WfJllltEIiS ,,1N'III1II' 25¢ No. 297 :-=~: . '.>13 22 January 1982 Oust the Fraser Gang! Fight the Auto Bosses!

• DETROIT-Half a million auto work­ anarchic in irrationality, most painful in ers are on the front lines facing a social consequences. Detroit's skilled concerted capitalist offensive in this proletariat would be the most valuable resource of a rational society-the class "year of the giveback." And already the that can build a socialist America." misleaders of the powerful industrial -WV No. 287, 14 August 1981 unions have started dealing away the hard-won gains of the American labor Auto was once the symbol of the movement. Nine months early, the "American way of life." The industry United Auto Workers (UAW) contracts employed, directly or indirectly, rough­ have been reopened. On January 13 ly one-sixth of the country's workforce. UA W president Doug Fraser an­ Now as one plant after another shuts its nounced an agreement with GM to bail gates for good, 214,000 UAW members out the auto bosses with Chrysler-style find themselves on indefinite layoff, concessions. The UAW membership alongside more than 50,000 who have must answer Fraser's givebacks with a given up looking for work (and are not resounding "no" vote, and prepare to included in official government figures). fight with the weapon that built the A Department of Commerce official Auto Workers into what was the recently announced that auto and strongest union in the U.S.: the sit-down related industries will emerge from the strike. present recession with 550,000 fewer The companies aren't asking for workers-permanently. What's hap­ peanuts. GM called for a whopping $5/ pening to auto is not just management hour slash in "fringe" benefits (like and the stockholders bleeding the health care); Fraser countered by companies dry, as at Chrysler, but a offering S2.50/hour (in cuts) Ford is crisis of American capitalism. And as demanding a total wage freeze and Leon Trotsky \vrote in the ;'~T ransi~iar.R.~ elimination of even the present inade­ Program" (1938): quate cost-of-Iiving escalator. The "lJnder the menace of its own disintegration, the proletariat cannot UAW tops are giving up entire pro­ permit the transformation ofan increas­ grams won through past struggles, ing section of the workers into chroni­ taking billions of dollars from their cally unemployed paupers, living off the members' pockets to put into company slops of a crumbling society. The right to employment is the only serious right profits. Last fall Fraser announced the left to the worker in a societv based uniform industry-wide contract had upon exploitation." - "gone by the boards"; already Chrysler What's at stake in auto is the preserva­ workers are taking home $50 a week tion of a key sector of the American less. Now he supports the bosses' lie that proletariat. inflation is caused by high wages, linking givebacks to lower sticker prices. What better way to get the public to Fraser Leads the Way blame auto workers for the sky-high (Backwards) price of buying a car! Unions representing some 4.5 million While the bankers and the Big Three workers go to the bargaining table this (or Big Two) bosses figure out how to year. The UAW is the traditional squeeze out more profits, Detroit is Auto bosses throw hundreds of thousands into the streets. WV Photo pacesetter that oil wcrkers, electrical dying. The politicians don't even bother workers, rubber workers and others to promise that prosperity isjust around outs to say. But what about the crisis with race terror and union busting. look to as an example for their own the corner. Chrysler president Lee hundreds of thousands of laid-off auto But Detroit does mind dying. As contract struggles. But if the UAW is Iacocca explained that "the trick is to workers and poor, who no longer have Spartacist candidates for city council "leading the way" today, the direction is make sure you don't die before prosperi­ SUB benefits, unemployment "insur­ said last year: backwards-and fast. The wholesale ty gets here" (New York Times, 9 ance," welfare or even food stamps? "Here in Detroit we see the crisis of the retreat began at Chrysler in 1979, where January). Easy for the recipient of Meanwhile the fascists grow bolder with entire capitalist system most starkly workers gave up over $1 billion in wages almost $2 billion in government hand- their program of meeting the capitalist revealed. most advanced in decay, most continued on page 8

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Reagan's policy is roll back all the gains of working of surplus cheese have been rotting for some 18 months people and the oppressed-from the overthrow of in government silos in a deliberate scheme to drive up capitalism in Eastern Europe to the achievements of prices. Now that the cheese is molding, they have the labor movement in this country, and black and finally doled it out. Around the country people by the minority rights. Black unemployment is a whopping thousands turned out to wait in line in the bitter cold Reagan's 17.4 percent, a postwar high, with black youth several hours before distribution centers opened. Then unemployment now running more than 50 percent. An they were required to prove "full documentation of economist in the New York Times (11 January) had to need"-as if standing outside for hours for a 5-pound admit blacks "don't have to have a recession, they're package of leftover processed cheese wasn't proof depressed all the time." And Reagan racism isn't just enough! Try that one in Poland! the capitalist market working its "magic." Last week Reagan supplied his "answer" to the growing Racist the administration ordered tax subsidies for segrega­ poverty and hunger in America at a recent speech to tionist private schools. the super-rich at New York City's Waldorf Astoria: The capitalists claim the "bankruptcy of garbage. In praise of "volunteerism" to replace communism" can be seen in people standing in line for government welfare, Reagan cited the groups that rationed food in Poland. Now in capitalist America scavenge what's left in farm fields and on boat docks. there are not only soup kitchens, but a new Such efforts, he said with uplifting contempt, "could Rollback phenomenon-the cheese line. Thirty million pounds continued on page 10 Letter

sectarian because we sue against being included in this SL Deukmejian SUit: official hit list. After naming a number of left groups other than the SL included in the Deukmejian report, he asks whose name should not be removed. But Grant Rght Against Witchhunting doesn't mention that the Nazis, KKK, Hell's Angels August 13, 1981 Whose names should not be removed from the and the Manson Family, among others, are listed as "political terrorists" by the California attorney To the editor: report? Who are the criminals and terrorists who "belong" in the report? Do socialists who do not general. Well, we remember seeing on TV a young In WV[No. 286], 3I July 198 I, the SocialistWorkers support the Soviet Union in Afghanistan "have the black man shot dead at an Altamont, California rock Party's conduct in its suit against the FBI is criticized. right to say so" in the labor movement? concert in 1969 where the Hell's Angels "kept order." WVstates: In its lawsuit against the Attorney General, the SL But it is not ourjob to assist in the legal prosecution, or "But if the SWP wins, we still lose. The SWP is trying to and SYL might not be able to challenge the inclusion of defense, of the Hell's Angels, for instance. show the government that the eight million documents other left organizations in the report. But, in its We found ourselves on a list that was not just a the FBI admits to having collected on the SWP are a "subversives" list but a set-up for immediate violence misdirection ofeffort. The SWPdoes not even pretend to propaganda around the suit, the SL need not limit call for the abolition of the spy agencies; they couldn't itself to Nelson's attitude-one which shows no to be taken against us by the agents of the capitalist care less what the FBI/CIAdo to otherorganizations...." concern about the Attorney General's attacks on other state. It said to the police who received the list: you The same issue of WV contains a statement by AI left organizations. have in your midst not merely the usual "subversives" Nelson of the SL Central Committee, which "couldn't who think and write things "un-American," but Alan Grant terrorists. This means get them now. The list did not care less what" the government does to left organiza­ New York City tions other than the SL and SYL. In support oftheSL's include the larger groups on the American left. Instead suit to delete the SL and SYL from the California we were listed with some leftist groups who are so full Attorney General's Report "Organized Crime in of bravado that they might even consider it a merit California," Nelson states: "We demand that our names WV replies: We should have answered this letter badge to be listed as a "dangerous faction with which be removed from this report." Not a word about earlier, particularly because it is an insidious attempt to law enforcement would have to deal." Progressive Labor, International Committee Against frame up the Spartacist League. Alan Grant claims a We decided to attack the list in general through our Racism, Communist Workers Party and the Revolu­ statement by Spartacist League spokesman "'couldn't own particulars-the only ones for which we can tionary Communist Party, all of which were also care less what' the government does to left organiza­ legally and in substance take responsibility. While we included in the report of the Attorney General. tions other than the SL and SYL." This is a patent lie: are not in a position to underwrite even the leftism of Nelson believes that the "working class and its party Nelson's statement says no such thing. In fact, he some of the groups cited, our victory discredits the have the right to organize" (WV's emphasis) and that denounced the California attorney general's "terrorist" entire "Organized Crime Report," and the publicity socialists who share the SL's positions on Afghanistan list as a "classic attempt to use the terrorist right as an about the case has shown the Deukmeiian witchhunt and EI Salvador: excuse to go after the left and labor movement." for what it is. Any left group that cares to challenge its " ... have the right to say so in the labor movement Grant quotes Nelson saying the "working class and inclusion on the list now has our case to stand on. And without being labeled as terrorists. The intent of this its party have the right to organize," but claims we this is not the first time resistance to McCarthyite report is to restrict us from carrying out our restrict this to "socialists who share the SL's positions witchhunting has been fought by protesting inclusion activities...." on Afghanistan and EI Salvador." Then in disingenu­ in government black lists and hit lists. Leaving aside Nelson's view that a working class can ous, tendentious, i.e., lying, fashion he refers to In 1949 the then-revolutionary Socialist Workers have only one party, is the problem with the Attorney "Nelson's view that a working class can have only one Party (SWP) protested its inclusion on the notorious General's report solely that the activities of the party.... " Throughout this letter there is a malicious U.S. attorney general's list. The Shachtmanite Spartacist League are threatened? suggestion that the SL is totalitarian, supporting one­ Workers Party began their legal effort to have their Nelson's statement is accompanied by a reprint of a party dictatorship, and doesn't deserve to exist off or name struck off in 1948, and continued it for ten years Los Angeles Times article, quoting Rachel Wolken­ on Deukmejian's "terrorist" list. Nowhere does the as the International Socialist League (ISL). Of course, stein, attorney for the SL and SYL, as stating: writer indicate the slightest support to the Spartacist the Shachtmanites argued that their fierce anti­ "We're saying we don't belong in that report because suit against inclusion in the California attorney Sovietism should exclude them from being ideological we're not criminals and terrorists." general's "Organized Crime Report." victims of the government. Nevertheless, their case Nelson demands "that our names be removed from this Grant has all the stupid slyness of a Reagan helped to wreck the legal basis of the list, making it report." prosecution team. He claims our legal strategy is continued on page 9 Editorial Note

