Number 113 October I November 1985 - 30centa Black Freedom Struggle "eeds a Workers Party!

I

I

Deepen, Extend Union Bans Internationally! __"J!~~f!I~~!H~!~! ft!!l!J!!~'!!f, South African Oppressed'!

SEPTEMBER 30 - Eight years ago black nationalist leader Steve Bao died, after being tortured and beaten into a coma by apartheid's racist killer cops. Today as the apartheid butchers shoot down black people, in the words of black bishop Desmond Tutu, as if they were "swatting flies", the black masses of South Africa are rapidly coming to the conclusion that the kind of "nonviolent negotiated solution" preached by the Tutus is impossible - apartheid must be overthrown. . The massive anti-apartheid up­ heaval poses pointblank the question of power: Who shall rule? "Tutu's brand of moderate leadership is rapidly losing ground among the street fighters", wrote Newswee/c's Robert B Cullen and Ray Wilkinson. "Their revolution awaits its Lenin. " For Apartheid Fuhrer P W Bothe (Top). Gold mlneri: workers need leninist party to lead black freedom struggle. stating this simple truth, the apartheid regime threw W'tlkinson out of the that proletariat has been kept on the former a fake franchise and the latter the backs of the country's six million country. But precisely what is lacking, sidelines in isolated skirmishes with nothing, served instead to unite the Zulus. What is necessary to combat and is more urgently required in South' the racist regime and the capitalist non-white population as coloureds and this fifth column is trade-union led Africa than anywhere else in the world baas, as was' demonstrated in the Indians massively boycotted elections multiracial defence guards, in particu· right now, is a party of the kind that aborted mine strike in September. for their "parliaments". In Natal lar drawing on Durban's powerful Lenin built in tsarist Russia: an inter­ And never have conditions been province where the Indians, mainly black and Indian proletariat in Natal nationalist and multiracial revolution­ more ripe in South Africa for the crys­ engaged in commerce, are concen­ province to defend the Indian ary workers party that can mobilise the tallisation of a Leninist party. By all trated, 1,000 striking black rubber communities and ANC supporters and giant of South Africa's black prolet­ accounts, there exists a widespread workers were locked out -in June. in the process teach Inkatha a much­ ariat for its own class dictatorship as hatred for capitalism as it has been When they called a one-day general needed lesson. the emancipator of all the oppressed. experienced and openness to com~u­ solidarity strike in July, Pieter­ The black proletariat last November in nism as it is Understood. Botha's maritzburg, Natal's political capital, Botha's State of Emergency tar­ the Transvaal showed its power in the "divide and conquer" constitution, was completely paralysed as more geting black townships around most massive general strike in the his­ which was supposed to divide coloured than 90 percent of the black workforce Johannesburg in the Transvaal and tory of South Africa. But since then and Indian from black by offering the stayed home and every Indian Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape has business closed. caused the anti-apartheid upheaval to spread west to Cape Town. The Cape Now Botha's Zulu chieftain Gatsha Buthelezi and his Inkatha thugs have coloured, precisely because they are declared open war on the African oppressed by apartheid and concen­ trated in the urban proletariat (in National Congress (ANC). As the many ways culturally Europeans), are situation polarises Buthelezi has that section of the oppressed which become a brazen defender of the apartheid regime, -fearing the collapse can most easily transcend nationalism. of the little kingdom granted him on . Continued on page two ~ I ... ',.. ,':.~ .~ c t· .t. ". ~.~>~;::~ .:~: \- _- ..:: .... ~)., i.

