soe No. 654 ~X-~23 25 October 1996 Malan Ruling: Apartheid Butchers Go Free No Justice lor Oppressed in "New" South Alrica JOHANNESBURG, October 21-For­ mer South African defence minister Gen­ eral Magnus Malan was let off on Octo­ ber 11 after a high-profile trial for masterminding the 1987 slaughter of 13 people, mainly women and children, at K waMakhutha, south of Durban. A hard­ line racist in the former apartheid gov­ ernment of F.W. De Klerk's National Party, Malan was charged with providing covert military support to members of the Zulu tribalist Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), ten of whom carried out the mur­ ders. Among the 19 tried for the massa­ cre alongside Malan were five former members of the general staff, a number of military intelligence officers, Inkatha deputy secretary-general M.Z. Khumalo and six others who were charged with being in the murder squad. All of them walked. The grotesque verdict in the seven­ month trial highlighted the racist reality of the "new" South Africa under the gov­ ernment of Nelson Mandela and his bourgeois-nationalist African National Congress (ANC). "We are bitter, but we expected this .verdict," said Mbusi Ntuli, who was 12 years old when his father and three sisters were killed in the 1987 massacre. The 13 were wantonly gunned continued on page J J "New" South Africa, same racist state terror: police fire rubber bullets at squatters in black township near Johannesburg.

Bitter Fruit of Washington's Anti-Soviet Dirty. War Alghanistan: Hell lor Women On September 27, Kabul, the capital Now the Taliban killers have begun to city's United Nations compound and Without question the chief victims in of Afghanistan, fell to the Taliban, a wreak bloody vengeance against any beaten, shot and hanged, his body left the consolidation of Islamic fundamen­ fundamentalist Islamic militia. Four vestige of social progress overlooked strung up on the street for several days. talist reaction in the aftermath of the years of horrific rule under a shifting by the vultures who preceded them. Justifying this atrocious act of sav­ Soviet military withdrawal in 1989 have "coalition" of warring factions of reac­ One of their first targets was Najibul­ agery, a member of Kabul's Taliban been Afghanistan's miserably oppressed tionary Islamic mujahedin ("holy war­ lah, the pro-Soviet Afghan president council railed that Najibullah "was women. While the civil war has now riors") had already broug~t Kabul to ousted by the mujahedin in 1992, who _ against Islam. He was a criminal, and resumed, with ethnically based militias the point of famine and devastation. was dragged from his sanctuary in the he was a Communist." continued on page 3. Steel-Perkins/Magnum Chin/NY Times

Seizure of Kabul by Taliban militias (near right) has led to intensified Islamic fundamentalist reign of terror against Afghan women, imprisoned at home or forced to wear head-to-toe "veil."

II 43

7 ""25274 81030 7 1 Down With Racist Cop Repression Against Student Protesters! OCTOBER 21-Reprinted below is a thrown against walls, poked in the eyes, fist of the state, which attacked black and the university by workers, faculty and leaflet dated October 20 which was dis­ punched in the face, and those who Latino protesters to protect the adminis­ students! tributed at the State University of New attempted to leave the area were blocked tration as well as their student govern­ Just as these attacks are part of a York, Binghamton by members of the by university security officers." What ment lackeys through intimidation and larger social context, so too are the solu­ New York Spartacus Youth Club. Students brought on this vicious police attack? violence. College campuses like Bing­ tions. The capitalist system itself is continue to occupy the administration Confederate flag-wearing Student Asso­ hamton exist for middle- and working­ based on the exploitation of the working building there following a vicious Octo­ ciation (SA) president Anthony Benar­ class youth as training grounds for class and on the racist oppression of ber 15 cop attack on an integrated group delio, with the support of his ,appointed administrative positions serving the cap­ blacks and immigrants. This system of student protesters. SYC members trav­ officers, implemented a racist purge of italists. When the interests of students offers no future for the majority of peo­ eled to the campus from New York City the SA by removing the post of Vice Pres­ clash with the purpose of these institu­ ple in this society, especially workers, and Sy.racuse University to intervene in ident of Multicultural Affairs. Large num­ tions, down Gomes the hammer. minorities and youth-so it confines mil­ support of the struggle at Binghamton, bers of students came to the Student These attacks are part of increased lions to unemployment and starvation, raising the need for socialist revolution Association meeting on Tuesday the 15th racist repression and police brutality on throws them into prison hellholes and to get rid of racist repression for good. to speak against the purge; they were universities nationwide and part of a beats them with police clubs when they On October 15, anti-racist protesters at excluded. When they tried to get in they larger attack on minority and working­ protest. a meeting of the State University of New were set upon by campus cops in full riot class youth and workers. With the Demo­ The Spartacus Youth Club is a socialist York (SUNY), Binghamton student gov­ gear under the orders of Binghamton cratic Party taking the lead in smashing organization which intervenes in strug­ ernment were brutally attacked by univer­ president Lois DeFleur. welfare, pushing reactionary "family val­ gles against racism and oppression. We sity police. According to the Binghamton We in the Spartacus Youth Club ues" and brutally scapegoating immi­ fight to link these struggles to the larger Coalition (an ad-hoc student leadership demand: ALL COPS OFF CAMPUS! The grants, it is no wonder that Benardello fight to sweep away capitalism-the root formed in the immediate aftermath), stu­ campus police (ULED)-newly armed and DeFleur can openly push racist reac­ of all oppression-and create a workers dents "were attacked with pepper spray, with pepper spray-represent the armed tion at Binghamton. government that would liberate society's Students have occupied the Bingham­ wealth for social need. Toward this end ton administration building in protest students must ally with the working class, ~gainst their macing and beating. It is which has the social power to effect such necessary to defeat this racist atrocity by a fundamental social overturn. The SYC Permanent Revolution and the defense and extension of this occupation. is dedicated to winning students to the Struggle Against Imperialism Even a one-day strike by campus work­ struggles of the working class and mobi­ In recent years, the Western and Japanese ers, faculty and students would be a big lizing them in the fight for socialist lead­ imperialists have intensified the exploitation step toward that goal. No reprisals against ership. We are active in the fight against of the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin the student demonstrators! Not hat-in­ the cutbacks at the City University of America. In these backward countries in the hand appeals to the administration but a New' York. In Chicago we mobilized to epoch of imperialism, the gains associated fighting response by all those facing the smash the KKK fascists when they with the bourgeois-democratic revolutions of racist attacks and cutbacks at SUNY! The attempted to rally for race terror. And we West Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries SYC fights for: OpeI1 admissions and have worked to free death row political cannot be achieved by the indigenous bour- no tuition! For a living stipend for all prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal. Hands off TROTSKY geoisies. Bourgeois nationalists in "Third LENIN. students! Nationalize the elite private the Binghamton student protesters! Cops World" countries, whether right-wing butch- universities! Abolish the racist adminis~ off campus! Join us in the fight for a ers like Suhqrto in Indonesia or liberals like Nelson Mandela in South Africa, act as tration! For the democratic control of socialist future! _ political agen'ts for the world bankers and industrialists. As Trotsky explained in his theory of permanent revolution, only through proletarian socialist revolution and its extension to the imperialist centers can the workers and peasants of colonial and semi­ colonial countries achieve genuine national independence and social and economic modernization. The revolution of 1848 revealed within a few months that precisely under more advanced conditions, none of the bourgeois classes is capable of bringing the revolution to its termination: the big and middle bourgeoisie is far too closely linked with the landowners, aild fettered by the fear of the masses; the petty bourgeoisie is far too divided and in its top leadership far too dependent on the big bourgeoisie. As evi­ denced by the entire subsequent course of development in Europe and Asia, the bour­ geois revolution, taken by itself, can no more in general be consummated. A complete purge of feudal rubbish from society is conceivable o_nly on the condition that the pro­ letariat, freed from the influence of bourgeois parties, can take its stand at the head of the peasantry and establish its revolutionary dictatorship. By this token, the bourgeois revolution becomes interlaced with the first stage of the socialist revolution, subse- . quently to dissolve in the latter. The national revolution therewith becomes a link of the world revolution. The transformation of the economic foundation and of all social rela­ tions assumes a permanent (uninterrupted) character. For revolutionary parties in backward countries of Asia, Latin America, and Africa, a clear understanding of the organic connection between the democratic revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat-and thereby, the international socialist revolution­ is a life-and-death question.

- Leon Trotsky, "Ninety Years of the Communist Manifesto" (October 1937) . Mireille Moga Anti-racist student protesters occupy Binghamton administration building following October 15 police attack.

!!!'!!~.!Ym~~!~!!~!!.'!.. ~ Funds Needed as December 2 Trial Approaches DIRECTOR OF PARTY PUBLICATIONS: George Foster EDITOR: Len Meyers Defend Chicago Anti-Klan Three! EDITOR, YOUNG SPARTACUS PAGES: Carla Wilson Three anti-racist protesters face Partisan Defense Committee. Protest PRODUCTION MANAGER: Susan Fuller trial in Cook County Circuit Court on statements demanding that all charges CIRCULATION MANAGER: Shauna Blythe December 2 on trumped-up charges of be dropped should be addressed to: EDITORIAL BOARD: Ray Bishop (managing editor), Bruce Andre, Liz Gordon, Frank Hunter, Jane Kerrigan, James Robertson, Joseph Seymour, Alison Spencer assault and battery against police Jack O'Malley, State's Attorney Ii The Spartacist League is the U.S. Section of the International Communist League (Fourth stemming from a June 29 protest Cook County, 55 W. Randolph Street, Internationalist) . against a KKK race-hate provocation Chicago, IL 60602; please send a Workers Vanguard (ISSN 0276·0746) published biweekly, except skipping three alternate issues in June, July and in Chicago's Daley Plaza. All oppo­ . copy to the PDC. Contact the PDC August (beginning with omitting the second issue in June) and with a 3·week interval in December, by the Spartacist Publishing Co., 41 Warren Str~et, New York, NY 10007. Telephone: (212) 732-7862 (Editorial), (212) 732-7861 nents of racist terror have a stake in . in Chicago at Box 802867, Chicago, (Business). Address all correspondence to: Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116. E-mail address:[email protected]. the defense of the Anti-Klan Three, IL 60680-2867, phone (312) 454- Domestic subscriptions: $10.00/22 issues. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Workers Vanguard, Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116. who face up to a year in jail. 4931. You can also reach the PDC in Opinions expressed in signed articles or letters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint. Funds are urgently needed to de~ New York at P.O. Box 99, Canal Street The closing date for news in this issue is October 22. fray legal costs. Send donations (ear­ Station, New York, NY 10013-0099, marked "Anti-Klan Protesters") to the phone (212) 406-4252 .. No. 654 25 October 1996

