WfJ/iNlliS"IINfitJIII' 25¢ No. 539 ~X'623 22 November 1991

IMoscow I

Spartacist Moscow, November 7-Tens of thousands march to Red Square celebrating the October Revolution and denouncing capitalist-restorationists led by the traitors Yeltsin and Gorbachev. MOSCOW-The imperialist media and wind. In contrast to the regimented the now anti-Communist Soviet televi­ formal parades of previous years, this sion sought to portray Revolution Day, Down With "Free Market" Starvation! was an outpouring, heavily proletarian November 7, as the wake after the "death in composition, of people who wanted . of Communism." They even brought , For a Leninist-Trotskyist Party! to take a stand for socialism. They back the Romanov pretender to the tsar- chanted "Lenin! Lenin!" and "Down ist throne. The new "rulers" tried to ban with the bourgeois dictatorship!" They all celebration of the anniversary of the fact as many as 90,000 came out in Mos­ where thousands more took to the streets. carried hand-painted signs with such Bolsheviks taking power. The New York cow in an angry protest against the Gathering before the Lenin statue in slogans as "Privatization: A Dream Times admitted that "more than 10,000 counterrevolution headed by Yeltsin and October Square, there were hundreds of for Millionaires, for the Workers a Communist loyalists" marched, but in Gorbachev. In Leningrad, Kiev and else- red flags snapping in the stiff winter continued on pages)

\ .... Louisiana Election Catap-ulted Fascist Demag!gue KKK· Duke Rides Racist Backlash Young Spartacus Gerald/Morning Advocate NOVEMBER 18-The national spot­ during the campaign and after, he light was on the Louisiana governor's has appeared on virtually every major election where fascist David Duke, run­ national TV talk show, from Good Morn­ ning as a Republican, was pitted against ing America to Nightline. The candidacy former Democratic governor Edwin of KKKer Duke represents another step Edwards, who is widely viewed as a in the backlash against even paying lip crook. Although Edwards won, ~ith 60 service to racial equality, as covert percentofthe total due to a massive turn­ racism is increasingly replaced by the out of blacks at the polls, Duke got 55 overt variety that is historically the percent of the white vote and even more norm in America. A New York Times among lower-income whites. (18 November) editorial stated the obvi­ The political establishment in this ous, that "Duke's rapid rise in politics country, especially the Bush Republi­ makes clear that racism has a large cans, heaved a sigh of relief that an constituency." American state would not be governed This is by no means limited to Loui­ by an "ex"-Klansman and Nazi. But siana or the South. Duke would be a . black people rightly fear that the rise of force in New York's Howard Beach or David Duke will mean an increase in the Chicago suburb of Cicero. Almost racist attacks, frr~ .further cutbacks in half his campaign funds came from welfare to KKK 'terror. Indeed, on the out of state. And in Dubuque, Iowa, eve of the election the home of a black black families have been victimized by parish coordinator for Edwards, Johnny cross-burnings and racist epithets by fas­ Cox, was burned down; a charred cross cist punks affiliated with the sinister ,"National Association for the Advance- was found in the front yard. Taking off his sheets doesn't change Duke crowed that even though he lost ment of White People," which was Klansman David Duke's fascist pro­ this election, "the message goes out loud founded by Duke a decade ago. gram. 1,500 demonstrated against and clear across the country." Both continued on page 3 the KKK fuhrer last March in Boston. because no one with credibility claimed­ responsibility for it. U.S. Congressman Unemp.!gy.ment Up., Bush's Ratings Down James Traficant claimed the bomb "was placed on board with the connivance of CIA agents who believed it contained heroin" (London Guardian, 4 November 1989) as part of a complicated plot involving Syria and U.S. hostages in It's Libya-Bashing Time Again Lebanon. The London Guardian (23 December 1988) among others has also As George Bush's standing in the check, the imperial president will flash stomachs growl, and Bush's ratings will suggested that "the remaining candidate opinion polls continued to drop this fall on the screen to announce that fighter shoot back up in the polls. The Romans for the atrocity from the Middle East with the U.S. economy in the doldrums, planes from a U.S. aircraft carrier on used to call it "bread and circuses," to could, the PLO fear, be Mossad,' the we've been wondering what foreign "routine exercises" in the Med had keep the plebes quiet. But in capitalist Israeli intelligence agency, seeking to bogeyman he would go after to make up "struck back." in "retaliation" after com­ America today, millions of jobless and discredit Palestinians. for his vulnerability on the domestic ing "under attack." homeless and hundreds of thousands Given the tangle of intrigue, it's pos­ front. Noriega's on trial in Miami, so The Democrats will snap to attention thrown off the welfare rolls could be sible to find a "link" to whomever the that leaves him out. Air strikes against for their commander in chief, Americans asking, "Where's the bread?" imperialists want to "get" this month. Iraqi "nuclear sites"? Thinkable, but it will briefly glow with renewed "pride" The Pan Am bombing has always This time, even the lickspittle purveyors could stir up the Near East hornet's nest as they did in the Gulf War even as their had mystery surrounding it, first of all of administration disinformation at the right when Washington was pushing its New YorkTimes (15 November) felt com­ "peace" talks. Cuba is already targeted, pelled to note that "For more than a year and the North Korea "A-bomb threat" is investigators had pursued a theory that just getting going. But that's serious the bombing was ordered by Iran and business for later. carried out by a Syrian-based terrorist That left the old standby, Libya's group." But now that those two countries Qaddafi, considered the no-risk target of are being courted for Bush's "New World choice. So after a three-year "investiga­ Order," a "timing device" was discov­ tion" into the bombing of Pan Am Flight ered that supposedly linked it to Libya 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, which even though it was made· by a Swiss, killed 270 people iri December 1988, the company. U.S. suddenly indicted two alleged "Lib­ Many of the relatives of those who yan intelligence agents." White House died on Pan Am Flight 103 aren't buy­ spokesman Marlin Fitzwater issued the ing. Bonnie O'Conner of Long Island, usual script about "Libyan-inspired whose brother was killed, said angrily: terrorism" which typically precedes a "Indicting Libyans is only a con­ bombing run on Tripoli. Asked about venience for George Bush's Mideast military action, Ole Fizzwater refused to peace policy. Does George Bush take "rule out any options." us for fools?" (London Independent, For a while the media big guns will 15 November). But the bourgeois poli­ soften up the target, Pat Buchanan will ticians, Republican and Democrat alike, accuse Bush of being a wimp. And then, indeed take the electorate for fools, and probably at prime-time dinner hour when the prospect is that more innocent the family is gathered in front of the TV Reuters Libyan civilians will tragically pay with and after Dad and/or Mom cashed their Rubble from U.S. terror bombing of Libya in 1986 in failed attempt to murder their lives in order to boost Bush's first unemployment benefits extension Qaddafi. electoral chances in 1992.•

Fascism and ---Heroic Soviet Spies--­ Capitalist Decay The striking showing ofKlan leader David Duke in the Louisiana elections comes Honor Richard Sorge and after a decade ofunrelenting attacks on the labor movement, blacks and other oppressed minorities across America. Fascism is a Ozaki Hotsumi product ofcapitalist decay, as racist dema­ TOKYO-A memorial was held in rades warned the Soviet government gogues exploit the growing economic des­ Tokyo to honor Richard Sorge andOzaki in detail of the impending Nazi Ger­ peration of the middle classes. Writing in Hotsumi, who were arrested 50 years ago man attack. Yet Stalin deliberately dis­ TROTSKY the early 1950s, American Trotskyist leader LENIN for spying for the Soviet Union. They regarded this and similar warnings from James P. Cannon maintained that only a were deliberately executed by the Japa­ other sources, desperately clinging to his revolutionary-led workers movement can defeat fascism once and for all. nese imperial government on 7 Novem­ non-aggression pact with Hitler. American capitalism is not in love with democracy. It's no principle of American ber 1944, the anniversary. ofthe Bolshe­ As a by-product of glasnost, Soviet capitalism that we must maintain all the democratic forms-free speech, free press, vik Revolution. sources are now revealing the truth about free rights to organize, and all the rest. The only principle the American capitalists This year's commemoration, attended this period. For example, an article in have is the exploitation of labor, the extraction of profits, and the enrichment of by some 500 people, was organized Soviet Life (June 1991) reports that themselves at the expense of the workers. That's their principle. If they can do it in by the Ozaki family and attracted older the "superstar of Soviet military intelli­ any easy and smooth and quiet.and peaceful way under political democracy, OK. veteran radicals as well as youth. gence, Richard Sorge, radioed from That's the cheapest way. But when that doesn't work any longer, our wonderful, Representatives of the Spartacist Group Tokyo the strategic, operational and tac­ democratic capitalists will tum, with the savage fury of the German and Italian Japan came to honor the memory of these tical plans of the German command" capitalists, to the bloody violence of fascism. They will finance and equip a fascist heroic fighters and martyrs for interna­ three weeks before Hitler's Operation movement, and check it straight up to the labor movement: "What are you going to tional communism. Barbarossa was launched. do about it? There are going to be no more debates with you, it's going to be fight." Among those present was Hanako In Japan Ozaki and Sorge are the per­ It will be a fight to a finish, and it will be fought on all fronts, from election Ishii, who befriended and cared for sonification of communist idealism in campaigns to strikes and fights with fascist gangsters in the streets .... The irrepressible Sorge in the last period before his arrest. the defense of the Soviet Union. In 1986 conflict will lead inexorably to a showdown in the United States of America, which She herself was persecuted by the Japa­ representatives of our international ten­ will bear the name: The Struggle for Power. nese authorities, not only because her dency and the founders of the Spartacist lover was a spy for the Soviet Union and Group Japan placed a wreath on the -James P. Cannon, America's Road to Socialism (1953) a Communist but also because he was a graves with the inscription, in Japanese foreigner. After the war she arranged to and English: "In honor ofRichard Sorge, move his body from the prison cemetery hero of the Soviet Union, and Ozaki to Tama Cemetery. Hotsumi, who died fighting for the cause !!!!!!'!!!~'1.~!.~!!~. In 1941 Sorge, Ozaki and their com- of the international proletariat.". DIRECTOR OF PARTYPUBLICATIONS: Liz Gordon EDITOR: Jan Norden PRODUCTION MANAGER: Joan Parker CIRCULATION MANAGER: Karen Valdez EDITORIAL BOARD: George Foster, Frank Hunter, Jane Kerrigan, Len Meyers, James Robertson, Joseph Seymour, Alison Spencer, Marjorie Stamberg The Spartacist League is the U.S. Section of the international Communist League (Fourth Internationalist). Workers Vanguard (USPS 098-770) published biweekly, except 2nd issue August and with 3-week interval December, by the't;partacisr Publishing Co .. 41 Warren Street, New York, NY 10007. Telephone: (212) 732-7862 (Editorial), (212) 732-7861 (Business). Address all correspondence 10: Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116. Domestic subscriptions: $7.00/24 issues. Second-class postage paid at New York, NY. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Workers Vanguard, Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116. Opinions expressed in signed articles or letters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint. Photos: Ozaki Hotsuki Richard Sorge at Hakone, Japan in No. 539 22 November 1991 1938; Ozaki Hotsumi and his daughter in Shanghai, 1932. • 2 WORKERS VANGUARD Fascist Duke..-. (continued from page 1) David Duke is not a "former" or "ex" Klansman/Nazi. In the 1960s he was known as the Nazi of Louisiana State University, and in the '70s he was a "grand wizard" in the Klan. Media-hip Duke took off his robes for a three-piece suit, but this in no way changed his fascist politics. When in 1986 Duke visited the Boston, March 28: Nazis' Mauthausen concentration camp Partisan Defense in Austria.jie said: "This wasn't really a Committee initiated gas chamber, it was just to de-lice peo­ united front that ple"! Until two years ago, he was selling mobilized youth and the Nazi tract "Did Six Million Really labor in militant, Die?" out of his "legislative" office. integrated anti-Duke protest. Down with But many of the fascists' intended vic­ twin parties of tims clearly saw through the media cloud racist American around Duke. Black Louisianan Albert capitalism! Joseph remarked: "It is easy for white people to forgive David Duke for being in the ... Klan, they were never hung from trees. We cannot forget or forgive .... Bur it is not just blacks who will suffer. of white families earning more than to victimize black women on welfare, a ger) ran as Democrats. Moreover, one of Remember he was a Nazi." In New $75,000 voted for him. workers party would go after the ruling­ Edwards' main cronies is Jefferson Par­ Orleans Jewish survivors of Nazi Ger­ Edwards' campaign appeal to whites class criminals, both Republicans and ish sheriff Harry Lee, the Chinese "good many were reminded of Hitler's early was pitched to yuppies with the message Democrats, who have swindled hundreds ole boy" who a few years back ordered days by the sea of "mesmerized" white that Duke is "bad for business." Inves­ of billions of taxpayers' dollars: the S&L his deputies to stop and interrogate faces at frenzied rallies. tors would shun the state, and Louisiana con artists, Wall Street operators and blacks who entered the heavily white Just as Hitler's rise to power in Ger­ would become an international pariah Pentagon aAl1S contractors. parish. And nationally the Democrats are many was fueled by the Great Depres­ "redlined" or "X-rated." One Edwards But the only "alternative" to Duke that trying to slough off their "image" as a sion which ravaged the capitalist world ad depicted a neighboring Texan gleeful various liberals and leftists had to offer party of black rights, women's rights, in the early 1930s, so Duke's rise to at the economic benefits to his state if was veiled calls for votes to the Demo­ labor and other "special interests." prominence is linked to the depressed Duke won. New Orleans was warned it crats. A Louisiana Coalition Against The Democrats are no friends of labor, state of American capitalism. And no could lose the Super Bowl and numerous Racism and Nazism-advertisement in the women or blacks, but the phony "lesser state in the U.S. is as depressed as Loui­ conventions. New Orleans Times-Picayune made an evil" party of American capitalism. The siana, whose economy was devastated In its own way, the Democrat Ed­ implicit pitch for Edwards' "good ole Republicans worry that Duke may make by the collapse of the oil boom a decade wards' campaign reinforced Duke's boy politics" as opposed to Duke's gen­ it harder for Bush to fun for re-election ago. In the early '80s oil accounted for demagogic claim to speak for the white ocide. A Workers World leaflet called for on the program of "crime, quotas and 40 percent of the state's revenues; today "little man" whose interests are disre­ "people to stop Duke at the polls," while Kuwait." Yet both the capitalist parties it is down to 15 percent. Louisiana ranks garded by the ruling political estab­ adding that "Duke and fascists like him are running on "respectable" versions of 49th in per capita income with the largest lishment. Edwards' advisers insisted that cannot be stopped by elections." The ex­ this racist platform, and have been for gap between rich and poor. Life for many Duke supporters were "immovable." Maoists of the Revolutionary Political years. This has been accompanied by black people is pervasive crushing pov­ Supposedly nothing could convince Organization, via their African American the rise of racist attacks on the erty akin to the Caribbean. them to abandon the racist demagogue. Liberation League, were part of a "Get streets, from anti-busing mobs to cop The majority of whites are also hurt­ Certainly, Edwards has nothing to offer Out the Vote Coalition," a bloc of black terror. The Spartacist League has taken ing. Here is the root source of Duke's them except to continue things as they elected officials, the NAACP and the the lead in mobilizing labor/black de­ appeal as he uses blacks as scapegoats are, which are intolerable. Urban League which explicitly backed fense against KKK/Nazi provocations, for American capitalism's decay. "Wel­ Only integrated working-class strug­ Edwards. including against appearances by "Klan fare parasites should have all the illegit­ gle against capitalist exploitation can The main obstacle to the kind of in a Suit" Duke. imate children they want," he tells fren­ cut through the racist false conscious­ working-class struggle that can defeat To put a stop to Duke and his ilk zied crowds of supporters. "I just don't ness of Duke's present supporters, iso­ Duke is the sellout labor bureaucracy requires the building of a revolutionary think you should have to pay for them." lating and smashing the hard core of and its ties to the politically bankrupt workers party which would mobilize the In the absence of a working-class social­ fascists. Unionization of the "open shop" Democratic Party. While the Democrats social power of labor in the interests of ist opposition, Duke's racist demagogy South would impel white and black are now trying to use Duke's member­ the black poor and all the oppressed finds a ready constituency. He did best workers to fight together against scab­ ship in the GOP to embarrass the Repub­ and exploited in a struggle against among white families earning between herding cracker sheriffs, company goons licans, in point of fact, in the past Duke increasingly vicious, decaying American $15,000 and $30,000, while only a third and Klansmen. While Duke & Co. aim (as well as fellow Klansman Tom Metz- capitalism. _

Partisan Defense Committee Benefits Holiday Appeal for Class-War Prisoners Come to a Fundraising Party!