Hayden are no friends of South go -into Idioa. Interaational wortina~ African CM'gO continues to be worked SthAfrica ••• African blact labourl class solidarity, reaching out to lint· .- the bans actually only delay the Coathaaecl from page one For a start, they're not going to let hands with the insurgent blact muses ships. When the WWF lifted bans on their well-known "abhorrence" of and their allies, ·can help win concrete cargo left behind by the MUdura, it apartheid disrupt Australia's growing advances and direct the struggle to­ was loaded on another ship. As one It is no accident that in the 1930s and trade with South Africa, worth wards a revolutionary class-struggle maritime worker told the WWF's 19405 Trotskyism had a base among S312 million in exports and $166 axis and away from a disastrous con­ August Maritime Worker, "I don't coloured teachers in South Africa. million in imports last year. Nor can it frontation along race-national lines think it's right. We shouldn't be work­ Today the coloured population are still obscure the fact that Australia, as that brings with it the likelihood of a ing it at all." a key strategic component for crys­ regional sheet-anchor and policeman pointless bloodbath. The aim of inter­ While providing an important· tallising a multiracial Trotskyist of Reagan's global anti-Soviet war national labour solidarity must be to vanguard. example to workers throughout the drive, is in de facto alliance with the strengthen the class independence and Cape Town has also been the centre world, the union actions in Australia South African white supremacist fighting capacity of the black proletar­ have been limited by the union bur­ of multiracial anti-apartheid protests regime. South Africa is an in­ iat on the road to the destruction of the that have included white students, eaucracy, which ties them to pressur­ dispensable ally of the US-led "free apartheid system and the establish­ ing the government to impose stronger especially around the demand to free world" guarding the strategic Cape ment of a black-Centred workers ANC leader Nelson Mandela. Sections sanctions. The September ACTU sea lanes, and is periodically involved government. of the white population do not want to congress was "strong on rhetoric but in military clashes with the Soviet­ Against therdormists' clamour for left decisions on bans and sanctions to live in a garrison state, a white backed regime in Angola which is government sanctions and capitalist laager dominated by backward, future union meetings and .ppeals to defended by Cuban troops. divestment, Marxists fight for con­ government" (Australian, 12 Septem­ bigoted Afrikaner nationalism. It The Australian sanctions are above crete acts of labour solidarity­ is imperative that the revolutionary ber). The week-long bans on trade and all directed at supporting Western protest strikes, blacking of all military telecommunications begins on 21 Oct­ movement reach out to co-opt this imperialism's efforts to force Botha cargo, and more generalised bans and layer, pledging in advance a place for ober, giving South Africa plenty of to implement cosmetic "reforms" , strikes in specific circumstances such time to ensure its ships and aircraft whites in the future anti-racist society. hoping thereby to avert the as the present State of Emergency. This is particularly important as the are clear. threatening revolutionary explosion. Our goal is not to "isolate" apartheid As well, the Australian capitalists white population constitutes an Their fear of the revolutionary South Africa but to help the black indispensable reserve of technical see opportunities to tum the South potential of the six-million strong black masses overthrow it. Victorious African crisis to a tidy profit. South skill needed for the socialist recon­ proletariat was reflected by their workers revolution is the only "divest­ struction of the country. Africa is a major trade rival of Aust­ treatment in late August of the visiting ment" that will benefit the black ralia in the supply of a number of The apartheid system remains secretary-general of the South-West workers. unbroken and unyielding. This was important raw materials - wool, coal, Africa Peoples Organisation, Andimba Over the past two months in Aus­ underscored by Botha's infamous manganese, uranium, mineral sands Toivo ja Toivo, a man who spent tralia, bans by maritime and water­ etc. And as the price of South African hardline speech of August 15. One sixteen years in Robben Island prison front unions have continued to hit the has to live in the land of Reaganite gold shares have plummeted, so have along with Nelson Mandela. Though South African freighters, Safocean myth or be willingly naive to see Australian gold shares soared, as the government itself had paid part of Mildura and Safocean Nederburg as in Botha's latest "concessions" any­ investment managers in the US and the cost of his trip, it demanded for well as the lloyd Australia and other Europe look around for somewhere thing else than cosmetics for foreign his entry visa a written undertaking vessels in ports from Sydney to consumption. The' proposal to give stable to re-invest their "divestment" . not to "espouse or promote armed Fremantle. In Fremantle, the Sea­ blacks South African "citizenship" is funds. This sentiment also fuels struggle or violence as a necessary men's Union and the Waterside just hot air. since blacks will still be sections of the trade-union bureau­ means of bringing about change in Workers Federation (WWF) banned cracy like Transport Workers head barred even from voting and the sep­ South Africa, Namibia or elsewhere". arate black "homelands" will be main­ the Nederbutg in protest at both the Ivan Hodgson, who demanded the tained. The proposal to abolish the Extend the Bans on State of Emergency and the arrest in South African De Beers diamond Pretoria on 16 August of officials of the monopoly be "kicked out" of the new pass laws is larg~ly a recognition of South African Shipping I black dockers union, the National reality, namely that hundreds of Argyle diamond venture in Western thousands of blacks have illegally At this crucial hour, when the General Workers Union. The painters Australia "to prevent one of the rich­ flocked to the urban areas anyway. white racist rulers of South Africa and dockers in the port alsQ banned est resources being managed and The "reform" would replace the think they can do anything and get the ship until the living conditions profited by the racist South African passbooks with a national "identity away with it, it is the urgent duty of of the crew were improved: How­ document" for everybody, including the international labour movement to ever, in between stoppages, South Continued on page four whites, thereby expanding police surveillance powers. One thing is certain: there will be no dismantling of apartheid so long as the present rulers remain in power, and they will I Vengeance for Victor Simpson! 1 not go peacefully. ASp photo Hayden/Hawke: Beating Botha On 25 August in the West Aus­ tralian wheatbelt town of Mullewa, ~vel)g~ the "uroer l>t Jotm with a Feather racist murder claimed the life of yet Here in Australia, Reagan's token another young Aboriginal man, Victor "sanctions" on South Africa were Simpson, a well respected 25-year-old tA"I''' ~-;;a echoed by the measures announced in father of two girls. That night Simpson August by the Hawke government.­ had been thrown out of the Railway ms§~~~i:~I~~ ~m~~r Oosure of the Trade Commission' Hotel after an argument with the pub­ in Johannesburg, a ban on Krugerrand lican sparked by racist insults. When imports, restrictions on government the five-foot-tall Simpson returned he business dealings with South Africa was attacked by the over six-foot­ and so on - it didn't come to much. pUblican, an ex-cop, who held him in a For those on the left devoted to headlock for five to ten minutes until pressuring Labor to translate its highly he was dead. The official cause of "moral" anti-apartheid metoric death was given as "asphyxiation". into action, this package was an index Like John Pat, killed by cops in of how little progress they have made Roebourne, and Robert Walker and along their chosen road. For revol­ Charlie Michael in WA prisons, this utionary Marxists it illustrated once case is racist murder pure and simple. again that the working class should The workers movement and all anti­ Spartaclst contingent at protest on second anniversary of cop killing of have no illusions that this government racists must demand: Vengeance for John Pat, 28 September. is motivated by anything other than Victor Simpsoni Jail his murderer 1 imperialist self inf.erest. Hawke and Straight after Simpson was kllled, anger as 1000 turned out from as far knowledge that government forensic angry blacks confronted the cops away as Darwin and South Australia ghouls like Derek Pocock, ex-Scotland Australasian ' demanding they arrest the killer. - was used by the racist media and Yard, will find their victims died of When they got no satisfaction they W A Burke Labor government to praise "natural causes" and the courts will SPARTACIST ~ exploded, storming the hotel while ; the cops' conduct and rail about ram­ back them up. Now the arrogant cops Marxist two-monthly of the Spartacist chanting the name of John Pat. The pant alcoholism as the cause of are trying to intimidate the ABC with League of Australia and New Zealand, sec­ cops called in reinforcements and Simpson's death, effectively blaming "bans" and are also going after the tion of the international Spartacist tendency. eventually whisked the publican, Brian the victim for his own murder. The Aboriginal Legal Service. EDITORIAL BOARD: Darl~ne Carlson, Williamson, away in a car to Gerald­ white preacher at the funeral had the At the 28 September Sydney dem­ Paul Connor (editor), Doug Flynn, Steve ton, charged him with "unlawful same message: "The grog got him." onstration on the second anniversary Hooper, Rita Sutherland kllling" (manslaughter) and then let "That's bullshitl", a mourner replied. of the killing of John Pat, the Socialist i CIRCULATION: Jenny Klein him go. This kid glove treatment con­ PRODUCTION: Jennifer Brown There's nothing for blacks in racially Workers Party reformists tried Printed by trade union labour. Registered trasts with the Gestapo-like dawn raids exclusionist, capitalist White Aus­ (unsuccessfully) to censor the Spart­ at GPO, Sydney for posting as a publication launched on Aboriginal homes in tralia. As for land rights, WA p~emier acist League. To our demand "Avenge - Category B. Subscription 52 for 6 issues: Mullewa the next day, when 25 blacks Burke is leading a .revolt in the ALP the Murder of John Pat" they have overseas airmail 57 for 6 issues. Address were dragged out of their beds and against the federal Land Rights Blll, always counterposed appeals to the all correspondence to: Spartacist Publi­ arrested - including six boys and one bosses' state for "justice". But as rev­ cations, GPO Box 3473, Sydney, NSW, 2001. insultingly inadequate though it is. Opinions expressed in signed articles or girl aged from 13 to 161 The ABC's Four Comers ptogram 01 olutionary integrationists we look for­ letters do not necessarily express the Aboriginals can expect no "justice" 23 September for once truthfully ex­ ward to the day when the working editorial viewpoint. from the capitalist courts or cops. Even posed some of the racist terror routine­ class in power will avenge Victor Simp­ Printed by Spot Press Pty Ltd, 21 Ross St, Simpson's funeral - a restrained and ly meted out to blacks. The murderous son, John Pat and all victims of racist Forest Lodge, respectful d~monstration of Aboriginal cops and screws are secure in the terror.• 2 Australasian Spartacist Greenp-eace Murder: French Trotskyists say' We Accuse Mitterrand I Islands Business Abridged from Le Bolchevik No 57, are to be feared from the French army. September 1985, newspaper of the Ligue Trotskyste de France, French \ And Mitterrand is not exactly a section of the international Spartacist beginner. Minister of the Interior in tendency. 1954 at the time of the outbreak of the PARIS - On July 10, in the New struggle for Algerian independence, Zealand port of Auckland, a double Justice Minister in 1956 and in this explosion ripped the hull of the Rain­ office personally responsible for the bow Warrior, a former trawler char­ execution of Algerian Communists, tered by the ecology organisation he's a long-time servant of French Greenpeace for a protest campaign imperialism who fully merits the against French nuclear testing in the hatred of all victims of this racist and Pacific. A victim of two magnetic colonialist state. And he continues in mines placed against its hull, the ship this role as president of the popular went down within minutes. A member front, responsible for the sending of of Greenpeace who was aboard, paratroopers to Lebanon to disarm Fernando Pereira, 36 years old, was Palestinians in the face of invasion by killed by the explosion of the second the Israeli war machine, responsible mine. But the death toll could have for repression in the West Indies and been much higher. Le Monde (13 July) New Caledonia, the mercenary-style wrote that Greenpeace officials "are invasion of Chad last year and now convinced the perpetrators of the the Auckland murder. bombing were extremely well in­ Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior, sunk by Mltterrand's murderous formed and intended to wipe out the spooks In Auckl.and Harbour, killing crew member, Fernando Pereira. movement's leadership: the move­ Anti-Soviet Consensus ment's seven international leaders All through this affair, Mitterrand bombing was a golden opportunity: effect that the DGSE should "antic­ were, in fact, due to meet on board the and his clique have benefited from a Greenpeace's liberal illusions and Rainbow Warrior to coordinate the ipate" the pacifists' activities. This near-total "sacred union" [national pacifist disarmament propaganda campaign [against the French nuclear brings to mind E10i Machoro, the unity). Since the beginning, the press finds a ready ear among a New tests] and it was only at the very last leader of the [pro-independence] and the bourgeois politicians have Zealand population which has just minute that they decided not to spend FLNKS assassinated in New Caledonia been einbarrassed because the DGSE the night on board, preferring instead begun to discover that it can no longer by a bullet in the chest from a gen­ opt out of a northern hemisphere agents got caught, and not because a seaside hotel. " darme after the French government they had murderously attacked (and nuclear Armageddon and who under­ gave orders to "neutralise" him. The There is no longer any doubt: this in another country) a legal organis­ standably don't appreciate being army brass acted in the political murderous terrorist act was committed sprinkled with nuclear fallout for the ation which was peacefully exercising by agents of the Direction Generale de framework that the government gave its right to protest French nuclear benefit of the arrogant French (Le them - which in no way removes la Securite Exterieure (DGSE), the Monde's special correspondent called testing. Without forgetting the French spy agency, under the auth­ their own responsibility in this Socialist Party, the party of front men the New Zealand prime minister "a despicable crime. ority of the defence ministry. Two little emperor of the coconut palms"). for the current denizen of the presi­ teams from the DGSE's "action Mitterrand is not giving an inch.On dential palace, which prudently waited department" set the mines which But at least it now seems that the August 18 this horseman of nuclear until August 21 to condemn the killed Fernando Pereira: the couple French agents will be put on trial in apocalypse reminded French soldiery Auckland bombing, all the rightist posing as Swiss tourists - "Mr and New Zealand. (In France, none of the that Greenpeace is still the enemy. dignitaries are ostentatiously lining Mrs Turenge" now in custody in New implicated agents can be charged with In a "directive" addressed to the up behind Mitterrand. The rightist Zealand - were in reality two French anything, since they are in the armed forces, he launched this sinister parties have no interest in meddling officers, Captain Dominique Prieur, military.) This is a good thing and a from the "special cadres" (female good opportunity for the working class personnel) and Major Alain Mafart, of this country to learn a thing or two until recently second in command at about the dirty tricks of the sordid the Training Centre for Combat Divers capitalist state apparatus running the - and the crew of the windjammer country. This sort of "affair" offers Ouvea, which included three more the possibility of a brief glimpse of diver-saboteurs. what goes on in the secret police cesspool. But it will take nothing less French Spies Caught in the Act than a social revolution to bring to light the crimes of these secret tools of . This despicable act is unfortunately the imperialist state, as did the not out of the ordinary. The hired October Revolution of 1917, which, by killers of French imperialism have overthrowing the old state apparatus, chalked up quite a few other terrorist permitted the uncovering of those of operations, particularly in the rem­ the sinister tsarist secret police, the nants of its colonial empire and the Okhrana. In the meantime we demand African neo-colonies, where French that the entire trial of the French undercover agents and paratroopers agents be broadcast on prime time on make and unmake governments with French state-owned television. impunity. But in this case, the DGSE agents made the mistake of believing that in New Zealand they would ben­ Mltterrand Is Guilty efit from the quasi-absolute impunity that normally covers them in Chad, the Mitterrand and his government have tried to absolve themselves of Bulletin Central African Republic, Gabon, French gendarmes In New Caledonia. Polynesia or France. any responsibility by means of the Tricot report, which relies on mis­ For this region is now a "hostile leading arguments and a phony warning: "I repeat the order given to with the mechanisms of a state appar­ environment" for French imperialism. naivete, written in pompous language the armed forces to prevent, by force atus that they suppose will once again First of all, Australia, which is home to whose absurdity is matched only by its if need be, any non-authorised entry be theirs in 1986, whether it be the American spy and communications cynicism. "Tricot Washes Whiter" into French territorial waters and secret police or the bonapartist powers bases central to the US' nuclear first­ ran the headline of the August 27 French airspace in the Polynesian of a president who is literally above strike capacity against the Soviet Liberation. The responsibility for this atolls of the Mururoa and Fangataufa the law. (Article 68 of the Constitution Union, would be happy to be rid of premeditated act of state· te"orism, sector. . .. 1 give notice that nuclear stipulates, in fact, that "the President France in order to fulfill its ambitions carried out with important material testing in the Pacific will continue as of the Republic is not responsible for as the hegemonic mini-power in the and financial means, belongs above long as it is deemed necessary for the acts accomplished in the exercise of region. In New Zealand, the Labour all to Mitterrand, the head of the army defence of the country by French his functions except in the event of government of David Lange is cur­ - as he himself repeats on every authorities and solely by them" high treason", and that "he can only rently the object of active destabilis­ possible occasion - to his govern­ (Le Monde, 20 August). The French be indicted on the basis of an identical ation efforts on the part of the White ment and to his war minister Hernu. navy will thus await Greenpeace's vote by both Assemblies after a public House, in retaliation against New The Tricot report quotes a note from flotilla, due to arrive in mid-October in ballot and by an absolute majority of Zealand's refusal to dock US nuclear Admiral Pages, commander of the the vicinity of the French nuclear the members comprising them" .) ships. For Lange, the anti-Greenpeace Pacific nuclear testing center, to the atolls, and more murderous assaults Continued on page foUr October I November 1985 3 Racist Fees and Quotas Must Go! Overseas Students Fight Deportation Over 150 overseas (Asian) students While delegates from the demon­ and abroad and that it will tate a Blaineyite lies to scapegoat overseas and their supporters, including the stration began negotiating for a halt on determined and united struggle to students for the extreme government­ University of New South Wales all deportation actions pending talks beat them. imposed shortage of university places. Spartacist aub, struck a blow against with ALP ministers Hayden, Hurford When the Department heads made We demand a massive increase in Federal Government attempts to re­ and Ryan, the demonstrators sang their final "offer" which contained no TEAS coupled with a program of open introduce tertiary fees by occupying "We are the World" for a bevy of TV real concessions, the decision to stay admissions to all universities and the Overseas Students Office of the cameras. While some begged Edu­ put and face arrest if necessary was CAEs and no racist quotas! Education Department in Sydney, cation minister and one-time feminist unanimous. Police (including Wran's The government picked on overseas 27 September. The department was pin-up Susan Ryan to "stop those fees Tactical Response Squad) moved in to students believing them to be isolated immobilised for four hours while applyin' " others called out "deport evict us from the building at 6.15 but from Australian society, an easy students demanded an immediate halt Susan Ryan I" One Spartacist placard made no arrests. aearly Hayden/ target. But these students came here to moves to deport those who have not put it clearly: "Break with the ALP I Ryan/Hurford did not want the embar­ to get an education often at great yet paid the discriminatory "visa" Build a revolutionary workers partyl" rassment of 100 arrests lending financial sacrifice by their families and fees. The fees, applied to overseas A Spartacist speaker reported to the notoriety to their cowardly attempt to are prepared to fight. For the majority, students only, were increased to a sit-in on the cases of a Tamil (see page victimise overseas students. from repressive anti-communist states whopping $3500 early this year and nine) facing deportation to the bloody This struggle has potential to spark like Malaysia, this takes real guts. will be increased in short order to Sinhala chauvinist regime in Sri a hard fight on campuses against the Further actions are planned and all $10,000 in the government's scheme to Lanka; and the five Irian Jayans who creeping reintroduction of fees and those who have chafed under Hawke's make the "user pay" for education in fled Indonesian army terror only to against White Australia racism. Accord - militant unionists, blacks. Australia. Most overseas students be refused asylum in this country. We Hawke & Co singled out overseas immigrant workers who have also simply cannot afford the fees and their made the point that the pro-Reagan students after being forced to back off experienced the racist backlash - leadership began Ii "Delay the Fees" Hawke government is deeply commit­ wholesale reintroduction of tertiary must rally to the defence of overseas campaign last April. ted to racist imperialist order at home fees early this year. Ryan used racist students .•

