No. 30, October 12, 1973
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WfJRKERS ,,INfJIJIIRIJ 251 No. 30 .:~~~ X-523 12 October 1973 NEAR EAST: Turn tile National War into Class War! For the fourth time in the last Palestinian Arabs must be able to quarter century, national war has exercise the right to self-determin broken out in the Near East between ation and to live in their homeland, Israel and the surrounding Arab The Spartacist League supports states, representing yet an 0 the r the right of the Hebrew-speaking tragic defeat for the Hebrew- and population of present~day Israel to Arab-speaking workers and peas self~determinationo At the same ants of the region. The concern of time we are irrecollcilably opposed the bourgeois press over who fired to Zionism, Recogni2.ing that it is the the first shot, or who really started Arab populations of the Near East the fighting, is of no consequence. in particular the homeless Pales Whatever the particular sequence tinian Arabs, driven from their lands of events, this is essentially a con by a triumphant and arrogant Zionist tinuation of the 1967 war, a conflict state-that have borne the brunt of between the chauvinist, expansionist national oppression in the past per appetites of the Israeli and Arab iod, we are prepared to militarily bourgeoisies. In such circumstances defend a struggle for self-determin the only principled Leninist position ation for the Palestinian Arabs (even is the call for revolutionary defeat if it were temporarily under the ism on both sides: the working leadership of petty-bourgeois radi masses can have no stake in the cal nationalist forces, such as the "PI victory of either side in this re Jordanian rebels brutally crushed Israel i tanks heading for the front. actionary war. by Hussein in 1970), But so long as the Arab and Is Marxists will certainly have no raeli states continue to be dominated subjective sympathy for Israel, the by bourgeois regimes, oppressed cidal campaign against the blacks currently in the USSR's diplomatic victors in 1967, in the current waL peoples such as the Palestinian of southern Sudan, show yet again orbit, Should the U.S. become deci The willfully oppressive Zionism Arabs will be used as pawns and that national oppression cannot be si vely involved in attempted imperi which has gorged itself on the blood, their absolutely just democratic de ended until national chauvinism it alist conquest of the Arab nations, or lands and labor of the Arab Pales mands will be subordinated to re self is uprooted by the united class should the USSR's involvement call tinians it conquered in 1948 and 1967 peated ncLtional wars. The reaction conscious proletariat of the Near into question the defense of the USSR must be finished with for all time. ary militarist Arab regimes are East. Arab nationalism, the ideo itself, Marxists would be compelled T!:.e Jewish-exclusivist "Law of Re interested only in their own aggran logical means by which reactionary to modify this stand, recognizing that turn," the second-cl[l.ss citizensh"p dizement, and their victory in a petty-bourgeois, )) 0 l: r ,:; e 0 i:3 ::md the conilicting national appetites of tor A.rabs in Israel, the brutal ex conflict against Israel could result feudal rulers keep a stranglehold the israeli and Arab rUlilig classE-s pulsions of West Bank Arabs from only in a repetition of the same on the Arab workers and peasants, were no longer the decisive element. their homes and lands, the super chauvinist atrocities by the new is no more "progressive" than He Turn the National War into Class exploitation of Arab labor must be victors, The brutal oppression of the brew nationalism-Zionism. War! Toward a Near East Socialist ended. Israel must leave the terri Kurdish people in Iraq by the dom To be sure, Israel is a client state Federation! For National Liberation tories occupied in 1967 and the inant Arab majority, and the geno- of the U.S. while Egypt and Syria are through the Permanent Revolution! U.S./USSR Summer Detente Cools After all his clowning, embraCing detente. With his usual contempt for flected the intersection of several dis of the Communist Party in June and of Chuck Connors and attempting to Congress and the rest of the ruling tinct political currents and interests. the classic Stalin-type frame-up trial make himself likeable to the American class, Nixon is pushing ahead with his An important interest group pushing for of liberal dissidents Yakir and Krasin people, General Sec ret a r y Leonid detenteo However, the advocates of a the detente were those businessmen, early last month, Brezhnev must be feeling frustrated and harder line against the Russians are like David Rockefeller and Armand For Nixon and Kissinger the de angry. Since his visit to the U.S. in turning this into apopular issue against Hammer of Occidental Petroleum, who