soC!: No. 734 "'H23 21 April 2000 The Elian Case and the U.S. Imperialist Drive for Counterrevolution Delend the Gains 01 the Cuban Revolution! Ever since the government of Fidel divisions within the American bourgeoi­ Castro expropriated the capitalist class in sie over Cuba. Spearheading the efforts to Cuba in 1960-61, establishing a bureau­ For Unconditional Military Defense of keep Elian in the U.S. are the counterrev­ cratically deformed workers state, the olutionary gusanos (worms)--the former U.S. ruling class has worked relentlessly Cuba Against Imperialism! bourgeoisie and its henchmen from the to undermine and overthrow the Cuban brutal regime of Fulgencio Batista-who Revolution. From the 1961 Playa Gir6n At the same time, the collapse of the ment has opened up to foreign capital fled the Cuban Revolution and have ever (Bay of Pigs) invasion to repeated attempts Soviet Union has enabled the American over the past decade. Consequently, since waged a campaign of terrorism to assassinate Castro, from funding coun­ bourgeoisie to pursue different means of many within the Clinton administra­ supported by their CIA masters. The terrevolutionary terrorists in Miami to the promoting counterrevolution in Cuba. In tion now advocate policies of "construc­ gusanos' aim is the reconquest of power ongoing economic embargo, the Ameri­ tum, this has led to increasing divi­ tive engagement" with Cuba, aiming to in Cuba, wreaking bloody vengeance on can bourgeoisie has been determined to sions among U.S. capitalists. After the strengthen the forces of counterrevolu­ the workers and peasants, and especially bring back the days when Cuba was a U.S. twice tightened the embargo in the tion from within, while maintaining mil­ Communist Party members. While the brutally exploited, viciously racist neo- mid-'90s in an attempt to squeeze Cuba itary pressure against Cuba. This type of Immigration and Naturalization Service colony of U.S. imperialism. . (INS), on orders from Clin­ CIA dirty tricks and mili­ ton and Attorney General tary plots were repeatedly ~ Janet Reno, has declared stymied, epitomized by the that the boy must be re­ crushing of the mercenary turned to his Guban father, invasion force at the Bay of INS authorities in Miami Pigs by Cuban soldiers and Return handed Elian over to the workers. For more than three Elisn now! family of his rabid gusano decades, the biggest obsta­ Left: Counter­ great-uncle, who brandishes cle to Washington's drive revolutionary him as an anti-Communist for capitalist counterrevolu­ gusano mob trophy. tion in Cuba was the exis­ outside Miami The gusanos have won tence of the Soviet Union, home of support in the Republican­ which supported Cuba with Elian Gonzalez' controlled Congress and also some $4 billion a year in kidnappers. from Democratic Party pres­ aid and provided. a crucial Millions have idential aspirant Al Gore. rallied in Havana military shield against im­ (right) and Trawling for votes in Flor­ perialism. In the wake of the throughout Cuba ida, a key electoral state, capitalist counterrevolution to demand Gore signed on to a call for which destroyed the Soviet Elian's return. Elian and his immediate degenerated workers state in family to be given perma­ 1991-92, the imperialist rul­ nent residency status in the ers see their big chance to ; U.S. Amid the frenzy over bury the Cuban Revolution once and for into submission, growing sections of the policy has been employed against the Elian this winter, the government charged all. Indeed, without the Soviet lifeline, ruling class have concluded that such Chinese deformed workers state, where a Cuban diplomat and a senior INS the social gains of the revolution based on moves have only served to rally the pop­ more than two decades of increasing official with spying for Cuba and had Cuba's planned, collectivized economy ulation around the Castro regime in the imperialist economic penetration under the diplomat deported. Meanwhile, Clin­ are today in great peril. This underscores name of national solidarity against U.S. Deng Xiaoping and his heirs have encour­ ton and Reno, whose racist immigra­ the necessity for the interQational working imperialism . aged capitalist-restorationist forces. tion cops routinely expel black Hai­ class to rally to the defense of Cuba . Moreover, American corporations have The kidnapping of Elian Gonzalez, the tians and other "undesirables," have bent against U.S. imperialism and internal found themselves cut off from access to six-year-old Cuban boy rescued off the over backward to appease Elian's Miami counterrevolution. the markets which the Cuban govern- coast of Florida last fall, has highlighted continued ()n page 9

IMF Protests Beware Fraud of "Human Rights" Imperialisml

APRIL 17-When some 15,000 dem­ national Monetary Fund (IMF) and strike by seizing the protest headquar­ many remain in jail. We demand: Free onstrators from around the country World Bank, they were faced with a ters. Later that day, over 600 people, all the protesters! Drop the charges gathered in Washington, D.C. last massive police mobilization. A good including supporters of the Spartacist now! weekend in protests against the Inter- 50 blocks of the nation's capital League/Spartacus Youth Clubs, who From all points of the geographic became an armed camp: police heli­ were protesting against the "prison­ and political compass, the youthful copters patrolled overhead; armored industrial complex" were penned in by demonstrators came to Washington vehicles rolled through city streets; riot cops for hours and then arrested looking to join a movement against police snipers sat atop buildings; and forced to sit, handcuffed, in police '<'globalization"-sweatshops, poverty ~ baton-wielding riot cops in full body buses for up to 18 hours before being in the "Global South," child labor and armor lined street intersections. On released. Some 700 more protesters other evils inherent in the system of 7 25274"81030I April 15, the cops staged a pre-emptive were arrested over the next two days; continued on page 4 International Solidarity Campaign Wrap-Up Mexico: Free Jailed UNAM Student

Strikers and Leftists! / APRIL 16-Before dawn yesterday, some 5,QOO cops of the' Federal Preven­ tive Police (PFP) re-occupied Mexico Protest Police Siege of UNAM! City's National Autonomous University (UNAM), site of a ten-month-long stu­ dent strike until it was brutally sup­ Cops Off Campus! pressed in the government's February crackdown. This cop attack provoked forces on the campuses. The STUNAM arrested-who still face serious, trumped­ anew widespread anger and indignation tops even gave as a reason for calling the up charges-while keeping eight strike among both students and workers. In May 3 strike the fact that the federal leaders in jail. On April 12, up to a third response, the STUNAM campus work­ police were "doing the job" of Auxilio of the UNAM campus and several prepar­ ers union has called a mass protest dem­ UNAM cops! A heated debate took place atory high schools were temporarily re­ onstration for April 19, which is also at yesterday's CGH general assembly, occupied by students demanding the supported by the UNAM students' Gen­ held at the STUNAM offices, where release of the jailed strike leaders, follow­ eral Strike Council (Consejo General de comrades of the Grupo Espartaquista de ing a 5,000-strong march to the jail Huelga-CGH). The STUNAM union Mexico (GEM), section of the Interna­ the day before. Cops off campus! Free all also called a campus workers strike for tional Communist League, intervened to the UNAM strikers now-Drop all the denounce Auxilio UNAM and call for May 3 and announced that it would charges! Reuters refuse to work at any sites where the fed­ cops out of the unions. In the February crackdown on the Mexico City, February 14: Parents eral police were present. The day before the April 15 cop raid, UNAM strike, up to a thousand students and supporters of jailed UNAM The police occupation of UNAM some 8,000 students and workers had and others were arrested. On March 20, strikers demand their release. underscores the pernicious effect of the demonstrated to protest the UNAM the Partisan Defense Committee and ICL Auxilio UNAM campus cops, who have administration's threat to send the PFP launched an international fundraising Hidalgo, student activists occupied the attacked student strikers, being part of the cops onto the campus. Since the crack­ campaign for legal defense and to help campus of the El Mexe teachers college, STUNAM union. The STUNAM leader­ down and mass arrests in February, the pay bail for the UNAM strikers. We are and after the campus was raided by ship has demanded, as a condition for its Mexican government has cynically tried pleased to announce that this campaign police, the villagers of El Mexe captured support to the student strikers, that the to defuse the ongoing protests in sup'­ has collected US$4,830.83 plus 2,304.60 68 cops, who were then traded for the CGH drop its demand for abolishing the port of student strikers who are still im­ Mexican pesos (approximately US$246) release of the arrested students (see WV Auxilio UNAM cops and other repressive prisone,d by releasing most of those . for the imprisoned militants and the hun­ No. 730, 25 February). dreds still facing charges for fighting to This campaign clearly struck a chord defend public education. Last week, these among workers and leftists in the places funds were transmitted to the CGH's where the ICL does political work. In the For International Finance Commission for Political Prison­ San Francisco Bay Area, $300 was con­ ers. This money-donated by union tributed by International Longshore and Workers Revolution! members, students and others from the Warehouse Union Local 10. Los Angeles As seen in the protests against the World United States, Britain, Ireland, France, NALC letter carriers Local 2200 gave Trade Organization and the Interilation­ Italy, Poland, Germany, Canada, Japan, $200. In Chicago, transit workers contrib­ al Monetary Fund, the AFL-CIO labor Mexico, Australia and South Africa-is a uted approximately $175. In one instance, bureaucracy promotes flag-waving protec­ concrete expression of international soli­ as a Chicago Spartacist supporter was tionism in the name of fighting· "globaliza­ darity with the courageous struggle of the soliCiting donations from a group of work­ tion." In reality, "globalization" is a funda­ Mexican students and workers. More ers, a transit worker from Guatemala in­ mental feature of the imperialist epoch, funds have been collected since that tervened to insist on the importance of the marked by relentless competition among the transmittal and will be forwarded to the UNAM strike, recalling the 1968 massa­ TROTSKY capitalist powers for markets and sources of LENIN CGH's Finance Commission. cre of Mexican student protesters. When • raw materials and cheap labor. Against the Collecting funds for the strikers' legal he finished, everyone in the group made purveyors of bourgeois nationalism, Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky advanced the pro­ defense is part of the ICL's active partic­ a contribution. New York City transit gram of revolutionary proletarian internationalism: uniting the workers and oppressed ipation in the UNAM strike. As noted in workers, city workers and UPS workers of the imperialist countries with those of the impoverished "Third World" in the strug­ our fund drive call, "The tens of thou­ also made donations. On March 25, the gle to overthrow capitalist rule and create a world socialist economy. sands of students and workers who par­ day of Patrick Dorismond's funeral, pre­ The bourgeois revolutions were directed in similar degree against feudal property ticipated in the strike and in huge sup­ dominantly Haitian marchers mourning relations and against the particularism of the provinces. Nationalism stood beside lib­ port rallies were fighting for all those this recent victim of the NYPD's terror eralism on their liberating banners. Western humanity long ago wore out such baby­ oppressed and dispossessed by capital­ donated $15.50. In Los Angeles, with its shoes. The productive forces of our time have outgrown not only the bourgeois forms of ism, and it is our revolutionary interna­ large Mexican population, contriQutions property, but also the boundaries of national states. Liberalism and nationalism have tionalist duty to raise funds to help get were received at a downtown labor rally become in like degree fetters upon world economy. The proletarian revolution is them out of Mexico's dungeons." on March 28, at a celebration in memory directed both against private property in the means of production and against the The UNAM strike, provoked by the of Cesar Chavez, at a movie about the national splitting~up of world ec6homy. The struggle of the eastern peoples for inde­ ruling class' attempt to purge poor and Zapatistas of Chiapas, and among Chi­ pendence is included.in this world proces& and will subsequently merge with it. The working-class youth through tuition cano college students. Chinese immigrant creation of a national socialist society, if such a goal were in a general way attainable, hikes, sparked wider social struggle workers in Vancouver expressed their sol­ would mean an extreme reduction of the economic power of mel1. But for that very throughout Mexico. Thousands of cam­ idarity and made donations. reason it is unattainable. Internationalism is not an abstract principle but the expression pus workers took part in demonstrations On many campuses where students of an economic fact. Just as liberalism was national, so socialism is international. and defense of the occupied university, face cutbacks and attacks upon education, Starting from the world-wide division of labor, the task of socialism is to carry the and after the PFP raid in February, the campaign found a real resonance. At international exchange of goods and services to its highest development. refused to return to work until the cops New York City's Borough of Manhattan vacated the campus. In the state of continued on page 11 -Leon Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution, Vol. 3, Appendix II (1932)

(1i).olb.en (1i)a:i.er I -10 February 2000 Support for Mexican students rL~!!!!.!of.('!.!'L~l!.1!.. ~ Protestors rally ~...... EDITOR: Len Meyers against public EDITOR, YOUNG SPARTACUS PAGES: Anna Woodman school tuition hike PRODUCTION MANAGER: Susan Fuller By A110n Yu CIRCULATION MANAGER: Mara Cadiz StarrRepon.. wo/ftmm~- EDITORIAL BOARD: Barry James (managing editor), Bruce Andre, Ray Bishop, Jon Brule, Protestors rallied oullide the Mexican George Foster, Uz Gordon, Walter Jennings, Jane Kerrigan, James Robertson, Joseph Seymour, Consulate in downtoWn SIn Fnnc:isco Alison Spencer ,. Monday nishl asainsl the arrests of over 700 sludenls who are 011 strike The Spartacist League is the U.S. Section of the International Communist League (Fourth against the increase of tuition reel at NllioMl Internationalist). Aulonomous Univenity(UNAM) in Medea Cily. the larlcst public Workers Vanguard (ISSN 0276·0746) published biweekly, except skipping three alternate issues in June, July and university in (he Western Hemisphere August (beginning with omitting the second issue in June) and with a 3·week interval in December, by the Spartacist wilh a studen. population of 270,000 Sludems. Publishing Co., 299 Broadway, Suite 318, New York, NY 10007. Telephone: (212) 732·7862 (Editorial), (212) 732·7861 "Crop lhe cha.... , fn:t: lito _ (Business). Address all correspondence to: Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116. E·mail address: [email protected]. cops out of UNAM'" and ''From Wall Domestic subscriptions: $10.00/22 issues. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY. POSTMASTER: Send address Street 10 Mexico. capitalism's 801 to changes to Workers Vanguard, Box 13n, GPO, New York, NY 10116. go!" were sl08aDI demonltra'ors shouted a. they paced in front of the Opinions expressed in Signed arlieles or letters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint. consulate for an hour in support of the sludent I(rike and the downfall·of The closing date for news in this issue is April 18. Mendoza/Golden Gater Front page of San Francisco State campus newspaper highlights speakout by No. 734 21 April 2000 Bay Area SYC in defense of UNAM strikers. 2 WORKERS VANGUARD ======-A Small Town in Texas The "Red ~8ers" and h

Americana Image Gallery All-German artillery unit in Union Army. Many veterans of 1848 German Revolution played leading roles in Civil War which smashed black chattel slavery.