t.~~I!IlIIiO F 1ii3f~ 'i:a!"j a demonstration held in Papeete in whatever "reforms" it has promised bonapartist of all the advanced Mitterrand II ... March during which a policeman was the masses, that it will never touch capitalist countries and in general wounded, is an example. the sacrosanct core of the bourgeois parliament becomes virtually irrel­ Continued from page three The Pacific nuclear test center thus state - the armed bodies of men evant as soon as things get hot. In the midst of this disgusting orgy represents the symbiosis of colonial­ which defend private property and in Furthermore, it is hard to imagine the of "raison d'etat", now that it is out ism and anti-Sovietism. We Trotsky­ particular the officer corps. "Demo­ French army giving,PCF deputies of the government the French Com­ ists demand immediate independence cratic" France's history has been access to "defence secrets" so that munist party (PCF) at least had the for all of the remaining vestiges of the marked by quite a few near and real they can poke their nose into DGSE or merit of being blunt. "It's a question French colonial empire, on the one coups d'etat (such as de Gaulle's DST [French counterintelligence] of state terrorism", declared Andre hand because we want the liberation of takeover on 13 May 1958). One of business. Lejoinie at the National Assembly on the still-enslaved peoples, and on the Mitterrand's first gestures on coming The calm in the social climate this August 10, adding: "It is impossible other because in this country the exist­ to power was to amnesty all the fall is extremely fragile. The colonies, to pretend in this Fifth Republic, ence of colonies has always been a I)fficers imprisoned by de Gaulle for from New Caledonia to Guadeloupe, where everything proceeds from the powerful encouragement to reaction participating in the coup d'etat against are in turmoil. The workers of this summit, that the decision to commit and bonapartism. Since the days of Algerian independence. And now he is country, French and immigrant, are this bombing didn't get the green General Cavaignac [who slaughtered seeking to use his prerogatives as far from resigned to being sacrificed light from the highest authorities of the insurrectionary French workers "chief of armed forces" to keep as on the altar of [economic] "re­ the state" (L 'Humanite, 23 August). in 1848] up to the Algerian War, the many as possible of his bonapartist structuring". What is holding back the They also denounced the sacred union gangrene always ends up reaching powers after the inevitable electoral struggle, that of the working class in by the SP and the reactionaries France itself. We say: Down with the defeat [of his current parliamentary France and of the oppressed peoples around this crime. But beware of those force de frappe, NATO, ANZUS and majority] in '86 - as shown by the of the colonies, is not so much fear of a who preach the possibility of a the other imperialist war alliances I recent nomination of General Saulnier, right-wing government replacing "clean" and "democratic" national We stand for the unconditional mili­ his personal chief of staff at the Mitterrand, but the social-chauvinist defence. This sacred union around tary defence of the Soviet Union Elysee [the French White House], to and reformist line of the PCF. The the post of chief of general staff Mitterr~d is based, above all, on a against Reagan and Mitterrand's government is discredited on all sides nuclear consensus around France's war drive. of the armed forces. and everything it touches falls apart anti-Soviet •'force de frappe" [nuclear Mitterrand has shown his willing­ in its hands. The only progressive and arsenal], which the PCF supports. It ness to defend the military capacity of What Justice for realistic way out of the current is now 50 years since the PCF degen­ French imperialism, whatever the Fernando Pereira? disastrous situation is to fight for a erated into a reformist party, and the cost. The popular front of May 10 workers government which will expro­ sign of that reformist degeneration [1981, date of election of the No "justice" can be expected from priate the capitalist class and try all was its support to French national Mitterrand government], like all the investigations now going on in the war criminals of French imperi­ defence in 1935. Similarly, to cement popular fronts, from the Kerensky France, nor from the PCF's attempts alism before a jury composed of their its entry into the "Union of the Left" government in Russia in 1917 to to set up parliamentary committees to surviving victims. Vengeance for the and try to make itself accepted as a Allende's Chile, must give explicit "oversee" the secret police. The martyred victims of French imperi­ "party of government" by the bour­ guarantees to the bourgeois army, French regime is one of the most alisml. geoisie, the PCF, from 1973 to 1977, had to accept piece by piece the anti­ Apartheid Slavery I Unions: black all sanctions are fire and water;. they Soviet nuclear force. Sth Africa ••• South African cargo I , , cannot be mixed." - "Once Ag~in the ILP", Force de Frappe and Colonialism Continued from page two ~ending and deepening these Writings ofLeon Trotslcy, 1935-36 labour solidarity actions, ie, going government" (Daily Commercial Nowhere is this clearer than in the France is a second-rate imperialist beyond the government's hypocritical News, 1 August). This Laborite "more ACTU's excuses that they are con­ power. It's only thanks to the posturing, will inevitably draw the for master, more for us" mentality is strained by section 45D of the Trade remnants of its colonial empire, class line against the Hawke govern­ the enemy of real working-class Practices Act, directed against transformed into so many military ment. Sanctions by the imperialist solidarity . secondary boycotts and picketing, as bases and naval stations, and its governments and independent former ACTU president aiff Dolan independent nuclear arsenal that it can workers action are counterposed. In The Australian reformist left, true told the 24 August march. For example still pretend to play at being a world to its mission of prettifying its "own" 1935 when the Stalinist Comintern tried to combine "workers sanctions" the WWF and maritime union leader­ military power and occupy something ruling class as somehow capable of ships - in Sydney dominated politi­ a little bit better than a back seat in playing a "progressive" role, has all with appeals to the League of Nations over fascist Italy's invasion of cally by the pro-Moscow Stalinist the Western bloc, engaged, under plumped for the "pressure Hawke and Maritime Unions Socialist Activities Reagan's sway, in a war drive against Hayden to do the job" line. At the Ethiopia, Leon Trotsky, Russian revolutionary leader and founder of Association (MUSAA) - have tried to the Soviet Union. Here we have the largest anti-apartheid action to date, evade a legal confrontation with 45D real secret of this obscene the 2000-strong march on 24 August in the Trotskyist Fourth International, wrote: by limiting the bans to a few days, as sacred union. Sydney, neither the Communist different unions hit the ships in suc­ And if the guardians of the Party, the pro-Moscow Socialist "The. truth is. that if. the workers cession. But the shipowners are "grandeur of France" think them­ Party of Australia nor the Socialist begin their own sanctions ag~t Italy, . their action inev.itably strikes threatening to prosecute them any­ selves able to get away with such Workers Party had much represen­ way. This political alibi of the labour tation, let alone contingents. While the at . their own capitalists, and, the action against a mainly white and well­ . bureaucracy is not limited to Australia. organised organisation like Green­ official speakers at the march urged League would be compelled, to drop all sanctions. It proposes. them now In an open letter to members of the US peace, all those who fight in the crowd to step up pressure upon because the workers' voices are muted West Coast longshoremen (wharfies), Hawke to impose stronger sanctions the French colonies against colonial in every country. Workers actio~ can the IL WU, veteran militant and oppression can expect worse. The and apply pressure to Reagan, a begin only by absolute opposition. to Spartacist supporter Stan Gow took sentencing of 17 pro-independence militant Spartacist contingent stood the national bourgeoisie and .its this question up head on: militants in Tahiti on August 27 to out behind a banner reading: "Black international combinations. Support prison terms of up to five years, after workers must take the lead - Smash of the League and support of workers Continued on page ten 4 Australasian Spartaclst f,

