NUMBE.R 60 DECEMBER 1978 TWENTY CENTS Teng leads campaign to "re-evaluate" Mao New power struggle in Peking For workers political revolution to smash , the Stalinist bureaucracy. Peking's announcement in late November that leaders were the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist reportedly executed Party (CCP) had just held an "important meeting" for their activities culminated weeks of speculation that, yet again, during the Cultural there was "great disorder" in the Heavenly Pal­ Revolution.. ace. On 20 November, the 1976 Tien An Men dem­ onstration -- which had been labelled "counter­ "Reversing the revolutionary" and brutally suppressed by the verdict" on Tien An People's Liberation Army and local militia -- was Men is a clear sign declared a "completely revolutionary action". that the erstwhile And for weeks before vice-premier Teng Hsiao-ping "demon and freak" cautiously declared a stop on 1 December, the Teng, twice purged famous dazibao ("big character" poster) wall in by Mao, has pre­ Peking was thronged by thousands of curious citi­ sently got the zens, joined by foreign· embassy first secretaries upper hand over his and their translators, where they read unpre­ rivals, real and cedented attacks on the formerly "infallible" potential, in the Great Helmsman, Mao Tse-tung. bureaucratic hier­ archy.After all, Anyone making such criticisms of Hao ten years it was at the same ago would have been denounced instantaneously as Political Bureau a "count errevo 1ut ionary"- and d i sa ppeared . Mao meeting following was attacked for being "metaphysical" and "amen­ the suppression of able to flattery" in his later years and for Tien An Men that lacking any understanding of "Marxism and the Teng was last purged class struggle". Mao's famous "criticism" of and the current Hua (centre), Teng (left) and Yeh Chien-ying (right) watch show by air force. Stalin as 70 percent good and 30 percent bad was chairman, Hua Kuo-feng, elevated to the post of what enthusiastic popular response. To a work­ turned around on him, some posters insisting prime minister. And Hua joined with the Gang in ing class denied a wage rise for two decades in that even that was too generous. Other posters applauding the militia for crushing the demon­ the name of Maoist hostility to "economism"; to painted a picture of a senile Chairman manipu­ stration. None of this has been forgotten: one the millions of Red Guard youth who were cyni­ lated by the evil "Gang of Four" into allowing recent poster denounced Hua for cynically jumping cally used and monstro'lsly betrayed by Mao and them to establish a "family-style fascist dic­ on the bandwagon by inscribing the title page of sent for "re-education" to labour on rural com­ tatorship" to return China to "feudalism". a soon-to-be published volume of poetry praising munes; and to a population whose intellectual The official campaign to "re-evaluate" Mao has the Tien An Men demonstration. Moreover, Hua's and cultural aspirations were prevented from been building for some time. \'Iu Teh, the mayor authority rests singularly on Mao's much pub­ rising above the incredibly shallow and of Peking who was identified with the Mao wing of licised purported final words -- when he was philistine "revolutionary operas" of cultural the bureaucracy, has been ousted; and party vice- supposedly a "senile" dupe of the Gang -- to his tsar Chiang Ching, the de-mythologising of Mao successor: "With you in is hardly an unpopular step. charge I can rest easy". But despite the spate of inflated reports in So while Hua and other the bourgeois press about a "spontaneous" out­ leaders have lain low, the pouring of demands for "democracy" and "human ebullient Teng has been rights" .. what is going on is clearly a carefully putting on a virtuoso per­ orchestrated campaign to consolidate Teng's formance entertaining a primacy in the Heavenly Palace -- a fact con­ stream of Japanese business­ firmed by his peremptory order to his supporters men and politicians and to desist. And if it is impossible right now Western journalists -­ to determine the specifics of the immediate bu­ praising the "Democracy reaucratic power play, in the long run the answer Wall" while assuring .one and all that it was a symptom Continued on page eleven only of China's "basic stab­ ility" and denying that he had any differences with Hua (Age, 29 November). Coyly, Teng "criticised" the How the "masses" for going too far f' in their attacks on Mao -­ L who "was better than that" Stalinists -- and generously granted

~., that he himself was only "60 percent good". There are limits to the planned "re-evaluation" of Mao's Teng bows before Japanese flag: "peace and fdendship" with Japanese imperialism. role which no wing of the Chinese bureaucracy will chairman and head of Mao's bodyguard, Wang Tung­ willingly cross. I~hile his wife of three dec­ Trotsky'S hsing, is reportedly next in line. The once ades can be retroactively slandered as a Kuo­ ubiquitous Mao badges have been consigned to the mintang agent, Mao most certainly cannot be. In scrap heap and the LittZe Red Book, which when Maoist hagiography he is China's Lenin and Stalin Mao was alive was attributed miracle powers, has both: the founder of the People's Republic and murder gone with it. In early November the stigma of the historic political and "theoretical" foun­ "bourgeois rightist" was lifted from the last of tainhead of the CCP since the 1930s. several million victims of the "rectification" campaign which followed the short-lived Hundred Nonetheless it is not surprising that the of­ . .. page 6 Flowers Movement in 1956-57. Five Red Guard ficial "re-evaluation" of Mao has found a some- How tile. SWP distorts Trotsle,ist IIistor, Tripp's meanderings revisited

The 26 October Direct Action announced that shabby cyn1c1sm is no compliment to Tripp; rather application of this program to Australia -­ Ted Tripp, for three years during the 1930s a it is demeaning and patronising. Tripp played an one section [the Trippites] claiming that it member and leader of the Trotskyist Workers Party important role at one time and it must be under­ should be rejected in toto; the other (WP) and for several years prior to that a promi­ stood. So we would like to set the record [Wishart's] wanting to amend it so as to com- nent figure in the then-Stalinist Communist Party straight on a few points. . pletely alter its meaning. Both wanted a (CPA), had capped "60 years of struggle for loose group expressing several viewpoints, socialism" by joining the Socialist Workers Party Deutschmann explains how "a few years" after Tripp joined the WP following his 1934 expulsion rather than a disciplined organisation advo­ (SWP). In itself this event has little signifi­ cating one programme and policy.... " cance. For the last 38 years, Ted Tripp has been from the CPA for Trotskyisn, "he left the Workers virtually politically inactive; for the last The splitters formed a group called the Revol­ twenty he has been secretary of the Victorian utionary Workers League (RWL), which published Labor College (VLC) in Melbourne's Trades Hall. three issues of a roneoed paper, Socialist But for the SWP, prettying up Tripp's political Appeal, with which Tripp was associated, and history, as the Direct Action piece by Dave .'-JIPP'S shortly thereafter disappeared. The political Deutschmann did, serves the purpose of artifici­ issues in the split were murky. The RWL's ac­ ally boosting the SWP's pretensions to represent ~L eandreriugS count in the first issue of Socialist Appeal the continuity of Australian Trotskyism. I \ (March 1939) scarcely clarified the matter, although it betrayed elements of cliquism and In the process the SWP shamelessly distorts -- 10 January 1938 Australian parochialism. In 1940 its members re­ \_. ~ vi('''' ot tM '~.~l'I).'\f"tI"'. 01 the history of the Trotskyist moyement. Such 1.:,1 w"td 'fripP .n thO 1"'\1\.0&1 Militant.on joined the Communist League, some to split yet l M.. i~ ill 1'>1311l" i\ IJeCOtIl"· noe­ "Tripp's again in solidarity with·'Max Shachtman's oppo­ \l.~""'~ 1\1,,1 .... n""" i\ 0\"" \h&\ he Footnote to a betrayal ,."".". "" connection ,.ilb \be ""0,,,··1 meanderings" . sition to military defence of the USSR. l';\.t'lo)·fur • .be 1",\ .ov.~\ tIlootbS 't.ipp" During most of World War II and from there • I"". "",,0 001l1."h.' o,ra\'o. onwards, Tripp was not involved in the Trotsky­ Almost two months after the fact, Direct Action (30 , ~\l>~t\1 November) felt compelled for same reason to comment on ist or any other leftist movement at all. Direct what it calls "one of the more bizarre sidelights to the Party and subsequently began to publish another Action attempts to obscure this fact by pointing October 7 NSW elections". What Allen Myers, resident Trotskyist magazine, Proletarian Review, which to Tripp's association with the VLC. But the VLC "humourist" of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), finds was based among Trotskyists at Sydney Univer­ is a creature of the Trades Hall bureaucracy, on so "bizarre" is our call for a simple act of class soli­ sity". Deutschmann's glib account notwithstand­ which it depends directly for its survival. Its darity in defence of striking Government Printing Office ing, one does not simply "leave" a revolutionary primary, albeit marginal, "educational" effect workers in Sydney whose picket line was broken .by the organisation and publish one's own "Trotskyist has been the training of "left" union bureaucrats Wra'n government to remove scab election ballot papers. magazine" -- if one is a bolshevik. Tripp "left" such as Ken Carr of the furnishing trades, a one­ time "star" Labor College student. The Spartacist League responded with a 5 October leaf­ after an April 1937 conference of the \'IP, though let, ",Black ban scab ballot papers!", demanding that the according to a 10 January 1938 article in the But in the immediate post-war years -- after WP's paper, the Militant, entitled "Tripp's Labor Council black ban the ballots in support of the Tripp had become a permanent fixture of the VLC Meanderings", he did not formally resign until -- the VLC's Labor College Review served its strike. We urged workers to treat these scab goods like 27 May, any others: black products not to be touched by self­ bureaucratic sponsors by becoming an organ for respecting union militants. Naturally this was not to the ". .. following his unsuccessful attempts to Cold War anti-communism. Its April 1947 number taste of the Labor Counci I bureaucracy. gather a faction sufficiently strong to alter gratefully acknowledged the support given the the organisational decisions of the party.... college by the right-wing, viciously anti­ Nor, obviously did it suit the SWP which was trying to "His next move was to gather together a group communist ALP Groups; in August that year an un­ convince Wran to adopt "socialist policies" and wasn't of heterogeneous elements under the intriguing signed article praised the companion NCC-backed about to let a little thing like class struggle get in the title of 'League for Revolutionary Democracy.' industrial groups in the unions. When Laurie way. Myers abjects most especially to our statement that "Tripp has not produced a political position, .Short, a long-time Trotskyist until his defection "Elementary labour solidarity demands that workers re­ substituting for this the bald statement that to the groupers in 1946, used the bosses' courts fuse to vote in an electian held with scab ballots". "If he is a 'Trotskyist' .... and vicious red-baiting to purge the admittedly workers had been foolish enough to follow the SL's "We have allowed Tripp a considerable time to corrupt Stalinist leadership of the Feder~ted call"', he says, "the result would have been the election renouncp h,is pre$ent erraticcQurse. .But opr Ironworkers Association, the Review backed his. of the liberals. The title of the leaflet ... would more tolerance is not absolute. We 'now make it· rise to power. accurately have read: 'Only Liberals should vote!'" quite clear that Tripp is not connected with Did Tripp dissociate himself from this contin­ Warped logic perhaps, but revealing: rather than en­ the Workers Party, nor do we accept responsi­ ual red-baiting? Did he oppose the Revie~'s open danger Labor's occupation of the treasury benches, the bility for his political utterances." support to US imperialism against the Korean SWP would logically have organised mass crossing of a workers and peasants in 1950 ("Aggression in strike picket line to vote Labor! In May 1938 Tripp's group (now called the In­ Korea", August 1950)? There was nothing in the dependent Communist League with a paper called Review which would indicate that he had. And in If Labor can only win at the polls by smashing a strike, Permanent Revolution), minus Tripp, fused with any case, Tripp had already (and has since) been even a ",small" one, then we say: let Wran lose! A the \\IP to form the Communist League of Austral ia. associated with "third camp" positions on the strikebreaking Labor government will no more serve At a January 1939 conference there was a new Russian question, rejecting the defence of the workers' interests than a strikebreaking liberal one. We split, by a minority containing Tripp'S old sup­ deformed workers states against imperialism. Has do not subordinate the class struggle to the parliamentary porters and a distinct grouping around Jack he, in joining the SWP, been won to the Trotsky­ careers of ALP reformists. The SWP has made it crystal Wishart (party name J Royston). According to the ist position on this question? Direct Action clear that it does. Militant (February 1939), after the conference does not say -- but then the SWP has no qualms adopted the Transitional Program of the just­ about recruiting those who differ with Trotskyism Footnote to a footnote: Myers cannot resist a flat lie, founded Fourth International and the principles on one of its most fundamental programmatic pos­ that our leaflet "produced no small amount of bewilder­ of democratic centralism, itions. Little more than a year ago its American ment when members of the SL distributed it ta the printers' picket three days after the election". In fact it " ... the non-Trotskyists united to oppose the Continued on page eleven received a sympathetic response when distributed on the picket line the day before the election, as well as being distributed at a number of major Sydney industrial sites Ban on Sparfacists re-i.posed that day. What •IS the SWP afraid of? The following is the text of a letter sent to the Socialist only". A 28 November SWP "Forum'~, "Fighting the at· Workers Party on 4 December 1978. tacks on Women and Gays", broadly advertised at the Socialist-Feminist Conference of 25 November, became a monthly organ of revolutionary Marxism for the re­ On Saturday 25 October members and supporters of the Spartacist League were excluded from a publicly adver­ "internal" according to your Sydney organi~er John birth of the Fourth International published ~y Sparta­ Garcia when an SL member approached the hall, while cist Publications for the Central Committee of the tised Socialist Youth Alliance forum in Parramatta on youth unemployment. Apparently lacking a ready pretext .another member described it as for contacts and sup· Spartacist League of Australia and New Zealand, porters only. section of the international Spartacist tendency for this pol itical exclusion, Anthony Forward and other· SYA members reverted to the time-worn slander of SL These transparent pol itical exclusions betray a pol itical EDITORIAL BOARD: David Garden "disruption". This accusation, in fact 0 standard reform. cowardice rivalling that of the SLL or the Stalinist Social­ Steve Haran (Melbourne ist euphemism for political criticism from the left, is ist Party, who regularly exclude or attempt to physically correspondent) hardly credible. It is also utterly hypocritical. For three deter their pol itical oppanents from attending public pol­ Chris Karwin years your organisation banned SL supporters and even itical functions. Such systematic violations of workers Len Meyers (managing editor) contacts from "Direct Action Forums" on the same democracy are a necessary consequence of your reformist David Reynolds trumped-up basis. But during a joint campaign of our two politics. Evidently you cannot stand to expose your sup­ Inga Smith (production manager) organisations against thuggery by the Healyite Socialist porters to a genuine Trotskyist criticism of, for example, Labour League (SLL), you felt compelled to formally lift your tailing after Wran in the NSW elections - shameless CIRCULATION MANAGER: Roberta D'Amico t his ban. Then you sought our authority as. staunch de­ opportunism which they might discover has nothing to do , fenders of workers democracy. with the Trotskyism you pretend to embrace. However the GPOBax 3473, Sydney, NSW, 2001 At that time we noted in a letter to you (26 November need of the working class for political clarification stands (02) 235-8115 1976) that such formal assurances are of little worth bal­ higher than the SWP's self-interest in avoiding exposure. anced against the SWP's avid desire to seal off your sup­ In light of your de facto policy we demand a clear answer: SUBSCRIPTIONS: Three dollars for eleven issues porters from the threat of Spartacist criticism during a What is the position of the SWP toward admitting opponent (one year). democratic discussion period. And recent events indicate tendencies to its public events? What is the SWP afraid AUSTRALASIAN SPARTACIST is registered at the GPO, Sydney for that you have begun your former undemocratic policy anew. of? posting as a publication - Category B. In September Spartacist League members were barred entry to a series of events advertised publicly as "election Fraternally, Opinions expressed in signed orticles or letters do not "rallies". Leading SWPers invented an unpublicised - and Phillipc Naughten necessarily express the editorial vie)'fpoint. false - stipulation that attendance was by ",invitation For the Sydney Spartacist League

