WORKERS ,,16(;0I1R' 25¢ -~.... ~-, ... No. 245 .. •J:l.... '~y X·523 7 December 1979 Desnite Khomeini'sDeath Wish for Iran 010
It ;;an't go on much longer without a ready to die for the "imam" and the head-on crash between the world's most Americans who have made a fashion of dangerous imperialist power and the "Nuke the Ayatollah" T-shirts. world's most powerful medievalist The U.S. media counts off the days religious fanatic. Not for much longer for a frustrated. angry and humiliated can Khomeini threaten to hold trials population. while a group of congress and execute the hostages at the U.S. men have organized a campaign to "set embassy in Teheran while he calls forth the date" for military retaliation. ABC Islamic wrath against the "American TV runs a near-nightly news special Satan." and taunts Carter for having entitled. "America Held Hostage." and "no guts." It cannot go on indefinitely. Tillli' magazine's tlag-and-eagle cover thiS gathering of U.S. warships and demands to know: "Has America Lost aircraft off the coast of the Arabian Its Clout')" peninsula and these storm clouds of war No. it can't go on much longer. sentiment on the streets of America and Despite the efforts to "play it cool." Iran. Carter's war threats are real. and the In the bizarre events of the last month conscLJuences terriblc~tor the masses there IS a tearful S) mmetr) in the lunatiC of Iran and the international proletanat. pronouncements of the 79-year-old nut For the ultimate target in the \\'1'1" with state powcr in Qum who says that room of U.S. impnialism is not Iran but ali Iranians would welcome martyrdom. Russia. It is because the shah was part of Kitty Hawk: Carter's "other remedy." and the coldly genocidal calculations of American imperialism's global anti the Dr. Strangeloves in the war/crisis Soviet strategy that U.S. embassies have condition its every move in this danger rule. But without gIVIng the slightest room buried decp below the Pentagon. now become the targets of enraged ous contest of nerves. diplomacy and amount of political support to the There is indeed a dreadful correspon mobs from the halls of Islamabad to the perhaps war. Surely the ayatollah is reactionary mullah regime of Iran. in a dence between the Iranians who display shores of Tripoli. And it is this same prepared to sacrifice a few million military connict between the most themselves in their funeral 'shrouds anti-Soviet strategy which continues to Iranians to the cause of popular mullah continued on page 2
Embassies Ablaze, Shootout in Mecca's Mosque ...What Next? , Behind Mullah Madness f' American embassies ablaze from On November 20. 200 to 300 well Tripoli to Islamabad. marine guards armed Bedouin tribesmen led by their dead in the fiery ruins. diplomats in 22-year-old Mahdi. or self-proclaimed Teheran still hostage to huge crowds of Messiah. seized Mecca's Grand Islamic students burn U.S. embassy in Pakistan on November 21. fervent Khomeiniites. gunbattles Il1 MosLJue. holiest shnne of Islam. during Mecca's Grand MosLJue. a tide of the height of Islamic New Year religious assaults on Amencan embassies. consu the U.S. embassy unhindered. while blamic religious frenzy reaching an pilgrimages. Though it was the work of lates and businesses throughout the Qaddafi sent apologies to Washington. orgiastic crescendo of bloody self a small Islamic sect. Khomeini instantly East. in Kuwait. Lebanon. Bangladesh. Meanwhile the Shi'ite holy month of tlagellation~has the Sword of Islam called on the faithful to rise up and India. Turkey. Pakistan and Libya. Muharram was reaching its climax in been raised to crush the "infidel" once de:end Islam against supposed Ameri In Islamahad. capital of Pakistan. the holy day of Ashura when huge and for al!,! can complicity. letting loose a storm of 20.000 demonstrators chanting "Down processions oftlagellants whipping their with the Dog Carter" and "Down with backs bloody. some even cracking their --'-'- Imperialism" stormed and burned the skulls with scimitars. poured through J2-acre American embassy complex. In the streets while women in black a country where troops are swift and chadors wailed and shrieked from ruthless in suppressing any opposition rooftops and doorways. Ashura com to General Zia"s military dictatorship. it memorates the martyrdom oj Mo took them over two hours to reach the hammad's grandson Hussein by the smoldering ruins where two marines lay Caliphate of Yazid. and it was out of last dead. In Libya. where Islamic colonel year's Ashura processions that the Qaddafi rules with an iron hand. 2.000 mullahs emerged victorious over the iiiiiiiiii_iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii ...... _ ....."'....._....,.,-·~"'__.._,,_'"" .. demonstrators hailing Khomeini sacked ('olltilllied 011 page II ,. See No Evil dP-eak No Truth SWP Bows Ever Lower to Khomeini
The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) womcn back into \cils. strikebrcaking a "Iren/ied campaign to discredit him" liberal pacifism and bourgeois ddeat has been the "best builder" in the U.S. 01 and blnndv supprcssion nl thc Kurds. upon his recent return from leheran. Ism to get t he masses into the streets. Khomeini's reactionary Islamic mO\c Ihe symptoms of a grnwing and though "Hansen has so far rclused to "WIl\ dic lor the shah"" the SWP asks. ment. In the mullahs' moment 01 dangerous patriotic \\ar re\er in thc retreat." Hansen. however. is already but what It really means is "Why die lor triumph ovcr the shah last year. the 23 U.S. arc all around us. Hut if you had to discredited. A convicted tax evader and anything"" February tfititalll trumpeted: "Iranian rely on the\/ililillll. you'd ne\er kno\\ on the e,\treme right \\ing of Capitol It may come as a shock to the SWP. Masses ShO\\ the Way." Today. at a it. Ihe SWP has a problem-t he Hill. Hansen has championed causes hut the American population is not time when much 01 thc left has become American public has de\elo["led a deep Irom the fight vs. abortion to opposing inherently pacilist. Carter's imperialist increasingly 4ueasy about their lormer hat red for ayatollahs. So these \\ ollld-be the "gi\ea\\ay" of the Panama Canal. \\ar drive against Iran must be fought enthusiastic support to the Islamic spnkl'smen lor the "\ast majnrity His last diplomatic mission took him t.o hard. and genuine socialists know ho\\ mullah regime, the oh-so-respectable simplv lie. "Protests say: '\0 War the bunker of Gennal Somo/a where hc to do It. Hig Oil's ripoll's. the torture reformists of the SWP arc wildly Agalll"! Iran·..· reads thc ,\lililalll's encouraged the shah of \icaragua to chic shah. Rockdeller's and Kissinger's cheering the Khomeiniite sei/llre of the hCldline. \\ hIle the article goes on to hang on. sinister plots. the "nest of spies" in the U.S. embassy. pronf positive that elaim: What IS thc SWP up to \\ith this U.S. embassy-the American \\orking Khomeini is the "progressi\e" they "Defying the wishes of the vast majority cloud-cuckoo-I,1l1d fantasy. of mass class can be mobili/ed against these alwa\s said he was. "Iranian workcrs in of the American people. Carter is taking new steps toward war against Iran.... protests against Carter's war threats? imperialist machinations, but not in lead of deepening re\olution."· the fhe American people arc not buying it.·· Quite simply. these reformists arc solidarity with the ayatollahs and their .Hililalll (30 i\:n\embn) insists. exhnrt \ot hUylng ie' A recent Associated seeking ,I' way to make their consistent program for "liberation": no whiskey. ing thc American public to "dra\\ Press; \ HC \ews poll re\ealed that pro-Khomeini position palatable at a no rock and roll. and no unveiled inspiration from the heroic example of some 00 percent of Americans would time when the ayatollah's effigy is heing \\omen. the Iranian masses ... who arc no\\ support a mIlitary strike against Iran it hurned from coast to coast. And while Ihe \\ay to win the American prok mobili/ing by the millions tn detend the hostages were harmed or even put on they may he the most craven. the SWP tanat to the light against imperialism is their re\olution.'· triaI. \10st bourgeois commentators arc by no means the only left apologists not the SWp's way, the way of cringing You'd ne\er know from the .tlititalll have remarked in ama/ement at Carter's for the "imam." At a December I Ne\\ pacifism .in America. nothing but a that the Ayatollah Khomellli-whose restraint thus I'll' III the face 01 massive York "anti-shah" [read pro-KhomeiniJ eo\er for political support to th.. 4uotations arc carefully selected and sentiment to ":\uke the Ayatollah." demo attended by much of the left. a religious fanatic of Qum. We arc sanltl/ed for SWP publicatinn--is using Another .\Iililalll article (7 Spartaclst leafleting team \\as excluded absolutely opposed to any American the crisis to divert the Iranian Illasses' December). began under the absurd lor being "antl-Khomeini.'· imperiali~t military adventures in Iran. attention from the shattered condition front-page headline "Carter steps up Sometimes it's hard to be a reformist. We raised the demand "Down with the of the Iranian economy and state. :\or \\ar threats. Defies growing anti\\ar Ha\ing decided to stand by their man. shah!" along with Iranian militants. would you know that his theocratic re sentiment." (Douhtless the run on Khomeini, the SWP has got to comince when the SWP was saying this was an gime had been exposed as an enemy 01 Iranian flags-which Americans al"l' at least its own membership that it's "ultra-left" call. Hut we tell thetruth: the the e.\ploited and oppressed. For its buying In record numbers for purposes doing the right (i.e.. the pupular) thing. working class must organize itsell part. the SWP desperately needs to 01 Immolation. i':l a sign of the "growing"' In order to pull 011 this impossible teat independently of the shahs. the ayatol divert attention lrom the o\er\\hclming or perhaps "burning" sentiment against of simultaneously tailing mass senti lahs and the imperialists in the battle for evidence of Khomeini's reactionary war.) rhe story.rushes to defend Idaho ment in Teheran and the U.S., the SWP world socialist revolution. the only way repression-his firing s4uads' slaughter Republican congressman George Han is cynically using the Vietnam antiwar to win human dignity and freedom lor of homost;xuals and leftists. forcing sen who the SW'p says was the object 01 movement as a niodel. when it relied on the world's oppressed masses.•
another Ira4i-style Soviet-linked left Carter's War nationalist regIme that the CIA engineered the restoration of Moham mad Rela Pahla\i back in 1953, and Threats ... through him assured a loyal bulwark (continued/rom pOKe 1) against the USSR for more than 20 years. powerful imperialist country on earth Having created the monster. the U.S. and backward. semi-colonial Iran. is now stuck with him. Mexico. which socialists stand even with crazy mullahs briel1y sheltered him. refuses to take against U.S. imperialism. Hands off back the Yankees' deposed king of Iran! kings. Of all the countries on earth, only Anwar Sadat's Egypt seems to want the Target Moscow shah. Carter's response to the seizure of the Iran is not some Latin American "banana republic," where Washington American embassy has been character can "send in the marines" without risk of i/ed as one of great restraint. (Not so that of his mother. The irrepressible world war. .It is a strategically important "Mil Lillian" has publicly suggested country on the southern border of the that someone offer $1 million to Soviet Union. U.S. imperialism's policy assassinate Khomeini.) But Carter's toward Iran since World War II has Abb'as!Gamma carefully calculated "moderation" been motivated by capitalism/ "We are ready to be martyred": Khomeini is ready to put all Iran in burial masks a seething fury fired by humilia imperialism's implacable hostility to the shrouds. tion and impotence. In point of fact. Soviet degenerated workers state. For Carter is every bit as capable of unstable friends in the region like well."' Yakolev said in a masterful instance, it was to prevent the rise of ruthlessly sacrificing thousands of lives Egypt's Sadat and the Saudi monarchy. understatement. "Recently. the Ameri over this incident as is the madman U.S. imperialism has anti-Russian cans captured our plane at Kennedy Khomeini. especially if he thinks it will designs even for a shah-less Iran. In this Airport with 60 innocent people. chil WORKERS get him another term in the White regard it is significant that. although dren" (Sell" rurf.; Til/WI, 3 December). House. Carter's "moderation" is moti Washington and Teheran are practically VANGIJARD \ated nol so much by concern for the in a state of war, 270 Iranians continue Lonely at the Top Marxist Working-Class Biweekly hostages as by anti-Soviet strategic to receive training as pilots in the U.S. of the Spartacist League of the U.S. calculations. The fact is that the U.S. Air Force.and \'1\ y. Although congres Carter. for now. can seemingly do EDITOR Jan Norden desperately wants an anti-Soviet Iran. sional pressure forced Defense Secre nothing but grit his oversiled teeth and ASSOCIATE EDITOR Charles Burroughs Thus, the latest Business Week (10 tary Harold Hrown to suspend their strike the pose of a cool-headed crisis PRODUCTION Darlene Kamiura (Manager) December) urges Carter not to heed the flight training last week. these Iranian manager. Itchy trigger fingers in the Noah Wilner cries for Iranian blood and to do military cadres remain under the aegis Pentagon arc being restrained nM only CIRCULATION MANAGER Karen Wyatt nothing to weaken the Iranian state. lest of the Pentagon. by the considerations of anti-Soviet EDITORIAL BOARD Jon Brule, George Foster, liz Gordon, James Robertson. Joseph the Kremlin step into the power Meanwhile the Soviet Union has strategy. hut also by the inability of the Seymour, MarJone Stamberg vacu um: remained aloof (although formally L .S. to control its Japanese and Workers Vanguard (USPS 098-770) published "It would be catastrophic-not only for speaking out for the release of the German imperialist allies. for whom one biweekly. skipping an issue In August and a Iran but also tor long-term U.S. hostages) to watch the U.S. agonize over barrel of Khomeini's crude is worth week "In December. by the Spartacist interests.... Any U.S. action to splinter Publishing Co. 260 West Broadway. New its difficulties in Iran. Recently the more than an embassyfu! of CIA spies York, NY 10013 Telephone 966-6841 what is left of the Iranian state could (Edltonal), 925-5665 (Business). Address all cause its disintegration. And it is Soviet ambassador to Canada. Alek and Foreign Service desk jockeys. The correspondence to Box 1377, G.PO. New unlikely that anyone could pick up the sandI' :'\I. Yakolev. noted that Khomeini U.S. has had no luck even in getting its York. NY 10001 Domestic subscriptions pieces-excep,~ the Russians who live $3.00/24 Issues Second-class postage paid at was not the first fanatic to seize hostages allies to take economic or even tough New York, NY next door. ... this year. Jimmy Carter beat'him to it diplomatic measures against Khomeini. Opinions expressed In Signed articles or An attack on Iran would surely when he kidnapped a planeload of The other imperialist powers have leIters do not necessarrly express the provoke a violent wave of anti Acroflot passengers last August in an editorral VieWpOInt refused to withd raw their embassy staffs American nationalism. not only in Iran, . attempt to force Bolshoi ballerina from Teheran and certainly have no No. 245 7 December 1979 but throughout the Near East. which Lyudmila Vlasova to defect. "We interest in jeopardi/ing their Iranian could sweep away Washington's few understand the American feeling very and Near Eastern h(Jldings by joining a