"All through history those who monthly stipends to class-war prisoners have fought against oppression and extra gifts for them and their fam­ have constantly been faced with Music • Dancing • Food ilies during the holidays. This year is the dungeons of a ruling class. our sixth holiday appeal to raise The greater the cause has been, Saturday, Dec. 7, 10 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 8, 5-10 p.m. funds for the stipend program. We now and the deeper it has been rooted Please call for information: 179 Varick St. send stipends to 19 prisoners-former in the needs and sufferings of (404) 659-0251 For information: (212) 406-4252 Black Panther Party leader Geron­ the masses, the more it has been imo ji Jaga (Pratt), death row political menaced by the tortures of prison prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, Ramona cells." Africa and 12 other members and sup­ -James P. Cannon, "The Cause porters of MOVE, Panther supporters That Passes Through a Sunday, Dec. 8, 1-4 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 8, 3-7 p.m. Ed Poindexter and Wopashitwe Mondo Prison," September 1926 The Firehouse. Fort Mason Ctr. UE Hall Eyen we LangajDavid Rice), prison We must not forget the class-war Marina at Laguna 37 S, Ashland Ave. activist Hugo Pinell and Irish Repub­ For information: (510) 839-0852 For information: (312) 663-0719 prisoners of today-those in prison for lican Socialist Party supporter Eddie standing up to racist capitalist oppres­ Mcf'lelland. Support to these prisoners sion-whose freedom is in the interests is not an act of charity but of solidarity of the working class and all the op­ by those on the outside with those pressed. In 1986, the Partisan Defense Tickets: $5 advance, $8 at door, $10 contributing inside prison walls. Committee revived an International (A $10 ticket includes a subscription to Class-Struggle Defense Notes for one.year) Add your support to the class-war Labor Defense tradition of sending- prisoners. Their fight is our fight.

22 NOVEMBER 1991 3 "The Samson Option" and Mordechai Vanunu After trying out and discarding numer­ (They're already in league with the ous "reasons" for the U.S.' mass slaugh­ White House in secretly supplying the Iranian ayatollahs with American arms.) ter in Iraq last year, George Bush's Or are the Israelis preparing to go solo? speech writers finally hit upon the The Zionistmadmen couldvery easily­ bogeyman of "madman" Hussein armed and perhaps deliberately-trip over the with nuclear weapons. Of course, this trip wire for World War IlL" was a brazen lie-Iraq was years away Hersh notes that Israel not only has the from nuclear capability. That is in fact bombs, but also the capacity to deliver what the "UN investigation" last summer them. Back in 1986, we checked out showed-despite all the manufactured what information was available about crisis atmosphere, with U.S.-controlled Israeli delivery systems, and published "investigators" swiping Iraqi personnel a map showing that the Lavi fighter­ files-though it hasn't stopped Bush bomber could reach Moscow. from using this as an excuse to threaten So "Vanunu knew," as the British renewed military action against Baghdad Economist commented on Hersh's book, and to continue to starve the Iraqi people. but you read it first in Workers Vanguard. But there is a gang of certifiable mad­ And we don't just report Vanunu's spec­ men in the Middle East today who are tacular revelations, we defend him. The armed with hundreds of nukes: ballistic Spartacist League and Partisan Defense missile warheads, weapons systems for Committee have waged an international long-distance. fighters, tactical nuclear campaign calling for Vanunu's freedom. weapons, neutron bombs, nuclear land All of humanity owes a debt of gratitude mines, miniaturized warheads small to this heroic man! enough to fit in a suitcase, and more! It has been known for years that the war­ "Cap'n Bob"­ crazed Zionist rulers of Israel had the Vanunu's Dead in the Water bombshell in bomb. This was confirmed in great detail The Samson Option confirms in every five years ago by courageous Israeli 5 October 1986 London Sunday respect the information about Israel's nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu, top-secret Dimona nuclear reactor and who also for the first time revealed the Times revealed extent of Israeli plutonium reprocessing center (known extent of the Zionist nuclear arsenal: at nuclear arsenal. as "the Tunnel") revealed by Mordechai least 200 warheads. For this. service to The courageous Vanunu. Born a Moroccan Jew, he humanity, Vanunu is being held incom­ nuclear tech­ worked at Dimona from 1977 to 1985, municado in an Israeli prison, sentenced nician flashed and risked his life to expose the danger to 18 years for "treason." message to of the Israeli nuclear time bomb. His A new book, The Samson Option­ reporters from story was printed in the London Sunday which is not the latest spy thriller from police van of Times (5 October 1986), in which he Robert Ludlum, but a history of Israel's his abduction by the Mossad. detailed the workings of "the Tunnel," nuclear stockpile-has been receiving a whose two innocuous floors above lot of attention. The title is a term coined ground serve to hide a six-level concrete by the author, New York Times man Sey­ more appropriate than Masada, where in Well, actually, in a 1981 article headlined underground bunker. He also gave the mour Hersh, to describe the mindset of committing suicide the Zealots killed "Israeli Nuclear Terrorists," we wrote, Sunday Times more than 50 photographs, this group of lunatics hell-bent on their only themselves and took no Romans "Israel has never signed the U.S.-backed several of which show full-sized models expansionist project of a Greater Israel; with them." Sort of reminds you of Non-Proliferation Treaty-they've got of Israeli nuclear weapons. who, if they don't get their way, are pre­ Wagner's Gotterdammerung (twilight of the bomb; they're not going to give it Hersh's book also details how the pared to blow up the world. It is a the gods), so beloved of Hitler. ..and up and certainly are not about to allow Mossad-the Israeli CIA-was tipped reference to the story of the biblical familiar to Israeli prime minister Yitzhak international observers to go snooping off to Vanunu's whereabouts in London strong man Samson, who lost his hair­ Shamir, whose fascist-terrorist Stem in the Negev." We added, "the Zionist by none other than the late Robert Max­ and his strength-after screwing around Gang appealed to the Nazi leader in the rulers are not only willing to destroy well---owner of the New York Daily with the shiksa Delilah, was captured middle of the Holocaust to get the Third their own people in a nuclear Masada, News, capitalist darling of the British and blinded by the Philistines, and Reich franchise for a "Jewish state" in but to spark a global holocaust as well" Labour Party and publisher of the Lon­ chained to the pillars of a temple. After Palestine in exchange for a "judenrein" (WV No. 283, 19 June 1981), don tabloid Daily Mirror-and by the praying for one last burst of strength, Europe! And in 1986, following the Vanunu Mirror's foreign editor Nicholas Davies. Samson pulled apart the pillars, col­ revelations, we headlined our article (The Mirror is a redbaiting rag which lapsing the temple on top of himself Target: Moscow "What Are They Doing with 200 A­ served as right-wing Labour leader Neil and crushing his enemies in the process. Kinnock's hatchet men in smearing the Get it? ,. The "bombshell" of Hersh's book is Bombs? Zionist Madmen Target Russia" underlined in the final paragraph of his (WV No. 416, 21 November 1986). Not­ British coal miners during their year­ As right-wing Zionist Norman Pod­ . first chapter-the target of the Israeli ing that "A dozen or so A-bombs could long strike in 1984-85.) The Mirror horetz put it in a 1976 essay (quoted by .nuclear arsenal was the Soviet Union: nuke every Arab capital and make Hit­ denounced Vanunu's revelations as "a Hersh), "It used to be said that the Israe­ "Indeed, there were'not many, even in ler's Holocaust look like child's play," hoax, or even something more sinister­ lis had a Masada complex...but if the the American intelligence community, we asked: "What's going on here?" And a plot to discredit Israel." Hersh reveals Israelis are to be understood in terms of who understood in 1981 why Israel had we answered: Maxwell and Davies' close ties to the a 'complex' involving suicide rather than collected satellite imagery of the Soviet Israeli Mossad, as well as Davies' not­ surrender and rooted in a relevant prec­ Union and why Sharon was so insistent "But 200 nukes would mean the war­ on continued access to that intelligence: mongers in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem have so-secret life as an international arms edent of Jewish history, the example of Israelwasitselfa nuclearpowerthat was a much bigger target in mind:Russia. Is dealer. With the help of these scum, the Samson, whose suicide brought about targeting the Soviet Union with its war­ this a joint operation with Washington Mossad lured Vanunu to Rome only days the destruction of his enemies, would be heads and missiles." in preparation for nuking the Soviets? after his interview, then drugged him and spirited him back to Israel. The publication of The Samson Option in Britain caused a sensation. After Hersh's accusations against Maxwell and Davies were raised in the House of Commons, these two Mossad finks filed libel actions against Hersh, denying all. With the exception of the iconoclastic Private Eye, which regularly lampoons the despicable "Cap'n Bob" Maxwell, the British press was loath to publish any of the arms-dealing allegations, Sec:,.1t:of Dimon.. while the Mirror (24 October) ran a hys­ Inlh,·I.u~ J<,l~I,.. "ntd "jIb I"" "'" terical denial under the headline "For­ gery ...the document used to smear our j~!~~ man:" Four days later, the Daily Mirror announced that Davies had been fired. Meanwhile, Maxwell sought an in­ Five years before Seymour Hersh's selective expose, Spartacist junction to stop distribution of the book League revealed Zionists' primary target-the Soviet Union. (too late-it had already .sold out), continued on page 7 4 WORKERS VANGUARD Fourth Reich Guards Nazi Provocation 100,000 in Anti-Fascist Vigils on Kristallnacht Anniversary

November 9 is the anniversary of the shouting "Sieg Heil!" It was the urgent fall of the Berlin Wall and of the grisly duty of the workers movement, and 1938 Kristallnacht, the night when the anyone who seriously means it when Nazis staged their first state pogrom they say "never again fascism," to stop against the Jewish population, the point this monstrous provocation. Outraged at which the Third Reich unleashed workers from throughout the region their drive to the Holocaust. Today, after responded positively to the proposal the capitalist reunification of Germany, . of the Committee for Social Defense resurgent Nazis want to tum this day into (KfsV), linked to the Spartakist Work­ a show of anti-communist nationalist ers Party (SpAD), for a union-organized Financial Times terror. And to carry out their blood­ mass mobilization to stop the Nazis at 400 Nazis, screaming threats against foreign-born workers, march with police thirsty provocation, the fascists could the very place they wanted to start their protection in Halle, Germany. count on the protection of the police provocation. forces of the Fourth Reich, while the After a consultation with several Fourth Reich of German imperialism. consequences of reunification, the SPD/ parliamentary parties prepared the way unions, on November 7 the KfsV pro­ The Spartakists warned that capitalist DGB social democrats also have knifed by launching.a racist campaign against posal was taken up by the DGB trade­ reunification would bring mass unem­ countermobilization by the opponents "foreigners." union federation in Halle, which called ployment, poverty, racist persecution of of the Nazis. TheSpartakists fought to Over the past year, attacks on foreign­ for a demonstration right next to the foreigners and Jews, anti-Communist make a workers' anti-fascist mobiliza­ ers have escalated, from 26 reported last Nazis' announced assembly point. The witchhunting, oppression of women and tion a reality, distributing thousands of January to over 900 in October. A num­ anti-fascist demo was announced in a a wave of fascist terror. The Nazis have leaflets calling to "Stop the Nazis, ber of these assaults have been fatal. DGB press release and publicized by the been recruiting out of the mass unern- Now!" at big plants in the area. And in spite of the treacherous demobilization by the union misleaders, on the anniver­ sary of the Nazi Kristallnacht pogrom a hundred trade unionists, students and leftists marched in a contingent with the KfsV and SpAD against the fascist provocation. In the 1930s, Trotsky called repeat­ edly for a workers united front to stop the Nazi march to power, but this was sabotaged both by the Social Democrats and Stalinists. As Trotsky wrote in the Banner of 1938 Transitional Program: "The Ger­ Spartakist man proletariat was not smashed by the Workers Party enemy in battle. It was crushed by the of Germany cowardice, baseness, perfidy of its own at Halle parties." Today the capitalists don't need anti-fascist the fascists, but they hold them in reserve demonstration for hard times. reads "Workers/ In _a leaflet to workers in the Halle Immigrants: Stop region, the Spartakist Workers Party the Nazis, Now!" drew the lessons of November 9, ex­ plaining the treachery of the SPD/DGB and pointing to the need for a revolu­ tionary party that joins .. the struggle against the Nazis to the struggle against the capitalists' massive attacks on their They reached a crescendo with a week­ radio and newspapers. Metal and rail ployment, appealing to lumpenized livelihoods; thatfights for full citizen­ long pogrom against hostels for immi­ unionists took a strong stand for this youth. Our comrades also warned that ship rights for immigrants, for jobs for grant workers and asylum seekers in the urgently needed step. There was thepos­ the SPD was acting as the Trojan horse all at no loss in pay, and for a transitional mining town of Hoyerswerda, near the sibility of a genuine, powerful workers of Anschluss (annexation) of the DDR program leading from the present Polish border, in late September. The . united front which could stop Nazi by the bourgeoisie of Auschwitz. demands and partial struggles of the police responded by removing the for­ .terror. And it was just this spectre of the Today, just as they throttle any work­ workers and oppressed to the necessary eigners and repressing leftists protesting organized power of the working class ers' resistance against the devastating working-class fight for power. _ against the racist assault. This only which caused the DGB bureaucrats and further encouraged the violent rightist the SPD tops to recoil in horror and skinheads and Nazis, who announced demobilize their members. Thus they a national mobilization to "celebrate" in fact made the Nazi mobilization Violence Project, reported that there have Kristallnacht in the East German indus­ possible. Rivera ... been 869 crimes against gays reported trial city of Halle. At all costs, said the union misleaders, (continued from page 16) to the group so far this year, and 425 Many Germans were horrified by this a clash with the fascists must be avoided, last year (Newsday, 6 November). hideous spectacle, and to dispel the throwing up as a smokescreen that they the killers of his close friend, and about The murder comes in the context of image of the "ugly German," more than feared a "takeover by left-sectarian par­ the kind of man Rivera was: mounting racist violence and bigotry in 100,000 people demonstrated on the 9th, ties or groups." And so, instead of organ­ "In the past two weeks, I've listened to New York City, from the Bensonhurst the defense witnesses and statements from Munich to Berlin, waving balloons ized union contingents, only 2,000-3,000 from the accused of the total violence lynch mob killers of Yusuf Hawkins to and calling for solidarity with the people came out instead to a popular­ committed against Julio Rivera. The the stabbing death of Hasidic Jewish .fascists ' victims. Yet these vigils were front march to the Halle Market, some sheer hatred demonstrated here is more scholar YankeI Rosenbaum this fall. And organized by the racist popular front distance from the Nazis' assembly point, than a normal member of society is the lynch mob punks take their cue from expected to hear. Julio was a kind, sweet, which had prepared the ground for the where they stood aroundhelpiess as reasonable and generous man. He had an the men in blue: Federico Pereira, Mary fascists: the Christian Democrats (CDU) the fascists strutted through the ~treets artistic bent which included abstract Mitchell, David Cotto, Michael Stewart, calling to revise the constitutional right under police protection. More than 1,600 watercolor, acrylic and oil painting. He Tomas Vizueta, Maximino Cintr6n­ to asylum, Social Democrats (SPD) police were mobilized along with several also enjoyed music and theater." these are only a few of the victims of calling for "collection" camps, Greens units of the federal border police riot Rafael Ruiz-Ayala, of the Latino Gay the killer cops. . calling for "quotas" of immigrants, and cops, who put up roadblocks and mili­ Men of New York City, says that one There is a crying need in New York the PDS (successor to the former Stalin­ tarily occupied the town, sealing off the thing the Rivera case has done is "put a for mobilization of labor/black/Hispanic ist ruling party of the East German marketplace. That evening as more Nazis brown face to gayness in the city of New defense in the face of the murderous rae­ deformed workers state) calling for more arrived in town there were clashes with York. This has created a new awareness." ists and bigots. A revolutionary workers cops. leftists, who were bottled up by the cops, The murder of Julio Rivera has party must champion the cause of all the On the same day, a Mozambican and more than 200 arrests. underlined the enormous increase in oppressed in the fight for socialist rev­ worker in Weimar was critically injured What happened in Halle was the log­ gay-bashing in the city in recent years. olution, which will sweep away the hired by Nazi gunfire, and 400 Nazi thugs ical consequence of the capitalist annex­ Matt Foreman, executive director of the state killers and their fascist. fringe on marched through the streets of Halle ation of East Germany (DDR) by the New York City Gay and Lesbian Anti- the streets. _ 22 NOVEMBER 1991 5 Young Sparlacus

