25¢ WfJRlllRSNo. 602 ""'II'R'~X-523 10 June 1994 Abolish the Racist Death Penalty! Lei Mumia Abu-Jamal Speak!
"There is a quickening upon the nation's Death Rows oflate, a pick ing up of the pace of the march towards death.... States that have NYC Rally for Death Row Political Prisoner not slain in a generation now ready their machinery: generators whine, poison liquids are mixed and gases are measured and readied, silent chambers await the order to smother life." -Mumia Abu-Jamal, Yale Law Journal (January 1991) Since Mumia Abu-Jamal wrote the above words, the American assembly line of death has vastly speeded up-and now Jamal, a powerful fighter for black freedom, a man who was sentenced to die for a crime he did not cpmmit, is directly in the path of the state's killing machine. Jamal's case is what the death penalty in America is all about, the attempt to terrorize the minority popu lation, part and parcel of the extralegal terror of the nightriding KKK and sum mary executions by the cops on the streets-all to try to keep black people "in their place." Our fight for the aboli tion of the death penalty, and to save the life of Mumia Abu-Jamal, is an insepa rable part of our struggle for black equal ity in a socialist America. Despite the outrageous attempt of National Public Radio (NPR) to silence him, the voice of Mumia Abu-Jamal was heard on June 3 in New York City, when WVPhoto over 250 people filled the Ethical Cul At New York speak-out, Judge Bruce Wright, WBAI's Bernard White and actor Ossie Davis read from works by Mumla ture Society's auditorium to hear the Abu-Jamal, censored by National Public Radio. words of this award-winning black jour nalist who became known as the "voice of the voiceless" for his powerful articles VOICE OF THE VOICELESS and radio commentary championing the cause of the oppressed. The speak-out, "This is Mumia Abu-Jamal and hosted by actor Ossie Davis, was organ this outlaw broadcast from ized by the Partisan Defense Committee and the Committee to Save Mum~a Abu Pennsylvania's Death Row is Jamal to protest NPR's May 15 cancel subject to immediate termination lation of a series of commentaries by Jamal, the former Black Panther Party by the government. Hear what member and MOVE supporter who has NPR, 'National Police Radio,' been targeted for death by the Philadel phia police. wouldn't allow." Mumia has already spent 12 years -From Jamal's call fur June 3 Speak-Out behind bars on death row at Pennsylva Jennifer Beach nia's Huntingdon state prison, framed for the shooting of a Philadelphia police are guilty, crazed psychopathic ax mur coming up with a formula which will million people behind bars, the prison officer. His commentaries were to have derers. In fact, as Mumia Abu-Jamal's take as many of the victims as they can population has tripled since 1980. Having been aired on the prestigious All Things commentaries powerfully expose, the catch in their net and put them safely destroyed millions of unionized indus Considered show, but NPR caved in and system of legal lynching is an integral away out of sight. They will build more trial jobs and wiped out wide swaths of canceled under pressure from the Phila part of the racist oppression of black prisons, more facilities to warehouse industry, the ruling class has consigned delphia Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), America. people for whom there is no meaningful, a whole layer of black inner-city youth among other forces. Republican Senate At the June 3 speak-out, Ossie Davis gainful employment in our society." to die off through disease, cop murders leader Bob Dole spoke on the Senate eloquently indicted the real criminals: Davis pointed to the huge number of and imprisonment. The speedup on death floor threatening to go after NPR's "Our whole society, instead of facing up young black men who are either in prison row encapsulates this capitalist hell. funding. to what is happening, and what 3S not or wards of the racist "justice" system They want to silence Jamal in order happening, decides to resolve the prob (as many as three out of five in cities Jamal's Voice Is Heard to make it easier to kill him, and the lem of unemployment, of crime, of like Baltimore). Clinton vowed to "end The June 3 speak-out attracted a di 2,800 other people on the nation's death drugs, of inferior education, of home welfare as we know it," and the new verse audience and featured a wide array ~~~i rows. The executioners lessness-to resolve the whole thing by "welfare" system is jail. With almost a continued on page 6 ~ want their victims to be ~ eX) faceless and nameless. - An articulate, compas g sionate black man de o scribing the horrors of a; this barbaric system of injustice would give the lie to their racist prop- ~ ganda justifying judi cial executions with the o claim that all its victims Letters
particularly of the ideas of the French Revolution and great expec On Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam tations that, in the congenial atmos phere of the myth of the Aryan race, May 21, 1994 keeping its readers abreast of incidents (Malcolm X) to turn him into some kind Zionism and the myth of the Jewish and developments regarding racist of integrationist, the fact is that he race will also thrive." Editor- attacks on Africans and other people of preached African self-determination. I hope yOU- will agree with me that I have just read the current edition of color, economic oppression, etc. How Like Omowale, I believe in and support this example is particularly relevant now, WORKERS VANGUARD, in particular, ever, my patience has run out, with this self-determination for African people, not only as applying to Zionism but, also the piece· on Farrakhan ["Farrakhan Is edition of WORKERS VANGUARD, here and elsewhere. I don't believe in to Farrakhan. Bad NeWs for Black People," WV No. insofar as your frequent arrogantly racist the concept of African people needing Sincerely yours, 600, 13 May]. As a political prisoner, I attacks against African leaders and Caucasians to determine for us which Israel Shahak am most appreciative ofthe paper's cov spokespersons and movements are con among our people are good or "bad erage of my case and that of other polit cerned. As much as you have attempted news" for us. I will, as an African person, * * * ical prisoners. I commend the paper for to rewrite the biography of Omowale determine whom I will listen to and/or NY, NY follow. 8 April 1994 I have written to you in the past about Dear editor, the racist arrogance and paternalism, as The Truth About D-Day well as ideological colonialism, your I have been ruminating over some The rulers of u.s. imperialism are cyni paper has exhibited. You have continued thing that appeared in WV a few issues cally celebrating the 50th anniversary to disrespect African people. As of this ago, and I should now like to raise this of "D-Day," claiming that the Normandy date, please do not continue to send me issue with you and your readership. You landings were the "turning point" of World WORKERS VANGUARD. Thank you. characterized Louis Farrakhan as a "dan gerous anti-Semitic demagogue." Fur War II. This is a myth. Hitler's forces were slMondo vanquished by the Soviet Red Army on the ther, you concluded that his freedom of Wopashitwe Mondo Eyen we Langa speech should not be denied him. Eastern Front, as more than 27 million (formerly known as "David Rice") Soviet citizens died in defending the USSR I find your characterization of Farra khan insufficient from a Trotskyist per and its collectivized social foundations * * * against the Nazi scourge (see "D-Day Was spective. I think that the evidence shows TROTSI\.Y LENIN Jerusalem, Israel a Sideshow: The Russians Crushed Nazi him to be not just a demagogue (AI 26 May 1994 Germany," WV No. 357,22 June 1984). The Fourth International fought for defense Sharpton is that much) but a cIerical of the Soviet degenerated workers state, while opposing both imperialist camps whose Dear friends of "Workers Vanguard" fascist. If that be true then your calling real war aims were for redivision of colonies and markets. Stalin, who undermined I have greatly enjoyed your article on for his freedom of speech is in error. Let the defense of the USSR, also throttled the revolutionary upsurges in Europe at the Farrakhan (May 13). Allow me to add us consider the facts: close of the war. In the spirit of proletarian internationalism, the French Trotskyists something, actually drawn from the book 1. It is a matter of public record that courageously sought to organize German soldiers against the Nazi rulers, clandes I have right now published (Jewish His Farrakhan praised Hitler as a "great tinely publishing the German-language paper Arbeiter und Soldat (Worker and Sol tory, Jewish Religion: The Weight of man." dier). We print below an excerpt from an article published on the eve of the Allied Three Thousand Years [distributed in the 2. His rantings against the Jews as landing in the French Trotskyists' underground newspaper, La Verite. U.S. and Canada by Westview Press], power-hungry world manipulators, pp. 71-2) about the ideological support blood-suckers, monopolists of the film Why are these gentlemen of the City [London's financial district] and Wall Street and media industries, and creators of now in a hurry to finish the war? The war is piling up corpses and destruction, blood given to the Nazi regime at its inception by a prominent and characteristic Zion AIDS are on par with anything the Nazis and tears. But it is also accumulating gold in the reserves of the National Bank of ever accused the Jews of. the United States and in the vaults of Mr. Morgan, and dividends in the pockets of ist, who then emigrated to the U.S. and became an important American Zionist. 3. You have frequently cited his taking the stockholders of United Steel and General Motors. So they carefully allowed the a financial contribution from neo-Nazi "Some Zionist leaders in Germany German "enemy" to get oil from Spain, special steel alloys and even Ford motors Metzger. Conversely we may note that welcomed Hitler's rise to power, via neutral countries. such a hardcore fascist as Metzger would because they shared his belief in Why are these gentlemen from Wall Street and the City now in a hurry to finish only give money to someone he felt a primacy of 'race' and his hostility the war? Their interests, the interests of the arms merchants, of the traffickers and deep political kinship with. to the assimilation of. Jews among of the reactionary politicians, were precisely to let the USSR exhaust itself in the 4. My own chance observation on one the ' Aryans.' They congratulated fight, lose its wealth and its youth, so that it would come out of the war impoverished, occasion revealed a streetcorner Farra Hitler on his triumph over the com bled white and ready, under pressure, extortion and threats by the international khanite bookstand selling black litera mon enemy-the forces of liberal bourgeoisie, to abandon its socialist structure and open its markets to imperialism. ture literally keeping under the table cop ism. Dr. Joachim Prinz, a Zionist While the USSR was losing its blood, the English and American imperialists were ies of the fascistic Protocols of the Elders rabbi who subsequently emigrated to building up gigantic stockpiles of materiel and countless arms near Europe with the of Zion for sale to black anti-Semitic the USA, where he rose to be the hope of being able to impose their will on the USSR and Europe. cognoscenti. I might add that my one vice-chairman of the World Jewish That was their plan. But instead, the Red Army resisted. It has pushed forward personal observation of this is bolstered Congress and a leading light in the and driven the German imperialist armies out of the USSR. It now threatens Romania, by accounts in the bourgeois press which World Zionist Organization (as well Hungary and is driving toward Central Europe. allege that Farrakhan's bookstores rou as a great friend of Golda Meir) pub At the same time, the proletariat is awakening in all countries. Recently, we saw tinely stock this filth. lished in 1934 a special book, Wir the Italian workers sweep away fascism and spontaneously set up factory councils. 5. To my mind, the best American par Juden (,We, Jews'), to celebrate Hit From Norway to Greece, from France to Poland, the working masses are gaining allel to Farrakhan's clerical-fascism is ler's so-called German Revolution confidence once again and taking action. Under these conditions, the weakened that of Father Coughlin's in the 1930s. and the defeat of liberalism: German gendarme will soon be incapable of insuring police functions and holding Coughlin, too, hailed (heiled?) Hitler, back the rising revolutionary ~~de. 'The meaning of the German Revolution railed against the Jews. "Jewmockracy," At this precise moment, the -second ftont becomes necessary. The bourgeoisie for the German nation will eventually be clear to those who have created it and "Jewish control" etc., ad nauseam. The wants to draw up its army in front of the Red Army, which is driving toward the formed its image. Its meaning for us must then-Trotskyist SWP flatly denounced West, and in front of the revolutionary wave which is rising throughout Europe and be set forth here: the fortunes of liber Coughlin as a fascist. And I believe I threatening to sweep everything away. . alism are lost. The only form of political am on strong historical ground when I Despite the propaganda statements, which are as hypocritical as the Nazis', the. life which has helped Jewish assimilation is sunk.' say that the SWP never called for his second front is not a second front against Nazism (if that were the case, it would freedom of speech. already have existed months ago). It is a front against the Revolution and against "The victory of Nazism rules out Here are the political questions I the USSR. assimilation and mixed marriages as should think necessary to discuss in your -"The Working Class and the 'Second Front': How to Do Away an option for Jews. 'We are not pages: Is Farrakhan now a cIerical With Fascism and War" (La verite, May 1944) unhappy about this,' said Dr. Prinz. fascist? If not, why not? What actions In the fact that Jews are forced to on his part would it take before the Spar identify themselves as Jews, he sees tacist League denounced him as such? 'the fulfillment of our desire.' And The last question is, I think, the most further: significant. I realize that there is a very 'We want assimilation to be replaced by strong tendency on the part of the Amer a new law: the declaration of belonging to the Jew.ish nation and Jewish race. A ican left to say that "blacks can't be rac !'~!!!~yJ!.4l!l!!.~'!.! ~ ists" (and therefore fascists) because DIRECTOR OF PARTY PUBLICATIONS: George Foster state built upon the principle of the purity EDITOR: Jan Norden of nation and race can be only honoured they don't have the political, social and and respected by a Jew who declares his economic power to do so in a highly PRODUCTION MANAGER: Susan Fuller belonging to his own kind. Having so CIRCULATION MANAGER: Karen Valdez declared himself, he will never be capa continued on page 15 EDITORIAL BOARD: Uz Gordon, Frank Hunter, Jane Kerrigan, Len Meyers, James Robertson, ble of faulty loyalty towards a state. The Joseph Seymour, Alison Spencer, Marjorie Stamberg state cannot want other Jews but such as The Spartacist League is the U.S. Section of the International Communist League (Fourth declare themselves as belonging to their Internationalist). nation. It will not want lewish flatterers Worl photos Vancouver anti-fascists received wide union support. Left: Dem onstration outside courthouse on May 31 in solidarity with the defendants (above). VANCOUVER-For the last nine many others sent their own message: through the proceedings, the charge was spray-painting a 200-pound Nazi? months, six anti-fascist protesters faced "Drop the Charges Against the May 6 dismissed against postal unionist Bob The charges emboldened the racist ter trumped-up charges of assault for defend Anti-Fascist Protesters!" They showed McBurney, and CUPE member Tom rorists. Cyllorn skulked around Miriam ing themselves and others at a 60-strong their determination on the morning of Hansen was found not guilty. Scribner's workplace and in the days demonstration on 6 May 1993 organized the first day of the trial, May 31, when Outrageously, Miriam Scribner, Trot before the trial he made harassing and against Ron Gostick and his rabidly anti over 60 came out to a demonstration in skyist League activist and a CUPE mem threatening telephone calls to unionists Semitic and white-supremacist "Cana front of the provincial courthouse initi ber, was found guilty and given a con who publicly backed the Six. The re dian League of Rights." No matter that ated by the Partisan Defense Committee, ditional discharge. Her "crime"? Spray sponse was anger at this open attempt Gostick's "host," infamous racist Jud chanting "It's no crime to stop the fas painting a yellow line down Cyllorn's at intimidation and a renewed determi Cyllorn, came out and waded into the cists! Drop the charges now!" Members back to stop him from menacing the nation to defend the anti-fascist pro demonstration that night with an iron bar. of the Vancouver Local of the Canadian protesters. testers. This was reflected in the impres (He was quickly disarmed by the pro Union of Postal Workers (CUPW), the The Vancouver Sun (2 June) reported sive labor support and turnout at the testers.) No matter that the protesters had Canadian Union of Public Employees on her testimony. She noted that "it courthouse. to fend off repeated fascist attacks and (CUPE) Local 391 and the Canadian was 'an extremely dangerous moment' Speaking on behalf of the Vancouver provocations clearly shown on TV. The Brotherhood of Railway, Transport and when Cyllorn came out on the street CUPW, Acting President Jim Lougheed anti-fascists were charged (three months General Workers Local 100 came out carrying a metre-long length of metal told the May 31 rally that "The Local after the event!) because, as the official with their union banners. pipe. Protest marshals managed to take has been supporting the six anti-fascist police report stated, they wanted to send Even before the trial date, the Crown the metal pipe away from Cyllorn, she protesters since day one," and called on "a message" to "radical activists." The Attorney prosecutor dropped the charges said .... " While celebrating the victory those present to "go into that courtroom message: that it's free rein for the fascists, against two of the Six, John Lipscomb of five of the Six against the state's and show the state that they cannot tram state repression for those who oppose and Oliver Scribner. As the trial con . attack, supporters were furious at this ple on people who are willing to fight them. vened, charges against telephone work verdict. A telephone worker shop stew fascism." That's exactly what happened But dozens of trade-union locals and er Glenn Mason were thrown out of ard asked pointedly: you mean they as supporters overflowed the courtroom, officials, anti-racist organizations and court. Of the three who were dragged convicted a 5-foot-one librarian for continued on page J5 All Out for James Frazier! . -lriNES: New York City transit worke~s, stu- Good ev~ning. It:s really moving ~o ,""l\DS Of f dents and other opponents ofr~clst cop be here tomght, to hear about Mumla ...,. terror are mobilizing support for James Abu-Jamal. We both were shot by the ..... '. 