25~ WfJ/iIlE/iS"II'tJ'"No. 452 6 May 1988

Workers Strike, Contras Splinter, Sandinistas Backpedal Icara• ualn• urmol• Workers Need Bolshevik L~adership

With truce talks in Managua be­ tween the radical-nationalist Sandi­ Outside U.S. nista regime and Washington's contra embassy in mercenaries once again interrupted, Managua, Nicaragua is seething internally. As Sandinista , government negotiators offered increas­ demonstrators ingly dangerous concessions to the denounce counterrevolutionary chiefs, who keep CIA-backed assassins, c~1I demanding more, thousands of Sandi­ for permanent nista supporters demonstrated with cease-fire to signs demanding "death to the con­ end contra war. tras." Meanwhile, the Nicaraguan masses stagger under anti-working-class austerity which has slashed their miser­ able wages. Pushed to the wall, con­ ,J'.ii\" struction workers and mechanics have been on strike for the last two months. And as.the Sandinista police crack "peace" pact engineered by the Dem­ all SandinistaII.'military and civilian per­ AID has already resumed air drops to down, the internal right wing and contra ocratic Party and Costa Rican pres­ sonnel to abandon the seven"cease-fire" the mercenary camps along the Hondu­ leadership-in collusion with opposi­ ident Arias, is an effort to undermine the zones! They are also demanding the ran border with Nicaragua. Even so, the tion union leaders-are cynically pos- limited gains of the Nicaraguan Revolu­ right to receive "replacement" weapons military attempts at overthrowing the ing as friends of the strikers. . tion through negotiations, since Rea­ and ammunition, and that Soviet mili­ Sandinistas may have reached a dead In the all-sided turmoil engulfing gan's contras have lost on the battle­ tary aid to the government be cut off. ' end. "The bottom line is that theContra Nicaragua, a Bolshevik party is ever field. Contra official and former La The Reaganites in Washington are war is over," said U.S. Assistant Secre­ more urgently needed to crystallize the Prensa editor Pedro Chamorro said as doing their best to sink the truce talks. tary of State Elliott Abrams in an off­ situation along class lines, fighting to much on returning to Managua: "We Under the Sapoa accord, "humanitar­ the-record interview. "And perhaps the complete the revolution by- expro­ came here to achieve at the conference ian" aid to the contras is supposed to be last service I will perform for the Con­ priating the bourgeoisie, and to extend table what we have not been able to delivered by a "neutral" party, so the tras will be to band out green (US immi­ it throughout Central America and achieve in the mountains" (New York White House picked AID (Agency for gration) cards" (Independent [Lon­ beyond. Times, 17 April). Backed up by the International Development), synony­ don], 9 April). The March 23 Sapoa cease-fire agree­ $48 million voted by the Democrat­ mous with CIA counterinsurgency pro­ Meanwhile, the contra leadership is ment, implementing the Esquipulas II controlled Congress, the contras want grams from Vietnam to EI Salvador. continued on page 10

Behind French Elections: Fascist Threat Mounts As the results came in from the first bled the Communists' total, finishing Le Pen's racist electorate, Mitterrand round of the French presidential second only to "socialist" Francois is trying to undercut the National elections on April 24, millions in Mitterrand. ' Front by promising public spending to France and throughout Europe react­ The second round, on May B, pits improve housing conditions in areas ed in shock. Jean-Marie Le Pen-can­ President Mitterrand against Prime with high unemployment and immi­ didate of the fascist National Front, Minister Jacques Chirac, former dis­ grant population. Mitterrand will paratrooper-torturer from the dirty ciple of de Gaulle. Although he came likely remain in the Elysee pres­ colonial war in Algeria, the man who in ahead of Raymond Barre, the other idential palace, perhaps with a coali­ reaped international infamy with his major bourgeois candidate, the Gaull­ tion of his Socialist Party(PS) and sec­ Gavin Smith declaration that Hitler's gas chambers ist Chirac received less than 20 per­ tions of Barre's UDF. French fascist Le Pen. were only a historical "detail," the sin­ cent. The score of the Communist On May 1, Le Pen held a sinister ister inciter of' anti-immigrant ter­ Party (PC F), historically the party of anti-working-class provocation in for attacks on immigrants. This fas­ ror-had won over 14 percent of the the militant French proletariat, was Paris. Mixing May Day and Joan of cist demonstration wasn't the massive vote. From Amiens in the north to catastrophic: 6.8 percent, its lowest Arc, the fascist leader wanted to review outpouring that the National Front Marseille in the south, in many cities., since the 1920s, down by two-thirds his troops under the watchwords . hoped for after its spectacular electoral including the Paris region, Le Pen beat from the last presidential elections. of "fatherland" and "labor," Nearly breakthrough. Aside from a hard core the candidates of the "respectable" Mitterrand himself received only 34 25,000 people marched, shouting of some 2,000 fascist thugs sporting bourgeois parties and more than dou- percent. So while Chirac is bidding for "France for the French"-code words continued on page 8 week and one family visit per month. According to Susan Rosenberg, who Parti8au Defeu8e describes herself as an anti-imperialist political prisoner, Lexington officials £o...... ittee told her, "The only way you can get out is if you change your associations and CLASS-STRUGGLE DEFENSE NOTES affiliations." The government hellhound is still on Geronimo Pratt's case. For 18 years Pratt has foughtfor his freedom and to Geronimo/Pratt expose the bloody crimes of COINTEL­ PRO which murdered 38 of his Panther comrades and keeps him behind bars. The PDC learned from prison officials Back Safe­ that Pratt's legal papers, seized more than one month earlier, had not been forwarded under federal seal as prom­ Free Him Now! ised. Instead they were sent through the On April 29, Geronimo Pratt finally prison in El Reno, Oklahoma on the mails, and "lost"-just like the FBI arrived safely in San Quentin prison, way back for nearly two weeks and sub­ "lost" the wiretap logs which prove that more than two weeks after leaving the jected to a grueling 36-hour non-stop Pratt was 400 miles away from the site of Metropolitan Correctional Center in final leg from there. At El Reno, he was the murder for which he was framed. New York. Pratt had come to New York allowed into the general prison popula­ Pratt's papers, the product of years of research on COINTELPRO, are vital to to testify as a defense witness in the trial tion for the 'first time in over a month, WV Photo of Mutulu Shakur and Marilyn Buck and then again placed in solitary con­ Geronimo Pratt, America's foremost his exposure of the FBI vendetta against (see "Geronimo Pratt Put in Chains," , finement for the last five days ofhis stay. class-war prisoner. him. And this sleight of hand occurred WV No. 451, 22 April). Pratt was kept Upon learning that Pratt was back in as the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals chained and manacled all the way to "the hole," the PDC called news report­ tions, Inc. (IE), which turns a neat profit threatens to throw out his appeal on a New York, his very life endangered by ers and civil rights organizations urging transporting prisoners and suspects not legal technicality. being falsely branded a "prisonescapee" them to call the prison to protest this lat- convicted of any crimes in a manner Congressman Ronald Dellums has as he was dragged through several pris­ . est abuse. similar to {he brutal way Pratt was introduced a resolution calling for a ons in' the Deep South. In a lawsuit Until El Reno officials threw P~att brought to New York. IE packs prison­ Congressional investigation of COIN­ brought by the Partisan Defense'Com­ into solitary they treated him no better, ers wearing leg irons and handcuffs TELPRO and the frame-up of Geron­ mittee in New York, the government and no worse, than other inmates-e-i.e., attached to a "belly chain" into a imo Pratt. The Dellums resolution also was forced to admit in courtthat Pratt is hideously! And that customarily abu­ "stretch van" which drives cross­ calls on the California governor and not a "prison escapee," and thereby he sive treatment' of prisoners is getting country. The van meanders to drop off parole board to "take actions within won a measure of protection on his worse. Reaganite privatization has giv­ and pick up new "passengers."Thereare their power to bring about the immedi­ return trip. en birth to private prisoner transport no stops for sleep and prisoners are let ate release from prison of Elmer'Geron­ Even so, Pratt was kept in the federal companies such as Interstate Extradi- out only for brief bathroom stops every imo' Pratt." The 1976 Senate Church three or four hours. Food is brought in Committee hearings exposed some of three times a day and the tightly packed the crimes of COINTELPRO-but left prisoners are denied access to showers its gangsters unpunished and its vic­ tims, like Pratt, behind bars. Geronimo Return to Lenin's International! or change of clothes. American prisons are filthy, over­ needs your help now! Send your letters Ignace Reiss (Poretsky) was a veteran crowded, degrading and deadly dan­ to Congressman Peter W. Rodino, Jr., Polish-Jewish Communist who served in gerous. The largely black and Hispanic Chairman, Committee on the Judi­ Soviet intelligencefor 15 years,first in the prison inmates constantly face the ciary, 2137 Rayburn House Office Fourth Department ofthe RedArmy, then sadistic caprices of their racist jailers. Building, Washington, D.C. 20515, and for the Comintern supplying weapons to This country's capitalist rulers' only to your local Congressman urging them Republican Spain. Following the bloody answer to the swelling prison ranks is to support House Resolution No. 413. Moscow purge trialsin 1936 andin theface the speedup on death row. Even the Geronimo Pratt is America's fore­ of Stalin's counterrevolutionary treachery minimal. human rights permitted are most class-war prisoner. His freedom is in Spain, Reiss publicly broke with the rapidly diminishing. The Reagan Su­ vital to all who fight against racist TROTSKY Stalin regime and declared for Trotsky's LENIN preme Court, which last year endorsed capitalist oppression. It is now more Fourth International in the letter to the the Jim Crow death penalty, is now urgent than ever for all leftists, trade Soviet CP Central Committee excerpted below. (See "Honor Ignace Reiss," page 7.) threatening to bolster the wardens' cen­ unionists and civil rights activists to His body wasfound afew weeks later by a roadside in Switzerland. Stalin's assassins sorship power over inmates' reading unite in the fight for Geronimo Pratt's had rewarded Reissfor his loyalty to the world revolution with a bullet to the head. materials. freedom. As Geronimo wrote, "I ear­ nestly call on everyone who actively sup­ The day when international socialism will judge the crimes committed in the past For those like Pratt who challenge ports my efforts to be free to come ten years is not far off. Nothing will be forgotten and nothing will be forgiven. this barbaric system, prison hell is even History is harsh..... ten degrees hotter. the federal insti­ together, fight together and rally togeth­ er to see justice done." Freedom now for The working class must defeat Stalin and Stalinism so that the U.S.S.R. and the tutions at Lexington, Kentucky and international wor-kers' movement do not succumb to fascism and counter-revolution. Marion, Illinois have 'pilot projects Geronimo Pratt! This mixture of the worst of opportunism, devoid of principles, and of lies and blood designed for political opponents. For threatens to poison the world and the last forces of theworking class. instance, women prisoners at Lexing­ *** What is needed today is a fight withoutmercy against Stalinism! The class struggle ton are confined to subterranean cells Join our struggle to free Geronimo and not the popular front, workers' intervention in the Spanish revolution as under glaring bright lights 23 hours a Pratt and all class-war prisoners. Be­ opposed to the action of committees. day and kept under constant surveil­ come a sustaining contributor to the Down with the lie 'of socialism in one country! Return to Lenin's international! lance by TV camera. They are subjected PDC. Send a donation of $5 or more Neither the Second nor the' Third International can carry out this historical to high-tech barbarism using "Clock­ and receive a subscription to Class­ mission. Corrupt and dislocated, all they can do is to prevent the working class from work Orange" behavior modification Struggle Defense Notes. For a single fighting. They can only be the policemen at the service of the bourgeoisie.... methods-including sensory depriva­ copy send $1 to: Partisan Defense Com­ I cannot stand it any longer. I take my freedom of action. I return to Lenin, to his tion. Officials restrict them to one 15­ mittee, P.O. Box 99, Canal Street Sta­ doctrine, to his acts. minute phonecall with their lawyer each tion, New York, NY 10013.• I intend to devote my feeble forces to the cause of Lenin. I want to continue the fight, for only our victory-that of the proletarian revolution-will free humanity of capitalism and the U.S.S.R. of Stalinism. Forward to new struggles! For the Fourth International! "il.rti~n aaefen!lJie -Ignace Reiss, "To the Central Committee of the Communist Party -=.....Dlittee of the U.S.S.R." (July 1937) • 14"i"'i'jlMlj·J":UJ.1'Ue.'If $1.00 < ....., APRIL 1988

