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. capitalist reaction, culminating in the black freedmen were again disenfran­ near-universal establishment of Jim Crow blacks, nor did Jim Crow immediately Ferguson case in 1896? Some of the chised under Jim Crow laws steeped in segregation laws and the political disen­ the spirit, and at times the letter, of the spring into existence in 1877-78. In fact, development can be followed in the deci­ sions of the U.S. Supreme Court prior to franchisement of blacks only by the end Plessy, which sought to sharply curtail of the nineteenth century." This reformu­ the special protections of the Fourteenth lation, brief and not too different from Black Liberation Through Amendment and the Reconstruction-era WV's, has this virtue, it does not telescope Socialist Revolution 1875 Civil Rights Act. For instance in the historical development, nor does it make three Civil Rights Cases of 1883, the it seem that blacks rolled over in defeat The fight against black oppression is cen­ court tried to emasculate efforts by Radi­ with the end of Reconstruction. I am sure tral to the struggle for socialist revolution in cal Republicans to promote racial equal­ that the editorial staff of WV can do a bet­ this deeply racist country. This understand­ ity, e.g. by prohibiting racial segregation. ter job than me in coming up with the cor­ ing was brought to the American Communist But the U.S. capitalist government still rect formulation. movement by the Communist International held that it could prohibit discriminatory Fraternally, of Lenin and Trotsky at its Fourth Congress action by a State government. It wasn't Jeffrey K. in 1922. Drawing on the experience of the until the period of reaction had consoli­ WVRepJies October Revolution of 1917, the Russian dated itself by the mid-1890s that the out­ We appreciate Jeffrey K.'s observations TROTSKY Bolsheviks imbued the early American Com- LENIN right legal overturn of Civil War and and refer him to the article in this issue munist Party with the need to actively take Reconstruction attempts at equal protec­ on "Defeat of Reconstruction and the up the fight against racial oppression in the U.S. tion and civil rights was made explicit in Great Rail Strike of 1877-The Shaping Three hundred years ago the American Negro was dragged from his homeland, the notorious Plessy case. In this latter, of Racist American Capitalism.". brought in indescribably horrible conditions on board ship, and sold into slavery. For 250 years he worked as a slave under the lash of American overseers. His labour cleared the forests, built the roads, planted the cotton, laid the railways, and kept the aristocracy of the south. His wages were poverty, ignorance, humiliation, and wretched­ ness. The Negro was not a docile slave; his history is rich in revolts, disturbances, and subterranean methods of gaining freedom. But all his struggles were savagely sup­ Cops at UPS Victimize pressed. He was forced into subjection by torture, and the bourgeois press and religion justified his enslavement. Slavery then became an obstacle to American development on a capitalist basis; personal slavery came into conflict with wage slavery, and personal Jamal Defense Rally Organizers slavery was bound to go under. The civil war, which was not a war to free the Negroes, but a war to maintain the industrial predominance of capital in the northern states, con­ The following is a Partisan Defense the other flashed a sheriff's deputy fronted the Negro with the choice between slavery in the south and wage slavery in Committee leaflet issued on November badge. When ordered to leave the area, the north. The longings, the blood, and the tears of the "emancipated" Negroes were a 15 in response to police harassment of the two asserted their right to distribute part of the fabric of American ,qlpitalism. As America, which had meanwhile risen to trade unionists who were mobilizing at labor material on public property. Evoy the position of a world Power, was inevitably dragged into the maelstrom of the world a UPS location in the suburb of Willow radioed for the Willow Springs cops. war, the Negro was declared to be equal in rank to the whites. He had to kill and be Springs for the November 21 Chicago When they then attempted to leave, killed for "democracy." ... rally to free Mumia Abu-Jamal. Evoy thrust a heavy mag lite into the The Communist International notes with satisfaction the resistance of the exploited It's no secret to Teamster members chest of one of the leafletters, threaten­ Negro to the exploiters' attack, for the enemy of his race and the enemy of the white that the United Parcel Service desper­ ing to arrest them himself and saying, workers are one and the same-capitalism and imperialism. ately wants to destroy the union, which "Consider yourselves detained." Before -"Theses of the Fourth Comintern Congress on the Negro Question," obstructs its quest for ever higher prof­ long, the two Jamal supporters were November 1922, reprinted in Jane Degras, The Communist International its. In fact, after the successful 1997 surrounded by five Willow Springs 1919-1943 Documents (1971) UPS strike, which broke a very long cruisers, two unmarked police cars and chain of labor defeats, UPS beefed up two Indian Point squad cars! its union-busting, racist security forces The purpose of this overwhelm­ for that very purpose. At the Hodgkins ing police mobilization, ostensibly in UPS facility these thugs, acting in con­ response to an alleged traffic "viola­ cert with local cops, were mobilized to tion," was to send a message of intimi­ threaten, assault and illegally detain dation and implied terror to any who !.~~!!!!or..4..'!.!!~!!.'!.. ~ supporters of Mumia Abu-Jamal, the would seek to link the struggle for radical black journalist facing execu­ black rights to the power of the multi­ EDITOR: Len Meyers tion on frame-up charges in Pennsylva­ racial working class. UPS, notorious EDITOR, YOUNG SPARTACUS PAGES: Jacob Zorn nia. The same state forces arrayed for its racist mistreatment of black PRODUCTION MANAGER: Susan Fuller against the union moved to suppress workers across the country, is espe­ CIRCULATION MANAGER: Jane Patterson EDITORIAL BOARD: Ray Bishop (managing editor), Bruce Andre, Helene Brosius, George Foster, the defense of Jamal. cially motivated to squash any threat Liz Gordon, Jane Kerrigan, James Robertson, Joseph Seymour, Alison Spencer On the night of November 13 two of laborlblack power. But for Team­ The Spartacist League is the U,S, Section of the International Communist League (Fourth Jamal supporters were handing out fly­ ster members at UPS as well as other Internationalist). ers at the Willow Springs Road unionists, the lesson should be clear: Workers Vanguard (ISSN 0276-0746) published biweekly, except skipping three alternate issues in June, July and August (beginning with omitting the second issue in June) and with a 3-week interval in December, by the Spartacist Pub­ entrance to UPS calling for a mass union rights and black rights must lishing Co., 299 Broadway, Suite 318, New York, NY 10007. Telephone: (212) 732-7862 (Editorial), (212) 732-7861 laborlblack protest demanding: "All march forward together-or they will (BUSiness). Address all correspondence to: Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116. E-mail address:[email protected] Domestic subscriptions: $10.00/22 issues. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY. POSTMASTER: Send address Out to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal! Abolish fall back separately. In the aftennath of changes to JNorkers Vanguard, Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116. the Racist Death Penalty!" Soon two last year's strike, UPS and the cops Opinions expressed In signed articles or letters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint. UPS guards arrived on the scene in ally to strangle the social power of the The closing date for news in this issue is November 17, company Broncos. One, Thomas Evoy, union; this is the power that must be identified himself as a state policeman; mobilized to defend Jamal. . No. 701 20 November 1998

2 WORKERS VANGUARD ·...... Government HanHsOff.New·Yor~CityD.C.31

The increased combativity of the of cops, and for good reason: the ISO and American labor movement which has its international patrons, Tony Cliff's been evident beginning with last year's ISO Cheers Feds' Union "Reformers" British Socialist Workers Party, have time Teamsters (lET) strike against UPS and again supported the "struggles" of has prompted a counteroffensive by Wall tect the class rule, property and profits of man from office, the ISO started howling prison guards anchops. Thus the British Street, the government and its courts the bourgeoisie. The emancipation of about the evils of government interven­ Socialist Worker (8 February 1997) pos­ aimed at completely shackling the labor and the liberation of all the tion. Thus a Socialist Worker (19 June) its that cops could cease being "agents of unions. This has been highlighted by the exploited and oppressed depends on the article on the Teamsters talked about the the state" if they "rebel collectively." government "stepping up its years-long destruction of the capitalist state machin­ need for "shop-floor organization inde­ And in 1996, the Canadian International intervention into the Teamsters following ery through socialist revolution, creating pendent of the union bureaucracy-and Socialists supported a strike by "union­ the UPS strike, voiding last December's a society where those who labor rule. for getting both the mob and the federal ized" prison guards in Ontario in which re-election of lET president Ron Carey, Today, the labor movement is being government out of the union." they subjected inmates to a lockdown imposIng new elections and expelling increasingly threatened and hogtied by Stung by what happened to Carey, the and, when the prisoners protested, rushed Carey from the union altogether. having the class enemy in its house. With ISO has suddenly "discovered" the dan­ into the jail from their picket lines to sup­ Now, expanding this anti-union ven­ cop-infested and court-controlled unions, ger of government intervention. That press them. detta, the government has targeted Amer­ the labor movement cannot effectively this is sheer hypocrisy is shown by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels de­ ican Federation of State, County and wield its power on behalf of workers their response to the events in AFSCME clared some 125 years ago, and the entire Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Dis­ trict Council 37 in New York City, which represents some 120,000 city workers in 56 locals. Under the guise of fighting "corruption," four separate sets of investi­ gators are probing the union, while the Manhattan District Attorney's office has subpoenaed financial records from every single local. These ominous intrusions into the union have. nothing to do with the measly financial shenanigans the D.A.'s office claims to be investigating and everything to do with further crip­ pling the unions as defensive organiza­ tions of the working class. Government hands off the unions! The D.C. 37 bureaucracy has itself been instrumental in shackling the poten­ Times AFSCME D.C. 37 hospitaf workers tial power of the union by its embrace of protest closures and cutbacks, the capitalist politicians who run the city 1996. D.C. 37 chief Stanley Hill has and their anti-union laws. D.C. 37 presi­ pushed through layoffs and union­ dent Stanley Hill-a longtime backer of busting, slave-labor "workfare" viciously racist, anti-labor Republican schemes for racist mayor Giuliani. mayor Rudolph Giuliani-has run point for City Hall's massive cutbacks which and the oppressed. We say: cops and D.C. 37. In Socialist Worker (25 Sep­ course of labor struggle has shown, have meant tens of thousands of layoffs courts out of the unions! For the unions tember), the ISO lauds the "Committee that "the working class cannot simply lay and further devastation of the ghettos to act as instruments of class struggle for Real Change" (CRC) headed by hold of the ready-made state machinery and barrios. In 1995, Hill pushed through requires a political struggle against the Local 375 chief Roy Commer and Mark and wield it for its own purposes." In con­ a five-year contract which included a pro-capitalist labor bureaucracy. This Rosenthal, the president of Local 983. trast, the ISO has a reformist perspective. two-year wage freeze and millions of means in the first place a fight for The ISO claims the CRC stands for As we wrote in "Government Steps Up dollars in givebacks. The following year, the complete independence of the unions "organizing the unorganized, including Anti-Labor Attacks" (WV No. 675, 3 Hill endorsed Giuliani's imposition of from' the capitalist state, its cops and workfare workers" and for implement­ October 1997): "What the ISO pushes is slave-labor, union-busting "workfare," courts, and from the Democratic and ing various reforms in the union. What social-democratic politics, the view that which has led to more rounds of layoffs Republican parties of capital. the ISO doesn't say is that these bureau­ the capitalist state, which is organized to and has served to pit the desperate The Spartacist League opposes state crats have been acting as point men for defend the interests of the bourgeois rul­ minority poor against the unions. And intervention into the unions as a matter state intervention into the union. When ing class, can be pressured to act on the D.C. 37 tops have long bowed to of principle. Not so for such reformists Rosenthal took office earlier this year, he behalf of the interests of the exploited." New York State's Taylor Law banning as the International Socialist Organiza­ proceeded to turn over to the D.A. Key to unchaining labor's power is to public workers strikes-it's been more tion (ISO), which has long promoted reports on the union's. finances. And imbue workers with the understanding than 25 years since D.C. 37 last went on the Teamsters for a Democratic Union Commer responded to his recent suspen­ that the capitalist state is the deadly strike. (TDU), an outfit which literally wrote sion from union office by fiting a com­ enemy of the unions, of blacks and Nationally, the AFSCME bureaucracy the blueprint for the feds' takeover of plaint against the union in federal court. all minorities. The necessary instrument has eagerly "organized" prison guards the union. Along with other reformist The ISO doesn't say a word about how to sow that consciousness is a revolu­ and cops-the racist, strikebreaking "socialists," the ISO trumpeted Ron these bureaucrats look to "reform" the tionary workers party, forged through guard dogs of the capitalist rulers. The Carey, who tooK office as a direct result union by running to the courts and fink­ political struggle against capitalism's police, courts and prisons are at tht;! core of the government's intervention into the ing for the D.A. Nor does the ISO ever "labor lieutenants" and their "socialist" of the capitalist state, which exists to pro- union. But once the state removed their object to the AFSCME tops' "organizing" mouthpieces .