'T,. h.' \.,1 O·R.V rR Frazier, a black traCk worker and mem- police department-his case was in ~' \ f\ W· '" \.. . ber of Transport Workers Union Local Philadelphia, mine was right here in I 'T 100 who faces frame-up charges in New York. We both were attacked t.l Brooklyn Criminal Court. Last Octo- in the hospital by the police. I'd like ." -~.-f\l\E" ber, Frazier was shot from behind by to say that everyone here should keep '.' t:'., "'\ the police as he was driving to visit up the fight to help free this man. It ~ \..,. I a friend in the hospital. The Transit happened to me, it happened to him, it NYC transit i=: » -- Authority bosses summarily fired Fraz- happened to Geronimo Pratt, it could worker James ier, despite a perfect work record, and happen to anybody sitting here. So Frazier (right) to cover up the cops' crime, the Dis- the struggle must continue for these speaks to rally trict Attorney is railroading Frazier on people. outside T A charges of weapons possession. He Up until the day I was shot, I didn't headquarters, faces up to 15 years in prison. know any organizations or anybody April 19. As a result of the efforts of Frazier's cared about what happened to another supporters in TWU Local 100, two person. Because, you know, New York union divisions have called a rally de- is mostly a place where a man is dying manding "DA-Drop the Charges! on the ground, you step over. him. I TA-Reinstate James Frazier Now!" very strongly believe that if I, didn't to be held at the next court hearing have this support, I'd have been rail- for something he didn't do. I hear about (applause). From the beginning we are on Friday, June 17 at 8:30 a.m. roaded in jail a long time ago. Every Geronimo Pratt, in prison for 23 years targeted, just because I'm young, and at Brooklyn Criminal Court, 120 time I go to court, I have a lot of support for something he did not do. I'm still I'm black and I have a nice, flashy Schermerhorn Street. The cops who from the Partisan Defense Committee, fighting in court to stay out of prison, car-I guess I'm not supposed to have did this to brother Frazier are sched- the Spartacus Youth Club, the Labor/ for something I didn't do. So I know, that. uled to appear. Black League and the Transport Work- I deeply know how you feel. It's not easy fighting this system we At the June 3 NYC speak-out for ers Union members. Unlike Mumia and Geronimo Pratt, have here. Mayor Dinkins, a black Mumia Abu-Jamal, Frazier spoke pow- I would also like to say to Wadiya Irro not a~'political speaker, I was not mayor; hired 6,000 cops and Giuliani erfully about his case and in defense Abu-Jamal, there's nothing I really can a member of the Black Panthers. I read controls them. So I'd like to say, just of other victims of racist cop ter- do to express my sympathy to you but in an article that Mumia was a target. keep up the struggle, and let's keep the ror. Following are excerpts from his to say, "stay strong." I hear about But as a young black male, we are fight up for Mumia and Geronimo remarks: Mumia, 13 years in prison-13 years targeted from the very beginning Pratt. Thank you. 10 JUNE 1994 3 The Death of Gay. Liberation? By David Thorstad April 1993 gay rights march in Washington, D.C. was a flag-waving celebration for Democrat Clinton and U.S. imperialism. This past spring David Th.orstad sub state that persecutes hom.osexuals. longstanding "only gays can liberate would-be bureaucrats for Clint.on and mitted the f.oll.owing article t.o Workers As always with signed articles, the gays" belief in the liberating potential of Reno, the mass murderers of Waco. Vanguard, as well as a number .of .other .opinions expressed do n.ot necessarily radical lifestylism, so characteristic of As we said in "Stop the Witchhunt of left and gay papers. A former president reflect our editorial viewpoint. In the the early '70s New Leftist sectoralist Peter Melzer!" (WV No. 587, 5 N.ovem of New York's Gay Activists Alliance case of Thorstad, our differences and m.ovements. ber 1993): (1975-76), Thorstad was a founding exchange of views g.o back a ways. The logic .of New Left sectoralism has "The portrayal of NAMBLA as child member of the Coalition for Lesbian and Th.orstad was briefly prominent as a long since played itself out, as yester molesters has nothing to do with the protec Gay Rights (1977), as well as co-author spokesman for the Socialist Workers year's "gay liberati.onists" have bec.ome tion of children; rather it is part of a gener of the book, The Early Homosexual Party in the early 1970s, before resign t.oday's hard-n.osed c.onstituency lobby alized campaign against sex aimed at the 'moral rearmament' of the American peo Rights Movement (1864-1935). In 1978 ing in disgust when the SWP aband.oned ists, wh~eling and dealing in the Dem ple which would bolster the bourgeoisie's he was a founding member of NAMBLA its brief hypocritical flirtation with the ocratic Party and letting cops march authority. The guiding principle for sexual (North American Man/Boy Love Asso "gay liberation movement" (see "Gays while excluding the likes of NAMBLA. relations between all people ought to be one ciation). This organization, which sup and the SWP," Women and Revolution Thus, while we don't share Thorstad's of effective consent." p.orts the sexual rights of gays and espe No. 24, Spring 1982). Our m.ost signifi sense of betrayal, we appreciate his Defense of NAMBLA should be an cially youth, has been repeatedly singled cant difference has been with Th.orstad's p.owerful indictment .of today's toadying elementary act of basic decency-but it .out for vicious attack by the govern seems it is left t.o us Marxists to practice ment-and by .other gay groups seeking the basic principle that "an injury t.o one "acceptance" from this racist, capitalist is an injury to all." The gay movement faces an old par Lesbian and Gay Ass.ociation t.o expel adox. Just when it has attained a level the North American Man/B.oy L.ove of social influence greater than any Association-the only U.S. group active achieved over the past century, it is in the ILGA for more than a decade. But losing its soul. heterosexual supremacists object to all Gay leaders prefer p.olitical correct varieties of homosexuality, not just this ness to variety and ambiguity, sameness or that subgroup. to difference. I myself yearn for the spirit On January 26, 1994, the U.S. Senate of a banner I saw in 1971: "Love is a unanimously (99-0) adopted a Helms many-gendered thing." amendment to withhold $118 million Passionless bureaucrats on C-SPAN from the United Nations unless the ILGA press a p.olitics of victimization (copied expelled NAMBLA. Not a peep from the from middle-class feminism) and a lib gay establishment against this antigay eral strategy of expanding state pro Republicrat diktat-for which, in fact, tecti.on of "gay people" rather than .of Young gay they paved the way. liberating sexuality. Victimizati.on is "in" activists gather Pat Califia has observed that boy these days-there's money in it; it can outside Stonewall l.overs and SMers face the brunt of get y.ou acquitted ..of murder. As a strat bar, New York anti-sex repressi.on-thereby winning f.or egy for extending rights, though, it City, June 1969, the broader movement the elb.owroom it reminds me .of the "Victim of the Press" -after brutal enjoys. That is why NAMBLA and SM button worn by the ex-homosexual z.om cop attack figure prominently in right-wing relig Wh4Ch triggered bies of Aesthetic Realism. "Stonewall ious propaganda. But don't expect the No talk here .of emp.owerment or Rebellion." gay establishment t.o acknowledge this. liberati.on (passe in these p.ostm.odern, To them, "An injury to one is an injury post-everything times), rarely .of repeal to all" is a mere phrase. ing s.odomy and other anti-sex laws, and In England, the gay movement has never of laws that discriminate against been campaigning to l.ower the age of youth. Rather than fight the anti-sex. c.onsent t.o 16 for male-male sex. (It is legacy of Jude.o-Christianity, gay leaders already 16 for straight and lesbian sex.) seem t.o ignore it, even embrace it. mander in Chief Cl.inton a week before history'S most renowned example .of On February 21, activists stormed Par Oblivi.ous t.o the s.ource .of gay op the march .on Washingt.on, Human Rights same-sex military heroism-the "sacred liament when it adopted a "c.ompromise" pressi.on in instituti.ons like the family, Campaign Fund executive director Tim band" of Thebes. That w.ould not have age of 18! In contrast, in the United gays l.obby the state to bless their McFeeley voiced confidence that Clin been p.c. since the Theban Band States-where the age .of consent varies uni.ons-and stage a "mass wedding" in ton w.ould rip up the ban on gays in the involved men and youths, and pederasty from 14 to 18 in states where sodomy the nati.on's capital fit f.or the Rev. Sun military by July: "It's not just what the is a secret not to be told. (These days, laws have been repealed (you can't do Myung Moon. The state is using AIDS President said, but how he said it. It's a .only andr.ophilia is p.c.) it legally anywhere else no matter h.ow to reimp.ose coupled.om and c.ontrol over feeling y.ou g.ot by lo.oking int.o his On .one level, surely, gay men and old you are)-gay leaders have agreed sexuality, and h.ow d.o gay leaders eyes" (New York Times, 18 April 1993). lesbians wh.o are fighting t.o be in the n.ot t.o challenge whatever the arbitrary resp.ond? By embracing mon9gamy and McFeeley expressed similar sappy cer military are extending the civil rights of age happens to be. marriage-this despite the fact that half tainty on Donahue. All that gay money all .of us. Their contribution to sexual Lowering any of the ages of c.onsent of straight marriages fail, and m.on.og d.onated to big-business bimbos (instead liberation is m.ore iffy. And the m.orality would advance the civil rights of youth amy is a bit player in the mammalian .of being used to fight gay oppressi.on) .of militarism is never questi.oned. and their (often older) lovers. But the heritage (fewer than 3 percent .of mam was ab.out t.o payoff. Clint.on neverthe Can this be what St.onewall was new hom.ophile establishment will have mals are monogam.ous). less .opted for c.ontinuing a discrimina- ab.out? none of it. For them, pederasty remains We Are Family-or wannabe. tory policy. - The first group t.o emerge from Stone tabo.o and anathema. Peri Jude Radecic, Hundreds of thousands marched in Gay leaders argue that since ~"lesbians wall-the Gay Liberati.on Front-strug executive director of the National gay pride in Washington in April 1993. and gay men" (p.c. nomenclature nowa gled against the Vietnam War. It was Gay and Lesbian Task F.orce, recently The event became a virtual love fest for days) fought so well in the U.S. war exhilarating t.o see the GLF banner stated: "Lowering age .of consent laws President Clinton-bef.ore the bl.ood had against Iraq, they deserve rec.ognition as waving in antiwar demos. Today, gay has never been and never will be a part dried on his and Janet Reno's hands after cogs in the war machine. As we prepare leaders wave the Stars and Stripes and .of the missi.on ofNGLTF" (Village Voice, their incinerati.on of the Wac.o dissidents to commemorate the twenty-fifth anni h.ope to bring gay pride al.ong in the next 8 February). The gay movement in (among whom 25 children). That numb versary .of the St.onewall Ri.ots, one of bombing raid on Third World babies. In England fights to lower the age of ing act of police-state terrorism and child their main goals is to get' the stafe to this respect, little of the Stonewall spirit consent, but in the United States, never? abuse gave little pause t.o gay leaders, welcome same-sexers as servants .of the survives. New York's Gay Activists Alliance wh.o were enthusiastic v.ote-getters for New World Dis.order. Proud out-of-the Hoping to appease the Christian right (from which NGLTF was an elitist the principle-less draft d.odger turned cl.oset patriotism. and the Clint.on administrati.on, gaycrats . .offsh.o.ot in 1973) and other post mass murderer. Despite their rush to embrace the from Barney Frank on down j.oin Jesse St.onewall groups in the ~nited States, Flush from a meeting with C.om- military issue, n.o gay leaders inv.oked Helms in calling on the Internati.onal Canada and Europe opposed age .of 4 WORKERS VANGUARD system, but toeing the "family values" line of the bourgeois establishment can never win "respectability" for gays and Protest "Stonewall 25" Exclusion lesbians, who are by definition anathema to the religious-inspired right wing. From its inception the Marxist move ment has championed the rights of homosexuals; Oscar Wilde was defended against persecution for homosexuality by the most authoritative journal of the Let NAMBLA March! Second International, Die Neue Zeit. The Spartacist League vigorously pro and teachers-a campaign which began to support not just basic rights of Within the -framework of fighting for tests the Stonewall 25 Steering Commit with the witchhunting of homosexual NAMBLA and others to march, but also socialist revolution to lay the basis for tee's attempted exclusion of the North teachers. To exclude NAMBLA from a a series of political demands. Central to a new society in which the full expres Americqn Man/Boy Love Association gay pride march is therefore to enlist in its political thrust is support to gay sion of the individual (sexual and oth from the march on the United Nations the crusade to persecute gays in the name sectoralist lifestylism, embodied in the erwise) will be possible, we stand later this month. We are printing below of "saving children." demand that "the gay and lesbian move against all state interference in private our letter defending NAMBLA's right to The Steering Committee's despicable ment...return to its roots" in the Stone matters of sexuality. Trotskyists have march to Spirit of Stonewall (SOS), a action can only encourage the very wall 1969 rebellion. As against "life always opposed the "family values" g~oup also defending NAMBLA. forces responsible for the repression and style" advocacy as a road to sexual conservatism of the anti-Marxist Stalin, oppression of gay people and youth, and liberation, we Marxists believe that the as they also fought his bureaucratic 4 June 1994 those forces are sinister indeed: In 1992, oppression of women and gay people in usurpation of soviet power and the Spirit of Stonewall following an "expose" by KRON-TV in this capitalist society stems fundamen resulting counterrevolutionary interna Organizing Committee collusion with the SF cops, NAMBLA tally from the institution of the family, tional program. We call for abortion Boston, MA members were threatened at their press which is bolstered by the state and rights for young women as part of free, Dear SOS: conference by a demonstration of child organized religion. Sectoralist, gay life quality health care, including contracep The Spartacist League condemns the abuse "survivors"-joined by a gang of stylist politics cannot address the mate tion, for all. Advocating the concept of vicious exclusion of NAMBLA by the skinheads carrying the Confederate flag rial cause of gay oppression. In divorc effective consent in sexual matters, we Stonewall 25 Steering Committee from of slavery. On the East Coast, Bronx ing the goal of fighting for full rights denounce the reactionary "age of con the upcoming Stonewall 25 national High School of Science teacher Peter for gays from the liberation of the sent" laws which seek to straitjacket the march in New York City on 26 June Melzer is threatened with the loss of his working class and all the oppressed from sexuality of young people. 1994. When the Steering Committee job solely because of his beliefs and capitalist exploitation, gay sectoralist Let NAMBLA march! voted to ban from the march all "organ association with NAMBLA. politics "can only tail the Democratic Fraternally, izations advocating ... the repeal of age The Spartacist League cannot, how Party of war and racism. The Steering Amy Rath for the Spartacist League of consent· laws without adequate pro ever, endorse SOS's call (dated 3 April Committee's action is the logical result cc: NAMBLA tection of youth, or those advocating ... 1994). Signers of the call are being asked of seeking a space within the capitalist Stonewall 25 Steering Committee the sexual abuse of youth," it was singling out, and slandering, the North American Man/Boy Love Association " ••men and~ (NAMBLA) and all others who oppose Ilevolution ~ I -Spring 1982 ,'~ the oppression of young people in this society. As Marxists we oppose the Drop the Charges Against NAMBLA! ',~h"~~ regulation of private consensual sexual 18 February 1982 deadly dangerous, in fact-of these is: "We demand GOVf J?N~l Nr I~".