2 WORKERS VANGUARD ~ Steward Fired at British Leyland utI LO:\ DO:\. December 3-Britain was on the edge of a major industrial showdown late last month when the chronically failing nationalised car manufacturer British Leyland (Bl) sacked Derek Robinson. Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers British CP trade (A UEW) official and long-time Com union leader munist Party member. Robinson is the Derek Robinson. convenor of the giant BL Longbridge His sacking was factory outside Birmingham and. as an act of class war. head of the Leyland Combine Commit tee. the leader of over ~OO Leyland shop stewards. The sacking of Robinson. the most prominent trade unionist in the British motor industry. was an open. outrageous provocation against the entire working class. On both sides of c the class line the country girded for the § d5 most important confrontation under u; Margaret Thatcher's Tory government. u ~ Indeed. it was potentially the most ~ ~. important class battle since the miners ~ ~ took on Edward Heath in the winter of 1973-74. defend jobs and working conditions out for the spirited November 26 only two days after the march, stabbed Within hours of Robinson's dismissal against Edwardes' job-slashing. union Birmingham march heatedly denounced in the back by their own leaders. the on November 19. Longbridge was shut busting juggernaut. Robinson was the scabs who went to work at Long workforce returned to the plants. There down tight by mass pickets. The strike sacked for co-authoring a pamphlet bridge that day, "crawling in like rats could be no more striking evidenee of spread rapidly through the industrial opposing the Edwardes plan. through the hole in the fence." Workers the need for a revolutionary leadership Midlands area and by the next day over The conservative London Economist from the Rovers factory at Solihull of the labour movement to replace these 25,000 BL workers had downed tools, (24 November) explained why Ed demanded the union take disciplinary labour fakers on the proletariat's road shutting down production at four other wardes took the risk of sacking "the action against the scabs who had kept to the revolutionary expropriation of BL factories. By Thursday, November most powerful man among the 90,000 the factory going through the "day of the capitalist class! 22, half of BL's 90,000 car workers had workers": action." Demonstrators marching been idled. The Combine Committee "BL management is determined to through Birmingham militantly chant The result ofall the bureaucratic foot clobber the unofficial shop steward's ed. "Edwardes Out-Robinson In!" dragging and back-stabbing could be a issued a call for a "day of action" and organisation while the tide is running its mass trade-union protest rally in Bir way and while the company's future is There were march contingents from major defeat for the British labour mingham the following Monday. Rob still in the balance.- Ford ·'and.,RoUs· Royce. as well 'as movement. Derek Robinson rna)' be seamen. metal workers. chemical work come the victim of the same kind of inson himself raised threats of a general In this crucial class battle. all the ers and others. sellollt policies he has advocated for strike call. to which the tabloid dailies ingredients but a militant leadership years. (But from the standpoint ot the responded with headlines ranting ready to carry the struggle forward were The Birmingham "day of action" set British ruling class. Robinson made one against "Red Robbo." In general Rob there: an unprecedented and provoca back the rising line of struggle against sellout too few.) It is the reformist inson's sacking has been greeted with a tive victimisation: the prospect of Robinson's victimisation. The union policies of the Stalinists and social chorus of red-baiting by the bourgeois sackings hanging over the heads of bureaucrats could have mobilised for democrats which have paved the way to press. And while BL chairman Sir upwards 01'40.000 BL car workers: mass the action by shutting down every shop the disastrous situation confronting Michael Edwardes warned. "It's me or unofficial walkouts throughout the in the Birmingham area through roving Leyland workers and all British workers Robinson." the entire BL management Midlands motor industry: outstanding picket squads and extending the strike today. policies allowing the Tories to threatened to resign if Robinson were wage claims and threatened strikes from nationwide. That would have brought implement and step up their vicious rei nstated. other industrial sectors including the out hundreds of thousands of workers attacks on the working class and the Robinson's sacking came only two militant and strategically placed miners. and provided a staging area from which oppressed. weeks after BL chairman Edwardes had What was urgently needed was an to deepen and extend the strike. extorted a seven-to-one "yes" vote from immediate shutdown of every BL But Derek Robinson wasn't sacked the demoralised BL workforce in a factory throughout the country. com Instead, the bureaucrats did for scab-herding on the unofficial postal ballot for his scheme to "save" BL bined with immediate preparations to everything possible to defuse the work toolmakers' strikes of 1977 and 1979 or through savage redundancies and plant deepen and extend the strike as neces ers' militancy. The very day after the for playing a key role in pushing closures. It was a warning. if any were sary throughout the motor industry and sacking, top AU EW officials voted to through every rotten agreement that car needed. that within the framework of the rest of the trade-union movement. reject an all-out strike in favour of workers have been stuck with in recent decrepit British capitalism. "saving" BL For mass labour actions up to and "whatever support was possible." And vears-all of which he did. No. this means breaking the back of even a including a general strike to bring down Robinson's fellow CPer. Rovers con ~acking was a blatant attack on the semblance of militant unionism in the the Tory government and actually place venor Joe Harris. saw to it that the only union. And despite the betrayals of the industry. Moreover. the dismissal was the working class in power! resolution brought before a mass AU EW bureaucrats. it still can and explicitly justified by BL management Certainly there was a will to struggle. meeting of Rover workers was a call to must be reversed! Stop the sellout! For as an attempt to suppress any efforts to One of the 6.000 workers who turned ... take the rest of that day off! Finally. an immediate. all-out strike!.
U.S.-sponsored boycott of Iran. The CriSIS. But in the post-Vietnam, post principally the Soviet threat to Iranian students harassing Iranians on campus West German government. for example. dollar devaluation world, the U.S. sovereignty" (Countercoup. [1979). are not just right-wing activists, Birchers hit the roof when Morgan Guaranty cannot simply run roughshod over its Twenty-six years ago this was a Cold or members of the Veterans of Foreign Irust took legal steps to guarantee imperialist rivals. Japan relies on Iran War truism. Today. it ties Washington's Wars. The anti-Iranian chauvinist repayment of its Iranian loans by seiling for 20 percent of its oil and West hands and makes the stakes involved in reaction cuts across the usual social/ the 25 percent Iranian share of Krupp Germany is similarly dependent on the any war moves toward Iran even higher. political divisions. These protesters are steel. U.S. attempts to use the U.N. Teheran oil dealers. Schmidt and Ohira not motivated by any great love for the Security Council to pressure Khomeini have consequently let it be known that a Chauvinist Backlash and shah. Most Americans don't care if the have been frustrated by the same inter U.S. attack on the Iranian oil fields or Gunboat Diplomacy shah is sent back to Iran or to hell. imperialist rivalries. Spokesmen for the oil port of Kharg hland would be Carter has done very little thus far. To Certainly the bloody, torturing butcher every country from Panama to China considered a most unfriendly act IOHard the chauvinist mobs which had been should be sent anyplace he will get his have certainly been willing to denounce them. just deserts. chanting "De-por-ta-tion!" he has the sei/ure of the hostages-they all Nor can the chauvinist backlash be For the U. S. Iran is chiefly valuable as thrown some Iranian students. This have a stake in the sanctity ofdiplomatic explained simply by the fact of violence a bastion against the USSR, but for the action sets a dangerous precedent for immunity-but the "outrage of the against fellow Americans in Iran. Even European and Japanese capitalists it is the deportation of any and all foreign international community" remams when they were killing "our boys," little more than one big gas pump. CIA political dissidents as well as undocu purely verbal. popular hostility toward the North operative Kermit Roosevelt noted this mented immigrant workers. The labor Vietnamese was not what it. now is In the "good old days" when the U.S.. potential conflict of interests in 1953 movement. left and all those who defend as undisputed top-dog imperialist su when he was busy plotting the coup that democratic rights must strongly oppose toward the Iranians. Millions of Ameri perpower, could tell subservient Bonn put Pahlavi back on the Peacock the deportation of Iranian students. cans came to recognize that the ex-Nalis and Tokyo politicians where to Throne: "Naturally. the British have Vietnamese were fighting a just war get off. a little strong-arm diplomacy been primarily concerned with their oil But the demonstrators now chanting against Johnson/Nixon's government. might quickly have solved a Khomeini problem. while our concern has been in front of Iranian consulates and cO/ltinued on page 10 7 DECEMBER 1979 3 For Labor/Black Mobilizations to Smash the KKK! Greensboro-We Will Not Forget!
For the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazis, of the' Trotskyists and other sectarians. troopers and 175 local cops to the area. funeral for carrying guns, 26 of whom the Greensboro massacre-a two min who at least can understand the mean A pair of national guard helicopters were CWP comrades. according to ing of murder when they see it." ute fusillade which left five anti-fascist hovered overhead, while 150 riot-clad the group's newspaper. Worker.1 demonstrators dead-was more than a On November II, the CWP buried its police lined both sides of the street. I'iell,/willt. multiple execution in a black housing dead after a two-and-a-half mile funeral The funeral march once again ex As Marxists, we stand for the right of project. The daylight murder of five procession in Greensboro. Several posed the role of the cops. On the day of armed self-defense. But the CW P seems members of the Communist Workers hundred mourners escorted the coffins the Klan attack. Novemher 3, police re- more interested in making a phony show Party (CWP, formerly Workers View of arms. According to an II November point Organization) was a bold declara UPI account, the CW P made a deal with tion written in blood that American the cops to have the funeral "honor fascism can provide the thugs for the guard" carry unloaded weapons. Mak bourgeoisie's deadliest assaults against ing no mention of this agreement, the 19 blacks, militant workers and leftists. November Workers Viewpoint cynical While cross-burnings and fascist ly boasts that "the march was armed to marches are cropping up from Vine the teeth." Even more dangerous is the land. New Jersey to Northern Califor CW P's continuing delusion that a small nia, the Anti-Defamation League re number of leftists can take on the ports national Klan membership up to fascists and even back down the bour an estimated 10,000 with a three-fold geois state. Thus. they descrihe the growth in sympathizers put at 100,000 funeral march, which was held literally (Nell' York Times, II November). under the guns of 1,000 capitalist In the face of this growing threat, the troops. as "a great political victory." fascist killings of the five Southern left The Greensboro massacre and the and labor militants were a challenge response to it posed in the sharpest form demanding the most immediate and the counterposed strategies in the fight powerful response. Instead-there was against, fascism: either the impotent silence in the main, with the exception of strategy which attempts to substitute the CWP itself. the Spartacist League small-group action or the mobilization and a number of union militants of the working class. For their part. the fighting for a labor-centered response. liberals, the "responsible" black leaders As a 19 November Village Voice article, Militant Armor, helicopters and 1000 cops and troops harassed mourners at the and the trade-union hureaucracy reacted "Silent as the Graves." put it: November 11 burial procession in Greensboro. with the same treacherous "even hand" "Dignity would at least have required of the bourgeois press-condemning labor and its liberal allies to issue some to a local cemetery. despite the city fused to arrest the KKK assassins even proclamation of grief, some demand for administration's initial ban on parades as they aimed their guns for the kill. alike the KKK killers and their victims justice, if not revenge. Courage would or marches of any sort. Although finally hecause they had not yet "committed a as "violent" and "extremists." And the demand issuance of a call for anti permitting a burial procession, the crime." In the eyes ofcapitalist "justice," black preachers were, grotesquely. most fascist demonstrations in every major disturbed that the Greensboro murders city-like the one sponsored by the bourgeois state put on a massive show of however. it is a crime when leftists or Spartacists in Detroit.... Action force for the occasion. assigning some blacks prepare to defend themselves. raised the spectre of communist gains in against native fascism is left in the hands 500 national guardsmen. 250 state Thirty-four people were arrested at the the South! An unusually political Ig November Nel\' York Times article. "Rights Lead ers Troubled by Prospect of Leftist Gains Among Blacks," writes: "They are fearful that the killings might provide Communist groups with a foothold among poor. Southern blacks whom they have not been successful in recruiting over the years." The article goes on to quote a Raleigh. :\orth Carolina. NAACP official who said he was "frightened. because they [the CWP] obviously can no longer be written off as 'outside: 'white-Ied radicals'-their blood has been spilled in this state and in a black neighborhood by white racists." Moreover. at the first meeting of the Black Pastors Confer encc in Detroit. a delegation of Greens boro ministers organi7ed a committee to "find ways of responding to Communist organizing efforts:' it was reported. In Greensboro. several black minis ters got cold feet and pulled out of a planned November I~ anti-Klan dem onstration called by civil rights. black student and socialist groups. Did the preachers fear another KKK assa ult" Hardly. City Hall put on the pressure and the FHI was ready with "proof" that some of the organi/ers were Icltists. !\ Greensboro NAACP spokesman. Dr. George Simkins. told WV. "They got a lot of these communist groups coming in here and we can't be involved with this. with the communists." The clergy men caved in and the lelt groups came tumbling alter-the rally has not occurred. The Uncle Tom establishment is right to be concerned that the rise of Klan· terror will make the reds look better to blacks. Blacks don't buy the ruling-class line on Greensboro, that it was a feud between two equally bad "extremist" groups. They know that the "extre mists" of tlie Klan have a final solution .fi)r them. While the preachers and NAACP do nothing as the Klan grows and grows bolder. blacks want to fight and they will fight along with the reds. On 'ljo\embLT 10 In do\\ nt\l\\ n I>Ctroil.
