NUMBER NINETEEN TEN CENTS MAY 1975 Saigon puppets flee All Indochina must go communist!

The fall of Saigon on 30 April to the National The triumphant advance of the NLF-DRV proved and the complete collapse of the capitalist class Liberation Front and Democratic Republic of Viet­ conclusively the complete untenability of the and its state apparatus, there is now only one nam (NLF-DRV) is a decisive defeat of US imperi­ 1973 Paris peace treaty, an agreement promoting possible path of 'development -- the expropriation alism and its South Vietnamese puppets. Together the illusion of peace between the classes, pro­ of the basic . Whatever the with the success of. the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, claiming acceptance of continued in outward forms of rule in Cambodia and South Viet­ it is a great victory for the oppressed through­ South Vietnam and a coalition government with the nam, they are now deformed workers states, which out the world, and especially for the workers and capitalist Saigon government. The peace treaty can only base themselves on the property forms of peasants of Indochina who have fought so long and came not out of a decisive military victory but proletarian rule, but with socialist development suffered so much through three decades of war out of a heroic struggle of the masses resulting and the international extension of against oppression. But with this victory the in a military standoff with their enormously held back by a bureaucratic caste ruling in the struggle does not end, either for the peoples of powerful enemy. But it was a political setback, absence of a conscious, active working class and Indochina or the world . As Marxists a treacherous compromising of the basic tasks of organs of workers' democracy. we must evaluate its true significance in order the revolution, opening the door to defeat de­ It was above all the decay, corruption and to go forward prepared for conflict with the spite the military strength of the NLF-DRV fol­ rapacious villainy of the puppet regime, propped corrupt and ruthless class of exploiters who lowing the withdrawal of US troops. As the up by promises of continued US aid alone, which despite their setback in Vietnam still rule the Spartacist tendency said at the time the Paris led to the rapid, almost effortless advance of world. Long live the Indochinese Revolution! treaty was signed: the NLF-DRV forces in what had begun as a limited Forward to the World October! "The main difference between this and the 1954 offensive intended not to take Saigon but only to sellout is the ceasefire in-place, ie, the force the replacement of Thieu and the creation continued presence of large numbers of NLF/DRV of a coalition government. But like rotten wood troops in the South. Because of this, and the the Saigon puppet army crumbled at the first difficulties (real, but not insurmountable) strong blows. The refusal of the Saigon ruling for the US in reinvading, we can judge that classes to agree to a coalition after the Paris ._Ik"',,--t.l!e. ce~s~Ji:J;~ 4P.~ lj,Qt. ~a:n,a.a iilmediate treaty wllS,·of decisive importance. The formation liquidation of the struggle and could well of the coalition demanded by the NLF would have lead to a Viet Cong victory in the South. postponed indefinitely the offensive and left the However, this gamble is based on the funda­ South Vietnam military apparatus temporarily in­ mental strategy of betrayal which has been the tact. A popular-front coalition might have saved essence of Vietnamese and international them, probably not permanently, but perhaps long Stalinist policy since the inception of the enough for US intervention to become feasible struggle. There has been no Dien Bien Phu and once again. Instead, evidently with encourage­ the NLF continues to call for a coalition ment from the US administration the Saigon regime government, which, if realized, with the obstinately refused all the class-collaboration­ Saigon military apparatus intact, could still ist propositions of the Stalinist-led NLF, gam­ lead to defeat." (Workers Vanguard no 16, bling on being saved in extremity by a new US in­ February 1973) tervention. Luckily and its lackeys proved too weak_and too brittle to provide sufficient scope But when the crunch came, the US for class-collaborationist treachery. To have left Thieu in the lurch, having decided by 1973 that keeping Vietnam was no longer worth the ignored the danger of defeat would have made that enormous war effort and growing popular discon­ defeat more likely; we warned of the danger and tent that it engendered. Still, up until today celebrate that it was unrealised. President Ford's decision on the eve of Saigon's With the NLF and Khmer RouQe in full control fall to abandon any intervention plans, it was possible that the US would act. Contingency plans existed for an assault, under the guise of "evacuating" Americans, on the NLF-DRV forces concentrating around Saigon and vulnerable to air attack. But the reluctance of Congress to grant more aid to Thieu after the rout of the ARVN in the northern provinces reflected the general ruling-class consensus that, as Nelson Rockefeller put it, "It's really too late to do anything about it" (quoted in the New York Times, 4 April 1975). And any intervention would have meet strong popular resistance within the US, already suffering from an economic depression and with leading government institutions substan­ tially discredited by constant political scandals. This military paralysis did not stop the American bourgeoisie from concocting anti­ communist hysteria about the Red Menace to inno­ cent Vietnamese babies, and to the butchers, torturers and thieves who were the Vietnamese "allies" of the US, supposedly threatened by an impending Communist "bloodbath" -- this from the blood-stained perpet~ators of napalm and terror­ weapon attacks on Vietnamese civilian population, operation Phoenix, saturation bombing of both North and South Vietnam, "free fire zones" and defoliation! Recently the of Australia Top: and General Leclerc toast March 1946 accords allowing French troops into North (CPA) 's Tribune has "attacked" our analysis of , Vietnam. Left: Viet Minh troops enter Hanoi, 1954. Right: NLF-ORV troops enter Oa Nang, 1975. Continued on page two """" Fiscal fiddling can't Marx versus KeJnes • • • • page 4 stop depression by Joseph Seymour \.. ~ CONTINUED F.ROM PAGE ONE served -- that all political prisoners be re­ jectively revolutionary under the influence of an leased [a point left out of the Peace inexorable "revolutionary momentum" -- leading to accords], a government of national accord the same conclusion: there is no longer any need Saigon puppets and reconciliation formed, and that all US for a revolutionary party based on the Trotskyist • • • mil i tary personnel withdraw." program. For the CL the "proof" that the Viet­ namese Stalinists have "assimilated" the Trotsky­ the role of the Stalinists in Indochina: Thus despite the overwhelmingly favourable ob­ jective circumstances it was still possible that ist theory of permanent revolution is their "Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger needn't Stalinist class collaborationism would snatch adopting not the Trotskyist program but armed worry, the Australasian Spartacist (April defeat from the jaws of victory. struggle, "the alternative of revolutionary com­ 1975) assures its readers that the 'Cambodian bat" (Inprecor, 27 March 1975). But of course, The victory in Vietnam has meant not a vindi­ armed struggle is always subordinate to a pol­ stalinists' have a 'strategy' to 'maintain cation but the violation by the Vietnamese capitalist rule'. The Spartacists, the most itical program and has variously been adopted by Stalinists of their own perspective of a "two Stalinists, bourgeois nationalists, and centrists way-out of all the sects, advocate a struggle stage" revolution. It proves that at stake in must be waged to construct Trotskyist parties as well as Leninists. The Stalinists smashed Indochina all along has been not just a question capitalism only against their own perspectives, in Indochina'. Words fai 1. " (Tribune, of self-determination (as the CPA and also the 15 April 1975) only to preserve their own position, only because "Trotskyist" Socialist Workers League (SWL) have the working class was and is not an active, They do indeed. With blatant dishonesty Tribune maintained); not just the democratic tasks of direct contender for power, and only under the drags our words from their context. What we said national independence and minor land reform; but exceptional conditions of a collapse of the local was: "while the strategy of the Stalinists is to a fundamental . In this epoch bourgeoisie and the inability of imperialism to form a government and maintain these tasks historically belonging to the bour­ intervene in time. The CL has yet to explain why capitalist rule ... any coalition government of geois revolution can only be carried out by the the 1954 betrayal occurred, in spite of success­ this sort would be highly unstable, and ... at dictatorship of the proletariat, by ftmbarking on ful armed struggle. Was it all the fault of most be a transitory episode in the process of the road to socialist development. The class Moscow and Peking? In that case, why have the forming a deformed workers state." The recent conflict of Vietnamese workers and peasants on Hanoi bureaucrats, these "unconscious Trotsky­ "Declaration of the Second National Congress of one side against Vietnamese capitalists, land­ ists", never called for political revolution in Kampuchea" of the National of Kam­ lords and their imperialist patrons on the other those countries, and why have they not denounced puchea (FUNK) and the Royal Government in Exile could be resolved only by smashing capitalist before the international proletariat the numerous (GRUNK) reassert their "policy of a broad union property relations and the capitalist state -- or crimes of Brezhnev and Mao? In fact the likes of of the entire nation, the entire people regard­ by the triumph of counterrevolution. That Ho, Le Duan et al are cast from the same mould. less of social classes ... " (quoted in L'Hurnanite, victory has come in spite of Stalinist betrayals 3 March 1975). FUNK categorically defends the does not justify them but is rather greater As for the "anti-Pabloist" SLL, it has em­ right of private property, assuring the bour­ reason for their condemnation, for without them braced the Vietnamese Stalinists with the same geoisie of conditions of "uninterrupted sale of victory would have come much sooner with far enthusiasm and wholeheartedly adopted Pabloist manufactured goods" (quoted in Young Spartacus greater impetus to inter­ liquidationism. In the early 1960s the Healyites no 31, April 1975). nationally. Not.a bourgeois but .only a prolet­ vehemently denounced those who described Castro The following issue of Tribune (29 April 1975) arian, socialist program can hope to appeal to as an "unconscious Marxist", correctly attacking tried another tack, dismissing any criticism of the international working class, whose solidarity the liquidationist implications of this position. Stalinist leadership as the "arrogance" of "arm­ with the Vietnamese revolution, and whose own But unable to grasp the essential methodological chair generals". But what is the record? After revolutionary victory, is essential to preserve basis of this capitulation they conclUded that the 1945 August Revolution the Viet Minh under the gains made. capitalism had not been overthrown in Cuba at all Ho's leadership allowed the British and French Of the tendencies in Australia claiming to be but that the Castro regime was still a capitalist imperialists to return to Indochina without a Trotskyist, the SWL and eCL) state, rather than a state of the same kind as struggle, and it was only the murderous shelling (both supposedly "sympathising" sections of the that in the Soviet Union and China (and North of Haiphong that convinced Ho that a deal with United Secretariat (USec) and the Socialist Vietnam) -- primarily because Castro, unlike Mao De Gaulle was impossible (at the time the Stalin­ Labour League (SLL) are all critical of the role and Ho, was not a Stalinist! Now they make the ists were still calling for limited independence played by the Chinese and Soviet Stalinist bu­ identical capitulation in Vietnam to that of the within the French union!). It takes no military reaucrats. But all abandon a Trotskyist analysis Pabloists in Cuba. According to the Healyite expert to figure out that victory was simply to adapt to the current popularity of the Viet.