25C1:

No. 578 ...X~ 18 June 1993

U.S./UN Troops SlaughlerSomalis

JUNE 14-Some 70 unarmed Somalis, many of them women and children, were gunned down and 20 of them killed by United Nations troops in Mogadishu yesterday. Witnesses described a scene of dreadful car­ nage as Pakistani "peacekeepers," firing from sand­ bagged bunkers, sprayed the peacefully protesting crowd with machine-gun fire, leaving scores of dead and wounded writhing in the streets. The day before, Pakistani troops wearing UN blue helmets had fired on Somalis demonstrating in front of a military compound, killing at least four and wound­ ing another 20. The demonstrators were marching on the former U.S. embassy to protest the pre-dawn attack by American AC-130H gunships and Cobra attack helicopters. A massive barrage of computer-guided artil­ lery shells was unleashed, supposedly against local strongman General Aidid's "weapons storage centers" located in a heavily populated residential area. To cover their racist crime, the imperialists lie shame­ lessly. Clinton's UN delegate Madeleine Albright said she "can understand" the reaction of the soldiers who were "not able to defend themselves"! The troops sup­ posedly had itchy trigger fingers because the rules of engagement only allowed them to fire in self-defense. The New York Times (14 June) claimed that the Pak­ istanis are easy targets because they are "without armored personnel carriers or tanks," while printing on continued on page 9 Somali demonstrators gunned down in the streets of Mogadishu by UN "peacekeepers." Balkanizing the alkans Imperialism Keep Your Bloody Hands Off!

In early May, the White House to defend Muslim "safe havens." threatened air strikes against Serbian The Clinton administration "inter­ positions in Bosnia, proclaiming the' preted" this resolution to mean only U.S. to be "the world's only super­ the defense of the UN "peacekeep­ power." A Pentagon spokesman ing" forces, not the Bosnian Muslim announced plans to send 20,000 enclaves. U.S. troops into the Balkans. But Now Washington's saber rattling when America's NATO allies called over the Balkans has been fol­ Clinton's bluff by demanding U.S. lowed ... by attacks on African war­ ground troops, Washington quickly lords in Somalia. The whole Soma­ backed off. As a "show of force," lian military adventure in the guise they have offered to put 300 "peace­ of "humanitarian" aid was designed keeping" troops into Macedonia, to demonstrate on the cheap that where there is at present no fight­ the U.S. was still the cops of the ing. Two weeks ago a UN Secu­ world. With classic Pentagon over­ rity Council resolution authorized kill, they brought in AC-130H Spec­ air strikes against Serbian forces ter gunships-no doubt practicing for use against South-Central Los Angeles: Even the New York Times (13 June) commented acidly, "Does it mean that peacekeepers will be prepared to take decisive military son action only when the adversary is Slavic Muslim refugees in Bosnian town of Srebrenica, victims of nation-alist-communalist o continued on page 10 bloodbath unleashed by capitalist counterrevolution in Yugoslavia. Letter On Counterrevolution in East Europe

April 21, 1993 They left out one small trifle: the pro­ damentally reformist concept. paper that calls its~lf Workers Vanguard Dear Comrades: letarian revolution. For Marx, Lenin and And since proletarian revolutions would seem to be to use language that Don't you recognize the origins of Trotsky, the "sine qua non" of a workers were no longer necessary to change workers use. I'm sure you could think the "nationalization fetish" you so vig­ state was the seizure of power by the the class basis of the state, the Trot­ of a perfectly good English equivalent orously denounce? (WV #573, 9 April). working class, acting through its own skyist movement began looking for for "sine qu·il non." This is our :Old friend, the revisionist organizations: proletarian party, soviets, radical non-proletarian forces to tail N'est-ce pas? Deformed Workers' State theory of 1950, Red Guards. after. Peasant-based guerrillas, national­ Marion Syrek come back to disorient another genera­ Of course, Trotsky never used his liberationists, anti-war activists, stu­ Oakland, CA tion of Trotskyists. Three Criteria as a definition of a work­ dents, all sorts of petty-bourgeois forces Trotsky used the famous Three Cri­ ers' state. That refinement was first used became the focus of its work. The slow, WV replies: Marion Syrek is the victim teria (nationalized industry, centralized by the revisionists in connection with difficult, but absolutely essential work of a hopelessly outlived "theory," used planning, monopoly of foreign trade) to the eastern European countries. These of establishing solid connections with to explain a world that never existed in indicate the point at which a degenerat­ small, underdeveloped bourg~ois states the working class was set aside. the first place. Surely the working ing workers' state should be considered proceeded, in the aftermath of World War Part of the theory of Deformed Work­ masses of Eastern Europe whose coun­ as having reverted to its original bour­ II, to nationalize industries, initiate eco­ ers' States was the claim that these coun­ tries are now being ravaged by mass geois form. The revisionists argued that nomic planning and control foreign trade. tries could not revert back to capitalism unemployment, poverty, homelessness history could move backward as easily And magically became workers' states without a counterrevolutionary struggle. and bloody nationalist fratricide would as forward, and that therefore these overnight. Without revolutions, without Well, the return to "market economies" be surprised to learn that nothing has Three Criteria also defined the point at soviets, without Bolshevik parties, with­ in eastern Europe is far from complete, changed-that they have always been which a bourgeois state became a degen­ out the proletariat having to do anything but so far there have been few visible living under capitalism! Ditto for the erated workers' state. But since degen­ but watch. Saying that they. still needed signs of class-against-class conflict. population of Russia and the other for­ eration cannot precede birth, they called a "political" revolution to achieve full Instead the fighting has been on a mer Soviet republics who are to believe these new creatures "Deformed" Work­ workers' state status was a clever way national, ethniO' and religious basis. that they are still living under a workers ers' States. of giving a revolutionary cover for a fun- So maybe it's time to reconsider the state, albeit degenerated. validity of this theoretical concept. Syrek argues that in the absence of Maybe these so-called Deformed Work­ proletarian socialist revolutions led by ers' States were simply new forms Bolshevik parties, no social transforma­ Defend Immigrant Workers! of bourgeois states, in which Stalinist tions did, or could have, taken place in regimes with communist rhetoric ran the Eastern Europe. Why stop here? The One hundred years ago,.in the summer government, much as labor parties some­ 1917 October Revolution did not em­ of 1893, racist anti-Chinese pogroms swept times do, with socialist rhetoric, in west­ brace all the areas of the former tsarist California. Fomented by the passage of the ern Europe. And if a resident bourgeoisie empire. For example, the Sovietization anti-Asian Geary Act the previous year, and was hard to find, it might be present in of the Caucasus and Central Asia were whipped up by anti-Chinese rhetoric from the role of western governments and accomplished not as the result of indig­ the capitalist press, racist white mobs bankers, who loaned millions to these enous insurrections, but largely through burned out the camps of Chinese laborers countries in the 70s. In any event, a bour­ the military intervention of the Red in Fresno. From Napa to the San Joaquin geoisie can always be created from a Army. By Syrek's criteria, the only parts Valley, Chinese workers were driven from thriving petty-bourgeoisie of well-to-do of the former Soviet Union one could TROTSKY the fields by the racist terror. LENIN farmers, small traders, and thieving ever have genuinely considered to have The labor movement had a despicable bureaucrats. In this basically bourgeois been workers states are Russia and the record of anti-Asian racism, which it carried into the 1900s and which was matched world, if you do not see the working Eastern Ukraine. by the leadership of the Socialist Party. But the revolutionary syndicalists of the class consciously taking power on its Similarly, the missing ingredient in Industrial Workers of the World, the WobbliesJought for proletarian internationalism own behalf, you are looking at some Syrek's "analysis" of Eastern Europe is against the "yellow peril" socialists. form of bourgeois state. the intervention of the Red Army,whose In May 1913, the Wobblies denounced an article in the Socialist Party's California Trotsky'S Three Criteria are still valid military victory over Hitler's Nazis and newspaper for its scurrilous protectionist line that Japanese workmen in California and useful for their original purpose: to their East European puppet regimes undercut white American labor: determine the progress of capitalist res­ caused the former rulers to flee, leaving It is not enough for this socialist writer to play into the hands of the capitalists toration in the former USSR. The thing behind a power vacuum that was filled by dividing the workers on an alleged "yellow peril," but she must do so in the to watch is not the speeches and maneu­ by the Soviet Army. Under the pressure name of internationalism .... Of course, it comes from the same source and is on a vers of bureaucrats like Yeltsin and his of imperialist Cold War I, the Stalinists par with the actions of the Job Harriman brand of socialists, who clamor for working competitors, but whether or not major established deformed workers states in class solidarity and then vote in their dinky little craft unions to raise the initiation industrial plants are being privatized. these countries as a "buffer zone," fee so as to get a tighter cinch on the jobs. When this happens, the bourgeois press through cold social revolutions that were The person who thinks that the Japanese or Chinese are inferior in intellect or will be sure to let us know. Until then, imposed from the top down. ability to the average Missourian or the Connecticut Yankee is a stranger to the facts. maybe it's a bit premature to hold funeral The Soviet military forces held the All workers can be organized, regardless of race or color, as soon as their minds are services over the first, and so far' only, decisive levers of power. Forty years cleared of the patriotic notion that there is any reason for being proud of having workers' state. later it was the Kremlin bureaucracy been born of a certain shade of skin or in an arbitrarily fenced off portion of the And finally, the "sine qua non" of a continued on page 8 earth .... This tendency to look down upoothe workers of the "far-off' lands is foolish, for we venture to remark tQat the United States !s just as far off from Japan as Japan is from the United States. On this one point the I.W.W. is confident. There are but two nations-the exploiters James P. Cannon and the Early Years and the exploited; but two races-the robbers and the robbed. We want to see the exploited organized solidly and we welcome the Japanese to membership, but when of American Communism it comes to a fight we will wage just as relentless warfare against a Japanese employer' as we will against a star-spangled American labor skinner. . Selected Writings and Speeches, 1920-1928 If the workers need fear any "yellow peril," it is from yellow socialists of the The book includes: Social-Democratic stripe. ~The Industrial Worker, 15 May 1913 • Extensively documented introduction • Explanatory footnotes for Cannon's text • 16 pages of rare historical photographs • Glossary of names and terms !!!!!!!y~"...,!!~!,~~! ~. with over 200 entries DIRECTOR OF PARTY PUBLICATIONS: Liz Gordon EDITOR: Jan Norden • Bibliography of Cannon's works, PRODUCTION MANAGE.R: Joan Parker 1912-1928 CIRCULATION MANAGER: Karen Valdez • Index EDITORIAL BOARD: George Foster, Frank Hunter, Jane Kerrigan, Len Meyers, James Robertson, Joseph Seymour, Alison Spencer, Marjorie Stamberg 624 pages, smyth-sewn binding The Spartacist League is the U.S. Section of the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist) . Paperback $14.50 ISBN 0-9633828-1-0 Workers Vanguard (USPS 098-770) published biweekly, except 2nd issue August and with 3-week interval December, New York St;lte residents add 8.25% sales tax, by the Spartacist Publishing Co., 41 Warren Street, New York, NY 10007. Telephone: (212) 732-7862 (Editorial), Shipping and handling: $3.50 (212) 732-7861 (Business). Address all correspondence to: Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116. Domestic subscriptions: $7.00/24 issues. S8f:X)nd-class postage paid at New York, NY. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Workers Vanguard, Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116. Order from/make checks payable to: Opinions expressed in signed articles or letters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint. Spartacist Publishing Company, Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 No. 578 18 June 1993

