WfJlIllEIiS "NltJ'" 25~ No. 456 1 July 1988

Jesse Jackson Fronts for Party of War and Racism Unchain Labor, Blacks Break 'with the Democratsl

AP WV photo Democrats Dukakis and Jackson, no friends of labor and blacks. Spartacists at Harlem Hospital protest against racist austerity and cop terror in Democrat Koch's New York. We print below excerpts from a talk of the "little people" and the "common given in San Francisco on June 10 man." The reformist fake-left in this by Don Alexander of the Spartacist Fight for a Workers Party! country is sprinting at breakneck speed League Central Committee. to chain labor and blacks to the chariot of the so-called "lesser evil" capitalist About a decade ago, at a news con­ The whole system is set up to oppress nightmare a thousand and a million Democratic Party. For the left, the ference Democrat Jimmy "Ethnic Puri­ and exploit working people and minor­ times over. The system of capitalist Jackson campaign has become the issue ty" Carter, in response to a decision ities, and it will take a socialist revolu­ anarchy in this country increasingly . of the American popular front, the which denied Medicare for poorwomen tion under the leadership of a multi­ is no longer even functioning off a vehicle for class collaboration which ties for abortions, had the following to say: racial Trotskyist vanguard party to lead reserve army of the unemployed, who the working class to the bourgeois "Life is not fair." Now, if that's what a united working-class struggle to the historically have been disproportion­ parties. Jimmy Carter said a decade ago, the seizure of state power, by smashing the ately black. Today in racist capitalist Obviously, Jackson can't come to the bourgeoisie's prescription for working bourgeois state-machine and replacing it America, we witness the absolute rot masses with a program like the late people and oppressed in Americatoday, with the rule of the working class. and decay of this sick, dying capitalist Clarence Pendleton of the Civil Rights particularly in light of the stock market The fight for black liberation is system, as reflected in the homeless­ Commission, or with a program offered crisis, is more pain and, more suffering. strategic to the fight for proletarian ness, the police terror and murder, the by a character like Reverend Ike, who Because it was this "born again" anti­ revolution in the V.S. The all-sided number of poverty-stricken women once said that the best way to help poor Soviet Democrat who launched Cold brutal racial oppression is widely doc­ heading up families, the number of people is not to be one. So he's running War II over Afghanistan and paved the umented, there's a proliferation of babies dying in their early years. The around posturing as a New Deal liberal .way for the certified nuclear nut Ron­ absolute pauperization of the ghetto studies with regard to the deterioration in the spirit of Roosevelt, combining' ald Reagan, and a stargazer at that. of life-things are worse for the black masses and the immiseration of the anti-corporate rhetoric, flag-waving The imperialist racist Democratic masses in comparison to the 1930s in working class in America is the unmis­ protectionism and anti-drug crusading. Party, which brought World War I terms of sheer social misery. Blacks are takable sign of capitalism in its death And. he's the only one of the bourgeois under Woodrow Wilson, World War II agony. forcibly segregated at the bottom of candidates who's making cynical prom­ under Roosevelt, the Korean War under American society as an oppressed race­ Jackson Campaign a Trap ises. His advisers, like the crooked Truman, and the Vietnam War under color caste-ghettoized, lumpenized Georgia banker Bert Lance, they don't JFK and LBJ, is no longer even making for Labor and Blacks and terrorized. The last hired, the first mind it, because they know he's follow­ the cynical promises of yesteryear. Like fired, the specially oppressed black pop­ So this is an election year , and the ing the master's advice, to get those their twins and partners in the Republi­ ulation will achieve its centuries-old labor fakers, the fake-left and other blacks to the polls and shut up about can Party, they have been waging a quest for genuine freedom by helping to defenders of capitalism are saying: Vote black rights. bipartisan class war" against working build that revolutionary workers party Democrat, Don't Fight. They're play­ He's done that and more. For exam­ people and oppressed minorities as an that can put an end to the decrepit sys­ ing the capitalist game once again, and pie, initially he said the death penalty integral part of their war drive against tem of capitalism. pushing the greatest deception and was supposed to be central to his cam­ the Soviet V nion. Now the American dream is not only fraud: that the party of Kennedy and the paign. So during the primaries while he Our starting point as revolutionaries a racist nightmare for the black popula­ party of George Wallace, the party of was running around, Willie Darden was is that capitalism cannot be reformed. tion in this country, hut it's a racist' the Klansman Tom Metzger, is the party executed in Florida. Mumia Abu­ Jamal, former .Panther, MOVE, jour­ nalist, class-war prisoner, on death The "Blank Space" That row-nothing 'said about that. The incineration of the Philly MOVE com­ Haunts Gorbachev's Russia mune; orchestrated by the black Dem­ ocratic Party mayor there. Wilson Goode, along with the FBI and Edwin New York .Bridges Meese. Jackson's response to that? We need black contractors to rebuild! Are Falling Down Geronimo Pratt, foremost class-war prisoner in America. who's languished ---- SEE PAGE 3 ------SEE PAGE 4---- in jails for close to 20 years. victim of continued on page 9 Parti§au Defeu§e £o...... ittee Nihat Sargin (left) and Haydar Kutlu, leaders of United Communist Party of Turkey, imprisoned and Free Leaders tortured by of Turkish CPI NATO regime. On 16 November 1987Turkish police Since Turkey's 1980 NATO military Our comrades of the Spartacist East 1st Street, Des Moines, Iowa arrested Dr. Nihat Sargin, general sec­ coup, half a million people have been League/Britain and the Trotzkistische 50309. Contributions can be sent to: retary of the Turkish Workers Party, detained, the' trade-union federation Liga Deutschlands have joined in Mark Curtis Defense Committee, P.O. and Haydar Kutlu, head of the "official" DISK was banned and many of its lead­ publicizing the case of Kutlu and Box 1048, Des Moines, Iowa 50311. pro-Moscow Communist Party of Tur­ ers imprisoned. Thousands remain in Sargin. On June 16 the Partisan Defense key, as they emerged from a plane at jails for political "crimes," 400 face the Committee protested to .the Turkish * * * Istanbul airport. Handcuffed and blind­ death penalty, and the genocidal repres­ embassy in Washington, "Even among On May 13 MOVE member Alberta folded, Sargin and Kutlu were taken sion of the Kurds in eastern Turkey your reactionary NATO allies Turkey 'Africa was finally released from Muncy to the notorious "Deep Investigation continues. stands unique as the only European state prison. Pennsylvania state officials Laboratory" of the security police and, Over the past 18 months a new wave country in which communist parties and forced Alberta to serve every single day thrown into solitary confinement for 19 of workers' strikes and student strug­ workers organizations such as the DISK of her seven-year sentence on charges days of torture. Sixty-year-old Sargin gles against the brutal austerity rule of are outlawed.... We demand the imme­ arising from a 1977 cop siege on was kicked, hosed with freezing water the Evren regime has swept Turkey. The diate release of Sargin and Kutlu, their MOVE's Powelton Village home. They and hung by his arms from the ceiling. charges against Kutlu and Sargin are a lawyers Atjllo Conkurn and Rasim Oz released her on the third anniversary of Sargin and Kutlu are charged under sinister attack on all Turkish workers and the 12 others arrested with them." the hideous police bombing of MOVE's the infamous- articles 141 and 142 of and leftists. But in an act of sectarian Osage Avenue home. Now MOVE's the Turkish Penal Code, modeled on stupidity, the rival left-Stalinist Com­ * * * Miriister ofInformation, Alberta vowed Mussolini's fascist Code of 1936. The munist Party of Turkey (TKP) re­ Socialist Workers Party member to continue the struggle for the release of charges include "making Communist sponded by branding Kutlu and Sargin Mark Curtis is the victim of 'a dirty all imprisoned MOVE members. propaganda," "insulting the president" as "traitors," suggesting they arranged frame-up in Des Moines, Iowa. On and "forming an illegal organization their own arrest as part of a "deal" with March I INS cops raided the Swift aiming to overthrow the constitutional the Turkish government. Whatever meatpacking plant and arrested 17 * * * order." They were arrested as they their illusions in Turkish "democracy," of Curtis' immigrant coworkers. On Time is running out for the Sharpe­ stepped off the plane in their well­ Kutlu and Sargin are in the hands of the ' March 4, after Curtis left a meeting ville Six, who still face the apartheid publicized return to join in the notorious security police. This hideous protesting the arrests, cops charged hangman. Worldwide protest won a "democratization" (!) process in Tur­ frame-up must be defeated-and the onto a porch where Curtis waited for a stay ofexecution in March. But on June key and establish their newly merged TKP's criminal sectarianism repudi­ woman whom he had driven home, and 13 a South African -Supreme Court party, the United Communist Party of ated-by mass workers protests in Tur­ arrested him on charges of attempted judge cleared the way for a July hang­ Turkey (TBKP), as a legal organization. key and around the world. rape. They later tacked on a burglary ing, rejecting their application for a new charge. During interrogation at the city trial. The Six were convicted, by the jail, one cop chided, "You're one of state's use of a Nazi-like theory of "col­ those Mexican-lovers aren't you? Just lective guilt," for being in an area where Behind the Moscow Trials like you love those coloreds." The cops an enraged crowd of black rent strikers broke Curtis' cheekbone and charged stoned to death a hated collaborator of The Soviet bureaucracy has justexoner­ him with assaulting them. the white supremacist regime in Septem­ ated the victims ofStalin's 1936 show trial, The PDC has sent a letter to the Des ber 1984. On June 20 the PDC sent a let­ among them Lenin's close comrades-in­ Moines chief of police demanding that ter demanding their immediate release, arms Gregory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev. all charges against Mark Curtis be stating, "The Sharpeville Six have been Trotsky's son and comrade in the Left dropped. We also sent $100 for Curtis' condemned to die for one reason-they Opposition, Leon Sedov, himself among defense, along with a letter of support, 'shared a common purpose' with the those accused and later a victim ofStalin's noting: millions of black South Africans, and terror, wrote in a pamphlet exposing the "From Austin, Minnesota to Ottumwa, hundreds of millions around the world, Moscow Trials that the nationalist bu- Iowathe meatpacking bosseshavebeen who detest your racist apartheid re­ TROTSKY reaucracy's aim was to drown the interna- LENIN playing hardball.•... The brutal attack gime." An. international outcry of tionalist foundations of Leninism in a sea and frame-up of Mark Curtis is an protest must immediately be raised to attempt to intimidate those who strug­ ofblood. The Stalinist degeneration ofthe October Revolution cannot be reversed by gleback in any way. To.smashthisanti­ save them from the apartheid hang­ bureaucratic fiat, but only through the revolutionary action of the Soviet masses. labor offensive, the workers must play man's noose! The corpses of Zinoviev and Kamenev are intended to prove to the world hardball too. Working-class solidarity is key-foremost are the principles that * * bourgeoisie Stalin's break with the revolution, to serve as a certificate of his picket lines mean don't cross, and cap­ * dependability and maturity as a national statesman.... italist courts out of the unions!" Mumia Abu-Jamal continues to fight The Moscow trial has shownonce again to what extent the bureaucracy has played Curtis' trial is scheduled to open for his life (see "Abolish the Death Pen­ out its progressive role as the keeper of the achievements of the October Revolution. July 6. Smash the frame-up of Mark alty! Save Mumia Abu-Jamal!" WV It has become an obstacle to thefurther development ofthe USSR, as the interests of Curtis! Send letters of protest to: No. 454, 3 June). There has been an this development come into irreconcilable conflict with this bureaucracy, socially, William Moulder, Chief of Police, 25 continued on page 10 culturally and politically. To open the way for the development ofthe USSR to socialism, what's needed is to liquidate the bureaucracy. ... The Soviet proletariat can arrive at socialism only through the rebirth and free No. 35 SUMMER 1988 development of soviet democracy through the legalization of soviet parties, above all the party of revolutionary Bolshevism. Yet the rebirth of soviet democracy is possible only as the result of the overthrow of the bureaucracy. Only the power of the JUST OUT! revolutionary working masses can overthrow the bureaucracy. -Leon Sedov, Rotbuch iiber den Moskauer Prozefi Women and (Red Book on the Moscow Trial, October'1936) Revolution Summer 1988, No. 35 $,50 (16 pages)

