W(JRKERS IIIINfJlJlIRIJ soc No.SSO ®€Q9u~C'701 • 10 June 200S Occupation of Iraq and the "War on Terror" ies, orlure • • an - - moerla Ism

In the year since the Abu Ghraib Thomas Friedman argues to close tortures came to light, one expose down Guantanamo because "I want after another has confirmed that the to win the war on terrorism," adding policies of torture and humiliation that the deaths of over 100 detai­ have come from the top of this gov­ nees in American custody "is not just ernment. The official use of torture deeply immoraL it is strategically extends well beyond Abu Ghraib­ dangerous'-' He concludes his col­ into other prisons in Iraq. Afghani­ umn by quoting the executive direc­ ,tan and the notorious concentration tor of Human Rights First: "If we camp in GuanUinamo Bay. Cuba. are going to transform the Middle where some 500 prisoners continue East, we have to be law-abiding and to be held with('c:t charge or trial. uphold the values we want them to The line of the Bush administration embrace-otherwise it is not going to ha~ been to deny every new report work'-' Meanwhile. in its recent report that comes out documenting more on Guantanamo. Amnesty Interna­ torture and brutality. When Amnesty tionaL too, is concerned that "the rule fnternational released its report last of law. and the:efore, ultimately_ month condemning the U.S. for its security. is heing undcrmincd. a.' j" mass detentions, torture, disappear­ any moral credibility the USA claims ances and elimination of the right to to have in seeking to advance human trial for those caught in the web of its rights in the world." "war on terror," President Bush and While the Bush administration is a Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice particularly arrogant and demented called it "absurd," while General Gambarini/EPA regime, what has really offended its Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint bourgeois critics, particularly liberals Chiefs of Staff, called Guantanamo a and Democrats, is that it has made "model facility." shamelessly overt what is normally ~ N At the same time, a growing sector • carried out behind closed doors. As ~ , ~/O\,~ of the bourgeoisie is worried that the :',;'~' we wrote in "U.S. Imperialism's Tor­ impact of one torture scandal after ~.pI~V/ ture, Inc." (WV No. 826, 14 May another is hurting U.S. imperialism's .. ... 2004), state terror and torture are not interests abroad. When Newsweek "aberrations": 'They are the con­ (9 May) published an article report­ scious policies of imperialist and ing that a Koran had been flushed neo-colonialist ruling regimes, who down a toilet at Guantanamo, pro­ routinely and necessarily use terror tests erupted throughout Muslim and degradation as tools to maintain countries, leaving 17 people dead. their power." As death row political Swearing on a stack of Bibles that it prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal wrote in wasn't true, Bush & Co. twisted arms a 3 May 2004 column, "In the Shad­ to force Newsweek to retract the arti­ ows of Abu Ghraib Prison": 'The cle as a warning to any other publi­ Iraq Adventure is not, and never has cation that might report on policies been, about 'liberating' an oppressed the government wants concealed. people .... Americans may call it 'lib­ Having faithfully reported the gov­ eration,' but they are bringing torture, ernment's lies of Saddam's "weapons humiliation, and domination .... Now, of mass destruction" to encourage Saman/Newsday let us prepare for the inevitable "rally 'round the flag" patriotism in Top: U.S. Marines terrorize Sunni family in Ramadi. Above: Mother of Abu Ghraib whitewash." the buildup for war, the capitalist prisoner weeps at protest, May 2004. Banner demands: "Occupiers Leave Our Country." In the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, news media continue to kowtow to the Spartacist League took a side for their White House masters with apologies off. A guard had not thrown the Muslim American by Any Name," a New York the military defense of these countries for occasionally leaking a bit of truth. In holy book in the toilet-he urinated on it. Times (5 June) editorial complains that against U.S. imperialist attack. At the so doing, the bourgeois media help chill Now, a number of bourgeois politi­ the administration's policy has not "been same time, we stood in irreconcilable polit­ free speech and assist the government's cians and commentators are calling on effective in finding and prosecuting the ical opposition to tl1e reactionary Afghan assault on civil liberties and the right to the Bush administration to shut down most dangerous terrorists, and it has Taliban and the capitalist regime of Sad­ dissent. Guantanamo. What these forces are try­ been a disaster in undermining Amer­ dam Hussein, both former allies of U.S. In fact, when the Pentagon's own report ing to do is refurbish the image of Amer­ ica's reputation for fairness." imperialism. Today, we demand the imme­ on GuanUinamo was finally released, it ican imperialism in order to maintain its In a 27 May piece in the New York diate and unconditional withdrawal of all was clear that Newsweek didn't have it far effectiveness. Under the headline, "Un- Times, "Just Shut It Down," columnist continued on page 7

23 Defend, Extend the Gains of the 1949 Revolution! SEE PAGE 8 ,1,"25274"81030 7 Letter Klan Terror in North Carolina 3 June 2005 members are black. The city was once Dear Wv. home to a thriving "Black Wall Street." When crosses were burned in three and Durham's NC Central University was very visible locations in Durham, NC, the first state-funded liberal arts college on May 25, many residents were shocked for blacks. There's also a sizeable Jewish and puzzled. The seven foot tall and population and an active gay and lesbian four foot wide, kerosene-drenched crosses community. (The city is the site of the Candlelight vigil in were erected and set afire where they largest "pride day" festival in North Car­ Durham, May 26, would most clearly target the race ter­ olina.) It's the kind of place that one following fascist rorists' intended victims. One was burned may think would be inhospitable toward 'Klan provocation. in a predominantly black neighborhood: the Klan, a cowardly lot who prefer to another at Marxism vs. Pacifism gloss over these contradictions. the fas­ the pain and outrage felt by decent peo­ cists haven't missed them. They know ple over the fascist threats. but the best a In tbe lead-up to the March 2003 US.­ that the existence of gangs and crime candlelight vigil can do is to make some led imperialist inl'asion of Iraq. reformist brings with it a real racial fear among people feel better. Candles and tears will socialists in the US. and internationally whites that the Klan can tap into. So. not stop Klan terror. What's needed is a organi;:ed massive demonstrations around while on the surface it seems a sur­ mobilization using the social power of pacifist slogans such as "No War" and prise that fascists would choose an inte­ the organized, multiracial working class. "Stop the Wm:" These slogans were con­ grated. progressive city like Durham. it's That's a tall order here in the so-called sciously designed to not challen/ie the capi­ consistent with their current strategy. "right to work" South. where Jim Crow talist system and not take a military side Since the' 80s the Klan has consistently and race-terror have worked hand in with Iraq against US. imperialism. The targeted cities that have integrated pop­ hand with union-busting to keep the stnlg/ile against militarism and imperial- ulations. with crime. They play on the working class divided. disorganized and TROTSKY ist war //lust be directed not simply "against LENIN racism of the war on crime/drugs. cheap. war" but against the source of Ivm; which because they feel they will get traction For labor-black mobilizations to stop is the sYstem of imperialism. the highest stage of capitalism. III a 1936 pamphlet with whites. fed up with crime that has a the KKK! published by the Workers Party of the United States, then-Trotskyist James Burnham black face. The incredibly racist and Comrade\y, (John West) explained why the strategy ofpac(fisl11 must be rejected. slanted prosecution of the war on drugs LB and MD. We have already seen the complete fallacy of the pacifist position as a means of pre­ sends the racist message that the face of Durham, NC venting war. But it is necessary to go further. Not merely is pacifism powerless to pre­ vent war. In the modern world it is, in effect, a means of preparing for war. Harsh as this conclusion may seem to pacifists themselves, many of whom are per­ sonally sincere in their convictions. it can be proved by both theory and history. Pacifism in any form aids the preparation for war because: (I) It spreads illusions about the nature of war and of the fight against war (advo­ For Full Citizenship Rights for All Immigrants! cating disarmament. conscientious objection. naval treaties. the League [of Nations­ predecessor of the UN], etc .. as solutions). and thus prevents a real struggle against Stop Racist Violence Against Immigrants, Blacks! war, which can be based only on a true understanding of the nature and causes of war. (2) Pacifism turns aside the working class from its struggle for power, the only gen­ A Workers Vanguard readers circle discussion on WV No. 847 (29 April) uine way to fight war. In this way it redirects the revolutionary struggle against war article on racist violence in Long Island into "safe" channels-that is. channels safe for imperialism. Saturday, June 18, 4 p.m. For more information: (212) 267-1025 (3) Pacifism subordinates the working class-the only class which can lead the fight against war-to middle class ideas and middle class individuals (preachers. fake lib­ 299 Broadway, Suite 318 (1·1/2 blocks north of Chambers St.) NEW YORK CITY erals. professional "anti-war agitators"), and thus weakens the class strength of the workers. (4) Most dangerous of all. in the case of pacifism, is the fact that. by exploiting the desire of the masses for peace and yet completely deluding the masses about the character of the struggle against war. pacifism leaves the masses helpless when war ---SPARTACIST LEAGUE/U.S. --­ actually comes. At that time, the middle-class and pseudo-liberal leaders of the paci­ Local Directory and Public Offices fist movement and organizations for the most part go over at once to the side of the war-makers, Web site: www.icl-fi.org • E-mail address:[email protected] -John West. "War and the Workers" (1936) National Office: Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 (212) 732-7860 Boston los Angeles Oakland Box 390840, Central Sta. Box 29574, Los Feliz Sta. Box 29497 Cambridge, MA 02139 Los Angeles, CA 90029 Oakland, CA 94604 (617) 666-9453 (213) 380-8239 (510) 839-0851 [email protected] [email protected] slbayarea@ Public Office: Sat. 2-5 p.m. sbcglobal.net f!/~!~!l!Y o~'l!"l!.~I!.I!.. ~ Chicago DIRECTOR OF PARTY PUBLICATIONS: Alison Spencer 3806 Beverly Blvd., Room 215 Public Office: Box 6441 , Main PO EDITOR: Alan Wilde Sat. 1-5 p.m. Chicago, IL 60680 New York 1634 Telegraph EDITOR. YOUNG SPARTACUS PAGES: Rosemary Palenque (312) 563-0441 Box 3381, Church St. Sta. 3rd Floor CIRCULATION MANAGER: Susan Fuller chicagospartacist@ New York, NY 10008 EDITORIAL BOARD: Kathleen Harris (managing editor). Helene Brosius (letters editor), sbcglobal.net (212) 267-1025 San Francisco Linda Jarreau (production manager). Bruce Andre. Jon Brule. Helen Cantor. Paul Cone. [email protected] George Foster, Walter Jennings, James Robertson. Joseph Seymour Public Office: Box 77494 Sat. 2-5 p.m. The Spartacist League is the U.S. Section of the International Communist League Public Office: San Francisco. CA 94107 (Fourth Internationalist). 222 S. Morgan Sat. 1-4 p.m. slbayarea@ Workers Vanguard (ISSN 0276·0746) published biweekly. except Skipping three alternate issues in June, July and (Buzzer 23) 299 Broadway, Suite 318 sbcglobal.net August (beginning with omitting the second issue In June) and skipping the last issue in December. by the Spartacist Publishing Co .. 299 Broadway. SUite 318. New York. NY 10007. Telephone: (212) 732·7862 (Editorial). (212) 732·7861 (Business). Address all correspondence to: Box 1377 GPO. New York. NY 10116. E·mail address: [email protected]. Domestic subscriptions: $10.00121 issues. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY POSTMASTER: Send address TROTSKYIST LEAGUE OF CANADA/LiGUE TROTSKYSTE DU CANADA changes to Workers Vanguard. Box 1377 GPO, New York. NY 10116

Opinions expressed In Signed articles or letters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint. Toronto Vancouver The closing date for news in this issue is 7 June. Box 7198. Station A Box 2717, Main PO. Toronto, ON M5W 1X8 Vancouver, BC V6B 3X2 (416) 593-4138 (604) 687-0353 No. 850 10 June 2005 [email protected] [email protected]

2 WORKERS VANGUARD The Left and the Occupation Following the second anniversary of Iraq and for the defeat of U.S. imperial­ the U.S. invasion of Iraq, there has been a ism. We took a side militarily with semi­ lot of handwringing and whining among colonial Iraq against the U.S. imperialist self-proclaimed socialist groups in the invaders. while politically opposing SJd­ U.S. as to why the "antiwar movement" dam Hussein's bloody capitalist regime. has fallen on hard times. Both the We also clearly stated that the foremost Workers World Party (WWP), builder of means to defend Iraq was not on the mil­ ANSWER and the "Troops Out Now itary plane, given the colossal military ad­ Coalition."' and the International Social­ vantage of the United States. but through ist Organization IISO) now have the international proletarian struggle. par­ nerve to complain that "the movement" ticularly in the United States. We called was diverted into supporting pro-war for class-struggle opposition to U.S. im­ Democratic presidential candidate John perialism. noting. in a 19 March 200:< Kerry. Workers World vows: "The antiwar "Statement of the Political Bureau of the movement should never again sacrifice Spartacist League/U.S.": its independence and demobilize itself "Workers in Italy. Scotland and elsewhere on behalf of a political party that have already staged labor actions against supports the war" (''Troops Out Now the war, including blocking military ve, goods destined for the Persian Gulf. Such Coalition" leaflet for March 19 New actions point the way to the kinds of labor York City protest). The ISO. for its part. struggles that are necessary, especially in boldly proclaims: "Backing Democrats Left: March 19 anti-occupation protest, New York City. Right: AI Sharpton the belly of the American imperialist speaking at antiwar protest in Washington, D.C., October 2002. In antiwar has pulled the antiwar movement to the beast. The obstacle to this is the AFL·CIO movement, Workers World and ISO promote illusion that capitalism can be right" (Socialist Worker, 22 April). labor officialdom, which pits American reformed. . workers against their class brothers and Under the headline. "Are the Demo­ sisters around the world by promoting crats Our Allies?" the 13 May Socialist nomic system as it is presently consti­ a series of working-class revolutions to national chauvinism and subordinatinQ Worker includes an exchange that proves workers to the dual parties of capitalist tuted. With economies dominated by huge overthrow capitalist rule can create a that the debate is about tactics. not funda­ rule, the Democrats and RepUblicans." financial conglomerates and a small num­ world-wide planned economy and put a mental class interests: While ex-Maoist In contrast, the reformists consciousl) ber of monopolist industrial producers, stop to the incessant struggle for domina­ Carl Davidson insists that the antiwar refused to take a military side with the major capitalist powers (centrally the tion by the various imperialist powers. movement should be lobbying Con­ Iraq. The ISO enthusiastically built the U.S., Japan and Germany) are in compe­ But the power of the working class has to gressional Democrats, Elizabeth Schulte demonstrations of the UFPJ coalition as tition with each other for control of raw be marshaled and mobilized by a revolu­ of the ISO writes. "We need an activist well as the ANSWER and Not In Our materials, markets, labor forces to bru­ tionary party. The aim of the Spartacist movement that doesn't compromise its Name coalitions. Typical slogans at these tally exploit and strategic military posi­ League is to forge such a party. Thus we antiwar positions in the name of defeating protests were "No to War," "Stop Bush's tions. The U.S. is currently overwhelm- approach every social struggle from the the greater of two evils-a movement that War," "Money for Jobs & Human Needs. none of the politicians in Washington. Not for War," and "Bring the Troops Home Democrat or Republican, can ignore." So Now." it's write your Congressman vs. action in These slogans are all premised on an the street to pressure your Congressman. acceptance of the framework of capital­ be he a Democrat or Republican. ism, at most calling for a reordering OJ The antiwar movement did not undergo the policies and priorities of the capitalist some fundamental transformation to end government. In no way do these slogans up in the "Anybody but Bush" camp. challenge capitalism as a system that js From the very beginning, the assorted $ itself responsible for poverty and war. reformist "socialists" subordinated the Far from raising the consciousness of the '%I.. interests of the international working class .. i\lll£l n- 0.5. 001 OF \QI4~it\1IlQ\£S\ working class about the need to over­ to what would be acceptable to those ~ Ill< ..ul OF 'filE OCCOPIEIl .""1 i i throw capitalism, they lull the work­ capitalist politicians (e.g., Barbara Lee. R ing masses into thinking that it is pos­ , t.1$, '1111\-11\-1£ Q£\AOC .. \c'lIAJI.i Ii Dennis Kucinich, Al Sharpton) who op­ ~. _., OF Vlt.1HNO Rt.C\S\.t--· • .. sible to pressure the capitalist system to posed the war because they deemed it '" be peaceful and to change its priorities. was not in the best interests of U.S. F fOR" VlORKERS I't.Rii il'lKl The aim of the various reformists is to imperialism. The socialist pretensions of It:i\1S FOR SOClt.USl establish a movement in which a future R£~UII\lll\\ bourgeois-defeatist wing of American cap­ these reformists-like Workers World ~rACISl l£M3\lt / SI':'RTt.OJS 'fOOlt\ Ct~ Vc.. ~ (which built ANSWER), the Revolution­ -",." ital would feel at home, a movement ary Communist Party (RCP-which built similar to the one the Socialist Workers Not In Our Name) and the ISO (which Party and others built in the early years worked within United for Peace and of the Vietnam antiwar movement. Justice-UFPJ)-were once again proven Recently, Workers World initiated a to be so much hot air as they devoted new ''Troops Out Now Coalition" that j~ themselves to building a movement that "open to all individuals and organizations did not and could not challenge the willing to work together to stop the war' framework of the capitalist system. Meanwhile. the ISO's self-declared goal Only a program of turning the antiwar is to "influence Congress" by building movement into an anti-capitalist move­ "a confident, coherent and growing oppo­ ment could point the way forward. The sition to the Iraq occupation" (Social­ perspective of the Spartacist League and ist Worker, 18 February). By promoting Spartacus Youth Clubs was to wage a pro­ Spartacist contingent at Chicago anti-occupation demonstration, 20 March "broad unity" (i.e., unity with the bour­ 2004. letarian fight to break the disastrous unity geoisie), the reformists keep American of antiwar militants with elements of the workers tied to their "own" capitalists. bourgeoisie on a pacifist program. We ingly dominant militarily, and wants to point of view of furthering the interests of while cutting across the international fight to win antiwar activists away from remain so. The invasion of Iraq was the working class, raising its conscious­ unity that workers in the U.S. must han:: classless appeals to "peace" and "justice" designed to ensure its strategic military ness and instilling an understanding of its with their class brothers and sisters in and to the perspective of mobilizing the predominance in the Near East to the det­ historic task-to overthrow capitalism. Iraq under the guns of U.S. imperialism. proletariat in class struggle against the riment of its rivals. There are now ele­ As then-Trotskyist James Burnham wrote If the U.S. working class does not mobi· U.S. imperialist rulers. In the absence of ments of the U.S. ruling class that worry in "War and the Workers" (1936): lize in defense of American imperialism';; such a perspective, the antiwar movement that the U.S. military is over-stretched in "Since the victorY of socialism, and this victims. then it will never mobilize for could only benefit bourgeois politicians. Iraq and that it should conserve its alone. will defeat war, every step on the socialist revolution. forces for other battles (e.g., against path to socialism is a blow at war. In the in particular the Democratic Party, and struggle against war. properly understood. Reform VS. Revolution reinforce bourgeois rule. the Chinese and North Korean deformed every militant workers' demonstration. Our starting point. as revolutionary, workers states). However the various every broad mass labor defense fight. The fundamental dividing line be­ working-class and internationalist Marx­ imperialist ruling classes conceive of their every well-led strike, and in general every tween us and the rest of the left ;s interests at any particular conjuncture, advance of the workers toward power. is program: reform or revolution. Ours i,' a ists. is the understanding that the drive worth a thousand 'Peace Leagues'" toward war is inherent in the world eco- colonial wars-as well as wars among program for the independent mobiliza­ the imperialist powers themselves (e.g .. In the lead-up to and during the tion of the working class in opposition (() World Wars I and Il)-are inevitable as March-April 2003 war, the SL raised as the entire capitalist system, and the war~, NYC NOTICE long as capitalism continues to dominate its central slogans: "Defend Iraq Against poverty and desperation it breeds. Tlk V.S./British Imperialist Attack!", "Down The New York Spartacist League's the globe. program of the ISO, Workers World and public office will be open from The Achilles' heel of capitalism is its With U.S. imperialism!". "For Class the RCP is based on class collaboratioi1. 