soC!: No. 630 ~)(.623 6 October 1995

Racist Rulers Grind the Poor

j""', ~

THE POOR' WILL BE \iEARl\!

t.I IA.J D II

The legislation being rushed through all wings of the Democratic Party along Congress in the last two weeks signals with most of the so-called left joined a return not only to the days before the with Reagan/Bush in waging Cold 1930s New Deal but to conditions rem­ War II, which ended with capitalist iniscent of the 19th century. The already counterrevolution in East Europe and the threadbare social safety net-a by­ destruction of the Soviet Union. The product of generations of struggle by dismantling of social welfare programs working people-which has meant the call this country a "welfare state" is a considered sacrosanct, are under attack. in the U.S. is but the domestic side difference between subsistence and star­ cruel joke. Over the past generation, the Children, single mothers, the elderly, of the "New World Order" of unfettered vation for a large sector of the inner-city real wages of American working people immigrants, the ill or infirm-all the capitalist exploitation. For the men who and rural poor is now being tom to have fallen by 20 percent, while the most vulnerable layers of society are run Wall Street and the Fortune 500, shreds by both capitalist parties. chasm between rich and poor has wid­ being told to drop dead, literally. Time anyone who isn't producing profits The lopsided 87-12 Senate vote Jo ened enormously. One percent of U.S. (2 October) talks of "cutting loose the for them-whether unemployed black throw everyone off welfare after two families now own nearly 40 percent of poor." What the capitalist rulers are ghetto youth or old people in nursing years was a sign of the times. This deci­ the' nation's wealth, more than double doing is killing the poor. homes-has no right to live. sion to destroy the lives of several mil­ the proportion of any West European Gingrich & Co. certainly revel in Yet this arrogant "let them starve" lion single mothers and their kids was country. At the other end of the spectrum, this onslaught against minorities and attitude is fueling a seething anger at the marked by outright jubilation. House the bottom 10 percent of American fam­ the poor. But it is the two pillars of base of American society, which was majority leader Newt Gingrich strode ilies has an annual income of $11,000, Democratic Party liberalism-the labor expressed in the multiracial upheaval that across the Senate floor slapping the the lowest of any Western capitalist bureaucracy and black elected offi­ shook Los Angeles following the 1992 backs of fellow Republicans. "Million­ country except Italy! Many working peo­ cials-who have made the working class acquittal of Rodney King's racist cop tor­ aires celebrating the stomping of the ple get by only by having two or more and poor vulnerable to the ever more mentors. It can be seen today in the out­ poor," commented liberal New York wage earners in the family. And in the savage attacks against them. Over the pouring of popular support-from stu­ Times columnist Bob Herbert. Yet the ghettos and barrios, most people teeter past two decades, the AFL-CIO mislead­ dent youth to trade unionists-for former liberals are reduced to little more than between chronic unemployment, short­ ers have allowed the trade-union move­ Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal, who "moral witness." Despite the furious term minimum wage jobs and prison. ment to be gutted by giveback contracts, faces execution in Pennsylvania for his rhetoric of the Republican right, what Now the rulers of this country are two-tier wage systems, runaway shops eloquent defense of the oppressed. It can differences exist between the parties are demolishing the few meager social wel­ and police scabherding. During the Rea­ be seen as well in the fierce picket-line over degree and pace. It was Clinton, fare programs which do exist. Aid to gan/Bush years, almost every major city battles by newspaper workers and other after all, who pledged 'to "end welfare Families with Dependent Children had a black Democratic mayor, who unionists against police scabherding in as we know it" in the '92 elections. (AFDC), Head Start, Legal Services, blamed all social ills on the Republican Detroit. It is necessary to revitalize the Echoing the language of the Republi­ Medicaid, Medicare-all are to be eittler White House while his cops terrorized labor movement by freeing it of the dead can right, the media speaks of the dis­ eliminated or slashed to the bone. Even the ghettos and barrios. hand of the pro-capitalist bureaucracy, mantling of the "welfare state." But to Social Security retirement benefits, long In the name of anti-Communism, continued on page J2

0 ~ ~ I Feds' Bloody The Mrs'; GuerriIlL __ ~N Trail of-Terror If'I ~ I SEEPAGE 8 'ft I SEE PAGE 8 r-. Federal Court Turns Down UMWA Militant's Appeal freedom for Jerry Dale lowe! United Mine Workers (UMWA) mili­ an area where company gun thugs from eight Logan County miners accepted tant Jerry Dale Lowe was dealt another Elite Security had been located. The plea bargains and received $500 fines cruel blow in the federal courts. On Sep­ Court of Appeals' decision hinges on evi­ with 120 days of jail time. tember 20 the United States Court of dence that the bullet which struck the In her dissenting opinion, Circuit Appeals for the Fourth Circuit turned scab driver could have come from a pis­ Court judge Diana Gribbon Motz down Lowe's appeal,' condemning him tol Lowe had been seen with one week exposed the legal hocus-pocus about to nearly eleven years in prison for the before the shooting. But the court had "interstate commerce" which was used "crime" of defending his union. His refused to permit evidence that Lowe had to send Lowe to prison: "The vehicle attorneys will be filing a request for re­ sold the gun prior to the shooting! that the decedent was driving was owned argument. All labor must stand up for Lowe was singled out by the author­ and operated by a West Virginia com­ this courageous union brother. ities because he was known as a militant pany in connection with an intrastate On 24 June 1994, Lowe was rail­ defender of the union. While the bosses business transaction with another West roaded on federal charges of "interfering sought to pin the scab's death on Lowe, Virginia company. There was no evi­ with interstate commerce" in the shoot­ they had no evidence to charge him dence that the vehicle had ever been used ing death of a scab contractor at Arch under state laws-for anything. So in outside the state of West Virginia, in con­ Mineral's Ruffner mine in Logan order to make an example of Lowe and nection with interstate commerce or County, West Virginia during a bitter seven other UMWA militants at the Ruff­ otherwise. " of the road to talk to anybody, not even labor battle in July 1993. The scab was ner mine, the coal bosses and the federal But these legal and constitutional to ask them to honor a picket line. That shot in the back of the head while leaving government turned a local contractor niceties have no meaning to the Clinton would be affecting interstate commerce the mine, the fatal bullet coming from into "interstate commerce." Seven of the Justice Department and the bosses' according to them and you're just liable courts as they go after the labor move­ to go to jail." ment and oppressed with a vengeance. Constantly striving to build up its As Lowe';> attorney, Rebecca Ann Baitty, arsenal of repression, the government Che Guevara and the stated, "This decision has enormous increasingly uses this "interstate com­ Guerrilla Road potential for impacting labor strikes .... merce" myth as the "legal" sledgeham­ mer to intervene to break strikes and rail­ On 8 October 1967, heroic guerrilla It would be implicated in virtually any road pickets when the local cops, goons fighter Che Guevara was captured in Bolivia strike situation." Or as Lowe told Work­ and then murdered by the CIA and its local ers Vanguard, if the ruling holds, "You and courts can't do the jobs themselves. operatives. Many leftist organizations at the won't even be able to stand on the side continued on page 4 time saw CastrolChe's Cuba as an alterna­ tive to the conservative Kremlin Stalinist bureaucracy. Today, in the wake of the coun­ ten'evolutions that have swept the ex-USSR Paris Demonstrations for TROTSKY and East Europe, radicalizing youth around LENIN the world are again looking to Che as an inspiring revolutionary fighter. Yet Guevara's "guerrilla road" was capable at best­ Mumia Abu-Jamal under exceptional circumstances--

2 WORKERS VANGUARD Editorial Notes

capital punishment. "Besides," she told the City Paper, in Poland "they have been Philly's Grim Reaper Goes to Poland practicing the death penalty for years. It's called communism. How many peo­ ple have been murdered because of a communist dictator?" For years, Washington vituperated against the supposed brutal crackdown against Solidarnosc in 1981, which tem­ porarily spiked the bid for power by that She's the'Queen of Death in the ''Cap­ on the Poland trip, told Frangipanni, pro-capitalist Polish nationalist move­ ital of Capital Punishment," and she's "The United States will most likely be ment sponsored by the Vatican, Ronald been sent to Poland by the State Depart­ condemned at this conference for its use Reagan and the CIA. In fact, a total of ment to do battle for the death penalty. of the death penalty." They want Abra­ nine people are known to have died Lynne Abraham, the Philadelphia District ham along because "she can make a real­ in the crackdown. Even a Solidarnosc­ Attorney who wants to further her polit­ world contribution to these discussions." led parliamentary committee could only ical ambitions by executing death row The "real world" means Philadelphia, come up with 54 people killed by the political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, is Pennsylvania, where Abraham presides security forces during the year and a half a member of the U.S. delegation to a over the most vicious racist murder of martial law (Tina Rosenberg, The meeting of the Organization for Security machine in America. The fight to save Haunted Land [Random House, 1995]). and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal Lynne Abraham, enforcer of the most This is about half the number of prison­ Warsaw, which opened on October 2. At has focused worldwide attention on the ruthless "legal lynching" machine in ers the Philly D.A. 's office has sent to this two-week international conference whole system of Philly "justice," where the U.S. death row, not to mention the more than to monitor "human rights," there is a spe­ the 40 percent black population lives those sentenced to be executed. No one 3,000 facing execution nationwide. cial session on abolition of capital pun­ under a reign of terror from the racist will shed a tear. Prison is too good for Our comrades of the Spartakusowska ishment. The U.S. expects to come under cops, the capitalist courts presided over them. They don't deserve to live." Grupa Polski participated in a demon­ fire and wants somebody who's really by the likes of hanging judge Albert Sabo, Only such minds would be capable of stration against Lynne Abraham and the into it to champion the legal lynching of and the deadliest D.A. in the country. death penalty on October 2. In a leaf­ thousands on death row. The death penalty is Lynne Abraham's stating, as did the Philadelphia D.A. 's reply to Jamal's appeal for a stay of exe­ let entitled "Protest Philadelphia D.A. News of the. trip first appeared in the "passion," wrote Tina Rosenberg in a Lynne Abraham, Would-Be Executioner Philadelphia City Paper (22 September), front-page profile of her in the New York cution: "The carrying out of a valid death sentence cannot constitute irreparable of Mumia Abu-Jama\!" the SGP writes: injury for purposes of requesting a stay." "Abraham arrives in Warsaw five years after the capitalist counterrevolution, After Jamal won a stay of execution, she backed to the hilt by the American im­ bitterly complained in a New York Times perialist bourgeoisie, which destroyed (13 August) column, sneering that Jamal the former deformed workers state was just a "high school dropout" and in Poland. Throughout the 1980s, with supreme hypocrisy imperialist govern­ dripping with racist arrogance at the ments around the world conducted a "ludicrous" idea that Jamal "was a fa­ massive campaign ostensibly defending mous journalist whom the police framed 'human rights' against 'communist total­ to silence his unpopular political views." itarianism' as a means to undermine the Soviet Union and other workers states. Warsaw, June The OSCE meeting takes place as which had been deformed and weakened 23: Polish reactionary forces in Poland are trying by decades of Stalinist bureaucratic Spartacists at to rev up the machinery of death. One rule .... rally of some can't help but note the grotesque qual­ "Meanwhile. the Polish bourgeoisie. 200 calling to including politicians from the fascist ity of Abraham arguing for the death grouplets. to Walesa and the pro-clerical­ save the life of penalty in the land of Auschwitz. The U.S. political nationalists of the post-Solidarnosc par­ death penalty in Poland is a holdover ties, to the ex-Stalinist social democrats prisoner Mumia of the SLD, are unanimously howling Abu-Jamal. from the Pilsudski dictatorship and was scandalously maintained by the Stalinist for a strengthening of police powers. This means more deportations of Roma, bureaucracy of the deformed workers Sinti as well as so-called 'illegal' work­ state. But there has not been an execution ers, further crackdowns on women seek­ in an article by columnist Mary Frangi­ Times Magazine (16 July). The Philadel­ in Poland since 1988, a situation that ing abortions, and a reactivation of the many of the new capitalist rulers are barbaric death penalty. Ultimately their panni, who wrote: phia District Attorney's office "is more target is the organized working class and "Her mission? zealous in seeking the death penalty" than trying to reverse. the left, and anyone else who seeks to "Spread the gospel of the wonders of the any other jurisdiction in the U.S., Rosen­ Abraham argues that in Poland "sooner rebel against the 'new order' of capitalist death penalty.". berg noted. Philadelphia's death row pop­ or later, they will have to accept the death 'free market' misery .... " "Nearly all of OSCE's 52 participating nations will send representatives to talk ulation of 105 is the third largest in the penalty. With such a high homicide and The SGP leaflet ends, "Free Mumia Abu­ about why the death penalty sucks. Abra­ nation, close behind Houston and L.A., drug abuse rate, they wiU have no Jama\! Down with Anti-Semitism and ham will face a hostile crowd." which are both much larger. Abraham choice." And why does Pqland have a Anti-Roma Racism! Down with Capital­ William Spencer, who runs the OSCE doesn't lose any sleep over the pending high crime rate today? Abrahim-i·is saying ist Counterrevolution! Down with the desk at the State Department and is also executions, declaring: "I've looked at all that capitalist counterrevolution requires Death Penalty!"_