Printed by Eastern Suburbs, Randwick, NSW .t."f~" ~---.~~:'"! /".'j. ;~.;';~.~~(..J'# , .... '.\"\r·... ·#', ,i_:"l":;"\'~··"~~~·"·~·~ Page Two AUSTRALASIAN SPARTACIST December 1978 Down witlt• tile sllalll Down witll tile mullallsl SWP bows to holy

Religious fun~amentalist and darling of the reformist left, Ayatollah Khomeini praying with followers in French exile. manl\homeini For a year and a half the Iranian masses have geoisie's top cop, became a prominent backer of of the prophet (seventh century AD) as his sole taken to the streets in opposition to the terror CAIFI. point of reference is "progressive"? Simple. of the blood-drenched Pahlavi monarchy. On 6 According to a speaker from the SWP's Iranian November, after the convulsive rebellion in Today in Iran, however, the sacking of banks, student front group at a 10 November forum in New offices, movie theatres etc, and the calls of Teheran, the despot imposed a military govern­ York, the proof is that Khomeini is "popular". "Death to the shah!" are the handiwork of a bour­ ment headed by General Gholam Reza Azhari, chief As if Hitler's railings against foreign domin­ geois opposition which tries to pass itself off of staff of the armed forces. But while the ation of Germany and hatred of Jews were not in the "respectable" trappings of "democracy". massive oil workers' strike which was bringing "popul-ar", or the slaughter of Indonesian Commu­ So now the pages of the SWP's are super­ the Iranian economy to its knees has subsided, Militant nists and working-class militants in 1965 in the massive strikes and demonstrations continue to saturated with uncritical enthusiasm for these name of Islam. Muslim-led protests. In order to portray the sweep the towns and cities of Iran. On 27 mullah-led movement as a democratic one, the SWP Only a year ago the SWP's co-thinkers in the November, a 24-hour nationwide general strike suppresses the Muslim preachers' unashamedly re­ Iranian Sattar League gave a central role -- 28 broke out -- called by the bourgeoii-liberal actionary slogans. One would never know from the paragraphs -- in their programmatic document to a National Front -- in protest over the military Militant that the new-found heroes of these "most long exposition on the women's movement in Iran. government's slaughter of street demonstrators consistent" tailists of feminism shouted for Wrote the Sattar League: "ReI igious superstition the previous week. "Death or the Veil" in the streets of Tabriz; and all the backward hierarchical social re­ .j The shah's absolutist regime, facing an en­ that the religious centre of Qom is a city com­ lationships will be challenged by the growth of raged population, is now reduced to its essential pletely bereft of movies, non-religious litera- the women's movement" (quoted in 8WP Inter­ I bases of support, the army and US imperialism. national Information Bulletin, July 1977). Now a t But rather than a plebeian mobilisation threat­ leading member of the Sattar League enthuses over I t ening to deal the death blow to the shah's white the women's auxiliary of a movement based on this terror, or even a bourgeois-led "democratic" very same "religious superstition" and social movement, the current opposition is an amorphous backwardness: "Women, organized in separate movement led by the organised Islamic clergy. contingents and covered with their qhadors Its stated aim is an Islamic theocracy; its un­ [veils], led the fraternization with the army challenged leader is the head of the Shi'ite troops in Tehran ... " (Interaontinental Press, hierarchy, Ayatollah Khomeini. If the Peacock 20 November)! Throne is torn down only to be replaced by Khomeini wielding the sword of Islam, the Iranian Khomeini - a workers' leader? masses will gain absolutely nothing. In order to gloss over the reactionary/ clerical character of the Khomeini-led religious Yet the Iranian left has fallen into lockstep opposition, the SWP tries to pass off the current behind the "progressive" mullahs and the "anti­ strike wave as a mere part of the "movement" imperialist" Khomeini. In recent years, the once against the shah. Now in fact, prior to the last overwhelmingly Maoist overseas Iranian student month the working class was not at all active in movement, centred primarily in West Germany, the demonstrations as a driving force. Instead France and'the US, has fractured into countless it was the shopkeepers, merchants and half­ political tendencies under the impact of Peking's peasant seasonal labourers who rallied to shameless and criminal support for the self­ Khomeini's banner.' When the workers' strike wave proclaimed "Light of the Aryans". Thus at a mushroomed, these petty-bourgeois demonstrated large meeting of Iranian students in Paris in their hatred of the proletariat by re-opening the September, French pro-Peking Maoists who inter­ Teheran bazaar which had been shut down as part vened to defend Hua's trip to Iran met with of a religious-led protest. While genuine Marx­ general abuse and catcalls. But the "critical" ists seek to break the proletariat from the reac­ Maoists, prO-Albanians and nationalist and tionary mullahs, the SWP seeks to tie them to Islamic guerrillaists are all united in denying Khomeini. the central, urgent task today facing the Iranian proletariat: mobilising an opposition both,to The SWP's centrist European cohabitants in the shah and to the mullahs in the struggle for the United Secretariat (USec), long adept at workers state power. lim women in traditional veil, carrying portrait of finding "revolutionary vanguards" virtually any­ Khomeini, whom the SWP labels "progressive", where (but in the proletariat), have been if any­ Uniquely, the international Spartacist tend­ thing even more enthusiastic over Khomeini. At a ency has sought to win Iranian leftists to this ture, bars or women without the traditional recent forum of the Ligue Communiste Revol­ perspective. A series of public forums on Iran ahador (veil or cloak); that Khomeini is a utionnaire (LCR) in Paris, LCR speaker Rovere held by the Spartacus Youth League (SYL), youth staunch anti-communist who adamantly refuses any "criticised" Khomeini's program only for being a section of the Spartacist League/US, across North collaboration with the left; that the protesters' bit "vague", proclaiming in particular that America has been confronted with an orchestrated choice of targets is motivated by the "anti­ Khomeini should take a clear position on church­ campaign of hyste~ical intervention and outright imperialism" of the Koran: "usurious" banks, state relations! The mind boggles! Khomeini disruption by Maoist and Muslim student groups "immodest" movies etc. openly champions a return to the 1906-07 Consti­ intent on bureaucratically silencing our intran­ Is the veil "progressive"? tution which guaranteed the mullahs veto power sigent communist exposure of Khomeini. At forum The obscene spectacle of an ostensibly Continued on page ten after forum, however, the Maoists' myth of "rev­ I olutionary mullahs" has been exposed in the most Trotskyist organisation (not to mention anyone dramatic way -- by the Muslim students them­ claiming to be a socialist, democratic or even selves. In Chicago, for example, when a ~~oist secular) supporting a drive for a Muslim theoc­ I attacked our comrades for attributing to racy drew a critical letter from an ex-member, Khomeini's followers the slogan, "Death or the Marvin Garson, and a long response by SWPer David 'l'o~ I Veil", a Muslim student immediately rose to Frankel in the Militant of 3 November. Observing matter-of-factly explain that of aourse the that the Muslim leaders' opposition to the shah mullahs raised that slogan! was based on a hatred of alcohol, movies, women's Monthly newspaper of the SpartacUS Youth teague rights and other "pornographic" aspects of I, SWP: ousting the shah is "wishful thinking" Western culture, Garson honed in on the cynical November issue begins a i The Stalinists have been joined in their re­ tailism manifested in the Militant's journalism: three.part article on the "So much on the extent of the fighting in Iran, ' organi sational question !, . actionary pro-Khomeini charade by every osten­ in classical Marxism, sibly Trotskyist current but the Spartacist and so little on the aharaater of it" (emphasis in or iginal) . continuing a series by tendency -- particularly the US Socialist Workers Joseph Seymour on Party (SWP -- co-thinkers of the Australian SWP). Frankel responded with the predictably oppor­ For years the SWP distinguished itself by its tunist talk of mass struggles irreversibly set pacifist, civil-libertarian approach to the into motion, of ever unfolding revolutionary Marxism and Iranian class struggle. The SWP's pet c,reation "dynamics" and "processes", and so on -- remark­ was a Committee for Artistic and Intellectual ably failing to/mention Khomeini's name even the Jacobin Freedom in Iran (CAIFI) -- a committee which once. Such wilful ignorance is untenable evep hauled its Iranian left opponents into US courts for the SWP, so a subsequent (17 November) Communist to face deportation and which dismissed defence Militant brazenly explained: of the royal murderer's leftist opponents as sub­ ordinate to the question of what poetry was con­ "Although Khomeynisubscribes to a religious Tradition sidered printable in Iran. The SWP's studied ideology; the basis of his appeal is not religious reaction. On the contrary, he has refusal to raise any slogan demanding the over­ SUBSCRIBE! $US2 - 9 issues (one year) throw of the shah -- even publicly polemicising won broad support among the Iranian masses against such calls as being mere "wishful think­ because his firm opposition to the shah's surface mail ing" (see '''Down With the Shah' -- SWP Says No", 'modernization' is progressive." Order from/pay to: Workers Vanguard no 191, 3 February 1978) -- paid How, one might ask, does the SWP come to de­ Spartacus Youth Publishing Co, off when Ramsay Clark, formerly the US bour- termine that a religious leader claiming the time Box 825, Canal Street Station, New York, NY 10013. AUSTRALASIAN SPARTACIST December 1978 Page Three \;-: ~.~ '\-~''*~;'':~~.~-.~'.,: ~ ((·~l'-: :1'.,ft>~\;: ;~ ~.,:?:t:, ~·/~{~:f:~:~;,~t., :i>it ,~J;t.~.~: A program to beat "Ma 8ell" Militants score gains in US telephone union American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T), the 3000 members the largest CWA local in northern a virtually unprecedented victory, and one which profit-gouging US phone monopoly, is notorious California. Margolis' 372 votes -- a powerful 42 a buoyant rank and file in Margolis' local cor­ for mercilessly ripping off the US public and as pepcent of union members who balloted in her rectly recognised as such. a slave-driving employer. Labour d~scipline division (plant) -- placed her second in a field rivals anything seen in nineteenth-century sweat­ of thirteen candidates, in what was reportedly Margolis' victory in a largely male department shops: forced overtime, forced transfers and job the largest turnout ever for Local 9410 elec­ like plant is testimony to MAC's consistent fight to mobilise the union as a whole around demands downgrading and brutal enforcement of a medieval tions. At the same time, Gary Adkins, a class­ "absence control" policy, under which phone struggle militant in Los Angeles Local 11501, aimed at the special oppression of women workers: workers who miss work even for documented medical came in second in a field of twelve candidates to eg for an end to discrimination in hiring and up­ reasons can be disciplined. Clerical and win a position on his executive board. Adkins' grading; for free, quality 24-hour child-care "Traffic" workers (operators) -- overwhelmingly campaign had been endorsed by some ten stewards facilities; for free abortion on demand and free medical care for all. MAC refuses to join the women -- are treated with particular arrogance by in the local. Months earlier, both Adkins and feminists and their camp-fOllowers, like the IS the universally despised "Ma Bell" (so-called Margolis had also been elected delegates to the supporters, in praising "affirmative action" after the Bell System, the phone products CWA convention, marking the first time that a schemes which allow the government to step in and division). Operators can get the sack even for class-stru~gle opposition grouping had won rep­ smash hard-won union seniority rights, thereby (!) resentation at the union's convention. such "crimes" as standing up while working at exacerbating sexual divisions. In fact, many of their position. MAC's success must be incomprehensible to the MAC's earliest members were won to class-struggle Little wonder, then, that the Communication opportunist "lefts", whose uniformly economist unionism when, as members of a feminist but mili­ Workers of America (CWA), which allows its more shop-floor militancy is tailored to get-rich­ tantly anti-company operators' caucus in 1971, than 500,000 members to be subjected to this quick appetites. The candidate of the reformist they recognised the necessity of arguing against industrial tyranny, has earned the sobriquet scabbing by women operators on a craft strike. "Company Wins Again" from many phone As a result, these militants came to see the con­ workers. The CIVA bureaucracy has vir­ tradiction between their feminist views and their tually refused to organise the large adherence to such class-struggle principles as number of women phone workers, encourag­ respect for picket lines. ing numerous instances of scabbing by clerks and operators on the predominantly "Not one more cent for kneeling to the company" male (and relatively better off) craft MAC's role at the five-day national convention workers in plant and "Long Lines" (long in June proved it to be.the clear class-struggle distance and overseas) and fostering de­ pole of opposition to the Watts bureaucracy. As structive sexual divisions within the it has done uniquely for years, MAC led the fight