~ Australasian . ~

Number 80 Summer 1980/81 30 cents A workers Poland, yesl

:. ~ The PODe's Poland, nol

In the'months since the signing of the much-heralded Gdansk and threats in an attempt to ride it out. One settlement seems settlement on 31 August, everyone senses Polish society has lost only to sow the seeds of the next crisis. Claiming government it,s moorings. The state of trade-union organisation has become footdragging on agreed wage increases and 'other concessions, utterly chaotic and confused. The regime is paralysed, with the the Solidarity leadership called a successful nationwide one-hour top leaders frantically scapegoating one another. The leadership work stoppage on 3 October. Kania charged Walesa & Co had of the new "free unions" and the Catholic hierarchy reneged on a pledge to recognise the "leading role" of the ruling consort more brazenly. Meanwhile, the Kremlin and its Polish United Workers Party (PUWP); when the courts finally hard-line satellites, especially East Germany, speak registered the union, they inserted the contentious clause in the incessantly of the growing threat of "anti-socialist Solidarity charter. Kania stonewalled for weeks before agreeing forces" in Poland, increasingly drawing a direct parallel with the to put it in an "annex" to the charter instead, under pressure of 1968 }»rague Spring. And everyone in Poland, indeed through­ a general strike deadline. . out Europe, knows how that ended. Despite Kania's claims that they cl!D "work together", the At the time of the Gdansk agreement both the Polish bureau­ Polish Stalinists instinctively must feel the "new, self-governing· cratsand the leaders of the new "free trade unions" proclaimed unions" as a grave threat to their power. At the time of the 31 it as a genuine compromise, a step from confrontation toward August settlement, the strike committee published an apparent­ collaboration. We said no, the settlement is only on paper: "The ly authentic document by a high party commission which compromise creates an impossible situation economically and maintained: "Such unions would fulfill the role of a political politically; it cannot last". No Stalinist bureaucratic caste, we . opposition party inspired by anti-Communist forces. They would pointed out, which must monopolise political power to preserve create a division of.power" (New York Times, 1 September). itse.1f,can tolerate any genuinely independent wOrking-class This unquestionably expresses social reality from the standpoint organisation .. And the striJre leadership around Lech Walesa, .of t~ Polish Stalinist bureaucracy. ' . which strongly· identifies with the powerful Catholic church When the strike leaders initially conceded to recognise the opposition, would increasingly challenge the damaged and dis­ PUWP's "leading role", it was not without sharp dispute and credited regime. through clenched teeth. Of course, the PUWP is not a revol­ utionary (Leninist) vanguard; on the contrary, it is the instru­ Cold Dual Power '. ment of a parasitic bureaucracy. In struggling for proletarian As the new union federation dubbed Solidarnosc ("Soli­ political revolution to free the deformed workers states Qf this Walesa looks to god and pope against darity") grows more aggressive, the regime headed by Gierek's internal obstacle, Trotskyists support independent trade unions Stalinist bureaucracy. replaeement Stanislaw Kania alternates between concessions Continued on page six Reagan's America - court licence for ,fascist murder killers freed in Greensboro They staged the massacre on TV. A taken on the government now on their Nazi/Ku Klux Klan motorcade of death home ground, right in their own court­ drove up to the black housing project room and we beat them." But the Nazis in Greensboro, North Carolina one sunny didn't have to beat the government. morning in November 1979. Millions of They were on the same side. US workers watched in living colour They were all there together in the .' as the fascists calmly openeCi the trunks motorcade. A "former" FBI informer of their cars, pulled out pistols and rifles rode in the first car, a Greensboro cop . and opened fire on the small gathering brought up the rear. Even the Alcohol, of left-wing and black demonstrators. Tobacco and Firearms division of the Then they packed their weapons back into "Justice" DepQ.rtment got into the act: the trunks and drove off. their agent told the fascist killers how to It was cold-blooded murder for all legally transport the guns. At the trial to see. But on 17 November last an everyone agreed it was the FBI testimony all-white jury in Greensboro let the that clinched it for the defence. KKK killers go free - acquitted on five From the outset, the American ruling counts of first-degree murder, felonious class has maintained a remarkably rioting and all other charges. Now the disciplined line on the Greensboro courts can get down to their real aim - massacre. For over a year they unani­ pe~uting the fascists' victims in the mously labelled the fascist murder a Communist Workers Party (CWP). "shootout" between two "hate groups", Some commented the verdict was a equating the murderers and their victims. . licence to kill. It was more - it was Now they greet the verdict with sighs of an invitation to racist murder. "who can ever know what really hap­ pened?" Not a peep of liberal protest but It was all done under the stars and studied agnosticism, again serving to stripes. The Klan murderers claimed victimise the left and embolden the ultra­ they were just doing their patriotic duty right terrorists. For the bourgeoisie in the war against communism. The racist understands that it is now necessary to courts set them free in the name of stand with fascists against communists. "evenhanded" American (capitalist) communists. "justice". Harold COv1ngton, head of the . Public reaetion to the Greensboro National Socialist (Nazi) party cnlwed, Fascists routed In Evanston, Illinois, 19 October 1980. Protesters Joined "It's a victory for white America. We've Continued on page nine Spartaclst chant "Sweep the Nazis off the streets!"

_:c Hunger strikers demand political rights ~,'~'" Free Long IRA prisoners I

On 27 October seven Irish Republican international embarrassment for a Tory prisoners in the notorious "H-Blocks" of government which wants to march in step Northern Ireland's' Long Kesh prison with the US anti-Soviet' war drive. Iron launched a hunger strike against their Maiden Margaret Thatcher attempted to British imperialist jailers. They are de­ head off the hunger strike by having her manding no more than the status of politi­ secretary of state for Northern Ireland. cal prisoners and the rights taken away Humphrey Atkins, make the cosmetic from them by a Labour government in concession of agreeing to issue "civilian­ March 1976 under the slogan "U1steris­ style" uniforms. When rebuffed by the ation, Criminalisation, Normalisation". Long 'Kesh prisoners, Atkin's response Since then the prisoners have refused to was: "If they die, so be it". wear the uniforms issued by Her The Thatcher government has also met Majesty's jailers and have had only with ruthless terror the substantial sup­ blankets to cover themselves. port the "blanket" protests have evoked In an attempt to break the blanket outside the prison walls. In the past five protest, the vicious administration which months, four prominent leaders in- the runs Long Kesh forbade going to the campaign on behalf of the a-Block pris­ toilet except in uniform, and "Loyalist" oners have been assassinated either by prison guards refused to empty chamber Protestant extremists or the British pots or dumped them in the cells. The counterinsurgency force, _the SAS. But "blanket-men" are thus forced literally these attacks did not deter the thousands to live in their own shit. Female national­ who took to the streets in Belfast, publin ist supporters are incarcerated in equally and the south Armagh border village of horrendous conditions at the women's Crossmaglen in support of the hunger prison in Armagh. Hamilton Fish,. a con­ strikers'demands. servative US Republican representative The international Spartacist tendency from New York who visited Long Kesh as (iSt) calls for abolishing the Emergency part of an American Congressional del­ Powers Act and the Prevention of ASp photo SL contingent counterposes Trotskyist program for Ireland to IS' green egation, said he found the H-Blocks to be Terrorism Act, terror measures aimed at nationalism at Sydney "Stop Paisley" rally. worse than the Saigon "Tiger Cages" in intimidating the oppressed Catholic min­ which captured DRV INLF fighters were ority, and for freeing all their victims. In barbarically confined. ' Sydney on 21 November, Spartacist fascist. But as we pointed out in' our inate terror such as the murderous attack The. Irish nationalist prisoners at Long League (SL) members raised the slogan article "Protest reactionary bigot on the La Mon House hotel in 1978, in Kesh. and Armagh are victims of "Free Long Kesh IRA Prisoners! Smash Paisley!" (Australasian Spartacist no 79, which -twelve Protestant workers died, draconian laws which have been con­ H-Block!" at a small rally in Martin Place November 1980), Paisley "is no Adolf and call for programmatically based demned by such bourgeois institutions as called by the International Socialists-' Hitler and the IS know it. They insist on workers militias to combat sectarian and Amnesty International and the European dominated "Stop Paisley Committee". In the characterisation for a purpose: if imperialist terror. The ptogram raised by Court on Human Rights. Embodied in the New York, SLiUS comrades were'among Paisley is a fascist. then his followers are the iSt at the rallies in Sydney and New Emergency Powers Act and the Preven­ 800 protesters who chanted "Smash presumably fascists too. By extension York alone indicates the way ahead: tion of Terrorism Act, these laws provide H-Block! Smash Long Kesh!" outside the they must be crushed." In short, the "British Troops out of Ireland now! " , for the arrest and holding incommunicado British consulate on 22 November. "Stop Paisley Committee" was a vehicle "Not Orange against Green, but class for up to seven days of anyone susp'ected The organisers of both demonstrations for mobilising support to petty-bourgeois against class!':, '~For .. fUl. Jris~$ork~s of membership in or "support" to the had no other per!!pective, though, than nationalism, for a strategy which offers republic, part of a Socialist Federation of " Irish Republican Army (IRA) or any other tailing the Green nationalism of the IRA. no road forward for the prisoners rotting the British Isles!" To achieve these goals groups "concerned with terrorism". The "Stop Paisley Committee" had been in Long Kesh or for the Irish masses. a Trotskyist party, section of a reforged During that time a suspect· may not be set up to deny Ian Paisley a platform The iSt sheds no tears for British im­ Fourth International, is needed to lead permitted to contact lawyers, relatives or when he visited Australia during perialists killed by the IRA, such as Lord the Irish workers - Protestant and doctors. The only regular "visitors" are Novembet, on the grounds that he was a Mountbatten. But we condemn indiscrim- Catholic' - to power .• the Royal Ulster Constabulary's notorious Special Branch who extract "con­ fessions" under torture that are often the sole basis for conviction by special, juryless courts. 97 percent of the cases ( Letter)------that go before these courts result in con­ viction and 90 percent of these convic­ tions are based on "confessions", often uncorroborated. White Australian socialists hail Breaker Morant The "blanket-men" are an unwanted Dear Comrades, viewers love so dearly? Mainly the his­ stantly harping about "J[(istralian" jobs toric resentment Of colonial-settler Aus- disappearing to Southeast Asian Patricia Peters' review "Breaker . tratia that the British would not ad­ ,'''cOuntries which have cheap labour, no Morant -'the Lt Calley of the Boer To our readers equately defend them, iii particular union movement and which are mostly War" was excellent and particularly to against the "yellow hordes" - and their military dictatorships" (October 1980) The next ISlue of Australasian the point in noting how the film's reluctance to be drawn off· into the .de­ - as if that justified racist, protectionist nationalist message struck a patriotic Spartaclst will appear In fence of the rest of Her Majesty's mainly competition for jobs with Australian February 1981. chord among its reviewers on the left. non-white empire. This heritage can be workers' Asian class brothers! Why The only problem was you let one of the claimed only by those who identify with shouldn't· Keep Left also take up worst offenders get away - Bob Gould's the jackal-imperialist aspirations of the Audacity'S racist slogan: "Jobs not Healyite/Laboriterag Keep Left. While Australian bourgeoisie itself. When refugees"? .. AUstralasian - most of the left press tried to play down Heslop and Pritchard raise the "class . the obvious chauvinism in favour, of an With communist greetings, arrogance of the British ruling class" it is PC [$PARTAOST ~ J imagined "antiwar message", Keep Left not the latter's brutal oppression and ex­ writers Linda .Heslop and Gordon ploitation of the Indian, Chinese or black Revolutionary Marxist monthly of the Pritchard positively glory in it: Spartaclst League of Australia and New South African masses they have in mind Zealand, section of the international '''Breaker Morant' is not just an anti-war but their snobbish put-downs of their Spartacist tendency, for the rebirth of movie. It appeals, through expressing that country cousins, the "barbarous and dif­ the Fourth International. appeal in a romantic and even slightly ficult colonial Australians". They tate EDITORIAL BOARD: chauvini$t way, to the whole history of re­ James Shaughnessy (Managing Editor), issue not with the Empire's vicious im­ pression of the convicts and early settlers perialist war against the Boers (whom Spartacist League Doug Fuliarton,Steve Hooper (Melbourne that has become our [I] colonial heritage. correspondent), Chris Korwin, David "It appeals to the 'Ned Kelly' in all of us. Marxists defended) but with its scape­ Reynolds; Ron Sperling, Linda Brooke goating of three war criminals and Sydney (production). "Most importantly, the film brings out the class nature of imperialist wars." . . officers who happened to be Australian. CIRCULATION: Paul Connor. When the film shows the three staunchly public ollice Printed by trade union labour. Regis­ - KeepLeJt. August 1980 defending the British against a Boer tered at GPO, Sydney for posting as a attack, the Keep Left review actually publication - Category B. Subscriptions "The class nature of imperialist wars"l? cheers this as an "heroic action" ! $3 for 11 issues; airmail overseas $10 for One can Search both the movie and their Summer hours: 11 Issues. Address all correspondence review in vain for anything about it; the This tie!! in with the Gouldites' em­ Saturday 12 noon to 4 pm to: Spartacist Publications, GPO Box ._ reviewers don't even say which side of bracing of the poisonous Labor reformist 3473, Sydney, NSW, 2001. Telephone the Boer War they are on. What they do tradition of White Australia. Gould (02) ,264-8115. 