·.: acts, which are nobody's business but NAMBLA that the vast amounts of money used for this purpose the persons involved. Bo)( 174, Midtown Station Ito harass and prosecute NAMBLA) be used Instead OV1 ' New York, New York 10018 to investigate and prosecute the hundreds of By its action the Steering Committee thousands of unsolved murders and Violent assaults (If litE' shows that it has signed on with the gov Dear NAMBLA: ernment's anti-sex witchhunt-a cam The Spartacist league/Sparlacus Youlh league .JPIi; Parti§an Defen§e ~EOROOM! protests and denounces the vicious state witch hunt .. £onlnlittee paign aimed at instilling conformity to Christian, puritanical, bourgeois moral CLASS-STRUGGLE DEFENSE NOTES ity. The state's persecution of NAMBLA Hysterical Liberals Join Hands Off NAMBLA! is part of an attempt to assert its prerog S. F. Anti-Gay Witchhunt ative to legislate sexual norms as against Stop the Witchh~nt all those it considers "deviant," a cate gory which includes all gays and lesbians Defend NAMBLA! of Peter Melzer! SAN I·RANCISCO A c~kul'l.,d and Ih consent laws on the grounds that they there aren't any, but thousands of gay 18! That reflects an antigay male agenda, Western-culture. It is inseparable from protect no one; rather, they criminalize men call a U.S. jail home because of in which yelling "child abuse" is a way the high points of Western civilization consensual sex (the best kind). sexual activity that was no less consen to increase funding. "When they lay (Ancient Greece and the Renaissance), Stonewall meant struggle. It meant sual than anything Radecic, McFeeley those dollars on you, your soul goes" It lies close to the roots of gay liberation. putting your livelihood on the line. It or Frank engage in. (Malcolm X). Attempts to purge it resemble those meant irreverence, pride in outsider sta-' A 14- or 15-year-old has as much right Gay liberation is falling victim to in the early 1970s to shove drag queens tus, youth sexuality, drag, sexual ambi as they do to sexual pleasure with the its success. With growth have come aside-despite their role in Stonewall. guity. It meant redis'covering gay history .. partner of his or her choice and should middle-class efforts to get into the main The aim is to corral rebellion, to allow It meant solidarity with gay prisoners not need the imprimatur of the state stream, to win a place at the het table the Republicrat party to set the gay and anyone who is oppressed. or any gay/lesbian ·Pope. In Minnesota, (two current cliches )-even if this means agenda, to deny homosexuality. This is Solidarity-there's a concept that now where the age of consent is a ridiculous anathematizing pederasty, a ubiquitous not the spirit of Stonewall. counts for less. When was the last time 18, lesbian directors of an antiviolence same-sex variant. This is a form of In all cultures and in all historical you heard a guppie call for freeing gay agency have called for locking up any self-hatred. periods, men and youths have been prisoners? Their silence may suggest that gay man who has sex with a youth under The loss to AIDS of many sex radicals getting it on, because they are naturally has also been a heavy blow, from which attracted to each other. Efforts to deny gay liberation will not soon recover. this, and to demonize man-boy love, are grotesque. _ Fighting discrimination is necessary. Civil rights and sexual freedom issues have always coexisted; they complement each other. Personally, I have felt more Spartacist League discrimination from other homosexuals than from straights-in 1989, for exam Public Offices ple, when New York's Gay and Les -MARXIST LlTERATURE bian Community Services Center re fused to rent space to NAMBLA for a Bay Area concert by America's greatest living Thurs.: 5:30-8:00 p.m., Sat.: 1:00-5:00 p.m. poet, Mien Ginsberg (boy lover and 1634 Telegraph, 3rd Floor (near 17th Street) Oakland, California Phone: (510) 839-0851 NAMBLA supporter). Your case against discrimination is Chicago' weakened if you yourself discriminate. Tues.: 5:00-9:00p.m., Sat.: 11 :00a.m.-2:00p.m. 161 W. Harrison St., 10th Floor Man-boy love has been a player in Chicago, Illinois Phone: (312) 663-0715 gay liberation since the mid-nineteenth century. The first gay magazine in the 'New York City Tues.: 6:30-9:00 p.m., Sat.: 1 :00-5:00 p.m. world, Der Eigene, celebrated boylove 41 Warren SI. (one block below Spartaclst banners at 1993 Washington gay rights march. Attorney General and anarchism. Pederasty is the form Chambers SI. near Church St.) Janet Reno's cynical lie of "child abuse" was used to Justify government's that homosexuality most commonly has New York, NY Phone: (212) 267-1025 Waco massacre of 86 Branch Davldlana, Including 25 children. taken throughout Western-and not only 10 JUNE 1994 5 Jamal ... (continued from page 1) of presentations centered on Mumia Abu-Jamal's own words. The entire event was taped for broadcast, effec tively breaking the ban imposed by NPR and bringing the man and his message to the public. The highlight of the eve ning was a moving reading from Jamal's commentaries by Ossie Davis, Judge Bruce Wright, author of Black Robes, White Justice, and Bernard White of WBAI radio. They came together on stage, their strong and 'dignified voices alternating, imparting the drama of Jamal's searing portrayal of black life on death row. The compilation, "Mumia AbU-Jamal Death Row Collage: His Words for Three Voices," was arranged by Charles Brover. Michael G. Haskins of WBAI radio also read powerfully from Jamal's jour nalism from death row. Mumia's greet ings to the meeting were played via an .A audiotape made from prison. A video Photo taped statement was sent by actor Mike Leonard Weinglass, Jamal's lead counsel, addresses rally detailing constitutional violations which railroaded former Farrell, co-chairman of the Committee Black Panther to death row. to Save Mumia Abu-Jamal. Greetings were read to the rally from actor Ed law-this outlaw being the system confront when they judge whether or not and put me in one of those quiet places Asner and Raymond Martinez, Jr., pres simply because Mumia can't stop telling a person should be given life or death." forever, the march will still be going ident of the Philadelphia Chapter of the the truth .... This outlaw has killed many, Weinglass conduded, "If Mumia on. And I will be able to tell history that, Pennsylvania Social Services Union many innocent people, and will do it would get'a new trial tomorrow, we're at least, when I was alive, there was a SEIU Local 668, and the British National again. Each and every day. Please use confident on the basis of what we've place for me in the line of march. You Union of Journalists. Amnesty Interna all that's right within you to support developed thus far that we could win his should be happy to say as much. That's tional also released a statement against Mumia and all innocent people on death case." the reward for being alive, to be a part the gross legal travesty of Jamal's trial row, so that he can help you, because he Paul Cooperstein of the Partisan De of the struggle. That's all' you were and the racist death penalty. is still the voice of the voiceless." fense Committee emphasized the politi promised." As the Partisan Defense Committee Dr. Alan Berkman, a former political cal nature of the vendetta against Mumia With the NPR's censoring of Mumia and the Committee to Save Mumia Abu prisoner who served eight years in prison Abu-Jamal, asking, "What role did the Abu-Jamal, and the outcry it produced, Jamal recognized in sponsoring the in the frame-up "Resistance Conspiracy" Clinton White House have in NPR's gag his case has become a national issue. case, recalled seeing Mumia in prison, order on Mumia? The same day NPR This has heightened the urgency of rais where "facing death, he spent an enor killed Mumia's broadcast, President ing the fight to save Jamal in unions, mous amount of his time and energy Clinton was speaking to thousands of student groups, churches and commu helping the other prisoners deal with cops, promoting his 'three strikes you're nity organizations throughout the coun cases that were much less serious than out' crime bill which will add dozens of try. The speak-out raised over $2,000, his own." Other speakers induded new crimes punishable by death. Clinton all proceeds going for Jamal's legal Elombe Brath, chairman of the Patrice told that throng, 'We recognize that there defense. Much, much more is urgently Lumumba Coalition and a commentator should be capital punishment for people needed, as death penalty cases can cost on WBAI, and James Frazier, a New who kill law enforcement officials in the York City transit worker, who in October line of duty.' was shot in the head by an NYC cop "Clinton appears even more prepared and now faces frame-up gun possession to outdo Reagan and Bush in unleashing charges. The meeting dosed with a musi terror. The 1985 bombing of MOVE was cal rendition by Bernadette Speach and the signature of the Reagan years. Last Jeffrey Schanzer of Jamal's essay, "To spring, Clinton and his attorney general War for Empire," bitterly denouncing the Janet Reno made their mark with the sum Persian Gulf slaughter. mary execution of 86 men, women and children of the integrated Branch David A System of Racist Injustice ian religious sect," Cooperstein said. WV The PDC spokesman put Jamal's case Actor and activist Ossie Davis, co Leonard Weinglass, Jamal's lead attor ney, reported on the defense team's in historic perspective: "1887: the Hay chair of the Committee to Save market martyrs-labor organizers, anar Mumia Abu-Jamal. efforts to uncover ignored and/or sup pressed evidence that will prove Jamal's chists, leaders of the ejght-hour day event, NPR' s cancellation in the face innocence, as they fight for a new trial. movement-hanged in Chicago. 1915: of an increased police vendetta makes "We are in a race against time to save IWW member Joe Hill, executed by breaking the ban "a life and death issue this innocent and eloquent spokesman a Utah firing squad." He recalled the of free speech." The meeting's urgency of the African American community," anarchist workers Sacco and Vanzetti, and the "Scottsboro Boys"-nine black was magnified by the fact that the Penn Weinglass wrote l!lst year-and time is WVPhoto sylvania state legislature is immInently getting even shorter. youths whose lives were saved by mass Wadiya Abu-Jamal expected to enact a bill, overriding the As merely one example of the gross international protest-and pointed out: governor's veto, which would force him violations of Jamal's rights which landed "In the Cold War witchhunt of the '50s, as much as a million dollars. Contribu to begin signing death warrants. And him on death row during his 1982 when Reds were branded as spies who tions to Jamal's defense, which are tax with Pennsylvania's gubernatorial race trial, Weinglass told how the prosecutor deserved to die, the courageous Rosen deductible, can be made payable to the heating up this year, the FOP is pushing argued to the jury, "Mr. Jamal will have bergs were electrocuted for being Com Bill of Rights Foundation, earmarked hard to make the legal murder of Mumia appeal after appeal after appeal and his munists and Jews. Now, the impending "Jamal," and sent to the Committee to Abu-Jamal a key issue, bombarding the case will be reviewed, so you needn't sentence of death against Mumia threat Save Mumia Abu-Jamal, 163 Amster media with demands for his immediate feel you're taking personal responsibil ens to be the first political execution dam Avenue, No. 115, New York, NY execution. ity here for the death penalty." Weinglass since the Rosenbergs." lO023-5001. Jamal's wife, Wadiya Abu-Jamal, told pointed out, "That precise argument has Cooperstein conduded, "Ultimately it A video of Mumia speaking from the gathering: "For almost 13 long years been held by the United States Supreme is only socialist revolution that can end prison is available which also recounts we have suffered at the hands of the out- Court to undermine what the jurors must the system of capitalist lynch law and his early history and details the police guarantee the rights of the oppressed. In vendetta against the Panthers and MOVE. a socialist America, maybe with Geron You can order this to show to your union, imo ji Jaga in the Ministry of Justice, community or school group. A detailed Mumia Abu-Jamal in the Ministry of legal report by Leonard Weinglass on the Information, then and only then can we outrageously biased trial of Jamal is start to speak of justice." available from the Partisan Defense Com mittee, which also distributes Mumia Join the Fight to Save :J Abu-Jamal's writings from death row. .0 Mumia Abu-Jamal - .... ~. Mumia Abu- Call the PDC at (212) 406-4252 or write ~ ~ Jamal in 1969 Renowned actor and veteran activist PDC, P.O. Box 99, Canal Street Station, when he was Ossie Davis told the audience in his New York, NY lO013. Minister of introductory remarks: "As Napoleon Phone calls protesting NPR's censor Information for said, victory belongs to the one who can ship should be addressed to vice presi Philadelphia survive the last 15 minutes of the battle. dent 'Bill Buzenberg or Mary Morgan at Black Panther Party. We cannot afford to let the bastards wear (800) 235-1212, or fax to (202) 414- us down. We gotta fight! The march to 3045. If you wish to correspond with freedom, and the march to equality, was Jamal, you can write to Mumia Abu in process when I was born. I just got Jamal, AM8335, 1100 Pike St., Hunting on board. I suspect when they let me off don, PA 16652-1112.• 6 WORKERS VANGUARD - .... -----.--.~---..------_ ... ----.---.-----~.---.- Young Sparlacus Racism, Anti-Semitism and Free Sp'eech Malcolm X Mural Controversy at S.F. State Cops Off Campus! SAN FRANCISCO, May 28-An inte grated crowd of over 3,000 students and their famiI.ies assembled on the field. If they cast their eyes above the podium, they would find that police snipers sta tioned on the rooftops of surrounding buildings had their sights trained on them, scanning the crowd for "trouble" from student protesters. EI Salvador? No. It was graduation day at San Francisco State University. This chilling display of police-state style terror was part of the "tactical" response of the campus administration to a controversy that had erupted ten days earlier at the dedication of "Mal colm X Plaza." There, the Pan-Afrikan Larsen/SF Examiner Obscene anti-Semitic symbols on Malcolm X mural were seized upon Student Union had unveiJed a ten-foot by administration to launch racist cop occupation at SF State. high mural of the martyred black mili tant, which incorporated into its border an American flag with Stars of David ethnic prejudice and racial hatred.' Mal potent social weapon against the racist scrub it clean. The mural was again colm X was the enemy of the kind of reaction of the ruling class. painted over, and again scrubbed clean._ and dollar signs intermingled with skulls nationalist demagogy and bigotry, the "To invoke anti-Semitism in a mural to and crossbones and the words "African vile anti-Semitism that is preached by commemorate Malcolm X is an insult to Finally, the enraged administration called Blood." people like Louis Farrakhan and the the legacy of that courageous black in another cop riot squad and had the To tie the legacy of Malcolm X, a Nation ofIslam. Farrakhan, the man who fighter against racist oppression. But it mural ground off the wall with sanders. courageous fighter for black freedom, to said Malcolm X was 'worthy of death,' is not a question for the administration The gestapo-style intervention of the wants to divert the justified outrage of to deal with. Any bans on freedom of administration was used by the mural this display of anti-Semitic imagery was black youth against this racist society speech or expression will be used by obscene. Lois Lyles, a black English into poisonous bigotry, into accepting the powers that be on campus against artist and his nationalist backers to argue professor at State, tried to wipe out racial segregation. Anti-Semitism is those who militantly fight against racist that the issue was not anti-Semitism the mural's anti-Semitism with a paint sucker bait and it lets the racist rulers of reaction." but "freedom of expression." At the this country-who hold the real wealth The following day, university presi May 23 meeting of the Student Govern brush. Now she is charged with assault and power--off the hook. It is capitalism and vandalism. What should have hap which keeps black people forcibly seg dent Corrigan ordered that the entire ing Board to debate the mural, the artist, pened was the mobilization of an inte regated at the bottom of this vicious rac mural be obliterated. A multiracial group Senay Dennis, pronounced that the Star grated force of black, white, Latino, ist society of exploitation and oppres of students hastily assembled barricades of David and the dollar sign did go Asian and Jewish students to take down sion. Setting blacks against Jews only in front of the mural and set up a together because "Jews had the money." fans the flames of racist reaction, whose Obscenely, he demagogically "proved" the anti-Semitic symbols in the border first targets will be black people. Mean round-the-clock encampment on "Mal of the mural. Instead, the mailed fist of while,' the white racist rulers laugh all colm X Plaza." At 11 p.m., the plaza's this by asking Jews in the audience to the racist capitalist state was brought the way to the bank. five pay phones were cut off. Shortly raise their hands and when some com onto campus to obliterate the -mural. "Just as black-nationalist separatism before 2 a.m., a tactical squad of 56 cops plied, Dennis declared they had the plays into the hands of the racist WASP armed with clubs, guns and plexiglas money in their wallets. Meanwhile, Den The SF State administration presides capitalists who run this country, reaction over this heavily plebeian campus, with ary Zionism fuels