WfJlIllElI1 '."'fI.1I1) soC!: ~X.523 No. 635 ~ 15 December 1995

Explosive Strike· Wave Rocks France

AFP Mass demonstration of striking workers in Paris, December 5. Burgeoning strike wave of railway workers and other public employees has virtually shut down France for weeks.

DECEMBER 12-A cr~scendo of mili­ finalize the NATO-dictated "peace" divide-and-conquer strategy, offering against the unions, which would set the tant strikes and workers mobilizations accords for Bosnia. The site of the con­ concessions to the rail workers who have stage for a broader onslaught against the has virtually paralyzed France. The rail­ ference has now been moved outside the been the backbone of the strikes. Over working class, as was the case with Rea- roads have been shut down for almost strikebound French capiial. the weekend, Fa and CGT union leaders . gan's destruction of the PATCO air traf­ three weeks as part of the protests against Barely six months after the over­ signaled their willingness to accept a fic controllers in 1981 and Thatcher's attacks by the government of conserva­ whelming victory of a right-wing gov­ compromise, dropping any precondi­ assault on the British miners in 1984-85. tive prime minister Alain Juppe on the ernment, which holds an 80 percent tions for negotiations with Juppe. Now So far, Chirac/Juppe have been stymied. social service system. Mass transit in majority in parliament, today large num­ it is reported that leaders of some rail But if the workers do not break out of Paris and other major cities has ground bers of workers and youth sense that they unions are going for Juppe's ploy, saying the stranglehold of the reformist mis­ to a halt. Last week there were two one­ can stop the government in its tracks. they are ready to settle. leaders, then the bureaucracy acting in day general strikes, centered in the pub­ But their leaders are moving to behead The present situation cannot long con­ collusion with the bourgeoisie will either lic sector, called by the CGT and Fa the struggle. After trying for weeks to tinue. What is at stake here is not simply dissipate the militancy or betray the trade-union' federations. Even official ram through a slew of budget-slashing union retirement funds. The French bour­ strike outright. There will undoubtedly be estimates put the number of demonstra­ measures, Juppe has switched to a geoisie is out to inflict a decisive blow "modifications" to the massive takebacks, tors on Thursday, December 7 at more and Juppe could w~ll be sacrificed by than one million nationwide. the bourgeoisie as a, sop to the workers' Today, close to two million came anger. But even if the government grants out at the unions' call. In Paris, a concessions, the capitalists will use other mile-long stretch beginning from the means-like devaluation of the franc and Place de la Republique concomitant inflationary devaluation of o was packed wall-to- wages-to try to take back everything lf' wall with demonstra- they have granted. =====,... tors chanting, "Jupp The destruction of the Soviet Union resign!" Over 200,000 has sharply intensified a worldwide cap­ o "., marched in Marseille. italist assault on the living standards o The current workers' and organizations of the working class, ~ co protests have come at a while e'xacerbating economic competi­ ~ particularly embarrass­ tion among the imperialist powers. The ~ ing time for President French bourgeoisie is under relentless ~ Jacques Chirac, as Paris pressure from Germany to slash social was to host a summit welfare programs and drastically' cut the ,... conference this week to continued on page 8 Spartacists Protest Imperialist Occupation of Bosnia

As the first of 60,000 NATO troops, screams out for socialist revolution." including 20,000 from the U.S., began The same theme was underlined by to descend on Bosnia, the Spartacist Spartacist speakers in the Bay Area, as League held protest demonstrations 70 protesters turned out December 9 for demanding, "U.S./NATO Get Your a demonstration in downtown San Fran­ Bloody Hands Off the Balkans!" For cisco which was covered by three local Marxist revolutionaries, it is an elemen­ television stations as well as KCBS tary duty to mobilize opposition to this and KPF A radio. SL speaker Barbara imperialist occupation force. Yet these Francis pointed to the explosive strike were tbe first organi.zed protests in the wave rocking France, where 'the Bal­ U.S. :against the NATO expeditionary kans "peace" deal is slated to be signed force. Three months earlier, the SLIU.S. December 14: "In France, the biggest and other sections of the International class battles in 30 years are being waged Communist League organized emer­ just as French imperialism prepares to gency protests against the massive NATO clean out 120,000 Bosnian Serbs from terror bombing of the Bosnian Serbs Sarajevo. We stand with the French which paved the way for the current workers in struggle to bring down the imperialist-dictated "peace" deal. bloodthirsty French imperialists, while At the December 5 NYC protest out­ in the U.S. we fight to bring down our side the UN building, demonstrators own racist rulers." carried signs reading "United Nations­ The Bay Area protest also drew a Fig Leaf for Imperialist Slaughter." SL handful of representatives of other leftist spokesman Len Meyers pointed to other groups, including the Freedom Socialist recent imperialist interventions in the SL protest outside United Nations, New York City, December 5. Party. An FSP supporter who addressed name of "peace," "democracy" or "hu­ the Bay Area demo moaned about how manitarianism," including the racist, co­ Meyers declared: "What this deal prom­ Speaking a day later at a Chicago pro­ "peace groups and activists are confused lonialist invasions of Somalia and Haiti, ises is more killing, more imperialist test outside the Federal Building, SLer and divided over whether to support or the 1991 attack on Iraq and the contin­ slaughter and more of the same kind of Lisa Br09ks pointed to the imperialist­ oppose Clinton's plan to send U.S. uing starvation embargo which has led 'ethnic cleansing' that was hypocritically instigated capitalist counterrevolution troops to Bosnia." In fact, as a Spartacus to the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children. denounced a short time ago." which destroyed the former Yugoslav Youth Club spokesman pointed out in deformed workers state and unleashed reply, the FSP itself was "confused" on the nationalist wars that have ripped this fundamental question. Our comrade apart the Balkans. She stated, "Lasting noted that the FSP's paper castigated France: Revolutionary peace and national equality for all the Washington for not siding "with the Bos­ Leadership Is Key peoples of the region will only come nian resistance fighting for a pluralistic The continuing wave of strikes which has through' proletarian revolutions leading' society" and for the phony arms embargo paralyzed France in recent weeks points to a socialist federation of the Balkans which left the Sarajevo regime "almost ever more directly toward the question of as part of a Socialist United States of defenseless." This was the line as well power: who will rule, the bourgeoisie or the Europe." Spartacist signs called "For of the "Workers Aid" campaign in West proletariat? The reformist misleaders-the Workers Revolution to Overthrow All Europe, supported by various fake Trot­ Communist and Socialist parties and the the Bloody Nationalist Regimes!" skyists, which ran convoys under UN heads of the various labor federations--are Emboldened by the restoration of cap­ "protection" to the Bosnian city of Tuzla: the main obstacle to victory. They seek to italism in the former Soviet Union and Now Tuzla is to be the base for 20,000 TROTSKY impose a "solution" compatible with the LENIN East Europe, the imperialist rulers in the American troops. interests of French capitalism, pleading for U.S. and West Europe have unleashed As the New York SL speaker con­ piecemeal concessions which even if granted today will be taken back tomorrow. all-out assaults on social welfare and cluded, underscoring the urgency of the Writing at the time of the 1936 French general strike, Leon Trotsky underscored the education programs while scapegoating ICL's fight for revolutionary leadership: urgency offorging an internationalist Bolshevik Party to lead the proletariat to power. minority and immigrant workers for epi­ "The International Communist League Contrary to the assertions of the leaders of the Second and Third Internationals, demic levels of unemployment. At an SL fights to reforge the Fourth International present-day capitalism is already incapable of either giving work to all workers or speakout at the College Park campus of of Leon Trotsky. This is the fight for raising the standard of living of the workers. Finance capital passes the costs of the University of Maryland on Decem­ workers revolution around the planet, to social reform onto the shoulders of the workers themselves and of the petty bour­ ber 7, a Spartacus Youth Club member put an end, once and for all, to racist told students: "With such a bleak future geoisie by means of rising prices, open or concealed inflation, taxes, etc. The essence terror, to imperialist war, to imperialist of the present "statism," of state interference-in both "democratic" and fascist for today's youth, this is a time which exploitation. Join us in that fight!". countries-consists in saving rotting capitalism at the price of lowering the living and cultural standards of the people. No other method is possible ~n the basis of private property.... < The mass organizations of the working class remain powerless, undecided, and Free" Chinese Immigrants lost, if they are not inspired and led forward by a firmly welded-together vanguard. The necessity for a revolutionary party is shown with new force. Thus, all the tasks of the revolutionary struggle unfailingly lead to one task-the Imp~isoned by INS! creation of a new, really revolutionary, leadership, capable of dealing with the tasks We reprint below a December 8 pro­ Government's plans to deport them," and possibilities of our epoch. Direct participation in the movement of the masses, test statement by the Partisan Defense and notes that nine women "had lost bold class slogans taken to their conclusion, an independent banner, irreconcilability Committee. an average of 10 pounds." "There is toward compromisers, mercilessness towards traitors-here lies the road of the Fourth no pain in dying, but it hurts when International....' -, District Director they keep you in jail," said 25-year­ Immigration and Naturalization Participation in the living struggle, always in the front line of fire, work in the old apparel maker Tin Chin Wang. Service trade unions, and the building up of the party-all go on at the same time, mutually Another protested that "prison guards San Francisco, California supplementing each other. All the fightin~ slogans-workers' control, workers' mili­ have placed her in solitary confine­ tia, the arming of the workers, a government of workers and peasants, the socialization We demand the immediate release ment in an effort to force her to eat." of the means of production-are indissolubly bound up with the creation of workers', of all the Chinese immigrants who These women have committed no peasants', and soldiers' soviets. have been imprisoned for over two crime: they are victims of a racist pol­ -Leon Trotsky, "The New Revolutionary Upsurge years after their nightmarish journeys icy of the U.S. government which has and the Tasks of the Fourth International" (July 1936) on ships such as the Golden Venture, whipped up anti-immigrant hysteria, which ran aground off New York in including the old "yellow peril" bog­ June 1993. eyman which has a long history, par­ On 13 September 1993 we tele­ ticularly in California. It was in fact grammed you to demand their release, Democratic president Bill Clinton and including those who had arrived in his National Security Council which San Francisco on the freighter Pai ordered the policy of incarcerating '!!w!!!!!~~~~!~~! ~ Sheng, after reports leaked out of a such immigrants, and the well-hated DIRECTOR OF PARTY PUBLICATIONS: George Foster hunger strike "by as many as 60 pris­ INS eagerly implemented it. It is of EDITOR: Jan Norden a piece with the vicious anti­ EDITOR, YOUNG SPARTACUS PAGES: Carla Wilson oners some of whom have been sub­ PRODUCTION MANAGER: Susan Fuller jected to solitary confinement." Now, immigrant Proposition 187 pushed by CIRCULATION MANAGER: Shauna Blythe over .two years later, both the San Republican governor Pete Wilson. It's EDITORIAL BOARD: Bruce Andre, Ray Bishop, Liz Gordon, Frank Hunter, Jane Kerrigan, Francisco Chronicle and the New York pure racism, designed to deflect rising Len Meyers, James Robertson, Joseph Seymour, Alison Spencer, Marjorie Stamberg Times reveal that the imprisonment/ discontent with a decadent economic The Spartacist League is the U,S, Section of the International Communist League (Fourth torture continues. system which, among its many Internationalist) , The Chronicle reported on 18 crimes, brutally exploits Asian wom­ Workers Vanguard (ISSN 0276-0748) published biweekly, except skippinjl1hree alternate issues In June, July and August (beginning with omitting the second issue in June) and with a 3-week interval in December, by the Spertacist November that 19 women were in en under virtual slave conditions in Publishing Co" 41 Warren Street, New York, NY 10007, Telephone: (212) 732·7882 (Editorial), (212) 732-7881 "the sixth day of a hunger strike at sweatshops from L.A. to New York. (Business), Address all correspondence to: Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10118, Domestic subscriptions: $10,00/22 issues, Second·class postage paid at New York, NY. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Worlrers Vanguard, the Lerdo Detention Facility in We repeat: Down with the Clinton/ Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116, Bakersfield.~' The 2 December Times INS incarceration of the Chinese im­ Opinions expressed in signed articles or letters do not necessarily express the edilorial viewpoint, says up to 22 women "have gone on migrants. Release them now! With The closing date for news in this issue is December 12. a hunger strike to protest their deten­ great hardship, they got here-let No. 635 15 December 1995 tion for more than two years and the them stay here!

