~ Australasian 4.

30 CENTS Number 77 September 1980 Fight clerical reaction! For proletarian political revolution! II I Everyone predicted it was coming. A restive, combative working class, peasant strikes, massive foreign debt, chronic and widespread food shortages, a powerful and increasingly assertive Catholic j church, the burgeoning of social­ democratic and clerical-nationalist oppositional groupings. All the elements J.•...... i,{!""~'" .... ':1';' were there. Poland in the late '70s was I .. ' locked in a deepening crisis heading ) < toward explosion, an explosion which ., f il. could bring either proletarian political revolution against the Stalinist bureauc­ racy or capitalist counterrevolution led by Pope Wojtyla's church. And when it came it gripped world attention for two solid weeks. The Baltic ':JII'1 • coast general strike was the most power­ ful mobilization of the power of the working class since France May 1968. But was it a mobilization for working-class power? That is the decisive question. Now there is a settlement on paper. The Polish workers have forced the bureaucracy to agree to "new self­ governing trade unions" with the pledge that these recognize' 'the leading role" of the Communist party and do not engage in political activities. Insofar as the settlement enhances the Polish workers' power to struggle against the Stalinist Strikers In Gdansk (left); praying beneath pope's portrait at Lenin Shipyard (right). A massive demonstration of the bureaucracy, revolutionaries can support the strike and its outcome. But only a power of the working class - but a mobilisation for working-class power? blind man could fail to see the gross influence of the Catholic church and also Kremlin has a sense of humor. If Gierek willingness to negotiate with unofficial decade ago. The regime quickly agreed to pro-Western sentiments among the in Warsaw is pushed to the wall, shop-floor spokesmen, not just rep­ this. striking workers. If the settlement Brezhnev in Moscow stands behind him. resentatives of the state-run trade Within a week 150,000 had downed strengthens the working class organiz­ The settlement was conditioned, on both unions. In this sense the Gierek regime tools, 200 factories were shut and the ationally, it also strengthens the forces of sides, by the presence of forty Soviet encouraged small wage strikes as a lesser Baltic ports - Gdynia, Sopot, Szczecin, reaction. Poland stands today on a razor's divisions in East Germany. The Kremlin evil. Elblag as well as Gdansk - were edge. has already made disapproving noises July saw a flurry of slowdowns and paralyzed. And it seemed as if every time The compromise creates an impossible about that settlement, and Soviet military strikes - tractor builders near Warsaw, the Interfactory Strike Committee (MKS) situation economically and politically; intervention cannot be ruled out. The end railwaymen in Lublin, steel workers near met, it raised five more, and more it cannot last. In a country facing inter­ of the strike is only the beginning of the Krakow - which were quickly settled political, demands - "free" trade national bankruptcy, heavily subsidized crisis of Stalinist Poland. with significant wage rises. Predictably, unions, end all censorship, free all by the Soviet Union, the strikers are The present crisis was triggered once the strikes had a cascade effect. Other political prisoners (there were only six). demanding. the biggest free lunch the again by increases in the price of meat. workers went out demanding more. In What had begun as a series of quickly world has ever seen. The Poles demand On July 1 the Gierek regime took a early August there were stubborn strikes ended wage struggles had become a that they live like West Germans. There's gamble and it lost. To continue the price by Warsaw garbagemen and transit political general strike. a joke in Poland: we pretend to work and freeze was economically intolerable, workers; one ofthe leaders was arrested. the government pretends to pay us. In especially to Poland's Western bankers But when on 14 August 17,000 workers Workers democracy or clerlcal­ West Germany one works. (the food subsidy absorbed fully 8 percent seized the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk, the nationalist reaction? Politically the Stalinist bureaucracy of total national income!). To raise the Stalinist regime was faced with a fun­ What is the political character of the cannot live with this kind of independent price of food without a wage increase was damentally different order of challenge. strike and the consciousness of the working-class organization, a form of cold to invite an immediate, nationwide mass It was the Baltic shipbuilders who in 1970 workers? Certainly the workers are dual power. The bureaucracy is not a strike/protest like in December 1970 and toppled Gomulka and forced his suc­ reacting against bureaucratic mis­ ruling class, whose social power is June 1976. The regime figured it could cessor Gierek to accept an independent management, privilege and abuse. The derived from ownership of the means of minimize the financial cost and social workers committee for a time. One of the Polish workers' grievances are real and production, but a caste based on the disruption by granting wage rises only to strikers' first demands was to build a they are just. The firing of an old militant, monopolization of governmental power. those groups of workers who made some monument to the workers killed when Anna Walentynowicz, a few months But it's a good thing someone in the trouble. The government indicated its Gomulka called in tanks to restore order a Continued on page 2

. .. ~ The Korean war and .CPA."·""conference: the utilit'd ." PessiOlisOIinlhe '80s ... 6 Gdansk shipyard started every day by particular prelate was responsible for the said, •'we were promised that many times Poland ••• "rush[ing] into the courtyard and at a trot greater oppositional stance of the church: before". began tossing pictures of the Virgin "In recent years, the church has taken a Now the workers' attitude is very continued from page 1 Mary, Queen of Poland, into the air" sharper anti-government tum under different than, say, ten years ago. The (New York Times, 31 August). And at the Krakow's Cardinal Wojtyla, who captured 1970-71 strikes were clearly economic. before her retirement, which reportedly signing of the strike settlement, Walesa the allegiance of university students by None of the eleven demands of the ostentatiously wore a crucifix and used a opening the city's churches to their anti­ Warski Shipyard strike committee in sparked the Lenin Shipyard takeover, government discussion groups." should infuriate every honest worker. The foot-long red and white (the Polish Just a few months earlier this cardinal Szczecin (the leading workers' organiz­ existence of special shops exclusive to national colors) ballpoint pen, a souvenir from Krakow had become the "infal­ ation at the time) went beyond prices, party members and cops, which the of Pope Wojtyla's visit to Poland last lible" head of the Roman Catholic wage compensation and no reprisals. strikers demanded be abolished, is an year. (To top it off, Walesa's father, who church, the first non-Italian successor to Today leading elements of the Gdansk­ abomination, a rejection ofthe most basic has emigrated to the US, posed with the throne of St Peter in four centuries. based Interfactory Strike Committee are principles of socialism. Ronald Reagan as the Republican reac­ Karol Wojtyla is a dangerous reactionary associated with the Catholic church But if we know what the Baltic workers tionary officially kicked off his presiden­ working hand in glove with US imperi­ opposition and the social-democratic are against in an immediate sense, what tial campaign.) alism (especially his fellow countryman Committee for Social Self-Defense are their positive allegiances and general Even more ominous was the demand Zbigniew Brzezinski) to roll back (KOR). With the authority of the bu­ political outlook? Early in the strike there for "access by all religious groups [read "atheistic Communism", beginning in reaucracy greatly weakened, the unions were reports of singing the Inter­ Roman Catholic church] to the mass his homeland. As we wrote when this will strongly tend to break the paper nationale, which indicates some element media" , a prerogative for which the Polish anti-Communist was made pope: prohibition on political oppositional of socialist consciousness. Some of the Polish episcopate has long campaigned. " . .. he now stands at the head of many activity. strike committee members had been This is an anti-democratic demand which millions of practicing Catholics in East The particular slogan of "free trade shop-floor leaders in the official trade­ would legitimize the church in its present Europe, a tremendous force for counter­ unions", pushed for years by the CIA­ union apparatus who were victimized for role as the recognized opposition to the revolution" ("The President's Pope?", backed Radio Free Europe and the trying to defend the workers' interests. Stalinist regime. Significantly, the strike WVno 217,20 October 1978). Catholic church, has acquired a definite They undoubtedly were and possibly still committee did not even demand the right The power and the danger of the Polish anti-communist and pro-Western con­ are members of tpe ruling Polish United to such media access for itself or for the Catholic church are clearly revealed in notation. Remember the 1921 Kronstadt Workers Party (PUWP, the official name "free trade unions" it was fighting to set the present crisis. The day after the Lenin mutiny's call for "free soviets" - free of the Communist party). These advanced up. In effect the Baltic shipbuilders were Shipyard seizure Cardinal Stefan from Communists, that is I An integral workers surely desire a real workers asking for a state church in a deformed Wyszynski led 150,000 "pilgrims" in a part of the Trotskyist program for pro­ Poland and world socialism. workers state. commemoration of the bourgeois­ letarian political revolution in the While the imperialist media always But the church is not loyal to the nationalist Pilsudski's victory over the degeneratedl deformed workers states is plays up any support for anti-communist workers state. Far from itl The Polish Soviet Red Army in 1920, reminding the struggle for trade unions independent ideology in the Soviet bloc, there is no church (virulently anti-Semitic) has been them how Poles acted when "freedom of of bureaucratic control. Trade unions and question that to a considerable degree the a bastion of reaction even within the life was endangered" (UPI, 15 August). the right to strike would be necessary strikers identify with the powerful framework of world Catholicism. A A week later Pope Wojtyla declared even in a democratically governed Catholic church opposition. It is not just typical Polish parish priest would regard before 1,000 Poles in the Vatican that workers state to guard against abuses the external signs - the daily singing of American Catholics, from the hierarchy "we are united with our countrymen", a and mistakes by administt"lltors and the national hymn, "Oh God, Who Has to the laity, as a bunch of freethinking deliberately provocative act under the managers. But it is far from clear that the Defended Poland" , the hundreds of "commies". Especially since the 1976 circumstances. "free trade unions" long envisioned by strikers kneeling for mass, the ubiquitous crisis the Polish church has become The Polish episcopate, fearing both the dissidents would be free from the pictures of Wojtyla-John Paul II (talk increasingly open and aggressive in its Russian military intervention (the influence of the pro-Catholic, pro-NATO anti-Communism. Early last year the about "the cult of personality"). The Warsaw Pact forces were maneuvering elements who represent a mortal danger strike committee's outside advisers Wall Street Journal (2 January 1979) nearby in East Germany) and its own to the working class. In any case, in the consist of a group of Catholic intellectuals observed: inability to control a workers' uprising, highly politicized situation in Poland headed up by Tadeusz Mazowiecki, "Thus, the priesthood has become in has taken a different, more cautious tack. today the "new, self-governing" trade editor of a leading Catholic journal. effect an opposition party. The number of It waited until the regime made public the unions cannot and will not limit them­ The strike leaders flaunted their priests is at an all-time high of 19,500 and seriousness of the Baltic general strike selves to questions of wage rates, Catholic and Polish nationalist ideology. many openly defy the Communist Party by and then, while expressing sympathy for working conditions, job security as was Anna Walentynowicz, asked if she were a building churches without government the case, for example, with the Szczecin approval. ". the workers' aims, warned against socialist, replied she was a patriot and a "prolonged stoppages". When the strike workers committee in 1971. They will believer. MKS leader Lech Walesa in the This article also pointed out that a started spreading to other areas, the either be drawn into the powerful orbit of regime put Wyzynski on television to call the Catholic church or have to oppose it in for the workers to settle. Then a few days the name of socialist principle. later the church hierarchy backed off And in determining that outcome the from so fulsomely supporting the govern­ presence of a revolutionary vanguard letter----- ment. party would be critical. A central task for But whatever the present tactical a Trotskyist organization in Poland would be to raise in these unions a series of Melbourne, sheets distributed by the campus calculations of the Polish episcopate, in a power vacuum the church, well organized demands that will split the clerical­ 27 August, 1980 Spartacist Club, they had no choice but nationalist forces from among the to grant us speaking time, for fear of and with a mass base, will be a potent agency for social counterrevolution. One workers and separate them out. These Dear Comrades, losing control of their meeting. And then unions must defend the socialized means can appreciate the plight of Gierek & Co. The recent article "SWP/HKE's it was only after a fight from the floor. of production and proletarian state power Fallahi: All the way with the Imam" Secondly, it states that "A group of Short of a political revolution it would take a JV Stalin to clean out the church, against Western imperialism. In Poland (Australasian Spartacist no 76, August campus leftists from the Socialist Left, today the elementary democratic demand 1980) correctly paints Fallahi and her International Socialists and feminist packing 18,000 priests off to forced labor camps. But then Poland would get a lot of of the separation of church and state is a Socialist Workers Party (SWP) mentors milieu - none of whom have any love for dividing line between the struggle for as the Khomeini-Iovers they are. the SL's Trotskyist program, but a better new public libraries with spires on top of them. workers democracy and the deadly threat However, I feel it is necessary to clarify sense of workers democracy than the of capitalist restorationism. and expand upon two points discussed in SWP by tenfold - came to ensure that "Free trade unions"? The germs of a Leninist-Trotskyist the article concerning Fallahi's visit to the SL did get into the meeting". In fact, opposition in Poland would have nothing LaTrobe University. First, the article says these people have no sense of workers Until a few days before the settlement to do with the present dissident groups. It "the SWP was forced to concede some­ democracy . Yes, they came to defend our the general strike was limited to the would denounce them for trying to tie the thing they have always bureaucratically right to enter the meeting, but only Baltic coast, a region whose modem strikers to imperialism, the pope and tried to deny: substantial (if not fair) because they knew that this was to be a history is very different from the rest of Pilsudskiite anti-Soviet nationalism. But speaking rights for Spartacist sup­ showdown between the Spartacist League Poland. Before World War II the main among the rebellious workers there must porters" . The fact is, having been and the pro-mullah SWP over Iran. These Baltic cities - Danzig (Gdansk), Stettin be elements that are fed up with the already politically discredited and "leftists" were forced to tail our (Szczecin) - were largely populated by bureaucracy and looks back to the challenged by leaflets and question communist program of "Down with the Germans. With the consolidation of traditions of Polish communism, while mullahs - For workers revolution in Stalinist Poland after the war, the having no truck with bogus "democracy" Iran I", because their own brand of Germans were driven out and the region ,in priests' robes. It is among this layer AlIStraIasian------:;;------impotent reformism meant that they resettled by Poles from- the eastern above all that we must struggle to win the could not present a revolutionary territories annexed to the Soviet Ukraine. cadres to build a genuinely communist (SPARTACIST fa J alternative to the SWP. From the Thus, while the Baltic coast workers are proletarian party that can defend and Libertarian Socialist editors of the highly volatile, they lack the socialist