W'liKEliS,,1NfitJl1lI' 25¢ No. 486 ·e~)(-523 29 September 1989

Smash Apartheid! For Workers Revolution! South Alrica: Blacks Dely Apartheid Elections As South Africa's whites trekked to the polls on September 6 to vote for the racist candidate of their choice, the country's oppressed and disenfran­ chised black majority registered its vote-and its power-in the factories and streets. Mines, mills, shops and schools were shut down and buses, trains and taxis idled as some two to three million black workers-far more than the number of whites votin-g­ staged a massive two-day stayaway strike to protest the apartheid elections. The London Independent (7 Septem­ ber) reported: "With 90 per cent of urban workers estimated to be on strike, Cape Town, like Johannesburg and Durban, was as deserted as on a Sunday, eloquently demonstrating the degree to which the country's economy depends on non-white labour. ... " Once again, the black proletariat has shown it has the power, standing at the head of all the oppressed, to bring down apartheid capitalism. The general strike capped a six-week "defiance campaign" against the apart­ heidelections. Organized by the Mass September 15-Ten thousand at Johannesburg police headquarters protest state terror against blacks in racist Democratic Movement (MOM), which elections. includes the now-banned United Dem­ ocratic Front and the Congress of South emergency" imposed three years ago tors, and riot police charged into groups Desmond Tutu and Allan Boesak. Cops African Trade Unions (COSATU), this and a frenzy of murderous repression of schoolchildren -peacefully demon­ invaded the offices of COSA TU and was the first sustained and most wide­ called out by National Party president strating, Whipping them with heavy the home of its general secretary, Jay spread wave of anti-apartheid protest F. W. de Klerk. And on election day leather sjamboks. In the days leading up Naidoo, arresting eleven trade union­ since the brutal suppression of the town­ there were protests in at least 20 cities. to the elections, police stormed a cathe­ ists. On August 30, over 200 wom­ ship rebellions of 1984-85. The MOM Armored car~ terrorized the town­ dral to suppress an anti-apartheid rally en were arrested while on their way protests directly defied the "state of ships, cops chased down demonstra- and arrest liberal anti-apartheid leaders continued on page J2 Practicing for Racist Martial Law· Bush Flexes Military Muscle in SI. Croix Leave it to the Bush administration to Montserrat and Culebra. A newsman use even a natural disaster to whip up who flew over St. Croix told WV that hysteria for a military exercise in racist the devastation "looked like Hiroshima repression. At the direction of the for­ without the radioactivity." With no mer CIA director in the White House, food, water, electricity or phones, peo­ 16 Air Force C-141 transports landed on ple on St. Croix became desperate to St. Croix September 21 in the wake of get food and water. White merchants, Hurricane Hugo. They were bringing panicked tourists and ham radio opera­ not water, not food, but. .. 1,200 U.S. tors put out stories of roving bands troops, "to suppress the violence." More of machete-wielding crazies and "rat>­ accurately, they were sent there to pro­ ists" escaping from prison to imperil tect property values of white real estate white womanhood. Tabloid headlines interests, on this island which is three­ screamed "Anarchy" and "Island of quarters black, while pandering to arac­ Fear." An NBC-TV report claimed a ist media barrage. Officials in St. Croix, Coast Guard cutter had exchanged gun­ one otthe Virgin Islands, complained fire with "Rastafarians" on shore who that "the Bush administration was more had shouted "Leave the island to us!" interested in deploying troops than air­ On St. Croix, the worst stories of lifting relief supplies." Something sin­ "anarchy" that reporters could produce ister is going on here. were scenes of National Guardsmen The hurricane wreaked havoc from heJping in the "looting" and giving away the Caribbean to the Carolinas this things. A witness was horrified seeing week, cutting a swath through Puerto "50 people sitting on the street, trying on Rico, including San Juan, and virtually sneakers." The Times mentioned that destroying some smaller islands such as continued on page 10 Ft. Bragg military police armed with M-16s in St. Croix. Black Student Thrown Out of Class on Civil War No Jim Crow at S.F. State! Something very ugly is afoot at San black student and member of the ·Spar­ Francisco State University. Under the tacus Youth Club, attended the first robes of academia, professors are ped­ session of Professor Barbara Loomis' Cindy Nolan dling open racist lies about the history of course on the Civil War. Cindy spotted speaks at this country, the better to justify the D. W. Griffith's pro-slavery Birth of a defense rally inequalities of the present. Courses on Nation on the syllabus. The son of a September 18 the Civil War, the Second American Confederate_soldier, D.W. Griffith was at S.F. State. Revolution which put an end to slav­ a vicious racist whose film vilified ery, are introduced with KKK recruit­ Reconstruction, glorified the Klan and ing films like Birth of a Nation (orig­ fueled the revival of the terrorist KKK. cross on Stone Mountain with the said, That's the whole point. What movie's release in Atlanta and ran they're trying to do is keep whites inally titled The Clansman). Black The NAACP launched vigorous pro­ against blacks and vice versa'." students who challenge this crap are tests of the film and tried to block its recruitment posters in local papers next Dozens of students signed up to help abused like "uppity Negroes" and release, but President Woodrow Wil­ to ads for the film. One Yankee film­ build a protest of this racist outrage. kicked out of the classroom. One young son, who was pushing segregationist goer proclaimed, "It 'makes me want to Students announced the demonstra­ woman decided to fight back, and now legislation, endorsed it at a private go out and kill the first Negro I see," as tion on graffiti chalkboards in the students-black, Latin, Asian, white, scr~ening at the White House, as did "Ku-Klux fever" spread in the North as bathrooms, and filled the boards with gay-are incensed and organizing to do Edward White, the Chief Justice of the well. comments against racism on campus. something about it. . Supreme Court and a "former" Klans­ The effect of pushing KKK propa­ You could hear a pin drop in the usu­ On September II, Cindy Nolan, a man. Klansmen timed the burning of a ganda in classrooms today while mi~ nority students are under attack on ally boisterous cafeteria when SYC campuses across the country was played members came through to announce the out in Loomis' class. Professor Loomis, demo, and students as well as campus workers grabbed up leaflets. On the East Germany and with her "Gone With the Wind" sylla­ bus, brooked no debate with Cindy, evening of September 18, as Barbara Political Revolution giving a green light to racists who then Loomis' shamefully segregated "His­ In June 1953, East Germany was the barraged Cindy with fighting words tory 424" reconvened, a very integrated scene of the first mass proletarian uprising like "black slaves were lazy and goofed demonstration of over 50 people chant­ against Stalinist bureaucratic rule. The off a lot," that "poor whites were the ed outside, "Protest Jim Crow 424! It's workers' protests defended the collectiv­ real victims of slavery," that Chinese time to finish the Civil War!" and "From ized foundations of the East German de­ immigrant workers, who were victims Bensonhurst to SF State, workers and formed workers state and called on their of murderous racist pogroms and re­ students must fight race-hate!" class brothers in the West to "clean out pression in California, were "treated Twenty years ago, minority students your crap in Bonn." Fighting against the well." Refusing to abide by Loomis' took over San Francisco State Universi­ TROTSKY pro-Stalinist revisionism of Michel Pablo LENIN appeal for "self-imposed censorship," ty in the militant 1969 student strike, and Ernest Mandel which destroyed the Cindy was told she "didn't belong," That spectre still haunts the admin­ Fourth International, the then- Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party of James P. ordered to leave the room and dropped istration today. (They tried "banning" Cannon championed the East German workers uprising as a vindication of the from the course. the Spartacists five years ago, only to perspective of proletarian political revolution, dnd called for the reunification of The Spartacus Youth Club fought be defeated when we spoofed their Germany on a socialist basis. back-and in the process found many totalitarian red hunt by going "under­ other students who had also been ground" as "Xandra and the Red Briefly, what did the East German uprising reveal? Avengers"!) Now director of student I. It showed that the working class was the initiating and decisive force in leading. degraded and victimized at this school. One black woman told how she had activities Russ Natson has declared the the people to revolt. anti-racist protest "an illegal demon­ 2. It disclosed the-cplossal power and potentialities of the workers' movement· been driven out of a class for objecting to the screening of Birth ofa Nation orr stration" and has revoked "official which united all currents of labor opinion in massive protest. Virtually the entire recognition" of the Spartacus Youth working class opposed itself to the regime and all its agencies, beginning with the the first day of her history course! Another told how she was given an Club on the campus he patrols like an SED. apartheid bantustan! The SYC swiftly 3. The unpopular government was sprung into midair without any support "incomplete" i9 a psychology course for . challenging the professor's assertion responded with a petition campaign to amongst the people. Its main props, the party, the police and the top bureaucracy, that "black women have babies differ­ "protest the exclusion of Cindy Nolan crumbled and collapsed l!nder the impact of the uprising. from History 424 and demand that the 4. The advanced workers broke in action with the government party, the SED. ently from white women." A lesbian woman complained of another psy­ administration cease and desist its ha­ 5. They evinced determination to overthrow the regime, not to reform it. This rassment of the S partacus Youth Club." repudiation and rejection was implicit in the demand for "a metal-workers govern­ chology professor who made anti­ homosexual remarks and claimed that Six different student organizations took ment." The sum total of the other demands were incompatible with the continuance petitions and several have invited the of the dictatorship. blacks were oppressed "for genetic reasons." Many are eager to challenge SYC to address their meetings on how 6. The general mass political strike, sparked by immediate economic demands and "bigotry as usual" at SF State. On Sep­ to fight back. directed against the government, became the means for mobilizing the masses and What's happening at San Francisco pitting them against the regime. tember 14, Cindy addressed an abortion rights. rally on campus: state is not an isolated phenomenon. 7. The Trotskyist program of the necessity of political revolution against Stalin­ On September 21, at San Francisco City ism by a mass uprising was vindicated and adopted in action by the insurgent "This class is supposed to be on the Civil College (a school with 70 percent minor­ workers. War, it's supposed to be on the smash­ ing of chattel slavery, and the only black ity enrollment) Black Student Union 8. The unarmed and unsupported masses had to fall back. They felt the need for in the class-me-is kicked out! So posters were defaced with Nazi swasti­ the formation of a revolutionary leadership and a party to organize the next stages who:s this class really for? ... This racist kas, skulls and crossbones and racist and link it up with the struggles in the West and the buffer zone countries. incident comes in a wave of a whole death threats: "Niggers Beware. Hands growing tide of race-terror. You have a - "Against Pabloist Revisionism" (November 1953) racist murder of Yusuf Hawkins in Ben­ off Whites. Or Die!" At the College of sonhurst, New York. He was in the San Mateo, a "free speech" newspaper 'wrong place,' he was a black and didn't called Monday Morning Blues ran a have the 'right' to be there too, he 'didn't slimesheet of slurs against Asians, belong' in the neighborhood. He was signed by one "Jubal Early." Jubal murdered. "What the racists are trying to do in this Early was a lieutenant general in the country, and what the administration ConfederateArmy! The American Civil on this campus is doing to help, is turn War is as relevant to Asian immigrants !!~!!'!!'Y '!~!!t'!.~'!{!u.s~ back the hands of the clock. What they as it is to blacks or anyone else fighting DIRECTOR OF PARTY PUBLICATIONS: Liz Gordon want is 'white only' pre-1954 segrega­ EDITOR: Jan Norden tion! , .. Any decent student, white or for equality in this country. As Cindy PRODUCTION MANAGER: Jorge Ramirez black, on this campus is a potential vic­ Nolan stated: CIRCULATION MANAGER: Jon Lawrence tim ofthis kind of racial harassment and "In 1989 a black woman is still denied EDITORIAL BOARD: George Foster, Frank Hunter, Jane Kerrigan, Len Meyers, James Robertson, the kind of anti-scientific things that access to a college class-because I dare Reuben Samuels, Joseph Seymour, Alison Spencer, Marjorie Stamberg these teachers are trying to put forth. to challenge those who would reverse The Spartacist League is the U.S. Section of the International Communist League (Fourth "So we call on all decent, anti-racist stu­ the verdict of the Civil War. Today Internationalist) . dents to come out on Monday ... to KKK race-terrorists-the 'ghosts of the have a militant demonstration against Confederacy'-spew racist filth to mo­ Workers Vanguard (USPS 098-770) published biweekly, except 2nd issue August and with 3-week interval December. by the Spartacist Publishing Co., 41 Warren Street, New York. NY 10007. Telephone: (212) 732-7862 (Editorial). this racist expulsion, so that black stu­ bilize for genocide. We have to stop (212) 732-7861 (Business). Address all correspondence to: Box 1377. GPO, New York. NY 10116. Domestic dents can get an ed ucation just as well as them and the way to do it is by mo­ subscriptions: $7.00/24 issues. Second-class postage paid at New York. NY POSTMASTER: Send address changes to any other student on this campus! We bilizing the power of the integrated, Workers Vanguard. Box 1377. GPO. New York, NY 10116. want all of you to be there because all of organized labor movement to finish Opinions expressed in signed articles 6r letters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint. you know a lot more about the history the Civil War with a third American of the Civil War than this teacher revolution, a socialist revolution that No. 486 29 September 1989 does .... A white student asked me, 'But will make good on the promise of racial I'm white, why should I be there?' And I equality.". ' 2 WORKERS VANGUARD Join the Fight to Save MumiaAbu-Jamal!