1 :00 to 3:00 p.m. on Saturday, dependence on the labor of the working Struggle Against U.S. Capitalist Rul­ which means subordinating the interes:' June 11 and will be closed on class for its profits. The proletariat has the ers!", and "All U.S. Troops Out of the of the workers to those of the capitall~t Saturday, June 18. social power and objective interests to Near East Now!" Our slogans reflected class. They push the illusion that war CJH sweep away the capitalist system. Only our policy of revolutionary defense of continued on page r, 10 JUNE 2005 "" "Honor" Kil"lings in Germany

We print below the translation of an method for keeping Turkish and Kurdish set off more racist violence on the streets. article that first appeared in Spartakist girls within prescribed bounds. This has been among the obvious effects No. 158 (Spring 2005), ne""spaper of the Simultaneously. the bourgeois press of the anti-Islam "war on terror" waged Spartakist Workers Party of Germany, set up a howl over fundamentalism, for­ by U.S. and European governments since section of the International Communist eign customs and Turkish immigrants. 11 September 2001. With the collapse 1,·'>' League. Berlin's SPD [Social Democratic] mayor of the Soviet Union, misery-grow­ Exberliner Wowereit is demanding that "Those who ing unemployment, ghettoization, war Hatun Surucu come [to Germany] must show the will and hopelessness-is on the rise among i to assimilation" (Del' Tagesspiegel, 22 immigrants and in the entire ''Third This Marxist view of women's oppres­ ~i :7 ';i til;J ti If' sion as linked to private property and par­ February). This is only the latest version World:' with the result that fundamental­ On January 7, Hatun Stirticti was shot of Chancellor Schroder's 1998 threat: ism is gaining strength as a seeming ticularly to the oppressive institution of in Berlin-Tempelhof, her head and body when someone "abuses the right to hospi­ alternative. the family was integral to the Bolshevik so riddled with bullets that she died on tality. there's just one thing to do: out Many social workers who took part in program and strategy for building social­ the spot. In contrast to the way she chose with them-and fast.'· It is with disgust the TdF demonstration have been engaged ism internationally. Lenin emphasized that to live, her relatives buried her in the most (but no surprise) that we learn that Neu­ in a Sisyphean task against the mosques "one cannot draw the masses into politics conservative religious tradition. Only her kolin mayor Heinz Buschkowsky (SPD) and the state, attempting to assist, hide without drawing in the women" ("Interna­ three brothers were not present at the bur­ has been using the murder of Hatun and defend young women immigrants. tional Working Women's Day." 8 March ial. They were in'jail, accused of their sis­ Stirticli to push his campaign for forced They told a Spartakist saleswoman how 1921 ). In addition to legal equality. ter's "honor" killing, supposedly commit­ assimilation, In an interview with the conflicted they were about joining the "The second and most important step is ted to restore the family honor destroyed fascist newspaper Junge Freiheit, Busch­ demonstration in the midst of an anti­ the abolition of the private ownership of land and the factories. Thi, and this by her behavior: abandoning a marriage kowsky inveighed from the right against Islamic witchhunt. The Turkish Associa­ alone opens up the way towards a com­ arranged by her family with a cousin in "multicultural" politics. saying that tion of Berlin-Brandenburg (TBB) posted plete and actual emancipation of \\oman. Istanbul when she was 16: returning to "many people apparently are much more the call for the demonstration on their her liberation from 'household bonda;:c' Berlin: living with her son in a home for outraged when foreigners become vic­ Web site, However. three days after the through transition from petty indivictiIaI housekeeping to large-scale socialized mothers and children. beyond the reach of tims of right-wing extremist violence demonstration. the TBB Women's Forum domestic services:' family discipline. She had sought out than when Turkish women are shot to put out a press release warning against Even in the face of dire poverty and impe­ training as an electrical installer. which restore the family honor" (tip. 24 March). "undifferentiated and all-embracing state­ rialist encirclement. the young Soviet ,he was within weeks of completing, had On March 5. occasioned by the recent ments that could heighten prejudice and state undertook heroic efforts to organize stopped wearing the headscarf and was "honor" killings, Tene des Femmes racist tendencies vis-a-vis the Turkish public education. childcare. laundries, dressing as she pleased, She was also dat­ (Tdn along with SPD, PDS [Party of community and other minorities." health facilities and canteens at the facto­ ing German men and choosing her own Democratic Socialism]. Green politi­ Halun', execution was extreme in its ries and in the fields. Bolshevik women friends. which could have led to her choos­ cians and others. called a demonstration brutality, but her situation was horribly organizers went voluntarily to Central i ng her next husband without the agree­ against violence against women that common. A study by the Family Ministry Asia to inform women of their rights and drew some 1,000 people onto the streeb reveals what social workers were only ment of her family. mobilize them for their class interests of Kreuzberg lin Berlin]. The issue of able to guess at: "49 percent of Turki sh This is reportedly the sixth such "honor" against family interests and "honor." killing in Berlin in four months. It has Spartakist with the headline "Full Citi­ women said they had experienced physi­ Many Bolshevik policies \vere rever~cd zenship Rights for All Who Live Here" calor sexual \'iolence in their marriage. horrified and polarized society. igniting under the rule of Stalin's nationalist bu­ the explosive mixture of women's oppres­ drew lots of attention and sales v.ere A quarter of those married to Turkish reaucratic caste which usurped power in ,ion and racism. It wa~ the revolting sym­ brisk, especially when we pointed out an husbands said that they had met their 1923-24. betraying the Leninist inter­ Dsocialism in one country" and "peaceful ners selected by their relatives and 17 per­ coexistence" with imperialism. Similad). cent felt they had been forced into such the family was reinstated as a "fighting partnerships" (Spiegel online. 2 March). unit for socialism." Despite all these That Hatun had the fortitude (and help) to deformations. with the collectivization of fight her way out of this situation \vas agriculture. Central Asia was raised into unusual. Social workers at Papatya. an the 20th century from a mode of produc­ institution that maintains a secret home tion typical of the 7th century. so that specializing in assisting young women women were able to cast off the veil. get who are fleeing their families, have often an education, participate in social life. observed that many of the young women choose their own husbands and obtain who come for help do eventually go back access to contraception. In contrast. their to their families. It takes a very determined sisters in Afghanistan remained chained to or very frightened young woman to break centuries-old customs and traditional fam­ completely with her family and make her ily violence until 1979, when a leftist sec­ way alone or even as a single mother in ularist, pro-Soviet regime, backed by the this racist country. Red Army, briefly lifted them out of this The concept of "family honor," i.e., wretchedness; against this, the imperialist control of the sexuality of women by powers (including all the parliamentary their family, is not exclusively Islamic, parties in Germany) financed and armed but rather connected to a mode of pro­ the Islamic fundamentalists, including the duction where a clan-a series of related Taliban. It was the first time in modem his­ extended families-holds and works the tory that women's rights became the cen­ land in common. Citing Marx, Friedrich tral question of a war. In contrast to most Berlin, 5 March: Some 1,000 protest "Against Violence Against Women." Sign Engels explained the history of women's of the "left," we said at the time: "Hail Red reads: "Stop Political Islam, Stop Honor Killings." oppression in his classic work The Ori­ Army! Extend the social gains of October gin of the Family, Private Property, and to the Afghan peoples!" But with the School in [Berlin's] Neukolln [district] demonstrators stood facing one another, the State (1884): that really ignited debate over the slaying excitedly discussing whether one should destruction of the Soviet Union in 1991- "'The modern [patriarchal) family' con­ 92, all the old crap is coming back. and the whole issue of "honor" killing­ beg the racist state to defend immigrant tains in embryo not only slavery (serv­ ,heir justification was that "she had lived women against Islam or defend the head­ itus) but serfdom also, since from the While immigrants of the Turkish and like a German" (Junge Welt, 25 Febru­ scarf as such. This is a false polarization: very beginning it is. connected with Kurdish ethnic minorities and their :lry). The shocked school principal re­ the veil, along with the headscarf, is a agricultural services. It contains within German-born children and grandchildren itself in miniature all the antagonisms have no links to agriculture in Germany. ~;;onded to the mocking jeers with an open symbol of the subordination of women to which later develop on a wide scale ktter to all students. parents and teachers. men, and the church/mosque/synagogue within society and its state: since most have either no citizenship ,\nd while the overwhelming majority of is a primary instrument for women's "Such a form of the family shows the rights at all or citizenship rights that are pupils at this school, including those of oppression. Nonetheless, we defend the transition of the pairing family to revocable, they often remain tied to land \ ear Eastern and Muslim extraction, un­ right of ethnic minorities to practice their monogamy. In order to guarantee the and family structures in Turkey. Family fidelity of the wife. that is. the paternity organization often replaces the social -,'11biguously condemned the murder, this religions and recognize that state perse­ of the children, the woman is placed ',as not just an expression of macho on the cution will not only drive oppressed in the man's absolute power; if he kills measures that most Europeans have ,,:lrt of a small minority-it also reveals the women back to home and hearth but will her, he is but exercising his rights." continued on page 15 WORKERS VANGUARD German Trotskyists Beat Back Attack by Pro-Zionist Goons

We print beloll' (/ May 24 leaflet issued view. In 2003 they attacked two of our tion," the U.S .. France, Britain and the to death row in the u.S. When the attack hy the Spartakist Workers Party of Ger­ forums at Humboldt Uni\'Crsity in Berlin, Soviet Union. And they carried Israeli was repulsed, the "anti-Germans" sicced II/any (SpAD), section of the interna­ including once with a smoke bomb [see flags. The "anti-Germans" deliberately the cops on the Mumia supporters. We tiol/al COllllI/unist League (Fourth inter­ "Germany: Apologists for Zionist Terror equate the reactionary forces of Arab defended the RK (Revolutionary Com­ I/({{ionalistj. The leaflet outlines hOI\' our Attack Spartakist Youth Meeting," WV nationalism and Islamic fundamentalism munists L who supported the Mumia con­ SpAD cOlI/rades .llIccessfitliY de/ended No. R06, .+ July 2003). Most recently, on with fascism, in order to mobilize for tingent. against the ensuing racist witch­ thelllseil'es against a violent attack by April 28, they attacked our lit table there. their modern-day \'Cr~ion of an "anti-Nazi hunt by the "anti-Germans." The result "anti-Gerlllan" thugs in Hamburg. The They hate us especially because \ve have coalition." in defen~e of U.S. imperialism of their slanders is that the Mumia con­ "anti-Gemwns" are in 110 wav part 0/ exposed them as wanting to destroy left­ and its Israeli junior partners in the Near tingent was completely banned from this the left or \\'orkers 1II00'ement. The\' are a ists and have had some success in isolat­ East. What they sell as anti-fascism is in year's Carnival. Mumia Abu-Jamal is conglomeration of ex-leftists who c(lme ing them politically, not least with our reality defense of Zionist terror against hated by ,the "anti-Germans" because he together in 1990, following the counter­ artic Ie "'Anti -N ationalsl Anti-Germans': Palestinians, and imperialist war. takes a stand against the racist politics rn'oilitionary annexation of the East Goons for the SPD/Green Government'" They hailed the NATO bombing of of U.S. imperialism, which the "anti­ German deformed \l'orkers state by the (Spartakist No. 152, Fall 2003) docu­ Afghanistan and the U.S. war against Germans" cheer with waving flags. We Fourth Reich of German imperialism, menting how they are financed by the gov­ Iraq and today they support the colo­ demand: Free Mumia Abu-Jama/! Down and hal'e since embraced man,v re(lctiol1- ernment. The "anti-Germans" are goons nial occupation there. Their racism with the racist death penalty! ary forces, including U.S. imperialislII and provocateurs and work hand in glove against immigrants of Muslim back­ In Hamburg we also were in the cross and the israeli Zionist state. with the bourgeois state. On May 8 in ground corresponds to that of the U.S. hairs of these goons because we call Berlin, they tried to pull the plug on the neoconservatives like Richard Perle and for defending the seminars of Profes­ sound truck belonging to the ATTAC con­ Paul Wolfowitz, who are quoted posi­ sor Hanisch, who argues for the right to tingent at the Spasibo coalition's Antifa tively by "anti-German" magazines like existence of both Israelis and Palestin­ Hamburg [groups of self-described anti-fascists] Jungle World and who make up a main ians, against "anti-German" provocations and attempts to get them banned. In our On May 14, at 4 p.m., we held a forum leaflet mobilizing for the university strike at a Hamburg cafe of the AIDS-Help '>lp against tuition fees, we wrote: 'The prov­ Association. The forum was entitled "8 \1 ~ ocations of the 'anti-Germans' all follow May 1945: The Red Army Smashed the a pattern of inciting the German state ~ l il " I! ur ArBf:T£K/ .~ llmmigran(m Nazi Regime! SPD [German Social Dem­ ~ against whoever may be their victims at ocratic Party]/Green/PDS [Party of Dem­ t. ' ':. JnnlG£MTEN· <11 und linkc -.. ~ the time. Thus they called (in vain) on ocratic Socialism]-Popular Front for .