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~X-523 WfllillEliS "11'11'11'~.; No. 504 15 June 1990 Nelson Mandela in America mash Apartheid! For Workers Revolution! Across the U.S., hundreds of thousands of people will turn out to enthusiastically greet Nelson Mandela, leader of the African National Congress, who arrives No "Power Sharing" with the Randlords! in New York oil June 20, the first stop on his ten-day American tour. The man who during his 27 years' imprisonment was the symbol of the fight against apart­ heid slavery has also inspired black peo­ ple in America, who see in the oppres­ sion of their South African brothers a mirror of their own. At the same time, some of the most powerful oppressors and exploiters of black people will join in a hypocritical celebration of "free­ dom" while the South African masses and minorities in the U.S. bear the dead­ ly weight of racial oppression. Mandela will get the red carpet treat­ ment at the White House, staunch sup­ porters of the white-supremacist Pretoria regime, and chat with President Bush, former head of the CIA which engineered

Workers Vanguard, like so many informative foreign periodicals of a radical Marxist character, has been banned in South Africa.

his 1962 arrest (see article, page 14). He will address a joint session of Congress -which talks of "sanctions" against South Africa while bankrolling the Salva­ doran death squad regime to the tune of a million dollars a day. In NYC there Steve Hilton-Barber/Afrapix-Impact Visuals will be a ticker tape parade down lower Power of black labor can smash apartheid. Above: Militant black unionists in Johannesburg protest anti-labor laws, Broadway, where the ANC leader will October 1989.._ doubtless meet with the captains of in­ dustry and the lords of high finance, He where 14 black protesters were mowed The imperialists are courting Mandela segregation) in a country with 28 million will pose with Mayor Dinkins, and there . down and hundreds injured in March. for they see in him the black leader blacks and 5 million whites, let alone will be an enormous outpouring in Har­ The apartheid rulers, hard hit by six whose unique authority as an anti­ address economic equality, where white lem organized by the "popular front" years of black revolt and economic loss­ apartheid fighter is necessary to convince income is across the board twelve times (including many labor leaders) which es, try to salvage their. class rule by South African blacks to submit to a deal higher than that of blacks. elected the black Democrat and now removing some of the most glaring seg­ with the oppressive racist state. But The London Financial Times (II June) seeks to bask in Mandela's popularity regationist legislation, partially lifting the despite these treacherous schemes, there bluntly laid out the purpose of de Klerk 's while imposing anti-worker cutbacks state of emergency and releasing a few will be no such "power sharing." The negotiations: to "interrupt the process of which hit minorities hardest. score political prisoners, while countless apartheid regime, whose wealth is based radicalisation among blacks." But despite Mandela's message will be for a non­ thousands remain in jail. A peaceful res­ on the superexploitation of the black the conciliation of their leaders, who are existent "negotiated solution" in South olution of the conflicting interests of the laboring majority, is necessarily at odds now backing away from even the "mod­ Africa, which means blacks will pay. His multinational corporations and capitalist with the most minimal level of formal erate" demands of the Freedom Charter, trip grows out of the talks between the politicians who rule South Africa and the democracy. De Klerk's "reforms" cannot South African blacks know their libera­ ANC and the de Klerk regime in early oppressed majority- including blacks, even include the simple demand of "one tion can only be achieved through a far­ May, which came on the heels of the coloureds (mixed-race) and Indians-is man, one vote" (keystone of the Ameri­ reaching social revolution which smashes cop massacre in Sebokeng township, impossible. can civil rights fight against Jim Crow the apartheid state. The fight to forge a racially integrated Bolshevik party that can lead the struggle for it black-centered workers government, drawing as well on the coloured and Indian populations, and South African CP Leader growing numbers of whites who do not want to live their lives in a racist garri­ son state, is the task of the hour. Massacre in Welkom­ Mumia South Africa in Microcosm Last February we headlined, "Mandela Abu-Jamal on Released-Black South Africa Jubilant, Defiant" (WVNo. 496, 23 February). We predicted an upsurge of struggle among Nelson Mandela the black masses, who saw Mandela's freedom as heralding their own., as well SEE PAGE 13 as an acute crisis of expectations: "The SEE PAGE 12 smell ofrebellion is in the air," we wrote. continued on page J3 Reply to FSP/Peace &Freedom Party We print below the Spartacist League's struggle and its culmination in workers. response to a request by the Freedom revolution, you are led in your program Socialist Party, an ostensibly Trotskyist to a fundamental revision of the Marxist organization, to endorse FSPer Merle "The Working Class Cannot understanding that the capitalist state Woo's campaignfor California governor (like all states) consists of special bodies in the Peace and Freedom Party June of armed men, courts, prisons. etc. and primary election. The FSP and the New Reform the Capitalist State" is an instrument for the oppression of Alliance Party are currently contesting one class by another. Furthermore, the for control of the long-moribund Peace working class cannot reform the capital­ and Freedom Party, which for over two ist state to wield it for its own purposes, decades has been a "third party" elec­ but must smash it, and establish its own toral vehicle to pressure the Democratic rule. Party. Instead you call for the "demilitariza­ tion and community control of the po­ June 1, 1990 lice ...." But comrades, the police and the Freedom Socialist Party standing army are the chief instruments, San Francisco the very essence, of the capitalist state! When the police break up picket lines Dear Comrades, and imprison strikers, brutalize peaceful Our Oakland local received your re­ demonstrators and murder black and quest for endorsement of Merle Woo's Hispanic people on the streets and in the campaign for governor of California, and prisons, they are carrying out their role we have carefully read the accompanying as the enforcers, of capitalist "law and materials, including the Freedom Social­ order." They will not be "demilitarized" ist Party/Peace and Freedom Party (FSP/ until the whole bloody capitalist state is PFP) election program. UPI smashed once and for all, ending the rule Cops attack and arrest striking shipbuilders in Newport News, Virginia. FSP The Spartacist League has itself con­ pushes illusions in "community control of the police." of the bourgeoisie by workers revolution. ducted a number of election campaigns To say otherwise is to politically disarm in New York. San Francisco and Oakland cessity for the labor movement to break a workers party based on the unions; the workers and al1 the oppressed and based on our proletarian, revolutionary, from the capitalist Democratic and Re­ representing the independent political create deadly illusions in the "reformabil­ internationalist program. Our purpose in publican parties and reliance on the capi­ mobilization of the working class and ity" of the police at a time when across these campaigns is to focus on the ne- talist state and to cal1 for the forging of oppressed minorities. the country these racist killers are in­ In elections where we are not running creasingly becoming bonapartist death our own candidates, we are prepared to squads. give critical support to other socialist or Worse yet, in your desire to appeal to For Permanent Revolution labor candidates, providing theirelection a middle-class constituency, and despite in South Africa program contains significant elements of your stated concern for "the trend toward this class-struggle perspective. From this a police state," your program contains For decades the Stalinists have preached standpoint we cannot support the FSP/ distinct echoes of the "law and order" a "two-stage" revolution in South Africa. PFP gubernatorial campaign. Taken as slogans now being used by the govern­ assigning leadership of the first. "national­ a whole, your campaign continues the ment and right-wing lobbies to mobilize democratic" stage to the petty-bourgeois history of the Peace and Freedom Party public opinion and strengthen the repres­ nationalist African National Congress. The as a "radical" third party, purely elector­ sive powers of the capitalist state. Your Trotskyists have maintained that only a alist vehicle, with a sectoralist program call for "compensation to individual vic­ socialist revolution led by the black African directed mainly to a liberal middle-class tims of theft and violence" has been part proletariat can smash the white-supremacist constituency. ofthe "victim's rights" campaign used to TROTSKY state and liberate the black, coloured (mixed­ LENIN As opposed to the utopian socialists of re-institute lengthy mandatory sentences race) and Indian masses. We print below the 19th century, Marxists see the work­ without parole in California. In the real excerpts from a draft program written in 1945 for the Johannesburg-based Workers ing class as the only class in capitalist world your class-neutral and color-blind International League. society with the social power to overturn cal1 for "communities to exercise their In South Africa, no African bourgeois is allowed to develop, and the only example capitalism. But your program treats the citizen police powers to fight street of big business is the small trader in a location's shabby shop .... The small intelligent­ labor movement as just one more sector crime" has meant everything from neigh­ sia, teachers, are interested mainly in accommodating themselves to the ruling forces. of those who suffer under capitalism, borhood "crime patrols" working with the They are afraid to take the lead in a struggle against them. The peasantry in the denying therefore the centrality of the police to vigilante mob violence against reserves, kept illiterate, scattered, are overwhelmed by rural poverty and primitiveness. working class as the decisive force in al1 blacks, Hispanics or Asians for being in Africa's most backward sections are unable to grapple with modern imperialism. The social struggles. Your program makes no the "wrong neighborhood." And you say only remaining force is the urban industrial and mining worker. Imperialism has reference to the crucial need for politi­ nothing against gun control and for the concentrated him in huge numbers in all the big cities, has given him a novel and cal struggle within the labor movement historic right to bear arms. moving atmosphere, has torn him violently from his ancestral environment, and fitted against the main obstacle.to the indepen­ The political upheavals in the Soviet him as a cog in the perpetual motion of the capitalist machine. His working life and dent political mobilization' of the working Union, East Europe and China are of thought is involved in capitalist relations and he has the power to shake capitalism class, i.e. the racist, pro-capitalist, Cold historic importance to the international and force his demands dramatically on the attention of South Africa. He must supply War labor bureaucracy whose program proletariat. As Trotskyists our position is leadership to Africa. He will lead the political upheaval against imperialism.... of class col1aboration ties the workers to unambiguous: we unconditional1y mili­ South Africa needs above all else a revolutionary party. Only a Marxist analysis the capitalist political parties and state. tarily defend the bureaucratical1y degen­ can be the pneumatic drill to pierce the complex layers of South Africa's development Lacking this strategic working-class per­ erated or deformed workers states against and disclose its basic· driving forces. Only. the methods of proletarian mass struggle spective you have no instrumentality for capitalist restoration, whether from impe­ can free the people from the pernicious influence of the bourgeoisie and its petty serious social struggle and therefore are rialism or from restorationist forces with­ bourgeois imitators.... left with a perspective ofelectoral protest in. We seek to build Leninist parties to To become the revolutionary vanguard we must be, in deeds, the champions ofevery politics. lead the working classes in political struggle, against oppression. We must give a political lead to the oppressed.... We Not willing to recognize the class continued on page 11 must be as intransigent in smal1 events as in great issues, and prepare for the socialist goal by waging implacable warfare against every form and vestige of oppression, against all discrimination, against all backwardness and primitiveness, against all reactionary national subjugation. -The Revolutionary Communist, August 1945 !~!.'!!!!YO~~'!..~~~f'!.! ~ DIRECTOR OF PARTY PUBLICATIONS Liz Gordon EDITOR Jan Norden PRODUCTION MANAGER: Jorge Ramirez CIRCULATION MANAGER: Karen Valdez EDITORIAL BOARD: George Foster, Frank Hunter, Jane Kerrigan, Len Meyers, James Robertson, Reuben Samuels, Joseph Seymour, Alison Spencer, Marjorie Stamberg The Spartacist League is the US Section of the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist) . Workers Vanguard (USPS 098-770) published biweekly, except 2nd issue August and with 3-week interval December, by the Spartacist Publishing Co, 41 Warren Street, New York, NY 10007. Telephone: (212) 732-7862 (Editorial), (212) 732-7861 (Business). Address all correspondence to: Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116 Domestic subscriptions $7.00/24 issues. Second-class postage paid at New York, NY. POSTMASTER: Send address changes FSP lionized CIA-funded Nicaraguan to Workers Vanguard, Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116. Brooklyn Rivera, above at Opinions expressed in signed articles or letters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint. eentre election rally for contra candidate No. 504 15 June 1990 Vioieta Chamorro last February.