­ journal (February 1968), given away at Geneva in 1954, when South Vietnam namese Stalinists. Unlike the CPA the reformist Vietnam demonstrates "the transcendental power was handed back the capitalists, or that military SWL refused to support the Paris treaty, favour­ and resilience of the protracted peoples war led struggle in the South was abandoned in the period ing its own "single issue" variety of class col­ and organized by a party [the Stalinists!] based immediately following the consolidation of the laboration. Aithough belatedly criticising mild­ on the working class and the poor peasantry and rule of the dictator Diem. These betrayals were ly the DRV-NLF leadership, Direct Action has in inspired by the example of the October Revol­ manifestly the products of a political strategy the past (eg, the 18 January 1973 issue) exoner­ ution". And at the time of Ho Chi Minh's death of conciliating capitalism and imperialism. Even ated them of all biame for any sellouts. the British Healyite paper, the Newsletter with the last battles raging around Saigon, as On the other hand, the CL's Pabloist tailing (9 September 1969), lauded Ho as a man who "in­ Tribune (22 April 1975) so correctly puts it: of Stalinism led them into an open bloc with the stinctively yearned to do battle with imperialis~ "The Provisional Revolutionary Government·de­ CPA and other reformists in support of the Paris and the internal forces of reaction·within his mands nothing more and nothing less than that treaty, the robber's peace. During the Paris native country", claimihg that he stood up to the Paris Peace Agreement be at last ob- negotiations, the CL wrote in a veiled attack on Stalin and French imperialism at precisely that the SWL: time at the end of World War 11 when he was negotiating with the French for autonomy within "What was ignored by them was the fact that the French union. and while his followers were the Vietnamese had been under Russian and murdering the Trotskyist leaders of mass oppo­ Chinese pressure to back down for years, so sition to his betrayals! Today the SLL's Workers why would they chose to do it now when mili­ News, with lavish headlines of "Victory in Viet­ a monthly organ of revolutionary for tarily and pol itically [!] they were stronger nam", has not one criticism to make of the Viet­ than ever .... They also ignored the fact that namese Stalinists. the rebirth of the Fourth International the Americans were getting out of Vietnam, published by Spartacist Publications for the Laos and Cambodia under the agreement -- Did Peasant-based armies in backward countries, they expect a Dien Bien Phu? .. Above all led by Stalinists or other petty-bourgeois of the Spartacist League else, they chose to ignore the fact that it radicals, can at best only lead to the formation of Australia and New Zealand, section of the was the Vietnamese themselves who were demand­ of a·qualitatively deformed workers state, ruled ing that Nixon sign the peace-plan. From the by a bureaucratic caste which constitutes an ob­ international Spartacist tendency safety of their offices and lecture theatres, stacle to the 'completion of the . they knew better than the oppressed, as This obstacle must be smashed through political EDITORIAL BOARD: Bi I I Logan usual." (Militant, 17 November 1972) revolution in Vietnam and Cambodia and the build­ David Reynolds (editor) What the CL "ignores" is that if the Paris treaty ing of workers democracy, while resolutely de­ Adaire Hannah was the result of militarily forcing the US out, fending the revolutionary gains against imperial­ ist attack or counterrevolution. A burning need (Melbourne correspondent: John Sheridan) then the class-collaborationist treaty was no ruse to deceive US imperialism, which knew what is the creation of Trotskyist parties throughout GPO Bcx 3473, GPO Box 2339, the military state of affairs was. The deception Indochina to lead this struggle. The victory in Sydney, Melbourne, was directed rather at the oppressed masses. The Vietnam, achieved in spite of its leadership's NSW, 2001. Victoria, 3001. Stalinists could not afford and did not want a treachery and against enormous odds, is all the more an indication of the tremendous revolution­ (02) 660-7647 (03) 429-1597 v.ictory based on a political mobilisation of the masses in class struggle, a mobilisation which ary force of the world proletariat possible with would directly threaten the continued rule of the a revolutionary leadership. Forward to the re­ SUBSCRIPTtONS: One dollar for the next birth of the FOu:i'th International! • twelve issues (one year). Hanoi bureaucracy. AUSTRALASIAN SPARTAcrST is registered at the GPO, The CL has carried Pablo's original theory Sydney for posting as a newspaper -- Category·C. that Stalinism is objectively revolutionary one - step further, concluding that it can become sub- WIJIItIII~!i":::::::::==':::'::'-::::::':::"-::'-:''3F-=::::::::=::::':-'':'-:'===-_-:':'~Jffi ""''''11) 2S1 Fortnightly organ of Spartaci st/US

One year subscription (24 issues): Fi ve dollars Order from Spartacist, GPO Box 3473, subscribe 12 issues - $1 Sydney, NSW, 2001. NAME ...... mail to/make cheques payable to: HW"IIIII'i' ADDRESS ...... Spartacist Publications, CITY...... STATE ...... GPO Box 3473, ~f '~,;',c.;" ...:~;;'~ Sydney, NSW, 2001. POSTCODE ...... ~~~;:~~ Page Two AUSTRALASIAN SPARTACIST May 1975 The SLL's "answer" to crisis: Fake theory, fake press, fake party, fake

The current economic depression is a decisive in no sense a campaign to pressure the Labor o~ the Trotskyist program. But this renunciation confirmation of the Marxist understanding of leadership to the left but rather to bring the could not be clearer than in the SLL's "Mani­ capitalist society and a stunning blow to the op­ working class into aonfliat with its leader­ festo" which concludes: "We call on all workers, ponents of Marxism who in the post-World War II ship, break it from and in that con­ trade unionists, housewives, professional people period asserted that capitalism had become flict train and educate a Marxist leadership and youth to join the Socialist Labour League and capable of suppressing its internal contradic­ to prepare and organise the struggle for state fight for the following programme." The program tions. Moreover, the international scope of this power." (emphasis in original) which follows, the basis of membership in the SLL recession and the developing rivalries between and the sole programmatic basis of the SLL indi­ the imperialist countries, has confirmed the The fight for the workers' organisations -- both cated in the "Manifesto", is listed under six Leninist analysis of the imperialist epoch of the ALP and the trade unions -- to adopt a revol­ headings: "Halt unemployment", "Halt rising capitalism as the period of capitalist decline utionary program, the transitional program (not prices", "Homes for all", "Decent social ser­ and decay following the exhaustion of its histor­ the deliberately vague "socialist policies", a vices", "Abolish all anti-working class laws" and ical purpose. Events now daily demonstrate the phrase which invites confusion with the left re­ "Foreign policy". The sole solutions offered truth that this is an epoch of war and revol­ formists of the Socialist Left) is a central task under the first four are the expropriation of ution; one of constant struggle of the imperial­ of revolutionaries in this period. But to demand various capitalist enterprises. What has hap­ ist for the redivision of the world of the openly reformist Whitlam/Hawke leadership pened to the transitional program? Its traces among them; and of the urgent objective need for of those organisations that they fight for pro­ remain only in the demand to "open the books" of the proletariat, the only class capable of letarian revolution is simply ahildish, stupid companies retrenching' workers. The SLL "Foreign smashing class society, to take state power and opportunism. The SLL believes that the objective policy" includes nothing on support for revol­ liberate humanity once and for all from degra­ deepening of the class struggle will of itself utionary struggles in other countries. There is dation, exploitation, misery and destruction. convince workers of the need for revolution, and no call for the military defence of the USSR and For this reason the program of world proletarian so abandons the struggle to oust these traitors other deformed workers states against imperial­ revolution, the Transitional Program of the from their positions of leadership to be replaced ism, n6r for political revolution in those Fourth International, retains its validity. Only by a revolutionary leadership. For that struggle countries, which are indeed never mentioned at through the struggle for the Transitional Program the SLL substitutes another shoddy, incredibly all -- not even in the point on Vietnam! New can the working class become conscious of this cynical trick. Instead of telling the working Guinea (as an Australian colony) rates a mention, historical necessity; only a revolutionary class the truth -- that Whitlam, Hawke and com­ but not even Indonesia or New Zealand. There is workers' party based on this program will be able pany can only betray beaause of their reformist no policy on the new threat of inter-imperialist to overcome the crisis of leadership of the work­ program, the SLL wants to trick workers into a war. This program is a aompletely nationalist ing class and lead it to power. futile attempt to force proven, self-proclaimed l?rogram. Yet the Socialist Labour League (SLL), a group servants of capitalism to overthrow capitalism! fond of loudly proclaiming its unique loyalty to