-, ,.' . ~,' , Australian SWP S~lits from USec, Embraces Stalinist' Butchery We Honor the Vi e Trotskyists Trotskyist leader Ta Thu Thau. When it comes to betraying revol­ namese Revolution and Its Leadership cesses". But not the Australian SWP murdered by Stalinists In 1948. utionary principle, the Australian an "Accomodation to Stalinist - they hail this murder. Socialist Workers Party always likes to positions". That's putting it mildly. Percy and Co indulge in a little kiem go their US counterparts one better. Myers shamelessly defends the thao themselves for their past "mis­ traying the aspirations of the Viet­ Where the American SWP politely murder of hundreds of Vietnamese judgement" of the Vietnamese namese masses for independence, the debates fascist Klansmen on TV, the Trotskyists, the leaders of workers Communist Party as Stalinist and Viet Minh openly welcomed the return Australian SWP apologizes for the militias who 40 years ago fought apologize for their former adherence to of British and French troops to Saigon. genocidal Croatian fascist Ustashi. against the British and French col­ "the false schema of the theory of Stalinist leader Tran Van Giau And when Jack Barnes denounces onialists welcomed with open arms by Permanent Revolution". Myers' declared: "Those who incite the Trotsky and the doctrine of permanent the Stalinist-led Viet Minh. Myers pamphlet, unanimously adopted by people to arm themselves will be revolution as ultraleft dogma, Jim writes of the August-September 1945 the Australian SWP leadership in considered saboteurs and provoca­ Percy openly glories in one of the Saigon insurrection: October 1984, rivals the dirtiest teurs, enemies of national indepen­ ugliest episodes in the annals of Stalinist frame-ups against Trotskyism dence: Our democratic liberties will be Stalinist butchery: the 1945 murder of "During this extremely perilous from the time of the 1930s Moscow granted and guaranteed by the the Vietnamese Trotskyists, martyred period for the revolution, the Saigon trials. Today Intercontinental Press democratic allies." On September 7 for their militant opposition to the Trotskyists appear to have outdone says this is an attempt to justify "a Giau issued a decree disarming all reinvasion of Vietnam by imperialist themselves in pursuing a sectarian, crime against the revolution that can non-government organizations, in ultraleft line that would have pre­ troops at the end of Wodd War n. Now have 110 justification .... ' , Yet this vile particular aimed at the factory-based vented any real struggle against the these Australian reformists have anti -Trotskyist diatribe was openly self-defense militias organized by the imperialist enemy (I). During the distributed at the USec's "12th World renounced Trotskyism altogether. mass demonstration on August 21, Trotskyists. The disparate, and increasingly Congress" earlier this year without a for example, the Trotskyists unfurled According to one right-wing desperate, groupings that make up the a huge banner of the Fourth Inter­ peep from any of the participants! historian, the Trotskyists "did not "United Secretariat of the Fourth national. According to an observer We Spartacists, who seek to International" (USec) have long lived sympathetic to the International continue the struggle of Lenin and agree with the Viet Minh that by with the glaring contradiction betWeen Communist League, they carried Trotsky, published a pamphlet in 1976 negotiation alone they would be able to their professed Trotskyism and their banners and placards reading: defending the Vietnamese Trotskyists maintain independence. They did not trust the Viet Minh; they refused to actual political practice of sucking up give up what weapons they had. The to social democrats, nationalists and Trotskyite !nternationaI Communist Stalinists. In the case of the Australian League held meetings demanding SWP, that contradiction has finally resolved itself. The August 28 issue of arms for the people" (E J Hammer, their paper Direct Action announces IJ'1 The Struggle for Indochina, 1940- they are splitting from the USee, 1955).Far from being ultraleftist, the openly expressing the dream of re­ Vietnamese Trotskyists' political formists everywhere, to obtain "mass weaknesses in fact lay in the direction influence" on the cheap, renouncing of underestimating Stalinist treachery, and denouncing Trotskyism in the which left them unprepared for the most categorical terms. SWP national betrayals and bloodbaths which cost secretary Percy proclaimed: ~ them their lives. &, "In the end, our political position is ; When British and Indian troop!> a total neg~tion ofthe whole reason for > landed in Saigon on September 10, the existence of the Fourth inter­ national .... 1 think.it was wrong, to they were welcomed by the Viet Minh. form the Fourth International in the The Saigon People's Committee and ! the Trotskyists of the International first place .... In the end the org~is­ Spartaclsts always fought for military victory of the N LF I DRV forces ational form cut off Trotsky and, the Communist League issued a joint Trotskyists from any other possibility against Imperialism. manifesto denouncing this treason; in of development of. the Communist response, the Stalinists sent troops to movement." "Down with imperialism! Long live against such despicable slanders. surround the People's Committee the world revolution! Long live the Stalinism and Trotskyism in Vietnam Today, says the meeting and arrested the Trotskyist Direct Action, workers and peasants front! People's was dedicated: "to the martyred Cuban Communist Party, the Sal­ leadership on September 14. On committees everywhere! For the Vietnamese Trotskyists. The most vadoran FMLN, the Nicaraguan FSLN September 22, the British moved to people's assembly! Arm the people! uncompromising fighters against and the Vietnamese CP are "dynami­ rearm the French colons, who Land to the peasants! Nationalize imperialism, they led the 1945 Saigon cally and creatively" dealing with the factories under workers control! unleashed a wave of terror against the insurrection against the reinvading political developments. Percy and Co For a workers and peasants govern­ Vietnamese; the Viet Minh sought colonialists. For this heroic struggle neglect to mention other "crp.ative" ment!" "negotiations" with the British and they were massacred not only by the opposed "violence" while the masses organizations they have embraced According to Myers, the fact that French and British expeditionary lately, including the Croatian pro-fas­ 30,000 people joined the Trotskyists of Saigon insurrected against the forces, but above all by the Stalinist colonial troops. Armed contingents cist HDP and the American Democ­ only made this "ultraleftist posturing" Viet Minh. Today renegades. from ratic Party. Australian SWP confer­ of the Trotskyists more "danger­ of workers led by the Trotskyists were Trotskyism hail the Vietnamese in the forefront. ences heard speeches by Peter Came­ ous"! Stalinists . .. absolving them of jo, a consummately cynical former •'The decision to disarm the Trotsky­ responsibility for the vile murders of The Viet Minh, meantime, were honcho of the American SWP, and ists before they went from words to busy negotiating the return of the action was obviously a wise and Ta Thu Thau and hundreds of other John Trinkl, the resident anti-Trotsky­ Vietnamese Fourth Internationalists. French, whose expeditionary force ist and anti-Spartacist for the rad-lib necessary one .... "It was at this time that leaders of the But the international Spartacist under Leclerc landed on October 5, Stalinoid New York Last Guardian. Trotskyists and of bourgeois and tendency proudly upholds the banner moving to crush the insurgency and year, Camejo and Trinkl supported petty-bourgeois nationalists were ex­ of Vietnamese Trotskyism." "restore order" . The Stalinists black Democrat Jesse Jackson's ecuted. According. to most sources, assisted, arresting the Trotskyists of "Rainbow Coalition", and the Guard­ the executions were ordered by Tran the Struggle (La Lutte) group, who ian endorsed the Mondale-Ferraro Van Giau. The 1945 Saigon Insurrection were imprisoned and shot as the Democratic Party ticket against "The Trotskyists and their nationalist French approached. In the North a Reagan in the '84 elections. allies had made a major contribution Following Stalin's line of collabor­ well-organized Trotskyist group, The latest issue of the American to the near-destruction of the ation with the Allied forces in World which published a daily paper in SWP's Intercontinental Press (23 revolution in the South. Preventing War II, the Stalinist-led Viet Minh Hanoi, Tranh Dau (Struggle), was also September) has 27 pages devoted to further damage, if necessary by cooperated with Kuomintang China wiped out by Stalinist repression. Ta physical repression, was imperative." the split by their Australian ex­ against the Japanese. When the Thu Thau, one of the most prominent comrades. An article by Steve Oark Tran Van Giau, says Myers, was defeated Japanese withdrew their leaders of the Trotskyists, was labels a 1984 pamphlet by Australian forced to go through "kiem thao occupation forces in 1945, the Viet arrested on orders of the Viet Minh. SWP leader Allen Myers on The Viet- (self-criticism)" because of "ex- Minh held effective state power. Be- Continued on page eight October I November 1985 5 Behind South Africa The prominent white South African future - of the apartheid state. liberal Helen Suzman recently ob­ Foreign investors ask themselves: served that no one has to call for "How much longer can a privileged divestment anymore. It's already caste of 4.5 million whites totally happening. Foreign investors do not subjugate and hideously superexploit want to touch South Africa right now. 26 million black Africans, coloureds The blood-soaked racist apartheid [people of mixed race] and Indians?" state has been hit by a massive flight Sooner or later, they figure, the white II Stree of capital. Stocks of South African police state is going to crack, and after companies, even goldmining shares, that the deluge . . . possibly a descent are going for a song. The value of the into anarchy and prolonged racial, country's currency, the rand, plum­ ethnic and tribalist bloodletting. meted to an all-time low of 35¢ late But that is not the only alternative last month, half its value at the begin­ to apartheid capitalism. South Africa's ning of this year, a quarter of its value mines and factories, its railroads and Aparthei in 1981. American and West European gold reserves, were produced by the banks have called in their loans to sweat and blood of black, coloured and the tune of $2 billion. They even Indian labor, especially the black at a large discount on Wall Street threatened to seize the foreign assets migrant workers from the bantustans and other Western financial centers. of Nedbank, South Africa's largest and neighboring black states who are The attitude of international capital domestically owned bank, if it did not hideously superexploited in the mines. toward South Africa is, let's get what meet its international obligations. To paraphrase Marx, apartheid has we can while we can. Business Week In just a few weeks David Rockefel­ created in a six-million-strong black (23 September) reports: "In the face of ler and his fellow bankers have upset proletariat, stripped of every democ­ escalating strife and the deaths of the South African economy far more ratic and human right, its own grave­ more than 700 - mostly blacks­ than decades of activity by the divest­ digger. The wealth of South Africa since rioting broke out a year ago, ment/sanctions lobby. "We are being belongs not to the capitalist - the nearly every American corporation asked to pay all our debts in a minute Wall Street, Frankfurt and London in the country has an escape plan." - no country can do that", exclaimed bankers or Johannesburg mine Foreign capital in South Africa is the chief economist of Anglo American magnates - but to the toilers who highly volatile and invested in ways Corp, the giant mining and industrial created it. And the only kind of designed to minimize the risk when conglomerate in South Africa. After "divestment" that will benefit the time finally does run out for the temporarily shutting down both the exploited and oppressed will be pro­ apartheid state. stock exchange and foreign-exchange letarian revolution, and the expropri­ markets, Pretoria announced· a four­ ation of these riches by a black­ The Land Where Gold Is King South African rand plunges as capital month freeze on the repayment of centered workers government as part flees. principle on its 519 billion in foreign of a socialist federation of southern While South Africa is the only indus­ bank debt. As if he represented some Africa. trialized country in sub-Saharan bankrupt Third World regime, the The spectre of communism in South Africa, in one fundamental way its role This is the third time South Africa has head of South Africa's central bank Africa also haunts Wall Street. South in the world capitalist economy is experienced massive capital flight. journeyed hat-in-hand to London and Africa: Time Running Out was the similar to that of a backward Third The 1960 Sharpeville massacre Washington, pleading with inter­ title of an influential 1981 study World country. It is an exporter of provoked militant nationwide protests national financiers to roll over their commissioned by the Rockefeller raw materials and an importer of and mass stayaway strikes. The loans. Foundation. The commission was manufactured products. And one raw African National Congress (ANC) While the actions of foreign bankers headed by Ford Foundation president material quite dominates the economy: abandoned passive resistance and have made front-page news, the South Franklin Thomas (Ford is a major gold. It accounts for 50 percent of attempted armed insurrection. It African financial crisis was actually investor in South Africa). This study South Africa's foreign-exchange looked for a moment like the triggered by the flight of domestic concluded that "all the ingredients of earnings and almost 20 percent of long-anticipated black uprising was capital. Whenever the unrest in the a major crisis are present there. its gross national product. As gold at hand. A billion dollars was with­ black townships threatens to spill The dangers of political instability, goes, so goes the South African drawn from the country in the over into their suburbs, well-to-do large-scale racial conflict, and the economy. When the price of gold space of weeks. The apartheid state whites cache more liquid assets in growth of Communist influence plunged from 5850 an ounce in 1980 faced the worst balance-of-payments Wall Street, the City of London, are real." to less than $500 an ounce in 1983, crisis in its history . Frankfurt and Zurich. Last year At the same time, Western capital­ hitting a low of $285 earlier this year, In 1960, US imperialism came to the $2 billion fled the country. As one Wall ism cannot write off South Africa as apartheid capitalism plunged into the aid of its beleaguered South African Street economist put it, "At the first hopeless. The stakes are much too worst depression in SO years. ally by arranging emergency loans sign of trouble, locally held funds high. The ruling classes in the US and It is above all, a golden chain which from the International Monetary move out" (Business Week, 26 West Europe have convinced them­ binds the apartheid state to Wall Fund (IMF). But it was not timely IMF August). And no one doubts that selves, in the face of South African Street, the City of London, Frankfurt loans which restored foreign investor South Africa is in big trouble. realities, that there is a reformist and Zurich. South Africa supplies confidence, however, it was the To be sure, no one who looks at the solution which will preserve their world capitalism with 60 percent of crushing of all resistance to white situation soberly also doubts that the interests. Thus the Rockefeller Foun­ that commodity Marx called "the uni­ racist rule. Eleven thousand militants white supremacist regime can drown dation study urges the US government versal medium of payment" and "the were arrested and every major anti­ in blood a black upheaval at this time. "to promote genuine political power universal embodiment of wealth". apartheid organization, including the But in the longer run international sharing in South Africa" . For a century the rich veins of gold on ANC and Stalinist Communist Party capital is deeply pessimistic about the However, these days South African the Witwatersrand and superexploited was driven underground, their leaders future - and not just the distant "power-sharing" futures are selling black African labor have been a killed, imprisoned or forced into exile. Socialist Oraaniser powerful magnet attracting capital - In the decade following Sharpeville originally British, in the postwar a totalitarian police state reigned period increasingly American - to supreme over the defenseless, atom­ southern Africa. The dominant ized and demoralized black masses. mining company, Harry Oppen­ This was the perfect climate for heimer's Anglo American Corp, is foreign investment, which poured well named, since half of it is owned into the country . by Englishmen and Americans. Fifty The 1960s and early' 70s marked the percent of the stock of the seven golden age, so to speak, of apartheid mining groups which control South capitalism. Since then troubles have African gold production is in the hands increasingly accumulated for the of foreign investors (or was until they Randlords and their partners on Wall started selling off like crazy a few Street and in the City of London. In months ago). early 1973 the black working class The enormous wealth" of apartheid shattered the police-state calm as the capitalism and, indeed, the inter­ city of Durban was paralyzed by a national monetary system rests upon mass strike. The rising level of the naked back of the black African workers' struggles converged with a miner, who daily risks being killed or new generation of black student mili­ maimed digging in 110 degree heat tants in the 1976 Soweto uprising. and darkness of the deep pits, who Mass stayaway strikes in solidarity when not working lives in males-only with the rebellious black youth barracks under prison-like conditions, embraced 70-80 percent of the labor who faces being sent back to starve in force resident in Soweto, whose two the bantustan hellholes at any show million inhabitants make it the largest of resistance. city in sub-Saharan Africa. At the Thus the threat of black revolt trig­ height of the unrest capital once again gers international financial panic. fled the country. And Washington

8 Au.lralaalan Spartaclsl lCa's Financial Crisis foreign bank in South Africa, has A small furor was erellted a couple of reduced its holding by 20 percent. weeks ago by the private publications Overall, direct US investment has of a report entitled 'How You Can Get fallen from $2.8 billion in 1981 to $2.3 a Second Passport' - how in other words, sanctuary can be arrang~ billion. elsewhere if apartheid collapses. " The notion of rad-lib activists that While not many whites have as yet divestment means multinationals will been leaving South Africa for sanctu­ ~et no longer profit from apartheid and the aries elsewhere, they have been displays a woeful ignorance of how sending their money to sanctuaries capitalism works. Foreign companies elsewhere. The outflow of South can sell off every last asset and still African-owned funds tripled between continue to superexploit South Africa's 1983 and 1984, from $700 million to black workers. A major business enter­ $2 billion. ~id prise, a large factory or big bank, for State Most of this white capital tlight example, is almost never sold for cash. It is usually paid for with interest­ comes from middle- and upper-class bearing notes. And when profits are at English speakers rather than Afri­ tans. Even white South Africa did not depression-level lows and interest kaners. It is not simply that· the Beating down the Rand escape the effects of the economic rates near historic highs, divestment is English are more fearful about black Rand against the dollar crisis. At the lower end of the white good business. Over the past half revolt. They do not relish living in a caste, unemployment reappeared for decade international capital has sig­ garrison state under a diehard Afri­ 18 kaner regime which has learned :0 the first time in decades. At the upper nificantly shifted the way in' which it '" nothing and forgotten nothing since "Q. end, well-to-do families now hired shares in the superexploitation of 20 their black servants on a part-time South Africa's black toilers. the Great Trek of the 1830s. What is basis as an economizing measure. involved is not just a clash of national The Botha regime responded to the cultures and historic enmities. A die­ 22 Smash Apartheid Capitalism hard Afrikaner government would

