~ Australasian ~

Number 105 March I April 1984 30 cents US Out of Near East, Central America!

a n's e I ess "I don't want to be killed here. It's to pull the Marines out of Beirut: "He killing who knows how many hundreds thanks". If Mitterrand wants to regain crazy. They are crazy. We are crazy." may be ready to surrender, but I'm or even thousands of Druze villagers. some credibility he might throw in - Israeli soidier in southern Lebanon not." Yet within days the macho man With consummate cynicism Reagan with the Shi'ites and Druze and start president was forced to eat crow, or­ offered naval and air cover to the shelling the US fleet. FEBRUARY 12 - "We are making dering the besieged Marines evacu­ British, French and Italian contingents Almost all Americans want out of progress in Lebanon" , proclaimed ated to warships offshore within the of the "multinational force" he was the bloody mess Reagan has gotten Ronald Reagan in his State of the next few weeks. And to make it look leaving in the lurch. The British himself into in Lebanon, but some Union speech in late January. A week like he didn't "cut and run", he bugged out the next day, the Italians right-wingers were shocked that their later he baited Congressional Demo­ ordered the Sixth Fleet to open up with ordered a "gradual" pullout and the hero came off looking like a paper tiger cratic leader Tip O'Neill for proposing the USS New Jersey's 16-inch guns, French replied, "thanks, but no in his first serious test. The ultra­ hawkish Wall Street Journal (8 Feb­ ruary) wrote in dismay: "President Reagan's decision to move ., US Marines from Beirut to ships off the Lebanese coast is a stunning de­ of feat for his Lebanon policy and a Australia S· haunting reminder of the Carter ad­ • ministration's failure in Iran. As the world watched the collapse Hayden went on tour to the Neal that the "smooth operation of the " ... the Reagan administration, for of the Beirut "peacekee~ing" force, East to prepare for his government's multinational force" in the Sinai was a all its tough talk, was unable to that other imperialist military bridge­ intended renewal of its troop commit­ "confidence-building measure" for succeed in its most visible foreign­ head in the Near East, the 2,600 ment. Israel's genocidal invasion of Lebanon. policy venture." strong US-led Sinai force, is digging in En route to Egypt Hayden praised Continued Gissin: Ronald Reagan's Lebanon adven­ for a long stay. Hawke dumped Labor the Australians for their "excellent "The fact that Egypt had been with­ ture has turned into a first-class Party policy for withdrawal of the service" in maintaining the "peace". drawn out of the military confron­ debacle. The self-appointed sheriff of Australian contingent one year ago, Everything went fine until he decided tation state provided us with some world imperialism shot himself in the on the eve of the 1983 election which to visit a Palestinian refugee camp on strategic advantage not just vis-a­ foot and is hobbling away. But the brought his slavishly pro-Reagan the Wes(Bank. Though his intention vis the Lebanese situation but the global repercussions are by no means government to power, but formally was simply to throw a bone or two to whole Arab world." - Australian, 31 January all to the good. The Reagan gang will it remains on the ALP's books. the Labor "lefts" back home, the want to wipe out their humiliation by Australian imperialism's commitment Foreign Minister succeeded only in Set up to police the 1979 Egypt­ launching a bloody adventure some­ of some 100 air force men and eight provoking the Israelis, whose spokes­ Israel peace treaty, the "multi­ where where the odds are more in Iroquois helicopters expires this April, man Lieutenant-Colonel Ranaan national" Sinai force is the southern their favor. Remember how the US two years after Fraser first sent them Gissin bluntly spelled out what anchor of Zionist expansionism, raped the tiny black West Indian isle of in. So last month Foreign Minister Hayden had been at pains to deny: continued on page ten continued on page two Registered by Australia Post - Publication no NBF0710 drawn predominantly from the Maron­ Levant correspondent for the snide sect derived from Shi' a Islam) in Lebanon ••• ite elite. London Economist (5 November 1983) Lebanon. In the 1860s some 10,000 neatly captured the essence of Maronite peasants were massacred continued &om page one Since the ¥uslims' birthrate out­ stripped the Christians' for a couple of Lebanese politics when he wrote of the when they rose up against Druze land­ Grenada in order to divert attention generations, the deal that was leb­ "national reconciliation" conference lords; and last fall the Druze besieged from the devastating truck-bomb anon fell apart by the beginning of the in Geneva last fall: some 20,000 Christians in the town of attack on Marine HQ in BeinIt last 1970s. The mass of impoverished and Deir al Qamar. In the mid-'70s October. Lebanon was a long-shot downtrodden Shi'ites, who had be­ "To compare this week's conference Walid's father Kamal Jumblatt was gamble in the anti-Soviet war drive, come the largest sectarian/communal of Lebanese faction bosses in Geneva head of the largely Muslim National one which the Pentagon always con­ grouping, demanded a change in the with a gathering of Mafia godfathers Movement, allied with the Pal­ sidered a no-win situation. The might be unfair to the Mafia, because estinians in the 1975-76 Lebanese civil constitution to redress the balance of it has never eliminated several hun­ humiliation in Beirut will intensify the political and economic power in their war. With the Israeli invasion in June dred victims in a single day. There can 1982, however, the younger Jumblatt Reagan gang's drive to drown in favor. Further, the OPEC oil boom of seldom have been so many delegates blood the insurgent masses of the early 1970s, which Lebanon shared around a table who were directly and declared, "The PLO[Palestine Liber­ Central America. as the main financial center and personally responsible for killing the ation Organization] as it used to be in Unlike the squalid communalist entrepot for the Arab East, widened followers of fellow delegates." Lebanon is finished", and told PLO bloodletting in Lebanon - between the disparities between rich and poor fighters to lay down their arms. The Christians and Muslims, Shi'ites and in this bankers' republic. Shi'ite All Sides Squalid Druze chieftain established friendly Palestinians, Druze and everyone­ peasants from the countryside and relations with the Israeli occupying in Central America a potential social migrant workers from Syria streamed Today in Lebanon the Reaganites army, and last summer promised to revolution is at stake. Salvadoran" into Beirut and other port cities present the Druze and Shi'ites as keep Palestinian guerrillas out of his workers and peasants are fighting (and looking for work, producing a class of nothing but surrogates for the Syrians, feudal fiefdom in exchange for Israeli beating) a blood-drenched oligarchy desperate slum dwellers. American who are in turn labeled surrogates for withdrawal from the Shuf. Due to and its Yankee protectors. A rout of liberal academic Stanley Reed de­ the Soviets, while the Maronite Phalangist president Gemayel's the puppet dictatorship by leftist guer­ scribed Maronite-dominated Lebanon Christian Phalange are supposedly the refusal to cut a deal, Walid is currently rillas in El Salvador would pose the on the eve of the 1975-76 civil war: true defenders of Western-style aligned with Syrian president Assad, threat of direct US military inter­ democracy. The reformist left, on the who, however. was responsible for "The conflict occurred because leba­ vention. The CIA's contras are now other hand, presents the squalid the assassination of the elder non's political and economic structure Jumblatt. ravaging Nicaragua, while 5,000 US cheated too many people in too many communal fighting in Lebanon as a combat troops are poised for attack ways. The Maronite businessmen and war of national liberation in which the The estimated one million Shi'ites across the border in Honduras. While bankers who dominated the country entire people rises up against Yankee are at the bottom of the social scale in the Democrats and reformist leftists refused to part with any of their huge invaders. Thus Sam Marcy's Workers Lebanon, but the notion that they are see the Marine withdrawal from profits derived from handling oil World Party wrote: . agents of an international Communist Lebanon as a retreat from foreign mili­ money .... The system that gave the conspiracy run from Moscow (or presidency and the command of the "Different religious and ethnic alternatively a patriotic leftist force) is tary adventurism, in reality it only groups, different political parties makes more urgent the need to army to the Maronites became a sym­ even more absurd. In the '75-'76 bol of injustice to the have-nots and ranging. from conservative to revol­ organize working-class opposition to utionary ,have united in their oppo­ fighting the Shi'ite "Movement of the the leftists, both consisting largely of the American war drive in Central sition to Gemayel and his US, French Dispossessed" (which later became Moslem city dwellers .... What be­ and other imperialist backers. " the Amal) was loosely associated with America --boycotting military cargo gan as a social revolution has obvi­ bound for right-wing regimes, and - Workers World, the Palestinian-Muslim bloc. Yet on ously taken on many other meanings. 17 November 1983 labor strikes against US intervention. For instance, the leftist militia leaders the eve of the June '82 Israeli invasion who set out to topple the old warlords the Amal was engaged in bloody Lebanon: Not a Country The reality looks considerably differ­ have wound up emulating them." ent from these fictions. The myriad battles against the PLO and the Buta Deal - New York Times, 9 July 1982 ethnic/religious/communal groups in Lebanese Communist Party. > They Lebanon, far from being united, have were pushed into opposition by the The workers of the world have a side In early 1975 Lebanon stood on the Zionist army terrorizing their strong­ in the revolutionary struggles now brink of a revolutionary upheaval every one of them been in treacherous, murderous alliance with and against hold in southern Lebanon. Only when engulfing Central America. But they which could have radically altered the Gemayel's army began indiscrimi­ do not take sides in the Lebanese blood political situation in the entire region, every other one. Let Lebanon be Lebanon and this is what you get. nately shelling the Shi'ite suburbs of feuds, the endless succession of com­ most imniediately by extending itself Beirut at the end of January did they munal massacres and retaliations. to Syria. But a revolutionary outcome Take supposed Lebanese "progress­ finally "unite" with Jumblatt & Co. Lebanon is not a nation nor even a was diverted by the traditional Muslim ive" leader Walid Jumblatt, a vice Shi'ite militiamen celebrated their country, but a deal among the imperi­ clan chiefs (ab.etted by the Palestinian president of the Second International. "liberation" of West Beirut by alists (1919) and between the im­ nationalist leaders) into a decade-long His "Progressive Socialist Party" is smashing all whiskey bottles­ perialists and the various Christian series of bloody squabbles between actually a communalist party of the shades of Khomeinil Any Soviet KGB and Muslim clan chiefs (1943). One is the various communal groups. The estimated 350,000 Druze (an esoteric