When it fails, workers will then supposedly flock Though token pieties are thrown in elsewhere Trotskyism, at a recent SLL national conference to the SLL. But workers are not as stupid as the in the manifesto, the program ignores the crucial codified more clearly and explicitly'than ever SLL thinks, and they will also throw out the question of the state. There is no mention of before its fundamental rejection both of scien­ charlatans who try to sow illusions in the re­ the need for workers' councils, factory com­ tific Marxism and of the transitional program. formist traitors. mittees or any other potential organs of workers power. There is not even a call for a workers The SLL, led by Jim Mulgrew, is the Australiar Central to the SLL's conference documents is The Crisis, the prophesy of the impending final government; not even a demand to dismantle the manifestation of the "International Committee of bourgeois armed forces! The SLL thinks that the Fourth International", run by Gerry Healy of collapse of the capitalist system because of which "The task facing the is not to fascist repression or military dictatorship is the British Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP). imminent, but its new program leaves the working This tendency, which originated in the struggle make industry more efficient by imposing wage cutting and increasing exploitation, though this class totally unprepared for such threats, with against Pabloist liquidationism, is characterised no mention of the need for workers' militias! by a subordination of the revolutionary program will be attempted, but to actually destroy the productive forces themselves." (Draft Perspec­ It is an utterly eaonomist program, consisting of to opportunist organisational manoeuvres, a various reform measures strung together only with policy of unprincipled political banditry stem­ tives of the SLL). Catastrophic prophecies and the litany of "nationalisation without compen­ ming from a refusal to carry through to com­ pathetic bombast are not necessary to Trotsky­ sation under workers' control". There are no de­ pletion the fight against Pabloism. Consequently ists. To rely on them as a substitute for revol­ mands regarding the special needs of women, youth utionary will and scientific Marxist theory underlying the Healyites' anti-Pabloist rhetoric or migrants. There is nothing to bridge the gap is a fundamentally Pabloist, objectivist method, reveals a fundamental lack of faith in the pro­ letarian revolution. Thus the SLL sees the "rev­ between the present reformist consciousness of expressed in an inverted form by their criminal the working class and the need for a workers sectarian abstentionism, and providing the im­ olutionary party" as needed only now, only because of_ the current eco-nomic depression: state; incomplete but essential transitional de­ pulse for their wild opportunist- zigzags and mands -- the sliding scale of hours and wages, liquidation of the Trotskyist program in "All revolutionary perspectives today begin factory committees -- are missing entirely, practice. Perhaps the most glaring expression of from the rapid and violent development of the while workers' control is made aonditional on the underlying Pabloism of the SLL is its current economic crisis now gripping the international nationalisation. It is not the program of a 'uncrITical enthusing over the Vietnamese revolutionary party but a program of capitulation Stalinists (see the article on page one). But capitalist system. The necessity for the con­ struction of the revolutionary party derives before the present false consciousness of the this betrayal is no aberration: thus the SLL working class and the reformists who foster it. has adopted Pablo's theory of a classless "Arab from the profound nature of the crisis and its utter insolubility." (SLL Central Committee Revolution", capitulating to Arab nationalism; The Spartacist League, in opposition to the and thus its calls for workers to pressure the "Draft International Economic Perspectives", Workers News, 13 February 1975) SLL revisionists, upholds as valid today the ALP misleaders to the left, alternating with basic perspective of the 1938 founding program of absurd denunciations of the ALP traitors in terms In contrast, Trotsky pointed out: the Fourth International, which declared: resembling the third-period Stalinist "theory" of social . "There is no crisis which can be, by itself, "The strategic task of the next period Mulgrew apparently believes it possible for fatal to capi,talism. The osaiUations of the consists in overcoming the contradiction be­ the SLL to aheat its way to a revolution, that a business ayale only areate a situation in tween the maturity of the objectively revol­ make-believe mass revolutionary party is as good whiah it will be easier, or more diffiault, utionary conditions and the immaturity of the as the real thing. Thus the SLL pretends that for the proletariat to overthrow aapitalism." proletariat and its vanguard .... It is necess­ Workers News is a mass paper "in direct compe­ ("Once Again, Whither France?", March 1935) ary to help the masses in the process of the tition with the press of the bourgeoisie" (in the (emphasis added) daily struggle to find the bridge between present demands and the socialist program of words of one of the SLL's rare internal documents But for the SLL, it is the economic conjuncture issued in 1972), and pretends that the SLL has the revolution. This bridge should include a and not the nature of the epoch of capitalist system of transitional demands stemming from widespread support in the working class, while in decline which determines the need for a revol­ fact it is objectively a tiny propaganda group. today's conditions and from today's conscious­ utionary party. This is preparation for liqui­ ness of wide layers of the working class and SLL activities are conducted for show, not for dationism, just as Stalin's "theory" of the struggle. Thus the SLL mobilised to "lobby" the unalterably leading to one final conclusion: "third period" of the final collapse of ­ the conquest of power by the proletariat." • ACTU conference last September and the Terrigal ism was preparation for Stalinist betrayal in ALP Conference in January but consistently boy­ the 1930s. cotts demonstrations for concrete aims -- even those it supposedly supports. Events advertised It is no accident that the Healyites' "theory" in Workers News often simply do not happen. The of a post-WW II capitalist "boom" based on monet­ SLL's second national conference was itself an ary inflation followed by a stage of permanent .Atal'x;SI J/ulleUn Alo. 3 empty facade: imitating the practice of Stalin­ crisis closely parallels that of the Pabloist (part iv - 1965) ist parties the SLL published the documents and (see the article "Marx versus central resolutions proposed by the SLL leader­ Keynes", page four). Specific aspects of the ship in Workers News before the conference took SLL's development of this "theory" are downright place, so certain was Mulgrew that they would be silly. For example, the SLL "Draft International Publ ished by automatically accepted. Economic P.:.rspectives" says, Spartacist/US Conversations The SLL's Pabloist call for workers to "In order to restore -the 'correct' proportion wit. "unite .,. around a socialist program and force between the surplus produced by the One dollar the Labor government to institute it" (Workers working class and the amount of capital Woblfortb News, 1 August 1974) is an approach shared with values, whole sections of the the productive Order from the reformists of the Socialist Workers League forces must be destroyed. And to carry this Spartacist, MINUTES OF THE SPARTAC.ST-ACFI (who are more realistic about how far left through what is required is the destruction of GPO Box 3473, UNITY NEGOTIATING SESSIONS Whitlam can be pressured). In the "Draft Per­ the greatest productive force of all -- the Sydney, spectives of the SLL" (Workers News, 13 March international working class." NSW, 2001. 1975) the SLL tries to explain this fact away: Why, then, doesn't the capitalist class simply "The struggle for socialist policies from the dynamite some factories? "''''''ACIIT--. Labor government is therefore [because the Wn,,:: ~:..:u:.:...~""-' .,',c...... 147J, or G 1'.0.... _ "maturing economic crisis" forces the working Such crackpot "theories" are nothing more than .,..., " ..'-nit. class into conflict with the ALP-reformists] a smokescreen to obscure the SLL's renunciation -lielfoto AUSTRALASIAN SPARTACIST May 1975 Page Three Fiscal fiddling can 't stop depression Marx versus Keynes by Joseph Seymour reprinted from Workers Vanguard No 64, 14 March 1975 financing this through borrowing rather than in­ military expenditure required by the emergence of The current extremely sharp economic downturn creased taxation. This bourgeois reform measure American imperialism as world gendarme in the has produced a wave of pessimism extending from has a long and respectable history going back to postwar period. the Stock Exchange and White House to the aca­ at least the 1890's. Moreover, the relative weight of military ex­ demic redoubts of bourgeois economics. While Thus the minority report of the English Poor penditure in the US has been steadily dealining President Ford proclaims that unemployment will Law Commission of 1909 stated, "We think that the since the Korean War, except for the Vietnam War not drop below 8 percent again for another two Government can do a great deal to regularize the years. In 1954 (the year following the end of years, the president of the American Economics aggregate demand for labour as between one year the Korean War) the military budget accounted for Association, Robert A Gordon, declares: "I don't and another, by a deliberate arrangement of its 11 percent of the US gross national product think we have a body of economic theory that is work of a capital nature." In 1921 President (GNP); by 1965 (the year before the Vietnam of great help to use in today's world" (Wall Harding's Commission on Unemployment recommended buildup) the figure had fallen to 7 percent; and Street Journal, 30 December 1974). expanded public works during the post-war down­ in 1973 military spending accounted for only 6 During most of the 1960's US government econ­ turn, a recommendation endorsed by such conserva­ percent of GNP (Eaonomia Report of the President, omic policy was dominated by Kennedyesque "whiz tive organizations as the US Chambers of Com­ 1974). So much for the "permanent war economy" kids" who claimed to be able to simultaneously merce. theory! hold down prices and stimulate investment through Moreover, in 1930 a bill was introduced into Before undertaking a Marxist criticism of adroit manipulation of fiscal "levers". Now, the US Senate (no 3059) calling for "advanced Keynesianism it is necessary to indicate more however, with the onset of double-digit inflation planning and regulated construction of certain precisely what it is that the latter asserts. and a slump of depression proportions, these public works, for the stabilization of industry, According to the pre-Keynesian