Mumia Abu-Jamal is a death row political pris­ substantive and procedural fairness of the trial, I Pat Farren oner. A Black Panther Party spokesman at the age of appeal to you in your capacity as governor to remove Editor, Peacework, Publication of American Friends 14, a prominent journalist known as a supporter of the cloud of death from Mr. Abu-Jamal. Service Committee, Cambridge, Massachusetts Philadelphia's MOVE organization, former president Beyond the fact that I believe that utilization of the To have a man on death row essentially for political of the Philadelphia Chapter of the Association of death penalty is unbecoming of a modern, civilized reasons, because his outspoken views were offensive Black Journalists. For his political views and activities society, I l1elieve that the circumstances of this case to those in power and because the color of his skin the racist capitalist courts have sentenced Abu-Jamal compel a rejection of this most ultimate sanction. I join made him appear expendable, is absolutely out­ to die. The name of Mumia Abu-Jamal must be made a with many others in urging you to commute this sen­ rageous. This adds up to the premeditated murder of rallying cry in the fight against injustice and syn­ tence, and to spare the life of one who seems perhaps to a political prisoner; beyond the basic immorality onymous with the fight against the barbaric death have met his accusers on the spoiled ground of polit­ of capital punishment and the fact that there is penalty. Save Mumia Abu-Jamal! Abolish the Death ica} entanglement. deep doubt about the circumstances of the crime, Penalty! the fact that Mumia Abu-Jamal is being punished The "voice of the voiceless" is again being heard­ Rev. Graylan S. Ellis-Hagler for his race and for his politics is a triple level of Abu-Jamal's columns are now being published in the Northeast Coordinator, Church of the United immorality. Philadelphia Tribune, Atlanta Inquirer, Savannah Community, Roxbury, Massachusetts Herald, New York's Big Red News, Bakersfield News Under no circumstance should the State put them­ James W. Ryder Observer, San Francisco's Sun Reporter, San Fran­ selves in a place to judge who lives and who dies. The President, /L WU Local 6, San Francisco, California cisco Metro Reporter, Jackson Advocate, Alabama's act of judgment resulting in death should only rest with It is true that I, personally, and my Local and Greene County Democrat and Workers Vanguard; God and not any state. Also, as we look across the International Unions deplore the death penalty, but in From Paris to the San Francisco Bay Area over 9,000 country, one easily realizes that who serves on Death this particular case, it is most compelling that you people-union officials, civil rights organizations, Rowand faces death at the hands of the State are reject the death penalty and commute the sentence of death penalty abolitionists, religious leaders-have almost always poor people and usually people-of­ Mr. Abu-Jamal. His life should not be sacrificed as demanded of the Pennsylvania governor that Abu­ color. Which automatically says to us, that the use of part of a larger political battleground. Jamal not die. Capital Punishment is both classist and racist. continued on page 10 Chicago's Amalgamated Transit Union Local 308 and Cleveland's Communications Workers of America Local 4309 have written Governor Casey on Abu­ Jamal's behalf. Congressmen Ron Dellums and John Lewis, Wisconsin state representative David Claren­ bach and Massachusetts state representative Byron Rushing wrote Governor Casey, as did Chicago Alder­ men Bobby Rush and Danny Davis, who said Mumia's "fight should become the fight of all those who seek justice and love mercy." Among the many rallying to Mumia's support are Stop Racist '~Legal" Lynchings!' television's Edward Asner and Sabrina LeBeauf of "The Cosby Show"; Pat Turner, widow of blues great .... ','."'~".,""~~.,. - Sponsors/Speakers'- "Big Joe" Turner; Rev. Daniel Berrigan; Rev. Joseph Lowery, president of the Southern Christian Leader­ William Babcock, Executive Director, Pennsylvania Prison ship Conference; Jack Healey, executive director of Society Amnesty International; and Robert Bryan, chairper­ Charles Brover, Co~Chairman, Partisan Defense Committee son of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Sister Falaka Fattah, President, House of UMOJA Boystown' Penalty. Muriel Feelings, Director, Pan-African Studies Community Don't let them murder this courageous fighter for Education Program of rem pie University (PASCEP) the oppressed. Take a stand against "legal" lynching. Wadiya Jamal, Wife of Mumia Abu-Jamal, MOVE supporter Mobilize your unions, community and civil rights Harold Jamison of the New York Amsterdam News' organizations. Send your letters demanding Abu­ I Abdul Jon, Mumia Abu-Jamal supporter, MOVE supporter Jamal not be executed to: Governor Robert Casey, Raymond Martinez, Jr., Vice President, Philadelphia Chapter, Main Capitol Building, Room 225, Harrisburg, PA Pennsylvania Social Services Union SEIU Local 668' 17120. Join us ill Philadelphia to rally against the death David P. Richardson, Jr., President, National Black Caucus of penalty on October 14 (see ad). Take a stand with the State Legislators,' Pennsylvania State Representative POC contingent at the March Against Executions in Sonia Sanchez. Poet San Francisco on Octoher 21. Pamela S. Tucker, President and Co-Founder, Western We print below excerpted letters demanding Mumia ,. Pennsyhiarfia Coal.,-Againstthe Deat~ty' not be executed. Charles Valenta, President, Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Workers Union Local 1034' JaNina M. Abr'on Lois A. Williamson, Executive Director, Citizens United for Assistant Editor, The Black Scholar, Rehabilitation of Errants (CURE)' Oakland, California I am a former member of the Black Panther Party 'Organization tor identification purposes only. and a former editor of The Black Panther Inter­ communal News Service. I know from firsthand experience the racist treatment to which African­ Americans like Mr. Abu-Jamal are subjected when Saturday, October 14, 3:00 p.m. they take a strong stand against the many injustices suffered by black people. Temple University, Gladfelter Hall, Room 107 Ronald V. Dellums Hosted by Pan-African Studies Community Education Program (PASCEP) Member of Congress, Oakland, California Having reviewed the basic facts of the case, the 12th and Berks Streets failure to call witnesses, the jury selection, Mr. Abu­ Jamal's injuries at the time of the incident, and the --...,..----. Refreshments Available ----- circumstances leading up to and following the shoot­ For information contact Slate Representative David Richardson. 6345 Germantown Avenue, Philadelphia. PA 19144 (215) 849-6592 ing, I am deeply troubled by the conviction and sen­ Partisan Defense Committee. Suite 92, 1530 Locust Street, Philadelphia, PA 19102 (215) 222-7880 tence. While it remains for the Court to determine the 29 SEPTEMBER 1989 3 Anti-Communist Frenzy Over East German "Dropouts"

The following article is translated from Spartakist No. 63, September/ October 1989, newspaper of the Trotz­ kistische Liga Deutschlands. The biggest mass outflow from East Germany since the Berlin Wall was built in. 1961 has precipitated a sharp confrontation between capitalist West Germany and the East German bu­ reaucratically deformed workers state. Since Hungary opened its border with Austria in early September for East Germans heading for West Germany, the number coming this route pres­ ently totals 17,000. In addition, more than 50,000 citizens of the German Democratic Republic (DDR-East Germany) have legally emigrated to the Federal RepUblic (West Germany) so far in 1989. The West German me­ dia is having an anti-Communist field day whipping up the mass flight "psy­ chosis." East Germans listening to the bombastic, minute-by-minute re­ 'Der Spiegel ports on West German TV said tpat East Germans line up at West German embassy in Budapest, Hungary. West German magazine Der ~~gel gloats, "Is they sounded like "victory reports in the DDR Exploding?" wartime." In addition to an expected 100,000- The first "breakout," on August 19, ers are now applying for jobs in the Gertnan, so long as they aren't Jewish. plus East Germans, the Federal Re­ was organized by the ultrarightist Pan DDR). (There have been numerous cases of public is bringing in half a million European Movement of Count Otto So why do these thwarted "dropouts" Volksdeutsche who petitioned forWest ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche) this von Habsburg. Nothing "spontaneous" from a materially comfortable no-win German citizenship but were turned year from the Soviet Union, Poland, about it-a special train was standing by society leave? By and large it's not down because they were Jews.) This Romania, etc. The same imperialist in Vienna to whisk the "refugees" to for economic reasons: many know of ominously recalls Hitler's "protection" state that has expelled Turkish "guest camps in West Germany. And the mass unemployment in West Germany of the Sudeten Germans in Czechoslo­ workers" by the tens ·of thousands is "exodus" of September 10 was minutely (almost two million jobless according vakia in 1938. now conducting a campaign to "Aryan­ prepared: the West German Auto Club to official figures) from Western TV. Along the same lines, the 50th anni­ ize" its workforce along the lines: "For­ set up fuel dumps along the Austrian While the emigrants are not partic­ versary of Hitler's invasion of Poland eigners out, emigres in, and German Autobahn of the gas-oil mixture needed ularly political, there was a sense was "commemorated" in West Ger­ women should give birth." for older East German "Trabant" autos. that there would be no "opening" in many with the right wing in Bonn reas­ But those that are enticed by the prop­ The bourgeois press (as well as the East Germany for the foreseeable fu­ serting that the Federal Republic laid aganda barrage to "flee" to the West Greens' unofficial house organ taz) pre­ ture. Gorbachev's glasnost is verboten claim to the" 1937 borders of the Ger­ don't always find the experience pleas­ dicted that East Germany was "disap­ in Honecker's Vopo (People's Police) man Reich." No wonder the Poles got ant. Currently the influx of tens of thou­ pearing," and sniggered that the last one state. The hard line Stalinists who lead nervous: even Solidarnosc-funded for sands of skilled workel'S is being used by out (DDR chief Erich Honecker, of the DDR were one of the few govern­ years with D-marks from the West Ger­ the bosses to undercut wage demands by course) would have to turn out the iight. ments in the world to applaud Deng's man DGB unions (and CIA dollars)­ West German unions in upcoming nego­ To get a sense of proportion, even bloody massacre in Beijing. And now was squirming. U.S. chief Bush may tiations. ~oreover, many who are used the conservative London Economist there was an opportunity, with the find the prospect of a capitalist unifica­ to having cheap housing, guaranteed (16 September) noted that the total opening of the Hungarian border, cou­ tion of Germany tantalizing but it sends employment and free medical care just number of East Germans likely to enter pled with Torschlusspanik, a panic over cold shivers up the spines of his Euro­ don't fit into the competitive "elbow­ West Germany this year "is proportion­ the gate slamming shut. But rather than pean allies, whose memories of the last society" of capitalist West Germany. An ately smaller than the number of people a hemorrhaging, the pressures building Reich are not that short. estimated 20 percent of the homeless are who abandoned the Republic ofIreland up in the DDR steam boiler could pro­ The imperialists are using the DO R former DDR "refugees." Meanwhile, last year. Nobody assumes the collapse duce an explosion. emigres as a wedge for breaking up chauvinist hostility against them is of Ireland." Out of a total DDR popu­ Contrary to the expectations of Der the Warsaw Pact by exploiting contra­ growing among West German Spiess­ lation of 17 million, there were 1.8 mil­ Spiegel et aI., that upheaval is by no dictions among the East J;:uropean burger (philistines) anxious to defend lion East German visitors to the West means destined to be counterrevolu­ bureaucracies. The meaning of Buda­ their standard of living. last year, a total of 3.3 million visits to tionary. More than 40 years of Stalinist pest's aggressive act -of abrogating its When East Berlin denounced :the West Germany (some visited more than misrule has not extinguished a deeply treaty with the DDRwas made clear West's "trade in human beings," Bonn once). Except for 40,000, they all went .egalitarian consciousness in the DDR. when the president of the Hungarian cried foul. But the next day a OM 500 back. The stand'ard of living in the DO R The International Herald Tribune (15 parliament spoke of withdrawing from million ($250 million) bank credit to is by far the highest in the Soviet bloc, September) reported that in random the Warsaw Pact and becoming neu­ . Hungary was announced, secured by a and certainly higher than Britain or interviews with young, well-educated tral, like Finland or Austria (Wash­ West , German government guarantee. Italy (in fact, unemployed Italian work- East Germans visiting Budapest, many ington Post, 19 September). Simulta­ shared the sentiment of a 27-year-old neously, Washington announced that chemical engineer who said, "We're Hungary would be granted "most educated in such a way that we believe favored natiqn" trade status. In War­ socialism makes everybody equal. Here saw, where. the new goverp.ment is in Hungary, I see that people are not headed by a 'Catholic prini~" minister equal. Here, I think it depends on the who openly vows to restore capitalism, money." The sodal foundations of the Bonn has indicated that future D-mark East German deformed workers state investment in the moribund Polish were laid as the Red Army smashed the economy is conditional on flying out Nazi Third Reich. As a result, East East Germans occupying the West Ger­ Germany experienced a more profound man embassy. soc1al upheaval than did Hungary or The crisis in East Germany reflects Poland. above all developments in the Soviet Union. Until now the East German Sta­ Bonn's Orang nach Osten linists have tried to follow the Krem­ The chauvinist hysteria in the West lin's every zig and zag, for good reason. over the East German emigrants, ex­ Facing the economically far stronger tending from the Christian Democrats West Germany, they needed the mili­ (CDU/CSU) to the Social Democrats tary backing of the USSR and the (SPD) and Greens, reflects the ominous Warsaw Pact. But with relative success based on central planning, the DDR Der rise of German nationalism. Bonn claims a "protective right" for "ethnic has little reason to follow Moscow's West Germany's doo'rs close to non-German refugees seeking political market-oriented perestroika. (They tried asylum (above). Tamils, Kurds-are routinely deported, tens of thousands of Germans" throughout the Soviet bloc­ Turkish workers have been expelled. no matter if they don't speak a word of continued on page 11 4 WORKERS VANGUARD Centrists Swing Wildll Ove.r Balties! Poland The Men on the Flying Trapeze

As thousands of Jewish slave labor­ ers left the Vilna Ghetto in Lithuania for their work detail on the morning of 6 August 1943, they were surrounded by Estonian Nazi troops. The Jewish men and women knew what this meant­ deportation to death, the FinalSolu­ tion. Many resisted-they were blood­ ily mowed down. The rest were loaded onto freight cars for transport to con­ centration camps in Estonia. A month later, Vilna, the historic center of Jewish culture In East Europe, was "ludenrein"-"cleansed" of Jews. As the final Aktion was being carried out in early September, Estonian patrols stood outside the ghetto gates to get those who tried to escape. After the Soviet army drove the Wehrmacht out of the Baltic Socialist Action leader Nat Weinstein (left) joins region in 1944, many of these local Nazis with anti-Communists in December 1981, rally for escaped to the woods, where as the counterrevolutionary Solidarnosc. Workers Power "Forest Brothers" they continued to ' honcho Mark Hoskisson (far right) showing "solidar­ carry out terror against Communists ity" with Reagan's favorite "union." and Jews until the early 1950s. Now we read that these sadistic beasts return to capitalism!" Like Nancy sweep the issue of Nazi collaboration new 'liberated' territories-Lithuania, were "freedom fighters" who were part Reagan telling ghetto kids to "just say under the rug, Lindmae positively Latvia, Estonia, White Ruthenia [Bye­ of "The Armed Struggle Against Sta­ no to drugs"! But whenSolidarnosc crows: "In the expUlsion of the Red lorussia], the Ukraine ...." ,The Esto­ linism in Estonia." And where is this Was preparing a counterrevolutionary Army from the mainland and islands of nian Nazis had a particular place of apologia for Estonian Nazis to be coup in the fall of 1981, Workers Power Estonia, Forest Brothers' self-defense "honor" in Hitler's satellite legions: found? Not in the pages oLsome neo­ called for a "military united front" with units partiCipated along with the Ger­ unlike the others, they were deemed to Nazi "revisionist" history, but in a "left­ Walesa & Co. man armed forces." He takes pride in be full equals in the German-Nordic wing" publication, International View­ the fact that by May 1943 "there were Aryan "New Order." Ernest Mandel's USee Salutes already 22,849 Estonians i,n Hitler's Early in the war, Estonians formed point (18 September), the organ of Estonian Nazis Ernest Mandel's United Secretariat armed forces." For Lindmae, the Esto­ the 658th and "Narva" volunteer bat­ (USee), represented 'in' this country , Any Red Army veteran of the war nians in Hitler's armed forces were talions and 17 border guard battalions; mainly by "Socialist Action." Mandel's against Nazi Germany, any survivor of engaging in a "national liberation" in 1943 the Estonian SS Volunteer Bri­ outfit reprints without criticism this the extermination camps and of the struggle: gade was formed as part of the Waffen piece by one Herbert Lindmae, origi­ Einsatzgruppen death squads would "The armed struggle against Stalinism SS. Estonia was the main center for was fundamentally a struggle of the nally published in the monthly paper of boil in outrage if they saw International Nazi concentration camps in the Baltic. Estonian people for liberation .... The Of Estonia's tiny prewar Jewish popu­ the Estonian People's Front. In its Viewpoint's disgusting glorification of fact that during the war people involved editorial introduction International their tormentors. A 1982 History of in it fought on the side of fascist Ger­ lation of some 4,000, the 1,000 not for­ Viewpoint recommends Lindmae's arti­ the Waffen SS by Hugh Page Taylor, many is strictly the fault of Stalin­ tunate enough to make it to Soviet ism .... It was hoped that the Germans Russia had all been wiped out by the end cle as an answer to the Soviet press sympathetic to the Baltic nationalists, would reestablish Estonian independ­ which "continues to cry scandal about noted: "The German advance through of 1941. At the Tartu camp, whose Esto­ ence' or that it would be re-established nian commandant Karl Linnas was any defense of the 'Forest Brothers'." southern Estonia was greatly assisted by when Germany lost the war to the West- Scandal?· The "Forest Brothers" were the efforts of Estonian guerrillas, those ern Allies.'" . finally extradited from the U.S. in 1987, anti-Soviet Nazi terrorists! men who had started to go into hiding as Here is the true longing of anti­ 12,000 people were slaughtered, most of Swinging from another pole in the 'Brothers of the Forest' during the lat­ Communist Estonian nationalism: to them Communists. When the Red Army fake-Trotskyist milieu are the confused ter stages of the Russian occupation." have been an "independent" puppet of was about to liberate the camp at centrists of the British Workers Power A recent piece in the New Yorker (I8 either Nazi Germany or U.S. imperial­ Klooga, Estonia in 1944, a band of 30 group, which has simultaneously come September), which conveys a sense of ism-"re-established" over the mass Estonian fascists killed as many Jews as out for the Stalinist position of the the virulent anti-Slav racism permeating graves of Jews and Communists. they could get their hands on. inviolability of the borders of the So­ the current Estonian nationalist move­ The Estonian Nazis played their full The current Baltic nationalist move­ viet Union while supporting the anti­ ment, interviews one Forest Brother part in Hitler's crusade against "Judeo­ ment is being portrayed by the Western democratic demands of the Baltic who proudly recalls his participation in Bolshevism," as Arno J. Mayer points media and most self-styled leftists as a nationalists. And after years of tailing the siege of Leningrad. For 900 bitter out in Why Pid the Heavens Not noble str~gle for democracy and free­ pro-capitalist Solidarnosc in Poland, days, at the cost of a million lives, the Darken? (1988): "Significantly, some of dom, symbolized by young girls in folk now that Solidarnosc has formed a cab­ people of Leningrad heroically held out the first and for a time the worst out.:. costumes carrying candles and flags of inet intent on carrying out its program and triumphed-and today Mandel rages against the Jews were committed the pre-1940 "independent republics." of restoring capitalism, Workers Power salutes their Nazi attackers! ' not by the new-model Einsatzgruppen We have warned that this movement is sagely advises the Polish workers: "No Where many Baltic nationalists try to but by latter-day local pogromists in the continued on page J4 Ernest M'andel's USee Salutes Estonian Nazis