As the counterrevolutionary destruc­ tion of Yugoslavia turned the former Why Socialist Action Is Compelled deformed workers state into a bloody cauldron of ethnic hatred, Socialist Action sided with one of the warring nationalist factions-the Bosnian Mus­ to Alibi Clinton's Terror Bombing lims. The Bosnian "government" is led by an Islamic fundamentalist cabal, but In World War I, Lenin called the Social ration. It just states with unusual frank­ tic Tudjman government (which looks Socialist Action follows the imperialist Democrats who shamefully supported ness what has been their policy all back to the Nazi-allied Croatian Ustasha press in presenting these rabid national­ "their" bourgeoisies in imperialist war along-to be a pressure group for impe­ in World War II) drove out 200,000 ists as "multi-ethnic" democrats. And it's "social chauvinists." Today, as U.S'; rialist intervention. In the August issue, Serbs from lands they had inhabited no accident that SA supports the same NATO bombs enforce imperialist domi­ Gerry Foley denounced "UN Betray­ for centuries. And the July Socialist side embraced by Washington, both nation in the Balkans, the American als in Bosnia" and hailed the Croatian Action proclaims, "Morale Steadily Democrats and RepUblicans. Socialist Action (SA) group acts as Wash­ military offensive which carried out Rises in Bosnian Army," above a photo War and revolutions are fundamental ington's attorney. "Why the U.S. and the largest "ethnic cleansing" operation of a bandoleered, Rambo-like "freedom events which throw into sharp focus NATO Were Compelled to Punish Serb in this murderous war, as the fascis- fighter." where different political forces and ten­ Chauvinists," reads the headline in the dencies stand. Contrast SA's line with September issue of Socialist Action. the Spartacist League. Over the head­ "Compelled"? "Punish"? Do tell. The Why the U.S. and NATO were line "Down With U.S./UN/NATO Attack on Bosnian Serbs!" (Workers Vanguard first paragraph quotes the premier of :;:";;;:::::.;::d:::~. compelled to punish Serb chauvinists Bosnia saying that the massive NATO "n. EnOItbPe beeD.....ac 10 lbe_ No. 628, 8 September) we declared, "No bombing of the Bosnian Serbs allowed o!~~~~~~~~~ to Imperialist Diktat in the Balkans!" the "international community" (read: The article noted: U.S. and German imperialism) to "regain "It has been quite clear in recent months, beginning with the deployment of the so­ credibility." While complaining that a called rapid reaction forces last spring, hardline Serb faction is refusing to highlighted by the American engineered accept the NATO diktat, Socialist Action and controlled Croatian offensive in assures its readers: "The United States early August, and now with the mass will certainly not flinch from burning murder bombing by the U.S. and NATO, . that this has become an imperialist some Bosnian Serb butts to get the sort September Socialist Action's disgusting apology for U.S./NATO bombing of war against the Serbs. We call for of settlement it wants." - Bosnian Serbs. defense of the Bosnian SeriJs against This latest Socialist Action is no aber- continued on page 4 6 OCTOBER 1995 3 wrote in our article, "Fake Lefts in the Socialist Baggage Train of Imperialism: What's Behind 'Workers Aid for Bosnia'" (WV Action ... No. 604, 5 August 1994): (continued from page 3) "These 'leftist' charlatans cynically use the plight of the Tuzia mining commu­ U.S'/NATO imperialism and its puppets nity to promote political support to the of the Muslim-Croat alliance." Bosnian Muslim government in the three­ At the same time, we emphasized sided fratricidal war in the former Yugo­ slavia and to push for imperialist support the need for a socialist fight against to Bosnia." the ethnic-nationalist butchers, calling prominently: "For Workers Revolution So they've gotten what they asked for. to Overthrow All the Bloody Nationalist As early as February 1993, the United Regimes! For a Socialist Federation of Secretariat called on the imperialists to the Balkans!" send arms to the Bosnian Muslim gov­ In. our last issue, we noted how the ernment. And now that the U.S./NATO despicable Tim Wohlforth, one-time hon­ forces are bombing the Bosnian Serbs, cho of the Workers League, is now post­ Socialist Action cheers. ing messages on the Internet praising So here we have the scandalous spec­ NATO for its terror bombing of the Bos­ tacle of ostensible Trotskyists seeking nian Serbs with an enthusiastic "Good imperialist intervention to support one Going!" Wohlforth is an open renegade side in a nationalist civil war. These who has denounced Trotskyism and Len­ "laptop bombardiers," as journalist Alex­ WV Photo inism as he embraces "American values." ander Cockburn termed such "leftist" The International Communist League held emergency protests in early But the example of Socialist Action gloat­ warmongers, accept the bourgeois lie September against NATO onslaught at UN headquarters in New York (above), ing over the U.S.'s "punishment" of the of the "death of communism." Thus London, Paris, Berlin. Serbs underlines that he is shouting out the United Secretariat recently publish­ Trotsky's program for permanent revo­ collapse of Stalinism, a gain has been ed an entire declaration on "Bosnia­ loud the same pro-imperialist line that a lution, which explains that in the impe­ made for the working class worldwide" grab bag of ostensible Trotskyists have Herzegovina: No Ethnic Partition!" (In­ rialist epoch the fight even for the most (Socialist Action, August 1995). been peddling for some time. . ternational Viewpoint, June 1995), in basic democratic tasks such as national Socialist Action emerged from the which they say not one word about social­ Support for NATO terror bombing is independence requires that the proletar­ (by then thoroughly reformist) Socialist ism or the working class. And the USec's the logical outcome of the "workers aid" iat take power, under the leadership of Workers Party (SWP) in 1983. Its first Yugoslavia expert, Catherine Samary, campaigns for Bosnia that this crowd its communist party, passing over to notable act was to goon for the San Fran­ admits "the left's inability to mobilise a has been running for the past several undertake socialist tasks and extending cisco labor bureaucracy. When thou­ solidarity movement with democratic years. SA is internationally linked to the the revolution internationally, centrally sands of Bay Area workers took to the forces in former Yugoslavia is partly the United Secretariat (USec) of the late to the imperialist countries. streets to stop scab buses during the Grey­ result of a thorough confusion over who Ernest Mandel, whose Bosnian aid outfit A "democratic" capitalist Bosnia really hound strike, Socialist Action helped to is who, and who we should support" is called "International Workers Aid." is a fantasy. The interpenetration of organize a goon squad for the bureauc­ (International Viewpoint, March 1995). Together with the British Workers Rev­ several (closely related) peoples in the racy to stop the workers and protect the olutionary Party of Cliff Slaughter, which Having written off a fight for socialist Balkans means the formation of capitalist company from "crazies"! Nor is their Sta­ has been running the "Workers Aid for revolution as impossible, they now pre­ nation-states born of counterrevolution linophobia anything new: they are charter Bosnia" group, they ran convoys to the sent a bourgeois-democratic program for can only come about through massive members of the "solidarity with Solidar­ town of Tuzla under the protection of "self-determination" for a "multi-ethnic" forced population transfers, and worse. ity" club, "AFL-CIA" branch. Already Croatian and UN military forces. As we Bosnia. This throws out the window While the USec talks of a mythical in 1981, when he was still in the SWP, "sovereign and multi-ethnic Bosnia," in future SA honcho Nat Weinstein was ing a finger in their defense. Trampling reality they are aligned with Islamic demonstrating alongside hoary "Captive Lowe ... on the proud miners' tradition that an fundamentalists and Croatian neo-fascists Nations" anti-communists at a rally for injury to one is an injury to all, UMWA under the protection of the U.S./NATO the counterrevolutionary Solidarnosc. (continued from page 2) head Richard Trumka has refused to use imperialists who want to police the The logo on Socialist Action's newspaper For the past decade, nearly every militant the union's power in defense of Jerry region, "punishing" the Serbs for remains to this day that of Lech W alesa' s labor struggle has been met with bogus Dale Lowe against this vindictive pros­ stepping out of line in the "New World Polish Solidarnosc-Ieader of the Polish "conspiracy" charges under the draco­ ecution by the Clinton administration. Order." counterrevolution. nian RICO laws. This is a throwback to Trumka's contract selling out the 1993 Socialist Action poses as the left wing From Poland to Bosnia, Socialist the 19th century, when unions and strikes strike specifically excluded from am­ of the USec, as opposed to the majority, Action has lined up foursquare with its were considered criminal conspiracies. nesty any strikers facing federal charges, which openly talks of liquidating the "own" imperialism. This was shown dra­ Also railroaded to 35 to 45 years in in other words, Jerry Dale Lowe and the organization that has long, and falsely, matically during the 1990-91 Persian prison, under the anti-labor provisions other seven Logan County miners. claimed to be the continuity of Trotsky's Gulf slaughter, when Socialist Action of the Crime Control Act, are four Ken­ The Partisan Defense Committee, a Fourth International. But there's nothing endorsed wearing yellow ribbons in sup­ tucky miners and UMWA brothers­ class-struggle legal and social defense "left" about these cheerleaders for Clin­ port of "our boys," the U.S. troops that Donnie Thornsbury, David Thornsbury, organization associated with the Sparta­ ton. In fact, SA is marked by profound rained death and destruction on Iraq, kill­ Arnold Heightland and James Darryl cist League, sends monthly stipends to Stalinophobia. Socialist Action hailed ing more than 100,000 Iraqis for Amer­ Smith-who were arrested during the Lowe as part of our program of stipends the capitalist reunification of Germany. ican control of Near East oil. Now these 1984-85 strike against A.T. Massey and to victims of capitalist repression. And in a report to the USec's 14th World yellow-ribbon socialists are cheering on Samoyed Energy. As a UMWA Local 5958 safety com­ Congress, Jeff Mackler said of the wave Clinton as he "bums Bosnian Serb butts." From the powerful Teamsters to the mittee chairman and a union militant, of counterrevolution'. that swept the These pseudo-Trotskyists are social UMWA, the labor tops who routinely Jerry Dale Lowe fought to protect his Soviet Union and East Europe: "with the chauvinists of the third mobilization. _ bow down to strikebreaking injunctions union brothers. Jerry Dale Lowe must now conveniently hide behind the threat not fight alone. The fight to defend Jerry of RICO indictments and civil suits as Dale Lowe and all class-war prisoners they abandon the most miHtant strikers is the cause of the entire labor move­ who have been t~rgeted and set up by ment. There should be mass mobiliza­ the feds. Teamster militant Jesse Acuna tions in the coal fields and around and Ravenswood, West Virginia Steel­ the country-co~voys of Teamsters, BOSTON worker Bob Buck are just a couple of marches of auto, rubber, steel, transport Spartacus Youth Club Class Series the strikers imprisoned for defending and municipal workers, demanding free­ Saturdays, 2 p.m. Next classes, October their union without the bureaucrats lift- dom for Jerry Dale Lowe .• 14: Workers of the World, Unite: The Power of the Proletariat; October 21: The TORONTO Marxist Understanding of the State and Imperialism; call for location Saturday, October 21,7:30 p.m.: National Chauvinism Is Poison to Class For more information: (617) 666-9453 Struggle-For Quebec Independence! SPARTACIST LEAGUE/U.S. LOCAL DIRECTORY Speaker: Charles Galarneau, Spartacist Canada Editorial Board; St. Paul's National Office Chicago Oakland CHAMPAIGN/URBANA Centre, 427 Bloor Street w. (just west Box 1377 GPO Box 6441, Main PO Box 29497 Spartacus Youth Club Class Series of Spadina) New York, NY 10116 Chicago, IL 60680 Oakland, CA 94604 Alternate Thursdays, 7 p.m. Next classes, Spartacus Youth Club Class Series (212) 732-7860 (312) 663-0715 (510) 839-0851 October 5: For Black Liberation Through Alternate Mondays, 7 p.m. Next class, Socialist Revolution! November 2: 1917- October 16: The Origins of Marxism; Inter­ Atlanta Los Angeles San Francisco The Russian Revolution; University of national Student Centre, 33 St. George Box 397 Box 29574, Los Feliz Sta. Box 77494 Illinois-Champaign/Urbana, call for room Street (north of College) For more information: (416) 593-4138 Decatur, GA 30031 Los Angeles, CA 90029 San Francisco, CA, 94107 For more information: (312) 663-0715 (404) 521-9338 (213) 380-8239 (415) 777-9367 VANCOUVER Boston New York Washington, D.C. NEW YORK CITY Friday, October 13, 7:30 p.m.: National Box 390840, Central Sta. Box 3381, Church St. Sta. Box 75073 Thursday, October 12, 7:30 p.m.: Race, Sex, Class and Clinton'S War on the Poor; Chauvinism Is Poison to Class Struggle­ Cambridge, MA 02139 New York, NY 10008 Washington, D.C. 20013 For Quebec Independence! Speaker: (617) 666-9453 (212) 267-1025 (202) 872-8240 Speaker: Amy Rath, Editor, Women and Revolution; PS 234, 292 Greenwich Street Charles Galarneau, Spartacist Canada (at Chambers Street) Editorial Board; Britannia Community Centre, Room L4, 1661 Napier (off Spartacus Youth Club Class Series Commercial Drive) TROTSKYIST LEAGUE OF CANADA/LiGUE TROTSKYSTE DU CANADA Alternate Fridays, 7 p.m. Next classes, Spartacus Youth Club Class Series Toronto Montreal Vancouver October 6: Workers Revolution; October Alternate Thursdays, 7:30 p.m. Next class, 20: The Revolution Betrayed; Spartacist October 26: Marx's View of Economics; Box 7198, Station A C.P. Les Atriums Box 2717, Main P.O. Public Office,41 Warren Street (one Britannia Community Centre, Room L4, Toronto, ON M5W 1X8 B.P.320.66 Vancouver, BC V6B 3X2 block below Chambers Street) 1661 Napier (off Commercial Drive) (416) 593-4138 Montreal, QC H2L 4V5 (604) 687-0353 For more information: (212) 267-1025 For more information: (604)'687-0353