• 8ellelltl0, Clt/II-Wt/, P,IIOlle'l spartaciS~ Eve~ts Y Organize for Mumia Abu-Jamal's Freedom Spartacistl..eag4.. /i>·'i~pa~'~H •.··rOYJh···9jyb····· •..• ·.···.·.·.\ I. F01I,1m< . ·····ViiJjoSbow·.ric;/DI.r:us$!pn·· Join us for the 13th annual Holiday focused on the urgent struggle to free BOSTON NEW YORK CITY Appeal to raise funds for those impris­ black death row political prisoner For Black Liberation Through Come see the oned for championing the rights of Mumia Abu-Jamal. With the rejection Socialist Revolution! Partisan Defense Committee video: labor and the oppressed. In sending of Jamal's appeal by the Pennsylvania Free Mumia Abu-Jamal! "From Death Row, monthly stipends to class-war prisoners Supreme Court, there is an immediate Abolish the Racist Death Penalty! This Is Mumia Abu-Jamal" and additional funds to them and their danger that Governor Tom Ridge will Friday, November 20, 7 p.m. Wednesday, December 2, 2:30 p.m. families during the holidays, the PDC sign a death warrant, aiming to silence Sever Hall, Room 102 Borough of Manhattan Community College continues a tradition dating back to the forever this courageous fighter against Harvard University 199 Chambers Street, Room S114 International Labor Defense of the racist injustice. Build the Holiday For more information: (617) 666-9453 For more information: (212) 267-1025 1920s. Appeal-Build the fight to free Mumia This year's benefits are particularly and abolish the racist death penalty! .$p,tf,~~U~YQiI1i!ql~c'~~.ej .••••. ·.·· ••· •.•• ((····· NEW YORK CITY TORONTO ttiw'or~, Gl1icagcf . Bay Area Confronting the The Revolutionary Party Friday, December 4 Sunday, December 6 Sunday, December 6 "Death of Communism" Myth: and Its Program 5 to 9 p.m. 3 to 7 p.m. 1 to 4 p.m. The Revolutionary Party in the Thursday, November 26, 7:30 p.m. AFSCME District Council 1707 UE Hall ILWU Local 34 Hall 75 Varick St. (at Canal) 37 S. Ashland (at Monroe) 4 Berry St., San Francisco Post-Soviet World International Student Centre For more information: For more information: Tuesday, November 24, 7 p.m. Riddell Room For more information: (212) 406-4252 (312) 454-4931 (510) 839-0852 Loeb Student Center, Room 413 University of Toronto New York University (laGuardia PIJWash. Sq. South) 33 St. George Street (north of College St.) SPONSOR: PARTISAN DEFENSE COMMITTEE For readings and information: (212) 267-1025 For readings and information: (416) 593-4138

20 NOVEMBER 1998 3 Philippines: Estrada Regime Turns Screws on Workers, Poor

Amid desperate poverty, NOVEMBER 16-Less than five months Filipinos plead tor help at of a proletarian vanguard party committed into his term as president of the Philip­ presidential palace of Joseph to the Trotskyist program of permanent pines, Joseph "Erap" Ejercito Estrada's Estrada (near left, with revolution and steeled in political com­ image as guardian of the masa (masses) billionaire patron Eduardo bat against the myriad forms of national­ is fading, and fading fast. Campaigning Cojuangco). ist class collaboration promoted by the on the slogan "Erap para sa mahirap" Stalinist-dominated Philippine left. (Erap for the poor) and on promises of jobs, cheap food and housing, the capi­ investment in light industry in the Philip­ historic tasks of the bourgeois-democratic An ''Archipelagic talist politician was elected in May on a pines, although the country was sidelined revolution, including expropriation of the Aircraft Carrier" wave of popular discontent over the aus­ during the much-touted Southeast Asian landed estates. As Bolshevik leader Leon Significantly, the return of the U.S. terity dictates imposed by his predeces­ "economic miracle." Now it is being buf­ Trotsky explained in The Permanent Rev­ military under the Visiting Forces Agree­ sor, former general Fidel Ramos, at the feted by the effects of the economic olution (1931): ment comes 100 years after the U.S. behest of the International Monetary crash. The lines of men and women­ "With regard to countries with a belated seized the archipelago in the 1898 Fund (IMF) and U.S. imperialism. With sometimes stretching more than half a bourgeois development, especially the Spanish-American War which signaled mile-outside the Malacafiang presiden­ colonial and semi-colonial countries, the class polarization progressively sharpen­ theory of the permanent revolution signi­ America's emergence as an imperialist ing and labor militancy threatening to tial palace pleading for jobs, housing, fies that the complete and genuine solu­ power. In the process of suppressing undermine the stability of this classic medical care and scholarships attest to tion of their tasks of achieving democ­ nationalist resistance, the U.S. military U.S. neocolony, Estrada is backing calls the desperate conditions throughout the racy and national emancipation is launched a brutal, racist war that resulted for emergency presidential powers and a in the slaughter of hundreds of thousands moratorium on strikes. He is also cham­ of Filipinos. As we noted in "A Century pioning the return of U.S. military forces of U.S. Imperialist Plunder" (WV No. to the country, throwing his support No Illusions in Bourgeois Liberals­ 686, 13 March): "The conquest of the behind the Visiting Forces Agreement Philippines, leading to decades of bloody (VFA) signed early this year by Ramos. colonial repression, was a statement of Shortly before Estrada's June 30 inau­ For Workers Revolution! U.S. imperialist appetites in the Pacific guration, Philippine Airlines (PAL) and a harbinger of the future war with pilots walked out-defying a govern­ Japanese imperialism, which culminated ment injunction-against a uQion-busting country. The number of jobless has conceivable only through the dictator­ in the American A-bombing of Hiro­ attack by PAL boss and Estraaa backer climbed by 30 percent in one year. The ship of the proletariat as the leader of the shima and Nagasaki in 1945." subjugated nation, above all of its peas­ Lucio Tan. The pilots were subsequently. Philippine peso has plunged to a record ant masses." The strategic importance of the Philip­ joined by flight attendants and the low, and the only thing apparently keep­ pines for the U.S. was laid out following combative PAL Employees Association ing the economy afloat is dollar remit­ The Philippine proletariat must take its World War II by General Douglas (PALEA) representing ground crews. The tances from the vast number of Filipinos place at the head of the unemployed poor, MacArthur, whose father commanded day after Estrada's inauguration, PAL working abroad·. These conditions have the rural masses, women, subjugated eth­ the war of extermination against inde­ strikers joined with other trade unionists, provoked widespread proletarian unrest, nic and national minorities in a struggle pendence fighters at the turn of the cen­ impoverished slum dwellers and youth in measured in the 32 percent increase in for socialist revolution against all wings tury: "Now the Pacific has become an a 10,000-strong protest at the opening strikes and lockouts over the past year. of the capitalist class. Such a struggle Anglo-Saxon lake and our line of session of Congress in Manila, where the The PAL strike, which served as a bea­ must be based on a perspective for prole­ defense runs through a chain of islands "populist" president unveiled a hard­ con for workers throughout the archipel­ tarian revolution throughout the region fringing the coast of Asia" (quoted in nosed austerity program entailing deep ago, went down to bitter defeat last month and internationally, especially the U.S., Nautilus Research, Pacific Command: cuts in the already measly social services in the face of government-backed strike­ Japan and Australia. This is underscored The Structure and Strategy of the US budget and wholesale privatization of breaking, sealed by a backroom deal by the U.S. military presence, which Military in the Pacific [July 1983]). In remaining state-owned firms and utilities. between the PALEA tops and the airline seeks to enforce imperialist "stability" in 1951, MacArthur told the U.S. Congress: What lies behind the American military bosses (see "Philippine Airline Strike this increasingly tumultuous region and "From this island chain we can dominate presence in the Philippines has been Knifed," page 9). But the groundswell of to assist Washington's interests against with sea and air power every Asiatic port amply evident in recent days, as Indone­ dissent and labor activity coming hard on Japan. It is also a dagger at the throat of from Vladivostok to Singapore and pre­ sia again erupts in mass protests met with the heels of the PAL strike was sufficient the Chinese bureaucratically deformed vent any hostile movement into the bloody repression. Less than six months to rattle the capitalist rulers. Workers on workers state, which is teetering on the Pacific." after dictator Suharto was forced out by the island of Cebu recently occupied and brink of capitalist counterrevolution. Despite half a century of nominal inde­ student protests and plebeian upheavals, shut down a major plant while a nation­ Trotskyists stand for unconditional pendence, the Philippines remains an his successor and former henchman, B. J. wide walkout at Philippine Telegraph military defense of China and the other impoverished semicolonial vassal of the Habibie, is likewise using military terror & Telephone crippled automated teller remaining deformed workers states U.S. Described by the London Economist to prop up his austerity regime. The eco­ machines and lotto terminals. against imperialist attack and internal as an "archipelagic aircraft carrier," the nomic crisis which has engulfed the The fraud of "Erap para sa mahirap" is counterrevolution while fighting for pro­ country has long served as a linchpin of region, sending shock waves as far not just the product of Estrada's inti­ letarian political revolution to oust tl'le anti-Communist ASEAN alliance in as Japan, Russia and Brazil, has driv­ mate relationship with imperialism and the nationalist Stalinist bureaucracies. Southeast Asia. During the anti-Soviet en millions to the edge of starvation. At the Philippine oligarchy. In the epoch of Socialist revolution in the Philippines Cold War, the Philippines provided stra­ the same time, it has impelled the urban capitalist decay, the bourgeoisie of the would be an enormous impetus to the tegic military bases at Clark and and rural masses to fight for their very countries of belated capitalist develop­ Chinese workers fighting the ravages of Subic Bay for U.S. imperialism's savage survival. ment-the junior partners of the imperi­ the Beijing regime's "market reforms." counterrevolutionary war in the 1960s There has recently been imperialist alists-are incapable of carrying out the Above all, what is needed is the forging and '70s against the heroic Vietnamese 4 WORKERS VANGUARD workers and peasants. When the U.S. mahirap" have now replaced it with one opted to abandon its Philippine bases }RHh':lpAiN~S: reading, "I'm sorry I voted for Erap." shortly after the counterrevolutionary And a columnist for Manila's Today (25 destruction of the Soviet Union in 1991- July) observed, "Those who can't afford 92, the Pentagon took literally every­ to buy bumper stickers, much less a car thing, except the tons of toxic waste left to stick them on ... suffer the greatest dis­ behind. For more than half a century, the illusionment and feel the deepest sense U.S. military arrogantly treated the Phil­ of betrayaL" In turn, the reformist ippines as its whorehouse. Thousands of "socialists" now seek to distance them­ Amerasian children were abandoned selves from Estrada. when the U.S. military left. Now these Such opportunist twists and turns are in children, especially those of black GIs, keeping with the-whole history of Fili­ face ostracism in the communities around pino Stalinism and help explain why the the former bases. left there consists of a veritable alphabet Estrada became the darling of the soup of groups which are barely distin­ nationalist '-'left" in good part because he guishable politically-all agreeing on the spoke out against the U.S. military bases U.S. uses Philippine neocolony Menshevik/Stalinist "two stage" model. while serving as an opposition senator as strategiC outpost against Each new betrayal tends to result in a under ,the administration of President Japanese imperialist rival and to cliquist split in which one faction or Corazon "Cory" Aquino. Recognizing the quell social unrest in region. U.S. military presence is dagger at another is denounced for relying too brittleness of bourgeois rule in a neo­ throat of Chinese deformed much on the "national bourgeoisie" and colony situated in a potential cockpit workers state. not understanding the "leading role of the of interimperialist rivalry, Estrada now working class in the democratic revolu­ openly courts the favors of the United tion" or for focusing too much on "guer­ States. The VFA allows the U.S. military rillaism" instead of electoral politics. unlimited access to ports and installations tinue to slave as his plantation hands. shrines the oppression of women, who In warning against illusions in Aquino throughout the Philippines. U.S. interests As the case of Cojuangco illustrates, cannot even sign contracts without a in 1986, we wrote: "Many a Third World are especially focused around General the bourgeoisie and the landlord class in husband's consent. The 1987 constitution nationalist regime has sought to protect Santos City at the southern tip of Minda­ such semicolonial countries are inextri­ promulgated under Aquino includes one its left flank by bringing the Communists nao-where USAID funds were used to cably intertwined. Half of the peasantry of the most severe anti-abortion laws in into a 'democratic (or anti-fascist, anti­ upgrade the airport and ship handling consists of tenants who are forced to hand the world, and a bill proposed last year imperialist, etc.) coalition government,' facilities-which faces the maritime over up to three-quarters of their crops to would make abortion punishable by only to set