• Criminal State Neglect as Epidemic Rages: !~!!!f.l!!,yf.~!!t'!~~~.~*4. The Agony of AIDS , • SL/PDC Brief in DIRECTOR OF PARTY PUBLICATIONS: Liz Gordon U.S: Supreme Court: EDITOR: Jan Norden No to RICO PRODUCTION MANAGER: Noah Wilner Sex Witchhunt! CIRCULATION MANAGER: Jon Lawrence • In Defense of" EDITORIAL BOARD: George Foster, Liz Gordon, Frank Hunter, Jane Kerrigan, Homosexual Rights: Len Meyers, Jan Norden, James Robertson, Reuben Samuels, Joseph Seymour, The Marxist Tradition Alison Spencer, Marjorie Stamberg, Noah Wilner (Closing editor) • Afghan Women Workers Vanguard (USPS 098-770) published biweekly, except 2nd issue August and with 3-week interval December, by the Spartacist Publishing Co., 41 Warren Street, New York, NY 10007. Telephone: 732-7862 (Editorial). 732-7861 Fight for Their Lives (Business). Address all correspondence to: Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116. Domestic subscriptions. $5.00/24 Issues Second-class postage paid at New York, NY POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Workers Vanguard, Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116. Make checks payable/mail to: Opinions expressed in signed articles or Jetters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint. Spartacist Publishing Co, Box 1377 GPO New York, NY 10116 No. 456 1 July 1988

2 WORKERS VANGUARD ·~, ..,,,...... - The "Blank Space" That Haunts Gorbachev's Russia Leon Trotsky: Fighter for World. Revolution JUNE 27-As tensions mount within wrote. The same is still true of Bukha­ the Soviet bureaucracy with the ap­ rin and Kamenev and Zinoviev." proach of the Communist Party's spe­ Meanwhile, the London Guardian Trotsky exposes cial conference, set to open June 28, the (23 June) reported that a public me­ Moscow Trials "historical" issue of the victims of Sta­ morial in central Moscow to millions frame-up from lin's purge trials has become one of -of Stalin's victims is expected to be Mexican exile burning .immediacy, But as the Gorba­ authorized by the CPSU conference. A in 1938. chev regime rehabilitates the leaders of public rally for the memorial was held the Bukharinite Right Opposition and June 25 outside Moscow's Dinamo Sta­ the Zinoviev-Karnenev capitulators, dium, with .speakers including prom­ Wide World there is one glaring "blank space" which inent Gorbachev supporters such as sigent defense of revolutionary Russia market. So long as this is not the case, continues to haunt Gorbachev's Russia: Afanasyev and Vitaly Korotich, editor during the Civil War, castigating Trot­ the bourgeoisie considers the Soviet state hostile to it. And it is right." Leon Trotsky, co-leader together with of the glasnost weekly Ogonyok, And sky and Zinoviev for regarding "their Lenin of the Russian Revolution, on the eve of the conference, Moscow well-known ruthlessness during the In explaining the "confessions" ex­ founder of the Red Army and leader of News (26 June) ran a lengthy article, Revolution as a sign of valour" and torted by Stalin and his GPU thugs, and the Left Opposition-the only ones who "The Poisonous Mist Disperses," on the claiming: "They themselves put into the to explain away the political capitula­ fought Stalin to the end, those who rehabilitation of the victims of the Mos­ operation the bone-crushing machine tions, the Moscow News writes that "a stood on the Leninist program of com­ cow Trials. The article admits that "the which crushed them." The author's torture can be found to break anyone, munist internationalism. main defendant at the trial-inabsentia, main objection to the purge trials is that: even the staunchest." Yet there \'(ere On Monday, JUne 13, the Supreme to Stalin's great dismay-was Trotsky, "Satisfying his thirst for blood ... Stalin those who did not confess, who fought Court of the USSR formally reversed whom Stalin hated bitterly." And it himself undermined the anti-fascist to the end. The Soviet people in the adds: front then taking shape, and ignited search for the truth about their own his­ "Trotsky, then living in Norway, the democratic West's mistrust for the tory will rediscoverthe courageous Left couldn't believe his ears. How could Oppositionists, whose commitment to he-a Jew and an anti-fascist-and his USSR." former supporters be accused of con­ In fact, the opposite is the case. The international socialist revolution armed spiring with the Gestapo?" Western press overwhelmingly bought them for irreconcilable battle against Elsewhere in the same issue of Mos­ the Moscow Trials and helped to spread Stalin's destruction of Lenin's Bolshe­ cow News, the heretofore number one Stalin's murderous slanders around the vik Party and program. As an eyewit­ "non-person" in the Soviet Union is world, with such mouthpieces as the ness at the prison camp of Vorkuta re­ ported, when the Trotskyists were shot mentioned in an interview with Healy­ New York Times' Walter Duranty, the during the bloody spring of 1938, "As ite actress Vanessa Redgrave (who calls British Fabian "socialists" Sidney and they marched away, the condemned for Trotsky's works to be published), Beatrice Webb, and various Stalinist fel­ sang the 'Internationale,' joined by the and a column by Afanasyev urges tour low travelers. A Boston paper gleefully voices of hundreds of prisoners remain­ guides in Leningrad's Smolny Institute; summed up the bloody purges, saying ing in camp." the hub of the 1917 October Revolu­ that the Third International had been tion, to point out Trotsky's study. Yet stood against the wall and shot. At the The Trotskyists do not look to the M N's back page gives even more prom­ same time, Stalin was'beheading the bureaucracy, but to the Soviet workers inent coverage to the millennium of the Spanish Revolution by' starving it of to restore the Bolshevik leaders to,their Russian Orthodox church, that bastion weapons, smashing the Barcelona work­ rightful place in history. Soviet democ­ of Russian nationalism, obscurantism ers and executing militant leftist lead­ racy will only be restored through and anti-Semitism. And in a succinct ers. As the then-Trotskyist Max Shacht­ proletarian political revolution which expression of glasnost today, they an­ man. wrote in his 1936 pamphlet, Behind will oust the parasitic Stalinist bureauc­ racy in fighting to defend and extend nounce that George Orwell's 1984 will the Moscow Trials: the gains of the October Revolution soon be published in the Soviet Union "The dramatic indictment of Zinoviev, (while Trotsky's works are stillbanned). Kamenev and the others, their ruthless throughout the world. As Trotsky wrote Bulletin of the Opposition execution, the indictment of Trotsky­ of the Moscow Trials: As we noted in "The Bukharin Dos­ at the height Leon Sedov, Trotsky's son and or­ that is, the assault upon those figures "Revolution will unlock all the secret sier" (WV No. 455, 17 June), the com­ that symbolize the dread words 'World ganizer of International Left Oppo­ compartments, review all the trials, sition, victim of Stalin's terror.. mon thread behind the rehabilitations . Revolution' to the international bour­ has been the "desperate need to find geoisie, is Stalin's way of taking the rehabilitate the slandered, raise memo­ blood-oath to the latter that the interna­ rials to the victims of wantonness, and the convictions of Kamenev, Zinoviev, some historical alternative to the dis­ tional proletarian revolution, so long as credited Stalin on the same political cover with eternal infamy the names of Pyatakov, Radek, and 29 other Bolshe­ the Kremlin is concerned, has long been the executioners" ("The Beginning of . vik leaders framed up in the first two ground of 'socialism in one country'." interred." Thus the Izvestia (l4June) article on the the End," June 1937), Return to the Moscow Trials in 1936 and 1937. Ear­ Yet this was not enough for the "dem­ road of Lenin and Trotskyljs lier, the court had rehabiiitilted Bukha­ rehabilitation of Zinoviev and Kame­ ocratic" imperialists, who refused Sta­ rin, Rykov, Rakovsky and 17 others nev baldly claims, "Everyone knows lin's entreaties for an alliance. They were convicted in the 1938 frame-up trial today that Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin counting on Hitler to finish offthe "Bol­ of the so-called "Anti-Soviet Bloc of was another Lenin, the favorite of the shevik menace." As Trotsky wrote in Rights and Trotskyites." Although the party and its most prominent theo­ "Not a Workers' and Not a Bourgeois Spartacist League latest court decision cleared "everyone retician." Gorbachev's brain trusters State?" (November 1937): Public Offices involved in their trials," there was no look to the leader of the Right Opposi­ "In spite of all the efforts on the part mention of Trotsky and his son Leon tion as the granddaddy of their market­ of the Moscow clique to demonstrate -MARXIST LlTERATURE­ its conservative reliability (the coun­ Sedov. But on Friday, June 17, Yuri oriented economic policies (perestroi­ Bay Area ka). Trotsky remains anathema because terrevolutionary politics of Stalin in Afanasyev, rector of the State Institute Spain!), world imperialism does not Thurs.: 5:30-8:00 p.rn., Sat.: 1:00-5:00 p.rn. of Historical Archives, called-at a press his name is synonymous with the '1634 Telegraph. 3rd Floor (near 17th Street) trust Stalin, does not spare him the most Oakland,California Phone: (415) 839-0851 conference at the Ministry of Foreign program of world revolution. humiliating flicks and is ready at the Affairs for the juridical exoneration of Moreover, with the rehabilitations first favorable opportunity to over­ Chicago Trotsky and for the publication of his ·they seek not to solidarize with the gen­ throw him. Hitler-and therein lies his Tues.: 5:00-9:00 p.rn .. Sat.: 11:00a.m.-2:00 p.rn. strength-simply more consistently and' 161 W Harrison St. 10th Floor works: eration of the' October Revolution that frankly expresses 'the attitude of the Chicago. Illinois Phone: (312) 663-0715 "We have to rehabilitate all who were Stalin murdered in the Moscow Trials, world bourgeoisie to the Soviet bu­ oppressed or wrongly accused and, as a but to conciliate Western liberal (impe­ reaucracy. For the bourgeoisie-fascist New York City Tues.: 6:00-9:00 p.m., Sat.: 1:00-5:00 p.m. matter of justice, Leon Trotsky stands rialist) opinion. The Moscow News as well as democratic-isolated coun­ equally with all the victims of Stalin.... terrevolutionaryexploits of Stalin do 41 Warren St. (one block below article makes this explicit. Not only does Chambers St. near Church SI.) It is very strange that professors and not suffice; it needs a complete coun­ New York. N.Y. Phone: (212) 267-1025 teachers try to criticise Trotsky when Lt grotesquely suggest that the seeds of terrevolution in the relations of prop­ they have never read a word that he Stalinism are to be found in the intran- erty and the opening of the Russian 1 JULY 1988 3 Cap-ital.ist America in 'Phy'sical Decay . "

New York Bridges Are Falling' Down . The chief engineer of New York City's Transportation Department stopped during an inspection of the Williams­ burg Bridge one morning in April to lis­ ten to a "squealing or screeching sound, which was then abruptly cut off and fol­ lowed by a bang. 