soC!: No. 701 ~X-623 20 November 1998 Down With. Starvation Blockade! U.S. Out of the Near East! • • et our ooav anas raq! NOVEMBER 17-Massively rein­ 1991, which included the use of de­ forcing its armada of warships, sub­ pleted uranium shells (see "Iraq marines, aircraft carriers, tighter­ Cancer Epidemic Made in U.S.A.," bombers and cruise missiles in the WV No. 690, 8 May). Down with Persian Gulf, U.S. imperialism is the starvation blockade! U.S. impe­ once again poised to unleash rialism: Get your bloody hands off bloody carnage on the Iraqi people. Iraq! The Clinton White House has now Fearful of stirring up domestic announced a postponement of the discontent, America's rulers rely military strike as the Iraqi regime on high-tech missile and bombing agreed to again allow free rein to strikes which minimize U.S. casu­ the imperialist spies who masque­ alties while wreaking devasta­ rade as "arms inspectors." Trum­ tion on the Iraqi population. peting Washington's aim of over­ An editorial in the New York Times throwing the Saddam Hussein (13 November), mouthpiece of regime, Clinton hellows, "Iraq has the liberal bourgeoisie, virtually backed down, but that is not screamed for Iraqi blood, calling enough." British Labour prime for a "sustained" bombing cam­ minister Tony Blair rants that the paign which would necessarily "slightest obstruction" of United include "a regrettable risk of civil­ Nations weapons inspectors will be ian casualties." met with an "immediate attack, no The repeated displays of terror warning whatever." Today's New by U.S. imperialism are aimed at York Times headlines, "Allies See enforcing the subjugation of the Bombing of Iraq as Inevitable." semi colonial peoples of the world and demonstrating to its capital­ As we declared. in a statement. of Women an d c h'ldI ren .In Bag hd a d walt. f or scarce me d'Ica I care. I mperla. I'IS t bl oc ka d e hAPas the Spartacls~ League. PO~ltIcal killed well over a million Iraqis, now Clinton threatens renewed terror bombing. ist rivals that the American bour- Bureau at the tIme of ClInton s last geoisie remains top dog. In cyni­ terror-bombing threat (WV No. 685, 27 cally railing against destitute Iraq's February): "Whether or not America's supposed "weapons of mass destruction," capitalist rulers decide this time to yet Washington is asserting its "right" to a again rain death and destruction on Iraqi monopoly over such weapons. The U.S. men, women and children does not has not only enormous stockpiles of change by one iota the rapacious and chemical and biological weapons but murderous character of this imperialist a nuclear arsenal capable of wiping out system." Against the reformist "social­ the world's population many times over. ists" who perpetuate the ·liberal lie that And it is the only country to have used imperialism is just a "bad policy" which nuclear weapons in wartime, incinerating can be changed through mass pressure, over 200,000 Japanese and Korean civil­ we asserted: ians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. "As Lenin stressed in polemicizing In organizing protests at various cam­ against similar views advanced by Ger­ puses around the U.S. last week in man Social Democrat Karl Kautsky, imperialism is 'the highest stage of capi­ response to the war buildup, the Sparta­ talism,' marked by the concentration and cus Youth Clubs raised the call, "Defeat domination of finance capital, the preem­ U.S. Imperialism Through Proletarian inence of the export of capital and com­ Revolution!" As an SYC spokesman at petition among the advanced capitalist a November 12 speakout at UCLA countries to control markets and spheres of exploitation. War is a necessary prod­ U.S.-led forces acting under a UN fig strike more than they are killing with stressed: "What is necessary is the build­ uct of the capitalist system." leaf. Over a million children and hun­ sanctions every day." The death rate ing of a class-struggle, revolutionary This marks the eighth time since the dreds of thousands of other Iraqis have among children from diseases like pneu­ workers party that stands opposed to one-sided 1991 Persian Gulf War that since died from malnutrition and disease monia and diarrhea has increased more the Democratic and Republican parties Washington has either perpetrated or resulting from the imperialist embargo. than tenfold. The country has also been of war and racism. Such a party is threatened mass destruction of Iraq. Tens As one Iraqi official remarked bitterly, ravaged by a horrifying cancer epidemic absolutely essential in the struggle for of thousands were slaughtered in 1991 by the imperialists "will not kill in a mili~ary caused by the imperialists' rape of Iraq in continued on page 10 , '{'1 !! \t I 1J 'f 1i f t; !