2 WORKERS VANGUARD Oust UAWTop~, Labor lieutenants of Cap'italism Betrayal at CAT: Major Defeat for Labor

On December 3, United Auto Workers (UAW) president Stephen Yokich dealt Caterpillar workers and the whole labor movement a stunning and- historic defeat by ordering the 8,700 strikers back. to work "immediately and unconditional­ ly." To choke off any show of defiance, the UAW tops announced they would cut off the weekly strike benefit checks for recalled workers (even though the union is sitting on a $900 million strike fund)! Justifying this stab in the back, newly elected AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer Richard Trumka declared this "a change of tactics, that's all." But a CAT striker in York, Pennsylvania voiced what thou­ Earl Dotter sands of CAT strikers feel in their guts: New AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer "It has been your worst nightmare come Trumka (left) and UAW chief Yokich true." Indeed, the entire labor movement stabbed Caterpillar strikers in the will pay dearly for the bureaucrats' back. treachery. In Peoria, Illinois, strikers from UAW the world, the UAW, prepared its own The UAW launched a flag-waving cam­ pie-in-the-sky promises of NLRB law­ Local 974 voted down. the proposal con­ defeat in one of its Midwest bastions of paign with tile slogan, "Defending the suits, although not one of the over 170 taining Yokich's ignominious terms of strength refusing to build mass picket American Dream," a direct attack on anti-company charges upheld by the surrender by 94 percent; overall CAT lines that would shut down production. thousands of potential strike allies work­ NLRB has ever been enTorced. strikers gave thumbs down to the "deal" With over 5,000 "temporary" strike­ ing in CAT plants abroad. Even more by a whopping four-to-one margin. After breakers and as many as 4,100 scabbing virulent was the United Rubber Work­ Revolutionary Leadership the bitter 18-month battle against Cater­ union members waltzing across the ers' racist Japan-bashing campaign for pillar Inc., one of the world's largest pro­ picket lines, -Caterpillar sales, profits, Clinton to launch a trade war against The price of the UAW tops' betrayal ducers of construction equipment and and even stock prices soared during the Bridgestone-Firestone. By last spring, at Caterpillar will be paid in places far diesel engines, workers were told that, strike. this filthy jingoism had smothered the beyond the factories of this construction no matter how they voted, Yo.kich was The New York Times (5 December) URW strike, and union bureaucrats sent equipment giant. The Wall Street Journal calling off the strike. Hardest hit by this boasts that "Union Capitulation Shows some 4,000 strikers back to work in (8 December) is crowing that "Caterpillar sellout are at least 150 unionists who· Strike Is Now Dull Sword." But militant another unconditional surrender. Inc. wrote the book on how to operate were fired during the strike for the sim­ union action, which could have shut Likewise, it's the union bureaucrats' factories profitably during a strike." plest acts of union militancy. They were down production tight, is a sword that loyalty to the capitalist system, the gov­ Hard-pressed newspaper strikers in sacrificed with a handshake between Yokich and the rest of the pro-capitalist ernment and their Democratic Party Detroit and the Machinists fighting Boe­ Yokich and the fabulously wealthy, union brass have never unsheathed. which tolled the death knell for the fight ing will inevitably feel reverberations of union-busting Caterpillar bosses. These labor traitors fear class struggle against Caterpillar's union-busting. In this defeat. Just as the AFL-CIO tops' But unknown numbers of strikers may like the plague. CAT's profit-gouging, response to the company's massive scab­ capitulation to Reagan's smashing of the never see the inside of a Caterpillar plant union-busting, scabherding and "out­ herding, UAW leaders ordered strikers PATCO air traffic controllers in 1981 again; the company says they will be sourcing" is nothing new-nor is any­ to obey anti-picketing injunctions issued gave a green light to a decade and a half called back "as needed." Those who are thing else that capitalists use to drive by the courts while lobbying the Dem­ of ruinous defeats-from the 1983 cop-. recalled will have to toil with scarcely down the price of labor and crank up the ocrats to pass a "striker replacement" bill per miners' strike against Phelps Dodge a fig leaf of union protection, their rate of exploitation. that would have relegated strikes to bind­ to last year's nationwide Teamsters seniority, safety and scheduling rights The union tops sabotage struggles for ing arbitration. To workers, they offered continued on page J0 ripped to shreds, forced to work along­ higher wages and against company take­ side many of the scabs who slithered backs because they embrace the inter­ across the picket lines. Even using the ests of U.S. capitalism, reflected in their word "scab" will be grounds for dis­ treasonous alliance with the Democratic missal under "temporary" guidelines Party. The CAT strike of 1991-92 was Appeals Court Turns Down approved by the National Labor Rela­ called off just 24 hours after the AFL­ tions Board (NLRB), and armed com­ CIO endorsed then-candidate Bill Clin­ pany goons will be ready to act if anyone ton. For the next two years the UAW UMWA Striker Jerry Dale Lowe starts talking union. The whole surrender waged an "inside campaign" that didn't On November 28, the'-U~~. Court ka's fellow "reform" bureaucrat, has CAT bosses and capitalists across seriously affect the company's produc­ of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit Teamsters chief Ron Carey, has like­ the country grinning. "Caterpillar Pre­ tion but did get a lot of union activists refused to reconsider its denial of wise done nothing to defend Los pares Rules for Conduct, Including Gag victimized. Membership anger finally an appeal by United Mine Workers Angeles area trucker Jesse Acuna, who Order on Union Dispute," gloated the flared into a multi-plant strike in June militant Jerry Dale Lowe. Lowe faces was jailed during last year's national Wall Street Journal (5 December).· 1994. That summer the conjuncture of nearly eleven years in prison on fed­ freight strike. The pro-capitalist labor Meet the "new" AFL~CIO: this crush­ striking CAT and Bridgestone-Firestone eral frame-up charges in connection tops do everything in their power to ing defeat is the first accomplishment of rubber workers along with locked-out with the shooting death during a bitter sabotage class struggle and abandon the "reform" leadership elected at the Staley com processing workers in Deca­ 1993 strike of a scab contractor at those who do fight on the picket lines labor federation's convention barely two tur posed the possibility of powerful Arch Mineral's Ruffner mine in Logan to rot in jail. months ago. Key among their supporters labor action across industry lines. County, West Virginia (see Workers The Partisan Defense Committee were the UAW, Machinists and Steel­ Noting that the most urgent task was Vanguard No. 630, 6 October). urges labor militants everywhere to workers leaders who are presiding over to stop the scabs who threatened all three Jerry Dale Lowe was singled out fight for their unions to take up the the wholesale gutting of this country's struggles, Workers Vanguard (No. 604, because he was known as a defender cause of these and alI. class-war pris­ unions. While Caterpillar management 5 August 1994) called for mobilizing the of the union. But UMWA president oners, as part of a broader struggle kicks returning strikers in the teeth, entire labor movement for mass pickets, Richard Trumka, now secretary­ against anti-labor and racist repres­ AFL-CIO chief Sweeney calls for a new to "hot-cargo" (refuse to handle) scab treasurer of the AFL-CIO, refused to sion. Drop the charges against Jerry "social contract" between corporations products, and to prepare for sit-down lift a finger in Lowe's defense. Trum- Dale Lowe! and workers, saying he wants "to build strikes inside key industrial sites. bridges between labor and management, Urgently needed was a class-struggle so that American business can be more leadership to transform the workers' will successful and American workers can and determination to fight, even in the share in the gains." face of brutal cop attacks, into effective action. Meanwhile, a host of "reform" From "War Zone" bureaucrats and mealy-mouthed "sqcial­ to Killing Field ists" like the International Socialist Organization, Socialist Action and the For the past few years, workers across Labor Notes crowd populated a strike the country have looked to the Illinois support coalition which pushed diver­ Lea and Jerry "war zone" struggles as a symbol of sions like consumer boycotts and civil Dale Lowe. resistance to corporate greed. Thousands disobedience stunts, allowing the bureau­ of unionists trekked to Peoria and Deca­ crats to slowly but effectively strangle tur to bolster picket lines and attend mass the "war zone" strikes. rallies. CAT unionists themselves have The union tops channeled the workers' never lacked a willingness to fight. But anger into chauvinist appeals for the here workers were hamstrung as one of "solidarity" of the American government the most powerful industrial unions in - against foreign capitalists ~nd workers. 15 DECEMBER 1995 3 Letters·

Today, ex-Stalinist "hardliners" on the remains a workers state, whose military outs in Yeltsin's Russia, along with ele­ apparatus is the People's Liberation ments of the Castro bureaucracy in Army (PLA). While even the PLA has On China beleaguered Cuba, wistfully look to delved into the market, generating more China as an alternative to the wrecked' revenue through its business ventures A subscriber in Seattle asks: Is China In conclusion, what I'm saying is that regimes of the former USSR and East than it receive.s from the state budget, capitalist? I'm having a hard time seeing China as Europe. the manifest tensions within the army at But there is a potentially powerful the time of the 1989 crisis indicate that Dear Workers Vanguard: even a very deformed workers state in any meaningful sense of the word. I'm obstacle to capitalist counterrevolution this armed force cannot be relied upon I have a question concerning China. not a China expert, I'm just a working­ in China: the working class. Far from to shove the immiseration and depriva­ We have said that the critical date when class Marxist. It seems to me though, being smashed, the Chinese proletariat tion that must accompany the restoration the old Communist Party of the Soviet that if it looks like capitalism, smells . has shown many signs of struggle in of capitalism down the throats of the Union fell victim to capitalist counter­ like capitalism and acts like capitalism­ recent years, from strikes in the SEZs workers and peasants. revolution was the day Yeltsin stood the then it must be capitalism. to demonstrations by workers in state The Beijing bureaucracy is playing an old guard Stalinist tanks down on the plants fighting to defend the "iron rice increasingly precarious balancing act be­ Red greetings, barricades in Moscow. We said it was a bowl" of guaranteed jobs, income and tween the working people in whose name Lawrence definitive historical event. social benefits. In 1993 there was a 50' they rule and the imperialist powers. When we talk about China how do we WV replies: To address the important percent increase in officially recognized· While state industry accounted for just know there is going to be this publicly questions raised by Lawrence's letter labor disputes, totaling over 12,000 over one-third of China's economic out­ observed historical act? requires going into the situation in China strikes and slowdowns. And this does put in 1994, and continues to decline When we talk about China, how do in some depth. Lawrence echoes a not include wildcat actions unreported relative to private and "collective" town­ we know there is going to be this same view now fairly common in Western in government statistics. ship businesses, the industrial core of kind of event? The Stalinist Communist bourgeois circles and among many left­ Unlike the workers of Poland and the economy remains state owned, Party (CCP) is utterly committed to the ists:-namely, that the Chinese Stalinist other East European countries, who accounting for 70 percent of state invest­ establishment of capitalism and when it bureaucracy has brought back capitalism reacted to Stalinist bureaucratism and ment and employing 70 percent of all crushed the Tiananmen Square students in a gradual, "cold" manner from above. the lie of "real, existing socialism" by industrial workers. In the face of (which was a warning to workers) to However, the restoration of capitalism swallowing Western propaganda that demands by world bankers that Beijing solidify its control of power, did it not in the Chinese deformed workers state capitalism, would give them a life of cut its subsidies, the regime has also at the same time establish the dom­ inance of capitalism to which it is com­ mitted? Is it not possible that the Chinese version of Yeltsin's barricade stand in reverse has occurred? Maybe we just didn't notice? Some observations are called for. First of all, as Spartacist Canada has noted, the rate of privatization of industry is