extend the collectivist economic gains, Revolutionary Marxist monthly of the campus paper Rabelais, who regularly traditions common to the other main Spartacist League of Australia and New continued on page 8 Zealand, section of the international engage in open political censorship of our sections of the Polish proletariat - the Spartacist tendency, for the rebirth of submitted articles; to the Socialist Left heavy-industrial workers around Warsaw Change of telephone number the Fourth International. who have excluded us from a number of and Krakow, the Lodz textile workers, the EDITORIAL BOARD: their "public" events out of fear of Silesian miners. Had the general strike from 12 September James Shaughnessy (Managing Editor), discussing any politics at all; right over to spread throughout Poland, its political Doug Fullarton, Steve Hooper (Melbourne Sydney Spartacist League correspondent), Chris Korwin, David the Russia-hating International Socialists axis could quite possibly have shifted to - (02) 264-8195 Reynolds; Ron Sperling, Linda Brooke who also keep out Trotskyists from their the left and away from clericalism. (production). "Friends of the IS" and "public" Gierek tried, but failed, to work the Spartacist Publications - (02) 264-8115 CIRCULATION: Paul Connor. meetings ~ they all really share op­ same deal to end the crisis that he did in position to workers democracy in common 1970-71. Then he gave the rebellious Printed by trade union labour. Regis­ tered at GPO, Sydney for posting as a with the reformist SWP. workers Gomulka's head; now he gave publication - Category B. Subscriptions For the Socialist Left which is them that of his chief lieutenant, Edward $3 for 11 issues; airmail overseas $10 for currently in an "existential" crisis, let Babiuch, and three· other politburo Spartacist League 11 issues. Address all correspondence them remember that having at best a members. In <:ounter to their demand for to: Spartacist Publications, GPO Box MELBOURNE ...... (03) 62-5135 3473, Sydney, NSW, 2001. Telephone sub-reformist perspective, they found a "free trade union", he offered them GPO Box 2339, (02) 264-8115. themselves tailing the Spartacist Club's free elections to the official union. But in Melbourne, Vic, 3001 Opinions expressed in signed· articles or revolutionary program on Iran. Now let 1971 he promised the Baltic workers the letters do not necessarily express the them come to terms with thatl same thing and took it back when the editorial viewpoint. SYDN EY ...... (02) 264-8195. Printed by Eastern Suburbs, Randwick, crisis atmosphere died away. The strike GPO Box 3473, NSW. Communist greetings, committee leader Lech Walesa no doubt Sydney, NSW, 2001. Jenny Stein had this experience in mind when he 2 Australasian Spartacist Polish social democrats arm-in-arm with clerical reaction All the Pope's dissidents

"The strikes in Poland mark a signi­ (and largely successful) effort to form an 1978) refers to this outfit as "the strong­ ficant tum in Eastern Europe because alliance with the Catholic hierarchy. hold of more conservative, national workers and dissident intellectuals have For it is the church together with the and - with some of its members - tra­ joined forces in a major conflict with the land-holding peasantry which form the ditional anti-semitic tendencies". To Government", noted a news analysis in social basis for counterrevolution in get ROPCIO's number, one only has to the New York Times (23 August). As to Poland. note that the first signer of its platform is the existence of the alliance there is no KSS-KOR: Social Democrats General Borutz-Spiechowicz, the highest doubt. From the beginning" of the Polish commanding officer of pre-World War strike wave in early July and in the early for Popery II Potand; and that it distributes Pilsudski stages of the shipyard occupation~, The best-publicized Polish dissident calendars. dissident circles in Warsaw were the group in the West is the Committee for ROPCIO, in tum, gave rise to an even main source of information for the imperi­ Social Self-Defense (KSS), better known more reactionary group, the Confed-­ alist press. In addition, several ofthe key by its original name Workers Defense eration of Independent Poland (KPN) strike leaders have been publicly as­ Committee (KOR). The leading spokes­ whose stated goal is to "end Soviet sociated over the past several years with man for KSS-KOR is Jacek Kuron, and domination by liquidating the power of "pposition defense groups, and they have its newsletter Robotnik includes among the Polish United Workers Party". drawn in prominent Catholic intellectuals its correspondents Lech Walesa, the Then there co~es the Polish League for as "expert advisers". So while the ruling leader of the Interfactory Strike Com­ Independence (PPN), a clandestine bureaucracy has been reluctant to use mittee centered on the Lenin Shipyard in group, and remnants of the pre-war Gdansk. The KOR was formed after the Polish sQclal-democratlc "dissident" force against workers in the Baltic ports, KOR leader Jacek Kuron. ultra-rightist, anti-Semitic, fascistic on August 20 police in the capital suppression of the June 1976 strikes at National Democratic Party. All of them, rounded up 14 well-known dissidents Radom and Ursus,. and originally Modzelewski) an "Open Letter to of course, cover themselves with rhetoric accused of illegal association. centered its activities on raising funds for Communist Party Members" in 1964; about "democracy". This gives rise to and demanding release/ reinstatement of for this he became a victim of bureau­ the Polish dissident joke: "Question: Who are the Polish dissidents? West­ the hundreds of workers arrested and cratic repression, spending six years in What's a Polish nationalist? Answer: ern commentators hail the appearance of fired at that time. After a general am­ jail. The United Secretariat opportun­ Someone who wants to drive the Jews out a "worker-intellectual alliance". Yet the nesty a year later it became the KSS and istically hailed the Kuron-Modzelewski of Poland even though they aren't there non-Stalinist left-wing press sounds the concentrated on building ties to key text with its syndicalist program and any more". More respectable than these same theme. Thus we find favorable factories through Robotnik. Most of the fuzzy analysis (which called Poland would-be pogromists is the liberal interviews with dissident leader Jacek pseudo-Trotskyist left in the West has a "bureaucratic state") as the "first Catholic ZNAK movement, which has Kuron being printed everywhere from the come out in support of the KSS-KOR in revolutionary Marxist document" to several representatives in parliament. liberal Le Monde and Der Spiegel to varying degrees. come out of the post-war Soviet bloc. While ZNAK leaves clandestine bravado publications of the ostensibly Trotskyist Because of its name and origins and Since then, however, Kuron has mQved for the fringe groups, their aims are no United Secretariat (USec). Meanwhile, the reputation of Kuron, KOR is some­ far to the right, now posing the struggle less counterrevolutionary: they are New York Times columnist Flora Lewis times referred to by superficial observers in East Europe as one of "pluralism vs merely waiting until an explosion when (a former official of the OSS, World War as "Marxist in orientation". Social­ totalitarianism". In his "Thoughts on they will step in as the only mass-based II predecessor of the CIA) praises Kuron democratic is a far more accurate descrip- an Action Program" Kuron supports opposition. peasant struggles for private property, claims "the Catholic movement is The dissidents' Pope fighting to defend freedom of conscience The core of the clerical opposition, of and human dignity", and concludes with course, is the Catholic hierarchy, a a call for the •• Finlandization" of Poland: disciplined army extending from the "We must strive for a status similar to village priest right up to the Vatican. Finland's: a parliamentary democracy Stalin's famous remark, "How many with a limited independence in the field divisions does the pope have?" indicates of foreign policy where it directly touches military realism. But in Catholic Poland, the interests of the USSR." probably.. the most religious European Marxism it ain't. But this social­ country today (even the men go to democratic program for a peaceful mass!), the church is a powerful political restoration of capitalism represents force. Unlike Hungary's Cardinal the left wing of the dissident movement. Myndszenty, who was discredited by The right wing is openly clerical­ cooperation with the Horthy dictatorship, nationalist. There was a split in KOR in the Polish pope (who brags he once was 1977 leading to the formation of ROPCIO, a worker) could be an effective rallying the Movement for the Defense of Human point for counterrevolution. A revealing Rights. The latter is based on the article by the former editor of the CIA's founding declaration of the UN and the house organ, Problems of Communism, Helsinki accords and offers itself as an Abraham Brumberg, makes this crystal instrument to "cooperate with all inter­ clear: national organizations which defend "The Catholic Church has been crucial in human rights .... " Where KOR pub­ the growth of a political opposition in lishes Robotnik, ROPCIO puts out Poland. Had it not been for the support Gospodarz (The Peasant) and appeals to of the Church, even the new alliance Polish crowds welcome Pope 1979. A movement for "socialist democracy"? the Catholic rural popUlation. And this between 'the intelligentsia, village, and workers' to which Kuron refers would is not the Catholicism of Vatican II, as "a responsible man, a moderate and tion, and even that does not do justice either. The Economist (9 September Continued on page 9 a patriot". Is this the "new coalition" to some of the anti-Marxist elements which sophisticated Western fomenters around it. Of the original 24 founders of of counterrevolution in the Soviet bloc KOR, six are former members of the degenerated/ deformed workers states pre-war Polish Socialist Party (PSP), Sydney Public Forums have been looking for as their "captive among them the prominent economist nations" relics fade into oblivion? Or Edward Lipinski. (Robotnik was the name does it portend a movement for "socialist of the PSP paper as well.) The list also democracy", as some on the left would includes a former chairman of the have us believe? Christian Democratic Party, a delegate of r;· Certainly none of the prominent the World War II London exile govern­ ,·······':[;~l\~'t~~lri.. dissident groups and personalities has ment, various activists from the 1968 a good word to say about socialism, which student movement (among them his­ is identified with the perversion of torian Adam Michnik), left Catholic proletarian rule represented by the writers (such as former party member !i.'i;·')~Jr!l.il:i_i'!_ present Stalinist bureaucracy. The Jerzy Andrzejewski, author of Ashes and dissidents' role as a conduit to the capi­ Diamonds), several veterans of the talist media is nothing new - Sakharov 1944 Warsaw uprising and Rev Jan has been at it for years in the Soviet Zieja, "Polish Army Chaplain in the 1920 Union. Nor are appeals to the imperialists and 1939 campaigns" - ie, a died-in­ via the UN, the Helsinki Agreements, the-wool Pilsudskiite priest who twice etc. What is partic,ularly ominous about fought the Red Army. .<} ..· .... MacqaflqmftOOm ...••...... • Trade Union .Clup.. . .. the Polish dissidents, who· range from ····~l?~'lStAl'~·~:;;!f.~,· ·············HPlmeE3l,d1dir:tQ .' .•.• 1.~ 1 Fqveaux Street social democrats to openly Pilsudskiite J,acek Kuron was first known in the ... ·SurryHiUs reactionary nationalists, is their active West for co-authoring (with Karol September 1980, 3 The 'roots·· of the International Socialists The orean War and 111][1 the ~~third camp"

Five years ago, the Vietnamese Stalin­ tion of the British Trotskyists to bour­ tion until the outbreak of the war. Then, ists were at the peak of their popularity in geois anti-communist hysteria, which on 25 June 1950, North Korean troops petty-bourgeois circles and "detente" impelled it to break from the Marxist rolled across the 38th parallel in a wide with the Soviet Union was still the imperi­ movement. front, allegedly in response to a South alist order of the day. For Tony Cliff's Korean incursion. The question of who International Socialists (now the Socialist Front line of the Cold War fired the first shot, always secondary Workers Party - SWP), "steering left" from a class standpoint, was in this case and hoping to intersect the thousands of The Korean War was the climax of US virtually meaningless. The 38th parallel youth who had come to radical politics imperialism's post-war drive to "roU had already been a "real front line" for Tony Cliff: Korea was his August 4th. through identification with the Stalinist­ back" the Soviet sphere of influence. But several months, reported a US State how the civilian attitude in the South to led struggle against US imperialism in the victory of Mao's People's Liberation Department official in April, with "very the "invasion" forces "appeared to veer Indochina, the merest suggestion that the Army in China in 1949 inflicted a massive real battles, involving perhaps one or two between enthusiasm and passive accept­ Korean War figured in the group's blow on the "Truman Doctrine" of "con­ thousand men". Now it became the front ance". Seoul changed hands four times, origins elicited cries of "calumnies and tairtment". "Who lost China?" became line not only in a full-scale civil war, but with tangibly different popular reactions falsifications". Nothing of the sort, ex­ the rallying call of anti-Communist in the international Cold War. to the opposing armies. A member of the plained Oiff's court historian, Ian revanchism; and there was no shortage of It is clear that Stalin was at least caught ignominious US Military Government in Birchall: unprepared by the North Korean assault. US strategists, prime among them the Korea, Albert Crofts, recounted a decade "It is sometimes alleged that the creation megalomaniacal commander of the The Soviet Union was not even present later that: of the Socialist Review group represented American occupation forces in Korea, when the question came up before the some sort of concession to Cold War General Douglas MacArthur, who advo­ United Nations Security Council, boycott­ " ... millions of South Koreans wel­ pressure at the time of the Korean War. In comed the prospect of unification, even on cated the "liberation" of China and the ing it in protest at the treatment of Mao's Communist terms. They had suffered fact, the Korean War was not the issue at USSR. Speaking at the inauguration of China. The absence of the Soviet veto the heart of the split. Rather it was the police brutality, intellectual repression shamelessly opportunist support for Tito's puppet dictator Syngman Rhee's "Re- enabled the US to gain a "United and political purge. Few felt much incen­ Yugoslavia by the rest of the Trotskyist tive to fight for profiteers or to die for movement from 1948 onwards that high­ Syngman Rhee. Only 10 percent of the lighted the principled differences." Seoul population abandoned the city; - International Socialism no 76, f many troops deserted, and a number of March 1975 go public figures, including Kimm Kiu Sic, joined the North. " Today, "detente" lies mangled be­ I - The Nation, 2S June 1960 neath the imperialist anti-Soviet jugger­ if If not for the lack of Soviet air power naut, the Vietnamese Stalinists have '" the North Korean army might well have fallen in the popUlarity ratings and the '" achieved an early victory saving millions posture of being principled fighters of lives. As it was the imperialist forces against Pabloite liquidationism has took advantage of Stalin's, criminal been exchanged for something more passivity to overwhelm Kim's army with closely resembling the truth. Bob Dylan superior troops and firepower. Following once said: "You don't need a weather­ a ~urprise .landing at Inchon - behind man to tell which way the wind blows". Communist lines - on 15 September, With the winds of the Cold War blowing, they surged past the 38th parallel within Tony Cliff's "third camp" has once weeks and continued to thrust towards again, proudly, raised its true colours: Korea's border with China, the Yalu social-democratic anti-communism. And River. They effectively destroyed not only those self-styled Trotskyists, notably the the North Korean army, but Korea itself. International Marxist Group (IMG) , who Two buildings were left intact in the hold sacred the myth of the "revolution­ Northern capital of Pyongyang. The head ary" SWP, reflect only their own oppor­ of the US Bomber Command in the Far tunist appetites and rightward motion. East, Rosie O'Donnell, was forced to Today the SWP makes no bones about its lament: hatred for all things Russian. And the "Everything is destroyed. There is self-same Birchall makes the appropriate nothing standing worthy of the name. Just (and rather more honest) revision of his US army "liberates", My Lal-style, a Korean village, May 1952. before the Chinese came in we were tendency's history: grounded. There were no more targets in "It is thirty years this month since the public of Korea" in Seoul in 1948, Nations" propaganda fig-leaf for its Korea." O'Donnell's solution to this dilemma was outbreak of the Korean