A Spartacist Pamphlet $1.50 Black History and the Class Struggle ---- No.21 ----

From Slavery to Mass Incarceration PAGE 27 The Cold War and the Civil Rights Movement PAGE 35 Haiti: Mass Misery Under Imperialist Occupation PAGE 55 2

Table of Contents Introduction

Break with the Democrats! In the first issue of Black History and order to better sell the big lie that racial For a Revolutionary Workers Party! the Class Struggle, published in 1983, we oppression is a thing of the past. Indeed, Obama Offers Facelift for wrote: "The fight for black freedom in the the "end of racism" lie and the burial of U.S. Imperialism ...... 3 United States is inextricably linked to the struggle for racial integration are the the fight for socialist revolution against domestic side of the reactionary "end of Communist Organizing in the racist, imperialist capitalist system." communism" myth promoted by imperi­ the Jim Crow South Today it remains the purpose of this pam­ alist ideologues after the counterrevolu­ What's Not in The Great Debaters ...... 7 phlet series to bring working people and tionary destruction of the USSR. youth to an understanding of this inextri­ Under Obama's administration the racist Oscar Grant Executed in Cold Blood, cable link, as part of winning them to a cops continue to perform their function of Black Oakland Under Siege Marxist program of struggle to bring the upholding the capitalist order against the Racist Police Terror U.S.A ...... 15 working class to power at the head of all working class, including by intimidating the oppressed. displays of racist terror and murder on the The Man in the Mirror The articles reprinted here show that, streets. Immigrants have been rounded up Michael Jackson and as Barack Obama became a serious con­ and deported in higher numbers than Racist America ...... 20 tender for the U.S. presidency heading under the Bush regime as scapegoats for toward the 2008 elections, the Spartacist the capitalist economic crisis. In a coun­ Break With the Tripartite Alliance! League clearly set forward our position try where a distinguished member of the For A Black-Centered Workers Government! refusing political support to all candi­ so-called "talented tenth" and personal South Africa: Mobilize Trade Unions dates of the bourgeois class enemy. Our friend of Obama's, professor Henry Louis Against Anti-Immigrant Terror! ... 22 revolutionary program begins from the Gates, can be harassed on his own front fight for political independence of the porch by a racist cop, much worse contin­ Caster Semenya-Leave Her Alone! working class from all capitalist parties ues to be visited upon the common peo­ Racist, Sexist Furor Over and state institutions. After the election, ple. The president underscored again that South African Runner ...... 24 we wrote (Workers Vanguard No. 925, 21 nobody should expect him to stand up November 2008): "From the standpoint for black people when his administration From Slavery to Mass Incarceration of the international working class and fired Shirley Sherrod, a black woman Black Liberation and the Fight for oppressed there is nothing to celebrate in official of the Department of Agriculture, a Socialist America ...... 27 Obama's victory and much to fear. Enthu­ after right-wingers alleged she had dis­ siasm among large sections of the bour­ criminated against a white farmer, a story For Black Liberation Through geoisie, on the other hand, is justified." revealed as a total fabrication almost as Socialist Revolution! Large numbers of black people were also soon as it had been purveyed. The Cold War and the Civil Rights Movement ...... 35 celebrating, not least older people, who Obama made promises to the ruling had never thought a black man could be class, and he has kept them: to loyally elected president in this deeply racist serve and defend the interests of Wall Reformists Crawl to Obama and His Top Cop country. Street, to increase the number of U.S. Mumia Is an Innocent Man! Free Him Now! ...... 49 In contrast to our position, Workers troops raining death and destruction on World Party, one of the organizations that Afghanistan, to continue the so-called falsely claim to be socialist, wrote: "The "war on terror" which is a license for Down With Arizona's Racist Pass Law! election victory of Barack Obama will racist persecution of Muslims and others Full Citizenship Rights for All Immigrants!...... 51 go down in history as a triumphant step at home and the hypocritical justification forward in the struggle against racism for U.S. military adventures in the Near and national oppression in the U.S." The East. Obama bailed out the big banks All U.S./UN Troops Out! Haiti: Mass Misery Under illusions of workers and youth in Obama using billions of tax dollars and brokered Imperialist Occupation ...... 55 are false consciousness, fed by the lying the rip-off "rescue" of the auto industry propaganda of the ruling class, and based by axing jobs, wages and working condi­ Shirley Sherrod Thrown Under the Bus on people's desperate desire to believe tions of unionized auto workers, with the Obama: CEO of things are getting better. To purvey such complicity of the sellout "labor states­ Racist American Capitalism . .... 58 false consciousness is the main job ofref­ men" at the top of the trade unions. He ormist organizations-those who believe has gone after teachers unions with a ven­ No Deportations! For Full Citizenship Rights! that the capitalist system can be reformed geance and redoubled the bourgeoisie's France: Down With Racist to "serve the people." attacks on public education across the Anti-Roma Campaign! ...... 60 Now these opponents of revolution pro­ board. fess to be disappointed at Obama's record. Supposedly "socialist" groups covered But Barack Obama promised nothing to their loyal support to American capital­ black people or the rest of the working ism's Commander-in-Chief with a fake masses. In acknowledging that slavery militant veneer of opposition (along the Spartacist Publishing Co. and racism have been at the center of lines that Obama will do good things if Box 1377 GPO bloody American history, Obama was only we put sufficient mass pressure on New York, NY 10116 February 2011 only using a bit of undeniable truth in continued on page 63 3 reprintedJrom Workers Vanguard No. 920, 12 September 2008 Break with the Democrats! For a Revolutionary Workers Party!

Obama celift for U.S. Imperialism As the glittery red-white­ the reformability of capital­ and-blue media circuses of ism and a vote against the the two bourgeois parties' need for socialist revolution. presidential nominating con­ Nor would we run for execu­ ventions in Colorado and tive office-president, gov­ Minnesota faded away, the ernor or mayor-ourselves last whiffs of police tear (see Spartacist [English­ gas dissipated, and the last language edition] No. 60, police barricades were dis­ Autumn 2007). In the U.S., mantled, official U.S. un­ the president is the top cop employment hit a five-year responsible for the most high of 6.1 percent, while massive military power in the actual business of Amer­ history and for the domestic ican imperialism continues machinery of repression unabated. The occupation that maintains social oppres­ of Afghanistan-supported sion and exploitation. by both capitalist candi­ AFP (top); Reuters To the U.S. rulers, dates-heated up as the Top: Imperialist candidates Barack Obama and Joseph Biden Obama, the son of a Kenyan U.S. killed or wounded 500 at Democratic Party convention in August 2008. Obama calls man and a white American people in one week alone. for 10,000 more troops to Afghanistan. Above: Afghan vil­ woman, is an acceptable Meanwhile, U.S. commandos lagers mourn two children killed by U.S.-led troops in Kabul choice for president because openly made incursions into on 1 September 2008. he would refurbish the tat- Pakistan on September 3, tered image of U.S. imperi­ the sort of action advocated by Democratic against Iran over its nuclear program. alism. Obama serves as a very powerful Party presidential nominee Barack Obama. As Marxist opponents of this racist propaganda weapon for the bourgeoisie, With bipartisan unity, Democratic vice capitalist-imperialist order, we stand for telling black people and the oppressed to presidential candidate Joe Biden's pro­ the political independence of the working shut up and stop complaining, because, posal for a $15 billion bribe to Pak­ class from the capitalist class enemy. you see, "the American dream" works! istan's new president to ensure compliance Working people need a party that fights Former Bush supporter and former New with further U.S. incursions was supported for their class interests, a workers party Republic editor Andrew Sullivan pointed by the Bush administration. The Joint committed to sweeping away the mur­ out in promoting Obama: "What does he Chiefs of Staff have recommended shift­ derous imperialist order through social­ offer? First and foremost: his face. Think ing some troops out of the Iraq quagmire ist revolution. We are opposed to any of it as the most effective potential re­ in order to send them to Afghanistan, a political support to any capitalist politi­ branding of the United States since Rea­ move in line with Obama's recent call for cian-Democrat, Republican, Green or gan. Such a re-branding is not trivial­ 10,000 additional troops into Afghani­ "Independent." A vote for any bourgeois it's central to an effective war strategy" stan. And both parties continue threats candidate is a vote of confidence in (Atlantic Monthly, December 2007). 4

c Indeed, when Obama spoke in Berlin c on July 24, more than 200,000 Berliners, E'" waving U.S. flags, cheered him on. It Zbigniew ~ was a public relations triumph that Presi­ Brzezinski, dent Bush could not have pulled off; as Carter's national one commentator quipped, the only way security adviser, Bush would have gotten that kind of at Khyber Pass crowd was if he was being tried as a outpost war criminal. Obama's speech itself was overlooking a rip-roaring rehash of just about every Afghanistan in anti-Communist Cold War cliche known 1980 as U.S. financed and to bourgeois speech writers. armed cutthroat Berlin was where John F. Kennedy mujahedin against made his famous "feh bin ein Berliner" Soviet Red Army. speech in 1963-after his failed 1961 Today Brzezinski Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and his serves as one of dispatch of U.S. troops to Vietnam. It was Obama's foreign also in Berlin that Ronald Reagan de­ policy advisers. manded that Soviet leader Gorbachev "tear down that wall" in 1987 during Cold War II. Obama's performance, a virulent mix of classic "Cold War liberalism" with in "U.S. Imperialists Out of Afghanistan, 'advanced' countries. And this 'booty' neoconservative Reaganite rhetoric, was Iraq!" (WVNo. 918, I August): is shared between two or three power­ designed to show how tough an imperial­ ful world plunderers armed to the teeth "The Spartacist League, U.S. section of (America, Great Britain, Japan), who are ist Commander-in-Chief he would be. the International Communist League drawing the whole world into their war Obama declared that after World War II (Fourth Internationalist), stood for the over the division of their booty." "the Soviet shadow had swept across military defense of Afghanistan and Iraq against imperialist attack without giving The occupations of Afghanistan and Eastern Europe." Left unsaid, of course, any political support to the reactionary, Iraq have gone hand in hand with the capi­ was the fact that it was the Red Army that woman-hating Taliban cutthroats or the talist rulers' onslaught against working capitalist dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. defeated the scourge of Nazi terror in people, minorities and most everyone else Europe at the cost of over 20 million We underlined that every victory for the imperialists in their military adventures domestically. What is necessary is class Soviet lives. Obama sang the praises of encourages more predatory wars; every struggle against the capitalist rulers at NATO, "the greatest alliance ever formed setback serves to assist the struggles of home. Such a perspective requires politi­ to defend our common security." He gave working people and the oppressed the world over. Today, we call for the imme­ cal combat against the pro-capitalist trade­ shout-outs to "the German people" who union bureaucracy, which subordinates the "tore down that wall" and to "American diate and unconditional withdrawal of all U.S. troops and bases from Iraq, Afghan­ proletariat to its capitalist class enemy, bases built in the last century" that "defend istan and Central Asia!" particularly through promoting Democratic the security of this continent." It was a In contrast, reformist left groups, such Party "lesser evilism." Above all, what is speech geared to reinvigorating "West­ as the International Socialist Organiza­ required is the forging of a revolutionary ern allies" behind U.S. imperialist aims tion (ISO), Workers World Party (WWP) workers party, built independently of and abroad: "The Afghan people"-the same and the Revolutionary Communist Party in opposition to the Democrats, Republi­ ones the U.S. and NATO forces slaugh­ (RCP), and the various antiwar coalitions cans, Greens and all capitalist parties; a ter with impunity-"need our troops and they built-ANSWER (founded by WWP workers party that fights for socialist your troops." but now run by the Party for Socialism revolution and a workers government. While the Soviet Union has been and Liberation), United for Peace and destroyed, Obama's anti-Communism still Justice (where the ISO worked) and the Evil Dead II: Obama's Heroes serves a real purpose in targeting the RCP's Not In Our Name-refused to mili­ deformed workers states of Cuba, North Obama told the Chicago Council on tarily defend Afghanistan and Iraq against Korea, Vietnam and especially China, the Global Affairs in 2007 that the U.S. needs U.S. attack. Through their refrain of most powerful of the remaining deformed "the first truly 21 st century military .... "money for jobs and education, not war," workers states. Just as we did with the We must maintain the strongest, best­ the reformists promote the lie that impe­ USSR and the deformed workers states equipped military in the world." He stated rialism can be reformed through some of East Europe, today we stand for the in March that he "would return the coun­ peace-and-justice-Ioving "different policy." unconditional military defense of the re­ try to the more 'traditional' foreign policy But as Bolshevik leader V. I. Lenin wrote maining workers states against imperialist efforts of past presidents, such as George in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Cap­ attack and capitalist counterrevolution. H.W. Bush, John F. Kennedy and Ronald italism (1916), as the first interimperial­ The 1991-92 counterrevolutionary de­ Reagan." Such a "tradition" includes the ist world war wreaked its devastation: struction of the Soviet degenerated workers Bay of Pigs invasion under Kennedy, the state, a world-historic defeat for the interna­ "Private property based on the labour of covert wars against Nicaragua and EI Sal­ the small proprietor, free competition, tional proletariat, has created a one "super­ democracy, all the catchwords with which vador in the 1980s under Reagan, and the power" world dominated by U.S. imperial­ the capitalists and their press deceive the invasion of Panama and the Iraq War of ism. It is in this context that the U.S.-led workers and the peasants-are things of 1990-91 under Bush Sr. occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan must the distant past. Capitalism has grown Obama's foreign policy coterie includes into a world system of colonial oppres­ be seen. As revolutionary working-class sion and of the financial strangulation Democratic advisers Zbigniew Brzezin­ Marxists, we oppose U.S. imperialist adven­ of the overwhelming majority of the ski and Madeleine Albright. Brzezinski is tures and invasions everywhere. We wrote population of the world by a handful of the anti-Communist Dr. Strangelove who 5 served as National Security Advisor to minded everyone that the levees have yet ing its victory in the Spanish-American Democratic president Jimmy Carter and to be adequately rebuilt. War, to its intervention in Nicaragua to as godfather to the reactionary Afghan One should also recall that following suppress the Sandino rebellion in the mujahedin cutthroats financed by the CIA the horror exposed by Katrina in 2005, 1920s and' 30s, to the occupation of the against the Soviet Army, which intervened Obama declared, "the incompetence was Dominican Republic in 1965, to Leba­ in Afghanistan in late 1979 in defense of color-blind." The Obama campaign touts non, Panama and Grenada, to its wars on the USSR's southern flank and on the the "end of racism" myth, with the Obama Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. imperialism side of elementary human progress. family itself supposedly living proof that has left a grisly trail of carnage around Madeleine Albright was Democrat Bill black people can make it in the U.S. The the globe, all accompanied by vicious Clinton's Secretary of State. When asked "end of racism" lie and the burial of the racial oppression and contempt for "non­ about the U.S. starvation blockade against struggle for racial integration as a "failed white" peoples. This includes U.S. impe­ Iraq that killed one and a half million peo­ experiment" are the domestic side of the rialism's counterrevolutionary wars against ple, she said: "We think the price was reactionary "end of communism" mythol­ the social revolutions in Korea and Viet­ worth it." She was also a key player in ogy promoted by imperialist ideologues nam, resulting in the slaughter of some Clinton's U.S'/NATO devastating aerial after the counterrevolutionary destruction six million people. As one Iraqi driver bit­ war against Serbia in 1999, supported at of the USSR. Both myths are deeply terly commented after being trapped in the time by liberals and many reformists as false. Black oppression, rooted in chattel Baghdad as the city was closed down dur­ the kind of "human rights" interventions slavery, is deeply interwoven in the social ing Obama's visit this summer: "Why that the U.S. should be carrying out. fabric of capitalist America. It can be does it matter to us if a white man or a Delaware Senator Joseph Biden, Obama's measured in astronomical unemployment black man wins the election. Obama and vice presidential choice and the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Commit­ tee, was aptly described by radical-liberal columnist Alexander Cockburn-a sup­ porter of right-wing libertarian Repub­ lican Ron Paul !-as a "corporate serf' (along with his new boss Obama) and "a man so ripely symbolic of everything that is unchanging and hopeless about our political system that a computer simula­ 24 July 2008: tion of the corporate-political paradigm Obama's senator in Congress would turn out 'Biden' speech before in a nano-second" (CounterPunch Diary, cheering crowd 23124 August). In his speech at the Dem­ in Berlin hailed ocratic convention on August 27, Biden U.S.-led outlined the Obama camp's imperialist Cold War blueprint: anti-Soviet crusade. "Our country is less secure and more iso­ lated than at any time in recent history .... The emergence of Russia, China and India as great powers; the spread of lethal weapons; the shortage of secure rates, police terror, the consignment of Bush are two faces on the same currency, supplies of energy, food and water; nearly one million blacks to prisons and an American currency." the challenge of climate change; and the purge of black youth from higher edu­ the resurgence of fundamentalism in cation. Obama looks upon all this and Defeat U.S. Imperialism Afghanistan and Pakistan, the real central Through Socialist Revolution! front against terrorism .... We've once claims, as he did in his speech in Selma again seen the consequences of this last year, that America is "90 percent of While bloodsoaked war criminals and neglect with Russia's challenge to the the way" toward racial equality! In fact, it corporate fat cats made deals as their can­ free and democratic country of Geor­ is only the current lack of militant labor didates preened for the cameras inside gia. Barack Obama and I will end this neglect." and black struggle against conditions of both Republican and Democratic conven­ World, watch out. oppression that makes this lie even possible. tions, outside these bastions of bourgeois The link between U.S. imperialist wars politics masses of police were mobilized The "End of Racism" Lie abroad and racist reaction at home is to muffle protest. As the Partisan Defense Both conventions were an exercise in clear. Two years before the 1898 Spanish­ Committee-a class-struggle, legal and rank hypocrisy. With the vice presiden­ American War, when U.S. imperialism social defense organization associated with tial nomination of Alaska governor Sarah came onto the world scene, the Supreme the Spartacist League-wrote in a Sep­ Palin, Republican anti-abortion bigots have Court codified Jim Crow segregation with tember 7 protest letter: "The brutal sup­ now discovered the evils of sexism. Or the Plessy v. Ferguson decision declar­ pression of the rights of speech and assem­ witness the spectacle of Republican poli­ ing "separate but equal" the law of the bly, which was also carried out by the ticians pretending to care about black and land, while the years 1889 to 1903 saw police in Denver outside the Democratic poor people, as they scaled back the first an average of two lynchings a week. National Convention as well as the con­ day of their convention when Hurricane Among black people, opposition to U.S. ventions in 2004, has become a staple of Gustav hit the Gulf Coast. The threat of imperialism's military adventures has his­ these spectacles to choose those vying to Gustav to the Gulf Coast recalled the torically been stronger than among the become what is ludicrously promoted racist atrocity by the bourgeois rulers­ rest of the populace. as the leader of the 'free world'." We Democrats as well as Republicans-in From U.S. imperialism's genocidal denounce the police violence at both con­ the wake of Hurricane Katrina and re- "pacification" of the Philippines follow- ventions and demand that all charges be 6

things like universal health care. The reformist, anti-Communist ISO, for its part, claims that "Support for Barack Obama is one sign of a deeper shift to the left" (Socialist Worker, 13 August). The ISO never met a counter­ revolutionary "freedom fighter" it didn't like, so the Obama/Brzezinski crew's anti-Communism is right up their alley. Socialist Worker (27 August) reprinted a Spartacists at piece by Dave Zirin, a regular contribu­ March 2007 tor to that paper, under the title, "What New York City antiwar We Didn't Learn in Beijing." The article demonstration. chides the bourgeois media for insuffi­ cient China-bashing during the Olym­ pics, condemning them for supposedly not asking "why the State Department last April took China off its list of nations that commit human rights viola­ dropped against those arrested. bourgeois critics of capitalist imperialism tions." While the ISO, the Revolutionary The fact is, however, that most of what dream of going back to 'free,' 'peaceful,' Communist Party and Workers World, as passes for the left in this country has either and 'honest' competition," and insisting well as other reformist leftists, all have explicitly or implicitly endorsed a Demo­ that "a 'fight' against the policy of the articles "exposing" Obama's policies, these cratic Party victory over the Republicans trusts and banks that does not affect the are thin covers for their actual politics of in the upcoming election. Having built an economic basis of the trusts and banks Democratic Party "lesser evilism," as all "antiwar movement" premised on appeals is mere bourgeois reformism and paci­ their various coalitions in one way or to bourgeois (Democratic) politicians to fism, the benevolent and innocent expres­ another recapitulate the RCP's classic "end the war" in Iraq-and only Iraq, not sion of pious wishes." That sums up the call, "The World Can't Wait: Drive Out Afghanistan-the liberals and their ref­ support by groups like Workers World the Bush Regime!" This is also the goal ormist supporters have now buried that to the capitalist Green Party's presidential -what an amazing coincidence-of the "movement" in the morass of American candidate and former Georgia Demo­ Democrats this year. electoral politics. The starting point of the cratic Congresswoman Cynthia McKin­ The Democrats' rhetoric about "hope" reformist left is not the fight for socialist ney, who spoke at a "Recreate '68" rally and "change" is meant to refurbish illu­ revolution, but rather the lie that capital­ outside the Democratic convention. She sions that the shell game of bourgeois ism can be reformed to serve the interests promoted the usual reformist pabulum electoral politics can work in the interests of working people and the oppressed. about ending occupations abroad and of the working masses. And, indeed, In Imperialism, Lenin denounced such redirecting "excessive" military spending Democratic voter turnout during the pri­ shams, noting that "reactionary, petty- toward higher education, and other good maries, including among black people and youth, has been very high. But while the Republicans may revel in inflicting suffering on working people and the oppressed, the Democrats put on a more :•• bjJc':OtfiIIS·~: kindly face and do the same thing. As Web site: www.icl-fi.org • E-mail address:[email protected] Lenin captured it in his 1917 work, The National Office: Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116, (212) 732-7860 State and Revolution, "To decide once every few years which member of the rul­ Chicago ...... Box 6441, Main PO, Chicago, IL 60680, (312) 563-0441 [email protected] ing class is to repress and crush the peo­ Public Office: Sat. 2-5 p.m., 222 S. Morgan (Buzzer 23) ple through parliament-this is the real essence of bourgeois parliamentarism." Los Angeles ..... Box 29574, Los Feliz Sta., Los Angeles, CA 90029, (213) 380-8239 This system of imperialism, the highest [email protected] stage of capitalism, cannot be reformed. It Public Office: Sat. 2-5 p.m., 3806 Beverly Blvd., Room 215 cannot be pressured into being more New York ...... Box 3381, Church St. Sta., New York, NY 10008, (212) 267-1025 peaceful or humane. Lenin's Bolsheviks [email protected] showed in leading the October Revolu­ Public Office: 1st and 3rd Sat. of every month, 1-4 p.m., and by tion of 1917 that it can and must be appOintment, 299 Broadway, Suite 318 defeated through workers revolution. The Oakland ...... Box 29497, Oakland, CA 94604, (510) 839-0851 Spartacist League stands for forging a [email protected] working-class party like the Bolshevik Public Office: Sat. 1-5 p.m., 1634 Telegraph, 3rd Floor Party to overturn, by socialist revolu­ tion, this rotting capitalist order. Thus we stand in implacable opposition to the dual parties of capitalism, as well as petty­ ...... Box 7198, Station A, Toronto, ON M5W 1X8, (416) 593-4138 [email protected] bourgeois would-be reformers like the Green Party. Break with the Democrats­ Vancouver ...... Box 2717, Main P.O., Vancouver, BC V6B 3X2, (604) 687-0353 trotskyist_ [email protected] For a revolutionary workers party to fight for socialist revolution!. 7 reprintedJrom Workers Vanguard No. 925, 21 November 2008

he Great Debaters, directed sion and humiliation at the core of Jim Crow segregation, T by Denzel Washington, , ~;'t()mmunist"<, produced by Oprah Winfrey the movie provides a glimpse. and starring Washington and Forest Whitaker, is supposed Organizing in Black Rights and the Reformist Left Today By Don Cane The Great Debaters opened the Jim Crow during the 2007 holiday sea­ and Jacob Zorn son, but there should be no 'South doubt that it was made for to be a feel-good movie about the 2008 presidential election overcoming racism in the seg­ campaign. The heroes of the regated South. It is loosely film, Tolson and his protege based on an article published Farmer, are obviously designed in 1997 in American Legacy to evoke Barack Obama. The magazine about the debate audience is supposed to see team of Wiley College-a Obama, who claims that the small, religious black col­ civil rights movement "took us lege in East Texas-during 90 percent of the way" toward the Great Depression in the racial equality, as the modern­ 1930s. Under the tutelage of day Great Debater, triumphing their coach, English professor over historic racism through Melvin B. Tolson, the debat­ hard work. It is an echo of ers triumph in contest after Booker T. Washington, who contest against bigger black over a century ago preached schools and jump over the accommodation to the racist color bar to triumph over pres- status quo by telling impover­ tigious white schools as well, What's Not in ished blacks to pull themselves such as a touring Oxford Uni­ up by their bootstraps. versity team from England. Trade-union bureaucrats, The highlight of the movie The Great Debaters black bourgeois politicians, ref­ is their victory over Harvard; ormist leftists and others seized the team defeats the all-white on economic and social discon­ Ivy League team by advocat­ tent and peddled support to ing peaceful civil disobedi­ Obama and the "lesser evil" capi­ ence against oppression. As talist Democratic Party-the the credits roll, we are told other party of war and racism. that one of the debaters, James The Communist Party's People's Farmer Jr., went on to form the Weekly World (30 December Congress of Racial Equality 2007) wrote, "A film that rings (CORE), which was founded as true and powerful as 'The in 1942 and went on to be­ Great Debaters' may have an come one of the organiza­ effect on the 2008 election pri­ tions active in the mass civil Young Worker (top); Weinstein Company maries." After Obama won the rights movement of the 1950s Top: "Smash the Barriers!" illustration from the Young elections, the People's Weekly and '60s. Communist League's Young Worker in 1930. Above: World headlined a November 6 The Great Debaters drives Denzel Washington as Melvin B. Tolson in The Great online statement, "Dawn of a home the hardships faced by Debaters. New Era." even relatively elite black stu- Workers World Party's paper dents and intellectuals-the "talented tenth" some sort of radical, perhaps even a (l February) called the movie "magnificent" -in the Jim Crow South. Farmer's father, Communist, and he actively opposes because it "puts everything in context." religion professor James Farmer Sr., the racial injustice. In one scene, the young The message Workers World draws is that first black person in Texas to earn a PhD, Farmer follows Tolson as he sneaks out "liberation is not to be won through elec­ is threatened with death by two impover­ in the middle of the night to organize toral bourgeois politics, but is to be waged ished white farmers while driving through an integrated sharecroppers union, and and won through open class struggle." the countryside with his family because barely escapes arrest as the police raid This is rich coming from an organization Farmer accidentally hit their pig with his the meeting. Later, the police track down that has repeatedly supported black Dem­ car. His son resolves to stand up after he Tolson after torturing some of the share­ ocrats, from Jesse Jackson in the 1980s to sees his educated father forced to grovel croppers, arrest him at Wiley and drag New York City councilman Charles Bar­ before illiterate whites. him to jail. For an audience not famil­ ron in recent years. Workers World called Tolson, on the other hand, is obviously iar with the everyday violence, oppres- for a vote to Cynthia McKinney, a former 8

Race and Revolution,

Max Shachtman

"Communism and the Negro," written by then-Trotskyist leader Max Shachtman in 1933 (published by Verso in 2003 as Race and ReVOlution), emphasized that black workers would be vital part of working-class movement. Right: Packinghouse workers strike in Chicago in late 1930s. CIO organizing drive built mass industrial unions by uniting black and white workers.

