsarist empire-Central Asia nationalist regimes a certain room to and Azerbaijan in the Caucasus-had maneuver vis-a.-vis the Western and Japa advanced from conditions even more nese imperialist states. But the room in socially and economically backward which they maneuvered was dominated than the Near East to modern societies by Wall Street, the City of London, the jn which women were no longer enslaved Deutsche Bank and the Japanese keiritsu. by the-veil and education and medical Despite limited land reform carried out 'care were available to all. in the 1950s and early 1960s by national Yet revolutionary upheavals in Iran ist regimes in Egypt, Syria and Iraq, the and Iraq did not result in new October pattern of land ownership still resembles Revolutions. Instead, these opportunities what it was a century ago. Wealthy land were sacrificed on the altar of the Soviet owners possess large tracts of the best Stalinist bureaucracy's futile and treach . land while millions of desperate peasants, erous pursuit of "peaceful coexistence" unable to scratch out a living on tiny plots with imperialism. The leaderships of the of arid land, have moved into the vast Communist parties in the region -were shantytowns that ring Cairo, Damascus extremely loyal to and pretty tightly con and Baghdad. National Geographic trolled by Moscow, both ideologically Many of these countries are riven by British troops march into Baghdad in 1919, as British and French imperialists and through financial support. Despite the national, religious and ethnic antago carve up Near East after World War I. revolutionary aspirations of their ranks nisms, including sharp divisions between 4 WORKERS VANGUARD Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims. In Algeria, - Leon' Trotsky revolutionary struggles which were be the predominantly Arab ruling class Leon Trotsky trayed by Stalinis.m and crushed by Arab lords it over the Berber national minor PROBLEMS OF bourgeois nationalism. ity; in mainly Muslim Egypt, the Coptic THE CHINESE THE PERMANENT Stalinist Degeneration of the Christian minority is hounded and perse REVOLUTION cuted, particularly by Islamic fundamen REVOLUTION Communist International Witla Appo..dica bylinoviu, v.. y
The following leaflet was issued by the The liberal organizers of the DNC ary worker~ party fighting Los Angeles Spartacist League/Sparta protests look to pressure the Democratic to sweep away the entire cus Youth Club on August 12 and distrib- . Party (the party which administered Jim system in which racial Young Spartacus uted at the protests during the Demo Crow in the South) to be more "humane" oppression is rooted. This Poster for "anti-racist" workshop "for white people" cratic National Convention. to the peoples of the Third World and to program of revolutionary at L.A. Convergence Center recalls racist Jim Crow "Whites Only." "Coloreds Only." put "people before profits" at home. Since integration ism is the only segregation in the South. In the name of fighting These were the watchwords of the hide they promote the view that U.S. imperial road forwafd. Finish the racism, liberal organizers exclude non-whites, ous oppression of blacks in the Jim Crow ism and its parties can be the agency for Civil War! For black lib accepting racial divisions of American society. South-a racist society of "separate and "justice" and "human rights," they not eration through socialist Elliott Erwitt/Maanum unequal" which was enforced by system only can't challenge racist American cap revolution! atic police repression backed up by lynch italism but end up mimicking the racial We Spartacists aren't mob terror. Grotesquely such segrega and ethnic divisions in society. Thus our here to beg the capitalist tionist practices have appeared at the comrade was told that he couldn't attend Democratic Party to be Convergence Center run by the Direct their workshop because white people "more responsive" to the Action Network and the D2KLA Net needed a "safe place" to discuss racism! needs of working people work, which are organizing the protests at Is it any wonder that the "spirit of Seat and the oppressed. Nor are the Democratic National Convention tle" protests have maintained a mainly we here to hustle the vote (DNC) in Los Angeles. white, middle-class composition? for Ralph Nader, whose On August 10, a dark-skinned comrade The bipartisan abolition of welfare, the candidacy for the capital of the Spartacus Youth Club, youth group gunning down of Amadou Diallo in a hail ist Green Party is, by of the revolutionary Marxist Spartacist of 41 bullets, the hundreds of thousands Nader's own admission, League, was told to leave an "Anti-Racist of black men consigned to prison hell simply aimed at strength Workshop" because the meeting was holes are the bitter daily expression of the ening the Democrats. "for white people." We spoke to people fact that black oppression is rooted in the Rather, we want to win those youth who like the WTO or IMF but by imperial throughout the Center, condemning the very foundation of American capitalism. want to fight against racism, exploitation ism, which is the highest stage of capi Jim Crow policy of segregating whites Racism is produced not by the white pop and war to the perspective of socialist talism Where imperialist powers compete and "people of color." We learned that a ulationof all social classes as the liberals revolution. The exclusion of our com against each other over who gets to loot white woman from South Africa, recalling claim, but centrally through the policies rade by the liberal "anti-racists" organ the rest of the world. The myth of "global her experience with racist apartheid, felt of the ruling class forcibly segregating izing the workshop and our exclusion ism" is designed to obscure the central uncomfortable and left the meeting. And blacks at the bottom of society. But the from the Convergence Center altogether role of U.S. imperialism as the primary at the previous night's "people of color oppression of black people as a race-color flow from the politics of the "spirit of source of poverty, war and oppression only" workshop, Latino youth were angry caste also makes the struggle for black Seattle," which combined protectionism, around the globe. The struggle against at the segregatio~ist policy. Now, D2KLA equality a powerful potential lever for China-bashing and the revolting promo exploitation and racial oppression re organizers have banned us Spartacists social revolution. That fight must be tion of U.S. imperialism as a vehicle for quires the destruction of capitalist rule from the Convergence Center altogether linked to the social power of the working bringing aid to the world's downtrodden. through international socialist revolution. for agitating against this disgusting pol class, of which blacks are a strategic com The oppression of the. world's masses Defeat U.S. imperialism through workers icy of racial exclusion. ponent" through a multiracial revolution- is not caused by "supranational" agencies revolution! •
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25 AUGUST 2000 7 • e oots 0 narcnlsm TheJollowing is an' edited transcript of very familiar to you. To this bad reality is a class given by Spartacist League Cen counterposed the alleged will of the peo tral Committee member Joseph Seymour ple with its categorical imperative, the to the New York Spartacus Youth Club on absolute demand for freedom. Engels July 22. goes on: '''Justice,' 'humanity,' 'freedom,' What I want to try to do here is dis 'equality,' 'fraternity,' 'independence' cuss those ideas and attitudes of classical so far we have found nothing in the pan anarchism which we encounter among Slavist manifesto but these more or less American radical youth today, not only ethical categories, which sound very fine, those who call themselves anarchists, but it is true, but prove absolutely nothing in the Green radicals and left-liberals; that historical and political ,questions. 'Jus is, the kind of people who were at the tice,' 'humanity,' 'freedom,' etc. may de Seattle and D:C. protests, many of whom mand this or that a thousand times over; are now around the Nader campaign. As but if the thing is impossible it does we shall see, the youth who demanded not take place and in spite of everything, that the directors of the World Bank can remains an 'empty fragment of a dream'" cel the debts of poor Third World coun [emphasis in original]. tries were expressing an attitude and a I believe that this passage contains position entirely compatible with the doc the crux of 90 percent of the discussions trines of Peter Kropotkin, the foremost and arguments that we have with Ameri anarchist spokesman and theoretician in can radical youth today. In the name the late 19th and early 20th centuries. of justice and humanity, they call upon Basically, anarchism is part of a fam the World Bank to forgive the debts of ily-one might call it the slightly nutso poor countries, they call upon the Clin second cousin in this family:-of radical ton administration to promote an interna democratic idealism. Now all forms of tional code of labor and environmental radical democratic idealism derive in an standards, they call upon NATO to liber intellectual sense from the Enlighten ate the Albanian Kosovars from the ment of the 17th and 18th centuries, or oppressive yoke of Serbia. more precisely its left wing, and they achieved organized expression as a result Rousseau and "Human Nature" of the French Revolution of 1789, which The dominant intellectual influence on attempted to translate the ideals of the left the left prior to Marx was Jean Jacques wing of the Enlightenment into reality. In Rousseau, who summed up his political the early 19th century, the various schools Anti-WTO demonstrators in Seattle . last winter. Self-described anarchists philosophy as "man is naturally good; it of socialism which Marx and Engels later joined with liberal activists in reformist appeals to "humanitarian" sentiments is only by institutions that men become called utopian socialism were a form of against "globalization." evil." This discourse on the origin and radical democratic idealism. In our day, foundations of inequality among men was Green radicalism is a form of radical are trans-class doctrines. That is. they ingly enough, he and Friedrich Engels the single most important intellectual democratic idealism, which, as we'll see, appeal to all men of all social classes, were sort of like chums, they were sort influence on generations of revolution has a close family resemblance to classi including the "progressive" or "enlight of the "big reds on campus." They were aries, from the Jacobins of the French cal anarchism in some ways. Mainstream ened" elements of the propertied and part of a left Hegelian circle which called Revolution through the various radicals liberalism also draws from this same ruling class, to carry out these principles themselves "the Free." of early 19th-century Europe to most of intellectual.tradition. which many of them claim to uphold-to Bakunin came to prominence during the "Red' 48ers" in the 1848 Revolution. The central premise of radical demo practice what they preach. the European bourgeois-democratic rev The central premise of Rousseau is that cratic idealism is that the world can be That anarchism is really a form of and olutions of 1848 as an exponent of what there is in the human species a natural more or less instantaneously restructured derives from radical democratic idealism was called "democratic pan-Slavism," not socially and historically conditioned so as to conform to the ideals of the clas is very clear in the career of the most his which was a form of extreme left-wing but a natural-instinct for sympathy and sic bourgeois-democratic revolution torically important figure of the anarchist national liberationism. At this point, all empathy with the sufferings of other expressed, for example, as "the right to movement, the man who actually founded of the Slavic peoples (except for the Rus members of that species. life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" the movement, Mikhail Bakunin. While sians) were subjugated and oppressed by The most ambitious attempt to provide in the American Declaration of Independ Bakunin is mostly known only as an other peoples. The South Slavs-the a sort of scientific substantiation for this ence or the more radical expression "Lib anarchist, he was actually an anarchist Serbs and the Bulgars-were part of the view-which could be called "species