WfJltNEItS ',111",11' 25¢ No. 533 30 August 1991

Bankrupt Stalinism Opens Floodgates to Capitalist Restoration Soviet Workers: e eal elsin- us ounlerrevo ulionl Laski/Sipa AUGUST 27-The working people of August 21-Pro-Yeltsin crowd in front the Soviet Union, and indeed the workers of Russian "White House" (below). of the world, have suffered an unparal­ Bush and Yeltsin congratulate them­ leled disaster whose devastating conse­ selves earlier this year. quences are now being played out. The ascendancy of Boris Yeltsin, who offers himself as Bush's man, coming off a botched coup by Mikhail Gorbachev's former aides, has unleashed a counter­ revolutionary tide across the land of the October Revolution. The first workers state in history, sapped and undermined by decades of Stalinist bureaucratic misrule, lies in tatters. The state power has been fractured, the Communist Party-its bureaucratic core-shattered and banned from the KGB and armed forces, the multinational union is ripping apart as one republic after another pro­ claims secession. But while Yeltsin & Co. now see a clear field to push through a forced­ draft reintroduction of capitalism, the outcome is not yet definitively decided. As the imperialists rejoice and the pro­ capitalist petty bourgeoisie exult, Soviet workers are facing a disaster of cata­ strophic proportions: every gain for which they, their parents and grand­ parents sacrificed is on the chopping block. An explosion of even greater nationalist strife is looming. The lash of capitalist exploitation being introduced amid universal economic dislocation threatens widespread hunger and mass unemployment in the coming winter. The Soviet proletariat, whose capacity for throw a giant wrench in the works who opposed Yeltsin's plans for whole­ munist League (Fourth Internationalist) militant action was dramatically shown ~ and prevent the rapid consolidation of sale privatization and Gorbachev's mar­ continues this struggle. in the miners strike of the summer counterrevolution. ket reforms, looked to the so-called Stalinism was the political rule of a of 1989, has not been heard from. Soviet Stalinism has breathed its hardline "patriotic" wing of the bureauc­ bureaucratic caste parasitically sitting Opposition from the factories against pathetic last gasp. Even up to the coup, racy. There is no room anymore for such atop the proletarian property forms the ravages of capitalist assault could many of the most advanced workers, illusions. created by the October Revolution of The coup's collapse and the ascen­ 1917. Whether during the bloody purges dancy of counterrevolution in the Soviet of the 1930s or the myriad "reforms" Union buttresses, for the present mo­ from Khrushchev and others, this sys­ ment, Bush's proclaimed "New World tem based on lies and repression of Order" militarily dominated by the U.S. the working class not only blocked Following its annihilation of Iraq, the further progress toward socialism but triumphalist and vengeful American rul­ clogged every pore of Soviet society. ing class threatens to tum its wrath, unre­ After decades of self-sacrifice extracted strained by the deterrent of a powerful from the proletariat in the name of USSR, against myriad peoples of the building "socialism in one country," world. Cuba, in particular, is in Bush's Gorbachev's perestroika was the last cross hairs, and its defense is more than desperate attempt of the Stalinist bu­ ever a duty of all opponents of Yankee reaucracy to preserve its position by imperialism. adopting capitalist measures. But like From the time of Stalin's bureaucratic Nikolai Bukharin's appeals to the rich usurpation of power in 1924, Leon peasants (kulaks) in the late 1920s to Trotsky and the Left Opposition waged "enrich yourselves," perestroika fueled an unrelenting fight for the internation­ the forces of capitalist restoration which alist program of the Bolshevik Revolu­ have now reached their fruition with tion. Under the deadly blows of Stalinist Yeltsin's countercoup. . terror and slander, the Trotskyists perse­ Boris Yeltsin is not a "Westernizer"­ vered as the best and only consistent he is an extreme Russian chauvinist who defenders of the remaining revolution­ intends to sell out the Soviet Union to Red Square: Soviet tank facing the Kremlin during coup attempt. ary gains. Today the International Com- continued on page 10 _Cl_"".CIIIllII'lf'-" ~feu8e Parti-.u ..... ~.r aOMet eu.,. ••ia Capital ..IUlla" ... US -- ••nbball:', ... nUl "0. Mr.llUia ",,-J_1 £ ....._ittee ~".UOII: 0..11: OW_)', t .. wr1tb, OIl ...-aaU of !"'" lI_itlt. en. wolI:kon. CLASS-STRUGGLE DEFENSE NOTES alt"n.,11 .. 011:. DOt 10 a podU.. w ~t "'.-th. pUt 011: ~:V1 IOWA INDIANA loIINNESOTA •CIIIlII1IIl'lIMIlIlI£ _ WISCO/'lSIN

"'SOI1TH %Ie STREET • M1LWAUltEl!, WISCONSIN S3204• PHON£,(414)645-%769 Il£(]lONAL~-ROU1lTCLAJlK Bon. Robert P. Cue)', GonIl:'QOI: "An Injury to One .=: ~r::i"'YlnnL • •• niabut. ,enqyl"ania 17120 Doar Governor ca.oy:

Int.~:ro::,,1t~~:..~~~~:='~~~the 59,000, lIMberi ot the =:;!"::la ~~~ OWOdtioa to t:la ':=1~Ontaon~~~~C; :~ Is an -Injury to All" aDd :!oumaUtt. • NDaLa .\l:lu...,....l, an Atric:u.-A..dc:aa aetinet A ro91.. or tbti 091 A decade of Reagan/Bush reaction: but thin patriotic fervor it unleashed, Labor support for Mumla'Abu-Jamal grows. Power of labor must be mobilized 1981, PATCO union leaders in shackles; Bush & Co. stepped up their war on In defense of all victims of capitalist state repression. 1985, Mother's Day bombing of Philly labor, blacks and Hispanics at home. MOVE; 1991, precision bombing of a Racist cop terror is epidemic, a national back, and now the city of Wichita is hos­ Duke protest, the latest of many labor! Baghdad civilian shelter. With their death penalty is in the works, segregated tage to anti-abortion fanatics while poor black mobilizations against fascist terror bloody victory over Iraq, and the broad schools and school prayer are on the way women die from back-alley abortions. initiated and organized by the PDC and Workers, minorities, gays and women­ SL (Washington 1982, Philadelphia 1988 we're all under the gun in this "New and elsewhere), was a small but impor­ World Order." It is time for the organized tant point of struggle against the reaction Stalinism: Gravedlgger of working class to get off its knees to fueled by the Middle East slaughter. the October Revolution smash this onslaught against their rights, Today's fighters against war, union­ won through years of bitter and often busting and racist reaction owe a special More than halfa century ago, Leon Trotsky bloody struggle. debt to those imprisoned in the struggle. warned that Stalinism was a mortal danger The Partisan Defense Committee is a In the U.S.' dungeons are dozens of to the survival of the Soviet Union. Having class-struggle, non-sectarian legal and political prisoners, thrown behind bars usurped power from the Soviet workers by social defense organizatiof which cham­ for standing up to racist capitalist repres- . gutting the Bolshevik Party of Lenin and pions cases' and causes in the interests sion. They must not be forgotten! We Trotsky, the nationalist bureaucracy headed of the whole of the working people. have been active in the campaign to free by Stalin proceeded to undermine the gains Launched by the Spartacist League in former Black Panther Party leader ofthe 1917 October Revolution andsabotage 1974, the PDC seeks to mobilize the Geronimo ji Jaga (Pratt). As an expres­ TROTSKY revolutionary struggle worldwide. While de- LENIN power of labor in defense of all those sion of solidarity we send monthly sti­ moralized "anti-Stalinists" simply wrote off . targeted by capitalist reaction. Fighting pends to 19 class-war prisoners: Geron­ the first workers state, Trotsky's Left Opposition fought to restore soviet democracy and for justice against the world's most imo and other former Black Panthers Bolshevik internationalism to the USSR. As Trotsky emphasized time and again, the only dangerous capitalist power, we recognize such as Mondo we Langa (David Rice) . alternative to capitalist restoration was a proletarian political revolution to defend the a special responsibility to oppose our and Ed Poindexter, prison activist Hugo remaining gains of October by ousting the treacherous bureaucracy. Now the utter col­ "own" government, which props up re­ Pinell, members and supporters of the lapse of Soviet Stalinism has opened up the floodgates of bloody capitalist counter­ pressive regimes all over the world. So Philadelphia MOVE organization, and revolution. The key to defense of the Soviet working people against BushiYeltsin's when American troops headed for the Irish Republican SocialistParty member counterrevolutionary onslaught is the forging ofa Leninist-Trotskyist party. Gulf, the SL and PDC fought at home for Eddie McClelland. Under the conditions of the transitional epoch, the political superstructure plays a the defeat of U.S. imperialism and in A central focus of our recent work is decisive role. A developed and stable dictatorship of the proletariat presupposes that defense of its victims around the world. the campaign to save death row political the party functions in the leading role as a self-acting vanguard, that the proletariat We defended all those whose civil lib­ prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal. Jamal-a is welded together by means of trade unions, that the toilers are indissolubly bound erties and rights were among the first former Black Panther Party spokesman, up with the state through the system of soviets and, finally, that the workers' state is victims of the war-Arab immigrants, prominent radio broadcaster known as aligned through the International into a fighting unit with the world proletariat. In the antiwar protesters and GI "resisters." the "voice of the voiceless," well-known meantime, the bureaucracy has strangled the party and the trade unions and the soviets When KKKer David Duke sought to supporter of the MOVE organization and the Communist International.... carry his program of fascist terror north and president of the Philadelphia chapter Which is closer: the .danger of the collapse of the Soviet power that has been sapped with a speech at Boston's Ford Hall of the Association of Black Journalists by bureaucratism or the hour of the consolidation of the proletariat around a new party Forum on March 28, a PDC-initiated at the time of his arrest-was shot and that is capable of saving the October heritage? There is no a priori answer to such a united-front protest of 1,500 blacks, framed up, charged with killing a cop in question; the struggle will decide. A major historical test-which may be a war-will unionists, socialists, minorities, women, 1981. Long a target of PhiUy cop terror determine the relation of forces. It is clear, in any case, that, with the further decline gay rights activists, students, Jews and because he used his radio booth to of the world proletarian movement and the further extension of the fascist domination, Catholics turned out to say, "Stop KKK speak for the poor, the homeless and it is not possible to maintain the Soviet power for any length of time by means of the Hitler-Lover David Duke!" The anti- continued on page 13 internal forces alone. The fundamental condition for the only rock-bottom reform of the Soviet state is the victorious spread of the world revolution.... '.> Every political tendency that waves its hand hopelessly at the Soviet Union, under the pretext of its "nonproletarian" character, runs the risk of becoming the passive instrument of imperialism. And from our standpoint, of course, the tragic possibility Petition for New Trial Denied, is not excluded that the first workers' state, weakened by its bureaucracy, will fall under the joint blows of its internal.and external enemies. But in the event of this worst possible variant, a tremendous significance for the subsequent course of the revolution­ Geronimo Still in "the Hole" ary struggle will be borne by the question: where are'those guilty for the catastrophe? Geronimo ji Jaga (Pratt), America's FBI wiretap logs proving Geronimo Not the slightest taint of guilt must fall upon the revolutionary internationalists. In foremost class-war prisoner, was dealt answered a phone at a Panther house the hour of mortal danger, they must remain on the last barricade. . a double blow by the courts of Cali­ in Oakland just before the murder; Today the rupture of the bureaucratic equilibrium in the USSR would almost surely fornia. On August 15, just one day statements from former Panther serve in favor of the counterrevolutionary forces. However, given a genuine revolution­ after receiving Geronimo's 284-page Tyrone Hutchinson that in 1970 he ary International, the inevitable crisis of the Stalinist regime would open the possibility petition for a new trial, Judge Gary peported overhearing two associates of of revival in the USSR. This is our basic course.... Klausner dismissed it as "without FBI fink Julius Butler admit they The problem of the world revolution as well as the problem of the Soviet Union merit." Just days earlier, federal court committed the murder, but was told may be summed up in one and the same brief formula: The Fourth International. judge Stanley Weigel refused to order by the cops to keep his mouth shut. -Leon Trotsky, "The Class Nature of the Soviet State" (October 1933) Geronimo released from "the hole" Butler, the witness on whom the (disciplinary confinement) at Teha­ government's frame-up rested, was an chapi prison, where he was thrown on LAPD informant as early as 1966 and April 1 as he was preparing his state FBI fink by May 1969. court petition for a new trial. Lead attorney in the application for Geronimo, a victim of the FBI's a new trial, Robert Bloom, said of the racist COINTELPRO conspiracy to judge's cavalier dismissal of Geroni­ !!.!!!'!!!...'s!.!!~!! ~ crush the Black Panther Party, has mo's demand for a new trial, "In 25 DIRECTOR OF PARTYPUBLICATIONS: liz Gordon been locked away in California pris­ years of practicing criminal law, I EDITOR: Jan Norden ons for more than 20 years for a have never seen anything like this." PRODUCTION MANAGER: Jorge Ramirez murder that the FBI, the cops and Because Geronimo remains true to CIRCULATION MANAGER: Karen Valdez millions of people know he did not his political beliefs, state authorities EDITORIAL BOARD: George Foster, Frank Hunter, Jane Kerrigan, Len Meyers, James Robertson, commit. The petition for a new trial are determined to make his prison hell Reuben Samuels, Joseph Seymour, Alison Spencer, Marjorie Stamberg presented new evidence concealed even hotter. Geronimo's disciplinary The Spartacist League is the U.S. Section of the International Communist League (Fourth from Geronimo at trial and for almost confinement was based on a bogus Internationalist). two decades thereafter: statements marijuana trafficking charge on the Workers Vanguaid (USPS098-770j published biweekly, except 2nd issue August and with 3-week interval Decembsr, by the Spertacist Publishing Co., 41 Warren Street, New York, NY 10007. Telephone: (212) 732-7862 (Editorial), from six former Black Panther Party uncorroborated testimony of a jail­ (212) 732-7861 (Business). Address all correspondence to: Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116. Domestic members that Geronimo was with house snitch. Federal court judge subscriptions: $7.00/24 issues. Second-class postage paid at New York, NY. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Workers Vanguard, Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116. them in Oakland at the time of the Weigel's ruling denying Geronimo's Opinions expressed in signed articles or letters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint. 1968 Santa Monica murder; testimony appeal of the marijuana frame-up from two legal investigators who saw continued on page 13 No. 533 30 August 1991