The armed struggle against Stalinism in Estonia

18 September 1989 ~m..hu to stm1. from £ f.a form.uon J the new government of the Ibat the EslOlJiGn ,cpublic -.r Esl:oniUl Republic IImkr O. Tier on Sep- A_ .~~~~byllv,l:lA""1~~~~y~C«Iq~IOf

United Secretariat's International Viewp-olnt defends Estonian "Forest Rebane (left in photo) led "Forest Brothers" unit against Red Army, then Brothers," 'claiming these Nazi collaborators were waging "liberation" joined Nazi forces. Right: Klooga death camp in Estonia, where 3,000 people, struggle. Center: Three Estonian officers of Waffen SS 20th Division. Alfons half of them Jews from the Vilna Ghetto In Lithuania, were exterminated. 29 SEPTEMBER 1989 5 The following is the second and final part of an edited speech given in Paris on July 22 by Joseph Seymour, mem­ ber of the Central Committee of the From Jacobinism to Bolshevism Spartacist League/ U.S; The talk was part of an educational by the Ligue Trotskyste de France on the bicenten­ nial of the French Revolution. Part One is printed in Workers Vanguard No. 484 (1 September).

he Jacobin regime, which came IN,.DEFENSE~, ·1 OF THE into being through the journee of T2 June 1793, and was overthrown with the fall of Robespierre op the 9th of Thermidor, July 1794, represented both the climax of the French Revolution and one of the most extraordinary FRENCH moments in the history of the Western world. Ever since, almost all of the passionate debates and conflicts around the French Revolution have centered on precisely this brief period. For 200 years reactionaries and liberals have denounced the Jacobin terror as. a REVOLUIION great crime 'against humanity carried out in the name of red revolution. At the same time, the young Marx believed that the Jacobin regime represented the political rule of the proletariat. In this misconception he was expressing the views of many of the participants of the Revolution itself. After the monarchy was overthrown the Parisian plebeian masses became increasingly radical, especially because their living standards were eroded by the

PART TWO ,OF TWO

inflation generated by the war. Increas­ ingly the sans-culottes raised economic demands which went against the inter­ ests of both the bourgeoisie and sec­ tions of the upper petty bourgeoisie. They demanded price controls, laws against hoarding and speCUlation, and these questions widened the split within Uprising of 2 June n93 brought J~cobins to power. Eighty thousand National Guards surrounded Convention, the revolutionary bourgeoisie ruling on demanding purging of right-wing Girondins. the basis of the Convention. The right wing of the revolutionary bourgeoisie, This was a demagogic falsification, a leadership to the left of the Jacobins, ocratic convictions, rested on a belief in the Girondins, opposed these demands because the Montagnards were not that is, militants like Jacques Roux the virtue of the parliamentary sys­ in the name of economic laissez-faire. social levelers. In February of 1793 the and Pierre Vadet whom later historians tem .... The revolt of2 June had struck a The left wing, the Montagnards-what poor· people of Paris broke into many termed the Enrages. Thus Robespierre grave blow at parliamentary ideals." we call the Jacobins now-were willing shops, taking sugar and soap and pay­ and his colleagues decided to concili­ This is one of the few occasions in which to meet these demands halfway. Thus ing at prices far below the going market ate, co-opt and utilize the sans-culotte I find myself in agreement with Furet, the Girondins denounced the Monta­ rate. This action was denounced, not radicalism rather than simply opposing because 125 years later the reverbera­ gnards-the Robespierrists---:flS practi­ only by the Girondins but also by the it. And indeed the Montagnard leader­ tions of this journee were heard when cally communists. The Girondin leader Montagnard leaders Robespierre and ship took power through the journee of the Bolsheviks disbanded the Constit­ Brissot referred to the Montagnards: Marat, for disturbing the unity of the June 2, when 80,000 National Guards­ uent Assembly in the name of soviet "The troublemakers are those who want French patrie, because for them the men surrounded the Convention and power. to level everything down-property, shopkeepers and merchants were also demanded the purging of the Girondin But .the originaljournee created only human comfort, the price of goods, and part of the patrie. leadefs. an unstable regime of the revolutionary the various services that are performed But such opposition risked alienat­ Marx was mistaken to believe that bourgeoisie, resting on classes with for society." ing the sans-culottes and driving them to this marked the beginning of the pOlit­ fundamentally different and conflict­ ical rule of the proletariat, the artisan ing economic interests. While all of proletariat. What actually happened the dramatic events of the French , was that the proletariat imposed upon Revolution occurred in the cities, pre­ France a government of a revolution­ dominantly Paris, the key to the Revo­ ary minority of the bourgeoisie. But in lution is really what happened in the Marx's mistaken conception there was countryside. As long as t4e peasants an important germ of historical truth­ were still struggling to abolish the sys­ that is, thejournee of June 2 was the dis­ tem of feudal exploitation, the French tant ancestor of the dictatorship of the Revolution moved leftward. However, proletariat, because this inspired the one of the first acts of the Jacobin­ uprising of the Paris proletariat in the dominated Convention was to order the June Days of tht;: Revolution of 1848, an abolition of all feudal rents without uprising which Marx termed the first any indemnification. Moreover, they attempt to establish the dictatorship of ordered the title deeds burned. the proletariat. And the June Days of ·Once the peasantry felt secure as 1848 were a major factor inspiring the small property owners, their economic uprisings which created the Paris Com­ interests obviously conflicted with those mune a generation later. of the urban lower classes. They wanted It is very significant that even today high food prices, the urban lower classes the liberal Fran~ois Furet sees the origi­ wanted low food prices. Thus during nal sin of Jacobinism in that they came much of the Jacobin regime the revolu­ to power through the .violation of par­ tionary army had as its task to collect liamentary sovereignty. Thus Furet and grain from the peasantry at prices below Denis Riche! write in their book The the natural market rate. This did not French Revolution: "The whole bour­ make the Robespierre regime very pop­ Maximilien Robespierre Georges Danton geois revolution, even in its most dem- ular in the countryside. 6 WORKERS VANGUARD At the same time, the question of' economic controls also split the sans­ culottes along class lines. Obviously all of the Parisian lower classes could agree At the Grave of Philippe Buonarroti that the price of grain should be lower. But the so-called "general maximum," the controls on all major prices and wages, opened up conflicting interests between the small property owners-the THE , JACOBIN shopkeepers and the master artisans­ and the wage earners such as journey­ men and day laborers. In the fall of 1793 there were violent conflicts between COMMUNIST TRADITION the market women of Les Hailes, who resented the price controls, and the Society of Revolutionary Republican We print below a translation of the BUONARROTrs HISTORY Women, which was part of the Enrage remarks by Jean Thimbault, speaking for the Ligue Trotskyste de France at current and wanted more sever~ -and­ BABEUF'S CONSPIRACY better-enforced price controls. The Jac­ a gathering at the tombo! Philippe obin leadership used this as a pretext for Buonarroli in Montmartre Ceme.tery suppressing the Society of Revolution­ in Paris on July 22. EQUALITY; ary Republican Women. First I would like to begin by quot­