~ . ~ ~ 110BILISIEfVNG, university president Liithje to ban Profes­ German Imperialism," We celebrate the sor Hanisch's seminar. Anti-racist students I: ( ! < urn die Maeis 8th of Mayas the day of the victory of the , • • " STI ;'()l.."N~ , must defend the seminar against censor­ m' 'ttl I (;:n:., . Red Army over Nazi Germany, We stand ship efforts by the racist 'anti-Germans.' . "" ~ . ! S'P7iifjKISl in the tradition of the Trotskyists, who in t '1" ~ rl'll\l: In the winter semester of 2003-04, Berlin the Second World War unconditionally ~ -4 ij'~. ~ "'l~ ,', 'anti-Germans' slandered the university militarily defended the Soviet degener­ student strike in Berlin as 'anti-Semitic':' ated workers state and fought for the The appeals by the "anti-German" group defeat of the imperialist bourgeoisies of Bad Weather and people in the Hamburg Germany, Japan, the U,S., Britain and student library-made to the same Liithje France, The imperialists, no matter who sics the cops on students-to cancel whether Axis powers or "democrats," Professor Hanisch's seminar are a threat were vying for a new division of the against all those protesting the imposition world. While the Western imperialists of tuition as well as all those who want bombed the workers districts of Hamburg to form their own opinion about the and Dresden, it was the Red Army that Near East. At least one of the May 14 brought the Holocaust to an end and lib­ Spartakist photos attackers was among the "anti-Germans" erated the peoples of East Europe from Berlin, May 8: Sixtieth anniversary of Red Army victory over Nazi Germany. disrupting various seminars by Professor Nazi barbarism. Only when it became Spartacist placard (top left) reads: "'Collective Guilt' Amnesties Bourgeoisie Hanisch at Hamburg University and had clear that the Soviet Union would tri­ of Auschwitz-Workers Revolution Will Avenge the Holocaust!" Below: Pro­ already tried to set off a violent confron­ umph did the Western Allies open the sec­ imperialist, pro-Zionist "anti-Germans" march with flags of Allied "anti-Hitler tation with us on May 12 while we were ond front in 1944 "to save" capitalist coalition." distributing leaflets outside a seminar. Europe from the Red Army. That is why Already in July 2003, Bad Weather had it is false when the left of today hails made death threats against a linguistics the "democratic" Western imperialists as professor at Hamburg University for sup­ "liberators." porting a call by university lecturers from After we had left the cafe of the AIDS­ Britain and Israel to isolate Israel as a Help Association on Lange Reihe Street protest against its occupation policy. The and some of the participants had gone to "anti-Germans" brand as anti-Semitic a nearby bar, a gang of 10 to 15 "anti­ every defender of Palestinians, including Germans" dressed almost exclusively in non-Zionist Jews and human rights activ­ black showed up around 7:30. The group ists such as Professor Hanisch. Workers, pursued two of our comrades to the leftists, immigrants and anti-racists­ bar. threatening, "We're here to get you defend free speech! Defend Professor again!" We demanded that the provoca­ Hanisch and his lectures and seminars! teurs get out of the bar and informed the We stand for the overthrow of the rest of the guests that they are racists who sheiks, mullahs. colonels and Zionist cheer on state terror against Muslim butchers and for a socialist federation of immigrants and the oppression of the the Near East. In contrast to nationalists Palestinians. When we made it clear that of every stripe. we want to win the these people were known for attacks on Hebrew-speaking \\orkers to the defense leftists, one of the provocateurs shoved of the Palestinians. Israel is not "the only one of our Jewish woman comrades secure place:' but a deathtrap for Jews. It against a wall. While we were trying is especially Je\\-s from East Europe who to restrain the goon, a second attacker demonstration, because ATTAC support­ part of the Christian-fundamentalist are used by the Israeli bourgeoisie in punched another woman comrade in the ers were singing rap songs against Bush administration. And their racism their dirty war against the Palestinians. face. In the course of pushing back the the bloody U.S. occupation of Iraq. In corresponds to that of the SPD/Green In Israel/Palestine. an area to which two "anti-Germans," two young workers were our leaflet. '''Anti -Germans': Goons for government which is administering Ger­ nationalities lay claim. only an Arab­ injured and one had his glasses broken. German Imperialism" (4 May), we had man imperialism for the bourgeoi­ Hebrew workers revolution can demo­ While we were successful in rapidly already warned, prior to the demo. "The sie. One cannot fight the Nazis together cratically resolve the question of national expelling these thugs from the bar. they 'anti-Germans' feel the wind in their with racist warmongers like the "anti­ self-determination for both the Palestin­ turned over tables and tried to use chairs sails. The political backdrop for this is Germans'" The "anti-Germans" are nor ian and the Hebrew-speaking peoples. as weapons on their way out. Finally the the rapprochement of left Antifas with part of the left but accomplices of Israeli troops and settlers out of the cowards beat it. An injury to one is an these racists in the name of transclass FischerlSchily [German Foreign Minister occupied territories! Defend the Pales­ injury to all! For united-front action by 'antifascist unity'." We intervened for a and Interior Ministerl and Bush/Blair! tinians! For a socialist federation of the workers, leftists and immigrants to defend proletarian internationalist perspective to At the Carnival of Cultures in Berlin Near East! against "anti-German" goons! stop the Nazis. "Anti-Germans," pre­ in May 2004, "anti-Germans" from the The "anti-Germans" couldn't care less This attack is· the latest in a whole eminently the group Kritik & Praxis. group Kritik & Praxis assaulted a contin­ about the fate of the Jews. Following on series of "anti-German" attacks on left­ were permitted to march at the tail of this gent defending black journalist and for­ the Kohl government's banning of immi­ ists, immigrants and others who don't fit coalition demonstration waving flags of mer Black Panther Party member Mumia gration by Jews from what was then the into their racist, pro-imperialist world- the countries in the "anti-Hitler coali- Abu-Jamal, an innocent man condemned continued on page 14 10 JUNE 2005 5 counterrevolution. At the same time, we relations-something the ISO would like struggles. This is chut::,pah, considering Left and fight for workers political revolution to disappear. Further, the defeat of the that the ISO's international founder, the to oust the parasitic Stalinist bureauc­ U.S. was a major victory for workers late Tony Cliff, was expelled from the racies, which base themselves on the re­ around the world. creating the "Vietnam Fourth International for refusing to defend Occupation ... actionary dogma of "socialism in one syndrome," which stayed the hand of the North Korea against the UN-backed U.S. (continuedfrom page 3) country," and to establish regimes based imperialists from military invasions for invasion of the peninSUla during the 1950- be ended by pressuring the bourgeoisie. on workers democracy and revolutionary over a decade. We were for the victory of 53 Korean War. Behind this was Tony The reformists did not fight to get the internationalism. the Vietnamese Reyolution. Cliff's Cold War anti-Communism, as the working people of the U.S. to understand In contrast, the ISO has from its incep­ . 1\s revolutionary Marxists, we have a Korean War was more than a national lib­ th~t their fundamental interests lay in tion been defined by the virulent anti­ side in the current conflict in Iraq: eration struggle. Like Vietnam, the Korean siding with the Iraqi people against Communism of the Cold War period. In against the U.S., its allies and Iraqi lack­ War was a conflict of forces of counter­ the U.S. military machine. Rather, they the name of "democracy," the anti­ eys. Our starting point is to demand the posed class characters. pitting the North wanted to build a "movement" tailored to Communist ISO hailed nearly every force immediate and unconditional withdrawal Korean and Chinese deformed workers "antiwar" bourgeois politicians-and no arrayed against the USSR, including the of all U.S. troops. We defend the peoples states against U.S. and British imperial­ bourgeois politician is going to feel com­ CIA-backed mujahedin in Afghanistan of Iraq against any U.S.-led attack and ism and their South Korean lackeys. The fortable on a platform with those who who took up arms against the Soviet repression. Insofar as the forces on the Korean War is unmentioned in D'Amato's support the other side in a conflict with Army and opposed elementary demo­ ground in Iraq aim their blows against article. Also unmentioned is the fact that the U.S. Nor did the ISO and Workers cratic rights for women and reforms that the imperialist occupiers, we call for the Cliffites' anti-Communism was so World, despite their socialist pretensions, infringed on the economic and political their military defense against U.S. impe­ deep that they refused to defend the Viet­ call for the overthrow of the capitalist dominance of the mullahs. The ISO rialism. Every blow struck against the nam National Liberation Front (NLF) system from the platforms of the major cheered the cutthroats Reagan called imperialist occupiers is a blow struck until quite late in the war, when it became antiwar mobilizations they supported. "freedom fighters," who threw acid against the enemy of workers and the clear that their anti-Communism would In their press, the ISO and Workers isolate them among left-radical youth in World polemicize against the Democrats. the U.S. at the time who were chanting, For example, in 'The Future of the Anti­ "Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, NLF is going to . I" war Movement" (International Socialist Wll1. Review, January-February 2005), the ISO DAmato, arguing against other refor­ states: "The antiwar movement was quiet mists who renounce defense of the "Iraqi because it plunged itself headlong into' resistance," tries to equate these refor­ the Kerry campaign." But their "opposi­ mists with those who defended the work­ tion" to the Democrats is very different ers states: from ours. We oppose the Democratic "Much of the Left in the U.S. suf­ fers from the hangover of a Stalinist Party on principle because it is a capital­ approach to national liberation, which ist party that is the enemy of working identified certain movements worthy of people, blacks and all the oppressed. The uncritical support because they were led reformist left, however, views the Demo­ by secular nationalist forces strongly cratic Party as a potential ally. identified with Cuba, China, or the Soviet Union .... For example, Workers World, which "For those on the Left with illusions in ran its own presidential campaign in the USSR as a socialist state (and this 2004, enthusiastically endorsed black lib­ includes the majority of the U.S. Left), eral Democrat Cynthia McKinney for the whole project of national liberation U.S. Congress, calling her "Unbossed seemed to fade in the wake of the col­ lapse of the Berlin Wall." & Unbought" (Workers World, 22 July It is the Stalinists and Maoists, as well 2004). This year's 19 March "Troops Out as the ISO, that have a tradition of politi­ Now!" protest featured Democratic Con­ cal support to Third World nationalism. gressman Charles Rangel as a speaker. Novosti Genuine Trotskyists have always sharply Rangel had introduced a bill in Congress May Day in Petrograd, 1917: Bolsheviks organized against imperialist war, distinguished between military defense, in 2003 (and again last month) for the brought working class to power in Russia in October Revolution. Center including unconditional military defense reinstatement of the draft, i.e., more banner reads: "For the Arming of the People-Long Live the International." of the degenerated and deformed workers imperialist troops' The ISO's "alterna­ states, and political support. which Trot­ tive" to voting for Kerry was to support in the faces of unveiled women and oppressed. But as we wrote in "The Left skinned Communist school teachers alive! and the 'Iraqi Resistance' -U.S. Out of skyists never give to any non-proletarian capitalist politician Ralph Nader's "inde­ party. government or movement. Genuine pendent" campaign ff)r president. Nader We Trotskyists said, "Hail Red Army in Iraq Now'" (WV No. 830.6 August 20(4): "We do not imbue the forces presently Trotskyists, i.e .. genuine Marxists and did not even oppose the imperialist occu­ Afghanistan!" When the Soviet Union was dealt a mortal blow by Boris Yeltsin's organizing guerrilla attacks on U.S. Leninists, stand above all for· the political pation of Iraq. proposing only that it be forces with 'anti-imperialist' credentials coup, the ISO and its international co­ independence of the proletariat. under the cover of a United Nations fig and warn that in the absence of working­ In his piece. DAmato admits that the thinkers crowed. "Communism has col­ class struggle in Iraq and internationally leaf. and explicitly promoting his candi­ "building of a secular resistance" in Iraq dacy as a vehicle to pressure the Demo­ lapsed.... It is a fact that should have against the occupation. the \'ictory of one or another of the reactionary cleri­ that is "on a class basis" would be a good crats to "return" to liberalism, For its part, every socialist rejoicing" (Sociafist Worker [Britain]. 31 August 1991). cal forces is more likely to come thing. but nonetheless writes, "We do not the RCP advised: "vote for Kerry if you about through an alliance with U.S. The coll'apse of the Soviet Union plays make our support for the Iraqi resistance feel you really have to" (Revolutionary imperialism .... conditional upon our criticism of the an important role in evaluating the ongo­ ''The so-called 'national resistance' in Worker, 29 August 2004) .. resistance's tactics and politics." The ISO Attacking the reformist strategy on ing debate in the left on the Iraqi "resis­ Iraq is a myth promoted by U.S. and Western imperialism and cynical left­ is seeking to prettify the insurgencies war. Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky wrote tance." In "What Kind of Movement Do We Need?" (Socialist Worker, 22 April), ists .... Resistance forces led by religious in Iraq. which have large aspects of crim­ in The Permanent Revolution (1929) of clerics are by definition sectarian. There the ISO reports that "New York City inal sectarian violence in which Shi'ites, "the boundary that separates Marxism isn't a unitary 'resistance' force in Iraq Sunnis and Kurds are all targeted. Since from opportunism, the revolutionary from UFPJ leaders refused to endorse the but rather disparate groupings organizing guerrilla attacks on U.S. forces-and April 28, when the Shi'ite-dominated Iraqi the pacifist position": March 19 'Troops Out Now' protest in Central Park-in part, they said, because often against rival groupings and random government was installed, more than 600 "It is a question of nothing less than the civilians." struggle against war, that is, of how and 'some of the early materials for this Iraqis have been killed in sectarian vio­ with what methods war can be averted or protest' contained 'language about sup­ In a piece by ISO honcho Paul D'Amato lence. The present-day "resistance" stopped; by the pressure of the proletar­ porting the Iraqi resistance'." in International Socialist Review (March­ forces-whether Ba' ath nationalists or iat upon the bourgeoisie or by civil war In an article titled "The Future of April 2005) titled "Iraqis Have the Right Islamic fundamentalists-are virulent to overthrow the bourgeoisie? .. to Resist," he tries to paint the insur­ reactionaries with a long and bloody his­ "Only a reformist can picture the pres­ the Antiwar Movement" (International sure of the proletariat upon the bourgeois Socialist Review, January-February 2005), gency in Iraq as a "national liberation tory of murdering Communists. In fact, state as a permanently increasing factor Meredith Kolodner of the ISO wrote: movement." D'Amato compares it to the should the proletariat in Iraq attempt to and as a guarantee against intervention. "The truth is that a mass demonstration North Vietnamese Stalinists: '"North Viet­ raise its head as an independent force, it '"The st?uggle against war is decided not isn't sufficient to end a war. The Iraqi nam was under the sway of a one-party will face not only the occupation troops by pressure upon the government but resistance, whose impact on the U.S. is only by the revolutionary struggle for dictatorship that suppressed dissent, and but the very anti-working-class "resis­ far more forceful than a mass demonstra­ the Vietminh under Ho Chi Minh's lead­ tance" celebrated by D'Amato. power." tion, hasn't yet been enough to force the U.S. to leave. The U.S. took years to ership murdered Vietnamese Trotskyists As opposed to outright craven liberals, The ISO and "the Resistance" finally admit defeat and pull out of Viet­ after the Second World War during the the ISO is trying to strike a leftist posture The imperialist war and occupation of nam-a country less strategically impor­ resistance against the reimposition of with its position on the Iraqi insurgency. Iraq are a direct consequence of the tant than Iraq today. It was forced to do French colonialism," But behind this seemingly leftist position counterrevolutionary destruction of the so by the combination of a mass move­ It is grotesque to compare the Viet­ lie rightist politics. The ISO is extending ment at home, a unified national libera­ Soviet Union in 1991-92, The USSR tion movement in Vietnam. and the dis­ namese forces that fought for social revo­ its program of class collaboration to the was the military-industrial powerhouse integration of the U.S. army as an lution, that actually defeated the U.S. international field-in this case subordi­ of the degenerated and deformed work­ effective fighting force." militarily, with the religious and nation­ nating the interests of Iraqi workers to ers states-with a nuclear arsenal that The truth is the ISO is deeply dishon­ alist fanatics in Iraq whose existence is reactionary Muslim fundamentalists and could challenge that of the U.S. Without est. Kolodner holds the antiwar protests often defined by the national and sectar­ bourgeois-nationalist remnants of the the Soviet Union to stay the hand of as equally responsible for the American ian divisions in the country among Sunni Ba' athist regime. Subordinating the inter­ U,S, imperialism, the world has become pullout as the "unified national liberation and Shi'ite Arabs and Kurds. and which ests of the international proletariat to anti­ a far more dangerous place, a place of movement in Vietnam," In fact, the U.S. often target other religious or ethnic proletarian forces is nothing new for the unbridled American military interven­ pulled out of Vietnam because it was mil­ populations in criminal bombings. Dur­ ISO. For example, the ISO, which has tion. Although bureaucratically degen­ itarily defeated on the battlefield by the ing the Vietnam War, we exposed the always had a fascination with Islamic erated under Stalinist misrule, which heroic workers and peasants of that coun­ crimes of the North Vietnamese Stalin­ fundamentalism, hailed the 1979 rise to included policies that conciliated impe­ try. Along with the army of the North ists, such as the murder of Vietnamese power of Khomeini and his mullah forces rialism, the Soviet Union was still a Vietnamese deformed workers state, the Trotskyists. One doesn't need to prettify in Iran-which butchered leftists, forcibly workers state with a planned economy workers and peasants of the South sacri­ history to understand that D'Amato's com­ imposed the veil on women and rules the and collectivized property. We fought to ficed so much because they were fighting parison exudes fierce anti-Communism. country through sharia (Islamic law)­ defend the USSR-as we do China, for more than "national liberation." Their Throughout his article, D'Amato cites painting the "Iranian Revolution" as North Korea, Vietnam and Cuba today­ victory resulted in a social revolution­ war after war to lecture about the impor­ "anti-imperialist." against imperialist attack and capitalist i.e., the overturn of capitalist property tance of supporting national liberation Equitable resolution of the democrat- 6 WORKERS VANGUARD Democrats' criticisms that the Bush Lies, Torture ... administration wasn't doing enough in (continued from page 1) fighting the "war on terror." The government is more and more U.S. troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. open about prosecuting thought crimes Some 50.000 people were detained dur­ pure and simple. In March and April, a ing U.S. military and security operations federal court in Virginia convicted Mus­ in Iraq and Afghanistan and routinely lim spiritual leader Ali AI-Timimi and denied access to their families and three of his alleged followers of terror­ lawyers. We say: from Guantanamo to ism conspiracy charges. The "evidence" Iraq. Afghanistan and everywhere else~ against them was comments Al-Timimi free all the detainees! made on the September II attacks and the destruction of the Columbia shuttle Torture and Death: two y~ars later. and the fact that his Standard U.S. Policy young followers played paintball. a typ­ Many of those ensnared in the govern­ ical youthful activity. portrayed by ment's torture chambers were literally prosecutors as paramilitary training for sold to the U.S. government. According international jihad. Writing in the Frollt­ to a 31 May report by Michelle Faul of PageMaga::ille (2 May), Web site of the Associated ,Press. in March 2002 racist ideologue David Horowitz, Daniel leatlets and broadcasts from U.S. heli­ Pipes hailed the Al-Timimi conviction as copters urged Afghans to "Hand over the "momentous" because "the government Arabs and feed your families for a life­ Spartacist contingent protests roundup of Arab and Muslim immigrants, has put away a terrorist not for his deeds. time." One leatlet read. "You can receive Brooklyn, March 2002. . such as raising money or blowing some­ millions of dollars. This is enough to thing up, but for his words." Pipes is part take care of your family, your village, provided the rationale. And the C.I.A. the Spartacist League and the Partisan of the Project for the New American your tribe for the rest of your life, pay tried to cover it up." Just as torture is stan­ Defense Committee on behalf of Jose Century, which has included Vice Presi­ for your livestock and doctors and school dard policy for the imperialists, so is Padilla, an American citizen who remains dent Cheney, Secretary of Defense books and housing for all your