2 WORKERS VANGUARD German S~artacists: Letter to Polish Workers We reported in our last issue about fight for a United Socialist States of the rail workers strike in northern Poland List do polskich robotnikow Europe based on the rule of workers which shook up the country. groaning ROOOlnicy polsry! councils. Z JedneJ 6trony,stol d.tiS pned wamlwew~lrZJla cro1bapov.TOlU do kapllaUzmu, kl6ryJu! Vi PolsceUCl4i1opero".e, under the capitalist austerity program im­ a ad lewnftrz &tO~i ...:am nnannw hi fU-1: m I Ibm.. Ilebu ~f. ch c:..' nl ych pn;cdsi~bjorstw Those who have paved the way for i sprzcdat reszl~ Zac nlemlecld. na drodzc posed by the pro-capitalist government led do CzwarteJ Rzcszy, capitalist restoration cannot lead the Cltkaj~ was ci~~1 lin i Ubezpleczenfe by Solidarnosc. Subsequently, the Sparta­ li~cb. , l'1' kQlejacl\ struggles to beat it back. Stalinism as an prT.YSIJooci wa57.}'th ( ••lIIl1dlilllilll...iIIIII.IIIII.., :tlQ:~ty sj~ tenraedr aif;gatponadcZ)'Sto kist Workers Party ofGermany, section of ekonomicznc hdanl ai, ua,lo i program ideology is dead, buried and unmourned the International Communist League politycZR)' oparty 0 5 5 June 1990 In Poland. Social Democracy has been a (Fourth Internationalist), published in willing tool of capitalist imperialism Polish and German a letter to Polish interest payments. key to resolving this question is a revolu­ since August 1914 (when it voted for workers (printed below). Several thousand Walesa says it's time to give capital­ tionary internationalist leadership of the credits for the imperialist war). And copies ofthis leaflet have been distributed, ism a chance in Poland. But capitalism working class. many self-styled Trotskyists have ex­ in the Baltic port city of Szczecin and to already had its chance in Poland, and its By promoting anti-Soviet nationalism posed themselves as social democrats by a national meeting of the OPZZ trade restoration is bringing back all the and the breakup of the Warsaw Pact, So­ their years-long glorification of Solidar­ unions in Warsaw. backwardness and chauvinism of the lidarnosc has assisted in creating the nose, even echoing such rabidly anti­ . dark, pogrom-plagued past. Openly anti­ conditions for a Fourth Reich. Six hun­ Communist and anti-Semitic elements Polish Workers: Semitic agitation is rampant. Women are dred thousand Soviet soldiers died lib­ as the KPN in calling for the smashing You are today confronted from within being exposed to a sharp escalation of erating Poland from Nazi slavery; they of the Warsaw Pact. In 1983, pseudo­ by the capitalist restoration now taking reactionary and religious bigotry, their must not have died in vain! Now the Trotskyist theoretician Ernest Mandel place and by the danger of renewed imperialist domination from without. Solidarnosc is driving the working people into starvation in order to get rid of unprofitable enterprises and sell the remainder to the Western banks. Mean­ while German imperialism drives toward Railway workers in the creation of a Fourth Reich, looking Szczecin strike hungrily at the Oder-Neisse border and against Solidarnosc regime's economic beyond. "shock treatment." You are facing desperate struggles to Sign (lower right) defend your jobs and livelihoods, to de­ reads: "Strike fend your families and your children's Occupation." future. Major strikes have begun on the railways, while in the mining areas of Slask [Silesia] and elsewhere bitter strikes have already been waged. But in order to triumph over the forces arrayed against you, the Polish workers will have to go beyond purely economic demands. This requires not only a determination to fight but also a political understanding of the events leading to the present situation and a political program based on the true interests of the international working class. Eight or nine years ago many of you supported Solidamosc, seeing in it an alternative to the economic mismanage­ ment and stifling bureaucracy of Stalinist rule. Three times-in 1956, 1970 and 1976-the working people in Poland rose up against the bureaucracy's mismanage­ ment. But 1980-81 was a different mat­ ter. The central leadership around Lech Walesa were from the outset hardened anti-Communist nationalists whose poli­ cies were determined not by the needs of Spartakist Photos the workers but by Pope John Paul right to abortion endangered. The aged, forces of counterrevolution are seeking hailed the Solidarnosc leadership as the Wojtyla's Vatican and by Ronald Rea­ the weak, the unemployed are being to overtu. n the historic gains of the "best socialists in the world." But the gan's White House: the red flags of the forced to beg for a bit of food at soup collectiv zed economies-albeit gains Trotskyist program of proletarian politi­ working class were replaced by Pilsud­ kitchens. imposed from above with Stalinist bu­ cal revolution to overthrow the Stalinist ski's eagle and cross, the singing of the Now you are threatened with being reaucratic measures-throughout Eastern bureaucracy rests on the defense, not the Internationale by the hymns of priests. turned into vassals by German imperial­ Europe. Decades of Stalinist bureaucrat­ destruction, of the collectivized property At its first congress in September 1981 ism in its drive for a Fourth Reich. Your ism, conciliation of nationalism and forms in the bureaucratically deformed Solidarnosc adopted a course aimed at coworkers who have gone to Germany to capitulation to imperialist counterrevolu­ workers states . .the conquest of power, consolidating work have already gotten a sense of what tion internationally (in a fruitless search The Spartakist Workers Party of Ger­ around a program that demanded "free this means. In West Germany, Polish for "peaceful coexistence") prepared the many, section of the International Com­ trade unions" and "free elections," refugees and immigrants are being im­ ground for these reactionary movements, munist League (Fourth Internationalist), refused even to mention socialism and prisoned or deported in Night and Fog whose development has been sharply is the only party to have clearly and called for putting an end to the planned operations reminiscent of the SS. In the accelerated by the Gorbachev regime's unambiguously fought against capitalist economy. In reality this meant the "free East, Polish workers are being scape­ "market reforms." This is what the lie of Anschluss of the DDR through its can­ market" of naked, ruthless capitalist goated as "speculators" for the imperial­ building "socialism in one country" has didacy in the March 18 Volkskammer exploitation. From afar we warned that ist campaign of economic destabilization led to. Now the homeland of the October elections and over the past few months. Solidarnosc was a "company union for and the sellout of the planned economy Revolution is itself in mortal danger. We struggle against all manifestations of the CIA and bankers" and we organized by the ex-Stalinist plant managers. Polish workers: instead of looking to chauvinism and national oppression, an urgent international propaganda cam­ That, too, is an expression of capitalist Pilsudski and nationalism, revive the whether against Poles and other immi­ paign around the call: Stop Solidarnosc counterrevolution, one which goes hand tradition of proletarian internationalism grant workers in Germany or against counterrevolution! in hand with German capital's campaign personified by your greatest revolution­ Jews and people of German descent in Now Solidarnosc has taken over the for Anschluss (annexation) of the DDR. ary figure, Rosa Luxemburg. A Jewish Poland. Only the Trotskyists have a reins of government. What has this This means horrendous unemployment woman from Lublin educated in Warsaw, program to combat capitalist counter­ brought you? You are being forced to and devastation of social services for all Rosa Luxemburg dedicated her life to revolution and imperialist war, by re­ suffer the kind of economic "shock treat­ workers in the DDR, while workers in forging the unity of the Polish, Russian turning to the authentic communism of ment" usually carried out by Latin Amer­ West Germany face assaults on their and German working class. She fought Rosa Luxemburg and Lenin-the fight ican juntas. You are being bled white living standards in order to finance the every expression of nationalism, chauvin­ to defend and extend the gains of the by the Frankfurt bankers, by Wall Street expansion of German capital. This can ism, reformism and bureaucratic compla­ October Revolution through socialist and by the world bankers cartel, the either be a recipe for vicious internecine cency. Today you must unite with the revolutions throughout the capitalist International Monetary Fund, which feuding among different sectors of the workers of Germany and the Soviet world. Forward to a Trotskyist party oversees the deliberate impoverishment working people-a losing battle for all Union to reforge revolutionary unity in in Poland, section of a reborn Fourth and starvation of millions in the Third sides-or it can be the impetus for pow­ class struggle against your common International. World to ensure an unbroken flow of erful united working-class struggles. The capitalist and imperialist enemies, in the 26 May 1990 15 JUNE 1990 3 Protest Anti-Communist Witchhunt

Over 65,000 demonstrators assembled Think of where the "Aryanized'tmoney June 2 in the East Berlin Lustgarten to of the Deutsche Bank came from. The protest the onslaught by the capitalist German bourgeoisie fed off the bones government of East Germany (DDR) that in East Germany and the blood of millions of Jews and seeks to wipe out leftist opposition in slave laborers from the East, and now preparation for Anschluss (annexation) by tance to Anschluss!" Referring to East DDR and to despicably exploit DDR once again it is extending its greedy imperialist West Germany. On Thursday, and West German SPD leaders, one sign workers. The police forced their way into fingers. Its expropriation is what we have May 31, the Volkskammer (DDR parlia­ proclaimed: "Meckel/Lafontaine: Blood­ the FDJ's office to demand documents. to call for. ment) majority passed a law to investi­ hounds for the Deutsche Bank." Another This was [East German DSU interior Capitalist reunification means blood gate the assets of all parties and mass declared: "Kohl Must Not Become minister1 Diestel' s police, which let and violence. We of the Spartakist Work­ organizations and immediately seize Reichs Chancellor! Neither Should Willy skinheads get off free when they beat up ers Party of Germany have said "No to those holdings acquired from 8 May Brandt's Grandchildren!" Demonstrators on Mozambicans. capitalist reunification" from the very 1945 (the fall of the Hitler Nazi dicta­ bought more than 700 copies of Sparta­ This attack is a foretaste of capitalist beginning because we know that the torship) through 7 October 1989, when kist publications, and several thousand reunification. Brandt's grandchildren, interests of the working people can only the Honecker regime began crumbling. This anti-Communist witchhunt clearly targeted the PDS (Party of Democratic Socialism), successor to the SED which ruled East Germany for 40 years, and the FDJ (Free German Youth). The draconian expropriation law was introduced by the rightist DSU (German Social Union), a creature of the Bavarian wing of West Germany's Christian Dem­ ocrats. Another DSU bill was also passed granting a government commission au­ thority to order trials, search houses and carry out other searches and seizures. A third law ordered the removal of the DDR state symbol (the hammer and June 2 compass) from public buildings. The demonstration Spartakist Workers Party (SpAD) imme­ in East Berlin's diately sent a protest letter to the presi­ Lustgarten dent of the Volkskammer, excerpts from against capitalist which were printed in Neues Deutschland onslaught. (2 June), noting: "Bonn's quislings want Sign says: to silence all opposition in their drive "1. Ban the PDS. to a Fourth Reich by imposing drastic 2. Burn books. police state measures taken from the 3. Auschwitz?" Third Reich." Another article in the paper detailed how the Nazis upon taking power seized the property of the Communists (Kl>D) and Social Democrats (SPD). At the June 2 protest demo one sign recalled Bismarck's 1878 anti-socialist law, Hit­ ler.s 1933 "enabling act," the West German 1956 ban of the KPD and the 1975 Berufsverbot banning employment leaflets were distributed for the speaking such as [West German SPD chancellor be protected through the struggle for of leftists. Another declared: "I. Ban tour of Don Alexander of the Spartacist candidate] Lafontaine, have staged this proletarian internationalism. Millions are the PDS. 2. Burn books. 3. Auschwitz?" League/ U.S. Central Committee and the anti-Communist witchhunt.as their "im­ looking to the DDR, because they don't From the podium, Gregor Gysi of the Bay Area Labor Black League for Social provement" on the State Treaty.: The SPD want a Fourth Reich. They are our allies. PDS said he was "sad" that the SPD had Defense. SpAD spokesman Renate Dahl­ also launched an attack on the FDGB From the DDR to Poland to the peoples a hand in this dirty affair. But implicitly haus receivedapplause for her remarks, [former East German trade-union federa­ of the Soviet Union, the working class responding to a previous Spartakist which we print below. tion], but before the FDGB could suffer must fight together to stop and turn back speaker, he added, "we must be ready to the same fate as the PDS it threw in the the imperialist drive toward a Fourth cooperate" with the Social Democrats. towel without a struggle. So the first Reich. Now is the time to fight, not when (SPD offices are exempt from seizure Dear friends and comrades, we de­ blow was against representation oftrade­ we're lying on the street, out of a job because they were bought with the mil­ mand: Hands off the PDS and FDJ! The union interests, the second was against and banned. A new revolutionary party lions of D-marks that Bonn poured into anti-Communist expropriation measures the youth, whom they want to prepare for must be forged from German and immi­ the DDR to buy the elections.) must be blocked. The Volkskamrner, as war service, and the third was against the grant workers, to again raise together the Our comrades of the SpAD took part a lackey of the Frankfurt bankers, has party, as a signal to all leftist political banner of the October Revolution. An in the Lustgarten protest with a literature decided, using methods of the Third parties that we're headed for capital­ attack on one is an attack on all! Against table and signs, including: "Hands Off Reich, to steal the FDJ's and PDS's ism. The SPD were also the ones who this anti-Communist witchhunt, let us act the PDS!" "Stop the Anti-Communist property, to destroy these organizations, began the witchhunt after 250,000 anti­ together with the methods of the workers Witchhunt!" and "For Workers Resis- to steal the accumulated wealth of the fascists protested in Treptow on January movement, united in action but with 3 against the desecration of the Soviet freedom of criticism, with workers resis­ war memorial. They have experience in tance in East and West. • betraying and selling out the working class. Think of the SPD's murderous campaign of incitement before their henchmen murdered Rosa [Luxemburg] Spartacist League and Karl [Liebknecht]. And now they're Public Offices calling for expropriation! Who did this party get its money from to set up shop - MARXIST LITERA TURE­ again in West Germany after 1945? From Bay Area Workmen the CIA! Thurs.: 5:30-8:00 p.rn., Sat: 1:00-500 pm. dismantle seal of But to now appeal to these "demo­ 1634 Telegraph, 3rd Floor (near 17th Street) former Stalinist crats" and abide by these laws, as the Oakland, California Phone (415) 839-0851 ruling party at PDS is doing, is to hand yourself-and Chicago Dresden party all decent people-over to the hangman. Tues.. 5:00-9:00 p.rn., Sat.. 1100 a.m.-200 pm. headquarters 161 W. Harrison St., 10th Floor last January. After all, so-called democrats created the Chicago, lllinois Phone (312) 663-0715 [West German] blacklisting laws, the ban on radicals and laws against foreigners. New York City Tues .. 6:30-9:00 p.m., Sat.: 100-500 pm Anti-Communism and expropriation such 41 Warren St. (one block below as we see here now-history has taught Chambers St. near Church St.) us this-mean preparation for the next New York, NY Phone (212) 267-1025 world war, this time World War III. 4 WORKERS VANGUARD Young Sparlacus Harvard Salutes Helmut Kohl ... The Man Who Would Be FUhrer One of the most elite universities on earth, Harvard bears a special relation­ ship to the U.S. ruling class and its plans for world plunder. At this year's gradu­ ation exercises, Harvard awarded an honorary degree to German chancellor Helmut Kohl, declaring him "the German Hercules" in a "time of miracles." Har­ vard's "miracle" is the prospect of capi­ talist exploitation and immiseration of the working people of East Germany, Poland and the Soviet Union. Working­ class resistance to the economic "shock treatment" braintrusted by Harvard econ­ omist Jeffrey Sachs has already broken out in mass strikes in Poland. Harvard's fat bosses are downright amused by the spectre ofhunger and food riots that will come with the "free world" diet. At the commencement ceremony, outgoing Har­ vard president Derek Bok quipped, "Any day now, I expect to wake up to find an angry mob of Polish housewives and shopkeepers descending on Harvard Yard in pursuit ofJeffrey Sachs."We reprint below a leaflet issued by the Spartacus Youth Club in protest against Harvard's AP Mark Darchinger filthy jete. West German chancellor Helmut Kohl, with Reagan, salutes Nazi SS war.dead at Bitburg cemetery, 1985. Every June, Harvard unveils a war Adolf Hitler are clear. Under the banner many expanded to its 1937 borders! Friedman and his "Chicago Boys" did to criminal, despot, bigot, or anti-working­ "Germany, One Fatherland" Kohl leads Today Kohl has the chutzpah to de­ braintrust Chilean dictator Augusto Pino­ class blowhard for the commencement the charge to rip back for capitalist ex­ mand from the Polish government res­ chet's murderous policies in Chile, the address, and this year they've scored big. ploitation the markets the German bank­ titution for losses the German capitalists "Harvard Boys" led by Jeffrey Sachs are On June 7th, West German Chancellor ers lost when the Red Army shattered suffered there in World War II. now doing throughout Eastern Europe. Helmut Kohl, the man who would be Hitler's Third Reich in 1945 and created As one of America's pre-eminent bour­ Sachs earned his spurs advising the right­ FUhrer of a reunified capitalist Germany, a deformed workers state in the DDR geois think tanks, Harvard is up to its wing regime of Victor Paz Estenssoro of will be accorded honors in Harvard Yard. (East Germany). Since the mass upheav­ eyeballs in plotting the immiseration of Bolivia whobrutally suppressed a gener­ Kohl casts the shadow of a Fourth Reich als which brought down the Stalinist the working people of Eastern Europe. al strike in 1985 to meet the International before him; a mortal threat to East Ger­ Honecker regime last fall, the bourgeoi­ (Harvardians did a pretty good business Monetary Fund's diktat of a budget "bal­ man workers, women, youth and working sie has tried to thwart a workers political with the Third Reich too. One Harvard anced" through mass unemployment and people across Europe. Kohl is the crea­ revolution by stampeding the East Ger­ grad rewrote a Harvard football song into starvation. These "academic advisers" for ture of the extreme right, rabidly re­ man population into reunification on a Nazi goose-step chant-"rah, rah, rah" economic "shock therapy" literally have vanchist wing of the German bourgeoi­ terms dictated by the Frankfurt bankers. became "Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil, Sieg.Heil!" blood on their hands. From inside Har­ sie; the loyal servant for the industrial Kohl intends to exploit the DDR pop­ -played by brownshirts on the day vard's ivy-covered walls, Sachs cooks up magnates who made their fortunes on the ulation as a new low-wage labor pool Hitler took power.) Today Harvard con­ the "big bang theory" of capitalist resto­ Holocaust, running the IG Farben slave for Western capital and to seize the tributes mightily to Hitler's failed dream ration which spells misery for millions. labor economy based on the death camps. DDR as a launching pad for the Drang of wiping out the "Bolshevik menace" The drive toward capitalist restoration The man who Harvard salutes today nach Osten (drive to the East). To the through bloody restoration of capitalism in Eastern Europe will provoke explo­ was in Bitburg in 1985 with Ronald embarrassment of his NATO backers in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. sions of working-class resistance. Last Reagan saluting the Nazis' Waffen SS. and his social-democratic handmaidens, Harvard's wunderkind Jeffrey Sachs is week rail workers shut down the whole Kohl cannot boast of the crimes of his Kohl stridently insisted throughout the the key architect of the.Solidarnosc gov­ of northwestern Poland in opposition American counterparts-who murdered East German election campaign that the ernment's brutal austerity program in to capitalist austerity policies. In East over two million Indochinese in their Polish border was still up for grabs! Poland which has lowered real wages by Germany there have already been warn­ bloody war against Vietnam-but the Small wonder from a man whose Chris­ 40 percent, and produced mass unem­ ing strikes by workers fighting Kohl's ambitions of the first man who would tian Democrat campaign headquarters ployment and hunger for the first time in Anschluss which threatens the gains of call himself "Reichs chancellor" since in Bonn is bedecked with maps of Ger- four decades. What the infamous Milton the East German workers state where a planned economy and collectivized property provided subsidized housing, day care, education, and full employ­ ment. Kohl has made no secret of his appetite to drive East German women back to "Kinder, Kiiche, Kirche" (chil­ dren, kitchen, church). A plank in the Christian Democrats' platform for the DDR elections was "protection of the unborn," threatening to export West Ger­ many's vicious witchhunt against abor­ tion rights to women of the DDR. Kohl's appearances in the DDR have been accompanied by Republikaner and Nazi skinhead attacks against leftists and minorities, which have continued with ferocious violence in the West and East. Just as George Bush harbored East European fascists in his Republican Na­ tional Committee, Helmut Kohl is now regrouping fascists around the parties of Independent a Fourth Reich. - Harvard economist Jeffrey Sachs masterminded Poland's economic "shock From Boston to Berlin, capitalism treatment" producing mass unemployment and soup kitchens. continued on page 6 15 JUNE 1990 5 Spike -Lee's Shoes

