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No. 483 ·t~~x .... 4 August 1989 Soviet Workers Challenge Perestroika The powerful strike by Soviet min­ who have amassed wealth and huge ers has not only shaken up the bureau­ resentment under the new economic order that Mr. Gorbachev is trying to crats in Moscow. In an extraordinary build." front-page "news analysis," the New York Times (26 July) had some advice Soviet workers have no love lost for price-gouging speculators and exploi­ for the Kremlin leadets. "Worry for tation by nascent capitalists; they are Gorbachev," it headlined: "Workers, Resentful of His Changes, Could Top­ hostile to Gorbachev's attacks on ple the Crippled Economy." Soviet "wage-leveling." And, the Times arti­ cle noted, "it is not hard to imagine the president Mikhail Gorbachev has been trying to portray the miners' bur­ newly mobilized workers someday geoning strike movement as support using their power to resist the disloca­ for his program of pro-market eco­ tions that are expected to come with nomic reforms that goes by the name perestroika." For example: of "perestroika" (restructuring). But, "Mr. Gorbachev cannot count on warned the Times, the workers' "no­ blue-collar support for closing bank­ rupt industries, deregulating prices on tion of perestroika is not necessanly consumer goods, laying off surplus the one held by Mr. Gorbachev's workers-all measures that leading economic brain trust." economists say are inevitable ifthe So­ The article noted the mood of the viet economy is to be revived." triumphant miners, who raised one We Trotskyists have insisted for "largely overlooked" demand which several years now that the powerful must have caused Gorbachev a "shiver Soviet proletariat is no fan of market­ of disquiet": oriented reforms which would dis­ "Along with soap rations and winter mantle piecemeal the historic achieve­ shoes, night bonuses and greater polit­ ical power, many of the miners called ment of a planned economy. The for abolishing or sharply curtailing the prospect of inflation, speedup, layoffs freewheeling private entrepreneurs continued on page 4 Prokopyevsk, July 15: Siberian miners strike for soap, meat and justice. For Workers Political Revolution in China I Lessons of the Beijing Spring

,We publish below an edited tran­ "the main monumeI1.t to capitalism" in script of a speech by Ray Bishop of the that area. Spartacist League Central Committee It appeared also that the People's Lib­ at a June 29 SLforum in New York. eration Army was splitting right down the middle over the massacre. The army unit that carried it out was the 27th While looking out over the carnage Army, very close to Deng Xiaoping. But in Tiananmen Square on ;June 4, one right after that happened, in Inner Mon­ young Beijing worker said, "This gov­ golia, which is where the 27th Army is ernment is done with." You had troops based, there was a troop rebellion, lead­ patrolling up and down Beijing's boule­ ing to 30 of the officers being shot. vards; you aiso had students and work­ So China was on the verge of civil ers in China's key cities rising up as one war, and at that very time the govern­ in protest. In Shanghai, China's largest ment itself seemingly disappeared. FOr city and its commercial and industrial up to a week foreign diplomats and powerhouse, you had an effective gen­ newspapermen couldn't find anybody eral strike until the end of that week. to get the line on what was going on. In the northeast, in Shenyang, 30,000 . The People's Daily, which is the Com­ aircraft workers commandeered trucks munist Party's main newspaper, could and marched in unison to protest the not be found on the streets of Beijing. massacre. In the center of China, in But five days after the massacre, Deng Xian, the ancient capital, tens of thou­ re-emerged. And he re-emerged with a sands of workers blocked roads. And in vengeance, unleashing a savage repres­ Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan prov­ sion which to date, so far as we know, ince, 30 workers were killed in the has meant 27 workers executed, thou­ course of protests over control of the sands of arrests, including leaders of the Reuters vast underground private market, which Beijing, May 20: Workers flooded into the streets to defy state of siege. was called by one Chinese newspaper continued on page 6 union. Labor had the power to shut down the airports and stop all 'traffic! . Gun control is a way to slowly take Labor and Blacks Have the Power away the arms of all. decent working people. Then black and poor people would be at the mercy of the local city police and the rest of the racists. Remember, lynching decreased when Stop Racist Terror in Norfolk! black people became owners of guns. Labor must destroy gun control. The • Portsmouth, March 18 • Virginia Beach, June 30 police and National Guard troops are By Cliff Carter At approximately 10:35 on a Satur­ For the third time in a week, a Viet­ not geared to protect working people. day night, a cross was set afire on the namese man found his yard ripped apart The drug testing of the workforce is lawn of an elderly retired black woman and his house spray-painted with racial The racism of the eighties has shaped just a way to control who works and who recently moved into a predomi­ insults. The driveway was also painted the year of 1989 into a free-for-all for WhO doesn't. If a shop or cotp.pany nantly white neighborhood. with racial insults and had these words: the racists in the Tidewater area. In the wants to get rid of a militant worker, "DIE HO CHEE" and "GO BACK TO early 1980s, segregated schools sud­ • Portsmouth, May 30 label this worker a drug user and he is CHINA SIGNORA." denly became "neighborhood schools" At a playground, a 26-year-old white gone. Want to have a family become and the racists saw a green light that man fired seven shots with a pump shot­ • Virginia Beach, July 11 homeless? Accuse just one member of hasn't changed. gun at black children. Police arrived, A cross was reported burning shortly the family of being a drug user and the On July 9, 1984, United States Dis­ questioned the shotgun man, but did not before 6:40 a.m. The police traced the landlord can request the door keys. trict Court judge John A. MacKenzie arrest him, saying he DID NOT pose a wood to a nearby resident's yard, where Labor must stop the drug witchhunt. approved the Norfolk schOOl board's serious threat. some gasoline also had been stored. The Supreme Court' has shown its plan to end cross-town busing and • Portsmouth, June 4 These same police determined that the true face where abortions are con­ return to neighborhood (segregated) A 32-year-old black man found his wood and gasoline had been stolen. cerned, by letting the decisions and wel­ elementary schools. The labor unions 1986 Mazda RX7 messed up with spray The police sergeant's final assumption: fare of women be made by men who care could have defended busing, but since paint. On the hood were words "NIG­ "We don't think it is racially motivated little or nothing about working women they didn't, the advocates of the neigh­ GER MOBILE" and a picture of male because there are no black families liv­ of today. Is it strange that every Con­ borhood schools have been feeling genitalia. On one door was a Ku Klux ing in the immediate area. But as a pre­ gressman in Washington that is anti­ welcome to continue to bring back Klan insignia, and the other door had a caution, we did notify the FBI." abortion is for the death penalty? the old Jim Crow discrimination laws picture of a pitchfork, the symbol of a . In the 1880s the Republicans with­ The death penalty is the "legal" lynch­ and ways. satanic cult. drew the federal troops from the South ing of black and' poor people. When the state wants to rid itself of an unwanted In the Tidewater cities several ugly • Portsmouth, June 4 and placed the control of law and order person, this person, guilty or not, can be incidents have taken place this year: A 19-year-old white man was arrested into the hands of the Ku Klux Klan. placed on death row. Labor must defend • Chesapeake,. January 31 for burning a cross on the front lawn ofa Today in the 1980s, while the control of the right for free abortions and fight to A cross was burned in the yard of a 43-year-old black longshoreman who black and poor people is a little more 32-year-old black lady and her four has lived at his present address for the sophisticated, once again we see the abolish the death penalty. children. last ten years. nightriding of the Klan. With the "go ahead" given to racists in The Reagan administration contin­ the form of Congressmen, city councils, ued with Bush (with the backing of the school board members, KKK and Nazi Democrats) and controls black and skinheads, and aided by Uncle Toms and other so-called black leaders, it is Soviet Workers and poor people with: 1) union-busting past time for labor to show its strength, Political Revolution 2) gun control unchained from the grip of the Dem­ ocratic Party. From East Europe to the USSR to 3) the drug witchhunt 4) control of abortions and the death The labor movement of Tidewater China. the crisis of Stalinism has reached must reorganize itself, not only to fight the point of explosion. The fundamental penalty 5) the green light to racist terror. for jobs for the workers, but to fight causes of that crisis were laid out more racism in the communities throughout than 50 years ago by Bolshevik leader The union-busting got its strong start with the decertification of the Profes­ the area. To see racism and not organize Leon Trotsky in The Revolution Betrayed sional Air Traffic Controllers Organi­ against this wrong will only weaken you (1936). The perspective of proletarian in every way and fashion. political revolution advanced by Trotsky zation (PATCO) in 1981. Sure, the TROTSKY was a keystone in his struggle to forge LENIN leaders of P A TCO made some bad decisions, but the AFL-CIO should Cliff Carter is a guest contributor to the Fourth International and return the Soviet Union to the internationalist road of never have let Ronald Reagan destroy a Workers Vanguard. the October Revolution. Will the bureaucrat devour the workers' state, or will the working class clean up the bureaucrat? Thus stands the question upon whose decision hangs the fate of the Soviet Union .... The revolution which the bureaucracy is preparing against itself will not be social, SPARTAOst1:: ;NUMBER 43·44 ENGLISH EDITION SUMMER= 11118 like the October revolution of 1917. It is not a question this time of changing the economic foundations of society, of replacing cert'lin forms of pfoperty with other forms. History has known elsewhere not only social revolutions which substituted JUST OUT! the bourgeois for the feudal regime, but also political revolutioIi~ which, without Sp-artacist destroying the economic foundations of society, swept out an old ruling upper crust (1830 and 1848 in France, February 1917 in Russia, etc.). The overthrow of the English Edition Bonapartist caste will, of course, have deep social consequences, but in itself it will be confined within the limits of political revolution .... No. 43-44 It is not a question of substituting one ruling clique for another, but of changing the Summer 1989 very methods of administering the economy and guiding the culture of the country. (56 pages) Bureaucratic autocracy must give place to Soviet democracy .... If a bourgeoisie cannot peacefully grow into a socialist democracy, it is likewise $1.50 true that a socialist state cannot peacefully merge with a world capitalist system. On the historic order of the day stands not the peaceful socialist development of "one . (Spartacist is country," but a long series of world disturbances: wars and revolutions. Disturbances sent to all WV in tbe USSRI are inevitable also in the domestic life of the Soviet Union. If the bureaucracy was subscribers.) Sf;E PAGE 5 compelled in its struggle for a planned economy to dekulakize the kulak, the When w•• the Soviet Thormldor? KorAl __.... """-, working class will be compelled in its struggle for socialism to debureaucraiize the bureaucraey. On the tomb of the latter will be inscribed the epitaph: "Here lies the theory of socialism in one country." -Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed (1936)

Also Available: !/!w~!!'!!../!~!!'!~'!!.s~ Spartacist Pamphlet DIRECTOR OF PARTY PUBLICATIONS: Liz Gordon EDITOR: Jan Norden "Market Socialism" PRODUCTION MANAGER: Jorge Ramirez CIRCULATION MANAGER: Jon Lawrence in Eastern Europe EDITORIAL BOARD: George Foster, Frank Hunter, Jane Kerrigan, Len Meyers, James Robertson, Hungary: Reuben Samuels, Joseph Seymour, Alison Spencer, Marjorie Stamberg MGoulash communism" (32 pages) The Spartacist League is the U.S. Section of the International Communist League (Fourth Goes Bust Internationalist). ------for Central Planning------. $1.00 Workers Vanguard (USPS 098-770) published biweekly, except 2nd issue August and with 3-week interval December. ThrOUgh sovieH)emocracy by the Spartacist Publishing Co.. 41 Warren Street, New York. NY 10007. Telephone: (212) 732-7862 (Editorial). ~16_ (212) 732-7861 (Business). Address all correspondence to: Box 1377. GPO, New York. NY 10116. Domestic subscriptions: $7.00/24 issues. Second-class postage paid at New York. NY. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to dblhtatcs lei1dcr 01 RIght OpPOSI on Make checks payable/mall to: Workers Vanguard, Box 1377, GPO. New York, NY 10116. . . Spartacist Publishing Co. Opinions expressed in signed articles or letters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint. Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 1Q116

No. 483 4 August 1989

2 WORKERS VANGUARD