~p'artacus Youth Club: "Picket Lines Mean Don't Cross!" Columbia Clerical Workers Strike Scuttled Amid widespread anger among union pickets-should be booted out of TWU members, a strike of clericals organized Local 241. by District 65 of the United Auto Work­ Unlike past years where at least a core ers at Columbia University was deep­ of students took a side with labor and sixed by the union bureaucrats only days walked picket lines at Columbia, there after it began. About 300-350 strikers has been virtually zero student partici­ packed the November 18 union meeting pation at District 65's rallies and on their where, disgruntled workers later said, lines. In part this reflects the class prej­ they were subjected to three hours of' udice of Columbia's well-heeled student "brainwashing" by the bureaucrats population who seek to be the future cap­ which finally led to a vote to work with­ italist managers and bosses, and partly out a contract until January. "They're not it's due to the fact that the union leaders the union, we're the union," said one have only sporadically set up picket clerical leaving the meeting. Another lines, and even then have let the scabs said: "The members want to stay on go through. strike, the negotiating committee wants Spartacus Youth Club members were to go back to work." well received for our help in manning The predominantly female, mostly the picket lines. At rallies SYCers minority I,100-member local staged two chanted "Victory to 65!" "Shut down one-day strikes after their contract Columbia!" and "Picket lines mean don't expired on October 10. They went out cross!" SYCers pointed out that students again on Thursday, November, 14, when and faculty should, instead of moving the university, sitting pretty on a $1.5 their classes away from picket lines, can­ billion endowment, offered a paltry 3.7 cel classes and walk the lines. After a percent pay increase and demanded give­ sharp fight waged by the SYC at a strike backs in health care benefits. At a spir­ support committee meeting on Novem­ ited noontime strike rally that day, Local Young Sparlacus ber 6 to win students to honor the lines, 1199 workers and District 65ers raised Spartacus Youth Club joins 500-strQng picket line of striking Columbia clerical the committee issued a leaflet saying the chant "On strike, shut it down!" On workers, November 14. "Picket lines: DON'T CROSS-JOIN Friday, 1199 walked off the job in soli­ THEM!" darity with the strike. Professors sup­ of minority workers in District 65 is War against union organizing drives and In opposition, fake "leftists" like the porting the strike also moved 400 classes $1, I 00 lower than their white coworkers, now wants to break the wage pattern International Socialist Organization and off campus, to Barnard and to West End even though minority workers average established by the unions. To defend the Solidarity actually defended students' bars and churches. more seniority! interests of the entire workforce at Col­ crossing of picket lines! These scabby Columbia is a chief think tank for the The union is seeking greater equity in umbia, there ought to be one campuswide socialists cross the class line internation­ U.S. ruling class, a training ground for pay and benefits with other campus union, including lower-level faculty, to ally, cheering Yeltsin's drive to restore the bourgeoisie's future war criminals workers organized by Local 1199 and break the pattern of setting one sector capitalism in the USSR, and cross work­ and strikebreakers, and a notorious rac­ TWU Local 241. District 65 also of the workforce against another with ers' picket lines at home (of course with ist slumlord, routinely evicting black demands guarantees on job reclassifica­ separate contracts and pay scales. Cam­ strike support buttons gleaming). and Hispanic tenants in Morningside tion and seniority rights to protect work­ pus cops-whose job is to protect The SYC fights to defend the gains Heights. The same class and race preju­ ers from racist discrimination in promo­ Columbia's property, harass the sur­ of the Russian Revolution, and seeks to dices permeate Columbia's relations tions, layoffs and pay. rounding Harlem community, police stu­ win students and youth to the struggle with its employees-the average salary Columbia waged a decades-long dirty dent protest and escort scabs through the for workers revolution here. Join us! •

\ .. Run-In with Farrakhanites in Louisiana

14 November 1991 governor's mansion. Yet even in the face militant fighter for black rights. (See of a whole layer of black youth who have To the editor: of this deadly menace, Farrakhan support­ Farrakhan's death threat against Mal­ never seen successful social struggle. The ominous rise of David ("Klan in ers had a very different idea of the real colm in Mohammed Speaks, 4 December This pessimism has grown in direct pro­ a Suit") Duke to national prominence enemy. At Southern they mobilized to 1964.) portion to the rise of Duke and his ilk sends a sharp warning to all his intended fight two communists-s-myself (an Indian I was told to "get back on the boat," out of the cesspool of the last decade victims. Nowhere should this be clearer immigrant) and a black woman comrade! that I could have "nothing to say to black and a half of social reaction and govern­ than in Duke's backyard in Baton Rouge, Seven Farrakhanites surrounded us, people," while another threatened, "I'm ment rollback of rights won through hard Louisiana, where my comrade and I hollering that "socialism never did any­ gonna knock your head off." When my struggle. The Farrakhanites turn justified recently visited Southern University as thing for black people" and pushing faith comrade stepped to my defense, any pre­ anger into a program of retreat, pushing part of the Workers Vanguard subscrip­ in the capitalist system with arguments tense to "respect the black woman" fell the deadly fantasy that black liberation tion drive. Our visit began promisingly to "serve the community by building away as they screamed at her to "shut requires segregation, "black capitalism," with a steady stream of students stopping black businesses," which is nothing but up" and called her a "traitor" for "taking and poisonous bigotry against Koreans, at our literature table. We soon ran into a scheme for a few black hustlers to sides against the black man." Jews and other minorities. trouble, however, with followers of make a buck for themselves by exploiting There is a logic to the nationalists' Against the do-nothing pessimists Louis Farrakhan. black workers and the ghetto masses, We passivity toward Duke and aggression who aid the bosses' game of divide and A Farrakhan supporter bought a col­ counterposed the strategy of black,work­ against communists. Farrakhan shares rule, we have pointed the way forward lection of WV articles which exposed this' ers leading the whole class against this the Klan's program for the total segre­ and chalked up some real victories by sinister minister as bad news for black cap.italist system which is based on sys­ gation of America-s-Califomia Kluxer building mass, integrated, labor-centered people [see "The Sinister Farrakhan," tematic racial oppression. Tom Metzger applauded a talk by mobilizations that have stopped the Workers Vanguard No. 355, '25 May With Malcolm X gear the height of Farrakhan there. The rabid anti-Semite Ku Klux Klan and the Nazis in cities 1984]. He left quietly but came back an fashion with black youth, the national­ Farrakhan hails the ultimate genocidal around the country. These actions elec­ hour later with reinforcements to stage ists are trying hard to cash in on a big racist Adolf Hitler as "a great man," trified the youth and working people and a bigoted provocation and to threaten lie of identifying Farrakhan with Mal­ but the Hitlerites seek to exterminate set an example that class struggle is the physical violence. Just days earlier colm. And they really went nuts when every black person along with every road to black freedom. Black liberation across town at LSU, Louisiana's would­ we pointed out that Farrakhan set the Jew! through socialist revolution! be Fuhrer David Duke held a campaign stage for the murder of Malcolm X by The hearing black nationalism is get­ Comradely, rally to stearnroll his racist drive to the repeatedly calling for the death of this ting today'is a symptom of the despair Mohan Nair

6 WORKERS VANQUAA,D Scab IISocialists" Boycott Union Label This fall, a young East German com­ from the battle to shut down production. rade of ' the International Communist The Maoist International Movement , League was visiting Chicago where he and Progressive Labor Party simply could see American capitalism up close. Scab wash their hands of the labor move­ "socialists" He also studied the press of various self­ ment-since unions are led by sellouts should have proclaimed socialist organizations in the they must be hopelessly reactionary. But tried out their U.S., and wrote to different groups ask­ what MIM and PL reveal is their own arguments ing why they had no union label. Why incapacity to politically fight the pro­ against the would an organization which claims to capitalist trade-union bureaucracy, as union print shop fight for the working class print their well as a deep, anti-Marxist pessimism on Daily News newspaper in a non-union shop? Using about the possibilities for class struggle strike pickets union labor ought to be, and used to be, in the United States. last winter. ABC for any professed socialist. In the imperialist epoch, the age of The responses (Or lack thereof) decaying capitalism, successful "busi­ revealed a lot about the principles and, ness unionism" or reformism is impos­ politics of the U.S: "left." Of a dozen sible. The labor bureaucrats from, the TheSpartacist tendency has always think socialism or communism are dead, different groups that our comrade con­ AFL-CIO's Kirkland to the miserable printed in union shops as an expression since neither socialism or communism tacted, only three answered why they UAW Solidarity House gang who sit on of our commitment to forging a revolu­ were established in the Soviet Union. used a non-union printer. Of the rest, the company boards ofdirectors serve as the tionary party ofthe working class, whose "The reason we don't have a union Fourth Internationalist Tendency and the "labor lieutenants of capital." They line gains we defend, from the trade unions bug is where it is printed there is no Socialist Workers Party sent form letters up workers for imperialist slaughter, as to the Soviet Union, despite and against union shop nearby that can print it at a extolling their papers while ignoring in the Persian Gulf, and strangle key the sellout leaders who undermine them price we can afford. We don't think indi­ the comrade's question. The Workers strikes at home like the PATCO air con­ and the fake-lefts who spit on them. vidual boycotts, say of non-union com­ League, the Marxist-Leninist Party and trollers and Hormel meatpackers. Yes, Virginia, union shops are more panies, provide a solution for workers. the Revolutionary Communist Party, PL's talk of organizing drives by its expensive. And there's a reason why. During a real struggle, say the Chicago among others, didn't respond' (no sur­ InCAR front is eyewash-when they Tribune strike here, or the New York prise in the case of the WL, which treat the unions as a "joke" and talk of * * * Daily News, we of course support the raked in millions of petrodollars from "fascist union misleadership," what's boycott as a part of the struggle." bourgeois Arab regimes to fund their meant is they don't defend the only Challenge, Progressive Potemkin-village "daily newspaper"). mass organizations of the working class Labor Party MIM Notes, Maoist We print below excerpts from the let­ against the bosses. These "communists" "We no longer print the paper at a International Movement ters of Spark, Progressive Labor Party often can't tell the difference between union shop because the shop that used and the Marxist International Movement David Duke and a sellout bureaucrat­ to print our material, which was union, "To address your question about the "explaining" why they use non-union no wonder they've called the Soviet labor movement and the union label. closed as a union shop. And as is the labor. Union capitalist for decades. case all over, the right-wing nature of MIM does not support the labor move­ Spark begins by referring to the fine MIM simply writes off the entire labor the union leadership makes the union ment in the United States because it print in their "who we are" box-about movement as a white labor aristocracy, movement a cruel joke. believes that the white working class in the only place you'll ever find the word this country primarily constitutes a labor natural allies of imperialism. Not only "We are not opposed to unions-in "socialism" in this paper. And they cer­ aristocracy (as was first defined by do they equate white workers with the fact, INCAR has several union organiz­ Lenin). tainly have nothing to do with the Rus­ imperialist-bribed labor bureaucracy, the ing drives on at this moment. The tradi­ sian Revolution. These super workerists, MIM is willfully blind to the fact tional right lead [sic] unions deserve no "Their economic position is such that for whom the pinnacle of class struggle that blacks and Hispanics are repre­ allegiance." they do not have an interest in seeing is the fight for better vending machines sented in disproportionately high num­ changes made to the Amerikan imperi­ in factory lunchrooms, will junk union bers in unions in this country; in fact Spark alist system beyond those reforms that labor at the drop of a dime. But if some they are the backbone of countless afford them a higher salery [sic]. This labor faker is selling out a strike with unions and strike struggles-precisely "As you can tell from the box' on is demonstrated through study of their appeals for an impotent consumer boy­ because they're under the heaviest attack page 2, we are a revolutionary commu­ material status and the history of the cott, Spark "supports" this diversion by the racist bosses. , nist organization.... Obviously we don't labor movement." •