'That was one of the most frightening things'," he told the New York Times. "Tt was the sound of something going'." The inspection had already discov­ ered that 90 percent of the cross section of several beams holding up. the road­ way had been lost to corrosion. How­ ever, cars and trucks with their unsus­ pecting occupants continued to use the structure until almost 36 hours later, ' when 30 such beams had been found. At that point NYC mayor Ed Koch decid­ ed the spectre of collapse of the road­ way into the East River, with possible deaths and certain political embarrass­ ment, outweighed the predictable up­ roar over requiring 240,000 commuters to find another way across the river. The bridge was closed; an army of traffic guards was sent out to try to unsnarl the clogged streets. Small businesses near the bridge were devastated. And the the streets and water system, the schools engineers went out with pick .hammers and housing stock, is literally the prod­ to see how far the damage went. uct of the decay of capitalism. City officials knew that the bridge was in very bad shape, but they were mak­ Fish Oil and Salt ing every effort to keep from replacing The Williamsburg Bridge, built in it. (For one thing, more federal money is 1903 in conscious competition with the available for repairs.) A 1985 engineer­ then 20-year-old Brooklyn Bridge, is a ing study concluded the huge suspen- rusting monument to the low bidder sys­ , sion cables holding up the entire span tem. They built it to carry subway trains, wouldn't last a decade. The entire top of they eliminated any designed-in safety the bridge was wired with strain sensors, factors, and they finished it in half the vibration monitors, frequency analyz­ time. To save money they didn't gal-: ers. But nobody looked underneath, On vanize the suspension cables, as was May 26, after closing the bridge for six standard practice, Instead, the cables weeks to patch rotted beams at break­ were treated with graphite and linseed neck speed, the city partially reopened oil. Seven years after the bridge was the Williamsburg to light traffic. The opened, the cables were found to be very next day, four construction work­ deteriorating. By 1922the city was pour­ ers were injured when a repair platform ingfish oil on the foot-and-a-half-thick collapsed. Now a new city study calls for cables to try to halt the rust. A concrete $350 million in repairs to the roadway, roadway was installed in the 1950s, but claims nothing is wrong with the without drainage. Water and road salt main suspension cables. Even Koch's collected in cracks, seeped down into friends at the New York Times (11 June) steel pockets. Raia/Newsday don't believe it, editorializing: "Fix the The New York Times (10 June) re­ Disaster waiting to happen:Williamsburg Bridge (above), shut down because Bridge? Get a Second Opinion." ports that by 1971 an engineering con­ of massive corrosion. Koch reopened bridge after patchwork repairs. And the Williamsburg is just the tip sultant recortrmended "repair of cor­ of the iceberg. Jim Bishop, secretary­ roded members be undertaken at an "This bridge is safe." But finally, many droppings, dirt and acid automobile treasurer of the bridge painters' union, early date." (The Times, which finds years of neglect, coupled with an active exhaust residues, sealing in the wet told the New York Post (25 May): very little critical of the NYC fathers "fit corrosion agent-salt-took its toll. corrosives. "A truck could fall through the lower 'to print," entitled its article a "Chron­ Salt is cheap. At the first snowflake, The Williamsburgis the symbol ofall deck of the Manhattan Bridge any day. icle of City's Neglect.") Nothing was city trucks fan out across the city, pour­ the 2,098 city bridges: 32 are closed, 471 The Williamsburg? That could go down any time. The only thing holding them fixed, just painted over. In 1980another ing salt onto every major roadway and must be repaired or replaced in the next up is rust. ... When it comes to bridges, study warned of "heavily, corroded" bridge. Steel and air and salty water few years to avoid collapse, at an esti­ and highways, New York is a disaster beams. In 1985 the understructure form a complete electrochemical cell' mated cost of $2.5 billion, more than waiting to happen." passed a state 'inspection-a few cracks producing current which greatly accel­ twice the amount budgeted. The most But it's not a "natural" disaster: the state were repaired, then more paint. Last erates the oxidation of the metallic iron heavily used East River bridge, the of NYC's bridges, like the condition of August Mayor Koch announced flatly, by air. Steel bridges contain thousands Queensboro, is' in worse shape than of pockets where this reaction can the Williamsburg, and the Manhattan occur, thousands of such cells produc­ Bridge "has a distressing tendency to ing current and corroding away the twist whenever a subway train rumbles structure., Freeze and thaw cycles pro­ across it" (New York Times, 21 Febru­ duce cracks in the concrete roadbed. ary). The Sheridan Bridge in the Bronx Saltwater works its way in toward the was opened in 1967 as a temporary steel reinforcing bar. The rusting rebar wooden timber detour. So many cars expands against the concrete, which used it that they paved over the wood. cracks and falls out of the roadbed, When that gave out they installed steel The technology exists-cathodic pro­ plates. Twenty years later the timbers tection-to prevent the ravages of this finally gave way, so they start to build a corrosion cell activity by running a bridge. small electric charge through a bridge's The city's bridges are going the way of steel components. And for years there the subway system and highways. The NYC public have been recognized, elementary meas­ Wall Street bankers have let the transit employees ures which can be taken to protect a union exposed system go to hell, while assaulting the crumbling bridge from salt (and particularly in a heavily minority Transport Workers bridges in 1976. marine environment), notably main­ Union. Now, after years of derailments, tenance-washing it down after 'the subway fires and deaths due to faulty snows are ended, providing for drain­ doors, the bourgeoisie has announced a age and keeping the drains clean, and $8.6 billion "rebuilding plan." But once keeping it painted. But NYC bridges again the bankers will feed at the trough, aren't washed down, and what littte as interest payments on the financing paint is applied goes over salt, pigeon bonds funnel hundreds of millions of 4 WORKERS VANGUARD dollars to the Wall Street profiteers. And Manhattan is left with only one overcrowded, deteriorating north-south highway. After a truck fell through a hole in the West Side Highway in 1973, the roadway was used by joggers until its final demise years later. Unlike the rad-lib opponents of "Westway," our 1978 NYC election campaign (under the watchword of a "Socialist Fight to Save New York") called for a ten-lane under­ ground West Side highway, as part of a massive program of public works under union control. Grand opening of Koch's Cuts Kill Brooklyn Bridge, 1883. Ascendant The decay of this city's infrastructure capitalism built is directly connected to Koch's calls for magnificent more murderous police and his attacks public works, on city workers unions. Koch lets black capitalism in its and minority youth rot in the streets and decline is letting the prisons he calls schools, while the them go to hell. bankers and arbitragers plunder this country's industry. The ports and rail yards, bridges and water mains rust away in the shadow of tax-supported luxury housing. The only things being the Brooklyn Bridge alone. Today to massively rearm. Beginning under The feds are urging Donald Trump to built for minority and working people 160 workers are responsible for 846 Democrat Carter and sharply escalat­ rebuild the Williamsburg Bridge for are more prisons. And until those are bridges-less thanfive for the Brooklyn ing under Reagan, billions which could cheap. He visited the bridge in a heavy­ ready, they've added a prison barge-a Bridge. It's barely enough to watch them have gone in)o capital investment were duty photo opportunity, to declare great floating jail-which was first docked in rust. put into Trident subs and "Star Wars" plans. It would be "Trump's Folly"­ the shadow of the Williamsburg Bridge nuclear first-strike schemes. Last year there's a big difference between a rec­ and now (following community uproar) Coast-to-Coast Rust Belt the Center for Defense Information reational skating rink and a major has been moved to the Hudson River. New York City bridges are a symbol reported, "Preparations for war have transportation link. The' resources to Meanwhile, under his administra­ of the decaying infrastructure across the cost the United States $2 Trillion since maintain and rebuild the infrastructure tion the number of bridge workers and United States. Almost one-quarter of 1981," and current spending is more of this country cannot be squeezed out painters was slashed by more than one­ the country's bridges are closed, have than double that of all U.S. imperialist of an economic base increasingly made third. Koch was installed to finish the reduced load limits, or need immediate allies (including NATO and Japan). of junk bonds and junk food joints. job begun by the bankers with "Big rehabilitation to remain open. Over 150 American capitalism in its heyday During the New York state primary, MAC" in 1975, when New York was put bridges collapse each year. An esti­ had an international reputation.for Jesse Jackson led a march across the in receivership to the direct' rule of mated $51 billion is required to fix building things to last, from machine closed Williamsburg Bridge, calling finance capital. A fifth of the entire city them. And it's not just bridges: in 1960, tools to construction. A recent article in for "rebuilding people to rebuild the budget went to debt service to the banks. 3.6 percent of the GNP was spent on in­ the New York Times (28 April) de­ bridges"-a WPA-style program for a To pay for this they launched a whole­ frastructure. This dropped to 1.7 per­ scribed the use in Vietnam of small new New Deal. He proposes an "Amer­ sale assault on the unions and city serv­ cent in 1980, and.then climbed back to American pumps which have been oper­ ican Investment Bank," financed with ices, used overwhelmingly by the poor only 2.6 percent in 1985. From high­ atingsince the '50s to drain land and irri­ the pension funds of public employees! and working people: ways to water and sewer systems, from gate fields. So widespread and integral But NYC workers have already had "Wages were frozen, 30,000 workers were axed, future pension benefits were schools and hospitals to the subways to Vietnamese farming are they, that the their pension money siphoned into the reduced, and the unions' pension funds and railroads, the bourgeoisie in its generic word for pump is derived from 8ig MAC sinkhole. Dukakis, mean­ themselves-not the banks-became decline is letting the physical plant of Kohler, the manufacturer. The article while, calls for "Rebuilding America." the major source of emergency city this country go to hell. quotes a peasant requesting recently The Democrats, and their reformist sup­ financing. Hospitals were closed. Tran­ sit fares. '.. were increased 43 per cent. A Historically, the bourgeoisie has pro­ built pumps. But the pumps being built porters on the left, call for "reordering free university education-the tradi­ duced massive public works in periods today by the notoriously anti-union priorities," for butter not guns. But the tional passport between poverty and of capitalist expansion ...and for war. Kohler Company now have plastic ("no­ Democrats and Republicans are solidly the middle class-would soon be In early 1800s Britain every new mile of lube") bearings and rotors, and a united around a mounting war drive abolished." railway laid inland from the ports pro­ five-year life expectancy. against the Soviet Union to restore the -Jack Newfield and Paul Du Brul, The Abuse ofPower, duced a thousandfold return for the cap­ The Brooklyn Bridge just reached its U.S. as a hegemonic world power. The Permanent Government italists, as colonial markets exploded 100th birthday, and its first major over­ The program of the Democratic Party and the Fall of New York and factories were built to supply them. haul. It was designed by the brilliant (and their kept labor lieutenants) is to (1977) The broad boulevards of Paris were German-born engineer (and student of make the working class pay for decades Even before the cutbacks, in April built by Emperor Napoleon III as a Hegel) John Roebling, and built by his of capitalist looting of this country's 1967, Jim Bishop of the bridge painters defense against militant Parisian work­ son, Washington Roebling,a Union vet­ wealth. AtChrysler, the Democrats and union had warned Mayor Lindsay that ers, who in the defeated 1848 Revolu­ eran of many of the Civil War',s blood­ the UAW company cops conspired with he was facing a "catastrophe-with the tion .held the old neighborhoods with iest battles. In the 1930s, Robert Moses, the auto bosses to steal billions in con­ bridges of New York City." What did barricades of paving stones. In the 19th the public works czar of New York, built cessions and throw auto workers on the Lindsay do about it? He eliminated century, the American system of canals a municipal water system that dazzled scrap heap. That's what Dukakis' and bridge painting from the budget (New and railways was the path of expansion the world, a magnificent system of res­ Jackson's "Rebuild America" slogan York Post, 25 May). And AFSeME to the West. Today's 42,OOO-mile "Na­ ervoirs and lakes, aqueducts and tun­ means: racist Japan-bashing protec­ District 37, the largest NYC union, tional System of Interstate and Defense nels. Even today people in Los Angeles tionism, givebacks and war. recalled that it warned the city more Highways," begun in the 1950s,was pat­ pay for bottles of New York City tap From factories to people, the ravag­ than a decade ago when it headlined the terned after the Third Reich Autobahn water. But the system is living on the ing of the country's productive forces union paper "New York's Bridges Are system which was designed by the Nazis investments of the past. A new water reflects the decay of American capital­ Rusting, Crumbling" (Public Employee to speed their invasion of Europe. tunnel to Manhattan, under construc­ ism. A Pentagon study lamented that Press, 9 April 1976). But the union After U.S. imperialism's dreams of an tion for decades, has run into mishap private investment in plant and equip­ tops didn't lift a finger to fight the cut­ "American Century" were shattered by after mishap. The two existing tunnels ment, as a percentage of the Gross backs and layoffs. In 1898 there were the heroic Vietnamese workers and have not been inspected since they were National Product, is currently a paltry 206 maintenance workers assigned to peasants, the bourgeoisie decided it had built. On the block grid level, tens of 10 percent in the U.S. Bycomparison, in millions of gallons of water are wasted, Japan it is 17 percent (Wall Street Jour­ and frequent main breaks result in clos­ nal, 16 May). The economic lifeblood of ing subway lines, roadways, and even this country-the steel, the autos, the buildings. farm machinery and tools and oil­ needs highways, railroads, waterways, For Socialist Revolution to bridges. The capitalist class is letting the Rebuild America factories rust into the ground, while the industrial working class rots in low-paid A recent study called for an increase McDonald's jobs. The black youth of of "up to 100% in the amount of capital this country are being- deliberately the nation invests each year in new and wasted, kept out of any meaningful role existing public works"-some $50 bil­ in this racist, rotting society. lion annually (Engineering News Rec­ A workers revolution would put ord, 25 February). But the ideologues America back to work rebuilding the around the White House apparently bridges, highways and factories. And think they can solve all problems with not just here-massive aid programs to an apocalypse now. Other members of rebuild Vietnam, Latin America, Afri­ the bourgeoisie, who don't trust in the ca, everywhere the imperialists have stars, are worried. Privatization is plundered and destroyed. The capital­ proposed as one solution. Everything ist class in its twilight has shown that it is from prisons to highways is being built incapable of maintaining society. The . ~ Sobolik/Black Star Jesse .Jackson leads march over Williamsburg Bridge during NY primary by private investors, who will use chain working class led by its revolutionary campaign, calling for grabbing workers' pension funds to pay for years of . gangs and tolls and tax breaks to return vanguard must wrench society from the neglect by capitalist rulers. a profit. bourgeoisie's death grip .• 1 JULY 1988 5 Anatomy of aHealyite Russia Hater David North: Joseph Hansen's Natural Son Workers Press