2nd floor, Opinions expressed in signed articles or "bring out" loud and clear is the idolises Labor racist Jack Lang, who has letters do not necessarily express the Gouldites' obscene toadying to Aus­ the dubious distinction - rare even for 112 Goulburn St • Sydney editorial viewpoint. tralian racist chauvinism in its traditional labour traitors - of being quoted on the Printed by Eastern Suburbs,Randwlck, masthead of a fascist sheet (the National NSW. Laborite form. What is th~ "colonial heritage" the re- Alliance's Audacity). Keep Left is con- 2 Australasian Spartaclst After Blackpool conference British 'S left face From the bourgeois right to the 'far left', the British Labour Party conference held at Blackpool in October drew sensational responses. Shudders and even hysteria in the bosses' papers; raptures of ecstasy in much of the left press. Blackpool was a "watershed" , "half a revolution", indeed a new "October Revolution" with Tony Benn its V I Lenin. The Times cringed: "as a portent it is terrifying" . Margaret Thatcher held the spectre of a "downhill slide towards socialism" before her assembled bluebloods in Brighton two weeks later. And Socialist Press, paper of . Alan Thornett's Workers Socialist League (WSL), discerned a "germ of truth" in that. Sorry, no. A storm is brewing in Britain, but Blackpool was a tempest in a teapot. A vote for withdrawal from the EEC - the key policy victory of the "lefts" - is only a return to Labour's policy when last in opposition. The After Callaghan, Foot (left). After Foot, Benn (centre)? BlP picks "left" face for next "social contract". constitutional triumphs, primarily broadening the leadership election franchise beyond MPs, are accepted an "electoral college" of MPs, con­ that occasion, many of the Labor demonstrated in practice their loyalty to norms in such stai4 reformist parties as stituency parties and trade-union stalwarts selected to destroy this bastion the capitalist system. the German SPD. And James Callaghan bureaucrats to choose the party leader as of bourgeois privilege from within instead Of course there are differences· was not kicked out for his class treach­ "damaging to parliamentary govern­ discovered that a comfortable sinecure between the competing Labour factions ery - he resigned, a lame duck in any ment". Hardly. Of course the idea that wasn't such a bad thing, crossing the and bourgeois consternation about the case, to smooth the path of his successor Labour MPs should have a measure of floor to defeat the proposal! Bennites is not just Tory raving. The amid "constitutional crisis". The new accountability to their working-class Ralph Miliband commented in his book bourgeoisie needs the Labour Party as a leader, former "left" Michael Foot, electors and trade-union backers is Parliamentary Socialism: "responsible" opposition to a firm, but loyally served in all the anti-working­ distasteful to the capitalists. But the ".of political parties claiming socialism to flexible, Tory regime. But the Iron Lady class Wilson and Callaghan cabinets of Blackpool decisions, the product of much be their aim the Labour Party has always is rather inflexible. And the bourgeoisie 1974 to 1979. Like all his rivals, Benn backstairs dealing and horsetrading for been one of the most dogmatic - not genuinely dislikes some of the notions included, Foot stands for the same trade-union block votes, don't even strike about socialism but about the parlia­ peddled by the "lefts". It sees no future program as his predecessor: contempt­ mentary system." particularly hard at the cherished auto­ Nothing that happened at Blackpool was in "splendid isolation" from Europe. It uous disregard of the basic class interests nomy of Labour MPs. Revolutionaries even a small step toward the revolution knows it can have no foreign policy of the workers in order to preserve putrid favour the widest democracy in such independent of the US. And though British capitalism. Britain needs. The road to socialist workers organisations (eg doing away revolution lies through breaking the Benn's leadership prospects are slim it The 5-2 Blackpool vote on the EEC, like with anti-communist proscriptions) to stranglehold of all wings of Labourism on fears a situation in which militant an indicative vote against Cruise missiles facilitate the struggle to expose the PJ;'o­ the working class and winning it_to a workers' expectations are aroused-and all capitalist bureaucrats. But for the Labour in Britain, reflected not class opposition revolutionary program.- hell breaks loose. to the Common Market as the economic politicians, "democracy" is·a convenient Attacking Benn from the right, ex­ adjunct of the anti-Soviet NATO alliance, cover for a power struggle on the basis of Facellft for betrayal Labour cabinet minister Barbara Castle but narrow British parochialism. The bourgeois politics. Blackpool illuminated the nature of noted "that he never spells out that anti-Cruise motion also demanded What unites all of them, "left" and Labour as a bourgeois workers party. In responsibility involves choice and the "urgent discussions for Soviet with­ right, is their commitment to bourgeois power it was a loyal tool of the bosses. choices in this country are grim for drawal of the SS-20", and a motion for parliamentary rule. Even Benn's call for Now in opposition, as always, it must everybody". True - and the Tory/ withdrawal from NATO took a stinging the abolition of the House of Lords "regenerate" internally through some Labour cycle is no choice at all. How 8-1 defeat. Labour "lefts" - and some involved the creation of a thousand new "left" talk and a little bloodletting­ many more strikebreaking Labour right-wingers too - oppose the EEC Labour peers to pass the measure and necessary steps in rebuilding the governments must the working class only out of chauvinism and protectionism: get. " Royal assent. Benn's "suicide workers' illusions in "their" party. Benn endure in the hope that their attempts to shielding British capitalism from foreign squad" could well, if implemented, go is nothing new either, coming from a line bandage crippled capitalism will be competition through illlport controls and the way of a similar attempt by the NSW of "lefts" like Clement Attlee, Aneurin slightly more sufferable than Tory rule? other trappings of national autarky. Labor government to abolish that state's Bevan and Harold Wilson who, when Bankrupt British capitalism must go and The Times decried the narrow vote for undemocratic upper house in 1959. On faced with the exigencies of power, thus the bankrupt Labour party must go. The deadly, palpable danger is that if the workers don't despatch Labour, the fascists will - and crush the whole workers movement. Yet for the fake-revolutionary left, the Victory to idea of destroying the senile Labour Party brewer,workersl is utterly absent, the idea of building it embraced. For the International Marxist 7 December - It has been nearly a at Auburn, union federal secretary John have started a fight over the flagging month since the bosses at .Tooheys Group (IMG) the ultimate crime at Morris pushed through a treacherous 35-hour week campaign which the Blackpool was: "Labour right threatens Auburn brewery in Sydney locked out 700 motion lifting all LTU bans with the spineless ACTU and metal trades bu­ maintenance workers and Liquor Trades party unity". Short of a deep split in the justification that they would then only be reaucrats thought they had finally buried trade-union bureaucracy, Labour right­ Union (LTU) members on 11 November. stood down, not sacked, and could thus in October. At nation-wide metal trades For ten years maintenance unions in the wingers have only the Tories, Liberals or get the dole. But with maintenance mass meetings the bureaucrats, against a short-lived "centre party" to-8o to, but breweries have routinely demanded the workers holding "firm, the plant remains strong opposition from the ranks, got the 35-hour week (a long-standing ACTU who cares? Revolutionaries want to see shut down tight. national 35-hour week campaign in the Labour Party unity shattered, with the position) in their annual log of claims. metal industry suspended. In its place the This year the bosses delivered an ulti­ In Victoria, LTU members at five working-class base broken from the pro­ ACTU tops promised to "coordinate" capitalist misleaders, "left" or right. matum: drop the 35-hour week claim. or Carlton and United breweries went on campaigns in "selected" areas - no negotiations whatsoever. The workers strike in late November to press claims "Party unity" is precisely the rationale including breweries - sometime in Benn used to justify remaining' in responded by working a nine-day fort­ for a 520 wage rise and a 35-hour week. 1981. night. After taking Friday 7 November off LTU state secretary Joe Goddard, a Callaghan's strikebreaking cabinet­ as part of the campaign, workers were Communist Party of Australia supporter, The long, standing paper position of the "on the grounds that a Tory government confronted by company executives at the said the delegates wouldn't recommend a trade-union bureaucracy for a 35-bour which would succeed it if it was defeated, plant gates demanding that they indi­ return to work to the 3 December mass week is woefully insufficient to deal with would be much worse" . vidually sign statements renouncing meeting "without some sort of offer" current levels of unemployment. But they This is the pervasive rationale for future industrial action. Without ex­ (Age, 2 December). But the Victorian even dumped their own pitiful campaign Labour-cretinism. Even the left-centrist ception, they rejected this outrageous LTU leaders, including Goddard, man­ in the metal trades and have left the Workers Power group, which makes no blackmail :..- and were sacked on the aged to "withdraw" the 35~hour week Tooheys workers in the lurch to slug it out claims about the "gains" of Blackpool spot. Since this calculated provocation, claim in favour of future talks between for months in almost total isolation. With voted Labour in 1979 as it stood on an production has been shut down by a the ACTU and the breweries, effectively capitalism in deep recession, what is openly strikebreaking, wage-slashing round-the-clock picket line. Reinstate the killing it. Now Carlton has made "some needed is a fight for a sliding scale of program and was widely discredited sacked workers! Defeat Tooheys bosses' sort of offer" and Goddard is "optimiS­ hours without loss of pay, and that means among the workers. The sundry fake provocations! tic" the 8 December meeting will vote to a struggle against the capitalist system revolutionaries hope that cuddling up to return. itself - the very last thing the bureau­ the -"left" betrayers will bring them But the initial solidarity of the workers crats want! Victory to the brewery closer to the workers. It only brings them is now threatened by the union bureau-. The NSW brewery workers are facing a workers in NSW and Victoria! Fight for closer to the workers' reformist illusions. crats' manipulation of craft divisions. At hard bosses' united front. With the 30 hours work for 40 hours pay! Jobs for Trotskyists don't underestimate the a 3 December meeting of LTU members provocative Tooheys lockout, the bosses a11l. Continued on page eight Summer 1980/81 3 Melbourne Discussion Grollp conference Weekend 01 the living dead, Over the weekend of 22-23 November, > for themselves the anti-Soviet line of practice. Instead it's back to the drawing :1,. about 25 supporters of the Melbourne .:~~ ~ opposition to the Red Army incursion. boards, to another two years of "Sunday Discussion Group (MDG) and its Sydney 1 Forced into brief public existence over socialist" study groups, another two offsider, the Trotskyist Study Group Afghanistan, the Moo/TSG planned to years of "excruciating introspection" as (TSG) , gathered in Melboume for a set up a public organisation. Dubbed a "Problems of the Melbourne 00" had special conference. Episodically there "transitional organisation", the group put it. This time we suggest that top of appear on the left such centrist "anti­ was to have no program, just position the list be a study ofthe life of Saint Jude, Spartacist Leagues", generally semi­ papers on three (!) topics they had been patron saint of hopeless cases. If there clandestine discussion circles whose main discussing for two years - the ALP, was a "tendency to cliquism" before, it's criterion for membership is hatred of our industrial work and women~s liberation. clear that the MDG is "divided up into Trotskyist politics. Clique-ridden and Despite the stated position of prominent hardened, warring cliques" now. intemally divided, with neither prograni individuals on the Russian Question,. the nor perspective, these grouplets are group was to have no position on this key among the smallest, -most inconsequent­ issue. The conference even refused to From the centrist swamp ial and impotent of the "sects" they all have a discussion on the topic I to Trotskyism claim to despise. The group also pretentiously declared Where did the MDG/TSG come from? that "our collective endeavours are based At the conference, however, two In late 1975 there was the "Melboume on the recognition of the inadequacy of comrades - Angelo Rosas of the Sydney 'Revolutionary Marxists" (MRM) , led by the left sects", but could advance no TSG and Steven King of the Moo­ self-styled "Marxist economist" Bob analysis of what was wrong with these fought against this mish-mash of oppor­ Doming, a political grasshopper known "left sects" or why. Instead they insisted tunism and cliquism. The comrades as Ken Mansell and one John Ebel who that "practice" would solve all. But jointly . submitted a programmatic I~s to think of himself as a new Isaac Shooting his mouth off: Paul White without a revolutionary program the document "Against petty-bourgeois Deutscher (see Australasian Spartacist calls for Soviets out of Afghanistan practice of the group and its individual· eclecticism! For Trotskyism!" which they no 27, 20 December 1975). MRM soon at Melbourne rally. components could only be a continuation counterp~ed to the "What We Stand folded and died. Before the Mandelite For" draft. Their prior political experi­ Communist League (CL) dissolved into ences had brought them together on the the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), such basis of agreement with the Trotskyist anti-Spartaclst gadflies occasionally program: for Rosas, the defeat of the found a home there. But the CL's liqui­ Portuguese left in 1975 when he was a dation has left them, and any other member of the SWP, and the subsequent would-be centrists, without a home, betrayals of the fake left on Iran, frantically trying to discover a safe ' Afghanistan and Poland; for King, middle ground between the SL's Trotsky­ Afghanistan and the centrality of the ism and the reformism of the SWP. picket line question. They insisted that In 1978 Doming, Ebel and Mansell without a revolutionary program, the hooked up with elements· around Paul group could only blow apart. Their White and Frans Timmerman to form the document quoted from Cannon's StrUg­ Melboume Discussion Group (MDG). gle for a Proletarian Party to underline Timmerman had been a long-time honcho the point: in the SWP, while White was an oppor­ "Marxists always begin with the pro­ tunist gadfly who had been successively a gram. They rally supporters to the pro­ Maoist, a member of the Healyite Social­ gram and educate them in its meaning in ist Labour League, a CLer and then an . the process of the struggle. The political SWPer until he was ignominiously spat victories of the Marxists are always in the out of that group in 1978. Like the MRM, first place victories for their program .... the MDG was a rotten bloc of armchair "Petty-bourgeois politics is always a socialists who wrote endless turgid "Afghanistan: Hall Red Army!": Spartaclst contingent at Melbourne hodge-podge. It never attains to a fully documents about "practice", but none on "anti-war" rally, February 1980. developed and consistent program .... It fights at best for partial aims. and slurs the program the practice was to be based over contradictions within its ranks in on. that the 00 is divided up into warring, of what it's been to date - opportunistic, order to preserve a formal unity. Petty· Sure enough, the group eventually split hardened cliques..,.. simply that there's a lowest common denominator politics in bourgeois groupings struggle, not in the along clique lines with Doming, Ebel and tendency towards cliquism in the 00.)" essence similar to that of the SWP they name of great principles, but for organi­ Mansell exiting, leaving the MDG in the Imagining the problem to be the group's profess to oppose. sational objectives." hands of White and Timmerman. The petty-bourgeois composition, which What was left of the group's member­ . The MDG/TSG" clots conformed in group's new gurus loudly (and rightly) White & Co equate with programmatic ship was all geared up to go public. The every detail to Cannon's description of denounced Doming, Ebel and Mansell degeneration oil. the left, these petty­ group even had a name ("Socialist petty-bourgeois politics. When any (referred to as "DEM") as an "ob­ bourgeois workerists place their faith in Action"); a plan for a similarly named attempt was made to discuss the decisive noxious example of a fully-formed "an overwhelming proletarian member­ monthly paper; blueprints for a Steering questions facing the intemational pro­ clique", but not before imbibing from ship. : .. After all, its their movement. Committee and an Editorial Board; even letariat, the response of the group was them the mass of anti-Spartacist slander They're the ones with 'nothing to lose but the rules of order of the meetings it was inevitably purely organisational. For their chains'" (emphasis in original). For which "DEM" willingly peddled to planning to have every fortnight. A example, when the Melbourne Spartaclst Marxists the point is obvious: witIiout a anyone who could bear to listen. But the "What We Stand For" was drafted which League challenged White to a public revolutionary program as its foundation, "new" outfit was just as c1iquist as the began: "Socialist Action is a revolution­ debate on Poland, this coward brought any group will ine.,itably degenerate into old. . ary organisation formed in November the matter up under ... security! And A self-evaluation called "Problems of c1iquist/personalist stews. That was, is 1980". Because it was a "transitional even then he only felt confident enough to the Melbourne DG", made in October and always will be the fate of the MDGs organisation", the group was to be a read out selected passages of our letter to of this political world. 