The class contradictions of its po­ ing the inscription that the disciples of TilE Al:TIIOR'8 REFLECTIOXS litical base account for the internal Philippe Buonarroti wanted to place contradictiuns of Jacobin ideology. In on pis tombstone, his graveyard mon­ practically every speech and every ument, in 1837: "Philippe Buonarroti, C!!autlttl So (tbn~tttr of tbe SrtntfJ Utuolutioll. piece of writing by Robespierre and born in Pisa (Tuscany) on II No­ Saint-Just on the question of property, vember 1761, granted French citizen­ LE.1DING MEN AXD EVENTS Op THAT EPOCH. one sentence contradicts the previous ship by a decree of the Convention on ,u.su. HI. YIIWS O. sentence and the following sentence. 27 May 1793, died in Paris on ))E)lOCH.\ TIC GOYERNMENT, For example, here's Robespierre in the 16 September 1837. 'My life, stormy, COMl\IUNITY OF PROPERTY, spring of 1793:"1 can hardly believe that troubled, full of sacrifices and sor­ it took a revolution to teach the world rows, marked by an ardent effort for POLl'nCAL AX)) SOCIAL EQUALITY. that extreme disparities in wealth lie at the happiness of others, this is what the root of many ills and crimes." That' you have been called upon to judge'." Kurt Philippe Buonarroti carried 1 • .t.~iLAT'D .aoll TNa .... ~"'CH L"NCt'AQI. AND ILLl:5Ta"TID I" sounds pretty good. However he goes That was Buonarroti's defense argu­ forward Babeuf's· heritage. ORIOIJI',U. "'liT III, IOTe. on: " ... but we are not the less con­ ment to the High Court of Vendome By BRONTERRE. vinced that the realization of an equal­ on 21 Floreal, Year V [April 1797], ity of fortunes is a visionary's dream .... after the coup d'etat of 9 Thermidor. standing, a worker placed a wreath national commissar to the tribunal at It is far more a question of lending dig­ The inscription goes on: "Sentenced to with these words: "Buonarroti, great Corte. He participated in the attempt nity to poverty than of making war on deportation, deprived'ofhis civil rights citizen, friend of equality, the people at a revolutionary invasion of then­ wealth." Well, even Chirac and Ray­ in jail and exile, prey to the cruelest award you this wreath. History and feudal Sardinia. In Paris, he linked up mond Barre could agree with that! persecution, he nonetheless persisted posterity will uphold this acclaim." with the Jacobin milieu. It even seems Robespierre states that he upholds the in his work. Nothing could shake his On the occasion of the bicentennial that he was a frequent visitor to the right of property, but then he qualifies courage. He lived for humanity." of the French Revolution, we Trot­ house where Robespierre lived, owned it: "It may not be so exercised as to I t was a little more than 150 years skyists, members of the International by the Duplays, who themselves prejudice the security, or the liberty, or ago that Philippe Buonarroti died­ Communist League (Fourth Interna­ late~ participated in the Conspiracy the existence, or the property of our fel­ the former reVOlutionary Jacobin cad­ tionalist), are indeed htEre to pay of Equals. The revolutionary govern­ low men." This is an entirely utopian re, former communist leader of the homage to Buonarroti and all the "ment entrusted him with several mis­ qualification. Conspiracy of Equals alongside Grac­ Babouvist fighters who were the first sions and on 9 Thermidor he was gov­ Of course the contradictions of the chus Babeuf. He was 75. When he was to try to institute communism through ernor of the principality of Oneglia, a Jacobin, or revolutionary, bourgeoisie buried, more than 1,500 people fol­ revolutionary action. From this point small territory east of Menton, which did not 9nly exist in the realm of ideas. lowed the funeral procession. A copy of view, we are their heirs. the revolution had split off from the They existed in the realm of real politics, of his book, Babeuf's Conspiracy for Buonarroti was born in 1761 in Kingdom of Piedmont. and under the pressures of conflicting Equality, a real bible for European Italy, more exactly in Pisa. He was a Thrown into prison, Buonarroti social forces the Jacobin bourgeoisie revolutionaries of the time, was buried descendant, it is said, of Michelangelo. joined the ·former Robespierrists and began to rip apart into bitterly hostile with him to symbolize, according to When the French Revolution broke former Hebertists in the jails of Ther­ factions. On the right you had the so­ the burial certificate, a desire to shield . out in 1789, he went to Corsica, which midor, where they drew up a balance called Indulgents led by Danton, who it from the desecration of man and . was then French, in order to devote sheet 'of the' revolution from which wanted to negotiate a compromise with pass it on to a far-distant posterity. On himself totally to the revolutionary they had expected, in the language of the forces of counterrevolution-both his tomb, before which we are now struggle. In particular, he served as continued on page 10 the foreign royalists and the domestic counterrevolutionaries-and to pursue an economic policy favorable to the peasantry and the bourgeoisie. On the pierre center physically destroyed the Before discussing Thermidor and its down the houses of the slaveowners. left you had the so-called Exageres led left and right Jacobin factions, execut­ aftermath I want !O discuss the question For this he was accused of being a by Hebert and Chaumette, who wanted ing their leaders. This fatally narrowed of the so-called Terror, because for 200 barbarian, a modern Attila the Hun. an economic policy more favorable the social and political base of the entire years this has been the main focus of Sherman replied: "If the people raise to the sans-culottes. Robespierre and Jacobin regime, and laid the basis for attack by both reactionaries and liber­ a howl against my barbarity and cruel­ Saint-Just tried to occupy the center. Robespierre's overthrow a few months als against the French Revolution. ty, I will answer that war is war, and not And in the spring of 1794 the Robes- later. Approximately 16,000 people were ex­ popularity-seeking. If they want peace, ecuted, maybe another 20,000 people they and their relatives must stop the were killed without a trial. It's unfortu­ war." nate that the popular image of the Ter­ I want to emphasize that the Jacobin ror focuses on Paris-the executions of Terror had nothing to do with totalitar­ Marie-Antoinette, Danton, Hebert and ian thought control or Stalin's Russia. If Chaumette-because the Terror in you read the letters arrd the diaries of the Paris was atypical of the Terror as a . soldiers in the revolutionary army, they whole and moreover constituted only are continually complaining that royal­ a small fraction of the people who ists and counterrevolutionists are insult­ were executed or killed-much less than ing them, that the waitresses who serve 10 percent. them are openly declaring their sympa­ Over 70 percent of the people who thy with the counterrevolution without were executed, and far more of the peo­ any fear of reprisal. ple who were killed without trial, were There's another important question, killed in only two regions of France­ and that is a question of scale. The last both the regions of full-scale' civil war: major war of ancien regime Europe the Vendee and the Gironde in west­ before the French Revolution was the ern France;.. and Lyon and the lower Seven Years' War from 1756 to 1763. In Rhone valley. In half the departments this war Frederick the Great's Prussia of France there was no Terror; practi­ faced a European coalition of Austria, cally no one was killed. Over 80 percent Russia, France and other European of the people who were sentenced to powers. During this war 100,000 Prus­ death were caught fighting the revolu­ sians were killed, not only soldiers but tionary government arms in hand. So also civilians. Since the Prussian army the Terror was simply the revolution­ was a very efficient killing machine, they ary side in a civil war in which neither killed about 200,000 non-Prussian Ger­ side gave any quarter or took prisoners. mans, Russians and others. The war We Americans fought an even blood­ ended in a stalemate. The treaty ending ier Civil War than that of the French it simply reaffirmed the prewar bound­ Revolution. During that Civil War the aries of all the contending parties. In Union general William Sherman rav­ other words, a generation before the The execution of Louis XVI, January 1793. aged the' state of Georgia and burned continued on page 8 29 SEPTEMBER 1989 7 time, came to be seen by future genera­ French tions as the legitimate continuator of the Great French Revolution? The answer is that the Jacobin bourgeoisie of 1793 for Revolution ... the most part became the Bonapartist (continued from page 7) bourgeoisie a decade later, that almost French Revolution 300,000 people were all of the Jacobin cadre who remained killed-ten times the number of the Jac­ politically active became integrated into obin Terror-for absolutely nothing, the Bonapartist bureaucracy. The oth­ for no political or social gain at all. Yet ers simply dropped out of politics. today Frederick the Great is universally The principles of revolutionary de­ honored, including by the East German mocracy embodied in the Jacobin con­ Stalinists, while Robespierre is vilified stitution of 1793 were carried forward as a bloodthirsty monster. only by a small number of extreme­ In any six hours of any of Napoleon's left radicals such as Buonarroti. major battles-Eylau, Austerlitz, Bo­ Buonarroti made a living teachifig Ital­ rodino-more people were killed than ian and music. When in 1821, at the were executed in the entire so-called height of the Metternichian reaction, he Reign of Terror. During World War I, praised the Republic of '93 to one of his 2,700 French soldiers were executed by music students, the young man looked the French government for refusing to at him as if he were out of his mind and fight, for desertion and for mutiny. That said: who today could hope to restore was more than were executed in Paris this kind of government? Buonarroti's under the Jacobins. In other words, the history of Babeuf's Conspiracy, pub­ government of Petain, Foch and Cle­ lished in 1828, was also an ardent menceau executed more French sol­ defense of the Robespierrist regime. Indeed the old Jacobin claimed that diers than the government of Robes­ Downfall of Robespierre at the Hotel de Ville, 9th of Thermidor (27 July 1794). pierre did in Paris during the entire pe­ if Robespierre had continued to rule riod of the Terror. Yet this crime of the position and recognized that Thermi­ and naturally in all the people. The rea­ France, he would have gradually intro­ French bourgeoisie is today practically dor had been bourgeois reaction clothed son for this is simple, Robespierrism duced communist institutions. unknown. So all of the hue and cry in the language of liberal principles. But is democracy, and these two words are When a new revolutionary period, perfectly identical: thus in reviving a new revolutionary movement, came against the Terror has nothing to do he did more than that. He also recog­ Robespierrism you are sure to revive with considerations of humanity, and is nized it was not enough to try to turn the democracy." into existence after the Revolution of entirely motivated by hostility to rad­ calendar back to before Thermidor. -quoted in R.B. Rose, 1830, the term "Jacobin" had come to ical social revolution. He recognized that the fundamental Gracchus Babeuf (1978) . mean something far more radical and The French bourgeoisie was prepared division was no longer between the aris­ Thus just a few years after his downfall something far more proletarian than the to accept the exceptional reign of tocracy and the patriots, between the Robespierre had become a symbol of politics of the Committee of Public Robespierre-the Jacobin dictatorship royalists and the republicans-that the radical democracy and equality trans­ Safety of the Year II. In other words, the -only as long as it was necessary to fundamental division was between the cending the actual experience of the term "Jacobin" was simply a synonym defeat the forces of counterrevolution. rich and the poor, the exploiters and the Jacobin regime. for "red." Behind both the idealization Babeuf's Conspiracy of Equals was of the Jacobin Republic by the commu­ easily suppressed by the Thermidorean nists and working-class radicals of that bourgeoisie, and within a few years it period, and the demonization of the was largely a forgotten incident. Yet. it Jacobin Republic by the ruling classes had a world-historic importance which of that period, there was an important in some ways is eq ual to any of the other historical truth. achievements of the French Revolu­ During that period a democratic tion. Thus Trotsky in the founding man­ republic was incompatible with the ifesto of the Communist International political rule of the bourgeoisie as a states that "we Communists, united in class. It was assumed by reactionaries, the Third International, consider our­ by liberals and by radicals that a sover­ selves the direct continuators of the eign parliament based on universal male heroic endeavors and martyrdom of a suffrage would lead directly to civil war, long line of revolutionary generations as in fact it did in France in 1848. That from Babeuf-to Karl Liebknecht and is, a democratic republic was seen as Rosa Luxemburg." And the commu­ necessarily a red republic, and it's sig­ nists of Marx and Engels' generation nificant that the Communist Manifesto saw in Babeuf the continuator of the was first published in English in the principles of the French Revolution. Chartist newspaper The Red Republi­ Thus Engels wrote in 1845, "Babeuf's can. In his own way Blanqui captured conspiracy for equality revealed the this when he said somewhat later: There final consequences of the democracy of are only two real parties in France-the '93-insofar as these were at all possi- communists and the priests. So that on Gernsheim Collection. U. of Texas . ble at that time." the eve of 1848 Marx and Engels Napoleon column toppled during Paris Commune of 1871, termed by Marx believed that a democratic revolution, the first dictatorship of the proletariat. The French Revolution and the establishment of a democratic con­ Bourgeois Reaction In June 1794 the French revolutionary exploited. It was not enough to attempt stitution like the Jacobin constitution of armies won a decisive victory over the to reinstate the various economic con­ How was it that an extreme left-wing 1793, would lead quickly toward the Habsburgs at Fleurus in Belgium. A trols of the Year II. Thus a reign of extension of Jacobinism, a movement rule of the proletariat and the expropri­ month later, on July 27 (9 Thermidor equality was possible only under what which had almost no impact in its own ation of the bourgeoisie-directly in according to the revolutionary calen­ he called Ie bonheur commun (the col­ dar), all of the various factions of the lective well-being)~that is, a form of revolutionary bourgeoisie got together . rudimentary, distributive communism and overthrew Robespierre. in which everyone would work, putting their goods into a common warehouse The Heritage of Babeuf from which they would then be distrib­ uted equally among all citizens. At first Thermidor was apparently Babeuf's change of attitude toward welcomed by most sections of French the Robespierre regime was not simply society, including the sans-culottes. And an individual reaction. With the deep­ here Babeuf's reaction is extremely ening of the Thermidorean reaction, interesting. Babeuf himself ha'iJ been many of the sans-culotte militants began loosely associated with the h:ftJaco­ to look back on the Robespierre regime bins like Chaumette, prosecutor of the as a kind of golden age when bread was Paris Commune. However, he was in cheap and a poor man could speak his prison in the provinces during the last mind. Babeuf, Buonarroti and their several months of the Jacobin regime. colleagues therefore asspciated their He was released from prison a few days program of communism with the old before Robespierre's fall, and initially Robespierre regime. was a very ardent supporter and propa­ This provoked a very interesting de­ gandist for the Thermidoreans, whom bate within the Babouvist movement. he saw as opening up a new period of One of its organizers, Joseph Bodson, political liberty and democracy. an old Hebertist, Objected to associat­ However, after a few months it be­ ing Ie bonheur commun with Robes­ came clear that the abolition of eco­ pierre who, he argued, had destroyed nomic controls was reducing the Paris many good revolutionaries. Babeuf proletariat to extreme misery, that the A. lc;"'~ '\,)t::~'··.lff':'i replied in a letter which demonstrates Musee Cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne sans-culotte militants were being perse­ very considerable political insight, and Roots of the French Revolution go back to the massacre of Protestant cuted, and that the Thermidorean bour­ it also gives us an insight why even today Huguenots by the royalist government on St. Bartholomew's Day, 1572. geoisie was suppressing the democracy Robespierre is such a vilified figure in Destruction of French Protestantism retarded capitalist development under of the Paris sections far more thor­ official bourgeois opinion: . the ancien regime. Preservation of royal absolutism and aristocratic order oughly and ruthlessly than Robespierre - "Robespierrism is in all the RepUblic, in called forth the most radical of all bourgeois-democratic revolutions two had done. And thus Babeuf changed his all the judicious and farseeing class centuries later. ' 8 WORKERS VANGUARD invasion of Soviet Russia. Continuing our analogy; one can describe the Vichy regime as an alliance of the French heirs "--- of the Thermidorean bourgeoisie along with the heirs of the French emigres with the descendants of the Prince of Brunswick. And one can describe the Battle of S talingrad as a titanic struggle between the Russian heirs of the French Revolu­ tion, albeit in its "Bonapartist form, and the enemies of the French Revolution. Marx's Communist And one likes to think on this 200th Manifesto was first anniversary of the ,French Revolution published in English . that the ghosts of Robespierre .and Ilml. IT 0. IIIU.lII .UIlD. in the Chartist -:-:••-."'21:---;;'"V.-.--:,"':".]----- 'ATURli~y. NOVEM8ER 9, l8GO. ----"('=-.1('.0111 Pl'''''' Hebert and Jacques Roux and Babeuf Red Re~ublican. I •.. tII ...._ ...j ...... r ,,,,, •.. 1.,,". 11,_ r.u , ...... J , ...... - --..-. .,...... ,., •• will all join us in celebrating not only the err ...... niSm. I Til..... 1 .... r...... M £"'"1''' .. k_.. ",~,p .... U.. !II •• w. .rioI,.,~ ri_9 ..... oJ -'r. .. .. 1.__ .... _ I ... I...... ,.• ~, II It i.'".... '., p ... tIM ....._~ -. _ ~c ,"" I • __.... I" I,. ~f· .. tlwo • ....w ... .,., "'" ..... ~~,I"" ..... """ ...... J ,,_... storming of the Bastille and the victory )(API,fE_YO OF THE GERM""' "I th." .....<>4 .n ...... '-. .... '" ~I'rw-~"'" " ....,,_ .... -r "" Ik ~ ...... , n..__ CQ .... UKIIT PARTy. I:!.:::~.~~~~t f"~~ 1::':;-••-' .... "I ==- ~:;:., T~I-:'=::-:.~~-,: . at Valmy, but will also join us in ...... ,.-~, II." I !p.... _~.'Ik __"_ .. ~t __· .... T_c " ...... c \I~"." ...... hwh hM 11__ '".. n-a. I. '~'...-.J' .,I ...... w-; ...... ~ 'OJ'''' celebratirig the victory at Stalingrad, for loyall fr .. of , ...... U aouaC[()11 .lID '.OLITUIAJCS, i ... ·~.I_ .t , ...... -..,..a.-...... 1<1 t_. j ••• •Ira •• '"IP" tIM· I;.....,. .• __ . ". __ "lAC. '-ta.-....." kart,.. ~ ..... ,~ ... .. that, too, is in a sense their victory . In 1792 the French bourgeois con­ England, where a majority of the pop­ national fibre, he is a patriot like the Europe. But of course the French bour­ stitutionnel Adrien Duport declared ulation were proletarians, and indi­ Jacobins of 1793." But a bourgeois ten­ geoisie, while continuing to pay lip serv­ that the French Revolution was over. rectly in France and Germany, where a dency like Clemenceau's Radicals was ice to the Revolution, also played a key Eight years later Napoleon, with rather majority were rural and urban petty necessarily unique to France. role in the anti-Bolshevik campaign. greater justification, declared that the bourgeois. After the Revolution of 1848 the French military cadre-including the French Revolution was over. Two hun­ The actual course of the Revolu­ European bourgeoisie-centrally the young Charles de Gaulle-aided Polish dred years later the liberal ideologue tions -of 1848 proved very different German-became counterrevolution­ forces in turning back the Red Army Franr;:ois Furet declares that the French from Marx and Engels' conceptions, ary. There were no bourgeois forces who from Warsaw in 1920. Revolution is over. Well, as a historical as they themselves later recognized. In praised the French Revolution in The isolation of Bolshevik Russia, its event, the French Revolution certainly France under universal suffrage the Bismarck's Germany, or late Hahsburg encirclement by hostile and stronger is over-it achieved the tasks of the peasant masses voted in a reactionary Austria, or late Bourbon Spain-not to capitalist states, produced within Russia bourgeois-democratic revolution more government which first provoked and speak of tsarist Russia. Quite the con­ a bureaucratic degeneration that Trot­ then crushed the Paris working class trary. In the l890s, a century after the sky regarded as analogous to Thermi­ in the so-called June Days. The fear French Revolution, a Prussian Junker dor. That is, the revolutionary leaders of social revolution drove the French stood up in the Reichstag and declared were overthrown by a group of nation­ bourgeoisie toward Bonapartism and that the King of Prussia must be able to alist and conservative bureaucrats, but the German bourgeoisie toward a com­ order any lieutenant to take ten men the social achievements of the Bolshe­ promise with the monarchical reac- and shoot the Reichstag. This speech vik Revolution-the expropriation and collectivization of property-remained. And this is of course the basis for the hostility of world capitalism to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to this day. The coming to power of the Nazis in Germany constituted a terrible danger to the Soviet Union. The Stalinists responded to that danger by seeking an French Marshal alliance with the so-called "democratic Petain (left), head imperialists," especially in France and of collaborationist England. This was called the "popular Vichy regime, front against fascism." The French Sta­ and Hitler united linists attempted to· glorify French in hatred for imperialism with the mantle of Jaco­ heritage of French uages Revolution binism. To use our analogy, one can G.V. Plekhanov, father of Russian and Russian describe the Popular Front in France as Marxism, was inspired by Jacobin Bolshevik the attempt of the French supporters of intransigence. Revolution. t.he Russian Thermidor to ally with the heirs of the French Thermidorean bour­ radically and more completely than any geoisie against the heirs of Babeuf. other. But for precisely that reason it has But in helping to prevent a proletar­ become something more than a long­ ian revolution in ,France in the mid- concluded revolution--'--it has become a 1930s and in actually suppressing a symbol of the struggle of the oppressed tion. Thus it was only a generation was greeted with wild applause by the proletarian revolution! in Spain, the and exploited for a just and egalitarian later, after the debacle of the Franco­ Reichstag deputies of the right. Stalinists only encouraged, embold­ society. And that is why the French Rev­ Pruss ian War, after the crushing of the ened and strengthened European fas­ olution is still being fought, and it will Commune, that there was established a The Spectre of Bolshevism cism. The Popular Front paved the way continue to be fought until liberty, bourgeois-democratic republic. (Inci­ both for the Vichy regime and for Oper­ equality and fraternity become a reality dentally, 17,000 people were killed in Thus the radical democratic heritage ation Barbarossa, the Nazi German in a communist world .• Paris in one week after the suppression of the French Revolution was taken of the Communards-without trial, over almost exclusively by the interna­ E'" without anything. Talk about terror!). tional workers movement in this period. ~ I t was only in this period that the Analogies with the French Revolution French bourgeoisie began to celebrate were especially commo'n in tsarist the French Revolution as the birth of its Russia among both the Marxists and power. It was the Radical Party histori­ the Populists, who appeared to be fac­ ans of the early Third Republic like ing an ancien regime very similar to late Avenel, Spulier' and Aulard who first Bourbon France. In 1900 'Georgi Ple­ identified the French Revolution and khanov, the father of Russian Marx­ Jacobinism with French nationalism ism, wrote to one of his comrades, "you and liberal principles. In the 1870s know I am beginning to lean toward A vene! criticized the conservative Ger­ Jacobinism." man historian Sybel for saying that The Bolshevik Revolution reawak­ the French Revolution fostered com­ ened in the world bourgeoisie an under­ Battle of munism. No, said the French Radical, standing that the French Revolution Stalingrad: communism is an invention of you had also carried with it a radical egali­ titanic battle Germans like Karl Marx. tarian tradition, that the French Revo­ between Soviet This exchange is indicative of the dif­ luti'on really was a revolution. Remem­ heirs of the ferent attitudes on both sides of the ber that not a single European monavch French Rev01ution Rhine. Outside of France the Revolu­ was executed between 1793 and 1918, and its enemies, tion was still identified with social rad­ when the Russian tsar and his family embodied by German Nazis. icalism and leveling. Within France a were killed. That fact alone identified significant section of the bourgeoisie the French and Bolshevik Revolutions was trying to dissociate the Revolution in the minds of both the rulers of Europe from its Babouvist heritage. So that it and the popular masses. was only in the early years of the Third The anti-Bolshevik hysteria reawak­ Republic that the term "Jacobin" came ened all the old hostility of European to be identified with French national­ reaction to the French Revolution, ism, especially anti-German national­ which is seen as the original sin giving ism. On the .eve of World War I, the birth to this terrible event. Hitler's Mein French reactionary Poincare praised Kampf, for example, denounced the Clemenceau as "in the highest degree, French Revolution as a catastrophe for 29 SEPTEMBER 1989 9 appearance of a communist party with a insist on how crucial this activity was in slogan '~Proletatians of the world, B~onarroti real activity in the framework of the transmitting communism to new gener-. uniter: and .which Marx and Engels •... bourgeois revolution." ations of· revolutionaries, and I want joined in 1847. Marx had read Buonar-· (continued from page 7) As you know, the Conspiracy of especially to stress its importance in roti'sConspiracy for Equality and even Equals failed. Babeuf and Darthe were connection with Marxism. Most of considered translating it. the . times, collective well-being [Ie condemned to death and executed by Marx and Engels' collaborators in the After 1830, with the development of bonheur commun], the emancipation of the Thermidoreans. Buonarroti and 1840s were directly or indirectly influ­ Chartism and also the July Revolution mankind, the realization of the prin­ others were deported. But there is one enced, in varying degrees, by Buo~ in France, the figure of Buonarroti ciples of fraternity, liberty, equality, fact that remains extraordinary to this narroti and some of them had even been infused the nascent European workers which had been the principles of the day-namely that for nearly 40 years recruited by him. In Belgium, Lucien movement. In varying degrees, he in­ Enlightenment, the principles of the fluenced a whole new generation of French Revolution since 1789. The bal­ revolutionaries, Blanqui and others, all ance sheet drawn up by the left Jacobin LE CO)1I T £: INSURRECTEUR D& those who were the revolutionary lead- tendency gathered' around Gracchus SALLT PCBLIC# AU PEUPLE. . ers of the first half of the 19th century. Babeuf concluded that these lofty One of Buonarroti's discip1es gave a emancipatory principles could not be striking description of him that I want to achieved in the framework of private Acte d'Insurrection. quote and that bears witness to the ownership of the means of production. justified admiration of an entire revolu­ For the Babouvists, realizing "equal­ tionary generation. It is by Prati, who i.GAI.rTi:, LI&.ATi# ity" in particular-which is central to was an Italian revolutionary in exile. the French Revolution-required, and I n 0 :\ II E U ReO M M U ~. I quote: "Neither the success of his quote, "suppressing private property," adversaries, nor the glory of Napoleon, E 5 Democrates Francais # considerant que "establishing common management," "ppression ct la mis';re Ju l'euple sont a leur nor the combined efforts of the Holy establishing "common property and com hIe , que cet etat de t'yrannic et de DJAllt.cur Alliance, nor the betrayal of many of his cst du tait ou gouverm:uumt uctuel; friends, nor the slanders of his enemies, labor" set up by a provisional dictator­ Consiuerant que !.ell Domhreux Curtaits des ship of what we would call a revolution­ ~ou'·crflans ont excite contre ewx lea plam~ nor exile, nor poverty-nothing ever ary party. )Ilurnali~rcs ct toujours inutiles des goul'ernes •. shook his courage or slackened his The communism of Babeuf is obvi­ Consioerant que la COll$Litution cIu Peuple efforts. When I knew him, he was a man jUl'~e eD 1795, fut remise par lui sow 14 ously not that of Marx. The com­ of 70, with silvery, wavy hair framing a munism of Marx seeks a limitless devel­ The Conspiracy of Equals, led by Gracchus face that radiated Promethean energy, opment of human capacities based on Babeuf (left), called for insurrection against that seemed to defy the powers of this achieving abundance. The communism Thermidorean reaction, 1795. world, and incite the world, near or far, of Babeuf is essentially a communism of to break the chains of despotism." distribution which seeks a frugal equal­ Buonarroti fought for the universal Jottrand, president of the Democratic He was known familiarly to all these ity in the realm of consumption. But revolutionary principles of '89, for a Association of which Marx was vice young men as the "Old Man of the how could it have been otherwise in the communist program and organization, president, had been recruited by Buo­ Mountain." The Mountain [Montagne] conditions of the time, when small-scale during the [Napoleonic] Empire, dur­ narroti. In England during this period, here obviously refers to Jacobinism. ownership and small-scale, preindus­ ing the [post-1815] Bourbon Restora.; one of Marx's main collaborators was Buonarroti was seen as, and is, the trial artisan or peasant production tion, when reaction reigned and grew Harney, the lert Chartist leader who living and active link between a past predominated, when the working class stronger, at a time when virtually all was the protege of [James Bronterre] revolution, the French Revolution, and as we know it did not exist. From this the Jacobin cadre, even the Babou­ O'Brien, the famous Chartist leader who the coming revolution, the communist vantage point, the Babouvist program vists, capitulated to Bonapartism. Buo­ was a follower of Babouvism and !tad revolution, whose cadre are being was utopian. But it was nonetheless a narroti-totally isolated, going against translated Buonarroti's book, Babeuf's formed and forged. The unremitting revolutionary communism. In the 18th the stream-continued indefatigably to Conspiracy for Equality, into English and intransigent fight of Buonarroti, century, even in the 17th century, com­ organize popular societies, secret soci­ and corresponded with him toward the like Babeuf's martyrdom in the cause of munist theories existed, but they were eties to spread democratic, revolution­ end of Buonarroti's life. The German communism, was far from futile. Their only utopian systems. With Babou­ ary and communist propaganda from founder of the League of Exiles was Conspiracy, which emerged from the vism, with the Conspiracy of Equals, his place of exile, whether in Switzer­ also linked to Buonarroti. This League, womb of the French Revolution, is communism entered into the history of land or Belgium. after being transformed into the League also at the origin of the communist, social and political struggles. It was, as This is not the place to go into Buo­ of the Just, later gave rise ~o the Trotskyist, contemporary revolution­ Marx and Engels later wrote,."the first narroti's activity in detail, but I want to Communist League, which adopted the ary movement..