4 WORKERS VANGUARD wv Re~orter's S~eech to November 10 Anti-Klan Rally They L.ied About the Massacre
nclo!\ is rC/lrilllcd l!Ic ,1/1l'CC!l gil'CIl hr \ ow where did the med ia gl'l this line'! Wur"n, Vanguard u'/Iorta ,\llIrk Well. they got it Irom the politician,. 01 1.1II1g!l10)/ til l!IcVol'clllllt'r III 1.1Ihor/ COllr,e. Hne's the statement the politi mllcl, RlIlh 10 .\/)/t/I!I AllIlI I/'rror III cians put out the ne\t day at a press / )clroil. cunlerencc. /)0 you "now whaL the~ Blllther, and ,i,ter" I'm a curre 'aid" I hey ,aid. " ... an appalling out ,pundent luI' JlOrA.CI'.\ 1/lIIgl/{lI'll. thc hurst ul Iiolence pro\o"ed primarily hy nCII'papcrultheSpartaci-.t l.cague,l\e olltsltk radical inlluences ... whose in CUI ned a lut ul ,torie,. a lot 01 stri"e,. tent wa, tu plllmo1l' riot and chaos...... hut I neln cO\ered anything li"e the In uthn \\ords. the people that wne ma",ane 111 (ireen,holll. I went there a Ilctlml/ed \\ere the same as the erimi Ie\\ hour, altn the shootll1g. and I want Iwls In the eyes 01 the politicians. tu tell ynu II hat happened. I spo"e with I hat', just like Coleman Young who tllU widows who just the day helore had had planned to arrest Klansmen and thl'i I' 11lIsha nd s die in thei I' a rms. COl ered ;Intl-Kbn dem(lIlstrators alike until vou \\ith hluod. I spoke with \dson .Iohn lul"s and the people 01 Local 600 and a ,un. one 01 the organi/ns 01 the rally. lut 0) \IUr"n, aruund the city made him \Iter he was stahhed and attac"ed hI hack du\\n. the Ku Klll\ Klan. then the polIc~ ,hulled up and they arrested !Iilll. I One thing is clear. A small numher ,pu"e with eyewitnesses. people who ul demon,traturs can't heat the Klan hy ,a\\ the attac". and;they told me a stOI'\ 111elll,cll es. It take, a mohili/ation or that was a lot dillcrent Irom what yuu the laoor mOlement to deal with the rl';ld in the newspapers. Kia n 111 the unly la nguage they under I hel told me thc anti-Klan ralliers ,tand. Bruthers and sisters. it's oeen a \\lTe assemhling ncar a hlac" housing lung tlllle since the laoor movement as a Greensboro Daily News \\hule ha, shuwn its might in this pWIL'Ct hall an hour or so hdore the Greensboro, November 3: the media blamed the victims. ,t;lrtll1g tlll1e. Suddenly a caralan 01 l·ullntry. and that power is real. Ihecoal Klansmen pulled up. /)oors lIe\\ open (';lwllI1a and acruss the country said thc dillercncc hetwecn the people that mll1ers prO\ed that. I was in Kentucky and Klansmen poured out. screaming that the demunstrators plllvoked the ,hout and the people that get sht5!! And and \Vest Virginia la,t winter. I saw the ;Ind cursing racial insults in the hlac" "iIlers. I he dead, they implied. got \\ hat we'd all heller know this-that those miners union hold out lor 110 day, peuple's UII n neighhorhood. Ihey went thl'~ desel'\ed. '\u Klansman was shot. people who urgani/ed that demonstra ;Igain,t the oosses. against the gun thugs ;Ind against the ,caos. And -they told to the trun'" ul their cars and they hut l110re than a do/en anti-Klan tiun. ,ure. the~ wcrc cra/y and thcy \Inc .I11l11.11~ methodically got out lead pipes. shut dl'l11unstrators wne hit. I'he' press. acting hystcrically. hut that's not the Carter to ta"e his contract and gun,. pistols. semi-automatic rilles and IW\\ellT. descrihed it \I ith words li"e reasun they \\cre gunned down. Ihe .. Iwle it. So we "now It ean he done. gud "110\\' \\hat else. And then the~ '·,Iwutuut." "a shooting spree.....a \cud rea,on they were 'Shot is hecause the~ 1(11 he a long time hdore the lahor upl'ned lire. One woman \la, c1uhhed hl'l\\een I iulent e.\tremists." Well. ,aid thel \Iere communists and lahor III0\ elllent forgets the day the Klan shot ;Ind I!I£'II thel ,hot her. A witness tuld thne', a \\urd lor \\hat happened all \lrgani/ns. All olus helln "now that du\\ n tho,e textile worker's Spartacist spokesmen and class-struggle control!" Only after unionists had trade unionists led hundreds of black lealkted for several weeks and won auto workers in chanting "Smash the broad support among the ILWIJ mem Klan!" This chant reaches into the heart hers for the demonstration did the of millions of black working people, hureaucracy feel compelled to respond. Trade-Union Bureaucracy: Local 6 president Keith Eickman 2~ "Better Dead Than Red" reportedly came into the November a~ GEB meeting with a belated statement Silent the Graves For most ofthe labor bureaucrats. the from the International condemning the -19 November 1979 The murder of five communist demonstrators by Klan Greensboro murders were an issue to Klan and declaring the local's support and Nazi gangsters has been greeted circumspectly by avoid. Yet there were a number of , for the rally proposal. The present task what passes for the American left. Though the spectacle of fascism running wild ought to evoke unhappy memo unions where militants locked horns must be to rake Ihis proposal ai/paper ries among liberals, most remain unseen and unheard. with the bureaucrats in a fight to and pUl ir i/1/t; 1I('1 ion.' " They are content to let consensus reign, in this case the mobilize the power oflabor to smash the notion (suggested by Anthony Lewis in a disgraceful Klan. The most vivid example was in Militant Southern California phone column) that the Communist Workers Party brought the Detroit, where auto workers from UAW workers put out a leaflet in their union protesting the brutal Klan killings. hail of bullets down upon itself by its "provocative" Local 600 at Ford's River Rouge behaviour. This leads to a gruesome state of affairs: the initiated the November 10 labor-based When the unionists in Los Angeles Times mildly chastises the Greensboro police for lack of anti-Klan rally after their local execu CWA Local 11502 handed out Militant vigilance, while those same cops whisper that the com tive board had meekly counterposed Action Caucus leanets condemning the mies really fired the first shot. Eventual acquittal of the impotent protest telegrams to Jimmy Greensboro murders. Ma Bell-which is guilty men seems likely, which will naturally encourage Carter. Also in auto. at Ford's Mahwah. notorious for its racist practices-went other white supremacist murderers, cross-burners and New Jersey plant. members of the so far as to discipline several people for their kind. Militant Solidarity Caucus of UAW handing out leanets. Unfortunately. the Four of those killed were union activists. Three had Local 906 proposed at a December I local union officials played into the organized workers in the Cone textilemiIls to fight for better conditions with the Amalgamated Clothing and union meeting a state-wide anti-Klan hands of the company when at the Novemher union meeting, they pushed Textile Workers Union, and another, Cesar Cauce, was rally. It passed unanimously-the savvy trying to organize Duke M~dical Center workers into the through an even-handed motion con bureaucrats knowing better than to Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees at demning the CWP victims as well as the oppose any motion l;;xpressing the the time of his murder. Their political views were an workers' deep hatred of any variety of Klan killers and "any other totalitarian tagonistic to those of the unions' leaders-who incidental group that advocates violence." fascism. ly call themselves socialists-which may be why the labor statesmen haven't bothered to excoriate the killers or In Locals6and 100fthe ILWU.some Twin Faces of Reformism those who let the slaughter be done, Dignity would at least have required labor and its 400 unionists signed a Militant Caucus Dangerously. even after Greenshoro liberal allies to issue some proclamation of grief, some initiated petition demanding a Bay the ('\\/1',. the YA\VFs. the Pl... and demand for justice if not revenge. Courage would demand Area-wide anti-KKK rally dnd passed a Reps continue to believe that small issuance of a call for ant.i-fascist demonstrations in every motion to this dlect at both local groups of militants can physicaily defeat major city--like the one sponsored by the Spartacists in meetings. The petition also demanded. the Klan and Nazi vermin. But nobodY Detroit. But our liberals are' t.oo busy with Teddy, and "Jail the Killer Klansmen! Drop, the can accu~ the SWP of adventuris~ labor is getting ready to elevate Lane Kirkland' as charges against the Greensboro anti toward the Klan. Instead. they have Meany's successur. Action against native fascism is left Klan protesters! For union-organized made themsel\es the "best builders" of Reprinted by permis in .the hands of the Trotskyists and 'other sectarians, who sion of The Village at least can understand the meaning of murder when they laoor/olack/Latino defense guards to the fascists' so-called "rights" of free Voices New Group smash Klan/Nazi violence! Uphold the speech. f.\s we have continually pointed Publications, Inc., see it. For liberals. it's much more stimulating to dump on the Iraniarn;. • right to armed self-defense! 1\0 to gun ('oillilllled on !JlIRC 10 1979. 7 DECEMBER 1979 5 MORENO'S lEfT fACE to ha\e discovered this fact on Iv in the Rt'PRI\FI:D fRO\! last two years (after being rart of every MORENO TRUTH KIT lISec betrayal and unprtncipled maneu \er lor the previous decade and a halt!. Elsewhere in this bulletlll we reprint And there is the telltale fact that numcrous excerpts from materials Moreno's H1-/ BT consistently deseri bed documenting .\Iahuel Moreno's the Mandelite majority as "ultraleft" decade.. -Iong ((ner for Peronism in hi .. while \\e label the IMT cCllfrisf. Hut thl' nati\e Argentina: his opportuni.. t most striking difference is that the support to roruli-.t general-. from Peru\ \10renoitl' attack on the USee leader \·ela .. co tn Panama\ Torrijns: his shir consists solely of organi/ati(inal chameleon-like .. hifh of political atrocity stories rlus evidence 01 re\i cnloration. Irom gung-ho guerrillaist to sionism at the most general theoretical sni\Clllf1g sneial dell1nerat: and hi .. k\l'1 Concrete political hClrilla!,. scandal'lu .. finanCial dealings. Hut that \\here their line means deleat lor the dnes nnt accnunt for the arrarl'nt \\()[·king clas~. are almost ne\er Ietusmol thc documents 01 his mentioned. Hnlshevik I-action and its rredecessor. lhe Hol~hevik Faction has some the Hoshe\ ik lendency (HI-/BI). For in rrl'tt\ harsh words to say against the the case of Moreno the contra-.t het ween L:See\ 1\)77 resolution on "Socialist theory and rractlce is so dramatic that Democracy and the Dictatorship of the he has dc\elored a "method" earable of Proktanat."lnadocumentendorsed by ~ustilying almost any betrayal. the Hf·. \1oreno says it "comrletely For almost a decade. from I \)OX re\iscd the revolutionary Marxist posi through 1't77. the United Secretariat tion on the dictatorship of the proletari was rent hy acute factional struggle at." Mandel. he says. is "filling the between a centrist International Marxist concertion of workers revolu Majority lendency (I MT) led by Ernest tion and proletarian dictatorshir with a Mandel and the reformist Leninist Eurocommunist content and pro lrotshist Faction (LTF) led by the gram... " ( 711c Rel'olutionary Dictator Ameri~an SWP of Joe HansenjJack .1/111) (Ilthc Pro/c/(Jriat [IYN]). Fine. but Barnes and (initially) Moreno's where do the Morenoites denounce the Argentine PST. While the Mandelites USec for capitulating to the Eurocom chased after a Maoist/Gunarist "new munists in the class struggle? What mass vanguard" in Europe and Latin about the electoral support to porular America. the LTF used rseudo fronts gi\Cn by both the SWP and ex orthodox arguments to attack IMT. who call for \otes to the reformist guerrillaism from the right (not unlike workers rarties involved in such c1ass the rro-\1oseo\\ collaborationist coalitions') The HI CPs). Atter doesn't breathe a word of criticism. lor H,nnes and \1an its own electoral rolicies arc just as (or del dissohed the even more) tailist. lactions in 1\)77. Perhaps the best example of how ul1lkrhlng dIt Morenoite "orthodoxy" in the abstract lerenl·e .. re is translated into opportunism in the mained but a concrete is the case of Portugal 1975. tcmpnrary unit\ During the spring and summer the \\as obtained at situation was polarizing rapidly: the thc LiSee helm. ruling Armed Forces Movement (MFA) So simrly by standing still while the ex and its Stalinist allies escalated their For the past decade and a half the main drawing card of the "United Secretariat" I MT galloped to the right, Moreno (USec) has been its pretensions to be the Fourth International. Even while its warring leftist rhetoric, in part to co-opt embry suddenly arpears as a "left" critic of the onic factory committees and collective factions were publicly· hurling epithets at each other from opposite sides of the "reunified" rotten bloc: barricades over Portugal in 1975, the USec could still attract subjectively farms which were beginning to sprout "Before. it [the I MT] had bent to the up. On the other side, the Socialist Party revolutionary militants with its claim to be the organizational embodiment of the ultraleftism of a predominantly student world party of socialist revolution founded by Leon Trotsky. And woe to any USee radicalized vanguard. Now, it is of Mario Soares sided with more dissidents who challenged this myth-over the years left oppositions have been bending to the pressures of conservative officers and civilian reac Eurocommunism and a trade-union summarily chucked out for such sacrilege. tionaries in mounting an anti and middle class vanguard, which are Communist mass mobilization. The Now in the