continued on page ten reminded of the description of Austria between the two world wars as a "situation [that was] fatal but not International Women's Day - March 8 serious" . The entity known as Lebanon was created by the French, who together with the British carved up the Ottoman empire in the Near East after World War I. They sought to fashion a pro­ Western enclave in the Levant by com­ bining the predominantly Christian Mount Lebanon with a subordinate "A certain bourgeois observer of the Paris Commune, writing to an English newspaper in May 1871, said: Muslim hinterland, part of it (notably 'H the French nation consisted entirely of women, what a terrible nation it would be!' Women and teenage the Bekaa Valley) extracted from the chlldren fought in the Paris Commune side by side with the men. It wUI be no different in the coming battles province of Syria. The French colonial­ for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie. Proletarian women wUI not look on passively as poorly armed or un­ ist system of Maronite privilege was armed workers are shot down by the weD-armed forces of the bourgeoisie. They wW take to arms, as they did preserved after Lebanon became inde­ in 1871, and &om the cowed nations of today - or more correctly, &om the present-day labour movement, pendent. Under the so-called National disorganised more by the opportunists than by the governments - there wUI undoubtedly arise, sooner or Covenant the president would always later, but with absolute certainty, an international league of the 'terrible nations' of the revolutlolUU')' be a Maronite Christian, the prime proletariat." minister a Sunni Muslim, the head of - V I Lenin, &om "The MIlitary Programme of the Proletarian Revolution" the Chamber of Deputies a Shi'ite Muslim, and so on. The Christians were allocated a six-to-five majority in parliament, and more importantly the IIID IDIUMS officer caste of the Lebanese army was UniofNSW

Australasian--~ Ipm, Thursday 15 March Room 209A, Matthews Building CSPARTACIST ~ J Sydney Marxist bimonthly of the Spartacist League of 7pm, Friday 16 March Australia and New Zealand, section of the Room 2, 2nd floor, international Spartacist tendency. EDITORIAL BOARD: Greg Blythe, Darlene Teachers Federation. Carlson, Doug Flynn, Andrew Giannakis, 73 Bathurst Street Steve Hooper (editor) CIRCULATION: Vicki Pearson PRODUCTION: Linda Brooke Printed by trade union labour. Registered at GPO, Sydney for posting as a publication - Category B. Subscription $3 for 11 issues; Melbourne Spartacist League overseas ainnail $10 for 11 issues. Address ToasttoIWD all correspondence to: Spartacist Publications, GPO Box 3473, Sydney, NSW, 2001. 5.3Opm, Saturday 10 March Opinions expressed in signed articles or For more information letters do not necessmly express the editorial phone: 6S4 4315 viewpoint. Heroic Vietnamese woman captures US 8-52 pilot. Defend Vietnam/USSR Printed by Eastern Suburbs, Waterloo, NSW. against US and Its Australian Junior partner's war threats! . 2 Australasian Spartacist n Melbourne months of cam­ I paigning by reactionary bigots to "Save Our Children" took a sinister .Down with Cain's Anti-Gay' Witchhunt! turn late last year. On November 5 Victoria's "Delta Task Force", a special cop "morality" squad set up under Labor Premier John Cain, arrested eight homosexual men (another was arrested in Sydney) for "conspiracy to corrupt public morals" ' Defend the PSG I (a charge originating in medieval England when untold numbers of to coercion. This ought to be the Melbourne is the seat of an over­ bulk of feminists, many of whom in women were burned at the stake as guiding principle not just for Marxists whelmingly Protestant, prudish and years long gone marched in protest witches). The nine men are supporters but for any democrat on such social pretentious bourgeois establishment, against girls being locked up in of the tiny Paedophile Support Group questions. The case is also a test of whose smug hypocrisy and oppressive "homes" like Sydney's Bidura pre­ (PSG), a self-support group for taking elementary political decency, as most morality is aped by the social democ­ cisely for being under the age of up the socially explosive issue of feminists and the reformist left are racy. Cain's insufferable blend of consent and "exposed to moral consensual cross-generational sexual washing their hands of this small and Victorian-era puritanism and "mod­ danger", have lined up with the state relations between adults and "under­ vulnerable group, if they are not ern" eco-faddism has made life and religious bigots in this witchhunt age" youth. actively egging on the witchhunters. for the citizens of this aptly named against the PSG. In good part this is The PSG was formed in 1980 at a Down with Cain's puritanical witch­ state ever more unbearable, for because feminists view men as the National Conference of Homosexual hunt! Drop the charges! example, slapping an extra 40 cents enemy, and see women, and in this Men and Lesbians in Canberra and tax on cigarettes to punish smokers, case youth, only as victims, so is patterned after similar groups Down With Reactionary even declaring a special non-smoking entrapped by their conditioning in a overseas, notably the North American "Age-of-Consent" Lawsl day complete with "Big Brother is sexist society as to be incapable of Man-Boy Love Association (NAM­ Watching You" type TV ads and exercising effective consent. Just as BLA), itself the target of a vicious FBI After busting the PSG the police posters. Meanwhile, entire suburbs of they have lined up with the camp of frame-up and witchhunt. held a press conference, crowing that Melbourne are pub-free "dry areas". reaction in "Reclaim the Night" anti­ On November 5 police smashed they had smashed a "child sex ring". Cain, as you might have guessed, porn marches, calling on the state to their way into a meeting of the group The bourgeois media swung into doesn't touch the stuff. According to censor pornography, their lack of a in the Melbourne suburb of Clifton slanderous action, from the yellow class analysis of women's oppression Hill (and raided a house in Sydney's scandal sheet Truth with its six­ once again leads them to backing the Glebe), arrested all those present, inch front-page headline "EVIL most hideous forces of clerical and ransacked the houses and seized any SCUM" to the more "respectable" male chauvinist reaction. These witch­ and all material they could find on the Melbourne dailies who ran "investi­ hunting feminists should appreciate subject of sex (even Kate Millet's gative" articles on allegations of Khomeini's Iran where they really Sexual Politics). The arrests were "child sex rackets". Meanwhile respect women - no porn there! preceded by months of prying "ob­ TV channels broadcast addresses servation" into the lives and activities and descriptions of those arrested, Like the Festival of Light types the of the group by a police informer pogrom-stYle. Laborites uphold the sanctity of the working for "Delta" who infiltrated Hysteria redoubled when radio bourgeois nuclear family, denying the group early in 1983. As well as the 3AW's Derryn Hinch, a notorious working women easy access to outrageous "conspiracy" charge the union-hating, anti-gay bigot, inter­ abortion, refusing the dole to married cops also laid phony charges like viewed Gay Legal Rights Committee women, relegating thousands of "child stealing" and "indecent spokesman Alison Thorne, a school­ migrant women to be victims of super­ assault of a child" against the PSGers teacher at Glenroy Technical College. exploitation as "out workers" in the in a vindictive attempt to smear this Thorne's accurate statement that garment industry etc. As a recent small group of homosexuals as child "the age-of-consent laws are in SL opposes reactionary age-of~nlent Sydney Morning Herald (22 February) molesters and sex criminals. themselves reactionary" and her laws. survey on child care pointed out, The PSG's "crime" is their assertion that youth between the ages facilities in this wealthy but deeply preference for an unusual mode of of 10 and 16 could be capable of press reports of the Premier's recent male chauvinist country are virtually consensual sexual activity not con­ consenting quickly became the basis trip to Peking, the Chinese Stalinists unavailable to most working women. doned by the state, church and for yet another witchhunt. Hinch had to give him soda water so they Yet even the Herald was forced to reactionary bigots who see in this attempted to incite his listeners to mob could share a toast (no doubt to the admit that in Vietnam, devastated by witchhunt an opportunity to inflame Thorne's school that afternoon while struggle against vodka-swilling decades of hideous imperialist the poisonous fears and vicious the Liberal Party opposition in State Russians and the Soviets' Viet­ bombings and carnage but where a repression that underly official bour­ parliament howled for her dismissal. namese allies). victorious social revolution defeated geois morality, particularly against The next day, following a "Sex-at­ This Victorian prudishness is but the US and Australian imperialism, great homosexuals. The case goes to trial Ten Teacher Outrage" front-page surface veneer atop the brutal reality resources are devoted to child care as a in early March and if the PSG sup­ headline in the Melbourne daily of Australian society, where wife and means of bringing women into pro­ porters are sent to jail their very lives Sun, Thorne, a prominent gay activist child-beating are a "normal" part of ductive labour alongside the men, and may be at stake from a depraved and supporter of the tiny US-based life. Paedophiles are smeared as child out of the stultifying isolation and alliance of brutal elements on both Freedom Socialist Party, was sus­ abusers and treated like rapists. The backwardness of "family life". In sides of the bars. The defence of the pended from teaching duties. puritan bigots and the Catholic Church Vietnam between 25-60% of children PSG is an urgent duty for all those The Technical Teachers Union of above all push the big lie that all under five (depending on the locality) who defend democratic rights. Victoria (TTUV) leadership (who have homosexuals are degenerate sub­ are provided for by creches and The guiding principle for sexual re­ their own sell-out "social contract" verters of youth, who are not admitted kindergartens, compared to a pitiful lations between people (which in­ with the Cain Labor government) to having any sexual feelings or prefer­ 3 % in this "lucky country". Even in cludes youth) should be that of effect­ refused to take any action to defend ences at all. Like homosexuality, priest-ridden Poland women have ive consent - that is, nothing more Thorne, hiding behind a statement paedophilia is a variation of human been able to obtain abortions for years, than mutual understanding as opposed that merely defends her right to sexual behaviour dating back to thanks to the bureaucratically insti­ "express views" in a "vexed area". antiquity. Perhaps one of the better tuted social revolution carried out after the Red Army routed the Nazis Journal of the Women's Gay teachers in particular have always known paedophiles in recent history Commission SL/US. been a' prime target for witchhunting was the Reverend Charles Dodson, in 1945. bigots. It is vital that the union fight who under the pen name Lewis Carroll wrote some of the most captivating The reformist left's disgusting for Thorne's immediate reinstatement refusal to defend the PSG flows from Wom('nand~ with full back wages and seniority. children's books in the English language. their capitulation to social backward­ R(~Volution Moreover the union should fight for ness and fawning loyalty to Labor. ~~~~--;-~"-~~~ ;;-'--':~~~~~~--=----;-:~--=-:--~---~ As Marxists we do not presume Thorne to get a public apology from After all the Cain Labor government is to advocate any particular mode iHtii,l.r.l;.