already much higher than Russia. I've been in China twice. The first time was over a decade ago. I recall that the big announcement in the papers at the time was how all Chinese could afford orange sodas as a result of increases in production. The iron rice bowl was firmly in place. There were no public displays of ostentatious wealth or prostitution and people in general were afraid to talk with foreigners-with good reason. As deformed a workers state as it was there was nonetheless a socialist Fred Scott Schwarzbach/Argus structure and goals. Workers in China's state industry face mass layoffs, while imperialist companies like Volkswagen (right) are invited I also was in China proper last in by Stalinist bureaucracy. year in places like Chengdu and Xi!ln etc. and ethnic provinces like Tibet and would necessarily entail fundamental plenty, millions of Chinese workers have increased its investment in state indus­ Xinjiang. The changes have been changes at the political level, i.e., state already experienced the harsh reality of tries in the years following the suppres­ phenomenal. power. This Marxist understanding was exploitation in capitalist enterprises in sion of the Tiananmen protests. Petit-bourgeois shopkeepers abound. reaffirmed by the recent counterrevolu­ the "socialist market economy." And In a book on China written a couple You can go into a restaurant and on the tionary overturns in the former Soviet workers in state factories know that their of years ago, an American banker in Hong menu you will find listed right after the Union and East Europe. The forces driv­ livelihoods will be on the chopping Kong stated with evident disapproval: food dishes, guides for hire, wives for ing toward capitalist restoration in block of any capitalist-restorationist "Much of the economy remains under sale via "marriage services" just like the China-both inside and outside the government. Key to transferming the the sway of huge state enterprises-such worst hellholes in Manila. bureaucracy-are undeniably powerful. massive but amorphous unrest in the as steel or coal companies that sometimes Another stunning sight was huge new But they have not yet triumphed. Chinese working class into a proletarian have more than 100,000 employees. houses built in tracts just like middle­ Lawrence correctly points out that political revolution against the decrepit These are run rather like an American class urban America. I'm talkin..g about market "reforms" initiated under Deng Stalinist regime is the construction of a post office, with no incentives for effi­ $300,000 houses in a country where the Xiaoping have regenerated some of the Trotskyist vanguard party. ciency and almost as little ability to fire GNP [per capita] is' in the hundreds of most heinous aspects of life in prerevo­ lazy or incompetent workers" (William dollars. No doubt they belong to the lutionary China, particularly in regard to Deng's China and H. Overholt, The Rise o/China [1993]). taizidang and other capitalist scum. women's oppression- and the rampant, Yeltsin's Russia Similarly, in contrast to the "shock treat­ The Tibetans are becoming the equiv­ ostentatious corruption in the state bu­ The changes racking China have not ment" imposed on the peoples of the for­ alent of American Indians in China. Pool reaucracy. To be sure, Deng's dictum, arisen overnight. Following the disas­ mer USSR, Poland, East Germany, etc., halls and lots of alcohol and tons of "To get rich is glorious," has been taken trous "Cultural Revolution," Deng took Beijing refuses to implement a bank­ racism and spies and a huge Chinese to heart by many "Communist" officials. the reins of the Chinese Communist ruptcy law, passed years ago at the urging immigration. Tibet reminds me of the Furthermore, the Chinese bourgeoisie Party (CCP) in 1978 with a program to of foreign investors, before a package of "wild east." Even the black market was not totally destroyed by the victory revive the economy by decollectivizing "social security" benefits for laid-off money changers must be Chinese. Truly, of Mao's army in 1949, but, after looting agriculture, extending market incentives workers is in place. This is not because cultural genocide is being perpetuated the country for all it was worth, fled to and inviting greater foreign invest­ the Chinese Stalinists are sympathetic to against them and the same is true in Taiwan and Hong Kong, setting up shop ment-all of which had begun under the interests of the workers. Rather they Xinjiang with the Uighurs, although I with the aid and protection of world Mao. The bloody suppression of the are fearful of worker unrest and ulti­ sense with less success. Very unfortu­ imperialism. Over the past 15 years, off­ 1989 Tiananmen protests showed that mately of political revolution. nately, the Dalai Lama is the only game shore Chinese capital has repenetrated there would be no political opening, such As we wrote in "Turmoil Brewing in in town. Also, sadly, never once did I the mainland, especially through joint as Gorbachev introduced in the Soviet China" (WV No. 618, 10 March), the meet a Chinese person who viewed Tibet ventures in the "Special Economic Union in the mid-1980s, to go along with bureaucracy's policies exemplify a ten­ or Xinjiang as anything other than as an Zones" (SEZs). economic "liberalization." dency common to all Stalinist regimes, integral part of China, which they are A large fraction of the ~Beijing To argue that a bourgeois counterrev­ which rest on proletarian property forms not. The Tibetans are viewed as the "Chi~ bureaucracy is consciously striving to olution has already occurred buys into while excluding the working class from nese man's burden." tum China into an "authoritarian" capi­ the bureaucracy's schema of a-gradual, political power. From "market social­ The last observation that sticks in my talist "tiger," it la Singapore or South and bountiful, transformation to a market ism" in Yugoslavia and Hungary in the mind is this: again and again the Chinese Korea. This is also the perspective of economy. What this scenario denies is 1970s and '80s to Gorbachev's pere­ I met were very concerned that China significant elements in Western and the central question of the state which stroika, the Stalinist rulers opted for could break apart into literally separate Japanese ruling circles who, hoping to issued out of the victory of Mao's guer­ market mechanisms to correct the bot­ 'countries. I realize historically that was avoid the chaos of post-Soviet Russia rilla forces in 1949. Despite the rule of tlenecks produced by bureaucratic mis­ often the case but maybe you could and East Europe, would like to see the a bureaucracy, which originally upheld management of the centralized economy. explain to me why and how that could venal Stalinist officialdom oversee the Stalin's nationalist dogma of "socialism These "reforms" generated capitalist­ occur because I'm at a loss to figure what restoration of capitalism while retaining in one country" but now embraces the restorationist forces which, with the full could actually make that happen. tight control over Chinese society. gospel of the (capitalist) market, this support of the imperialis~ powers, 4 WORKERS VANGUARD layer. This could only be overcome (see "Freedom for Cuban Trotskyists!" through extension of socialist revolution, Spartacist No.3, January-February Che Guevara and particularly to the advanced industrial 1965). As we pointed out in our two-part countries. article, "For Workers Political Revolu­ The previous year, speaking before the tion in Cuba!" WV Nos. 223 and 224, Workers Democracy leadership of the Cuban trade-union fed­ 19 January and 2 February 1979), "The eration (speech of April 1962), Guevar.a most active slanderer of Trotskyism in Milwaukee the triumphant Revolution." While the asked why there was "apathy" in the the Cuban leader~ship has been Ernesto 16 October 1995 bureaucratically deformed workers state working class: "Why do great, enormous 'Che' Guevara."- Great piece on Che and the mystique rests on proletarian property forms tasks which belong directly to the work­ Che Guevara was certainly a coura­ of the guerrilla! [see "Cuba, Castro and resulting from the expropriation of ing class always have to come from geous fighter, who was vilely murdered Che: The, Mystique of the Guerrilla Cuban and imperialist capital in 1960- bureaucratic initiatives? .. Why do initi­ by CIA operatives as he sought to carry Road," in: the Young Spartacus pages of 61, its political leadership has always atives arise at the top, and go from the out his program of guerrilla war against been rooted in a peasant-derived army WV No. 630, 6 October]. As someone » who was caught up in "sandalismo" in rather than the organized working class. "U the '80s, your article hits the political This came through clearly in every­ allure right on the head. The portion on thing Guevara wrote concerning the Che and material incentives is also right working class. In a June 1960 speech on on. Your critique of Che's position on "The Working Class and the Industrial­ revolutionary internationalism clearly ization of Cuba" he declares, "The work­ brings theory and practice together. But ers should understand all their duties," does this mean that Che did not believe adding: "One cannot hide the fact that in proletarian democracy or that within the revolutionary movement was based the context of a besieged state a de­ first in the peasants and later in the work­ formed workers state was the best they ing class." The workers' "duties" are could do? After all Che did split after it . listed as producing, saving and organiz­ Che Guevara as ing-not to rule society, but to carry out Cuban minister of became clear that Fidel wanted to run industry, 1964. the show. orders from above. "We are not yet cer­ Please send your pamphlet on Cuba tain if the working class has understood & Marxist Theory and your writings on the problems we face or how much they revolutionary integrationism. jHasta la will help," he said, graphically express­ Victoria! ing the distance of the petty-bourgeois c.F. leadership from the proletariat. The nationalist guerrillas in power WV replies: In our article, we noted that became Stalinist bureaucrats, who soon top to the bottom, where they really the imperialist-backed military dictator­ "Guevara's politics were a particularly found themselves afflicted with ... should have originated, to the entire ship in Bolivia. He has come to symbolize idealist, voluntarist brand of Stalinism," bureacratism. In a February 1963 arti­ working class?" He called for the for many radical youth theself-sacri­ and that this reflected the attempt to cle, "Against Bureaucratism," Guevara "participation" of "active revolutionary ficing revolutionary they aspire to be. build "socialism" in a small, impover­ wrote: "Our revolution was, in essence, nuclei': who were the "true repre­ But his petty-bourgeois nationalist ished and besieged island. In fact, there the product of a guerrilla movement sentatives of the working class." But co­ worldview was counterposed to a prole­ is an intimate connection between Che which undertook an armed struggle opting a few workers and union leaders tarian-internationalist Marxist perspec­ Guevara's program of peasant-based against the tyranny and crystallized in has nothing to do with the genuine rule tive. There has been much speculation guerrilla struggle led by a tiny toco of the taking of power. The first steps of workers councils as took place under about the reasons for his departure from austere revolutionaries and the hostility as a revolutionary state ... were strongly the Bolshevik Revolution led by Lenin Cuba in 1965. Yet as we have pointed of the Cuban Stalinist bureaucracy to colored by fundamental elements of and Trotsky. . out, his differences with Castro over eco­ direct workers political rule. This hos­ guerrilla tactics as a form of state Guevara had a clear Stalinist concep­ nomic policy represented at most intra­ tility was shared by all wings of the administration." This led to a spate of tion of a one-party state. In an interview bureaucratic conflicts within the Cuban bureaucracy, not just the old-line pro­ "administrative guerrilla wars." "As a with MauriCe Zeitlin, first published Communist Party (see "'Radical Egali­ Moscow PSP but also Castro and Gue­ countermeasure," Che went on, "strong in January 1962, he declared: "You can­ tarian' Stalinism: A Post-Mortem," Spar­ vara personally. Since various pseudo­ bureaucratic apparatuses began to be not be for the revolution and be against tacist No. 25, Summer 1978). Trotskyist groups have long tried to formed which characterize this first the Cuban Communist Party." He also The Spartacist tendency originated in portray Che as an unconscious Trotsky­ period in the construction of our socialist opposed factions within that party, a fight within the Socialist Workers Party ist, it's useful to examine his real views state." denouncing as "counterrevolutionary" in the U.S., whose degeneration from and actions. Guevara attributed the malady of Trotsky'S formation of the Left Opposi­ Trotskyism into centrism and then hard­ The program of seeking to overthrow bureaucratism to thr~e factors: lack tion against Stalin's usurpation of the ened reformism was signaled by its aban­ the capitalist state through peasant guer­ of revolutionary consciousness, lack of revolution. Asked about the printing donment of the fight