~ Australasian ~

NUMBER 128 OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 1988 lfO cents Hawke's Cold War Reaction Fuels y , urore

• • • Sian mmlar I

The current ruling class "de­ the English Queen). "We can I t bate" over Asian immigration is keep bringing in Lebanese who stirring to the surface all the ugly ha ve been told I You don I t have to and vicious white racism that is at die to go to paradise, there I s a the foundation of Australian capi­ place called Australia where you talist society. Columnist Mike don I t ha ve to wor k and the Steketee summarised: "Like it or Government will pay you I. II And not, race is stirring up a potent there's a place called Canberra brew in Australian politics. Asian where fat-cat academics are paid immigration has become such a astronomical sums to write major concern that it can no reports retailing such bar-room longer be ignored; Japanese in­ racist trash. vestment in Australia has trigger­ Fitzgerald I s ball was picked ed a bout of ugly xenophobia; and up by hapless Liberal Party leader community sentiment seems to John Howard, in a desperate bid have swung against Australia IS to boost the opposition coalition IS original inhabitants" (Sydney Stone, Howard and Hawke (left to right). The bosses' "One Australia" sagging electoral fortunes. Forti­ Morning Herald, 17 June). rallying cry targets Asi.ans and all those they consider not "true blue" fied by a handshake from Marg­ The limits set to the debate Australians - most of the population! aret Thatcher, in August the are narrow - whether the current whining Tory nerd launched a new small intake of Asian immigrants, family reunions, skilled and Asia as "non-discriminatory," and immigration policy which said about 50,000 last year, is too few business immigrants just a thin laden with hysteria. In fact only they would alter the mix of or too many to provide the disguise for a racial criterion. The 3.7 percent of the population were immigration in the interests of necessary "protective coloration II debate is dripping with hypocrisy, born in Asia including the Middle protecting "social cohesion. II ,while keeping Australia over­ describing the current policy East a geographic entity Translation: less Asians. For whelmingly white. Its terms are under which it is many times stretching from the Bosphorus to once, briefly, Howard seemed to thoroughly racist, all the talk of easier for applicants from Britain the Bering Strait and lumping to­ be on a winner : one newspaper juggling the numbers of refugees, to be accepted than those from gethersome 2.5 billion people. poll claimed 77 percent support The jingoistic Bicentennial was for less Asian immigrants. But in supposed to exhibit Australia as a the blink of an eye the issue split liberal, "multi-cultural" democ­ the Tory opposition. National racy; beneath the veneer this front-bencher John Stone was "debate" has put on show all the sacked for saying out loud the new racism that is, as the motto of policy meant less Asians, and a the old Sydney Bulletin once gaggle of Liberal "Wets" crossed proudly proclaimed, "offensively the floor in parliament on the Australian. II issue. It started with the govern­ Howard has broken the hal­ lowed "bipartisan consensus" on ment-commissioned report on immigration by Dr Stephen Fitz­ immigration . because Hawke I s right-wing Labor government has gerald, Whitlam I s appointment as the first ambassador to the occupied all the traditional Tory Peoples RepUblic of China. He ar­ territory, and then some •. gued for preserving the bourgeois Haw.ke/Keating have successfully consensus on immigration by ap­ policed the working class and have peasing the anti-Asian backlash­ impeccable relations with the US less refugees and family reunions, Pentagon and State Department. more English speakers, skilled And in seeking to exploit racism workers and businessmen - while for electoral advantage, Howard retaining "non-racial" selection is walking a path already well­ criteria. He also attacked the trodden by Hawke I s ALP, with its official doctrine of "mul ti­ jingoistic Cold War appeals for culturalism" as divisive and "national unity," attacks on mi'­ professed "a certain sympathy for grants and Aboriginals. Hawke the average Australian who sees sanctimoniously pontificated that the concept of multi-culturalism he I d rather lose an election than being thrust down his throat" "compromise on the question of (Australian, 4-5 June). And he discrimina tion, II which is hardly demanded social security pay­ necessary, since his governm~nt ments be cut to those who do not has been quietly instructing Immi­ Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric Scheme, buH t by immigrant labour in take out Australian citizenship gration to do exactly what post-war period. Brutal conditions meant high death and injury tolls. (through swearing allegiance to Continued on page four Registered by Austral ia Post - Publ ication no NBF0710 Delend Women's Right to Abortion I On Saturday 20 August the Betrayed). In this viciously male­ Spartacist League marched in a chauvinist country abortion has lOOO-strong demonstration in always been illegal except when a Sydney organised by Women's doctor certifies a woman's health Abortion Action Campaign to op­ to be in serious danger. In the pose attacks on abortion rights. Whitlam period women won some With spirited chants we linked the gains, including a liberal fight for women's right to abor­ interpretation of abortion laws. tion to the fight against attacks Today women can get abortions on child care, health care, wages easily in most big cities. But in and jobs. Our placards included, Cold War II women's rights are "Free Abortion on Demand ~" under attack. In 1985 Queensland "Free 24-Hour Child Care ~ Free cops executed Gestapo-style raids (:uali ty Heal thCare for All ~" on abortion clinics in Townsville I Anti-Soviet War 8ri ve means and Greenslopes, Brisbane, seizing Social Reaction at Home ~ Defend over 19,000 personal medical files the Soviet Union and Vietnam~" and charging doctors with and "For Workers Action to De­ conspiracy to use force to procure fend Women, Gays, Aboriginals abortions. The charges were and Migrants!" thrown out of court - after the The demonstration protested damage was done. Right-to-Life two anti-abortion bills drafted for reactionaries have targetted the NSW Parliament. Fred Nile's abortion clinics, regularly picket­ Spartacist contingent marching in Sydney rally to protest reactionary draconian Unborn Child Protec­ ing Sydney's Preterm Clinic and anti-abortion bills, 20 August. tion Bill proposes three-year jail the Bessie Smith Foundation in Homebush. The Preterm Clinic class and vicious attacks on administers this drug to teenage terms for women who have abor­ women and minorities. Under girls locked in reformatories for tions, and 14-year sentences for has hired full-time armed guards to protect its patients and staff. Keating and "left" Social Security "promiscuity." Deep sexual re­ doctors who perform them. Minister Howe, social services pression is enforced by capitalist Liberal MP Guy Yeomans' Ter­ What's needed is a massive mobil­ isation of labour, women and including sole parent benefits and society to maintain the stultifying mination of Pregnancy Restriction youth unemployment benefits insti tution of the nuclear famify Bill would shut down· abortion minori ties to run these bib1e­ thu m ping bigots out of town! have been slashed. Women have and to reinforce generalised sub­ clinics. With the public hospital been driven out of work, and the mission to bourgeois class rule. system verging on collapse, the Nile's Call to Australia Party, limited gains of the '70s are The Hawke Labor govern­ long queues and high costs would with a program of domestic under attack, among them child­ ment's attacks on working people force many women into higher­ drudgery for women and the ban­ care centres and women's and the oppressed are mandatea risk, late-term abortions, to con­ ning of all "promotion" of homo­ refuges, often the last recourse by a ruling class striving to tinue with unwanted pregnancies, sexuality, holds balance of power for women in a country where bolster its profits and regiment or into the potentially deadly in the NSW Upper House between wife and child-beating are a the population as it pursues its hands of backyard abortionists. the governing Liberal Party and "normal" part of life. In this white mad drive to anti-Soviet war. Nile's bill is unlikely to succeed, the Opposition Labor Party. That racist enclave Aboriginal women Only a planned collectivised econ­ but the ALP's reactionary Cath­ reactionary filth like Fred Nile, are often unknowingly sterilised omy can lay the basis for the olic right-wingers will exercise a who calls AIDS "god's retribution after child-birth, and the Queens­ liberation of women. Our fight for "conscience vote" for Yeomans' on homosexuals" are in parliament land government injects black free, safe abortion on demand is "softer option." is a sharp expression of the right­ women with Depo-Provera with­ integrally linked to our fight for a Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky wing climate of Cold War II. out their consent. Depo-Provera is revolutionary labour movement denounced abortion bans as "a foul Hawke's Labor government has a long-term contraceptive with which will champion the struggle police interference in what is to rolled back democratic rights devastating side effects including of all the oppressed. For women's every Woman the most intimate across the board, with austeri ty sterility, diabetes, haemorrhaging liberation through socialist sphere of life" (The Revolution and union-busting for the working and intense pain. The state also revolution! •

SPARTACIST CLASS SERIES I ~~artacist League Forum RETURN TO THE ROAD OF LENIN AND TROTSKY! SYDNEY UNIVERSITY Delend Vietnaml Ipm, Oct 5 and Oct 19 MELBOURNE, 22 September: The cide in Kampuchea. As SL Spartacist League (SL) today held speakers pointed out: Pol Pot Meet at Spartacist literature a well-attended forum at LaTrobe killed the real Khmer communists, table outside Fisher Library. University entitled "Vietnam to then committed genocide! It has AustraIasian-_;----- pull out of Kampuchea. US/ taken great sacrifice from Australia/ ASEAN Hands Off Vietnam to rid Kampuchea of the [SpARTACIST ~) Vietnam!" Included within the horrendous Pol Pot regime. Tragi­ audience of over 20 people were cally, the liberation of Kam­ Marxist two-monthly of the supporters of the SL and trade puchea's peoples is threatened by Spartacist League of Australia unionists. We were prepared to Gorbachev's treacherous pressure and New Zealand, section of ensure the proper conduct and de­ on Vietnam to pull out. What Cold the international Spartacist fence of the meeting against the War Laborites have to swallow is tendency. threat of attack by Vietnamese that Pol Pot's brutal Khmer Editorial Board: Greg Blythe, fascists, who in 1985, given the Rouge is on their side as US/ (editor) Linda Brooke, Doug green light by Hawke's Cold War Australia/ ASEAN' s key Cold War Flynn, Andrew Giannakis, Labor government, rampaged proxy in the counterrevolutionary Sandra Morris around the country attacking left war qgainst Kampuchea and Circulation: Jenny Klein Vietnam. Swainston, the Spartacist League Production: Phillipa Newman events (including those organised by the SL) celebrating the lath The Vietnam question cuts spokesman concluded: Printed by trade union labour. anniversary of the heroic Viet­ very deep in this white imperialist "Class conscious workers Registered at GPO, Sydney for namese Revolution. enclave. Not only is it the ques­ understand, if you can't de­ posting as a publication -­ Category B. Subscription $3 for Various Cold War social demo­ tion of the defence of historic fend the gains already made, 6 issues; overseas airmail $7 crats, an NCCer and a Liberal working class gains in this region you can't make new ones. The for 6 issues. Address all were amongst the audience. One but the Vietnamese Revolution only way to defend the Soviet correspondence to: Spartacist Hawke-lover revealed his utter places an explosive charge under Union and Vietnam is to fight ANZ Publishing Co, GPO Box contempt for the heroic struggles the White Australia "monolith." to extend socialist revolution 3473, Sydney, NSW, 2001. of the Vietnamese working masses Today as the Hawke government's internationally - to defeat Opinions expressed in signed when he grotesquely tried to make anti-Soviet war drive breeds imperialism over and over articles or letters do not an amalgam between the struggle vicious White Australia racism again. For us in the Australian necessarily express the of the Indochinese working masses and targets blacks, Asians and section of the international edi torial viewpoint. to defeat brutal and murderous US other minorities, it is critical to Spartacist tendency the Printed by Spot press Pty Ltd, and Australian imperialism, and mount hard class struggle against struggle begins right here, 21 Ross St, Glebe. the Pol Pot Khmer Rouge geno- the government. As Andrew again~t our own imperialism.".