erty, Equality, Fraternity" of the far more only for the last decade of his career as a Turkish Ottoman Empire. The western solidarity"-was that of the anarchist radical French Revolution. How these are leftist radical, which lasted from the mid- Slavs-the Czechs and the Slovaks Kropotkin, in a book called Mutual Aid, interpreted varies, but they ~U-stem from 1840s to his death in the mid-1870s. He were part of the German-dominated which was considered the authoritative the same basic pr~ise. By their nature, began as a student radical at the Univer Hapsburg Empire. Poland, which was the statement of anarchist doctrine in the late all forms of radical democratic idealism sity of Berlin, as a left Hegelian. Interest- biggest Slavic country besides Russia, 19th and early 20th centuries. The first was divided at that time between the Mansell Collection two chapters are devoted to mutual aid Hapsburg Empire, Prussia and the fellow among animals, that is, non-human ani Slavic empire of tsarist Russia; mals. To give you a flavor 'of the argu Bakunin put out what he called an ment (I am not making this up; I am not "Appeal to the Slavs," to unite and liber that creative): ate all of the Slavic peoples and establish "As to the big Molucca crab (Limulus), a radical democratic federation of the I was struck (in 1882, at the Brighton Slavic peoples. This was not an appeal Aquarium) with the extent of mutual to the Slavic peasantry or the oppressed assistance which these clumsy animals are capable of bestowing upon a com and exploited masses. It was literally an rade in case of need. One of them had appeal to the Slavs, all of them. Engels fallen upon its back in a corner of the subjected Bakunin's manifesto to a scath tank, and its heavy saucepan-like cara ing criticism. What's significant is that he pace prevented it from returning to its natural position .... Its comrades came went beyond the specifics of the Slavic to the rescue, and for one hour's time I national question to the underlying world watched how they endeavoured to help view expressed in this appeal, which their fellow-prisoner." today still has much influence. Engels Now I think, just by reading that, one Storming of Bastille in wrote: can easily see the connection with Green July 1789 sparked "There is not a word about the actu radicalism. Great French ally existing obstacles to such a univer The very close family resemblance sal liberation, or about the very diverse Revolution, which between classical anarchism, especially gave organized degrees of civilization and the conse expression to quent equally diverse political needs of in its Kropotkinite version, and Green democratic idealism of the individual peoples. The word 'free radicalism is personified by the career of dom' replaces all that. There is not a Murray Bookchin. In the 1960s and '70s, thinkers like Jean word about the actual state of things, Jacques Rousseau. or, insofar as it does receive attention, it Bookchin was the pre-eminent anarchist Anarchist conception is described as absolutely reprehensible, intellectual in the U.S. That is, his role in of "revolution" as arbitrarily established by 'congresses of . American left politics and the intelli moral regeneration of despots' and 'diplomats'." gentsia was very similar to that of Noam all classes is based If you replace "congresses of despots" Chomsky today. In fact~ Bookchin was on Rousseau's trans and "diplomats" with "multinational cor even more aggressively anti-Marxist than class doctrines. porations," this passage should sound Chomsky, because "Marxism-Leninism" 8 WORKERS VANGUARD was then fashionable. But at some point, . thinkers, especially those who denounce Bookchin shifted over to the more- fash the existing state of society, are radically ionable doctrine of Green radicalism, reinterpreted by subsequent generations which he called social ecology. But he in light of their own very different experi didn't change his worldview. It's the ences. And that's what happened to Rous same worldview, just expressed slightly seau during the French Revolution. Here differently. was a revolution which in the space of a Implicit in all forms of Green radical few years not only radically changed all ism is that all people should basically of the political and social institutions but govern their social and political behavior brought about a change in mass psychol by the perceived future interests of the ogy that would have been inconceivable human species. In other words, if you even a year or two before the revolution. could convince people that automobiles So the leftist intellectuals at the time con are harmful to the environment and harm cluded that Rousseau had been too pessi ful to the future of humanity and other mistic. Man was not so corrupted and species, they'll presumably give up auto depraved; the moral regeneration of soci mobiles. It doesn't matter that modern ety was in fact possible through revolu industrial society is built around the auto tionary action. Rousseau's historical pes mobile, that you can't get to work with simism was sort of inverted into a naive out it most of the time. historical optimism, that the paradise that Dietz Verlag If man is naturally good, naturally was lost with private property coul.d May 1849 Dresden uprising (above). Mikhail empathetic,as Rousseau argued, how do instantaneously be regained. Bakunin first gained prominence as a left-wing, we then get into the mess we are in? The first work which contains a doc pan-Slavic nationalist in the European democratic revolutions of 1848. How come we get war, slavery, the con- , trine that is distinctly anarchist was History Today quest and subjugation of one people by written in 1793, the same year as the another, class exploitation, torture, mur radical climax of the French Revolution izations. There was, of course, the Inter socially determined. They maintained der, the whole kit and caboodle? Well, under the Jacobin regime. It was written national Workingmen's Association, the that it was the workers, by their role Rousseau's answer is that this comes by an Englishman called William God First Interna}ional, dominated by Marx. in society and their experience, who from the institution of private property, win. It was called Enquiry concerning But there was a rival, liberal body called would be uniquely attracted to and dis which was for Rousseau basically "a bad Political Justice. And Godwin in this the League for Peace and Freedom, which posed to accept the program of anarcho book advocated, in his words, "a well was led by liberal politicians and intellec communism; they had an interest in this conceived form of society without gov tuals like John Stuart Mill in England program. The capitalists, by their role in ernment." Godwin was part of a circle and the novelist Victor Hugo in France. society, had become so selfish and egotis of English radicals who were both pro At first, Bakunin didn't join the work tical that they were hostile to the program foundly influenced by the French Revo ers international, he joined the bourgeois of anarcho-communism. And of course lution and in turn became defenders liberal international, and only when he the classic anarchists, of which Kropot of the French Revolution, propagan couldn't convince the bourgeois liberals kin was the dominant figure, had to dists for the ideals of the French Revolu to embrace anarchism did he go over to answer this challenge. So in Mutual Aid tion, in the English-speaking world. The the workers international. he writes: best-known representatives of this circle But even more so than Bakunin, Kro "Men who have acquired wealth very often do not find in it the expected satis were Tom Paine and Mary Wollstone potkin was very explicit in appealing to capitalists. And here the difference faction .... The conscience of human soli craft, the pioneer advocate of women's' darity begins to tell; and, although soci rights. Interestingly, Mary Wollstonecraft between anarchism and syndicalism actu ety life is so arranged as to stifle that married William Godwin. They had a ally is of some importance. In the 1890s, feeling by thousands of artful means, it daughter, also named Mary, who later the anarchist movement split into two often gets the upper hand; and then they rival competing tendencies. Generally the try to find an outcome for that deeply married another famous English radical, human need by giving their fortune; or Houghton Mifflin Company the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Mary syndicalists denounced the anarchists as Peter Kropotkin, foremost anarchist their forces, to something which, in their Wollstonecraft Shelley is also famous in woolly-headed idealists and ivory tower opinion, will promote general welfare." spokesman and theoretician of the intellectuals. The American syndicalists her own right, as the author of the novel So as I said at the beginning of this late 19th and early 20th centuries. said, "The anarchists deny the class strug- Frankenstein. talk, the youth who called upon the direc , gle and we fight it." In turn, the anarchists Godwin made it very clear that his con tors of the World Bank to forgive the idea." In his Discourse on the Origin of condemned the syndicalists for what we ception of anarchism was simply a shift debt of poor Third World countries were Inequality, he writes: later would call "economism," for reduc ing of what Rousseau had placed in the entirely consistent with the doctrines "The first mlln who, having enclosed a ing the noble goals of the anarchist revo piece of land, thought of saying 'This is distant past, in the Golden Age, into the of Kropotkin, expressed through human lution to the small change of trade-union mine' and found people simple enough immediate future. Thus he wrote: solidarity. to believe him, was the true founder of struggle for higher wages and better "It was however by a very slight mistake. Let's deal with another aspect of civil society. How many crimes, wars, working conditions. They denounced that he missed the opposite opinion the question. In the Spartacist pamphlet murders; how much misery and horror which it is the business of the present some anarcho-syndicalist leaders, not the human race would have been spared "Enlightenment Rationalism and the enquiry to establish. He only substituted without justification, as aspiring trade if someone had pulled up the stakes and as the topic of his eulogium, the period Origins of Marxism," I noted that in union bureaucrats, although.the term was filled in the ditch and cried out to his that preceded government and laws some ways Rousseau and Adam Smith fellow men: 'Beware of listening to this not yet in vogue. But the impo~ant point instead of the period that may possibly represented the poles of Enlightenment impostor. You are lost if you forget that follow upon their abolition." is that like the Marxists, the syndical the fruits of the earth belong to everyone and that the earth itself belongs to no ists maintained that consciousness was continued on page 10 one!" Marxism vi. Anarchism And Rousseau goes on to attribute all Now at this point I want to elaborate on malignant and ignoble emotions and atti an aspect of anarchism that is not gener tudes to property and resuhing inequality: 'ally appreciated, including among people "Insatiable ambition, the thirst of raising who call themselves anarchists, because their respective fortunes, not so much it shares a fundamental point of conver from real want as from the desire to sur Karl Marx and pass others, inspired all men with a vile gence with liberalism in opposition to Friedrich Engels propensity to injure one anothe~, and Marxism. Anarchism really is a doctrine (inset). Marx and with a secret jealousy, which is the more of class collaboration. In the first part Engels counterposed dangerous, as. it puts on the mask of of the anarchism series ("Marxism vs. the revolutionary benevolence, to carry its point with Anarchism: The Origins of Anarchism," mobilization of the . greater security .... All these evils were the first effects of property, and the WV No. 640, 1 March 1996), I quoted proletariat against inseparable attendants of its growing from the then-Trotskyist Felix Morrow capitalism to the inequality." who explained that when the Spanish class-collaborationist Those of you who are blessed or cursed anarchists entered the capitalist Popular doctrines of with a Catholic school background, or Front government during the Spanish anarchism. are otherwise familiar with Christian doc Civil