union. Joe Beirne, its founding president against CWA involvement in the AIFLD. "The real from 1948 until impending death finally story of the AIFLD", explained a MAC leaflet dis­ forced him to retire in 1974, was a company tributed to the delegates, "is to be found in the unionist in the 1930s and a rabid Cold War prisons and torture chambers of the military anti-communist. It was Beirne who dragged juntas in Chile and Brazil, where thousands of the CWA into its central and founding role unionists are still imprisoned, and thousands in the American Institute for Free Labor De­ more have been executed". Margolis was applauded velopment (AIFLD), a CIA "labour"-front run when she exclaimed from the convention floor: "I by representatives of government, the unions want no stain of this on the banner of our and giant corporations. Glenn Watts, Union". Some thirty delegates refused to be Beirne's colourless successor, is today AIFLD swayed by flag-waving speeches for Carter's "hu­ treasurer. Following a militant· seven-month­ man rights" campaign and joined Margolis in' long strike by New York phone workers in 1971- voting against the bureaucracy's resolution on 72, Beirne saw to it that his last act as presi­ foreign pol icy. dent was to effectively seal off the local right to strike. It was MAC who initiated an amendment endorsed by 58 delegates (including more than 30 local A resounding vote for class struggle presidents and chief stewards) to give locals the For the past eight years, however, an op­ unrestricted right to strike over grievances and positional grouping centred in the San Francisco working conditions. Fearful of any challenge to the no-strike agreement with the company, Watts Bay Area, the Militant Action ~aucus (~~C), has been struggling to transform the CWA into an did not even allow the motion to be debated. In­ instrument capable of fighting and defeating Ma stead, with more than 100,000 jobs slashed Bell. Numerous fake-militant oppositions within through the introduction of extensive automation in the last four years, Watts squandered four the CWA -- variously supported by the ~1aoist Revolutionary Communist Party, the eclectic days attempting without success to push through a Stalinist Progressive Labor Party (PL) and the nearly 100 percent dues increase. In leading off workerist International Socialists (IS -- similar the fight against the dues increase pr~posal, Margolis made it clear that she was motivated to the Australian version) -- have in that time MAC election leaflet for successful candidate Margolis. been driven out by the company, become de­ not simply by the usual popular resentment moralised or simply been discredited by their PL-supported Committee Against Racism got a against such increases, but by opposition to the false policies. Despite vigorous witchhunting paltry 40 votes in his bid for local secretary. capitulatory policies that members' dues by both the company and, the union bureaucrats, Yet Margolis, like Adkins, stood on a full class­ financed: MAC has not. For unlike the lot of them, MAC has struggle program, including such demands as' "I would be for a dues increase if we had seen refused to capitulate to either the bosses or the national strike action to win a shorter workweek action to defend our members •.•. at no loss in pay, nationalisation of the phone bureaucrats. "But I know where the money will go. It will ~ompany without compensation, for labour/black go to more of the same. Layoffs have not been In a resounding confirmation that MAC's class­ defence to smash racist and fascist gangs, and struggle, policies based on the Trotskyist Tran­ opposed under this leadership. There has been for a break with support to the Democratic Party an increase of firings. We have not been able sitional Program have won a consistent following -- for a workers party to fight for a worKers among the membership, MAC candidate Jane Margolis to stop absence control. And money is going' government. As opportunists reason, such prin­ into supporting strikebreakers, anti-labour swept to victory in November elections for San cipled politics are "sectarian", above the heads Francisco Local 9410 Executive Board -- with some politicians, Jimmy Carter who brought the of rank-and-file workers. Taft-Hartley [anti-strike legislation] against But the Bay Area ranks have not forgotten the miners' strike .... Marxist Bulletin no 5 that following contract expiration in 1974' PL "So I am for money to build a strong, militant supporters refused to join MAC in seeking to mo­ union, but not one more cent for inaction and (Reyis~d) ,bilise the membership against the bureaucracy's kneeling to the Phone Company." anti-strike position but instead initiated their Significantly the recent vote for ~~C included wn isolated, adventurist wildcat action; and approximately 65 phone workers who "bulleted" that the PL supporters spurned MAC's attempt to their ballots, voting only for Margolis for Documents on the organise a united-front defence of the nine mili­ black struggle executive board. These workers represent a core tants (including one MAC member) who were sacked of militants who are not only fed up with the do­ in the US. in its wake. The ranks know that MAC went to the nothing uniori bureaucrats, but have consciou~ly membership and not to the bosses' courts (as the turned to MAC as the only force in the local de­ IS-supported United Action Caucus in New York CWA termined to wage a militant struggle against the Price: $3.50 -- whose sister grouping in 9410 is now defunct company. Furthermore, the emergence of tested '-- is fond of doing) to beat an ant i-communist militants like Adkins, committed to a clear pro­ purge attempt by union officials in 1972. In gram of class struggle, represents a step forward 1973 MAC initiated a successful campaign in laying the groundwork for a fighting oppo­ Order from/pay to: throughout the union to stop an anti-red clause sition throughout the CWA nationally. from being inserted into the union's constitution Spartacist League ;by the bureaucracy. And MAC mobilised the mem­ MAC has yet to be tested at the head of mass GPO Box 3473 bership again after Margolis got sacked in 1975 struggles. But its recent victories demonstrate Sydney, NSW, 2001. in a blatant political victimisation. After 14 again that a full class-struggle program is the months, Ma Bell was finally forced to back down, Continued on page eleven Page Four AUSTRALASIAN SPARTACIST December 1978 Spartacist election campaign In• New Yorlc: A bolshevik success abridged from Workers Vanguard no219, 17 November 1978 election districts Stamberg did well where the mittee of his choice". In-the process we almost SWP/CP did not. forgot to publicize our candidate. Finally we realized we had to strike a balance between our Spartacist Party campaign committee press release We ran an intensive campaign ... we revived, program and the candidate who carried it. NEW YORK CITY, Noveniber 10 -- The Spartacist the soap-box street corner rally, handed out Party announces that its candidate for NY State thousands of pages of literature, pasted up It is axiomatic in American bourgeois election Assenibly in the 64th A.D. {Greenwich Village­ posters on lamp posts and subway stations, gave campaigns that politicians lie. In fact, in Chelsea}, MARJORIE STAMBERG, received 871 votes interviews to local newspapers. From the first common parlance the words "campaign promises" are in Tuesday's election {with returns in from 94 of public act of the campaign -- supporting the understood to mean "cynical lie". And the re­ the 96 Election Districts}, amounting to over 3.2 striking pressmen on their picket lines -- we formists play the same game; they just lie about percent of the total vote cast for Assembly in wanted the residents of the 64th Assembly Dis­ different things: that the bourgeois government the district. In several Election Districts on trict to know that here was a revolutionary can be "pressured" into fighting for working socialist campaign going on. people, that whatever is popular is right. We wanted to make people sit up and take Just how powerful the truth can be was dem­ notice. We wanted to show them that the program onstrated in a central campaign debate when the of socialist revolution bears no resemblance to Spartacist League confronted the CP and SWP (see rotten liberalism or to the reformism of the "Race War or Class War", [ASp no 59, November second-hand Democrats of the CP and SWP. In 1978]). While the SWP lied to cover for the liberal Greenwich Village, we ran against all black Democratic pork-barrelers in Crown Heights, that liberals hold dear. Sometimes it must have Brooklyn, we told the truth about what happened seemed to them that we had a four-point program: -- that a protest which should have been mounted for the dreaded Westway [a proposed new West Side against killer-cop brutality marched instead on a expressway opposed by ecology faddist's], against synagogue. gun control, for the defence of the Soviet Union, During the campaign, we were struck by the down with Carter's "human rights" crusade. We depth of electoralist illusions among the Ameri­ attacked the liberals' most cherished illusions can public. (In fact, many people take voting so in the capitalist state, to which they look to seriously that they gave our ,candidate a hearing "protect" black schoolchildren and "democratize" that we might not otherwise get.) It is a testa­ the unions. In the heart of the gay ghetto at ment to American backwardness that so many Sheridan Square, we attacked not only the Demo­ workers are deceived by the electoral process, an crats' assault on gays' democratic rights but exercise in illusion-mongering controlled by the also the dangerous illusions of "gay power". ruling class (and junked when capitalist expedi­ Our biggest publicity "coup" was a sympath­ ency requires) _ And we were disgusted by the ex­ etic notice by Village Voice columnist Joe tent to which the reformists add to these deadly Conason (6 November). Explaining Stamberg was illusions. Spartacist candidate Stamberg on NY printers' picket line. "campaigning simply to raise the consciousness of With strikingly similar programs and aims, the the Lower East Side and in the West Village voters against the capitalist system", he pre­ CP and SWP ran quite similar campaigns. During Stamberg tallied as much as 10 percent of the sented excerpts from the Spartacist Party pro­ one televised roundtable of minor candidates, the vote. This was a substantial showing for the gram: moderator asked the CP's Jarvis Tyner and the revolutionary socialist candidate who ran against "Her program puts forward little-mention'ed SWP's Dianne Feeley "what the differences are incunibent liberal Democrat William Passannante. solutions to the city's difficulties, some between the SWP and the CP". There were no takers. Finally Tyner told the moderator that if Stamberg's vote was actually higher than two­ of which have a distinct appeal: expropri­ ation of the banks, Con Edison, and New York he listened "carefully" he could "detect" a dif­ thirds of the Liberal Party assenibly candidates ference between the parties' programs, adding Telephone (where Stamberg worked); resto­ in NYC where they ran as a third party instead of quickly that of course they shared "the same ration of free admission to the city univer­ simply endorsing the Democrats, and exceeded the general approach". Evidently the SWP isn't too sity system; and the abolition of the Emerg­ totals of ten Republican candidates as well •.•• embarrassed by its overt kinship with a party it ency Financial Control Board~" In the 64th A.D. the gubernatorial candidates of still formally characterizes as reformist. On the Corrmunist Party (CP) and the Socialist Of course, he singled out for criticism another TV appearance, Feeley said the SWP liked Workers Party (SWP) received 457 and 459 votes Stamberg's opposition to "petty-bourgeois" ecol­ "some [!) of Trotsky's ideas"! respectively, or 1.6 percent of the total votes ogy faddism. Marjorie Stamberg did not win the election. cast for governor in the district. Our anti-electoralist bias nearly pushed us But the Spartacist election campaign was a The Stamberg campaign ~ceived widespread into some mistakes early on. As Stamberg said bolshevik victory for those who believe in p~ss coverage in the Village Voice, Gaysweek, after the election: "For us it seemed right for Trotsky's ideas and fight for his program of Soho Weekly News, B~ack American, Villager, Gay everyone to go out and vote for the central com- international proletarian revolution.' Community News, Columbia Spectator and Washington Square News. Attention focused on the fact that r ~ Stamberg's campaign FOR A SOCIALIST FIGHT TO SA VE 'l NEW YORK posed revolutionary solutions as the II only answer to the city's problems. Spartacist Defend Jobs for Youth marchersl Party campaign literat~ called upon the "power­ ful NYC labor movement to lead a united struggle On 22 November the uniformed thugs of NSW Labor prem­ according to Healyite "dialectics", "provocateurs"! ier and minister of police, Neville Wran, stopped a small on behalf of all the oppressed. Break with the Similarly these cynical practitioners of the Big lie fre­ "Jobs for Youth" march as it passed through the Sydney Democrat,s, dwrrp the union b~aucrats who helped quently prate about "the highly dubious Spartacist League , suburb of Punchbowl and arrested twelve (possibly all) of the banks loot the city, and build a mass workers League, which is noted (!) for its involvement in provo­ the participants, charging nine of them with "obstructing party which would fight for a workers govern­ cations" - regardless of whether the SL was present at an traffic". The sharpest protest must be registered by the ment." Village Voice columnist Joe Conason wrote event, much less in the leadership. Among our so-called trade-union movement, ALP branches and all supporters that he was disappointed because Passannante "provocations" the SLL includes our call for the LaTrobe had refUsed to debateStamberg; he would have of democratic rights. The Spartacist League (SL) has con­ Valley power workers to set up picket lines as a necess­ liked "to watch a liberal Democrat answer the tributed a donation to help defray legal costs for the de­ ary component of shutting down the power stations and accusations of a tough Trotskyist" •••• fendants and urges our readers to do likewise. Drop the winning their 1977 strike. The SLL's alternative to such charges against the "Jobs for Youth" marchers! "provocative" class-struggle methods is a six.day trek by When the Spartacist League undertook to run a a handful of teenagers duped into believing that by bolshevik election campaign in New York in 1978, The Healyite Socialist Labour League (SLL),whcise Young Socialists (YS) youth group organised the "Jobs for wearing out the soles of their shoes through the Western we were not expecting to get a lot of votes. The Suburbs, they were somehow contributing to the struggle Youth" march, decried the arrests as "0 maior attack on New Left/liberal heyday of the 1960s is long to "Kick the liberals out" and to win "Jobs for Youth gone; even the Great Fiscal Crisis is already old basic democratic rights" (Workers News, 24 November) and an editorial in the same issue compared Wran's ac­ Now". And then, in an act of infantile bravado, the cyni. news. So we took as the theme of our campaign cal SLL confidence men (by Workers News's own account) nothing more "topical" than socialist revolution: tions to the Queensland government's ban' on political "the sheer enormity of this city's problems leads street marches. Indeed, if not so blatant as Bjelke­ twice refused the cops' demands to move onto the foot­ inescapably to one conclusion: it will take a Petersen, Wran's violation of elementary democratic path - the "protest politics" of pointlessly courting ar· rest by defying the cops with a dozen i II-organised youth. socialist ~volution to save New York". rights has been notorious. , In