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. 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 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 : 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 . 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 . 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 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 and '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 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 , 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 and 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,O