, , ~ . clation provides housing and other assistance for its 25,000 members. The president of the women's organization, a woman in her 60s, gave a very fighting speech. Other women spoke about how they came to lose their relatives. N one of them wore the chador, although many had a scarf over their heads. One described how her family was attacked by mujahedin bandits on the road from Konar to lalalabad. Her husband was killed and a little son died under a tank. Two of her daughters threw themselves info a river to die rather than b.!! cap­ tured. She and the women with her waited for the enemy to return. Some of KABUL-Every day cities like Kabul, One of the soldiers invited me inside and embrace and exchange of"tasakor" the women took small bombs and, Kandahar and Khost are being hit by their billet to share their lunch, a tasty (thank you). knowing they would die at the same rockets. Frustrated by their humiliat­ mix of some cereals with roasted pota­ time, threw themselves at the murderers. ing defeat at 1 alalabad, the mujahedin toes, milk and cucumbers. * * * Not surprisingly, most of the women are taking it out on the civilian pop­ They all had lots of questions-this is July 24-A visit to Watan's nursery, the in the regular army battalions and in the ulation, who are growing ever more very typical here, I get interviewed more main nursery in Kabul. It is enclosed in a new voluntary women's militia come outraged with the cowardly murderers than I can interview others. A young large walled compound west of the city from the association-they want re­ and their masters in Islamabad and officer wanted to know about the status center, with a steep hill to the back. It venge. Commander Shafiqa, a Russian­ Washington. of women in the West. From the little houses 1,000, mostly boys, who have trained woman who runs the training On Saturday, luly 22, six rockets that we could say to each other it was been orphaned by the war or come from center, told me very proudly when I met killed 41 and injured 161 in Kabul. Then nevertheless clear that the other side of poor families. Another nursery for girls her that this is the first time in the his­ on Monday afternoon, a bomb ex­ women's oppression is how miserable is located in the southern part of Kabul tory of Afghanistan that women have ploded in a normally crowded restau­ life is for the young men of Afghani­ near the Soviet embassy. There are some been allowed to set up military units. rant a few hundred yards from the stan. People on the dance floor never 60 such homes all over the country, They currently have a battalion of 600, Jhumiat Hospital. On Wednesday, a one of whose detachments was in bloodbath was narrowly averted at a lalalabad. The battalion is also respon­ vegetable market when shoppers no­ sible for guarding schools and institu­ ticed a box, wQich was found to contain tions where women study or work. . five kilos of explosives. Two days later, 17 rockets hit the city, killing 10 and * * * wounding 19. July 27-Accompanied by the head of We recently went to a huge kinder­ the provincial youth organization, our garten in the capital which had been hit armed escort and a translator from the by a rocket. Thankfully, there had been press center, I visited a youth battalion no casualties. When the teachers heard made up of People's Democratic Par­ a rocket explode nearby, they quickly ty (PDPA) and Democratic Youth got all the kids-aged three months to Organization (DYOA) members sta­ six years-down to the basement. The tioned near Koresimir, some ten to windows were completely smashed­ twelve kilometers north along the glass everywhere. It could have been a Charikar Road, which is now closed off massacre. but used to be the main link with Salang. The mujahedin are showing the signs Army artillery units were active while of an army in disarray. Never united to we were there, and the youth unit was begin with, they are now beginning to preparing to pursue mujahedin in a kill each other in a serious way. Earlier nearby village. This is part of the this month, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's defensive ring around Kabul. gunmen ambushed a commando be­ Earlier, I met with general secretary longing to the Massoud faction, wiping Mazdak, the 30-year-old leader of the out seven military commanders and DYOA. A member of the youth organi­ another 23 men. This could signal a real zation since 1976, he spent a year in jail blood feud. Let them kill each other! under the Daoud regime. I outlined our In my third week in embattled Af­ support for the Soviet intervention in ghanistan, some other observations 1979, our offer to organize interna­ from this reporter's notebook: tional brigades after the Soviet with~ Afghan militiawoman with Soviet-supplied AK-47, ready to fight counter­ revolutionary mujahedin. drawal and our criticisms of the policy * * * of "national reconciliation." All per­ July 19-The traditional hospitality of touch, women enter the buses from the which provide schooling and recreation sonnel in the DYOA have undergone the Afghan people stands out even front and men from the back, swim­ and introduce the children to practical military training; there is even a mili­ among the horrors of war, and it is dou­ ming pools are for boys and men only. skills, like carpentry, mechanical work, tary HQ in their Central Committee bled and tripled when they find out that We talked about lalalabad and what carpet weaving and drawing. Occasion­ offices. The armed forces have six inde­ this Western journalist is on their side this victory represents for working peo­ ally the children are taken for excur­ pendent regiments made up of PDPA against their counterrevolutionary en­ ple the world over, how aur campaign sions around Kabul. and DYOA members. emies. Today, while I was walking by a got an audience especially among wom­ The nursery is heavily guarded. This At the Karesimir outpost today they guarded building in downtown Kabul, a en from every part of the globe. I talked underlines the fact that in this country welcomed my visit and explained that soldier waved me over to drink tea with about how the civil war had erupted anything which represents culture and one of their main tasks is to prevent him, curious why a Westerner was not over issues like equal rights for men and progress and the most elementary de­ rocket attacks against Kabul. Kha­ driving past in a car. Luckily, his com­ women and how every step toward fense of· human dignity-be it a nursery mayan, the unit's political commissar, rades, standing guard with bayonets social progress is always met with reac­ home, the national art gallery, a told me how everybody predicted they fixed, spoke Russian (one had studied tionary resistance. school-has to be protected against the would fall after the withdrawal of Soviet in Stavropol, the other in Leningrad). When I was about to leave, the young counterrevolutionary cutthroats. troops, but "Afghans are defending They came over to translate when they captain told me how much he liked our I also visited the Indira Gandhi Insti­ themselves everywhere"; the mujahedin learned I was opposed to the mujahedin. conversation and offered a handshake tUte for Child Health. In the past year are "afraid to fight with us face to face, the Institute treated 3,525 war-wounded that's why they hurl rockets against children. Most suffer from burns due to defenseless people." "They come, we are rockets or falling flares; 89 percent don't ready," he added. co. " survive because their bodies are too Hassan heads the special "Partisia" weak to withstand the wounds they group and has been a partisan leader for have received. "These are the pangs of eight years. The partisans, often dis­ a nation in the throes of war. The guised, infiltrate areas where the coun­ economy of a nation can be brought terrevolutionaries are active, and then back on the rails, the infrastructure strike at them. Hassan and some of his can be rebuilt, but what about the hun­ comrades were featured prominently in dreds and thousands of innocent chil­ a front-page article in the youth paper. dren who get wounded, their arms and Nurallah, 'a 22-year-old political ac­ limbs amputated?" said Dr. Abdul Salm tivist, wanted to know the opinions of Jalali, president of the Institute. "It will ordinary people in the West. It was a Children in take decades to undo the destruction pleasure for me to be able to say, on the Kabul waiting and damage being wrought on the basis of our concrete experience around for food. society." the campaign for lalalabad, that there CIA-supplied are tens of thousands of people that care terrorists * * * about the fight of the Afghan people target civilian against the reactionaries. I concluded by population. July 25-1 was privileged to be present at a meeting of the Association of assuring them that I and my comrades Families of Martyrs and Invalids, held would do all we can to help them to at a hall of the Women's Council to win victory over the counterrevolution­ commemorate the 70th anniversary of aries who would like to bring back the the country·s'~1ndependence. The asso- Middle Ages .• 4 AUGUST 1989 3 West. Deputy prime minister Aleksan­ nationalist, company "tmi0l!" of the gia. In the Georgian capital ofTbilisi on Soviet dra Biryukova purchased $58 million in CIA and the Vatican. But when July 24, there was a general strike and pharmaceuticals and $108 million in the U.S.-financed "Democratic Union" march through the capital of some consumer goods, including 30 million tried to raise its head in the Kuzbass, its 20,000 Georgian nationalists waving Workers ... pairs of pantyhose. The total price tag spokesman was hooted off the plat­ flags and shouting "Long live free (continued from page 1) for the concessions is estimated at $8 form. The only place where the name Georgia, Down with the Russian Em­ billion. But this is only the tip of the ice­ Solidarity has been proposed is in the pire" and "Invaders go home." Interior and vast incom€! differences is social dy­ berg: what of the needs of millions of formerly Polish western Ukraine. When ministry troops have been stationed in namite in the USSR with its deep col­ other Soviet workers? a strike committee member in Novokuz­ the area to prevent ethnic pogroms, as lectivist heritage. When the workers Conservative columnist William Sa­ netsk (the former Stalinsk) said "we with the dispute between Armenians enter the scene, we wrote, they will take fire wrote that "It would be ironic ifMr. are the new Solidarity," the chairman and Azerbaijanis to the south. aim at the parasitic bureaucracy which Gorbachev ... should slip on a cake of begged to differ. "Workers in Gdansk F or decades, from the beginning of from Stalin on has usurped political soap" (New York Times, 20 July). But, had many political demands. Weare Sta,lin's rule, the Kremlin has pursued a power and whose policies ultimately as a member of the Supreme Soviet putting forward only economic ones." nationalist course which reflects. itself threaten the very foundations of the from the Donbass, Aleksei Boika, said, In fact, the Soviet coal strikers have for­ at home in Great Russian chauvinism Soviet workers state. Now imperialist "The people have been driven to the mulated political demands from the out­ toward the other peoples of the multi­ spokesmen, blinded by the Solidarnosc streets not by a shortage of soap, but by set, but of a markedly different kind. national Soviet state. The bankrupt experience into thinking that Soviet­ a shortage of justice." He added, "The The Kuzbass miners called for aboli­ policies of the Stalinist regime have gen­ bloc workers aFe a fertile field for anti­ miners of Donetsk trust nobody and tion of all special privileges for the erated powerful tendencies for the Communism, are beginriing to wake up. nothing. This is what we have come to bureaucracy and for a new Soviet con­ restoration of capitalism, which are But from an opposite class standpoint. . .. there is no protection, not from the stitution, to be prepared and publicly going under the cover of national self­ The Times' "analysis" suggested that determination. While in the Caucasus Moscow think twice about the "price and Central Asia ethnic pogroms have of buying peace in the coalfields" by been set off as various nationalities concessions to workers interested in "in­ squabble over their share of the pie in stant gratification." This view from the the framework of "market socialism," most authoritative organ of the Ameri­ in the Baltic republics the nationalist can bourgeoisie is of a piece with the line movements are blatantly heading to­ taken by the White House toward the ward counterrevolution, with the sup­ recent crackdown in Beijing. While port of local CP leaders. And last week vote-conscious legislators' called for the USSR Supreme Soviet gave prelim­ sanctions, President Bush uttered a tut­ inary approval, with the support of the tut while making sure the U.S.' trade Gorbachev leadership, to a law for the ties, investments, military connections 0 economic autonomy of Estonia and and intelligence listening posts along the Lithuania that represents the first step Soviet border were secure. The imperi­ on the road to independence. alists' immediate concern is to pump Simultaneously there was a four-:day billions in surplus. value out of the general strike in Estonia, called by the deformed workers states; ultimately "International Movement," against a their aim is counterrevolution. Work­ new proposed law which would effec­ ers political revolution, toppling the tively bar Russian workers from local Stalinist bureaucrats and returning the and republic elections. Estonian nation­ Soviet Union to the road of Lenin and alists cooked up this chauvinist legisla­ Trotsky, is the mortal enemy of their tion, which would require voters to have plans. two years residency, and candidates must have lived in the republic for 15 Riding the Siberian Tiger years! Already, a law making Estonian the sole "official language" was passed The miners strikes which spread like in January. This is a proposal to wildfire across the USSR last month disenfranchise and deprive of their marked the gravest crisis in the four rights nearly half of