Even as 50,000 men, women and chil­ thinkers"-atheists or agnostics-the and parcel of their hostility to bigotry Party. Among the Communist Club's dren took to the streets of Columbia, religious bigots went running for their and oppression, having experienced principles were that members "recognize South Carolina in January to protest the pitchforks. Hundreds signed a petition religion as the intellectual weapon of a the complete equality of all human Confederate flag of slavery flying from headlined, "No Monument to Atheism in clergy closely allied with the reactionary beings irrespective of color or sex. They Southern state capitols, a small but no Comfort." Getting to the heart of the mat­ forces of the state bureaucracy, the army therefore strive, before all else, to do less telling battle is raging over a 'pro­ ter, one racist ranted, "I don't see what we and vested landed interests at home. away with so-called bourgeois property, posed monument to anti-slavery fighters need a monument for in the first place. For the radical ' 48ers, as Dobert writes, whether inherited or acquired, so that in the town of Comfort, Texas. The Com­ Those people were turncoats and got "Their atheism was not based solely on each may have a reasonable shan~ in the fort abolitionists were among the many massacred, which was just what they philosophic materialism, but on the firm national and spiritual riches of the earth, "Red '48ers" who had fled to the Unit- deserved" (New York Times, 27 February). conviction that all churches, Catholic as a share answering as far as possible to The German settlers in Comfort, like well as Protestant, were in league with his needs." their fellow Red ' 48ers, were inspired by reaction and narrow nationalism and When the war broke out in 1861, the rationalist ideals of the Enlighten­ consequently were barriers to progress. the Turner became mass recruiting agen­ ment. More than a few Red ' 48ers were They had observed this phenomenon in cies-often instant regiments-for the Communists, including collaborators of Germany and the attitude of American Union Army at a critical time when the Karl Marx. These revolutionaries upheld clergymen strengthened their belief." North was desperately short of expe­ the fundamentals of science and rational­ The German radicals brought with rienced soldiers. Three-fourths of the ism against religious obscurantism. They them their militant traditions and organi;­ Turner signed up for the army of naturally allied themselves with the zations, in the form of the Turnverein, the North, and in the end over 176,000 Union side in the Civil War which or simply Turner. These "athletic clubs" German-born Americans fought for the smashed the Southern slavocracy. As one with political, social and military func­ Union cause. There were some 500 Ger­ , 48er and former member of Karl Marx's tions were often simply direct transplants man officers from major to general in the Communist League, Fritz Anneke, titled of the Schiitzverein (rifle clubs) of 1848. Union Army. Three of the very few major his memoirs, it was "The Second Fight Anneke and another ' 48er, Eduard generals under Ulysses S. Grant were for Freedom." Schultz, founded the first T14rnverein in , 48ers-Franz Sigel, Carl Schurz, and 1850; a second was organized in 1852. Peter Joseph Osterhaus, as were a major­ From the German Revolution The ' 48ers soon gained leadership of ity of the nine Germans who were briga­ to the Second these clubs, as was clear from tile plat­ dier generals. Osterhaus participated in American Revolution form adopted at a national convention of the Atlanta campaign and the march to The year 1848 ushered in a wave of representatives of the 47 societies of the Savannah with General William Tecum­ revolutions acrossburope, seeking to Turner held in Buffalo in 1855: seh Sherman. no topple the autocracies and consolidate "The Turner are opposed to slavery; par­ The revolutionary German fighters "Red '48er" Joseph Weydemeyer,:·a. modern bourgeois nation-states, particu­ ticularly they are against extension of played an important role in the Civil War collaborator of Karl Marx, was a slavery to the free territories, and regard colonel in Union Army. larly in East Europe and Germany, which this institution as definitely unworthy of from the opening days of the war to was then divided among a number of dis­ a republic and contrary to all concepts of Sherman's march to the sea (see "German ed States to escape counterrevolutionary parate principalities. In anti.cipation of freedom." Red '48ers in the U.S. Civil War," WV repression in Germany following the this revolutionary upheaval, and with the In 1857, Marx's collaborator Friedrich No. 494, 26 January 1990). Their role failed 1848 Revolution. Following the expectation that the German bourgeois Sorge co-founded the New York Com­ was acknowledged by no less an author­ outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, this revolution would be the immediate pre­ munist Club. Its members rallied to the ity than Confederate army commander Texas community of German immigrants cursor of a proletarian revolution, Marx antislavery movement, and most of them Robert E. Lee, who exclaimed, "Take the refused to take the state's oath of alle­ and Engels authored the Communist, joined the radical wing of the Republican continued on page 8 giance to the Confederacy. Confederate Manifesto as the platform of the Com­ thugs retaliated by pillaging and burning munist League. But the revolutions went their farms. down to defeat, as fear of the emerging In August 1862, nearly 100 of the Ger­ proletariat led the bourgeoisie in Ger­ spartacist~ Forums man immigrants fled south, hoping to many and other countries into a compro­ make their way to Mexico in order to mise with monarchical reaction. In the ·.~~t"~llii.,,.arJ.1 head back toward the North to join the reactionary terror' that followed the Union forces or to wait out the war south defeat of the revolution, the radical and i)~'. Het~".'I't~. of the border. A Confederate cavalry unit socialist fighters of 1848 faced severe ·p~t,at .• ;~··§ ••••. I.mperiali$lIl! ambushed the group at their camp near repression. Wednesday, April 26, 7:30 p.m. Saturday, May 6, 3 p.m. the Nueces River. Nineteen were killed Upon reaching the U.S., the '48ers Columbia University, Hamilton Hall The St. Clair Restaurant in the raid, 15 more were captured and threw themselves into the social struggles Rm. 602, 116th and Broadway 93 Smith St., Brooklyn executed. After the war, friends and rela­ of the day, including the cause of (take 1 or 9 to 116th St.) (at Atlantic Ave., take A, C; or F to Borough Hall) tives gathered their bones, buried them in women's suffrage as well as the fight a common grave, and in 1866 erected a against slavery. As Eitel Dobert described NEW YORK CITY For more information: (212) 267-1025 marker at the gravesite, believed to be in his essay "The Radicals" (The Forty­ the only monument to pro-Union forces Eighters [1967]): (outside of national cemeteries) in for­ "They found a federal government in the mer Confederate states. hands of slaveholders, election frauds in many of the states, and a growing xeno­ Now, plans to commemorate them with phobia in a country where, after all, a new monument have run aground. everyone was a newcomer. ... To their Saturday, April 29, 3 p.m. Harvard University When proponents of the memorial want­ borror they saw at every fifth street cor­ Science Center, Room 109 ner a church, and that an ugly one." For more information: (617) 666-9453 ed the monument's inscription to note BOSTON Event not sponsored by the Science Center of Harvard University tliat the settlement was made up of "free- The '48ers' anticlericalism was part 21 APRIL 2000 3 .: of the planet are all inevitable products of reactionary and absurd. The authority tops' rabid anti-China crusade. Thus the IMF Protests~ •• this system of capitalist imperialism. And exercised by these bodies derives from ISO's Socialist Worker (3 March) article (continued from page 1) they will persist until socialist revolution the power of the imperialist states for headlined "Why China-Bashing Hurts sweeps away the capitalist state and which they function as agents. Formed at U.S. Labor." In fact, the ISO has always imperialism. But the protest was organ­ places the wealth of society in the hands the end of World War II to help finance refused to defend the Chinese deformed ized by the Mobilization for Global of the workers who created it. the reconstruction of Europe as a bul­ workers state against imperialism and Justice, aided by the AFL-CIO labor wark against the spread of Communism, supported every counterrevolutionary bureaucracy and supported by most self-' The Liberals and the World Bank and IMF later shifted movement arrayed against the former styled ','socialist" organizations, to corral "Globalization" their attentions to Asia, Africa and Latin. Soviet Union and East European de­ these youth behind the interests of U.S. The labor bureaucrats and liberal left America. The U.S. has armed countless formed workers states. The ISO social imperialism, the main exploiter of labor present "globalization" as a new devel­ death-squad regimes, provided econo­ democrats alibi China-bashing when on the planet. Among the speakers at the opment in which a handful of multina­ mists to draft austerity plans and sent its it comes out of the mouths of the pro­ main rally on April 16 were Democratic tional corporations, represented above advisers and troops to squeeze debt imperialist labor bureaucrats, writing Party .p·oliticians and officials of the all by organizations like the WTO, repayments out of the blood and over the "Sweeney's call for keeping China out of United Steelworkers, UNITE garment IMF and World Bank, are responsible corpses of workers throughout the Third the WTO is tied to an effort to promote workers, the AFL-CIO and other union for the impoverishment of the masses in World. ' labor rights around the world." The ISO's bodies pushing economic' protectionism the "Global South"-Africa, Asia and virulent anti-Communist hostility to and the anti-Communist crusade against Latin America. As far back as the Com­ American Imperialism: Biggest China puts it in the same bed as ultra­ China. munist Manifesto of 1848, Karl Marx ExplOiter on the Planet rightists like Jesse Helms and Pat The D.C. demonstrations were con­ explained how the productive forces of The union misleaders and opportunist Buchanan. This is hardly the first time sciously built in the "Spirit of Seattle"­ capitalism had outgrown the nation-state "socialists" who aim all their fire at they have found themselves in such com­ the protests last fall against the World s~stem which accompanied the rise of agencies like the IMF and WTO promote pany. But now they're trying to cover Trade Organization (WTO) which we the bourgeoisie. the illusions that these institutions can be their tracks, evidently feeling the pressure characterized as a circus "dominated by V.1. Lenin, leader of ~he Russian reformed and the U.S. imperialists pres­ "of youth who are understandably revolted national chauvinism, racist protectionism workers revolution of 1917, built on this sured to serve the oppressed around the by the ISO's political companions. and counterrevolutionary attacks on the understanding in his book Imperialism, world. It is grotesque to call upon the The Marcyites of the WWP are simul­ Chinese deformed workers state." An the Highest Stage of Capitalism. Lenin American state-the biggest exploiter of taneously slavish supporters of the Bei­ April 12 rally organized by Teamsters explained that by the beginning of labor on the planet-to eliminate sweat­ jing Stalinist bureaucracy which is trying and AFL-CIO officials seeking to pres­ the 20th century, world capitalism had shop labor abroad, cancel the Third to sell China out to the imperialists and sure Congress into voting down normal become dominated by industrial monoPQ­ World debt and impose "fair labor stan­ tails upon the Democratic Party donkey trade relations with China featured the lies and big banks represented by differ­ dards" globally. The official anti-IMF at home. Differences over China's entry racist rantings of Pat Buchanan, who ent imperialist states whose interests are protests \rirtually buried the questions of into the WTO have sharply divided the announced ,that if he were president and in sharp conflict. Against Social Demo­ poverty, sweatshop labor and racial Democrats, making it more difficult to the "Communist Chinese came to my crat Karl Kautsky, who prefigured the oppression in the United States itself. mobilize the labor vote for Al Gore in office, I'd tell them to stop threatening "globalization" theorists with his idea Not surprisingly the demonstrators were November. At the same time, Sweeney's my country" or "you have sold your last of "ultra-imperialism" (see the Sparta­ overwhelmingly white and middle-class, anti-China crusade has bolstered the cre­ pair of chopsticks." Buchanan is the clos­ cist pamphlet, Imperialism, the "Global although it is black and Latino youth dentials of right-wing demagogues like est thing the U.S. has to a clerical-fascist: Economy" and Labor Reformism), Lenin who are most alienated from and hostile Pat Buchanan. The Progressive Labor a racist, anti-Semitic, anti-abortion bigot wrote: to the American ruling elite in Wall Party (PL) provides some left-sounding who champions the defense of Nazi "Therefore, in the realities of the capi­ Street and Washington. criticisms of the national chauvinism and war criminals while railing against dark­ talist system, and not in the banal philis­ For all the talk about the concern for anti-Communism of the liberals and tine fantasies of English parsons, or of skinned immigrants from Africa, Asia the Gennan 'Marxist', Kautsky, 'inter­ the poor abroad, the organizers of the labor tops. But PL joins with the rest of and Latin America. Joining the "yellow imperialist' or 'ultra-imperialist' alli­ Seattle protest and April 16-17 D.C. the fake left in tailing these forces by peril" festival was liberal Democratic ances, no matter what fonn they may protest had nothing to say about the denouncing "fascist" China. Senator Paul Wellstone and Michigan assume, whether of one imperialist coali­ nearly daily bombings of Iraq ordered by The reformists act as waterboys for the Democratic Congressman David Bonior, tion against another, or of a general alli­ the Democratic Party Clinton administra­ union bureaucracy-the labor lieutenants ance embracing all the imperialist pow­ who denounced how American jobs are ers, are inevitably nothing more than a tion, following the massive bombing dur­ of the capitalist class-which aims to line "ripped off, boxed up and shipped away to 'truce' in periods between wars. Peaceful ing the 1991 Gulf War, which is accom­ up American workers behind their "own" a. factory in