1980 by three members Paul [White], "temporary, transient formation" . his "comrades" present. (In contrast we Duggi and Richard, gives some idea of From nothing, through nothing, "Temporary and transient" proved to published our challenge and White's the functioning of these circles. The to nothing be much too generous - the group never reply in a bulletin which TSG/MDGers occasion for the self-analysis was an made it into public existence at all! At the avidly bought and, of course, photo­ MDG meeting on 20 September: The The Soviet incursion into Afghanistan conference a last minute lash-up between copied.) When Comrade Rosas began document describes what happened: flushed the MDG into the open, however. White and Fleming'sTSG suddenly advancing his critique of the whole " ... The men raised their voices, talked In Melbourne, Paul White· and Frans announced that the group's labours had MDG/TSG enterprise, White moved a over people and ignored the chair .... Timmerman tried unsuccessfully to set all been in vain. White's clique opponent motion asking the TSG "2. To ask A.RI if Simon and Paul were mentioned specifi­ up a "Stop the Carter/Frase~ War Drive" Frans Timmerman was outraged. He had he is a .member or Sympathiser of the cally in this connection. Both also pulled propaganda bloc which deliberately a point, but this was a case of two equally Spartacist League. 3. To give its' [sic] faces when they disagreed with an idea omitted the question of Soviet defencism. venal political pickpockets falling out. In opinion as to whether comrade A.R. is a being expressed. Simon should not have In Sydney, the Trotskyist Study Group the end it was White, not Timmerman, security risk." - (Minutes of Discussion interrupted Duggi continually, or told (TSG); set up on the MDG pattem in Lesley to 'shut up' , . . . . who had the numbers. So there is to be no Group, 9 November) Certainly the MDG September 1979 by ex-CLer Barbara "Speaking more generally, Lesleyobject­ "transitional organisation", no paper, no was and is an excessively paranoid little ed to some comrades who always want to Fleming and others, also made its public say 'I'm rightl I'm rightl'" debut over Afghanistan. But whereas After this introduction, the authors go on White called for Soviet troops to get out, to draw some conclusions: TSGers like Janet Burstall and Tony Sydney Summer Public Classes "Like other discussion circles formed in Brown claimed to stand with the Red Melbourne (eg MRM) our 00 [Discussion Army. But like White they sought to Saturday 13 December, 4pm Group] was not established on the basis of establish a rotten bloc for "anti-war" The Party Question: Rebuild the Fourth International clear politics. People were recruited on propaganda, the short-lived "Anti­ Speaker: Angelo Rosas, form.erly of the SWP/SYA, the Gay Solidarity the basis of personal association and past Imperialist Caucus". At the time we Group, and the Trotskyist Study Group, now a member of the . collaboration. Furthermore, the 00 has noted that Burstall and Brown's refusal to Spartacist Leag ue never been predominantly proletarian in forthrightly defend the Soviet incursion compOsition. . .. Our point is that the Saturday 20 December, 4pm situation we've described generates a and the USSR was part of an attempt to certain internal dynamic which is suicidal secure "unity with those who stood on The Russian Question is Key Speaker: Jeff McCarthy to ignore. the other side of the class line" (Austral­ All classes to be held at 2/112 Goulburn Street, Sydney 2000. "That internal dynamic is a tendency asian Spartacist no 72, April 1980). Since For more information ring (02) 264-8195 towards cliquism. (NB: We're not saying then the two have gone over and adopted

4. Austral~sl~n $partacist study circle whose members used even to three times would of course have to fighting on a non-programmatic basis" Butit was the final session on organ- deny that it existed. White's reply to our leave!) by reference to the "work" of MOO , isational perspectives which' graphically Poland challenge also claimed, "I do not members in the RefOfDl Group of the demonstrated the correctness of the run any grouplet". What this fetishis­ Despite the organisational barriers, Australian Clerical OffiCers' Association comrades' program for building a lenin­ ation of "security" amounts to is a though, Comrades Rosas and King (ACOA) and of TSGers in the Redfern ist party. Having been busy caucusing all suppression of any political discussion. defended the Trotskyist program. Their Mail Exchange in Sydney. At Redfern, he weekend, White, Fleming and Burstall dQCument covered positions on Leninism said, "at a time.;. when the left suddenly introduced an amendment The conference itself was conducted in and the Fourth International, the Russian bureaucrats in the APTU were unable or "that the Sydney' and Melbourne Groups similar petty-bourgeois bureaucratic Question, permanent revolution and the unwilling to defend their members remain Discussion 'Groups .... " In their fashion. When Rosas and King moved a popular front, as well as the topics - the against the union-busting Mail Network defence they then began parrotting the motion to discuss the Russian Question, ALP, trade-union work and women­ Plan, the rant and file groups had been very arguments earlier advanced by White denounced this as an "outrageous allowed on the agenda. Prior to that unable to do anything but whimper." At Rosas and King! Bursta11 announced, for organisational stunt"! Former AUS hack Comrade Rosas. had written a sepuate the session on women, the comrades example, that "this conference has Lesley Podesta chaired a session in dOcument on the Fourth International and upheld the basic Marxist pos~tion that proved that we really have no basis for hectoring schoolmistress fashion .and Comrade King one on Afghanistan and "the only way women will be liberated is agreement. All the documents were big announced she would "name names" of Poland. But above all they emphasised through socialist revolution, not through messes .... " White, sounding for all the people she thought were too noisy during the centrality of the party question and a 'women's revolution', or 'feminist world like a born again Christian who had the session - a chairing device taken the primacy of progrlrm. revolution"', in opposition to the ram­ just seen the light, chiqted in that "it is straight from AUS and the Speaker in On trade union work" for example, pant feminism of Timmerman and ludicrous to go into practice without a bou~geois parliaments. (Anyone named Comrade Rosas pointed out "the logic of Podesta . Continued ou page seven • Ex MDG/TSGers join Spartacist league From eclecticism to Trotskyism In the statements below, comrades appeared in Intercontinental Press, I was grating. So I helped set up a Socialist Oxford Street saying "This is where Angelo Rosas and Steven King explain overjoyed. This meant a fight .... Lesbians/Male 'Homosexuals group, homosexuals are. We've got to get into why they joined the Spartacist League. I remember that I did read SL articles based on the Lavender and Red Union of our mass work; unless we understand Rosas was a participant. in the Sydney on Portugal, but at that stage I still had the US. I hated the SWP by then because why people go to bars we'll never build a Trotskyist Study Group at its inception in this concept that anyone outside "the I hated their single issue, democratic socialist homosexual movement". And 1979, and King was a member of the Fourth International" (ie the USec) was rights persp~ctive.... This group [I'd then there was the whole punk thing. I'm Melbourne Discussion Group for more irrelevant really.' But I was sort of help set up) openly identified as socialists sure you'll all be pleased to know that I than a year. Following a weekend confer­ interested that the SL had similar pos­ in the gay liberation milieu and I thought took a side with consistent semi-socialist ence which resolved nothing, in which itions to the IMT; it didn't in fact, but in that was an advance. It combined people Johnny Rotten against the petty­ these two comrades alone fought for a my warped imagination it did sound like who were opposed to the CPA brand of bourgeois hedonist Sid Vicious. I'm not consistent Trotskyist program (see they were talking about soviets, so that refol'lllitim and the SWP brand of reform­ raising this to be trivial because this was "Weekend of the living dead", this the IMT couldn't have been all that bad ism. Or so I thought .... a point in the left at the time. Like, issue), they have both been excluded. because they were talking about soviets In retrospect, the SL interventions in Socialist Worker in Britain, the paper of from these groups on the basis of their too. that group had an effect on me. I can [Tony Cliff's) SWP was having entire supportfor the SL. Neither group has any I also got involve~ in the Australian remember one particular in'stance when spreads on punk and how this was, a mass political basis for these crude expulsions Union of Students (AUS). I rejected, at a Comrade N intervened on this big debate movement, this was a cultural movement other than cowardly and sectarian refusal gut level, the orientation of the SYA, that on psychoanalysis where everyone was of working class youth against to confront the views of the SL, ie auth­ students were workers and. that we treat being a big Lacanian. And she said, "Oh capitalism '.... entic Trotskyism. the~ the way we treat people in a factory. well, you ~ow Trotsky did have some­ What happened in the Gay Solidarity Comrade Rosas' statement is excerpt­ I did think Utat students were petty:' thing to say on psychoanalysis and he did Group (GSG) was important in smashing ed from his verbal presentation to the bourgeois intellectuals and therefore I say it is interesting that Freud is delving a111his. Here was the living example of Sydney SL, 30 November. was attracted to the milieu in AUS that into these things and it is something that , what happens to people once they are had a similar perspective. Although in. we would investigate in a socialist consistent political. bar queens. I was fact they did have the same views as society. But really it's not quite the point; impressed-by the work of the SL at this **** the SYA: they were building this big like it is the party question and we want point in the GSG. They were coming to . .. I am exhilarated to have finally industrial, ps~udo-industrial, "union", to make a revolution so we can abolish all meetings [saying) how you could mobilise found a place in the Trotskyist move­ AUS. . .. It was pretty eclectic.' In this shit" .. : . trade unions around the issue of defence ment. I'd like to outline my political retrospect it is interesting that the About this time the [pro-Mandel) of homosexuals. . . . - history briefly so that you can understand document that programmaticallv brou2ht Communist League (CL) was disintegrat­ I got elected as a delegate in my work­ how I got from being an absolute enemy me openly into the SL is called ing back into the SWP. My instinct was place, with five other people. We all got of the Spartacist League (SL) to being elected unopposed, on no program. I here. I joined the SYA (Socialist Youth thought that this was a bit ratshit, but Alliance) in 1974 and basically I radical­ under the circumstances this was where I ised around the issue of gay ·liberation worked and this was the best I could do. and feminism. At that stage what I was In other words, revolution by stages. You looking for was an umbrella organisation get people to trade-union consciousness, for all the oppressed groups and a nice then you get them to a consciousness of theory to coordinate it all and that nice what's wrong with trade unions and then theory was "Trotskyism", SWP~style, you get them to a higher consciousness watered-down "Trotskyism". and then, maybe, in 2000 years you get to Having been recruited at that level, it . pass them Ii copy of Permanent Revol­ didn't take me long to develop oppo­ ution or something .... sitional stances on the SWP insofar as I At this stage the Trotskyist Study wanted to be a consistent. feminist and a Group came up. What happened was that consistent gay Iiberationist.... Plus it Barbara Fleming came to visit Jenny and becomes really obvious empirically once I and s,aid, "There's this group in _ you've been in the SYA or SWP that it is a Melbourne starting up and we think it's a bureaucratic organisation, that it's not a really good idea; regroupment, regroup­ truly democratic-centralist organis­ ment and we hate everybody else, and ation .... we're going to get all these ex-CL people I became attracted to, being at Sydney in it and it'll be really wonderful". And I University at this point, the Left thought, oh well, if it's going to be a CL­ . Tendency of the Communist Party. I was type organisation, even though I had particularly interested in their trade inklings that the CL was centrist, it was union work because at that stage the better than nothing. And the party SWP was not interested in trade union Portugal 1975: SWP apologised for rightist mobi during sacking of CP offices. question, I thought the perspective was work at all. Their basic orientation was to towards building a new party. So we had campuses, to "the movements". This "Against Petty-Bourgeois Eclecticism! that if the CL had remained as an organis­ meeting after meeting after meeting. was where it was at and these were the For Trotskyism!" .... ation I would have joined them. I was And the note that I've got here is movement$ that we were to take the [After a period outside the group) I did totally opposed to their fusion witl) the "boring, boring, boring". And that's leada.ship of and lead into revolution .... get back into the SWP. But by that stage I SWP and I thought the [Proletarian exactly what it was like .... This eventually consolidated itself was. much more assimilated in the Left Democracy Tendency) was wrong in And here we are in the Spartacist towards the end of 1975 around the Tendency milieu of the CPA; I used to get capitulating to the SWP. I flirted with the League. I don't know what else I can say question of Portugal. I was not at all all these talks from Craig Johnston, the possibility of doing entry work. I had long apart from that. Except that although this impressed with the perspective of the ostensible Trotskyist, and Peter King, the talks with David Fagan about how this document [" Against Petty-Bourgeois [SWP-Ied) Leninist-Trotskyist Faction other ostensible Trotskyist in the Left [the SWP) was a centrist party, but Eclecticism! For Trotskyisml") has three (LTF) [in the United Secretariat), that Tendency. And, yes, it was a good idea if basically I stuck by the definition that I typographical errors that we could basically what we were fighting for iti I got involved in this, and then we could thought they were reformist. Entry work spot '" it makes basically the points I've Portugal was democratic rights, and that fight for -our "Trotskyist" perspective you could do was really limited. There summarised as we presented them to the maybe it was a bourgeois revolution and against the "syndicalists" in the Left was no question of, making this into a conference, given the limitations. And I that what we should do under the Tendency. revolutionary party .... don't know what else I can say except circumstances, given that there was no Anyway, as a result of that I eventually [After thatl I retreated into the petty­ forward to the hard-drinking, hard­ democracy .. was support the Socialist [quit) the SWP but I didn't get involved in bourgeois milieu and at this stage went smoking Australian section of the reborn Party. I couldn't really buy this and when trade unions because at that point the through every possible stage you could Fourth International. the Mandel-Maitan-Frank document "In trade union [orientation) and the Left imagine. I became one of the many - Angelo Rosas Defence of the Portuguese Revolution" Tendency itself was· slowly disinte- Pabloite bar queens running up and down . Continued on page eleven Summer 1980/81 & Continued from page one mass media, which they didn't even demand for themselves, based on a socialist program and would and which certainly never under any circumstances flouts the elementary democratic recognise the "leading role" of the Aworkers Poland, yes 1 demand of separation of church and state. Stalinists. But Lech Walesa objects to it not from the standpoint of revolutionary The clerical-apologist, "human rights" socialism or even of primitive trade-union SWP and its Australian namesake syndicalism (as many -anti-Soviet leftists The Pope's .Poland, no I· vociferously defend this measure. At a in the West falsely claim). Rather, he is forum in New York on 30 August, US expressing his clerical-nationalist al- SWP spokesman Fred Feldman not only legiances. . termed it progressive, but declared he'd Another crisis erupted when Stalinist even like to see a "daily Wyszynski Hour security police searched Solidarity on television"l- This same Wyszynski offices, discovered a government docu­ organised at the height of the August ment on "anti-socialist activities", and strikes, a mass (actually a political arr~sted two Solidarity activists respon­ demonstration) of 150,000 commemorat­ sible for leaking it.