2 AUSTRALASIAN SPARTACIST South Korea's Police • State Olympics Labour, Students Defy US Puppet Regime

On September 1, South Korean sula in 1950 that the Cold War soldiers armed with semi-auto­ turned into a hot war. It was here matic rifles escorted the Olympic that US imperialism moved to torch into the city of Kwangju on "roll back Communism," begin­ its way to the site of the up­ ning with North Korea, only to be coming games in the capital of stopped by the Chinese Army Seoul. Student protesters were all backed by the Soviet Union. The the more outraged because American Caesar, Douglas Kwangju was the site of the 1979 MacArthur, suffered the most massacre in which hundreds were humiliating defeat of his career mowed down by South Korean when the Chinese Red Army units which had been withdrawn crossed the Yalu and smashed the from the border with North Korea US Eighth Army. In response Guardians of "free world" military dictatorship in South Korea. and replaced by the US Army. MacArthur wanted to bomb China. US president Harry Truman In recent months the US­ the Cold War neocolony in the bloated profits for the chaebols­ vetoed this move, fearing it would backed police state has been South, proletarian political revol­ the huge state-sponsored--mono­ shaken by massive workers' strikes trigger World War III by provoking ution against the Stalinist regime polies like Hyundai, Daewoo and Russia. Ever since the 1953 truce, and student protests. To secure in the North. Samsung - and their Wall Street social peace the generals are pre­ the totally militarized Korean SOUTH KOREAN WORKING and Tokyo backers. paring for the Olympics as for peninsula - divided between the CLASS SHOW S ITS POW ER Until last year independent war. A force of 120,000 police and "free world" military dictatorship trade unions in South Korea were soldiers has been mobilized under in the South and the grotesquely For decades South Korea has effecti vel y suppressed. The only the pretext of "anti-terrorism" to deformed workers state in the been ruled by a succession of gen­ legal unions were cOlnpany unions "protect" the games. A special North - has been a trip wire for erals trained and selected by the under the umbrella of the state­ commando unit has been formed World War III. Pentagon. Following last year's sponsored Federation of Korean consisting of sharpshooters also For decades anyone in South month-long labor and student Trade Unions, which enforced trained in the more deadly martial Korea who even spoke of re­ revolt, the military regime in labor discipline hand in glove with arts. The right-wing US News & unification risked imprisonment, Seoul has taken on a parliamen­ company goons, the KCIA spy World Report quipped:-..with torture and assassination. But tary facade. A majority in the agency and riot police. This cor­ Korean security on a hair trigger, today popular sympat!1y for re­ impotent National Assembly is poratist straitjacket was ripped fans might want to think twice unification, spearheaded by the now held by liberal opposition apart by a massive strike wave before leaping up to cheer the militant student protests, is so parties led by Kim Dae Jung and centering on the notoriously re­ ho,ne team - or suddenly reaching intense that even the US puppet Kim Young Sam. While the feud­ actionary Hyundai empire (see regime of Roh Tae Woo is paying for a stick of gum." ing Kims don't like one another, "South Korea: Strikes Shake lip service to it. In July Roh an­ The entire 600,000-man South both are currently on amicable Dictatorship," WV No 435, 4 nounced an opening to the North, Korean army as well as the 40,000 terms with President Roh, who September 1987)-.- permi tting trade, family visi ts and US troops stationed there will be was trained for the job at Fort Again this spring a strike wave student exchanges. In late August placed on full alert during the Bragg, North Carolina and later involving over a thousand separate South Korean politicians and games. A squadron of US fighter with the US forces ravaging Viet­ industrial actions shook the North Korean bureaucrats met at planes has been moved from Japan nam. The so-called "democra­ chaebols. The core of the South the Korean War truce village of to Korea, a US Navy carrier task tization" of Sout:1 Korea is pure Korean industrial proletariat went force will patrol offshore and Panmunjom, but their talks went hype. With its weak native nowhere. out - auto workers at Hyundai AWACS aircraft will be flying bourgeoisie, its huge and combat­ and Daewoo, shipbuilders at overhead. The North Korean The notion that reunification ati ve proletariat and radical Sam sung. At H yundai Precision regime (which has refused to par­ can be achieved peacefully under student movement, this Cold War and Industry Co strikers held ticipate in the Seoul Olympics) the banner of "democracy" is a front line state can exist only as a eleven executives, including the liberal nationalist pipe dream. The rightly called the games military dictatorship (open or dis­ founder's son, hostage in the "undisguised war maneuvers." national and social liberation of guised) or it won't exist at all. company compound for seven To hold the Olympics in Seoul the Korean people requires revol­ In addition to heralding its days. Throughout South Korea is itself a Cold War provocation. utionary reunification - prolet­ phony "democratization," propa­ workers took on the kudasan, the For it was on the Korean penin- arian socialist revolution against gandists for US imperialism point bosses' paid goons and---strike­ to South Korea as a great success breakers. story of "free enterprise" The strikes ended with wage capitalism. But the South Korean increases averaging 20 percent. :;:: "economic miracle" is based on Even the Wall Street Journal ~ subjecting workers to the highest conceded that the chaebols-could ~ rate of exploitation in the indus- easily absorb the additional labor trial world. An American liberal costs. Profits are expected to in­ who visited a Seoul factory last crease by 30 percent this year, year wrote to the New York Times (5 January): -- --- while South Korean companies routinely achieve double-digit "Condi tions were reminiscent gains in labor productivity. Never­ of the 19th-century Lawrence, theless, the Korean bourgeoisie Mass., textile mills. Teen-ag~ and their imperialist overlords women, recent arrivals from have to be nervous about the the countryside, work 13-hour emergence of a combative and days, 6-day weeks, for 65 independently organized prolet­ cents an hour. They live in ariat. They are sitting atop a hostels above the factories, 10 volcano. to a room, returning half their Imperialist agencies are work­ wages to the American-owned ing overtime to co-opt and control company for 'room' and the new South Korean unions. meals." Thus last winter the AFL-CIO Business Week points cut that sponsored "craining sessions" for Sou-th-Koreans work over the union leaders at various South course of a year 40 percent more Korean universities. The AFL-CIO hours than Americans and 25 per­ bureaucracy is notorious as an ins­ cent rT'')re hours than Japanese. trument for CIA-backed inter­ At the same time, South Korea's vention to smash labor militancy industrial plant, heavily financed throughout the American empire '}. ...••..•• ; .""'." .S· by American and Japanese - while pushing racist, anti-Asian Combative South Korean proletariat has the power to ovenhrow Cold capital, is among the world's War police state. most advanced. The result is Continued on page ten OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 1988 3 continent for ourselves and our Immigration ••• '"­w -' descendants unless we greatly in­ Continued from page one '"- crease our numbers." From 1947 >- to 1973 immigration was directly Howard and Fitzgerald advocate. -D or indirectly responsible for 59 Howard's new line didn't go down ~ percent of popUlation growth. The so well amongst sections of the .~ ruling class also had to come to Liberals' traditional big business 0 terms with the newly independent, base: such racist populism could ~ US-backed Asian regimes to the be bad for business in Asia and ~ north and the crude and offensive c:: Hawke is doing the job anyway. o racism of the White Australia pol­ Howard cries "One Australia!" +­ icy became more and more em­ Hawke replies that's what the five :;:; barrassing. This was highlighted in years of his government have been ~ cases like the brutal 1965 deport­ all about. Just so. Make no mis- ~ ation of a five-year-old Fijian take, to the extent the ruling :;: Indian girl, Nancy Prasad, as a class is having a debate, it's 8 "prohibited immigrant," to a about how best to enforce White ,;: chorus of protest. In 1966 the Australia. "One Australia" is a Migrant groups protest against cutbacks to English-teaching programs, Liberal Holt government expunged catchphrase for racist reaction, part of Hawke/Keating's austerity drive. overt racism from immigration reminiscent of Hitler's "One law, permitting a small number of Germany!" This "debate" has is increasingly unstable and more chauvinist persecution and de­ non-European immigrants if they served to dispel liberal taboos and difficult for the arrogant white portation. We demand full citizen­ fulfilled the requirements of a bring overt racism back into the imperialists to police. The Aust­ ship rights for all foreign-born strict points system, based on poli tical mainstream. Racist pigs ralian bourgeoisie is gripped by working people who have managed language, job skills, age and like Ruxton and Ron Casey are anti-Soviet war fervour and de­ to make it into the country! money. This was purely cosmetic, almost respectable now. Various termined to push ahead with their never intending to admi t any large far-right outfits have crawled out anti-working class economic HISTORY OF GENOCIDE, number of Asians. Nonetheless, of the woodwork, including the "rationalisation." Their "One RACIAL EXCLUSION even with the door only slightly fascist National Action, which has Australia" assimilationist war cry ajar, Asian minorities have es­ targets ranging from leftists to demands submission, order, The foundation stones of Aust­ tablished themselves in the larger the Uniting Church in Sydney and coercion. It is the ideological ralian capitalism were firstly, the cities, where they provide a vis­ conservative financial journalist spearhead of a fearful ruling class bloody massacre and dispossession ible target for the racist backlash. Maximilian Walsh. There has been whose response to the increasing of the Aboriginals, the exploit­ But for the working class they can a rise in violent attacks on Asians, "threats" around them is inten­ ation of whose lands was the basis be a valuable link to its class including students and Japanese sified belligerence at home and of its wealth; secondly, the driv­ brothers and sisters of the region. tourists. The organised workers abroad. Cold War racism, in the ing out and exclusion of Asian and In the 1970s the official policy movement must be mobilised to guise of "na tional consensus," Pacific Island labour and forging of "assimilation" of imrnigrants defend Asians against racist at­ serves the bourgeoisie to divide the federation of the settler col­ gave way to "multiculturalism." tacks and crush the incipient fas­ and conquer its working class. The onies as an outpost of the Bri