War.... Last MacArthur vowed that the "barrier" genocidal onslaught against the Korean but not qt:ite least it precipitated a crisis to repeatedly urge a nuclear attack on tletween North and South "must and will workers and peasants. Khrushchev was in the depleted ranks of British Trotsky­ China. MacArthur, equally determined to ism which gave birth to the Socialist be torn down" . to claim later: "I must stress that the war wasn't Stalin's idea, but Kim II Sung's. "liberate" China, even at the risk of Review group, ancestor ofthe SWP." But for Stalin's unfailing adherence to touching off another world war (this - Socialist Review, 15 June-12 July 1980 the treacherous "spirit of Yalta", that Kim was the initiator" . For the US ruling class, however, shortly got him sacked - and sent home To be more precise, what the Korean War barrier might never have existed. Soviet to a hero's welcome), ignored Chinese precipitated was a capitulation by a sec- forces entered Korea on 10 August 1945, Korea provided a welcome opportunity for gearing up the American war machine warnings that they would not tolerate an a month before the Americans. But Stalin advance on the Yalu. readily acquiesced to Truman's "General in line with its new post-war role as the Why the USSR Is Not Capitalist Order Number One", which ceded every­ chief imperialist gendarme of the world. The Chinese did come into the war and A Spartacus Youth League thing south of the 38th parallel to the Within two days, Truman "interdicted" the American military advance was pamphlet containing a Trotskyist Americans, dividing the former Japanese the straits of Taiwan in defence of the rapidly stopped. By the year's end the critique of the anti-Marxist theory colony into two zones of occupation. In defeated butcher Chiang Kai-shek, who imperialists had been forced back to the of "State Capitali--" the face of increasirw imperialist belliger­ had previously been abandoned by the 38th parallel through a series of Chinese ence Stalin took tlie same tack as in US; offered aid to the French in Indo­ human wave assaults, a heroic effort Eastern Europe, eliminating the capital­ china; made preparations to fight in the costing nearly a million casualties. In July $2 ists and landlords as a class and installing Philippines; and began an intensive 1953, the ceasefire was signed, after Order froml in power a regime headed by Kim II Sung militarisation programme across the more than a year of military stalemate. cheques to rule a deformed workers state. Mean­ board. The Korean peninsula had by then been to: while in the South, the US forces but­ reduced to rubble and scorched earth, Spartacist tressed the corrupt tyrant Rhee and the Liberators vs occupiers and littered with at least two million .Publ ications capitalist/landlord clique around him. corpses. PO Box For several years South Korea teetered The North Koreans did not yet have Since then, the US imperialists have on the edge of a civil war. In 1947 there their army up to full strength. Nonethe­ , maintained a massive military presence, wits a wave of riots, strikes and. minor less they made swift advances, nearly without which the eorrupt capitalist .insurrections. When the American occu­ driving the imperialist/South Korean dictatorship would undoubtedly long pation government decided to impose troops into the sea in the first few since have fallen. For their part, the separate United Nations elections in months. Popular support for the Stalinist­ North Korean Stalinists gave immediate the South in 1948, it led to open guerrilla led forces was widespread, a fact evidence of their treacherous willingness .~;- ; '.,;.)' warfare in the Cholla provinces and Cheju painfully obvious even to the American to "peacefully co-exist" ,trying a leading

~"'~-" island, which continued without interrup- imperialists. General Dean described member of the Korean Workers Party in

<;; 4 Australasian ___ist 1953 for "wanting to fight to the death South Korea". Following Downey's rewritten to read the reverse. They began and strikes fear into the hearts of rather than accept the armistice" . public breach of discipline, the majority to move out of their home in the Labour compradores and landlords. When Max "Socialism in half a country" a la Kim II demanded an assurance - unsuccess­ Party and took up support for the Shachtman opted for the "third camp" in Sung has' been particularly vulgar in its fully - that the rest of the opposition Vietnamese NLF. But for all the tortuous the wake of the Stalin-Hitler pact carving nepotism and cult of the personality. Only would abide by discipline. Some were theoretical attempts to discern a distinc­ up Poland in 1939, Trotsky pointedly with Trotskyist-led political revolution in expelled, others left, and the Socialist tion between Korea and Vietnam, there asked: "Why was it chiefly revolution­ the North and socialist revolution in the Review was born. was no qualitative difference. The only ists, 'democrats', and Jews who fled from South will all Korea have a truly revol­ The first issue, in November 1950, substantial difference was in the severity [Nazi-occupied western Poland], while in utionary regime. But this does not scarcely touched on the question of of the anti-communist pressures around eastern Poland - it was chiefly the diminish in the least the progressive Yugoslavia, so decisive had it been in the them. It is telling in that context that, to landlords and capitalists who fled?" character of the North Korean workers split, but the very first sentence declared: our knowledge, throughout the 1950s ("From a Scratch to the Danger of state. While the Southern masses remain "The war in Korea serves the Great Socialist Review featured not a single Gangrene"). Explained Trotsky: "the immiserated in poverty despite the high Powers as a rehearsal for their intended word of support for the NLF's direct social foundations of the USSR forced a economic growth rates, the lives of the struggle for the redivision of the globe". predecessor, the Vietminh. Both were social revolutionary program upon the people in the North have undergone a Elsewhere it attacked the Trotskyist civil wars, genuine struggles for national Kremlin". Shachtman, Trotsky observed, dramatic improvement under the collec­ Socialist Outlook for campaigning and social liberation. There was the camp "lacks the time to think it out". tivised economy. " . . . for full and unconditional support of the proletariat and there was the camp In their headlong rush from Trotskyist for the Stalinist forces in Korea, who (so it of the imperialists and their compra­ defencism, the Cliffites too lacked the No turning back claims) are conducting a genuine struggle dores; there was no "third" camp. time or inclination to "think it out". The for the national and social liberation of the only significant theoretical reply to the Thirty years after the fact, not even Yet for prosaic renegades like the oppressed Korean people. This attitude of Trotskyist analysis is a cheap syllogism Birchall attempts to deny that on one side SWP's Birchall this heroic struggle course, is fundamentally identical with which denies the possibility of creating against the world's mightiest imperialist that of the Stalinists and their fellow­ Korea too was a war of liberation: workers states in the absence of power has nothing but a "squalid test of travellers. " "Originally the war had been - partially revolutionary workers parties. This strength". It was a test of strength - for As even the fake-Trotskyist IMG was able - a national liberation struggle. When the new imperialist hegemony of the to recognise in 1969, "One has only to North Korean forces came into the South supposed anti-Pabloism is simply the inverse of the Pabloite thesis that where American Century. And no sooner had the fighting broken out than Cliff and social overturns have taken place, they company deserted their revolutionary have necessarily been led by "un­ conscious" revolutionaries. The premise posts in order to seek an accommodation with the imperialist bourgeoisie and its is the same - that there is no qualitative distinction between a deformed and a social-democratic lieutenants. The healthy workers state. The former denies Tribunite "lefts" sanctified the imperial­ the reality of a social overturn, the latter ist rape as fighting "to uphold a Labour the necessity of a Trotskyist-led political Party principle" and some toyed with the revolution to remove the bureaucratic idea of using nuclear weapons. barrier to the development of socialism. A measure of the intensity of the anti­ "State capitalism" is not intended as a communist pressure and the disorien­ serious Marxist analysis; it is a flimsy tation in the Trotskyist movement was revisionist rationale for escaping the reflected in the initial response of the unpleasant task of defending a prolet­ then-Trotskyist American Socialist arian revolution. In a moment of rare Workers Party (US SWP) , which failed candour, Tony Cliff said it: "And I say for several weeks to state its unequivocal no, no, we have nothing to do with support for the Northern forces. From bloody Russia, because it is not a source then on the Trotskyists took a clear, of strength" (Leveller, September 1979). revolutionary stance: And now that hating "bloody Russia" "What each side represented in the revol­ utionary war in Korea was indicated by has again become a source of strength in the social and eoonomic programs they social-democratic circles, the Cliffites instituted in territories they had cap­ have graduated from merely standing tured .... This is the fundamental issue in aside from a struggle against reaction to the war as far as the Korean people are 'enthusiastically aiding the reactionaries, ooncerned. One side is taking the land putting their energies to use encouraging from the landlords and giving it to the Margaret Thatcher to starve out the Red poor peasants. The other side is taking it How US Trotskyists saw Korean war: cartoon In The Militant, 15 June 1953. Army soldiers fighting against obscuran­ from the peasants and returning it to the tist mullahs, feudal landlords and hlndlords." _ Militant, 18 August 1952 substitute the word Vietnam for Korea to workers and students rose in their enslavers of women. ButforCliff, this was not a momentary see what a right wing policy that was" support." That is why defence of the Soviet Union disorientation; it was a decisive break, (International, November 1969). To say less would be to fly in the face of has been a question of proletarian theoretically prepared two years earlier The break was definitive, and there overwhelming evidence, even from principle and a touchstone of revolution­ when, under the influence of the develop­ was to be no turning back. The deepening bourgeois accounts. As for the supposed ary Marxism from the first days of the ing Cold War mood, he abandoned the of the imperialist anti-Soviet vendetta equivalence of the "Russian puppet October Revolution. A decade ago, even Trotskyist analysis of the Soviet Union as only deepened the Cliff group's deter­ government" and the "American puppet the IMG was prepared to recognise a degenerated workers state in favour of a mined defeatism. A year after the split, a government" , Birchall concedes that: as much: "state-capitalist" analysis. Now the Cold resolution of the National Committee "In the South the US gave short shrift to "The logic of their position leads them to War had become a shooting war, and (Minutes, 22-23 September 1951) the revolutionary committees which had deny that we should be on the side of affirmed that, emerged out of the anti-Japanese " other workers states against imperialism. Cliff's "third camp" analysis served the This is why the difference between purpose it had for others before, as an " . , . the world Trotskyist movement is resistance; where necessary Japanese forces were used against them. Trotskyists and "state capitalists" is a exit visa from the camp of revolutionary divided into defencists and anti­ defencists ... We declare that we will not "In the North the resistance was incorpor­ principled one." Marxism. make any fusion with any group that ated into a pro-Russian regime, which was - International, December 1969 When the question of Korea came up stands for the defence of either Russian or consolidated by a land reform." From the 'renegade Kautsky' in 1918 to for a vote in the Birmingham Trades American Imperialism. " But with the entry of China into the war the renegade Cliff today, one thing has Council, one of Cliff's supporters in "The and the increasing importance of Russian not changed: those who abandon the Club" (the Trotskyist entry grouping in ellfllle 'analysis': hate military aid, the character of the war as a proletarian duty of defending the Soviet the Labour Party), Percy Downey, 'bloody Russia' national liberation struggle became Union end up in the imperialist camp. publicly repudiated a defencist stand. As As the pressure of the Cold War anti­ "non-existent" , claim the Cliffites, And that is why we chant, as we have had the Cliffites described it themselves in a communist hysteria subsided and the subordinated to "Russian imperialism". occasion to do frequently of late, statement "To the members of the club", political climate changed, so did the It is a strange breed of imperialist "Afghanistan today, Korea '53 - Cliff's Downey was expelled by the Trotskyist Cliffites' colours. The yellow of social capitalism which encourages and incites still a friend ofthe bourgeoisie" . majority for "opposing both the Russian democracy took on a pink tinge. revolutionary uprisings and general puppet Government of North Korea and Statements from 1959 that Luxemburg strikes, incorporates revolutionary - reprinted from Spartaclst Britain the American puppet Government of had been right as against Lenin were committees into the regime it establishes no 24, August/September 1980

MELBOURNE - Thirty years after their break with Trotskyism during the Korean War, the Cliffites are flaunting as vigorously as ever their anti-Soviet credentials. In Britain, SWP leader Paul Foot has been running a campaign in the trashy Daily Mi"or to embarrass the Thatcher government over its foot-dragging in the anti-Soviet crusade, with "exposes" on how "our beef" is rumoured to be finding its way to Red Army troops in Afghanistan. In Australia, Cliff's followers in the International Socialists (IS) have eagerly fol­ lowed their mentors' lead. On 1 August a handful of them, led by local honcho Tom O'Lincoln (third from left in photo), turned out to denounce the "Kremlin's propa­ ganda offensive" ie the Moscow Olympics. The IS had initially lined up with Fraser in calling for a boycott of the Games as well as trade bans against the Soviet Union. This outrageously reactionary position shocked even the British SWP, and one of their leaders, Andrew Milner, dashed off a letter exclaiming, "This puts you squarely on the same side as Fraser, Carter and Thatcher ... trying to whip up support for the Cold War" (Battler, 8 March)! Dead right - but who is Milner to talk? Earlier in January, the IS had shown up at an anti-Soviet rally which featured reactionaries like the Captive Nations Council and Nazi hoodlum Ross "the Skull" May. This time, though, their rally was countered by a 2S-strong mobilisation by the Melbourne Spartacist League, bigger and better organised than the third campists' dishevelled-looking band. Among our comrades' slogans were "The third camp is in Fraser's camp - Defend the Soviet Union!", "Women in veils, workers in jails, this is what the IS hails!" It was a small, but striking confirmation that the SL stands by the Trotskyist program while the IS takes to the streets to do Fraser's dirty work for him .•

September 1980 5 It was a veritable smorgasbord of workshops, films and exhibitions, designed to cater to every taste, which Nostalgia, reformism, betrayal greeted participants at the Communist Party (CPA)-organised "Communists and the Labour Movement Conference" held over the 23-24 August weekend at Melbourne's State College. The official II purpose was to "celebrate" the party's "sixty years of struggle". Old party stalwarts turned out to nostalgically II reminisce about the days when the CPA's strikebreaking support for World War II Pessimism brought it increased membership Jlnd a measure of public acceptance; current party leaders gave "critical reappraisals" (for the nth time) of the party's past; younger CPA leaders -held forth on the party's "perspectives" for the future. But none of the gala weekend euphoria could hide the reality. As the conference got underway, Spartacist League (SL) members and supporters had distributed a leaflet entitled "Nostalgia, Reformism, Betrayal: Swansong of the CPA". It accurately captured the real significance of the weekend: "This conference is .. . the swansong of the CPA's hopes for a new lease of life following its split from the Kremlin bureaucracy ten years ago. For a few years, tailing the (now vanished) New Left. the CPA made certain empty 'revolutionary' noises. But now it merely celebrates its most successful betrayals of the working class, while repudiating in horror the best part of its past - when it was a section of the .Communist Inter­ national of Lenin and Trotsky." So it proved. Left: Steve Haran, founding member of CPA Left Tendency who joined Spartaclst League. Right: CPA national president Judy "I was an alienated typist" Mundey.