orthodoxy of bour­ claims are rapidly being debunked. and for the prevention of unemployment during geois economics, a fall in the volume of invest­ It was predictable that a world depression periods of business depression". This principle ment that precipitated a slump would also free would lead to the collapse of optimism concerning was incorporated into the National Industrial money capital, which in turn would enter the loan Keynesian economic policies. The anti-Keynesian Recovery Act of 1933, a half decade before the market and drive down the rate of interest. This right (well represented in the Ford adminis:.. popularization of Keynesian economics. fall in interest rates would then stimulate in­ vestment to the point that full employment of re­ tration by the Ayn Randite Alan Greenspan and by What, then, is the significance of Keynesian­ former Wall Street bond dealer William Simon) had sources was restored. All the government had to ism -- why all the hullabaloo? While practical do was to see that the crisis did not disorganize argued for years that government deficits must politicians had advocated and partly attempted generate ever-increasing inflation, and now the banking system, ie, to ensure that the mech­ expanded government expenditure during economic anisms of credit expansion remained functioning. claims vindication. downturns, orthodox bourgeois economic theory (particularly in English-.speaking countries) Keynes accepted the theory that a sufficient Even the Keynesian liberals appear unsure of fall of interest rates would restore a full­ themselves, observing that the "trade-off" be­ still held that slumps were easily self-correct­ employment level of investment in a Slump. His tween inflation and unemployment has become most ing through a fall in the rate of interest. Ac­ cording to the textbooks, government policy dur­ major work, The General Theory of Employment, painful. Thus Sir John Hicks, one of the orig­ Interest and Money, is an attempt to explain why inal architects of the "Keynesian Revolution", ing a downturn should be to expand bank reserves and run a balanced budget. such a sufficient fall of interest rates does not has recently brought out a book entitled, sig­ occur. Keynes asserted that rentiers held some nificantly, The Crisis of Keynesian Eaonomias. What Keynes did was to provide a theoretical notion of a normal rate of interest. If the rate And revisionist Marxists who had earlier written justification, within the framework of bourgeois falls much below this, lenders will expect it to about the "relative stability of neo-capitalism" economic doctrine, for the deficit spending which rise again, thereby producing a capital loss on are now dusting off their copies of Capital and most capitalist governments practiced in the bonds purchased at the lower rates. In a general asserting that its venerable truths still haunt 1930's, as well as in earlier slumps. The sense, Keynesianism holds that at some abnormally the capitalist world. "Keynesian Revolution,,'was a revolution in uni­ - low rate of interest (termed the "liquidity We are witnessing a notable intellectual con­ versity economics departments, in the writing of trap") lenders will hoard money in anticipation vergence ranging from bourgeois reactionaries textbooks, not in actual government policy. of higher rates in the future. This is less an (Milton Friedman) to ostensible Marxists (Ernest explanatory theory than a description of the mon­ In the post-World War II period, capitalist etary aspect of a crisis/slump. Mandel), and including a number of liberals (John politicians have claimed that the relative econ­ K Galbraith, John Hicks, Abba Lerner): Keynesian omic stability has been due to their effective From these premises Keynes argued that govern­ economics., which supposedly "worked" for a gener­ use of Keynesian stabilizatidn policies. This ment efforts to expand money and credit during a ation, has now been overcome, they agree, by un­ assertion -- that capitalist governments can and slump would be ineffective, producing simply precedented global inflation and the worst crisis do control the economy for the benefit of "the money hoards and/or excess bank reserves. There­ since 1929. Despite its widespread acceptance, people" -- is partly bourgeois propaganda and fore, he argued that increased state expenditures however, this thesis is false. Keynesian fiscal partly bourgeois false consciousness. would have to substitute for inadequate capital policies never did, and neve~ could, stop the investment. This, in a nutshell, was the cyclical crises of overproduction which are in­ The notion that the proportion of government "Keynesian Revolution". herent in the capitalist system. expenditure has increased greatly since World War II is so widespread that it is taken as In order to. understand the difference between (1947-49 =100) a matter of course by virtually all Marxist and bourgeois (including Keynesian) political tendencies,including bour­ analyses of economic cycles, it is necessary to 140 geois reaction, Keynesian , take account of a fundamental difference concern­ ing the role played by the rate of interest. In 130 social-democratic and Stalinist reform­ ism, and revisionist "Marxism" a la bourgeois economics the level of investment is 120 Mandel. In truth, the supposed ex­ determined by the difference between the rate of 110 panded role of state expenditure is the interest on borrowed money capital and the rate of profit on the physical . 100 greatest of all myths of the "Keynesian Revolution". As long as the interest rate is substantially 90 below the profit rate entrepreneurs will presum­ It can be easily disproved by a few 1947 1948 1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 ably borrow and invest until this gap is elimin­ statistics which indicate government ated. A historical tendency for the rate of Index of US manufacturing production, 1947-58. While expenditure as a percentage of gross profit to fall, projected by many bourgeois econ­ bourgeois economists, revisionists talk of "1950s boom", national product for the major capital­ omists (including Keynes), is not viewed as a US annual growth rate in 1950s was 3.3%, compared to a ist powers during the interwar period fundamental barrier to expanded production. As historic norm of 4.0% and 1960s rate of 4.9%. (1920-39) and during the 1961-70 long as the rate of interest is sufficiently low, decade: a full-employment level of investment is suppos­ A major world slump as severe as the present edly assured. one has been. possible at least since the world In contrast, for Marx the level of investment recession of 1958. That such a slump did not oc­ Country 1921-19/59 1961-1970 cur before 1974 is due to contingent factors and France 1 14% 13% is determined by the rate of profit on the pri­ not to the effectiveness of Keynesian counter­ Germany 2 18% 16% vately owned means of production. The interest Great Britain 21% rate is part of and governed by the profit rate measures. For example, in 1967 the US would 19% Japan 10% 8% on the real means of production. During a slump, have had a recession except for the expansion of United States despite abnormally low rates of interest, the Vietnam War. Output actually did fall in the 11% 20% loanable capital remains unused. Thus Marx re­ first quarte.r of that year and there was a 1967 Sources: OECD, NationaZ Aaaount8, 1961-1972; US De­ recession in West Germany, then the second partment of Commerce, Long-Term Eaonomia Growth, ferred to "the phase of the industrial cycle im­ 1860-1970; Mitchell, Ab8traat of Briti8h Hi8toriaaZ mediately after a crisis, when loanable capital largest capitalist economy. Without the sudden Stati8tia8; Stolper, The German Eaonomy, 1870-1940; lies idle in great masses" (Capital, Vol III, escalation of the Vietnam War, this conjuncture Maddison, Eaonomia Growth in the West; Ohkawa and Chapter 30). would undoubtedly have caused a world economic Rosovsky, Japane8e Eaonomia Growth. crisis, possibly quite severe. Only an idiot The validity of the Marxist position was dem­ objectivist could deny this historic possibility. lGerman interwar figures only cover 1925-39. onstrated during the late 1930's when excess bank 2British figures are based on national product net reserves (an index of the difference between The fact that a major world slump did not oc­ actual loans and the legally authorized lending cur in the twenty years preceding 1974 is not due of depreciation, giving them a slight upward bias relative to the other countries. capacity) were at the highest level in US his­ to credit inflation, an ever-increasing arms tory, in spite 'of the unusually low interest budget, Keynesian stablization policies or any rates. The exact same phenomenon is occurring in other deliberate government policy. There has the present depression. Bank deposits in the US been no fundamental change in the structure of These few figures utterly destroy the notion of a "Keynesian Revolution" involving major are now declining at an annual rate of 0.6 per­ postwar capitalism that would justify the various cent as bank loans fall, although the falling labels popular in liberal and revisionist Marxist structural changes in the capitalist system fol­ lowing World War II. Only in the United States interest rates are now even lower than the rate theorizing -- eg, neo-capitalism, the mixed econ­ of inflation (International Herald Tribune, 15-16 omy, the permanent war economy, etc. was there a significant rise in the level of government expenditure. In all other major capi­ February). The expansion and contraction of John Maynard Keynes was not responsible for talist countries, the weight of the state budget credit is a passive result, not a cause, of developing or even for popularizing the policy in the economy dealined slightly. And the ex­ changes in production. that capitalist governments should increase their panded role of the state budget in the US is en­ expenditures during an economic downturn, tirely accounted for by the greatly increased Underlying the analytical difference over the Page Four AUSTRALASIAN SPARTACIST May 1975 role of credit and interest between bourgeois and economics if instead of treating government ex­ What is this supposedly Marxist work which ~laims Marxist economics is the concept of class. In penditure as a non-profit component of surplus that state intervention has ensured "greater bourgeois economics there is no capitalist class. value he treated it as a subtraction from the stability" and "a reduction of cyclical fluctu­ Instead, atomized non-capitalist entrepreneurs gross value of output, in the form of constant ations"? It is entitled Marxist Economic Theory borrow from equally atomized rentiers, using the capital expended and replaced. (the excerpts are from Chapter 14) and is written funds to establish productive enterprises. Entre­ Mattick's work is a partially correct expla­ by one Ernest Mandel. preneurs and rentiers are linked solely through nation of why those capitalist countries bearing To be fair to Mandel, it should be noted that the rate of interest. a heavy burden of government expenditure (the