M A !l,1 rands were pumped into the growing 1985 military sector, fueled by the war in Source: The Economist Namibia; to subsidize the drought Le Havre, stricken Afrikaner farmers (the France, 24 once again pumped money into South original Boers); and to increase the August, 400 Africa via the IMF, almost half a salaries of civil servants by 30 percent. union militants billion dollars, to quiet down the The state bureaucracy employs a third occupy ship panicky financial markets. ofthe entire white labor force. carrying South The Soweto rebellion inspired a The effects of this apartheid African coal. rising line of black resistance on Keynesianism were predictable. almost all fronts, most importantly Inflation took off. So did borrowing the emergence of a black workers from foreign banks. International debt Spartaclst movement. In 1979 the official jumped from $12 to $19 billion contingent at Wiehahn Commission warned that between 1981 and 1984. Half this Sydney anti­ black unions "can unite with other money was owed by the government Apartheid unions through affiliation (as is and its panoply of state-controlled demon­ happening now) without government companies. The rand steadily de­ stratlon, 24 approval and thus embrace strategic preciated, which further fueled August. industries which can be paralyzed domestic inflation. ASp photo at any given moment." The business community was not ~'1'4 - h4'~ At the same time, another funda­ amused at the effects of Bothanomics. mental contradiction of apartheid Bankers denounced the regime for Black wartrers l&i capitalism came to the fore. Industrial borrowing abroad to pay inflated _'~ expansion was blocked by a growing government salaries. The Business lfUlm shortage of skilled workers, tradition­ Times demanded "hack the public SMASlCa...... ally and legally restricted to the service". The liberal Rand Daily Mail t\J~. tit white labor aristocracy. In 1979 the (which has since folded) editorialized: ~*" a\l Stk." Chamber of Mines projected that by "Wishful apartheid thinking lies at .. :~ \'> ~ 1982 there would be a shortage of the root of our economic misery. The -No Fri, 50,000 skilled artisans throughout the government is taking too much money jc;«'f'::.ji,weight, overpaid, inefficient monolith ly strengthen the increasingly power­ that was created to administer the disastrous policies of the [ruling] ful and combative black labor National Party." movement. - quoted in Wall Street J ouma/, 5 February Apartheid Capitalism 'The Botha regime responded to these In Depression business pressures by imposing a monetarist! austerity program last South Africa's manufacturing sector year, driving interest rates to a historic stagnated in the late 1970s, but the high of 25 percent and further de­ effect was offset and partially masked pressing the worst depression in African economy was in deep troubie: this direction by imposing a two-tier by the inflationary boom in gold. Then SO years. unemployment, investment and profits foreign-exchange system. the bottom fell out for the South The depression naturally also were stuck at depression levels; As massive white capital flight African economy.. As monetarism/ affected the multinationals operating inflation was accelerating, and inter­ drained their reserves, South African austerity swept Western capitalism - in South Africa. The return on direct national debt was building up rapidly. banks were forced to borrow abroad Reagan's America, Thatcher's Britain, foreign investment slid from 20 What turned this severe conj~nctural ever larger amounts on ever shorter Mitterrand's France, Kohl's West percent at the beginning of the decade crisis into a wholesale financial panic terms. Of South Africa's $19 billion in Germany - the price of gold plum­ to 5 percent in 19841 Suddenly, the is, of course, the prospect of bloody foreign bank debt, two-thirds falls due meted. The world depression also hit idea that divestment in South Africa civil war. within a year, almost half within six South Africa's other metal exports might be a good thing, after all, began Significantly the panic button was months. Such a lopsided debt struc­ (eg, platinum, manganese). And to to be heard in corporate boardrooms first pushed not by the multinationals ture is exceptional even by Third make matters worse, a severe drought from Detroit to London. Early this year and Wall Street banks but by South World standards. has devastated agriculture throughout Ford, then the largest carmaker in Africa's own white moneyed classes. Normally, there would be no sub-Saharan Africa. South Africa, sold 60 percent of its Reporting from Johannesburg early question about rolling over these Black unemployment in South Africa operation to Anglo American. Coca­ this year, the Wall Street Journal (5 South African loans. But the situation soared to over 20 percent of the labor Cola, likewise, sold off a majority February) wrote: in South Africa is anything but normal. force. The hideous poverty of the interest, and International Harvester "Many whites here, clinging to their The state of emergency imposed in townships became even more so. Fam­ sold its truck operation outright. The privileges and luxuries, nevettheless late July and Botha's hardline speech ine and disease ravaged the bantus- British-owned Barclays, the largest exude apprehension about the future. Contlnu.ed on page ten

October I November 1985 7 :,'; ': :f-,_ r~. :."