· Solidarity leaders ing the defeat of the Bolshevik Red Army again threatened. a general strike, in 1920 at the hands of the right-wing demanding not only the release of these Polish nationalist (and later fascistic two but four other dissidents under arrest dtctator) Pilsudski. as . well, including right-wing activist Appealing to "pure" classless demo­ Leszek Moczulski. Amidst charges by cracy, the Militant preaches: "In Poland Moscow that a Polish rail stoppage on it is neIther liberating nor realistic to Warsaw Pact supply routes to East. deny the right of the Catholic majority to Germany would pose a military danger, hear the views of the church". What if the government backed down once more the Polish Catholic majority wants to re­ at the last minute and released the two place the Stalinist regime with a clerical- _ charged with revealing /tne "state nationalist government blessed by Pope secrets". . Wojtyla? Does the SWP think it is In the 1956 Hungarian Revolution the "neither liberating nor realistic" to deny secret police, the most, depraved and a Polish Catholic majority the "right" of notorious section of' the bureaucracy, capitalist counterrevolution? What about were so hated they were on occasion ,the dictatorship 'of the proletariat? In cornered by furious crowds and beaten to repudiating it, the SWP social democrats death. Thus the indignation over the join hands with the "free world" imperi­ document, which to judge by the version alists like Zbigniew Brzezinski. Poles greet Red Army solellers In 1945. Stalinist Russia carried out a published in the London Times (27 The PUWP tops have taken to. de­ bureaucratlcally-deformed social revolution. November) -is a political police memo on nouncing Jacek Kuron and KOR in how to suppress dissidents. Trotskyists particular as the "anti-socialist ele­ would have stood unambiguously for the the sweeping violations of national and abolished). Probably no one in Poland ments" behind Solidarity. But Kania defence of those who leaked this docu­ human rights" (Militant, 19 September). knows what the workers are doing knows where the really serious and ment, and one essential task of workers But at the time in the late 1940s when the politically and organisationally in most dangerous anti-socialist elements are - political revolution would be to abolish Stalinists were jailing and staging show areas. Some Western press reports have and is desperately trying to conciliate the Stalinist security police whose trials of Catholic prelates - Stepinac in it that the Solidarity leaders aim to them. bi a deal specifically approved by principal function is to defend the privi­ Yugoslavia, . Mindszendty in Hungary.l­ exclude PUWP members, or at least bar the pope in the Vatican, a prominent leges of the bureaucracy through terror Wyszynski in Poland - the Fourth them from officership - what amounts Catholic spokesman and member of the against the working class. However we International of the then-Trotskyist SWP to an "anti-red" clause. If true (and the Catholic ZNAK parliamentary group, are just as unambiguous in opposing the answered the renegade Max Shachtman, bourgeois press might falsify this point), Jerzy Ozdowski, was appointed a Deputy defence of genuine pro-capitalist, anti­ who sided with these reactionaries . Solidarity would be constitutionally a Prime Minister - for family and social~ socialist elements such as Leszek against the Stalinists; in the revolutionary clericalist, anti-Communist union. 'But affairs (Sydney Morning Herald, 4 Moczulski. spirit of the Polish communist Felix w.hlle many things are confused and December) I What a slap in the face for Even the Sydney Morning Herald (27 Dzerzhinsky who led the Bolshevik uncertain about the Solidarity unions, the Polish women, whom this church wants to November) described Moczulski 'as a Cheka: " strong influence of.the Catholic church is see kept barefoot and pregnant with no "Right-wing dissident". This man, who "WE COUNTERPOSE TO THE POLICE one thing that is not. ' abortions or contraception. Contrary to was a member of the Moczar faction of TERROR AND PROVOCATIONS OF THE The first time Walesa left Gdansk after those on the left like the SWP and Bob the PUWP at the time it ran the 1968 anti­ STALINISTS THE REVOLUTIONARY the initial settlement, it was for a private Gould of the Socialist Leadership Group semitic purges, is the leader of the KPN TERROR OF THE MASSES as a thousand audience with Wyszynski in Warsaw. On (SLG) who maintain ludicrously that the (the Confederation of Independent times more effective method of fighting 20 October the cardinal met a whole church in Poland. has been rendered Poland), whose stated goal is to "'end fascism .... Not for a moment, however, delegation of 20 Solidarity leaders, told fundamentally pro-Stalinist, no amount of do we undertake the defense of our main Soviet domination by liquidating the enemy, the Polish bourgeoisie and all its them "I am with you" and pronounced such scandalous conciliation will change power of the Polish United Workers political lackeys." (emphasis in original) Solidarity's aims "good ... for' the the counterrevolutionary aims of the Party". KPN is a clerical-reactionary - Fourth International. February 1947 - Motherland". The head of the Warsaw Polish pope and his priests, nor eliminate split-off from ROPCIO, the Movement for unions welcomed this "enormous moral their social base in Poland's numerous the Defence of Human Rights, itself the Walesa's claims to a membership of up backing for us" (Australian, 21 October). landholdiRg peasantry. . product of a rightward split from the KOR to 10 million (out of a workforce, of 13 Right after the deal on the "leading role" Both the SWP and Gould also see a (Committee for Social Self-Defence) of million) may be exaggerated, but clause, Walesa was back to embrace the kindred spirit in Kuron, whom they both the social-democratic dissident Jacek Solidarity clearly has widespread sup­ cardinal again, who had himself just try to make out as some sort of Trotskyist; Kuron. port. Nonetheless many -workers are returned from a visit to Pope Wojtyla in Gould enthuses in the SLG's Keep Left Today the US Socialist Workers Party doubtless paper members of both the new Rome. And politically, one of the first (October 1980) that Kuron & Co's "re­ (SWP) claims that the jailing of Cardinal Solidarity unions and the old official ones 'demands of the Gdansk strikers to be emergence as major leaders [1] ••• Wyszynski until 1956 by the Stalinist, (though the totally discredited, Central granted was a reactionary one - for bodes well for the necessary construction regime "was a symbol for many Poles of Trade Union COuncil has now been privileged church access to the state-run of an alternative socialist leadership in Polish dissidents call·. for capitalist restoration Virtually without exception the left •• . .. Better to live in an open prison than ' around Cardinal Wyszynski and the Cath­ have set out on a road on which there is no internationally has hailed the leadership in the Gulag." • olic establishment, second, those around turning back .... " of Poland's Solidarity movement and its - student organiser for -Solidarity, quoted Karol Malcuzynski, a leading liberal - KOR leader Jacek Kuron, article dissident advisers as bona fide soclalist in the GuGrdilln Weekly, 9 NOvember journalist who works on the official Com­ translated in Intercontinental Press, opponents of the Stalinist bureaucracy. Iti As for the Russians, the same "dissident munistpaper Trybuna Ludu and, third, 17 November the Kuron group of dissident intellec­ contrast, the international Spartacist inteIlectual" ~ys: tendency has insisted that "The present tuals .... "We hate them. No, we hate the ,Soviet crop of Polish dissidents are overwhelm­ Union. We like the Russian people and "Yet Walesa claims that he is not a poli­ W'RNERS ',NfJlI,RI ingly enemies of the cause of proletarian Russian.culture .... But there is a sort of tician. 'I am a union man and not a social­ ist. My religion helps now - it has Religion and Reaction socialism" ("All the Pope's dissidents", schizophrenia. We feel superior. More Australasian Spartacist no 77, September helped all my life. A man without religion Pope WoJtyla "progressive"? European. More Western. More Demo­ Khomelnl "revolutionary"? A two-part 1980). Emboldened by Solidarity's recent is a dangerous man and without my re­ cratic." ligionJ would be a dangerous man. 1 go to special feature In defence of the basic successes, the dissidents are now more church every day of my life and on Marxist understanding that religion Is openly proclaiming their real program. • • • • • specially difficult days I pray· the 'Queen reactionary. In Workers Vanguard We reprint below some recent comments of Poland (the Virgin Mary) help us'. nos 268 and 269 by leading dissidents - some of whom "In general it seems to me that the Cath­ olic Church over the past thirty years has Singlel•• ue.: 25 cents each call themselves "socialists" - to let our "Talking about the form of society displayed so much wisdom, common he wants, Walesa agrees with Order from/make cheques readers jJldge for themselves what they sense and realism, that we are fully en­ 'Solzhenitsyn's criticisms of the West as payable to: really stand for. titled to trust it. I'm absolutely convinced well as of Russia .. _, '" 'Spartaclst League that the Church will never do anything - GuGrdilln Weekly, 16 November GPO Box 3473, Sydney, NSW, 2001 • • !I' • • that might prove harmful to the interests of the nation." Subscription.: $3 surface, $20 air • • • • • (one year - 24 Issues) "I suppose people have different views - KOR leader Jan Litynski, interview in but very few of us could be called social­ theNew York Review ofBooks , 9 October "Parliamentary democracy and indepen­ Order from / make cheques ists at all. We would even welcome multi­ dence represent the aspirations of Poles. payable to: nationals and big combines. In theory we • • • • • We cannot pose such demands today as Spartaclst Publishing Co would not mind having capitalism back immediate goals, However, we do pose Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY - not on the American pattern but like "Asked to list the intellectual advisers to them as long-range objectives toward 10001, USA Sweden or Denmark. Solidarity, Walesa cites first, people which all our activities are directed. We 6 Australasian Spartaclst Poland". What rubbish! Kuron's calls for porn aad sex for which he has been to stabilise Poland by economically "human rights". "parliamentary demo­ crucified as an affront to the puritanism subsidising a country in which the living dead ••• cracy" and "pluralism" make this Polish of Catholic Poland (Wojtyla even says it's standard of living is far higher than in version of a Eurocommunist program­ a sin for a man to "lust" for liis wife!). It their own. Brezhnev is for the time being Continued from page five matically committed to building bour­ is . rather his financial affairs which willing. to continue paying. as long as it geois democracy in Poland - a program concern us Marxists. including shares in bears fruit, to judge by the recent de­ of fruitless discussion [showed] that it for capitalist restoration. Kuron and other Austrian colllpanies and 51 million' in a cision to extend 5957 million in aid to the was [pointless] to form a transitional KOR leaders have made it perfectly clear London bank. Szczepanski is a live Polish government. The alternative. for organisation .... Dead right, White, but where they stand: in the camp of specimen of capitalist-restorationist the Kremlin. is!o resort to force. what about the two years you spent Wyszynski and "democratic" imperial­ tendencies within the demoralised Polish The Kremlin is. talking. as if it rilight, helping think up this caricature of ism (see accompanying article). They are bureaucracy . indeed. intervene with tanks as they did Leninism? the enemies of the Polish proletariat and Amidst the growirlg frenzy of party / in Czechoslovakia in 1968. The Kremlin In opposition to this cynical cliquist are certainly not capable of defending the state shake-ups. one change has been justified its crushing of the 1968 Prague manoeuvring Comrade King took the socialist property forms - only of especially ominous: the re-emergence Spring by claiming it was really the floor to advance the program that none of misleading the workers at a crucial and now elevation onto the 10-member beginning of. a fascistic. pro-imperialist the warring factions dared talk about - juncture .. But then the same applies both Politburo of General Mieczyslaw Moczar. counterrevolution. This lie was not just a the program of Trotskyism. After reading to the SWP and to Gould. who ends his an extreme nationalist who ran the diplomatic cover - it was directed above the international Spartacist tendency's article with a third-campist - ie in­ vicious anti-Semitic campaign in 1968 all at winning the Soviet people to this nine points for revolutionary regroup­ herently non-defencist - call for not (and who declares Solidarity a "healthy military intervention. When Soviet ment (reprinted in the comrades' docu­ political but "Socialists [sic] Revolution movement" from which "adventurist soldiers actually occupied Prague, many ment), he summed up: against the Stalinist bureaucracy" . elements wili be removed"). Trotsky had . were visibly shaken by the protests of "We have a perspective for regroupment. Church influence is so visible that types like Moczar in mind when he said a Communist workers and left-wing We're the only ones who have a perspec­ students. "We were told we were being tive of building a revolutionary party. This sent to combat a' counterrevolution. but is the only way you can do it [based] on a when we came here we didn't see any". program." confessed a Soviet colonel (New York But none of the opposing cliques could Times, 23 August 1968). take up the challenge. Timmerman was still clinging to his anti-Leninist "tran­ The Prague Spring was made under the sitional organisation" idea. whereas all banner of a liberalised Stalinism. But in that Burstall/Fleming/White proposed Poland the discontent and rebelliousness was a retreat to anti-Leninist study circle of the working masses has been tapped politics. there to mull over whether or not by clerical-nationalist forces. The democratic-centralism is in fact correct. counterrevolution which did not exist in Then, as if to prove that there is nothing Czechoslovakia in 1968 could develop out fundamental dividing any of these Gdansk shipyard of Poland 1980. But as revolutionaries we workers rally: lib­ inveterate opportunists. they all joined do not consign the Polish working class to hands to chummily elect a study eration of Polish the camp of clerical national reaction. As group "steering committee·...... with workers lies In we wrote in "Polish workers move". the Timmerman nominating White for a Leninism, not clerical­ present crisis. especially the existence of nationalist reaction. A position on it and White ever-so-kindly independent working-class organisations. returning the favour by nominating Trotskyist party In also .contains the potential for proletarian Poland would raise Frans. Truly, as thick as thieves. At the political revolution. It is this outcome end MDGer Simon Marginson was l~ft demands to split the which we as Trotskyists strive for. clerical-nationalist trying to put a brave face on it: "Well, As Afghanistan showed. the Kremlin you know, there's no need to be pessi­ forces from among bureaucrats are capable of sending in the the workers, demands mistic. We've been through all this Red Army on the side of the oppressed before. It'strue we have'nt got anywhere such as separation of against their counterrevolutionary class church and ,tate. but we've learned how not to do it". Not enemies in a civil war. As Krushchev so; if ever a group deserves to be pessi­ showed in Hungary in 1956, they are also mistic and despairing it is this one. mortal enemies of workers political For serious leftists in the TSG/MDG revolution which strikes at the foundation there is a road forward, though. the road .Walesa felt the need to deny he was over to fascism. Some elements in the of their own privileges and usurped taken by Angelo Rosas and Steve King. organising a union for Catholics only; "I . bureaucracy may be hoping that this power .and which they are prepared to Only by coming to terms with the revol­ don't want to create church trade unions" Stalinist would-be Pilsudski can effect­ drown in blood. As we have said. Poland utionary program, history and proven (Wall Street Joumal. 