2 WORKERS VANGUARD the next generation. Afghan landlords, tri­ WIJ'ItE" "",,,,,,,.. bal chiefs and mullahs launched a fero­ Afghanistan ••• ._, ..- " ;;;; cious jihad (holy war), burning down (continued from page 1) . WNIe carter St8WS. Soviel ArmY RaIlS Back AfgI\IIII MullahS schools and flaying teachers alive for the which supported the former mujahedin "crime" of teaching young girls to read. regime launching an offensive against Hail Red Armyl When Moscow airlifted Red Army Taliban positions outside Kabul, all the troops to Kabul in December 1979 to contending forces are deeply reactionary. prevent its PDPA client regime from fall­ Among the first acts of the Taliban ing to the Islamic reactionaries and to after seizing Kabul were to bar women protect its southern flank against imperi­ from all work, to close down all girls' alist incursion, the "Russian question" schools and to order women to remain was posed pointblank. Democratic presi­ locked in their homes in purdah (social dent Jimmy Carter's savage proxy war isolation) unless accompanied by a man. against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan As a result, almost all educational facil­ and his retaliatory embargo against the ities have been shut down, since 75 per­ Soviet Union were the opening shots of cent of teachers are women, overwhelm­ Cold War II. Under Carter's successor, ingly trained during the Soviet presence Republican president Ronald Reagan, the in the 1980s. This has also created chaos U.S. spent hundreds of billions of dol­ in hospitals and orphanages that were lars on high-tech "Star Wars" weaponry primarify staffed by women. Given fun­ aimed at facilitating a first-strike nuclear damentalist taboos against women being attack against the USSR. And over $2 treated by male doctors, the elimination Spartacists hailed 1979 Soviet billion worth of equipment was lavished of female medical personnel means a Women and ~t~~''''.''· intervention against imperialist­ on the Afghan mujahedin in the biggest death sentence for countless women and Revolution ~~~::;1~~:';~':':':: backed reactionaries. We mobilized CIA operation in history. Meanwhile, the girls. international aid to embattled city of capitalist media kept up a hysterical Jalalabad following Gorbachev's propaganda barrage against the Soviet The Los Angeles Times (2 October) treacherous 1989 withdrawal. reports that "women who have ventured "evil empire." onto Kabul's dusty streets without cloak­ As consistent defenders of the gains of ing themselves from head to toe in the October Revolution, we Trotskyists of opaque, suffocating gowns have been unveiled woman butchered by the Afghan indoctrination in the United States and the International Communist League lashed with whips or fan belts." The situ­ fundamentalists is also on the hands of West Europe was geared to producing (then the international Spartacist ten­ ation there is today so dire that better-off those leftist organizations internationally hatred for and fear of the Soviet Union. dency) proclaimed: "Hail Red Army in Afghanis are seeking refuge for their which lined up behind US, imperialism's Because groups like the ISO bought Afghanistan! Extend social gains of daughters in neighboring Iran, which is anti-Soviet dirty war in Afghanistan! into the anti-Soviet program propagated October Revolution to Afghan peoples!" under the rule of Islamic fundamen­ For years, groups like the social­ by the bourgeoisie, they lined up with any We warned that the Kremlin bureaucracy talist ayatollahs. The Taliban's orgy of democratic International Socialist Organ­ and all forces opposed to the Stalinists reluctantly intervened simply to stabilize woman-hating terror adds the finishing ization (ISO), U.S. supporters of Tony in power-from sadistic Islamic fun­ a strategically placed client state. and touches to the program of social reac­ Cliff's British Socialist Workers Party damentalists in Afghanistan and Iran to might well cut a deal with the imperialists. tion implemented by the mujahedin cut­ (SWP), marched in lockstep behind the Vatican-backed anti-Communist, anti­ throats who took power four years ago Washington's drive for the defeat of Semitic and anti-woman Solidarnosc and revived the stoning of women for Soviet troops by the mullah-led forces movement in Poland. adultery and "immodesty," while subject­ who were openly fighting for the enslave­ Historic American Trotskyist leader ing the entire population to a reign of ment of women in Afghanistan. Now they James P. Cannon, in waging a factional terror and plunder. have gotten what they wanted. These self­ struggle within the then-revolutionary While hypocritically distancing itself styled "socialists" contributed, to the U.S. Socialist Workers Party against from some of the "excesses" in the night­ extent their limited means allowed, to the Shachtman/Burnham minority which mare of dark reaction which has befallen bringing about the horror which is today argued to abandon the Marxist position the women of Kabul, Washington has being inflicted upon Afghan women. of military defense of the Soviet Union, been the chief force in the Taliban's rise said in 1939: to power. Through its client regime in The "Russian Question" "The question of the Russian revolution Islamic Pakistan, U.S. imperialism has Pointblank and the Soviet state which is its creation has drawn a sharp dividing line through for years funneled vast sums of money In the 19th century, utopian socialist the labor movement of all countries for and high-tech military equipment to var­ Charles Fourier observed that social 22 years. The attitude taken toward the ious mujahedin factions, from the notori­ progress can be gauged by the status of Soviet Union throughout all these years ous Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who rose to women in society. This is unambiguously has been the decisive criterion separating the genuine revolutionary tendency from prominence by throwing acid in the face clear in the case of Afghanistan. For all shades and degrees of waverers, back­ of unveiled women students at Kabul Marxists, as indeed for all opponents of sliders and capitulators to the pressure of University in the 1970s, to, most recently, women's oppression, taking the side of the bourgeois world," the Taliban cutthroats. Even as women those fighting the U.S.-backed Islamic In the case of Afghanistan, this dividing were being beaten and brutalized in the fundamentalists in Afghanistan was as line not only separated revolutionaries streets of Kabul, Clinton administration clear and obvious a position as was the from reformists, but proponents of social Former Afghan president Najibullah, spokesmen rushed to meet with Taliban support of Karl Marx's First Interna­ progress from those who backed, openly tortured and murdered by Taliban representatives, hailing the efforts of tional for the Union forces led by Abra­ or otherwise, medievalist barbarism. killers. these medievalist killers and torturers to ham Lincoln in the American Civil War Uniquely in modern history, the rights "liberate Afghanistan." against slavery. of women were a central issue in the civil Nonetheless, sending troops into Afghan­ The unspeakable hell which has de­ How, then, could self-avowed social­ war which raged in Afghanistan from the istan was an unambiguously decent and scended on women, teachers, doctors, ists like Cliff's ISO/SWP line up with late 1970s to the early 1990s, After com­ progressive act, cutting across the grain working people, ethnic and religious those fighting for the enslavement of ing to power in an April 1978 coup, pro­ of the reactionary Stalinist-nationalist minorities and all secular elements in women in Afghanistan? The answer lies Moscow intellectuals and army officers in dogma of ':socialism in one country," Afghanistan is the bitter fruit of U.S. in their virulent hostility to the So­ the PDPA sought to implement some which renounced Lenin's fight for world imperialism's unrelenting drive to under­ viet bureaucratically degenerated workers minimal reforms to bring the country socialist revolution in favor of a futile mine and destroy the former Soviet state. From the moment the Bolshevik closer to the 20th century: land distribu­ quest for "peaceful coexistence" with Union, whose military presence in Af~ Revolution toppled capitalism in Russia tion, freeing women from the burka (the imperialism. ghanistan in the 1980s was the chief in 1917 until the capitalist counterrevolu­ head-to-toe "veil"), reducing the bride Moreover, we recognized that it was bulwark against Islamic fundamentalist tion led by Boris Yeltsin several years price to a nominal sum and providing only the Soviet military intervention reaction. For over a decade, Washington ago, the imperialists' central aim was education for girls. However, such basic which offered the possibility of opening armed the mujahedin murderers to the focused on restoring capitalist exploita­ democratic reforms can be explosive in a the road to emancipation for the hid­ hilt, building them up to wage a proxy tion in the Soviet Union and overturning cruelly backward country like Afghani­ eously oppressed peoples of Afghanistan. war against the Soviet Army and the the social gains which remained despite stan, not least because women's subordi­ If liberation was to come to Afghanistan, People's Democratic Party of Afghani­ decades of Stalinist degeneration. That is nation in the family has decreed them as it had to come from without. The tiny stan (PDPA). But the blood of every why the entire apparatus of political the "bearers" of the traditional culture to continued on page 4

:J. Socialist Worker Socialist 12 January 1980 Socialist P1per1l ___WorkerliII'!IIIIIIIIIr.iC Worlcer_.... Troops of Afghanlstanl _- - out May 1988 thl 5 October 1996 I Just as socialists welcomed the But Taliban's success comes defeat of the U.S. in Vietnam, we from popular disenchantment with welcome the defeat of the Russians the leaders who oppose it-the in Afghanistan, It will give heart to forces guarding Kabul melted all those inside the USSR and in away last week. Eastern Europe who want to break Tragically, the Taliban has no answer to the terrible crisis of the the rule of Stalin's heirs. country either. Bu.I..Jb.i.s.. does Afghan mujahedin reactionaries with paymaster Ronald Reagan in the White House. Tony Cliff's British SWP and U.S. ISO embraced imperialist anti-Soviet crusade in Afghanistan, "welcomed" anti-woman Islamic fundamentalist victory. .

25 OCTOBER 1996 3 Planeta Soviet military presence (left) opened possibility of liberation for Afghan women, who joined PDPA government militias to defend their rights against mujahedin arms in hand. Right: Students at Kabul University in the 1980s.

