WfJRKERS ,,1NIIII1R' 25¢ No. 189 ...... ~ ....i-;,. )(·sn 20 January 1978

Obscene Imp.erialist Rites for War Criminal, Witchhunter urn re ea a as

Had he been shot down over Vietnam Meany mourn this obscene death of his by the peasants and workers against "old friend" on Capitol Hill. It is just whom he waged hellish war for Ameri­ one more insult in a life-long record of can imperialism it would have been a class treason. Let the "rad-libs" weep poetic death. a well deserved end for this bitter tears because, they say, Humph­ vicious anti-Communist~the Cold rey wasn't a "good enough" liberal. On Warrior fallen in a hot and losing war the contrary, he was the quintessential against the "red menace" he had fought liberal. And let the entire ruling class passionately all his life. But as Jimmy gather round the corpse to praise Carter is fond of saying, "Life is not Humphrey's spirit of "Human Rights" fair." Nor is death, and in the case of anti-Communism. We for our part, as Hubert Humphrey it has certainly not working-class revolutionaries. will been poetic. Instead it resembled the come to bury Humphrey and all that he man himself: drawn-out, puffed-up, represents. pedestrian, public, tasteless~but not without malignant reactionary purpose. There is political intent behind the Happy Cold Warrior sickening-sweet smell of the eulogies. One of the more obscene spectacles in The press is on to the scent of it as they the recent annals of American capitalist memorialize "HHH: Man of the Peo­ politics has been the protracted, ple." For this handshaker of "the little carnival-like death ecstasv of Hubert guy," vacuous windbag and baby kisser Horatio Humphrey. As s~on as it was was one of the most dangerous enemies realized over a year and half ago that the of the working class. More than any foremost symbol of American liberal­ politician of recent memory Humphrey ism was fading from the scene. the­ was touted by the labor bureaucracy as a testimonials for the living dead began. cause for hope and faith in the bosses' But in the last few months the "Happy Democratic Party. Even after death the Warrior's" final losing battle with labor fakers recite his name: the empty terminal pelvic cancer became a morbid Humphrey-Hawkins "full employment" media event as television cameras bill is again being pushed in an effort to John Dominis recorded in living color Hubert's death LBJ and "Happy Warrior." build illusions in the "pro-labor" mask profile and his penchant for the Democrats. unintentionally grotesque. When he To us he was, plainlyand simply, a liberal This left-over New Dealer was pre­ walkout from the 1948 Democratic finally expired last Friday night, every convention, the pragmatic politician rat. cisely the best "friend of labor" that major public figure was ready with a George Meany invoked as he betrayed who floor-managed the 1964 Civil statement of nauseating bourgeois Rights Act through Congress. Beyond Bad Taste labor on behalf of the capitalists. But homilies that had been waiting for Humphrey was no betrayer of his class; To do literary justice to the macabre months. To the treacherous misleaders of the he served its interests with gusto. So let affair of Humphrey's drawn-out death American labor movement, Hubert The Washington political estab­ rattle would require the low-brow Humphrey was their proverbial "friend lishment shed official tears and organ­ surrealism of a Paul Krassner. But a in Washington." United Auto Workers ized a memorial service which abounded New York Times reporter writing for president Douglas Fraser said he had in the inanities Humphrey relished. Vice the Family/Style page came pretty close always been "the champion of the PART SEVEN president Walter Mondale, one of when she described one of the endless underdog." George Meany of the AFL­ Hubert's Minnesota proteges, ended his testimonials for the rotting senator, a CIO said the senator "was our friend~a eulogy with the remark: "He taught us memorial dinner at the Washington A[!·IOK~ATW~[CKA.I ...__... _~ genuine supporter of the labor move­ 'OC"""~""'''''IfCK~~P.