the population of years of Gorbachev's regime. From the Estonia, which includes several hun­ Kuzbass coal fields in Siberia to the Mammoth miners strike rally in Mezhdurechensk, July 13. The $oviet workers dred thousand Russian-speaking res­ Donbass in the Ukraine to Vorkuta in have awakened. idents as well as 200,000 Soviet troops the far north, half a million miners stationed in the area. Most industrial walked off the job. In an irony of his­ work councils, not from the unions, not discussed by 7 November 1990, the anni- workers in the republic are Russian, tory, Donetsk workers shut down the o from the party committees." Thus from versaryof the Bolshevik Revolution. and the walkout included thousands of Stakhanov mine, named for the Stalin­ the beginning, the miners movement In Vorkuta, strikers called for power workers at the Tallinn shipyards. Simi­ ist superworker who jacked up piece­ threw up elected strike committees, -to the elected soviets and for abrogat­ lar national-chauvinist proposals have rate norms for all Soviet workers by recallable at any time, whose work was ing Article 6 of the Stalin-Bukharin been raised by the "People's Front" in overfulfilling his daily quota. Thou­ overseen by mass workers assemblies. constitution consecrating the political Latvia and the Sajudis of Lithuania, sands of strikers in hard hats jammed These are the embryos of soviets. The monopoly of the Communist Party. The including calls for a ban on immigra­ the city squares from Prokopyevsk to strike committees will be maintained as S.talinist CP is not a workers party but tion by Russians. Donetsk in round-the-clock protests. A workers commissions to monitor the the political vehicle of the bureaucracy. The "economic reform" plan for Esto­ worried Gorbachev went on nation­ fulfilling of the concessions, and as a On the other hand, Gorbachev's refur­ nia and Lithuania debated in the Su­ wide television three times with per­ reminder that the workers' muscle can bished "soviets" are hardly the revolu­ sonal appeals to the miners, saying they preme Soviet is a frontal attack on cen­ be flexed again. tionary workers councils of 1905 and tral planning. Under the law, which is had "good reasons" for "taking matters The government conceded the min­ 1917 but pseudo-parliamentary talk into their own hands" but urgently supposed to be a pilot plan for pere­ ers' demand for the right of individual shops. Indeed, the Kuzbass strikes grew stroika, the Baltic republics would raise asking them to return to work. As the mines to sell excess coal abroad after out of frustration with the recent meet­ London Financial Times (24 July) put their own taxes, set prices, control fi­ their plan delivery quota is met. This is a ing of the new Soviet congress in June. nancial markets and foreign trade, and it, Gorbachev is "trying to ride the dangerous demand, ultimately threat­ One miner in the Kuzbass' told the Siberian tiger." Now a rail strike is eventually issue their own currency. ening the state monopoly of foreign Financial Times that the workers had Hoping to build a "market economy" threatened. trade, which Lenin established as a cor­ been waiting for results ever since 1985, The miners finally heeded Gorba­ based on agriculture and light industry, nerstone of the dictatorship of the pro­ when Gorbachev came to power. advocates of this plan seek to build a chev's appeal. In the deal worked out letariat. Moreover, the workers may not "Then, the Congress of Deputies began. with strike committee delegates who The workers expected something con­ system "resembling Finland or Sweden like what they get. Soviet miners are more than the traditional Soviet mod­ traveled to the Kremlin, the govern­ crete to be decided. We were all waiting relatively highly paid while Soviet mines , for something important. Every day el," the New York Times (28 July) re­ ment . granted sweeping concessions are comparatively inefficient, so their people watched. They saw how people ports. Yet their own tiny markets are far including bonuses for hardship and coal may not be competitive on the talked and talked, and took no deci­ too narrow to support an industrial night wQrk, bigher pensions, longer sions. The people had just had enough." world market. The logic of the market economy, and even the nationalists vacati

South can be broken, but it will take the kind of class­ bosses to "Do the Right Thing" by settling for the same struggle tactics that built the U A W -like "hot­ contract negotiated at the city's Catholic hospitals, a Auto Workers Shafted cargoing," mass picket lines and sitdown strikes. contract which gives up pension money in return for an at Smyrna 8.5 percent a year raise. And at a July 20 hospital work­ ers rally at Riverside Church, Jesse Jackson told work­ It Was the vote on organizing auto in the South. The ers to "Do the Right Thing" by voti~g for Democratic labor-haters at ~issan ran an all-out campaign to NYC Hospital Workers mayoral candidate David Dinkins. defeat the United Auto Workers whatever the cost. But empty slogans, pressure tactics and relying on And the labor traitors at 'Solidarity House let them get Call Three-Day Strike Democratic Party politicians like Dinkins and Jack­ away with it. Bieber's boys had nothing to offer-they son, and Governor Cuomo, won't beat the bosses. couldn't even show the union made a difference. How In the second one-day strike by Local 1199 in two They're hard lining it, and they have the capitalist could they, after giving away billions to Chrysler, Ford weeks, more than 15,000 NYC health care workers courts and cops behind them. What's needed is a solid and G M in the last decade? The UA W tops lost this one massed on July 24 outside St. Luke's Hospital in Har­ strike of all New York City health care workers, includ­ big, by more than two to one. All labor will payfor the lem, then marched crosstown to M t. Sinai. The fight by ing AFSCME workers in the public hospitals. Mobi­ defeat. Nissan's Smyrna plant will soon be the largest lize NYC labor to swell the picket lines in what would assembly plant in the U.S. Like new plants being con­ be a hugely popular struggle. For a whopping wage structed by Honda, Toyota and G M, it was sited in the increase and free, quality health care for all! rural South to exclude militant and black and union­ consCious workers. Nissan, like the others,hires a far smaller percentage of black workers than live in the surrounding area. The plant has ~een open for six For· a National Coal Strikel years, the one millionth vehicle rolled off the line last month. But for six years the VA W did nothing tofight After wildcats in defense of the striking Pittston Nissan's racism. miners spread across ten states for over a month, the Crippling back and carpal tunnel injuries at Nissan United Mine Workers tops called a "memorial period" are the direct result of the grueling pace of the "team" to squelch what had become a virtual national UMW system of production. But "teaming up" with the boss strike. West Virginia miners, who had been the first to is exactly what Solidarity House is ramming down the shut down the mines in June, were finally pushed back throats of auto workers across the country. South of to work by union president Richard Trumka in mid­ Nashville, just a few miles from Smyrna, GM's new July, as the courts and labor board handed down Saturn plant will be the "model" of the UA W bureauc­ massive injunctions. racy's sweetheart "teamwork" schemes, which rip up Across the Appalachian coal fields, the war on the seniority rights and any union defense on the shop­ UMW continues unabated. Jails continue to fill up floor. The UA W tops aren't union organizers, they're with Pittston miners, their families and supporters. union wreckers. Fines against the UMW have soared into millions of Criminally, the union went ahead with the vote dollars. An army of armed thugs and state police knowing they were going to get routed. The Wall Street (called "Pittston's blue lights" by the miners) have put Journal (28 July) spilled the beans: "Before the vote coal towns in southwest Virginia under: virtual martial UA W officials conceded privately that they expected 1199 workers rally, July 24. NYC hospital workers law. But Trumka, who likes to brag that he goes "up to to lose." Just a month before the vote, UA W president need solid citywide strike to win big. see the good people on the hill in WashiI)gton D.C.' Owen Bieber was cynically trumpeting the organizing wearing my camouflage tie," continues to beg from the drive at'the UAW convention in California. Now the low-paid, overwhelmingly bUick and Latin hos­ Democratic Party and labor boards. workers who put everytQing on the line for the union pital workers is a fight for decent health care for all. The Pittston strike can and must be won. Report­ face Nissan's retaliation, while the bureaucrats can 1199 president Dennis Rivera says that starting August edly, a "heated" meeting ofthe UMW executive board safely retreat to "Sacrifice House." 14; the union will strike for three days, kicking off with held in Virginia last week debated a call for a national Since former UA W chief Doug Fraser joined the a mass march from City Hall to Battery Park. coal ·strike. But T'Tumka, with his "selective strikes" Chrysler board of directors, the UA W tops have The hospital union's members have been working and impotent civil disobedience, has hamstrung this openly been company cops, enforcing giveback rob­ without a contract. at 53 hospitals and nursing homes fight from the beginning. This is class war, and miners bery and layoffs, Whipsawing one union local against since July 1. On the picket line at St. Luke's, before need a leadership that is willing to fight. Delegations another. Over 500,000 auto union jobs gone, laborj striking workers from other hospitals arrived, picket from every section and district of the UMW -miners, black Detroit decimated. And it's all done under the captains tried to lead chants of "No Contract, No pensioners, the Daughters of Mother Jones aux­ labor traitors' rabid protectionist program: the lie that Peace,'!. pushing the 1199 leadersbip;s program of civil iliary-should meet in Camp Solidarity, organize an workers must unite with their exploiters to '~protect disobedience stunts instead of strike action. But the all-out national strike and appeal for solidarity action American jobs." How are you going to organize work­ strikers began to chant "No Contract, No Work" from other unionists. . ers slaving away for Nissan, Toyota or Honda with instead. Steel workers in Pennsylvania shut their plant down that racist crap? The only things the bureaucrats have Rivera had vowed that the rally outside St. Luke's when UMW pickets arrived. Hundreds of other "protected" are capitalist profits and their own would be "the largest picket line that has ever-circled a unionists have cometo Camp Solidarity to fight along­ privileges. hospital in the world." But he caved in to a state court side the miners. The miners must tap this power. For a And the "New Directions" gang, the lash-up of ref­ order obtained by the League of Voluntary Hospitals real national coal strike, with roving-pickets dis­ ormists and out-bureaucrats on the make? They ped­ prohibiting pickets in front of hospital entrances, and patched to shut down steel mills and power plants dle the same protectionist poison against workers in scabs were able to enter unimpeded. across the East and Midwest! Hot-cargo scab coal! Mexico, Korea and Japan. The racist, open-shop The 1199 leadership is pleading with the hospital Victory to the Pittston strike! _ tic nationalists welcomed the Nazi occur, Cuba and the Cuban Revolution 1987 the "populist" Yeltsin met with the defend and extend the gains of the invaders, and retreated with the SS will continue to fight and resist." As sinister Russian nationalists of Pam­ October .Revolution. While Gorbachev when they were driven out by the heroic Trotskyists we don't view things from yat, thus giving credence to this danger­ ignominiously withdrew Soviet forces resistance of the Red Army. and the the same vantage point as Castro, who ous fasCistic outfit. from Afghanistan in order to appease Soviet peoples. Now they are trying to stands at the head of a bureaucracy that The "triumphalism" of American im­ imperialism, there are recent reports attract Swedish, West German and claims to be building socialism in one perialism is palpable. Bush just re­ from Moscow that "Soviet veterans of American capital in the name of island and has dug in to weather some .turned from a trip to Poland, where he the Afghanistan war have asked the "democracy."IIn the heyday of Soli dar­ strong winds coming from the north. spoke before a crowd at Gdansk in Central Committee of the CP to be nose it was said that the Poles wanted to But neither are we worlds apart, and we which members of "Fighting Solidar­ allowed to return there with a volun­ live like West Germans and work like share some common concerns. ity" carried signs proclaiming "A Good tary division" to fight the counterrevo­ Russians. Well, the Baltic nationalists And with his connections, maybe Communist Is a Dead Communist," and lutionaries (Siiddeutsche Zeitung, 27 want to live like Swedes and exploit the Castro knows something we don't. The to Hungary,where the American pres­ July). We Trotskyists wholeHeartedly Russians! very next day the Supreme Soviet in ident chortled that Marx's Capital is nQ supported Soviet intervention in the Moscow approved the Baltic economic longer required reading at K.arl Marx face of imperialist reaction and were For Proletarian "autonomy" law. And now an ultra­ University. Gorbachev's.response to this outspoken in denouncing the pullout as Political Revolutlonl perestroika "Inter-Regional Group" has flaunting of American imperial arro­ a betrayal of internationalism. formed in the Supreme Soviet, led gance was a belly-crawling letter to the With the miners strikes of July 