the six months preceding the latest arrests, Wran's cops charged four separate marches To take them at their word, the SLL to be consistent Though we always said the future will be de­ should expel its leaders, who have been exposed as cided not at the polls but on the battle lines of by gay-rights activists, arresting a total of 178 people and bashing many of them. authors of what by their lights must be labttlled a "provo­ the class struggle, nevertheless we were frankly cation" . gratified to find we made a lot of sense to a lot of the voters of the 64th Assembly District. But the Workers News editorial failed to mention any of But for the SLL's depraved leaders, honesty and revol­ these four "major attacks on basic democratic rights", or utionary integrity are alien qualities. Thus when tele­ In general, left candidates usually poll about the ten demonstrators arrested at the Sydney Stock phoned by an SL supporter to inquire about united-front one and a half percent or less. In this somewhat Exchange following the anti-Budget rally on 21 August. defence efforts, SLL gauleiter Jim Mulgrew regurgitated more radical district, which includes parts of Becouse in everyone of these cases the primary target of the usual slanderous filth: we were Zionists, "not an or­ Greenwich Village and Chelsea, the figures are these now pious defenders of the right to march hod been, ganisation of the left", and" infiltrated by police and the often somewhat higher. In 1976 a [CP) Daily not the cops, not the attocks on democratic rights, but the CIA" ... only to ask supposed cops, Zionists and CIA World staff writer, Amadeo Richardson, ran for victims! Of the 24 June anti-gay cop rampage in Sydney, the same office as Stamberg against the same agents to "9ive finance" toward the campaign. Nor is it Workers News (29 June) lied that the police were pro­ Democratic incumbent, on an "independent" line surprising that he flippantly repudiated the Leninist pos­ vided a "first rate opportunity to set up this attack by the with the active support of the CP and "community ition on the united front - march separately, stnke control" advocates of Spanish-speaking Chelsea. organisers of the demonstration". The courthouse protest together - expressing the SLL's bizarre sectarianism as: When he received 4.6 percent, it was noted as one two days later in which the cops wantonly shoved demon­ "Our slogan is march separately, strike separately!" of the best showings for any radical candidate strators over railings was a "punch-up" launched by the Despite the extreme political degeneracy of this dis­ anywhere in the US that year. protesters bearing "t&!e unmistak able stamp of adventuri st tasteful sect, we unconditionally defend the SLL from the publicity seeking". In other words if those who exercise bourgeois state. Mulgrew's ilk must be politically purged Stamberg's impressive showing was not merely their right to protest are attacked by cops, they must be from the labour movement from within. part of a general protest vote. Thus in many ..J AUSTRALASIAN SPARTACIST December 1978 Page Five , \ , . ; \, '" . , . '~'. \ .'. ' We reprint below from Workers Vanguard no 218, self as an accredited delegate of the Communist 3 November, a chapter from the recently published Third International. The latter had announced memoirs of Mexican Communist Party leader the decision to eliminate Trotsky, and requested Valentin Campa, Mi testimonio: memorias de un his personal cooperation as secretary-general of comunista mexicano (Mexico, 1968), and the ac­ the Party, as well as a squad adequate to ensure We do not forgive companying commentary. The translation is by this elimination. Comrade Laborde replied that Workers Vanguard from the French version pub­ this involved an extremely delicate question, lished in L'Humanite of 26 and 27 July 1978. that the Communist Party considered Trotsky to be a defeated political figure, and that he needed or forget! by Valentin Campa several days to resolve this. The envoy of the ---e intensified· the struggle against Third International emphasized to him that no one W Trotsky, which immediately placed the Com­ should hear anything about this whole business, munist Party in opposition to President Cardenas that it was strictly confidential. (1). The CTM (Confederation of Mexican Workers), Laborde decided nevertheless to consider the HOW THE led by Lombardo Toledano (2), struggled vigor­ matter with the two of us. \'Ie \'lere all in com­ ously against Trotsky, without going to the point plete agreement that this wa:; an extremely of breaking with President Cardenas. Things serious and strictly secret matter. ;'Ie examined being as they were, we unceasingly denounced it very calmly and carefully. After the rigorous Trotsky's betrayals. It was only later that we analysis which the question deserved, we con­ realized the harassment directed against him, STALINISTS cluded, as we had already done on several oc­ which drove him in desperation to reprehensible casions, that Trotsky had been politically excesses. At the end of 1936 the Dies Com­ defeated, that his influence was practically nil, mittee was created in the House of Representa­ and that moreover we had already made this point tives in Washington. It was named for the con­ sufficiently throughout the world. On the other gressman who chaired it, who proved to be the hand, his elimination would result in great harm PLANNED McCarthy of that period -- a vicious anti­ to the Mexican Communist Party, to the revol­ Communist who propagated the worst calumnies utionary movement in Mexico and in the Soviet against the Communists and the Soviet Union. Union, and to the international Communist move­ Along with the well-known aviator Charles Lind­ ment as a whole. We thus concluded that to bergh and numerous other American reactionaries, propose the elimination of Trotsky was a grave TROTSKY'S he organized an intense propaganda campaign in error. Once this viewpoint was agreed upon; favor of United States participation in World War II on the side of Hitler, Mussolini and the Laborde informed the delegate of the Third Japanese Empire against the Soviet Union. This International about it. The latter threatened him, telling him he would pay the consequences Dies Committee organized a whole series of public for his attitude, and that a breach of discipline hearings and invited Trotsky and Diego Rivera to MURDER appear before the House of Representatives in with respect to the Third International carried a Washington. high price. Laborde told him that lye were acting according to our principles, and that we con­ figures that a bureaucratic neo-bourgeoisie was A leader of Trotsky's Fourth International, sidered the idea of eliminating Trotsky to be being created within the Cardenas government, Diego Rivera (3) participated in this arch­ inadmissible. with far greater resources than those available reactionary, anti-Communist campaign of the Dies In the face of the threats against Laborde on to the bureaucratic bourgeoisie of the supporters Committee, clearly playing into the fascists' of Calles (6). This bureaucratic bourgeoisie hands and obviously serving the interests of the part of this delegate of the Third Inter­ national, we considered the problem in the Sec­ included Maximino Avila Camacho, Damaso imperialism. Trotsky was arso personally invited Cardenas, the president's brother, and the ex­ to appear before the Dies Committee, but, being retariat, and decided to go to !lel'l York to discuss with Earl Browder (4), a laember of the "callistas" who went over to "cardenismo": more intelligent, refused to do so. On the other Abelardo Rodriguez, Aaron Saenz and others. This hand, he lent his cooperation through his state­ Executive Committee of the Third International. At the first opportunity we left by car for New bourgeoisie predominated within the government, ments, writings and other means. The neo­ and decided on the course of supporting Manuel Trotskyites denied that Trotsky had collaborated York. All three of us spoke \'lith Browder, laying out to him the whole problem in detail. Avila Camacho for the presidency of the Repub­ with the Dies Committee, but ~ere is the testi­ lic, whereas the normal process in Mexico would mony of Trotsky himself to confirm it; he stated Without reflecting at length, he stated cat­ have made General Mujica the democratic candi- that he had accepted the invitation "in order to egorically that he agreed with help the workers understand the reactionary his­ us; he decided we were right, toric·al role of Stalinism and to turn them away asked us immediately not to from it" (Cardenas y la izquierda mexicana, see the delegate again and Stalin dkl itl Mexico: Juan Pablos Editorial). Trotsky's ex­ told us he would go to Moscow planation is even more far-fetched given that the and explain things. Trotsky de­ fascist character of the Dies Committee was quite well known. The intrigue is orchestrated llOunces May 25 machine gun at­ In his capacity as a leader of the Fourth Several weeks later, some tock on him. A International, Diego Rivera amply cooperated with rather suspicious comings and week after the at­ all the Dies Committee's activity against the goings occurred. Vittorio tempt he wrote: USSR, against the Mexican Communist Party and Codovilla (5), an Argentine, "The interrog· most especially against Comrade Hernan Laborde. arrived in Mexico; then ation ... of Siquei­ Martinez, a Venezuelan, and ros, would help A ruinous directive other comrades sent by the Third International, suppos­ very much to shed In the course of the campaign against Trotsky, light on every­ a meeting called by the Communist Party took edly to cooperate with the Mexican Communist Party which thing concerning place at the Arena Mexico on Friday, 26 September the attempt on my 1938. Speakers included Carlos Rivera, a was in a critical situation. What followed was the direct life.... And who Colombian leader; Margarita Nelken, a Communist could have given deputy from Republican Spain; Jacques Gresa, a intervention of these del­ them the order? French Communist deputy; and Hernan Laborde, egates in all the business of secretary-general of the Mexican Communist Party. the PCM. They began to place Obviously, the Laborde and me in the defend­ master of the At this meeting where the international situ­ ant's box; according to them, Kreml in: Joseph ation was analyzed (I"e were on the eve of the we had been following a sec­ Stalin". Second World War), Trotsky was politically un­ tarian and opportunist line. masked, exposed by his reactionary excesses ~vhich This opportunism took the form played into the hands of Hitler and Mussolini of the policy of "unity at any against the Soviet Union. price"; it was in fact opportunist, but they pre­ date, albeit with the serious handicap of having Around that time, Comrade Laborde sent for tended they had known nothing about it and that supported Trotsky's right to asylum in Mexico. Rafael Carrillo and me, both members of the they did not know that it had been imposed on us in June 1937 by the Communist International, de­ Codovilla became interested in my expose and Secretariat of the Central Committee, to discuss asked me to draw up 1:'. document on the economic, spite our reservations. This was even more gro­ with us an extremely delicate confidential ques­ political and social processes of the last year tesque since although our orientation had been tion. It concerned a matter which had been com­ of the Cardenas government. I prepared this decided in Mexico at the suggestion of and under municated to him by a comrade who introduced him- material. In this connection, hOlvever, an inci­ the discipline of the International, and on dent occurred; in complete good faith, I had Browder's direct intervention, we were now ac­ allvays held that the category of llarxism-Leninism cused of being opportunists for having carried it ought not to be extended to Stalin, but it was out! It was thus that a highly dishonest ac­ already customary internationally to speak of tivity based on intrigues was then carried out Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism. I refused to do against Laborde and myself in particular. this, while at the same time expressing my admir­ Laborde was suspended from his post as secretary­ ation for Stalin and for the value of his work, general; I was suspended from the Political adding that I opposed elevating him to the level Bureau. A so-called committee to purge the Party of Marx and Lenin because in the last analysis he leadership was set up' under the direction of was still alive and this estimation could only be Andres Garcia Salgado, who some years later be­ made with a definitive balance-sheet of the work St.n the came a pro-government trade unionist. of those who were dead. I thus wrote my report ..s .. sin In this atmosphere, I continued. trying to using the expression "Marxism-Leninism" with attend meetings of the leadership. I edited regard to an unrelated subject; but the comrade reports and explained with supporting statistics who transcribed it added "Stalinism". When I "He seeks to and arguments how General Cardenas had made a protested, she replied that everyone said stri ke not at turn to the right in 1939. I quoted the Bureau "Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism". "Everyone, per­ the ideas of his of Agricultural Smallholdings, Ivhich permitted haps, but not me", I told her, and I crossed out opponent, but the curbing of the land redistribution. The "Stalinism". The crossed-out original was to be at his skull." statistics confirmed the sharp decrease in land presented as proof that I was a Trotskyite. - Trotsky redistribution proceedings in 1939 and 1940. Impressed,he said, by my contribution on the Cardenas had signed the unconstitutional decree turn of the Cardenas government, Codovilla had a forbidding bank employees from unionizi~g; this private conversation with me. Speaking of the clearly tended to restrain mass strur:~le in the crisis of the Mexican Communist Party, he gave me country and was aimed particularly at preventing to understand, in no uncertain terms, that I was workers' . strikes. slated to become secretary-general in place of I demonstrated Ivith supportinz facts and Laborde. I refused; I told him that he and Page Six AUSTRALASIAN SPARTACIST December 1978 the process of organizing a squad of comrades to storm Trotsky's house and that it was being done very sloppily. The Dominican weekly Ahora late: published an interview with Siqueiros titled: "Siqueiros Recounts the Attack Against Trotsky". He states: "Stalin was worried that Trotsky, during his exile in Mexico, could become the center of another chauvinist movement which would attempt to replace him in Soviet power. There­ fore he ordered a high functionary of the NKVD, Leonid Eitingon, to organize the physical elim­ ination of Trotsky, and granted him unlimited resources to carry this out. But the leader of the Mexican Communist Party, Laborde, opposed this act of violence and in fact refused to as­ sist with it. Finally Laborde and his collabor­ ators_ were expelled and the Party remained under our control" (Cardenas y Za izquierda mexieana). In a very off-hand manner Siqueiros relates the facts concerning what was a political crisis for our Party and for the international Communist movement. The attempt of Siqueiros and his group to take Trotsky's house by storm having failed, a third alternative was put into action. On the evening of 20 August 1940, Ramon Mercader, who went under the pseudonym of Jacques Mornard, assassinated Trotsky. As Laborde and I had anticipated, and as we had told Browder in New York, the elimination of Trotsky unleashed -a large-scale campaign against the Mexican Communist Party, the international Communist movement and the Soviet Union. The demands of autonomy and independence Our Party recognizes the precious aid it has others knew of my differences of op1n10n with obedience to the Third International led by the received from the Communist