\I!!¥.41 ILl Ji 2 Cain's government and some hefty their govel11ment. Foremost amongst financial compensation for their con­ of consensual sexual behaviour. We oppose any attempts to fit human the"socialist" bigots is the SWP. Re­ temptible victimisation. portedly the SWP's suppression of an As for the reactionary age-of­ sexuality into legislated or decreed "norms". We hold that any and all article defending Thorne from Direct consent laws, they recognise no possi­ Action has led to quits amongst consensual relations between individ­ bility of consensual sex. As the Sparta­ the dwindling survivors of earlier uals are purely their own concern, and cist League/US wrote in defence gay purges in the SWP. But then the state has no business interfering in ofNAMBLA: what did they expect from an or­ •'The fact is that age-of-consent laws human sexual activity. State out of ganisation that includes open anti­ II the bedroom! (which have their roots in the "bride­ gay bigots in its leadership like price" guarantee of virginity of Life for working-class youth in this Andrew Jamieson? At the SWP's Karl II women in arranged marriages) do not country is bad enough - the schools II Marx Centenary Conference in protect children. They are designed to are lousy, the few apprenticeships Melbourne last year Jamieson told repress the sexuality of youth with the available are largely restricted to I Thorne that NAMBLA were "child­ power of the state. They enforce the males and pay slave-labour rates; the reactionary morality of the bourgeois fuckers" who "should be shot", Subscribe! unemployment benefit for youth under winning him a back-slapping notoriety $4 airmall/S3 seamall - 4 Issues nuclear family, an institution at the the age of 18 is a miserable $45 a Single Issues -- 50 cents core of the oppression of women, amongst his fellow SWPers. The homosexuals and children. It is week. Sex at least doesn't cost money. But it's no joke screwing around if SWP has always defended the age­ Order from/pay to: within the family that most brutality of-consent laws, ludicrously com- Spartaclst Publications, and rape against children occur.' , you're under 16 when if caught the GPO Box 3473, state can lock you up and make your Sydney, 2001 - "DefendNAMBLA!", Workers Vanguard no 321,14 January 1983 life a living hell. Grotesquely, the main continued on page five Marchi April 1984 3 "Some Thoughts on Australia Ten Years Later" ASp photo What is clear is that it's either going In Australia, the US bases are key. to be socialism or barbarism (or per­ To say that opposition to them could be haps more likely nuclear annihilation). construed as some kind of Maoist The question is what to do about it. nationalist position turns reality on its That is, what is your program? One head. It says that those bases are not can either struggle for proletarian important (Gough found out differ­ revolution or go over to some variant of ent and the fact that Pine Gap was reformist anti-Soviet nationalism .... apparently the main monitoring point I want to be part of the struggle of the Soviet air-ground communi­ against the impending scenario of cations during the KAL 007 provo­ On the Beach. And there is a way, cation only underscores their import­ through the revolutionary Trotskyism ance to the US imperialists in their ofthe Spartacist League. insane drive toward nuclear war). It In the "Lucky Country" Oucky, that also is a capitulation to the anti­ is, if you are a white male), the social Americanism of the "left" (both democracy through the Labor party within the ALP and outside it) since stands as the strategic obstacle to they oppose the bases from a perspec­ tive of opposition to the "super­ Melbourne, 20 November 1981: Sll ANZ contingent In antiwar demonstration the struggle for proletarian revolution. denounces soclal-c:lemocratlc pacifism and "little Australia" nationalism. That is explicit on all the key issues. powers" since Australia is a nice They hate Russia. They are deeply country that does not do the bad things and Poland fairly clearly express the social-democratic hysteria. The Red immersed in the institutionalised that the big mean Americans do (a lot contradictions of the Stalinist bureau­ Army is doing a good thing and it's class-collaboration of the Arbitration of people in Papua-New Guinea would cracy. In Poland, the corrupt bureau­ welcome. Both of these examples point system. And above all they fear and have a different view). The main cracy drove the workers into a situ­ to the need for workers political hate the non-white masses of Asia enemy is at home. And Hawke is ation of looking to the anti-Soviet revolution in the deformed workers ("only 600 kilometres from Darwin"). . Reagan's man in Southeast Asia and clerical nationalists of Solidamosc states in order to put a stop to internal The central question internationally the Southwest Pacific. Since Curtin as an alternative. And while Jaruzelski counterrevolution and to put their is the Russian Question. As James jumped His Majesty's Ship for the pro­ and company had enough of a sense of resources at the disposal of the P Cannon said, when you touch that tection ,of the American Eagle, the self-preservation to step in at the last struggle for proletarian revDlution. question, you touch a revolution and Australian bourgeoisie has been a moment, they cannot resolve it. it's not to be played with. H you claim loyal junior partner ~d done all kinds Afghanistan, on the other hand, is a The ostensibly non-Labor left in to stand for the unconditional military of leg work - from Korea to Vietnam situatioq where they are carrying out a Australia really have a kind of concep­ defence of the USSR against imperi­ to the Middle East (and now maybe progressive war against the reaction­ tion of strategic critical support to 'the alist attack, then it must be concretely even Grenada). The "lefts" deny this ary mullahs and their hideous op­ ALP. They cannot break with it expressed where you are. To counter­ talking about the Reagan anti-Soviet pression. At best they can carry out a because they share its fundamental pose defence in some other place (ie, war drive, carefully leaving out the social overthrow and set up a de­ basis. That infects the whole scene. To EI Salvador) to the necessity for local running dogs, and attacking the formed workers state but that would not be a loyal opposition is simply defence in your region (ie, Pine Gap, Liberals with "Malcolm's wool keeps be good. The Red Army is to be hailed beyond the pale. An argument that the the Indian Ocean, Trincomalee and of the Russians warm". H the Stalinists in this case. To call instead for "vic­ ALP is the party that the workers look Vietnam) is to deny it. To disappear it are the syphilis of the workers move­ tory" and on the basis that to do to in spite of what they say and do and for a "united front" with Third ment, then these characters are otherwise would express confidence in that therefore we have to support Campers is not only criminal, it the herpes. the Stalinists is to blunt the point and them is simply crass Laborism. And I is stupid. In the current period, Afghanistan is a capitulation to the pressure of don't care if they have been out of "The Enemy is at Home" Qear comrades, while Hayden harks back to Evatt, the The international campaign of the supplied with bureaucrats, judges, "libertarian" who presided over the iSt in defence of the Tamil people of ministers and loyal labour lieutenants I have been actively working again UN during the Berlin Airlift. Lanka was augmented by work in the who once claimed the red flag. This with the SL for over a year and seek to Australian situation and the prospect country buys its continued existence as rejoin the tendency. The SL's call for "No Vote to Labor" exposed the totally national-parochial of class solidarity in action with the a white imperialist enclave by pro­ In the period since I resigned there perspectives of the reformist Laborite South Asian proletariat was raised. viding the sites for the US spy bases has been ample opportunity to watch left who are committed to the survival The social-chauvinism of the reform­ which are part of the military encircle­ the burgeoning anti-Soviet war drive, of their "own" bourgeoisie and to its ists was again sharply revealed. Those ment now threatening the USSR. marked in all imperialist countries by anti-Sovietism. But despite years of Australian petty-bourgeois radicals Opposition to the bases means increasing nationalism and the emerg­ entrenchment in the trade union best represented in the CPA showed smashing the ANZUS pact and bury­ ence of fascist groups. In this country centre-bureaucracy the SPA, sensing by their indifference that their concern ing White Australia, support to the the Spartacist tendency, weak in num­ the anti-Soviet character of the im­ for the hapless East Timorese is but a struggles of the oppressed in South bers, but having defeated and purged pending government was forced to peg on which to hang their nationalist Asia and Indonesia and defence of the social-patriotic opposition which make a show of independence from it. hostility and fear of Indonesian power. Vietnam and the USSR. This is the erupted from within its established Since attaining power the Labor only road forward for the workers leadership in 1981 with a bid to aban­ The program expressed in the movement in this country: the alterna­ Government has been at pains to work of the SL on these questions don Soviet defencism in the region, demonstrate its slavish commitment to tive is the protectionist mire, vicious has been able to stand out against the ' shows the way for revolutionaries in anti-Asian racism and nuclear the US alliance and the guaranteed this country .... insular social-imperialist "left" like security of the US spy bases. And they armageddon. a beacon. have been quick to reveal aspirations The main enemy is at home, but the The Hawke/Hayden government The choice for me is to fight along­ to share control of the Indian Ocean, effective struggle against our own side comrades here and inter­ draws on the whingeing anti­ and wrest back the hard-won gains of bourgeoisie can only be from an inter­ nationally, to build the Leninist/ Americanism of the middle class and the workers and peasants of Vietnam, national perspective. In Australia, Trotskyist vanguard. A party that can the White Australia traditions of the Laos and Kampuchea. Only the SL was whose establishment under paternalist derail the imperialist war drive; reach labour aristocracy to serve its lackey­ able to call Australian workers to de­ rule, protection and privilege has out to the Asian proletariat and defend imperialist designs. Hawke trumpets fend the Vietnamese revolution from allowed the bourgeoisie to corrupt and the Soviet Union and Vietnam, not the tradition of Curtin who engineered the Hawke/Hayden government's smother the workers movement while only in word but in deed. the alliance with the US in the Pacific schemes and stand on the past actions filling the role of jackal/lackey to a War against Japan, an alliance of of class-solidarity with the Vietnamese greater imperialist power (today the PhillipaN blood, race and anti-communism; revolution in this country . US), the state machinery has been well 29 October 1983 4 Australasian Spartaclst office for a long time and haven't really had a chance to betray or be exposed. Sure, the ALP is contra­ dictory and there may be times when it might be of value to give it critical "The Best Type of Bolshevik" electoral support, but the onus is on them to indicate why that might be We reprint below an appraisal by the case, not the other way around. Leon Trotslcy of Yakov Sverdlov, a To have supported them in the last, member of the Bolshevik Central election would have been to embrace Committee during the October austerity, nationalism and anti­ Revolution. Renowned for his out­ Sovietism and the left all did it. Now standing organizational capacities, they whinge that "Hawke betrays Sverdlov held the post of Chairman Labor policy" . of the All-Union Soviet Executive And what is Labor policy? In this Committee after the revolution until remote, white imperialist enclave (an his death. excellent chatacterisation) the historic The following passage was writ­ basis ofthe ALP has been "socialism" and White Australia combined with ten in 1927 and is presented here as it appeared in Fourth International, economic protection. And that has Leon Trotsky Vakov Sverdlov been the basis for a working class that, November 1946. while quite militant, has been bought *."