2 WORKERS VANGUA~D . Cops, Nationalists, Zionists Fan Flames in Brooklyn Death in Crown Heights- Gavin Cato, a seven-year-old black nationalists. And so did the opportunist child from Guyana, and YankeI Rosen­ "leftists." baum, a 29-year-old Hassidic scholar Today most of the connections that in from Australia, died on the streets of more economically prosperous times Crown Heights, Brooklyn, -onAugust 19. linked the ghetto and the factory have They were strangers in a strange and been shattered, so that any social con­ increasingly ugly land. Gavin's father nection to a wider world is being lost. brought him here searching for a better As the ghetto turns in on itself in des­ life. Yankel, the son of Polish concentra­ peration, there's a new focus on small­ tion camp survivors, came to study the time local merchants as "the enemy," pre-Holocaust world of Eastern Euro­ whether it's Sal's Pizza, or the Korean pean Jews. What they' found here was fruit stand, or the "men in long black death, their blood spilled on the dirty, coats" and their shops. In a narrow world cracked ghetto pavements. A reckless bounded by garbage-ridden streets, - accident, a vicious murder, and if an evil where you can't get out because you witch had taken a sharp stick and stirred have no job, nowhere to go, and no this city's steaming summer cauldron of money to go there anyhow, that's all you News ay ghetto misery and ethnic conflicts, the Gavin Cato (above) killed In can see (except for luscious, hopeless poisonous result couldn't have been any tragic car accident. Yankel TV commercial dreams). worse than the tragedy that exploded that Rosenbaum, Australian student, August night. stabbed to death hours later. Hassldlm, Hispanics Gavin Cato and his cousin Angela Paraskevas/Newsday and Blacks were playing on the sidewalk near their communal war in Crown Heights is dead mob) was beaten, and writer Vinette K. The conflict between the Hassidic home, when they were struck by an out­ wrong, deadly dangerous and must be Pryce almost had her leg broken as she sects and the black and Hispanic minor­ of-control car. Gavin was crushed stopped! The Jewish community is not was roughly searched and shoved into a ity populations in Brooklyn is com­ against a wall, his cousin's leg broken. the enemy of black people, despite the police van. White reporters got it from pounded by economic conditions which The car was bringing up the rear in a slanderous poison spread for years by angry black mobs as well: veteran com­ place these communities at loggerheads. small motorcade headed by an unmarked anti-Semitic black demagogues like Louis mentator Jimmy Breslin barely escaped, Complaints that the highly organized police car, escorting Rabbi Menachem Farrakhan, and most recently CUNY clad only in his shorts and his green press Hassidic community gets favored treat­ Schneerson, world head of the Luba­ professor Leonard Jeffries (and despite card. The same night Mayor Dinkins was ment from the authorities are not just a vitcher Hassidic sect, from his regular that walking incitement to anti-Semitism, surrounded and booed wildly by a crowd problem ofperception, but a problem in cemetery visit. The story quickly swept loudmouth racist ex-mayor Ed Koch). when he tried to visit the community. reality. through the black community that the Today Al Sharpton and his allies like In Williamsburg, where the Satmar Hassidim were whisked away by a pri­ Alton Maddox and Sonny Carson have The Politics of Death Hassidic sect is concentrated, the sur­ vate Jewish ambulance service while the stirred up murderous violence with their rounding Puerto Rican and Dominican black children lay bleeding; Years of vile rhetoric around Crown Heights, as There is a long history of communal community (Los Sures) is constantly simmering resentment by the oppressed well as a provocative march against violence in Crown Heights. Back in being squeezed. The Satmars have been blacks against the Hassidim for their the Lubavitcher synagogue on Saturday 1978, the police in Crown Heights mur­ able to obtain city-owned land to build "special relationship" with the cops and (the Jewish Sabbath), August 24. The dered a black businessman-in broad a 6,Ooo-seat synagogue, a yeshiva and city politicians came to an ugly head. march was funneled at the last minute daylight 15 cops clubbed Arthur Miller private housing on public redevelopment Later that night, Yankel Rosenbaum was into a Sharpton-Maddox "United African to the ground and then strangled him to land. Legal services lawyer Martin surrounded by a gang of young blacks Movement" meeting in a black high death. In an unrelated incident two days Needelman, denounced as a "traitor" and and stabbed to death. school. As they passed by Jewish homes later, a black youth named Victor Rhodes "self-hater" by the local Hassidic lead­ For the next three nights, young blacks and community centers, the marchers was jumped and beaten to a pulp by a ers, has brought lawsuits against the city hurled bottles, set fires, overturned taunted, "Whose Streets? Our Streets!" small army of Hassidic goons patrolling for preferentially renting public housing squad cars, hit the "Sneaker King" shoe Criminally, the supposedly socialist against "outsiders." Then the Rev. Her­ units to Hassidim (non-white minori­ bert Daughtry and a group of black ties were kept to 25 percent). In 1986, nationalists consciously went after the through control of the community school Jewish community instead of the killer board, the Satmars got a wall built cops, instigating a march of jeering through PS 16, to separate Hassidic girls blacks through the Jewish'. .lll'eas of from the Hispanic children in the rest of Crown Heights. Most leftist groups sup­ the school. In addition to this incredible ported that anti-Semitic provocation. We piece of apartheid, close to 100 Hispanic of the Spartacist League warned that this students were to be pushed out of the was heading straight for race war, in grade school. which blacks would inevitably lose. Also in 1986, the Shomrim (Orthodox The Hassidim are not the oppressors. "watch patrols") were initiated, vigilante They are only a tiny minority community gangs known to beat up blacks and Lati­ who want to recreate the sealed-off nos suspected of robbery. These patrols world of the 18th century Russian/Polish receive $10,000 in subsidies from shtetl (village) in the middle of Brook­ Albany (EI Diario, 29 March 1989). In lyn,not unlike the Amish in Pennsylva­ Berman/Sipa Crown Heights, the aggressive vigilante Rabbi Schneerson (above), nia. But in Crown Heights the shtetl patrols go back to the late '60s and the power broker for right-wing meets the ghetto, and on top of the sharp origins of the JDL. A lot of the tensions Zionists. Rev. AI Sharpton, FBI economic contradictions, you have a between Hispanics and Hassidim in Wil­ fink and sinister demagogue. sharp culture clash as black Caribbean liamsburg .are replicated between the Chris Gierlich Rastafarians with their long dreadlocks black community and the Lubavitcher. store, stormed a firehouse and fought group Workers World Party marched in are thrown together with ultra-Orthodox Thaddeus Owens, Jr., a black community running battles with the cops. They this demonstration, which was tanta­ Jewish men with their payes (sidelocks). organizer and son of the judge who marched past the Lubavitcher World mount to a call for an anti-Jewish But both blacks and Jews have the right presided in the Yusuf Hawkins case, told Headquarters on Eastern Parkway, bom­ pogrom. The Workers World banner read, to go about their lives and not be scape­ how he grew up in Crown Heights, barding it with rocks and grotesquely "Stop the War Against Black America." goated or persecuted. The same goes for where his family got along well with taunting this community of Holocaust There is a war against black America, any other people or religion in the world. Hassidic neighbors, sometimes perform­ survivors with chants of "Heil Hitler!" but the Lubavitchers aren't running i~- One of the most vicious splits between ing tasks like turning off an oven for a Black people should not so readily praise Washington and Wall Street are. , Jews and blacks in New York City family that could not do so because of Hitler-they were included in his list of As the explosion built, an army'of was the 1968 teachers strike. And much the Sabbath: "Untermenschen" (subhumans). Hassi­ cops moved in, beating not only ghetto of the so-called "left" bears a lot of "Mr. Owens said his feelings turned sour die vigilante squads and the .fascistic. youth but reporters. Hundreds of black responsibility for that disaster. In '68 as he saw public housing in the area dis­ Jewish Defense League, armed to 'the youths were arrested, although by the the same phony black militants like proportionately.allocated to Hasidim and teeth, mobilized in response. These thugs end of the week the police had also Jitu Weusi (Les Campbell), Carson and the police took their side in confronta­ tions with blacks. He also charges that stormed into buildings to get black arrested over 40 Hassidic men. The cops, their left supporters used anti-Semitic Hasidic Jews attempted to redraw com­ youths who they claimed were throwing no doubt furious that a few of their num­ slurs to mobilize Brooklyn blacks munity board lines in their favor and rocks at the policemen from the roof. ber had actually gotten hit by debris and against the predominantly Jewish United gain control of the local school board," The explosion of hate broke out a few rooftop missiles, roughed up jour­ Federation of Teachers (UFT), under -New York Times, 23 August exactly two years after the murder of nalists, including from Newsday, the the name of "community control." The While blacks and Hispanics and, black teenager Yusuf Hawkins by white New York Times and the Amsterdam liberal Republican Lindsay administra­ indeed, many Hassidic Jews in these racists in Bensonhurst. And the steaming News. Am News photographer Chris tion and Ford Foundation, ruling-class communities are horribly.downtrodden ethnic cauldron is boiling, bringing New Griffith (brother of Michael Griffith, forces who wanted to break the teachers and impoverished, a wealthy layer of the York to the edge of race war. This inter- murdered by a Howard Beach lynch union for their own reasons, backed the continued on page 15 30 AUGUST 1991 3 Intifada at an Impasse Pax Americana Targets Palestinians

Fresh from its easy kill against Sad­ dam Hussein's Iraq and the slaughter of more than 100,000 people, Washington is determined to forge a "New Order" in the Near East under exclusive U.S. hegemony. The Gulf crisis changed the political map of the region. The U.S. is now firmly implanted there, easing its reliance on Israel as its chief client state. Iraq's previous position as a military counterweight against Israel (and Iran) Israeli police beat up is gone. And Assad's Syria, erstwhile Palestinian protesters leader of the "rejection front" against in Jerusalem in any negotiations with the Zionist state aftermath of AI Aksa and former "International Terrorist mosque massacre, No. I" in Washington's books, is now a October 1990. Zionists close and compliant ally of the U.S. As are aiming at "final Secretary of State James Baker shuttles solution" of "Palestinian from one Near East capital to another question" through trying to lash together a regional "peace mass expulsions, mass slaugHter. conference," it is clear to all that the big losers in this Pax Americana will be the Palestinians. More than three and a half years after the start of the heroic popular uprising in the Occupied Territories, the Intifada is seemingly at a dead end. The Palestine Liberation Organization, which tried to Israel Out of the -Occupied Territories! exploit this courageous struggle as a bar­ gaining chip to get the U.S. to pressure Israel into conceding some variant of a For a Socialist Federation of the Near East! "mini-state" in the Occupied Territories, finds itself besieged on all sides. The of the country and will continue." lashed back with the Intifada, thrusting loss in income from'Palestinians who had war swept away the fictional distinction But there is one point on which Assad, Israel's brutal occupation and oppression been working in the Gulf states. between "progressive" and "reactionary" Baker and Shamir are in firm agreement: under the international spotlight. When On the eve of Washington's murderous Arab regimes, and both feudalist sheiks going after the Palestinians and the PLO. Saddam Hussein seemingly stood up to war on Iraq, we warned that "the massive and bonapartist colonels have dropped Weeks after the Israeli bombing raids in Israel's imperialist patron and struck into influx of Jewish immigrants from the So­ even lip service to the Palestinian na­ Lebanon, Syrian-backed forces swooped the Zionist heartland with Scud missiles, viet Union has given Israel a pretext to tional cause. In their pursuit of American down on the Palestinians from the north. Palestinian youth cheered from the roof­ launch a new drive for Lebensraum patronage, Syria and the other Arab re­ Brushing aside PLO pleas for "negotia­ tops of their concentration camps and against the Palestinian people" (WV No. gimes have acquiesced to even the most tions," the Lebanese army disarmed and hoped that national salvation was finally 518, 18 January). Israel seized on the humiliating of Israel's demands as trans­ ousted the PLO from its bases in Sidon at hand. . Gulf War to intensify its drive toward a mitted by Baker. and Tyre, dragged off hundreds of fight­ But the cheering soon evaporated. "final solution," planning an air and land As proposed by the U.S. and agreed ers and restricted the rest to their refugee Washington's murderous war machine sweep through Jordan which would have all around, the Israelis do not have to camps. Deprived of antiaircraft weapon­ bombed Iraq back to a "pre-industrial meant driving the Palestinians out of the concede an inch of occupied territory as ry, the Palestinians are now sitting ducks age." Now, the "catastrophe of '48" is West Blink (New York Times, 7 March). a basis for negotiations, Palestinian rep­ for further Israeli bombing raids. And being played out again in Kuwait. The military operation was shelved un­ resentatives will be vetted by Israel-no with the camps surrounded and effec­ Scarcely more than 100,000 of the der American pressure. But designs, for PLO allowed-and they may participate tively defenseless, there are widespread 400,000 Palestinians who had lived and mass expulsion were not. A Jewish only as part of a Jordanian delegation. fears that the Lebanese Deuxieme Bureau worked in the emirate remain, and those . American artist living in a West Bank Some "peace" conference! (secret police) will resume its practice are subjected to a murderousreign of Palestinian area in late March wrote: Meanwhile, key Israeli military and of raiding the camps to round up PLO terror by the ruling family: The PLO's "People are now discussing mass depor­ political leaders talk ever more openly activists. claim to be "sole legitimate repre­ tations as if they were commenting on of war with Syria. With Washington's sentative of the Palestinian people" has the price of bread" (Palestine Focus, blessings, Damascus moved to consoli­ never had less legitimacy among the im­ July-August 1991). date its hegemony over the perpetually The New Palestinian Catastrophe perialist powers and their regional lack­ After more than a thousand Palestini­ feud-ridden statelet of Lebanon, codified eys. The disarming of PLO units in Leba­ ans martyred and many tens of thousands in early June in a treaty of "broth­ At no time have the Palestinian people non has put an end to the organization's .more injuredor arrested, the Intifada has erhood, cooperation and coordination" faced a crisis of such proportions. Driven last independent base of operations. And seemingly ground to a halt, caught in its with Beirut. The Israelis marked the from their homes and deprived of their Arafat's refusal to toe the American line own crisis of perspectives. Ifyoung Pal­ signing of the treaty with the fiercest land in the 1948 war, for more than during the Gulf War has cost him $250 estinian fighters sense despair, it is with bombing raids over Palestinian refugee 40 years the Palestinians have endured million in aid from the oil-rich Gulf good cause: their people today face more camps in southern Lebanon since the a seemingly endless nightmare of per­ states. Now exultation by sections of the persecution, more repression, more iso­ 1982 invasion. And when Baker says secution, repression, isolation, despair. Palestinian movement over the short­ lation and even less prospect of a home­ that continued Jewish settlement in Forced into diaspora, they managed to lived Moscow coup against Gorbachev land than before. Over the decades, all the Occupied Territories is the "great­ become the chief labor force and eco­ is being used to further isolate the PLO. the options offered by nationalism have est obstacle to peace," Israeli prime nomic backbone of Kuwait and the other In the Occupied Territories, the young been tried and all have failed-from im­ minister Yitzhak Shamir sneers in re­ oil-rich Gulf states. Tortured and tor­ Palestinian fighters who have endured potent "armed struggle" to respectable ply: "Settlement continues in all parts mented by Zionist repression, they torture and imprisonment in Israeli United Nations resolutions, from reli­ camps, who have seen brothers and sis­ ance on the Arab bourgeoisies to direct ters gunned down by undercover army appeals to the imperialist powers. death squads or fascistic "settlers," sur­ The petty-bourgeois nationalist PLO, vey a horizon which is bleaker than ever not for the first time, is being crucified before. With nearly 60 percent of West by the very forces it has looked to for Bank land already in Israeli hands,. the redemption over the years. While loudly . Zionists have been "creating facts" proclaiming their support to the dispos­ aimed at making the "green line" (the sessed Palestinian nation as proof of pre-1967 border) a historical footnote, their anti-Zionist and anti-imperialist as Shamir's fascistic "housing" minister credentials, 'in fact the bourgeois Arab Ariel Sharon sharply escalates the ex­ regimes have been no less ruthless than propriation of Arab agricultural lands Israel in suppressing the Palestinians. and the construction and expansion of The PLO's reliance on various kings, armed-to-the-teeth Jewish "settlements." sheiks and colonels has more than once The seven-week-long war "curfew" and led to a bloodbath of the Palestinian peo- draconian pass laws have driven an "ple. Its insistent appeals to the U.S. and A already impoverished population to the other imperialist powers to broker a deal Pale.tlnlan representatives Falsal Husselnl (left) and Bethlehem Mayor Ella edge of starvation, with 50 percent with Zionist Israel are now being real­ Frel) meet with U.S. secretary of State James Baker In Jerusalem. unemployment exacerbated by a massive ized-at the expense of the Palestinian 4 WORKERS VANGUARD people. The PLO finds itself cut out and at a dead end. It "is the dead end of nationalism.