anti-Semitism. Mem riot shields stormed into the student nis had the tidy sum of $1,500 in his a significant minority student popula bers of Hillel H~use came out to protest union facing the plaza. Students quickly wallet, his fee for painting his anti tion, like apartheid police on a South the mural. That is their right, but one tied the building's glass doors shut. Semitic "tribute" to Malcolm X. can't blame others if they are suspect of Smashing through the doors with an ax, Trying to put a "p.c." veneer on his African bantustan. In 1968, hated college their intentions. Last year, it was reported president S.1. Hayakawa mobilized hun that members of Hillel had spied on left the cops chased students away from own racism, Dennis nonetheless insisted dreds of cops in an attempt to smash a ist and Arab student groups on behalf of the plaza as painters moved in to cover that his work was not anti-Semitic but student strike led by the Black Students the Anti-Defamation League. The ADL over the mural. After the cops retreated, rather "anti-Zionist." This self-se-rving Union. Today, to enforce the administra is a rabid, pro-Zionist organization that the students rushed into the plaza to continued on page 11 has also spied on anti-apartheid mili tion's own brand of "political correct tants and tumed information over to the ness," squads of riot-equipped cops are apartheid regime in South Africa. They brought in at the behest Qf university have a long and sordid history of work president Robert Corrigan to wipe out a ing against militant integrated strug gle against fascist terror. So these self Malcolm X mural. The message to the described spokesmen for the Jewish students is clear-don't step out of line, people act as the front men for the worst Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of the Spartacist League or else ... the police have got their guns enemies of Jews and all minorities. loaded and aimed at you. We demand: "This is a profoundly racist society. The Cops off campus! Abolish the administra rich are getting richer, the poor are get 0$7/24 issues of Workers Vanguard o $3/3 issues of ting poorer, and the work~ng class is (includes English-language Spartacist) tion! For student-teacher-worker control getting screwed. Schools are closed and Women and Revolution of the university! prisons are built. There are no jobs o New 0 Renewal international rates: o $2/4 issues of and the jails are overflowing. Democrats $25/24 issues-Airmail $7/24 issues-$eamail Espartaco (en espaflol) Racist Bigotry and and Republicans scream to ax welfare (includes Spanish-language "Free Speech" benefits while 100,000 cops are hired to o $2/10 introductory issues of Workers Vanguard Spartacist) shoot and kill ghetto youth. The way out At a meeting of the Student Union is not the dead end of nationalist despair Name ______Governing Board on May 23, called to but integrated class struggle. A power debate the question of the mural, Spar ful example of that is when the Parti Add~ss ______~ ______san Defense Committee and the Sparta tacus Youth Club member Joe Sol cist League organized a rally against - ______Apt. # Phone ( __ ) ______addressed a crowd of some 200 students: the Klan's provocation against Martin "We demand that the charges against Luther King's birthday in Springfield, City State Zip ______--,= Professor Lois Lyles be dropped. We Illinois. This was a mass, militant, labor 602 agree with her statement 'that the legacy centered demonstration that showed that Make checks payable/mall to: Spartaclst Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 of Malcolm X not be contaminated by labor, fighting in its own interests, is a 10 JUNE 1994 7 ." ,.. ,., ...... :. .' ....' .... " .. , .. ," , ., .. "." ... " .. :", .. ",." ,.... ,., ...... , .. " .. ,.... ,...... , ,.. , ..... ,..... ,': .. ,.. ,.. ,.:" .. , .... ,.,",., ...... , .. ,.. , ...... ,...... " .... ,.. ,... ':, ..:."!:.,: .. ,.. '.' .. : ...... ,., ... : ,. .. '.' ,.' ".::" .. ,. e are pleased to announce the W publication of the first Russian language edition of Leol) Trotsky's The Communist International After Lenin. Published in Moscow by the Prometheus Research Library and the International Communist League, this volume finally makes available to Russian readers two key documents written by Trotsky for the Sixth Congress of the Communist International in 1928, published in English as The Third International After Lenin, as well as two subsequent docu ments, "The Chinese Question After the Sixth Congress" and "Who Is Leading the Comintern Today?" The book also contains Trotsky'S foreword to the 1930 French edition, which included all four· of the above documents, along with an introduction written by the Prometheus Research Library. The PRL is the cen tral reference archive of the Spartacist League, U.S. section of the ICL. The central document in the book is "The Draft Program of the Communist International: A Criticism of Fundamen tals," which consists of three sections: "The Program of International Revolu tion or a Program of Socialism in One Country?", "Strategy and Tactics in the Imperialist Epoch" and "Summary and Leon Trotsky, 1929 Perspectives of the Chinese Revolution." In this and the second document, "What Now?" Trotsky extended to the whole A limited number of copies of The Communist International After Lenin are available outside of the ex-USSR. of the Communist International the Left $25 (includes postage). NY State residents add 8.25% sales tax. NJ residents add 6% sales tax. ISBN 5-900696-01-4 Opposition's struggle against the consol Order from/make checks payable to: Spartacist Publishing Company, Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 USA idating conservative nationalist bureauc racy in the Soviet Union, which sought Kamenev, and after Kamenev and Zinov necessity of the proletariat taking power munist International After Lenin [The above all to ensure itself a comfortable iev broke with Stalin, by Bukharin/Stalin. in the coming Russian Revolution-to Great Organizer of Defeat]). In 1936 an standard of living in a ravaged coun These policies had led fledgling Commu other countries of belated capitalist entirely new English translation of the try. This bureaucracy usurped political nist parties around the world to centrist development like China. Trotsky's Per "Critique" and "What Now?" from the power in the Soviet Union in 1923-24, vacillation, opportunism and disaster. manent Revolution (1929) was written original Russian manuscripts was pub and it first adopted as its program The latter was particularly the case in as a sequel to this document. lished by Pioneer Publishers as The Third "socialism in one country" (and at a China, where Zinoviev/Stalin's subordi With its sweeping analysis, the "Crit International After Lenin. John G. Wright snail's pace), only to be forced by a nation of the Chinese Communist Party icism of Fundamentals" comprises a (Joseph Vanzler) was the translator; the kulak grain strike in 1928 into a to the bourgeois-nationalist Kuomintang handbook of communist strategy. The volume was edited by Max Shachtman, program of fotted collectivization and (KMT) was maintained even in the face document had very restricted circulation at the time the principal literary exponent maximum industrialization. With the of overwhelming evidence that KMT at the Sixth Comintern Congress, poorly of Trotskyism in the United States. This post-1934 great purges this bureaucracy leaders viewed their Communist "allies" translated and bowdlerized, and only in English-language edition, still available sought to free itself from all connection as far more of a danger than the warlords numbered copies handed out to delegates as a Pathfinder Press reprint (minus with Lenin's revolutionary internation and foreign imperialists. As a result, the who were members of the Program Com Shachtman's introduction), remains the alist Bolshevik Party. Second Chinese Revolution of 1925-27 mission. But despite the fact that the definitive foreign-language edition. Prior to 1928 the Left Opposition's was derailed, ending in the KMT's seminal "Strategy and Tactics in the Trotsky's critique was crucial to the struggle had been contained within the bloody suppression of the Communist Imperialist Epoch" was missing from the extension of the Left Opposition beyond Russian Communist Party. "What Now?" Party and the Chinese workers move circulated English translation, the revo the borders of the Soviet Union. In par and Trotsky's criticism of the draft pro ment. It was_ in his analysis of the lutionary focus and power of Trotsky's ticular, it served to distinguish the inter gram provided to the International the Chinese experience in the critique of analysis and program were clear to nationalist prograrri of the Trotskyists Opposition's scathing critique. qJ the the Comintern's draft program that Trot James P. Cannon and Maurice Spector, from the "Right Opposition" that crys policies imposed on the Comintern from sky definitively generalized his theory who were delegates to the Congress from tallized around Bukharin after Stalin 1923-1928, first by Zinoviev, as part of 'of permanent revolution-developed in the U.S. and Canadian CPs. Cannon and dumped him in 1929. Trotsky had the "Troika" together with Stalin and 1905 to explain both the possibility and Spector smuggled this partial translation warned that the nationalist dogma of out of the country and used it to recruit "socialism in one country" would lead to adherents for the Left Opposition. the growth of centrifugal social-patriotic It was the partial and poor English tendencies within the Comintern. And translation brought back from Moscow indeed, a leading German spokesman which was published by the American of the Right Opposition, August Thal Trotskyists in 1928-29, first in the Mil heimer, in his 1928 "Critique of the Draft itant in serialized form and then as a Program of the Communist Interna pamphlet with a never-reprinted intro tional" (which has only recently been duction by Cannon. Cannon described obtained from the Institute for the His Trotsky's document as "a searchlight in tory of the Workers Movement in Ber the fog of official propaganda, scholas lin), dismissed the need for a unitary ticism and administrative decree which program for international socialist revo has been substituted for the ideological lution, stressing the need for "freedom leadership of the Executive Committee and independence" and repeatedly urg of the Communist International in earlier ing "the non-Russian parties" to work years." out the "special characteristics" for "the Later in 1929 the complete text of the building of socialism in their countries." critique of the Comintern program was Internationally, the discarded bureau published in Germany in Volkswille. The crats of the Right Opposition evolved section on "Strategy and Tactics in the increasingly to the right, toward making Imperialist Epoch" was translated from peace with "their" capitalist rulers, and the German by Max Shachtman and in the case of the American Jay Love published as a pamphlet, "The Strategy stone eventually to direct collaboration of the World Revolution," by the Com with Western intelligence agencies. munist League of America in Novem After ousting Bukharin, Stalin's Com Russian Center for the Preservation and Study of Modern History Documents Sixth Congress of Communist International, 1928. Trotsky's documents in ber 1930. The French edition published intern zigzagged through the ostensibly The Communist International After Lf}nin, written for the Congress, were that year was titled L'Internationale leftist stupidities of the "Third Period," devastating indictment of Stalin/Bukharin's nationalist dogma of "socialism Communiste apres Lenine (Le Grand including equating Social Democracy in one country." Organisateur de la Defaite) (The Com- with fascism (the infamous "social- 8 WORKERS VANGUARD fascism" thesis), prostrating the power centrally with these developments. partism," February 1935). Especially "None of the material in this volume ful German working class in the face of But Shachtman's introduction was after the Seventh Congress, which sig was ever published in the Russian lan Hitler's rise to power in 1933. Recoiling flawed in that it continued to describe naled the passage of the Com intern guage .... If more than one pair of eyes from the German disaster, in 1935 Stalin Stalinism as "bureaucratic centrism." to reformism, the term "bureaucratic saw them in Russia, it was only because turned the Communist International to Already in February 1935, soon after centrism" disappeared from Trotsky's painfully multi-typed copies were dis full-blown class collaboration, commit Stalin began the massive purges which own writings. In October 1937 he wrote tributed from hand to hand among the ting the French Communist Party to followed the assassination of Kirov, a letter to Cannon criticizing the Amer Oppositionists in exile." The publication social-patriotism with the Stalin-Laval Trotsky I;ad noted that the social basis ican section for continuing to use the of The Communist International After pact. This was generalized in the policy for the characterization of the Soviet term: Lenin in Russia today finally brings these of the "People's Front," announced with bureaucracy as centrist was changing: "Some comrades continue to charac documents to readers in the land of their great fanfare by Georgi Dimitrov at the "As the bureaucracy becomes more in terize Stalinism as 'bureaucratic cen origin, 66 years after they were written Seventh World Congress that year and dependent, as more and more power trism.' This characterization is now by Trotsky and 64 years after they were totally out of date. On the international consummated with the Stalinist sabotage is concentrated in the hands of a sin arena Stalinism is no longer centrism, first published in full abroad. of the Spanish Revolution. Max Shacht gle person, the more does bureaucratic but the crudest form of opportunism and We publish below a translation of the man's lengthy 1936 introduction to The centrism tum into Bonapartism" ("The social patriotism. See Spain!" Prometheus Research Library'S intro Third International After Lenin dealt Workers' State, Thermidor and Bona- In his introduction, Shachtman noted: duction to the new volume. 1n~¢~en;{tfl~I~~{\ by .. Pr~JJ.l~~e~.$~~lt: e publish here a collection of doc been initiated by Lenin himself-in W uments written by Leon Trotsky December 1922, he made a bloc with which synthesized the Left Opposition's Trotsky to fight Stalin and even proposed programmatic counterposition to Stalin to remove Stalin as General Secretary. ism on key international questions. The While Lenin was alive, Stalin's bu first two documents in the collection, reaucratic abuses (such as those com "The Draft Program of the Communist mitted against the Georgian Commu International: A Criticism of Fundamen nists) had not yet acquired an overt tals" and "What Now?" codified the polit~ political program. But less than one year ical intervention of the Left Opposition after Lenin's untimely death in January into the Sixth Congress ofthe Communist 1924, Stalin announced the theory of International (Comintern-CI) in 1928 "socialism in one country." This was an and were critically important to the inter explicit repudiation of the revolutionary and Study of Modern History Documents national extension ofthe Left Opposition. internationalist program upon which the James P. Cannon at Red Army event during Sixth Congress of the Communist In addition to these two documents, Bolshevik Party of Lenin and Trotsky International, 1928. we also include "The Chinese Question had led the October 1917 Revolution After the Sixth Congress" and "Who which created the world's first work- haps initially a rationale for its position, Now?" to the Sixth Congress in order Is Leading the Com intern Today?" . ers state. Up until early 1924, all the "socialism in one country" became the both to refute the Stalinists' false "the which completed the 1930 French edi Bolshevik leaders-including Stalin bureaucracy's justification for existence. ories" and to expose the miserable record tion of The Communist International acknowledged that the revolution's only This doctrine born of defeat was to breed of failures the CI suffered under their After Lenin. In his 1929 foreword to the prospect for survival was its extension many others. leadership, such as the knifing of the French edition, Trotsky declared this col to one or more of the advanced capitalist At the Sixth Congress of the Comin 1925-1927 Chinese Revolution and the lection to be "the one and only edition countries, especially Germany. A critical tern in 1928, Stalin & Co. sought to undermining of the 1926 British General for which I bear responsibility before the turning point was the failure of the 1923 enshrine "socialism in one country" into Strike. readers." These works have never before German Revolution, which meant the the CI's program. Trotsky'S scathing At this point, Trotsky characterized been published in the Russian language. prospect of a lengthy period of isolation response, "The Draft Program of the the Stalinist bureaucracy as a centrist By the summer and fall of 1928, when for the Soviet workers state. Stalin Communist International: A Criticism of excrescence in control of a party still these documents were written, Trotsky became the spokesman for the growing Fundamentals," which is the core of this capable of being reformed and polemi and his supporters had carried on five bureaucratic layer in the party and state book, speaks powerfully both as an ex cized against those among Stalin's oppo years of P9litical combat against the apparatus for whom material privilege position of Marxist clarity and revolu nents who wanted to declare the party bureaucratic degeneration of the CPSU and official posts had become more tionary internationalism. He submitted dead. Even after their expulsion in 1928, and the Comintern. This struggle had important than the world revolution. Per- this document and the letter "What continued on page 10 Moscow Meeting Greets Publication n April 25, over 40 people-attended Trotsky'S book in Boris Yeltsin's coun O an International Communist League. terrevolutionary Russia. Many historical meeting in Moscow to greet the publi-· of Trotsky Book and political books in Russia today are cation of the first-ever Russian edition published with small press runs and dis of The Communist International After tributed only locally, given astronomical Lenin. Those in attendance included rep rises in production costs and the disin resentatives from a wide spectrum of tegration of the distribution networks of political views, including supporters of the old planned economy. In contrast, several ostensibly Trotskyist tendencies 1 he Communist International After in Russia, as well as members of some Lenin had a press run of 25,000 and is of the groups claiming the Stalinist her being distributed in Houses of Political itage of the old Communist Party of the Books and across the territory of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Those present former USSR from Dnepropetrovsk to included an academic exponent of Niko Leningrad, Chelyabinsk, Vorkuta and lai Bukharin's Right Opposition and a beyond to Warsaw and Berlin. journalist from Pravda. What was strik The ICL speaker noted the difficulties ing was the genuine appreciation for this involved in this enterprise: "From the book expressed by almost all those in time that we acquired the original Rus the divergent audience, which included sian texts from the Trotsky Archives in students from Moscow University and Harvard and set about this project, it has Patrice Lumumba University as well as been a challenge to get this book out. workers who had read ICL literature dis Several potential publishers were scared tributed at factory gates. Thirty-nine cop off by our introduction which contains ~Spartacist ies of the new Trotsky volume were sold, First Russian edition of The Communist International After Lenin is presented a forthright statement on the vital impor as well as a good deal of other ICL at April 25 ICl meeting at the House of Journalists, Moscow. tance of this book in the struggle against literature. capitalist counterrevolution in general, A spokesman for the ICL explained nist International After Lenin were key founded in 1938, embodied the program and Yeltsin's August 1991 barricades, in the significance of the fight of the Left to ensuring the maintenance, though out and continuity of the Communist Inter particular. 