1989, In his annual July 26 speech, Fidel by Communist Party "maverick" .Boris Western economic summit in Paris, in the Soviet workers dramatically re­ Castro raised a cry of alarm about crisis Yeltsin and pro-imperialist "dissident" which the Soviet leader called for the turned to the political scene with a dis­ in the Soviet bloc. Developments in Andrei Sakharov. Although the group USSR's "full and entire participation in play of proletarian power that shook the Poland and Hungary, he said, "lead one is described as "left-radical" in the of­ the world economy." With his plans for Kremlin bureaucrats of all factions and to think of a peaceful passage from ficial Soviet media, its politics point making the ruble convertible, and ap­ cliques as well as the imperialist bour­ socialism to capitalism." Cuba can no. instead to Western social democracy. peals to the imperialists that they "can geoisies. Under revolutionary leader­ longer rely on "the supplies which have Historian Yuri Afanasyev, one of . only gain from the opening up of. a ship, this is the decisive force which will . been arriving like clockwork from the the Inter-Regional Group spokesmen, market as big as the Soviet Union," determine the fate of the Soviet Union, socialist camp for 30 years," he said. The called in a press conference for rethink­ Gorbachev is offering an open door to together with the struggles of their class Bush administration has "shown a ing socialism, "from Jesus Christ, capitalist exploitation. brothers and sisters throughout the triumphalist attitude like no other U.S. through Lenin's death agony, to con­ Unlike Castro, Trotskyists under­ world. Their urgent need is to reclaim government, not even Reagan's." And temporary social democracy" (Finan­ stand full well that counterrevolution the banner of Bolshevism, the program as for the Soviet Union, Castro re­ cial Times, 31 July). During the recent would be anything but peaceful. And it'~ of world socialist revolution, which we marked: "If one day we wake up to the - coal strikes, Yeltsin went on national anything but inevitable. What's posed Fourth Internationalists of th.e Interna­ news that the Soviet Union has disinte­ TV appealing to the miners to go back to for the Soviet proletariat is fighting a tional Communist League also take as grated, something we hope will never work. And as Moscow party chief, .in civil war from Jalalabad to Riga to our own._ 4 AUGUST 1989 5 ... 13) China ... ~

(continued from page 1) ~(J) C :l autonomous trade unions that have .c. U sprung up. Thousands of others are in hiding all throughout the country. It's very significant that the regime ha~ struck out first and foremost at the workers. The first executions, in Shang­ hai on June 21, claimed three young Sea of workers. The next day, seven Beijing protesters demonstrators were shot They were all in Beijing's workers as well. And in Jilin, 17 were Tiananmen Square, killed. Deng's bloody terror is a mon­ May 1989. strous crime, and partisans of the work­ Hundreds of ing class everywhere must demand a thousands stop to the executions. of voices But you have to ask, why is it that all sang the the executions to date are of workers­ Internationale. :md most arrests as well-when it was the students who touched off this whole series of demonstrations? Some of the papers have suggested that students entire program revolves around a deal formed workers state. Despite all the other cities, it made sure that the work­ traditionally have this very privileged with the United States and with Japa­ encroachments by capitalism, it's still a ing class was kept down. The workers status in China, and in fact the leaders of nese imperialism, opening up wide workers state in that its basic economic never played an independent political the demonstrations largely came from areas of China for their exploitation. forms, the state-owned industry and role. in that .revolution. So the regime the families of the governing bureau­ And he's accusing the demonstrators of state-owned land, are the basis of a that took over, led by Mao, was crats themselves. However, the funda­ trying to bring back capitalism! planned economy, the necessary eco­ basically a bureaucratic military caste mental reason is that while the students It's very true that the demonstrators nomic foundations for any workers' dic­ that knows only one way to rule were the spark, it was the workers' social had plenty of illusions. They had illu­ tatorship. The creation of the People's society-through commandism. It was power that immediately threatened the sions in the United States, and in so­ Republic in 1949, which will celebrate a state that was modeled on Stalin's bureaucrats' grip on Chinese society. called Western democracy. Yes, they did its 40th anniversary on October 1, was a Russia, where in 1923-24 a conserva­ As revolutionary Marxists, as inter­ listen to the Voice of America and to revolution against imperialist subjuga­ tive bureaucracy seized control of the nationalists, we' must pose the way for­ the BBe. There were certainly pro­ tion of China; it threw out the bloody young workers state through a political ward for the next wave of battles which capitalist elements that were active in Chiang Kai-shek regime, led to the counterrevolution. will inevitably grow out of the current the demonstrations, but whenever those expropriation of the capitalists, finally situation. We have to ask: what kind of forces appeared to try to take over those united the country, gave land to the The Stalinist Bureaucracy­ A Fragile Caste Deng's violent repression of the work­ ers at the very first sign of their re­ sistance shows not the strength of that regime, but its extreme fragility. Its power stems from monopolizing polit­ ical control of a workers state, a state based on collectivized property. In fact, the Stalinist bureaucracy rules ~n place of the proletariat, and in contradiction to the very 'working-class basis of that society. What they do is they conduct a very delicate balancing act between the proletariat and imperialism, which seeks nothing less than the overthrow of socialized property, which seeks noth­ ing less than capitalist re-enslavement of the masses. That's why Deng Xiaoping cannot stand any independent mobi­ Tanks in Tiananmen Square (above) and victims of crack­ lization of the workers. That will ruin down. Deng's provocative massacre sparked beginning of his balancing act. And the bureaucrats proletarian political revolution. know it could only spread too quiCkly and just shatter their rule. government must replace the hated, dis­ protests, they were defeated. There's one peasantry-a revolution that took years Now, there's a good example of how credited regime of Deng Xiaoping? anecdote that I think captures it very of bloody civil war to accomplish. Cer­ this can happen, which is Hungary 1956. well, from the Manchester Guardian tainly the working people of China It's in the news now, because there's Oeng's Big Lie Weekly (11 June): after the troops know far too well what Chiang Kai­ been this drama over the reburial of the When Deng finally resurfaced on started firing on the demonstrators, shek stands for, and they don't want his body of Imre Nagy, who was the liberal June 9, his first act was to speak to the there was shock, then, "Gradually, the tyranny back. reform Stalinist who headed the coun­ Military Commission, where he con­ chants of 'Tu Fei, Tu Fei'-the old But the revolution and the state it cre­ try and was hanged in 1958 after the gratulated them on their "victory" in nationalist cry of 'Communist bandit'­ ated was deformed from the beginning. defeat of the Hungarian workers' upris­ Tiananmen Square. And what did he grew louder and louder. Then they The Communist Party; in China, in fact, ing. Hungary was the peak of a working­ say? Well, first of all, there's this Big Lie: stopped and men in tears began singing really is communist only in name. It class insurgency that swept through the army didn't kill anyone, it was the the Internationale." And every time you rode to power not on the basis of a pro­ Eastern Europe. First you had the Ger­ people who fired at the army. Secondly, turned on the news, that's what you letarian .insurrection, but through guer­ man workers in '53, then Poland in '56, Deng says, the student demonstrations heard, the Internationale, the interna­ rilla warfare based on the peasantry. It and then Hungary the same year. were intended to "overthrow the com­ tional socialist anthem. When Deng was the peasant-based Red Army that The Hungarian workers' uprising munist party and the socialist system, Xiaoping and Li Peng, the premier, seized power in 1949. And when it started as a show of support to Nagy subvert the People's RepUblic of China were denounced by the students, they finally marched into Shanghai and against the old hardline Stalinist regime. and establish' a bourgeois republic." were not denounced as communists~ When you read the bourgeois press, they were denounced as fascists and as they say the very same thing: the dem­ reactionaries. onstrations were a unanimous cry for This is very unlike a real counter­ Western-style democracy, for the free revolutionary organization like Soli­ market, for capitalism. Not only the darnosc in Poland, which glorifies the bourgeois press, but sections of the prewar fasCistic regime of Pilsudski and left in this country said this, like the carries his portrait in their demonstra­ Workers World Party of Sam Marcy, tions. You did not see posters of Chiang Putilov factory which historically has denounced all Kai-shek, you did not see the Kuomin­ workers voting working-class uprisings against Stalin­ tang flag in Beijing. The students were for delegates to ism as inevitably feeding into capitalist not aiming to overturn socialism. They Petrograd counterrevolution. were angered at the corruption, and they Soviet, 1920. The Spartacist League said that it was wanted more democracy as they under­ Banner reads, a massive outpouring of defiance which stood it, in political and social life. And "Long live the signaled the beginning of a proletarian that's why we say it was the start of a holiday of the political revolution in China. We need political revolution, a revolution whose international army of labor." to explain that, because that's a unique­ only outcome, to be successful, would Chinese workers ly Trotskyist conception. The first thing have to lead to ousting the Beijing need soviet to state, very clearly, is that this was not bureaucracy and replacing it with the democracy, an attempt to restore capitalism. For democratic rule of workers', soldiers' Bolshevik Deng Xiaoping to call the students and poor peasants' councils defending internationalism. counterrevolutionary and pro-capitalist the collectivized property. is at the very least the most incredible - Our program is' based on our under­ ~.; -'. hypocrisy. This is a man whose favorite standing of what the Chinese People's slogan is "To get rich is glorious," whose Republic is. It is a bureaucratically de- 6 WORKERS VANGUARD There was a series of demonstrations, corruption? Zhao's two sons are two of leading to one where Stalin's bust ended the wealthiest men in China now. up just lying on the ground in the cen­ The demonstrators' illusion that they ter of Budapest. What happened when would find a solution by pressuring for the workers overturned that statue change at the top was utterly shattered and threw it to the ground is that the on June 4, under the bodies at Tianan­ secret police started machine-gunning men Square. The next uprising will be them down. And that touched off upris­ fundamentally different. ings all throughout the country. The workers armed themselves and they For Workers Dernocracy­ formed workers' councils throughout For Lenin's Communism! the country. The Communist Party apparatus I also want to talk ahout the illusions shattered-80 percent went over to the that the students showed in Western­ side' of the workers' councils-which style democracy. Democracy is a very really pomts up its contradictory na­ vague term, and many people mean ture, as opposed to a capitalist ruling many things by it. As Marxists, we class. You would never see even a tiny understand there is no such thing as fraction of the capitalists go over to the a classless, pure, abstract democracy. workers against capitalism. Like the Democracy here and in West Europe Chinese workers and students, the Hun­ was a product of revolutionary strug­ garian workers also had plenty of illu­ imes gles against feudalism, and in this coun­ Deng says "To get rich is glorious." Consumer goods are available, but not try against slavery, and it provided a sions in the West. They were influenced for Chi,nese workers. by bourgeois nationalism. But every political framework for the develop­ time fascist or openly counterrevolu­ Jiang Zemin. In fact it's faced with a sit­ show a lot of output, they can fire work­ ment of capitalist class society. Today tionary elements appeared, they were uation of extreme instability. There is an ers, layoff workers. Unemployment is the capitalist state tolerates democratic defeated by the workers. The workers' underlying economic crisis behind the an extremely explosive issue right now. institutions just so long as their rule is councils eventually declared for interna­ crisis of the political regime, a product They're also letting factories go bank­ not in jeopardy. When their rule is in tional socialism. Some of them even of Deng's so-called "open door" policy. rupt if they can't turn a so-called profit, jeopardy, you get something like Chile called for the councils to take power. First of all, in the countryside right now except the government has not closed 1973. There you had a self-described The only way the Stalinists could sup­ land is still, technically owned by the a single factory under that new law, Marxist elected president who didn't press the uprising was to use the Soviet state, but