V-.etnamese Trotskyists ••• Continued from page five USecJLCR Howls with Imperialist "Tried three times by local People's Committees, he was acquitted each time - a tribute to the Trotskyists' reputation in Vietnam at that time. Wolves Over Vietnam Finally, he was simply shot in Quang Ngai in February 1946, on orders from While the Australian SWP hails arian revolution, today all wings of groups preparing armed actions from the southern Stalinist leader Tran Van the 1945 murder of the Vietnamese the USec demonstrate their virulent abroad" - unhesitatingly compares Giau" (Stalinism and Trotskyism Trotskyists, the French section of anti-Trotskyism over the litmus test this trial to the Moscow Trials: in Vietnam). Ernest Mandel's United Secretariat, of Vietnam. "When in a stammering voice he Myers claims that the Saigon the Ligue Communiste Revolution­ We reprint below excerpts from an [the accused] 'sincerely repented' his Trotskyists' "ultraleft line ... would naire, is equating recent espionage article by our comrades of the Ligue crimes, you could imagine in elab­ have prevented any real struggle trials in Vietnam with the Moscow Trotskyste de France, published in orate detail the sinister procession of against the imperialist enemy". Yet Trials. Even though there is no Le Bolchevik no 52, February 1985. 'sincere repenters' from Zinoviev to as we have seen, the Stalinists evidence contradicting Hanoi's as­ Slansky." welcomed the Allied imperialists. In sertions that the accused were in fact Last December 18 a court in Ho To make this comparison is to March 1946 Ho Chi Minh signed an plotting armed counterrevolutionary Chi Minh City sentenced to death adopt the standpoint of the liberal or agreement for limited "indepen­ activities, an LCR article, incredibly, five men accused of espionage and social-democratic philistine for whom dence" within the French Union, argued that it is necessary to "howl attempting to organize attacks on there is no difference between permitting the stationing of 15,000 with the wolves", to join the im­ French and Soviet diplomats: since convicting a revolutionary militant French troops in the North. It took perialist hue and cry over these trials. then three of them have been ex­ and a partisan of counterrevolution, ecuted. On the 26th,' in the city of for whom there is nothing here but an eight more years of bitter struggle to In the days of the Vietnam War, drive the French colonialists out of Song Be, it was the turn of three attack on "human rights". But no, the gung-ho vicarious guerrillaists former officers in Marshal Thieu's gentlemen, there is all the difference North Vietnam. And only in 1975, of the LCR were pursuing radical thirty years and two million dead later, army, held since 1975 in a re­ in the world: the Moscow Trials youth. In 1968 they ran through the education camp, who were accused signaled the consolidation of the was imperialism driven from the streets chanting "Ho, Ho, Ho Chi peninsula. The Vietnamese Trotsky­ of seeking to set up a reactionary Stalinist bureaucracy through the Minh I " and trying to pull down organization inside their camp. physical elimination of an entire ists. who fought for a workers and pictures of Vietnamese Trotskyist peasants government in 1945, were In France, only a few of the most generation of "Old Bolsheviks", the martyr Ta Thu Thau as "irrelevant". discredited professional anti­ professional revolutionaries who had ;:hampions of the Indochinese revol­ Most contemptibly, they refused to Communist renegades bestirred made the October Revolution. That 'Jtion. We honor their memory and support their own Vietnamese t]leir struggle. themselves on this occasion to was a tragedy for world revolution. section, the Bolshevik-Leninist denounce the "Vietnamese gulag". But Monsieur Couturier isn't These days the Vietnamese Stalin­ Group of Vietnam, keeping its The imperialist government of thinking about world revolution. he is i~ts themselves don't talk much about existence secret and refusing to Mitterrand, while turning up the worried about what his pals in the how they executed their Trotskyist print its documents (see Workers diplomatic pressure, has waged a Socialist Party and CFDT [Socialist­ compatriots. Tran Van Giau was Vanguard no 72, 4 July 1975). purged from his post and demoted to veritable anti -Vietnam campaign led union federation] think about academic historian. But when French Today things have changed a demanding they be pardoned. him: "How then can one protest socialist Daniel Guerin interviewed Ho bit: the European Mandelites are But the so-called "Trotskyists" of when dictatorships or pseudo­ Chi Minh in Paris in 1946, he was clear busy sucking up to Mitterrand and the LCR had no such scruples. In an democratic regimes condemn com­ enough about Ta Thu Thau: "'He the anti-Soviet social democrats, article titled "Must We Howl with munists to death?" And this person­ was a great patriot, and we mourn championing counterrevolution from the Wolves?" (Rouge no 1142, 11-17 age concludes with a cry from the him,' Ho told me with unfeigned papists in Poland and mullahs in January), one "Louis Couturier" heart: "Whatever be the howls of the emotion. But a moment later he added Afghanistan to former Saigon puppet - after having explained that "it wolves, it is necessary to fight in a steady voice, 'All those who do not officers who yearn to crush the hard­ is equally plausible that not all against those methods [the trials] follow the line I have laid out will won revolutionary victories of the is false in Hanoi's charges: some knowing they will be used tomorrow be broken' . " Vietnamese people. Having long ago of the accused appear to actually when popular discontent gives birth abandoned the struggle for prolet- have been in liaison with Vietnamese to a Vietnamese Solidarnosc." • Corollary of Menshevism: Murder of Trotskyists tarily turned their arms over to their I n Defence of Trotskyism! Nicaraguan revolution I" The alterna­ The Australian SWP pamphlet is bourgeois "allies". The Spartacist tendency resolutely tive is not a "realistic" policy, but explicitly Menshevik, openly de­ But why stop there? Don't forget upholds the principles of revolutionary bloody defeat, as in Spain. Throughout fending the reformist "two-stage those Spanish "ultralefts", assassin­ Trotskyism. We proudly defend our the war in Vietnam, our tendency ~evolution" dogma and the con­ ated by the People's Front because Vietnamese martyrs. Increasingly we fought consistently to mobilize the ,,"'quent need to rely on the Stalin was more interested in pre­ are coming to be recognized as the power of the labor movement in strikes 'progressive" bourgeoisie. The cor­ serving an empty alliance with Trotskyists. Certainly in Australia against the Vietnam War; we agitated ollary of this class collaboration is "democratic" British and French there is no contest. In our final pam­ for military victory to the Viet Cong murdering Trotskyist "ultraleftists" imperialism by maintaining capitalist phlet on the American SWP, The and North Vietnamese forces; we who might threaten the preservation of rule in Spain than in winning the Civil Socialist Workers Party: An Obituary warned of the dangers of Stalinist capitalist exploitation. Says Myers: War against fascism. And what about (1984), we noted that SWP leader Jack betrayal. As we wrote in our Vietnam "The CP was also being realistic and that most dangerous "ultraleft Barnes' 1982 speech explicitly re­ pamphlet: sectarian" , Leon Trotsky, alleged sensible when it attempted to estab­ nouncing the fundamental principles ".It has been left. to the international lish a broad national united front ... agent of the Mikado and Hitler? We of Trotskyism at least clarified the left Spartacist tendency. to uphold, the and when it made the compromises are awaiting a tract by the Australian political landscape. Against the anti­ struggle of our martyred Vietnamese and concessions necessary to secure Ustashi-Iovers about how Trotsky, too, Trotskyist revisionism of the USee, we comrades and call for the formation of such an alliance .... The main enemy had to be eliminated in the name of the uphold the perspective of permanent authentic Trotskyist parties in Indo­ at that time, the enemy who had to popular front of all progressive revolution: china as part of a reborn F91,1rth be defeated if the revolution was to freedom -loving anti-fascists...... Under certain exceptional con­ International. While unconditionally go forward, was foreign imperialism, defending the new deformed workers not Vietnamese landlords or capital­ A few months ago the author of ditions (including centrally the absence of the organized working states ... we have called for ex­ ists - their turn would come later. The Vietnamese Revolution and its tending. the revolutionary conquests This is why one southern party class as a contender for power in its Leadership snarled at one of our own right), Stalinist- or petty­ and opening the road. to socialism official, Nguyen Van Tao, issued the comrades in Sydney, "We support the by political revolution to replace warning during August: 'All those bourgeois-led peasant-based guerrilla murder of the Vietnamese Trotskyists movements have come to power in Stalinist bureaucratic rule with. the who have instigated the peasants . and we support the murder of some democratic rule of the working class to seize the landowners' property will countries like China, Cuba, Vietnam. Australian Trotskyists." Myers' The result has been new bureau­ (supported by the exploited peasantry) be severely and pitilessly punished through soviets." . . .. We have not yet made the poisonous sectarianism is particUlarly cratized workers states on a national­ Communist revolution which will dangerous in the present context in Stalinist program.... Yet these The Australian SWP's denunciation of solve the agrarian problem. This Australia, where rightwing Viet­ deformed social revolutions are them­ Trotskyism, lock, stock and barrel, is government is only ... a bourgeois­ namese gusanos have violently selves partial confirmations of the the logical culmination of decades of democratic government, even though attacked anyone who speaks out in theory of permanent revolution, as deepening reformist degeneration by the Communists are now in power' ." these leaderships were forced - in defense of Vietnam. This includes opposition to their stated programs - the various factions of the United gatherings of trade unionists and to go over to the expropriation of the Secretariat, which broke with auth .. Here Myers goes to the heart of the public appearances of representatives bourgeoisie and the adoption of the entic Trotskyism a long time ago. The historic division between the Trotsky­ of the Vietnamese government, as well socialized property forms first estab­ component groupings of the USec ist theory and program of permanent as forums of both the SWP and lished by the victory of the October long ago lost the ability - and revolution and Stalin's pipedream of Spartacist League of Australia and Revolution, as the only way to achieve desire - to distinguish between "socialism in one country". In the New Zealand. This deadly threat must genuine national liberation and to Menshevism and Bolshevism, debate over China in the 1920s, Trot­ be met by a united defense of the address classically bourgeois- ' between Trotskyism and Stalinism, sky fought Stalin's disastrous policy of workers movement (see "Viet Fascists democratic tasks like land reform. ' , between revolution and counter­ collaboration with the bourgeois Rampage in Australia, US" Workers Today in Sandinista Nicaragua, the revolution. One of the few positions Kuomintang of Chiang Kai-Shek, Vanguard no 380, 31 May; [also Trotskyist theory of pemanent revol­ shared by all the competing factions is a policy which ended with the 1927 "Defend the Vietnamese Revol­ ution again takes on a burning their "anti-Stalinist" unity with the massacre of thousands of Communists ution I" , Australasian Spartacist relevance, expressed in our call to counterrevolutionary Polish Solidar­ and militant workers who had volun- special supplement, 4 June]). "defend, complete, extend the nosc - pet "union" of the pope, the 8 Australasian Spartaclst role they inherited from the British. No Trust in the Indian Bourgeoisie! Remember the Sirima-Shastri pact! But the other side of it is that the Tamil people do have real allies. They have allies in the working people of India. The struggle for Tamil Defend the Tamil People I liberation is a source of inspiration for all the workers and oppressed Asp photo> throughout the whole region. For example, in Tamil Nadu, following the Ev.en as Sri Lanka president J R ~.,'" '~~ ,,. <;'-; " , deportations, there were rail strikes Jayewardene's representatives were .;' "'> meeting with Tamil nationalist leaders and there have been thousands at talks in Thimpu. Bhutan in early " of arrests of people who have August; J R's Sinhala-chauvinist undertaken protest actions in support troops carried out a bloody massacre of of the Tamils from Lanka. Here are the hundreds of Tamils in the occupied real allies of the Tamil people. With an northern town of Vavuniya. When. internationalist and revolutionary per­ several days later. the sham "nego­ spective, the Tamil struggle can be the tiations •• finally broke down. Indian leaven for socialist revolution through­ prime minister Rajiv G,andhi retaliated out the entire region. in anger against the Tamils. deporting Lastly, we're internationalists and three spokesmen for the Eelamist what I said previously about the Tamil organisations. Dr Anton Balasingham. workers in South India being a spring­ C S Chandraghasan and N Satyendra board to revolution throughout the from their refuge in the southern whole continent ties in with what we Indian state ofTamil Nadu. put forward, and that is for a federated Tamil Nadu has since erupted in workers republic of Lanka and Eelam massive demonstrations of outrage . in the context of a socialist federation and protest against the central govern­ of South Asia. ment. including school boycotts and protest strikes on the railways. and Lastly. every atrocity committed by leading to massive a"ests. Indeed the J ayewardene and his army thugs is Gandhi government has been forced to ~~a~!~ aided and abetted by Margaret rescind the deportation order of Spartaclst League protests J R Jayewardene's anti-Tamil pogroms; Thatcher's SAS advisors and by het Chandraghasan. who demanded to be Sydney, 23 July 1983. arms [applause]. These are the thing: returned to India after being flown to that go towards Jayewardene's bloody the US. We print below a slightly of the Tamil people, he also oppresses the predominantly Sinhalese women pogrom against the Tamil people. edited transcript of a speech by and exploits the Sinhala working class. workers in the Free Trade Zone who Then there is Reagan who wants Spartacist League speaker Cheryl Now we know that it is the labour of are superexploited for the profits of Trincomalee. He wants it as a base Myall to a ZOO-strong demonstration the Tamil estate workers that has the multinationals. We believe that alongside Diego Garcia and he'll have in London. 1 September in protest earned the profits for the Sinhala­ there are people amongst the Lankan this base over the blood and over the against the recent massacres. chauvinist capitalists in Lanka. That is population, the Sinh ala population, corpses of the Tamil people. And of why we chant along with you, "Ceylon like these women, who can be won to course, he wants Trincomalee because I want to bring you greetings and tea means Tamil blood!" [applause] the struggle for Tamil freedom. it is part of the international express the solidarity of the inter­ But the Tamil workers have been Now I want to say something about capitalists' aim to wage war against national Spartacist tendency with the denied and stripped of all their citizen­ the events of the last few days. The countries like the Soviet Union struggle of the Tamil peoples. The ship rights. We in the Spartacist deportations of Tamil leaders from and Vietnam. brutal massacre of Tamils at Vavuniya League fight for full citizenship rights Tamil Nadu, unfortunately confirms Today, comrades, in South Africa, recently demonstrated that the only for all workers, of Tamils in Lanka, of something which we have warned black gold and coal miners start a deal that J R wants to negotiate is a black South Africans who are against, and indeed which we have strike against apartheid terror. We deal that is signed in Tamil blood. foreigners in their own country, of had many discussions about with many in the international Spartacist tend­ I am particularly proud to be able to black and Asian people in Margaret of you here today and that is - that ency have sought and have organised speak to you as a representative of Thatcher's racist Britain. And we the Tamil people must not rely on the the Spartacist tendency, because to Indian capitalist class to aid their international solidarity with these demand the right of asylum for all struggles as we have done with yours. the best of our resources in every liberation struggle. If you look at the Tamil refugees who are fortunate That's why we say, "Same enemy, country we have sought to mobilise situation created by the Indian bour­ enough to escape Jayewardene's same fight, workers of the world in defence of the Tamil people. bloody terror and make it to Britain. geoisie in places like the Punjab or in unite!" Now we are internationalists, we see In Lanka we have fought for soli­ Assam, then you can predict that any Thank you .• the struggles of the working class and darity with the Tamil people amongst capitalist solution to these communal of all the oppressed peoples around those sections of the Lankan popu­ contlicts will necessarily lead to a - Reprinted from Worken Hammer, the world as part of the same struggle. lation who have good cause to hate bloodbath. India's role in the region DO 72, September 1985, published by Jayewardene is not only the butcher Jayewardene and his class. Notably is one of divide and rule. This is the the Spartadst I.eagaelBrltalD.

the Hawke Labor government refuses to grant political asylum to Tamil refu­ Stop Deportation of Tamil Refugee! gees. The reason is simple; Hawke Roben Arumugam Alahantham, a pected terrorist." side Workers Federation have also supports Jayewardene, whose mass 33-year-old Tamil, faces imminent For Jayewardene's Sinhalese sent protests to the government. killing of the Tamils is closely connec­ deportation to Sri Lanka where J R racist regime, any young Tamil is a Should the government refuse to ted with US imperialism's appetite to Jayewardene's right-wing UNP "suspected terrorist"! The Australian reverse its order, trade union action secure Trincomalee harbour - government has been waging a government's deportation order­ must ensure that any plane intended historically a heavily Tamil area­ massive campaign of communalist the first served on a Tamil refugee in to transport this Tamil refugee back as a base for its anti-Soviet war drive. terror against the island's oppressed this country - must be vigorously to face his would-be murderers In Hawke's Australia Polish reac­ Tamil minority. Alahantham has been opposed by the labour movement. remains grounded. At last report, the tionaries tleeing a failed attempt to held for six weeks at the Maribyr­ Upon hearing of Alahantham's order had been "deferred" for the restore capitalism, South African nong Immigration Detention Centre plight the Spartacist League sent time being, but the Lankan High whites looking for a safer white in Melbourne after being arrested as telegrams to immigration Minister Commission and local Sinhalese racist country, and Vietnamese an illegal immigrant. A ship's deck­ Hurford and Foreign Minister Hayden chauvinists are pressing for it to be contras escaping social revolution are hand, Alahantham returned from a demanding that he "be fre~d at once carried out with lying claims that he welcome. But refugees from Hawke's voyage following the anti-Tamil and given immediate political asylum. has nothing to fear! regional allies like Lankan Tamils pogroms in 1983 to find his home burnt Deportation order against this Tamil Many thousands of Tamils who tled or Irian Jayans from Indonesia are to down. The Melbourne Sun (17 Sep­ refugee from J R Jayewardene's to Europe and North America in the be sent back to their tormentors. tember) quoted him: "My wife has racist terror in Sri Lanka is a cold wake of the 1983 massacres face the The Spartacist telegram concluded: written to me saying I should not blooded death sentence." The Vic­ same fate as Alahantham. Like That­ "Full citizenship rights for all foreign­ return to Sri Lanka as the police are torian branches of the Building cher's Britain, Kohl's West Germany born workers! Political asylum for all presently looking for me as a sus- Workers Industrial Union and Water- and other European capitalist states, Tamil refugees!" •