China." alliances prepare the ground for wars, panied by the ongoing United Nations exploiters. We fight to instill in the work­ The student youth who converged and in their tum grow out of wars." starvation blockade. Ten years ago, the ing class the consciousness that its inter­ on Washington over the weekend did The small number of imperialist pow­ literacy rate in Iraq was 95 percent, and 93 ests are diametrically opposed to those of not share this flag-waving enthusiasm ers are engaged in a ruthless struggle to percent of the population had access to the capitalists. The eradication of the pov­ for trade protectionism and belligerence improve their relative competitive posi­ modern health facilities. The child mor­ erty, racism and war endemic to capital­ toward China. Most hadn't even heard of tion by increasing the rate of exploitation tality rate, once one of the lowest in the ism can only be accomplished by the one the April 12 China-bashing rally, which of their domestic working class, by world, is now the highest. Likewise, the revolutionary class in this society, the was organized by many of the same union plundering the colonial andsemicolonial anti-IMF protest made no mention of last working class. Because of its central role officials wbo provided organizational world and by seizing markets at the year's NATO terror bombing of Serbia. In in capitalist production, the proletariat as backbone for the anti-IMFIWorld 13ank expense of their rivals. Particularly since fact, most liberals and ostensible leftists a class has the power to sweep away the protests. SLlSYC comrades encountered the destruction of the Soviet Union fully supported U.S. imperialism's war capitalist system and lay the foundations little overt anti-Communism except for a through capitalist counterrevolution in against Serbia in the name of "humanitar­ of a socialist society-based on an inter­ few pockets of right-wingers like the 1991-92, there has been a sharp escala­ ian" concern for the Kosovar Albanians. national planned economy providing "Free Tibet" crowd and sold hundreds of tion of interimperialist rivalries, as evi­ , Prominent among the left apologists material abundance for all. This requires copies of Workers Vanguard with front­ denced in the breakup of the Seattle talks for "human rights" imperialism are the the instrumentality of a revolutionary page articles headlined "Defend Cuba and the growth of bourgeois militarism International Socialist Oi"ga~ization (ISO) workers party to render the proletariat Against U.S. Imperialism!" and "Down in the U.S., Europe and Japan. and Workers World Party '(WWP), both conscious of its historic tasks and lead it With U.S. Anti-China Crusade!" As pro­ It is significant that many young "glo­ of which hailed the Seattle protest and in revolutionary struggle against the letarian internationalists fighting to build balization"- protesters are looking to the helped build the Washington demonstra­ exploiters. That is the purpose of the a world party of socialist revolution, we trade unions-the basic defense organi­ tions. Recently these groups have sought Spartacist League and Spartacus Youth call for unconditional militarY defense of zations of the working class-as allies in to distance themselves from the AFL-CIO Clubs. Join us!. the Chinese deformed workers state the fight against exploitation. But the against imperialist attack and internat" power of the labor movement to wage counterrevolution. class struggle against the capitalist Demonstrators were organized into exploiters is chained by the pro-capitalist "affinity groups" based on the particular union tops. Both in the Seattle anti-WTO cause they supported or campus they protests and in Washington last week, the came from. For many, this was their first AFL-CIO bureaucracy manipulated lib­ foray into political protest of any kind. eral student youth, whose- conCern for National Office: Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 • (212) 732-7860 For their efforts, they were assaulted by global poverty is mixed with illusions in Web site: www.icl-fLorg • E-mail address:[email protected] cops with tear gas and potentially lethal the "democratic" nature of the American pepper spray for being in the wrong state, for their own reactionary ends: Boston Los Angeles Oakland place at the wrong time. Many were chauvinist trade protectionism and anti­ Box 390840, Central Sta. Box 29574, Los Feliz Sta. Box 29497 clubbed before being dragged off into Communist China bashing. Cambridge, MA 02139 Los Angeles, CA 90029 Oakland, CA 94604 police vehicles. Several were intention­ What the organizers of the Seattle and (617) 666-9453 (213) 380-8239 (510) 839-0851 Public Office: Public Office: ally hit by speeding police motorcycles. D.C. protests share with labor bureau­ Chicago crats like John Sweeney and ultra-right­ Sat. 2-5 p.m. Sat. 1-5 p.m. Here was an object lesson in the work­ Box 6441, Main PO 3806 Beverly Blvd., Room 215 1634 Telegraph, 3rd Floor ings of the capitalist state-a machinery ists like Pat Buchanan is the notion that Chicago, IL 60680 of repression to defend the profits and supranational institutions like the WTO (312) 454-4930 New York San Francisco rule of the capitalist class. and IMP now dominate the world, Public Office: Box 3381, Church St. Sta. Box 77494 Protesters were looking for solutions to thereby stripping the American nation of Tues. 5-9 p.m. New York, NY 10008 San Francisco, CA 94107 the brutal exploitation· and oppression its "sovereignty." Thus a statement build­ and Sat. 12-3 p.m. (212) 267-1025 (415) 395-9520 which are rooted in the capitalist system. ing for Seattle by a coalition of student 328 S. Jefferson St. Public Office: Public Office: Suite 904 The pro-capitalist labor tops, liberals and and environmental groups in the U.S. Tues. 6:30-8:30 p.m. Sat. 11 a.m.-1 p.m. fake leftists all try to sell them a bill of and Canada decried the WTO as "so and Sat. 1-5 p.m. 564 Market St., Suite 718 299 Broadway, Suite 318 goods: that capitalism can be made more mighty, it could make the next vote you "humane" and that its state can be pres­ cast for government meaningless." One sured to serve the interests of working of the main chants of the Seattle protests TROTSKYIST LEAGUE OF CANADA/LIGUE TROTSKYSTE DU CANADA people and the oppressed. This is a lie. was, "Clinton, say no to the WTO!" Depredations like the war against Serbia The idea that the world is governed by Toronto Vancouver and continuing U.S. bombing of Iraq, bodies like the WTO and IMF which Box 7198, Station A Box 2717, Main P.O. Toronto, ON M5W 1X8 Vancouver, BC V6B 3X2 miserable wages and sweatshop condi­ trample on the "sovereignty" of the most (416) 593-4138 (604) 687-0353 . tions, racism, hunger and the despoliation powerful imperialist countries is both 4 WORKERS VANGUARD "i> Scholars Conference. It puts forth our Marxist program, the revolutionary alter­ The "Spirit of Seattle" Is Protectionist Poison, native to heightened global capitalist plunder. America'n Chauvinism and Anti-Communism! * * * The call for this year's Socialist Schol­ ars Conference lauds the Seattle anti­ WTO protests as a "glimmer of the future." The kind of future these "social­ For Workers Revolution to ist scholars" are trying to sell you is one of American chauvinism, protectionist poison, anti-Communism and dressing up the bloodiest ruling class in the world as potential allies of working people and Smash u.S. l!!Iperialisml the oppressed. Though some youth might , "····A#8I.,~ view throwing rocks through the win­ dows of Starbucks as a major statement against exploitation, this merely was the SYC at Socialist streetfighting veneer for the grotesque nationalist festival that was the Seattle Scholars Conference protests. What was seen in Seattle was the labor face of the capitalist Democra­ The rotten, pro-imperialist politics tic Party, shot through with strident calls at the center of Seattle's backward, for a more belligerent U.S. imperialism. national-chauvinist anti-World Trade From the anti-China ravings of the Organization protests pervaded the dry AFL-CIO tops to the banners reading academic panels and discussion at the "People First Not China First" and the recent Socialist Scholars Conference dumping of Chinese steel into the harbor, 2000 in New York, an annual confab the "spirit of Seattle" courtesy of the sponsored by the Democratic (l>arty) AFL-CIO tops and their reformist left Socialists of America, At the confer­ tails was anti-Communism and poisonous ence, entitled "Rockin' the Boat: Build­ protectionism ever so thinly veiled as a ing Coalitions for the New Century," the campaign for "human rights." For exam­ Spartacist League and Spartacus Youth ple, Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa, Club interjected the fight for interna­ who has never displayed any concern for tional workers revolution into discus­ the "human rights" of the Mexican truck­ sions awash in the consensus reformism ers he wants banned from the U.S., railed of ostensibly Marxist organizations and against "slave labor" in "undemocratic the "socialist scholars." Wrapped in the regimes" like China and Vietnam. It is "spirit" of the WTO protests, this entire no coincidence that both countries hap­ lot of fake socialists entrusts rapacious Photo pen to be places where revolutions led U.S. imperialism with the "human rights" Spartacist contingent counterposed proletarian internationalism to pro­ to the overthrow of the capitalist system. mission of bringing the rest of the world imperialist pacifist appeals at 5 June 1999 antiwar protest in San Francisco. The American capitalist class would very under its heel, in particular the Chinese much like to destroy the remaining gains deformed workers slate. tive ruling classes, called on NATO and pro-imperialist paternalistic moralism of these revolutions so that they can Two panels focused on China. One the United Nations to do the same provides the pretext for the ruling classes secure rights to exploit Chinese and Viet­ featured Chinese academic apologists bloody work in lieu of the U.S. military. of America, Western Europe and Japan namese workers in the same way the for Mao's heirs, openly heralding the With their "humanitarian" rhetoric, these to rip off the wealth of the entire world U.S. imperialists already exploit workers attempts of the Communist Party bu­ "socialist" scholars echo the premise of while the masses of the Third World are throughout the rest of the world and in the reaucrats to dismantle the collectivized imperialist ideologues from the turn of consigned to permanent impoverishment. U.S.: through "slave labor" and by prop­ economy, legacy of the 1949 Revolution. the last century and their cry to take up What follows is a leaflet put out by the ping up "undemocratic regimes." At the other panel, emigre speakers who the "white man's burden." In both cases, Spartacus Youth Club for the"Socialist continued on page 8 think China is already capitalist (since 1979) expressed their nostalgia for Mao by denying both his alliance with U.S. imperialism against the USSR and the famine that followed his "Great Leap FOf-. ward." Both groupings stand on the ter­ "The Main Enemy Is at Home!" rain of nationalism and at bottom, the We reprint below Karl Liebknecht's brethren, against our fellow-workers acceptance of the "death of communism." 1916 May Day Manifesto, a speech in the United States, and fight America, Meanwhile, American "socialists" such upholding proletarian international­ too. Consider well this fact: As long as as the International Socialist Organiza­ ism at a time when the reformist the German people does not arise and tion, who effusively cheered every coun­ Social Democrats were supporting the use force directed by its own will, the terrevolutionary movement aimed at the imperialist war efforts of the German assassination of the people will con­ Soviet Union and ultimately hailed its bourgeoisie and thereby acting as an tinue. Let thousands of voices shout collapse, are now lined up in support of a obstacle to revolutionary workers' "Down with the shameless extermina­ similar fate for the Chinese proletariat­ struggles. For their role in leading the tion of nations! Down with those the wholesale destitution accompanying Spartakist uprising of 1919, Karl responsible for these crimes!" Our capitalist restoration. The SUSYC inter­ Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were enemy is not the English, French, nor vened at these panels in defense of China murdered in the white terror un­ Russian people, but the great German against imperialism and counterrevolu­ leashed in its wake by the Social landed proprietors, the German capi­ tion. Chinese workers must overthrow the Democrats. talists and their executive committee. bureaucracy through a proletarian politi­ Forward, let us fight the govern­ cal revolution with an internationalist * * * ment; let us fight these mortal ene­ program-a perspective that includes Poverty and misery, need and star;­ mies of all freedom. Let us fight for saving the gains of the 1949 Revolu­ vation, are ruling in Germany, Bel­ everything which means the future tri­ tion which the reformists and "socialist" gium, Poland and Serbia, whose blood umph of the working-classes, the scholars reject outright. the vampire of imperialism is sucking future of humanity and civilization. A main point of "contention" at the and which resemble vast cemeteries. Workers, comrades, and you, Socialist Scholars Conference was the The entire world, the much-praised women of the people, let not this fes­ degree to which the murderous U.S. mil­ European civilization, is falling into tival of May, the second during the itary should intervene to protect "human ruins through the anarchy which has war, pass without protest against the rights" around the world. One panel been let loose by the world war. Imperialis't Slaughter. On the first of wholeheartedly supporting intervention Those who profit from the war want May let millions of voices cry, "Down called on U.S. imperialism to expand its war with the United States. Tomorrow, with the shameful crime of the exter­ profit-grabbing and spheres of influence perhaps, they may order us to aim mination of peoples!" "Down with in the name of "democracy." A panel of lethal weapons against new groups of those responsible for the War!" European academics, more concerned with the prospects of their own respec- 21 APRIL 2000 5 Chicago Cybercops Entrap Priest GCN£RNMf.NTour OF THE I B£DOOOM '"