FBI ConIiIJJes to HotI1tJ Ametica's Special Supplement Foremost Class-War Prisoner! (April 1988) !~!!!..'t!.,y~~!!t'!.~'!.~.S~ Freedom Now for Geronimo Pratt! DIRECTOR OF 'PARTY PUBLICATIONS: Liz Gordon EDITOR: Jan Norden With your contribution "/~calon of $5 or more receive 6IoeI)On&whoacti\Qy PRODUCTION MANAGER: Noah Wilner a subscription to supports myefforts 10 CIRCULATION MANAGER: Jon Lawrence be /lee 10come Class-Struggle together, fi{1t togeI/'Isr EDITORIAL BOARD: George Foster, Liz Gordon, Frank Hunter, Jane Kerrigan, Defense Notes. andraft togeI/'Isr 10 Len Meyers, Jan Norden, James Robertson, Reuben Samuels, Joseph Seymour, seejJsticeoOOe.,. Alison Spencer, Marjorie Stamberg, Noah Wilner (Closing editor) , For a single copy of -gt1tr1IWno Warkers Vanguard (USPS 098-770) published biweekly, except 2nd issue August and with 3-week interval December, the Special Supplement MCC-NY by the Spartacist Publishing Co., 41 Warren Street, New York, NY 10007.Telephone: 732-7862 (Editorial), 732-7861 417/88 (Business). Address all correspondence to: Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116. Domestic SUbscriptions: $5.00/24 send $1 to: issues. Second-class postage pakl at New York, NY. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Workers Vanguard, Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116. Partisan Defense Committee, Opinions expressed in signed arlic/es or leiters do n61 necessarily express lhe edilorial viewpoint. P.O. Box 99. Canal Street Station, New York, NY 10013 .~ fRlCIAL Sl.fIPt.SEHf}_. _ No. 452 6 May 1988

2 WORKERS VANGUARD

. ~.~ ... Letter In. Memory of a Yugoslav Communist

We print below a letter from a sym- der.J guess he figured that being 79, he Western-stylesocial democracy openly pathizer in Boston. . didn't have too much to lose. What was advocated by one bureaucrat.) These even more amazing was that these guys are just individual stories, but about February 21, 1988 were saying, "That's exactly it, that's people who represent larger social Dear WV, exactly right. Trotsky's right." Later in forces, in just the same way each and Your recent articles on Yugoslavia the conversation one of the guys turned every one of you is not only an individ­ have been excellent and, as such, really to my f~ther and said, "Your son, he's a ual but stands as a marker for the future disturbing to me. 1 have in mind to communist, isn't he?" Then he turned to mass party of a politically conscious write a letter corroborating your point me and said, "It's hard to be a com­ working class. The sum of every fighter of view with my own personal obser­ munist in America. It's easier here." is the organization, and each fighter is a vations. 1 have wanted to combine that Some people know a victory when they part of the experience and memory of a letter with a memorial to my father, see one. Some people know there are working class that can and is willing to who died two years ago. My father, gains to defend. These people will find take power in its own name. Ernest Weissmann, was a Yugoslav the road to Trotskyism ifthe iSt can find 'It is this-that your work and Communist and an internationalist for the road to them. your organization, to paraphrase Lenin, 70 years; starting when he was 12in'I915 My father was only loosely, and stands as the ho... "", the conscience and and going to his grave with a red star always somewhat uncomfortably, asso­ the power of the working class-that my over his ashes. He knew the world ciated with the Yugoslav Stalinist bu­ father recognized. And it was the power before and after there was a Russian reaucracy once it settled into power, and of your actions and the power your pro­ Revolution. He immediately recog­ was disgusted with the cynicism, waste­ gram is capable of mobilizing, that nized the voice of Lenin in the program fulness, anti-Semitism of some, and per­ finally at the end of his life, when he was of the international Spartacist ten­ sonal self-seeking of much of that deciding what was really important, dency, and because of that he was won bureaucracy. Still, he was a kind of mav­ won this man-e-whose life's work in the to Trotsky, as he came to understand erick member of the bureaucracy, in Communist movement amounted to Lujo Weissman Trotsky's program, as expressed by that he was proud of the gains of the rev­ Ernest Weissmann something-away from fiddling with the iSt. olution and wanted to defend them and workers self-management as a poor sub­ As his son, 1 had the privilege of saw no decisive alternative way. RRA (including some Americans), I stitute for workers democracy and away knowin~ my father as a fighter and He had a history. He was not un­ believe, helped make the difference from a kind of economic autarky as an human being. He is gone now forever recognized in Yugoslavia. He was between life and death for many people answer to the Western bankers who he from the human stage, so it is up to me awarded the Order of Tito (which, I in Eastern Europe in the years immedi­ hated, and back to the perspective that to convey to you-the fighters of this believe, is Yugoslavia's highest honor) ately following WW II. He once told me, an international revolution could be generation-fraternal greetings from for his work in the Yugoslav Com­ "I never broke the rules; Ijustmade sure won. He was not afraid at the end of his one who fought for Communism his munist Party in the two decades before they were followed." After his death, life to pick up that banner once again, whole life, bowing to no enemy and World War II. The party was, of course, while looking through his papers, I once he was convinced that there was seeking no compromise for himself, and illegal, the work clandestine, and every came across a clipping from the New an organization that really understood who finally fell only before death, day meant potential torture. imprison­ York Times, in which some Senator or what Marxism is supposed to be about believing Trotsky was right. ment or death; a fate that befell many of Congressman was demanding to know and had the backbone to really fight He was a real Communist. He said­ my father's comrades and some of his how these locomotives that UNRRA for it. this man born to a poor, intellectual friends. The Nazis knew my father well had earmarked.for Chiang Kai-shek had I'd like to share with you one more Jewish family in the anti-Semitic enough to have him on their list to be ended up in the hands of Marshal Tito. story about my father. 1 came to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, this man executed when they invaded 'the coun­ I guess Chiang Kai-shek had already Spartacist League out of the orbit who worked with Le Corbusier in the try. Among other things, he had written gotten his quota for that year. of Peter Sollenberger's Revolutionary 1920s and helped introduce modern an article in the '30s exposing Hitler's My father used to recite with glee the Workers League (RWL). 1 broke with architecture to Yugoslavia-that the highway building as the construction of story of how he informed the partisan the RWL because 1 wouldn't cross a greatest satisfaction of his life was that invasion routes. The Order of Tito was delegation in the U.S. that the U.S. picket line they were crossing; because 1 when everyone said that it could not be also awarded for the work he did in the Army was selling all these surplus jeeps wanted to fight the Klan and defend the done, that it was impossible to do, he United States during and immediately _ dirt cheap in Italy. Yugoslavia had noth­ Soviet Union, which they wouldn't. My and a small band of others fought for a after the war and for his contributions in ing at the time. I don't remember now if father despised Peter Sollenberger and revolution in Yugoslavia and won. (And the area of regional planning in postwar my father just informed the Yugoslavs the RWL. When 1 asked him in later he did understand the deep but incom­ Yugoslavia. o~ also told, them to request UNRRA years what he thought of Peter he said, plete nature of that victory in a visceral "I never liked that Peter for two rea­ way.) sons. First, he always knew the answer. 1 once asked him if he was afraid of He never had to think about anything dying; he was in his late 70s, and he said, and he seemed to always have to impress "No. My only regret is that I won't live me WIth how much he knew. And I felt to see the world revolution." I will never that he hated the Soviet Union.;' He forget when he ended an argument with pinned the Sollenbergerites to the wall me about the Popular Front in France in three sentences. in 1936-whichhe had participated in­ When I asked him at the very end of by saying, "You know, you're right." his life what he thought of the SL he And I will never forget·the day he looked said, "I think if any group will make a up at me and said, some 50 years after revolution it will be this one." 1 asked the events of 1919,1921 and 1923:"I still him why he thought that way. He said, say, what we could have showed them if "From the first time 1 saw their news­ we'd won, in Germany." paper 1 knew this was a serious organi­ He said, a year before he died, that if zation. But what really won me was he was 20 years younger (60) he would Afghanistan. Because when 1 saw what still be fighting and that the thing he felt this group had to say about Afghani­ worst about was leaving this world, with stan 1 knew that this was a group that its terrible trials ahead, to the young. He knew how to defend what has already never said it could be easy but he said the been won." iSt could do it. My father was only one One day, when we've won it all, when man but he represented a lifetime of we can truly spare the next generation dedication to the Communist move­ from the brutality'of being born into a ment, and his adoption of the Trotsky­ capitalist world, and can' offer them ist program represents, in a small way, United Natfons Archives beauty instead of hope, 1 would like to the power of the Trotskyist call for pro­ Belgrade, December 1946: Lpcomotives obtained by Yugoslavia from UN see a park for the children of humanity letarian political revolution in defense Relief and Rehabilitation Administration were vital to rehabilitate transport. my father loved so much; and by his. .. ~ of the gains already won in the over­ name, alongside of which he would turning of capitalist propertyforms, and He was in the U.S. when the war dollars quickly, but I do know that the insist be written "only one among the insistence on the necessity of defend­ broke out. This was one of his greatest partisans bought the jeeps, marched a many," I would like to see the words I ing those gains through international regrets because it meant that he could detachment of drivers over the border laid oil his casket at his cremation­ revolution. notfight the fascists, arms in hand. Still, and drove all this surplus equipment along with three California poppies­ I'll never forget the conversation my he did his part. Working in UNRRA back into Yugoslavia. the words of the Internationale and father and I were having with two polit­ (United Nations Relief and Rehabilita­ So 1 have seen, in Yugoslavia, evi­ these from the pre-WW I German Social ically conscious workers in Yugoslavia, tion Administration), he battled the dence of the reality of the power of the Democracy: "Though cowards flinch at least one of them a Party member, Americancomponent, to make sure that Trotskyist program to address the needs and 'traitors sneer /You'll find the red from the local shipyard. One of the men materiel such as locomotives, supplies of the proletariat in the degenerated and, flag flying here." In this way the chil­ was wondering why the revolutionary for basic industry, etc., got to Eastern deformed workers states and its power dren of freedom will know the nature of ideals were being lost in one generation. , Europe. This was, in my eyes, perhaps to win a section of the bureaucracy to a the men and women who brought them My father started quoting Trotsky on his greatest service to the workers of the program of proletarian political revo­ , to that place of joy. the origin of the bureaucracy being world. His actions, along with other lution based on the defense of social­ Fraternally, scarcityelinesepolicernen to keep or- people of' jsimilar sympathies in UN- ized property forms. (I have als? heard Gordon Weissmann 6 MAY 1988 3 Madison: 700 March Against Frat Rats lop te AlIa, $'