'It will never get past the cen Opposition against the degeneration of side the USSR, of the revolutionary Len national of Lenin's time. sors!' some said. the Russian Revolution. The 1928 Trot inist current which led the Russian Rev The ICL spokesman went on to "When we finally did settle with a sky writings published in The Commu- olution. Trotsky's Fourth International, describe the challenge of publishing continue.d on page 11 10 JUNE 1994 9 Russian Edition ... (continued from page 9) Trotsky and the Left Opposition refused to abandon the CPSU to Stalin as long as there appeared the slightest possibility of reversing the bureaucratic degenera tion from within. However, in his 1935 article, "The Workers' State, Thermidor and Bonapartism," Trotsky revised his analysis of the triumph of the bureauc racy 'and the analogy to the overthrow of the radical Jacobins during the French Revolution: no "In the internal controversies of the Rus Trotsky's work exposed Stalin's policy of subordinating Chinese CP to Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang which led to sian and the International Opposition, we mass slaughter of Communist workers. Above left: Armed workers militias In Shanghai, 1927. conditionally understood by Therrnidor the first stage of the bourgeois counter many would signify an inevitable war France and Greece, Stalinism enabled upset the imperialists, the coup leaders revolution, aimed against the social base against the USSR." Yet in 1933, follow capitalism to survive, and thus prepared capitulated to the imperialist-backed of the workers state .... "The overturn of the Ninth Therrnidor ing Hitler's assumption of power, there the way for its own ultimate demise. Yeltsinites. did not liquidate the basic conquests of was not one significant manifestation of In the blood purges of the late 1930s, In the subsequent 18 months, and in the bourgeois revolution, but it did trans factional opposition, let alone a split, Stalin liquidated a substantial portion of the absence of any leadership to mobilize fer the power into the hands of the more within the CI against the disastrous the Red Army's commanding officers the atomized Soviet proletariat, a piece moderate and conservative Jacobins, the better-to-do elements of bourgeois soci line of the Stalinist leadership. The ser an action which played a major role in meal consolidation of bourgeois coun ety. Today it is impossible to overlook vile acquiescence of the parties of the the terrible defeats suffered by the USSR terrevolution took place. The degener that in the Soviet Thermidor also a shift CI underlined for Trotsky two funda in the early stages of the Nazi invasion. ated workers state of Stalin and his heirs, to the right took place a long time ago, mental conclusions. First, despite the At enormous cost to the Soviet peoples resting on the social foundations of the a shift entirely analogous to Thermidor, revolutionary aspirations of much of its in and out of uniform, Hitler's forces October Revolution, was destroyed, rep although much slower in tempo and more marked in form .... working-class base, the Comintern had were ultimately defeated, leading also to resenting a world-historic defeat for the "The smashing of the Left Opposition become simply a creature of Stalin and the formation of bureaucratically degen international working class. Today, a implied in the most direct and immediate his faction; and second, rectification of erated workers states in East Europe. The socialist revolution is needed to sweep sense the transfer of power from the this situation could no longer be pursued multinational Soviet proletariat and its away the emerging capitalist class. hands of the revolutionary vanguard into the hands of the more conservative ele within the framework of an internal fac Red Army were fighting to defend the Who is responsible for this catas ments among the bureaucracy and the tion. A decisive political and organiza Soviet Union, homeland of October. But trophe? Above all, the Stalinists. In upper crust of the working class. The tional break was now necessary-the Stalin did not fight the war in the name the 1920s, Stalin destroyed the party of year I 924-that was the beginning of the Stalin faction had so effectively stran of "socialism" or even under the banner Lenin by negating the essence of its pro Soviet Thermidor." gled the CPSU and the CI that its of defense of the first workers state. gram; later he killed its cadres. By July At the same time, Trotsky was clear that removal could only be secured by force, Rather, he proclaimed it the "Great Patri 1933, Trotsky noted: "The present CPSU the victory of the Stalin faction did not that is, by a proletarian political revolu otic War"-to be fought in defense of is not a party but an apparatus of dom signify a capitalist counterrevolution; tion. The continued rule of the conser the Rodina (motherland), that is, explic ination in the hands of an uncontrolled rather "this usurpation was made possi vative bureaucratic caste, as the experi itly on the basis of Russian nationalism. bureaucracy" ("It Is Necessary to Build ble and can maintain itself only because ence of Germany showed, represented a Communist Parties and an International the social content of the dictatorship of mortal threat to the further existence of Stalinism in Terminal Decline Anew"). In the end, the CPSU collapsed the hureaucracy is determined hy those the Soviet workers state. As Trotsky All of Stalin's heirs emerged from the under its own weight, demonstrating that productive relations that were created hy noted in his classic book The Revolution same political cesspool. Imbued with the without the lure of privilege and the the proletarian revolution." Betrayed: "Will the bureaucrat devour spirit of Russian nationalism inherent power of repression this "party" of 18 the workers' state, or will the working in "socialism in one country," they, like million members was simply a bureau Germany 1933: Decisive Test class clean up the bureaucrat? Thus cratic shell. Out of the cadaver crawled for the Comintern Stalin, practiced crass class collaboration stands the question upon whose decision under the rubric of "peaceful coexist all sorts of maggots, from pro-imperialist What prompted Trotsky'S reassess hangs the fate of the Soviet Union." ence" with imperialism. Gorbachev took "democrats" to neo-tsarist fascists. As ment of Thermidor and the nature of the With the CPSU and the CI dead as this to its logical conclusion, by treach for those remnants seeking to claim the bureaucracy was the victory of Hitler in instruments of revolution, Trotsky began erously abandoning Afghanistan to the mantle (and properties!) of the old CPSU, 1933, a historic defeat for the German to organize and regroup cadres for a new imperialist-backed mujahedin cutthroats, what they want to recreate is not the party and world proletariat which can be laid International. Even some of his support then giving the green light to capital of October but the bureaucratic machine directly at ~talin's door. In 1928, in the ers thought this was "premature," and to ist counterrevolution throughout East which destroyed it. face of a virtual kulak insurrection, a them he replied: "The proletariat has Europe. It was tlle Trotskyists-and they only panicked Stalin broke with Bukharin and need of an International at all times and In the USSR, Gorbachev opted for -who fought against the degeneration made a left turn on economic policy, under all conditions. If there is no Com "market reforms," leading to the aban of the Bolshevik Party. The documents implementing in his own brutal way sig intern today, we must say so openly and donment of planning in a planned econ printed below are important not only for nificant aspects of Trotsky's economic immediately start the preparation for a omy in 1988. Predictably this led to their content but also because they rep program. Especially in the sphere of new International" ("Success or Fail economic chaos, as managers looted resented the breakout of the Left Oppo industrialization, Stalin's actions dra ure?" September 1933). It was to this their enterprises and speculators flour sition internationally. As members of the matically vindicated Trotsky's five-year vital task that Trotsky dedicated the ished. Once the political monopoly of Program Commission at the Sixth Con long struggle against the rightist course. remaindeL of his life, right up to his the bureaucracy was broken in 1989, the gress of the CI, American Communist However, the Stalinists' "left" turn was assassination by a Stalinist agent in CPSU was openly divided into hostile Party leader James P. Cannon and lead accompanied internationally' hy the so August 1940. factions, all of which ultimately ac ing Canadian communist Maurice Spec called "Third Period" policy of sectarian As Trotsky warned in the 1928 docu cepted the inevitability of capitalist res tor read translated excerpts of Trotsky's opposition to the' tactic of the united' ments below, adoption of the dogma of toration. The real squabbles between "Criticism." Convinced of its correct front and to the official trade unions, led "socialism in one country" (which he them amounted to at what pace and in analyses, Cannon returned to the U.S. by the Social Democrats. characterized as a form of national ref particular who would get possession of and founded the American Trotskyist With the onset of the Great Depres ormism) by the CI would inevitably lead the state property built up over decades movement along with supporters from sion in 1929, Germany was thrown into to its demise. He noted in his "Criticism by the blood and sweat of the Soviet within the American CP; Spector did a profound social crisis, one posing of Fundamentals" that: "It will be the workers. likewise in the Canadian party. Thereby the question: which class shall rule? beginning of the disintegration of the The "socialist" veneer of the compet they established a significant extension The bourgeoisie mobilized the shock Comintern along the lines of social ing Stalinists was discarded as if this of the forces of the Left Opposition on troops of fascism to smash the organ patriotism." This forecast turned out to threadbare mantle were contaminated the North American continent, the cita ized workers and maintain the rule of be prophetic: in its panicked reaction to with leprosy. In the republics of the del of world imperialism. This provided capital. United in struggle against the Hitler's victory, the CI began implement USSR, Stalinist hacks made an easy much of the slender thread of revolu Nazi threat, the German communist and ing and in 1935 formally adopted the transition to nationalism, often in the tionary continuity which is today embod social-democratic workers could have policy of "people's fronts"-the subor company of outright fascists. Faced with ied in the International Communist stopped the fascists and paved the way dination of the workers parties to those the imminent breakup of the USSR, League (Fourth Internationalist). for a German proletarian revolution of the supposedly "progressive" bour some of Gorbachev's lieutenants moved For decades, the Stalinist betrayers something for which Trotsky repeatedly geois forces in the fight against fascism. against him in August 1991, not to sought to keep the workers atomized agitated. The Social Democracy, acting The CI had been transformed into an defend "socialism," but to defend the and, through lies and terror, sought to as a prop of German capitalism, refused instrument for the Kremlin's diplomatic perks and sinecures they possessed as erase every vestige of revolutionary to mobilize the working class against the maneuvers, an agency for shackling the part of the bureaucratic machine which and internationalist consciousness. This fascists. And Stalin, dubbing the Social international proletariat to its imperialist ruled the degenerated workers state. book embodies the essential core of the Democracy the "left wing of fascism," rulers. Even a small disciplined mobilization revolutionary internationalist program refused to allow joint workers' action. Stalin suppressed the Spanish Revo of the Moscow workers could have eas Trotsky sought to implement, first within Thus, in this critical juncture, the Ger lution in the late 1930s in a bid to curry ily dispersed the counterrevolutionary the CI and later with the Fourth Inter man Communist Party, following Sta favor with his hoped-for "democratic" rabble on Yeltsin's barricades. But the national. It is imperative that the political lin's pronouncements, failed to provide imperialist allies against Nazi Germany. pathetic GKChP [the coup plotters' heirs of the proletariat which made the the proletariat a revolutionary way out As a gift to his wartime imperialist "State Committee"] told the workers to October Revolution reclaim their true of the crisis. The result was that Hitler "allies," Stalin liquidated the Commu stay home, fearing to unleash forces revolutionary birthright. We therefore came to power virtually without a shot nist Internationa.l with the stroke of a which could have opened the way to pro present these vital historical documents being fired. _ pen in 1943. Then, by selling out revo letarian political revolution against all to the working people of the former In November 1931, Trotsky had lutionary opportunities at the end of sections of the fragmented bureaucracy. Soviet Union. warned that a "victory of fascism in Ger- World War II, particularly in Italy, Opposed to any measures that could 22 June 1993 10 WORKERS VANGUARD and opposing the administration did not administration responded by trying to contrary, when Richard Bradley, a sup S.F. State ... mean defending anti-Semitism. But it ban the SYL. Now the "free speech" lib porter of the Spartacist League and the of the ACLU, who go to bat-and (continued from page 7) was a polarization that was fueled not erals Labor Black League for Social Defense, only by the riot-equipped cops but by to court-in defense of the Klan's scaled the flagpole and tore down the alibi, seconded by some Palestinian the abject racist hypocrisy of the powers "right" to mobilize for genocide, weigh Confederate flag, the Chronicle re nationalists, serves only to reinforce the that be. To hear Corrigan intoning that in on the side of the administration, sponded by smearing the SL as "violent." Zionist lie that anti-Zionism is anti "enforced silence is poisonous" at grad arguing that "artistic freedom" only The SF State administration promises Semitism. All of this crap does not take uation ceremonies when police snipers applies to murals in art galleries not in that they will allow a new mural of place in a vacuum. The poisonous rav are stationed on surrounding roofs, to public places. Malcolm X, one that doesn't "offend" ings of Louis ("Hitler was a great man") listen to the administration paying hom This refrain was taken up by the edi anybody, to be painted next fall. To Farrakhan and Khallid Muhammad are age to "multiculturalism," is too much torialists of the San Francisco Chronicle equate Malcolm X with anti-Semitism is gaining some currency among middle to stomach. Everybody knows that when (26 May) who opined, "the Malcolm X a grotesque slander. But where the black class black students. With fewer oppor it is a question of racism against blacks mural is not intended as a gallery or nationalists and the administration have tunities for advancement in this racist it is a different story. museum piece. Rather, its continual a meeting of minds is in their portrayal society, many within this layer are In 1975, liberal professor Ted Keller display in a public