Fact: Black youth are being killed in article cites several alleged examples of senseless murders in American inner-city apparel-related murders and asks the ghettos. Racist media myth: Spike Lee's $125 question of who's to blame-Is it catchy television commercials with Chi­ the shoes? Is it Spike Lee and Michael Spike Lee cago Bulls basketball star Michael Jordan Jordan? with picture promoting Nike sneakers are responsible of Michael for inner-city gang shootings and violence It's Capitalism Jordan's shoes. by encouraging black teens to covet the As the gap between rich and poor shoes. and black and white widened enormously Three months ago, New York Post during the last decade of the Reagan/ sportswriter Phil Mushnick launched what Bush administrations-the "yuppie" years has become an all-sided media crusade -Americans have been told to spend pation they can master. For now it's still the myth of black capitalism is a cruel to blame Lee and Jordan for fights and and spend as fast as they can. Vance pretty much music and sports for us." hoax-there's not one black CEO in the Packard's "hidden persuaders" combine Same story 20 years later. top 1,000 corporations and even Spike with ballooning credit card debt. Of Few blacks besides entertainers and Lee doesn't have the capital to finance course, black and poor kids watch the athletes like Michael Jordan can become his own movies. same television commercials- and have household names and sought-after pro­ One letter writer to the Village Voice the Madison Avenue inspired desires for moters of advertisers' products. And demolished Barra by stating that "to the latest in fashion and its associated the sneaker business is a big business­ suppose that sneakers can inflame a man "respect." Mushnick charges that black nine billion dollars in sales last year. to murder makes about as much sense as film director Spike Lee and other black Michael Jordan's contract with Nike is to believe that a short skirt can drive a stars hawking shoes are "ghetto warfare worth an estimated $20 million. The man to rape. It's tabloid logic." The profiteers." buying apd wearing of the high-tech Voice liberals, the tabloid gutter colum­ In April Lee penned a response pub­ shoes and the team jackets and caps of nists like Mushnick, and Spike Lee can't lished in a sports daily, the National, professional sports teams is a way for answer the real money question of how denouncing Mushnick's attack as "a thin­ minority youth to put themselves into to stop the killings endemic to rotting ly veiled racism." Where's the outcry their heroes' shoes, literally, and imagine American inner cities, because they all against white sports stars who plug themselves gaining some upward mobil­ accept the premise of a capitalist system. away on TV for everything from beer to ity by becoming professional athletes. With equality ostentatiously "out" in sneakers? The nonsense of the idea that The successful black athlete becomes Reagan/Bush America, with ghetto kids well-known black athletes and coaches one of the very few so-called "positive unable to afford a set of wheels (or mur­ who endorse sporting goods are respon­ role models" allowed for minority youth dered by a lynch mob if they try to buy sible for murder and theft is answered to admire. a used car in the "wrong" neighborhood, by Lee: "America tells everyone BUY, The liberal monitors of culture at the like Bensonhurst), for many black and BUY, BUY, it's Capitalism at its BEST/ Village Voice made their entry into the Hispanic youth the "American dream" is WORST, and folks who don't have, want sneaker print wars with an article "Who reduced to getting hold of some fancy to 'get' by hook or crook." Stole the Sole?" by Allen Barra chastis­ sneaks. And when it turns out that a The sociology behind the faddist mass ing Lee for refusing to accept any re­ generation consigned to permanent job­ appeal of expensive, gimmicky sneakers sponsibility for the footgear violence. lessness can't even come up with the is bound up with the warping effects Barra also claims he is exposing Spike cash for that, the response of the bour­ of racism on American society. Two Lee's "shaky credentials as a revolution­ geois media is that they should want Bourgeois media's racist propaganda decades ago basketball great Kareem ary." But Lee is right to query his sancti­ less! Abdul-Jabbar told Sports Illustrated monious media critics about their lack of Emancipation of black people op­ fatalities over the Air Jordans and other writer Jack Olsen, "Yes, I was just like interest in how poverty and discrimina­ pressed by this violent, racist capitalist $100+ per pair sneakers that are the the rest of those black athletes you've tion in "education, housing, jobs, drugs, society will begin with a socialist revo­ objects of status and trendiness among read about, the ones that put all their racism" can produce violence and death lution. The abolition of capitalism will American youth. Sports Illustrated's fea­ waking energies into learning the moves. over a pair of sneakers. mean jobs and housing for all, and en­ ture story for May 14 entitled "Your That might be a sad commentary on Actually, black nationalist filmmaker able blacks and other minorities to real­ Sneakers or Your Life" is packaged with America in general, but that's the way Spike Lee doesn't claim to be a revolu­ ize their talents and aspirations outside a racist cover depicting black hands with it's going to be until black people can tionary-he believes that blacks need of the sports and entertainment fields in a gun snatching a pair of sneaks. The flow without prejudice into any occu- their own base of black business. But a society with real racial equality.• Harvard... (continued from page 5) breeds unemployment, racist terror and war. The American imperialists are busy Sex, .Drugs &Rock 'n RolI­ on many fronts, from the murderous invasion of Panama (where hundreds of corpses are now being'discovered in mass graves) to the racist police stranglehold on black, Latino and poor neighborhoods in Gonzo Victory the U.S. This is the face of the "free world." As the deformed workers states On May 30 prosecutors in .Aspen, house. She then ran to the cops, who appear ripe for plundering, the competition Colorado announced they were seeking used her complaint of sexual harass­ among the major imperialist powers for dismissal of their felony drug and ment as. their excuse for a six-man, the spoils vastly increases the danger of explosives charges against journalist eleven-hour invasion of Thompson's new wars. What we are witnessing is not Hunter S. Thompson. The District At­ house in search of "evidence" to hang the "death of Communism" championed torney's office was forced to drop its him with-in fact, all they came up by Bush and Kohl, but the death agony outrageous witchhunt against Thomp­ with was literally a bunch of crumbs and unraveling of the Stalinist bureauc­ son, prosecutors admitted, because of (see "Lifestyle Police Frame Gonzo racies throughout Eastern Europe and the "discrepancies" in testimony and their Journalist," WV No. 501,4 May). Soviet Union. It is urgently necessary for inability to line up witnesses. "I have more public support now leftist students and workers everywhere "I was going to be put on trial for than I did when I ran for sheriff," to support the Eas( European workers in sex, drugs and rock and roll," said Thompson said-and it's nice to see their struggles against the capitalist Thompson, inventor of"gonzo journal­ the good guys win one for once. "shock treatment." ism" and author of biting "fear and But this vicious witchhunt and police The only way forward is a class­ loathing" exposes of the dark side of invasion have deadly serious impli­ struggle fight for the genuine socialism the American dream. "I've been doing cations in this era of the "retroactive of Lenin and Trotsky. The Spartacus that for a long time," he added, warrant" and erosion of the Fourth Youth Club stands alongside our Ger­ announcing a celebratory orgy in his Amendment (which supposedly protects Frank G. Martin man comrades of the Spartakist Workers hot tub-for "consenting adults" only against unreasonable search and sei­ Hunter S. Thompson Party in fighting for proletarian inter­ (San Francisco Chronicle, 31 May). zure). As Thompson has noted, "They nationalism, for workers mobilizations to The lifestyle police went after this search your house without cause, and at work on a new book, Songs of the crush the fascists, for an internation­ ferociously independent, longtime As­ if they find anything to charge you Doomed, which will take up this issue. ally planned economy and an egalitarian pen resident on the word of an out-of­ with, the courts will uphold it as a He is. after all, a professional at skew­ socialist future. town sometime porn star and producer proper search." ering the enemies ofthose fundamental Harvard Spartacus Youth Club who got herself invited to Hunter's We're glad to hear Thompson is hard freedoms we cherish. 6 June 1990 6 WORKERS VANGUARD be extended to an industrywide strike by the newspaper told the press: "We need to win this battle, I can't feed unions at the New York Times, Post and Newsday. Break my family on what they are paying." And you certainly Daily News Unions: Daily News management's racist plans by instituting can't buy anything in Century City with what the jani­ union-run minority recruitment and training programs tors who work there are paid.The bourgeoisie built the Fight or Die! at full union scale and at the capitalists' expense. A complex, which borders Rodeo Drive only a half-mile New York's "hometown paper" (owned by the class-struggle victory here could turn around strikes from Beverly Hills, as a walled city for finance and Chicago-based Tribune Company) is escalating its war such as that of Greyhound workers and organizing business, safely distant from downtown L.A. and main­ on the unions. In sweeping layoffs at the beginning of drives like that of the garment workers at Domsey, tained by low-wage, immigrant labor. June, the Daily News bosses threw out one-third of the pointing the way forward for workers everywhere. At a second rally on June 7, over 200 cops massed Machinists and photoengravers. The electricians are against the strikers. With another union demonstration slated to go next. And later this month everyone is scheduled for June IS, the Los Angeles unions must be bracing for massive layoffs of the pressmen-cutting brought out in force, from teachers to hotel to long­ the crew size on a press from twelve to six. The ten "Justice for Janitors" shore. The battle of the SEIU workers at Century City Daily News unions' contracts expired in March, but the is crucial for all labor in L.A. It can help break the back workers have been held on the job by the Allied Print­ Takes Century City of the open shop, and spark the massive organizing ing Trades Council tops, who insist "we're going to drive that is needed to bring Latino workers in Southern wince, squirm and blink a little." This is a ticket to LOS ANGELES-Century City, a glittering oasis of California into the labor movement. And not least, disaster. The News workers had better play hardball, skyscrapers and high finance, got a taste of union power militant, integrated battle by these workers can help and now, or they will be carved up and wiped out. on June I. Sweeping aside security guards, 400 striking sweep aside the racist, protectionist poison that the pro­ The layoffs have cut deep-in one case a Machinist janitors and their supporters poured into the ritzy office imperialist AFL-CIO bureaucracy aims at foreign, espe­ and his son were thrown on the street at the same time. complex. Union chants mixed with conga drums as the cially Japanese and Mexican, workers. Full citizenship In the last two years, over half the Machinists who members of Service Employees International Union rights for foreign-born workers! Victory to the Century labor to keep the Daily News' .antiquated presses run­ Local 399 in red shirts stopped the Ferraris and Rolls City janitors! ning have been cut. The drivers union head, Michael Royces on Constellation Boulevard and carried their Alvino, is offering to sell off union jobs, which will strike into Century City. seriously weaken the union. Meanwhile, the high-living They blocked revolving doors with bags of garbage Daily News president James Hoge and his professional as union marshals backed down arrogant security "Enough! strikebreakersfrom King and Ballow are openly training guards. And in a moment that gave satisfaction to the scores of scab drivers and pressmen at the Pacific Street No Safety, No Work!" (Brooklyn) printing plant. The Daily News is trying to whip up race war in the tinderbox of New York, recruit­ The New York Transit Authority has announced ing black and Hispanic scabs to pit against the heavily budget cuts which could reach 10 percent, and for the white craft unions. first time provisional workers are going to be laid off. Last month, a member of the Newspaper Guild in the The funerals of two more NYC transit workers are classified department was suspended for calling one of barely over, but you can bet the first thing to be cut the strikebreakers in training "scab!" Other workers at will be workers' safety. We print below excerpts of a the News building on 42nd Street got hold of a man­ 20 May leaflet by the Committee for a Fighting TWU, agement "survival kit" introducing out-of-town scabs class-struggle militants in Transport Workers Union to life in New York, with advice such as "don't make Local 100. eye contact with passers-by" and if you are mugged, How much of our blood must be spilled before this "don't speak unless your assailant demands it" (West union takes action against the death trap conditions we Side Spirit, 8 May). They didn't, however, tell their are forced to work in? On May 8, Daniel Walsh and "replacement workers" what's liable to happen to them Robert Nicholson were added to the T.A.'s death toll, when they try to cross a picket line. crushed by a southbound F train leaving the Kings News workers are backed up against the wall, and Highway station in Brooklyn. That's six of our union many know they must strike to save their jobs and their brothers killed on the tracks in just over one year. unions. Hundreds of workers at Pacific Street booed the We are sick and we are tired and we are angry at hacks from the AFL-CIO Strategic Approaches Commit­ attending funerals for our brothers who are killed by tee, who came into town to threaten the unionists that deliberate T.A. policy. As far as management is con­ "if you take to the streets, you're history" (Newsday, cerned, workers' lives are cheaper than adequate man­ 4 June). These bureaucratic "organizers of defeat," ning scales. They spend a fortune on unionbusting drug including Steelworkers chief Lynn Williams and the testing, "beakies" and punishment. They substitute our butcher of Hormel, UFCW's William Wynn, have sabo­ Barnard/Los Angeles Times blood for capital investment needed to repair this dilapi­ taged every strike they have touched. They are selling Janitors rally in downtown Los Angeles. dated death trap we work in. the News workers the "outside/inside game"-a no­ What is the response of our union "leaders"? Sonny strike no-win recipe of bumper stickers, consumer many minority and working people who detest the Hall ran point for the T.A. and blamed the victims boycotts of the newspaper and the Chicago Cubs brutal LAPD, strikers swept past a squad of riot cops claiming they were let "fall into bad safety habits" (The (owned by the Tribune Company), and pleading with who impotently ordered them to leave. (L.A.-area cops Chief, 18 May). Local 100 "safety sellout" director capitalists to pull their ads from the News. This is the are notorious-the county sheriff's deputies alone paid George McDonald added, "Not only do we need the same "strategy" which sank strikes from the Chicago out $3 million each of the last two years to settle brutal­ rules, we need to make sure the men follow those Tribune to Eastern Airlines. The.union tops try to keep ity cases.) This time, for once, the bosses' hired thugs rules." What bull! The bosses' rule is "do it or be workers on the job with illusions that the bureaucrats' got a small taste of labor's strength, as the union dem­ written up"! The union sell-outs' "rule" is "do it first, "friends of labor" like Dinkins in.City Hall and Cuomo onstration continued inside Century City for two hours. then grieve it" which increasingly means "die first, then in Albany will rescue the unions-even as the Demo­ SEIU organizer Stephen Lerner told the Los Angeles grieve it"-and dead men can't talk. A real union crats send out the cops to break the picket lines. Times (2 June) that despite the "isolated, very elite leadership would have brought the whole Local 100 Daily News workers-it's fight or die! Against the community," "you can't wall off poor people and people membership out to the funerals for Walsh and Nichol­ army of strikebreakers assembled by Hoge, labor must of color. We'll come here until we get justice." son and shut down the entire system in protest of the draw on its own arsenal. Stop their plans for a scab The strike began on May 31, after the 180 workers T.A.'s callous disregard for workers' lives. paper with a sit-down strike, occupying the Daily News had tried for eight months to get a contract from Inter­ The transit system will never be safe for workers or building and the Pacific Street plant and appealing to national Service Systems, a giant building maintenance riders unless workers control safety. The conditions we NY labor for support. And any high-priced columnists outfit with 14,000 workers across the country. The face on the job only reflect the decaying capitalist or reporters who plan on scabbing like Jimmy Breslin workers, mostly Latino immigrants, get a lousy $4.50 system we live under. But without us, this city and Wall did in 1978 must get the message now that picket lines per hour, with no sick payor medical benefits. One Street do not move. You .can bet if the workers ran will be militant and solid. The battle at the News must woman striker, who fled EI Salvador nine years ago, transit, we'd make it runsafe. We call on all Local 100 members to fight for elected union safety committees. in every division of the TWU. No safety, no work! ... The unity and social power of the- integrated labor movement must be brought to bear in New York City today to stop the race haters! This would also undercut the FBI informer Al Sharpton and Sonny Carson with his disgusting anti-Asian pogroms. Meanwhile the Dem­ ocrat Dinkins tries to quell the outrage over the Benson­ Angry workers hurst killers, who are literally getting away with murder, protest.outside by spewing empty liberal rhetoric and appeals for "law luxurycoodo of Daily News boss and order," whilethe NYPD has blown away a dozen .. ·~ames Hoge black men since the first of the year. Even a one-day .·Iastrnonth. strike by Local 100 would send a very clear message, taking the wind out of Sharpton and Carson and putting fear into the race terrorists. The union represents a social force that should be reckoned with, a fighting force for workers on the job and throughout this city. Let's get this union off its knees! For a fighting TWU!.