they long ago broke up the precisely because they fear the work­ even talk about building socialism but army; twice, because the first time there people's communes, and they lease land ers' resistance to such a measure. One was seen as enough of a threat by the was too much fraternization between to individual peasant families. That's writer, Orville Schell, called it the United States for it to help sponsor the the troops and the Hungarian workers. created a very sharp class differentia­ "Chapter 11 revolution." When he vis­ bloody coup by Pinochet that unleashed And, by the way, the first government to tion in the countryside, so that on the ited China in 1986, he saw a news­ the last 16 years of terror. applaud the crushing of the Hungarian very same street, or the very same neigh­ paper that said, "Bankruptcy Improves F or the Chinese people, there is an workers was Mao's government. He borhood, you'll have rich peasants who Businesses." alternative. It's the workers democracy sent Chou En-lai to Moscow to make have benefited from these pro-capitalist So you're getting to see what Deng's of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, that clear. measures, living side by side with poor "building socialism with capitalist meth­ when the workers seized power and built Now around the events in Tiananmen peasants who have lost out. Huge re- ods" really means. It's brought back their state on the basis of workers' and some of the most hateful institutions of peasants' soviets, the revolution that ~ '0 prerevolutionary China-child labor, inspired the founders of Chinese com­ prostitution. Then YOll have the return munism. That's why we say in China of what used to be called foreign con­ today, workers' and soldiers' soviets cessions, basically a whole network of must rule. wealthy playgrounds for rich foreign­ We have another slogan: "For Lenin's ers. Schell describes one of them 10 Communism." In fact, what the Chi­ his book Discos and Democracy, the nese people know of communism is Zhongshan Hot Springs Golf Club the Stalinist perversion of the commu­ (designed by Arnold Palmer, no less) nist program. You know, a whole wave where, he says, "while shooting down a of radicals in the '60s and the early Stalin statue fairway, one could pause to admire pic­ '70s looked to Maoism as a revolution­ toppled in turesque Chinese peasants plowmgthelr ary alternative to the conservative Budapest, 1956. rice fields with water buffalo." This IS lit­ policies of Brezhnev and the Kremlin. Bureaucratic erally a picture you could have taken Today, aside from bizarre sects like the apparatus was from the China of 60 years ago. A vakianite Revolutionary Communist shatte(ed by There's another important factor of Party, Maoism is utterly discredited. Its Hungarian instability. It's a certain political awak­ image, its following, was basically political ening. In 1978 when Deng Xiaoping first ruined when Mao embraced Kissinger revolution. got back in the saddle, students went out and Nixon in Beijing while American in demonstrations and said, "Hello, bombers rained death and destruc­ Xiaoping." That wa~ their chant, call­ tion on Vietnam. But Maoism never ing him familiarly by his given name, amounted to more than Stalinism as which they've never done to a Chinese applied to a peasant country. Square, we called for the formation of sentment is building up. leader in the past. Now he's the most Mao's peasant-based Stalinism arose workers' and soldiers' councils. And Furthermore, the peasants now de­ hated man in China, next to Li Peng out of the greatest defeat the workers of that's not some pie-in-the-sky notion. pend mostly on sales of their produce in probably. When the current wave of China ever suffered, which was in the You had tens of thousands of workers, 'the private markets, where they get a demonstrations first broke out, stu­ failed revolution of 1925-27 and the whole work units from the factories better deal. When the state tries to dents were not really opposed to the Shanghai massacre of 1927. The CP was marching en masse, as a unit, to those buy agricultural goods, it's pretty hard government. What they were doing was founded in 1921 with one or two dozen demonstrations. The workers' councils, because they're chronically short of appealing to those in the regime they intellectuals who had their origins in the what were called soviets in Russia, are cash;and recently they resorted to issu­ saw as their friends. But how about radical bourgeois-nationalist May 4 quite appropriate to such generalized ing worthless lOU's to the peasantry. Zhao Ziyang, who they were looking up [1919] Movement. Under the impact of uprisings. When they did arise in Russia That's building up to a tremendous cri­ to as a fighter against corruption and the Russian Revolution, a section of it was to coordinate strike actions in the sis in agriculture. In fact it was reported bureaucratism? Zhao. was one of the these radical intellectuals was won over 1905 Revolution. Workers' soviets are on June 14 that the martial law author­ main architects of the economic reforms to Bolshevism, to a program of world based on the power that workers have at ities dispatched troops to the country­ like the \;>ankruptcy law in 1987. And continued on page 8 the point of production. They pose the side to harvest wheat and to move the question of who should rule that soci­ food into the cities, because they rightly ety. In Russia in 1917 that question was feared that food shortages were on the answered through the victory of the Bol­ way, which would mean price hikes, and shevik Revolution and the creation of that would simply inflame the situation the first workers state, based on the again. workers' and peasants' councils. Then there's inflation, a very sore spot Now why didn't the Hungarian work­ among the workers, who have a fixed ers succeed in taking power on the basis income. Last year was the first time that of their soviets? The critical element China saw double-digit inflation in they lacked was the revolutionary lead­ almost 40 years. This year it's estimated , ership that the Russian workers in 1917 to be 30 percent. And all these unem~, had, a tested Bolshevik party that could ployed workers who flocked to the show the way forward, that could pose demonstrations-where did they come how to seize power. And that is in fact from? Article 42 of the Chinese Consti­ the central lesson of the events in China: tution proclaims guaranteed "lifetime Shanghai the Chinese working masses also need employment for China's workers; it's worker that kind of Bolshevik party, if they are what is called the "iron rice bowl." But condemned to be successful. the dislocation that went on in the coun­ to death for tryside shook loose a lot of poor peas­ protesting massacre. China in Crisis ants and they're flocking to the urban Right now the Deng regime would areas. have you think that it's back in the sad­ Furthermore, the way that Deng dle. You know, it has just reshuffled the Xiaoping has largely dismantled cen­ govermpent; it has appointed a new tralized economic planning means that party leader, the former Shanghai boss if individual factory managers don't 4 AUGUST 1989 7 China ... (continued from page 7) workers revolution to liberate their country. By 1924, they had grown to be the mass party of the Chinese proletar­ iat. But Stalin and Bukharin ordered the Communist Party to liquidate into the Kuomintang of Chiang Kai-shek, and even made Chiang an honorary mem­ ber of the Comintern. The result was that in 1927 Chiang's Nationalist Army turned on a disarmed CP, unleashing a horrific bloodbath. Tens of thousands of Communist workers were killed. It was a blow that beheaded the Chinese proletariat literally and politically, a blow from which, in a sense, they've never fully recovered. Many Chinese Communist militants A. Mondadorl no discovered that in the USSR Trotsky . Armed workers militia in Shanghai, 1927 (left). Stalin's class-collaborationist policy of subordinating Chinese CP to had fought that policy of disaster all Chiang Kal-shek's Kuomintang led to mass slaughter of Communist workers. along. Ch'en Tu-hsiu, Peng Shu-tse and the "Great Proletarian Cultural Revo­ Soviet MPLA, to Afghanistan today, genocidal maniac Pol Pot trying to fight others fought for Chinese Trotskyism lution," which was nothing more than where the Chinese regime is arming the to get back power in Cambodia, a work­ under the most horrible conditions, end­ Mao's attempt to get back as head of the CIA's cutthroats who are fighting to re­ ers and peasants government in China ing up first in Chiang'S jails, then in Communist Party. It was a giant fac­ enslave women and to stamp out any would immediately provide massive aid Mao's. The rest of the party fled the cit­ tion fight, where Mao mobilized basi­ attempt to modernize that backward to Vietnam. Such a government would ies for the countryside and concen­ cally the students, the Red Guards, with society. China today is home to some of seek to forge communist unity with the trated on organizing the peasantry. In the support of the People's Liberation the CIA's most valued intelligence lis~ Soviet workers state, because if George the process they- transformed the party Army led by Lin Piao, against the bu­ tening posts along the Soviet border, Bush and his NATO allies succeed in from a Communist workers party into a reaucracy of Liu Shao-chi, based most­ which makes that border a possible trip their plan to overturn the gains of the peasant guerrilla army with a peasant lyon the trade unions, as well as the wire for World War III. This, of course, October Revolution of 1917, you can nationalist program. It was in' this party bureaucracy. When the Red is what explains the "moderate" re­ count the future of the People's Repub­ period that Mao took control of the Guards moved to "revolutionize" the sponse by the American government to lic of China in days. This unity is not party. With the Japanese invasion of PLA, Mao sent them off to the coun­ Tiananmen Square. For them, Deng only urgently required for military China, it was Mao's Red Army that tryside-he was saying, don't touch my Xiaoping is just too valuable an asset to defense against imperialism, but in fact fought them. All this time, Mao was army. upset too much. Probably the most seri­ would make possible what's really a calling for a coalition government with When Mao died in 1976, Deng took ous weakness of the recent demon- natural economic partnership between Chiang Kai-shek, but despite these over, purging Mao's wife and the "Gang appeals the Chinese bourgeoisie decid­ of Four." Deng came in preaching his ed to flee to Hong Kong and Taiwan gospel of "Four Modernizations," his l after the war. The Kuomintang re­ gospel of reaching the level of the West gime basically disintegrated, ravaged by by the year 2000. He appealed to the its own corruption. In 1949 Mao's Red self-interest of the middle-class elements Army seized power and, to counter especially. He coined a slogan, "To get the pressure of American imperial­ rich is glorious." After Deng initiated ism, finally expropriated the Chinese his market reform policies, there was in capitalists. fact a boom that lasted quite a few years, If it was absurd for Stalin to talk but now we're seeing the price the work­ about building "socialism in one coun­ ers are paying for that boom. It's com­ try" in the USSR, it's doubly absurd for ing, home to roost. the Chinese Stalinists to believe they can build it in their extremely backward Down with China's Alliance and poor country. What it takes in fact is workers revolution throughout the with U.S. Imperialism! world, an international division of labor The lesson here is that whatever based on a common economic plan, to wrenching faction fights took pla<;e take advantage of the advanced econo­ between different wings of the Chinese mies, like Japan especially, which is the bureaucracy, they were really agreed on powerhouse ·of Asia. But the Stalinists fundamentals. And one thing that really wanted to make China modern, rich and proves it is China's utterly reactionary, WV Photo powerful on their own. And that is counterrevolutionary alliance with the' Spartaclsts 'protest China's invasion of Vietnam, 1979. Beijing bureaucracy basically what explains the zigzags that United States, which arose out of the sealed alliance with U.S. imperialism in blood of Vietnamese workers. have taken place since 1949, from the nationalist rivalry between the Chinese strations is that they failed to raise the China, the Soviet Union and a workers' Great Leap Forward in the mid-1950s, and Soviet Stalinist bureaucracies. As I issue of China's alliance with American Japan. where Mao tried to forge a modern said, back in 1969 Maoism was all the imperialism. I want to close with a certain theme. power by increasing the load oflabor on rage on the left. The Spartacist League, One possibility now is that China A couple of weeks ago, you had the peasants' shoulders. And alIt hat did though, said, "we must warn against could disintegrate into what people are U.S. News & World Report claim­ was lead to a massive economic col­ the growing objective possibility-given calling economic or military warlord­ ing "Collapse of Communism"; you lapse where you had widespread starva- . the tremendous industrial and military ism. The PLA could break up into dif­ had Business Week saying "Commu­ tion in the countryside. It also meant capacity ofthe Soviet Union-of a U.S. ferent regional entities. You have the nism' in Turmoil." Here's what we that Mao lost tremendous prestige in the deal with China." J"hat's exactly what economically better-off regions like in said in announcing the launching of Party. Liu Shao-chi and Deng Xiao­ happened, and that alliance wasforged the south and east, where the imperial­ the International Communist League ping were then in the ascendancy, and by Mao. , ists exploit Chinese labor in the so­ (Fourth