people." wh'itewashing the crimes of American held by the government without charges: Rumsfeld, and former Assistant Secre­ Many detainees have been held in imperialism 's enforc~rs. "The 'war against terrorism' is a fiction, tary of Defense and now head of the undisclosed locations and transferred to . On May 26, a military court acquitted a political construct, not a military real­ World Bank, Paul Wolfowitz. be tortured in countries like Syria and an Army staff sergeant who shot and ity .... It is no more a 'war' in a military Criminalization of speech and thought Uzbekistan. The CIA has established a killed an unarmed Iraqi. The same day, sense than the 'war against cancer,' is exactly what the "war on terror" is string of shell companies to maintain a Marine lieutenant Ilario Pantano, a for­ 'war against obesity' or a 'war against about. The government's aim is to spike tleet of aircraft whose primary purpose is mer Wall Street trader. was cleared of immorality.' Like the 'war against com­ opposition to its domestic and interna­ to assist in the kidnapping of "terror sus­ murdering two unarmed Iraqis. He shot munism' and the 'war against drugs,' this tional policies. A 27 May New York Times pects" and transport them to torture cen­ the men 60 times, hanging a sign over 'war' is a pretext to increase the state's editorial notes that Homeland Security is ters abroad. The U.S. has a long history their dead bodies reading, "No better police powers and repressive apparatus, even targeting groups such as the Animal of deporting refugees 'and immigrants friend. no worse enemy." In dismissing constricting the democratic rights of the Liberation Front and the Earth Liberation back to countries where they would be the charges, the Marine Corps announced: popUlation." Front. From the beginning we warned subject to imprisonment, torture and "The best interests of 2nd Lt. Pantano and that the "war on terror." which initially death. The administration's current pol­ the government have been served by this Down With the USA-Patriot Act! targeted Muslim immigrants, is ulti­ icy of "extraordinary rendition" is yet process." A month earlier, an internal Today, up for review in Congress are mately aimed at black people, the left another step in institutionalizing torture Army investigation cleared Lt. General portions of the draconian USA-Patriot and the labor movement. Leftist attorney as a policy. This was described by for­ Ricardo Sanchez. the U.S.' senior com­ Act authorizing widespread wiretapping, Lynne Stewart, her paralegal Ahmed mer CIA operative Robert Baer in a Lon­ mander in Iraq, and three of his deputies surveillance and break-ins on the basis of Abdel Sattar and translator Mohamed don Guardian article (19 March): of any wrongdoing in the Abu Ghraib tor­ political advocacy. The Bush gang has Yousry face decades behind bars. Stewart "We pick up a suspect or we arrange for tures. As a New York Times (23 April) arti­ now proposed amendments to the law. was outrageously convicted of providing one of our partner countries to do it. cle pointed out: "Barring new evidence, Then the suspect is placed on civilian being considered in secret sessions of the material support to "terrorism" for con­ transport to a third country where. let';;, the inquiry by the Army's inspector gen­ Senate Intelligence Committee. which veying the views of her jailed client make no bones about it. they use torture. eral effectively closes the Army's book would give the Feds authority to track (Egyptian cleric Sheik Omar Abdel Rah­ If you want a good interrogation, you on whether the highest-ranking officers the mail of anyone caught up in their man) to a Reuters correspondent. Mobi­ send someone to Jordan. If you want in Iraq during the Abu Ghraib prison far-flung "terror" investigations, requir­ lizing in their defens,e is one concrete them to be killed. you send them to Egypt or Syria. Either way, the US can­ scandal should be held accountable for ing the post office to turn over the example of the way in which the labur not be blamed as it is not doing the command failings described in past names, addresses and all other material movement and everyone targeted in this heavy work." reviews." appearing on the outside of letters to or "war on terror" can fight the governc In addition. the Guardian article notes Bush dismissed the Amnesty Interna­ from people under such investigations. ment's assault on democratic rights. that there is a tloating population of over tional report as based in part on "allega­ Other proposals would permit the gov­ Ultimately, the colonial victims of U.S. 10.000 "ghost detainees" being held at tions" by "people who were held in ernment to seize business records with­ imperialism and working people interna­ secret CIA bases. detention, people who hate America, peo­ out the court order that is required for tionally will get justice when all the war Last week Bush declared, "When ple that have been trained in some regular search warrants. criminals and commanders, from Bush there's accusations made about certain instances to disassemble [sic], that means The Patriot Act expanded on measures and the Pentagon chiefs to their under­ actions by our people, they're fully inves­ not to tell the truth." Bush is enunciating adopted during the Clinton administra­ lings as well as their Democratic Party tigated in a transparent way." But as a policy that "hating America" equals tion and one of its co-authors was Beryl counterparts, are swept from power William Schulz, executive director of "terrorist," i.e., someone without rights Howell, a Democratic Party senatorial through a proletarian socialist revolution. Amnesty International USA recently who could be locked away forever with­ aide. Democrats voted overwhelmingly Our purpose is to forge the multiracial stated, 'The critical point is the deliber­ out a trial or any means to challenge his for the Patriot Act, and it was the Demo­ revolutionary workers party that will ateness of this policy. The president gave incarceration. crats who pushed for the Homeland sweep away the barbaric brutality that the green light. The secretary of defense As we wrote in the Amici Curiae Security Act. The draconian new FBI defines the capitalist system of exploita­ issued the rules. The Justice Department (Friends of the Court) brief issued by Guidelines were adopted in response to tion and oppression .•

ic rights of all the peoples of Iraq, and U.S., Germany, Japan~is vital, or, as class-collaborationist and pacifist character and thereby took the country out of World the Near East more broadly, cannot be Marx noted, "all the old crap" will return. of its program. D' Amato makes this clear: War I. Throughout the antiwar demonstra­ achieved under c.ilpitalism but only with "There is, to be sure, a difference be­ tions of the past two years, we intervened the overthrow or' bourgeois rule in the Defeat U.S. Imperialism tween the need to introduce this discus­ to counterpose our revolutionary program region and the establishment of a social­ Through Workers Revolution! sion [about whether or not to support the to that of the reformist organizers. At issue How is it that a group that refused to resistance] into the antiwar movement ist federation of the Near East. This is the and what kind of slogans and demands is which class in this class-divided society Trotskyist program of permanent revolu­ take a side with Iraq in the war now cheers most effectively widen and deepen the one looks to in order to end war, racism tion. This means combining the struggle on the "resistance"? It is more than just a reach of the movement. The antiwar and poverty. The reformist organizers of against the occupation with a struggle coincidence that the ISO began publishing movement today should have as its gen­ the antiwar movement did everything in against all manner of bourgeois national­ articles on the insurgency in Iraq as last eral watchword 'Troops Out Now'." their power to spread the lie that the capi­ ism and religious fundamentalism, and November's election approached. As we Thus, D'Amato says there is no need talist system can do otherwise than breed poses the urgent need to forge Marxist wrote in "The Left and the 'Iraqi Resis­ to split with the liberals and pacifists imperialist war; we Spartacists took the parties to lead the working people to tance' ," the adulation of the resistance then who refuse to countenance the spilling of side of working people and the oppressed power throughout the region. Interna­ stemmed from the fact that "every blow American blood in Iraq, since everyone in Iraq and throughout the world to com­ tional extension of the revolution to the against the U.S. in Iraq redounds against can unite around the sing.le demand for bat the rapacious capitalist class. Join us wealthy centers of imperialism~the Bush in the run-up to the November elec­ "Troops Out Now." Furthermore, and in the struggle to build the revolutionary tion and plays to the Democrats' advan­ most fundamentally, the ISO (and WWP, workers party needed to end this system of tage." Today, D'Amato writes, "We can RCP, etc.) reject the Marxist perspective imperialist war and misery and build a never lose sight of the fact that it is the that the only effective "antiwar move­ socialist society.• resistance in Iraq, above all, that is cur­ ment" is one based upon the mobiliza­ Moving? rently driving down Bush's popularity, is tion of the social power of the working To receive Workers Vanguard making possible the rekindling of the anti­ class in opposition to the capitalist sys­ CORRECTION without interruption please let us war movement at home, and is acting as a tem. D'Amato "supports the resistance" know at least three weeks before In the article "Northern Ireland: brake on U.S. imperial ambitions else­ not with any perspective of promoting British Troops Out Now!" in WV No. you move. Send your new and where." Given their appeals to the liberal workers revolution, but with the perspec­ old address to: 849 (27 May), a photo caption mista: United for Peace and Justice coalition to tive of building a "movement" to pres­ kenly stated the date of the Bloody Spartacist Publishing Co. rejoin the common fold of the "antiwar sure imperialism to be more peaceful. Sunday Massacre in Derry, Northern Box 1377 GPO movement," it is clear that the ISO does The only successful "antiwar move­ Ireland, as 17 October 1972. The mas­ New York, NY 10116 not propose that a "rekindled" antiwar ment" was the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, sacre took place on 30 January 1972. movement break with the fundamental which overthrew capitalist rule in Russia 10 JUNE 2005 7 Why China Is Not Capitalist Defend, Extend the Gains of the

We print below an edited transla­ that within two years all children of tion of an article thatfirst appeared peasants in rural areas will receive a in Spartacist Japan No. 30 (April free primary education. Earlier this 2005), newspaper of the Spartacist 1949 Revolution! year, the bureaucrats promised that Group of Japan. section of the Inter­ by year's end the basic agricultural national Communist League. tax in most of China's provinces will For the last several years. on a be eliminated. daily basis, at least one bourgeois In maintaining that China contin­ newspaper, magazine, or nightly ues to be a deformed workers state, news program has had a special fea­ we do not deny or minimize the ture on China. We have been told growing social weight in China of both the newly fledged capitalist entrepreneurs on the mainland and the old, established offshore Chi­ I ~/tJII~!I~" I nese bourgeoisie in Taiwan and Hong that China's economy is growing by Kong. The fostering of capitalist­ leaps and bounds, with no end in restorationist forces within the frame­ sight; that it has overtaken Japan in work of a deformed workers state has several important economic indica­ already gone much further in China tors, and will soon become a "super­ than in Tito's Yugoslavia or Gor­ power"; that it is in the process bachev's Soviet Union. The Chinese of "siphoning off' natural resources bureaucracy itself is a major partici­ that "belong to the Japanese peo­ pant in joint ventures with foreign ple"; that, while the Japanese econ­ capitalists. It continues to invite omy has rebounded due to trade overseas Chinese and foreign capital with China, the reason for the high into the country, opening up entire level of unemployment in Japan Fred areas to capitalist exploitation. The is the "hollowing out" of industry, The core of China's economy remains collectivized. Workers in state-owned steel economic policies of the Beijing most of which relocated to China in works in Shenyang. Stalinist regime that encourage capi­ search of higher profits; that soon talist enterprise (and the correspond­ China will replace Japan diplomati­ ing rightward shifts in the bureauc­ cally, politically and militarily as racy's formal ideological posture) the "most important and influential have increasingly strengthened those country in Asia." Accompanying the For Workers Political Revolution social forces that will give rise to bourgeois propaganda campaign, imperialist-backed, openly counter­ last December Japanese imperialism revolutionary factions and parties released new defense guidelines, and to Oust Stalinist Bureaucracy! when the CCP [Chinese Communist it is in the process oCre-stationing Party] can no longer maintain its pre­ its military, and also has signed sent monopoly of political power. security agreements with the American their previous miserable status, histori­ million rural Chinese have migrated to This can be clearly seen today in the cap­ imperialists, including one to defend Tai­ cally symbolized by the barbaric practice the eastern and southern coastal areas in italist enclave of Hong Kong, the one part wan to "counter the Chinese mili­ of foot-binding. A nation that had been search of work. Education and medical of the PRC [People's Republic of China] tary threat." (See "Joint Statement of ravaged and divided by foreign powers care are no longer free. The workers no where bourgeois oppositional parties the Spartacist Group Japan and Sparta­ for a century was unified and freed from longer have their "iron rice bowl" which exist. (See "Hong Kong: Expropriate the cist League/U.S.: Down with U.S./Japan imperialist subjugation. guaranteed a job and benefits for workers Bourgeoisie!" WVNo. 814,21 November Counterrevolutionary Alliance! Defend Unlike the Russian October Revolution in state-owned enterprises. Unemploy­ 2003.) the Chinese and North Korean Deformed of 1917, which was carried out by a class­ ment has reached massive proportions as Nonetheless, the political power of Workers States!" WVNo. 844,18 March.) conscious proletariat guided by the prole­ industries are closed or privatized. The the main body of the Beijing Stalinist It is in this context that the so-called tarian internationalism of the Bolsheviks. number of women working as prostitutes bureaucracy continues to be based on the Trotskyist group Kakehashi has pub­ led by Lenin and Trotsky, the Chinese has skyrocketed, and female infanticide is core collectivized elements of China's lished a pamphlet claiming that capital­ Revolution was the result of peasant guer­ resurgent in the countryside. economy. Furthermore, the economic ism has been restored in China. In this rilla war led by Mao Zedong's Stalinist The Beijing bureaucracy essentially policies of the CCP regime are still con­ pamphlet, Kakehashi disappears the role nationalist forces. Patterned after the Sta­ acts as a transmission belt for the pres­ strained by fear of social-especially that the Japanese zaibatsu and interna­ linist bureaucracy in the USSR, Mao's sures of the imperialist-dominated world working-class-unrest that could topple tional finance capital have played in the regime preached the profoundly anti­ market on the workers state. The brittle, it. This came close to happening in 1989, exploitation of the Chinese workers and Marxist notion that socialism-a class­ contradictory character of this bureau­ when student-centered protests for polit­ in undermining the gains of the 1949 Chi­ less, egalitarian society based on material cratic caste can be seen in the fact that, in ical liberalization and against corruption nese Revolution. Japanese imperialism's abundance-could be built in a single the face of working-class unrest, the cur­ triggered a spontaneous workers revolt direct foreign investment totaled more country. In practice, "socialism in one rent regime has often reversed some of its that was suppressed with great bloodshed than $5.45 billion in 2004 (China Daily, country" meant opposition to the perspec­ economic "reforms" and occasionally put by regime-loyal army units. 25 March). This investment is no longer tive of workers revolution internation­ some of its own on trial for corruption, The social revolution persists in prop­ confined to areas formerly colonized ally-for example in neighboring Japan­ sometimes with a penalty of execution. In erty relations and in the conscious­ by Japan, strch as Manchuria, but has and accommodation to world imperialism. the face of massive peasant protests and ness of the toiling masses~ Trotskyists expanded to the southern tip of China. In the 1950s, the People's Republic of riots over the last year, the recent give unconditional military defense to a They write nothing about Japan's military China established a centrally planned, National People's Congress announced deformed or degenerated workers state in provocations against China, and they socialized economy and agriculture was attempt to justify their betrayal of the collectivized. A state monopoly of for­ class interests of the proletariat and their eign trade protected the socialized econ­ own reconciliation with capitalism by omy from being undermined by cheap denying the working-class nature of the imports from the far-more-developed Chinese deformed workers state. In sum, capitalist-imperialist countries. In China what is missing is a proletarian interna­ under Deng Xiaoping. the bureaucracy tionalist perspective and the role of a con­ moved toward "market socialism" fol­ scious. i.e., Leninist, vanguard party to lowing the examples of Yugoslavia and lead the proletariat. Hungary. Economic administrators and managers were rewarded or penalized on China on the Brink the basis of market profitability. The The 1949 Chinese Revolution was. threat of plant closures and layoffs also despite profound bureaucratic deforma­ served as a means of enforcing labor dis­ tions. a social revolution of world historic cipline among the workers. At the same significance. Hundreds of millions of time. agriculture was decollectivized and peasants rose up and seized the land on replaced by the "household responsibility which their ancestors had been cruelly system:' i.e., peasant small holdings. exploited from time immemorial. The Many of the gains of the Chinese Rev­ rule of the murderous warlords and olution are being obliterated. The pres­ bloodsucking moneylenders. the rapa­ sures of market competition have inevita­ cious landlords and wretched bourgeoisie bly resulted in the growth of a small class was destroyed. The revolution enabled of wealthy farmers alongside tens of mil­ Landlord denounced by peasant at people's tribunal following 1949 Chinese women to advance by magnitudes over lions of poor peasants. As many as 130 Revolution. 