them up for a massacre on boundary with Indonesia and Malaysia. rapacious landlords, while well over a death both fot the woman and the doctor the morrow" ("Philippines Workers Must The VFA, which has provoked nation­ third of the overall population lives below who performs it. Fight for Power!" WVNo. 415, 7 Novem­ alist protests by- elements ranging from the official poverty line. Food prices have It is necessary to fight for free abor­ ber 1986). What is necessary is a the powerful Catholic hierarchy to the skyrocketed in recent months amid wide­ tion on demand and free quality health programmatic break with all variants of Stalinist and social-democratic left, is a spread sh.ortages. Genuine agrarian rev­ care for all. Marxists call for strict sepa­ the Menshevik/Stalinist dogma of "two­ response to intensified interimperialist olution-expropriation of the landed ration of church and state and oppose stage revolution," which subordinates competition and growing social turmoil estates-can only be realized through the every manifestation of discrimination the proletariat to a "progressive" or "anti­ in the region. The Philippines offers the overthrow of capitalist class rule. Directly against women, homosexuals and ethnic, imperialist" wing of the bourgeoisie in U.S. a strategic position from which to national and religious minorities. Relig­ the fight for "democratic" capitalism threaten the sea lanes that are Japan's ious backwardness-whether Catholic or while putting off the struggle for social­ shortest oil supply routes as well as a Muslim-serves to bolster the family, ism to a future that never comes. From the jumping-off point for military interven­ the key institution for the oppression of Chinese Revolution of 1925-27, which tion to quell social unrest in neighboring women. was drowned in blood by Chiang Kai­ semicolonial countries. We say: Smash To even begin to emancipate women shek's nationalist Guomindang, to the the VFA and ASEAN! U.S. troops out of from domestic slavery and all-sided slaughter of Indonesian Communists by the Philippines! oppression, the system of capitalist ex­ Suharto's military and Muslim funda­ Dead End of ploitation must be swept away through mentalist gangs in 1965, history has Bourgeois Populism socialist revolution, leading to the crea­ repeatedly demonstrated that "two-stage revolution" means bloody defeat for the Estrada's election was hailed by a tion of an international planned, collec­ working class and oppressed. host of liberals and avowed leftists as tivized economy. The ICL seeks to build a "victory for the people." In fact, an internationalist revolutionary van­ This has been amply confirmed in the Estrada is simply the latest in a long line guard party to act as a tribune of the peo­ Philippines as well. In leading the Huk­ of imperialist-sponsored "populist" or ple, mobilizing the proletariat in defense balahap-the "People's Anti-Japanese cacique (landowner) politicians, from of all the oppressed against the com­ Army"-during World War II, the old colonial Commonwealth caudillo Manuel Loeb/Philadelphia Inquirer mon class enemy. Particularly in Asia, Philippine Communist Party (PCP) fol­ Workers at Philippine shoe factory the fight for the emancipation of women lowed Stalin's prescription of supporting Quezon and post-independence president make 15 cents an hour. Oppressed Ramon Magsaysay to dictator Ferdinand is a key component of this perspective. the "democratic" imperialist Allies. With women workers will play key role in the end of the war and American recon­ Marcos and Aquino herself. For decades, fight for socialist revolution. For women's liberation through socialist Washington propped up the hated, cor­ revolution! quest of the islands, the U.S. imperialists rupt Marcos dictatorship. When Marcos related to the land question is the oppres­ turned their guns on the Huks, drowning became too discredited to continue ruling sion of the dozens of ethnic, religious and For Proletarian the peasant-based rebellion in blood. Class Independence! in the 1980s, the U.S. promoted long­ linguistic minorities on this chain of over This campaign, assisted by Magsaysay time CIA asset and millionaire Benigno 7,000 islands. Various Muslim insurgen­ The chief condition for any real strug­ and a young Benigno Aquino (whose Aquino. Following his assassination by cies have raged for years on the island of gle against imperialist subjugation and family collaborated with the Japanese Marcos' thugs in 1983, his wife took up Mindanao, one of the poorest areas in the capitalist exploitation and oppression is during the war), served as the laboratory the baton of the "democratic" opposition. archipelago. And, as in Indonesia and the class independence of the proletariat. in which the CIA developed the bloody Three years later, Cory Aquino, one of elsewhere in the region, ethnic Chinese Yet the Filipino left has historically been techniques of "counterinsurgency" later the largest landowners in the country, are simultaneously represented in the mired in class collaboration. In advanced used to slaughter millions of Vietnamese. was catapulted to office .by the "people bourgeoisie and subjected to vile racist capitalist countries, such class collabora­ The current Philippine Communist power" movement supported by Wash­ persecution. tion often takes the political form of Party (CPP) of Jose Maria Sison, which ington, the Catholic Church ... and much The woman question is also a central "popular fronts"-bourgeois coalitions emerged as a Maoist split from the pro­ of the "left." Months after becoming and explosive issue in this 80 percent of reformist workers parties and openly Moscow PKP in 1968, is no less wedded president, Aquino unleashed troops and Catholic country. While large numbers of capitalist parties. In semicolonial coun­ to such nationalist class collaboration ism. cops on a demonstration in Manila call­ women have been drawn into the work­ tries, the same treacherous strategy is The Sisonites have led the New People's ing for agrarian reform, killing 18 peas­ force in recent years, they have also been generally manifested through the vehicle Army (NPA) in a peasant-guerrilla strug­ ants and wounding scores more. Despite the hardest hit as unemployment climbs of bourgeois nationalism. gle which has waxed and waned over the a veneer of parliamentary democracy, the in the spreading economic crisis. Even In the recent elections, the various left years as overtures are made to each new Philippines remains a brutal police state before, millions of women were forced groups either tailed Estrada or politely bourgeois regime. While defying murder­ in which leftists and working-class mili­ to seek work abroad-in the U.S., Japan refrained from opposing him, giving ous state repression, such "armed strug­ tants face imprisonment and death-squad and the oil-rich Arab emirates-as their supporters the signal to go vote for gle" is essentially a means to pressure terror. nurses or servants, many of them treated "Erap." But many voters who had earlier the bourgeoisie. Estrada was a loyal Marcos sup­ literally as slaves. Philippine law en- sported the bumper sticker "Erap para sa continued on page 9 porter who organized goon-squad attacks AP against Aquino's followers. He gained popularity playing grade B movie roles as a hoodlum and, ironically, an incor­ ruptible union leader, and earned his political spurs as the mayor of San Juan, a suburb of Metro Manila. One of his chief patrons is billionaire business­ man and former Marcos crony Eduardo Cojuangco. When Cojuangco allowed the peasants on one of his eleven haci­ endas on the island of Negros to become "stockholders" in the plantation, Estrada hailed his padrino as the "godfather of land reform." Under the government's Philippine Airlines workers demonstrate in fraudulent "land reform" scheme, Coju­ support of striking pilots in June (left). Workers angco retains 60 percent control while picket electrical utility owned by U.S. Union Oil the "emancipated" tenant farmers con- during 1996 strike. 20 NOVEMBER 1998 5 Young Sparlaeus r-Oefeatof Reconstfuctio'n':a'nltheGreatRaiIStrike of 1877 I The Shaping of Racist American Capitalism

We publish below an edited pres­ :) tion of this was the founding of the entation by Young Spartacus editor Republican Party in 1854, in the Jacob Zorn at a Chicago Spartacus course of the fight for a free Kan­ Youth Club forum last month. sas. During that struggle over "bleeding Kansas," free-soilers, As Marxists, we understand that including the heroic John Brown, racism is not a question of "bad bravely fought pro-slavery maraud­ ideas." Rather, there is a material ers. The most radical representa­ basis for racial oppression. It is nec­ tives of the strong abolitionist essary to understand how this mate­ movement which developed-such rial basis was shaped by the history as Brown, Frederick Douglass, Har­ of this society. And that means riet Tubman and Thaddeus Ste­ understanding the pivotal events of vens-foresaw that only armed 1877. That year saw the final defeat action would end slavery. If you of Reconstruction, as the bourgeoi­ want to learn more about this, I rec­ sie withdrew the last federal troops ommend the fifth issue of our pam­ from the South, where they had phlet series Black History and the been stationed to suppress the slav­ Class Struggle, titled "Finish the ocracy defeated in the Civil War Civil War!" and defend the rights of the eman­ The Republicans nominated cipated black slaves. At the same Abraham Lincoln, a moderate, for time, federal troops-including the 1860 presidential election, see­ troops withdrawn from the South­ ing him as able to win more votes were sent to break a strike by thou­ State militia fires on striking rail workers in Baltimore. Great Rail Strike of 1877 than a more radical candidate. Lin­ sands of rail workers, the first na­ signaled emergence of American labor movement. coln did not call to immediately tional strike in this country. end slavery where it existed but The fight for black liberation is cen­ An "Irrepressible Conflict" amounts of cotton to sell to the world cap­ merely opposed its extension. But the tral to the fight of the working class in In the years after its founding, the italist market, primarily the British textile Southern slavocracy opposed any con­ the U.S. to smash this capitalist system American republic was divided between mills. At the same time, the slave system straints on the slave system. Following of exploitation, oppression and misery two social systems, slavery and capital­ was based on very primitive and ineffi­ Lincoln's election, eleven states seceded and to create a truly egalitarian socialist ism. In the fight for independence from cient agricultural production. So the slave­ from the Union to form the Confederate society. We call to finish the Civil War Britain, the first American Revolution owners continually wanted to expand States of America, which guaranteed the through a socialist revolution which drew on the ideas and even some of the their system to virgin soil which had not "right" to own slaves in its constitution. places the working class in power. As institutions of the parliamentary side of been depleted by cotton farming and to The North did not go to war specifi­ we wrote in the International Commu­ the English Civil War of the mid-17th increase the highly profitable slave trade. cally to emancipate the slaves but to sup­ nist League's Declaration of Principles century, such as the right of citizens to The inherent conflict between these press the Confederacy and restore the (Spartacist [English-language edition] bear arms, as codified in the Second two social systems gave.,rise to a series of Union. Nonetheless, it was clear from the No. 54, Spring 1998): Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In clashes over whether new territory in the beginning that the war was about slavery. "The U.S. black question is defined by the 19th century, the developing North­ West would be slave or free. The inevita­ Karl Marx, who followed American the particular history of the United States: developments closely, wrote at the time: slavery, the Civil War defeat of the South­ ern systemof large-scale industrial capi­ ble battle was always delayed through ern slavocracy by Northern industrial talism required "free" wage labor to some sort of "compromise," in which the "The whole movement was and is based, capitalism and the bourgeoisie's betrayal as one sees, on the slave question. Not in exploit-this is how the capitalist class Northern bourgeoisie allowed the slavoc­ the sense of whether the slaves within the of Radical Reconstruction's'promise of racy to remain dominant in the weak equality, leading to the racist segregation makes its profits-as well as a mobile existing slave states should be emanci­ of black people 'despite the economic' and somewhat literate working class. In federal government: for example, the pated outright or not, but rather whether integration of black toilers into the prole­ order to grow, capitalism needed to create Missouri Compromise of 1820, which ad­ the 20 million free men of the North tariat at the bottom. The forcible segrega­ should submit any longer to an oligarchy an expanding home market for the goods mitted Missouri as a slave state; or the of 300,000 slaveholders." tion of blacks, integral to American capi­ Compromise of 1850, which admitted talism, has been resisted by the black that it produced. - Karl Marx, "The North masses whenever a perceived possibility On the other hand, the South was ruled California as a free state while enacting a Amer~can Civil War" (1861) for such struggle has been felt. Hence our by a narrow slavocracy, and most produc­ fugitive slave law, enabling slaveowners As Frederick Douglass had argued from program for the U.S. is revolutionary tive labor was done by enslaved blacks to pursue escaped slaves throughout the the start of the war, whatever the intent of integrationism-the full integration of country. the Union leadership, the North would blacks into an egalitarian, socialist Amer­ who were legally nothing more than chat­ ica-and our program of 'black liberation tel-property. The Southern plantation In the 1850s, this "irrepressible con­ have to emancipate the slaves in order to through socialist revolution'." economy was based on growing great flict" reached a boiling point. An indica- win the war. Thus on 1 January 1863,

Ubrary of Congress Thomas NasI

Union Army in South was instrumental in defending rights of freed slave~. Thomas Nast cartoon depicts murderous KKK, which was given free rein by withdrawal of last federal troops in Compromise of 1877.