"Oh, what a lovely war It was" ments in Australia, Britain and America, intended to do what the old, exposed ironic, he said, that the Trotskyists who In the past ten years the CPA has taken the outcome of the war would have been slanders can no longer. Denis Freney, had been persecuted by Stalin are now to admitting that much of what it did in its very different, an outcome that left the one-time mate of Michel Pablo - when "defending the Soviet bureaucracy in its Stalinist days was "mistaken". Not so its Soviet Union destroyed and fascism the latter was busy helping the expansionist phase", a "bureaucracy role in World War II. For the CPA this dominant throughout the world. Think bourgeois-nationalist Ben Bella control which knows no bounds". was their "golden age", when party that Trotskyist policy through to the the Algerian workers - and the CPA's At this point the CPA was forced to membership rose from 4000 in June 1940 end". But in fact, Blake's objections - resident "expert" on Trotskyism, set the allow discussion after the by-now stan­ to 16000 in December 1942 to 23000 in in essence a rehash of the old Stalinist tone with a clownish, sneering presen­ dard "questions only" bureaucratic 1945. But it has a contemporary purpose slander that Trotskyism was "objec· tation. But Stalin took his rewriting of chairing was successfully overruled by a as well - a pledge to the bourgeoisie tively" anti-Soviet and pro-Hitler - had history more seriously. After running motion from the floor. Freney's "buf­ through a "history" of Australian foonery and massive lies", as one Trotskyism's origins that was false in speaker put it, backfired. Another SL Report from "Communists and practically every detail, he smugly comrade spelled it out: "Freney's clown announced that the Trotskyists were act has a political purpose - to suppress the Labour Movement Conference" "isolated" by their opposition to the war political discussion" because "he has no - and went on to outrageously lie that answer to Trotskyist politics. What is that it will serve as loyally in the next war been answered in advance by the first the White Australia Laborite "Lang Freney defending? He stands for a party as it did in the last. The CPA may have SL speaker. As he put it: forces took a similar sort of position'" that still defends what it did in World junked its link with Moscow, but it sticks "What is the best way of defending the Referring to Trotskyist expectations of War II - helping lead the workers to the by the social patriotism of the past. Soviet Union anyway, except for state revolutionary upsurges after the war, he slaughter in an inter-imperialist war". What that "golden age" really con­ power to be in the hands of the workers in declared that "of course it didn't Freney's attempted amalgam of the sisted of was revealed in the session on other states? Here and in France, in happen" (so, presumably the Stalinist Trotskyists with the La.ng group was a the "Anti-fascist struggle: 1935-44" Britain and in the United States? That was sellouts of those upsurges that did take slander; it was the CPA which produced given by Jack Blake and Ralph Gibson. the only real way to defend the place didn't occur either). The rest of his "this racist, chauvinist rubbish" in Soviet Union against fascism; that is the talk was more of the same - cynical, support of the war, he added, holding up Both speakers recalled with pride the way only real way to prevent fascism ever the CPA had liquidated the class struggle occurring again: to destroy the bour­ jokes, more lies, and no politics. the leaflet we had distributed bearing the in favour of fighting the "patriotic war geoisies in their own countries." The other featured speaker was Alan "Jappy ending" cartoon featured by the against fascist Germany and Japan". Roberts, a long-time supporter of Pablo Tribune on 16 August 1945, just days And both admitted that "we helped to Another comrade took - up Blake's and currently not much more than after the bombing of Hiroshima and keep the mines and steel going pro­ challenge directly: another disillusioned ex-communist Nagasaki (reproduced page 7). ductively and effectively" (Gibson), that "The speaker said before, 'Think liberal. He, at least, had the decency to Roberts and the CPA were on the side the CPA "worked to increase production Trotskyist policies to the end'. Well we point out that the Trotskyists had had to of CIA-backed reactionaries in Afghani­ saw Stalinist policies from beginning to contend with Stalinist hit-squads helping stan and going along with an anti-Soviet and minimise strikes" (Blake). end, and we can see what happened .... To many old CPAers in the audience all It was the Stalinist policy of calling social the Gestapo try to wipe them out. But he war drive, he continued, but "Trotskyists this was perfectly palatable. But to the SL democrats 'social fascists' and refusing to concluded with a vehement anti-Soviet stand for the military defence of the members present, it was a celebration of have a united front with them to smash assault on Trotskyists for hailing the Soviet Union". And the authentic betrayal and the grossest class collabor­ fascism that allowed fascism to grow. " Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. It's Trotskyists were clearly the Spartacist ation. As one comrade put it in his Their arguments rebutted at every tum, ASp photo intervention, Blake had admitted that "in the CPA members present could only the Miners' Federation particularly, the lamely claim that our comrades were "too conduct of the CP was virtually one of a young" to understand what "it was really strikebreaker, attempting to prevent' like", and thatff we "had been there", strikes and when they occurred to stop we wouldn't have such ideas. But as them". Blake admitted, there were those there at Stung by this charge, Blake replied the time who did fight for this revolution­ that the CPA had not broken any strikes; ary program - the small group of the following day at the session on Australian Trotskyists led by the then­ "Theories of Industrial Work" he revolutionary communist Nick Origlass. It repeated that "to my knowledge [there was Origlass, described by Blake as "an was] no case of strikebreaking" during extremely powerful and principled World War II. But in fact the CPA did leader", who stood against the stream help break strikes, for example at the and said "This is not our war" (see Austral Bronze plant in Sydney in 1943. Australasian Spartacist no 76, August Indeed, an internal circular by CPAer Pat 1980 for articles from the Trotskyist press Lavelle was circulated on how to break of the time). At the time, though, the the strike, while Jack McPhillips helped Stalinists slandered the Trotskyists as implement the policy. Perhaps Blake "agents of Hitler and the Mikado" . "forgot" this incident? Blake also felt obliged to take up the It was the Trotskyists too who fought Trotskyist position on the war, saying the Stalinists' betrayals, despite vilifi­ Who's calling who a "revisionist"? Maoist Ted Hili (left) and CPA leader that "if the basic Trotskyist position had cation, thuggery and assassinations. The Bernie Taft (centre) listen as Laurie Aarons speaks on 1963 split. seriously influenced the labour move- session on "Australian Trotskyism" was

6 Australasian Spartacist many in the LT at the time squirmed as Fullarton, shortly before his bureaucratic the CPA helped to prevent a general expulsion. Both then joined the Spartacist strike and to prop up the Labor Party League and are today fighting for a tops. Finally he recounted how, after the program which can defeat the reformism Aaronsites decided it was time to be which O'Shaughnessy has now "conciliatory ... to the Victorian op­ embraced. position", they smashed the LT's very right to exist in the party. "I suppose Judy gets a Job [that] sums up our naivete .... The key resolution was moved by Jock Syme, who The CPA. today is a party caught was secretary of ECCUDO" . between Canberra and Moscow. Cur­ O'Shaughnessy's conclusion? "We were rently it sees its role as that of a left in the· '80s pressure group on the ALP. But behind very, very naive" - not to believe that its rightward drift there is a Iiquidationist League, as the various fake-Trotskyist apparent to all - including to Ted Hill the CPA could be transformed into a "revolutionary instrument" , but for thrust, which Eric Aarons spelled out groupings present - including the whose attendance at the 1963 debate was during his talk on Stalinism: "some wanting a "revolutionary instrument" at International Socialists and Frans his first appearance on a CPA platform people think the CPA should dissolve and all. O'Shaughnessy appealed to those like Timmerman of Paul White's grouplet­ since the original split. Initially, he said, go into the ALP". In his "Theories of the intervened to solidarise with the anti­ he thought the conference was just going himself who had "grown up" to become a cynical, outright reformist. ALP", Jack Blake echoed him: "Any Soviet CPA line. to be "an exercise in geriatric nostalgia"; orientation seeking to bypass or destroy but instead he took the opportunity to This was exposed when Steve Haran, a [the ALP] is unreal". The ALP, he added, The USSR? "Don't ask me!" "warmly welcome the well-known founding member of the Sydney LT who "is transformable into a Socialist Labor But what the class nature of the Soviet opposition by many present to the Soviet was won over to the Trotskyist program of Party". Union now is, the CPA cannot say. invasions of Czechoslovakia and Mghani­ the Spartacist League, took the floor At the final session of the conference, Confronted by a Spartacist questioner at stan" and to invite the CPA into his anti­ (after yet another battle for democratic on "Socialism in the 80s", the CPA's the session on Hungary 1956, CPA Soviet "united front". The CPA is sure to discussion): deep-rooted pessimism about its future "theoretician" Eric Aarons could only decline the offer - but not because they "I was expelled ... from the LT and the was manifest. CPA President Judy bluster. The SL comrade had asked him disagree with Hill on the need to get the party, and the chief reason was that 1 said Mundey had set the tone by spending the pointblank, "What is your analysis of the Soviets out of Mghanistan. Rather, it's the CPA was reformist. central part of her 15 minute contribution Soviet Union today? What sort of class on ... how she left the cloistered life of society do you think it is?", and had full-time work for the CPA to become a underlined the importance of the typist "in the real world" I Describing question by pointing out that "The how "alienated" she felt by actually Communist Party of Australia, like doing what millions of others do daily Communist Parties throughout the world, (ie working), Mundey then described how for years justified every betrayal and after two days she asked her workmates every crime against the working class, in "how do you get promoted around the name of socialism and the Soviet here?"!! Even her own CPA comrades Union". Aarons hedged and fudged in stared embarrassedly at the floor during his reply: this apolitical piece of trivia. But it "I cannot answer that question briefly. certainly symbolised where the CPA is 1 wrqte in the pre-Congress discussion in now: once it recruited people who wanted 1974 ... a long account of this where 1 tried to outline my views about what the to fight capitalism - only to bum them political economy of the Soviet Union was out by its repeated betrayals of the and the nature of the regime." working class; now it recruits in the In an effort to pin him down, another SL image of the self-righteous liberal comrade interjected, "Which class is in moralist Judy Mundey. power [in the USSR]?", but again Aarons Mundey's pessimism was infectious. could only say "I cannot answer that l~ark (son-of-Bernie) Taft, joint national question simply" . secretary of the CPA, added that "many of us despair of change"; Ian Mill, Such deliberate evasion, after years of Socialist Left member of the Administrat­ hailing the USSR as the "socialist ive Committee of the ALP in Victoria, fatherland", is a good illustration of the CPA's bankruptcy today. But as we flatly asserted "the seizure of power is pointed out in our leaflet to the confer­ not possible in the advanced countries". ence, it doesn't really matter to them From the floor, Albert Langer, "Gang of what the Soviet Union is, since Four" Maoist and decrier of "irrelevant '''independence' is also a repUdiation of sects" who was there representing any duty to defend the USSR if that himself, predicted further "disinte­ gration" of the left this decade. comes into fundamental conflict with its The chairman of the session then first loyalty' , to the Australian bour­ This monstrously racist cartoon, captioned "JAPPV ENDING", appeared In refused to call a single SL spokesman, geoisie. Fittingly, alongside Aarons on Tribune, 16 August 1945, days after bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. the platform was the virulently anti­ despite the fact that it was quite apparent communist renegade Stephen Murray­ to the whole audience that we had our because the Hiltites are now an irrelevant " ... [In] the laTrobe Valley power strike hands raised to speak from the very Smith, who had come along to defend sect; indeed, in CPA circles, Hill is _ . . you had some of the most democratic "the way of life in a liberal democracy" start of the discussion period. It was a probably still the most hated man in all shop floor organisations; in that strike in simple act of bureaucratic cowardice: and to castigate communists as people Victoria, as one participant noted '77. That was sold out, not only by "dobbing in your for our revolutionary program would have who would be afterwards. Halfpenny in the bureaucracy but also by grandmothers and your old mates" if CPA leaders in the shop committees, cut right across the CPA's gloom and despondency. This conscious act of sup­ they ever took power. "I was a teenage leftist" precisely because revolutionary questions Murray-Smith needn't lose any sleep were posed.... It was a question of a pression showed well that for all the about the CPA taking state power, At the workshop on the long-defunct class-struggle perspective, of shutting CPA's prattle about democracy, it is as though. As one SL comrade seeing the Left Tendency (LT) ofthe CPA, a "sadder down the plants, taking on the state .... afraid now as it was in its Stalinist days CPA up close for the first time noted, but wiser" Terry O'Shaughnessy re­ "The LT said [the ALP] was bourgeois, of open political debate. rather than seeing the need to split this throughout the conference "the word called how he and other erstwhile New As a whole, the conference was best Leftists had thought the CPA "had bourgeois workers party on class lines. In summed up by an incident during the 'revolutionary' either wasn't used or was '75 when Whitlam was thrown out the used as a derogatory term". Victorian shifted decisively to the left in the period final session. A