There are important differences, of course. Pilsudski: Spiritual Father Solidarnosc Solidarnose today embraces the reactionary national­ of ist traditions of Pilsudski while discarding the old A striking point in the article "Fake-Lefts Support nose as the fabrication ofan international "disinforma­ marshal's veneer of petty-bourgeois radical national­ Solidarnose Counterrevolution" (WV No. 292,6 No­ tion" campaign conducted by the "Western capitalist ism and "socialism." Moreover, the clericalism vember 1981) is how various opportunist "socialists" press, the Soviet bureaucratic press and some of the dominant in Solidarnosc was never central to use as their alibi for backing Polish Solidarnosc, a pro­ more crazed elements of the American left" (Workers Pilsudskiism. It is the mass plebeian base, however, imperialist clerical-nationalist movement, the fact that Struggle, November 1981). Actually, about the only which enables Walesa, like Pilsudski, to act as a sinister it has mobilized the bulk of the Polish working class ones who don't see the capitalist-restorationist logic of instrument for counterrevolution. Opportunists like behind its red-and-white banners. This is the funda­ Walesa's "free elections/free trade unions" program the RWL, WSL and Workers Power are falsely mental argument, explicit or implicit, of the British are a bunch of social-democratic pseudo-leftists who concerned that Walesa will "sell out" to the Stalinists. groups Workers Power and Workers Socialist League have to deny reality in order to distance themselves The real worry for communists is that the Stalinists (WSL) and of the Revolutionary Workers League from Reagan's Cold Warriors. The Wall Street could sell out to Walesa, the German banks and (RWL) grouplet in the U.S. The workerist corollary is Journal (29 September 1981), certainly no friend of Reagan. Conciliation of counterrevolution is the that the proletariat is instinctively and necessarily labor, hails the AFL-CIO for "aiding the Solidarity modus operandi of the Stalinists' "socialism in one socialist, and can never be mobilized against its historic movement, openly and unashamedly." The same country." • interests. (Like supporting imperialist wars?!) This editorial attacked the Spartacist League protest kind of pollyannaism is perhaps understandable in against the opening of a Solidarnosc office on the Britain, where even backward workers are often pro­ premises of Albert Shanker's UFT with the sinister union and even vaguely pro-socialist. But in the U.S., threat that "anyone seeking to delegitimize" the AFL­ where backward workers are too frequently anti­ CIO crusade for "political freedom" should "be aware communist strikebreaking racists, such economist ofjust how serious a threat he is raising." Sollenberger opportunism is completely cynical. doesn't have to worry: he's no threat at all. In fact, on The RWL cult of Peter Sollenberger simply December I8, the RWL demonstrated in Detroit dismisses the counterrevolutionary danger of Solidar- together with the Meanyite labor fakers and "captive nations" reactionaries protesting the anti-Solidarnosc crackdown in Poland. A year ago, before Solidarnosc had sealed its WORKERS VANGUARlJ counterrevolutionary course, the Sollenbergerites Marxist Working-Class Biweekly objected that the Spartacists did not believe in "the of the Spartaclst League of the U.S. zwyei~zonym EDITOR: Jan Norden ability of the Polish workers to tell the difference Byc ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Charles Burroughs between workers' political revolution and capitalist " i Die ulee counterrevolution" (Fighting Worker, October 1980). PRODUCTION: Darlene Kamiura (Manager). Noah Wilner - to zwyci~stwo! CIRCULATION MANAGER: Linda Jarreau As the article "Pilsudski and Counterrevolution in Zwyci~iyC EDITORIAL BOARD: George Foster. Liz Gordon, Mark Poland" (WVNo, 293, 20 November 1981) points out, Kellermann. James Robertson. Reuben Samuels. Joseph this isn't the first time there has been such confusion in i spoezl\c na laurac.h Seymour, Marjorie Stamberg the Polish worke~s movement. Not only is Pilsudski - to kl~ska _" Workers Vanguard (USPS 098-770) pUblished biweekly, skipping an issue in August and a week in December, by the Spartacist the spiritual father of Solidarnosc, but in May 1926 Publishing Co., 41 Warren Street, New York, NY 10007. Polish workers could not tell the difference between a Telephone: 732-7862 (Editorial), 732-7861 (Business). Address J(JW Pilsudski all correspondence to: Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116. leftist insurrection and a rightist coup. The Socialist Domestic subscriptions: $5.00/24 issues. Second-class postage Party supported Marshal Pilsudski's grab for power paid at New York, NY. through a general strike, while the Communists, -=-. Opinions expressed in signed articles or letters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint. disoriented by Stalin's embracing of the Menshevik "two-stage revolution" dogma and by Pilsudski's Solldamoic placard Idolizes fascistic dictator of No. 297 22 January 1982 popularity in the working class, temporarily backed a fascistic coup, believing it represented a shift to the left. pre-war Poland. 2 WORKERS VANGUARD

-- "Amsterdam News" and Liberal Anti-Reaganism Blacks Don't Cry for Solidamosc

Since December 13 there's been a the television news have the look of rights to racist South Africa! cope's little empire underwent some well-dressed and well-fed people .... loud wail over "the death of freedom in It says a great deal about what black kind of shakeup and began sporting an Poland" coming from rightists, liberals 'The Poles who will be welcomed to these shores will be hailed as freedom­ people think of Poland that such an unaccustomed black militant image. and much ofthe left. However, one large fighters. They will be living proof of the editorial should appear in the Amster­ Today a black paper which supports section of American society has con­ superiority of the capitalist system. The dam News of all places. Fordecades this Koch (or Reagan) would more likely be Haitians have no propaganda value in spicuously refused to join the mourners. paper has represented the most conser­ burned than bought on the streets of Blacks instinctively understand and the east-west conflict. The Haitians­ and the Black South Africans are vative and venal section of the black Harlem. So in last fall's elections, the deeply resent the hypocrisy and racism another example ofAmerica's hypocrit- bourgeois establishment, an unashamed Amsterdam News supported Koch's of the American ruling class in postur­ liberal Democratic opponents such as ing as defenders of"freedom and human David Dinkins and Frank Barbaro. dignity" in Poland. They know that Despite its "militant" tone, the these "poor starving" Poles ate a lot Amsterdam News editorial on Poland is better than the people of Harlem and still trying to sell the old "free world" Chicago's South Side. They know that elixir. As with its support to "real many times more blacks, especially Democrats" Dinkins and Barbaro, it infants and old people, will freeze and has to adopt a new sales pitch to remain starve to death this winter in Reagan's credible in the face of mass black America than the number ofPoles killed outrage over Reagan racism. The under General Jaruzelski's "state of editorial peddles the notion (shared by war." They know that many more reformists and rad-libs alike) that ghetto youth have been shot by racist Washington, under a different adminis­ cops in this country than Solidarnosc tration, could pursue a foreign policy supporters have been shot by Polish which would make the U.S. "the friend cops. and ally of the downtrodden": Responding to this sentiment among "President Reagan doesn't give a damn American blacks is an editorial, "Why about liberty and freedom. Anti­ cry for Poland?" in Harlem's Amster­ Communism is his passion. No govern­ ment with a conscience could treat dam News (2 January). The editorial Haitian refugees so shabbily while points out that outpouring over Poland beating its breast about tyranny and is hardly spontaneous: at every opportu­ hunger in Poland. No government that nity the American government has respects human rights could denounce supported Solidarnosc and its demands; Warsaw while embracing Pretoria." for months the public has been bom­ Anti-Communism is notjust the passion of right-wing Republicans. As a matter barded with talk of a Soviet invasion Bob East and Reagan's threats to Soviet leaders. Reagan throws desperate Haitian refugees into concentration camps, while of fact, Jimmy Carter (of "human And it contrasts the U.S. government's hailing Polish "freedom fighters." rights" and "ethnic purity" fame) along brutal treatment of desperate Haitian with the Kennedys and Trumans and refugees with the glorification of Polish ical concern with political liberty-are voice of the Uncle Toms of Uncle Sam. FDR as well embraced vicious right­ not abused by a Communist tyrant. Publisher John Procope is intimately wing dictatorships like Haiti and South "freedom fighters": They are Black, unskilled and "Who can say that they have seen in illiterate." associated with the regular Democratic Africa in order to defend capitalism Poland any conditions that approach Party machine, and maintained ties to against social revolution the world over. what is commonplace in Haiti? Who These Polish "freedom fighters," more­ notoriously racist Mayor Ed Koch long While the Amsterdam News editorial can honestly assert that living condi­ denounces Reagan for claiming to stand tions or political liberty is anywhere over, are not only heading for Reagan's after other NYC black pols wouldn't be near as bad in Poland as they are in America. In Vienna, 150 Polish emigres caught dead in the same room with for freedom in Poland, it nonetheless Haiti? All of the Poles who appear on a day are applying for immigration hizzoner. But a few months ago Pro- continued on page 10 "Angels" and Cops: Bad News The lumpen vigilantes known as the dangerous racist vigilantes whose main "Guardian Angels" are developing into victims are minority youth. Moreover, a national menace. The subway-riding as the "Angels" have gone national, gangs of red berets have been endorsed their racial composition has been by capitalist spokesmen, including the changing. In the Midwest and on the Wall Street Journal, the New York West Coast, middle-class whites are Times, even the London Economist. joining up; many Angels are also Now Time magazine hopes that the security guards, National Guardsmen "young crime fighters" will be able to and martial arts instructors by day. "In fulfill their "potential effectiveness." Los Angeles I was astounded to see And no wonder. "We are the eyes and blond-haired, blue-eyed boys drive up in ears of the police," bragged Guardian cars with surfboards, park and go out on Angels founder Curtis Sliwa to a Miami patrol," said Sliwa (Time, 18 January). Herald reporter last March. Sliwa, a Riding the subways the Guardian former McDonalds manager, has big Angels harass passengers and drunks, plans. Angels squads now exist in and often transit workers, trying to Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and provoke footloose young punks itching elsewhere. As the economic crisis for trouble. On the streets they try to deepens, such protomilitary bands can establish their "turf" at the expense of be of great use to the rulers of U.S. neighborhood gangs. A glorified street capitalism in terrorizing restive ghettos. Guardian Angels-dangerous racist Vigilantes for the cops. gang of largely minority youth isn't The Guardian Angels were in the going to become a fascist movement­ news recently as Sliwa staged a "March reaction to a young black male who Jeremiah Denton (also the No. I would­ which in the U.S. will be based on white on Washington" to demand an investi­ "looked threatening" was to shoot first be witchhunter on Capitol Hill). At the racism. But they could become all too gation of a cop shooting an "Angel" in and ask questions later. hearing Sliwa claimed the Guardian useful as private thugs for hire or Newark on December 30. Just exactly But Sliwa's outfit is b\..coming far Angels had made 144 citizens' arrests, adjuncts of the police. And their ties what happened that night isn't clear. more than just a bunch of street youth with 38 resulting in pris~m terms ofmore with the ruling class are growing. The Sliwa claims his slain follower, a black who want to bash heads and act out than one year. co-leader of the Chicago "Angels," for security guard in a cemetery, was trying Bruce Lee macho fantasies in the name As we pointed out when the "Angels" instance, is the son of a former Illinois to help police stop a robbery, and of "fightingcrime." Sliwa has caught the received official sanction from New deputy governor (Sun Times, 8 Novem­ charges the cops with murder. Newark imagination of some big city politicians York City mayor Ed Koch last year, ber 1981). In New York, where Sliwa police claim they thought Frank Melvin and has gotten local government and even becoming liberal-chic celebrities, claims 700 members, an agreement with was attacking them, and shot him dead. police cooperation in developing his "Their real potential is to become a the city provides for official NYPD Hostility between Sliwa's roving crews "Angels" as auxiliaries of the cops. Last paramilitary auxiliary to the cops in identification cards and requires transit of young punks who go looking for July Sliwa testified before the U.S. terrorizing the ghettos" ("They're No cops to render "all necessary courtesy trouble-"to stop it," they say-and the Senate "Juvenile Crime Subcommit­ Angels!" WV No. 275, 27 February and assistance to identified members of cops on America's mean streets isn't tee," criticizing the cops for being 1981). The fact that the majority oftheir the Guardian Angels while they are in new. Nor is it surprising in this racist "ineffectlve" and winning praise from original NYC members were black and uniform on duty." society that the trigger-happy cops' first Moral Majority senator from Alabama Latin does not change their characteras continued on page 10 22 JANUARY 1982 3 Detroit's "Fifth Estate" Smear

THE m:TII mArE!I'A'li SlVEITIU T!'!!!Inr..... PI p!vchoegthoJ2u ~ HAIL RED ARMY See You at Kronstadt NERVE GAS! A particularly vicious attempt to however, happens to have the entire smear us was made recently by the weight of the American imperialist dwindling band of anarchists around military-spy apparatus on the other end. the Detroit Fifth &tate newspaper. So what about Haig's "yellow rain" Their 19 November 1981 issue repeated­ rumors? U.S.-backed Cambodian and ly linked the words "Spartacist League" Afghan rebels claim to have seen and "nerve gas" and carried a lengthy mysterious red, yellow, purple and attack on us titled "Trotskyism as orange powders dropped in remote, Psychopathology: Hail Red Army inaccessible areas. Haig bombastically Nerve Gas!" What is disturbing is not so announced in West Berlin on September much the primitive hostility towards 12 that the U.S. at last had "physical Leninism of these overwhelmingly evidence" of chemical poison being used vicarious enthusiasts for Makhno, the by the Soviets in Southeast Asia. This