of that backward region. on the eastern city of Jalalabad. The incendiary "revelations" in Foot's Afghanistan ... Following Moscow's military inter­ As an expression of solidarity, we dis­ column provoked an anti-Soviet frenzy vention in Afghanistan, the imperialists patched a Workers Vanguard correspon­ on the floor of Parliament, helping to (continued from page 3) and their "left" hangers-on railed against dent to Kabul and Jalalabad. As we justify an escalation of imperialist sup­ proletariat was dwarfed by a far more "Soviet expansionism." But far from wrote at the time: port to the Afghan mujahedin. numerous Islamic clergy, the urban pop­ seeking to incorporate Afghanistan, the "Jalalabad besieged was the focal point Though particularly flagrant in their Kremlin oligarchy fought the war half­ of imperialism's jihad (holy war) against embrace of imperialist anti-Sovietism ulation was surrounded by a sea of no­ social progress and the Soviet Union. madic herdsmen and peasants beholden heartedly, despite the fact that Soviet Jalalabad victorious can inspire revolu­ over Afghanistan, the Cliffites were far to the khans, the forces of social progress troops were winning the war on the tionary struggle throughout the region, from unique on the left. After some initial were outweighed by reactionary forces ground in the early 1980s. When Mikhail from India to Turkey. That requires zig zagging, the fake-Trotskyist United for tradition and the status quo. Gorbachev came to power in 1985, he above all the program of Leninist inter­ Secretariat of the late Ernest Mandel nationalism, the banner of the Interna­ The conservative Brezhnev leadership immediately began maneuvering for a tional Communist League." issued a statement in 1981 toeing Reagan/ in the Kremlin did not send 100,000 withdrawal of Soviet troops in the hope - "Front Line Afghanistan," Thatcher's line, with the call "For an End Soviet troops to Afghanistan to make a of easing the strains on the Soviet WV No. 482 (21 July 1989) to the Soviet Occupation of Afghani­ social revolution. But the very presence economy and appeasing imperialist hos­ Our Jalalabad campaign struck a chord stan!" The political bandits of David of these troops brought with it the pos­ tility. In the upshot, Gorbachev prepared among class-struggle fighters every­ North's Workers League and its "Interna­ sibility of social liberation, as did Napo­ the destruction of the Soviet Union itself. where. Contributions poured in from tens tional Committee" screamed along with leon's military drive through Europe in The Kremlin's retreat emboldened the of thousands of people around the world: the U.S. imperialist rulers that the So­ the early 1800s in the wake of the Great imperialist rulers, who remained intent immigrant workers throughout West viet intervention was an attack on "the French Revolution. As Trotsky noted in upon nothing less than the destruction Europe, Asia and North America; trade national rights and feelings of the Afghan The Revolution Betrayed, his definitive of the Soviet degenerated workers state, unionists; students eager to take a stand people" (Bulletin, 8 July 1986). Some­ analysis of the Stalinist bureaucracy, "In and strengthened the forces of capitalist against the CIA; and everywhere from what more contradictory was the centrist the sphere of national policy, as in the restoration within. Withdrawal from Af­ women, including in Muslim commu­ Workers Power group in Britain, which sphere of economy, the Soviet bureauc­ ghanistan was followed by counterrevo­ nities. It was in the course of this cam­ arose as a split from Cliff's organization. racy still continues to carry out a certain lution in East Europe: Solidarnosc' rise paign that we decided to faiiil"ch the In response to the imperialist uproar over part of the progressive work, although to power in Poland, the capitalist reunifi­ International Communist League, under­ the Soviet intervention, Workers Power with immoder.ate overhead expenses. cation of Germany, Boris YeItsin's 1991 scoring that our tendency, uniquely, took a step to the left, breaking from This is especially true of the backward pro-capitalist countercoup in Moscow. fights for the communism of Lenin and Cliff's absurdly anti-Marxist theory that nationalities of the Union, which must of This, in turn, led to a total cutoff of Trotsky. the Soviet Union was "state capitalist" necessity pass through a more or less pro­ aid to Kabul, spelling the doom of the (without either a capitalist class or a cap­ longed period of borrowing, imitation and fragile Afghan economy and central Anti-Soviet "United Front" italist economy) and announcing its for­ assimilation of what exists." government. with Imperialism mal adherence to Trotsky's analysis of the Under the Soviet military umbrella, When Soviet forces were pulled out The Cliffites responded to the 1979 Soviet Union as a bureaucratically degen­ Afghan women were liberated from the in 1988-89, p;1ving the way for a Soviet intervention by retailing the line of erated workers state. veil and trained and brought into the bloody onslaught against Afghan work­ every imperialist government in the But while not calling for an immediate workforce as teachers, nurses, doctors ers, women and leftists, we bitterly de­ world: "Soviet troops out of Afghani­ Soviet withdrawal at the time, Workers and goverriment functionaries; thousands nounced this betrayal. We warned that it stan!" The British Socialist Worker (12 Power joined the rest of the anti-Soviet served as soldiers and commanders in the was far better to fight and defeat the January 1980) tried to whitewash the Stalinophobic left in "condemning the Afghan army and self-defense militias. forces of counterrevolution in Afghani­ CIA-backed mujahedin opposition, say­ Soviet invasion of Afghanistan" as "coun­ The vast gains which were potentially stan than be forced to take them on inside ing "it speaks the rhetoric of Islamic fun­ terrevolutionary" (Workers Power, Feb­ open to the Afghan peoples were visible the Soviet Union itself. At the same time, damentalism. But in this time and place ruary 1980). When the Kremlin later in the stark contrast between Afghan­ we actively solidarized with the masses that tells us little." It didn't take a Marx­ pulled out of Afghanistan, Workers Power istan's backwardness and the massive who continued to wage a bitter struggle ist to know what the "rhetoric of Islamic turned around and denounced the with­ advances in living standards, education, for survival. The Partisan Defense Com­ fundamentalism" and, on the other hand, drawal. And all the while, they vituper­ health care and women's rights north of mittee, the class-struggle legal and social the Soviet intervention meant for Afghan ated against our call, "Hail Red Army!" the Amu Darya River in the Soviet Cen­ defense organization associated with the women. This was recognized even by Behind Workers Power's insistence that tral Asian republics. These achievements Spartacist League/U.S., wrote to the some Western bourgeois journalists, not­ the eminently progressive Soviet inter­ were the result of the working-class rev­ Afghan government in February 1989, ably women. Writing as the last Soviet vention was counterrevolutionary lay a olution led by Lenin and Trotsky's offering to organize international bri­ troops were pulling out, Mary Williams deeply ingrained anti-Soviet prejudice Bolshevik Party in October 1917 ana gades to help fight the CIA's fundamen­ Walsh reported in the Wall Street Journal inherited from their Cliffite origins. extended to Central Asia largely through talist cutthroats. Though this offer was (19 January 1989): But the C1iffites themselves showed armed intervention by the Red Army declined, the PDC 'and fraternal organiza­ "The plight of Kabul's women is a poig­ no such qualms, consistently supporting against the mullahs and tribal khans and tions around the world responded to an nant reminder that the West's vicarious the imperialist line. As Gorbachev was victory over communist expansion here a campaign by heroic Bolshevik women appeal by the PDPA regime for funds, isn't without its ambiguities. In a back­ preparing the Soviet withdrawal, the ISO who even donned the veil as part of a tac­ raising $44,000 internationally to aid ward country where the female peasantry gloated: "Just as socialists welcomed the tic to bring social progress to the women civilian victims of the mujahedin attack still toils like medieval serfs, Kabuli defeat of the U.S. in Vietnam, we wel- . women have managed to hold on to come the defeat of the Russians in many 20th-century freedoms .... Instead Afghanistan" (Socialist Worker [U.S.], of staying at home behind purdah walls, they emerge each day and work in May 1988). This comparison is truly SPARTACIST LEAGUE/U.S. LOCAL DIRECTORY offices, hospitals and schools." grotesque! The ISO sees no essential The Cliffite opportunists pose as "rev­ difference between medieval fundamen­ National Office Los Angeles Oakland olutionary" opponents of the capitalist talist killers coming to power in Kabul Box 1377 GPO Box 29574 Box 29497 and the victorious social revolution­ New York, NY 10116 Los Feliz Sta. Oakland, CA 94604 rulers, but they take their cue from the (212) 732-7860 Los Angeles, CA 90029 (510) 839-0851 reformist labor misleaders, who are which the ISO's forebears refused to (213) 380-8239 themselves (in Lenin's words) "social­ support-that drove U.S. imperialism out Boston San Francisco· imperialist" lackeys of the bourgeoisie. of Indochina! Box 390840, Central Sta. Box 77494 ~ But over Afghanistan, the Cliffites even With the fate they welcomed having Cambridge, MA 02139 New York San Francisco, CA 94107 surpassed their reformist Labourite big come to pass and its horrendous conse­ (617) 666-9453 Box 3381, (415) 777-9367 brothers in abject treachery. The British quences daily described in the bour­ Church St. Sta. Chicago Washington, D.C. Cliffites were actually able to make a geois press, Cliff's SWP can only wring New York, NY 10008 real contribution to the imperialists' anti­ its hands and hypocritically moan about Box 6441 , Main PO (212) 267-1025 Box 75073 Chicago, IL 60680 Washington, D.C. 20013 Soviet drive by making common cause the "long series of tragedies to beset (312) 454-4930 (202) 872-8240 with ... right-wing Tories. In 1980, SWP . the Afghan people" (Socialist Worker, leader Paul Foot, writing in his column S October). Even now, with the Soviet in the bourgeois Daily Mirror, attacked Union gone, the Cliffites continue to TROTSKYIST LEAGUE OF CANADA/liGUE TROTSKYSTE DU CANADA the virulently anti-Communist Conserva­ whitewash the role of the Islamic funda­ Toronto Montreal Vancouver tive government of Prime Minister Mar­ mentalist anti-woman terrorists and their Box 7198, Station A C.P. Lesf,triums Box 2717, Main P.O. garet Thatcher from the right by de­ Pakistani and U.S. backers, writing that Toronto, ON M5W 1X8 B.P.32066 Vancouver, BC V6B 3X2 nouncing the possibility that British meat "Tali ban 's success comes from popular (416) 593-4138 Montreal, QC H2L 4V5 (604) 687-0353 exports to the Soviet Union might be disenchantment with the leaders who going to Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan. oppose it" and complaining that "the 4 WORKERS VANGUARD bands. And in large parts of Africa, young girls are subjected to the barbaric Cruel and· Barbaric practice of female genital mutilation in order to supposedly ensure docility and "faithfulness." In the U.S. as well, women are the ultimate principal target of the anti-sex witchhunt. This is reflected not only in the assault by right-wing bigots on the California Castration Law right to abortion, but in the escalating California has now become the first Ages. And in this deeply racist society, it criminalize sex, and particularly sex with persecution of women over supposed state in the country to mandate castration represents a ghastly return to the worst or among youth. The demented lengths to fetal and child "abuse." Since the 1980s, as a form of punishment. On September horrors of the Jim Crow South. As we which this hysteria has been taken are over 200 pregnant women in 30 states 17, Governor Pete Wilson signed a bill, wrote in 1983 after a South Carolina seen in the recent "sexual harassment" have been prosecuted for acts as trivial· passed with' overwhelming bipartisan judge gave three young black men con­ suspensions of six-year-old kids for kiss­ as having a drink, on the grounds that support in the state legislature, which victed of rape the choice of 30 years ing their classmates. this could harm their fetuses. In a recent would force any man convicted twice in prison or surgical castration: "The Many sexual encounters now deemed case in Wisconsin, Deborah Zimmerman, of "child molestation" to receive injec­ American rulers' willingness to snatch "illegal" in this violently repressive and a 35-year-old waitress, faces up to 50 tions of the drug Depo-Provera while on up the ancient bloodstained knife, to anti-sex society are entirely consensual. years in prison on attempted murder for parole. Those refusing the injections geld the black man and sterilize the We are in favor of replacing reactionary giving birth to a baby with a high blood could be "voluntarily" surgically cas­ black woman, reflects the poisonous and "age of consent" laws with the principle alcohol level. In July, the South Carolina trated-having their testicles cut off. unbearable racism which characterizes of effective consent, applicable to people Supreme Court reinstated an eight-year Judges will also be able to order chemi­ American capitalism" (WV No. 343, 2 of all ages. Will someone whose boy­ prison sentence on "child abuse" charges cal castration after a first conviction. December 1983). friend or girlfriend is simply considered against a woman who had taken drugs Underlining the barbaric char~cter of Especially in this' election year, the "too young" now be castrated? California while pregnant eight years ago, although this legislation, an editorial in the San new law is a product of the fevered com­ already deems sexual relations between her child is perfectly healthy. Francisco Examiner exclaimed: "What's petition between Democrats and Republi­ an adult and someone 13 or younger­ There has also been an epidemic of the next step? Demanding that robbers cans over who can be tougher in prose­ and in some cases even 17 years old-a "child abuse" prosecutions against poor have their hands hacked off and liars cuting the "war on crime," a terrifying felony offense that counts under the and minority women who have left their their tongues cut out?" Usually used as a extension of the legal lynching and racist state's "three strikes" law. In Connecticut children home alone for a few hours. In contraceptive for women, when injected repression that the capitalist injustice recently, school bus driver Kerri Lynn October, Carmen Santiago, described by in men Depo-Provera causes the testicles system has unleashed against blacks and Paterson was sentenced to a maximum of neighbors as a caring mother of nine to shrink. The side effects include ele­ the poor. The return of chain gangs, the 1J 5 years in prison after a 14-year-old children, was arrested in the South vated blood pressure, increased blood Congressional ban on education for pris­ male student claimed she had seduced Bronx along with her boyfriend when clotting and higher risk of diabetes, as oners, the expansion of the racist death him by casting a spell on him! she was forced to appear in court to fight well as nightmares, fatigue and severe penalty and a host of other measures The government-engineered witchhunt an eviction notice and couldn't find a weight gain. Any doctor who agrees to reflect a sinister impulse to genocide over "child sexual abuse" has destroyed baby sitter. Meanwhile, the courts have carry out this treatment won't be practic­ against a layer of the black population. the lives of hundreds of innocent people torn children away from mothers who ing medicine but torture, like Hitler's Dr. In the past decade, California alone has who have been prosecuted and impris­ are lesbians. In a recent Florida case, Mengele, who subjected inmates in Nazi spent $10 billion on new prisons. The oned on the basis of lurid and demented Mary Frank Ward's 12-year-old daughter death camps and concentration camps to authorities are not only doing away with "satanic possession" and "recovered was taken from her and placed in the grisly "experiments" involving steriliza­ education for prisoners, but are trying to memory" fabrications (see "Satan, the custody of her former husband, a con­ tion and castration. eliminate physical exercise and anything State and Anti-Sex Hysteria," Women and victed murderer who killed his first wife! Republican assemblyman Bill Hoge, approaching a healthy diet. As a result, Revolution No. 45, Winter-Spring 1996). Behind the gamut of measures crimi­ author of the bill, tailed: "I am sending a prisooers can be expected to grow over­ Meanwhile, the deadly anti-welfare bill nalizing sex, and the imprisonment of message to child molesters of the world weight, weaker, more disease-prone and signed by Clinton in August completely wider layers of the population-under that you are not welcome in California." likely to die earlier. This is a conscious eliminated federal aid providing a mini­ increasingly inhumane conditions-is Sheila Kuehl, one of two Democrats in attempt to make the prison population mal lifeline for some 12 million people, the drive by the capitalist rulers to the Assembly to oppose the measure, flaccid and controllable. more than two-thirds of them children. enforce social conformity as they seek to grotesquely argued that castration was Of course, violent assaults on children The bizarre theory that an overabun­ increase the exploitation of working peo­ not enough to stop "molesters," insisting are truly terrible crimes, but the Califor­ dance of male hormones causes sex ple. Meanwhile, masses of ghetto youth that they "need to be kept out of society." nia castration law has nothing to do with crimes has sinister implications for deemed "expendable" to the profit sys­ The Examiner (15 September) reported protecting women and children. Another women. In countries dominated by Is­ tem are locked away in prison hellholes. that "the sole organized support for the bill passed by California legislators-one lamic fundamentalism, like Afghanistan It is a mark of capitalist society in termi­ measure came from the Women's Coali­ of a series of so-called "Megan's laws" or Iran, women are forced into stifling nal decline that these efforts lead to ever tion, an advocacy group in Hoge's dis­ being proposed across the country­ head-to-toe "veils" when not confined to more irrational and byzantine measures trict." In the .1980s, "castrate all rapists" would incite harassment of "sex offend­ the home, ostensibly to prevent men from reaching back to practices which prolif­ was the battle cry of right-wing femi­ ers" who have been released-from prison, being driven to rape and to curb the sup­ erated before the bourgeois revolutions. nists-and now it seems they've got their by opening up their records and addresses posedly insatiable sexual appetites of Only the destruction of the bourgeoisie's reactionary wish. to the public. These viciously punitive women. In fact, this reactionary institu­ rule through socialist revolution will put The concept of mutilating and tortur­ measures are the latest installment in a tion is aimed at enforcing women's role an end to the barbarism exemplified by ing "sex offenders" belongs in the Dark ruling-class drive over the past 15 years to as the property of their fathers or hus- the "California Reich" castration law .•