US, he always hedges his bets. He has not completely According to Marxism, however, the capitalist Great Britain) have grown much slower than those rejected the efficacy of Keynesian countercyc­ class is a definite concrete group composed of economies with a relatively limited state sector lical measures. Buried in the Inprecor article those who own and have a monopoly over the means (Japan, France). Yet his theory cannot explain is a statement that governmental intervention can of production (including loanable capital). The the onset of a major world depression, nor does arrest and reverse the present world economic capitalist class is bound together, by innumerable Mattick project such a development. The logic of crisis: personal, familial and organizational filiations; his theoretical model is for progressive stag­ "The recession is precisely a cr1S1S of over- the atomized non-capitalist entrepreneur -- the nation, not a general world slump. , production whose breadth and duration are central figure of bourgeois economic theory -- is According to Mattick's model, a sharp fall in limited by an injection of inflationary buying a fiction. The capacity to borrow is strictly private investment such as occurred in 1974 power. Thus, if the economy is refloated by limited by one's ownership of the capital assets should have been preceded and caused by a sharp means of such injections -- first of all in required for security against loans. In reality, rise in the share of government expenditure. But West Germany, then in the United States and credit under capitalism is always rationed, on this did not at all happen during the 1972-73 Japan -- the international capitalist economy the basis of specific monopoly complexes involv­ boom. The share of government outlays in the ad- will avert a grave depression this time." ing financial, industrial and commercial capital­ vanced capitalist countries remained virtually If th' 'bl d rs h the cap l' ists. The clearest example of this is the Japan­ unchanged dur1ng" that per10d, as can be seen f rom, 1S were POSS1 h e ' one wonh' e w y f - ese zaibatsu system, but the same phenomenon teoh f 11 oW1ng. f'19ures: ~ tal 1St governments ave let t 1ngs go so ar. holds throughout the capitalist world. r~- Despite his usual fine-print escape clauses, From the Marxist standpoint the fundamental Government Expenditures as Mandel's latest contribution is a dishonest re­ fallacy of Keynesian economics is the assertion Percentage of GNP "'" pudiation of the analysis of contemporary capi­ , that the expansion of the government sector will Country 1971 1973 talism expressed in his principal writings during leave the rate of profit, and therefore the level France 12% 12% the 1960's. Having served its purpose as an im­ of private investment, unchanged. Whether Japan 9% 9% pressionistic justification for opportunist poli­ financed through borrowing or taxation, govern­ United States 22% 22% cies of adaptation to the labor bureaucracy, ment expenditure constitutes overhead costs of West Germany 17% 18% "neocapitalism" has now been discretely removed the capitalist system -- a part of the total from the Mandelian vocabulary. social capital expended and replaced, denoted by Source: OEeD, Economic Outlook, December 1972 and Having "disappeared" his belief in the effi­ "constant capital" in Marx's equation for the December 1974. \. ~ cacy of Keynesian stablization policies, Mandel components of the product. (For a resorts to various ad hoc theories to explain the fuller discussion of this question, see "Myth Thus even at the empirical level it is indis­ present conjuncture. His central theme is why of Neo-Capitalism", RCY Ne'Wsletter no 10, putable that the current world economic crisis there is a world crisis now, whereas during the January-February 1972). cannot be attributed to the limits of Keynesian­ past 20 years the various national slumps (some­ Assuming, as Marx did, that the share of wages ism, at least not in the sense of intolerably times severe) were largely isolated in time from of productive workers (variable capital) is de- large government expenditure relative to private one another. As Mandel puts it: capitalist production. 'termined in the labor market, then an increase in "The generalized recession will be the most government overhead costs (constant capital) must In "The Generalized Recession of the Inter­ serious recession in the post-war period, pre­ reduce the potential and therefore national Capitalist Economy" (Inprecor, 16 Jan­ cisely because it is generalized. The lack of the rate of profit as well. A constantly ex- uary 1975) Ernest Mandel, -leader of synchronization of the industrial cycle during the 1948-68 period reduced the breadth of re­ cessions." It is an indisputable empirical fact that since the 1958 recession (not since 1948 as Mandel contends), the various national economic downturns have not reinforced and have partly offset each other. This statement can be trans­ formed from an empirical description into a causal theory only if it is asserted that the ab­ sence of conjunctural synchronization was not due to contingent factors, but rather was inherent in the structure of post-war capitalism Cat least until recently). This is precisely what Mandel, now seeks to demonstrate: "This synchronization is not an accidenta,l feature. It results from deeper economic transformations that occurred during the long period of expansion that preceded the re­ cession."

Mandel advances three ~easons to support this Ernest Mandel. . thesis. The first is that the world economy in John Maynard Keynes. the 1950's-1960's was not sufficiently inte­ panding government sector would tend to drive grated (!) to permit a generalized crisis. But the pseudo-Trotskyist United Secretariat, at­ during that period, the world economy became down the rate of profit, progressively arresting tempts a major analysis of the world conjuncture. private capitalist investment. sufficiently integrated, particularly due to the The article begins with a statement of self­ expansion of multinational firms: praise to the effect that the author, unlike many Published in 1969, Paul Mattick's book Marx "Internationalization of production took new and Keynes. which carries the more indicative others, always rejected the idea that Keynesian economic policies could stabilize capitalist in­ leaps forward, marked by advances in the in­ subtitle, The Limits of the Mixed Economy. ac­ dustrial cycles: ternational division of labor among all the cepts the common revisionist/reformist/liberal imperialist countries. From the standpoint of view that for a certain historic period Keynes­ "While the recession may be a surprise to all the organization of capital, this reflected ianism produced "prosperity": those in bourgeois and petty-bourgeois circles itself in the rise of multinational firms "Government induced production may even and in the workers movement who had been taken which produced surplus value in a great number bolster the rate of economic growth. Con­ in by the claim that the governments of Capi~ of countries simultaneously .... " ditions of 'prosperity' more impressive than tal endowed with neo-Keynesian techniques those brought forth under laissez-faire con­ would henceforth be in a position to 'control Apparently it really is necessary to point out ditions may arise .... At any 'rate, recent the cycle', it was foreseen and predicted by to Mandel that the world economy has been suf­ economic history has demonstrated the possi­ our movement, almost to the date." ficiently integrated to generate international bility of a 'prosperous; development of a crises/slumps for more than a century! The prin­ And who are these unnamed figures in the mixed economy." cipal basis of that integration is world com­ workers movement who believed -- oh, how modity trade and its associated complex of However, Mattick at least makes a serious attempt naively -- that "neo-Keynesian techniques" could financial claims. The principal "multinational to develop the internal contradictions of Keynes­ "control the cycle"? Perhaps Mandel is referring firms" which extract surplus value in a "great ian economic policy and holds that increased to the author of the following excerpts from a number of countries simultaneously" are today, as government expenditure must eventually destroy well-known book on Marxist economics published in they have been for centuries, the great banks, capitalist stability: 1962: not industrial corporations. "Once non-profit production becomes an insti­ "Since the Second World War, capitalism has World crises are marked and intensified above tutionalized part of the economy, a vicious all by major bank failures: the Austrian Credit­ circle begins to operate. Government pro­ experienced four marked recessions: in 1948- 49, 1953-54,1957-58, and 1960-61. It has Anstalt in 1931, Bankhaus Herstatt in West duction is begun because private capital ac­ Germany and Franklin National Bank in the US in cumulation is diminishing. Using this method had no grave crisis, and certainly nothing of the dimensions of 1929 or of 1938. Have we 1974. The partial displacement of banks by in­ diminishes private capital accumulation here a new phenomenon in the history of capi­ dustrial firms in financing international trade even more; so non-profit production is in­ and investment has a certain effect on present­ creased .... The limits of private capital talism? We do not think it necessary to deny this, as certain Marxist theoreticians do .... day capitalism. But it certainly does not quali­ production are thus, finally, the limits of tatively raise the level of international econ­ government induced production." The origins of the phenomenon are connected with all the features of the phase of capi­ omic integration, permitting world economic The most orthodox of the various revisionist talist decline which we have listed. The crises for the first time. theoreticians of postwar capitalism (eg, Mandel, capitalist economy of this phase tends to en­ Mandel's second reason is that the displace­ Paul Sweezy, Michael Kidron), Mattick is the most sure greater stability both of consumption and ment of the dollar exchange standard by managed grudging in giving ground before the claims of of investment than in the era 6f free compe­ fluctuating rates in 1971 has prevented competi­ Keynesianism. In contrast to Mandel and Sweezy, tition, or than during the first phase of tive devaluation, thus requiring simultaneous de­ Mattick's work has the virtue of recognizing that monopoly capitalism; it tends toward a re­ flationary policies: expanded government expenditure drives down the duction in cyclical fluctuations, resulting rate of profit on private capital and therefore above all from the increasing inte,rvention of ". .. as soon as the collapse of the inter­ national monetary system led to the system inhibits productive investment. However, Mattick the state in economic life." (emphasis in would have been more consistent with Marxist original) Continued on page seven AUSTRALASIAN SPARTACIST May 1975 Page Five Indian Trotskyist peasant leader persecuted Defend Jagadish Jha!