MADISON-On April 18an integrated march of over 700 students protested a new wave of racist attacks here. Chant­ ing "We've got to beat back the racist attacks!" the protesters marched from the University of Wisconsin Library Mall down Langdon Street, Madison's "fraternity row" and a stronghold of racist bigots. The Spartacus Youth Club built a militant qontingent for the demonstration, leading chants and car­ rying placards stressing the need for a mobilization of students and labor to stop the racist attacks. On April 25 a town meeting called by the liberal Minority Coalition de­ manded that "city, county and Universi­ ty officials ... provide the leadership in combatting racism." In a grotesque farce, the program included speeches by the Dane County district attorney, the sheriff, and campus security chief Ralph Hansen-the chief enforcers of racist cop repression on and off campus. Recently a Hispanic youth was beaten by the police, called a "crazy spic" and found dead the next morning in a Mad­ Young. Spartacus ison jail cell. An arsonist, who set fire to Madison, April 18: Spartacus Youth Club joined large, integrated demonstration to protest racist attacks. a wooden statue of a black woman and child on Madison's south side, was dis­ Against liberal and reformist illu­ On February 11, 23-year-old Rene higher education the Spartacus Youth covered to be a former city cop who is sions, the Spartacus Youth Club has put Campos, a Hispanic student, was found Club fights for open admissions with no also charged with spray-painting racist forward a class-struggle strategy to stop 'dead in the Dane County Jail. Enough! tuition and a state-paid stipend for all! epithets around town. And Hansen's racist attacks. We reprint below a leaf­ "Ldidn't come to UW to die for my Education should be a right, not a priv­ campus bullies get off on bashing let issued by the Madison SYC on B.A." read one woman's placard at the ilege! Abolish the administration! For minorities and leftist protesters-one April 23. large, integrated protest march on April student/teacher/worker control of the cop gave a young woman student a ------18th. Students and labor must mobilize university! black eye at an anti-CIA protest, Racist attacks in Madison must be in militant action now, before anyone Now that anti-racist militants are another stopped a black youth, pulleda stopped! On April 8 white fraternity else gets hurt or killed. In racist Amer­ talking about self-defense, the cops and . gun and said, "Okay n----r, why don't punks from Illinois, brought in by their ica, where the capitalist rulers have been the administration are working over­ you run?" Madison Acacia "brothers," terrorized waging a class war against the working time to cool out and derail the protests. . As the Spartacus Youth Club spokes­ African studies classes during mid­ class and minorities, '-it's become People must understand that the cap­ man stated at the meeting, "thecops, the terms, assaulting a professor in one class "respectable" to spew racist .filth, and italist state, its cops, courts, university courts, the administration are part of and setting off stink bombs in another. emboldened scum translate their big­ administrations, and front men are the the capitalist state, they're on theother Last week, a black woman student was otry into the language of violence. Black enemies ofleftist students, workingpeo­ side." Obscenely, the International jumped and choked by a 45-year-old students are tired of waiting for action ple and all the oppressed. At the April Socialist Organization (ISO) 6fficially thug, Gordon Chapman, who repeat­ from a university administration that 18th march, Eugene Parks, a protest endorsed this town meeting whose pur­ edly shouted, "I want to kill all the repeatedly alibis racist violence as "an leader and Madison's Affirmative Ac­ pose was to preach reliance on the '.n-----s." Fortunately, the young woman alcohol problem" or counsels moral tion officer, denounced "racial terror­ police. These pseudo-socialists say has a black belt in karate. She was able suasion of Klan-inspired punks to pro­ ism" in Madison...and called on the cops-whose job is.to break strikes and to defend herself and taught this racist mote "racial awareness"! As one fed-up terrorist FBI to intervene! These are the bust heads on behalf of racist "law scum a lesson by throwing him to the Black Student Union member said, "Ifit bloody G-men who conspired in Klan and order"-are "workers." The ISO's ground and kicking him in the stom­ takes being militant.. then let us' be attacks against .freedom riders in the Socialist Worker has hailed police ach. When she reported the assault, the militant!" civil rights movement, helped plot the "strikes" (Memphis 1978) and praised cops warned her not to press charges­ KKK/Nazi murder spree in Greens­ black cops for "step[ping] forward in the they ruled out racism as a motive and So, how do we put an end to these boro, and ran the government's dirty fighf'against racism" (Cincinnati 1979). insisted the bully bigot was just "men­ racist attacks? What's necessary is a COINTELPRO campaign to murder, While militant youth in the South Afri­ tally ill" and forgot to take his pills that class-struggle program! The working frame-up and destroy the Black Pan­ can townships have been meting out day! As the victim stated, "He's not class, under sustained attack from the ther Party. retribution to the front men for the crazy; he just doesn't like black peo­ bosses and the government, has a pow­ There are also a lot of illusions in apartheid regime, the January Socialist ple.... What if it had been some other erful objective interest in smashingthese continued on page 11 Worker came out in support of a strike black woman who wasn't able to pro­ racist attacks. A fighting alliance of.stu­ dents with organized labor in Madison by black cops for higher wages! tect herself?" (C~pital Times, 13 April). (e.g., the large AFSCME locals of work­ ers on and off campus) could stop the ~ e racist frat rats from ever poking their Spartacist League ~ IQ snouts out of the sewers again. A one­ Public Offices f day strike by students, the TAA, teach­ -MARXIST LlTERATURE­ n~ ers, campus workers andother union­ s verdell Hale (left), ists to shut down the university would Bay Area. a black belt in do more to change the racist climate on Thurs.: 5:30-8:00 p.m.• Sat.: 1:00-5:00 p.m. karate, defended campus than a thousand token reforms 1634 Telegraph, 3rd Floor (near 17th Street) herself from proposed by the union-busting .admin­ Oakland, California Phone: (415) 839-0851 racist thug. istration under the "Madison Plan." Chicago Student demo Part of the reason the Langdon St. Tues.: 5:00-9:00 p.m., Sat.: 11:00a.m.-2:oo p.m. raised funds 161 W. Harrison St., 10th Floor for Verdell's thugs, the cops and other racist scum Chicago, Illinois Phone: (312) 663-0715 think they can act with impunity is that mother, Juana New York City Jackson, to join this university town is kept overwhelm­ Tues.: 6:00-9:00 p.m.• Sat.: 1:00-5:00 p.m. her daughter ingly white. Blacks are "missing per­ 41 Warren St. (one block below. in Madison.. sons" at this university-enrollment is Cllambers SI. near Church St.) down to a minuscule 1.6 percent! To New York, N.Y. Phone: (212) 267-1025 undercut the race and class bias of 4 WORKERS VANGUARD Anti-Soviet Solidarnosc Perverts Memorl of Jewish Marty~ Hail Warsaw Ghetto Fighters! April 19 marked the 45th anniver­ sary of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto upris­ ing against the Nazis." Fighters against racism and oppression around the world honor the memory of these heroic Jewish martyrs. But in Warsaw itself, the uprising was "commemorated" by a disgusting spectacle. While the Stalinist regime of General Jaruzelski staged an official ceremony whose primary pur­ pose was to cement relations with Zion­ ist Israel, Polish Solidarnosc organized a march on April 17 through what had been the Warsaw Ghetto. With every step they took, these Pilsudski-Iovers trampled over the cause the Warsaw Ghetto fighters died for. ' In its drive to restore capitalism to Poland, Solidarnosc openly embraces the vilest traditions of anti-Semitic Po­ lish nationalism: its guiding spirit is the Catholic hierarchy, historic instigator of anti-Semitic pogroms; its banner, the eagle-and-cross of Polish reaction; its hero, Marshal Jozef Pilsudski, fascistic dictator of interwar Poland with its anti­ Semitic numerus clausus. In December 1981 Solidarnosc-i-boosted by Rea­ Pantheon Books gan, bankrolled by the CIA, blessed Defiant fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto, rounded up by Hitler's savage SS. by the Pope-almost achieved its aims with a counterrevolutionary bid for ly sees as its own nationalist antecedent. Warsaw Ghetto to await their ultimate imposed Judenrat ("Council of Jewish power. That this reactionary, clerical­ The Warsaw Ghetto uprising was the destruction in death camps like Ausch­ Elders"), former factory owners turned nationalist outfit in the Polish deformed last heroic chapter of the fighting Jewish witz. Bythe time the final liquidation of into managers by their Nazi expro­ workers state could posture as the proletariat of Poland, whose deeply the Ghetto was decreed in early 1943, a priators, the gangsters and Gestapo champion of Jewish anti-fascist strug­ internationalist traditions produced a population of some 500,000 had been agents and the 2,000 Ghetto police had gle speaks volumes about the bank­ generation of committed revolutionar­ reduced to a tenth of that through sys­ to be rooted out and crushed. With the ruptcy of the Stalinist regime. ies (see "Memoirs of a Revolutionary tematic starvation policies and deporta- exception of the Communists,' the The real purpose of Solidarnosc' rally Jewish Worker," Spartacist No. 41-42, , tions to the death camps. Militants in Ghetto organizations were also split was not to commemorate the anti-Nazi Winter 1987-88). These were the tradi­ the Ghetto organized to meet the final along generational lines. The tradi­ fighters but to pervert their memory into tions of the Poland of Rosa Luxem­ Nazi onslaught with a resistance to the tional Jewish organizations, both secu­ an attack on the Soviet Union. As the burg-the Jewish revolutionary who death. Under unspeakably adverse con­ lar and religious, whose representatives demonstrators unveiled a monument to was active in the proletarian move­ ditions, with little more than their bare sat on the Judenrat, preached collab­ two leaders of the Jewish Bund in ments of Poland, Russia and Ger­ hands and homemade petrol bombs as oration and resignation in the vain illu­ Poland, Henryk Erlich and Viktor many-s-the Poland of joint struggle by weapons, the Ghetto insurgents struck a sion this would spare at least some Jews Alter, executed by Stalin in 1941, Dr. Jewish and Polish workers against blow against the Nazi tyrants within from the gas chambers and ovens. The Marek Edelman, a surviving leader of tsarist Black Hundreds pogroms. Even occupied East Europe, keeping the elite fighters were recruited overwhelmingly the Ghetto uprising and now a sup­ under the Nazi occupation, numerous of Hitler's shock troops at bay for over a from the youth, who only in the course "porter of Solidarnosc, called it a left-wing and socialist journals con­ month until the Nazis literally reduced of the revolt swept along their parents. "symbol of the shame of inhuman total­ tinued to be published and distributed the Ghetto to a pile of rubble. Reuben The main resistance group was the itarianism all over the world." Stalin's within the Ghetto walls; others were Ainsztein's The War~aw Ghetto Revolt Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB), murder of these two Jewish socialists­ smuggled in from the"Aryan side." One (1979) and Ber Mark's Uprising in the initiated by "socialist"-Zionists like and countless other proletarian and among these was"Czerwony Sztandar Warsaw Ghetto (1975) provide graphic Hashomer Hatzair and Poale Zion anti-fascist militants-was a heinous (Red Flag), put out by the Jewish Trot­ and well-documented accounts of this together with the Polish Workers Party crime. But to insinuate that this memo­ skyist militants Shlomo Ehrlich and epic struggle and the proletarian tradi­ (PPR). Stalin had liquidated the Polish rial had something to do with honoring Stella Mihlstein. tions of East European Jewry which Communist Party in 1938,on charges of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising? This inspired it. "Trotskyism," executing most of its The Red Flag Flew grotesque display was aimed at tarring , Organizing the resistance at first took leaders. After Hitler invaded Russia, he Over the Warsaw Ghetto the Soviet Union-which 'liberated the form of a civil war within the Ghetto agreed to reconstitute it as the PPR, ' Poland and the rest of East Europe from In the framework of their hideous against literally thousands of Jewish though the Stalinists had become dis­ the Nazi jackboot-with the brush of "final solution," 'the Nazis funneled collaborators, corrupted or broken credited among the Polish proletariat, Nazi barbarism. Solidarnosc leader Jews from all over East Europe into the under the Nazi jackboot. The Nazi- particularly following the Hitler-Stalin Lech Walesa even tried to equate the pact. The other significant force in the anti-Nazi uprising with his own anti­ uprising was the Jewish Military Union Communist conspiracy by claiming that (ZZW), formed by the right-wing '''the uprising of the Jewish fighters Revisionist-Zionist youth group Betar, was perhaps the most Polish of all whose leader Menachem Begin fled the uprisings." country in 1939. Begin became one ofa For years, the Zionists, whose,butch­ very few Jews to join a Home Army unit ery of Palestinian Arabs emulates the in Palestine, on his way to becoming an Nazi terror, have tried to claim a anti-Arab terrorist. monopoly on this anti-Nazi uprising. The Jewish insurgents signaled the Now Solidarnosc tries to paint it in the start of the uprising on April 19by hoist­ colors of Polish nationalism. Amid all ing Polish, Jewish and red flagsover the this filthy hypocrisy, the most moving Ghetto. The arrogant Nazis, under SS ' tribute came when several hundred Major General Stroop, believing their Arab students laid a wreath at the own Ubermensch mythology, at first-did Warsaw Ghetto monument on April 19 not put their own units into operation and denounced "the fascist methods against the Jewish fighters, relying on used by the Zionists against the Pales­ their Jewish police and Lithuanian and tinian nation." Many of the Warsaw , Ukrainian puppet troops. Day after Ghetto fighters were Communists and day, despite 'their overwhelmingly supe­ pro-socialist Zionists who saw their rior firepower, the Nazis and their final act as part of the international puppets were routed. On the fifth' struggle against Nazi tyranny and day, ZOB leader Mordecai Anielewicz looked in particular to the Red Army as wrote: "What we have experienced can­ their ally and inspiration. In fact, this not be described in words. We are aware "most Polish" uprising was contemptu­ of one thing only: what has happened ously repudiated at the time by the anti-. Newsweek has exceeded all our dreams. The Ger­ Communist and anti-Semitic Polish Solldamost student protest halls fascistic dictator Plisudskl, marches under mans twice ran from the ghetto...." Home Army, which Solidarnose right- eagle-and-cross of anti-semitic Polish nationalism. ' continued on page 6 6 MAY 1988 5 uprising throughout occupied Poland. The Jews of East Europe were a people Warsaw who had no nation, who in the most lit­ eral sense found their banner in the red Ghetto ... flag of international socialist revolu­ (continued from page 5) tion and their salvation in the October Revolution. Not even the Nazi horror After the first week of the uprising, a could crush the ideals which had PPR report estimated that over 700 impelled the Jewish proletarians of Germans-largely crack SS troops­ Poland into the ranks of the revolution­ had been killed in the fighting. On ary movement. The Jewish Trotskyists May Day, writes Ainsztein, those who emblazoned under the masthead Ghetto fighters who still survived "held of their Ghetto publication, "Workers meetings at which they sang the Interna­ of All Countries, Unite!", expressed tionale in a gesture of supreme defiance the proletarian-internationalist pro­ of the Nazi New Order." gram which alone could put an end to And who came to the assistance of the barbarism unleashed by capital­ these isolated and courageous fighters? ism in its decay. Following the German While the British RAF grotesquely invasion of the Soviet Union, Czervony refused to bomb the gas chambers of Sztandar (July 1941) declared: Auschwitz even as they carried out "The first workers state isfighting for its sorties a few miles away, the Red Army existence. The fate of the Russian Rev­ did what if could to assist the Jewish olution and, in the most immediate fighters. In response to a radioed appeal Schocken Books sense, the fate of the international revo­ from the insurgents, the Soviets ordered Jewish Socialist Bund leader Henryk Erlich addresses May Day march in lution weigh in the balance. The work­ Warsaw, 1933. . . ers of the whole world follow with bated bombing raids of Warsaw a day later to breath the course of the greatest class hamper the Nazis' mopping-up opera:" hatreds by telling their men that the rea­ war in the world, and their hearts and tions in the Ghetto. Aside from a hand­ survivors of the Jews in Poland live with souls are with the Red Army.... ,the awareness that in the worst days of so.nwhy the Red Army had stopped on ful of courageous Polish liberals, the the eastern bank of the Vistula was "The war of the Soviet Union against only organized support the Ghetto our history you have given us no aid. because it was commanded by Jews Hitler is the war of the international proletariat; it is our war." insurgents received from the outside Respond. This is our last appeal to you." responsible for the Katyn massacre, came from the PPR and its People's Among the. handful of Jewish insur­ who now wanted to take revenge on the They concluded: "Long live the Red Poles for the Warsaw ghetto." Guard militia. People's Guard units on gents who survived, many tried to join .. Army! Long live the Russian Rev­ the "Aryan side" carried out a number the Home Army out of a desire to con­ For a fuller treatment, see"The Warsaw olution! Long live the international of military action's in solidarity with the tinue fighting the Nazis. Thousands of Uprising of 1944" (WV No. 294, 4 De­ revolution!" uprising, and the Jewish Communists Jewish partisans did fight, either indi­ cember 1981). Stalin's nationalist crimes notwith­ inside the Ghetto kept Moscow closely vidually or in all-Jewish units, along­ But, Zionist accounts to the con­ standing, the Soviet Union's entry into informed of events. Notably, the heads side the Red Army or in Red partisan trary, the Polish population was not one the war against Nazi Germany excited of the national PPR and ofthe Warsaw units. But the Home Army would have anti-Semitic mass. Emmanuel Ringel­ and inspired the masses of the Warsaw People's Guard outside the Ghetto were nothing to do with them; Jewish parti­ blum, the noted chronicler of the Ghetto, whose most militant elements both Jews. san units were even attacked and Warsaw Ghetto, observed in his Polish­ even ceased working in Nazi slave labor The nationalist Home Army not only annihilated by the Home Army. Bor­ Jewish Relations During the Second factories inside the-Ghetto, to express refused to offer any practical or mili­ Komorowski, who replaced Rowecki as World War (written shortly before his their solidarity with the Soviet war tary assistance, but even pocketed most head of the Home Army, was openly murder by the Nazis in 1944)thatwhile effort. The 7 June 1942 issue of Hasho- of the small quantity of arms airlifted sympathetic to the fascistic NSZ, the so­ for the Ghetto insurgents from Britain. called National Armed Forces. One statistic tells the story: the Warsaw When the Home Army finally moved Area People's Guard had some two into action against the Nazis with the dozen pistols in the period preceding the 1944 Warsaw uprising, it did so to pre­ uprising, whereas the Warsaw Com­ empt and prevent the Red Army's liber­ mand of the Home Army had more than ation of the city. Even so, a veteran of . a thousand (as well as hundreds of light the pro-Communist Polish People's' and heavy machine guns), yet the for­ Army estimated that some 2,000 Jews-'­ mer volunteered more weapons to the one in every 15 combatants-took part Jewish insurgents. Home Army com­ in the 1944 uprising, most by hiding mander in chief General Rowecki their Jewish identities. For many, the contemptuously dismissed the ZOB only reward they received for their valor as "Jews from various Communist against the Nazis was to be shot in the groups." The Polish nationalists explic­ back by a Polish nationalist once they itly ruled out any collaboration with were revealed to be Jews. And this con­ Communists-and, in practice, with tinued after the war, as thousands of any Jews. The Bund representative to Jewish survivors and refugees return­ the Polish government-in-exile in Lon­ ing from the Soviet Union were mas­ don, Samuel Zygelboim, finally com­ sacred in pogroms by right-wing na­ mitted suicide in May 1943 in an tionalists embittered over the Soviet anguished protest over the lack of liberation. Among them was one of the leaders of the 1943Sobibordeath camp assistance to the Polish Jews; he is not • Der Spiegel honored by Solidarnosc. revolt, Leon Felhendler. Apologists fof Solidarnosc have de­ Polish people greet Red Army in 1945. Six hundred thousand Soviet soldiers -Nor, despite the Zionists' subsequent died to liberate Poland from Nazi tyranny. attempts to claim the Warsaw Ghetto voted endless attention to the abortive uprising as their own, were appeals to 1944 Warsaw uprising, falsely claiming the Polish middle class embraced anti­ mer Hatzair's Ghetto journal, Der Western Zionist leaders much more suc­ that the advancing Soviet army refused Semitism "in toto," this was not the case Oifbroi (Ferment), stated: cessful. It is a well-documented fact that to 'assist it against the Nazis. And how with the workers, "who had long before "The heroic struggle of the Red Army is British and American Zionist leaders was this anti-Soviet slander first given the war grasped the class aspect of anti­ inspiring a!l the .peoples oppressed by refused to campaign openly for allow­ currency? According to Ainsztein, by Semitism, the power-tool of the native the NaZIS 10 their struggle for libera­ tion .... The Jewish masses have not yet ing free entry to Jewish refugees from the Polish fascists of the NSZ, who bourgeoisie, and during the war they "probably killed more Jews than Ger­ rid themselves oftheir distrust of their the Nazi terror, or for Allied military redoubled their efforts to fight anti­ own fighting capabilities and given up mans during the uprising": action against the extermination camps. Semitism." Thousands of Jews were the hope of salvation coming from out: In a January 1943 appeal to American "Many of the Polish Nazis were former hidden, at the risk of death, and Chris­ side. Such a state of mind must not last officers and as such were given com­ at a time when from the fjords of Nor­ Jewish leaders for assistance, the Polish mand of Home Army units, where they tian workers in Warsaw often raised a way to the suburbs of Paris, from the Jews bitterly observed: "Brothers! The did their best to intensify anti-Jewish signal to warn of Nazi raids into the mountains of Serbia to the factories of Ghetto. Czechoslovakia, the liberation army is consolidating and growing. Within the limited possibilities of the ghettoes we Under the Banner of must prepare the ground for a revolu­ Internationalism tionary Jewish deed. From Jewish pain and sufferings there must grow up the The legacy of the Warsaw Ghetto strength that together with all the revo­ Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of the Spartacist League uprising lies not with the reactionary lutionary forces in 'Europe and the nationalists of Solidarnosc, nor for that backing of the Red Army will rise to matter with the Zionist butchers, nor fight against Nazi slavery." o $5/24 issues of Workers Vanguard o $2/4 issues of with the nationalist Stalinists. With its The Red Army did liberate Poland International rates: Women and Revolution (includes Spartacist) perspective of "socialism in one coun­ from Nazi slavery-as well as from the o New 0 Renewal $20/24 issues-Airmail $5/24 issues-Seamail 0$2/10 introductory issues of try," Stalinism is driven to ape the most native pogromists whom Solidarnosc 0$2/4 issues of Spartacist Workers Vanguard reactionary aspects of bourgeois nation­ idolizes-s-and ~OO,OOO Soviet soldiers (eoiclon en espanol) (includes Spartacist) alism. Thus in 1968 the Polish Stalinist died for that cause. Today Poland is still regime orchestrated an anti-Semitic a workers state, albeit so bureaucrat­ Name _ purge which drove out many of the ically deformed that the Stalinist regime Address _ remaining Jews, including heroic Soviet drove the mass of the Polish proletariat ______Phone (__) _ WW II spy Leopold Trepper. into the arms of clericalist reaction more The Warsaw Ghetto revolt was in es­ than. 30 years after the liquidation of City State ~ Zip, = sence internationalist, as it could only capitalism. Only in a revolutionary­ 452 be, and not simply because the combat­ internationalist Poland will the heroic Make checks payable/mall to: Spartaclst Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 ants saw themselves as and consciously martyrs of the Warsaw Ghetto revolt fought to be the spark for a generalized receive the honor due them .• 6 WORKERS VANGUARD - - As Soviets PullOut, Islamic Fanatics Threaten Bloodbath Afghan Women Fight for Their Lives On May 15, Soviet troop-s are sched­ And those young women who did seize uled to begin their withdrawal from the opportunity for an education are Afghanistan. The fanatical Islamic fun­ now, in the most literal sense, faced with damentalist mujahedin have wasted no a fight for their lives. One such woman time in giving a taste of the bloodbath interviewed explained: they intend to unleash upon the Afghan '''Without the revolution, what.would I population once the Red Army is no be?' said the handsome young woman, who has a college degree from Bul­ longer there to defend elementary social garia, a good job with the Red Cres­ progress. On April 27, a truck loaded cent, and the freedom to wear lipstick, a with explosives blew up in a crowded skirt and even high heels. .street in Kabul, killing a 12-year-old girl '''I would be staying at home, and and five other people. The bomb was sit­ maybe only going out with the veil­ like my mother did,' she said. 'And for uated to strike people returning from a marriage, I could be bought like so youth festival in celebration of the tenth much property. . anniversary of the "April revolution" '''This is why so many Afghan women which installed the Afghan reform are with this revolution, and why we will fight so hard to defend it'.... regime. On April 10, several days before "They will try to put us back in the signing of the withdrawal agree­ chaderie [the head-to-toe veil]-we ment, a passenger plane was shot down know this,' Mina Fahim said of the by a U.S.-supplied. missile, killing all 29 mujaheddin. '''Like in Iran with Khomeini but aboard, including-eight women and two maybe worse, because we would resist. children. Rebel leader Gulbaddin Hek­ For us, chaderie is impossible,' she said matyar, described even by his Ameri­ with a shudder." can sponsors as a "scary fascist," seized Afghan women. will resist, arms in this moment to announce they would hand. Among the contingents in the "show the world that without the con­ April "/7 demonstrations was one of sent of the mujaheddin, no agreement Reuters deternuned-looking women armed with can be consummated:" Afghan women armed with Soviet AK-47s march on tenth anniversary of AK-47s. Now they are about to be aban­ These CIA-backed "freedom 'fight­ "April Revolution" in Kabul. doned by the Red Army, in which they ers" will not be satisfied until they have saw their salvation. Gorbachev's vain Inquirer (26 April), piercing the Ameri­ but the defense of the most basic rights extinguished the last remnants of the attempt to conciliate U.S. imperialism can bourgeoisie's veil of lies over what of women. As Kaufman noted: short-lived freedoms the Afghan peo­ consigns Afghan women to a horrible an anti-Communist victory will mean, "When asked why they had left Afghan­ ples have enjoyed. And their prime tar­ bloodbath, and it will only embolden described how "the specter of a muja­ istan for the refugee camps, many get will certainly be the hundreds of the murderous mujahedin to launch heddin reign of terror against women" Afghans in Pakistan don't talk about thousands of women who under the pro­ the bombing or land reform, or even the attacks across the Soviet border. De­ is widely perceived in Kabul. tection of the Red Army liberated them­ suppression of Islam. fense of the Soviet Union and ele­ "What they did not like, those Afghans selves to some extent from funda­ From the start this war has posed not said recently, was that the communists mentary human decency require that the mentalist slavery. A recent article by only defense of the Soviet degenerated in Kabul wanted to send their daugh­ Red Army mop up- the mullah-led Marc Kaufman in the Philadelphia workers state against U.S. imperialism ters to school." reactionaries.•