youth from the audience from about 1970", having "thrown off CPA called for a class-collaborationist asked union bureaucrat John Halfpenny CPA leader John Sendy said as much bloc of "all democrats" against Fraser. himself during his presentation on the the worst features of Stalinism ... and And now towards the ALP the CP is a whether he thought socialism in Australia 1971 split. Needling Laurie Aarons for the broken from the Communist Party of the ginger group - they've got the 'New would be achieved by legislative reform "revolutionary" pretensions of the CPA Soviet Union". He went on to describe Course' which is explicitly reformist .... " or would need soviets and armed workers in the early seventies, Sendy recalled: with bland cynicism how the LT was first insurrection. To that Halfpenny could There was no reply. only reply that there wasn't any real "In the main document of the 1974 co-opted and then cruelly disillusioned. Congress, the words 'revolution' or When the Aaronsites' feud with the Taft/ The Spartacist League, alone on the need to answer the question at all. left, said six years ago that the CPA, 'revolutionary' occurred, on my count, 54 Sendy faction in Victoria came to a head And he was right. times. On paper we were a very in 1974, "We personally were enlisted despite Aarons' pseudo-revolutionary Later, the same young comrade came by the centre in this struggle", revolutionary party" . rhetoric, broke from Stalinism in the to a Spartacist salesman and said that O'Shaughnessy fondly recalled. Harking direction of social democracy. In 1975, he'd been trying all weekend to get an Both at the session on the 1971 split back to the LT's workerist infatuation O'Shaughnessy's LT purged Haran from answer to his question from the CPA - and on the 1963 break which gave birth to with shop committees such as the CPA­ its ranks and set him up for but couldn't. But having listened to our Ted Hill's Maoists, the CPA speakers - led "ECCUDO, the combined delegates expUlsion from the party in a gesture of comrades intervene, he had begun Laurie Aarons, Bernie Taft and Sendy - organisation in the power industry in goodwill to the party leadership. At the looking on us as the authentic all took the opportunity to assert that, NSW", he said it was "much more time Haran wrote: "To exclude me from revolutionary pole at the conference. And unlike the pro-Peking or pro-Kremlin obvious now" that this fetishisation the Tendency ... will set a bureaucratic indeed we were. For as we put it in the parties, the CPA is a solidly "Australo­ "posed an organisational solution to a precedent that will make it impossible to leaflet we distributed, the program we communist" (ie reformist) group, with no crucial political problem, the problem of resist further degeneration and re­ stood on and fought for was indeed the "foreign" ties. Taft aggressively de­ reformism in the workers movement" . conciliation with Aaronsism" (LT docu­ program of Lenin and the Bolsheviks, fended the "peaceful, parliamentary" True - but what galll Covering up for ment, "Out of the swamp - towards the early Comintern and the Fourth road during his attack on Hill, and at the his own capitulation to the right when Bolshevism", 9 April 1975). This was International of Trotsky. Our task, we session on "workers control" even urged Aarons junked the LT, he declared confirmed when the LT meekly obeyed said, was "the abolition of capitalism. that the left should stop "the automatic absurdly that the "defeat of the the party leadership's demands that it Our aim- socialism. Our method­ response of support to strikes; there are Labor Government in November 1975 ... liquidate itself in 1976. In contrast proletarian revolution". This alone is many selfish strikes". [made] many of our theses, many of our comrade Haran formed the Bolshevik capable of leading to the Australian The CPA's rightward move was arguments, much less relevant". Even Tendency of the CPA with Doug October .•

September 1980 7 standards led in 1953-1956 to a rising extensive) has had a profound effect on PUWP cadre, were driven out of the LaTrobe Uni ••• line of intellectual dissidence and Poland economically, socially and politi­ country. (Almost none settled in Israel, working-class unrest. cally. It has saddled the country with a but rather ended up teaching Slavic Continued from page 12 In June 1956 workers from the ZIPSO backward, smallholding rural economy languages in Copenhagen or Stockholm.) locomotive works in Poznan marched into grossly inefficient even by East European Even Gomulka's Jewish wife wasn't safe But for serious left students at LaTrobe the center of the city calling for higher standards. In the mid-1970s farm output from accusations of "cosmopolitanism" the group's comic opera death agony is wages and lower prices. When the militia per worker in Poland was less than two­ and lack of "Polish patriotism". The rich in lessons. For some six years, day in failed to disperse them, they attacked the fifths that of collectivized Czechoslovakia,. present political atmosphere in Poland, and day out, the Socialist Left attempted city hall, radio station and prison. The for example! Many peasants still work especially the growing authority of the to maintain a "revolutionary" facade in army and special security police were divided-up strips, not even unitary farms. church, is conditioned by the purging of direct political competition with the called in. Over 50 demonstrators were And the horse-drawn plough is a common Jews, a traditionally socialist and inter­ authentic Leninism of the Spartacist killed, hundreds wounded. Poland stood nationalist cultural elite in East Europe. Club. It failed and that failure is clearly on the verge of civil war. not just the result of personal hatreds and In August Wladyslaw Gomulka, with a Blood on the Baltic and Gierek's a resurgent right. The point is not just reputation as a victimized "national­ maneuver that the Spartacist Gub is clearly the only liberal" Communist and honest workers In 1970 the Gomulka regime decided to dynamic left group on campus but more leader, was reinstated in the PUWP; in raise the agricultural procurement price importantly it has been proven politically October he was made head of it. A former in order to stimulate greater production right time and time again. What is the general secretary of the Polish Com­ from the peasants. A few weeks before record on AUS, Indochina, Iran, munist Party, he was purged by Stalin in Christmas - an unbelievably stupid Nicaragua, Zimbabwe and Afghanistan? 1948 as a "Titoist" and placed under piece of timing - the government an­ For this we have not needed political house arrest. Not sharing personal nounced food prices would be increased gurus and con-men committed to helping responsibility for the crimes of the Stalin on the average 30 percent. The Baltic the administration to run the campus but years, Gomulka enjoyed considerable ports ignited. Led by the shipbuilders, simply granite hard commitment to the popular authority, especially among thousands of workers, some singing the objective interests of the international socialist workers. Internationale, attacked police and tried working class and the revolutionary pro­ In what would become the standard to bum down Party headquarters in gram of Trotskyism. Join the Spartacist refrain of Polish Stalinism when under Gdansk and Szezecin. Over the objections Club!. attack from below, Gomulka in an open of the top generals, Gomulka ordered the letter "to the workers and youth" army in, tanks and all. More than a assured them that: hundred workers were reportedly killed, " . . . only by marching along the path of many times that number wounded. Once democratization and eradicating all the again Poland was seconds away from a Poland ••• evil from the past period can we succeed After Gomulka, Glerek (above). revolutionary explosion. in building the best model of social­ After Glerek, what? And once again the bureaucracy ContInUed from page 2 ism .... A decisive part on that road must .-,,"n presented to the workers a new face and a be played by widening the workers' new deal. Edward Gierek, an ex-coal opening the road to socialism by ousting democracy, by increasing the direct sight in the Polish countryside to this day. the Stalinist caste which falsely rules in participation of workers in the manage­ The rural popUlation is increasingly aged miner and party boss of the mining region the workers name. ment of enterprises, by increasing the as the peasants' sons and daughters of Silesia, had a reputation as unpreten­ Poland presents. the most combative part played by the working masses in emigrate in droves to the cities, where tious, pragmatic and competent. It is working class in the Soviet bloc with a governing all sectors of the country's the standard of living is appreciably commonly believed that as soon as Gierek history of struggling for independent life. " higher. replaced Gomulka, he rescinded the price organizations going back to the mid- -reproduced in Paul E. Zinner, ed, Contrary to the imperialist propaganda increase and the strikes ended. In fact, he National Communism and Popular ReVolt did not and the strikes continued. While 195Os. It is also the one country in East in Eastern Europe (1956) line that 90 percent of Poland is Catholic, Europe with a mass, potentially counter­ offering considerable economic con­ Khrushchev and his KremUn col­ the Polish workers movement since the revolutionary mobilization around the cessions, Gierek insisted that returning to leagues still feared Gomulka as the Polish 1890s has adhered to Marxian socialism. Catholic church. Thus, unlike Hungary in The strength of the Polish church is based the old 1966 price level was impossible. Tito at).d ~erio~ly, considered military 1956 or Czechoslovakia in 1968, the He spent the first two months in power intervention to oust him. One of the main on the social weight of the rural petty alternatives in the present crisis are not running from one strike committee to factors which forestalled them was that in bourgeoisie. And today over a third of the limited to proletarian. politi~al revolution another trying to sell them this economic large factories throughout the' country . labor force stilUoils in the fields, while 80 or Stalinist restabilization. At the same program, But the wc;>rkers were qot .buy­ workers councils organized resistance to perce"nt of famuandis privately owned. time, it is not Afghanistan where the ing it. In mid-February a strike of largely any attempt by the Russian Stalinists and Only by eliminating their hideous poverty Soviet Red Army is playing a progressive women textile workers in Lodz finally their local agents to overturn "the Polish and rural isolation can the hold of re­ role in crushing an imperialist-backed caused the new regime to give up; it October revolution". In the giant Zeran ligious obscurantism on the masses be clerical-reactionary uprising. In a sense agreed to freeze prices at the 1966 level. auto factory in Warsaw, the Communists broken. . Poland stands somewhere between In the course of his negotiations with armed the workers .. But it was not the An immediate, key task for !l revol­ Hungary 1956 and Mghanistan. How has the strike committees in eady.. 1971, Russians who overturned "the Polish utionary workers government in Poland this situation come about? would be to promote the collectivization Gierek was forced to defend his role as October" - it was Gomulka. While head of a workers state and justify his The bitter fruits of the 1956 granting large wage increases for a few of agriculture. And this has nothing in common with Stalin's mass terror in the policies as being in the specific interests "Polish October" years, Gomulka gradually bureau­ of the working class. In tum, the strike Russian countryside in 1929-31. Cheap Key to understanding the exceptional cratically strangled the workers councils, committee delegates addressed Gierek credits and generous social services instability of Stalinist Poland is the which had helped bring him to power. He not as the representative of a hostile, should be given those peasants who pool compromise which staved off a workers also suppressed the dissident Marxoid exploitative class but as a labor leader revolution in 1956. As in other East intellectuals. At the same time, his their land and labor, while higher taxes (possibly an untrustworthy bureaucrat) European countries the post-Stalin policies permanently strengthened the would be imposed on those who remained who was supposed to serve the workers' "thaw" produced a deep crisis within the potential social bases of counterrevol­ petty agricultural capitalists. interests and do his best to meet their Polish bureaucracy which extended to ution - the peasants and the priests. Polish Stalinism has strengthened the demands. The extraordinary nine-hour other sections of Polish· society. Promises The abandonment in 1956 of agri­ church not only by perpetuating a land­ session in January 1971 between Gierek of "socialist legality" and higher living cultural collectivization (never very owning peasanty, but also in a more and the strike committee at the Warski direct way. Since 1956 the Catholic ZNAK shipyards in Szczecin is a dramatic group in the Sejm (parliament) has been empirical refutation of all "new class" J 40. the only legally recognized opposition in FORUM/ VIDEO SHOWING theories of the Sino-Soviet states. any East European country. And that Interestingly, the present director of the opposition has in general been anti­ Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk was a member democratic. Church spokesmen have "1200 rally to stop Nazis in San Francisco" of the strike committee which bargained denounced the public schools' "atheiz­ with Gierek in 1970. . ation" of Poland's youth and have Two video documentaries demonstrating the Trotskyist program of Whereas in 1956 Gomulka had prom­ called for state financial support for mobilising labour, black and white, to smash fascist terror. The first film ised the workers democratization, in 1971 religious instruction. The Polish medical shows the rally held in Detroit on 10 November 1979 in response to the Gierek promised them prosperity. Judge Ku Klux Klan massacre of five anti-fascists in Greensboro, North system provides safe abortions for a me by the meat on your table, he told Carolina, and contains interviews with black car workers, and speeches nominal fee. (Women from West Europe them. He promised huge wage increases from trade unionists and spokesmen from the Spartacist League which travel to Poland to have their abortions in for the workers, higher procurement order to save money.) Committed to the built heavily for the rally. The second film is of the demonstration contInued on page 10 organised by the April 19 Committee Against Nazis (ANCAN), which patriarchal family and with it the age-old mobilised 1200 demonstrators in San Francisco to stop the Nazis cel­ oppression of women, the church has ebrating Hitler's birthday. This Spartacist League-initiated rally re­ singled out safe, cheap