International and the Laborde, which were of a secondary and tactical CPSU. To reveal disagreements meant exclusion important role which the Soviet Union plays in nature, and that I would not lend myself to these from the Communist movement and consequently fighting the tendency of Yankee imperialism to under-handed maneuvers; that I was thinking of being turned into bogeymen [;'satanization"]. unleash a Third World War which would be cata­ returning to my job as a railwayman; that that­ strophic for all of humanity. Very conscious of To build a movement against arbitrary dog­ all of this, Mexican Communists -- faced with the was my position consistent with the rules of matism, we would have had to begin by explaining revolutionary honesty to which I adhered. imbroglio caused by the interference of foreign the truth about the asphyxiating pressure of the Codovilla became angry, and from then on he comrades, above all in the course of a process policy of "unity at any price" [with Cardenas] crowned by the erroneous policy of "unity at any adopted the formula: "the sectariaIr opportunists and the brutal interference demanding that we Laborde and Campa". price" and then by the elimination of Trotsky -­ eliminate Trotsky; Laborde and I refused to do forcefully maintain, along with their inter­ "Stalin is a cuckold" this, since the Second World War had just broken nationalism, an insistence on the autonomy and out (August 1939). Thus we come to the Extraordinary Congress at independence of their Party. which we were expelled. I made an appearance and Laborde and I decided then not to fall into Comrades of other countries, unaware of these denied the charges against me. Laborde did not the errors committed by Trotsky when he found serious facts, do not understand our unchangeable come, .because to him it was obviously a farce. himself harassed by Stalin. The Trotsky affair position with respect to the independence and He was already convinced that Stalin had par­ would be used internationally against the Soviet autonomy of parties within the framework of pro­ ticipated fully in the problem of eliminating Union and the Mexican Communist Party. Our situ­ letarian internationalism. Trotsky and in using the Communist International ation was very difficult, but we had to remain against us for the position we had taken. He had discreet. We were particularly indignant to see For decades Laborde and I firmly resisted the -always held a high opinion of Stalin, but at this Rafael Carrillo act as a perfect scoundrel lies and slanders hurled at us by people like point he rectified it, as the matter was ex­ towards us, covering us with slander, when he Rafael Carrillo and others. We could not defend tremely serious. Angered by the maneuvers, he knew the whole truth of the matter. Some time ourselves without creating a very tense political reached the point of saying "Stalin es un eabron" later, moreover, this same Rafael Carrillo situation in the context of the Second World War (Stalin is a cuckold). boasted of being a renegade from Communism. then taking place. To defend ourselves would have caused grave injury to the international We set out to examine the situation we had Not yet expelled from the PCM, Laborde and I been put into. After our expulsion, we were were informed that David Alfaro Siqueiros was in Continued on page eight chased after by the international [press] agencies, especially the Americans. They wanted a statement from us on Trotsky, since he had written an article saying that our expulsion was in connection with Stalin's intefitions to elim­ inate him. Trotsky wrote: "What has happened, most likely, is that the GPU has encountered a Workers Vanguard commentary certain opposition among the leaders of the Communist Party ... and whoever opposes an at­ Ramon Mercader sought to take his secrets to soon established that the famous Stalinist tempt on Trotsky's life is obviously a Trotsky­ the grave. But not all his accomplices were so painter David A Siqueiros led the gunmen. Then ite" ("The Communists and the Cardenas Regime", tight-lipped and over the years a mass of the PCM tried to float the ludicrous claim that quoted by Lyle C Brown, in the University of evidence has accumulated showing how the Kremlin Siqueiros-was actually a former Trotskyist, even Mexieo Review, 8 May 1971). plotted the murder of Leon Trotsky. Huch of this though he was quoted as a party luminary in the Certain comrades have wondered if, in this has come from the statements of defecting Stalin­ Communist press up until a few weeks before the phase of intensifying crisis in t:le PClI, it would ist intelligence agents and second-hand sources attack. And when, three months later, Mercader not have been preferable to 30 to the heart of -- which in no way reduces their value as proof, carried out Stalin's grisly order he tried to the problem in order to avert this crisis. In for the accounts are remarkably consistent. But pass himself off as a disillusioned follower of 1940 \'Ie didn't even envisage this possibility. now we have the testimony of a leading public the Fourth International. The Campa memoirs The general tendency within the international political figure, Valentin Campa's Memoirs of a (together with the Siqueiros interview, cited in Communist movement was that of unconditional Mexiean Communist, detailing the assassination the above text) demolish this lie. conspiracy. Workers Vanguard now presents this Campa ~onfirms that the orders to "eliminate" revealing document for the first time to the Trotsky came directly from Moscow, and reveals English-language public. that the Communist Party leadership even sat Who is Valentin Camya? In 1939 he was a mem­ around debating the assassination. His account ber of the secretariat of the central committee of how he and Laborde were summarily removed as of the Mexican Communist Party (PCM), then led by PCM leaders is a graphic dembnstration of the Hernan Laborde. Both Campa and Laborde were cynical modus operandi of the Stalinized Comin­ violent Trotsky-baiters, but in December of that tern. And it verifies in every respect Trotsky's year the two were expelled from their leadership brill iant analysis of the "Laborde affair": positions (and subsequently from the party it­ "Today it is absolutely self-evident that the self) as "Trotskyites"_. Yet -- strange circum­ overturn in the [Mexican] Communist Party was stance -- the specifics of their sin were never intimately connected with the order for the i, publicly spelled out. The PCM body which hea~d attempt [on Trotsky's life] issued in Moscow. the report of the speCial purge commission What happened most probably is that the GPU (appointed by whom?) was not the party congress encountered some opposition among the leaders of even the CC, but a hand-picked committee of the Communist Party who had become accus­ meeting in seeret session. What was this crime tomed to a peaceful existence and might have too sensitive to tell even the party membership? feared very unpleasant political and police Now, 39 years later, Campa has decided that the consequences from the attempt. Perhaps this "opportune moment" has arrived to tell all ... is the source of the charge of 'Trotskyism' or almost all. against them. Whoever objects to an attempt We should begin by noting the signal merit of against Trotsky is, obviously, a -- Trotsky­ Campa's disclosures. Once and for all it does ist. " ("The Comintern and the GPU", 17 away with the Stalinist slander that Trotsky was August 1940) killed by "one of his own". The 2S May 1940 The question of the Dies Committee [House Un­ machine-gun assault on Trotsky's residence in the American Activities Committee] (HUAC) plays Mexico City suburb of Coyoacan was originally what at first glance seems a disproportionate portrayed by the GPU-controlled press as an Raman Mercader. "autogoZpe" ("self-assault"), even though it was Continued on page eight AUSTRALASIAN SPARTACIST December 1978 Page Seven mittee story was offered as "proof" that Trotsky demonstrate his power. A repetition of the Assassination ••• had switched over to Wall Street. attempt is inevitable." ("Stalin Seeks My Death", 8 June 1940) Continued from page seven And an invention it certainly was. Trotsky agreed to the committee's request for testimony The "jackal of the Kremlin" was not alone in Communist movement and to the Mexican Communist on the history of Stalinism in response to perceiving the danger represented by the tiny Party in particular. charges against him by Ameriean CP leaders who forces of the Fourth International. The French appeared before it. ("Your name has been men­ ambassador to Germany, M Coulondre, had a Laborde and I spoke of the need to let the tioned frequently by such witnesses as Browder dramatic interview with Hitler in August 1939, truth be known. New generations of Communists and Foster", said the committee telegram, of­ just before the break of diplomatic relations and other revolutionaries need to know it in fering Trotsky the "opportunity to answer their between the two countries, in which he remarked: order to understand these experiences and act in "If I really think that we will be victorious, I a more consistent and effective manner in the also have the fear that at the end of the war struggles of our country. there will be only one real victor: Mr. Since I left prison in 1970, I have insisted Trotsky". But while the imperialist "democ­ along with the leadership of ,the Communist Party racies" feared Trotsky and refused to grant him on the need to clearly layout these historical asylum, Stal in had a special need to "1 iquidate" truths. We have been in agreement on this, while any potential revolutionary leadership. Trotsky considering that it was necessary to await an wrote three days before his death: opportune moment to do it. " there has developed on the foundation of Laborde is dead and I am carrying out my duty the October Revolution a new privileged caste in recounting this drama, convinced that I am This ca.ste finds itself in a profoundly thus contributing to the steeling and stead­ contradictory position. In words it comes fastness of Communists in my homeland and in forward in the name of communism; in deeds it other countries. fights for its own unlimited power and col­ ossal material privileges. Surrounded by the Footnotes r mistrust and hatred of the deceived masses, (1) General Lazaro Cardenas was president of the new aristocracy cannot afford the tiniest Mexico between 1934 and 1940. A bourgeois breach in its system .... nationalist, he carried out a substantial "Stalin's absolutism does not rest on the agrarian reform and nationalized railroads and traditional authority of 'divine grace,' nor oil. In view of the general's popularity among \' on 'sacred' and 'inviolable' private property, the masses, the Communist Party's initial policy but on the idea of communist equality. This was "unity at any cost" with the government. deprives the oligarchy of a possibility of However, due to the PCM's total submission to the justifying its dictatorship with any kind of Kremlin, Cardenas' granting of asylum to Trotsky rational and persuasive arguments .... The in 1937 made this "unity" henceforth rather less ruling caste is compelled systematically to than total. lie, to paint itself up, don a mask, and (2) Vicente Lombardo Toledano was a prominent ascribe to critics and opponents motives fellow-traveling union leader, whose "indepen­ Mexican Stalinist painter David Alfara Siqueiros (left): diametrically opposite to those impelling dent" labor federation and "Popular Socialist organised the first attempt on Trotsky's life. them .... " ("The Comintern and the GPU") Party" were tolerated by the government as an charges"). Moreover, Trotsky never did testify escape valve to let off discontent. They also before the committee, which withdrew its request, Writing three years earlier about the Moscow served as a link between the tiny, isolated PCM possibly because of his insistence on open Trial of the Old Bolsheviks, Max Shachtman, then and a sector of the working class. Toledano had sessions. In contrast, the CPUSA leaders ap­ a leader of the American Trotskyist movement, close ties to Moscow and was virulent in his peared voluntarily before the Dies Committee vividly explained the political meaning of calls for the expulsion of Trotsky from Mexico. (they were not subpoenaed), tendering over 350 Stalin's terror: (3) The famous Mexican muralist Diego Rivera was pages of testimony. Diego Rivera, incidentally, "The dramatic indictment of' Zinoviev, instrumental in obtaining asylum for Trotsky had left the Fourth International by the time he Kamenev and the others, their ruthless from the Cardenas regime. He was active in ,the testified before the committee. execution, the indictment 'of Trotsky -- that Fourth International until early 1939 when he is, the assault upon those figures that broke with the Trotskyist movement after a series What Campa fundamentally leaves out is why Stalin wanted -- in fact, urgently required-­ symbolize the dread words 'World Revolution' of personal disputes. He later rejoined the PCM. to the international bourgeoisie, is Stalin's (4) Browder, then head of the CPUSA, rode herd on Trotsky's murder. I~ile Campa and his type (Eurocommunists, Krushchevites) portray the plot way of taking the blood-oath to the latter the CPs of the Caribbean basin for the ~mlin. that the international proletarian revol­ No major shift in PCM policy was decided without as the work of a madman, and a certain genre of pseudo-Trotskyists (the followers of Gerry ution, so long as the Kremlin is concerned, consultation lJith New York, and when Browder was has long been interred. That is just it: dumped in 1944 on charges of "liquidationism" it Healy) "explain" it in terms more appropriate to a paranoid ~olice detective, Trotsky all along Stalin has dug the grave of the Third Inter­ led to leadership shakeups in the Latin Ameriean national, its founders, its traditions, and satellite parties. . offered a trenchant political analysis of what moved the Stalinist regime to such criminal acts. literally filled it with corpses. In their (5) Codovilla, lOrllJ-time head of the Argentine place, he erected an institution which re­ CP, played a sinister role in the spanish Civil When Stalin exiled Trotsky from the USSR in 1929, he thought that without an apparatus Lenin's sembles the dead one only in name. In fact, War as watahdog over and aatual operational it is a border police patrol of the Soviet leader of the Spanish CP. Although offieially former comrade-in-arms would simply disappear into obscurity. However, wrote Trotsky in a bureaucracy and the police guardian of law and only Comintern delegate, together with the GPU order throughout the bourgeois world." he engineered the kidnapping and assassination of January 1932 letter to the Politburo of the CPSU (accusing the Kremlin of complicity in attempts (Behind the Mosaow Trial: The Greatest Frame­ Andres Nin and the bloody suppression of the Up in History [1936]) Bareelona May Days of 1937. on his life), "Contrary to expectations it (6) Plutareo Elias Calles was president of Mexieo turned out that ideas have a power of their own from 1924 to 1928 and remained the strongman be­ It is Stalin's conception that the mistake hind the suaaeeding three puppet presidents •• needs rectification". And he adds, in a post­ • • • script at the time of the first Moscow Trial: Naturally, Campa portrays himself as innocent "To be sure, not by any ideological measures: wasn't he chucked out of the PCM for op­ Stalin conducts a struggle on a totally different posing the assassination? Of course, they all plane. He seeks to strike not at the ideas of were, just like Khrushchev was too busy building his opponent, but at his skull" (original the Moscow subway to notice the Moscow Trials WV commentary ••• emphasis) . and the shootings of tens of thousands of long­ time party militants and leaders! But Campa Continued from pa,e seven Though Stalin was the very opposite of a