Democratic Congresswoman and the 2008 people into an egalitarian socialist order, come to power unopposed and smash the presidential candidate for the capitalist which is the only way to achieve real organized working class in order to save equality. While we fight against all as­ Green Party. After Obama's win, Workers pects of racial oppression, we point out capitalism. A few years later. the Stalin­ World (13 November) enthused. "Millions that there is no solution to that oppres­ ists went on to play an aggressive coun­ in Streets Seal Obama Victory." sion short of a social revolution. This terrevolutionary role in the Spanish Civil Genuine Marxists do not support any program is in sharp counterposition to War of 1936-39, slaughtering revolution­ capitalist party or politician-Democrat, the program of liberal integrationism­ ary fighters in order to appease the "dem­ what American Trotskyist leader James Republican, Green or "independent." The P. Cannon once derided and denounced ocratic" imperialists and head off prole­ working class must forge a class-struggle as 'inch-at-a-time' gradualism-which is tarian revolution in Spain. Nonetheless, workers party that fights for workers based upon the deception that black millions of workers, peasants. students revolution. Capitalism is a system based freedom can be achieved within the con­ and intellectuals joined Communist and fines of the racist capitalist system. It is on exploitation of labor, and, in the U.S., also in sharp contradiction to the petty­ social-democratic parties internationally, a unique and critical mainstay continues bourgeois utopian program of black trying to find a way out of the apparent to be the subjugation of the black popula­ nationalism and separatism, which rejects dead end of capitalism and fascism. tion at the bottom of society. and despairs of united multiracial class The catastrophic impact of the Great The veteran American Trotskyist, Rich­ struggle to abolish this racist capitalist Depression on the U.S. working class was system. Instead, black nationalism seeks ard S. Fraser. wrote in his 1955 work, to make a virtue of the racial segregation keenly felt by its most oppressed section, "For the Materialist Conception of the and ghettoization of black people that is black workers. The unemployment rate of Negro Struggle": "The dual nature of the seen as unchangeable." black workers exceeded white joblessness Negro struggle arises from the fact that by 30 to 60 percent. Even though millions a whole people regardless of class dis­ The Great Depression of black people moved to the industrial tinction are the victims of discrimination. in the Jim Crow South North and Midwest during the "Great This problem of a whole people can The Great Debaters is a well-made Migration," which began with World War I, be solved only through the proletarian movie. But in its paeans to dedication and and many others moved to growing South­ revolution, under the leadership of the debate, it downplays the real social strug­ ern cities, half of American blacks still working class" (reprinted in Marxist gle that was going on in the U.S. in the lived in the rural South at the start of the Bulletin No.5 [Revised]. "What Strategy 1930s, including by black people in the Depression. Southern agriculture was in for Black Liberation? Trotskyism vs. South. The Great Depression exposed the decline before the Depression hit. "By 1933 Black Nationalism"). We of the Sparta­ brutal irrationality of capitalism-in stark most blacks could neither find jobs of any cist League base our program for black contrast to the industrial achievements of kind nor contracts for their crop at any liberation upon Fraser's perspective of the USSR-as it threw millions of work­ price," as noted by historian Harvard Sit­ revolutionary integrationism, premised ers into starvation and misery internation­ koff in A New Deal jiJr Blacks. "A specter on the understanding that black freedom ally, including in other imperialist coun­ of starvation haunted black America." requires smashing the capitalist system tries. Germany, which was defeated in Southern agriculture in the 1930s was, and constructing an egalitarian socialist World War I. was especially rocked by even by contemporary bourgeois stan­ society. As we wrote in "For a Workers crises, culminating in the rise to power of dards, economically backward. It retained America!" (WV No. 908, 15 February): Hitler and the Nazis in 1933. Only the significant remnants of the slave system. "This program of revolutionary inte­ betrayal by the Stalinist and Social Dem­ The Civil War, America's second bour­ grationism is a fight to assimilate black ocratic misleaders allowed the Nazis to geois revolution. had smashed the slave 9 system, paving the way for the develop­ the 19605. Shachtman summarized the ment of industrial capitalism in the U.S. position of black farmers in 1933: as a whole. But after the betrayal of "In a word, to all intents and purposes Reconstruction by the Northern bourgeoi­ hundreds of thousands of Negroes in the sie, "the Negro was left in the South in South today occupy, both in economic as in the political sense, the position of the indefinite position of semi-slavery, serfs and peons, tied to the land, life semi-serfdom and semi-wage slavery" as and limb at the disposal of the landlord, then-Trotskyist Max Shachtman put it whose semi-feudal sway is maintained in his 1933 piece "Communism and the with the aid of the sheriff, the courts, the elaborate system of social and political Negro" (reprinted by Verso in 2003 as discrimination, and, when necessary, the Race and Revolution). law of Judge Lynch. The white share­ Sharecropping and tenancy formed the croppers and tenants are not very much labor backbone of Southern agriculture. better off." The sharecropper worked in lieu of wages Poor white farmers were also horribly for a share of the cash crop and "furnish­ oppressed economically. Southern agri­ ings" (food allowance, housing, etc.). The culture remained dependen"t on the cash tenant farmer worked land on which he crop cotton and cheap labor, and where paid ground rent with a share of the crop cheap labor is in abundance technology in lieu of cash. Sharecroppers and tenants will lag. In 1929, less than 10 percent of found themselves more in debt every year, all Texas farms had tractors. The rural and could not leave the land until they South was still mired in primitive farming Melvin B. Tolson had paid off their debts. Even when cotton techniques, illiteracy and poverty. During prices rose, they were cheated by white the 1930s, the price of cotton plummeted. batants in that carnage-a position for landowners and merchants. According to In 1929, cotton sold for 18 cents per which Trotskyists were imprisoned in Sitkoff, "Over two-thirds of the black farm­ pound; in 1933, for less than 6 cents per 1941 under the Smith Act. ers cultivating cottQn in the early thirties pound. By the Depression, with the South received no profits for the crop, either sinking further and further into misery, Who Was Melvin B. Tolson? breaking even or going deeper in debt." the ruling class as a whole was desperate Every reviewer gives passing mention Sitting atop all this was the system of to modernize this decrepit system, which to the movie's insinuation that the real­ Jim Crow. Designed to prevent blacks could only be done under capitalism life Melvin B. Tolson was a "Commu­ from voting, becoming educated or fight­ through the immiseration of untold num­ nist," "radical" or "self-described social­ ing for their rights, Jim Crow was the bers of black and white rural toilers. ist." During the 1930s, Tolson had his feet systematic legal segregation of black The United States in the 1930s was an in two different worlds-one foot was in people in the South, enforced by legal advanced industrialized capitalist country the world of the aspiring black middle and extralegal violence. When blacks did with a powerful working class. By the class of Wiley College, and the other foot challenge Jim Crow-either by person­ Depression, textile, iron, coal, steel and was in the world of the black dispos­ ally refusing to follow its rules or, more chemical industries were developing in sessed masses of the rural South. In the rarely, by organizing-they faced racist the South. In the North, powerful indus­ 1940s and later, Tolson was most famous terror, whether by the local sheriff or the trial unions formed the Congress oflndus­ for his poetry, including "Dark Symphony" Klan (who were often one and the same). trial Organizations (CIO) that broke away (1939) and Harlem Gallery (1965). In the At least 3,000 black people were lynched from the ossified American Federation of early 1930s, he lived in Harlem while between the end of Reconstruction in Labor (AFL) craft unions. The CIO organ­ working on his Columbia University mas­ 1877 and the dismantling of Jim Crow in ized all workers in a particular industry, ter's thesis on the Harlem Renaissance. regardless of their ethnicity or race-a There he met black radicals like poet significant improvement from the color Langston Hughes, who'would be his life­ bar of many AFL unions. long friend. He taught English and speech In the 1930s, large sections of the indus­ at Wiley for over 20 years. In 1947 he trial working class in the U.S.~black moved to Langston, Oklahoma, where he and white, native-born and immigrant­ taught at Langston University and was became more militant and radical, fight­ mayor from 1954 to 1960. He died in 1966. ing to build the CIO, often under the lead­ During the Depression, Tolson not only ership of Communists and other leftists. sympathized with radicalism but coura­ However, thanks in large part to the Sta­ geously struggled to implement his radi­ linists and social democrats, the incipi­ cal ideals in the Jim Crow South. There ent radicalization of labor was diverted is no concrete evidence of what, if any, into Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Demo­ political organization Tolson joined in cratic Party. During the Second World the 1930s. One historian argued that War, the Communist Party subordinated "although he heard the siren song of com­ the struggles of workers and black people munism and felt that capitalism was the to U.S. imperialism's war effort, falsely great force pulling his people down, he portraying this interimperialist war as a never joined the Communist Party and struggle against fascism. In contrast, the remained loyal to the social gospel of the i Trotskyists, while standing for the uncon­ Methodist Episcopal Church" (Gail K. Jamaican-born poet Claude McKay ditional military defense of the Soviet Beil, "Melvin B. Tolson-Texas Radi­ at Communist International's Fourth degenerated workers state during World cal," in The East Texas Historical Journal Congress in Moscow, 1922. War II, opposed all the imperialist com- [2002]). In the 1930s and 1940s, Tolson 10 had a column in the Washington Tribune, "Caviar and Cabbage," that gives a sense of his politics. In 1939 he wrote: "The Negro would not have escaped from chattel slavery if it had not been for radicals of all classes, isms, ologies, and sects. Don't forget that. For 150 years before the Civil War, radicals kept up a continuous fight for Negro freedom. Many of them were lynched .... "After the World War, white radicals camt; to the defense of the Negro in larger and larger numbers." -"The Negro and Radicalism," Caviar and Cabbage: Selected Columns by Melvin B. Tolson from the Washington Tribune, 1937-1944 (1982) The son of an itinerant Methodist min­ ister, Tolson was an eclectic Christian socialist. He wrote: "Jesus didn't believe in economic, racial, and social distinc­ Elliot Erwitt tions .... You talk about Karl Marx, the Jim Crow South: Segregated drinking fountains in North Carolina, 1950. Communist! Why, don't you know Jesus was preaching about leveling society that white landowners pay them a fair to armed self-defense was key to the fight 1,800 years before the Jewish Red was price for cotton. After the massacre, the for black rights. Black veterans, includ­ born?" Tolson may have found some con­ local and state government arrested hun­ ing from both world wars, were often in solation in his Christian beliefs, but in dre'ds, and 12 blacks were sentenced to the forefront of struggles against Jim reality religion is, to use Marx's phrase, death. (This is described in the recent Crow and of the Southern civil rights the opium of the masses. In place of the book by Robert Whitaker, On the Laps of movement in the 1950s. struggle for socialist revolution, it substi­ Gods: The Red Summer of 1919 and the Furthermore, the movie distorts the tutes a quest for eternal salvation to be Struggle for Justice That Remade a facts of the debate. As Timothy M. found in a mythical "afterlife." Nation [2008].) O'Donnell, a professor at the University In the 1930s, Tolson was involved in At the sarne time, this scene misrepre­ of Mary Washington in Virginia, pointed organizing sharecroppers, though not much sents the role of the black petty bour­ out in a review of the movie, not only is known about this. According to Robert geoisie (represented by Farmer Sr.) under was the culminating debate at the Uni­ M. Farnsworth, one of Tolson's biographers, Jim Crow. While most rankled under the versity of Southern California and not "Sometime in the thirties, he actively organ­ humiliation and oppression of Jim Crow, Harvard, "the 1935 Wiley team debated ized sharecroppers, both white and black, others materially benefited from segre­ the national intercollegiate debate topic in southeastern Texas. He protected his wife gation and opposed militant struggle. One about arms sales to foreign countries and and family from the details of his activi­ can look at the fate of Clifford James, not segregation or civil disobedience; ties, but they knew he was involved" (After­ a supporter of the Communist-organized they debated both sides of the proposi­ word to A Gallery of Harlem Portraits). Share Croppers Union (SCU) in Alabarna. tion, not just the side of truth and jus­ What little screen time The Great Debat­ After being attacked by a deputy sheriff tice .... Finally, by all accounts, Farmer ers gives to the sharecroppers' struggle and other whites, James walked to the was-if anything-the alternate in the is sanitized to give credence to liberal hospital of the Tuskegee Institute, which match against USC-and never did have and reformist pressure politics. There is had been founded years earlier by Booker the opportunity to give the 'winning' last the scene of sheriff-led vigilantes break­ T. Washington. A~er dressing James's rebuttal." Nor does the movie mention ing up a sharecroppers' meeting, burning wounds, the doctor notified the sheriff, the fact that Farmer later served as down the meeting place and later beating who threw James in jail, where he died! Assistant Secretary of Health, Education, information out of one sharecropper that and Welfare under Richard Nix~m! leads to the arrest of Tolson. In the movie, Struggles in the Communists were in the forefront of Professor Farmer reclaims his dignity, "Black Belt" South fighting for black workers and farmers and the respect of his son, by coming to There are several other dramatic scenes and against racial oppression and lynch Tolson's aid while black and white share­ in The Great Debaters. One example is a law terror during the 1930s-putting this croppers protest outside the jail. The CP's closing scene of the debate with Harvard, struggle on the agenda for the first time People's Weekly World (5 January) hailed in which Farmer Jr. argues that it is "a since the Populist movement in the 1890s this scene, declaring, the "Rev. Farmer right, even a duty to resist" unjust laws and trying to link it to the newly formed stands tall as a man of the people." "with violence or civil disobedience. You industrial unions. For decades, most of If anything, this scene underplays the should pray I choose the latter." This mes­ the American labor movement and the left danger of organizing black farmers in sage of the fictionalized debate is clearly had ignored the special oppression of the South-and hence Tolson's courage. intended for today's consumption, to read black people. Most early trade unions In the fall of 1919, amid numerous anti­ back the pacifism of Farmer and Martin linked to Samuel Gompers' AFL organ­ black race riots throughout the country, Luther King Jr. into the 1930s. Blacks ized only skilled, white workers-:-or, if white sheriff's posses and federal troops fighting against Jim Crow and capitalist they accepted black members, organized in Phillips County, Arkansas, killed as exploitation in the South did not live in a segregated locals. Trade-union bureau­ many as 300 black sharecroppers over sev­ peaceful world: they faced a campaign of crats like Gompers and right-wing social eral days who had organized to demand terror, both legal and extralegal. The right democrats like Victor Berger were openly 11 racist. Socialist Party (SP) leader Eugene Prior to 1930, the CP had less than 200 determination" for the (nonexistent) "Negro V. Debs and others in the left wing black members, but that year 1,000 black nation." This was nonsense. Black people of American socialism rejected racist people joined the party. The CP was are not a nation that is being forcibly ideology and stood for working-class active in numerous struggles. One of the assimilated, but an oppressed race-color unity. But Debs did not actively promote most famous was the Scottsboro Case, in caste forcibly segregated at the bottom of the fight for black equality, seeing it as which Communists led the struggle 'to American society. Black struggles have a diversion from the fight for workers free nine black youths who were framed historically been for integration, not sep­ interests. Debs famously declared that up in 1931 for raping two white girls on aration. As we wrote in "The CP and Black socialism had "nothing special to offer a freight train and were jailed in Scotts­ Struggles in the Depression" (Young Spar­ the Negro." boro, Alabama. Despite their clear inno­ tacus No. 25, September 1974): The infant American Communist move­ cence, a local court found eight of them "While the CP of this period was de­ ment, which split from the SP in 1919, guilty and sentenced them to death. (The formed by dishonesty, political zig-zags and egregious departures from Marxism, also failed to pay attention to the fight judge reluctantly declared a mistrial for nonetheless in the area of black work the for black liberation. As James P. Cannon, the ninth, since seven members of the 1930's represents the CP's heroic period. an early Communist leader and later the jury had insisted on the death penalty Despite the erroneous 'Black Belt' theory founder of American Trotskyism, noted, even though the prosecutor had asked and the call for 'Negro self-determination' for life imprisonment because he was in this territory (a call which was never the Communist International (Comin­ raised agitationally but remained part of tern) in Lenin and Trotsky's time forced a 13-year-old; nonetheless, he remained the CP's written propaganda), the CP's American Communists to address the in jail until 1937.) The CP, through work in practice combined a proletarian question of black oppression: its defense arm, the International Labor orientation with an awareness of the stra­ Defense, rapidly rallied to the defense of tegic need to fight racial oppression "The influence of Lenin and the Russian throughout all layers of American soci­ Revolution, even debased and distorted the Scottsboro youths and turned their ety, especially to address the problems of as it later was by Stalin, and then filtered case into an international symbol of the poor and.unemployed blacks." through the activities of the Communist horrors of Southern lynch law. (The Party in the United States, contributed Heroic Communist Work more than any other influence from any Scottsboro defendants were not executed, source to the recognition, and more or but were given long prison sentences; the in the South less general acceptance, of the Negro last of the defendants was not pardoned The Great Debaters' fleeting images question as a special problem of Ameri­ until 1976.) of Tolson's organizing highlight the dif­ can society-a problem which cannot CP work among black people in the be simply subsumed under the general ficulties and dangers of organizing share­ heading of the conflict between capital early 1930s took place in the context of croppers in the Depression South. Both and labor, as it was in the pre-communist the so-called "Third Period," in which the the Socialist and Communist parties radical movement.. .. Stalinists declared that the final collapse attempted to organize tenants and share­ "Everything new on the Negro question of capitalism was imminent and that re­ croppers to demand better pay and treat­ came from Moscow-after the Russian forms were no longer possible. As it did Revolution began to thunder its demand ment from landowners and merchants. throughout the world for freedom and on all questions, the Stalinization of the Both faced bloody repression from those equality for all national minorities, all Comintern led to disorientation on the who wanted to prevent black and white subject peoples and all races-for all the black question. The 1928 Sixth World sharecroppers from organizing. The most despised and rejected of the earth." Congress of the Comintern, applying the famous of these groups is the SP-Ied -"The Russian Revolution and the American Negro Movement," dogma of "two-stage revolution" to the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union (STFU), The First Ten Years of American so-called "Black Belt" in the American which was heavily backed and financed Communism (1962) South, promulgated the slogan of "self- by liberals and the clergy. Under the tutelage of SP leader (and Presbyterian Arkansas farm workers listening to speaker minister) Norman Thomas, it reached at meeting of the Southern Tenant Farmers' national prominence, including by .lob­ Union, circa 1934, bying President Roosevelt's administra­ ';J. of North Carolina (photo); Encyclopedia of the American Left tion for reforms. The STFU laid claim to be the first fully integrated Southern union. But the STFU's concept of integration was for whites to hold primary leadership while blacks held secondary positions. If whites objected to a common union local with blacks, they were allowed to set up whites­ only locals. As Shachtman, in "Commu­ nism and the Negro," noted of the Social­ ist Party: "The fact that the Negro masses in the United States occupy a special posi­ tion, that they constitute a distinct racial caste of pariahs, is conveniently ignored by the Socialist theoreticians." The STFU never raised a single demand in support of black rights. The 1934 founding of the STFU was a godsend for the liberals, clergy and petty-bourgeois black leader­ ship seeking to dampen the seething dis­ content rising up in the South. 12

For its part, the CP built the Share million acres of cotton were destroyed and Croppers' Union, which organized thou­ six million pigs were killed in an attempt sands of evicted black farmers as well as to stabilize the capitalist market. That the cotton pickers and was largely centered bourgeoisie would do this in the middle of in Alabama. The struggle to organize the a worldwide Depression speaks volumes SCU was conducted in a state of per­ about the irrationality of the capitalist sys­ petual civil war with both "legal" and tem. In the South, this meant paying the extralegal armed vigilante groups. For white landlords while black tenants and example, in 1931 at Camp Hill, Alabama, sharecroppers starved. There is no official the local sheriff led a posse and attacked count of the thousands of poor black and a meeting on union organizing and the white families driven off the land and into Scottsboro Case. The same posse also starvation as a result of Roosevelt's New attacked the home of a local sharecropper Deal alliance with Jim Crow Democrats in leader. In 1932 the SCU was again in the South, the Dixiecrats. a defensive battle when a local land­ Black people in the 1930s correctly lord attempted to seize the property saw the Democratic Party as the party of of an indebted sharecropper in Reel­ the old slavocracy and Jim Crow. Though town, Alabama. Determined SCU mem­ by the end of Reconstruction the Repub­ bers fought off the local sheriff and his licans had abandoned their short-lived com­ posse. mitment to black rights, pursuing their By 1935, the SCU claimed some 12,000 class interests as a party of big business, members; when it tried to merge with the they were still seen as the "Party of Lincoln" Library STFU, the Socialist leaders refused out Communist Party campaign poster, and a lesser evil to the Democrats. In the of anti-Communism. The SCU not only 1932. Despite CP's erroneous theory 1932 elections, over two-thirds of black fought to free the Scottsboro youths, it of black "self-determination," Com­ voters voted Republican. But by 1936,76 also raised demands for social equality, munist militants fought for integra­ percent of black voters in the North voted equal pay for equal work (including for tion and against racist oppression. for Roosevelt, thanks in part to illusions women), improved schools and extension in the Democrats pushed by both the of the school year, abolition of poor farm­ which made it easier to organize CIa trade-union bureaucracy and the CPo ers' debt and resurrected the emancipated unions, or the Works Progress Adminis­ Speaking of the South, where the Dem­ slave demand of 40 acres and a mule. As tration, which carried out public works, ocratic Party was openly segregationist a black-led union, the SCU also sought were aimed at stabilizing capitalism and supported Jim Crow, the CP Cen­ with great difficulty to recruit rural whites by tying the new, powerful industrial tral Committee's Southern representative to its ranks. It was of significance that in unions to the capitalist system. argued: "It is entirely within the field of counties where the SCU was active, the Key to Roosevelt's plan was forging the practical politics for the workers, farmers CP would receive hundreds of votes within "New Deal coalition," which included pro­ and the city middle class-the common an all-white electorate when elections were Communist labor organizers, liberals and people of the South-to take possession held. Thos.e impoverished whites who black leaders in the North, and racist Dixie­ of the machinery of the Democratic Party, dared not join a black-led union qemon­ crats and Klansmen in the South. The role in the South, and turn it into an agency strated their solidarity by voting for the of Communists and unionists was to be a for democracy and progress" (quoted in CP candidates when and where they could. loyal opposition to "progressive" capital­ Robin D. G. Kelley, Hammer and Hoe: ists like Roosevelt. The end result of their Alabama Communists During the Great The New Deal in the Rural South work was to tie workers and the oppressed Depression [1990]). Seeking a popular­ After the Nazis came to power in Ger­ tighter to their class enemy, the bourgeois frontist bloc with Democrats in the South, many in 1933, Stalin and the Comintern Democratic Party, and stave off the inde­ the CP liquidated the SCU in 1937 and soon abandoned the sectarianism of the pendent political organization of the work­ retreated from the struggle in rural areas. "Third Period" and sought desperately to ing class. To this day, the trade-union (The SCU's agricultural worker members form class-collaborationist popular-front bureaucracy and black misleaders, duti­ were urged to join a CIa union, and alliances with "progressive" elements of the fully tailed by the fake left, still push sup­ its tenant farmer members the National bourgeoisie. As Leon Trotsky emphasized, port to the Democratic Party "lesser evil." Farmers Union.) For example in Alabama, the Popular Front was not a tactic, but an By helping to tie the new cIa unions to CP work became centered on the Bir­ expression of the anti-revolutionary pro­ the Democratic Party, and using its con­ mingham "Right to Vote Club," which was gram of Stalinism, tying the working class siderable authority among blacks to sup­ dedicated to voter registration and educa­ and oppressed to their exploiters under port Roosevelt and U.S. imperialism in tion in the Deep South, where blacks had a bourgeois program in order to prevent World War II, the CP played a crucial role long been disenfranchised. proletarian revolutions. The American ver­ in protecting the capitalist system and sion of the Popular Front meant seeking channeling dissent back into bourgeois The Civil Rights Movement alliances with the pro-capitalist CIa union politics. This is the real crime of the Sta­ Much of the acclaim for The Great bureaucrats like John L. Lewis and the linist CP, which betrayed the revolution­ Debaters involves depicting the debate capitalist Democratic Party of Franklin ary aspirations of its working-class base. team as precursors to the civil rights move­ Delano Roosevelt. Roosevelt's New Deal, In the South, the Popular Front was ment a decade later, a link that James today hailed by most liberals and leftists, especially criminal. New Deal policies Farmer makes clear. In the movie, he was an attempt to protect U.S. capitalism hurt black sharecroppers directly. The is shown witnessing the. racism of Jim against the growing radicalization and Agricultural Adjustment Act paid farmers Crow, and then, in the last debate, defend- labor struggle. New Deal reforms such not to farm in order to eliminate excess . ing nonviolent protest. At the end of the as the National Labor Relations Act, supply and raise food prices. In 1933, ten film, we are told that he was a leader of 13

out of the South and into the North, where black people already had formal legal equality. The struggle for a fundamental change in conditions of life in the ghet­ tos.-for real equality, for jobs, decent housing and adequate schools--collided head-on with the realities of American capitalism. The upsurge of "revolution­ ary" black nationalism in the late 1960s, best represented by the Black Panther Party, was a response to the frustrated expectations of the Northern civil rights struggles. Those struggles promised much but left unchanged the hellish condi­ tions of life in the inner-city ghettos that are rooted in the capitalist profit sys-. tem. As an expression of despair, black nationalism, which rejects united multi­ racial class struggle, would deny blacks their birthright: the wealth and culture their labor has played a decisive role in creating. "Racial Uplift" and the Black Petty Bourgeoisie The Great Debaters represents a take During Harlem cop riot in 1964, Spartacists initiated rally in New York City on the old theme of "racial uplift"-the garment district to mobilize labor in defense of ghetto masses. belief that a talented black petty bourgeoi­ sie can by hard work and dedication tran­ CORE, an early civil rights group. Pre­ administrations of John F. Kennedy and scend the evils of racism and achieve jus­ sumably, then, the civil rights movement Lyndon B. Johnson to grant formal, legal tice. In the words of Denzel Washington, represented the culmination of the strug­ equality. Yet the myth of the civil rights this is not a film about "racism in Texas in gle to eliminate racial injustice and uplift movement as monolithically pacifist and 1935. It's what these young people did the "talented tenth." dominated by King ignores that the strug­ about it...to overcome whatever obstacles The courageous struggles of the black gle against segregation also produced were in their way." It is this very aspect of and white foot soldiers of the civil rights more militant forces, such as Robert F. the film that has made it popular among movement in the 1950s and '60s played Williams, who advocated and practiced both black and white critics. Roger Ebert, an instrumental role in overturning Jim armed self-defense (see, for example, film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, Crow. The creation of a Southern black "Robert F. Williams: Fighter Against called it "the feel-great movie of the year" proletariat fundamentally eroded Jim Klan Terror," WVNo. 737, 2 June 2000). and black journalist Herb Boyd described Crow segregation, which was based on In the 1960s, the Spartacist League, de­ it as "a feel-good movie (and the under­ the isolation and powerlessness of blacks spite our small forces, intervened into the dogs win)" and an "uplifting film that most in the rural South. The bourgeoisie even­ civil rights movement and put forward the African Americans gladly embraced." tually acquiesced to legal equality in perspective of a Class-struggle fight for "Racial uplift" is the same theme that the South, in part because, as protesters black freedom. As we said in our Program­ W.E.B. Du Bois raised in the late 19th showed the world the reality of America's matic Statement, "For Socialist Revolu­ century in arguing against Booker T. democratic pretensions at home, Jim tion in the Bastion of World Imperialism!": Washington, who promoted the servile Crow became an embarrassment to U.S. "In our intervention into the civil rights acceptance of segregation. Du Bois argued imperialism's posture as the defender of movement, the Spartacist League raised that it was the responsibility of the edu­ "democracy" and "human rights" in the the call for a South-wide Freedom Labor Party as an expression of working-class cated black petty bourgeoisie to "uplift" Cold War against the Soviet Union, the political independence and the need to black people under capitalism. In a 1903 industrial and military powerhouse of the mobilize the labor movement to fight for article, he stated: non-capitalist world. black emancipation. This was linked to "The Negro race, like all races, is going The struggle for black equality was a series of other transitional demands to be saved by its exceptional men. aimed at uniting black and white workers The problem of education, then, among intersected by growing domestic opposi­ in struggle against the capitalist class tion to U.S. imperialism's losing coun­ Negroes must first of all deal with the enemy, like organizing the unorganized Talented Tenth; it is the problem of devel­ terrevolutionary war against Vietnam's and a sliding scale of wages and hours to oping the Best of this race that they may workers and peasants. The potential for a combat inflation and unemployment. We guide the Mass away from the contami­ revolutionary transformation of American called for armed self-defense against racist nation and death of the Worst, in their terror and for a workers united front against own and other races." society was palpable. But from its onset, government intervention, both in the labor the civil rights movement was dominated movement and in the use of federal troops Du Bois' thesis was based on the by a black middle-class leadership allied to suppress hlack plebeian struggles. This acceptance of capitalism. In The Souls of to the liberal wing of the Democratic program is no less urgent today." Black Folk (1903), he defended "the rule Party. The aim of liberal-pacifist leaders The bankruptcy of the liberal program of inequality:-that of the million black such as Martin Luther King Jr. and of the civil rights movement's leadership youth, some were fitted to know and Farmer was to pressure the Democratic was revealed when the movement swept some to dig; that some had the talent and 14

OJ For the overwhelming majority of black ::l .0 people, exploited and oppressed as share­ '"C OJ croppers and tenants, the halls of Wiley ~ College might as well have been Mars. ~ Striking UAW g, workers at From the movie, one would get the idea ~ American Axle, that debate can change the world. The ~ April 2008. official Web site of the movie declares, m Multiracial "Believe in the power of words." But en proletariat, racial oppression is fundamentally not a under question of bad ideas in people's heads revolutionary that they can be argued out of. It is based leadership, on the workings of American capitalism. has power to In reality, the material conditions for most smash capitalist black people have continued to deteriorate. exploitation through socialist While Jim Crow is dead, the majority of revolution. black people, as a race-color caste segre­ gated at the bottom of society, face brutal daily racist subjugation and humiliation, by whatever index of social life one might capacity of university men, and some the tice. But what is left unsaid speaks vol­ choose-joblessness, imprisonment, lack talent and capacity of blacksmiths." The umes to the class divisions among the of decent, integrated housing. As the point of education, he wrote, was to oppressed black population. economy crashes into recession, blacks "teach the workers to work and the think­ The black students at Wiley certainly are disproportionately affected. ers to think." faced a racist world where even distin­ At the same time, black workers are a The Great Debaters articulates the guished PhDs like Farmer could be killed strategic part of the proletariat in urban liberal-integrationist view promoted by with relative impunity. One of the more transport, longshore, auto, steel, and they mainstream civil rights groups that black powerful-and accurate-scenes comes are the most unionized section of the equality can be achieved under capital­ when the team narrowly escaped being working class. They form an organic link ism. In a scene that attracted the attention lynched while on a rural road in the to the downtrodden ghetto masses. Being of all leftist reviewers, a Wiley debater South. The college debating circuit was strategically located in the economy and in a contest with a white college team segregated, with many white universities facing special oppression, black workers declares, "My opponent says today is not refusing to debate blacks. Nonetheless, led by a multiracial revolutionary party will the day for whites and coloreds to go to black colleges such as Wiley, Morehouse play a vanguard role in the struggles the same college .... No, the time for jus­ and Howard University were founded by of the entire U.S. working class. Class­ tice, the time for freedom, and the time church institutions to primarily train clergy conscious black workers, armed with a for equality is always, is always right and teachers, the core of the black petty revolutionary program, will play a central now!" By showing their skills and intelli­ bourgeoisie. Political protest was for­ role in the building of the workers party gence, the "talented tenth" are supposed bidden-as shown by the elder Farmer's necessary to sweep away the capitalist sys­ to break down the barrier of racial injus- negative reaction to Tolson's radicalism. tem of exploitation and racial oppression .•

~(JRNERS ,!lIl1fJlJlIRIJ 50< Subscribe! ~PARTACJSTi~_. -.- --III! • Workers Vanguard Marxist Principles Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of the Spartacist amtEleetoral Tactics League (includes English-language Spartacist -...... AgilinstApologlsts lor Ihe Treacher, and Black History and the Class Struggle) 01 the POUM Theil and Now o $10 for 22 issues 0 $2 for 6 introductory issues o International rates: $25 airmail/$1 0 seamail Espartaco (en espaijol) Publication of the Grupo Espartaquista de Mexico (includes Spanish-language Spartacist) o $2 for 4 issues o International rates: $4 airmail/$2 seamail Name ______

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City ______State ____ Zip ____ E-mail ______""""'''"' BH21 Make checks payable/mail to: Spartacist Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 15 reprinted from Workers Vanguard No. 935, 24 April 2009 Racist Poli r U.S.A.

I Oakland, 7 January 2009: Army of riot cops beat, tear-gassed and shot protesters with rubber bullets as hundreds demonstrated against cop killing of Oscar Grant. Oscar Grant Executed in Cold Blood, Black Oakl·and Under Siege OAKLAND-The coldblooded execution killed two black men during a five-day gas and rubber bullets at the protesters and of Oscar Grant III, a Joung black appren­ period in March, while the NYPD killed arrested more than 100 people. Among tice grocery butcher and father of a four­ two people in April. Obama's "stimulus those arrested and slapped with felony year-old girl, by Bay Area Rapid Transit package" for the moribund U.S. economy charges were David Santos, a 16-year-old (BART) cop Johannes Mehserle in the includes plans to spend billions to beef up supporter of the Revolutionary Commu­ early morning hours of New Year's Day the police by hiring 100,000 more thugs nist Party (RCP), and JR Valrey, a KPFA threw a spotlight on the deadly police ter­ in blue: any prospect of a decent job is programmer and journalist for the San ror that is a fact of life for black people in fading fast for millions of laid-off work­ Francisco Bay View who was trying to racist America. The video images taken ers and unemployed youth, but the ruling photograph the police violence. Drop all by horrified BART passengers showed class has plenty of money to pay its hired charges against the anti-racist protesters! Mehserle stand over Grant, methodically guns to intimidate and repress the ghetto Along with the mailed fist of state re­ draw his Sig Sauer P226 semiautomatic masses and tho,se who might protest being pression came the velvet glove: the cops' and fire into Grant's back as another cop thrown on capitalism's scrap heap. masters, from Dellums to California Attor­ held him face down with his hands behind "When is this going to stop?" cried a ney General Jerry Brown, stepped in to try his back: At protests after the brutal kill­ black man outside Grant's memori~l. to dampen the flames of protest with calls ing, demonstrators have carried signs ''I'm sick of people acting like we deserve for aninvestigation of Grant's killing. Be­ reading "We Are All Oscar Grant" (see what we get, that because we are black, hind them in trying to keep the peace was "Oscar Grant Killed in Cold Blood by they can shoot us in the back and get away a cabal of black preachers and the newly BART Cop," WV No. 928, 16 January). with it." More than 1,000 people, largely formed Coalition Against Police Execu­ The killing of Grant in Oakland, where black and Latino, turned out for the tions (CAPE), which hasn't been heard from liberal black Democrat Ron Dellums is memorial on January 7. Later that night, since late February. Echoed by the cring­ mayor, brutally exposes the hoax that the protesters took their justified outrage to ing reformist left, CAPE advanced various election of a black man, Barack Obama, the streets of Oakland, where they were schemes for police reform while appeal­ as U.S. president represents progress met by an army of Oakland cops (OPD) ing for redress to state agencies and offi­ toward black equality. Underlining the equipped with riot gear, helicopters and cials, from Dellums and Brown to the Feds. fallacy of such illusions, in Chicago police an armored vehicle. The cops fired tear The Labor Black League for Social 16

Defense, which is fraternally allied with the Spartacist League, intervened in the protests over the killing of Oscar Grant to fight for a class-struggle perspective. A January 12 LBL statement, "Mobilize the Power of the Multiracial Unions in Pro­ test!" (reprinted in WV No. 928, 16 Janu­ ary), declared: "The hard truth is that there will be no end to police brutality short of the destruc­ tion of this entire system of capitalist ex­ ploitation and racial oppression. But a mas­ 14 January 2009: sive protest based on the organized muscle Spartacist League of the labor movement would give the cops and Labor Black and their capitalist masters some pause. League for And it would drive home the point that Social Defense the interests of the working class are insep­ at Oakland arably linked to the defense of the ghet­ protest against tos and barrios, the defense of immigrant rights and the fight for black freedom." . racist cop terror; What prevents labor from waging such fights in its own defense and on behalf of all of the oppressed are the suicidal illusions in the possibility of reforming the system that are pushed by the patriotic, pro-capitalist union bureaucrats. The labor tops promote such illusions above all by lines and harsher jail sentences. The capi­ getting the cops "out of the black commu­ chaining the working class politically to talist media and the entire spectrum of nity," while others imagine ways to make the class enemy through support to the established black "leaders" are also scream­ the cops less racist or less violent. capitalist Democratic Party. ing for more stringent gun control laws to MehserIe, the BART cop who faces strengthen the state's monopoly of vio­ murder charges in the killing of Oscar "Reforming" the Repressive lence. We defend the basic democratic Grant, conveniently got his preliminary Apparatus of the State right to bear arms: No to gun control! hearing date postponed, with his lawyer The capitalist politicians had scarcely A frenzy is being whipped up on behalf claiming distress over the death of the dried their crocodile tears after the cop of the cops. A column by retired San four OPD cops. The International Social­ killing of Grant when four cops were Francisco Deputy Police Chief Kevin ist Organization (ISO) bleats that this only killed in a March 21 shootout in the streets Mullen in the San Francisco Chronicle reinforces the need to press "for the police of the East Oakland ghetto. The SWAT (29 March) chillingly made clear the to be held accountable in Oscar's death." team had charged into that deadly con­ rulers' contempt for the ghetto masses: But MehserIe's arrest, which was pro­ frontation with 26-year-old black parolee "For sure, fix the parole system and, moted by the ISO, the RCP, the Party for Lovelle Mixon, who was also killed. A while you're at it, pour money into the Socialism and Liberation and the "By Any fifth cop was wounded in the shootout: Pat schools and fix the mental-health system Means Necessary" coalition, was only Gonzales, who in 2007 killed 20-year-old as well. But unless the hate and grievance meant to quell protest. The cops aren't Gary King, shooting him in the back in' peddlers are stilled, and inner-city atti­ going to be held "accountable" for their the street near King's home. In 2008, the tudes evolve, not much will really change." crimes for the simple reason that their trigger-happy Oakland cops gunned down According to an AP dispatch, "one of purpose, together with that of the courts five more young black and Latino men. the most affecting tributes" at the pro-cop and the prisons, is to enforce the rule of Now, from Oakland City Hall to the media event came from Captain Edward the capitalist exploiters through the vio­ California governor's office and right on Tracey, commander of the SWAT team. lent suppression of the working class, up to the White House, the bourgeois "These were my men," Tracey said. "They blacks and all the oppressed. Even in the politicians have closed ranks to salute the died doing what they loved: riding in motor­ increasingly unlikely event that MehserIe "heroism" of the police amid cries to cycles, kicking in doors, serving in SWAT." is thrown behind bars, the purpose will strengthen the repressive apparatus of the In his condolences, President Obama added, simply be to give the state's armed thugs state. In a chilling and ominous display of "Their loss reminds us that the work to a more "democratic" facade. police power, reminiscent of Nazi Third which they dedicated their lives remains Oakland and the cities surrounding it Reich Nuremberg rallies, thousands of undone." So many doors to kick down, so have served as a virtual laboratory for the cops from all over the country marched many minority youth to shoot, so little time. liberal schemes advanced by CAPE and into Oakland's Oracle Arena for a March Even amid the outpouring of support the reformist left, such as police "civilian 27 memorial. They were joined by Cali­ for the dead cops, some 500 people came review boards." This con game started fornia governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, out to the funeral for Lovelle Mixon. some 36 years ago when Berkeley estab­ Democratic Senators Barbara Boxer and Flowers and condolence messages were lished the first police review board in the Dianne Feinstein, liberal black Congress­ laid at a memorial site for him, and one country. Of course, that never stopped woman Barbara Lee and other politicians. text message captured a cry of rage and Berkeley cops from blowing away black The consummately corrupt and brutal defiance against the police: "Us: 4- people, like grandmother Anita Gay, shot Oakland Police Department is being reha­ Them: 1." The black-oriented press, talk down on her own front porch in February bilitated and the memory of Oscar Grant radio and various blogs testify to the divi­ 2008. The Oakland Citizens' Police Re­ buried under an avalanche of demands for sions among the black population over the view Board (CPRB) was established in more police patrols, stricter parole guide- role of the police, with some dreaming of 1980 following an OPD killing spree that 17 wiped out nine black people the previous for black inner-city youth is jailor an early as well as of the later "war on poverty" year. One of those killed, Charles Bris­ death at the hands of the cops, one of their programs aimed at pacifying the ghetto coe, was an International Association of peers or the many diseases of poverty that upheavals of the mid 1960s. Barack Obama Machinists shop steward at the Alameda are rampant. is representative of the layer of petty­ Naval Air Station, then a major industrial At a meeting in Oakland of clergy, city bourgeois blacks who got their piece of concentration of integrated, unionized leaders and the cops to "create an action the action either by administering these workers. Five hundred of Briscoe's union plan to address youth violence," an adviser programs or by pushing through narrowly brothers and sisters jammed an Oakland to Dellums decried spending time and opened doors to privileged spheres that City Council meeting, making palpable effort on "people who are unskilled, un­ were previously barred to black people. the potential for mobilizing the social educated and end up in prison" (Oakland Obama's move into the Oval Office was power of the multiracial working class Tribune, 25 March). This was echoed in prefigured by decades of big city black against cop terror. The CPRB was estab­ an opinion piece in the 29 March San mayors, who were put into office pre­ lished to head off any such possibility and Francisco Chronicle by black liberal cisely to put the lid on social struggles. to whitewash the OPD with the illusion that Brenda Payton. Speaking of her neigh­ A 29 March opinion piece in the San they can be reformed to serve "the people." borhood just up the hill from "Oakland's Francisco Chronicle, titled "Speak Out killing fields," Payton contrasts the good Again, Mr. President," appealed to Obama The Class Divide in the people there, with their neighborhood to replay his "More Perfect Union" speech Racial Divide meetings, block parties and Christmas in Oakland in order to bridge "Oakland's Writing of the young black man who caroling, to the "violence and crime bred racial and social divides." That speech shot the four Oakland cops, an article in from ignorance, family breakdown and was an effective demonstration of Obama's the black newspaper the San Francisco lack of opportunity" just blocks away. credentials to become Commander-in­ Bay View (24 March) noted: "Lovelle Mixon Another piece, by a former resident of Chief of U.S. imperialism, as he used was America's worst nightmare: the Black Oakland, now a director of juvenile de­ a little bit of truth-acknowledging man with nothing to lose." Mixon grew tention in Washington, D.C., opined: "A America's roots in slavery and racial up on the mean streets of the East Oak­ leading cause of street violence is the lack oppression-the better to push the big land ghetto, cast off like countless thou­ of trust between the community and law lie that racism and inequality are just sands of black youth in the inner cities of enforcement. The tension in Oakland since past history. Obama's speech denounced this country whose lives are deemed the murder of Oscar Grant had amassed welfare, conciliated racist opposition to worthless by America's capitalist rulers. into a powder keg and it ignited. Whether affirmative action and condemned black During World War II, when shipbuilders Mixon lit it intentionally we may never people for "complicity in our condition," in the Oakland region desperately needed know, but it was lit. And now, before it echoing the line of Booker T. Washing­ their labor, untrained and often semiliter­ gets even worse, a deliberate, public, sin­ ton, who over a century ago told blacks to ate black youth recruited from the rural cere healing is needed in Oakland." pull themselves up by their own boot­ South were, in a matter of months, taught Here is the real face of CAPE's appeals straps (that is, if they had any). to read and write and became skilled ap­ for community "healing centers" and Writing of the racist killing of a black prentices. Today, the shipyards are barely police reform, embraced by Dellums and Howard University student by black cops a dim memory, and the factories that once other black elected officials-to rehabili­ in 2000 in majority-black Prince George's thrived in the area were shut down in the tate the cops as "servants" of the commu­ County, outside Washington, D.C., black 1980s deindustrialization of America. The nity so that they can more effectively go journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates nailed the black ghetto poor who once served as a after the "criminal" black youth in the political sensibilities of much of the black "reserve army of labor" to be maintained, ghetto. This is the voice of the black petty middle class: "Just as affluent white peo­ albeit minimally, are now written off by bourgeoisie, a small but significant layer ple aren't too interested in the plight of American capitalism as expendable. Like who were the main beneficiaries of the poor whites, neither are affluent blacks Lovelle Mixon, the most likely "future" limited gains of the civil rights movement especially concerned with their brothers