..* off. And at the core is the Arbitration Up to the spring of 1919 the chief writer, there grew up in a short time difficulties, the novelty of the prob­ system which is seen as the giver of organizer of the Party had been "an organizer who acquired irre­ lems, and sharp practical disagree­ lurks and perks. With the defeat of the Sverdlov. He did not have the name proachable authority, an organizer ments occasionally bursting out, the strike wave of the 1890s, the labour of General Secretary, a name which of the whole Soviet power in Russia, work proceeded with extraordinary movement turned to "political was then not yet invented, but he and an organizer of the work of the smoothness and friendliness and struggle" - the Labor Party in Parlia­ was that in reality. Sverdlov died at Party unique in his understand­ without interruptions. With a brief ment and to the Arbitration system to t~e age of 34 in March 1919, from ing". Lenin had no taste for the word we would recall episodes of "impartially" review "industrial dis­ the so-called Spanish fever. In the exaggerations of anniversary or the old revolutions. "No, it is better putes". And that is why you get a lot spread of the civil war and the funeral panegyrics. His appraisal with us." "This alone guarantees of two-bit strikes that don't go any­ epidemic, mowing people down of Sverdlov was at the same time a our victory." The solidarity of the where - except back to the learned right and left, the Party hardly characterization of the task of the center had been prepared by the judges. It's always to impress the realized the weight of this loss. In organizer: "Only thanks to the fact whole history of Bolshevism, and Commission which writes up 9OO-page two funeral speeches Lenin gave an that we had such an organizer as was kept up by the unquestioned awards that only wig-wearing QC's , appraisal of Sverdlov which throws Sverdlov were we able in war times authority of the leaders, and above can understand. You don't fight this a reflected but very clear light also to work as though we had not one all of Lenin. But in the inner mech­ stuff by calling for 88 varieties of gen­ upon his later relations with Stalin. single conflict worth speaking of." anics of this unexampled unanimity eral strike which are either simply "In the course of our revolution, in the chief technician had been more' 'militant" or to bring the ALP to its victories", Lenin said, "it fell to So it was in fact. In conversations Sverdlov. The secret of his art was power either. What it means is a Sverdlov to express more fully and with Lenin in those days we re­ simple: to be guided by the struggle in the unions to break out of more wholly than anybody else the marked more than once, and with interests ofthe cause and that only. Arbitration and to fight for real (not very essence of the proletarian ever renewed satisfaction, one of No one of the Party workers had any metaphysical) picket lines and a revolution". Sverdlov was "before the chief conditions of our success: fear of intrigues creeping down struggle to break the working class all and above all an organizer". the unity and, solidarity of the from the Party staff. The basis of from this racist, white pig society, to From a modest underground governing group. In spite of the this authority of Sverdlov's was struggle for international workers worker, neither theoretician nor dreadful pressure of events and loyalty .• revolution. Probably the hardest question in this country is race. Unlike the United Andropov Battalion" and the PATCO the SWP, consensual sex is not labour. country, fed as it is by imperialist anti­ States, the race question here has had stuff and the "worries" about trade Some even consider it pleasurable, a Sovietism and capitalist austerity., (although it is slowly becoming less union work bear that out. I wonder by fact of life no doubt recognised by Democratic rights are indivisible and white) an, external character. The the way what they think of the Hungar­ those SWP youth who squirm trying to the PSG is probably the weakest of a Aborigines were massacred and hid­ ian Revolution. At bottom it seems like defend this hypocritical puritanism. weak oppressed group. The defence of eously brutalised and broken and the a fear of being isolated from the "left" A November 5 Defence Committee all the oppressed and exploited Asians were simply kept out. And and union bureaucrats so they cannot demands a Leninist communist party while at points there have been does exist, formed by a few maverick piss in their pockets that motivates feminists and leftists like Betty that is genuinely a tribune of the struggles against the racism (the Black these characters. I had occasion to talk Hounslow and Gillian Leahy who at people, defending their rights through Armada and Vietnam - both of which to an ex-member a while back who least recognise a need to defend the the mobilisation of working-class came from the base and either op­ seems to have their line down pretty PSG, and it includes some of the actual power. It was this understanding that posed or sold out by the misleaders); it pat. I came away with the feeling that defendants and Alison Thorne. But the enabled the Spartacist League/US to has held. It's no accident that various he saw the SL as being overrun by organise a 3,OOO-strong labour/black American reactionary types (particu­ lifestylism/" consciousness raising" blacks, women, Asians and other un­ politics of the group's participants are mobilisation to stop a planned Nazi larly in the South) who want to get desirables and that it was no place for a major obstacle to any effective provocation against Gay Pride Day in away from Social Security, food a good, upstanding Australian white defence, so far centering almost Chicago back in June 1982. And it is stamps, TVA [Tennessee Valley Auth­ man. entirely on a "dialogue" to educate only this perspective of social struggle ority], creeping socialism and in their Anybody who wants to be a revol­ that can not only defend vulnerable words "uppity niggers" don't choose the feminist (and other) bigots who utionary in Australia has a hard row to would be quite happy to see the PSG groups like the PSG but break the class South Africa. They all want to emi­ hoe. The terribly deforming pressures rule that perpetuates the brutal and grate to Australia which they see as crucified by the state. In Melbourne of life on this far away island are subtle for example the group initially refused deforming life for women, gays, having less chance of being overrun by minorities and all of us in this white hordes of non-white people. and deep .. .. But it is possible to to build a 22 March public meeting on struggle against it and one of the basic the case as a defence meeting around racist imperialist backwater. Defend The left capitulates to the de­ requirements is internationalism and the PSG! Stop the witchhunt!. spair expressed in "back to the the call to drop the charges for fear an international party. tribal ways" and has a disgusting that it would cut across the "debate" The 5th November Defence Committee paternalistic position which says "you Finally, being born and raised a on paedophilia -- then cancelled it is call1ng for donations to conduct a can't tell blacks what to do". It is white American southerner, when I altogether. defence of the PSG. Contributions may going to have to be a hard fight in this saw the WV [Workers Vanguard], From our standpoint this case he sent to: 5th November Defence country against the racism and to win "Fmish the Civil War", I knew in my cannot be seen apart from the climate Committee, PO Box K485, Haymuket, blacks to the SL. ... bones what it meant and that the SL of growing social reaction in this NSW2000. Regarding the quitters of the ET was my party and that soone,r or later I [the self-styled "External Tendency of wanted to go back. And over the last the international Spartacist tend­ period, working a bit and listening to ency"] stripe - those "good people" reports of the SLiUS Conference, 1b Our Readers and Subscribers who were brutalised by the vicious SL simply confirmed that and these are With this issue we are formalising "mass" papers of the revisionist and my people. I guess I kind of always regime. As I remember, in 1939-40 the frequency of Australasian Sparta­ Laborite left and our determination to knew that anyway, I just "forgot" it. there was a lot of this stuff around and cist as a two-monthly. We have always return to not only monthly but more a lot of those types ended up as State JohnS aimed at producing a quality Marxist regular frequency will be the out­ Sydney Department socialists and worse. Un­ paper which as a highly polemical growth of deepening our real work and 30 October 1983 like earlier times, revolution is no propaganda organ intervenes into authority in the unions, on the cam­ longer trendy and things are increas­ class and social struggle in order puses, and in the workers movement ingly hardening up. Well, as a former to build the Spartacist League into generally. All current subscribers will PM said: "Life wasn't meant to be Defend the PSG ••• the nucleus of the Leninist-Trotskyist receive their full eleven issues. We easy". There are in political organis­ continued &om page three vanguard party in this country. also urge all our readers and sub­ ations truly evil regimes - Wohlforth Two-monthly frequency at the pres­ paring them to child-labour laws, scribers to supplement Australasian comes to mind - but the "loyal ent time reflects our real forces Spartacist coverage by subscribing to hoping to demonstrate their bourgeois opposition" (that has a peculiar ring to and capacities as we struggle to Workers Vanguard, biweekly press of it anyway) uses this charge as a cover respectability in this Cold War period consolidate and grow in this Cold War the Spartacist League/US, as well as for their real politics and impulses. I to their real audience, the reformist period. other international Spartacist tend­ figure that their Stalinophobia, the labour bureaucracy. Although it may We have always scorned the fake ency press. howls of dismay at the "Yuri be a revelation to some members of Marchi April 1984 5 US imperialism's trip wires for challenges a fundamental attitude of