search reactor, and even built a fake con­ Israel found a natural ally, and one with planting their own spies in the Pentagon! The Samson trol room for_U.S. inspections. a wealth of useful mineral resources. In (Not that the CIA doesn't do this Not that the Americans were inter­ the 1960s, South Africa began providing regularly to American allies.) With the ested in making a fuss about the Israeli Israel with huge "yellow-cake" uranium Soviet Union crumbling, .Washington Option... bomb. Nor did they complain when shipments. There followed various joint has less need for Israel as a regional (continued from page 4) . France secretly flew in four tons of projects including the Jericho medium­ gendarme and a spearhead of anti­ 'heavy water in 1960, or when Israel range missile, Shavit rocket and Ofek Sovietism, and is worried about its and the Labour Party called on Maxwell hijacked 24 tons of uranium aboard the spy satellite. In 1979 the two countries nuclear-armed Israeli "allies" slipping to "appoint an independent tribunal" to Sheersburg A in 1968, or even when over conducted joint neutron bomb tests in the leash. investigate himself! Yet on November 5, 200 pounds of enriched uranium disap­ the south Indian Ocean. For their part, the Israelis are not Maxwell's naked body was found float­ peared from the Pennsylvania NUMEC Liberal journalist Hersh's stock in averse to having it known that they are ing in the ocean off the Canary Islands. nuclear-fuel processing plant the same trade is "exposes" which are in the nuclear-armed bullies, and that their His family says it's murder-and the year. Interestingly, Hersh devotes a interests of at least a section of the U.S. bombs are not intended for parades. Dur­ Mossad's not talking. But they gave him whole chapter of his book to "debunk­ ruling class, like The Target Is Destroyed ing the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when a "hero's funeral" in Jerusalem. Mean­ ing" this widely acknowledged diversion (1986) on the shootdown of the KAL Egypt and Syria were destroying the while, Hersh promises to reveal more of weapons-grade uranium to Israel. 007 spy plane, which abounds in de­ Israeli army, Israel went on nuclear 'alert ~ast. about the press baron's murky Hersh comes to the defense of NUMEC tailed information from unnamed Amer­ twice, threatening the "Samson Option" Nuclear Nuts in Tel Aviv... founder Zalman Shapiro, who he claims ican intelligence sources (see "Seymour to blackmail the U.S. into sending mas­ was "hounded" for "his Jewishness and Hersh Joins Reagan's Cover-Up-The sive amounts of conventional weapons, and Washington the fact that one of the major investors Spectre of KAL 007," WV No. 415, which they did. And during the Persian Hersh's book, which mostly consists in NUMEC shared his support for 7 November 1986). In The Samson Gulf War, when Iraq landed Scud mis­ of interviews with "intelligence offi- Israel." Several pages later, however, Option, Hersh flaunts )lis high-placed siles on Israel in desperate retaliation for cials" and "Israeli government sources," we read that Shapiro was "especially sources in both U.S. and Israeli intelli­ the U.S. assault, the Zionists again went fills in a lot of the blanks about Dimona devoted to Ernst David Bergmann, who gence "communities," who seem to share on nuclear alert, until the U.S. rushed in and the Israeli nuclear capability. Of was head of Israel's Atomic Energy a concern that Shamir, or even worse, Patriot missiles. course, from the very beginning the U.S. Commission." Sharon, having his finger on the nuclear As we noted at the time of Vanunu's "intelligence community" knew what the Andrew and Leslie Cockburn, who trigger could derail the U.S.-Israeli spectacular revelations, "The Zionists Israelis were up to. When digging began documented this incident extensively in relationship. are dangerous madmen who are fully for the reactor in 1958, U.S. satellite their book Dangerous Liaisons, pub- Hersh is tuning in to an undercurrent capable of pushing the button. But their reconnaissance revealed what could only lished earlier this year, describe the of resentment within the U.S. ruling big brothers in Washington ar~,.lliso war­ be a nuclear installation. By 1962, Israeli-U.S. military axis in depth, in- class toward its bellicose ally in the crazy." Israel may have over 200 nuclear Dimona had "gone critical"-sustained eluding the Zionist state's role in training Middle East. This resentment was exac­ weapons, but it's an open secret that the a nuclear chain reaction-but the secre- death squads throughout Latin America erbated by the 1985 Jonathan Pollard, decaying U.S. empire has over 25,000! tive Israeli government maintained to ,and Africa, and the deep ties between spy scandal. For decades the U.S. has Itwill take world proletarian revolution their U.S. paymasters that the huge 70 - the Israeli and South African military es­ shelled out billions to fund and arm the to disarm these nuclear nuts .and sweep megawatt reactor was only a little re- tablishments. In the racist apartheid state, Israelis, and the Zionists responded by them all into the dustbin of history.• 22 NOVEMBER 1991' 1 I Lenin~Trotsky Fund Needs Your Support! The resources of the International for Trotskyist literature. But economic oKlnneTeHb CnapTaKOB~eB Communist 'League are sparse, our realities dictate that we must heavily New York current tasks mammoth. W~ have subsidize our publications to keep them Lenin-Trotsky Fund recently printed 70,000 copies of the affordable. Printing costs, travel and Comrades, Russian translation of "Soviet Work­ other expenses mean that an inter­ I was proud to have contributed ers: Defeat Yeltsin-Bush Counter­ nationalist intervention in the Soviet to the Lenin-Luxemburg-Liebknecht revolution!" We have reprinted the first Union costs money. Help forge the Fund and cannot imagine a more Russian-language Biulleten Spartakov­ Trotskyist nucleus needed to lead Important cause at this moment than tsev, "What Is Trotskyism" (pictured at the work of our comrades in the home the Soviet working people in struggle of the great October Revolution! left), of which 25,000 have already against counterrevolution. Please accept this enclosed check as been sold throughout the Soviet Union. Make donations payable/send to: a first installment. As sales of thousands of copies of the Spartacist, Box 1377 GPO, New Forward to the victory of special supplement and the Spartacist York, New York 10116. Earmark: the Fourth International, bulletin on Revolution Day show, pro­ "Lenin-Trotsky Fund" (or simply Peter F. socialist Soviet workers are thirsting "L-T Fund").