doesn't have the lUXury of using the standard theoretician; his experience in the Bolshevik argument: I didn't know. Campa knew. Further­ role in Campa's account. Part of the standard movement had taught him that the question of more he systematically helped prepare the terrain Stalinist slander lexicon is the charge that the leadership was central. And ever since Hitler's with the Mexican Stalinists' foam-flecked anti­ leader of the Fourth International revealed his accession to power (fundamentally due to the Trotsky propaganda war. Even after he was ex­ ties to reaction by agreeing to testify ,before Stalinist and social-democratic leaders' refusal pelled for "Trotskyism" he remained silent, -- to this witchhunting committee, and Campa uses this to unite in struggle against the fascist menace), prove his servile loyalty to the Kremlin -- when to justify his continued hostility to Trotsky­ he understood instinctively that a new European his "revelations could have blown apart the whole ism. What he doesn'~ say is that this canard was war was being prepared and the Soviet Union was conspiracy. In fact, he even knew in advance of the propaganda theme used by the GPU to prepare its principal target. He knew also that war the Siqueiros raid, and said nothing. And he the climate for Trotsky's assassination: Campa would bring about revolutionary conditions, and kept his mouth shut for another 39 years after­ wants to wash his hands of the blood while still this would threaten ,his bonapartist position ward. This man is an accomplice to murder, and supporting the "justification" for the crime, which was based on accommodating imperialism he should be thankful for bourgeois legality, for hoping thereby to excuse his own complicity. (and hence drowning revolution, as in Spain). if the proletariat held sway he would certainly But why the Dies Committee? Because up until Trotsky wrote following the Siqueiros raid on be called to account for his crime. that time, and notably in the Moscow Trials, his house: Trotsky was consistently portrayed by the Krem­ "The Moscow trials of 1936-37 were staged in Why is he talking at all? Campa's memoirs lin as being an agent of the Third Reich. How­ order to obtain my deportation from Norway, were carefully considered as a political act and ever, with preparations for the Hitler-Stalin i.e., actually to hand me over into the hands published with the agreement of the PCM leader­ pact underway already since mid-1938 ("What Lies of the GPU. But this did not succeed. I am ship. Now the Mexican Communist Party is part of Behind Stalin Bid for Agreement with Hitler?" informed that Stalin has several times ad­ the current loosely known as Eurocommunism, and was the title of an article by Trotsky in March mitted that my exile abroad was a 'major mis­ in recent years has been going out of its way to 1939), this fabrication fell .apart and had to be take. ' . No other way remained of rectifying prove" to the bourgeoisie its democratic creden­ replaced with a new invention. The Dies Com- the mistake except through a terrorist act .... tials. Given its own history, this requires a "In the capacity of a former revolutionist certain settling of accounts over the Trotsky Stalin remembers that the Third International assassination. It is noteworthy, for instance, was incomparably weaker at the beginning of that Campa's complaint is not that such an Sydney Spartaeist League the last war than the Fourth International is assassination was an abomination (in fact, he today. The course of the war may provide a and Laborde calmly and carefully analyzed the publie oHiee mighty impulsion to the development of the proposal and concluded '" it was unnecessary); Fourth International, also within the, USSR rather he criticizes the damage caused by "the itself. That is why Stalin could not have interference of foreign comrades" and promises 2nd floor Thursday: 5.30 to 9.30 pm that the PCM will maintain its "autonomy and 112 Goulbum St, Saturday: 12 noon to 5 pm failed to issue orders to his agents -- to finish me as quickly as possible. independence". It is not to the international Sydney "The accidental failure of the [Siqueiros] workers movement that Campa is appealing here assault, so carefully and so ably prepared, is but to the Mexican bourgeoisie, which is nat- a serious blow to Stalin. The GPU must re­ habilitate itself with Stalin. Stalin must Continued on page ten Page Eight AUSTRALASIAN SPARTACIST December 1978 from revolutionary social democrat to communist Lenin and the vanguard party

"One of the great achievements of the fined, centralised Russian party as against the a 'legitimate shade' in a single party that Bolsheviks was to recognise that a'political Menshevik conception of a looser, all-inclusive knows no 'extremes' has now turned into a split in the working class is the precondition grouping. Trotsky, of course, ultimately came tremendous deception of the workers .... " for proletarian revolution." (James Robert­ over to Lenin, but Luxemburg's failure to recog­ ("The Collapse of the Second International", son, Spartacist League/US Central Committee, nise early on the necessity for a split in the May-June 1915) February 1973) German party proved tragically fatal. The This transformation -- integrally linked with Mandelite IMG and its French co-thinkers have of Explicit reformists and social democrats, Lenin's analysis of the imperialist epoch of late taken to praising Luxemburg's position (as openly antagonistic to the October Revolution, capitalism -- recognised opportunist revisionism did Cliff for years, before "hard" Leninism be­ as the necessary product of developed capitalism. came fashionable among radical youth in the late The revolutionary unity of the working class be­ REVIEW: 1960s), in order to echo the pernicious thesis hind an intransigent Marxist party necessitated that Lenin's democratic-centralism was valid for the political destruation of this treacherous absolutist Russia but not for advanced capi­ layer within the workers movement based upon the Lenin and the Vanguard Partt talist, bourgeois-democratic countries. But labour aristocracy. Luxemburg's opposition to centralism in Russia was predicated precisely on the under-development Menshevik program, menshevik party Spartacist pamphlet of its proletarian movement, the pamphlet points Lenin and the Vanguard Party also explodes the out. In the advanced German party, where the myth pushed by Cliff that Lenin repudiated What revisionist right was formally a minority, she have long attacked the Leninist conception of the Is To Be Done?, his 1902 polemic against the was a centraliser and a disciplinarian. party, arguing that "Leninism leads to Stalin­ Economist tailists, when he fought against the ism", a premise they hold in common with the The IMG seizes on Lenin's tactics during the conservative Bolshevik "committeemen" to trans­ Stalinists. But the decisive significance of the 1906-09 period of Bolshevik-Menshevik coexistence form the Bolsheviks into a mass party in the 1905 . Leninist vanguard party in the successful seizure in the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party Revolution. It was only because of the previous of power by the Russian proletariat and the enor­ (RSDLP) to lend Lenin's authority to its quest struggle to build a hard cadre organisation on mous historical authority of the leaders of that revolution compel numerous others, no less anti­ Leninist, to deny its programmatic foundations while claiming its authority through insidious attempts to "reinterpret" Leninism. Thus the centrist unity-mongerers of the International Marxist Group (I~lG) have in recent years at­ tempted to make of Lenin a partisan of "unity at any price" and Tony Cl iff, guru of the Brit ish Socialist Workers Party (SWP -- associated with the Australian International Socialists [IS]), portrays Lenin in Cliff's own image as a nationally limited, workerist eclectic in the first two volumes of a projected three-volume biography entitled Lenin. Klinger, Eberleine, Particularly timely, therefore, is a new l12~ page pamphlet issued by the Spartacist League/US Lenin and (SL/US) entitled Lenin and the Vanguard Party, Platten at originally published as a series in the SL/US the first paper, Workers Vanguard. This excellently writ­ congress of ten, probing analysis of the development of the Third Lenin's position on the crucial organisation International question covers the period from the Iskra tend­ in 1919. ency, founded in 1900 to combat Russian re­ visionism, to 1917 and the principles of the future Communist International. As against both Stalinist worshippers of infallibility and those for swamp-like unity with anything that moves on the principles of What Is To Be Done? that the revisionists (like the IMG and SI'IP) who seek to the British "far left" (for an extended treatment Bolsheviks were able to transform themselves into counterpose the early period of Bolshevism to its of the U1G's revisionism, see "IMG Turns Lenin a mass party, without ceasing to be Bolsheviks. evolved principles as codified by the Comintern into a Menshevik", Workers' Vanguard no 164, 1 That Cliff attacks the Lenin of 1902 for and continued by Trotsky's Fourth International, July 1977). Lenin indeed declared as late as "overemphasiz,[ing] the difference between sponta­ the pamphlet demonstrates conclusively that: 1909: neity and consciousness" is perfectly explicable "In practice in Russia, Lenin strove to cre­ "A party [in contrast to' a faction] can con­ given the SWP/IS's crude mimicking of the Econ­ ate a disciplined, programmatically homo­ tain a whole gamut of opinions and shades of omists, exemplified by the insulting and patron-' geneous revolutionary vanguard. Until World opinion, the extremes of which may be sharply ising "worker talk" of the Battler (one headline War I, however,he did not break in principle contradictory. In the German Party, side by blared, "Stuff partial indexation -- we want the with the Kautskyan doctrine of the 'party of side with the pronouncedly revolutionary wing lot! ") . They adapt their program to the prevail­ the whole class.' The resolution of that of Kautsky, we see the ultra-revisionist wing ing moods and consciousness of the working class, dialectical contradiction was one of the of Bernstein." simultaneously appealing to petty-bourgeois class important elements creating Leninism as a guilt in the left milieu with their ocker-style world-historic doctrine, as the Marxism of our In fact the Bolshevik faction had been oper­ glorification of the stereotyped "rank-and-file epoch." ating as a de facto centralised party, even when militant". What need has the IS for a hard cadre Lenin: split with opportunism in formal unity with the Mensheviks, and far from organisation? None, as IS leader Tom O'Lincoln being forced into the 1903 split as the IMG clownishly confirms in his pathetic review of his Following the original 1903 split between the blithely claims, Lenin aggressively pursued and mentor's book: Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks, Lenin was the provoked it. But he still accepted the prevail­ "IS members should find it sadly amusing that object of sharp polemics by Trotsky and Rosa ing view that opportunist tendencies were sur­ the Bolshevik Central Committee was as disorg­ Luxemburg for his insistence on a strictly de- vivals of pre-Marxian petty-bourgeois democracy, anised as our own leadership bodies. The CC carried by intel­ again and again made decisions which they im­ lectuals, which mediately forgot about." (Front Line, would inevitably October 1976) succumb to revol­ utionary Marxism This attempt at comparison iS,certainly amusing with the growth enough, but sadly the occasional serious young and maturation of militant gets recruited to these tongue-in-cheek the proletariat. pimps for the labour bureaucracy. It was the shock­ It is true that Lenin's 1902 polemiC was not ing vote of the the definitive Leninist statement on the party German Social Continued on page ten Democrats for war credits on 4 August 1914 and the collapse of Out now! the Second Inter­ national that im­ Lenin and the pelled him to generalise the Vanguard Party_ Bolsheviks' ex­ perience of a Spartacist pamphlet struggle against Menshevism, and he came out for split with the oppor­ Price: $3.00 tunist social­ chauvinists on an international scale: Order from/pay 10: "The old Sparlaci 51 League GPO Box 3473 Lenin and Martov (sitting, right) in 1895 with members of the St Petersburg League of Struggle theory that Sydney, NSW, 2001. for the liberation of the Working Class, an early Russian Marxist propaganda group. opportunism is AUSTRALASIAN SPARTACIST December 1978 Page Nine the Bolshevik "faction". Another section of the Iran ••• pamphlet discusses the relation between the WV commentary ••• dialectical method and political program, looking Continued from page three at Lenin's defence of dialectical materialism Continued from page eight against the Kantian idealism developed by the over all civil legislation. How much clearer ultraleft Bogdanov in that period, and debunks naturally mistrustful of a party which simply would the LCR like him to be? When one of our the idealist mystification of dialectics hawked does the bidding of the Kremlin. comrades of the Ligue Trotskyste de France inter­ around by the Healyite Socialist Labour League. vened to attack the LCR's gross capitulation and This self-serving partial confession is not an to uphold the banner of Permanent Revolution, The Bolshevik revolution took the inter­ isolated phenomenon but part of the broader Rovere lectured him on the need to break with national class struggle to the highest plane yet Eurocommunist phenomenon. It is significant, for "old schemas". reached in history. The critical assimilation of example, that the newspaper of the French Com­ its lessons is vital if the world socialist munist Party, L'Humanite, prominently pub- The British International ~mrxist Group (IMG) revolution is to be successful before the lished this chapter of Campa's memoirs. And it has attempted to justify the USec's scandalous continuing decay of capitalism plunges the world comes after the publication of Eurocommunism and line by comparing Khomeini to Father Gapon, the into another, this time perhaps ultimately the State by Santiago Carrillo, in which the Russian Orthodox priest who figured in the 1905 catastrophic, imperialist war. Lenin and the leader of the Spanish CP says Trotsky rep­ Revolution. But the movement which Gapon -- who Vanguard Party is a valuable contribution to the resented a tendency within the workers movement unlike Khomeini was an isolated individual in no struggle against opportunism through which the and it was wrong to treat him simply .as a Hitler way representative of the clerical establishment cadres of a world bolshevik party, a reborn agent. What are Trotskyists to make of such -- fleetingly headed demanded a constituent Fourth International, will be forged .