2 WORKERS VANGUARD Thefollowing article is translatedfrom another serious struggle broke out in the SpartakistNo. J04,]une I993,published TLD that culminated in an emergency by the Spartakist Workers Party of Ger­ national conference. "Left" nationalism many, section of the International Com­ had found its way into the organization munist League (Fourth Internationalist). and was grossly obvious in the person of one Ulrich Sandhaus, a proto-fascist Our beloved comrade Elke Pirdszun punk who was expelled from the TLD. died of cancer on May 19 in Duisburg, Elke Pirdszun Elke was elected as one of the three Germany. Elke was tragically only 36 members of the Central Committee at years old, but she had fought in the ranks this conference. She worked closely with of our International for over half her life. the comrades of the International to for­ When she' died, Elke was a member of mulate sharply the polemic against "left" the Spartakist Workers Party (SpAD); nationalism, and Elke made the public earlier she had worked as a leading mem­ presentation on this topic for the German ber of the Lega Trotskista d'Italia section at the Lutte Ouvriere fete in (LTd'I) and the Spartacist League/Brit­ 1983. This work helped lay the basis for ain. Elke's death has left comrades in subsequent polemics against our oppo­ many countries around the world in' per­ nents in Germany. sonal grief and pain. In July 1983, Elke moved to Milano In 1975, when she was 17 years old, and worked as a member of the LTd'l. Elke became an active sympathizer of When in 1985 the TLD abstained with the Trotzkistische Liga Deutschlands the rest of the left from Jewish-organized (TLD) and worked with our organizing protests against Reagan/Kohl's obscene committee in Cologne. She joined the salute to the SS at Bitburg, she immedi­ party and moved to Berlin in October ately intervened in discussions in Ger­ 1976. As she studied basic Marxism, Elke many, insisting that the comrades thor­ helped shape the other young comrades oughly assimilate the historical lessons we recruited from the fairly lumpenized of the rise of fascism and the Holocaust New Left and Pabloite milieus, showing through extensive reading as well as through personal example that part of internal debate. Her library included an the seriousness of being a professional extensive section on the Jewish question revolutionary is learning a trade, leading and the rise of fascism. a disciplined, stable existence and reserv­ Elke was an excellent linguist. In ing most of one's energy for the party. Spartakist Milano she learned Italian in a short time Elke was a quiet, thoughtful comrade and was central to leading our Italian who preferred and advised thinking section. A talented organizer who knew through questions before engaging in a the value of a functioning apparatus, in fight, and her years in the TLD were the LTd'l Elke helped reintroduce Len­ indeed years of hard, painful fights to ~ inist organizational norms and financial forge a German section. In 1979, as the systems, as she had in Berlin. treasurer of the Berlin branch, she was During 1983, Elke was among the elected to the Berlin local executive; in 1957-1993 comrades from Italy and Germany who January 1981 Elke moved to Frankfurt conducted programmatic discussions and began to playa more important role with a group of young comrades, a left in the leadership and in editing the paper. faction in the otherwise thoroughly mis­ Elke's literary capacity was recog­ ularly on Poland and Afghanistan. We recognized at the time, as Elke erable Swiss United Secretariat; the best nized by all comrades who worked with In 1981-82, when most of the osten­ herself wrote in March 1982, that the of this group was recruited to our Inter­ her. From the summer of 1981 Elke sible left was enthusing over Solidar­ failure to learn the lessons of the resur­ national. From February 1986 Elke was was a member of the editorial board of nose, a fight took place in the TLD over gence of German nationalism and Cold a member of the Spartacist League/Brit­ the German section's newspaper, Spar­ Poland in the face of SolidarnosC' coun­ War II would "place a question mark ain, where she was co-opted to the Cen­ takist. She was dedicated to the German­ terrevolutionary bid for power. Elke was over the existence of a German section" tral Committee and also functioned as language edition of Spartacist, theoret­ one of the comrades in this fight who, of our tendency. Social Democracy was London organizer. Her political sharp­ ical and documentary journal of the together with comrades of the Inter­ the ideological spearhead of the increas­ ness against centrist and reformist oppo­ international Spartacist tendency, now national, helped reorient the section ingly strengthened German bourgeoisie. nents left its impact on the section, as the International Communist League. In around the Trotskyist program of prole­ It was necessary to politically arm the did her insistence on proper internal the winter of 1981-82, as a member tarian political revolution and the de­ section to combat resurgent German functioning. But as the result of a crisis of the Spartacist editorial board she fense of the gains of the deformed work­ nationalism in rightist and "leftist" col­ precipitated by personal bitterness and traveled to New York to assist in the ers states. She was elected to the Central ors, particularly as the Social Democracy disillusionment, Elke resigned with final editing of its edition No. 10, cen­ Committee at the TLD conference in dominated the "peace movement." In regret from the party in March 1988. tering on the Russian question, partic- September 1981. this regard, in the summer of 1982 continued on page 4 "We Are the Party of the Russian Revolution" The following is a translation of Elke's cannot erase October 1917 from his­ of socialism or barbarism is not yet Trotsky-to this I will contribute with statement on joining - the Spartakist tory, the date of the victory of the Rus­ decided. Building the party which will all my power. Workers Party (SpAD) and International sian workers and peasants over tsarist wage and decide this battle with the With communist greetings, Communist League (ICL). despotism. internationalist program of Lenin and Elke Despite the deadly noose of Stalinism, Duisburg, 25 January 1993 the "great organizer of defeats," despite Dear comrades, imperialism's obscene pretensions of Agreed, everything is to be changed victory, celebrating its supposed triumph the world and humanity in the firelight of burning hostels of asy­ above all the disorder lum seekers, accompanied by.a cres­ of classes of people, because there are cendo of bullets in murderous nation­ alist slaughters-in spite of all this: the two sorts of people Russian Revolution was and remains exploitation and lack of knowledge. alive for all fighters for world socialist -Bertolt Brecht, The Agreement revolution, having after all ripped a sixth The offer to rejoin the party as an of the globe from the capitalist order of honorary member has filled me with exploitation and oppression, and thereby great joy. My illness has forced me to undertaken the proof of the superiority review my life, and above all I felt regret of socialized property and planned fcon­ at no longer being in the party. I would omy over capitalist private property and be most happy to again place my expe­ the anarchy of the market. rience and ability in the service of the "We are the party of the Russian Rev­ fight for the rebirth of the Fourth Inter­ olution" means: we are the party of vic­ national, the world party of socialist tory. The throttling of the Soviet workers revolution. state by Stalinism is a defeat of historic "We are the party of the Russian proportions for the international prole­ Revolution" was and is one of my favor­ tariat. Nevertheless, it fights and will ite statements of Spartacism as it is continue to fight against the insatiable st embodied by the SpAD/lCL. The boast­ greed for profit of capitalism/imperial­ Elke carrying TLD banner calling for the rebirth of the Fourth International at fullies about the "death of communism" ism; the battle over the alternative 1980 Berlin May Day demonstration.

18 JUNE 1993 3 Editorial Note

The "Fighting Worker" program ex­ cludes anything that might turn off a lib­ RWL in Detroit Elections: eral union bureaucrat. This means no workers party, no workers government, not even a simple, clear call for a break with the capitalist Democratic Party and Abortion Rights in the Closet for ousting its political agents in labor, the union bureaucrats. Instead, we're told After the Ann Arbor-based Revolu­ relief when the various sectors they are mlssillg. While taking up the case of that "Coleman Young and his cronies tionary \Y6rkers League (RWL) under­ tailing get crossed. Malice Green, an innocent black man have refused to bargain in good faith with went a cleavage in 1991, separating Currently the RWL is running a "Fight­ brutally killed by Detroit cops, they the City's unions" and that "the union into Peter Sollenberger's "Trotskyist ing Worker Slate" in the Detroit city elec­ make no mention of the need to fight bureaucrats have been too frightened to League" and Leland Sanderson's RWL, tions. What's most notable about their against segregation, against attacks on call" for a strike. Good faith? Frightened? the RWL proclaimed it was going Black Democratic Party mayors like to "place the revolution on its agenda Coleman Young were installed to crush again." Some young comrades in the laborlblack struggle-and the labor trai­ RWL's Bay Area branch took this admo­ tors have been their conscious agents nition to heart and discovered through against the working class. reading Trotsky that putting "revolution" Whither the RWL? For that matter, look high and low, in on the agenda meant a serious investi­ Documents of a Political Struggle in the more than six single-spaced pages of gation of the politics of the Spartacist RevolutionarJ Workers League the RWL platform you won't find a sin­ League-much to their horror, given gle mention of socialism or revolution! Beyond the Impasse of the Revolutionary Workers league­ Sounding like nothing so much as a bom­ that within the RWL the SL is considered For PreCision of PrinCiples and Trotskyist Regroupment, the modern-day equivalent of Count by Keith H, 30 March 1993 bastic British Labour Party Member of Letter to the Political Committee, by Keith H., Maggie H Parliament, the RWL's "maximum" pro­ Dracula. Their efforts at internal discus­ Anna B., 16 April 1993 sion were met by the RWL slapping on Documents available gram is reduced to the statement that a virtual quarantine, to try to isolate for $1 (includes Letter to the Political Committee, by Anna B., 22 April 1993 the workers "will have to take political Resignation from the Revolutionary Workers League, these comrades' views from the rest of postage) from by Keith H., Maggie H., Anna B., 12 May 1993 power into their own hands and take Spartacist Publishing Co., the members both locally and nationally. Appendix: Letter from a "Majority" Comrade, charge of all fundamental economic One young woman was even banned Box 1377 GPO, by Joyce, 17 March 1993 decision-making." Shades of Tony Benn, New York, NY 10116. from attending the gay rights march in although even Labour MPs know how Washington, D.C. These comrades have to throw around some phony rhetoric on since resigned from the RWL in solidar­ nationalizations here and there. ity with the SL. t~77'" 50C For years the RWL sought to be In our article "RWL: Mitosis of a Cult" some kind of centrist halfway house (WV No. 570, 26 February), we noted between the reformists and the Sparta­ that the RWL's work is "a textbook exam­ program is what isn't there. As racist foreign-born workers (like the tens of cist League, based on the Sollenberger/ ple of how centrists are 'inclined to cringe "right to life" terrorists, with the back­ thousands of Arab Americans who pop­ Sanderson interpretation of the "transi­ before those who are more moderate,' as ing of the Reagan/Bush White House, ulate Detroit and Dearborn) or against tional method." Trotsky put it." The RWL's particular launched their deadly terror against abor­ the protectionism and American chau­ Well, the program of the "Fighting brand of pressure politics ranges from tion clinics across the country, the RWL vinism promoted by the pro-imperialist Worker" slate in Detroit is what the RWL trying to build coalitions in which they attracted young militants who wanted United Auto Workers (UAW) bureauc­ leadership must mean by the "transi­ operate as the tame "left wing" in to fight the anti-abortion bigots. But racy. Evidently considering political tional method." lash-ups with the bourgeois feminists of in black Detroit their platform contains struggle against conservative "family NOW, to demanding that Jesse Jackson nary a mention of abortion! The rapid­ values" to be "divisive," gay rights gets The First Time Farce ... build a more militant pressure group on ity with which the RWL jettisons any only a ritual mention. Pretty funny com­ We saw another application of the the Democratic Party. Sectoralist oppor­ defense of abortion rights should serve ing from a group that in its A2 campus RWL "method" at a recent meeting tunism is the sine qua non of the RWL's as a warning. stomping ground makes flaunting gay of the petty-bourgeois feminist (and politics. But this is thrown into sharp In fact, it's not just the "A" word that's lifestyle a matter of political principle. continued on page 11