22 September). ively compete with Wyszynski/Walesa as at this juncture stands somewhere record of the Spartacist League - from That he did so indicates that there are a nationalist. If so. they are playing a between Afghanistan 1980 and Hungary Chile to Iran. Afghanistan and Poland - many Polish workers who want a union dangerous game indeed. 1956. will they be able to contribute to the task independent of the ruling Stalinist With the factional/cliquist infighting The Soviet people know full well the of overthrowing capitalist class rule bureaucracy. but ODe that is not the paralysing the bureaucracy's effective­ mortal danger represented by the US/ internationally. As Comrade Rosas put it labour arm of the church hierarchy either. ness. the pressure of the present mass NATO imperialist phalanx aimed at the in his intervention on the "Leninism" The Silesian miners. for example. social struggles U. Poland is also breaking gains of the October Revolution. In session at the conference: traditionally a solid proletarian base for down its repressive c~pacity. How will following clerical-nationalists like "There has been one successful workers Polish Communism. are unlikely to want the Polish army respond if it is ordered to Walesa. Polish workers not only serve revolution in this world and that was the a union which kneels down before suppress mass workers~ strikes? And their class enemies in Poland but aid the one led by Lenin and Trotsky in 1917. We . cardinal and pope. even in the army the church has its Kremlin in rallying the Soviet people place ourselves in that tradition and that is why we call ourselves Leninists. We don't agents, in the form of Catholic chaplains. against thc!m. Polish workers cannot hope thinltthat the Leninist party is purely a But so long as clerical-nationalists like The fact that their Warsaw counterparts to appeal to Soviet soldiers unless they Walesa lead the new unions. they stand nice conception; we see it as the only way appear to have lost control over PolisJt assure them that they will defend that that capitalism can be overthrown. There­ in imminent danger of subordinatio~ to society is . what makes Brezhnev, part of the world against imperialist fore we stand on the basis of a democratic­ the counterrevolutionary aims of the Honecker & Co panicky. attack. Only by addressing their Soviet centralist Leninist party organised around Catholic hierarchy and behind it Western The Polish Stalinists try to cow their class brothers in the name of revolution­ a program .... imperialism. As we wrote at the time of masses with the spectre of the Soviet ary socialist internationalism can the And today it is not the MDG or TSG but the Gdansk settlement: army, while Western social democrats Polish proletariat liberate itself from the Spartacist League which represents "A central task fot a Trotskyist organiz­ (especially the "state capitalist" fringe Stalinist oppression. A Trotskyist party as Len~ism in Australia. • ation in Poland would be to raise in these groups, including the International a section of a reborn Fourth International. unions a series of demands that will split Socialists) rant about Soviet "imperialist forged in the struggle against the Polish the clerical-nationalist forces from among workers' misleaders - that is what this the workers and separate them out. These exploitation" of East Europe. In reality. urgent task requires above all .• unions must defend the socialized means in the past decade the Kremlin has tried OUT SOON I of production and proletarian state power against Western imperialism." (emphasis Revolutionary Communist in original) Bulletin no 9 - "Polish workers move", Australasia" Protest All lies! Spartllcistno 77, September 1980 In the 26 November Melbourne Age. working-class revolutionaries. But for "From Eclecticism The Polish Stalinist bureaucracy has the regular "News Diary" feature edited sheer unscrupulous viciousness this total to Trotskyism" run out of leaders whom the mas~s by one Peter Weiniger produced a snide fabrication takes some beating. It lifts respect and believe to be sincere reform­ little piece of redbaiting. Purporting to from our last issue the front-page. main Includes: headline dealing with the recent wave of ers. Unlike Gierek. Stanislaw Kania is an give a rundown of the "dialectic contor­ • The Russian question: Poland. anonymous apparatchik if there ever was tions among our' local communist par­ fascist bombings in Italy, France and Afghanistan apd the left - an one. whose former job as head of internal ties" in the face of the Polish events. he Germany (ie Westem' Europe. exchange with Paul White security is unlikely to endear him to cites an "informant" (who is he?) who Weiniger) --"Hitler's heirs: Fascist • .. Agal nst petty-bourgeois Poland's workers. Several waves of allegedly attended a.' 'recent seminar" terror explodes in Europe"; but it adds eclecticism - for Trotskyism" purges reflect the crisis gripping the of the Communist Party of Australia the word "East". and "concludes" that and other documents by Angelo party. "The apparat is frightened. The (CPA). After a few condescending words we denounce the "right to strike" and 'Rosas and Steve King from their rank and file are under tremendous for the CPA. Weiniger gets to his real the Polish workers! Weiniger made not struggle within the Melbourne the slightest attempt to check the facts; Discussion Group and the Sydney pressure. And the leadership is turning target. We quote: Trotskyist Study Group on itself in typical cannibalistic fashion" • •'Not all the ultra-left takes such a tolerant either he knew it was an outrageous one "well-connected" Polish writer told a view of the right to strike. The tiny Sparta­ slander. if indeed he didn't concOct it Price: $1.50 reporter from the New York Times (8 cist faction in its news-sheet condemned himself, or he simply couldn't care less. September). . the strikers as 'Hitler's heirs' and de­ One thing is clear: the aim was to use a Order from/make cheques scribed their actions as 'fascist terror ex­ sordid amalgam to discredit Trotskyism. payable to: An early victim of the attempt to clean ploded in East Europe' ." The "liberal" Age has refused even to Spartaclst League up the party's image was one Maciej GPO Box 3473 . Wemiger's lie is frankly breathtaking. print a letter refuting the lies. So much Sydney NSW 2001 Szczepanski. a "socialist" media czar .As Marxists we expect the bourgeois for the "objective" pretensions of the who enjoyed ten lavish residences, one press to twist and distort the truth of the respectable Spencer Street liars and GPO Box 2339 off the coast of Greece. and a taste for class struggle and the program of censors! Melbourne VIC 3001 wing of the Stalinist bureaucracy could go Summer 1980/81 7 -'

A spectre is haunting the SPA ••• Forty years after Stalin murdered against it .. According to him, the prin­ Anyone familiar with the SWP's craven covered the particular perniciousness of Trotsky, the pro-Moscow Stalinists are cipled proletarian internationalist pos­ electoralism, its support of the "right" of this piece of Bolshevism. Before that the still trying to exorcise the spectre of ition of openly welcoming and defending fascists to free speech, its naus­ Bolshevik Central Committee actually Trotskyism. In a piece entitled "Trotsky­ the Red Army incursion benefits not the eating apologies for the worst features of did export revolution - successfully to ism: the right-wing of the left" (Socialist, working class but ... imperialism! the butcher Khomeini's Iran, will be Georgia and Outer Mongolia in 1921. In 3 December), Socialist Party of Australia You see, the Soviet intervention was surprised to hear it described as "left", 1920' they failed in their attempt to (SPA) leader Alan Miller tries to show carried out according to the n9rms .of however. In truth, its social-democratic conquer Warsaw; had they done so and that Trotskyism is really a "right-wing bourgeois diplomacy: it was merely refomusm has' qualitatively more in thus forged a direct link between the position [cover~d] with a left veneer". "aid", provided for under treaty obli­ common with the SPA's Stalinist reform- German proletariat and Soviet Russia, His real target, though, is the Trotskyist gations, to the "Mghan revolution"; . ism than it has with Trotskyism. the future of the world would have been. program of international socialist revol­ it conformed to the charter of that The SWP's initial line on Mghanistan very different. As is well known, Trotsky thieves' kitchen, the United Nations; ution, a program the Stalinists have long was unexpectedly left-sounding, more so opposed the Pqlish invasion on tactical since rejected in favour of "peacefully apparently, it even assisted "peaceful co­ than any other party in the fake­ grounds. Ironically, he was later de­ coexisting" with imperialism and the existence". Trotskyist "United Secretariat" (uSec). nounced for this in Pepov's notorious class enemy. What nonsense! Soviet intervention in But like the SPA it justified its position by Official History of the Comm~ist Party Mghanistan came at a time when the reference to the mythical "Mghan oj the Soviet Union on the grounds that The core of Miller's article is a polemic "his social-democratic prejudices made· against an undifferentiated "Trotskyist" PDPA regime was losing to the mullah­ Revolution". The SWP's US mentors led reactionaries. Fearing the establish­ flatly declared that "the issue is him averse to the idea of imposing 'revol­ position on Mghanistan. When the Soviet ution from without' on any country" troops intervened in Mghanistan last ment of a hostile anti-Soviet state on its not Soviet intervention .... " (Militant, southeOl flank' the Kremlin decided to 18 January). The reason for this absurd (quoted in Erich Wollenberg, The Red Christmas, the international Spartacist Army)! So which is it to be, comrades? tendency (iSt) raised the slogan "Hail move and overnight piled in "aid" at the denial of reality is simple: to avoid, at rate of one plane load every two minutes. any cost, upholding the Trotskyist pro­ All this scarcely matters to Miller who Red Army!" in recognition of the fact doesn't want revolution at home, let that, for once, the Kremlin liad inter­ Was that sanctioned by a UN charter, gram of defending the USSR. Since then Comrade Miller? As for "peaceful co­ the SWP has pulled back from this initial alone "exporting" it anywhere else. His vened on the right side in a civil war. article refers to Spain in the 1930s, We said: existence", any five year old could tell "left" tilt. Given their social-democratic the SPA that detente is now deader than aspirations we wouldn't be too surprised France 1968 and Chile as illustrations of Trotskyist "There can be no question that for the dodo and what characterises world if they ultimately decided that in retr0- attempts to bring "the death revolutionaries our side in this con~ politics today is a fast-escalating anti­ spect they were really wrong about of the revolution", What gall! It ~as the flict is with the Red Army. In fact, Soviet Cold War drive. The duty of supporting, however lukewarmly, the Stalinists who paved the way for Franco although it is surely uncalled for proletarian internationalists is to say Soviet intervention. by smashing ~e Barcelona uprising of militarily, a natural response on the openly and unambiguously: Defend the May 1937; it was the French CP which part of the world's young leftists Soviet Union! But that is something Miller's polemic makes a more general sold out the May-June strik~ wave by would be an enthusiastic desire which the allegedly pro-Soviet SPA will charge that Trotskyism stands for the_ channeling it into the deadend of bour­ to join an international brigade to not apd cannot do, for fear of driving "export of revolution". True enough; geois parliamentary elections; it was Mghanistan to fight the CIA-connec­ away those bourgeois liberals it is Trotskyists do believe in principle that it Corvalan's CP which refused to arm the ted mullahs." constantly trying' to inveigle into its is possible and sometimes desirable to Chilean masses when Pinochet struck in "peace movement" . "export revolution". But then so did September 1973. The Stalinists are the -Workers Vanguard no 247, ones who tied the working class to the 11 January 1980_ every Bolshevik leader during Lenin's Miller does mention one ostensible lifetime; it wasn't until after Stalin popular-front death march with the bour­ Miller doesn't mention the iSt position rrotskyist group by name in the article, announced his dogma of "Socialism in geoisie. They have the workers' blood on by name, but his fire is in effect aimed the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). One Country" in late. 1924 that he dis- their hands! It was the Trotskyists every time who warned against these Stalinist betrayal$. We, not they (and not the USec) , were the ones who warned the Chilean proletariat three years before the, military coup against a bloody repeat of Constituency parties have long been a movement over' our representatives in the popular-front disaster: "Any 'critical BlP••• sandpit for fake-left oppositions to' play Parliament and therefore, if Labour has a support' to' the Allende coalition is in. And a significant component of the majority, control over Parliament." After class treason, paving the way for a bloody Contlnued from page three "left" today consists of petty-bourgeois a previous revisionist redefinition of a defeat for the Chilean working people radicals moving right, including a gaggle .workers government (ie the dictatorship when domestic reaction, abetted by inter­ of self-styled Trotskyists who only of the proletariat) as a Labour' govern­ national imperialism is ready" (Sparta­ depth of such illusions, which require mislead any radicalising workers they ment possibly "resting on a parlia­ cist no 19, November-December 1970). flexible tactics to be destroyed, including chance upon into footslogging and mentary majority", this all adds up to the Miller also quotes Lenin on Trotsky to when appropriate critical support and canvassing for left reformism. reformist "peaceful road to socialism". buttress his anti-Trotskyist attack: O'Mahoney called Blackpool "half a entry. But first there has to be the Of course genuine Trotskyists would "[Trotsky] twists, swindles, poses as a revolutionary program and the will to revolution: the opening half" (pre­ Left, helps the Right, so long as he seek to work in the constituency parties, sumably like the Russian