Symbionese Liberation Army and the was based on one sample, a single leaf I i Lh_,__ .. un.~".. virtues of underdevelopment. More and stem supposedly exposed to "yellow ominous is that the Fifth &tate "fuck rain." According to a State Department authority" sloganeers find the authority briefing the day after Haig's bombshell, of General Haig, U.S. "intelligence this sample showed high levels of lethal sources" and the fascistic anti­ mycotoxins which do not occur natural­ Communist mercenary magazine Sol­ ly in Southeast Asia. However, Science dier of Fortune sufficient for retailing magazine (2 October 1981) consulted "Red Army nerve gas in Afghanistan" experts who "expressed surprise" at the New Left anarchist Fifth Estate will pick up any stick to beat communists rumors as "common knowledge." U.S. claims, saying the mycotoxins are with-this vicious smear comes direct from General Haig. Light-minded irresponsibility is one naturally produced by the fungus thing; but when the slanders come direct fusarium which "is found almost every­ chemical warfare in Afghanistan and Soviet "yellow rain" are just so conven­ from the State Department and Penta­ where." And where did the tell-tale twig Indochina. Where from? Well, Soldier ient. Citing "growing evidence" of gon, when the U.S. ruling class is come from? It turns out (according to of Fortune (January 1982) brags, and Soviet chemical warfare "capacity," the seeking a domestic witchhunt against the New York Times, 17 November the State Department confirms, that an Pentagon is asking for $810 million in SOF "reporter" obtained a sample of the next fiscal year for chemical and "yellow rain" powder from a Hmong biological weapons (especially deadly refugee who escaped Laos by using a nerve gas), more than seven times as Defense Department map left over from much as was spent on such arms in 1978 the "old days." But even according to (New York Times, 15 January). these professional anti-Communist As for Fifth Estate, it's quite clear mercenaries, "There was nothing lethal they're far more hostile to communists in the sample. The sample was the of any sort than even to capitalism. In carrier agent for what is known as T 2 this they follow a hoary anarchist trichothecene, a truly medieval poison tradition; even Prince Kropotkin pre­ made from grain mold and fungus ferred Kerensky to the Bolsheviks. To which dissipates without a trace soon their credit, some anarchists did come after exposure to sunlight, humidity or over to the Bolsheviks, but others, in even a change in altitude." How Ma­ their hatred of the victorious October chiavellian ofthe Soviets, to use a poison Revolution, allied with the White that disappears so that you can't prove armies of reaction. For years their battle they're using it! cry against communism has been The whole thing makes such a perfect "Trotsky's suppression of Kronstadt," atrocity story that we doubt it: an evil the 1921 sailors' mutiny against Soviet superpower dropping deadly poisons on power which was hailed by counterrevo­ primitive tribal peoples in faraway lutionaries the world over. Now these jungles in violation of international New Leftovers believe they have their conventions. And in Laos there isn't modern-day Kronstadt in Solidarnosc, even a war going on! At least, we doubt Poland's company union for the CIA, the USSR is doing it-sounds a lot like bankers and pro-imperialist anarchists. what America was up to in Vietnam Fifth Estate is living up to this worst until 1975. Remember the close to tradition of anarchism in supporting the AP 100,000 tons of chemicals, such as the most vicious agents of capitalist reac­ American Imperialism at work: Vietnamese victims of U.S. napalm. defoliant Agent Orange with its long­ tion. They, like the social democrats, term deforming effects, which the fee! that in the present Cold War climate reds, when the SL and Spartacus Youth 1981) that this single piece of dubious Pentagon dumped on Southeast Asia? they can say anything against the League in Detroit have been waging an "evidence" for Haig's bombastic charges And talk of chemical warfare-what communists and get away with it. Lucky aggressive campaign against FBI-lovers was supplied by ... the Pol Pot forces in about all the napalm used by the U.S. on for the Fifth &tate they're mainly at Wayne State, and have been the Cambodia, authors of gruesome mass villages in Indochina? 1975, by the way, armchair anarchists. We recommend target of various anonymous smears murders who are supplied by the was when the U.S. finally signed those they retreat to basket-weaving and and threats-we find Fifth &tate's Chinese (and now the U.S.) in their war international conventions against chem­ exploration ofthe glories ofpreindustri­ nasty diatribe more than a little suspect. against the Soviet-backed Vietnamese! ical war (signed by the USSR in 1928) al poverty before their tailing of Haig Obviously Fifth Estate will pick up any Now the U.S. claims to have they now so piously praise. and the Pentagon gets them into real stick to beat communists with; this one, additional examples of alleged Soviet And all of these atrocity stories about trouble.•

Spartacist League/ Spartacus Youth League Public Offices -MARXIST LlTERATURE­ :0 WfJRNERI,,1NfitJI1RIJ Bay Area Fri.: 5:00-8:00 p.m., Sat.: 3:00-6:00 p.m. 1634 Telegraph, 3rd Floor (near 17th Street) 0$5/24 issues of 0$2/10 introductory issues Oakland, California Phone: (415) 835-1535 Workers Vanguard of Workers Vanguard Chicago (includes Spartacist) (includes Spartacist) o New 0 Renewal Tues.: 5:30-9:00 p.m, SaL 200-530 pm 523 S. Plymouth Court. 3rd Floor o $2/9 issues of 0$2/4 issues of Chicago, Illinois Phone: (312) 427-0003 Young Spartacus Women and Revolution New York City Tues.: 6:00-9:00 pm Sal.: 12:00-4:00 p.m N~e m 41 Warren SI. (one block below Chambers SI. near Church SI.) Address _ New York, N.Y. Phone: (212) 267-1025 ______Phone ( Trotskyist League of Canada City State Zip _ Toronto Sal.: 1:00-5:00 p.m. Make payable/mail to: Spartaclst Publishing Co., 299 Queen SI. W, Suite 502 Box 1377 GPO, New York, New York 10116 Toronto, Ontario Phone: (416) 593-4138

4 WORKERS VANGUARD Reagan to Aged: Drop Dead!

German imperialist chancellor Otto government expenditures, including von Bismarck, who introduced the first war. compulsory social insurance into Ger­ However, Vietnam War inflation in a many in 1883, is beginning to look like a period of increasing general discontent flaming red compared to Ronald Rea­ forced Congress to add a cost-of-living gan. Last October the Senate passed a adjustment to Social Security benefits. bill at Reagan's behest with unusual The inflation of the 1970s along with a bipartisan unity (95 to 0) which elimi­ growing aged population resulted in a nated the pitiful minimum Social skyrocketing Social Security bill. Now Security benefit of $122 per month for seeking to restore military supremacy virtually ail future recipients. The cut over the Soviet Union, the American Congress was symbolic of the ongoing ruling class ruling class feels it has to slash the living thinks old assault on the working class and standards of the aged to pay for a $1 people are particularly the most defenseless sectors trillion arms buildup. As liberal econo­ getting too of society: the minorities, the poor, the mist Lester Thurow explained: much money. aged and the disabled. "The proposed military increase is so Social Security payments were way large that it cannot be fully paid with cuts in civilian expenditure unless the below subsistence level to begin with­ president is willing to abolish major scenes of old people spending their social programs like Social Security." payments on dog food for their own -"How to Wreck the Economy," survival have become common in New York Review ofBooks, capitalist America. Minorities and 14 May 1981 women suffer even lower benefits since That is certainly true. At a deeper the payments are tied to the number of level the crisis of Social Security is but years of employment and to wage levels one aspect of the stagnation and decline McCUllough received in one's lifetime. In 1977 the of American capitalism. To think that productivity-increasing investment and inflicts still further misery upon the average monthly payments for black trimming the military budget is the a massive arms buildup while maintain­ masses, a system whose most liberal and women were 30 percent below the pitiful answer to all economic problems is a humanitarian exponents can do no ing the present level ofsocial programs. better than the Roosevelt 'social securi­ average payment of $243! And accord­ rad-lib panacea. Former Secretary of Something has to give. For the ruling ing to Scientific American (January Commerce Peter Petersen pointed to ty' program." class what has to give is the complex of -The New Militant, 1982) the main beneficiaries of the just­ the long-term problem for American economic reforms won through the 24 August 1935 abolished $122 minimum "are mainly capitalism in an article in the New York mass struggles ofthe 1930s, the so-called Leon Trotsky observed in 1939 that New Deal. "the policy of the New Deal, which tries In opposition to the Stalinists, who m1.1£ SH IF i UND£It)TANP J1.l1S--IN to save imperialist democracy by way of sought to be the best supporters of $PlT£ OF ALL'fI.lE WARNIN6S, IN sops to the labor and farmer aristocracy, FDR, the Trotskyists pointed out not SPITE OF ALL M EfF(X(TS OF OUR is in its broad compass accessible only to only the inadequacy but the reversibility PRMJENT, Kt~M~ fULL Wlli OOW the very wealthy nations, and so in that W FINANCIAL TROUBll wm of the New Deal measures. In 1935 the sense it is American policy par excel­ Trotskyists fought for a "Workers IN. ~U WOO ~UT A~[AD lence." He concluded that "the New Security Bill" which would have limited AND GOT OlD! Deal policy with its fictitious achieve­ the workweek to 30 hours, provided $10 ments and its very real increase in the billion for public works, and established national debt, leads unavoidably to unemployment and social insurance ferocious capitalist reaction and a administered and controlled by workers devastating explosion of imperialism" and farmers. In contrast to the Stalin­ (Marxism in Our Time). Reagan's ists, who were lining up behind FDR, assault on social insurance as part ofthe the Trotskyists pointed out that there Democratic/Republican anti-Soviet could be no substantial legislative TAK£ ANUMBER -1 war drive is a concrete fulfillment ofthis solution: the working class could move AND ~AV£ ASEAT prophecy in the twilight of American forward only by class struggle and, imperialism. ultimately, socialist revolution. As A.J. But the working class must not let this Muste, then a leader of the Workers attack go unanswered. We defend even Don Wright Party, wrote after passage of the Social Security Act in August 1935: the present subminimal Social Security "Fight against the Roosevelt wage­ payments against the Reaganite assault. women who worked for very low Times Magazine (17 January) entitled, cutting program, against the entire And a class-struggle labor leadership wages." "No More Free Lunch for the Middle WPA [public works] set-up, for sub­ would fight for an all-encompassing The excuse for the latest cut was Class." He complained that "we have stantial protection against the risks of social insurance system for the aged, the sickness, accident, old age and unem­ based not only on Reaganite austerity chosen to consume, rather than invest," ployment, at the cost ot employers and disabled and the unemployed, paid out but a conjunctural crunch in the Social and asks: "Whose consumption is to be government. Above all, organization to of the general federal government Security system, which actually never cut?" Petersen proposes squeezing the achieve power and thus to end, before it budget, equalized at the highest level. • was an insurance system but a tax. Up to working class, poor and aged. But this about 1970 the total Social Security tax Wall Streeter understands a key fact actually exceeded pension benefits. The of life that many liberals don't: the SPARTACIST LEAGUE LOCAL DIRECTORY surplus was then lent to the Treasury, American economy is notgrowing. And National Office Champaign Houston which used it to finance all manner of a stagnant economy cannot support Box 1377, GPO c/o SYL Box 26474 New York, NY 10116 P.O. Box 2009 Houston, TX 77207 (212) 732-7860 Champaign, IL 61820 Los Angeles Amherst (217) 356-1180 Box 29574 c/o SYL Los Feliz Station P.O. Box 176 Chicago Los Angeles, CA 90029 l#zsJa~::= Box 6441, Main PO Amherst, MA 01004 (213) 662-1564 Greetings to Chicago, IL 60680 (413) 546-9906 (312) 427-0003 Madison Lanka Spartacist! Ann Arbor c/o SYL c/o SYL Cleveland Box 2074 No. 1-2 November-December 1981 P.O. Box 8364 Box 6765 Madison, WI 53701 Ann Arbor, MI 48107 (608) 255-2342 (in Sinhala) Cleveland, OH 44101 (313) 662-2339 (216) 621-5138 New York CQtS:):J Berkeley/Oakland Box 444 e:!Cj)C)Se:!t) P.O Box 32552 Detroit Canal Street Station Box 32717 eOo,08d'O ~c>lCC C,el)J8 Oakland, CA 94604 New York, NY 10013 (415) 835-1535 Detroit. MI 48232 (212) 267-1025 ~~,~cc (313) 868-9095 80:.::Zl:le:s:r: 6,. ~. 0) 15ll.'~Csj 6,. ;;, ;;5 Boston San Francisco Box 5712 ~il8!t; e:I~,:l)8e:1(J gtSJ'C16, Box 840, Central Station Cambridge. MA 02139 San Francisco, CA 94101 33, el),lS)c! c6;, (617) 492-3928 (415) 863-6963 ~t:SJ'e;pJ I. TROTSKYIST LEAGUE OF CANADA Order from: ... I Toronto Vancouver Spartacist League/Lanka Spartacist Publishing Co.L... I Box 7198, Station A Box 26, Station A 33 Canal Row Box 1377 GPO Toronto, Ontario M5W 1X8 Vancouver, B. C. V6C 2L8 Colombo 01 Sri Lanka New York, NY 10116 3.50 As. $1.00 (416) 593-4138 (604) 681-2422