Taliban has no answer to the terrible cri­ forces of reaction as imperialism does in James P. Cannon explained: the former Soviet Union. This has em­ sis of the country." These fundamentalist its semicolonies, posed the possibility of "The Soviet Union emerged from the boldened reactionary forces not only in reactionaries do have an "answer"-a bringing progress to that backward land October revolution as a workers' state. backward areas like Afghanistan but in program of all-sided reaction and extir­ of fragmented peoples. As a result of the backwardness and pov­ West Europe and the U.S. as well. While' erty of the country and the delay of the pation of even the most modest social world revolution, a conservative bureauc­ various bourgeois commentators are now advances for women! We Are the Party of the racy emerged and triumphed, destroyed wagging their fingers over the horrors Again borrowing from Western impe­ Russian Revolution! the party and bureaucratized the econ­ being carried out by Islamic fundamen­ rialist propaganda, the sole fig leaf that As Afghanistan' demonstrated, the omy. However, this same bureaucracy talists in Afghanistan, "family values" still operates on the basis of the nation­ Christian fundamentalists in the U.S. the Cliffites and the rest of the anti-Soviet Cliffites' ludicrous "state capitalist" anal­ alized property established by the revolu­ camp offered for their line was that ysis and their posture as leftist opponents tion. That is the decisive criterion for our also aim to drive women back into the the Soviet intervention violated Afghan of Stalinism were simply a cover for evaluation of the question." home. This is revealed not only in "national self-determination." For Marx­ their profound programmatic hostility to - reprinted in "We Are the Party attacks by "right to life" terrorists on ists, the question of self-determination is the homeland of the October Revolution. of the Russian Revolution!" WV women seeking abortions but in the No. 181 (II November 1977) subordinated to overriding class consid­ From the time of the 1950-53 Korean growing barbarism of the racist capitalist erations-in the case of Afghanistan, War, when Cliff broke from Trotskyism Stalinist treachery and imperialist ter­ "justice" system (see "California Castra­ defense of the Soviet Union against impe­ in refusing to defend North Korea ror have left Afghanistan devastated, with tion Law," above). rialism and the struggle against feudal against U.S. imperialism, the Cliffites' a total breakdown of transportation, trade The horrors being played out in reaction and women's oppression. More­ supposed "third camp" ("Neither Wash­ and economic life. The country has been Afghanistan today are the starkest ex­ over, Afghanistan is not a unitary nation, ington nor Moscow") was nothing bu~ an turned into a patchwork of regional fief­ pression of the choice which has been as the Cliffites assert, but a caldron of empty shell, as they continually lined up doms ruled by ethnically based warlords, posed, with increasing sharpness and distinct, feuding nationalities (as well as with imperialism (first in a veiled way, with the Taliban, based on the predomi­ urgency, throughout this century: social­ tribal and other ethnic groupings) divided then openly) against the Soviet Union. nant Pashtun grouping, controlling the ism or barbarism. Young fighters against by artificial borders: the Pashtuns extend Opposition to Stalinism froUl a rev­ gutted capital and two-thirds of the coun­ social oppression must study and learn into Pakistan and the Uzbeks into the for­ olutionary, Trotskyist standpoi~t meant try in the south, while the Uzbek region the lessons of past struggles and defeats, mer Soviet republic of Uzbekistan, while defense of the social foundations of in the north is ruled by Abdul Rashid including the world-historic defeat repre­ the Tajik people overlap the border with the Soviet Union-centrally the exis­ Dostum and Ahmed Shah Massoud's sented by the destruction of the remain­ both Tajikistan and Iran. The hue and tence of a planned collectivized econ­ militia lords over the Tajiks. While Dos­ ing gains of the October Revolution, if cry about the "national rights" of "poor omy, a necessary precondition for the tum and Massoud's forces are today they are to go forward to win new victo­ little Afghanistan" had about as much creation of an international classless, painted as supposed "moderates" relative ries. We of the International Communist validity as the cries of "states' rights" communist society. The Trotskyist call to the Taliban, Massoud remains allied League fight for a new October, both in raised by the Confederacy during the for proletarian political revolution to oust with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, one of the the U.S. and around the world. We fight American Civil War and again I 00 years the Stalinist usurpers was premised on most savage fundamentalist leaders dur­ to forge Bolshevik parties internation­ later by diehard Dixie segregationists. our defense of the gains of October, ing the PDPA regime. ally to lead the workers-standing at the Precisely because the Soviet Union was including our unconditional military de­ The martyrdom of Afghanistan is a 'head of all the oppressed-to power not capitalist/imperialist, the Red Army fense of the Soviet Union against in­ direct product of the counterrevolution­ and to a society in which capitalist intervention into Afghanistan, rather than ternal counterrevolution and imperialist ary cataclysm which resulted in the resto­ oppression and enslavement of women deepening oppression and reinforcing the attack. In his 1939 speech, cited above, ration of capitalism in East Europe and are relics of a barbaric past. • 25 OCTOBER 1996 5 Indonesia Powder Keg

Reuters Massive protests against Suharto dictatorship during the summer were met with brutal crackdown, including arrests of trade unionists and leftists.