Islamic Fundamentalists on the Offensive In the wake of Iraq's defeat, the PLO has been rent with anguish over Arafat's support to Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War. Referring to "new conditions prevailing in the world," top Arafat aide Abu Sharif now talks about the need for "pragmatic" leadership. Palestinian bus­ inessmen are complaining' that the fre­ quent commercial strikes which have Sygma, Der Spiegel been a principal aspect of the Intifada PLO leader Yasir Arafat embraces Jordan's King Hussein, butcher of 10,000 Palestinians in infamous 1970 Black are ruining them. And Arafat's chiefsup­ September massacre (right). porters among "the wealthy Palestinian elite ... have been persistent in persuad­ against the PLO. On June 2, Hamas and on recruiting fedayeen guerrillas in the latest drive against the Palestinians. ing him to give in to American demands" Fatah engaged in a bloody shootout in refugee camps of Jordan and Lebanon Even so, the PLO "welcomes" Assad and (Middle East International, 28 June). the streets of Nablus. Hamas thugs then in the 1970s, the Palestinian CP (which embraces Hussein, just as yesterday it Despite Washington's refusal to hold out broke into the hospital where one of the was part of the Jordanian CP until 1982) embraced the Kuwaiti ruling family, even a fig leaf of Palestinian statehood, wounded Fatah supporters had been established a mass base through organ­ whose fabulous wealth was largely cre­ an "unofficial" PLO delegation-includ­ taken, stabbing him repeatedly as he lay izations like the General Federation of ated by Palestinian labor. ing prominent figures like Faisal Hus­ on the operating table. Angry Fatah ac­ Labor Unions and the Union of Working Dancing, to the nationalists' tune, the seini and Bir Zeit University professor tivists fumed: "Arafat wanted national Women's Committees. By the time of _ Stalinists uphold the "national integrity" Hanan Ashrawi-has met several times unity and asked us to accommodate them the Intifada, the CP could lay claim to of balkanized states carved out by the with Baker. Faced with sharp criticism and now look how they are acting." But taking "the initiative in establishing the imperialists. In 1975, the Lebanese CP, from Palestinian militants, Ashrawi re­ "national unity" with the Islamic funda­ popular and patriotic committees" which which had hundreds of Christian mem­ plied: "If we are excluded from the meet­ mentalists is not only the watchword of directed the uprising. But as Political bers, forged a bloc with "left" Muslim ings with Baker, we'll be excluded from Fatah. At the start of the Intifada the Bureau member Nairn Ashhab conceded, clan leader Kamal Jumblatt, aborting the the peace process." Palestinian Communist Party pledged the Intifada could not "defeat the invad- prospect of a plebeian upheaval which Combined with the growing economic could have cut across communalist <1l divisions. In a September 1988 Political desperation in the Occupied Territories, E E Bureau statement, it pledged its alle­ seething frustration at the base has led <1l to a sharp rise in support for openly anti­ CJ giance to the "unity" and "Arab affinity Jewish Islamic fundamentalist groups of Lebanon." LCP general secretary like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, who are Georges Hawi denounced the "Palestin­ apparently behind the escalation in kill­ ian resistance" for turning the country ings of "collaborators" (many simply for into a "playground" (Al-Nida, 27 Sep­ being "irreligious") as well as the recent tember 1987). And a joint statement by wave of stabbings of Israeli civilians. the Jordanian, Palestinian and Israeli Candidates identified with Hamas won CPs called for "a combat alliance of six out of eleven seats in chamber of Syria, the Palestinian revolution and the commerce elections in the West Bank Lebanese patriotic forces" (Al-Talia, 26 town of Hebron in June. Palestinian November 1987). What they got was a Quietly backed for years by Israel as youth cheer "combat alliance" against the Palestin­ a weapon against the PLO, Hamas now Iraqi Scud ians! Yet the Israeli CP nonetheless hails attacks against the shotgun "agreement signed between receives Kuwaiti and Saudi money Israel. which formerly went to the PLO. While the Lebanese army and the Palestinian the bulk of the resistance against the , forces" (Zo Haderech, 10 July). Zionist occupation forces during the In­ To counter the Zionists' annexationist tifada was organized by secular forces, "Jordan is Palestine" line, the Jordanian notably the Palestinian Communist Party CP echoes the British-installed Hashem­ and the left-nationalists of George "cooperation" with "religious currents." ers and expel the Israeli army, the most ite monarch in arguing that "the Pales­ Habash's Popular Front and Nayef Graffiti in Gaza read: "The Communist powerful in the Middle East; it will take tinians living in Jordan are Jordanians" Hawatmeh's Democratic Front, Hamas Party calls on our brothers in Hamas to a miracle to do that" (Information Bulle­ (Central Committee statement, 7 August devoted its energies to a campaign of use a democratic dialogue." Next to it tin, February 1989). The miracle the Sta­ 1988). So the Jordanian CP denies the terror against Palestinian women. For the is Hamas' bloodcurdling reply: "Com­ linists pray for is "to make Israel and national rights of the Palestinians inside first time' in decades the majority of munism is a cancer inside the nation's the United States accept the idea of an the artificial Hashemite state, the Leba­ women in the Gaza Strip (and, increas­ body and we will cut it out." These Is­ international conference," nese CP denounces Palestinian affronts ingly, in the West Bank) have been lamic fundamentalist cutthroats are right If anything; the Palestinian CP has to their bourgeoisie's integrity, and the forced to return to the veil (see "Pales­ in tune with Bush's "New Order." been more cringing than Arafat in its Palestinian and Israeli CPs invite the tinian Women and the Intifada," Women appeals to imperialism. It was the PCP butcher Assad into Lebanon! This is and Revolution No. 39, Summer 1991). Stalinists Sign Up for which, beginning in 'the mid-l97Os, what these "fraternal" Stalinist parties In Gaza today, as the New York Times "New World Order" pushed for the PLO to adopt its bantustan call internationalism. (22 August) reports: "Only a tiny handful Despite the collapse of Stalinism in "mini-state" line. For years, the Stalin­ What passes for a Trotskyist alterna­ of women venture outdoors without much of the world, the Palestinian CP ists have focused on the call for an in­ tive in the region is exemplified by some head covering." Yet the Pl.Ovpar­ continues to have considerable popular ternational peace conference. Now the the Revolutionary Communist League in ticularly Arafat's Fatah organization, support.particularly in the West Bank. Stalinists have become open apologists Israel, affiliated .fo Ernest Mandel's turned a blind eye to Hamas terror. While Fatah and the radical-nationalist for a Pax Americana. Calling for sup­ United Secretariat, whose erstwhile Now Hamas has taken to direct attacks PFLP and DFLP focused their efforts port to a petition campaign in favor enthusing over "Arab revolution" guer­ rillaism gave way to outright liberalism Sygma of the American proposal, the Hebrew­ language weekly of the Israeli CP says: as the USec moved right and the PLO "Even if the organizers of the petition shifted gears. An RCL statement on Rabbi Levlnger, leader of fascistic support an American solution...the most the Gulf War prominently called for "an "settler" movement In West Bank. immediate end to the bombardment of Zionist expansiOnists "create facts" In important thing is to join them and to the Occupied Territories by escalating help them get as many signatures as pos­ population concentrations in Iraq, Saudi creation of armed-to-the-teeth sible: (Zo Haderech, 5 June). Arabia, Israel and Lebanon." Behind this "settlements" aimed at driving In swearing fealty to the PLO as the "evenhanded" pacifist statement was a P,alestlnlans out. "sole legitimate representative of the blatant capitulation to the Zionist war­ Palestinian people," the Palestinian CP mongers' hysteria over the Iraqi Scud codifies its subordination of the workers missile attacks on Tel Aviv. Despite its and peasants to the would-be ruling class claim to stand "against the American of a Palestinian Arab capitalist state. war, against the American peace," the The Palestinian bourgeois and petty­ RCL joined the Stalinists in pacifist bourgeois leaders in turn place their faith pleading for a "cease-fire" and fostering in their class brothers among the Arab illusions in a Pax Americana with a call regimes. As the price for support, first for "an international conference...for the by Nasser's Egypt in the 1960s and then solution of all the open political ques- by Kuwait and others, the PLO promised 'tions, including those of Kuwait and "non-interference in the internal affairs" Palestine." , of the Arab states--even when it meant For Trotskyist Parties in the the slaughter of Palestinians. Nelfi' ,East!".- The first fruit of this policy was the 1970 Black September massacre of This region is a powder keg in more 10,000 Palestinians by Jordan's King ways than one. While military expendi­ Hussein, forcing the PLO to move its ture- worldwide went up 40 percent military operations to Lebanon. Six between 1960 and 1986, in the Near years later, it was Syria's turn to attack East it shot up 600 percent. Imperialist the PLO there, foreshadowing Assad's continued on page 13

•. ,~'IO{AUGUST'1991 4'.* 5 -,\., ... Young Sparlacus

Krulwich/NYTimes Peter Blakely George Bush atUnlveralty·of Michigan commencement bewails supposed "censorship" of campus racists.like the murderous thugs who destroyed occupied antl-apartheld shanties at Dartmouth.