War of the late 1930s, at one level trine, may immediately recognize a close this seemed to be a violent violation of similarity between Rousseau's concep their principles, and many anarchists tion of private property and the Augustin denounced them for it. But at a higher ian doctrine of original sin. This is the level, it was consistent with their ~rinci point where paradise was lost, where pies, because they had always believed man's natural innocence was lost, and that following the revolution the capital where sin and evil enter the world of ists too would undergo a moral regen men. The parallel is actually quite exact, eration and work for the betterment of because Rousseau himself was not a rev humanity. olutionary. He was not even a reformer. Bakunin today has a posthumous repu He was a historical pessimist. He was tation as some kind of revolutionary wild a moralistic critic of civilization. He man. Turn him loose and he's trying to considered that man in society had overthrow the state and abolish it for become so corrupted and so depraved that ever. But that reputation is undeserved. there was no hope for general moral Most of Bakunin's career was actually regeneration. spent in liberal and liberal-nationalist cir But it sometimes happens that the ideas cles. In the late 1860s, there were two of powerful, original and unorthodox competing left-wing international organ- 25 AUGUST 2000 9 equality and freedom have value in anarchists as such. We are interested in tion to a classless, communist society. Anarchism ... themselves, ultimately for us these are a anarchist youth only because they are Let me give you a concrete example. (continued from page 9) means to an end. What does equality involved, even if wrong-headedly, in Parts of the Persian Gulfarea have two mean under communism? It certainly struggles on behalf of the oppressed thirds of the world's oil reserves, and you thought. Adam Smith argued that social doesn't mean that people have the same and exploited. We are interested in the can extract oil from this region at a mere and economic inequality is a necessary living standards, or consume or utilize anarchist youth who are involved in the fraction of the cost pretty much anywhere overhead cost for technological progress, the same material resources. Equality Mumia campaign and even in the "anti else. But let's~~ay that you have a Baku raising the general standards of living, simply means equal access. There?ll be g'lobalization" campaign. In a number of ninite world in which you have these self increasing what he called The Wealth of a huge range of lifestyles, consuming West European countries, the anarchists governing regions in the oil-rich areas of Nations. Rousseau accepted that argu very differently. or the anarchoids are sort of the most mil the Persian Gulf. What's to prevent the ment, blIt drew the reverse conclusion: People will be free to do what they itant defenders of the rights of immi inhabitants of these regions from taking equality and social harmony and commu want. It's not merely that there won't grants against the attacks of fascists and advantage of their oil monopoly just like nal values could exist only with a static be a coercive state, but most time will be the government. WeB, so are we. the Saudi monarchy and the oil compa and .relatively primitive economy. Con what is now called "free time." The ques So, presumably a lot of anarchists nies do today and charging the rest of sistent with his entire doctrine, he main tion for Marx was, how will people uti- really want to overcome the vast differ- the world extortionate prices? Now of tained that man was happiest, indeed he course the Bakuninites never answer was only happy; at the most primal level that question, but one can answer it from of economic existence: their logic. They would say, "After the , "As· long as men remained satisfied anarchist revolution, everybody will with their rustic huts; as long as they undergo a moral regeneration. They wi1\' were content with clothes made of the skins of animals, sewn with thorns and identify their interests themselves with fish bones; as long as they continued the rest of humanity and therefore they to consider feathers .and shells as suffi will provide the oil which they extract, cient ornaments, and to paint their bod~ because of uneven natural resources, to ies different colors, to improve or orna the rest of the world, gratis." ment their bows and arrows, to fashion with sharp-edged stones ... they lived At bottom, anarchism is the Rous free, healthy, honest and happy as much seauean version of an essentially benevo as their nature would admit, and contin lent human nature and the "revolution" ued to enjoy with each other all the therefore is essentially close to religion. pleasures ~f an independent intercourse." And in the U.S. today, there's a lot of Now, Marx maintained that such sub religiosity in left circles. The revolution jective attitudes as ambition, selfish is basically seen as a change in subjectiv ness, envy of people who were wealthier ity, and in institutions only insofar as they or more successful were ultimately the follow from that change in subjectivity, product of economic scarcity. Rousseau where people give up their individual inverted this. For Rousseau, economic selfishness and identify with the interests scarcity derived from the fact that people of humanity. wanted to be hetter than their fellows. A conventional understanding of so The Workers State and cialism and communism, of what moti Bureaucratism vates us, is that we are hostile to capital The Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, ism because of the extremes of economic one of the founders of the Italian Com and social inequality. There are people munist Party, made a very important who work hard and are destitute, espe point. He said that military strategy is cially in but not limited to Third World Novosli based on attacking the w,eak points of countries. And then there are people who Soldiers march in Moscow after October 1917 Revolution with banner your enemy and avoiding the strong do nothing, who are strictly parasitic, reading "Communism." The Bolshevik Revolution won the best of the points. In political and polemical strug anarchists to communism. and live in the lap of luxury. Well, cer gle, yOu do just the opposite. You want to attack and polemicize against the strong tainly an important goal of communism lize that free time? Will they do it like ence between the Third World and the est arguments of your opponent, pre is to eliminate that. But that is not the they do now, which is mainly entertain First World. That is, they are opposed sented by the most intelligent and coher ultimate goal. The ultimate goal lies in a ment, sports, games, socializing, vegging to and want to overcome the impover ent representatives. If you're writing a whole other sphere of human activity, the out, hanging out, you know, not work ishment of much of humanity, which is polemic against somebody, you don't sphere outside of consumption, and it is ing? Marx envisioned most people spend entirely consistent with anarchist doctrine precisely this sphere that requires a much single out some indefensible formulation ing their free time in "free labor," that as a goal. The problem is that it contra higher level of labor productivity than which everybody knows they don't really is, creative, artistic, scientific or related dicts anarchist program and means. If exists even in the most advanced capi mean. That's not going to convince them. work, which he described in this way: you read, for example, Bakunin's Revo talism. In other words, if our goal were Now, the strongest arguments for Baku "Really free labour, the composing of lutionary Catechism, in which he spells simply to provide everybody in this music for example, is at the same time out in great detail the organization of ninite anarchism are actually provided country with a decent standard of living, retrospectively by the phenomenon of damned serious and demands the greatest the future anarcho-communist society, it say, equivalent to $80,000 or $100,000 effort. The labour concerned with material Stalinism. This is Bakunill against Marx is based on extreme economic as well for a family of four, we could do that production can only have this character if on the workers state: (I) it is of a social nature, (2) it has a sci as political decentralization: You have with the existing American economy just entific character and at the same time is "So the result is the control of the vast these little local anarcho-communes majority of the people by a privileged by a little rearranging. That is not what general wQ.rk, i.e. if it ceases to be human which get together to form regional minority. But this minority, the Marx we're ultimately about. What we're ulti effort as a definite, trained natural force, gives up its purely natural, primitive anarcho-communes, which are basically ists say, will c,onsist of workers. Yes, mately about is providing all mel]1bers of quite possibly of former workers, but, aspects and becomes the activity of a sub economically self-sufficient, though they society, here and elsewhere, with the as soon as they have become the repre ject controlling all the forces of nature in may trade with one another. But the prob capacity to do creativB work, what Marx sentatives or rulers of the people, they the production process." lem is, an anarcho-commune in upper called free or unalienated labor. We are cease to be workers and will gaze down Well, to control aB the forces of nature Manhattan and one in a peasant village in upon the whole world of the common not basically in the business of equality in the productive protess involves the India are going to be very different kinds workers from the eminence of 'state of consumption. expenditure of very considerable material of anarcho-communes. That's not equal hood'; they will no longer represent the Now precisely because of this aspect, people, but only themselves and their resources. First, there is the question of ity. Freedom maybe, equality no. How do Marxism, the concept of communism, 'claims' to govern the people. Anyone acquiring the knowledge of the forces of you get equality? Well, the one way you're is fundamentally different from both the who can doubt this knows nothing of nature. Consider the vast resources nec going to get that is the Marxist program, human nature." earlier socialists and the anarchists. For essary to acquire a PhD in physics or which is an internationally planned, Now wouldn't a typical American lib the pre-Marxian socialists, the ultimate chemistry or biology-not for the privi socialized economy with a central politi eral see in this that Bakunin was predict goal was equality. The first revolution leged few, but for anybody who wants to. cal government, at least during the transi- ing the rise of a Stalinist bureaucracy, ary communist organization, derived in Also, many spheres of scientific research the last stages of the French Revolution, require vast expenditures of material was called the "Conspiracy of Equals." resources-space exploration, genetic If you ask an anarchist what his ulti engineering, robotics, paleontology, on This pamphlet reprints presentations mate goal is, he would say "freedom." and on. The point basically is that Marx's given by SL Central Committee member When Kropotkin formed a journal in conception of communism is one in Joseph Seymour on the origins of England in the late 19th century, he called which all the progressive achievements of Marxism in the French Enlightenment it Freedom. Although we recognize that and in left Hegelianism. Also included civilization are fuBy utilized, ~ made accessible to all members of society and are "150 Years of the Communist Mani festo" and "Marxism and Religion." vastly expanded. It's a concept quite alien to the Rousseauean idea of some kind of In the retrograde climate of post-Soviet primitive economic harmony or commu reaction, the struggle to reassert the nal values. validity of the program and purpose of revolutionary Marxism is crucial for our The Workers State and fight for new October Revolutions. the Anarcho-Commune I want to discuss a couple of aspects of Marx's conflict with Bakunin, or Baku $2 (48 pages) ninist doctrine, which bear very much on Make checks payable/mail to: our current work with anarchoid·liberal Spartacist Publishing Co., Box 1377 Green-radical youth. We are not inter GPO, New York, NY 10116 ested in anarchist youth because