4 WORKERS VANGUARD I La-bor's Go--t-t---a--- Play----H----a- rdball -t--0------ml

that fights to expose the political basis of the bureauc­ back an angry, multiracial workforce. racy's sabotage, in order to sweep away this obstacle. In August, the MTA threatened Metro-North workers Detroit: The crucial point is that the newspaper union tops' with layoffs after members of four different unions­ Redbaiting Targets attack on the strikers is rooted in their allegiance to Machinists, firemen, sheet metal workers, cleaners and the capitalist system-in particular through their reli­ inspectors-voted to reject contracts agreed to by MTA All Strike Militants ance on and fronting for the Democrats. But you'll negotiators and union bureaucrats. The proposed sellout look long and hard to find this mentioned in the RWL's entailed vast work rule changes which would have For 12 weeks, workers striking against the Detroit "strike committee" leaflets. By confining their criticism lowered the income of many workers. Leading the News and Free Press have' endured hundreds of arrests of the union tops to picket line tactics, the RWL ducks retreat was TWU International president Sonny 'Hall, in the fight to shut down the scab papers. In early the necessity of a political struggle against the pro­ who first assured nervous NYC rulers that no strike September, the strikers' mass pickets that pushed back capitalist union leadership, leaving the door open to action was planned, then called the proposal rejected the cops were a welcome sight to workers across the tailing "progressive" elements of this bureaucracy. by TWU cleaners and inspectors "the best available at country. But the scene of hundreds of workers massed As we pointed out in our last issue ("Detroit Labor: the time, short of a strike, especially considering the outside the key Sterling Heights printing facility pound­ Stop the Scabs!" in WV No. 629), "militancy alone is financial climate we were bargaining in" (AFL-CIO ing the pavement with picket sticks and ready to teach not enough." Labor's gotta play hardball to win-and News, 28 August). a long-overdue lesson to the scabherders and goons that means class-struggle politics to defeat the back­ The LIRR and Metro-North are, respectively, the from outfits like Vance Security scared the union tops stabbers like Derey who are running this strike into first- and second-largest commuter railroads in the country, yet divisive craft unionism at both encourages backstabbing deals between management and the var­ ious union misleaders. It's absurd to have dozens of unions carving this powerful workforce into tiny com­ ponents. There must be one industrial union for all mass transit workers-including workers from the closely interlinked New Jersey Transit and the PATH trains between Manhattan and New Jersey. Metro-North and LIRR workers are covered under the Railway Labor Act, which deems strike action ille­ Detroit newspaper gal during government-imposed "cooling off periods" strikers and their supporters have that can last for years. The MTA wants to place them fought repeated under the even more draconian Taylor Law-which police assaults. declares all New York public employee strikes illegal. Left: Cops Such laws are a godsend for labor bureaucrats. partic­ attack picket line ularly phony "oppositionists" like New Directions in outside TWU Local 100, who boost themselves to union office Sterling Heights with militant rhetoric. then claim their "hands are tied" printing plant, at contract time. August 19. It's not just the Railway Labor Act or the Taylor Law-the whole system of regulations, labor boards and court injunctions covered by the National Labor Relations Act is designed to gut labor struggle. This framework is the bible of the labor bureaucrats, who as much as the company. Now the bosses' courts have the ground. In fact, the fakers posturing as "militants" are keenly aware of their role: to police the organized hit the unions with an anti-picketing injunction. Rather in the 1970s became the bureaucrats of today: look at working class, preaching faith in government interven­ than calling on all Detroit labor to come out in mass the TDU (Teamsters for a Democratic Union), in bed tion and the Democratic Party. At LIRR, 470 engineers defiance of the strikebreaking court order, the response with Ron Carey and finking for the feds. The RWL is have been working without a contract since 1991! In of the Metropolitan Council of Newspaper Unions was cut from the same cloth-that's why they look to Dem­ May, they held a one-day "illegal" sick-out that para­ to launch a dirty, redbaiting slander campaign. The ocratic Party con artists like Jesse Jackson to lead work­ lyzed the railway, and Wall Street howled with rage. bureaucrats' aim was clear: to denounce the determined ers and minorities in struggle. What's needed is a lead­ Later, union officials admitted their "mistake." and militancy of their own members as being the work of ership that fights for jobs for all and mass labor/black agreed to prevent more "illegal job actions" for at least "radicals" and Vance Security! struggle against racist attacks, against imperialist pro­ five years. It used to be that the owners had to hire their own tectionism that chains American workers to their own For the first time in memory, bosses at the NYC public relations hacks-now all it takes is a phone call exploiters, and for a workers party determined to expro­ Transit Authority are threatening mass layoffs and out­ and they get the labor fakers to do it for free. In a priate the capitalists under a workers government. With rageously demanding to reopen the contract approved grotesque press release on September 22, Teamsters such a revolutionary leadership, the working class will 14 months ago. Since 1989, the TA has slashed 5,000 official Al Derey, head of the Metropolitan Council of launch a fight to win-once and for all. jobs through attrition; now they want to eliminate 2,000 Newspaper Unions, attacked the Revolutionary Work­ or more jobs in the months ahead. Even with the 25-cent ers League (RWL) and their "Strike to Win Commit­ fare increase, the TA is expecting a $400 million budget tee," alleging that "Vance Security, one of the private gap next year that they will try to squeeze out of the paramilitary companies hired by the papers, could be Defeat the Crackdown '--Wprkforce with the help of the union tops. "The num­ controlling these so-called radicals." This crude smear bers are real," says Local 100 president Damaso Seda, job is directed against any striker and strike supporter on NYC Transit Workers! "and dealing with them will mean pain for everyone." who has defended the picket line. Over a hundred have What Seda means by "everyone" doesn't include the been arrested-17 more on September 30-for trying The over 40,000 subway, bus and commuter rail TA or himself-together they peppered last year's con­ to stop scab distribution. Instead of-Derey's backstab­ workers employed by units of New York's Metropolitan tract with dirty little secrets the membership is just bing attack, the union movement should use its muscle Transportation Authority (MTA)-the NYC Transit discovering. to demand all charges be dropped. . Authority (TA), Long Island Rail Road and Metro­ TA bosses withheld a scheduled 3.2 percent pay "This redbaiting reminds me of 1950," at the height North-are the most powerful hub of public service increase in early August, and demanded to siphon part of the McCarthyite witchhunt, one electrical worker employees in the country. But facing the broadest of the raise into a supplementary retiree health fund. manning the picket lines told Workers Vanguard. He attacks on mass transit in decades, workers are being When the raise did show up in workers' paychecks, added that strike leaders "were hoping and praying that held back, atomized and demoralized by their own reduced to 2.45 percent, the bureaucrats cynically the injunction would come through" to give them an union misleaders, above all by officials of the Transport claimed that they achieved a huge victory. In fact, Local excuse to do away with picket line militancy. Members Workers Union (TWU), whose 30,000-strong Local 100 100 tops hid this looming giveback from the workers of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers has the power to bring the city to a grinding halt. for over a year, and still won't let the membership see (lBEW) report that one Metropolitan Council bureau­ Strangled by budget cuts at the TA and locked in the contract with their own eyes. In many shops and crat justified scabbing by some IBEW members while contract fights at Metro-North and the LIRR, workers yards transit workers are starting to fight back, with redbaiting others who called for mass pickets! are facing speedups, forced overtime, dangerous such elemental measures as refusing overtime and The Metropolitan Council and their allies in the conditions, drug testing and disciplinary assaults by enforcing safety rules. But they are well aware that the United Auto Workers International have acted as cops gung-ho foremen and supervisors trying to save their union brass has a long track record of isolating and for the bosses by diverting away from the picket line own jobs. Riders are getting hit, too. Subway and bus sabotaging even these struggles. the hundreds of workers who have flocked to Sterling service was cut back after Labor Day, affecting poor At the 240th Street inspection barn, during the hottest Heights to support the strike. Like all union leaders and working-class neighborhoods the most, and on days of summer, car maintainers and cleaners rebelled who support the profit system and the twin parties of November I transit fares are slated to rise from $1.25 against horribly unsafe work conditions and a crack­ American capital, Derey & Co. function as agents of to $1.50. Virgil Conway, the MTA's recently appointed down on their breaks, starting to work to rule and refus­ the bosses to control and tame the labor movement. chairman, announced plans to cut operating expenses ing overtime for weeks. Union officials sat on their Many strikers fighting to win this battle recognize by up to $3 billion in the next five years! hands while management hit workers with a barrage that the union misleaders are the roadblock to victory. On a mid-September morning, a squirrel wandered of disciplinary write-ups and threats to put workers "in What will it take to defeat them? The RWL and into an electrical transformer serving the Metro-North the street" for up to a month 'without pay. In the bus the "Strike to Win Committee" reduce everything to commuter railroad and briefly accomplished something division, TA bosses set up an entire bus repair facility the call for more "militancy" and electing "militants" the sellout union tops of 17 railway unions have des­ manned with probationary mechanics, forcing them to to union office. It takes a lot of nerve for the RWL to perately avoided since the contract covering 5,000 of work up to 80 hours per week as part of a "time study" pose as militant defenders of the picket line: the first their members expired in December I 994-shut it speedup. issue of their paper was devoted to alibiing their scab­ down. Rumors of a strike action sent shock waves from Months after a June 5 subway crash on the Williams­ hing on a 1977 strike of AFSCME clerical workers in the train platforms of wealthy suburbs north of the city burg Bridge left motorman Layton Gibson dead and Ann Arbor! to the Midtown banks and Wall Street. But so far, MTA scores of passengers injured, the TA admitted that It is urgent to fight for mass pickets which shut down bosses have had more to fear from squirrels than from signals and emergency stopping mechanisms on 257 the scab production. Key to this is forging a leadership the Metro-North unions, whose leaders are holding continued on page 12 6 OCTOBER 1995 5 • ral While standing on· her cabin porch in KKK lynchings of men in blackface for Ruby· Ridge, Idaho in August 1992, a a "redneck of the year" award and raped mother holding her baby in her arms was women. The 15-year-old "Good 01' shot through the head by an FBI sniper, Boys" festival of white supremacy was one day after her 14-year-old son was traditionally organized right out of the killed by a bullet in the back from a BATF office in Greenville, South Caro­ federal agent's gun. Eight months later, lina. Now groups of black and female on 19 April 1993, the Bureau of Alcohol, BATF agents are waging lawsuits alleg­ Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) and the ing rampant racism and sexism against state of Texas ran "victory flags" up a their fellow gun-law agents. pole over the grisly killing field near In August, the government announced Waco, Texas, where 86 men, women and it was paying $3.1 million to Randy children had been burned alive that day. Weaver and his surviving children to set­ In both these cases, recently the subject tle his lawsuit against the FBI-a virtual of Congressional investigations, the feds admission by the "Justice" Department were carrying out the government's drive that they carried out premeditated mur­ for rigid control of the populace, waged der at Ruby Ridge. Yet two years after under various guises including "gun con­ the implosion of the Idaho prosecutor's trol." And it didn't make a dime's bit of case against Weaver, when both judge difference whether it was the Republi­ and jury concluded that it was the FBI can Bush or the Democrat Clinton in the which should be on trial, the G-men have White House. come up with a new, patently false claim: A decade earlier in Philadelphia-with that Randy Weaver shot his own son! a Republican in the White House and a Any lie, no matter how transparent, will black Democratic Party mayor in city do when the state asserts its armed might hall-Philly cops and federal police offi­ to enforce the rule of capital. cials conspired in bombing and burning down an entire black neighborhood. This First the Massacre, was the murderous Mothers Day 1985 Then the Lies rampage against the black back-to-nature At the time of the Waco massacre, the group, MOVE. And in 1979, under the media quickly fell into line and saluted Democrat Carter, five union organizers commander in chief Clinton and "Gen­ and leftists in Greensboro, North Caro­ eral" Reno, dutifully broadcasting their lina were cut down by a KKK/Nazi death Clinton and Reno ordered April 1993 assault with heavy weapons and deadly lies. In contrast, we warned in Workers squad-aided by the FBI, BATF, state CS gas on Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, killing 86 men, Vanguard that "child abuse, guns, cult­ and local police. When these bloody women and children. ism-these are all cynical pretexts which atrocities were perpetrated, the Sparta­ have nothing to do with what happened cist League immediately protested and sieges at Ruby Ridge and Waco, we also Europe to fascist mercenaries today has on the morning of 19 April 1993." Mil­ exposed the government's lies about its blasted the obscene silence or outright been the battle cry of barbarism. lions had watched in horror as live tele­ murderous deeds. On the very day of indifference of ostensible leftists. A host As the RepUblicans attacked the Dem­ vision coverage showed flames engulf­ the Waco inferno, the SL responded with of pseudo-socialists refused to protest ocrats over Waco, Clinton and Attorney ing the Branch Davidian commune: emergency demonstrations outside fed­ hecause they tail after the Democrats General Janet Reno tried to di vert outrage "Clinton and his cohorts could not erase eral offices against this deadly govern­ and accept the capitalist state's assertion against the government's bloody assault this image, so instead they called it 'mass ment repression. of its "riRht" to a monopoly on the means with lurid tales of alleged "child abuse" suicide.' To justify sending in tanks to of violence. As we noted in our article ram and wreck the complex, pouring in Recently, new material on Waco and and "weapons stockpiles" by the Branch massive amounts of potentially lethal CS Ruby Ridge has become available, fur­ on "Revolution and the Right to Bear Davidians. During the hearings, New gas, allowing the house and its inhabi­ ther debunking the government's lies Arms: The Second Amendment to the York Democratic Congressman Charles tants to bum to the ground while fire about its trail of terror. The Waco hear­ U.S. Constitution" (Spartacist No. 43- Schumer was Cli!1ton's bloodhound, engines were deliberately kept away ings in the House of Representatives in 44, Summer 1989), gun control means demanding an investigation instead into from the blaze, U.S. top cop Reno claimed the feds had to act because of July generated over 1,500 pages of wit­ that the cops, fascists and other enemies the National Rifle Ass.ociation (NRA), 'child abuse'." ness transcripts alone. In this mass of of the oppressed will have guns, while which had referred to BATF and FBI hit - "Waco and the White House: new literature there is ample additional workers and blacks are disarmed. squads as "jackbooted thugs." Fanatical First the Massacre, Now the evidence of the feds' blueprints for mur­ gun control nut Schumer (a staunch Zion­ Lies," WV No. 575, 7 May 1993 der, confirming in detail that, as we Ambush..at Ruby Ridge, ist who definitely doesn't preach gun con­ wrote at the time, "the Waco assault was Holocaust at Waco trol for Israel's Zionist terrorists) de­ The government's cover-up began deliherate mass murder, decided at the On the heels of hearings over the gov­ manded "stronger, more effective law with the initial BATF raid on the Branch White House" (WV No. 574, 23 April. ernment's fiery slaughter of the Branch enforcement" against those "who molest Davidians in February 1993. A memo 1993). What also clearly emerges is the Davidian commune outside Waco, Senate children and stockpile weapons"! presented at the Waco hearings shows that on March 1, the BATF began inter­ deadly role of the liberals' drive for gun hearings opened last. month on the FBI's The Waco hearings revealed signifi­ viewing its agents in a "shooting review" control and of the hysteria against pur­ "shoot on sight" sniper attack on white cant details about the government cover­ and "immediately determined that these ported "cults" as covers for the state's separatist Randy Weaver and his family. up of this mass murder. Official docu­ stories did not add up." Justice Depart­ strengthening of its repressive apparatus. At Ruby Ridge, the FBI's "rules of en­ ments presented at the hearings showed, ment attorneys "advised [BATF supervi­ At the time of the feds' atrocities gagement" amounted to "kill 'em all, let for example, that there were deliberations sor] Hartnett to stop the ATF shooting against MOVE and their later murderous God sort 'em out," which from medieval about possible fatalities from the FBI's review because ATF was creating Brady CS gas attack on the Branch Davidians. material" that could undermine prosecu­ Former deputy Treasury secretary Roger tion of the Branch Davidians. The Brady Altman wrote, four days before the final assault, that in using CS gas, "The risks of tragedy are there. And if the FBI waits indefinitely, Mr. Koresh eventually will Spartacist League concede." In fact, it turns out that the FBI had rejected using tear gas at Ruby Public Offices Ridge supposedly because of concerns -MARXIST LlTERATURE­ for the safety of the Weaver children, but decided at Waco to use this potentially Bay Area lethal gas long banned from warfare by Thurs.: 5:30-8:00 p.m., Sat.: 1 :00-5:00 p.m. the Paris Chemical Weapons Convention! 1634 Telegraph, 3rd Floor (near 17th Street) Oakland, Cali.lornia Phone: (510) 839-0851 But there wasn't much that the Dem­ ocrats' "spin control" could do to clean Chicago· up the "reputation" of the federal police. Tues.:5:00-9:00p.m., Sat.: 11 :00a.m.-2:00p.m. 161 W. Harrison St., 10th Floor In July, the press reported revelations Chicago, Illinois Phone: (312) 663-0715 that hundreds of agents from the FBI, Jeane Jordlson the Secret Service, and the U.S. Marshals New York City Vicki Weaver, here seen with 01' Tues.: 6:30-9:00 p.m., Sat.: 1 :00-5:00 p.m. daughter Sara, was killed in regularly attended an annual "Good 41 Warren St. (one block below cold blood by FBI sniper in feds' Boys Roundup" celebration of racism Chambers St. near Church St.) August 1992 siege of Randy in Tennessee, where they handed out New York, NY Phone: (212) 267-1025 Weaver home. "n____ r hunting licenses," staged mock 6 WORKERS VANGUARD rule stipulates that failure to disclose evi­ medical equipment. dence favorable to the defense invali- Several months later, the Justice T~£ 60Ve.f2.~ti\E~T A BUNCH of dates a guilty verdict. - Department issued a lying cover-up re­ Along with the Congressional hear­ port on Waco claiming that the FBI re­ J~CILos Angeles Times demolished fA~TA5Y ? important details about how the feds car­ this lie by reporting that "The FBI ried out state murder. In The Ashes of refused an offer from Flamechek Inter­ ~ Waco: An Investigation (Simon & Schus­ national, a Santa Paula, Calif., company, ter, 1995), Texas journalist Dick Reavis to use Czech armored, remote-control provides more evidence that the final tanks that would allow firefighters to conflagration at Mt. Carmel was ignited extinguish flames while being protected by the CS gas fired indiscriminately into from gunfire." And when fire engines the Davidians' home. Over 300 CS can­ from Waco finally did arrive, as the fire­ isters the size of footballs-called "ferret storm was raging, the FBI refused to let rounds"-were launched from 58-ton them in for 21 minutes! tanks that were also used to ram the As we wrote then: "As part of its house, bashing holes and undermining Big Lie campaign, the government in­ the structure. As Reavis writes: sists that Koresh's followers deliberately "About three minutes before the ferret started the blaze. We doubt it, but even rounds began breaking windows, tanks if someone in the commune started the started crashing through Mt. Carmel's walls.. .. Rather than creating escape fire as the tanks of their sworn enemies routes, the tanks that rammed Mt. Carmel were smashing through their walls, the closed them. They demolished the stair­ responsibility for the deaths of all these gun control measures. On the eve of the The mostly black Philadelphia group ways connecting the building's first and people lies squarely on the government" hearings, Clinton's Treasury secretary, opposed to killing any living being, even second floors, and also pushed debris (WV No. 575, 7 May 1993). Robert Rubin, sent a letter to the media insects-so they, too, were denounced over a trapdoor leading to a buried school warning that the inquiry could "erode in the media as a "cult." In an attack bus, whose exit opened to the fresh air support for federal firearms laws .... This outside. The bodies of six women were Gun Control: Government approved by Democratic mayor Wilson found within feet of the trapdoor, dead License to Kill issue is about law and order, and stand­ Goode and coordinated with the Repub­ of smoke inhalation; they apparently ing with our police and our federal law lican Reagan administration, the MOVE took their last breaths while racing It's no wonder that Waco and Ruby enforcement officials." house was bombed and its eleven occu­ toward the newly blocked underground Ridge have come to symbolize for many Clinton's attempt to dismiss fear of passage." pants (including five children) annihi­ the fearsome growth of a repressive federal police as limited to right-wing lated. The BATF and FBI provided plas­ In an investigative article last July, Los federal police apparatus. The Branch militia paranoia, however, just isn't tic explosives and automatic weaponry Angeles Times reporter Glenn Bunting Davidians, an integrated religious sect working. As writer Richard Lacayo not­ used against MOVE. The bombing set revealed that "some chemists and other that derived its doctrine from Seventh ed, "Federal agents in body armor and off a fire that burned down the 62-home Day Adventism, bothered nobody. They black ninja uniforms, armored cars crash­ Osage Avenue neighborhood. were demonized as a "cult" to justify the ing up hillsides, even the fabled heli­ From death row, black political priso­ government's massive assault against copters of militia nightmares-Ruby ner Mumia Abu-Jamal wrote of Waco them on charges of violating federal gun­ Ridge had all the elements of a paranoid and MOVE: "The firestorm in Waco, tax laws. Randy Weaver supposedly got fantasy, with the difference that it was Texas, which snuffed out an estimated what he deserved because he was a white­ stamped in real flesh and blood" (Time, 86 lives shares eerily reminiscent prece­ supremacist who sold two sawed-off 28 August). A Time/CNN poll taken last dents with the police bombing of MOVE shotguns to a BATF informer in a sting spring showed that 52 percent of Ameri­ people on May 13th, 1985, in Philadel­ operation. The feds went after the quirky, cans interviewed agreed that "the Feder­ phia, PA. Both scenes of carnage were racially integrated Christians in Waco al Government has become so powerful preceded by government/media demoni­ and a family of "survivalist" racists in that it poses a threat to the rights and zation campaigns that portrayed the peo­ Ruby Ridge in order to issue a warning freedoms of citizens" (Time, 8 May). ple under government siege as insane for to all: defiance of authority will be met There is a steady stream of evidence daring to resist the state. By contrast, with death. that this fear is fully justified. The taped the government (i.e., the police) is al­ The government wasn't after ex-Green remarks of fascist LAPD detective Mark ways seen as reasonable. In Philadelphia, Beret Randy Weaver because he was a Fuhrman, spewing out racist threats and where the contrasts were even sharper supporter of the fascist Aryan Nations. bragging about beating up and framing due to race, class and politics, the inten­ In fact, the leader of the FBI's elite snip­ blacks and Latinos, are the missing tional mass murder of MOVE men, wo­ er team who shot Weaver's wife in the soundtrack to the videotaped beating of men and children was justified by the head has similar politics. Lon Horiuchi, Rodney King, said Los Angeles Urban government. MOVE, they reasoned, who refused to testify before Congress League spokesman John Mack (London were 'terrorists'" (WV No. 575, 7 May about his role at Ruby Ridge by invoking Guardian, 2 September). In the World 1993). the Fifth Amendment to avoid incrimi­ Trade Center bombing trial, FBI crime At the time of the MOVE massacre, nating himself, is a Pat Buchanan sup­ lab scientist Frederic Whitehurst testified so-called leftists joined the government­ porter who says he would refuse an FBI about the feds' fabrication of evidence. orchestrated campaign labeling the assignment to defend abortion clinics on In Philadelphia, Justie.e Department in­ victims a "cult." The fervently pro-gun­ BATF death squad mobilized for 1993 the grounds that they're murder mills! vestigators are reviewing over 100,000 Waco assault. control Communist Party (CP) de­ Other high-level FBI officials deeply arrest records as cops in s~veral districts nounced MOVE as an "anti-social cult" involved with Ruby Ridge also took the have admitted to routinely lying, planting which was "a menace to the commu­ specialists who have studied the spread Fifth and refused to testify at the Senate evidence, etc. And from Giuli'ani's mobs nity" (Daily World, 24 May 1985). The of the fire" suggest that "the inferno hearings. of killers-in-blue in New York to an actual pseudo-Trotskyist Revolutionary Work­ was stoked by the massive amount of Republicalfs hoped that the Waco police death squad in New Orleans, cops ers League grotesquely called for "black tear gas pumped into the buildiIlg." The hearings could inflict additional damage daily execute "suspects" in the streets: self-defense" groups to deal with the gas itself can be lethal, especiany for on Clinton's re-election hopes as they in 1993, 455 people were killed by the "problem" of MOVE (Fighting Worker, children and the elderly. As Bunting . coincided with the hearings into his police, according to the FBI. June 1985). The Stalinoid Workers World reports, CS gas is considered so potent . shady Whitewater real estate deal. By Party (WWP) wrote that "Mayor Goode that Army manuals recommend it only counterattacking on :Waco and Ruby Reformists and State Terror was merely informed of the planned be used outdoors. '''We never con sid­ Ridge, the Republicans also saw these assault and was not a participant in the ered ... that they [the FBI] might shoot hearings as a chance to distance them­ This is not the aCtion of a few "rogue plans" (Workers World, 30 May \985)." 15 or 20 [CS ferret rounds] in one selves from associations with right-wing elements," but the workings of the well­ Today, as they belatedly join the cam­ small room, let alone 300 in one morn­ militias linked to the Oklahoma federal oiled machinery of the "justice" system. paign to save black radical journalist ing,' said Rex Applegate, an expert on building bombing. In response, Clinton Waco and Ruby Ridge show that it comes and MOVE supporter Jamal, all these riot control agents who invented the fer­ intoned, "We must not make war against straight from the top. And it's hardly the groups would like to bury their alibis ret round" (Los Angeles Times, 17 July). police," and stepped up "anti-terrorism" first time: the feds also participated in for the bipartisan 1985 assault on MOVE. Furthermore, mixed with the CS gas was hysteria in an attempt to ram through the fiery immolation of MOVE in 1985. But ten years later, these same pseudo­ methylene chloride. Dow Chemical, the leftists still trail the Democrats and maker of methylene chloride (and also readily acquiesce to government repres­ infamous during the Vietnam War for sion if it's against so-called "cults." manufacturing napalm), cautions fire­ The Spartacist League Not surprisingly, the CP quickly 2 •• fighters that the agerit "forms flammable forthrightly denounced WflIltEIS_1M 'A/I''IAI'__ a ...... jumped to attention when the White vapor-air mixtures." murderous state terror at House and press denounced the resi­ When the FBI joined the BATF at Ruby Ridge and Waco; dents of Waco as armed cultists. Workers Waco, they cut off electricity, water and while bulk of the "Ieft"l Clinlon and FBI World denounced the Waco massacre telephone lines to the Davidians while maintained shameful while hoping nobody remembered their ringing their commune with razor wire silence. Mass Murderersl fulsome support to Janet Reno's nomi­ and plenty of firepower. A top FBI offi­ nation on thy grounds that she was cial then justified the fiery conclusion a woman. Back in May 1993, the social­ of the 51-day siege, saying the Davidians democratic International Socialist Or­ "were thumbing their noses at the crim­ ganization (ISO), while running an inal justice system." Damning proof of Feds Set Up Fascist in Idaho inside article against the "government­ the government's intent to make the Durin, lhe 1m sieae. Nazi Kin­ orchestrated massacre in Waco," accept­ heads, "suJ'\'ivllisr." and tu ptOCesten Davidians pay with their lives for what lined the road i9dinllo Weaver's cabin ed the Clinton administration's labeling 10 denOItl'lCe the federal .,enCl_ From the Cali(omia KKK (0 PoaM Comiwus in ofthe Branch Davidians as a "cult." Paper the BATF and FBI viewed as unaccept­ 'he Midwest to '"The Order" scum who shot Denver talk show host Alan &era. able defiance, was the feds' deliberate - arc I netwDrt of racist. anti-Semitic is cheap for such gutless opportunists- decision to keep out firefighting and continued on page 15 6 OCTOBER 1995 7 Cuba, Castro and Che There has been an explosion of interest in Che Guevara among radical youth around the world. Che patches and T­ shirts are practically the school uniform of leftist students in Italy. In Cuba, as the Castro government dangerously im­ plements capitalist economic "reforms," there is an organized fervor for Che. School children begin their day reciting, "Pioneers of communism we shall be like Che!", portraits of Che once again grace public buildings in Havana, and volun­ tary labor is mobilized in Che's memory for the "Day of the Heroic Guerrilla"-to . commemorate the anniversary of the assassination of Che in October 1967 by U.S.-advised counterinsurgency forces in the Bolivian forest. The revival of a cult of Che Guevara is in response' to the capitalist counter­ revolution in the former Soviet Union, the collapse of Stalinist rule throughout East Europe, and the fracturing and increased irrelevance of mass reformist Stalinist parties in the West. Che Gue­ vara, a youthful left-wing rebel with a cause who died with a gun in his hand fighting Yankee imperialism, aiways had more appeal as a model to alienated and radical youth than the doddering Krem­ lin bureaucrats who preached "detente" and "peaceful coexistence" with the most rapacious imperialist power on earth. This capitulation to imperialist pressure led to the Stalinists' ultimate betrayal in presiding over the destruction of the Soviet Union. Der Spiegel In the United States, the explosion of Giant portrait of Che Guevara in Havana's Plaza of the Revolution. Castro bureaucracy revives cult of self­ the Zapatista peasant revolt in southern sacrificing guerrilla as population reels under impact of U.S. imperialist embargo, collapse of Soviet Union. Mexico last year sparked interest in guer­ rillaism. But while young militants look to the legacy of Che Guevara for inspi­ would like to resuscitate. RC's newspa­ Castro bureaucracy to encourage work­ tional effect on U.S. society in the early ration to fight the grotesque inequalities per, Liherazione, is littered with adver­ ers to endure, with the ascetic heroism 1960s, driving the government abso­ and injustices of today, the fact is that tisements appealing to youth to take of Guevara, the privations imposed on lutely crazy and radicalizing tens of the booming cult of Che is being pushed advantage of a "good deal!" For "only them since the withdrawal of Soviet eco­ thousands of youth. To white middle­ by out-and-out reformists who want to 50,000 lire" you can get a Che flag, a nomic support. Che Guevara opposed all class Americans, the "red menace" was get out in front of alienated youth the Che scarf, a Che beret and two Che material incentives ilJ the organization as close as their backyard bomb shelter, better to channel their revolutionary patches. For 100,000 lire they'll also of the Cuban economy,'yet as the Castro and along comes a "communist revolu­ impulses back into a dead end of class throw in a Cuban flag, two RC pullovers, regime pushes the ultimate "material tion" only 90 miles from Florida. But in collaboration. In Germany, Castro's two hammer-and-sickle pins, and a date incentive"-the almighty Yankee dollar the tradition of so many Latin American writings on Che are distributed by the book! Yet back in the 1970s, when there -which threatens the gains of the Cuban fighters for national liberation from the PDS (Party of Democratic Socialism), were Guevarists running around Italy, Revolution and creates gross race and yoke of Yankee domination, Castro and the successor to the Stalinist ruling party these old-line Stalinists were in the PCI class inequalities, Che's memory is cyn­ Guevara were at the time essentially lib­ of East Germany, which sold out that as it aided and abetted the capitalist state ically invoked as a symbol of revolu­ eral democrats with guns. Indeed, the deformed workers state to the imperial­ in a bloody witchhunt which jailed 4,000 tionary sacrifice to deflect anger among political program of the 26th of July ist Fourth Reich! In. Italy, the myth leftists, Red Brigades militants and oth­ the poor and the black. Movement was simply a call for the of Guevara is thrown out as a net 'ers, many of whom still languish in Known for his hot temper, Che would return of the 1940 Constitution, and Cas­ by Rifondazione Comunista (RC)-a prison. have one hell of a fit if he could see tro himself ran on the liberal bourgeois rump left over from the demise of the Today in Cuba, the memory of Che is how his legacy has become the shibbo­ Ortodoxo party ticket in 1952. Communist Party, the PCI, which it revived and manipulated by the ruling leth for counterrevolutionary frauds. At The Cuban Revolution posed many the same time, a real examination of the new questions for Marxists. How could man behind the mystique would show a social revolution take place with scant that Guevara was indeed a courageous participation of the working class and martyr-and also an exponent of the without a revolutionary workers party? kind of elitist, bureaucratic, and nation­ How did Cuba become a workers state, alist Stalinist policies his youthful fol­ bureaucratically deformed from' its in­ lowers would abhor. ception? These questions were answered by the precursor to the Spartacist The Cuban Revolution League, the Revolutionary Tendency, a Born in Argentina and educated as a left opposition in the then-Trotskyist doctor, Ernesto Che Guevara teamed up Socialist Workers Party (SWP). with Fidel Castro's 26th of July Move­ The Batista regime was hated by the ment after witnessing the CIA's over­ Cuban masses and increasingly viewed throw of the vaguely left-wing Arbenz as an embarrassment by the upper layers regime in Guatemala in 1954. As one of of Cuban society, many of whom backed Castro's closest comrades-in-arms, Che Castro and his harhudos (bearded ones) helped oust the corrupt and crumbling against the avaricious dictator and his Cuban dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, cronies who were robbing the country which fell on New Year's Day 1959. blind. So the imperialist overlords in Guevara's belief that a small band (or Washington let Batista fall, and his sup­ foco) of revolutionary intellectuals could porters fled in their yachts to Miami with ignite a "revolutionary war" by forging suitcases full of money. This panicky a rural guerrilla army from impoverished exit is captured vividly in films like January 1994: Inspired by Zapatista revolt against NAFTA "free trade" rape peasants sprang directly from his Cuban The Godfather II and Robert Redford's of MexicO, Italian auto workers carry poster of early 20th-century revolutionary experience. Havana. peasant leader Emiliano Zapata. The Cuban Revolution had a sensa- The Castro regime which took power 8 WORKERS VANGUARD ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~I~i,iri!t!~;Sj;Et;!~I~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