CIA and the Western bankers. the ultra-Barnesite Australian SWP reputation as the orthodox, hard-core revolution can ensure the survival of In contrast, we Spartacists know the teams up with their Pilsudskiite Trotskyists, lays claim to the tradition those victories, won at so great a cost. difference between genuine Leninist­ Solidarnosc papists and Ustashi' and continuity of revolutionary lenin­ Trotskyists, whose opposition to Croatian fascists to bring "democ­ ism today. Our solidarity with the rev­ - reprinted from Worken Vanguard Stalinist bureaucracy is based on racy" to Eastern Europe and the olutionary victories won by the Viet­ DOW defending and extending revolutionary Soviet Union, we would most assur­ namese workers and peasants is gains, and counterrevolutionaries edly hail the verdicts brought by the underlined by our defence of the cour­ SPARTACIST LEAGUE who ally with world reaction and Stalinist-run trials which uphold the ageous struggle of the martyred Viet­ religious obscurantism to restore prior decisions of a justly enraged namese Trotskyists, who died fighting GPO Box 2339 GPO Box 3473 capitalist rule. And we are not necess­ populace to execute these counterrev­ against the re-introduction of imperi­ Melbourne, 3001 Sydney, 2001 arily opposed to all repressive olutionaries on the spot. alist rule. Only the program of Trot­ (03)854-4315 (02)284-8195 measures carried out by Stalinists. If Our tendency which has gained a skyist internationalism and proletarian October I November 1985 9 For the anti-communist nuts in the Sth Africa ••• Pentagon bunker, already obsessed with the Soviet naval base a: Cam Continued from paae four Ranh Bay in Vietnam, the once secure "Compared to what the courageous Southwest Pacific rim has become an black people in South Africa are "arc of instability", while the faced with right now, this is all just Philippine social volcano rumbles on, cowardly legalistic bullshit. Further­ threatening the critical US bases at more, given the international outcry Subic Bay and Gark Field. So the ag!linst the 'state of emergency' Reagan gang will stick with the French right now, however hypocritical and their planned New Caledonian and self-serving, the employers and "unsinkable aircraft carrier", and courts would be very reluctant to take > Australian mini-imperialism will just any legal action ag!linst long­ .g' have to live with it. shoremen, many of them black, '0 stopping ships to protest apartheid." ::r" To these squalid inter-imperialist - Workers Vanguard. 6 September ~ rivalries between Washington's How true this is! Gass-struggle 70-strong waterfront picket against Safocean Mlldura, Melbourne second and third-rate allies, revol­ militants in this country should see 5 August. utionary Marxists say: the main enemy this as the perfect opportunity to is at home! Australian imperialism is the mortal enemy of the peoples of kill two birds with one stone. By to the "enlightened" image the ruling tember). H the apartheid state suc­ extending the bans on South African Asia and the Pacific. The present show class wanted to project. It went down ceeds in restoring the social peace of of trans-Tasman sympathy for the ships and cargo to their fullest well in "third world" capitals and the the graveyard, as it did after Sharpe­ potential the Australian trade unions island peoples in face of French stormy protests against the 1971 ville, the Wall Street loans and "intransigence" is a smokescreen for can act as a beacon and example to Springbok Rugby tour showed the multinational investments will flow the rest of the world's workers to the appetites of Australian and New depth of feeling at home. (There was back. In the meantime ... advance their own actions. And by Zealand capitalism. Mitterrand's even a two-day general strike in For decades liberals and reformists neo-colonial scheme for New Cal­ openly flouting 45D the capitalist Queensland, when Bjelke-Petersen in the West have demanded "Divest, offensive intended to "break union edonia closely resembles Australia's declared a State of Emergency over divest, divest!" in order to pressure "decolonisation" of Papua New power" can be dealt a humiliating the issue). But the ugly reality of the Afrikaner nationalist regime into blow before it gains momentum. Guinea. There the state power is all White Australia, apartheid's brother reforming apartheid. Now they have but in name the direct extension What stands as an obstacle to this beneath the skin, is nowhere more divestment - as much as they're ever road of struggle is the ACfU and of the Australian bourgeois state starkly revealed than over the position going to get - for exactly the opposite apparatus, behind which the mining trade-union bureaucracy who are of Aboriginals. After the endless reason. Foreign investors are con­ desperate to maintain "class peace" companies and expatriate plantation promises, legislation and government vinced that the Botha regime will not owners ruthlessly superexploit the under their Accord with the welfare, the overwhelming majority make the concessions, even verbally, government, recently blessed again by black masses. The Somare govern­ of blacks in Australia are no better off which they hope will dampen black ment's imposition of a "State of the ACfU congress. Crean, Kelty than they were twenty years ago­ unrest. & Co know that a political challenge to Emergency" in Port Moresby is a shunted onto the rubbish dumps and The flight of capital can only further confession of the utter bankruptcy 4SD over South Africa would be a rural backwaters of this racially ex­ depress the South African economy. crisis for the Hawke government, of ten years of neo-colonial West­ clusionist "white man's country". Ex­ As revolutionaries, we do not believe would quickly expose their real class minster "democracy". Hawke's PM Malcolm Fraser, stumping South in "the worse, the better" in South allegiances and bring into sharp focus professed concern over "safety" Africa or elsewhere. Except in a period the critical need for labour's fighting Africa under UN auspices denouncing at Mururoa is a grim mockery of the when the revolutionary overthrow of class independence, at home apartheid's horrors, got hot under the Australian Aboriginals who were the apartheid system is immediately and abroad. collar when a South African minister treated literally as human guinea pigs said his cops are no worse than those posed, isolation from the world mar­ when Australia hosted the British Apartheid and White Australia in the US or Australia. Yet the names ket is likely to result in massive nuclear program at Maralinga in the of John Pat, Eddie Murray, Charlie dislocation and deprivation of black early fifties. We oppose French Hawke's "strong stand" against Michael, Robert Walker - Aborigi­ toilers, weakening their capacity to nuclear testing in the Pacific just as we apartheid merely continues that of nals murdered in prisons and police struggle. opposed Hawke's (foiled) plans t(1 his predecessor Fraser, and before cells like Steve Biko and hundreds of Wall Street is not only concerned participate in US MX-missile tests him, Whitlam. But the ruling class of anti-apartheid fighters - testify to about saving white supremacy from last year. Down with the force de this white imperialist outpost on the the essential truth of this. itself in South Africa. It hopes, as do frappe, NATO, ANZUS and other rim of Asia also uneasily perceive The South African revolution its political representatives in city imperialist anti-Soviet war alliances! they have much in common with will have worldwide repercussions. halls, Congress and the White House, US bases out of Australia and the apartheid South Africa. After World The self-liberation of South Africa's to exploit the "sanctions" and Pacific! For the unconditional military War n, both Labor and Tory govern­ black toilers, led by a multi-racial "divestment" issue to defuse the defence of the Soviet Union and ments consistently opposed sanctions communist vanguard, would be the anger of a deeply alienated black Vietnam! and breaking relations with South most powerful inspiration for workers population that sees all too clearly the Africa in the UN, fearing reper­ around the world, and not least the parallels between racist terror in The Mouse That Roared cussions for Australia's racist immi­ millions of black workers in Reagan's Soweto and in Harlem. Corporate gration policy and its New Guinea America. Revolutionary struggle America wants to convince black David Lange seized on the Rainbow colony. Later, however, as the against the apartheid dictatorship can people that they have a "friend in Warrior bombing to once more apartheid system was being erected, shake world imperialism to its core .• Chase Manhattan" . bestride the world stage as "the Australia went the opposite way to But from Wall Street to the White mouse that roared". Currently Lange adjust to the newly emergent South­ House, the main enemy is at home! is pushing through a ruthless anti­ east Asian neo-colonial regimes to And every blow struck against that working class austerity program, its north. It deleted the overt racism Wall Street ••• enemy by workers and their allies in winning him rave reviews from the from the White Australia Policy and this country is a real blow for black IMF and Wall Street but also causing Continued from page seven freedom in South Africa. As com­ eventually j 'de-colonised" Papua difficulties with his timid "left" New Guinea. What the cleaned up on August 15 finally convinced inter­ munists. we seek to unleash the power supporters in the trade union bureauc­ "non-racist" immigration policy national capital that South Africa was of the American proletariat for social­ racy, and real rage amongst sections of meant was unintentionally caught by fast heading toward a bloody abyss. ist revolution. The tremendous wealth the working class. He's also trying the Sydney Morning Herald, com­ "The speech was so far removed from and technology of this country, which hard to appease the Pentagon but is menting that almost all South Africans South African reality it breeds a sense have served to crush the oppressed of skewered between the US demand for granted residency in Australia are of fear among businessmen", said a Africa and the rest of the world, must abject surrender and the need to white: "Although the criteria are South African consultant for many US be placed in their service to build a maintain his nationalist credentials non-racial, the blacks just do not fit firms. More starkly, a West German socialist future free of want, exploi­ at home. When Mitterrand embarked them" (7 September). banker exclaimed, "I fear a blood­ tation and war. on a lightning trip to the colonies Particularly after the Vietnam war, bath in which there will be no win­ - abridged from Workers Vanguard, including Mururoa in mid-September, opposition to apartheid was essential ners" (Wall Street Journal, 5 Sep- no 387,20 September 1985 Lange launched a verbal fire storm of vituperation, denouncing the tour as an "obscene gesture" and adding: "It is not just that we're adversaries South Pacific ••• but really, I think, it should be prop­ erly translated enemies". But Lange Continued from page twelve too is bound to the anti-Soviet impera­ But the "great arbitrator" in tive underpinning ANZUS and the US/ the White House is not listening. French Pacific entente, and it is Reagan's former ambassador, the within this framework that he seeks ~ $2/6 issues of Australasian Spartaelst (inc!udes Spartaeist) "dragon lady" Jeane Kirkpatrick, to pursue the particular aspirations Overseas: 0 airmail - $716 issues 0 seamail - $2/6 issues frankly defended the Rainbow Warrior of the New Zealand bourgeoisie in "hit" . This is not simply mutual the Pacific. After bribing Tuvalu not Name admiration from one gang of imperial­ to accept a Soviet fishing deal he Address __ ist terrorists for another. Along with explained, "any escalation of the City __ _ Thatcher's Britain "Socialist" France Russian presence in the immediate State ______Postcode__ _ is a key anti-Soviet ally in Europe. Pacific area is in the end not in New Phone __ _ Both France's conventional and Zealand's interests" (Islands Busi­ nuclear forces are increasingly inte­ ness, July 1985). Order from/pay to: Spartaclst Publications, GPO Box 3473, Sydney, 2001 grated into NATO's first strike plans. Hawke's role as Reagan's local bully 10. Australasian Spartaclst c:.;. .':1

boy was on show at the August South fishing agreement with the Soviet Warrior into vile anti-French chauvin;' as it doesn't have to be translated into Pacific Forum meeting where he Union. Hawke's obsession is not just ism. They demand a .yet more am­ action aimed at removing French pushed through a "nuclear free with the spectre of increased Soviet bitious roJe for Australian imperialism imperialism. " Pacific" proposal that could have been diplomatic influence, but the sophisti­ in the Pacific. The dissolving rump of - Direct Actio1l, 2S September 1985 written by US war minister Caspar cated electronic detection equipment the Communist Party of Australia and While the reformists dream of Weinberger. Only Vanuatu's Walter that comes with the Soviet fishing the anti-Trotskyist Socialist Workers Australian imperialism "removing" Lini dared hold out against this "no fleet. The US navy has long regarded Party (SWP) shamelessly beat the its French rival, we Trotskyists look to nukes but US nukes" line. To placate the Pacific and Indian Oceans as jingo drum in support of the Green­ the Australian proletariat to "remove" Paris Hawke blocked the seating of the secure zones for its nuclear sub­ peace call to boycott all things French. through socialist revolution its own Kanak FLNKS as observers and marines, especially the new Ohio class The SWP's social imperialism is with­ bourgeoisie, thereby playing a van­ pronounced himself well satisfied subs with their first-strike capable out even a figleaf: guard role in liberating the oppressed with the "pace" of "de-colonisation" Trident ICBMs. "If France left it would create a power peoples of the South Pacific from in New Caledonia. And in the back­ The Australian reformist left has vacuum Australia would be unable to capitalist-imperialist enslavement­ rooms Hawke attempted to strongarm sought to channel the outrage over the flit. Hawke is quite happy to vocalise be it under the US, France or Australia Kiribati into abandoning a proposed state terror bombing of the Rainbow his opposition to nuclear tests as long and New Zealand .•