(despite Kondratiev's claim he was sell­ ing secrets to the Nazis in 1938). Refuting Assassins' Slanders It was not Reiss and the courageous Russian Left Oppositionists who aided Hitler's cause and endangered the gains of the October Revolution of 1917 -centrally the collectivized property Honor Ignace Reiss forms. It was Stalin who beheaded the Red Army, murdering Marshal Tukha­ We print below a letter to the editor of Bolsheviks were a pack of Nazi spies. chevsky and the cream of the Soviet the New York Times Book Review Whether drawn from tsarist or Stalinist officer corps on the eve of Hitler's in­ responding to a scurrilous slander of arsenals, for the Times any anti­ vasion (they too were falsely accused Ignace Reiss, a Communist murdered Bolshevik lie is deemed "fit to print." of being German spies). Ignace Reiss by Stalin's NKVD in 1937. Similarly, 11 Readers are also referred to Theo­ eloquently expressed his views in an recent piece on Trotsky in the Times dore Draper's informative article in the open letter "To the Central Commit­ (16 November 1987) echoed the Stalin­ 14 April New York Review ofBooks. tee of the Communist Party of the ist Big Lie with the disingenuous claim U.S.S.R.... dated I7 July 1937. written that "it was. never proved that Stalin a few weeks before his execution by SPARTACIST PUBLISHING Stalin's assassins: ordered Trotsky's assassination." COMPANY As the flagship organ of U.S. imperi­ "The working class must defeat Stalin 28 March 1988 and Stalinism so that the U.S.S.R. alism, the New York Times has a long and the international workers' move­ record of retailing anti-communist New York Times Book Review Vladimir Kibalchich ment do not succumb to fascism and Stalin murdered Ignace Reiss, "disinformation," going right back to To the Editor: counter-revolution.. " the hoary slander that Lenin and Trot­ heroic Soviet spy who embraced "I intend to devote my feeble forces Your recent exchange on "Stalin's sky were German agents (see illustra­ Trotsky's Fourth International. to the cause of Lenin. I want to contin­ Killerati" (March 6) contains a gross ue the fight, for only our victory­ tion).. During the' infamous Moscow historical falsehood that must not sky. Our Own People (University of that of the proletarian revolution-will Trials in the late 1930s, its Moscow cor­ free humanity of capitalism and the remain unanswered. A letter by Vadim Michigan Press. 1970). He 'personified respondent Walter Duranty dutifully U.S.S.R. of Stalinism. Kondratiev described Ignace Reiss as "a that tendency within the Soviet appara­ parroted Stalin's deadly lies that the Old "Forward to new _struggles! For the K.G.B. defector who was selling impor­ tus which sought to restore the authen­ Fourth International!" tant military intelligence in 1938.to the tic traditions of the October Revolu­ . 115 September 19181 Historical justice to the memory of highest bidder, which happened to be tion, traditionsbetrayed by the usurping this devoted communist demands this. Qi'1J.e New JI.ork ~imt.. Nazi Germany." In slandering Reiss asa Stalinist bureaucracy. . correction. Nazi spy. Kondratiev is retailing in a A Galician communist won to Bol­ Very truly yours, new form the universally discredited shevism in 1919. Ignace Reiss joined James Robertson Stalinist lie that Leon Trotsky and the Soviet intelligence in 1922. He was President DOOUMENTS PROVE Left Opposition (as well as the entire finally driven to break with .Stalinism generation of Old Bolsheviks) were all and to join with Trotsky when the cc: Leon Trotsky Museum, Coyoacan, LMANDTOOIZKY agents of Hitler and the Mikado. frame-ups of the first Moscow Trialand Mexico Contrary to the utterly unsupported the execution of the Old Bolsheviks, Institute for Social History, HIRED BY GERMANS claim of Vadim Kondratiev, the son of. together with the Kremlin's strangling Amsterdam Prometheus Research Library, one of the NKVD assassins of Reiss. of proletarian revolution in Spain. con­ New York Communications Between Ber. Ignace Reiss lived and died fighting for' vinced him that Stalin's counterrevolu­ Institute of Marxism-Leninism of lin anf· Bolshevist .Govern. communism and to defend the Soviet tionary policy threatened the survival of the Central Committee, Communist Umono For a truthful account ofthe life the USSR. For this Reiss was assas­ Party of the Soviet Union, Moscow Glven ment Out by Creel.' and struggle of Ignace Reiss, see the sinated by the NKVD near Lausanne. Cahiers lion Trotsky, Paris memoirs of his widow. Elisabeth Poret- Switzerland on 4 September 1937 Revolutionary History, London