Internationalist): they proceeded to dismantle the peo­ It was an alliance that was sealed in called special economic zones-sort of "The bourgeoisie is celebrating in antic­ ple's communes and reverse a lot of the acts of war, from Angola in 1975, where free trade areas. They recall the foreign ipation ofthe'end of Communism.' The measures 'that Mao had taken. China armed insurgents backed by the ' concessions they used to have in China Stalinist bureaucracies have indeed That laid the basis for what was called CIA and South Africa against the pro- reached the point of terminal crisis. But earlier in the century. That's why we call their crisis is because they are opposed for the unity of China under workers' to everything communism stands for. IL:·'; leadership. But for this unity, the work­ The national antagonisms in the So­ ers must have an internationalist pro­ viet Union, the revolt in China, arise gram. One of the first tasks of a revolu­ in response to 'market socialist' policies that are counterposed to centralized tionary Chinese regime would be to socialist planning. The bureaucratic combat Han chauvinism, the chauvin­ stranglehold over political and cultural Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of the Spartacist League ism of the predominant people of China, life, the appeasement that has embold­ granting autonomy and respecting the ened imperialism-these are not com­ autonmny of Tibet, Inner Mongolia, munism but its antithesis." o $7/24 issues of Workers Vanguard o $3/3 issues of and the Turkic peoples in Sinkiang Today it is the Trotskyists who uphold (includes English-language Spartacist) Women and Revolution province. In fact, one of the reasons why the banner of Lenin's communism. o New 0 Renewal 0$2/10 introductory issues International rates: the workers must restore centralized And you know that Chinese worker $25/24 issues-Airmail $7/24 issues-Seam ail of Workers Vanguard economic planning-under democratic that I talked about at the beginning? He (includes English-language 0$214 issues of Spartacist (edici6n en espanol) Spartacist) . soviet control-would be to enhance the was right, there is no future for Deng's development of those more backward regime in China. The task we have is the Name ______~------areas with the rest of China. building of a Bolshevik party in China Address ______The workers of China must have a as part of a reborn Fourth Interna­ perspective for international socialist tional, under whose banner the work­ ______Apt. # Phone (_) ______revolution, most importantly in Japan. ing people of China will find the road There must be an immediate rupture of to ousting their bureaucratic oppres­ City State Zi~--___--:4=83 the shameful alliance with the United sors, to securing the socialist future, and Make checks payable/mail to: Spartaclst Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, N_ York, NY 10116 States. While Deng Xiaoping continues in so doing avenge the' massacre at to harass Vietnam by supporting the Tiananmen.• 8 WORKERS VANGUARD The Hungarian Workers Uprising of 1956

On July 6, Imre Nagy and four others after the Soviet suppression. their voices, they cried: 'Long live the parties-including openly pro-capitalist sentenced to death for their role in the While there was plenty of political Soviet Army!'" ones-to contest the. coming parlia­ Hungarian Revolution of 1956 were confusion among the revolutionary Moments later, Kopacsi recalls, he mentary elections. Foreign capitalist officially "rehabilitated" in Budapest. workers, their representative organs received a report from one of his police investors can now own up to 100 per­ Three weeks earlier, the bodies of Nagy, stood clearly opposed to a return to officers .at the demonstration: "The cent of Hungarian firms, and will be Pal Maleter, Miklos Gimes, 10zsef capitalism and were in practice coun­ A VO [Hungarian secret police] is firing able to repatriate profits; the goverri~ Szilagyi and Geza Losonczy were re­ terposed not only to the old hard line from every roof. Now the Soviet tanks ment aims at putting fully one-third of moved from the unmarked graves in Stalinist butchers like Rakosi and his are firing on the AVO! They're defend­ the economy in private hands over the which they had been buried in disgrace coterie but to the Nagy reform regime ing the crowd ...." The extent of frater­ next few years. Even the "market social­ and reinterred in a ceremony attended as well. The Budapest Parliament of nization between the insurgents and the ist" Kadar was too orthodox by the by over 100,000 people. While the rul­ Workers Councils, representing two Soviet troops sent to suppress them was standards of Hungary's present leaders: ing party was not officially represented, dozen of the city's largest factories, pro- so widespread that the Kremlin was Kadar was stripped of the presidency party leaders in the government at­ tended and a ceremonial guard was pro­ vided by the People's Army. Having for three decades vilified, the events of October-November 1956 as a "fascist counterrevolution," the Stalinists now seek to "rehabilitate" it, as Soviet histo­ rian Leonid Yagodovsky puts it in the Soviet newsweekly New Times (4 July), as "the harbingers of the .current changes in Hungary and in the socialist world as a whole." Thus does one Stalinist lie replace another. While the neo-Bukharinite "reform" Stalinist Nagy could in some ways be considered the progenitor of the current regime's policies, even he mjght well have balked at the grotesque extremes to which his epigones have gone. More or less with Khrushchev's blessings, Nagy sought to carry out a program of economic and political lib­ eralization prefiguring Gorbachev's pe­ restroika. And later, after Nagy was Budapest insurgents atop Soviet removed and arrested by Soviet troops, tank (left). General Pal Maleter the Kremlin installed not the old hard­ (above) vowed: "There will never liner Rakosi-a tyrannical butcher-or be capitalists and landowners in one of his underlings but Janos Kadar, Hungary again." who was part of Nagy's circle and who claimed as its first principle when it con­ forced to pull back and unleash a second and expelled from the Central Commit­ went on to implement at least the vened on October 31: "The factory intervention days later, on November 4. tee in May. Imre Pozsgay, a leading gov­ economic aspect of Nagy's program in belongs to the workers" (reproduced in Nagy's defense minister, Pal Maleter, ernment spokesman and member of the what came to be known as "goulash Bill Lomax, Hungary 1956 [1976]). A new four-man presidency, declares that communism." was a decorated anti-fascist partisan in district workers' council in the capital it is "impossible to reform communist In foreign policy, Nagy sought to fol­ World War II, a dedicated Communist demanded "free elections in whiCh only and a colonel (promoted to general practice as it currently exists in the low in Tito's footsteps, declaring Hun­ those parties may participate that recog­ Soviet Union and East Europe .... This gary's "neutrality," then breaking with when he was appointed defense min­ nize and have always recognized the ister) in the Hungarian People's Army. system must be liquidated" (Le Monde, the Warsaw Pact as a way of dislodging Socialist order, based on the principle 30 May). the Soviet troop presence. But it wasn't Far more than Nagy, he was seen by the that means of production belong to soci­ It will require more than state decrees Nagy's policies, internal or external, workers as the popular leader of the ety" (see '''Pure Democracy' or Polit­ and parliamentary elections to liqui": which made the Soviets decide to inter­ insurgency. When Maleter called a ical Revolution in East Europe," Spar­ date the historic gains achieved for the vene. Khrushche:v sponsored Nagy and meeting of the various insurgent groups tacist No. 30, Autumn 1980). Hungarian workers by the overturn of was at that moment engaged in a recon­ with the aim of organizing a new It was the proletariat asserting itself capitalist property relations. As the ciliation with Tito. Indeed, Khrushchev National Guard, he told them: as an independent political force which nascent capitalist class-supported by visited Tito on the eve of the military "The purpose of this meeting is to lay caused the bureaucratic apparatus .to sections of the bureaucracy-=moves intervention and Tito condoned it. the foundations for a new armed force shatter. This is vividly described in an in our country. This force is born of the What drove the Stalinists into a ever more to assert itself, it will be con­ autobiographical account, In the Name insurrection, but we must ensure that fronted with a civil war, as the workers frenzy was the fact that the armed reactionary elements, wanting to re­ power in Hungary was in the hands of of the Working Class (1986), by Sandor establish the old prewar regime, don't seek to defend the jobs, rights and living Kopacsi, who was Budapest chief of the insurgent workers. The essence of worm their way into it. That regime, standards associated with the collectiv­ police at the time and later a co­ fortunately, is dead, and there will never ized economy. With inflation and unem­ the Hungarian Revolution was not to defendant with Nagy, Maleter et al. be capitalists and landowners in Hun­ ployment soaring, the current regime is be found in Nagy's liberal Stalinism, when' they were tried. Among the gary again. Am I understood?" but in the armed revolutionary com­ so discredited "among the workers that illusions within the insurgent proletar­ when Kadar died, ironically the same mittees and workers' councils which Maleter's going over to the side of the day that the former comrades he be­ sprang up throughout the country in iat, nationalist sentiments were wide­ insurgency is illustrative of the shatter­ spread, in part a reaction to the police trayed in 1956 were rehabilitated, tens October-November 1956. The Nagy re­ ing of the Stalinist bureaucratic caste. role of the Soviet army and in good of thousands turned out for his funeral. gime lasted less than two weeks, de­ He was at the head of a tank unit sent to measure a reflection of the influence of One woman explained, "We trusted him voting its efforts primarily to trying to suppress a nest of "counterrevolution­ rein in the insurgency on the streets the Stalinist dogma of "socialism in one aries. ", When he spoke to them under a more. He was stable, prices were stable." country." But these confused views were The Hungarian workers uprising, and in the factories; in contrast, the white flag and discovered that they were even in defeat, vindicated in life the workers' councils had sufficient influ­ by and large not an expression of anti­ pro-socialist workers, he turned his Sovietism or anti-Communism. Ko­ Trotskyist perspective of proletarian ence and organization to carry off tanks around. Like Maleter, Kopacsi pacsi recounts a scene in which three political revolution. The key to a future solid protest strikes even a month was also a former partisan, a third­ Soviet tanks came "nose to nose" with a generation working-class socialist from victory lies in the urgent crystallization crowd of demonstrators on October 25: the steel mills of Diosgyor. Had the of a Trotskyist vanguard. Trotsky's "A boy, undoubtedly a student-the insurrection continued and the work­ observations about Stalin's Russia in Spartacist League scene took place just below us-pushed ers' councils become the new state "The Class Nature of the Soviet State" his way through the crowd to the first (October 1933) apply with full force to Public Offices tank and passed something through the power, doubtless there would have been loophole. a further polariz{ltion among pro-Nagy Hungary 1956 and today: -MARXIST LlTERATURE­ "It wasn't a grenade but a sheet .of~ "national Communists" like Kopacsi. "When the proletariat springs into ac­ paper. It was followed by others .... The essential element that was miss­ tion, the Stalinist apparatus will re­ Bay Area "Then the top of the turret of the lead main suspended in midair. Should it Thurs.: 5:30-8:00 p.m .• Sat.: 1:00-5:00 p.m. tank opened a little, and the com­ ing in the Hungarian uprising was a still attempt to resist, it will then be 1634 Telegraph. 3rd Floor (near 17th Street) mander, with his leather cap and gold conscious proletarian vanguard party, necessary to apply against it not the Oakland, California Phone: (415) 839-0851 epaulettes, emerged slowly into the view committed to the revolutionary inter­ measures of civil war but rather the Chicago of the apparently unarmed crowd. Then nationalism of Lenin's and Trotsky'S measures of a police character.... Tues.: 5:00-9:00 p.m .• Sat.: 11:00 a.m.-2:00 p.m. he flung the turret open and perched Bolsheviks. .. A real civil war could develop not 161 W. Harrison St .• 10th Floor himself upon the top of his tank .... between the Stalinist bureaucracy and Chicago. Illinois Phone: (312) 663-0715 "The crowd erupted in a frantic ova­ Today there are capitalists in Hun­ the resurgent proletariat but between tion. In this jubilant atmosphere, the gary again. A 13 July New York Times the proletariat and the active forces of New York City commander's cap was thrown into the the counterrevolution.... The victory of Tues.: 6:00-9:00 p.m .• Sat.: 1:00-5:00 p.m. piece observed how "Budapest barely middle of the crowd. In exchange, seemed Communist at all, with gam­ the revolutionary camp, in any case, is 41 Warren St. (one block below someone plunked a Hungarian Army conceivable only under the leadership Chambers St. near Church St.) bling riverboats on the Danube and New York. N.Y. Phone: (212) 267-1025 kepi on his head. The crowd sang of a proletarian party, which would nat­ 'Kossuth's Song' and then the Hungar­ swank millionaires." In February, the urally be raised to power by victory'over ..I ian national anthem. And, at the top of regime decreed the right of all political the counterrevolution.".