Revolution-.,;. ._ destroy reformism. but the Labour Party's real strength lies can ...." He omits to niention that this sans soviets .and Bolsheviks - since was written before Trotsky was a In contrast the IMG has become a in the unions. There the bureaucrats Socialist Organiser's headline "Five days virtual press agency for Benn. Benn of must be challenged by a class-struggle Bolshevik; as Leninists, we naturally that shook the Labour Party" alludes to solidarise with Lenin's trenchant criti­ course knows their measure, openly program, an essential part of a strategy to the title of John Reed's account). welcoming' 'those socialists who have got split Labour. But fake lefts like the WSL cisms of Trotsky's, pre-Bolshevik can only counterpose to. the scabbing, • The Australian left's reaction to the conciliationism. But we also solidarise isolated in sectarian loneliness" back to decisions of the Blackpool conference was Labour's bosom. To what end? Even the Labourite policies ofthe bureaucracy ... with Lenin's evaluation of Trotsky after their own scabbing; Labourite policies. similar to the British, if more muted. the latter organised and successfully IMG admits "the last thing Benn wants is KeepLeft, paper of Bob Gould's Socialist a revolution". Precisely: the last thing led the October 1917 insurrection: Leadership Group (SLG) hailed the "Trotsky long ago said that unification Benn wants is a revolution. He talks now "resounding victory" of the Bennite left, of troop withdrawal from Ireland because Centrists and Bennery [with the Mensheviks] is impossible. contrasting this to the failure of the ALP Trotsky understood this, and from that "violence could spread to England" and to adopt "comprehensive socialist thinks loss of British power to the EEC History is littered with the forgotten time on there has been no better· initials of "revolutionary" groups who policies like the ones just adopted in Bolshevik" (Minutes of the Pettograd could light "the long fuse of revolution". Britain". The "full programme of His "little England" social-patriotic first adapted to social democracy, then Committee of the Bolsheviks, joined it. The fate of the Militant and socialist policies" which the Gouldites 14 November 1917; quoted in Trotsky, schemes and illusions JU"e explicitly are labouring to convert the ALP to thus designed to stop that fuse being lit. But Chartist grout»s awaits those who hail The Stalin School of Falsification). Blackpool. The right-centrist WSL is en turns out to be no more than left­ Miller's selective use of Lenin is the IMG offers advice on how to sell posturing social democracy. Th. SLG is himself to the workers: walk a few picket route, but the Workers Action tendency designed to prove that Trotskyism is seems to have arrived. Nearly forgotten both firmly embedded in the ALP's "like political quicksilver. You try to pin lines, which he will do when he needs to, particular "White Australia'! tradition are the initials of its parent group, .the it down to a clear and precise political just as on the Clyde in 1972. The social and politically closely akin to the bizarre democrats' capacity to head off workers International-Communist League (though program and it shifts its position". Like Healyite Socialist Labour League (which the rest of Miller's polemic, this too is a struggles is what makes them useful to Melbourne centrist elements such as Paul takes its cue from Libyan dictator the bourgeoisie. White struggle to keep their memory lie. Trotskyism today is the continuity of Qaddafi). But it also exhibits all the Bolshevism. As the Transitional Program alive). Two years after spawning the parliamentary reformism and eternal For example in the 1930s the Spanish Socialist Campaign for a Labour Victory of the Fourth International put it, "Our Socialist Party came out for the dictator­ Labour-Ioyalism endemic to the British task - the abolition of capitalism. Our (SCLV) as a "short-term" electoral tactic, fake-Trotskyists. ship of the proletariat. The French this tendency . has relegated its own aim - socialism. Our method - prolet­ Socialist Party had a large left-centrist paper, Workers Action, to the status of a To such house "Trotskyists" of social arian revolution". Stalinism stands wing and Trotsky advised a short-term monthly "theoretical journal" in order to democracy, it bears repeating: a workers opposed to all this. Its task - the pres­ entry to win these leftward-moving make the SCLV's reformist Socialist government will be established only ervation of the world imperialist status workers to revolutionary politics, the Organiser their fortnightly tool of through a revolutionary onslaught quo; its aim - the safeguarding of the' "French turn". Today there is no sub­ "intervention". In turn, the SCLV is part against the bourgeois state, Westminster privileges of the bureaucra~es of the stantial leftist programmatic content to­ ofa larger pro-Benn bloc - the Rank and and all. ThiBritish Labour Party, like the deformed and degenerated workers the Bennite ' 'left" , reflecting the File Mobilising Committee for Labour ALP, has demonstrated for decades the 'states; its method - "peaceful co­ absence as yet of such a leftward Democracy. banttruptcy of its claims to stand for the existence" and the strangling of prolet­ movement in Labour's proletarian base. interests of the working class. What is arian revolution. Between the Stalinism While the WSL found it "conspicuous But more centrally Workers Action has needed is a revolutionary party to tighten of an Alan Miller and the Trotskyism of that it was among the constituency now embraced explicitly reformist the noose around its neck and break the the Spartacist League there can be no delegations - most closely linked to the positions on the state. Leader John workers once and for all from this ground for political compromise. A re­ rank and file of the labour movement - O'Mahoney claims in his analysis of obstacle to their emancipation. forged Fourth International, world party that this new militant political cuqent· Blackpool (Socialist Organiser, 11 of socialist revolution, will be built only in found most support" (Socialist Press, October): "Direct channels are being - adapted from Spartaclst Britain no 27, opposition to this program of class 15 October), this is actually the nonn. opened for the control by the labour November 1980 treachery.. ' • 8 Australasian Spartaclst -:

'yet this was the Wran government which Engels had his number just the week before having whitewashed "prison officers' brutality and sadism . . . then .sent his riot squad to break up the prisoners' peaceful protest". The speaker contrasted the preoccupation Gould's HClusing Crisis farce with "these penny-ante little, petty, liberal reforms and reformism" to the In his 1872 polemic, The Housing, Australian section of the International "key question today" for Marxists­ Question, Friedrich Engels remarked that Committee (IC) of Gerry Healy and Mike "defence of the Soviet Union and the " . . . this housing shortage gets talked of Banda. Long notorious for their political October Revolution". banditry and shameless cynicism, the IC only because it is not confined to the One speake~ on, Gould took the floor working class but has affected the petty in recent years has functioned simply as himself and said "I won't bother re­ bourgeoisie as well". 108 years later apologists and press agents for the sponding to our... Spartacist friend, housing as a special question is still a Islamic bonapartist. dictator, Colonel with all the slander and bullshit", then hobby-horse of an odd collection of petty­ Qaddafi, a role which has taken them out­ launched into a ten-minute tirade pre­ bourgeois socialists, presently organised side the ranks of the workers movement. cisely and only to "answer" the SL's by Bob Gould's Socialist Leadership Mulgrew's remarks were pitched a revolutionary analysis. Conspicuously Group (SW) in the ALP. The 6 November certain distance to the "left" 'of the plat­ silent on Qaddafi's publicity agent meeting on the "Housing Crisis", al­ form, mildly criticising the speakers for Mulgrew, Gould waxed eloquent over the though heavily advertised by ~uld's not bothering to mention nationalisation prospects for "forcing our Labor leaders activists in posters throughoJlt Sydney, of the land and housing under workers and Labor aldermen that they start acting was a thoroughly drab affair, drawing a control, attacking Greenland's "twaddle some way like socialists. The Spartacist dull assortment of petty-bourgeois squat­ about rent control". He recently was in man might say that's sub-reformist .... " ters, greenies, Laborites of all factional Libya, which he claimed had virtually No kidding I Gould's "militant" answer hues, and various other inner-city exotica solved the housing question, building to the 2-percent levy advocates merely such as someone from a group of 30 col­ large. numbers of houses and handing confirms our point: "You ought to pro­ lective vegetable gardeners. No housing prOblem In Libya, says them over to the people. The nonnally duce a little more than a lousy 2 SLL gauleiter Mulgrew at Gould garrulous Gould seemed to see nothing percent. . .. It ought to be something From the platform, Sydney's new ALP Housing meeting. Lord Mayor, Doug Sutherland, explained strange in this paean of praise for decent like 5 or 10 percent", "something Qaddafi's Libya, for he saw no need to verging on the impossible' 'I that "we have a role to play with the level pressure politics and anti-Marxist reply. Indeed there is nothing strange: police force and the law enforcement "greenie" opposition to development Gould and the SLG would like the work­ Mulgrew simply believes in not biting the agencies" (after all, who else will enforce per se certainly gives the lie to the SLG's ers movement to believe that they are hand that feeds him. evictions?). Speakers discussed the pros pretension to stand in the proletarian serious "scientific socialists" taking up and cons of a miserable 2 percent levY on socialist tradition. As Engels pointed out, But when a Spartaclst spokesman the "real issues" before the working developers to finance public housing. "The housing shortage ... is one of the pointed out that the SLG's politics class. But this sideshow exploded that And "left" ALP Leichhardt councillor innumerable smaller, secondary evils "parallel those of the SLL - including claim. The Spartacist speaker alone cut Hall Greenland referred to the Commu­ which result form the present-day capital­ up to the point of Bob Gould's refusing to through the petty-bourgeois "socialism" nist Manifesto but called for a "freeze on ist mode of production" and "only by the. defend 21 Iraqi Communist Party of Gould's meeting with a Marxist, ie development of any kind in the city", no solution of the social question, that is, by members when they were executed by revolutionary Trotskyist, program. There doubt aspiring to transform his part of the abolition of the capitalist mode of that regime in 1978",. he was howled remains though the SLG's evident politi­ Sydney into a string of quaint little "self­ production, is the solution of the housing down by SLGers. The reception was in cal affinity for Mulgrew's SLL and the managed" villages I question made possible" . marked contrast to the respectful silence International Committee. The SLG may What brought this bunch together if There were not only Laborites wallow­ which had greeted not only Mulgrew but pose as simply a sub-reformist current not a desire to lobby the Labor city ing in Gould's pigpen, however. As chair­ also the various petty-bourgeois spokes­ within the ALP, but it must be held council and NSW state government to man, the first speaker from the floor that men who had shown up. On the housing accountable not just for its loyalty to implement a few worthless sub-reformist Gould recognised was Jim Mulgrew, boss question, the comrade noted that "the traitors like Wran but for its political schemes and reactionary crackpot pana­ of the sinister Socialist Labour League strategy " . was' simply to pressure the agreement with the Healyite Qaddafi­ ceas? Gould's pandering to such low- (SLL). The SLL is currently the official state ALP ... a little more to the left", lovers as well .•

into a mass movement to smash the KKK organisations of the worJdng class and Continued from page one oppressed minorities. In this process blacks are made the scapegoats for the failure of capitalism. verdicts was varied. Liberal reporters For blacks, leftists and unionists the expressed shock and dismay, but South­ question is starkly posed: the KKK and ern blacks long accustomed to Jim Crow the Nazis must be stopped. Those who justice were not su~rised. In various say it will be the cops and courts who will major cities across the US, on college "ban the Klan", let them look to Greens­ campuses, even in a few union halls boro. Those who say small bands of there were angry protests, though not leftists must throw themselves before the massive outcry that met other the KKK/Nazis when they are backed examples of racist injustice in the late up by the armed might of the state, 1960s or even as recently as Miami. let them look to Greensboro. And for The Spartacist League/US (SL) and those most treacherous of fools who its youth group, the Spartacus Youth call for "free speech" for the fascist League .(SYL), took the lead in building murderers ....: who, like the Socialist these protests, which demanded "Jail Workers Party, even debate the Klan­ the killer Klan/Nazisl Drop the Charges let them look to Greensboro. It must be Against Gre~nsboro Anti-Fascist Demon­ clear that it will require the .mass mobilis­ stratorsl For Mass Labor/Black Action ation of the power of labour and blacks to Smash Klan/Nazi Terrorl For the to smash the fascists. Only through the Right of Armed Se~-Defense Against final victory of the proletariat over the Racist Terror I " capitalist class, by achieving a revolution­ On 20 November, 300-400 demon­ ary workers government, can the fascist strators turned out to the University of US TV shows Klansmen I Nazis getting their guns for massacre of leftllts threat be swept away at last. California at Berkeley's Sptoul Plaza In Greensboro, November 1979. - .upted·from WOlken V..,..m for a united-front mobilisation initiated no 269, 28 November 1980 by the SYL and endorsed by an impres­ National Maritime Union and United Party) endorsed, despite their scandalous 'sive number of student groups, minority Auto Workers, called on their unions to line defending a "right to free speech" organisations and union activists. The mount protests against the racist verdict. for fascists. Change 01 teleph. number The telephone number of the day before, 150 attended a similar rally In Chicago, a small rally by UA W Local The Greensboro massacre and the Melbourne Spartadst League has at San Francisco State to express their 6 was held in the union hall; speakers judicial whitewash carry an ominous outrage. On 22 November more than 125 warned of the Klan/Nazi threat and message: now that Carter's anti-Soviet been changed. It Is now (03) 662·3740. rallied in Detroit's Kennedy Square, pointed to the local's experience in "human rights" campaign has prepared site of last November's anti-Klan rally stopping racist terror with a union the way for Republican reactionary built by the SL/SYL and militant car defence guard several years ago. Reagan and a new Cold War, blacks, workers in the immediate wake of the The biggest protest was in Greensboro labour militants and communists will Greensboro massacre. United Auto itself where a rally of 1000, largely black be targeted at home. With the cross­ Worker Local 6OO's largest unit, the North Carolina students, was held on Sparlacisl Dearborn Assembly Plant, officially en­ hairs of the Klan's M-16s trained on 20 November. But outside the South, communists, .standing behind the white­ dorsed the rally at a unit meeting just the SL/SYL-initiated protests were sheeted killers trained at the Bay of Pigs ' League prior to the demonstration. Two dozen notably larger than those called by River Rouge plant workers attended. and in Vietnam· are the black-robed various opportunist left groups. In judges and the powerful apparatus of Several carloads of students drove up Melbourne ...... (03) 662·3740 some cases, reformist groups which the US government. from Ann Arbor to attend the rally. normally turn a cold shoulder to any GPO Box 2339, Melbourne Earlier in the week 150 had rallied at a' form