~J;(}~i\Jl nAPTlII ....."...... ,....,.._., all how to hope and how to love, how to Hilton. Although the guest of honor .!., _ • ment in good times and bad." Speaking win and how to lose; he taught us how to could not attend in the flesh, each ofthe for black liberals, Coretta Scott King live, and, finally, he taught us how to 2,000 mourners present received a called him "the most outspoken and die." It must have been comforting to personal memento~a medallion bear­ courageous leader." European social the audience, for the occasion attracted ing the likeness of Humphrey in a toothy democrats praised his dedication to the a striking number of politicians remem­ grin strangely reminiscent of Bela cause of world peace. He "wished good bered, as the Lugosi playing Count Dracula. The New York Times (16 things for all God's children," said a January) observed, "as much for their highpoint of the evening was Jimmy Times editorial. failures as for their successes." First Carter's testimonial: among them was Richard Milhouse "Mr. Carter told the crowd that Mr. The international proletariat will Humphrey had touched his family's life Nixon, Watergate criminal and like write the story of Hubert Humphrey in 'strange and wonderful ways' and Humphrey an anti-communist hatchet quite differently in the history books recalled his daughter Amy sitting in the man and Vietnam mad bomber, who Senator's lap dribbling moist brownie than does the bourgeoisie and its sneaked into town to pay "last respects" crumbs." servants. We remember him as the anti­ to his arch-rival. -Nell' York Times, 3 December Communist mayor of Minneapolis who One of the most perverse aspects of Now that he is dead and gone the drove the "reds" out of the Democratic the whole business was Humphrey's bourgeoisie wants to resurrect Humph­ Farmer-Labor (DFL) Party and the own exploitation of his fatal illness. rey as a symbol that the American Way labor movement. Wewon'tforgetthat he Following an initial X-ray treatment for sponsored the 1954 Communist Control .':-~"";"~;j:.. , of Life holds out promise for the cancerous growths, he wisecracked, ...• "disadvantaged." Here was a druggist's Act outlawing the Communist Party nor "What can be done by medicine, surgery son who made good, the poor man's that he amended the 1950 McCarran Act or radiation, I'll have it. And if it can't be candidate who campaigned in the 1960 to set up concentration camps for done, then I'll have had it, you know." Toward the West Virginia primary in a bus. So he "subversives" in the U.S. His calls for Later, when doctors removed his blad­ lost as millionaire John F. Kennedy "strengthening" the anti-union Taft­ der he padded through the halls of New Communist outdistanced him in a jet~many of Hartley Act and his hatchet job on the York's Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Humphrey's bills were enacted anyway Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party persecuting the hapless patients with his International as he cajoled the victors. It's called will also be recorded. Above all, the fatuous cheeriness, urging them to get working within the system. He was, we Happy Cold Warrior will go down in up and walk for a quicker recovery. are told, the impassioned fighter for civil history as the single main propagandist PAGE 6 rights who prompted the Dixiecrat of the U.S.' dirty war against Vietnam. continued on page 2 hoped the election of Jifumy Carter phy, The Education of a Public A/an With the Trotskyists behind bars for Humphrey... meant the resurrection of the old New ( 1975). Humphrey describes the exploits their courageous opposition to the Deal alliance. These are the same forces which won his spurs as a bourgeois (continued [rom page 1) Imperialist war, Humphrey turned his who today are singing hosannas to politician: fire on the Stalinists. Hubert Humphrey. the main spokes­ HHH seemed to be competing verbally Humphrey was the architect of the man for that coalition since the days of in crudity with LBJ's famous tummy­ "Through that job I met and worked 1944 merger of the