4 AUGUST 1989 9 "Do The Right Thing''-A ·Review ence to their freedom betrayed. It is past immigrant bigotry that nationalist hus­ some point in his life, he'd called some­ Continued from page 12 defeats of integrationist struggles that tlers (like Sonny Carson, or FBI fink Al body a nigger, and I went crazy because he was someone I liked. Danny was fuel the defiant posture and rhetoric of Sharpton who led a march against Arab upset with himself, I was really upset the degradation, disease, crime and pov­ nationalists who have in fact given up grocers) are pushing in New York City. with myself, and Spike was gleaming, erty that are endemic in the ghetto. the fight. Pork barrel politicians and In one scene, the three sid~walk sages because he'd gotten the scene." Spike Let: has created a stylized neigh­ black capitalist hustlers worship the argue over why they are black and -Rolling Stone, 15 June borhood for his movie, which is of accomplished fact of segregation in unemployed while a Korean has a suc­ Esposito's real-life mother is black and course his right. Still, Lee purports to order to push their own ambitions: to cessful new business in the neighbor­ his father is Italian. Off camera, he and tell "the truth, Ruth"-and this portrait politically control and economically hood. One hastens to remind "Coconut Danny Aiello chatted in Italian. On is unreal. Before he could even build the camera, they were hurling epithets at sets for this movie, Lee hired 20 bow­ each other. Lee's art didn't imitate life, it tied heavies from Louis Farrakhan's became life. Fruit of Islam as his. private security . force! They boarded up two crack The Fake Unity· of houses, swept up M-16 cartridges, ran Malcolm and Martin the junkies around the corner, cracked down on crime and patrolled the set To the incessant beat of Public round-the-clock through the entire Enemy's rap tune "Fight the Power" shoot. blasted from Radio Raheem's boom In this film, nobody but Mookie has a box, the recurring image in this film is a job (except for his sister, who Lee photo of Malcolm X and Martin Luther described as "in a grey area, not black or King standing together. The incoher­ white, when it comes to politics"). ent, stuttering "Smiley" peddles this Working for the white man makes photo up and down the block. When Mookie the middleman between Sal's Sal's pizzeria is burned to the ground, business and the black community. "Fight the Power" still pounds away Mookie's unemployed friends keep from the ashes and Smiley pins his reminding him to "stay black" and photo on Sal's previously all-white, all­ demand that Sal add pictures of black Italian "Wall of Fame." people to his pizzeria's "Wall of Fame." What's the point? The photo evokes The main omission from Lee's slice of a period of militant struggle against life is the black working class, a force Jim Crow segregation and racist in­ that could lead the ghetto masses in equality in this country. That struggle struggle. was defeated-by black misleaders who There is a purpose to this deceptive sold their souls to the Democratic portrait: to construct a framework for 1980 New York City transit workers strike: integrated labor movement Party, by brutal state repression that the simultaneously liberal and reac­ has the power. Unleash it in revolutionary struggle to bring down racist mowed down the most militant black tionary politics of cultural nationalism. capitalist system! fighters, and by a passive labor move­ Certainly blacks and Hispanics caught ment that failed to flex its muscle in a in America's ghettos know what they've exploit "their" people, "their" market. Sid," a Caribbean black, that he's not so class-struggle fight for black freedom. got stinks and they want out. They don't Although this nationalist mindset per.­ long off the boat himself and ought Butthat photo (snapped in the one brief want Ed Koch's decals of flower boxes meates Spike Lee's diary, production to drop this Korean-hating nonsense; moment that these two opposing polit­ pasted over burned-out tenements, they notes and interviews, his talent as a another rejects talk of a boycott with the ical leaders ever stood together) has want real housing, real jobs, real filmmaker transc;:ends his politics. His announcement that "it's Miller time" been preserved and peddled to promote schools. So why prettify the conditions camera records all players in the New and heads over to buy a beer. When the a liberal lie. and omit the power that black people York scene with compassion and com­ police murder Radio Raheem, the Malcolm X, who stood for militant have in the working class? It's con­ plexity and gives us a richer picture. Korean grocer is among those chasing self-defense against racist attacks and venient if your perspective is petty- the cop car out of the ghetto. The crowd opposition to the bosses' Democratic bourgeois black nationalism. . New York City Raw turns on him as another "outsider" Party, is made more "acceptable" by The name of Spike Lee's production Do the Right Thing captures the charging "much money" in the black association with King. King, who company, "Forty Acres and a Mule," ambivalence of the black community neighborhood. He frantically swings a preached "love thy oppressor," is pack­ identifies with the aspirations of black toward a Korean greengrocer and turns broom to defend his store and pleads aged to make him acceptable for today's people after the Civil War and is a refer- it into an argument against the anti- that he is not white either, that he too is alienated and oppressed black youth. black. Fury turns to amusement and That 'photo hangs in virtually every finally compassion; the crowd disperses. Black Studies department in every uni­ Lee exposes the contradictions of versity. Malcolm X is now marketed race-hatred with humor, and at times for the illusion that you can "fight the with a startling blast of raw loathing. power" while just buying into it. And '1.1: .-•• r.ifINIttee ..... ~ •• ~~ Sal's son Pino, a racist Italian punk who that message is the conclusion of the .... c::...... can't stand serving Pop's pizzas to black film. There is no social struggle to com­ , people, ties himself in knots trying to bat cop terror against black America, justify his bigotry while conceding that just one word from "Mister Senor Love all his entertainment idols are black: Daddy," the neighborhood's DJ and No. 11 " ... but not really black. They're more social conscience: "VOTE!" . August 1989 than black. It's-it's different." A rapid­ fire montage of racial slurs slung Fight For Power Latest Issue of CSDN between blacks and Italians, cops and contains: -- Puerto Ricans, and the Korean to the In his epilogue to Do The Right Jewish mayor, stings the audience while Thing, Spike Lee (who thinks his char­ • An International campaign they laugh. These words mean blood in acter, Mookie, is "from the Malcolm X of class solidarity and NYC and everybody knows it. Lee ham­ school of thought") writes: "In the end, humanitarian assistance for mers home the point of how absurd it is justice will prevail one way or another. besieged Jalalabad victims for everybody to hate everybody ... There are two paths to that. The way of CIA's mujahedln. while the cops get away with murder. of King, or the way of Malcolm.. .. I know who I'm down with." The film • Solidarity greetings Sal (Danny Aiello) is a compelling figure in the film because he seems like ends with two quotes. Martin Luther from fraternal defense King espouses nonviolence. Malcolm X organizations initiated In such a decent guy, but when menaced, France, Australia, Japan the same racist filth surges out. More­ objects to self-defense being misla­ and four other countries. over, that scene was a genuine, unscript­ beled as "violence"; he rightly calls it ed eruption. Giancarlo Esposito, who "intelligence. " plays "Buggin' Out," the mover of the It's a terrible abuse of a terrific quote from Malcolm X. Malcolm told the With your contribution of $5 or more receive a subscription to boycott of Sal's in the film, says "I got Class-Struggle Defense Notes. the ball rolling when' I called Sal a truth about the need for black self­ For a single copy of issue Number 11, send $1.00 to: guinea bastard": defense and warned against any illu­ Partisan Defense Committee, P.O. Box 99, Canal Street Station, New York, NY 10013 "When Danny said 'Nigger,' I freaked. sions in the bosses' police or the bosses' It finally came up for him. I knew that at political parties to defend black rights. 10 WORKERS VANGUARD The intensified repression against Salvadoran students follows on the heels of a stepped-up terror campaign Army Storms Salvador University targeting the labor movement and peas­ ant and community groups. Hundreds About 60 people demonstrated out­ have been arrested and kidnapped since side the Salvadoran consulate in New the victory of the fascistic ARENA York City July 26 to protest the lat­ party in U.S.-brokered elections held est wave of repression against students March 16. But contrary to Pentagon in EI Salvador, carried out by the propaganda claims ("Salvador's Army Salvadoran death squad government Gains on Rebels") in' the New York backed by the United States. Organized Times (30 July), the leftist insurgents of by the Hunter College Central America the FMLN control a good third of the Solidarity Committee and CISPES country and are hitting governmept (Committee in Solidarity with the Peo­ San Salvador, forces in the heart of the capital, while ple of EI Salvador), demonstrators July 17: troops the unions mobilize tens ofthousands in demanded freedom for Rene Antonio occupy campus, defiance of state terror. So ARENA has Cruz, president of the General Associa­ round up introduced "anti-terrorist" legislation tion of University Students (AGEUS). students. which would officially outlaw virtually Cruz was captured and beaten by gov­ any activity of trade-union, student and ernment soldiers at a bus stop just peasant organizations. outside the University of EI Salvador At the July 26 protest in New York, on July 16. At this writing he is still one protester, Mark Hoyt, was arrest­ being held by the notoriously sadistic ed and charged with disorderly con­ Treasury Police. sity of El Salvador, was one of nine peo­ ber the government has held the cam­ duct, resisting arrest, and "assaulting" Between July I and July 16 at least 14 ple injured at the July 17 demonstra­ pus in a virtual state of siege, establish- cops who knocked him to the ground, students and teachers were captured by tion. Drennon told Young Spartacus . ing military checkpoints at all gates. punched him in the face and wrenched government security forces. A social sci­ that when they heard gunshots and After the July 17 protest the govern­ his arms behind his back. The presence ence student, a sociology professor and bazooka fire, "Everyone just scattered ment of Alfredo Cristiani sent in troops of numerous "undercover" agents at the a high school student abducted by gov­ and ran into the University away from to occupy the campus indefinitely. Pre­ demonstration was particularly menac­ ernment forces are missing and feared the guns. It was a lot of confusion, and ceding the abduction of Cruz, govern­ ing in view of the U.S. government's dead. On July 1,7, army soldiers and right after that I broke my leg." ment helicopters flew overhead and concerted campaign of harassment Treasury Police fired on a demonstra­ Under the constitution, the Universi­ planes dropped leaflets. One of the leaf­ against Central America solidarity ac­ tion of some 500 students demanding ty of El Salvador is supposed to be an lets "said the UNTS [the main Salvador tivists. We demand the dropping of all the rele~se of Anionio Cruz. Robert "autonomous" institution, the one place labor federation] equals urban terror­ charges against Mark Hoyt. Stop the Drennon, a Hunter College exchange in the country where soldiers aren't ists and it had the picture of a skull," repression against workers, peasants student studying Spanish at the Univer- allowed to come. But since last Decem- Drennon told us. and students in El Salvador! •