The military regime of Indonesian dic­ and supporters of the leftist People's sent by the Partisan Defense Committee Mankind, are powerful indictments of tator Suharto is facing the most convul­ Democratic Party (PRD). in Japan to the Indonesian ambassador brutal exploitation by the former Dutch sive political and social upheaval in Among those arrested was Muchtar there demanding the immediate release colonial rulers. Today they are banned by decades. On July 8, army troops, marines Pakpahan, chairman of the banned Indo­ of all those imprisoned (see "Free an authoritarian regime which fears that and police brutally attacked a strike and nesian Workers for Prosperity Union Victims of Right-Wing Repression in readers might see too many parallels rally of 20,000 workers in the east Java (SBSI), the largest of the independent Indonesia!" WV No. 650, 30 August): between the situation then and now. city of Surabaya. Later that month, unions. Arrested for playing a leading "The regime's tirades against a supposed U.S. imperialism has played a key role police, troops and rightist vigilantes in 'Communist threat' evoked-as was in­ in propping up the bloody Suharto dicta­ role in strike struggles in Medan in April tended-the spectre of the horrendous the capital city of Jakarta stormed the 1994, Pakpahan's conviction was over­ anti-Communist bloodbath of workers torship fTOm the time of the 1965 anti­ headquarters of the Indonesian Demo­ turned last October. Now he faces the and peasants carried out by the military. Communist massacre. The recent flap cratic Party (PDI), one of two tame oppo­ death penalty on charges of subversion and by anti-Communist mobs in 1965. over Indonesian funding for Clinton's sition parties permitted by the military stemming from the July 27 protest. Budi­ The message was as clear as it was election campaign underlines not only dictatorship. Supporters of opposition brutal: All who oppose Suharto's 'New Washington's continuing close ties with man Sudjatmiko, 27-year-old leader of Order' govemment will be slaughtered in leader Megawati Sukarnoputri, daughter the PRD, was also hunted down and the same manner as were the more than the butchers in Jakarta but the rampant of former Indonesian ruler Sukarno, had faces the firing squad for treason. At one million supporters of the Indonesian nepotism and corruption of the Indo­ occupied the building to protest her least 25 PRD leaders are being held, Communist Party (PKI) and other mili­ nesian ruling family. Now the imperial­ ouster from the PDI leadership in a tants in 1965 and the workers and peas­ ist bloodsuckers who for years lauded according to an overseas spokesman for ants of East Timor who have been fight­ government-orchestrated maneuver in the group. All are in isolation, and there ing for their independence for over 20 Suharto for ushering in "political stabil­ June. have been reports of electric shock and years." ity" are worried about the aging dictator's More than 10,000 people took to the other torture being used to force con­ Suharto's blood-soaked regime was health and the absence of a credible streets in outrage over the government's fessions. Leaders of the PRD-affiliated born out of the 1965 massacre. Old and alternative to his regime. An editorial in raid on the PDI building, and banks and trade union, peasants union and student sick men condemned as Communist the London Economist (3 August) titled government buildings were torched. The group were also arrested. PRD offices in activists following the 1965 bloodbath are "If Indonesia Erupts" warns that as "a military ordered demonstrators shot on Jakarta and Surabaya have been seized stilI sitting on death row. Only last year vital part of Asia's fragile security sight; at least five protesters were offi­ and ransacked. The military has ordered did the regime say it would remove the balance, turmoil there would produce cially reported dead and 74 "disap­ the arrest of all PRD supporters and designation "ET" (ex-Tahanan Politik­ tremors fTOm China to Australia" and peared." The regime then launched a announced that they will likely be tried former political prisoner) from the iden­ "shake boardrooms." In an accompanying countrywide manhunt against a wide under the 1962 anti-subversion law, tity papers of some 1.4 million people. article, this mouthpiece for the impe­ range of dissidents. At least nine are which carries a maximum penalty of One of these, writer Pramoedya Ananta rialist bankers wants Suharto to allow charged with "subversion," punishable death. Toer, has been accused of being a leader a little "space" lest he contribute to by death. While Megawati was pulled in Determined to crush the PRD, the of "formless organizations"-a reference "a future explosion of potentially devas­ several times for lengthy police interro­ government has denounced it as "analo­ to Communist front groups-and his tating consequences"--devastating, that gation, the main targets were not PDI gous" to the earlier Communist Party. As writings are banned. His novels, like is, to the maintenance of neocolonial supporters but trade-union organizers we noted in a recent protest statement Child of All Nations and This Earth of enslavement, where stifling repression, starvation wages and draconian union­ busting assure a huge flow of profits from the sweat of millions. The imperialists have reason to be wor­ ried. Even official figures point to a huge growth in strikes and other workers' struggles. There have also been outbursts of student unrest. In April, three students were killed during two weeks of protests against public transport fare increases in south Sulawesi. Student activists frus­ trated at the tight military control of cam­ puses and the lack of job prospects have turned to labor organizing. Protests by workers, students and the unemployed in urban centers have intersected peasant struggles for land and grievances against ethnic and national oppression. Inca­ pable of developing a unified Indonesian nation. the Java-centered bourgeoisie pre­ sides oYer a prison house of peoples. Indonesia is a powder keg waiting to explode. Yet despite the evident courage and dedication of its supporters, the PRD offers a strategy of class collaboration like that which paved the way for the 1965 slaughter. The PRD actively organ­ izes support for the tame bourgeois oppo­ "\~,,,. Der Spiegel sition led by Megawa~i-who denies any PKI support to bourgeois-nationalist Sukarno regime prepared the way for 1965 massacre of leftists, workers and intention of threatening the power of peasants by CIA-baCked military and Islamic anti-Communist mobs. Suharto and the generals-and itself calls 6 WORKERS VANGUARD m o and capitalist exploitation, strengthening o :::Jo outright capitalist-restorationist forces ·3 (including within the bureaucracy). ~ The defense of the remaining gains of these anti-capitalist revolutions can be ensured only by proletarian political rev­ olution against the bureaucratic Stalinist regimes as part of a perspective of in­ People's ternational socialist revolution, centrally Democratic Party leader aimed at the advanced industrial powers, Budiman whose vast economic wealth and produc­ Sudjatmiko, tive resources must be liberated in the jailed by interests of all humanity. The central les­ Suharto regime. son of the October Revolution retains its full force today for the exploited and oppressed around the world: Bolshevik parties must be forged in the struggle for for nothing more than a "multiparty erated flow of imperialist investment a new October Revolution, from the dem'ocracy." SBSI leader Pakpahan, over recent years, countless tribal and islands of Indonesia to the imperialist meanwhile, says that he is not a commu­ peasant families have been thrown off centers in Australia, Japan, the U.S. and nist but a "nationalist" and avows his the land in favor of mining, manufactur­ West Europe. support for the 1945 bourgeois constitu­ ing and other corporations. tion (Far Eastern Economic Review, Indonesia presents a classic case of Lessons of 1965 2 November 1995). But in this backward "combined and uneven development" in In 1965, the PKI was the mass party of country tied by a million strings to inter­ the epoch of imperialism, where pre­ the Indonesian proletariat and the largest national finance capital, there can be capitalist forms of exploitation and Communist party in the capitalist world. no thoroughgoing democracy without oppression exist side by side with mod­ But basing itself on the Stalinist schema sweeping away the entire capitalist class, ern industry, communications and trans­ of revolution in "stages"-first a revolu­ which acts at the behest of the imperialist portation. In such countries of belated tion limited to (bourgeois) democracy, to overlords. A new generation of working­ capitalist development, no wing of the be followed only later by a fight for class militants must come to grips with bourgeoisie is capable of lifting society socialism-the PKI counterposed to the the burning question: Will they be led up from neocolonial SUbjugation and program of workers revolution the call once more down the suicidal path of class oppression. The dynamic growth of for unity with Indonesia's bourgeois­ collaboration which led to the 1965 the Indonesian proletariat and its re­ nationalist rulers. In 1952, PKI chairman bloodbath or undertake the struggle to emergence into the arena of class strug­ D.N. Aidit raised the slogan "Long Live unite the dispossessed peasants, horribly gle points to the one social force that can Sukarno! Long Live the PKI!" and called nqui oppressed women and ethnic and national successfully lead the struggles of the on Sukarno's Nationalist Party to form a Rosintan Marpaung, wife of SBSI minorities in a revolutionary struggle to oppressed-from land-hungry rural toil­ "united national front, including the union leader Muchtar Pakpahan, now end the brutal rule of capitalism? ers to women, youth and religious and national bourgeoisie" which would carry facing death penalty on charges of Indonesia and ethnic minorities-against the entire out "not socialist but democratic reforms" "subversion." Permanent Revolution capitalist-landlord ruling class and its (see "How Maoist Strategy Sabotaged imperialist patrons. Indonesian Revolution," Young SpartaClis The.immediate precursor to the 1965 The world's fourth most populous As Leon Trotsky, co-leader with V. I. Nos. 36 and 37, October and November military coup was a botched attack on country, Indonesia is a vast archipelago Lenin' of the 1917 Russian Revolution, 1975). top army officers in late September. of more than 13,000 islands spanning explained in "What Is the Permanent In the 1950s, when nationalist dema­ Sukarno may in fact have encouraged the 3,000 miles and encompassing a diverse Revolution?" (1930), in colonial and gogues had some foom to maneuver move against the officers, in which six collection of ethnic, national and reli­ semicolonial countries, "the complete between U.S. imperialism and the Soviet were killed, although he quickly dis­ gious groupings. Separatist ins.urgencies and genuine solution of th~ir tasks of Union, Sukarno's "non-aligned" postur­ owned it, leaving the PKI to bear the have taken place from the tip of the achieving democracy and national eman­ ing was a constant irritant to Washing­ brunt of the subsequent repression. Fol­ westernmost island of Sumatra to Irian cipation is conceivable only through the ton. With the full backing of their Stalin­ lowing the attack, Sukarno appointed Jaya (on the island of New Guinea) in dictatorship of the proletariat as the ist mentors in Moscow and especially in General Suharto "responsible for restor­ the Far East. The deepgoing divisions leader of the subjugated nation, above all Beijing, the PKI implemented the policy ing security and order." As hundreds of among these peoples are the heritage of of its peasant masses." The validity of this of gotong royong-"national unity"­ thousands of PKI supporters were mas­ the brutal rule of Dutch colonialism, perspective was confirmed by the workers with the "progressive" bourgeoisie and sacred by Suharto's troops' and Muslim which ended with the Japanese occupa­ revolution in backward Russia itself. its military. The PKI gained a number of rightists. Sukarno called for exterminat­ tion in World War II and, following Under the leadership of Lenin and Trot­ cabinet posts in Sukarno's government, ing the Communist "rats." But even as Japan's military defeat, the 1949 victory sky's Bolshevik Party, the numerically embracing his strategy of "Nasakom"­ they sat in prison cells awaiting execu­ of Sukarno's nationalists in the war of small Russian proletariat was able to an ailiance of bourgeois nationalists, tion, PKI leaders continued to pledge independence against the Dutch. mobilize behind it the mass of the peas­ Islamic groups and "Communists." This their loyalty to the "democratic" military The struggles of oppressed ethnic and antry and oppressed national minorities in regime was an example of a popular and the "progressive" Sukarno! 'national minorities in Indonesia were a proletarian revolution which broke the front, a class-collaborationist coalition On the eve of Suharto 's counterrevolu­ recently highlighted by the awarding of power of the capitalists and landlords and in which the proletariat and oppressed tionary October 1965 coup, the PKI was the Nobel Peace Prize to two of the more opened a period of revolutionary struggle are chained to the class enemy, in this an enormously powerful force, with a moderate figures in the struggle of the internationally. case through the instrument of the PKI. membership of three million and over 14 East Timorese people, who have been The Bolsheviks' revolutionary program Groveling before Sukarno and the reac­ million additional supporters organized subjected to a genocidal military occupa­ was trampled on by the Stalinist bureauc­ tionary Muslim clerics, the PKI organized in PKI-controlled labor unions, youth, tion since 1975. In November 1991, Indo­ racy which usurped power in the Soviet work brigades to build mosques. Again women's and peasant organizations. But nesian troops carried out a slaughter of Union in 1923-24, following the failure and again, the PKI banned strikes, sup­ the PKl's treacherous policy of class col­ 200 demonstrators in the Timorese capi­ of the revolution to spread to advanced pressed militant peasant movements and laboration bartered the political indepen­ tal of Dili. As our Australian comrades capitalist countries like Germany. Stalin­ courted imperialist investment, preaching dence and revolutionary mobilization of wrote recently (Australasian Spartacist ist betrayal finally culminated in the cap­ confidence in Sukarno and his generals. the exploited for maneuvers with their No. 159, Spring 1996): italist counterrevolution which destroyed The PKI even denounced an uprising it oppressors. When the generals struck, "For 350 years, the people of East Timor the bureaucratically degenerated and de­ had led at Madiun in 1948 and elevated the PKI, politically disarmed and militar­ suffered the brutal rule of Portuguese ily unprepared, was paralyzed. Even as imperialism. As the Portuguese empire formed workers states" in the Soviet Union the general who suppressed it to its pan­ collapsed in 1974/75, the Indonesian and East Europe in 1989-92. This, in turn, theon of "Heroes of the Working Class." the remnants of the PKI in exile issued a capitalist military regime invaded and has emboldened the imperialist powers to Raising the slogan "For the Maintenance "self-criticism" of its failure to adopt "an annexed East Timor. Twenty years of bit­ seek the destruction of the remaining of Public Order, Help the Police," and independent attitude toward Sukarno," ter resistance has ensued, with over they refused to break from the disastrous 200,000 East Timorese killed by gun­ deformed workers states, which (with the pledging to enforce "the co-operation fire, disease or starvation. As Marxists exception of Cuba) are all located in East between the people and the Armed stagist politics that paved the way for the and Leninists who recognise the right of Asia-China, Vietnam, North Korea. In a Forces, in particular the Police Force," the massacre: "By correcting the mistakes self-determination, we of the Spartacist desperate and futile balancing act, the PKI served to strengthen the very repres­ made by the Party in the united front League of Australia (Australian section Stalinist regimes in these countries have sive apparatus which was later to come with the national bourgeoisie it does not of the International Communist League) mean that now the Party need not unite demand: Independence for East Timor! opened the door to imperialist investment down on it. Indonesian troops out of East Timor! with this class ... our Party must work to Australia hands off!" win the national bourgeoisie over to the Until the Dili massacre, many Indone­ side of the revolution." sians knew little about what was happen­ In an article headlined "Indonesia: ing in East Timor. Intended by the military Lesson in Betrayal" (Spartacist No.5, as a signal not only to the East Timorese November-December 1965), we wrote but also anyone who might oppose the that "the working people of Indonesia regime, the killings were acatalyst in gal­ are now paying with their h/ood" for the vanizing new opposition to the regime. PKl's betrayal in "helping administer Ethnic and religious tensions have Indonesian capitalism while suppressing also been stoked by government poli­ the struggles of the Indonesian workers cies encouraging settlement of outlying and keeping them wedded to Sukarno's islands like Irian Jaya by people from pol ice-state." Java and other densely populated areas of the country. Closely intertwined with Imperialist Rivalry the struggles of minorities is the fight for Over Indonesia land. The Dutch left in their wake mas­ The U.S. was up to its neck in the sive plantations, which are now worked Indonesian bloodbath. The CIA provided by millions of landless laborers and the Indonesian generals wit'h ahit list of small tenant farmers. And with the accel- continued on page R 25 OCTOBER 1996 7 against theocratic reaction while oppos­ ing discrimination against all religious Indonesia ... minorities. (continued/rom page 7) Religious fundamentalism is a particu­ 5,000 Communists, and U.S. embassy lar threat to women, who have played an officials ticked the names off as they were increasingly strong role in strikes and hunted down and murdered in 1965-66. protests. The militant role played by The mobilization of reactionary Islamic women in the struggle against the fundamentalists against the PKI was also Suharto dictatorship is exemplified by promoted by Washington. In 1950, John the case of Marsinah, a young woman Foster Dulles, later to be Eisenhower's worker militant tortured, raped and killed secretary of state; explained how the in east Java in May 1993. Her death, "spiritual beliefs" of "the religions of the which became an inspiration for new East. .. cannot be reconciled with Com­ fighters, illustrates the hideous oppres­ munist atheism and materialism. That sion and superexploitation of women creates a common bond between us and workers in Indonesia, who make up a our task is to find and develop it." That majority of the workforce in the prison­ "bond" was cemented in the blood of the like factories. As in the Russian Revolu­ Indonesian workers and peasants, and tion of 1917, women are and will be in later in Afghanistan. the forefront of the fight against capitalist With the "Communist menace" elimi­ and semi-feudal enslavement. As Trotsky nated in this strategic Pacific Rim coun­ said of the Muslim women in the Soviet try, Washington felt emboldened to mas­ November 1994: Indonesian riot cops charge pro-independence protest in East: East Timor marking the anniversary of 1991 Dill massacre. "The Eastern woman who is the most sively escalate its ground invasion of paralyzed in life, in her habits and in cre­ South Vietnam. At the same time, the etc.-are being plundered by interna­ Communist mobs in 1965, and during ativity, the slave of slaves, that she, hav­ consolidation of Indonesia as a bastion tional capital at an ever-increasing rate. the strikes in Medan two years ago, ing at the demand of the new economic relations taken off her cloak will at once of "free world" anti-Communism created Foreign investment, principally Japanese efforts were made to divert militancy the conditions for the later development feel herself lacking any sort of religious and American, totaled $40 billion in into attacks on Chinese shops. But in buttress .... And there will be no better of a defeatist wing of the American rul­ 1995 alone. For the world's imperialist Indonesia as in all Southeast Asian communist in the East, no better fighter ing class, who felt that the U.S. could overlords, Indonesia is a rich source for states, there are many poor and working­ for the ideas of the Revolution than the safely withdraw from its losing war in capitalist profits, where impoverished class Chinese, who are class brothers in awakened woman worker." Indochina without jeopardizing its strate­ - Perspectives and Tasks in the workers labor in the textile and shoe fac­ the struggle against capitalism. The need East (1924) gic interests in Southeast Asia. tories, the oil fields and rubber plan­ for proletarian' internationalism is under­ The imperialists have continued to tations, under conditions of brutal lined by the fact that increasing numbers For a Trotskyist Party assign a key role to Indonesia in their exploitation. Typical is the Nike shoe of Indonesian workers are compelled to in Indonesia! counterrevolutionary ambitions in Asia. factory in Serang, where the cost of labor cross the straits to Malaysia and Singa­ The PRD was formed in 1994 as an Indonesia is the central player in for a pair of athletic shoes which sells pore, where Chinese are respectively 30 umbrella group of student, worker and ASEAN, the anti-China bloc which now for $ \00 is only $2.60. Even the govern- percent and 78 percent of the population. peasant associations. From our limited encompasses virtually every nation to information, it appears that many of its China's south and east. Vast amounts of members are young university students military equipment and funds have been who became labor activists, organizing provided by the U.S. and Britain to prop trade unions and strike struggles; a num­ up Suharto's generals and crush internal ber were arrested in the course of recent dissent. Last December, Australia agreed strikes and protests. Earlier this year, on a wide-ranging military alliance with PRD militants played leading roles in Indonesia, described as "an effort to free organizing strikes and anti-government up the two countries to pay more atten­ demonstrations in several key industrial tion to the rise of China" (International centers. In the wake of the recent wave Herald Trihune, II June). And while of repression, the PRD is reportedly Washington postponed the sale of nine reorganizing to operate clandestinely, F-16 fighter planes to Indonesia to pla­ while supporters overseas are broadcast­ cate critics after the recent repression, it ing their statements into Indonesia via made clear its intention to proceed with fax and e-mail. the sale as soon as the dust settles. With The courage of these young inilitants is an eye not only to China but also to epitomized by imprisoned union activist instability in Indonesia and interimpe­ Dita Indah Sari, president of the PRD­ rialist rivalries with Japan, the V.S. and affiliated Indonesian Center for Labor Australia have agreed to joint mili­ Struggles (PPBI). She has often been tary exercises which will bring 17,000 Women workers at Nike factory in Serang slave for $2.60 a day making shoes sold for $100 a pair. imprisoned for her work in organizing American military personnel to northern strikes and for participation in protests Queensland next March. ment itself admits that the minImum There they often replace Chinese, Malay such as the December 1995 demonstra­ The post-Soviet world is marked by wage of $2 a day (and many ~orkers, and Indian workers in the lowest-paid, tion against the occupation of East Timor. intensified interimperialist rivalry. U.S. especially women and children, receive hardest and dirtiest jobs. During the July 8 rally of 20,000 strikers imperialism, with its Australian junior far less), will not buy enough to feed one Ethnic and religious divisions are in Surabaya, she was arrested for "spread­ partner in tow, is vying with Japan over worker, let alone a family. consciously fostered by the' capitalist ing hatred against the government." But who will dominate the region. Indonesia The changes brought about by capital­ exploiters to keep working people from along with this courageous work, she also is the largest supplier of oil to Japan out­ ist development have brought new misery uniting against their common foe. One of exemplifies the central political weakness side the Near East, and 90 percent of for the toiling masses, with peasants the factors in the violence against Chi­ of the PRD: its support for and illusions Japan's oil imports pass through Indone­ thrown off their land and driven into nese Indonesians is that many of them in Megawati and the PDI. Dita Sari is sian waters. The Japanese imperialists urban shantytowns where they cannot are Christians, as are the East Timorese. described by the PRD as involved "also recognize that the U.S.-led invasion of but notice the massive chasm between Islamic fundamentalist groups have been actively in organizing actions for the Iraq and its military buildup in the Per­ rich and poor. At the same time, industri­ growing recently in Indonesia, though Indonesian oppositions and for Mega­ sian Gulf is aimed at reinforcing U.S. alization has created a growing working not as spectacularly as in other countries. wati's supporters," including as a regu­ control over Near East oil. Japan's ruling class, young and not weighed down by Some of the largest of these have been lar speaker at public forums organized class has never forgotten the U.S. naval the horrendous defeat of 1965. More than loosely aligned with the pro-Megawati by pro-Megawati dissidents at the PDI blockade of oil which impelled Japan's 20 million workers now live in urban opposition. It is necessary to fight for the headquarters. entry into World War II. This reinforces areas like the Jakarta-Bogor-Tangerang­ separation of state and religi~n and continued on page 10 the appetites of Japanese imperialism to Bekasih industrial belt where strike activ­ include Indonesia as a key component in ity has been centered. a new "Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Meanwhile, there is widespread resent­ Sphere." ment among the new middle classes at the Indonesia's rich natural, resources­ nepotism, cronyism and corruption of the oil, gas, timber, gold, silver, copper, ruling Suharto clique. Suharto's six chil­ dren have utilized their family connec­ tions, cheap state loans and subsidies and state monopolies to build up business empires worth more than $4 billion, span­ ning telecom franchises, p~rochemical complexes, transport and trading monop­ olies. Foreign capitalists seeking to invest in Indonesia are forced to set up joint ven­ tures with Suharto family members, ced­ ing them controlling interests in exchange for their political influence. The Indonesian rulers consciously fos­ ter national and communal divisions to ward off multiethnic class struggle and to jack up the rate of exploitation. Chi­ nese Indonesians, who include a fabu­ Former nationalist leader Sukarno, lously wealthy elite, have been a par­ father of current tame "oppositionist" ticular target for racist attacks. Ethnic Spartacist protest in SydneYl 1986, demands freedom for condemned Megawati. Chinese were singled out by anti- Indonesian Communists. 8 WORKERS VANGUARD ----"'f International Workers Solidarity It------Australian Maritime Union Protests Indonesia Repression