World War III extend from one end of Marxism as well as undercutting the the globe to the other. Reagan is now central Leninist proletarian strategy to engaged in three wars - in Lebanon, fight against imperialist war. Our EI Salvador and Nicaragua - and in critics have nonetheless served a the Caribbean the US troops are finish­ purpose in prompting us to restate ing off the rape of Grenada. American some basic Marxist truths, beginning Pershing 2 nuclear missiles have been with the fact that Marxists are not deployed in Europe, aimed directly at bloodthirsty . Moscow - at six to eight minutes .We are for the victory ofjust causes. group in the country? Shortly before , striking distance. Decaying capitalism Necessarily and above all, the cen­ is readying to plunge humanity once the Israeli invasion of June 1982, the trality of just causes is the shattering Shi'ite Amal carried out murderous again into global war, and lurching of the exploiting and oppressing toward a nuclear holocaust which attacks against the PLO in Beirut and classes and the victory of socialism. southern Lebanon. As for the Syrians, threatens the extinction of life on this We are socialists not least because we planet. who vaunt their rejection of any are passionately opposed to war, the negotiations with the Zionists, they Revulsion and opposition to the gathering together of large numbers of mass slaughter which is endemic to made a separate ceasefire with the young workingmen to be slaughtered Israelis early in the 1982 invasion, the imperialists' class rule is a central in the interests of the rulers. In this part of the Marxist vision of and leaving the Palestinians to fight alone. savagely class-divided world, domin­ To be sure, our Lebanon slogan was struggle for a classless, stateless ated by the mass murderers of My Lai, society. The hideous threat of World highly conjunctural; the situation in the struggle for the victory of just the Near East is changing rapidly. The War III and the bellicose policies of causes will have a big physical com­ Washington today engender justified US is already drifting in the direction ponent. ,We must stand therefore for of a direct conflict with Syria, thanks in fears and inchoate pacifistic senti­ the maximum assembling of effective ments among the world's masses, both good part to the Reaganites' irrational force on the just side, hopefully to notions of " Soviet surrogateship" . in the Soviet bloc and the capitalist demoralize and deter the forces of countries, sentiments which can be Should the US go to war against Syria, reaction so that the actual casualties a complete reevaluation would be turned against the imperialist war­ are minimized. makers. The carnage of World War I indicated, not least because such a war gave birth to the Russian workers But in Lebanon at the moment, could become a de facto US/USSR revolution of 1917 -- because the there is little evidence of justice on any conflict in which Marxists would Bolshevik Party won the workers, side. At bottom, the present fighting defend the Soviet side. peasants and soldiers to revolutionary there is a continuation of the centuries­ Lebanon is a quagmire for US imperialism - and this is a good opposition to their "own" govern­ old communal! sectarian conflicts October 23, 1983 bombing of Marine headquarter ment, and ended Russia's partici­ between Muslims and Christians, thing. But we do not gloat over those 240 aluminum caskets, those dead Spartaclst slogan "Marines Out of Lebanon, Now pation in the inter-imperialist Sunnis and Shi'ites, Druze and others. outrage against Reagan's criminal and senseless slaughter by replacing the exploiters' There is no known force fighting young men many of whom were con- state with a government of the against the US imperialists - they are sidered expendable in the first place within sections of the bourgeoisie, the working p'eople. all jockeying for position' with the because they were black. We can only slogan was a dass betrayal precisely When over 240 US Marines were imperialists. Those whose cause is despise those who call for the death of because the international proletariat blown to pieces at the Beirut airport clearest - the Palestine Liberation American soldiers for the crimes of had a side in Vietnam - "our" boys their rulers. For Marxists there is all were the NLF/North Vietnamese. the difference between the men in the There were two ways the Americans field and those who sent them there to could come home: withdrawal or in die. We are not per se interested in the body bags. A common thread runs annihilation of everyone who is through the SWP's social-democratic executing Washington's global blood­ slogan and the New Leftist calls for thirsty policies. Lebanon has aroused exterminating the Yankee pigs - strong opposition in the US popul­ both despair of mobilizing the prolet- ation; sending in the Marines was a ariat to wage class struggle against stupid act which could backfire on the imperialist war, and both renounce US rulitig class. appealing to the ranks of the army We are for the A very different situation obtains in along class lines. victory of Just Grenada, Reagan's diversion from the Imperialism's hemorrhaging in Viet­ causes. Liber­ Lebanon disaster. We viewed the US nam and the consequences of its de­ ation of Saigon invasion of Grenada in terms com­ feat - the profound demoral­ (now Ho Chi parable to the 1982 Israeli invasion of ization of the US armed forces, the Minh City) by Lebanon: racialist atrocities against convulsions throughout American the North Viet­ another nationality. We had a side in namese Army In society, the fear of "another Vietnam" 1982: the defense of the Palestinians which has stayed the hand of imperial­ 1975 was an his­ against the attempt to wipe them out. toric victory for ism - were good things from the world revolution. And we had a side in Grenada: with standpoint of ~e world's toiling the 700 Cuban construction workers masses. The "Vietnam syndrome" who resisted the Yankee invaders. It here at home provided a breathing took 6,000 US troops to "take" space for national liberation struggles Grenada in the face of the Cubans' such as those in the former Portuguese heroic self-defense, and most of the colonies of southern Africa, tending to Cubans were over 40 years old! The prevent a direct American intervention compound in October, the largest Organisation (PLO) - in fact request­ same issue of Workers Vanguard into Angola in 1975-76. It has inhibited number of American troops killed in a ed the intervention of the imperialist which our critics believe marks our Reagan thus far from trying a whole­ single day since the height of the Tet troops (a suicidal demand supported decisive capitulation to "social­ sale assault with US troops against the offensive in Vietnam, the American by virtually the entire reformist left patriotism" hailed the Cuban fighters Nicaraguan regime and the Salvadoran public reacted with outrage. There in this country, and sharply opposed of who - unlike anyone in Lebanon leftist insurgents. But we do not gloat were elements of pacifism, isolation­ course by us revolutionists). Now the today - fought the main enemy, over the deaths of rank-and-file US ism and patriotism, and there was a US is there, having disarmed the US imperialism. In Grenada, we had a soldiers. Among the GIs and Marines broad grasp that the Lebanon inter­ PLO and prepared the way for the side, and our call was "US Out, Dead who were sent to Vietnam were to be vention was senseless. The outrage Israeli/Phalange massacres at Sabra or Alive!" found, as the losing war dragged on, was mainly directed at the imperialist and Shatila. Arafat's organisation has And in Vietnam! The side of justice some of the angriest, most bitter and commander in chief (who immediately split into bloody rivalry, dispersed and there was unambiguously that of the most important opponents of the launched the racist bully-boy invasion evacuated (under the UN flag and National Liberation Front (NLF)/ government's war. Unlike the New of tiny Grenada for an easy "victory" Israeli shells). The Israelis precipi­ North Vietnamese forces against US Left radicals who went, without blink­ to distract attention from the debacle tously withdrew from Beirut, leaving imperialism. At stake were the nation­ ing an eye, from counseling draftees in Beirut). To intersect this con­ the Americans to take the casualties. al rights of the Vietnamese people and and giving GIs flowers to glorifying junctural anti-government sentiment The warring Lebanese communal the social revolution whose victory was their being blown to bits, we sought to evocatively, the Spartacist League militias can't tell the difference the only way to definitively drive out do Marxist propaganda work among raised the slogans "Marines Out of between the Americans and the colonialism. Our call for "Victory to the American troops. We said that Lebanon, Now, Alive!" and "US Out Russians and couldn't care less. the Vietnamese Revolution!" was not antiwar youth if drafted should seek to of Grenada, Dead or Alive!" There Where is the just, anti-imperialist side bloodymindedness but a recognition of educate their class brothers in the were those among our readership who in Lebanon today? what was necessary to bring peace to army about the imperialist character of - objecting particularly to the word What about the allies of Arafat's Vietnam after three decades of imperi­ the war and their own interest in "alive" - denounced our Lebanon organisation? In Tripoli where he was alist war. In Lebanon, it is precisely opposing it. slogan as a "social-patriotic" capitu­ besieged by Syrian-backed PLO dissi­ the question of social revolution, or The global conflict between the lation to American chauvinism, dents, Arafat allied with the Islamic even national liberation, that is antiquated imperialist order and the counterposing the supposedly radical Unity Movement of Sheikh Shaaban, missing. emancipation of the proletariat does sentiment: "the only good one is a which last October massacred some SO The flip side of the dimwitted New not reduce itself to a division between dead one". But far from radical, this members of the Lebanese Communist Left bloodlust exemplified by the SDS "good" and "bad" peoples. In battles vicarious bloodthirstiness (reminiscent Party. What about the Shi'ites, who Weathermen was the Socialist between just and unjust causes, Marx­ of some of the more dim and despic­ are at the bottom of the social scale in Workers Party's Vietnam slogan, ists have a side but nevertheless do not able elements of the old New Left - Lebanon, totally deprived of political "Bring Our Boys Home Now!" Tail­ propose as our program the extermi­ draft-dodgers turned accountants) power although they are the largest ored to appeal to liberal defeatism nation of all those sent to fight for the 6 Australasian Spartaclst ist armies began the Civil War that the guided by a rational calculus and not killing really began. In sheer arms, the by bloodlust. Bolsheviks were infinitely inferior to There are situations in which the imperialist powers who intervened insufficient force used initially leads to to crush the revolution along with the greater bloodshed ultimately. Had the contras of the day, the White Army. Nicaraguan Sandinistas beheaded the The Bolsheviks emerged victorious; counterrevolutionary pro-Somocista Deutscher wrote: "They agitated, they organizations, eg, by trials of Somo­ appealed to the consciousness of the za's torturers by revolutionary tribu­ soldiers, of the workers in uniform in nals, the Nicaraguan masses today