WORKERS VANGUARD that "an Australian woman represen­ tative of the International Communist Moscow... League," asked why she had come, (continued from page 1) responded: "The October Revolution Graveyard," "Yeltsin: Russians Will was directed to the whole world. What Never Be Slaves-Your Rapacious is happening with you these days is a Reforms Will Not Work," and "Down blow to communists in all countries." with the CIA's Perestroika!" They In other Soviet cities similar, though repeatedly sang the Internationale and smaller, Revolution Day demonstrations other revolutionary songs from the early were held. In Leningrad, several thou­ days of the Soviet Republic under Lenin sand militants, -including a number of and Trotsky. sailors in uniform, gathered next to As tens of thousands marched to Red the historic battleship Aurora, which Square, they voiced a deep working­ played a key role in the Bolsheviks' class hatred toward the 'agents of Wall seizure in 1917 of the Winter Palace, Street and Frankfurt who have come to site of Kerensky's provisional govern­ the fore following the botched Kremlin ment. One speaker declared: "Our duty coupin August. The older generation of is to not allow the restoration of capi­ CPers intermingled with the youth. The talism in our country! We will not mood was angry and sharply contrasted be lackeys of American imperialism!" with last year's November 7 parade, pre­ Over 300 pieces of Spartacist litera­ sided over by Gorbachev, where the main ture were sold to the Revolution Day slogan was "The Success of Perestroika Spartacist demonstrators in Leningrad. A hundred Trotskyists protest Moscow mayor Popov's threats to close Lenin Museum. copies of ICL literature were sold at Lies in Civil Concord." Among the signs leL sign (left) reads: "Return to the Road of Lenin and Trotsky. Defend the this year was one showing the double- Lenin Museum!" the Kiev demonstration by members of - headed tsarist eagle with one head being the Union of Socialist Students of the Yeltsin and the other Gorbachev. Another was not narrowly economic in char­ Moreover, the demonstration was ex­ Ukraine. An additional 800 pieces of wrote under Gorbachev's portrait, "You acter, nor, given the occasion, could it tremely receptive to Trotskyist literature. Spartacist literature were sold to Revo­ ruined the country, hell waits for you." be. Above all, it expressed visceral In Moscow, supporters of the ICL sold lution Day demonstrators in other pro­ Initially, Moscow mayor Gavriil Popov working-class hostility to capitalist res­ 4,750 copies of our Russian-language vincial centers. -a leading figure in the capitalist coun­ toration and the destruction of the Soviet supplement, "Soviet Workers: Defeat The most dramatic confrontation took terrevolution-announced a ban on any Union by Western imperialism and its Yeltsin-Bush Counterrevolution!", and place in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev. Revolution Day demonstration within Russian agents. One sign said: "What 600 copies' of our Russian-language Some 5,000 demonstrators, organized the city's ring road, which includes Red Adolf did not do, Michael has done." Spartacist bulletin, "Return to the Road by, among others, the Union of Toilers Square. But when it became clear that When a British journalist asked, why call of Lenin and Trotsky!" of the Ukraine, marched from an out­ the protests would take place in defiance Gorbachev "Michael," the bearer of the At the same time there were instances lying cemetery to a statue of Lenin in of his authority, Popov rescinded the ban slogan replied: "We call him Michael of vicious reactionary attitudes, particu­ the central city. En route they were the night before. This is symptomatic of because he's a westerner now" (Finan­ larly anti-Semitism, at the Revolution blocked by a sizable number of Ukrain­ how politically weak are the forces push­ cial Times [London], 8 November). Day demonstration. Pamyat salesmen ian nationalists and fascists in fight­ ing for capitalist restoration. In our first Gorbachev is not a Westernizer in the were peddling their filth. The Stalinist ing uniforms. But the column broke statement after the August coup and sense of seeking to modernize Soviet organizers of the rally appealed to Great through the blockade and continued on Russian chauvinism. Our comrades were while the rightists harassed the march baited alternately as "Trotskyites" and from the sides. As they reached the Lenin "Jews." We shot back that the filth they statue, the column again had to pierce a spewed was the White Guard politics nationalist/fascist blockade in order to of Yeltsin which are at war with the lay flowers commemorating the founder revolutionary politics of Lenin and Red of the Soviet workers state. As the dem­ October. The cutting edge of the struggle onstration dispersed and thinned, they .to combat Russian chauvinism is to were attacked by the nationalists and mobilize the workers movement against several demonstrators suffered' serious every manifestation of anti-Semitism. At injuries. The principal organizers of the No­ Russian one point about 20 Stalinists attempted counterrevolutionaries to physically exclude our contingent, vember 7 demonstrations were drawn bring back the shouting "Trotskyists out of the demon­ from a rump of the so-called "patriotic" (would-be) tsar: stration," "Get out of our country," etc. wing of the Stalinist movement: the Romanov pretender to But we were able to effectively rally the Moscow Workers Council, the United the throne, Grand crowd to defend us. One worker came Front of Toilers, (OFT) and a broader Duke Vladimir, and out of the crowd to stand with us against umbrella group, "Toiling Moscow." Orthodox Patriarch this rabble, and stayed to sell with us all The Moscow Workers Council's Viktor Aleksy II In ceremony day. A student from Moscow State Uni­ Anpilov postures as a hard opponent of to rename Leningrad Yeltsin, but simply wants to turn the "St. Petersburg." versity came to our contingent and said he's been looking for Trotskyism all his clock back to before 1987, with a "pere­ life. As the crowd paraded toward Red stroika" (restructuring) of the CPSU. Square, a comrade reporte~: These Stalinists played on working-class "While we marched we chanted, 'Long opposition to Gorbachev and Yeltsin's live the October Revolution!' 'Long live privatization before the August coup, but countercoup, we noted: "But while Yel­ society and the economy, as Peter the the Soviet Union!' 'Down with Yel­ when the decisive moment came, they tsin & Co. now see a clear field to push Great attempted to do for Russia in the tsin/Gorbachev/Bush's Russian-nation­ uncritically subordinated themselves to alist counterrevolution! For proletarian the bankrupt and ineffectual "Gang of through a forced-draft reintroduction of age of absolutism. Gorbachev, Yeltsin & internationalism!' One of our contacts capitalism, the outcome is not yet"defin­ Co. want to sell out the Soviet Union to chanted 'Long live the world communist Eight" and failed to mobilize any of their itively decided" (WV No. 533, 30 Western banks and multinationals-at movement-Workers of the world unite!' working-class base to go after the Yel­ August). We added that the Soviet pro­ fire sale prices. If they succeed, Russia, These were all met by loud 'Hurrah! tsinite spearhead of counterrevolution. letariat "has not been heard from." But the Ukraine, Kazakhstan, etc. will be Hurrah! ", Now in opposition, they are appeal­ on November 7, it began to raise its degraded to the economic level of Latin Along the march, it supporter of the ing to narrow economic concerns linked voice. American neocolonies while all the old ICL was interviewed by Pravda. In its to Russian nationalism. Thus an early The numbers pouring into the streets reactionary crap from the pre-1917 tsar­ next issue it reported on its front page continued on page 10 far exceeded the organizers' expecta­ ist autocracy will return. tions. Revolution Day tapped into the Indeed, the answer of the pro-Western economic desperation of Moscow's "democrats" to working-class protest is working people. The week before, Yel­ lying promises of prosperity under cap­ tsin announced that all price controls italism, accompanied by appeals to would soon be ended, setting off a medieval obscurantism. On the eve of new wave of panic buying, hoarding Revolution Day, the mayor of Leningrad and speculation. For the first time organized a fete to celebrate restoring bread began to disappear from the the city's old name of St. Petersburg. shops. Moskovskoe Komsomolets car­ Featured in this ceremony were Patriarch ried a heart-rending story of a worker Aleksy II, Primate of the Russian Ortho­ who was crushed by a train when he dox church, and Grand Duke Vladimir jumped onto the subway tracks to Kirillovich Romanov, son of the cousin retrieve a sausage he had struggled all of Tsar Nicholas II. Grand Duke Roma­ day to get for his family. nov, who had never before set foot in The older generation who came out the Soviet Union, said he hoped to remember what a horrible thing hunger become the new Russian tsar! is-they remember bread rationing dur­ ing the heroic struggle of the Soviet peo­ Trotskyists March on ple against the Nazi invaders. One .MoscQw's Revolution Day recalled, "My mother on 16 October Despite a few pictures of Stalin sprin­ 1941 stood on the longest bread line of kled among the signs, there were many that year, and even so it was not half as more of Lenin and there was also the long as today's!" (Sovetskaya Rossiya, ]ed banner of the International Commu­ euters 9 November). nist League emblazoned with, the insig­ Bread lines In Moscow grow longer as Yeltsin/Gorbachev push restoration of Yet the Revolution Day demonstration' nia of Trotsky's Fourth International. -capitalism, producing economic chaos. 22 NOVEMBER 1991 9 foresees Soviet army officers and ranks ization by taking plants and controlling Moscow... supporting and joining popular protests production. Such workers committees against the new regime. However, Alknis can be the basis for genuine soviets, (continued from page 9) is no enemy of a market economy. Far drawing into their ranks collective from it. He is an outspoken advocate of farmers, oppressed minorities, working call for Revolution Day issued by the "the Chilean model" for a strong Soviet women, Red Army soldiers and officers, Moscow Workers Council concluded (capitalist) state. old-age pensioners-all those who will with the slogan: "No to the physical and The question of how to ensure food be victimized by the "new order." But spiritual genocide of the Russian peo­ supplies was ever-present on Revolution authentic soviets must become organs ples!" Yet in the city of Moscow itself, Day. The Moscow Workers Council for the struggle for power. Revolutionary about half the industrial workforce is called for "Distribution of Goods Under leadership is the key. from non-Russian republics-Ukraini­ Control ofthe Workers!" Another group­ In his well-known article, "The ans, Caucasians, Turkic-speaking Cen­ ing, Toiling Moscow, called for putting Impending Catastrophe and How to tral Asians. Trying to outbid the Yeltsin­ "under WORKERS' AND PEASANTS' Combat It," written in September 1917 itecounterrevolutionaries in appeals to CONTROL prices and the wages of on the eve of the Bolshevik Revolution, Great Russian nationalism is poison, and the 'democrats' and bandits, partycrats Lenin called for a program of all-sided anathema to the struggle for a genuinely and speculators and FORCE THEM workers control as the indispensable socialist union of soviet republics. to work." Workers control is indeed, means to prevent famine .. In that situa­ In their own way, many of the Russian urgently, necessary. But popular resis­ tion of dual power, in which the shaky Stalinist "patriots" accept the disinte­ tance to "free market" starvation can pre­ capitalist government had ordered a rise Financial Times gration of the USSR along national serve the Soviet Union on a socialist in food prices, he emphasized: "For only lines. But the breakup of the Soviet Poster of Gorbachev: "Youruined the country, hell walts for you." basis onlyby breaking from the policies the winning of power by the proletariat, Union would necessarily produce bloody of the parasitic, nationalist bureaucracy headed by the Bolshevik Party, can put nationalist strife-border wars, inter­ the popular mood is turning mark­ which led the Soviet Union to disaster. an end to the outrageous actions of communalist pogroms-such as are edly against the "democrats," i.e., open Workers resistance will immediately Kerensky and Co. and restore the work now ravaging Yugoslavia. We Leninist­ capitalist-restorationists, who are now face the question of power, and to of democratic food distribution, supply Trotskyists stand for proletarian political held responsible for the hyperinflation, succeed it requires the leadership of and other organisations, which Kerensky revolution to reforge the Soviet Union shortages of food and everything else, a genuinely communist, i.e., Leninist­ and his government are frustrating. The on the socialist basis of genuine national and the overall descent into economic Trotskyist party. Bolsheviks are acting ... as the repre­ equality. chaos. A poll by the Moscow Sociolog­ The Stalinist "patriots" at bottom have sentatives of the interests of the whole ical Agency in late October showed 65 no alternative to the market. The "max­ people ...." Would-Be Tsar Boris Decrees percent of Muscovites believe the polit­ imum program" of Anpilov's newspaper The historic catastrophe now facing "Free Market" Starvation ical and economic situation is the same Molniya offers a lot of left verbiage, but Soviet working people cannot be pre­ "People will suffer but we have to go or worse than before the August coup in practice the "minimum program" (the vented or even softened by defensive eco­ through this," declared Boris Yeltsin as attempt. real program) takes over: as was the case nomic struggles. Trade-union activism he announced his new economic shock The imperialist godfathers of Yel­ in last summer's Russian presidential cannot prevent mass unemployment and treatment. All price controls are to be tsin, Popov & Co. are worried about lifted by the year's end. Unprofitable working-class opposition to capitalist enterprises are to be shut down. Collec­ counterrevolution in Russia. One can tive farms are to be privatized. And the already see the beginnings of this. In central economic ministries will be dis­ late October, the Moscow Federation of mantled. So Yeltsin decreed. But carry- , Labor Unions organized a march of up ing out this program of even greater to 50,000 against the price increases. immiseration of the Soviet working peo­ The Federation leaders did not challenge ple is another matter. Yeltsin/Popov and their "free market" In the two and a half months following program as such, but rather adopted a the Kremlin coup attempt in August, defensive posture. Their main banner jockeying between Yeltsin's Russian read: "Unity! Solidarity! For the Rights Republic, Gorbachev and the nationalist of Working People!" However, a placard leaders of the non-Russian republics pro­ saying "Free Prices Mean Death for the duced a power vacuum at the center of People!" caught the angry and desperate the fractured Soviet Union. As the impe­ mood of the Soviet working class. rialists complained that the country was drifting, in late October Yeltsin moved For a Leninist-Trotskyist Party! to reassert himself as the strongman Last year the Soviet Union had a near­ of the counterrevolution by announcing record grain harvest of almost 220 mil­ a "free market" shock treatment and lion tons. Yet there were still severe food demanding sweeping dictatorial powers. shortages as the distribution system col­ The Russian parliament duly voted him lapsed due to massive hoarding, specu­ the right to ban all elections and refer­ lation and black marketeering. This year endums for more than a year, cancel the grain harvest has fallen to 165 all legislation passed by local and million tons, the lowest level in ten TASS regional assemblies, and override pre­ Leningrad, November 7-Rally at the battleship Aurora, symbol of the years. Everyone is expecting food riots, Bolshevik. Revolutlon~, famed for Its shots fired at the Winter J)alace. vious legislation. which have already begun, to spread ; In an attempted show of strength, this winter. "A revolt would be most campaign, when Molniya supported the hyperinflation if the Wall Street/Yeltsin would-be Tsar Boris decreed a state likely in December," predicts Major candidacy of the anti-Semite Makashev, program is actually carried out. The au­ of emergency in the Chechen-Ingush General Viktor Ivanenko, head of the who was for "equality of all property thors of this program must be overthrown Autonomous Region-a traditionally KGB in the Russian Republic. Moscow forms"! by the revolutionary working class. The Muslim enclave in the northern Cauca­ News (13 October) is even predicting MQSCOW mayor Popov has decreed disintegration of the USSR cannot be sus which had declared its independence "Putsch-Z,' a new coup coming off of that basic foodstuffs-bread, meat, but­ halted by Stalinist "patriotism," which from the Russian Republic-and threat- . desperate blowups over hunger. ter and eggs-are to be rationed by cou­ increasingly has taken the form of narrow ened to send in Soviet troops. This move And everyone in Russia knows it was pons. Control over the means of life must Russian nationalism. Only the program was so flagrantly dictatorial and inflam­ food riots by women workers in Febru­ be wrested from this lackey of Wall of proletarian internationalism, carried matory that even Yeltsin's supporters in ary 1917 which set off the revolution Street and Frankfurt. Workers commit­ out by a communist vanguard with a the Russian parliament came out against that toppled the tsarist autocracy. The tees must be set up to oversee the dis­ multinational cadre, can reforge the it and he backed off. Yeltsinite "democrats" rightly fear that tribution offood, smashing the strangle­ Soviet Union on the basis of national In a small way Yeltsin's retreat over food riots could spark their overthrow, hold of parasitic petty traders, black , equality and socialist economic planning. Chechen-Ingush points up the funda­ too. The "black colonel" Viktor Alknis, marketeers and pro-capitalist bureau­ For decades, the oppressive, corrupt mental weakness of his position. For a leading figure among the "patriots," crats who would become Russia's new and parasitic Kremlin oligarchy falsely capitalist exploiters. The vast quantities claimed the historic mantle of Lenin's of foodstuffs they are hoarding must be Bolshevik Party. In reality, it was the seized and defended, which requires the Trotskyist Left Opposition which pre­ formation of workers defense commit­ served and carried forward the revolu­ tees, i.e., the nucleus of workers militias, tionary internationalist program of Red Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of the Spartacist League in coordination with pro-socialist ele­ October. Under the banner of "building ments of the Soviet Army. socialism in one country," which trans­ The attempts to victimize national lated into sniveling popular-front alli­ 0$7/24 issues of Workers Vanguard o $3/3 issues of , minorities, to rip apart the multinational ances with imperialist rulers abroad, (includes English-language Spartacist) Women and Revolution o New 0 Renewal Soviet proletariat while giving free rein Stalin was the gravedigger of the Russian International rates: 0$2/10 introductory issues to monarchists and Pamyat thugs and Revolution, whose surviving cadre he $25/24 issues-Airmail $7/24 issues-Seamail of Workers Vanguard (includes English-language pardoning Nazi war criminals, must be murdered in the Great Purge of the . 0 $2/4 issues of Spartacist (edici6n en espanot) Spartacist) met by organized multinational workers 1930s. It is' urgently necessary to build defense guards. a new Bolshevik party in the Soviet Name _~ _ These urgently necessary measures Union, uniting the most class-conscious Address --.,. --.,._ can be a step in creating organs --of wQrkerswith revolutionary Marxist intellectuals. Only under the leadership ______Apt. # Phone (_) _ proletarian dual power to challenge and overthrow the Yeltsin/Gorbachev of such an authentic communist party, City State Zip - counterrevolutionary gang. Independent .section of a reforged Fourth Interna­ 539 workers committees must be formed in tional, can the Soviet working class and Make ehecks payable/mall to: Spartael.. Publlahlng Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10118 factories, mines, railroad yards and other its allies defeat the forces of bloody cap­ enterprises to prevent layoffs and privat- italist counterrevolution.• 10 WORKERS VANGUARD panic Fort Green and Williamsburg area. With over 100,000 emergency admissions annually, it is the sec­ UAW Workers: ond largest hospital in Brooklyn. While the private You Can't Win Strikes by Skin the CAT! outfit that staffs the hospital, Medical Associates, Begging the Democrats turned a $17 million profit last year, conditions for the CHICAGO-On November 3, some 2,400 members of patients and staff are disastrous. There is not one full­ BOSTON-For more than a month not a single school the United Auto Workers (UAW) struck two Caterpillar time infectious disease specialist, in a hospital where bus or van left the terminals. The small USWA.Local plants in Illinois. Coming' more than a month after the one-third of the patients are infected with HIY. The 8751 held out in the face of a concerted union-busting expiration' of contracts covering 17,000 CAT workers waiting list for a mammogram is a year long. The drive on the part of the School Department and the and also UAW members at John Deere Co., the partial orthopedic department was simply eliminated. Other In-City Bus Company (ICBM), and a concerted attempt strike encouraged the company to step up its hardball by the capitalist media to whip up a back-to-work tactics against the union. On November 7 the construc­ movement. tion equipment giant locked out 5,600 workers and Mayor Ray Flynn and the local bourgeoisie want less than a week later began laying off hundreds more. to gut the drivers union as they wipe out any remain­ Over the past six years Caterpillar has wrung nearly ing vestige of busing, in essence burying the corpse $2 billion out of the workers' sweat-now it wants of the school desegregation struggle of the 1970s. blood. The company's "final offer" included a three-tier The heavily minority bus drivers hung tough, but wage proposal as well as demands to slash health bene­ their discipline and determination was dissipated by fits and install speedup work rule changes. "It's nega­ the union tops' strategy of relying on the very tive if they don't strike," counseled one Wall Street same Flynn, tying the power of the workers to the analyst, reflecting Caterpillar's desire to defeat the bosses' Democratic Party. And the USWA Interna­ union. tional intervened from Pittsburgh, collaborating with The company is banking on big inventories and a Flynn to pressure the local. On October 28, the driv­ workforce hogtied by the Solidarity House crew that ers returned to work-their union intact, but nothing runs the UAW. Auto Workers chief Owen Bieber sab­ gained. otaged the industrywide contract-and forfeited joint Drivers will be saddled with a one-year wage freeze strike action-by settling with John Deere on October and a four-year no-strike clause (the first ever), and 5 (Navistar workers were cast adrift several years ago). the School Department will be free to implement big And the "Buy American" jingoism of Bieber & Co. layoffs as it "consolidates" bus routes. All that ICBM aids the company campaign for givebacks: they claim and Flynn promised to do is rehire from Local 8751 they need to "crack down" on labor costs to fight com­ members that get laid off! Even drivers' president Garry petitors like Komatsu of Japan. Murchison said, "I think the contract stinks and we UAW workers: don't let the "Sacrifice House" gang deserve better." hang you out to dry, as in the 206-day Caterpillar strike But if you read Workers World (7 November), WVPholo of 1982. It's high time the ag imp bosses in the Midwest New York,City, November 13-Woodhull doctors' newspaper of Sam Marcy's Workers World Party, you tasted some union hardball. Shut down Caterpillar­ tWO-day strike was the first ever by attending find Local 8751 vice president Steve Kirschbaum occupy the factories! See how fast the CAT bosses physicians. crowing that this "historic union security agreement" come running to talk when the strikers are on the inside guarantees that "wages, benefits, terms and condi­ of the plants, sitting on top of their inventory and cuts were made in ophthalmology and urology. tions...will stay intact." What he doesn't say is that a machinery! Mass pickets must seal off the plants. It's The doctors at Woodhull, 40 percent foreign-born, hell of a lot of drivers are faced with losing their jobs, not so easy to sell those big CATs if you can't move are organized in the Doctors Council, whose members while saddled with the no-strike pledge Kirschbaum them-eall on Teamsters, longshoremen and rail work­ cover all city hospitals. When they finally struck on never mentions! ers to refuse to handle them. There's only one way to November 12, after five months without a contract, the Kirschbaum and Steven Gillis, an exec board skin the CAT-mobilize union power! doctors got immediate support from the 900 members member, whine in Workers World (24 October) that of AFSCME Local 420 at Woodhull, who refused to the unions want "the mayor to use his executive powers cross their lines. But technicians and pharmacists in to force the ICBM Co. to bargain in good faith." Yet Hospital Workers Local 1199 crossed, only coming out even the Boston Globe knew that anti-busing mayor Doctors Strike Against at lunch to "picket"-so much for 1199 head Dennis Flynn was in a "united front" with School Superintend­ Rivera's "solidarity." ent Lois Harrison-Jones against the school bus drivers Deadly Cutbacks Moreover, Local 420 president Jim Butler, whose union. members are bearing the brunt of the cutbacks, ordered It was to cover for their own defeatist program "Conditions in a hospital have to be pretty bad to the AFSCME members at Woodhull to cross the doc­ that the Marcyite junior bureaucrats threatened to call drive doctors from its senior staff out into the cold to tors' picket lines the second day of the strike. At the the police on Workers Vanguard salesmen, then later walk a picket line," wrote Daily News columnist Bob same time, Butler grandstanded by bringing in several created a provocation toward the end of the strike. Herbert as over 300 senior physicians struck the Wood­ hundred AFSCME hospital workers from Harlem, Kirschbaum and a few white anti-communists initiated hull Medical Center in Brooklyn last week. In fact the Coney Island, Bellevue and Kings County to march a loud provocation, causing cops to enter the line and walkout, over the budget cuts which have decimated on the 'lines that day. '. remove two WV supporters, endangering everyone on health care in NYC, was the first ever by attending When the announcement of the settlement came late the line-especially immigrant Haitian workers. physicians (not just interns and residents) in the U.S. in the afternoon, the housekeepers and doctors, porters . The labor bureaucrats, both the open company cops Hundreds of community residents and members of and lab technicians, cheered the announcement that and their small-time shadows, hate the Spartacist other hospital unions swelled the picket lines, chanting some of the cuts had been restored. But to win decent League because we tell the truth. As an SL leaflet "No cutbacks on services! No givebacks for workers!" wages, not to mention fighting for decent health care, stated: "Workers in this city, everywhere, need a c1ass­ After two days, the doctors succeeded-in reversing some it's going to take a solid strike by all hospital workers. struggle leadership willing to take on this racist capi­ of the devastating budget cuts that sparked the strike, And the hospital union bureaucrats above all don't want talist system. To get what we need-quality integrated including canceling the firing of 50 staff members. to embarrass their buddy, Democratic mayor David education, housing and jobs for all-will take a social­ Woodhull serves the predominantly black and His- Dinkins. ist revolution.t' a