They are lurking in chat rooms in against victimless crimes (such as carry­ ever-greater numbers, dangling tempta­ ing or using drugs). There was no child March for abortion rights, tions hoping to lure their prey out for a and there was no crime. San Francisco, 1992. sexual tryst and when they succeed­ The cops and the media whip up a you're busted! "They," of course, are the frenzied depiction of an Internet crawl­ growing number of cops engaged in 'a ing with Chester the Molester and his WV Photo vicious national campaign of Internet ilk. But make no mistake: the real stalk­ tight rein on "acceptable behavior." Sex institution of the family, which histori­ entrapment aimed at those wishing to ers are the hundreds of cops and under­ is a particularly effective target as it raises cally came into existence with property engage in consensual, intergenerational cover agents infesting the chat rooms. explosive fears and prejudices, and it ownership and is thus crucial for capital­ sex. The scenario is becoming a regular The Chicago Sun-Times (27 February) doesn't get much more dicey than the ism which is based on such ownership. spot on the. evening news: two people noted that in Illinois alone the number of combination of minors, adults and sex. The family is the key institution for the meet on the Internet and set up a date; law enforcement agencies that have spe­ Witness the incessant persecution and oppression of women under capitalism. one is of age, the other allegedly under­ cial officers or units assigned to investi­ prosecution of the North American Man­ Gays are persecuted and held in contempt age-except when the fellow shows up, gate "computer sex crimes" has jumped Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), which in bourgeois society because homosexu­ he finds out that his "date" is a cop and from six to 50 in the last two years. advocates the right of consensual sexual ality is perceived as a threat to the "holy" he is now branded a pedophile, a sexual Cases handled by the FBI and convic­ relations with young men under the age family. One of the roles of organized deviant, and dragged off to prison. The tions nationally have nearly doubled in of consent. We find it particularly repul­ religion is to shore up the family and its spate of arrests has netted a wide variety the same period, climbing to 209 and sive that the state that regularly perpe­ "values," i.e., it operates to perpetuate of victims, including a vice president 130 respectively. The mere act of send­ trates atrocities in the name of human women's oppression, coyly described as of the Bank of America, a roadie ing "pornographic pictures" accounted rights-<:ondemning millions of Iraqis to the "special status" of women. Countless for Engelbert Humperdinck, the U.S. for one-third of the 24 "computer sex" a slow death through sanctions, incinerat­ poor and working-class women have been Senate's top Y2K expert and, most arrests of late in Wisconsin. ing over 80 men, women and children in driven to despair and, at times, to death recently, a Chicago priest named John We condemn governmental entrapment Waco, Texas, executing juveniles and the by religious prohibitions against birth Furdek. What these men have in com­ and are opposed to reactionary age of mentally disabled-tries to dictate what control and abortion. The apparent irony mon is that they were set up and arrested consent laws. Age of consent laws are is socially acceptable behavior. when a member of the clergy "does it" for a "crime" that never happened. One designed to repress youth sexuality. They For tens of thousands of years the outside the boundaries of the moral code can now be charged with "endangering a only speaks to'the utterly normal charac­ c child" without the existence of a child g: ter of sexual activity of all types. To par­ anywhere! Taking their cue from the aphrase Cole Porter, birds do it, bees do

Christian doctrine that includes thoughts ~CD it, evangelicals and priests do it. under the category of sin, Illinois law­ The casualties of the escalating entrap­ makers have passed a law that allows a ment campaign go far beyond the lives suspect to be charged with "solicitation and livelihoods of those arrested. It feeds of a child" merely for believing that it is directly into the climate of fear and intol­ a child with whom he is chatting. erance and endangers the democratic Defense attorney Warren Breslin com­ rights of all, beginning with those most mented, "I think it's outrageous we're vulnerable. Branding these men as mon­ really aggressively looking for people on "Cybersheriffs sters is a conscious effort to intensify the the Internet who engage in fantasy con­ on Patrol": sexual hysteria and further ostracize those these men want who do not fit into the narrow sexual, versations. They're looking for crimes to "protect" you! that have not yet developed" (Chicago social confines prescribed by this rotting Sun-Times, 27 February). Indeed. Father capitalist society. By the authorities' own Furdek of Villa Park, Illinois was nabbed admission these cases are generally not when he showed up at a Racine, Wiscon­ about coercion. A New York Times (14 sin McDonald's allegedly to meet a 14- October 1999) article detailing a police year-old boy he met online. Furdek was sting pointed out that "none of the men charged with attempted second-degree have about as much to do with "protect­ onset of puberty signaled the entry into charged today were accused of forcing sexual assault and two counts of child ing youth" as the death penalty has to adulthood. Sex among the very young the teenagers to have sex, but because enticement involving sexual contact. The do with preventing crime. Both are (often with the not so young) was the the boys were minors, the law does not fact that the "child" was an undercover repressive tools in the bourgeoisie's norm and not viewed as taboo. In mod­ recognize any consent they may give." agent and no sexual relations ever took arsenal to maintain its grip on a disgrun­ ern society, stultifying moral codes have Small wonder that in the same article Dis­ place is deemed irrelevant! He was also tled population. In this society, where pushed biology aside and an arbitrary trict Attorney Jeanine F. Pirro bemoans charged with possession of anabolic ster­ the small minority that owns the means of age, generally 17 or 18, is set to establish the fact that "several victims" in the oids with intent to deliver and possession production relies on state repression to the legality of "doing it." And sex educa­ entrapment arrests were unwilling to tes­ of marijuana and drug paraphernalia. maintain its class rule, you can bet that tion, birth control and abortion are often tify against those arrested. We say drop the charges against John their obsession with snooping on the pop­ withheld in an attempt to enforce absti­ The capitalist state can only promise Furdek! We are opposed to all laws ulation flows from their need to keep a nence among the young, along with mor­ to continue to mete out more punishment alistic "saft( sex is no sex" campaigns in as it continues to cling to a decaying many public school systems centered social system. It is our job as revolution­ around youth pledging .to remain chaste ary Trotskyists of the International Com­ until marriage. Decreeing that all youth munist League, acting as the tribune of "under age" are incapable of consenting the people, to fight against all manifesta­ to having sex with an older person 'and tions of oppression and backwardness. Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of the Spartacist League labeling all such sexual relations as child As Marxists, we maintain that the guid­ molestation is not only absurd, it instills ing principle of sexual relations should gUilt and shame in those youth who do be that of effective consent, nothing 0$10/22 issues of Workers Vanguard 0 New 0 Renewal (includes English-language Spartacist and Black History and the Class Struggle) partake, or would like to. This guilt and more than mutual agreement and under­ international rates: $25/22 issues-Airmail $10/22 issues-Seamail shame is particularly intense for gay standing. Determining effective consent youth whose only outlet may be Internet requires assessment of the particular $2/6 introductory issues of Workers Vanguard (includes English-language Spartacist) o chat rooms or anonymous meetings. relationship', especially when young peo­ o $2/4 issues of Espartaco (en espanol) (includes Spanish-language Spartacist) They know too well the fate of Matthew ple are involved with older ones; but Name ______Shepard and the misery and dangers that such relatiopships are not prima facie may come with being "out" at school. evjdence of abuse or coercion. Only Address ______We oppose attempts to fit human sexual­ when the working class sweeps away Apt. # Phone ( __ ) ______ity into legislated "norms." this capitalist system and takes power in These laws are little more than religion . its own name, can we begin to lay the City State Zip ----- transcribed into legal code. Their aim is to groundwork for a society in which sex­ 734 enforce social conformity and reactionary ual relationships can be truly free from Make checks payable/mail to: Spartaclst Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 social mores, primarily by bolstering the coercion, economic or otherwise .• 6 WORKERS VANGUARD On Winning the New Generation to Revolutionary Trotskyism

WV Photo Young Spartacus Demonstration in March against Prop 21 and 22 in San Francisco (left). 23 October 1999 labor/black mobilization against KKK in New York City; SYCs helped organize successful action against racist terror.

We print below in edited form a pres­ schools with white kids, not unheated, and white and mainly youth-it is the aid society. The Leninist organization is entation by comrade Don Cane to the rickety one-room schoolhouses where it "working poor." Bourgeois propagandists designed to conduct a relentless struggle Bay Area Spartacist League local on 1 was common practice to pull kids out preach to them about the death of com­ against the capitalists and their agents April 2000. to work the fields. They could boast that munism and that tobacco is a drug­ in the workers movement. The reformist This presentation will narrowly focus their children will never work a field. The drugs fry your brain, commies are amoral workers organizations see this as a rigid­ on the party question and will be centered expectation of their generation of escape dreamers because there is nothing wrong ness and a commandist organization that on our own local and therefore limited from the degradation of the Jim Crow with robbing your neighbor if you can. threatens their individual stardom. Can­ experience. I was recently reading some South was in many ways met in this state. get away with it. What are the expecta­ non points out that the Leninist organi­ of the prison letters of [founding Ameri­ The expectations of their children's tions of this new generation? How do zation is in reality not this at all; it is can Trotskyist leader] James P. Cannon; generation-who knew of, but had not they see the world? The party must be flexible and varied. For the Leninist, in one, I believe, he was proposing the lived in the Jim Crow South, and desired able to open up a line of communication organizational questions are subordinate transfer to New York of a valuable com­ much more--could not be so easily satis­ with the best, most conscious layer of to political aims. In other words, in order rade who had spent too much time in Cal­ fied. These expectations collided with this generation in order to act on a pro­ to advance the program of revolution­ ifornia and was growing soft. So the the constant threat of violence of the aII­ gram of revolutionary Marxism. ary Marxism the Leninist will adapt and problem of the laip-back California life­ white LAPD, collided with the contempt Cannon refers to "men of common improvise his organizational means. The style has a history. The California life­ of the all-white school administration clay" to explain that Marx, Lenin and program and principles of revolutionary style problem is nothing more than the (I was a very good, hard-working student Trotsky were rare men of genius that we Marxism are the only sacred weapons pressures of bourgeois society on a revo­ but the San Pedro schools kept me off should not expect to encounter again in that cannot and will not be tampered with. lutionary party as they manifest them­ the all-white honor rolls every semester; our lifetime. What we "men of common The revolutionary party must bend selves within this western state with its I'm still mad about this) and they col­ clay" can and should expect to encoun­ over backwards to provide a political edu­ own unique but very American history. lided with the booming job market that ter are great leaders of revolutionary cation on the party and Trotskyist history I grew up in California as a post-World kept blacks in the dirty, backbreaking action. In other words, good"party peo­ to our youth. Cannon made the point that War II baby boomer; here is a slice of jobs while the clean, easy and good jobs ple who, having learned the art.'of pol­ the history of the Bolshevik Party is not my experience. My parents arrived here remained all white. Official bourgeois itics of what to do next, actually do it­ confined to Russia, buried under a foreign in the early '50s as Southern migrants, society said that.a11 was well in this land take the programs and principles laid language; after October 1917 this party semi-illiterate small-farm people, prod­ of milk and honey, even the colored peo­ out by the greater men of our move-;i became international, it has a living his­ ucts of the Jim Crow South. For them ple were happy, making progress and ment and achieve final victory over tory in many languages. Youth 'must learn this state was the land of milk and honey treated fairly. As we know these lies the capitalist enemy. This concept dis­ that our party does not just study the his­ because black people lived well here. exploded and burned in the '60s ghetto tinguishes Leninist organizational meth­ tory of the Russian Revolution, we are the There was factory work and wages, no rebellions. This opened up a huge win­ ods from all others in the workers party of the Russian Revolution. The field work and sharecropper income. dow on American society:-blacks weren't movement. class war goes on, the Bolshevik com­ Blacks lived in stucco and brick houses the only ones that were pissed off in the The Leninist organization is a combat rades of Lenin and Trotsky remain at and apartments, not whitewashed wooden land of milk and honey; the Mexicans organization, not a debating or mutual their post.. shacks; their children attended good were pissed off and a wide layer of white youth and workers were too. Asian youth expressed their displeasure as well. Now here we are in California in the A Spartacist Pamphlet year 2000. There is no talk of milk and New Edition honey, only the clamor of Silicon Val­ ley dot-com millionaires congratulating themselves as they add up their profits. First published in 1978. this CHICAGO After a series of state propositions target­ pamphlet provides a detailed Saturday. April 29. 