Left: In menacing show of force, thousands of cops packed Oakland's Oracle Arena for 27 March 2009 memorial to four cops who died in shootout. Above: Black Democratic mayor Ron Dellums (far right), liberal face of racist police terror, at March 21 press conference. 18

Left: Drug bust. Right: Democratic Party huckster AI Sharpton marking "crack house" in 1986. Rulers' "war on drugs" is a racist war on blacks, other minorities.

in the ghetto-in fact, they may be even layer of black professionals, executives ism, in which the subjugation and segrega­ more eager to distance themselves from and government administrators whose tion of the majority of the black population the ghetto than white people are trying to bread and butter depends on keeping the at the bottom of this society is rooted. Only distance themselves from the trailer park" black ghetto masses down. then will it be possible to eliminate the (Washington Monthly, June 2001). The upscale black petty bourgeoisie material roots of black oppression through But in racist America, even those regards "crime" as the scourge of Oakland the integration of black people into an blacks who have "made it" are still branded and wants more cops for their own protec­ egalitarian socialist society based on a col­ by the color of their skin. Mayor Del­ tion. They see the ghetto masses as "bring­ lectivized economy, with jobs and quality lums, chief executive officer of Oakland, ing down the community," a sentiment also housing, health care and education for all. who has probably done more to expand spread from the church pulpit and too the OPD than any recent mayor, was often shared within the black working "Community Control of the barred from speaking at the memorial to class. Blaming the black poor for their Police"-A Liberal Hoax the cops. Despised by a police force that own oppression is equally the program of Arguing that the solution to police ter­ hasn't forgotten his association with the Louis Farrakhan's Nation ofIslam, which ror "is not simply removing individual Black Panther Party (BPP) many years has long offered to police housing projects racist police officers," an article in the ago, he sat silent on the podium, humili­ in the ghettos. At an Oakland meeting to San Francisco Bay View (26 March) ated amidst a sea of armed cops, while protest the killing of Oscar Grant, Farra­ opines that the solution is "a police force columnists in the local press ominously khan took black protesters to task for march­ that comes from within the oppressed intoned that he got what he deserved. ing only against Oakland District Attor­ community and that is democratically And today the Brenda Pay tons, so un­ ney Tom Orloff and not protesting "when controlled by that community." It points to easy at being only one block away from day after day we are killing each other." the "American roots" of this demand in "Oakland's killing fields," could also them­ The desperate conditions of life in the the Ten-Point Program of the Black Pan­ selves be one paycheck away from sharing vast ghetto wastelands of America have also ther Party of 40 years ago. the situation of their less affluent black produced a reactive glorification of lum­ The best of a generation of radical black brothers and sisters. Close to 70 percent of penism, gang warfare and other pathologi­ nationalists, the Black Panther Party was black middle-class households have no cal behavior among inner-city youth. How born in Oakland in response to the failure net financial assets, and a report by the could it be otherwise? There are no jobs. of the liberal-led, pro-Democratic Party Pew Research Center states that 45 per­ Parents have been cut off welfare. What­ civil rights movement to challenge the cent of their children end up "near poor." ever social infrastructure existed-schools, oppressive conditions of life for blacks in hospitals, community centers-was gutted the ghettos when it came North in the mid Down With the long ago. While slashing any and all known 1960s. In the late '60s, the BPP heroically Racist "War on Crime"! social programs benefiting the ghetto poor, organized armed patrols of the Oakland Heightened cop terror has been the billions have been poured into prisons. In ghetto against cop terror. But while sub­ handmaiden of a drive for gentrification, California, one out of every 12 black men jectively revolutionary, the Panthers, like particularly in the West Oakland ghetto, in their twenties is behind bars in the other components of the New Left, identi­ which butts up against the downtown area. state's overflowing prisons-the majority fied the organized working class with the An "anti-crime" crusade was initiated by of them snared under the racist "war on ossified, racist Cold War trade-union bu­ the previous Democratic Party mayor, drugs." In a society where the rate of job­ reaucracy atop the AFL-CIO; dismissing Jerry Brown. Following his mayoral elec­ lessness among ex-cons is more than 75 the workers as "bought off," they saw the tion in 1998, Brown presided over the percent and rates of rearrest nearly 45 per­ ghetto poor as the vanguard of revolution. OPD "Riders," who rampaged through cent, Lovelle Mixon was a marked man Absent a Marxist program, the Panthers, West Oakland, torturing and framing up with little future except jail or the morgue. under the pressure of events, especially state their victims. The Riders were so notorious An elementary demand, part of the Ten­ terror, adopted explicitly reformist poli­ that three of them were put on trial, only Point Program of the Labor Black League, tics, such as the "breakfast for children" to be acquitted on all counts. Under Del­ is for the decriminalization of drugs, which program and the call for community lums, more cops have been put on the would take the money and thus the crime control of the police, which combined streets with the purpose of making Oak­ out of drug dealing. But to really change liberal illusions in the bourgeois state land safe for a new influx of well-heeled the systematic demonization and degrada­ with dreams of ending black oppression petty-bourgeois elements. Once, these peo­ tion of black youth trapped in ever more through "control" of ghetto institutions. ple wouid have been overwhelmingly hellish conditions requires shattering the (For more on the BPP, see Marxist Bulle­ white; but Oakland now has a significant entire system of racist American capital- tin No.5 [Revised], September 1978.) 19

Even if it could be accomplished, black electoralism. Elected to Congress in 1970, Scandalously, CAPE joined Dellums in "control" of the inner cities would not put he actively sought appointment to the bad-mouthing the "violent" protesters. an end to endemic poverty, joblessness, House Armed Services Committee, where As the Bay Area LBL wrote in its Janu­ crime, gutted housing and broken-down he worked to repackage the imperialist ary 12 protest statement: "The mass out­ schools. The liberation of black people in military as a force for "human rights." rage against cop terror needs an organized America requires a massive reallocation Dellums is best known as the force behind political expression, and not one that of wealth and resources, which is pos­ the 1986 amendment for divestment from strengthens the hand of the Democratic sible only with the expropriation of the South Africa adopted by the U.S. Congress Party, the political tool of the very capital­ bloodsucking capitalist class as a whole over Reagan's veto. This piece oflegisla­ ist rulers whose interests the cops 'serve and the creation of a workers state where tion was a signal that the U.S. rulers were and protect'," The Bay Area's multiracial production is based on human need, not willing to let their longtime allies, the unions-longshore, municipal and transit profit. The capitalist state cannot be taken brutal apartheid government, go down to workers-can strike a powerful blow over and used for this purpose but must defeat.. .so long as what got installed in against the racist killers in blue. To shut be destroyed and replaced with a very dif­ ferent kind of state where those who labor rule. The multiracial working class, in­ cluding its strategic black component, is the only class with the social power and Obama speaking at graduation of objective interest to smash the rule of the police recruits in bourgeoisie and its system of exploitation Columbus, Ohio, and vicious racial oppression. To lead this 6 March 2009. struggle requires a revolutionary workers President's party built in unwavering opposition to all "stimulus package" the state agencies and political parties of promises billions the capitalist class enemy and in unwaver­ to hire 100,000 ing commitment to the fight for black more cops. freedom as the key to breaking the chains of capitalist wage slavery in America. its place was a regime of black front men down the city and port of Oakland for a Democratic Party: Graveyard of (led by the formerly outlawed African day would do more for the victims of Labor/Black Struggle National Congress) to oversee the same police brutality than a thousand demon­ In the late 1960s, the Black Panther exploitation of the mainly black working strations pleading for "accountability." Party stood up to the racist violence of the masses for the benefit of the white ruling Black workers who are a vital part of the trigger-happy cops, soon bringing down class and its imperialist big brothers. Bay Area unions are an equally vital link upon them the fury of the capitalist state. In a recent interview on National Public to the ghetto masses. But the central Under the impact of murderous repres­ Radio, Dellums was asked what it was like obstacle to mobilizing labor's power is the sion which took the lives of 38 Panthers, moving from Congress to the local stage. pro-capitalist bureaucrats who chain the the BPP lurched to the right and split He replied that the local stage was not new unions to the Democratic Party and push in 1971. The wing led by Huey Newton to him, "but it is different. ... You're the chief the lie that workers and bosses have com­ used the Panthers' authority to build up executive officer, so it's the executive mon "national interests." Far from mobi­ the Democratic Party's base in Oakland. branch." Unlike parliamentary talk shops lizing against police terror, they have Bobby Seale ran for Oakland mayor as a such as the U.S. Congress, the executive organized these hired thugs for capitalism Democrat in 1973. Five years later in officers of the government have the job of into the unions. The SEIU, the same union 1978 the city's first black mayor, Lionel running the racist capitalist state (see that organizes BART maintenance workers Wilson, took office, putting an end to a "Marxist Principles and Electoral Tactics," and Oakland city workers, includes the half-century of control of Oakland by the Spartacist [English-language edition] No. BART cops! As the LBL Ten-Point Pro­ right-wing Republican Knowland regime. 61, Spring 2009). Just as Obama is now gram demands: "Cops, prison guards and By 1983, conditions for blacks were worse Commander-in-Chief of U.S. imperialism, security guards out of the unions!" than ever as unemployment and cop ter­ it is Dellums who commands the racist The hard truth is that the only way to ror mounted. That year, when the Sparta­ OPD and slashes the jobs and wages of eliminate police brutality is to do away cist League ran Martha Phillips as a can­ city workers. In 2007, this supposed "friend with the system of racist American capi­ didate for Oakland City Council, we wrote: of labor" moved against Waste Manage­ talism, for which the "gang in blue uni­ "The city of Oakland is itself the best ment sanitation workers fighting a union­ forms" is the front line of defense. A mul­ argument against the Democratic Party." busting lockout by threatening to make the tiracial, revolutionary workers party that Not accidentally, Ron Dellums played city's garbage collection non-union. champions the cause of all of the op­ a key role in husbanding the Panthers into Obscenely, Dellums was a keynote pressed can be forged only in political the Democratic Party. He is the embodi­ speaker at CAPE's January 14 protest combat against the misleaders oflabor and ment of the Bay Area "progressive" black! against the killing of Oscar Grant. In their leftist outriders. Led by such a party, labor coalition whose purpose has been to response to news of the arrest of Meh­ the victorious workers revolution will divert working-class and black struggle serle, Dellums declared: "You guys were shatter the power of the racist rulers and away from any challenge to capitalist rule. able to make the system bend to the will their state. Only then will justice be meted Getting his start as a community organizer of the people." This was CAPE's reward out to Mehserle and his ilk and the basis during the heyday of the 1960s anti-poverty for having organized squads of marshals, laid for eradicating all inequalities based programs, he served to keep the antiwar including city workers mobilized for this on class and race and for using the wealth movement safe for the capitalists by help­ purpose by their union tops, to prevent of this country and all the world for the ing to channel it into Democratic Party protesters from "getting out of hand." benefit of those whose labor produced it.. 20 reprintedJrom Workers Vanguard No. 940, 31 July 2009

Michael Jackson and Racist America Los Angeles Times On June 25, black megastar and musi­ son 5 under Motown Records, through would not let him get away with. cal icon Michael Jackson died at his his solo career as a songwriter, musician There is' a real connection among blacks home in Los Angeles. The "King of Pop," and performer up until age 50-Michael to someone who, no matter what he did, as he has been known for decades, was Jackson was famous not only for his tal­ always had to respond to this society's one of the most successful recording art­ ent and versatility, but also for challeng­ expectations of what a black person should ists of all time and has remained hugely ing both racial and sexual identities. In look like, act like and sleep with. Even popular throughout the world. Following the spirit of other "crossover" artists like in death, the mud continues to be slung his death, there were spontaneous gather­ Chuck Berry-who was one of the first against this enormously talented and idio­ ings of fans dancing to his music in Har­ artists to perform to multiracial audi­ syncratic man, with most black people de­ lem and doing the "moonwalk" or hold­ ences-Jackson was known for breaking fiantly coming to his defense. In the last ing tributes as far away as Mexico City, down racial barriers and was the first few weeks, it was not rare for TV and Hong Kong and Paris. Rio de Janeiro's black artist to get heavy airplay on MTY. radio commentators to ask why black peo­ mayor announced the construction of a But the "inexcusable" racial barrier ple seem to identify with Michael Jack­ statue of Michael Jackson in the slums that he attempted to break down was his son since he "looked white." Rabidly vile where he filmed one of his videos to appearance. Whether due to vitiligo or to Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly "They Don't Care About Us." In Algiers, skin bleaching, the fact is that his gradual ranted on his show The O'Reilly Factor hundreds of singers and dancers from "whitening" and plastic surgeries did noth­ against blacks seeing Jackson as their own across the African continent performed ing to make him less black in the eyes of when he looked white and "chose to have the Jackson 5's "Blame It on the Boogie." racist America-a twisted confirmation white children." In pure O'Reilly fashion, The tragedy of Jackson's death is that of the color-caste nature of black oppres­ this was a bitter and unfiltered expression an extremely influential music career was sion. No money in the world, no changes of the American bourgeois psyche. driven to the brink of destruction by a to your "racial" appearance, could ever savagely racist and puritanical witchhunt change the fact that, if you are born black, Race and Sex in America spanning more than a decade. The mass capitalist America will make sure to try to As we stated in our article "Stop Ven­ hysteria whipped up against Jackson over put you in your place. In a country where detta Against Michad Jackson!" (WV charges of "child molestation" was an in­ the white supremacist ideology of racial No. 818, 23 January 2004): "The Jackson dictment of this anti-sex, bigoted capital­ "purity" resulted in the "one drop of black case represents an intersection of blatant ist society, where being an eccentric black blood" rule, Jackson's physical transfor­ anti-gay bigotry, the reactionary state­ celebrity is enough for the state to try to mation became a transgression that the enforced stigma against intergenerational frame you up with something. The stun­ bourgeois media and "public opinion" sex, and racial prejudice." The intense ning hypocrisy of the bourgeois media­ a. which hounded and scapegoated Jackson « as a "pedophile" when he was alive, even after he was acquitted of all charges, but then teemed with adulation and tributes after he died-was captured by an arti­ cle in the Los Angeles Times (27 June): "The tabloids that had baited him merci­ lessly, dubbing him 'Wacko Jacko' for his erratic behavior, increasingly strange Fans sing and dance to the looks and accusations of child molesta­ music of Michael tion, were suddenly effusive in their praise Jackson during of a man 'who provided the soundtrack to tribute at the a billion lives' ." Apollo Theater in Harlem, Victim of Racist Vendetta 30 June 2009. During his highly publicized career­ which soared when he was only eleven years old as the lead singer of the Jack- 21 vilification of Michael Jackson served principle should be effective consent, guilty" bandwagon around the Jackson the bourgeoisie's aim to whip up hysteria regardless of age, gender or race. That is, case, thus demonstrating their embrace of if those involved have effective knowl­ over race and sex, which is all too com­ edge and desire to do whatever it is they prudish bourgeois morality and their fun­ mon in a country where blacks (famous will, that should be the end of it. We damentalloyalty to the current social order. or not) are frequently indicted on false oppose arbitrary and reactionary state Michael Jackson's sex life was no­ charges involving sex. In 1913, black interference in such intimate matters." body's business but his own. But not boxer Jack Johnson was arrested because Our steadfast defense of privacy and unlike the countless people branded "sex his relationships with white women were sexual freedom, more generally across offenders" in this country who have com­ deemed to violate the Mann Act against the board and more specifically in the mitted no crime and hurt no one and yet transporting women across state lines for Michael Jackson case, has earned us the whose lives are made a living hell under "immoral purposes." In 1960, black rock contempt of the liberals and the reformist bourgeois laws and media hysteria, Jack­ 'n' roll artist Chuck Berry was also con­ left, who groove on being the "moral­ son had to withstand the bourgeoisie's victed under the Mann Act for transport­ ity police" when sexual matters are attempts to railroad him for falling out­ ing an underage girl across state lines. involved. The most extreme demonstra­ side the norms of this society. Today, after More recently, R&B singer R. Kelly was tion of this was when our comrades in his death, the media is replete with dis­ dragged through the courts on sex-related Germany were excluded from a confer~ cussions over his finances, custody of charges. Frenzy about black male sexu­ ence called "Socialism Days" hosted by his children and the raid on his doctor's ality is a common thread in American cul­ Sozialistische Alternative Voran (SAV), office for suspected manslaughter. ture, long used as a justification for lynch the sister group of Socialist Alternative in Black Democrat Al Sharpton is a politi­ rope terror. the U.S., both of which are associated cal hustler who specializes in corralling Many black establishment figures who with Peter Taaffe's Committee for a black anger at racist injustice into support wouldn't normally go near a contentious Workers' International (see "German for the capitalist Democratic Party. But at "sex" issue have felt obliged to come out Taaffeites Exclude Defenders of Michael Jackson's elaborate, lavish and emotional in Jackson's defense. The day after Jack­ Jackson," WV No. 847, 29 April 2005). memorial, he had a moment of honesty, son's death, black Representatives Jesse For the Taaffeites, anything that doesn't stating: "I want his three children to know, Jackson Jr. and Diane Watson asked for a conform to bourgeois society's chauvinist wasn't nothing strange about your daddy. moment of silence in the House of Repre­ and repressive values deserves political It was strange what your daddy had to sentatives in Michael Jackson's memory, censorship. Outrageously, the Taaffeites deal with." The fact that the very gifted with at least one Congressman storming slandered our position in the Michael Michael Jackson was one of the entertain­ out in protest. When Democratic Repre­ Jackson case as "defense of rapists" and ment world's biggest sources of scandals sentative Sheila Jackson Lee put forward a "relativizing child abuse"! Whether explic­ and attacks was not an indication of what resolution proclaiming Jackson "an Amer­ itly or implicitly, much of the left was he did, but of the sick society in which ican legend, musical icon and world happy to jump on the "strange means he lived .• humanitarian," it was promptly killed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, to the pleas­ ure of Republican Representative Peter King. King infamously called the media Spartacist English edition coverage of Jackson's death an "orgy" and No. 54, Spring 1998 ISPARTACJSTI~ I ranted on a YouTube posting about Jack­ Includes: "Declaration of PrinCiples NUMBEI'III4 ENGLISHEDInON PRING'! son being a "pedophile" and a "pervert." and Some Elements of Program, Michael Jackson was the victim of a International Communist League depraved social order with 'a degenerate (Fourth Internationalist)" and cruel sense of "morality." And all of Adopted in 1998 at the Third these politicians-black or white, Demo­ International Conference of the ICL. crat or Republican-are staunch defend­ $2 (48 pages) ers of that very social order, i.e., Ameri­ can capitalism. America's Puritanical Values As Michael Jackson was twice dragged through the courts over accusations of child sexual abuse, we defended him through his legal trials and tribulations. The cases relied on hearsay, contradictory testimony and zero physical evidence. As we stated in "Michael Jackson Defeats Racist, Anti-Sex Vendetta" (WVNo. 851, Programmatic Statement of the 8 July 2005): Spartacist League/U.S. "Jackson steadfastly maintains that he Organizational Rules and Guidelines has been asexual in his relations with 01 the Spartacist League/U.S. $2 (40 pages) boys, which is certainly possible-but SEE PAGE 30 for us, that is irrelevant. The state's ven­ Opponents 01 the Revolutionary detta against Jackson rested upon anti­ Internationalist Workers Movement Make checks payable/mail to: sex laws that we oppose on principle .... SEEP ....GE37 Spartacist Publishing Co. "Sex is a natural activity for humans­ Box 1377 GPO even children. We believe that in any New York, NY 10116 kind of sexual relations, the guiding 22 reprintedJrom Workers yanguard No. 915,23 May 2008

Full Citizenship Rights for All Immigrants! No Deportations! South Africa: Mobilize Trade Unions Against Anti-Immigrant Terror!

I I Neil 'V'G'Jannev Left: Injured seek refuge at local clinic after anti-immigrant violence in Alexandra and other townships. Right: Crowd attacks immigrant outside Alexandra clinic, 12 May 2008.

JOHANNESBURG, May 19-As pogrom­ immigrants and to unite all the poor in a over the lack of service delivery-i.e., ist attacks against immigrants continue fight for jobs and quality housing for all. electricity, housing, water and sewage sys­ into their second week, 22 people in the It was distributed at a May 17 rally that tems. The SACP and COSATU misleaders Johannesburg area have been killed, ac­ drew a few hundred people protesting ris­ have to date refused to mount any kind of cording to official figures, and many more ing food prices, the Zimbabwe elections mass protest or labour mobilisation to maimed and raped, while thousands have and xenophobia. The rally was called by combat the attacks on immigrants. been driven from their houses, shacks and the Congress of South African Trade The violence has been abetted by the shops. Three people have been burned to Unions (COSATU) and backed by the police who, even as they flood into the death. The attacks began on May 11 in South African Communist Party (SACP), townships, are carrying out their own Alexandra, an impoverished black town­ the Anti-Privatisation Forum and other vicious attacks in residential areas and ship of several hundred thousand people, reformist and liberal organisations. on the streets. After hundreds of people as mobs targeted immigrants mainly from Even government spokesmen acknowl­ swarmed into an Alexandra police station Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Malawi. edge that the root cause of the pogroms seeking protection, Home Affairs minister Later in the week, the attacks spread to lies in anger over the desperate conditions Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula announced on Diepsloot and other townships before in the townships that persist 14 years after May 14 that the government would not erupting in Johannesburg's central busi­ the demise of apartheid. But it is the Tri­ deport "illegal" immigrants at this time. ness district yesterday. partite Alliance government of the African The very next day, police in Olifants­ In the midst of the anti-immigrant ter­ National Congress (ANC) and its partners fontein, near the Tembisa township, ror, Spartacist South Africa, section of the in the SACP and the COSATU union arrested 32 immigrants they had "rescued" International Communist League, issued bureaucracy that is responsible for these who lacked documentation. Asked about a leaflet calling for the country's power­ conditions. There have been continual pro­ the minister's statement, a police spokes­ ful trade unions to mobilise in defence of tests in townships throughout the country man replied, "We are only doing our job." Break with the Tripartite Alliance! For a Black-Centered Workers Government! 23

Outside Soweto two days later, police sion along the border with Zimbabwe. gees, only encourage mob attacks as in stopped a taxi van and demanded that two The situation cries out for a mobilisa­ Alexandra. At the May Day rally in North women they considered "too dark" to be tion of trade-union power to stop these West, ANC president Jacob Zuma South African show inoculation marks to attacks! From the mines and farms to the cloaked the call to crack down on immi­ supposedly prove their citizenship. motor industry, immigrant workers have grants with empty words of sympathy, The scope of the attacks points to the been integral to the economy and labour saying that "the ANC government will danger of far wider violence pitting black movement in South Africa. Spartacist South naturally take strong measures to restrict African groups against each other and Africa, section of the International Com­ illegal immigration" in line with the against coloureds [mixed-race] and other munist League (Fourth Internationalist), "human rights ethos of our country"! minorities. In Alexandra, Zulu speakers demands: Full citizenship rights for all As under apartheid, the capitalist state have reportedly been involved in attacks immigrants! No deportations! The pogroms in "democratic" South Africa defends the against not only immigrants but also South against immigrants in desperately impover­ rule and profits of the Randlords-and Africans who speak Venda, Xhosa, Shan­ ished Alexandra have spilled over into their senior partners on Wall Street and in gaan or other languages. Interethnic hostili­ attacks on Venda-speaking and darker­ the City of London-against the oppressed ties were reinforced under white-supremacist skinned South African blacks. Different black, coloured and Indian toilers. To apartheid rule. But anti-immigrant terror layers of the oppressed are put at each hold the popular front together, the SACP and tribal divisions are also enduring fea­ others' throats to deflect anger from the reformists provide the ideological glue tures of the neo-apartheid capitalist order real enemy: the white capitalist class, with of the "national democratic revolution," under the Tripartite Alliance. The Somali its black front men. But for the unions to which puts forward the nationalist lie that Association of South Africa reports that champion the cause of immigrants and all black people-from rich businessmen 471 Somalis have been murdered since the poor requires a political struggle against like Tokyo Sexwale to Alexandra squat­ 1997. Dosso Ndessomin, a refugee from the pro-capitalist misleaders of COSATU ters-have common interests. This ob­ the Ivory Coast who represents the Coor­ [Congress of South African Trade Unions], scures the fundamental class divide in the dinating Body for Refugee Communities, which is dominated by the South Afri­ service of containing proletarian struggle. told the Mail & Guardian (16 May): "It can Communist Party (SACP), and the The COSATU tops, the SACP and the starts off as xenophobia and when they're NACTU and FEDUSA labour federations. rest of the reformist left treacherously finished dealing with the foreigners, they The bourgeois African National Con­ paint the cops as "fellow workers" and turn to tribalism. Trust me, that will be gress (ANC) and the COSATU bureau­ "comrades." The SACP's own Charles much, much worse that anything we are crats mouth pious phrases against "intol­ Nqakula is the minister of cops. The police seeing now." erance" and the "frustration" of the poor. are at the core of the capitalist state, an In putting forward the call for a black­ But it is the ANC/SACP/COSATU Tri­ instrument of oppression of one class by centred workers government, we noted partite Alliance government that oversees another. In February 2001, cops attacked in our 1997 pamphlet "The fight for a neo-apartheid capitalism, under which thousands of squatters and residents of Revolutionary Vanguard Party: Polemics the overwhelming majority are locked in Alexandra along the Jukskei River who on the South African Left": grinding poverty and black people remain were evicted in scenes that brought to "Widespread expectations for better hous­ on the bottom. The poor in this country, mind apartheid-era forced removals. Ear­ ing and jobs cannot be met; even simple and hundreds of millions around the lier this year, mobs attacking "foreigners" democratic demands such as the right to an education for all children or the right world, are faced with starvation from in Atteridgeville, outside Tshwane, were of women to birth control and abortion rising food prices, which are at bottom aided by police who, according to the vic­ are denied to the overwhelming majority caused not by shortages but by price­ tims, "stood back and, indeed, encouraged by social inequality and lack of facilities. gouging and other capitalist profiteering. the violence" (Mail & Guardian, 28 March). If the masses' frustration does not find Since 1994, the Alliance government In Alexandra this week, cops broke up expression along class lines it will fuel and embitter every other kind of division." has helped spawn repeated xenophobic attempts by immigrants to defend them­ We reprint below the Spartacist South outbreaks in which immigrants are used selves. Meanwhile on May 13, cops in Africa leaflet issued on May 15. as scapegoats for mass unemployment, Tshwane fired rubber bullets and stun gre­ poverty and crime. Last year alone some nades at up to 300 protesters from the * * * 250,000 people were deported. Actions SAMWU municipal workers union, which In the latest wave of anti-immigrant like the January police raid on the Central was on strike, near an award ceremony for violence sweeping South Africa, lynch Methodist Church, long a haven for refu- Nelson Mandela that included government mobs in Alexandra township have killed five people and wounded and raped .scores of others since May 11. One of those killed, a South African, had refused to take partin the attacks. Thugs demolished shacks and stole personal belongings. After more than 1,000 people, mainly from Zimbabwe and Mozambique, fled to the Alexandra police station for pro­ tection, the cops announced they would demand identification papers, posing the threat of deporting "illegal" immigrants. From Tshwane (Pretoria) to the Eastern Cape, Somalis, Zimbabweans and others InSollthAfrica: have been killed in similar mob attacks, 8partacist, PostNet Suite 248 while the government continues its anti­ Private Bag )(2226 Johannesburg 2000 immigrant roundups and steps up repres- 24 reprinted from Workers Vanguard No. 942, 11 September 2009 Caster Semenya-Leave Her Alone! Racist, Sexist Furor Over South African Runner JOHANNESBURG, September 7-At last being subjected to "gender verification" month's world athletics (track and field) testing. After Semenya won the gold championships in Berlin 18-year-old Mok­ medal, an IAAF spokesman announced gadi Caster Semenya, a black woman from that she would be stripped of the medal if an impoverished village in rural South tests showed that she was not a woman. Africa, achieved a stunning victory in the Caster Semenya was able to become a women's 800-metre race, running the world champion athlete despite growing fastest time this year with a huge lead up in a country where the degraded status over her competitors. Her accomplish­ of women is reflected in traditional prac­ ment was all the more impressive given tices such as lobola (bride price) and what transpired just before she ran the polygamy, which reduce Women to prop­ final: the world media was informed by erty to be bought and sold into marriage. the International Association of Athletics Yet it was in Berlin that she faced the ulti­ Federations (IAAF) that Semenya was mate humiliation at the hands of athletics officials. One striker said, "What is there to During her recent visit to southern Africa, able, quality, integrated housing for all. The celebrate when we go to sleep each night U.S. assistant secretary of state Jendayi burning needs of the masses will not be on an empty stomach?" (Daily Sun, 14 Frazer praised the unions involved for realised short of the overthrow of South May). Cops out of the unions! creating a "leadership moment." This from African capitalism, a system based on Zimbabweans, who make up much of the a mouthpiece of the most murderous state white privilege and the superexploitation of estimated three to five million immigrants power in history and the foremost enemy black labour. Spartacist South Africa fights in South Africa, continue to flee unbear­ of the world proletariat! The hue and to build a Leninist-Trotskyist vanguard able conditions of poverty, exacerbated cry over the arms shipment also coin­ party, which would act as a tribune of the by imperialist economic pressures, and cided with the reactionary "Free Tibet" people. Defending all of the oppressed and the violence of the bourgeois-nationalist campaign against the Chinese deformed exploited in the struggle for proletarian Mugabe regime. In the current elections, workers state. The International Commu­ state power, such a party would cut through both the Mugabe regime and the Move­ nist League stands for the unconditional the ethnic hatreds born of the horrendous ment for Democratic Change (MDC) of military defence of China against imperial­ poverty produced by superexploitation. Morgan Tsvangirai, which is backed by ism and capitalist counterrevolution while We fight for a black-centred workers white farmers and the imperialists, repre­ fighting for proletarian political revolu­ government which would include a full sent the class enemy of the proletariat. tion to oust the Stalinist bureaucracy. role and democratic rights for coloureds, South African president Thabo Mbeki has The South African proletariat, which is Indians and those whites prepared to live been propping up Mugabe, while the exploited by a capitalist class whose hold­ under such a government. We do not COSATU and SACP leaderships implic­ ings extend throughout southern Africa, regard as sacrosanct the borders that were itly or explicitly back the MDC. has the social power to liberate not only drawn up by the colonialists, which have In this context, the Durban SATAWU the downtrodden masses in this country no correspondence with tribal or ethnic dock workers union, affiliated with but those of the entire region groaning groupings. Our program is for a socialist COSATU, refused to unload a Chinese under neocolonial misery. But it cannot federation of southern Africa, in which ship carrying arms for Zimbabwe last realise this potential when it is chained there will be an equal place for all the month. As revolutionary Marxists, we to its exploiters through the Tripartite Alli­ myriad peoples of the region. As we wrote oppose this military aid, whose only pur­ ance nationalist popular front. The same in "South Africa: For a Black-Centered pose would be to aid Mugabe in crushing COSATU tops who willingly put their Workers Government!" (Workers Vanguard his internal opposition. But we do not union at the service of the bourgeois MDC No. 911, 28 March): "The expropriation support this boycott, which was any~hing have done nothing to mobilise union of the bourgeoisie would begin to lay the but the paragon of labour solidarity it power in defence of Zimbabwean immi­ material foundations for social equality. was proclaimed to be by left groups and grants or the township poor. Break with But this perspective can only be fully labour bureaucrats around the world. The the Tripartite Alliance! To unite workers realised through the extension of socialist "labour action" in Durban-carried out against their class enemy, what's needed revolution to the most advanced capital­ jointly with the cops-and the subsequent is a class-struggle fight for jobs for all ist countries and the establishment of a international boycott of the ship were through a shorter workweek at no loss in collectivised, planned world economy." in line with the anti-Mugabe campaign pay, for massive wage increases to combat Reforge the Fourth International, world orchestrated by London and Washington. poverty and rampant inflation, for afford- party of socialist revolution! • 25 officials and doctors who wanted to prod women athletes in having what is deemed 1968 at around the same time that ana­ and poke her young body to determine a "masculine" appearance. Legendary bolic steroid use by athletes came under whether she had an "unfair advantage" Mozambican 800-metre champion Maria scrutiny. Much of the hysteria against over her competitors because she is not Mutola was dogged throughout her career steroid use and accusations of cheating by female enough. The treatment of this ath­ by similar speculation thai she was not having men compete as women were lete, who has struggled to overcome the really female. Compare this with the whipped up against the former Soviet barriers of race, sex and class in neo­ treatment of white South African runner degenerated workers state, as well as the apartheid South Africa, has ignited a fire­ Zola Budd who was described merely as East European deformed workers states, storm of indignation and protest from all "tomboyish." But even when it comes as part of the anti-Communist Cold War. quarters in this country, and beyond. It to the question of "sex determination," Czech runner Jarmila Kratochvilova was has been aptly described as a modern-day research shows that one in 1,000 peo­ dogged by gender and steroids accusa­ version of the abuse of Sarah Baartman, a ple are born with an "intersex" condi­ tions after setting the world record in Khoikhoi woman who was taken to Europe tion ("The Gender Trap," guardian.co.uk, Semenya's event in 1983, a record which in 1810 to be studied and exhibited as an 30 July 2008). According to the Inter­ still stands. Such anti-Communist accusa­ anthropological and sexual curiosity ("the sex Society of North America, the term tions of cheating also did the rounds in the Hottentot Venus") and whose brain and "intersex" is used to describe a variety of bourgeois press around the Olympic Games genitals remained on display in the Paris conditions in which a person's sexual in China last year, such as the imputation Musee de I'Homme until at least 1974. anatomy doesn't fit the typical medical that China had lied about the age of some The IAAF is well aware that there was definitions of male and female. There are of its champion female gymnasts. nothing questionable about Semenya's also chromosomal and adrenal anomalies Anti-Communism also plays a role in performance, which was slower than that of the woman gold medalist in last year's Olympics. The vilification of Semenya, in which the Afrikaans newspaper Rapport had a hand, has everything to do with race and sex. As Semenya's mother bluntly stated, "They're just jealous because they don't want black people improving their Friends and status" ([London] Guardian, 23 August). relatives of Black South African athletes suffered Caster "double apartheid" for many years. Under Semenya the system of apartheid segregation, the gather outside country's white capitalist rulers denied her home at impoverished most black athletes the material and legal village of means to participate in organised sport Ga-Masehlong at the national and international level. This outside isolation was exacerbated by the interna­ Polokwane. tional boycott of everything South African promoted by anti-apartheid liberals through­ out the 1960s to '80s. While apartheid formally ended in 1994, when Nelson Man­ that are sometimes described by this the attacks on Caster Semenya. An arti­ dela became South Africa's first black term. As Alice Dreger, a professor of cle in the Mail & Guardian (28 August) president, sport, like other aspects of life, medical humanities and bioethics at focuses on one of her coaches, Ekkart still reflects the poverty and deprivation Northwestern University, pointed out to Arbeit, who was the head coach of the ath­ of the oppressed non-white masses. the New York Times: "It turns out genes, letics team of the former DDR (East Ger­ hormones and genitals are pretty compli­ many) and a key target of the furor The Politics of Biology cated. There isn't really one simple way whipped up over the "doping" of athletes. In Caster Semenya's case, the most ad­ to sort out males and females. Sports Such accusations were used to deny the vanced forms of medical testing, includ­ require that we do, but biology doesn't enormous advantages of the planned ing genetics and endocrinology, are to care. Biology does not fit neatly into sim­ economies of the bureaucratically de­ be used to supposedly determine her sex. ple categories, so they do these tests." formed workers states, where capitalism The IAAF states that it is not accusing Dreger said, "But at the end of the day, was overthrown. As Katarina Witt, the Semenya of knowingly cheating by trying they are going to have to make a social world champion East German figure skater, to pass for a woman. Instead, according decision on what counts as male and recalled, "The state provided for me .... to their cruel logic, they are checking female, and they will wrap it up as if Skating is rather expensive, and in East whether, unbeknownst to her and her fam­ it is simply a scientific decision" ("Gen­ Germany all the equipment and the time ily, she is not really female. As some have der Test After a Gold Medal Finish," on the ice that you needed were provided" pointed out, Semenya's rapid improvement 19 August). (Times online, 25 May 2003). as an athlete can be explained in large In fact, the International Olympic The IOC and IAAF have continued the part by the fact that last year she moved Committee (IOC) abolished universal practice of "gender testing" if a complaint from a rural backwater with virtually no gender testing after the Atlanta games in is made about a particular athlete. These sporting facilities and enrolled as a stu­ 1996, where eight women "failed" the tests are supposed to be kept private, but dent of sport science at the University tests but were cleared after challenging in Semenya's case she and her coaches of Pretoria, where for the first time she the results. Seven of these women were were clearly pressured by IAAF officials received high-quality training as a runner. found to have an intersex condition. Such to have her drop out of the competi­ Semenya is hardly unique among gender testing in Olympic sports began in tion prior to the final, including by 26