From Verdun to Hiroshima, the those interventionist armies. The would not be forced to fight and die imperialists wage their barbaric, cycli­ French navy, sent to suppress the against the contra invaders. We raise cal wars for profit, turning entire revolution, rose in mutiny in Odessa the slogan "Kill the Invaders!" not generations into cannon fodder. and refused to fight against the because we want to see a lot of dead Bukharin wrote about the hideous Bolsheviks .... " bodies lying around, but because if carnage ofthe first World War: While the bourgeoisie can only every little band the CIA sends over is •'The leading characteristic of the war maintain its rule over the laboring wiped out, and the counterrevol­ was that it was murderous to an utionary capitalist "fifth column" in unparalleled degree. The levying of majority through the massive use of troops advanced with giant strides. intimidation, force and violence, for Nicaragua is expropriated as a class The proletariat was positively deci­ Marxists violence is a necessary and its power broken, bloodshed will mated on the battlefields. The reports evil - one imposed upon the defense be minimized, while conciliation show that down to March, 1917, the of the struggle for socialism by the strengthens the hand of the US-backed number of dead, wounded, and miss· bloodymindedness of the exploiting contras who aim to drown in blood ing totalled 2S millions; by 1 Jan· class in power. After the Cuban people the possibility of socialist revolution­ uary, 1918, the number of the killed defeated the CIA's Bay of Pigs in­ ary development in Nicaragua. had been approximately 8 millions. If vaders, the Castro regime traded the Or consider the US' Korean Air we assume the average weig~t of a soldier to [be] 1SOlb, this means captured gusanos for needed medical Lines Flight 007 Cold War provocation that between 1 August 1914, and supplies. In El Salvador, the leftist against the Soviet Union last summer, 1 January 1918, the capitalists had brought to market twelve hundred million pounds of putrid human flesh." - The ABC ofCommunism Or as Rosa Luxemburg put it in her uarters In Beirut killed 241 US servicemen. Junius Pamphlet (1916): n, Now, Alive!" Intersected widespread "Dividends are rising - proletarians seless policy. falling; and with each one there sinks a fighter of the future, a soldier of the wrong side (a program which, if car­ revolution, a savior of humanity from ried out, would long ago have done the yoke of capitalism, into the away with the proletariat of most of the grave." Western capitalist nations). In wars An end to this slaughter is the goal of where no side represents an advance Marxist revolutionists. And we hope to for elementary justice, we stand for put an end to the bourgeoisie's rule revolutionary defeatism on both sides. with as little bloodshed as possible. Consider, in addition to Lebanon, the We wish we could be pacifists, but we Iran-Iraq war. Is it "social-patriotic" can't - the old social order does not to advise the Iranian and Iraqi troops give way to the new in a peaceful not .to slaughter each other for their and orderly fashion. Isaac Deutscher respective regimes, to turn the guns noted that, "In embracing the vision of around and go home? The squalid a nonviolent society, Marxism ... has Reagan's racist rape of Grenada: cowardly Marines round up black Falklands/Malvinas war was another gone further and deeper than any Grenadians. SL said "US Out, Dead or Alive!" such case. Neither the Argentine nor pacifist preachers of nonviolence have the British working masses had any­ ever done. Why? Because Marxism insurgents have followed a policy of a grotesque example of the ruling thing to gain from the victory of their laid bare the roots of violence in our turning captured enemy soldiers over class's willingness to cynically squan­ "own" murderous rulers in the Falk­ society, which the others have not to the Red Cross unharmed - an der human life. The Soviet military lands; they only stood to lose their done" ("Marxism and Nonviolence", effective incentive to mass desertion took the only course of defensive ac­ lives. (In fact, Argentina's defeat led 1966). from the junta's army. Contrast this tion possible, under the circumstances straight to the downfall of the military Certainly, the Russian Revolution with the fascistic death squads who - ie, given the refusal of the jet to regime; Britain's victory led to the re­ was a nearly bloodless event, carried operate against the populace under the communicate, the Russians were election of Margaret Thatcher.) out, Deutscher writes, "in such. a way principle of "the only good one is a unable to identify it while at the Those who want bloodthirstiness must that, according to all the hostile eye­ dead one". The principal weapon in same time a US spy plane was clearly look to Thatcher, who ordered the witnesses (such as the Western the proletariat's arsenal is not force in contact with it. But we do not gratuitous sinking of the Argentine ambassadors who were then in Petro­ per se, but the ability to undermine the "hail" the shooting down of 200-plus cruiser Belgrano, taking the lives of grad), the total number of victims on capitalist regiments by appealing to innocent civilians; we solidarize with more than 320 young men in the icy all sides was ten". It was when the common class interests. Even in de­ waters ofthe South Atlantic. tsarist generals backed by 13 imperial- fense of just causes, Marxists are continued on page eleven

Kampuchean People Now Have a Future

PRESIDENT HENG SAMRIN PHNOM PENH PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF KAMPUCHEA

GREETINGS ON FIFTH ANNIVERSARY OF LffiERATION OF KAMPUCHEAN PEOPLE FROM BARBAROUS POL POT REGIME. HAIL INTERNATIONALIST ASSISTANCE OF VIETNAM THAT SAVED MILLIONS FROM GENOCIDE AND LAID BASIS FOR ECONOMIC RECONSTRUcrION - KAMPUCHEAN PEOPLE NOW HAVE FUTURE. FORWARD TO FINAL DEFEAT OF REAcrIONARY REMNANTS OF POL POT/SON SANN/SIHANOUK CLIQUES ARMED AND FUNDED BY CHINA AND US IMPERIALISM. HAIL HEROIC PERSEVERANCE OF INDOCHINESE WORKING PEOPLE, INSPIRATION TO REVOLUTIONARIES IN BELLY OF IMPERIALIST BEAST. FORTHEINTERNATIONALSPARTACISTTENDENCY SUSAN ADAMS NATIONAL CHAIRMAN LIGUE TROTSKYSTE DE FRANCE

JIM ROBERTSON Sydney, 27 September 1983: Protest demands Pol Pot out of UN, seating of NATIONAL CHAIRMAN Heng Samrln government, real government of Kampuchea. SL said: "Hall SPARTACIST LEAGUE/US Liberation of Khmer People! Hall Reconstruction - Kampuchean People Now Have a Future!"

MarchI Aprtl1984 7 Racist Anti-Labour Frame-U~ Lauren and Ray Not Go to Jail!

In Oakland, California two militant US telephone workers, Lauren Mozee and Ray Palmiero, are the target of a racist and anti-union frame­ up, facing up to seven-and-a-halfyears in pri~on for doing their duty as union­ ists on a picket line during the national Communications Workers of America (CW A) strike last August. While on the picket line in Ku Klux ~ Klan-infested San Leandro, California, Lauren was called a "black nigger bitch" and hit in the face by a racist J scab manager, Michelle Rose Hansen. Because Lauren defended herself and J the picket line and her companion and Lauren and Rayon CWA picket line fellow unionist, Ray, came to her aid, during national strike. they were fired from their jobs with tJ:te Pacific Telephone Company (part of thirty-seven year-old Machinists union the national Bell system), denied un­ official brutally gunned down in 1979 employment benefits and arrested on by Oakland cops. felony assault charges. The racist scab Some of the most active workers for Hansen got off scot-free. The com­ Lauren and Ray in the weeks before pany, the cops and the Alameda the demonstration were members of County District Attorney (DA) hope to the Labor Black League for Social use this gross frame-up to send a Defence (LBL). The LBL was formed message to the US population: black around the Spartacist election cam­ people don't have the right to defend paign when Martha Phillips ran for themselves against racist attack, Oakland City Council last March. The workers don't have the right to defend campaign heavily stressed the hideous their picket lines. pattern of racist killings by East Bay cops and the need to fight Klan terror But this blatant act of politicised through labour/black mobilisations racism in the service of union-busting like the 5,OOO-strong mobilisation in is being opposed by a vigorous public Washington on November 27, 1982 campaign of protest and exposure. The that stopped a major planned provo­ Phone Strikers Defence Committee cation by the KKK. The LBL also (PSDC) has marshalled an impressive demonstrated with the Spartacist united-front defence effort which has League last September demanding been endorsed by labour organisations October 29 Oakland march of over 400 mainly black militant trade unionists and "Vengeance for Patrick Mason!" representing many thousands of socialists. Portraits commemorate black victims of cop terror, flve-year-old Patrick The PSDC's demands have been Mason and machinist Charles Briscoe. workers, prominent public officials, endorsed by more than 20 local unions numerous left-wing and community for doing my duty on the picket lines white unionists who know who the real and over 160 labour officials, by activists. The Defence Committee is ... I've been victimised. criminals are. Prominently displayed minority, student and civil rights demanding: 1) that Mozee and .. ... It's not Ray and myself who are from the podium at the rally were large groups, and community activists. Palmiero be reinstated at their jobs the criminals here. The criminals portraits and flowers to honour the Backing has come from a broad with full back pay, 2) that all charges are Ma Bell, the San Leandro Police memory of two black victims of racist spectrum of socialist organisations in­ against them and all other phone Department and the District killer cops: Patrick Mason, the five­ cluding Democratic Socialists of Attorney. " strikers be dropped, 3) amnesty be year-old child shot to death by an America leader Dorothy Healy, granted to all victimised phone The demonstration brought out a Orange County, California, cop last Greensboro massacre survivor Nelson strikers. serious hard core of black, Latin and March, and Charles Briscoe, the continued on page ten On 29 October last year, 400 mainly black militant trade unionists and socialists demonstrated in Oakland demanding "Stop the racist anti­ labour frame-up! Lauren Mozee and Ray Palmiero must not go to jail!" As they marched through the streets in drizzling rain, the protesters - who Protest telegrams have also been Mozee, Ray Palmiero and all phone all charges to be dropped and for an included striking workers, interracial sent by the Miners' Federation strikers be dropped immediately. end to the racist frame-up. couples, people with direct experience and Victorian branch of the BWIU. George Crawford, General Secretary Lyall Munro Jnr, Chairman of cop violence, as well as organised Plumbers and Gasfltters Employees' Aboriginal Legal Service contingents from locals of the CWA, Plumbers and Gasfitters Union of Australia American Federation of Teachers, and International Brotherhood of Elec­ Condemn Frame-up NSW ATEA: Injury to trical Workers - chanted, "Hey DA! Plumbers and Gasfitters Employees' One is Injury to All Workers say: Hands off Lauren Union of Australia declares support Aboriginal Legal Service and Ray!" for demands of Phone Strikers backs Lauren and Ray The Australian Telecommunications Lauren Mozee, speaking at the rally Defence Committee. Employees' ASSOCiation, (Tech­ at the Alameda County Courthouse, Urge immediate reinstatement of The Aboriginal Legal Service of New nician's Union), stands in solidarity explained the stakes: Lauren Mozee and Ray Palmiero South Wales, Australia, records Its with the campaign to defend Lauren without loss of any entitlements and solidarity with Lauren Mozee and Mozee and Ray Palmiero against the .. As everyone knows, I'm a victim of a that amnesty be granted to all vic­ Ray Palmiero. racist union-busting actions of Pacific racist, anti-labour frame-up. Why? timised phone strikers. We have seen 200 years of racist Telephone Company. We demand all One, I'm a black woman. Two, Ray International image of United States violence and oppression. We know charges be dropped and racist anti­ and I are an interracial couple. Three, is not good in relation to South too well what it is to be victimised in labour frame-up be stopped. I'm a militant - I said militant­ African-type anti-labour and black the struggle for freedom and justice. Freedom and jobs back for Lauren trade unionist. A former member of frame-up cases. We stand together with our American and Ray. No victimisation of any of the Black Panther Party for· many The Plumbers and Gasfitters Em­ brothers and sisters in their defence the strikers. Injury to one is injury to years. And I'm a firm believer - I ployees' Union of Australia expresses against the Alameda County DA and all. Down with South Africa­ said firm believer - in socialism. international solidarity with workers the Pacific Telephone Company. style justice. I've always been a fighter against on picket line subjected to employers We note that in persecuting black A Douglas, Acting Secretary, racism and cop terror, and a fighter for and their agency attacks. union members your system indicts Australian Telecommunications unity of the working class against Demand all charges against Lauren itself. We add our voice to the call for Employees' ASSOCiation, NSW the bosses. Now for these things and 8 Australasian Spartaclst . lleaders of the Socialist Workers .RParty's Direct Action may be intrigued to have found in its pages the speeches of Soviet Foreign Minis­ ter Andrei Gromyko, some lengthy Lonely Stalinists quotes from the late Yuri Andropov and even reprints from the US Stalin­ ists' People's World. Is this the SWP of Jim Percy which screamed "Stalin- ' ist lies" when the Spartacist League sharply denounced Polish Solidarnosc Embrace Son of Walesa as a company union for the CIA and Western bankers, and which counts the Sydney Morning Herald that they banner of nationalism. Yet despite the toiling masses around the world, from among its closest friends the Ustasha­ were "the group most closely aligned uproar in and beyond the left, the SPA Southeast Asia to the Caribbean, loving Croatian Movement for State­ with Solidarity in Australia" . has remained conspicuously silent against US imperialism and its allies, hood (HDP)? Yes it is, and the reason After that episode the SWP got a over the SWP's scandalous defence of including Australian imperialism, the is that for some months now the little more cautious, particularly when the HDP and its apologetics for the main enemy of the Australian prolet­ SWP has been engrossed in a "unity" their hopes for an anti-Soviet "mass bloody Pavelic regime in 1941-45 ariat. The imperialist bourgeoisies will offensive with the local pro-Moscow movement" fell flat, and it was clear to Croatia. never disarm - they must be driven Stalinists of the Socialist Party of most everyone that Santamaria's NCC from power. In keeping the nuclear Australia (SPA). So cosy are relation­ The SWP has seized on the HDP's and the "Free Poles" (not to mention single-minded hatred of the Yugoslav madmen at bay, Soviet military (and ships between the two groups that the CIA) had the real Solidamosc nuclear) capacity has bought the Direct Action is now on sale at SPA workers state in order to sell Croatian franchise. But nothing has changed. nationalism as hostile to Yugoslavia's world working class precious time to bookshops, enabling SPA members to For example we were amused to hear make the socialist revolution, the only follow the latest developments in the pro-US "non-alignment". Thus we are that SWPers visiting Cuba recently told that the HDP is very anti-Reagan road to peace. "Croatian national movement" and to were soundly trounced when they tried As for the SWP they printed a read first-hand about how Solidamosc and very pro-Castro. Have the SPA, to convince their hosts that Lech like the SWP, actually bought this "peace" resolution just over a year is really "socialist". Walesa was really a Polish version of ago quoting the late SWP/US leader Direct Action (13 December 1983) garbage? If the HDP was successful in Castro. The anti-Soviet SWP hasn't carrying out their program to "dis­ Joe Hansen's infamous 1977 state­ claims that one of the reasons these changed its spots. Quoting Gromyko, member" what they call "fascist" ment that "it is clear Brezhnev must birds got together is "to defend the like their adulation of the "non­ be blamed for failing to seize the Soviet Union against imperialist at­ Yugoslavia, then in short order aligned" Castro, is primarily in the NATO's cruise and Pershing missiles initiative on disarmament" (Socialist tacks and to refute the anti­ service of their "anti-American" would be on the Hungarian border Worker, November 1982). Unlike the communist, and anti-Soviet hysteria reformist appetites to cut out a niche to SWP we condemn the Soviet bureauc­ whipped up by the capitalist media". and pointing north and east. Symon/ the left of Hawke in the Laborite Miller desecrate the memory of racy not because they lack in pacifist Can anyone believe this? Things really spectrum. idiocy, but because their utopian are at a sorry state for pro-Moscow 20 million Soviet lives sacrificed So what exactly are Symon/Miller in the struggle to defeat Hitlerite policy of "disarmament" and "peace­ Stalinism when the only "unity" they playing at here? Is this just more ful coexistence" undermines the can get "to defend the Soviet Union" Germany and its fascist allies like stupid opportunism, or perhaps a soft­ Pavelic's Ustasha. military defence of the workers states, is with the anti-Soviet SWP. But if sell message that the SPA isn't really tying the workers to an illusory there are any in the SPA's ranks who against "free trade unions"? What­ "peace-loving" wing of imperialism. are revolted at this tum of events they ever the motivation the Stalinists Hawke's Loyal Opposition In 1916 Lenin wrote, "Our slogan must should understand that this is a logical themselves are completely bankrupt be: arming of the proletariat to defeat, end-product (admittedly almost at the on Poland. It was the Stalinist bu­ expropriate and disarm the bour­ level of farce) of traditional Stalinist reaucracy that fostered the counter­ What really unites these strange geoisie" ("The Military Programme of policies of "socialism in one country" revolutionary threat, that disorganised bedfellows is their shared appetite to the Proletarian Revolution"). Over 20 and popular frontism. the Polish economy and mortgaged it get a position of influence within the years later, on the eve of World War The record speaks for itself. Stalin­ to the Western banks, that capitulated labour bureaucracy. The SWP-SPA are II, the founding document of Trotsky's ism breeds Eurocommunist desertion to the Church and small-holding very much on the outs looking in, what Fourth International heralded the to anti-Soviet social democracy. In peasantry, that demoralised the with the ALP and Communist Party same message to the world proletariat: 1971 a good three-quarters of the Com­ workers in the face of resurgent "lefts" busy policing the government/ '''Disarmament'? But the entire munist Party of Australia (CPA) broke Pilsudskiite reaction and drove them ACTU Accord and keeping the "peace question revolves around who will to the right from Moscow and the into the arms of Solidarnosc. Now the movement" safe for Reagan's man disarm whom. The only disarmament CPA's virulent anti-Sovietism is now SPA can only defend the Jaruzelski Hawke. Both groups see their "al­ which can avert or end war is the taking it rapidly towards liquidation regime that continues to conciliate the liance" as a way to capitalise on dis­ disarmament of the bourgeoisie by the into Hawke's Cold War ALP. Then last Catholic Church, the centre of the content with Hawke, providing a workers. But to disarm the bour­ year the SPA lost half its membership counterrevolutionary danger in platform for dissident bureaucrats geoisie the workers must arm as almost its entire base in the trade Poland. which will allow them to posture as themselves." union bureaucracy defected en masse, We supported the military crack­ the Labor-loyal opposition to Hawke. - TransitionalProgram (1938) preferring "unity" within Hawke's down in 1981 and the checking of the The credo of this alliance, the Today in this pre-war period as US anti-Soviet "consensus" to party ties counterrevolutionary threat, but we "Manifesto of Social Rights" is full of imperialism and its Australian junior with the Soviet Union. The renegacy of made clear that nothing had been vague "rights", all crowned with the partner lay the basis for attacking Clancy, Supple, Geraghty and the rest solved. It bought some time­ appeal that Hawke's anti-working Vietnam and the Soviet Union the under pressure of Cold War II was pre­ nothing more - for a revolutionary class, pro-Reagan "ALP government Trotskyists of the Spartacist League pared by decades of social patriotism socialist solution to the Polish crisis. must stick by and defend the working fight for this same progl'am. Only and congenial "unity" with the main­ The defence of the revolutionary gains people who elected it". Not one of international proletarian revolution stream anti-Soviet Labor Party bu­ of October and the Polish deformed the key programmatic elements to can bring peace and truly defend the reaucracy. What remains of the workers state against NATO/US unehain the unions from their bureau­ Soviet Union. To do that the social Stalinist party in Australia which once imperialism and internal counter­ cratic stranglehold - occupations and chauvinist leaders of the workers and boasted 23,000 members and led revolution must begin from a perspec­ strikes against layoffs, mass picketing, their "left" advisors like the SWP/ unions covering from 25 to 40 per cent tive of international socialist revolution opposition to Arbitration or protection­ SPA have to be unmasked and swept of organised labour? A pathetic rump - proletarian revolution throughout ism etc - can be found in this sub­ away in a fight to reforge the Fourth of a few hundred, whose leadership of the capitalist world, and in the East reformist document, which concludes International, world party of social­ Peter Symon/ Alan Miller doggedly proletarian political revolution to oust with this stirring wet noodle: "See ist revolution. • proceed to do it all again, dragging the parasitic bureaucracy that at every your local Member of Parliament. Tell their long-suffering membership step undermines the workers states. In him or her what you want the govern­ DeclaratIon of PrIncIples of @ into alliance with the SWP. It's Poland it is urgently necessary to build ment to do." In short, they want a the Spartaclst League certainly a dog's life being a Stalinist educational and propaganda cells of better, more "progressive" Accord (In Turkish) hack. an internationalist Trotskyist vanguard from this imperialist government.