6 WORKERS VANGUARD ~ f!! Ol IBIOFeUR c Tollnas! To&nas! 8 (; :>':'.':' ... .OJl.~LlfD_ co""" .0 THREE YEAIr SERYICE! Radical :.J 1&1TLIl1 LIEITI DB m_ abolitionist Frederick lliLiiaiiii miD Douglass campaigned for ~u:r~I:1If'~\fii~f,ulu blacks to join Union Army. VAIJU[OOfmOISM Black troops PIIIT lIUII&Iiiiiiiii:Ums IIIID. helped turn tide ill mliilfLiiiIiAviTii!iiSi.AVii of war against ,,'-((Wiiiiririrli"fli slavocracy. ... CUi.-iimiis-iil,iUDsr WE APPEAL TO YOUr -~··~r-

Lincoln issued the Emancipation Procla­ the slave system. Some became skiIIed tion and the consolidation of Jim Crow "There were, of course, labor struggles mation, ordering that slaves in the Con­ tradesmen and professionals. Poor whites segregation over the next 20 years that during the pre-Civil War period, But they were dwarfed in importance beside federacy (but not in Union slave states also benefited. Massive public spending the accommodation ism of Booker T. the anti-slavery struggle, because the such as Maryland) be freed, and soon on education created some of the first real Washington and, later, utopian separatist national question for the American peo­ after authorized the enlistment of black public schools in the South, for whites as schemes gained prominence. ple had not yet been solved .... soldiers. Some 180,000 black troops­ well as blacks. While women-both 'The whole future of the working class emancipated slaves in the South and free black and white-were denied the vote, The Birth of the American depended, not so much upon organiza­ tional achievements against the capital­ blacks in the North such as the heroic they began to participate in civil society Labor Movement ists, as upon the solution to the question "Massachusetts 54th" led by Robert in great numbers. As I mentioned earlier, the Civil War of the slave power ruling the land, Gould Shaw~emonstrated before the For Reconstruction to succeed would laid the basis for a national economy in "This is the fundamental reason for the eyes of the nation the courage and com­ have required not just the defeat of the belated character of the development of the United States, based on industrial the stable labor movement in the U.S." mitment of black soldiers and helped tum plantation class, but that the plantations capitalism and "free" wage labor. Integral the war's tide. be seized and redistributed to those who The expansion of railway transport led to the development of this capitalist sys­ to one of the first working-class move­ toiled on them, the freedmen. In 1865, the tem were the railways. In 1850, there Reconstruction and the Union government promised freedmen 40 ments in the U.S. based on industrial Compromise of 1877 were only 2,201 miles of track in use; in unions-made up of all workers in an acres· each to farm. In fact, many planta­ 1877, over 79,000 miles. The concentra­ The Civil War was the shaping event of tions, including the family plantation of industry-as opposed to craft unions tion of railways in the North helped the which organize each skilled trade sepa­ American history-the last great bour­ former Confederate' president Jefferson Union win the Civil War. The extension geois revolution, the second American Davis in Mississippi, were already being rately. Railwaymen were extremely of the railways throughout the West uni­ exploited, as the rail magnates continu­ Revolution-finally and firmly establish­ run collectively by the former slaves as fied the country. And the convergence of ing the rule of the bourgeoisie throughout the landowners fled after the war. But as ally sought to increase profits and divi­ railways here in Chicago made this city dends at the expense of the workers. The the U.S., with a strong central govern­ we wrote in a founding document of the the epicenter of American capitalist de­ ment and a national political economy. Spartacist League in 1966, "Black and elimination of safety equipment was velopment in that period. Railway barons common, and workers who had run trains After the war, the question of what to do Red-Class Struggle Road to Negro amassed huge profits in the "Gilded Age" with the South was debated heatedly. The Freedom": "Capitalist and slave alike hundreds of miles were forced to pay for of the late 1800s, which was marked by their return trips. question of the freedman was central: stood to gain from the suppression of the rampant speculation. It was the president would he become a full, enfranchised cit­ planter aristocracy but beyond that had no Speculation and overdevelopment by of the Pennsylvania Railroad, Thomas A. the railroad barons, who engaged in what izen, or would he be confined to second­ further common interests." Scott, who actually drew up the Compro­ class status, not slave but not free. The American bourgeoisie was not were literally wars-pitched battles­ mise of 1877 in order to guarantee the with their competitors, helped precipitate Lincoln wanted to assimilate the South interested in a thoroughgoing social re­ development of a Texas Pacific Railroad. back into the Union as quickly and pain­ construction of the South. Northern capi­ the depression of 1873, which until A unified capitalist system also laid the 1930s was referred to as the "Great lessly as possible. But the defeated slav­ talists looked at the devastated South and the basis for a unified working class. ocracy would have none of it and acted Depression." Many railway lines were saw an opportunity not for building a rad­ There is a famous quote by Marx in the as though it hadn't lost the war, sending placed under court management when ical democracy but for exploiting South­ first volume of Capital: former Confederate leaders to Congress ern resources, and the freedmen, profit­ their owners defaulted. As unemployment "In the United States of North America, and enacting "Black Codes" which all ably. Dividing the plantations into small soared and wages were slashed, railroad every independent movement of the workers struck and began to organize in but re-enslaved blacks. When Lincoln plots would not have facilitated this. workers was paralysed so long as slavery was assassinated less than a week after Rather the aim was to restart Southern disfigured a part of the Republic. Labour the industrial Trainmen's Union, a move the South surrendered in 1865, the for­ agriculture, which meant getting the cannot emancipate itself in the white strongly opposed by the capitalists, who mer slaveowners were encouraged by his agricultural workforce-blacks-to work skin where in the black it is branded. But sought to destroy any form of unionism. out of the death of slavery a )lew life at In May 1877, representatives of four successor, Andrew Johnson, who threw again, to the advantage of the landowning once arose. The first fruit of the Civil his lot in with white supremacy during class, now dominated by mercantile inter­ War was the eight hours' agitation, that large railroad companies met and con­ the brief period known as Presidential ests with ties to the Northern capitalists. ran with the seven-leagued boots of the spired to slash wages by a further 10 per­ Reconstruction. Such demands as "land to the tiller" are locomotive from the Atlantic to the Pa­ cent, and other railway companies soon cific, from New England to California." In response, the policies of radicals not anti-capitalist per se-they are in fact followed suit. In mid-June, workers on like Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sum­ the quintessence of the bourgeois revolu­ Expanding on Marx's understanding, the Baltimore & Ohio line walked out, American Trotskyist Richard S. Fraser, ner attained great influence within the tion. But especially after the 1871 Paris demanding the restoration of their past Republican Party, the main party of the Commune-the first, short-lived example who first laid out the perspective of revo­ wage rate. For more than a month, the Northern bourgeoisie. The central goal of what Marx called the' "dictatorship of lutionary integration, wrote in his 1955 strike spread throughout the U.S. and of Radical Reconstruction-carried out the proletariat"-the bourgeoisie saw the document "For the Materialist Concep­ even to Canada. Increasingly, federal on the ground by the freedmen and expropriation and redistribution of private tion of the Negro Question" (reprinted in troops were used to break the strike; the sympathetic whites who were slander­ property as a threat. In return for having Marxist Bulletin No.5 [Revised]): continued on page 8 ously labeled "carpetbaggers" and "scal­ Republican Rutherford Hayes declared awags"-was to reconstruct the South on the winner of the 1876 presidential elec­ a bourgeois-democratic basis, with the tion, the Republicans agreed to pull the integration of blacks (who comprised the last troops out of the South in yet another majority in much of the South) into capi­ "compromise," the Compromise of 1877. talist society. With the 14th Amendment This final compromise was largely just granting citizenship to "all persons born a codification of the actual defeat of or naturalized in the United States" and Reconstruction several years earlier. the 15th Amendment extending the right The post-Reconstruction period­ to vote to all men, black Americans went called "Redemption" by racists-was from being chattel to citizens. What made marked by a political counterrevolution this possible were the federal troops, aimed at black people and enforced by many of them black, stationed in the Klan terrorists. Blacks were disenfran­ South to suppress resistance by the for­ chised and brutally exploited in the form mer slavocracy-which was organized in of sharecropping and tenancy, while the Democratic Party-and its Ku Klux being driven out of the skilled trades. Jim Key~mentsaridarti~ Klan terrorist auxiliary. Crow segregation was formally codified 1955-1978 Blacks not only voted at rates as high in Plessy v. Ferguson, the 1896 Supreme as 90 percent but were elected to state and Court ruling which gave the official national offices in large numbers. More stamp of approval to "separate but equal." .,.,....~CO._I311G1'O._"/\:>1I.NY'OII. than 600 blacks, mainly ex-slaves, served I want to underscore the point that dur­ -- as legislators. Millions of freedmen, ing Reconstruction the general thrust of $1 (32 pages) $1.50 (72 pages) aided by the Freedmen's Bureau but _black struggle was toward integration and largely through their own initiative, equality in American society. In fact, it Make checks payable/mail to: Spartacist Pub. Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 learned to read, a right denied under was only after the defeat of Reconstruc- 20 NOVEMBER 1998 7 tariat had not become what Marx called a part of the fight for communism. 1877 ... "classjOr itself'-consciously struggling Until the substantial entry of blacks (continued from page 7) for its own class rule-but it had achieved into the industrial workforce during some sort of critical mass. In a letter to World War I, anti-immigrant and anti­ bourgeoisie deemed the National Guard Friedrich Engels in London during the Catholic racism were the chief weapons unreliable in a confrontation with strik­ strike, Marx stated: of the capitalist rulers in dividing and "This, the first outbreak against the asso­ ers. As a pretext to call in the troops, mail holding back the working class. In ciated capital oligarchy that has arisen the 1870s, almost all labor leaders­ cars were attached to the struck trains, since the Civil War, will, of course, be and the strikers were then charged with suppressed, but may well provide a point including the NLU and NCLU-pushed obstructing the mail. In Pittsburgh, troops of departure for the constitution of a anti-Asian bigotry. The year 1877 also serious workers' party in the United marked an increase in anti-Chinese and killed ten. workers and wounded eleven, States. There are two favourable circum­ causing'angry strikers to burn the rail­ anti-Japanese racism on the West Coast, stances on top of that. The policy of the as strike support rallies in San Francisco road's property, including 39 buildings new President will tum the negroes, just and 1,200 freight cars. as the big expropriations of land (exactly degenerated into pogroms against Chi­ Ip Chicago, militants called a general of the fertile land) for the benefit of the nese immigrants, many of whom had Railway, Mining, etc., companies will strike, which was prevented only by the helped build the railroads. This was tum the peasants of the West-whose followed by the Chinese Exclusion Act threat of bloody state repression. One of grumblings is already plainly audible­ the strike leaders there was Albert Par­ into militant allies of the workers." of 1882. AFL leader Gompers and the sons, a former Confederate soldier who Engels replied with a letter expressing his Blacks won right to vote under right wing of the Socialist Party were also had become a staunch Republican during "delight" at the level of struggle attained Reconstruction, were elected to virulent opponents of Chinese immigra­ Reconstruction in Texas. After being by the American working class: "The way state and national office. tion. Today as well, the pro-capitalist union bureaucrats, with their anti-immi­ driven out of the South by racists as a so­ they throw themselves into the movement with the First International for a while. grant racism together with appeals for called "scalawag," he joined the socialist has no equivalent on this side of the As Michael Goldfield put it in his recent movement here in Chicago. In 1886, Par­ ocean." protectionist measures against workers in book, The Color of Politics (1997): Japan, Mexico and elsewhere, exude poi­ sons was a leader of the Haymarket strike The first Marxist party in the U.S.