France: eGl Still Knows How to Sell Out a Strike "Socialist" president Francois Mitter­ ants of the capitalistregime in "socialist" the workers-scabs included! Even after As the general strike of May-June rand has succeeded in halting the strikes colors. this stab in the back, Renault workers at 1936 was scuttled by the French sweeping the French auto industry, with With riot cops ringing the Cleon plant, Le Mans held out for another eleven days Communist Party (PCF) in the name a big helping hand from the Communist the union bureaucrats rushed to "nego­ before settling for an increased year-end of "unity" with the popular-front gov­ Party-led CGT union federation. At the tiate" a sellout deal-a measly 224 bonus. ernment, .PCF leader Maurice Thorez key Renault plant in Cleon, the despised francs ($39) monthly pay boost plus an After a decade of strikebreaking, rac­ declared: "You have to know how to CRS (riot police) were sent in on "end of the conflict" bonus-with, no ism and austerity, workers have grown end a strike." Supporting Mitterrand's November 5 to clear a passage for the defense of the eight strikers hit with increasingly fed up with Mitterrand's popular-front Union of the Left since scabs. Mitterrand acted as' the strike disciplinary suspensions. Two days after gang of "socialist" bourgeois-technocrat 1981, first in exchange for four PCF min­ spread to the Renault plant in Le Mans the cops moved in, the Stalinist leaders ministers. France continues to be swept isters and then in a "corridor coalition" (along with sporadic walkouts in other of the CGT and the social democrats at by strikes. Nurses have stayed out after they were dropped, the Stalinists plants). A strike ofthe entire state-owned the head of the CFDT rammed the "set­ despite attempts by the union tops to in league with the social democrats auto company would have meant a tlement" down the strikers' throats. As push through a "settlement" with the betrayed the powerful movement of the showdown with the government, .which .thejmion hacks-c-interrupted by boos government. France's ports have repeat­ auto workers. Our comrades of the Ligue the union misleaders sought to avoid at and cries of "sellout!"---exhorted strik­ edly been shut down in the past month Trotskyste de France fought for class:' all costs. Despite the cop presence, forc­ ers to. return to work "your heads held as dock workers struck against govern­ struggle leadership in the strike, empha­ ing the workers back required a mobili­ high," strikers voted by a slim majority ment union-busting. Last week the air­ sizing the need for internationalism and zation of the CGT tops, who helped put to reject the sellout. However, the Sta­ ports were virtuallyclosed down several defense of"immigrant" workers, in seek­ Mitterrand in office and have loyally linist double-dealers simply stated that days as air traffic control technicians ing to forge an authentically Bolshevik carried out their duties as labor Iieuten- this did not represent a majority of struck for higher wages. party of the working class.• 22 NOVEMBER. 1991 11 Northite Fool's old This article was written forSpartakist as Yeltsin's countercoup brought to victory of "those forces now in the fore­ "leader of the restorationist faction of No. 91, November-December 1991, pub­ power the capitalist-restorationist forces front" who they admit are "frothing ene­ the official Communist Party apparatus" lished by our comrades ofthe Spartakist that the Bulletin has been covering for. mies of the working class." What's to while Yeltsin is called "a representative Workers Party of Germany. The Northites' current posture as the welcome? This is not "dialectics," which of the emergingSoviet bourgeoisie" and defenders of the gains of the October Healy and North have done so much to of "bourgeois comprador elements," dat­ For close to two decades David Revolution is so manifestly fraudulent discredit, but the squirmings of oppor­ ing this as far back as 1987. But as North's Workers League.and his cohorts that they can't get it straight themselves. tunists hoist on their own petard. They recently as the 21 June Bulletin, an arti­ in the "International Committee of the want to be with the Yeltsinite "masses" cle titled "Behind the Election of Boris Fourth International" have been foam­ Healyite Schizophrenia on the barricades while warning against Yeltsin" writes of "the drive to capitalist flecked cheerleaders for virtually every The "ICFI" statement on the coup and Yeltsin the harbinger of capitalism. The restoration in the Soviet Union, whether imperialist-backed anti-Soviet force in Yeltsin's countercoup reads like it was dilemma many Stalinophobic pseudo- it is led by Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris the world. But these days the WL is Yeltsin or some other counterrevolution­ talking a lot out of the other side of its ary representative of the bureaucracy." mouth. Now we read in the "ICFI" state­ , What Do David North and Susan Sontag Have in Common? ment on "The Lessons of the August And referring to Yeltsin the bureaucrat Putsch and the Tasks Before the Soviet rather than Yeltsin the bourgeois is no Working Class" (Bulletin, 6 September) mere slip of the pen, for in the Northite that only their organization "defends the zodiac the Soviet bureaucracy is nothing historic conquests of the Soviet prole­ but a "counterrevolutionary" agency tariat and upholds its great socialist working hand in hand with imperialism. traditions"! Our advice to anyone who Thus in his 1989 tract on Perestroika falls for this one is, as the Romans Versus Socialism, North declares that said, caveat emptor-hold on to your "the political and economic goals of the wallet. bureaucracy in its relations with world imperialism" are "the destruction of the More than 20 years ago we recalled planned economy and the social con­ Lenin's term "political bandits" to de­ quests of the October Revolution" and scribe the Wor-kers League and its "Inter­ the restoration of capitalism. And, more national," then headed by IC "founder­ generally, in his 1988 tome The Heritage leader" Gerry Healy. Over the years, We Defend, he declares that "Trot­ the Healyites' "political" banditry was sky had branded the Stalinist bureauc­ eclipsed by their degeneration into out­ racy as 'counterrevolutionary through right gangsters-for-hire. In 1979, after and through'." This stupidly one-sided years of pimping for Libya's Qaddafi, formulation is the banner of every anti­ Healy & Co. heralded Iraqi Ba'athist dic­ Soviet fake-Trotskyist. And it is a lie. tator Saddam Hussein as a leader of the struggle against "counterrevolutionary Answer: They both supported Polish Solidarnosc, Leon Trotsky never said any such Stalinism" and hailed his execution of thing. Rather, he wrote in "The Class 21 members of the Iraqi Communist the only "union" Ronald Reagan loved. Nature of the Soviet State" (October Party. At the same time they photo­ 1933) that "Whoever fails to understand graphed anti-Saddam protesters in Lon­ this dual role of Stalinism in the USSR written by a schizophrenic. First we have Trotskyists resolve by prettifying the has understood nothing." He is referring don and handed the photos over to the the declaration that "The International "democrat" Yeltsin, North deals with by Iraqi embassy, fingering demonstrators here to the position of the bureaucracy, Committee of the Fourth International talking out of both sides of his mouth. which rests upon the collectivized prop­ for arrest, torture and possibly death. welcomes the humiliating collapse of the The anti-Stalinist David North evi­ Meanwhile the Healyites were receiving erty forms inherited from the October August 19 Stalinist putsch in Moscow." dently agrees with JosephStalin on one Revolution, at the same time as it seeks tens of thousands of dollars from the Yet the very next paragraph states, "But thing: "Paper will put up with anything Ba'athist regime. to balance between the bourgeoisie and the justified satisfaction felt by workers that is written on it." the proletariat, transmitting the pressures Although the most heinous, this was both in the Soviet Union and interna­ Even at the level of description, the of imperialism but also, on occasion, only one of many crimes committed by tionally at the failure of the putschists "two-line" statement exposes itself. It constrained to defend in its bureaucratic the Healy/Northites, for which they were must not blind them to the fact that those heralds "the implacable opposition of the fashion the workers state in order to pro­ put on the payroll of virtually every Arab now assuming center stage in Moscow socialist working class to the military­ tect its privileges. Trotsky repeatedly sheik and dictator in the Near East are bitter antisocialists and ruthless KGB coup." Yet a few paragraphs later insisted on this fundamental point, as in (see "Healyites Got Blood Money," WV exponents of capitalist restoration." it notes Yeltsin's "appeal for a general The Revolution Betrayed, which has a No. 517,4 January, and "Northite Blood Again later it declares, "The collapse of strike went largely unanswered, even in section on "The Dual Character of the Money," WV No. 523, 29 March). the August 19 coup is a large nail in the Moscow. The working class identified Workers State." And in a 1937 article In 1985 when this dirty source of rev­ coffin of the Stalinist bureaucracy." Yet with neither .faction." The Northites against the future renegade Burnham, enue dried up, Healy's organization fell this is followed by: warn that "without the independent Trotsky noted: apart and Workers League leader David mobilization of the working class on the "But anypremature jubilationon the part "The function of Stalin,likethe function North declared himself the heir to his of the working class would be totally basis of a socialist program, the collapse of Green [then head of the American former master's seat at the head of the unjustified. of Stalinism will lead to even more brutal trade-union federation, AFL], has a dual shattered remnants of the International "Those forces now in the forefront are the most ruthless and frothing enemies forms of repression and social devasta­ character. Stalin serves the bureaucracy Committee. Now that it seems like of the working class.Their aimis nothing tion" and "the terror of capitalism." Yet and thus the world bourgeoisie; but he nobody's paying them for whatthey say cannot serve the bureaucracy without less than selling off all the assets of the for years these Stalinophobes have defending that social foundation which and write, the Northites have reverted to SovietUnionand its reduction to a semi­ denounced the Kremlin bureaucracy as the bureaucracy exploits in its own inter­ an earlier scam: selling themselves as colonial status." the sole moving force for capitalist coun­ -Bulletin, 6 September ests. To that extent does Stalin defend supposed orthodox Trotskyists in the terrevolution in the USSR. nationalized property from imperialist abstract, while still tailing after anti­ It's those telltale "buts" that give the Thus in one of his interminable attacks and from the too impatient and avaricious layers of the bureaucracy Soviet counterrevolutionaries in the con­ game away. For the collapse of the speeches, spread over six pages of the itself. However, he carries through this crete. But this latest con game blew apart coup, which North & Co. "welcome," is same 6 September issue of the Bulletin, defense with methods that prepare the with the August showdown in Moscow, not divorced from, but identical with the David North refers to Gorbachev as general destruction of Soviet society. It is exactlybecause of this that the Stalin­ ist clique must be overthrown. But it is the revolutionary proletariat who must overthrow it. The proletariat cannotsub­ contractthis work to the imperialists. In spiteof Stalin,the proletariat defendsthe USSR from imperialist attacks." -"Not a Workers' and Not a Bourgeois State?" (November 1937) We discussed the genealogy of the anti-Trotskyist formula that Stalinism is "counterrevolutionary through and through" in our article "David North: On Yeltsin's Joseph Hansen's Natural Son" (WV No. "barricades": 456, 1 July 1988). It is important to counterrevolutionary underline it here once again, for behind petty-bourgeois North's analytical deceit lies a funda­ swine sport mental assault on the Trotskyist program Confederate flag of of unconditional defense of the Soviet white-supremacy. .. .. Union" against counterrevolution. And indeed, at the decisive moment in the face of a direct counterrevolutionary assault by forces which North himself acknowledges to be a "comprador bour­ geoisie," North's bottom lirre was "we 12 WORKERS VANGUARD Work... L...... PUBUC MEETINGS ...... ~L.~. United front of counterrevolution: -MIIIIIii George Bush, POLAND Lech Walesa, Full Support for Solidarity! Lane Kirkland at No to Martijll Law! AFL·CIO gala, and Free Lech Walesa and all Solidarity David North's Prisoners! Workers League. Defeat Stalinism! Down with Jaruzelski! II 1t1;'i!t'i!!iW ; I t.wn4'U,~ ~."l I I