Farmer-Labor Harry Truman. But their hopes have with the labor leaders of Minneapolis baring display for reporters after a gall Party, which under Floyd B. Olson gone unfulfilled. In the absence of a and St. Paul. Without it, I would never bladder operation. have been asked to run for mavor in dominated Minnesota politics in the serious challenge to the capitalist parties 1943. And it was there that I ran into mv 1930's, with the local Democratic Then after doctors opened up from the workers movement and op­ first intense. personal experience with machine. It was this merger that enabled Humphrey for the last time, declaring pressed minorities, Carter is mainly the Communist left.... FD R to take the state in 1944 and put him too far gone for further surgery, the concerned to restore the government's "There were essentially three groups of Hubert in the mayor's seat the next year. real celebrations over the corpse began. authority internationally from the teachers at that time on WPA; the Stalinist Communists, the Trotskyist The next step was to purge Communist When he returned to Capitol Hill his disasters of Vietnam and Watergate. bloc and a third group of everyone Party (CP) supporters who had been decaying remains were wheeled around For this he has adopted a policy of else .... The presence of such an intense influential in the FLP from the new from one testimonial dinner to another. Democratic Farmer-Labor (DFL) Not many people would stand for being Party. Liberal muckraker Robert Sher­ treated as dead men while they are still rill describes how it was done: alive. But for the shallow buffoon who " ... one method used by the ate up humiliation with relish, sitting Humphreyites to take over the DFL through his own funeral service was from their left-wing opposition after typical of the Humphrey style. At a 1946 was to prepare a blacklist of persons who were to be kept out of teary Senate farewell session hawks and party meetings; sometimes, when neces­ doves, friends and enemies alike, joined sary to enforce the blacklist, thugs in a chorus of hollow praise. Anyone would be stationed at the door and else would have been more than a little when one of Humphrey's henchmen signaled from within that a person embarrassed, but Hubie was pleased as trying to enter the meeting room was on punch: the list, the thugs would toss him into the street, where he would be arrested "His time come, Humphrey rose. 'My by a Minneapolis policeman for 'dis­ good friend, Sen. Dale Bumpers, silting turbing the peace.' The police force was alongside of me here, said: "This isjust a under the jurisdiction of Mayor little too much, isn't it Hubert?" I said: Humphrey. so there was little use in "Hush. I like it""" lodging a protest." --Nel\'Sueek. 7 November 1977 Robert Sherrill and Harry W. Ernst, The Drugstore Liheral What lies behind the Democrats' ( 1968) ostentatious political necrophilia? Cer­ tainly it can't be yearning for Hubert Humphrey won the support of local Horatio's windy speeches. Humphrey capitalists with his campaign promise to has been a walking political corpse for fill the post of police chief with an FBI­ the past decade, and during the 1976 trained "professional." With access to the FBI blacklists and assurance of primaries Jimmy Carter baited him as a Lee Balterman/Life "has been." When he was forced to police department goons to maintain Humphrey and Muskle at the 1968 Democratic Convention. "labor peace," the business community withdraw from the race for Senate was convinced, and the money flowed majority leader that January, a leading Wilsonian platitudes rather than R oose­ Marxist movement in Minnesota may into Humphrey's campaign chests. Democratic colleague estimated he seem strange, but it became, for several veltian social programs. Hubert kept his promises to the bosses. would have been lucky to get even a reasons, possibly the most active Com­ dozen votes. It is not H umphrey the Driving the "Reds" Out of munist center between the East and West Coasts. HHH: No Friend of Labor man who is being celebrated but Minneapolis "I soon