In late September, the Maritime Union later the scene of racist mass slaughter of boycott of Dutch transport, paralyzing ership of the waterfront and seamen's of Australia (MUA) launched boycotts of Japanese POWs-the imprisoned mili­ the colonial fleet and buying precious unions argued that in fact the boycott Indonesian shipping in protest against tants appealed for help by throwing notes time for the Indonesian nationalist forces was in the best interests of Australia. the Suharto regime's arrests of Muchtar from convict ships and railroad cars. Aus­ to organize resistance. At great sacrifice, Lockwood quotes the appeal carried in Pakpahan, leader of the Indonesian tralian trade unionists and civil libertar­ Indian seamen refused to fulfill the the CPA's newspaper, the Trihune: Workers for Prosperity Union, and union ians responded with a successful cam­ strikebreaking role for which they had "Australia must raise the strongest voice activist Dita Sari. Pakpahan was arrested paign to free the leftist political prisoners. been recruited. The Chinese Seamen's to see that her 70 million Indonesian following demonstrations in late July Once freed, some former prisoners Union in Australia was critical in organ­ neighbours win their freedom. A fettered Indonesia in the Near North carries a against the government's attacks on the were employed by the Dutch in sensitive izing material aid for Indonesians and constant threat of political and economic supporters of opposition leader Mega­ positions where they had access to infor­ Indians facing desperate financial hard­ instability to Australian trade and foreign wati Sukarncputri, who was ousted by mation on Dutch military stores and ship because of their refusal to work policy." the state from the leadership of the Indo­ shipments, classified radio reports and Dutch ships. This posture in fact coincided with nesian Democratic Party. Dita Sari was Allied intelligence. With the defeat of Undercutting the internationalist im­ that of the governing Labor Party (ALP), arrested earlier the same month in Sura­ Japan and the proclamation of the pulse and implication of these actions, which had ruled throughout World War baya after a workers' protest. The MUA's Republic of Indonesia in August 1945 by however, was the social-patriotic policy II and to which the CPA was (and its action, directed at all Indonesian ship­ nationalist forces led by Sukarno, the of the CPA. From the time of the arrival successors are) ultimately subservient. ping and cargo, was backed by the Inter­ Dutch and Allied powers sought to rush of the newly released PKI members, the Founded on the racist "White Australia national Transport Workers' Federation. military forces and supplies to Indonesia Australian CP "instructed" these mili­ Policy," the Labor officialdom witnessed The MUA's labor boycott is an exem­ to shore up colonial control. Members of tants-who had been in complete isola­ the ignominious demise of the European plary act of solidarity with the struggles the Indonesian Seamen's Union, founded tion since 1926-on the necessity of sub­ colonial powers in Asia. With the end of of the workers and oppressed of Indone­ in Australia during the war, declared they ordinating the struggle for independence the war, the ALP government of Ben sia. The MUA is in the cross hairs of would not man Dutch ships steaming to to the Allies' war effort against the Axis Chifley initially supplied the Dutch with the right-wing Australian government of crush the Republic and began deserting powers in the imperialist conflict. As arms and transport in the attempt to Prime Minister John Howard-which the ships in late September 1945. Austra­ Lockwood wrote: crush the Republic. But, reading the has launched an all-sided attack on labor, lian waterfront workers and seamen, led "Though advised by the CPA, the PKI writing on the wall for Dutch rule, it also immigrants and other minorities-not by the CPA, immediately declared their retained its independence, and at first tolerated the "Black Armada" boycott. made sectarian errors that made CPA only because of its strategic economic support for the Indonesian seamen, plac­ hairs stand on end .... After the failure of Dutch military position in the country, but also because ing a "black ban"-boycott-on Dutch "The Australian advice was delivered in offensives in July 1947 and December of the history of militant struggle by ships, the "Black Armada." firm terms, that support of the war 1948, the Labor government adopted a waterfront workers, including on behalf That union-enforced ban tied up most against the Axis powers was essential." policy of ingratiating themselves with of the working masses of Asia. Dutch shipping in every major Australian The labor boycott was called in response the nationalist leaders in Jakarta, figuring During the dirty, losing U.S. war port over the next four years. Over 30 to the fact that the imperialist "democra­ that the interests of Labo;'~s' 'masters in against the workers and peasants of Viet­ unions, including those of Asian seamen cies" were attempting to prop up colo­ the Australian capitalist class would nam, in which Australian imperialism organized in Australia, participated in the nial rule in Indonesia. The Stalinist lead- best be served by cementing links with served as loyal lackeys of Washington, the bourgeois nationalists who would waterfront workers took concrete action emerge as the new rulers of Indonesia. on behalf of the heroic struggle of the More fundamentally, with the empire of Vietnamese people. The recent labor its traditional British big brothers in irre­ bans in protest of the repression in Indo­ versible decline, the Australian bourgeoi­ nesia recall in particular the 1945-49 sie and its Labor lackeys turned to Amer­ boycott of Dutch shipping carried out ican imperialism. As Labor dutifully in support of the Indonesian independ­ lined up with the U.S. in the escalating ence struggle by Australian, Indian, Chi­ Cold War frenzy fueled by the imminent nese and other workers. success of the Chinese Revolution and The history of that boycott can be Communist-led insurgencies in Asia, at found in the book Black Armada (1975) home the Labor government sent the by Australian journalist Rupert Lock­ army into the coal fields to crush the CP­ wood, a longtime supporter of the now­ led miners strike of 1949. defunct Communist Party (CPA). During Despite its misleadership, the workers' World War II, as the Japanese imperialists struggle over the "Black Armada" is an invaded Indonesia, the retreating Dutch example of internationalist proletarian transported their colonial functionaries to action that today can be an inspiration to Australia, along with hundreds of mem­ those struggling against imperialist dep­ bers of the Indonesian Communist Party redations. What's necessary is a genu­ (PKI) and other political prisoners, Many inely revolutionary leadership, armed of these had spent decades in the Dutch with the perspective that the most effec­ imperialists' jungle death camp of Tanah tive "solidarity" the Australian working Merah in Netherlands New Guinea. class can offer the working masses of While being moved to prison camps in Australian and Indonesian protesters march in Sydney in 1945 to demand end Asia is an irreconcilable struggle against Australia, including the infamous camp at to Dutch colonial rule in Indonesia. Waterside workers boycotted Dutch its "own" imperialist rulers. The main Cowra, New South Wales-which was shipping in solidarity with independence struggle. enemy is at home! •