for a Leninist­ rilla warfare, if successful, necessarily organization and lack of technical knowl­ plates for Trotsky's Permanent Revolu­ Trotskyist vanguard and its fulsome leads to a state apparatus based on edge. His answer was to call for infusing tion being smashed by Cuban officials, embrace of the Cuban leadership of Cas­ the petty-bourgeois cadres of the guer­ the workers with a permanent "spirit of Guevara said this was an "error," but tro and Guevara. Defending the Cuban rilla army, not democratically elected October," the spirit of unstinting self­ went on to slander the Cu.ban Trotskyists Revolution against imperialist attack organs of proletarian power: workers sacrifice and urgency that accompanied as "acting against the revolution." He and internal counterrevolution, we have councils and workers militias. Guevara the October 1962 "missile crisis" when was incensed that they had criticized the fought from the outset for a Cuban Trot­ stated this explicitly. Referring to the the fate of the Cuban Revolution hung "Workers Technical Commiitees," say­ skyist party to lead a proletarian political experience of the nationalist 26th of July by a thread. This was summed up in his ing "the Trotskyists characteriied them revolution to sweep out the nationalist Movement's struggle against the Batista call for "moral incentives" as opposed as a crumb given to the workers because Stalinist bureaucracy and establish the dictatorship, in a 1963 essay on "The to material incentives to raise productiv­ the workers were calling for the direction rule of workers councils as part of a fight Role of a Marxist-Leninist Party" Gue­ ity. In contrast to this idealist approach, of the factories." for international socialist revolution. vara declared that the guerrilla leaders Leon Trotsky's materialist analysis of the The Cuban Trotskyists were jailed in As Yankee imperialism continues its in "the mountains" wl?re "ideological­ bureaucratic degeneration of the Russian 1963. When a Spartacist supporter raised unrelenting war on the Cuban Revolu­ ly proletarian" whereas those in "the Revolution located' its origins in the this during a meeting with Guevara on tion, and the desperate Castro-Stalinist plains" (i.e.; the cities) were petty­ scarcity imposed by international isola­ a trip to Cuba the following year, Gue­ bureaucracy multiplies pro-capitalist bourgeois. His conclusion: "The Rebel tion leading to the poliiical domination vara labeled the Trotskyists "division­ "reforms," the fight for Trotskyism- in Army is the genuine representative of of a narrow, nationalist petty-bourgeois ists" and threw in a dose of CIA- baiting Cuba is all the more urgent today. _

emerged victorious in the counterrevo­ It is useful to compare China today throughout East Europe, capitalist resto­ tion of Marxist classics, Beijing has just lutions that swept the USSR and East with the Soviet Union under Mikhail ration has resulted in the collapse of announced the publication of new Chi­ Europe. The destruction of the Soviet Gorbachev. After a few years of tinker­ industrial production, the pauperization nese editions of the works of Marx, En­ Union enormously increased the pres­ ing with market-oriented "reforms," in of millions of workers, the closure gels, Lenin-and Stalin.) Nonetheless, sures of world imperialism on China. Yet early 1988 Gorbachev announced a "500 of large. numbers of big factories and the danger of capitalist counterrevolu­ the Chinese Stalinists only hardened in day plan" for the outright restoration of mines and hyperinflation reaching an­ tion is quite real. their pursuit of "free market" measures. capitalism. But as the leader of a degen­ nual rates of 2,000 percent. This is to Nevertheless, if a bourgeois regime erated workers state, Gorbachev could say nothing of the bloody nationalist, Stalinism Undermines Gains were to take power in China, it not implement this plan. It took the sei­ racist frenzies besetting the region. The of 1949 Revolution would have to dismantle the CCP's zure of political power by Boris Yeltsin's effects of counterrevolution have been As Lawrence reports, many people in military/political structure and construct counterrevolutionary gang in August brutally apparent. China fear that the country may be tom a new state apparatus committed to 1991 to initiate the destruction of the This bears little resemblance to China. apart. It is not national separatism that enforcing capitalist austerity by what­ fractured workers state and the consoli­ Whereas the gross domestic product in poses this threat, since national minori­ ever means are necessary. In China, this dation of a new state power to enforce Yeltsin's Russia has plummeted by 60 ties make up only 8 percent of the pop­ could only be a neocolonial regime de­ the laws of the capitalist jungle on the percent since 1991, the Chinese econ­ ulation. Rather, the attenuation of central pendent on foreign capital and subservi­ Soviet peoples. The Communist Party omy has been growing at an average planning, the growth of "township/ ent to imperialism. That situation would was immediately banned; the USSR was annual rate of 10 percent for the past village enterprises"~now the fastest­ be a far cry from today's "People's officially dissolved that December; the few years. While inflation in China in growing sector of the economy-and the Republic," whose growing military pow­ Soviet military was puf'ged of p~~­ recent years has been relatively high by opening of whole areas to direct impe­ er has touched off alarm bells from Tai­ socialist commanders and broken up past standards, annual price increases are rialist exploitation have all served to cre­ pei ~ the Pentagon. Significant voices along nationalist lines in Russia, the still only about 1 percent of the level ate a species of economic warlords who in the U.S. ruling class are today scream­ Ukraine, etc.; strikes were broken to experienced in" post-Soviet Russia or chafe at the constraints imposed by the ing for a harder line against Beijing, demonstrate the regime's commitment to Poland. (And it is interesting to note that central bureaucracy. often under the guise of promoting its imperialist godfathers. while the anti-Communist purges in Yel­ The book China Wakes (Random "human rights." In the former Soviet Union and tsin's Russia included organized destruc- continued on page 11 15 DECEMBER 1995 5 - n November 16, the celebrated gressive Labor with a vengeance. Injunc­ O civil rights lawyer, social revo­ tions were issued barring many members lutionary and fighter for black freedom, of Progressive Labor and other radicals Conrad Lynn, died at his home in from even setting foot in Harlem. A Pomona, New York, less than two weeks grand jury investigation was begun. Bill after his 87th birthday. Lynn was a cou­ Epton was charged with criminal anar­ rageous pioneer in the struggle for black chy and many other PLers were jailed rights in the United States this century, for contempt for refusing to testify be­ in the forefront of many key legal battles fore the jury: When in February 1965 against segregation and racist cop terror. Jim Robertson was subpoenaed to appear It was Conrad Lynn who initiated the before the grand jury, we determined to legal s!ruggle to desegregate the Amer­ use his testimony to undermine. the lurid ican army in World War II; it was Lynn lies being told by the "red squad." While who defended the two black children refusing to "name names," we sought to (ages 7 and 9) charged with rape for kiss­ indict the system and defend our socialist ing a white playmate in the infamous aims and views instead of taking the North Carolina "Kissing Case" in 1958; Fifth Amendment. Robertson's testimony it was Lynn who uncovered the frame-up placed the blame for the "riots" the pre­ of the Harlem Six, black youth who vious summer squarely where it belonged dared to defend themselves against the -on the cops. cops in the hot New York summer of Conrad Lynn and his partner Gene 1964-to mention only a few of his Ann Condon agreed to serve as Robert­ famous legal battles. Yet with the ex­ son's legal counsel, and assisted in pre­ ception of a respectful obituary in the paring his testimony. Lynn understood New York Times, Conrad Lynn's death well the potential power of our tactic. received only perfunctory notice in both Called to testify before the witchhunting the established black and bourgeois House Un-American Activities Commit­ press, now enamored of Louis Farrakhan tee (HUAC) in 1963, he had refused to and the Million Man March. take the Fifth Amendment. Indeed, Lynn Conrad Lynn was always much more had gone on the offensive in the HUAC than a lawyer for civil rights causes-he hearing, detailing the injustices against was also an active participant, a fighter black people which had been perpetrated for radical causes, a believer in the in each of the Committee members' dis­ necessity of integrated social struggle tricts! In his fundamental outlook, Con­ against the capitalist American state. rad was far from sharing the legalistic As such, Lynn not only took up the prejudices of his profession. explosive legal cases that the likes of In the following few years we some­ Roy Wilkins and Thurgood Marshall re­ times had cause to consult Conrad over fused to touch-he told the truth about legal matters, and he followed our press the pusillanimous misleadership of black and our activities, writing to us a few Democratic politicians like Adam Clay­ times (see Spartacist Nos. 4 and 5, May­ ton Powell and liberal civil rights organ­ ence as an organization, in united-front linked with Epton's, was Conrad Lynn­ June 1965 and November-December izations like the NAACP. Neither did action in defense of Harlem during the probably the only well-known civil 1965). Even after we developed our own Lynn have much truck with the Black infamous cop riot in July 1964. rights lawyer in the country willing legal apparatus, we continued our con­ Muslims' segregationist political pro­ to stand with Epton at that moment. nection with him. His complimentary gram, and he condemned Muslim leader The 1964 Harlem Cop Riot Epton and Lynn were arrested as they subscription to Workers Vanguard began Elijah Mohammed for accepting money stepped off the curb-the march was with issue No. 1 and continued to the from George Lincoln Rockwell's Amer­ The years 1963-64 saw New York's stopped. end of his life. ican Nazi Party. rulers panic-stricken as the Southern We in the Spartacist tendency also In 1980, Lynn was threatened with Conrad Lynn firmly upheld the right civil rights movement moved north into did our best to defend the embattled disbarment for exposing corruption in of armed black self-defense against Klan the heart of American capitalism. Rent black masses of Harlem, seeking to the NYC legal system (see WV No. 260, and cop terror. He stood with heroic strikes spread like wildfire through Har­ mobilize the social power of the working 11 July 1980). Conrad solidarized with Monroe, North Carolina NAACP leader lem. Two effective school boycotts gal­ class. A few days after the abortive the labor/black mobilizations against the Robert F. Williams, who organized black vanized opposition to the racist policies HDC march, a rally in the city's garment Klan and Nazis which we initiated in self-defense against the KKK in Monroe of the New York school board. Self­ district sponsored by the Spartacist­ several cities in the early 1980s. He in the late 1950s and early '60s. Lynn proclaimed communists were getting a initiated Harlem Solidarity Committee spoke at the Partisan Defense Commit­ defended Williams in the bourgeois hearing among the black masses, in par­ drew over 1,000, demanding "Remove tee's first fund-raising benefit at Small's courts-and he defended him in front of ticular Harlem-based Bill Epton, who the rioting cops from Harlem" and "Sup­ Paradise in Harlem in 1984. Around this the national board of the NAACP, which was vice chairman of the Maoist Pro­ port the right of the citizens of the ghetto time the Spartacist League sued the FBI, threatened Williams with expUlsion in gressive Labor Movement. to defend themselves." Again Conrad forcing them to retract their witchhunt­ 1959 for publicly advocating armed self­ Democratic Party mayor Robert Wag­ Lynn was there-a featured speaker ing "definition" of the Spartacist League defense. When the bourgeois authorities ner and Police Commissioner Michael along with Milt Rosen of Progressive which equated Marxism with terrorism; tried to prosecute Williams on phony J. Murphy were intent on confronting Labor and Jim Robertson of Spartacist. at our 1985 victory forum in New York, kidnap charges, Lynn helped Williams and smashing this wave of black protest. In response to the frenzied redbaiting of Conrad Lynn was one of the featured escape the country. In mid-July 1964, after an off-duty the bourgeois press, which sought to speakers. . . Such stands did not endear Conrad police lieQtenant shot and killed a 15- blame the Harlem protest on a commu­ In 1990 he wrote us, skeptical of Lynn to liberal black civil rights leaders, year-old black youth,James Powell, the nist conspiracy, Robertson noted, Workers Vanguard's report that the mil­ the bourgeois establishment, ·or. to black cops decided to use the resulting protest "Unfortunately there aren't many Reds itary arm of the African National Con­ nationalists for that matter. But we in as an excuse to launch a pre-emptive in Harlem