building would appear of Malcolm as a man who believed in the attracted, to Farrakhan's appeals to invited Nazis to spew their anti-black, to give the university'S institutional en "economic development" of the black "uplift the race" by keeping the swelling anti-Semitic, genocidal filth at one of dorsement to its content." But when the ghetto within the framework and under black "underclass" down-i.e., so that his classes. The administration mobi Confederate flag of the Southern slavoc the rules set by white-dominated Amer petty-bourgeois blacks can find careers lized the cops to protect the Nazis. When racy flew in SF's Civic Center, a highly ican capitalism. to ,uplift themselves as exploiters of a united-front protest of 150 students and public place, the Chronicle did not find SYC member Joe Sol spoke of the "their own people." workers, initiated by the Spartacus Youth this an "institutional endorsement" of Malcolm X that we commemorate in his The SF State student government, League, drove the Nazis off campus, the anti-black racism and Klan terror. On the remarks at the debate over the SF State which hired Dennis, is simply a bunch mural: of junior porkbarrelers. But in the teeth o-< C "Malcolm X believed and stated very ::J of the administration's police attacks (Q forcefully that black people must fight en on the mural, they palmed themselves "0 for equality 'by any means necessary.' off as "fight the power" radicals. What '" The necessary means to fight against rac oiir ist oppression is working-class revolu a charade! These guys will readily call c (J) tion to smash the rule of capitalism the cops when it suits their purpose. The which breeds racist degradation. We of charges against Professor Lyles are the the Spartacus Youth Club fight for rev result of a "citizen's arrest" made by one Students rally olutionary integrationism-the under of the mural defenders! Nonetheless at S.F. State on standing that black freedom will not be their appeals to "free speech" as against May 25 to won short of workers revolution and that there will be no workers revolution Corrigan and his riot-equipped cops protest painting over Malcolm X unless the cause of black freedom is enabled them to draw some support from mural by actively championed by a fighting labor students who otherwise did not subscribe administration. movement. When the integrated working to the mural's anti-Semitism. class in this country makes that revolu tion, Malcolm X will be honored by This was a false polarization-oppo black and white alike as a courageous sition to the mural's anti-Semitism did fighter and a martyr for the cause of the not mean supporting the administration, liberation of humanity.". having stood on Trotsky'S "outdated" and forgotten nothing, the spokesman for and the very basis of the Soviet workers Moscow program of military defense of the Soviet Pravda insisted that because Russia was state. It was an embrace of the bourgeois Union against imperialist attack and moving toward colonial status in the Great Russian derzhava [strong state] internal counterrevolution. What these imperialist world market, it was "anti that has now come spilling out. And this Meeting ... pseudo-Trotskyists hate in particular imperialist" struggle, not proletarian rev nationalism is not monopolized by the (continued from page 9) since they all sided with Yeltsin's "dem olution, which stood on the agenda. Stalinists, it is shared by the social dem ocrats" in August 1991-was our forth What this "anti-imperialism" means in ocrats and fake-Trotskyists. publisher, our next immediate hurdle to right call on the Russian working class practice today is an obscene "red-brown" "We published this book so that we overcome was the collapse of the pub to disperse the counterrevolutionary coalition with Russian fascists and would have a common language with lishing industry: paper and printing forces mobilized on Yeltsin's barricades. monarchists. subjective revolutionaries: the language prices were climbing every week. Our The mountebanks of David North's It was in answer to arguments such as and understanding of communist inter editorial commission-which stretched International Committee, who today pos these that the ICL speaker declared that nationalism and revolutionary princi from here in Moscow, to the Prometheus ture as "orthodox" Trotskyists, chose to Stalinism's terminal coUapse in 1991-92 ples. Today, every political activist who Research Library in New York, to the remain silent on the question of Soviet confirmed, in the negative, Lenin and hopes for a better life for humanity must PRL-West in the San Francisco Bay defensism, covering up their own past Trotsky'S argument for revolutionary learn of the content of this work. Area-worked as quickly as possible. as cheerleaders for each and every coun internationalism: either we expropriate "We are at a crossroads. There can be But at the sam$! time we worked method terrevolutionary threat to the USSR, the imperialist world market and estab no return to the Soviet Union of Stalin ically, to ensure that our galleys were from the Afghan mullahs to Polish lish an internationally planned economy, and his heirs. The question is not whether worthy of Trotsky's original manuscript. Solidarnosc. The Northites objected or we will be plunged into the barbarism Russia as a nation will be degraded. The "The challenge of the political con instead to the ICL's exposure of their of imperialist counterrevolution. question is whether Russia will be a vehi juncture in which we worked can be "Security and the Fourth International" He continued, "For many years of iso cle for imperialism as in Bosnia, or a illustrated in one small example: our slander campaign, which maligns many lation and imperialist encirclement, the force for social liberation in Eurasia. We final consultation with our proofreader of Trotsky'S closest collaborators as Russian nationalism of 'socialism in one share with Trotsky the commitment to (out of the seven stages that we put our KGB agents (and simultaneously CIA country' was passed off as 'Soviet patri the latter, which now requires a socialist galleys through) had to be postponed agents!). The Northites thus obscenely otism.' But at bottom, this nationalism revolution to re-establish the working because it fell on 3 October 1993, the echo the Stalinist lie that Trotsky was was a rejection of the October Revolution class as the ruling class."_ day that street fighting began in response killed by hi~r "own" people. to Yeltsin's September putsch, culminat Back ,in 1990, Fred Weir, the Gorba ing in his Bloody Monday White-House chevite Moscow reporter for the Stalinist massacre. When the s!11oke cleared from Canadian Tribune, gave evidence that around the bombed-out White House, even longtime CP hacks can sometimes James P. Cannon and the Early Years newspapers and parties were banned, recognize empirical r~ality (after a few hundreds had been killed and jailed, decades) when he admitted in a couple of American Communism and thousands of so-called 'foreigners' of Canadian speeches that the idea of deported in a state-run pogrom. building an "isolated socialist state" Selected Writings and Speeches, 1920-1928 "But Yeltsin and his IMF masters were had proved something of a failure. (For still not able to bring down the iron hand this Gorbachevite, the failure of "social The book includes: of bonapartist dictatorship as firmly ism in one country" was an argument • Ext~nsively documented as they wished. Along with producing for moving to a full-blown capitalist introduction the supplement, 'Yeltsin's Coup Serves "market economy.") Weir's admission Washington!' the ICL threw itself with exposed the essential nationalism under • Explanatory footnotes for renewed speed into getting this book out lying Stalinist dogma; he never sought Cannon's text as quickly as possible. to explain why the "already existing • 16 pages of rare historical "This book is for us not a commercial socialist states" in East Europe, the photographs venture but a political act by the ICL in Soviet Union and China remained "iso the struggle against the counterrevolu lated" from each other-and particularly • Glossary of names and terms tion that has ravaged the former Soviet from proletarian revolution in 'the ad- with over 200 entries bloc." vanced capitalist countries. ~ • Bibliography of Cannon's works, The discussion period fully reflected But the current pathetic remnants of 1912-1928 the diversity of views present at the the old Soviet bureaucracy, as reflected ICL meeting. The revisionism of many in the remarks of the Pravda reporter at • Index of the currents who today claim the our Moscow meeting, don't even aspire 624 pages, smyth-sewn binding mantle of the Fourth International was to Weir's crass empiricism. Stalinism Paperback $14.50 ISBN 0-9633828-1-0 glaringly obvious. Russian supporters strangled the Communist International New York State residents add 8.25% sales tax, of Cliff Slaughter's British Workers as a revolutionary organization, sabotag , Shipping and handling: $3.50 Revolutionary Party and of Rabotchaya ing promising revolutionary situations Demokratiya (formerly affiliated with the around the globe for 60 years, all in the Order from/make checks payable to: British Militant group) got up to praise , Spartacist Publishing Company, vain pursuit of an illusory "peaceful Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 The Communist International After coexistence" with imperialism. Proving Lenin .. . and fulminate against the ICL for that the Stalinists have learned nothing 10 JUNE 1994 11 cent ofthe budget to the heralded "Recon oppose a vote to the ANC on the basis native list (like WOSA or the Azanian South Africa ... struction and Development Program," of class principle and called for a vote Peoples' Organisation [AZAPO])" then Mandela's inaugural speech to parlia to the WLP. Among them were Socialist "we will join with them" (Revolutionary (continued from page 16) ment "seemed tailored more for corporate Organiser (S.O.) and Workers Power Fighter, April/May 1994). Leaving aside donning 'democratic' trappings .... How boardrooms than the townships where (WP) in Britain. But where we fight for the fact that the militant nationalists ever, just as the struggles of the black many of South Africa's poor blacks live," a revolutionary party, a Bolshevik oppo of AZAPO called for an impotent boy toilers for freedom and equality broke noted the Washington Post (25 May). sition to the ANC, these groups are look cott of the elections, what this evasive down the old apartheid system, so Writing to South African supporters ing to create a South African version of gobbledygook amounts to is saying they they will break down the neo-apartheid 'power sharing' deal between the Rand six decades ago, Leon Trotsky outlined British Labourism, a Menshevik party to will vote for the bourgeoisie, unless lords and their new black front men." the policy of a communist vanguard tail after the ANC with a fig leaf of there is a reformist force big enough to The South African elections were an toward the ANC, which then as now was "independence. " chase after. The RIL's American coun acid test for the left, and for a host of the hegemonic organization of black Af Again the question of the state is terpart, Leland Sanderson's Revolution groups dramatically exposed their social rican toilers: "The Bolshevik-Leninists the touchstone. S.O. supported the use ary Workers League, has yet to pro ist pretensions. In backing Mandela's unmask before the native masses the of the apartheid army in the KwaZulu nounce itself on the South African ANC, whether openly or with a fig leaf inability of the Congress to achieve the bantustan: "socialists should support the elections (or to bring out a paper in the of "independence," they were making realization of even its own demands, use of force--even by the SADF-to last five months). common cause with their "own" bour because of its superficial, conciliatory ensure that the elections take place Meanwhile, Ernest Mandel's United geois rulers. This is not surprising from policy" ("On the South African Theses," in Natal KwaZulu" (Socialist Organiser, Secretariat (USec) seems to have a bad those who had earlier called for sanctions April 1935). Yet today many of those 14 April). To preach illusions in the case of conflicting opportunist appetites. by the imperialist governments and cap who claim to be Trotskyist, rather than fascist-infested and racist SADF (now Prior to WOSA's decision to put up the italist corporations to pressure the apart unmasking the ANC and waging a fight rebaptized the SANDF) is the height of Workers List, the USec's International heid regime. They may see this as their for proletarian power, are building sup opportunist folly, for it is precisely these Viewpoint (February 1994) promoted victory, but for the South African masses port for the new black bourgeois co forces that will be unleashed by the "the idea of calling for a vote for it means that a black president and cabinet rulers. In a May 16 speech in New York, ANClDe Klerk government against the the ANC while running an independent ministers will now order the army and Peter Taaffe, leader of the British Mili black masses! campaign of immediate democratic and state machinery carried over from apart tant Labour tendency, opposed the call Workers Power argues that in South social demands"-i.e., putting up a heid to crack down on black township for a workers party now in South Africa, Africa, "The workers do not need the phony militant platform to cover for a squatters and striking workers. The ANC vote to the bourgeois-nationalist ANC. in office cannot deliver any of the Workers Power (May 1994) reports that demands of its base. The MandelalDe South African USec supporters "with Kler\c regime sits atop a powder keg. WIIi/(EIiS...... ""'(J'II/).,., 25. drew from WOSA, condemning the deci .. _- sion to stand against the ANC." In its In different guises, the SWP's line was that of the entire reformist left. The April edition, International Viewpoint granddaddy of them all, the Communist printed a financial appeal for WOSA, while skeptically commenting about the Party USA, headlined "South Africa ICL told the truth. ANClOe Ilerk Deal Is Workers List: "It remains to be seen Vote: 'Revolution by Ballot'" (People's "Power sharing" Weekly World, 30 April). Veteran Stalin deal preserves Betrayal 01 Black Freedom which approach is the most pedagogical ist leader Gus Hall surely envies his neo-apartheid and constructive towards the hundreds South African counterpart, the SACP's capitalism, as of political and trade union activist mem Joe Slovo, who is now housing minister power of black bers of the ANC and SACP who will in in the MandelalDe Klerk government, proletariat is their majority vote for the ANC ticket." shackled to having been elected along with a slew The dispersed American USec sup bourgeoisie of other CP ministers on the ANC ticket. porters, both Socialist Action (May 1994) through nationalist and the Bulletin in Defense of Marxism In the same vein, Sam Marcy's Stalinoid popular front. ~~II 11 y ..,.,,, .. , "",_,10" , .. (May/June 1994), reprinted interviews Workers World (5 May) glowed that the ------~-- :;;~,:'::~:"':~~~:'t;.~:;:., ~ For a BolsheVik Workers Partvl ...,...... ·1<"' ... 011 j"'"on 12 WORKERS VANGUARD Denny's Bosses Agree to Pay Black Victims of Jim Crow Racism On May 24, the Denny's restaurant chain agreed to pay $45.7 million (plus another $8.7 million in lawyer's fees) to settle two lawsuits on behalf of thousands of black customers who suffered outrageous racist mistreatment. For years, the 1,500-restaurant chain charged "cover charges" only to blacks, demanded that blacks and Hispanics (but not whites) "pre-pay," seated whites first, made blacks wait for hours or refused to serve them. Families who brought their kids in for advertised "free birthday meals" were treated like criminals and driven out. Denny's often called the cops on those who complained. Managers were even told to close up to avoid "blackouts" ("too many" black customers at one time). When Denny's policy of blatant, old-style segregation-three decades after the civil rights movement supposedly ended institutionalized Jim Crow racism-became a scandal last year, the Spar tacist League and Labor Black Leagues launched a nationwide campaign of protest demonstrations. On July 3, several hundred people joined militant, inte grated picket lines at Denny's restaurants in six loca tions: Los Angeles, the Bay Area, Chicago, Atlanta, Boston and the Washington, D.C. area-uniting unionists and students, black, white and Hispanic, to demand: "Down with Jim Crow at Denny's! For equal treatment, good service and food for all!" The protests WVPhoto Coast-to-coast demonstrations Initiated by the Spartacist League and Labor Black Leagues last July drew significant support from integrated unions, from brought out hundreds to protest Jim Crow discrimination at Denny's. Bay Area Rapid Transit workers to leaders of Chica go's transit workers union. Protesters raised the call: restaurants. Those who were humiliated, harassed and some "Fight this racist open shop-Unionize Denny's!" Rather than protesting the rampant discrimination times even arrested by Denny's racist bosses de Part of the $1.5 billion-a-year Flagstaff Corporation at Denny's, NAACP head Ben Chavis, a former civil serve every cent they get, however token. But the headquartered in Spartanburg, SC in the heart of the rights activist, sought to cut a deal for black busi settlement changes nothing. Don't expect racism to open-shop South, Denny's is a non-union outfit whose nessmen. Last July the NAACP signed an agreement stop at Denny's, or anywhere else in this racist country. racist, segregationist actions go hand in hand with for more black managers, black-owned franchises, The enforcers for the capitalist ruling class, from Clin vicious exploitation of its workers. Despite Flagstaff contracts for black advertising agencies and suppliers, ton's "Justice" department on down, are there to defend chairman Jerome Richardson's