little more. During February, in the brief delighted that a German translation of of Polish extraction. Her mother Uschi Elke Pirdszun ... respites she eked out, she visited her [the Spartacist pamphlet] Lenin and the was the rebellious, determined and gifted (continued from page 3) friends and comrades in London and Vanguard Party was in the final stages daughter of a conservative miner. Uschi Berlin. Although it meant a strenuous of editing; only her painful illness pre­ had to defy her own father and give in In August 1989 she returned to the exertion for her, she and her devoted vented her from finishing it herself. to the church to go to secondary school Ruhr basin city of Duisburg where· she companion Arno visited the Socialists' Elke remained a hard communist to at all; even for gifted proletarian chil­ had grown up, supporting the party from Memorial in East Berlin, where only a the last. The day before she died, com­ dren, only the convent school was free. there. During the incipient political rev­ few days earlier comrades of the SpAD rades who had traveled to Duisburg told Among the many lessons from this back­ olution in East Germany in 1989-90 Elke ground that she imparted to Elke was a rendered considerable assistance to the deep hatred of discrimination against u; women, and the woman question party in our work in the Ruhr area, as ~ well as participating in our regular public co strongly motivated Elke as a communist. ~ Q. Elke's father was a trained carpenter, meetings in Berlin. When comrades of if) the SpAD traveled to the Ruhr area after but went to work in the higher-paying the massive public workers strike in Mannesmann steel plant to raise their 1992, Elke intervened at our public three children. He was devoted to Elke, meeting in Essen, speaking against the the oldest, encouraging her to read, German Northites-with her customary and he too worked to form her character. sharpness and, as our own comrades As an active social-democratic trade­ noted, more powerfully than some of our unionist, Helmut Pirdszun won great own members could have. Thereafter respect and love among his immigrant Elke moved steadily into closer collab­ coworkers at Mannesmann, who.repre­ oration with the party. Elke distributing sented a good percentage of the work­ Her last public intervention with us Trotskyist force. He died of cancer when Elke was literature at was on 30 August 1992, in the demon­ only ten years old, and the entire shift Frankfurt shut down the plant that day to mourn stration in Rostock against the racist demonstration, pogrom only days before. The police, 1981. "our brother" together with his family. who had allowed fascist-led rioters to Elke was fiercely independent and burn down a hostel for asylum seekers despised hypocrisy. But she never hid and Vietnamese workers, then unleashed her compassion for the exploited and massive repression against the leftist oppressed, nor her warm generosity protesters. When Elke rejoined the Ger­ toward her friends and all those she cared man section as an honorary member at for. It is a comfort to her comrades and the beginning of 1993 she already knew friends that to the last in her fight for she was fatally ill. She was miserable had laid wreaths for our fallen comrades her of successes in our work, and she life she received boundless love from outside the party, and she and her loved Martha Phillips and Dirk Schubert in was happy to learn of these: that our Amo, Uschi ahd Horst and her two sis­ ones repeatedly told our German com­ commemoration of the "Three L's," comrades had demonstrated that day in ters. Our hearts are with them. Elke rades that in rejoining she had come Lenin, Liebknecht and Luxemburg. defense ofDDR master spy Markus Wolf devoted her talents and her intelligence home. In these past five months Elke In every way she could, Elke struggled at his trial in Dusseldorf, that in Ham­ to thf) fight for a revolution which would gave the party all she could, because in the few months that remained to her burg our comrades had been warmly open the path to the construction of a building her party was her main reason for the expansion of the party into the received as they defended Roma and truly humane, socialist society. Let us to live and fight. Ruhr industrial basin, placing her own Sinti protesting mass deportations, and go forward to that end, and build an Her terrible illness left her very little home at the party's disposal as an organ­ that our comrade Renate's European international Leninist party that in­ time, and she chose to undergo painful izing center for much of that time. In speaking tour had met with success. scribes on its banner the struggle against chemotherapy in the hope of gaining a the last months of her life she was Elke grew up in a proletarian family all forms of social oppression. _ 4 WORKERS VANGUARD NYC: Spartacists Protest Mass Arrest of Chinese Immigrants

On June 6, nearly 300 Chinese immi­ shop labor. Certainly conditions on the grants made a desperate swim to shore "Golden Venture" were atrocious-but as their freighter ran aground off Rock­ the "founding fathers," Yankee and Brit­ away Peninsula. Six workers tragically ish shipowners and slaveowners, treated lost their lives in the frigid tidal waters their human cargo no better. only yards from one of New York City's The PDC pointed out in its NYC press most popular beaches, Jacob Riis Park, release, "For over 100 years, Chinese named after the reformer whose book, immigrants have endured discrimination How the Other Half Lives, exposed the and exploitation; forced to work in swel­ harrowing misery of earlier immigrants tering New York laundries and sweat­ to America. shops. They were forbidden to bring The Immigration and Naturalization their wives and children to join them and Service (INS) moved in to arrest the sur­ denied citizenship rights even after serv­ vivors, threatening to deport them back ing in the U.S. army." This race prejudice to China as "an example" to deter others. was most extreme in California, where "Who's going to control the borders of in San Francisco in the early 1900s an the United States? The aliens have taken outbreak of plague led to proposals to control," hysterically claimed INS New raze Chinatown and incarcerate the York director William S. Slattery (New inhabitants. Upon completion of the York Times, 13 June). The New York Union Pacific railroad-built largely mass media echoed the government's with Chinese labor-Congress passed radst scapegoating and lurid warnings the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 at by "experts" of "a. global crime network the behest of the racist trade-union tops. of unprecedented sophistication," with a Today this "yellow peril" atmosphere burst of "exposes" of criminal influence is again being whipped up. Partisan and sinister Chinatown gangs, drugs and Defense Committee spokesman Frank so on, summed up by the New York Post's Hicks told WBAI radio at the demon­ editorial headline: "Send Them Back." ,stration: "The Clinton administration is In New York on June 8, some 60 peo­ scapegoating Asian workers and the ple joined the Partisan Defense Commit­ American trade-union bureaucracy is tee and Spartacist League's demonstra­ scapegoating Asian workers for the tion in front of the INS offices at Federal WV Photo Partisan Defense Committee and Spartacist League protest at INS headquarters crimes of capitalism. There's 60 percent Plaza in downtown Manhattan to say in Manhattan, June 8. unemployment among youth in New "Let Them Stay." The latest INS mass York City. That's not because of Asian arrest follows on the heels of the gov­ disgusting spectacle of every Cuban to medical treatment and a right to secu­ workers, and that's not because of Hai­ ernment's arrest of some 200 Chinese criminal and plane hijacker who gets into rity in their old age-is being broken by tian workers that this country refuses to immigrants who landed under the Gold­ this country being treated as a hero, the regime in the pursuit of capitalist admit." en Gate Bridge in San Francisco. The because they oppose the workers state 'reforms' ." The day after the NYC protest it was Bay Area PDC and Labor Black League in Cuba, while every black Haitian is The Spartacist League and Interna­ reported that a federal judge finally for Social Defense held an emergency treated as a criminal, and sent to con­ tional Communist League, Meyers con­ ordered the release of Haitians held at demonstration demanding the refugees' centration camps in Guantanamo and tinued, "say what is necessary in China the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base con­ freedom in San Francisco on May 28. Krome Avenue." is a working-class political revolution centration camp, most of whom had been Both protests received wide press cov­ Chinese authorities in Fujian Prov­ which fights to defend the social gains cruelly barred from entering the U.S., erage, including local television reports ince have cynically denounced "money achieved by the Chinese masses and first by the Bush administration and then and articles in Chinese-language news­ worship-ism" as leading workers to overthrows the bureaucracy which is by Clinton, because of suspected infec­ papers on both coasts. leave China-this from a leadership selling those gains out in the interests tion with the HIV virus. Many had There has been a massive increase in which has plunged millions into poverty of creeping capitalism .... In 1989, in the been imprisoned for almost 20 months, the Asian population in the United as it encourages rapacious "private enter­ aftermath of the bloody crackdown of without adequate medical care or legal States, up some 95 percent between 1980 prise"! Meyers said at the protest, "As Tiananmen, there was the possibility of assistance. and 1990. Immigration has always been these Chinese immigrants point out, had such a political revolution is China, From the chemical-drenched farm­ used as a political weapon, but the Cold they known what they could expect in where the working class' would take lands and orchards to the dangerous War policies allowing a mass influx this so-called land of honey, they would power in its own name to rule on the anti-union sweatshops and factories of Vietnamese "boat people" and Chi­ have never left China. They're leaving basis of authentic working-classdemoc­ throughout the country, immigrants and nese following Bush's post-Tiananmen because of the introduction of so-called racy, for its interests and the interests of "illegal aliens" have built this country. Square promise to allow Chinese immi­ 'market reforms,' capitalist counterrev­ working people around the world." The answer to the horrendous conditions grants political refugee status are fading olution on the installment plan, by the these workers labor and live under is not fast. Today the Clinton administration Stalinist bureaucracy in Beijing. The Racist Hypocrisy and racist INS imprisonment or more corrupt wants to shut that door, while leaving a so-called 'iron rice bowl'-which meant Capitalist ExplOitation cop patrols against "crime." We need a window open for Cubans. As Spartacist that, ever since the revolution of 1949, Coming from the ruling class of this fighting labor movement that will launch spokesman Len Meyers pointed out at the Chinese working people had a right country, all the talk about sinister "snake­ massive campaigns to organize the un­ the demonstration, "Today we have the to a job, a right to social security, a right head" gangsters and the sweatshops and organized workers. It will take revolu­ dungeons of Chinatown is pure racist tionary socialist leadership to break from hypocrisy. The wealth of the United the racist traitors in the'labor movement States was built through the toil of black and build an international workers move­ SPARTACIST LE~GUE/U.S. LOCAL DIRECTORY slaves and white indentured servants, and ment that will be a powerhouse for social National Office: Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 • (212) 732-7860 , then wave after wave of immigrant sweat- justice. _ Atlanta Detroit Norfolk - 9 June 1993 Box 4012 Box 441043 Box 1972, Main PO Atlanta, GA 30302 Detroit, MI 48244 Norfolk, VA 23501 .. alllJ __ • we a • .·$·_ -.~§.e.,.~_.- • .fIl.a._ .. fta* ~ ...... tI ...... il-*·. Oakland •••.• ·.II..e ••• Aa Boston Los Angeles ••111. T •• li ...... SfJ tit Box 29497 "IEI"'J t.. ",,,_ .... 11. II Box 29574, Los FeliZ Sta. • '...... ij';&lJII@'iI-. Box 390840, Central Sta. e ..... 1 oJ; ••H ..... it - Oakland, CA 94604 .fiA. ....,Jt~ •• "f11: Cambridge, MA 02139 Los Angeles, CA 90029 .. "" •• , .. tt •• ~." ~ ,. (510) 839-0851 til •••• *fn".".~. 13" (617) 492-3928 (213) 380-8239 !:..J&J.e .~.' •••• ~ •.~a~. a,,"" a~~~.~...... ,It. ~ .. •• eli. ~.4P.if ••• a Faj San Francisco .A1ttt~ ~.11;ilili·lII.. Chicago Madison .fo ...... ,.an. ,,~ Box 77494 .,."'".kftlf.t.* f:ffM-1f'M""~1c"'_ .".t..1J.1J -f,t:, W Box 6441, Main PO Box 1492 San Francisco, CA 94107 ~~:~= :I=t~:ff ~~ ~ .... ;.'tt ~! • .r£i!'CJ tH1 ~. Chicago, IL 60680 Madison, WI 53701 (415) 777-9367 ~"'JtI9Ji.e: .;;:-WJH! 1+.11. I (312) 663-0715 :;i~~ ~I::= ~~~ I Chinese­ ~::i~ ~: ~~ .~!Irt-+- New York Washington, D.C. lIJ1m~~ $lt ,.ii:tt A •• ~M . .11. .~. *m .8 4P ~ • Cleveland Box 444, Canal st. Sta. Box 75073 language ft~&IJ .. * *a ~';j;=:*~~ u press in ~*.~7j';_.' 1-' ::t=i~~* •• :i::I:::~Da'.~7. :=*~=~ti~.~,wl~ ~ Box 91037 New York, NY 10013 Washington, D.C. 20013 1~1rl!!"i'lilJrli~~. aiM, .lII;;ttr *,~If.l;;r;iIi¥?Hf; j!!jf;!B.:t:Stti /,'.\ i!I~."lH}]f;!:~II}, M'fi~ili t'n.~W.~ a_nMn· ~ Iii Cleveland, OH 44101 (212) 267-1025 (202) 872-8240 San Francisco -i;ldH;Jf;;QfI\f!;!:~ "'~.> [email protected]' $'; ~. ff,9}iTi~ ~ U • 4t~~~j;' ft{£il!411.i:'l'>J;. ).tJi.~tt:Jt ~ and New York "~~=;~T:~ ftU~~ ~ili,~nM.¥ ~.~~~ ~ II"lJi(ij· IlIbI!W 4-r.f .u Ult' RtfllU111.• 8+