15 JUNE 1990 7 enstein emem ere Our comrade Noah Wolkenstein died April 23 by joining, he had been reading our paper very carefully his own hand. Noah was 34 years old, a member of for a couple of years. the Bay Area Spartacist League and a full member Noah never lost his interest in the Jewish question of the SL Central Committee at the time of his death. and his involvement was central to many of the arti­ For twelve years, from September 1976 to October cles on the Near East which appeared in WV over the 1988, he was a member of the composition crew of years. A comrade of the editorial staff who worked Workers Vanguard, serving as production manager closely with Noah recalled collaborating on an article of WV for many of those years. on the Warsaw Ghetto uprising: "We had found some This tragedy touches every comrade and section of material produced by Jewish Trotskyists inside the the International Communist League. Noah's hard­ Ghetto. They had on the masthead of their newspaper, driving and meticulous work and his political leader­ 'Workers of the World, Unite!' Noah devoted a lot ship expressed mainly through our press made him of time, added on to his already enormous job as a shaping force in our tendency. Our comrades in the production manager of Workers Vanguard, to Mexico City wrote to Noah's parents after the trag­ researching and translating this material which we edy: "None of us knew Noah really well, and others had only in Hebrew. The statement hailed the Red of us not at all, but we all knew him by reputation Army's struggle against Hitlerism, and as communists and his was good. We want to talk more here with from a Jewish background we both valued it highly." our new young comrades about his life and work, so those who never met him will understand our loss. The Forging of a Communist We believe that we should remember of Noah that he Department chose as his life's work the struggle for international Noah joined the Spartacus Youth League in 1975, socialist revolution and all those who worked with moved to New York and volunteered for the comp him believe he did his work exceptionally well." crew of Young Spartacus, which was at that time a publication separate from WV. The youth group, an A Witchhunted Family organizationally independent, politically subordinate Noah was a red-diaper baby. His father Ed Wol­ organization, had its own monthly press with a young kenstein edited New Foundations, the magazine of the 1955·1990 editorial staff and comp crew which was trained not Communist Party student group, the Labor Youth only by putting out its own paper under party League, from 1948 to 1952. He moved the family to supervision but through participation in Workers Van­ Buffalo, New York in November 1952 at the sugges­ ~ guard, the more frequent paper. In many respects YSp tion of the CPo Ed worked in the Bethlehem Steel was far from optimum training for a young plant in Lackawanna until he was fired after the communist, as there was a central problem with HUAC hearings in Buffalo in 1957. Noah's mother arrogant young men of the editorial staff who tended WV Photo Gloria worked in an auto factory and later as a to treat earnest young women and members of the teacher. comp crew rather badly. At the same time, the fights Labor, a Stalinist organization formed by a left split The family was witchhunted again after Ed Wol­ waged over "the party question" were in their own out of the CP and based mainly in its trade-union kenstein was subpoenaed before HUAC in April wayan important aspect of shaping a communist department and youth in New York City. Ed Wolken­ 1964. At that time, he was a member of Progressive collective in the youth. Noah showed great aptitude stein was part of the nucleus of organizing mass and responsibility in the youth comp crew from 1976 protest against HUAC in Buffalo in 1964. Gloria was onward and was named Young Spartacus comp chief also a leader for many years in the struggle to imple­ in the fall of 1977. ment the desegregation of the Buffalo public schools. In April 1979, Noah's central role in WV was Noah was always very proud of his parents for fight­ recognized when he became assistant production ""UAC- ing for their beliefs. On the wall of his office ·in manager of the party paper, thus moving into a posi­ comp, he had posted the New York Times clipping tion of great responsibility as the junior member of showing the picket line outside the courthouse from \. 1964. The Times story recounts how Gloria caused a commotion in the hearings by shouting encourage­ ment to her husband during his testimony. It doesn't tell how the U.S. marshals tried to drag her from the courtroom as Ed and the children struggled to stop the men who were molesting her. Noah, the youngest child, was eight years old at the time. So Noah's home was imbued from the earliest with pro-socialist values and an activist conscience. His parents also set great store on giving their kids a sense of Jewish identity. Noah, after graduating from high school, went to Israel for over a year in 1973-74, attending Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He evi­ dently went to Israel as someone sympathetic to the left-Zionist kibbutznik currents, and his experience there was a bitter disappointment which left him repulsed by anti-Arab racism and Israeli militarism. As one comrade wrote at the time of Noah's death, "He was an internationalist who hated and despised the Zionist oppressors who would engulf the world in flames for their 'right' to lord it over the Palestin­ ian people. He was an internationalist who gave no quarter to the Arab nationalists." Returning to the U.S., Noah continued college, where he came inte renewed contact with the Sparta­ cist League; he had some familiarity with us because his sister Rachel was involved with the Buffalo Marxist Caucus which fused with the SL's youth group in 1972. Although by the time Noah joined UPI/Bettmann WV Photo Picketing the HUAC hearings in Buffalo, 1964: the party both Rachel and their brother Seth were At SL protest against opening of anti­ Noah carries sign "Our Parents Are Good! Leave members, Noah recruited himself to the SL's revo­ Communist Solidarnosc office in New Them Alone!"; at front ishis brother Seth; behind lutionary Trotskyist politics on his own timetable­ York, September 1981. Noah is their sister Naomi. at the time that he came around us with a view to