now-but there will be!" gress (ANC) had begun negotiations the Spartacist League are proud to have· strike against unrest in the ghetto. Spar­ However, the reign of cop terror and with the army of the white-supremacist considered him a friend and sometime' tacist No. 3 (January-February 1965) red baiting managed to put a clamp on South African capitalist state. Like many ally. Our relationship with Conrad was described what happened in the ensuing the growing protest movement in New of those who supported Mandela's ANC, established in the first year of our exist- days as "wave after wave" of the tactical York. The witchhunters went after Pro- Conrad found it hard to believe that these cops "swept through Harlem indiscrim­ inately beating and terrorizing all who crossed their paths." In the midst of this all-out police SPARTACIST LEAGUE/U.S. LOCAL DIRECTORY assault, Bill Epton's Harlem Defense National Office: Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 (212) 732-7860 .!lrLThe Council (HDC) issued a leaflet calling aut~aphy for the organization of block commit­ Atlanta Eugene Oakland tees as basic units of community self­ Box 397 Box 3392 Box 29497 defense, and for a mass demonstration Decatur, GA 30031 Eugene, OR 97403 Oakland, CA 94604 civil rights of these block committees in organized (404) 521-9338 (510) 839-0851 lawyer defiance of the reign of cop terror. The Los Angeles Boston San Francisco city administration, backed up by the Box 29574, Los Feliz Sta. Box 390840, Central Sta. Box 77494 "leadership" organ­ Los Angeles, CA 90029 craven official black Cambridge, MA 02139 San Francisco, CA 94107 (213) 380-8239 ized in a Harlem "Unity Council" (in­ (617) 666-9453 (415) 777-9367 cluding everyone from the NAACP to the Muslims), went all out to stop that Chicago New York Washington, D.C. march. Box 6441, Main PO Box 3381, Church St. Sta. Box 75073 Epton was put under intense pressure Chicago, IL 60680 New York, NY 10008 :Washington, D.C. 20013 to call off the action-when he refused, (312) 663-0715 (212) 267-1025 (202) 872-8240 the police banned the march, marshaling an incredible army of 27,000 cops to ConradLrm make sure no one dared protest in Har­ TROTSKYIST LEAGUE OF CANADA/LiGUE TROTSKYSTE DU CANADA lem that day. In a singular act of personal Toronto Montreal Vancouver courage and defiance of New' York's Box 7198, Station A C.P. Les Atriums Box 2717, Main P.O. Conrad Lynn's autobiography, pub­ arrogant racist rulers, Bill Epton, sur­ Toronto, ON M5W 1X8 B.P.32066 Vancouver, BC V6B 3X2 lished by Lawrence Hill & Co. in rounded by supporters, went to the (416) 593-4138 Montreal, QC H2L 4V5 (604) 687-0353 1979. march assembly point. At his side, arms 6 WORKERS VANGUARD petty-bourgeois nationalists could con­ around its popular-front program in the for example. He worked with Bayard it was nonetheless true. The SWP could template a deal with the apartheid ruling late 1930s, supporting FDR and his Rustin and other pacifists as a participant no more escape the influence of the class. "Dixiecrat" allies, abandoned a burgeon­ pervading psychology than most other in the first black freedom ride in 1947. groups. Only the hungry barbarians at ing proletarian base in the Deep South, He adopted a none sectarian, if aloof, the gates incessantly see their salvation The Best of His Generation where CP-Ied struggles for black work­ attitude toward the various groups active in war." ers and sharecroppers and against Jim on the American left. .. Conrad Lynn published his autobiog­ From their own vantage points, it seems Crow discrimination had won to com­ During the 1950s, Conrad Lynn led raphy There Is a Fountain: The Autobi­ Lynn and Malcolm had picked up on the munism a vanguard layer of young the defense of Puerto Rican nationalists ography of a Civil Rights Lawyer (Law­ SWP's slide into reformism, increas­ black fighters. CP black intellectuals jailed by the U.S. for their fight for in­ rence Hill & Co.) in 1979. It was given ingly seeing itself as a white party also began to leave in disillusionment. dependence for the Caribbean colony. little attention in either the mainstream enthusing from the sidelines for liberal The experience of this social layer is Following an uprising on the island and or the left press. WV (No. 252, 21 March and nationalist leaders of the black strug­ reflected in the best of 20th-century an attack on the Blair House residence 1980) reviewed it and the SL helped dis­ gle. The Spartacist tendency formed American literature-works by Richard of President Truman in 1950, the gov­ tribute it: There Is a Fountain is quite inside the SWP to fight against its degen­ Wright, Chester Himes, Ralph Ellison ernment jailed Nationalist Party leader as useful an introduction to the major eration in the early 1960s, sharply oppos­ provide fictionalized accounts of the Pedro Albizu Campos. At the height of battles for black freedom and social jus­ ing the failure of the party to intervene crushing disappointment of this layer of the McCarthyite witchhunt, when few tice in this country this century as one in the civil rights movement North and black ex-revolutionists, many of whom lawyers would touch this explosive case, is likely to read. We are happy to report South to fight for Trotskyist leadership. became bitter anti-communists. Those Lynn defended Albizu Campos in a San that it is currently in print and available An early supporter of the Cuban Rev­ who didn't leave the CP became hollow Juan court. (It was during this time that in both paperback and hardback editions. olution, Conrad helped arrange Fidel and cynical Stalinist hacks and figure­ Conrad met his future wife, Yolanda Castro's famous stay in Harlem's Hotel Young people who have been radical­ heads, bowing to every twist and tum in Moreno, who had been a nurse of Albizu ized around the campaign to free Penn­ Theresa in 1960. Lynn not only supported the Kremlin's line. Campos.) Later, after four Puerto Rican sylvania death row political prisoner the social revolution in Vietnam, he trav­ Conrad Lynn escaped both these fates. Nationalists staged an armed attack on eled to North Vietnam in 1967 as part Mumia Abu-Jamal will draw particular He was won to the Young Communist the U.S. Congress in 1954, Lynn was inspiration from the first chapter of of Bertrand Russell's War Crimes Com­ League (YCL) in 1928 as a student at the attorney for the leader, Lolita Lebron, mission in order to expose the terror­ Lynn's book, an account of how he Syracuse University (he was the school's and 11 of the 16 independentistas who unraveled the monstrous police frame-up , bombing campaign of U.S. imperialism which kept six black youths from Harlem against the Vietnamese Revolution. In in jail for years on a bogus murder POLICE BREAK UP 1965, when liberal pacifists insisted that charge. These youth were part of a teen­ "Stop the War Now" be the sole slogan age social club training in karate-they HARLEM PROTEST; of the New York Fifth Avenue Peace were targeted by the cops because they 2LEFrlm SEIZED Parade, Lynn praised Spartacist for insist­ dared to jump to the defense of some ing on the demand for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops. As he wrote: young schoolchildren being beaten by Small Band of Followers Is a police tactical squad in the hot spring Dispersed Alter Defying "Any position less than this is objective of 1964. Murphy and Injunction aid to the Johnson Doctrine of armed The "Harlem Six" were charged with intervention against the social revolution the heinous murder of a Jewish shop­ PLEAS PROVE FRUITLESS where ever it may break" (Spartacist keeper and his wife-the cops used the No.5, November-December 1965). Negro Leaders Had Sought perjured testimony of one of the real In There Is a Fountain, Lynn writes: 10 Avert Demonstration, "It would be hard to deny .. , that the basic murderers to put the six behind bars. bul Opposed Ban, Too Lynn's account of the case reveals not ideas of Karl Marx have afforded a key ., .. w. APPLE Jr. to understanding the fundamental factors only the depths of the police frame-up The POllee ~ked a propolld protest march In Harlem yea­ about which the world has been in con­ system, but the limits and hypocrisy of terday by arresting the lefUata the bourgeois courts. After the frame-up who bad Ofl'aaJaed tt. flict for the last one hundred and fifty They had 1IImted on pro­ years." Yet although he saw a socialist was exposed, four of the six defen­ ceedUIc With tb. demonatraUoa. acatnat the pollee despite a ban future as necessary, Lynn stood aside dants accepted a deal offered by the dis­ by Pollee Commtuioner Michael J. lIurpby. • Supreme Court from the fight to forge a Marxist party trict attorney-on the understanding that InJuncUoa obtained by the city and the combined OPPOSlUon of on the program to lead the working class the two youths already falsely con­ nearly every orgalzalion in Harlem, in the struggle for power. Thus he often victed would be released and the other Tbe ...... ,b hod been planned b,- the Harlem Defense Council. adopted an uncritical attitude toward the four would plead guilty to manslaughter. all offaboot of the Communbt. coatroUed .Procreaaive Labor leaderships of existing social struggles, Needless to say, the D.A. never lived up Kowmen.t. City offlclall had. _ that the _troU... for example the Stalinist NLF in Viet­ to the bargain. woaI. precipitate _eel 01<>: But There Is a Fountain is more than _InH.. I .... nam. He preferred to cheer where he Conrad Lynn (right) and Bill Tho.e arrested wen WOUam himself did not seek to lead. As we noted just a story of Lynn's major legal cases­ U yean old, the coun­ Epton (center) were arrested as , and a M1r_rlboc\ in reviewing There Is a Fountain, "In it is the odyssey of a black radical, the ChIAeae Commu. they tried to lead off July 1964 Ills 1&..,.... I:oarod J Conrad Lynn one finds an example of a won to communism in his youth, who march against police occupation hu a Ioac nPuerto Rico). When imperialism on the Caribbean island of international rates: $25/22 issues-Airmail $10/22 issues-Seamail Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in June Trinidad. o $2/6 introductory issues of Workers Vanguard (includes English·language Spartacist) 1941, the Kremlin proclaimed World Though Lynn resolved never again to o $2/4 issues of Espartaco (en espanol) (includes Spanish-language Spartacist) War II a "war against fascism." The join a radical political party, his experi­ American CP denounced struggles for ence in the Stalinist CP never shook his Name ______~------black rights as undermining the war belief in the necessity for social revolu­ Address ______effort. But while class-conscious work­ tion. He continued to be active in and ers around the world stood for defense around the left-wing movement-he was ______Apt# Phone (___ ) _____ of the Soviet Union, WW II for the impe­ the lawyer who won the rescinding of City State Zi p ______--",;; rialist countries was a war to redivide the 1939 postal ban against the Trotsky­ 635 the world ,among ~hemselves. ist New International, theoretical organ Make checks payable/mall to: Spartaclst Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 The Communist Party's consolidation - of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), 15 DECEMBER 1995 7 Meanwhile, the "far left" does little France ... more than echo the rhetoric of Blon­ del and Viannet. The sizable pseudo­ (continued from page 1) Trotskyist groups supported the "Social­ budget deficit in the interests of launch­ ist" president Mitterrand through 14 ing a common European currency by years of anti-working-class austerity, 1999. This would hit hardest at the most Cold War anti-communism and racist vulnerable sectors, "immigrants" and terror. On this basis, they (and legions youth. The Italian bourgeoisie, having of their ex-members) managed to make installed the extreme right-wing Ber­ their way into the middle and lower lev­ lusconi cabinet to streamline the gov­ els of the trads:-union bureaucracy (and ernment and discipline the workers, then in some cases into the upper reaches, let Berlusconi be swept away by the big­ such as the Fa national organizer, who gest general strike in that country in sev­ isa supporter of Pierre Lambert's Parti eral decades. Instead a government des Travailleurs). Today these otganiza­ headed by former Bank of Italy chief tions call to "extend the strike" to force Dini was installed with the votes of the "withdrawal of the Juppe plan" (Lutte reformist left, to legislate the pension Ouvriere), or for an "unlimited general "reform" that Berlusconi and his fascist strike" to "dismiss this government" allies had failed to impose. (Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire). The spreading strike wave in France What this rhetoric amounts to in reality has produced a sharp confrontation be­ is pressuring the Fa and CGT tops to tween the working class and the bour­ bring about a reshuffling of Chirac's geoisie. What's desperately needed in cabinet. This attempt to appear as the order for the proletariat to throw off the ISSler/Heuters most "unlimited" of militants leaves shackles of decaying capitalism is a rev­ , Coal miners from Gardanne region join students in Marseille protesting untouched the hard political tasks of olutionary workers party to fight for a government cutbacks. articulating a clear program to lead the workers government. Our comrades of proletariat and its allies