6 MAY 1988 7 bourgeois layers to forge ahead in his France •.. strategic plan of organizing his hetero­ geneous voters into assault troops (continued from, page 1) against the workers organizations and military haircuts, former paratroopers immigrants. His voters, Le Pen told the and lumpenelements, the mass of the May Day crowd, are "a vanguard that ranks was made up of provincial shop­ must now be organized." This is an open keepers. Yet the fact that it could take call for brownshirts. Le Pen's election place on the international proletarian meeting in Marseille before the first. holiday is an outrage only possible due round featured a precision jump by five to the treachery of the PCFIPS mis­ paratroopers into the middle of the sta­ leaders who dissipated the anti-fascist dium to kick off the meeting. French anger instead of sweeping away Le Pen's paratrooper units have long been noted provocation. as the shock troops of the extreme right The traditional May Day march of wing, ever since the abortive generals' trade unionists and immigrants-which coup against de Gaulle in 1961 which took place in two contingents, one aimed at preventing the "loss" of under the banner of the Communist-led Algeria. CGT labor federation and the other With the exception of Le Pen's cam­ called by the social-democratic CFDT paign, it had.been one of the most vacu­ and FEN (teachers union)-was con­ ous presidential campaigns in French siderably more important, both numeri­ historical memory. There was nothing cally and socially. But the reformist to debate: Mitterrand's campaign has Patrick Artinian bureaucrats deliberately held a passive not a trace of "socialism," and Mitter­ Flag-waving chauvinist mob cheers fascist Le Pen's electoral success. • protest march. If a solidly organized rand/Chirac/Barre are united around united-front mobilization of the same an anti-Soviet, anti-working-class, anti­ many ofthe "red belt" workerssuburbs ist crisis onto the backs of the workers, 70,000 or 100,000 workers had been immigrant consensus. Mitterrand's rec­ around Paris, attest to that. But the France has become the European coun­ called for the same placeas the National ord of savage capitalist austerity and his electoral house of mirrors is no true try with a mass fascist movement. And Front demonstration; the fascist pa­ role as Reagan's Cold War European gauge of the potential for class struggle. the fight to crush the National Front has rade would not have come off. A lieutenant during the 1981-86 popular In the winter of 1986-87 student pro­ an importance extending beyond the massive and disciplined squad of mar­ front, and the ensuing two years of tests, more than a million strong, with a borders of France. Le Pen's success shals (and the CGT knows how to "cohabitation" with Chirac, disarmed heavy anti-racist component, turned emboldens fascist rats to crawl out of organize one) would have stopped the his rightist, opponents. The Communist back the government's attempt at their holes elsewhere. In West Ger­ fascists cold. The pro-Le Pen shop­ Party, meanwhile, has abdicated any accentuating the class bias of the many, for example, the neo-Nazi FAP keeper getting off his bus would have pretense of organizing working-class university system. This victory was fol­ announced plans to hold a May Day decided to go see the Eiffel Tower or the opposition to the massive unemploy- lowed by a hard-fought wildcat strike of rally outside Rheinhausen, where the Folies Bergeres instead! . ment and anti-union offensive that have railway workers, which posed the neces­ threatened closure of the Krupp steel sity of a general strike. plant has sparked massive workers' But without revolutionary leader­ protests throughout the Ruhr region. ship, the militant French workers' will Yet while the fascists mount provoca­ to fight was criminally frittered away. tions from West Berlin to Bremen to the The history of. the past two decades­ Ruhr, the reformist Social Democracy from 1968 OR-has been one of derail­ does its best to turn May Day rallies into ing, sabotaging and suppressing class apolitical beer festivals. struggle in the service of class collab­ oration. In contrast to the reformists Return to the Road of . and theirfake-Trotskyist tails, the Ligue Lenin and Trotsky! Trotskyste de France has stood out for its proletarian opposition to popular­ Le Pen's results inspire a real fear, but frontism. In a long article on the Le Pen for a number of left and labor organiza­ campaign, the Munich Siiddeutsche tions this fear is transformed into panic. Zeitung (20 April) noted the LTF's And this panic is used to "justify" their stand: "Left-wing extremists distributed call for workers to vote for Mitterrand their newspaper, Le Bolchevik, You on the second round. The Communist can't fight unemployment, racism and Party leadership exhorts all those who fascism with Mitterrand and [PCF can­ are "anti-Chirac and anti-Le Pen to didate] Lajoinie, the headline read, block their path on May 8." Former 'they're the ones that got us into this PCF leader and pro-Mitterrand "reno­ shit.' And in passing Le Bolchevik vator" Pierre Juquin, now supported by accuses Gorbachev of squandering the Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire Ligue Trotskyste/Tribune Communiste contingent at Jalrluluy Afghanistan." The article referred to (LCR), says "don't do the work of Paris against Le Pen. Banner reads: "Le Pen-Enough is EnIDU!~h! For from the LTF newspaper declared: ChiPen-LeRac." Arlette Laguiller, per­ Worker/Immigrant Mobilizations to Crush the Fascists! Full "It is the governments of class col­ ennial candidate of Lutte Ouvriere Rights for Immjgrants!" laboration, the anti-worker, anti­ (LO), is competing with the fascists for immigrant and anti-Soviet popular In the face of Le Pen's May Day prov­ increased under governments of both front in. which they participated and votes on a program of populist anti­ ocation, our comrades of the Ligue the right and "left." So the fascists which they supported since 1981, which Sovietism. Le Pen & Co. are trying to Trotskyste de France issued an urgent mo-ved in. paved the way for the right bent on "push politics in a reactionary direc­ appeal for a united-front workerIimmi-" Bourgeois commentators have con­ revenge and for the fascists.... And if tion," so "we need another vote, a vote today these same leaders are blocking which is a counterweight" (Lutte Ouvri­ grant mobilization to stop the fascists. cluded that the National Front has the mass workers mobilizations urgent­ The 27 April LTF leaflet declared: replaced the PCF as the party of the dis­ ly needed to drive Le Pen's scum back' ere, 26 March). "The working class has rhe social power gruntled elements in French society. It is into their rat holes, if they display such All. these reformists who are urging to prevent the fascists from demon­ true that the poison of racism has seeped shameful prostration and passivity in workers to fall in behind Mitterrand strating on May Ist and to crush them. the face of fascist provocations, it's Hundreds of thousands of workers are. into .backward sections of the working because their one and only objective is "forget" rather conveniently that after needed, solidly organized to occupy the class, rendered desperate by massive to replay '81." the 1936 Popular Front came the bona­ terrain where the fascists plan to pa­ unemployment-Le Pen's. score in -Le Bolchevik No. 82, partist dictator Petain; after Allende, rade. But there's not a moment to lose. Lorraine, where the coal and steel indus­ April 1988 Pinochet. So too the anti-working-class, Already on January 27, united-front tries have been gutted by the capitalist As a result of the Mitterrand popular anti-immigrant and anti-Soviet policy demonstrations took place at the call of the PCF (which, however, buried this crisis, and his victory over the PCF in front, which put the cost of the capital­ of the 1981 popular front paved the way initiative soon after) in which the Ligue Boccon-Gibod/Keyst0n.e Cochin/Keystone Trotskyste participated; tens of thou­ sands of workers and anti-fascists ral­ lied across France to cry out 'Le Pen: Enough!'Today we must go to a higher level. Working-class and democratic organizations, both political and trade­ union, have the duty to organize, start­ ing now, a determined and massive united-front action, rallying youth, women, immigrants, Jews, homosexu­ als, etc. in the streets on this day around the workers battalions, mainly organ­ ized by the CGT, to stop the fascists." What's needed is "an agreement for combat, not a so-called 'action' of par­ liamentary pressure in order to re-elect Mitterrand 'against the right and far right'." The felt need for united anti­ fascist action must not be prostituted in the service of a new popular front!