3 p.m. ing every segment of the population in historical and theoretical Women's Liberation through general and the working class in par­ account of Lenin's struggle Socialist Revolution! ticular, we face the youth generation of for a vanguard party. Location and readings: (312) 454-4930 Prop. 21. We are familiar with the out­ Includes: "In Defense of line of their experience: liberal integra­ Democratic Centralism" NEW YORK tionism's crowning achievement was the This edition also includes: Tuesday. April 25. 7 p.m. integration of the repressive capitalist "The Fight for a Leninist Confronting the "Death of state. So there are the Diallo and Rodney Vanguard Party" Communism" Myth: King cases, but increasingly the murder­ The Revolutionary Party in ous cops are black and brown, grade­ the Post-Soviet World school kids are mobilized for Martin $2 (56 pages) NYU. Thompson Center, Basement Luther King Day while their older broth­ 238 Thompson St. (near W. 3rd St.) ers and sisters are mobilized for the Bal­ Order from/make checks Information and readings: (212) 267-1025 kan War and Desert Slaughter. payable to: The black middle class and their white Spartacist Publishing Co. VIsit th. ICL W.b Sit., C"ounterparts have gotten fat at the gov­ Box 1377 GPO www.ic.-fi.org ernment's pork barrel, while a new New York. NY 10116 term is coined to describe workers, black 21 APRIL 2000 7 Ridge at Gettysburg. Perhaps their most where workers' opposition was instru­ Marx insisted on the need for working­ Red '48ers ... memorable battle came in the fall of mental in preventing a British interven­ class independence from the parties of the (continued from page 3) 1863 when they were sent to help tion on the side of the Confederacy. liberal bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie, Grant's Army of the Tennessee relieve In his 1861 article "The Civil War in denouncing those who sought to entangle Dutch (Deutsche) out of the Union Army the besieged Army of the Cumberland the United States," Marx made special the workers in a party in which "their spe­ and we-'ll whip the Yankees easily." at Chattanooga. The breakthrough came note of the German immigrants in Texas cial interests are concealed and in which In the first few days of the war, Wash­ after Schurz's and Steinwehr's divisions in opposing the designs of the slavocracy. the particular demands of the proletariat ington was in danger of being isolated, attacked the Confederate stronghold on Noting that Texas was entitled to form may not be brought for the sake of as secessionist mobs in Baltimore cut the Lookout Mountain at dawn. This "battle five separate slave states out of its terri­ beloved peace." rail lines and prevented reinforcements above the clouds" opened the way for the tory when it was admitted into the Union The Civil War was the Second Ameri­ from reaching the nation's capital. Just can Revolutiol}. exemplified by the about the only reliable troops in the area 200,000 black troops who flocked into were two German companies, who the Union Army and were crucial to the cleared the Confederate rabble out of North's victory over the slavocracy. How­ Annapolis Junction and secured the rail­ ever, after the Civil War, the victori­ road line~ until troops from Massachu­ ous Northern capitalists saw their class setts and New York arrived. interests best served in betraying the Similarly in Missouri, German units promise of black freedom ushered in were'crucial in the grim early days, man­ by the smashing of the slave system. aging to save the state for the Union Breaking up the plantations and distribut­ despite strong secessionist sentiment. At ing the land to the freedmen was inimi­ the war's onset, the pro-secessionist gov­ cal to the capitalists' worship of "pri­ ernor massed troops in a plot to seize vate property" and counterposed to the the vast federal arsenal in St. Louis, bourgeoisie's need for large-scale farm­ guarded by only 200 Union soldiers. ing. So they sealed an alliance with the In May, Turner regiments seized the ex-slaveholders by withdrawing Union secessionists' encampment at Camp Jack­ troops from the South in the infamous son in a surprise raid, saving St. Louis Compromise of 1877, marking the de­ and its arsenal. Serving as a Union officer' feat of Reconstruction. Left defenseless in the St. Louis military district was against the landowners and the rising Joseph Weydemeyer, a comrade of Karl racist terror of the Ku Klux Klan, the Marx. Weydemeyer supervised the build­ emancipated slaves were forced back ing of ten forts around St. Louis, and then onto the plantations as tenant farmers and became the colonel of a volunteer artil­ Harper's Weekly sharecroppers. lery regiment tracking down Confederate August 1865 funeral ceremony in Comfort, Texas honors German immigrants Since then, the racist ideology devel­ guerrillas. killed in fight against Southern slavocracy. oped by the slaveholders to justify chattel In July 1863, New York City was the slavery has been adopted by the bour­ scene of anti-draft riots by Irish immi­ assault on Missionary Ridge by mostly in 1845, thereby greatly enhancing the geoisie in order to maintain their class grants, who feared their precarious living German regiments from Illinois, Indiana, political power of the slaveholders in the rule through keeping the workers divided standards would be threatened by an Kansas, Ohio and Wisconsin, led by federal government, Marx continued: along racial and ethnic lines. What Marx influx of black freedmen. The rampaging Brigadier General August Willich (who "However, the slaveholders found it wrote at the time of the Civil War is no mob, including Irish cops, lynched in 1848 had also been a commander impracticable to cut up Texas, where the less true today: "Labor cannot emanci­ blacks and burned down a black orphan­ in the Baden campaign, with Friedrich German population plays an important pate itself in the white skin where in the part, into even two states without giving age. It was the Turner who moved in to Engels serving as his adjutant). Under the party of free labor the upper hand black it is branded." put a stop to the riot. intense fire, Willich ordered his nine reg­ over the party of slavery in the second In a society where racial oppression is The hefty weight of the German pres­ iments up the ridge without waiting for state. This furnishes the best proof of the the bedrock of American capitalism and enGe in the Union forces could be seen in orders, leading to a quick victory which strength of the opposition to the slave­ where religious obscurantism is increas­ the eastern Army of the Potomac, whose made it possible for the Union armies to holding oligarchy in Texas itself." ingly used to prop up capitalist rule, the XI Corps was composed of three largely begin their march to Atlanta and the sea. controversy in Comfort, Texas illumi­ German divisions led by Sigel. "I fights The ' 48ers drew strength from the Finish the Civil War! nates both the unfinished business of the mit Sigel" was the proud boast of the influential pen of Marx and Engels, The German Red '48ers thus partici­ Civil War and the vast regression from ranks of the XI Corps, expressing admi­ whose articles in the New York Herald pated in two of the greatest revolution­ the Enlightenment principles which ani­ ration for the man who had led insurrec­ Tribune and elsewhere provided detailed ary upheavals of the 19th century. The mated the bourgeois-democratic revolu­ tionary forces in the German state of political and military analysis of, in their bourgeoisie's role in sealing the defeat of tions of' the past. We honor the Red' Baden in 1848-49 against the Pruss ian words, the "first grand war of contempo­ the German Revolution made clear that , 48ers in our struggle to build the multi­ Army. raneous history." Under Marx's leader­ the era during which the capitalist class racial revolutionary workers party which The XI Corps saw bloody action at ship, the First International rallied the could playa historically progressive role will lead the workiqg class to power Chancellorsvillt; and engaged Confeder­ European working class behind the Union was drawing to a close. Drawing a bal­ through a socialist revolution which will ate troops in the battle for Cemetery cause, most significantly in England, ance sheet of the events two years later, finish the Civil War.•

powerful transnational grouping, as V. I. in the Balkans is hardly surprising. The before other class forces. Socialist Lenin noted in his book Imperialism, the DSA has a long and sordid history of The call for this conference of rene­ Highest Stage of Capitalism, bodies like service to U.S. imperialism from DSA gade "socialist" scholars agonizes over the WTO "are inevitably nothing more founder Michael Harrington;s support whether to "organize to our right or Scholars ... than a 'truce' in periods between wars." to the Vietnam War to their backing of consolidate the Left." That was already (continued from page 5) In the pursuit of its interests, the ruthless counterrevolutionary movements like the answered in Seattle where the "left" The Spartacus Youth Club ,(SYC), American ruling class has driven down bloody mujahedin Islamic fundamental­ was allied with the likes of the Reform youth group of the revolutionary Marxist wages at home, spearheaded the brutal ists in Afghanistan. But the DSA hardly Party and incipient clerical fascist Pat Spartacist League, stands for the uncon­ .terror bombing of Serbia, and regularly stands alone. The rest of the so-called left Buchanan who saluted the "economic and ditional military defense of the Chinese, unleashes its cops to mete out its "jus­ are just as firmly in the camp of their political patriotism of those who rallied Vietnamese, North Korean and Cuban tice" to blacks, immigrants and workers, "own" imperialist rulers. The Interna­ in Seattle." deformed workers states against imperi­ such as the execution of Amadou Diallo tional Socialist Organization, Socialist The SL/SYC is the only organization alism and attempts at internal counter­ in a hail of 41 bullets. Imperialist war, Action and others were well prepared around that fights uncompromisingly in revolution. We call for a workers politi­ racist repression and cop terror are en­ to embrace the chauvinism and anti­ opposition to the bloody U.S. imperialist cal revolution to oust the Stalinist demic to the capitalist system and cannot Communism of the WTO protests by their rulers. We fight to build the revolutionary bureaucrats who have grievously under­ be eradicated short of sweeping the years of standing with the imperialists in multiracial workers party committed to mined the gains of these revolutions. whole rotten system away through a backing every and any counterrevolution­ the struggle for socialist revolution, much While the rest of the left celebrates the workers revolution. ary movement aimed at destroying the like the Bolshevik Party of Lenin and pro-imperialist "battle of Seattle," the During last year's Socialist Scholars former Soviet degenerated workers state. Trotsky which led the working people SYC will be celebrating the 25th anniver­ Conference, Bogdan Denitch, honorary Groups like the tiny Bolshevik Ten­ of Russia to power in October 1917. The sary of the humiliating defeat of U.S. chairman of the Democratic Socialists dency, who tried to give something of microcosm of such a party in action was imperialism by the heroic workers and of America (DSA), chicken-baited the a "left" gloss to these same politics dur­ seen in New York City on October 23 in peasants of Vietnam-a true victory for U.S. imperialists and NATO for only rain­ ing Cold War II, openly hail the WTO the 8,000-strong mobilization-initiated working people arourid the world. ing bombs on Serbia, screaming for impe­ protests, denying that these had anything by the Partisan Defense Committee and The bloody U.S. imperialist rulers rialist ground troops to go in to wage all­ to do with the counterrevolutionary drive actively built by the SL/SYC-which who spend billions on busting unions out war. This was the day after armchair against the Chinese deformed workers ran the KKK off the streets. In contrast in the U.S. are not in the business liberal "anarchist" Noam Chomsky and state. Then there's the Internationalist to Seattle where the working people and of defending workers rights anywhere. other "socialist scholars" decided to Group (IG) whose first statement on the youth were lined up behind the aims of They are engaged in a ruthless struggle squelch any discussion about the U.S. ter­ WTO protests said not a word in opposi­ their "own" imperialist rulers, the Octo­ to improve their competitive position by ror bombing of Serbia during the opening tion to the Seattle mobilization. Only ber 23 anti-Klan mobilization was built increasing the rate of exploitation of plenary of the conference. The Spartacist after being challenged by members ofthe in opposition to the Democratic Party and "their" domestic working class, by plun­ League (SL) and SYC rained on this lit­ Spartacist League and Spartacus Youth all the agencies of capitalist class rule. dering the colonial and semicolonial tle parade of fake-socialist warmongers, Club did the IG come out in cyberspace If you're interested in an organization world and by seizing markets at the interjecting from the floor and raising with a statement opposing the chauvinism of socialist revolutionaries rather than expense of their rivals. This struggle is signs demanding "Defeat U.S. Imperial­ of the WTO protests. But these are mere being sold some pro-imperialist, pro­ the natural outgrowth of the capitalist ism Through Workers Revolution!" and words to cover for the IG's opportunist Democratic Party snake oil by a gaggle of system and its need for ever-increasing "Defend Serbia Against U.S.INATO politics which are defined by despair in' "socialist" scholars, check us out. profits gained through the conquest of - Attack!" the revolutionary capacity of the work­ -New York Spartacus Youth Club new markets. Far from being an all- Denitch's backing of U.S. imperialism ing class and corresponding capitulation 31 March 2000 . 