&1 ..j""" No Illusions in Bourgeois Liberals­ ,... Defeat of Reconstruction and the For Workers Revolution! Great Rail Strike of 1877 The Shaping of Racist American Capitalism See Page Six ,... Letter as is well documented in C. Vann Wood­ the Supreme Court upheld a Louisiana ward's classic study, The Strange Career law requiring segregation in railway cars. On Reconstruction of Jim Crow, originally published in In other words, the legal codification of August 17, 1998 old Slave Codes. In the 1896 Plessy 1955, an entire historical period was segregation took almost a generation fol­ required to wipe out (and then never com­ lowing the Compromise of 1877. The Dear Editor, case, the Supreme Court codified "sepa­ rate but equal" segregation as the law of pletely) the gains made through tremen­ capital (so to speak) of earlier struggles, I write concerning a significant episode the land .... With the withdrawal of the dous suffering, fighting and sacrifice by and the struggles of men and women in of (Black) history, which I believe gets last Union troops in 1877, KKK terror stalked the South unchallenged." both blacks and whites during both the the 20 years 'following the end of official short shrift in the fonnulations I have read Civil War and in the attempt to impose As a precis of a crucial period of U.S. Reconstruction, ensured that black Amer­ upon it in the pages of WV. If, after read­ Radical Reconstruction thereafter. Du history-the defeat of Reconstruction­ ica would not go down fighting [sic]. Per­ ing below, it turns out that I have been Bois wrote, in his seminal study noted the above is perhaps adequate. However, haps WV would like to research and write mistake'n, and the points I make have above, written in the early 1930s: my main disagreement concerns the an article on this someday. been covered in WV, then you can ignore "Negroes did not surrender the ballot Why bother to carp upon a single sen­ this letter. But even if they have been cov­ overly mechanistic, and historically inac­ easily or immediately. They continued curate, depiction of this defeat that tence in a WV article? Well, for one, I ered, I believe they still lack the proper [after 1877] to hold remnants of politi­ have read the same fonnulation of this equates the Compromise of 1877 with the cal power in South Carolina and Florida, emphasis. My concern is over how the period in previous WV articles, and have period after the Compromise of 1877 is establishment of Jim Crow. Secondarily, Louisiana, in parts of North Carolina, in "t. think it's worth pointing out that KKK Texas, Tennessee and Virginia, Black long thought of writing a letter about it. I characterized, most recently, but I think Congressmen came out of the South do not write with any substantive criti­ and other race terrorists rampaged not atypically in the 'otherwise fine and until 1895 and black legislators served cism, but only, really, to suggest a refor­ important article, "Death Row Speedup throughout the Reconstruction period, as late as 1896 [po 692] .... The whole only half-heartedly challengeq by the history of this post-Reconstruction mulation of how a particular period in Targets Minorities" (WV, No. 694, 31 history is presented. This may have sig­ Union government. There did continue to development is yet to be written .... " [pp. July 1998). I quote the fonnulation in its 693-694] nificance, as we are now living though a context: be black militias during this latter period, , but their influence was largely kept in Both Du Bois and Woodward point out period of international defeat and reaction " ... the promise of black freedom was check. On this latter point, please refer to that the fight against the black vote, and ourselves. I would suggest only a modest betrayed by the Northern capitalists, who refonnulation of the immediate post­ were not about to take any action which Du Bois's Black Reconstruction in Amer­ the attempt to subjugate blacks economi­ would threaten the dominance of private ica, 1860-1880. But to return to my main cally, socially and politically, was sym­ Reconstruction period somewhat along property, North or South. Even minimal point, the Compromise of 1877 may have bolized by the rise of the accommoda­ the lines as follows: "The gains of Civil land redistribution was stopped and the tionist Booker T. Washington, whose War battle and Reconstruction were not large plantations maintained, with the officially ended the Northern attempt at Reconstruction of the South, ending in program' was not enunciated until the easily overturned. Following the Com­ former slaves becoming impoverished promise of 1877, a losing battle sharecroppers and tenant farmers. Fol­ the so-called "redemption" of the South­ mid-1890s! What happened in the almost lowing the defeat of Reconstruction, for­ ern states, but it did not result in 20 years between the official' end of the was fought against the forces of racist, malized by the Compromise of 1877, the the immediate disenfranchisement of the Reconstruction period and the Plessy v.