abortions as one asserted that 'San Francisco is a labour town', and stopped the Nazi of the great "crimes" of the Communist scum from showing their faces that day: government. By the late 1960s the Gomulka regime had pretty much exhausted the moral Spartacist League capital of the 1956 "Polish October". The economy was stagnant, real wages were Sydney rising more slowly than in any other East European country. The 1968 "Prague spring" in neighboring Czechoslovakia· public office panicked the Polish bureaucracy, which feared the unrest would spread to its own Thursday: 5.30 pm to 9.30 pm more volatile and combative people. At this point a faction in the bureauc­ Saturday: 12 noon to 5 pm racy around secret police chief Mieczyslaw Moczar sought to channel popular discontent into traditional anti­ 2nd floor, Semitic Polish chauvinism. Under. the 112 Goulburn St rubric of "anti-Zionism", the few tens of Sydney thousands of Jews who had survived Hitler's holocaust, many of them loyal 8 Australasian Spartaclst Healyism, Laborism, Stalinophobia What is the Gould group? At the Communist Party (CPA) "Com­ same basic pro-imperialist line - both for a public inquiry was an utterly hyp­ cupation - only weeks from the line munists and the Labour Movement" demand the Red Army get out and leave ocritical cover for his efforts to construct shut down - was buried far down under conference in Melbourne, one group the country to the Islamic reactionaries 1 an anti-Steering Committee bloc with the heading: "For the full ACTU redun­ could be heard vociferously denouncing In fact what distinguishes Stalinism from some of its right-wing factional dancy plan" - ie no jobs, only more the "Stalinism" of the CPA and railing the sort of class traitors who lead Gould's opponents. At the Melbourne conference crumbs. against the CPA's support for the leftish ALP is precisely political support for a he also railed against the CPA's support Workers News" heavy coverage of Steering Committee faction of the NSW bureaucratic caste ruling a deformed for the Steering Committee, and its Pagewood was notable for its near ALP. It was the Socialist Leadership workers state; and that is just what the equally treacherous call for a "Crimes complete silence on Ford, "Pagewood Group (SLG), headed by long-time "left" CPA aimed to junk when it cut its Commission" . News" or the SLG; but an SLL speaker Sydney Labor Party ftxture Bob Gould, Kremlin ties in 1972. The group's crass Laborism also backed up Ford when he spoke on out in force again after a rash of appear­ The Gouldites absurdly deny the CPA's emerged vividly at GMH Pagewood, Pagewood at the Myers report meeting. ances at public left and labour movement social-democratic split from Stalinism for where SLG supporter Paul Ford was a Likewise SLG supporters abhor any events since it surfaced with a paper a reason, as SLG supporter John Hoskin shop steward with a "rank-and-fIle" mention of the SLL's sinister ties to (Keep Left) last April. What is the SLG? (who has been in and out of the SLL for group. Not only did it peddle the reform­ capitalist regimes in Libya and Iraq, ties What of its claim to be a class-struggle, years) let slip during the conference ist lie that "State resumption" by the which have taken the Healyites out of the even Trotskyist, alternative to the CPA session on the CPA's one-time Left Wran government would have saved jobs workers movement. Nevertheless there and the wretched Labor "lefts" of Tom Tendency. Backing up an intervention by (see Australasian Spartacist no 75, has not been a single instance to date of a Uren's ilk? Mulgrew along the same lines, he August 1980); it made no bones about clear political difference between the two Gould himself has a long record of· insisted: "The CPA is ... the liberal calling on the NSW premier to run it as a groups, while Keep Left echoes stock SLL rotten opportunist shenanigans - from wing of Australian Stalinism, there's no "profttable enterprise", as Ford said at a slogans like "Socialist Policies to Fight the Pabloist United Secretariat to the way that organisation can be won around mid-July "Rank and File Conference" in Fraser", joins the Healyites' praise for 1971 NSW edition of the ALP Socialist to a revolutionary position". Note Sydney. And racist protectionism was not the "Iranian Revolution" of Khomeini's Left - which have mostly ended in the underlying assumption: if the just implicit in Ford's enthusing over reactionary mullahs, and even made a failure. He did succeed, however, in CPA isn't Stalinist, it might well 'be Peter Wherrett's "Aussie car" schemes: point of pushing for Young Labor to take building a chain of bookshops and a small 0 up Healyite-style "youth work" (Keep personal fortune. ~ Left no 1). In 1974-75, he began an association -a The deeply politically corrupt Healyite with the Socialist Labour League (SLL) of ~ political bandits went out of the workers Jim Mulgrew, the Australian· branch movement altogether when they entered office of Gerry Healy's Workers Revol­ the service of the anti-communist fanatic utionary Party (WRP) in Britain. This odd Qaddafi and, increasingly of late, his ally, alliance, with a group who had de­ Iraq's Ba'athist strongman Saddam nounced him as a degenerate renegade Hussein. They did not baulk at applaud­ only two years previously, was cemented ing the Iraqi regime's slaughter of 21 by Gould's solidarity with a vicious SLL members of the Iraqi Communist Party in thug attack on Spartacist supporters in 1978, proving that no crime against the June 1975, outside the Sydney Trades oppressed will be too foul for the Healy­ Hall where Healy was speaking. ites in holding up their end of this rotten The formal program of the SLG scarce­ allegiance. ly goes beyond the ALP's watery "social­ And what about Gould? When con­ isation objective" and would indicate just Left, Bob Gould holding forth. Right, British pro~Qadd8fJ WRP fronted during the CPA conference, he another species of garden-variety leader, Gerry Healy. Partners In crime? evaded a direct answer but sneered to a Laborite reformism, but for a distinctive Spartacist supporter that he wasn't going feature: its political congruence with the possible to win it to a "revolutionary Gould himself spoke ominously of "how to protest "just because a bunch of SLL, which since 1976 has become the position". After all, the SLG itself stands jobs are exported to low-wage areas in Stalinists got killed" for trying to push mouthpiece for the capitalist dictatorship for the reform of that big-time version of Asia" at a 12 August union forum on the the Ba'athist regime "to the right". This of Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya and the the social-democratic CPA, the ALP. Myers technology report in Sydney. Stalinophobe thundered against state Iraqi Ba'athist colonels. Keep Left's own The cynical Gould's joking self-. In fact pushing this social-democratic involvement in ALP affairs after the genealogy (no 2, June 1980) traces the description to a Spartacist supporter in rubbish was counterposed to, and Baldwin bashing, but not when the Iraqi paper's name to a 1951 manifesto of the the corridors of the CPA conference as "a actively helped to derail, a militant capitalist state intervenes and executes Bevanite wing of the British Labour greasy social democrat" is apt up to a seizure of the plant as the opening blow 21 members of that country's historic Party, and to the name the Healyite youth point. Thus it campaigned for such of a real, national ftght against car mass workers party. Why? The striking group took for its paper during and after world-shaking demands as proportional industry layoffs. At the CPA conference parallelism between the political pos­ the ftghts which led to the split in the BLP representation in pre-selection ballots for Gould bellowed about how an occupation itions of Mulgrew's SLL and Gould's SLG Young Socialists in the early 196Os. the NSW upper house, and the defence of had been necessary at Pagewood. forces the question: Where does the Like the SLL's Workers News, the SLG the traditional 60:40 trade union-to­ Right - but it was the Spartacist League "Socialist Leadership Group" stand vis­ is markedly Stalinophobic and attacks the branch delegate ratio in ALP. confer­ which issued this call at the start, not the a-vis the SLL 'pimps for Qaddaft? The Soviet Union for "alienating" "Arab and ences. "60:40 with PRo The unity of SLG which conftned itself to urging workers movement generally - and colonial" peoples Oike Qaddaft?) by Labor is the hope of the world" slogan­ "consideration" of "the tactic of sit-in". anyone tempted to take the SLG's more defending the elementary reforms of the ised Keep Left no 2. After four roneoed issues of "Pagewood accessible Laborism and left talk for good Kabul regime in Mghanistan against Likewise, in the wake of the Baldwin News", even the call for nationalisation. coin - have a right to know the answers. CIA-backed gangs (Keep Left no I, April bashing, Gould's formally correct-"Ieft" had disappeared (no 6, 29 July), and a We too await with interest the reply of the 1980). Yet the "Stalinist" CPA has the attack on the Steering Committee's call half-hearted call for some sort of oc- normally none-too-reticent Bob Gould .•

visit last year: Eastern Europe since the late 1940s"l Dzerzhinsky. One of the greatest crimes Dissidents •• 1 "It will be a powerful demonstration of Meanwhile, USec leader Ernest Mandel of the Polish Stalinist bureaucracy is that the bond between the Polish people and laments that the .. Stalinist bureaucracy it has discredited the name of commu­ Continued from page 3 the world of Christian culture, a' demon­ in Poland has not' 'permitted a demo­ nism among thinking workers. stration of their solidarity with the Cath­ cratic and intense political life, including The present crop of Polish dissidents olic Church, and a demonstration of their probably have failed to survive the hatred a legal Catholic party ... " ([SWP] yearning for freedom, the champion of are overwhelmingly enemies of the cause ofthe authorities." which they see as being their fellow International Internal Discussion Bull­ of proletarian socialism. They act as - New York Review ofBooks, countryman John Paul n, the defender of etin, October 1979). direct conduits to the church and the 8 February 1979 human rights." This pandering to clerical reaction is a West. Today we do not see "dissident" Brumberg points out that the original far cry from the revolutionary social Stalinists of the Titoist mould. On the KOR demands for amnestying workers For Polish Trotskyism! democracy of a Rosa Luxemburg, who contrary, the most left-wing are the East arrested and ftred in the June 1976 wrote in 1905: European equivalent of the "Eurocom­ strikes were almost identical to those of This paean to the standardbearer of "The clergy, no less than the capitalist munists". But where in the capitalist the episcopate. "Since then, the parallels capitalist restoration in Poland was class, lives on the backs of the people, West this is but another variety of between statements by the Church­ printed without comment in Labour Focus profits from the degradation, the ignor­ reformism, more closely tied to its "own" ance and the oppression of the people. and especially by Cardinal. Wyszynski, on Eastern Europe (July-August 1979), bourgeoisie, in the Soviet bloc countries The clergy and the parasitic capitalists passing from Stalinist to Eurocommunist whom Michnik strongly, if not uncriti­ a joint publication of supporters of the hate the organized working class, con­ cally, admires - and those of the USec and the "state-capitalist" British scious of its rights, which fights for the means joining the camp of counter­ opposition have become even more SWP of Tony Cliff. But these pseudo­ conquest of its liberties. " revolution. Authentic Trotskyism stands conspicuous". He points out that Trotskyists are not satisfted with such a - "Socialism and the Churches" not for the bogus "unity of all anti­ supporters of the ZNAK group have tepid brew. A subsequent issue of Labour Stalinist forces" - including disciples participated in the "flying university" Focus reprints an interview (by the In fact, in all the publications of the of Wojtyla and ,Br.zezinski - but for a circles sponson,d by KOR, which in French USec paper Rouge) with Leszek Polish dissidents which we have con­ class-conscious confmunist opposition to Krakowa used churches for its classes Moczulski, who was a member of the sulted, some hundreds of pages, there is the parasitic bureaucracy. And those with the permission of then-Archbishop Moczar faction of the PUWP at the time not one reference to Luxemburg, would-be leftists who today follow the Wojtyla. Michnik described the new pope it ran the 1968 ·anti-Semitic purge, and Poland's greatest contribution to the Kurons and Michniks should realize as one of the two "co-founders of the now heads the KPN. The journal Marxist movement. "Naturally", be­ that if they ~successful in bringing off anti-totalitarian policy of the Polish comments that Moczulski is more mili­ cause she was a Jew and hardly a a national rev91t together with the clerical Episcopate" (Der Spiegel, 23 October tantly anti-government than KOR, and Polish' nationalist. But neither is there reactionarie~; Gierek & Co will be the 1978). Michnik, a Jew, is so enamored hails the formation of his clerical­ a reference to other authentic ftrst to go, but they will be next. of the new, "enlightened" Catholic reactionary party as "an event almost Polish Communists, such as Julian f-1J'prlftf from Workers Vanguard primate that he wrote of the pope's without precedent in .. the history of Marchlewski, Leo Jogiches and Felix no 263, 5 September 1980 :/9 "·"'SeilteJnbeJ,j98Q;.:.,w~ U Poland;s liuge loans came due in the late gave it a bargaining counter\Vidt"t'fie' . waiting lines. If Polish workers still Poland 1970s. regime. At the same time Cardinal strike for higher pay, it's because they Gierek's Poland was heading toward Wyszynski called for amnesty for the have no control over economic policy and Continned from page 8 the honor of being the first Communist imprisoned workers, a universally would suffer inflation and shortages in prices and state pensions for the peasants country to declare international bank­ popular demand. any case. The social democrats of the Committee plus the rapid modernization of Polish ruptcy. In late 1975 the regime simul­ The June events were a devastating taneously tried to brake the economy and and lasting blow to the moral authority of for Social Self-Defense (KOR) are op­ industry. And how was this economic posing the present large wage hikes on miracle (the term was actually used in steer it into a U-turn. Wage increases the regime. Gierek's earlier promises of were to be scaled back, new major unparelleled prosperity were thrown back the grounds that it will simply fuel the official propaganda) to be achieved? inflationary spiral. Kuron, Michnik & Co, Through massive loans from the West investment projects practically frozen. in his face. The popular attitude was The massive balance-of-payments deficit caught in the line: "the party decided to very full of themselves, are in effect offer­ and also the Soviet :·,Union. The Polish ing the Stalinist regime the following deal Stalinist bureaucracy rode out the crisis was to be reversed. The decision to raise stuff the people's mouth with sausage so food prices an average 60 percent in June they would not talk back, and now there is (which, of course, they can't deliver on): of 1970-71, but only by mortgaging the you give us "free trade unions", an country to West German bankers. 