8 WORKERS VANGUARD ~:;,.; ~ WV Photo At left, some of Noah's work: 1985 WVarticle on the revolutionary German Spartacists Li~bknecht and Luxemburg used display of paintings by artist Fritz Brosius (top); front cover, Black History and the Class Struggle pamphlet No.1, 1983 (left); front page of Spartacist No. 41-42, Winter 1987-88. Right: Noah-in the comp room with other members of the WVeditorial board in 1981. a two-comrade team heading the department which whereby the work of executing an idea is seen as WV in 1971 and shortly thereafter we had purchased a perhaps more than any other gives the party's deliber­ unrelated to, and inferior to, "political" work like not too expensive typesetting system which we then ations and decisions voice and impact on the world. writing articles or making speeches. ran until it was certainly the only still operating The partnership between Noah and comrade Darlene Noah made himself indispensable in centralizing equipment of that sort in the world. Noah devised a Kamiura helped give Noah the confidence to take the whole publishing program of the American orga­ system which enabled us to keep producing the news­ over as WV production manager in his own right in nization, driving forward and balancing the sometimes paper using parts of the old equipment (acquiring a March 1983, when Darlene took over the running of conflicting priorities of every kind of publication, not substantial stock of pieces over the years as compa­ other party work. only WV but everything else from pamphlets to nies replaced their machines with new systems) while In his years in comp, Noah and the party estab­ posters and leaflets to internal bulletins. He took replacing our old paper-tape keyboards with personal lished norms and values that are crucial in under­ especial pride in his work as production manager of computers. He and the comp crew kept this antiquated standing how the central office of a communist orga­ Spartacist, our journal published in four languages system operating in the face of constant breakdowns nization should function. The newspaper is a vital and under the supervision of the International Executive until 1989. central task of any communist propaganda group. WV Committee of our tendency. In addition to all this As we struggled to find the money for the inevita­ as our tendency's most frequent paper is necessarily work carried out in our center, Noah took heavy ble major equipment purchase, Noah fought to pene­ a hotbed of debate and often controversy, frequently responsibility for the press of overseas sections, trate the new technology of computer typesetting. involving not only comrades of the SLiU.S. but others sometimes making trips in between WV productions Having begun his tenure as comp chief with no of the ICL involved in preparing (not to mention to Toronto or Paris to directly train comrades in particular knowledge of computer technology, he reprinting) some of the articles. To be a member of production skills and party norms. suffered through the voluminous literature and all the the comp crew means a lot of very demanding and Noah spent several years being desperately con­ trade shows and in consultation with other comrades meticulous work at high speed, an involvement in the cerned with the problem of production equipment. authored an equipment proposal which was adopted. formal and informal discussions of the line and tone At the beginning, his work involved keeping our old In the early fall of 1988 Noah asked to be relieved and layout of articles, and the satisfaction of seeing machines going past their time, as we lacked both the of the job of comp chief, but he took responsibility one's work immediately impact the world outside. money and the expertise necessary to replace them. for seeing the equipment question through. It was But because of the intense pace, the demands on the The Spartacist League had undertaken publication of continued on page 10 crew, the political debates going on all around and the importance of the work, the production depart­ ment requires a strong political leadership. Although in our party the comp chief of a publica­ tion has always been a full member of the Editorial Board entitled to a substantial say in the paper's deliberations, it was not until Noah took over the task that the comp chief became a central political leader of our press. Noah had a political overview of the way the department should be run and in particular the relationship bet~een editorial and camp; he implemented that overview and in so doing redefined the job of comp chief. He came to be a strong force of cohesion between the paper and all the other departments and functions of the national center. Noah collaborated closely with the editors in shap­ ing the paper and fought hard with them when he thought it necessary. In internal party struggles, Noah was incisive, logical and devastatingly articulate. To redress the imbalance and tension between the edito­ On a vacation in rial and composition sides of press production, for a the Soviet Union, period of time Noah was placed in overall charge of Noah in front of WV. the cruiser What made Noah superb in leading our press pro­ Aurora whose duction was that he combined technical, administra­ shots on the Winter Palace tive and political capacity at the highest level. He signaled the trained comrades not only in the concrete skills of 1917 Octobel' paper production, where he set the highest standards Revolution. of careful professionalism, and not only in under­ standing how to use layout, headlines, photos to achieve political clarity and impact. He worked above all to imbue in the comrades of comp an understand­ ing of the politics expressed through the paper and of the importance of their work in bringing the party's program forcefully to the consideration of readers and potential supporters. At many levels he combated our society's denigration of skilled labor,

15 JUNE 1990 9 Washington,_ D.C., November 27

For Labor/Black Mobilization AgainstRacist Terrorl --~;...,~---~~ ..,-_._---

WV Photo Visually striking poster helped galvanize mass mobilization of 5,000 militants, mainly black unionists and youth, which stopped the KKK from marching in Washington, 27 November 1982.

workers states, the prospect of a reunified capitalist Noah Fourth Reich in Germany and the danger of world nuclear conflagration-these things Noah felt deeply. It is impossible for anyone to say what Remembered ... were the political components to the pain which (continued from page 9) led our comrade Noah to take his own life. In his farewell letters to his parents and his sister and not a surprise to him when this grew into staying comrade Rachel, he wrote "Except for some short­ in New York an additional year, working with the lived periods my personal life has been over­ new comp chief and getting the equipment in and whelmed by despair and a tremendous pessimism" running. Even after he transferred to California and noted that "The organization has been what has Noah was in frequent fax communication with given me purpose, peace and satisfaction-but it the center to help with decisions and problems isn't enough." involved with the new equipment. Noah was a shy man who held himself aloof The advent of the new technology also prompted from close personal ties. He had very exacting a new round of collaboration with the comp chiefs standards for everyone, but most strongly for of other ICL sections: Most recently prior to his himself. He was intolerant of sloppiness and death, Noah spent many weeks in Berlin helping ignorance in all their forms. He was a high to set up the new systems needed to cope with the achiever in virtually everything he did in his life vast increase in the publishing work of the German although this was not adequately reflected in the section. A leader of the section there has noted: way he saw himself. He possessed a biting, ironical "Noah's impact here went far beyond developing wit and didn't mind' being described as "the a technical infrastructure and setting up the world's youngest curmudgeon," but whenever production of our newspaper. He saw too clearly things got tough and the pressure was really on, he the problems of our section. It is no surprise to brought good humor to the fore. He was drawn to anyone who knew him that in his work here he attractive, sometimes difficult, women, which acted in every way as a Bolshevik. He took up the placed some limits on the aloofness he imposed fight for the leadership to take collective respon­ upon himself. Although many of his comrades sibility, for example on financial questions. He " '11IPf " liked him enormously, he did not allow people to also took special interest in the comrades from WV Photo get close to him. Nonetheless he spent many hours the DDR and argued for the training and education On the subway coming back from a listening to the problems of members of his they require to become party cadres. In both cases Nicaragua demonstration, June 1979. department, because he considered this part of these fights were prescient of the tasks we now his job and because he really cared about the confront." comrades. After being supportive to some comp Those who care less about people than Noah did, comrade raging or weeping about their lover or We Honor Noah by and those who buy the rulers' racist and anti­ their parents or their financial problems, he would Carrying Forward His Work working-class lies, accepting the idea that some emerge from his little office looking wrung out Our ideological enemies, the bourgeoisie, would people are not really worthy of all the good things and complaining that "I can't stand personal like to paint communists as malcontented indi­ that everyone wants, need not feel much for the 'stuff," but many of the people he cared most viduals who seek a target for their anger in the victims of the capitalist social pathology of today, about in the world were indeed those comrades existing social system. But we know that the but communists do. The visible immiseration of the who had shared their troubles with him. connection goes the other way. Whatever personal­ working people, the overt intensification of the Noah's final personal letters indicate that he griefs our comrade had that led him to such incom­ brutal racism of American society, the dramatic made his terrible decision after serious consid­ prehensible' personal desperation, he was also collapse of Stalinism through the exacerbation of eration over a lengthy period. He seems to have deeply sensitive to the needless pain inflicted on its internal contradictions which now threaten to undertaken an orderly process of extricating him­ the most vulnerable sectors of capitalist society. reverse the remaining social gains in the deformed self from the central responsibilities through which he had made himself indispensable over the years. Noah's suicide has been very difficult for his party comrades to deal with. Beyond the terrible tragedy of the death of a young and very gifted person, we must come to grips with the loss of someone who was very much part of our central core of cadre, and who we looked upon with great pride and great expectations for the future leadership of our move­ ment. We must not allow the shock of his death to diminish the recognition of his achievements. Rather, we must redouble our dedication to the struggle for the communist goals Noah deeply Noah (right) in believed in, for it is only through the triumph of Berlin this March to set up paper the socialist program on this planet that his work production for and contributions to our tendency will go beyond Sparfakist/ being admirable in their own right, and will Arbelterpresse­ become -itnportarnin. helping to shape the future korrespondenz, history of mankind. . during the " _,_ In remembranfe of ourcomrade Noah, the Wol­ tumultuous kenstei~{a_mily ?~s asked.that,a,memorial fund be events in establiShedro.honorNm anlihis contributions to the DDR. 9~rpaitya!1dtoassist. in our continuing work. Pte~en.tJ~,.ul)ge~discussioJlin the party are some . idea~.f()~Jlnderta:kin~s?m~

10 WORKERS VANGUARD Save Mumia private conduct is not to the liking of the religious right. It is barbaric that poe Protests Exclusion of Gays the government today invokes the Abu-Jamal! ... McCarran-Walter Act's police-state (continued from page 16) The Partisan Defense Committee has exclusion or border patrols. There is exclusion of "sexual deviants" to im­ sent the following letter protesting the no rational medical basis for exclu­ arbitrary cruelty of this ultimate form of pede those who seek an end to the U.S. government's announced intention sion from society of people who either state terror, but also the inherent racism devastation of AIDS. And hypocritical to bar homosexuals from entering the test HIV positive Or who have AIDS. ofits application. He's on death row spe­ besides: nobody questions the degrees country to take part in the international Like the racist U.S. policy banning cifically because as a Black Panther and of consanguinity between spouses in AIDS conference scheduled to begin in Haitians from donating blood as pos­ prominent journalist he spoke out against European royalfamilies who come to San Francisco on June 20. sible "AIDS carriers," its only purpose racist state repression." Jamal's wife be feted at the White House. is to further stigmatize the victims Wadiya will be speaking in New York We demand an end to the racist and of bigoted and racist government ne­ and Philadelphia to "ask people to con­ 11 June 1990 anti-homosexual McCarran-Walter Act glect. The government's ferocious tinue to. support Mumia, because his Director, Immigration and and disease exclusion of immigrants across-the-board assault on the civil struggles are truly our own. If people Naturalization Service and visitors as cruel and unnecessary. rights and living standards of working think it can't happen to them, they are Washington, D.C. Quality health care for all is both people has fueled the rise of murderous living life blindly." objectively possible and desperately Dear Mr. Director: attacks on homosexuals and minori­ Jamal was framed on charges ofkilling necessary, but not within the framework ties. The paltry sums allotted to AIDS a Philadelphia policeman in 1981. On The Partisan Defense Committee of a system which breeds sexual and research amounts to genocide for hun­ February I the Pennsylvania Supreme strongly protests the INS' exclusion of racial hatred to justify the exploitation dreds of thousands of AIDS victims, Court denied Jamal's petition to re­ people who test positive for HIV virus and brutal oppression of the vast most of whom will be poor and black argue his appeal. As Pennsylvania State and its reactionary threat to exclude majority. or Hispanic. Representative David Richardson said, homosexuals attending the 6th Interna­ "Mumia's trial was a farce .... It was tional Conference on AIDS. Government has no business regu­ Very truly yours, clear, to anyone whose eyes are open The terrible medical problem of lating consensual sexual activity. Yet Paul Cooperstein to racism, that Mumia had been framed AIDS cannot be solved by national it increasingly punishes those whose Partisan Defense Committee for his political beliefs.... An innocent man has been sentenced to die." Last Their participation recognizes the link Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty Interna­ to Canada-have signed petitions and month Jamal's attorney Marilyn Gelb between the death penalty, a central tional, and the National Coalition Against sent letters to Pennsylvania Governor filed for review by the U.S. Supreme part of the war on black America, and the Death Penalty will also speak out to Robert Casey, demanding Jamal not be Court. attacks on the labor movement for the save Jamal's life. executed. Among them are California Jamal was president of the Philadel­ past decade." Protests will begin in Paris on June 29. Congressman Ron Dellums; actor Edward phia chapter of the Association of Black Across the country elected officials are In Germany, rallies will be held at the Asner; Operation PUSH, Chicago; South Journalists, arid a prominent supporter of beginning to come forward. New York U.S. consulate in Hamburg and the em­ African poet Dennis Brutus; former At­ the MOVE organization. He was known State Assemblyman Roger Green and bassy in Berlin, DDR (East Germany) on torney General Ramsey Clark; and Rev. as "the voice of the voiceless" for his Chicago Alderman Danny Davis and July 3. The next day Jamal supporters in Joseph Lowery, SCLC. Former DDR radio interviews which presented the Pennsylvania State Representative David Toronto will demonstrate outside the Prime Minister Hans Modrow has en­ points of view of blacks, Puerto Ricans, Richardson, from Jamal's hometown American consulate on July 4. The Lon­ dorsed the rallies in Germany. Unions the elderly, poor and other minority Philadelphia, will speak at rallies to don rally on July 6 will take place in the representing tens of thousands more are groups. From the depths of death row protest the racist sentence of death. Offi­ black community of Brixton, scene of a on record for Jamal, including ILWU Jamal continues to speak out for them in cers from the NAACP Legal Defense vicious cop riot five years ago. Local 6, San Francisco Bay Area; ATU columns appearing in newspapers around Fund, Operation PUSH, the Chicago Over 16,000 people around the world Local 308, Chicago; ILA Local 1414, the country, including the Nation, Phila­ Conference ofBlack Lawyers, American -from Australia to France, from Poland Savannah, Georgia; and CWA Local delphia Tribune, Atlanta Inquirer, Chica­ 4309, Cleveland. go Defender, Workers Vanguard, New The protests mark the anniversary of York's New American,San Francisco's Jamal's sentencing on 3 July 1982 and Sun Reporter, and Greene County Demo­ the restoration of capital punishment. crat (Alabama). "The Supreme Court's contribution to the The rallies will bring together politi­ 1976 bicentennial celebrations was the cally diverse forces with a shared hatred reinstitution of the death penalty in the for the racism and cruelty of the death case of Gregg v. Georgia on July 2, penalty. Speakers will include officials 1976," said Wolkenstein. "We call on all from Transport Workers Union Local death penalty abolitionists to come out 100, Social Service Employees Union and join the fight to save Jamal. With his Local 371, the Amalgamated Transit - pen and voice he's fought for so many. Union, International Brotherhood of It's our time to fight for him." For more Teamsters Local 808, International Long­ information contact the Partisan Defense shoremen's and Warehousemen's Union Committee. Local 6 and Local 10, and in Toronto officials from the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, Hotel Employees and We want to make it very clear that the Restaurant Employees Local 75, United views expressed in the above article Transportation Union Local 43, and Tele­ submitted by the Partisan Defense communications Workers Union Local l, Committee, and elsewhere in Workers "That organized labor is coming forward Vanguard, do not necessarily represent is most important," said PDC Labor AG1PA-PRESS the views ofother endorsers and speakers Coordinator Gene Herson. "Labor has the At protest in Bremen, West Germany last November, banners say: "Abolish working together to save Jamal and abol­ clout to stop the assembly line of death. the Racist Death Penalty in the USA" and "Freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal." ish the racist death penalty.