tish The harsh racist reality remained cist groups in the egg! fight against White Australia Empire. From the pogroms on the unchanged - exclusion of all bOut a The bourgeoisie has staked its racism is inseparable from class goldfields in the 1860s to the anti­ few Asians, apartheid oppression economic future on "enmeshing" struggle defence of the USSR and Chinese immigration laws to the of Aboriginals, and concentration wi th the faster-growing econom­ Vietnam! "Whites Only" clauses in the of immigrants at the bottom of ies of Southeast Asia. It knows White Australia capitalism craftist trade unions, all doors society, doing the dirtiest and tha t returning to an openly racist mirrors the racialist states of were progressively closed to the hardest jobs, first to suffer from immigration policy would get in Apartheid South Africa and Zion­ Chinese and other non-Europeans. the ever-increasing cuts to basic the way. Already, reacting to the ist Israel, except that its A t various times, especially in the social services. current "debate," the Japanese "blacks/ Arabs" are the masses of tropics, Chinese and other Asians government has told banks to ease Asia and separated from it by constituted a significant part of TERROR FOR TOURISTS off on Australian property in­ hundreds of miles of ocean. All the workforce that built this vestment; Hong Kong yuppies are attempts to maintain Australia as country rail way workers, A t the borders and airports, looking for better places to em­ a privileged white outpost in con­ miners, shearers etc, who fought the Whi te Australia policy re­ igrate to, and so on. On the other flict with the surrounding region their own strikes, mostly unchron­ mains the reality, as recent atroc­ hand, Australia's rulers are ter­ are not only reactionary but his­ icled, against the racist bosses ity stories illustrate. The navy and rified of Japan's emergence as torically doomed. Geographic and and exclusionist white unions. But coast guard wage a constant war economic king-pin of the Pacific, economic reali ty dictate that one after the 1901 Immigration Re­ on Indonesian fishermen, who are rivalling the US which is their day the population will be many stri<;:tion Act, the infamous "White picked up, interned and their political/ mili tary lifeline. From times larger, and of mainly Asian Australia policy," this country boats confiscated. A Thai female the Philippines to Fiji the region descent. The only progressive way was hermetically sealed off tourist was strip-searched by Cus­ this can happen is through social­ against Asians for over fifty toms, jailed for nine days, sub­ Spartacist League ist revolution to expropriate the years. Prospective immigrants jected to "ocker" racist and sexist White Australia bourgeoisie. Rev­ were required to pass the notori­ abuse by customs officials and GPO Box 3473, GPO Box 2339, olutionary Marxists recognise that ous "dictation test" in whatever denied access to friends. A Brazil­ Sydney, 2001 Melbourne, 3001 to call for "open borders" under European language that an immi­ ian commercial agent visiting his Ph: 281-2181 Ph: 654-4315 capitalism would be a utopian de­ gration official saw fit to pre­ niece was seized at Sydney mand. Free movement of people scribe, until 1958. This was airport, questioned for hours and will occur only after the triumph complemented in 1907 by the de­ deported next morning while his of socialism internationally, when portation of most of the Pacific niece waited anxiously at the air­ the nation state, and therefore Islanders who had been brought to port. An Egyptian-born American Correction borde~ and immigration laws, will work the cane fields under "inden­ medical specialist denounced The conclusion of our article, have disappeared. We do not ad­ ture" - ie, slavery. customs officials as "flagrant "Vietnam to Pull out of Kampu­ vise capitalist governments on After the scare of World War racists" after they searched his chea" in the previous issue their necessarily chauvinist and II, which the Australian bour­ baggage and accused him of being (Australasian Spartacist no 127, exploi tative immigration policies. geoisie fought as a racialist war a possible carrier of foot and August/September 1988) con­ But we aggressively oppose the against Japan, Labor Immigration mouth disease. Those who make it tained a stupid error, which read: White Australia immigration laws Lvlinister Cal well motivated the past zealous customs and immi­ "Ultimately, not only in Vietnam, and all forms of racially and post-war European immigration gration officials but remain Kampuchea and Laos, but also in nationally discriminatory quotas, scheme under the slogan "Popu­ "illegal" are chased up by cops China, the construction of social­ and defend the rights of migrant late or Perish" and said: "we can­ and sent to virtual concentration ism requires prole tar ian revolu­ workers - "legal" or not - against not continue to hold our island camps such as Villawood and tion in the advanced West - the US, Japan and Australia." And further on we stated, "The pre­ condi tion for socialist revolution in the capitalist West, as well as for proletarian political revolution in the deformed workers states of the East, is the building of inter­ na tionalist, Trotskyist parties forged in the struggle for the LaTrobe Uni Melbourne Sydney rebirth of the Fourth Inter­ 1 pm, Thursday, 6 October 2 pm, Saturday, 15 October 7 pm, Saturday, 22 October national, world party of socialist Meeting Room, Union Building Room 1, YWCA Room 5, 2nd floor, YWCA revolution." Jap?n of course is an Latrobe Uni 489 Elizabeth Street, Cnr Wentworth Ave and advanced capitalist giant, but of Melbourne Liverpool Streets, Sydney the East, not the West. We For more information phone: Spartacist League Sydney (02) 2&1 21&1 or Melbourne (03) 6544315. apologise to our readers. 4 AUSTRALASIAN SPARTACIST .. Ox I ey Library Kanak cane-cutters, virtually slaves, in North Queensland (above). Anti-Chinese massacre by diggers on the goldfields (right). Last century saw Australia built on the blood and sweat of coloured labour­ later deported as Australia became a "nation." Maribyrnong detention centres, Its racial xenophobia about Mitchel I Library where they can be interned with­ Asia has condemned weak Aust­ that you can now watch SBS TV Melbourne, supported by 14 leftist out trial indefinitely. ralian imperialism .to a lackey's and enjoy drinking wine and eating and immigrant groups ranging The Cold War Hawke govern­ existence, the price of protection a wide variety of decent food. from Eurocommunists to Stalinists ment has cracked down on first by the British then the More importantly it has created a and Maoists, turned its first public "illegals" and refugees from right­ American empires. Today the working class that at least is meeting over to a platform for ist terror regimes. Right now, Australian ruling class needs the heavily immigrant, with the im­ the ALP. A Spartacist speaker seven Tamils await deportation to US spy/communications bases and migrants concentrated in less from the floor received a round of Sri Lanka, their appeals for wants to be in the front line of skilled, lower paid, more danger­ applause when he said, "You can I t asylum ignored, where they face war plans against the Soviet ous jobs. Less tied to the craftism even begin to combat the racism torture and execution at the hands Union, because they cement the and class collaboration of the being bred today if you do not of the vicious Sinhala-chauvinist commitment of the US to defend Laborite trade union bureaucracy, start with a hard class opposition regime of Hawke's Cold War ally, White Australia. Their fear that immigrant workers will be in the to the government of the day - Jayewardene. The red-carpet US power is weakening translates forefront of a class struggle up­ the Hawke Cold War govern­ treatment of Soviet-bloc "defect­ into a desire to be even more use­ surge. The Ford Broadmeadows ment." The reformists are all ors" makes a glaring contrast. ful as a lackey, for example strut­ strike in 1973 was an example - immersed in Laborism, glorifying They are welcomed as "refugees ting around as policemen of the just as the fake-communist bu­ the history of the Labor Party and from communist tyranny." After South Pacific. Hawke's real reaucrat Carmichael thought he peddling the myth of a progressive World War II, the Labor govern­ foreign minister was never Bill had a sellout all wrapped up, the Australian na tionalisrn. In the ment gave orders that Jewish Hayden but George Shultz - wit­ anger of the largely migrant midst of the racist furore, the refugees were to comprise no ness the recent revelation that he workers exploded and they tried Socialist Workers Party (SWP) more than 25 percent of each wrote a 1983 Australian defence to tear him apart, along with the headlined in Direct Action, ship-load of immigrants, whilst department statement on nuclear Ford factory itself. "Racists in Retreat"! They have East European fascist war ship visits. But the obstacle to class swallowed the liberal "multi­ criminals were assured first class It was the defeat of US im­ struggle and the main conduit of culturalism" myth hook, line and passage. Following the Vietnam perialism and its Australian racism into the working class is sinker, and really believe White war, the CIA twisted the Fraser lackey at the hands of social rev­ the same ALP that once pro­ Australia is a thing of the past. government's arms to take in the olution in Vietnam that ended the claimed White Australia the num­ The various "unity" manoeuvres of Vietnamese "boat people," "American century" and cracked ber one plank in its platform. the pro-Moscow SodaUst Party amongst whom were certified war the hard chauvinism of Cold War I Earlier this year at a meeting of and the S-w P include the iv'\aoist criminals and US and Australian in Australia. A generation of Labor MPs, one of them ventured CPA(M-L), whose Vanguard runs collaborators. The largest group youth took to the streets bearing the opinion that the ALP had been racist headlines referring to "Jap :;:: formed to help the poor and the imperialism." The political bandits ~ weak. Gareth Evans, now the of the Socialist Labour League ; foreign minister, shot back: "Bull­ have put new words (for them) to ~ shit. It was formed to keep out paper lately in Workers News, ~ the 'yellow hordes'" (rYdney "Down with racism, protectionism Morning Herald, 17 May. And and na tionalis~n!" but in practice some of them are proud of it. they always turn to the racist, Sydney Radio Station 2KY, owned protectionist, nationalist union and managed by the NSW Labor tops and ALP to carry out their Council, only sacked their ugly program - up to and including the racist announcer, Ron Casey, formation of a workers govern­ after months of public uproar. ment! Moreover, for years the Four months later he was rehired, SLL ignored the race question, and left wing delegates in the and exploded vitriolically in re­ Labor Council were taunted with sponse to our article "Life in a chants of "Casey's back! Casey I s Remote White Imperialist En­ back!" The trade union bureauc- clave" (Australasian Spartacist no racy fosters vi triolic anti- 101, April 1983), contemptuously Japanese protectionism which dismissing our attacks on Laborite fuels racism. Early this year a racism as a "jaundiced middle Sydney Waterside Workers