• statements? assembly based on universal suffrage, an eight­ hour day and the amelioration of working con­ Ernest Mandel, perhaps the best known figure ditions. Gapon himself stood for the separation claiming to represent the traditions of Trotsky­ of church and state. The mullahs, to be sure, ism today, treats them as the "positive aspect" do play upon popular hatred for real crimes of of what he sees as the "contradictions" of Euro­ the shah, but their mobilisations are for the Cricket ••• comnrunism and crows that Carrillo's book "rep­ Koran, not for a Constituent Assembly! resents a formidable historic vindication of Continued from page twelve Trotsky and Trotskyism" (Inprecor, 12 May 1977). That those who claim adherence to the program And in a public meeting in London against Healy's of the Russian Revolution today can assist in foundation of Test Cricket an insidious slanders over the murder of Trotsky, Mandel binding the Iranian proletariat to the mullahs populist twist. called on the Eurocommunists to "immediately, demonstrates the chasm separating the USec from openly and publicly rehabilitate all the victims genuine Leninism-Trotskyism. The potential New Left moralism run amok of Stalin, all the victims of the Moscow trials", expressed by the entry of the Iranian proletariat Packer's "crime" was not simply to flout tra­ and to calIon the Spanish Communist Party to' into the political arena, to break through the dition, but to step on the liberal sensibilities expel Trotsky's assassin. showdown between the shah and the clergy and open of those who would like to think of Australian the road to a workers and peasants government, capital ism as somehow "morally" superior to the This seemingly innocent appeal is wrong in demands for its fulfilment the construction of a rest, or at least to South African capitalism. every way. In the first place pressuring Moscow revolutionary Trotskyist leadership in Iran. Thus the SWP chafed that the inclusion of indi­ to "rehabilitate" Trotsky et al implies a per­ Only thus will the Iranian proletariat, the most vidual white South African cricketers like Mike spective of bureaucratic self-reform. Genuine powerful in the region, exercise its capacity to Proctor, Eddie Barlow and the brilliant batsman, Trotskyists know that there can be no vengeance smash the shah's reign of terror and lift Iran' Barry Richards -- who are no less "than ambassa­ per se for the assassination of the founder of from the centuries-long legacy of backwardness, dors for South Africa's racist apartheid the Fourth International. Trotsky's historic poverty and obscurantism .• system" -- was the "thin end of the wedge for vindication depends centrally upon a' Leninist workers party leading a political revolution to (adapted from Workers Vanguard n~ 219, 17 November 1978) South Africa's re-inclusion in international sport" (Direct Action, 16 February). What the overthrow the Stalinist bureaucracies in the legalist SWP confined to the pages of its paper, Kremlin and the deformed workers states and re­ more brazen types, including one Betty Hounslow, placing them by authentic soviet democracy of the a well-known Sydney "Marxist-feminist", put into working people. Secondly, it fails to recognize "revolutionary" practice. On the first day of a that reformists -- whether Eurocommunist or unre­ Lenin ••• WSC Supertest in Sydney last year, Hounslow generate Stalinist -- cannot restore Trotsky to and a small group of supporters stormed the pitch his rightful place in revolutionary-history. Continued from page nine Unlike Zinoviev or Bukharin, Trotsky represented and accosted Richards while he was batting. In all consistency, Hounslow and the SWP should pro­ a revolutionary program and mortal threat both question. But if Cliff finds it too Leninist to the Stalinist regimes and the bourgeoisie. for his liking, it is because his hostility to test against Australian sportsmen as "ambassa­ dors" of the genocide of the Aboriginals. That is why Moscow to this day refuses to re­ Bolshevism is so strong that he must reject Lenin habilitate him, and that is why when Carrillo or even when the latter was still a revolutionary This disgusting outburst of New Left moralism Campa feel obliged to distance themselves from social democrat. As Lenin and the Vanguard Party was especially pernicious in that Richards, like Stalin's assassination of Trotsky they neverthe­ comments of the Cliffites: many of the white South African cricketers, has less continue to justify their own violent op­ "This group had its 4th of August long ago, repeatedly expressed opposition to apartheid, if position to him 40 years ago. The historian when in 1950, under the pressure of intensely only verbally. He is no Gary Player, who is not Pierre Broue, a leader of the French OCI, nicely anti-Communist public opinion, it refused to only one of f~rmer prime minister Vorster's captured the quality of the Eurocomnrunists' defend North Korea against US imperialism and favourite golfing buddies but a frankly self­ "rehabilitation" of Trotsky ina review of the broke with the Trotskyist movement over this proclaimed ambassador for apartheid as well. Campa memoirs published in Informations Ouvrieres question. And yet this utterly shameless CIA And even in the case of racialist scum like (9-23 and 23-30 August 1978): "And so all the 'socialist' now presumes to lecture on what Player, revolutionaries would direct protest not half-lies become half-truths". Lenin really meant to say in What Is To Be against his participation as a South African in Done?" golfing, but against his attempts to mobilise But above all, we do not appeal to the Stalin­ sympathy for the hated regime he supports. Like­ ists and Eurocommunists because we do not call on In defence of democratic centralism wise, revolutionaries wo.uld be in the forefront the assassins to rehabilitate their victims. These are the main, but by no means the only, of demonstrations directed against racially And everyone of them is up to his elbows in the issues taken up by this absorbing pamphlet rich selected South African sporting teams engaged in blood of valiant militants cut down by Stalin's with historical material. The relation of organ­ international tours, such as the Springbok Rugby counterrevolutionary terror. Campa's responsi­ isational methods to program is explored in depth Union side or the official Test Cricket team bility has been mentioned. Carrillo was an over the question of "freedom of criticism". An as a protest against a particular obnoxious, if active member of the political bureau of the illuminating polemic (from which the above quote secondary, feature of apartheid. Spanish CP which ordered the detention of Andres by Comrade Robertson is excerpted) against But a total quarantining of South Africa from Nin (later assassinated in a NKVD prison in workerist currents who want to go back to the or­ all sporting or cultural contact can only Spain). Even the author of the introduction to ganisational norms of the.RSDLP of 1907 -­ strengthen the garrison-state attitudes of the Campa's memoirs in L'Humanite, Georges Fournial, was one of the GPU agents, trained in the characteristic of a whole ser~es of left splits white population, without in any way weakening from the United Secretariat in the early 1970s -­ the repressive regime. When the legendary West Spanish Civil War, who were sent to Mexico to to open up the internal disputes of the vanguard Indian all-rounder Gary (now Sir Garfield) participate in the assassination of Trotsky. to the pressures of backward layers, illustrates Sobers. toured Southern Africa with an inter­ Healy rehabilitates Stalinist slander why such "open", "democratic" measures are in national side in'the early 1970s, in what sense fact essential features of social democracy. As was he aiding apartheid? When Jesse Owens surged On the other hand there are the likes of Zinoviev observed, Leninism as such did not exist to victory in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, he did Healy, who in the flamboyant style of the London before 4 August 1914. not enhance Hitler's "master race" pretensions gutter press publishes "expose" after "expose" on the contrary, he humiliated them. accusing Joseph Hansen and George Novack, leaders A discussion of the struggle against the together with Mandel of the United Secretariat, Bolshevik ultralefts of 1907-1909 -- the Consigning every white South African to the of being "accompl ices of the GPU" in the murder "Ultimatists" and "Otzovists" -- throws light on category of moral pariah, of unconscious "am­ of Trotsky. Their latest despicable installment the tactical questions raised by the triumph of bassador of apartheid", makes sense only to those in this utterly discredited slander campaign has tsarist reaction and the centralist character of who divide the world into good and evil people. Hansen no longer merely complicit in "covering And if a black South African cricketer were to up" alleged GPU infiltration in the Trotsky play in Australia, would he too be assaulted on household, but being a former "collaborator" of Spanish language Spartacist number 6 the pitch as an "ambassador of apartheid" -- is Ramon Mercader ("Is Trotsky's Assassin Really he a pariah as well? South African whites are Dead?" [!!J, [US] Bulletin, 24 October). indeed an oppressor caste in relation to the (Interestingly there was a GPU cell in the SWP black majority, but the communist program is in 1941, the Sobe1-Soblen group; how come Hansen Contents include class war -- for a black-centred proletarian ~TACJST~:~...... """ ... **" -.".".- analysis of the de- missed braintrusting them?) . This vile character revolution to smash the apartheid state -- not assassination not only shows that Healy and com­ ci sive break from race war! Moscow of the "Euro­ pany will stop at nothing in their vile GPU­ communist" Commu. The reformists hypocritically claim they baiting, but it aids the real assassins in re­ ni sf Party of Spain strike a blow against capitalist aggrandisement viving the long-dead slander that "his own (PCE) and the cri si s and racist oppression by seeking to "purify" people" killed Trotsky. inside the Pinochet sport, by keeping it "amateur". Marxists under­ junta in Chile. stand that the converse is true: sport, like A year ago, when Santiago Carrillo visited all cultural endeavour, will be cleansed of the the United States_ in the hopes of gaining the deforming influence of bourgeois class rule only blessing of the State Department -- for which he Price: 50 cents when the bourgeoisie is overthrown .. The destruc­ was willing, even eager, to cross a picket line tion of private ownership will inaugurate a Order from/pay to: society which, through the qualitative expansion r of the means of production, will nurture the de­ NOTICE: Spartaci sl League AUSTRALASIAN SPARTACIST will not appear in S~ velopment of creative and athletic expression GPO Box 3473 January; the next issue will appear in February 1979. Sydney. NSW, 201n. freed from the warping influences of racism, com­ mercialism and imperialist chauvinism .• \.. ~

Pa.e..:r~~ ~p>ST~~A~!~.S,~~R"I:~~IST•. De,ce~b,er}~?~ of striking Yale University workers -- Workers victory of rev1s10nism in Chinese ruling circles, is overthrown through workers political revol­ Vanguard [WV] confronted this class traitor at a culminating a "two-line struggle" between "left" ution. And for that task what is required above press conference at Harvard University. Chal­ and "right" dating back to the Cultural Revol­ all is the construction of a Chinese Trotskyist lenging Carrillo for his responsibility in the ution. party, section of a reborn Fourt]l International .• murders of Nin and Trotsky (Mercader was a mem­ ber of the Catalan Communist Party, the PSUC), Today it is almost universally accepted by all WV demanded to know if Carrillo continued to but Maoists that the "Great Proletarian Cultural deny his compliciLy. He responded: Revolution" was in fact a power struggle between competing wings of the bureaucracy. But at the "Ramon Mercader was a member of the Com­ time, the Spartacist tendency was virtually alone Tripp ... munist Party in Catalonia until 1936. In 1936 in recognising that this "revolution" represented he disappeared and has not returned since to nothing so much as "one section of the Chinese Continued from page two the party ranks. If, as is known, 'he partici­ bureaucracy striving, against a less verbally pated in and was the protagonist of the 'militant' section, to strengthen its own bu­ namesake "fused" with a whole group of "third­ assassination of Trotsky, the Communist Party reaucratic rule" ([US] Spartacist no 10, May­ campists". bears no responsibility for this. June 1967). As a later article emphasised: We would not begrudge Comrade Tripp a politi­ "I would like to remind you that in London, "Revolutionary Marxists could not support either cal change of heart. Our movement too has re­ I believe it is, there exists a committee the utopian-militarist nationalism of the Mao cruited numerous individuals with long and di­ which accuses the Fourth International [shout faction or the various careerists struggling to verse political histories. But for Trotskyists, by a WV journalist: "That's a lie!"]. Well, keep their jobs" ([US] Spartacus Youth League the first thing is "to be true in little things you can believe what you want, but there's a pamphlet, The Stalin School of Falsification Re­ as in big ones". The SWP is not Trotskyist how­ committee that says Trotsky's bodyguards were visited). But the ostensible Trotskyists of the ever, as it demonstirates even in its attempt to agents of the KGB .... The Communist Party of Healyite International Committee (represented in claim -- through a deliberately uncritical ac­ Spain is not responsible." Australia by the Socialist Labour League) and the count of Tripp' 5 past -- continuity with the Mandelite wing of the United Secretariat fell earlier Trotskyist movement ...... over each other in lauding the Red Guards, who On 28 August 1940 some 1500 people attended a were being used by Mao to smash his factional op­ Tripp's subsequent actions do not diminish the Trotsky memorial meeting in New York where they ponents, as "radical", "anti-bureaucratic" youth. role he played in the revolutionary movement for heard James P Cannon say farewell to their com­ some years earlier in his career. His recruit­ rade, teacher and martyr: Teng boosts Japanese militarism ment to Trotskyism when a leading public spokes­ There is no genuinelY,radical faction within man for (though never a central leader of) the "We do not deny the grief that constricts all the ruling circles in Peking, nor has there ever CPA represented a genuine and substantial gain our hearts. But ours is not the grief of been. Every section of the bureaucracY'is united for the Trotskyist movement. His record in, the prostration, the grief that s~ps the will: It in defending the privileged nationalistic CPA in the 1920s is one of persistent work in­ is tempered by rage and hatred and determ1- interests __ under the guise of building spired by revolutionary sentiments, in an organ­ nation. We shall transmute it into fighting "socialism in one country" __ which derive from isation not yet fully corrupted by Stalinism. energy to carryon the Old Man's fight. Let its position as a parasitic caste resting upon Tripp, unlike many sincere Communist militants us say farewell to him in a manner worthy of the socialised property forms of a workers state. who were bamboozled and then rendered cynical by his disciples, like good soldiers of Trotsky's All the factors which have convulsed the Chinese Stalin's Comintern, made the leap to Trotskyism. army. Not crouching in weakness and despair, bureaucracy for two decades __ great power as- The Trotskyist movement of the 1930s, however but standing upright with dry eyes and pirations in the face of extreme material back- weak, isolated and occasionally disoriented, for clenched fists. With the song of struggle and wardness the demands of the workers and peasants a time strove under difficult conditions to main­ victory on our lips. With the song of con- . __ will ~ontinue to lead to interminable fac­ tain the Trotskyist program. Not so the SWP, the fidence in Trotsky's Fourth International, the~~ional backstabbing, having nothing in common end-product of several decades of Pabloist de­ International Party that shall be the human w'lth the interests of the Chinese workers or the generation. Thus it is not true that, as Tripp race!". socialised economy. The traditional Stalinist' says in Direct Action, "my joining the SWP is a model of forced-march industrialisation pre­ contiriuation of my membership of the Communist dicated on building large industrial complexes Party of Australia in the 1920s and the early from the economic surpluses brutally extracted, Trotskyist movement in the 1930s". However, in the main, from the peasantry (as it was in Tripp himself, having long ago recoiled from the Telephone militants ••• Russia, through mass terror) is simply not on. struggle, may indeed have found some "continuity" And the idealistic voluntarism and national with. the SWP, whose disdain for principles and Continued from page four messianism associated with Mao (eg his."Great for the history of our movement is one facet of Leap Forward") has been a demonstrated fiasco. its hostility to genuine Trotskyism •• only sure road to mobilising the ranks of the l'lithin the nationalist framework of "socialism labour movement in struggle against the bosses. in one country", the Chinese economy simply Opportunist short cuts in the end lead only to cannot advance to the level of the industrialised "" demoralisation and defeat. At ,"best", they prod­ West, much less to socialism. Vile Stalinist racism uce more flexible, left-talking labour fakers, not opponents of the bureaucracy's pro-capitalist It is particularly in the area of foreign The recent signing of the Sino-Japanese "Peace and policies. Militant Telecom workers here, strad:. policy that the treacherous equivalence of ~ll Friendship" treaty has been hailed, naturally, by EF dIed with a bureaucracy equally, if not as wings of the Chinese Stalinist bureaucracy 1S Hill, chairman of the Communist Party of Australia blatantly, pro-capitalist as the CWA tops, con­ demonstrated. Hua and Teng are both carrying out (Marxist-Leninist), as a "good thing". But this flunkey to the letter the reactionary policies -- in fronted as well with the continual threat of may have some "re-education" to do on his comrades. massive layoffs through automation, would do well particular the alliance with US imperialism -- , initiated by Mao and faithfully followed by the For years the Maoists have ranted in the vilest "yellow to examine the record and program of the Militant peril" style against the thr.. eat of "Jap imperialism" to Action Caucus. It is the only program which can Gang of Four during its spell in power. In the midst of the massive popular uprising in Iran, Australia. As recently as October 1978 a leaflet of the assure the workers' victory against the bosses Hillite Students for Australian Independence fulminated and their system .