last two months the USee has been torn apart over Nicaragua, with two transmission belts for liberal ideology blocs (each a marriage of convenience, in true USee tradition) taking shape to claim and the public opinion of the imperialist SWP, in response, wholeheartedly took the title. For Ernest Mandel the split exploded his re\eries of presenting a "united" countries.... up the cause of the CIA-financed USec as an international clearing-house for the "broad far left." Ihe expellees and "This capitulation is what has made the Portuguese SP. Not wantlllg to be tied convergence between the ex-I MT and their new-found allies are now as aggressive as the USec in presuming to speak for to this right-wing unholy alliance, the leaders ofthe SWP, i.e.,theex-LTF, Moreno began making trouole in the "the world movement." Yet the counterposed blocs are deeply unstable. both possible." consisting of centrist-talking adventurers (Mandel and Moreno) combined with h-ard -"Declaration and Platform of Leninist-Trotskyist Faction and finally social-democratic reformist national machines (the American SWP and the French the Bolshevik Faction," [SWP] split over the SWP document, "Key OCI respectively). International Internal Issues in the Portuguese Revolution" Discussion Bulletin, July 1979 On the USec side. its just concluded "EIC\enth World Congress" sa\\ three main (October 1(75). This was the origin of tendencies most clearly expressed in their- competing motions on the nature of the An uninitiated reader might well the Bolshevik Tendency. present Sandinista/bourgeois government in Nicaragua. The right wing around Jack confuse such passages with Trotskyist The future BTers were hard on the Barnes' SWP praise.d the present ruling junta in Managua as a workers and peasants critiques of the revisionist USec by the SWP, accusing it of thinking "the government; to cozy up to the FSLN (explicitly endorsed as a :revolutionary international Spartacist tendency (iSt). possibility exists that the SP could leadership") the SWP acts as a fingerman and political adviser to the Sandinista Of course. the iSt and its precursors break with the bourgeoisie and take secret police against supposed "ultra-lefts" (including its erstwhile Morenoite have been denouncing the United power in Portugal today," and that the "comrades"). . Secretariat as a rotten bloc since its SP is "no longer counterrevolutionary" In the middle there was the grouping around Mandel. saying in typical centrIst inception in 1963. while Moreno seems ("Letter from Former LTF Members to fashion that the nature of the Nicaraguan regime was undetermined. And there was Mandel's left cover. the hodgepodge centered on the British IMG, sections of the Swedish KAF and the Matti tendency. in the F 'ench LCR. These "loyal oppositionists" labeled the Sandinista junta a bourgeois class-collaborationist Get the Goods! regime, but instead of calling for a Trotskyist party to organize independent Forty-one pages of documentary exposure: proletarian opposition in Nicaragua, they accepted the USec's liquidationist policy of entry into the petty-bourgeois bonapartist FSLN. • Moreno in Argentina I: From Left Peron ism to Social Democracy &oBi~ On the other side, the new lash-up between the French oel of Pierre Lambert and Nahuel Moreno's Bolshevik Faction (BF) is one of the more unnatural alliances in • Moreno in Argentina II: Back to Peronism :\TRtJ'!B K history. When Vishinsky ranted at the Moscow Trials against a "bloc 01 rights and Trotskyites" it was a Stalinist slander. but the OCI and Moreno have actually created • Moreno's Lett Face: Portugal, Angola, Eurocommunism something worse; Trotsky and Bukharin had more in common than this pair! Lambert's organization is a known quantity among ostensible Trotskyists in Europe: • Opportunist Chameleon Sui Generis its social-democratic Stalinophobic politics meant eagerly supporting the candidate • Moreno the Swindler of the popular front, Socialist leader M itterrand. in the 1973 French presidential Price: US $1.50 ~ election. By 1975 the OCl's slide into reformism \\as scaled by its support to the Order from/make checks payable to: "democratic" CIA-funded Portuguese Socialists as the latter spearheaded a Spartacist Publishing Co.. P.O. Box 1377 G.P.O., New York. NY 10001 continued on page 9 6 WORKERS VANGUARD the International Executive Commit Moreno's supporters of the Portu tee," [SWP] Internalln(ormation Bul guese PRT went even further and in an le/in, March 1977). The "Declaration of article entitled "A Necessary Rectifica the Bolshevik Tendency" took the LTF tion: The M FA and the Revolution in to task because it "did not indicate a Portugal" (Co/llhate Socialis/a, 10 July single task or slogan in relation to the 1975) diseovered a "semi-soviet sector" 'workers commissions'," and con of the bourgeois officer caste. But they demned Hansen's "categorical refusal to did not come up with this dangerous raise the policy and slogan for centraliz revision of Marxism by themselves. In ing these committees." The SWP, an April 1975 report to the pRT concluded the BT, had "an essentially national committee Moreno referred to bourgeois-democratic program" for the M FA as "the superstructural expres Portugal ([SWP] lIDS, January 1977). sion of the beginning of the formation of These same points were made so\iets In the arm\". ,ltld s,lid that it n1<1\. repeatedly-and much more sharply be "Ii petty-bourgeois movement that in J-Vorken Vanguard (e.g., "SWP/OCI reflects the revolutionary process"-in fail Counterrevolution in Portugal." which case, "We have to struggle within WV :-':0. 75. 29 August 1975). this process. and understand that there But li'I' emphasi7ed above all the are differentiations inside the Armed need to fight "class collaboration Forces Movement itself" (PRT Internal tying the workers to the bourgeois f)iscussiot/ Bulle/in No.2). So while officer corps." On the issue of soviets, correctly attack ing the SW P for chasing we said that for an authentic Trotskyist after Soares and raising a purely party the key issue was "calling for bourgeois-democratic program for Por independence of the workers commis tugal. Moreno talks about sO\iets ... sions and popular assemblies from the and runs after the populist MFA with its MFA ... " ("Soviets and the Struggle for demagogic talk of "people's power." Perspectiva Mundral Workers Power in Portugal," WV No. Moreno has developed this Janus ~Q. Sandinistas in power. SWP defends new government's repression of 24 October 1975). The program of faced policy into a veritable science. "ultra-left" critics. Moreno & Co. was exactly the opposite. Thus on the second issue over which he Having decided to abandon the social broke from the SWP-Angoia-he democratic camp (in the early summer takes his former mentors severely to he was for participating in the SP's anti task for failing to call for military Communist demonstrations), Moreno victory to the M pLA in the crucial INTERUIEW WITH simply switched horses and plunked his months after November 1975, when it money down for the M FA. Thus in a was facing a combined attack by South long polemic against SWPer Gus Africa and the CIA-aided FNLA/ Horowitz he argued that this faction of UNITA coalition. Moreno drew a close NICARASHAN lEfl1ST the officer corps of the capitalist army parallel between Angola and Vietnam was no/ classically bonapartist and I·ras (falsely. for in the case of Angola it was "Kerenskyist" and petty-bourgeois (N. simply an imperialist invasion, whereas Moreno, "Revoluci6n y contrarrevolu in Vietnam this was overlaid on a civil JAilED BY fSIN JUNTA ci6n en Portugal." Rel'iSla de America, war which sa\v two opposing class In early October Nicaragua's Sandi 242. 20 October). July-August 1975). continued un page 8 nista (FSLN)/bourgeois government We print below excerpts from an launched a full-scale roundup of leftists inteniew with Carlos Petroni, a leading •!iii: critical 01 the ne\v regltTIc's pro member of the LM R. now in exile I capitalist policies. Scores of memhers of follo\\lIl,l! his arrest by the FSLN. the MO\imiento de Accion Popular. the It is unfortunate that such militants as MEXICAN USEC fACTION MAP's trade-union organi/ation Frente Petroni and others \\ ho are subjecti\ely •r Ohrero. the sell-proclaimed Trotskyish looking lor the road to revolution have ~ of the Liga Marxista Revolucionaria been pulled into the political orbit of the - (LM R) and other groups and indi\idu notorious impresario from Argentina. SOES OUER TO CP als \vere picked up and jailed through Nahuel .\10reno. F "ort\ members of the Mexican to ItS logical conclusion. Nor were out the country. The imprisoned Ieft Partido RC\olucionario de los Trabaja lIern:lndet' pro-Stallllist sentiments a wing militants were charged with bank WV: We had hcard of your arrest and dores (PR I-Revolutionary Workers secret. During the elections of robbery, attacks on FSLN soldiers and Ino. that 01 other "far left" militants in Party), which claims to uphold the Hern:lndet' lendencia Militante (1M). "illegal" possession of the arms with Nicaragua during October. Could you resil!ned th/·· ;.:....,,', nf Trotskvism. which had just taken over the Liga which they had fought against the L s pdst Augut t " tell us more about the details and have recently l'OIt'''L~ s . _O)oln the Socialista. joined a popular-frontlst Somoza dictatorship. Many were ar reasons for your jailing, about the Mexican Communist Party (PCM). the hloc to campaign for the PC M presiden rested with no formal charges at all. government's attitude and how this party of Leon Trotsky's.assassins. The tial candidate Campa. The TM signcd a FSL.N leaders vowed to "smash" the action was fought? defectors were led by one Ricardo common electoral platform which in "ultralefts," whom they termed "the Hern:llldcz, pRT Political Bureau time-honored Stalinist tradition called same thing as the counter Petroni: My jailing, like that of many member and a former member of the for "pe,lcclul coexistence" with imperi revolutionaries." other comrades who belong to the Liga International Executive Committee of alism and il1\itcd hourgeois forces into The American Socialist Workers Marxista Revolucionaria (LMR) and the fake-Irotskyist United Secretariat the coalition. Hermlndez ansWt:red Party (SWP), which has filled its the Frente Obrero (FO-Workers (USec). On leaving the PRT, Hernandez criticisms raised bv his factional rivals in newspaper. nIl' A1ili/alll, with glowing Front) in Nicaragua, was basically the tributes to the FSLN and extensive renounced Leninism and Trotskyism as the USec hy yelling at a campaign outcome of the policies of the present coverage of every proclamation of the "religious concepts" (Bandera Sliciali meeting for Campa. "the Communist pro-bourgeois government of the Junta new regime, remained silent on the s/a. U August 1979) and thc same day Party is more revolutionary than you of National Reconstruction and of the signed up as a paid party functionary in ,lre~" He added that the masses "don't FSLN's repression for more than a Sandinista National Liberation Front the PCM. gi\e a flying shit" ahout programmatic month. Finally, the Sandinista syco (FSLN). That is, to take a hard line phants ventured to write an article against the revolutionary left and a soft Like the "Eurocommunists," In dtllcrences hetween lrotskyists and entitled, "FSLN Discusses Workers line on the national bourgeoisie. and \\ hom USec prolcssor Ernest Mandel Stalinists. Democracy." posing the question, even a soft line toward some sectors of sees re\olutionary potential, the Mexi Ricardo Hern:llldet' hlatant depar "How to answer ultraleft sectarians." Yankee imperialism. My arrest, like that can CP IS trying to clean up its image. tures from what could harely be termed The answer. it turns out, is "Lock 'ern of many other comrades, is due to that seeking to provc it can serve its "own" pseudo-lrotskyism wcrc a hit much. up!" Nowhere in the 16 November policy, i.e., the FSLN's need to maintain bourgeoisie cxclusively as loyally as it nen for those long accustomed to /v/ilitalll article are the arrests explicitly its deals with the bourgeoisie, which was served the Kremlin. Notorious for conciliating n:formists. Some apparent denounced. Instead, the SWP gently beginning to totter due to the mass organizing an attempt on Trotsky's life ly orthodox objections by the reformist chides the FSLN leaders with the mobilization taking place in Nicaragua. in 1940 shortly before hc was finally American Socialist Workers Party observation that the Sandinistas' "fun That was the basic reason. I wasn't struck down hy a GPU agent, the PCM (S \V p) were simply expressions 01 pique damentally correct political arguments" arrested on any specific charge:""'just for now finds its complicity in the assassina at heing spurned by Hernandez. For against th~ir critics "were weakened and heing a Trotskyist. And the comrades of tion to he a political liability. peM merly a copartner in the SWP-Ied obscured by charges that these group~ the Frente Obrero were arrested for leader Valentin Campa in his recently minority Leninist- rrotskyist Faction were 'neo-Somolaists'...." The FSLN. being memhers of FO. puhlished memoirs tries to dissociate (LII-). he had fallen under the sway of we are told, should "politically" defeat the party from rrotsky's murder, '\ahuel :Vloreno's rO\ing band of politi Trotskyists and other sectarians. "Re WV: When did these arrests take place', blaming it on "the interference of cal bandoleros and under their tutelagc pression," it seems, "cuts across this Petroni: The mass arrests occurred ir foreign comrades." '\0 doubt this had purged Mexican supporters of the political clarification and makes it more early October. I should point out that detection from an ostensihly Trotskyist SWP from the Liga Socialista. The difficult to win these cadres to a revolutionary leftist militants have been group will he used to aid the despicahle Mandelite USec majority, not missing a genuinely revolutionary course." Per arrested ever since the victory of the whitewash attcmpt. chance to score against their factional haps the SWP should help the FSLN anti-Somma rebellion. At the point Ricardo Hern:llldt. was no isolated rivals. leapt to Hern:llldez' defense and lcaders avoid the unpleasantness of when I was picked up already more than militant, demoralized and looking for endorscd the electoral hloc. A Julv 1970 jailing leftists by recommending, as they 60 memhers of FO and roughly a half an easy exit from revolutionary politics: letter to Hernandez from a USec may well have done in the case of the dozen militants of the LMR had passed rather. this was a significant desertion majority leader was quite straightfor Simon Bolivar Brigade, that the trou through the Sandinista jails. But the by long-time USec cadre, carrying the ward: "\Ve hclieve therclore that the blemakers merely be deported (see "Did mass arrests carne after the San<;iinista I'abloists' liquidationist methodology continued on page 8 Peter Camejo Turn Them In'?" WI' No. continued on page 9 7 DECEMBER 1979 7 Moreno's Left The Crisis in the LTF 1 As the Portugu~se revolution was d~ve1l,ping. the SWP Left Criticism of SWP was changing its initial, COrtect position. That POllition I Face... was to develup the embryos of dual power in order to (colllili/ledfrom page 7) transform them into sovids, in combination with dem~ r cratic slogans such as "Constituent Assembly," "freedom camps). But for Moreno this parallcl ------...., of press," "Against the MFA government," "CP-SP united l" presented certain problems, for in u1nccption()'''' Ih"",01, IhourgeoisK'''' """"4dell10cracy'" "'" 0' and•,,,' slogans.front and governmen TI,.IMT ',fu,Ocentrism-what Trotsky proletariado y la revolucion is principled. and there is no need to get support a popular front or a bourgeois espanola," July 1936. in A. Nin, called "crystalliled confusion"-his beaten up by pro-war workers while nationalist movement without de Los prohlemas de la re\'()lu<'iull appetites and real program are those of distributing dcleatist propaganda in nouncing it as a betrayer of the workers' espanola (1931-1937) a hardened reformist. In either case, as front of the factories (as happened to the movement. That is: voting in itselt is tor Not bad, on paper. But the POU M the example of Nin shows. the end result Bolsheviks in World War I). Ho\\ us a tactical and not a principled helped put the Popular Front in power. is the same, and it is the working class convenient. Why didn't Jack Barnes ljuestlon" (N. Moreno, "A Scandalous therealt<:r acting as its left tail while that pays the price.• Repl~ think of that"! Document-A to Germain:' mouthing abstract slogans about "so ~ Moreno dreamed up a similar subter [SWPJ II/)B. January 1974). cialism or fascism." And when the fuge a few years earlier when the LTF Moreno didn't invent that one, showdown came in the Barcelona May got into a shouting match with the IMT however. The author is Andres Nin. Days of 1937, Nin refused to mobilize Mexico over who supported popular front ism: Even after the Spanish POU M partici the workers to overthrow the fragile (continued from page 7) pated in the Popular Front coalition Popular Front. thereby "preparing the the LTF said Mandel and his friends accusation directed against you that you during the February 1936elections, Nin, victory of fascism." Presumably Nin, did. by supporting the French Union of have created 'basis for a Popular its most left-wing leader. continued to too, thought "voting is a tactical a the Left: the IMT said Hansen/Moreno I'ront' or 'declared the Stalinists to be denounce the Popular Front in the ljuestion." did, because their Uruguayan support re\olutionists: are not confirmed..." ers called for a vote to the Frente abstract. For example: Not so the international Spartacist (S W P III ternationallllternal IJi.ICU.ISioll "Hence the policy of the Popular Front, tendency, for whom opposition to class Amplio (Broad Front). (Answer: both Bulletill, Arril 1977). support popular fronrism.) Moreno by presenting the problem as a struggle collaboration is a matter of principle. between bourgeois democracy and Ihree ycars ago, we anticipated argued that the Uruguayans had made This is what distinguishes us not only fascism, sows fatal illusions among the rn:sent dcvelopments in Workers ~'all an "error, not a betrayal." Furthermore. from the misnamed "Bolshevik Fac working masses and detours them from guard No. 131. (29 October 1976) III "it was a good move to enter the F rente accomplishing their historic mission, tion" but the entire United Secretariat "Mexican Standoff in the Usec": "The Mexican situation shows in microcosm the bitter triangular polemic now wracking the USee. The fact that Ate hoje sempre caracterilamos 0 MFA como um movimento burgues. defen the pro-PST Militant Tendency could sor. na ausencia de qualquer partido estruturado da c1asse dominante ou sequer go from L-TF pseudo-orthodoxy on de um aparelho de Estado solido. dos interesses fundamentais do Capital. se bem the popular front into a c1ass que tambem muitas vezes obrigado, pela posic;ao de arbitro ctsupra-partidario H collaborationist alliance in a matter of a em que se encontra colocado. a castigar os sectores tradicionalmente mais privi few weeks tells a great deal about the reformist character of the L-TF. And legiados da burguesia. por forma a defender os interesses globais dessa mesma the fact that the most right-wing classe. grouping (both in Mexico and interna tionally) can effortlessly shift from the A Necessary Rectification international minoritv to accommoda tion with the majority speaks volumes .0rlUglieS The MFA and the Revolution in Portugal ,\Undamenla,s do procesSo :: about the unprincipled nature of all the o prod des1es tra~Os e, de cerl;1 factions. ulO forma, 0 MfA podemos compret!ndt'er "Now a new PRT has been born, at a characteri~ed "l,"p to 110\1' \I'e ahmrs the .'l1 FA [A rmed Forces -\0 como lim fenOmeno novo, QlI di fusion conference in the 'M iguel En J/m'ell/ent] as a hourgeois mOl'ement. a de/£'mler. in the ahsence olanr ze , lim reslI\lado mOlllenli!neOr de riquez Auditorium' at the National stl'l/ctllred party 01the ruling class or nen a solidstate apparatus. oj"the umr rea\idar:le nlll,IO p",li< 1I1a eSilda ,e University of Mexico. The 1,000 people a jillldamental interests 01 capital. ... " a\ldad da Revolucao po,lUgu E present at the meeting reportedly inicialmenlee um movimento. uma re named Mario Roberto Santucho, the "The product oltllese traits [olthe Portuguese rnolutionarr process] acC;a pequeno-bUrguesa ric um sec\vr murdered leader ofthe Argentine PRT/ o lras. iI/a lral". the 'v! FA. We can ul/derstand it as a new phenomenon. dos oflclais (It: urn exerL,IO n1arlelado ERP. honorary president of the con that is. a momentarr result ola I'e/T parlicular realitl'. the reality olthe Da mesm. 0"3 e massaerado pela derfot;! gress. Given the ex-Militant Tendency's operario d man(,rra t "Ill SI'CIO' quI' POrluguese Re\"(llutiol/. It \1'0.1' initially a movement. a petty-bourgeois unabashed rejection of Trotskyist op cIIJa e c~~ rfd (ol'Cjrlca que os parlid l,\,~(r? position to popular fronts and the 'I'M's reaction ola sector 01 the officia/.l 01 all armr Iioullded hr \I'ar alld do G m,JlOln,'" ,. o. 0 MFA . os naked Stalinist methods. it is entirelv II/assacred hr the II/ililarr de/i'(J( ill A/rica. _ . overnr) I. (-se co . partl- slgnrllca 10 t Jurgues Min d POlltil appropriate that the unification should "In rhe sall/e I\"a\" as the \I·orking-cla.\:, Ilarlie.\ 01 rhe coalirioll. the Forc;:as A t ntlflcar as IStO . a take place under the symbolic auspices MFA rnradas 0 Govern lidO \/1-'.1 parlin/){/tcs in and cOII/mirs il.\ell to the policy 01 the hourgeois com d IJ . nem· a e as of Enriquez and Santucho, two leaders as factos VI- urgueSla P I,dentiflcar 0 gm·ernmel/t. But rhis does I/ot mean identi/ring thegm'ernlllenr and the of centrist groups set up by the USec urnale m da tOleranemonstrando:/11 d eo contrarro. who became renegades. As Santucho arll/ed/orce.l, nor identitrillg the JIFA \I'ith the hourgeoisie. On the a gar . cia rie f que p was1aking the PR-r out of the USee, he cOf1(rarr. the/acts are delllUl/straring that . .. the I\"orsening o(the crisis blasted 'the Fourth International' com deelWII.I_ from theComclea\"(Jges \lithil/ the JlFA alld the .\ell/i-sol'iet tendellCl ,j"", I ,,~';::,' "" c ,';;"" q '" :;: posed of 'counterrevolutionary ad\en implied hr olle 01 its polcs.... " turers' and based on a 'scarcely redeem :~~ ~',~'i" ,p,~:~C:,~"" ~~:~~~'" able tradition.' No doubt in short order Po,tugues; Socialista (news renolte MFA as seus pol semi-soviet,; ns "'no ).10 July 1975 paper of the Mo· "'" de, ,,,"",,,,,,' " we will be hearinl! similar-words from . .. orr os 1m ,""g,""""I· Ica'qu' some 01 the mor:: intrepid renegades ____--.___ transmit ,a Illstab:lld p rla, dao C Irom Trotskyism in the Mexican PRT." ___- __ __.-- '''"'," 0 eq""<0"~I G"'""10~\'d"""_ qco'9."0-CO"" _____ -______. ,,0','ental f.- "__ ••.. - "" con-- Wei I. it appcars Ricardo Hern:lndl'l has L ____" _' '''-~ .--..-----=e n· .....~~ spoken_ • 8 WORKERS VANGUA~D 14 days were spent in a cell nine feet by six feet together with ten other USee ... prisoners-that is. in subhuman condi (cof1linued/i'o/J1 page 6) tions and with terri hie food. counterrevolutionary anti-Communist WV: Was there any working-class mass mobilization. mobilization demanding your freedom as well as for the other left-wing The Morenoite current is far more prisoners.'" contradictory. Moreno himself was a Petroni: There was a mobilization not reformist in Argentina, but one who lost only at a national level in Nicaragua but his reformist base, the direct tie to his also on an international scale. Many "own" bourgeoisie. Forcibly separated parties of the Fourth International from the national terrain of Argentine [U nited Secretariat] which are led by the reformism, with nothing to sell out and Bolshevik Faction [of Nahuel Moreno] no Peron to sell it to, Moreno-now held a number of demonstrations based on the Colombian PST-chose to abroad. And inside the country as well embark on a leftist adventure in Nicara the LMR undertook a campaign as did gua. Now seeking to consolidate the the FO newspaper F/ Puehto. benefits of his refurbished militant reputation, Moreno has gone out on a WV: Were there any marches or centrist swing. His Bolshevik Faction demonstrations in Nicaragua'! has been built on a left critique of the Petroni: One that I know of. demanding freedom for the revolution Mandelites' response to "Eurocommu Portugal 1975: With CP offices in flames, OCI and SWP backed social nism" and of the SWP over Portugal democrats' CIA-engineered offensive, ary prisoners. was a march by the and Angola. On these positions the BI government construction workers. sounds uncannily close to the positions less liquidation. Particularly in France a WV: Could you explain the political line of the international Spartacist number of leftists have joined the new Jailed by of the LMR and the Fa? tendency-but it is a fraud: Moreno is a Ligue Communiste lnternationaliste Petroni: The Liga is a Trotskyist consummate charlatan. We can prove it, (LCI) despite its cynical OCI-loyalist organi/ation. It has a Trotskyist ideolo and we have. in the Moreno Truth Kit leadership. Elsewhere such elements are Sandinistas ... gy and is opposed to handing ovcr the (sec excerpts publtshed in this issue). still being held in tow by the USec revolution to the bourgeoisie. It also (continued/i'om page 7) For some time now this Argentine (England. Sweden). Both In Spain and orposes the participation in the present political handotero had been sneaking Italy there arc relatively large Moreno hont. through its newspaper Barrica junta government of the bourgeois up on Mandel, scurrying through the ite breakaway organizations. but ones do, and the Government of National clements who are part of it. We hold that bushes and then hiding under the skirts whose political practice has been ex Reconstruction through the words of it is necessary to deepen the mass of a larger group, only to break from it posed as clearly rightist. Moises Hassan and Daniel Ortega mobilization in Nicaragua. expropriate launched a huge campaign accusing the all the arable land and hand it over on a "left" basis when an appropriate But both the USee and Moreno/OCI most revolutionary sectors. those who immediately to' the peasants. and ex opportunity presents itself. First with blocs are showing a suddenly increased \\anted to continue the mass mobiliza propriate'the hourgeoisie.1t is necessary the SWP (1969-75) in the reformist, vulnerability to the Spartacist tendency. tion in 'Jicaragua. ofheingcounterrevo to pre\ent the bourgeoisie from organi/ pseudo-orthodox "Leninist-Trotskyist The response has been a wave of lutionaries. It began with the expulsion ing. as it is rapidly doing in Nicaragua Faction" (which was at bottom a scummy cop-baiting and thug violence in early August of the Simon Bolivar today. to deliver a counterrevolutionary reformist opposition to Mandel's vicari in the worst Stalinist