they are 10 WORKERS VANGUARD (I) which ruled in its own interest while in order to have a workers revolution in Q; :; claiming to be Marxist and to represent the first place, the workers would have to Q) a: the interests of the working class? And have a much higher level of political con in fact a number of left-wing writers who sciousness and a different leadership. in general reject and. oppose anarchism That is, as long as the British workers have argued that Bakunin on this ques supported the openly pro-capitalist union Seattle anti-WTO tion was more prescient, more realistic, leaders, supported the British Empire, protest, 1999. less utopian than Marx, because he there could be no workers revolution. So Utopian idea worried about the bureaucracy of a post it's not that somehow you go from what that capitalism revolutionary society. How does one exists to a workers state with no change can simply be ansWer that argument? in leadership and consciousness on the "resisted" by "the people" ignores When Bakunin asked, "Will perhaps part of the working class. As long as the basic class the entire proletariat stand at the head American working class more or less sub division of society 'of the government?" Marx replied, "In a scribes to the politics of AFL-CIO leader and revolutionary trades union, for example, does the en John Sweeney, there's not going to be a role that the tire union form its executive committee?" proletarian revolution in this country. So proletariat must But in point of fact, in the unions of that's part of the answer. play against U.S. Marx's day-and he was fully aware of The second part, which is more funda imperialism. this-the leaders did not represent the mental, is that Marx and Lenin, when interests of the ranks. The only mass they were talking about a workers state, unions at the time when Marx said this were not talking about Soviet Russia in were the British trade unions. The leaders the early 1920s. They were talking about bers of left-wing organizations who similarity between certain strands of Sta were political liberals. They were openly a workers state in an advanced capitalist thought of themselves as reds. But they linism and Bakuninism, so that anarchist pro-capitalist. Moreover, Marx just a few country, an advanced industrial country. went into the union officialdom, and intellectual Paul Avrich argues that Mao years earlier had engaged in a factional Moreover, they were talking about it in an gradually they lost their belief in revolu ism and Guevarism-which really main struggle against them in the First Interna international context in which proletarian tion and acquired certain material and tain that socialism is basically a change tionaL (Ironically, the liberal leaders of revolution had triumphed' in the major social privileges. in psychology in the masses with no rela the unions blocked with the anarchists capitalist countries. Obviously there can I suppose the most extreme case would tion to the level of production-were against Marx. So Bakunin was not in a be no "withering away" of the state even be South Africa, because there the exis actually closer to Bakuninism than Marx position io denounce Marx on that score. in an advanced capitalist country if you tence of a labor bureaucracy is so recent ism, and he was right. and the result of such a rapid change in If you read some of the old Stalinist the political situation. Consider that 15 propaganda about the "new Soviet man," years ago all of the trade-union leaders it's very much consistent with the Baku and Communist Party government offi ninist notion of a moral regeneration. cials in South AfriCa were either in The Marxist scholar Isaac Deutscher, prison,. underground or in exile. And if for example, characterized the "socialist these people 15 years ago could have man" Stalin presented to the world as looked into the future and seen what they working 12 hours a day under conditions had become, they would be horrified. But that no American worker would accept. the difference, especially in South Africa, In his Revolutionary Catechism, Baku between the life you can live as a union nin in many ways paints a very attractive official and the life of a rank-and-file society. But he maintained that society worker is vast. could exist, and was in fact even more Ultimately of course, as Marx and likely to exist, in the most backward, rural Engels wrote, the withering away of regions of Europe-Italy and Russia. It the state is premised on a rapid rise is no coincidence that anarchism as a doc in the level of labor productivity, making trine and a movement took hold in back it higher than the advanced capitalist ward European countries like Spain and STATE AND countries. Italy; tsarist Russia, which never had IlEVOL1JTION a mass anarchist movement, produced Anarchism and Stalinism some of the most influential anarchist 01 V. I. LEXI~ M.S. Nappelbaum In reality, Stalinism as a doctrine is thinkers. Lenin during founding congress of the Communist actually closer to Bakuninism than it is Bakunin was an advocate of, by the International, March 1.919. In opposition to to Marxism. Stalin maintained that you very nature of his doctrine, socialism in nationalist dogmas of anarchism and Stalinism,~ communists fight for revolutionary could build socialism in one coun one country, or even in one region of one internationalism. Lenin's State and Revolution try, Russia, but at least he thought you country. For Bakunin, consistent with the - explained that socialism can only be built in the could raise the .level of productivity. whole Rousseauean tradition, the main context of international workers revolution. Bakunin thought you could have anarcho effect of the revolution was not a reorgan communism in a Rus,sia that was basi ization of production to a higher level but cally on a primitive peas~nt base. In both a change in the political consciousness, But that's Realpolitik, not ideas.) are involved in a cold and maybe hot war .cases there's a divorcing of what could be so that people identified their own per You get the same apparent contradic against another equally or more powerful called social psychology from the eco sonal interests with humanity in generaL tion in Lenin. By the time you get to capitalis1 state, like the U.S. So if we take nomic basis. In other words, there's a Marxists, on the other hand, reject the Lenin, you have mass workers parties as ' power in Japan, believe me, the state is denial of the fundamental premise of spurious arguments of both the Stalin well as unions, but these are'thoroughly not going to wither away as long as a cap Marx that right cannot stand higher than ists and the anarchists that classless com bureaucratized. And in 1916, Len,in italist U.S. is there. the economic structure of society and the munism is simply the product of a wrote Imperialism, the Highest Stage of So again, one comes back to the funda cultural level conditioned thereby. And psychological regeneration. We fight to Capitalism, and a central aspect of that mental question. of economic scarcity. that's the real answer. Ultimately the Sta overthrow the capitalist system in order book is an analysis of and attack on the Why is there a labor bureaucracy, ulti linist bureaucracy is a product of the con to reorganize production so as to raise pro-capitalist bureaucracy of the workers mately? Is it, as Bakunin would argue, tinued world domination of capitalism, it to such, a high level that scarcity will movement. But the next year, when he because of a natural desire on the part of which prevents the raising of the general no longer exist. Only then can we lay wrote State and Revolution, there was men to lord it over and dominate other level of productivity in deformed workers' the material-basis for the emancipation an implicit assumption that there would men? Well, if that's true, that's an incon states, like China. The more intellectually of humanity from exploitation, war and be no bureaucracy in a workers state sistent argument even on his part, because honest anarchists actually recognize the poverty.• after the overthrow of capitalism. Thus then how do you get anarchism? No. Ulti he writes: mately a labor bureaucracy has the same "It is quite possible, afte~ the overthrow cause as classes in generaL It arises from of the capitalists and the bureaucrats, conditions of economic scarcity. As Leon to proceed immediately, overnight, to Trotsky explained in his classic work on replace them in the control over produc Stalinism, The Revolution Betrayed: tion and distribution. in the work of NEW YORK TORONTO keeping account of labour and products, "The basis of bureaucratic rule is the by the armed workers, by the whole of poverty of society in objects of con Meet the Marxists on Campus Marxism vs. Anarchism sumption, with theresultil1g struggle of the armed population. (The question Thursday, September 7,4 p.m. each against all. Where th~re is enough Wednesday, September 13, 7 p.m. of control and accounting should not be New York University confused with the question of the sci goods in a store, the purchasers can The Communist Manifesto: . come whenever they want to. When there entifically trained staff of engineers, Friday, September 8, 5:30 p.m. A Guide to Action agronomists and so on. These gentlemen is little goods, the purchasers are com Columbia University are working today in obedience to the pelled to stand in line. When the lines Wednesday, September 20, 7 p.m. wishes of the capitalists, and will work are very long, it is necessary to appoint a For room and further information call: policeman to keep order. Such is the International Student Centre even better tomorrow in obedience to the (212) 267-1025 U of T, 33 St. George Street wishes of the armed workers.)" starting point of the power of the.Soviet bureaucracy. It 'knows' who is to get VANCOUVER For information and readings call: So how does one account for this something and who has to wait." (416) 593-4138 apparent contradiction? Why did Marx Now in the U.S. today, the labor The Communist Manifesto: and Lenin recognize the role of bureauc bureaucracy is pretty much petty-bour A Guide to Action racy in the workers organizations under geois careerists from the get-go. But Wednesday, September 20, 6:30 p.m .. Visit the capitalism but implicitly assume .this in the 1930s and' 40s in this country, and University of British Columbia ICL Web Sitel would not be a problem in a workers state in other countries today, many of the For room and further information call: www.icl-ti.org following the overthrow of capitalism? labor bureaucrats were people who (604) 687-0353 First, Marx and Lenin recognized that began as militant young workers, mem- 25 AUGUST 2000 11 Democrats, Republicans ... ( continued from page 1) programs benefiting minorities and the poor, America's rulers are quite aware that they are sitting on a powder keg of discontent. Yet even as they vastly aug ment the forces of state repression, they are concerned to maintain illusions in the "democracy" of capitalist class rule in the U.S.' Less than half the electorate now votes in the presidential elections-an all-time WV Photos low-while, for the first time since before Reformist~ push bourgeois electoral politics: ISO at L.A. convention protest promotes "anti-corporate" fa~ade of cap the Civil War, third parties got more than italist Greens' Nader, shill for Democrats; Communist Party in Philadelphia stumps for Gore with "fight the right" line. 10 percent of the votes in the last two elections. Bourgeois Green Party candi While the level of black unemploy . of racist American capitalism. There is why so many black leaders, centrally the date Ralph Nader seeks to capitalize on ment has dropped, most of those jobs are no road to eliminating the special Democratic Party politicians, today in oppression of black people other than the this disaffection by offering a refurbished subsistence-level, minimum-wage posi working-class conquest of power, and effect accept de facto segregation. That's version of Democratic Party liberalism tions with no benefits and no future. there will be no proletarian revolution to because genuine social and economic which doesn't even make a nod to black Meanwhile, the axing of welfare and end class exploitation unless the working integration would require a massive redis~ people. Meanwhile, the AFL-CIO labor Mediqid benefits has consigned mil class actively takes up the fight for black tribution of wealth, a total and radical bureaucracy and the middle-class black