discovered that a number of Humphrey the standard bearer of mid­ teachers were not working. They were But it was Humphrey's close ties to twentieth century liberalism. The trib­ Humphrey's admirers paint the son of more interested in their own brand of organized labor that built his power utes are for the old anti-communist a Huron, South Dakota druggist as a revolution and agitation.... so I sent base in the ensuing years. In 1948 he set out the word that anyone without a full cold-war liberal/labor/black alliance throwback to the prairie populism of the his sights on national office, runningfor LaFollette era, a representative of a schedule by Thanksgiving would be which he symbolized. fired .... senator against Republican Joe BaH. As generation formed by the hardships of "From that job I moved up to district Hubert described his opponent: But this alliance has lain in tatters the Great Depression. This is consistent director of workers education...." "He had been a kind of liberal, broke ever since the 1968 presidential cam­ with his rhetoric, geared to farmers' with his party to support Roosevelt in That was in 1940. Three years later paign, Humphrey's last bid for the union meetings and state fair rallies, and 1944, but got more conservative to Humphrey was the Democratic candi­ presidency. That year the antiwar with his economic philosophy. It ex­ regain ground lost by that act. He and date for mayor of Minneapolis, and in Senator Robert Taft worked closely liberals boycotted the Democratic plains his outmoded electioneering 1945 he won the post with a "law and and he supported the Taft-Hartley bill, candidate in November because of his style, but it Goesn't explain how the thus enraging labor and providing me order" campaign that won the support vehement defense of the Vietnam war. senator from Minnesota became a pillar with political support." of Twin Cities businessmen and labor The next time around mainstream of the U.S. Senate establishment. It - The Education ofa Public Man bureaucrats alike. Ever since, this liberals lost control of the 1972 conven­ ignores the visceral anti-communism Labor's fury over Taft/ Hartley sparked supremely power-hungry man retained tion to the McGovernite lib-rad fringe, which has marked his career from the a nationwide miners' strike, filled _a special hatred for those who dared to the labor bureaucracy washed its hands beginning and made him the archetype Madison Square Garden with protest­ oppose him then, the "left-wing leaders of the election and the party went down of cold-war liberalism. ing unionists and threatened to take the who had not forgotten our arguments in to stinging defeat at the hands of one of Hubert Humphrey got his first entire cia out on a protest general the Workers' Education Program": the least trusted politicos of recent political break through the New Deal as strike. However, instead of mobilizing memory, "Tricky Dick" Nixon. The Twin Cities director of a WPA workers "Much of the leadership of the Team­ the organized strength of the unions the sters Union, which was strong in the impact would have been far worse but education program. He used this post to Twin Cities, opposed me. Up to 1941 "labor statesmen" relied on their for Nixon's Watergate fiasco, which smoke out and fire communists on the the Teamsters were primarily led by the "friends" in Congress and the White allowed the Democrats to reverse their project's teaching staff. It was here that Trotskyist Dunne brothers, Vincent, House. While Truman vetoed the bin fortunes and recapture the White House he forged his initial links with the labor Ray, Miles and Grant. In October 1941 during the 1948 campaign, his veto was Rav Dunne and other Teamster­ in 1976 on the single issue of "trust." bureaucracy, then engaged in a bitter Trotskyist leaders were convicted of overridden by Congress with the votes Union officials, black elected officials fight with socialist forces for control of violating the Smith Act." of a number of liberals. and Congressional liberals fervently Minneapolis labor. In his autobiogra- -Ibid.