22 JANUARY 1982 5 he showing of Man of Marble and its sequel Man ofIron, two recent films by the great Polish director Andrzej Wajda, is a politi­ cal event. At theaters around the U.S., moviegoers are ap­ proached by leafletters wearing AFL­ MI. or110.: CIO buttons with the smug anti­ Communist message that Polish workers "must look to us, who have already won the rights for which they are fighting." In Poland these films, along with their maker, have been locked up in the military crackdown which frustrated the counterrevolution- A Review by Pat Kincaid ary bid for power by Solidarnosc. They have become important symbols of, and propaganda vehicles for, the only "workers movement" in the world supported by the White House and the Vatican. Almost any film about contemporary Poland would necessarily be seen today in the context of the present political crisis. This is particularly true of these films, whose subject is disillusionment with Stalinist bureaucratic rule and the struggle against it. The two films are very different. Man of Marble is a powerfully probing film of postwar Poland; Iron is just hack propaganda TBIOOSPIL for Lech Walesa's Solidarnosc. The message of Man ofIron is the supposed continuity of workers struggles in Poland. In reality it is the sharp political break which has allowed the agents of Reagan and Wojtyla to dominate a 100010lRO •• movement of millions of Polish work­ ers. Wajda's dangerous myth serves those who seek to wipe out the social­ ized property forms which have made possible Poland's economic resurrec­ tion from the rubble of World War II. TO SOLIOIIROSO Man of Iron, Man of Lies intense, better organized version of the marries the intellectual truth-seeker/ went on the streets against the price It is because of the events in Poland battles of 1956, 1968, 1970, 1976-only filmmaker Agnieszka from Man of hikes, Maciek and other students, that Man of Iron has won awards at this time the workers, the intelligentsia, Marble. However, in the later film she is burned by their experiences in 1968, Cannes and is likely to receive acclaim at the peasants, the church, the whole no longer the intensely nervous seeker of remain aloof. the U.S. Academy Awards. It is surely Polish people are on the same side. truth. Now she has found Truth in The marriage of the workers and not winning awards on the basis of Wajda's puff-piece for Solidarnosc is Solidarnosc, and in her gushing sermon intellectuals is presided over and ar­ artistic merit. This primitive morality seen through the eyes of a Stalinist in praise of Solidarity she seems like ranged by the church. At the ceremony play for Solidarnosc has embarrassed hack-an alcoholic, cowardly and nothing so much as a glassy-eyed Po­ Lech Walesa playing Lech Walesa even some politically sympathetic re­ cynical broadcast journalist sent to do a lish Moonie. presents the "new" man and "new" viewers. The New York Times' Vincent smear job on Maciek, a leader of Man of Iron has as one of its central woman ofnew Poland with flowers and Canby admitted that this "gung ho Solidarity in the Gdansk shipyards. themes the coming together of Poland's "democracy." The church plays a large propaganda is boring even if you agree Maciek is the son of Birkut, the worker­ workers and intellectuals in struggle role in Iron, as it does now in Polish with it." And Jacek Kuron, the leader of hero of Man of Marble. (In Iron we against the regime. The film deals with political life. Man ofIron is shot full of the disbanded KOR dissident group and learn that Birkut died a "martyr's death" the student/intellectual protests of 1968 religious images and symbolism, most Solidarnosc' key intellectual adviser, in the workers uprising in 1970, felled in and the workers uprisings from 1970 of it cheap cliches: shots of crosses, has commented that Wajda's portrayal a hail of bullets. Wajda had tried to put and 1976 through the strikes in the stumbling bare feet imitating the sta­ of Solidarnosc is "like a touched-up this in the ending of Man ofMarble, but Lenin shipyards in Gdansk and the tions of the cross, the martyr's disap­ wedding portrait" (New York Times. II it was cut out by the Stalinist censors.) August 1980 accords establishing Soli­ peared body and grave. The son's desire October 1981). The journalist hack in Man of Iron darnosc. The son is shown as a leader in to commemorate his father's death and The basic theme of Man of Iron, interviews many of the figures connect­ the 1968 student/intellectual protests, martyrdom in 1970 becomes a religious­ common also among Western commen­ ed with Solidarnosc to do his smear, and which did not attract support from the political act. The film takes particular tators, is that Solidarnosc is a more stories are told in flashbacks. Maciek workers. Then in 1970, when Birkut aim at the failure of the Stalinist regime to deal with the spiritual needs of life, and thus Wajda "explains" the church's Contradiction of Stalinism: "Model worker," Blrkut (left) In Man of Marble Is a entry as a major player on the field of victim of bureaucratic abuse ... Polish politics. To be primitive with cardboard characters is one thing; to lie is some­ thing else. And Man of Iron lies at its heart. In this film that is all political message, there is a point to the theme of fathers and sons and wives in holy union. Wajda uses the figures of Birkut and Maciek to portray the movement which led to Solidarity as the political continuation of prior struggles against the Stalinist regime. It is the continuity of anti-Stalinist struggle which is the central political theme ofthe film and its central political falsehood. It is precisely the radical political discontinuity between Solidarnosc and past worker revolts that defines the present crisis. The 1956 "Polish Octo­ ber" raised the call for workers democ­ racy, while the events of 1970 and 1976 were spontaneous explosions of eco­ nomic discontent. Neither in 1970 or ...while rebuilding Poland from the rubble of World 1976, much less 1956, did the workers War II (right). look to the West and the U.S. as a model. There was no kissing the cross in 6 WORKERS VANGUARD Poznan, 1956. No Polish eagle flew over museum. She makes her way to the bureaucracy jail the innocent, but it ments in moral terms. Except for the Gdansk in 1970. Then the workers basement and there, in a literal dustbin even prevents competent police work! hero Birkut, all of the characters from burned down Communist Party head­ of history, she finds a huge marble The secret police would have made it a the Stalin era who have adjusted to the quarters singing the "Internationale," statue of Mateusz Birkut. She illicitly lot safer for the Birkuts of Poland had "thawed" system are corrupted. The not "Oh God, Who Has Defended takes her camera astride the massive they simply found the actual saboteur director of the "socialist realist" Archi­ Poland." But Wajda doesn't show this marble relic in a symbolic coupling of and dealt with him. Instead they tects is now an international jet-setter, scene of 1970 because it isn't the side of the present with the "socialist realist" fabricated a giant "imperialist plot." fat and complacent with his car, maid his hero he wants to celebrate. The film past. In a flashback to the making of and fancy house. The sleazy secret presents a history of Polish workers The hero of the past turns up in Architects during the construction of policeman comes to manage a state-run struggle so distorted by Solidarnosc documentary clips which show him as Nowa Huta, the heroic feat of Birkut is strip joint and comments that young mythologizing that it deserves to be the bricklayer who did many times the exposed as a stunt by the film director girls are healthier now. Birkut's friend condemned by its own declared values. average quota in a single shift at the new and party administrator. The attempt to Witek, "rehabilitated" as manager of a There is, to be sure, a personal "model workers city" Nowa Huta, lay 30,000 bricks in eight hours can be giant steel complex, tours visitors in a continuity between the participants in outside a new steel plant near Krakow. accomplished only with the help of a helicopter and is no longer interested in earlier struggles and the leaders of the Birkut is glorified as a living representa­ squad of workers off camera. Birkut the truth of the past. Solidarnosc movement. But are they the tive of Socialist Progress. Like Nowa seems merely the object of the camera The last narrator in the film is Birkut's same political beings now as then? Take Huta itself, Birkut the farm boy become and bureaucratic ambitions. Yet for all former wife, once a poor but fresh and Jacek Kuron, for instance. In his 1964 "model worker" is "created" out of that, Birkut really is a modelworker. He happy gymnast, the model helpmate for "Open Letter to Communist Party bleak backwardness. This documentary really is a simple farm boy given the a "model worker." After leaving Birkut Members," Kuron attacked the Stalinist from the Stalin era, entitled Architects opportunity to become a skilled worker she lives with her former employer, a regime from the left, from a vague ofOur Happiness, has a parodic edge as in a new city that will house thousands sort of speculator/entrepreneur, in a syndicalist perspective. Today he calls well-to-do house surrounded by shiny for "Western-style" democracy under possessions. But she is miserable, the aegis of the Catholic church. drunken and sick at heart. She recounts Kuron's (and Wajda's) shift to the in a flashback that Birkut tried to win counterrevolutionary right is part of a her back after being released from wider shift of the Polish intelligentsia to prison. Her protector, the entrepreneur, clerical nationalism. After 1976 the explains the new system to him: every­ church, the only institution allowed to body is out for himself. Birkut is remain independent of the Stalinist disillusioned with contemporary Po­ bureaucracy, threw its powerful support land and so is Wajda. to the dissident movement. The Western Man of Marble shows the extreme bourgeois press as well as Man ofIron Westernization of Gierek's Poland, its celebrates this joining of the dissidents, imitation of the capitalist West not least the church with its peasant base and the in values. The theme of bourgeoisifica­ workers. tion of Poland contrasts sharply with Given the miserable failure of liberal the earlier Stalin era and implies there is Stalinism and the lack of a credible left­ little, if any, difference between Poland wing alternative this alliance, concen­ and the capitalist West. Wajda's utter trated in Solidarnosc, brought Poland disillusionment with liberal Stalinism, to the brink of capitalist counterrevolu­ expressed in Man ofMarble, leads him tion. The central lie of Man ofIron is to to the clerical nationalism of Lech deny or disguise the threat of counter­ Fabian/Sygma Walesa in Man ofIron. Liberal Stalin­ revolution by presenting an undifferen­ ism in Poland has failed and failed tiated popular anti-Stalinism. In this miserably, as must Stalinism in all its film, as in Man of Marble, the term variants. Both its early phase of direct "counterrevolutionary" exists only as a terror and its later bureaucratic incarna­ Stalinist slander. But the danger of tions are corrupt and morally corrupt­ counterrevolution led by Solidarnosc, ing. But the moral failure has a material which called on the Western imperialist basis. bankers of the International Monetary Fund to take over the Polish economy, Why DQ They LIe? is very real. Stalinism and Stakhanovism Near the end of Man of Marble the Man of Marble: Past and Present old party administrator from the Stalin era stands over Nowa Huta and tells Andrzej Wajda has always mirrored Agnieszka: the prevalent attitudes of the Polish "Your film, let it be critical. But do not intelligentsia. His earliest works were attack the principle of 'socialist emula­ typical examples of "socialist realism." tion.' You see all these houses. Do you His great films of the 1956 "Spring in think they built themselves?" October" period, Kanal and Ashes and, And he might have added in defense, not Diamonds (1958), stand broadly on the only of Stalinism but of the social basis terrain of liberal-national Stalinism Dejean/Sygm-a. ­ of his society, what every Pole must combined with existential angst. Politi­ Lech Walesa gets instructions from the pope (above). Film director Andrzej know: that Poland was economically cally, they show a fierce hostility to Wajda does hack propaganda for clerical-nationalist Solldarno'c (below). devastated after the war. Somebody had fascism and general sympathy for the to rebuild it some way. And the film Communist cause. The 1977 Man of Wajda mimics the style of the bigger­ of such workers in a rebuilt Poland. He shows the enormous progress achieved Marble marks a transition between the than-life presentation of the "workers' is full of honest enthusiasm and socialist by Poland's collectivized economy. liberal Stalinist illusions of the Gomul­ paradise." Birkut's gargantuan portrait idealism for the building ofthe city and Warsaw was rebuilt from total destruc­ ka "thaw" and clerical-nationalist anti­ hangs with that of Poland's little Stalin, good collective purpose. Thus, in tion into a pleasant modern European Communism of Solidarnosc. Bierut, above the town square of Nowa Birkut, Wajda has found the appropri­ capital. Compare this, for example, to In sharp contrast to the Man ofIron Huta. But in the outtakes for Architects, ate symbol for the contradiction he finds the scenes of the South Bronx in Fort ' hack job, Man of Marble is a serious the filmmaker sees the huge portrait in socialism: a system capable of great Apache. But for the moralist Wajda work ofart. It views the development of pulled down. material progress for collective good, what is important is only that Nowa Gierek's Poland from the vantage point Agnieszka learns that at one of his calling upon what is best in the workers, Huta was built in part on lies and of disillusioned idealism. We are shown performances as "model worker," Bir­ but tragically corrupted by the corruption. a society of conspicuous material kut was handed a red-hot brick and bureaucrats. It is of particular interest to Trotsky­ prosperity and pervasive moral corrup­ seriously injured his hands. His friend ist revolutionaries that Wajda's meta­ tion. The vast technical resources ofthe Witek had earlier warned him that Disillusionment and the Failure phor for the contradictory character of cultural establishment are devoted to ordinary workers were not glad to see of Liberal Stalinism Polish Stalinism is the pre-1956 Sta­ suppressing and distorting the past. their quotas raised by latter-day Sta­ khanovite movement Here he finds Unlike its sequel, Man ofMarble is not khanovites. Now it is Witek who is Wajda sees the roots of the moral the sources of both acquisitive individu­ an anti-Communist tract. Yet it presents accused ofthe crime. Suspect because he corruption of modern Polish society in alism in present-day Poland and the such a negative view of postwar Polish had fought in Spain, Witek is charged the beginnings of Stalinist rule in collective spirit of socialist idealism in society and its evolution that its maker's with being part of an "imperialist plot." Poland. It is interesting and unusual Birkut. That the system of Stakhanov­ enthusiasm for the counterrevolution­ When Birkut tries to stand up against that on balance Man ofMarble is kinder ism eventually undermines and destroys ary eruption around Solidarnosc comes the frameup of his friend, he too runs to the Stalin era with its "model its own accomplishments is a major as no surprise. afoul of the bureaucracy. In defiance workers" than to the post-1956 liberal­ theme of Man of Marble. Stalinist Man ofMarble has two protagonists, and desperation Birkut throws his ized era of Gomulka and Gierek. This regimes cannot mobilize the kind of each in his own way idealist. In the souvenir brick through the window of differs sharply with conventional Sovi­ general enthusiasm of the working class present, the frenetic young film student, the secret police. This is followed by a et and East European liberal Stalinist shown in the "socialist realist" news Agnieszka, is making her "diploma mini show trial and the jailing of both works in which "de-Stalinization" is clips in Man ofMarble. Only when the film" for Polish TV about the early Birkut and Witek. By the time Birkut is presented as the great divide between workers actually control their destiny 1950s. In the past, a "model worker" of released from prison in 1956, his health bad times and good times (or, at least, through soviet democracy can such that period, Mateusz Birkut, who has is broken, and he clearly has no taste for better times). Wajda sees the continuity socialist idealism take root. since been "lost." The plot, or mystery, the life of the bureaucratically rehabili­ of Stalinism, but only its moral effects. Marxists have held for more than a of the film centers on Agnieszka's tated. After trying unsuccessfully to win Actual news clips in Man of Marble century that competition among work­ attempt to find out and document what back his wife, the former "model show the triumphant mass demonstra­ ers for individual economic reward is an really happened to Birkut. Early in the worker" seems to disappear. tions which greeted Gomulka during the abuse endemic to capitalist society, in film Agnieszka finds a replica of the It is worth noting that in this glimpse Polish October of 1956. It is this which men compete for wages and object of her search in a Warsaw of Stalinist terror, not only does the promise betrayed that the film docu- continued on page 10 22 JANUARY 1982 7 Stop ••• Givebacks ••• I (continued from page 1) and benefits. The "job security" they got I II;;' in return consisted of closing nine of Chrysler's 42 plants and shrinking its ~ "'. workforce from 130,000 to 65,000. Oh yes, and a "profit-sharing" plan as well, which will go into effect whenever company profits exceed 10 percent of Chrysler's net worth. Don't hold your breath! In contrast to the union bureaucrats, social democrats and Stalinists who tied the workers' fate to a bankrupt com­ pany and relied on the capitalist government to bail it out, the Spartacist League advocated militant class strug­ gle to defend the workers' interests. Chicago transit While the reformists called on Jimmy workers protest Carter to nationalize Chrysler, the layoffs, cuts Trotskyist SL said, "Workers: seize the in services, 19 December 1981. plants! If Chrysler's broke, then sell it off and keep the proceeds" (see "What­ ever Chrysler's Worth-Give It to the Workers!" WV No. 238, 17 August 1979). Another example of the UAW lead­ WV Photo ers' "innovative" bargaining has been employee "buyouts" of bankrupt firms. leading plant occupations and other equipment. The average age of Ameri­ cannon fodder to make the world safe At General Motors' Hyatt Bearing plant working-class struggles against layoffs ca's industrial plant is twice that of for General Motors. We say no! in Clark, New Jersey the union agreed and takeaways. The Fraser bureaucracy Japan's. Small wonder GM and U.S. There must be an end to this criminal under threat of plant closure to accept a recently put the strike fund to work­ Steel cannot compete in the market­ policy of surrender carried out by the cut of the workforce from 1,700 to under for capitalist America. Nationally tele­ place with Toyota and Nippon Steel. So union misleaders. The tactics ofmilitant 1,000, a 50 percent pay cut for new hires vised ads were bought proclaiming, the auto and steel bosses are throwing class struggle-plant occupations, sit­ and renegotiation of the entire contract. "The UAW wants to make America half their labor force into the streets, down strikes-that built the UAWand The workers also took a 30 percent work again," and depicting two UAW while demanding that the other half CIO industrial unions during the Great across-the-board wage cut as a means to members finishing a huge sculpture of reduce their wages to the level of, say, Depression must be used today. There's finance their eventual purchase of the the word "AMERICA." The message to Britain. no other way to stop the massive social plant! GM chairman Roger Smith was the bosses is that the "responsible," But if America's capitalists cannot devastation and slashing of jobs and reportedly "delighted," because "the patriotic UAW leaders fully support compete economically, neither are they wages. And this takes a leadership episode fits neatly into his campaign to Reagan's program of rearming Ameri­ about to let key industries like auto and which fights against the whole boom­ persuade the UAW to accept wage can imperialism. steel be taken over by foreign business­ bust system of capitalism that subjects reductions" (New York Times, 26 America's rulers have driven basic men. Tariffs, quotas, "voluntary" ex­ auto workers to a killing cycle of speed­ October 1981). industry in this country into the ground. port restrictions-the whole arsenal of up and layoffs, and then throws them on Making the World Safe for Every year vast amounts of wealth are trade-war weaponry will be directed at the scrap heap. The program ofmilitant General Motors squandered by the rich or given over to Japan and also West Europe. However, class struggle has been raised by UAW the Dr. Strangeloves of the Pentagon. countries like Japan and West Germany oppositionists who proclaim: The UAW has a $339 million strike Although Japan has only half the live and die by exports. Protectionism "The auto bosses want to impose a fund which could be a powerful weapon population and national income of the for American industry is a death death sentence on labor/black Detroit: no hope of any jobs, rising Klan/Nazi in the hands of a leadership capable of U.S., it spends more on new plant and sentence for theirs. It is a well-known racist terror and nothing in our future historic fact that trade wars lead to but wars to defend dying industries that shooting wars. Auto workers who buy even the capitalists don't pretend to Fraser's chauvinist protectionist cam­ want to save. But we have the right to paign may well find their sons fighting live and work in dignity. We have the power to put an end to Reagan's war on Mass Layoffs At Japanese fellow workers tomorrow. labor, blacks and the poor. Labor Meanwhile, as the Reaganites action can bring Reagan down! We demand "guns not butter," to pay for must not be duped by the labor their anti-Soviet Cold War buildup, misleaders' promises of another Jimmy Fremont OM Carter. The future of labor/black Fraser & Co. seek "guns and butter." Detroit lies with the fight for a workers The social-democratic labor fakers are OAKLAND-Auto workers at the along" as minimal price cuts. government, a planned economy where 100 percent behind Reagan's anti-Soviet we take the wealth we have created and Fremont, California General Motors The small town bureaucrats at war drive. Militant oppositionists in run society for the benefit of all working plant, home on a "temporary" two­ Fremont Local 1364 have also done UAW Local 600 (River Rouge) people. week layoff, recently learned from their part for the auto bosses. Many "Rouge workers, we are faced with a protested: the evening TV news that their entire of today's local leaders once postured job-either fight for our jobs against "Reagan is on the warpath, and that Reagan and the companies, or face second shift of 1,600 workers will be as mavericks or militants in the UAW means billions for the Pentagon while depression conditions for years. It's laid off indefinitely February 1. The (remember the "people's power" the workers and poor are bled dry, and sitdowns or soup lines, and despite what layoff cuts deeper than ever before, rhetoric of the Brotherhood Cau­ unions like PATCO are smashed. But the traitors who run the UAW want, we throwing workers with up to 14 years' cus?). That was before they were the man who is hated by the labor won't starve for Ford's profits!". movement around the world has finally seniority onto the unemployment faced with the massive layoffs, found one union he loves-Poland's lines. against which they've all refused to Solidarnosc. Reagan loves Solidarnosc Three years ago the Fremont lift a finger. In fact, when GM because it is a company union for the assembly plant employed 6,800 eliminated truck production and CIA and the bankers. "Solidarnosc wanted to turn the Polish workers in two shifts each of truck tossed 1,500 out the gate last Septem­ economy over to the International and passenger car production. This ber, all factions of the Local 1364 Monetary Fund, the same outfit which latest in a cascading series of layoffs bureaucracy bitterly opposed the put the Pinochet dictatorship in power will leave a mere 1,550 auto workers efforts of the UAW Militant Caucus, in Chile. Solidarnosc honcho Lech on a single shift of automobile a class-struggle opposition in the Walesa met in secret in Paris with 20 of the biggest American capitalists, includ­ production. The repeated layoffs local, to mobilize a sit-down strike ing Ford chairman Philip Caldwell. since 1979 are widely seen as posing (see "Fremont GM Militants Say: This sure is Reagan's and Fraser's kind the possibility of a complete shut­ 'We Need a Sitdown!'," WVNo. 290, of 'union leader'-Walesa told Walter down of the plant in the not-so­ 9 October 1981). Local officers Cronkite that American capitalism 'has passed the test.' Maybe this Reagan­ distant future. And this is no case of argued that a sit-down strike against lover should try to get a job in Detroit! an antiquated, dilapidated produc­ layoffs would only jeopardize the "The Stalinist bureaucrats who run tion facility: the Fremont GMAD remaining jobs at Fremont! Poland must be held responsible for plant was opened in 1963. Playing 'possum won't appease the their criminal policies which have Meanwhile, the United Auto auto bosses. The devastating loss of driven Polish workers into the arms of Reagan and the Pentagon. But Poland Workers (VAW) International lead­ jobs at Fremont and throughout the is a lot better off than when the Nazis ers have been working'overtime to auto industry proves the need for and capitalists ran it. We must fight the help the auto companies raise their plant seizures and sitdowns against Reagan/Solidarnosc/ Fraser attempt to sagging rate of profit. In fact, a full layoffs. It shows that a new leader­ make Poland 'safe for Ford, GM and the bankers'." month before the current giveback ship must be constructed to oust the -Rouge Militant Caucus, "For talks opened in Detroit, Fremont Solidarity House traitors. And it Sit-Down Strikes to Save Our workers noticed cars going out demonstrates the need to put an end, Jobs!" (18 January 1982) without sticker prices, obviously in once and for all, to the disastrous The labor fakers say "Buy American" to anticipation of substantial wage and boom-bust cycle of production for save jobs. It won't. Such poisonous New York Times benefit cuts that would be "passed profit under capitalism.• protectionism is the road to imperialist Will laid-off workers be reduced to war, in which workers will be used as this? 8 WORKERS VANGUARD .~,' ~ . SL SUit ... James P. Cannon on (continuedfrom page 2) moribund. Two months after the U.S. dropped the ISL from the attorney general's list, it abandoned the attempt AFL Labor Fakers to list the National Lawyers Guild. According to the New York Times, "the -from James P. Cannon, "Platform are the direct bearers of this ideology impression left here was that the of the Communist Opposition" (Feb­ in the working class and must be Department of Justice had lost most of ruary 1929), in The Left Opposition in fought as such. The labor bureaucracy its enthusiasm for the list-orat least for the u.s. 1928-31 is a part of the capitalist rationaliza­ the task ofdefending it in court" (quoted tion and war machine-its "labor" in Labor Action, 12 September 1958). Due to the strong position of wing. De Leon's classic definition of The ostensible point of Grant's letter American capitalism, which has en­ the reactionary labor leaders as "labor is that we are just like the SWP, at least abled it to bribe large sections of the lieutenants of the capitalist class" in court. But our policies are diametri­ workers and to provide a higher holds doubly good today. The distinc­ cally counterposed. The SWP wanted a general standard of living than that of tive features of these labor leaders in stamp ofapproval; it wanted to practice the other capitalist countries, the comparison to the social-reformist togetherness with the government, American workers, from a class leaders of Europe consists in the fact seeking political acceptance in revolting standpoint, are in a primitive stage of that they are outspoken defenders of ways. They denounced the principles of development. The American workers the whole capitalist regime and all of Leninism before Judge Griesa, be­ are not class conscious, they have not its institutions, without "socialistic" smirching the Trotskyist leaders prose­ yet developed even the concepts of pretense or class-struggle phraseology. cuted under the Smith Act. Cringing social reformism or independent polit­ Their program is a program of stark and vicious, they expelled their vicari­ ical action, and, on the whole, are reaction. They repudiate the class ously leftist minority, the International­ Pathfi nder Press permeated through and through with struggle in words as well as deeds. James P. Cannon ist Tendency (IT), labeled "terrorist" by the ideology of capitalism. These They oppose any kind of independent the government-naming names and incontestable facts are the starting political action. They support the makes it the more vulnerable in the turning over internal documents to the point of the communist approach and whole military program of American period of growing radicalization. The feds. They smeared ex-IT leader Hedda indicate our fundamental task: to imperialism and will indubitably be a very first steps of the workers towards Garza as an"FBI fink" when she tried to struggle for the creation of a class powerful ally ofthe capitalists in lining a class movement can be taken only in testify in their defense after they had movement of the American workers, up the workers for the coming war and direct struggle against them. The persecuted and abandoned her. for the development of class con­ demoralizing the struggle against it. ... relentless and irreconcilable fight In contrast, the fight of the Spartacist sciousness, and to lead them toward This bureaucracy is the chief against the AFL leadership, based on a League was negative. When attacked by revolutionary concepts in struggle. influence against the class movement correct analysis of its specific role as the capitalist state we filed suit to keep The fight for a class movement of within the workers' ranks-the strong­ the outspoken bearer of capitalist the government at bay, as much as the American workers is in the first est, the best organized, and the ideology, is a prerequisite for effective possible. We forthrightly fought for our place a fight against the capitalist representative of the most reactionary work in developing the struggle of the right to defend our program, including ideology which dominates them. The program. The specific nature of the workers, increasing their class under­ those stands most unpopular with the .labor bureaucrats of the AFL and the American labor bureaucracy-its standing, and leading them to the fight American imperialist "establishment"­ unaffiliated unions of the same type present source of strength-also for broader political aims.... like hailing the Red Army in Afghani­ stan and opposing Solidarnosc counter­ revolution in Poland. The SL especially lines, at which Anwar spoke alongside stressed the threat of a new McCarthy­ several union officials. The picket line ism and the sweeping assault upon $$$ Needed for case received coverage from much ofthe democratic rights which the Deukmeji­ local media, including the Gary Post­ an list represents. With bitter criticism .Tribune, Hammond Times, Daily Calu­ of the SWP's Watersuit, we nevertheless met of South Chicago and the black­ said that "nobody should begrudge the Picket Line Case oriented Chicago Daily Defender. SWP whatever 'compensation' it can Workers Vanguard urges its readers leader of a 1978 bricklayers' strike at Reagan's attacks on minorities and wrest from the embarrassed govern­ to come to the aid of a critical fight for Inland, whose picket lines Anwar also working people make it increasingly ment," because this could "hamper the workers' rights. In May 1979 Inland honored. urgent that labor act to defend its dirty work of the FBI" ("Bell Shields Steel fired a worker for refusing to cross On the basis of the hearing, the judge weapons of class struggle. Congress is FBI Finks," WV No. 213, II August a picket line at its enormous East is to make a recommendation to the currently holding hearings on an 1978). Likewise, our suit to have our Chicago, Indiana plant. Two and a half NLRB in Washington, D.C., which will amendment to the Hobbs Act (a federal name removed from the California years later, Keith Anwar, a member of then decide whether or not Anwar extortion law) to make even the alleged "Organized Crime Report" should have Steelworkers (USWA) Local 10 10, is should be reinstated. However, even a threat of violence on a picket line a been supported-although the SWP still battling to get his job back. The favorable NLRB ruling will not guar­ federal crime punishable by 20 years in and Alan Grant did not do so. Anwar case has received wide backing in antee that Anwar will get his job back. prison and a $250,000 fine! The best With their massive illusions in bour­ the USWA, including a resolution at a Inland has made it clear that it will spare way to secure the right to honor picket geois law, the courtroom cretins of the District 31 conference pledging to use no effort in its quest to establish a legal lines is by exercising that right, as the SWP abased themselves, giving the "all available resources" to defend precedent against labor solidarity. This coal miners did in 1978, when they told government everything including the Anwar and anyone else victimized for poses the likelihood of lengthy and president Carter to take his Taft­ pseudonyms of their foreign comrades! honoring picket lines. expensive court appeals before the case Hartley no-strike injunction and shove .And they haven't won (yet). What really Refusing to cross a picket line is an reaches a definitive conclusion. it. By actively supporting the Anwar galls Alan Grant is that we gave the elementary trade-union principle. It For many ofthe same reasons that the picket line case, union militants across government nothing, insisted on our grew out of the convulsive and often bosses would like to deprive working the continent can help prepare the democratic rights to propagate Marxist bloody struggles that built the unions, people of their ability to fight, many workers movement for such militant principles, and won-not merely for which taught workers the need for labor steel workers see the Anwar case as their action. ourselves, but for all those who defend solidarity against the bosses. But the fight. Keith Anwar Defense Committee The Keith Anwar Defense Committee democratic rights. Thank you.• steel capitalists consider adherence to members took the case to steel workers is asking for contributions to help pay such basic traditions a crime. They in the mill shanties and washhouses, on the continuing and anticipated legal POC Telegram know the labor movement is stronger pay lines and in the bars. In response, expenses. The costs arising just from when workers stick together, when hundreds sent statements of support to this most recent NLRB hearing have 18 January 1982 strikes are enforced by picket lines that the District headquarters, and over a already put the KADC several hundred Governor Fob James no one crosses. Inland fired Anwar to thousand signed petitions telling the dollars in debt. Help make sure that a State Capitol, Montgomery, help root out such working-class union officials to win this one. Union cash shortage never stalls this cam­ Alabama traditions. members contributed nearly $3,000 to paign! Contributions are urgently The Partisan Defense Committee The support of thousands of USWA aid in the defense effort. And in October needed and may be sent to: Keith Anwar protests the outrageous imprison­ members helped push Anwar's case all 1979 Local 10 I0 held a rally at its union Defense Committee, Box 7914, Chica­ ment of civil rights activists Julia the way through the union's grievance hall to defend the right to honor picket go, It 60680. Wilder and Maggie Bozeman for procedure to arbitration. However, last the "crime" of assisting elderly fall an "impartial" arbitrator upheld the black citizens of Pickens County to firing, and Anwar was forced to take his Also Available: exercise their constitutional right to case to the National Labor Relations vote. With this racist prosecution, Board (NLRB). Now Available: Vol. 1 lIN Nos. 1-34 Nov. 1970-Dec. 1973 the state ofAlabama spearheads the At a November 16 NLRB hearing racist campaign to repeal the Workers Vanguard Vol.2 WV Nos. 35-58 before an administrative law judge, Jan.-Dec. 1974 Voting Rights Act. Jailing two Anwar told how he stopped on his way Bound Volume 12 Vol. 3 WV Nos. 59-89 elderly black women for five years is to work when he saw a picket line on one Jan.-Dec. 1975 an act ofjudicial terror intended to ofthe roads feeding the Inland plant. "It WV Nos. 271-295 Vol. 4 WV Nos. 90-114 .send a message to blacks through­ was a gut-level reaction," Anwar told 2 Jan.-18 June 1976 out Alabama and the entire South: Wv. "Workers shouldn't cross picket 2 Jan.-18 Dec. 1981 Vol. 5 lIN Nos. 115-138 organizing for the fundamental lines, period." The strikers were mem­ 25 June-24 Dec. 1976 Vol: 6 lIN Nos. 139-162 right to vote will be met with legal bers of USWA Local 8180 who bale 7 Jan.-17 June 1977 persecution! We demand the imme­ scrap steel inside the Inland complex. A Make payable/mail to: Vol.7 lIN Nos. 163-186 diate release of Julia Wilder and $20.00 Spartacist Publishing Co. per volume 24 June-23 Dec. 1977 former president of Local 8180 testified Box 1377 GPO Maggie Bozeman. Drop all charges. in Anwar's defense at the hearing. In New York, New York 10116 Vols. 8-11 forthcoming Partisan Defense Committee addition, testimony was given by the