­ "Though Sylvis was among the white sonous chauvinism. Meanwhile, petty­ which fought for an eight-hour day. He what later became the Socialist Labor leaders who spoke in favor of admission was framed up by the police and hanged Party (SLP) led by Daniel De Leon-did of Blacks to labor unions and supported bourgeois black nationalist demagogues like Louis Farrakhan spew vile racist dia­ for his role in that strike, which is com­ develop out of the intervention of the equal pay for equal work, he was espe­ cially obtuse about the importance of tribes against Korean and Arab shop­ memorated by May Day, the international Workingmen's Party into the strike. But the struggles of southern freedmen. He labor holiday. the SLP remained essentially a small keepers, Jews and others. We oppose never indicated any sympathy for their chauvinist protectionism and call for full In St. Louis, the strikers' executive propaganda group. A "serious workers' demands in the South for land, educa­ citizenship rights for all immigrants. committee, led by members of the Work­ party" was not founded in the U.S., either tion, and the vote. He denounced the ingmen's Party of the United States Freedmen's Bureau as 'a huge swindle' Labor's fight is international-workers of then or since. There are a number of rea­ and called for its closing." (WPUS-American section of Marx's sons why the American working class has the world unite! First International), essentially ran the In 1869, the National Colored Labor Union (NCLU) was formed and its lead­ For Black Liberation Through city and established what was called the Socialist Revolution! "St. Louis Commune." As Philip S. Foner ers sought joint work with the NLU. But wrote in his book The Great Labor Upris­ the issue of Reconstruction kept the two The legacy of the betrayal of Recon­ ing of J877 (1977): apart. While blacks supported the Repub­ struction is that blacks in the U.S. consti­ "The executive committee ruled the city. lican Party, white labor leaders and immi­ tu te a specially oppressed race-color caste, Nearly all the manufacturing establish­ grant workers supported the Democrats. segregated at the bottom of this society. ments in SI. Louis had been closed. Sixty In 1863, Irish workers in New York City At the same time, unlike the Reconstruc­ factories were shut down.... Such eco­ had staged draft riots against the Civil tion era, blacks are today overwhelmingly nomic activities as continued did so only with the permission of the executive War and carried out a pogrom against part of the proletariat. During World committee." blacks. Yet Irish immigrants were them­ War I, blacks began to move to Northern Only the threat of state repression ended selves despised by the predominantly and Midwestern cities and became indus­ the St. Louis general strike. Protestant bourgeoisie and were later tar­ trial workers. Today, even the South is By August, the rail strike had been geted by the virulently anti-Catholic increasingly urban and industrialized, a crushed, largely without any economic KKK. factor which contributed to the develop­ gains. But it was apparent that the U.S. At the time of the 1877 rail strike, there ment of the civil rights movement of the was no longer the same. The rail strike were not many blacks in the industrial 1950s which led to the end of formal Jim gave birth to the modern American labor working class, which was centered in the Crow segregation. Black workers are not movement. It was the first major strike Midwest and Northeast and composed only integrated into the American econ­ to face the use of government troops and largely of immigrant workers. Instead, omy but form a strategic component of the first to see the major use of strike­ most blacks lived in the South and the multiracial proletariat, especially in Haymarket martyrs framed up and breaking court injunctions. It illuminated worked in agriculture, usually as either key sectors like auto and transit. So that hanged in Chicago, 1887, for leading sharecroppers or tenant farmers. In St. the question is posed even more starkly: the class nature of the state-what Marx struggle for eight-hour day. and Engels called the "committee for Louis, where the strike was strongest and union rights and black rights will either managing the common affairs of the never achieved even a rudimentary level the WPUS largely controlled the leader­ advance together or fall back separately. whole bourgeoisie"-as an armed force of political consciousness, including the ship, the strike leaders at first welcomed The combination of economic mili­ which safeguarded the property, profits availability of land and large-scale immi­ the participation of blacks. But as the tancy and political backwardness has and class rule of the bourgeoisie. The gration. But the main reason lies in the strike continued and the media attacked been characteristic of the American work­ armories today present in most major cit­ defeat of Reconstruction and the way in the strikers as combatting not only eco­ ing class since i877. The history of the ies are a result of this strike-or more which the American capitalists, abetted nomic but racial inequality, the Working­ American workers movement is one of precisely, of the bourgeoisie's fear gener­ by the trade-union tops, have succeeded men's Party eschewed black participa­ the bloodiest in the world. Yet the U.S. ated by this strike. in using racist poison to divide the work­ tion. One WPUS leader recalled that black remains the only industrialized country in ing class. workers, whom he disgustingly called the world where the workers have not had Racism: Poison to The militant alliance projected by "n-----s," "sent word that they wanted to their own independent political party Class Struggle Marx never happened, largely because join our party. We replied that we wanted reflecting in some way the conflicting Above all, the strike signified that the the labor leaders-including the "Marx­ nothing to do with them." In order to dis­ interests of labor and capital. The chief American working class had entered the ists"-did not attempt to find a bridge to courage black participation, the WPUS obstacle to the development of such con­ scene as a force in itself. Especially since the freedmen. This is clear in the case of even stopped calling strike rallies. sciousness is the trade-union bureaucracy, it came only six years after the Paris William Sylvis, leader of the National While avowed Marxists and other vet­ which chains the working class to the Commune, the capitalist class saw in the Labor Union (NLU), which was founded erans of the Revolutions of 1848 in Democratic Party. We fight to forge a rev­ rail strike the spectre of "Red Revolution" in 1866 as one of the first national union Europe played a prominent role in the olutionary workers party which cham­ coming to America. The American prole- federations in the U.S. and was affiliated Civil War and the fight against slavery, pions the cause of all the oppressed, mod­ racist hostility to blacks figured heavily eled on the Bolshevik Party of Lenin and in the early American socialist move­ Trotsky which led the workers of Russia ment. For example, several leaders of the to state power in October 1917. Break Socialist Party in the early 1900s were with the Democrats-For a workers party viciously racist. The American Federa­ that fights for socialist revolution! tion of Labor (AFL) founded by Samuel Key to the fight for socialist revolution Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of the Spartacist League Gompers pushed lily-white craft union­ is the understanding that black oppression ism. Even Socialist leader Eugene Debs, is the cornerstone of American capital­ a railway union leader who was one of the ism. The American bourgeoisie has very o $10/22 issues of Workers Vanguard 0 New 0 Renewal best of the early American socialists on consciously used racism and racial op­ (includes English-language Spartacist and Black History and the Class Struggle) the black question, argued: "We have pression to divide the working class and international rates: $25/22 issues-Airmail $10/22 issues-Seamail nothing special to offer the Negro, and we to derail militancy. The struggle for black o $2/6 introductory issues of Workers Vanguard (includes English-language Spartacist) cannot make separate appeals to all the equality is a driving force in the fight o $2/4 issues of Espartaco (en espana I) (includes Spanish-language Spartacist) races." The prominent exception to this against racist American capitalism. But outlook was the syndicalist Industrial complete social and political equality can Name ______Workers of the World, which fought for only be realized in an egalitarian socialist Address ______integrated labor struggle and opposed society in which those who labor rule. anti-Chinese racism. But it was not until Achieving that goal requires the building Apt. # Phone ( ___ ) ______the young Communist Party examined of a revolutionary vanguard party which the black question in the early 1920s, at can lead the multiracial working class in City State Zip ______701 Russian Bolshevik leader v.1. Lenin's a third American Revolution, a proletarian Make checks payable/mail to: Spartaclst Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 urging, that American Marxists actively revolution. For black liberation through took up the fight for black liberation as socialist revolution!_ 8 WORKERS VANGUARD Philippines ... (continued from page 5) Shortly before the ouster of Marcos, Philippine Airlines Strike Knifed the Sisonites' "National Democratic Front" demanded: "Unite all anti-imperi­ Marking a bitter defeat for the Tan's threats of mass firings and red­ Estrada regime, vowing to challenge the alist forces to overthrow the US-Marcos country's combative labor. movement, baiting tirades by Estrada and the bour­ agreement in the courts, which far dictatorship and work for the establish­ in early October the Philippine Air­ geois media against union militants. from being "neutral" are a key com­ ment of a coalition government based on lines Employees Association (PALEA) But strike militancy alone was not ponent of the brutally repressive capital­ a truly democratic system of representa­ returned to work under vicious union­ enough to defeat PAL and its protectors ist state. tion." The CPP's class collaborationism busting terms. This ended a strike in the state apparatus. What directly Among those opposing the agreement was also reflected in conciliation toward which had crippled Asia's oldest airline paved the way for the defeat of the was Filemon "Popoy" Lagman, leader the church, serving to reinforce the reac­ and one of the country's top corpora­ strike was the class collaboration ism of of the leftist SANLAKAS group, who tionary socja1 values of the bourgeoisie. tions for months. Under intense pres­ the PALEA tops, who looked to was one of the targets of the redbaiting Before the recent elections, the Sisonite­ sure from the government of "Erap" Estrada as an ally against Tan. When campaign. But Lagman also helped sow controlled KMU union federation invited Estrada, the union accepted a deal Tan shut down the airline on September illusions in Estrada among workers, Estrada and other bourgeois presiden­ which its members had rejected only 23 after the strikers rejected his terms, joining an Estrada election rally. And tial wannabes to a May Day demonstra­ three weeks earlier, signing away the the PALEA tops appealed directly to when the Lagmanites' Konsume coali­ tion in downtown Manila. While most right to strike and all collective bar­ Estrada. As the Far Eastern Economic tion, which included striking PALEA did not show up, the Sisonites provided gaining rights for the next ten years. Review (8 October) reported: members, staged a demonstration dur­ a platform for a candidate connected to Billionaire Philippine Airlines (PAL) "His three-month-old government, they ing Estrada's "State of the Nation" the sinister Catholic rightist Opus Dei owner and Estrada backer Lucio Tan were certain, wouldn't dare let the address, a spokesman explained: "What national flag-carrier close. That would organization. has already threatened mass layoffs. As disrupt air travel throughout the archi­ we are looking for is an ally inside payoff for pushing through this deal, pelago. But Estrada had other ideas. Malacafiang [the presidential palace]. Lenin on the State and PALEA president Alex Barrientos Just four days after PAL's closure, What we are asking is that the President Revolution expects to get one of the seats being Cathay Pacific Airways agreed to take give meaning to his slogan, Erap para sa Particularly under the impact of capi­ given to the union on the PAL board of over PAL flights from Manila to the Mahirap [Erap for the poor]" (Philip­ talist counterrevolution in the USSR and major cities of Cebu and Davao. Union directors. The union also gets 20 per­ leaders promptly asked Estrada to pines Inquirer, 24 July). imperialist triumphalism over the "death cent ownership of the airline, thus intercede; they would accept Tan's ulti­ What unites the union bureaucrats of communism," the CPP's congenital directly subordinating the interests of matum after all." and "leftists" like Lagman is their opportunism has led to an escalating pro­ PAL workers to