ber). National Guardsmen joined local nearly twice that of blacks ($9,908) in St. CrOix ... cops in patrolling the streets, while the Virgin Islands. The building boom Save Mumia (continued/rom page 1) Charleston police chief Reuben Green­ by white condo developers has further berg told his men: "Don't arrest any­ fueled resentment by the majority black, "Some looters were hungry people pick­ body. Beat 'em." One cop admitted, poor popUlation which has been left out. Abu-Jamal ... ing over groceries that were about to rot "We're beating the ... out of them." Unemployment is estimated at 30 per­ (continued/rom page 3) anyway." Most telling of all, "Four days cent, and blacks are often made to feel after the hurricane struck, no relief sup­ FEMA and Military Coup unwelcome in the tourist town of James F. Gay plies had arrived. There was no running What the White House wanted in the Christiansted. Keeping black people NAACP, Norfolk, Virginia water, little food, no electricity, no Virgin Islands was an offshore practice. down is a big money question in real telephone service. The hospital, badly run for martial law. Spearheading the estate. As the editor of the St. Croix Specifically, this country must never damaged, was closed." B.ut Washington plan is the Federal Emergency Man­ A vis, the only black paper in the islands, allow the death penalty to be utilized sent ... cops. agement Agency (FEMA), which used Charles Fisher, said: "This is a class as a means of curtailing free speech This mini-invasion was a police oper­ to concentrate on flood relief but under fight. The rich guys come down from and expressions of political beliefs. To ation, not a relief effort. It was the first the Reagan administration was secretly New York or wherever and build a do so, would reduce us to the level of time in 21 years that American troops transformed into a sinister agency for hotel, but they can't be bothered to build many totalitarian governments which were called out against disturbances on introducing military rule during a fab­ us a hurricane shelter or a playground" we condemn. U.S. territory. "Top generals met in the ricated "emergency." The authoriza­ (New York Times, 26 September). . In the name of humanity and for the underground operations center at the' tion was provided by National Security A medical worker in New York told advancement of civilization, we ask that Pentagon to work out details of the Decision Directive No. 52, signed by WV that when news of Bush dispatch­ you not permit this act of murder in the troop movement," reported the New Reagan on 6 April 1984. One of the ing 'troops reached Caribbean workers name of the state. If it is wrong to kill, York Daily News (21 September). The Iran/contra scandal revelations was at Harlem Hospital, there was sponta­ then it is also wrong for the state to kill. troops were six companies of M Ps; in that Colonel North had drawn up a neous anger and denunciations of the We .are sure that your conscience will addition, Bush dispatched 100 federal secret "contingency plan" according to occupation because it was "just like Gre­ guide you in the way of righteousness marshals and FBI agents. Yet the black the wishes of his commander in chief. As nada." Once again American troops and that you will not allow this bar­ Democratic elected governor of the Alfonso Chardy reported: would be imposing "law and order" on baric act to occur. islands, Alexander Farrelly, told Asso­ "The secret plan called for suspension of defenseless black islanders. But the Vir­ ciated Press "there is no near state of the Constitution, turning control of the gin Islan~s, unlike Grenada, have a Rev. George E. Riddick government over to the Federal Emer­ anarcllY'\ and denied he had ralle~ for black proletariat with significant social Vice President at Large, Operation gency Management Agency (FEMA), Push, Inc., Chicago, Illinois U.S. troops. Bush wants to 100k like appointment of military commanders power. Out of a total islands popula- he's "standing tall," so since he can't get to run state and local governments, and . tion of 110,000, over 8,500 are unionized We are writing requesting that the rid of Noriega, he "cracks down" on the declaration of martial law in the by the United Steelworkers of America death sentence imposed against M umia Rastafarians in St. Croix! event of such a crisis as nuclear war, alone, principally at the giant Hess Oil Abu-Jamal be reversed immediately. violent and widespread internal dissent First, because we do not believe he is Rampant government racism was or national opposition to a U.S. mili­ refinery. Add in their families, as well as apparent on the mainland too, where tary invasion abroad." unionized hotel/ restaurant and gQV­ guilty of the crime he is alleged to have supposedly "normal" relief operations -Philadelphia Inquirer, ernment workers, and the power of committed. There is nothing in the were under way. In Charleston, South 5 July 1987 ' organized labor is clear. These workers background of this man to suggest that Carolina, residents of poor black neigh­ Now with Hurricane Hugo, Bush saw come from all over the Caribbean, and he would contrive to undertake a delib­ borhoods were unable to stock up a chance to tryout his martial law plans. have ties to their union brothers and sis­ erate and calculated. crime of murder. before the storm. Now, with electricity Two days before the troops arrived, ters on the mainland as well. Second, the death penalty itself enter­ still out, there are virtually no stores FEMA agents landed on St. Croix on an The Bush administration's operation tains the worst that is in our criminal open. So "looting" has occurred. The Air Force C-141 carrying "radio equip­ in St. Croix is a threat to blacks and justice system and has been shown to Red Cross even removed its food truck, ment." They probably figured the Vir­ labor at home. The labor movement have little effect as a deterrent against even though hundreds of people were gin Islands are small enough and distant must demand U.S. troops out! Elemen­ crime. lined up for hours waiting for it; a: cop enough from the mainland that they tary justice would require that the peo­ A talented and gifted journalist who cited fear of "mobs." "They're thinking could get away with it without signif­ ple who live and work on the Virgin defended unpopular and controversial more about downtown Charleston icant political blowback. Islands be able to decide their own fate. causes should not be for that reason vul­ stores ... than about people who are St. Croix is also a microcosm of the But it is clear that this is not possible nerable to charges that lead to incar­ going hungry," said one woman (Atlan­ racial tensions in the U.S. Median in­ so long as an imperialist ruling class ceration and to criminal conviction on ta Journal & Constitution, 24 Septem- come for white households ($17,281) is rules in Wasliington .• charges of murder. • 10 WORKERS VANGUARD E. Germany ... (continued from page 4) "decentralization" in the mid-'60s and abandoned it as unworkable.) Noted historian J lirgen Kuczynski and former secret service chief Markus Wolf repre­ sent a still small minority that may want to follow Gorbachev's glasnost. As the German Democratic Repub-' 17 June 1953- lic approaches the 40th anniversary of East German its founding, October 7, its leaders are workers rose feeling isolated and threatened. The against Stalinist Berlin Wall, a bureaucratic defensive regime, calling on West German measure erected to stem an earlier workers to exodus of skilled workers, is no longer "sweep out your effective. The ruling SED's (Socialist crap in Bonn." Unity Party) Stalinist program of build­ Ulbricht regime' ing a·"socialist nation" in half a country was saved only is ever more divorced from reality. And by Soviet tanks. with the 77-year-old DDR leader lying in the hospital, with no heir ~PQ!!l"@t,i!_ leadership crisis comes on top of the social crisis. Yet their course of pursu­ ing "peaceful coexistence" with West­ official media are stultifying. In the a show window full of bananas or glitzy mentary delegation this week. So now ern imperialism and competing on the 1950s, in "Operation Ox Head" the FDJ travel brochures" (quoted in Die Wahr-­ the SPD is turning its attention to terrain of German nationalism with (Free German Youth) climbed up on heit, 14 September). a new crop of East German dissidents Bonn revanchists encourages counter­ roofs to turn TV antennas around so The alienation of many East German in the orbit of the Lutheran church revolutionary forces. As the Federal they couldn't receive West German tele­ youth cannot be overcome simply (New Forum, Democratic Departure, Republic seeks to subordinate and ulti­ vision. Now the DDR has laid cable into through more and better consumer Democracy Now). mately gobble up the "other.Germany" Dresden so that the only East Ger­ goods and greater freedom for a How long will the powerful East Ger­ as part of its Drang nach Osten (drive to man city which couldn't get TV from Western--style youth culture in the man working class remain quiet? Le the East), we Trotskyists uncondition- "driiben" (over there) now has clear DDR. But the Stalinist bureaucracy Monde (14 September) quotes a high­ cannot inspire among young German ranking Soviet official as saying that the workers and intellectuals the socialist DDR was "on the eve of great changes, idealism which animated their fore­ almost a prerevolutionary situation." bears, from Karl Marx's Communist And former Soviet ambassador to West League to. the militant~ of the Com­ Germany Valentin Fallin reportedly munist Party in Weimar Germany. said that by next spring the Kremlin Honecker & Co. offer East German expects "mass demonstrations which youth nothing more than a defense of would be hard to control" in the DDR. the postwar status quo vis-a-vis West­ Many bourgeois commentators and ern imperialism. An authentically com­ petty-bourgeois leftists consider this munist, internationalist vision of the impossible, and speak of the historic future would win over many of today's "docility" of the German working class, disaffected East German youth. which supposedly obeyed the Kaiser, then Hitler and then the Stalinists. But, For Revolutionary Reunification! in fact, the German proletariat has been the strongest and most class-conscious In German imperialism's division of in Europe, and has fought heroic bat­ labor, the Social Democrats have the tles when it had the opportunity. special task of carrying out a counter­ Germany's position in the heart of Der Spiegel revolutionary political mobilization in Europe is a key factor in its present (and Berlin Wall: bureaucratic defense measure to stem drain of East German the DDR. As we wrote in "Market past) division. This makes it the natural skilled workers instigated by Western media. . Socialism" in East Europe (Spartakist theater for continent-wide war, but also pamphlet, July 1989): places the German proletariat in a ally defend the DDR against counter­ reception. Intended as an escape valv~ "In recent years the Brandt wing of strategic position. -In 1953, the East revolution, from within or without. it boomeranged as Western TV instipt- the SPD, along with its Green fellow German workers were the first in -ed mass "escape." / travelers, has been the main expression East Europe to rebel against Stalinist OOR: Consumerism of resurgent German nationalism in Economically, while the centralized bureaucratic rule. This occurred when Instead of Communism Kombinate, huge conglomerate enter­ pseudo-leftist and pacifistic colors. The slogan of a neutral, demilitarized and the hardline Ulbricht regime in East The tens of thousands who have left prises, are relatively su~cessful, there are reunified Germany-independent of Berlin found itself out of step with the for the West pose a grave threat to East endless infuriating bureaucratic snafus both Washington and Moscow-is a post-Stalin thaw in Moscow. Begin­ Germany's economy. The writer Stefan and no way to remedy them. Doctors thinly disguised call for 'democratic' ning with the construction workers in counterrevolution in East Germany." Heym, a loyal critic of the East Berlin can't operate for lack of oxygen sup­ Stalinallee on June i6, strikes, demon­ regime, says this is a "phenomenon that plies. Now East Germany has a halfway The East German SED Stalinists and strations and workers assemblies spread threatens to destroy the DDR" (Der decent car, the new Wartburg, but still their West German cohorts claimed that throughout East Germany. The bu­ Spiegel, 14 August). The emigres are on can't build a decent engine. And then the August 1987 SPD/SED "common reaucracy was paralyzed and polarized, the whole young, highly trained, and there's nowhere to drive it. One of the declaration" would mean "peace in our with part of the lower and middle party their loss already hurts in areas such as biggest complaints of the westward­ time." The SPD tops, however, have cadre going over to the side ofthe work-, hospitals, schools and skilled trades. heading youth is sheer boredom. Even seen in the flood of East German ers uprising. Ulbricht was saved only by This is added to the already acute labor the FDJ paper Junge Welt bitterly emigres a big chance to break through Soviet tanks. Today once again there shortage in East Germany, which has asked how it is possible to make East politically in the DDR. But they upped are tensions between East Berlin and brought in more than 100,000 Vietnam­ Germany "into a home ... from which the voltage so much that East Berlin Moscow. And as Siberian and Silesian ese and African workers as well as tens you don't let yourself be lured simply by canceled the visit of a high-level parlia- miners strike against the ravages of of thousands of Poles. "market reforms," the East German To keep the lid on, the East German - workers can make cOIllmon cause with regime has assiduously encouraged their class comrades. Western-style consumerism, complete The revplutionary unity of German with "summer close-out sales" for everr­ and Soviet workers is indispensable for thing from food processors to stereo sets the victory of the proletarian political (at high prices, to soak up surplus revolution, ousting the Sta.linist bu­ marks). Nor is the outflow due to reaucracy in the DDR and throughout increased repression. The Vopo cops are the Soviet bloc, establishing the rule of quite as arbitrary as Prussian police workers soviets. Return to the road of officials could be, and the Stasis (state Lenin and Trotsky! The key is forging security police) have recently broken up an internationalist Bolshevik leader­ demonstrations by pro-"democracy" ship, which can also lead the workers in dissidents and would-be emigres in the imperialist West in socialist revolu­ Leipzig with their usual efficiency. But tion against capitalism. The Stalinists, if anything, as former East German who despair of social revolution in the protest singer Wolf Biermann com­ West, hand the national question in mented, "it has become looser because class-divided Germany over to the fas­ of all the trips to the West that are now cists. Today, when both Gorbachev's permitted" (taz, 21 August). Until 1963, market-oriented "reforms" and the dancing the twist was forbidden in the DDR's regimented regime are in crisis, DDR as an example of Western dec­ the internationalist program of Trot­ adence; this last summer the hit film was skyism stands out in sharp relief, fight­ Dirty Dancing. ing for revolutionary reunification of But the all-pervasive bureaucracy is East Berlin store window: DDR regime encourages consumerism to soak up Germany in a socialist united states seen as "anchored in cement." The surplus currency and buy off social discontent. of Europe.• 29 SEPTEMBER 1989 11 unions within COSATU, particularly South Africa ... the National Union of Metalworkers (continued from page 1) (NUMSA), headed by the recently freed Moses Mayekiso, and the Amalga­ to present a petition to the British mated Clothing and Textile Workers consulate in Cape Town. On election Union (ACTWUSA), advocate "social­ day alone, 29 demonstrators were ism" as the goal of their struggle. At the killed in the apartheid butchers' bloody 1 latest COSATU congress in July, a crackdown. focus of discussion was ACTWUSA's Black anger has been fueled by a flood call for a "workers charter" to guar­ of executions and death sentences meted antee elementary trade-union rights. out by the white-supremacist regime in One unionist commented, "They want recent months, many on the basis of the to ensure that when apartheid goes, they Hitlerite "common purpose doctrine" will still be the workers' watchdogs, not . under which anyone present at the scc::ne the pet poodles of the nationalist.move­ of killings of police agents and inform­ ment-as in Zimbabwe." ers is deemed guilty of murder. In late The road to liberating the toilers of May, the Upington 14 were condemned South Africa is not, however, through to death for being part of a large crowd maintaining a strong trade-union move­ which killed a black policeman in 1985. Many of South Africa's black unionists see need to smash apartheid cvct,.m ment under a petty-bourgeois national­ Two weeks later, fo.ur blacks were of capitalist exploitation. ist ANC regime which it is assumed will hanged' in Pretoria, including the first replace white-supremacist rule. What's woman to be executed in two years. tea with jailed African National Con­ terms of the agreement. Meanwhile, as needed is the establishment of a black­ Twelve others from the Ciskei bantu­ gress leader Nelson Mandela on July 5, Cuban troops are shipped home, An­ centered workers government through stan ("tribal homeland") were sen­ the first time a government official golan peasants continue to be massa­ smashing apartheid capitalism. This tenced to hang for a 1987 "necklacing" openly met with a representative of the cred by the U.S./South Africa-backed poses the formation of a racially in­ (executing informers and other apart­ banned organization. Then the Weekly UNIT A terrorists, who immediately tegrated workers party, drawn primar­ heid collaborators by placing burning Mail revealed that foreign minister Pik violated the UN-negotiated "cease-fire" ily from class-conscious militants in the tires around their necks). Now, in the Botha and other leading National Party agreement. predominantly black trade unions. This Delmas III trial, 12 Pretoria anti­ officials had been meeting with Man­ In the buildup to the September 6 is the only road forward if the protesta­ apartheid activists charged with being dela regularly for almost three years. elections, the ANC unveiled its "peace tions of "socialism" and "workers "ANC terrorists" face possible death Immediately after taking over from plan" at a summit of "front line states" power" by left-wing militants in COSA­ sentences. Botha, de Klerk flew off to diseuss the held August 10 in Lusaka, Zambia. For TU are not to be simply a means of pres­ The outcome of the election reflected ANC's new "peace plan" with Zambian the nationalist ANC, the "defiance cam­ suring the ANC. We are not talking increasing polarization within the white president Kenneth Kaunda as a show of paign," like its sporadic guerrilla forays about a reformist labor party as in minority, as the National Party emerged his "moderate" credentials. into South Africa and its appeals for Britain, but rather forging a revolution­ with its narrowest majority in 41 years. For years, the ANC has sought to imperialist disinvestment, are aimed at ary workers party such as Lenin built in The "Nats" lost ground on both flanks, pressure Washington and London to pressuring the apartheid rulers. As the tsarist Russia, the Bolshevik Party though the ultrarightist Conservative force the apartheid regime' to the con­ Weekly Mail (I I August) noted:' "It is which in October 1917 led the first vic- Party gained less than expected while ference table, while the imperialists have ~ the "liberal" Democratic Party in­ insisted that the ANC first accede to Q) :; creased its vote substantially. While Pretoria's conditions (i.e., "renouncing Q) cr: successfully appealing to Indians and violence"). Under Gorbachev, the Mos­ "coloureds" (of mixed race) to boycott cow bureaucracy has begun placing elections for their segregated sham intense pressure on the ANC to give in parliamentary chambers, the. anti­ to negotiations without any precondi­ South Africa"s apartheid MOM implicitly called on ti()ns. In April, the first public Soviet de Klerk held whites to vote for the Democratic Party. diplomatic mission to South Africa in discussions with The DP was recently formed out of 33 years arrived in Johannesburg. Yuri Zambian president a merger of two smaller parties with Yukalov, head of the Soviet foreign Kaunda on ANC the Progressive Federal Party, voice of ministry Department of African Coun­ "peace pl~m," the giant mining conglomerate Anglo then ordered tries, insists: "South Africa should not crackdown on . American Corporation. be destroyed. It should also be spoken to defiance campaign not only through threats or pounding against apartheid "Peace"with the our fist on the table. There should be elections. Apartheid Regime dialogue" (New York Times, 16 March). The election was seen as a referen­ Yukalov cited the Angola/Namibia dum among whites on de Klerk's five­ "peace process" as an example of year "action plan," which claims to offer successful negotiation in which "all understood that the ANC sees the de­ torious workers revolution in history. reform of the apartheid system while sides stood to gain" (Weekly Mail, 23 fiance campaign as a key vehicle for Furthermore, South Africa is not firmly maintaining white control. De March). The sort of "dialogue" Preto­ pursuing a peaceful end to apartheid in like Zimbabwe or Zambia where Klerk took over as acting president in ria has in mind can be seen from the first conjunction with negotiations on the petty-bourgeois African nationalists August after finally forcing P. W. Botha, result .of the Namioia "peace process," basis of equality." The ANC plan, sub­ displaced the white colonial regimes the longtime head of the apartheid state, as the apartheid butchers slaughtered sequently endorsed by the Organiza­ within the framework of continuing to resign. Botha provoked a storm of 300 SW APO supporters who tried to tion of African Unity meeting in Harare, imperialist economic dominance and outrage from ultrarightists when he had cross the border from Angola under the Zimbabwe on August 21,' is modeled exploitation. Apartheid as a system of on the Namibia settlement. It envisages white caste domination will not be a transitional government-with the ended without uprooting the entire sys­ existing apartheid regime-and "free tem of capitalism in South Africa, which Spartacist ~Forums and fair" elections for a constituent cannot exist without the superexploita­ assembly which would then draw up a tion of black labor. This necessarily new constitution for South Africa. means starvation wag~s and the denial Stalinism in 'Crisis Despite occasional talk of revolu­ of democratic rights to the black major­ tion, particularly at the height of the ity. For the moment, Pretoria is dead set township rebellions four years ago, the against any negotiated settlement with ANC has long pursued a strategy aimed the ANC. But even were some future at "power-sharing" with apartheid cap­ South African government to reach an • Return to Lenin's Communism! For Workers Soviets! italism. The ANC disavows "whole­ agreement with the ANC-under the Oust the Bureaucratsl sale nationalization," calling instead pressure of the Western imperialist pow­ • Poland on the Brink-Defend Deformed and Degenerated for a "mixed" (i.e., capitalist) economy, ers-it could not "negotiate" the end of Workers States Against Imperialist Attack and Domestic and the growth of a black capitalist apartheid, but only do away with the class. Imperialist investment would more odious and obvious manifesta­ CounterrevolUtion! .: .] be encouraged, noted an' ANC rep­ tions of apartheid. ~---Speaker: Ed CI~rkson, Spartacist League Central Committee---- resentative, "on terms acceptable South Africa's racial capitalism is to the foreign investors." But while both the generating force for the CLEVELAND OBERLIN COSATU supports the ANC's Free­ extraction of superprofits and at the Friday, Sept. 29, 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 30, 7:30 p.m. dom Charter, the combative and in­ heart of its inability to advance as an creasingly organized black proletariat industrial country in the world econo­ University Center, Room 1.10 Mudd Library 050 is far fron;! sanguine about this pro­ my. With the discovery of diamonds at Cleveland State University Oberlin College gram for a "democratic, nonracial" cap­ Kiinberley and then gold on the Rand For more information: (216) 781-7500 For more information: (216) 781-7500 italist South Africa. at the turn of the century, the charac­ CHICAGO Blackstone Hotel, Regency Rm. COSA TU has grown two and a half ter of the economy changed from 636 S. Michigan Avenue times larger since its formation in 1985, overwhelmingly agrarian to extractive. Saturday, Oct. 7, 7:30 p.m. For more information: (312) 663-0715 while strike activity in the first half of Mining of the low-grade ore was labor­ this year is almost triple what it was for intensive, requiring a large reserve of ------Speakers: Jan Norden, Editor, Workers Vanguard, ------­ the same period a year ago. Particularly unskilled and therefore relatively uned­ Marjo~ie Stamberg, Spartacist League Central Committee with the banning of the United Dem­ ucated labor. Apartheid evolved out of (Both speakers have recently returned from a tour of Eastern Europe) ocratic Front and AZAPO (Azanian and was dictated to a large extent by NEW YORK CITY Lehman Auditorium, Altschul Hall People's Organisation), COSATU has these conditions. The ANC seeks an Barnard College emerged as the strongest organization of accommodation with "progressive sec­ Saturday, Sept. 30, 3:00 p.m. the black proletariat in South Africa's tors" of the apartheid ruling class, like Sponsored by the Spartacus Youth Club For more information: (212) 267-1025 history, and the voice of broad sections Anglo American's Gavin Reily. But of the oppressed masses. A number of the black miners who toil and die in 12 WORKERS VANGUARD interest rates up to 20 percent, U.S. and other foreign capitalists can sell their assets for. interest-bearing notes and Black Workers Strike Against make a killing while divesting. Thus the primary demands of the reformist anti-apartheid movement have been fulfilled,· as much as they can be, yet apartheid remains intact, "Divestment" Union-Busting while black unions are forced to try to negotiate the terms of divestment. Strikes of black South African work­ financial holdings in corporations oper­ from divestment activists. On the con­ The assumption of the divestmentf ers against the hellish conditions of ating in South Africa. The Spartacist trary-divestment is simply good busi­ sanctions movement, which includes apartheid rule increased dramatically in League alone stood up and told the ness for corporations, though not for such so-called "socialists" as the 1989, vividly demonstratipg the social truth: divestment is at best an empty black workers who have to live with the Communist Party USA, the Socialist and economic power of organized black moral gesture, and if foreign companies results. Workers Party and the International labor. But two key strikes this year have did withdraw productive assets from With the apartheid state's economyin Socialist Organization, really is that focused world attention on workers' South Africa this would hurt black its worst shape since 1985, foreign South African capitalism can be opposition to divestment. In May, workers and weaken the black union investors do not want to touch South fundamentally reformed through the workers at nine Mobil Oil installations movement. Africa. Although sanctions and divest­ pressure of other capitalist powers, struck against the company's plan to Four years ago, it was cheap to advo­ ment have had limited overall impact on especiallY the "democratic" United "divest" by selling out to Gencor, a cate divestment, since there hadn't been the economy, the cutoff of foreign loans States. It's obscene to imagim: that South African mining conglomer­ any. But since then, 136 companies­ from banks worried about the future of racist American imperialism-which ate notorious for union-busting. The half of all the. U.S. firms with direct the white-supremacist regime is drain­ ·put its own citizens in concentration Chemical Workers Industrial Union investments in South Africa-have sold ing up to $2 billion annually in repay­ camps while A-bombing Hiroshima and called the action to protest MobWs a-ut to--South African busiilessmen:IfiiS mentsH