making public the accusation that she is stripped naked and paraded by a group of elders who enforce a benighted social not a woman. The IAAF has managed to men who then burnt her house down for order in rural areas. That practices such take to truly grotesque levels the regular violating a rule against women wearing as abducting women into marriage con­ humiliation Caster Semenya has been pants in the area of their hostel. South tinue in some parts of the country gives subjected to here in South Africa, such as Africa has one of the highest rates of rape a sense of how fraudulent the SACP's bathroom inspections demanded by rival in the world, and for those women who purported "national democratic revolu­ teams in local athletics competitions. even try to report the crime, the result is tion" really is. What we wrote ten years Today it was reported that after Semenya generally further humiliation at the hands ago remains true today: returned from the African championships of the police and the courts. "While the African National Congress­ in Mauritius in July, she was given gen­ Such violent abuse is the most extreme led bourgeois-nationalist government of Nelson Mandela has put on paper some der tests that she thought were just reflection of the degraded status of women of the broadest liberal democratic laws­ standard drug tests. Her coach, Wilfred more generally in South Africa, which is striking down prohibitions on homo­ Daniels, has resigned and apologised to also measured in high rates of HIY I AIDS sexual sex, legalising abortion and the athlete for the way he and Athletics infection and death among women, with promising free health care to pregnant South Africa, the sport's national govern­ a high maternal mortality rate along with women and their children-all these legal provisions amount to a cruel ing body, had handled the whole debacle. infant mortality that has worsened since hoax .... This capitalist government can­ The devastating consequences of such 1990. The intersection of racial, sexual not and will not deliver on promises of high-tech "gender testing" as the IAAF and class oppression in South Africa is in quality health care for women, housing, practices were seen in the case of Santhi many ways epitomised by the legions of jobs, education or anything else the population desperately needs." Soundarajan, an Indian runner whose black women who toil in the most menial - "Brutal Murder of South brief hope of lifting her family out of dire of domestic service and cleaning jobs in African AIDS Activist," poverty in the state of Tamil Nadu was the wealthy, white suburbs, just as they Workers Vanguard No. 706, shattered after she "failed" a gender test did under apartheid. 5 February 1999 and was stripped of an Asian Games 800- The only road forward in addressing metre medal in 2006. Soundarajan subse­ For a Black-Centred the triple oppression of race, sex and class quently tried to commit suicide. Workers Government! faced by black women in South Africa The cruel and twisted treatment of South African athletics officials along is that of permanent revolution. Genuine Semenya and other athletes before her who with the Tripartite Alliance government national and social liberation will be real­ have faced scrutiny for not looking suffi­ have vigorously protested the treatment of ised only through the expropriation of the ciently "feminine" is an expression of the Caster Semenya, with Parliament planning capitalists and the establishment of the dic­ reactionary sexual stereotyping upheld as to lodge a complaint with the UN High tatorship of the proletariat. We fight for a the norm in capitalist society. These stereo­ Commissioner for Human Rights because black-centred workers government. There types along with entrenched male and the gender tests constituted a "gross and can be no justice in South Africa until the female gender roles flow from the institu­ severe undermining of rights and privacy." non-white majority has power in a workers tion of the family, which is the main" social The government organised a "hero's wel­ state that would unite the many black tribal­ source of oppression of women, youth and come" for Semenya and other gold medal­ and language-based groups along with the homosexuals in class society. The institu­ ists upon their return to the country along Coloured (mixed-race) and Indian popula­ tion of the family, along with organised with a meeting with the president, Jacob tions, with ampl€ room and full democratic religion and traditional authority, serves as Zuma. The justified outrage over the abuse rights for those whites who would join in a key prop for the capitalist system of of Semenya is predictably being used by building a society based on genuine equal­ exploitation and oppression by instilling the capitalist government ofthe bourgeois­ ity. Proletarian revolution will put the enor­ subservience to authority and ensuring that nationalist African National Congress mous wealth of this country at the disposal the task of rearing the next generation of (ANC) and its partners, the South Afri­ of the workers and poor. Only by extend­ wage slaves falls largely on the shoulders of can Communist Party (SACP) and the ing socialist revolution internationally, the domestic slaves, women. Anything that COSATU trade-union bureaucracy, to especially to the imperialist centres, and deviates from the family "ideal" is thus whip up a frenzy of nationalist pride, com­ building a world socialised planned econ­ viewed as a threat to social order, whether plete with "anti-imperialist" rhetoric. Yet it omy can the material conditions of life for it be gay sex or giving women control over is these very same leaders who for 15 the masses of southern Africa and the rest reproduction through access to contracep­ years have administered a system of neo­ of the neocolonial world be lifted up to a tion and abortion. apartheid capitalism in South Africa, level of material abundance for all. The consequences of not conforming where the economic order continues to Such a revolutionary overturn will to these reactionary sexual stereotypes be based on white privilege and the make it possible to eliminate the material are often quite brutal in South Africa, superexploitation of the overwhelmingly roots of women's oppression: to replace where women suspected of being lesbians black working class by the Randlords and the institution of the family with social­ are targets for "corrective rape" as with their imperialist partners. ised childcare and housework, thus free­ the gang rape and murder in 2008 of The misleaders of the working class ing women from domestic servitude. This former women's soccer star and gay in the SACP and COSATU bureaucracy is the program that Lenin and Trotsky'S rights activist Eudy Simelane ("Raped seek to obscure the reality that they Bolshevik Party sought to carry out in the and Killed for Being a Lesbian: South themselves are responsible for maintaining young Soviet workers state following the Africa Ignores 'Corrective' Attacks," the capitalist system which perpetuates October Revolution of 1917. Our task is guardian.co.uk, 12 March). This murder racial. national and women's oppression. to build a revolutionary workers party like echoed that of AIDS activist Gugu Dla­ The SACP/Young Communist League and the Bolshevik Party that will act as a trib­ mini in 1998 by a rabid mob who beat her COSATU spokesmen piously preach the une of the people, a defender of all the senseless for having the courage to talk need to defend women's rights, while oppressed, to lead the fight for socialist openly about her disease and sex life. In defending a bourgeois constitution that revolution as part of a reforged Trotskyist Durban in 2007, Zandile Mpanza was enshrines the authority of tribal chiefs and Fourth International.. 27 reprinted from Workers Vanguard No. 955, 26 March 2010

From Slavery ~ Mass Incarcetatio.lb """. ··':f:!M'" .,"'" .~::::.:':.:::.: Black Lib'er~tip~ a~F~1 the Fight;for'a lIVt, Socialist America We print below, in slightly edited "How a society treats its poorest, least Imprisonment for black males without form, a Black History forum given in defended children is a measure of its a high school education tripled between Oakland, California, on February 27 by madness." Last August, the New York 1978 and 1998 to 59 percent, whereas the Spartacist League Central Committee Times (10 August 2009) reported: "About rate for blacks with some college decreased member Reuben Samuels. two-thirds of the nation's juvenile inmates from 6 to 5 percent-even though the Welcome to Lockdown America. As I ... have at least one mental illness, and arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis speak, over 7.3 million men, women and are more in need of therapy than punish­ Gates Jr. last year demonstrates that the children are in jailor prison or on parole ment." One out of every four incarcer­ fate of educated black people is anything or probation. The U.S. may not manufac­ ated Latino children is held in an adult but secure in racist capitalist America. ture many automobiles now, but with prison. You're not old enough to screw, Nevertheless, those middle-class blacks less than 5 percent of the world's popula­ drink or buy a cigarette, but you're old who have turned their backs on the ghetto tion, it leads with one-quarter of the enough to be sent away to the state pen, poor have found their spokesman in world's prisoners. There is a direct rela­ where young prisoners are especially Obama, who disses black fathers with state­ tion between these two facts, as dis­ vulnerable to sexual and physical abuse. ments like, "what makes you a man is not played by the charts showing the steady Meanwhile, the U.S. prison camp in the ability to have a child-but the courage decline in manufacturing jobs since Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is still open for to raise one." This, as one in four black World War II and the massive increase in business, and U.S. imperialism's black children by age 14 loses a father to prison. the prison population since 1980. Commander-in-Chief Barack Obama has Last February, Cornel West, the some­ Of the 2.3 million men, women and ramped up the number of secret, Special time Obama booster, popular hip-hop children behind bars, 70 percent are Forces-run, black-site torture chambers professor of religion at Princeton and black or Latino. At the time of the for his Afghanistan surge. Transparency, member of the Democratic Socialists of Brown v. Board of Education decision in anyone? The esteemed Russian novelist America, ventured down to the Garden 1954, 100,000 black people were behind Fyodor Dostoyevsky (182]-]881), who State Youth Correctional Facility near bars. Today there are over 900,000 saw the inside of tsarist prison camps in Trenton, New Jersey. In the spirit of blacks stuffed into America's over­ Siberian exile, put the question this way the newly inaugurated president Obama's crowded dungeons. Fifty-five years after in The House of the Dead: "The degree hope-hype, he told a select audience of Brown promised equal educational oppor­ of civilization in a society can be judged 200 young inmates: tunity, five times as many black men by entering its prisons." In California, 80 "In the midst of 244 years of slavery, when they had no control over land, terri­ are in prison as in four-year colleges and percent of incarcerated women are moth­ tory, no rights, they held together in the universities. ers. Last October the ACLU hailed it as dark and raised their voices to create the Some worry about life after death. For a victory when the Eighth Circuit Court spiritual." us the question should be, is there life of Appeals ruled six to five that a jury He then asked: "You all still listen to the after birth? Death row political prisoner should decide if a woman in late-stage spiritual, don't you?" Mumia Abu-Jamal was right when he labor needs to be shackled to her bed We still ain't got no land, no job either, said in his February 7 commentary, during delivery, a common practice in dad's injail, the bank's got the house, but "When Young People Are the Enemy": America's dungeons. we've still got spirituals. No wonder Karl 28

Marx called religion the opium of the and to' steal bread." The struggle for a this republic was founded,· the black people-and the pushers in the pulpits do fundamental change in conditions of life slaves of the French colony that is now no lIard time. in the ghettos-for real equality, jobs, Haiti, roused by the French Revolution, decent housing and adequate schools­ were organized into an armed force that The Civil Rights Movement collided head-on with the economic won their freedom by defeating Europe's Black Columbia University professor realities of American capitalism. mightiest armies, inspiring slave rebel­ Manning Marable, a leader of the Com­ lions throughout the Americas. mittees of Correspondence, called mass Revolutionary Integrationism Since then, if not before, America's black incarceration "the great moral and From slavery to convict labor, from the rulers have been haunted by the spectre of political challenge of our time." How to chain gang to the assembly line, American black insurrection and social revolution. meet this challenge? In an August 2000 capitalism has been built upon the lash­ The payback to Haiti was 200 years of piece titled, "Racism, Prisons and the scarred backs of black labor. Any organi­ political isolation, economic depredation Future of Black America," Marable looks zation that claims a revolutionary per­ and military occupation. The respopse at back to: spective for the United States must home: the incarceration and criminaliza­ "the black freedom struggle of the 1960s confront the special oppression of black tion of black people that is woven into the [that] was successful largely because it con­ very fabric of this country. vinced a majority of white middle class people-their forced segregation at the Americans that Jim Crow was economically bottom of capitalist society and the poi­ In 1793, the same year that slavery was inefficient, and that politically it could not sonous racism that divides the working abolished in Haiti, Eli Whitney invented be sustained or justified. The movement class and cripples its struggles. the cotton gin in the -U.S., which would utilized the power of creative disruption, Counterposed to liberal integrationism, vastly expand both the scope and the making it impossible for the old system of white prejudice and power to function . which holds that black equality can be profitability of the Southern plantation­ in the same old ways it had for decades." achieved within the American capitalist based slave economy. The surplus value From the outset, the civil rights move­ system of racial subjugation and ruthless extracted through the oldest form of ment was dominated by a black middle­ labor exploitation, we advocate revolu­ exploitation would fuel the birth of indus­ class leadership represented by Martin tionary integrationism: the understanding trial capitalism in the U.S .. and, with it. Luther King Jr. The aim .of their "creative that black freedom requires smashing the capitalism's gravedigger, the proletariat. disruption" was to pressure the Demo­ capitalist system and constructing an . Also in 1793, Congress passed the cratic administrations of John F. Kennedy egalitarian socialist society. This per­ first national crime bill, the Fugitive and Lyndon B. Johnson to grant fo~al, spective is also counierposed to petty­ Slave Act. The law fleshed out the slave­ legal equality. They did, in part because bourgeois black nationalism and black catching clause in Article 4, Section 2, of Jim Crow had become an embarrassment capitalism, an ideology of defeatism that the recently ratified U.S. Constitution­ to U.S. imperialism's posture as the de­ would deny blacks their birthright: the that very document that President Obama fender of "democracy" against the Soviet wealth and culture their labor has played as a candidate claimed "had at its very degenerated workers state. a decisive role in creating. As Bolshevik core the ideal of equal citizenship under The bankruptcy of the civil rights leader Leon Trotsky told his American the law." movement's leadership and its liberal supporters in 1939: "We must say to the program was revealed when the move­ conscious elements of the Negroes that The Bourgeois State and ment went North, where black people they are convoked by the historic devel­ the Civil War already had formal legal equality. As the opment to become a vanguard of the The instrument for criminalization and French writer Anatole France wrote working class." incarceration is the state, an instrument about legal equality in the late 19th cen­ of organized violence for the suppression tury: "The law, in its majestic equality, Early America and Slavery of one class by another. Friedrich Engels forbids the rich as well as the poor to The capitalist ruling class is also explained in Origins of the Family, Pri­ sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, acutely aware of this fact. Shortly after vate Property, and the State (1884) that

Workers Vanguard Graphs Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics Source: Bureau of Justice StatistiCS 30% ...... - 4.5 r------..::::::.:::=;~==.:::..::=::::::..::::::::::=; Manufacturing Employment as 4.0 Adult Populations 25% in U.S. Penal System Percent of 3.5 . 1981-2008 . U.S. Labor Force (in millions) . 20% 1940-2008 3.0 2.5 15% . 2.0 .

10% ...... 1.5

1.0 .. 5% ...... ,.... .

.5 L..-",...... 1i:o:::tal~in:-:u~.S:--. Penal System, Year-End 2008: 7,523,365Parohi'" o%r-----.-----,-----.------r-----r~--~--~ Or-~-~~-~~-~~-~~-~~-~~ 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 '08 1981 1983 1985 1987 1989 1991 1993 1995 1997 1999 2001 2003 2005 '08 29

Warren McCleskey showed that black people in Georgia convicted of killing whites were sentenced to death 22 times more frequently than those convicted of killing blacks. In rejecting McCleskey's appeal in 1987, the Supreme Court openly acknowledged that to accept his premise would throw "into serious question the principles that underlie our entire crimi­ nal justice system." We can all agree with that. McCleskey has been called the Dred Scott decision of our time. We say: Abolish the racist death penalty! Class War vs. Convict Lease To recreate the cheap labor so coveted by Northern and Southern capital, the freed slave had to be forced back into bondage, especially on' the plantations. The 13th Amendment to the Constitu­ tion, which codified emancipation, also Above: Civil rights protests in 1950s and 1960s helped shatter Jim Crow seg­ contained the exception with which to regation but could not attack roots of·racial oppression in American capitalism. forge new chains for the freed black: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servi­ the state consists "not merely of armed implies. A barbaric and archaic system of tude, except as a punishment for crime men [like the police and army], but also exploitation had been overthrown. But whereof the party shall have been dldy of material adjuncts, prisons, and institu­ what would replace slavery? The ensu­ convicted, shall exist within the United tions of coercion of all kinds." Writing ing period of Radical Reconstruction, States." [emphasis added] at the dawn of modem imperialism, he imposed on the South with Union army Under that exceptioI\, every former described how this state or public power bayonets, was the most democratic and slave state passed a plethora, of laws that "grows stronger, however to the extent egalitarian period in American history. criminalized vagrancy, loitering, ,gam­ that class antagonisms within the state Public schools were established where bling, using "obscene language," homo­ become exacerbated and adjacent states become larger and more populous. We have previously it had been a crime punishable sexuality, bigamy, "miscegenation." These only to look at our present-day Europe, by death. to teach blacks to read and were punishable by long sentences or a where class struggle and competition for write. It gave us the Fourteenth Amend­ fine so high no poor man could pay it, so conquests have raised- the public power ment, ratified in 1868, which overturned that the convict was "leased out" for it to such a level that it threatens to swallow the notorious 1857 Dred Scott Supreme temi of labor to payoff the fine. the whole of "Society and even the state." Court decision that declared blacks "so As an 1892 letter published in the Wash­ By the time Engels was writing, he could far inferior that they had no rights which ington, D.C. Evening Star pointed out: have added the United States. How apt that the white man was bound to respect." Thomas Hobbes, writing in 1660 after the "The lease system brings the state a But Northern capital eyed the devas­ revenue and relieves it of the cost of English Civil War, named his classic work tated South not as a laboratory for a . building and maintaining prisons. The on the state, The Leviathan, after the most fact that the convicts labor is in this way radical-democratic experiment, but as an diabolical of biblical monsters. No ex-· brought into direct competition with free opportunity to profitably exploit South­ labor does not seem to be taken into ploiting class but the bourgeoisie ha~ ern resources and cheap labor. Cotton account. Th!! contractors, who get these built such monstrous institutions of coer­ was still king in the South and, Northern laborers for 30 or 40 cents per day, can cion, suppression and destruction-this textile mills obtained nearly aU their cot­ drive out of the market the man who Leviathan that swallows up the whole of employs free labor at $1 a day." ton from the South, from which they pro­ society-in order to struggle to the death -Quoted in Ida B. Wells, ed., duced $100 million worth of cloth a year. to avoid leaving the stage of history. The Reason Why the Colored The Compromise of 1877, which with­ American Is Not in the World's It was not words of eloquent moral sua­ Columbian Exposition (1893) sion, or freedom protests and petitions or drew the last Union troops from the "creative disruption" that crushed the South, sealed the betrayal of black free­ Just as slave labor in the Caribbean slaveowning Confederacy in the Civil dom. Reconstruction goverrlments were helped fuel the industdal revolution in War, but the Union Army-two and a half overthrown and in the late 19th century England, it was convict labor that would million strong, including' the decisive replaced with governments based on Jim lay the foundation for the growth of mobilization of 200,000 black soldiers Crow lynch law terror. The precise num­ industry in the South (even as the South ber of lynchings will never be known. and sailors. The Civil War~the Second remained largely agricultural). Slavery American Revolution-was the last of the One generally accepted figure is that of was inhuman. But as the chattel slave was .world's great bourgeois revolutions that the 3,943 lynchings between 1880 and an expensive piece of "property," there began with· the English Civil War of the 1930; 3,220, or 82 percent, had black were some economic deterrents to the 17th century and included the French victims. regular use of the most extreme forms of Revolution of the 18th century. The death penalty, where judges in plantation brutality. No such limit existed black robes supplant racist mobs in white for convict labor. According to David M. Reconstruction and Betrayal sheets, is the lynch rope made legal. A Oshinsky's Worse Than Slavery (1997), Yet the Civil War was a bourgeois revo­ suit brought before the Supreme Court much of the railroad system in the South lution, with all the contradictions that by black Georgia death row prisoner was built by leased convicts packed in 30 rolling iron cages moved from job to job, working in such hellish conditions that they rarely survived past two years. Coal fueled the advance of industry in the South, employing black and white together under hellish conditions. There was a popular saying that down in that inferno all are black, even though the dir­ tiest jobs were reserved for those who started off the shift with coal-colored skin. Despite deep race-hatred elsewhere, those conditions mandated biracial soli­ darity in bitter class war. The Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company (TCI) deployed convict labor from 1871 in eastern Tennessee coal fields. Free miners were organized by the Knights of Labor. When their contract Harper's Weekly i expired in April 1891, TCI locked them Left: Southern black men voting in 1867, during Reconstruction period. Right: out and brought in convicts to break the Frederick Douglass, pre-eminent revolutionary abolitionist. union. There ensued two years of class war. Armed miners up to 3,000-strong "reform" package that had as its purpose With profits fat, at least industrial work­ marched to stockades holding convict the complete triumph of white suprem­ ers were able to achieve some real gains, laborers, overwhelmed the guards and acy in political affairs. There, the mas­ but not without hard class struggle. At released the convicts, sometimes burning sive Parchman and Angola prison planta­ the same time, as U.S. imperialism's the stockades to the ground. tions were made state institutions. Today Cold War against the Soviet Union was The miners were finally outgunned and Angola State Prison is the largest maxi­ being launched, and following a mas­ outnumbered by a state militia reinforced mum security prison in the country. With sive postwar strike wave, the power of with army Gatling guns and field artillery. long rows of stooped black bodies work­ the state to police and shackle labor Defeated on the battlefield, the miners ing under the hot sun, and armed over­ was magnified. The Taft-Hartley Act out­ nevertheless celebrated something of a seers called "trustees" at the end of each lawed the secondary boycott and banned victory when the convict lease was not row, chattel slavery underwent a 20th­ Communists and other leftists from serv­ renewed, and TCI was forced to pull century renaissance. ing as union officers. In 1955, the AFL up stakes and move its headquarters to If I have concentrated on the South it is and CIO were fused under a homoge­ Birmingham, where it also operated because its Jim Crow laws and black nized leadership of Cold War fanatics. mines with convict labor. That saga is codes, and not the early 19th-century It was no accident that U.S. union mem­ the subject of Douglas Blackmon's Pulit­ Quaker vision of the pen as a place of bership began to decline in the mid zer Prize-winning best seller Slavery by penitence and rehabilitation, shaped the 1950s, having reached its historic peak Another Name (2008). In Birmingham, prison boom of the 1980s and 1990s. in 1954. In 1959, 500,000 steelworkers also, the deployment of convict labor met struck for 116 days; they only returned with fierce resistance by the besieged American Imperialist Decline to work under government intervention biracial United Mineworkers, a history The militant class struggle of the 1930s and Taft-Hartley injunction. As Leon unfortunately downplayed by Blackmon. that built the Congress of Industrial Or­ Trotsky had warned: The post-Reconstruction "Redeemer" ganizations (CIO) finally integrated black "Monopoly capitalism is less and less governments, based on open black disen­ labor into powerful industrial unions, if willing to reconcile itself to the inde­ franchisement and Jim Crow terror, made only at the bottom of the workforce. pendence of trade unions. It demands of the legal pretense of the horrendous con­ World War II not only pulled the United the reformist bureaucracy and the labor vict lease system unnecessary. In Ten­ aristocracy, who pick up the crumbs States out of the Great Depression but from its banquet table, that they become nessee, the state simply took over the intensified the "Great Migration" of mil­ transformed into its political police mines and worked them with prison labor. lions of Southern blacks to Northern before the eyes of the working class." In 1912 Alabama also took over the TCI industrial cities. During the war, it took -"Trade Unions in the Epoch of mines and worked them with convict only 90 days to turn illiterate black rural Imperialist Decay" (1940) labor for another 16 years. Elsewhere in youth, whose only experience had been Meanwhile, America's imperialist com­ the South, Blackmon writes: chopping weeds in cotton fields, into lit­ petitors were rebuilding their plants with "As African Americans across the region erate apprentices with high-grade indus­ the latest technology and much higher were ground into political and economic trial skills. A black proletariat was being productivity. By 1960, U.S. per-hour penury, the difference in the costs of legally enslaved and free, but impover­ forged, strategically integrated into basic manufacturing costs were three times ished, labor narrowed dramatically .... American industry, representing the link those in Europe and ten times those "Moreover, while thousands of state pris­ between the anger of the ghetto and the in Japan. Because of increased compe­ oners in Georgia, the Carolinas, and power of organized labor. tition and overproduction, prices were other states were no longer leased to With its imperialist competitors like falling worldwide by the early 1970s. private corporations, they were being forced into an "improved' method of Japan and Germany devastated, the U.S. But in the U.S. during the same period, coercing labor and intimidating African emerged from World War II the pre­ the rate of worker compensation in­ Americans-the chain gang." eminent capitalist power, producing one creased as strike activity soared. Thus, In Mississippi and Louisiana, aboli­ half of the world's goods. That pre­ the rate of profit fell for non-financial tion of convict leasing was part of a eminence continued well into the 1950s. corporations from a peak of 10 percent 31

in 1965 to less than 6 percent in the sec­ Black Panther Party in particular was strate is that some individuals, politicized ond half of the 1970s. a fall of more than in COINTELPRO's crosshairs. The Pan­ and radicalized by their own experiences, a third. thers represented the best of a generation transcend their background to choose a The struggle for black equality in the of black activists who courageously stood social solution to their oppression. As a 1950s broke the back of the Cold War up to the racist ruling class and its kill­ black supporter wrote us from Soledad anti-Communist consensus and in the crazy cops. In 1968, FBI director J. Edgar Prison some 33 years ago, "For the bulk 1960s intersected growing opposition to Hoover vowed, ''The Negro youth and of the lumpenproletariat its social and U.S. imperialism's losing war against the moderate[sl must be made to understand economic stake in capitalist society-its Vietnamese workers and peasants. While that if they succumb to revolutionary largely parasitic relationship within capi­ the bourgeoisie was willing to permit the teachings, they will be dead revolutionar­ talist society-is dependent upon the con­ gradual abolition of legal segregation and ies." Under the ruthless COINTELPRO tinuance of ~uch an economic system." a little upward mobility for a small layer vendetta, 38 Panthers were assassinated of blacks, it unleashed a campaign of and hundreds were railroaded to scores of One-Sided Class War "white backlash" and police terror aimed years in prison hellholes-and many are Back Oil the economic front, the at reining in and suppressing the struggle there today, like Mumia Abu-Jama\. decline of American industry was accel­ for black freedom. erated by ib aging capital stock. New Vicious police repression in major U.S. A Lumpen Vanguard? investment went not into retooling and cities precipitated black ghetto eruptions Unfortunately, the Panthers, along with modernization of industry, but into specu­ across the country, which were reflected most of the New Left, rejected the or­ lative capital or into moving American in widespread disaffection among black ganized working class as the agent of plants to the low-wage, non-union South soldiers in the U.S. military. Meanwhile, black freedom and socialist revolution. and low-wage countries abroad. Organiz­ working-class upheavals shook Amer­ Inspired by the Caribbean-born black ing the South meant taking Jim Crow ica's allies: France in 1968, Italy in 1969 psychiatrist and nationalist Frantz Fanon, racism and the Democratic Party head­ and Portugal in 1974-75. These reverber­ the Panthers turned to the most wretched on-~-anathema to the pro-Democratic ated across the Atlantic. In the U.S., when and the most despised layer of black Party labor tops. International class 210,000 postal workers walked out in ghetto youth to be the vanguard of the solidarity with superexploited workers 1970, defying a federal strike ban, Presi­ black struggle. The underlying ideology abroad. whose conditions were enforced dent Nixon called out 26,000 National of the Panthers was that of Fanon: that by brutal U.S.-backed, anti-Communist Guard and Army troops to scab. But only the most oppressed are the most revolu­ dictatorships. meant taking on the Cold 16,000 showed up; to say they were tionary. But, in fact, the lumpenprole­ War e~tablishrnent, of which the labor worse than useless would be an under­ tariat in the ghetto, removed from the bureaucracy was still very much a part. statement. The potential for an explo­ means of production, has no real social The lahor burea lIcrats supported the sive and revolutionary transformation of power. Moreover, as Marx noted in his election of Georgia Democrat Jimmy American society was evident. Once 1850 work, The Class Struggles in Carter, who openly proclaimed the vir­ again the spectre of black and red haunted France, this layer, which also includes tues of "ethnic purity." In 1979 Carter the country's rulers. prostitutes and pimps and petty thieves appointed Paul Volcker as chairman of The response was the bipartisan "war who mostly prey on workers, is "thor­ the Federal Reserve. the same Volcker on crime" launched in 1968 by the oughly malleable, as capable of the most who is now Obama's point man on eco­ "Omnibus Crime Control and Safe heroic deeds and the most exalted sacri­ nomic "'reform." After his appointment Streets Act," passed under Democratic fices as of the basest banditry and the by Carter, Volcker gave away his game president Johnson and a Democratic Con­ foulest corruption." plan for reversing Wall Street's declining gress. The Cold War domestic Counter­ Incarcerated black militants served as rate of profit in a New York Times (18 intelligence Program (COINTELPRO), a transmission belt for social protest into October 1979) interview: "The standard which originally targeted the Stalinists America's penitentiaries, which are but a of living of the average American has to and Trotskyists, was now expanded to concentrated expression of racist, capital­ decline .... I don't think you can escape include the New Left, black radicals ist barbarism. What such heroic figures as that." The Fed chairman proceeded to and other social activists. The militant Malcolm X and George Jackson demon- drastically tighten the money supply,

Bettmann Library of Congress Left: Scarred back of slave. Right: Soldiers of 107th U.S. Colored Infantry at Fort Corcoran near Washington. Nearly 200,000 black Union soldiers and sailors helped turn tide of Civil War. 32

forcing interest rates up to 16.4 percent and driving economic activity down, creating what was then the worst reces­ sion since the Great Depression. The Ira­ nians were blamed-some things never change. It was not the ayatollahs in Teh­ ran but the people running Wall Street and the Fed who were responsible. To let folks know what was coming, Ronald Reagan launched his 1980 presi­ dential campaign from Philadelphia, Mississippi, with a ringing endorsement of "states rights" before a cheering crowd of some 10,000 whites. Philadel­ phia, which as you may recall was the setting for the film Mississippi Burning, is where civil rights workers Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Chaney were murdered 16 years earlier. Obama's admiration for Reagan, after "all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s," should be seen in this context. Soon after taking office, Reagan fired over 11.000 striking air traffic controllers, a blow from which the labor movement Texas State Library & Archives Commission has not recovered. Volcker stayed on as Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Douglas A. Fed chief, ""hi Ie unemployment reached Blackmon chronicles inhuman exploitation of I 0.8 percent at the end of 1982. In the convict labor. Above: Leased prisoners "miracle of the free market," growing constructing granite columns for the Texas unemployment and the industrial reserve State Capitol in mid 1880s. army replace the overseer's whip and the trustee's gun to discipline and drive As auto plant after auto plant closed, ocrats, have been among the most fervent down the wages of the working class. In Detroit lost half its population during the drug warmongers. The Rainbow/PUSH addition, the ranks of the industrial re­ . 80s. By 1990, this once-proud center of Coalition's Web site, referring to the "war serve army were swelled with the pro­ industrial might and multiracial class on drugs" and other government policies, found de industrialization that began un­ struggle was 80 percent black and the brags that "long before" they "became der Carter and accelerated under Reagan. poverty rate was 33 percent. accepted public policy positions, Rever­ Between 1980 and 1985 the Department end Jesse Jackson advocated them." And of Labor estimated that some 2.3 million The "War on Drugs" taking the "war on drugs'" global has long manufacturing jobs disappeared for good. The economic whip of unemployment been Al Sharpton's mantra. He declared: was augmented by the vast expansion of "We have to use trade leverage to go after police powers and prisons under the the countries that produce the drugs­ A Spariacist Pamphlet ---1 bipartisan "war on crime" and "war on who openly allow drugs to be in their 1--- Karl Marx Was Right drugs." In 1973, New York State governor economy-and put them out of business." Nelson Rockefeller launched the harshest Obama, as well as Bush before him, has ! Capitalist Anarchy and the drug laws in the country, with mandatory used the pretense of the global "war on minimum sentences of 15 to life for sell­ drugs" to build military bases and back Immiseration of the ing two ounces or possession of four death squads in Colombia and wage mur­ Working Class . ounces of heroin, morphine, coke or can­ derous repression on both sides of the nabis. As WV reported in "New York Mexican border (see "Mexico: Down Tinkers with Rockefeller Laws: Down With 'Drug Wars' Militarization"" WV With the Racist 'War on Drugs'!" (WV No. 953, 26 February). Thanks, AI. No. 949, I January), these laws, which While some reformist outfits bewail have recently undergone some paltry the blatant racist profiling by the drug reforms, provided a blueprint for similar police, most do not raise the elemen­ draconian laws across the country. By the tary democratic demand to decriminalize 1980s, the "war on drugs" was a major drugs. Indicative of this is a catchy chant contributing factor to the historic rise from the Revolutionary Communist Party in the prison population. From a figure that only a somewhat demented Maoist