22 JANUARY 1982 9 the lies of Stalinism have a political biggest lie of all: that communism is clerical-nationalist ideological poison basis. The more irrational and brutal the Stalinism. And now this lie is getting pushed by Solidarnosc. What is needed Man of Iron ... "socialist competition," the greater the assistance from Wajda. in Poland is a class-eonscious commu­ (continued/rom page 7) need to paint it red. As Trotsky But if the Stalinists must lie to the nist opposition-a Trotskyist vanguard profits. In socialist society with its rich explained in The Revolution Betrayed workers, the truth can be explosive in a which will not only tell the truth but lead material abundance, competition (or (1936): society in which capitalism has been a proletarian political revolution emulation) among workers would be "When the rhythm of labor is deter­ overturned. In a collectivized economy against the Stalinist bureaucracy, to mined by the chase after the ruble, then (no matter how bureaucratically defend and extend socialist conquests, economically disinterested. But socialist people do not expend themselves society can be built only through 'according to ability'-that is, accord­ botched) the workers can easily see that not to destroy them. international economic planning, based ing to the condition of their nerves and only a brittle bureaucracy stands be­ Wajda does not provide the liberating centrally on the wealth and technology muscles-but in violation of them­ tween them and political power. It is this truth his films extol. On the contrary, expropriated by proletarian revolutions selves. This method can be justified only fragility which makes the Stalin~sts rely Man of Iron expresses the anti­ conditionally and by reference to stern on rigid censorship and suppression of Communist lies of Solidarnosc. Not in the advanced capitalist countries. necessity. To declare it 'the fundamental In claiming "to build socialism in one principle of socialism' means cynically the truth. The real history of Polish surprisingly this has also severely hurt [backward] country" (Russia in the to trample the idea of a new and higher communism, for instance, would be a his art. At least one politically sympa­ 1930s, Poland in the late 1940s/early culture in the familiar filth of weapon in the hands of the working thetic critic, Vincent Canby, has offered capitalism." 1950s), the Stalinists resorted to the class. The truth about Rosa Luxem­ the idiotic thesis that, since Wajda was most extreme forms of economic Stalinism has corrupted the truth of burg, Leo Jogiches, the early Polish most free from Stalinist censorship competition between workers. Piece Polish history and in this they have had Communist Party, which was destroyed when he made Man of Iron, such rates became the dominant form of the help not only ofthe church but of the by Stalin for the "crime" of Trotskyism, freedom itself may be the problem: payment while Stakhanovism produced dissidents who have propagated the would be a powerful antidote to the "Remove restrictions that have the force a new labor aristocracy. The system also of artistic discipline and the explosive served to atomize and politically weak­ energy inside some artists becomes en the workforce. And, of course, the defused" (New York Times, IS Novem­ Stalinists claimed this degrading, dog­ ber 1981)! eat-dog system as the highest form of There is a much simpler explanation socialism. In 1929 Stalin pronounced: for the hack quality of Man ofIron. Just "Emulation is the communist method of as Wajda's hero Birkut goes from constructing socialism on the basis of Stalinist saint in Man of Marble to the utmost activity of millions of Catholic saint in Man ofIron, Wajda's toilers." The following year he dead-end disillusionment has taken him elaborated: from existential sympathy for the goals "The most remarkable feature of of socialism to clerical-nationalist coun­ emulation is that it brings about a basic terrevolution. Wajda rejected what change in people's view oflabour, that it Stalinism has done to truth and art, but transforms labour from drudgery and a Man of Iron embraces the lies of anti­ heavy burden ... into a matter of ho­ nour, a matter of glory, a matter of Communism and of the church. Of bravery and heroism." Polish youth, he has said, "People who -quoted in Isaac Deutscher, are 20 today need to know, and to "Socialist Competition," in understand, why their parents are Heretics and Renegades and lying." That is so. They also need to Other Essays [1955] Gdansk 1970: Workers burned PUWP headquarters. They sang know why one of their leading artists Wajda the moralist does not see that "Internationale." cannot tell the truth.•