company profitability. Betrayed by their leadership, workers nationalist embrace of their "own" ex­ liferation of cliquist splits. One such, the The strike was the first major test of voted for the deal on October 2, but ploiters, who are seen as allies against SANLAKAS breakaway headed by File­ the Estrada regime's resolve in impos­ not without militant opposition. In a the imperialist overlords. But the "na­ mon Lagman, openly joined an Estrada ing crushing austerity on the working confrontation between Barrientos and tional bourgeoisie" in such countries of rally at Manila's Rizal Park to cheer for masses on behalf of the imperialists enraged PALEA militants who took belated development is tied by a mil­ Lagman's brother Edcel, who was run­ and the International Monetary Fund. over the union hall, a member of lion strings to the imperialists. Key to ning for senator on the Estrada ticket. Beginning with a walkout by the pilots Barrientos' bodyguard drew his pistol the mobilization of the proletariat at Another, the Proletarian Revolutionary union in June, the strike spread the next on union members. Barrientos had long the head of all the impoverished and Movement (PRK), emerged as a "left" month to the 8,000-strong PALEA tried to keep PALEA members from oppressed is first and foremost the polit­ split from the CPP in the early 1990s. ground crew union just as the new gov­ walking off the job in support of the ical independence of the working class The PRK claims to be the authentic ernment took office. Week after week, pilots. Several PALEA officials opposed from all wings of the Philippine bour­ "Marxist-Leninist" organization in the the strikers tenaciously held out against the sellout. But they also look to the geoisie and its state. Philippines and polemicizes against the multiple strains of reformism and "two­ stage revolution" peddled by the Sison­ ites. But while correctly placing Estrada geolSle. Indeed, the Philippines is key bolted the Lagmanite organization in This is a gross falsification of Lenin in the camp of the class enemy, the PRK to the U.S. drive against the Chinese July after spending months as an opposi­ and Leninism in the service of bourgeois nonetheless urged that his capitalist deformed workers state. tion to "Stalinist and sectarian policies" liberalism. Lenin argued against ultra­ regime be "pressured" to carry out its In the "Declaration of Principles and and "the continuing drift of its pol­ leftists who refused on principle to work promises to the impoverished masses. Some Elements of Program" (Sparta­ itics ... toward the right" (Progresibo, in reformist-led trade unions or to stand Thus do these "Marxist-Leninists" re­ cist [English-language edition] No. 54, July/August 1998). Describing itself as Communist candidates in parliamentary ject the Leninist understanding of the Spring 1998) adopted at the Third Inter­ a "pre-party formation of the working elections. It was not Lenin's Bolsheviks state. The bourgeois state is not a "neu­ national Conference of the ICL earlier class," LS argues for "an open social­ but the Mensheviks who promoted politi­ tral" agency which can be pressured to this year, we assert: ist formation" to "regroup the growing cal blocs with the liberal bourgeoisie­ act in the interests of the masses. Rather, "The proletariat must give unconditional number of socialists and politically con­ and Lenin opposed them down the line. as Lenin stressed in The State and Revo­ military defense against imperialism to scious individuals from the mass move­ When the Mensheviks consummated lution, "the state is an organ of class the deformed workers states in China, ment." It attacks Lagman as a Stalinist their political appetites by entering the Vietnam, North Korea and Cuba. Our rule," consisting at its core of armed bod­ and even cites Trotsky favorably. Yet LS bou!'geois Provisional Government after ies of men-the military, the police, the position flows from the proletarian class character of these states, embodied in remains buried in the liberal coalition the February Revolution of 1917, Lenin prison system. The capitalist state is an the collectivized property relations­ AKBAYAN, a motley assortment of disil­ waged an indefatigable campaign of instrument of repression against work­ nationalized property, planned economy, lusioned ex-Stalinists, left nationalists opposition and exposure against these ers and the oppressed which must be monopoly of foreign trade and bank­ and "Christian socialists" which calls for class traitors, counterposing the fight for smashed through socialist revolution and ing, etc.-established by social revolu­ tions that destroyed capitalism. Despite vague "pro-people social and economic workers rule: "All power to the Soviets!" replaced by a workers state. The PRK's the bureaucratic deformations of these reforms." And the same issue' of Progre­ It was this uncompromising struggle revisionist view of the state is reflected states, our defense of them against the sibo features a front-page headline read­ against bourgeois coalitionism which as well in its characterization of China, class enemy is unconditional, Le., it does ing, "Progressives Close Ranks: Extend directly prepared the victory of the Octo­ not depend on the prior overthrow of Vietnam, North Korea and Cuba as "state the Gains of the Elections!" What is this ber Revolution. capitalist" regimes. The PRK's refusal the Stalinist bureaucracies, nor does it depend upon the circumstances and if not a programmatic commitment to And it was the Stalinist embrace of to militarily defend these states andits immediate causes of the conflict." chaining the working class to the cart of Menshevik class collaboration which cheering for the "democratic" counter­ the bourgeoisie? prepared defeat after bloody defeat for revolutions which destroyed the Soviet For a Leninist-Trotskyist Party! Indeed, Sonny Melencio, now leader the international proletariat and led ulti­ Union and the East European deformed Yet another organization, Liga Sosya­ of LS, openly defended class collabora­ mately to the final undoing of the Octo­ workers states represent a capitulation Iista (LS), recently emerged around a tion in a January 1997 speech to a con­ ber Revolution. In the Philippines and to "democratic" imperialism and the split from the Lagmanite student group ference of the Australian Democratic throughout Southeast Asia, it is neces­ Philippines' own anti-Communist bour- and the newspaper Progresibo. The LS Socialist Party (DSP). The DSP itself sary to forge Leninist vanguard parties is a thoroughly reformist outfit which rooted in proletarian internationalism includes in its leadership the likes of and armed with the Trotskyist program \SPARTACJSTI~ ~ Max Lane, who served in the Australian of permanent revolution. Socialist revo­ HUM8ER 53 IUMllER 11111 ISPARTACJSTI~ ~ NU"ER 154 ,.~ •. IPRINO,.. embassy in Indonesia under Labor Party lution in the backward countries would , . SL'iil_MAlIiM.J.fi~ rule. Formerly linked up with Jack necessarily have to link up with the Barnes' U.S. Socialist Workers Party, the struggles of the working people in Indo­ DSP reformists joined with the Barnes­ nesia, South Korea and elsewhere in the ites in the 1980s in explicitly renouncing region-and would act as a powerful Trotsky's theory of permanent revolu­ impetus for proletarian political revolu­ tion, going on to act as press agents tion in China and for socialist revolution for "human rights" imperialism and for in Japan, Asia's economic powerhouse. petty-bourgeois nationalists like the In­ The millions of Filipino toilers who are 0.. uleWI$ .... ~Oe donesian PRD. In his speech to the DSP, ·OtgaA~... fPI to be found throughout Asia, the U.S. and Melencio raised the question of "whether elsewhere can serve as a living link unit­ Original Documents published from Soviet Archives or not to include the bourgeois liberal ing the workers of the semicolonial coun­ Trotsky's Fight Against Stalinist Betrayal lor!laann-Jza-G~~~~i;n:~les forces in a broad front, form an electoral tries and the imperialist centers. In the of Bolshevik Revolution bloc with them and support them in elec- . (Foarflllntemafi_IIs1) U.S., the Spartacist League seeks to build l~ntemafional ca_.n~E~!'!~' tions." He continued: ...... ,".~..". cc=:. ~ .. "",. ~~ a revolutionary workers party which Revolutionary Regroupment or "Lenin's 'Left Wing' Communism­ champions the rights of blacks, women, Centrist Alchemy? An Infantile Disorder argues precisely SEE PAGE 56 I..... lIIId"mIIIhI~~~1R ~ ~1I1 immigrants and all the oppressed as part c_c.... u _...... ,.111[1 ..... rM ..IbCA .•• for such a tactic in order to advance .u.~...... "' 142M ..."., ...... c ...... c",...... "'...... '" .... ' .. _ .....AOC ...... the class struggle and for the party of the fight for proletarian revolution to to carry out an alliance (including smash racist American imperialism. The No. 53, Summer 1997, $1.50 (56 pages) No. 54, Spring 1998, $2 (48 pages) an electoral bloc) with the bourgeois lib­ ICL fights to reforge the Fourth Interna­ erals in order to defeat a more reaction­ tional of Leon Trotsky as the indispen­ Make checks payable/mail to ary target, and in order to expose the sable instrument for leading new 'October Spartacist Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 bankruptcy of the liberal line to the masses." Revolutions around the world .•

20 NOVEMBER 1998 9 Iraq ... (continued from page 1) socialist revolution to end racial oppres­ sion, exploitation, war and imperialism." Interimperialist Rivalries in the Near East During the Cold War, antagonisms among rival imperialists were held in check by their mutual hatred of the Soviet Union. With the counterrevolu­ tionary destruction of the Soviet degen­ erated ~orkers state and the deformed workers states of East Europe, competi­ tion among the major capitalist powers­ the U.S., Germany and Japan-and their respective trade blocs came to the fore. Action Press The U.S. proclaimed a "one superpower" Amid imperialist scramble over Caspian oil resources, U.S. world, intent on using military blackmail demands new pipeline go through Turkey, which is waging war of terror (above) against Kurdish minority in eastern region. to guard its position as the planet's pre­ New York Times map eminent power. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, barely a month has gone would go through the former Soviet the Palestinians is aimed at shoring up the aims of the imperialist rulers. by when Washington has not either republics of Azerbaijan and Georgia, U.S. support among the Arab regimes. Reformists like the International Social­ issued bellicose war threats or actually where Russia seeks to assert its imperial However, the chief import of the 'sham ist Organization (ISO) and the Workers carried out invasions or terror bombing ambitions in what it calls the "near "Wye Accords" recently signed by Israeli World Party (WWP) promote the illusion against defenseless peoples from Panama abroad." Both of these routes would deny prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and that U.S. imperialism and Clinton's Dem­ and Haiti to Somalia and the Sudan. By Turkey billions in potential revenues. Palestine Authority president Yasir Arafat ocrats can be pressured into adopting a the U.S. Army's own account, its mili­ The Clinton administration is insisting is to openly affirm the CIA's role as arbi­ more "peaceful" policy. In a call sup­ tary operations have increased 300 per­ on construction of a far more expensive ter and overseer of the anti-Palestinian ported by these groups for a New York cent since 1989 (Los Angeles Times, II pipeline to the Turkish port of Ceyhan. "Pax Americana." The only road to City protest on November 17 against the November). Not the least of Washington's reasons emancipation for the Palestinian people U.S. war moves, there is not even a hint In its lates't war moves against Iraq, the is its interest in strengthening ties with lies in socialist revolution to explode the of the need for class struggle against the Clinton administration made a point of Turkey, which has long served as a key Zionist garrison state from within. capitalist rulers. Indeed, WWP's chief "going it alone," not even seeking the fig Trotskyists seek to break the Hebrew­ public spokesman on the question of Iraq leaf of a UN Security Council resolution. speaking proletariat from anti-Arab chau­ has long been Ramsey Clark, who served Aside from Britain's Blair, who has taken vinism and to win the Palestinian masses as attorney general in the Democratic on the role of Washington's voice within from the dead end of petty-bourgeois administration of Lyndon Johnson when it the European Union, the other major cap­ nationalism and religious fundamental­ was raining down napalm on the Viet­ italist powers offered at best grudging ism. U.S. out of the Near East! Israel namese workers and peasants and waging support to a military strike. In.his column out of the Occupied Territories! a war of terror against black radicals in in the London Independent (6 Novem­ While hypocritically railing against the U.S. ber), Robert Fisk pointedly asked, "How Saddam Hussein's oppression of the An ISO leanet for the demonstration long will Europeans, let alone Arabs, go Kurds in northern Iraq, both the U.S. and fatuously claims: "Thousands protested on accepting America's theatricals in the Germany have showered military aid on last February to stop the slaughter and we Middle East?" Germany and France in the Turkish bourgeoisie