.program you call for a "universal end World War I and the Russian Revolution. clear annihilation, and who are looking Reply to to the arms race..." and to "Dissolve Therefore it is our opinion that your for a program of revolutionary struggle NATO and all other military pacts," election program does not offer a way against it. (emphasis added). You thereby equate forward for young workers and students Fraternally, FSP... the Warsaw Pact with the imperialist who have come to hate the capitalist Al Nelson (continued from page 2) NATO, and the military steps taken by system, its racism and its threat of nu- Bay Area Spartacist League revolutions against the crumbling Stalin­ the USSR, nuclear and conventional, to ist bureaucracies to establish workers defend itself, with counterrevolutionary rule through workers and soldiers coun­ imperialist aggression, which dates cils, as in October 1917. This is the back to the October Revolution itself. program being actively foughtfor in East The vague "anti-Stalinism" turns out Germany by our German section, the to be "third camp" social democratic Spartakist Workers Party of Germany. anti-Sovietism. Marxist Working-Class ·Biweekly of the Spartacist League Particularly in the United States, where You call to "Abolish the CIA" and to anti-communism and racism in the work­ "End all support to repressive...merce­ 0$7/24 issues of Workers Vanguard o $3/3 issues of ing class are the principal ideological nary forces like the Contras." Bur this is (includes English-language Spartacist) Women and Revolution obstacles to class consciousness, it is contradicted by the FSP's previous sup­ o New 0 Renewal o $2/10 introductory issues important to be very clear on "the Rus­ port to Brooklyn Rivera, the leader of International rates: $25/24 issues-Airmail $7/24 issues-Seamail of Workers Vanguard sian question." But beyond being against Miskito Indian contras, who according to (includes English-language Stalinism and for socialist democracy, Rivera himself were armed and paid by 0$2/4 issues of Spartacist (edici6n en espanot) Spartacist) the statements of your camiidate seem the CIA to be an "Eastern front" against Name -'- _ intentionally vague. Besides one charac­ the Sandiiiistas. terization that ttteEast European coun­ Mainly, you seem to think that capital­ Address _ tries"...were a degraded form of work­ ism can be "transformed" by reforming ______Apt. # Phone (_) _ er's governments" (Golden Gater, April the tax structure and "redistributing" cor­ 19, 1990), you give no indication of the porate profits. In this sense your Cam­ City ...:..- State Zip _ class nature of these states and where paign is reminiscent of the electoralist 504 you stand on defense of their collectiv­ "municipal socialism" of the right wing Make checks payable/mall to: Spartaclst Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 ized property forms. However in your - of American social democracy prior to 15 JUNE 1990 11 South' African CP Leader Joe Siovo: From "Uncle Joe" Stalin to G,orby

Joe .Slovo, general chairman of the "showing its essentially [!] human face," foursquare for a "political settlement" Certainly it would be unfair to accuse South African Communist Party, returned But unlike Gorbachev he still holds "the with the apartheid state. Where was him of such "preoccupations" as he hob­ home in April from decades of exile, class struggle is the motor of human "working class internationalism" when nobs with the top exploiters of South During those years his wife and comrade, history," and criticizes the CPs' "unilat­ Soviet deputy foreign minister Anatoly Africa. We can't see Siovo chatting with Ruth First, was murdered in 1982 in eral ideological disarmament" in the face Adamishin flew over the Witwatersrand Prime Minister de Klerk and "Law and Mozambique by a letter bomb sent by a of the capitalist ideologues' offensive. in a helicopter with South African for- Order" Minister Coetzee about the dicta­ South African assassination squad. A torship of the proletariat. Indeed, Slovo week after his return, Siovo accompanied writes: "On reflection, the choice of the African National Congress leader Nelson word 'dictatorship' to describe this type Mandela, himself just released after 27 of society certainly opens the way to years in apartheid prisons, at the first­ ambiguities and distortions," Like bour­ ever ANC negotiations with the white­ geois ideologues, he equates the Marxist supremacist Pretoria government in May. term for the rule of the working class Now Slovo's pamphlet, Has Socialism with the Stalinist bureaucratic regime. Failed"; has become a hot item, a topic And his purpose is to reject the program of discussion in meetings of disintegrate of socialist revolution, replacing it with ing Communist parties from Chicago to "democracy" and a "mixed economy"­ Toronto and London. i.e., capitalism. But this is not Gor­ Amid the terminal crisis of Stalinism, bachevite "new thinking." The SACP CPers are clinging to Slovos pamphlet renounced the struggle for socialism as a drowning man grasps at straws. Joe Siovo (left), decades ago ... under Stalin. As leaders of collapsing East European returning after Today Slovo & Co. imagine them­ regimes seek refuge in the Second Inter­ decades of exile, selves negotiating a "post-apartheid national, here is a party leader who still with Nelson state" with de Klerk, Coetzee and the rest calls himself a Communist. And unlike Mandela at of the capitalist ruling class. So while Brezhnev-era dinosaurs like the CPU SA's political rally in Anglo American publishes ads showing Gus Hall, Slovo is a Gorbachev man all South Africa. black miners as "shareholders," the the way. Moreover, while Communist SACP chairman talks of "reorganising parties from Europe to North America social life" so that "the producers... have are in the throes of demoralization and a real say not only in the production of outright liquidation, the SACP is at the social wealth but also in its disposal," height of its popularity. and assures Jo'burg corporate executives That the SACP's stock has gone up he does not foresee "the premature aban­ has nothing to do with any change in its donment of any role for market forces," program, which remains as wretchedly The appeal is to those CPers who eign minister "Pik" Botha, with whom etc. But while Siovo talks of "real de­ reformist as ever, at most calling for don't just want to throw in the towel. But he worked out in secret negotiations mocracy in the post-apartheid state," the bourgeois democracy. In an interview to justify all the years when he followed the withdrawal of Cuban troops from young comrades in the townships and the with the London Independent (4 Novem­ "Uncle Joe" Stalin's every twist and turn, Angola? workers in the mines and factories are ber 1988), cited by the South African flying the red banner of communism and Siovo pens some patently self-serving And while Siovo comes to the defense Marxist intellectual Baruch Hirson, Siovo looking for revolution now! "self-criticism," like it is "now becoming of "Marxist theory," he hastens to add declares: "We are engaged in a struggle In South Africa, with its combative clear that the virtual destruction of the that "this is not to say that every word of in which socialism is not on the immedi­ millions-strong proletariat, the brutally command personnel of the Red Army, Marx, Engels and Lenin must be taken as ate agenda or should be a criteria of par­ oppressed black, coloured and Indian the lack of effective preparation against gospe!.. .." Which words exactly does he ticipation in the struggle. For some while population battling against overwhelming Hitler's onslaught and Stalin's dictatorial have in mind? Well now, it seems that after apartheid falls there will be a mixed force, where numerous white students and damaging interventions in the con­ "The concept of the 'Dictatorship of the economy.... There is no pole-vault into embrace revolutionary struggle and even duct of the war could have cost the Proletariat' was dealt with rather thinly socialism." some groups of white workers make Soviet Union its victory." Now becoming by Marx as 'a transition to a classless In the context of the apartheid police common cause with the black unions, the clear?! In a similar vein, Slovo writes society'," dixit Joe Siovo. The Paris state, even white liberals found in the SACP's commitment to the maintenance that "we kept silent for too long after the Commune, which Marx and Engels saw Communist Party the only organized ofcapitalism is a betrayal of monumental 1956 Khrushchev revelations." as exemplifying this rule of the working vehicle to struggle against racism and for proportions. Trotsky's program of perma­ Baruch Hirson bitterly commented last class, is dismissed as "an exceptional basic democratic rights. It was the only nent revolution explains that in the age year on the SACP leader's belated dis­ social experience." And Lenin's elabora­ sizable racially integrated party in South of imperialism bourgeois democratic covery of Stalinism. "Slovo had heard tion of the concept of the dictatorship of Africa, including not only blacks and tasks cannot be fulfilled without socialist these accounts of Stalin's crimes over the proletariat in 19I7 is explained as whites but also Indians and coloureds revolution. In South Africa, even "one many decades: was he deaf, or did he (mixed-race). At his 1964 trial under the due to other special circumstances: lack a sense of morality? He heard them man, one vote" can be achieved only by Suppression of Communism Act-Nelson "Understandably, the dominant preoccu­ smashing the white-supremacist state from Trotskyists in Johannesburg in pation at the time was with the seizureof Mandela pointed out: I943, he knew them when he read about power, its protection in the face of the through an uprising of the oppressed "For manydecadei communistswere the the condemnation and rehabilitation of expected counter-revolutionary assault, black, centrally proletarian masses. only political group in South Africa the creation of'democracy for the major­ Black miners laboring in barbed-wire who were prepared to treat Africans as the Jewish doctors, in the USSR..." ity' and the 'suppression of the minority human beings and their equals.. .. Be­ ("Thieves in the Thieves' Kitchen," compounds will be won to this program of exploiters'." of workers revolution, not to Joe Slovo's cause of this, there are many Africans Searchlight South Africa, July 1989). For Joe Slovo, that was then, and this nostrums of "power sharing" with their who, today, tend to equate freedom with More than avoiding a painful re­ communism." is now. "enlightened" exploiters.• -quoted in Mary Benson, examination of history, Slovo seeks to Nelson Mandela: The Man avoid renouncing Stalinism's reformist and the Movement (1986) perversion of Leninism or analyzing its The black African masses also equate social roots. Thus Stalinism is defined as communism with a thoroughgoing social a "bureaucratic-authoritarian style of revolution, with ripping South Africa's leadership," and "socialism without de­ wealth out of the hands of the Randlords mocracy." If Stalinism is simply over­ who have so cruelly superexploited them bearing centralism, therefore one does for over a century. not have to analyze the material bases for But they will not find the road to the rise of a conservative, nationalist liberation in Joe Slovos pamphlet, or in bureaucracy in the USSR, and the pro­ the party which for decades has sought gram it generated: "socialism in one "power sharing" with the "enlightened" country" for Russia and "two-stage revo­ slavemasters like Anglo American in a lution"-i.e., no socialism-elsewhere. "post-apartheid" (capitalist) South Africa. Siovo mouths platitudes about "work­ In Has Socialism Failed? Siovo glibly ing class internationalism" being "one of remarks, "Socialism certainly produced the most liberating concepts in Marxism" a Stalin and a Ceausescu, but it also which "needs to find effective expression produced a Lenin and a Gorbachev." Oh in the new world conditions." This rings well, the reader is to conclude, two pretty hollow in the face of Moscow's out of four-not all bad. And his tract world-historic betrayal of East Germany admits, rightly enough, "The Fault Lies to a Fourth Reich, as well as its aban­ with us, not with Socialism." Siovo em­ donment of Afghanistan, Nicaragua and Gubb/JB Pictures braces "the processes of perestroika and­ Angola, to say nothing of Kremlin arm­ For South Africa's oppressed black masses, the red flag of communism is a glasnost" as socialism's only hope of twisting to get the ANC to come out symbol of the fight for freedom and social equality. . 12 WORKERS VANGUARD International anti-apartheid campaigns have cost the Pretoria regime badly needed trade dollars, billions of rands (S. African dollars) lost by spreading eco­ nomic sanctions. In this light, the actions of de Klerk, the regime's president, take on an intelligible aura. To free one "k affir," the government reasons, is a cheap price to pay to restore South Africa's grossly From Darkness exploitative economy. Already, de Klerk's P.R. cam­ paign has borne fruit with a new air of acceptance hovering over the world's image of Pretoria, although life for the average African there is still more Into Light nightmare than promise. . Ghanian sage Kwame Nkrumah once opined that Mandela: Amandla! (Power!) birthed there, really be changing? "capitalism is but the gentlemen's form of slavery." Crowd of Supporters: Ngawethu! (It is ours!) The answer did not take long in coming. Is apartheid capitalism, which exploits Black labor Mandela: Amandla! Days before the African National Congress leader power to undergird the racist regime, the ruffian's Crowd: Ngawethu! was freed, Mandela's daughter's mate, Clayton Sizwe form of slavery? Mandela: i-Afrika! (Africa!) Sithole, was found hung in the notorious John Vorster Yes, Mandela is free, and that is a glorious thing­ Crowd: Mayibuye! (Let it come back!) Square police station in Johannesburg. but the revolution must continue for all Africans to Mandela: Mayibuye! Sithole, the father of Mandela's grandson, was a share the sweet taste of freedom! Amandla! On the Crowd: i-Afrika! member of the Umkhonto we Sizwe, or Spear of the MOVE! -Prelude to Mandela's speech in S. Africa, Nation, the ANC military wing of which Mandela, 12 May 1990 Feb. 11,1990 decades ago, was a founder and commander. The extraordinary spectacle of South Africa's most Like the police killing of rising Black activist, renowned political prisoner, Nelson R. Mandela, Steve Biko, in custody, this too was pegged "an emerging from the dark confines of prisoa into the accident," or "a suicide." Mumia Abu-Jamal, a Philadelphia black journal­ warm South African sunlight marked a magic moment But for the Mandelas and the Sitholes, gladness was ist, is on death row at Pennsylvania's Huntingdon for Africans around the globe. leavened with painful tragedy. Sithole was 22. state prison. Framed up because of his political The frenzied toi-toi was danced by South Africans, Days after Mandela's walk to freedom, Afrikaner views, Mumia faces death for his defiance of the both at home, and in exile, a dance of sheer joy at the police opened fire on an African protest in Seboking, racist, capitalist order. His columns appear periodi- falling of the last shackles of dubious legality, in a leaving Black death in the double digits. .cally in Workers Vanguard and other newspapers. spiritual-sunburst of loving welcome at the long-gone The South Africa, then, of the massacres at Sharpe­ To get involved in the fight to save Mumia father, brother, comrade who has finally come home. ville and Langa (Uitenhage) remains a daily cruel Abu-Jamal and abolish the death penalty, contact Many Black men and women wept with heartfelt reality. the Partisan Defense Committee, P.O. Box 99, joy at his coming. Why then did this racist apartheid state take the Canal Street Station, New York, NY 10013. If Could South Africa, the hellish spawn of every extraordinary step to free an internationally acclaimed you wish to correspond with Mumia, you can Black nightmare, that earthly inferno of overt op­ critic and political prisoner? The answer lies deeper­ write to: Mumia Abu-Jamal, AM8335, Drawer R, pression on all Black life unlucky enough to be not in the South African heart, but in its wallet! Huntingdon, PA 16652.