Federation Hall, 17 May 1985: 250 workers protectionist demonstration of class view of the working class" gathered in solidarity with Vietnamese Revolution, prepared to defend Geelong cement workers against (Workers News, 25 June 1983). Vietnamese Embassy official (on podium) against Vietnamese fascists. Japanese cement imports, organ­ It will take a socialist revol­ ised by the union bureaucrats in ution to racially integrate Aust­ of Asians admi tted to this the flag of the National Liber­ league with the bosses in ralia, sweeping away a ruling class country, the Vietnamese are the ation Front; wharfies and seamen Melbourne, ended up in attacks on that despises the rest of Asia and anti-communist exception to the initiated strikes and bans in a busload of Japanese tourists. increasingly hates the sight of its White Australia rule. If there had defence of Vietnam. This class And in the mines, chauvinist pro­ own population. In the absence of been Indonesian "boat people" polarisation opened opportunities tectionism has been used by the a thoroughly internationalist following the massive anti­ for building a revolutionary party "left" Miners Federation leader­ multi-racial Bolshevik party, mo­ communist massacres there in with a perspective of breaking the ship of John Maitland and Co to bilisations of the working class 1965 the Australian navy would working class from Laborite suppress any class struggle against can be diverted into reactionary have blown them out of the water. chauvinism to an internationalist job losses, mine closures and give­ channels by the poisonous influ­ The bourgeoisie has its side; they solidarity with social revolution in backs - which they then blame on ence of Laborism. The only way collect counterrevolutionary riff Asia. the Japanese coal importers. Pro­ out for workers, immigrants, raff from all over the world. The tectionism and racism mean de­ blacks and women lies in building FOR A MULTI-RACIAL working class must demand the fea t for the working class. such a revolutionary party, REVOLUTIONARY WORK~RS right of asylum for all victims of Yet it I s these very ALP tops through splitting the ALP I S work­ PARTY! reactionary terror, be they Iran­ and union bureaucrats who are ing-class base from its White Aus­ ians fleeing Khomeini, Tamils The bourgeoisie's post-war championed by the left as op­ tralia capitalism-loving tops, in from Sri Lanka, Fijian Indians, op­ immigration program has amelior­ ponents of racism. A recently the struggle for a racially inte­ positionists from Malaysia and ated the cultural philistinism of formed Coalition for Multicul­ grated workers republic of Singapore - No Deportations! British Australia somewhat, so turalism and Democratic Rights in Australia, part of socialist Asia .• OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 1988 5 Turmoil at the Top in Gorbachev's Russia erils 0 erestroiK8 The article below, focussing on rubber-stamp legislative bodies. the late June special conference As Business Week (27 June) put it, of the C PSU, is reprinted from "Gorbachev- I'iots an End Run Workers Vanguard no 458 (29 July) Around the Party Bureaucrats," biweekly organ of the Spartacist by giving greater weight to the League/US. government and technocratic bureaucracy. But with thousands For decades the stage- protesting in the streets, vocifer­ managed congresses of the Com­ ously debating what were pre­ munist Party of the Soviet Union viously closely guarded "affairs of were viewed as non-events both in state," this could awaken expec­ Russia and abroad. But for a few tations that the Kremlin rulers days in late June political people cannot fulfill. And if behind the around the world were engrossed "Leninism" preached by the by the 19th CPSU conference. It bureaucracy as the ideological was the first special conference in straitjacket of Stalinist rule the 47 years. Moscow News (17 July) Soviet working people rediscover headlined, wTthmore than a little what the living Lenin really overstatement, "Four Days That fought and stood for, the result Shook the Worid" - recalling John will be explosive. Reed's book on the Russian Rev­ Yet amid all this ferment the olution of October 1917. After six decisive social force in the Soviet decades of heavy-handed suppres­ Union - the working class - has sion, this clash of contending not ~ entered the political fray. viewpoints in full view of the And this is not accidental. Pere­ Soviet population must seem like stroika is an anti-working class a revolution. But al though program, aiming to overcome the "bureaucracy" was endlessly con­ "years of stagnation II under demned, CP leader Mikhail Brezhnev through speedup, mass Gorbachev's program of ~sn9~!. Soviet leader Gorbachev (bottom, right) with perestroika point man layoffs, inflation and cutbacks in (openness) and ~~est.!oika (re­ Yakovlev and "hardliner" Ligachev (left) at CPSU 19th Party social programs. For the most structuring) is no answer to the Conference, June 1988. part the Gorbachevite intelligent­ deepening crisis of Soviet society sia - Russia's yuppies - deeply engendered by Stalinist misrule. minded "comrades" says a lot banners declaring, "Comrade re­ about the sharpening tensions in gional committee: We're for resent the working class with its A few weeks before the con­ egalitarian values and commit­ Gorbachev's Russia ••• and the ~~estr_(?.ika! How about you?" In ference, the editor of the official ment to economic security. On Communist Youth publication widespread fear of a return to the Omsk, 7,000 jammed the Dynamo dark, not-so-distant past. soccer stadium to protest local the other hand, the conservative Y ouns. 0a~<,!, who had been aptaratchiks want above all to named a delegate, addressed a When Gorbachev originally party leaders imposing their can­ de end rigid control of the didates. In Moscow's Pushkin 111e- meeting of his supposed constitu­ called the conference over a year bureaucratic elite (the nomen­ ents. But it was not a happy oc­ ago, it was expected to be a Square, the unofficial clubs Civic Dignity and Commune staged a klatura) over all aspects o£Sociaf casion for Anatoly Ivanov, who triumph for "political ~~estr9ika" The Soviet proletariat is too demonstration carrying red flags me. was raked over the coals merci­ with his people replacing the socially powerful, the issues at with the hammer and sickle and lessly as an unreconstructed holdovers from the Brezhnev era stake affect it too directly for the chanting II All Power to the Stalinist and opponent of ~ on the Central Committee. But working class to remain passive. Soviets! II stroika. Atone point the 59-year­ the conservative ~ara!~hiks For all the rhetoric about o{cI''i'youth editor" exclaimed, "I countermobilized effectively. These are not the anti­ "openness," "soviet power" and am near retirement. Don't Many prominent intellectual sup­ Communist protests of a few "revol utionary change," what all worry. II When Ivanov finally fled porters of ~~':>~Ioi!

Pro-Gorbachev demonstrators mobilize outside party headquarters in Irkutsk Cleft) and Moscow City Soviet protesting selection of delegates for party conference and demanding green light for glasnost. 6 AUSTRALASIAN SPARTACIST the far-from-extravagant living was it a setback for Gorbachev. and Gorbachev and a large banner Arutyunyan every time he tried to standards they already have. The main proposals coming out of saying "Socialism, Not Stalinism." speak. As we go to press, tens of Within the Soviet proletariat the conference are for a new The police couldn't figure out thousands continue to demon­ there is a deep reservoir of "strong" president on the Ameri­ who they were and so let them strate every night. Nagorno­ egalitarianism, legacy of the 1917 can or French Gaullist model and alone. Meanwhile, in the Georgian Karabakh, which was paralyzed by Revolution. But "socialism in one for a mammoth super-parliament town of Gori - Stalin's birthplace a general strike for two months, is country" - the program of Stalin combining the bureaucratic - copies of Anatoli Rybakov's under virtual martial law, with and Bukharin (as well as Krush-· "soviets" with representatives of Children of the Arbat, a powerful Soviet troops searching cars and chev, Brezhnev and Gorbachev)­ (presumably pro-Gorbachev) mass novel about the 'Onset of Stalin's trucks for weapons. Typesetters is a cruel hoax. The interests of organizations. The stated purpose terror ,are being burned by youth­ for the paper ~~vets~ Kar2.bakh the Soviet masses can only be is to provide some mechanism to ful Stalin-worshippers. refused to publish the central advanced through a program of energize or sidestep the notori­ The most dramatic and explos­ government's decision. At the world socialist revolution~ cre­ ously sluggish party apparatus. ive political unrest has been in the same time, Moscow ordered the ating the basis for an inter­ While the top levels of the party Caucasus and Baltic regions. In deportation of Paruir Airikyan, a national planned economy and and state bureaucracies (the February violent national conflict prominent Armenian nationalist eliminating the deforming pres- nomenklatura) closely overlap, erupted between Armenians and agitator, who was simultaneously . sure exerted on the Soviet state lower down many government Azerbaijanis over the status of stripped of Soviet citizenship. through imperialist encirclement. officials are non-party intellec­ the Nagorno-Karabakh Auton­ Nationalist agitation has also Rather than a return to the tuals and technocrats who are omous Region. Since then scores hit the Baltic republics. The soviet democracy and revolution­ Gorbachev's people. of people have been killed in CIA's "Captive Nations" crowd ary internationalism of the has long dreamed of counterrevol­ Bolsheviks under Lenin and utionary dismemberment of the Trotsky, Gorbachev's bureau­ Soviet Union. Last month thou­ cratic "reform" aims in the op­ sands marched through Riga sing­ posite direction, toward greater ing the Latvian national anthem concessions to the imperialists and carrying flags of the bour­ abroad and undermining socialist geois independent Latvian state of gains at home. What's needed is a the interwar years. In neighboring genuine poli tical revolution of the Estonia the Gorbachevite intelli­ proletariat of all the Soviet gentsia has set up a non-party peoples to oust the stultifying bu­ "People's Front," which on June reaucratic caste whose continued 17 organized a mass rally of domination endangers the home­ 150,000 around the demand for land of October. Above all, that complete economic autonomy. requires the leadership of a Originally proposed by sociologist Leninist-Trotskyist party capable Tatyana Zaslavskaya, a leading in­ of defending and extending the tellectual light of ~~.?!!