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25 OCTOBER 1996 9 made sure that no black kids were bused While we took our stand with the black the Ku Klux Klan-which has histori­ Boston ... out to the swanky schools of suburban ghetto masses, supposed "leftists" like cally spewed race-hate against Catholics (continued/rom page 12). Lexington or Weston. Busing of black the Revolutionary Communist Party as well as blacks and Jews-held a rally students was purposely limited to neigh­ (then known as the Revolutionary Union) on the steps of South Boston High. This Representative Ray Flynn, co-founder of borhoods like South Boston, one of the rallied behind the racist mobs. Their summer, racist thugs repeatedly chased ROAR ("Restore Our Alienated Rights"), poorest white areas outside Appalachia, newspaper Revolution (October 1974) and beat up minority youth in the South the reactionary umbrella group that or­ with the aim of pitting poor and working­ carried the obscene headline, "People Boston projects. Meanwhile, the black ganized racist mobs throughout the city, class whites against blacks. Cynical Must Unite to Smash Boston Busing Mission Hill and Franklin Hill housing became the "liberal" mayor of Boston politicians then inflamed racist senti­ Plan." The International Socialists, pre­ projects are routine targets for cop and later Clinton's ambassador to the Vat­ ments in these ethnic white enclaves, decessor to the International Socialist sweeps in the "war against drugs." In ican. Current City Council president under the watchwords of "neighborhood Organization, also capitulated to the 1994, a police SWAT team killed 75- James Kelly was leader of the South· schools" and "stop forced busing." racist anti-busing backlash, seeking to year-old black minIster Accelynne Boston Information Center, front for The 1974 desegregation order was carve out a non-existent "third camp" Williams in a raid on his Dorchester the racist paramilitary South Boston immediately met with a white boycott of with the line that "socialists oppose both home. Marshals. This summer Kelly attempted South Boston High School which rapidly the 'pro' -busing and' anti' -busing forces, Though 40 percent of the city's popu­ to kill a City Council resolution con­ escalated into citywide racist mobiliza­ both of whom use racism to further their lation overall, blacks and Hispanics now demning the burning of Southern black tions and lynch-mob terror. Racial epi­ own ends" (Workers Power, 10 November account for 82 percent of public school churches! thets and rocks were hurled at buses 1972). This grotesque argument am­ attendance. Continual weakening of bus­ Before and during the Civil War, carrying black schoolchildren. Frenzied nestied the lynch mobs who were daily ing guidelines along with massive "white Boston was the heart of the anti-slavery mobs roamed the streets intimidating and attacking black people on the streets! And flight" to parochial schools and the sub­ the tiny League for the Revolutionary urbs has long since made desegregation a Party, a splinter from the family tree of dead letter, as minority students were the International Socialists, scurrilously simply shuttled from one impoverished denounced busing as a "vicious ruling neighborhood to another. The public class attack on blacks and cannot be sup­ school system has been so starved for ported" (Socialist Voice, Spring 1977). funds by the city's rulers that five Meanwhile, reformist groups that sup­ schools were put on academic probation ported busing lined up behind the racist last year, while 60 percent of high capitalist government. A hallmark of the schools were either decertified, on pro­ Socialist Workers Party (SWP) at the time bation or on warning status. was its call for "federal troops to Boston," The capitalist attack on public educa­ peddling the criminal lie that tbe same tion for minority youth is part and parcel repressive apparatus which gunned down of a broader ruling-class assault on all Black Panther activists could be relied on working people, from the onslaught to defend black rights. The arch-racist against the trade unions to the devasta­ Louise Day Hicks demonstrated a better tion of welfare and public health care to understanding of the role of the capitalist the millions of homeless who have been state than the supposed "socialists" of thrown onto the streets. Using the threat the SWP, as she called for federal troops of privatization, the city's Transportation o to put down hlack Roxbury. Authority (MBTA) is trying to ram down Spartacist contingent in December 1974 pro-busing march in Boston. The SWP, too, initially opposed bus­ the throats of nearly 7,000 transit workers We fought for labor/black defense to stop racist attacks against black ing, under the rubric of "community con­ a contract imposing layoffs and cuts in schoolchildren. trol," reversing itself only to opportunis­ health care while delaying until 1998 a tically tail after the NAACP and other pay raise negotiated last year. Racist Abolitioni~Lmoyement. But following assaulting blacks. The NAACP office black liberals and preachers who begged abuse of black transit workers by their the huge influx of Irish and Italian immi­ was firebombed. Nightriding vigilantes the racist rulers to enforce integration. MBTA bosses is so rampant that the grants around the turn of the century, fired into the predominantly black "Community control" of the impover­ state attorney general felt compelled to Boston's blue-blooded Brahmins placed Columbia Point housing project. Confed­ ished ghetto schools is nothing but an threaten a lawsuit. These bus drivers, ethnic white ward heelers (like "Honey erate flags were prominent at anti-busing accommodation to the racist status quo, subway carmen and mechanics can playa Fitz" Fitzgerald, John F. Kennedy's rallies. The racist terrorist South Boston which would do little more than prettify vital role in leading all their class broth­ grandfather) in charge of the city admin­ Marshals patrolled the area against "out­ hideous oppression. Today, as expressed ers and sisters in a fight against the racist istration. The city's ruling class pur­ side agitation," carrying out repeated by cine of their· spokesmen at a recent capitalist exploiters. posely retarded industrial development attacks on blacks and anti-racist militants SWP forum in Boston, these reformists In this society based on unbridled cap­ and suppressed attempts to organize throughout the city. bizarrely claim that school busing won italist greed, it will take a socialist revo­ trade unions. Today Boston has one of As pitched battles over school integra­ and that the city is more integrated than lution to secure quality education, hous- . the lowest rates of union membership of tion raged in the streets from 1974 to ever! This in the midst of the widespread ing and jobs for black, Hispanic and all any major city in the North. And for 1976, the Spartacist League and Sparta­ unemployment, racist cop terror, crum­ working-class youth, just as it took the black residents, forced into the ghettos of cus Youth League actively fought to bling schools and conditions of desperate revolutionary Civil War to smash the Roxbury and Dorchester and the worst defend school busing. We called on the poverty and neglect which plague Amer­ slavocracy and to establish public educa­ jobs,· Boston's veneer of ivy-covered integrated labor movement-including ica's inner cities, including Boston. tion for black people in this country. academia and Northern liberalism has teachers, bus drivers and meatpackers What is needed is a revolutionary work­ always been a cruel hoax. unions-to organize labor/black defense For a Class-Struggle Fight ers party, acting as a tribune of all the It was in this quintessential Democratic of bused children. Against the narrow Against Racist Oppression! oppressed, that can lead the multiracial Party stronghold that busing was killed, limits set by the federal judges, we Emboldened by the defeat of busing, working class in-a fight to replace this foreshadowing its defeat nationwide, by called to extend busing to the suburbs so racists mobilized against efforts to inte­ racist capitalist system with an egalitar­ an alliance of racist mobs in the streets. poor kids, black and white, could have a grate South Boston's public housing ian classless society where those who and limousine liberals in Congress who shot-at a real education. projects in the late 1980s. In May 1994, labor rule .•

hatred for the regime into minimalist Timor through the intervention of the sian working class have demonstrated Indonesia ... · economic demands and support for the Australian jackal imperialists, who are their determination to rise up against their bourgeois opposition. Megawati, mean­ themselves deeply complicit in Suharto's exploiters. What is lacking is a leadership (continued from page 8) while, has disassociated herself from her slaughter of the East Timorese. which can point the way forward to a vic­ The government's claim that the PRD supporters' "violence" and has called "to The PRD not only looks to Megawati torious struggle for power. Such a party is fomenting communist insurrection is guarantee public order." Megawati is and her bourgeois PDI to oppose must be based on the Trotskyist program far from reality. PRD leader Budiman often compared to the Philippines' Cory Suharto, it also makes a veiled bid for of permanent revolution: the combative Sudjatmiko insists his party is "leftist in Aquino, who was promoted by Washing­ a split in the Indonesian military and proletariat leading the toiling peasant the socio-democratic sense," which is ton as a successor to the venal Marcos fosters illusions in the "democratic" masses in the struggle not only to over­ confirmed by the limited material avail­ regime. While Megawati is less effective appetites of U.S. imperialism. An August throw the venal, repressive rule of the able to us on the PRD's political work. than Aquino, there are certain parallels: 12 statement released by the PRD's over­ generals, but to expropriate the factory The PRD describes its program as aimed both wholeheartedly defend the interests seas office in Australia appeals to gener­ and plantation bosses-both the Indone­ at "achieving a multiparty democracy, of the capitalist class they represent and als who "are indicating support for the sian exploiters and the imperialist over­ with the right to freedom of _organisation both have been backed by leftists who democratic movement" and continues: lords they serve. Such a party must, like for workers, peasants and all oppressed mislead the workers movement into the "The U.S., which has become the pillar Lenin's Bolsheviks, be a tribune of the sections of society," explicitly calling for trap of popular-frontist betrayal. of anti-communism, considers we have people, championing the rights of the class-collaborationist alliances "with the While the PRD has, been active in entered the New World Order where subjugated women, the restive' youth, the issues of human rights, democracy and two legal non-government parties-the protesting the genocidal Indonesian occu­ economic development have become the myriad oppressed nationalities, the reli­ United Development Party (PPP) and the pation of East Timor, it refuses to call priority for all world nations. And this gious and ethnic minorities. Indonesian Democratic Party (pDI)-and for independence, instead demanding "a principle has given birth to a wave of The proletarian vanguard must look with all other democratic forces." peaceful resolution and no military inter­ democratisation everywhere." not to suicidal alliances with the class A PRD manifesto issued after the vention in East Timor, and recognition of Belief in the "democratic" intentions of enemy, the "democrat:c" bourgeois oppo­ July arrests sums up its. "immediate human and democratic rights for the East the imperialists who sponsored the 1965 sition and their imperialist sponsors, but demands," calling for raising the daily Timorese nation." Meanwhile, the PRD's massacre and in the "progressive" mili­ to linking up with its international class minimum wage to 7,000 rupiahs (about "democratic" heroine Megawati endorses tary is a fatally dangerous illusion. Such allies, the workers throughout Asia and $3), for a referendum for the people of the expansionist aims of the military a policy will lead these courageous across the world, in an international party East Timor, and for the nomination of regime, calling for incorporation of East young militants into the same kind of of socialist revolution-a reborn Fourth Megawati as a presidential candidate. Timor as the 27th province of Indonesia. bloc with bourgeois nationalists that led International. For a Leninist -Trotskyist Together these reflect the reforfuist and Among the Australian reformist left, the to the slaughter of a generation of leftist party in Indonesia! For an Indonesian popular-frontist outlook of this group, as PRD's publicity agents in the Democratic militants in 1965. workers republic, part of a socialist fed­ it seeks to channel the vast popular Socialist Party call for "liberating" East Successive generations of the Indone- eration of Asia! • 10 WORKERS VANGUARD while their racist tormentors-who typi­ in the South African police, most of by capitalist superexploitation and the South Africa ... cally win amnesty-not only remain free them in KwaZulu-Natal, where political divide-and-rule policies of the apartheid (continued from page 1 ) but in po~itions of power. The Truth violence between Inkatha and the ANC masters." Commission draws an equation between rages on. Yet COSATU remains a key prop of down when the killers found that their apartheid state terror, rape and butchery ·In 1990-91, armed thugs roved the the new capitalist government. While intended victim, ANC activist Victor and the occasional excesses of the sym­ commuter railways that brought black COSATU denounced the "far-reaching Ntuli (who was killed at a rally two years bolic guerrilla actions of the ANC's for­ workers from Soweto to Johannesburg. negative consequences" of the Malan later), was not home at the time. Mbusi mer military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe. These gunmen, often masked or includ­ verdict, not one of its unions protested Ntuli continued: "This is justice in South The "new" South Africa is a neo­ ing whites painted in blackface, sought with the strikes and stayaways that chal­ Africa. It has always been like this and apartheid regime: the rigid structures of out union shop stewards for assassination lenged judicial repression under the for­ the judiciary are the same old people." racial segregation-the Group Areas Act, and murdered scores of Zulu and Xhosa mer regime. Staking its future on the language restrictions, pass laws-are But the ANC leaders-no less than the workers. The bourgeois press wrote off nationalist popular-front ANC alliance, a gone, but white supremacy remains. The racist ruling class for which they front­ the "train violence" as "tribal factional newly formed labour bureaucracy closely "sunset clause" which was a key feature were quick to accept this old-style South struggle," but it was well known to apart­ aligned with the SACP is pushing an African "justice." Malan gloated that the of the "power sharing" deal between heid racists that the ANC-allied Con­ agenda of class peace. Meanwhile, Man­ Mimdela and De Klerk guaranteed that outcome "serves as an example of how gress of South African Trade Unions dela & Co. have tried to mobilise plebe­ the Randlords' racist henchmen would democracy should function in a civilised (COSATU) used the trains as organising ian black sentiment against the trade maintain their positions in the capitalist country." Mandela dutifully chimed in: centres for labourers. unions, claiming that the relatively high "I have confidence in the judiciary. I am state for at least five years. The courts, In the wake of the "train violence," the wages in the industrial sector are respon­ cops and military that enforced apartheid a politician and am guided by their deci­ ANC/SACP leaders worked overtime to sible for mass unemployment and abject rule remain in place, even if some former sion. I will not interfere in the judicial lead the proletariat away from working­ poverty in the countryside. ANC guerrillas have been incorporated process." Yet even as a Durban judge class defence against the violence. In this into the repressive apparatus. There will exonerated Malan of his heinous crimes, way they gave backhanded support to For a Bolshevik Party! convicted killer Eugene de Kock (code be no justice in South Africa until the anti-Zulu communalism among their For a Black-Centered Workers white racist capitalist class and its black name "Prime Evil") was presenting testi­ supporters organised in predominantly Government! mony before a court in Pretoria about Without taking the road of class strug­ Malan's role in the apartheid regime's gle, the working masses of South Africa "dirty war" against black liberation fight­ face a grim future of rotten ethnic ers, in which de Kock had been chief hatreds rising to the top. In Cape Town. assassin. Indian and Malay Muslim vigilantes An editorial in the leading mouthpiece organised in "People Against Gangster­ of the American ruling class, the New ism and Drugs" have hunted down and York Times (15 October), lauded Man­ killed alleged drug dealers in response dela for "embracing judicial decisions to rising street crime in the country. This even when they go against him." But did "movement" linked to religious funda­ this judicial decision really go against mentalists in the Near East has roamed the ANC leadership? Recall that Malan the Indian township of Lenasia out­ and the others were arrested and indicted side Johann~sburg under slogans such as two days before local elections were held "one dealer, one bullet." Anti-immigrant last November. ANC spokesmen were mobilisations are increasingly. routine. worried about a low turnout as their Alexandra residents dancing the "toyi­ supporters were becoming disillusioned toyi" brought the local Home Affairs that nothing had changed in their day­ office to a standstill recently in a chau­ to-day lives since Mandela became vinist protest against foreigners, whom South Africa's first black president in they accused of taking their jobs. One 1994. The judicial action against Malan woman shouted: "Grigambas, go home," and his colleagues was thus a cynical using a slur for Africans from north of ploy to revive the ANC's anti-apartheid the Limpopo River, which divides South credentials. Africa from Zimbabwe. Even Judge Jan Hugo, who freed With race and class contradictions rife, Malan and the others, hypocritically Children of women slaughtered in the alternatives in South Africa are chastised government prosecutors for 1987 KwaMakhutha massacre ordered by former apartheid defense minister starkly, posed: either workers revolution presenting a sloppy case by, for example, Magnus Malan (right). based on the power of millions of black not calling witnesses to substantiate the workers or an escalation of racial and charges. Mandela & Co. certainly did not ethnic strife with its murderous outcome. want to antagonize the many apartheid Reuters Securing basic democratic rights, like the criminals-Malan's former comrades-in­ right to housing, employment and a arms-who continue to occupy positions front men are swept away and replaced Xhosa "self-defence units" in the embat­ decent quality education for all, can only of authority in the army, the police and by a black-centred workers govern­ tled black townships around Johannes­ come by breaking the economic and the rest of the South African state appara­ ment in which there would also be a burg. As thousands were being killed in political power of the giant mining and tus. For the white racists, the Malan ver­ place for coloureds (mixed-race), Asians the so-called "Reef war" between Inka­ manufacturing combines through expro­ dict confirmed that the ANC regime and whites who accept the democratic tha and the ANC, we wrote: priation of their assets, laying the basis would continue to shield them from the will of the black toiling majority. "What is needed is the formation of for a planned economy under the rule of vengeance of the black masses. union-based workers defense guards, linking the factory to the townships, and workers councils. In the absence of any hint of justice Only Proletarian Power Can Overcome Murderous Tribalism made up of class-conscious workers This understanding is rooted in the for the oppressed in the racist courts, including Zulus, Xhosas and members what is being offered up as an alternative Political violence between Inkatha and of other tribal groupings, as well as Trotskyist theory of permanent revolu­ is the Truth and Reconciliation Commis­ the ANC was the unstated backdrop to coloured, Asian and anti-racist white tion., the program demonstrated in action workers, to suppress both right-wing ter­ sion headed by Bishop Desmond Tutu, Malan's trial. While the ANC draws sup­ by Lenin's Bolshevik Party in Russia rorists and the fomenters of bloody com­ as it led the successful struggle for the an impotent safety valve for the outrage port from all sections of the nonwhite munalist war." of the survivors of apartheid terror. The population as well as liberal and leftist - "South Africa and Permanent dictatorship of the proletariat in 1917. New York Times editorial cynically coun­ whites, its strongest base of support is Revolution," WV No. 515, The working class must forge a multi­ selled that the acquittal "reinforces the among the Xhosas of the Eastern Cape. 30 November 1990 racial revolutionary party built in sharp country's need for the commission, Xhosas, the country's second-largest tri­ The bosses continue to use interethnic political combat against the bourgeois­ which is charged with finding the truth bal group, are prevalent in the ANC lead.,. rivalries as a weapon to suppress class nationalist ANC and its ostensibly about apartheid crimes and giving thou­ ership, with Mandela himself being the struggle. Today, under the guise of "leftist" backers. In opposition to the sands of victims-many more than son of a minor Xhosa chieftain from the "independent" unions such as Uwusa "tripartite alliance" of the ANC/SACP/ would get satisfaction through trials­ Transkei. Hence the Afrikaner nationalist (United Workers Union), Inkatha organ­ COSATU front men, a revolutionary the chance to tell their stories." In other regime and Inkatha were able to exploit ises Zulu miners as strikebreakers. But workers party will fight for the expropri­ words, the victims are allowed a "cathar­ the fears of traditional-minded Zulu vil­ while the IFP won most of the rural vole ation of the white agribusinesses and the tic" cry and some token compensation, lagers and backward Zulu workers that in recent K waZulu-Natal elections, the vast tracts of farmland seized from black an ANCgovernment would be a dis­ ANC garnered the biggest vote in the rural labourers and for the nationalisa­ guised form of Xhosa domination. main cities and towns. This points to a tion of the mines and factories under a The Ma1an trial confirmed the extent significant distance from the IFP among black~centred workers government. The Spartacist League to which elements in white ruling circles, urban Zulu workers and poses the International Communist League fights particularly the Afrikaner military, pro­ possibility of continued cross-ethnic or­ to forge a Bolshevik party to lead the Public Offices moted and funded Zulu tribalist terror­ ganising among workers. COSATU re­ struggle for a new South Africa in which -MARXIST L1TERATURE­ ism against the ANC and the closely mains the only mass institution in the those who labour nile. allied South African Communist Party country embracing members of all racial The fight for justice in this country Bay Area (SACP). Undisputed testimony in the and ethnic groups on a class basis. requires a party that 'will fight for the Thurs.: 5:30-8:00 p.m., Sat.: 1 :00-5:00 p.m. Malan case showed how 206 Inkatha COSATU unions have even won over interests of all the oppressed, for prole­ 1634 Telegraph, 3rd Floor (near 17th Street) Oakland, California Phone: (510) 839-0851 supporters received paramilitary training some white workers. Thus the labour tarian revolution. and its necessary inter­ under the auspices of Military Intelli­ movement can be a crucial bulwark national extension to the industrial cen­ Chicago gence in the Caprivi strip in 1986. An against South Africa's sliding into a tres of the capitalist world. Under a Tues.: 5:00-9:00 p.m., Sat.: 11 :00a.m.-2:00p.m. 328 S. Jefferson St., Suite 904 obvious omission of the trial was the sewer of racial and tribal strife. As we workers government, the Magnus Malans Chicago, Illinois Phone: (312) 454-4930 complicity of Inkatha chief Mangosuthu wrote in Part One of "South Africa and Mangosuthu Buthelezis will be tried Buthelezi, who was involved in the mili­ Powder Keg" (WV No. 603, 8 July 1994, before revolutionary tribunals made up New York City tary cover-up relating to "Operation reprinted in Black History and the of people like the survivors in the Ntuli Tues.: 6:30-9:00 p.m., Sat.: 1 :00-5:00 p.m. 41 Warren St. (one block below Marion" in the Caprivi strip, but wasn't Class Struggle No. 12): "Hard class family and others who have suffered the Chambers St. near Church St.) ~harged. The liberal Weekly Mail and struggle is the only way to cut through murderous rampage of racist apartheid. New York, NY Phone: (212) 267-1025 Guardian (11 October) reports that at these poisonous ethnic hatreds born Only then will those massacred at Kwa­ least 55 of the Caprivi trainees still work of the horrendous poverty produced Makhutha be avenged .• 25 OCTOBER 1996 11 WfJlIllEIiS "."'11'