forward toward the Ligue Trotskyste de France have du Nord train station has become a ral­ sector, for which the trade-union tops are the conquest of power. intervened in the strike wave, issuing a lying point for strikers from other sectors responsible. A leaflet distributed today The smaller, centrist Gauche Revolu­ special supplement to their paper, Le and an unofficial organizing center, dis­ by the CGT branch in the Renault car tionnaire-Jeunesses Communistes Revo­ Bolchevik, on December 4. (An English patching delegations to hospitals, post factory in Flins argued against solidarity lutionnaires, affiliated with the British translation is printed below.) This sup­ offices and elsewhere to extend the with the ,rail workers and opposed Militant group, calls for a general strike plement is also being published in Arabic strike. "premature" strikes. to "make Chirac and Juppe resign" and, for distribution to the large numbers of In Lorraine, thousands of coal miners Despite the widespread disruptions, "as in '36 and '68," to "accumulate a workers and youth of North African who are facing layoffs and mine closings opinion polls show that an increasing maximum of gains," notably a 35-hour origin. Our comrades call "For a New, engaged in pitched battles with CRS riot majority of the population supports the week, retirement at 55, and a 1,500 franc Revolutionary Leadership-For a Work­ cops. In the northeastern town of Freym­ strikes. Government attempts to organize ($300) monthly raise. Yet it was pre- ers Government to Sweep Away the ing-Merlebach, 4,000 strikers set fire to Whole Rotten Capitalist System!" As an the company headquarters and threw LTF supporter declared at one of the burning trash cans, metal bolts and rocks daily strike assemblies of postal workers at police who were attacking the strikers last week: with tear gas and stun grenades. Dock­ "While the government sends its troops ers and naval yard employees in several to the Balkans and its army against ports have walked out. In Toulon, where immigrants and their families, it sent its Jean-Marie Le Pen's fascist National cops against yesterday's demonstration. Front won the mayoralty last spring, Against this, we need a resolute leader­ ship, and that poses the need for a strike pickets have shut down the military ship­ committee, elected by the general assem­ yards. In Nantes, the main banner in the bly of strikers, who can also revoke its strikers' demonstration denounced the mandate, to organize and lead the strike, government's racist "Operation Vigipir­ to organize mass pickets and delegations to other sectors to ask them to help us ate," which uses the army to terrorize mobilize. A showdown with the govern­ immigrant communities. Strikers in that ment is posed and the question of power city have repeatedly erected barricades is posed." to counter police attacks, and public util­ Many militant workers are already angry ity workers have taken jackhammers to rs and suspicious of the trade-union lead­ a local police station. German chancellor Kohl with French president Chirac last week. Assault on ers' willingness to negotiate with Juppe, social programs in France is part of scheme for D-mark dominated European So far, with' important exceptions, the Monetary Union. French workers must link up their struggles with their class and fear a sellout. This underscores the wave of strikes has been centered on brothers and sisters throughout Europe. urgency of forming factory committees the public sector. At the same time, to take control of the struggle out of the last week's strikes and demonstrations, anti-strike demonstrations have been dis­ cisely through such economist demands hands of the reformist union tops. which were particularly strong in indus­ mal failures. The union struggles have that the Communist Party sabotaged the trial cities outside Paris, included con­ given expression to a broad discontent 1936 and 1968 general strikes. The gen­ Biggest Workers tingents from heavy industrial plants­ Mobilizations Since 1968 within the population, which is fed up eral strike is, as Trotsky said, "the often from the private sector-such after over a decade of austerity and mas­ necessary means for casting off the The rail strike has caused businesses as Michelin tires in Clermont-Ferrand, sive unemployment. But in phe face of treachery of the leadership and for cre­ throughout France to curtail produc­ the Dassault aerospace plant in Bor­ vacillations by the reformist leaders of ating within the working class itself the tion or shut down. Air traffic has also deaux, Peugeot automobiles and Pechi­ the working class, frustration among the preliminary conditions for a victorious been hard hit by strikes of air traffic con­ ney aluminum in Dijon, Rh6ne-Poulenc petty bourgeoisie could boil over into uprising." But the GR/JCR et al. instead trollers as well as firemen and other air­ chemicals, Renault trucks and Alsthom open hostility to the strikes. tail after the existing leadership, and thus port workers, who battled police on the industrial machinery in Lyon, and the are themselves an obstacle to revolution­ runways last week. Meanwhile, students heavily North African and Turkish coal Reformists and Centrists: ary consciousness in the working class. are on strike at a score of universities miners in Grenoble. The paucity of Roadblocks to This is reflected in their refusal to even and have participated heavily in' the strikes in heavy inqustry reflects the Workers Revolution mention the racist attacks faced by North workers' demonstrations. The Paris Gare weakness of the unions in the private Increasingly, union leaders Marc Africans, who form a strategic compo­ Blondel of the anti-Communist, social­ nent of the working class in France.

1SF democratic Fa and Louis Viannet of the The recent mobilizations are the LlGUE TROTSKYSTE DE FRANCE tend.nc. ,p.,'ecl.'elnt.,n.Uone'. Supple.... ' Communist Party-led CGT have talked largest outpouring of combative mass spjcla' L~BOLC"EVId of bringing down "the government"­ protest in France since 1968. The exam­

A bas Viglplrate I Unite des « Immigres », des i.e., Juppe and his cabinet. But they are ple of May '68, when a workers gen­ femmes et de la Jeunesse derriere la puissance tacitly appealing to divisions within the eral strike and student revolt brought the soclale de la classe oUYriere ! ruling Gaullist party, the RPR. Sensing country to the brink of revolution, has Pour une nouvelle direction, that the government's days may be num­ become a widespread point of reference bered, several RPR leaders have jumped in France, both for the capitalist rulers, une direction revolutionnaire !' ship and cynically come out against the who fear a repeat, and for striking work­ lJ.. c~do:'"""_"",,," D· ... u.».It:...... -... L.quell_mouaIe ..,"""d· ...... c·cs, ...... _ ... a..c.IIIIIPI ...... p:!OtM._ ... In ...... ia. 4tNaiona La~.I.C.·UT,·CSI ...... _1a "bocIpe clll ...... 1cs rc-,1eII "Juppe plan." National Assembly chair­ ers. However, the differences with the 1- 0..,'-...... ~Ia_ .. ,.."...._IMt.~ .-~, •. tM~e' lu"",-"IcI.ca••• __I'" ~ ... Ct.-ra.FO ... ""b_ .... lcwull::fllClj(f... ~ICI_ de l"oII"oItiw d'.Atn..: e'I do .. __ _ .....ott.,.,.. daue ...... a...e __ • ....-...... no iemratl"'pl-.J..",c.MMSC':",""CIJ""",1llllMel..c man Philippe Seguin met with striking 1968'upheaval are greater than the sim­ •·... pllrlCo.e ... It~_._,.n..MoaIc ... ~ ~"."'-'-"'_"""".'.....-w ...... C'~ .....a"IICICI ..... '"""'_del_ ...... ~_ ... 1'<'1"....., .... I.how ...... ,eslioot ...... aec'_E ...... k_,.,...--.. n ... _Prcn ... _p.... I..... ~ ilarities. The sharp defensive strug­ .-... pIus ...... C·CII .. _.k-'IM ..... "=~I'le a-ln ___"",I)MtcaI_ Mcr... _.oOlll' railway workers, and promised to pres­ "-r.... ~ 'oces,_ ...... *-_, __ .... _ .. I'CF ... I"5.pmeNeMaIIiv .... tIi.eu_ .... u.• .., lc'a._I..... MicI ...... _. '-_le_. ' ..~ ..I ...... Ie _I ...... NboIa ..... , .....1 CI • Ia ent their case to the president, while for­ gles in France today come in the context ..trc..,~~ .. _ , ..... Ie.Mau.nt.c. ",,-d·_t.... ."JOI.d·_""-_U!"""'-an:doMlePfOtr__ <¥W!rD' .... I· ...... a.-a/e StI.elMlC""...... • •• ',,.. .-...--~ ...... su .. ~lIIcottll"c .. - ...... _1*,--1I00I_ .~.- ...... * ...... ---...... mer interior minister Charles Pasqua of a period characterized by momen­ A"_.I~"'~"""""aes .. ,..... do! _ _ i*""""",.tat'".Le,.o:tI .... _Iu.~. 1csacVietnam War. Meanwhile, the bastion against the ~'Juppe plan." of world capitalism, the United States, 8 WORKERS VANGUARD Rail workers in Lille (left), in forefront of mass strike wave. Orly Airport workers battle cops, Paris, December 7. was shaken by rebellions of the black necessary for the factory committees to masses in the Northern ghettos. Smash Vigipirate! Unite "Immigrants," Women, Youth organize workers defense guards. Disci­ But despite the widespread sense Behind the Power of the Working Class! plined contingents of workers are needed of revolutionary potential in May-June to defend strike mobilizations and pro­ 1968, the reformist Communist Party tests and to defend the immigrant quar­ was able to liquidate this massive social For a New, Revolutionary Leadership! ters which are the first target of the fas­ upheaval in exchange for short-lived cist gangs and the racist Vigipirate police economic gains. This dramatically dem­ For a Workers Government to Sw_ep Away the terror. The workers movement must onstrates that even under the most favor­ appeal to rank-and-file soldiers to refuse able conditions, socialist revolution Whole RoHen Capitalist System! to be used as strikebreakers. requires the' leadership of a Leninist The following special supplement to une of the people, opposing all manifes­ Factory committees, centralized on a vanguard party which has established Le Bolchevik, newspaper of the Ligue tations of oppression against all sectors citywide and national level, should con­ its authority in the working class. At Trotskyste de France, section of the In­ 'of the population, drawing in behind the trol and organize distribution of goods that time, the pseudo-Trotskyist groups ternational Communist League (Fourth power of the working class the youth, and services, drawing in representatives in France were consumed in student Internationalist), was issued on Decem­ the besieged North African and black from among the students, "immigrants," vanguardism and/or trade-union econo­ ber 4. African workers and their children, the unemployed, working women and mism. None of these groups fought to France is moving toward a showdown. who are dismissed as "immigrants" even housewives and other layers of the forge a revolutionary party to lead the On one side stands the Chirac/Juppe gov­ when they are born in France and are population. fight for power and therefore neces­ ernment and the bourgeoisie, backed up French citizens, the women whose right Such factory committees can serve as sarily sought other forces to tail after. by the bourgeoisies of all of Europe. On to abortion is increasingly at risk. the nucleus of workers power-workers The project for a new popular front, the other stands the working class, The crucial question now is the ques­ councils, or soviets-which will confront led by Frant;ois Mitterrand, originated women, "immigrants," youth' and stu­ tion of leadership. The CFDT union fed­ the power of the bourgeoisie. The out­ in a meeting at the Charlety stadium dents, pensioners-all the intended vic­ eration leadership has declared itself at come of the confrontation will depend in the last weeks of the May-June '68 tims of the rulers' austerity assaults and one with the government's assault on the on the leadership of the working class. events. racist terror. The burgeoning protest social welfare program. The CGT and The government's current assault on The present social explosion in France movement is headed toward a general FO labor leaders proclaim as their final the working class was prepared by an is the most powerful response to date strike, a political clash with the bour­ goal defeating the Juppe plan. But Chirac ongoing racist campaign targeting immi­ to the intensified capitalist offensive geoisie and its state. The question which and Juppe have made it clear that they grant workers and their children through following the counterrevolutionary de­ is increasingly posed is: who will rule? intend to go ahead at any cost. This con­ deportations and police terror, whose struction of the Soviet Union. After The bourgeoisie is united in its determi­ flict will not be resolved through back­ aim was to scapegoat them for the crisis several years in which it was widely nation to wage war on the workers and room deals on the terrain of parliament. of capitalism and to divide the working taken for granted that brutal austerity and oppressed. To fight back, to win, the Nor can it win simply within the confines class on the bas-is of racism. It is a matter the destruction of welfare programs were working class needs a general staff, a of narrow trade unionism. Beware those of elementary self-defense of the entire the inevitable vision of the future, the revolutionary leadership based on a pro­ like the Communist Party (PCF) and proletariat that the workers movement working class has boldly stepped to gram that those who labor must rule. Socialist Party (PS) who claim to offer uncompromisingly combat all forms of center stage. The outcome of the current Following