of cooperation with Trotskyists felt Today the fascist groups exist as little VIC, 3001 University of Michigan demonstration constrained to associate themselves terror gangs on the very {tinges of the called by the SU. with SYL protests. Thus at San Francisco far right racist milieu. But this milieu is Sydney ...... (02) 284-8195 In addition, class-struggle militants State Communist Party leader Angela fertile ground for Klan and Nazi recruit­ GPO Box 3473, Sydney, in several unions, including the Com­ Davis endorsed; at Berkeley, the YSA ing. In a deep crisis of capitalism NSW, 2001 munications Workers of America (CWA), (youth group of the US Socialist Workers the fascists can make their bid to grow Summer 1980/81 9 • San On 4 November, 7183 San Francisco Her revolutionary policies were well voters cast their ballots for Diana publicised by the Spartacist campaign as Coleman, Spartacist candidate for the well as through a hard-hitting statement city's Board of Supervisors. Coleman's in a Voter Information Pamphlet mailed average was 2.7 percent citywide, but the to over 400,000 registered voters. bulk of her support was concentrated in In contrast, Socialist, Workers Party the heavily black inner city areas, the (SWP) candidate Louise Goodman, in her young and integrated Haight! Ashbury, statement, did not identify herself as a the heavily 'gay Castro district and the socialist or mention the SWP, only pro­ predominantly Latino Mission district. In claiming as her maximum program a her top 20 precincts Coleman received labour party and "public ownership" of 8.47 percent of the vote. the energy industry. She got 6SOO vQtes At a time of a significant rightward for this social-democratic program. shift in US politics, this is an impressive Goodman was very much the non­ showing for a Bolshevik candidate. With candidate, curious behaviour for these Carter and Reagan trying to' outbid each consummate electoralists. Their silence, other in the arms race against "Red and the absence of Goodman literature Russia", Coleman stood as a staunch de­ early on, probably was due to evident dis­ fender of the USSR against imperialist array in the SWP over whether to endorse war threats. While all the bourgeois poli­ another candidate, Building Trades union ticians and trade union bureaucrats leader Stan Smith. yearned for the Catholic church to restore But when the SLiUS paper, Workers capitalism in Poland, Coleman stood for Vanguard, reported that Smith was a strict separation of church and state and registered Democrat, a delegate to the for workers political revolution in the 1980 Democratic convention and was run­ Soviet bloc - to strengthen socialist ning as a candidate who could "get along property forms, not undermine them. with big business", the SWP quickly Coleman attacked California's exotic backtracked. Their spokesmen first said brands of eco-freaks and "less is better" they were rethinking their position of culture flJddists, who, mimicking capital­ critical support to Smith, based on huge ist austerity policies, oppose smoking in contributions he was getting from the pUblic, pornography, guns and "growth". construction industry and so on. Then She demanded massive public works, the Goodman said at a public meeting that right to bear arms, and defended individ­ the SWP had never discussed endorsing ual liberties against feminist anti­ Smith. Finally the SWP's Militant (14 pornography censors and liberal moral­ November) felt constrained to run an ists in league with "Moral Majority". article opposing a vote to Smith (but Unlike other left candidates for super­ didn't bother to say anything about the visor, Coleman .did not duck the hard Diana Coleman campaigning at San Francisco's Bethlehem shipyards. other 63 candidates). issues to get votes. "The capitalist state SF workers given a real choice. Diana Coleman ran in this election to can't be reformed to serve the interests of The receptivity to an openly "red" can­ Coleman" indicate what could have been make effective communist propaganda workers and poor people", her election didate was evidence of the difficulties .achieved on a larger scale had even a and to bring the program of class struggle brochure proclaimed. "It must be re­ which labour officialdom and black mis­ couple of unions broken with the Demo­ against capitalism to workers and min­ placed by a workers state and it will take leaders had in stumping for Jimmy crats to run labour candidates on a class­ orities. She ran against electoralist a socialist revolution to get one." Carter's Democrats. She was the only struggle program. illusions spread by the SWP and Com­ supervisorial candidate invited to address The campaigning began to show re­ munist Party, insisting that only a revol­ Running against Carter I Reagan, the San Francisco local of the Communi­ sults long before the polls opened. For utionary workers party fighting on the Nazis and Klan cations Workers of America (CWA) (of example at one college two black women picket lines, in the ghettos and barrios can create a workers government. We are 'Growing out of last April's successful which she had been a member). Coleman' approached a Coleman supporter, one also addressed the executive board of the pulled out a "Stop the Nazis" brochure proud of the 7000 votes for Spartacist mass labour rally against the Nazis .(see supporter Coleman. But an equally im­ Australasian Spartacist no 73, May 1980), transit drivers' union, who wanted to and declared "She's our candidate". The know her position on crossing picket Spartacus Youth League (SYL) took the portant indicator of our success is the Colemat}'s socialist campaign drew wide nearly 20 non-members of the SL/SYL recognition among blacks, unionists and lines: "Did you have any friends that , campaign' onto the campuses. At City worked behind the picket lines [in the College, Coleman spoke to 2S mostly who actively worked on the campaign, the left in San Francisco. She hammered many moving closer to joining. We run in home the message of that victory: not­ 1976 city workers strike]?" "No", she black students who had come to see a replied, "people who cross picket lines videotape of the April 19 anti-fascist elections not to hold down a desk in City electoraiiSm, but mass labour/black mo­ Hall, the state legislature or Congress but bilisations in the streets are, necessary to aren't my friends". Coleman was the rally; in the wake of this success the SYL only candidate invited to meet ~e mem­ set up a new chapter. to use them as a platform, a vehicle for 'stop the fascists. Recalling her back­ the Trotskyist program and for building ground in the civil rights moveme~t, she bership of one of the local postal unions The votes of San Francisco's large gay - while Democratic candidates who population is openly courted by even the the revolutionary party. ~y these stan­ noted, "l've seen more Klan activity in dards, the Coleman campaign was a very California in the last year than I did in showed up were pointedly barred. most respectable bourgeois politicians The real worker backbone of the and normally corralled by the local satisfying success. Mississippi in 1965." The right-wing - adapted from Worken VaagwmI policies of both the Democratic and campaign staff were unionists from the Democratic Party machine. Coleman did DO 268, 14 November 1980 Republican parties have fuelled the International Longshoremen's and Ware­ very well, winning about 1200 votes, in growth of fascist terror groups. Coleman housemen's Union (IL WU) and Communi­ gay incumbent Harry Britt's own super­ stressed that this makes even more ur­ cation Workers of America (CW A). Mem­ visorial district. When the Democrat Britt gent her campaign's main demand, bers of class-struggle caucuses in these called a supervisor's hearing on the rise "ENOUGH I IT'S TIME FOR A unions supported by the Spartacist of anti-gay violence, Coleman denounced SUBSCRIBE!! WORKERS PARTYI" League/US (SL/US) mobilised fellow his call for more police patrols - to thun­ Coleman's campaign took the socialist unionists to support and work for Coleman. derous applause from the gay audience, Australasian Spartaclst It was in these industries that the cam­ most of whom had experienced the "even program directly to the working class, o 11 Illues (1 year) - $3 addressing union meetings, visiting work paign probably had its most direct impact hand of justice". At nearly weekly rallies locations and reviving the socialist on workers. On one hand, these militants in the Castro district, Coleman and other overseas rates: tradition of street-comer soap-boxing. used the election campaign to concretise Spartacists denounced Britt for his ties to o surface mali - $3 for 1.1 Issues their program for the formation of a the. party of Klansman Tom Metzger, o alrmali - $10 for 11 Issues workers pa~. And Coleman pointed to Jimmy Carter and the widely-detested their fight to turn their unions to the path Mayor Dianne Feinstein. Driven to a Name of class struggle' as key to forging a fight­ frenzy, Bntt's flunkies repeatedly called Have you' ing labour movement. The overlapping the police to try to break up our rallies. Address campaigns of both militant caucuses to These life-style Democrats' real senti­ elect members to their .union executive ments were revealed when one snarled, City boards underscored this point. "I'd vote for Tom Metzger before I'd vote State Postcode moved? Coleman repeatedly visited the IL WU for Coleman." If you want to keep receiving hiring hall and pay lines. A campaign Phone Donation __ Australasian Spartaclst please let worker noted, "The guys would be on They also ran us know at least three weeks their feet to shake hands and talk as soon mali to/make cheques p,ayable to: before you move. Send your new as they saw us coming". Her frequent Had San Francisco voters simply Spartaclst Publications, and old address to: visits led one longshoreman to comment wished to record a protest vote there were GPO Box 3473 Sydney NSW 2001 that he thought she was the ~ion's of­ plenty of choices: 65 candidates for 11 Spartaclst Publications ficial candidate. Responses from workers seats. Yet Coleman beat 24 of them. Most GPO Box 3473 o I would like more information Sydney, NSW, 2001. like, "My sister works for the phone importantly, she ran on a Bolshevik pro­ about the Spartacist League company and our whole family voted for gram - against the Democratic party. 10 Australasian Spartaclst Ex-MDG/TSGers. •• Continned from page five • ••••• Frasers censors My fust contact with the Spartacist League (SL) was at the 1978 Melbourne The Fraser government set off a ruckus­ may pose as a battler for' 'freedom of the ploitation (of some of those islands, for conference of the Socialist Youth Alliance on 8 November when, in an act without press" and the "public's right to know"; instance) are severely limited by the short (SYA). Near contact is more accurate, peacetime precedent, it suppressed pub-, but as the Age (3 December) stressed, all reach of its relatively puny economic since everyone present was instructed to lication of "top secret" defence and the bosses' media are "voluntary parties strength. The Australian ruling class neither talk to SLers nor accept their foreign policy documents by the flagships to the 'D' Notice system" of rigorous self­ knows it can be nothing other than the literatur&. Shortly after, I joined the SY A of the Fairfax media empire, the Sydney censorship, not to mention their complete vassal-ally of the US imperialists - the and became a provisional member of the Morning Herald (SMH) and the class bias on all social questions. What power that fought World War II to make Socialist Workers Party (SWP). Melbourne Age. Melodramatic early­ disturbs them over Timor is "Australia's the Pacific an American lake and won. During 1978 there occured the "Ram­ hours High Court injunctions stopped the total inability 10 influence important Yet it pricks Aussie national pride when jan/Nicholls affair". These characters, presses; all but the early editions came neighbourhood developments" (Age, the Pentagon won't even tell its allies student bureaucrats, worked in offices of out with blank columns replacing extracts 4 December) - ie, ,Canberra's reluc­ 'what exactly is in "their" treaty, much the Sydney University SRC when a strike from the just-published book Documents tance to "stand up" to Jakarta. less what its top-secret bases in Australia by secretaries was in progress. The SL on Australian Defence and Foreign The "expose" rehashes what has been are up to. was the only tendency on the left who Policy put together by George Munster . known for years: the Australian, British and Richard Walsh. We oppose bourgeois state censorship stuck to the basic class/union principle and American governments' active even when directed against ultra­ that you don't work in a struck shiP. This Canberra told the High Court that support to the 1975 Indonesian invasion respectable ruling-class organs and de­ seemed an elementary principle to me. At "national security" was endangered by and subsequent massacre of the petty­ mand the abolition of all secrecy laws an'AUS regional meeting I seconded the the book's inclusion of the government's bourgeois nationalist Fretilin. The re­ which are intended to be used to suppress SL motion which con~mned the scab­ own unflattering references "to leading formists of the Communist Party, the the left and labour movement. As bing and called for the removal of the Indonesian political figures still very International Socialists and the SWP once opposed to Fairfax' sanitised "leaks", we scabs from otticlafpositions. Iwas unable much on the scene". But the book had again decry in unison "the Whittam/ want to see all Canberra's "defence though to draw the approp~ate con­ already been, snapped up by the Fraser sellout of East Timor". For these secrets", diplomatic skullduggery and clusions as I had had it drummed into my Indonesian embassy, and Fraser's threat social patriots, the main enemy is never imperialist conspiracies, together with head that no matter what the SL said or to bring down the draconian Crimes Act their oWn "democratic" ruling class - those of its US allies, exposed on nation­ did it was chronic sectarianism, the did not deter suburban newspapers and indeed, they are forever urging it to take wide TV and radio! purpose of which was merely to disrupt up the Pacific equivalent of the "white FM radio stations from running the The ALP continues to cover for the and destroy left' groups. Thus, I later "banned" material in full. One suppos­ man's burden", as they did' in de­ abstained on the motion I had seconded. manding Australian intervention in East Pentagon. Hayden lied in 1979 that US edly super-sensitive East Timor, docu­ bases like Pirie Gap, Omega and At this time witch hunts were occuring ment had been published by American Timor in 1975 and again with the New Hebrides earlier this year. Northwest Cape "are not part of any in the SWP; it had swallowed up the New Leftist Noam Chomsky in his book missile or weaponry control system" Communist League (CL) and was in the The Washington Connection and Third The "ANZUS papers" coDected by (Challenge, 2 December). The Fairfax process of spitting out the indigestible World Fascism, on sale itt Australian Munster and Walsh expose how lick­ Washington correspondent Brian Toohey elements. Some oppositional elements bookshops for years! spittle the Australian bourgeoisie - and describes in the magazine Omega formed the Proletarian Democracy Tend­ Faced with such evidence' of breath­ their ALP lackeys - are to their US (Jan/Feb 1981) the Pentagon Dr ency; I supported this tendency though I taking stupidity, no wonder High Court imperialist big brothers. Take the ANZUS Strangeloves' plans to make them a wasn't too happy with its thrust. Its Justice Mason dismissed Canberra's treaty itself, the cornerstone (and most of key link in a global system for pinpointing "theoretical" guru, John Ebel, rewrote "national security" case. The book re­ the edifice) of Australian bourgeois mili­ Soviet nuclear subs and thus gain a the history of Bolshevism to say that mains "banned", however, on the ludi­ tary strategy and foreign policy since the crucial first-strike advantage against the Leninism meant the liquidation of the crous grounds of copyright violation. This, Korean War. When Whittam asked in Soviet degenerated workers state. Parliament in 1959 what Pacific islands vanguard into the class. This made the farce took a sinister tum on 14 November "Left" ALP