In May the President of the United and jocular term by which one Ieftist aggressive racists who've been attacking geoisie's agenda includes weeding out States donned cap and gown to deliver Challenged another's "politically cor­ minorities .with alarming intensity. anything remotely pink from the curric­ a commencement address to the gradu­ rect", credentials. Some of :the most. It is on behalf ofthese bruising big­ ulum. purging '60s leftovers from the ates. of the University of Michigan, a humorless may go a bit overboard­ ots that Bush, whose administration faculty. driving minorities out of higher speech which grabbed headlines across typically this milieu rests on ladies with just slapped an anti-abortion'gag order education in the .name of "maintaining .the nation. Fresh from. the slaughter. of fourlegs ("chairpersons,,) and is served on clinic counselors; now grotesquely standards" and inciting straight-out rac­ 100,000 Iraqis, George Bush.declared by. restaurant workers from outer space claims the mantle of "free speech," to ist violence. Hitler had a similar program war on ..the enemy within."Ludicrously, ("waitrons"). There are some politics incite every retrograde punk to violence for universities in his "New Order"­ in the present climate of right-wing teo-s-an ivory tower battle to undo the by championing their "right" to hurl Gleichschaltung-the forcible repres­ triumphalism, he railed against the real and hideous history of racial, sexual fighting words like "N----r!" Other sion of independent thought and action, "notion of 'political correctness'" as an and class oppression through sectoral­ prime targets are the few professors and a lockstep march to total.conformity. "inquisition," "censorship" and "bully­ ist and triumphalist glorifications of courses in black andwomen's studies In effete Harvard Yard, just days be­ ing." "Political extremists roam the "mystory." Over the last year however, departments, slim gains remaining from fore the fascist David Duke rode into land," Bush claimed, "abusing the priv­ the term "PC" has become what one the big civil rights and Vietnam antiwar town this spring, an ultra-conservative ilege of free speech, setting citizens writer aptly called "the bloody shirt" of struggles of the '60s. \'. creep hoisted the Confederate flag of against one another on the basis of their the right wing. During the Vietnam Warthe campuses slavery' to challenge the "tyranny" of class or race." The University of Mich­ It's also a big-time Big Lie campaign. were organizing centers of political pro­ the "politically correct." In April, three igan, like so many other campuses across A mighty media wurlitzer has churned test, "breeding grounds of subversion" student members of the University of the country, has been rocked by violent up a mountain of magazine cover stories, in the eyes of the White House/penta­ Chicago Gay and Lesbian Alliance re­ attacks against blacks, gays, Jews and op-eds and books screaming that the gon/CIA. Then anti-imperialist youth ceived death threat letters covered with other minorities-and Bush came to give campuses have been seized by "tenured chanted, "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids a lethal neurotoxin absorbable through the presidential seal of approval to the radicals" and leftist "thought police" did you kill today?" This time around, the skin. In Long Island, Jermaine Ewell, race-haters and spur the witchhunt subverting wholesome American youth Bush & Co. want to ensure that the uni­ a black high school youth, was beaten against the newall-purpose bogeyman, with satanic verses 'of "multicultural­ versities are brought firmly into line with within an inch of his life by a posse of the "PC monolith." ism." Yet, as anyone who has set foot the "New World Order," with mobs white Hofstra students for talking to a What is "PC"? If you want to fight on a campus in the last five years knows, chanting "USA! USA!" and showering white girl. On and off campus, this is against racist attacks, abortion clinic America's colleges are hardly commu­ confetti on the soldiers and their war the real face of the anti-"PC" crusade. bombings, union-busting and imperialist nist valhallas. In a country with a shrink­ criminal commanders. New Left illu­ Just what is it that these"PC" hunters war, then maybe you're "politically cor­ ing economy and a growing non-white sions to the contrary, petty-bourgeois who rail about constraints on their "free rect" and a dangerous enemy to Western population, with "death of Communism" students are not inherently radical but speech" (yet rule the country and own civilization. Among rad-lib academic ideologues and yahoos riding high, the can swing all the way to the fascist far the media) want to say? Take the case circles "PC" used to be a self-conscious campuses have become nasty havens for right. To mold this generation, the bour- of Douglas Hann, who was recently expelled from Brown University after he stood in a courtyard screaming a string of vile racial epithets at blacks, Jews and gays. He threatened one black woman, telling her that "My parents own you people." Sure enough, less than two. weeks after Hann's outburst, racist graf­ fiti and white-supremacy leaflets began The Big Lie appearing around campus. campaign: We shed no tears for the expulsion of bourgeois this pig, but neither do we call for speech media whips up codes or reliance on university adminis­ witchhunt to trations to fight racism, as many mis­ drive red-libs guided leftists do. Ninety-nine out of a off the hundred times, speech codes will be used campuses.• against the left and anti-racists. Reinstat­ ing Hann has become a reactionary cause celebre, uniting right-wing Senator Henry Hyde (author of the amendment that cut off Medicaid funding for abor- 6 WORKERS VANGUARD. tions) with "civil libertarian" Village to attack public school teaching ofevolu­ Voice columnist Nat Hentoff, who says COME JOIN tionary science, to bringschool prayer Hann needs to be "educated." The kind into public schools, to get tax credits for of learning Hann needs is a tete-a-tete THE MINUTEMAN parochial schools and to ban textbooks with the ground, not via the Socratic these bigots didn't like. After a decade method that Hentoff has in mind. of this mean-spirited racist and anti­ scientific indoctrination, no wonder Amer­ "PC"·Bashers·: A Who's Who ican schoolchildren ranked second to last The opening salvo in the antr-t'PC" in a survey by the International Associa­ crusade was fired by Allan Bloom with tion for· the Evaluation of Educational his 1987 bestseller, The Closing of the Achievement comparing ninth grade sci­ American Mind. Bloom and other dim ence students from 16 countries. stars in the far-right firmament seethe In 1987, Reagan's Department of that their .beloved canon: the traditional ducation discovered the dreaded "PC" in "Western Civilization" course, has under­ a widely used high school course on the gone a minor facelift at a few schools Holocaust, pulled all funding for the like Stanford. For them it is high treason DANIEL ORTEGA project and canned the curriculum. What that a small number of courses are being And Take A Shot at a was wrong with it? "UNFAIR TO taught by profs who don't see history as NAZIS" blared the New York Daily a glorious struggle of white Europeans Communist News (20 September 1987) in a front­ and Americans to fulfill their ,manifest page expose and revealed the review destiny. A sampling from Bloom's book: panel's findings that the course failed to Susan Muniak present "the Nazi point of view" or "that "[The] exploration and discovery of the Dinesh D'Souza, founding editor of New World produced, among other won­ Dartmouth Review-flagship publication ofthe Ku Klux Klan." The "PC"-bashers want to abuse the right of "free speech" ders, the United States.... For the poor, for campus contras like UMass Amherst's 11 February 1988 the weak, the oppressed-the over­ Minuteman. by claiming that genocide is just another whelming majority of mankind-it is the point of view. Indeed, a motto of promise of salvation." The controversy' of the Olin Foundation, whose goal is among undergraduates entering the uni­ D'Souza's Dartmouth Review was, "Gen­ further heated up this spring when the fighting "the creeping stranglehold that versity." What bunk! Columnist Russell ocide is never having to say you're Smithsonian had the chutzpah to buck socialism has gained here." The Institute Baker quipped on the multicultural cur­ sorry." Custer's "the only good Indian is a dead for Educational Affairs is another source riculum dispute, "The question is not Reagan's education secretary, William Indian" credo in the narration to an art of cash, and intelligence agency and big what bias should be applied when teach­ Bennett, made his debut in office by exhibit on "The West as America." business connections. lEA is a creature ing history, but why our schools seem announcing that too many people go to Dinesh D'Souza, author of Illiberal of William Simon and Irving Kristol incapable of teaching any history at all, college and slashing children's school Education: is presently one of the most (who has been exposed as an "indirect" biased or otherwise." The last half­ lunches. Following the example of their widely quoted of the "PC"-bashers, all recipient of CIA monies). They overlap serious effort to improve education in brethren in Washington, the chairman of of whom like to falsely portray them­ with Accuracy in Academia (AlA), this country came after the Russians the Bicentennial Commission for the selves as under siege in the ivory towers. which is allied through its parent group launched Sputnik in 1957, when a wave U.S. Constitution in California got the According to D'Souza, this is the result (Accuracy in Media) with the Moonie­ of government-sponsored hysteria pro­ Commission to sponsor a textbook that of a "victims' revolution" which is low­ owned Washington Times. Their leader, duced a concerted effort to teach more called American black slaves "pick- ering academic standards and. resulting Reed Irvine, networks with the World en ::J in college admissions where "race-based Anti-Communist League, an outfit that U ctl preferences often have the effect of mis­ brings together fascists and right-wing 'iii C1. placing blacksand Hispanic students into militants from Taiwan and South Korea (J) 0> academic environments where they are to Salvadoran death squads. In June AlA c ::J dramatically butmatched by their class­ sponsored a snidely titled "Politically ~ mates, and this. contributes to extremely Incorrect: Fighting the Campus Thought high dropout rates among these groups." Police" conference with special invited To bleach the campuses of "misplaced" guest Dinesh D'Souza and topics like dark-skinned students,' native of India "Give War a Chance" and "The Truth and WASP wannabee D'Souza embraces Hurts" by white-supremacist (and ten­ direct hit methods. D'Souza is a found­ ured) Berkeley anthropology professor Vincent Sarich. University of ing editor of the Dartmouth Review, the Wisconsin, flagship newspaper of the campus ultra­ A few years back Accuracy in Acade­ November 1987: right whose staff made headlines for mia rang the bell for a new McCarthyite hundreds slamming sledgehammers against anti­ witchhunt on the campuses. AlA wildly protest racist apartheid activists occupying a symbolic claimed that 10,000 Marxist and 35,000 attack on black shantytown on the Dartmouth Green. liberal professors were busy polluting and Jewish D'Souza's editorial achievements in­ the highly impressionable minds of col­ students. c1ude publishing an interview with a lege students. AlA focused on the cam­ "former" KKK leader (illustrated with a puses as the "final redoubt" from which staged photograph of a black man hang­ pinkos "will have to be dragged one day, ing from a tree on the Dartmouth cam­ kicking and screaming" (AlA's Campus pus) and an article on affirmative action Report, September 1986). They also written in what was supposed to be a libeled the Spartacist League as "cop parody of black speech ("Now we be killers," for which we took this sordid comin' to Darmut and be up Over our outfit to court- in 1987 and forced a full math and science. But any commitment aninnies" and claimed slaveowners were 'fros in studies, but we still be not grad­ retraction of their deadly lies. AlA func­ to educating the population went down the real victims of the system. uatin' Phi Beta Kappa"). For these 'colle­ tioned as privatized Reaganite witch­ with the decline of the American empire, All across the domestic front Reagan giate efforts D'Souza .made it into the hunters in the '80s. Now, in the wake of particularly its losing dirty war against and Bush's vigilante squads scrutinized big leagues and was hired as a policy 'his big kill of Iraqis, Bush is personally the Vietnamese workers and peasants. public school districts for the use of analyst by the Reagan administration and leading the charge for an open govern­ The election of Ronald Reagan in textbooks with so-called "atheistic" and as Bush's presidential campaign "direc­ mental assault against 'domestic opposi­ 1980, a president whose decisions were subversive deviations. Tennessee funda­ tor of Catholic votes." tion, beginning on campus.. apparently made by his astrologer, sig­ mentalists sued a school board for read­ Scratch the surface of this crowd and naled a renewed assault on education. ing "heathen" stories like Goldilocks, you find a global web of Nazis, death­ The Destruction of Back then the "PC" demon was known The Wizard of Oz and Cinderella in squad terrorists, their academic apol­ American Education as "secular humanism." Fundamentalists classes. In California, Little Red Riding ogists, and their CIA moneybags. Bloom and other rightist ideologues and other yahoos were funded and en­ Hood was pulled from the shelves in one D'Souza and Bloom are both on the tit blame the left for "growing illiteracy couraged by the Reagan administration school district because a heroine who scampers off to grandmother's house with a bottle of wine in her picnic basket conveys "the wrong message" about alcohol to children! In Mobile, Alabama Spartacus Youth Club ~ Forums a judge banned 45 textbooks and de­ clared "secular humanism" a religion, so the religious and racist dogma of crea­ Bankrupt Stalinism Opens Floodgates ~o Capitalist Restoration tionism must get equal time in "science" classes. This racist, right-wing indoctrination has provided fertile soil for the Defeat Yeltsin-Bush Counterrevolution in USSR! growth of ignorance and bigotry. The National Institute Against Prejudice and Speaker: Joseph Seymour, SL Central Committee Friday, Sept. 6, 7:30 p.m. Violence reports soaring racist attacks on _Ameri<;:a!l ,:ampuses:15Q .incidents Saturday, Sept. 21, 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 19, 5:30 p.m. Barnard College in 1.988 and over 300 in 1989, and UC Berkeley SF State University Lehman Auditorium, Altschul Hall that's just what's reported. A survey 126 Barrows Student Union B112 (#1 IRTTrain to 116th/Broadway) released earlier this year by the National For more information: (415) 839-0851 For more information: (415) 777-9367 For more information: (212) 267-1025 Opinion Research Center questioning racial attitudes among non-black respon­ dents showed the extent of prejudice: continued on page 8 30 AUGUST 1991 7 By dealing with racist violence like "PC?"• • •• it's just a bad idea they can "ban," the (continued from page 7) "PC" crowd has given ground to the right wing on the issue of free speech. Al­ 53 percent thought blacks were less in­ though this milieu is attacked as "Marx­ telligent than whites, 56 percent thought ists," they are basically liberals whose blacks were more violence-prone, and 78 politics run to hard anti-communism at percent thought they were more likely times, and they make some strange bed­ to "prefer to live off welfare" and less fellows. "Radical" feminists ape Moral likely to want to be self-supporting! Majorityite Jerry Falwell in the crusade ~. j1jll!l.~J?/ll5·E-D' against "pornography." For that matter, (EAlf1~AGU4.•.•.....•.••.•.•...•..•....•... ;r5ti5lk4TE! MrGS'~ "PC" Muddleheads Run Amok "PC" comes straight from the tradition NEEDS I J' '\. This is the ugly background to the of Stalinism, from enforcing puritanical u.s. I~LDODY HANDc "- • restrictive "speech codes" and "sensitiv­ sensibilities, to persecuting and silenc­ .) OFF CENTRAL At"\£R\CJ\l ity training" that "PC" academics and ing left opposition-in the service of a ~U~,~Ulc .' anti-racist students have campaigned for "popular front" with sections of the "".i!.lJA . . . - .) IlNOON PLt\2A and instituted at many universities. The bourgeoisie. So we do appreciate the I~· ~tfq;ll<~ ojllll<: Lil\!. : . '~,... problem with this strategy is it disarms case of columnist Alexander Cockburn, .n(r;J··RZ}df'\f) Sl'1\~A('\"'<' VN1n\ It the victims by fostering illusions in the who wrote in an excellent article against Young Spartacus supposed "neutrality" of the racist uni­ the "PC"-bashing rabble that he himself Mostdefinitely not "PC": Red Avengers of Underground SYL lampoon feminist­ versity administrations and the cops. It was gagged by "PC" guardians of the led witchhunt of Trotskyists at San Francisco State University. gives enhanced power to those institu­ podium at Reed College. tions to act against, for instance, leftists Like Workers Vanguard, Cockburn has benefit from such idiotic and cowardly "Deconstructionists" seek to expose the' who might rightly protest Colin Powell denounced the anti-day-care hysteria and censorship. There is a proud tradition­ injustices of Western civilization as pre­ or Schwarzkopf and call these imperial­ its false, lurid claims of child abuse that with which we openly solidarize-of sented in classic texts. Feminists write ist pigs "imperialist pigs." What's more, have ruined innocent people's lives and scathing argument and even rude polem­ "herstory" and black nationalists write this strategy doesn't work. which aim to remove women from the ics in the history of the revolutionary "Afrocentric" curricula. An example of In 1987 at the University of Wisconsin workplace by closing day-care centers. movement. It is through such clash of how "PC" tinkering serves to mask the in Madison, where frat rats had their Cockburn wrote in the Nation (27 May): opinion that one actually learns some­ hideous reality of capitalism is seen in thing. We've certainly enjoyed our the current debate over use of the word "fun" holding mock slave auctions and "The left in Portlandtends to our defini­ partying in blackface, mass student out­ tion of the P.e. side of the ledger, and decade-long political scrap with Cock­ "slave" vs. "enslaved person" in school rage and opposition to these creeps was not long before the date of my speech I burn over vital issues for the left and textbooks. In a debate on this question channeled into calls for suspension of got a call from one of the event's organ­ labor movement, such as why Marxists in Newsday (16 August), Henry Louis three malefactors and enforced sensitiv­ izers saying there was an uproar about must oppose imperialist sanctions and Gates Jr. wrote: my analysis in these pages ["Beat the defend Iraq against the American bour­ "...if your class has a tendency to think ity training. After passing a preachy Devil," February 12, 1990] of the day­ tolerance seminar aimed at modifying carehysteria.... I wastoldthatI hadbeen geoisie (see, e.g., "Pinko Journalist of slavery as an electivevocation, I sup­ Turns Yellow," Workers Vanguard No. pose the longer phrase might help them. their behavior they were reinstated-and insufficiently sensitive to 'the reality of But there's a trade-off. After all, a pow­ celebrated their return by immediately ritual abuse,' which was certainly true 518, 18 January). Ten years ago, Cock­ erful tradition of abolitionist rhetoric since, re day care, I denied its existence. beating up black and Jewish students! burn's more polite reference to us was turned on the awful fact that the condi­ So the Reed folk said I could no longer tion of slavery truly negated one's very The Spartacus Youth Club participated make a speech.... I did end up in Port­ "Marxism-Leninism-Bonkerism" when we enraged the popular-front left by our personhood. 'You have seen how a man in campus demonstrations against these land that weekend and foundwhatit was was made a slave,' Frederick Douglass scum, calling for mobilizing students like to be deemed politically incorrect. un- "PC" call for the military victory of famously wrote, pouncing on the con­ and labor in militant action' to drive the Even an invitation to sit on a panel dis­ Salvadoran leftists and opposition to a trast; 'you shall see how a slave was cussing the victory of UNO in the Nica­ negotiated sellout. Poor Alex just ran race-terrorists off campus. As we said at raguan elections, which had occurred made a man'." the time, "If one of these Nazi-inspired only days earlier,was countermanded by afoul of the same foul crowd, and As Marxists our aim is to change real­ punks were nabbed and displayed naked David Linder and associates 'because of we can't help asking, "Who's 'bonkers' ity, not merely the perception of it. Thus with a yellow stripe down his back it the controversy'." now?" . as opposed to empty "sensitivity train­ would do more than a thousand 'race Only the right wing, which seeks to Workers Vanguard, the Spartacist ing" for racist thugs, we have initiated relationship workshops'." purge and silence all opposition, can League and the Spartacus Youth Clubs united-front labor/black mobilizations, are most assuredly not "PC." For our enrolling the power of the integrated hard commie politics, e.g., our forthright union movement, that have stopped defense of the Soviet Union against fascist terrorists like the KKK and imperialist attack and internal counter­ skinhead/Nazis in their tracks. And to Workers Vanguard revolution, our opposition to the craven, fight the injustices of the present it is Democratic Party-ensconced "left," our important to understand the past-a his­ opposition to government intervention tory of class struggle. To that end we Subscription Drive into the Teamsters union, we too have publish a pamphlet series on Black His­ earned the enmity of muddleheaded tory and the Class Struggle so that "PC" rad-liberals. today's fighters can reclaim the lessons In 1984 at San Francisco State Univer­ that are deliberately omitted by the edu­ August 22 to October 9 sity we were "banned" by "PC" bean­ cational system to perpetuate bourgeois sprout totalitarians. Campus feminists ideology and the racist status quo. led by Julianne Malvaux couldn't toler­ A pernicious aspect of the "PC" 1991 Quotas ate our Marxist politics and deemed our curriculum debate is the tendency for constant exposure of their.support to the each oppressed constituency to elevate Quota loser Democrat Mondale an "assault." its own particular race, sexuality or Local (In points) We offered a lesson in dialectics, asking: ethnicity above all others. Since chattel "What is the business end of a female Atlanta 225 slavery, the ideology of race has been great white shark? The answer depends the white-supremacist justification fora Boston 260 on whether one is a horny male great Chicago 500 whole system of exploitation where white shark or a deeply committed femi­ blacks are integrated into production but . Cleveland 100 nist skindiver." They wanted a red­ kept forcibly at the bottom. For Third Los Angeles 300 hunt.. .and in willful mockery of their World nationalists and their rad-lib New York 1,140 efforts we gave them one, going under­ cheerleaders to present racial differences Oakland 800 ground as the "Red Avengers" and sur­ as fundamental and insurmountable is to San Francisco 300 facing in disguise to hold fund-raising provide a "PC" gloss on the ethnic polar­ Washington, D.C. 150 rallies for embattled Nicaragua to pro­ izations fueled by the white ruling class At Large 275 cure Soviet MIGs. In the end we defeated to keep the producers of the wealth of these would-be McCarthyites, as we this country divided. National Total 4,050 promised we would in our first under­ As Leninists, our aim is to unite the ground communique: entire working class to fight the special "The Spartacus Youth League of San oppression of blacks, women and other Francisco State University has been driven underground by gestapo persons minorities. As an example, when the r--- Subscribe Now! ---, and rabid dobermanpinschersof the fe­ Nazis threatened to storm the Gay Pride male persuasion crawling between the Day parade in Chicago in 1982, we mo­ Name __---:- _ I I toes of the FBI. We go underground be­ bilized steel workers, Holocaust survi­ cause sinister elements in the student vors and the black community to defeat Address _ I government and the Women's Center, I bookburners inspired by sentiments at their common enemy and defend them­ ______Apt. # Phone (_._) L.-_ I bottom not different than those of CIA selves through a united-front action. The City State Zip ---== I tool Pinochet of Chile, leave us no re­ battles at hand require the leadership of course if we are to distributeour Marxist a multiracial workers party that will act 533 I. literature.... Venceremos!" SPECIALI A free packet of Spartaclst literature or pamphlet with full I as a "tribune of the people" in cham­ subscriptions to both Workers Vanguard and Women and Revolution. Marxism vs. Idealism pioning the'cause of all the oppressed, I fighting to achieve black liberation o $7/24 issues of Workers Vanguard o $3/3 issues of I "PC" thinking is a form of idealism, through revolutionary integration in a (includes English-language Spartacist) Women and Revolution I a false consciousness that obscures the socialist society. It is by joining the o New 0 Renewal 0$2/10 introductory issues I material basis of oppression. The current struggle to build such a party that International rates: $25/24 issues-Airmail $7/24 issues-Seamail of Workers Vanguard I trend among leftish academics, particu­ radical-minded students and campus (includes English-language I larly now that many are "rethinking workers (and even professors) can help 0$2/4 issues of Spartacist (edici6n en espanol) Spartacist) I Marxism" (the title of one voguish jour­ to unify the working class to overthrow L Make checks payable/mall to: Spartaclst Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 ~I nal) is to advance a sectoralist study this whole rotten system and open the of one's own sexuality or ethnicity. door to human freedom.• 8 WORKERS VANGUARD Furor Over CUNY Prof. Jeffries White Racist Backlash Against Anti-Semitic Demagogue