• Hua was to be found '~ining and dining with the butcher whose troops were massacring anti- again$t "Jap (sic!) woodchipping \YIonopolies which plun­ shah protesters in the streets of Teheran. der our beautiful national forests". This despicable Shortly thereafter Teng visited the various racism flows naturally out of the "patriotic" heritage of Southeast Asian dictatorships which comprise the Australian Stalinism, typified by the Communist Party's anti-communist ASEN~ military alliance. I~ile bloc with the bourgeoisie during Wodd War II when China ... Peking excoriated Vietnamese prem~er Pham ran Stalinist cartoonists regularly caricatured the Japanese as sub-human. And in every sphere, capitulating.Jo the most Continued from page one Dong for laying a wreath at a nat10nal mon¥ment to British imperialist troops killed fighting the reactionary prejudices of backward layers of the working to the question of what is happening in China is, Malayan Communist Party in the 1950s, Teng!, class is par for the course for Mao-Stalinism. Thus a re­ "Stalinist business as usual". himself made an inspection tour of Thai military cent article in Vanguard (23 November) carries the,dis­ What is a pro-Peking Maoist whose critical hardware used against Thailand's Madist-leaning gusting headline, "Willesee - a faggot of the multi. capacities have not been totally corrupted by guerrillas (see photo in 24 November Far Eastern nationals". As LD Trotsky put it, "Stalinism is the Economic Review). syphilis of the workers movement" ~moist doublethink to think now? Not only is a "counterrevolutionary incident" of two years ago The centre!liece of Teng' s toar I'las an eight­ , # now "completely revolutionary"; not only is the day visit to Japan to sign the so-called Treaty era ushered in by the "Great Proletarian .Cultural of Peace and Friendship, ~lhich included an "anti­ Revolution" now being mooted as a "feudal-fascist hegemony" clause obviously directed against the Austr8lasiaf) dictatorship"; but even the Great Helmsman, the Soviet Union. In Tokyo Teng showered praise on Tt:~ one "sure thing" in the topsy-turvy world of the US-Japan Security Treaty as a bulwark against ;'~ Maoism, it now turns out, was at pest only 70 the "Soviet threat". This obscene 'betrayal of SPARTACIST percent "great". . . the Japanese proletariat was also a striking illustration that it is the bureaucracy's own Some members of the Peking-loyal Communist counterrevolutionary policy of "peaceful co­ Party (Marxist-Leninist) may well find the existence" with imperialism which is the Subscribe 11 issues - $3 latest twist too much to stomach -- a thought greatest threat to the conquests of the Chinese undoubtedly causing EF Hill nightmares -- and revolution. For whatever the immediate Overseas rates: see in the recent events a vindication of ex­ surface mail - $3 for 11 issues CPA(ML) cadre and now Red Eureka Movement (REM) exigencies of Japanese diplomacy, the Japanese leader Albert Langer's line that the ouster of bourgeoisie will always look upon China as its natural colony. ' airmail - for issues (except the Gang of Four two years ago placed China on $5 11 the capitalist road. Langer will undoubtedly EuropeJNorth America). $10 for 11 For a Chinese Trotskyist party issues (Europe/North America) point to the attacks on t~o to raise the spectre of Khrushchev's "secret speech" denunci­ At the time of the ouster of the Gang of Four, NAME ______~ ______ation of Stalin in 1956 which, according to we noted that "Mao's' crown lies unsteadIly on Maoist dogma, signalled the restorationist coup lIua' shead. . .. The purge of the Chiang Ching ADDRESS ______in the Kremlin. In the idealist worldview of clique is not the consolidation of a new stable Stalinism, speeches replace civil war as the regime but the beginning of a time of troubles vehicle for counterrevolution. The ouster of the for the Chinese bureaucracy". That applies with CITY STATE. ______Gang of Four, claims Langer, represented the equal force today. The Chinese working class has , no interest in supporting any of these bureau­ POSTCODE PHONE ______Spartacist League "" cratic parasites. Rather it must struggle to smash the entire bureaucracy and replace it with MELBOURNE ...... (03) 62·5135 a genuinely proletarian regime based on the GPO Box 2339, Melbourne, VIC, 3001 . institutions of soviet democracy and committed mail to/make cheques payable to:Spartacist Publications, to a goal of international proletarian revol­ GPO Box 3473, SYDNEY ...... (02) 235·8195 ution. The gains achieved by the Chinese Sydney, NSW, 2001 \. GPO Box 3473, Sydney, NSW, 2001 workers and peasants will continue to be con­ stantly threatened until the Peking bureaucracy AUSTRAt:ASIANSPARTAC1ST 'uecember 1918' Pap Elflen" . Packer mone, versus Empire tradition The cricket fracas Bourgeois journalists do call summer the media audacity to secretly recruit players right in the Forsyth, The Great Cricket Hijack) "silly season". And indeed, while power middle of struggles in Peking and uprising in Iran are more. That these faded colonialist fossils can often than not relegated to the inside pages, " the Centenary Test in Melbourne in March, . excoriate as "mercenaries" a Vivian Richards or scarcely a day has gone by without some note 1977, an event hailed at the time as the most an Andy Roberts, sons of Antiguan fishermen and being taken in the front pages or editorial momentous in the history of the game, when the sharecroppers, for utilising their great athletic columns of the bourgeois press on such contro­ sun seemed destined to shine forever on of­ talents to escape from the grinding poverty which versies as the colour of the cricket ball and the ficial cricket and all it stood propriety of limited overs, or whether the Sydney for: good manners, fair play, Cricket Ground ("the most picturesque in the gentlemanliness -- not a whisper of world") has been "desecrated" by the construction vulgar money." ("Inside the Packer of six enormous light towers which give half of Circus", National Times, 2 December Sydney the appearance of an indoor movie set at 1978) night. For the cricket season is here, and with Let Thommo play! it the second year of the much ballyhooed "war" between media mogul Kerry Packer's innovative And with "gentlemanliness" and World Series Cricket (WSC) and the somewhat "fair play" on its side, the ACB pro­ depleted forces of the "establishment game" con­ ceeded to fight tooth and nail against trolled by the Australian Cricket Board (ACB). the churlish Packer1s attempt to in­ fringe on its monopolistic grip over Cricket's days of Sturm und Drang date back to the sport, and its feudalistic pro­ the ACB's refusal to grant Packer exclusive prietary control over its players television rights for Test cricket in Australia (which extended to not allowing in 1976. Frustrated by what he described as the players' wives to join them on six­ "old boys network", Packer retaliated by signing month tours!). Anyone who signed up up fifty of the world's best cricketers to com­ with WSC was banned not only from pete in his own series. Packer streamlined the playing Test Cricket but from matches rules of the game and introduced night cricket to all the way down to the district and make cricket matches more accessible to mass club level. Most recently, when fast audiences, offered his players double the sal­ bowler Jeff Thomson, the ACB's one aries they got for playing "official" Tests and· remaining star attraction, returned financed a high-powered media promotion campaign. from the West Indies tour and an­ Cricket traditionalists, of course, were livid. nounced his "defection" to Packer, he But the ensuing "war of words" went far beyond found himself denounced in court by sporting circles. Even the reformists of the these "gentlemen" as "utterly irres­ Communist Party (CPA), International Socialists ponsible and a liar". BThommo", by (IS) and Socialist Workers Party (SWP) felt com­ all accounts a perfectly friendly and WSC cricket stars: West Indian Viv Richards with South African Barry pelled to speak out against the "Packer Circus", harmless'fellow whose only "crime" is Richards. For SWP Barry Richards is an "ambassador for apartheid". in the case of the latter, against Packer's re­ a somewhat promiscuous habit of sign­ is the lot of the great mass of West Indian cruitment of white South African cricketers. ing contracts without looking at the fine print, youth, is the height of hypocrisy. Yet it found Why is Test Cricket sacred? was banned from WSC cricket for a year and ef­ its echoes in the reformist "left". The CPA's fectively deprived of his livelihood. Tribune (15 February 1978) carried a signed Why all the fuss? Why is Test Cricket sacred? Cricketers should be allowed to play for whom article which, while rapping the ACB and the What caused bourgeois editorialists, not to they like, when they like. Melbourne Cricket Club as "remnants of upper mention would-be revolutionaries, to take a class snobbery", directed all its fire at the position on the conduct of a sport? Ah, but As the new season opened, the first WSC game "blatantly hard-sell commercial approach" of the cricket is not just a sport, not to those mired drew nearly 50,000' people to the Sydney Cricket "Packer Circus", which was "more interested in in nationj-l chauvinism. It is a "way of 1 ife", a Ground. The ACB could only wait to play its selling the young cricket enthusiast a cigarette symbol otthe Empire, or at least of the myth of trump card -- the appeal to "national pride" in or a MacDonald's hamburger than how to bowl leg­ an Empire which is long since decrepit, whose the upcoming Ashes battle. But with Packer's breaks". raid leaving the ACB a second-rate (if not third­ IS: for cricKet ... and Queen and country? rate) Test team to face the English Eleven (the 1 ISer Alec Kahn, writing in the 18 February December Sydney Sun called Battler, did not bother to attack the ACB at all, the first day's play of the simply denouncing Packer: "His whole aim is to first Test, a BWreck of the turn the non-profit structure Of international 'Gabba"), the appeal ap­ cricket into his own personal money-spinning peared to be rather limited. fiefdom" (emphasis added). In the meantime, Packer -­ no slouch at exploiting This defence of the Imperial gerontocracy (ap­ nationalist emotions himself propriately enough, the supreme governing body of -- filled the airwaves with "international cricket" was until the 1960s still a jingoistic ditty in the known as the Imperial Cricket Council) by the finest Madison Avenue style ocker-workerists of the IS is truly scandalous. exhorting, "Come on, Certainly socialists deplore the crass commercial Aussies, come on". and nationalist exploitation to which sport is SUbjected by capitalism. But the elevation of While we refuse to side athletics, like all cultural pursuits, from the with either Packer or the cesspool of decaying capitalism is obviously ACB in the "great cricket possible only with capitalism's destruction. In war", we do not begrudge the meantime, would the IS prefer that Lillee, first-class cricketers' at­ Chappell et al. got paid less in the interest of tempts to maximise their maintaining "non-profit" cricket? In any case, earnings in their in­ the ACB is no stranger to "commercial exploit­ variably short playing ation" either, having assiduously and not un­ L . ) ~. }("iF•.. :J_I',,,,,;,.S',-- u-/4'.-" .•. j _ careers. Before the "Packer successfully courted business sponsorship for the Protesters against Barry Richards, including Betty Hounslow (right), under arrest revolution" a regular member last two decades. after invading pitch during WSC Supertest, 16 March 1978. of the Australian Test team metropolitan centre today has a lower standard of was earning about $12,000 (which has since risen Behind the aSl.nl.ne "amateurism" and idiot living than even Spain. Even CLR James, the l~est to compete with the WSC). If he made it into the national chauvinism of the IS and CPA lurks Indian renegade from Trotskyisn '-Iho became a guru "superstar" bracket like Dennis Lillee, he might another factor: Kerry Packer is singularly un­ for British Africa's emerging neo-colonial go as high as $20,000. The ACB justified this popular among Labor Party supporters and class­ "socialist" rulers, lauded the "inherent decency" relatively paltry return by monotonously stress­ conscious workers -- and rightly so. Under his of the "great game" in his paean, Beyond a ing the purported "honour of representing your control the Packer media empire has more than Boundary, and cried out in horror at the creeping country" -- after all, if Don Bradman played for maintained its notoriety as a mouthpiece for commercialisation of the sport in the 1950s that peanuts, why couldn't Test cricketers today? -­ reactionary and viciously anti-working-class "cricket is integral to British civilisation". and denouncing those who opted for the average propaganda. Packer himself, arrogant and ag­ Yes, "King, Country and Cricket" represented $25,000 salary Packer was offering as "mercen­ gressive, epitomises the obnoxious tycoon -- his "decency" and "fair play" -- for the pith­ aries". In the words of Victorian wicket-keeper publicly proclaimed heroes are Menzies and helmeted "gentlemen" of the British Imperial of­ Richie Robinson: Genghis Khan! But how is he different from any ficer caste, whose "civilising mission" meant en­ other capitalist? To focus attention only OP slavement and butchery for the colonial masses. "I knew people would say we had no loyalty. the "big, bad" capitalist while ignoring his more But loyalty would not get my sons a good edu­ aristocratic rivals only gives the chauvinist Yet here was Kerry Packer, the money-grubbing cation. That would take money and Packer of­ capitalist who, in the pursuit of profit, had the fered it at the right time for me." (Chris Continued on page ten Page Twelve AUSTRALASIAN SPARTACIST December 1978