1976 was in part designed to spur agri­ no sausage". The government inspired neither fear nor respect. Corruption, end to censorship, etc; in return, we will For the militant Baltic shipbuilders the cultural production, but mainly to soak up black-marketeering and worker apathy convince the workers to accept a few new regime's promise of an economic domestic purchasing power, allowing more to be exported. Superficially June became common, even normal. In a 1977 years of austerity. In an article in a miracle was not enough. Gierek had to current Der Spiegel (18 August) Michnik concede an independent workers com­ appeals to Gierek's noted pragmatism: mittee arising out of the strike " ... whether he [Gierek] understands committee, and free elections to the that a dialogue with the people is in­ official trade union. In a year or so the dispensable to carry through necessary, bureaucracy regained control in part but unpopular, economic reforms cannot through firing some committee leaders today be answered". and coopting others, but mainly because But the Polish workers must not pay for the exceptional increases in real wages the gross mismanagement of Gierek's (running about 8 percent a year) quieted regime. Nor should they have the worker discontent and activism. A leader slightest confidence in the bureaucracy's of the Szczecin workers committee, "economic reforms". Egalitarian and Edmund Baluka, now in exile, described rational socialist planning, capable of the process in a 1977 interview: overcoming the mess the Stalinists have "But, of course, Gierek did an about tum, made of the Polish economy, is possible and partly by bettering the mate,rial situ­ ation of the workers - and in the process only under a government based on massively indebting Poland to the West democratically elected workers councils and the Soviet Union - the Party (soviets). As a revolutionary, transitional managed to rebuild its ranks and regain step toward that Polish workers must control. struggle against the bureaucracy for "The rises in living standards gave the control over production, prices, distri­ workers a false sense of security, but in bution and foreign trade. the first 2 or 3 years of Gierek's rule The Polish Stalinist bureaucracy's people thought that things in Poland were economic mismanagement is today reaIly changing for the better. " glaring. Nonetheless, the historical - Labour Focus on Eastern Europe, May­ June 1977 superiority of collectivized property and centralized economic planning, even Glerek runs out of when saddled with a parasitic bureauc­ economic miracles Lenin shipyard strike committee meets. Where will the "free" trade unions racy, remains indisputable. Any Polish Gierek's economists projected trans­ stand - for clerical reaction or defence of socialised property? worker who takes Radio Free Europe as forming Poland into something like an good coin and thinks he would be better East European Japan. They maintained 1976 appeared to be a replay of 1970-71. open letter to Gierek, a former head of off under "free enterprise" capitalism that the rapid modernization of the state and PUWP general secretary The regime announced food price in­ should consider these few statistics: country's industrial plant would enable creases, the workers reacted with mass Edward Ochab wrote: "The conviction is spreading amongst the between 1950 and 1976 the advanced Poland to flood world markets with strikes and protests, the regime re­ capitalist economies grew at an average cheap, quality goods and so repay the, scinded the increases. Yet the differences people that one achieves nothing through honesty: the tendency to corruption, annual rate of 4.4 percent, the backward loans when they fell due. Whatever slim are perhaps more important than. the capitalist economies at 5 percent and the chance this economic maneuver had of similarities. cliquism and the dishonest earning of money increases constantly." / centrally planned East European econ­ working was dashed by the 1974-75 world Six years earlier the regime had stood - Labour Focus on Eastern Europe, omies at 7. 7 percent (Scientific American, depression. At a deeper level, Gierek's up to a two-month strike before relenting. March.Apri11978 September 1980). economic ,gamble failed because the Now Gierek cancelled the price increase The government promised to leave the The Poles have contradictory economic Stalinist regime is incapable of mobilizing within 24 hours, at the first sign of worker people alone; in return, it asked only that aspiration. There is an overwhelming the enthusiasm and sense of sacrifice of resistance. In December 1970 Gomulka the people leave it alone. But the world demand to abolish the special shops­ the Polish working people. This incom­ had ordered a massacre. In 1976 Gierek economy wouldn't leave Poland alone. an egalitarian socialist measure. Yet all petence is endemic in a bureaucracy, forbade the use of firearms, and serious For workers control of production! those who get dollars from relatives in more due to lack of an effective corrective violence was limited to the mammoth America would like to spend it on lUXUry feedback than to material privilege. - Ursus tractor factory near Warsaw and Although the government promised to goods imported from the West. For strike Between 1970 and 1975 the value of the small industrial city of Radom. The freeze food prices, it couldn't meet leaders who yearn for capitalism, we Poland's imports from the West in­ Radom workers were driven into a fury market demand at those prices, suggest a long vacation in Liverpool creased an incredible 40 percent a year when, on seizirtg the Party headquarters, especially since money wages continued where they won't have to stand in line to (East European Economics, Fall 1979)1 they discovered a cache of top-quality to rise. Raising the procurement price for buy anything. Of course, they will have a Exports could not possibly keep pace. By ham and other lUXUry goods unavailable the peasantry didn't encourage nearly little difficulty finding a job, and even if 1976 imports were twice exports, total on the domestic market. By late 1977 all enough additional output. And the they do their pay will be so low that they foreign debt three times exports and debt the workers imprisoned for participating government food subsidy - the differ­ will have to cut back on their meat service absorbed 25 percent of hard in the June events were amnestied and ence between the price paid to the consumption. (The dissidents ought to be currency earnings (US Congress, Joint most of those fired were reinstated. peasant and paid by the urban consumer sent to Afghanistan where they can find Economic Committee, East European The ch.urch played a clever double - has been an enormous and increasing out what Carter's "human rights" are all Economics Post-Helsinki [1977]). More­ game. It supported the price increase, drain on the entire economy. In the past about by seeing what happens to them if over, things were bound to get worse as which benefited its peasant base and ten years the cost of food subsidies has they try to teach young girls to read and multiplied twenty times (Economist, 12 write!) January 1980)1 Break the imperialist economic !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!~ Spartacist Class Series The regime tried to get around the stranglehold! problem through an elaborate system of In 1978 over 50 percent of Poland's different classes of retail stores. The hard currency earnings were absorbed by Building the Trotskyist. better class the shop, the higher the debt service, in 1979 over 60 percent and prices, the more likely the goods would today over 90 percent 1 Early last year actually be on the shelves. At the top of Poland avoided becoming the world's Vanguard Party the line were the Pewex shops which sold biggest bankruptcy only by a major re­ lUXUry items for Western currency only. scheduling of its debts. But Poland's Politically prevented from raising Western bankers are, in an opposite way, prices in line with market demand, the just as fed up with Gierek's economic Melbourne regime resorted to rationing by waiting mismanagement as Poland's workers. Saturday, 13 September - The struggle against women's oppression line. And the waiting lines kept getting They demanded and got the right to longer, especially after last year's bad monitor all aspects of economic policy Friday, 26 September - The social democracy and the "family of the left" harvest (in part caused by peasant and to have their recommendations taken Friday, 10 October - The main enemy Is at home strikes). Things have now reached such a very seriously - an unprecendented pass it's reported even the Pewex shops step for a deformed workers state. As an All classes will be held at Plumbers Union Hall; 52 Victoria Street, Carlton. have empty shelves. A typical Polish economist for Bankers Trust commented The 13 September class begins at 2pm. The 26 September and 10 October family spends a good part of its free time at the time. "This marks the first time a classes will begin at 7.30pm. hunting for food and other consumer Communist government has embraced goods. , austerity - a purposeful cut in its Sydney The present large wage increases now planned rate of growth - for balance­ being granted will lead either to wild of-payments reasons" (New York Times. Saturday, 13 September - For a Trotskyist leadership In the trade unions inflation or even longer waiting lines. 26 January 1979). This is the same kind Saturday, 20 September - The class, the Party and the leadership And Polish workers know this. One of the of program the International Monetary Baltic strike committee's demands is the Fund normally imposes on neo-colonial All classes to be held at 2pm at 2nd floor, 112 Goulburn Street, Sydney. temporary rationing of meat to replace bankrupts like Turkey, Zaire and Peru. For further information: phone (03)62-5135 Melbourne, (02)264-8195 Sydney the present system of multiple prices and But then Gierek's Poland has become a the maddening resort to ever-longer West German client-state economically, 10 Australasian Spartacist supplymg It W1m sUDStann81 quannnes convlDceo tne l'IJemnn tnat II me ronsn Jorergll aeDl. "eu, not qune. Jne \JUIUU. n.Ylu~ IU:)L ~u 1I11111UII III "KIILIIIK of raw materials. This was noted by the masses were pushed too hard to pay the workers might export comrade Edward Nazi Germany, the Soviet people under­ New York Times (20 August) during the foreign debts, there would be a popular Gierek to West Germany, where he can stand that NATO's nuclear arsenal is present crisis: explosion which, whatever way it went, work off his obligations in some Ruhr coal targeted at them. This understanding is West German banks, which have played could only hurt them. So the Russians are mine. A very good idea, some Polish now heightened by Washington's open an important role in providing Poland with paying a good part of Poland's debt both worker might say; but will the bankers of threats of a nuclear first strike. The credits, have pointed out that its deposits directly and by shipping the Warsaw Frankfurt write off $20 billion with a Soviet masses also know that the imperi­ of coal, copper, silver, platinum and regime agricultural produce. In one sense shrug? What of imperialist retaliation, alist powers' wllr against their country, vanadium make it an intrinsically more Poland has become the intermediary economic or military? Polish workers can hot and cold, began with the Bolshevik promising client than either Hungary or through which Western finance capital counter such retaliation only by mobil­ Revolution of October 1917. Russian Czechoslovakia.' , sucks surplus out of the Soviet workers izing the West European, centrally West working people see pro-Western One West German banker is now propos­ and peasants (whose living standards are German, working classes under the "dissidents" like Sakharov for what they ing that any new loans to Poland be substantially lower than those of the banner of a Socialist United States of are - traitors to the socialist revolution. secured by specific mines and factories. Poles). If Polish workers don't appreciate Europe. Following the 1956 Polish crisis and this, Western bankers are very much If the Kremlin believes that the Soviet Hungarian revolution Shane Mage, a aware of the fact. That house organ of the conscript army can be depended on to founding leader of the Spartacist For the revolutionary unity of the international financial community, the suppress any mass upheaval in Poland or tendency (who has since abandoned Polish and Russian workers! London Economist (9 August), writes of Czechoslovakia, it is not simply out of Marxism), produced a theoretical con­ the current crisis: mechanical discipline or Great Russian sideration of the ways in which capitalism All organized forces in Polish political "In past Polish crises the Soviet Union has chauvinism. The Soviet people fear the might be restored in East Europe. Should stepped in with cash and emergency grain life - the Stalinist bureaucracy, the transformation of East Europe into a petty-bourgeois clericalist party come to sales. But the Poles may be wearing out church, and all wings of the dissident hostile, imperialist-allied states extend­ power in a "democratic revolution", he their welcome on begging·bowl trips to movement - inculcate hostility to Russia ing NATO to their own border. The posited, it could restore capitalism by Moscow. The Soviet Union has already as the enemy of the Polish people. The Kremlin bureaucrats exploit this legit­ eliminating the state monopoly of foreign lent Poland 51 billion this spring to meet Gomulka and Gierek regimes continually pressing debt-service requirements." imate fear to crush popular unrest and trade and reintegrating the country into threatened that any mass struggle, even democratic aspirations in East Europe, as One international banker, who chose to the world economy without significant purely economic strikes, would bring in in Czechoslovakia in 1968. There were remain anonymous, remarked that Soviet denationalization of the existing indus­ the Soviet Red Army. "Our fraternal numerous reports that Soviet soldiers military intervention would enhance allies are concerned" is the stock phrase. trial plant: were shaken when on occupying Prague "Another decisive aspect of the return to they encountered not a bloody fascistic capitalism under petty-bourgeois demo­ counterrevolution as they had been told, cratic