in January 1959 did not seek to expro­ defense of their revolution against Amer­ "socialism in one country"-a national­ santly strive to make the proletariat, priate the capitalists. Instead, Castro ican imperialism. Guerrilla insurgencies ist and counterrevolutionary accommo­ whether of a state remaining within the formed a coalition government with sprang up around Latin America, leading dation to imperialism that culminated in bounds of imperialism or of a deformed workers state. aware of its independent bourgeois forces and pledged to protect Washington to spend millions on "coun­ the destruction of the Soviet Union itself political tasks. The struggle for the their interests. At the same time, the pro­ terinsurgency" programs to prop up their in 1991. Similarly in Cuba, the role accomplishment of these tasks, which gram of land redistribution and the rev­ puppets. For a time, the leftist guerrillas played by the consolidating Castro­ requires the indispensable formation and olutionary justice meted out to Batista's received training and aid from Cuba, Stalinist bureaucracy was that of a trans­ steeling of a Leninist party, finds one of former police torturers scared Castro's culminating in the Tricontinental and mission belt for the pressures of world its greatest obstacles in the reactionary stratum balancing over society." own bourgeois supporters. Nor was this OLAS (Organization of Latin American imperialism on the workers state. In both popular with Eisenhower's CIA director Solidarity) conferences in Havana in countries, the Stalinists brought down Just as we Trotskyists fought tooth and Allen Dulles, or his Secretary of State 1966-67. formidable powers of state repression on nail against capitalist restoration in the brother, Jqlm Foster Dulles, who were During this period, Cuba assumed a Communist left oppositionists, defend- Soviet Union, so today do we fight to both major stockholders of the United Fruit Company. This was a highly unsta­ o ble situation. o~ (f) Despite overtures by Castro to :S appease the United States, Eisenhower iii' co tried to bring Cuba's radical petty-bour­ OJ :J geois democrats to heel through brute economic pressure. Washington's policy backfired. Castro responded with sweep­ ing nationalizations of the U.S.-owned sugar plantations, banks and other firms and by grabbing the lifeline offered by the Soviet Union, the other Soviet-bloc countries and China. By early 1961, the holdings of the National City Bank, United Fruit, Standard Oil, the sugar bar­ Workers hang on ons and the Mafia-as well as the Cuban to overloaded Havana bus as bourgeoisie-had been expropriated and oil shortage the Cuban capitalists were either in exile chokes or prison. transportation The working class had not contended system. for power in its own name. Still, the petty-bourgeois Castro government was unable to find a third way between labor and capital to organize society. Facing the unrelenting pressure of imperialism, the government's weakness as repre­ sentatives of an intermediate iayer, the petty bourgeoisie, forced it to choose be­ tween capitulating or creating the prop­ militant posture toward the U.S. and its ers of the revolution, while international defend the gains of the Cuban Revolu­ erty forms of another class, the working Latin American clients. Enduring an capitalism was appeased. tion from imperialist attack and inter­ class, which they however were hostile imperialist economic embargo, repeated The exceptional circumstances of the nal counterrevolution. We have always to and distrusted. gusano invasions and a string of assas­ Cuban Revolution cannot be repeated, called for a political revolution to oust The Revolutionary Tendency argued sination attempts, the Castro regime was, particularly since the collapse of the the parasitic bureaucracy and put the that the nature of the state which in 1960- as we called it, "Stalinism under the Soviet Union which served as the mili­ workers at the head of their own state. 61 issued from the Cuban Revolution gun." But particularly after the disaster tary and industrial powerhouse for Cuba With the dangerous inroads of capitalism was a deformed workers state, in which of Che's Bolivianfoco, Castro emulated and indeed every state which overthrew in Cuba today creating a society where capitalism had been overthrown, but the Stalin's policy of selling out revolutions capitalist rule. Tragically, those who fol­ those with dollars get what they want working class does not hold political internationally to jockey for diplomatic lowed the "guerrilla road" to revolution while those with pesos have nothing, power. Reflecting its newly acquired advantage. Helping mislead the Chilean elsewhere found a dead end of bour­ defense of the Cuban Revolution will social position-i.e., holding a political workers down the "peaceful" road under geois-nationalist regimes (Algeria)-or take place in struggles over vital gains monopoly at the head of a nationalized Allende's Unidad Popular capitalist coa­ worse. The mountains of Latin America like the basic right to a job. economy-the guerrillas in power em­ lition government in 1971-73, leading are literally scattered with the graves of In this country, real solidarity with the braced the ersatz "Marxism" which is to the bloody tragedy of the Pinochet young revolutionaries, including Gue­ Cuban Revolution is a fundamental duty the ideological reflection of a Stalinist coup, and counseling the Sandinistas not vara himself, as a tragic testimony to the for all opponents of U.S. imperialism. bureaucracy. Amid all the initial enthu­ to expropriate the bourgeoisie, a policy inability of guerrillaism to defeat the Yet rad-lib muddleheads lend themselves siasm for Castro and the Cuban Revo­ which culminated in the drawn-out defeat despotic dictatorships backed to the hilt to the service of capitalist counterrevo­ lution on the left, the RT alone pointed of the Nicaraguan Revolution in the by U.S. imperialism. . lution by lashing up with liberal Demo­ out that the Fidelistas were constructing 1980s, are just two examples. As we wrote in "Theses on Guerrilla crats and "progressive capitalists" (like a society that most resembled the bureau­ The Spartacist analysis of Cuba was Warfare" (Spartacist No. '-II; March- Ted Turner and Lee Iacocca?) who cratic regime in the Soviet Union after an extension of our Trotskyist under­ April 1968): ' oppose the U.S. economic embargo as decades of Stalinist degeneration. standing of how the revolutionary lead­ "Though revolutionaries should uncon­ counterproductive (and costly to their At the time, our unique political anal­ ership, organizational methods and polit­ ditionally support all progressive meas­ profits), preferring to undermine the rev­ ysis was viewed as heretical. The SWP ical aims of the Bolshevik Revolution ures taken against imperialism by a vic­ olution through greater capitalist eco­ and most of the left were swept away were destroyed by Stalin. In Russia, the torious guerrilla movement, they should nomic penetration. In contrast, we Spar­ by the revolutionary b1."avado of Castro liberating internationalist goals of the never forget that the guerrilla leadership, tacists link our opposition to the bureaucratically and uneasily ruling over and Guevara. Following the defeat of the Bolshevik Revolution under Lenin and the state, threatens to return the con­ blockade with defense of the revolution 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, leftist youth Trotsky were grotesquely perverted by quests of the revolution to imperialism. and its gains, based on collectivized were inspired by the Cubans' heroic the Stalinist bureaucracy into a lie of Therefore, revolutionaries should inces- continued on page 10 Workers Vanguard Subscription Drive