As New York City continued to fester during this long hot summer, becoming ever more racially polarized, the tabloid gutter press seized upon the anti-Semitic statements of Leonard Jeffries, chairman of the African-American studies depart­ ment at City College, t6 fuel white racist fear and loathing of black people. In­ deed, counterrevolution in the Soviet Union was the only news to push Jeffries Professor off the front page. Leonard Jeffries fuels racIal While ostensibly addressing the con­ polarization troversy over "multiculturai" textbook in NYC. revision at a conference in Albany on Supporters and July 20, Jeffries seized the. opportunity JDL opponents to rave about a "conspiracy, planned and met him at plotted and programmed out of Holly­ Kennedy Airport wood, where people called Greenberg (right). and Weisberg and Trigliani and what­ not. ..had a particular control over the movies" and together with "their finan­ cial partners, the Mafia, put together a system of destruction of black people." While citing just about every ethnic supremacist who claims that "the aver­ such as what's boiled over in the streets their lives to fight Jim Crow in Missis­ group for the horrors of the slave trade, age black is significantly less intelligent of Crown Heights against the Hassidim. sippi. But times have changed. Particu­ Jeffries singled out Jews for their role than the average white" (New York Ob­ Jeffries is one more voice in the chorus larly in the aftermath of Israel's 1967 as a merchant class. (He whitewashes server, 7 May 1990), and calls for black that's leading this city to race war-a war against its Arab neighbors, Ameri­ any mention of the African kings who youth to be herded into segregated war in which the oppressed black popu­ can Jewry has lurched to the right and got their cut selling their own and other police-patrolled subway cars and barred lation in a racist white country can only Zionism is now politically dominant. As African peoples.) Denouncing right­ from white-owned stores. Levin raises lose. Leaflets went up all around Harlem we wrote about Jesse Jackson's disgust­ wing Assistant U.S. Secretary for Edu­ only a few eyebrows and receives not a declaring that "the Black community ing "Hyrnietown" remark: cation Diane Ravitch as a "sophisticated fraction of the tabloid outrage directed would hold the Post and Jewish people "American capitalism tended to set the Texas Jew," who had "blinded us on the at Jeffries. responsible for any threat, misquotes, Jewish and black communities against attack coming from the Jewish commu­ Leonard Jeffries' method is to put a slander or acts of violence" against Jef­ one another. In a number of U.S. cities plus where Levin puts a minus. But let's fries. The Amsterdam News fulminated the black ghetto exists today where the nity-systematic, unrelenting," Jeffries Jewish ghetto of East European immi­ blamed the Jews for black oppression. face it, Jeffries' whacked-out theories that: . grants existed yesterday. Thus, a black Leonard Jeffries is an anti-Semitic about melanin conferring biological and "In order to discredit the leadership of ghetto dweller often identifies Jews with bigot. But the people hounding him are intellectual superiority on "sun people" Jesse Jackson, call him an anti-Semite his landlord or shopkeeper... the oppres­ of African descent would never get that for referring to New York as 'Hymie- sion of blacks and Jews in the U.S. is even more virulent bigots, and they have •town.' Cast Louis Farrakhan as an fundamentally different. Jews in the U.S. the prerogatives of state power. Follow­ wide a hearing. Now the white racist anti-Semite for referring to the' 'gutter today Me generally well-off and com­ ing the New York Post's 5 August "ex­ backlash has caused many blacks to religion of the Jews.' Repudiate Jeffries fortable, while blacks are impoverished, pose" of Jeffries' remarks, an enormous close ranks and rally 'round him, and for referring to Metro, Golden, Mayer miserable, brutalized by the cops and outcry was raised by everyone from Sen­ that's too bad-because Leonard Jeffries [sic] as Jews. In the world of anti­ forced to live in ghetto hellholes. At the is an enemy of black struggle. For all Semitism, it is a sufficient act of anti­ same time, Jews, even if relatively priv­ ator Al D' Amato (a racist pig who called Semitism to call a Jew a Jew." ileged, have a deep sense of historic blacks "animals") to Governor Cuomo, his talk of a conspiracy against black This stuff is anti-Semitic-and more oppression." to the New York Times, to State Educa­ America, he hobnobs with the police, the grist for the Zionist propaganda mills. -WV No. 351, 30 March 1984 tion Commissioner Thomas Sobol, call­ armed fist of the racist ruling class, and It is a measure of the terminal decay ing for disciplinary action against Jef­ last week addressed the National Black Historically, American Jews were repre­ sented in great numbers in the labor of American capitalism that communists fries. The fascistic Zionist Jewish Police Officers Association in Newark. are the only people fighting for integra­ Defense League (which cut its teeth as Jeffries has degenerated from a crack­ movement.,the Communist Party, and in tion of the schools and any semblance a paramilitary anti-black organization in pot cultural nationalist to an anti-Semitic; the front lines of the black freedom struggle. It was people with names like of equality, while bigotry and preachers Brooklyn) demonstrated against Jeffries demagogue. When in 1982 the Spartacist Schwerner and Goodman who joined of pseudo-scientific racial supremacy and lynched him in effigy at JFK airport League initiated the Labor/Black Mo­ with black youth like Chaney and gave take hold on the campuses. _ upon his return from Ghana two weeks bilization that stopped the threatened ago. KKK march in Washington, D.C., Pro­ A City College faculty committee fessor Jeffries enthusiastically endorsed criticized Jeffries but recommended that our call to action, both individually and no action be taken against him-how­ on behalf of the African-American Stud­ ever, final word rests with the university ies Department. Yet by 1988, when officials and trustees. State or university approached by the Partisan Defense Just Out! disciplinary action against Leonard Jef­ Committee for endorsement of our call fries would not .only be wrong, but to action against the Klan and skinheads' • South AfrIca and obscene. City College is also home to "White Pride Day" in Philadelphia, Jef­ Permanent RevolutIon Professor Michael Levin, a white- fries disgustingly retorted that the KKK • Mercedes-Benz was "a white man's problem." Fortu­ SIt-Down StrIkers nately, large numbers of trade unionists, RaIse Red Flag, CP SellS Them Out blacks, Jews, gays and others didn't buy • South AfrIca: Spartacist. League this lie, 'and the Klan did not ride in Razor's Edge Philly on November 5th. Public Offices • InterracIal Sex Ban The ridiculous belief, expressed by Jolted In South AfrIca -MARXIST L1TERATURE­ Jeffries and other pork-barreling black • Wall Street and the Bay Area nationalist demagogues, that the Ameri­ ApartheId State Thurs.: 5:30-8:00 p.rn., Sat.: 1:00-5:00 p.m. can ruling class is comprised of Jews • CP Leader Joe Siovo: 1634 Telegraph, 3rd Floor (near 17th Street) and Italians, is a testimony to the pathetic From "Uncle Joe" Oakland. California Phone: (415) 839-0851 state of what passes for black leadership Stalin to Gorby Chicago today. The real stagemasters of racist op­ • Smash Apartheldl For Tues.:5:00-9:00 p.rn., Sat.: 11:00a.m-zoo p.m. pression, as George Herbert Walker Bush Workers Revolutlonl 161 W. Harrison St., 10th Floor himselfcould tell you, do not even allow Chicago. Illinois Phone: (312)663-0715 Jews or Italians into their social clubs. $1 (48 pages) New York City In the absence of a revolutionary Order from: Tues.: 6:30-9:00 p.m., Sat.: 1:00-5:00 p.m. socialist alternative, the preachers of 41 Warren St. (one block below Spartacist Pub. Co. nationalist despair play upon the in­ Chambers St. near Church St.) Box 1377 GPO SJ>artaeist P~iShing Co.• Box 13n New York. NY Phone: (212)267-1025 creasing frustration of the black popu­ New York, NY 10116 GPO, New York,N'( 1D116 lation, fueling murderous ethnic violence 30 AUGUST 1991 9 viks' fighting arm against White Guard subversion. The next day they toppled Soviet Union.;. the statue of Yakov Sverdlov, a Jewish (continued from page 1) Communist (and first president of the Soviet republic. There, the pro-Hitler the West. He is connected to a far-right, NTS distributed a leaflet that called for racist outfit in the U.S. called the "Free the very measures that Yeltsin decreed Congress Foundation" (whose East Eu­ the next day. The Russian Orthodox ropean operatives include notorious Nazi Patriarch presided over the burial of collaborators) which takes credit for three who died assaulting the tanks. Brit­ "training" him and his staff on how to ish TV reported, "The images today were seize power. His laws are being drawn of old Russia, pre-revolutionary, a coun­ up by advisers supplied by the U.S. gov­ try throwirig itself back 75 years." ernment.i.One of Yeltsin's first acts as In the wake of the botched coup, Moscow party chief in the mid-'80s was Yeltsin, the former bureaucratic hack to legitimize the anti-Semitic Pamyat turned capitalist-restorationist, moved fascists when they emerged from their quickly and ruthlessly against his oppo­ ratholes. While' he promises working nents. In the best tradition of Stalin, people that the free market will bring Yeltsin dragged the politically enfeebled them prosperity, in fact it will lead to Soviet "president" Gorbachev before the elimination of what every Soviet jeering members of the Russian parlia­ worker considered a right until recently: ment to crudely humiliate him. Aping a stable job, free health care, an educa­ Anatoly Sapronyenkov the tsar, the "democratic" Russian pres­ tion for their children-gains which all Hardliners of the OFT labor federation brandish portrait of Stalin during May ident Yeltsin haughtily issued a ukase rest on the collectivized economy. Day parade this year. Illusions that any sector of Stalinist bureaucracy would (decree) banning activities of the Com­ The alternatives posed before the So­ resist counterrevolution are now brutally exposed. munist Party on Russian soil and out­ viet bureaucratically degenerated work­ lawed Pravda and other CP newspapers. ers state have always been: counterrev­ authors staked everything on a neutral even the "Great Patriotic War." Instead The CPSU Central Committee and Mos­ olution or Trotskyism. Today Stalinism acceptance of the coup by the imperial­ they looked to the traditions of the cow offices were sealed and surrounded is dead. The key to frustrating the bloody ists, hinting that Gorbachev might be tsarist empire-which Lenin called a by bloodthirsty gangs. Flaunting his plans of Bush, Yeltsin and their counter­ brought back and leaving Washington's "prison house of peoples"-declaring: power over Gorbachev, Yeltsin named revolutionary cohorts is the early forging darling Yeltsin untouched. The GKChP's "Our multinational people have lived for the new head of the Soviet army, KGB of a Trotskyist nucleus in the Soviet statement vowed to "support private centuries, proud of their Motherland." and interior ministry, who promptly out­ Union, regrouping those elements in enterprise" and to observe every treach­ But in appealing to Russian nationalism, lawed Communist Party activity in these the workers movement, the army and erous commitment to the imperialists by Yeltsin held the stronger hand. pillars of state power. The next day throughout society who would fight for Gorbachev. Its chief economic spokes­ . Nor did the coup organizers manage Gorbachev not only resigned as general the program of October. man Tizyakov insisted that "the policy to assuage Washington and Wall Street. secretary of the CPSU but called for dis­ of the reforms toward a market econ­ As soon as Bush took a hard line backing solution of the disintegrating party and Perestroika Coup Fiasco omy will not be reversed." There was Yeltsin (and incidentally demanding confiscation of its property. As the crowd of yuppies, students and no mention of "Marxism-Leninism," Gorbachev's return), the coup began Yeltsin may wield the pen and the assorted Russian nationalists, including "communism," or even "socialism." fascists and priests, gathered'at the start For this was a "perestroika coup." For of the coup outside the Russian parlia­ months there had been calls for a crack­ ment, Yeltsin's "White House," a call down coming from hardline Stalin­ on Moscow workers to clean out this ist/nationalist "patriots" like the "black counterrevolutionary rabble was in or­ colonels" of Soyuz. But what moved the der. Yet the coup plotters not only did coup leaders, all of them Gorbachev not mobilize the workers, they ordered appointees, to action was the imminent everybody to stay at work and at home. signing of a new union treaty, which The working class did, and Yeltsin's would have ceded significant central call for a protest strike fell flat. But powers to the republics. The coup was the free-enterprise "cooperativists" and not so much by the military, which petty-bourgeois self-styled "democrats" largely stayed out of the fray, but by intoxicated by the allure of dollars and top administrative and party hacks of D-marks thronged into the streets. And the central apparat whose bureaucratic the impotent "state of emergency com­ fiefdoms were threatened. Their avowed mittee" (GKChP) did nothing. Any class­ program was martial law to keep the conscious Soviet worker who saw the USSR from breaking apart, which comes urgent need to halt the capitalist­ down to perestroika minus glasnost: the restorationist forces would certainly introduction of the market but not so fast, and shut up. Thus one of the "gang of Reuters have been against Yeltsin, but critical of COUporganizers' press conference: (from left) Tizyakov, Starodubtsev, Pugo, the coup-which wouldn't stop Yeltsin, eight," Prime Minister Pavlov, was the Yanayev and Baklanov. and was therefore doomed to failure. Gorbachev regime's main spokesman for The ineptitude of the coup plotters the new law allowing widescale privati­ unraveling. In the afte~aih~, there has microphone, but his orders came on the astounded even imperialist commenta­ zation of industry, and was'notorious been a lot of hoopla about the 'outpouring direct line from the White House On the' tors. It was reported that they had for tripling food prices last spring. At of popular support for "democracy." Potomac to the "White House" on the ordered 250,000 handcuffs from a fac­ the time, he told a British journalist: While up to 150,000 (out of a city of Moskva. Less than 24 hours after Bush tory in Pskov as well as stacks of blank "I must be very firm and say that ten million), undoubtedly including expressed dissatisfaction with Gorba­ arrest orders, but they failed even to privatisation has always been on the many workers, turned out at one point chev's appointment of General Moiseyev agenda of economic reform, and it was seize the man who would clearly be the always, for obviousreasons,veryclosely to hear Yeltsin, the fabled barricades out­ as the new defense minister, Moiseyev focus for a pro-imperialist countercoup. linkedwiththe liberalisation of prices.... side the "White House" were purely was out. The Russian demagogue Yeltsin Washington spokesmen ascribed this We want to bring about the normal sit­ symbolic, generally having only a few is portrayed as a great hero of "democ­ failure to follow the first rule of coup­ uation of capital as in other countries." thousand hanging around them. "They racy." This "democrat" is calling for the making and arrest Yeltsin to a "miracle." -London Independent (18 April) were mainly young ones, like myself, formation of a new Russian army, the They didn't even cut off his phones, and Not exactly a program to inspire students, intellectuals, professionals," "National Guard," whose first decoration incredibly allowed TV to report Yeltsin's Soviet workers to support the plotters' said one participant. In addition to a cou­ would be the Order of St. George-the appeals for soldiers to disobey their bid for power! The coup leaders con­ ple dozen Russian republic police, tsarist emblem and banner of the Russian orders! But these apparent stupidities spicuously avoided any mention of the Yeltsin's bodyguards were rent-a-cops fascists. A former White House official were no mere oversight. The coup October Revolution, or for that matter from a private security company (like called Yeltsin "a Slavic edition of Huey the strikebreaking Pinkertons in the Long" (San Francisco Chronicle, 22 U.S.). At most there were a dozen tanks, August), the right-wing Louisiana dem­ dispatched by pro- Yeltsin commanders, agogue who in the 1930s used populist in' front of the building. Speaking of a rhetoric to build up a personal, authori­ possible assault, 'a Yeltsin "commander" tarian regime. Even many pro-Western, said: "Ofcourse, we could not hold them "free market" intellectuals in the Soviet off for more than five minutes." But Union fear Yeltsin as a potential dictator there was no serious assault. who will ride roughshod over them. Like Emboldened by the paralysis of the Poland's Lech Walesa, admirer of the coup leaders, the reactionary mob nationalist dictator Pilsudski, he will try heaved Molotov cocktails at young tank to use his popularity to impose capitalist drivers. And then, barely two and a half "shock treatment" on the workers. Uniformed days after the action began, the army The imperialist media are exultant, Pamyat fascists withdrew. At this point frenzied Yeltsin­ hailing "The Second Russian Revolu­ burn Soviet rampa,g~ng New York Times flag outside ites begal!. through the_£i!Y. tion." The sneeringly Communist A lieutenant colonelwho attended the refers to V.1. Lenin as "little more than Party demonstrations was shocked: "I am sur­ a demagogue with a lisp." (The Times is headquarters. prised by how many of the young are so intent on portraying a counterrevolu­ thirsting for blood." Their first target was' tion victorious that its copious coverage the statue outside KGB headquarters of never once mentions the Soviet work­ Feliks Dzerzhinsky, a Polish Communist ers.) But in the Soviet Union.even some and founder of the Cheka, the Bolshe- of the more liberal Yeltsinites are begin- 10 WORKERS VANGUARD ning to get nervous about reaping the er, pensioner and soldier will immedi­ whirlwind they have sown. Ogonyok edi­ ately recognize that this process of coun­ tor Vitaly Korotich is now warning of a terrevolution is well under way. The state "third force, which may be represented monopoly of foreign trade has been by certain young people of the fascist scuttled, the planned economy aban­ persuasion." The leaders of the "demo­ doned. In their stead, imperialist corpo­ cratic revolution" are already promoting rations from Pepsi-Cola to Chevron oil the tsarist watchword of "Russia, one have made encroachments on the Soviet and indivisible.'" Leningrad mayor economy. The Russian federation's new Anatoly Sobchak lambastes centrifugal "land reform" lays the basis for destroy­ Soviet workers forces pulling apart the USSR: "This is ing the kolkhoz collectives, promising have not entered insanity. We are a nuclear country." rural poverty for the many and riches the scene in Yeltsin aides talk of destabilization of for the new kulaks. "Cooperative" prof­ this hour of the economy and warn Ukrainian seces­ iteers and black market speculators have deadly peril. sionists that"these lands Were settled by grown explosively in the vacuum of the 1989 miners strike Russians." collapsed distribution system. But this threw up incipient workers councils Meanwhile, thousands of Muscovites is only the beginning. Yeltsin now (soviets), showed have been lining up to visit the Lenin intends to ram through capitalist resto­ potential power mausoleum, worried that this may be ration at breakneck pace. Yavlinsky, co­ of multinational their last opportunity to pay their author of the Harvard-designed "grand USSR proletariat. respects to the founder of the Soviet bargain" to sell out the Soviet Union to state. the imperialists, is now in charge of the economy. But for the Soviet working Fight Capitalist. Enslavement! masses, the "magic of the marketplace" For decades, the "Stalinists and impe­ holds the promise of hunger and home­ munist leadership represents the greatest soldiers and officers must be formed to rialists have joined together in identify­ lessness. In an insiders' newsletter, the obstacle, leaving the working class prey oppose the purges and prevent the army ing the system of bureaucratic rule major Wall Street brokerage firm Merrill to confusion, false polarizations and from being used to attack the workers' installed by Stalin and his henchmen in Lynch hints at the truth being hidden defeatism in the face of their class interests. 1924 with beninism. Nothing could be from the Soviet masses: enemies. • The anti-Communist mobs are the further from the truth. The Bolsheviks "Although there is likely to be a surge Both the Yeltsinites and the "hard­ shock troops of a budding fascist move­ under Lenin and Trotsky carried out the ill optimism among the Sovietpeople as liners" compete on the terrain of coun­ ment, the future strikebreakers, jailers a new political order emerges, expecta­ October Revolution as the first step of tionsaboutthe neworder's abilityto tum terrevolutionary Russian nationalism. and torturers of militant workers and the world socialist revolution. Backward aroundthe economy are likelyto exceed Starting with Stalin himself, vicious leftists. Already the NTS, former WW II Russia, the "weak link" of imperialist whatis realistically possible. If the expe­ Great Russian chauvinism has charac­ quislings of the Hitlerite invaders, have rule, was the scene of the first workers rience of eastern Europe is any indica­ terized the bureaucracy, undermining the raised their heads at the Yeltsinite mobi­ tion.the next several years will be pain­ multinational USSR. ThePamyat anti­ lizations. The blackshirted Pamyat fas­ revolution, but it had to be completed ful for the Soviet economy as workers by the proletariat in the advanced impe­ lose lifetime jobs and state-owned enter­ Semites' rise was protected by sections cists are burning red flags. Next they rialist countries if it was to sustain itself prises are restructured." of the Gorbachev bureaucracy, in par­ will be staging deadly anti-Semitic and lead to socialism, a society of equal­ - Wednesday's Global Report, ticular Yeltsin's wing. Meanwhile, the pogroms. Workers militias must be ity based on abundance. It was on the 21 August nationalist secessionists-mostly from formed, aided by Red Army officers and basis of the defeat of the European rev­ Up until now Yeltsin has been able to the better-off republics-yearn to be soldiers loyal to socialism, to defend olutions, centrally in Germany, in the blame the economic chaos and immisera­ pawns of imperialism today, as many of against and crush the lynch mobs and 1918-23 postwar period, that the usurp­ tion of perestroika on Gorbachev's "half­ their forefathers were for the Nazis. In pogromists. ers Stalin/Bukharin "discovered" the measures" and the sabotage of the old the last fight of his life, Lenin insisted, • Illegalization of the Communist Party profoundly anti-Marxist notion that it Stalinist apparat. The Russian' dema­ against Stalin, that the, revolutionary will be used as a precedent to ban all was possible to construct "socialism in gogue talks out of both sides of his Soviet state be a voluntary union based groups claiming to stand for socialism one country." Trotsky denounced this mouth, visiting strikers one week and on equality of nations. or communism. The red purge will be nationalist dogma as writing off the approving anti-strike laws the next. But Itis urgently, indeeddesperatelynee­ used to victimize militant workers who world revolution, and predicted it would now Yeltsin will seek to implement his essary for the working class to now es­ lead strikes against layoffs and privatiza­ be the undoing of the Soviet Union if real program, to impose brutal capitalist tablish organizational forms to mobilize tion. Down with the witchhunting ban on the bureaucracy was not swept away by austerity on the Soviet working class. its power' to resist and overthrow the the cPt Don't let them drag away Jewish the resurgent working class. He will beheld responsible for closing forces of capitalist counterrevolution. or Communist coworkers! lit his decisive analysis of Stalinism, down "unprofitable" enterprises, throw­ • As' every hustler is out to "get theirs," • The escalating nationalist secessionist The Revolution Betrayed (1937), Trotsky ing millions of workers into the streets, workers will be" anxious to protect their movements in the various republics are asked prophetically, "Will the bureaucrat raising rents and the price offood, shut­ own threatened livelihoods. Independent fueling fratricidal slaughter among the devour the workers' state, or will the ting down childcare centers and attack­ workers committees must be formed in deeply interpenetrated Soviet peoples. It working class clean up the bureaucrat?" ing Soviet working people in all ways. factories, mines, railroad yards and other is urgently' necessary to organize multi­ In developing this, he elaborated the pro­ At the same time, it will be very difficult enterprises to prevent '. layoffs and Rational defense guards to ward offcom­ gram of proletarian political revolution in the next several months to Use the privatization by' taking over the plants munalist butchery. As Leninists, i.e., pro­ led by a Bolshevik party to re-establish army, KGB or police to break strikes Or and controlling production. Such work­ letarian internationalists, we stand for Soviet democracy. The planned economy break up popular protests. ers committees can be the basis for genu­ full equality ofall nations and national­ would be subordinated 10 the will of the Despite Yeltsin's present ascendancy ine soviets, drawing into their ranks col­ ities in a genuinely socialist federation. workers, freeing it from the arbitrary zig­ and the mood of anti-Communist hys­ lective farmers, oppressed minorities, Working women, who have·suffered zags of the faceless, grey bureaucrats. teria among the petty bourgeoisie, it will working women, Red Army' soldiers and most under perestroika's economic mis­ And instead of the conservative anti­ not be that easy to carry out a capitalist officers, old-age pensioners-t-all those ery, must be in the forefront not only of revolutionary policies of Stalin's Krem­ counterrevolution in the Soviet Union. who will be victimized by the "new the battle to stop the closures of child­ lin, the Soviet Union would again In fact, one might expect a higher level order." care centers, but in the forging of a gen­ become the headquarters ofinternational of strike action than took place under • Yeltsin & Co. have already begun uinely communist nucleus. In Poland socialist revolution. He also spelled out Gorbachev's perestroika, During this purging the officer corps of the military. and the former DDR (East Germany) the bleak alternative:' period the Soviet working class has been This has nothing to do with democracy. women are being driven from their jobs "If-to adopt a second hypothesis-a politically disoriented and confused by He wants to turn the Soviet army which and abortion is considered a criminal act. bourgeois party were to overthrow the the ever-shifting lineup of Yeltsin vs. defended the Soviet people against the ruling Soviet caste, it would find no Reawakened women workers of the small number of ready servants among Gorbachev vs. the "hardline" Stalinists. Nazi scourge into a compliant tool for Soviet Union-who have the most to the present bureaucrats, administrators, Now the lines of battle are hard, and internal repression in the interests of the lose under capitalist counterrevolution­ technicians, directors, party secretaries raw. But the absence of genuinely com- new capitalist masters. Committees of must play a leading role as their grand­ and privileged upper circles in general. mothers and great-grandmothers did in Apurgation of the stateapparatus would, of course, be necessary in this case too. the Bolshevik Revolution. But a bourgeois restoration would prob­ The youth, many shocked into polit­ ably have to clean out fewerpeoplethan ical awareness for the first time in recent a revolutionary party. The chief task of the new power would be to restore pri­ days, must find their way to the program vatepropertyin the meansof production. of revolutionary internationalism. Re­ First of all, it wouldbe necessary, to ere­ version to the Slavophilic backwardness ate conditions for the development of ofYeltsin & Co. precludes the genuinely strong farmers from the weak collective open intellectual and artistic climate that farms, and for converting the strongcol­ lectives into producers' cooperatives of so many young people yearn for. Make the bourgeois type-into agricultural no mistake: life for youth in the West stockcompanies. In the sphereof indus­ does not resemble a music video! The try, denationalization would begin with reality for working-class youth under the light industries and those producing food. The planning principle would be capitalism is a nightmare of uncertainty, converted for the transitional periodinto unemployment, hopelessness with the a series of compromises between state very real prospect of being cannon fod­ power and individual 'corporations'­ der in the next imperialist war. The potential proprietors, that is, among the young Soviet republic in the days of Soviet captains of industry, the emigre former proprietors and foreign capital­ Lenin and Trotsky fought for women's ists. Notwithstanding that the Soviet emancipation, for every kind of social bureaucracy has gone far towardprepar­ emancipation, against censorship, for ing a bourgeois restoration, the new freedom from state intervention in one's regime would have to introduce in the AP personal affairs. matterof formsof propertyand methods Leon Trotsky shortly before his assassination by Stalin's agents In Mexico, of industry not a reform, but a social 1940. Left Opposition intransigently defended USSRagainst threat of capitalist Workers and soldiers soviets (coun­ revolution." ~ restoration. Right: Trotsky's 1935 article, "Where Is th& Stalin Bureaucracy cils) must orient to defeating the Every Soviet worker, collective farm- Leading the USSR?" In Bulletin of the Opposition. continued on page I2 ,30 AUGUST 1991 11 of the working class. catastrophic losses in the initial stages . opposed capitalist reunification. Soviet Union.. ~ After the relative stagnation of the of World War II. Within the Soviet Union represen­ (continued from page 11) last Brezhnev years, in their own way More than 20 million Soviet citizens tatives of the ICL have fought for a rev­ the dominant sections of the Kremlin were killed defending the homeland of olutionary internationalist perspective.