as it wages a can stop it again." Today, with imperialist particular are already at loggerheads with murderous war against the Kurdish pop­ spokesmen around the world calling for the U.S. in the jockeying for influence in ulation and the Kurdish Workers Party an end to the UN embargo, the ISO and the Balkans, as a New York Times (10 (PKK). Last Thursday, only days after the WWP push appeals to the U.S. govern­ November) article titled "Kosovo Crisis Russian parliament voted to grant asylum ment to "lift the sanctions" in their dem­ Strains Relations Between the U.S. and to PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, he was onstration call. But during the Gulf War, Europe" made clear. One German official arrested in Rome and is threatened with the ISO dropped its formal opposition to complained that "the Americans prefer to deportation to Turkey, where he would the imperialist boycott in order to endorse cut us out." face imprisonment, torture or death. The a January 1991 "Campaign for Peace" The cruise missiles, jet fighters and ICL demands that Ocalan be released march which explicitly called for eco­ aircraft carriers zeroing in on Iraq are immediately and calls for asylum for nomic sanctions as a supposedly "peace­ ultimately aimed at securing U.S. impe­ Kurdish and all other refugees from right­ ful" alternative to war. rialism's geopolitical interests in this wing terror! At the same time, we oppose It is a cynical reformist fantasy to sug­ strategic, oil-rich region. Washington is SYC campus speakout in Los Ange­ the PKK's petty-bourgeois nationalism. gest that liberal "peace" marches can stay intent on asserting its dominance there as les demands: "U.S. imperialism get Enslaved by a number of capitalist the hand of the most rapacious imperial­ your bloody hands off Iraq! Defeat the imperialist powers scramble over the regimes, the Kurdish people can only win ist power on earth. As we concluded in U.S. imperialism through proletarian immense oil and gas reserves being national emancipation by joining with the our February statement: revolution!" "The International Communist League opened up near and under the Caspian workers of Turkey, Iran, Iraqand Syria in socialist revolution. For ,'a Socialist adheres to Lenin's injunction that revolu­ Sea. The American bourgeoisie wants to outpost for the U.S. military while being tionaries 'will not deceive the people control these energy resources particu­ the object of massive German invest­ Republic of United Kurdistan! with admitting the idea that a peace larly because they are so vital to its com­ ment. Last year, the German-dominated The capitalist regime of Saddam Hus­ without annexations, without oppression petitors, especially Germany and Japan. European Union denied membership to sein has many crimes to answer for, from of nations, without plunder, and without the embryo of new wars among the pre­ The New York Times (8 Nbvember) Turkey amid a furor that this would its bloody repression of Communists and workers to its brutal SUbjugation of the sent governments and ruling classes, is noted: "Rivalries being played out here invite an influx of Turkish and Kurdish possible in the absence of a revolution­ will have a decisive' impact in shaping immigrants into racist "Fortress Europe." Kurds and ethnic and religious minor­ ary movement' (Socialism and War, July­ the post-Communist world, and in deter­ Months later, the U.S. joined with Tur­ ities. It is the job of the Iraqi workers, August 1915). We fight for socialist revo­ lution in the U.S. and internationally as mining how much influence the United key and Israel in staging joint military standing at the head of the peasants and all the oppressed, to overthrow Saddam the only way to put an end to war and States will have over its development." maneuvers. Under Washington's patron­ imperialist oppression. This requires The immediate backdrop to the latest age, Turkey has forged a Near Eastern Hussein's dictatorial rule. Down with all building revolutionary working-class war buildup is a conflict over where to axis with Zionist Israel, American impe­ the colonels, sheiks, mullahs and Zionist parties like Lenin's Bolsheviks, in the construct a pipeline which will carry oil rialism's other main gendarme in the butchers! For Trotskyist parties commit­ U.S. and around the world, and the ted to the perspective of permanent revo­ reforging of Trotsky'S Fourth Interna­ from the Caspian region. The major oil region, antagonizing the neighboring tional of world socialist revolution.". conglomerates prefer a route through Arab regimes. lution-Workers to power! For a socialist Iran-which is why many of them are Clinton's increasingly impatient at­ federation of the Near East! lobbying for Washington to "normalize" tempts to pressure Israel into granting Reforge the Fourth International! relations with Teheran. Another route some cosmetic territorial concessions to Spartacist League Washington's war moves in the Near East are carried out by the same racist rul­ Public Offices ing class that has ruthlessly driven down -MARXIST LlTERATURE­ SPARTACIST LEAGUE/U.S. LOCAL DIRECTORY the living standards of working people in National Office: Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116· (212) 732-7860 the U.S., that fiercely oppresses blacks, Bay Area Hispanics, immigrants and others, that Thurs.: 5:30·8 p.m. and Sat.: 1-5 p.m. Boston Los Angeles Oakland 1634 Telegraph, 3rd Floor (near 17th Street) has condemned millions to homelessness Oakland, CA Phone: (510) 639-0851 Box 390840, Central Sta. Box 29574, Los Feliz Sta. Box 29497 and starvation through the axing of wel­ Cambridge, MA 02139 Los Angeles, CA 90029 Oakland, CA 94604 ' Saturday: 2-4 p.m. (617) 666-9453 (213) 380-8239 (510) 839-0851 fare. Last year's UPS strike and the recent 123 Townsend St. (near 2nd St) GM strike testify to a revival of labor mil­ Dial #826 for entry Chicago New York San Francisco itancy and underline once again the fun­ San Francisco, CA Phone: (415) 777-9367 Box 6441, Main PO Box 3381, Church St Sta. Box 77494 damental irreconcilability of labor and Chicago, IL 60680 New York, NY 10008 San Francisco, CA 94107 Chicago (312) 454-4930 (212) 267-1025 (415) 777-9367 capital. It is the multiracial U.S. proletar­ Tues.: 5-9 p,m. and Sat.: 12-3 p,m. iat which has the social power to sweep 328 S. Jefferson St., Suite 904 away this rapacious imperialist ruling Chicago, IL Phone: (312) 454-4930 TROTSKYIST LEAGUE OF CANADA/LiGUE TROTSKYSTE DU CANADA class. To mobilize that social power New York City Toronto Vancouver requires breaking with the class collabo­ Tues.: 6:30-8:30 p.m. and Sat.: 1·5 p.m. Box 7198, Station A Box 2717, Main P.O. ration ism of the chauvinist AFL-CIO 299 Broadway, Suite 318 (north ot Chambers St.) Toronto, ON M5W 1X8 Vancouver, BC V6B 3X2 bureaucracy, which chains workers to the New York, NY Phone: (212) 267-1025 (416) 593-4138 (604) 687-0353 capitalist Democratic Party and embraces 10 WORKERS VANGUARD was the state that made lawful the appropriation by landowners of the forests, streams, and commons, and imposed terrifying penalties on those who persisted in claiming the old rights to these resources. It was the state that freed serfs or emancipated sharecroppers only to leave them landless." (52) The "Law," then, was a tool of the powerful, to protect their interests, then, as now. It was a weapon against the poor and impoverished, then, as now. It punished retail violence, while turning a blind A Quiet and Deadly Violence eye to the wholesale violence. daily done by their class masters. The law was, and is, a tool of state power, utilized "The deadliest form of violence is poverty." single year, two to three times as many people die from -Gandhi poverty throughout the world as were killed by the to protect the status quo, no matter how oppressive Nazi genocide of the Jews over a six-year period. This that status was, or is. It has often been observed that America is a truly is, in effect, the equivalent of an ongoing, unending, in Systems are essentially ways of doing things that violent nation, as shown by the thousands of cases of fact accelerating, thermonuclear war, or genocide on have concretized into tradition, and custom, without social and communal violence that occur daily in the the weak and poor every year of every decade, regard to the rightness of those ways. No system, that throughout the world." [Gilligan, p. 196] nation. causes this kind of harm to people should be allowed Worse still, in a thoroughly capitalist society, much Every year, some 20,000 people are killed by oth­ to remain, based solely upon its time in existence. ers, and an additional 20,000 folks kill themselves. of that violence became internalized, turned back on the Self, because, in a society based on the priority of Systems must serve life, or be discarded as a threat Add to this the nonlethal violence that Americans and a danger to life. wealth, those who own nothing are taught to loathe daily inflict on each other, and we begin to see the Such systems must pass away, so that their great themselves, as if something is inherently wrong with tracings of a nation immersed in a fever of violence. and terrible violence passes away with them. But, as remarkable, and harrowing as this level and themselves, instead of the social order that promotes degree of violence is, it is, by far, not the most violent this self-loathing. This intense self-hatred was often 19 September 1998 feature of living in the midst of the American empire. manifested in familial violence, as when the husband © 1998 by Mumia Abu-Jamal We live, equally immersed, and to a deeper degree, beats the wife, the wife smacks the son, and the kids in a nation that condones and ignores wide-ranging, fight each other. "structural" violence, of a kind that destroys human This vicious, circular, and invisible violence, unac­ The October 30 Pennsylvania Supreme Court life with a breath-taking ruthlessness. Former Massa­ knowledged by the corporate media, uncriticized in ruling against Mumia Abu-Jamal places the life of chusetts prison official and writer, Dr. James Gilligan substandard educational systems, and un-understood this courageous, eloquent spokesman for the observes: by the very folks who suffer in its gripsr feeds on the oppressed in immediate danger. All fighters "By 'structural violence' I mean the increased rates of spectacular and more common forms of violence that against racist repression, all opponents of the bar­ death and disability suffered by those who occupy the the system makes damn sure that we can recognize baric death penalty must join the fight to free bottom rungs of society, as contrasted by those who and must react to. Mumia now! Mobilize your unions, your stu­ are above them. Those excess deaths (or at least a dent and community groups. Contact the demonstrably large proportion of them) are a function This fatal and systematic violence may be called, of the class structure; and that structure is itself a prod­ The War on the Poor. Partisan Defense Committee. In New York: PDC, uct of society's collective human choices, concerning It is found in every country, submerged beneath the P.O. Box 99, Canal Street Station, New York, how to distribute the collective wealth of the society. sands of history, buried, yet ever-present, as omnipo­ NY 10013-0099; phone (212) 406-4252; e-mail: These are not acts of God. I am contrasting 'structural' tent as death. In the struggles over the commons in [email protected]. In Chicago: PDC, with 'behavioral violence' by which I mean the non­ P.O. Box 802867, Chicago, IL 60680-2867; phone natural deaths and injuries that are caused by specific Europe, when the peasants struggled and lost their bat­ behavioral actions of individuals against individuals, tles for their communal lands (a precursor to similar (312) 454-4931. In the Bay Area: PDC, P.O. Box such as the deaths we attribute to homicide, suicide, struggles throughout Africa and the Americas), this 77462, San Francisco, CA 94107-0462; phone (510) soldiers in warfare, capital punishment, and so on." violence was sanctified, by church and crown, as the 839-0852. [Gilligan, J., M.D., Violence: Reflections On a Nation­ "Divine Right of Kings" to the spoils of class battle. Urgently needed contributions for Mumia's al Epidemic (New York: Vintage, 1996), 192.] defense, which are tax-deductible, should be made This form of violence, not covered by any of the Scholars Frances Fox-Piven and Richard A. Cloward wrote, in The New Class War (Pantheon, 198211985): payable to "Mumia Abu-Jamal Legal Defense" majoritarian, corporate, ruling-class protected media, and sent to the Committee to Save Mumia Abu­ is invisible to us, and because of its invisibility, all the "They did not lose because landowners were immune to burning and preaching and rioting. They lost Jamal, 163 Amsterdam Avenue, No. 115, New more insidious. How dangerous is it-really? Gilligan because the usurpations of owners were regularly York, NY 10023-5001. If you wish to correspond notes: defended by the legal authority and the armed force of with Jamal, you can write to: Mumia Abu-Jamal, "[E]very fifteen years, on the average, as many people the state. It was the state that imposed increased taxes die because of relative poverty as would be killed in a or enforced the payment of increased rents, and evicted AM8335, SCI Greene, 1040 E. Roy Furman Hwy., nuclear war that caused 232 million deaths; and every or jailed those who could not pay the resulting debts. It Waynesburg, PA 15370.