\ ReIly's gold and diamond mines know SACP revealed the extent of leftist B~rnes insists to the black workers: This tions led directly, in our epoch, to the that their lives will not fundamentally opposition to the bourgeois-democratic far and no further! dictatorship of the proletariat and that the dictatorship of the proletariat puts change unless ReIly and his class are put Freedom Charter by reporting in their . The SWP's "democratic" program is socialist tasks on the order of the day." out of business permanently. subsequent issue that they had received flatly counterposed not only to the -Introduction to The a slew of letters disputing the article's class interests of the black proletariat Permanent Revolution (1930) Forge a Trotskyist Vanguard conclusions. (They cynically decided but to the struggle for democratic in South Africa! "not to publish" any of them!) But even rights. South Africa is a quintessential The black proletariat of South Africa For the Stalinist South African Com­ the wretchedly tailist SACP, which has example of the validity of Trotsky'S has already amply demonstrated its munist Party, the debate over the been submerged inside the pro-capitalist perspective of permanent revolution: capacity to fulfill its historic mission. "workers charter" evoked the terrify­ ANC for decades, acknowledges the in this country the black working What it lacks is a revolutionary leader­ ing spectre of Trotskyist "ultraleftism": socialist aspirations of the South Afri­ class is patently the decisive force in ship worthy of its courage and aspira­ "Those who champion ... the cause of can proletariat with its stagist slogan, the struggle against apartheid. Trotsky tions. Forward to a Trotskyist party, 'workerism' against so-called 'popu­ "For a Democratic Victory and Ad­ explained: section of a reforged Fourth Inter­ lism' betray ... a bias toward Trotsky­ vance to Socialism." "The theory of the permanent revolu­ national! For a black-centered work­ ism" ("What Is Trotskyism?", African Yet there are self-styled "socialists" tion ... pointed out that the democratic ers government! Smash apartheid! For Communist, Fourth Quarter 1988). The who explicitly oppose the struggle for tasks of the backward bourgeois na- workers revolution! • socialism in South Africa. Jack Barnes' American Socialist Workers Party (SWP) insists that the South African SPARTACIST LEAGUE/U.S. LOCAL DIRECTORY revolution will have one stage only­ democratic capitalism. "We could say," National Office: Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 • (212) 732-7860 says Barnes in a 1985 report (reprinted Atlanta Detroit Norfolk in New International, Fall 1985), that: Box 4012 Box 441794 .. )h,Box 1972, Main PO "Yes, the key tasks of the revolution in Atlanta, GA 30302 D~troit, M I 48244;--, .: , Norfol~, VA 23501 .. , South Africa are clearly national and ,;v~· ;;1',~~'~,,~. - ~I!.j" democratic in character. Yes, it would Boston Los Angeles !pakl;mq :IUO:J be completely ultraleft for South Afri­ Box 840, Central Sta. Box 32552 can revolutionists to wage the struggle Box 29574, Los Feliz Sta. Cambridge, MA 02139 Los Angeles, CA 90029 Oakland, CA 94604 around a socialist program. But, given (617) 492-3928 (415) 839-0851 the development of modern capitalist (213) 380-8239 ind ustry and mining, and the size of the Chicago San Francisco Black working class, won't the over­ Box 6441, Main PO Madison Box 5712 throw of the imperialist apartheid state Chicago, IL 60680 Box 2074 San Francisco, CA 94101 actually establish the dictatorship of the Madison, WI 53701 proletariat and open what we might,call . (312) 663-Q715 (415) 863-6963 the democratic stage of the sociillist revolution?" Cleveland New York Washington, D.C. Box 91037 Box 444, Canal St. Sta. Box 75073 But even such a hackneyed Sfalinist Cleveland, OH 44101 New York, NY 10013 Washington, D.C. 20013 apologia for betrayal in the name of (216) 781-7500 (212) 267-1025 (202) 636-3537 revolution in stages is too "ultraleft" for Barnes, who in 1982 explicitly de­ nounced the SWP's distant Trotskyist TROTSKYIST LEAGUE OF CANADA past. He replies to his hypothetical question: Toronto Vancouver Box 7198, Station A Box 2717, Main Post Office Apartheid butchers slaughtered 300 "The answer is, 'No.' What is on the SWAPO supporters returning to Na­ agenda in South Africa is a bourgeois­ Toronto, Ontario M5W 1 X8 Vancouver, B.C. V6B 3X2 mibia under "peace process" and democratic revolution, not the dem­ (416) 593-4138 (604) 255-0636 threw their bodies into mass grave. ocratic stage of the socialist revolution."