8 WORKERS VANGUARD order to prevent its military defeat by a capitalist power because these states are based on collectivized property. Simulta­ neously, we call for a proletarian political revolution that would oust the reactionary bureaucracy whose policies undermine the defense of the workers state and which has brought China close to the brink of internal capitalist counterrevolu­ tion. In place of bureaucratic autocracy, soviets (workers councils) must be cre­ ated as the direct organizations of the workers. soldiers and peasants, the vehi­ cles for them to organize and administer their own state in all aspects. This is the most fundamental historic Shenzhen, October 2004: Workers at Computime, a Hong Kong-mainland jOint-venture company, protest low wages, task of the Chinese proletariat. What is harsh working conditions. needed to realize this is to build a Leninist­ Trotskyist party. This party would link the officially recognized that some of their CIA-backed Afghan mujahedin against lapse, but the danger of the breakup of the struggle of the workers in the state-owned members had been capitalists for many the Soviet Red Army. The bureaucracy country and bloody political chaos. In enterprises with those in the private enter­ years. And last year, at the March 2004 continues to preserve state property, not addition, because the Chinese economy is prises, with the struggles of the migrant party conference, the constitution was out of a subjective identification with somewhat integrated into the world econ­ workers, the poor peasants and women, amended to recognize private property. socialism but, as Trotsky wrote, "only to omy, workers around the world would be and it would fight against Han chauvinism. It is not this or that resolution that the the extent that it fears the proletariat." adversely affected. The current Japan­ The International Communist League is bureaucracy passes, although these are How is a gradual, decade-long, bour­ U.S. alliance against China could frac­ committed to bringing this Marxist pro­ dangerous developments, that determines geois counterrevolution possible? Real ture, as each hungry imperialist beast gram to Chinese workers and rural toilers. where China is going, but social conflict. Trotskyists would not have let this his­ competes for the spoils. To, premise one's conclusion about the toric defeat occur without fighting against Kakehashi vs. Trotsky class character of the Chinese deformed it-or even noticing it until years later. Capitalism Is a Brake For some ten years, the Kakehashi yvorkers state exclusively on the actions Trotsky did not live to see capitalism on Further Development, group publicly debated the question of of the bureaucracy relegates the working restored in the Soviet Union, and his Not an Accelerator China in its newspaper: Is it still some class to merely a passive object of either prognosis of how that would occur­ The Marxist revolutionary program is kind of workers state, or has capitalism the bureaucracy or imperialism. What through civil war-did not happen. But not based on moral repugnance against been restored? While members of Kake­ Kakehashi has done is written off the Chi­ Kakehashi members have lived through war, social oppression, class exploitation hashi may not have agreed on the class nese proletariat as a contender in the bat- the counterrevolutionary destruction of and inequality. It is based on the objective nature of China, in action their party sided fact that capitalism arrests the develop­ with capitalist-restorationist forces-from ~"C"r1 ment of the productive forces and must be the pro-capitalist China Democratic Party , superseded by a superior economic sys­ to the CIA-backed Dalai Lama. In 1999 tem, which will eliminate the basis for all they organized a march on the streets of the evils which are inherent in capitalist Tokyo protesting the visit of former Chi­ society. nese premier Jiang Zemin to Japan, a Kakehashi locates counterrevolution in protest that could only have appealed to China during the same period when Japanese anti-Chinese chauvinists. Their China has been experiencing its highest debate was preceded and guided by a for­ growth rate and has been convulsed by mal rejection of their own program­ labor struggles and peasant unrest. In the which they considered Trotskyist-and a past five years, from the northeast down negation of the Marxist conception of a the coast and into the heart of the coun­ class society: try, workers have been protesting in "With the destruction of the Soviet defense of collectivized property, which Union and East European bloc, there has they consider to be theirs. Only those who been a fundamental change of circum­ stances in the structure of the interna­ are completely blinded by their own tional revolutionary movement, and our defeatism could have missed this. program also needs to be changed ... . For the past two decades, China's Thinking in terms of fixed 'classes' .. . economy has been growing at about 7 to must be decisively considered as a past 9 percent a year, unmatched by even the methodology." -Sekai Kakumei, 30 October main imperialist powers. Between 1998 1995 (Sekai Kakumei was Glitz and poverty: and 2001, government spending in China Kakehashi's previous name.) Sleek new office increased from 12 to 20 percent of the buildings in country's gross domestic product. The In the summer of 2004, Shin Jidai Shanghai's Pudong Sha, the publishing house for Kakehashi, Special Economic largest and fastest-growing component of published a pamphlet titled, "Boiling Zone; migrant government expenditure has been invest­ 'Capitalist China'; Will It Have a Suc­ workers pack ment in infrastructure, which increased cessful Soft Landing on Its Way to Becom­ train station in by 8.1 percent over these three years. ing a Normal 'Imperialist Power'?" The Guangzhou. Moreover, this has been happening at a basic premise of this pamphlet is the fol­ AFP time when the entire capitalist world has lowing: The Trotskyist analysis of the tIe against capitalist counterrevolution. the Soviet Union and East Europe and been pursuing fiscal austerity. China nav­ Stalinist bureaucracy is outdated and the But Kakehashi and the Pioneers actu­ know there was nothing gradual about igated successfully through the 1997-98 period of the "anti-bureaucratic political ally thought it was the Chinese Stalinist those. East Asian financial/economic crisis and revolution is over." Following discussions bureaucracy that would bring socialism to The unprecedented economic and then through a generalized world capital­ with their Hong Kong comrades, the Pio­ China. Under the subhead, "Abandon­ social implosion taking place in the for­ ist recession. If China is capitalist and its neers, Kakehashi became convinced that ment of the Fight Toward Socialism," a mer Soviet Union and East Europe is economy has been growing without cycli­ under the rule of the Communist Party, representative of the Pioneers wrote, "In the real measure of just how historically cal contractions (which are inherent in the Chinese bureaucracy had restored 1979, after Deng came to power, the stage progressive the planned, collectivized capitalism), this would negate the funda­ capitalism during the 1990s, a process of the 'planned economy' went to 'market economy really was, despite bureau­ mental Leninist understanding that we are that, according ib them, took a while. socialist economy' (read: changed to cratic deformities. Trotsky's prediction of living in the epoch of capitalist reaction Workers in China noticed the danger of 'capitalism'). The socialist outlook was what capitalist restoration would look continued on page 10 capitalist restoration in the mid '90s. But completely abandoned" (Kakehashi, 21 like was correct. The laws of capital­ by that time, the workers had lost control March). But the bureaucracy, from Mao ism have resulted in total economic col­ of production and therefore were unable to Hu Jintao, never did and does not now lapse and all-sided nationalist fratricide. b-ltl;j:L~ Jt.-:t1"::~T {,.li~ to put up any resistance, i.e., it was too have a "socialist outlook." Up until 1946, Life expectancy has fallen dramatically, late. In addition, Kakehashi cites three Mao was still seeking a coalition govern­ with the lifespan of an average Russian ~iftpOO(;t.~~. 121I~I main reasons for capitalist counterrevolu­ ment with the bourgeois-nationalist KMT male dropping to 571/2 years. In fact, the ""(i(;t~L \(J) f:J\ i/tl tion: During the 1990s, the bureaucracy [Guomindang] regime of Chiang Kai­ number of deaths exceeded the num­ '949 "'O).¥:IillO)!lllItIJ~IIIHtil..l1J;:;\:1t J: ' 11111 began the process of "primitive accu­ shek. After the revolution, Mao sought to ber of births during the first six years fol­ A$I-')-=A~ir.~ITf!!T~~tI*,i&j/r1/ilt~ ! mulation of capital": capitalists were transform impoverished China into a lowing counterrevolution in the Soviet '9! allowed to become members of the Com­ "socialist" world power through eco­ Union. Malnutrition has become the :!/, munist Party; and the constitution was nomic autarky within the framework of a norm among schoolchildren. The infra­ amended to guarantee protection of pri­ bureaucratically centralized economy, structures of production. technology, sci­ ~ \ate property. Today. according to Kake­ based on the anti-Marxist dogma of ence. transportation. heating and sewage ~ hchhi. the Chinese Communist Party is a "socialism in one country." Contained in have disintegrated. The gross domestic capitalistic people;., political party. and this nationalist perspective were the seeds product fell more than 80 percent from what is now required in China is a social­ of the bureaucracy's implementation of 1991 to 1997. j,t re\ olution. "market reforms" under Deng. called That is what capitalist counterrevolu­ Later on \\e will explain wh;. Kake­ "socialism with Chinese characteristics." tion looks like. The former Soviet Union Spartacist Japan hashi"s position has nothing in common It was under Mao that China consum­ was a global industrial and military Issue No. 30 with Marxism and is in fact deeply social­ mated an alliance with U.S. imperialism power. And because China is so much Current Issue: ¥1 00 democratic. For now. we will note that during the Vietnam War and betrayed rev­ behind \\ here the Soviet Union was eco­ International Subscription: ¥1000 two of the reasons they mention for China olutionary struggles from Indonesia to nomically, capitalist restoration in China Order from/pay to: becoming capitalist in the last century Africa. It contributed to the victory of would be much worse. It would lead to Spartacist Group Japan PO Box 49, Akabane Yubinkyoku actually occurred during this century. It widespread impoverishment of the popu­ capitalist counterrevolution in the Soviet Kita-Ku, Tokyo 115-0091, Japan was in 2002 that the Communist Party Union by supporting, for example, the lation, and tlring not only economic col- 10 JUNE 2005 9 -, China ... (continued from page 9) and decay. If there exists today a capital­ ist system which ensures the rapid and steady growth of productive forces. this calls into question the necessity and pro­ gressive character of proletarian revolu­ tion in the capitalist countries and of working-class rule. The CCP leadership officially describes China as a "socialist market economy." It is the "socialist" (i.e .. collectivist) aspects that are responsible for the positive eco­ nomic developments in China in recent Left: 1991 Yeltsin-Ied capitalist counterrevolution created years. And it is the market aspects of misery for Soviet people. Above: Pensioners protest China's economy that are responsible for withdrawal of Soviet-era benefits, January 2005. the negative developments-the ever­ widening gap between rich and poor. the dismantle. Their ultimate goal is to On a much smaller scale. the situation and channeled the resulting economic immiseration of a large and growing frac­ reduce China to a giant sweatshop under which Kakehashi describes is similar to surplus into the rapid construction of an tion of the populace. tens of millions of neocolonial subjugation. that of the bureaucracy of several trade industrial-military complex. workers laid off from state-owned enter­ The main weapon available to a nation­ unions in Japan. Take for example lichiro Insofar as the economic surplus ap­ prises. the army of impoverished migrants ally isolated and relatively economically [civil servants union]. The misleaders of propriated by the Chinese bureaucrat­ in the cities who can no longer make a liv­ backward workers state against the inter­ this one-million-strong trade union have turned-entrepreneur is used for his per­ ing in the countryside. vention of cheaper goods is the state been taking the dues money that their sonal consumption or speculation, for In China today, it is the core col­ monopoly of foreign trade, i.e., the strict members pay every month and enriching example in real estate, this is the anti­ lectivized elements of the economy whicn control of imports and exports by the gov­ themselves. They have set up "subsidiar­ thesis of the accumulation of capital. continue to be dominant. though not in a ernment. The Beijing bureaucracy's aban­ ies" of the union. whose profits do not go Rather it is the squandering of the exist­ stable, coherent manner. In 2003, state­ donment of the strict state monopoly of back into the trade union to be used to ing productive wealth of society, a form owned and partly state-owned enterprises foreign trade serves to facilitate imperial­ better the conditions of the members or to of social parasitism. In China, over the (shareholding corporations) employed half ism's plans. Despite its rapid growth in prepare for future class battles against the past two decades a large fraction of of China's 750 million workers and ac­ recent years, the Chinese economy is government. Some of the profits go into state-owned industry-whether meas­ counted for 57 percent of the gross value backward relative to even the lesser the pockets of the union bureaucracy. In ured by number of enterprises. labor of China's industrial output (McKinsey capitalist-imperialist powers. While China's addition, it is the bureaucracy which over­ force or volume of production-has been Quarterly, 2004). But this simple statisti­ exports continue to increase at record lev- sees the management of the subsidiaries, privatized. Most small enterprises were cal figure obscures the strategic central­ simply sold off to individuals, typically ity of state-owned industry. the managers who had been running The private (including foreign-owned) them. The larger enterprises, however, sector consists for the most part of facto­ were "privatized" through a sharehold­ ries producing light manufactures by ing scheme. When. a decade or so ago. labor-intensive methods. Heavy industry. China opened its first stock market. much the high-tech sectors. and modern arma­ of the bourgeois media hailed this as proof ments production are overwhelmingly that "communist" China had taken a concentrated in state-owned enterprises. Chinese premier decisive step on the road to capitalism. It is these enterprises that have enabled Hu Jintao at But what has actually happened? New York Stock China to put a man in space. Far more Of the 1.253 companies listed on Exchange, China's two main stock exchanges. in some importantly, it is state-owned industry 29 April 2002. that has enabled China to build an arsenal cases the government holds a majority of of nuclear weapons and long-range mis­ shares. in others a substantial minority. siles to ward off the imperialists' threat of But even the latter remain effectively a nuclear first strike. government-controlled because the CCP All major banks in China are state­ has retained a monopoly of political owned. Almost the entirety of house­ els. these largely consist of low-wage, controls production, and lays off and fires power. According to the 28 March Finan­ hold savings-estimated at $1 trillion­ low-value light manufacture and consu­ the workers. Is Kakehashi now going to cial Times. "Only one-third of issued is deposited in the four main state-owned mer goods like clothing, toys and house­ argue that lichiro is a capitalist organiza­ shares in listed companies form the free commercial banks. Government control hold appliances. China's increase in gross tion and not a real trade union; that this float for trading on the exchanges. The of the financial system has been key to industrial output between 1993 and union, whose leadership is completely rest are mostly owned directly by the state maintaining and expanding production in 2002-from $480 billion to $1.300 bil­ pro-capitalist, should not be defended or its companies .... Permission for initial state-owned industry and to the overall lion-has been nearly completely offset against the government? public offerings is given first and fore­ expansion of the state sector. Continued by the increase in its gross purchases of What the bureaucrats in China are most to state companies, leaving pri­ state ownership of the financial system industrial products, i.e., machinery and doing is certainly criminal from the vate enterprises without an easy funding has enabled the Beijing regime, up to capital equipment. The ultimate answer to standpoint of the workers, but it is not route." There is no workers democracy in now, to effectively (though not totally) China's economic backwardness and the what Marx meant by "primitive accumu­ China-but neither is there shareholders' control the flow of money-capital in and only road to a socialist, i.e., classless, lation of capital." Marx used the term, democracy. Shareholders in China's cor­ out of mainland China. China's currency egalitarian society, lies in world socialist primitive accumulation of capital, to refer porations do not have ownership rights in is not freely convertible; it is not traded revolution and China's integration into an to the initial phase of capitalist develop­ the capitalist sense. They have the right to (legally) in international cu;rency mar­ internationally planned economy. ment in West Europe when the massive income from their financial assets and they kets. The restricted convertibility of the economic surplus appropriated by the can sell their shares. But they cannot deter­ yuan has kept China insulated from the "Primitive Accumulation bourgeoisie did not yet derive from wage mine, or even influence, the management volatile movements of short-term capital of Capital" labor but rather from the peasantry and and corporate policies. These are deter­ which periodically wreak havoc on the According to Kakehashi, during the slave labor in the colonies. This wealth mined by various and often conflicting economies of Third World neocolonial 1990s the bureaucrats who had become was then transformed into capital and political as well as economic pressures. countries from Latin America to East managers of privatized enterprises were used for the initial financing of European Capitalists in Asia. Furthermore, the Beijing regime pocketing the profits, getting rich from industrialization. (See Capital and Theo­ a Communist Party has maintained an increasing undervalu­ buying and selling stock, and also buying ries of Surplus Value.) To get a sense ation of the yuan (in "free market" terms), and selling the usage rights to agricultural of what Marx meant by the primitive Ever since the Deng regime introduced much to the displeasure of American, Jap­ land, and are laying off workers. In an accumulation of capital, think about the market-oriented economic "reforms" in anese and European capitalists. It is pre­ attempt to give a Marxist veneer to their 1873 Land Tax that was enacted during the early 1980s, bourgeois opinion and cisely these core collectivist elements of political appetites, Kakehashi describes the early Meiji period. At that time, the some leftists have maintained that the China's economy which the forces of this process as the "primitive accumula­ Meiji leaders maintained an exceptionally Communist Party itself is gradually re­ world imperialism want to eliminate and tion of capital." high level of exploitation of the peasantry storing capitalism in China while keeping a tight grip on political power. This posi­ tion was widely and loudly trumpeted in 2002 when the 16th Congress of the CCP legitimized party membership for capital­ ist entrepreneurs. In fact, this Congress Left: Joint did not introduce a significant change in U.S.