the, capitalist counterrevo­ leadership to the workers only to behead discrimination in employment, wages, French upheaval will have a powerful lutions which destroyed the gains of the their struggles and divert them into elec­ education and housing and to demand impact on the class struggle through­ planned, collectivized economies in the toral channels. If the working class does that all public sector jobs be opened to out Europe. The shifting climate was Soviet Union and East Europe, the bour­ not act boldly and audaciously, the result "non-French" workers-For full citizen­ captured by British journalist Martin geoisie cheered over the supposed "death could well be a strengthening not only ship rights for all immigrants and their Woollacott: "Europe's resignation, its of communism." Today, the eyes of of the parliamentary righfwing but of families! To fight unemployment, we sense of slowly drifting into worse times, workers around the world are riveted on, Le Pen's fascist marauders who terrorize demand a shorter workweek at no loss is suddenly confronted by youthful France, where the combative workers "immigrants" and bid to act as the bour­ in pay to provide jobs for all! energy and by union resolve, phenomena have demonstrated that the class struggle geoisie's final resort against a revolu­ The current student protests against we had almost forgotten" (London lives. But what is necessary for the work­ tionary challenge by the proletariat. cutbacks must join behind the proletar­ Guardian, 9 December). ers to move on to victory is that Marxism As one strike militant put it, we need iat in struggle. As the Jeunesse Spar­ But energy and resolve are not live, in the form of an international- a "government of the strike." But how taciste, youth group of the Ligue Trots­ enough. The key question today, as in " ist, Leninist-Trotskyist vanguard party to get there? It is necessary to unite the kyste de France (LTF) , emphasized in 1968, is the struggle to build an inter­ which fights for the proletarian con­ workers in a concerted and coordinated a leaflet to students last month: "What nationalist Leninist-Trotskyist party to quest of power-a party of revolution­ struggle against the regime, to draw in is necessary today is a revolutionary pro­ lead the workers to power. This is what ary action, not of parliamentary sell­ other sectors of the population who sup­ gram that links the struggle of the youth the International Communist League outs and trade-union bureaucrats. Such port the workers and are also fighting for the right to a job, housing and (Fourth Internationalist) and its French a party will be infused with Lenin's against the all-sided attacks. The first wages-to a decent life-to the strug­ section, the Ligue Trotskyste, fight for. understanding that it must serve as a trib- step is the formation, in the factories, of gle for the proletariat to end this capi­ committees elected in mass assemblies talist system of exploitation and oppres­ r: of strikers at the shop floor to lead and sion. We, Jeunesse Spartaciste, fight for c ~ coordinate the struggle. It is crucial to free quality education for all, without iii extend the strikes to other sectors, espe­ any race or class discrimination. We 0' ::J cially the bastions of industrial workers, want the proletariat to have access to where immigrant workers are a strate­ culture, for working-class youth to have gic component-time and again, the full access to the universities. For uni­ lack of leadership to generalize and link versities open to all and for adequate up workers' struggles has allowed the stipends!" bourgeoisie to isolate combative sectors Popular Front The assault by the French capitalist and suppress the workers' militancy. regime on the social security system is leaders, social l democrat Leon Blum Against the government's plans to use not unique. The same thing has happened (left) and Stalinist scab buses to break the transportation in Britain, it is being attempted in Italy, Maurice Thorez, strike, it is necessary to mobilize mass it is being planned in Germany. The IMF betrayed general pickets which block the streets and to (International Monetary Fund) and the strike of 1936. launch flying pickets which extend the capitalist rulers of Europe have made it Thorez crowed: "It's strike-especially to the private sector­ clear that the French bourgeoisie must necessary to know and k~ep it solid. push this through, and the French bour­ how to end a strike." Against the threats to use the army, geoisie is more than prepared to unite against the mobilization of the fascists with its ruling-class allies across the who act as spearheads of social reaction border to quash the French proletariat, and are waiting to be used as auxiliaries as It has done time and again from the for the bourgeoisie's strikebreaking, it is continued on. page 10 15 DECEfJlBER 1995 9 Racist Paratroopers Gun Down Black Man and Woman Nazi Murder in North Carolina In a cold-blooded racist execution, Fort Bragg is right in the middle of three soldiers of the U.S. Army's elite Klan country. Less than 100 miles from 82nd Airborne Division gunned down Fayetteville is Greensboro, site of the 36-year-ol~ Michael James and 27-year­ infamous November 1979 massacre of old Jackie Burden in nearby Fayetteville, leftist -black and labor organizers by North Carolina on the night of December Klansmen working in collusion with 6. The black man and woman were shot local and federal police. Today, there are at least five times in the head at close at least two distinct right~wing "militia" range after being stopped by the carload movements in the state, and a "Special of nightriders as they were walking Forces Underground" publishes a news­ down the street. letter at Fort Bragg called The Resister. The three killers, all members of the This racist rag fulminates against the paratroop unit based at Fort Bragg, had Congressional Black Caucus as "the van­ a history of cruising the streets "hunting" guards of neo-communist tribalism" and for black people to terrorize. They rails against "societal leveling, social openly paraded around in skinhead re­ equality, and egalitarianism." galia and had swastika flags as well Michael James Jackie Burden From the racist "war on drugs" to as right-wing "resistance" propaganda, Washington Post photos imperialisi terror abroad, this capitalist pamphlets on Hitler and Nazi Germany, . ruling class encourages and breeds the and instruction manuals for making advance guard of U.S. imperialist butch­ assassinated tens of thousands of Viet­ fascist marauders who murder black peo­ bombs. According to the Washington ery around the world. This is the home namese. The Special Forces were also ple with impunity. It will take nothing Post (9 December), at least one of them of the "Green Beret" Special Forces, involved in "domestic counterinsur­ less than a socialist revolution to put an "made no secret of his white supremacist hard-bitten killers who were involved in gency," including in the massive army end once and for all to the racist oppres­ views" on base. some of the worst atrocities of the Viet­ spy operation which stalked Martin sion and lynch mob terror which is Fort Bragg is a hotbed of racist, chau­ nam War, like the infamous Phoenix Luther King Jr. in the 1960s (see WV rooted in the bedrock of American vinist reaction. The 82nd Airborne is an "rural pacification" program which No. 582, 13 August 1993). capitalism. _

thugs against the workers movement. izations, such as the Ligue Communiste against the wave of racist and imperialist France ... The historic role of the PCF has been Revolutionnaire and Pouvoir Ouvrier, state terror in France and Tahiti to to contain class struggle and divert it have joined in the hypocritical hue and demand: Down with the anti-immigrant (continued from page 9) into the dead end of parliamentarism. cry over "poor little Bosnia," demanding pogroms and Chirac's racist state of Commune to Vichy. Against the Europe Today, the PCF is no longer the hege­ imperialist intervention against the Bos­ siege! Cops and French troops out of the of NATO, it is necessary to counterpose monic force it once was within the work­ nian Serbs. Now they have got what they immigrant quarters and out of Tahiti! a Europe of workers struggle. What is ing class because of the complete bank­ screamed for. As for Lutte Ouvriere and Our Paris protest was held in front of needed is an internationalist perspective ruptcy of Stalinism in both the Soviet Socialisme Internationale, they refused the Grand Rex cinema, one of the places that reaches out to the struggling workers Union and East Europe-where the to call for the defense of the Bosnian where on 17 October 1961, hundreds of of Italy, that seeks to link arms with _ betrayals of the bureaucracies paved the Serbs against imperialist aggression. Algerians were massacred as they dem­ the student protesters in Belgium, that way for capitalist counterrevolution-as The same French troops who besieged onstrated for independence. appeals to the workers of Germany for well as in France. But rest assured that the immigrant quarters of Marseille and In this way, as in our interna­ common struggle against the capitalist PCF chief Hue & Co. have not given up Paris are now to be sent on a "humani­ tional struggle to demand freedom for attacks. It is particularly crucial to reach their old game and will do the best they tarian mission" to Bosnia. Yet even as black U.S. death row political prisoner out over the Mediterranean to the North can to derail the workers' struggle. the bourgeoisie prepares to send its army Mumia Abu-Jamal, we seek to act as African masses beset by imperialist Emboldened by the world-historic to impose NATO's dictates on the peoples the nucleus of the revolutionary workers exploitation, whose class brothers are a defeats for the proletariat in the destruc­ of the former Yugoslavia, they first party which will be a tribune of all the key component of the proletariat here. tion of the homeland of the October threaten to use these soldiers to impose oppressed. A defeat of the Juppe plan Yet the PCF stands counterposed to Revolution, the bourgeoisie today feels the economic dictates of NATO Europe today would be an enormous victory for such a perspective, with its nationalist­ it can ride roughshod over the workers on the working people here. It is neces­ the workers movement. But a bourgeoi­ chauvinist appeals to "Produce French" at home, with or without the assistance sary for the working class to oppose this sie which has been wounded is truly a which blame the growing unemployment of its reformist lieutenants. It is no imperialist expeditionary force to the dangerous animal. here not on the French bosses but on wonder that syndicalist prejudices and Balkans. The jockeying of the big powers The bourgeoisie is on the attack foreign workers. The PCF would like to a mistrust of political parties are so in the Balkans underscores the escalation against the working class. The reformists serve as an agency for the bourgeoisie widespread today among militant work­ of imperialist rivalries following the and class collaborators of the peF and to derail and subvert the combative work­ ers. This is the result of decades of destruction of the Soviet Union and ulti­ PS and their centrist tails offer only illu­ ers movement, just as it did in '68, when class-collaborationist betrayal by the mately points toward another w'orld war. sory reforms. They are all incapable of it showed it knew "how to end a strike," PCF, perverting the very meaning of the We Trotskyists of the LTF have .called leading the working class in the current throttling the workers' occupations of word communism, and of 14 years of for defense of the Bosnian Serbs against struggles and in the struggle to end the the factories and the mass student pro­ attacks on the working class and minor­ NATO's onslaught. No to the draft-Not system of wage slavery once and for all. tests on the streets which had 'brought ity communities by popular-front gov­ one man, not one penny for the bour­ Only a party of the Bolshevik type based the country to the brink of revolution. ernments masquerading as "Socialist" geoisie's army! And in contrast to the on a working-class revolutionary per­ With its grotesque appeals to anti­ .