Let's examine how the SWP-SPA which can restore to the Polish prolet­ To cover the foreign policy angle 10< Q,)QOM 11("L1OO,20n..S\>·lff will "defend the Soviet Union", ariat the deep and rich Marxist trad­ there's a tiny section on "the right to starting with Poland and the rise of the ition represented above all by Rosa live in peace" pitched to " little counterrevolutionary Solidamosc Luxemburg. This is the perspective of Australia" patriotism: "US bases SPARTAKUs movement. Poland was an acid test for genuine communism, of the inter­ should go" because they "ensure that the left in this period of renewed Cold national Spartacist tendency. Australia will be directly involved if LiGASI'NIN War. Certainly for the SWP it showed nuclear war occurs." Here there is their true colours. When the Polish Stalinists Keep Silent genuine unity indeed - social­ TEMiL military spiked Solidamosc's counter­ on HOP Scandal patriotic defence of Australian mini­ PRENsiPLERI revolutionary bid for power back in imperialism. From the mouths of December 1981 the imperialists let out The SWP's scandalous courting of social democrats and Stalinists "anti­ a cry of rage, and all the anti­ the pro-Ustasha HDP is no bizarre Americanism" is just a means of communist rabble washed up on these aberration, but the generalisation, whitewashing their own imperialism. shores came out of the sewers to pro­ extended to even these openly The SPA has long campaigned test. At Sydney's Polish consulate they reactionary nationalists, of its position around the slogan "US bases make were all there - the "Free Poles" of support to all oppositional move­ Australia a nuclear target" . Our and the whole fascistic "Captive ments in the Soviet bloc against the Trotskyist opposition to these bases is E",.",... "n~1 Spa""""' le,,

... , Australasian ... SPARTACIST Down with Hawke! Keep- out NCC Witchhunters! Labor's CIA Connection When Robert Hawke's Labor Australian imperialism's US godfather organised clericalist anti-communist those like Short who decided the better government was elected last year we and its CIA. In 1975 the CIA was witchhunting in the unions and we tactic was to "stay in and fight" in the in the Spartacist League bluntly told instrumental in bringing down the certainly want to deny them official ALP. Their direct descendants are the the truth. The working class and op­ Whitlam Labor government after ALP backing for it. Their emergence Harvard-trained Unsworth-McBean pressed in this country faced "Cold Whitlam threatened to meddle with back into the mainstream of the labour Centre-Unity machine presently War Labor in Power", a government the US super-secret Pine Gap spy movement, under Hawke's open running the NSW ALP and Labor determined to prove its loyalty to the base. And Hawke knows that he must patronage, only underlines what we Council who provide the solid power American alliance and Reagan's anti­ continue to prove to the Americans Trotskyists have said since Labor came base of Hawke and the pro-US ALP Soviet war frenzy while it enforced that he has "learnt the lessons" of to power. A break from Hawke and his right wing nationally. Hawke is wage-cutting austerity at home. Now, 1975 - that Labor can only govern as imperialist government of anti-Soviet arranging the reunification inside the one year later, Hawke is putting into the US's slavishly loyal junior partner. warmongering and capitalist austerity ALP of the Centre-Unity and the NCC effect plans to bolster his Cold War Hand in hand with their moves in is the starting point for struggle on trade-union base, who have recently ALP by bringing back those sinister the ALP the Hawke-NCC axis is on an every important question facing the split from Santamaria to facilitate this forces for decades openly aligned with anti-communist offensive against the working class. Down with Hawke! manoeuvre. CIA "free trade unionism" and the Labor lefts' base in the union bu­ Keep out the NCC Cold War witch­ Back in 1982 the "left" cheerleaders Catholic anti-communist witchhunters reaucracy. a battle now centred on hunters! for Lech Walesa squirmed when these of B A Santamaria's National Civic the crucial metalworkers union Hawke deludes himself that the cur­ same CIA loyalists ran the Polish Council (NCC). (AMFSU). Though presently these rent euphoric mood of "national con­ Solidarnosc tour of Australia. The tour A major factional boilover is brew­ left-right factional struggles in both sensus" will solve all his problems. was an important bench-mark in re­ ing in the ALP, centred in Victoria the ALP and the unions are intra­ But courting the widely hated NCC forging an ANZUS/CIA-Ioyal anti­ where the NCC-Ied "gang of four" bureaucratic brawls, they are fuelled could backfire on him, especially in communist alliance within the union unions - the Gerks (FCU), Shop by Cold War II. The bourgeoisie his own party. Accord or no Accord, bureaucracy and ALP. As we said, Assistants (SDA), Ironworkers (FIA) doesn't trust the Socialist Left partly the class struggle will not forever "Solidarity is Poland's DLP/ and Carpenters and Joiners - are because its leading figures like Bill cease at his command. The historically Groupers" - organised Catholic attempting to reaffiliate to the ALP. Hartley make statements like "anti­ militant Australian working class will reaction mobilising in the working These forces for decades buttressed Sovietism is anti-working class". And not put up indefinitely with over ten class against the historic gains of the the NCC's fanatically anti-communist the NCC are the perfect example of per cent unemployment, no-strike Polish proletariat. And at last Septem­ electoral front, the now-defunct how Reagan/Hawke's anti-Soviet war pledges, and continued grinding away ber's ACTU congress this Cold War Democratic Labor Party (DLP), a prod­ drive fuels the most reactionary dom­ of the wages and conditions it has line-up was up there with Hawke, uct of the 1955 ALP split which ended estic forces. come to expect. Moreover to fill the leading the anti-Soviet hysteria over the Industrial Group anti-communist Anti-union wrecking, witchhunting. slot Hawke has aggressively claimed the US KAL 007 war provocation. witchhunt in the unions in the late attacks on women's right to abortion in Reagan's anti-Soviet war drive, he's More recently, Unsworth and his 1940s/early 1950s. Hawke wants these and child care, anti-gay reaction, got to overcome Australia's "Vietnam Harvard-trained cronies in league with Catholic reactionaries back in the fold strengthening the imperialist army syndrome" - opposition to getting the AFL-CIO initiated a Labor Com­ to break Socialist Left control of the and police and spy agencies - this is' into losing American wars has strong mittee for Pacific Affairs (LCPA). Victorian ALP, the major remaining the program of the NCC. The Labor­ roots in this country's labour move­ Playing a key role in the LCPA is obstacle to locking up the ALP along loyal "left" hate them as the great ment. Finally, the ruling class drive for long-time CIA man Gerald O'Keefe, a hard pro-ANZUS Cold War lines. The violators of unity, who kept the ALP off industrial "restructuring" poses colleague of John Maynes in the CIA Socialist Left have proven their loyalty the Treasury benches for a decade and slashing the tariff barriers protecting international trade-union front, the to the Hawke government, backing his a half. By contrast Santamaria and the Australia's weak manufacturing sec­ Internationl Federation of Commer­ anti-Sovietism and policing the no­ NCC have never shared this parlia­ tor, which would strike at the heart of cial, Technical and Gerical Em­ strike, wage-cutting ALP-AerU mentarist framework, knowing that Laborite chauvinism. Hawke's prob­ ployees (FIET). Accord. But nevertheless their "anti­ the real fight is to be had in the lems have only just begun. While the Socialist Left are shriek­ American" nationalist leanings make factories, on the campuses etc to iso­ Australia and the CIA's "Labor ing about the NCC danger neither they them an "aberrant" factor in this late, defeat, and destroy all left-wing Boys" nor their "left" satellites outside the period, particularly in the eyes of and militant forces. They represent ALP say a word about the CIA con­ The US AFL-CIO trade-union nection that runs straight to Hawke. bureaucracy is well known for giving a As far back as 1969 when he won the "labour" .cover to bloody CIA sub­ AerU presidency. Hawke had the nod version, witchhunting and splitting of from the US embassy's "labour the labour movement in the service of attache" as their favoured labour imperialist reaction and bloody leader. Now as head of the govern­ counterrevolution, from post-war ment he's at the centre of the CIA­ Western Europe to Chile in 1973 to loyal wing of social democracy. He sought to curb supporting Polish Solidarnosc and Worried about their own necks and no the worst excesses "agrarian reform" in El Salvador doubt remembering the CIA-inspired of the bureaucracy. today. In 1960 a key AFL-CIO oper­ witchhunt of former ALP national ator, Harry Goldberg, visited Australia secretary David Combe for his friend­ He sought to at the invitation of PIA national sec­ ship with expelled Soviet diplomat increase the retary Laurie Short, and noted in a productivity of Valeriy Ivanov, the cowardly Socialist report to his CIA masters: Left flinch from pointing the finger at the Soviet masses. .. Australia is in a terribly important Hawke. Left MP Gerry Hand blus­ strategic position and if things went tered that the reaffiliation of the He made no overt wrong there its negative repercussions "gang of four" could bring down the betrayals on behalf on the free world would be great. And of imperialism. the exceptions in the situation, the Cain and Hawke governments, yet in labor boys especially who are on our . the same breath claimed, "I don't He was no friend side. who are fighting an uphill battle know what individual within the party of freedom. versus the commies, are looking to us is pushing it" (Australian, 13 and only to us." February)! - our emphasis. quoted in The Ultra Even as Hawke sharpens the knife File, March 1983 for their throats the "lefts" try to Who are the CIA's "labor boys"? On ingratiate themselves with their the one hand those of the CIA-aligned "messiah". Typical of this line is Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov Groupers who went with the DLP split­ the Labor-loyal Communist Party ters in 1955, like key NCC figures John (CPA) whose Tribune (22 February) 1914-1984 Maynes of the FCU and Jim Maher of warned: the SDA. On the other hand there's continued on page eleven 12 March I April 1984