_~L~~ gains of the first workers such organizations can easily slip revolution in history. out of the control of the Kremlin. TURMOIL AT THE TOP, In reality, the People's Front is a front for resurgent nationalism. FRA YING AT THE FRINGE They march behind the flag of the The fissures in the Kremlin interwar Estonian republic, which oligarchy were displayed quite outlawed Communists, barred openly at the conference. Jews from the universities with Gorbachev lashed out at his con­ Armenians demonstrate in Moscow. Program of perestroika heightens the numerus clausus, and was a servative opponents for their "un­ national tensions in USSR. bast{on of White Guard reaction. disguised attempts at perverting No doubt, Gorbachev is also communalist rioting, while That resurgent nationalism in the essence of the reform." A seeking to protect himself from Armenia was paralyzed by mass the Baltic republics and also delegate from the Urals caused an Krushchev's fate, that is, being protests and strikes. These pro­ Armenia drapes itself in the uproar by calling for the resig­ ousted by his colleagues in the tests were suspended for the party mantle of ~~st!oik'!. is not nation of longtime Soviet leader party leadership. (Ligachev point­ conference. But when the confer­ simply protective coloration. The Andrei Gromyko, who as chairman edly reminded the conference that ence failed to satisfy the Bal tic region and Armenia are the of the Presidium of the Supreme Gorbachev was installed with his Armenian demands, the protests most economically and culturally Soviet is the titular head of the and Gromyko's support.) But set­ resumed with even greater fury. advanced regions in the Soviet USSR. The influential "reform" ting up a bonapartist president One person has been killed and Union. In the past, centralization economist Leonid Abalkin asked and a parliament aping the cor­ over 30 injured in violent clashes from Moscow (despite Great rhetorically, "Can we, while rupt bourgeois talk-shops of West between Soviet army troops and Russian chauvinism) has tended to retaining the Soviet organization Europe is hardly a step toward demonstrators trying to shut down act as a national equalizer. Now of society and one-party system, genuine soviet democracy. the airport of Armenia's capital, these regions hope to use econ­ ensure a democratic organization The turmoil at the top of the Yerevan. In response, an emerg­ omic decentralization and market of social life?" In response, Kremlin hierarchy has spread to ency session of the Presidium of competition as a lever to gain at Gorbachev chastised his advisor the intelligentsia and national re­ the Supreme Soviet of the USSR the expense of more backward for lack of faith in the Communist publics of the Soviet Union. In the was called which on July 18 areas. When the Armenia crisis system. weeks leading up to the confer­ rejected the Armenian claim for erupted, we wrote: The delegates were also ence, the tiny self-styled Demo­ Nagorno-Karabakh. "Except where it serves as a treated to the long-awaited pol­ cratic Union (some of whose The decision was announced in cover for capitalist counter­ itical fistfight between Boris leaders are funded by the notori­ a three-hour TV broadcast of the revolution, we support the right Yeltsin and Yegor Ligachev, dar­ ous CIA conduit, the National En­ Supreme Soviet debate, with of national self-determination ling of the conservative ~arat­ dowment for Democracy) staged Gorbachev reading the riot act to for the various Soviet peoples - ch~ks. The pugnacious Yeltsin was demonstrations in central Moscow the Armenian and Azerbaijani ie, the right to secede and form ousted as Moscow party boss last raising the slogans "Down with leaders for fostering national a separate state. And we do not fall for pushing the reform line tyranny!" "Down with the KGB!" rancor. In response, more than regard as sacrosanct the in­ too far, too fast. When Reagan On one occasion another "unof­ 200,000 protestors flooded the ternal national boundaries of visited Moscow this May, Yeltsin ficial" group also turned up, center of Yerevan, shouting down the USSR, which the Kremlin called a press conference and told carrying portraits of Marx, Lenin Armenian CP leader Suren Continued on page eight Western reporters that Ligachev, head of the party apparatus, was a closet opponent of ~~..s~.!:..oika and should be dumped. Yeltsin ap­ pealed to the conference: "Re­ habilitation after 50 years has now become habitual.... I am asking for political rehabilitation while I am alive" (New York Times, 2 July). For now, he- didn't get it. Ligachev hit back, calling Yeltsin a "destructive force" who Autoworkers meeting considers "the work of the party in VAZ auto plant in and the people is in vain." T ogliatti. Perestroika means speedup, layoffs Overall, Gorbachev performed for working class. a careful balancing act, seeking to raise himself in bonapartist fashion above the contending bu­ reaucratic factions. As it turned out, the conference was not a triumph for the conservatives, nor Union Sovietica OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 1988 7 Perils of ~ one country," represented the bu­ ~ reaucratic-nationalist response to Perestroika g the pressures of world capitalism• ••• ~ . The Bukharinite Right tried to Continued from page seven -i ignore and deny those pressures, 3 bureaucracy has arbitrarily (1) and so advocated a program that fixed. " (Jl would have led to the destruction - "Behind the Armenia Crisis," of the USSR (though this was not Workers Vanguard their intent). How could the no 450, 8 April Soviet Union have defeated Nazi But by intensifying national div­ Germany if industrialization had ISlOns and inequalities, Gorba­ proceeded, in Bukharin' s phrase, chev's perestroika is stoking the "at a snail's pace"? Of course, fires of nationalist antagonism. history cannot simply be reversed: today the Soviet Union THE ANDREYEV A LETTER is a great industrial and military What a year or so ago seemed power. What then does a neo­ a shading of opinion wi thin the Bukharinite program mean in the Soviet leaders:1ip has become a late I 80s? An attempt to increase hardening rift. The evident differ­ the economic and social weight of ences between Gorbachev and the intelligentsia at the expense Ligachev are narrow. The No 2 not only of the party ~~atchiks party leader does not criticize but also the working class. It Gorbachev I s appeasement of Demonstrators in Tallinn raise flag of interwar bourgeois Estonian means raising the incomes of the Western imperialism, from dis­ republic, viper's nest of anti-Semitism and fascism. educated petty bourgeois, shifting armament to Afghanistan to Russian republic, Soy.!':.tskaya heirs, the present Kremlin bu­ economic power to factory man­ Angola. He has repeatedly de­ Ro.?.~,!. The "Andreyeva letter" reaucracy. To date, most of the agers and technocrats in the name clared his support for market­ of market competition, promoting oriented economic reforms, was a hysterical diatribe denounc- attacks on Stalin come from neo­ ing "Glasnost, openness, the dis- Bukharinite intellectuals and a new class of petty entrepren­ though perhaps less sweeping and appearance of zones off limits to outright supporters of "Western­ eurs, and even decollecti vizing rapid than Gorbachev would have agricul ture. it. The battle lines have been criticism," as "'prompted' in one style democracy," rather· than degree or another by Western from partisans of authentic drawn instead over glasnost. It is STALINISM, PERESTROIKA AND radio stations or by those of our Bolshevism. The Gorbachev here that Ligachev has set the THE WORKING CLASS terms of engagement. Yegor fellow countrymen who are not regime tries to distinguish the steadfast enough in their under- "good" Stalin of the 1920s-early Alongside the Ligachev offens­ Ligachev is no old-line Stalinist, nor a stodgy holdover from the standing of the essence of social- '30s from the "bad" Stalin there­ ive against .&~snost in the press Brezhnev era. Like Gorbachev, he ism." It defended Stalin as one of after. Thus at the recent party and intellectual life, there is pass­ was elevated into the Kremlin the "trail-blazers of socialism" conference top Kremlin aide ive resistal)ce to perestroika in hierarchy from the provinces in worthy of "honor and dignity." Georgi Arbatov, arguing for a ten­ the economic sphere. The reforms the early '80s by the late Yuri Ligachev's supporters in the ap- year limit on holding high party in the name of enterprise "self­ paratus made sure the "Andreyeva office, opined that if only Stalin Andropov. Ligachev won favor financing" have been undercut· and even sabotaged by the bureauc- with the austere Andropov letter" was reprinted in every re- had retired in 1934 - before the gional newspaper in the USSR. because he was reputedly the only partv first secretary in a major (The East German Stalinists also city (Tomsk, in Siberia) who did printed it.) not take bribes. Not coincidentally, both Ligachev is worried that glas­ Gorbachev and his chief lieuten­ nost could go - is going - too far. ant, Aleksandr Yakovlev, were out Beginning early last year he began of the country at the time. For hammering at historians who were three weeks the Gorbachevite in­ exposing Stalin I s monstrous tellectuals were paralyzed by this crimes: "Weare for an honest and attack on them, orchestrated Leon Trotsky, open look back, but we are decis­ from the Kremlin corridors of co-leader of ively against the falsification of power. When Gorbachev returned October Revolution our glorious past and against the from abroad, he moved quickly and founder of portrayal of our history as a series and effectively to defend his base. Red Army, waged of continuous mistakes and disap­ Cgachev was called onto the car­ internationalist pointments." Accentuate the pet and stripped of his position as fight against Stalin's posi ti ve, he instructed Soviet his­ ideological overseer. A reply to "socialism in one torians: "the 70 years since the the "Andreyeva letter," report­ country." October Revolution have been edly written by Yakovlev, was above all a period of the triumph printed in Pravda and reproduced of socialist construction" (New with ritucir-self-criticism in York Times, 24 March 1987). Last Sovetskaya Rossiya. Now the fall he publicly criticized the two Soviet press officially declared: most vocal advocates of "Democratism is impossible with­ Gorbachev ' s line, Moscow News out the freedom of thought and and Ogonyok. speech, without an open and broad clash of opinions •••• " Kirov assassination, which trig­ racies of the industrial ministries The boldest move - by gered the bloody purges of all the who use state orders (which have Ligachev I s people to scuttle &~s­ The core of the "Andreyeva Old Bolsheviks, loyal Stalinists in­ priority) to try to retain their old nost was the "Andreyeva letter." letter" is the question of Stalin. cluded - Russia would have been control over the enterprises. The In mid-March a lengthy tract, os­ And for good reason. Exposing spared so much suffering! resul t of this turf war has been a tensibly written by a Leningrad Stalin as a psychopathic mass kind of bureaucratized economic chemistry teacher but reportedly murderer, an enemy of socialism The Gorbachevite intelligent­ sia looks back not to the Russia of anarchy. At the conference, the edited by Ligachev, appeared in and the Soviet people, calls into director of a machine building the official newspaper of the question the legitimacy of his Lenin and the October Revolution, but to the Russia of Bukharin and factory was heavily applauded Stalin and the New Economic Pol­ when he attacked the endless English Edition icy (NEP), when the bureaucratic forms and reports, demagogically l~~A.~!!,~!