18 JUNE 1993 5 On Trial for "Treason" Against Heirs of Nazism Defend Markus Wolf! The former head of the East German (DDR) intelligence service, Markus Wolf, is now beiflg tried by .the capitalist courts of reunified Germany. Our com­ rades of the Spartakist Workers Party of Germany and the Committee for Social Defense held a demonstration protesting this witchhunt trial at the court session on May 18. We print below the article "Fourth Reich: Hands Off Markus Wolf!" from Spartakist No. 103 (May 1993). Markus Wolf himself called it "the last campaign of the Cold War." On May 4, the trial began against the DDR spymas­ ter in DUsseldorf, the site of numerous "Stasi" trials. In a 389-page indictment, Attorney General Alexander von Stahl, notorious for chasing Red Army Faction "terrorists," accuses the leader of the Sparta kist Workers Party of Germany protests outside anti-Communist show trial of East German spymaster Central Administration for Intelligence Wolf in Dusseldorf. (HVA) of the DDR Ministry for State Security of "treason" and "bribery" (of Wolf, as we earlier demanded in the case intimidate and demoralize the working even by arch-reactionary Franz Josef agents who spied in West Germany on of Erich Honecker. Hands off Markus class, at the same time as it throws half Strauss, undermined the DDR and aided behalf of the HVA). Wolf responded, in Wolf! Freedom for (former East German the working people of the former DDR the Fourth Reich in annexing the first his speech to the court about his years army chief) Heinz Kessler, (former secu­ out of their jobs and rips up the contracts workers state in Germany. Wolf is as head of espionage and as a citizen of rity minister) Erich Mielke and all other of those who still have work. Even the also sympathetic to Gorbachev's pere­ the DDR, asking: "What country did I representatives of the former DDR! SPD/DGB bureaucrats like SteinkUhler stroika, which paved the way to Yeltsin's supposedly betray?" Defense of the DDR was no crime-seil­ have noticed that since the destruction counterrevolution. As for "treason," this can only refer ing it out was! But we also defend those of the USSR and the DDR the bosses While Wolf sees "grounds for re­ to "betraying" the Third Reich, which who sold it out, like Hans ("Germany are everywhere acting more brutally. At morse" in "looking back on the whole was smashed by the victory of the Red One Fatherland") Modrow, against the the same time, SteinkUhler & Co. use history of 40 years up to the end of the Army over German fascism. The East imperialist campaign of revenge. this to split the German working class DDR" (Der Spiegel, 3 May), we take the German deformed workers state was As we have written (see "Free Erich and to chain it. The struggle against the liberty of quoting Soviet spy Ignace built on the basis of this victory. Not Honecker!" WV No. 565, 11 December anti-Communist witchhunt must, like the Reiss, who broke from Stalin in 1937. only has the Federal Republic of Ger­ 1992, and "The Show Trial of Erich fight against racist terror, be an integral Reiss did not "regret" his laudable work many declared itself to be the legal suc­ Honecker," WV No. 568, 29 January): part of the struggle against the bosses' of supplying guns to the Spanish Repub­ cessor state to the Third Reich, but it "In fighting for the freedom of former offensive by the working class, begun licans, but instead declared: took over the entire spy network from DDR leaders, we are doing our class duty by the metal and steel workers. "The working class must defeat Stalin Hitler's "Foreign Armies East" military in defending the victims of this capitalist Even though the DDR named its Berlin and Stalinism so that the U.S.S.R. and espionage service, the Gehlen organiza­ class justice, just as we fought tooth and guard regiment after Feliks Dzerzhinsky, the international workers' movement do tion, which became the core of the later the founder not succumb to fascism and counter­ nail against capitalist reunification of of the Soviet Cheka, never­ revolution. This mixture of the worst of BND (Federal Information Service, West Germany, which gave rise to this anti­ theless the HVA cannot be equated with opportunism, devoid of principles, and Germany's CIA). Hardly anyone went Communist witchhunt, racist terror, the intelligence agency of the October of lies and blood threatens to poison the after the Federal Republic and its BND mass unemployment and other horrors." Revolution. The limits of Wolf's secret world and the last forces of the working with more success than Markus Wolf, What's going on here is not just a ven­ service operation lay in the Stalinist class." and now he's supposed to pay for that. detta directed against Honecker or Wolf. policy of "socialism in one (or half a) Reiss did not scorn the defense of the Concerning the revenge campaign, The goal is to snuff out among the East country," which presumed "peaceful USSR, but rather the Stalinist policy of Wolf told the court that "while I am German working class any conscious­ coexistence" with the imperialist states. "socialism in one country" which under­ brought to trial as the former head of ness and memory of the achievements This was a bitter fallacy, as it turned out. mined that defense. the intelligence agency of a German of the DDR's planned economy, or, as Wolf sees the fall of Social Democrat We hold in great esteem the work that state, the former leader of the same ser­ Wolf put it, "to disappear whatever is "detente" chancellor Willy Brandt as Markus Wolf carried out for decades in vice in the other German state reprdents left of 40 years of the DDR." one of his biggest defeats. But Brandt's defense of the DDR and the other de­ united Germany as its foreign minister." It is no accident that the German bour­ Ostpolitik (eastern policy), which was formed and degenerated workers states We Trotskyists demand immediate geoisie is staging one anti-Communist then continued by Helmut Schmidt and against imperialism. Now is the time to dismissal of the charges against Markus show trial after the other, in order to Christian Democrat Helmut Kohl, and defend him._ Chicago Protest Against "Populist Party" Fascists CHICAGO-On May 22, nearly 100 17 March 1989). anti-fascists demonstrated in front of Organized on short notice, the dem­ the Marriott O'Hare Hotel, where onstration at the Marriott united blacks, David Duke's Populist Party was hold­ Latinos and whites-youth, leftists and ing its national convention. A front for trade unionists-in comnion action the racist terrorists of the KKK, the against the violent hate-mongers of the Populist Party denies the Nazi Holo­ Populist Party. Participating organiza­ caust ever happened while ,its sup­ tions included Anti-Racist Action, the porters obscenely pledge to "make the International Socialist Organization, Holocaust a reality." The demonstrators and the Spartacist League with its reportedly outnumbered the Hitlerites fraternal organizations, the Spartacus inside the hotel. Klan-in-a-suit Duke, Youth Club, the PDC and the Labor who ran for president on the Populist Black Struggle League. ticket in 1988, didn't show. The Spartacist contingent, the'larg­ The suburban-like setting of the est in the demonstration, led protesters Marriott O'Hare was the closest the in chanting: "No Hitlers in Chicago­ so-called "Populist.s" dared to get to Nazis off the streets!" and "Stop the the working-class and heavily minor­ skinheads, stop the Klan-Only work­ ity city of Chicago. These fascists ers defense guards can!" One Sparta­ have not set foot in downtown Chi­ cist placard compared Democratic cago since March 1989, when a labor/ president Bill Clinton's massacre of black demonstration initiated by the the Branch Davidians in Waco to Partisan Defense Committee (PDC) Hitler's infamous SS mass murder in protested a Populist Party gathering the Czech town of Lidice during World in the Bismarck Hotel (see "United­ War II., Another said: "From Moscow s Front Protest Against Klansman Duke: to Berlin-Capitalist Counterrevolu­ Chanting "No Hitlers in Chicago-Nazis off the streets!" militants march 'No Hitlers in Chicago!'" WV No. 473, tion Breeds Fascism, War, Poverty." in front of Marriott O'Hare Hotel. .