tente was another of their endless dip June, anti-Soviet sen tim e n t has in Nixon. were in a position to rake in sizeable lomatic maneuvers, specifically de creased steadily both within the ruling If Brezhnev could indeed understand profits through trade deals and con Signed to get the Kremlin to strengthen class and throughout American society, Marxism, as he occasionally claims to, struction/management contracts. The the U.S. in certain troublesome areas in Taken together, the now-certain his frustration at the short life of the Nixon administration itself saw an the imperialist domains. Andfrom Nix passage of the Jackson Amendment detente would be tempered by compre opportunity to trade economic and dip on's point of view, Brezhnev has kept (making tariff cuts conditional upon the hension of the implacable hostility of lomatic concessions (e.g., the recogni his side of the bargain. Difficult as the elimination of all Soviet emigration U.S, imperialism to the Soviet state. tion of East Germany) for certain pro task is, the Soviet bureaucracy has restrictions), the two-year accelera American actions in Soviet foreign really tried to keep Indochina in the tion of the Trident missile-launching Sakharov/Jackson vs. policy, particularly in Indochina and the "Free World," The Brezhnev regime submarine program, the defeat of the B rezhnev IN ixon Middle East. helped pressure the North Vietnamese Mansfield Amendment for U.S, troop The most reluctant supporters of the to sign the peace treaty which legiti cuts in Western Europe and a large The apparent enthusiasm of the detente were the cold-war liberals con mized the Thieu regime in Saigon and increase in the arms budget mark a American ruling class for the Nixon centrated in the Meany-Humphrey UoS, financial and military support to sharp retreat from the Nixon-Brezhnev Brezhnev detente earlier this year re- Jackson wing of the Democratic Party. its reactionary puppets. They were temporarily won to support Soviet diplomats collaborated close ing Nixon by the argument that in ly with the UoS. to set up yet another creased economic relations would lead "neutralist" Laotian government head to the bourgeoisification of Soviet so ed by Prince Souvanna Pl),ouma, despite ciety and the strengthening of unam the overwhelming military advantage FARM WORKERS' UNION: biguously pro-Western tendencies. of the Pathet Lao. And most grossly, In the long run, it is indeed true Brezhnev's government continues to that the massive involvement of U,S, recognize the mayor of the beSieged capitalism in the Soviet pOlitical econo city of Phnom Penh, Lon Nol, as the Meany/Chavez my would generate consciously pro legitimate Cambodian head of state, imperialist, bourgeois -restorationist although the Khmer Rouge controls the political groupings. However, the rest of the country. Brezhnev regime belie~·ed it could get The outcome of the revolutionary Abandon Strike what it wanted out of Nixon without ci vil wars raging in Indochina has not relaxing its absolutist political control. yet been determined. However, should From Brezhnev's Side, the detente capitalism be overthrown in the region, was deliberately combined with a cam it will be despite the best efforts of paign of intensified internal repression the Brezhnev regime to preserve it, PAGE 2 symbolized by the elevation of secret For Nixon and company, the fate of pOlice head Andropov to the Politburo continued on page 5 among the farm workers. When several bus loads of RU sup Fllrm Workers Wellry of Pllcifist Protest liS • •• porters arrived at the picket line at 10:30, they then joined the farm work ers in chanting "Viva la huelga gener al! 11 ••• until they realized that the chant had been initiated by the SL/RCY con tingent! The RU tails after any pro Meany/Chavez Abandon Strike, gram it thinks the bureaucracy sup ports-even to the point of accidentally supporting a class-struggle slogan! At one point during the picket, the RU Turn to Boycott led contingent stopped the whole line to shout such epithets as "you don't WV PHOTO do anything to support farm workers!", After almost a decade of organizing thereby exposing the entire picket line and struggle, the United Farmwork to attack from the police. The RU ers Union (UFW) has been hurled back ended -up picketing on the other side onto its home base, the grape fields, of the road from the SL/RCY and the by the attack of the grower-Teamster farm workers. alliance, during the 1973 harvest sea The September 9 Livingston action son. In contrast to the misty-eyed op was typical of many throughout the timism of the maturing Chavez bureau state. After the picketing, SL speakers cracy-"Sure the Teamsters have our addressed the workers in Spanish, at contracts but we still have the people" tracting interested crowds of 20- 30 (El Malcriado, 21 September)-mili workers.