~!I~ :. degeneration had already reversed thundering: "You've got to kill the revolutionary course of the the people producing them." He i SPARTACIST IlIUriltii,ii'J4ti"'i"ljii?i16 ,iimmttttjl Soviet state. They identify them­ also illustrated how ~troika Return to the Road No 41-42, Winter 1987-88 selves with the "red professors," threatens central planning and the (64 Pages) ~~~ (technocrats) and Nepmen state monopoly of foreign trade­ of Lenin and Trotsky! (petty entrepreneurs) of the fundamental conquests of the PAGE 4 $1.50 1920s. They see both Trotsky and October Revolution - remarking: 5talin disturbing their peace, "To tell you the truth, we don't Spartacist is sent to comfort and social advantages. need ministries. We earn our own all Australasian Spartacist Trotsky represented the prolet­ feed. We earn our own hard cur­ and Workers Vanguard arian internationalist response to rency. What can they give us? subscribers the pressures of world imperialism Nothing." on the weak Soviet state - In terms of their economic im­ seeking to optimize what they had pact on the working class, Mail/make dleques payable to: through industrialization while Gorbachev's policies represent Spartacist ANZ Publishing Co, promoting workers revolution in not de-Stalinization but in many GPO Box 3473, Sydney 2001. the capitalist West. Stalin, under respects a re-Stalinization the watchword of "socialism in widening income differentials be- 8 AUSTRALASIAN SPARTACIST tween managers/technocrats and ~ October 1917. But in the absence workers, between skilled and un­ ~ of a revolutionary-internationalist skilled labor, reintroducing piece : perspective counterposed to all rates. The labor policies of g- variants of Stalinism, strikes and ~restroika are strikingly remi­ ~ workers protests could be diverted niscent of Stalin's anti­ ::! into support for the Gorbachev re­ egalitarian campaigns. The 18th ~ formers promising "democra- Party Conference in 19~1 tization" or even for old-line decreed: Stalinists using populist dema­ "We must liquidate completely gogy. Gorbachev's "self-reform" the rotten practice of egali­ is an illusion; the bureaucratic tarianism in wages and must apparatus must be shattered, and 'achieve the objective of making it is not excluded that in the out of the piecework and bonus course of a political revolution system the most important fac­ sizable sections of the bureauc­ tor of the struggle for increased racy would split and go over to labor productivity ••.• the side of the proletariat. - quoted in Zakonodatelstvo 0 SMASH IMPERIALISM THROUGH trude:komrrle-ntarii WORLD REVOLUTION! ---(Mosc-ow, 1947) The current crisis of Stalinist Compare this with the principal rule in Russia is directly linked to archi tect of E.~estroika, Abel the increasing pressure of US im­ Aganbegyan: "we want to start perialist militarism - Cold War II. now to end the general levelling The Gorbachev regime has re­ process which developed in the Soviet troops leaving Afghanistan (above), paving the way for bloodbath sponded to that pressure with a past and to introduce well­ by CIA-backed Islamic fanatics. Below: Soviet Afghan war veterans at founded differentials in wages de- memorial for comrades who fell doing their internat~onalist duty. policy of z!£~al ~t::.aseme.!!.!.. demonstrated most strikingly in pendent on results" (The the withdrawal of Soviet troops Econof"!:!!£ .()f Chal}_eng~ from Afghanistan. This betrayal E.~roika [ 1988] ). poses a terrible bloodbath as the When Stalin died in 1953 prac­ CIA's Islamic cutthroats are out tically the entire industrial pro­ to kill every unveiled woman, letariat was on piece rates and leftist and modernizing intellec­ almost a third on "progressive" tual in that country. There are, piece rates. This meant that their however, people, in the Soviet wages increased and decreased Union, especially veterans of the more than their output. The harsh Afghan war, who understand this labor discipline and extreme in­ and do not like Gorbachev' s sell­ egalitarianism of the Stalin era out. The afghantsy are an increas­ fueled potentially explosive work­ ingly vocal force, demonstrating ing-class discontent. Thus Stalin's in the streets and reportedly being heirs moved to rapidly improve taken into the Communist Party the condition of Soviet workers. in large numbers. Investment was shifted from Now, even Brezhnev is being heavy industry to consumer goods. presented as some kind of ultra­ Income differences between pro­ left adventurer in international duction workers and managers/ affairs. The Gorbachev regime is technocrats were narrowed con- u.. echoing the Re~anite line that sider ably. By the end of the creased productivity and Western­ "The democratic character of Soviet aggressiveness, not the in­ Khrushchev period in the mid- ized economic conditions. Yet ,planning can, on the one hand, transigence of American imperial­ 1960s, little more than half of economic growth is now slower:. be attained through a developed ism, was responsible for Cold War production workers were still on and the supply of consumer goods, system of workers self­ II. This is spelled out in a recent piece rates, while "progressive" especially food, is perhaps worse management in production - article in Lit~ra~~i!. Gazeta by piece rates had been eliminated than in the last Brezhnev years. moreover, not only at the one Vyacheslav Dashichev, a lead­ completely. (And economic parasitism, from factory level but also at the ing ideologue in Moscow's Insti­ While the Brezhnev regime the black market to prostitution, level of factory associations, tute for Socialist World cracked down on dissident intel­ has reached epidemic proportions, entire 'firms,' and branches of Economics: lectuals, it continued and reminiscent of the profiteers who the economy - it can, on the "Weare convinced that the deepened the "soft" line toward flourished in the late NEP period.) other hand, be secured by a CrISlS was caused mainly by the the workers. In fact, this was As a result of "self-financing," democratic structure of the miscalculations and incom- probably the major factor many enterprises are not able to state itself." petent approach of the accounting for the exceptional meet their payrolls on time. A On the one hand, planning is Brezhnev leadership towards internal stability of Brezhnev' s working-class delegate at the re­ incompatible with self-manage­ foreign policy. • •• For the 18-year reign. By the late '70s cent party conference exclaimed: ment, whether of individual en­ West, the expansion of the Soviet workers were guaranteed a "Where is perestroika? The terprises or entire branches of the Soviet sphere of influence job and a modest standard of situation with food has not econom y. If enterprises totally reached a critical point when living without having to work very changed, except now there are control their own inputs and in­ the USSR sent troops into hard for it. Now all this is coupons for sugar. Meat is still vestment funds then they can re­ Afghanistan. " threatened. A piece in the New unavailable, industrial goods late to other enterprises only - Man,chester Gua~9jan ~~~§, York Times (lO May) noted how have disappeared in some through the exchange of their 29 May workers see the effect of peres­ places. Understand me cor­ products on the market. On the The Gorbachevites are de­ troika as attacks on their basic rectly. I do not say all this to other hand, a democratic struc­ nouncing and moving to reverse rights to housing, job security and build up tension but to express ture can only be secured through the few instances when the medical care. It described a to the delegates the pain that the Soviet working class reassert­ Brezhnev regime materially sup­ recent "Soviet-style layoff" at the tortures all the workers." ing its political power through or­ ported national liberation and port of Ilyichevsk on the Black How much longer will Soviet gans of soviet democracy as in Continued on page ten Sea, complaining it could only be workers endure that pain without carried out "according to the rules protest? of the social contract, keeping the Not all (only most) Gor­ people who needed the jobs, not bachevite intellectuals are gung JUST OUT! the people the company needed ho for "market socialism" and A reprint in pamphlet form of most." Soviet workers find mass hostile to the interests of the three articles from Workers unemployment so inconceivable working class. Boris Kagarlitsky, Vanguard, analysing the economic that many literally do not believe principal organizer of the Feder­ si tua tion in the East European the conditions of homelessness ation of Socialist Clubs, has pol­ deformed workers states in the and despair which are rampant in emicized against the "free context of perestroika and American and other Western market" economists like Nikolai counterposing the Trotskyist cities. Shmelyev. In an article appearing program for centralised economic Hungary: "GOUlaSh Communism" Now, to overcome the econ­ in the West German Arbeiter­ planning based on workers Goes Bus. omic stagnation, the Kremlin bu­ kamp"'~ (2 May) he argues: "Cer­ democracy. Also includes "The For Central Planning reaucracy under Gorbachev wants tain situations are such that the Bukharin Dossier." Through SOViet Democracy to use the whip of market compe­ methods of the market not only II I $1.50 (32 pages) tition on the workers. To date, don't solve existing problems but Soviet workers appear perplexed conjure up even catastrophic re­ i Mai I/make cheques payable: Spartacist and frustrated. Pere~troika, they suI ts." Kagarlitsky' s own solution ANZ Publ ishing Co, GPO Box 3473 are told, will overcome the "years is a confused amalgam of liberal Sydney 2001. of stagnation," leading to in- Stalinism and syndicalism: AUSTRALASIAN SP ARTACIST 9 from A-bombing China in the South Korea ••• Korean War, and reunifying Korea Continued from page three as an American neocolony. Oppo­ sition to US imperialism means defense of the Soviet Union as protectionist chauvinism at home. well as North Korea and all the South Korea's new unions are other deformed workers states. admirably combative but at pres­ Korea must be reunified ent remain narrowly economist in through proletarian socialist rev­ their demands. Yet just to exist olution in the South - the only requires a direct struggle with the way to smash the generals and state. Any serious struggle to put chaebols and break the hold of US an end to the series of brutal dic­ Tm perialism - and proletarian pol­ tatorships which have ravaged the itical revolution in the North country since the postwar based on workers democracy and American occupation must point internationalism. A unified to a workers revolution and, in Korean workers state would have turn, to a struggle to smash the I an enormous impact on the Cold War partition of Korea along i ~ Chinese deformed workers state tile 38th parallel while defending (j) and on imperialist Japan, which ~~orth Korea against i:nperialism. ~" ruled Korea as its colonial master FOR THE REVOLUTIONARY ~ for the first half of the 20th cen- REUNIFICATION OF KOREA! Special commando unit trains for Seoul Olympics. Spectators had tury, and could thus ignite the better not make any sudden moves. working classes throughout East The question of reunification Asia. has been placed on the center protesters as radical extremists Seoul's rulers and the US masters. - Reprinted from stage of South Korean political and leftists. However, the pro­ But the students surely wouldn't Workers Vanguard No 460, life with the militant student pro­ testers appear to express liberal