reprinted from Workers Vanguard No 65, 28 March 1975 "He helped to organize the first Fire Brigade Workers' Union and other unions in Calcutta We stpongly upge oup peadeps to contpibute to City. the defence of compade Jha. Cheques should be "When the BLPI entered the Socialist party in made payable to ''PaPtisan Defence Fund", the 1948 -- after the former Congress Socialist legal defence fund of the SLANZ. Contpibutions party seceded from the Congress party to form fop the defence of Jha should be so maPked, and an independent SP -- he moved to the Raniganj sent to: PaPtisan Defence Fund, GPO Box 3473, area where he organized the colliery workers Sydney 2001. " in the coal mines. He was later elected The Partisan Defense Committee (PDC), legal secretary of the Bankura district committee defense arm of the Spartacist League, is of the SP. He was one of the first trade launching a campaign to generate international unionists to be detained by the then West support for the persecuted veteran Indian Bengal government under the Public Security Trotskyist, Jagadish Jha. Comrade Jha and a num­ Act. On his release he was 'externed' from ber of fellow militants have been subjected to Bankura district but he continued to work five years of vicious government harassment and 'underground. ' prosecution for their courageous efforts in 1969- "In 1952 when the SP merged with the Krishak 1970 to organize the agricultural workers of " Mazdoor Praja party [KMPP], a dissident group Bankura. from the Congress party, to form the Praja The district of Bankura, with a population of Socialist party [PSP], he resigned along with 1.7 million, is the most arid and backward sec­ other Trotskyists and functioned for a while Naxalites in West Bengal. Workers Press tion of the state of West Bengal. The state under the banner of the Socialist party government at the time Jha's organizing drive was (Marxists). Thereafter he lost contact with agement of workers through elected committees of at its height was the so-called "United Front" the T~otskyist groups that existed in differ­ workers in all undertakings". which included the pro-Moscow Communist Party of ent parts of the country and settled down in Bankura to work among the peasants." In many cases the demands reveal the stark India, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and poverty which exists in West Bengal, calling for the centrist Revolutionary Socialist Party, as As to the later organizing which led to the PSKS, things which are taken for granted even in many well as such outright bourgeois parties as the Kolpe writes: semi-industrialized capitalist countries. How­ BangIa Congress Party. "Jha has emerged as a militant peasant leader ever, neither in the demands relating to distri­ Trotsky called Stalinism the syphilis of the after the successful ten-day strike of 15,000 bution of land or in the demand for nationaliz­ workers movement, and in the r"ndian strain we farm labourers in 400 villages in Bankura dis­ ation of industry is the stipulation "without find Stalinism at its most virulent. While the trict in November 1969. The farm hands, as a compensation" included. This is crucial in order CPI(M) sometimes made halfhearted attempts to result of the strike, got their daily wages to contrast the Trotskyists' call for exppoppi­ organize agricultural workers and lead land seiz­ nearly doubled -- from two and a half kilo­ ation to the bourgeois nationalizations proposed ures (mostly prior to its entry into the popular­ grams of paddy [threshed unmilled rice] to by the social-democratic and Stalinist reform­ front government), Comrade Jha's campaign was the four kilograms plus two free meals for an ists. In addition, no demands are raised for first serious effort. Typical of the West Bengal eight-hour working day. political power, ie, for the elimination of capi­ Stalinists' practice was to permit the capitalist "But they got their wages only during the talist rule by a workers and peasants government. landlords (the "jotedars") to join their parties sowing and harvesting season. They are con­ Kolpe quotes Jha as stating, "Unless we estab­ and then defend the Jotedars against the agri­ demned to remain idle from January to June." lish a firm alliance with the working poor and cultural workers who were often members of the the urban working class, we cannot win our same parties. This was as true of the CPI(M) as He quotes Jha as saying: struggle." Even if the SWPI had been a healthy of the CPl. "The jotedars and rich peasants agreed to a revolutionary party, it would have required a Furthermore, their coalition partner in the wage rise because the strike took place "during strong base in the Calcutta proletariat to back popular-front state government, the BangIa Con­ the harvesting season. But they are launching up and provide working-class leadership for the gress Party, was openly the party of the jotedars an offensive now. All sorts of tricks are mass organizing of the agricultural workers. Had and the urban capitalists. It is not surprising, being employed to scare. the. rural poor away the continuity of revolutionary Trotskyism not therefore, that Jha's organizing efforts, con- " from "the PSKS. . been broken in India, had the Trotskyist movement ducted through the Paschim BangIa Palli Shramik "There are court cases pending against eighty­ not been totally disoriented and dealt a lethal Krishak Sangh (PSKS --West Bengal Village three of the militants of the"PSKS, including blow by two decades of liquidationism, a genu­ Workers and Tillers Union), encountered savage me. The charges vary from rioting to illegal inely Marxist party could very well have stood at repression from the "United Front" government. seizure of land, use of firearms, and incite­ the head of the Indian proletariat. In that case (The head of the police at the time in West ment to violence. We were charge-sheeted by Comrade Jha's courageous efforts in attempting to Bengal was Jyoti Basu, a leader of the CPI(M), the police under the United Front government organize the agricultural workers might not have who also unleashed a murderous campaign to round which has since fallen. But the prosecution gone down in defeat. continues, naturally, now that the president's up militants of the Communist Party of India The defense of Jagadish Jha is not only (Marxist-Leninist), the official Maoist group, rule [by the central government] has been im­ posed on the state." necessary because of the government repression of which had recently organized a peasant uprising the activities of the PSKS which, whatever their against landlords in the Naxalbari district.) The program of the PSKS contains a number of limitations, were clearly on behalf of the op­ Since 1970 Comrade Jha has been arrested three vitally necessary reform demands, such as for a pressed and exploited. It is also required times and the police have brought 39 cases statutory minimum wage, year-round employment, because Jha and his fellow militants have been against 150 of the PSKS members and organizers. full unemployment compensation, disability allow­ vilely abandoned by their "comrades" of the CLI Jha is a member of the Communist League of India ances, land distribution, free medical care and and USec, including by the USec's financially (CLI), formerly the Socialist Workers Party of education, as well as the demand "Nationalization rather well-off "fraternal" group in the US, the India (SWPI), a section of the fake-Trotskyist of all large-scale industries in the urban areas Socialist Workers Party. The defense of this United Secretariat (USec) of Ernest Mandel. The to abolish the monopoly of the capitalist class veteran Trotskyist and valiant fighter for the SWPI and USec supported and widely publicized over them, nationalization of all principal means cause of the workers and exploited peasants is an Jha's organizing drive at the time of its initial of production and distribution including trans­ elementary duty for socialists and a necessary successes. However, now that these militants no port, whole-sale and foreign trade and commerce, part of the struggle for the rebirth of the longer have the media appeal of, for example, as well as all credit institutions under the man- Fourth International in India ....• Bangladesh Maoists or the Chilean MIR, they have been criminally abandoned by the opportunist USec. CONTINUED FROM PAGE EIGHT trast to the fake-lefts who gave the trade-union bureaucrats a blank cheque and helped to keep Moreover, Jha and the other defendants have students confined to narrow student issues, accumulated enormous legal expenses which cannot Spartacist supporters earned a reputation among be paid simply from the pittances which can be • • • Uni strike the workers not only as the most active allies of contributed from the meager earnings of agricul­ the strike but also as the communists. The SSC tural workers. They have been forced to sell first said that "we will have to call Sydney". gave valuable assistance to the striking workers their livestock and implements but still cannot Later, when challenged about their attitude out­ by helping to turn back delivery trucks and to meet the cost of court appearances (lawyers' side a 21 April SLL "public meeting" (Cancelled successfully persuade some scabs to stop work, fees, travel expenses, etc), much less bail. Jha when only two SLLers and thr~e Spartacist sup­ collecting money for strike funds (a total of himself must support a family of six and is porters turned up), SLL supporter Paul White over $800 was raised at LaTrobe, about half from seriously ill, presently being hospitalized. All said: "You know we're sectarian and not com­ the SRC) and publicising the struggle (blacked this makes the negligence by the USec particu­ munist. Anyway we're not interested in throwing out by the bourgeois press). larly despicable. garbage on clerical workers." The dumping of garbage outside the vice-chancellor's office was A detailed account of Jha's 1970 organizing The strike also showed that universltles are drive, including the program of the PSKS and a a tactically ~nept and juvenile measure, adopted only when all other proposals had been voted not enclaves sealed off from the class struggle. brief biographical sketc~ appeared in the SWPI down. Therefore, although used by the Maoists to The attitude of the administration showed clearly magazine Wopld Outlook (May 1970) and was sub­ evade real strike support work, it did represent that it is a tool of the capitalists and an enemy sequently reprinted in Intepcontinental Press a gesture of student solidarity with the of the working class. The class function of uni­ (11 and 25 May 1970). The article is by Sitaram strikers, which is mope than the SLL did at any versities cannot be completely overcome until the "B Kolpe, a leading member of the SWPI and CLI. point. proletariat successfully overthrows the capital­ He writes: ist class and institutes its own rule. Thus the "Now forty-seven years old [making him 52 The Spartacist League, which was the driving Spartacist League sought to link the strike to today, quite old for a worker or peasant in force in the SSC, did not accept the "workers the fight against the capitalist recession, India] and the father of five children, must decide" line. Students cannot of course through demands for a sliding scale of wages and Jagdish Jha started his political career as take part directly in union decision-making; but hours, for a revolutionary leadership of the a trade-union worker in Calcutta in the revolutionists have a duty to argue for the workers movement, pledged to expropriate the forties. He was one of the first group of class-struggle policies necessary for victory, to capitalist class, and for a real workers govern­ workers who were attracted to the Bolshevik win students and workers to a revolutionary work­ ment; and raised the call for student/staff/ Leninist party which was then the Indian ing-class perspective, and to point the way worker control of the universities, to break them section of the Fourth International. towards successful socialist revolution. In con- .from the hold of the ruling class .