trekker Monument in Pretoria. South Africa... Welkom is one of the premier mines (continued from page 1) of the Anglo American Corporation, which owns 70 percent of the country's Since then, revolt has spread through the mining capital and has been known for rural bantustans, urban townships have its "far-sighted" approach to South Afri­ exploded with protest and a strike wave can capitalism. The company recently ran continues (the government calculates that a full-page ad in the London Financial the number of workdays lost to strikes in Times to ask "Do We Sometimes Wish the first quarter of 1990 is four times that We Hadn't Fought To Have Black Trade Nelson Mandela of the same period last year). Unions Recognised?" "Life has not (left) seeks Nowhere is this spirit more evident to negotiate always been easy since then," they sigh than in Welkom, Transvaal, a gold min­ "power-sharing" with paternalism worthy of a latter-day ing town 150 miles southwest of Johan­ deal with Cecil Rhodes, particularly when "our nesburg. The Welkom mine produces South Africa's gold and coal mines" are struck. But they 27 percent of South Africa's gold, and biggest mining sought to bring in unions "for very sound both the mine and the town are owned and industrial commercial, as well as moral, reasons." by the so-called "progressive" capitalists magnate, Anglo American's commercial interests of Anglo American Corporation. About Gavin Reily. were clear: to set up a collaborationist 58,000 well-off whites live in comfort­ labor bureaucracy to prevent an outbreak able neighborhoods with manicured of revolutionary worker agitation. lawns. Thousands of desperately poor Part of this strategy has been Anglo's black miners are jammed 21 to a room attempts to co-opt the NUM, not least in the Saint Helena Mine hostel, and on with its "employees shareholding" in a the other side of town 138,000 blacks joint fund. This draws the union into live in shanties along dirt vroads in ers were stabbed to death. Scores of eral Jay Naidoo, arrived in Welkom direct collaboration with finance capital. Thabong township. Last month, tensions blacks were arrested. On Sunday, May and issued a conciliatory statement over The ad explains that these "verligte" (en­ in Welkom reached the flash point. 20, there was a protest meeting in the the "regrettable" stabbing. But at funer­ lightened) tycoons understand there will It began with the ANC leader's release black township ofThabong. About 1,000 als for the white managers there was a be no class peace until blacks have polit­ last February. "As soon as they showed miners and 500 youth formed a proces­ column of vehicles adorned with the ical rights. Anglo chairman Gavin ReIly Mandela on the TV, then this started," sion after the meeting and attempted to swastika-like flag of the neo-Nazi Afri­ (since retired) was the leading capitalist one white shaft steward complained. march into Welkom. Police opened fire kaner Resistance Movement (AWB). to venture to Lusaka for "secret" talks The black miners began to wear ANC on the procession, killing 11 blacks and Such paramilitary and fascistic groups with the ANC, which led to two years of 'l-shirts, militant slogans were found injuring 90. have been growing, in reaction to de "negotiations" and the freeing of Man­ scrawled on tunnel walls. They particu­ South Africa's two most prominent Klerk's talk of "power sharing" with the dela. Now once again, Anglo and ReIly larly objected to the segregated changing leaders of black unions, National Union ANC. On May 26, Conservative Party are trying to mold the shape of a "post­ rooms and the preference given to whites of Miners (NUM) president Cyril Rama­ leader Treuernicht gathered more than apartheid South Africa," orchestrating in the process of "hoisting." This meant phosa and Congress of South African 50,000 right-wingers and neo-Nazis from a late May meeting at Johannesburg's whites were the last to go down and Trade Unions (COSATU) secretary gen- the AWB for a racist rally at the Voor- continued on page 14 first to come up, spending two to three hours less underground. As black work­ ers began to organize, the far right in Welkom formed vigilante groups or­ ganized by the Blanke Veiligheidswag (White Security Guard). This fascistic outfit began "night patrols" on the streets of Welkom that meant carrying out at­ tacks on black pedestrians. White fascist On May 16, 31 black miners were paramilitary forces dismissed by Anglo American for "dis­ arming against any democratic obeying rules," such as by wearing ANC concessions to the garb. That afternoon, the fired black black majority. miners and a few of their union brothers approached company officials outside Shaft Number One. White security cops opened fire with rubber bullets and a 9mm pistol, wounding 18. In the clash' which followed, two white mine manag- 15 JUNE 1990 13 sanctions campaign now lies with world South Africa.;.. financial capital." He notes that at the (continued from page 13) height of the 1985 township revolt, U.S. financial capital-following the lead of Carlton Hotel of 350 leading bankers and Chase Manhattan Bank-imposed finan­ industrialists with a high-level delegation cial sanctions on South Africa, blocking from the African National Congress. new credits and demanding repayment of At his first press conference after back loans. Since 1985 some $15 billion being released, Mandela caused conster­ in foreign debt was repaid by South nation in corporate boardrooms by re­ Africa, while another $10 billion left the affirming the ANC's call (in its 1955 country in capital flight. He observes: Freedom Charter) for nationalization of "The action of the banks in July-August South Africa's mines and redistribution 1985, setting in motion the sole effective of the wealth. But in a.joint news confer­ process of economic sanctions so far, was a measure by capital in its own defence ence with Gavin ReIly at the Carlton, against a future threatened loss .... What Mandela backed off from this pledge: the banks require are political changes in "I would like to share a secret with you. South Africa that can assure them of The view that the only words in the eco­ future safety for their investments, and a nomic vocabulary that the ANC knows safe field for future investment." are nationalisation and redistribution is Trewhela notes that the present sanc­ mistaken. The ANC has no blueprint that decrees that these or other assets will be tions policy was designed by state tech­ nationalised, or that such nationalisation nocrats of imperialist countries (notably would take this or the other form." Canada and Australia, the number three -London Independent, 24 May and four gold producers in the world after While Mandela was appealing for "co­ South Africa and the USSR). They were operation of the corporate sector," ReIly approved by meetings last year of the said they agreed on a "mixed economy," Commonwealth foreign ministers in Can­ and that "one shouldn't jump about and berra and Commonwealth heads of gov­ get frightened just because people see the ernment at Kuala Lumpur, and endorsed word 'nationalisation'." For his part, Joe by the ANC, the Pan Africanist Congress Siovo of the South African Communist and a delegation of COSATU headed Party has been quoted as saying that by Metalworkers union leader Moses redistribution of wealth does not mean Mayekiso, "formerly a leader of the left "sectors of the economy would have to Campbell/Sygma wing of the unions." By looking to the be nationalised." Superexploited black gold miners are key to producing the wealth of the banks as liberators, the ANC and its apartheid state. Black workers must fight for their own class power. various allies and satellites are playing Imperialist Sanctions: withdrawing productive assets it was to straight into the hands of the Interna­ Who Do They Serve? The following year the Chemical Work­ protect their profits and, except when a ers Industrial Union demanded that 41 tional Monetary Fund and the drive to Mandela is using his tours of West revolutionary overthrow is directly posed, foreign-controlled companies negotiate "mass pauperization" of the Third World: Europe and the U.S. to appeal to the this would serve to weaken the black so that divestment not be at the workers' "The convergence of real practical bank sanctions and the agitation of the ANC imperialist chiefs to maintain "sanctions" unions, the organizational embodiment of expense. And last year, the CWIU struck for financial sanctions marks its co­ against South Africa. "Sanctions must the proletarian power that can bring nine Mobil Oil installations against plans option into the political operations of continue to be applied until the whole down apartheid capitalism. "So divest­ to "divest" by selling out to the South world capital. Outside the environs of structure of apartheid is brought down," ment has become good business. But it African mining conglomerate Gencor, Mrs Thatcher, it is hard to discover who does not either support or threaten to he said (New York Times, 27 May). is not good for South Africa's black while the Metalworkers union struck support their extension. Congresses of We have pointed out how grotesque it workers," we summed up (WV No. 434, Goodyear over the company's sellout to bishops and the Trade Union Congress, is to call on American rulers, who 7 August 1987). South Africa's Con sol. the UN and the Communist Parties, dropped atom bombs on Hiroshima and The Spartacist tendency (now the A recent article on "Financial Sanc­ radical leftists and the far-seeing right: Nagasaki and turned Vietnam into a International Communist League) was tions and the Future of South Africa," by all look to the agency of money-dealing capital to undo what money-dealing capi­ moonscape, who block effective school unique in telling the truth about the Paul Trewhela in Searchlight South Afri­ tal set in place at the founding of modern integration in the U.S. and whose pro­ liberal divestment movement when it ca (February 1990), published in London, South Africa, in the period of Rhodes and gram for ghetto poverty amounts to gen­ was highly unpopular to do so. But incisively analyzes the cause and effect Rothschild. ocide, to pressure their South African forces in COSATU have begun question­ of imperialist sanctions. Trewhela writes "Ultimately it is the future ofthe workers junior partners to ... fight racism. We ing the policy of divestment and in South Africa that is under examina­ that while in the 1960s and 1970s the tion .... The ANC has passed from the noted that calls for "disinvestment" were sanctions. COSATU's 1987 congress ANC called mainly for international patronage of the USSR into the US at best an empty moralistic gesture, that criticized selective sanctions, which consumer, sports and cultural boycotts, sphere of interest. Its guiding policy in when multinational corporations began "cause serious regional unemployment." today "the decisive practical role in the international affairs has in the last resort become that of the IMF and the US banks, the real authors of 'financial sanc­ tions'. In aligning themselves with this politics, the leaders of Cosatu, and in was involved in the National Union of particular Mayekiso, have become the South African Students (NUSAS) via means of transmission of the politics of the Agency's infiltration/control of the the banks within the proletariat." CIA Set Up Mandela U.S. National Student Association. Through collaboration with the banks in The account of the U.S. official was the question of sanctions, and such During Nelson Mandela's visit to the backed up by retired South African schemes as the Anglo American employ­ U.S., he will meet with George Bush, intelligence operative Gerard Ludi, who ee shareholder plan and retirement fund, the CIA's man in the White House. Yet disclosed that the CIA was running a whose first chairman is NUM secretary it was the CIA which set I!P Mandela highly successful "deep cover" agent in Cyril Ramaphosa (who called off the \l 1988 mine workers strike), these are all for arrest in 1962, leading to his the ANC branch in Durban. The agent decades-long imprisonment in apart­ provided detailed accounts of the measures that bring the black unions heid's hellhole jails. ANC's activities, including information increasingly under the control of finance On June 10, the Atlanta Constitution on the whereabouts of Nelson Mandela, capital and of the capitalist state. The published an article by Joseph Albright then being sought for his anti-apartheid aim, as Trewhela indicates, is "to build and Marcia Kunstel quoting a retired activities. The morning after a secret up a trade union bureaucracy and a la­ U.S. intelligence official who verified dinner party with ANC members in bour aristocracy among black workers, what has long been whispered: that the Durban, Mr. Mandela, dressed as a through which it hopes to control the CIA, using an agent inside the African chauffeur, ran into a roadblock. He was class." Whether this is possible in South National Congress, provided South immediately recognized and arrested. Africa today is another matter. African police with precise information Today as at the height of the Cold about Mandela's activities that led to Black Workers Must War, the deadly U.S. "intelligence" net­ Take the Power! his arrest on 5 August 1962. work still has the same aim-to root The official recounted how, within out and destroy fighters against impe­ Trewhela holds that following the 1985 hours after Mandela's arrest, Paul Barry von Below rialism and capitalism. While the CIA township revolt and subsequent growth Eckel, then a senior CIA operative, Nelson Mandela in 1961, shortly was targeting anti-apartheid activists of black trade unions, the existence of walked into his office and told him before he was forced underground. in. South Africa, in the American the apartheid regime has become "anom­ approximately: "We have turned Man­ South FBI informers were participating alous" to the banks. He assumes that a dela over to the South African security port" of the British spy agencies MI-5 in bombings, shootings and -beatings post-apartheid capitalist state is in gesta­ branch. We gave them every detail, and MI-6as a result of withdrawing of civil rights marchers. The Feds' tion which will include an ANC presence what he would be wearing, the time of from the Commonwealth. The CIA was COINTELPRO operation sought to dis­ in the government. This assumption is day, just where he would be. They have happy to pick up the slack by supplying rupt black organizations and set up shared as well by a whole political spec­ picked him up. It is one of our greatest tidbits to the "friendlies" in the racist militants for imprisonment and murder. trum, from de Klerk on the right through coups." regime. The CIA set-up of Nelson Mandela Gavin ReIly to Nelson Mandela, Joe In the Cold War summer of 1962, the Five years earlier, the American em­ makes all the more grotesque the ap­ Slovo and leftists like Trewhela. At most Kennedy administration was still smart­ bassy in Pretoriahad cabled Washington peals by the South African ANC and this would mean that South Africa would ing over its humiliating defeat at the that South Africa's black intelligentsia American liberals to Washington to beeome another Zimbabwe (where last Bay of Pigs the year before and gearing was "psychologically susceptible to the impose "sanctions" on The Company's week Mugabe's cops and army beat and up to challenge Moscow-to a nuclear extremes of Black Nationalism or Com­ junior partners in Pretoria. The fight tear-gassed striking schoolteachers and showdown over Soviet missiles in munism" arid that black radicals "could for black freedom means revolutionary -government workers). But this perspec­ Cuba. In Johannesburg, the South Afri­ become a cardinal threat to American struggle against the racist capitalist tive is a conservative/liberal/reformist can apartheid regime had lost the "sup- security." Around this time also, the CIA rulers from Harlem to Soweto! utopia. In fact, South Africa is barreling down the road to civil war. 14 WORKERS VANGUARD CPUSAin Turbulent Waters After his summit meeting with George especially black, cadre are evidently Bush, Soviet president Gorbachev spent frustrated that they are missing the boat, the rest of his cross-country visit to the - namely, the black wing of big-time Dem­ U.S. socializing with the ruling class. In ocratic Party politics. Some black CPers San Francisco it was hobnobbing with are speaking about Democratic black Reagans on Nob Hill and a power lunch elected officials (BEOs) in the exalted with the corporate power elite. New York language once reserved for the Christian Times reporter Bill KeIler described heaven and Stalin's Russia. Listen to Gorby's visit to the Bay Area as "a day James Jackson on Virginia governor of rampant, unabashed, big-money, high­ Douglas ("Death Penalty") Wilder: tech, brand-name California capitalism," "I just had the happy experience of and contrasted this with Nikita Khrush­ being in Virginia and 1got this souvenir chev, who included leaders of the long­ of a new face, not of communism, but a new face of a new democracy in Vir­ shore and auto unions in his itinerary ginia.... And this is the 66th governorof during a 1959 visit to the West Coast: Virginia.... "President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who "The only game in town, thus far in the prizes investment over solidarity, left new decade, with bold and persistent little doubt here that he feels more initiative, witha confidentstep, and with comfortable on the other side of the very broad vistas, is that of the ally of barricades." the working class,the strategic allyof the Kale/Chicago Tribune working class, the forward thrust of the For Mikhail Gorbachev the very exis­ Old-line Stalinist Gus Hall blames his troubles on glasnost. equality and freedom movement of the tence of an entity called the Communist ' African-American people." Party of the USA is an embarrassment in "Even a few, almost in the same breath, removing Stalin as general secretary. While Jackson exalts "the forward his efforts to woo Wall Street and Wash­ call for the removal or resignation of Angela Davis talks of "our failure to thrust" of the African-American people, ington. And as the Stalinist bureaucracies the national leadership and a change on facilitate the democratic functioning of every index-from infant mortality to these basic questions. 1 believe some of homelessness to inmates on death row­ collapse throughout East Europe, their these comrades are using the call for re­ our party." Charlene Mitchell refers to American cheerleaders have lost the very moval of the leadershipto open the door "the command-and-control nature of our shows that American blacks face greater reason to exist. Already, the People's to removing the workingclass, class leadership." misery and oppression than at any time Daily World has announced that it is struggle policies of our Party." in recent decades. The decay of Ameri­ Former youth leader James Steele cutting back to a weekly for financial Class struggle policies?! The CPUSA has can capitalism, signaled in the labor came close to calling the existing leader­ reasons. And internally, the CPUSA has prostituted itself to the "liberal" wing of movement by giveback contracts and ship and its political line racist: become embroiled in backbiting and American imperialism ever since the union-busting, has hit blacks the hardest. mutual recrimination. 1930s, from applauding the A-bombing "There is an unprecedented upsurge, And it is the very BEOs the Communist democratic upsurge in our country. It's In his speech to a January 27-28 of Hiroshima to supporting racist trade in process, it's escalating and it is Party is tailing after who have been put National Committee meeting, recently protectionism advocated by the AFL-CIO reflecting itself in the Party. One of the in place to preside over the misery and published as a pamphlet, the party's bureaucracy. spearheads of this upsurge is among the prevent struggle against it. perennial leader Gus Hall hit back at his What, then, were the political issues in African-American people. That too is With the Kremlin bureaucracy disinte­ numerous critics pretty hard while im­ dispute? A "substantial and representa­ reflecting itself, 1 think, in the dis­ grating and the East European Stalinist gruntlement of many African-American plicitly blaming Gorbachev's glasnost for tive selection" of the NC discussion comrades. Ifyou listen to the discussion, regimes gone, and seeing the Canadian all his troubles: indicates one black Committee member there is a divergence of perception. and CP falling apart, some cadres in the "Could it be that becausein the socialist after another sharply criticized Hall. it has a certain racial dimension to it, American CP see an opportunity in world there is a temporary ideological Several focused on the party's internal in termsof composition of whois saying mainstream bourgeois politics and they climate of 'anything goes' that all ques­ regime: Kendra Alexander took the ques­ what." want to go for it. The future of black ex­ tions are open for discussionand debate, and, therefore that in our Party some tion of democratic centralism back to The old guard around Hall seems Communists in American bourgeois poli­ comrades feel it is now opportune to Stalin's seizure of power in 1923 and resigned to tum the party into a kind of tics is not likely to be bright. But, then raise again the old class questions? Lenin's call for fighting bureaucracy and Stalinist rest home. But the younger, again, neither is the future of Stalinism.•