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rade, who spends his life in a city is propertied class. An oppressed landless achieved simply by an act of will. As for unwittingly bourgeois in comparison peasantry can be a key revolutionary fac­ Guevara's attitude toward Trotskyism, Cuba ... with a guerrillero." Debray sneeringly tor, and many fighters for communism after the Cuban government had banned (continued from page 9) dismissed the "working-class model" of will be drawn from middle-class back­ the Trotskyist paper Voz Proletaria in property and a planned economy. The revolution and the Trotskyist "meta­ grounds. But the petty bourgeoisie as 1961 and smashed the printing plates fundamental truth is that Cuba alone can­ physic." Traveling to Bolivia in 1967 to such cannot lead the revolution-it will for an edition of Trotsky'S book, The not stand as a workers state. The future "cover" Che's guerrillas, he was arrested follow either the bourgeoisie or a prole­ Permanent Kevolution, Guevara declared: of the Cuban Revolution hangs in the and tortured. Later, dropping his infatu­ tariat which offers a revolutionary solu­ "We consider the Trotskyist party to be balance of class struggle outside the Car­ ation with guerrillaism and, as always, tion to its precarious situation. acting against the revolution. For exam­ following the dernier cri of Parisian ple, they were taking the lire that the ibbean island, and this fact underlines Guevara's politics were a particularly revolutionary government is petty bour­ the urgent necessity for revolutionary petty-bourgeois fashion, Debray became idealist, voluntarist brand of Stalinism. geois, and were calling on the proletariat struggle here in the U.S., in Latin Amer­ an adviser to French "socialist" president This reflected his attempt to theorize and to exert pressure on the government, and ica, and elsewhere. Mitterrand in the 1980s. And continuing build "socialism" in one small, poor and even to carry out another revolution in his fascination with caudillos (strong­ besieged country. Lacking the economic which the proletariat would come to power." Marxism vs. _ men), his latest opus is an adulation of. .. resources to achieve prosperity, Guevara Guevarist Idealism -see "For Workers Political Charles de Gaulle (Charles de Gaulle, simply dismissed the workers' desires Revolution in Cuba!" While the Kremlin under Khrushchev Futurist of the Nation [Verso, 1994])! for a decent standard of living as bour­ WV No. 223, 19 January 1979 sought "peaceful coexistence" with the Like a rural Auguste Blanqui (the geois. Writing off the proletariat of The Cuban Trotskyists were arrested in U.S. imperialist carpet-bombers of Viet­ 19th-century French utopian communist the West as "bought off," and thereby 1963, even though they were active nam, Che Guevara appealed to the Latin who sought to take power through rev­ consciously rejecting a revolutionary­ defenders of the revolution in the work­ American left to open new fronts in the olutionary secret societies) Che recruited internationalist perspective, Guevara's ers militias. war against the Yankee colossus and to his small revolutionary band and "socialism" was to be built by e:l(horting We fight for the Trotskyist program wage "Two, Three, Many Vietnams!" We believed that simply through an act of the laboring masses to sacrifice and of permanent revolution. We recognize in the Spartacist League and Spartacus will his followers would prevail in top­ ignore their supposedly base material that in economically backward countries, Youth Clubs solidarize with the revolu- pling the state. In contrast, Karl Marx interests. In his essay on "Socialism and where the domestic bourgeoisie is so Man in Cuba," Che rejects "material utterly tied to and subservient to impe­ incentives" as opposed to "moral incen­ rialism, even the most basic democratic tives" an9 argues: demands such as agrarian revolution or "Pursuing the chimera of achieving genuine national independence require socialism with the aid of the blunted the conquest of power by the proletariat, weapons left to us by capitalism (the led by its Leninist party, with the support commodity as the economic cell, profit­ ability, and individual material interest of the poor peasants. This will then nec­ as levers, etc.), it is possible to come to essarily pose socialist tasks and the a blind alley .... Meanwhile, the adapted extension of the revolution to the impe­ economic base has undermined the rialist centers. development of consciousness. To build communism, a new man must be created Today the post-Soviet world is a dan­ simultaneously with the material base." gerous place of heightened imperialist Marx insisted that socialism could only rivalries threatening new wars, and a be built at the highest level of the devel­ world where U.S. imperialism's appetite opment of the productive forces, achiev­ for intervention-from Haiti to Somal ia ing equality on the basis of plenty. As to the Balkans-is unchecked. But it is Marxists, our aim in fighting for a society also a world where workers in the impe­ where those who labor rule is to eliminate rialist centers have given every sign of scarcity, not glorify it! When the means willingness to engage in sharp class of production are collectively owned and struggle, and in these struggles they are democratically organized in a planned notably inspired by revolutionary events economy on an international scale, in the Third World. As comrade Jan Nor­ harnessing the resources of the advanced den noted in a recent speech in Italy: Photo "In addition to the cult of Che, earlier Spartacists call for internationalist defense of Cuban Revolution in September industrial countries, then production will this year you saw the COBAS [factory 1991 protest against cutoff of Soviet aid to beleaguered island. serve human needs, not profits, and the committees] of Alfa Romeo carrying pic­ standard of living for working people tures of Emiliano Zapata, hailing the tionary content of this slogan insofar as studied the capitalist mode of production around the world will rise dramatically, outbreak of an Indian peasant revolt by it is a call for the defeat of the American and saw that there are two main classes not fall. Che Guevara accepted the frame­ the Zapatista National Liberation Army in the Mexican state of Chiapas. That ruling class. It speaks volumes about the in capitalist society: the bourgeoisie, work of the status quo in seeking to build was pretty strange at one level, workers degeneration of the U.S. left that they which owns all the means of production, socialism in this beleaguered island when carrying the portrait of a peasant revo­ raise the banner "No More Vietnams!" and the proletarians who sell their labor the urgent task was to extend socialist lutionary, but it was eminently interna­ When raised in the Central America anti­ power to the capitalists. Marx explained revolution not only throughout Latin tionalist, and showed a desire for revolu­ that capitalism has created its own grave­ tionary struggle at home. intervention movement in the 1980s this America but centrally to the imperialist "And if you want an example of how we slogan expressed the social-patriotic digger by creating the proletariat, the countries, first and foremost Cuba's nem­ Spartacists of the International Commu­ aversion to any more losing wars for U.S. only class capable of destroying capital­ esis, the United States. By r~jecting the nist League deal with such events, it is imperialism. It reflected an even more ism and setting up an egalitarian society revolutionary capacity of the industrial captured in this: When the Zapatista repulsive alignment of the left with their where the wealth created by its labor is proletariat in the imperialist countries, revolt broke out in Mexico, whereas virtually the entire left declared, 'We own bourgeoisie during the racist U.S.­ used for the benefit of all mankind. the Castro/Guevara leadership helped to are all Zapatistas,' our comrades of the led slaughter of Iraq in the '90s. It's cer­ Because of its vast numbers, its location isolate the Cuban Revolution. Grupo Espartaquista de Mexico declared tainly no accident that Richard. Nixon in the urban centers of finance and man­ Che's economic plans brought the that we 'saluted the Zapatista rebels with titled a volume of his memoirs No More ufacture, and its strategic position with Cuban economy to the brink of disaster. the red flag of workers revolution.' The its hands on the means of production key is to forge a Leninist-Trotskyist Vietnams! As we wrote in "'Radical Egalitarian' party, which is a painstaking task, going Despite the revolutionary spirit of in the factories, where the common Stalinism: A Post Mortem" (Spartacist through a whole process like the Bol­ Guevara's battle cry against imperialism, experience of the workers creates soli­ No. 25, Summer 1978): sheviks did. That is what we are com­ his call for a peasant-based guerrilla war darity and organization, the proletariat "Genuine economic egalitarianism is not mitted to doing, as part of a genuinely on many fronts was a flat rejection of uniquely has the social power and class possible as long as political power is mo­ democratic-centralist international, and we ask you to join us in this task.". Marxism, Leninism and the proletarian interest to overthrow capitalism. nopolized by a Stalinist ruling oligarchy. struggle for power. Moreover, while To carry out the historical necessity The genuinely egalitarian use of moral incentives requires a government with Guevara is reported by those who knew of overthrowing capitalism requires the the moral authority derived from the him to have been a sincere and self­ intervention of a revolutionary workers democratic participation of the working sacrificing egalitarian, his political pro­ party to bring the ideas of scientific masses expressed through soviet institu­ gram was fundamentally elitist in that socialism into the working class. Lenin tions. Wage labor and the commodity he rejected outright the need for the refined that conception of the revolution­ nature of consumer goods will be over­ come through the appropriation of the working people to express their voice ary party and created a new type of party, economic wealth of the advanced capi­ and power through their own class a party of professional revolutionists, talist world-the fruit of the transitional organs, such as workers councils (sovi­ which recruits to its ranks the most class­ period inaugurated by the victory of the $1.50 (37 pages) ets). Instead, the masses were supposed conscious workers and those intellectu­ international proletarian revolution." to submit to the leadership of a self­ als willing to break from their middle­ Against the reformist Communist Selected documents appointed band of petty-bourgeois radi­ class or even bourgeois backgrounds. parties who argued that Latin America from the 1960s by the cal intellectuals become guerrilleros To the extent that Che Guevara looked was not ready for revolution, Guevara Revolutionary Tendency of who took to the hills. to any layer for organized support, he simply argued that socialism was an act the Socialist Workers The anti-working-class prejudices of looked to the peasants, who are part of of will. He spoke of "skipping stages" Party and the early the guerrilla road were rendered explicit what Marx called the petty bourgeoisie­ and for this was even accused of "Trot­ Spartacist League which by Che's literary disciple, Regis Debray, literally small bourgeois--consisting of skyism." This is because Trotskyists also formed the core of our whose 1967 book, Revolution in the Rev­ professionals, teachers, small business­ believe that the fight in Latin America Marxist understanding of olution? became something of a bible men, intellectuals and the scattered rural and throughout the so-called Third W orId the Cuban deformed for New Left "Third World" enthusiasts. peasantry. This layer is atomized and of countries which have been forcibly workers state. A young French university lecturer who lacks the cohesion, social power and clear held in a state of backwardness by apparently never noticed the workers class interest of the two fundamental imperialism is for socialist revolution. Make checks payable/mail to: who were to jolt imperialism with the classes. In the normal functioning of the However, we do not think that the level Spartacist Publishing Co. proletarian revolt in Paris in May 1968, market, peasants are competitive and of development of productive forces is Box 1377 GPO, New York:NY 10116 Debray wrote: "any man, even a com- their fundamental aspiration is to be a irrelevant, or- that socialism can be 10 WORKERS VANGUARD pendent Palestinian national entity" Israel-PLO encompassing 90 percent of the West Bank, the "interim" agreement ceding 30 He Exposed Israel's Nuclear Arsenal percent of the area to nominal Palestin­ Pact ... ian control is likely to be pretty much (continued from page 16) the final outcome of the "peace" charade. According to the Jerusalem Post, "Jew­ Free Mordechai Vanunu! perpetrated under the watchful gaze of ish settlers will not be evacuated even Israeli troops. Armed settlers and soldiers was sentenced to 18 years of a living under an agreement on the final status In a letter to his supporters last have continued to rampage through the month, Mordechai Vanunu announced death. For more than 3,000 days he of the territories" and "the settlements town while the Palestinian population is that he would stage a hunger strike has been denied any physical human will be organized into blocs of territory" subjected to virtual house arrest through September 30 on the ninth anniver­ contact. In July, a Beersheva court which will be annexed to Israel. one curfew after another. Last month, sary of his kidnapping by the Israeli heard his petition for an amelioration But even where it exists, the PLO settlers invaded a Palestinian girls high government. Ever since his arrest, of his prison conditions but refused administration will simply be a fig leaf school which dared fly the PLO flag from Vanunu has been subjected to solitary to overturn the solitary confil1ement. for Israeli domination, as it is now in its roof; brutally beating students and ran­ confinement in a tiny, windowless Aside from weekly visits by family the Gaza Strip and Jericho. Israel deter­ sacking the building. prison cell. His "crime": exposing to members, who Vanunu is not even mines who will vote in Palestinian elec­ Ever since the signing of the 1993 the world the vast scope of Israel's allowed to touch, the only people who tions, what size the Palestinian police accord, Zionist ultrarightists have threat­ nuclear arsenal. Based on his experi­ can speak to him are the prison war­ force will be, what arms it can carry, etc. ened civil war against even the most min­ ence as a technician at the top-secret den and one guard. Meanwhile, doz­ As we warned two years ago, the PLO imal Israeli withdrawal from the West Dimona nuclear facility, Vanunu re­ ens of other Israelis are held in secret has become a surrogate police force for Bank. The powerful Union of Rabbis, vealed that the war-crazed Zionist in Zionist dungeons on charges of the Zionist occupiers, imprisoning, tor­ echoed by a thousand reserve officers, madmen had upwards of 200 nuclear espionage, in addition to the thou­ turing and kiIling militant Palestinian openly calls for soldiers to disobey orders warheads, enough to vaporize every sands of Palestinians who are regu­ youth. Arab city in the Near East and to larly imprisoned and tortured. The The "democratic" Israeli state is one strike at what was then the Soviet international working class and all of the few countries in the world which Union. the oppressed must raise an outcry openly mandates torture for political For his courageous act on behalf demanding: Free Mordechai Vanunu prisoners. The Rabin regime recently of all humanity, Mordechai Vanunu and all victims of Zionist repression! overturned a ruling by its own attorney general outlawing the use during inter­ '"­« rogation of "violent shaking," which can leave victims brain-damaged and some­ times dead after a few minutes. And as recent revelations about the mass execu­ Heroic Israeli tions of Egyptian POWs demonstrate, technician the Zionists themselves learned much Mordechai from the practices of Hitler's Nazis. Vanunu, After retired general Arieh Biroh con­ kidnapped in 1986 by Mossad fessed last month to the coldblooded secret police murder of 49 POW s during the 1956 war, after revealing numerous other accounts have come out Israel's arsenal of unarmed prisoners being forced to dig of nuclear mass graves in the desert before they weapons. were gunned down by their Israeli cap­ tors. Military historian Arieh Yitzhaki says at least a thousand more POWs were kiIled in the 1967 war. Nor were the victims only Egyptian soldiers. An eyewitness account of one bourgeoisie. Even after the "Gaza­ aged by imperialist economic sanctions incident of Israeli mass murder of Pal­ Jericho" accord had clearly shown itself instigated by the U.S., supposedly to estinian civilians in 1956 brings to mind to be a slavemaster's diktat, even after "punish" Qaddafi for the mysterious how the Nazi SS death squads (Einsatz­ the bloody Hebron massacre, the RCL bombing of a Pan Am flight over gruppen) slaughtered Soviet Jews in continued to whine to "put pressure on Lockerbie, Scotland in December 1988. World War II: "Soldiers using loudspeak­ the government" to demand "the exact Washington has long had the Libyan ers ordered us to leave our homes. Every­ implementation of the agreements" (The strongman in its gun sights: in 1986, U.S. • Palestinian cities body went out, and the men and women Other Front, 5 September 1994) . jets rained down terror on Tripoli in an o Major Israeli settlements were separated. We were about twenty Other leftists, like the Healyites in the attempt to assassinate Qaddafi. 1 Israeli military posts men, and the army took us to a place 1970s and '80s and more recently the From the bloody 1970 "Black Septem­ Washington Post map to the side and shot at us .... I pretended French Gauche Revolutionnaire/JCR ber" massacre perpetrated by Jordan's "Peace" pact creates Palestinian to be dead, and thus saved my life." (associated with the British Militant King Hussein, to the expUlsions of hun­ ghetto in West Bank, ceding six group), have hailed Libyan strongman dreds of thousands of Palestinians by towns and several hundred villages The Israeli regime, including self-styled to PLO "control," surrounded by "left-wingers" like Meretz spokesman Muammar Qaddafi as the embodiment Kuwait and Saudi Arabia following the Israeli army and Zionist settlements. Shulamit Aloni, does not even make a of a so-called "Arab Revolution." (The U.S.-led imperialist rape of Iraq in 1991, Israel out of the Occupied Territories! pretense of bringing its murderers to trial. GR/JCR has even taken to reprinting to the "radical" Qaddafi today, the Arab To bring down the blood-drenched Qaddafi's speeches.) Qaddafi recently bourgeoisies have shown themselves to for the removal of even a single settler Zionist regime will take nothing short proclaimed his opposition to the Israel­ be no less the enemies of the Palestinian from the Occupied Territories. Following of workers revolution. The PLO's current PLO accords ... by expelling hundreds, people than the Zionist oppressors. the announcement of the new agreement, role as cops for the Zionist occupation and possibly thousands, of the country's The PLO's capitulation has served more than a thousand settlers, joined by forces, after years of futile reliance on 30,000 Palestinian immigrants. Busloads only to push militant Palestinians into leaders of the right-wing Likud.opposi­ the Arab bourgeoisies and looking to Of Palestinians have been dumped in the the arms of the fundamentalist reaction­ tion, stormed through Hebron denounc­ Israel's imperialist patrons, is the sharp­ desert near the Egyptian border in order, aries of Hamas, who would treat leftists, ing Prime Minister' Yitzhak Rabin for' est illustration of the dead end of petty­ claims Qaddafi, to expose Israel's refusal women and Jews no differently than "crimes against the Jewish people." bourgeois nationalism, and of the bank­ to let them in and show "that this people the Israeli rulers treat Palestinians. What But despite his occasional denun­ ruptcy of the numerolls "revolutionaries" is still without a homeland." is needed are Trotskyist parties to lead ciations of the ultrarightist ·settlers for who enthused over Arafat and his more Libya has also begun rounding up and the working class-Hebrew-speaking their attacks on his government, Rabin "radical" nationalist rivals. Chief among deporting thousands of Egyptians and and Arab alike-at the head of all the and his thoroughly capitalist "Labor" the latter is the Israeli Revolutionary Sudanese who have lived and worked oppressed, in a struggle to sweep away Party do not oppose the settlements. Communist League, part of the late there for decades, claiming that they are all the murderous capitalist regimes in Labor initiated the settlement policy, Ernest Mandel's United Secretariat, taking jobs from Libyan workers while the region and create a socialist federa­ and the expansion of these armed anti­ which tailed Palestinian nationalism unemployment rages at 30 percent. The tion of the Near East in which all peoples Palestinian fortresses throughout the right into the hip pocket of the Israeli Libyan economy has indeed been rav- will have national and social justice. _ West Bank has been an integral part of Labor policy. Even following a public «'"­ outcry against the Hebron settlers after the February 1994 mass murder, Rabin­ and his supposedly "dovish" foreign minister Shimon Peres-refused to shut down the fascist enclave there so as not Israeli troops to set a "negative precedent." The Labor massacred government has committed a whopping hundreds of $200-250 million for each of the next captured six years to settlement development. Egyptian While nominally disowning right­ soldiers and wing talk of a "Greater Israel," Rabin Palestinian blithely proclaims, "We want Jerusalem, civilians in we want the Jordan River to be our secu­ 1956 war. rity border, and we want other areas here and there" (Jerusalem Post, 26 August). What the "here and there" amounts to is that, for all Arafat's cynical eyewash that the PLO is on the road to "an inde-- 6 OCTOBER 1995 11 Wall Street rallies as joblessness rises Other numbers show ..,' IE S 4""