6 WORKERS VANGUARD Mass Coal Strike Rocks the Ukraine

DONETSK, June 14-Some 50,000 genuinely egalitarian, voluntary Union regional autonomy in order to exercise recalling how Ukrainian nationalists col­ miners and other workers rallied in the of Soviet Socialist Republics based on control over profits from sales of coal. laborated with the Nazi genocide. Min­ central square here today to push for­ soviet democracy and guided by prole­ The newly appointed deputy prime min­ ers take pride in the fact that over 100 ward their strike against the Ukrainian tarian internationalism! ister, Yukhim Zvyagilsky, is the former nationalities are represented in the work­ regime of President Leonid Kravchuk director of a mine which was known for force. As one miner said, "We have Jews, and Prime Minister Leonid Kuchma. "Nationalism Shall Not Pass!" its strikebreaking and his chief political Tatars, Ukrainians, Russians, all work­ Begun a .week ago, the" strike rapidly The economic situation in the Ukraine aide is a strike leader. Prime Minister ing in the shaft together." Great Russian expanded to include almost all of the is even more calamitous than in Yeltsin's Kuchma, who stands to benefit from chauvinism is an enemy of the Russian 250 pits in the Donets Basin (Donbass) Russia. Having abandoned the Russian Kravchuk's downfall, is a favorite of the workers. Only on the basis of Leninist as well as hundreds of other industrial ruble after declaring independence 18 World Bank. internationalism, granting national self­ enterprises throughout the Ukraine. Up­ months ago, the Ukraine still has no real Meanwhile, in nearby Lugansk a dem­ determination and full democratic rights wards of a million workers in mines, currency, substituting an ~rsatz "cou­ onstration of several thousand "Commu­ to all nationalities, can the Soviet Union machinery, textile and defense plants are pon" currency. The collapse of the indus- nists" and "Socialists" reportedly called be reforged on its original revolutionary now on strike, and the government foundations. quickly started granting concessions to The Donbass was a key bastion of the the workers in an attempt to stop the mammoth 1989 miners strike against the snowballing struggle. effects of Gorbachev's perestroika "mar­ This massive walkout was precipitated ket reforms." That strike marked a high by astronomical price increases on basic point in militant working-class struggle, goods announced two days earlier. The as strike committees took control of dis­ cost of some food" items was raised as tribution and organized defense guards much as sevenfold. Under prodding from to maintain order, directly posing the the World Bank, the regime has been loos­ possibility of dual power and a pro­ ening controls on prices while clamping letarian political revolution to sweep down sharply on wage increases. When away the entire bankrupt Stalinist appa­ miners in Makeyevka arrived at work ratus which-from Stalin to Brezhnev last Monday to 'find that the price of their and Gorbachev-had sapped and under­ sandwich lunches had been jacked up, mined the Soviet Union. Memories of they walked off the job. Many workers the '89 strike are vivid among the already went without lunch to leave their Donetsk miners today. One young miner families a bit offood. One miner summed told us: it up: "We must strike or starve, and the "In 1989 we had workers defense guards strike must spread!" who patrolled the city. Crime stopped totally. All shops and state stores were Every day since the strike began, the checked against price rises. All shops center of Donetsk has been filled with could be checked against hoarding of thousands of miners and other strikers goods. But even that is not enough. What in round-the-clock demonstrations. On we really need besides workers defense guards is a real workers party." June 11, a coordinating committee was formed here by representatives of 73 Already in this strike, workers have set striking enterprises and immediately up patrols, keeping the militia (police) demanded buses from the city council at bay. Miners are not scared by rumors to transport delegations to spread news of troop movements. of the strike in the face of a media black­ But as strikers bitterly point out, this out. A miner from Pavlograd, near strike is tightly controlled from the top: Dnepropetrovsk, reports daily demon­ "This is not the same as the '89 strike. strations there as well, with all eleven Then we had a solid strike. Now they pits and a defense plant employing barely tell us anything." Many leaders 15,000 workers shut down. Major enter­ who emerged from the ranks in '89 were prises in Dnepropetrovsk and Kharkov bought off by the regime with govern­ are also out, and there have been protest ment posts, or in some cases mysteri­ rallies at electronics enterprises in the ously killed in "accidents." The NPG capital of Kiev and the Byelorussian city was formed in the aftermath of that strike of Minsk, with threats of a general strike For Workers Soviet Rule! by a coterie of "AFL-CIA"-sponsored being raised in both places. The strike pro-Yeltsin "leaders," and joined with has now spread to the western Ukraine, other "independent" unions to support including Lvov and Yolyn near the trial supply network after the breakup of for annexing the area to Russia. Seeking Yeltsin in the April 25 Russian referen­ Polish border. the Soviet Union and the planned econ­ to whip up nationalist sentiment among dum. But when the pro-Yeltsin air traffic This is the first major proletarian omy has had a disastrous effect on the the predominantly ethnic Russian popu­ controllers union walked out last sum­ challenge to the nascent capitalist states Ukraine. Many factories, like Kharkov's lation in the eastern Ukraine, the Social­ mer, Yeltsin and Rutskoi ruthlessly broke erected in the wake of the counter­ giant Hammer and Sickle engine plant, ist Party of the Ukraine (SPU), successor their strike. Likewise, the Ukrainian revolutionary destruction of the Soviet have stopped production for lack of parts to the old Communist Party, also calls NPG leadership earlier looked to Krav­ Union. Comrades of the International from Russia. The sharply rising prices for making "Russian the official lan­ chuk, the former Stalinist chief of the Communist League (Fourth Internation­ i.n the Ukraine are largely the result of guage of the Donetsk oblast [district]." Ukraine who effortlessly and overnight alist) have been distributing the Russian­ the spiraling cost of fuel imports. In Moscow, the Russian Communist converted to capitalism. language Biuletin Spartakovtsev. Over Today the minimum wage and pension Workers Party (RKRP) did not even give The factory managers are no less in 2,400 pieces of Spartacist literature were in the Ukraine is 6,900 coupons ($2) a lip service support to the strike but fear of this combative struggle spreading sold at today's rally alone, including the month, while a kilogram of sausage costs instead joined with the fascistic Russian beyond their narrow interests in the Don­ article "How the Soviet Workers State up to 29,000 and a bushel of potatoes is National Sobor in a small "red-brown" bass than are Kravchuk and Yeltsin. Was Strangled," stressing that Stalin and 15,000 coupons. Miners, who are an elite demonstration marked by vile anti­ Volsky, the corporatist spokesman for his heirs, with their lying theory of sector of the workforce and average Semitic tirades outside the Ostankino TV Russia's factory managers and would-be "socialism in one country," led the USSR monthly salaries from 60,000 to as high center. While pushing Russian national­ owners, told a conference of interna­ to disaster. These bureaucratic usurpers, as 200,000 a month depending on pro­ ism-under the guise of "Soviet patrio­ tional businessmen in Moscow that he who atomized and demoralized the ductivity, can barely survive. As for tism"-the various Stalinist has-beens was "more worried about these social tensions than about Ukraine's nuclear Soviet p~oletariat, betrayed the crucial teachers, who make 27,000, and other are in league with capitalist-corporatist opportunities for proletarian revolutions workers, even minimal subsistence is forces like Arkady Volsky and Russian weapons or the Black Sea Fleet" (Mos­ abroad which would have broken the impossible without resorting to dealing vice president Aleksandr Rutskoi. Thus cow Times, 10 June). Miners must not power of world imperialism and laid the in the black market. The recent food the SPU distributed a leaflet calling allow their strike to become an instru­ basis for developing an international price rises have a particularly devastat­ "for the right of workers themselves to ment for maneuvering among different socialist economy. ing effect in this heavily industrialized choose property and economic forms" factions of the new exploiters, but must take control of the strike, demanding In discussions with miners, we have region of the eastern Ukraine, where and demanding "any radical change in property to be allowed only in the inter­ new elections to the strike committees. emphasized the need to form authentic workers cannot even fall back on grdwing ests of toiler and workforce collectives." Among the demands raised by the workers councils (soviets) based on their own crops in private garden plots. coordinating committee is the call to re­ elected representatives from striking Faced with this situation, the miners This is Volsky's program of privatization through the manager-controlled "work store the workers' buying power to 1988 enterprises and drawing in other strata have demanded pension and wage in­ levels. Asked how this could be imposed, of the population like students, pension­ creases indexed to inflation and a cut in collectives. " committee representatives reply: "Let ers and soldiers. ICL comrades have also food prices and taxes. But the strike The striking miners are overwhelm­ the state worry their heads about that." argued for delegations to be sent to the committee, which is led by. the Inde­ ingly anti-nationalist and would strongly But this capitalist state cannot restore coal fields and industrial centers of Rus­ pendent Union of Miners (NPG) and prefer to live in a reunited Soviet Union. the economic conditions that existed sia and other republics to expand the works closely with the mine directors, A huge red banner at today's demonstra­ under the former workers state, even one strike beyond the Ukraine. This would has increasingly manipulated the strike tion proclaimed: "Nationalism Shall Not deformed by Stalinist bureaucratic mis­ directly pose the possibility to sweep around its own political demands, calling Pass!" A spokesman from the nationalist rule. To bring the workers economic away Kravchuk, Yeltsin and all the new - for a referendum on Kravchuk and Rukh movement was booed off the security, it is indeed necessary to revive exploiters through class struggle. A vic­ the government and for regional "self­ podium at an earlier demonstration with continued on page 9 torious workers revolution must forge a administration." The mine directors want cries of "Murderers of our children," 7 18 JUNE 1993 dreds of Algerian protesters on 17 Octo­ ber 1961-and budget minister under Mass Murderer Bous~uet Shot Dead Giscard d'Estaing. Touvier's documented war crimes include the murder of seven hostages (six ofthem Jews), the bombing of a Lyon synagogue, and numerous instances of torture and murder. Despite two death sentences in absentia after the war, Touvier went about life undisturbed France: Vichy War Criminal through the years, protected by leading officials of the French Catholic hierarchy like Archbishop of Lyon Cardinal Gerlier and Vatican secretary of state Cardinal Villot. Last year Mitterrand created an uproar Brought to Justice when he refused to offer even a symbolic gesture acknowledging French complic­ On July 16 and 17, 1942 nearly 13,000 ity in the Holocaust, denying any con­ Jews, including more than 4,000 chil­ nection between the Petain regime and dren, were dragged off to the Velodrome the postwar Fourth and Fifth Repub­ d'Hiver bicycle-racing stadium in Paris. lics. No wonder. Mitterrand is the em­ From there, they were taken to Drancy bodiment of that continuity. He was and other concentration camps in the information officer for the General Com­ vicinity of Paris to be loaded into cattle missariat of Prisons, and in 1943 was cars for their final destination: Ausch­ awarded one of Vichy's highest honors, witz. The perpetrators of this massive the Order of the Francisque, for service deportation to death were not the Nazi to the Petainist "national revolution." SS, but French police led by one Rene. After the war, Mitterrand was interior Bousquet. Nearly 51 years later, this minister in charge of police repression hideous mass murderer was finally during France's colonial war in Algeria. brought to justice. The "solidarity" of the Vichy old boys' On June 8, Bousquet was shot four club continued as Mitterrand endorsed times at pointblank range in the en­ Bousquet in the 1958 parliamentary elec­ trance of his ·elegant 16th Arrondisse­ tions, and Bousquet returned the favor ment apartment in Paris. Grotesquely, when Mitterrand ran in the '65 presiden­ tial elections. the French government immediat~ly ar­ rested the avenger of Bousquet's crimes, As we wrote at the time of the Barbie 49-year-old writer Christian Didier, and trial: "Since the bourgeoisie and its state charged him with murder. From the was up to its neck in Nazi atrocities, standpoint of the working class, of sur­ nothing short of an overthrow of the vivors of the Nazi Holocaust, of all bourgeois state by a workers revolution decent people, in ridding the world of could have inflicted on the auxiliaries of "that piece of garbage," as he called Nazi barbarism the punishment they Bousquet, Christian Didier deserves to AFP deserved" ("French Fascism and the German officers in 1943 with Vichy regime police chief Rene Bousquet (at Holocaust," WV No. 431, 26 June 1987). be honored, not prosecuted. Didier right), who sent thousands of French Jews to Nazi death camps. already served a four-month prison sen­ And this is true not only for the French tence for a 1987 attempt against Nazi on French soil were perpetrated solely Robert Paxton, Vichy France and the bourgeoisie-Vichy or Gaullist-but for war criminal Klaus Barbie. Drop all by the German occupation forces. Only Jews [Schocken; 1983]). Gestapo chief all the imperialist powers. The British charges against Christian Didier! after a growing uproar did the regime Himmler called Bousquet a "precious bourgeoisie has for years covered up Obscenely, various self-styled repre­ even begin to make any moves to try collaborator. " local collaboration with the German sentatives of the Jewish people in France Bousquet and two other Vichy war crim­ Only months before being dumped occupying forces on the Channel Islands, rushed to defend the government and to inals, Paul Touvier and Maurice Papon. from his post in late 1943, Bousquet where thousands died in slave labor condemn the war criminal's execution. But as Klarsfeld himself said earlier this pledged to "pursue with a fierce energy camps. The Churchill government de­ Zionist Nazi-hunter Serge Klarsfeld de­ year about the government's endless the struggle against all the enemies of ported German Jewish refugees to con­ nounced the killing as "a deplorable foot-dragging, "They seem to be waiting French internal security," singling out centration camps in the Australian des­ event which interrupts the course of jus­ for Papon to die." And the 84-year-old "terrorists, communists, Jews, Gaullists, ert, while Roosevelt slammed the door tice." We say: Justice has been served! Bousquet had not yet even been sched­ and foreign agents." Yet this mass mur­ on refugees from the Holocaust and The hypocritical claim that a trial would uled for trial. derer never served a day in prison. threw Japanese Americans into concen­ have helped to further expose the crimes If ever a war criminal deserved to die, Following a sham treason trial in 1949, tration camps. of the Nazi-collaborationist regime Bousquet was it. Appointed secretary­ his five-year sentence was suspended on Under the "socialist" Mitterrand the based in Vichy is a whitewash of the general of the Interior Ministry's Police the grounds that he secretly supported racist crimes of French imperialism have government, pure and simple. As Didier Nationale in May 1942 by his mentor, the Gaullist "resistance." He went on continued. Last October, when over said, "I've heard of the Bousquet case Prime Minister Pierre Laval, Bousquet to influential posts in the Fourth Repub­ 1,200 CRS riot cops rounded up hun­ for years and nothing ever happened." quickly distinguished himself for his lic, including as a director of the dreds of African immigrants in Vin­ In the 48 years since the war ehded, anti-Semitic and anti-Communist blood­ Banque d'Indochine and later of the cennes, bystanders cried out, recalling not one Vichy war criminal has ever been lust. Bousquet personally appealed to state-owned UTA airline and numerous the 1942 mass deportation from the Velo­ tried/or their role in the Nazi Holocaust. Gestapo deputy chief Reinhard Heydrich other companies. drome, "It's the raid of Vel d'Hiv!" To The 1987 trial of Klaus Barbie, the SS to expand the deportations from occu­ The Bousquet case is symptomatic of sweep away the system which spawns butcher of Lyon, was turned into a legal­ pied France to include Jews from Vichy the postwar bourgeoisie's reaction to the fascist terror, it will take not the act of istic charade in which Barbie was' cod­ territory as well, and insisted that chil­ war crimes carried out by the pro-Nazi a lone avenging angel, however coura­ dled while those of his'victims who had