Tweedie/Chicago Daily News LBJ shows off for press. Chicago cops assault demonstrators during 1968 Democratic Convention. 2 WORKERS VANGUARD When "friend of labor" Humphrey the time told us if we didn'tgo forthe two arrived in Washington, he suddenly votes, if we didn't slow down, Mr. announced that "we have to go a good Humphrey wouldn't get the nomi­ deal further than we had" in the Taft­ nation.... Mr. Humphrey was sitting right there when Mr. Rauh said that and Hartley non-Communist oath. For he had tears in his eyes.... Iasked the vice starters he suggested that the oath be president if his position was more expanded to exclude any union member Important than the lives of400,000 black who was "spiritually and morally a CP people in Mississippi. He didn't answer me and I didn't get invited to any more member" in addition to the actual meetings, neither." members. He also advocated that a - The Drugstore Liberal "Communist" union, "even if it gets a The MFDP imbroglio at the 1964 majority [in shop elections], shall not be convention accurately portrays how the given bargaining status in terms of a Democratic Party exploits the illusions collective bargaining contract." of the exploited and oppressed in its In his first year as a national figure, claims to be the "party of the people." Humphrey went on from his Minnesota Liberals of the Humphrey ilk playa witchhunting to playa leading role in crucial role in this deception, posing as founding Americans for Democratic influential friends in high places whowill Action (ADA) as an "additional method be benevolently inclined to the massesso of finding people whose political philos­ long as they settle for crumbs. ophy was liberal but anti-Communist." The MFDP convention challenge was This was code language for the ADA's also one of the formative experiences drive to "clean out the reds" from leading the most militant sectors of the American unions and the liberal wing of civil rights movement to reject integra­ the Democratic Party as the imperialist tion and turn instead to black national­ "cold war" against the Soviet bloc ism. In our 1967 document "Black and reached a fever pitch. Humphrey writes: Red," the Spartacist League drew the "In the spring of 1949, as my term as lessons of the MFDP experience: mayor was ending, I decided it was time to move into high gear to eliminate 'The struggle for black freedom Communist influence in the DFL. ... Vice-president Humphrey (right) bids farewell to Cardinal Spellman In 1966 demands the total break of the Negro Philip Murray, national president ofthe as Spellman began trip to visit U.S. soldiers In Vietnam. people from the Democratic Party, the CIa, was the person who could help so I preferred political weapon of the forces flew to Pittsburgh to see him .... which profit from the suppression and would have outlawed the CPo Truman up to that point ... had done super-exploitation of the Negro people. "Murray's response was direct. He said, Hubert Humphrey enjoyed, until well little to inspire the nation's liberals.... The only alternative is a new party based in essence, that he had been looking for "S.omething had to be done to galvanize someone to take the lead, that he into the 1960's, a reputation as a flaming on the needs of the poor and working liberal, the scourge of Dixiecrats and thiS drowsy bloc, and fast. A bit of civil­ people. The formation ofthe Mississippi understood my position, and that he rights byplay might do it. ... Freedom Democratic Party in the would co-operate in running the Com­ established interests, a "winter soldier" "The plan was for Humphrey to amend South, initially with a mass base, munist leadership out of the cIa in in shining armor who stood on the side the Democratic civil-rights plank.... indicated the potential and feeling which Minnesota." of the "little guy." But from the very "The amendment that Humphrey - The Education ofa Public Man beginning of his career he was the most would seek was drafted by Joseph Rauh. Rauh is about as radical as Humphrey started off his Senatorial vicious hatchet man for the bourgeoisie. career by stepping on a few toes of the Quaker Oats, and the amendment that Far from being a friend oflabor he went he wrote can hardly be differentiated Congressional patriarchs, but he soon along with Taft-Hartley, the corner­ from the civil-rights plank which the mended his ways. By 1951 he had stone of post-war legislation imposing Trumanites had come prepared to offer. become chairman of a Senate Subcom­ state control over the unions in the cause The Truman plank called for nondiscri­ mittee on Labor and Labor­ minatory right to vote, right to work of anti-Communism. Far from fighting and equal protection of the laws. To Management Relations investigating the