29 SEPTEMBER 1989 13 . established in Croatia a puppet fascist language"-which was attacked by around CIA/money, when Solidarnosc state. The Ustashi bands were so blood­ Lenin even before 1917-is inherently strikers were kneeling before the priests Centrists ... thirsty in slaughtering Serbs, Jews, Gyp­ anti-democratic. Ever since 1944, Esto­ in the Lenin Shipyard and their leader (continued from page 5) sies and many Croats that even some nian, Latvian and Lithuanian have been was openly taking his marching orders German officers sought to restrain used in their respective republics' gov­ from the Polish pope in Rome. aimed at a counterrevolutionary resto­ them. The anti-Nazi Yugoslav parti­ ernments, schools, media, etc., along As Walesa & Co. became ever more ration of capitalism, that these flags sans led by the hard-bitten Stalinist with Russian. Now the Baltic national­ shrill in their counterrevolutionary stand for fascistic dictatorship, anti­ Tito, and drawn largely from the ists demand that their languages be agitation, Workers Power hopped from Semitism and anti-Communism. Last peasantry, liberated the country from made the sole "official" languages of one to another "left wing" in Solidar­ month we reported that Estonian the Croatian fascists as well as Ser­ the republics, thus degrading millions nose. Most recently it was the small Po­ nationalists in the city of Kohtla re­ bian monarchists. Postwar Yugoslavia of Russian, Byelorussian, Ukrainian lish Socialist Party (Democratic Revo­ cently openly commemorated a gang was established on the basis of an and other inhabitants to second-class lution), heralded as a potential "nucleus of World War II Nazi collaborators, anti-capitalist social revolution, albeit citizenship. for forging an independent Polish inter- the ERNA group organized in Fin­ bureaucratically deformed, and in a The large and largely proletarian . nationalist workers' party" (Workers land with German support, by erect­ nationally very uneven country. Since Russian-speaking popUlation has resist­ Power, May 1989). During this period ing a memorial on the site of a World War II emigre Ustashi groups ed this anti-democratic measure, mainly the PPS-RD was in a political bloc with former Nazi monument (see "Stop Bal­ have waged a terrorist campaign against through the "Internationalist Move­ "Fighting Solidarnose"-animated by tic Counterrevolution!" WV No. 484, Yugoslavia, especially its diplomatic ment." But here is one mass movement the rabidly anti-Communist and anti­ 1 September). representatives. Workers Power explicitly refuses to Semitic KPN-which greeted. George Now Lindmae dots the i's and crosses The SWP's support for and collab­ support, slanderously dismissing the Bush's arrival in Gdansk last summer the t's-and the Mandelites shame­ oration with Croatian fascists was quite mass protest stril$.es organiz~d by Inter­ with signs proclaiming" A Good Com­ lessly trumpet his fascist glorification. a scandal on the Australian left. The Movement against the reactionary lan­ munist Is a Dead Communist." Some His article ends with the demand that U stasha affair was sufficiently embar­ guage laws with the canard that the nucleus for "an independent Polish the Soviet government rehabilitate these rassing for Mandel's center in Europe to "KGB-organised 'Intermovement' is internationalist workers' party"! Now it Baltic Nazi collaborators! He com­ take its Australian comrades to task coordinating a chauvinist campaign." In seems the PPS-RD-whichjust opened plains that the law passed by the over it. But now there is an anti-Soviet its strikes, Inter-Movement has raised up a very visible public office in Lon­ Supreme Soviet early this year annul­ "mass movement" in the. Baltics, and the demand for "equal rights for all don-has disappeared into one of those ling the verdicts of Stalin's frame-up with their longstanding support to any nations." In speaking with the New ,."blank spaces" in Workers Power's trials "does not apply to traitors to the history. . fatherland and punishment battalions Trotsky defined centrism as "crystal­ formed during the Great Fatherland lized confusion." Polemicizing against War [World War II], to Nazi criminals, the American SWP's Shachtman/Burn­ members of nationalist bands, their sat­ ham bloc which opposed defense of ellites and so on." And he concludes: the Soviet Union in 1939-40, Trotsky "Suci:t persons must also be considered addressed their plaint that they failed to rehabilitated. " "foresee" Stalin's occupation of eastern Lindmae has a fig leaf in the final Poland: "If our ill-starred politicians paragraph condemning "summary exe­ failed, to foresee 'this' it is only because cutions" and participation in "mass ,they fail to think a single question repression outside the borders of the through .to the end" (In Defense of Estonian Republic"-he's well aware of Marxism). For Workers Power, this is how the Estonian Nazis had to go to congenital. They "fail to foresee" the Latvia and Lithuania to get in on the danger of counterrevolution in the mass extermination of Jews. But this is a deformed workers states because they call for the rehabilitation of practical­ wear the blinders of Stalinophobia. ly all fascist murderers, armed anti-' Despite their nominal Soviet-defensism, Communist squads and natIonalist they carry the baggage of their origins in bands who fought alongside the Nazi in­ Tony Cliff's "third camp" outfit, which vaders and then joined the SS murder blew out of the Trotskyist movement machine. What's going to appear in Der Spiegel in the early 1950s over Cliff's refusal International Viewpoint next? A call for Gdansk, 1980: Lech Walesa oversees Catholic priests hearing workers' to defend North Korea against U.S. the rehabilitation of General Vlasov, a confessions. This is the clerical-nationalist "fighting strength of the early imperialism. defector from the Red Army whose days of Solidarity" that Workers Power celebrates. ' Behind the wild vacillatiolls of the "Russian Liberation Army" fought un­ centrists over events in East Europe and der the Wehrmacht in the name of "anti­ and every opposition to the Soviet gov­ Yorker writer, its spokesmen were a the Soviet Union lies their lack Of a pro­ Bolshevism"? ernment the USec is openly defending Georgian, a Jew and a Russian who had grammatic anchor. They spurn the Mandel's USec is shamelessly oppor­ the fascist fringe of Baltic nationalism. lived in Estonia virtually their entire Trotskyist position of unconditional tunist, wildly impressionistic and given Where Mandel' & Co. hail the Nazi lives. Even Boris Kagarlitsky; a leader of defense of the gains of the October Rev­ to extreme zigzags in line. But this is an "Forest Brothers," we salute the real the Moscow People's Front, reported olution against counterrevolution and incitement. Even the anti-Communist Estonian freedom fighters, who were the after visiting Estonia that "the program instead tail every "mass movement" that bourgeois press wouldn't touch such a soldiers of the Red Army's Estonian of the Inter-Movement looked much comes along. They tailed the mullah-led blatant salute to pogromist counter­ 8th Rifle Corps, which included 250 more democratic than the [Estonian] movement in Iran, and ended up with revolutionary terrorists. Although they Jews. In June 1944 these Estonians People's Front program" (Internation­ Khomeiniite reaction; they tail reac­ claim to be Trotskyist and in some sense helped liberate their homeland from the al Viewpoint, 20 February). tionary "anti-StalinistS''' of ev~~y stripe to defend the Soviet Union, the Man­ Nazi butchers and the "Forest Brother" The same issue of Workers Power in Poland, and end up with a pro­ delites' embracing of Baltic fascism in collaborators. emblazons on its back page: "Poland: capitalist, anti-working-class govern­ the name of "anti-Stalinism" has a pre­ No Return to Capitalism!" Today it's ment in Warsaw. What differentiates history. Tailing Eurocommunism in the Workers Power Lost in East hard to continue ducking the issue when Bolshevism from centrism is precisely mid-'70s, Mandel & Co. championed Europe Without a Compass Walesa declares the new government' the capacity to "swim against the pro-Western Soviet "dissidents" like intends to take Poland "from a Com­ ~tream" when the masses are being mis­ Andrei Sakharov, who called for impe­ While the Mandelites embrace Baltic munist system of ownership to capital­ led against the historic interests of the rialist economic warfare against the Nazis in the name of "national libera­ ism" (see "Poland on the Brink," WV proletariat. There would have been no USSR. 'And they then glorified the tion" and "independence," the left­ No. 484, 1 September). But back in 1981 Qclober Revolution if Lenin's party had clerical-nationalists of Polish Solidar­ ,"entrist Workers' Power group mimics when Solidarnose consolidated around submerged itself in the sea of social­ nose, whose great hero figure is Marshal Stalin's opposition to any national a pro-capitalist program, at a time wheR chauvinism that inundated the Russian Pilsudski, the fascistic dictator of Po­ secession from the Soviet Union. In Solidarnose was hatching its coup plans workers at the start of World War I. But land in the 1920s and '30s. reprinting excerpts from the 26 August (revealed on the infamous "Radom Lenin persevered, and three years later A few years later the Australian USec statement of the Central Committee of tapes"), a Workers Power leader de­ the Bolsheviks achieved state power. section, the Socialist Workers Parfy, the Communist Party of the Soviet clared, "if Solidarity is armed under its T o~ the opportunities are open­ established close politicai' collabora­ 'u nion on the threat of civil war in the present leadership we will be for a mili­ ing up for political revolution in the tion with an emigre group associated Baltics (WV No. 484, I September), we tary united front with that leadership d~formed/degenerated workers states. with the Croatian Ustas~. :rhen Nazi " stressed that the statement "leaves out against the Soviet invasion." Around Solidarnosc-in league with· Jaruzel­ Germany invaded' the Bali(lr~s\n 1941, it the critical element, insisted upon by the same time, WP admitted that ski-intends to administer a "short, Lenin, that all nations not seeking coun­ Walesa was "tied particularly closely to sharp shock" .of capitalist austerity to. terrevolutionary social change were the Catholic hierarchy" which is "ulti­ the Polish workers as the opening shot promised the right to fully administra­ mately fighting for capitalist restora­ of dismantling the historic gains of the Spartacist League tively disaffiliate from the rest of the tion" (Workers Power, January 1982). collectivized economy. What is posed is Public Offices Soviet Union." Workers Power says Their excuse for tailing behind the a real struggle by the Polish workers in nothing about the danger pf capitalist ,Polish "mass movement" for counter­ both the Stalinist and Solidarnosc -MARXIST LlTERATURE­ counterrevolution in the Saltics today revolution was familiar: "It is not the unions, necessarily beginning around but simply declares, "we oppose calls for responsibility of the Polish workers that immediate economic demands for sur­ Bay Area independence in the sense of secession Thurs,: 5:30-8:00 p,m" Sat.: 1:00-5:00 p,m, the brutal Stalinist regimes have hand­ vival but raising implicitly the perspec­ 1634 Telegraph, 3rd Floor (near 17th Street) from the Soviet Union" (Workers ed to the forces of reaction the possi­ tive of a working-class struggle for polit­ Oakland, California Phone: (415) 839-0851 Power, September 1989). bility to initiate struggle for elemen· ical power. For the first time in decades, Chicago At the same time as it falls into line tary working-class demands" (Workers the Soviet workers-including in the Tues,: 5:00-9:00 p,m" Sat.: 11:00 a,m,-2:00 p,m, behind the old tsarist doctrine of Power, October 1981). Now that Soli­ Baltics-have begun to assert them­ 161 W Harrison SI., 10th Floor "Russia-One and Indivisible," Work­ darnose is in a position to carry out its selves as an independent social force. Chicago, Illinois Phone: (312) 663-0715 ers Power capitulates to some of the "struggle" for a return to capitalism, The situation cries out for revolution­ New York City worst nationalist excrescences of the these centrists are squirming. They want ary leadership, for Trotskyist parties, to Tues,: 6:30-9:00 p,m" Sat.: 1:00-5:00 p,m, Baltic movements, supporting the to harken back to "the fighting strength whose construction the slick centrists 41 Warren St. (one block below Chambers SI. near Church St.) demand for "recognition of non­ of the early days of Solidarity the trade are an obstacle as they trot eagerly New York, N,Y, Phone: (212) 267-1025 Russian languages as official, lan­ union." Right, the days when Walesa behind the illusions· and false con­ guages." The very idea of an "official was appealing to Reagan while waving sciousness of the masses .• 14 WORKERS VANGUARD Council and the Lorain, Ohio Central 'Pittston Labor Council passed resolutions call": ing for a "one-day general strike." George Leitz, Transport Workers Un­ Miners ... ion (TWU) president, blusters that Detroit Union Convoy (continued from page 16) "Organized labor is already talking the deadline came union lawyers told about a nationwide strike. If that's what the judge that they "were having a hard it takes to get some attention, so be Rolls Into Coal Country time persuading a small number inside it" (People's Daily World, 31 August). the plant to leave." AFL-CIO chief Lane Kirkland re­ We print below a report from a plane came low over the camp. The With 5,000 strikers and supporters sponds: "I have no aversion to a general trade unionist in Detroit who took old-timers I spoke to are not speak­ massed outside, it wasn't the threats of a . strike, I would never say never" (News­ part in the September 8 caravan ing ill ofTrumka or the District lead­ coal company judge that ended the sit­ day, 3 September). Like hell! He would which traveled 1,300 miles round-trip ership, but do talk about· using down late Wednesday night. It was the run to his pals at the CIA to try and to show solidarity with the Pittston effective traditional methods alld miners' own union bureaucrats. UMW stop it. strike. tactics for conducting a strike. Predictably, the "socialist" water vice president Cecil Roberts, who led The morale is very high. I think boys for the trade-union bureaucracy We had 215 cars, vans, trucks and the miners out of Molis No.3, shouted, the civil disobedience tactics, what­ have churned out adoring stories on the motor homes-590 people in all. "We stood the state on its head," as the ever their ultimate worth, have labor traitors' newfound "militancy." That many cars is about three miles 98 sitdowners melted into a sea of cam­ helped in this respect, especially The Socialist Workers Party gives glow­ on the expressway, more than a cou­ ouflage. But as one miner said: "We with the women and young people. ing press to the stunt where Kirkland ple of miles when we were closed up. came, we saw, we conquered, we left." Everybody's doing something. There and a dozen International union chiefs Great logistics job-CB radio con­ In the 1938 Transitional Program is also a feel to the place that the took a grandstand arrest in Virginia, trolled, wrecker, doctor and nurses, Leon Trotsky pointed to the revolu­ traditional miners' strike is being Kirkland's first ever for union activity. lawyers, portable toilets, food, gas tionary implications of the workers' sei­ waged. It's not without reason that The Communist Party's People's Daily pumpers, traffic controllers. It was zure of capitalist property: the State of Virginia has brought World obscenely quotes Kirkland tell­ an 18-hour trip. "Sit-down strikes. , . go beyond the lim­ its meanest dogs out of the base­ ing miners the old refrain: "Which side The last 30 miles or so to Camp its of 'normal' capitalist procedure. In­ ment and cut them loose from their dependently of the demands of the are you on?" (In a 3 August PD W col­ Solidarity were without local police chains. strikers, the temporary seizure of fac­ umn, however, CP chairman Gus Hall traffic control. We closed up by radio tories deals a blow to the idol, capitalist blasts Kirkland as the leader of a "right and ran in at the highest possible State police usually run in pairs property. Every sit-down strike poses, wing" cabal, collaborating with the FBI speed, running the lights. No break­ and at extremely high speeds, like in a practical manner the question of stock car racers drafting. The troop­ who is the boss of the factory: the cap­ 'and the capitalists against "militant left downs or accidents. Local residents italist or the workers?" elements." Sounds like Hall can't figure and UMW supporters turned out to ers and the governor who sent them In the hands of the UMW tops, the sit- . out which side Kirkland's on.) Sam wave us through from front porches are hated. Miners told of strikers down at Moss No.3 was never intended Marcy and Workers World's United and intersections. Close to Castle­ arrested for civil disobedience being to challenge Pittston's "right" to destroy Labor Action (July-August 1989) grov­ wood, Lebanon and St. Paul we got forced to kneel at the side of the road the lives of 1,700 striking miners and els as it "asks": "Will the top AFL-CIO an enthusiastic reception from work­ with loaded AR-15 carbines pointed their families. And at the first threat officials heed this call for a nationwide ing people, glares from upper-class at their foreheads. by Pittston's black-robed judges, the one-day work stoppage?" The dubious types. Courts seem to be after tying bureaucracy pulled the sitdowners out. Workers League pleads with Kirkland Camp Solidarity is in a lovely loca­ up the union treasury more than But miners who felt the power of the to "call a general strike." tion. It is very well run-security is in anything else. The convoy raised occupation at Moss No.3 Illay not be so These reformists' cynicism is bound­ good shape, discipline in evidence $110,000 in the Detroit area, which easy to pull out in the future. less. The sordid record of the labor . everywhere. It's disquieting that a rail will go out to strikers immediately traitors in the Eastern and Pittston spur is running coal through the back as a back-to-school bonus for the Bring Out Labor's Muscle strikes is well known: Leitz has kept of the camp site. Pittston has a kids. UMW members were genuine­ to Win the Strike thousands of TWU airline ground ser­ massive security operation running, ly thrilled to see this convoy. The After a dozen years of union-busting, vice workers on the job, as TWU flight and one can see some of it when the hospitality and food were wonder­ from Jimmy Carter's use of Taft­ attendants at Eastern are left to twist in coal is moving. A helicopter and light ful, the farewells were heartwarming. Hartley against the miners in 1978 the wind. Kirkland appeared before through the years of Reagan reaction to ALPA's executive board in August to the greed of corporate raiders like Frank denounce the Eastern pilots' demand for Lorenzo, workers want to fight. When a national pilots' action. And in a letter busting offensive. Miners in a dozen how to win this one. miners' pickets appeared at power earlier this summer, AFL-CIO head­ states already showed what is needed The labor bureaucracy's alliance with plants and steel mills in western Penn­ quarters ordered state and local labor when they wildcatted, fighting Trumka the Democratic Party is the roadblock sylvania, workers walked. Eastern pilots councils not to support the UMW if it and the judges who forced them backto standing in the way of successful labor fought the Air Line Pilots Association meant violating "legal obligations im­ work. This is class war, and to win struggle. Virginia coal miners, fed up (ALP A) tops for a national pilots' posed by the court" or "existing la"bor requires a leadership which will take on with getting the shaft from Demo­ shutdown. agreements"-in other words: cross the the state's injunctions, dispatch the fly­ crat Baliles, are casting write-in votes And this anger, reflected in the out­ miners' picket lines. 'ing pickets and call on railroad work­ for John L. Lewis and Mother Jones pouring of labor solidarity for the Coming from the bureaucracy and ers, waterfront and steel workers to "hot in November. Class-struggle militants, Pittston strike and earlier demonstra­ their fake-socialist press agents, the cargo" scab coal. Everyone who is in this from Pittston to Eastern, must fight to tions and picket lines at Eastern, has "general strike" talk is a cover for their fight-working miners, pensioners, the break .the bureaucracy's stranglehold on prompted "militant" phrasemongering sabotage of the Pittston and Eastern Daughters of Mother Jones auxiliary­ the. unions through the battle for a from some very unlikely quarters: the strikes. What is needed is to bring should send delegates to Camp Solidar­ revolutionary workers party that can New Jersey AFL-CIO Industrial Union out labor's muscle to smash the union- ity to elect a strike committee and decide lead all the oppressed .•