bureaucracy came to recognize there can October and liberating all of I Europe Thus at a coal miners congress last Octo­ counterrevolutionary Yeltsin regime and be no "socialism in one country," that from the nightmare of Nazism. On the ber in Donetsk, we helped block the establishing a government based on so­ the Soviet Union must be integrated into basis of the Red Army's destruction of effort of right-wing, Yeltsinite forces viet democracy such a~ was established the world economy as part of an inter­ the Third Reich, subsequent threats to advised by the American "AFL-CIA" by the October Revolution of 1917. In national division of labor. Since the core the USSR by nuclear-armed American federation to enlist Soviet miners in the this hour of dire needmore than ever, of the Stalinist ideological outlook is the imperialism led the Kremlin to undertake international anti-Communist witchhunt the key to successful defense of the So­ rejection of socialist revolution in the bureaucratically deformed social, i.e., against British miners leader Arthur viet proletariat is the forging of a new, advanced capitalist countries, this meant anti-capitalist, transformations in East Scargill. The imperialist rulers hate authentically communist vanguard party integration into the world capitalist sys­ Europe as a defensive measure. But now Scargill because he led the 1984-85 Brit­ of the working class. Return to the road tem. The intent of Yeltsin and Gorba­ East Europe is being handed back to the ish miners strike-which Soviet workers of Lenin-and Trotsky! chev-who both began as typical young, imperialists. generously aided. This momentous class up-and-coming apparatchiks under the battle gave the lie to the self-serving We Trotskyists Have For Revolutionary Brezhnev regime-to'sell the Soviet Stalinist myth that workers in advanced Defended the Soviet Union Regroupment! Union to Wall Street and Frankfurt is capitalist countries are incapable of the logical culmination of the Stalinist Today the Soviet Union faces being hard-fought class struggle. With the evident and total collapse doctrine of "socialism in one coun­ dismembered and its constituent repub­ We urgently seek to bring the program of Stalinism, there is a crying need try." Gorbachev's neo-Bukharinite "mar­ lics turned into neocolonies of Wash­ of Trotskyism to the Soviet proletariat for regroupment among the numerous ket socialism" was the antechamber to ington, Berlin and Tokyo. The present and socialist-minded intelligentsia with would-be communist groupings on the counterrevolution. collapse of the Stalinist bureaucracy has our Russian-language Spartacist Bulle­ left fringe of the CPSU. Many of the Despite the anti-Communist hysteria its immediate origins in the renewed tin, containing in addition to key docu­ most communist-minded workers have now raging in the Soviet Union, there Cold War offensive launched by Amer­ ments of the ICL the section on the had illusions in the "patriotic" elements are large numbers of workers and even ican imperialism after its ignominious USSR from Trotsky's Transitional Pro­ of the Stalinist bureaucracy, who fre­ a few intellectuals who want to defend defeat in Vietnam. In every key battle­ gram. In recent months, we analyzed the quently appealed to Great Russian chau­ socialism and communism. They must ground of Cold War II-Afghanistan, mounting crisis in our article "Where Is vinism and conciliated or embraced out­ the Soviet Union Going?"(WV Nos. 520, right anti-Semites, fascists and tsarists. 521 and 522, 15 February, 1 March and But for example Soyuz leader Colonel 15 March), including a program of strug­ Viktor Alksnis denounces Gorbachev not gle for genuine soviet power. for introducing the market, but for intro­ ducing "democracy": "My model is the It's Desperately Necessary market first and democracy later." This to Fight is known as the "Chilean option," mod­ eled on the bloody Pinochet coup, whose Writing in 1935 on "The Workers' vaunted fake "economic miracle" was State, Thermidor and Bonapartism,' built on the corpses of tens of thousands Trotsky noted: "The inevitable collapse of leftist workers and peasants. of Stalinist Bonapartism would immedi­ In late July activists from the "patri­ ately call into question the character of ots" milieu initiated a workers confer­ the USSR as a workers' state." This has ence in the capital which drew over 500 now occurred. He added: "The fate of delegates from 400 major Moscow-area the USSR as a socialist state depends plants. A representative of the Interna­ upon that political regime that will arise tional Communist League addressed this to replace Stalinist Bonapartism." The gathering: imperialists and their flunkeys such as "Today the imperialists and the native Yeltsin want to accelerate the consolida­ restorationists strive to dismember the tion of a capitalist state. But it will not USSRby splitting,paralyzingthe Soviet be so easy. This is not East Germany, a proletariat withnationalism. This is their compact, homogeneous country which greatest weapon. But the proletariathas its own weapon-internationalism. We . was taken over by the existing German need to forge a party that mobilizes bourgeoisie, which simply moved in its against all forms of discrimination, partakist state apparatus, laid waste to the DDR nationalism and anti-Semitism!" Spartaklsts Initiated 250,000-strong anti-fascist mobilization In defense of economy and put half the working pop­ - WV No. 532, 2 August Red Army monument at Treptow Park, East Berlin, January 1990. ulation on welfare. When the cost turned During the coup, the Moscow workers out to be higher than expected, Bonn council which came out of this July con­ understand that Trotskyism is the genu­ Poland, the German Democratic Repub­ kept pumping in billions of D-marks. ference issued a call to: "Form workers ine expression of Bolshevism today, that lic (DDR)-the International Commu­ The Soviet Union, in contrast, is a militias for the preservation of socialized a Trotskyist party must be built to lead nist League'(ICL, formerly the intema-, huge country, with over 100 nationali­ property, for the preservation of social the struggle against the counterrevolu­ tional Spartacist tendency) has stood ties, a tremendous potential for chaos order on the streets of our cities, for the tion. Stalin's first step in consolidating resolutely in defense of.the Soviet Union and no one to finance a capitalist take­ control of the carrying out of the orders his regime, aided by Bukharin, was to against the capitulation of the Kremlin over. The U.S. could probably buy the and instructions ofthe State Committee purge and persecute the Left Opposition, bureaucracy. country for a few tens or hundreds of on the Emergency Situation." There was and eventually to murder the entire sur­ Where the Soviet Stalinists waged billions of dollars, but the American rul­ not one word of criticism of the GKChP. viving Old Bolshevik cadre, the leaders ahaltbearted war against CIA-armed ingclass is as ideologically opposed to A call for workers militias tosmash the of October. Islamic reactionaries in Afghanistan, that as it is to financing a decent social counterrevolutionary Yeltsinite demon­ The disastrous effects of "socialism in ultimately selling out and withdrawing, welfare or health care system in this strations was certainly in order, But if 'One country" on the world revolution and we said "Hail Red Army in Afghani­ country. Soviet petty-bourgeois yuppies the Emergency Committee had consoli­ on the USSR soon made themselves felt. stan!" and calledto "Extend Social Gains believe in a utopian capitalism, dreaming dated power, it would have attempted to . Stalin/Bukharin collaborated with the ofthe October Revolution to the Afghan that they will suddenly achieve a stand­ disband any such workers militias, .British social-democratic labor bureauc­ Peoples!" When in late 1981 Polish Soli­ ard pfIiving like Scandinavia. In fact, which would otherwise have inevitably racy who then sabotaged the 1926 Gen­ darnosc, under the guidance of Reagan economically and politically their fate and rapidly escaped its political control. eral Strike. They supported the Chinese and Pope John Paul Wojtyla, made a under capitalism would· be more akin to The last thing these degenerate Stalinists nationalist general Chiang Kai-shek, bid for power in the name of "bour­ Mexico, or worse, with deep impover­ wanted to see was the independent mobi­ who then drowned in blood the revolu­ geois democracy," we raised the call: ishment of the masses presided over by lization of the working class. tionary proletariat. As the 1927 Platform "Stop Solidarnosc Counterrevolution!" an authoritarian state. The forces backing Those communist-minded leftists who of the Opposition stated: "The defeat of General Jaruzelski's countercoup tempo­ Yeltsin would liketo be a capitalist class, looked to the "patriotic" wing of the the revolution in China, following the rarily spiked these Clerical-nationalist but they are not yet one. Even in Poland, Communist Party and armed forces are defeat of the British General Strike, has front men for Wall Street and Washing­ where the state is capitalist from top to now understandably in a state of polit­ inspired the imperialists with the hope ton. But the Stalinists had neither the bottom, a capitalist class has not yet con­ ical trauma. They cannot understand that they may succeed in crushing the moral authority nor the program to gealed because they lack ...capital. what happened. In fact, they cannot Soviet Union." Only a few years later, undercut counterrevolution, and eight And there are additional obstacles: for understand what has happened since the German CP, on Stalin's orders, years later the same Jaruzelski, with one, the Soviet economy is organized on Gorbachev became leader of the CPSU allowed Hitler to come to power Gorbachev's approval, abdicated politi­ an all-Union basis and the departure of in 1985. The economic chaos and mis­ unchallenged. cal power to Walesa & Co. major components, particularly if the eries of perestroika, the abandonment of Having rejected Trotsky's call for a When in late 1989 the Honecker Ukraine pulls out, will wreak havoc. East Europe, the endorsement of the principled workers united front to defeat regime in East Germany (ell and the Moreover, many Soviet workers believe American destruction of Iraq in the the fascists, as Nazi Germany became Berlin Wall was opened, the ICL threw that the country belongs to them, and name of Bush's "New World Order"­ an obvious threat to the USSR, Stalin its forces into the fight for the perspec­ they have a deep reservoir of commit­ these are not simply a result of spine­ called for a "popular front" with the tive of a red Germany of workers ment to egalitarianism which must be lessness, corruption or stupidity on the so-called "democratic" imperialists of councils. We initiated the call for rooted out for capitalism to be implanted. part of Gorbachev and his collaborators. France and Britain. In the name of this the giant Treptow anti-fascist demon­ Thus although events are moving at They are the legacy of more than six "popular front," the Stalinists sabotaged stration of 3 January 1990, which drew breakneck speed, these factors may decades of Stalinist perversion of the a prerevolutionary situation in France 250,000 people to honor the Soviet allow enough of a window for the Soviet October Revolution: the bureaucratic and strangled the revolutionary Spanish soldiers who died liberating Ger­ proletariat to go into struggle before the usurpation of workers rule, the high­ working class, paving the way for Fran­ many from the Nazis. Then, as Gorbachev counterrevolution consolidates. Should handed bureaucratic mismanagement of co's victory. Then, by beheading the gen­ gave the green light to a reunified that happen, revolutionaries must seek the economy, the Great Russian chau­ eral staff of the Red Army during the Fourth Reich of German imperialism,' to intervene to provide leadership, seek­ vinism atthe expense of national minor­ - bloody 1936-38 purges and relying on our comrades of the Spartakist Work­ ing above all to cohere a new revolu­ ities, the stifling of free expression his "non-aggression" pact with Hitler, ers Party of Germany were the only tionary vanguard party, the necessary and creativity, the political demobilizing Stalin was directly responsible for the party which clearly and unambiguously instrument for victory.• 12 . WORKERS VANGUARD siderable authority derived from the heri­ U.S. handouts), as unemployment and could well shatter the popular Zionist Palestinians...- tage of Lenin and Trotsky's Communist inflation soar, and skyrocketing rents consensus in the bankrupt Israeli garri­ International, instead prostituting them­ drive thousands out of their apartments son state. The tiny racist Zionist state­ (continued.from page 5) selves to the national bourgeoisies. Un­ to become homeless in the "promised surrounded by hostile Arab countries and balkanization created an overlapping and der Stalin, the Palestinian CP capitulated land," the class contradictions in Zionist ruled by'a war-crazed gang who glory interpenetrating patchwork of national, alternately to Zionism and Arab nation­ Israel can't be papered over forever. An in a suicidal Masada complex-s-is, as communal, ethnic and religious group­ alism, boosting the anti-Semitic, pro­ outbreak of revolutionary proletarian Trotsky predicted more than 50 years ings. Inside any given state boundary, Nazi Mufti of Jerusalem in the 1930s struggle elsewhere in the Near East ago, a deathtrap for the Jewish people. one of those groupings is dominant, and .and supporting the creation ofthe Zionist The West Bank has neither the social the rest victimized, while women are state a decade tater. These treacherous nor economic wherewithal to provide a horribly oppressed everywhere. The na­ zigzags tore the party apart along nation­ base for a successful national uprising, tional/religious fratricide strikes hardest alist lines, into a Jewish organization much less a socialist revolution (a phrase at the working class, which inmost coun­ which tailed Zionism and an Arab Na­ the various CPs consider taboo). Any tries of the Near East is multinational. tional Liberation League which blocked meaningful expression of the right to The Gulfstates and Iraq were host to with the Palestinian Arab bourgeoisie. self-determination for the Palestinian millions of workers from other Arab Likewise the Egyptian CP liquidated people which does not come at the ex­ countries and South Asia. Millions were lock, stock and barrel into Nasser's pense of the national rights of the He­ displaced as a result of the Gulf War: movement in the mid-1950s. brew-speaking people requires at least many of the one million Egyptians work­ Breaking the stranglehold of national the overthrow of the Zionist capitalist ing in Iraq, 700,000 Yemenis in Saudi oppression and economic backwardness state and its Hashemite neighbor. Pales­ Arabia, hundreds of thousands of Kurds imposed and enforced by imperialism tinians constitute a sizable majority of and Palestinians. requires the Trotskyist program of per­ Jordan's population, more so now with What's desperately needed is an inter­ manent revolution: the independent the postwar influx of refugees. nationalist proletarian leadership. De­ mobilization of the proletariat-leading In cutting Palestinian workers off spite their nationalist, popular-frontist behind it the impoverished peasant from the possibility of joint struggle with subordination to bourgeois forces, the masses-which alone is capable of their class brothers and sisters, the Sta­ Stalinist parties have exercised an attrac­ sweeping away imperialism and its bo­ linists and nationalists cut the throats of tion not least because they represent the ' napartist and feudalist satraps. In this re­ the Palestinian people as a whole. As a only political haven for oppressed mi­ gion, genuine proletarian international­ result of their dispersal throughout the norities and others who reject the reign­ ism is an iron necessity for any real Near East by the Zionist-imposed dias­ ing nationalist chauvinism. Thus all of working-class struggle. And a key litmus pora, the highly educated, politicized the three communist formations which test for an internationalist perspective is and cosmopolitan Palestinian working arose in Egypt in the 1940s were founded the call for revolutionary Arab-Hebrew class can play a vanguard role in revo­ and led by Jews who were militantly class unity. While the Hebrew-speaking lutionary class struggle throughout the anti-Zionist. The mass Communist Party working class of Israel is presently thor­ region. In that role, Palestinian workers of Iraq was based heavily on Jews and oughly inundated by Zionist chauvinism could be the key not only to securing Kurds in the 1940s. Even in the difficult and anti-Arab racism, only through joint national rights for their people but in terrain of British imperialist repression, Arab-Hebrew class struggle can the achieving the social liberation of all the Zionist colonization and recurring race ~ nuclear-armed, war-crazed Zionist ruling toilers of the Near East. Above all, that class be swept away. riots, the original Palestinian CP man­ WVPholo requires forging Leninist-Trotskyist par­ aged to build a binational Arab-Hebrew And with the mass influx of Soviet Spartaclst League in Boston protest ties which actively struggle as tribunes organization. ' Jews straining the already bankrupt Is­ against U.S. war moves In Persian of the oppressed against all the nation­ But the Stalinists squandered this con- raeli economy (dependent on massive Gulf, 15 September 1990. alist butchers of the region. _