and Vietnam, were capitalist is derived degenerated workers state. In short, we the idea that nothing fundamental has from the position of the French organi­ are to believe that "small, underdevel­ changed in Eastern Europe and the for­ Letter ... zation, Lutte Ouvriere (formerly Voix oped bourgeois states" were able to insti­ mer Soviet Union. N'est-ce pas?_ (continued from page 2) Ouvriere). At its best, this was a sterile tute a collectivized economy, centralized which gave the green light to the undo­ "revolutionary" response to Pabloite re­ planning and a state monopoly of for­ ing of the regimes in Eastern Europe. visionism, which took the fact of the eign trade. If this were so, what need Spartacist League Impelled by their own internal problems social transformations in Eastern Europe would there be for proletarian social­ and in a desperate bid to appease impe­ as evidence that the Stalinists could be ist revolution? Despite his emphasis Public Offices rialism, the Soviet Stalinists under Gor­ pressured to play an "objectively revo­ on this, Syrek's indifference to which -MARXIST LlTERATURE­ lutionary role." This was the first step class rules is demonstrated in his appre­ bachev ditched their backing for the Bay Area countries of the "Soviet bloc," and down a long slippery slope, with the Pab­ ciation of the forces of capitalist resto­ ~; Thurs.: 5:30-8:00 p.m., Sat.: 1 :00-5:00 p.m. loists looking to any and every force­ ration which now hold sway in the 1634 Telegraph, 3rd Floor (near 17th Street) rJ~ the Stalinist regimes there collapsed. In the absence of the mobilization of the other than the working class led by a former Soviet Union. Although arguing Oakland, California Phone: (510) 839-0851 working class-which had been atom­ revolutionary Trotskyist party-to serve that the "nationalization fetish" was the Chicago ized and politically demoralized through as the "vanguard." root of all revisionism, he applies the Tues.: 5:00-9:00 p.m., Sat.: 11 :OOa.m. -2:00p.m. same yardstick to argue that the ex­ 161 W. Harrison St .. 10th Floot decades of Stalinist misrule-to take Yet, for all his "anti-revisionist" rhet­ Chicago, Illinois Phone: (312) 663-0715 power in their own hands through pro­ oric, Syrek ends up investing the bour­ USSR remains a workers state, i.e., letarian political revolution, the void geoisie with the capacity of playing nationalized property. New York City was filled with the forces of capitalist a "progressive" role in the epoch of As for Syrek's patronizing plaint that Tues.: 6:30-9:00 p.m., Sat.: 1:00-5:00 p.m. 41 Warren St. (one block below counterrevolution. imperialist decay. By his own criteria we don't use language the "woikers" can Chambers St. near Church St) Syrek's "theory" that the states in the states that existed in Eastern Europe understand: surely "sine qua non" is New York, NY Phone: (212) 267-1025 Eastern Europe, as well as China, Cuba mirrored what existed in the Soviet more accessible to the proletariat than 8 WORKERS VANGUARD hope.' What do we tell them now?" What they're certainly not telling them is the story of how Butler was an FBI/cop fink who pistol-whipped a young Panther member (which was stopped by Geronimo) and machine­ gunned the apartment of a leader of Ron Karenga's "US" organization; who at Geronimo's trial repeatedly lied to the jury about his relations with the On May 21 America's foremost was that Geronimo survived. Iiams. Williams calls for "community cops and feds; and who framed Geron­ class-war prisoner, former Black Pan­ Year after year, the parole board con­ policing"-lining up some Uncle Toms imo for a 1968 murder in Santa Monica ther Party leader Geronimo ji Jaga cocts some specious justification to to keep things cool in the 'hooa as an the government knows he did not com­ (Pratt) was denied parole for the elev­ keep Geronimo behind bars. In 1989 auxiliary to a massive show of cop mit. They know because wiretap logs enth time by the California Board of Commissioner David Brown slandered force. His model is .the police mobili­ (which the feds claim are "lost") prove Prison Terms. As before, the board Geronimo as a heroin user to counter zation during the recent federal civil Geronimo was 400 miles awav in Oak­ deliberately closed its eyes to the mas­ the growing support for his freedom. rights trial of the racist cops who beat la~d at the time of the shooting, Today, sive evidence of Geronimo's innocence This year they cited Geronimo's Post­ Rodney King. One of Williams' most while Butler obscenely postures as an and ignored the outpouring of sup­ Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) as prominent "community policers" is one advocate of the black community, the [Jort for Geronimo's freedom. Adjoa grounds for denying him parole­ Julius Butler, the FBIILAPD fink that activist Butler helped frame is still Aiyetoro, Geronimo's attorney at the despite. the fact that prison officials put Geronimo behind bars 22 years ago. behind bars, fighting for his freedom. hearing, announced she plans to appeal. have persistently denied that Geronimo Shortly after his appointment was Geronimo has spent over 22 years This year's four-hour parole hear­ suffers from PTSD and therefore announced in April 1992, Williams behind bars, the victim of a racist frame­ ing focused on Geronimo's Panther refused him treatment. (This is one of attended a welcome gathering at the up under the FBI's notorious Counter­ background as leader of the Los Ange­ the glaring instances of prison harass­ First AME Church in L.A. "to establish intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) les branch. It focused on Geronimo's ment challenged by Geronimo in an liaison to further sensitize [Williams] which targeted the Black Panther Party military expertise, which he learned ongoing lawsuit filed by Partisan to our immediate needs," said Rev. and other militant groups for "elimina­ while serving two tours in Vietnam .. Defense Committee counsel Valerie Chip Murray. It was at about that time tion." Numerous California and gov­ In December 1969, L.A. Panther head­ West in 1989.) The only time they ever that AME church member Julius E ".:r ernment officials, including Reagan's quarters came under a massive cop told the truth was in 1987 when the began to gain increasing prominence top cop Ed Meese, built their careers siege, in which, thanks to Geronimo's D.A.'s representative, Dianne Vezzani, in the capitalist press. A New York on the war against the Panthers and the military training, none of his Pan­ opposed parole on the grounds that Times (12 Ntwember 1992) "Special frame-up of Geronimo. So court after ther comrades were hurt. This came Geronimo is "still a revolutionary." Report" described Butler as a lawyer court (and parole board after parole just days after Chicago BPP leaders The parole board received over 500 active in church affairs and youth coun­ board) has refused to allow any expo­ Mark Clark and Fred Hampton were letters calling for Geronimo's freedom, seling, and quoted him bemoaning that sure of the FBI's role in concocting the gunned down in their beds by the while only one letter opposed parole­ "we've been saying for years to the case. It will take mass protest to smash Chicago cops. What angered the board from black L.A. police chief Willie Wil- younger generation, 'Hold on, there's the frame-up. Free Geronimo Now!