STOCKS Dow Jones Industrial Average II I I I I I I I I I I I I I I E b4::~~ 4400 4200 4000 3800 11 3600 MAMJ J ASONDJFMAMJ JAS HI96

Gibson/AP Wall Street Journal graph Clinton, Gingrich say: Let 'em eat pink slips. Corporate "downsizing," murderous budget cuts send stocks soaring.

ency cycle." What sane person would members. The destruction of welfare and lic health or even simple economics, choose welfare over a decent-paying other social programs is part of a drive such policies are not rational. Once it Welfare ... job? The sharp rise in homelessness, to force down the wages of those workers spreads, TB does not discriminate be­ (continued from page 1) poverty and reliance on welfare-among who still have a job. Even as they throw tween rich and poor. Nor is it econom­ to organize and broaden such defensive whites as well as blacks-over the past millions off welfare, the rulers slash away ically rational to spend more on impris­ struggles into a movement capable of couple of decades has been fueled by a at public-sector jobs, the only part of the oning a ghetto youth than it would cost overthrowing the capitalist system. The massive destruction of unionized jobs. economy which has experienced a rise to put him through Harvard, or on speed­ indispensable condition for this is a The devastation of basic industries like in union membership in recent years. ing up the assembly line of death at a multiracial revolutionary workers party. steel and auto in the Midwest was Meanwhile, welfare recipients are being cost of a million dollars or more per exe­ accompanied by the wholesale transfer drafted to do work that was once done cution. But capitalism is not a rational Genocide U.S.A. of factories and investment to the low- by unionized municipal workers. system. Intensifying police-state repres­ sion is the corollary to capitalist looting The assault on welfare is facilitated and a program of starvation. by a racist ideological offensive, exem­ Because "modern" American capital­ plified by the infamous tract, The Bell ism cannot employ the millions of job­ Curve, with its sinister claim that blacks less in a way that produces adequate are genetically inferior, and now The End profits, in the view of this country's rul­ of Racism by Dinesh D'Souza, which ers, whole layers of the minority poor argues that slavery was not racist! In are a surplus population. As we wrote September, a government-funQed confer­ in 1988 when Washington first moved ence discussed a supposed genetic con­ toward welfare "reform": nection between crime and race. New "Genocide is what this new 'workfare' is York University sociologist Dorothy all about! Millions of single mothers on Nelkin remarked, "Genetic explanations welfare who refuse to take a job-any of crime provide convenient excuses for job, anywhere, at any starvation wage­ those seeking to dismantle the welfare will be cut off without a cent, literally state" (New York Times, 28 September). left to starve .... The children will either be left to wander the mean streets alone Tellingly, the assault on welfare is car­ or be ripped away from their mothers ried out under the same "states' rights" through 'protective payments' to unspec­ banner raised by diehard racist segrega­ ified 'third parties.' This is not welfare tionists in the 1950s and '60s. State gov­ reform, it's a plan to turn the ghettos into vast cemeteries-because there are no ernments will now determine who-if Farley/""Newsday Lincoln Hospital, the Bronx. With diseases like tuberculosis and asthma jobs to get." anybody-gets benefits and are already rampant in the inner cities, the poor wait for care in teeming public -"Genocide U.S.A.," WV No. engaged in a frenzied competition to cut hospitals-and now it's going to get worse. 463, 21 October 1988 payments and eligibility. Reeking with This indictment is now accepted even racist and sexist reaction and hypocrisy, wage, open shop South and to neocolo­ Take New York City, for example. by liberal bourgeois commentators. the budget-ax murderers talk.of "family nial havens of superexploitation in Mex­ Since the racist Giuliani administration UCLA law professor Joel Handler re­ values," "illegitimacy" and "child abuse" ico and other Third World countries. came to office just two years ago, some marks: "You can deny welfare for child­ to justify killing children and breaking The same labor tops who have presided 17,000 city jobs have been eliminated. less adults, the homeless, people like up families. Wisconsin, for example, over this massive slaughter of jobs, while Under a "workfare" program instituted that. They'll drift around and die slowly threatens to cut off any woman who trying to shift the blame with chauvinist last January-now being extended to under the bridges, out of sight." But, refuses to leave her home for a slave­ poison against "foreign workers," refuse the 300,000 single motherson AFDC- he adds, "you have no choice but to labor job once her child is three months to lift a finger on behalf of the ghetto 23,000 welfare recipients are pow being do something about the children." The old. Meanwhile, there is a full-scale masses at home. Yet the fates of the union forced to work at a fraction of normal ruling class is hardly so squeamish. assault on even the limited right to abor­ movement and the minority poor are wages at clerical and maintenance jobs Even the more "benign" Senate version tion, from the halls of Congress to "right inextricably intertwined. A labor move­ in sanitation garages and schools, and of "welfare reform" will deny three to life" terrorist attacks on the ~linics. ment that fails to fight for all the cleaning parks and office buildings. At With racist arrogance, the opponents oppressed, through a struggle for power, the same time, 10,000 City University of welfare decry laziness as the root ,is incapable of defending even the im­ students are threatened with a loss of CORRECTIONS cause of the supposed "welfare depend- mediate economic interests of its own financial aid because the new "workfare" In the introduction to the "Quote requirements mean they will have to give of the Week" in WV No. 629 (22 up their full-time student status. September) we wrote that it was 40 the head by racist cops and summarily The Wall Street financiers and their rather than 30 years since the infa­ Hardball ... fired by the TA, the Local 100 brass Republicrat politicians don't care mous 1965 massacre in Indonesia. sabotaged his defense by never mobi­ whether minority youth get an education In the article "Independence for (continued from page 5) lizing the membership to protest the because there are no jobs waiting for Quebec," a photo caption incor­ miles of track are grossly inadequate. frame-up charges against him. The TWU them anyway. Head Start, which has rectly identified Lucien Bouchard as Known as a meticulous train operator, must oppose all acts of racist injustice, demonstrably raised the educational lev­ a Parti Quebecois leader. He is the Gibson was killed as the rising sun glared whether against transit workers or the els of young children from poor families, leader of the Bloc Quebecois in the off the bridge where signals were riding pUblic. Transit workers can rally is being slashed. Not because of high federal parliament. installed in 1918! Of course, the TA riders to their side by demanding free cost or failure: it's one of the most suc­ The article "Free Geronimo blamed the operator as they have in each mass transit-rip out the turnstiles! cessful-and cheapest-social programs Now!" stated that a motion is being of eight crashes and derailments since To lay the groundwork for a counter­ instituted in the 1960s. It's going filed for rehearing an appeal by 1990. The bosses' latest response is to attack against the bosses, transit workers because the kids it serves are not Geronimo ji Jaga (Pratt) in his law­ use radar guns on trains (most of which from the TA, Metro-North and, LlRR intended to live. Ditto for the 20 percent suit against persistent prison ha­ don't have speedometers) and disci­ must bind together in action against cut in Medicaid, the primary means of rassment. The motion is actually for pline "speeders." Horribly overworked their common enemy. The MTA's threat­ health care for one in four children in a rehearing by the 9th Circuit Court motormen are told to chew gum, roll ened layoffs must be met with more than the U.S., with even deeper cuts in federal of Appeals of its decision reversing down the window, and not to work seven just empty words. A mass meeting to payments to hospitals serving the poor. the order by U.S. District Judge days in a row! The fact is, the TA mur­ authorize a strike would be a good start, Diseases of poverty like tuberculosis, Stanley Weigel in favor of Geron­ dered Layton Gibson! but the existing labor tops and wannabe once virtually eradicated, have returned imo, which had directed that he be Any union leadership worth its salt bureaucrats must be swept aside. The with a fury. The South Bronx is in the given a single cell. would have shut down the system over problem is not just a vicious Congress grip of an asthma epidemic! Ever­ WV No. 627 (25 August) incor­ these inCidents, but the TWU bigwigs or governor or mayor, but the whole cap­ growing numbers of people are without rectly reported the demonstration work overtime to isolate and diffuse the italist system and both parties which any form of health insurance, while pro­ demanding freedom for Mumia workers' anger over these and other perpetuate it. To win, we need a class­ grams to provide free vaccinations which Abu-Jamal in Volta Redonda, Brazil crimes. Last year, while some divisions struggle leadership in the unions and a would save children in poor families took place on August 10. The correct passed motions to defend James Frazier, ~ workers party fighting for a workers from death or crippling disabilities are date is August 9. the black track worker who was shot in government. _ eliminated. From the standpoint of pub- 12 WORKERS VANGUARD million children any means of survival. on, bemoan the fact that Clinton's Dem­ Jesse Jackson is today regarded as the workhouses or poorhouses when they lost It is notable that the author of the 1988 ocrats have ceased being the party of foremost spokesman for old-fashioned their jobs or fell into debt. For decades, legislation, New York Senator Daniel Roosevelt's New Deal and LBI's "Great "welfare state" liberalism. Yet more than Keynesian liberals pointed to the sup­ Moynihan, was one of the few Demo­ Society." The Democratic Party was no any other black leader, Jackson helped posed disappearance of such conditions crats to oppose the Dole/Clinton wel­ less capitalist, racist and anti-working­ create the political climate which allows as evidence that Marxism and its program fare bill, which tears away even the fig class in the '30s and '60s than it is the Republican right to dominate the of communist revolution were "out­ leaf of job placement. Moynihan's wel­ today. The social welfare programs Washington scene. During the 1970s, moded." But the immiseration of the fare policy of "malign neglect," which enacted in those eras were not evidence Jackson's Operation Push in Chicago, working class analyzed by Marx and Eng­ he devised under the Nixon administra­ of some "humanitarian" capitalism, but which was funded by major corporations els, always present in the neocolonial tion, hasn't changed over the years; it's rather sops aimed at derailing and sup­ like Coca-Cola, pushed the fraud of countries, is today palpably evident just a measure of how rapidly and open­ pressing-along with a hefty dose of "black capitalism" and lectured impov­ throughout America, with its slave-labor ly this genocidal drive has escalated. repression-massive labor and black erished ghetto youth to "pull yourself up sweatshops from Southern California to Moynihan's latest proposal---enthusias­ struggles which gave rise to a signifi­ by the bootstraps." New York's Chinatown-except there are tically embraced by Republican lead­ cant left. As we noted following the Sharing responsibility with the black no poorhouses or workhouses, only ers-is to cut Social Security benefits 1994 Republican Congressional victory, Democrats for the ascendancy of racist bridges under which the poor and home­ by cheating on the annual cost-of-living the popular-frontist New Deal coalition reaction is the labor bureaucracy. The less can die. This is no aberration, but the adjustment. The assault on welfare and "represented a betrayal by the CIO union hidebound AFL-CIO leadership, ex­ true face of raw capitalist exploitation. other "poverty" programs is the thin tops and the Stalinist Communist Party, pressing the outlook of the job-trusting Accepting the immutability of capital­ end of the wedge for going after the who beheaded the possibility of an in­ white labor aristocracy, opposed militant ism, New York Times (20 September) vastly more expensive-and broad­ dependent workers party and corralled black struggle while backing the U.S. journalist David Rosenbaum writes, based-Social Security pensions and "The problem is that no one really knows Medicare benefits for the elderly. ~ how to lift people out of poverty once -n Our TV screens are now filled with ::y and for all." Wrong! We communists big-business ads featuring disgusting o know how. While defending every exist­ yuppies clamoring to "balance the bud­ ing social program against capitalist get" over the bodies of the elderly. But attack, the working class must fight to far from being on the verge of bank­ replace the demeaning and dehumaniz­ ruptcy, the Social Security trust fund has ing capitalist welfare system with a always run a large surplus, which for struggle for jobs for all under a socialist decades has been looted by the Treasury society. What Leon Trotsky wrote in the to pay for the Pentagon's missiles and 1938 Transitional Program for proletar­ aircraft carriers, interest on the national September 18: ian revolution, shortly after the advent debt and the like. Social Security is pro­ Chicago of the New Deal, is even more apt today: demonstration jected to be solvent for the next 35 years "The right to employment is the only seri­ at present levels of payroll taxes, bene­ expresses outrage at cop's killing of ous right left to the worker in a society based upon exploitation. This right today fits and eligibility unless the Treasury homeless man, reneges on the trust fund's long-term is being shorn from him at every step. Joseph Gould. Against unemployment, 'structural' as bonds, as some now propose doing. The well as 'conjunctural,' the time is ripe to drive to eliminate or cut Social Security advance, along with the slogan of public and Medicare is a savage attack on all works, the slogan of a sliding scale of working people-including the young­ working hours. Trade unions and other mass organizations should bind the who would be forced to shoulder the cost workers and the unemployed together in of providing for their elderly relatives. the solidarity of mutual responsibility .... Corporate CEOs want to reduce costly "The question is one of guarding the pro­ Social Security payroll taxes and also the working class behind the phony rulers' dirty imperialist war in Vietnam. letariat from decay, demoralization, and figure that a reduction in employees' 'friends of labor' Democrats" (WV No. The net result was the weakening and ruin. The question is one of life or death of the only creative and progressive taxes will make it easier to hold down 611, 25 November 1994). political isolation of the trade-union class, and by that token of the future of or cut wages. Over and above concerns The Social Security Act (which in­ movement. mankind. If capitalism is incapable of about profitability, there is the question cluded Aid to Dependent Children) was Following the capitalist counterrevo­ satisfying the demands inevitably arising of strengthening the role of American passed in 1935, a year after citywide gen­ lution in East Europe and the Soviet from the calamities generated by itself, finance capital in the world economy. eral strikes led by self-declared reds Union, America's rulers believe they can then let it perish." During the Cold War, a large part of rocked San Francisco, Minneapolis and now do anything to the workers, the The capitalist would-be masters of the this country's productive wealth, espe­ Toledo. Even then, Social Security and poor, the elderly, the black and Hispanic universe delude themselves into thinking cially its scientific and technological the other New Deal reforms effectively communities without the slightest dan­ their rule is eternal. There are going to resources, was expended by the Penta­ excluded blacks and the various "relief' ger of serious social unrest, not to speak be in the future, as in the past, big social gon. Under Reagan, an accelerated mil­ programs did not cover women. Until of red revolution. Typical is the gloat­ struggles in this country. The key ques­ itary buildup combined with tax cuts for the 1960s, when the Northern ghettos ing response of one investment broker tion is, who will lead these struggles the rich produced a massive increase in exploded in anger, well under a million to AT&T's plans to cut its workforce and where will they lead. What is needed the government budget deficit as the families were eligible for any form of through a corporate reorganization: "In­ is a multiracial workers party capable U.S. went from being the world's biggest welfare. Lyndon Johnson's "Great Soci­ vestors today like the fact that 20,000 of leading all of the exploited and creditor nation to being the world's big­ ety" programs-which included Medi­ people are going to lose their jobs" (Wall oppressed against the capitalist bosses gest debtor nation. So Wall Street wants caid and Medicare-were designed to Street Journal, 28 September). and their state. In a small but significant to take money from old people in order pacify the rebellious ghettos, mainly by Writing in the mid-19th century, Karl way, the Spartacist League has pointed to reduce its debts to Japanese and Ger­ co-opting a layer of young black activists. Marx and Friedrich Engels described the the way to uniting organized labor and man bankers. The "poverty" programs of the 1960s are horrendous conditions of-the English the ghetto poor in struggle, from stop­ now being scrapped not because they working class during the rise of industrial ping the Klan and Nazis from marching For a Revolutionary have failed, as right-wingers contend and capitalism: whole families, including in major cities to defending former Black Workers Party! many liberals agree, but because they young children, forced to work 12 or 15 Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal. For a work­ The liberals and labor bureaucrats, succeeded in their real purpose: the sup­ hours a day in disease-ridden mills to ers party to fight for international social­ echoed by their fake-socialist Hangers- pression of black radicalism. eke out a living; consigned to orphanages, ist revolution! _