fight against the racist death penalty has titioning Congress. Workers and minori­ guards with poison darts" and to "kidnap poe Notes... become the Scottsboro case of today. ties need a mass organization of class­ children of Folsom guards," were This spring the Midwest Region and struggle defense. We look to the heritage deemed bogus by ajury in the 1976 Pratt (continued from page 2) New York chapter of the Coalition of of the International Labor Defense under v. Rees case. But they remain in his file Black Trade Unionists (CBTU) voiced its first secretary, James P. Cannon. In today, along with later fabrications disenfranchised minorities, today Jamal their support for Jamal. In late May the the ILD's campaign to save Sacco and which set Geronimo up for victimization is fighting for his life on death row in national CBTU, representing members Vanzetti from the .electric chair, Cannon and undermine his chance for parole. In Huntingdon, Pennsylvania. of 76 international and national unions, elaborated the strategy on which we a significant ruling on July 18, the judge The campaign to save Jamal,launched adopted a resolution to support Jamal. fight: granted Geronimo and his lawyers ac­ by the PDC three years ago, has The black caucus of the Amalgamated "One policy is the policy of the class cess to the confidential portions of his taken on international dimensions. Over Transit Union voted to send a letter of struggle. It puts the center of gravity in 4,OOO-page prison file, and two weeks 40,000 people have signed petitions de­ protest against Jamal's death sentence the protest movement of the workers of later set up a process for negotiating America and the world. It puts all faith manding Jamal not be executed. On July and to form a "Committee to Save in the power of the masses and no faith Geronimo's demand for the removal of 8, the PEN American Center, an organi­ Jamal." National Association of Letter whatever in the justice of the courts. false and damaging documents. zation of over 2,500 writers, wrote to Carriers Branch 2200 in Pasadena, Cali­ While favoring all possible legal pro­ Despite leaving Geronimo in "the Governor Casey to prevent Jamal's exe­ fornia and Hospital and Health Care ceedings, it calls for agitation, publicity, hole," Weigel has recognized the demonstrations---organized protest on a cution, and trade unions representing Workers Union Local 250 SEIU, repre­ national and international scale...." state's vindictive mistreatment; declared millions more have taken a stand in his senting 29,000 workers in California, - "Who Can Save Sacco and Geronimo's life-threatening transfer to defense. are among the other unions who have' Vanzetti?" Labor Defender, Folsom prison in 1989 an unlawful Most important is the increasing labor recently come on board. January 1927 retaliation for his exercise of First support for Jamal's struggle, particularly The fight to defend our rights won't We encourage all readers of Workers Amendment rights; persuaded prison among black workers, for whom Jamal's be won by voting for Democrats or pe- Vanguard to join the work ofthe PDe. officials to remove Geronimo from cell Help provide assistance and solidarity to conditions which exacerbated medical the class-war prisoners. Get involved in problems stemming from his Vietnam the campaign to free Geronimo. Join the War wounds; and, although he upheld the SPARTACIST LEAGUE/U.S. LOCAL DIRECTORY fight to save Mumia Abu-Jamal. Write marijuana frame-up, the'judge restrained National Office: Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 • (212) 732-7860 us for petitions, leaflets and more infor­ prison authorities from "imposing pun­ mation on how to join the international ishment, penalty, or other reprisals Atlanta Detroit Norfolk campaign. You can read more about the because of plaintiff's exercise of his Box4012 Box441043 Box1972, Main PO activities of the PDC in our newsletter rights." Without explanation, prison offi­ Atlanta, GA 30302 Detroit, MI 48244 Norfolk"VA 23501 CLass-StruggLe Defense Notes. Send a cials reduced Geronimo's term in the donation of $5 or more and receive a hole, which would return him to the Boston Los Angeles Oakland subscription to CSDN. For more infor­ general prison population in October. Box 390840, Central Sta. Box29574, Los Feliz Sta. Box 29497 Cambridge, MA 02139 Los Angeles, CA 90029 Oakland, CA 94604 mation, contact: Partisan Defense Com­ .There has been an increased outpour­ (617) 492-3928 (213) 380-8239 (415) 839-0851 mittee, P.O. Box 99, Canal Street Station, ing of support for Geronimo ji Jaga Pratt. New York, NY 10013._ Chicago San Francisco Actor Danny Glover, Rev. Ben Chavis Box 6441, Main PO Madison Box 77494 and numerous clergy spoke out for him Chicago, IL 60680 Box 1492 San Francisco,CA 94107 from the steps of the federal courthouse (312) 663-0715 Madison, WI 53701 (415) 777-9367 in San Francisco on July 26. Reflecting Geronimo... the growing labor support for Geronimo, (continued from page 2) Cleveland New York Washington, D.C. on July 30 the 70,Ooo-member Central Box 91037 Box444, Canal S1. Sta. Box75073 came in the latest stage of a lawsuit, Labor Council of Alameda County Cleveland, OH 44101 New York, NY 10013 Washington, D.C. 20013 stated, "It is the position of this Central (216) 781-7500 (212) 267-1025 (202) 872-8240 brought by Partisan Defense Committee attorney Valerie West in 1989, challeng­ Labor Council that Pratt was framed dur­ ing the punitive mistreatment of Geron­ ing the FBI's infamous COINTELPRO TROTSKYIST LEAGUE OF CANADA imo and demanding the removal of false campaign." The next hearing in Geron­ and life-threatening charges in his prison imo's lawsuit against prison harassment Toronto Edmonton Vancouver file. is scheduled for November 1. Box7198, Station A PSSE P.O. Box'96~ Bo)(.2717. Main·P.O. For 20 years the California prison Geronimo's legal struggles cost lots Toronto, ON M5W 1X8 Edmonton, AB T6E 5X3 Vancouver, BC V6B 3X2 authorities have acted with impunity on of money. We are up against the vast (416) 593-4138 (604) 687-0353 the assumption that because Geronimo financial resources of the state. Send Moncton Montreal was a Black Panther Party leader they contributions earmarked "Geronimo Pratt P.O. Box563 C.P. Les Atriums, B.P. 32066 can peddle any lie about him and do any­ Defense" to the PDC, P.O. Box 99, Canal Moncton, NB E1C 8L9 - Montreal, QC H2L 4V5 thing they want to him. Lies, such as Street Station, New York, NY lOOl3. that Geronimo "conspired to kill Folsom Join the fight to free Geronimol a 30 AUGUST 1991 13 Phelps Dodge, 1984 -WItsonville, 1985 Harmel, 198& Eastern, 1989 Greyhound, 1990

WVPhoto WVPhoto Levison/Minneapolis Star and Tribune , Taylor/Compix WVPhoto A decade of workers' struggles Isolated by Democratic Party-loyal labor bureaucrats who played by the bosses' rules.