were for the defeat of this coup"-which class that Lech Walesa & Co. were an imposing imperialist sanctions against the AFL-CIO," according to the Ameri­ was also Yeltsin's bottom line. agency for the CIA and Western bankers, the Soviet workers state on behalf of can union federation's newspaper, and Ronald Reagan, the Pope and clerical Lithuanian independence: indeed they had been toured through the From Walesa to Yeltsin: nationalists. They quoted as if it were "The April 24 announcement by the U.S., paid for by the Bush government. Crush the Counterrevolution! an outrage our forthright statement: "If White House that it is taking no retalia­ And we noted how the AFL-CIO is noto­ the Kremlin Stalinists, in their necessar­ tory actions against Moscow for its rious as an agency for CIA intervention In an article titled "Middle Class Rad­ blockade of Lithuania underscores the icals and the Soviet Coup" (Bulletin, ily brutal, stupid way, intervene militar­ unprecedented level of collaboration be­ into the labor movement internationally. 13 September), the Northites assume a ily...we will support this. And we take tween imperialism and Stalinism against Not a peep on any of this from the posture of denouncing the cabal of fake­ responsibility in advance for this; what­ the international working class." Northites. Trotskyists who cheered Yeltsin's coun­ ever the idiocies and atrocities they will -Bulletin, 27 April 1990 Among the cabal of CIA types present ­ tercoup. At thesame time they rant that commit, we do not flinch from defending Here the militantly counterrevolutionary at the founding congress of the Russian the Spartacist League "criticized the the crushing of Solidarity's counterrev­ Lithuanian Sajudis regime-whose first miners union in October 1990 was a del­ coup plotters only for 'ineptitude' and olution". (WV No. 289, 25 September act when granted independence by the egation from the scab "Union of Dem­ 'stupidities,' because they did not arrest 1981). Healy, North et al. lined up with Yeltsin-Gorbachev regime was to grant ocratic Miners" in Britain. A creature of Yeltsin or even cut off his phones, and the counterrevolutionary cabal. a blanket amnesty to the native fascist the Thatcher government and the British did not mount a 'serious assault' on the Now that Solidamosc leader Walesa is collaborators of Hitler's Germany-is mine bosses set up to destroy the real Russian parliament building. In other presiding over the capitalist immisera­ identified with the international working miners union during the 1984-85 coal words, this politically-diseased organiza­ tion of Poland, all the fake-lefts are class! strike, the UDM was there to purvey the tion was hoping against hope f~r an old­ jumping ship, including North. Thus in Today the Northites declare that the imperialist-orchestrated Big Lie cam­ fashioned Stalinist bloodbath." North's its statement on the August coup, the Soviet working class "must retain its paign that miners union leader Arthur German followers of the BSA (Bund Bulletin denounces Walesa for running complete independence from the politi­ Scargill "mishandled" funds that were Sozialistischer Arbeiter) continue in the a "pro-imperialist regime" which uses cal aims of the imperialists and their donated by Soviet miners during the same vein, saying the Spartacists only police and troops to smash workers political and economic agents in the strike. The bourgeoisie was enraged at criticize the coup plotters "because they strikes. But ten years ago, the Northites Soviet Union." Yet last spring the Bul­ this internationalist solidarity' from didn't carry out a bloodbath in front of joined with anti-Communist Polish letin uncritically enthused over the Soviet workers, who dug deep in their the White House in Moscow like the emigres and AFL-CIO bureaucrats at a Soviet coal miners strike, which was pockets to aid this bitter class battle. Chinese Stalinists did two years earlier pro-Solidarnosc rally in Chicago which organized and manipulated by the pro­ After years of persecuting the union, and in Tiananmen Square in Peking" (Neue was addressed by the Reaganite gov­ Yeltsin leaders of the newly formed even stealing union funds from the Arbeiterpresse, 4 October). ernor of Illinois, "Mass Support for Independent Union of Miners to demand banks, the British state finally had to To compare the couple of thousand Solidarity," ran the front-page headline that control over the mines and other drop court charges against Scargill. scruffy yuppies, speculators and Rus­ Spartacists who were present at the sian nationalists, including fascists and ~ Soviet miners congress exposed this ,"U priests, who were the pathetic advance ':::To anti-union vendetta. Now the Northites guard of Yeltsinite counterrevolution, a say nothing about the whole affair. Small with the hundreds of thousands of work­ wonder. In 1983 it was their own inter­ ers and students, many of them explicitly national leaders, in Gerry Healy's Work­ pro-socialist, who rallied day after day ers Revolutionary Party, who instigated in Tiananmen Square, is obscene. Like the initial anti-Communist witchhunt the less duplicitous cheerleaders for Yel­ against Scargill. On the eve of the coal tsin, the Northites can't stand our state­ strike, Healy's press lambasted the min­ ment that "a call on Moscow workers to ers union leader for accurately calling clean out this counterrevolutionary rab­ Solidarnosc an "anti-socialist" organiza­ ble was in order." And to North & Co., tion. This was a completely calculated the crime of crimes would be a military Spartaclst "bombshell" by the Healyites and one bloc with a section of the bureaucracy protest In 1979 which was played for all it was worth against Workers by Thatcher, her Fleet Street media and seeking to fight the outright capitalist­ League, who restorationists. And as we wrote in took money the anti-Communist labor bureaucrats in our polemic "Traitors, Not Trotskyists­ from Arab Britain in their campaign to cut off any Cheerleaders for Yeltsin's Counterrevo­ despots to be solidarity with the miners. The Healyites lution" (WV No. 535, 27 September): their hired were so proud of themselves that they "The 'gang of eight' was incapable of polson pens. published an entire pamphlet about it. sweeping away Yeltsin in its pathetic excuse for a putsch because, as we wrote, ''AFL-CIA'~ it was a 'perestroika coup.' But both David North and the imperialism and the forces of internal Here we had the intersection of counterrevolution were aligned on Yel­ tsin's side. The coup plotters were not the two political hallmarks of Healy­ only irresolute but didn't want to unleash of the Bulletin (18 December 1981) industrial enterprises be transferred from ism-vicious anti-Sovietism and belly­ the forces that could have defeated the describing this anti-Soviet political orgy. the central Soviet government to the Yel­ crawling before the Cold War trade­ more extreme counterrevolutionaries, for tsin regime of the Russian Republic. union tops. At the height of the Vietnam that could have led to a civil war if the Anti-Soviet Nationalists and Yeltsinites really fought back. And in an Although the strike reflected the War, the Workers League put out a armed struggle pitting outright restora­ Anti-Union Witchhunts desperate economic conditions facing program for a labor party that didn't tionists against recalcitrant elements of With openly capitalist-restorationist the miners and their growing hatred for mention either the war or the fight for the bureaucracy, defense of the collec­ forces on the ascendancy in Russia and the Gorbachev regime, we warned of the black liberation in the U.S. And in the tivized economy would have been placed December 1990 German Bundestag elec­ on the agenda whatever the Stalinists' other republics, the Northites offer them­ hardline Yeltsinites at the head of the intentions. Trotskyists would have selves as the leadership for the struggle miners union: tions, the Northite BSA ran on a program entered a military bloc with 'the Ther­ of the Soviet working class to "stop the "These people are bitter enemies of the that did not even mention immigrant midorian section of the bureaucracy degradation of the Soviet Union into a Soviet working class. They seek to tum workers, racist/fascist attacks or wom­ against open attack by capitalist counter­ the powerful Soviet miners into a batter­ en's rights. And while they included rit­ revolution,' as Trotsky postulated in the Balkanized semicolony of imperialism." ing ram for openly pro-capitalist forces . 1938 Transitional Program. This was What gall! The Workers League has been whose victory would mean the destruc­ ual criticisms of the Social Democrats precisely our policy toward Jaruzelski in the most fervent defender of every force tion of every remaining social gain-the (SPl:», the Northites called for votes to 1981." in the USSR that was fighting for just right to work, cheap housing and low the SPD witchhunters, who served as And indeed, it is precisely the example such an- outcome. food prices, free medical care-which the advance guard of capitalist reuni­ the Soviet workers have as a result of fication in a Fourth Reich of German of Poland which lies behind the North­ Last year they championed the cause the collectivized economy." ites ' policy in the Moscow coup. At that of the right-wing nationalist Sajudis gov­ - "Soviet Miners Strike Amid imperialism. time, when the entire left was proclaim­ ernment in Lithuania. Echoing the most Perestroika Turmoil," Today, a's part of its "orthodox" con ing "Solidarity with Solidarity," the right-wing, anti-Communist elements of WV No. 522, 15 March game, the Northite "ICFI" is making international Spartacist tendency sought the American ruling class, the Workers We pointed out how many of the leaders critical noises about the pro-imperialist to expose before the world's working League even denounced Bush for not of the new union were "well known to continued on page 15 22 NOVEMBER 1991 13 about, au"d meanwhile we have an expo­ catd black America'in 'particlilarabout money" and a pillar of the community. Magic... nentially growing public health disaster. the virus, and more generally to fight In the context of the convulsive civil In Harlem, Watts and Miami's "Little the opprobrium heaped upon the esti­ rights and Vietnam antiwar struggles of (continued from page 16) Haiti," AIDS is spreading furiously mated one million Americans who are the '60s and early '70s, some black ath­ not a lot of joy or opportunity for high among IV drug users. More than half of infected with HIV, may help, but aware­ letes broke the mold, at a huge personal achievement, so they identify with sports the people infected with HIV in this ness is not a cure. What is required cost. Muhammad Ali was stripped of his as a connection-hopeful and illusory­ country are black and Hispanic. The is to fully mobilize society's resources boxing title (and millions in endorse­ to those few who do make it to the big AIDS virus is compounded by systematic for AIDS research as well as to care ments) when he refused to be drafted leagues, the big money, and the accep­ race and class oppression: poverty, for those infected. What stands in the and stated, "No Viet Cong ever called tance and even admiration by white unemployment, decrepit housing, inade­ way is the government's policy of me nigger." Gold and bronze medalists America. For many, Magic Johnson quate schools, too few hospitals and no malign neglect, reinforced by pervasive Tommie Smith and John Carlos were seemed to bring youth's cloak of invin­ health insurance. By the time people in social backwardness. Kareem Abdul­ banished from the U.S. Olympic team cibility and immortality into adulthood. these conditions are diagnosed, most are Jabbarsaid it best: "This is still a nation for their defiant "black power" salute Now the prospect of seeing an adored only weeks away from death. ofbigotry andfear." Just look at the sky­ when the American flag was raised over superstar-wither and die has brought the rocketing incidents of gay-bashing since their heads and the national- anthem agony of the AIDS epidemic home to Sex, Race and mainstream America became "aware" boomed during the 1968 Mexico City millions. A Sports Illustrated headline the AIDS Witchhunt that thousands of homosexuals were games. In the macho world of sports, it captured the impact on America: "Like An estimated ten million people dying of AIDS. Stars don't comebigger took tremendous courage for football One of the Family." around the globe are infected with HIV than Magic, and now even against him player Dave Kopay to come out of the The fantasy of super stardom now fol­ and everywhere outside the U.S. and the backlash has begun. closet. lows Magic Johnson off the court and Western Europe the primary means of Since the bigots can't blame gays or It's a sign of these conservative times into the battle against AIDS. The expec­ transmission. of the virus is through het­ IV drug use for Magic's infection, that even as Magic Johnson coura­ tation that Magic Johnson and height­ erosexual sex. The devastation wrought they've unleashed a torrent of prejudice geously goes public with HIV, he repeat­ ened awareness and concern can tum edly attributes his infection to "God's around this catastrophic epidemic is in way." Much of the sports world has itself a devastating condemnation of the responded with moments of silence and American government. Tens of thou­ public prayers. This plays into the hands sands have died horrible deaths because of every bigot, from the Catholic church there is no cure and because the govern­ to the White House to the black preach­ ment has done precious little to find a ers who have opposed every measure that cure or alleviate the suffering of those could prevent the spread of AIDS, like infected with HIV, and a very great sterile needle exchange programs and deal to make it worse: giving free rein condom distribution in the schools. They to insurance company greed, closing think it's "God's will" to wipe homosex­ hospitals, fostering discrimination. The uals, drug addicts, teenage mothers with virus has been a "giggling factor" in the AIDS babies off the face of the earth. halls of the White House, welcomed They demand "behavioral change," by as a divine mop-up operation of capi­ which they mean abstain from sex, talist society's most despised pariahs: abstain from drugs ... or drop dead. homosexuals. Sex and hormones is a lot of what The criminal neglect and bigotry by being a teenager is all about, but for kids the government and the medical estab­ today, sex without a condom is like lishment based on the insistence that playing Russian roulette. In Chelsea, AIDS was a "gay disease" has also led Massachusetts, an economic wasteland, to the death of thousands of black peo­ 20 percent of adolescents are infected ple. In 1981, Dr. Arye Rubinstein, a pedi­ with sexually transmitted diseases, and atric immunologist at Albert Einstein the rate of HIV infection is 50 times College of Medicine, documented cases higher than that of the rest of the state. of AIDS in black children in the Bronx. In an emotional hearing on November He was scorned, ignored, his paper Condyles/Impact Visuals 12, a proposal to distribute condoms in returned unpublished because the New Disease of poverty: AIDS victim reduced to begging in New York City subway. the Chelsea schools was defeated by England Journal of Medicine thought it The full resources of society should be mobilized to fight this deadly plague. priests and administrators who argued impossible that children could have a against "promoting sex." As 15-year-old "homosexual disease." By 1988 one out by the disease in sub-Saharan Africa has against sex itself. From other players, Sabrina Sullivan retorted, "Sex does not of every 61 babies born in New York brought incalculable horror; India, Thai­ like Phoenix Suns guard Kevin Johnson, need to be promoted." was HIV-infected. land and Brazil are threatened by the we get misogynous tales of satanic AIDS is caused by a virus, not by Magic Johnson wants to take a "safe rampant spread of this plague. The enor­ temptresses stalking locker rooms and "sin," and not by sex-any kind of sex. sex" message to the black community. mity of the shock in the U.S. of a famous parking lots for sexual prey: "The Our species didn't evolve to its present He told a national audience from the heterosexual person announcing he has women hover and wait to try to get you." state through chastity. Nor did anyone Arsenio Hall show to "put your thinking the AIDS virus is in itself a monument From right-wing ideologues and boozy, ever advocate an end to the "heterosex­ caps on and put your caps on down to the ignorance, bigotry and backward­ lunkheaded, hypocritical moralist sports ual lifestyle" because it was responsible there" (gesturing below his belt). But ness of this country whose rulers have writers we get the inverse-that "inno­ for spreading herpes, gonorrhea and powerful institutions, from the govern­ greeted this terrible disease as "God's cent" women are the victims of over­ syphilis. But now we have a government ment to the schools to the black church, retribution" against homosexuals, IV sexed, spoiled men. On the sports page, with the mindset of Salem witchhunt­ demand "behavioral change," not edu­ drug users and other social "deviants." Dave Anderson outrageously denounced ers-they preach abstinence not only cation. Vice President Quayle countered The intersection of disease with sex "the egotistical essence" of Johnson test­ because they think people with AIDS Magic, stating, "I would not say safe calls out every hatred, every prejudice ing positive for HIY. "He's notSt. Magic deserve to die, but as part of a whole sex, I would talk about abstinence." If in this sick society. In Georgia, the of Sunset Boulevard; he's Earvin John­ repressive puritan drive to mold obedi­ "safe sex" is a contradiction in terms, Ku Klux Klan sport "Thank God for son of the Fast Lane who finally got ent boys and girls for Bush's New World talk of teenage abstinence is., utterly AIDS" T-shirts. Reactionaries obstruct caught for speeding." On the opinion Order. absurd. fighting this disease and welcome AIDS page we get Patrick Buchanan thunder­ Larry Kramer, founder of the Aids as a political weapon to instill fear ing, "We want to ignore the traditional Criminal State Neglect as Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) as part of a racist, religious, anti-sex morality, but never pay the price ... there Epidemic Rages and author of the play The Normal Heart, witchhunt. For the past year public health is a moral distinction between Kimberly Magic Johnson has accepted Bush's appeared on Ted Koppel's Nightline the officials, Congress and the bourgeois Bergalis and Magic Johnson that cannot offer to join the National Commission same evening as Magic Johnson's an­ media swarmed like vultures to be lost." on AIDS, and vows to "tell President nouncement. Kramer said: the ravaged body of Kimberly Bergalis For women this is nothing but a rehash Bush that it's time to drop the political "He's going to die and I'm going to die. (who apparently contracted AIDS from of the sexist stereotypes of women as barriers that have slowed down efforts Andthe40 million peoplethatthe World improperly sterilized equipment at her either Virgin Marys or Lay Down Sallys. to find a cure for the disease." The Com­ Health Organization predicts are going dentist's office) in order to further to be Hl'V-positive by the year 2000 are For black men, it's a racist double stan­ mission issued a report in September going to die. We are not talking epi­ spread fear, loathing and state repres­ dard. Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson advocating national health care and demic, Mr. Koppel, we are talking sion of "guilty" carriers who infect "the or Donald Trump aren't pilloried in delivered a scathing attack on the Bush plague. No amount of education is going innocent." the press for their sexual exploits-it's administration's lack of response. As to end this plague. The only thing that Randy Shilts (author of And the Band accepted as a "legitimate" lifestyle of Carisa Cunningham, a spokeswoman for will end this plague is a cure. And re­ searchis simply not being done because Played On) commented: "In his fight the rich and famous and white. the AIDS Action Council, said, "if the George Bush and Congress don't care. I against HIV, Magic Johnson should Black athletes, who weren't born with President continues to ignore the recom­ beg Magic Johnson to be the spokesman not confine his concern to heterosexual silver spoons in their mouths, are held mendations of the commission, it doesn't for a cure." victims .... The depressing subtext to to a different code of conduct. The price matter who sits on the commission or Tasks of basic education, support for Johnson's announcement was that sud­ of fame and adulation for them is what they say." Bush and Congress only the sick, hospices for the dying, all of denly people cared about HIV because high: no politics, no drugs (except want Magic's winning smile as window­ which should be energetically under­ it struck someone they liked, someone what the owners pump you up with), dressing for a policy of neglect. taken by public health authorities, are who clearly didn't 'deserve' it" (Sports praise god whenever possible, and be a Likewise in New York City where picked up by groups like the Gay Men's Illustrated, 18 November). And the patriotic "role model" for the Moral AIDS is ravaging the ghettos and barrios, Health Crisis. Based in the largely white, bluntly honest Charles Barkley con­ Majorityite bigots to hold up for youth. the city's response has been to plaster petty-bourgeois milieu of the organized fessed: "I'm disappointed in myself that In the NBA, the blackest of profes­ filthy urine-stenched subway cars with gay community, with access to jobs, edu­ I don't feel bad for everyone who has sional sports, players have been de­ slick bilingual advertisements of happy cation, health insurance, and connec­ AIDS like I do about Magic." If Magic nounced by the media for "perverse faces announcing that they've tested pos­ tions, GMHC has reached out to provide hadn't made it to the NBA he could be commercialism" when they promote itive for the AIDS virus and life has help to black and other destitute AIDS just another black man dying of AIDS products like high-priced sneakers. But never been better. It's enough to make victims. But heroic ad hoc volunteerism in a Michigan ghetto-and no one would if your great-great-grandfather amassed you scream-but the most curdling is always a cruelly insufficient resource­ give a damn. the family fortune through buying and howls of rage would not begin to do jus­ for any endeavor a society actually cares Magic Johnson's commitment to edu- selling black slaves, then you're "old tice to the appalling state of medical care 14 WORKERS VANGUARD in capitalist America. Even the New York troublesome "surplus" population. The people who tested negative for AIDS The answer to the AIDS COStS i8": Times (17 November) acknowledged: only way out of the literal dead end they might really have already been exposed science, not hysteria. But in this sick "As AIDS becomes more deeply en­ face is a thoroughgoing socialist revolu­ to the virus but, wouldn't develop anti­ capitalist society, scientific research on trenched in the culture of poverty, inspi­ tion that creates jobs, free quality edu­ bodies and test positive for an indefinite AIDS is hampered by underfunding, gro­ ration alone can only help so much. cation and health care for all. period of years. Medical experts long tesque squabbles among drug companies Already those answering Johnson's call The government's chief response to ago concluded these findings were and research teams for glory and pres­ to get tested for the virus may face months of waiting. Those who test pos­ the AIDS crisis has been hysteria and false-the interval between infection tige, and especially by a medical system itive and lack health insurance may find repression. Just as the Bergalis case and a positive test result is short, less run for profit. AIDS patients are bank­ themselves in a three-month line just to fueled a blizzard of bills pushing for than six months-but the public wasn't rupted by the drug companies, who see a doctor, let alone gain access to mandatory testing and blacklisting of informed until this month! Such indif­ charge a fortune for drugs that appear to costly life-prolonging therapy." health care workers backed by threats of ference and incompetence make a mock­ be life-prolonging, like AZT. And while Thirty-four million Americans have fines, jail terms, and loss of jobs and ery of the witchhunters' demands for .the FDA takes forever to get new medi­ no health insurance at all. There are licenses, so too will Magic Johnson's mandatory testing. cations on the market, AIDS victims are 200,000 reported cases of AIDS in the announcement be jumped on to push legally persecuted for seeking out new U.S. and over 125,000 deaths. On 1 Jan­ mandatory testing for drugs and HIV in medications the only way they ~an­ uary 1992,.the definition of AIDS will sports and other occupations. Boston through an international black market. change from having an opportunistic Celtic Kevin McHale has already called We need billions for AIDS research infection to having either an infection or for mandatory testing in the NBA. These and international cooperation in research a T4-cell count (cells which fight infec­ calls for mandatory testing represent the for a cure. We're facing a devastating tions) of less than 200. It is estimated triumph of ignorance over science. AIDS plague here, and society should be mo­ that under this new, more appropriate is spread not through casual contact but bilized from top to bottom to fight it. definition the number of AIDS cases in exchange of semen, blood or vaginal But of course this capitalist society is the U.S. alone will soar to 350,000­ secretion. Who's at risk in the locker organized to produce for profit, not to 400,000. At the same time, the less than room is not McHale but an HIV -positive fill human needs. And there's no better $500 million allocated for education player, whose suppressed immune system example of that than what has happened about AIDS in the U.S. is being slashed makes him more susceptible and less and continues to happen and not happen by $14 millioa for fiscal year 1992. able to fight infections from colds and with the AIDS crisis. This government There is more than enough money to viruses that are spread casually. The only is doing everything in its power to push slaughter Iraqis, or line the pockets of purpose then of mandatory testing is to a reactionary social and political pro­ Bush's family and capitalist friends, as stigmatize, victimize and blacklist. gram that prevents effective treatment in the S&L bailout, which will cost tax­ Since a test for HIV antibodies first or containment of the disease and that payers about $500 billion-because the became available in 1985, the Spartacist ensures that its effects will be most dev­ American ruling class has a program of League has opposed any and all govern­ astating and inhumane. death and destruction. They build pris­ ment attempts to legislate mandatory As we wrote in "The Agony of Aids" ons instead of schools, shut down mental testing of anybody. Instead, we advocate (Women and Revolution No. 35, Sum­ hospitals, dump the sick on the streets, voluntary, anonymous testing for those mer 1988): "The fight against AIDS yank the homeless out of their shanty­ who want it. In this racist, anti-gay soci­ cries out for a socialist revolution which towns and subway platforms, slash ety, forced testing only exposes those will lay the basis for a society which spending for welfare, Medicare, and on most in need of help to the vicious big­ will end all forms of social oppression. \. and on. AIDS in America has rapidly otry intensified since the onset of this WVPhoto Only then will the limits of science be become a disease of poverty. Black terrible epidemic. In 1989 UCLA re­ Spartacists at demonstration for gay the sole limits-and those will con­ youth have been tossed on the slag heap searchers terrified millions with a clini­ rights in Washington, D.C., October stantly be enlarged through thoughtful, by a ruling class that sees them as a cal study they claimed showed that even 1987. energetic research.".