Crush the Fascist Threat! Unfortunately, the impunity Le Pen On the barricades: struggles by mUilant workers (above) enjoyed on May lst can only embold­ and students against Mltterrand/Chirac's racist austerity en this leader of reactionary petty- and anti-immigrant attacks. 8 WORKERS VANGUARD for the fascists. To want to repeat 1981-while an anti-immigrant con-' sensus unites the social democrats and bourgeois politicians and the fascists Teamster Revolt Over Contract draw strength from the instability of the regime-is criminally to lead the work­ dictments and endless investigations, ers to a much more serious defeat than This necessarily affects their war on the electoral victory of the right in Feds Hands Off the Union! labor and blacks at home, providing March1986. In contrastto the LO/ LCR openings for the Teamsters to strike pseudo-Trotskyists, the, Ligue Trots­ back at the exploiters who are out to kyste proclaimed: "We didn't call for a Workers in the largest and most Influenced and Corrupt Organizations squeeze even more of workers' blood in vote to Mitterrand in '81, and we won't powerful union in America, the Inter­ (RICO) Act. IBT International pres­ concessions. Teamster ranks see the IBT do it in '88 either." national Brotherhood of Teamsters ident Jackie Presser is under indict­ tops in disarray, and less able to police Authentic Trotskyism may get a hear­ (lBT), are rebelling against the IBT tops' ment by the feds for payroll padding. the union for the trucking magnates.. ing from Communist militants fed up proposed national contract. Nearly His defense is that he did it on the FBI's Here's a chance to fight back, to take with their party's criminal passivity. The 200,000 Teamsters are currently voting instructions while he was their informer! back the givebacks and break the gov­ PCF says it "harbors no illusions" by mail tallot on the National Master Presser, on the ropes and dying of can­ ernment's plot to put the union in (L'Humanite, 28 April) that a Mitter­ Freight Agreement(NMFA), which will cer, has lost his grip, and the union is in chains. The NMFA must remain intact. rand victory will benefit the working set standards for an additional 300,000 danger of returning to the federation of A solid national strike must necessarily class ("on the contrary," Marchais adds workers in the 1.7-million-strong IBT. local and regional fiefdoms thatexisted be a strike to organize the non-union cynically), while it calls for voting Mit­ Truck drivers and warehouse workers, before Jimmy Hoffa welded together terminals and warehouses! terrand to stop the right. But many of its embittered by years of givebacks, are the union's power through the first To win, the working class must base ranks may not follow this road to defeat. being joined by scores of local and 'national over-the-road contract. itself squarely on its own power, inde­ On May Day, as they marched past a regional officials, riled over the Interna­ The capitalist state launched its 30­ pendent of the capitalist agencies and local PS headquarters, CGT militarits tional union tops' concessions and their year vendetta against Hoffa and the courts and their front men in the labor chanted, "Mitterrand, betrayal." PCF deals gutting "supplementals" covering Teamsters not 'because of bureaucratic movement. Having endorsed the Re­ supporters who seek to break from the publicans in 1980 and 1984, Presser infernal cycle of popular fronts alter­ & Co. have few friends left in Washing­ nating with open reaction should study ton now that Reagan/Meese have jilted the example of Tribune Communiste, a them. So the Teamsters rejoin the AFL­ group which came out of the pro-Soviet CIO, Whose bureaucrats and their "mil­ "anti-opportunist" milieu in and around .itant" hangers-on preach trust in the the PCF, and'fused with the Ligue "friend of labor" Democrats--whether Trotskyste this February: Dukakis or Jackson-in order to throt­ An important step in Tribune Com­ tle class struggle. Teamsters: don't for­ muniste's evolution toward genuine Teamster get. it was the Kennedy boys who rail­ Leninism was taken when they refused power: roaded Hoffa in order to break the to vote for the PCF in the legislative supporters of national contract. Both the partner par­ elections of June 1981, opposing the Greyhound ties of capitalism are out to gut the Communist Party's entry into the Mit­ strike on unions with the Landrum-Griffith and terrand popular front. And in their res­ flatbed trucks, Taft-Hartley slave labor laws. To win, olution this year which served as a basis Philadelphia, 1983. Teamsters must break the straitjacket of for the fusion with the Ligue Trotskyste, these anti-labor laws and use the class­ Tribune Communiste wrote: struggle tactics that built the unions: "In 1988 it is not possible to back mass picket lines and secondary boy­ Lajoinie'scandidacy with a vote, since he is running, all by himself,as the can­ cotts (hot-cargoing). As we wrote in the didate of a popular front that the PS is special' Workers Vanguard supple­ ,in no hurry to form-e-waiting for the ment, "Labor's Gotta Play Hardball to PCF leadership to come over once local working conditions. The IBT corruption, of course, but in order -to Win" (WVNo.' 349,2 March 1984): more." ranks must tear up this giveback deal break the power of this national "But 'secondary boycotts' are 'illegal: -"From the lIIusory and reverse the capitalist onslaught transportation union at the core of Transformation of the say the union tops from coast to coast. PCF to the Road of Lenin through hard labor struggle. And that American labor. The feds' war on the Unions themselves were once branded means taking head-on the bosses' Teamsters has gotten plenty of help as 'illegal criminal conspiracies.' The and Trotsky," Le Bolchevik entire history of the American labor No. 81, March 1988 government, with its strikebreaking from careerists seeking to ride RICO movement is one long string of laws Ori the eve of the fusion, Tribune Com­ injunctions and union-busting "trustee­ indictments and court suits into union broken and court injunctions defied. muniste participated together with the ships." For an industrywide trucking office. the opposition Teamsters for a Otherwise there would be no labor LTF in the'anti-fascist demonstration strike! Democratic Union (TDU) beat Reagan movement." called by the PCF on January 27. The When the contract was presented to a and Meese to the draw by filing their These are the lessons of the victo­ joint contingent marched' under the gathering of 277 local union leaders own RICO suit against the union in rious, hard-fought Minneapolis Team­ slogans of "Worker/Immigrant Mobili­ in Chicago on April 7, it provoked a December 1986! The TDU, which sters general strike of 1934, which was zations to Smash the Fascists" and "Full 40 percent "no" vote from this usually doesn'teven call for a strike, works hand led by the revolutionary Trotskyists and Citizenship Rights for Immigrants." obedient crowd. At membership meet­ in glove with' Reagan and Meese's . laid the basis for the over-the-road As Leon Trotsky underlined in his ings across the country the following Justice Department to increase. the sub­ organizing drives which transformed famous pamphlet Whither France? week, scores of locals came out against ordination of the labor movement to the the IBT into a powerful'industrial written after the fascist-bonapartist­ the agreement. Twelve hundred mem­ capitalist state. The labor movement union. To win, this is the kind of a class­ royalist march in February 1934,the key bers of LocaL 299 in Detroit unani­ must demand: Government hands off struggle leadership that must be forged, to crushing the fascists is "Not a Pro­ mously gave it the "thumbs down," and the Teamsters! to lead labor and all the oppressed in a gram of Passivity But a Program of Local 728 members in Atlanta shouted The Reagan regime is discredited, its fight for a workers government that will Revolution": down the son of the International loser contras on the ropes, its anti­ end the boom-bust cycle of the capital­ " ... if opposition to "further aggrava­ secretary-treasurer (Labor Notes, May Soviet provocateurs facing multiple in- ist profit system for good.• tion of the situation of the masses 1'988). On April 18, a thousand Team­ under capitalism is still possible, no sters, members of Local 707 in New real improvement of their situation is conceivable without a revolutionary York and NewJersey, reported to union invasion of the right of capitalist halls instead of freight terminals in a job SPARTACIST LEAGUE/U.S. LOCAL DIRECTORY property.... action to protest the contract. Under the "The social crisis in its political ex­ straitjacket of the IBT bureaucracy, a National Office: New York pression is the crisis of power. The old two-thirds majority is required to defeat master of society is bankrupt. A new Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 Box 444, Canal St. Sta, the contract. master is needed. (212) 732-7860 New York, NY'10013 "If the revolutionary proletariat does The three-year deal offers a paltry 35 (212) 267-1025 . not take power, Fascism will inevitably cents per hour (2 percent) yearly raise, Detroit take it!" while continuing all the concessions Atlanta Norfolk Only by accomplishing its historic Box 4012 Box 441794 Box 1972, Main PO wrenched from the Teamster ranks in Atlanta, GA 30302 Detroit. MI 48244 Norfolk, VA 23501 mission, by taking state power with a previous agreements (elimination of workers government which will expro­ COLA, a two-tier pay scale, and the use Boston Ithaca Oakland priate the bourgeoisieandundertake the of low-wage part-time "casual" work­ Box 840, Central Sta. Box 6767 Box 32552 socialist reconstruction of society, can ers-now about 10percent ofthe work­ Cambridge, MA 02139 Ithaca, NY 14850 Oakland, CA 94604 the proletariat crush the fascist scum force). Fed up with the bankruptcies (617) 492-3928 ' (415) 839-0851 once and for all. And for that, as in all and massive layoffs in the decade since Chicago Los Angeles San Francisco working-class struggles, the leadership trucking deregulation, Teamsters want Box 6441, Main PO Box 29574, Los Feliz Sta. Box 5712 . of a Leninist vanguard party is indis­ to defend their jobs. But under the Chicago. IL 60680 Los Angeles, CA 90029 San Francisco, CA 94101 pensable. Such a party must be a trib­ proposed NMFA; the companies will (312) 663-0715 (213) 380-8239 (415) .863-6963 une of the people, championing the have a free hand to continue "double Cleveland Madison Washington, D.C. cause of all the oppressed. It must also breasting"-setting up non-union sub­ Box 91037 Box 2074 Box 75073 squarely oppose the anti-Soviet war sidiaries-which has bled the union of Cleveland, OH 44101 Madison, WI 53701 WaShington, D,C. 20013 drive and uphold the banner of uncon­ 120,000jobs. (216) 881-3700 (608) 251-6431 (202) 636-3537 ditional military defense of the de­ All hell is breaking loose in the Team­ formed and degenerated workers states. sters over this freight contract because This party will- be the section of a the bureaucratic cement is cracking at Toronto reforged Fourth International, regroup­ ~ the top. The corrupt gang at Ed Meese's TROTSKYIST LEAGUE Box 7198. Station A ing genuine communists behind the "Justice" Department is trying to dis­ OF CANADA Toronto, Ontario M5W fX8 Leninist-Trotskyist program of world mantle this powerful union using the (416) 593-4138 socialist revolution.• blatantly unconstitutional Racketeer 6 MAY 1988 9 a bureaucratically deformed .workers out of the "national reconciliation" Yet the' strikers certainly do not see Nicaragua ... state, is moving toward reconsolidating talks, protesting Sandinista "intransi­ themselves as counterrevolutionaries. (continued from page 1) a capitalist state (see "Sandinista­ gence" in resolving the strikes. Indeed, as the New York Times (14 Contra Pact: Revolution in Grave Dan­ On May Day, Daniel Ortega de­ April) reported: "The construction fracturing. During the negotiations ger," WV No. 450, 8 April). nounced the strikers, saying, "These workers' union hall is decorated by por­ longtime CIA operative Adolfo Calero In recent weeks the FSLN has made workers are fighting against the rev­ traits of Lenin and other Marxist and former Somozaist National Guard one concession after another to the olution instead of the imperialism of the heros," and both unions sport the tradi­ colonel Enrique Bermudez have fallen bourgeoisie while forcing the working United States and the contras." "They tional communist symbol, the hammer out. Bermudez fired the contra com­ class to the wall. The current labor bat­ are led," he said, "by people who have and sickle. SCAAS is known for lead­ manders who signed the Sapoa agree­ tles are the result of a sweeping pro­ a counterrevolutionary program'... ing a hard-fought building workers ment, whereupon Calero tried to pull a capitalist economic "shock treatment" pseudo-leaders who receive money from strike against "Somoza following the coup to oust the military chief. The launched by Ortega on February 14. the C.I.A." A relative of a striker count­ 1972 earthquake, while CAUS once led cease-fire poses a big problem for the Overnight the Nicaraguan currency, the ered, "They say this is a political strike, the largest and most militant factory in contra tops: their mercenary peasant cordoba, was devalued by 3,000 per­ but the real cause is that we can't live on the country, now called FABRITEX, army could dissolve without the pres­ cent; the government exchanged old what they want to pay." With these where they continue to have support sure of war and the promise of endless cordobas for new ones at the rate of totally counterposed accounts, what is and which has one of the highest dollars. One contra official said, "Who 1,000 to one. Given the astronomical the truth? And what should be the policy percentages of workers who have joined knows how long we can hold together inflation, monetary reform was inev­ of proletarian revolutionaries? the militias and fought the contras at the and keep up the morale of our troops" itable. But along with it, Ortega decreed The strike clearly began as an eco­ front. In fact, most of Managua's indus­ (New York Times, 26 April). As Sandi­ a series of measures favoring business­ nomic struggle, forced by the FSLN's tries have a strong presence of ostensi­ nista troops in the field began meeting men and gutting Nicaraguan workers' drastic anti-worker economic policies. bly socialist opposition unions. with nearby contra units, orders went budgets. Almost all subsidies for food When the strikes broke out in' late out from contra HQ in Tegucigalpa to and basic goods were eliminated, gov­ February, the government made no Lessons of October: stop the fraternization. But in several ernment spending was cut by 10 per­ . attempt to bargain and simply fired eve­ Bolshevik Party Is Key cases the meetings have continued. cent, wage differentials were increased ryone. And the wages are truly impossi­ Sandinista Nicaragua has been bru­ . While the Sandinista leadership for higher-paid professional employees ble. A New York Times (14 April) article tally battered by years of Yankee rolled out the red carpet for the contras, ...and capitalists' export earnings will reported the comments of a con­ imperialist aggression, both by the the Nicaraguan masses were in the' now be paid at international market struction assistant who earns 26 cordo- bloody contra terrorists who have killed tens of thousands and by Reagan's trade embargo which has sought to strangle the economy. Having endured so much, so long, it is natural that war-weariness has spread in Nicaragua. This can drive backward workers into the arms of reaction. We have recalled the example of Kronstadt, where sailors mutinied in 1921 against the Soviet regime (see "Finish Off the Contras-Complete the Revolution!" WVNo. 445, 29 January). At that time also, hard-pressed urban workers led by the Mensheviks were striking for basic economic necessities. Lenin, Trotsky and the rest of the Bol­ shevik leadership tried to negotiate with the sailors, but finally the mutiny had to Reuters be put down by the Red Army. March 3-Nicaraguan masses demonstrate against The PSN and PCN are politically La Prensa, mouthpiece for capitalist reaction. similar in many ways to the Russian Contra kingpin Calero (center) Whoops it up with Mensheviks. They are hardline refor­ La Prensa publisher Violeta Chamorro. mists, ardent believers in "two-stage" revolution who opposed as "adventur­ streets. Dozens of demonstrations rates! One U.S.-educated "technocrat" bas a day (while a worker's lunch costs istic" the 1979 insurrection which top­ assembled to call for unconditional sur­ who helped design the program said: 30 cordobas, a pack of cigarettes costs pled Somoza. The Mensheviks, too, led render by the contra killers. While the "This is a reaffirmation of the view that 39 and an inexpensive pair of shoes goes sections of the working class, such as the imperialist media have been bellowing socialist central planning is not viable in for at least 400):"It's a question of starv­ railway workers who opposed the about "censorship" of the voice of the this country. The logic of these meas­ ing on strike or starving on the job. You ures is a greater reliance on market October Revolution and sabotaged its internal contras, La Prensa, because it signals." . absolutely cannot live on that salary." defense. But the Sandinistas are no Bol­ wants more (Soviet-supplied) news­ - Washington Post, 5 March There have also been walkouts in sheviks-far from it. The Kronstadt print, and the government caved in by workplaces controlled by Sandinista The impact on the Nicaraguan masses sailors, many of whom came from rural supplying it, Sandinista youth gathered unions: eight in January alone. has been devastating. While wages were backgrounds, objected to the Bolshe­ outside the CIA mouthpiece chanting, On the other hand, the union leaders viks' policies of War Communism, seek­ "Give back to the people the paper you increased, prices have risen faster.. Mainstays of the Nicaraguan diet like are cooperating with 'right-wing reac­ ing free markets for peasant producers. used to defame the people" (La Repub­ rice, beans and corn have virtually dis­ tion. The strikers are organized in the "War Sandinism," in contrast, has been blica [Rome], 17 April). Pressured by appeared from the markets as produc­ SCAAS construction workers union, marked by hefty dollar subsidies for the Sandinista ranks, Nicaraguan pres­ affiliated with the pro-Moscow Social­ "patriotic" capitalists and increasingly ident Daniel Ortega vowed to a crowd of ers and speculators hold on to them rather than sell them at government­ ists (PSN), and the CAUS union of the impossible conditions for the workers. 