like North Korea if they ever got 9 September 1988 tests beginning last June. Univer­ illusions in pure, classless "demo­ there. sity students planned to march to cracy" as well as resurgent The other side of the students' the Demilitarized Zone (D1\IZ, Korean nationalism, directed just hatred for US imperialism and Perils of actually one of the most militari­ centrally against the United its local puppets has been a tend­ zed zones on the face of the States. The New York Times (10 ency to prettify conditions across Perestroika ••• planet). At Panmunjom they were June) quoted one studentleader: the 38th parallel. "Campus bull­ to meet with a delegation from "Our ul timate goal is not just etin boards are filled with photo­ Continued from page nine the North's Kim II Sung Univer­ blind unification, but achieving graphs of life in North Korea, sity to demand co-sponsorship of sovereignty under an inde­ including some of women working progressive struggles in the so­ the Olympics, the ouster of US pendent regime.... We have in key positions, and messages called Third WorId. Beginning with troops, and reunification of the realized we can't have true condemning America," reported the abandonment of Afghanistan, country. democracy with a regime the San Francisco Examiner. The Moscow is now pressuring the As the students prepared to represented by military force relatIve sociaf equalltyforged in left-nationalist government in march from Seoul's Yonsei Uni­ and manipulated by a foreign the North on the foundation of a Angola to agree to the remova.l of versi ty and ten other campuses, invasive force - the United collectivized economy contrasts the Cuban troops sent there when they were surrounded by 60,000 States." starkly with the filthy rich bosses the South African army invaded riot police equipped with armor­ Along the same line, the San side by side with extreme poverty that country in 1975-76. Moscow plated vans shooting rapid-fire Francisco Examiner (15 June) in the capitalist South. And the has also offered to cut off all tear gas grenades. Courageously, quoted-KimJeunggl, who orig­ advancement of women is a crit­ mili tary aid to Sandinista the students fought to break out inally proposed the march to ical question in Korea, so recently Nicaragua if Washington stops of the police cordon, hurling Panmunjom: a peasant/feudal society in which funding the contras. And to pla­ rocks, bricks and firebombs while "The division of our land by women were routinely bought and cate Washington and Peking, Gor­ chanting "Down with the military superpowers, spearheaded by sold as wives, and where today bache v , s Kremlin is pressuring dicatorship!" and "Drive out the the United States, has brought women workers get paid half their Vietnam to withdraw its forces Yankees who enforce the partition immeasurable trials and trib­ ;nale counterparts' wages. from Kampuchea, whose people it of our land!" The march to Pan­ ulation to our people. We have . Nonetheless, the Democratic saved from the unspeakable horror Inunjom, however, was stopped by now reached a point in our People's R.epublic of Korea is a of Pol Pot. To this end Moscow is the massive use of police-state history when we ourselves far cry from a workers paradise or threatening to cut back its piti­ repression. And when onlookers 1lUst get rid of the barbed an egalitarian society. On the fully inadequate aid to the protested the brutal treatment of wire fence that divides our contrary, Kim II Sung & Son run Vietnamese, whose incredible her­ the students, police tossed tear land." the most grotesque Stalinist oism and sacrifice inflicted upon gas grenades into the crowds. That the students are rnarch­ regime in the world. Officially US im perialism the greatest de­ A few days later as a sop the ing against American imperialism proclaimed Great Leader and Sun feat in its history. Roh regime permitted a thousand is a good thing, and it is true that of tvlankind, Kim has created a 'Where Gromyko was widely studen ts to stage a ceremony near the US is a barrier to re­ personality cult which makes known in Western diplomatic the North Korean border, where unification. However, the Cold Stalin look like a modest soul. The circles as ":vir Nyet," now they're they prayed for the reunification War division of Korea is rooted in comparison which comes to mind calling Gorbachev "Mr Da." But of their country. But neither the the class war of world capitalism is the deification of the old the Kremlin's policy of appease­ riot police nor tame pray-ins have against the Soviet bureau­ Roman emperors. The Great ment has only emboldened dam pened the student movement cratically degenerated workers Leader has set out to create a Western imperialism to push for­ for reunification. In August South state. A nationalist program can dynasty by naming his son, Kim II ward in its ultimate goal of de­ Korea's cam puses were again neither understand the division of Jung - officially known as "the stroying the Soviet Union. battlegrounds between Roh' s Korea nor mobilize the forces dear leader" - heir apparent. Harvard Cold War ideologue Adam police and student protesters necessary to overcome it. The Government workers devote a Ulam writes triumphantly that the trying to march to the border. students' courageous attempt to month a year to studying the Soviet evacuation of Afghanistan The Western press and the march to Panmunjom defied the writings of Kim & Son, whose con­ represents "what has been a car­ Seoul regime describe the student anti-Communist hysteria of tributions are elevated far above dinal goal of American foreign those of Marx, Engels and Lenin. policy at least since 1947 - con­ Little is known about the North tainrnent and even 'roll-back' of Korean economy since the regime Soviet imperialism" (Los An~~.? -Subscribe!------, publishes no usable economic Times, 25 May). Believing they da tao We do know, however, that have successfully "rolled back" much of the scarce foreign ex­ Soviet power in Afghanistan, US change is spent on full-page ads in rulers will intensify their efforts the Western press glorifying the to roll back Soviet power in East Great Leader. Europe. To this end, as even the New York Times (10 July) now (SPARTACIST J ..... If South Korea's student nat­ ~ admits-,-- Washington funnels ionalists prettify North Korean NAME ______millions to counterrevolutionary Stalinism, they view the Soviet Polish Solidarnosc. ADDRESS ______Union as the other "superpower" responsible, along with the US, for For its part, the Kremlin bu­ STATE "____ POSTCODE PHONE ______the division of their country. But reaucracy, forged under Stalin, Australasian Spartacist - 6 issues (1 Year) for $3 such an equation is radically and opposes any perspective for pro­ (includes Spartacist) overseas rates: dangerously false. The Soviet letarian revolution to destroy C surface mail -$3 for 6 issues Union is the military/industrial Western imperialism from within. [1 airmail - $7 for 6 issues Mail/make cheques payable: bulwark of all those countries Indeed, the ideological triumph of Women & Revolution - 4 issues for $5 Spartacist ANZ Publishing Co, where capitalism has been over­ Stalin is so complete that the pre­ _, Workers Vanguard - 24 issues for $10 GPO Box 3473, L_, Workers Hammer - 10 issues for $6 Sydney, NSW, 2001 thrown. Only fear of war with sent-day Soviet intelligentsia take Russia prevented US imperialism "socialism in one country" for 10 AUSTRALASIAN SPART ACIST comments that have been made ~. SL Protest ••• from Aboriginal community mem- £. Continued from page twelve bers in the Redfern area about the 0- riots and the community •••• We :2. Florrimell pointed out that the don't usually ask you not to su~ working class is key: "The organ-. port a rally, but when the com­ ised social power of the working munity comes out and is opposed class must be brought to bear in to ••• well, they haven't come out this situation. What that means is and been opposed to it, but when a when Greiner's storm troops rally is organised without per­ marched into black Redfern two mission of the community and and a half weeks ago swinging when it's organised in direct their batons there should have conflict with what the community been thousands of decent working is trying to do to sort out their class men and women on the own si tua tion there, then it's streets there, to put this govern­ something that we don't support.' ment on notice that they would They concluded, 'give the Spart­ tolerate no more of this racist acist rally a miss ..•. And that's a terror. The Hawke government message that also comes from has been busting the working Radio Redfern as well ••• firmly class' unions, they've been de­ expressed this morning.'" stroying thousands of their jobs Our Stop Press continued: Eveleigh St: Tiny ghetto was brutaIly attacked by cops, 27 August. and driving their living standards "Radio Redfern, and the guilty into the ground - to enrich the white liberals of Skid Row, with Aboriginal or not and prevented League were also approached. . Bonds, the Murdochs, and also in supreme patronising arrogance, non-Aboriginals (sometimes paint­ They do not consider fighting . order to regiment this country to act like the new mission keepers ed as communist agitators) from Australian Apartheid a priority. play its role in US imperialism's who can tell Aboriginals what to entering reserves. Greg Eatock of And that's no surprise. They call crazed drive to war against the do. They agree with those we the CDBR ludicrously announced on Gerry Hand, Minister for Ab­ Soviet and Vietnamese workers 'criticise and condemn' for calling at a CDBR meeting on 21 Sept­ original Oppression, to form a states. The working class must for more police in Redfern, and ember that he considers the SL a workers government. The rabidly and can be organised around an stand condemned for opposing the "banned organisation" because we anti-Soviet International Social­ understanding that an attack on only rally to date to protest the ini tiated a protest demonstration ists were asked. Well, they're not one section of the oppressed is an vicious cop terror. But Redfern "without the permission of the here. That's no surprise either attack on all. The ruling class Aboriginals know our leaflet tells Aboriginal community," by which, because they're on the wrong side might be white, and they might the truth and have enthusi­ of course, he means himself. of the class line internationally like to keep this country very astically responded that it's about Coming from people like Eatock, and at home." white, but the working class is time someone did something about who devoted his speech to wailing As a Spartacist speaker con­ very heavily immigrant. They it. Which is what gets the goat of that his organisation doesn't get cluded at the rally, "It's a dirty have no interest in defending this Radio Redfern/Skid Row, self­ as much government money as rotten country where the cops can white racist capitalist state. The appointed 'voice of the Aboriginal was promised, being "banned" for get away with terror against Ab­ main obstacle to that necessary community.' Our rally, especially fighting Australian Apartheid is a originals just one mile from this fight by the working class is the our program of mobilising the badge of honour. As for "per­ university and no one wants to do trade union bureaucracy who owe working class in defence of blacks mission from the Aboriginal com­ anything about it except the their allegiance to the ALP and against racist state terror, draws munity," the SYdne Morning communists. It's not just the imperialist state which it a sharp line between those who Herald (10 Septemberr noted: "If Redfern's problem, it's the prob­ administers." want to cover up Australian the Spartacists, at least, are reg­ lem of all the oppressed of this BLACK NATIONALISTS/WHITE Apartheid and those who want to ulars in Eveleigh Street, the rest country that cops are allowed to smash it." LIBERALS MOBILISE: TO STOP of the white visitors are strictly get away with this. We fight for PROTEST!