8 WORKERS VANGUARD ~ a. ~ Defend Cuba •• ~ CD ~ (continued from page 1) 5: kidnappers. As we go to press, the case is still tied up in the courts, while EWin's father is forced to extend his stay in the U.S., where he has been targeted by Cuban militiaman anti-Communist mobs. As counterrevo­ guards U.S. oil refinery expropriated lutionary exiles continue to stage anti­ in 1960. Democratic Communist rallies in Miami, up to two president John F. million people have demonstrated in Kennedy received Havana and other cities in Cuba, demand­ gusano flag from ing that EWiR be reunited with his father. survivor of 1961 We say: Relurn Elhln nowL Bay of Pigs invasion The Spartacist League has always which was routed opposed U.S. imperialism's four-decade­ by Cuban soldiers long embargo against Cuba, a blatant act and workers. of war. We demand that the U.S. Navy get out of Guantanamo Bay, the military base on Cuba's eastern tip where over 2,000 U.S. troops are stationed. This is part of our unconditional military defense of The seizure and nationalization of all old embargo that has failed to dislodge erished black immigrants from U.S. Cuba against imperialism and internal U.S. property and finally the eco­ Castro. Farmers, businessmen and tour­ neocolonies like Haiti have never been counterrevolution. In other words, our nomic liquidation ofthe Cuban bourgeoi­ ists are clamoring for greater access to the welcome on U.S. shores. In early Janu­ military defense of Cuba with its collec­ sie by this petty-bourgeois government island, as other countries usurp a natural ary, while Elian's case was being hotly tivized economy does not have as a prior demonstrated that even under these most U.S. market." Prominent politicians such debated, the U.S. quietly deported 437 condition the overthrow of the Stalinist favorable conditions it was unable to as Republican Illinois governor George Haitian refugees who came to Florida on bureaucracy. find a third way between labor and capi­ Ryan have made highly publicized trips rafts. We demand: Full citizenship rights At the same time, we emphasize that tal to organize society. By virtue of its to Cuba, while right-wing Missouri Sen­ for all immigrants! Stop the deportations! the Cuban workers state has been bureau­ newly acquired social position-hold­ ator John Ashcroft swung the vote in the cratically deformed from its inception, Senate to end the embargo on food ship­ Castro Bureaucracy ing a monopoly of political power at the Undermines Gains of when pervasive nationalizations of capi­ head of a nationalized economy-the ments last year. When Elian's two grand­ talist property in the summer and fall of Castro regime was compelled to embrace mothers came to Washington in January Cuban Revolution 1960 liquidated the Cuban bourgeoisie as that ersatz Marxism which is the neces­ to demand their grandson's return, 77 The elimination of capitalist class a class. The rebel army under Castro---a sary ideological reflection of a Stalin­ Congressmen met with them. rule in Cuba in 1960 meant enormous former supporter of the liberal bourgeois ist bureaucracy, centrally the nationalist Despite the current ambivalence of a gains for its working people which, even Ortodoxo party-which occupied Havana dogma of "socialism in one country." The section of the ruling class toward them, while increasingly attenuated, remain on 1 January 1959 was a politically het­ decisive section of the Castroites could the gusanos still have a powerful and tangible today. Prior to the revolution, erogeneous petty-bourgeois formation. make the transition to the leadership of well-connected political machine, as the immensely corrupt and brutal U.S. The guerrilla war it had waged was mili­ a deformed workers state because in demonstrated by the months-long stand­ puppet Batista and his cronies ruled over tarily marginal but it was the last straw the absence of the egalitarianism and off in Miami. In addition to funneling a society marked by mass unemploy­ for the Batista regime, which was hated proletarian democracy of a state directly millions to American politicians, the ment and illiteracy, with sprawling, mis­ by the masses, increasingly isolated from won by the working people, they never CIA-connected Cuban American Nation­ erable urban slums and a destitute rural the upper layers of Cuban society and had to transcend or fundamentally alter al Foundation (CANF) funds terrorist population squeaking by through sea­ finally abandoned by its U.S. imperialist their own radical petty-bourgeois social attacks like the murderous bombings-of sonal employment. On top of this was patrons. Explaining how Castro's petty­ appetites, but only to transform and redi­ several Cuban hotels by a Salvadoran hit­ the systematic and brutal oppression of bourgeois government presided over the recl them. man in 1997. Yet even among the Cuban black people-indeed, heavily black expropriation of the Cuban bourgeoisie, The Cuban Stalinist bureaucracy, as a population of Miami, a growing segment Santiago province was a center of guer­ the Spartacist League wrote in the 1973 petty-bourgeois stratum, is necessarily regards the CANF types as dinosaurs and rilla struggle against Batista. Such was preface to "Cuba and Marxist Theory" hostile to the perspective of proletarian thinks the best way to overthrow Castro the Cuban "democracy" upheld by the (Marxist Bulletin No.8): revolutionary internationalism as well as is not through invasion or terrorism but anti-Communist rabble in Miami-in­ "Its initial coalition government with to workers democracy, i.e., the rule of the through the Yankee dollar. cluding singer and gusano darling Glo­ authentic liberal-bourgeois politicians proletariat through workers councils (so­ Enraged by the threat to their status as ria Estefan, whose father was one of took place in the context of a shattered Batista's bodyguards and a veteran of the old bourgeois state apparatus. In the viets). To place the proletariat in power the Cuban ruling class in exile, the gusa­ course of the earlier guerrilla struggle­ and open the road to extending the revo­ nos have fought back with hysterical Bay of Pigs. a species of civil war-the commanders lution internationally requires a subse­ accusations of Cuban spying and drug Following the overthrow of capitalism, of that rebel afmy had had their previous quent political revolution. To this end, it . trafficking~ even outrageously accusing the resources of Cuban society, with direct connections with oppositional is necessary to forge an internationalist, Elian's grandmothers of abusing him sex­ heavy Soviet aid, were invested in a cen­ bourgeois-liberal elements broken and tralized, planned economy, with every­ had become episodically autonomous Leninist-Trotskyist vanguard party in ually while they were in the U.S. Four one guaranteed a job, decent housing, fro~ their class (and in many cases bio­ Cuba. This is inextricably tied to our fight years ago, in a provocation aimed at fore­ logical) fathers, the Cuban bourgeoisie. for a workers party in the imperialist stalling talk of ending the embargo, the food and education. The free health care After taking power, they were confronted "belly of the beast" which can sweep paramilitary gusano outfit "Brothers to system, despite the crippling effects of by U.S. imperialism's clumsy and mount­ away bloody U.S. capitalism through pro­ the Rescue" sent two planes.into Cuban the U.S. blockade, is still far and away ing attempts to bring them to heel through the best among "Third World" countries, brute economic pressure upon Cuba with­ letarian revolution. airspace in a brazen challenge to the out corresponding attempts by the con­ country's air defenses. After the planes and Cuban medical schools train doctors temptuous Eisenhower administration to Defend Cub~ Against were shot down just outside Havana, from countries like Honduras, Nicaragua create the conditions and connections to U.S. Imperialism! Washington passed the Helms-Burton and EI Salvador. Cubans now enjoy one reknit the new rulers to the old social fab­ of the highest literacy rates in the world, ric in order to facilitate accommodation With the destruction of the Soviet Act, which tightened the embargo by to the brutal demands of the imperialists. Union, and with the Castro regime hav­ mandating retaliation against other coun­ and nearly one in eleven hold university "No less crucial thim the estrange­ ing long abandoned its early pretense of tries profiting from trade or investment in degrees. The island has more doctors and ment created by the civil war conditions promoting national liberation struggles Cuba. This was after the embargo had teachers per capita than just about any between the petty-bourgeois guerrilla and peasant-based guerrilla war, saber already been strengthened under legisla­ country in the world. fighters and the bourgeois order was the The revolution especially benefited absence of a class-conscious combative rattling against tiny Cuba isn't quite the tion pushed through by Democratic New proletariat which would invariably have cause it used to be. Recent polls show Jersey Senator Robert Torricelli. women. The domination of the Catholic polarized these petty-bourgeois militants, that 67 percent of the U.S. population For more than 30 years, Washington church was broken. Abortion is a free drawing some to the workers' side and opposes the embargo. kept the borders open to Cuban "refu­ health service, and the birthrate is only 1.5 repelling others back into the arms of the per woman, more typical of rich coun­ bourgeois order. Hence the exceptional American capitalists are also increas­ gees," according them privileged treat­ latitude available to this petty-bourgeois ingly voicing opposition to the embargo, ment and automatic asylum in an effort to tries. Prenatal care is a high priority, which government in the face of the escalating with an eye toward their bottom line. destabilize Cuba by encouraging a mass has contributed to an infant mortality rate tit-for-tat economic struggle with the Time magazine (17 January) noted how exodus. But in 1994, Clinton enacted the lower than in parts of the "First World." American government in that period and "af the State Department, in the business so-called "wet feet, dry feet" law under One of the first acts of the Castro regime under the enormous popular, patriotic was to outlaw racist discrimination--one upsurge of the undifferentiated Cuban community and even in Congress, senti­ which Cubans have to make it to shore masses." ment is growing to abandon the 40-year- before getting asylum. Of course, impov- reason why black Cubans are especially hostile to the predominantly white gusa­ AP nos in Miami, who since fleeing Cuba have been a bulwark of racist bourgeois politics in South Florida. And black peo­ ple in South Florida know this, too! These gains are all results of a planned economy based on the elimination of pri­ vate ownership and of production for profit. But as Karl Marx pointed out over 150 years ago, the attainment of social­ ism-a society of such material abun­ dance'for all that classes no longer exist -requires the victory of proletarian rev­ olution in at least several advanced capi­ talist countries in order to create an inter­ "Dollar store" in Havana for those holding greenbacks; national planned economy ba~ed on the state pharmacy with empty shelves as result of imperialist highest material and technological devel­ trade embargo. Castro bureaucracy's introduction of trade opment. As the experience of the former in dollars has sharply increased social inequality in Cuba. continued on page 10 21 APRIL 2000 9 can't get. Many doctors, unable to live on fight for proletarian socialist revolution in then-popular doctrine of peasant-based Defend Cuba •.. their $20 monthly salaries, have aban­ the U.S. and throughout the Americas. guerrilla warfare, writing that this was (continued from page 9) doned the hospitals and clinics to work as Trotskyism and the "rooted in Menshevism and Stalinist ref­ waiters and cab drivers. Other Cubans Cuban Revolution ormism, which rejects the vanguard role have joined the scramble for dollars via of the working class." We continued: USSR vividly showed, an isolated work­ Shifts in American imperialism's pol­ the black market. . "Movements of this sort can under cer­ ers state cannot last indefinitely under icy toward the Cuban Revolution are not the relentless pressures of continued cap­ The toll of the U.S. embargo, particu­ tain conditions, i.e., the extreme dis­ larly after the destruction of the USSR, unprecedented. In fact, it was precisely organization of the capitalist class in italist rule in the imperialist heartlands of such a shift 40 years' ago which led the colonial country and the absence of North America, West Europe and Japan. was captured in a report by a comrade of the working class contending in its own the Trotskyist League of Canada who Castro's petty-bourgeois government to Whether through military threats or the expropriate the Cuban capitalist class and right for social power, smash capital­ influx of cheap commodities undermin­ visited Havana in 1997 (see "Eyewitness ist property relations; however, they can­ consolidate a deformed workers state. Far not bring the working class to political ing the planned economy, the pressures Report from Havana Youth Festival," WV No. 674, 19 September 1997). He noted from being a Marxist, Castro had run for power. Rather, they create bureaucratic of world imperialism will work ulti­ anti-working-class regimes which sup­ that the fuel shortage has led to the col­ office as a candidate of the liberal bour­ mately to overthrow the gains of a revo­ geois Ortodoxo party in 1952, and the press any further development of these lution confined to a single country. lapse of the public transit system and revolutions towards socialism." caused daily power outages lasting two political program of his 26th of July The Stalinist bureaucracy which seized Movement simply called for a return to In the wake of the Cuban Revolution, political power in the Soviet Union to three hours. Most meat and fruit are much of the American and international only available at expensive private mar­ the 1940 constitution, which the dictator in 1923-24 represented a conservative, Batista had suspended. Months after left was swept up by illusions in Castro nationalist reaction to the failure to ex­ kets, while those without access to dol­ and his dashing Argentinean lieutenant, lars have to subsist on meager rations. seizing power, Castro was feted by the tend the 1917 workers revolution in Rus­ imperialist press corps when he visited Ernesto "Che" Guevara. The Socialist sia through socialist revolution in Ger­ Describing the burgeoning income dis­ Workers Party (SWP), which had been parity, our comrade added: the U.S. many and other advanced capitalist In its first few months, the new Cuban the party of revolutionary Trotskyism countries. The outlook of the bureaucracy "My host was a computer programmer who delighted in telling me about the government implemented a series of in the United States, equated the Cas­ was captured in the Stalinist dogma of latest edition of Microsoft Windows and reforms culled straight from the program tro bureaucracy with the revolutionary "socialism in one country," which meant lived in Playa Miramar, a ritzy neighbor­ of the bourgeois Ortodoxo party, such as internationalist Bolshevik government of in practice conciliating the imperialist hood with many foreign embassies. limited land reform and cuts in rent for Lenin and Trotsky. In so doing, the SWP powers. But if this nationalist dogma was Cubans living there have access to dol­ leaders explicitly rejected both the neces­ lars-through private dealings or other­ the poor. But the land redistribution and a lie in the Soviet Union-a vast country wise. Their homes often have air condi- the revolutionary justice meted out to sity of a Leninist-Trotskyist party to pro­ covering one-sixth of the globe-"social­ vide revolutionary leadership and the ism" on one small, impoverished Carib­ centrality of the proletariat in the fight for bean island is far more so. Facing eco­ socialism. nomic disaster following the Soviet aid This galloping revisionism on funda­ cutoff initiated by the Gorbachev regime mental tenets of Marxism was fought by in 1989-90; the Cuban bureaucracy has In 1971 visit to Chile, the Revolutionary Tendency (RT) within instituted a series of "market reforms," Castro stood with the SWP. The RT, precursor of the Spar­ leading to a sharp increase in inequality "constitutionalist" tacist League, characterized Cuba as a among the population. In 1990, Castro general Augusto bureaucratically deformed workers state announced a "Special Period in Time of Pinochet, armed and showed how the Jidelista guerrillas Peace," a harsh economic restructuring forces chief in in power had embraced the nationalist which slowed the pace of industrializa~ Allende's popular­ Stalinist model of the USSR after its tion, put an emphasis on agriculture and front government. degeneration and of the deformed work­ tourism, and decreed mass layoffs of Pinochet was ers states of China and East Europe, sup­ workers. Foreshadowing the current dif­ architect of bloody pressing any semblance of independent 1973 coup which led ferences in the U.S. bourgeoisie, a series to deaths of tens of working-class politics. The RT's resolu­ of reports issued by the U.S. Army War thousands of tion for the 1963 SWP Convention, titled College, the RAND Institute and others workers and leftists. "Toward Rebirth of the Fourth Interna­ around that time advocated ending the tional,'! stated: blockade and negotiating with Castro. "The record of the regime's opposition to In 1994, the regime introduced further the democratic rights of the Cuban work­ market measures including joint ventures tioning, VCRs, computers. Some even Batista's former police torturers scared ers and peasants is clear: bureaucratic with foreign companies, introduction of have maids. When supplies are available, Castro's own bourgeois supporters and ouster of the democratically-elected lead­ they buy fish, pork, good fruit. In other ers of the labor movement and their cooperatives in the agricultural sector parts of town, however, I saw people liv­ the American imperialists-Eisenhower's replacement by Stalinist hacks; suppres­ and legalization of markets for agricultu­ ing in cramped quarters and houses fall­ CIA director, Allen Dulles, and his sion of the Trotskyist press; proclamation ral products and in service sectors. It ing apart. On a state salary of 200 pesos brother, Secretary .of State John Foster of the single-party system; and much also legalized the holding and exchange (US$9) a month or less, daily life for Dulles, were both major United Fruit else. This record stands side by side with enormous initial social and economic of U.S. currency, a "dollarization" of the Cuban workers is a struggle, while those stockholders. who have access to the newly legalized accomplishments of the Cuban Revolu­ economy which has led to sharp and dollar economy-entrepreneurs, black When Eisenhower asked Congress in tion. Thus Trotskyists are at once the growing income differentials hitting marketeers or those with relatives abroad January 1960 for authorization to eut the most militant and unconditional defenders women and black Cubans the hardest. ---can live more comfortably." Cuban sugar quota, Castro signed an against imperialism of both the Cuban Revolution and of the deformed workers' According to NACLA Report on the Meanwhile, desperate women trying to agreement with Soviet deputy prime state which has issued therefrom. But Americas (Marchi April 1999), by last feed their families have been forced into minister Mikoyan for the USSR to pur­ Trotskyists cannot give confidence and year sales in U.S. dollars accounted for prostitution at the edges of the booming chase a million tons 'of sugar yearly from political support, however critical, to a about 54 percent of Cuba's total domestic tourist industry, and increasing poverty Cuba. When Cuba's imperialist-owned governing regime hostile to the most ele­ retail sales. Over $800 million a year mentary principles and practices of has led to a rise in crime. oil refineries refused to· handle Russian workers' democracy, even if our tactical flows into Cuba from the U.S., but black The Cuban Stalinist bureaucracy, like crude in June, Cuban authorities inter­ approach is not as toward a hardened Cubans, whose relatives are not rich the Chinese Stalinists, claims it can avoid vened to prevent this. Eisenhower then bureaucratic caste." Miamians, are far less likely to receive the disasters that befell the former de­ eliminated the sugar quota, and Castro But the bureaucracy soon hardened, these greenbacks. formed workers states of East Europe by responded by nationalizing U.S.-owned necessitating the call for a political The growth of inequality and...the dan­ introducing its "market reforms" slowly. properties in Cuba: 36 sugar mills, three revolution. ' ger of the growing free market to the But the impact of these "reforms" is oil companies, the power company and The SWP's embrace of Castroism was planned economy can be seen in the tour- . sharply undermining support for the rev­ the telephone company. a decisive step in its centrist political ist industry, which has surpassed sugar . olution among the population. While Cas­ Faced with an escalating imperialist degeneration, passing over into outright exports as the primary source of foreign tro boasts, "We have reserves to keep on offensive, the Cuban government struck reformism -in 1965. Applied on the home exchange. In 1998, the Cuban govern­ going for another ten years" (New Yorker, a decisive blow against the economic front, the SWP's abandonment of a pro­ ment invested over $500 million in tour­ 21 February), the fundamental truth is base of domestic reaction: on 13 October letarian revolutionary perspective and ism as opposed to $49 million for the that the anti-working-class policies of 1960, it nationalized all banks and busi­ denial of the need for revolutionary foodstuffs industry and $37 million in the the bureaucracy are progressively unrav­ nesses amounting to 80 percent of the Marxist leadership led it to criminally steel and metals sector. Though paid in eling the gains of the revolution. Cuba country's industry. On 16 April 1961, abstain from the early 1960s civil rights pesos, those who work in tourism (as did cannot indefinitely survive as an isolated Castro declared that the Cuban Revolu­ struggles in the South, instead tailing both Elian Gonzalez' parents) get most of deformed workers state. The fate of its tion was "socialist" during his speech after pro-Democratic Party liberals and their income in dollars through tips, giv­ revolution hangs in the balance of class mobilizing the working people to fight later black nationalists. For our opposi­ ing them access to luxuries' and even struggle outside the Caribbean island, against the U.S.-sponsored' invasion at tion to these betrayals, the RT was basic necessities which most Cubans underlining the urgent necessity of the the Bay of Pigs. . expelled in 1963-64. The liberal Democratic Party admin­ While the Cuban bureaucracy availed istration of John F. Kennedy surpassed itself of more militant rhetoric than even Eisenhower/Dulles in its virulence the stodgy Kremlin Stalinists, Castro's Marxist Bulletin No.8 toward Cuba. One of Kennedy's first acts regime in practice emulated the Krem­ Cuba and Marxist Theory as president was to authorize the Bay of lin's policy of selling out revolutionary Pigs invasion. A year later, Kennedy opportunities internationally to jockey Selected Documents on the brought the world to the brink of thermo­ for diplomatic advantage. Addressing the Cuban Question, 1960-1966 nuclear war by threatening to interdict UN General Assembly in 1964, Che The fight of the Revolutionary Tendency Soviet ships-an act of war-to search Guevara stated that for Cuba the most in the Socialist Workers Party and the for missile parts intended for Cuba. important problem was "peaceful co­ development of the Spartacist While relentlessly besieged by U.S. existence between states with different League's characterization of Cuba imperialism, the Stalinist bureaucracy led economic and social systems." This as a deformed workers state. by Castro has itself been an impediment meant support to some of the bloodiest Includes preface from 1973. to the defense of the Cuban deformed capitalist regimes in the Americas, like workers state through the spread of Brazil under President Janio Quadros, $1.50 (48 pages) socialist revolution throughout the Amer­ who repressed unions, sent troops to Order from: Spartacist Publishing Co . icas. In the Spartacist League's Declara­ crush hunger protesters and imprisoned . . . ,~.~.f!Q • ..,~~~~~.~. -,..t~· Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 tion of Principles adopted in 1966, we students. emphasized our political opposition to the In the early 1970s, Castro called on 10 WORKERS VANGUARD the workers of Chile to give political sup­ Reno, who burned babies alive in the the godfather of the Solidarnosc move­ to Cuba, the ISO has openly allied with port to the Unidad Popular regime led 1993 Waco massacre. At its January 20 ment which oversaw the restoration of forces who seek to destroy the revolution by the Socialist Party's Salvador Allende. demonstration in New York City, the capitalism in Poland. Indeed, the few from within. Several years ago, the ISO's This capitalist popular-front government WWP chanted, "Bill Clinton/Janet Reno/ times the SWP has differed with Castro Canadian cothinkers hailed a counterrev­ -a coalition including the reformist Jesse Helms: You know better!" A New was when they stood to his right, capitu­ olutionary riot in Havana as a sign that Socialist, Communist and bourgeois par­ York Times (30 January) report on these lating to the U.S. ruling class by cham­ "Cuban workers and peasants have begun ties-politically disarmed the proletariat protests described the lAC as "a liberal pioning anti-Soviet counterrevolutionar­ to break the hold of a repressive regime" by preaching faith in the "constitutional­ organization founded by former Attorney ies like Solidarnosc and Yeltsin. (Socialist Worker [Canada], September ist" officer corps and "democratic" bour­ General Ramsey Clark." Clark, a long­ For its part, the social-democratic 1994). In practice, the Cliffites' "third geoisie. It thereby paved the way for the time WWPIIAC favorite, certainly knows International Socialist Organization (ISO) camp" position equating the workers bloody 1973 coup led by the officer about U.S. policy toward Cuba: as U.S. opposes the Castro regime from the stand­ states with capitalist imperialism always corps under Pinochet, ushering in the Attorney General under Lyndon Johnson, point of virulent anti-communist hostility leads them into bed with the "demo­ massacre of more than 30,000 work­ he used to personally enforce the em­ to Cuba. But because of Cuba's continued cratic" imperialists. ers and leftists. Six years later, when the bargo on trade with Cuba. Now he works popularity among leftists and youth-and With the destruction of the Soviet radical-nationalist Sand~nista guerrillas degenerated workers state, there has been took power in Nicaragua and established a qualitative increase in imperi.alist ex­ a petty-bourgeois government similar to ploitation of the Third World. Faced with Cuba's in 1959-60, the Castro bureauc­ intensifying interimperialist rivalries over racy explicitly counseled them not to take natural resources and cheap labor, the "the' Cuban road" of expropriating the U.S. has tightened its hold on its "back­ bourgeoisie. This policy culminated in yard"-the Caribbean, Central and South the drawn-out defeat of the Nicaraguan America. This is reflected in trade agree­ Revolution in the 1980s, as the Sandinis­ ments like NAFTA, which has meant the tas eventually handed power back to the imperialist rape of Mexico, and the link­ capitalist contras. ing of currencies in Argentina and Ecuador (and maybe El Salvador soon) For Socialist Revolution directly to the U.S. dollar. As the U.S.­ Throughout the Americas! dominated IMF and World Bank tighten Genuine defense of the Cuban Revolu­ the screws on Latin American govern­ tion against imperialism requires a pro-' ments to implement austerity measures, gram for workers revolution throughout the working class and peasantry face the Americas-and above all here in the increasing immiseration. There have been United States, the most powerful and and will be opportunities for proletar­ rapacious capitalist country on earth. In ian revolution in the Caribbean, Mex­ sharp contra~t, the various reformist ico, Central and South America. The key pseudo-socialists who call for "solidarity WVPhoto requirement for victory in the struggles with Cuba" seek at most to pressure the Spartacist contingent at 1994 NYC demonstration calls for defense of Cuba that lie ahead is the forging of Leninist­ imperialists to "end the embargo." In against internal counterrevolution and imperialist attack. Trotskyist parties built in irreconcil­ seeking a lash-up with liberal Democrats able opposition to all variants of petty­ and "progressive" capitalists-who today with Pastors for Peace, which wants to especially now that Clinton is leaning bourgeois nationalism, fighting for a oppose the embargo as counterproductive end the blockade so they can flood Cuba toward "constructive engagement"­ proletarian, revolutionary, internationalist and prefer to undermine the deformed with Bibles! these opportunists today denounce politi­ perspective. workers state through greater. economic Today's eccentrically reformist SWP cians who "only want to meddle in In the backward and impoverished penetration-these reformists objec­ under Jack Barnes still seeks to attract [Elian's] life to whip up more hysteria countries of the Third World, even the tively lend themselves to the service of radical-minded youth by proclaiming against Cuba" (Socialist Worker, 4 Febru­ achievement of basic democratic rights capitalist counterrevolution. Aside from itself the most consistent defender of the ary). This "hysteria" is the rage ofthe im­ like health care, education, housing and their occasional enthusing over Castro's Cuban Revolution. Yet when defense of perialist masters over having Cuba ripped land redistribution requires a revolution­ "socialist" credentials, the fake leftists the Soviet Union, Cuba's main economic out of their grasp through social