Workers League leader David North theory that Hansen had been hired by demonstration of opponents of Saddam the dirtier aspects of the WRP's past has made no small effort to ensconce the U.S, government and the Kremlin Hussein's Ba'athist regime in Iraq. The than they have so far publicly admit­ himself as the undisputed "leader" of the Stalinists to destroy the SWP. report of the IC investigation says that ted.... These include North, who has shattered remnants of Gerry Healy's Declaring themselves to be the while the "Commission has not yet been resolutely chosen not to make public corrupt International Committee (IC). Fourth International, Healy's IC kept able to establish all the facts ...a receipt even the skeletal information we pub­ To do so of course requires that North up a vicious vendetta against the long­ for £1,600 for 16 minutes of documen­ lish.. .." Of course he hasn't. Of all declare all of the other former lead­ since reformist SWP, including the use tary footage of a demonstration is in the Healy's former lieutenants, North is ing lights of Healyism (including the of the capitalist courts. This is not the possession of the Commission," An uniquely the one who clings to the real "founder-leader" himself) to be hope­ only time they crossed the class line. A indisputable and monstrous fact is that "heritage" of Healyism-in particular less"renegades." Never mind that North secret report (which surfaced as part of the Healyites hailed the execution of 21 the scandalous "Security and the Fourth was trained, tutored and installed as a the fallout from the Healyites' spectac­ Iraqi Communists by Ba'ath rulers in International" campaign. leader by the same crew he now' de­ ular implosion) by an IC Commission to 1979. Healy's payoff was blood money! nounces in order to proclaim himself to investigate "the corruption ofG. Healy" As the Spring 1988 issue of Solidar­ "Counterrevolutionary be the sole surviving repository of details payoffs that were received for ity, a British journal of "libertarian Through and Through" Healyite "orthodoxy." services renderedto a variety of oil-rich socialism" which leaked the secret IC But North could well be hoist on his One of the most recent installments of Arab despots. This included supplying report, notes: "It is certainvthat the own petard. In The Heritage We Defend this cynical charade is North's book The photographs to the Iraqi embassy of a anti-Healy camp know far more about he writes that "Trotsky had branded the Heritage We Defend. Ever so modestly Stalinist bureaucracy as 'counterrev­ described as "A Contribution to the olutionary through and through'... ." History of the Fourth International," in One can look through everything Trot­ reality it is a 500-page treatise against sky ever wrote and never find this falsely Healy's longtime hatchet man Michael and stupidly one-sided formulation. On Banda. Against Banda's ignorant, anti­ the contrary, as he said in "The Class Trotskyist "Twenty-Seven Reasons Nature of the Soviet State" (October Why the IC Should Be Buried Forth­ 1933): "Whoever fails to understand with and the Fourth International th[e] dual role of Stalinism in the USSR Built"-a way station on Banda's road has understood nothing." The formula­ to becoming a Stalinist PR man-North American SWP's tion "counterrevolutionary through and attempts to claim as his own the revolu­ Joseph Hansen framed through" which North embraces was the tionary heritage of James P. Cannon's by Healy/North's work of, .. none other than the devil psychotic "Security and Socialist Workers Party. This is really incarnate of Healyism, the arch-agent egregious considering that the Workers the Fourth International" smear, wbich parroted himself-Joseph Hansen. League published hundreds of pages Stalinist lie that It first issued from the big and unwise written by their former leader Tim Trotsky was killed by' mouth of Dave Weiss (D. Stevens) dur­ Wohlforth, sneering that Cannon was a "one of his o'wn:' ing the 1952-53 fight against the pro­ barely Marxist, vulgar "window smash­ Stalinist liquidators in the Cochran­ er." This was Wohlforth's way' of mak­ Clarke faction in the SWP. And it was ing himself out to be, in effect, the first Hansen who landed the assignment of real American Marxist. Stanton/Pathfinder Press defending Weiss' statement. This Han­ As for North, he was specially chosen sen did with his usual quite capable by Healy to be the WL "leader" as a vigor, including the amplification that reward for his eager services as mouth- '. Security and the Fourth International the Kremlin Stalinists were not on­ piece for Healy's obscene "Security and THE INDICTMENT -June 11th 1976 ly "counterrevolutionary through and the Fourth International" campaign-a through" but "to the core" ("What the psychotic smear, job impugning the THAT REMAINS New York Discussion Has Revealed," integrity of the old, revolutionary SWP Joseph Hansen, SWP Internal Bulle­ and Trotsky himself. Slandering the tin, Vol. 15, No.4, February 1953). SWP's Joseph Hansen as a conscious UNANSWERED Indeed Hansen was the biggest ex­ agent of the FBI and the Russian secret ponent, if the number of pages count, of police, and an accomplice in the mur­ the view North falsely ascribes to der of Trotsky, the Northites have for Trotsky. over a decade echoed the Stalinist lie • Yet who in the Soviet Union could be that Trotsky was killed by one of his characterized as "counterrevolutionary own. through and through"? Only an out­ "Security and the Fourth Interna­ and-out Great Russian fascist, some­ tional" grew straight out of Gerry thing out of the present-day Pamyat or Healy's own particular combination of perhaps a CIA mole in the KGB could years of political banditry and para­ fit this bill. But this certainly doesn't noid megalomania. It was Healy's way describe the Stalinist bureaucracy. A of "explaining" his International Com­ conservative nationalist caste resting on mittee's failure to definitively expose the proletarian property forms estab­ and defeat Pabloism, the revisionist lished by the Russian Revolution, the current originated by Michel Pablo Kremlin bureaucracy is the product of which in the early 1950s abandoned Spartacist protest and reflects the contradictions of a against Healyite . Trotskyism with the perspective of liq­ bonapartist regime issuing from the uidation into the mass Stalinist and Big Lie campaign. We defended Hansen as degeneration of a workers revolution in social-democratic parties. In the 1960s "an honest revisionist." a 'backward country surrounded by Joseph Hansen became the main imperialism. spokesman of the Pabloite degenera­ In "Not a Workers' and Not a Bour­ tion of the SWP as it abandoned the geois State?" (November 1937), Trot- struggle for an independent proletarian sky explained: , vanguard. But instead of political strug­ "The proletariat of the USSR is the rul­ gle the Healyites concocted their devil ing class in a backward country where

6 WORKERS VANGUARD there is still a lack of the most vital necessities of life.The proletariat of the USSR rules in a land consistingof only one-twelfth part of humanity; imperi­ alism rules over the remaining eleven­ twelfths. The rule of the proletariat, already maimed by the backwardness and poverty of the country, is doubly and triply deformed under the pressure of world imperialism.... "In its capacity of a transmitting mechanism in this struggle, the bu­ reaucracy leans now on the proletariat against imperialism, now on imperial­ ism against the proletariat, in order to increase its own power. At the same time it mercilessly exploits its role as distributor of the meager necessities of life in order to safeguard its own well­ beingand power. Bythis token the rule of the proletariat assumesan abridged, curbed, distorted character. One can with fulljustification say that the pr?le­ tariat, ruling in one backwardand ISO­ lated country, still remains an op­ pressed class. The source of oppression World Publishing G. Neri is world imperialism; the mechanism of WhoJn the Soviet Union could be "counterrevolutionary through an~ thro~~h"? Only CIA agents.o~ Russ.i~n fa~cists transmissionofthe oppression-the bu­ coll~borated reaucracy. If in the words 'a ruling and like General Vlasov (left), who with Nazi invaders, or anti-Semitic Pamy-at leader Dmitri Vasslhev (right). at the same time an oppressed class' thereisa contradiction, then it flows not "the Kremlin with its bureaucratic been killed by war and by fascist and of China and Cuba was a state of the from the mistakes of thought but from methods gave an impulse t9 the social­ Stalinist repression. As we noted in same order as that issuing out of the the contradiction in theverysituation of ist revolution in Poland.... This impulse politicalcounter-revolution of Stalin in "Genesis of Pabloism" (Spartacist No. the Soviet Union, the degeneration of the USSR. It is precisely becauseofthis . in the direction of socialist revolution that we reject the theory of socialism in 21, Fall 1972), they were confronted the October. That is why weare led to . one country." was possible only because the bureauc­ with the question: define states such as'theseas deformed racy of the USSR straddles and has its " ... is the Trotskyist understanding of workers states. And the experience Far from characterizing the bureauc­ roots in the economy of a workers Stalinism correct if Stalinism shows since the Second World War, properly racy as "counterrevolutionary through state." itself wiUing in some.cases to accom­ understood, offers not a basisfor revi­ and through," in the Transitional Pro­ plish any sort of anti-capitalist social sionist turning away from the perspec­ As Trotsky noted, the seizure of East­ gram, the founding document of the transformation? Clinging to ortho­ tive and necessity of revolutionary ern Poland was both "a pledge of the working-class power, but rather it is a Fourth International, Trotsky wrote doxy, the Trotskyists had lost a real alliance with Hitler" and "a guarantee grasp o( theory and suppressed ~art of great vindication of Marxian theory that "all shades of political thought are against Hitler" through the national­ Trotsky's dialectical understanding of and conclusions under newand not pre­ to be found among the bureaucracy: Stalinism as a parasitic and counter­ viously expected circumstances." ization of semi-feudal and capitalist from genuine Bolshevism (Ignace Reiss) revolutionary caste sitting atop the -"Spartacist Statement to property. To understand this means to complete fascism (F. Butenko).' The gainsofthe October Revolution,a kind International Conference," understanding real dialectical material­ of treacherous middle-man poised Spartacist No.6, June-July dual nature of the Kremlin oligarchy is ism as opposed to the cynical shell game between the victorious Russian prole­ 1966 fundamental to the Trotskyist position of "dialectics" employed by the Healy­ tariat and world imperialism." of unconditional military defense of the The Healyites' opposition to the SWP ites. For years they were distinguished Empirical evidence tore a gaping hole Soviet Union combined with the call over the Cuban Revolution had little to by obfuscating, idealist lectures on the through the Trotskyists' post-WW II for political revolution to oust the do with fighting the Pabloist liquida­ ever-mystical "dialectic" which nobody attempt at wooden orthodoxy. The bureaucracy. tion of Trotskyism. In fact Healy's line could understand-except Healy. Only impressionistic Pablo simply threw Trotsky presented his