20,000 that if peace talks fail, "we shall Communist Party (peN). SCAAS and And now the Sandinistas have decreed a continue fighting until we totally anni­ controlled prices. The working class faces an impossible situation. An auto CAUS, in turn, are part of an opposi­ "free market" austerity rivaling any­ hilate the Contras." And on May-Day, tion labor umbrella group which in­ thing the IMF bankers' cartel has Ortega declared: mechanic, a skilled worker toward the .upper end of the new 15-step wage scale, cludes the CUS union that is indeed on ordered, as they prepare to bring back "What we are discussing is how the mer­ makes 1,700cordobas per month(about the Washington payroll, via the Ameri­ the contra capitalists. cenary forces, who are already defeated, can Institute for Free Labor Develop­ can lay down their weapons, US$45 currently). Yet even according to The current Nicaraguan strikes are "They should be grateful that we are not government estimates it takes at least ment, a "labor" front for the CIA set up not Kronstadt but closer to the El offering them the guillotine or the fir­ 2,300 cordobas tand more likely double by the AFL-CIO and U.S.business­ Teniente strike in Allende's Chile. In ing squad, which is what they deserve," men. According to the Wall Street Jour­ May-June of 1973, workers at the coun­ -New York Times, 2 May that) just to feed a family of four. Unskilled workers may earn as little as nal (3I.December 1985), "AIFLD fun­ try's largest mine fought against the Militant declarations notwithstanding, 500 cordobas per month! Simply to sur­ nels about $60,000 a year to the CUS "Popular Unity" government to retain in negotiating a treacherous "peace" vive workers must find some bisnes in from funds it receives from the National their sliding scale of wages, a protection fraud the Sandinistasare paving the way the black market, which continues to Endowment for Democracy," set up to against inflation. Allende, like Ortega, for counterrevolution. flourish despite government efforts to launder U.S. government dollars. And accused the strikers of being "economis­ both PCN and PSN are part of a 14­ Showdown Over Strikes suppress it. tic." Yet while the popular-front left party alliance opposed to the Sandinis­ denounced the El Teniente strikers, we Despite all the vituperation from the The catastrophic collapse of the tas which includes all the right-wing Trotskyists called to defend their strike. Reagan White House against "Sandino­ workers' standard of living resulting parties. Eventually, however, as Allende's "pop- Communism," the .:Sandinistas have from the economic reform soon touched never sought to establish a collectivized off strikes by 3,000 construction work­ economy, the basis of a workers state. ers and 1,200auto mechanics, as well as While the FSLN smashed the capitalist (more briefly) by restaurant workers, state of the Somozadynasty installed by truck drivers and sugar plantation the U.S. Marines, the ,guerrillas in workers. The striking construction power vowed to follow a utopian pipe workers are demanding 200 percent dream of "mixed economy, political wage increases and the limitation of the pluralism and nonalignment." But this workday to eight hours. The Sandinis­ didn't placate the Reaganauts, who tas responded by declaring the strikes . wanted an easy "win" in Central illegal and firing the workers, while the America for their anti-Soviet war drive. pro-government CST labor federation For more than eight years, the fate of has organized scabs to take their places. the Nicaraguan Revolution has hung in Tensions have run high as Sandinista the balance. Now with the defeat of militants and unionists have squared off Washington's contra terrorists, we ~ ":', ,"=._:;:<,""\..i, in street confrontations. Last week 38 SIN-T-V/WV Photos have warned that the petty-bourgeois construction workers went on a hunger Construction workers and mechanics on hunger strike for a living wage at bonapartist FSLN regime, rather strike to press for their demands. And union hall in Managua. Reformist union leaders display the hammer and than following the "Cuban road" to then the right-wing opposition walked sickle, but ally with the bourgeoisie. 10 WORKERS VANGUARD ular" government drove the strikers into their constitutional and civil rights to the abyss, the CIA's coup plotters seized Abortion enter school buildings, the United States the opportunity. A miners' march on government recognized their respon­ Santiago was taken over by the ultra­ sibility and escorted ... people inside rightist National Partyand turned into a Rights ... these buildings." Actually, FBI agents counterrevolutionary political mobi­ (continued/rom page 12) rode along while KKK killers gunned lization. (For more about the El the cops were following the lead they got down Viola Liuzzo, and KKK church­ Teniente strike, see "Defend Chilean straight from the White House. What's bombers who killed four little black girls Miners' Strike," WV No. 23, 22 June needed to keep the clinics open is a in Birmingham were aided by FBI 1973; and "How The BattleofChileDis­ massive mobilization of labor, together "informants." And to call today on Ed arms the Workers," WV No. 202, 21 with women and minorities, to run these Meese-the sworn enemy of blacks, April 1978.) bible-thumping bigots out of town. women, labor-to protect the clinics is In Nicaragua today, Ortega has Death is written all over the "right to grotesque. As the Spartacist contingent denounced the strikers as having "no life" crusaders. They seek to drive at the. demonstration chanted, "Down class consciousness" for struggling to working-class and poor women back to with Reagan! Down with Meese! Down feed and clothe their children while the the rusty coat hangers and back alleys. with government sex 'police!" Nicaraguan bourgeoisie receives sub­ In December 1986, a bomb so powerful At a press briefing at Planned Par­ sidies and the Sandinista comandantes it would have blown away the Margaret enthood April 26, clinic operators shop at Managua's "dollar stores." The Sanger clinic in midtown Manhattan announced that they have been check­ workers. have sacrificed plenty, but was defused at the last moment. While ing to make sure that "we have what­ where's the social revolution? The work­ the fundamentalist fanatics look to Rea­ ever materials and tools would be . WV Photo ers' demands are a legitimate defense gan, the liberal feminist groups are Bill Baird addresses April 29 rally necessary to thwart attempts to block­ against the FSLN's economic "reforms" bound up with the Democratic Party. with photo of 1979 firebomb attack ade our doors and windows." "Project which are aimed at securing capitalist But it was Jimmy Carter who passed the by "right to life" terrorists on his Defend" has been training escorts in property relations. The right-wing Hyde Amendment that wiped out Hempstead, Long Island clinic. "non-confrontational tactics" to guide opposition, which seeks untrammeled abortions for poor women. clinic patients through the mobs. capitalist exploitation, has seized upon The attack on abortion rights is the police protection for the clinics. That "Refuse and Resist" is calling to the strikes as a club against the Sandi­ spearhead of the Reaganites' all-sided the rampaging racists of the NYPD will "UnWelcome 'Operation Rescue' at nistas. A genuine communist leader­ onslaught against democratic rights, not protect women was shown by their Their Hotels!" All of this misses the ship would seek to take control of the from the Supreme Court bigots in their aid to the clinic blockaders-just the point: what's needed is to bring out real struggle away from the reformist trai­ black robes with their anti-"sodomy" week before, the cops shot two His- social power capable of driving out the tors who are leading the workers into laws, to the racist terrorists in blue uni­ -panic women in Upper Manhattan! bigots and backing down the state. the arms of Reagan's contras. forms or white sheets. Spartacist plac­ Long . Island clinic owner and Labor must be mobilized to defend A Leninist-Trotskyist party would ards at the April 29 march called for courageous longtime abortion rights abortion rights. During the Reagan fight for workers. control of the fac­ "Government Out of the Bedrooms!" activist Bill Baird recalled what hap­ years, the Spartacist League has become tories, for expropriation of the bour­ "Down with All Laws Against Por­ pened in December 1985when "right to known for ourfight to mobilize the mus­ geoisie, for a workers and peasants gov­ nography, Sodomy, Drugs!" "Reagan/ life" bigots led by Nassau County D.A. cle of the workers movement to cham­ ernment-and oppose the sellout of the Democrats Target Gays, Immigrants, Dennis Dillon and Bishop McCann pion the cause of blacks, women and all revolution in the phony "peace" talks Blacks-Down with the AIDS Witch­ massed outside his clinic. After a bomb the oppressed against this murderous with the contras. It would fight to hunt," and "For the Separation of threat was reported, cops with police capitalist reaction. Labor/ black/His­ defend, complete and extend the Nica­ Church and State." Warning of the dogs walked in on his patients, terroriz­ panic mobilizations to stop racist ter­ raguan Revolution! terrible bloodbath now looming in ing women in the recovery rooms. Yet ror are urgently needed in Reagan's Located in an area considered by the Afghanistan, a sign read, "Afghan Baird is calling for federal marshals to America and _Koch's New York. As Yankee imperialists to be their "back­ Women Fight for Their Lives Against escort women into the clinics! the Spartacist banner at the April yard," Sandinista Nicaragua has been CIA-Backed Mullah Reaction!" Baird makes the analogy to the civil 29 demonstration proclaimed: "For battered by an unrelenting onslaught The "Pro-Choice" activists and city rights movement of the 1960s, claiming Women's Liberation Through Socialist from the colossus to the north, combin­ councilmen are calling for stepped-up that "When blacks were deprived of Revolution!" • ing bloody contra terror and economic strangulation. Reagan wouldn't leave them alone yet Washington feared to was a cop, Koch demanded Mercedes "Twenty years after" the '68 ghetto send the 82nd Airborne into another NYPD ... Perez be charged with murder anyway, riots, professors and pundits solemnly under a law which states that if a killing Third World military adventure. So the (continued/rom page 12) declare what everybody knows-that Nicaraguan Revolution has been stuck takes place during a criminal act, the racist cop terror still stalks black in midstream-it is now becoming criminal can be charged with murder. America. And the green light comes inEI Barrio, so now she is dead. Just what was that criminal act, exactly? straight from the top. In Britain, "Iron unstuck. As decisive days approach in Just after noon that same day, four Managua, the experience of the Rus­ Going for a gun after strange men break Lady" Maggie Thatcher gets re-elected plainclothes cops (with ten more out­ down the door? As for drugs, no "con­ by running a dirty little war in the Falk­ sian October Revolution becomes all side in uniform) stormed an apartment the more vital. In September 1917, trolled substances" were found in the land/Malvinas islands. "Rambo" Rea­ in the Inwood section of Manhattan. apartment. gan props up his polls by invading the following the defeat of Kornilov's They said they had a tip they would find attempted counterrevolutionary putsch No matter to the arrogant racist pig tiny black island of Grenada. Now Ed two kilos of cocaine inside. What they Koch who as the enforcer of capitalist Koch wants to get a fifth term by and as economic collapse threatened, found was Mercedes Perez, 22 years old Lenin wrote his famous pamphlet, The "law and order" proclaims his "right" to unleashing a racist war against the black I and pregnant. After she fled terrified kill-he wants his cops to pull the trig­ and Latin population of New York. He Impending Catastrophe and' How to into her bedroom, the cops said she Combat It: . ger and his courts to pull the switch. figures he can neutralize the black PO:l­ reached for her gun. Five. shots were Koch and Ward have had their prob­ ticians by calling it a "war on drugs." "Control, supervision and accounting fired and police sergeant John McCor­ are the prime requisites for combating lems lately after the mayor's Virulently Across the country, speedupon death catastrophe and famine. This is indis­ mick died. Mercedes was shot twice in racist outbursts against Jesse Jackson row,cop executions on the streets: putable and universally recognised. the stomach and arm. She gave birth by made life uncomfortable for the black blacks and Latins in America are under And it is just what is not being done Caesarean sectionwhile being treated at police commissioner (who says.his wife siege. That siege is carried out by the from fear of encroaching on the the hospital for her wounds. The police is a Jackson supporter). So now they black overseers of the inner cities like supremacy of the landowners and immediately labeled Perez a "cop killer" capitalists....' patch things up by gunning people Ben Ward. And Jesse Jackson longs to "In point of fact, the whole question of and screamed for blood. down. Mercedes Perez, Juan Rodri­ be Washington's drug czar, carrying out control boils down to who controls Koch's black police commissioner guez, Eleanor Bumpurs-the list of Nancy Reagan's witchhunt and chan­ whom, i.e., which class is in control and which is being controlled. In our coun­ Benjamin Ward raved, "She shot-a cop. black and Hispanic New Yorkers neling black anger to the voting booth to try, in republican Russia, with the help She should be taken out and executed. gunned down in their homes by the pull the lever for the racist Democratic of the 'authorised bodies' of suppos­ Kill them all and let God sort them out." police goes on. And the shooting of Party. Desperately needed is a revolu­ edly revolutionary democracy, it is the And those were orders. The mayor Lydia Ferraro chillingly recalls last tionary workers party which cham­ landowners and capitalists who are still called for the death penalty. Not until year's killing of black Muslim street pions the struggles of the oppressed recognised to be, and still are, the con­ trollers, The inevitable result is the cap­ almost 24 hours later was it announced vendor Nicolas Bartlett, surrounded by populations, mobilizing the power of italist robbery that arouses universal that the cop was killed by a bullet from a cops and shot down on the busiest street the workers movement in a struggle for indignation among the people, and the .38 calibre Smith & Wesson police pis­ in Harlem. This racist NYPD murder socialist revolution-the only road to economic chaos that is being arti­ tol. But when it turned out the cop-killer rampage must be stopped! black emancipation.• ficially kept up by the capitalists. We must resolutely and irrevocably, not fearing to break with the old, not fear­ ing boldly to build the new, pass to con­ The nsmg tide of racist attacks puses? Sections of the frenzied petty trol over the landowners and capitalists Madison ... against blacks, Hispanics, gays and bourgeoisie who've been force-fed by the workers and peasants." (continued/rom page 4) Jews on campuses across the country is "Rambomania" lash out against minor­ How this was to be done was spelled out a direct result of government policy of a ities on the "home front"-as scape­ in an article he wrote that same day, black Democrat Jesse Jackson who has Klan-endorsed President and the contra goats for the rot of American capital­ which concludes: "Power to the Soviets made whistle stops at .black student Congress. Democrats and Republicans ism which threatens their own economic means the complete transfer of the protests, like last fall's building take­ alike carry out war against labor and position. country's administration and economic .over in Ann Arbor, to defuse them. blacks in this country as the domestic The source of racist attacks is the sys­ control into the hands of the workers From busing for school desegregation counterpart to their anti-Soviet war tem that keeps black people perma­ ana peasants, to whom nobody would to self-defense against racist attacks, drive. The sanctimonious drug witch­ nently segregated at the bottom of the dare offer resistance and who, through to repealing the death penalty, Jack­ hunt by the ruling class which runs the economy and exploits all the working practice, through their own experience, son has deep-sixed or opposed every contras who run the world drug trade people through wage slavery. The Spar­ would soon learn how to distribute the effort at black struggle. Jackson tells has turned the already miserable ghet­ tacus Youth Club fights to link students land, products and grain properly" black students: "You cannot serve the tos and barrios of this country into to the power of the integrated, organ­ ("One of the Fundamental Questions of age of those that sat in, you cannot "occupied territories" held by the racist ized working class, to build a multi­ the Revolution," September 1917).That serve the age of those who rode the cops. The twin parties of capital have racial vanguard party to fight for a step was taken with the October Revo­ flaming buses ..." But you can vote launched an all-out assault on union workers government that will open the lution, whose 'program remains today Democrat-and as Malcolm X saki: A rights and every social gain won since road to black freedom. Finish the; Civil the guiding light for proletarian revolu­ vote for the Democrats is a vote for the the Civil War and civil rights move­ War! Black liberation through socialist tion throughout the world.• Dixiecrats. ment. How is this reflected on the cam- revolution!. 6 MAY 1988 11 W,I//(EI/S '''''(JUIII/I)