next month, six black Secret Service year, the gross injustice and cruelty to right to eat anywhere they want, but that agents who were part of the security which he is the constant victim. To him, they can afford to. Genuine equality and Somalia ... your celebration is a sham; your boasted team for Clinton's speech at the U.S. liberty, an unholy license; your national freedom for blacks requires a revolution­ (continued from page 1) Naval Academy were made to wait an greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds ary leadership of the working class wag­ the same page a picture of a Pakistani hour before they were served at a Den­ of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your ing a fight for a third American revolution APC behind one of the Somali dead. ny's restaurant in Annapolis, Maryland. denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted to finish the Civil War through the estab­ Of the 21 Secret Service agents in impudence; your shouts of liberty and lishment of proletarian state power. _ The whole U.S.fUN intervention has equality, hollow mockery; your prayers been cloaked in the rhetoric of humani­ the restaurant (with one exception, the and hymns, your sermons and thanksgiv­ tarian aid. "Operation Restore Hope" has others were white and notably self­ ings, with all your religious parade and instead turned Somalia once again into segregated at a different table), the black solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, Ukraine ... government agents were the only ones fraud, deception, impiety, and hypoc­ a UN "trusteeship," with imperialist gen­ risy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which (continued from page 7) darmes acting on orders from the Pen­ who were made to wait for their order. would disgrace a nation of savages." Then in late May, 125 black children the economy, to restore central planning tagon. The American expeditionary force What are the Jim Crow racist policies went in when the famine was already in the Martin Luther King Children's and collective ownership over the means Choir were refused entry at two Denny's of Denny's except a reminder that-more of production and to reforge the eco­ dissipating. The real purposes were to than 100 years after the Civil War which allow the U.S. to act as global cops, and restaurants in Virginia. The manager of nomic links among the different regions the first Denny's told them he had no smashed .the chains of chattel slavery­ of the former Soviet Union. This now let President Bush look tough in the wan­ there is no equality for black people in ing days of his presidency. Now with his room and told them to go to a bigger will require a socialist revolution which Denny's 40 miles away. When the buses America? As the father of one young sweeps away all the counterrevolution­ poll ratings down, Democrat Clinton black man, who was told he had to pay wants to do the same. arrived there, the manager met them in ary regimes, centrally the dominant Rus­ before he could eat at Denny's, said sian state, and places the workers in While much of the left fell for the the parking lot to tell them there was no bitterly, "Almost 30 years ago, I was power through their own democratically "humanitarian" cover, the Spartacist room inside. "It was as if he didn't even arrested for trying to eat at a McCrory's elected soviets. League warned from the outset that want us inside his restaurant," said the five-and-dime store in Ocala, Florida. The vast bulk of strikers, while mili­ "American military intervention in Afri­ choir leader, Anita High. And my kids still can't eat in Denny's." tant and frustrated, see no alternative to ca can only result in increased oppres­ A nationwide chain, with some 1,300 The civil rights movement fought the current leadership. But if their aspi­ sion and exploitation of the African restaurants, Denny's is a relatively af­ fordable place and it's open 24 hours a against the legal segregation and discrim­ rations are to be met, the key is building people" (WV No. 565, 11 December ination against blacks in the American a revolutionary party forged in intransi­ 1992). Spartacist supporters are join­ day. It's supposed to be open to the public. South. But that movement shattered when gent opposition to all variants of nation­ ing in protests around the country,with In short, it's a place which many peo­ it came up against the social reality alism and all wings of the would-be signs proclaiming "U.S. Global Cops Out ple-especially working people-come of the segregation and discrimination exploiters. One older strike leader com­ of Somalia," "100,000 Iraqis Slaugh­ to, or otherwise stop by in their travels, for a meal. But what Georgia's former against blacks in the North, who for years mented after reading our article, "This tered-U.S. Imperialism=World's Big­ had lived with "equality under the law." is absolutely right. The party was a real gest Terrorist" and "Rodney King Beat­ governor Maddox did by. waving an ax Our fight against Denny's Jim Crow pol­ party of the workers and a revolutionary ing, Waco Inferno: America's 'New handle, Denny's does with its racist "pre­ icies is part of our fight for integrated party before Lenin's death. Afterward World Order'!"_ pay" policies, insults, discriminatory ser­ vice and lousy food for blacks. We intend class struggle by black and white workers it really did become a party of scum­ to see to it that Denny's is a place whose against the racist rulers of America­ bags." It is necessary to begin now to doors are open to everybody! whether represented by the Republicans build anew a party of Lenin and Trotsky, Denny's ... On the July 4th weekend, the Labor or by yuppie Arkansas executioner Bill which can place Soviet workers again in Clinton and his Democrats. We look to the vanguard of the struggle for world (continued from page 12) Black Leagues and the Spartacist League plan to picket Denny's restaurants from guarantee that blacks not only have the socialist revolution. _ when the same employee asked if eggs California to Virginia demanding "Down which had been overcooked could be with Jim Crow at Denny'S! For Equal taken back, he was told by the manager Treatment, Good Service and Food for to "take it to the niggers and if they have Corrections May) called for "reforging a genu­ AllI" And they intend to make Denny's a complaint, tell them to come see me." inely internationalist socialist fed­ provide just that. Following these inte­ In the article "ADL's Massive Spy eration of the Balkans, from the This March, in the face of an impend­ grated protests, the demonstrators. are Operation" (WV No. 577,4 June), we Danube to the Aegean Sea." It should ing lawsuit by the U.S. Justice Depart­ going in to eat, taking no "ifs, and~ or referred to one of the ADL's targets have called for "forging" such a fed­ ment charging Denny's with a "pattern buts" as a condition. ' as "political scientist Yigal Arens, the eration. While the possibility of a or practice" of discrimination against Denny's is based in Spartanburg, South liberal Zionist son of the former blacks, the restaurant's management genuinely socialist federation was Carolina-the hardcore racist state of the Israeli war minister." Yigal Arens has posed in the victory of Tito's Com­ signed a decree agreeing to racial "sen­ Confederacy, which was settled by the brought to our attention that he is not sitivity" training and tests for its employ­ munist partisan forces at the end of original British slave owners of Barba­ a political scientist, but rather works World War II, Stalin and Tito's ees, as well as television ads featuring dos. In protesting this outfit on the holi­ at a computer science research insti­ blacks and a written pledge on its menus respective nationalist policies sabo­ day weekend meant to celebrate the foun­ tute, and that he is not a liberal Zionist welcoming "customers of all races." At taged this internationalist perspec­ dation of the "United States of America," but a socialist and anti-Zionist. We the same time, Denny's, central office tive, whose implementation would the LBL will recall the words of Frederick have expressed to Arens our apology issued a statement arrogantly denying have required a proletarian political Douglass in his 1852 speech on "The for these unfortunate errors. revolution in East Europe to sweep "allegations that customer concerns, Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro": received more than a year ago in a A sentence in "U.S./NATO Hands away the Stalinist bureaucrats. and a "What, to the American slave, is your (WV socialist revolution in Greece. few California restaurants, demonstrate 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals Off the Balkans!" No. 575, 7 . a pattern of racial discrimination." The to him, more than all other days in the 18 JUNE 1993 9 from the Turks. The next year the two South Slav monarchies went to war with Balkans ... one another over division of the spoils, (continued from page 1) with the Serbs coming out on top. A year a hapless, ill-trained rabble, like General later the whole world was in flames. Aidid's militia, and that Washington and While the imperialist powers and its allies will continue to shrink from their various factions debate what to more difficult challenges, like quelling do about the Balkan crisis, we have the fighting in Bosnia?" insisted that in the face of U.S./NATO Clinton's rapid backtracking over intervention we defend the Serbs, while Bosnia has reinforced the image of a calling on the Serbian working class weak, vacillating and inept presidency. to overthrow its nationalist-capitalist But Clinton's uncanny ability to shoot misleaders in an internationalist struggle himself first in one foot .and then the for a socialist federation of the. Bal­ other is not' just a matter of personal kans stretching from the Danube to the incompetence. Behind all the zigzags Aegean Sea. and inconsistencies of U.S. policy in the Balkans lie the weakness and con­ Liberals, Leftists Spearhead tradictions of American imperialism. Anti-Serbian Warmongering America's arrogant rulers long to pun­ ish the Serbian nationalists for flout­ The response in the U.S. to the new ing the dictates of the Western powers. outbreak of Balkan wars is something of The self-proclaimed sole superpower a reversal of the usual political lineup. looks feeble if it cannot restore order The right wing of the bourgeoisie has in the Balkans. But neither Washing­ Croatian National Guardsmen, armed thugs of fascistic Tudjman regime. generally advised against military inter­ ton nor its imperialist allies/rivals know vention, while the screechiest anti­ what kind of order they want to restore­ Serbian hawks have been liberals and death in 1980, the Yugoslav Stalinist tsin. U.S./NATO attacks on Serbian self-styled radicals. In the U.S. Senate, or can possibly restore-in that region, bureaucracy fissured along national forces would give Yeltsin's Russian the warmongering has been led by Dem­ a tinderbox of murderous nationalist pas­ lines. That fissuring was personified by nationalist opponents an emotionally ocrats such as Biden and DeConcini, sions and lust for historic vengeance. Milosevic, who took over the Serbian powerful issue. And while Russian dip­ who demanded "Bomb the Serbs. Now" For months we've been deluged with League of Communists in the late 1980s, lomats have voted for all the anti-Serbian on the op-ed page of the New York Times go-to-war propaganda against Serbia. and Croatian leader Franjo Tudjman, a sanctions in the UN, they've lobbied for (18 May). Echoing this line is Paul The forced population transfers, called former general in the Yugoslav Federal a softer line. However, Washington's Hockenos, East European correspondent "ethnic cleansing," arising from the ter­ Army who became a notorious apologist other major ally in the region, Turkey, for the social-democratic In These Times ritorial conflict between three South for the U stasha. is pushing a hawkish line against Serbia. Slavic peoples in Bosnia is being com­ (28 October 1992): "A quick, decisive With capitalist counterrevolution Today the imperialists are held back pared to the Nazi Holocaust. Belgrade invasion of Bosnia-Hercegovina-on the sweeping East Europe and then the from intervening more massively in the strongman Slobodan Milosevic is por­ scale of Operation Desert Storm-is an Soviet Union in 1989-91, Tudjman asked Balkans by their own competing inter­ trayed as the Adolf Hitler of the Bal­ option that the left should rally around for and received Western, especially Ger­ ests and the daunting prospect of untan­ kans. To gain popular support at home as forcefully as any issue since opposi­ man, imperialist backing in creating a gling the interpenetrated peoples of the for a renewed Western imperialist over­ tion to the Vietnam War." Croatian client state. In the eyes of the former Yugoslavia. But the region is a lordship in the Balkans, the media played Such outright calls to "send in the U.S. rulers, Milosevic's only crime is powder keg and the fuse is burning. The up the plight of the Bosnian Muslims. Marines" are still a bit much for most that he has tried to redraw the boundaries world situation today resembles the But as the U.S. got cold feet about anti-Serb warmongers of the "left." They of the Balkans without getting Washing­ pre-1914 period of mounting imperialist going in, suddenly they discovered that prefer the Clinton line of providing tanks, ton's approval first. Current imperialist rivalries. It is widely known that World the Croatians were doing their own artillery and other heavy weaponry to strategy-to the extent that there is War I was triggered by national disputes "cleansing" in Mostar, and now it's the Bosnian Muslim forces. This is the one-is to starve the Serbian people in in the South Slav region. But it was more reported that Bosnian Muslim forces are main program of the self-styled Cam­ order to pressure Milosevic into reining than just some Serb nationalist shooting driving thousands of Croat refugees out paign for Peace and Democracy, a group in the Bosnian Serbian militias. But the an Austrian archduke. The first impe­ of Travnik into the arms of Serbian of rad-lib academics who more accu­ Bosnian Serbs have defied Milosevic, rialist world war, with its horrendous troops! rately should have called it the "Cam­ who himself has come under heavy polit­ carnage, was prefigured by a succession While the American imperialists are paign for War and Imperialist Domina­ ical attack from even more fanatical Ser­ of Balkan Wars manipulated by the Great clearly reluctant to rush into the Balkan tion in the Balkans." Last week, this bian nationalists. Powers, fueled by rival local national­ quicksand, the liberal and rad-lib milieu group rallied at the UN around the slo­ isms and marked by constant shifts in has taken up "poor little Bosnia" as its Direct U.S./NATO military interven­ gans: "Lift the Arms Embargo on Bos­ alliances. latest cause, and various pseudo-leftists tion risks igniting an ever-widening nia! Allow the Democratic, Multi-Ethnic are falling over themselves trying to think Balkan war, potentially involving both The direct origins go back to the Bosnian Republic to Defend Itself up arguments for direct or indirect impe­ Russia, historically the protector of its Russo-Turkish War of 1875. With the de­ Against Aggression." rialist intervention against the Serbs. As Balkan "Slavic little brothers," and Tur­ feat of the Ottoman Empire, Austria­ The same line is put forward by Ernest Marxists and proletarian international­ key, in support of the Bosnian Muslims Hungary annexed Bosnia, while Serbia Mandel's pseudo-Trotskyist United Sec­ ists, we take no side in the squalid nation­ and Albanians. The Balkan conflagration and Bulgaria became independent mon­ retariat (USec) in its February resolu­ alist bloodbath that has ripped up the could prove a decisive obstacle in the archies under Russian protectorship. In tion, titled "For a Multi-Ethnic and former Yugoslavia, establishing capital­ already difficult project of transforming the first Balkan War of 1912, Serbia and Sovereign Bosnia-Herzegovina," which Bulgaria seized Macedonia and the ist rule over the corpses of the workers Russia into an American neocolony states: "The demand to lift the embargo and peasants of all nationalities. But we through Washington's agent, Boris Yel- Albanian-populated province 'of Kosovo on sending arms to the Bosnian forces oppose all forms of imperialist interven­ is an answer to the main Greater Serbian tion in the Balkans, from the economic I 30 miles I aggression .... " This is nothing but a call boycott of Serbia to "peacekeeping" UN ·SAFE AREAS· on Yankee imperialism, the Fourth Reich troops, whether or not they wear, UN and Belgian merchants of death to arm blue helmets. the bourgeois-nationalist Bosnian Mus­ lim leadership., U.S. Imperialism and the Western liberals, social democrats and Balkan Quagmire i \ J leftists may sell the line that the Bosnian Washington is not opposed to a Muslim forces are fighting for a "dem­ Greater Serbia as such provided it sets ocratic, multi-ethnic state," but no one the terms for it. It was, after all, the West­ in the Balkans buys it. Bosnian Muslim ern imperialist powers-Britain and president Alija Izetbegovic came to France-which, following World War I, prominence in the late 1980s as the established a far greater Serbia than any­ author of a tract in favor of an "Islamic thing Milosevic is aiming at. The 1919 state." The Bosnian Muslim population Treaty of Versailles created Yugoslavia was in fact largely secular, cosmopolitan by attaching the South Slav regions and urbanized, and had little interest in (Slovenia and Croatia) of the defunct an Islamic state. A veiled woman was Habsburg Empire to the Kingdom of and is a rare sight in Sarajevo. Izetbego­ Serbia. The Yugoslavia of the Serbian vic's rise to power, along with Milosevic monarchy was destroyed by the Nazi and Tudjman, indicated the ascendancy German invasion in 1940. The Ger­ of reactionary nationalisms, each rein­ mans then set up a puppet government forcing the other, with the disintegration in Croatia and Bosnia under the of the Titoist order in Yugoslavia. clerical-fascist Ustasha, who massacred The 1974 Titoist constitution, recog­ hundreds of thousands of Serbs, as well nizing the multinational character of the as Jews and Gypsies. Bosnian republic, gave the Bosnian In this cauldron of war and inter­ Serbs as well as the Bosnian Croats the communalist slaughter, Tito's Com­ right to veto its secession from Yugosla­ ...... ; " , Ser b'Ian f ront I'me munist Partisans fought and defeated , •••••.: and controlled areas via. Izetbegovic and the Muslim leaders the Croatian U stasha, Serbian royalist Main UN routes MONTENEGRO simply ~iolated the Serbs' constitutional Chetniks and Nazi German occupiers, rights when they organized a plebiscite - International borders thereby laying the basis for the Social­ on independence in early 1992 (which ist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Independent Map the Serbs boycotted). After this plebi­ However, postwar Yugoslavia was from Defending UN-declared "safe havens" for Bosnian Muslims may be pretext for scite, the Bosnian Serbian and €roatian the outset a bureaucratically deformed Western imperialist military intervention against Serbia. Numbered areas are leaders agreed to an independent Bos­ workers state. Especially after Tito's "safe havens" as of May 26. nian state, provided it was constituted 10 WORKERS VANGUARD on ethnically based cantons. But this was ago the Bosnian Muslim foreign minister three very closely related South Slav tling over Bosnia early last month, a rejected by the Muslim leaders. Milovan reasserted his government's intent to peoples intermingled in its territory. number of left groups, mainly pseudo­ Djilas, a one-time leading figure in the take back all of the territory of this There has never been a Bosnian nation, Trotskyists, got together in a Committee Tito regime who became a world-famous former Yugoslav republic. The actual nor any sense of common national iden­ Against U.S. Intervention in the Balkans, social-democratic "dissident," noted: program of the "arm Bosnia" leftists­ tity among its inhabitants. The journalist which called a "Hands Off Yugoslavia!" "The Serbs bear the largest share witting or unwitting-is to create a Misha Glenny observed that Bosnil;l's rally in Oakland in mid-May. Yet among of responsibility for what has hap­ Muslim-dominated, U.S. puppet state in "internal stability was invariably guar­ the prime movers of this committee pened to Yugoslavia, but the Croats also the Balkans, driving out the Serbs and anteed by an external power which medi­ is Socialist Action, American supporters have an authoritarian and chauvinist Government, and the Bosnian Muslims Croats or reducing them to subjugated ated between the three communities (the of Ernest Mandel's USec, which is wanted dominance in an independent minorities. Sublime Porte, Vienna, the inter-war simultaneously agitating for the Western and unitary state." Even on its own terms, the demand royal dictatorship or Titoism)" (The Fall imperialists to arm the Bosnian Muslims -New York Times, 5 March for "democratic, multi-ethnic Bosnia" is of Yugoslavia [Penguin, 1992]). Izetbe­ against the Serbs! Furthermore, this While the Muslims constituted rough­ undemocratic since the Serbs (a third of govic's campaign for Western imperialist committee has nothing to say about the ly 45 percent of the total population of the population) and the Croats (almost overlordship is the logical conclusion of U.S./European Community economic Bosnia, they were heayily urbanized, a fifth) do not want to live in the same his aim to create a state encompassing warfare against Serbia. The economic while the 'countryside was dominated state as the Muslims or with one another. the historic boundaries of Bosnia against embargo against Serbia is just as deadly, mainly by Serbian peasants (who owned The ostensibly Trotskyist Revolutionary the will of over half its inhabitants. if not more so, than air strikes against 64 percent of the land), with some Croa­ Workers League, which opposes imperi­ The democratic and national rights of Serbian forces in Bosnia. The main vic­ tian areas. Consequently once the fight­ alist intervention on behalf of the Bos­ all peoples in the region can be secured tims are old people, young children and ing broke out, the Serbian and Croatian nian Muslims, nonetheless states: "The only by proletarian political power the poorest sections of the population. militias quickly took over much of the working class must fight forthe integrity within a socialist federation of the Bal­ It takes no great political courage or country and besieged the cities where of Bosnia-Herzegovina as a multi-ethnic kans. In such a federation the present radicalism to oppose direct U.S. military the Muslims were concentrated. state-but this is impossible under the state and provincial boundaries could intervention in the Balkans at the present Naive liberals and radicals may sup­ leadership of Alia Isbegovic's strongly and in many cases would be redrawn in time. Opinion polls show a solid major­ port the imperialist arming of the Bos­ pro-imperialist government" (Fighting a democratic and equitable way accord­ ity against such action, as well as influ­ nian Muslim forces on the grounds of Worker, March 1993). ing to national affiliation. For example, ential sections of the Republican Party, self-defense and ensuring a "fair fight." But why should the working class aim the oppressed Albanians of Kosovo, who the U.S. Joint Chiefs et al. Right now, But the Muslim leaders are not simply to establish an independent state encom­ make up 85 percent of what is now a economic warfare is the cutting edge of interested in defending their present passing all the territory of this former Serbian province, would certainly want U.S. imperialist aggression in the Bal­ territorial positions, which they consider Yugoslav republic? The region called to and have the right to unite with kans. We Spartacists say: Break the intolerable in any case, nor do they want Bosnia originated as a province in the Albania. Blockade of Serbia! U.S./NATO Hands a fair fight with the Serbs. A few months Ottoman Empire. Over the centuries In response to Clinton's saber rat- Off the Balkans! _