-Japanese war either the social composition of the CCP. maneuvers threaten which has 66 million members, or its China. Right: functional ideology. According to an offi­ Spartacist Group cial survey. of China's two million private Japan at April 1996 business owners, 600,000 are party mem­ protest. Signs at center read: "For the bers and have been for some time. The Right of Nuclear overwhelming majority of these were and Military Testing longtime CCP managerial cadre who took for Chinese Workers over the small state-owned enterprises ... State!" and "Not One they were running when these were pri­ Man, Not One Yen vatized over the past several years. to Imperialist Kakehashi claims that. "The Chinese Japanese Military!" Communist Party has officially become a capitalistic peoples political party, and under the one-party rule of the Commu- '" 10 WORKERS VANGUARD I: .... nist Party. the Chinese state has officially orthodox Trotskyist covering, Kakehashi become a bourgeois state." Many in the even quotes from Trotsky's Revolution bureaucracy may aspire to a place in the Betrayed. This was disingenuous because ruling class of a capitalist China for them­ the chapter in Rem/ution Betrayed that selves and their children. But this would immediately follows the quote they use require a social counterrevolution that deals with the 1936 Soviet constitution, destroys the workers state and creates a which incorporated inheritance rights and new bourgeois state. In East Europe and the "guaranteeing of personal property." the Soviet Union. the bureaucracy as a Trotsky understood that this new provi­ caste did not transform itself into a capi­ sion in the constitution would be used to talist class. It disintegrated, as did its benefit the bureaucrats and not the Soviet political instruments. the ruling Commu­ working masses: nist parties. Various elements of the "... a protection by law of the hut, cow bureaucracy then regrouped into hostile and home-furnishings of the peasant. worker or clerical worker, also legalizes political factions, and in many cases the town house of the bureaucrat, his united with former anti-Communist "dis­ summer home. his automobile and all the sidents" whom they had previously sup­ other objects of 'personal consumption pressed. The new capitalist classes in East and comfort: appropriated by him on the basis of the 'socialist' principle .... The Europe and the former Soviet Union bureaucrat's automobile will certainly be derive. with differing weight in different protected by the new fundamental law countries. from elements of the bureauc­ more effectively than the peasant's October Review racy and also the intelligentsia, many of wagon." 22 April 1989: Workers join student protest in Beijing in early days of whom were not at all privileged, at least Trotsky went on to warn that, "By Tiananmen Square upriSing. Banner reads: "We Workers Have Power." not economically. A capitalist counterrev­ juridically reinforcing the absolutism of olution in China would be accompanied an 'extra class' bureaucracy, the new con­ no need for a workers revolution that iat from Berlin to Beijing. We lost. but the by the collapse of Stalinist bonapartism stitution creates the political premises for smashes the capitalist state apparatus­ lessons of that struggle will be important and the political fracturing of the ruling the birth of a new possessing class." But the police, courts. military-expropriates for future struggles of the international Communist Party. he added: the zaibatsu and the other capitalists, and proletariat. China's high rate of economic growth "If these as yet wholly new relations should solidify. become the norm and be creates organs of workers rule. Therefore, The central event of the Russian coun­ in recent years has produced a certain tri­ legalized, whether with or without resis­ there is no need for a party similar to the terrevolution was Yeltsin's August 1991 umphalist mood among the CCP leader­ tance from the workers. they would, in one that Lenin and Trotsky built which "countercoup" against the inept "pere­ ship and cadre and affiliated intelli­ the long run. lead to a complete liquida­ can lead the proletariat. This is the his­ st(oika coup" by the Stalinist has-beens gentsia. One would certainly encounter a tion of the social conquests of the prole­ toric position of social democracy, in tarian revolution. But to speak of that of the "Emergency Committee." Yeltsin's very different mood among the millions now is at least premature. The proletar­ whicb Kakehashi can now be completely consolidation of his imperialist-backed of workers laid off from state-owned iat has not yet said its last word." [our welcomed, now that it has thrown off its power grab for "democracy," in the ab­ enterprises, impoverished migrants from emphasis] last pretenses to Trotskyism. sence of mass resistance to the encroach­ the countryside and poor peasants barely The new amendment is a reflection of ing capitalist counterrevolution by a eking out a living toiling on tiny plots already existing reality. Private property The Fight for working class atomized and demoralized with rudimentary eq!lipment. Hu and his has existed in China for years. Inheritance Authentic Trotskyism b'y decades of Stalinist rule, spelled the cohorts are driven by delusions of gran­ has existed since 1982. With this amend­ For the past four decades, the ICL has destruction of the Soviet degenerated deur exceeding the wildest imaginings of ment, the bureaucracy is trying to ensure exposed the impostors who masquerade workers state. On this question, the USec Chairman Mao. their privileges through the legal recogni­ as Trotskyists as they abandon every prin­ was united: they were first on the barri­ The present CCP leaders believe that tion of private property and the right to cipled position Trotsky stood for. above cades of counterrevolution. The Japanese they can modernize China, transforming it inherit. By late November 2003 there all the fight for an independent Trotsky­ USec organization even went so far as to into a great world power-indeed, the were 2.97 million private firms with cap­ ist vanguard. Those who cheered the support the anti-Communist red purge global superpower of the 2 I st century- ital exceeding $40.5 billion (Chinese forces of anti-communist counterrevolu­ directed against the Soviet Communist tion share the responsibility for selling Party. 'The CPSU should be disbanded out the gains for which the working class and must be disbanded, which is the start­ fought so hard. They have openly shown ing point for struggles to establishing min­ themselves for what they are: not Trotsky­ imum political democracy" (Sekai Kaku­ ists. but traitors to the October Revolution. mei, 16 September 1991). Kakehashi's international organization. The fate of the People's Republic of the United Secretariat rUSec]. supported China-proletarian political revolution every counterrevolutionary and national­ or capitalist counterrevolution-is of ist movement in the USSR and East huge importance to the working class Europe. They hailed clerical-nationalist throughout the world. The Chinese work­ Polish Solidarnosc as a model of a rev­ ers and peasants have waged many strug­ olutionary working-class movement. The gles in the past ten years. but they are USec embraced the fascistic fringe of atomized and without a leadership whose the Baltic nationalist movements, which perspective is to overthrow the political sought capitalist restoration in the guise rule of the bureaucrats and place power of "independence." fi key battlefield of in the hands of the workers, soldiers and the capitalist counterrevolution was the peasants soviets. In addition to coordi­ A.H. Buchman struggle over East Germany [DOR] in nating and leading the spontaneous and Provisional Central Committee of-the (Trotskyist) Communist League of 1989-90. What was immediately posed localized workers struggles, an interna­ China, winter 1936. Clockwise from left: Wang Fanxi, Frank Glass, Hua was: either proletarian political revolu­ tional Trotskyist party would link the Zhenbin (party printer, not on CC), Han Jun, Chen Qichang, Jiang Zhendong. tion linking up with socialist revolution in fight against the corrupt bureaucracy in West Germany, or capitalist reunification China with that of the North Korean and through ever-greater integration into the embassy Web site). While this sounds like strengthening an imperialist Fourth Reich. Vietnamese workers against their Stalin­ world capitalist economy. They truly a lot of money, broken down it is $13,636 At this critical juncture, the USec was ist rulers. Such a party would work in believe they can control and manipulate per company. Most workers in Japan have politically paralyzed. They were unable concert with their comrades in Japan Citibank. the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi many times this amount in their postal to agree whether capitalist reunification fighting for a workers revolution, and and the Deutsche Bank, to help build up retirement account. should be greeted with champagne or together with the class struggles of the China so that in a generation or two it will Private property in China is as unsta­ aspirin. In contrast, we fought with every­ militant Philippine and South Korean surpass the United States, Japan and Ger­ ble as the bureaucracy itself. Private thing we had for proletarian political rev­ workers against their capitalist rulers. many. Believing they are transforming property and capitalists exist in China olution in the DDR before it was too Only through a socialist revolution in China into a global superpower, they are today to the extent the bureaucracy, act­ late, as the only way to defend the anti­ imperialist Japan will the basis be laid actually clearing the path for returning ing under the pressures from imperialism capitalist conquests of the world prole tar- for the development of a socialist Asia .• China to the pre-revolutionary era of on the one hand and the proletariat on untrammeled imperialist SUbjugation. the other, has allowed them to exist. Whether or not private property will be Constitutional Amendments "inviolable" will not be decided by the Cannot Change the constitution. but by social conflict. It is .e~lUl {SPARTACJST~; Class Nature of a State possible that "inviolable" private prop­ During the National People's Congress erty would be violated by the bureauc­ Defeat Imperialist Drive which took place in 2004, the bureaucrats racy under the impact of proletarian for Counterrevolution! $I~P*, II ± S<.~ r:p IIIY!J amended the Chinese constitution to read: struggle andlor open counterrevolution­ Defend, Extend Gains of 1949 Revolution! &.i$Il~! "Citizens' legally obtained private prop­ ary threats from the imperialists and the For a China of Workers and Peasants Councils in a Socialist Asia! fl!JlIllIrIlI '>49'U: ••J; ! erty shall not be violated." In an attempt bourgeoisie, or. more fundamentally, by "-1'1'±Ulitj;J(.!i!:ltIIl9,I'1<»!ltl!Il9q>lIIi1!iif4'.. ,. to appease the populace, the Chinese go\'­ an ascendant working class struggling Down With.the UN Starvation Blockade! '§l$fjEUwlMElil ernment announced that the amendment for political power. Defend Iraq Against U.S. would help prevent state officials from Those who argue that China is capi­ and Allied Imperialist Attack! fiJ!1Jt11L1l·Jii~.IIl! requisitioning private property and pos­ talist must reject one or another funda­ Statement of the International J(.~B9~fi~Sli!1R! sessions. This amendment is surely a dan­ mental element of classic Marxism. usu­ Communist League, 23 October 2002 n~U~mll!Jlll.tIf.m! "----.. ,... ------gerous development, which a section of ally the theory of the state. If a workers ·nWJ'i§§a. the workers in China understands. It was state, however deformed, can become a In Protest Against Resurgent Militarism first proposed two years earlier at the 16th capitalist state through amending a consti­ Japanese Longshoremen 8~~I.A.I!t!•• ~. Congress and provoked something of a tution, which Kakehashi claims, then log­ Refuse to Load Warships ---.... _-- _Al'"ldl.lI.fCL.Sa.1~CiI'O _-'OIT '0"", ..... "'"----,. popular backlash. ically the reverse would also be true. That - "" . $1 (28 pages) -"- "...... This amendment is one reason that is, a capitalist state, such as Japan, could -.. ""~ Kakehashi has decided that capitalism be transformed into a workers state by Make checks payable/mail to: has been restored in China. In a dis­ making changes to the Japanese consti­ Spartacist Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 ingenuous attempt to give itself an tution. This would mean that there is 10 JUNE 2005 11 tionate numbers of those collecting SSI Class War... disability benefits and children receiving (continued from page 16) survivor benefits are black. Black oppression is the bedrock of this certain percentage of your income upon capitalist system. While black workers retirement. Low-wage workers (and we are an integral component of the \\lorking mean low wage-those earning under class, black people in America suffer spe­ $16,000 per year) are promised 49 percent cial oppression as a race-color caste. Thus. of their pre-retirement income-a pittance. black people suffer more from any eco­ but for many retirees it is the difference nomic downturn. Conditioning this is the between starvation and survival. Opposi­ deindustrialization of the U.S.-rust-belt tion to the various schemes :hat threaten cities like Detroit are emblematic. Dein­ the benefit system is widespread among the dustrialization has weakened the position working population. The administration of black workers who were key in auto. wants a fundamental change that would steel and other industrial unions, which tum the SSl system into a "poor-people's" were the heavy guns of American labor. program. like welfare. Remember what Blacks and Hispanics are now likely happened to welfare? It was virtually elim­ to be stuck in low-wage service jobs, but inated under Democrat Clinton-in part by those who still have unionized jobs using racist verbiage to convince white account for a quarter of the organized workers that their tax dollars were suppos­ labor movement. A focus of a fighting Harris/IFL edly going to support black single mothers. labor movement would be to champion Top: British miners battle cops in heroic 1984- In fact. white people. including white sin­ workers at the bottom-blacks, immi­ 85 strike against Thatcher's union-busting. gle mothers. make up the bulk of welfare grants and women. This means fighting Thatcher's pension privatization scheme is a model for Bush. beneficiaries. racial oppression. chauvinism and dis­ Press Association crimination that are used to divide and Divide and Conquer weaken the working class. It also means York City. nearly half of black males aged in the mid 1930s the CP came to espouse Bush has attempted to push his scheme fighting tooth and nail against govern­ 16 to 64 are out of work. Some "future"! a "popular front" with "progressive" bour­ by pitting one section of the working class ment take-backs of social programs. Labor and Capital- geois politicians. peddling illusions in a against the other. Forty percent of elderly When Clinton axed welfare in 1996, the An IrreconCilable Conflict reformed and benevolent capitalism. This helped cement the labor movement's alli­ black people rely solely on SSI to sur­ union tops turned a blind eye and many Without some hard class struggle, the vive. In January, Bush parroted one of the enlisted as overseers of the government's ance with the Democratic Party-the capitalist assault on the working class other party of the American capitalist most cynical claims of the pro-privatization slave-labor "workfare" schemes. The dev­ and oppressed in this country will only nght-wingers: that the higher mortality rate bosses-that has shackled it to this day. astation wrought by the axing of welfare intensify. But the current trade-union lead­ of black men means that black people are Labor bureaucrats and liberals look swelled the ranks of workers desperately ership's accommodation to the capitalist getting less for their SSI tax dollars. His to revive the New Deal coalition of the competing for jobs with appalling condi­ class through the Democrats keeps the conclusion is that blacks should support tions, paying starvation wages. Capitalist 1930s to pressure the Democrats to act as working class disarmed, demoralized and "friends of labor." But now. as then, the privatization so that the pitiful sum they "workfare" schemes have acted to sharply demobilized. The union tops believe that manage to accrue is "their own," presum­ depress wages and increase overall job outcome will depend not upon the sup­ capitalism can be reformed, putting all posed good graces of the capitalist Dem­ ably to pass on to their orphaned children. insecurity. faith in compromises with the class enemy. As we wrote in our article "Bush to Amer- When Bush promises that his SSI plan ocratic Party but upon a contest of forces This has led to defeat after defeat. The between the working class and the bour­ readiness of the working class to fight is geoisie. In the 19305. the Communist evident in, for example, the militant strike League of America. then the Trotskyist 1.- of nearly 60,000 members of the United party, explained in their paper, the Mili­ Food and Commercial Workers that ended tant (23 June 1934): last year. This popular and winnable "What will social insurance become? five-month-long battle against California It will become what the workers make supermarket owners was sold out by a it. The words 'social insurance' were union leadership unwilling to wield the wrung out of Roosevelt by the grip of UFCW picket workers' power to put the employers up an aroused working class .... But to obtain line against actual relief. the working class must pre­ against the wall. The bureaucrats kept the sent its own demands for social im,ur­ Ralphs strike limited to California despite the supermarket, ance and immediately build the united fact that union contracts covering tens of front of labor that will push it over." Los Angeles, 17 October thousands of supermarket workers in In the end. whatever gains are won 2003, other states had expired during the strike. through struggle come under constant Instead of extending it, the bureaucrats attack by the ruling class and, as we are saw the strike as a pressure tactic on the seeing, are ultimately reversible. What is politicians and ended up caving in to the needed is a party that fights in the interest bosses' demands. of the working class, absolutely indepen­ The social reforms that were gained in dent of the bourgeois parties and interests, ica: No Pensions, No Jobs. No Rights" assures that "future generations receive the mid 1930s such as Social Security a party dedicated to leading proletarian (WVNo. 842,18 February): benefits equal to or greater than the ben­ were won through intense class struggle. revolution to seize the means of produc­ efits today's seniors get," he's hitting one "The fact that black men have a lower As we wrote: tion and put the vast resources of this life expectancy than others powerfully of his most sour notes. In fact. all the "The mass industrial unions of the cro country, and ultimately this planet. to ben­ illustrates the entrenched and vicious "reforms" proposed today are designed to were born out of the three citywide efit the mass of people. As the Trotskyists racial oppression of black people .... This batter "future generations." Youth are sad­ general strikes in 1934 (Minneapolis, blatant racism barely elicitel a response San Francisco and Toledo)-all led wrote in the Militant (14 July 1934): dled with shamefully poor, underfunded -such is today's reactionary social cli­ by 'reds' -and were built through mili­ "A new Communist Part v that will blend mate where black people's exclusion schools. At the same time, college students tant class-struggle tactics like the sit· that militancy and the fighting tradition from a decent life is to be accepted as a are being hit with deep cuts in school down strike. Contrary to the union mis­ of the American working class with the given for all time." loans and grants, assuring that they will leaders and their reformist tails. the right theory and practice of the international Aside from Bush's putrid racism, the con­ be left with crippling debt, if they can to organize wasn't won in Washington, revolutionary movement is needed now. but through pitched battles with scabs. tention that blacks get less bang for their afford to attend college at all. And even not to renovate and redecorate the pres­ cops and government troops." ent social system but to end it and build buck with SSI is an utter lie. For one those who make it through school are -"Feds Loot Social Security:' the new-the Socialist Society:' thing. the low life expectancy figure is having a hard time finding jobs. The WV No. 669. 