leadership would be the ties of Poland and Hungary with the capitalist but protests by Communist workers and world market .... left-wing students. "And what would become of the national­ ized industries? Their fate would serve the Revolutionary Polish workers cannot interests of the peasants and petty­ hope to appeal t'O Soviet soldiers unless bourgeoisie and the needs for trade with they assure them that they will defend the Western capitalists. Hungary and that part of the world against imperialist Poland can be capitalist without de­ attack. A Polish workers government nationalizing a single large industrial must be a military bastion against NATO. plant; all that is necessary is to convert the industry .. . into an appendage of the And a proletarian political revolution in peasant economy and the world market." Poland must extend itself to the Soviet - Shane Mage, The Hungarian Union or, one way or another, it will be Revolution (1959) crushed. To a cQnsiderable degree Poland has become an appendage of the world - For trade unions Independent of capitalist economy not, as Mage pro­ bureaucratic control and based on a jected, under a petty-bourgeois "demo­ program of defending sociallzed cratic" party, but under a shaky Stalinist property! bureaucracy which tried to buy off a - For the strict separation of church and combative working class and a backward, state! Fight clerical-nationalist smallholding peasantry by mortgaging reaction! Guard against capitalist the country's wealth to the imperialists. restorationism! Thus, the response of the world, - Promote the coUectivlzation of especially West German, bourgeoisie to agriculture ! the Polish crisis is divided between short­ Priest giving communion to workers In Lenin shipyard. - For workers control of production, term financial interests and a historic prices, distribution and foreign trade! appetite to overturn proletarian state Poland's creditworthiness (New York And, of course, Pope Wojtyla's church -'- For proletarian political revolution power in the Soviet bloc. Most German Times, 31 August)! and the dissident movement grouped against the Stalinist bureaucracy­ bankers want Gierek to win the best A key task facing the Polish proletariat around it have as their ultimate goal For a government based on demo­ terms he can get. After all, they've been is to break the imperialist economic "national independence" (like under cratically elected workers councUs pushing him for years to do away with the stranglehold. The Baltic strike committee Pilsudski?), though they differ amongst (soviets)! food subsidy and impose other austerity is demanding "a full supply of food themselves how to achieve this. - Break the imperialist economic measures. But the right-winger Franz­ products for the domestic market, with A hallmark for a revolutionary party in stranglehold - cancel the foreign Josef Strauss called for a moratorium on exports limited to surpluses". (It is not, Poland is a positive orientation to the debt! Toward international socialist loans to Poland to blackmail the regime however, demanding limitations on Russian working class (which incidentally economic planning! into. granting all the strike committee's imports.) Economic autarky is not what pays no small share of Poland's debt to - For mUitary defense of the USSR demands. Poland needs. On the contrary, socialist the West). And this is not simply a matter against Imperialism! For the revol­ One cannot, however, consider economic planning should maximally of abstract proletarian internationalism. utionary unity of the PoUsh and Soviet Poland's relations with Western capital­ utilize the international division of labor, It is a matter of life and death. working classes! ism without taking the Soviet Union very exporting and importing as much as - For a Polish Trotskyist party, section much into account. To do so is truly to possible. Illusions about the good will of the of a reborn Fourth international! play Hamlet without the Danish prince. What a revolutionary workers govern­ Western capitalist powers common in - reprinted from Workers Vanguard The experiences of 1970 and 1976 ment in Poland would do is cancel the East Europe do not extend to the Soviet no 263, S September 1980 Victory to the Melbourne garbos' strikel MELBOURNE, 6 September - As we go private contractors, victory against labour movement in Melbourne must be brought out. Shut down every Council in to press the week-old strike of 900 metro­ Waverley Council is crucial in throwing prepared to beat back the cops' strike­ Melbourne! Stop the coo thuggery! politan garbage collectors is poised to back a city-wide assault on MEU jobs and breaking. The rest of the MEU must be Victory to the garbos' strike! • become a major class confrontation. conditions. So the ranks overwhelmingly There have been three days of violent turned the initial 24-hour strike into an clashes at the Springvale-Waverley tip as indefinite walkout; and on Friday, 5 Hamer's cops have attempted to smash September, they rejected out of hand a the workers' picket line. As the striking deal concocted before the Arbitration workers have become more militant and Commission between the Council and the determined, the Liberal state government "left" union leadership for a three month under acting premier Lindsay Thompson "cooling off period" before bringing in SPARYACIST ~ is preparing for a showdown with threats the contractors. of still more police strikebreaking to With Thompson blustering that' 'we do Subscribe 11 issues (1 year) - $3.00 come. not intend to let everyone go down with overseas rates: o surface mail - $3 for 11 issues The strike by members of the Feder­ gastro-enteritis just to avoid a confron­ Dalrmail $10 for 11 issues ated Municipal and Shire Council Em­ tation" (Herald, 5 September), the o Donation $ ___ ployees' Union (MEU) began as a 24-hour Springvale tip has become a picket line NAME ______------walkout on 30 August in support of battlefield. Many householders have Waverley Council fellow workers who had respected the picket, but a few of ADDRESS ______gone out two days earlier, opposing a Thompson's "ordinary people" have Council plan to bring in private contract­ attempted to break through with massive CITY STATE ______ors to handle the regular garbage pick­ cop protection. The vicious uniformed up. Private contractors offer only casual bosses' thugs have already hospitalised mail tol make cheques payable to: rates and no permanency and Waverley one 63-year old garbage collector, who POSTCODE ______Spartaclst Publications workers fear an immediate loss of 36 jobs was hurled under a car trailer. GPO Box 3473 PHONE ______if they take over. With a third of Victory in this strike requires that all Sydney NSW 2001 Melbourne's municipalities already using municipal tips be shut tight. The entire September 1980 11 ~ Australasian """" SPARTACIST "Not a bad thing but a good thing" LaTrobe Uni Socialist Left unravels ASp photo MELBOURNE, 3 September - From the ciple" to being one-eighteenth of an days of the anti-Vietnam war struggles to employer as an SRC officer and being a the late 1970s when, uniquely for a major "leftist" as well - so he quit his SRC campus, "left" candidates continued to presidency just seventeen hours after t win majorities on the Student Represen­ being elected. This "conversion" ill­ tative Council (SRC), LaTrobe University befits a man who for years served on has been recognised as one of the most "left" SRCs - bodies which Libertarian political, left-wing campuses in Australia. Socialist guru Murphy, in an attack of But while in the early seventies many political honesty back in 1978, admitted students became political around the act as "a buffer between students and the struggle against US imperialism's brutal administration, (which) benefits both the war in Indochina, today, the rotten bloc of SRC and the administration". For her Libertarian Socialists, ALPers, feminists part Angela McKie declared she would and "independents" which calls itselfthe no longer be a "puppet", itself a reveal­ "Socialist Left" appeals simply to ing insight into the invidious internal life ecology nuts, the anti-uranium crowd and of Ted's Bundoora fiefdom, already liberal anti-Sovietism. Initially born of notorious for its male chauvinist treat· hatred of Leninist "sectarianism", and ment of women members. haunted for years by the revolutionary As for the "great" Rabelais strike, the politics ofthe Spartacist League, this not­ LaTrobe Uni Spartacist Club, while so-chummy social clique has been glued emphasising its political contempt for together by a voracious appetite for SRC Murphy and his censors' pen, put office. Now the Socialist Left sandcastle is forward a motion calling on the SRC to disintegrating, and at a furious rate. meet the strikers demands and requiring that all SRC staff be members of the ap­ • Better red than Ted! propriate union and be paid at least the LaTrobe Unl Afghanistan meeting: Chlppocrat Ian Farrow (right) and In the last two months there have been award wage. Two Socialist Lefters, Peter SOCialist Lefters Peter Summers (centre), Paul Norton. at least eight resignations from both the Summers and Paul Norton, moved SRC and the Socialist Left including such instead that Murphy and Stradijot get porters and quitters, who had confined "student marches won't achieve well known "pols" as Graham Proctor, 5120 take-home pay (as opposed to the themselves to the most innocuous ques­ anything" . Angela McKie and Geoff Lazarus. The 5140 demanded), the increase to be back­ tions, could only grumble that we had This year, when the Red Army inter­ implosion was triggered by a rece!lt strike dated to the start of the year. Typically, "stolen" their points! The inability to vened in Afghanistan to put down by the editors of the student newspaper Murphy decided to take the money and draw a class line against Chipp indicates Islamic reaction, the Socialist Left was Rabelais. Socialist Left honchos Ted run. In accepting the 5120, he argued that these "socialists" underlying political left high and dry, totally unable to Murphy and Fabio Stradijot, against this was better than 5140 and no retro­ kinship with Farrow's mob. distinguish themselves from bourgeois "their" SRC for higher pay and by a later spective payment, adding also that it was Those whe ,have now jumped the sink­ reaction. At the April student general stop-work meeting by SRC office workers "impractical" to require SRC staff to be ing ship evince a deep sourness about meeting the Socialist Left opposed the for a log of claims. Suddenly, the "social­ union members! their old SRC playpen, with Proctor and Spartacist motion of forthright defence of ist" officers "discovered" that the SRC is Enter Chipp - who lashes out company vowing not to run in the up­ the Red Army and condemned the Soviet an employer of labour. For Proctor this coming by-elections. The remaining intervention while maintaining the barest was too much - he objected "on prin- Trying to take advantage of the Social­ Socialist "Leftovers" are now desper­ figleaf of opposition to the imperialist war ist Left's disarray, Ian Farrow's Aus­ ately trying to justify their continued drive. Even this was easily amended out tralian Democrats, known on campus as existence in any form. As part of this they by Ian Farrow who called on the Socialist Centre Unity, have been printing the are falsifying their political history by Left to "cut the waffle and bullshit"; Socialist Lefters' resignation statements. claiming as their own the militant actions after all, they were all on the same side Having already made inroads into their ofthe Spartacist Club. But a glance at the on Afghanistan - against the Red Army, SRC bastion, Farrow is angling to pick up record shows that the Socialist Left have for the Islamic rebels - so why didn't "moderate" Socialist Left pieces. Farrow done nothing but talk and, in the words of the Socialist Left say so? even brought Don Chipp to campus to one of their disenchanted supporters, run The Socialist Left's bankruptcy was impress what he sees as potential re­ for elections. It has been the Spartacist again underlined when the reformist cruits. At Chipp's meeting, the Socialist Cfub which has consistently fought for a Socialist Workers Party brought their Left could only scratch its head and look class-struggle program. . Iranian co-thinker Fatima Fallahi to in vain for something to distinguish itself In April 1975, when LaTrobe Uni campus in July. Her meeting was one of from the Chippocrats - after all, they workers held a campus-wide strike, the the biggest political events of the year, agree on TEAS, opposition to uranium Spartacist Club initiated the Strike Sup­ yet these "leftists" without an Iranian mining and conscription. It was left to port Committee, manned the picket lines position of their own, could only tail the Spartacist supporter, Andrew Georgiou, with the workers, and fought for a united Spartacist Club as it sharply confronted to take the mike to denounce Chipp as a university-wide strike of all workers and and exposed Fallahi and the SWP as' committed capitalist politician whose students. The then-Independent Left, in obscene apologists for Khomeini. "small-is-better philosophy" is no more contrast, pitifully announced they would The political collapse and subsequent than a reactionary attack against so­ "offer their help if asked by the workers" shredding of the Socialist Left is, as the called "big" unions. But when Georgiou and flatly opposed the call to broaden the strike! In September 1976, the AUS homiletic Mao put it in another context, documented Chipp's history as Navy "not a bad thing but a good thing". Its called a national student strike and Minister in Gorton's Liberal government legacy is one of wholesale political Melbourne-wide rally to demand an and a hard supporter of conscription and corruption and cynicism and avowed class increase in TEAS. The Spartacist Gub the Vietnam war, this parliamentary betrayal. For the survivors the outlook is mobilised students in support of the rally "hero" literally lost his cool. Grabbing . grim. Already the group has announced it Georgiou by the collar, Chipp pulled him and worked actively to build support for is not running a ticket in the SRC elec­ away from the mike, snapping that this the strike. But Murphy and his ilk tions. There is the drop-out option was "his" meeting and that he was only deliberately sabotaged united action by (organic gardening, perhaps?) or they allowing questions. Immediately another walking out ofthe strike committee meet­ could drift into the Labor Party apparatus Spartacist, Frank Sortino, intervened to ing which voted to build the rally. They like Con Sarkis and other former Socialist bring the ex-minister "Democrat" to then organised a ftlm and B-B-Cue at the Don Chlpp: Australian Democrat Lefters. Then there is the Chippocrats. In a flap. order and allow Georgiou to continue. same time as the main rally, justifying After the meeting both Socialist Left sup- this splitting action with the argument Continued on page 8 12 September 1980