lions of women and children to even rights. restructuring of the American economy deeper destitution, homelessness, dis "The working class has the numbers, the which can only come about with the Democrats are hitting the hustings to get organization and the power to win all out the vote for Gore. . ease and malnutrition. The percentage those things that the ruling class appro destruction of the capitalist system. There Fully 30 percent of· DNC delegates of black people covered by any form priates for itself-health care, education, is no other possible way to provide for were trade unionists. The ties to the Dem of medical insurance has continued to decent housing, abortion rights. What is quality, integrated housing and medical ocratic Party forged by the labor bureau decline in recent years. And for every lacking is the kind of leadership neces care, to ensure that children in the inner sary to ijght-a leadership of the unions crats, which bind the working class to the young black male attending an elite uni that doesn't bow down to the bosses' city ghettos receive an education in any class enemy, are a strategic obstacle to versity, dozens are serving time in laws, parties and state agencies, a work sense comparable to that available in pursuing the class struggle against capital. prison. The U.S. prison population- ers party that doesn't respect the prop- affluent, largely white suburbs. The liberal-led civil rights movement Q; of the 1960s could do nothing to funda in E mentally change the economic and social Left: ro {E. conditions of black people. Demands for Ralph Nader, protectionist voting rights, an end to Jim Crow segre China-basher. gation and legal equality could be Right: Teamsters achieved under capitalist democracy. But head James the forcible subjugation and segregation Hoffa Jr. carries of the black population at the bottom of sign against this society cannot be eradicated through trade relations new civil rights laws. with China at While younger blacks may view the anti-Communist 1963 March on Washington as the culmi protest in nation of the militant struggle for civil Washington, April 12. rights, the reality was very different. The fight for black equality profoundly shook the American bourgeois order. However, the liberal black leadership represented For the working class to be mobilized in heavily black and Hispanic-has now erty 'rights' of the bourgeoisie. We need by Martin Luther King sought to contain its own interests and in the interests of all reached two million. a workers party that fights for a workers the civil rights struggles within the frame the oppressed, it must stand independent Fed up with being pushed around in government to rip the means of produc work of "respectable" bourgeois politics, tion from the capitalist class and institute in particular tying the movement to the of the capitalist class, its parties and its the one-sided class war against labor and a planned socialist economy that oper state apparatus .• Break with the Demo the poor, seething with anger over ram ates not for the profit of a few greedy Democratic Party Kennedy and Johnson crats-Forge a workers party to fight for pant cop tetror like the death-squad-style exploiters but for the working people administrations. a workers government! killing of Amadou Diallo, thousands who produce the wealth of society. That This was especially clear during the is the kind of workers party that we com came out last October 23 in response to 1963 march, which was marked by Jackson, Sharpton: Front Men munists of the Spartacist League are the Partisan Defense Committee call to fighting to build." growing tensions between the younger for White Racist Rulers stop the KKK terrorists from riding in black militants and the King leadership The Democrats' overt appeals to the New York City. Running point for the Bankrupt Liberalism vs. and his sponsors in the white liberal Republican "mainstream" risk even fur entire state Democratic Party machine the Fight for Black Freedom establishment, particularly the Walter ther alienating organized labor, blacks and working in collusion with Republi Reuther wing of the AFL-CIO bureauc Official black leaders no longer even and liberal intellectuals. Yet it, is the trade can mayor Giuliani, Sharpton pulled out racy. John Lewis, then head of the mili talk about reforms which would radi unionists manning the campaign phone all the stops to- try and prevent this mass tant Student Nonviolent Coordinating cally improve the conditions of the black banks and the black politicos and preach labor/black mobilization. But the Demo Committee (SNCC), drafted a speech masses. A recent op-ed piece in the New ers who are critical to a Democra'ti6 vic crats, who went so far as to offer a plat denouncing the Democratic Party, saying York Times (6 August) by liberal black tory. One delegate, a retired auto worker, form for the Klan in a grotesque demon "the party of Kennedy is the party of academic Orlando Patterson criticizes the shrugged: "Can we get our people to turn stration of "tolerance," failed. On that Eastland," Mississippi's Dixiecrat sena Congressional Black Caucus and a num out on election day? I don't know." day, the working peopl.e and minorities tor. March leaders, particularly Reuther ber of black Democratic mayors for being The black Democrats are working of NYC repudiated the Democrats and and black social-democratic union leader "committed to a conception of inclusive overtime to bring out the vote for Gore/ ensured that they would prevail. As we A. Philip Randolph, pressured Lewis into ness that eschews genuine social and cul Lieberman come November. The Con wrote in our WV supplement (1 Novem deleting this section of the speech. tural integration." He notes, "While most gressional Black Caucus was trotted out ber 1999) titled "Labor/Black Mobiliza With millions taking to the streets African-Americans and the middle classes for a photo-op with Lieberman. The sec tion Rides KKK Out of NYC": and battling the racist cops from Bir generally still say they favor integration, ond day of the convention was devoted to "The successful labor/black mobilization mingham, Alabama to Los Angeles and "liberals' night," as Ted Kennedy joined brought to life the connection between some prominent black political leaders Detroit, the fight for black equality inter with Jesse Jackson in spouting off about labor's fight and the fight for black free have given up on this strategy." sected growing popular opposition to a "new frontier" and "diversity" (i.e., dom. Black oppression is the cornerstone However, Patterson does not explain U.S. imperialism's dirty colonial war tokenism). Meanwhile, Al Sharpton is against the Vietnamese workers and a. working the streets to hustle the black c( peasants. However, the ruling class was vote, organizing an August 26 demonstra able to restabilize society through a com tion in Washington, D.C. on the anniver bination of murderous repression, partic sary of the 1963 March on Washington. ularly directed at the Black Panther Party While nominally a protest against police and other radicals, and the co-optation of brutality, racial profiling and the death a layer of black leaders and activists. penalty, the real message of Sharpton's Today, the core of the black wing of the march is on his mobilizing flyer: "Vote in Democratic Party-from King's one November to ensure justice for all!" time lieutenant Jesse Jackson to former The politics of "lesser evilism" perpet SNCC leader John Lewis-derives from uate the racist hellhole that American UAW president this period. society is for black people. For all the Stephen Yokich It is these black Democrats, based on talk from the DNC platform about an (left) fetes the middle class, who help tie the mass of "economic miracle" and unprecedented Democrat Gore black workers and poor to the capitalist prosperity, by every measure-educa at August 11 system of exploitation, impoverishment tion, housing, job prospects, wages for union rally. and racial oppression. Yet the entire net those who can get work-the mass of the work of government programs upon black population is materially worse off which the black middle class' is largely than before the struggles of the 1960s. based-as bureaucrats in various federal, 12 WORKERS VANGUARD .8 state and local government agencies-has o .r: been steadily under bipartisan attack. c.. This is a direct product of the sharp shift ~ to the right throughout the bourgeois political spectrum. As we explained when the Republicans moved to impeach Clin ton over the Monica Lewinsky affair: "The shape of bourgeois politics in America was fundamentally altered in the wake of the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act of Up to 10,000 1965. The 'New Deal' Democratic Party turned out for PDC alliance between labor, Northern liber initiated labor/black als and the Southern segregationists mobilization that cemented by Franklin Delano Roosevelt rode Klan out of in the-1930s was blown apart. Republi NYC last October 23, can 'presidential candidate Barry Gold in opposition to water-who voted against the Civil Rights Act-authored the Republican Democrats' grotesque Party's 'Southern Strategy,' persuading call for "tolerance" . racist Southern Democrats-the Dixie for racist killers . crats-to defect. For the past 35 years, every presidential election has centered on race, with the Democrats desperately working to reverse the perception that they were beholden to 'special interests' like blacks and labor." in elections-as we have in the past-in into "Socialists for Nader." The Soli United Mine Workers with financial cor '-WV No. 704, 8 January 1999 order to bring our political program to darity outfit, which is also endorsing ruption. In 1972, he turned his attention to Central to Clinton's electoral strategy in new and wider audiences and to mobilize Dave McReynolds of the moribund, anti the powerful Teamsters union, helping set 1992 was the Democrats' own "Southern support for extraparliamentary social communist Socialist Party, lauds Nader up an opposition group called PROD strategy," aimed at recapturing some of struggle in defense of labor and against for "a powerful critique of the strangula (Professional Drivers Council for Safety the racist white vote which had gone racial oppression. tion of democracy by corporate control of and Health) which served as a coordinat Republican during the Reagan-Bush The reformist left, occasional lip ser the political process." The International ing center for lawsuits against the union. years of the 1980s. vice to socialism notwithstanding, offers Socialist Organization (ISO) enthuses, "A PROD later fused with the ISO-supported As opposed to the dead end of sup a program of palliatives of capitalist Left Wing Challenge to the Two Main Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU), port to "lesser evil" Democrats and the exploitation and oppression. The ref stream Patties." which wrote the blueprint for the gov reactionary black nationalism of Louis ormists' whole purpose is to reinforce Only a few months ago, the ISO's ernment's takeover of the Teamsters Farrakhan, we stand for the perspective the consummate shell game of bourgeois Socialist Worker was filled with implic union in the late 1980s. Besides advising of revolutionary integrationism, fighting electoral politics, which means reinforc itly pro-Democratic Party "fight the the government how best to take control against every instance of discrimination ing the grip of the Democratic Party on right" attacks on Bush and paeans to of the unions, in 1984 Nader did his own and for the full integration of black peo working people and minorities. The vehi Democratic politicians like Jesse Jackson union-busting, locking out the staff at his ple into an egalitarian socialist society. cle some fake-socialist groups have Jr. who call for a moratorium on the Multinational Monitor magazine after Black workers are a strategic component seized on' for doing this in the current death penalty. Socialist Worker (12 May) they tried to organize a union to improve of the work.ing class, in whose hands lies elections is Ralph Nader's Green Party lambasted Nader for joining with right their working conditions. the 'power to break the chains of capitalist campaign. While not receiving the big winger Pat Buchanan in China-bashing, What the ISO means by Nader's "pro exploitation and racist oppression. Sub corporate bucks that fund the two main adding that "Nader has shied away labor" stance is that he joins with the jected to both class and racialoppres pro-imperialist AFL-CIO tops in anti sion, black workers will be impelled to Communist China-bashing aimed at playa leading role in the socialist revo fomenting capitalist counterrevolution to lution in this country. destroy the gains of the 1949 Chinese Revolution. In his support for trade pro Reformist Tails on tectionism, Nader pushes the most vile Democratic Donkey anti-Mexican chauvinism, ranting: "You It is telling that even before the L.A. are driving along in Maine or Minnesota convention, the Democratic Socialists of or Illinois, looking in the rearview mirror America (DSA) decided not to endorse and there's a big Mexican truck bearing Gore, saying he "represents a centrist, down on you with a driver who doesn't neo-liberal politics." Michael Harrington have to meet the same standards ... that and other DSA founders were key Demo U.S. truck drivers have to meet" (Chicago cratic Party advisers and authored ti).e Tribune, 25 June). This diatribe is of a "war on poverty" programs which were piece with Nader's hostility to the strug used to co-opt a layer of black activists gle against the special oppression of in the '60s. Now the DSA contends, "It black people, despite his proclaimed is inaccurate to describe DSA as primar opposition to the death penalty and the ily working within the 'left-wing' of the "war on drugs." During his 1996 presi Democratic Party." This is not because dential bid, Nader sneered that "to the DSA has moved to the left, but focus on discriminatory injustice"-i.e.,