lying insistence that and a seat on Denny's board. Even this has been and perpetuate the racist social order which generates Denny's had "no policy ... to discriminate against any shortchanged by Denny's bosses, who have added no the type of vicious discrimination Denny's inflicted one," with the settlement Denny's has admitted its new black franchises while "minority businesses are on its victims. It took communist revolutionaries to guilt. Those who can "prove" they were victims of still receiving only a sliver" of Denny's dollars (Wall organize a simple act of anti-racist decency against these racist outrages are to get $25,000 each. Denny's Street Journal, 11 March). But the NAACP did get Jim Crow at Denny's. It will take a socialist revolution also agreed to "run checks" for racism at its a black member of the board. to root out racist oppression for good. cutoff of funds repatriated to the country demanded that 300 of the 8,000 rods be Korea ... from North Koreans resident in Japan. set aside for later determination whether Clinton & Co. are in a sticky posi any plutonium reactor by-products had (continued from page 16) tion. Alternating bluster about sanctions been diverted five years ago. Pyongyang capitulate, the U.S. began beefing up its with offers of diplomacy, they face a offered to negotiate an arrangement to formidable military garrison of 37,000 dilemma: "How' do you isolate the inspect key rods and has allowed IAEA troops south of the 38th parallel armistice world's most isolated country?" asked a inspectors on site. Even IAEA chief line, shipping in Patriot missile batter top South Korean official. "The truth is, Hans Blix denies that there has been any ies, Apache attack helicopters and spare it can't be done." As for· all-out war, the violation of the treaty, but the U.S. is parts for war planes. The Pentagon has Pentagon's own war scenarios project now pointing to North Korea's efficient dispatched the nuclear-powered aircraft that-even with a U.S. "win"-the result removal of the rods to justify its latest carrier Carl Vinson into the region, and would be devastation in the South. It has war threats. last week the Independence was placed occurred even to mad-dog Cold Warriors What imperialist arrogance! Estimates on full alert. De.spite reams of Penta like the New York Times' A.M. Rosenthal of the amount of plutonium North Korea gon/CIA "reports" that North Korea is that, while North Korea only has two may have managed to produce in its tiny readying to invade the South, the only small power-generating nuclear reactors, reactor are measured in grams. (It takes military buildup going on in Korea is South Korea has nine large ones, which 22 pounds of weapons-grade plutonium Washington's. if they were hit with conventional weap to make a single reliable A-bomb.) By The imperialist news media have onry would inundate the country with contrast, last month it was revealed by branded North Korea an "outlaw state," radioactive fallout. American scientists that the U.S. has like Saddam Hussein's Iraq on the eve "lost" more than 13,600 pounds of weap of the Persian Gulf slaughter. Heralding Nuclear "NonprOliferation" ons-grade plutonium from its Hanford Clinton's announcement, a rabid edito Hypocrisy Nuclear Reservation, enough for hun rial in the New York Times (1 June) Constantly bullied by International dreds of powerful A-bombs. With an warned that "time is running out" and Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) demands arsenal vast enough to blow up the world laid down a naked ultimatum that if many times over, the Pentagon has "AP for inspections of its power facilities, Pyongyang didn't bow to U.S. diktat, North Korea at first refused to allow nearly a thousand nuclear warheads Clinton traveled to border to threaten aimed just at North Korea. And the U.S. "it may leave the U.S. no recourse but North Korea. U.S. troops out of the these inspections and even threatened is the only country ever to use nuclear to seek economic sanctions and prepare Korean peninsula! to pull out of the NPT. But under the for any military reactions." Pyongyang constant pressure of the annual "Team weapons, incinerating some 200,000 has rightly denounced any economic adventure on the Korean peri insula. And Spirit" military maneuvers, in which people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and embargo as an "act of war." The manu no wonder, for Washington's purpose is U.S. and South Korean forces rehearse leaving a generation of maimed and mal factured nuclear scare is so transparent to throw around its military weight to an invasion of the North, Pyongyang formed babies. that the Washington Post (24 April) reassert its role as imperialist top dog in agreed to IAEA inspections, offering In the 1960s, it was discovered that reports from South Korea: "Even U.S. the Pacific Rim. China may well veto more than the treaty requires. Not satis hundreds of pounds of enriched uranium soldiers and airmen say Washington sanctions in the UN Security Council fied with anything but abject surrender, bomb material "lost" by the U.S. had recently has seemed gripped by a hys and Japan and South Korea balk at pro U.S. imperialism and its IAEA front men found their way to Israel. When Israeli teria about North Korea's nuclear pro voking the North. However, Tokyo and keep demanding new "conditions" every nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu gram that seems inappropriate .... " Seoul are now talking about supporting time the Kim II Sung government makes ,revealed to the world that. the Zionist The U.S. is playing a deadly game of economic measures against the North a concession. state had over 200 A-bombs, he was nuclear brinkmanship, alternating be even without a UN resolution. This is The latest round of escalation came slammed into a dungeon in the Negev tween bellicose threats and offers to crucial to Washington, since the only when the North started removing spent· desert, where he remains to this day. Yet "negotiate." The U.S. has had a hard time concrete action proposed against the fuel rods from its Yongbyon nuclear Washington has not so much as rapped lining up regional support for a military already isolated Pyongyang regime is the reactor late last month, and the IAEA continued on page 14 10 JUNE 1994 13 nomic sanctions, right-wing leaders like in Seoul. The "honeymoon" has long who was executed by the Japanese army. Korea ... Ishihara Shintaro have called for scrap been over for the Kim Young Sam Koreans in China and Manchuria were ping the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty. "reform" regime. As last summer's an important component of the Comin (continued from page 13) While giving verbal support to the strikes at Hyundai and the banning of tern's Shanghai Far Eastern Bureau. American threats, Japan-as the major the knuckles of its war-craz~d junior the student group Hanchongryon show, The first Comintern representative to partners in Tel Aviv, who still refuse to investor in Korea, South and North while the military is no longer formally set foot on Japanese soil was a Korean, sign the "Nonproliferation" treaty. Like seeks a more deliberate push toward in power, the state apparatus continues and many Korean youth studying in wise, South Africa's apartheid rulers counterrevolution in the North. Editorial to rule through naked military and police Tokyo joined the Japanese CPo Coura last year admitted to a cache of six comment in the Japanese bourgeois press terror. The bourgeoisie put Kim in power geous Korean Communists, dispatched bombs (developed in collaboration with continually urges North Korea to adopt to impose austerity cutbacks--carried by the Comintern from the USSR, China Israel and Germany) which they intended a more conciliatory posture toward the out under the government's obscene slo and Japan, tried to organize an indige to "destroy" given the prospect of a U.S. and wants the Beijing regime, gan of "Money is sin, poverty is pride" nous Korean party, but these efforts were majority-black ANC government. Paki further down the road of "market social as the chaebols seek to drive down real thwarted by the brutally efficient Japa stan and India, perennially on the verge ism," to exert similar pressure on Pyong wages. In anticipation of this year's nese occupation police. The Korean con of war when not actually shooting at yang. The Spartacist Group Japan (SGJ) spring labor offensive, the government tribution to early Asian communism was each other, are estimated to have some calls on the Japanese working class to arrested workers' leaders and threatened reflected at the First Congress of the 60 "near bombs" between them. defend North Korea against imperialist to use torture against "suspects who hold Toilers of the Far East, held in Moscow Meanwhile, Japanese imperialism, threats and to oppose the Japanese bour anti-state ideas." in 1921, where 52 of the accredited 144 which also howls against the North geoisie's drive to revive its "Greater East What is needed is the creation of a delegates were Korean. The nationalist Korean "nuclear threat," has been amass Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" of neocolo Leninist-Trotskyist party that can link dogma of luche could only prevail in ing plutonium at the rate of several tons nial exploitation-the main enemy is at workers' struggles into a common fight, the Korean party after its international a year, aiming at a stockpile of 85 tons home! winning the radical student movement ist traditions had been purged, first by in the next couple of decades. While U.S. sabre rattling is also not popular and rural population to its side, and over Stalin and later by Kim II Sung. But demanding that North Korea "obey" the in Seoul as the Kim Young Sam regime throw the venal puppet government of the working class has a long memory, NPT, Japan has itself been exempted is caught between a rock and a hard U.S. imperialism, whether it is repre and the greatest tribute we can pay to from many of the treaty's provisions and place. South Korea does have to pay lip sented by (former military head of state) the founding internationalist spirit of has been making noises about entirely service to U.S. imperialism's aggressive Roh Tae Woo or Kim Young Sam. Korean 'communism is to build a new repudiating the agreement. And with the military stance but is not anxious to go Leninist-Trotskyist Korean communist February launch of its sophisticated H-II to war. The North's ground forces are Juche vs. International party. missile, Japan clearly has the capacity far superior to Seoul's puppet army and Communism Today North Korean schoolchildren a new Korean war could easily wipe out to send nuclear payloads to any part of The Stalinist Kim II Sung and his cult learn by rote epic fairy tales of how Kim the country's huge industrial monopo the world. ist, nepptistic regime undermine the II Sung "led" the' Korean revolution. lies, the chaebols. Nor can South Korea The hysterical imperialist claims that defense of the socialized property forms. Nonsense! The North Korean workers afford to rapidly swallow up a collapsing North Korea possesses nuclear weapons The world capitalist market has proved state was created not by luche but by North Korea as German imperialism did are probabiy untrue-not merely trivial itself far stronger than Kim's doctrine of the Soviet Red Army's rout of Japanese with its Anschluss (annexation) of the in extent. The international working luche (self-reliance) which, stripped of imperialism. Land was soon redistrib former East Germany (DDR). Thus class must defend the right of North its Korean nationalist parables, is the uted and industry nationalized in the Seoul sides with Tokyo's desires for a Korea and the other remaining deformed same old Stalinist crap that "socialism" northern half of Korea. When North less precipitate drive toward capitalist workers states (China, Vietnam, Cuba) can be built in a single country while Korean troops advanced south in 1950 restoration in the North. to have nuclear weapons to defend them (vainly) striving for "peaceful coexist they were welcomed as liberators; pop selves against the imperialist war crim ence" with imperialism at the expense ular support for the Northern side was For the Revolutionary often expressed in strike action. In con inals. Down with Washington's sanctions Reunification of Korea! of socialist revolution elsewhere. Kim's blackmail! Defend North Korea against version of this discredited nationalist trast, when MacArthur led imperialist imperialist provocations! Following the collapse of Soviet Sta dogma glorifies a bizarrely bureaucratic, troops back into Seoul under the bloody linism and with China heading fast down impoverished and autarkic "socialism" UN flag, his reception was anything but New World Disorder the road of capitalist restoration, the warm. To this day, most South Koreans in the Pacific in half a country with an illusory notion North Korean deformed workers state is of "self-reliance" rooted in feudal despise the U.S. troops who have occu Washington's nuclear brinkmanship militarily isolated and in great peril. Its obscurantism and reactionary Confu pied their country for more than 40 on the Korean peninsula must be seen policies of extreme autarky are a dead cianism. In the absence of political rev years. through the lens of growing inter end. Proletarian political revolution in olution, Stalinism will be the gravedig The Korean Question and imperialist rivalry in Asia. Noting that the North intertwined with socialist rev ger of the North Korean workers state. the Japanese Left "relations between Seoul and Tokyo olution in the capitalist South is the only Bereft of Soviet and Chinese aid, the have never been better," U.S. News & way to salvage the social foundations Pyongyang regime faces a grave eco The Japanese left has a wretched World Report (4 April) recently com of the workers state. A revolutionary nomic crisis and sees no alternative but record on defending the deformed work plained about a "strategic realignment. .. upsurge by the combative working class to open the economy, as have China and ers states against imperialism. During that eventually may reduce America's in the South, joined by radical students Vietnam, to imperialist penetration. Hav the Vietnam War the heroic resistance of influence in Northeast Asia." Indeed, and discontented peasants, would cer ing already enacted a joint-management the Vietnamese workers and peasants to Washington'~ frenzied anti-proliferation tainly reverberate across the 38th paral law, at a December 1993 plenum of the decades of imperialist aggression was push is aimed in large part at Tokyo, lel, as well as inspiring outbreaks of ruling Workers' Party additional meas popular. But the understanding that the which has been using the North Korean class struggle throughout the region, par ures were taken to draw in Western cap USSR was the main obstacle to imperi bogey as an excuse for forging ahead ticularly in China and Vietnam, where ital. This sharp tum to "market social alist aggression rarely penetrated the with its own nuclear arsenal and to workers face the ravages of "market ism" was underscored in Kim's New narrow and chauvinist Stalinophobic grease the skids for a propaganda assault socialism." The revolutionary reunifica Year's address, as he call,ed for a popular politics that predominates here. With the on widespread pacifist opposition at tion of Korea would also inspire resis mobilization to make thi,s year "a refor USSR gone, the remaining deformed home to the development of nuclear tance by the powerful industrial prole mative turning point toward a new stage workers states in Asia are in great dan weapons. Defense Minister Aichi Kazuo tariat of Japan, the key to a socialist Asia, of development of North Korean social ger. With Korea's long history of being sees the North Korean standoff as and propel the sizable Korean population ism." What this "new stage" means for exploited by Japanese imperialism it is "a wonderful opportunity ... to expand in Japan into struggle. the working class is an expansion of the particularly disgusting that most J apa Japan's role" (Asian Wall Street lournal, The most volatile social factor on the free-trade zones, like the ones created in nese leftists refuse to defend North 23 March). As the U.S. seeks -to over Korean peninsula is the South Korean Nampo, Raijin and Sonborg, where Korea. Those who can only whine about come its trade deficit with Japan by . working class, from the strategic Hyun workers will be directly exploited by for the unsavory and bizarre character of the threatening to impose retaliatory eco- dai workers in Ulsan to militant teachers eign capital and profit extracted from Pyongyang regime in order to justify an their labor. A "peaceful" reunification of abstentionist or neutral position on North Korea, as Kim II Sung has long called Korea do so in the interests of their own for, would mean turning the North into bourgeoisie. SPARTACIST LEAGUE/U.S. LOCAL DIRECTORY a giant free-trade zone-dismantling the Sanctions and other war measures planned economy and restoring capital against North Korea will also mean Chicago Norfolk ism. The resulting immiseration would increased attacks against Koreans in National Office: B.ox 6441, Main PO Box 1972, Main PO be far worse than the social disintegra Japan. The government has already Box 1377 GPO Chicago, IL 60680 Norfolk, VA 23501 tion of the former DDR. threatened legislation that would make New York, NY 10116 (312) 663-0715 Oakland luche is antithetical to the internation it illegal to send money to North Korea. (212) 732-7860 Such a law would particularly target Cleveland Box 29497 alist traditions of Lenin's Bolsheviks and Box 91037 Oakland, CA 94604 the early Communist International prior Chosen Soren, the main Korean social Cleveland, OH 44101 (510) 839-0851 to Stalin's usurpation of political power organization in Japan sympathetic to the Atlanta leading to the strangulation and eventual North. In April, Osaka police raided Box 4012 Los Angeles San Francisco destruction of the Comintern. Pioneer