camps from Mississippi to Michigan, and gross economic mismanagement by racist and globally counterrevolution­ Rollback ... the CP's policy is to call on the the Stalinist bureaucracy has indeed ary. The drive toward nuclear war and (continued/rom page 1) government to "ban the Klan." Espe­ fostered among the Polish masses the increasing oppression-of black cially in the context of the Reagan enormous illusions about the "free people cannot be stopped short of lick the hunger problem in this country administration this is patently absurd. world." Thus Solidarnosc leader Lech sweeping away the capitalist system. and maybe the world" (New York In contrast, the Spartacist League Walesa could tell Walter Cronkite on Only international socialist economic Times, 14 January). fought for labor/black mobilizations to American television last November, planning can break the chains of Bread lines, soup kitchens, empty defend busing in the streets of Boston. "Your system has passed the test." poverty and inequality that enslave the factories, house-to-house searches by Class-struggle labor militants protected Behind Walesa's calls for "free elec­ black masses. Only a soviet America will Welfare. Already 300,000 poor chil­ black unionists' homes from racist tions" is the program of capitalist be a friend and ally of the downtrodden uren no longer get school lunches, a attack in Chicago. The SL initiated counterrevolution. And the ghetto poor and oppressed the world over.. million people are about to lose their demonstrations to prevent the KKK of racist capitalist America well know that Reagan's "magic of the market­ food stamps, and proposed cuts in from riding in the Motor City in Medicare literally mean death for the November 1979 and to stop the Nazis place" certainly hasn't "passed the test" from "celebrating" Hitler's birthday in for them! "Angels"... elderly-this is the reality for the poor (continued/rom page 3) today. And in racist America the San Francisco in April 1980. The American ruling class is commit­ poorest are the blackest. Meanwhile, The reformists seek to limit black ted to restoring capitalist exploitation in "Crime in the streets" is an explosive "rolling back" even the modest gains of struggle to the "cutbacks," while all their those countries where it has been issue, deeply entangled with racism. It's the civil rights movement is now the rule talk of "new people's unity" is just overthrown, especially East Europe and the standard populist appeal of "Iaw­ at all levels of government. While the looking for another "people's front" the Soviet Union. Today the U.S., with and-order" right-wing politicians whose White House lobbies to water down the with the Democrats. After Reagan's bipartisan support, is undertaking the aim is to strengthen the repressive forces Voting Rights Act, in Alabama this is election the CP's response was to send a largest arms build-up since World War of the state to control labor, the poor followed up with judicial racial terror thousand ghetto kids from Harlem and II. And Reagan intends to use these and increasingly desperate big city to drive blacks back from voter Detroit to Washington-to lobby weapons against the USSR, risking populations. And it's the bread and registration. Strom Thurmond and the other hold­ global nuclear holocaust. Here is a butter issue of the Guardian Angels. Yet In Pickens County, Alabama, state outs of the slavocracy in the halls of government taking milk from ghetto neither the cops nor these paramilitary troopers backed up by the sheriff's Congress! But the Democrats went right school children and throwing black vigilantes will or can stop crime. That's office last week dragged two elderly along with Reagan's killer cuts anyway, mothers off welfare to pay for MX not their role. The police are the official black ladies off to jail for maximum as part of the bipartisan anti-Soviet war missiles and Trident submarines. But armed bands hired by capitalism to five-year terms for the "crime" of voter drive. The struggle against Reagan's anti-Communism victimizes oppressed protect its private property and profits, registration. Mrs. Julia Wilder, 69, racist rollback must be a struggle blacks not just through cutbacks in food to maintain a monopoly on the means of president of Pickens County Voters against the twin parties of American stamps or the elimination of programs violence for the ruling class. They're not League, and Mrs. Maggie Bozeman, 51, capitalism: in the streets, in the plants like CETA and Head Start. Remember about to share that monopoly with a former president of the local NAACP, and the neighborhoods. The fight ahead how many black youth were killed or bunch of ghetto kids. But as conditons had been urging elderly illiterate blacks must be a class struggle; it requires the permanently crippled in Vietnam, worsen in ghettos ravaged by to vote by absentee ballot. In a cam­ mobilization of the power of labor and America's last war to defend the "free depression-level unemployment, the paign of terror and intimidation, the blacks to win. Not sidling up to the world" against Communism (and which Guardian Angels are offering them­ state rounded up dozens of frightened union misleaders, who didn't lift a finger was begun by liberal Democrat JFK). selves to do dirty work which the older people in their homes, dragged when PATCO was destroyed by Rea­ Now even more in Reagan's "volunteer" police-overwhelmingly white and them into court to testify to the gan, but a fight for a class-struggle army, jobless black youth will be used as more visible-may find difficult to carry authenticity of their absentee ballots. leadership of labor, which acts as a the cannon fodder in America's wars of out. When one terrified old woman finally tribune of the people in leading the fight counterrevolution. Ultimately the source of fear and "confessed," the courts seized her against black oppression.• Washington's anti-Communist cru­ violence in this decaying capitalist statement to charge "voter fraud" and sade, including its support to the pro­ society is the enforced poverty, exploita­ throw the book at the two elderly civil imperialist Polish Solidarnosc, is ne­ tion and racial oppression ofcapitalism. rights workers. Thus the Alabama Amsterdam cessarily also a war against the workers, We believe people have the right to courts do the job of the night-riding black people and the poor in this protect themselves against the endemic KKK terrorists. News ... country. It is now easy and even violence bred by this society-including The wave of attacks against blacks (continued/rom page 3) necessary for the black bourgeois from swaggering toughs like the Guardi­ comes in the utter absence of black establishment to denounce Reagan's an Angels. The organized working class leadership to make any kind of fight. supports the stated goals ofSolidarnosc hypocrisy over Haiti, South Africa, will clean up the streets by taking power And the same retreat from struggle is for "Western-style democracy": "We are etc.-:-witness the Amsterdam News and putting people to work. And in the reflected by the reformists, most notably not without concern for Poles who are editorial. But in their own way the John process they will sweep away the brutal the Communist Party. Trying to avoid without political liberties taken for Procopes, Andrew Youngs and Ron thugs, official and unofficial, who struggle against the fascists, who are granted in white America." The sup­ Dellums are staunch defenders of a enforce the "law and order" of this growing daily and training terrorists in pression of workers' democratic rights capitalist system which is inherently criminal system.•