But burning down a pizzeria has noth­ ghetto block. But not too far. Even ing to do with self-defense, and the real a glimpse of the local subway at rush powers that keep blacks locked at the hour would do. Tens of thousands of bottom of a capitalist social system lie black men and women, many of them far from "Sal's Famous" pizzeria in Bed­ unionized hospital workers and public Stuy. Herein lies the danger of the pur­ employees, teachers, utility employees posely ambiguous message of Do The and service workers, are a key compo­ Right Thing. nent in what makes New York run. And In a recent Penthouse (August 1989) getting them to work every morning· interview Spike Lee said the way out is are the transportation workers, who that "blacks have to build our own showed their power in 1980 in a big economic base, own our businesses, be strike that left the Brooklyn Heights self-sufficient." And, he added in a talk yuppies limping over the bridge to Wall show on Black Educational Television, Street. when blacks are not just consumers but Genuine emancipation of black peo­ owners, then they can put up the pic­ ple from their oppression in this racist tures they want in their shops. So in the capitalist society, making racial equal­ end, what triumphs is accommodation ity a reality rather than a dream, will with the racist Pino's views: blacks begin with socialist revolution. There is should stay in their own neighborhoods no other road to black freedom. To lead and Italians in theirs. What crap! In a that fight, we need a party-an integrat­ racist society, separate means unequal. ed, class-struggle workers party that will The myth of black capitalism is a hoax, mobilize labor and minorities in defense and furthermore a naked one, which Malcolm X addressing Harlem rally. He opposed both racist parties of of the beleaguered ghettos. The bosses' anyone can see by just looking at the American capitalism. Democratic Party is the main political racial composition of the ruling class in means used to tie the oppressed to their this country: not one black CEO in the just the most oppressed among many. working class that has the social weight exploiters. We need a workers party to top 1,000 corporations. Yet "black cap­ Since the victory of Northern capital­ and power to break the bosses' rule. To lead all the oppressed in a fight for a italism" schemes such as pushed by Jesse ism in the Civil War and the defeat of see that, Spike Lee would have to cast workers government. To this we in the Jackson tell black people the lie that Reconstruction, the black popUlation his camera off the microcosm of one Spartacist League .are dedicated .• they should look to Coca-Cola for lib­ has been compacted as a race-color eration, rather than to united class caste: last-hired, first-fired and segre­ struggle together with white, Hispanic gated at the bottom of society. A caste and Asian working people against their system means social mobility only for SPARTACIST LEAGUE/U.S. LOCAL DIRECTORY common enemy. some-Koreans, even light-skinned His­ Lee provides the wrong answer to the panics can move up, but keeping black National Office: New Yor.k question of why there are no black­ people down is a pillar of this capitalist Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 Box 444"; CanaJ St; Sta; owned businesses in a discussion about system. (212) 732-7860 New York,;NY'10(,USt the Korean grocer in the film. His side­ But society is not fundamentally (212) 267-102S",t,,;.·: . walk sage concludes: "Either dem Ko­ divided between owners and consum­ reans are geniuses or we Blacks are ers. There are producers of the wealth Atlanta Detroit Norfolk Box 4012 . Box 441794 Box 1972, Main PO dumb." Black people are not simply who have been systematically denied the Atlanta, GA 30302 Detroit, MI 48244 Norfolk, VA 23501 another ethnic group in this society or fruits of their labor. It is the integrated Boston Oakland Box 840, Central Sta. Ithaca Box 32552 Cambridge, MA 02139 Box 6767 Oakland, CA 94604 (617) 492-3928 Ithaca, NY 141350 (415) 839-0851 Chicago ~ Los Angeles San Francisco Box 6441, Main PO Box 29574, Los Feliz Sta. Box 5712 Martin Luther Chicago, IL 60680 Los Angeles, CA 90029 San FranCiSCO, CA 94101 King Jr., (312) 663-0715 (415) 863-6963 Robert Kennedy, (213) 380-8239 Roy Wilkins, Cleveland Washington, D.C. Lyndon Johnson Box 91037 Madison Box 75073 in 1963. King Cleveland, OH 44101 Box 2074 Washington, D.C. 20013 tried to channel (216) 781-7500 Madison, WI 53701 (202) 636-3537 ghetto anger into racist Democratic Toronto Party. TROTSKYIST LEAGUE Box 7198, Station A OF CANADA Toronto, Ontario M5W 1X8 (416) 593-4138

4 AUGUST 1989 11

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I City Scenes from the movie: Residents outraged by police murder trash pizzeria; above, Mookie (Spike Lee) and Sal (Danny Aiello). e " o e t In "- e

New York City. From the Bronx to ing a movie about American racism Brooklyn, people are lining up in the "irrelevant." (We suspect that North summertime heat to see Do The Right African workers in France and Asian' Thing, Spike Lee's new film about eVlew immigrant workers in Thatcher's Brit­ racism in New York. It is a riveting pic­ ain won't think so.) The critics found is deliberately the bourgeois press. ture of abrasive race relations as seen ih Do The Right Thing "Mookie," the movie's central black ambiguous in its message. One reviewer hysterically accused the life of one block of the Bedford­ character, "unheroic.'" It is precisely the is dedicated tb Spike Lee of having lost the election for Stuyvesant neighborhood in Brooklyn. Do The Right Thing absence of heroes and angels and feel­ six black men and women, a roll call of black'Democratic hopeful David Din­ Here people are locked in, compressed, good-Movieland endings that give this victims of lynch-mob and racist cop kins. Others sound the alarm that this brimming with pent-up frustration. film its complexity and its viewers some­ terror: Michael Griffith, Eleanor Bum­ film could spark race riots at a theater Nothing comes from outside this block thing to think about. Shouting "How­ purs, Michael Stewart, Edmund Perry, near you. Blit did the press worry when ard Beach!" Mookie turns his wrath at Yvonne Smallwood, Arthur Miller. As they screamed "WILDING" all over the police murder of Radio Raheem (the Young Sparlacus their names rise on the screen we their front pages? Did any of them fear block's baddest, most alienated and remember each chilling murder and also unrest when George Bush rode to office menacing youth) on Sal, the white piz­ think of the new names that must now over the image of Willie Horton? Whip­ Film 'Review zeria owner. It's not heroic. It is a very be added and also not forgotten-Rich­ ping up white fear and hatred is news fit tame screenplay of the repression and by A. Stevens ard Luke, seized in his housing project to print for those who mold "public rebellion that's swept America's inner and murdered in police custody; Trevor opinion" in order to keep things as they cities when black youth have been Francis, hurled to his death from a Har­ are. But black rage? Misdirected ven­ driven beyond reason by trigger-happy except the heat-the killer cops and a ' lem roof. How many more have been geance? It's a racist double standard. As cops .• merciless sun. As the temperature rises, martyred for the "crime" of being black Lee said, "Any riot this summer will be we see not the fabled American "melt­ in a racist society?' Deliberately timed because another cop killed a black kid ing pot" but a pressure cooker that Cultural Nationalism: for release in the midst of New York who's innocent." Liberal Lies serves up an American meltdown. A City's mayoral race, this is pretty hot The Euro-chic judges at the Cannes racial confrontation and then police ter­ stuff-too hot for some blowhards of Film Festival snubbed this film, deciar- A self-prociaimed "black nationalist ror spark. an explosion. People who with a camera," Lee paints a very ideal­ don't even see themselves as racists get ized portrait of ghetto life. This block of caught up in it: there is no way out. Bed-Stuy looks good; poor but nch in There is a genuine New York flavor to spirit, laughter and innocence. Even the this movie-both in the stinging raw­ cops are too good to be true. The choke­ ness of race-hatred and the cultural mix hold murder of Radio Raheem il'o hor­ in this city with its ethnically diverse rifying and intentionally evocative of population of minorities and foreign­ the real-life police murder of Michael born. This vibrant and often very funny Stewart, yet here it's portrayed as an film is something of a cultural break­ accident by two overzealous pigs, one of through: a restoration of humanity and whom pleads, "Hey, that's enough, stop compassion to black people that Holly­ it." By contrast, the murder of Michael wood has all too often typecast in racist Stewart, like so many others, was no stereotypes. Lee's idea for Do The Right accident. It was 14 against one and Thing arose out of the racist murder of a nobody yelled "stop!" except the an­ black man by a gang of white racists in guished family and angry New Yorkers Howard Beach, Queens. Lee says: "It in protest of this heinous crime. was 1986 and a black man was still being It is not this "artistic license," how­ hunted down like a dog. Never mind ever) that has many critics howling. All Mississippi Burning: Nothing has they want to know is "where's the changed in America, and you don't have dope?" One can appreciate Lee's bris­ to go down south to have a run-in with tling at racists who believe all black racist rednecks. They're here in Nueva people are shiftless, lazy junkies who York." Although Lee has brought a February 1987 protest outside Bronx courthouse against police m mus~ be held personally responsible for charged political issue to the big screen, black grandmother Eleanor Bumpurs. continued on page 10 12 4 AUGUST 1989