While "verligte" capitalists and imperi­ The idea that apartheid, that is to say labor of South African blacks, to ensure against the reformism of the SACP and alists would like to strike a deal with the capitalist rule basedon white supremacy, equality and freedom for the oppressed , the petty-bourgeois nationalism of the ANC, in apartheid South Africa there is will pass peacefully into history is masses and raise them out of poverty, it ANC. It must be a racially integrated very little middle ground. De Klerk's absurd. will take nothing less than proletarian party, which includes not only blacks but National Party is losing votes as white In the period since the Mandela­ revolution, with black workers in the also coloureds and Indians as well as reactionaries dig in, arming themselves de Klerk Cape Town talks, COSATU has vanguard. , whites as comrades. It will be a Trotsky­ to defend their swimming pools, ranch pushed to get in on the negotiations. Today the contradictions in South ist party, built on the program of perma­ houses and farms built on the toil of "We're meeting ministers almost every Africa are excruciating: the mood of nent revolution, which says to black black labor. Moreover, it is far from day," glowed one NUM official, and demoralization following the exhaustion workers: the nationalists want you to pull clear that the maximum concessions by Ramaphosa referred to blood-drenched of the 1984-86 township revolts is past, the cart of capitalism as the apartheid the Nationalist government can meet the top cop Adriaan Vlok as "our minister" the working class is insurgent as never rulers have forced you to with their when they met in Welkom. The Pan­ before, yet never before has it been so sjamboks and bullets, but you have the Africanists oppose negotiations, but their politically dominated by the politics of power, you produced the wealth-take it, slogan of "one settler, one bullet" is class collaboration. A socialist revolution it's yours. simply a call to drive whites out of a must be prepared and led by a genuinely Smash apartheid-For workers revolu­ black nationalist-ruled capitalist South communist party, forged in struggle tion in South Africa!. Africa. The Azanian People's Organisa­ tion (AZAPO) also criticizes the ANC negotiations with the de Klerk regime and talks of building a "mass-based people's organization with a socialist SPARTACIST LEAGUE/U.S. LOCAL DIRECTORY orientation" (Socialist Action, June National Office: Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 • (212) 732-7860 1990). But its advocacy of "Black Consciousness philosophy" denies the Atlanta Detroit Norfolk central role of the black African Box 4012 Box 441043 Box 1972, Main PO proletariat capable of leading also the Atlanta, GA 30302 Detroit, MI 48244 Norfolk, VA 23501 oppressed, coloured and Indian masses Boston Los Angeles Oakland as well as those whites who accept a Box 840, Central Sta. Box 32552 racially integrated, egalitarian South Box 29574, Los Feliz Sta. Cambridge, MA 02139 Los Angeles, CA 90029 Oakland, CA 94604 Africa. (617) 492-3928 (213) 380-8239 (415) 839-0851 Allied with AZAPO is the Cape Action Chicago San Francisco League, whose youth group recently Box 6441, Main PO Madison Box 5712 published a document calling for a Chicago, IL 60680 Box 2074 San Francisco, CA 94101 constituent assembly rather than a nego­ (312) 663-0715 Madison, WI 53701 (415) 863-6963 tiated settlement. CAL is led by Neville Alexander, whose latter-day Menshevism Cleveland New York Washington, D.C. Box 91037 Box 444, Canal S1. Sta. Box 75073 WV Photo is often misidentified as Trotskyism in South Africa. The. revolutionary­ Cleveland, OH 44101 New York, NY 10013 Washington, D.C. 20013 Spartacist contingent in June 1983 (216) 781-7500 (212) 267-1025 (202) 636-3537 NYC anti-apartheid protest. democratic slogan of a constituent assem­ bly is appropriate as the ANC prepares minimum demands of the ANC if either to abandon "one man, one vote" in prac­ side is to retain any support on its tice, alleging the need to assuage white TROTSKYIST LEAGUE OF CANADA respective side of the yawning chasm fears. But by itself this slogan does not Toronto Vancouver that separates the oppressed black major­ go beyond the limits of bourgeois soci­ Box 7198, Station A Box 2717, Main Post Office ity from the layer of white oppressors, ety. To overthrow the domination of the Toronto, Ontario M5W 1X8 . Vancouver, B.C. V6B 3X2 far smaller but big enough to wage a "capitalists who have sucked fabulous (416) 593-4138 (604) 255-0636 bloody fight to the death. And they will. wealth from superexploitation of the 15 JUNE 1990 15 WfJltllEItS ",,'O,It,

• ave umla

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In cities around the world opponents of the rac­ Europe and stretching down under to Australia. ist death penalty will be rallying to save the life of The case of Mumia Abu-Jamal is the rallying black journalist and former Black Panther Mumia cry for all opponents of the racist death penalty. Abu-Jamal, a death row political prisoner in Hunt­ The two weeks of protest are part of a campaign ingdon, Pennsylvania. Beginning June 28 in New to save Jamal's life, initiated by the Partisan York and ending on July 14 with rallies in Chi­ Defense Committee. Rachel Wolkenstein, counsel cago, Oakland and Jamal's hometown ofPhilade1­ for the PDC, stated, "Jamal's case is what the phia, events will include pickets and protests death penalty is all about. It exposes not only the outside U.S. embassies and consulates throughout continued on page 11

June 29, 7:00 p.m. July 6, 7:00 p.m. July 3, 4:00 p.m. July 3, 4:00 p.m. July 12, 7:30 p.m. LSC, 69ter rue de la Chapelle Lambeth Town Hall USA-Botschaft USA-Generalkonsulat Tom Mann Theatre Brixton Hill Neustadtische Kirchstr. 4-5 Alsterufer 27-28 136-140 Chalmers St., Surry Hills

June 28, 7:00 p.m. July 14, 2:00 p.m. July 4, 5:30 p.m. Associated Musicians of Greater New York, The Blackstone Hotel, 636 S. Michigan Avenue u. S. Consulate Local 802, 330 West 42nd Street For more information: (312) 663-0719 360 University Avenue For more information: (416) 593-4138 Speakers: Speakers: Frank Boone, Vice Chairman, UMD, TWU Local 100* Jackie B. Breckenridge, International Vice President, Partial List of Endorsers: Charles Brover, Co-chairman, PDC Amalgamated Transit Union* Ojl Adlsa, Mother Africa Children's Photographic F.J. DeFilippi, Eastern striker, Exec. Board member, Danny K. Davis, Alderman, 29th Ward* Reproductions International IAMAW District 100* Michael E. DeutSCh, Lawyer, Peoples Law Office* African and Caribbean Student Association Roger L. Green, NY State Assemblyman Mark Kelly, Midwest Representative, PDC Afrocanadian Club, Oakwood Collegiate* Lennox S. Hinds, Attorney, Prof. Criminal Justice, Elizabeth King·Whitaker, Chicago Conference of Anarchist Black Cross Rutgers University* Black Lawyers Canadian Union of Postal Workers, Vancouver Local Wadiya Jamal, Wife of Mumia Abu-Jamal, Reverend George E. Riddick, Vice President, Coalition for the Truth About Africa MOVE supporter Operation PUSH* Claire Culhane, Prisoners Rights Group* Harold Jamison, Journalist and former Philadelphia Patricia Vader, Director, Illinois Coalition Against the John Donaldson, Past Vice President, Ontario Federation colleague of Mumia Abu-Jamal Death Penalty* of Labour* I·Abdul Jon, Committee in Support of MOVE Josephine Wyatt, Chairperson, Chicago Chapter, NAARPR* Lennox Farrell, Chairperson, Rally Against Apartheid* Michael Lighty, Business Manager, NABET Local 15* Andre Kolompar, President, CUPW Toronto Local* Cleveland Robinson, Secretary-Treasurer, Labour Council of Metropolitan Toronto and District 65 UAW* York Region, Executive Board Henry Schwarzschild, Director, ACLU C.J. Marshall, Executive Vice President and Treasurer, Capital Punishment Project* July 14, 7:30 p.m. Hotel Employees Restaurant Employees Local 75* Chris Silvera, Secretary-Treasurer, IBT Local 808* Darl Meade, Spokesperson, Black Action Karima Wicks, Research Director, Capital Punishment ILWU Local 6 Hall, 99 Hegenberger Road Defense Committee* Project, NAACP Legal Defense Fund* For more information: (415) 839-0852 Partisan Defense Committee Ira L. Williams, Vice President, Political Action, Speakers: Charles Roach, President, Martin Luther King Jr. SSEU Local 371* Don Alexander, Partisan Defense Committee Commemoration Committee* Ronald E. Bell, Founder, Aaron Mitchell Foundation to Clayton C. Ruby Abolish the Death Penalty Bill Storring, Local Chairman, United Transportation Robert R. Bryan, Chairperson, National Coalition to Abolish Union Local 483 the Death Penalty Telecommunications Workers Union Local 1 July 14 Bobby Castillo, Political Prisoner Project Coordinator, Executive Council International Indian Treaty Council* Trotskyist League of Canada For more information: (215) 222-7880 William F. Freeman, President, Oakland NAACP*; United Transportation Union Local 483 Partial List of Speakers: Senior Representative, SEIU* Lance Wilson, Research Consultant, Multicultural Access Charles Brover, Co-chairman, PDC Charles R. Garry, San Francisco attorney Program* Muriel Feelings, Director, Pan-African Studies Community H. Lee Halterman, District Counsel for Wimmin Prisoners' Survival Network Education Program Representative Ronald V. Dellums* Wadiya Jamal, Wife of Mumia Abu-Jamal, Hilary Naylor, Regional Abolition Coordinator, *Organizational affiliation for identification purposes only. MOVE supporter Amnesty International* I·Abdul Jon, Committee in Support of MOVE A representative of the former Black Panther Party* Raymond Martinez, Jr., Statewide Executive Board, Leo L. Robinson, Longshoreman, ILWU Local 10* Pennsylvania Social Services Union, Local 668 SEIU* James W. Ryder, President, ILWU Local 6* David Richardson, Pennsylvania State Representative Ben Visnick, 1st Vice President, Oakland Education Pamela S. Tucker, President and Co-Founder, Western Association* Pennsylvania Coalition Against the Deatb Penalty* Burton H. Wolfe

16 15 JUNE 1990