(which in fact were class-collaborationist capitulation by the reformists and cen­ spective can lead the workers forward_ "immigrant" racism, exemplified by the coalitions between the PS, the PCF and trists to Chirac's radst crusade, the The forging in struggle of that party is bulldozing of a hostel of Malian workers bourgeois politicians) .. LTF called a united-front demonstration the urgent task of the hour. _ in Vitry in 1981, and its support to 14 Lacking a revolutionary program and yea{s of the "socialist" Mitterrand gov­ perspective, fake-Trotskyist groups like ernment, whose hallmark was racist state the LCR and LO seek to appear as more This anti-fascist action drew significant terror against "immigrants," the PCF militant than the widely discredited CAT Strikers ... support from unionists in the area, but helped prepare the ground for the growth reformist bureaucracies. They issue calls (continued from page 3) the Illinois AFL-CIO worked overtime of Le Pen's National Front, which for "indefinite" general strikes, limited to sabotage labor support. today prepares to unleash its fascist to strictly economist slogans. They do strike-the massive betrayal of CAT In the wake of the historic surrender not breathe a word of the need for the strikers today can't help but accelerate at Caterpillar, the key lesson for militant integrated workers movement to combat the precipitous decline of the unions, unionists who want to get the labor racial and sexual oppression, to smash particularly in the private sector, where movement off its knees is the necessity Spartacist League Vigipirate, to mobilize against the fascist barely 10 percent of the workforce is for a political struggle within the unions Public' Offices threat. Their "revolutionary alternative" organized. to oust the pro-capitalist misleaders. As stands to the right of a whole layer of The defeat at Caterpillar will also fuel we wrote shortly after the latest CAT -MARXIST L1TERATURE- the current student movement, exempli­ the growth of the Ku Klux Klan and Nazi strike was launched (WV No. 604, 5 Bay Area fied by the St. Denis students who issued race-terrorists who have increasingly August 1994), workers must "forge a Thurs,: 5:30-8:00 p,m,. Sat: 1:00-5:00 p,m. a leaflet calling for opposition to the gov­ targeted Midwestern cities like Decatur leadership that will unceasingly combat 1634 Telegraph. 3rd Floor (near 17th Street) ernment's racist attacks. At the mass dem­ and Springfield. It's no coincidence that the poison of national chauvinism that Oakland. California Phone: (510) 839-0851 onstration last fall against the nuclear during this strike Caterpillar shipped sabotages labor struggle, a leadership Chicago tests in the Pacific, neither the PCF and scabs from the KKK-infested and open that will push the fight for black freedom Tues.: 5:00-9:00 p.m .• Sat: 11 :00 a,m.-2:00 p.m, PS nor their "far left" tails raised a single shop backwoods of Mississippi to its to the forefront. What's needed is a class­ 161 W. Harrison St. 10th Floor word against Vigipirate. Thus they all Illinois factories. In January 1994, the struggle workers party fighting for a .chicago. Illinois Phone: (312) 663-0715 wind up embracing the campaigns and Partisan Defense Committee, a class­ workers government that will expropri­ New York. City interests of their "own" bourgeoisie and struggle defense organization affiliated ate industry and replace the capitalist Tues.: 6:30-9:00 p.m,. Sat: 1:00-5:00 p.m, do nothing to challenge capitalist rule, with the Spartacist League, organized a boom-bust cycle-the bankrupt sys­ 41 Warren St (one block below Chambers St. near Church St.) just as they supported the anti-working­ union-centered mobilization to stop a tem that produced the Midwest 'rust New York. NY Phone: (212) 267-1025 class Mitterrand popular front. Klan provocation against the Martin bowl' -with international socialist eco­ More recently,-several of these organ- Luther King Jr. holiday in Springfield. nomic planning."_ 10 WORKERS VANGUARD The bureaucracy then sought to ensure China ... social peace by staging public execu­ tions of workers, while most student (continued from page 5) activists were able to flee or go under­ House [1994]) by Nicholas Kristoff and ground. A few purges in the military and Sheryl WuDunn recounts the tale of a party apparatus were sufficient to enable village chief who had made a small for­ the bureaucracy to rule more or less as tune in local "collective" factories before ... but not for long. As we wrote exploiting labor from other villages. He in the 1992 conference document of the armed and organized what was essen­ International Communist- League: tially a private militia which was able "The conditions which led to near civil war in 1989 have in no way been miti­ to fend off police from the nearby indus­ gated. China is today a seething cauldron trial city of Tianjin who had come to of contradictions and discontents barely investigate the murder of an accountant. suppressed by an octogenarian 'Stalinist While-he was eventually made to submit, regime .... When Deng dies, ifnot before, the succession crisis likely will lead to such stories immediately bring to mind a situation in which proletarian political the warlord-ridden country that emerged revolution or capitalist counterrevolution after the overthrow of the Qing dy­ are posed pointblank, thus determining nasty in 1911. The warlords were only the fate of the most populous country on earth." vanquished when Chiang Kai-shek's -"For the Communism of Guomindang (Kuomintang) regime was Lenin and Trotsky!," sent packing by the 1949 Revolution, Spartacist No. 47-48 which secured the national unification (Winter 1992-93) of China. Today, capitalist counterrevo­ This underscores the decisive factor lution would be a huge impetus to of leadership, especially in the workers latter-day successors to the warlords to movement. Following the Tiananmen carve out zones of exploitation in league crackdown, some pro-imperialist "dissi­ with imperialist moneymen. dents" like Han Dongfang turned to Thi~ is already beginning to happen "independent" union organizing. Last in Guangdong province, where the first March, a petition circulated to the

SEZ was established in Shenzhen. Local . , ~,~, ,u" "ey National People's Congress hailed the state officials have presided over the Tiananmen Square, Beijing, 1989: Demonstrators against Deng regime United Nations-an imperialist den of steady integration of Shenzhen and other surround and fraternize with military units ordered to suppress mass protests. thieves-as a force for "democracy" and cities spri'1ging up nearby into Hong "human rights." As we wrote then, Kong, the international banking metrop­ dependence for Soviet republics in Tibet tain efficient large-scale collective and "Abstract calls for 'democracy,' in the olis just across the border, which dom­ and other minority regions, while advo­ state farms. So now Mao's heirs have absence of any declaration of defense inates foreign investment in the region cating a socialist federation with China. turn.ed the historical clock back, putting of the Chinese workers state, how­ and shares a common language with the On the other hand, we understand that forward a policy that encourages class ever deformed, against capitalist forces, area's Cantonese population. Trumpet­ the imperialist-inspired call for an inde­ differentiation in the countryside, where amount to a program for bourgeois rule, ing the slogan, "One country, two sys­ pendent Tibet-which prior to the Chi­ more successful (or well-connected) which would be anything but demo­ tems," China has declared in advance nese Revolution was a hideously back­ peasants will shortly be hiring others to cratic" (WV No. 618, 10 March). Giving that its takeover of the British colony on ward, monk-ridden region incapable of labor for them. a "left" cover to "democratic" counter­ 1 July 1997 will not threaten imperialist leading an independent existence-has The Stalinists have also begun encour­ revolution, the Hong Kong journal of the investors in the least. At a recent con­ since the 1950s been a fig leaf for aging Confucian beliefs and even relig­ pseudo-Trotskyist United Secretariat, ference in Beijing attended by leading counterrevolution. ious practice. This particularly threatens October Review, has printed appeals for Hong Kong business executives, a Chi­ The biggest threat to the social stabil­ women, who before the revolution were U.S.-backed "dissident" Chen Ziming, nese official stressed that Hong Kong ity craved by the ruling Stalinists and literally enslaved in the traditional Chi­ hailed Tibetan "independence" demon­ would remain "financially independent," capitalist investors alike may well be the nese family. Today, many rural women strators and lauded the recent UN Wom­ so much so that the central government peasantry, which makes up three-fourths joining the influx into the cities are en's Conference in China, where Hillary would not even collect taxes in the of the population. The liquidation of the preyed upon by pimps and kidnappers Clinton fatuously told Third World territory! rural communes under Deng and the seeking to sell them into slavery as women that the way to escape their hor­ The answer to the threat of warlordism reversion to private farm plots-dubbed "wives." Thus, the Stalinists are recre­ rendous oppression was by going into is not the backward-looking nationalism the "Family Responsibility System"­ ating some of the brutal conditions of business! put forward by the sclerotic bureaucracy. created a vast "surplus" population rural life which spawned countless peas­ Time is running short in the struggle ant rebellions through the centuries, lead­ to prevent the re-enslavement of the Chi­ ing to the collapse of major dynasties. nese masses by imperialism. But as Trot­ sky insisted in his 1940 "Letter to the For Proletarian Political Workers of the USSR": Revolution in China! "It is the duty of revolutionists to defend The stark alternatives before the Chi­ tooth and nail every position gained by nese proletariat are the sweeping away the working class, whether it involves democratic rights, wage scales, or so of the decrepit Stalinist regime through colossal a conquest otmankind as the workers political revoiution or the com­ nationalization of the means of produc­ ing to power of a counterrevolutionary tion and planned economy. Those who government. The latter ~bUJd spell a are incapable of defending conquests already gained can never fight for new social catastrophe for the hundreds of ones." millions of Chinese toilers. It would also We Trotskyists stand for uncondi­ set off a fevered competition between tional military defense of the Chinese U.S. and Japanese imperialism over the deformed workers state-including its spoils, sharply exacerbating the drive to right to a nuclear arsenal-against impe­ a new interimperialist war. rialism. To stop the drive toward internal The struggle for political revolution counterrevolution requires mobilizing was posed pointblank in the Tiananmen the Chinese workers, at the head .of upheaval in May-June 19.89. Since Law­ the peasantry, to oust the bureaucracy, rence believes that the wave of terror expropriate the imperialist enterprises that suppressed these protests marked and extend the struggle for socialism to the emergence of a capitalist regime, it the industrial powerhouses of Korea and is useful to review what happened then. especially Japan. This points directly to Photo First of all, to say that the bureaucracy the need for a Leninist-Trotskyist party, Migrant workers outside Shanghai railway station, October 1995. As result of brutalized the students as a message to which would be faced with the difficult decollectivlzation of agriculture, over 100 million rural laborers have flooded the working class misses the key point­ task of introducing the program of rev­ into China's cities. it was the entry of the workers onto the olutionary Marxism to a working class streets, not only in Beijing but through­ whose consciousness has been numbed While the minority peoples of Xinjiang, which formed the initial labor pool for out the country, that put a deathly fear by decades of Stalinist lies that passed Tibet, Inner Mongolia and the hill the capitalist SEZs. Today, over 100 mil­ into the regime. The ensuing repression for "Communism," whether in the guise regions in the South have gained enor­ lion laborers from the countryside are was first and foremost directed against of Mao's peculiar peasant nationalism or mously since 1949, Mao and his heirs, estimated to be flooding the cities, look­ the workers who mobilized in solidarity of Deng Xiaoping's gospel of the mar­ like all Stalinist regimes, have aped the ing for work in the construction boom with the students and to advance their ketplace. Only such a party can draw the chauvinist policies of the prerevolution­ taking place from Beijing in th~ North own demands, raising the prospect of a bitter lessons of the destruction of the ary ruling class in discriminating against to Shanghai and Guangzhou (Canton) proletarian political revolution. But the Soviet Union for all those struggling to minority peoples. This stands in sharp along the southeastern seaboard. Other workers lacked the Trotskyist leadership prevent a similar disaster in China .• contrast to the internationalist policies displaced peasants scrape by as part of necessary to organize a fight for political of Lenin and Trotsky's Bolshevik the huge class of petty proprietors power. Thiswould have required, among regime, which granted the right of self­ spawned by market "reforms." other things, drawing a sharp line against determination, i.e., separation, of the While the 1949 Revolution laid the all pro-capitalist elements in the protests NOTICE non-Russian nations, while recognizing basis for' an agricultural revolution and winning over the ranks, ,!nd many Woikers Vanguard skips that this democratic question was subor­ by expropriating the capitalist-landlord officers, of the PLA. In the upshot, while dinate to the overriding necessity to class, the People's Republic could not some army units refused to move on the a week in December. defend the workers revolution. on its own, with China's backward tech­ demonstrators, the regime was able to - Our next issue will A China of workers and peasants nology and infrastructure, mechanize mobilize other detachments to put down be dated January 5. councils would recognize the right of in- - farming to the degree necessary to sus- the rebellion in blood. ·15 DECEMBER 1995 11