California: Vote No on Prop 209! OAKLAND-Proposition 209, the and upheavals of the '60s were at best always: vote for Clinton. Yet the Demo­ ties together with the power of the inte­ racist and grotesquely misnamed Cali­ a limited gain for a tiny percentage of cratic and Republican parties alike are grated labor movement in the fight fornia Civil Rights Initiative (CCRI), minorities and women; the racist rulers determined to roll back every gain for open admissions with no tuition calls for the destruction of all state initially implemented hiring quotas workers and minorities have wrested and free, quality education for all. affirmative action programs in educa­ with the intention of breaking the from the bosses through bitter class To combat massive unemployment, tion, hiring and contracting. With rising unions and exacerbating racial divi­ struggle. The fake leftists who tail Jack­ particularly among minorities, we raise tuition rates forcing black and Latino sions in the workforce. Now, embold­ son have tried to restrict opposition to the demand for jobs for all through a youth out of the state's universities, ened in its one-sided class war against Prop. 209 to a narrow ballot issue. But shorter workweek with no loss in pay. the CCRI amounts to a racist purge working people, the ruling class has set simply defending existing affirmative To win such demands requires a strug­ of higher education. Public schools its sights on the minimal access minor­ action programs accepts the racial dis­ gle that transcends the framework of have already been resegregated, and the ity youth have to the race- and class­ crimination inherent in capitalist soci­ capitalist pressure politics and chal­ sharp cuts in education funding have biased higher education system. Like ety. The Spartacist League and Sparta­ lenges .the oppression of black people led to a lack of books and adequate the racist campaign against immigrants, cus Youth Clubs call on all working which is rooted in American capitalism. teaching staff. Taken together with the this is a ploy to deflect domestic dis­ people, minorities and youth to vote We fight for revolutionary integra­ devastation of welfare by Clinton and content into a "divide and rule" scheme "no" on Prop. 209. However, we under­ tionism-complete social, political and Congress and the widespread destruc­ to better exploit the whole working stand that the right to an education and economic equality in a socialist society. tion of manufacturing jobs, Prop. 209 is class. to employment will not be decided at We seek to build a multiracial work­ a declaration that no black person need The National Organization for the polls. ers party which can lead the working ever be hired again. Women and Jesse Jackson have run The strategy necessary to drive back class in defense of all the oppressed The affirmative action programs around the country in support of affir­ this ruling-class assault is one which through the struggle for proletarian established in response to the protests mative action, but their real message is seeks to mobilize students and minori- revolution.

Racist Mob Attacks Black Students Courts Resegregate Bo"ston Schools law of the land. Hispanic masses in impoverished ghettos Against the racist rollback being and barrios. Any real fight to desegregate pushed by both Democrats and Republi­ education must be linked to the strug­ cans, we defend busing as well as affirm­ gle for integrated, quality low-cost hous­ ative action as minimal measures to ing for all. enable minority youth to have some access to a decent education. But unlike The Battle for Busing in Boston those whose ultimate goal is only to For the past 20 years the political lead­ BOSTON-Carloads of jeering white admission of a white student pending assure a place in elite public schools and ership of Boston has been a rogues' racist youths, armed with Mace, hockey the trial of her "reverse discrimination" universities for a relative handful of gallery of those who built their careers on

~ sticks and baseball bats, viciously at­ suit (see "Boston Schools: Liberals middle-class black and Hispanic students, the racist mobilization against busing. tacked black students last month outside Attack Affirmative Action," WV No. 631, we demand: Free, quality, integrated edu­ Late City Council president Louise Day the prestigious Boston Latin Academy in 20 October 1995). Two weeks later, city cation for all! For open admissions and a Hicks, who threw herself in front of buses the Roxbury ghetto. The thugs wore officials announced plans to gut the affir­ living stipend! But the question of school carrying black stuqents, rode her dema­ "Southie Rules" T-shirts anq taunted, mative action plans implemented under integration cannot be divorced from the goguery into a Congressional seat. State "Southie's in the house!" Most of them Garrity's original 1974 desegregation pervasive segregation of the black and continued on page 10 came from South Boston, which in order, which reserved 35 percent of the the 1970s was the focus of racist seats in the city's three entrance exam mobilizations against school busing, as high schools-Latin, Latin Academy, black schoolchildren being transported and John D. Bryant Math and Science­ to white schools were confronted by vio­ for minority students. lent, howling mobs. Meanwhile, the state Board of Educa­ Today, 20 years after busing to inte­ tion is leading the charge to repeal the grate Boston's schools was killed on the "Racial Imbalance Act," which applies to streets, the city remains if anything more any district (excluding Boston, which is segregated' than before. The beleaguered under separate court order) with a school black population faces increasing attacks where more than 50 percent of enroll­ from both the city administration and ment is minority students. Pushing for emboldened racist thugs. Just a week the law's repeal is state '~education czar" before the Latin Academy attack, a John Silber, who as the dictatorial head hClUse which had just been sold toa of Boston University was notorious for black family was burned down in pre­ intimidating leftist professors and run­ September 26: dominantly white West Roxbury. ning an FBI-style surveillance file on Cops manhandle These vile racist attacks come as the student activists. Upon taking office last black students at Boston city government is about to for­ March, Silber wasted little time in Boston Latin expressing his contempt for minority stu­ Academy, following mally finish off the remnants of school attack by white desegregation, and with it what slim dents: "If we want to pontificate like racist mob. chances black children currently have for God almighty and say all children are a decent education. On August 22, Judge created equal, then we're talking rub­ Arthur Garrity Jr. effectively overturned bish" (Boston Herald, IS March). This an affirmative action program at the elite racist pig wants to return to the days Boston Latin public school, ordering the when "separate and unequal" was the

12 25 OCTOBER 1996