rights against the union-hating lynchers Jamal ... of the Ku Klux Klan, from the June 1982 (continuedfrom page 12) laborlblack mobilization which spiked a Nazi provocation against Gay Pride Day Mumia's freedom and abolition of the to the January 1994 Springfield mobili­ racist death penalty. zation against a KKK race-hate rally on Chicago is a labor and black town. It is the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. In the birthplace of the modern labor move­ 1987, the ATU and other unions joined ment. Remember the Haymarket martyrs forces to beat back the racist frame-up of -executed for leading the fight for trade­ black transit worker Cassandra Seay. union rights and the eight-hour day in Many of these same unions supported 1886. Among these heroic working-class the successful fight waged by the PDC to fighters was Albert Parsons, who also defend the Anti-Klan Three, who faced fought for labor to cha11)pion equal rights imprisonment for their role in stopping a for black people. We don't need more 'violent Klan attack in Daley Plaza in martyrs! We need Mumia back in the June 1996. arms of his family and free to serve on the There must be no illusions that the front lines of the struggle against this capitalist state lacks either the power or racist system of poverty, war and death. the will to execute Mumia. There must Springfield, Illinois: Chicago unions joined in POC-initiated labor/black Chicago area unions have a proud his­ be no illusions that Mumia can get a fair mobilization against KKK provocation on Martin Luther King Day, January tory of joining efforts to defend black trial in the capitalist courts, despite mas­ 1994. sive evidence of his innocence in the December 1981 killing of a Philadelphia opposing court intervention. The working which has been the bedrock of American policeman. From the sham trial in 1982 class cannot effectively fight the racist capitalism ever since. to the rigged appeal hearings in 1995-96 frame-up of Jamal with cop-infested and We seek to bring together the broadest to the latest ruling, Jamal's case itself government-controlled unions. possible forces in labor-centered united­ has shown that this "justice" system is The Partisan Defense Committee is a front actions-where all participants are racist and anti-working-class to the core. non-sectarian, class-struggle legal and free to express their own particular Neither must there be any illusions social defense organization which cham­ views-to free Mumia and abolish the in the Democratic Party, which is no pions cases and causes in the interests of racist death penalty. In taking up the fight friend of labor and blacks but a party of the whole of the working people. This for Mumia's freedom, the working class big business no less than the Republi­ purpose is in accordance with the views of will be striking a blow against an entire cans. Clinton has condemned millions of the Marxist Spartacist League. We under­ system predicated on the brutal exploita­ women and children to starvation through stand that the cops, courts and prison sys­ tion of labor and rooted in the racist the devastation of welfare. His White tem which have persecuted and seek to oppression of the black population. The House has implemented a vast intensifica­ kill Mumia are at the core of an appara­ fight for black freedom is central to the tion of racist "law and order," including tus of repression which protects the emancipation of labor itself. Those who the "war on drugs" which has filled the rule and profits of the employing class. labor must rule! prisons to overflowing and a massive The death penalty is at the pinnacle of Trade unions, civil rights organiza­ expansion of the death penalty. For the this r.ystem of capitalist repression. And tions,' students and youth, all opponents social power of the working class to be Mumia's case symbolizes what the death of racist injustice: Mobilize now to bring unleashed, labor must be independent of penalty is all about: it is legal lynching out your members for a mass, defiant the political parties and the state that rep- pure and simple, rooted in the Southern protest at Federal Plaza on November - resent the enemy class. That also means slave system smashed by the Civil War 21! Free Mumia now! Abolish the racist ridding the labor movement of cops and and in the oppression of the black masses death penalty!. 20 NOVEMBER 1998 11 WfJRltERS """'RI)

Free Mumia Abu-Jamal! Abolish the Racist Death Penalty! We print below the call for the Chi­ October 29, the state Supreme Court lions to ensure fabulous profits for a cago demonstration issued by the Parti­ upheld the racist frame-up conviction wealthy few. All of labor must mobilize san Defense Committee on November 5. that railroaded Mumia to death row now to demand: Free Mumia! Abolish An innocent man, an award-winning more than 16 years ago. This is a fight the racist death penalty! writer, a lifetime fighter for the op­ for more than the life and freedom of Mumia, a MOVE supporter, has been pressed is in danger of execution. Any one courageous man. They want to kill in the cross hairs of the racist rulers Jay now, Republican Pennsylvania Mumia because of what he represents: from the time he was a 15-year-old governor Tom Ridge may sign a death defiance of this racist system which spokesman for the Black Panther Party, warrant for Mumia Abu-Jamal. On saps the lifehlood from the many mil- which was targeted for destruction by Jennifer Beach the FBI's COINTELPRO terror opera­ there lies the power to challenge the tion against black revolutionaries. If racial divisions they promote to weaken they get away with killing Mumia, it the working class. And it is precisely FR[E MUMTt\ will be a blow against all black people, the power of the integrated trade unions all minorities, all working people­ that must be mobilized to free Mumia. because the state will have strength­ In mobilizing to defeat the frame-up of fAB OrrSFl'~r'R]j~-~' ened its forces to move against all of Jamal, the unions will take a huge step us. It will embolden the cops in "Segre­ forward in becoming instruments of gation City" to intensify their daily ter­ struggle to defend not only their own DEATH PENALTY! ror in the ghettos and barrios. Black immediate interests but those of all the / \."/ \j \ rights and union rights go forward oppressed. together or fall back separately. When Philadelphia transit workers PARTI SAN DEFENSE COMMITTEE Those who howl for Mumia's execu­ went out on strike last summer, Mumia tion-from the Philadelphia Fraternal spoke out powerfully on their behalf Order of Police and District Attorney's from the dungeons of death row. Now office to the governor on up-are the all of labor must speak out and act on same forces which bust up picket lines, Mumia's behalf. Every union in the break strikes and seek to criminalize Chicago area should follow the example the very unions which were built to of Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) defend our jobs and livelihoods. The Local 241, which has taken up the unions are the only racially integrated call by the Partisan Defense Committee _ WV Photo mass organizations in this country. The to build for a powerful united-front SL/PDC contingent at October 31 emergency demonstration in San bosses and their state hate and fear the labor/black mobilization to demand Francisco. Multiracial labor movement is key to fight for Mumia's freedom. integrated union movement because continued on page I J

Partial List of Endorsers as of 16 November 1998 Prof. Peter Erlinder, Immediate past President, National Lawyers Brenda Rayford, Secretary-Treasurer, ATU Local 308, Chicago, IL Guild: SI. Paul, MN Norman C. Roth, Past President, UAW Local 6: Stone Park, IL Craig Aaron, Editor, In These Times: Chicago, IL Jearlean Fleming, OPEIU 391: Chicago, IL Earl Slibar, Steward, Executive Board at-large, AFSCME Local 3506,* Florine Allen, Assistant Secretary-Treasurer, ATU Local 308, Henry Louis Gates, Jr.. Director, W.E.B. Du BOis Institute*; Chicago,lL Chicago,lL Chair, Department of Afro-American Studies, Harvard University: Chris Siobogln, Law Professor, UF Law School: Gainesville, FL Robert L. Allen, Senior Editor, The ,Black Scholar journal: Oakland, Cambridge, MA Spartaclst League CA Robert Earl Hayes, Former death row inmate, Camden, MS Spartacus Youth Club, Chicago, IL Mary L. Johnson, Coalition Against POlice Torture: Chicago, IL Amalgamated Transit Union Local 241, Chicago, IL Jed Stone, Attorney, Chicago, IL Walter L. Johnson, Secretary-Treasurer, San Francisco Labor Amalgamated Transit Union Local 308, Chicago, IL Jean-Franc;ois Tealdl, National Secretary, National Union of Council: San Francisco, CA Amnesty International-Midwest Region Journalists (SNJ-CGT), Paris, France Troy L. Jones, Former death row inmate, Fresno, CA Marcellus Barnes, PreSident, Black Caucus, Amalgamated Transit Lowell Thompson, Partnership Against RaCism, Chicago, IL Union: Chicago, IL Jose Solis Jordan, Professor of Education, University of Puerto Rico, * Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico Darby Tillis, Pastor-President, Friends To Strangers Ministry: Nancy J. Bothne, Regional Director, Amnesty International-Midwest Chicago,lL Region, Chicago, IL Katie Jordan, President, Coalition of Labor Union Women: UAW Local 551 Civil Rights Committee, Chicago, IL Chicago Branch of Solidarity Chicago,lL UAW Local 719, Countryside, IL Chicago Conference of Black Lawyers, Chicago, IL Labor Black Struggle League, Chicago, IL Cornel West, Professor of Afro-American Studies, Department of Chicago Committee to Free Mumla Abu-Jamal League for the Revolutionary Party Chicago Refuse & ReSist! Leon London, Executive Board member, ATU Local 241, Chicago, IL Afro-American Studies, Harvard University,* Cambridge, MA Robert C. Clay, Executive Board member, ATU Local 241, Brian McWilliams, President, International Longshore and Jerry W. Williams, Sr., President, Business Agent, ATU Local 308, Chicago,lL Warehouse Union: San Francisco, CA Chicago,lL Ted Conner, Chair, UAW Local 551 Civil Rights Committee, Salim Muwakkil, Senior Editor, In These Times magazine, * Standish E. Willis, Chair, Chicago Conference of Black Lawyers, Chicago,lL Chicago,lL Chicago,lL Michael E. Deutsch, Past Legal Director, Center for Constitutional National Union of Journalists (SNJ-CGT), Paris, France Jolonda Young, Reporter, Illinois Times: Springfield, IL Rights: Chicago, IL October 22 Student/Youth Network, Chicago, IL Richard Ziebell, President, UAW Local 477: Chicago, IL Seth Donnelly, Case Manager, Hull House Association: Chicago, IL David D. Owen, Executive Board member, Rail-North, ATU Local 308, Dr. Michael E. Dyson, Professor, Columbia University: New York, NY Chicago,lL *Organizational affiliation for identification purposes only. Earlham Socialist Alliance, Richmond, IN Partnership Against Racism, Chicago, IL Mike Elliott, Co-Chair, UAW Local 551 Civil Rights Committee, Aaron Patterson Defense Committee, Chicago, IL Chicago,lL JoAnn Patterson, Mother of Aaron Patterson on death row, Aaron We want to make it very clear that these endorsers do not necessarily Henry L. English, PresidenVCEO, Black United Fund of Illinois: Patterson Defense Committee, Chicago, IL agree in any particular with the call by the Partisan Defense Chicago, IL - R. Eugene Pincham, Retired Justice, Appellate Court: Chicago, IL Committee printed above.

12 20 NOVEMBER 1998