------~.~--.--- of about 40,000 people incarcerated in could learn to love: "The war on drugs is prison or jail for a drug offense in 1980, a war on the people. The fascist crack­ $2 (56 pages) there has since been a I, 100 percent down is worse than crack." increase to more than 500,000 prisoners A recent article in Progressive Labor's Order from/pay to: today, with black people accounting for paper, Challenge (3 March), actually Spartacist Publishing Company more than 60 percent of drug convictions. equated drug treatment centers with Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 Democrats, and especially black Dem- police terror and capitalist exploitation, 33 opining: "Ha\ing drug clinics in a AIDS cases and the majority of people jobs and exploit ex-cons as cheap labor mainly black and Latino neighborhood is living with HIV/AIDS. with no benefits or protection. One such no solution for health care. and i, a result program was recently instituted in Chi­ of the ruling class' racist attempt to Immigrants and Incarceration cago transit (see "Down With Racist, oppress workers." A, for the reformism­ It took a Civil War to smash slavery Anti-Union 'Ex-Offender Apprentice' at-a-snail's-pace International Socialist and create the Fourteenth Amendment. Scheme!" WV No. 923, 24 October Organization. now that even Republican which granted citizenship not only to 2(08). We say: Equal pay for equal work! California governor Arnold Schwarze­ blacks but also to the children of immi­ Organize ex-cons like anyone else into negger has called for a debate on legaliz­ grants born on American soil. While the the unions with full union wages, benefits ing marijuana. they have come out for it American ruling class has always used and protection! racial and ethnic divisions to keep work­ as well-but don't hold your breath. Impulse to Genocide As we wrote in WV No. 949, we sup­ ing people and the oppressed divided, the port any mitigation of the Rockefeller or truth is that immigrant rights and black As the first to be fired and the last other drug laws. But no amount of tin­ freedom either go forward hand in hand, to be hired. black people were always kering will change the reactionary nature or they fall back separately. over-represented in America's industrial of these laws or their racist enforce­ Today, some 400,000 immigrants pass reserve army. But now the ravages of ment. We oppose all laws against through wretched detention facilities, decaying American capitalism are driv­ "crimes without victims"-such as drug some dying though sheer lack of medical ing many black workers out of the pro­ use, prostitution. gambling and pornog­ attention and then "disappearing." No ductive economy and into the ranks of raphy. Such laws are at bottom designed wonder the Obama administration, like the lumpenproletariat as an outlaw caste. to maintain social control. By remov­ Bush's, even refuses to make legally In the 1990s, Washington and Califor­ ing the superprofits that come with the enforceable rules for immigration deten­ nia led the states in passing "Three illegal, underground nature of the drug tion. We demand full citizenship rights Strikes Laws," which established manda­ trade, decriminalization would also re­ for all immigrants, no matter how they tory sentences for a third felony convic­ duce the crime and other social path­ made it here. tion. The '90s also saw the resurrection ology associated with it. We oppose drug At the same time, an estimated 5.3 mil­ of post-Civil War "black codes" in the testing in the workplace, which employ­ lion Americans are denied the right to form of so-called "quality of life," "zero ers use to cow the entire workforce and vote because of laws that prohibit voting tolerance" and "anti-gang" laws and weed out militants. by people with felony convictions, in­ policies. These laws criminalized black There is a saying as true as it is old: cluding 1.4 million black men. In Florida, and Latino youth, often for minor acts of There is nothing so bad that a cop can't over 30 percent of black men can't vote. misbehavior, and the poor and the home­ less for their poverty. Following the so­ make it wor~e. Yes, drug addiction can We categorically oppose every instance be a terrible thing. but addiction is a of black disenfranchisement. Full voting called "'90s boom" of the Democratic medical problem. As anyone can attest rights for prisoners and convicted felons! Clinton administration, by 2000 one out who has worked with addicts and under­ In 2007, before the current economic of every three black men in their 20s stands the physiology and psychology of crisis, the National Institute of Justice was in prison or unemployed. As we addiction, nothing creates or aggravates found that 60 percent of all felons remain wrote in the article "Lockdown U.S.A." addiction faster than the stress and unemployed a year after their release. We (WV No. 618, IO March 1995): "The trauma of police and prison. That is why say: abolish everyone of California's 210 bourgeoisie's vicious drive to imprison overcrowded prisons are a breeding laws and regulations that prevent felons and execute the ever-increasing numbers ground for drug addiction, just as they from getting jobs or licenses--even to be of ghetto youth reflects a sinister im­ are breeding grounds for communicable a barber, an interior designer or a guide pulse to genocide against a layer of the diseases. dog trainer. Strike down criminal back­ black population." By targeting prostitutes and drug ad­ ground checks for employment applica­ Black Panther Party supporter, former dicts, the state also targets those who are tions! Full access for ex-cons to all pub­ Communist Party member and UC Santa at high risk for HlV, and one in every lic services, like public housing! Cruz professor Angela Davis has written: "Taking into account the structural simi­ four Americans living with HIV passes At the same time, we oppose so-called larities and profitability of business­ through a prison. As of 2005, blacks and "Second Chance" or "Ex-Offender" pro­ government linkages in the realms of mili­ Latinos represented 71 percent of all new grams, which are meant to replace union tary production and public punishment,

Detroit: General Motors world headquarters looms above makeshift homeless shelter, March 2009 (left). Hard-hit residents line up to receive food supplies, December 2008. 34

the expanding penal system can now must do our best to defend and extend it part of the perspective for the over­ be characterized as a 'prison industrial against all the ravages of American capi­ throw of disintegrating capitalism, which complex'." -"Masked Racism: Reflections talism and the treachery of the pro­ threatens the whole culture of mankind, on the Prison Industrial imperialist union bureaucracy. For black and its replacement with a centrally Complex," ColorLines workers remain indispensable to a revo­ planned socialist economy on a global (Fall 1998) lutionary rejuvenation of American labor scale. Only that will make accessible the Following the Civil War, as we have -and does it need rejuvenating! fruits of human culture to be fully uti­ seen, racist incarceration was used to lized for the benefit of humanity at large. force freedmen back onto the plantations Education and Revolution If that seems utopian, look at the or into the mines as convict laborers. But A call for the March 4 "Day of Action Cuban deformed workers state for only a to treat today's prisons as profit centers­ to Defend Education" asks: "But if foretaste of what is possible. We stand when in fact the main activity is enforced there's money for wars, bank bailouts, for the unconditional military defense of inactivity punctuated by grotesque vio­ and prisons, why is there no money for Cuba because there the capitalists were lence-disguises their core role as insti­ public education?" In his autobiography, thrown out of power-although a prole­ tutions of organized class repression and the former slave Frederick Douglass tarian political revolution remains on the prettifies the irrational, rotting capitalist quoted his former master that to educate agenda to get rid of the Stalinist bureau­ system they represent and defend. SCI­ a man "would forever unfit him to be a crats running the country. From this Greene, the Pennsylvania Supermax slave." That is why it was a crime pun­ former sugar colony, 400 doctors, whose where Mumia Abu-Jamal is locked down ishable by hanging to teach slaves to entire education and training was paid 23 hours a day on death row, is not a read or write. Visit inner-city schools for by the state, are now in Haiti provid­ profit center, although it is just as indis­ today and you wonder if those codes are ing top quality medical services to earth­ pensable to the defense of the predatory still in effect. Right now putrescent quake victims. Marxism rejects the religious dogma of punishment, whether it is retributive or penitential. What is utopian is think­ ing you can reform the capitalist Levia­ than and abolish its dungeons without overthrowing the whole damn capitalist­ imperialist system. Only then can we consign the modem instruments of tor­ ture, incarceration and death to the museum, alongside the rack, the pillory and the whipping post. For a Revolutionary Workers Party Shortly after the end of the American AFP Civil War, Marx wrote in Capital (1867): Women detainees at immigrant detention center in Texas, 2007. Homeland "Labour cannot emancipate itself in the Security officials forced them to turn their backs to visiting media. white skin where in the black it is branded." You will find those words on profit system as the 82nd Airborne. American capitalism has no need to edu­ the membership cards of our Labor Black lumpenization is not some racist cate working-class or poor youth; it has Black League for Social Defense. conspiracy between the White House and no room for those skilled black appren­ You are not going to get labor and Wall Street, but part of the normal work­ tices that filled the shipyards during black freedom by backing the Demo­ ings of the capitalist marketplace. As World War II. Many of the black and cratic Party of racism and imperialist war. described by Marx in his renowned work, Latino youth for whom the bourgeoisie Yes, they claim to feel your pain, and the Capital (1867): cannot provide a future end up in prison. reformists push Democratic Party lesser­ "The greater the social wealth ... and, Our Spartacus Youth Clubs demand evilism. When the Democrats get into therefore, also the absolute mass of the free, quality public education for all, from office they can do greater evil with lesser proletariat and the productiveness of preschool to postgrad, and a living sti­ resistance. And you're not going to get its labour, the greater is the industrial reserve army.... But the greater this pend so working people and the poor­ any satisfaction with those green-washers reserve army in proportion to the active and felons-can afford college. We of capital and pacifiers of the people, the labour army, the greater is the mass of a demand a massive expansion of remedial Greens or the Peace and Freedom Party consolidated surplus population, whose and bilingual education for inner-city either. misery is in inverse ratio to its torment of labour. The more extensive, finally, the schools and neighborhoods. But equal and Don't buy the substitute, the imitation lazarus-layers of the working class, and adequate education is rendered meaning­ or the fake. Let's get on with the the industrial reserve army, the greater is less if the majority of blacks and other immensely difficult and challenging task official pauperism. This is the absolute socially downtrodden people are excluded in this post-Soviet trough of building the general law of capitalist accumulation." from using the results by a decaying kind of party needed for the inevitable [emphasis in original] social order that has consigned three gen­ social and class battles ahead, one that is Since 2000, the U.S. has lost another erations of black youth to the scrap heap. proletarian, internationalist and revolu­ five million manufacturing jobs. The Labor has created the social wealth that tionary. Free Mumia Abu-Jamal! Finish existence of a strong, skilled black prole­ has made human culture, science and tech­ the Civil War! Break with the Democrats! tariat is the product of an exceptional nology possible. That is why we insist Build a workers party that fights for a conjuncture in American history, and we that the struggle for equal education is socialist future!. 35 reprintedjrom Workers Vanguard Nos. 956 and 957, 9 and 23 April 2010

The Cold War and the Civil Rights Movement

Birmingham, Alabama, 1963: Demonstration against Jim Crow segregation (left). Civil rights protesters attacked by cops (right).

We print below a Black History Month civil rights movement. With some modifi­ is named Black History and the Class Forum given in the musicians union hall cations, Semple's observations are no less Struggle precisely to express the inextri­ in New York City on February 20 by applicable today. The billy club has been cable link between the emancipation of Workers Vanguard Editorial Board mem­ replaced by the retractable truncheon, the the proletariat and the fight for the lib­ ber Paul Cone. revolver has been replaced by the semi­ eration of black people in the U.S. With pictures of Charlie Parker, The­ automatic and the cops have added the We meet here today a little over a year lonious Monk and Dizzy Gillespie-the Taser stun gun to their arsenal. In the first after Barack Obama became the first black fathers of bebop jazz-looking upon us I nine months of last year, nearly half a president of the U.S.-the Commander­ thought it would be appropriate to recall million men, women and children were in-Chief of the most rapacious imperial­ a short story called "Bop," first published subjected to the degrading "stop and frisk" ist power on the planet. Obama governs in 1949 by the great writer Langston by New York City cops-84 percent of on behalf of the capitalist class, whose Hughes. Through his character, Jesse B. them black or Hispanic. As Hughes' char­ rule is maintained on the bedrock of black Semple, Hughes describes the origins of acter, Semple, pointed out, "White folks oppression. Obama's election was hailed bebop. According to Semple, it's "From do not get their heads beat just for being by bourgeois pundits and reformist "social­ the police beating Negroes' heads. Every white. But me-a cop is liable to grab me ists" alike as the realization of Martin time a cop hits a Negro with his billy almost any time and beat my head-just Luther King's "dream"-a dream that, as club, that old club says, 'BOP! BOP! ... for being colored." King put it in his famous speech at the BE-BOP! ... MOP! ... BOP!' ... That's where Welcome to our Black History Month 1963 March on Washington, was "deeply Be-Bop came from, beaten right out of forum. We study the history-often bur­ rooted in the American dream." Malcolm some Negro's head into them horns and ied-of the struggles for black freedom, X saw things quite differently: ''I'm one saxophones and piano keys that plays it." which are strategic for the American of the 22 million black people who are That was written on the cusp of the socialist revolution. Our pamphlet series the victims of Americanism. One of the 36

22 million black people who are the vic­ elation" while watching Obama's inaugu­ Capital (1867). The capitalist rulers, who tims of democracy, nothing but disguised ration (Workers World, 18 February). The claim the banner of "freedom" and "civ­ hypocrisy .... I don't see any American International Socialist Organization (ISO) ilization," have carried out mass murder dream; I see an American nightmare" enthused in their Socialist Worker (21 and torture on an immense scale in their ("The Ballot or the Bullet," 3 April 1964). January 2009): "Obama's victory con­ drive to secure world markets, cheap While Wall Street barons wash down vinced large numbers of people of some labor and raw materials. And history has lobster dinners with 25-year-old single basic sentiments at the heart of the great shown that this system cannot be made malt Scotch-paid for by government struggles of the past-that something dif­ to be more humane or the imperialist bailouts-the past year has seen the dev­ ferent is possible, and that what we do rulers more peace-loving. Nor can capi­ astation of the lives of many workers: matters." To the extent they have any influ­ talism provide for the needs of the the loss of jobs, homes, savings and medi­ ence, what the reformists do is prop up world's masses, despite the vast wealth it cal coverage, hitting the black popula­ illusions in the capitalist Democratic Party. possesses. tion disproportionately hard. I work near In order to preserve their class rule, the 125th Street in Harlem and regularly pass The Demise of Jim Crow tiny capitalist class has at its disposal the an ever-increasing number of apparently The title of this forum is a bit of a vast powers of the state-which at its homeless and obviously desperate people misnomer. It's not narrowly about the core is made up of the army, cops and asking for help to buy a cup of coffee or Cold War. I want to try to explain a bit courts-and means of ideological subju­ some food; blaring from the loudspeak­ the context in which the mass struggles gation through the schools, press and ers set up by merchants is Obama's voice for civil rights took place. In the Pro­ religion. The capitalist state cannot be boasting of "change we can believe in." grammatic Statement of the Spartacist reformed to serve the interests of workers Obama has beefed up the occupations League, we wrote regarding the civil rights and the oppressed. On the road to revo­ of Afghanistan and Iraq, threatened crip­ movement: lution, it must be smashed by the revolu­ pling sanctions again£t Iran; he has built "The bourgeoisie eventually acquiesced tionary proletariat, and a workers govern­ on the police-state measures implemented to the demand for legal equality in the ment established in its place. first by Bill Clinton and enhanced by South, both because Jim Crow segrega­ A key prop of capitalism is to keep the George W. Bush in the name of the "war tion had grown anachronistic and because working class divided along ethnic and it was an embarrassment overseas as on terrorism," and escalated attacks and American imperialism sought to posture racial lines, which in this country means repression against immigrants. Before the as the champion of 'democracy' in the foremost the segregation of black peo­ election, the Spartacist League declared: Cold War, particularly in competition with ple. We fight for black freedom on the "McCain, Obama: Class Enemies of Work­ the Soviet Union in the Third World." program of revolutionary integrationism: ers, Oppressed" (WV No. 923, 24 Octo­ And that is roughly what I will be talk­ while the working class must fight against ber 2008). We gave no support to any ing about. But not yet. all instances of racist oppression and dis­ bourgeois candidate, Democrat, Republi­ As Marxists, we see the motor force of crimination, genuine equality for black can' or Green like Cynthia McKinney, history as the struggle between oppressor people in the U.S. will only come about a former Democratic Party Congress­ classes-today, the capitalist class, which through the smashing of capitalism, pre­ woman supported by reformists like the owns the means of production like the paring the road to an egalitarian socialist Workers World Party. banks, land and factories-and the op­ order. This perspective is counterposed to Just as the reformists' forebears fol­ pressed classes. Under capitalism, this is liberal integration, which is premised on lowed King to John F. Kennedy's Oval the proletariat, workers who have nothing the utopian notion that equality for black Office, today's reformists deliver their but their labor power, which they sell to people can be attained within the confines followers to Obama's doorstep. Workers the capitalists in order to live. Capitalism of this capitalist society founded on black World (27 November 2008) proclaimed is an irrational system based on produc­ oppression. It is also counterposed to Obama's election "a triumph for the Black tion for profit, born "dripping from head go-it-alone black nationalism-a petty­ masses and all the oppressed." Today, to foot, from every pore, with blood and bourgeois ideology of despair which at Larry Holmes still recalls the "shock and dirt" as Marx put it in his classic work bottom accepts the racist status quo.

Bettmann photos Left: Unionists picket Woolworth's in New York City, 1960, as part of national campaign in solidarity with Southern civil rights sit-in movement. Right: Civil rights activists sit in at a lunch counter to protest segregation in Jackson, Mississippi, 1963. 37

a significant section of the proletariat. decomposing American social democracy wasn't a participant in these events like The South in the early 1960s offered such like Bayard Rustin and Michael Harrington some of my comrades. A lot of my focus a rare opportunity. as well as by the Stalinized Communist that year was on the upcoming Dodgers/ The mass mobilization of black people Party (CP)-worked to keep the civil Yankees World Series; the Dodgers swept in the Southern civil rights movement, rights movement within the confines of them. But even at that age and younger, I and the subsequent Northern ghetto rebel­ bourgeois reformism and the Democratic was surrounded by the images of the lions, disrupted and challenged the racist Party. And this they did very well. Ulti­ assassination of Medgar Evers, Missis­ American bourgeois order. It shattered mately, millions of youth, whose oppo­ sippi governor Ross Barnett blocking the the anti-Communist consensus and it sition to racist oppression and growing steps of the University of Mississippi to paved the road for the mass protest move­ animosity toward U.S. imperialist depre­ blacks, the burning churches, the vilifi­ ments that followed-against the U.S. dations were leading them to seek revolu­ cation of one of my childhood idols, dirty war in Vietnam, for. the rights of tionary solutions, were channeled into the Muhammad Ali, when he appeared with women, gays, students and others. Democratic Party of racism and war. In his Malcolm X by his side after winning the The civil rights movement achieved classic work in defense of the Bolshevik heavyweight title. I recall the fear that important-though partial-gains for black Revolution, The Proletarian Revolution Malcolm generated, seen in the eyes people largely in the realm of formal and the Renegade Kautsky (1918) Lenin and heard in the voices of the bourgeois democratic rights whose main beneficiar- nailed Karl Kautsky, the granddaddy of the press corps and politicians, who in turn embraced the same conservative civil z rights leaders whom they earlier casti­ ~ gated for wanting to .move "too fast." I ~ also remember the cities in flames, start­ ::!" ing with Harlem in 1964. 3 CD (f) Largely ignored by accounts of that period is the ferment in the North, where Newark ghetto black people had already attained the for­ upheaval, mal rights blacks in the South were fight­ 1967. Poverty, unemployment ing for. But discrimination in housing and racist cop was public policy. In New York, Phila­ terror helped delphia, Chicago, Cleveland, Milwaukee trigger ghetto and other cities of the North, black new­ explosions in comers were forced into overcrowded the North in ghettos, where they paid high rent for rat­ the 1960s. infested slums; black children were sent to inferior schools, and black adults had few job opportunities and few, if any, ies have been a thin layer of the black later social democrats and reformists: public facilities. By 1962-63, there were petty bourgeoisie. Public facilities were "Even in the most democratic bourgeois as many protests in the North and West as desegregated, black people won the right state the oppressed people at every step in the South-for jobs, an end to segre­ encounter the crying contradiction be­ to register to vote in the South, and man­ tween the formal equality proclaimed by gated housing, and for school integration. dated school segregation was outlawed. the 'democracy' of the capitalists and the Fueling this rage was the grim reality But the liberal-led civil rights move­ thousands of real limitations and subter­ that the economic advancement of much ment did not and could not challenge the fuges which tum the proletarians into of the black working class-which came root cause of black oppression. The hell­ wage-slaves. It is precisely this contradic­ with wartime employment, U.S. indus­ tion that is opening the eyes of the people ish conditions of ghetto life-the mass to the rottenness, mendacity and hypoc­ trial dominance and, most importantly, chronic unemployment, racist cop ter­ risy of capitalism. It is this contradiction unionized jobs-was coming to an end. ror, crumbling schools, poverty and hun­ that the agitators and propagandists of Between 1947 and 1963 Detroit lost ger (the "American nightmare")-which socialism are constantly exposing to the 140,000 manufacturing jobs. In New York people, in order to prepare them for revo­ remain the lot of the mass of black peo­ lution! And now that the era of revolution City, over 70,000 garment industry jobs ple nearly 50 years after the Civil Rights has begun, Kautsky turns his back upon it were lost in the 1950s. The same was Act was adopted are rooted in American and begins to extol the charms of mori­ happening to meatpacking workers in capitalism. The civil rights movement bund bourgeois democracy." Chicago and longshore, warehouse and smashed its head against this fact when it If you didn't live through it, I think it's shipbuilding workers in Baltimore, New­ swept out of the South and into the North hard to appreciate how tempestuous and ark, Oakland and Philadelphia. In large in the mid 1960s. volatile this period was, and how the part this was because the capitalists were From its onset, the civil rights move­ struggle for black rights dominated domes­ increasingly moving production to the ment was dominated by a black middle­ tic politics for over a decade. That era has South. Much of the industrial Northeast class leadership allied to Democratic Party become sanitized in movies, newspapers, and Midwest was soon rendered rot­ liberalism. The aim of this leadership­ books and the accounts of many of its ting hulls. This was largely a product whose most effective exponent was King participants-even former militants from of the union tops' failure to organize -was to pressure the Democratic Party the Student Nonviolent Coordinating the South-a failure that stemmed from administrations of John F. Kennedy and Committee (SNCC) and the Black Pan­ the anti-Communist purging of militant Lyndon Johnson to grant formal, legal ther Party, who are today comfortably organizers during the Cold War, the union equality to blacks in the South. Walter ensconced in the Democratic Party. tops' allegiance to the Democrats and Reuther's United Auto Workers (UAW) Now I'll confess, I was a bit young, failure to take up the fight for black and Randolph's Brotherhood of Sleeping only ten years old at the time of the rights. Car Porters-assisted by elements of the March on Washington, for example, so I On 13 May 1963, in solidarity with 39

blacks in Birmingham, Alabama, who ming not least from the efforts of the ship groups that acted as a brake on the were fighting back against the racist ter­ Communist Party to organize sharecrop­ movement-specifically including King rorists and in protest against brutal cop pers in the 1930s. This had been a neces­ and preachers identified with him. terror in their city, some 3,000 black teen­ sary measure to make sure such gather­ agers in Chicago pelted cops with bricks ings took place without anybody being The RT's Fight for and bottles. In New York City, 1963 and killed. This tradition however was anath­ Revolutionary Integrationism 1964 saw thousands of Harlem tenants ema to the accommodationist wing of It is during these years that our organ­ forming tenants councils, withholding the civil rights movement led by King. ization originated as the Revolutionary rent and winning services and repairs Be clear: this question was not an issue Tendency (RT) opposition within the from the slumlords. This was met with a of whether or not an individual whose Socialist Workers Party (SWP). (Among vicious bourgeois campaign of racist hys­ home or family was under attack would the founders of the RT were the former teria. The purpose was, as we wrote at the repel the invaders. In a well-known 1959 editors of the Trotskyist Young Socialist, time, "preparation and justification for statement, King himself acknowledged who had initiated a nationwide campaign the smashing, through police terror, of this basic human impulse. The issue was of picket line protests at Woolworth's in the coming stage of the Negro rights quite different. By pledging non-violence, support of the Greensboro sit-in.) Our struggle" ("Negro Struggle in the North," the civil rights leaders were pledging strategic perspective was to transform the Spartacist No.2, July-August 1964). In allegiance to the white power structure, left wing of the civil rights movement July of 1964, New York City cops asserting that the movement could not into a revolutionary workers party capable exploited the protests against the police go beyond the bounds set for it by the of leading much of the black working killing of 15-year-old James Powell to liberal wing of the ruling class repre­ class and impoverished petty bourgeoisie justify a full-scale offensive to smash every sented by the Democratic Party. To say in the South. sign of these struggles. Such cop terror as that the civil rights movement had the The SWP had for decades been the that in Harlem would trigger many of the right to defend itself against racist terror Trotskyist party in the U.S. It maintained ghetto upheavals that took place in over was to say that you didn't accept the a revolutionary course through the diffi­ 300 cities over the next three years. In rules of the capitalist ruling- class and its cult World War II years and the immedi­ New York, as the cops sealed off Harlem, racist "democracy." ate period thereafter. In 1941, under the we Spartacists launched the Harlem Soli­ The ISO portrays King's statement as thought-crime anti-Communist Smith Act, darity Committee, which organized a pro­ part of a "debate" with black militant 18 Trotskyists and Minneapolis Team­ test of 1,000 in the garment district. leader Robert F. Williams. This was no sters leaders were sent to prison by the Adding to the civil rights movement's "debate." King's statement was used by Roosevelt administration for their opposi­ turbulent character was the fact that activ­ the NAACP leadership in suspending tion to the imperialist slaughter of World ists were on a daily basis forced to Williams as president of the Monroe, War II. During the war, the SWP took up confront and grapple with questions of North Carolina, chapter. Williams was and publicized the defense cases of black where their movement was going. Such targeted by the state and ultimately driven soldiers victimized for opposition to Jim questions ultimately bring to the fore out of the country in 1961 for organizing Crow segregation. In the aftermath of the nature of the capitalist state, class black self-defense against KKK terror. To anti-black riots in Detroit in 1943, they divisions in society, the "rottenness, men­ King's argument that "violence" by black fought for flying squadrons of union mili­ dacity and hypocrisy of capitalism"­ Americans "would be the greatest tragedy tants to stand ready to defend blacks men­ leading to the heart of the question of that could befall us," Williams responded, aced by racist mobs. reform vs. revolution. This played out in "I am a man and I will walk upright as a In contrast, following Hitler's attack on the first instance in the issue of armed man should. I will not crawl!" (quoted in the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Stalin­ self-defense or the strategy of "non­ Timothy B. Tyson, Radio Free Dixie: ist CP hailed U.S. entry into World War II violence," which was the calling card Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black in December and worked overtime to of King. For this, King won the 1964 Power, 1999). We defended Williams. In enforce the trade-union bureaucracy's "no Nobel Peace Prize. This prize itself has 1965, the SL initiated a fund-raising cam­ strike" pledge. They demanded that the no noble history. It was also later awarded paign for the defense of the Deacons black masses forsake their struggle for to such peace-loving people as Mena­ for Defense and Justice in Bogalusa, equality in the interest of the imperialist chern Begin, Henry Kissinger, Jimmy Louisiana, who also organized armed war effort. The SWP viewed black libera­ Carter and now Barack Obama. self-clefense. In doing so we advanced tion as the task of the working class as a In 1960, Trotskyist activists got a first­ our class perspective-the revolutionary whole, and intervened in the struggle against hand view of how the question of armed mobilization of the working class inde­ racial oppression with a militant integra­ self-defense was perceived by student pendent of the capitalist rulers. tionist perspective. The party won hundreds activists during a visit to Southern black During the civil rights movement, as of black recruits, including a major break­ campuses shortly after the student sit-in government forces, not only the Southern through in Detroit. However, under the movement was launched at the Greens­ municipalities but at the federal level, intense pressure of the Cold War period, boro, North Carolina, Woolworth's in either stood by or facilitated the beatings most of them left the party over the next February. While the student militants of activists, the question of the nature of few years. were for peaceful picketing-perfectly the capitalist state was brought to the fore. By the early 1960s, the SWP had lost correct as they were outnumbered-the In part, dealing with such issues accounted its revolutionary bearings and tailed non­ influence of pacifist ideology was slight, for the receptivity among students to proletarian class forces, seen domesti­ and, notably, the students undertook self­ Marxist literature during that 1960 trip to cally in its policy of abstention from the defense measures to protect their campus the South I just referred to. Notable as Southern civil rights struggle and later and themselves from the racist terrorists. well was the absence of the social demo­ embrace of black nationalism. By 1965 it Armed defense of meetings of black crats and Stalinists, which also provided had become a thoroughly reformist party. activists in the Klan-ridden South had openings for Marxists, and the distrust by As opposed to the SWP majority, the RT been a well-established tradition, stem- many student activists of the adult leader- fought the party's criminal abstentionism 40 and pointed out that the young radicals adopted at the founding conference of the system, paving the way for the develop­ would not come to a Marxist program Spartacist League/U.S. in 1966: ment of industrial capitalism in the U.S. simply by virtue of their militancy-the "Ultimately their road to freedom lies as a whole. But after the betrayal of intervention of a revolutionary party was only through struggle with the rest of the Reconstruction by the Northern bourgeoi­ necessary. Building a revolutionary van­ working class to abolish capitalism and sie, "the Negro was left in the South in guard necessarily meant participating in establish in its place an egalitarian, the indefinite position of semi-slavery, socialist society. and building a revolutionary leadership in "Yet the struggle of the Black people of semi-serfdom and semi-wage slavery" as the current struggles of the working class. this country for freedom, while part of then-Trotskyist Max Shachtman put it in The RT fought inside the SWP for the the struggle of the working class as a his 1933 piece "Communism and the party to seize the opportunity to recruit whole, is more than that struggle. The Negro" (reprinted as Race and Revolution Negro people are an oppressed race­ [2003]). Sharecropping and tenancy formed black Trotskyist cadres to their ranks. The color caste, in the main comprising the RT put forward a series of demands link­ most exploited layer of the American the labor backbone of Southern agriculture. ing the fight for black rights to broader working class .... Because of their posi­ Sitting atop this was the system of Jim struggles of the working class and address­ tion as both the most oppressed and also Crow, the systematic legal segregation of ing immediate needs such as organized the most conscious and experienced sec­ black people in the South enforced by tion, revolutionary black workers are self-defense and union organizing drives slated to play an exceptional role in the legal and extralegal violence. It was de­ throughout the South. coming American revolution .... signed to prevent blacks from voting, be­ Many SNCC activists were open to a "The victory of the socialist revolution in coming educated or fighting for their revolutionary perspective. Shirley Stoute, this country will be achieved through the rights. When blacks did challenge Jim a black member of the RT, received a per­ united struggle of black and white work­ Crow-either by personally refusing to ers under the leadership of the revolu­ sonal invitation to work with SNCC in tionary vanguard party. In the course of follow its rules or, more rarely, by organ­ Atlanta, which the SWP majority had to this struggle unbreakable bonds will be izing against it-they faced racist terror, accede to. Then they called her back to forged between the two sections of the whether by the local sheriff or the Klan (who were often one and the same). At least 3,000 black people were lynched be­ tween the end of Reconstruction in 1877 and the dismantling of Jim Crow in the 1960s. Black people in the U.S. constitute a race-color caste integrated into the capi­ talist economy at its lower rungs while socially segregated. As historic Trotsky­ ist leader Richard S. Fraser noted: Malcolm X with "Discrimination and prejudice in the rest Muhammad Ali in of the United States derives directly from New York City, 1963. the southern system, feeds upon it, and like racial discrimination throughout the world is completely dependent upon it.. .. In every possible way it [the capitalist class 1 perpetuates the division of the working class by establishing throughout the entire nation the basic reciprocal relations between discrimination, segre­ New York on a pretext a month later. working class. The success of the strug­ gation and prejudice which are so suc- After a bitter political fight over this and gle will place the Negro people in a posi­ cessful in the South." . other questions, the RT was expelled from tion to insure at last the end of slavery, -"The Negro Struggle and the racism and super-exploitation." Proletarian Revolution" (1953), the SWP in 1963-64, going on to found reprinted in "In Memoriam­ the Spartacist League in 1966. The Rise of the Richard S. Fraser: An In an August 1963 document, "The Civil Rights Movement Appreciation and Selection of Negro Struggle and the Crisis of Leader­ His Work:' Prometheus Research ship," the Revolutionary Tendency wrote: The civil rights movement did not just Series No.3, August 1990 "We must consider non-intervention in fall from the sky. The elimination oHegal Fraser added, "the scar of race antagonism" the crisis of leadership a crime of the worst segregation cannot be portrayed as an serves to fortify and stabilize "the struc­ sort." Had the SWP remained a revolu­ idea whose time had come, as the fulfill­ ture of American capitalism by dividing tionary party and concentrated its forces ment of American democracy's supposed the population into hostile racial groups, in the Southern civil rights movement, "moral mission," as the realization of who find it difficult to get together in it could have won to Trotskyism a large the ideals of the Declaration ofindepend­ defense of their common interests against fraction of those young black radicals ence or, as Martin Luther King claimed, the master class." who eventually became black national­ the cashing of a promissory note from The industrial needs of both world ists. After being expelled from the SWP, the "founding fathers" to blacks whose wars, and the murderous terror blacks we intervened with our small forces in the ancestors were enslaved. As I mentioned faced in the South, led to mass emigra­ civil rights movement in both the South earlier, the Jim Crow system, designed to tion out of the South and into Northern and North. We called on militants to control and terrorize blacks in the rural and Western industrial centers. Rural share­ break with the Democratic Party. Our call South, had become anachronistic-i.e., croppers were transformed into prole­ for a Freedom Labor Party was an axis it no longer served the needs of the tarians in modem mass production in­ to link the exploding black struggle U.S. bourgeoisie. This is important to dustries. Following the strikes in the to the power of labor, North and South. understand. 1930s that formed the CIa labor federa­ As we elaborated in "Black and Red­ The Civil War, America's second bour­ tion, black workers were integrated into Class Struggle Road to Negro Freedom," geois revolution, had smashed the slave powerful industrial unions. 41

Nihon Oenpa News, Lid. Spartacisl Left: 1968 Tet Offensive by North Vietnamese and National Liberation Front fighters was a powerful blow against U.S. imperialism. Right:. Spartacist banner at New York antiwar demonstration, 1970. Spartacists fought for victory of Vietnamese workers and peasants.