• Page Six AUSTRALASIAN SPARTACIST May 1975 CONTINUED FROM PAGE FIVE Thus two factors -- the widespread resort to com­ world depression should deepen this year, gIvIng petitive devaluation after 1971 and the effect of way to high-unemployment stagnation lasting at the 1972-73 boom on agricultural and raw material least through 1976. If this occurs, in two years Marx vs Ke,nes supplies -- account for the price explosion of the rate of inflation will be greatly reduced; it the last few years. already shows numerous signs of slowing. Those of floating exchange rates, that is, as soon leftists whose central argument against bour­ as it became impossible to resort to sharp Even discounting the fact that it is empiri­ geois economic"reformism is that it leads to devaluations to boost exports, all govern­ cally false, the argument that Keynesianism is ever-accelerating inflation will then find them­ ments were obliged by interimperial'ist com­ now ineffective because it leads to intolerable selves theoretically defenseless against the petition to apply an anti inflationary policy inflation is not a fundamental but rather a tem­ claims of resurgent Keynesianism. sirrrultaneously." (emphasis in original) porary, conjunctural one. As an attempted ob­ jective analysis it is similar to the present The "theory" that for a generation capitalist This argument is simply false, totally wrong. position of certain right-wing Keynesians, such governments were able to prevent major crises and The fixed exchange rate system set up at Bretton as Federal Reserve Board chairman Arthur F Burns stimulate exceptional economic expansion has an Woods in 1944 was deflationary and 'acted as a and Ford's economic adviser William Fellner, who implacable revisionist logic. Whatever the sub­ limit to deficit spending. Several prominent contend that a few years of high-unemployment jective attitudes of its proponents this view British Keynesians, such as Roy Harrod and James slump are needed to drain the inflationary press­ leads straight to the conclusion that we have Meade, long advocated fluctuating exchange rates ures out of the world capitalist system. After been living in an epoch of capitalist economic in order to pursue more expansionary monetary and that, they contend, Keynesian policies can again stability. Such arguments have nothing in common fiscal policies. produce 10 or 20 years of low-inflation, mild-re­ with Marxism. On the contrary, the Transitional cession expansion. Program of the Fourth International has as its Before August 1971 competitive devaluation was cornerstone the Leninist theory of imperialism as exceptional, to be used only in extremis; today If there is no major war nor a mass revol­ the highest Clast) stage of capitalism, its epoch it is the rule. During the 1950's and 1960's utionary upheaval in West Europe during the next of decay and a period of wars and . governments often resorted to deflationary few years (both are genuine possibilities), the This must be our perspective .• measures to protect an overvalued exchange rate (for instance, the policies of the second Eisenhower administration, the austerity program CONTINUED FROM PAGE EIGHT its "What We Think" column to an attack on the of the early Gaullist regime and the "stop-go" Spartacist League's trade-union work. It starts policies of various British governments before off by attacking one woman militant who spoke at the 1968 devaluation of the pound). the Redfern Oval meeting, calling her a "Sparta­ metal workers II I Mandel's third reason is that since periods of cist League sympathiser". This is completely false -- she had no contact with the SL at all national economic slump are becoming longer they pointing out that unco-ordinated, isolated shop prior to that meeting, as the SLL could have are more likely to overlap with recessions in floor struggles will dissipate the great poten­ easily found out -- and her contribution fell other countries: tial united industrial strength of metal workers, short of a revolutionary policy. But the SLL's "The phases of stagnation, and even recession, and called for a co-ordinated" continuing bungle does contain an insight: such an articu­ are beginning to be longer. Obviously, this national strike run by elected rank-and-file com­ late militant, though not yet a revolutionary, is leads to synchronization. When they occur in mittees. exactly the type of person the SL would seek most a dozen countries at once, recessions that In Victoria, Halfpenny's defence of the of­ urgently to recruit to a Leninist perspective. last six months are less easily surmounted ficial resolution was backed up by Terry Bosely, The SLL evidently prefers the likes of John than recessions that last two years."" a shop steward at the Williamstown Naval Dock­ Percer. yard, who distributed a leaflet by the Communist This is, of course, a statistical truism. How­ Workers News goes on to attack the speech of a League (CL) at the Festival Hall mass meeting and well-known SL supporter in the AMWU at the same ever, since the prolongation of an economic informed the meeting that a national strike would crisis in one country is strongly influenced by "play into the hands of the employers"! And in meeting: simultaneous slumps in the rest of the world, keeping with the CL leaflet, which contained not "The thrust of the Spartacist line was put by Mandel's reasoning is completely circular. Thus one criticism of Halfpenny or any other union a supporter who called for a national campaign his third "reason" is no reason at all but simply misleader, Bosely moved an addendum to "aonsider to be run by rank and file committees of metal another way of describing a general world down­ a campaign of complete overtime bans and working workers. Even the outward militant form of turn. a 35-hour week as a positive form of action" (em­ this proposal barely conceals the content, In short, of Mandel's three reasons why a gen­ phasis added), a proposal so obviously innocuous which is precisely that of the official resol­ eraL world slump is occurring now but was not that Halfpenny willingly incorporated it into the ution; take the responsibility for a national possible in the preceding period, the first is official resolution. . campaign out of the hands of the leadership irrelevant, the second is false and the third is Another group that claims to provide an and put it back on the shop floor representa­ meaningless. alternative to the assorted MTF reformists is the tives. Such 'militant' rank and filism must have been music to Joe Caesar's ears." Virtually all liberal bourgeois, reformist Healyite Socialist Labour League (SLL). In its and revisionist economists maintain that the only frenzy to make it look as though the SLL ha~ mass In fact, the SL supporter condemned the treacher­ obstacle to effective Keynesian policies is in­ "influence", the SLL paper Workers NeuJS (17 April ous way in which the log had been served on the flation. Expanded government expenditure can 1975) enthusiastically quotes (in a headline no employers without consultation with the member­ always produce full employment, they say, but less) an unnamed senior shop steward from Ples­ ship; criticised the specific shortcomings of the sometimes only at the cost of intolerable rates seys who is supposed to have said: "'National log (which SLL supporters did not do); attacked of inflation. From bourgeois reactionaries like stoppages on a national basis are the only way we the phoney indexation schemes of the Labor Milton Friedman to the pseudo-Marxist Ernest are going to receive satisfaction with our government, pointing out that it is not a real Mandel there is agreement that Keynesian poli­ award. "' This "senior shop steward" the SLL is workers government but one that serves the cies must generate ever-higher levels of in­ so eager to portray as a fighting militant bosses; condemned Caesar for ignoring the 35-hour flation. Is this contention valid? clearly identified himself at the meeting as week, calling for a sliding scale of hours; urged right-wing Electrical Trades Union steward John that workers refuse the sack and take no re­ The accelerated inflation of the past few Percer. The SLL leadership knows perfectly well sponsibility for the capitalist recession; and years is an indisputable empirical fact. In the who and what he is. While Percer said at Lid­ called for a national strike run by elected shop­ period 1961-71 consumer prices in the advanced combe that individual shop-floor struggles would floor committees. If this is "music" to Caesar, capitalist countries increased at an annual rate be ineffective, militant Plessey workers report the SLL might explain why he (as well as red­ of 3.7 percent; in 1972 this rose to 4.7 percent, that Percer has undermined attempts to mobilise baiting the SLL) specifiaally attacked the SL in 1973 to'7.7 percent and in 1974 to 14.1 per­ workers at Plesseys for the metal 'campaign and supporter for this last demand. Do Caesar, Scott cent (OECD, Economic Outlook, December 1974)! Is has never spoken for national stoppages to and Halfpenny really prefer a national strike run this accelerated inflation an inevitable result workers on the shop floor. But even more des­ by the rank and file to a strike they bureau­ of 20 years of Keynesian policies? picable is the failure of Workers News to mention cratically control and can sellout at will? Earlier in this article it was pointed out that the bulk of Percer's speech; reflecting re­ NonsenSe! that the share of government expenditure did not acti@nary craft prejudices prevalent among many Elected rank-and-file strike committees are no increase during the 1972-73 boom. Thus the price tradesmen, was taken up with demanding higher cure-all; but as part of a clear program for explosion during the past few years cannot be at­ relativities for tradesmen! The consaious re­ class struggle, they are absolutely necessary for tributed to ever-greater budget deficits to fusal of Workers News to report this is only an a successful strike. The metal campaign covers finance ever-greater government spending. The outstandingly cynical and disgusting example of seven unions; there is a crying need for unified very sharpness of the price increases since 1971 the SLL's consistent tailing of backward con­ organisation on the shop floor, essential.to run sciousness in the working class. It is linked to argues against the theory that it is an organic, any real strike. The SLL says that Halfpenny, inevitable outcome of a generation of deficit the Healyites' refusal to fight the special op­ Scott and Caesar can be trusted to mobilise the spending. pression of women and migrants (who are concen­ rank and file, that democratic strike committees trated in the unskilled job categories), and are not needed. This is an open, explicit bloc What then is the cause of the increased in­ helps the bosses keep workers divided. flation of the past three years? One major cause with the bureaucrats against rank-and-file con­ Workers News was too busy fawning over sell­ trol of the campaign, against elementary workers' has already been touched on. The dollar exchange outs like Percer to bother reporting the presence standard, which collapsed in August 1971, had an democracy, against a solid strike. Nothing could of the group of militants from Plesseys who stood show more clearly the SLL's utter renegacy. effect partially similar to the pre-World War I ?n a class-struggle program, who not only dis­ gold standard. The maintenance of a fixed ex­ tributed a leaflet outlining this program but It is therefore somewhat pathetic for Workers change rate served as an external limit to the presented a motion (copies of which were also News to say: expansion of domestic money and credit. Since distributed at the meeting) offering a clear "In their ' work' [the SL] begins 1971 capitalist governments have taken the "easy alternative to the proposals of both Percer and not from the necessities before the working way" out of balance-of-payments deficits by al­ Dick Scott (AMWU National President and the re­ class; that is the construction of a Marxist lowing their currencies to depreciate. Exchange­ porter at Lidcombe): leadership, but from their own needs as a rate devaluation further feeds domestic in­ "I. That the MTF rej ect arbitration in any small group. Hence they direct any members in flation, producing a vicious spiral. Britain and the trade unions towards so called 'exemplary Italy are the clearest examples of this process. form. "2. That we demand an immediate 35-hour week trade union work', not a fight f~r leadership, The second reason for the accelerated in­ without loss of pay linked to a sliding scale but to act as a 'showpiece' to impress other flation is that the sharp 1972-73 world boom had of hours to combat unemployment. radicals and 'left' tendencies." an effect on agricultural and raw material sup­ "3. That we seek a flat increase of a minimum Coming from the similarly small SLL this is rich. plies similar to that of a major war. From the of $20 with provision for an automatic monthly The question is precisely how revolutionary Marx­ Korean War through 1971 the terms of trad"e for cost-of-living adjustment starting in April ists, who are in fdat a "small group", begin to agricultural products/raw materials had deterio­ based on the highest wage in the industry. construct a Marxist leadership with authority in rated relative to manufactures, producing a fun­ "4. That if we can't get an automatic cost­ the working class. Certainly it is not built damental" imbalance in global productive capacity. of-living adjustment we demand a total $60 from right-wing shop stewards and opposition to During 1972 when industrial outp~t in the ad­ rise instead. rank-and-file organisation. The SLL has aban­ vanced capitalist countries increased by 8 per­ "5. That we fight to ensure that the entire doned the Marxist transitional program in favour cent, global food production actually fell balance of the log of claims is met. of the crudest capitulation, and substitutes the slightly (OECD, Economic Outlook, December 1973). "6. That there be a continuing national facade of a "mass" paper and publicity gimmicks These physical shortages quickly generated specu­ strike run by elected shop-floor committees in for serious day-to-day work. The SLL has had lation, hoarding and cartel manipulation. Be­ support of these claims." supporters in the metal trades for some time, but tween 1971 and 1973 the index of world raw ma­ their own showpiece "alternative leadership", the terial prices increased by over 80 percent, as (As usual, the chairman of the meeting ignored phantom "SLL Metal Trades Caucus", seems to have did the price of internationally traded food pro­ the motion and it was never put.) disappeared again this year -- scarcely a model ducts (OECD, Economia Outlook, December 1974). The same issue of Work.ers News devotes most of for revolutionists .• AUSTRALASIAN SPARTACIST May, 1975 Page Seven Metal workers must unite - For a continuing national strike!