this hasn't allayed the "god's wrath Wran's offer of free condoms to the Of those who corne into contact AIDS Hysteria ••• against sodomy" tripe. general public if he hadn't reneged. with the disease, an estimated 20,000 to SO,OOO men in Australia now, Continued from page twelve For gays, "corning out". an often deeply felt personal need and act of Science verlulDecaylng only a small proportion develop the scaremongering and threats defiance in the face of oppression is Capitalism Category A AIDS resulting in death becoming an unaffordable luxury or develop the less fatal AIDS-related fuel the deep fear of social backlash in Since the first case of AIDS in for those with jobs to protect, not to illnesses like lymphadenopathy. Once the gay community and, by guarantee­ Australia - which was transmitted via ing in advance that positive results mention their skins. The Anti­ infected it can take anywhere from six Discrimination Board gets 90 calls per the US - was diagnosed in March months to five years to develop will lead to social ostracism and victim­ 1983 there have been 113 notified isation, in general keep people away month regarding AIDS - 25 of those symptoms. This adds another dimen­ are from people who've been dis­ cases of Category A (fullblown) AIDS sion to the agony of those who have to from existing test facilities, thus with 51 resulting deaths. There are missed or forced to resign from their live with the fact that they have assisting in the spread of the disease. likely to be 200 known cases by the end jobs; the others have faced harass­ contracted the virus. In fact there has been an 80 percent of this year and 600 by the end of 1986. drop in detection of AIDS recently. ment. Most are homosexuals and none While the number of confirmed have actually had AIDS. People By comparison 45,000 people died AIDS cases doubles every six months The Wran legislation protects no one of heart disease in Australia in 1984. and must be opposed by all defenders "perceived" to be gay seeking the US Health Department and the AIDS is caused by a virus which of democratic rights and human medical or dental attention are being Pasteur Institute of Paris are squab­ attacks the immune system leaving its decency I It will be used as a mechan­ turned away. The Immigration Depart­ bling over patent rights to the AIDS ment has strengthened its refusal victims defenceless against a range of virus and the AIDS diagnostic kit. ism for witchhunting and targetting opportunistic and sometimes fatal for right-wing attack one of the most to recognise homosexual relation­ Now, as part of the drive to shore up ships for family immigration. A infections. Endemic to equitorial American capitalism by dismantling vulnerable sectors of the oppressed, Africa it is believed to have been homosexuals. spokesman said they don't want to the social welfare programs, the "embarrass" the government. More present in animals and humans there, budget axe has corne down, on the ominous is the dramatic increase in for how long and in what form is Atlanta Center for Disease Control AIDS and Cold War Reaction street bashings of homosexuals by unclear. Of course AIDS only became - one of the main centres for AIDS gangs of marauding youths in the gay an issue after it had infected white research. There ought to be multi­ Those who contract the AIDS virus ghettos, and a spate of murders Europeans. There are a couple of millions poured into AIDS research are tarred as lepers. What should be recently in Adelaide and in Sydney - credible theories as to how it migrated internationally I seen as a private tragedy for the ill to Europe and the US: either via guest once heralded as the gay mecca of Medical research and health care, to be combatted with all available the southern hemisphere. Last July workers returning from Zaire to scientific and technological resources Belgium, and Zaire to Haiti where it like everything else in this society, psychopathic killer. Andrew Tre­ have always been class biased. has instead become a means to shore gurtha, was given front-page coverage was then transmitted to American up the anti-sex poison of reactionary tourists; or more directly by the Stephen Jay Gould - a real gem in the Sydney dailies and prime­ of a biologist/ palaeontologist/ dialect­ bourgeois morality. The media mess­ time television slots to blame his pharmaceutical companies leeching age:: has been loud and clear: homo­ contaminated blood from the desper­ ician with a social conscience - in hi;\' victims for their own deaths. This ex­ essay •'The Nonscience of Human ~exuality is a dangerous aberration Kings Cross hustler was promoted by ately poor of black Africa for sale in the Nature" ~aptures this nicely: that produced AIDS; monogamy the media as an innocent corrupted by centres of western imperialism. ("safe sex") [,)r everyone is the wave , . perverts' , . Compared to hepatitis, malaria and "How satisfying it is to fob off tra of the future. As the British Guardian a host of other infectious diseases responsibility for war and violence Weekly put it, "It is amazing how More recently there have been including the common cold it is upon our presumably carnivorous fear can transform even a sexual reports of warders at Sydney's Long distinctly uncontagious, requiring ancestors. How convenient to blame revolutionary into a social conserva­ Bay Gaol subjecting prisoners suffer­ direct transmission into the blood­ the poor and the hungry for their tive." (8 September, 1985) ing with AIDS to taunts of "bring out stream of another person for them to condition - lest we be forced to blame our economic system or our In this political period of Cold War your dead" as they patrol the cells become infected. Blood and semen are government for an abject failure anti-Sovietism all manner of social in the isolation wing. Wran's screws the only two body fluids proven to secure a decent life for all people. reaction flourishes. The deep sexual "struck" for two days last month capable of transmitting the virus And how convenJent an argument for repression enforced by capitalist demanding compulsory blood testing intact. The major mode of trans­ those who control government and, by society is a means to maintain the for all prisoners, while issuing bloody­ mission is sexual. Anal intercourse is the way, provide the money that stultifying institution of the nuclear minded refusals to even consider somewhat more likely to result in science requires for its very family - to which homosexuality allowing the distribution of condoms, infection than vaginal intercourse existence. ' , let alone sterile syringes, to prisoners owing to fragile blood vessels closer to is seen as a threat - and to reinforce If there is any illusion that capitalist generalised submission to authority - because homosexual activity and the surface. In Zaire the disease drug use are illegal in NSW jailsl Australia has the interests of society to shore up class rule. The products is widely spread among the popUlation at heart, one need only look at the are emotionally agonised, guilt­ These are basic measures of public and evenly distributed among men and hygiene, especially in the closed decrepit state of hospitals and health ridden human beings in fear of enjoy­ women. One can only suppose that care in this country. Then there are environment of a prison and we homosexuals entered the infection able sex and life itself. So it's no those for whom the ruling class' demand that prisoners have access to surprise that there's such a wide­ cycle partly by accident and having arrogant indifference has been a them. And we would've welcomed got there are stuck with it. spread neurotic reaction, what the miserable fact of life - the poor, the French have labelled "AIDS psy­ elderly, and particularly the Abor­ chosis", to a truly terrible disease iginals whose infant mortality rate, - particularly one that can be sexually malnutrition, incidence of trachoma transmitted. and on and on, rivals that of the most While homosexuals remain the main underdeveloped nations. target others in the "at-risk" cat­ The bourgeoisie would like to keep egories for AIDS - haemophiliacs, this a virulently racist and homophobic intravenous drug users, blood re­ society. But their myth of a healthy, cipients - have also been SUbjected sports minded, clean white he"envolk to a public reaction ranging from the enjoying their place in the sun im­ ignorant to the malicious. Take the mune to the rest of the world, has been case of Eve, a three-year-old girl who shot full of holes - from MX missiles was infected with AIDS through a to AIDS. There may be a cure found blood transfusion and forced out of for AIDS or time may render it less her pre-school by 120 frenzied parents. virulent, but the fight for the right to For some reason Australia has a something as fundamental as free higher proportion of transfusion cases quality health care for all means a than any other western country. It's fight for a workers government been postulated that possibly SO per­ that acts in the interests of all the cent of severe haemophiliacs have oppressed. And it will take the social acquired the infection, and for the The "AIDS crisis": fear overturn of workers revolution to first time in the world four women and loathing In the even begin to undo the legacy of have been infected through artificial boSS88 press. deforming sexual guilt drummed into insemination. In other words there are everyone in this sick and dying class men, women and children dying. But society .• October I November 1985 11 , Australasian ... SPARTACIST French Terror Bombing, US Destabilisation in NZ- Austra Hands 011 the South Pacilic I government looks to be in real trouble The Main Enemy (see article page 3). His war minister Charles Hernu and DGSE boss Admiral Lacoste have been thrown is at Home! overboard. French Prime Minister Laurent Fabius said he is "truly The international furore over the sorry" to Lange and finally admitted murderous bombing of the Green­ what everyone knew: that the order peace Rainbow Warrior ship by the to bomb the Rainbow Warrior - just French secret service (DGSE) in New like the cold-blooded murder of Kanak Zealand's Auckland Harbour on 10 independence leader Eloi Machoro 1uly has been a mixed blessing for early this year - came straight from .e Hawke Labor government. the Elysee Palace. These social-demo­ fhether administered by Labor or the cratic dwarfs masquerading as latter !'ories, Australian imperialism has an day De Gaulles hope to be saved by historic appetite to divest France of their "sacred union" with the rightist its Pacific colonies from New Cal­ opposition over retaining the "con­ edonia to Tahiti and become the fetti" of France's empire, the force de hegemonic mini-imperialist power frappe and the traditional bonapartist over the entire region. But it is also :$/ powers ofthe state apparatus. the slavish junior partner of US imperi­ alism. From hosting US first-strike Cold War Allies, Pacific Rivals spy and communications bases to r;.;: f'. collaborating with US de stabilisation With Mitterrand on the defensive at of David Lange's "no-nuke" New home and his neo-colonial scheme for Zealand Labour government, Hawke is New Caledonia likely to be still-born Reagan's foremost regional enforcer. in the face of the explosive Kanak Canberra is painfully aware that independence struggle, the Hawke Washington values the French domi­ government is making its bid for nance of the Pacific micro-states as a Australian overlordship of the South barrier to Soviet ,influence and sup­ Pacific under the ANZUS banner. In ports the force de frappe and the a carefully timed speech Hawke's Mururoa test program as an essential ambassador to the US, Rawdon adjunct to the "free world" anti­ Dalrymple, laid Canberra's cards on Soviet armoury., . the table, warning the US: "If you Hawke maintJined a deafening want the South Pacific to become an silence in the iInmediate aftermath of "No nukel but US nukes" at 1985 South Pacific Forum: petty area where the Soviet Union, Cuba the Rainbow Warrior atrocity, riding •Imperlaliit overlord Hawke Ilgnl treaty al hlliliand yes-men look on. and others of that stripe can find out the disquiet of ALP left-national­ fertile ground for anti-United States, ists. But more than diplomatic silence Jsland 24 hours after the bombing. CIA and/or MIS, but kept their New anti-West propaganda and activity ... is involved here. The National Times Likewise with yet another of the DGSE Zealand cousins in .the dark - with­ then continue with a policy of indiffer­ (30 August) reported that Australian spooks who passed through Sydney. holding intelligence is now policy, ence to what the French are doing Federal Police held and then let go And there have been persistent intended to punish New Zealand for there" (Sydney Morning Herald, one of the three French sabotage reports that ASIO had been fore­ its veto of US nuclear ships. 26 September) squads as it passed through Norfolk warned of the French strike by the Mitterrand's Cold War "Socialist" Continued on page ten AIDS Hysteria Targets Gays- Down with Wran'S Witchhunt Legislation I Anti-gay bigots of every stripe may Crawling before and stirring the years in prison was quickly passed in obeyed and if it's not strong enough have their dream of institutionalised mounting reactionary hysteria, NSW the Queensland parliament in Novem­ I'll make it stronger. " (The Aus­ victimisation of homosexuals passed in Labor boss Wran is pushintllegislation ber 1984. Wran immediately threat­ tralian, 10 September, 1985) the New South Wales (NSW) Parliam­ that would expose patients with posi­ ened laws "twice as tough" as It would be a punishable offence ment. The pretext is "Wran's war" on tive AIDS antibody diagnosis to Queensland's. with a SS,OOO fine not to inform a Acquired Immune Deficiency Syn­ criminal prosecution. When three Under the proposed legislation the sexual partner of having AIDS or anti­ drome (AIDS), called the "gay Queensland babies died last year after Health Department would have the bodies - something impossible to plague" by much of the bourgeois being given blood transfusions from an power to require names and addresses prove in a court of law. "Contact media. While AIDS is neither specific unknowingly AIDS-infected young of patients found to have AIDS anti­ tracers" in the Department of Health to homosexuals nor a disease of plague male donor, the howling of the wolf bodies. Doctors refusing to tum fink would be increased, and AIDS carriers proportion or type, its victims (over­ pack for the blood of gay "babykill­ on their patients would be fined 51,000 could be forcibly ordered into hospital whelmingly homosexuals in Australia) ers" echoed around the world. A bill for each "offence" and threatened where the cruel joke of "no frills" are persecuted as "guilty" for catch­ against "unsuitable" blood donors with prosecution and deregistration. health care awaits them. Moreover, ing - and spreading - the disease. with a penalty of 510,000 and/or two As Wran put it, "The law will be Continued on page eleven 12 October I November 1985