10 WORKERS VANGUARD Blockade... (continued from page 12) At L.A. Cam~us San Salvador. Several U.S. Special Forces "advisers" looked on approving­ ly as a 17-year-old youth and a 13-year­ SYL Drives Off INS Recruiters old girl were tortured to death. The Salvadoran troops have been far better LOS ANGELES-Chanting "Defend at torture and massacre of defenseless the Mexican Workers, INS Off Cam­ civilians than at combatting the leftist pus" and "One, Two, Three, Four­ guerrillas of the Farabundo Marti INS Out the Door" the L.A. Spartacus National Liberation Front (FMLN). .f. Youth League (SYL) led a group of 16,000 people were killed last year by the angry, mainly Latino students on junta's armed forces and right-wing January 14 in a protest against the death squads. But despite the war of presence of U.S. Immigration and extermination against the FMLN base Naturalization Service recruiters at areas the guerrillas seem as strong as Los Angeles Community College ever and their campaign of sabotage (LACq-an overwhelmingly minori­ against bridges, roads, telephone lines ty campus. and other economic targets has virtually The SYL, which learned of the INS bankrupted the country. recruiters only the previous night, Despite its shaky hold on the country immediately planned a demonstration the junta is going ahead with plans to against the justly despised "La Migra." hold "elections" in March-which will The do-nothing liberals in CISPES include only assorted factions of the routinely showed a film on EI Salvador oligarchical right and the rump of the at the same time, even though they Christian Democrats, whose leader were within a two-minute walk from Napoleon Duarte is the figurehead the INS recruiters. This is the same despised "La Migra." announced plans to immediately triple president of the army-ruled state. No INS that is directly responsible for This is the first demonstration called its daily deportation quota to 75 to doubt Reagan will proclaim the results a deporting hundreds of Salvadorans a in Los Angeles as the Reagan 100, according to the Los Angeles sign of the health of the democratic month from L.A. to their death at the administration steps up its racist (24 December 1981). Even the process in this terrorized land. It should Times hands of the junta killers. SYL offensive against the L.A. Latino National Immigration Council, a be recalled that the last (and only) time activists went to the CISPES film population. In December the "Silva anything faintly resembling a genuine group of labor bureaucrats, lawyers, calling for an immediate demonstra­ letters," which grant temporary U.S. Stalinists and nationalists, described it "free election" was held in EI Salvador tion and left with the bulk of the residency status to tens of thousands, was 1931. The slight liberalization as "a state of siege" in the Spanish­ audience as the CISPES organizer was were revoked by the government, speaking neighborhoods. What's nec­ which resulted soon produced the first haplessly justifying why she could do laying the basis for deportation of up essary now is for the L.A. labor Communist-led revolt in the Americas, to 100,000 previously protected movement to organize Latinos and as the army massacred 30,000 workers nothing. As the SYL and several en­ Mexican-born workers. To carry out blacks in massive demonstrations and peasants. The oligarchy learned its thusiastic students who grabbed our placards escorted the INS off campus, planned massive deportations, the INS demanding: Full citizenship rights for lesson and there followed half a century some surrounding students applauded tripled the number of agents directly foreign-born workers! Stop the racist, of military dictatorship. The EI Salva­ and clenched their fists against the responsible for the roundup and anti-working-class deportations! dor demonstrations around the U.S. called for January 22-23 commemorate the 50th anniversary of la Matanza (the Massacre). attitude toward Duarte and toward the ers like Duarte, the killing will go on and showdown with imperialism's ultimate Despite the plain impossibility of generals, an obvious overture for aU.S.­ on. In 1982, as in 1932, the alternatives target: the Soviet degenerated workers compromise with these genocidal butch­ approved compromise coalition be­ are revolution or death. state. Deformed by Stalinist bureau­ ers and their civilian puppets like tween the FDR and the Christian All opponents of U.S. imperialist cratic rule, the USSR is nonetheless the Duarte, the bourgeois politicians and Democrats. This pipe dream is also aggression in Central America must strongest state to have overthrown leftist guerrillas of the opposition peddled by reformists in the U.S.-from denounce the Reagan regime's open capitalist rule, and the U.S. imperialists popular front, the Revolutionary Dem­ CISPES t6 theCP and SWP-who preparations for armed action against will never rest while the gains ofOctober ocratic Front (FDR), politically tied to look to the Teddy Kennedy liberals as Nicaragua and Washington's continued 1917 survive in Russia. the FMLN, continue to press for a "friends" of the Salvadoran masses. But support to the Salvadoranjunta. But the Down with Reagan's anti-Soviet war "political solution" with the oligarchy these are the same imperialist liberals CP/SWP/CISPES reformists want to drive! Military victory to the leftists in and imperialism. Two FDR spokesmen who launched the Bay of Pigs invasion isolate the showdown in Central Ameri­ EI Salvador! Defend Cuba-Hands off who were recently granted a meeting and the war on Vietnam! Without ca from its Cold War context. Reagan's Nicaragua-No Cold War blockade! with a State Department flunky were smashing the Salvadoran ruling class, actions in the Caribbean, like his threats For workers revolution in Central careful to distinguish between their its military officer caste and its bootlick- over Poland, are the first steps toward a America! •