At the same time, by the 1930s, South­ the federal government. They could either War against the Soviet Union and anti­ ern agriculture in this most advanced go along with the suppression of the civil communist witchhunts at home-even as capitalist country was still economically rights movement by the Southern state they found themselves in the gun sights backward, retaining significant remnants authorities and local governments, or they of the McCarthyites, HUAC and their of the slave system. In search of cheaper could utilize the federal government to Southern replicas. labor markets, and to accommodate the favor policies that would introduce to The Democratic Party's dominance in economic needs of World War II, Ameri­ the South the same bourgeois-democratic national politics was based on the New can capitalism had been forced to aban­ norms that existed in the rest of the country. Deal coalition of Northern liberals and don its earlier conception of the agrarian Dominant sections of the Northern Southern segregationists. Throughout the South as mainly a source of raw materi­ bourgeoisie concentrated in the Demo­ Great Depression and World War II, als and very limited industrial develop­ cratic Party opted for the latter. They Franklin D. Roosevelt refused to endorse ment. By the Depression, textile, iron, would use the federal government to pres­ anti-lynching legislatio~ and the de­ coal, steel and chemical industries had sure, but not compel, their Southern class segregation of the armed forces. Many been developing in the South. The urban­ brethren to grant democratic rights to of his New Deal programs-including ization and industrialization of the Ameri­ blacks. The Eisenhower and Kennedy/ Social Security-largely excluded the can South during and after World War II Johnson administrations engaged in a bulk of the black population in the created large concentrations of black continual series of compromises between South. Maintaining this New Deal coali­ workers, and proletarianized poor agrar­ the civil rights movement and Southern tion was a paramount concern for the ian and middle-class whites. This created authorities. At the same time they did Democratic Party establishment, up to a clear identity of interests between white very little to prevent the violent suppres­ and including John F. Kennedy in the and black exploited industrial workers, sion of civil rights activists by the South­ earty 1960s. establishing conditions for the emergence ern authorities and sometimes collabo­ But in 1948, President Harry S. Tru­ of broader class struggle and the struggle rated in that suppression. For instance, man adopted a mild civil rights platform for black freedom. The practice of land­ when asked what the government would at that year's Democratic Party Conven­ lords and sheriffs picking up isolated do about attacks on civil rights activists, tion. Truman was motivated by the Demo­ tenants, sharecroppers or black transients Kennedy answered, "We'll do what we crats' Cold War foreign relations con­ at will, and forcing them into the prison always do. Nothing." cerns, as well as the need to prevent a slave-labor system (powerfully depicted It is to this wing of the bourgeoisie hemorrhaging of liberal votes to Henry in the book Slavery by Another Name that the leaders of the civil rights move­ Wallace's Progressive Party in that year's [2008] by Douglas A. Blackmon) was not ment shackled the fight for black free­ presidential election. Wallace, who had very effective when dealing with black dom. The bourgeoisie could acquiesce to been Roosevelt's vice president from workers concentrated in factories-par­ partial gains for blacks-desegregation 1941-45 and then Secretary of Commerce, ticularly if organized into unions. of public facilities, voter registration, as ran for president on the bourgeois Pro­ For black people, the Deep South in the well as a degree of school integration­ gressive Party ticket on a platform that early 1950s remained a racist totalitarian as these did not undermine their class called for peaceful negotiations with the police state. When black soldiers came rule. Moreover, continued denial of civil Soviet Union, repeal of Jim Crow laws back from integrated units in the Korean rights to blacks in the South was a liabil­ and legal guarantees of civil rights. Wal­ War, they swore they would no longer ity to the ambitions of U.S. imperial­ lace was supported by the Stalinist Com­ submit to Jim Crow. The emergence of a ism internationally. In short order, as munist Party (CP). mass movement of blacks in the South the federal government granted civil Hubert Humphrey's speech at the 1948 that not only protested but also defied rights concessions, the NAACP and other Democratic Convention marked his na­ racist legality posed a problem for the civil rights organizations and celeb­ tional emergence as a liberal icon. He Northern bourgeoisie, which controlled rities would be signing on to the Cold went on to become one of Washington's 42 most virulent anti-Communist witchhunt­ from Congress ...." Rustin called for "a power. Its European capitalist rivals were ers. Humphrey sponsored the 1954 Com­ liberal-labor-civil rights coalition which in tatters, and several of them were dis­ munist Control Act outlawing the CP and would work to make the Democratic credited and reviled by large sectors of proposed to amend the 1950 McCarran party truly responsive to the aspirations the working masses for their identifica­ Act to set up concentration camps for of the poor" (Commentary, September tion with the fascists. Colonial empires "subversives" in the U.S. 1966). Meanwhile, the CP's Claude were dissolving. Independence movements When Truman won the Democratic Lightfoot argued, "ousting the Dixiecrats in turn were inspiring black activists in presidential nomination, a significant num­ from the halls of <;ongress" will "lay this country, as would the revolution­ ber of Southerners fled the Democrats to the basis for building a broad and pro­ ary overturns of capitalism in countries form the States Rights Party and nomi­ democratic and antt-monopoly coalition" like China and Cuba. nated South Carolina governor Strom (Turning Point in Freedom Road: The Wartime employment and organization Thurmond for president. (The Democrats Fight to End Jim Crow Now [1962]). into CIO unions provided tremendous had been the racist South's historic party The program of building "unity" with advances for black people. At the same well before Abraham Lincoln, a Republi­ progressive capitalists in an "anti­ time, black veterans returned to a wave can, won the 1860 presidential election monopoly" coalition and both working of lynchings and race terror North and on a platform opposing the extension within and pushing from outside to make South. These black workers would form of slavery.) With the help of the black the Democrats fight remain the hallmark the core of the early civil rights move­ vote in Northern urban centers, Truman of American reformism. ment-for example, the NAACP grew squeaked out an upset victory. For the In the early years of the civil rights ninefold between 1940 and 1946. most part, the Southern Dixiecrats re­ movement in the 1950s, the then­ In posturing as the shining defender mained a core part of the Democratic Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party (SWP) of "freedom" and "democracy," Washing­ Party until the mid 1960s. insisted on the need for an independent ton had a distinct handicap. Despite While Thurmond was trying to lead the labor party in the fight for black and the devastation and the loss of 27 mil­ South out of the Democratic Party, the workers rights. American Trotskyist leader lion people during the war, the Soviet social democrats, liberal labor tops and Richard S. Fraser argued against "realign­ bureaucratically degenerated workers state the CP adopted the strategy of "realign­ ment" reformism: "The differences within emerged with tremendous international ment"-i.e., driving the Dixiecrats from the leadership of the Southern Demo­ prestige-a military power that had liber­ the party and pressuring the Democrats to cratic Party are tactical ones of how best ated Europe from Nazi Germany, and a fight for black rights. The social demo­ to protect white supremacy." Fraser rec­ rising industrial power as well. The Sovi­ crats were also actively trying to drive the ognized the revolutionary implications of ets provided support for national libera­ reds out of the unions. Some of these the fight for black freedom: tion movements in Africa. The U.S. was social democrats, such as Bayard Rustin, "It is the Negro movement which at the widely detested as an ally of the British, A. Philip Randolph and, later, Michael present moment holds thy key to the French and other European colonial pow­ whole picture. If the Negroes should suc­ Harrington, wouJd be long-time advisers ceed in breaking away from the Demo­ ers. The postwar Marshall Plan to rebuild to Martin Luther King. cratic Party, large sections of the indus­ West Europe as a bulwark against the Defending the strategy of "realign­ trial working class in decisive sections of Soviets also played a key role in preserv­ ment," UAW president Walter Reuther the country would be impelled to do like­ ing the colonial empires of U.S. allies­ declared, "We felt that instead of trying wise. The result would be the disintegra­ for a time. When the French African tion of the Democratic Party in its strate­ to create a third party-a labor party ... gic Northern centers and its replacement colony of Guinea voted for independence that we ought to bring about a realign­ by independent labor political action." in 1958, the U.S. supported France's re­ ment and get the liberal forces in one -"Why Support for the taliations and refused to recognize Sekou party and the conservatives in another" Democrats by Reuther and the Toure's government. In 1960, the U.S. CP Helps Preserve White (quoted in David Brody, Workers in Supremacy," Militant, 24 opposed a United Nations resolution con­ Industrial America: Essays in the Twenti­ September 1956 demning Portugal for forced labor and eth Century Struggle). Labor Action, Ultimately, the Democratic Party did brutality in its African colonies, and published by Max Shachtman-who had get "realigned." But not in the way the another censuring South Africa for its split with Trotskyism on the eve of social democrats foresaw. Passage of the apartheid policies. the Second World War because he re­ 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Vot­ Following the 1960 Sharpeville massa­ fused to defend the Soviet Union against ing Rights Act by the Johnson adminis­ cre in South Africa, in which 69 black imperialism-declared in 1956: "The tration would lead to a massive flight of activists were killed for protesting the indicated strategy for labor in the com­ Southern whites to the Republicans-the hated apartheid pass laws, President Eisen­ ing Democratic Convention is: oust realization of the Southern strategy first hower waxed on about his concerns for the South from the Democratic party devised by Barry Goldwater in the 1964 the white South Africans and what he through an all-out struggle for civil presidential election and implemented suc­ called their "difficult social and political rights." This article was written by left cessfully by Richard Nixon in the 1968 problem." The Congo won its independ­ Shachtmanite Hal Draper, whose Inde­ election. The Democrats have won barely ence from Belgium that same year and pendent Socialist Clubs, founded in any Southern states in national elections within months Eisenhower resolved to 1964, were the precursor to the Interna­ since. And as the Democrats spent the remove its nationalist prime minist~r tional Socialist Organization (ISO). next 32 years pandering to that white Patrice Lumumba, authorizing the CIA to Years later, responding to the Black racist vote, the reformists only deepened try to eliminate him. Lumumba was exe­ Power advocates in late 1966, Rustin their commitment to "fighting the right" cuted in early 1961, with U.S., Belgian stated, "The winning of the right of through the Democratic Party. and UN complicity. During the Kennedy Negroes to vote in the South insures the administration the CIA worked closely eventual transformation of the Demo­ Post-World War" Struggles with South African security forces, in cratic Party .... The Negro vote will elimi­ The United States emerged from World 1962 tipping them off to African National nate the Dixiecrats from the party and War II as the pre-eminent imperialist Congress leader Nelson Mande1a's where- 43

Cops Invade Detroit ghetto during 1967 upheaval. Cartoon captures cringing pacifism of Martin Luther King, who supported suppression of 1960s ghetto explosions. abouts, which led to his arrest and 27- the Bill of Rights, the Habeas Corpus, to sing the praises of U.S. race relations. year imprisonment. trial by jury, and the English common law Jazz great Dizzy Gillespie toured Africa But the biggest public relations prob­ find their most famous expression in the for the State Department, as basketball lem for the U.S. rulers was the horrific American Declaration of Independence." star Bill Russell did in 1959. New York treatment of black people within their Needless to say, none of these applied to Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, who own borders. This was well known to black people in the South. The NAACP, had earlier been elected with CP support, workers, students, guerrilla leaders and the leading civil rights organization of the told the 1955 Bandung Conference of government officials from Bombay to day, blasted Churchill's speech: "It would "non-aligned states" that his presence gave Lagos. Even U.S. imperialism's closest virtually insure continuation of imperial­ "living proof to the fact that there is no allies recognized the dilemma. In 1947, at ism .... Great Britain's policies toward colo­ truth in the Communist charge that the the height of the Greek Civil War, with nial peoples which have been continued Negro is oppressed in America" (quoted the U.S. pouring military aid to the brutal by the present labor government can cause in Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights). Ulti­ right-wing forces, Helen Vlachos, writer only shudders of apprehension as far as mately, Powell's "reward" for this service for the conservative Greek newspaper Churchill's proposal of an Anglo-American was to be stripped of his Congressional Kathimerini, traveled to the American coalition is concerned" (quoted in Ger­ seat in the 1960s. Wilson Record's 1951 South. She related how, after her trip, she ald Home, Black and Red [1986)). The book, Race and Radicalism, The Negro could better understand "the bitter answer NAACP would soon sing a different tune. and the Communist Party in Conflict, was of a small Negro boy who, when asked by The State Department's international used by the U.S. in Asia and Africa. Pro­ his teacher what punishment he would propaganda efforts had a sort of Joseph moting Record's anti-Communist work, impose upon Adolf Hitler, said, 'I would Goebbels quality. On one hand, the gov­ Voice of America broadcasts proclaimed, paint his face black and send him to ernment prevented black critics from "This is the real American Negro as he is America immediately'" (Mary L. Dudziak, traveling abroad. Most prominent among described by the distinguished Negro soci­ Cold War Civil Rights [2000)). them was the actor Paul Robeson, a sup­ ologist Wilson Record." Wilson Record The opening verbal shot of the Cold porter of the CP, whose passport was was a white man, from Texas. War was British prime minister Winston seized. The State Department also pre­ A number of civil rights leaders joined Churchill's famous 1946 Fulton, Missouri, vented unfavorable books from being in the State Department's efforts. A. speech. I say "verbal shot" because the stocked in its libraries overseas. At the Philip Randolph declared his support of atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Naga­ same time, the United States Information the Fair Employment Practices Com­ saki were the first real shots. Over 200,000 Agency distributed pamphlets abroad, mission in 1948. He said: "The most pow­ Japanese people were sent to a fiery death such as The Negro in American Life, that erful political propaganda weapon Rus­ out of racist spite and with the purpose of depicted ever-increasing harmony in race sian Communism now holds in its hands intimidating the Soviet Union. Churchill, relations. This pamphlet boasted of how is discrimination against Negroes" (quoted speaking at the segregated Westminster equality was slowly "nurtured" as com­ in Martha Biondi, To Stand and Fight College in Truman's home state of Mis­ pared to post-Civil War Reconstruction's [2003)). Speaking at the 50th anniversary souri, declared that "an iron curtain has "authoritarian measures" that had sought of the NAACP's founding, Walter Reuther descended across the continent." Churchill to impose equality for the newly freed warned that segregation "can be Ameri­ stated, "We must never cease to proclaim black slaves in the South. can democracy's achilles heel in Asia and in fearless tones the great principles of free­ The State Department sponsored tours Africa where the great millions of the dom and the rights of man which are the of black public figures to back up the lies. human family lives" (quoted in Home, joint inheritance of the English-speaking Whenever called upon, NAACP executive Black and Red). In 1958, after a federal world and which through Magna Carta, secretary Walter White would fly overseas court judge ordered a moratorium on school 44 desegregation for a couple of years, Mar­ tin Luther King, Randolph, the NAACP's Roy Wilkins and others joined in a letter of protest to Eisenhower, declaring, "In our world-wide struggle to strengthen the free world against the spread of totali­ tarianism, we are sabotaged by the totali­ tarian practices forced upon millions of our Negro citizens" (quoted in Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights). In 1949, when Randolph declared blacks would and should fight in a war against the Soviet Union, the SWP's Militant (26 December 1949) powerfully answered: "By this answer he gives a go-ahead sig­ nal to the very same ruling class that is responsible for the oppression and segre­ gation of the Negro people at home­ for a war that will be a projection on the AP international field of the same reactionary June 1958: Black leaders lobby White House following suspension of school policies that they are pursuing in the integration in Little Rock, Arkansas. From left: Martin Luther King, White United States .... Not only the Soviet House administrator E. Frederic Morrow, President Dwight Eisenhower, A. Philip masses but American workers and Negroes have a stake in preserving this system, for Randolph, Attorney General William Rogers and NAACP leader Roy Wilkins. its destruction in a war by U.S. imperial­ ism would mean a new lease on life for class fighters for black rights. Ironically, ingly a center of black~and white-­ dying world capitalism. The strengthen­ this took place against the backdrop of proletarian power, there is a long history ing of capitalism in turn would mean "Operation Dixie," the CIO campaign to of investigations into the connections the strengthening of all its institutions, including the institution of Jim Crow organize the South. As the experience of between blacks and reds. By the end which Negroes are fighting to end." the 1930s had shown, this would require of 1956, Virginia, Florida, South Caro­ combining the fight for unionization with lina, North Carolina and Mississippi had The Cold War Attacks on Labor the struggle against Jim Crow. This was adopted laws and launched investigations The year 1946 saw the largest strike anathema to the CIO tops, whose Demo­ to harass the NAACP, while Alabama, wave in U.S. history, followed by an anti­ cratic Party loyalties ruled out any effort Louisiana and Texas banned the organi­ Communist purge of the unions. Key in that would affront the Dixiecrats. zation's activities outright. this purge was Walter Reuther of the The anti-Communist purge targeted In 1948, the U.S. Justice Department United Auto Workers (UAW). At the same just about anyone seen as fighting for indicted leaders and members of the CP time, the imperialists, led by the Demo­ black rights. This in turn also levied a under the thought-crime Smith Act. The cratic Truman administration, launched heavy toll on the unions. Among the ques­ SWP defended the CP, which had earlier the Cold War against the Soviet Union. tions asked of Dorothy Bailey, a black hailed the Smith Act prosecutions of Trot­ As early as 1947, Truman put in place U.S. Employment Service employee, to skyists in the early 1940s for their revo­ a loyalty board to screen all government "prove" supposed Communist sympathies, lutionary opposition to World War II. employees and the purge of left-wing was: "Did you ever write a letter to the Even while under attack during the Cold militants from the CIO began. That same Red Cross about the segregation of blood?" War, the Stalinists did their best to poison year Congress enacted the strikebreaking (quoted in Biondi, To Stand and Fight). any united action against the witchhunt­ Taft-Hartley Act. In addition to outlaw­ She was fired from her job. Black work­ ers. Robeson spit on the SWP's campaign ing such labor weapons as secondary ers were asked, "Have you ever had dinner for the "legless veteran" James Kutcher. strikes, it barred Communists from union with a mixed group? Have you ever Kutcher, who had lost both his legs in office. The anti-Communist witchhunt danced with a white girl?" White workers World War II, was fired in 1948 from his was launched to regiment the "home were asked if they ever entertained blacks government clerk's job in Newark, New front," to break the back of the militancy in their home. Witnesses before the witch­ Jersey, because of his SWP membership, of the industrial unions that had been hunting commissions were asked, "Have By the late 1940s, in stark contrast organized in the 1930s. you had any conversations that would to their statement following Churchill's Some 25,000 union members, many of lead you to believe [the accused] is rather speech, the NAACP had dropped even them key leaders of the CIO organizing advanced in his thinking on racial mat­ any verbal opposition to colonialism. They drives, were purged from the labor move­ ters?" (Philip S. Foner, Organized Lahar had ousted W. E. B. Du Bois, one of the ment, in some cases leading to the destruc­ and the Black Worker, 1619-1973 [1974]). organization's founders, following his sup­ tion of whole unions. Shachtman's Inde­ Under the 1950 Port Security Act (a port to the Henry Wallace presidential pendent Socialist League supported the precursor to the Maritime Security Act candidacy in the 1948 elections, For the expulsions of the CP-Ied unions from adopted a few years back as part of the next two decades NAACP head Roy Wil­ the CIO. The anti-red purge installed a "war on terrorism"), 50-70 percent of kins and lead counsel Thurgood Marshall, venal, pro-imperialist union leadership sailors and longshoremen dismissed were who went on to become the first black that abetted the bosses in fostering racial black or foreign-born. Purgings of black justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, shared divisions and would preside over the deci­ postal workers by the loyalty board were information about alleged Communists mation of the unions in coming decades. upheld by the Supreme Court. with the FBI. The Harlem Branch of the In the South, the red purge drove from In Birmingham, Alabama, the South's NAACP had a special "Committee on the unions a militant generation of working- one truly industrial center and accord- Subversion." 45

Toadying to the forces of racist reac­ screamed at 15-year-old Elizabeth Eck­ racist mob and defend the students. The tion did little to immunize liberal civil ford, "Lynch her! Lynch her!" After days troops restored "law and order," prevent­ rights leaders from the witchhunters. Ulti­ of protests, Ei senhower sent in the 10 I st ing the total rout of the retreating racists. mately, it only emboldened them. Redbait­ Airborne Division. In a pattern that would be repeated ing was a common thread throughout As myth has it, this was to "protect" in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963 and the course of the civil rights movement. the black students. The call for federal Watts, California, in 1965, King praised Despite his pacifism and pro-Democratic troops to the South was a defining issue the troops for enforcing "nonviolence" Party politics, King was subjected to throughout the course of the civil rights among the black population. He sent a vicious and degrading FBI surveillance, movement. We are opposed to such calls telegram to Eisenhower "to express my wiretapping and interference in his per­ on the armed forces of the capitalist state. sincere support for the stand you have sonal life. The wiretaps on his phone, In an early expression of the SWP's loss taken to restore law and order in Little as well as on Bayard Rustin's, were of its bearings under the pressure of the Rock, Arkansas." He added, "your action authorized by Attorney General Robert F. Cold War, in October 1955 the party has been of great benefit to our nation Kennedy. called on the government to send troops and to the Christian traditions of fair to Mississippi to defend blacks. Inside the play and brotherhood" (The Papers of The International Context SWP, Richard S. Fraser objected to the Martin Luther King, Jr., Volume IV' Sym­ There is a lot of anecdotal material on slogan, writing in a March 1956 docu­ bol of the Movement, January 1957- the international effects of various events ment, "If we advocate that the Federal December 1958 [2000]). Eisenhower had in the civil rights period and how these Government send them there, we will earlier conveyed his notion of brother­ events caused a great deal of embarrass­ bear political responsibility for the con­ hood to Supreme Court justice Earl War­ ment for the U.S. imperialist rulers. I summation of the demand." He noted, ren, telling of his empathy for the segre­ want to give just a few examples sur­ "The most probable condition under gationists: "These are not bad people. All rounding some of the landmark events of which the Federal Government will send they are concerned about is to see that that time. troops to the South will be that the their sweet little girls are not required The international effects of the civil Negroes hold the initiative in the struggle. to sit alongside some big overgrown rights movement were made clear in the As long as the white supremacists have Negroes" (quoted in Dudziak, Cold War Justice Department's intervention into a the initiative and the lid of repression is Civil Rights). series of civil rights cases, including the clamped on tightly, the social equilibrium Little Rock reverberated worldwide. Sec­ landmark Brown v. Board of Education is not upset by a lynching or other terror­ retary of State John Foster Dulles com­ decision in 1954, which outlawed segre­ ist actions." Fraser presciently added, plained, "this situation was ruining our for­ gation in public schools. In the Brown "When the Negroes take the initiative it eign policy." Jazz legend Louis Armstrong case, the government submitted a "friend is a 'race riot' and the public security is canceled a propaganda trip to the Soviet of the court" brief that quoted Secretary threatened and an excellent reason is Union planned by the State Department. He of State Dean Acheson at length: "The given to the government to intervene" explained: "The way that they are treating United States is under constant attack ("Contribution to the Discussion on the my people in the South, the government in the foreign press; .. because of various Slogan 'Send Federal Troops to Missis­ can go tohel!." When then-vice president practices of discrimination against minor­ sippi' ," reprinted in "In Memoriam­ Richard Nixon visited Venezuela in 1958 ity groups in this country." Acheson con­ Richard S. Fraser: An Appreciation and his limousine was stoned by an angry crowd tinued, "As might be expected, Soviet Selection of His Work," Prometheus who chanted, "Little Rock! Little Rock!" spokesmen regularly exploit this situation Research Series No.3, August 1990). Dignitaries from Third World countries in propaganda against the United States, This was proven to be the case. Eisen­ wooed by Washington were themselves both within the United Nations and through hower's troops were sent to put. down often denied the use of public facilities radio broadcasts and the press, which an upheaval of the Little Rock black and subjected to the same racist humilia­ reaches all corners of the world." One popUlation when it fought to disperse the tion as American blacks were on a daily young activist of South Africa's African National Congress offered, "I think Amer­ ica has lost African friendship. As far as I PROMETHEUS RESEARCH SERIES 3 am concerned, I will henceforth look East Marxist BulIe~!,~~_ where race discrimination is so taboo that it is made a crime by the state" (quoted in Thomas Borstelmann, The Cold War and . WHAT STRATEGY the Color Line). FOR BLACK LIBERATION? In Memoriam Over the next few years, black stu­ Richard S. Fraser dents' attempts to attend all-white schools TrotskJlsm were met with a vicious racist backlash VS. All Ap",eciation utt Selection that again reverberated across the world­ Black NaUooalJsm of His Work most famously in the fall of 1957. When nine black students went to enroll in Cen­ tral High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, they were met with lynch mob opposition led by the Capital Citizens' Council. The day before school opened, Democratic Party governor Orval Faubus called in 250 National Guardsmen, guns in hand, $1.50 (72 pages) $7 (110 pages) to keep the black students out. As soldiers Make checks payable/mail to: Spartacist Pub. Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 blocked the school entrance, a racist mob 46 basis. John Kennedy's secretary of state, streets. It was at that motllent~and not segregation in schools and public accom­ Dean Rusk, described one such incident: before-that Kennedy sent troops to modations.In early 1965, Johnson ordered "Early in the Kennedy years a black dele­ bases outside the city and announced he the first bombing attacks on Vietnam, gate to the United Nations landed in had taken steps to federalize the Alabama sparking the initial antiwar protests and Miami on his way to New York. When the National Guard. again revealing the brutal face of U.S. passengers disembarked for lunch, the white passengers were taken to the airport In the wake of black self-defense imperialism around the world. Days after restaurant; the black delegate received a efforts against Klan and cop terror in enactment of the Voting Rights Act in folding canvas stool in a corner of the Birmingham, Kennedy made vague sug­ 1965, Watts erupted after the arrest of hangar and a sandwich wrapped with wax gestions of civil rights legislation. The a black motorist, as did ghettos across paper. He then Hew on to New York, 1963 March on Washington was an at­ the country over the next three years, an where our delegation asked for his vote on human rights issues." tempt to channel the mass struggle for expression of the frustrated expectations -quoted in Dudziak, Cold War black rights into pressure politics for the generated by civil rights agitation. These Civil Rights passing of such a civil rights bill and to upheavals marked the beginning of the Having been elected in 1960 with no cement ties with the Democratic Party. end of the civil rights period. particular political commitment to civil But when Kennedy called the civil rights rights legislation, the administrations of movements' "representative leaders" into The End of the Civil Rights Era Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson ushered the Oval Office, they quickly changed After the ghetto upheavals in Harlem in the 1964 Civil Rights Act. This won their minds about seeking to pressure and Watts, when it was clear the explo­ John Kennedy and his younger brother, Kennedy, who they saw was dragging his sions were part of a pattern and not isolated events, it also became clear that King's "turn the other cheek" ethos had no relevance to the embittered urban black masses. In 1966, Stokely Car­ michael, newly elected as chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), raised the demand for "Black Power." This call electrified young radicals from the Jim Crow South to the ghettos of the North. We noted at the time that the Black Power slogan Vice President "represents the repudiation of tokenism, Richard Nixon's liberal tutelage, reliance on the federal car attacked by government, and the non-violent phi­ angry protesters losophy of moral suasion. In this sense, in Venezuela, therefore, black power is class power, May 1958. and should be supported by all socialist forces" ("Black Power-Class Power," reprinted in Marxist Bulletin No. 5 [Revised], "What Strategy for Black Lib­ eration? Trotskyism vs. Black National­ ism" [September 1978]). We also warned that "'Black Power' must be clearly Robert, reputations as champions of black feet. The destination of the march was defined in class, not racial terms, for rights. In fact, Kennedy's primary concerns changed from the White House to the otherwise the 'black power' movement were prosecuting the Cold War against the Lincoln Memorial. The march leaders may become the black wing of the USSR and keeping the Democratic Party deleted a "statement to the president" Democratic Party in the South" ("Black coalition of Northern liberals and South­ and a call to confront Congress from and Red-Class Struggle Road to Negro ern Dixiecrats together. Just a few years the march handbook. Participation was Freedom," Spartacist supplement, May­ after Robert Kennedy signed wiretap denied to "subversive" groups and speeches June 1967). orders on King's phone, Johnson's attor­ were censored. Unfortunately, this prognosis was ney general Ramsey Clark would escalate Malcolm X rightly condemned the proven to be the case. And not simply in the war against the Black Panthers and march as a "farce." Overseas it generated the South. Beginning with Carl Stokes in other "black extremists." In 1992, Clark substantial goodwill for the administra­ Cleveland in 1967, black mayors came went on to found the International Action tion. But this didn't last very long. The to be installed in Northern cities to con­ Center, among whose leading spokesmen following month the Klan bombed the 6th tain the seething discontent of the ghetto are members of the Workers World Party Avenue Baptist Church in Birmingham, masses. Over the years, a layer of black (WWP). killing four young black girls. When an elected officials rose to prominence by In Birmingham in 1963, the world embassy official invited a Cameroon gov­ cynically selling themselves as agents watched police official Bull Connor and ernment representative to a screening of a of "change" from within the system. In his stormtroopers: police dogs were set film on the March on Washington, he was Chicago, Harold Washington, elected in loose upon black protesters, while fire­ asked, "Don't you have a film of the 1983 as the city's first black mayor, hoses set at pressures sufficient to strip church dynamiting, too?" slashed jobs and services and oversaw off tree bark hurled children up against The following year, in 1964, months Chicago's murderous police department. walls. In response, the black masses after Kennedy's assassination, his succes­ In 1985, Philadelphia mayor Wilson fought back with sticks, rocks, knives sor Lyndon Johnson pushed through the Goode oversaw the FBI/cop bombing of and bottles against the racists in the Civil Rights Act, formally eliminating the MOVE commune, killing eleven peo- 47

Social-democratic advisers to Martin Luther King. Bayard Rustin (far left) seen here with Max Shachtman. Right: Michael Harrington.

pIe, five of them children. In 1989, David ment's struggle for legal equality have Afghanistan." Socialist Action declared, Dinkins, a member of the Democratic long been removed. The desperate condi­ "Dr. King ... spoke on behalf of all the ex­ Socialists of America led by Michael tions of black people today, in the context ploited and oppressed .... Dr. King's fight Harrington, became the first black mayor of the deteriorating conditions of the is still before us, as is his inspiration" of New York City. He promised to tame entire working class, underline that any (January 2004). the largely black city workers unions with serious fight for black rights must take as Nobody has pushed this more tire­ his pledge to Wall Street: "They'll take it its starting point the need to uproot the lessly than the WWP and the ISO. King's from me." capitalist order. Today, black workers picture is plastered all over the WWP In the 1960s and '70s, while co-opting remain a strategic part of the working class. Web site and posters for their "BailOut a layer of civil rights activists, the capi­ For a number of years, we have seen the People" campaign. Workers World talist rulers also waged a war of police ter­ groups raising the call for a "new civil cites the "trans formative" last year of ror against black radicals, particularly tar­ rights movement." One that immediately King's life, during which it claims he geting the Black Panther Party. The comes to mind is the By Any Means "had come around to the understanding Panthers originated at just about the same Necessary (BAMN) group initiated by the that merely altering the appearance of time the SNCC militants were embracing fake-Trotskyist Revolutionary Workers the capitalist system would in a short Black Power. In Oakland, California, a League in California in 1995. On the one time amount to little more than a cruel group of young black militants led by hand, the call is just plain stupid-you betrayal of the fierce urgency to change Huey Newton and Bobby Seale appeared cannot suck a movement out of your the system." They add: "This contradiction on the scene, dressed in black leather thumb. Politically, it is an appeal to revive pushed King toward ... an anti-capitalist jackets and berets and lawfully carrying the same type of liberal pressure politics struggle" (Workers World online, 3 Sep­ rifles. Within the space of one short year, that cut off the revolutionary potential of tember 2008). the Panthers would win the allegiance of militant black activists in the 1960s in The ISO's Brian Jones chimes in that thousands. service of the Democratic Party. But in "in that last year Of his life," King "cam­ The Panthers represented the best of this, BAMN is not alone. paigned for radical, social-democratic a generation of young militants who The same political perspective is seen reforms that are still far beyond what the sought a revolutionary solution to the in the reformist left's adulation of King. Democratic Party is prepared to accept" oppression of black people. Despite About a year ago, while poring through (Socialist Worker online, 19 January 2009). their militancy and personal courage, some left-liberal and self-proclaimed Normally a little slicker, the centrist Inter­ the Panthers' program was one of black socialist papers and Web sites, I was nationalist Group (IG) got on the band­ nationalism-disdainful of the only force struck (maybe naively) at how often King wagon in their Internationalist (May for revolutionary change, the multiracial was cited as the authority for whatever 2008) report on the 1 May 2008 ILWU working class. Their isolation left them cause the liberals and reformists were longshore workers' port shutdown against especially prey for the brutal COINTEL­ promoting. The invocation of King is a the occupation of Iraq. The IG wrote PRO vendetta. Within a few short years, naked appeal to the not-so-progressive without any comment, "The crowd was the Panthers of Newton and Seale would wing of the bourgeoisie: Dear Congress­ most animated when actor Danny Glover run for office for the petty-bourgeois man, this cause (whatever it is) is so read from Martin Luther King's speech Peace and Freedom Party and then the wholesome that even King would support against the Vietnam War calling for a Democratic Party. us-you should too. 'radical revolution in values' and restruc­ A United for Peace and Justice turing of the U.S. economy." The Myth of MLK's Radicalism "Action Alert" (19 January 2009) on the The May Day action, a powerful dem­ This brings me back to why under­ U.S. Labor Against the War Web site onstration of the kind of working-class standing historical context is so impor­ declared: "We honor King's legacy by action that is needed against the imperial­ tant. The unique circumstances-both continuing to work for a new foreign ist occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, domestically and internationally-that policy which recognizes that there are no was politically undermined by the ILWU set the stage for the civil rights move- military solutions in Gaza or Iraq and bureaucracy. The bureaucrats disappeared 48 the occupation of Afghanistan, widely The ISO's Jones lavishes praise on ideology that pervades all sectors of soci­ supported by the Democrats, and chan­ King's 1967 book, Where Do We Gofrom ety in "normal" times. Bilt when power­ neled the anger of the ranks against Here? In that book the "anti-capitalist" ful social struggles erupt, these attitudes the Iraq war and their desire to defend King urged America's rulers to "seek are rapidly swept aside by the developing their union into "national unity" patriot­ to remove those conditions of poverty, consciousness of shared class interest. ism and support for Obama. (See "ILWU insecurity and injustice which are the This has been borne out time and time Shuts West Coast Ports on May Day," WV fertile soil in which the seed of Commu­ again in U.S. history. Socialist revolution No. 914, 9 May 2008.) The acclaim given nism grows and develops." King be­ is the only means for delivering the King by Glover and the ILWU tops exem­ moaned the "sad fact" that "comfort" and exploited and oppressed from the capital­ plified the politics of the event. "complacency" have "driven many to ist bondage that took the place of the King was explicitly clear that in the feel that only Marxism has the revolution­ chains of slavery. And in that struggle, era of Black Power with angry black ary spirit." black workers will play a vanguard role youths and workers groping for a revolu­ That the ISO & Co. seek to boost as the section of the proletariat with the tionary solution to their oppression, he King's credentials by portraying him as a least to lose and the most to gain from a had been compelled to oppose the Viet­ "democratic socialist"-which he wasn't fundamental reshaping of the existing nam War because of growing criticism -certainly tells a lot about them. The· social order. of his hypocritical appeals for "non­ whole purpose of social democracy is to Our study of the civil rights period is violence." In response to the fake social­ tie the working class to its "own" rulers, critical to exposing those who have stood ists who concoct an "anti-imperialist" to inculcate among the workers the invi­ and continue to stand as props to the capi­ King, I'll let King speak for himself: "I olability of the capitalist state, to contain talist system, obstacles to the develop­ knew that I could never again raise radicalization and prevent revolutionary ment of revolutionary consciousness. So, my voice against the violence of the upsurge in times of social crisis. Social I will conclude by again citing the pro­ oppressed in the ghettos without having democracy is a key prop of capitalist grammatic statement of the Spartacist first spoken clearly to the greatest pur­ rule-a lesson paid for in the blood of League/U.S.: veyor of violence in the world today­ workers and imperialism's colonial slaves "The proletariat is the only revolution­ my own government." In a speech at around the world. ary class in modem society. Only the revolutionary conquest of power by the Riverside Church, King chastised John­ Today, the Soviet Union no longer multiracial working class, emancipat­ son for suppressing Vietnam's "only non­ exists, and its destruction has been accom­ ing the proletariat from the system of communist revolutionary political force, panied by a retrogression in conscious­ wage slavery, can end imperialist bar­ the unified Buddhist Church" ("Beyond ness, albeit unevenly, to the point where barity and achieve the long-betrayed Vietnam," 4 April 1967). He issued the promise of black freedom. We seek to politically advanced workers no longer build the Leninist vanguard party which timeworn appeal for "reordering our pri­ identify their struggles with the goals of is the necessary instrument for infus­ orities, so that the pursuit of peace will socialism. King got his wish. ing the working class with this under­ take precedence over the pursuit of war," But things change. The American bour­ standing, transforming it from a class this being "our greatest defense against geoisie's class war on the working masses in itself-simply defined by its relation­ ship to the means of production-to a Communism" (Martin Luther King Jr., has been so one-sided for years that class for itself, fully conscious of its his­ Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or young militants today tend to see only the toric task to seize state power and reor­ Community? [1967]). painful and pathetic reality of the racist ganize society.".