U.S. war crimes in Central America than cover to their genocidal war against the regimes; which set up the leader of the crew in the White House basement. Iraqi people. At the time, the American the British miners union for persecution Northite 'people,' in their overwhelmingmajority, Lane Kirkland was a member of the supported Bush's war!" by the class enemy; which has system­ Rockefeller Commission, which carried - WV No. 523, 29 March atically used the capitalist cops and Fool's Gold... out a whitewash of CIA assassination courts against its opponents on the (continued from page 13) activities for the Ford administration in North's attempt to invoke Trotsky in left; which extolled the execution of 1975. Kirkland was a member of the defending this social-patriotic ploy is a Iraqi Communist workers, and fingered labor bureaucracy. North cynically pro­ Kissinger Commission, which rubber­ slander against the Bolshevik leader, opponents of the Ba'athist regime for claims: "We do not make a fetish of the stamped Reagan's support to the contra who consistently fought for class strug­ bloody repression; which hailed feudal­ so-called mass organizations, with their terrorists in Nicaragua. He is a member gle against imperialist war. While the ist Ayatollah Khomeini and Walesa's paper membership and their overstaffed of the National Endowment for Democ­ "ICFI" was peddling this line, the Spar­ Solidarnosc, the only union Ronald Rea­ and overpaid bureaucracies.... The AFL­ racy, set up to give a veneer of legitimacy tacist League marched under the banner gan ever loved; which has supported CIO, like all the other bureaucracies to CIA-funded subversion. And the AFL­ "Defeat U.S. Imperialism! Defend Iraq!" fascistic Lithuanian nationalists and which exist in this world, is an instru­ Yel­ CIO has for years provided cover for and the sections of the International tsinite "union" misleaders bought by the ment of imperialism which exists to con­ CIA "labor" activities through the Communist League (Fourth Internation­ "AFL-CIA"; which has catered to the trol and discipline the working class" "American Institute for Free Labor alist) fought for labor political strikes AFL-CIO bureaucracy in America and (Bulletin, 6 September). He calls for a Development" in Latin America and sim­ against the war. the Fourth Reich Social Democrats in "Fight for a Labor Party Based on a ilar outfits elsewhere. So our advice to anyone who might Germany.. .look carefully at all this and Socialist Program," and even declares be taken in by North's latest shell game understand that the slimy reality of the that such a party need not be "some sort "Democratic" Cover for is to look carefully at the' record of Northites is not just what you read on of social democratic party under the Imperialist War this dubious tendency which took well paper. These people are capable of say­ aegis ofthe AFL-CIO." Quite a mouthful over £I million from Arab bourgeois ing and doing anything._ coming from the same Workers League The hypocrisy is mind-boggling, but which for years routinely called on hardly new for the sinister David North, the same sellout AFL-CIO bureaucrats who was one of the prime authors of the to lead everything including general Healyite cop-baiting smear job against strikes. the American reformist Socialist Work­ SPARTACIST LEAGUE/U.S. LOCAL DIRECTORY In fact, during the Iran-Contragate ers Party, "Security and the Fourth scandal, the Northites demanded that International," and who more recently National Office: Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 • (212) 732-7860 "the AFL-CIO conduct[s] its own inde­ appealed to the capitalist state to jail pendent inquiry into the illegal White SWP member Mark Curtis, while lining Atlanta Detroit Norfolk House activities and the direct dangers up AFL-CIO bureaucrats to back this Box 4012 Box 441043 Box 1972, Main PO Atlanta, GA 30302 Detroit, MI 48244 Norfolk, VA 23501 they pose to the working class" (Labor vicious frame-up. As part of his current pseudo-orthodoxy jag, North is putting Must Act on Iran-Contra Crisis, January Boston Los Angeles Oakland his membership's heads through yet 1987). This is tantamount to calling on Box 390840, Central Sta. Box 29574, Los Feliz Sta. Box 29497 another Healyite wringer as they build the CIA to investigate itself! The AFL­ Cambridge, MA 02139 Los Angeles, CA90029 Oakland, CA94604 CIO tops were no less involved in the for a "Berlin Conference Against Colo­ (617) 492-3928 (213) 380-8239 (510) 839-0851 nialism and War" this month. Chicago San Francisco This is quite a name for a conference Box 6441, Main PO Madison Box 77494 held by this crew. When the U.S. impe­ Chicago, IL 60680 Box 1492 San Francisco, CA94107 rialists' mad bombers were laying waste (312) 663-0715 Madison,Wl53701 (415) 777-9367 Spartacist .League to Iraq, the central demand of the North­ Public Offices ites was for a "national referendum on Cleveland New York Washington, D.C. the gulf war in which all workers' and Box 91037 Box 444, Canal St. Sta. Box 75073 - MARXIST LITERATURE­ youth of voting age would be able to Cleveland, OH 44101 New York, NY 10013 Washington, D.C, 20013 (216) 781-7500 (212) 267-1025 (202) 872-8240 Bay Area take part" (Bulletin, 30 November 1990). Thurs.: 5:30-8:00 p.m., Sat.: 1:00-5.'00 p.rn. We pointed out (and perhaps members 1634 Telegraph, 3rd Floor (near 17th Street) of North's Workers League could figure Oakland, California Phone: (510) 839-0851 out for themselves) how this amounted TROTSKYIST LEAGUE OF CANADA Chicago to "democratic" support for the imperi­ Toronto Vancouver Tues.: 5:00-9:00 p.rn.. Sat.: 11 :00 a.m.-2:00 p.m. alist war: 161 W. Harrison St., 10th Hoor.r., Box 7198, Station A Box 2717, Main P.O. Chicago, Illinois Phone: (312) 663-0715 "At the red-white-and-blue 'antiwar' Toronto, ON M5W 1X8 Vancouver, BC V6B 3X2 demonstration in Washington, D.C. on (416) 593-4138 (604) 687-0353 New York City January 26, the Northitesmarched under Tues.: 6:30-9:00 p.rn., Sat.. 1:00-5:00 p.m. a banner reading: 'Stop War Against Montreal Edmonton 41 Warren St. (one block below Iraq-Letthe People Vote on War.'This C.P. Les Atriums, B.P. 32066 . PSSE P.O. Box9605 ChambersSt. near Church St.) is worse than the most abject social­ New York, NY Phone: (212) 267-1025 pacifism, appealing to the imperialist Montreal, QC H2L 4V5 Edmonton, AB T6E 5X3 butchers to give a more 'democratic'

22 NOVEMBER 1991 15 W,/iNE/iS "II'IJ'" ale• o nson

risis•• ." , On the early afternoon of November 7, Magic Lakers had not had a losing month since Magic Johnson calmly stepped up to a microphone as if it joined the team in 1979. Lumbering down the lane were just another NBA free throw line and stunned on the break with his shoulder-high dribble, arching the world with the announcement that he had been jumpers from "downtown," master of the touch pass, infected with the HIV virus ..Johnson announced his no-look pass, fake pass, "junior sky hook," and now immediate retirement from professional basketball and then a crushing slam dunk, Johnson led his and pledged to become a spokesman in the battle Lakers to five NBA championships. He is also that against AIDS, cautioning, "You think it can never rare professional gracious enough to visit the oppos­ happen to you, that it only happens to other people. ing team's locker room to offer congratulations If it can happen to Magic Johnson it can happen to when the Lakers lost. anybody." To list Johnson's achievements only scratches the His composure and bravery in publicly announc­ surface of his game. Magic Johnson is one of the ing his infection with the AIDS virus-a death very few who changed the way the game was played. sentence for its overwhelmingly gay, black and The on-court coach, Magic demonstrated that team­ Hispanic victims who also suffer a plague of work, setting up teammates to score, was an art. In bigotry-was met with an unusual outpouring of the dozen years since Johnson and his friend Larry support. Philadelphia 76ers' forward CharlesBark­ Bird brought their rivalry onto the hardwood floors ley adopted Johnson's uniform number "32" for the of the Boston Garden and the Great Western Forum, rest of the season as a personal tribute. Phone lines pro basketball was transformed from an exciting but to AIDS organizations were jammed coast to coast little-watched inner-city game to a vastly successful as thousands called in $32 contributions or asked international business-helping overcome the last for information about the virus. Young black kids vestiges of a quota system in basketball by proving who practice Magic's moves with the basketball in that white fans will tum out for a "black sport." vacant lots and schoolyards across the country cried .. Especially for minority youth who face big "Do and talked of their fears for themselves, their older Not Enter" signs at the gates of most walks of life, Soohoo/NBA Photos brothers and sisters, and their idol. sports are the great escape fantasy from a reality of Legendary Los Angeles Lakers basketball star Earvin For more than a dozen years Magic Johnson has grinding poverty and oppression. For them there's "Magic" Johnson. dominated the sport of basketball. The Los Angeles continued on page 14 NYC Trial of Skinhead Gay-Bashers·· The Murder of Julio Rivera Three white skinhead killers are cur­ wait for a gay man to walk by. The Jack­ premeditated murder. rently facing charges in Queens for the son Heights schoolyard is known as a The cops said Rivera was a "cocaine brutal slaying of Julio Rivera, a gay His­ gay "cruising strip." user" and treated it as a low-priority drug panic bartender. "I killed him because They lured Julio Rivera into the yard, murder. They waited nine months to he was gay," Daniel Doyle testified on then took out a claw hammer and began classify it as a "bias crime" and four November 7. Doyle could calmly deliver to hit him in the back of the head with months of demonstrations passed before this chilling admission because he isn't full force. They broke a beer bottle over they made an arrest, even though the kill­ even on trial, having earlier copped a his head and smashed him in the face ers were going around the neighborhood plea. And the judge encouraged the pros­ with a plumber's wrench. When Rivera bragging about their deed. It was due to ecution to work out a deal for a lesser was bent over under the blows, they the courage of Alan Sack, a close friend plea for his two accomplices. stabbed him in the back, the blow that and former lover of Rivera, that the case The case is becoming known as the ended his life. has come to court. "gay Howard Beach trial" as the mur­ Gang leader Daniel Doyle, who deliv­ Sack, a 39-year-old interior designer, derous bigotry of the gang members ered the fatal knife blow, is the son of had been talking with a friend on the recalls the racist lynch mob which, in a retired city detective. By pleading street, when someone shouted at him to 1986, set upon three black men and guilty to manslaughter Doyle will be eli­ run to the schoolyard because "some­ Newsday chased Michael Griffith onto an express­ gible for parole in eight years, in one's killing Julio." As he testified at Julio Rivera way where he was struck and killed by exchange for testifying against fellow the trial, he ran to the scene where he a car. gang members Erik Brown, college stu­ found his friend covered in blood and In the early morning hours of 2 July dent and brother of a New York City lying on the sidewalk. Fighting back and with their help flyers were distrib­ 1990, the skinhead punks, members of cop, and Esat Bici, a lumpenized part­ tears, Sack told the jury how he held uted and marches organized. On one can­ the fascist "DMS" ("Doc Martens Skin­ time pizza deliveryman with underworld Julio, desperately urging him to hang on: dlelight march this August, 350 gay men heads") gang, set out on a vicious "hunt­ connections. Sack had never been an activist until and women walked to the schoolyard, as ing party." They looked for a homeless Brown and Bici are charged with he held Rivera dying in his arms. Deter­ store owners cheered them on. man, but couldn't find one. So they second-degree murder and, if convicted, mined to seek justice, he tracked down At the Queens state supreme court last knocked. down an empty shanty of a could face 25 years to life. Even that witnesses and badgered the police and Wednesday, Sack told WV what it has homeless person under the subway ~ is a whitewash, for it's crystal clear mayor's office. He called upon the gay meant for him to sit through the trial of tracks, and went to P.S. 69 and lay in that this was a case of cold-blooded, rights group Queer Nation in Manhattan, continued on page 5

16 22 NOVEMBER 1991