Week Three of Six Totals

Quota Week Quota Week Local (in points) Three % Local (in points) Three %

, Atlanta 170 196 115 Oakland 810 353 44 Boston 300 281 94 San Francisco 360 158% 44 Chicago 520 421% 81 Washington, D.C, 170 151 89 Cleveland 200 218 109 At-large 200 57% 29 Los Angeles 270 212% 79 National Total 4,250 ' 3,049112 72 New York 1,250 1,000% 80

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~S~ I ______Make checks payable/mail to: Spartacist Publishing Co., 'Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 ~ . 29 SEPTEMBER 1989 15 WIJRItERS ,,1"tiIlI1R' Mobilize Labor to Back Them U,-! Don't Touch Scab Coal! ittston oa Iners• on tne ront Ine• SEPTEMBER 25-For over three days, 98 members of the United" Mine Workers (UMW) occupied the control room of Pittston's strategic Moss No.3 coal preparation plant. One of the " I;;'~r ' .- -,=, ':~r sitdowners told Workers Vanguard of :,,~:. ,'" A\ the power they felt looking out at the I L~, d\J~ \. \ ~'..'/"'''-J .' r\ miners and strike supporters in camou­ ".".), .~; t·· .", "," ".- if. flage massed to defend the occupation: j·::r~ , ~ .~; "f "When we were standing on that tipple, there were 5,000 standing out there. It (Y'i " CL \...J\...... lu~~ny hf ORE V r,;, F, really makes you feel good. We knew we had the backup." Eighty hours later, the U M W tops pulled the strikers out. The plant occupation came as the Pittston strike nears its sixth month. The 1,700 strikers in southwest Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky are bat­ tling for the U M Wand all working peo­ ple. By breaking from the industrywide contract and seeking to slash miners' and pensioners' medical benefits, the company has provoked a battle the coal bosses hope will destroy the union at Pittston. The coal miners, for years the "shock troops of American labor," are on the front line of the class war. In West Virginia, coal company gunmen shot and wounded Roy Blankenship, vice president of UMW Local 1971. Less than ten days later some of the same thugs returned to try to run down U M W Pittston miners contingent at Chicago Labor Day m~rch. pickets in Slab Fork Hollow with a front-end loader. At every turn, the Across the country, hundreds of current labor misleaders will wail that were helpless against the sitdown, as Pittston strikers have come up against thousands of workers have poured out such tactics are "illegal." Well, if it miners lined the road into the plant. In the cops and court injunctions of the for solidarity rallies, car caravans and works for the working class, there is an instant, the sitdown strike at Moss capitalist state. The courts have de­ picket lines on behalf of key strikes: always a law against it. There must be a No.3 had dorie what five months of civil manded that the UMW pay over $24 some 17,000 Machinists, flight atten­ hard fight in the labor movement for a disobedience and parading in front of million in fines this week. In the llO-day dants and pilots fighting Eastern Air­ class-struggle leadership- that is willing New York banks had failed to do-shut coal strike of 1977-78, miners defied the lines with their backs to the wall; 63,000 to defy the bosses' injunctions and break down Pittston. The company's million­ Arnold Miller leadership and burned , NYNEX phone workers defending their from the racist, anti-labor Democratic dollar-a-day plant lay silent. Taft-Hartley injunctions. But this time medical benefits; 50,000 Local 1199 hos­ Party. Presitient Richard Trumka and the the miners' courage and militancy has pital workers in New York, who voted UtyfW tops intended' the occupation been diverted by the U MW tops into ten to one to strike on October 4. The Miners Take Moss No. 3 only as a "dramatic public statement" to impotent "corporate campaign"-style Unionists from across the Midwest have The workers' occupation of Moss appeal to labor-hating Democrat Vir­ boycotts and endless civil disobedience poured into Camp Solidarity in south­ No.3 took the Pittston union-busters ginia governor Gerald Baliles to bring arrests. west Virginia to stand with the miners. and their gun thugs by surprise. On Sun­ Pittston boss Michael Odom to the bar­ Every uni'on-conscious miner knows As Ken Crowe noted in New York -day; September 17, busloads of miners gaining table. But the moment workers that the union cannot afford another Newsday (3 September), this has been rolled up to the preparation plant, seizeo the mine baron's sacred prop­ defeat like A. T. Massey-the capital­ the year that the "Labor Movement wQich cleans, grades and ships coal from erty, Odom squealed like a stuck pig. ists are trying to turn union miners into Takes to Streets." the surrounding mines. Moving quickly Comparing the takeover to the 1979 sei­ an endangered species. Alm{)st 50,000 This sentiment must be tapped to win across a narrow tiridge, the strikers bar­ zure of the U.S. embassy in Iran, Odom miners from Pennsylvania to Alabama the Pittston strike. Railroad workers ricaded themselves inside the plant's declared, "We will not negotiate with poured out of the mines in June and July must let the bosses know that Pittston control room with padlocks and steel terrorists. " in a virtual national strike in solidarity coal is too hot to handle; let it pile up on cables, three stories up and accessible Baliles and Douglas Wilder, the new with the Pittston strike. But they were the docks in Tidewater; unionists in £he only by a narrow stairway. The scabs Democratic candidate for governor, shoehorned back to work by federal steel mills and power plants must shut fled, escorted through the assembled issued a joint statement demanding the judges and their own UMW misleaders. down the coke ovens and boilers that are miners at .. the gate to Moss No.3 by a miners abandon the plant. Federal Enough! Send out the flying pickets­ burning scab coal, and appeal to Japa­ convoy of state troopers. These "Pitts­ judge Glen Williams threatened that if for a national coal strike! nese steel workers to do the same. The ton blue lights," as the miners call them, the occupation wasn't ended by 7:00 p.m. Wednesday, something "unpleas­ ant" was going to happen to the miners. But unlike Virginia Beach, where the racist cops and National Guard terror­ ized black college students, in Carbo, Virginia they faced the power of organ- , ized labor. After five months and 3,000 arrests, the Pittston strikers refused to be cowed. And despite assurances by the UMW tops that the sitdown strikers would obey the judge's injunction, when continued on page J5 16 29 SEPTEMBER 1989