revolu­ ary struggle to overthrow the bloody raise demands which are indistinguish­ lifeline, was posed pointblank in 1991, tion. Yet the ISO has scabbed on the bourgeoisies, who act as junior partners able from those raised by mainstream the SWP backed the forces of counter­ Cuban Revolution from day one, refusing to the rapacious imperialists. In the neo­ sections of the U.S. bourgeoisie. Thus the revolution led by Boris Yeltsin, exclaim­ to defend this deformed workers state· colonial countries, the only road to the reformists sow illusions in U.S. imperial­ ing "Soviet Workers Win Giant Victory against imperialism and calling Cuba a resolution of the burning democratic ism and in particular the capitalist Dem­ by Defeating Coup" (Militant, 6 Septem­ "state capitalist" regime not qualitatively tasks is the conquest of power by the ocratic Party-the class enemy of the ber 1991). In contrast, we called for pro­ different from impoverished Haiti! working class, at the head of the peas­ Cuban workers state and of the American letarian political revolution to sweep The ISO's British mentor Tony Cliff antry and all the oppressed, and the exten­ proletariat. away Yeltsin and his counterrevolution­ (who just died) broke from Trotskyism at sion of the revolution to the imperial­ A perfect example is the Workers ary rabble. the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 by ist heartlands of North America and World Party (WWP) and its affiliated As its support to Yeltsin's counterrevo­ refusing to defend the North Korean and beyond. This is the Trotskyist perspective groups, the International Action Center lution makes clear, the SWP's politics Chinese deformed workers states against of permanent revolution. The Interna­ (lAC) and the "National Committee to are counterposed to genuine defense of imperialist attack. The ISO's American tional Communist League is dedicated to Send Elian Home to His Father." The the Cuban deformed workers state. When historical forebear, Max Shachtman, reforging Trotsky's Fourth International WWP has organized demonstrations de­ Pope John Paul II visited Cuba in 1998 repudiated the Trotskyist position of un­ in order to lead these struggles to victory. manding Clinton and Reno "do the right explicitly for the purpose of fomenting conditional military defense of the Soviet As the U.S. section of the ICL, the Spar­ thing"-i.e., "stop stalling and send Elian counterrevolution, the Militant (9 Febru­ Union at the start of World War II and tacist League is fighting to build a multi­ home without delay" (Workers World, ary 1998) fatuously headlined, "Confi­ later went on to support the 1961 Bay of racial workers party which will smash 17 February). The WWP grotesquely dent Revolutionary Gov't Hosts Pope in Pigs invasion, earning himsCifthe epithet U.S. imperialism from within, through appeals to the "family values" of Janet Cuba." This is the Pope Wojtyla who was "State Department socialist." With regard proletarian revolution .•

strike leaders Alejandro Echevarria Zarco demand the Trotskyist program of perma­ Los Angeles ••• UNAM ••• ("EI Mosh") and Alberto Pacheco Guizar nent revolution. The Trotskyists of the (continued from page 12) . (continued from page 2) ("El Diablo") to its class-war prisoners GEM fight to build a Leninist vanguard stipend program. The monthly stipend of party that can lead the workers and peas­ other in order to prevent integrated class Community College, the primarily work­ US$25 alleviates some of the hardships ants of Mexico to power, smashing the struggle. SEIU Local 399, from which ing-class students contributed almost of imprisonment and represents a living capitalist system of oppression and-pov­ Local 1877 was formed in a 1995 split, $60. A student co-op in Berkeley donated link between the activists behind bars erty and opening the way to proletarian has made some real efforts to take up the $50. In Australia, generous contributions and the international workers movement revolution throughout the Americas .• defense of black rights. In 1992, the were made by students and striking uni­ which champions the struggle for their local marched against police repression versity teachers at the March 22 release. in the aftermath of the L.A. upheaval. In "National Day of Action" calling for In struggling for such basic democratic 1994, Locals 399 and 347 organized a "Public Education NOT Privatisation" rights as the right to education, the mili­ [fi..-.n :Til~._ hi (!R.]IEIICIO ___ demonstration in front of the L.A. dis­ held in both Sydney and Canberra. tants of the UNAM strike have faced bru­ trict attorney's office demanding free­ In France, comrades of the Ligue tal repression from the police thugs sent ~ ...... IPor HCiIDes- llullgulsllcas--,. IIItraras dom for black political prisoner Geron­ Trotskyste de France collected funds at by both the PRD (Party of the Democratic ... imo ji Jaga (Pratt), a former Black demonstrations defending "sans-papiers" Revolution) administration of Mexico Panther Party leader in L.A. (undocumented immigrants) against gov­ City and the PRI (Institutional Revolu­ Strikes are a test.of strength, persis­ ernment deportation threats and at a tionary Party) national government. Now, tence and endurance. Against the vast rally for Mumia Abu-Jamal. In Japan, lagging in the polls, the PRD's candidate resources and power ofthe capitalists, the more than $500 was collected at,. among Cuauhtemoc Cardenas claims to oppose SEIU strikers must draw on their own other events, a meeting of striking air­ the federal police siege of the campus. powerful forces-the capacity of the line pilots, a gathering of the oppressed This is nothing but a crass maneuver for workers for struggle, the solidarity of the Korean minority, sit-down protests by votes based on the hope that strikers will entire labor movement, the popularity of fired railway workers in front of the Diet forget the attacks by the PRD's riot police Espartaco the strike among the working people. (parliament) building, and a mass labor earlier in the strike. The GEM says: "The Publication of the Grupo This requires a fight inside the unions rally. The largest amount was collected at PRD is a capitalist party-no illusions!" Espartaqulsta de Mexico against the misleaders who chain that a protest demonstration against U.S. mil­ The urgent demands and needs of power to the parties and agencies of the itary bases in Okinawa. Mexico's impoverished workers and N~. 13, Autumn-Winter 1999 peasants-for agrarian revolution, educa­ capitalist class enemy. The working peo­ The funds collected for the defense of $.50 (32 pages) ple need a party that fights for their inter­ the UNAM strikers by the sections of the tion, health care, etc.-cannot be fulfilled ests-a workers party committed to the ICL are a modest expression of our prin­ by the corrupt and venal Mexican capital­ Order from/make checks payable to: fight for· a workers government which cipled defense of all whose struggles are ist class, beholden to U.S. imperialism. Spartacist Publishing Co. in the interest of the international work­ Even the most minimal reforms, like the Box 1377 GPO overturns this whole system of capitalist New York, NY 10116 exploitation and racist oppression .• ing class. The PDC has added imprisoned ones the UNAM students are seeking, 21 APRIL 2000 11 WI/INE/I, "/1,,,/1, Victory to the Janitors Strike! . Los Angeles

APRIL 17-Ever since an April 3 mass meeting of 3,000 janitors voted virtually unanimously to strike, Service Employ­ ees International Union (SEIU) Local 1877 has been waging a hugely popular strike against maintenance contractors in Los Angeles. On April 9, janitors in SEIU Local 2028 in San Diego also went on strike. Significantly for Los Angeles, an "open shop" city with a history of vicious anti-labor repression, Teamsters Local 396, representing garbage collec­ tors and UPS drivers, has called for its members to honor the SEIU picket lines. The Los Angeles Building Trades Coun­ cil and Operating Engineers Local 501 have said they would defend their mem­ bers who honor the picket lines. On April 14, 700 janitors at L.A. International Air­ Seib/l.A. Times port held a one-day sympathy strike. Strike by overwhelmingly Latino janitors has generated Local 1877 has led regular "marches of widespread support in historically "open shop" L.A. Right: thousands throughout the city, with strik­ Police attack on April 6 strike rally. ers chanting "We're on strike! Let the Almeida/NY Times rich do the cleaning!" The union has a sign 'Local 1877 On Strike Against employees) leader declared, "We have an of Local 1877. staged a "rolling strike," pulling out jani­ ABM' none of those 1,500 will cross interest in helping to elect Al Gore, and The AFL-CIO executive council tors one building after another. Describ­ the line." we would be careful not to take actions passed a resolution in February calling ing the strike's impact, the big-business that would hurt his candidacy." for blanket amnesty for the estimated six Los Angeles Times (13 April) has called Union Tops Push Democratic Selling the Democrats as a "lesser evil" million "illegal" immigrants in the U.S. the red-shirted strikers a "nagging pres­ Party Electoral Con Game than the Republicans is the political and an end to most sanctions against ence, inserting themselves into the con­ Democratic Party politicians like may­ expression of the labor bureaucracy's role employers who hire them. At the same sciousness of workaday Los Angeles." oral candidate Antonio Villaraigosa are in promoting class collaboration, which time, the resolution called on the federal Republican mayor Richard Riordan has trying to sucker workers' votes by cyni­ ties the workers to the racist capital­ government to "maintain efforts to keep set the notorious LAPD-currently in cally "supporting" the janitors strike. ist class enemy. Yesterday Gore, who illegal immigrants out of the country." the spotlight for the murder and torture They see this strike as part of the so­ received the AFL-CIO's endorsement at Previously, the AFL-CIO" tops openly practiced by its Rampart Division in the called "Latino resurgence" which will its national convention last October, was colluded with the INS in the deportation cops' relentle~s war against the ghetto catapult them into political office. While the keynote speaker at a strike support of immigrant workers. Today, with the and barrio poor-against the striking the union leadership openly brags about rally where he declared, "I am with you in capitalists screaming about a labor short­ janitors, arresting at least 50. All labor its role in getting Democrats elected, your fight." This phony "friend" of immi­ age and looking to low-wage immigrant must demand: Drop all the charges! the Democratic Party and the L.A. city grants and labor comes from an adminis­ labor to keep down labor costs, the gov­ The janitors-98 percent of whom administration are intent on maintaining tration which signed the 1996 Illegal ernment has slowed down deportations. are Latino immigrants, over half of them labor peace as the city gears up for the Immigrant and Immigtant Responsibility The Sweeney-led AFL-CIO recognizes women-make a paltry $6.80 to $7.90 Democratic National Convention (DNC) Act massively increasing the militariza­ that immigrants are a growing compo­ an hour, less than it costs to park a car this summer. DNC planners are pressur­ tion of the U.S. border with Mexico; nent of the U.S. labor force, and thus a in many of the skyscrapers they clean. ing local labor leaders to rule out strikes within two years almost 300;000 immi­ source of new members and dues-payers. With another 250,000 Southern Califor­ or picket lines at convention sites-like grants were deported. In 1998, Clinton! It is crucial that the labor movement nia workers-including teachers, county the deal the-Republicans already have Gore's INS immigration cops raided use its power to defend immigrants and government workers and transit work­ for their convention site in Philadelphia. hotels and commercial buildings lead­ to aggressively recruit immigrant work­ ers-facing their own contract battles in As an SEIU Local 660 (L.A. county ing to the firing of some 500 members ers as part of the fight to organize the the next months, a victory for the janitors unorganized. Many immigrants from could set the stage for a hot summer of Latin America and elsewhere bring with class struggle in L.A. Support from the them the experience of bitter struggles entire L.A. labor movement is critical for against U.S. imperialism and help to the strike's success. In some cases, the infuse the American labor movement contractors have been able to bring scabs with greater combativity and class in, a grave danger to the strike. Backed consciousness. But from maintaining by the other unions, the SEIU must their chauvinist call for strengthening the enforce the basic labor principle: Picket militarization of the border to their poi­ lines mean don't cross! This underscores sonous protectionist campaigns against the need for one industrial union of all Chinese, Mexican and other foreign building maintenance workers, from sta­ workers, the AFL-CIO tops line up on tionary engineers to cleaners. the side of U.S. imperialism against the As the L.A. strike heads into its third working class in other countries. Down week, the contracts of tens of thousands with racist protectionism! Full citizen­ of other SEIU maintenance workers ship rights for all immigrants! across the country are also expiring. In The "Justice for Janitors" organizing New York City, the contract for the campaign in L.A. was launched after the 30,000 SEIU Local 32B-32J doormen janitors union was decimated in the mid- and apartment maintenance workers, 1980s by massive outsourcing to non­ whose ranks include many immigrants union cleaning firms who hired immi­ from Latin America, the Caribbean and grant workers at minimum wages. The East Europe, is set to expire on April 20. unionized workforce of the early '80s in More than 10,000 turned out for a rally L.A., which was primarily black, lost out on April 12 in suppOI1 of Local 32B-32J. as wages plummeted. The virulent anti­ The ABM Corporation, one of the chief imr¢grant policies of the AFL-CIO bu­ contractors for maintenance workers in reaucracy played into the bosses' hands. L.A., also employs 15,000 janitors in Especially since the multiracial L.A. New York City, including 1,500 at the WV Photo upheaval in 1992 following the Rodney World Trade Center. One Local 1877 offi­ 80,000 march in Los Angeles against anti-immigrant Prop 187, October 1994. King verdict, the city's rulers have tried cial told the L.A. Weekly (7 April), "If one Latin American immigrants have brought militant traditions to workers' to pit blacks and Latinos against each of our members shows up outside with struggles in U.S., particularly Southern California. continued on page 11

12 21 APRIL 2000