eight Chosen Soren offices. Right-wing Atlanta, GA 30302 Box 29574, Los FeliZ Sta. Box 77494 Korean Communists, driven into exile storm troopers have also targeted Chosen (404) 521-9338 Los Angeles, CA 90029 San Francisco, CA 94107 by Japanese imperialism's 1910 occupa Soren ~ offices and businesses and (213) 380-8239 (415) 777-9367 Boston tion of the peninsula, played an impor launched cowardly attacks on Korean tant role not only in their own country schoolgirls. On June 1, the Spartacist Box 390840 New York Washington, D.C. Central Sta. Box 3381, Church St. Sta. Box 75073 but in the Chinese and Japanese. Com Group Japan issued a leaflet demand Cambridge, MA 02139 New York, NY 10008 Washington, D.C. 20013 munist parties as well as the Bolshevik ing: "Hands Off Chosen Soren! For (617) 492-3928 (212) 267-1025 (202) 872-8240 Party in the Soviet Far East. Koreans in Labor/Minority Mobilizations to Stop the Soviet Maritime District eagerly Racist Attacks Against Korean Residents joined 'the Red Army to fight against the in Japan!" Yet most of the Japanese left, TROTSKYIST LEAGUE OF CANADA/LiGUE TROTSKYSTE DU CANADA White Guards and Japanese imperialism refusing to defend North Korea against Toronto Montreal Vancouver during the Civil War. Among the many imperialist attack, also fails to lift a fin Box 7198, Station A C.P. Les Atriums Box 2717, Main P.O. Korean Communists who died defending ger in defense of Koreans in Japan Toronto, ON M5W 1X8 B.P.32066 Vancouver, BC V6B 3X2 the Russian Revolution was Bolshevik 'against the racist government. (416) 593-4138 Montreal, QC H2L 4V5 (604) 687-0353 commissar Alexandra Kim, born in a Even those leftists who utter a few Korean village in the Primorsk region, empty words in support of Koreans 14 WORKERS VANGUARD usually tail the Socialist Party (JSP), JCP leaders were released from Fuchu try and union organization. This defeat Syngman Rhee was the final straw for with its line of extending diplomatic rec prison in October 1945, public meetings led to attacks on Koreans during the Cold Korean militants in the party. In Febru ognition to North Korea. Bllt to prove to greet them attracted large numbers of War and in September 1949 Chouren was ary 1955, the JCP's Korean leaders its loyalty to the bourgeoisie, the JSP Koreans. When the JCP called a general outlawed as part of the anti-Communist resigned, taking some 4,000 members too will support sanctions. As part of the strike for 1 February 1947, party mem witchhunt. In January 1951, after the with them. Seeing no revolutionary short-lived Hosokawa coalition govern bers and sympathizers in the militant Korean War broke out, Chouren was internationalist alternative, these Korean ment, the JSP not only backed anti Korean organization Chouren collected reorganized as Minsen and called for vic communists instead turned to Kim II working-class austerity measures, but money and organized support commit tory to the North. But JCP leaders instead Sung's brand of Stalinism. Minsen was accepted direct responsibility through its tees in preparation for the strike, which sought a bloc with "centrist" and nation dissolved and replaced by Chosen Soren, cabinet post of Home Affairs Ministry the JCP leadership called off at the last alist forces in the South for a "demo which. was shackled from the start by for arresting and prosecuting labor mil minute. cratic revolution." This line was so right Kim's promise that it would not "inter itants, leftists and Japanese Koreans and The JCP's betrayal not only squan wing that even Stalin's Cominform fere"in Japanese domestic politics. for deporting foreign workers. Doing the dered a potential prerevolutionary situ complained. Today, Chosen Soren dutifully subor bourgeoisie's dirty work is nothing new ation but also reinforced the segregation The JCP's refusal even to oppose the dinates itself to the dictates of the "Great f()r these yellow "socialists." In 1950, of Japan's minorities from major indus- Southern regime of despotic U.S. puppet Leader" while rarely taking up issues the JSP used the MacArthur occupation central to Koreans in Japan, like the call regime's red purge to build the anti for full citizenship rights for all non Communist Sohyo labor federation, Japanese residents. But the responsibil which supported the imperialist side in ity for the degeneration of the post the Korean War. war militant Korean movement must be placed squarely at the feet of the JCP's Why the JCP Has chauvinist leadership. JCPmembers who No Korean Members hate racism and chauvinism need to un The Communist Party (JCP)' offers derstand that they are in the wrong party! tepid opposition to the threat of imperi Japan's revolutionary proletarian par alist sanctions against North Korea, ty has yet to be built. That party, like while pushing a wretched no-nuke pac Lenin's Bolsheviks who fought against ifism and supporting "peaceful" meas the tsarist prison house of nations, will ures by the United Nations. pomesti fight in the interests of the working class cally the JCP is steeped in chauvinist and the minority populations to create a protectionism, doing nothing to defend workers republic. The Spartacist Group non-Japanese workers against govern Japan is fighting to build a multinational ment and right-wing attacks. The JCP Leninist-Trotskyist party. Those who today has no Korean members and their hate racism and chauvinism, who believe trade-union federation refuses to organ that the working class has no country ize Koreans and other non-Japanese as Marx and Engels wrote in I 848-who workers into common industrial unions. defend North Korea against imperialist Yet in the years following World War provocations, who want to fight against II, the JCP recruited over 4,000 Koreans Reuters discrimination against Koreans and other from among the hundreds of thousands Hyundai workers fight off South Korean riot pOlice, July 1993. Combative minorities in Japan as part of the fight who were brought in as forced laborers South Korean proletariat can spark revolutionary struggle north and south of for socialist revolution, should join the before the war. When a number of central 38th parallel. SGJ._ and Farrakhan is black in a country sie could be based on anything but white . ciate with each other." But the fascists founded on institutionalized brutal racial racism. are not just right-wing ideologues with Letters ... oppression. That's fundamental. The While Farrakhan may share many demented ideas. They "speak" with (continued from page 2) Spartacist League has never held that opinions with white fascists, what he lynch ropes, iron bars, gas chambers and organized societal manner. I find such blacks in the U.S., because they are an is able to do is another matter. As we death camps. The Vancouver Sun (3 "logic" to be a well-meaning, but dan oppressed race/color caste, cannot be showed in our article in WV No. 600, June) quoted PDC spokesman Oliver gerous, inside-out liberalism. While it's racists or even fascists. But while there the NOI leader wants to sell his ser Scribner: '''While small in number now, true in a general sense that blacks can't can be individual black fascists in this vices to America's rulers. Yet today the the fascists are the mortal enemies of all oppress whites it is wrong in a specific country, there can be no significant black ruling class and bourgeois media-both working people and must be crushed in sense. A black boss, black cop, black fascism. Blacks of all political persua liberal and rightist-are whipping up the egg before they grow,' he said. 'Fas teacher, or a black in any position of sions would be the first victims. not the racist hostility against the Farrakhanites, cist terror is not free speech'." authority can, like a white person, make collaborators. of American fascism in with the aim of justifying the suppres Trying to hide the obvious fact that life miserable for the objects of his hate. power. Farrakhan's flirtations with the sion of all black "extremists," includ they were aiding and abetting the fas So my question is "Does the Spartacist likes of Klansman Metzger do not alter ing black leftists as well as various cists, both the prosecutor and the judge League feel that it is intrinsically impos this basic fact. In his letter Israel Shahak nationalist currents. What Farrakhan rep went out of their way to declare that they sible for any blacks to be racists or fas recounts that some Zionists initially wel resents is a latter-day version of Booker were "neutral." This idea, preached espe cists in America?" comed the ascendancy of Nazism in Ger T. Washington's "pull yourself up by cially by the NDP social democrats and If you feel that because of the terrible many as a victory over the liberal pro your bootstraps" accommodationism. their reformist tails, was challenged by historical oppression of blacks it is gram of assimilationism. This did not Farrakhan's anti-struggle program ac Spartacus Youth Club spokesman Angela impossible for them individually or in prevent the Nazi regime from extermi commodates the aims of the racist ruling Summers at the May 31 rally: groups (Farrakhanites) to be fascist, then nating the Jews, including the right-wing class to repress the deeply disquieted and "There's a very important lesson here: given the history of anti-Semitism in the Zionists among them. alienated black population. But the the capitalist state is not neutral. The We have always insisted that fascism whole system of racist discrimination is police, the courts, the whole system world and in America why is it possible exists to protect the propertied classes, for Jews to be fascists? I do believe that in the U.S. is deeply anti-black and anti run by and for the white ruling class. _ the bosses, the rich white rulers of this you have denounced the mis-named Jew Semitic. We have written that "The JDL country. They will not and cannot be ish Defense League as' fascistic. may be a fascist group in terms of its pressured into 'stopping' the fascists. In While black fascism will no mor$! take ideas and aspirations, but Jews will be fact, by their actions they embolden and victims and not a source of American Vancouver ... encourage the racist terrorists." political power in America than Jewish (continued from page 3) fascism will, it is still possible for both fascism" ("Jews and American Fascism," On 22 January 1993, some 3,000 anti these ethnic groups to spawn fascist par Revolutionary Communist Youth News with more forced to wait outside. Many racist protesters prevented Nazis of the ties which can do great damage. And letter No. 11, March-April 1972). Only took time off work and were there for "Canadian Liberty Net" from rallying in looking at the miserable alliance of the by emigrating to Israel with his hardcore all three days of the proceedings. Vancouver. Against those who wanted Inkatha with the South African neo- ' followers could JDL leader Kahane set Also speaking at the rally were repre an empty gabfest to just "say no" to the Nazis, I do not find a FarrakhanlKlan up a genuinely fascist organization. The sentatives of the Iranian' Immigrant and fascists, the PDC and TL mobilized dis axis, however temporary it might be, an same article noted, "To identify fas Refugee Society of British Columbia and ciplined union contingents in response impossibility. And Metzger's donation to cism as extreme ethnic nationalism is the Freedom Socialist Party. The Inter to our widely distributed call "All Out Farrakhan might well have been the start completely anti-Marxist. Fascism is a national Socialists declined an invitation to Stop the Fascists!" A few months later, on May 6, the PDC and TL brought of just such an allianc~ which may even counter-revolutionary movement whose to speak. now exist secretly. base is the bulk of the petty bourgeoisie The rally received extensive cover out a core of unionists, blacks, Asians, In any event I think it would be most and lumpen elements reacting to the pro age in the local media. Two Chinese gays and socialists to the demonstration (organized on less than a day's notice) fruitful for you to discuss these questions letariat's failure to take power in a rev language daily papers (Sing Tao and that shut down the fascist meeting for in WV, the' very best newspaper on the olutionary crisis." Ming Pao) published photos and stories over an hour. Our program is to unleash left. Peter Stone's reference to Father on the event. Days before, Vancouver's the power of labor and minorities to stop Sincerely, Coughlin underscores the difference be mayor had refused to apologize for the fascist terrorists-and it works. Keep Peter Stone tween the "radio priest" Of the 1930s and a February 1992 racist police assault, the demagogic head of the Nation of captured on videotape, on two Chinese the Nazis on the run! * * * Islam. Coughlin was an integral part of workers, even as the city was compelled The PDC extends its warm thanks WV replies: Our earlier exchange with a broad current of pro-Nazi forces in this to pay thousands in compensation to to all· those who endorsed the demand Mondo can be found in "On Integrated country, including significant elements these victims of cop terror. The social to "Drop the Charges" and who dug Education and Black Liberation," in the of the ruling class, represented by indus democratic New Democratic Party pro deep to help out financially. But Young Spartacus pages of WV No. 526 trialist Henry Ford and national hero vincial government had exonerated the more is still needed: it has cost thou (10 May 1991). Charles Lindbergh. With the American cops of any wrongdoing. ".. sands of dollars to defend the Anti In his letter (which was written ruling class almost exclusively white and The government went after the Van Fascist Six. Send your contributions, before our recent article on Farrakhan the working class mainly white, it is couver Six claiming, in the words of the payable to the Partisan Defense Com appeared), Peter Stone questions why we inconceivable that a fascist movement judge, that "as long as [the fascists] don't mittee and earmarked "Anti-Fascist don't characterize the Nation of Islam aimed at crushing and atomizing the contravene the criminal law, they have Defense," to: Box 4932, Main P.O., as fascist. Father Coughlin was white working class on behalf of the bourgeoi- a right to hold their meetings and asso- Vancouver, BC, V6B 4A6, Canada._ 10 JUNE 1994 15 WfJlillEIiS """'lil) Steve Hilton-Barber South Africa: Acid Test For the Left The imperialist media and reformists Betrayal of Black Freedom" (Workers around the world have been unanimous Vanguard No. 599, 29 April). Where the in hailing the election of Nelson Man SWP's Militant gushed about a "victory" dela as South Africa's first black pres for classless "democracy," writing of ident, often in identical words. The "Birth of New S. Africa: A Victory for South African elections New York Times (4 May) echoed Man Humanity" (16 May) and "Mandela Pres 'dawn offreedom' dela's inaugural address, repeating Mar ident; Apartheid Is Buried" (23 May), ··~·-tJ_.- tin Luther King's famous phrase, in we said bluntly of the now-bourgeois an editorial titled "Free at Last!" The nationalists in power, "Mandela/ANC Times waxed positively lyrical: "It was Front for Racist Capitalist Rule," and a magical moment: the peaceful passage stressed that "Black Freedom Requires from an era of oppression to a dawn of Socialist Revolution" (WV No. 600, 13 liberation in South Africa." The Finan May). While noting that "The heroic cial Times (27 April), spokesman for the struggles of the black masses over the international financiers of the City of past two decades have forced the white London, earlier celebrated Mandela's ruling class to abandon the rigid system victory as the "Dawn of South Africa's of racial oppression known as apartheid, Freedom." And the Militant (9 May), in which there was a garrison 'democ newspaper of the Socialist Workers Party racy' for the privileged white minority in the U.S., headlined "South African and totalitarian police-state repression of The hated SADF apartheid army, rebaptized SANDF (above), is still the fist Elections Mark 'Dawn of Freedom'." the vast non-white majority," we added: of racist capitalism against the black masses. Opportunists echo imperialist myth that "freedom" has arrived. In contrast, we told the stark truth "The Randlords and their imperialist about the pact between the African backers believe that they have preserved N ational C~ngress and the apartheid mas the bedrock of apartheid capitalism by ters, that "ANC/De Klerk Deal Is continued on page 12 Defend· North Korea Against Imperialist Provocations! Oppose u.s. Sanctions Threat! The following is adapted from an arti Soviet Union and China's headlong rush cle in the publication of the Spartacist toward capitalist restoration, the Clinton Group Japan, Spartacist No. 16, May administration has carried out a cali 1994. brated campaign of nuclear blackmail TOKYO, June ~ The 1950-53 Korean and military buildup aimed at forcing War was never officially ended, merely the Pyongyang regime of Kim II Sung "suspended" when the U.S.-led United to disarm, roll over and play' dead. Nations invasion forces failed to over On June 2, U.S. president Clinton whelm North Korea and its Chinese declared that Washington would seek allies. Ever since then, Washington has to impose economic sanctions against continued its relentless drive to under North Korea for alleged violations of the mine and destroy the North Korean Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), deformed workers state, created in 1945 which Pyongyang was strong-armed into when the Soviet Red Army drove Japa signing in 1985. When war secretary nese imperialism out of Korea. In the Perry threatened all-out war several past 18 months, taking advantage of the months ago if the North refused to counterrevolutionary destruction of the continued on page 13 Reuters For Revolutionary Reunification of Korea! South Korean students protest visit of U.S. war secretary William llerry in April, as Washington rattles its nuclear sabre against North Korea. 16 10 JUNE 1994