30 May 1997 largely because.of the tragically high U.S. Department of Labor reported that The 1934 Minneapolis Teamsters The Rip-Off Plot death rates inflicted by racist American in February alone, 373,000 discouraged strikes were won. not simply due to the Back in the' 30s. consen'ative elements capitalism upon blacks in childhood ·and college graduates dropped out of the labor immense courage and labor solidarity of of the bourgeoisie opposed the passage of young adulthood. The administration's force. A.nd black unemployment is more the workers nor the inherent pO\ver of the Social Security legislation. \1ore recently. claim also ignores the fact that dispropor- than double that of whites. and in New truckers to shut down production. As one of Bush's judicial nominees. Janice James P. Cannon. a leader of that battle Rogers Brown. called 1937 "the year the and founder of American Trotskyism. Supreme Court began to uphold the explained in 1936. success depends on l\'ew Deal. 'the triumph of our socialist understanding that e\ery class battle is: I'CYolution'" LVI'H' r(I/'k Timcs AJaga::inc. "a bullheaded struS!~de between two forces whose interest, ~~re in comtant and 17 April). In opposition to the likes of Marxist Working-C.lass Biweekly of the Spartacist League irreconcilable conflict. The partnership Brown. liberals laud Social Security as of capital and lahor is a lie. The imme­ the main progressive government pro­ diate issue in everv casc is decided bv gram in modern American history. But in $10/21 issues of Workers Vanguard :J New ~ Renewal the relative strength of the opposing one important respect. it is the opposite (includes English-language Spartacist and Black History and the Class Struggle) forces at the l1loment. The onlv strike international rates: $25,'21 issues---Airmail $10/21 issues-Seamail strategy worth a tinker's dam is the ,trat· of progressive. It is hased on a regressive egy that begim with this conception." tax. All wage and salaried income is taxed :J $2/6 intro~uctory issues of Workers Vanguard (includes English·language Spartacist) -Notebook Ofilll Agitator (1958) ·at a flat rate for the employee (currently :J $2/4 issues of Espartaco (en espanol) (includes Spanish·language Spartacist) Aiming to derail such class struggle 6.2 percent) up to a maximum amount Name ______and growing radicalism, Democratic (currently $90.000 a year). Because of the Address ______president Franklin Delano Roosevelt pro­ enormous widening of income differences posed a set of palliative reforms known over the past few decades. the top 15 per­ Apt.# ____ as the New Deal. It was the Communist cent of salaried income is now exempt City ______State ______Zip _____ Party (CP) and other misleaders of the from SSI taxes. Removing the $90,000 union movement that carried Roosevelt's cap on SSI taxes completely could in Phone (__ ) E-mail ______-::; 850 liberal bourgeois politics into the work­ itself-with no other changes in tax or Make checks payable/mail to: Spartacist Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 ing class. In the course of its Stalinist benefit policy--virtually eliminate the degeneration over the previous decade, officially projected future shortfall for 12 WORKERS VANGUARD the next three-quarters of a century. inegalitarian distribution of income of Much has been made of the "success­ any industrialized capitalist country save ful" privatization schemes introduced by ~_~!_~_~ZA!!'!' -~ Russia (whose economy is in shambles). two of Bush's models: the fascistic Chilean MINNEAPOUSSHOWS THE WAY The successful slashing of social benefits dictator General Augusto Pinochet and Learn F;';-';;-Mi~neep~lisT -'Militant ~-;P;ckotLi; Ro;;t.-S~abs,Cop., has been the fruit of a longstanding right­ Britain's "Iron Lady," Margaret Thatcher. =::-==_:;=-~ =',;:..z::::.?_;: Special DCcuti •••~Thuss and Stop. wing strategy. In the 1980s the Reagan­ Bush became enamored of the prospect of t";~jt~~~~~3I~~~~~:;ltT~;':~F~ ites deliberately manufactured massive privatization after talking to a key archi­ budget deficits-the federal debt tripled tect of the Chilean plan, Jose Pinera, now between 1981 and 1990-to create the a fellow at the U.S.-based Cato Institute, financial pressure and resulting political a right-wing think tank that has pushed conditions to dismantle the "welfare privatization here. That plan was drawn state." Bush's second term will see the up by a group of American economists lowest tax take as a percentage of GDP known as the "Chicago Boys" and was Trotskyist since the Truman administration (1945- implemented after Pinochet's bloody CIA­ leadership won 53), allowing the administration to cry backed coup in 1973 that left tens of thou­ Teamsters "deficit" to fuel their cuts. sands of workers and leftists dead. The union-organizing Democratic president Bill Clinton drive through system is administered by a bunch of com­ militant strikes accomplished what no Republican had panies, whose boards include many for­ in Minneapolis, been able to do-gutting welfare-while mer Pinochet cabinet members, that are 1934. assuring that millions of blacks and His­ among the most profitable in Chile. The panics were in prison and welfare moms success of the plan from the point of view were thrown into the low-wage work­ of the capitalist class may also be judged force. This set the stage for the assault by the fact that at least half of the Chilean where in the federal budget (most likely est and hefty fees. The balance of their on Social Security. It was Senator Daniel people never accumulate sufficient earn­ more cuts in sodal services) or. . .increased benefits is to be made up by their (suppos­ Patrick Moynihan, a respected Democratic ings to receive even the minimum . taxes. In other words: You put your money edly) successful stock and bond invest­ Party strategist. who openly floated the monthly pension, equivalent to $100. ! into the system, the government "bor­ ments. Tell this to those approaching idea of privatization in 1998. The Demo­ l:he British plan, installed in the mid . rows" it, and you have to pay more so the retirement who lost their shirts during the cratic Party leadership's line now is that '80s by Thatcher, a committed union­ government can pay back the debt! 2000-2002 market plunge. The privatiza­ it would consider all manner of cuts as buster with notorious contempt for the The argument to replace the "bank­ tion scheme would put people's paltry long as the privatization part is dropped. working masses, is now facing a growing rupt" Social Security system with private retirement savings at the mercy of the When it comes time to pull the plug on scandal over the fact that many workers accounts is full of Bush doublespeak. The repeated financial crises and economic social programs, the Democrats simply are worse off in retirement as a result of predictions of "bankruptcy" hinge on pro­ depressions that have marked the history have a better bedside manner. her privatization plan. In addition, admin­ jections of a steep slowdown in economic of industrial capitalism since its rise two The people pushing privatization are istration fees and charges take as much as and population growth-lower than any centuries ago. preaching faith in the stock market and 30 percent out of retirement savings. two decades of U.S. history, including capitalist economy. Investment firms will Clearly, this has whetted the appetites of the years encompassing the Great Depres­ Laying the Groundwork rake in millions but for working people some \Vall Street bankers. sion, 1920-39! If there were such an to Destroy 551 it amounts to a big lip-off. Take a look at The White House' director ?f strategic extended period of stagnation, and this is In 1983, the "free market" Cato Insti­ the actual state of the economy right now. initiatives, Peter Wehner. laid out the ideo­ certainly possible, U.S. capitalism would tute published a study, provocatively titled Over decades, the greedy capitalists have logical theme to the current campaign in a have a lot more to worry about than short­ "Achieving a 'Leninist' Strategy." Mak­ destroyed the U.S. industrial infrastructure, memo, leaked in January, that calls Social falls in pensions! On the other hand, the ing clear exactly which interests are being and this administration has plunged the Security reform "one of the most impor­ projections for returns on private accounts catered to, the battle plan called for forg­ country into huge debt. The trade deficit, tant consenative undertakings of modern are based on a stock market yield of 7 ing a coalition "that will gain directly which stood at S346 billion in 2001, rose to times," and "not simply an economic chal­ percent. If the economy were doing that from its implementation ... the banks, insur­ $666 billion in 2004. Some 20 percent of lenge. but a moral goal and a moral good" well. well enough to make the private ance companies, and other institutions this debt is held by Japanese finance capi­ [his empha~is 1. accounts payoff. then the SSI trust would that will gain from providing such plans talists and the Chinese Stalinist bureauc­ Bush's privatization campaign uses also be doing splendidl) and the system to the public." The Cato paper sketched racy. They, along with everybody else who mystification and lies to panic the masses. wouldn't need any help at all' out a series of measures to "prepare the holds U.S. gO\'ernment securities, are increasingly concerned as the value of the , The Cuban Revolution, bureaucratically (BLA, an urban guerrillaist outgrowth of office shot up .;..------by FBI in 1969 deformed from its inception and eco­ the Black Panthers), she was convicted in raid that killed nomically suffering under the U.S. 1977 of killing the state trooper and her Fred Hampton, blockade and especially since capitalist own companion, Zayd Shakur! The all­ Mark Clark. counterrevolution in the Soviet Union, white jury included two friends, one girl­ must be defended against imperialist friend and two nephews of New Jersey attack. state troopers. Three physicians testified Shortly before Shakur's bounty was that she had been so seriously hurt by cop increased, Cuban gusano (worm) Luis gunfire that ,he would have been physi­ Posada Carriles entered the U.S. (see cally unable to pull a trigger. The state "Extradite Cusano Terrorist to Havana!" trooper was killed with a bullet from a formed into leaders and foot soldiers The East Coast Panthers were among the WV No. 849, 27 May). With a blood­ police revolver. There was no gun residue fighting for black freedom. Shakur wrote main targets. and the FBI and local police soaked resume of 45 years of terror in found on her fingers. Her wounds also about joining the Panthers: "If a light initiated national search-and-destroy mis­ hand that stretches from Cuba across showed that she was shot twice in the had been plugged into me, i'm sure i sions for suspected BLA members-this North, Central and South America, he is back while her arms were raised over her would have lit up half of Harlem. I was was the context of Shakur's arrest and now requesting political asylum from his nead in a position of surrender. The judge fired up and raring to go. When i joined trial. former CIA employers. This counterrevo­ added 33 years to her' life sentence the. BPP, i was determined to give it That Shakur is alive at all today, let lutionary killer is looking for sanctuary because she would not stand up for him everything i had." Shakur helped organ­ alone out of prison, is amazing. Many of with his reactionary gusano cohorts in in court. ize a free medical clinic in Harlem. the original cadres of the Black Libera­ Miami who are welcomed by the U.S. Two days after he escaped, Sundiata Assata Shakur joined the Black Pan­ tion Army like Shakur were derived from imperialist butchers. In a May 10 speech, Acoli was captured, tried separately and ther Party right after J. Edgar Hoover the old New York Panther leadership. Fidel Castro said that the U.S. actions sentenced to life plus 30 years. Sundiata ordered the 41 FBI offices to intensify They sought to keep alive the spirit of against Shakur were intended to divert Acoli is a college-educated mathemati­ their efforts "to expose, disrupt, mis­ black rebellion through carrying out attention away from the criminaf Posada. cian who registered voters in Mississippi direct, discredit, and otherwise neutral­ individual armed actions. Rejecting the during the 1964 "Freedom Summer." He stated that Shakur was a victim of ize" militant black organizations as part Mar~ist strategy of mobilizing the inte­ racial persecution, adding 'They wanted Like Shakur, he joined the Harlem Black of the deadly COINTELPRO (Counter­ grated power of the working class to to portray her as a terrorist, something Panther organization. He was arrested in Intelligence Program) campaign. Assata fight for black freedom, surviving Pan­ that was an injustice, a brutality, an infa­ 1969 as one of the Panther 21, a frame­ Shakur, like so many others, watched thers went into the dead end of Demo­ mous lie:' up conspiracy case that included the while comrades were arrested and gunned cratic Party electoralism and/or black The vendetta against Assata Shakur ludicrous charge that they had plotted to down and the organization was sabotaged nationalist schemes. has been pushed by both Democrats and blow up, among other things, the Bronx and splintered. Today, black youth continue to be Republicans. In September 1998, the Botanical Garden. After a nine-month In 1971 the FBI had initiated a new beaten and gunned down by kill-crazy Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) even trial, the longest trial in New York State counterinsurgency program campaign cops on the streets of rotting American voted for a House resolution demanding history, the jury took 90 minutes to named "NEWKILL." Hoover wrote in cities. The fight for black freedom is the that Castro return Assata to the U.S. acquit the Panthers of the 156 counts a memo, "The Newkill cases and other strategic question of the American revo­ When caught out in their support for this against them. Acoli has spent years in terrorist acts have demonstrated that lution. There will be no social revolution reprehensible motion, some members of federal penitentiaries, including the noto­ in many instances those involved in in this country without the united strug­ the CBC backpedaled, with L.A. Con­ rious maximum security unit in Marion, these acts are individuals who cannot be gle of black and white workers led by a gresswoman Maxine Waters and Chicago Illinois, where he was in lockdown for identified as members of an extremist multiracial revolutionary vanguard party. Congressman Danny Davis "explaining" 23 hours a day. In August 2004, 67-year­ group .... They are frequently supporters, Hands off Assata Shakur! Free Sun­ that the Republican House leadership old Acoli was denied parole, which can­ community workers, or people who hang diata Acoli! Free Mumia Abu-Jamal! had "quietly slipped this bill" through not be reviewed for another ten years. around the headquarters of the extremist For black liberation through socialist and deceptively used only Shakur's for­ In 1979, Assata Shakur was freed from group .... If you have no file, open files." revolution! • mer name of Joanne Chesimard. As we New Jersey's Clinton Women's Prison in wrote in "Black Democrats Join Racist a dramatic and well-executed escape. Vendetta Against Assata Shakur" (WV After the recent announcement of the No. 699, 23 October 1998): "To believe raised bounty, Mos Def published a trib­ ship into a united front to stop the Nazis. Waters and Davis, they either voted for a ute to Assata Shakur titled "Assata Sha­ Hamburg ... Instead, the KPD leaders labeled the SPD resolution they hadn't bothered to read kur: The Government's Terrorist is Our (continued from page 5) "social-fascists," thus alienating social­ or endorsed the extradition of black Community's Heroine" that includes a democratic workers from pursuing a course Soviet Union in 1990, the SPD/Green COINTELPRO victims other than Assata moving passage about the impact of her of common struggle against the Nazis. The government has, since late 2004, been Shakur!" frame-up and subsequent escape on the KPD leadership left the working-class planning, in consort with the Israeli On 2 May 1973, Assata Shakur, Sun­ black Brooklyn neighborhood where he base of the SPD to its pro-capitalist lead­ government, a new anti-Semitic ban on diata Acoli and Zayd Malik Shakur grew up: "As a high school student I ership, which feared the independent immigration to Germany by Jews from were stopped on the turnpike ostensibly remember seeing posters all around the mobilization of the working class against the former Soviet Union. The Conference for a "faulty taillight" by cops of the Brooklyn community I lived in that read: the Nazis. Instead of mobilizing the of the Ministry of the Interior established Nazi-infested New Jersey state troopers. Assata Shakur is Welcome Here:' working class, in 1932 the SPD leader­ criteria whereby only "economically use­ In fact. the cops had been tracking their Assata, An Autobiographv, Shakur's ship called for a vote to Hindenburg as ful" Jews were to be allowed to come to car and organized an ambush. A state own story written in 1987, has some a lesser evil. In January 1933. Hinden­ Germany. Whereas we protested vehe­ burg appointed Hitler as chancellor. The trooper pulled out a gun, and when the powerful parallels with the recently pub­ mently against such an anti-Semitic and determination of the German proletariat smoke cleared, one trooper and Zayd lished book by Mumia Abu-Jamal. We racist ban on immigration, the "anti­ Shakur were dead. Sundiata Acoli had Want Freedom, A L!fe in the Black Pan­ to fight against Hitler was hetrayed by Germans" kept silent. In exactly the same the leaderships of the SPD and KPD. That escaped and ~sata Shakur was severely ther Party, in portraying the idealistic way, they take the side of the government wounded. Near death, she was finally youth that joined the Black Panther Party is why Hitler came to power without a in the state's "war against terror." For shot being fired. The Nazis then smashed taken to a hospital where she was (see review in Black History No. 18, Jan­ example, on 10 July 2004, 150 of them the Communist Party, then the trade chained to a bed, beaten and tortured, her uary 2005). The books give a sense of with U.S. and Israeli flags and war cries unions and finally the SPD. Only when arms paralyzed by gunshot wounds. She the determined black youth who grew up such as "Panzer into Ramallah-that's the was kept in barbarous conditions, in iso­ under the hellish conditions of racist the workers movement had been atom­ true Antifa" and "Anybody that likes lation in the basement of a men's prison, capitalist America, and who were trans- ized could the Nazis carry out their war Kreuzberg's got to be crap," terrorized the against the Soviet Union and the Holo­ Berlin immigrant districts of Neukolln caust. The Holocaust was the industrial and Kreuzberg. Without the protection of extermination of six million Jews and