Marxists defend citizenship rights! Class-Struggle Defense Notes NO.31 reprints in itS entirety the amici curiae (friends of the Affldavrt 01 Donald Herslng PDCIICL Prot .. Court of AppN" ~ .....• Torn MMnIng: LeIIer on PrIeon Hell Declarabon 01 Unn Washington ... ReformI.taer..llClot.un.andHhl1bpCop ... ' ...... a.. MOVE.....,...... court) brief filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals Affidavrt ofTerrr Maufef-Carter ffomDNltlRow,1lII8IaMumillAbu-.lanlal: ,nHanarof ...... JoM. Daclarabon01 Vv9tteWllhams -pun.... IngL~" ...... 14 ...... Wa/lllrand~~1 by the poe and the Spartaoist league in 39 OttcIarationo!~n"thPate 24thM...... PDCHoIId.yAppMla.n.ftbo ..... 111 v.nunus.....HobeI'M.-PItzII •.•• defense of Jose Padilla. $.50 (24 pages) $1 (48 pages) Order from/pay to: Partisan Defense Committee, P.O. Box 99, Canal Street Station, New York, NY.10013 (212) 406-4252 • partisandefense@earthlink,net 49 reprinted/rom Workers --Vanguard--- No. 941,. 28 August 2009

For nearly three decades, Mumia Abu-Jamal has been imprisoned on death row. An innocent man, Mumia is a former Reformists Crawl to Obama Black Panther Party spokesman and sup­ porter of the Philadelphia MOVE organi­ and His Top Cop zation. He was framed up and convicted on charges of killing Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner in December 1981. His conviction was based on lying testimony extorted by the cops, without a shred of physical evidence. His death sen­ tence was secured on the basis of his political convictions and powerful indict­ ments of racist America as a Panther. Since then, court after court has refused to even consider the mountains of,evidence proving Mumia's innocence, including the confession of Arnold Beverly that he, not Mumia, shot Faulkner. On April 6 the U.S. Supreme Court summarily turned down Mumia's petition to overturn the frame-up conviction. Omi­ nously, it has not ruled on the Philadel­ phia district attorney's appeal to reinstate the death sentence, which was overturned by U.S. District Court Judge William Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition at NAACP convention In New York City, 2009. Yohn in 2001. Should the Supreme Court rule in favor of the D.A.'s appeal, it would fighting to assist Mumia in pursuing tern, which is based on exploitation and place Mumia a big step closer to the every legal avenue, we had no illu­ oppression, through socialist revolution. death chamber. sions that this outspoken fighter for the In contrast, the reformist left's defense The relentless campaign by the cops, oppressed could or would get any "jus­ of Mumia is, in the words of Bolshevik courts, prosecutors and judges to put tice" from the courts or any other agency revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky, defined Mumia to death or entomb him for life of the capitalist state. Our fight has been by the "framework of bourgeois society epitomizes the apparatus of state repres­ to mobilize the multiracial working class and an adaptation to its legality-i.e., the sion deployed by the rulers of this country in the U.S. and working people interna­ actual training of the masses to become against any perceived opponents. It throws tionally. The proletariat is the one force imbued with the inviolability of the bour­ a spotlight on the barbaric, racist death in this society that has the social power to geois state" (Lessons of October, 1924). penalty, a form of institutionalized state effectively challenge the capitalist rulers. For years the reformists have subordi­ terror directly descended in the U.S. from Our fight to free Mumia and abolish nated the fight for Mumia's freedom to black chattel slavery. It goes to the core of the racist death penalty is rooted in the peddling the most treacherous illusions the racist subjugation of black people in revolutionary perspective of winning the in the capitalist courts with their calls this country, which is fundamental to the working class to the understanding that for a "new," "fair" trial. Now, with the maintenance of American capitalism. It the bourgeois state is not some "neutral" judicial appeals in which they put their underlines that the fight for Mumia's free­ agency that serves society as a whole but faith all but exhausted, they shamelessly dom must be based on a class-struggle op­ rather exists to defend the class rule and go on bended knee to the Commander­ position to the racist U.S. capitalist system. profits of the capitalist class against those in-Chief of U.S. imperialism Barack It is this understanding that has infused they exploit and oppress. To put a final Obama and his top cop, Attorney General the work of the Partisan Defense Com­ halt to the grisly workings of capitalism's Eric Holder. mittee-a legal and social class-struggle machinery of death-be they guardians defense organization whose views are in of death row or the cops who operate as Reformists Beg Capitalist State accordance with the Marxist principles of "judge, jury and executioner" in gunning for '~ustice" the Spartacist League-since it took up down miHority youth on the streets­ A petition to Holder by the International Mumia's case over 20 years ago. While requires sweeping away this entire sys- Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia 50

Abu-Jamal (ICFFMAJ), the International invested almost 20 years of time and standing the NAACP's opposition to the Action Center, initiated by the Workers energy-Mumia Abu Jama\. death penalty, the key thing is to let "Had he taken a position on the case, and World Party (WWP), and the Free Mumia if not, did hc intend to do so') 'I haven't, Mumia have another day in court before Abu-Jamal roalition (NYC) appeals: only because the details of this event the rulers "snuff his life out." "Inasmuch as there is no other court to I've never studied. I'm vaguely famil­ which Abu-Jamal can appeal for justice, I iar with the fact that there's been a Mumia's Cause and the Fight tum to you for remedy .... controversy around it. So let me just for Black Freedom "I call on you and the Justice Depart­ layout a very clear principle: In my ment to immediately commence a civil mind, if somebody killed a police officer, Black oppression is structurally em­ rights investigation to examine the many they deserve the death penalty or life in bedded in American capitalism and will examples of egregious and racist prose­ prison,' he told me. not be overcome short of socialist revo­ cutorial and judicial misconduct dating "Amen to that." lution. In our struggle to free Mumia and back to the original trial in 1982 and continuing through to the current inac­ Reporting on the lobbying effort at abolish the racist death penalty, we seek tion [!] of the U.S. Supreme Court. ... the NAACP convention, an article in to win the working class to the under­ "I am aware of the many differences that the Amsterdam News (16-22 July), ex­ standing that the fight for black freedom exist between the case of former Senator plained "hope is based on the premise is central to the fight for the liberation of Ted Stevens and Mumia Abu-Jama\. that having a Black attorney general, a all of labor and the oppressed from a Still, I note with great interest the actions you have taken with regard to Senator Black president. .. will give Abu-J amal's system based on exploitation and rooted Stevens' conviction to assure that he not plight stronger consideration." The self­ in the segregation of the black masses at be denied his constitutional rights." proclaimed "communists" of WWP took the bottom of society. The petition further notes, with gro­ a second to no one in championing The fight to mobilize the social power tesque understatement of the obvious, Obama's election as "a triumph for the of the working class in struggle for that Mumia, unlike Stevens, is not "a U.S. Black masses and all the oppressed" Mumia's freedom faces many obstacles. senator of great wealth and power." No (Workers World, 20 November 2008). Integrated unions representing millions kidding. Does anyone really think that the In fact, after eight years of the widely of workers have gone on record in sup­ Justice Department hasn't spotted the dif­ despised Bush regime, Obama's election port of Mumia. But these millions have ference between a white Senator facing has provided a much-needed facelift not been mobilized in action to combat bribery charges and a black radical facing for U.S. imperialism to more effectively this racist frame-up. The responsibility the death penalty on frame-up charges of lord it over the world's working and for that lies with the pro-capitalist trade­ killing a cop? oppressed masses. In the U.S., the inau­ union misleaders, who overwhelmingly This became an all-out lobbying effort guration of America's first black presi­ refuse to call their members into action to at the centennial convention of the dent is a powerful propaganda weapon defend their economic interests, much less NAACP in New York in July, where for the U.S. rulers. The message to black in defense of a black political prisoner. Obama and Holder were keynote speak­ people and the oppressed is to shut up The bureaucracy's class-collaborationist ers. Standing outside the convention, the and eat it because the election of a black policies, which have tied the working Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition (NYC) man as president proves the "American class to its capitalist class enemy, have raised a banner pleading: "Obama & dream" works! This was exactly Ol1ama's dissipated the fighting strength of the HolderlWe Need You Now!lFree Mumia." message in his speech to the NAACP unions. The pathetic reformist and lib­ Who are they appealing to? Obama is convention. "No excuses. No excuses," eral petitioners of Obama and Holder the Commander-in-Chief of U.S. imperial­ he intoned, channeling Booker T. Wash­ similarly do their best in reinforcing ism-the most bloody and rapacious im­ ington, who over a century ago preached belief in the inherent benevolence of the perialist power on the face of the planet­ accommodation to the racist status quo capitalist state. and the overseer of the slaughter of by telling the impoverished black masses For the Spartacist League and the Par­ countless peoples in Iraq, Afghanistan to pull themselves up by their bootstraps tisan Defense Committee, the fight for and Pakistan. His attorney general is the (if they owned any). Mumia's freedom is part of the struggle warden-in-chief of the prison dungeons The reformists and liberals were suc­ to do away with a social and economic holding political prisoners such as Mumia cessful in getting the NAACP to pass system based on exploitation, increas­ and over two million people, dispropor­ a resolution calling on Holder to inves­ ingly hideous oppression and state terror. tionately blacks and Latinos. It would be tigate Mumia's case. It would be more The power to do that lies in the hands of hard to find a more savage indictment of than welcome if the NAACP put its con­ the multiracial working class, with its num­ the reformists' fundamental belief in the siderable resources in a genuine fight to bers, organization, discipline and, most im­ "democracy" of capitalist class rule. free Mumia. But this is not the political portantly, its capacity to bring the wheels The appeal for Obama to "free Mumia" purpose of the WWP et a\.'s petition for a of the capitalist profit system to a grind­ is all the more grotesque considering that civil rights investigation, which disap­ ing halt. Mobilizing that power is a ques­ he supports the death penalty. His creden­ pears the fact that Mumia is innocent and tion of building a revolutionary workers tials in this regard have been promoted by pushes illusions in the "fairness" of the party, acting as the tribune of the peo­ Philadelphia's right-wing radio broadcaster American "justice" system. This was cap­ ple that can bring to the working class Michael Smerconish. The co-author of the tured by NAACP chairman Julian Bond the consciousness of its historic interests book, Murdered by Mumia, which rehashes in an interview with Amy Goodman that to be the instrumentality to shatter the the lies concocted by the Philly cops and aired on July 20. Bond argued that Mumia power of the racist capitalist rulers and D.A.'s office to falsely convict Mumia, has "had trouble" bringing "doubts" their state. Smerconish sees Obama as an ally in his about his case "before a tribunal that can The stakes are high and the situation relentless campaign to put Mumia to say, you know, these things are true or is grim, but any real fight for Mumia's death. In a 20 August Philadelphia Daily they're not true. And we think he needs freedom must be based on a class-struggle News op-ed article, Smerconish wrote: that chance. We think he needs that opposition to the capitalist rulers, who "I was also thrilled to have the chance to chance before the state of Pennsylvania have entombed this innocent black man in question him on a subject in which I've decides to snuff his life out." I.e., notwith- prison for more than half his life .• 51 reprinted from Workers Vanguard No. 958, 7 May 2010 Full Citizenship Rights for~ All Immigants!

liIown .illl ArilOlla's liaraist lIass Law!

To be brown-skinned in the chorus orchestrated by the state of Arizona is to be a Latino organizations, Demo­ suspected criminal under the cratic Party politicians and provisions of the recently trade-union bureaucrats who enacted "Support Our Law headed the protests. Enforcement and Safe Neigh­ In a televised message to borhood Act." This apartheid­ hundreds of thousands at a style, anti-immigrant pass law March 21 immigrant rights mandates the cops to stop and rally in Washington, D.C., question anyone they think Obama promised to "build a might be an "illegal" immi­ future worthy of our history grant. Those who fail to im­ as a nation of immigrants and

mediately produce documen­ i hicago (top); a nation of laws." The ability tation proving their "right" to Top: Immigration cops unshackle rounded-up immigrants to use such honey-coated be in the United States could and expel them across Mexican border, EI Paso, Texas, words to mask a system which be arrested and thrown be­ 2009. Above: 25 April 2010 protest in Phoenix against is based on the exploitation of hind bars. This is the codifi- Arizona's racist pass law. the working class and rooted cation in law of the racist in vicious racial oppression is roundups of Latinos that have been car­ tral pillar of capitalist rule in America­ precisely what has made the Democratic ried out for years by notorious Arizona the idea that the Democratic Party is the Party the often-preferred party of the sheriff Joe Arpaio, whose prisoners are "friend" of immigrants, labor and black American bourgeoisie in times of war and shackled in chain gangs and housed in people. The 2006 rallying cry of "Today economic crisis. tent cities in the blazing heat of the desert. we march, tomorrow we vote" paid off Behind the words stands the iron fist Outrage against the Arizona law broil ght handsomely for the Democrats, who cap­ of capitalist state repression. This was out tens of thousands in protest in cities tured the overwhelming majority of the seen in Arizona only a week before the across the country on May I. But as was Latino vote in the last presidential elec­ passage of the new law, in anti-immigrant the case with the massive immigrant rights tions. This year, chants of "Sf, se puede! raids carried out by Obama's Department demonstrations on May Day 2006, the Yes, we can!", the election slogan of of Homeland Security (now headed by protest leaders are channeling this outrage today's Commander-in-Chief of U.S. former Arizona governor Janet Napoli­ into the political shell game that is a cen- imperialism, Barack Obama, were the tano). With helicopters buzzing overhead, 52 up to 800 agents from the Bureau of language edition] No. 54, Spring 1998): (SEIU) are immigrants, and many of Immigration and Customs Enforcement "Modern capitalism, i.e., imperialism, these have waged militant struggles to (LC.E.) and other police agencies, some reaching into all areas of the planet, in organize unions. But their interests are in black hoods, launched a military-style the course of the class struggle and as betrayed by the union leaders. A state­ attack on shuttle van businesses that economic need demands, brings into the ment on Arizona's anti-immigrant law by proletariat at its bottom new sources of transport immigrant workers in Phoenix, cheaper labor, principally immigrants Eliseo Medina, executive vice president Tucson, Rio Rico and Nogales. Heralded from poorer and less-developed regions of the SEIU, declared: as the biggest smuggling bust in the of the world-workers with few rights "This radical anti-immigration law should LC.E.'s history, these raids provide a who are deemed more disposable in times be a wake-up call to Congress and the of economic contraction. Thus capitalism White House. Immigration is a national chilling snapshot of the Democrats' pro­ in ongoing fashion creates different strata gram for "immigration reform." problem that needs a national solution .... among the workers, while simultaneously We need immigration policies that will As described in a Washington Post amalgamating the workers of many dif­ eliminate the underground economy by (1 May) article: "The Democrats' legis­ ferent lands. Everywhere, the capitalists, getting undocumented immigrants into lative 'framework' includes a slew of abetted by aristocracy-of-labor opportun­ the system, paying fines, back taxes, learn­ ists, try to poison class consciousness new immigration enforcement measures ing English and getting on local, state and and solidarity among the workers by federal tax rolls. We need reform that will aimed at U.S. borders and workplaces. It fomenting religious, national and ethnic truly end illegal immigration and hold would further expand the 20,000-member divisions. The struggle for the unity and bad-actor employers responsible for de­ Border Patrol; triple fines against U.S. integrity of the working class against pressing wages and violating the right to chauvinism and racism is thus a vital a safe worksite for all workers." employers who hire illegal immigrants; task for the proletarian vanguard." and, most controversially, require all We do not seek to tinker with the capi­ Likewise, AFL-CIO president Richard American workers-citizens and nonciti­ talist system by advising the bourgeoisie Trumka's statement in opposition to the zens alike-to get new Social Security to take up an alternative immigration Arizona law demanded that "our focus cards linked to their fingerprints to ease policy. We call for full citizenship rights should instead be on a comprehensive checks of their work eligibility." Obama for all immigrants as part of our strug­ solution to the broken immigration system." promised to "open a pathway to citizen­ gle to advance the class consciousness Last year, the SEIU's "Change to Win" ship" for the more than eleven million and solidarity of the multiracial working union federation and the AFL-CIO issued undocumented immigrants in this coun­ class, preparing it for the necessary revo­ a joint statement for "comprehensive im­ try. What this means is seen in the current lutionary battle to end capitalist class migration reform." Embracing the govern­ Democratic proposal that these desper­ rule. A real fight for immigrant rights in ment's campaign against undocumented ately impoverished workers turn them­ this country will only begin when the workers, these labor traitors seek only to selves in as "lawbreakers," pay heavy workers-white, black, Latino and others tinker with its methods of repression. To fines and back taxes, pass background -struggle based on their common inter­ regulate immigration, their "unified frame­ checks and be proficient in English. Even ests as a class. This means opposition work" called for "an independent commis­ then they would be granted only a provi­ to all the political parties and state agen­ sion to assess and manage future flows" sional status for eight years. cies of the capitalist class. Unlocking the of immigrant workers, leaving open the This has not shaken the reformists' social power of the multiracial working possibility of their own participation on illusions in Obama as "change" they can class will take a political fight against such a commission as the labor police for "believe in." As usual, the International the current pro-capitalist misleaders of the capitalist state. It also demanded more Socialist Organization (ISO) takes second labor who have shackled the working "rational operational control of the bor­ place to no one on this score. A 30 April class to their exploiters, particularly der" and a "secure and effective worker article in its press, Socialist Worker, opines: through support for the Democratic Party. authorization mechanism." "A conversation about really progressive Since coming to power, bankrolled immigration reform needs to start by stra­ Labor Lieutenants of the by millions in contributions from the tegizing about how to stop the Arizona Capitalist Class labor tops, the Obama administration scare, and how to force Obama, who Many of the 1.8 million members of the has expanded such "worker authorization repeatedly has recognized that the system Service Employees International Union mechanisms" as the E-Verify program, is broken, to stop deportations"! This, they argue, "can buy time for the move­ ment to push for legislation ... that puts the interests of the entire working class, im­ migrant and native-born alike, up front." The hard truth is that the capitalist system is based on the brutal exploitation of all labor, with the ruling class inflaming racial and ethnic hostilities to keep the working class divided and thus ensure a greater extraction of profit. Just as immi­ grant workers are brought in during eco­ nomic boom times to provide a pool of low-wage labor, the current rise in anti­ immigrant attacks worldwide is exacerbated by the global economic crisis and its atten­ dant soaring unemployment. As we wrote in the International Communist League's "Declaration of Principles and Some Ele­ ments of Program" (Spartacist [English- Spartacist banner at Los Angeles demonstration for immigrant rights, March 2006. 53

which is aimed at confirming the legal status of workers through checking their Social Security numbers against gov­ ernment databases. At one workplace after another, mass firings of immigrant workers have followed such audits. Last year, 254 workers, mostly women, at the food processing plant Overhill Farms and another 1,500 at clothing maker American Apparel, both in the Los Ange­ les area, were driven out of their jobs after these so-called "desktop raids." The Obama administration boasts that in its first year it deported a record number of "illegals." Such raids are an open invitation to get rid of union activists and other "trouble­ makers." In 2006, the bosses at Smith­ field's pork processing plant in Tar Heel, Obama's Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano at Southern North Carolina, tried to stop a fight fornia's Otay Mesa port of entry, April 2009. for union recognition by firing 75 "no match" workers. A two-day walkout that tial (TWIC) program, such biometric ID must be led by a different kind of leader­ included black and white workers as well cards have already been mandated for ship, one rooted in a program of class struggle, as opposed to the present mis­ as Latinos forced the company to rehire hundreds of thousands of workers at the leaders whose policies of class collabora­ everyone. The workers won their union in ports. To qualify for a TWIC card, all port tion increasingly subordinate the unions late 2008, but by that time LC.E. work­ workers had to submit to extensive crimi­ to the capitalist state." place raids had driven out a significant nal background and immigration checks. When the ILWU embraces TWIC, number of the immigrant workers. For black and Latino port workers, who making itself an auxiliary to the racist The battle at Smithfield underlines have been particularly targeted under the crackdown on the port truckers; when the the need for a mass, militant union racist "war on drugs," even applying for auto unions lobby for the bosses' bailout organizing drive throughout the country the card meant running the risk of pos­ schemes, pledging to lower the cost of and particularly in the open shop South. sible deportation or being pursued as union labor to rival the depressed wages Only 6.5 percent of workers in Arizona, some kind of "fugitive from justice." The and rotten conditions in non-union plants; a notorious "right-to-work" state, are applications of tens of thousands of port when the powerful Teamsters union organized. Now, in response to the new workers were rejected, although some pleads that "unsafe" Mexican truckers anti-immigrant law, an article in the eventually won their cases on appeal. should be barred from America's high­ Phoenix Business Journal (30 April) An unknown number of longshore and ways: the conservative bureaucrats are reports that SEIU union representatives other port workers are permanently gone, lining up against the basic class inter­ "say they are seeing a surge in inquiries branded as a threat to "national security" ests of the international proletariat. Their from Hispanic workers in Arizona wor­ for trivial offenses like drug possession highest loyalty is to capitalist profitability ried about the new law and the potential with "intent" to distribute, or just being on behalf of their own racist ruling class, for more police raids and inquiries into an "illegal" immigrant. whose benefits are supposed to "trickle their workplaces." Enlisting immigrant Rather than fighting this "anti-terror" down." This means pitting workers workers-many of whom have a history law, the response of the leaders of the against one another in competition for of militant struggle in their own coun­ International Longshore and Warehouse crumbs and increasing poverty and un­ tries-in the front ranks of the labor Union-which is still widely seen as a employment, especially for the most vul­ movement is an urgent task both to fight bastion of labor power and militancy­ nerable social layers. the exploitation of the most vulner­ was to call for a more expedient and able layers of the population and to bust "fair" implementation of the TWIC pro­ Black Rights and the government's anti-union laws. This gram! As we wrote in "'War on Terror' Immigrant Rights in turn could reverse the decades-long Crackdown on the Docks" (WV No. 936, Calls for an economic boycott of Ari­ decline of the trade unions in this country. 8 May 2009): zona have come from a variety of Demo­ Rather than defending the working class "For the ILWU and other longshore cratic Party politicians, ranging from the as a whole or even members of their own unions to wage a real fight against TWIC San Francisco city government to New and the racist, union-busting 'war on ter­ unions, the union bureaucracy embraces ror' laws, the obvious starting point must York's AI Sharpton, with the reformist the "national" interests of the U.S. capi­ be opposition to the very state that is left, such as Workers World Party, bring­ talist rulers as its own. enforcing these laws. It means champion­ ing up the rear with the demand that capi­ The Democrats' "immigration reform" ing full citizenship rights for all immi­ talist investors and businesses "divest plans include the institution of a national grants and fighting to organize foreign­ from the apartheid-like police state!" The born workers .... In a country built on the biometric identity card for everyone in SUbjugation of black people, where racist last time there were appeals for such a the United States. This will increase the reaction has long served to ratchet up boycott was in response to the refusal of police-state powers and repressive appa­ the exploitation of the working class as the Arizona state administration to recog­ ratus of the capitalist state, which have a whole, the fight for black freedom is nize Martin Luther King's birthday as directly linked to the fight to break the already been vastly augmented under the chains of capitalist wage slavery and the an official holiday. That refusal, together so-called "war on terror." Under the state forces and laws that maintain it. But with the state's apartheid-style, anti­ Transportation Workers Identity Creden- to wage that kind of struggle, the unions immigration law, captures something of 54 the history of Arizona. This history is in Minuteman militias to patrol the borders A sign read "We Latinos Are the Jews turn emblematic of the racial oppression against "illegals." of the 21 st Century." Only two weeks ear­ of blacks and anti-immigrant reaction that Now, Sharpton-a political hustler lier, a gang of Hitler-loving Nazis staged are central to the maintenance of Ameri­ who mobilized against Korean-owned an anti-immigrant, race-hate rally in can capitalism. grocery stores in Brooklyn before he Los Angeles to "Reclaim the Southwest." Until the Mexican-American War of became a more "respectable" Democratic They were protected by hundreds of L.A. 1846-48, Arizona like most of the South­ Party politician-bombastically declares cops, mobilized by the mayor's office, west was part of Mexico. It was in large "we will bring Freedom Walkers to Ari­ against a protest by about a thousand anti­ measure the Southern slavocracy's drive zona just like Freedom Riders went to the fascists. The trade-union mis1eaders, in a to extend slavery that motivated the inva­ deep south 50 years ago" (New York Daily city where immigrant workers have been sion of Mexico, which resulted in the News, 26 April). The courageous civil in the forefront of union organizing over U.S. stealing. half of Mexico's territory. rights struggles of the 1960s led to the the past two decades, turned a blind eye Today, Latinos-largely Mexicans and elimination of formal Jim Crow segrega­ to this deadly fascist provocation. The Mexican Americans-make up more than tion in the South. But the promise of fascists should have been stopped by 30 percent of the state's population. black freedom was betrayed by the lead­ a militant mass mobilization of working Although black people are a mere 4.2 per­ ers of the civil rights movement, who tied people and oppressed led by the labor cent of Arizona's popUlation, the state has their fortunes to the Democratic Party and movement. Labor's inaction spelled an long been a bastion of anti-black racism. were bought off for token concessions unqualified defeat for the working class, Barry Goldwater, five-term Arizona Sena­ and a few "black faces in high places." the bitter fruit of the labor bureaucracy's tor and Republican candidate for presi­ Today, Sharpton's invocation of these allegiance to the Democratic Party. dent in 1964, voted against the 1964 Civil heroic freedom riders is aimed at enforc­ The working class needs its own party, Rights Act. For decades Goldwater was ing the rule of racist American capitalism a multiracial revolutionary workers party. an icon of a right-wing backlash against in its Democratic Party face. It is the purpose of the Spartacist League/ black rights, unions and any and all social A keynote speaker at the 50,000-strong U.S. to forge such a party, which, through welfare programs. In the past decade, Ari­ immigrant rights protest in Los Angeles education and in the course of sharp class zona has been on the cutting edge of anti­ on May Day was the city's Latino Demo­ struggle, can make the working class con­ immigrant reaction, spawning vigilante cratic Party mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. scious not only of its social power but also of its historic interest as the grave­ digger of the vicious and depraved rule of capitalist imperialism. Crucial to International Communist League building such a party in the U.S. is the (Fourth Internationalist) understanding of the inextricable link between the fight for labor's emancipa­ International Center: Box 7429 GPO, New York, NY 10116, USA tion, the defense of immigrant rights and Web site: www.icl-fi.org the cause of black freedom. When the Spartacist League of Australia ...... Spartacist League, GPO Box 3473 wealth of this country is in the hands of Sydney NSW 2001, Australia the working class that produced it, we Spartacist League/Britain ...... Spartacist Publications will begin the construction of a social­ PO Box 42886 ist planned economy which will provide London N19 5WY, Britain Trotskyist League of Canada/ the material basis for the eradication Ligue trotskyste du Canada ...... Spartacist Canada Publishing Assoc. of black oppression. Grounded in a pro­ Box 6867, Station A gram of revolutionary internationalism, a Toronto, Ontario M5W 1X6, Canada workers government will begin to right Spartakist-Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands .... SpAD, c/o Verlag Avantgarde the historical crimes of U.S. imperialism, Postfach 2 35 55 for example by returning to Mexico the 10127 Berlin, Germany predominantly Spanish-speaking areas Ligue trotskyste de France ...... Le Bolchevik, BP 135-10 along the border. Such a gesture would 75463 Paris Cedex 10, France be the sharpest possible repudiation of Trotskyist Group of Greece ...... Box 8274, Athens 10010, Greece the social-patriotic politics of the pres­ Spartacist Group Ireland ...... PO Box 2944, Dublin 6, Ireland ent American labor movement and a con­ crete demonstration of the international­ Lega trotskista d'italia ...... Walter Fidacaro, Ufficio Milano Cordusio ist program to smash the imperialist Casella Postale 1591, 20123 Milano (MI), Italy world order. Spartacist Group Japan ...... Spartacist Group Japan As we wrote in a 2006 joint declaration PO Box 49, Akabane Yubinkyoku of the SLIV.S. and our comrades of the Kita-ku, Tokyo 115-0091, Japan Grupo Espartaquista de Mexico (GEM), Grupo Espartaquista de Mexico ...... Roman Burgos, Apdo. Postal 006 written to intervene into the mass immi­ Adm6n. Postal 13, CP 03501 Mexico, D.F., Mexico grant rights demonstrations held that year: "The multiracial U.S. working class Spartakusowska Grupa Polski ...... Jan Jedrzejewski, Skr. 148 02-588 Warszawa 48, Poland is potentially the most powerful ally of Mexican workers. The SLlU.S. and the Spartacist/South Africa ...... Spartacist, PostNet Suite 248 GEM are dedicated to forging revolu­ Private Bag X2226 Johannesburg 2000, South Africa tionary workers parties on both sides of the border as part of the fight to reforge Spartacist League/U.S ...... Spartacist League, Box 1377 GPO New York, NY 10116, USA Trotsky's Fourth International, world party of socialist revolution.". 55 reprinted from ------Workers Vanguard-- No. 962, 30 Jul.v 2010 Haiti: Mass Misery Under Imperialist Occupation

Times Left: Hundreds of families live in shanties on median strip in Port-au-Prince six months after earthquake. Right: Protesters in front of National Palace demand that UN forces leave and President Rene Preval resign, 25 May 2010.