McCarthyite assault on democratic this, the Humphrey amendment added "Communist domination of unions and rights and the left, Humphrey was one virtually "nothing except jazzier national security." That same year he of the leading liberal witchhunters. And phrases.... - The Drugstore Liberal initially opposed the anti-Communist it was precisely his position on the left In 1948 Humphrey's speech to the McCarran Internal Security Act as not wing of the Democratic Party which strong enough, then voted for it made him a prime candidate for this Democraticconventionservedtolaunch his national reputation; in 1964 his Humphrey was one ofthe prime backers role. His close ties to the unions and the successful floor management of the of the Kilgore amendment (which aura of a "friend of labor" made it more Democratic administration's civil rights became part of the law) setting up palatable for him rather than an out­ bill was a key element in winning LBJ's concentration camps for times of and-out labor-hater to spearhead reac­ endorsement for vice president. Johnson "national emergency." UndeI' these tionary measures. provisions thousands of "potential spies told him, "this is going to be your test, and saboteurs" on a "master pick-up "The Bright Sunshine of Human your chance." The government ofcourse list" could be arrested overnight Rights" would not have lifted a finger except for fear that civil rights agitation would get One of the main themes of the "out of hand," In addition to southern Kit Luce Humphrey obituaries has been his voter registration, the unions had Hubert and Muriel Humphrey reputation as the foremost liberal backed Martin Luther King Jr.'s March exist for independent political action. champion of civil rights for minorities. on Washington and Harlem was in However, the MFDP, as its name Carter referred to him as "the first voice flames. But Humphrey's talents and indicated, was not independent but was I ever heard, a lone voice persistently good name among black liberals were simply a means whereby certain South­ demanding basic human rights for all ern and Northern civil rights leaders needed for another, dirtierjob. It was his hoped to pursue their ambitions within Americans." Particularly his "fiery role in keeping the Mississippi Freedom the national Democratic Party at the speech" to the 1948 Democraticconven­ Democratic Party challenge off the expense of the interests of the Negro tion urging a beefed-up civil rights plank Atlantic City convention floor that year, people." and his role in greasing the 1964 Civil saving the party the embarrassment of -Marxist Bulletin, No.9, Part I Rights Act througn the rusty Senate public collapse over nationwide TV, Chicago, Vietnam and October gears are cited as high points in his which really won him the nomination. career. In the present period when The M FDP had come to AtlanticCity From 1964 on Hubert Horatio bourgeois liberals have ignominiously demanding to be seated in place of the Humphrey ceased to excite the imagina­ abandoned any pretense to fight for regular Mississippi delegation on the tion of American liberals. After becom­ Strong/New York Times busing, Humphrey's claims as an inte­ unassailable grounds that the delegates ing LBJ's"veep" he was handed thejobof Humphrey medal given out at recent grationist may not look bad. But in both had been illegally chosen in a Jim Crow continued on page 4 Washington dinner. cases closer examination shows the election. First leaning on the credentials classic liberal response of token conces­ committee to keep the fight in the back (Charles Allen, Jr., "Concentration sions only in the face ofa threat from the rooms, Humphrey and MFDP lawyer Camps U.S.A." [1966]). left, and the subordination of Humph­ Joe Rauh worked out a "compromise" WfJ/illE/iS The New York Times (14 January) rey's famed "principles" to furthering seating two special MFDP "roving noted that, "Through the early 1950's, his own career. delegates" as well as the entire 68­ "NfJU,/iIJ during the time when Senator Joseph R. Today the papers praise his 1948 member regular delegation. Although Marxist Working-Class Weeki, McCarthy of Wisconsin came to symbo­ convention speech: "The time has come the M FDP voted the proposaldown, the ofthe Spartaclst League ofthe U.S. lize for some the excesses of anti­ for the Democratic Party to get out of very mention ofit was enough to spark a Communism, Mr Humphrey was un­ the shadow of states' rights and walk walkout by the "regulars." Preferring a EDITOR: Jan Norden characteristically quiet" He never forthrightly into the bright sunshine of bloc of empty chairs rather than seat a PRODUCTION MANAGER: Karen Allen spoke against the Republican witch­ human rights," he pontificated. The fact black delegation, the