· In glaring contrast to the de­ seasonal." In the worst of ugly full social equality for blacks and sire of Redfern Aboriginals to white Laborite tradition the likes minori ties and for revolutionary Ray McCann, a small-time fight to stop cop terror were the of the CDBR want to ensure that integrationism to smash Aust­ black nationalist demagogue and strenuous efforts of various black blacks are kept segregated and ralian Apartheid. We seek to build announcer with community Radio "community leaders," and liberals dependent on the "benevolent," a revolutionary internationalist Redfern, along with Radio Skid including the Committee to De­ racist state. workers party, brushing aside the Row, reportedly devoted days of fend Black Rights (CDBR) to pre­ Campus leftists were con­ capi talist-Ioving misleaders of the air time to trying to stop people vent blacks attending our rally. spicuous by their absence, as working class and bringing attending the rally. The SL re­ These self-important reformist Spartacist activist on campus together all of the oppressed sponded by issuing a "Stop Press" "guardians" are reminiscent of the Chris McCarthy related: "The under the leadership of the work­ on our leaflet (12 September): government Protectors, who en­ pseudo-left on this campus, all of ing class vanguard. We ha ve the "Last Saturday afternoon, forced apartheid under the "ben­ whom were invited - the mis­ program to overthrow this vicious Radio Skid Row broadcast the evolent" Aboriginal Protection named Students against Apart­ capitalist state and to replace it following: 'It's a r all y to protest Acts from 1909 through the heid, Left Action, Resistance, the with a workers state, part of a against the police riots in Red­ sixties. The Protectors, usually SRC - they were all asked. They socialist Asia. Students who want fern.... The Spartacist League cops, forced Aboriginals onto re­ claim they've got more important to fight on the side of the op­ ha ve gone to a hell of a lot of serves, took children away from things to do. Well, they stand ex­ pressed and fight for a socialist trouble to criticise and condemn their parents, decided who was posed. The Socialist Labour future should join us." •

granted (except for those who are bachev. In his book On Stalin and tion, economic stagnation and pol­ for the restoration of capitalism). Stalinism (1979), - Medvedev itical cynicism engendered by WIJRKERS VANtiUARD All the attacks on Stalin's crimes dismisses Trotskyism as "ul tra­ bureaucratic rule. That answer is N._ '.. ' '_''''bo''~ now being made in the Soviet leftism" and the Fourth Inter­ proletarian political revolution to press and literary works are fo­ national as a quixotic sect. His oust the Kremlin oligarchy and re­ cused on the national terrain. neo-Bukharinite outlook excludes store soviet democracy and Bush­ There is no interest or concern the possibility of proletarian rev­ socialist economic planning. That over Stalin's (and Bukharin' s) olution in any Western country. answer is the Trotskyist perspec­ Dukakis: The October Revolution is for ti ve of "permanent revolution," misleadership which derailed the I~·¥\."'i Chinese Revolution in the mid- Medvedev a historically and including the extension of the .. ~~~ ~. .•••.•.• The Bad 1920s; the strangling of the nationally unique event, its main Russian October to the advanced ./ . • Spanish Revolution in the late value being to lay the basis for capitalist countries of North ';C'~ ",4 News Bores 1930s for the sake of friendship the modernization of Russia. Such America, West Europe and Japan. with British and French imperial­ a nationalist view can only For a planned economy based ism; the disarming of Communist strengthen the ideological hold of on soviet democracy! Soviet his­ partisans in France, Italy and imperialism over its own working tory belongs to the Soviet peoples Greece as part of the Cold War classes. - Open the archives! For uncon­ south Korea's Police-State Olympics division of Europe. For Lenin as well as Trotsky, ditional defense of the USSR Labor, StUdentsDefy- ~: The deep faith in socialist in­ the Bolshevik Revolution was the against imperialism and internal ~:.!UJlP!,!egim~ - ternationalism which animated first great victory in the world counterrevolution! Taking up the their grandparents is totally miss­ socialist revolution. Soviet banner of the Bolshevik-Leninist ing in today' s Soviet intellectuals. workers resisting the effects of Left Opposition, fighting for a This is true even for those who perestroika, those who distrust Soviet section of a reforged claim to oppose Stalinism in the Gorbachev's appeasement of im­ Fourth International, is the only Marxist Working-Class Biweekly I, name of genuine Marxism, from perialism, those who fight against realistic course which can save of the Spartacist League/US Kagarlitsky to Roy Medvedev. Great Russian chauvinism in the the Soviet peoples and all of hu­ Medvedev has gone from outcast name of proletarian international­ manity from a nuclear holocaust 24 issues - $10 I Ma i I/make cheques payab Ie: I to "Prophet with Honor" ism, will find in Trotskyism their launched by the decaying capital­ Spartacist ANZ Publ ishing Cc (Newsweek, 4 July) under Gor- own class answer to the corrup- ist order .• GPO Box 3473 Sydney 200~. OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 1988 11 ~ Australasian------.... 5 PARTACIST For Mass Labour/Black MObili'sations to Stop Racist Terror! Apartheid-style Cop Assault on Redfern Blacks rn Q) want to take a side against the We reprint below a Spartacist (Jl -+ League leaflet dated 7 September, ..,(1) capitalist state must be there. distributed at Sydney University :J Racist oppression and apart­ ::r: and in Redfern. (1).., heid terror is bipartisan policy. "It was like South Africa, it [l) Greiner's TRG were paid for and 0. was like a war. It seemed like the outfi tted by the ALP government police were on a practice run and which used them to enforce didn't care who they hurt," said a martial law conditions in Bre­ Redfern resident, describing the warrina one year ago. For the outrageous cop assault on the paramilitary TRG, Redfern is a small Aboriginal community in the The face of training ground for assaults Eveleigh Street ghetto in Redfern. Australian against bigger targets, like Just after midnight on 27 August, Apartheid! workers' picket lines. Since the on the sham pretext of chasing a' State terror murder of John Pat in 1983 in WA bag-snatcher, approximately 50 against and the subsequent acquittal of baton-wielding racist cops ma­ Aboriginals is an the killer cops, the increasing terialised within minutes, led by everyday event numbers of deaths of black!; in the brutal TRG (Tactical Re­ in Redfern. custody have become a sharp sponse Group). They charged in signature of the anti-Soviet, military formation through the union-busting Hawke regime. backyards of Eveleigh St where There will be no justice through residents congregate, bashing and the Muirhead Commission cover­ trampling bystanders, kicking and up or Hawke's "Treaty" fraud. choking anyone within reach. Alone, the marginalised Ab­ Amongst those injured was original population has no social 'vlargret Campbell, Sydney Col­ power. The Spartacist League lege of Advanced Education lec­ fights for defending Aboriginals turer. The cop assault was through mobilising the power of eventually beaten back by cour­ organised labour against state ageous blacks defending them­ terror. The union tops mouth off selves and their own. about defence of Aboriginals but, Pamela Ingram, who watched when blacks stand up and defend the attack from her home, said themselves, they're either no­ "They (the cops) have been build­ explicitly to make it easier to jail ficers and self-policing: a suicidal, where to be seen, or on the other ing up to this, provoking us by blacks. The Police Association loser policy. side like the Teachers Federation coming in here all the time, petitioned the Greiner govern­ Students, trade unionists, all leaders were over the Cleveland grabbing people and harassing us. I ment for 24-hour TRG patrols in decent people must protest this St High expulsions. The fight for reckon this was a set up .••• " (Sun Redfern. The Greiner government VlClOUS state terror against full social equality for blacks, Herald, 28 August) Four blacks, says it was the blacks' fault. Bull­ blacks. The Spartacist League has ie, revolutionary integrationism, including Aboriginal Legal Service shit! It was an organised Apart­ called a rally on the front lawn at means building a revolutionary officers who intervened to get the heid-style cop assault. Some Sydney Uni on Wednesday, 14 workers party, forged in the cops to withdraw, were arrested. prominent local Aboriginals, like September at 1 pm to protest this struggle to split the ALP's work­ Cops began sifting the film they Cheryl and Tony Mundine, backed outrage. We demand: Cops out ing-class base from its racist shot to make further arrests. the government's line and blamed of Redfern! For labour /black/ pro-capitalist tops. To smash State Attorney-General John the community, organising meet­ minority actions to stop racist Australian Apartheid, it will Dowd announced proposed changes ings in collaboration with the cops terror! Drop the charges against take a thoroughgoing socialist to the Summary Offences Act, to push for more police liaison of- Redfern blacks! Students who revolution ••

o +­o Spartacist Protest o...C­

The Spartacist League held a received by Redfern blacks, who protest rally at Sydney University welcomed our action, as did many on 14 September against the students appalled by the violent Apartheid-style cop assaul t cop assault. The atrocity took against Redfern Aboriginals on 27 place not in South Africa, or even August. The rally demanded "Cops some isolated outback town, but out of Redfern! Drop the in the heart of Australia's biggest charges!" and called for building city. As in 1983 over the acquittal labour/black mobilisations to of the cop murderers of John Pat, smash racist terror. The rally was the Spartacist League was alone attended by about 30 people, and on the left in protesting the racist some 50 or so students sat further state terror, a demonstration of away and listened to the speeches. our commitment to working class Our chants, induding "Ruxton, action in defence of the em­ G'Irland, RSL: Shove your Nazi battled Aboriginal people. lit ood tes ts and go to hell!" rang Trade union militant and across the grounds of this eli tist Spartacist supporter Neil institution. Our leaflet was well- Continued on page eleven Spartacist rally at Sydney University, 14 September. 12 OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 1988