because the "New" Democratic leaders WVPhoto racism-"you tend to diVIde the country" no longer want a social-democratic "left USWA Local 8888 waged four-month strike against Virginia's Newport News (San Francisco Chronicle, 13 October wing" in their party. shipyard in heart of racist, "open shop" South. Labor rights and black rights 1996). As communists, we seek to direct go hand inl1and! As for the Green Party's environmen increasing disillusionment with bour talism, this can equally well appeal to the geois electoral politics into the struggle capitalist parties, the Green Party is nev from class issues" and that his "position right as to the left, seeing "over-consump for working-class political independence ertheless a capitalist party, albeit with on other issues is far from consistently tion" and technology as the problem. At from the parties of the capitalist class a petty-bourgeois base. Nader openly progressive." But now the ISO has dis bottom, the Greens seek to hide the enemy. Our purpose is to make the work says that his aim is t9 bring out the vote covered Nader's "unexpected popular squalor of capitalist exploitation from the ing class conscious of its historic interest for Democratic Congressional candi ity," particularly among the liberals it sensitive eyes of the middle class. Start in fighting to abolish this entire racist dates~ In short, Nader is a capitalist can appeals to who feel homeless in the ing with the nee-Malthusian argument profit system through proletarian socialist didate in his own right and a shill for the Democratic Party. that there isn't enough to go around, the revolution. As a tactic in building the Democrats. To cover for its craven opportun logic is to decide who loses ouL That revolutionary workers party necessary to Socialist Alternative (formerly Labor ism, the ISO's International Socialist logic was behind a 1998 proposal from a achieve this aim we will on occasion run Militant) has virtually liquidated itself Review (August/September 2000) claims wing of the Sierra Club for immigration that Nader's campaign offers "the oppor restrictions as a way to put an "end to tunity to fight for class solutions with a U.S. population growth." In Germany, smap but serious pro-labor alternative," Rudolph Bahro, a founder of the Green the justification echoed in one way or Party there, called for a "Green Adolf' to another by Nader's other "socialist" lead the Germans to "ecological salva cheerleaders. In fact, like Nader, the ISO tion" after breaking with the Greens in sees his campaign as a tactic to pressure 1985. In Britain, a wing of the fascist the Democrats, observing that "the Dem National Front issues the cry, "Racial ocrats are losing workers' and students' preservation is green!" votes that might cost them the election" and arguing that as a result of his cam For a Workers Government! paign the Democratic Party "will be pres In their own way, many poor and work sured to move to the left to win elections ing people recognize that there is little to or it will -precipitate deeper splits that choose from between the Democrats and may allow for the formation of a new Republicans. In effect, they vote against party independent of the corporations." both parties by not voting at all or by cast Far from being a "pro-labor alterna ing. a protest vote. But while the Demo tive," Nader has a notorious history of cratic and Republican leaders ritu serving the capitalist government against ally complain ~bout low voter turnout, AP the unions (something the ISO might not the interests of the ruling class are Martin Luther King Jr., A. Philip Randolph and other liberal civil rights notice because it has a similar history). In also served by political passivity, apathy leaders, seen here with President Kennedy following 1963 March on 1969, Nader testified before a Senate and even cynicism among' the masses. Washington, chained black struggle to Democratic Party. hearing tQ charge the leadership of the continued on page 14 25 AUGUST 2000 13 E strike leaders were arrested, condemned :::J C to death for "a grave crime against the Ol Near East ... ro state" and hanged on the factory grounds: ::t< ( continued from page 6) C The Communists were banned, strikes c ('§ Wafdists and the DMNL. Nasser looked were outlawed and a corporatist regime of to the DMNL to print the Free Officers' labor control was set up in which the leaflets and perform other tasks. Mean trade unions were placed under effective while, the Free Officers provided military control by the military regime. support to the Muslim Brotherhood for its Nasser's nationalization of ,the Suez "liberation battalions" in the Canal Zone. Canal in 1956 and the subsequent inva Central in this was Nasser's comrade-in sion of Egypt by Britain, France and French troops arms (and future Egyptian president) Israel was a milestone in the postwar occupy Port Said as Anwar Sadat, who in a 1952 newspaper history of the Near East. Washington's Britain, France and interview yraised Adolf Hitler as a great successful strong-arming of Britain and Israel invade Egypt patriot who worked for the good of his France to withdraw their troops con over Nasser's people. firmed U.S. imperialism as the top dog in nationalization of In July 1952, the Free Officers seized the region. The U.S. was then intent on Suez Canal, 1956. power, sweeping away the despised cohering the Baghdad Pact (CENTO), a monarchy. The DMNL supported the regional anti-Soviet military alliance akin military coup as an expression of the to NATO in West Europe. Standing at the "national democratic movement." The head of a campaign against adherence by following month, when textile workers Arab governments to the Baghdad Pact, in Kafr Al-Dawwar near Alexandria went Nasser shifted to a pro-Soviet posture, prison terms of hard labor. to hail Nasser as the "leader of the on strike, believing their leaders' assur while continuing his anti-Communist The establishment of closer relations National Front of Arab Liberation." But ances that the new regime was on their repression. Less than one month before between the Soviet Union and Egypt led the formation of the "United Arab Repub side, Nasser threw down the gauntlet to nationalization of the Suez Canal, a mili to a Soviet reappraisal of Nasser, whose lic" under Nasser's leadership in 1958 led the organized workers movement. Two tary tribunal sentenced 40 Communists to July 1952 coup was now described as an to the suppression of the powerful Syrian "anti-imperialist revolution." The various CP, then the largest in the Near East, and Communist groups in Egypt, united by the arrest of its leaders and hundreds of ~ (ii' their enthusiastic support for Nasser, members. ~ moved to fuse their forces. In their desire The next year, Nasser turned on his ao :r to ingratiate themselves with the rising Egyptian Communist supporters with a tide of Nasser's pan-Arab nationalism, vengeance, rounding up almost every the unified Communist Party of Egypt known leftist in the country. The Commu stipulated that Jews were prohibited from nists in prison were humiliated, tortured playing a leadership role in the party. and pressured to repudiate their political With the Egyptian Communists firmly ideas. Yet even as their comrades were under Nasser's thumb, the nationalists beaten to death or left to die for lack of in power in Syria sought a merger with medical aid" the Communists maintained Egypt in order to stifle the growing influ their political support for Nasser. ence of the Syrian Communist Party. During its diplomatic alliance with As in Egypt, the Syrian Communists tied Nasser's military bonapartist regime, themselves politically to bourgeois na the Kremlin Stalinists showered Nasser's tionalists who showed themselves to be capitalist Egypt with more anti-aircraft Demonstrators the workers' worst enemies. The fiereely missiles and other military equipment acclaim Egyptian military strongman anti-Communist Syrian Ba'ath Party in than they gave to North Vietnam as the Gamal Abdel Nasser, power had adopted a "left" stance. Resist Vietnamese workers and peasants waged hailed by Stalinists ing Western pressure to join the Baghdad a heroic-and ultimately victorious as leader of "anti ,Pact, it made overtures to the Soviet struggle against U.S. imperialism. Not imperialist" struggle. Union and welcomed the Communists surprisingly, the bourgeois-nationalist into the ruling coalition. Nasser ultimately turned against his The Syrian Communist Party contin Soviet patrons. In the 1970s, his hand ued to grow spectacularly, leading the picked successor, Anwar 'Sadat, brought three trade-union federations by 1957. Egypt fully into the fold of American While objecting to the proposed union imperialism. with Egypt, the Syrian CP continued [TO BE CONTINUED]
gles, and the role of the liberals and net, no regulatory agencies. lution. Like the pro-capitalist trade-union Democrats, social democrats was to keep those }t is necessary to defend Social Secur bureaucracy in this country which under struggles within the confines of electoral ity, public education, welfare and all mines the gains that were won through reformism. The New Deal reforms were social programs against the,vicious gov hard class struggle, the Stalinist bureauc Republicans ... instituted to head off the convulsive ernment rollback schemes. But our goal racy which came to power in 1924 (continued from page 13) labor struggles of the 1930s that formed is not simply to maintain the existing betrayed the gains of the Russian Revolu Certainly, many people rightly view the industrial. unions and shook the conditions of the working class and poor tion and hijacked the exercise of political government officials and legislators as American bourgeois order. The 1960s against the efforts of the capitalists to power by the workers. The Stalinists pur corrupt and unprincipled, as politicalpros "war on poverty" was aimed at buying bring about an even greater degree of sued class collaboration with the imperi titutes on the corporate payroll. But as social peace as the ghettos exploded immiseration. The capitalist system itself alist rulers, not the revolutionary interna long as they perceive tliat nothing can be 'across the U.S. Today, having achieved must be overthrown and replaced by a tionalist program that animated Lenin and done about this, such an attitude does not its decades-long goal in the counter planned socialist economy. For that, it is Trotsky'S Bolshevik Party. Ultimately, threaten or chililenge the capitalist order. revolutionary destruction of the Soviet necessary to forge a workers party. this led to the destruction of the Soviet Every reform and gain for workers, degenerated workers state, and having The best workers party in history was Union by the forces of imperialism and minorities and women in this country battered the trade unions at home for the Bolshevik Party of Lenin and domestic counterrevolution in 1991-92. industrial unionism, Social