fullest analysis was that the Fourth International had the self-declared "founder-leader" was overboard "the old Trotskyism" and of the contradictory nature of the Sta­ been rebuilt, the International Com­ meant to understand, just as only he declared that the Stalinists could play an linist bureaucracy in the last political mittee was it, and Pabloism was simply could determine "security" clearances. "objectively revolutionary" role; his battle of his life, against the repudiation proto-Stalinism, In contrast the Spar­ "Dialectics" and the "Security" slan­ conclusion was deep entrism into the of Soviet defensism by the petty­ tacist delegation to Healy's 1966 IC ders . were the underpinnings of the Stalinist and mass reformist parties in bourgeois Shachtman/Burnham oppo­ conference argued that the actual recon­ Healy cult, designed to keep the mem­ Europe. During 1951-53, Pablo's liqui­ sition in the SWP in 1939-40. Even in struction of the Fourth International bership completely confused and above dationism led. to the destruction of the the context of some of the most heinous could only be achieved through com­ all intimidated by their omnipotent Fourth International. The SWP (with counterrevolutionary crimes of the pletely rooting out this revisionism: "Up leaders. Healy in tow) waged a belated and Soviet government-the destruction of to now, we have not done very well, in partial fight against Pabloism, splitting our opinion, in smashing the Pabloites; the Bolshevik Party, the strangulation David North: A Joseph Hansen out the anti-liquidationist Interna­ of proletarian revolution in Spain by the the impact of events alone, no matter of the Second Mobilization tionalCommittee. But a few years later how favorable objectively 'or devastat­ Kremlin bureaucrats, the beheading of over the Cuban Revolution the SWP But just how is it that David North ing to revisionist doctrines, will not do the Red Army-Trotsky never charac- followed suit and Joseph Hansen was has come to embrace the politics of the job." As we pointed out: "The the main theoretical apologist. The need Joseph Hansen-a man he has reviled as 'orthodox' movement has still to face up for a Trotskyist ·party was dropped as the sinister arch-nemesis of Trotskyism to the new theoretical problems which Castro's petty-bourgeois guerrillas were and slandered as the number one agent rendered it susceptible to Pabloism in embraced as the modern-day equiv­ responsible for the supposed infiltra­ 1943-50 and gave rise to a ragged, par­ alent of Lenin and Trotsky's. Bolsheviks. tion and takeover of the SWP by the tial split in 1952-54." This was borne out In the name of combatting.Pabloite U.S. government? Applying the demon­ in the Healyites' embrace of various revisionism the Healyites reacted by ology of Healyism to North himself one "Third World" Stalinists like Ho Chi simply putting a minus where the SWP can only ask: can he be far behind? Not Minh and Mao's "Cultural Revolution." put a plus. Making a caricature of the For daring to raise our political dif­ subscribing to the paranoid conspiracy . sterile, formal "orthodoxy" that had theories that are the stock-in-trade of ferences openly in 1966,we were de­ characterized the post-World War II Healyism against their opponents, we nounced by Healy as petty-bourgeois SWP, the Healyites argued that since Can trace the political genealogy of American chauvinists, and expelled for there was no Trotskyist party in Cuba Hansen/North's shared anti-Soviet re­ refusing to confess to the charge. False no social transformation had taken visionism back to the source. confessions were a matter of "disci­ place-in short they stood Pabloism on In his 1953 document "What the New pline" in the political cult of the mega­ its head. In contrast the Spartacist dele­ York Discussion Has Revealed," Han­ lomaniac Gerry Healy, the man whose gation to the 1966 conference of Healy's sen proclaims, "I trace the current dif­ shoes David North is desperate to fill. International Committee argued: ferences back to the discussion on Almost two decades later Healy himself " ...the petty-bourgeois peasantry un­ was ousted amidst lurid charges of Eastern Europe.... First of all, in tak­ der the mostfavorable historiccircum­ ing the position that Stalinism had stances conceivable could achieve no moral turpitude leveled by his former brought about an overturn in property third road, neither capitalist, nor work­ lieutenants. In an interview "On the forms in these countries, I raised the ing class. Instead all that has come out continued on page 8 question myself as to how this affected our estimate of the politicalcharacter of Stalinism. My answer was that the Max Shachtman power to make such changes did not require us to revise the concept of Sta­ terized the bureaucracy as "counterrev­ linism developed by Trotsky. Stalinism olutionary through and through." But still remained counterrevolutionaey to Shachtman certainly did. the core." Defending Baron von Mannerheim's Leaving aside Hansen's wrongful Leon Trotsky Finland against Soviet intervention, attribution to Trotsky.the view that the in Mexican Shachtman argued that in Poland the Kremlin bureaucracy was "counterrev­ exile. His last Red Army had acted only as a "counter­ olutionary to the core," his analysis of political battle revolutionary force." Trotsky," who saw the differences that developed within the was against the possibility for a social transforma­ SWP and the Fourth International are petty-bourgeois tion in Finland coming with the Red quite to the point. The SWP had a v~ry faction that Army intervention, pointed to the hard time for a couple of years explain­ abandoned expropriation of the capitalists and ing how deformed workers states were defense of large landowners in Eastern Poland created in Eastern Europe. So did the Soviet Union. which took place despite the Stalinist "leadership that emerged at the head of degeneration of the Soviet workers the Fourth International in Europe state. Against Shachtman he argued: where the most promising cadres' had 1 JULY 1988 7 .. The WL's election manifesto also demands that "The working class must David North ... defend the Soviet Union." But repeat­ (continued from page 7) edly over the past two decades North's ISPARTACJSTI~ ~ Workers League has taken the side 1966 Split" in Spartacist (No. 36-37, NUMBER 3&-37 ENGLISH EDITION WINTER 1H5·16 . ONE DOLLAR/1S PENCE Winter 1985-86) covering the subse­ of virulently anti-Soviet forces-with quent rather spectacular implosio~ of Khomeini's mullahs in Iran, with the Healy's British Workers Revolution­ CIA's company union Solidarnosc "in ary Party, comrade James Robertson Poland, with U.S. imperialism's Islamic commented: cutthroats in Afghanistan. To cover for HEALYISM their anti-Sovietism the WL has in­ ..... we have some stuff to say now, because we were the principled people vented a global conspiracy between the whole way. And I would suggest When Healy's WRP/IC Washington and Moscow. Or rather, that the main reason is'not somemoral­ spectacularly blew up they borrowed it from Pierre Lambert, ity associated with Americans versus IMPLODES in 1985, special issue of English persons, but that over a long Healy's one-time bloc partner, who reg­ period of time, thtough many fights, --With-­ §p-artacist explored ularly vituperates against a "counter­ through one tendencyafter another, we political roots: two revolutionary Holy Alliance, sealed at stood concretely for the defense of the decades of cynical Yalta," supposedly uniting the White Soviet Union, against imperialism, and Documents and Interviews political banditry. To against the damn Russian bureauc­ on the receive a copy, send House and the Kremlin. They just leave racy. That has in fact beenour political $1.00 to Spartacist out the Cold War, and for a reason. compass, and it also generatesa certain WRP's Buried History Publishing Co., Box "Down with Imperialism and Stalin­ cultural superstructure and a certain 1377 GPO, New York, ism! Unite Soviet and American Work­ morality." NY 10116. ers" was the front-page headline of a "Workers League Political Committee The "Principles" of Statement" in the 27 May Bulletin. This Political Bandits slogan, equating the bureaucratic mis­ The Healyites had no such compass. leaders of the degenerated/deformed Despite their inverted Pabloism over workers states with the capitalist class Cuba, denying that a social revolution enemy, comes straight out of Lambert's ever took place, Healy's International 21 Iraqi Communists by the Ba'athist North's years-long court suit against the Organisation Communiste Internatio­ Committee had a perfectly Pabloite regime. . SWP (see "David North and the Law," naliste. "Long live the struggle of the taillst line toward the Vietnamese Sta­ While they lined their pockets with WV No... 430, 12 June 1987). More youth against the Stalinist bureaucracy linists and went on to herald Mao's Arab gold and availed themselves of the recently, witness the 1988 "Election and imperialism!" was the clarion call "Cultural Revolution." It was their sup­ forces of the bourgeois state againstleft­ Manifesto" of the Workers League's for the Lambertistes' 197I Essen Con­ port to the mythical "Arab Revolution" ist political opponents, the Healyites candidates for president and vice presi­ ference. The OCI's Stalinophobia led it in 1967 that provided the theoretical would still invoke Leninist "ortho­ dent. The call to "establish the political straight into the camp of the most right­ preparation for their various forays doxy" when it suited their purposes. independence of the American working wing Cold War social democrats. For across the class line, some of which Last year saw North screaming foul at class from the capitalist class" is rather example, several dozen of the OCI's have come home to haunt them. And it the SWP for using the capitalist courts remarkable from an organization which members, including Lambert himself, was under the cover of "anti-Stalinism" against the workers movement, to wit continues to drag leftists through the served as paid functionaries of the that the Healyites hailed themurder of suing the Workers League for costs in bosses' courts. French social-democratic union Force Workers. Power: The Baggage of State Capitalism David North's. The Heritage We like to claim occasionally (when overt Defend is the subject of a critical review anti-Sovietism is not in vogue) that they by Trotskyist International (Summer originated in a fight against "the shame­ 1988), new journal of the centrist cur­ Tony Cliff's Stepchildren. lessly opportunist support for Tito's rent led by the British Workers Power Yugoslavia by the rest of the Trotskyist group, the Movement for a Revo­ movement" (International Socialism lutionary Communist International No. 76, March 1975). The Cliff group (MRCI). In a nutshell, the review is fought against Trotskyism, not Pablo­ devoted to again vindicating WP's ism, arguing as early as 1948 that the "plague on both your houses" line on the Soviet Union and the deformed work­ 1953 split by the International Com­ ers states were "state capitalist." They mittee, then led by the American Trot­ got themselves expelled from the Fourth skyist SWP of James P. Cannon, from International in I950 for publicly repu­ the Pabloist liquidationism which de­ diating the FI's defense of the North stroyed the Fourth International. Yet, Korean deformed workers state against throughout five densely packed pages, U.S. imperialism. And it is precisely in "State capitalist" the review never takes note of North's Tony Cliff the period 1948-51 that WP locates ludicrous misattribution to Trotsky of broke with the definitive "collapse" into centrism Hansen's formulation that "Stalinism Trotskyist-Fourth of the FI. is counterrevolutionary through and International Seizing upon the disorientation that through." in 1950. gripped the entire world Trotskyist On the contrary, it takes the logic of movement in the face of the post-WW II this stupidly one-sided formulation to Stalinist overturns of capitalism in East absurdity, asserting that "Castro and co, Europe, Workers Power contemptu­ like Mao and Tito before them, car­ ously dismisses the Trotskyists who ried out a counter-revolutionary over­ fought the liquidationism of Michel throw of capitalism." Ditto for the formally Trotskyist position thatth~ stan is a quintessential example of the Pablo, albeit belatedly, partially and pri­ bureaucratically imposed social revo­ Soviet Union was a degenerated work­ "crystallized confusion" that Trotsky marily on their own national terrain, lutions in Soviet-occupied East Europe ers state. cited as a prime characteristic of cen­ and who reconstituted themselves as the following World War II. In brief, In typically centrist fashion, how­ trism. In the eight years since it repudi­ IC, Cannon just isn't up to snuff for according to Workers Power, every ever, Workers Power recoiled from ated its state capitalist position, WP has Workers Power, because it took him a overthrow of capitalism since the Rus­ drawing the hard revolutionary conclu­ continued to try to keep one foot in each few years to catch on. But he led a fight sian Revolution. has been "counter­ sions. In the abstract, WP called for camp. In its "Twenty two theses in to preserve Trotskyism against those revolutionary." What could a counter­ defense of the Soviet Union: in the defence of Trotskyism" (May 1987), the who sought to destroy it. Workers revolutionary overturn of capitalism concrete, they had "no hesitation in MRCI asserts: Power takes no side in this struggle for mean-except, perhaps, a return to condemning the Soviet invasion of Af­ "We reject Stalinophobia-a differ­ revolutionary continuity, and they can feudalism? The closest thing to this in ghanistan" (Workers Power, February ential hostility to Stalinism over social hardlyclaim Cliff as the continuity of democracy or other alien class influ­ recent times was the "Islamic revolu­ 1980). But with mealy-mouthed gut­ ences.This, with itsemphasison a mon­ Trotskyism. tion" in Iran. But there WP backed the lessness, they deemed it "tactically olithic nature for Stalinism ('counter­ To believe WP/MRCI, from the FI's mullah-led "mass movement" uncondi­ wrong" to openly join the imperialist resolutionary through and through'), "collapse" until WP emerged full-blown tionally, just as they supported Polish outcry for Soviet withdrawal until "the has led to softnessand accommodation on the scene like Athena from the head Solidarnosc' full-blown attempt at forces exist in Afghanistan which can to social-democratic reformism...." of Zeus, there existed no real Trotsky­ counterrevolution despite admitting the mobilise the masses for the major dem­ But in practice, on every contemporary ists on this planet. It requires a big dose Solidarnosc leadership was committed ocratic and socialist goals, and hold the issue, Workers Power ends up refusing of hubris for a group to anoint itself the to the restoration of capitalism. pro-imperialist forces at bay." Now, to defend the deformed/degenerated first Trotskyists since Trotsky. We can Workers Power carries the political with a bloodbath looming, an April workers states. And elsewhere WP only lay claim to continuing, as best we baggage of its origins in a 1975 split 1988 MRCI resolution continues to asserts: "Essential to Pablo's position can, the struggle passed on to us by Can­ from Tony Cliff's International Social­ "condemn the invasion as counter­ was a revision of the Trotskyist under­ non, and to him by Trotsky. We can, ists (now the Socialist Workers Party of revolutionary," while simultaneously standing of Stalinism, i.e. ·that it is in­ however, boast that we make available Great Britain). It was not until Feb­ denouncing the Soviet withdrawal! Not variably a counter-revolutionary force" 25 years of our written material in ruary ) 980 and the Soviet interven­ one of the some two dozen slogans at the (The Death Agony ofthe Fourth Inter­ .bound volumes for critical examina­ tion in Afghanistan that WP renounced' end of the resolution raises defense of national, 1983). tion by the working-class public. Work­ Cliff's "third camp" ("Neither Washing­ the Soviet Union. This is hardly an original thesis. ers Power, like all centrists, is loathe to ton nor Moscow") line, adopting a Workers Power's line on Afghani- Workers Power's Cliffite godparents deal honestly with its own heritage.•

8 WORKERS VANGUARD Ouvriere, which has been linked to the agent who was hired to infiltrate and notorious CIA operative Irving Brown destroy the SWP. Yet here is North ped­ going back to 1947. dling Hansen's "counterrevolutionary Applied to the U.S. the Northites' res­ through and through" line. Any of the urrection of this slogan leads straight to WL leader's acolytes who accept the the State Department "socialism" of demented logic of his "Security" scam Norman Thomas and Max Shachtman ought to be asking some' nervous in his later years. The Bulletin writes questions. How did it happen? Did Han­ that "Gorbachev's policies of pere­ sen secretly recruit North? And who will stroika (restructuring) and glasnost the next "great leader" be? (openness) are the road to the resto­ Consider the fate of North's for­ ration of capitalism in the USSR and mer lideres maximos. Yesterday's self­ the transformation of Stalinist bureau­ declared "founder-leader" Gerry Healy crats into capitalists." Evidently, for is today's KGB agent, according to the the Northites, no counterrevolution to Bulletin. In North's eyes, everyone of overthrow the remaining gains of the Healy's lieutenants (except North him- . October Revolution would be required, self, of course) has become a demoral­ just a cold transformation of the Soviet ized renegade-s-from Banda to Cliff degenerated workers state into a cap­ Slaughter, the longtime "theoretical" italist state imposed from the top. As mouthpiece for Healyite crimes, v, ,'0 Trotsky argued, this is to run the film of now admits that the "Security" slanders reformism in reverse, positing a peace­ were a fraud. And let's not forget Tim ful transition from a workers state to Wohlforth, Healy's former hapless Don Alexander addresses Spartacist-initiated mobilization to capitalism. American toady, who warmed the seat provocation against Gay Pride Day in Chicago, 1982. The Northites' "analysis" of where North now occupies at the head of the Gorbachev's Russia is going is unmiti­ Workers League. Wohlforth was axed black cabinet member. Yes, they have a gated Third Campism, which paren­ amidst allegations of CIA connections new gimmick every year. They're going thetically is a quintessential expression through the family of his girlfriend Unchain' to take one of their boys, black boys, and put him in the cabinet, so he can of petty-bourgeois Ametican chauvin­ Nancy Fields. Actually, to say he was walk around Washington with a cigar­ ism-the charge which Healy came up axed is unfair to the real character of Labor/Blacks... fire on one end and fool on the other. with and North continues to trumpet Wohlforth-he even voted for his own (continuedfrom page 1) "And because his immediate personal against the Spartacist League. North's expulsion. Truly the son of"the god that problem will have been solved, he will view is reality seen through the prism failed," in 1981 Wohlforth resurfaced a monstrous' FBI/Meese/L.A. Police be the one to tell our people, 'Look how Department frame-up. Jackson must much progress we're making: I'm in and under the pressure of U.S. im­ in the pages of New Left Reviewip. the Washington, D.C. I can have tea in the perialism. As Trotsky argued against role of saved-again social democrat remain silent about these issues, he must White House. I'm your spokesman, I'm Shachtman and Burnham in "A Petty­ denouncing Soviet totalitarianism. not make a stink about this, because your, you know, your leader.'." But Bourgeois Opposition in the Socialist Stalin never claimed that all the Bol­ that would alienate the white racist will it :-vork? Can that one, whom they Workers Party": shevik Central Committee at the time of Southern votes theDemocrats are af­ are gomg to put down there, step into ter, the Dixiecrat vote. the fire and put it out when the flames "A vulgar petty-bourgeois radical is the October Revolution were counter­ begin to leap up? When people take to similar to a liberal 'progressive' in that revolutionary spies and traitors. Ex­ So they're trying to out-Reagan Rea­ the streets in their explosive mood, will he takes the USSR as a whole, failing to empted were Lenin, a few who died early gan, talking about the global war that one, that they're going to put in the understand its internal contradictions and a couple who lucked out and died a against drugs, the sanctity of the family cabinet, be able to go among those peo­ and dynamics. When Stalin concluded and American values, and the need for ple? Why, they'll burn him faster than an alliance with Hitler, invaded Poland, natural death at old age. David North, they burn the ones who sent him," the new boy of the IC leadership, more budget cuts. Dukakis, the other and now Finland, the vulgar radicals Now, you have a lot of misleaders triumphed; the identity of the methods declares that every well-known leader of day, he said, well, look, he's more con­ running around, duping the black of Stalinism and fascism was proved! the British Healyites (SLL/WRP), and servative than Bush. And Mr. Anti­ masses once again. They're fearful of They found themselves in difficulties not least the leading American satellite, Struggle, Jesse "I Have a Scheme" however when the new authorities any type of social explosion in this coun­ Wohlforth, are degenerate if not deeply Jackson, is an important component in invited the population to expropriate try, talking about, "Well, you better the landowners and capitalists-they flawed or downright wrong from the a Dixiecrat Democratic Party to rope in vote, black people died for the vote." had not foreseen this possibility at all!" beginning. Thus North claims that he is the working people, to deliver blacks to But the question is, vote for what? And -L.D. Trotsky, In Defense the legitimate heir to what? At least Sta­ 'the highest bidder, come Atlanta in of Marxism will that save us from the rope? We in lin, by hiding Lenin's break with him, July. the Spartacist League say that it will Healy and North also charged the could claim the great Lenin. Moreover, Now he wants-something in return for take a new mass movement for black Spartacist League with being "agents" Stalin could cite himself as an "Old his role as black fireman in extinguish­ rights, linked to and led by a revolu­ of Joseph Hansen because we were Bolshevik." But North, until the final ing the flames of revolt in the past and in tionary labor movement and a revolu­ among the first to protest Healy's implosion of the WRP, was a self­ the present. Maybe he'll get the posi­ tionary party fighting for workers despicable "Security and the Fourth confessed toady to the "great" Gerry tion we've talked about, as head narc power, in order to smash the chains of International" slanders. In protest dem­ Healy and the heir to Tim Wolhforth. coordinating the war against drugs' racial oppression. ', onstrations outside Workers League Only someone who wanted to be "the globally. Or maybe he'll get a post as Our political track record speaks for meetings we defended Hansen as "an leader," no matter of what, would be so head of the Department of Education in itself. The several anti-fascist mobiliza­ honest revisionist." That's more than we desperate to .claim the heritage of order to complete the drive for school tions, labor-centered, that we initiated can say for North and his gang who have authentic Healyism. To any rational segregation, which he favors. in Northern cities several years ago, grievously crossed the class line so many elements in North's WL and IC we can Malcolm X, who had x-ray vision in which stopped Klan/Nazi provoca­ times that who, what or where they are is only say: Your organization is rotten terms of, the Republican foxes and tions. Not to mention the laiest extreme­ forever a subject for debate. through and through and to the core! Democratic wolves-i-though.he was not ly important victory in Segregation We waged a relentless political strug­ North is attempting to secure his posi­ a revolutionary Marxist with an under­ City, Chicago, Cassandra Seay, a black gle against Hansen's anti-Trotskyist tion at the head of an organization with standing that class struggle is the mo­ transit union driver beaten up by the revisionism. Healy could never. have a heritage of corrupt links with various tor force of history-could nonetheless, police, she and her mother; they done so because it would mean con­ murderous Arab colonels and sheiks. given his militant hatred of the racist tried to frame up the family and her, fronting his own politics. So he ~ex­ That this is not a suitable vehicle for the status quo, put his finger on the various to put them away for a long, long plained" the SWP's degeneration by socialist liberation of mankind is a vast self-serving schemes of the petty­ time. And the Spartacist League and slandering Hansen as'a government understatement. • bourgeois black hustlers. I just want to quote, he was trying to .sum up the class-struggle militants in the unions prospects in 1965 for the fight for black there, and others, mobilized the power freedom. The Voting Rights Act had of the labor movement and stopped SPARTACIST LEAGUE/U.S. LOCAL DIRECTORY been voted in, etc. And he was talking that frame-up. So there's an alterna­ about these black misleaders who tive to this Democratic Party liberal­ National Office: New York played a role of front man. ism and the petty-bourgeois separatism Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 Box 444, Canal St. Sta. "What will they give us in 1965~ I just as reflected in the politics of black (212) 732-7860 New York, NY 10013 read where they planned to make a continued on page 10 (212) 267-1025 Atlanta Detroit Norfolk Box 4012 Box 441794 Box 1972, Main PO Atlanta, GA 30302 Detroit, MI 48244 Norfolk, VA 23501 Boston Ithaca Oakland Box 840, Central Sta, Box 6767 Box 32552 Cambridge, MA 02139 Ithaca, NY 14850 Oakland, CA 94604 (617) 492-3928 (415) 839-0851 Chicago Los Angeles San Francisco. Box 6441, Main PO Box 29574, Los Feliz Sta. Box 5712 Chicago, IL 60680 Los Angeles, CA 90029 San Francisco, CA 94101 (312) 663-0715 (213) 380-8239 (415) 863-6963 Cleveland Madison. Washington; D.C. Box 91037 Box 2074 Box 75073 Cleveland, OH 44101 Madison, WI 53701 Washington, D.C. 20013 (216) 881-3700 (608) 251-6431 (202) 636-3537

Toronto TROTSKYIST LEAGUE Box 7198, Station A Toronto, Ontario M5W 1X8 OF CANADA (416) 593-4138