In the six months National Police and since the devastating were moved out at earthquake struck the All U.S.fUN Troops Out! gunpoint. People are Haitian capital of Port­ in deadly fear of the au-Prince, killing some hurricane season, with 250,000 people and destroying 100,000 depredation that left the country totally many living precariously on eroded hill­ homes, the suffering of the Haitian masses exposed to the quake's impact, as shod­ sides that could easily be wiped out by a has only deepened. A week after the dily built buildings in the teeming city mudslide. Only a few of the promised quake, imperialist occupiers led by the collapsed. Today, some 1.5 million peo­ hurricane-resistant shelters have been U.S. signaled what they had in store for ple are still living in makeshift tents­ built. Other people have fled to the abject the Haitian masses when police in a joint often no more than four sticks and poverty of the countryside. UN-Haitian operation fired into crowded bedsheets-in camps in and around the Some elements associated with the prison cells in the southern city of Les capital. With virtually no means of trans­ occupation have swooped down like vul­ Cayes, killing at least 12. port, many of these people are hours tures to reap the spoils of "reconstruc­ While the last of the 20,000 U.S. troops from the city center. In this utterly tion." In the town of Ganthier, 18 miles that were dispatched to Haiti in the guise impoverished country, where the unem­ east of the capital, private developers of a "relief effort" have been withdrawn, ployment rate reached as high as 80 per­ have laid claim to state land that has 500 American National Guardsmen are cent before the quake, this means that been used to grow food for 80 years, stationed there. The country remains few have even the hope of being able to driving peasants off with bulldozers. under military occupation by the UN find any work. Those who resisted were beaten and force known as MINUSTAH, which has People who had sought refuge on golf arrested, along with the mayor. run Haiti since 2004. Headed by the Bra­ courses, parks or other facilities were The Haitian Parliament has officially zilian military, more than 10,000 UN forcibly relocated to barren-land where ceded power over aid money and recon­ troops and police are imposing "order" on there are no basic services like water and struction to the Interim Commission for a starving, homeless population, brutally sanitation, where the dust and heat are the Reconstruction of Haiti, headed by repressing social protest and rebuilding unbearable and where a strong wind could Bill Clinton, placing control of what the machinery of repression on behalf of easily destroy their shelters. More than exists of an economy in this shattered Haiti's imperialist masters. 1,200 families camped in the Sylvio country in the hands of the IMF, World The earthquake's death toll was itself Cator soccer stadium had their tents Bank and other imperialist agencies. These a product of over a century of imperialist destroyed without warning by the Haitian are the same forces that have repeatedly 56 imposed drastic austerity measures on the Haitian population while enforcing pri­ vatization and other "free trade" policies that have ruined local agriculture and most of what little industrial production had existed. The "development" that Clin­ ton & Co. talk about centers on expand­ ing garment and other sweatshop produc­ tion. Workers in those shops are paid starvation wages, often less than the offi­ cial minimum salary of roughly $3 a day. Half a year after the quake, only some 2 percent of pledged reconstruction aid has been delivered and less than 5 percent of the rubble has been removed. Aid was never the point of the U.S. intervention into Haiti. The International Executive Committee of the International Commu­ nist League issued an April 27 statement repudiating our initial position justify­ ing the U.S. imperialist troop presence Reuters as essential to aid, a social-patriotic be­ 1 February 2010: U.S. troops push through crowds of desperate people trayal of Marxist principle. We wrote: waiting for food coupons in downtown Port-au-Prince. "The U.S. military invasion was designed to provide a 'humanitarian' face-lift to and other foreigners to safety" (New York in 1957. Duvalier organized the Tonton bloody U.S. imperialism and was aimed Times, 17 January). At the same time, the Macoutes paramilitary thugs and oversaw at securing U.S. military control in Haiti Obama administration ordered a naval the killing of 50,000 of his opponents. The and reasserting American imperialist dom­ blockade to prevent Haitians from flee­ bloodletting continued under his son "Baby ination over the Caribbean" (WVNo. 958, ing to the U.S., with Air Force flights Doc," who went on to face a popular revolt 7 May). broadcasting a Creole-language warning that caused him to flee the country in U.S. military authorities who took from Haiti's ambassador to the U.S. that 1986, when others in his cabal took over. command of the Port-au-Prince airport American forces would "intercept" any­ The massive social discontent eventu­ prevented the World Food Program from one fleeing by boat and "send you back ally led to the election of radical populist landing cargos of food, medicine and home." priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide, champion water for two days, diverting their flights We demand an end to the UN occupa­ of the Lavalas movement, by a two-thirds "so that the United States could land tion of Haiti and call for all imperialist majority in 1990. Virtually the entire left troops and equipment, and lift Americans troops and police forces out now! We call internationally gave this bourgeois politi­ for full citizenship rights for all Haitians cian political support. In contrast, we and other refugees and immigrants who warned: "Aristide will either play the role have made it to the U.S. No deportations! of groveling instrument of the Haitian bourgeoisie and the U.S. imperialist over­ Neocolonial Haiti: lords or he will be swept away in a reac­ Subjugation and Devastation tionary crackdown aimed at decisively For 200 years, the Haitian masses have disciplining the pitilessly oppressed popu­ been paying in blood for the revolution lation" (WVNo. 517,4 January 1991). In carried out under Toussaint L'Ouverture fact, both things happened. against the French colonial slavocracy. While the Aristide government tried to Culminating in the creation of the first carry out such reforms as raising the mis­ independent black state in the modern erable minimum wage, as a bourgeois era, the Haitian Revolution inspired slave regime it served the class interests of the revolts across the Americas and met with ruling elite of sweatshop owners and a frenzy of racist hostility from both landowners and their imperialist patrons. France and the then-slaveowning U.S. In Before his election Aristide often de­ return for recognition by France, Haiti was nounced U.S. imperialism's role in Haiti. compelled to compensate the former slave­ But once in office he welcomed US AID owners in an amount measuring $20 bil­ and IMF assistance, boasting that he lion at today's prices. The country remains would "restore the World Bank's confi­ hideously impoverished to this day. dence in Haiti." The occupation this January was the Seven months after taking office, Aris­ Slack History fourth carried out by the U.S. in the past tide was overthrown by the man he ap­ and the Class Struggle century. U.S. troops occupied Haiti from pointed as military chief, Raoul Cedras, 1915-1934, drowning an anti-imperialist who established a regime of military ter­ No.6· $1 (32 pages} revolt in blood. The U.S. installed and ror and forced Aristide into exile. Some Make checks payable/mail to: then propped up a series of brutal, corrupt 2,000 people were killed in the immedi­ spartaclst Pub. Co., Box 1377 GPO dictatorships, most infamously that of ate aftermath. Thousands fled to the U.S. New York, NY 10116 Franc;ois "Papa Doc" Duvalier beginning in rickety boats only to be imprisoned in 57

Guantanamo. In 1994. following a starva­ tary forces and bases out of the Carib­ instances \\ hen the {l.S. forced policies tion embargo imposed by the U.S. under bean! U.S. out of Guantanamo' U.S. impe­ down their throats that ruined their liveli­ Clinton, American Marines invaded the rialists: Hands off the world! hoods. After the Clinton White House country and reinstalled Aristide at bayo­ compelled Haiti to drop tariffs on im­ net point. Anger at Occupation Grows ports. suhsidized U.S. rice flooded the The condition for Aristide's return was Thousands of Haitians fed up by for­ Haitian market. bankrupting many peas­ that he agree to a drastic austerity pro­ eign occupation and Preval's puppet ants. Earlier. the U.S. had pressured the gram, privatization of state-owned indus­ government have staged protests recently Haitian government to wipe out the Cre­ try, massive layoffs in the public sector in the face of brutal repression. Dem­ ole pigs indigenous to the country on the and the virtual abolition of import tariffs. onstrations in May in Port-au-Prince pretext that they might be infected with All this he did, inducing the collapse of brought out an estimated 30,000 peo­ swine flu. The U.S. substituted its own Haiti's economy while setting the police, ple demanding free elections, a role pigs, which could not survive the Haitian supplemented by gangs, against strikers in reconstruction efforts and the return climate. and others. Nonetheless, his Washington of Aristide. Demonstrators have also The only way out of the misery im­ overlords were not satisfied. After an called for ending the ban of his Fanmi posed on neocolonial Haiti lies through interim regime under Rene Preval-the Lavalas party, which is barred from run­ proletarian socialist revolution through­ current nominal president-Aristide was ning in the national elections scheduled out the Caribbean and. crucially, in the re-elected in 2000 only to face a U.S.-led for November. We defend the right of North American imperialist heartland. destabilization campaign. To Washing­ people to vote for whomever they want. But the social base for workers revolu­ ton's chagrin, Aristide developed ties We demand the right of Aristide to return tion is exceedingly narrow in a country with the Cuban deformed workers state, to Haiti and oppose the ban on Fanmi as destitute and ground down as Haiti. which has provided crucial medical per­ Lavalas, despite our political opposition Struggles by the Haitian masses against sonnel for Haiti, and with Venezuela as Marxists to this populist party. imperialist depredation must be linked to under bourgeois populist Hugo Chavez. On May 4, after students at the State class and social struggle in the neighbor­ In 2004, "peacekeeping" troops led University Ethnology College in the ing Dominican Republic. where Haitians mainly by the U.S., Canada and France capital held a series of protests against are a sizable component of the prole­ landed in Haiti and Aristide was whisked the occupation, MINUSTAH troops tariat, and elsewhere in the Caribbean. It out on a U.S.-chartered jet to the Central stormed the campus, firing tear gas and is especially crucial that workers in the African Republic. (He later moved to rubber bullets and arresting militant stu­ belly of the U.S. imperialist beast-and South Africa.) dent leader Frantz Mathieu Junior. Faced in Canada as well-wage class struggle Ever since the 2004 coup, the UN's with the growing unrest, the UN is send­ against their "own" capitalist rulers. MINUSTAH troops have backed violent ing 680 additional foreign policemen Our perspective-for a workers and assaults by the Haitian police on poor to augment the MINUSTAH force. The peasants government in Haiti as part of a communities and on demonstrations de­ international workers movement must de­ socialist federation of the Caribbean-is manding Aristide's return. UN forces mand: Free all victims of military/police inextricably linked to the fight for the have participated in a number of "anti­ repression! revolutionary overthrow of U.S. imperi­ gang" raids on Cite Soleil, an Aristide Unrest has spread to the countryside. alism. In diaspora, Haitians, Jamaicans bastion, and other slum neighborhoods in On June 4, 10,000 peasants protested and others can play a crucial role as a Port-au-Prince. Attacks in December 2004 against the American agribusiness giant bridge to the rest of the American prole­ and December 2006, with hundreds of Monsanto, which had donated 475 tons tariat. particularly to other black work­ troops moving into Cite Solei! by land, sea of maize. They fear having to buy new ers. The key is to build revolutionary and air, left scores of residents dead. Dur­ seeds from Monsanto every year at workers parties-sections of a reforged ing hunger riots in 2008, UN troops fired prices they cannot afford. Haitian peas­ Fourth International-to lead the work­ on crowds, killing several demonstrators. ants have bitter memories of previous ers in this struggle._ The imperialist intervention under­ taken by the Obama White House shored up this bloody occupation force while also demonstrating to the world that the International Communist League ;theDliYelopin.nt and ExtenSion If:; U.S. continues to regard the Caribbean pamphlet comprising three articles leon Trotsky's Theory basin as an "American lake." Under both from ICL press: "The Development George W. Bush and Barack Obama, the and Extension of Leon Trotsky's of Permanent Revolution U.S. has expanded its military presence in Theory of Permanent Revolution," "A Trotskyist Critique of Germany Colombia, where there are now seven 1923 and the Comintern" and U.S. bases. The government of Costa "Down With Executive Offices of the Rica this month authorized the entry of Capitalist State!" These articles 46 U.S. warships and 7,000 Marines, together constitute an introduction while the U.S.-backed government in to the historically founded principles Honduras opened a new base for Ameri­ and program of Trotskyism can use in April. The U.S. military (i.e., genuine Marxism). buildup in the region is a particular threat to the Cuban bureaucratically deformed workers state. We defend Cuba uncondi­ $2 (56 pages) tionally against U.S. imperialism while Make checkS payable/mail to: fighting for a proletarian political revo­ Spartacist Publishing Co. lution against the nationalist Stalinist Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 bureaucracy. We demand: All U.S. mili- 58 reprinted from Workers Vanguard No. 963,27 Augusf 20JO Shirley Sherrod ThlOWIll Ilildel Ihe Bus Obama: CEO of Racist American Capitalism Shirley Sherrod's forced Now, with a black man as resignation from her USDA president and in the context (Department of Agriculture) of the economic woes that are post on July 19 was but the ravaging most Americans (and latest slap in the face to especially black people), and America's black population with no appreciable social by the Obama administra­ struggle to try to offset those tion. Sherrod's departure also woes, racist reactionaries feel caused no small amount of less and less constrained to distress for Democratic Party hide behind the fiction of liberals, black spokesmen and "reverse discrimination." the reformist left, all of whom Shortly before the March had sold the lie that Obama's 20 Congressional vote on ascension to office marked Obama's health care bill, Tea a historic turning point in the Party protesters yelled the "N" struggle of the black mass­ Times word at civil rights veteran es against their oppression. Evicted tenant with belongings on Milwaukee street last winter. John Lewis and other black Based on a phony report of Congressmen and spat on supposedly racist remarks made by Sherrod offer of another government job. another while confronting openly gay at an NAACP event in March concerning a The Tea Party is simply the most recent Congressman Barney Frank with homo­ 24-year-old incident-a report issued by manifestation of good old American racist, phobic slurs. Laura Schlessinger's recent the notorious con man and Tea Party dema­ nativist reaction. The Tea Party's roots go efforts to capture the Guinness record for gogue Andrew Breitbart-Obama's admin­ back to the racist backlash against the lim­ use of the "N" word on the radio; South istration instantly swung into action, brow­ ited gains for blacks and women that re­ Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham's pro­ beating Sherrod by phone, while she was sulted from the civil rights movement and posal to modify the 14th Amendment, driving her car, into immediately submitting other social upheavals of the I 960s. As we which gave citizenship to black freedmen her resignation with her Blackberry. wrote in Part One of "Economic Crisis and following the Civil War, so that U.S.-born The NAACP under its president Ben the Capitalist State" (WV No. 96 1.2 July): children of immigrants are excluded from Jealous promptly endorsed this action. 'That backlash eventually took the form citizenship; the recent Tea Party anti­ Having been chastised about its complaints of opposition to 'big government' -iden­ immigrant mobilization on the Arizona­ of overt Tea Party racism, the NAACP took tified with court-ordered racial integra­ Mexico border: all are testimony to the ex­ tion in the public schools, giving jobs to pains to remove any taint of supposed blacks and women under affirmative action acerbation of open racist/white chauvinism "reverse racism," intoning: "Racism is programs and handing out welfare money fueled by these types. To take as good about the abuse of power. Sherrod had it in to poor black women and their children (a coin reports of black "racism" from such her position at USDA. According to her demagogic lie since relatively few gov­ sources is not that far from accepting a remarks, she mistreated a white farmer in ernment funds went to the poor, black fascist expose of bloodless Christian babies or white). This boiled over into the 'tax need of assistance because of his race. We revolt' of the late 1970s ... which pro­ found in the basements of synagogues. are appalled by her actions, just as we are pelled Ronald Reagan into the White It is no less guileless to accept Obama's with abuses of power against farmers of House and began the ascendancy of the pretense that he was unaware of the actions color and female farmers." A couple of Republican right in national politics." taken to dump Sherrod. He has bent over days later, when the report was revealed to For some time it has been the norm in backward to address each and every com­ be a Tea Party fraud and the white farmer bourgeois politics to portray programs plaint from these quarters, ditching the spoke out in Sherrod's defense, the admin­ offering even the tiniest amelioration of Rev. Jeremiah Wright for excoriating istration and the NAACP raced to apolo­ the black masses' wretched conditions as American racism at the beginning of his gize to the onetime civil rights activist. "reverse discrimination," with the corol­ campaign and firing Van Jones, a black Sherrod has since accepted their apolo­ lary that blacks are painted as "racist" for administration official who dared to pro­ gies while refusing the administration's protesting discrimination and deprivation. claim the innocence of death row politi- 'Tea Party: Spearmeall aillaajat Reaatian 59 cal prisoner Mumia Abu-lamal, last year. ceded tu the cIlil righls !i10Yc':l1elit dUring Nor should one forget Obama's attempt, the Lyndon lohnson pre'>idency. The only over a cold one, to educate Harvard pro­ change Obarna has offered in L S. impe­ fessor Henry Louis Gates lr. and the cop rialism's wars of conquest has been to who rousted him for attempting to enter select a different one to focus on. Mean­ his own home, in the Miss Manners ap­ while those facing the vicissitudes of the proach to black-police community rela­ grinding depression arc offered nothing, tions. That was an attempt to placate the while the bankers are as\ured of salvation. nationwide outrage from law enforce­ Obama may compare poorly to Franklin ment officials over the president's initial Delano Roosevelt, although in reality the statement that the cop had acted stupidly. immediate impact of their respective anti­ At least the relatives of Oscar Grant-a depression measures is comparahle. Nei­ young black worker killed in cold blood ther significantly addressed the plight of by a white transit cop in Oakland in 2009 rkers Vanguard America's toiling and poor people. although -were spared Obama's revolting pieties. Oakland, 8 July 2010: Protest against Roosevelt's occasional demagogic critiques There were outcries of protest over Sher­ verdict in racist cop killing of Oscar of the fat cats gave some solace to capital­ rod's firing from those who have promoted Grant ism's unfortunate victims. Obama simply Obama. Perhaps none of those were more is what he is, his skin color notwithstand­ apologetic for Obama's rush to judgment ist Organization (ISO) and other refor­ ing: the overseer of the most deadly and than that of black author and political mists are publicizing the "One Nation" exploitative imperialist order on the planet. commentator Earl Ofari Hutchinson. "If march on Washington on October 2, a Following his election, we wrote in Obama talked candidly about race and mobilization being heavily built by the pro­ "Obama: CEO of Bankrupt American tried to spark a dialogue on race as some capitalistAFL-CIO union bureaucracy. The Capitalism" (WV No. 930, 13 February clamor for him to do," Hutchinson wrote call for that action pompously proclaims 2009): "The bourgeoisie will hardly spend in a 22 July Internet posting, "it would that the march will "charge up an army of money on improving the condition of the turn his administration into a referendum tens of thousands of activists who will masses unless it is forced to do so. Espe­ on race, This would turn the GOP and return to their neighborhoods, churches, cially since the counterrevolution in the tea party counterinsurgency into a red hot schools and, especially, voting booths, with fonner Soviet Union in 1991-92, capital­ fire. Obama's rush to judgment on Sher­ new energy to enact our common agenda. ists internationally have sought to increase rod had nothing to do with fear and only And on the same day, the labor movement their competitiveness against their rivals tangentially with a terrible misread of the will walk door-to-door in targeted states by taking an ax to whatever gains work­ information about her purported racial around the country, bringing the same mes­ ers have been able to achieve." Shortly statement. It had everything to do with sage to union members exactly one month before, Obama had given an interview to the price of White House governance. before the fall elections." the Washington Post (16 January 2009), The price is a politically constricted, race The ISO, in an article by Keeanga which reported his intention "to rein in neutral presidency." Thus black people Yamahtta Taylor in Socialist Worker (28 health-care costs, stabilize Social Secu­ are told that the price they must pay for July), intones: "Without a politically inde­ rity and prevent the Medicare program Obama's ascendancy to the White House pendent, activist challenge to the right­ from bankrupting the government." is, simply, to shut up and take it. wing lies and distortions about racism­ It is Obama's job as chief executive of Few commentaries were more poignant and the liberal acquiescence to them-the the U.S. capitalist state to administer the than that of black New York Times colum­ right will continue to shape and dominate race/caste oppression of black people that nist Bob Herbert, who wrote in a 23 July the debates and discussions about racism. is built into this country's economy and is op-ed piece titled "Thrown to the Wolves": And that will make it impossible to have invaluable to the rulers as an obstacle to "Black people are in a terrible condition 'civil and human rights in this country'." unified struggle against the predatory capi­ right now--economically, socially, educa­ These fight-the-right sentiments were ex­ talist order. That order must be combated tionally and otherwise-and there is no pressed in the same fashion by the same by working-class and social struggle. It effective champion fighting for their inter­ liberals and leftish groups two years ago must be overthrown through proletarian ests. Mr. Jealous and the new edition of the during Obama's campaign. This political socialist revolution. But it must be remem­ N.A.A.C.P. have shown in this episode that stutter is no accident. The bourgeois lib­ bered that during the massive strikes of the they are not ready for prime time, and Pres­ erals and their left hangers-on are the 1930s and the social struggles of the 1950s ident Obama seems reluctant to even utter apostles of reforming the racist, blood­ and '60s. the predecessors oftoday's liber­ the word black. Or poor, for that matter." soaked American imperialist order, and als and reformists no less than now plied The answer posed by Herbert was consid­ they display the persistence of Pepe Le their trade: the binding of the outraged erably less than inspiring: "There is no way Pew in their pursuit of this fantasy. masses to the reforn1 pretenses and candi­ we'll overcome those divisions if people To be sure, there seems to be no com­ dates of the Democratic Party. then and now who should know better keep bowing promise or concession this president will the other main party of the bosses' rule. before and kowtowing to the toxic agenda not consider. But it is not his lack of spine It requires the forging of an interna­ of those on the right whose overriding goal that renders him bankrupt in dealing with tionalist, revolutionary Trotskyist working­ is to foment hostility and hate." the agonies faced by working and black class party to relentlessly expose the The liberals who promoted Obama for people. Obama, America's first black treachery of the would-be reformers of the presidency wish he would pay them president, was elected after decades dur­ capitalist anarchy and to lead the working more attention and hang with them, per­ ing which social struggle withered and class and dispos~cssed to consign imperi­ haps while shooting some hoops. The fake militant strike activity all but disappeared. alism to the graveyard of history. And in this socialists, who touted him as an agent of According to him, the racial oppression country, the main banner of such a party positive change, want to force him to do of black people has been all but com­ must be: Finish the Ci\ il War! For black the right thing. The International Social- pletely put to rest by the changes con- freedom through socialist revolution!. 60 reprinted from Workers Vanguard No. 965, 24 September 2010

No Deportations! For Full Citizenship Rights! France: Down With Racist Anti-Roma Campaign!

Since July, the French government has been carrying out a witchhunt against the gens du voyage (literally "traveling peo­ ple," the common French name for all Gypsies) and massively deporting Roma. As citizens of the European Union (EU), these Gypsies from Central Europe (com­ ing in particular from Romania and Bul­ garia) are supposed to have a legal right to travel and work in any EU country. According to the French minister of the interior, the government has already destroyed 441 Gypsy encampments and expelled at least 1,000 Roma since the end of July. On September 4, at least 100,000 demonstrators rallied throughout France and some other European cities in liberal protests against this racist campaign. These deportations are an aspect of multi-sided and brutal attacks on the work­ ing class and all the oppressed. In the framework of the worldwide economic crisis, capitalist governments throughout 14 August 2010: Roma in MontreUil, east of Paris, face riot police following Europe are going after the living stan­ expulsion from building. dards of their own working people in order to improve their competitive position On September 14, the French parlia­ secution of this minority by capitalist against rival imperialists (see "Economic ment passed a law forbidding women to governments throughout Europe. Crisis and the Capitalist State," WV Nos. wear the face-covering Muslim niqab or As recently as April, the German gov­ 961 and 963,2 July and 27 August 2010). burqa in public, and the next day it passed ernment initiated a plan to deport 10,000 At the same time, in every country the a law canceling subsidies to immigrant Roma who had been living in the country rulers offer up immigrants and minorities families if their children miss school. for the past ten years to Kosovo, where as scapegoats for rising unemployment, Earlier this year, a government official, unemployment is currently 45 percent. playing the old game of "divide and rule." lashing out at North African and African In July, Denmark summarily expelled a On September 7, three million work­ Muslims, even threatened to strip away group of persons identified by Copen­ ers all over France participated in a day the citizenship of any person of "foreign hagen's lord mayor as "criminal Roma." of strikes and demonstrations called by origin" accused of polygamy. In 2008 in Italy, a wave of roundups trade unions against the dismantling of The singling out of the Roma as a and deportations of Roma was launched retirement pensions. This massive turnout specific ethnic group has been met with by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, showed the proletariat's will to fight to cynical protests by the United Nations who claimed the country was endan­ defend its gains. But the workers are sad­ and the EU. In August, the UN Com­ gered by "irregular third-country citizens dled with a treacherous reformist leader­ mittee on the Elimination of Racial and nomads" (see "Italian Trotskyists ship that accepts the reactionary notion Discrimination urged France to "avoid" Say: Mobilize Labor Power in Defense of a supposed "common interest" that the collective deportations. Meanwhile, the of Roma, Immigrants'" WV No. 922, 10 working class and the bosses have in safe­ EU's justice and citizenship commission October 2008). guarding the profits of French capitalism. called the expulsions a "disgrace" and What triggered the European commis­ Such a leadership is incapable of leading threatened legal action against the French sion's expression of wrath was the recent a fight to defend the most oppressed sec­ government. But the current deportations disclosure that, contrary to government tions of the population against the bour­ of Roma from France are only the most assurances that specific ethnic groups geoisie and its government. recent. and visible, manifestations of per- had not been targeted in France, a French 61

Interior Ministry circular had in fact ordered e\acuation of camps of Roma "as a priority." This led EU justice com­ missioner Viviane Reding to liken the focus on Roma communities to ethnic cleansing and to declare that it was "a Gypsies in situation that I had thought that Europe Montreuil-Bellay would not have to witness again after the internment camp, Second World War." 1944. Some Comparison of President Nicolas Gypsies remained Sarkozy's deportations of Roma with interned by French deportations of Jews and Gypsies from authorities until France during World War II raises a May 1946, well after end of touchy subject for the French bourgeoi­ Nazi occupation sie, which actively collaborated with the of France. Nazis in the persecution of Jews and Gyp­ sies. In fact, in the "free zone" of France not occupied by German forces, the quis­ ling regime of Marshal Petain in Vichy organized deportations to the concentra­ tion camps with as much zeal as the Nazis, if not more. In spite of the outcry and a resolution and all Gypsies because this is the most the municipal authorities demanded that by the European Parliament demanding vulnerable layer of the population, living Bulgarian Roma families send their chil­ that France immediately suspend expul­ partly on the margins of urban capital­ dren back to Bulgaria as the condition for sions of Roma to Romania and Bulgaria, ist society. The workers movement has granting housing to the adults. Paris is proceeding undeterred and keeps a direct interest in defending these The call for the September 4 demon­ expelling Roma by the planeload. Minis­ oppressed people against the govern­ stration declared that French president ter of Immigration Eric Besson, for­ ment's racist attacks. To accept these Sarkozy merly of the Socialist Party, insisted that attacks against the Roma would directly "is in no way fighting crime, which is suspending deportations was "out of the open up the workers movement to the reprehensible on the part of any indi­ question." The government even plans attempts to divide the working class vidual regardless of nationality or ori­ to introduce a new draft law allowing itself along ethnic, racial or sexual lines, gin .... It is no longer a matter of having a legitimate debate in a democracy about expulsions of people guilty of "aggres­ while also reinforcing the arsenal of how to ensure safety in the Republic. sive begging." police measures that target workers. An Rather, the point is to stigmatize millions We print below a slightly adapted injury to one is an injury to all! of people as dangerous based on their translation of an article datelined August origins or their social situation .... The 28 that appeared in Le Bolchevik No. 193 French Capitalism, boundary being crossed makes us worry the Reformists and about the future for all of us-associa­ (September 2010), newspaper of the tions, trade unions and supporters of vari­ Ligue Trotskyste de France, section of the Gypsy People ous political organizations-who share the International Communist League. The response by the Socialist Party, an attachment to the fundamental princi­ Communist Party (PCF), Left Party and ples of the secular, democratic and social Republic. We forcefully reaffirm that * * * New Anti-Capitalist Party to the govern­ Article I of the Constitution 'ensures On July 18 in Saint-Aignan [in the ment's racist campaign was to call (along the equality of all citizens before the Loire Valley 1. Gypsies exploded in anger with the Greens) for a demomtration on law, without distinction of origin, race after cops killed Luigi Duquenet, a youth September 4. The call for the demonstra­ or religion' and that all attempts to vio­ late this fundamental rule of democracy from their community. The government tion in I'Humanite (5 August) seized on undermine civil peace .... And we call for seized on the opportunity to literally the oppression of Roma to praise the a mass citizens' demonstration on the declare open season on the Roma and French Republic, a capitalist-imperialist l40th anniversary of the Republic, Satur­ unleash a racist campaign of unprece­ republic dripping with blood from Africa day. September 4, at the Place de la dented violence against the entire Gypsy, and the Near East to Indochina and, Republique in Paris." Roma and traveling population. Detach­ today, Afghanistan. The reformists want Isn't this the height of cynicism! Under ments of cops have attacked Roma to refurbish France's image after the the Third Republic [1870- I 940], a law encampments, violently destroying their international outcry provoked by the was passed in 1912 instituting "anthropo­ meager possessions and deporting them roundup of Roma. The signatories also morphic identity booklets" for itinerants massively to Romania. Every day we read wanted to reaffirm their support for along with a collective registration book­ of the government's vaunted successes in the capitalist order in the fight against let [enabling the authorities to keep track "eradicating" more encampments. 9,875 "crime," implicitly echoing in passing the of their movements]; their vehicles were Roma were already deported last year to racist cliche that all Gypsies are thieves. assigned special license plates to identify Romania and Bulgaria (l'Humanite, 29 Lutte Ouvriere (LO) properly refused them as belonging to itinerants, the equiv­ July), accounting for a third of the depor­ to sign this appeal, but they are notably alent of the yellow star [that the Nazis tations carried out in France that year. close-mouthed about the expulsions car­ forced Jews to wearJ. (Fairground caravans This year, as of August 25, more than ried out by the Communist Party in the and vendors' wagons were exempted from 8,000 people have been deported so far towns where LO is part of a municipal this requirement if their operators were of (l' Hum(lnite, 26 AugUst). majority headed by the PCF. For example, French nationality.) The requirement to The government went after the Roma in Bagnolet [outside Paris] in July 2008, have one's identity booklet or vehicle 62 registrati()n bo()klct stamped four times a on Aerop(htalc Street. they arc systemati­ torically. they were an invaluable source year remains in force f(lr (,ypsies today. cally rejected." And a Protestant minister of knowledge in the subsistence agricul­ The Third Republic continually beefed added simply: "We arc regarded as less ture economy. However. as a "people­ up its arsenal against Gypsies. In April than dogs" (Dernieres NOl/l'elles d'AI­ class" of itinerant craftsmen, their role in 1940 (before the German occupation), wee, 30 July). society remained more marginal than that the government decided to place Gypsies Under the capitalist Third Republic. at of the Jews. under house arrest. in effect interning all the time of the Dreyfus Affair. some Jews The 1917 Russian Revolution led by itinerant people in small local concentra­ also looked down on East European Jews Lenin and Trotsky's Bolsheviks, which tion camps throughout the war. The repres­ tleeing pogroms-French Jews saw them established the dictatorship of the prole­ sion carried out by the Vichy government as a threat to their own assimilation as tariat for the first time in history, success­ against Gypsies (who were for the most French citizens. As it turned out. the fully fought chauvinism and anti-Semitic part French citizens) was in fact based French state sent thousands of Jews-cit­ pogroms based on its truly international­ on laws enacted by the Third Republic. izens as well as foreigners-to the Nazi ist character. It also opened the way to the which was also the case for most of death camps under the Vichy regime. One emancipation of the Roma, who were rec­ the measures taken against them by of the overseers was Maurice Papon, who ognized as a minority for the first time. French police in the [German-controlled] went on to have a long career in the capi­ The creation of Romani dictionaries and Occupied Zone. talist state apparatus and who also hap­ grammars was promoted along with the After the end of the German occupa­ pened to be the CEO of Sud-Aviation dur­ Roma people's culture. tion of France, the PCF was in the gov­ ing the general strike of May 1968 [the The year 1924 marked the beginning of ernment with the Socialists from 1944 to factory where the strike started]. Work­ a political counterrevolution led by the 1947. But some of the Gypsies had to ers and the oppressed have a vital inter­ Stalinists, representing a layer of privi­ est in uniting in common leged bureaucrats, that would destroy struggle. The ruling class the revolutionary Bolshevik Party. The is trying to instill in immi­ poison of chauvinism was revived and grant workers the false nationalist tensions were used to break consciousness that Roma the workers' internationalist spirit. The threaten their own strug­ Romani language was soon suppressed, gle for legal papers; they followed by Yiddish. want French workers to After World War II, the East European think the Roma are "crimi­ Stalinist regimes were able to partly nals." Fighting this false restrain endemic prejudice but were not consciousness is the task able to lay the basis for the elimination of the revolutionary party. of chauvinism. In Romania, the particu­ larly brutal Ceaucescu regime forced the The Roma: A People Roma to become settled. However, today Without a State many Roma miss the Ceaucescu regime Today 8 to 12 million because the deformed workers state pro­ Gypsies live in Europe; vided a job and an income for all. Le they are either itinerant Parisien (23 August) quoted the typi­ or settled. Both Jews cal remarks of an elderly Roma: "Before AP and Gypsies have a long, the 1989 revolution, under Ceaucescu, Rome, 9 September 2010: Man leaves Gypsy camp shared history of victimi­ things were difficult but we managed. before demolition by Italian authorities. zation and oppression. The We had a place to live and a job, even if Belgian Trotskyist Abram it did not pay well. And then, everything wait until 1946 to be freed, with the last Leon, who died in Auschwitz in 1944, changed." ones leaving the detention camps only in explained in The Jewish Question: A Twenty years ago, the International May 1946. a full year after the war in Marxist Interpretation [published posthu­ Communist League fought against capi­ Europe ended. mously in 1946] that the Jews were a talist counterrevolution in the Soviet Not all itinerants in France are Gypsies "people-class." They survived as a dis­ Union and East Europe, while LO and the and not all Gypsies are itinerants. In the tinct entity, not in spite of their centuries­ Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire sup­ past few weeks. there have been demon­ old oppression but because they were ported counterrevolutionary forces like strations of communities of Gypsies car­ initially a caste filling a specific and nec­ Solidarnosc' in Poland. In the struggle rying French flags to stress that they are essary economic role. Under feudalism, against capitalist reunification of Ger­ French citizens and voters, as opposed to as money -lenders and traders, they neces­ many in 1989-90. we threw all our re­ the Roma from East Europe and the Bal­ sarily lived in urbanized communities. sources into fighting for a proletarian kans who arc the main focus of racist Later. with the rise of industrial capi­ political revolution in East Germany to hatred and prejUdice. But even French talism, the Jews' special commercial sweep away the Stalinist bureaucracy and Gypsies who are not itinerant continue to role came to an end and they assimi lated establish the rule of workers councils. All be victims of racist discrimination. In into modern capitalist society. In Europe, the racist prejudices against the Roma Strasbourg, 200 Gypsy families live in the the powerful workers movement took up resurfaced after the capitalist counter­ Poly gone neighborhood. in a camp that the struggle against anti-Semitism. Many revolution. There were massive layoffs of was set up in 1970 and is still in dismal socialists and revolutionaries were of Roma, who had to take to the road again condition today. An elderly woman com­ Jewish origin, including Karl Marx. to flee poverty and racist terror. Capital­ mented: "Our children go to school like In the old days, Roma and Gypsies ist restoration was so horrible that the any other children. But when they start were mainly musicians, horse traders. bas­ Roma came to France in spite of the looking for a job. and say that they live ket makers or scissors sharpeners. His- relentless oppression they face here. 63

disabled children." In Italy. a so-called "'emergency plan for itinerants" was adopted to fight crime, and thousands of Roma live under the threat of being evicted from their encampments and relo­ cated in large, isolated camps. In Hun­ gary, bloody pogroms have been reported. In Ostrovany (Slovakia) and in Tarlun­ geni (Romania), walls have been built to isolate Roma neighborhoods. Racist terror is inherent to the capi­ talist system. The hideous oppression of the Roma people can begin to be solved only within the framework of a Socialist United States of Europe. As Abram Leon wrote in regard to the Jews in the conclu­ sion of The Jewish Question: "Clearly, the tempo of the solution of the Jewish problem depends upon the gen­ eral tempo of socialist construction. The opposition between assimilation and the national solution is an entirely rela­ tive one, the latter often being noth­ ing but the prelude to the former. ... Nantes, 4 September 2010: Demonstrators against French government's racist Today, national-cultural and linguistic immigration policies carry banner reading "Gypsies: Full-Fledged Citizens." antagonisms are only manifestations of the economic antagonism created by On paper, Roma from Romania and they also lose the right to stay in France capitalism. With the disappearance of capitalism, the national problem will Bulgaria have the right to travel through­ longer than three months. We demand: lose all its acuteness. If it is premature out the European Union, including France. Lift all restrictions on employment for all to speak of a worldwide assimilation Theoretically, they also have the right to those who have made it here, now! For of peoples, it is nonetheless clear that work. However, in France only 150 job full citizenship rights! a planned economy on a global scale categories are available to them-low­ The Roma's appalling situation in will bring all the peoples of the world much closer to each other. But the paying jobs that no one else wants to do. the European Union exposes the capital­ hastening of this assimilation by arti­ In addition, they have to pay high fees to ists' hypocrisy regarding "freedom" and ficial means would hardly seem to be obtain work permits and wait for weeks, "democracy" for the oppressed in imperi­ indicated; nothing could do more harm. even months, to receive them. The capital­ alist Europe. In the Czech Republic, We still cannot foresee exactly what the 'offspring' of present Judaism will be; ists never want to wait so long to hire according to Amnesty International (13 socialism will take care that the 'birth' workers, so in effect, Roma do not have January), many Roma children are sent will take place under the best possible the right to work. Without an income, to special schools for "slightly mentally conditions." •

Though some of the articles in this world" leader in locking its people up. Introduction ... pamphlct start from discussing the shell But the article also traces the links (continued from page 2) game of capitalist electoral politics, they back to the unspeakable horrors of chat­ seek to illuminate American society far tel slavery and the post-Reconstruction him). Now they push another, equally more broadly. Through our press, cen­ "convict leasing" system under which spurious and timeworn argument for the trally our Marxist biweekly paper Work­ untold numbers of black men in the unity they perpetually crave with the ers Vanguard, we work to motivate the South were sentenced to long prison Democrats, namely, that Obama should proletarian, revolutionary, internationalist terms for trivial or nonexistent "crimes," join with them to "fight the right," in this program of the Spartacist League/U.S. as a means of reinstituting semi-slavery case the likes of Sarah Palin and the and the International Communist League. to supply superexploited labor for early repulsive racists of the Tea Party. For socialists in the United States, our Southern industrial development. In contrast, our opposition to Obama is article included here in solidarity with the The film review "Communist Organiz­ class opposition. It is not merely the poli­ oppressed masses of neocolonial Haiti, ing in the Jim Crow South-What's Not cies of the bourgeois government that we published six months after the devastating in The Great Debaters" explores the his­ oppose but its class character as the earthquake. is of particular importance. tory of mass plebeian struggles in the executive committee of capitalist class This pamphlet also includes important South in the turbulent period of the 1930s rule over the working class. U.S. imperi­ articles documenting earlier periods in during the Great Depression. "The Cold alism's wars of predation are not a "pol­ American history. "Black Liberation and War and the Civil Rights Movement" dis­ icy" that can be changed but an essential the Fight for a Socialist America" links cusses the civil rights movement of the feature of this system. Likewise, the eco­ mas, black incarceration today to the 1950s and 1960s, with an emphasis on nomic catastrophe which has overtaken decline of the industrial economy, ren­ documenting the role played by fake the system on a worldwide basis is an dering black youth mostly superfluous socialists who worked overtime to defuse embodiment of the capitalist boom-bust to the profit-making system, and to the the danger to capitalism posed by this system (see the SL pamphlet, Karl Marx vicious anti-drug laws, backed in the first explosive mass battle for democratic Was Right-Capitalist Anarchy and the instance by black bourgeois politicians, rights and channel it safely within the lmmiseration of the Working Class). which have made the U.S. the "free bounds of the Democratic Party.• Order Back Issues of Black History and the Class Struggle

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