NYC Abortion Clinics Under Sieg~ Labor Must Defend Abortion Rights!

Fanatical Moral Majority bigots have .~", .... ~.' invaded New York City, "the abortion capital of the eastern United States," in a weeklong campaign to blockade the 'NOMEN'S lI8ERATION clinics and intimidate, harass and ter­ rorize women. Having failed to make abortion illegal and with Reagan on the SoOAlISTu~EVOLunoNl way out, "Operation Rescue" reflects the increasing desperation of the relig­ lEAGUE/SX[. ious ultraright. In response, on Friday, April 29, a demonstration of 1,000 peo­ ple to "Defend Women's Right to Abortion" .and "Stop Terrorist At­ tacks!" marched down Fifth Avenue from St. Patrick's Cathedral (pulpit of the anti-abortion bully Cardinal O'Con­ nor) to the "Right to Life" office. A Spartacist contingent, the largest and most dynamic in the march, attracted support with signs saying "Labor Must Defend Abortion Clinics" and chants of "Defend the Clinics, Take a Stand, Free Abortion on Demand!" But on the first two days of their campaign, 500-600 of these fundamen­ talist bigots have succeeded in closing down two abortion facilities, in Man­ hattan and Queens, a defeat for de­ Spartacist League contingent in April 29 protest against attacks on abortion clinics. fenders of women's rights. On Monday, May 2, the bigots massed in front of the permitted to sit in, blockading the removed handfuls of pro-abortion an operation calculated to ensure the office of Dr. Herbert Schwarz, a private entrance, while the tiny group of abor­ demonstrators defending the clinic clinics remain blockaded for hours. practitioner on the Upper East Side. On tion rights activists was sealed off by the doorways and installed the blockaders While spokesmen for the Pro-Choice Tuesday, the Queens Women's Medical cops behind police barricades. The in their place. Unlike the cops' normal Coalition complained that the police Office in Elmhurst was shut down, as reactionaries have been aided and M.O., the anti-abortionists are gently were not respecting a court injunction, hundreds of anti-abortion fanatics were abetted by the NYC police, who carried out on stretchers one by one in continued on page 11

Racist NYPD Guns Down\.> Women Koch, Ward_Whip Up Killer Cops

They really are Koch's killer cops. lets into the car. A witness told the Daily The New York' police are a murder News (30 April) he saw the cops hand­ machine that takes its orders from cuff Ferraro as sue lay bleeding in the City Hall. car and "dragged her out a door until Month after month Ed Koch has been her body slammed on the ground": whipping up a racist frenzy that gets '''I saw the woman drive around the expressed in deadly attacks on minor­ block with the cops behind her. She ities from Howard Beach to Benson­ looked terrified. She was riding around on three flat tires (shot out by cops) .... hurst. The mayor's latest tirades against '''They pulled the car over. ... One cop Jesse Jackson's presidential campaign shot. Boom. She panicked. It looked. were an incitement to racist terror in this like she tried to lay down. Then she sat city on edge. So in short order, on up. Everybody started shooting. One Wednesday, April 27 the New York cop stood on the hood of a patrol car and fired twice through her windshield.' police shot down two Hispanic women. "The man said cops threw open the car Lydia Ferraro died in a hail of bullets, doors ana handcuffed Ferraro. 'One trapped in her car surrounded by cops. cop yelled, "Drag that bitch out of the Florescu/Newsday Mercedes Perez was shot twice in her car." Another cop looked under the seat >­ own home by a squad of narcs, forcing and said, "No gun".''' , ."0'" '"~ her to give birth to a baby two months It was a cop execution on the z'" prematurely. She now faces the prospect streets of New York. After the kill­ of life injail, or if Koch had his way, the ing comes the lies. There were "ques­ state would kill her, finishing the job the tions"-like "what Mrs. Ferraro was killer cops began. doing in East Harlem between I and It was 1:40a.m. in El Barrio (Spanish 2 a.m." For the cops, the only reason Lydia Ferraro was Harlem) when the cops said Lydia a light-skinned woman could be in executed in her car Ferraro ran a red light. The cops got on Harlem at night was to buy drugs. But by NYPD for the radio, and within moments nine there were no drugs in the car, either. running a red light squad cars-18 cops-were chasing her Her husband said she was visiting in East Harlem. through the streets. They hemmed he! in friends, whom she saw frequently. near the Metro-North railroad over­ Lydia Ferraro, 32, born in Venezuela, pass at 124th and Park and encircled the lived'with her husband and ll-year-old car. "Watch out, she's reaching for it," daughter in New Jersey. She had friends one cop said, and they pumped 13 bul- continued on page 11 12 6 MAY 1988