witnesses and the FBI's COINTELPRO terror campaign against Mumia and the Black Panther Party. Order bundles 1!'4' .-drli_n __ .:on.. niU •••• Join the Campaign! of the special campaign issue of Class-Struggle Defense .~f .r- Ju'~ 1995 PAMPHLET Notes and The Frame-Up of Mumia Abu-Jamal, 25 copies of The international campaign of protest temporarily either publication for $10. For only $1, buy the PDC's new .1982Tr,-,aMO,It.,."fJ.,.. stayed the executioner's hand, but as expected, the "pros­ button: "Free Mumia Abu-Jamal! Abolish the Racist Death .... ' ..... " ~ .. ".~'". --- ecutor in robes," Judge Sabo, ruled on September 15 Penalty!" Get your local bookstore to stock Jamal's power­ against Mumia's appeal in a flagrant disregard of the mas­ ful Live from Death Row. Contact the poe for speakers, to sive evidence presented of a police and prosecution frame­ arrange showings of the PDC's video, From Death Row, up. Mumia is now closer to a legal lynching. As the next This is Mumia Abu-Jamal. The video can be purchased for stage of legal appeals goes forward, we must redouble $30 from the PDC at the address below. Contributions of our efforts for his freedom. As Mumia said himself in "The $5 or more to the PDC include a year's subscription to Stay," Judge Sabo's earlier (August 7) ruling for a stay Class-Struggle Defense Notes. was an attempt "to blunt the edge off of a growing and mili­ Send protests to: Governor Tom Ridge, Main tant anti-death penalty movement.. .. Let us utilize this pre­ 3 Capitol Building, Room 225, Harrisburg, PA 17120. cious time to build a stronger and broader movement, to Ridge changes his phone and fax number daily to try and not 'stay' one execution, but to halt them all!" stay ahead of the growing movement for Jamal! As we go to press, the numbers are: phone (717) 789-2500; Organize protest! Pass motions demanding Jamal's fax (717) 783-3369. 1 freedom in your unions, campus, community and church organizations. Get your union or organization to Funds are urgently needed! To get a new trial and make a contribution and join rallies and protests for 4 overturn the death sentence could cost over a Jamal. Publicize Jamal's case in your union or organiza­ million dollars. Make a contribution today to the Bill of tion's newsletter. Get on the Partisan Defense Committee Rights Foundation (earmarked "Mumia Abu-Jamal Legal phone tree to organize in your area. Defense") and mail it to: Committee to Save Mumia Abu-Jamal, 163 Amsterdam Ave., No. 115, New York, NY Spread the word! The current issue of the PDC's 10023-5001. 2 Class-Struggle Defense Notes is devoted to the struggle to save Mumia Abu-Jamal. And the new PDC Write to Jamal to express your solidarity: Spread the word: order bundles pamphlet, The Frame-Up of Mumia Abu-Jamal, exposes 5 Mumia Abu-Jamal, AM8335, SCI Greene, 1040 E. in detail the prosecution's case of lies, the coercion of Roy Furman Highway, Waynesburg, PA 15370-8090. of the ,poe pamphlet!

For more information: Partisan Defense Committee, P.O. Box 99, Canal Street Station, New York, NY 10013 - (212) 406-4252

6 OCTOBER 1995 13 Left: Ligue Trotskyste de France at protest against French nuclear testing links call for independence for the ~~\..~~~,~~~ ~~\..~~,~ of North Africans in France against racist state terror. Right: Tahitian youth and workers erupt against colonial subjugation.