Security and more than two decades, the American Trotsky, which led the workers of Russia The Spartacist League is fighting to Medicare, public health, formal equality ruling class envisions a return to the to power in the October Revolution. That build a Bolshevik Party like that of Lenin for black people, the right to abortion unrestrained capitalism of the 1920s party was composed of the vanguard and Trotsky to fight for new October Rev has been won through hard-fought strug- trade unions decimated, no social safety layers of the proletariat and those revolu olutions-a multiracial revolutionary tionary intellectuals who came over to workers party that will champion the fight the side of the workers. It steeled the for black freedom, linking the power of Contents include: working masses for the seizure of state labor to the anger of the ghettos and bar • Mumia Abu-Jamal's Life of Struggle power through political combat against rios and wielding that power in defense of the labor bureaucrats and opportunist the rights of immigrants, women, gays • Court Hearings: New Evidence of Frame-Up "socialists" -of the day; It was built by and all the oppressed. In a socialist soci • From Death Row, This Is Mumia Abu-Jamal leading hard-fought strike battles against ety, the surplus value which currently "La Amistad and American Law" the employers and by actillg as a tribune goes into the coffers of Wall Street of the people in fighting for democratic tycoons would be used to rebuild the • The Frame-Up of Mumia Abu-Jamal rights for women, Jews and oppressed country's decaying infrastructure (such as • For Non-Sectarian,Class-Struggle Defense! nationalities against the Russian tsarist mass transit); to provide free medical care • Death Row Speedup Targets Minorities autocracy. It used bourgeois elections as and free, quality, racially integrated edu • Philly Cops' Reign of Terror a platform for revolutionary propaganda cation for all; to provide decent, afford and sent its elected representatives into able housing for all; to help raise the liv • Desperation, Segregation and the the tsarist parliament (Duma) as spokes ing standards of the impoverished masses "Ebonics" Controversy men against the political parties of the of the Third World. But to secure all these • Down With "English Only" Racism! capitalists and landowners. things requires breaking the power of the • Coleman Young: From CIO Union Lenin's Bolsheviks also combatted bourgeoisie and claiming the tremendous Organizer to Overseer for Auto Bosses illusions that the workers could come. wealth that is now controlled by a tiny to power through parliamentary means. ha'ndful to be used in the interests of soci $1 (48 pages) They fought for workers rule through ety as a whole. Forward to a workers rev elected workers councils (soviets), an aim olution and a socialist egalitarian society Order from: Spartacist Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 which was realized by the October Revo- internationally! • 14 WORKERS VANGUARD key to chaining labor's power. The CWA their determination to use their power. long been wielded as a weapon to keep Verizon ... is one ofthe biggest contributors to Dem Mass pickets in Philadelphia on the first black people "in their place" and unions (continued from page 16) ocrat Gore's election campaign-along day of the strike shut out management out, and rallying the black population with Verizon itself. When 10,000 work scabs. Today's New York Times sneered, behind labor against the cops and com decidedly not the policy of the CWA and ers turned out for a strike rally in New "When phone workers go on strike, life pany goons and their KKK auxiliaries. IBEW bureaucrats. York City on August 10, CWA officials pretty much goes on. That is because The fight against racist discrimination is Instead of calling a solid national strike paraded one Democratic Party politician modern networks are largely automated." also key to forging one industrial union, of all Verizon workers to organize the after another onto the speaker's platform A 1981 strike by telephone workers in which can only come about by break wireless sector, the CWA and IBEW while lauding the racist, union-busting British Columbia, Canada showed how to ing down the deep craft divisions-rein tops looked to contractual promises by cops patrolling the demonstration as an beat that system. Instead of marching out, forced by racist and sexist bigotry-that management, including a "neutrality" example of "good management"! The they occupied every major installation separate highc;r-paid, overwhelmingly clause supposedly assuring company union tops also welcomed a photo-op around the clock and held the company's white male technicians from operators non-interference in unionization efforts. appearance by New York Senatorial can property hostage. If Verizon workers had and clerks, largely minority women. According to the Wall Street Journal (21 didate Hillary Clinton on the picket lines. occupied the buildings, they could have The CWA bureaucracy stands out as August), "Verizon flatly rejected that Last December, this "friend of labor" won millions of allies among working the starkest example of a labor misleader approach~" Small wonder. The corporate endorsed New York State's strikebreaking people with a flick of the switch, by pro ship that equates the interests of the owners are never neutral when it comes Taylor Law when it was used to ban NYC viding free phone service. working class with those of the racist to their profits. The CWA has a "Neu transit workers not only from striking but But to carry out tactics like that, you imperialist rulers. The CWA was forged trality and Consent Election" provision even from using the word "strike"! need a union leadership that does not bow as a real union from a number of com in its 1998 contract with AT&T. The The Democratic and Republican par to the bosses' property "rights" and the pany unions only as the result of a hard company's consistent flouting ofthat pro ties represent the interests of the capital capitalist state's anti-labor laws. When a fought strike in the late 1940s. But the vision provoked a strike vote earlier this ists. The government is nothing other Pennsylvania court imposed an injunction union misleaders have always remained year over unfair labor practices. than the executive committee of the limiting picket lines to four strikers walk loyal to the interests of the company and The flying picket squads which have whole capitalist class. The job of the ing at least ten feet apart, with no other the American bourgeoisie as a whole. The shut down NYC facilities in the past two cops, courts and military which are at the striker less than 200 feet away, the CWA officialdom served for decades in days have not been seen in the American core of the capitalist state is to protect the bureaucracy simply bowed to this strike the forefront of the AFL-CIO's collusion labor movement in years. The mass profits and rule of the American bour breaking measure, hiding behind it to with the CIA in building anti-communist industrial unions were built in the 1930s geoisie. At least nine strikers were bit by avoid mobilizing mass, militant pickets to "labor" fronts for U.S. imperialism around using just such tactics; along with plant scab management cars on the picket lines. ensure no scab got in. the world. Founding CWA president occupations, secondary labor boycotts, But the cops went after striking workers, The union tops did not even bring out Joseph Beirne was instrumental in the etc.-not by the mechanism of signing arresting two dozen in the course of all unionized workers at Verizon, rushing American Institute for Free Labor Devel cards or scheduling NLRB elections. The 15 days. All of labor must demand: Drop to settle contracts in Kentucky, Indiana opment (AIFLD) , which aided bloody labor officialdom's faith in company all the charges! No victimizations-Full and elsewhere. There is a clear and cry death squad terror against leftists and "neutrality"-and in government agen amnesty for all strikers! ing need for industry-wide union organ union militants from Chile to El Salvador. cies and "neutral arbitrators" to enforce Labor can rely only on its numbers, izing efforts and for one industrial union Defending management prerogatives, a such contractual promises-epitomizes organization and class solidarity. Sum for all telecommunications workers. Verizon spokesman told the New York its program of class collaboration, which ming up this class-struggle understand The floodgates for attacks on union Times (15 August): "This is about the sees "allies" in the government and polit ing, American Trotskyist leader James P. ized telephone workers were opened by workings of capitalism." This capitalist ical parties of the capitalist enemy. This Cannon wrote at the time of a huge West the government-ordered "divestiture" of mouthpiece baldly stated a basic truth: policy goes all the way back to the 1935 Coast maritime strike in 1936: "A good the AT&T monopoly in the early 1980s. this society is divided between two hos Wagner Act, passed under Franklin D. deal is said about strike 'strategy' -and Coming in the aftermath of a national tile classes, the workers who are forced to Roosevelt's "New Deal" administration, that has its uses within certain clearly strike in 1983, the breakup of "Ma Bell" sell their labor power in order to survive which Wl)S designed to subordinate union defined limits-but when you get down was aimed at dismembering the union and the capitalists who reap fabulous militancy to government labor boards and to cases this strike, like every other and eliminating over 200,000 union jobs. profits from exploiting that labor. As we contain the tumultuous class battles that strike, is simply a bullheaded stru~gle Since that time, telecommunications has wrote following the 1998 Bell Atlantic built the unions. between two forces whose interests are seen a heavy influx of capital investment, strike (WV No. 695,28 August 1998): The corollary to this policy is the in constant and irreconcilable conflict. with a mad race to recombine into new "The situation desperately cries out for a bureaucracy's political strategy of seek The partnership of capital and labor is a monopolies. The primary responsibility new class-struggle leadership ofthe labor ing to elect "friend of labor" Democrats lie" ("The Maritime Strike," November for the proliferation of non-union work movement; one rooted in the understand ing that labor must be mobilized inde who, they argue, will enact laws in the· 1936, in Notebook of an Agitator [1958]). lies with the union bureaucracy. Lying pendently of the capitalist exploiters and interests of the workers. This lie has been The Verizon workers demonstrated prostrate before tbe attacks on the unions, their political parties-Democratic and they did less than nothing to organize the Republican. Even so elementary a task raft of low-wage firms spawned in this as organizing the unorganized requires a stantial labor support, along with Demo period especially in the South. leadership which, through such sharp class battles, can educate the working ILA Victory... cratic Charleston mayor Joseph Riley, Strikers told WV teams on the picket who endorsed the "compromise" which class in the pnderstanding of its social ( continued from page 16) lines how they are threatened by the power and its interests in fighting for the moved the Confederate battle flag from widespread transfer of union jobs to low cause of black freedom and in defense of Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan the top of the Capitol to an even more wage units of Verizon, particularly in its immigrant rights. Out of such struggles has now annouflced plans to stage a race prominent location at the front of the southern tier. Organizing the South means will come the proletarian leaders of a hate provocation in North Charleston on building! And it was a segregationist revolutionary workers party committed taking head-on the issue of racist discrim to the expropriation of the capitalist rul September 2, only two days before the Democratic Party state government that ination-on and off the job-wpich has ers through socialist revolution.". Labor Day picnic which in recent years hoisted the Confederate flag atop the has drawn thousands of black and work Capitol in the first place in 1962, in ing people. This would be the first Klan racist defiance of the mass civil rights Kuwait, fully agreeing' with Washing gathering in the area in