The long-delayed mass meetings of metal available work with no loss in pay, is crucial to handout in the national wage case decision, an­ workers held nationally in the second week of fight sackings and unemployment, and therefore nounced at last on 30 April. Attempting to brow­ April demonstrated clearly that the leaders of essential to a successful struggle for wages and beat workers into accepting a cut in real wages, the Metal Trades Federation of unions (MTF) in­ conditions as well. Already before the mass it includes the hoped-for token handout (a 3.6 tend to prevent an effective campaign even for meetings Communist Party of Australia (CPA) mem­ percent cost-of-living increase for the March their limited log of claims. Just one indication bers and leading officials of the key Amalgamated quarter), but the court has vowed to drop in­ of their policy is their downgrading of the de­ Metal Workers' Union (AMWU), John Halfpenny and dexation next quarteT if any section of the work­ mand for a 35-hour week. This demand, especially Laurie Carmichael, began talking about accepting ing class seeks wage demands, such as the $18-$20 if linked to a sliding scale of hours to share a 35-hour week for 35 hours pay, a proposal to MTF claim and all over-award claims, beyond the share the poverty, with a worthless promise to court's narrow guidelines! This recipe for a regain wages later (see Australasian Spartacist wage freeze must be rejected. What is needed in no 18, April 1975). And in his report to the the metal award is real wage indexation, an auto­ Redfern Oval mass meeting in Sydney on 9 April, matic, monthly cost-of-living adjustment based on Federated Ironworkers' Association National the highest wage in the industry, as well as a President Joe Caesar did not even bother to men­ real fight for a $20 flat increase. tion the 35-hour week demand! The whole MTF leadership has synchronised the According to the official resolution, carried campaign with the Arbitration Commission hear­ overwhelmingly at all the meetings, shop stewards ings, exposing as a fraud bureaucrats' claims to were to approach their respective employers to oppose Arbitration in favour of direct nego­ "seek undertakings" to accept direct negotiations tiations. Victories are not won by delegations with the MTF, an increase in award wage rates, to the employers or in the bosses' Arbitration and improvements in conditions. If no "satisfac­ Court, but by militant industrial action. The tory" progress is made the resolution authorises MTF resolution's "campaign of action" is a farce: the unions to initiate a "campaign of action" and "Collective non-co-operation with management to call further report-back mass meetings in the at the job level, including stoppages of work, last week of April. This policy is supposed to overtime bans and/or limitations in those split the ranks of the employers. But it is lu­ areas and/or shops where union officials and dicrous to expect individual employers to break shop stewards consider would be most effective from the Metal Trades Industries Association and approved by the members." (emphasis added) (MTIA) hardline policy (refusing to negotiate and At the Lidcombe Oval meeting in Sydney militants referring the claim to the Arbitration Com­ from the Plesseys Meadowbank factory attacked mission) simply because of visits by shop stew­ this strategy as a decisive step backwards, .tML ards. This tactic was really a device to stall Redfern Oval, Sydney mass meeting on April 9. the campaign in hopes of a token wage indexation Continued on page seven • Fake left tokenism and ~etrayal In • • • LaTrobe Uni Strike On Friday 18 April catering and maintenance organisation, though they were at workers at LaTrobe University voted to return to least willing for students to work after a week-long strike. The previous picket. No attempt was made to Friday, a stopwork meeting of all workers at gain the support of workers at La­ LaTrobe except for academic and clerical staff Trobe not directly involved in the (including members of the plumbers' union, the strike, such as the aca4emic staff carpenters' union, the Miscellaneous Workers' and administration clerks. At the Union, the Building Workers' Industrial Union, second stopwork meeting on Tuesday the Amalgamated Metal Workers' Union, the Fed­ 15 April all of the union bureau­ erated Engine Drivers and Firemen's Association crats (except one FEDFA official) (FEDFA), the Federated Liquor and Allied Indus­ clearly wanted a return to work. tries Employees' Union of Australia, and They had dropped the demand for a Australian Workers Union) had decided to strike thirty-five hour week, and instead for a l7-point log of claims rejected by the of the $20 over-award rate they university administration. The unions' claims had tried for $5 (the administra­ included a 35-hour week (an important demand in tion offered $2!). When the the fight against general high unemployment), a workers voted to reject the admin­ $20 over-award increase to offset a 16 to 20 per­ istration's offer, the officials cent inflation per annum, 15 days sick.leave, tried to stall, asking the workers Picket line in support of striking LaTrobe uni workers. l7~ percent annual leave loading, and a number of "what do you want us to go back claims relating to conditions. For the catering and present" (as if the log of staff the unions also demanded both equal pay for claims did not exist!). Another motion to picket ist Bulletin", undated). At a general meeting of casual workers (mainly women) as part of the workplaces on campus was carried, but officials students on 14 April the Spartacist League pre­ standardisation of conditions for all LaTrobe made no serious effort to implement it. sented a motion calling for support to the full workers (to eliminate the use of cheaper casual As a result of the workers' decision on log of claims, for a university-wide strike of labour to undercut the conditions of all students, workers and academic staff and for mass workers), and payment of the seniority-based in­ Tuesday to continue the strike new concessions were wrung from the administration. At the final picketing. While the SL fought for the most ef­ crembntal pay rises which the administration has fective way to win the strike, the fake-lefts refused to pay catering staff since they were stopwork meeting on Friday 18 April, the of­ ficials cited Health Department threats to close unanimously opposed a university-wide strike as awarded to Victorian public employees three years "unrealistic" and "utopian". ago. the university, the tensions between different sections of the workers, and growing student The strike marked the first time that unions antipathy to the strike as reasons for accepting The Maoist Revolutionary Student Movement (RSM) refused to have anything to do with the at LaTrobe have acted together around a common the new offer. But ~t no point did they them­ log of claims, a step towards the class unity selves attempt to offset these dangers. SSC. They simply advocated sending delegations needed to win any significant gains. The workers to the administration, and they were among the also sought the support of the students~ inviting Most left-wing groups at LaTrobe expressed initiators of the proposal, adopted at a second them to the stop-work meetings. The gains made support for the strike, and an ad-hoc Strike student general meeting on 16 April, to collect by the workers, though limited, are a minor vic­ Solidarity Committee (SSC) was established on the the garbage around the university and dump it tory which would not have been possible without initiative of the Spartacist League. Though they outside the vice-chancellor's office. were at least prepared to work in the SSC, the the united strike action. The final settlement But some other left-wing groups refused to do included wage increases from $3 to $11, l7~ per­ Socialist Youth Alliance, the Revolutionary Com­ anything whatsoever. The "militant" Communist cent annual leave loading, accumulated sick pay munist Club (campus arm of the Socialist Workers Action Group) and the LaTrobe Anarchists all hid League has at least two members at LaTrobe. On~, and equal wage rates for casual workers, a par­ Robert Dorning, when requested to help picket re­ tial implementation of the incremental pay behind the idea that "the workers must decide" plied with obscenities, and another, Ken Howard, scheme, and several improvements in conditions. what is necessary to the'struggle, in order to answered that 'he "didn't want anything to do with avoid supporting class-struggle policies and to it"! No CLers were to be seen anywhere. near the The officials of the unions involved did their justify their tailism. The LaTrobe Anarchists strike. As for the Socialist Labour League, they best to harness the workers. No preparation was wanted students simply "to be prepared to help in made for the strike and they had no plans for its any way they are asked by the workers " ("Anarch- Continued on page six Page Eight AUSTRALASIAN SPARTACIST May 1975