fourth-largest military in the world. Under a thin veil of anti-nuclear way for Suharto's "New Order," jackal Joint Objections in the European Union verbiage, "far-left" social-democratic Australian imperialism has played the (EU) to French tests have been care­ hangers-on like the Democratic Socialist role of counterrevolutionary gendarme fully calibrated to concerns about "safe­ Party and the International Socialist in the region. As in Indonesia before the Statement ... ty" and "access to technical information." Organisation have offered themselves up coup in 1965 and more recently with (continued from page 16) The most muted opposition has come as the "best builders" of this campaign, Australian investment in Vietnam, Aus­ from Britain and Germany. Britain clings urging the government to do more. In tralian front meri often serve where U.S. junior partner Prime Minister Paul Keat" to its own nuclear weaponry, dependent New Zealand, the ISO explicitly calls imperialism cannot openly go. ing, and French and Australian "left" on American technological input, to sus­ for a frigite to be sent to Mururoa. The chauvinists alike. As proletarian interna­ tain its claim to be a "great" power, and "leftists" and pacifists who line up with French Imperialism's tionalists, we have opposed the nation­ has a 1992 agreement with France for their own ruling class against its impe­ Colonialist Nuclear Arrogance alist slaughter in the former Yugoslavia nuclear collaboration. German imperial­ rialist rivals are not building a new For nearly three decades, the force de on all sides while denouncing all impe­ ism, the dominant power in Europe, "peace movement" but are participating frappe warheads had targeted major cities rialist intervention. Now the character greeted with "interest" Chirac's proposal in a drive toward bloody new imperialist in the USSR, threatening tens of millions of the war has changed as the weight to put the French strategic nuclear forces wars! The Spartacist League/Australia, of Soviet citizens with the horror of of Western imperialism is increasingly at the disposal of the EU. German impe­ which fights for a workers republic in nuclear annihilation. From de Gaulle to pressed against the Bosnian Serbs. In the rialism, which at most is "a screwdriver's Australia, part of a socialist Asia, has Mitterrand, French imperialism flaunt­ face of NATO's terror bombing, we call turn away" from having its own nuclear denounced this nationalist union sacree ed its arsenal of nuclear terrorism to for unconditional military defence of the weapons, is mindful of widespread fears as a class betrayal of the interests of the posture as a grande puissance in the Bosnian Serbs against U.S./NATO impe­ of German rearmament among the workers and oppressed in Australia and anti-Soviet alliance. While the French rialism and its clients of the Muslim­ European targets of past German milita­ internationally, leading ultimately to social-chauvinist left, from the Social Croatian alliance, while fighting for rism-the French arsenal provides an social-patriotic unity in the bourgeoisie's Democracy to the Stalinist PCF, rallied workers revolution to overthrow all the option for them to annex a nuclear war to defend their markets and spheres to the defence of this anti-Soviet arsenal, nationalist butchers and forge a Socialist capacity. of influence in another interimperialist the Ligue Trotskyste de France (L TF), Federation of the Balkans. war-in the case of the Australian bour­ section of the International Communist The counterrevolutionary destruction Australian Imperialist geoisie, in the position of subordinate League, opposed the force de frappe and of the Soviet degenerated workers state Jingoism and Hypocrisy ally of the considerably more powerful imperialist militarism as part and par­ has reopened the Pandora's box of in­ Jackal Australian imperialism, which and dangerous U.S. imperialist power. cel of our revolution::try defence of the terimperialist rivalries. The furor over would be happy to see the back of French The Australian and New Zealand gov­ Soviet Union. It was the existence of the the French tests not only exposes the colonial power in the South Pacific to ernments have fallen over themselves to Soviet nuclear arsenal which stymied vile hypocrisy of imperialist talk about better play its own role of local coun­ distinguish their protests about the tests U.S. imperialist moves to use its atomic "peace" and "non-proliferation," but also terrevolutionary gendarme and consoli­ from any identification with the anti­ weaponry, notably in Asia during the throws a harsh light on these mounting date its own niche, has responded in kind colonial protests. And well they might. Korean and Vietnam wars. So today interimperialist tensions. with a vile Australian nationalist anti­ The White Australian imperialist enclave with the nuclear arsenal of the Chinese U.S. imperialism, the world's most French campaign. Not only have protests was not just shaped through the genoci­ deformed workers state, we Trotskyists dangerous nuclear power and the only targeted French diplomatic offices but dal expropriation of the Aborigines couple the urgent struggle for proletar­ one to have used nuclear weapons, also French restaurants and individual but also the mass expUlsions of Chinese ian political revolution to oust the Sta­ slaughtering civilian popUlations of Hi­ French-descended residents. Scandal­ and Pacific Island workers who were key linist bureaucracy with the uncondi­ roshima and Nagasaki in 1945, is con­ ously if not surprisingly, the social­ to opening up the settlements of north tional military defence of the gains of cerned that Japan not acquire nuclear patriotic Laborite misleaders of the Aus­ Queensland and other parts of Australia. the 1949 Chinese Revolution, which weaponry. Japan (whose finance minister tralian working class have called on the They don't want a restive anti-imperialist includes the recognition of the right of was among the myriad parliamentarians workers to participate in the bourgeoi­ population to threaten the profits of the People's Republic of China to main­ putting in an appearance in Tahiti) is sie's campaign to boycott French prod­ the likes of Colonial SUg4r Refineries. tain and develop nuclear weaponry. opposed to the French and American ucts and ships. Trade union and Labor Canberra braintrusts and arm,<; the army By aggressively asserting the determi­ nukes in the Pacific. Increasingly squared Party leaders who would never say peep of its Papua New Guinea neocolony, nation to maintain and modernize the off against its American imperialist about the counterrevolutionary ANZUS whose people are manifestly victims force de frappe, Chirac is wielding his rivals for who will be first in the rape treaty and American military bases and of White Australia imperialism, in a nuclear terror machine as a direct threat of the Chinese deformed worker~. state, who were prominent in the racist outcry murderous war against the Bougainville to all potential rivals of French imperi­ Japan itself is preparing to forge its own about an Asian "invasion" when small' people. alism which might one day threaten its nuclear arsenal. Japan is intent on ex­ . numbers of Chinese refugees landed on The high moral tone and anti-nuke "vital interests," and against all the neo­ tending its neocolonial influence in the . the north coast in late 1994 vie with hoary posture that minor imperialist powers colonial peoples who would not accept region to reconstruct a "Greater East Asia old reactionaries from ex -servicemen's like Australia and New Zealand some­ the imperialist yoke. Chirac's ravings Co-Prosperity Sphere." It already has organisations fresh from the racist "Vic­ times take is only a symptom of their are not simply macho posturing: the tons of weapons-grade plutonium and the tory in the Pacific" commemorations. resentments at their subordinate roles 50th anniversary of the A-bombing of and frequently in the interests of their Hiroshima and Nagasaki-a racist mass -I -:::r o greater imperialist patron. In 1950 the murder which was also a bloody message 3 en Australian government invited the Brit­ to the Soviet Union-is here to remind o ::J ish imperialists to conduct nuclear test­ us that ultimately, the imperialist bour­ P );; "1) ing at Maralinga, on the lands of the geoisies will resort to the most hideous URANIUM Aboriginal Tjarutja people, irradiating acts of barbarism, including nuclear SALES! the site and contaminating it with pluto­ genocide, to defend those same "vital rr¥r;~~ """'-"'" -... -)\,.,. ~. "...... nium. Today the U.S. Navy still rules interests. " the oceans and Australia is pivotal in Chirac's policies abroad are also MINES! U.S. control of the southwest Pacific and intended to cement a racist, nationalist Indian Ocean. The U.S. spy bases at Pine consensus at home. His election prom­ Gap and Nurrungar are part of a global ises to increase police funding and As racist Australian network of the world's biggest nuclear tighten immigration controls indicated ruling class promotes madman and "world policeman." When clearly what his "populist" concerns France-bashing Gough Whitlam tried to tinker with this about unemployment and the "fractures" chauvinism, social­ arrangement in 1975, the Australian in French society really meant. Now patriots march with bourgeoisie and the U.S. imperialists had using the pretext of the criminal bomb­ bigots at anti-French him unceremoniously dumped by the ings in metropolitan France and else­ protest in Canberra, on CIA crony installed as the queen's gov­ where Chirac has deployed the police Bastille Day, July 14. ernor general. From the Korean War to and the army in Paris to institute a ver­ the dirty, losing war against the Viet­ itable state of siege, unleashing a racist namese workers and peasants, to its sup­ operation of identity checks, roundups, port to the bloody CIA-engineered 1965 and deportations aimed to terrorise the massacre of communists, workers and communities of second-generation North peasants in Indonesia which paved the Africans who were born in France but 14 WORKERS VANGUARD are still deemed "immigrants" in the eyes in the region under both right and "left" while the well-off in advanced capitalist that the exploited and oppressed masses of the racist, colonialist French state. The governments, from the assassination of countries make a few gestures like put­ opened the prison doors. The French Rev- current police terror is intended to intim­ Kanak independentist leader Eloi Ma­ ting their (non-French) wine bottles in 01ution offered citizenship to all drawn idate anyone who fights social reaction choro by Mitterrand's praetorian guard the right recycling container. to its promise of "liberte, egalite,frater­ and forestall trade-union struggle as the in 1985 to the murderous sinking of the The capitalist mode of production and nite" and abolished slavery, whereas capitalists demand new attacks on the Rainbow Warrior and the Ouvea slaugh­ the bourgeois nation-state have become today dark-skinned "immigrants" are living standards of the working class and ter. French imperialism out of the Paci­ a decisive fetter on the development of criminalised and deported. Many of the especially sweeping cuts in social wel­ fic! Immediate independence for Poly­ the economy and of society, with the original white settlers in Australia were fare provisions. The LTF has called nesia, New Caledonia and all the other drive for new markets and new sources convicts, including a significant number, united-front protests and demanded: remaining French colonies! of labour and raw materials inherent and Irish and others, transported for their "The workers movement must make the leading inevitably towards war. Capi­ radical activity in sympathy with the Eco-chauvinism and the struggle against racist terror and segre­ talism, irrational and degenerate, now French Revolution. But the Australian gation central to its fight. Stop the charter Drive Toward War flights and deportations! Defend the dooms tens of millions even in "ad­ ruling class lives in the spirit of Edmund right of asylum! Cops out of the ghetto/ The diverse currents of petty­ vanced" countries to suffer in poverty Burke, the arch opponent of the French estates! Crush the fa&cists before they bourgeois protest, the pacifists, the envi­ and ignorance amidst plenty. In the impe­ Revolution. The ideals of that Revolu­ crusltus! Worker-immigrant defence ronmentalists, the anti-nuclear groups, rialist epoch, the period of the death tion, progressive, humanist and liberat­ guards based on the factories! Full citi­ who oppose the tests are at best utopian. agony of capitalism, the tendency toward zenship rights for all immigrants!" ing, are borne today by the communist The real hazard, environmental and oth­ world economy collides with explosive fighters for workers socialist revolution. The leaders of the reformist PS and PCF erwise, of nuclear weapons is the drive sharpness against private ownership of Today the choice posed by Rosa Lux­ refuse to fight the racist roundups or to use them in imperialist war. The Greens the means of production and the nation- emburg at the turn of the century- against colonial repression in Tahiti. The despicable silence of these social­ chauvinists on these issues reveals their dedication to a "cleaner" French impe­ rialism. Their refusal to challenge either the imperialist aims of the bourgeoisie or the racist "consensus" at home shows their "protest" against the French nuclear testing for what it is, empty hypocritical posturing which leaves the chauvinist" u.s. A-bomb consensus around the force de frappe test on Bikini unscathed. Atoll, 1946. Australian But France's oppressed colonial sub­ jackal jects have exploded in outrage. On 29 imperialism June more than 1O,000-over a tenth of opposes French Tahiti's population-marched in Pa­ tests while peete to protest Chirac's decision. Two maintaining its days later, several thousand protesters own neo­ marched in Noumea, in New Caledonia, colonies in where the independentist trade union South Pacific USTKE, recalling the bloody assault under American nuclear ordered by Mitterrand's prime minister "umbrella." Chirac against Kanak independentist fighters in Ouvea in 1988, carried a ban­ ner declaring "Gossanah, Mururoa, Chi­ rac murderer." Prominent in the massive have no solution to the looming inter­ state with its borders, passports, mone­ "socialism or barbarism"-is even stark­ Tahiti demonstration, apparently the imperialist rivalries, but rather line up tary system, customs and the armies for er. Facing nuclear-armed imperialist biggest ever in the island, was the behind their respective imperialists over the protection of customs. The task of powers, it is socialism or annihilation. independentist party Tavini Huiraatira, Bosnia. The pacifists think they can make the proletariat is not the defence or "im­ The threat of a thermonuclear World War whose leader Oscar Temaru then sailed their rapacious capitalist ruling classes provement" of the national state but its III will only be avoided by the triumph to Mururoa on board Greenpeace's flag­ better, make them disarm and live peace­ complete and final liquidation. Only of international working-class revolu­ ship, the Rainbow Warrior II-named fully side by side. Their protests display when the proletariat internationally rips tion, opening the way to a genuinely after the ecologist group's ship sunk in a "not in my backyard" selectivity, not the means of production from the hands classless society of abundance and uni­ 1985 by French saboteurs acting on unlike the Third World governments who of the national bourgeoisies through the versal equality in which the full tre­ orders from "socialist" president Mitter­ bulldoze shantytowns because they are socialist revolution can the mighty pro­ mendous power of modern science and rand. And when a new round of protests "ruining the neighbourhood." A few ductive energies of the world be liberated, technology, including nuclear energy, shook the island in early September, years ago the environmentalist outcry finally uprooting every kind of racism, will be put to the service of human prog­ protesters stormed Tahiti's main airport, about overfishing in the waters off north backwardness and obscurantism, and ress. This requires an international and setting fire to part of the terminal. Australia dovetailed neatly with rabid creating the socialist system which can internationalist leadership-a genuinely Marching in Mitterrand's footsteps, on racist protectionism directed· at Asian feed and house and educate everyone. communist International, reforged on the July 9 Chirac had Rainbow Warrior II fishermen. Under capitalism proposals The Australian nationalists seized political foundations of Leon Trotsky's taken out by hooded French Navy thugs such as the call to reduce total energy upon Bastille Day as an occasion for their Fourth International. From Paris to Can­ and seized her crew. We denounce this consumption can only mean that the anti-French crusade. The French capital­ berra, we Trotskyists of the ICL say: The grotesque act of piracy, and we won't vast mass of people in the Third World ists have long since turned July 14 into main enemy is' at home! Long live pro­ forget the long list of bloody terrorist should continue forever to go without a celebration of the imperialist "gloire" letarian internationalism! Workers of the attacks carried out by French colonialism adequate drinking water and electricity, of France, not the anniversiHyof the day world unite!_

tutions invested with the power to Fed's Bloody enforce the laws" is in deep trouble. We have written that the 1985 bomb- ing of Philly MOVE was the signature Trail...' . of the Reagan years, just as the 1979 (continued from paRe 7) ·Greensboro massacre was for "human none of them demonstrated, as the Spar­ rights" Democrat Carter. Today, the Clin­ tacist League did, against the carnage at ton administration bears the indelible Waco, and the wretched RWL howled bloody stamp of the Waco holocaust. The about our banner calling Clinton and Spartacist League has sought to sear the Reno mass murderers at a gay rights memory of the government's slaughter march in Washington a week after the of dissidents into the collective con­ massacre. Recently, the ISO revealed its sciousness of the working class and true position, dismissing the Congres­ oppressed-and to warn of the threat that Spartacist demonstration sional hearings into the feds' inferno at they represent. outside FBI Waco as purely a "sop to the right-wing MOVE, Ruby Ridge and Waco are part headquarters in militias" under the despicable headline, of a drive to concentrate more repressive Washington "Wacko Speaks Up on Waco" (Socialist powers in the federal government. In the following feds' Worker, I September). name of "fighting crime," Clinton has Waco holocaust. Ironically, even the Wall Street Jour­ moved to hire 100,000 more police, push­ nal (12 May) published an editorial on ing for military involvement in civilian the tenth anniversary of the MOVE mas­ law enforcement and star chambeli "anti­ sacre, calling it "Black Waco." The Jour­ terrorist" courts for immigrants. Now lib­ nal noted that "thoughtful blacks who eral Democrats like Dianne Feinstein wondered 10 years ago how Philadelphia want to introduce an encrypted, database­ "social peace" means the disenfranchised against the capitalist masters is posed and MOVE could have spun so disas­ linked national identity card encoding masses must be disarmed and cowed at pointblank with the government's as­ trously into flames must shake their "biometric" data on computer chips. any cost. sault on civii liberties. The Spartacist heads now at the way white America is (Lacking such high-tech methods, the Every move to strengthen police pow­ League fights to build a revolutionary flailing around Waco, the BATF and sep­ Nazis simply tattooed numbers on their ers directly threatens the ability of work­ workers party, which will put the butch­ aratist militias." Naturally, this conser­ victims' bodies.) In the midst of a con­ ers and minorities to mobilize in their ers of MOVE and Waco out of business vative voice of big business is no friend certed attack on the living standards of own interests and self-defense-for ex­ for good, through socialist revolution of MOVE. Their editorial was motivated the working class, producing the largest ample, against fascists and strikebreak­ which sweeps away this decaying capi­ by growing concern within ruling-class gap ever between rich and poor, the racist ers. Defense of the rights of the work­ taiist system and the fascism and misery circles that the "credibility of the insti- American ruling class is asserting that ing people to struggle in their interests it breeds .• 6 OCTOBER 1995 15 WfJlIllEIIS """'111) Israel-PLO Pact Imprisons Palestinians

Two years after the U.S.-orchestrated "peace process" was first kicked off amid much fanfare, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) finally an­ nounced an interim agreement for "redeployment" of Israel Out of the" Occupied Territories! Israeli troops in the occupied West Bank. Far from being the step toward Palestinian "sovereignty" proclaimed by Yasir Arafat's PLO, this latest deal effectively formalizes the imprisonment of the Palestinian masses under the iron heel of Zionist state terror. Even as Israeli and PLO negotiators were finalizing the agreement in the Red Sea resort of Taba, three Palestinian protesters were shot dead by Israeli troops in the streets of Nablus. As we said at the time, the September 1993 "Gaza­ Jericho first" accord was not "even the most deformed expression of self-determination" but rather amounted to "'community control' over a couple of impoverished slums" ("Israel-PLO Deal for Palestinian Ghetto," WV No. 583, 10 September 1993)'. The current deal simply extends this arrangement to six more Palestinian towns in the West Bank and, in the future, to several hundred villages. All roads linking the towns, all border areas, all "state" lands and anywhere there is even a handful of Zionist "settlers" will remain firmly under the grip of the Israeli army. Thus, Hebron is to be partitioned, with the army maintaining total control of 15 perceilt, in order to "protect" a few hundred fascistic settlers among over 100,000 Palestinians. Hebron epitomizes the face of the new "Palestinian entity" being fashioned by Israel and its PLO lackeys. It was there that, five months after the signing of the 1993 agreement, Brooklyn-born fascist Baruch Goldstein slaughtered at least 29 Palestinians in a genocidal rampage Under new accord, Israeli army and fascistic Zionist settlers will continue to terrorize Palestinians in continued on page 11 West Bank city of Hebron.

French and Australian Trotskyists Say: The Main Enemy Is at Home!

We puhlish helow a September 30 joint But the hue and cry over the French statement by the Ligue Trotskyste de nuclear tests by other capitalist govern­ France and the Spartacist League of ments is the rankest hypocrisy. The Australia. sections of the International imperialist powers are lurching toward Communist League (Fourth Internation­ trade war and ultimately another global alist), in response to the French nuclear real and terrible danger of war will only roa Atoll is a sinister imperialist and colo­ conflagration and the French nuclear tests in the Pacific. be ended by the workers of all countries nialist provocation which must be tests and the national chauvinist howling joining together, rejecting all the divide­ opposed by class-conscious workers in­ of the Australian imperialists and their The orgy of chauvinism in Australia and-rule capitalist machinations parroted ternationally. This display of arrogant, Labor servants against them must be and France touched off by the dispute by the current misleaders of the wQrking aggressive nuke-toting chauvinism has seen in that context. The danger can be over renewed French nuclear testing in class, to throw out their exploiters and provoked widespread revulsion all over clearly seen today in the Balkans, igni­ the Pacific underlines how capitalism in take the future in their own hands. The the world, not least in France itself. Pop­ tion point for the first global inter­ its epoch of imperialist decay leads inex­ International Communist League says: ulations in and around the Pacific Ocean imperialist slaughter. While the French orably through trade war to world war, No to the French nuclear tests! Down have been especially outraged by the imperialists test their nuclear devices in unless the problem is destroyed at its with all imperialist militarism! Inde­ French government's brazenly colonial­ Mururoa and the Australian imperialists root by socialist revolution. The enemy pendence now for the French colonies! ist statement that they intend to do what pontificate on the dangers of nuclear of the workers and oppressed is not "the The main enemy is at home! they want in their last colonial outposts weaponry to the ecology of "their" back­ French" or "the Australians" but the The decision by the Chirac govern­ in the Pacific. Chirac's boastful "screw yard, 'tons of NATO bombs have been rapacious capitalist ruling classes which ment, which at the same time put "met­ you world" attitude also predictably pro­ rained down on the Bosnian Serbs, a dream of plundering the whole world ropolitan" France in a racist state of voked a powerful anti-French nationalist campaign supported by the bellicose while turning the screws on their "own" siege with its anti-immigrant Operation backlash amongst France's imperialist Chirac, America's slavish Australian workers in the interests of profit. The - "Vigipirate," to resume testing at Muru- rivals. continued on page 14

16 6 OCTOBER 1995