tradition. Both the Brigade organi/ed by the Colombian blow. ous guerrillaism). then in a more LCR and OCI recently used goon informal way in bloc with Mandel. PST. It continued with the arrests of the WV: What kind of government do you squads to attempt to silence the Ligue Frente Obrero people. and ended up Each time he has extended his influence: Trotskyste de France. But already this call for in Nicaragua') with the repression on a mass scale first to the rest of Latin America. then policy is beginning to backfire. Only Petroni: Well. for now we are calling on against the Trotskyists and memhers 01 establishing a beachhead on the south the FSL"J itself to break its deals with four days after the USee's G IM local in FO. ern flank of Europe. Meanwhile his KiHn. West (jermany. npelled our the bourgeoisie and to form. in alliance policies at home remained ultra comrades of the T rotzkistische Liga WV: Altogether. how many leftists were . with the Ielt and the unions. a workers' reformist (written declarations of sup Deutschlands from a public forum. the jailed during this campaign. after the and people's g.overnment. That is. to port to the Peronist regime. equating (JIM local in rlibingen at a :\member expulsion of the Sim6n Bolivar begin to form in ~icaragua a People's Brigade'.' left-wing guerrillas with fascist death 27 public meeting on Iran solidarized Assemhly and soviets. sq uads. etc.). with the TUYs proletarian opposition Petroni: Well. ineluding the FO mili WV: What ahout the FrenteOhrero? tants. the supporters of the Liga :\ow Moreno is at it again. this time to clerical reaction in Iran. No wonder Marxista Revolucionaria and dissident Petroni: 1-0 is an organi/ation which with the OCI. and the current bloc is Mandel told the last GIM conference Sandinista fighters who arc critical of comes from Maoism. with which it even less stable than his previous that regarding the future of his German the pro-bourgeois line of the Front at broke ahout two years ago. It is an operations. Its components can't even section. "one can only pray." _ organi/ation which operates in the ~ this point. I would estimate roughly 200. agree on whether they are for the -= We can do more than pray. Over the framework ofcentrism-so that one day "reconstruction." "reorganization" or WV: \Vhere were you held') years. serious leftist USec supporters its demands arc progressive. lJuite pro "reunification" of the Fourth Interna Petroni: I was locked up in EI Chipote. who sought an alternative to petty working-class. and the next day it tional and Moreno has admitted that his \\ hich is located in Lake Piscapa and bourgeois impressionism and popular capitulates to the FSLN leadership. Ihe "Paritv Committee" with the OCI is \\ hnL' carlin thnL' \\nL' the prL'sident\ frontism have regrouped themselves Frente Obrero calls today for the nothi~g but a defensive "united front" house and offices of Somo/a's senet behind the authentic Trotskyist pro hourgeoisie out of the prO\isional but one which supposedly will proceed police. I was the only Trotskyist thne. gram of the international Spartacist gO\ernment. hut a few days belore I was to build 'Trotskyist parties" despite its Other militants of FO were held in tendency. From the Cuban Revolution arrested they had a quite centrist disagreements over fundamental politi police headquarters: some memhers of to the clericalist mass mobilizations in pOSition on calling for the convocation cal issues. The "Parity Committee" is the Pvl R were arrested in Granada. and Iran and the insurgency in Nicaragua. of the Council of State. This hody merely a cynical attempt to trump the two of them (Mario Miranda and our tendency has eounterposed the ob\ iously has a hourgeois majority. Mandclites by playing the "unity" card. Rod rigo Iharra) arc st ill being held 111 La struggle for Trotskyist parties to the Later thev were for not calling the and not surprisingly the USee is invited P,'l!\lHa jail in GranaJa. rhey were Pabloist liquidationism of the USee. Council oi' State. but at the beginning to join up. scattered throughout almost all the jails Now again this crisis of the USec milieu thev supported it. in :\ iearagua. The uproar over Nicaragua has sent provides opportunities to regroup sub WV: As you know. belore the Sandinis left-wing clements in the USee into jectively revolutionary militants from WV: You said there was no specific tas for Socialism in Nicaragua lett [the turmoil. Many are being sucked into the the USec into an internationalist forma charge raised against the Ieft-wll1g I;.S.]. we wrotc an article critici/ing the MorenojOCI bloc. which on this issue tion fighting for the rehirth of Trotsky's prisoners. But didn't they raise any SS:\'s policies particularly on two stands to the left of the USee's bottom- Fourth International.. accusations which from the gO\ern lJuestions. First. in calling itself ment's standpoint .iustified the arrests" "Sandinista"-in other words. placing Petroni: As for the Liga Mar.xista itself in a nationalist framework. And SPARTACIST LEAGUE LOCAL DIRECTORY Re\olueionaria, with which I was secondly for its position on the nature of \\orking-after a group of us coming the g,nernment. That is. we are against National Office Chicago New York out of the Sandinistas for SOCialism in Box 1377, GPO Box 6441, Main P.O Box 444. Canal Street Station calling for a Sandinista government. New York, NY 10001 Chicago, IL 60680 New York. NY 10013 :\iearagua fused with it. along with a calling on a petty-bourgeois formation (212) 925-2426 (312) 427-0003 (212) 925-5665 communist opposition nucleus from the to take over. Our demand has always Ann Arbor Cleveland San Diego FSLN itself-we were accused 01 heen for a workers and peasants co SYL, Room 4102 Box 6765 POBox 142 leading a labor Icderation which in Michigan Union Cleveland, OH 44101 Chula Vista, CA 92010 gO\crnment. i.e.. one based on the University of Mlch (216) 621-5138 cluded II facton unions and about 23 independent forccs of the workers Ann Arbor, MI 48109 San Francisco agncultural workers unions. mO\ement. ~ow aftcr the experience (313) 994-8051 Detroit Box 5712 PO Box 32717 San FranCISco. CA 94101 WV: How did your arrest take place" vou had with the Sandinista movement Berkeley/Oakland DetrOIt. M: 48232 (415) 863-6963 in ~icaragua. with the expulsion of the Box 23372 (313) 868-9095 Petroni: An army patrolled by a "Jestor Oakland, CA 94623 Santa Cruz Moncada. who works for the security Sil1l(ln Bolivar Brigade and thejailing of (415) 835-1535 Houston c/o SYL leftists after that. have you rethought Box 26474 Box 2842 section in the Sandinista general stall. Boston Houston, TX 77207 Santa Cruz, CA 95063 hroke into my house hy force. rhey your call for a Sandinista government? Box 188 M.I T Station Los Angeles didn't have a warrant and first took me Petroni: Well. Sandinistas for Cambridge, MA 02139 Box 26282. Edendale Station to the "Ricardo Morales Aviles House," Socialism in Nicaragua no longer exists (617) 492-3928 Los Angeles. CA 90026 (213) 662-1564 \\hcrL' the Sandinista general stall as an organi/ation: it joined with the orerates from: Irom there I was moved. Liga Marxista. It was a group coming TROTSKYIST LEAGUE OF CANADA three days later. to El Chipote prison. out of the ranks of sOlldilli.llllO-more Toronto Vancouver Winnipeg Iheir first Intention was to liquidate me. specifically sympathi/ers of the Prole Box 7198, Station A Box 26, Station A Box 3952, Station B i.e .. assassinate me. But luckily the tanan lendency-that was evolving Toronto,Ont Vancouver. BC Winnipeg, Man (416) 593-4138 (604) 733-8848 (204) 589-7214 middle-bel officials didn't agree. After slowlv toward lrotskvism. It was a heing translcrred to El Chipote. the first - ("ontil/ued 011 paxe to 7 DECEMBER 1979 9 tants b\ the SWP. and In particular 01 worker. 'Thev already fired these guys. Helping l .S. to Shed Fear of lntenen Why don't thn la\ otT" You. the SWP. ing Ahroad." AccordlI1g to 1)cl1wcralll' Jailed by the IrotskYlsts In '\lc'lragu,1. I he '-SI'\ ha\~ lonl! held the cowardlv. liberal \\ hen It launched the campaign ,lgalnst position (;f 'tree speech' tor fas'cists. The Party nat\(1nal chairman John \Vhite: thl' Irotsk\lsts \\as nC\l'r ahle to \\agc ,I Klan and the '\a/is demonstrated to the "We may have reached a turning point Sandinistas ... polltlcli camp,llgn against us. Ihe\ world what they do With their so-called in our attitude toward oursehes. and (COl1f inuecl/i'olll page IJ) clilcd us "sectarians." compared us to 'free speech'-i'ive people now lav in that is a feeling that we ha\e a right to process that lasted some months. as you their l!raves'. thc SonHl/alsts. Hut the S\VP acted as protect legitimate AmerJcan interests can sec readmg \arious issues 01 R% I' "But the truth IS more powerful than the Ideologlcli nner lor the Sandlnista lies. Black and white. women and men. all\\\here in the world." What this Segro. Front. pro\ idll1g articles and lI1ten ie\\ s I.OOO-strong. stood together and lorced imperialist poiItican calls "protecting We ne\er calicd lor a gmernment to the I-SI'\. counseling them on ho\\ our union to act against McKulen and legitimate American interests" is plun only 01 the Sandinistas. hut instead. as Beinke's racist provocation. We did it. to run the campaign. And in the recent denng and terrori/lng the workers and lrotsh says In the Transitional Pro It stands as a victory for the workers of issues 01 Pcr1/h'Clil'a .Humllill the~ peasants of Asia. Africa and Latin gr'lm. \\e eallcd on the petty-hourgeois l.ocal 600. It is an example of the kind launch a campaign on hehall 01 the of class-strugglc leadership that is nec America. Thus. in one important sense. sectors which led the rehellion against Sandinlstas preclseh against the re\olu essary in order for us to go forward.". Khomeini has done the Pentagon a Somo/a to hre,lk their tics \\ ith the tionan sectors In '\icaragua. I-rom a great favor. albeit unwittingly. He has hourgeoisle and to resohe to lorm thl'lr POlltll,<1i standpoint this IS totalh supplied a national cause they could not own government. And at all times \\e l'rimll1 a I. ha\e created themsehes. called lor an independent workers J\nd Irom the standpOint 01 sel'llllt~ I u.s. Steel ... party-that IS. independent 01 thc ha\e a personal accusation against the (continued/i'o/ll page /2) Carter Gives Khomeini a Political Sandll1lstas themsehes. So \\e did not SWP. Ihose olus who arc politieall~ di\ isions like coal and chemicals. Plans Lease on Life capitulate. lor constructing a $J.5 billion new actin' In !.atll1 America know-and this If Khomeini did U.S. imperialism an WV: Do vou heliC\e that a Sandinista integrated steel plant in Conneaut. Ohio Isn't the lirst time I have been arrested unwitting favor. Carter had certainl:. governmcnt that hreaks with the hour ha\e been scrapped. and the company th,lt the elementary obligatIon 01 am done the same for him when he took in geoisie would hc a workers and peasants intends to squee/e whatever profits it militant is to say \\ hat organi/ation he is the shah. Khomeini needed help: his gO\ernment in the sense 01 the TranSI can from steel workers through ruthless \\ it h. period. Right') That is. not to regi me was in the throes of a grave crisis. tional Program') speed-up. .lob cuts and wage restraint. re\eal am inlormation which could help In August. Teheran was torn by fierce Petroni: We don't consider a purel~ gUIde the repression. Howe\er. the But stcel \\ orkers need not resign street fighting as 50,000 leftists and Sandinista gO\ernment a workers and SWP acting as cops in the last issue 01 thl'lllsehes to ever worsening condi liberals. protesting the suppression of peasants gO\ernment. We would con PCl"lpcC/imHulldial gave not only the tions. eroding wages and thc constant the oppositional press. clashed with sider it a sort 01 revolutionary pro\! group but also the tendency 01 which I threat 01 unemployment. Workers the Islamic Revolutionary Guards. sional gO\ernment. It would he progres am a member. In the first nine da\s light for your jobs! Seize the plants! 1-01' Throughout the month of October. sive compared to the present when I was mistreated and beaten [by an industrywide strike! Even a success militant student protests against Kho pro-bourgeoIs government. but nothing the Sandinista jailers]. I did not gi\\.: ful detensi\e struggle organized around meini's ban on political discussion in the more. And we also think that the them that inlormation-but the SWP such demands as unlimited recall rights classroom and increased tuition costs Sandinistas arc incapable 01 lorming publishes it in theirmaga/ine. That isan and unemployment benefits and full racked the universities. one. action 01 cops. 01 inlormers.• government financing of SU H funds can The purge of "un-Islamic" elements WV: In that sense. the call lor a unlock the necessary industrywide from industry and the government Sandinista government. even including struggle for jobs for all through a administration has been ruining the that it be based on "organs of people's shorter workweek at nocut in pay. Such Iranian economy. Since February. both power" or whatever. really represents a a struggle will not be led by the Greensboro ... inflation and unemployment have sky stagist conception of the revolution. McBrides and Balanoffs. It can only be (conlinut'd/i'olll page 5) rocketed. To the masses' demands for That is. first you will have a petty led by a new militant leadership dedicat bread and work. the ayatollah has bourgeois government and later a out. fascists are terrorists, not ideo ed t(; sweeping away the irrational and answered that the nourishment of Islam workers and peasants government ... logues. and they make their "points" brutal capitalist system and replacing it with dynamite. the noose. and. as in with a centralized. planned economy is spiritual. He has also answered with Petroni: We don't consider it a stagist Greensboro. with semi-automatics. and a workers government.. bullets. conception. not at all. That is. calling on At bottom the adventurists and the the Sandinistas to break [with the The well-organized uprising of Iran's civil-libertarian SWP. as well as the bourgeoisie] does not commit us to one-and-a-half-million-strong Kurdish Communist Party, which editorialized complicity in an eventual government: minority demanding autonomy from (/Jailr World. 