social patriots like Peter opposition easy meat for the SWP leader­ when an unexplained fire ravaged the its deliberately vague "mutual defence" commitment covered, the Liberal Baldwin's Challenge and the Victorian ship. The chief argument against us was Sydney premises of the radical publishers Socialist Left are against the US bases by Doug Lorimer (regional organiser in Wild and Woolley and conveniently de­ minister's reply --; dictated literally comma for comma by the US State mainly because they make Australia a Victoria) which essentially plagiarised the stroyed their stocks of Chomsky's book "nuclear target". The Kremlin-loyal SL'spamphlet Lenin and the Vanguard Department - refused to say! and another "spy book" (A Suitable Socialist Party's Socialist rushed to join Pw-ty. No wonder the SYA/SWP leader­ Piece of Real Estate -;- American bast,.. ship don't like members or supporters BUt then, 'so' what? What the treaty is the necessarily anti-Soviet chauvinist ations in Austmlia by Desmond HaU'. really all about is the willing integration 'chorus under the banner headline: talking to Spartacists. Coming only weeks after the highly sus­ In early 1979 I left the SWP and joined of capitalist Australia (under Labor an<;l "NATIONAL BETRAYAL". In contrast picious fue on the premises of the Social­ Liberals alike) into the Pentagon's global the Spartacist League stands for a fight to a discussion group (the "DG") started by ist Workers Party (SWP) we reported last Paul White after he had been expelled war machine. Australia itself is firmly in smash these bases, the ANZUS alliance issue, it suggests an ominous pattern of the imperialist camp by virtue of its pos­ and Australian jackal imperialism, as from the SWP in 1978. The group's mode right-wing arson. of operation was, and is, to cover over dif­ ition as an outpost of ("civilised" white proletarian internationalists committed to ferences and avoid programmatic ques­ It goes without saying that the SMH European) advanced capitalism in the tke unconditional military defence of the tions. A study agenda was approved to and the Age are fully committed to the Asian, Pacific. Its own jackal-imperialist deformed workers states against the appetites for colonial/neo-colonial ex- imperialist menace. deal with sectional concerns where "national security" of their class. Fairfax people had operations going - the ALP, "industrial work" and women's liber­ ation (which many males favoured as a The RG backed Paul Munro for President ' fought against the group's anti-Leninist rightward drift. In San Francisco we topic because it would ensure an influx of although he recommended voting for the concept of a "Transitional Organis­ endorsed Diana Coleman in elections women) - then it would look, at Chipp Democrats.... When the ation"; we argued for the necessity of a for the city's Board of Supervisors Leninism. thoroughly electoralist wing led by discussion on the Russian Question, to (see article page 8). Given the Cold War Forward managed to rescind an explicit What really brought home the bank­ which Paul White replied, "Thi$ is aD anti-Soviet atmosphere, we asked: pro-abortion stance from the policies of can Trotskyists call on American workers ruptcy of the group was its reaction to the the RG, the left talked but didn't. The organisational stunt"; -when the group Red Army's intervention in the Mghan , RG's history - from going to arbitration S4id they had nothing that they stood for, to cast ballots for the Communist Party civil war. The SL said "Hail Red Army" over CEER to its 'supporters' crossing we said _we have --:- argue against it (CPU SA) candidates, given a context and I agreed. The rest of the left capitu­ their own picket lines - is one of craven politically. They neither would nor could, in which the CPUSA is popularly ident­ lated to the bourgeois pressure - with capitulation. " demonstrating again the group's bank­ ified with Russia and communism. Could varying degrees of openness. Many People who entc!r these groups get ruptcy. It was and is a centrist labyrinth; critical ,electoral support to CPUSA people in the DG were moving in the trained in the school of capitulation to members in it who want to find clarity candidates Gus Hall and Angela Davis same direction and wandered around in such an extent that they can't see any and a revolutionary program must look to be a vehicle for a class-against-class the search for a "third camp". Several other way to operate; principled, pro­ the Spartacist League. There really isn't vote? The answer was no. The CP itself members, in particular Paul White and grammatically based communist indus­ any other way. had made clear that a vote for its can­ trial work seems ultra-left, ludicrous or didates was simply a "way of putting Frans Timmerman, got together a liberal - Steven King pacifist demonstration to "End th~ impossible. pressure on Carter and Reagan" (Daily , ,Carter-Fraser War Drive". I decided to After Afghanistan I began reading World 21 October). Trotskyists have no march with the SL contingent whose Lenin's What Is To Be Done? where he Reagan ••• interest in voting for illusions of lesser­ sl()Ban was "Victory to the Red Army!" polemicises against tailism, and theSL's evilism and "detente" with warmonger­ "Trade-Union Memorandum"_ (in Marx­ Contillued from page twelve ing imperialism. After this it seemed to me that nearly ist Bulletin no 9 part'iii). I saw that "rank reformists who told us yesterday that The slogan of the Diana Coleman all my previously held ideas should be and file groups" were a liquidation of every day, every way things are getting campaign in San Francisco showed the open to discussion. Trade Union work was program and without Ii revolutionary pro­ better and better have to continue way forward: "Enough! It's Time for a one of the most important. I was in a gram there could be no revolutionary lying to keep their story straight. So Workers Party!" Not the kind of "Reform Group" within the Australian practice. When White argued that cross­ the US working class just goes from parliamentary-reformist device that the Clerical Officers' Association (ACOA) ing picket lines was a tactical question, victory to victory - once a week in the SWP or CPUSA might propose, but one along with several other DG members. In this merely reinforced the point. Militant. which provides revolutionary leadership the document "Against Petty-Bourgeois Further study brought me closer to the There is a rightward drift in the in every arena of the class struggle­ Eclecticism! For Trotskyism!" which SL and increasingly more critical of the US, but it is neither deep nor irreversible. the mines, the mills, the ghetto streets , Angelo Rosas and I presented at the DG DG, whose anti-political nature was Unlike the 195Os, there is no general' and even in the bourgeois elections. conference, we described the Reform ShOlV1l by its treating the SL's challenge anti:Communist hysteria, nor an active The real "fight against the right" must Group as "a transmission belt into the to debate White asa "security" matter, wave of right-wing sentiment in 'the be a fight against both parties of the bureaucracy" : ie simply burying the politics. The culmi­ working class. But the last thing the ruling class. It must be a political fight "Its most infamous star, Anne Forward, nation of this.development was reached working class needs is more of the to mobilise the workers as a class and the who stood down in Wills [ALP preselec­ same class-collaborationist lesser­ ghetto/minority poor behind their tion] for her friend Hawke, is famous for with my getting together with Tl'Qtskyist using and threatening to use the bour­ Study Group member Angelo Rosas on evilism that brought us Jimmy Carter. leadership, the fight for a workers geois state against unionists of varying the basis of a struggle for the SL's nine During the election our comrades of the government. stripes from the NCC to the IS. The 'left' programmatic points for revolutionary SLIUS sought opportunitie,s for ad­ --adapted &om Workers Vanguard still electorally supports her in the union! , regroupment. At the conference we vancing a class program to counter this no 268, 14 Novt.'mber 19~ Summer 1980/81 11 J Australasian -- SPARTACIST Carter paved the way Reagan reaction

Ronald Reagan is in the saddle. The Democrats have been stampeded. In the United States and around the world people are trying to figure out what it means. During the election campaign not even the US bourgeois media' could get excited by what was probably the most. negative campaign in US history, a con­ test between two undeniably "greater '! evils". Now they hail a "conservative tide" sweeping in the Reagan "era", the long-prophesied thunder on the right. . The R~publican challenger ended the media "great debate" by urging voters, if they felt they were better off in the last four years, to vote for Jimmy Carter. Otherwise, he said they should vote for him. And that is more' or less what happened. The vote was fundamentally against Carter and the liberal Democrats, against years of pounding inflation and massive layoffs. Millions didn't bother to vote at all, continuing a modem trend with the lowest turnout in 32 years. But the result cannot be dismissed merely as a protest vote against Carter. Unlike Nixon's 1972 landslide victory over Vietnam "dove" George McGovern, this time the Democrats were beaten as a party, losing control of the Senate for the first time in decades. Elections 'SO reflected a rightward shift that has been building since the end of the 'Vietnam , War. But the rightward shift to Reagan was After Carter's "human rights" Imperialist moral rearmament comes Ronald Reagan's Cold War II and a redoubled prepared by Democratic Party Cold War nuclear first-strike drive. liberals and by Jimmy Carter himself. At the time of the Republican convention tive, anti-labour camp. Contrary to what Reagan's (and Carter's) other main America and the Caribbean. When last July the Spartacist League/US US schoolchildren are carefully taught in target, the Soviet Union. It is axiomatic Reagan says he opposes "human rights" (SL/TIS) noted: civics classes, the essence of politics is that US presidential candidates, whether campaigns against "our friends", "Carter's 'human rights' campaign, not found at the polls but in the class liberal or conservative, move toward the military dictators throughout the region braintrusted by the sinister Brzezinski, struggle. When -there 'is no effective op­ political centre after being elected. Sut in sharpen their bayonets: with the assUred sought to bury the 'Vietnam syndrome', position in the factories and .. in the, . banking on this conventional wisdom it backing of the Yankee president, leftist blood will flow. push public opinion toward a new Cold streets, it is not surprising that the back­ appears that the Soviet leaders are push­ Most· dangerous of all could be War and mobilize militarily against. the lash against the liberals works to the ing the astounding idea that Reagan's Soviet Union. . In this way Carter/ benefit of the political right. election was .... a victory for "detente'" Reagan's policy towards Eastern Europe, . The Stalinist bureaucrats in the particularly Poland. Remember, these Brzezinski made right-wing Republican­ Life after'Reagan ism respectable and gave it its present Kremlin suffer from'· chronic detente are the same people who yelled "betrayal'" when after all Dulles' talk of battle cries. " Will the Reagan government simply be illusions - the utopian-pacifistic mis­ _ Workers Vanguard no 261, a repeat of the abysmal Carter years1 No. conception that theY'can work out a live­ "rolling back" Communism he refused 25 July 1980 The crisis of the US economy will con~ and-let-live deal with imperialism, whose to intervene in Hungary in -1956. And Just as the war consensus runs deep in tinue to deepen. Life under the dogmatic constant goal is to overthrow the revol­ while Hungary '56 was actually a nascent both bourgeois parties there is bipartisan reactionary Reagan will be worse. More utionary conquests of the degenerated/ workers political revolution against the agreement on the austerity demanded by ideological. More Hobbesian. Closer to deformed workers states of the Soviet Stalinist bureaucracy - not the social stagnating US capitalism. Once again the the natural state of capitalist decay­ bloc. But the idea of Ronald Reagan as a counterrevolution which the Reaganites Democratic liberals led the austerity poorer, shorter, nastier and more brutish. "dove" takes the cake. This is Mr would have wished - in Poland there drive, targeting particularly blac~ and Former NATO commander Alexander "Peace-Through-Strength", who in an may be more opportunities for their Haig gets to stroke the nuclear trigger "destabilisation" schemes. Down that the poor. Cuts in social services and an interview with the Wall Street Jou77Ull ,- anti-labour offensive had been the order again and some of the old Nixonomics (3 June) asked rhetorically, "When did road lies World Warm in a hurry. of the day for Carter. Similarly, the boys are back, with a few fringy "supply the Cold War ever end?" For such types "Moral Majority" assault on women's side" economic cranks for window it has been going on since 1917, and they Hardliners and the class line rights and integration was pushed hard dressing. are preparing to heat it up. by "born again" Jimmy and his "ethnic All the Reagan talk about unleashing Evidently, the Russian leadership The working class internationally purity" politics. the great American capitalist productive hopes that eventually Reagan will tum faces some hardliners in the White Most importantly, Reagan's vote in­ machine is nonsense. When he says he's out to be a man they can deal with. After House. Yet incredibly the reformist US cluded a large portion of working-class going to "put America back to work all, he did oppose Carter's grain embargo Socialist Workers Party (SWP), in an ballots. Many trade unionists voted for a again", he means repeal the minimum and his Olympic boycott. But the article in its 14 November Militant certified symbol of anti-labour reaction, . wage. When he says he's going to get the Republicans criticised Carter's measures (reprinted in the 26 November issue of the preferred candidate of the KKK, a housing industry "on its feet"; he means as largely symbolic whereas they advo­ the Australian SWP's Direct Action) well-known ideological nuclear hip­ repeal the 1937 Davis-Bacon Act guaran­ cated the real thing - no SALT n and an dismisses the notion of a "conservative shooter. But if the Republicans found teeing union wages and work rules on unalloyed drive for military superiority. tide" as just "wrong". Anybody who some tolerance in the working class for federally financed construction sites. He Car.ter's "symbolic" attacks on the thinks so is presumably the victim of their right-wing ideology, it is a passive talks, like George Wallace, about Soviets reflected the transitional charac­ a gigantic media hoax (just like the tolerance. Many workers found un­ "getting off our backs". And what he ter of his regime, beginning on the theme people who thought that the SWP­ employment and inflation so devastating means is cutting social services for the of moral rearmament of US imperialism ·supported mullah "revolution" in Iran that they cast about for any alternative to ghettos, cutting taxes for the corpor­ (the "Human Rights" crusade) and soon veiled women, stoned adulterers and Carter. Some identified American "weak­ ations, getting union-won safety require­ passing over to economic warfare and repressed the left). . ness" with their lower standard of living. ments off the backs of the bosses and military rearmament exemplified by the . Readers of the Militant or Direct Action Most are just fed up with the failure of getting the state on the backs of women nuclear first-strike Presidential Direc­ may with some justification surmise liberalism. But when Reagan tries to act who want abortions. tives 58 and 59. that the SWP's compulsive denial of on his "macho mandate", he will find The ultimate "solution" .to the bour­ And now come the aggressive Cold reality is some sort of political pathology. that even many workers that voted for geoisie's economic ills is, of course, War n politics of Reagan. One place But it is method not madness. The him are by no means part of his conserva- imperialist war. Which brings us to where they will soon be felt is Central Continued on page eleven

12 \ Summer 1980/81