plant occupations. What counts ispower," let the strikers starve and shiver on picket from escaping the bounds of the Demo­ Labor... But the union tops are not interested in lines watching scabs go in for a year or cratic Party. (continued from page 16) winning-their first allegiance is to their so; then they can crawl back to their old What's urgently needed is a workers capitalist masters' profit margins. jobs at half the pay after the union chiefs party that will lead labor and the op­ and forge a leadership that has the pro­ Look at the UAW. lacocca pleads pov­ sell them out. The way to stop scabs is pressed in class struggle-to sweep the gram and determination to wage a down­ erty after years of the Big Three looting the way it was done in the sit-down racist KKK and Nazis off the streets, to the-line fight for a workers government their own companies? "Sacrifice House" strikes of the '30s. defend abortion clinics against reac­ that will undertake the socialist reindus­ says fine, hands over $5 billion to the The 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, which tionary thugs, to fight for labor political trialization of America. auto bosses and enforces the Closing of allowed the U.S. president to issue strikes against imperialist war. Despite dozens of plants, turning Detroit and sweeping injunctions against strikes our small forces, the Spartacist League Labor's Giant Flint into industrial ghost towns. UAW deemed not in the "national interest," and the Partisan Defense Committee Step-Backwards acquires a new meaning: "U Ain't came into ,existence because the union have built exemplary mobilizations of' Strikebreaking and union-busting Workin'." Still can't meet the Japanese tops refused to break their ties to the labor/black power to interdict the fascist have been a .bipartisan affair from the competition? The chauvinist union tops Democrats and bust this law in action. killers when they ventured into inte­ get-go. When Reagan fired 14,000 demand quotas and "local content" laws, And the CIO carried out a red purge that grated working-class centers, like the PATCOmembers and mobilized military setting American workers against their drove out many of the most militant successful 5,000-strong mobilization of air controllers as scabs in control towers international class brothers and sisters. unionists. Democrat Truman, elected 27 November 1982 which prevented across the country, he was following a They can't even organize Japanese­ with labor support, invoked the Taft­ the Klan from marching through Wash­ plan worked out by the Democratic Car­ owned auto plants in the U.S., blowing Hartley law no less than 61 times by the ington, D.C. ter administration. In August 1983, it the union organizing campaign at Nissan time he left office. It means opposing the imperialist war was the Democratic governor of Arizona, in Smyrna, Tennessee. Now they're It has become a truism in American machine head-on. Over 40 years ago, at Bruce ("Scabbitt") Babbitt, who called using the same protectionist poison labor that the unions should have "done the start of the Cold War, General Elec­ out the National Guard to disperse the against the North American "Free Trade something" when Reagan canned the tric chief C.E. Wilson pointed to the tar­ militant picket lines of striking Phelps Agreement," instead of organizing inter- PATCO air controllers. The Spartacist gets of U.S. imperialism: "The problems League called at the time for solid strike of the United States can be captiously action to shut down the airports. That summed up in two words: Russia abroad, would have required strike committees labor at home." Ever since 1917, war on elected in opposition to do-nothing the unions and war on the Soviet Union bureaucrats, from CIA overseer Kirkland have gone hand in hand. Jimmy Carter to "socialist" Winpisinger. It would have fired the opening shots in Cold War II meant mass picket lines prepared to con­ with the anti-Soviet Pentagon buildup front the repressive power of the state. and his use of the Taft-Hartley slave, It would have meant union leaders going labor law against the 1977-78 miners to jail, not for the first time in American strike. Reagan railed against the Soviet history. "evil empire" and opened up with both George Meany used to brag that he barrels on the unions in this country. had never walked a picket line. Under Just as we defend the Teamsters, Carter, Reagan and Bush, the current despite their corrupt, pro-capitalist lead­ crop of union misleaders have partici­ ership, against the vendetta by the pated in the destruction of their own bosses' state, we Trotskyists have de­ union organizations, with billions of dol­ fended the bureaucratically deformed lars in givebacks, ',"two-tier" wage workers states against counterrevolution. Cleveland Plain Dealer schemes which leave the new generation The socialized planned economies are The politics of capital's labor lieutenants: UAW bureaucrats'lobby pressures right-wing Democratic Leadership Conference, pushing poisonous protection­ of workers rightly bittersand slashing historic gains of the working class, how­ Ism against Mexican workers, begging millionaire Congress to stop scabs. health care. They truly are .the "labor ever much they have been undermined lieutenants of capital." Similar to the and mismanaged by the Stalinist mis­ Dodge copper miners. Two and a half national solidarity against this imperial­ black Democratic Party mayors, put in leaders, who repeatedly tried to sell out years later Governor Rudy Perpich, ist rape of Mexico. to keep the ghettos in line, they are the to the imperialists under the watchwords another "friend oflabor," sent troops into enforcers of capitalist reaction, open of "peaceful coexistence" and the "popu­ Austin, Minnesota to break the Labor: Break the Shacklesl company cops. lar front." The AFL-CIO fakers have meatpackers strike of, United Food and According to Kirkland & Co., work­ With the Democrats near-comatose sought to destroy the Soviet Union just Commercial Workers Local P-9. And this ers' struggle is impossible because all today, some left-talking bureaucrats are as they have joined in the destruction of last spring it was the overwhelmingly the legal shackles on the labor movement talking up a "labor party movement" the unions at home. Democratic Congress which voted to prevent a "fair fight" with the bosses. (organized by OCAW secretary-treasurer The workers built this country, so take order railroad strikers back to work one H.R. 5 is supposed to "level the playing Tony Mazzocchi and an array of reform­ it, it's yours! Seize the factories from day after they walked out. field" by protecting workers' jobs. What ists). Their purpose is to keep workers the capitalists before they tum it into Every one of these battles could have a crock. This "anti-scab" bill doesn't tied to the Democrats, reminiscent of the one giant rust belt. Sweep out the sell­ and should have been won. Strikers were even pretend to outlaw scabbing, only pro-FOR "American Labor Party," cre­ outs and build the revolutionary workers killed on the picket line with impunity: the permanent replacement of strikers. ated to keep the union militancy gener­ party that will fight for a socialist Greyhound drivers Ray Phillips and It's the perfect union piecards' proposal: ated by the battles which formed the CIO America. _ Robert Waterhouse, OCAW member Wide World Greg Goobic, phone worker Gerry Horgan. The striking workers fought their damnedest. But they were hogtied by their own leaders. When workers attempted to stop scabs with mass pick­ ets, union leaders ordered them to obey strikebreaking injunctions. Instead of union workers refusing to handle struck goods ("secondary boycotts"), labor bureaucrats promoted diversionary and toothless consumer boycotts and public­ ity stunts ("corporate campaigns"), PATCO chief Robert Poli had it right when he said in 1981: "The only illegal strike is a strike that fails." Or as we put it in our Workers Vanguard supple­ ment, "Labor's Gotta Play Hardball to Win": "Everything the workers move­ ment has won of value has been achieved ~ • Pat Oliphant by mobilizing the ranks of labor in hard­ In 1977-78 strike, miners burned contract and told Democrat Carter to shove fought struggle, on the picket lines, in his Taft-Hartley InJunction.

14 WORKERS VANGUARD ·_·.t

hunger strike. Although Teamsters and other unions are respecting the picket lines, Diaz is moving goods with his own drivers and Ryder rent-a-trucks. Pickets Report from EI Paso: told WV they were instructed by union organizers not to stop scabs or the trucks! Because of leaky picket lines, Dfaz has been able to continue operations with a scab force at three shops, including his Hispanic Labor Struggles lucrative dyeing and coloring work at ACC. Strikers told us they feel isolated ELPASO, Texas-With the Free Trade general assembly at midnight in El Paso. Street, where the struck shops ACC and and frustrated at the ILGWU's failure to Agreement, barreling down the "fast After they refused to board the buses of DCB are across the street from each mobilize support from other unions to track," capitalists here are salivating at the labor contractors and rallied at the other. The average worker is a Mexican- stop the scabbing. the thought of fat profits from exploiting site, the Border Patrol and El Paso cops born woman with 10 to 15 years experi- Strikers are determined to beat this Mexican workers. But Hispanic labor charged the strikers. One group of work- ence in garment work. Many worked in sweatshop king. Diaz' contracts are dry­ and community organizations like UTAF ers was pushed toward the Mexican bor- the maquiladora sweatshops in Juarez. ing up. The ILGWU organizers say he (Union de Trabajadores Agricolas Fron­ der. The stoppage continued, with work- A handful came out ofthe 1972-74 Farah will have to sign a contract or close the terizos) farm workers and the women ers from both sides of the border massed strike. Almost everyone puts in a full four factories. Some strikers said that garment workers in La Mujer Obrera are at the site to prevent buses from leaving shift on the picket line. The strikers are while they may lose their jobs, their waging union battles which could rever­ for the fields. After months of struggle very poor, a small strike fund stipend struggle will aid the 15,000 other gar­ berate throughout the U.S. Southwest and over 20 work stoppages, including allows only a meager existence. They ment workers in El Paso. So far, the and northern Mexico. In a display of Jose Luis Cerrato/EI Paso Times WVPhoto working-class solidarity, UTAF held an international protest against the FTA, bringing out over 200 workers on May 5 to the Santa Fe International Bridge between El Paso and Ciudad Juarez and issued a joint statement with the Demo­ cratic Campesino Front of Chihuahua. Over the past year, the chile pickers organized in the Union of Border Agri­ May 1-0ver cultural Workers have led some impres­ 100 garment sive struggles. These farm workers face workers picket DeB Apparel. brutal superexploitation. When we visited Far right: after in early August, UTAF leader Carlos four months Marentes told us that their real wages on strike, have dropped by half over the last dec­ workers and ade. They must gather on a street in supporters rally downtown El Paso around midnight, to .in downtown be picked up by labor contractors.and EI'Paso~ trucked for up to four hours to thefields in New Mexieo, They are paid only 50 cents per box of chiles, working in fields where they areexposed to deadly pesti­ cides and without toilet facilities or drinkable water, To avoid the long jour­ a day of solidarity for the farm workers hate the sweatshop king Andres Dfaz, strike has remained isolated because the ney to and from El Paso, many pickers in Ciudad Juarez, Anderson was forced they told of the horrible working condi­ ILGWU tops have stuck to the losing sleep under bridges near the fields. One to recognize the union. In April, the tions, and let loose a hail of cuss words "strategy" of consumer boycotts and grower would mark a number on work­ grower signed the first contract in his­ at his scabs ("ipinche esquiroles!"). begging the bosses. But it can be won, ers' forearms, calling them by number tory for a farm workers union in Texas Sonia's, site of the plant occupation and stand as an example of militant labor for their pay at the end of the day. 'or New Mexico. and hunger strike which ended three organizing to workers on both sides of A year ago UTAF organized and Meanwhile, the strike by women gar­ weeks ago, is empty, with only a union the border. Broaden the strike to organize struck. After a work action in an Arrey, ment workers which WV has been report­ (ILGWU) guard present. Eustolia and bring out workers in the more than New Mexico field owned by Lloyd ing on is in its fourth month. About 50 Olivas, the worker we interviewed, is at 100 garment shops in El Paso, and ex­ Anderson, 700 farm workers met in a pickets are always present on Bassett home, still sick from the effects of the tend it across the river! _

Nevertheless, while the perceived stuff today, has always had his connec­ in Williamsburg, the whole splintered NYC... sense of discrimination is based on tions, from racist Senator Alphonse "mosaic" of peoples now at each other's real experience, sections of the black D'Amato to the FBI, for whom-he wore throats. (continued from page 3) and Hispanic communities have become a wire and spied on black politicians. This As American capitalism is going Hassidic community-based in the dia­ caught up in viciously racist, anti­ June Sharpton was at a $1,500-a-plate down, the brutal swath of the police, mond trade, garment sweatshops and Semitic hate mobilizations against this Republican fund-raiser in Washington vigilante squads and racist terrorists is electronics-lords over the rest. And in­ marginal community. The anger directed where George Bush was the main increasingly evident. And increasingly deed, the Hassidic community in Crown against the Hassidic owners of 47th speaker (New Yorker, 26 August). The the capitalists are "privatizing" their Heights and Williamsburg' sits above Street Photo would be better directed only forces served by Sharpton's dema­ repression. The use of rent-a-thug "secu­ their black and Hispanic neighbors. They against the capitalist moguls of Citibank. gogic filth are his ruling-class masters. rity guards" (in addition to hundreds of are also about the only whites living in The betrayal of the city labor bu­ It is important that not everybody is city police) by the Daily News against these ghetto areas. reaucracy, in squelching 'integrated class falling for the garbage Sharpton and Car­ strikers was one example. Another is the The Lubavitcher hierarchy has a far­ struggle against cutbacks which have son are shoveling. A lot of black people _ violent "SSI Patrol Services," operating flung international establishment of devastated the minority poor, has stoked in Crown Heights are not anti-Semitic, out of East New York, which is hired "social" and "educational" institutions the fires of racial explosion. and' greatly resent Sharpton, Carson & by landlords to intimidate tenants and with a reported annual budget of $100 The establishment capitalist media are Co. coming into their community to supposedly go after drug dealers. "SSI million. In 1990, Grand Rabbi Schneer­ piously wringing their hands with con­ whip up a racist pogrom. The Times Patrols" is owned by Herschel Weber, a son acted as kingmaker in the Israeli cern about the explosive situation in (25 August) ran what for it was a quite Hassidic rabbi from Williamsburg, who elections when he prevented two of his CrownHeights, but they do so from their unusual article, "For Young Blacks, De­ staffs his squads with black Muslims, followers from joining the Shimon Peres ruling-class vantage point. Thus the New spair and Rage," documenting how many including many who learned their violent cabinet, because it would not categori­ York Times (23 August) quoted a law pro­ black youth they interviewed said they trade in the drug world and the prisons cally refuse to give up an inch of fessor claiming, "If the defendant ran a came out during the explosion because before they underwent jailhouse conver­ the Occupied Territories. "No Land for red light, and if he's in a motorcade they hated the cops: "For many, the sions to Islam. Peace" is their line, .: from the Golan where the lead car has lights flashing, greatest enemy of all are the police, Neither the city nor the state nor Wash­ Heights to Crown Heights. he's arguably privileged to go on through because they are considered the symbol ington has any intention of doing any­ The Lubavitcher treat their black the light." Whatever the culpability of of a repressive and hostile white soci­ thing to relieve the hopeless frustration neighbors like they're Palestinians on the driver in this particular case, this is ety," the article reported. of ghetto kids with no future. The night­ the West Bank. And with their tight polit­ an astounding piece of bourgeois hau­ "This isn't against the Jews. It's stick, the prison cell, and the death pen­ ical voting blocs, passed down from the teur. The Times goes out of its way to against the police," said one young black alty are the offerings at hand. Every kind Grand Rabbi as God's word, they exer­ assert the "right" of the bigwigs to go man in Crown Heights who has read ofsocial relief possible has already been cise inordinate influence over local pol­ careening through the city in their limos. some Malcolm X. Interethnic battles slashed to the hone to pay Wall Street iticians. The Lubavitcher are not without But the family of Gavin and Angela Cato only play into the hands of the real mas­ and to buy more cops and jails. When political clout in Washington as well. On and their neighbors see it differently. ters of society, the capitalists. The people they got together, all Cuomo and Dinkins Rebbe Schneerson's 90th birthday, he As (or the Rev. Sharpton.Twhat does who really run New York City-and it wanted to talk about was whether or not got 90 senators and Congressmento hold he get out of his provocations? In 1978~ sure isn't figurehead mayor Dinkins­ to send in the National Guard. It's going a birthday party at the U.S. Capitol. (The the Brooklyn black minister Herbert would be perfectly happy if somebody to take hard class struggle and a revolu­ Satmars, in contrast, are vehemently Daughtry led the anti-Semitic marches. dropped a big bomb on everybody in the tionary workers party to defend the myr­ anti-Zionist. and their political vehicle Having made his mark, he's now "Mr. ghetto, from the Lubavitchers and Car­ iad communities which make up this Neturei Karta even demonstrates with Community Harmony" for Mayor Din­ ibbean blacks in Crown Heights to the country, and to win a future for'an entire pro-PLO signs.) kins. Sharpton, who's pushing the same Puerto Ricans and Satrnar Hassidim generation of youth. _ 30~AUGUST 1991 15 W'RKERS ,,1I1(;(JI1R' Chained to the Democrats, Knifed, by AFL-CIO Top~

WVPhoto Militant Latino janitors in L.A. struck in June 1990, won union recognition. Don't Beg Congress-Stop Scabs with Picket Lines!

Every worker who comes to "Solidar­ "union," Polish Solidarnosc, So PATCO and finances the Inkatha killers for South and other pro-capitalist "free trade ity Day II" in Washington knows that was smashed...and now Polish workers African apartheid. And as counterrevolu­ unionists. " the labor movement is reeling. The AFL­ are being starved by Lech Walesa's tion rampages in the Soviet Union, the Ten years ago the official slogan was CIO tops say the purpose of this rally is Solidarnosc _government -acting for the stage at "Solidarity" Day is to be filled "Solidarity in '81-Victory in '82." In lobbying Congress to pass the so-called Western banks. Today Kirkland wines with Lithuanian reactionaries, who hail other words, vote Democrat. And what's "Workplace Fairness Act" to sH>R em­ and dines Bush's stooge Boris Yeltsin their "freedom" under Nazi occupation, happened since? One strike after another ployers from permanently replacing busted, the union movement in worse strikers with scabs, as' well as pushing shape than at any time since the early national health care and civil rights bills. '30s, official unemployment figures But ten years of defeats for the unions climbing while millions more have given and minorities won't be changedby beg­ up looking for work. Health care is non­ ging this Congress of millionaires, who existent for many and abysmal for most, are no "friends of labor" but, in fact, the three million people live in the streets enemies of labor. In reality, Lane Kirk­ of our cities and are reduced 'to picking land & Co. are trying to line up unionists, empties out of the garbage. Young black blacks and Hispanics as foot soldiers men have a better chance of doing a term for the bosses' Democratic Party in '92, in jail-if they aren't gunned down on a party so moribund it can't even get the streets-than in college. Young it together to put up a candidate .against women are being forced to bear babies Bush. they can't care for or risk their lives in You're going to hear- a lot of nickel­ back-alley abortions. and-dime BS from the stage August 31. Changing policies or parties in the The truth is: what this country needs is White House won't make a damned bit a revolution, and a revolutionary work­ of difference in our lives. The Democrats ers party to lead it. and Republicans are partner parties of It's been ten years since the first "Soli­ American capitalism, committed to darity Day" demonstration, when half a spending trillions on war and bank bail­ million workers poured into Washington outs and taking it out of the pockets of the workers and poor. Aiding and abet­ because they wanted to defend the WV Photo PATCO air controllers. But while letting Opening shot of Reagan's war on labor: Air ting these enemies of the working people PATCO strikers get hauled off in chains, traffic controllers union leaders are led away is the labor bureaucracy. There must be the "AFL-CIA" bureaucrats funneled in chains, PATCO marchers in·1981 "Solidarity a fight to sweep away these labor traitors millions of dollars into Reagan's favorite Day." continued on page 14 AP For a Fighting Workers Party! For a Socialist America!

16 30 AUGUST 1991