years, a deadly struggles. Iraq ... ton's aims while favoring other means. threat to Charleston's black population The entire history of Southern long (continued from page 2) But sanctions are enforced by a military and all trade unionists. A massive out shore labor, going back to the first years blockade, itself an act of war, arid are pouring of laborlblack power would make after the smalihing of the slavocracy in backhanded support to the call for UN backed up by the threat-and reality-of short shrift of the Klan lynchers who the Civil War, demonstrates that strug sanctions (or, in the case of the wretched military attack. Like the U.S.lBritish ter wrap themselves in the Confedera~e flag gles for black rights and union rights are Communist Party, openly supporting ror bombing, the economic sanctions of slavery. inseparable. It is necessary to fight for a sanctions). The International Socialist against Iraq aim to inflict suffering and As the Partisan Defense Committee, . new, class-struggle leadership of labor Organization (ISO) initially declared that death on the civilian population as a way which is associated with the Spartacist . committed to the cause of black freedom "in the case of the blockade and in the of pressuring the country's rulers to toe League, wrote in a letter protesting the and political independence from all the event of an actual war, we are on the side the line. cop rampage against the ILA in January: capitalist parties. Union-busting, racial of Iraq" (Socialist Worker [U.S.], Octo By helping to build support for the "The cops who were mobilized from oppression and the increasing immisera ber 1990). But tbe ISO pointedly refused sanctions, the phony "socialists" share across the state to enforce the Nordana tion of workers and the poor will only be to call for the defense of Iraq against responsibility, to the extent their limited shipping bosses' efforts to bust the ILA eradicated through a victorious socialist U.S. attack, deeming such a call a "sec influence allows, for their deadly conse union brought home what this flag repre revolution which smashes the capitalist tarian error" because it would be unpopu quences, even if they oppose sanctions sents-the 'open shop' enforced through state and places the multiracial working lar. And at the outset of the war, the today. These fake leftists sow the refor racist terror of the cops and their KKK class in power. Break with the Demo ISO scrapped its paper opposition to mist illusion that American imperialism auxiliaries." Only three days before that crats-:-For a workers party to fight for a sanctions in order to endorse a 26 Janu can be pressured to adopt a more attack, a Local 1422 contingent joined workers government! ary 1991. "Campaign for Peace" march "humanitarian" posture. As we declared with 50,000 others in the huge protest We urge all our readers to join the which explicitlJl calledJor UN sanctions in December 1998 as the imperialists against the Confederate flag atop the PDC and the many unions-most as an "alternative" to war (see "ISO in escalated their terror-bombing campaign state Capitol in Colu~bia. notably the West Coast ILWU, which the Antiwar Movement," WV No. 520, 15 (see "Defend Iraq! Defeat U.S. Imperial Any struggle to' organize unions in donated $105,OOO--that have already February 1991). ism'Through Workers Revolution!" wV the South will run head-on into the contributed to the Dockworkers Defense The Workers World Party (WWP) and No. 704, 8 January 1999): entrenched racism and extralegal terror Fund. Tbe courageous strikers a,rrested Socialist A(;tion (SA) also helped build "The death and destruction being which has long served to keep the South in January remain under virtual house the red-white~and-blue "sanctions not wreaked upon the people of Iraq right now show what imperialism is all about, union-free and greatly profitable for arrest, subjected to a 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. war" movement by organizing antiwar a rapacious system based on the exploita the capitalist exploiters. That means curfew-allowed out only to work or· protests whose featured speakers called tion, SUbjugation and murder of the directly confronting the cops and courts attend union meetings. Their defense for sanctions. In September 1990, SA in workers and semicolonial masses in of the capitalist state and the capitalist should become a rallying cry for unions Berkeley and the WWP in New York order to expand the profits of a handful politicians who enforce anti-union "right throughout South Carolina, the entire organized public meetings featuring, of filthy rich capitalists. respectively, liberal "peace" activist Dan "This system cannot be 'reformed,' as to work" laws, like Clinton did as gov South and across the country, linking this liberals and reformist 'socialists' would ernor of Ar~ansas. The support of the with the fight to organize unions and iel ElIsberg and Ramsey Clark (the Dem . have it. It cannot be pressured into being labor bureaucracy-from AFL-CIO chief combat racial oppression, which is a cor ocratic Party attorney general during the more peaceful and humane .... Imperial- John Sweeney and the ILA tops on nerstone of the racist capitalist sys Vietnam War and the bloody COINTEL~ ism is, as Russian Bolshevik V. I. Lenin down-to the Democratic Party serves to tem. Send donations to: Dockworkers PRO domestic war against the Black said, th" highest stage of capitalism. And as Lenin's Bolsheviks showed in leading perpetuate violent racist oppression and - Defense Fund, clo Robert J. Ford, Treas Panther Party). These liberal imperialist the October Revolution of 1917, it can brutal exploitation. It was Democratic" urer, 910 Morrison Drive, Charleston, "doves" called for sanctions instead of and must be defeated through workers governor Jim Hodges, elected with sub- SC 29403 .• war to force an Iraqi withdrawal from revolution." • 25 AUGUST 2000 15 WflllliEIiS ""''''111)
Verizon-, Strike Rattles Wall Street AUGUST 22-As we go to press, nearly union members. half of the 87,000 workers who walked The strikers' determination was also out against Verizon in 12 states from Vir fired by the hellish working conditions at ginia to Maine on August 6 remain on the company. A worker in Woburn, Mas strike. The Communications Workers of sachusetts who wants to be unionized America (CWA) and International Broth said she was "tired of being treated like a erhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) second-class citizen." But even unionized reached a tentative settlement in the workers are subject to the kind of totali company's northern division two days tarian management practices which made ago and ordered its members there back the old Ma Bell monopoly notorious: up to work, without even a vote on the con to 20 hours a week forced overtime, tract. Teams of "flying squadrons" frofll uprooting of workers and their families Pennsylvania in Verizon's Mid-Atlantic through forced transfers from one city to division continue to hit facilities in the another, grueling working conditions. Northeast. In New York City, hundreds Service reps are allowed only two sec of workers are refusing to cross their onds between calls. One striker in New picket lines. York City said, "These people will treat A central· issue in the Verizon strike you like a slave, if you give in to them." was organizing the burgeoning non-union Taken aback by the union mem sector of the workforce. Faced with the bership's determination not to give in, prospect oflow-wage, dead-end jobs with Verizon was forced to grant a number no security and no medical insurance, of concessions on mandatory overtime some 40 million unorganized workers in hours and unionized job categories. The the U.S. today say they want a union as company did not get the right to virtually compared to half that number in 1984. unlimited transfers it wanted, but the pro The strike by Verizon workers to reverse posed transfer rate of 0.7 percent of work the massive inroads on union power in ers annually is still nearly three times telecommunications has been closely higher than under the old contract watched by workers around the country. It (Reuters, 21 August). And the unions has also been very closely monitored by made some concessions on seniority. the bourgeoisie, which spends a billion Mainly, the unions won a "card check" dollars a year at least on- keeping out Shannon Stapleton procedure that will allow organizing new unions and is particularly concerned CWA Local 1106 pickets NYC Verizon facility in Queens. Solid strike was locations simply by signing up 55 percent about a strike in this high-tech industry undermined by union tops' class-collaborationist strategy. of the workers without going through the that is crucial to the operations of bank labyrinth of NLRB elections. This agree ing and finance capital. The New York and GTE, along with takeovers of a Brit bosses-and the other telecommunica ment covers only one-quarter of the non Times (21 August) was forced to admit that ish wireless company and a non-union tions giants-have billions in profit union wireless workforce at Verizon. But the strike showed that "organized labor Internet provider. Its fastest-growing riding on keeping unions out of the to translate even this into a real drive still has a place in the New Economy." division-wireless-is virtually all non booming wireless and Internet data busi to organize the unorganized requires a Verizon was formed earlier this sum union, with only 46 union members in nesses. Non-union workers at Verizon program of class struggle. And that is mer through.a merger of Bell Atlantic a workforce of 32,000. The Verizon make some $10,000 a year less than continued on page 15 "
ILA Victory Brings in New Union Members At their annual· Labor Day rally ments. This past spring, International Nordana agreed to use only longshore power and a beacon to working people and picnic this year, Charleston, South Longshoremen's Association (ILA) Local men hired out of the union hall at prevail and the black masses in the region. In Carolina longshoremen will be cele 1422 beat back a five-month attempt by ing union wages and conditions, in line turn, Local 1422's victory was an inspira brating a major victory against union the Nordana Line and the Charleston Port with the ILA master contract. tion to workers throughout this state in busting attacks by the employers and the Authority to use a non-union outfit to This victory was secured through a bit which barely 4 percent of the workforce Democratic Party state and city govern- unload their ships. Beginning in May, ter struggle last January, as picketing is organized. Riley told WV: "I cannot longshoremen were confronted by some begin to tell you the number of calls we 600 cops-mobilized from police forces have gotten since this incident, of groups across the state-who fired tear gas, of working people that want to orga shock grenades and sand-filled projectiles nize .... We have public workers, ware at the workers (see "Charleston ILA Bat house workers, workers in the building tles Racist Union-Busting Assault," WV supply industry." Fed up with grueling No. 728, 28 January). Local 1422 presi overtime and lousy wages, over 100 crane dent Kenneth Riley told WV that the and equipment operators and other Port support of the International Transport Authority workers recently joined the Workers' Federation was also crucial, as union. Riley observed that Local 1422's dockers in Spain, Australia and Nor successful struggle has "served as a cata dana's home port in Denmark vowed not lyst in this state to get folks fired up about to handle scab cargo. Like all labor victo unions and get other unions interested in ries, this was hard-won: eight ILA mem organizing again." bers were arrested, five of whom face up This victory shows the potential for the to five years in prison on trumped-up massive unionization drive needed across "felony riot" charges. All of labor must the racist, "open shop" South. The forces demand: Drop all charges against the lLA arrayed against integrated labor strug Mic Smith/Post and Courier longshoremen! gle in the South include the racist, labor Battle on the waterfront: Charleston ILA Local 1422 prevailed against union The capitalists aimed their fire at the hating Ku Klux Klan. Ominously, the busting ·after facing down attack by hundreds of cops in January. ILA because it is a bulwark of black labor continued on page 15 Down With the Confederate Flag of Slavery! Organize the South!
16 25 AUGUST 2000