1 JULY 1988 9 ... •.

opting a layer of blacks who were active U.S. imperialism thinks they can just ist state. So what we say is, the laws Unchain in civil rights struggles, to carry outthe stalk over in places like Bolivia. But they against so-called crimes without vic­ necessary attacks on the democratic got run out; the masses there had a gen­ tims-drugs, gambling, prostitution, aspirations and just demands of the eral strike-against the U.S. Army being sodomy and homosexuality-threaten Labor/Blacks... ghetto masses. And the Panthers began there, and also in protest against the the privacy and rights of everyone and (continued from page 9) to challenge the so-calledt'Iiberal" pro­ IMF. So they think they can slash and should be abolished! capitalist black misleaders, like King. burn their way throughout the Third Jackson went to Watts with his anti­ demagogues, anti-Semitic and Hitler­ Now, tragically, these militants were World countries. Ultimately, Russia is drug message. There was a certain loving demagogues like Farrakhan. isolated in the ghetto and they were not what they want. They want to restore amount of cynicism involved in it. He Black Overseers on armed with a revolutionary program capitalism in the Soviet Union-the first went into the gangs' territory-the Reagan's Plantation and perspective to link the struggle of and only successful workers revolution Reds, the other gang didn't show up. the ghettos to the factories, to link the in history. He's lucky he got out of there alive, espe­ So Jackson invokes the memory of struggle for black rights to the powerful The anti-drug witchhunt is laced with cially since as the self-proclaimed gen­ the civil rights movement only to preach organized integrated labor movement. racism. A few years ago, Peter Ueber­ eral in the war against drugs, he has a reconciliation between the bosses and And it made it much easier for the racist roth, the baseball commissioner, spear­ deep responsibility for the thousands of the workers, the oppressed and the bourgeois state to kill these militants headed it, particularly targeting black minority youth who have been swept up oppressors, the capitalist exploiters and with impunity. athletes, and in order to break the play­ in the mass roundup by Bradley's killer all those whom they oppress,rob, But mobilizing the power of labor ers union. With the death of black police. Even [LAPD chief] Darryl enslave and destroy. Jackson carne-to under a class-struggle leadership was'the basketball star Len Bias it began to pick Gates said, yes, I love you, Jesse! And prominence in Chicago as a product of key then, and it's the key today. The up some steam and now it's running in that's the point of this phony war, to the defeat of the civil rights movement, unleashing of labor/black power can full gear. Jackson showed up at Len bring blacks and working people more after Martin Luther King signed the Palmer House agreements acknowl­ ::E .>K~·~' < edging the failure to integrate Segrega­ ~ Spartacists say: tion City. What conclusion did Jackson tlu: s Party of imperialist draw from this? That the struggle for to f)[MOCWS war uses black integration and black equality should be front men to abandoned. So he built his Operation TYlffHlm enforce racist Breadbasket, which became PUSH, to terror at home. get his cut by brokeringblack business 8AYtJf PIGS, Jackson embraces in the ghetto. Except, in this deeply rac­ Philadelphia's ist society there's no space for a black VIETNAM/ Mayor of Murder bourgeoisie. So Jesse's brand of black Wilson. Goode, who .unleashed capitalism was to push or boycott, MOVE massacre, depending' on the percentage in it for and transit union him and his own, white corporate giants local president like Coca-Cola and Burger King. Roger Tauss Now, a comrade once told me that a (far right) in Russian anarchist, I believe it was Pennsylvania Bakunin, was told by another anarchist primary. comrade of his that there was this prom­ inent black leader in the United States that was a conservative. And Bakunin only come about by fighting within the Bias' funeral where there were a lot of tightly under police control and to dis­ responded by saying, but what is there unions to dump the labor lieutenants of mourning blacks. He said that [KKK arm them. to conserve? Well, for the pro-capitalist capital, and the fight to forge a class­ lynch] ropes never killed as many of our black misleaders of America, from the struggle leadership that will forge a young people as the pushers of drugs. Black Liberation Through standpoint ofthe defense of their inter­ workers party that will fight for a work­ Now that's really obscene, when you Socialist Revolution! ests, a lot. Because, of course, the civil ers government. And we're not just think about the hundreds of years of So what we're talking about is social­ rights movement opened up the gates fighting for working people and op­ lynching in this country, and racist mur­ ist revolution. From bur inception the for today's black overseers on Reagan's pressed here, but internationally, where der and terror. Not to mention what's Spartacist League has fought for the plantations. So when there are strikes the black front men have played a very going on currently: you know, MOVEl program of black liberation through that need to be broken in the big cities, vital role for the bourgeoisie. Jesse Jack­ This isa disgusting apology. socialist revolution, for revolutionary cops to be unleashed against rebellious son shares fundamental political agree­ But that won't save Jackson's ass. integrationism, which means integrated, blacks, red carpets to be rolled' out for ment with both capitalist parties. He This is a deeply racist country. Even-his revolutionary elass struggle for the the Klan and Nazi scum in order to supported Reagan's attempted ouster of own party redbaits him and race-baits assimilation of blacks in a socialist soci­ organize for racist murder and terror, Noriega.. He denounced the Soviet him. And there have been various ety. The struggle for the most elemen­ they've done it all. Coleman Young in . Union for shooting down the KAL spy threats on his life. Now the whole spec­ tary democratic aspirations and just Detroit; Andrew Young in Atlanta; plane, which was a Cold War provoca­ trum of black capitalist politicians have demands poses the question: which class Harold Washington in Chicago, before tion by the U.S. He opposes independ­ jumped on the "Crackdown" hand­ will rule. It poses directly the need for he died; Tom Bradley in Los Angeles .. ence for Puerto Rico. And of course, he wagon. So-called radicals of yesteryear united working-class struggle of black As for the white counterparts of these supports racist protectionism and he's a who were writing these pamphlets about and white workers fighting for power. black Democrats, look at the racist pig self-described general in the war against "Capitalism Plus Dope Equals Geno­ And that struggle has to be and can only Koch. You know, the police depart­ drugs. cide," are now carrying out these little succeed under the leadership of a ment in New York ought to open up a vigilante sprees. It's got so bad that ex­ multiracial Trotskyist vanguard party cemetery just to be prepared for the Down with Anti-Drug Witchhunt! Panthers in New YorkCity are hooking which has a large black-component to it. future victims of racist police murder. Now, in the name of waging a war on up with Al Sharpton, a .self-adrnitted The kind of party we need is a party Eleanor Bumpurs, Michael Stewart, drugs, the Democratic Party Congress FBI informant, and a man who has like Lenin and Trotsky built, a Bolshe­ this Latina [Lydia Ferraro] that they and the Republican White House are led marches against Arab merchants. vik party to smash the capitalist system, recently killed, the list just goes on and declaring a war not only onthe Ameri­ And of course, Farrakhan's outfit is establishing a workers government and on. Look at Art Agnos in San.Francis­ can people, but a war onthe world. The involved. a planned economy. And in fighting for co, so-called friend of labor: first thing bourgeoisie iri this country is increas­ . This whole campaign has a certain the rebirth of the Fourth International, he did was sic his cops and these bloody' ingly taking police-state measures. amount of support among working peo­ we call on revolutionary-minded Rus­ scabs on striking workers-a rampage, . Their sinister anti-drug campaign must ple, black people, because of the des­ sian workers to oust the bureaucracy as an assault against city labor. be seen inthat light, in terms of prepara­ perate conditions. Phony leftists go part of defending the Soviet Union and The bourgeoisie learned a lot from the tion for war. It's a hypocritical sham along with it. But the hopelessness and fighting for the international extension ghetto explosions of the '60s: Harlem, from beginning to end. It's widely the unemployment, the despair in the of the gains of October, and return to Watts, Detroit, Chicago. They learned known that the CIA are the biggest drug . ghetto, and the glaring absence of black the road of Lenin and Trotsky. Let all of that they could keep the lid on better if dealers in the world. Their Nicaraguan struggle, that's what leads people to those who are here tonight, who would they had black faces in high places pre­ contras and Afghan mullahs and their destroy themselves. And all of this have a better life for all of oppressed siding over the deteriorating ghettos. So Third World dictators overthe years are serves to strengthen the repressive ap­ humanity, join with us and help finish they began actively cultivating and co- the biggest drug peddlers. paratus of the viciously racist capital- off the imperialist beast..

President, AFSCME Local 171; How­ poe Notes .... ard Zinn, Professor of Political Science, (continued from page 2) Boston University [organizations listed for identification purposes only]. Thou­ immediate positive response to our cam­ Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of the Spartacist League sands more are needed. Please help paign to save M umia. The PDC has col­ us bring Mumia Abu-Jamal's case to lected over 1,500 names on petitions and your union, civil rights or community o $5/24 issues of Workers Vanguard 0$2/4 issues of individual letters to the Governor of (includes Spartacist) International rates: Women and Revolution Pennsylvania, demanding that he act to organizations. o New 0 Renewal $20/24 issues-Airmail $5124 issues-Seamail 0$2/10 introductory issues of stop the legal murder of Mumia Abu­ *** 0$2/4 issues of Spartacist Workers Vanguard Jamal. New signatories to individual W€ encourage WV readers to con­ (edicion en espanol) . (includes Spartacist) letters include: Neil Gleason, Presi­ tinue to support and build the Partisan dent, AFSCME Local 144; Lennox Defense Committee. Send a donation of Name ~ ~ _ Hinds, Permanent United Nations $,5 or more and receive a subscription to Address ----:- ~ _ Representative, International Associa­ Class-Struggle Defense Notes. For a tion of Democratic Lawyers; Chokwe single copy send $1.00 to: Partisan --- Phone (__) _ Lumumba, Chairman, New Afrikan Defense Committee, P.O. Box 99, . Ctty State Zip__-.-__--:= Peoples Organization (NAPO); Con­ Canal Street Station, New York, New 456 rad Lynn, Mid-Hudson Regional Coun­ York 10013. Send for additional news­ Make checks paYl!ble/mall to: Spartaclst Publishing Co., Box 13n GPO, New York, NY 10116 sel, NAACP; Norman Roth, former letters and Mumia petitions. Be a PDC President, UAW Local6; MarkThomas, sustainer! Build the PDC!. 10. WORKERS VANGUARD .. Mexican Elections ... (continued/rom page 12) latifundista, Manuel Clouthier, for president, and receiving a good deal of clerical support, As recently as this spring, 150,000 Catholics marched in Mexico City against "sacrilegious" modern art (a painting which put Mari­ lyn Monroe's face on the Virgin of Guadalupe). And in the Caribbean oil town of Villahermosa, the archbishop led a parade shouting "[ Viva Cristo Rey!" (Long live Christ the King-the battle cry of clerical reaction in the civil war which shook Mexico in the 1920s) as people gave the Nazi straight-arm salute. • • Gamma rctones Era Far more ominous for Mexico's cap­ ChIle 197~: Allende's UnJdad Popula, p,:.ved way for bloody Pinochet coup (left). Mexico City 1968: Mexican army kills italist rulers was the growing labor mil­ over 500 In Tlatelolco massacre (right). Popular front and bonapartist repression, last resort of capitalism in crisis. itancy. Following Reagan's example with PATCO, when uranium workers of hold of bourgeois nationalism, which nationalist outfit with the remnants of components of the PRT's own Unidad the left-led SUTIN union struck in 1983, has kept the proletariat chained to the the Mexican CP (both old-line Stalin­ Popular electoral lash-up had begun De la Madrid simply shut down the "national" exploiters and their pro­ ists and "Eurocornmunists"), hoping to drifting over to the Cardenas camp. state-owned Uramex plant. In follow­ gram of starvation and repression. become a pole for left regroupment. But Now a number of well-known PRT ing years, while many strikes were on June 7, the PMSsealed a "long-term members demonstratively' quit, de­ Cardenas and the political, programmatic alliance" with nouncing the party for "isolating" itself declared illegal, working-class strug­ New Popular Front gles kept spreading...and occasionally Cardenas' Democratic Current, with a from "the great mass movement which winning. So in order to really clamp Today Cuauhtemoc Cardenas de­ 13-point accord calling for "suspen­ Cardenas is generating." down, when 7,500 workers