7 November) for the Carter's War on the contrary. What we do beliC\e is Teheran's rule posed the gravest chal blood-soaked federal government to that it would have been a very progres lenge to the ayatollah's regime. The "Han the Klan." are the two faces of si\e step at the time of the victory of the Threats ... "Islamic Revolution" put an end to the reformism. Both despair of mobilizing (continued from page 3) shah's large and well-equipped army as insurrection against SomOla-it could the working class to fight fascism. The an effective fighting force and the havc been the beginning of a big mass ;\iot so with the Khomeiniite fanatics' Detroit ;\iovember 10 rally however. formation of the "Pasdars" or revolu mobilization lor a workers and peasants embassy seizure. When the Islamic heavily built by the SL. uniquely tionary guards did not compensate for gO\ernment. The fact of the matter is Revolutionary Guards denounce Amer demonstrated the potential power of a that the situation is dynamic in :'Iiicara ican imperialism. they are not just the loss. Desertion. absenteeism and real labor/black mobilization against indiscipline were the order of the day. gua. At this moment our central talking about the CIA and oil compan fascism. '\ot only did the SWP boycott Weapons fell apart for lack of mainte demand is for a workers and peasants ies. which many working people in this the Detroit rally but in its appetite to nance as spare parts disappeared and governmcnt. because an important country don't like either. The "satan" is become the left-wing advisors for the American technicians were no longer sector 01 the masses has already experi not U.S. imperialist policy but "western labor bureaucracy has used its paper to around to repair them. Faced with the enced the Sandinistas. and has found ways." When Khomeini condemns lie about the struggle at River Rouge to ferocious resistance of the veteran out in practice that they refuse to go America as a "corrupter of the Iranian drive out the KKK-hooded foremen. Kurdish guerrillas. the "Islamic Repub forward with the revolution. that- they nation," he is speaking of the things Frank Hicks. one of the rally organizers lic's" armed forces were fought to a refuse to break with the bourgeoisie. which for most Americans make life and a participant in the Rouge cam standstill. The jailing of two or three hundred enjoyable-liquor. music. dancing. sex. paign writes in a letter to the J1i/lwf71 The Imam of Qum is rightly viewed as a comrades of the revolutionarv left has At this point Khomeini managed to (also sent to W~): crazy. pleasure-hating tyrant. Through also demonstrated before the eyes olthe overcome his loathing for the "satanic "I was disgusted by the article by out the country, workers have started ;\iicaraguan masses that the Sandinistas Elizabeth Ziers on the anti-Klan peti West" in an unholy lust for American calling bossy foremen "ayatollahs." are soft on the bourgeoisie and come tion drive at the Ford River Rouge machine-gun bullets. artillery and heli down hard against the sectors who are plant which appeared in the II 2 79 However, the chauvinism provoked copters, Washington, though it had for deepening the revolution. And that issue of the Militant. It is a bold-faced by the Khomeiniites can be mobilized cover-up of the facts. Not even the backed the shah till the end. was only is an experience which the mass mO\e Detroit :Ve~1'S thought to give credit to for particularly reactionary ends. Since too happy to try to win the ayatollah's ment in :\ icaragua necessarily had to go the labor bureaucracy for the labor the U.S. slipped from its hegemonic favor. The Defense Department an through. The experience of Sandinistas action that I. among others. organ position among the imperialists. and nounced that it would look favorably on in power. We do not believe that the ized .... since its loss in Vietnam, this country Iran's request for $5 billion in military "Ziers. a Rouge worker herself, showed has seemingly faced endless humilia Sandinistas will ever break with the her true attitude towards fighting the hardware already on order at the time of bourgeoisie. at least as a whole. foremen who committed this racist tions at the hands of foreigners. Ameri the shah's overthrow. Unlike Khomeini. WV: The arrest 01 so many comrades provocation when she told a fellow cans have witnessed "Teddy Roosevelt's the U.S. rulers are not Persian chauvin and the expulsion of the Sim6n Bolivar canal" being turned over to Panamanian ists and could under different circum Brigade seems a pretty high price to pay sovereignty. They've watched the dollar. stances back Kurdish independence. as for that killd of education. not long ago considered as good as gold. Nixon/Kissinger did in Iraq. Washing From what we could see of the WORNERS depreciate evermore in world currency ton supplied Khomeini's forces because activity of the LMR and the Sim6n markets. They've seen German and it wanted a strong Iranian state as a Bolivar Brigade. they seemed to clash VANtilJAlil) Japanese competition drive major U.S. counter to the USSR. with the government over vanous manufacturers to the verge of bankrupt Marxist Working-Class Biweekly Despite Washington's tentative vote issues. But our major criticism would be cy. And they've been told that inflation. of the Spartacist League of confidence in Khomeini's regime. that at a general level its program. its falling real income and all manner of 24 Issues-$3 Iran by late October was driving toward perspective was to pressure the Sandi Introductory offer (6 Issues) $1 economic ills are caused by the Arab anarchy. At this point, Jimmy Carter nista movement rather than calling for a International rates: 24 Issues-$12 alrmall/ sheiks of OPEC. Khomeini's insane. $3 seamall violent anti-Americanism touched off a decided to allow the shah into the U.S. break with the Sandinista movement. 6 Introductory Issues-$3 airmail long-brewing nationalist reaction. Omi Outside the ranks of the Persian Shi'ite One final question. As you know. we -Includes Spartaclst nously. the super-militarists can taste a faithful, for whom Khomeini is allah's have severely criticized. denounced. the Name _ annointed on earth, the ayatollah's policies of the American SWP and the popular mandate to "restore America's Address _ popular authority stems from one thing United Secretariat. who supported the might." and one thing only: he is the man who expulsion of the Sim6n Bolivar Brigade City _ The American ruling class is hoping overthrew the hated shah. U.S. imperi by the bourgeois "government" of that this "Vietnam syndrome" is now State Zip ---~ alism's hangman in Iran. If Carter had Nicaragua ... 245 over. that the Teheran embassy crisis Make checks payable/mail to: has revived the "send in the marines" deliberately wanted to shore up popular Petroni: Look. the SWP's line in Spartacist Publishing Co. mentality of pre-Vietnam. Forexample, support for Khomeini. he could not Nicaragua was quite disastrous. even Box 1377 GPO the Nel\" York Times (2 December) have chosen a better means. By seizing playing in some respects a cop role: the New York, N.Y. 10001 published a front-page headline. "Iran is the American embassy and demanding public denunciation of left-wing mili- WORKERS VANGUARD 10 that the shah be returned to Iran for It is directly responsible for the torture shah to power. ousting the bourgeois the History of Early Christianity." that trial. the ayatollah dil'erlcd mass dis and murder of thousands of Iranians. nationalist Mossadelj. When Mossadelj the fundamental dividing line between content against the Islamic theocracy We also solidari/e with the hatred of first came to power, he was backed by revolutionary Protestantism and Islam against thc autocracy. Thus the reac the Iranian masses for the shah and his the mullahs. But with the growing is that for the former "the religious tionary religious fanatic can once again American guardians. But the Islamic influence of the Stalinist Tudeh Party disguise is only a flag and a mask I'm appear before th.e Iranian people as the fanatics who have sci/cd the embassy do under his 1\'ational Front government. a attacks on an economic order which is enemy of the shah and U.S. imperialism. flol want to get the shah for his rcal section of the Islamic clergy led by becoming antiljuated" whereas Islam is [he present crisis gives Khomeini the crimes-thc crushing of the workers Ayatollah Kashnai joined the CIA plot based on that feudal order which is chance to consolidate a strong state movcment and the left. suppression of to restore the shah. So while the antiljuated. apparatus. something he has not been all democratic freedoms. the subjuga American embassy in Teheran is justly In Af1li~[)iihrillg. Engels analyzed able to do since taking power in tion of national minorities and women. hated as the sinister power behind the religion as "nothing other than the February. Army recruits will not lightly the alliancc with U.S. imperialism go;\WQL if they think the U.S. isabout against the Soviet bureaucratically to invade their country. Even the degenerated workers state. For Kho disgruntled officers who look back meini's followers the shah's great crime Engels On Islam favorably on the shah's rule will obey was encouraging Western ways in Iran. A peculiar antithesis to this was the That is what happened from the conquest Khomeini ifthe nation is attacked by the The struggle against capitalist/ religious risings in the Mohammedan campaigns of the African Almoravids greatest military power on earth. imperialist domination in backward world. particularly in Africa. Islam is a and Almohads in Spain to the last Mahdi countries has nothing in common with religion adapted to Orientals. especially of Khartoum who so successfully thwart ;'1;0 doubt the "imam" and his clerical national/cultural isolation. with build Arabs. i.e .. on one hand to townsmen ed the English. 1.1 happened in the same engaged in trade and industry. on the way or similarly with the risings in Persia "Assembly of Experts" hoped that the ing "a Wall of China between East and present feverish mood of anti other to nomadic Bedouins. Therein lies. and other Mohammedan countries. All West" in Khomeini's words. A victori however. the embryo of a periodically these movements are clothed in religion Americanism and national unity would ous revolutionary socialist government result in an overwhelmingly positive recurring collision. The townspeople but they have their source in economic in Iran would. of course. eliminate all causes; and yet. even when they are response when Iranians went to the polls grow rich. luxurious and lax in the U.S. military installations and would obsenation of the "law," The Bedouins. victorious. they allow the old economic December 2 in a referenJum on a new expropriate all major foreign economic poor and hence of strict morals. contem conditions to persist untouched, So the Islamic constitution giving Khomeini holdings. And the security forces of an plate with envy and covetousness these old situation remains unchanged and the nearly unlimited powers as "faghi" Iranian workers state would purge the riches and pleasures. Then they unite collision recurs periodically. In the (dictator) of Iran. With armed Islamic country of CIA agents far more thor under a prophet. a Mahdi. to chastise the popular risings of the Christian West. on guards manning the ballot boxes and oughly than the Khomeiniites ever will. apostates and restore the observation of the contrary. the religious disguise is only keeping a sharp eye on the color of the the ritual and the true faith and to a flag and a mask for attacks on an But an Iranian socialist government ballots cast (green for "yes." red for appropriate in recompense the treasures economic order which is becoming would not seek to cut oil all diplomatic. "no"). a heavy "no" vote was highly . of the renegades. In a hundred years they antiquated. This is finally overthrown. a economic and cultural ties with the unlikely. Instead disgruntled voters are naturally in the same position as the new one arises and the world progresses. advanced capitalist countries. On the boycotted the balloting in large num renegades were: a new purge of the faith is -Frederick Engels. contrary. the revolution will be made by required. a new Mahdi arises and the bers. In Kurdistan and Baluchistan the On the Historl' of' Earlr ChristianilI' intt:rnationalists.led by Trotskyists..and game starts again from the beginning. (1895) ... . referendum was a total failure. The forged in struggle against capitalism's votes in the Kurdish stronghold of shahs and ayatollahs, . Mehebad (mostly from the pro -Hands Otllran! Oppose Carter's War Peacock Throne. fal 100 little has been Moscow. pro-Khomeini Tudeh Party) reflection