We don't know how you did it. The next day, demonstrators set up a who was recently fired by Harvard for You really must have been brave. picket line at Harvard's Holyoke Center fighting the university's discriminatory Harvard ... You sat through all their screaming (continued from page 12) to protest Chairman of the Joint Chiefs policies. Darryl Hicks spoke at the dem­ without emotions as they entered their of Staff Colin Powell's appearance as onstration and noted that as a man conformity, refusing to join a protest fiery grave. the university's commencement speaker. who had probably encountered discrim­ in which NAMBLA participated, while Save the children Chanting, "Down with anti-gay bigotry! ination in his own life, Colin Powell eagerly waving the stars and stripes of Well not this time Lift the ban in the military!" and "Not "should not be speaking up against U.S. imperialism for enlistment of gays For patience we have none one penny, not one man for Colin Pow­ gays being in the military-that's totally in the military. Addressing the protesters, Enough time has been wasted ell's imperialist plans!" the militant wrong." Bill Andriette, editor of NAMBLA Bul­ We were ordered to get this over get this done. picket was in stark contrast to the limp, Some ostensible socialists were para­ letin, denounced the reactionary "fam­ patriotic, officially sanctioned "protest" lyzed by their own political confusion, ily values" crusade and spoke of Reno's Patience is a virtue. which consisted of releasing a lot of hot sectarianism and outright bigotry. The Good things come to those who wait. satanic bullying and imprisonment of air-pink balloons festooned with the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) children in the "child abuse" witchhunt It took only 51 days For you to decide their fiery fate. slogan, "lift the ban." In contrast, Spar­ said they could not endorse the demon­ against day-care centers. tacist spokesmen pointed to the history stration because they oppose lifting the Deep down inside your heart you know The focal point of outrage and protest of revolutionary Marxist opposition to ban on gays in the military. They lurked against Reno was her central responsi­ the truth you cannot hide. Christians who believe in God don't discrimination in the military-from the on the fringes of our anti-Powell protest bility for the horrendous massacre of 86 contemplate suicide. Dreyfus affair in France to Jim Crow near an upside-down American flag and men, women and children in the Branch The day will come, we'll all be judged as segregation in the American military to wore buttons reading, "Extend the ban Davidian compound outside Waco, we stand before the Lord. fighting discrimination against women on gays to everybody." It doesn't wash Texas. As they shuffled into Memorial Koresh may have thought himself as Christ. and gays today-while we implacably for the RCP to cloak their reactionary Hall, every smug preppie and their rich But you thought yourself as God. oppose the war aims of the capitalist position as opposition to imperialism­ daddy were confronted with a Spartacist class. these homophobes from the Stalin-Mao banner reading, "Waco Holocaust-Clin­ Family of Floyd Houtman We love you, Dad" Demonstrators seized on the news that mold can't hide their anti-gay bigotry. ton/Reno/FBI Are Mass Murderers!" U.S. gunships had been dispatched to More laughable still was the International Family members of Floyd Houtman, Sr., Local television news coverage of Mogadishu and debunked the hypocrit­ Socialist Organization (ISO) which said a black man from New Bedford, Massa­ Reno's appearance at Harvard began with ical and racist "white man's burden" "yes" they would endorse, then phoned chusetts who was murdered in the Waco footage of our demonstration and clips justification for U.S. intervention in back and said "no" they couldn't, then holocaust, wrote a poem which was read from the attorney general's murderous Somalia. "First the imperialists starved showed up and picketed for two min­ at the demonstration: Waco inferno. As Julie Lavin of the Spar­ Africa, now they say, 'Let ,'em eat bul­ utes bleating, "Clinton and Powell go "Thank you Mr. President, Janet Reno too. tacusYouth Club said, "Just as the hid­ lets'," said SL spokesman tom Down­ hand in hand-ask them why they don't We mustn't forget the BATF, the FBI, eous MOVE bombing was the signature ing. "We say, 'U.S. hands off Africa! lift the ban!" but exited when protesters all the men in blue. of the Reagan years, so is the Waco mas­ Troops out now! '" Demonstrators made chanted back, "Break with the Demo­ How well did you sleep last night? sacre the signature of the Clinton/Reno the link between U.S. imperialism's war­ crats! Build a workers party!" Did you toss and tum? years. We must sear the memory of this making abroad and strikebreaking at The Spartacus Youth Clubs say: Down I myself didn't get much sleep. into the consciousness of the working home by championing the case of Darryl with the racist U.S. war machine! End Do you know, I saw my father burned? people and oppressed in this country." Hicks, an outspoken black union steward the ban on gays! _

1963 March led by Martin Luther room!-Down with anti-gay laws and gents in the Salvadoran civil war and King, Jr." cop harassment! Abolish all laws against called for smashing apartheid in South RWL ... Thirty years ago, Malcolm X aptly pornography, drug use, prostitution!" Africa. And we called for honoring (continued from page 4) denounced the "farce on Washington" The SL candidates opposed the U.S. picket lines. Funny, we didn't notice that anti-communist exclusionist) New York for what it was-another attempt to government's anti-Soviet war drive, sup­ either in the platform of the "Fighting Women's Action Coalition. In "Mitosis keep black struggle within the con­ ported military victory to leftist in sur- Worker" slate. _ of a Cult" we noted that "Typically, the fines of the racist, capitalist Democratic RWL will tack on a radical-sounding Party. Now the RWL begs WAC to slogan and march as the left tail of join the RWL/NWROC as the best some liberal mobilization aimed at pres­ builders of another Democratic Party suring Democratic Party politicians." crawl. The NWROC leaflet to WAC Now the RWL, through their National politely criticizes the Democrats-the Women's Rights Organizing Committee party of the Vietnam War and the Bay Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of the Spartacist League (NWROC), has hitched their wagon to of Pigs-for refusing "to commit them­ Coretta Scott King's star. selves to the elimination of poverty and o $ 7/24 issues of Workers Vanguard o $3/3 issues of At the New York WAC meeting, the racism"! (includes English-language Spartacist) Women and Revolution Gloria Steinem wannabes were con­ Unlike the centrists of the RWL, gen­ o New 0 Renewal international rates: 0$2/4 issues of sumed with the fate of their "sister" uine Marxists utilize bourgeois elections $25/24 issues-Airmail $7/24 issues-Seamail Espartaco (en espanol) Lani Guinier, Clinton's nominee for as platforms to advance the revolution­ (inclLides Spanish-language $2/10 introductory issues of Workers Vanguard Spartacist) the job of "civil rights" deputy to Waco ary program. In 1981, the Spartacist o baby-killer Janet Reno. After sitting League ran candidates in the Detroit Name ______silent while a Spartacist spokesman city elections, calling for "LaborlBlack Address ______angrily denounced the Reno fans in mobilizations to smash Klan/Nazi ter­ WAC, NWROC presented a motion ror" and "Abolish gun control !-For ______Apt. # Phone ( __ ) ______that "WAC will help build the anti­ the right of armed self-defense!" We City State Zip _____-.,,= police brutality contingent in the August _opposed segregated schools and hous­ 578 28th March on Washington called by ing, and demanded: "Free abortion on Make checks payable/mall to: Spartaclst Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 Coretta Scott King to commemorate the demand! Keep the state out of the bed- 18 JUNE 1993 • 11 W,/iIlE/iS "/I,,,,/i,

Down with Jim Crow at Denny's! Rachel Thompson wanted her family restaurant were African-American. Dis­ black friends in a San Jose Denny's proof, the manager called the cops. to celebrate her 13th birthday at the trict managers instructed store managers when their table was surrounded by • San Diego: In November 1991, a Denny's restaurant in Vallejo, California. to 'start cracking down and get rid of cops. The manager ordered the police black cop from San Francisco and his "Your birthday, our treat" advertises the some of those blackouts'." to remO\~e them, saying "there are too family were made to wait for an hour Denny's menu, offering a free meal as The word from the top was carried many of you here." The cops forced the before being seated at Denny's. When its "way o( saying 'Happy Birthday'." out with vigor. Here are just some exam­ women to pay for their food, although they finally got a table, they were told But despite having the requisite legal ples of how they kept blacks out: they were not allowed to eat it. When that they would have to pay for their proof that it was her birthday, Rachel • San Jose: In December 1991, 18 they went to another local Denny's, the meals in advance. A year earlier, Denny's Thompson didn't qualify. Why? Because black members of an NAACP youth East Indian woman was ordered out L.A.-area district manager had sent out Rachel Thompson is black. Instead of a group were told they would have to pay by the manager after he saw her talking orders that blacks should not be allowed birthday celebration, she and her family a two-dollar cover charge and pay for to her black friends. A year later, black to receive separate checks. were, in the words of her mother, "vio­ their food in advance if they wanted to 12-year-old Louis McNair was refused • Sacramento: On four separate occa­ lated, humiliated and embarrassed" by be served. The same month an East a free birthday meal. When his mother sions a black woman and her friends Denny's management. Indian woman was eating with three returned with his birth certificate as were refused service at Denny's unless This was no aberration. Over 30 years they prepaid for their order. Two who after the lunch counter sit-ins that swept refused were not served. the South in protest of the exclusion of July 2-4 In every case where blacks were blacks, Jim Crow racism is the unstated denied service, ordered to prepay or company policy at Denny's nationwide thrown out of the restaurant on claims restaurant chain. A lawsuit filed against that it was closing time, whites contin­ the restaurant by 32 customers in Cali­ ued to be welcomed in and served with fornia cites a former Denny's manager no restrictions. An affidavit by a former in Northern California who "acknow­ Denny's employee testifies that when­ ledged that during weekly district meet­ ever he told the manager of a customer ings the term 'blackout' was used to complaint, the manager "would ask me describe situations where a significant what color they were." In one instance, number of the customers in a particular continued on page 9

~~Mass Murderer Reno, War Criminal Powell!" Protests at Harvard Commencement

BOSTON-All the unctuous pomp of the Harvard elite couldn't cover the circumstance of spirited protests organized by the Spartacus Youth Club against U.S. top cop Janet Reno and top gun Colin Powell at Harvard's commencement cer­ emonies. On June 9, some 40 militants representing a broad united front of gay rights activists, unionists, Trotskyists, the Communist Party, black and Latino organizers and others picketed Harvard Law School ceremonies at Memorial Hall, where the attorney general addressed her alma mater. Haitian activists joined the picket to demand an end to the imprisonment of HIV-positive Haitian refugees in the barbed wire concentration camp on the U.S. military base in Guantanamo, Cuba. Demonstrators chanted, "Free Hai­ tians at Guantanamo! Guantanamo belongs to Cuba!" Rep­ resentatives of NAMBLA (North American Man-Boy Love Association) were early endorsers of the united-front protest, and the participation of this organization became a litmus test for others. Gay rights groups like ACT UP and Har­ vard's "Pride Committee" flunked and capitulated to social Spartacus Youth Club demonstration at Harvard, June 9, protests Clinton's top cop Janet Reno. continued on. page 11 &i1: ~~

12 • 18 JUNE 1993