embarrassing for a 'militant' to have the ILWU ... same position as the [ILWU's] Dis­ (continued from page 12) patcher, so he just hides it from you." Canadian Union Runkies The "Longshore-Warehouse Mili­ Militant" issued a special 6 January tant" leaflet described how Keylor's Blockade Polish Seamen leaflet, "No Vote for Keylor," explain­ growing defeatism led him to capitulate ing how Keylor had progressively on even the most basic trade-union is­ VANCOUVER-The ILWU pre­ line in the service of the Reagan/ abandoned the program of class' sues over the last several months. On the vented ships from leaving the harbor. Trudeau/NATO anti-Soviet war struggle: "steady-man" issue, it noted that "only The Machinists union (lAM) pre­ drive and the CIA company union in "At the April International Convention after the Militant Caucus again called vented a plane from taking off. Poland. They have an advantage Keylor was a delegate elected on the him to order did he vote correctly at the Militant class struggle by the British over their counterparts south of the basis of the Militant Caucus and its Columbia proletariat? Hardly. The border-the social-democratic New program. Keylor writes, 'The editor Executive Board" against a motion to modify the system which allows PMA ships and plane were Polish. The job Democratic Party (NDP). This submitted a minority report on Poland actions were called by the British ...'. His minority report and the speech bosses to circumvent the union hiring brand of"socialism" is represented in Columbia Federation of Labor he gave to the Convention were Militant hall. "It was no surprise therefore to find the U.S. by lAM president Winpi­ bureaucrats to support Polish sailor/ Caucus positions. He now states 'Broth­ that he has dropped abolishing the singer who didn't lift a finger for er Keylor argued for a policy of support steadyman system from his 'new' pro­ members of Solidarnosc. These sail­ American air traffic controllers when to those elements of Solidarity that were ors threatened hunger strikes, mutiny gram...." Keylor's opportunistic im- ' Reagan crushed their union, even groping toward a working class political and defection against the Polish revolution.' Not true. We said the union pulses led him to repeatedly shunt aside though the lAM had the power to Stalinist crackdown on the counter­ should take no position on Poland since the program of militant labor struggle: shut down the airports. the situation was unclear, and to do so revolutionary bid for power by Soli­ Given the junior partner relation­ would be falling in line with Reagan/ "As a result the Caucus decided not to darnosc. The bourgeois press hailed ship between Canadian and U.S. im­ Haig's anti-Soviet war drive. But since run him in the current election because the Polish sailors although their perialism, the NDP serves as a last April, Solidarity has definitively he couldn't be trusted to defend the become an openly counterrevolution­ program he claimed to agree with. We strikes were short-lived or called off. "labor" cover for U.S. as well as ary political movement pushing a pro­ said he couldn't run because program Almost all of the defectors were ra­ Canadian imperialist foreign policy. NATO, pro-Vatican program which was decisive. He didn't agree, so he pidly disillusioned with life in capital­ To defend the USSR against imperi­ has nothing to do with establishing quit (which itself revealed a certain ist Canada and returned to the ship. alism and forge a class-struggle democratic workers rule. For Keylor to appetite for petty office seeking and The BC Fed bureaucrats can be state now that he still supports some careerism).... leadership in the Canadian labor 'elements' in Solidarity denies this "We say this man is not to be trusted just as cowardly in selling out to their movement requires tlfe political de­ development and opens the door to the politically and does not deserve a vote." own bourgeoisie as their brothers on struction of the wretchedly right­ anti-eommunist line-up running from the AFL-CIO executive board. But In denouncing Keylor's deliberate wing and hypocritically self-righteous the American labor bureaucracy to they suddenly rediscovered the picket Canadian social democracy. Reagan and the Pope." and outrageous fraud, the "Longshore­ Likewise on the air controllers' strike: Warehouse Militant" pointed out: "The "Keylor's publication ducks the fact is Keylor has no intention of class-struggle program supported by longshore local that only barely ratified PATCO strike. Why? Because he building a new leadership." And indeed Workers Vanguard. the contract (by a 51-49 margin), it is im­ disagrees with the Militant Caucus the counterfeit "Militant" put Keylor's Running on a hard class-struggle portant to translate the votes for Gow position of labor action to shut down pessimism in black and white, saying program in a rightward-moving politi­ into active opposition and increased the airports. His position is for consum­ er boycotts, the same position of the do­ that a couple of people on the executive cal climate, Gow edged past reformist growth for the Militant Caucus. Forg­ nothing AFL-CIO, UAW and ILWU board "can't make any decisive differ­ politicians and self-seekers Leo Robin­ ing a class-struggle leadership is the de­ top leadership!> who have stabbed ence in the course ofthe union." Thus on son and Howard Keylor who also won cisive step in leading the working class PATCO in the back. It might be the most basic questions he rejected the seats on the executive board. In this and its allies to victory.• 22 JANUARY 1982 11 W'RNERS ,,1N'tJlllilJ

Down with Reagan/Hai{s Caribbean Cold War! u.s. Trains Junta Killers In training camps in the Florida January). "Boy Scouts do that." swamps and the deserts of southern Assistant Secretary of State for Inter­ California hundreds of Latin Ameri­ American Affairs Thomas Enders cans in combat gear are training for agreed: "It is not illegal to have guerrilla warfare in Central America. military exercises, guys running These terrorists and would-be guerril­ around the fields with guns, or to say las are right-wing Nicaraguan and 'Uncle Sam, we're ready when you're Cuban exiles training for counterrevo­ ready-wink, wink-and here we go'" lution against the radical-nationalist (New York Times, 16 December 1981). Sandinista government that came to Uncle Sam is almost ready, too. In power with the fall of Nicaraguan mid-December, according to Under­ dictator AnastasioSomoza in 1979. secretary of Defense Fred Ikle, the Reagan/ Haig have targeted Central Joint Chiefs of Staff put on Reagan's America in their anti-Soviet war drive, desk a set of "contingency plans" for and training international terrorists in military intervention, ranging from the U.S. is part of Cold War II. naval blockade of Nicaragua or Cuba There are, of course, laws that make to full-scale invasion. Preliminary this kind of thing illegal. But the skirmishes have been going on by Neutrality Act is applied only against proxy for months as ex-Somoza those, like the leaders of a recent troops in neighboring Honduras stage attempted uprising in Haiti, who constant raids across the border. In oppose "friendly" dictators. Gusanos December the sonlOcistas kidnapped Rancinan and Somozaist exiles face different 15 Nicaraguan troops into Honduras, Cuban gusanos train in Florida. Uncle Sam stands behind Batista's, standards. A Cuban counterrevolu­ killed a number of civilians and Somoza's hated killers. tionary leader explained American Sandinista soldiers and set off a bomb laws: "Under the Carter and Nixon in an Aeronica jetliner. Honduran a few miles from the frontier. trammg will they receive? An II administrations, what we were doing government denials of involvement U.S. commitment to the butcher January New York Times report may was a crime. With the Reagan Admin­ were spectacularly exposed recently junta in EI Salvador deepened last give a clue. A Salvadoran army istration, no one has bothered us for 10 when the Honduran army commander month when it was announced that deserter told Times writer Raymond months." "You can call it paramilitary of the border region, together with an 1,200 Salvadoran troops will undergo Bonner that he, along with other training or what have you," Justice ex-Somoza officer and the head of an training at Green Beret headquarters recruits, had been given a "torture Department spokesman John Russell anti-Sandinista Miskito Indian group at Fort Bragg. Another 400 officers class" at the Ilopango Air Base near recently told the San Diego Union (11 crashed together in a Honduran DC-3 will be at Fort Benning. What kind of continued on page 11 ILWU Militant Stan Cow Wins He-election SAN FRANCISCO, January 8-For government/employer strikebreaking." the eighth consecutive year, Militant The Caucus fought for solidarity strikes Caucus leader Stan Gow won re­ to defend the PATCO strikers­ election to the SF Local 10 (lonphore) intervening in labor demonstrations executive board in the International with the demand to shut down the Militant Caucus Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's airports-as well as other workers spokesman Union (ILWU). Campaigning on the struggles here and abroad (South Stan Gow. slogan, "For labor action to bring down Africa, EI Salvador, etc.). Reagan," Gow polled 329 votes, an Gow and the Militant Caucus have impressive 23.5 percent of the vote, an stood against the wave ofanti-Sovietism incre... ;;e from 20 percent last year. This generated by the Reagan government in first round of elections for officers and its drive toward imperialist World War WV Photo executive board will be followed by run­ Ill. While the ILWU leadership of leadership of Solidarnosc because they few casuals. Most of the work will be offs in February and elections for Coast Jimmy Herman joined the NATO/CIA want to overturn nationalized proper­ done by each employers' 'own' steady­ Caucus and International Convention chorus of sympathy for counterrevolu­ ty and go back to capitalist men." Meanwhile the warehouse divi­ delegates. exploitation.... tionary Solidarnosc, the "Longshore "Herman and the rest of the Interna­ sion is being devastated. In the recent Gow campaigned on the class­ Militant" of 18 December 1981 tional share Reagan's program for period, two major houses representing struggle program of the Militant Cau­ commented: 'rolling back communism' and that is over 500 jobs simply shut down with no cus, which has always fought against the "The International bureaucrats used to why they are capitulating to his domes­ real resistance from the union, and dues losing class-collaborationist strategy of pose as 'progressives' on international tic economic program. issues. ... But the 'progressive' facade payments have been dropping drastical­ the union bureaucracy. Against the has been slipping lately. The Interna­ The Militant Caucus fights for a ly as jobs disappear. Only a new class­ "modernization and mechanization" tional capitulated to the anti-Iranian workers party and a workers govern­ struggle leadership in the union could schemes and "steady-man" system hysteria with the boycott of Iranian­ ment as against the lesser evilism ofpro­ turn the tide. (instituted under former ILWU Interna­ bound cargo. And at the International Democratic Party ILWU/ AFL-CIO This latest election campaign was convention, it lined up with the State bureaucrats, whose only program these tional president Bridges), which under­ Department and Reagan on Polish marked by the desertion from the mines the union hiring hall, the Caucus Solidarnosc, whose plans for the Polish days is to give back more. Militant Caucus by Howard Keylor. has fought to abolish the "steady-man" working class have nothing to do with The ILWU is suffering massive Keylor issued his own look-alike publi­ clause and return all jobs ,to the hiring overthrowing the parasitic ruling bu­ erosion because of the leadership's cation, called the "Militant Longshore­ hall. Especially in light of Reagan's reaucracy in Poland in order to institute decades of class collaboration. As the workers democratic rule. The U.S. man," in a pathetic and cynical attempt union-busting assault on the air con­ government and American trade union "Longshore Militant" notes: "Local 10 to hide his political break from the trollers, Gow's program emphasized, bureaucracy have been bankrolling the is being squeezed down to a narrow­ Caucus. The "Longshore-Warehouse "For labor solidarity against pro-NATO, pro-IMF, pro-Vatican based computer dispatched hall for a contmued on page 11 12 22 JANUARY 1982