at Aero­ nounces the government's electoral sion" of the foreign debt, Mexico's tra­ After a two-day meeting, Central mexico struck this spring, the govern­ fraud, yet his co-leader of the National ditional "mixed economy," a "purged Committee spokesmen announced the ment simply "liquidated" its flagship Democratic Front (FDN), Porfirio and reorganized" police force, "resum­ PRT's decision to maintain its pres­ airline. Now the government is attempt­ Munoz Ledo, is a former president of ing" "Mexico's historic military doc­ idential candidacy. It declared with a ing to sell off the Cananea copper mines the PRI, well· known for stealing the trine, based on national defense," etc. tone of reluctance that "We cannot join in Sonora, birthplace of unionism in 'election in the state of Nayarit in 1975. (La Unidad, 12 June). For the Stalin­ those whosupport Cuauhtemoc Carde­ Mexico and site of the 1906 massacre of Cardenas makes clear his loyalty to the ists, it was their yearned-for chance to nas," while "appreciating" Cardenas' striking workers by Mexican and U.S. established order, meeting with army "unite" with the "progressive, national gesture in "not pressuring the PRT fur­ police. leaders and flattering the bloodstained bourgeoisie." ther for a single candidacy." While And with the PRI in trouble, bona­ officers who carried out the 1968 proclaiming itself to now be "the only partist terror is mounting, giving the lie Tlatelolco massacre. At his June 25 independent socialist option," the PRT to the regime's democratic pretensions. Mexico City rally, Cardenas declared: would seek "deeper" ways to "hook up" Teachers on strike for months in the "The people have faith that the Armed to "establish fraternal links with the southern states of Oaxaca and Chiapas Forces will be the first guarantee of national movement which has been have seen 60 of their fellow unionists legality...." Yet the bulk of the Mexi­ formed against the PRI" (La Jornada, killed by PRI union gun thugs in can "left," steeped in class collabera­ 12and 13June). What this is all about is recent years. And last week two mem­ tion and parliamentary cretinism (in a the PR T's call for a "pact of democratic bers of the Partido Revolucionario de country where "parliament" is a fig leaf solidarity," "a great front of opposition los Trabajadores (PRT-Revolutionary for serni-bonapartist rulel), rushed to parties" to "defend the vote" (Bandera Workers Party), Mexican affiliate of embrace Cardenas. Socialista, 6 June). Like the PRT's par­ Ernest Mandel's "United Secretariat of When Cardenas formed a "Dem­ ticipation in the Assembly for Effec­ the Fourth International," were killed ocratic Current" inside the government tive Suffrage with rightist parties, and by pro-government pistoleros in the party, fake-lefts began salivating. Then its joint actions with the PAN (most state of Puebla. The victims were Alvaro he split from the PRI to run for pres­ recently blocking highways in the north­ Zamora and Melit6n Hernandez Velas­ ident with the endorsement of several of ern town of Monclova). co, a veteran Indian peasant leader and the PRI satellite parties. The PARM, The PRT's election campaign is PRT candidate for federal deputy (La PPS and PST (now rebaptized the "independent" only by default. Month Jornada, 26 June). Cardenista Front of National Recon­ . after month these reformists appealed to But in addition to terror, the Mexi­ struction).put him on their tickets. Next the PMS for a "single candidacy" of can bourgeoisie also needs an escape was a split from the fake-Trotskyist "unity of the left." But PMS caudillo valve to let off the pressure of mass dis­ PRT. PR T parliamentary deputies and Castillo had bigger fish to fry. The PRT content. This is the job of Cuauhternoc student leaders followed "theoretician" Artu ro uentes reaped what it had sown when the MAS Cardenas, the former PRI governor of Adolfo Gilly to form a new pro­ PRT presidential canmda.te Rosario split off to bask in "unity" with Carde­ Michoacan who decided to go "inde­ Cardenas group, the MAS (Movimien­ Ibarra, head of committ.ee for the nas. The PR T's statement criticized the defense of the disappeared. pendent" when the governing party' to al Socialismo-Movement Toward idea of "an alliance with the national bourgeoisie," but declared "the present turned down his reform candidacy last Socialism). Then leaders of many "inde­ At a PMS rally the next day, chants phase we are going through... is funda­ fall. So now there is a divisionof labor: pendent" trade unions climbed on rang out: "Unity, unity! The people mentally democratic," Indeed, the elec­ the gray flannel technocrat Salinas to board. Soon ex-guerrillaists, syndical­ united will never be defeated!" This was toral platform of the PR T's Unidad Po­ win back votes from the PAN; Cardenas ists, local leftist coalitions, Social Dem­ the slogan of Allende's Unidad Popular for the impoverished masses, implicitly ocrats, Greens and a ·host of neighbor­ in Chile-"People's Unity" with the pular is purely bourgeois-democratic, promising a reconstituted PRI and hood associations abandoned their bourgeoisie-which by holding back It's easy to see why they have difficulty reviving the populist traditions of yes­ abstentionist "principles" to join- the .and suppressing the struggles of the saying no to Cardenas: there's nothing teryear. As a popularfront has formed Cardenas popular front. . workers led to bloody defeat in Septem- in their own program that a bolder with myriad "socialists" flocking to the And the pressure kept building on ber 1973 at the hands of Pinochet and bourgeois nationalist politician-like new tri-color coalition, the urgent need .the Mexican Socialist Party (PMS) to his "constitutionalist" army. Now Car­ Cardenas senior-couldn't support! is for independent, authentically com­ withdraw its presidential candidate denas and his reformist allies are The PRT/UP',s platform is filled with munist leadership to break the Mexi­ Heberto Castillo. Castillo had labori­ preaching faith that "the armed forces vague calls for "a national and popular can working class from the strangle- ously cobbled together a lash-up of his can never again be used against the peo­ banking system," "rational use and ple." Yet who in Mexico can forget the exploitation of the oil," etc. While black night of Tlatelolco on the eve of calling for "refusing to recognize the the 1968 Olympics when tlle army, foreign debt" (compared to Cardenas' under orders of PRI interior minister "suspension"), this is no more "anti­ Echeverria, massacred hundreds. When imperialist" than when most of Latin Echeverria became president two years America defaulted during the '30s later, the head of the' PRI was Munoz Depression. Rather than calling for the Ledo, the sameone who now heads the expropriation of the bourgeoisie, the "Democratic Current," PRTIUP is for "nationalization of pri­ ority industries"-in a country where Reformists on the Hot Seat well over half of industry is already nationalized! It calls for a sliding scale Now the PRT was on the hot seat, as not of wages (desperately needed in the Cardenas, the PMS and the left-liberal face of 177 percent inflation last year) press appealed to them to drop their butof prices for agricultural products. presidential candidate, Rosario Ibarra, In fact, the only demand that goes one leader of the courageous committee for millimeter beyond what the bourgeoi­ the defense of the disappeared. The par­ sie could grant is its call (in a "sewer liamentary "socialist" PRT was ill­ socialism" program for Mexico City) prepared to resist the siren song of the for "clean air"! '[hat will take a socialist For proletarian internationalism, not bourgeois nationalism! Banner of new "progressive" coalition, being revolution, and then some.. militant nuclear energy workers in 1988 Mexico City May Day march says, themselves inveterate "unity"-mongers "Workers of the World Unite!" with all and sundry. Some of the smaller [TO BE CONTINUED] 1 JULY 1988 11 W'liIlEliS "I/'(J'Ii'

Perez/Sygm~ Larry Reider Cuauhtemoc Cardenas. At right, PRI's Carlos Salinas orders aus­ skilled workers beg for jobs. terity for Mexico's workers. Left Peddles "Unity." with Cardenas Pop-ular Front Mexico: Starvation Elections MEXICO CITY-Every six years, a ers .marched through the capital on try, banking and commerce. When the few percentage points instead of "hold­ new president of Mexico is selected by a February 18, accompanied by Carde­ president "unveiled" his successor, the ing the line" ...at 0 percent! procedure that makes the selection of nas,signs with the president's initials wizened leader of the pro-government For the first time ever, it appears that the Pope look downright democratic. read "MMH: Mexico Muriendo de CTM union federation, Fidel Velasquez a lot of people are going to vote for the The outgoing ruler picks his successor Hambre" (Mexico dying of hunger).. (a veteran kingmaker who likes to say "I "opposition" in Mexico's rigged elec­ by pointing a finger (el dedazo). Instant­ De' la Madrid's hand-picked suc­ aI11 the PRI"), ostentatiously walked off tions. Of course the PRI will win. ly, walls all across the country are cessor is Carlos Salinas de Gortari, the the stage. So unpopular is the govern­ Already, both left- and right-wing par­ painted with his initials and portrait in former budget minister who is derided ment's wage-freezing Economic Soli­ ties are denouncing massive vote fraud red-white-green, the colors of the flag as - Carlos Recortari-"Charlie Cut­ darity Pact with workers that the PRI (a secret "ballot factory" was recently and of the Institutional Revolutionary backs"-for his brutal economic poli­ didn't dare put its candidate on the exposed in the capital). Yet Mexico is Party (P~), whose iron-fisted rule has cies. CSG is another "Harvard boy" presidential - balcony to review the not a parliamentary democracy but'a administered Mexican capitalism for economist who openly favors "private 1.3 million-strong May Day parade. Yet semi-bonapartist regime in which elec­ decades. In 59 years, it has never lost a enterprise" over Mexico's traditional labor boss Velasquez still defends the tions are really plebiscites-e-iot or single presidential, senatorial or guber­ "mixed economy" in which the capital­ starvation "pact," protesting against against the PRl. What counts is by how natorial election. But-as the July 6 vote ist state controls large sectors of indus- employers who wanted to raise wages a much the government party wins. With approaches, with the country mired in rampant discontent extending from the its worst economic crisis of the century, huge poor and working-class "lost cit­ the PRI is facing its first serious ies" to middle-class colonias, too big a competition. margin could spark anti-fraud protests On June 25, half a million people while a bare majority would give the packed Mexico City's Z6calo,the huge impression that the "strong state" is on square in front of the presidential pal­ the brink of collapse. . ace, to hear the populist candidate, From the 1930s on, Mexico has been Cuauhtemoc Cardenas. The challenger ruled not by the rubber-stamp parlia­ is the son of former president General ment but through a system of mass Lazaro Cardenas, who ruled M-exico in organizations tightly controlled by the late 1930s. Cardenas senior nation­ the "PRI-government." These "institu­ alized the oil industry, infuriating tions" into which the Mexican Revo­ British and American imperialism. lution is supposed to have congealed Cardenas junior is a pale reflection of have confined the working people in his nationalist father, calling only for a corporatist straitjacket. With a com­ "democratization" and "renegotiating" bination of populist-nationalist dema­ the debt to New York banks, and accus­ gogy, fear and corruption, the formula ing current (but not former) PRJ rulers has worked for decades-sometimes of "betraying the principles of the Mex­ drenched with blood, sometimes ican Revolution." But this, plus his leg­ greased with oil profits. Hungry peas­ endary name and Indian features, has ants, striking workers or rebellious stu­ turned Cardenas II into a rallying point dents were crushed or co-opted. But for opposition to' the pro-Washington then Mexico's oil boom went bust, and technocrats now running Mexico. when the Reagan depression took hold President Miguel de la Madrid the banks and corporate conglomerates Hurtado is a Harvard-trained econo­ tottered, producing the debt crisis which mist who has responded to the "debt cri­ broke out one month after De la sis" by carrying out brutal austerity, Madrid's election. ordered by the IMF international bank­ As the government cut back tortilla ers cartel. So far in his six-year admin­ subsidies, fired workers wholesale and istration more than 1,000 industrial impoverished the middle class, discon­ enterprises have closed, more than four tent turned against the PRl. In the bor­ million workers have been thrown out der states near El Norte (the U.S.), the of their jobs, and real wages have been rightist National Action Party (PAN) slashed by more than 50 percent (La gained support ranging from business­ Jornada, 27 April). This record has only men and farmers to slum dwellers. The been equaled by Pinochet's dictator-, I PAN, which was mixed up in Oliver ship in Chile and Argentina during the avier Audiffred North's schemes to finance the Nicara­ generals' "dirty war." No wonder that May Day 1987: 100,000 workers in independent union marches in Mexico City guan contras, is running a millionaire when hundreds of thousands of work- protest PRI union-busting and austerity. continued on page 11 12 1 JULY 1988