A Spartacist Pamphlet $1 200 cops, who arrested many counterdem­ 500,000 Roma and Sinti [Gypsies] and Bfack IffstOry onstrators, they would have been unable countless others. Today the SPD/Green to carry out this racist anti-Arab march, and tile Class Struggle government is utilizing the commemo­ Black History --1fI.1.-__ since they encountered the rage of 250 rations of the 60th anniversary of libera­ and the Class Struggle leftists and residents who closed ranks tion, in the name of the "German respon­ against them. We demand: Full citizenship sibility" for the World War and the No. 18 rights for everyone who has made it here! Holocaust. to advance the interests of Ger­ The reason the "anti-Germans" are still man imperialism. Already in 1999. "Never Black History is sent to all tolerated as a part of the left is the widely again Auschwitz!" served as the battle cry Workers Vanguard subscribers. accepted belief in "collective guilt." The in the war against Serbia, in order to ideo­ "collective guilt" lie that all Germans are logically justify the first wartime deploy­ $1 (48 pages) responsible for the Holocaust white­ ment of the Bundeswehr [German army] washes those who are truly guilty. It was since the end of the Second World War. Order from/pay to: the German bourgeoisie that brought Hit­ Only a successful workers revolution will Spartacist Publishing Co. ler to power in the early 19305. This was avenge the victims of the Holocaust. To Box 1377 GPO aided by the treacherous leadership of achieve this, it is necessary to build a New York, NY 10116 the KPD [German Communist Party], multi ethnic workers party that fights every which refused to force the SPD leader- form of oppression .• 14 WORKERS VANGUARD .r::: () olution but to the most elementary needs "Honor" ~ of workers, women and immigrants. Q) -0 For decades the Spartacist League/U.S. '0 Killings ... Q; journal Women and Revolution has been -0 C condemning and mobilizing against such (continlled/rom page 4) Q) horrific crimes against women as genital learned to expect from the state and other '"' mutilation. suttee. forced marriage and public institutions. The money to get a child marriages. l Women and Remllitioll truck to start a vegetable business comes has been suspended as a separate journal. from an uncle. not a bank or start-up Women and Rew,llltion pages now appear money from a state program. In most in Workers Vanguard and other sectional cases. one's first job is either at a family Bangladeshi papers of the ICL. as well as the ICL's enterprise or at a factory. achieved through women scarred theoretical journal. Spartacist.] We com­ the recommendation of a family member in acid attacks. munists see these abominations as part of working there. All the old oppressive tra­ the oppressive institution of the family, ditions are preserved through these inten­ which is necessary to maintain class soci­ sified ties to the family. ety and can be fought only by mohilizing Everyone knows that women are the the power of the trade unions to bring big losers of the counterrevolution. In the women into social production, sharing the DDR lEast German deformed workers perpetrators' possible immigrant back­ the Greens. The SPD/Green government social power of their class. away from the state]. 90 pereent of women were em­ ground' Violence against women cannot was responsible for sending German isolation of the homc. This is especially ployed and gmw up with the awareness be permitted to be relativized" (TdF dem­ troops abroad to wage a war. in the Bal­ important for fcmale immigrants. It is at that they could care for themselves and onstration call). In Germany, "honor" kans. for the first time since World War II work that language skills are really ac­ their children and get ahead in their pro­ killings are not automatically viewed as and now has troops in Afghanistan. The quired. where bonds de\elop on the picket fession with or without a man. But female murder. but are reduced to manslaughter German state makes use of feminist sym­ lines and in social struggles, where prej­ engineers. waitresses and nuclear physi­ "because the stamp of the perp's cultural pathy for the plight of "import brides" as udices between those of German and cists suddenly found themselves out on upbringing is taken into account" (Sey­ a way to close one of the last few remain­ other backgrounds. between men and the street and back in the kitchen. as the ran Ates, ta;: interview). This is both ing legal loopholes on immigration. just women of all backgrounds can be tran­ state-owned factories were destroyed one anti-woman and racist. and it's no won­ as the imprisonment of Afghan women scended. The liberation of women starts after another. Official unemployment rates der Turkish feminists are enraged at this. under the hllrka was used as a justifica­ in the class struggle and will finally be in eastern Germany are twice as high as in In the eyes of communists and the work­ tion for bombing Afghanistan to get rid achieved when the working class takes the west and twice as high for women as >ing class (and for that matter anyone who of the Taliban government. which had power. freeing women from age-old fam­ for men. But in the Turkish neighbor­ upholds the gains of the French Revolu­ originally come to power with the sup­ ily servitude and reorganizing society in hoods of Berlin. unemployment is just as tion) murdering a woman is murder. port of the U.S. and all West European the interest of all the oppressed. The fam­ high as in eastern Germany. In this atmos­ governments. Feminists Call for ily cannot simply be abolished: rather, phere of joblessness and isolation. relig­ All these lies must be taken apart and State Intervention its social functions, such as housework. ion and the oppression of women tlourish. exposed. Immemorial customs like the child rearing, preparation of food and Recently Turkish feminist voices have It is a dangerous illusion to believe that bride price, forced marriage and crimes education must be replaced by social been getting more of a public hearing: a the racist. capitalist German state can of "honor" exist in countries kept back­ institutions. few years ago, Serap, Cileli wrote and play a positive role in the liberation of ward by imperialist domination and in the For us as Trotskyists the point of depar­ then filmed her autobiography. Wir sind immigrant women. Laws of the central­ beleaguered ghettos in German cities, ture for attaining all this is to construct a Elire Tiichter, nicht Eure Ehre! [We Are ized state power are enforced in a com­ Your Daughters. Not Your Honor!]: Sey­ pletely racist and undemocratic manner. ran Ates won the Berlin Woman's Prize ultimately targeting not just victims of for her autobiography, Grosse Reise ins racism. but also the victims of "honor" Feller [Long Journey into the Flames]: killings and other patriarchal brutality. If and Necla Kelek's best seller Die ji"CIllde Hatun had been amled and her murderers Brmtt [The Foreign Bride] exposes forced had known she had a weapon and knew marriage. These women have pulled how to use it. she might still be alive today. Nall1l1s (honor) out of the closet and While the present TdF campaign is far exposed it; they have also taken on the removed from the grassroots support of racism of those liberals who preach a the French feminist organization "Neither "cultural relativism" that makes peace Sluts nor Slaves:' which brought 20,000 with the most abhorrent anti-woman onto the streets on International Women's practices by claiming that criticizing any Day in 2003, its strategy ha~ a lot in com­ aspect of another culture is racist. Thus mon with that organization's. As our the liberals sit on their hands when. for French section, the Ligue Trotskyste de example. Somali women become prey to Frrtnce (LTF), wrote in Le Bolchevik genital mutilation. Tibetan baby girls to No. 163 (Spring 2003): the traditional female infanticide, Afghan "It is criminal to sidetrack the anger and women are stuck under the suffocating courage of these young women into calls hllrka and Turkish. Kurdish, Indian, Pak­ on the class enemy, the bourgeois state. to protect them! It is not with calls for istani and many other women are forced Friends of Afghanistan Society more police repression in the ghettos that Afghan women's militia takes up arms against CIA-backed Islamic funda­ into marriage and become victims of one can resolve the pathology of the "honor" killings. In an interview with the ghettos, which are hit by the economic mentalist cutthroats. Spartacists hailed 1979 Soviet Red Army intervention in Afghanistan. tageszeitullg [taz] (28 February), Seyran crisis and where social backwardness is Ates stated: "Leftists and liberals and encouraged by the systematic segrega­ tion of minority communities'" where lack of citizenship and residency multiethnic vanguard party that the Bol­ feminists are always at a complete loss -quoted in "Racism and Islamic rights makes it almost impossible for a shevik leaders Lenin and Trotsky would and organize conferences and seek con­ Fundamentalism in France." young woman to break away from her recognize as their own. In Germany today sensus. That isn't enough." Turkish wom­ Workers Vanguard No. 811. family. Necla Kelek documents the plight this entails fighting for full citizenship en. she said, are "slaves in the Muslim 10 October 2003 of young second- and third-generation rights for all who live here, regardless of marriage market." Ates makes the same Seyran Ates, a former squatter, calls on women married off to cousins in Turkey: where they, their parents or grandparents proposals as Necla Kelek and Terre des the capitalist state to copy the immigra­ "A person's residence permit is lost, were born, or what their religious back­ Femmes: more women's safe houses and tion laws of Denmark's rightist conserva­ according to paragraph 44 of the Aus­ ground may be. Through its daily strug­ more stringent criminal law. tive government. according to which "only Hindergesetz. if they leave the country gles against racism and the oppression of But the SPD/Green government is not those who subordinate themselves to Dan­ 'for a reason which by its nature is not women, a revolutionary party will build making more money available to Papatya ish culture should be allowed into the coun­ temporary.' After six months at the latest, the possibility of returning to Germany the authority among the workers to mo­ and other women'.s houses, and neither is try." Necla Kelek agrees. In Die Jremde is lost. If the young woman doesn't know bilize them against all manner of back­ the SPD/PDS-run Berlin City Council Braut she openly calls for revising the this and is unable to report to the Ger­ ward consciousness, including the abuse [Senat]. Public funds for abused women hated "Auslandergesetz" [German law man authorities, she has to stay in Tur­ ofwomen. are being massively slashed along with all regulating foreign immigrants] to read: key forever." As Engels wrote in The Origin oj the other social measures. We oppose these "Bringing together the family on the basis But just take a look at all the feminists, Family, Private Property, and the State, cuts, while recognizing that the homes of marriage is authorized only when both reformists and so-called socialists, with the liberation of women is the precondi­ run by determined, hard-working and partners are at least 21. as in the Nether­ their arrogance and illusions in the Ger­ tion to "bring the whole female sex back often courageous social workers are just lands, or following the Danish model, when man imperialist state: not one will join us into public industry, and ... this in turn a drop in the bucket compared to the they have completed their 24th year." PDS in the call for the simple democratic demands the abolition of the monogamous needs of women attempting to escape immigration politics spokesman Giyasettin demand "Full citizenship rights for all " family as the economic unit of society." abuse in the family, in Germany, Europe Sayan uses the opportunity to call for those who live here." Why? Because they Such a change presupposes the abolition and worldwide. investigating the finances of Islamic accept the German state. and the property of private property: One of the feminist demands is "No organizations, saying, "In some organiza­ forms it protects. And they believe that they can pressure the SPD or PDS to the "With the transfer of the means of pro­ reduced sentence on the grounds of the tions the influence of foreign extremist duction into common ownership, the sin­ groups is very strong" (fa;:, 28 February). left to attain all the necessary reforms or gle family ceases to be the economic unit The struggle against the real horrors of that they have to support the "lesser evil" of society. Private housekeeping is trans­ women's oppression has been distorted to avert further attacks. In contrast, we are formed into a social industrv. The care into a justification for imperialist reac­ inspired by the Russian Revolution, not and education of the children"' becomes a NOTICE public affair." tion, made part of the racist anti-Islam least because of the gains for women, :. Workers Vanguard skips campaign that supposedly champions always a good measure of the develop­ Only when this is accomplished will a alternate issues in June, women's rights. The capitalist state-the ment of society as a whole. It will take a new generation of women grow up who revolution to get there, and that means have never known "what it is to give them­ July and August. police, courts and prisons-is not there i to protect young women from unwanted convincing the most politically conscious selves to aman from any other consider­ Our next issue will l• marriage or the consequences of escap­ workers, including the crucial immigrant ations than real love, or to refuse to give i be dated July 8. ing from it. Neither are the pro-capitalist sector, that the Social Democracy, whether themselves to their lover from fear of the politicians of the SPD or PDS, let alone' SPD or PDS, is an obstacle not only to rev- economic consequences:'. I 10 JUNE 2005 15 I ~ I I WfJlIllEIiS ,,1/1''''1111) Bush Attempts Heist of Social Security For Class War, Not Massacre of Workers Rights!

In the one-sided class war this govern­ March 31: San Francisco union ment is waging against the workers and members protest Social Security oppressed worldwide, the Bush adminis­ privatization plan. tration is taking on the final dismantling of social programs won over decades of struggle by American working people. Bush's popularity is the lowest of any The drive to maintain a competitive edge president in the last 60 years, at this against its rivals fuels American imperial­ point in a second term. Many. even ist adventures. like the unending. blood­ Republicans. believe that the administra­ spattered occupation of Iraq. as well as the tion might be overreaching its "mandate." push to slash social benefits and other­ Plummeting support for the SSI privatiza­ wise ratchet up the rate of exploitation of tion scheme has stoked that worry. Bush the working class. Competition among ment, transportation, medical research and sadistic flourish. there' s a new bankruptcy ploughs ahead, however. After all. if you capitalist powers has been amplified in safety inspections for food and drugs­ law (virtually written by the credit card have a mandate from God, why be con­ the age of imperialism and has intensi­ you name it. The Social Security Insur­ companies) that precludes this option for cerned with the opinions of mere mortals? fied even more since the collapse of the ance system (SSl) is now targeted as a many rendered destitute and debt-ridden This Christian fundamentalist crusade Soviet Union. With their election victory. major domestic battleground, to be fol­ by medical crises, job loss or divorce. is part of the ideological wrapper for the the Republicans feel at liberty to plunge lowed closely by Medicaid. Medicare will The arrogance of Bush & Co. is matched "war on terror," the cover for violent ahead with reckless greed, remolding surely be next on the chopping block. As by their religious zeal. The country is in destruction and repression of anyone, domestic social policy in the image of the always, the cuts will hurt the destitute, the grip of a gang of demented fundamen­ anywhere that stands in the way of U.S. robber barons of 19th century American children and the elderly the most-and talist Christians who deeply believe in imperialism. Domestically, the "war on capitalism. while rampaging across the the employed working class will get hit their mission: to impose their peculiar set terror" is the patriotic script for ripping globe at will. too. As health care costs soar and of moral values on us, and the rest of the up constitutional and basic democratic While the wealthy just got massive employer-paid insurance diminishes, 45 world too. Bush may believe, as he said rights and social gains wrested through tax breaks, the new federal budget in­ million people lack health insurance and during the 2000 presidential campaign, the American Revolution, the Civil War cludes savage cuts in health care, food and one million more are added every year. that "God wants me to run for President." against slavery, the civil rights move­ education programs, AIDS and HIV treat- Workers face falling wages, and, adding a But five months into his second coming, ment, the women's and gay rights move­ ments and decades of labor battles. However demented this administration may seem, it is a government by and for the owners of the means of production­ the capitalist class-who are driven by FBI's Racist Bounty on Former Black Panther the quest for profits. From that point of view, doling out millions so retired work­ ers can live a decent life, poor children can have nourishing meals or health care or a chance at a good education, is just unproductive overhead expense that cuts Hands Off Assata Shakur! into profits and, crucially, into funds needed to pay for imperialist adventures. On May 2, New Jersey's attorney gene other choice than to flee from the politi­ In the last three years, profits have had the eral, along with the federal Justice cal repression, racism and violence that fastest growth since WWII, and this has Department, announced that the bounty dominate the US government's policy made Bush's well-fed pals in the corporate on the head of former Black Panther towards people of color. I am an ex­ world hungry for more. Many Wall Street member Assata Shakur would be raised political prisoner, and I have been living firms are drooling in anticipation of the by $850,000, to $1 million, and that a in exile in Cuba since 1984." billions of dollars that will flow into their new reward poster would be circulated Mumia Abu-Jamal, America's fore­ coffers (especially in commissions and throughout the U.S., Caribbean, South most class-war prisoner, wrote from f~es. regardless of whether the market America and Europe. The Justice Depart­ death row on May 13 regarding Assata goes up or down) if even a partial SSI ment also added her name to the FBI's Shakur: "For centuries, nothing has so privatization plan goes through. However. domestic terrorist list as well as various stirred up American fury like the escape Bush's SSI plan has encountered oppo­ international "terrorist" lists. of a slave. That ain't just distant history. sition from significant elements of the Assata Shakur is the victim of a racist For daring to slip her bonds and escape capitalist class. including some Congres­ frame-up for the 1973 death of a New from brutal and unjust bondage, the sional Republicans who are concerned Jersey state trooper. She escaped prison Empire now labels her a terrorist.. .. As that it will add further hundreds of bil­ and fled to Cuba where she resides for terrorists, if they really wanna find lions of dollars to the federal budget def­ today, a political refugee from capitalist some. it shouldn't be too hard to find icit in order to finance the "transition" America's racist injustice. She wrote elo­ them. Just check the White House." to private accounts and reduced benefits. quently in her 1998 Open Letter: "My Assata Shakur's case casts a sharp Social Security is popular because almost everyone benefits from it. It doesn't name is Assata Shakuf. and I am a 20th light on how the U.S. bourgeoisie's Elana Levy century escaped slave. Because of gov­ many, decades-long terrorist vendettas Assata Shakur speaking in Havana, pay much. but it does promise you'll get a ernment persecution, I was left with no continued on page 14 Cuba, January 1998. cOlltinued Oil page 12 16 10 JUNE 2005