in the minds of men of those Threats! Defend Iran Against U.S. said of the complicity of the mosljues in will never be counted-an angry mob external forces which dominate them in Military Attack! restoring the shah as an anti-commutllst sci/cd and burned the ballot box. In their daily lives." When man through -:\t) Asylum for the Butcher Shah! bulwark in 1953. Baluchistan armed rebels voted "no" on the collective and planned ownership of -Down with the Islamic Reactionary the means of production becomes the Persian chauvinist constitution by SWP Lies: Even Stalin Would Khomeini! For Workers Revolution master of his social conditions. religion kidnapping a government official and Have Blushed in Iran! will wither away. The proletariat. whose torching a polling station. -For Military Delense of the Soviet The SWP's prostration bci'ore Islamic conditions of labor most directly pose Khomeini is an Islamic medievalist. Degenerated Workers State Against reaction has taken on such' incredible the social ownership of the means of but Iran is not a medieval society. The Imperialism' For Proletarian proportions in the 7 December :'vlili{(/1l1 production. is the class with the greatest workers. ~whose strikes were a decisive Political Revolution Against the that the most subservient Stalinist or potential and material interest for rising blow against the shah. fought for Stalinist Bureaucracies!. even Richard :\ixon might well have above religious prejudice. finding its economic egalitarianism as well as blushed. A Fred feldman speciaL way to a materialist and Marxist democratic rights. The Westernized "Hehind racist lies about 'Islamic fanat worldview. students and other petty-bourgeois ics·... denounces as a "fake" the bour The economic strikes of last year in layers who rallied to the Islamic opposi geois press descriptions of Ashura. Iran showed the enormous social power tion wanted political liberalization and Mullahs ... Feldman protests. "Similar propaganda of the Iranian proletariat. It was those democratic institutions. Iran's national (continued/rom page 1) was poured out last year to discredit massive strike waves. which hit every minorities. the Kurds. Baluchis. Turko shah of Iran. who was often compared major anti-shah demonstrations sector of the economy and paralyzed planned for M uharran ... but the mans. Arabs. Azerbaijanis and others to the hated Caliph. The intensity of this Iranian society. which began the opposi who together constitute a majority of year's orgy of bloodletting. indicating bloody tlagellants predicted throughout tion which finally brought down the the population. believed the overthrow the faithful's willingness to be martyred. the U.S. press were nowhere to be shah. The mullahs were able to lead the of the shah would bring an end to i's seen as proof that the Iranian masses found." final assault because every independent Persian domination. All these forces are willing to follow Khomeini even into We can only presume that the filmed political expression of the oppressed have come into conflict with the Islamic a fiery apocalypse against the military coverage of hundreds of thousands of masses had been crushed by the shah. Republic and the mullahs. who can forces of U.S, imperialism. Muharram tlagellants shown on every However. the bankruptcy of the left in satisfy none of their demands. Khomei No wonder then that many U.S. major television network last year were the Middle East. and its consistent ni\ drive to return Iran to the seventh commentators are expressing dark simply massive U.S. propaganda fabri refusal to organize the working class century has met stubborn. massive and Spenglerian fears that having sown the cations created by Cecil B. DeMille and independently for the seizure of power. increasing resistance. which the tempo wind. America must now reap the paid for by the CIA using Iranian extras played its part in this reactionary rary hysteria aroused by the embassy whirlwind of Islamic fury. Is the rented from SAVAK and paraded outcome. The Stalinist Tudeh Party lost crisis will not be able to overcome. Ayatollah Khomeini to be the scourge through Hollywood streets with fake its mass base through repression. but it of imperialism. the new savior who will Teheran skylines and building fronts. would have been happy to have handed Down With the Mullahs! For lead a pan-Islamic jihad-holy war-of We must assume the CIA bribed or it over to Khomeini-just as it threw the Workers Revolution in Iran! the "wretched of the earth" against their brainwashed reporters. visitors and enormous support it had after World imperialist oppressors'! scholars who claimed to have witnessed War II behind the shah and his prime The seizure of the American embassy the bloody ceremonies. According to minister Qavam. The remnants of the and its staff has also revived the Ieft·s Islam and Imperialism the SWP. to claim that Moslems Tudeh Party. along with the bourgeois claim that Khomeini is a great "anti practice flagellation is "stirring up racist Far from it-there is in fact a deep National Front. marched right beside imperialist" fighter. As proletarian and religious bigotry to justify oppres interdependence between Islam and the landlords and mullahs after revolutionists. we shed no tears over the sion of the peoples of the Middle East." imperialism. Islam has its place within Khomeini. fate of the imperialist diplomats. Ma Although Catholic sects in South the framework of imperialism. which Thus the Iranian proletariat has been rine Corps lifers and CIA agents held Europe, also practice flagellation. for retards the soc'ial and economic devel beheaded several times over. The task of hostage. The U.S. embassy in Teheran sljueamish liberals and prissy reformists opment of the oppressed. As an ideolog revolutionaries must be to aid this is. as Khomeini claims. "a nest of spies." apparently the simple recording of the ical reflection of archaic social classes strategic proletariat of the Moslem East facts of feudal practices of debasement and modes of production threatened by to crystallize its revolutionary van becomes "racist and religious bigotry." Spartacist League/ imperialist penetration. Islam shakes its guard. which must place itself at the Spa rtacus Youth League fist both at bourgeois capital alld Religious Obscurantism vs. head of all the oppressed to replace the Public Offices bourgeois rights. the progressive gains Marxist Materialism' Persian chauvinist "Islamic Republic" of the French Revolution. The of Khomeini with a workers and -MARXIST LlTERATURE- bourgeois-democratic revolutions in the The SWP repeats its absurd historical peasants government. Only the dictator West mobilized the masses against the analogy between Khomeini's movement ship of the proletariat. resting on the Bay Area feudal order. including the state church. and the revolutionary Protestant move peasantry. can resolve the urgent demo Friday 300-600 pm Saturday 300-600 pm. However. the would'-be Westernizing ments during the rise ofcapitalism in the cratic tasks that remain on the agenda in 1634 Telegraph,'3rd floor (near 17th Street) Alililal1l article: Iran. And in alliance with Soviet Russia. Oakland. California Phone (415\ 835-1535 rulers of the Islamic East-the Nassers. Bhuttos. Pahlavis-are bonapartists "This is not the first time in history that freed of Stalinist domination through a progressive movement took a reli Chicago b::tsed on the army, Thus the mullahs proletarian political revolution. Iran gious form at the start. The same thing can serve as a revolutio,nary beacon to Tuesday 5:30~900 pm, Saturday 2:00-5:30 pm can organi/e mass reaction to what are happened at the beginning of the anti 523 S Plymouth Court, 3rd floor seen as elite. corrupt. almost foreign the rest of the Moslem East. ean end Chicago, IllinOIS Phone (312) 427-0003 feudal revolutions in Europe that regimes. established democratic capitalist forever the cries of the oppr:ssed that states... New York rhe contradictory character of Is historically have found their tortured Mon,-FrI, 630-900 pm Sal 100-4:00 pm lam's opposition to imperialism was Must we really point out that Kho and distorted expression only through 260 West Broadway. Room 522 meini\ goal is a pro:f'eudalisl revolu self-flagellation and the eerie funeral New York, New York Phone (212) 925-5665 clearly demonstrated in the very CIA backed coup of 1953 that brought the tion? Engels was quite clear. in his "On wails of Muharram.• 7 DECEMBER 1979 11 WfJliNEIiS "NII/Illil) For Facto~_Seizures to Figbt Mass Firingg U.S. Steel Dumps 13,000 Workers YOU:',l'STOW:\. Ohio-Hundreds of steel workers and members 'of their fami lies stormed the headljuarters of the United States Steel Corporation in Pittshurgh in response to plant closings announced last week by the nation's largest steel manufacturer. The angry crowd-led by several hundred mili tants from Youngstown, Ohio brushed past security guards after picketing in a snowstorm outside the complex. They proceeded to occupy the first and second floors of the building, where they demanded to see David Roderick. the chairman of U.S. Steel. "We want Roderick," they chanted. "We want johs." The demonstration in Pittsburgh was sparked by Roderick's November _27 announcement that the company in tends to shut down 16 steel plants in eight states, a measure which will cost I),000 steel workers their jobs. Hardest hit were Youngstown and the Mahoning Valley of Ohio, once known as "Ameri ca's Ruhr." where U.S. Steel's last remaining operations and ),500jobs are to be eliminated. One day later Jones & Laughlin, the third-largest domestic steel producer, followed suit with pink slips for \.400 workers employed in its WV Photo More than 1,000 USWA members in Youngstown on November 29 demand union action against mass layoffs. Youngstown plants. Roderick's plan to eliminate the least productive of U.S. Steel's facilities is members who jammed their union halls indistinguishable. It was the same old proletariat at each economic downturn similar to the cutbacks at Youngstown for an emergency meeting the day before crap about appealing to the capitalist is the stark reality of both the present Sheet & Tube and at Bethlehem Steel in the Pittsburgh demonstration were told government that Youngstown workers and future of decaying American 1977. But it is more than that. It is an nothing they hadn't heard before. For employed by Little Steel had been fed capitalism. rhe 20,000 Little Steel announcement to the entire Steelwork years their union leaders have preached two years ago. They never got their jobs workers sacked in 1977 and the more ers (U SW A) union of what the bosses that maintaining labor peace and back. "We heard that all before:' the than 100.000 Chrvsler workers have have in mind for the 1980 contract enforcing the no-strike Experimental ranks heckled the speakers. The only learned through bi'tter experience that negotiations. Roderick made it amply Negotiating Agreement were the key to new twist was the call for a government the trade-union bureaucracy's attempt clear that unless the union accepts major preserving jobs. The USWA tops have bailout a la Chrysler. If the companies to prop up the capitalist system through cutbacks the huge mills in Birmingham urged support for every program of don't have the money to operate their government bailouts and protectionist and ChicagoIGary are next in line. If the government subsidy to the bosses. plants. said McBride's District 26 schemes otTers no way out. But unless a company can't be made competitive, he centering on protectionist legislation director Frank Leseganich. "We'll get it class-struggle leadership is forged in the warned, "We will have no choice but to limiting foreign steel imports. And it has for them. We'll go to the feds." But that unions. the just anger of the working take further actions to accomplish our all proven a bitter lie to the thousands of too was greeted with a lot of skepticism masses vvill he channeled into support long-range objective of making our steel steel workers thrown on the scrapheap. because steel workers know how Chrys for even more vicious forms of national operation an attractive business." The Youngstown meeting was ler workers fared under the terms of chauvinism which pit American work Such a frontal assault on steel addressed both by supporters of Lloyd Carter's bailout. And they also know ers against their German and Japanese workers should have evoked an instant McBride's International and the that even the recently negotiated suh counterparts in a dog-eat-dog struggle and militant response from the union. Sadlowski; Balanoff dissidents. But standard contract is likelv to be vetoed for a dwindling number ~)f jobs. But the \.000 Youngstown USWA v... hat they had to say was virtually by a Congress intent on a wage free/c. The attempt to blame foreign steel So it was not surprising that steel workers for the inefficient and obsoles workers interrupted Leseganich, de cent state of the American steel industry manding to know if he too was propos is a reactionary diversion from the need Down With Ayatollah of Kenmore S!luare! ing to "hargain johs versus wages." to fight the bosses at home. Of course They also gave it to USWA statl foreign steel is more competitive. For representative Marvin \Veinstoek, who 30 \ears the arrogant steel barons Defend the BU Faculty Five! ran on Sadlowski's ticket in 1977. The\ like the Chrysler bosses-have wrung wanted to know why he hadn't done a their operations dry. milking every BOSTON, ) December-Five Boston hy the ayatollah Silhcr\ hC