convention pro­ CIRCULATION MANAGER: Mike Beech hunter from Wisconsin on the floor of that the Dixiecrats walked out in protest ceeded to recognize the "compromise." EDITORIAL BOARD: Jon Brule. Charles the Senate. But even this silence and his Burroughs, George Foster, Liz Gordon, is cited as an example of the "Happy The MFDP could not accept the slap­ James Robertson, Joseph Seymour, Michael own record were not enough to spare Warrior's" "courage." But the 1948 in-the-face terms of the Humphrey/ Weinstein Humphrey from the charge by Republi­ plank fought for by Humphrey and Rauh deal. But an interview with Published weekly, except bi-weekly in August can vice presidential candidate Nixon in adopted by the convention was funda­ Freedom Democratic Party leader Fan­ and December, by the Spartacist Publishing Co., 260 West Broadway, New York. NY 10013. the 1954campaign that the "Democratic mentally a maneuver to protect the nie Lou Hamer in the Sherrill biography Telephone: 966-6841 (Editc;>rial), 925-5665 party's left-wing clique" was soft on Democrats' left flank. Sherrill writes: shows the Minnesota senator's ADA (Business). Address all correspondence to: Communism. This prompted the Box 1377, G.P.O., New York, N.Y. 10001. "With Henry Wallace's Progressive sidekick doing his best toforce it through Domestic subscriptions: $5.00 per year. Minnesota senator to retort that he'd Party on the ballot, the liberals of the by playing on illusions in a Humphrey Second-class postage paid at New York, NY "give the back-row Red-hunters on the large urban centers of the north and west might easily go to him in sufficient vice presidency: Opinions expressed in signed articles or other side some reill legislation to chew "Mr. Humphrey, he kept telling us to letters do not necessarily express the editorial numbers to leave several normally viewpoint. on" (The Drugstore Liberal). This was Democratic states in the hands of compromise for two votes. He seemed the 1954 Communist Control Act, which Republican Dewey. The presidency of very upset, very upset. Our attorney at 20 JANUARY 1978 3 Democratic Party which led to the 1972 Humphrey... convention-dominated by Vietnam CP Supporters Trail Class-Struggle doves, ecology freaks, feminists and (continued from page 3) black liberals-and a second term for Candidates touring the campuses and banquet Nixon. Only in the 1976 election was the circuits justifying administration policy division between doves and hawks on Southeast Asia. By his own count he overcome. But the liberals still felt gave more than 400 speeches in defense betrayed by Hubert. Bureaucrats Trade of the Vietnam war. This earned him the Revolutionaries, class-conscious enmity of intellectuals and youth for workers, militant blacks and other whom Vietnam had come to symbolize oppressed minorities cannot feel be­ Posts in S.F. the quagmire of an America which had trayed by Humphrey, however, for he "lost its liberal ideals." Harkening back was never one of their own. His biogra­ to his cold war rhetoric oftheearly 1950's phers frequently draw a parallel between Humphrey would denounce "North Humphrey and the West European Longshore Elections Vietnamese aggression" and straight­ social democrats such as Willy Brandt or facedly defend backingdictator/puppets Harold Wilson, with whom he politically SAN FRANCISCO-Recently con­ hiring hall. The newly instituted "rotary" Ky and Thieuas necessary forthedefense sympathized. But while his governmen­ cluded elections in Local 10, the Bay system will increase the disparity in time of the "free world." The only troops in tal policies were not markedly different Area longshore division of the Interna­ worked among Local 10 longshoremen, Vietnam who havecommitted atrocities, from these reformists, his class position tional Longshoremen's and Warehouse­ thereby further undermining union he would claim, are those of the Viet was notably different. Whereas they men's Union (ILWU), resulted in a vote solidarity in the same ruinous fashion as Congo stood at the head of mass organizations of "no confidence" for the outgoing the steady-man system. Thus the famous "credibility gap" hit of the working, class, misleading the Local leadership. Top positions were The Local 10 leadership de­ Humphrey as hard oreven harderthan it ranks into collaboration with capitalism taken by a group around Larry Wing, a magogically sought support for this did Lyndon Johnson with his Tonkin and betraying theirinterests, HH H was a former president of the Local who measure, claiming that it would elimi­ Gulf resolution and phony "body capitalist politician responsible only to regained that position in the elections. nate chiseling practices that had sprung counts." For a long time ADA liberal the bourgeoisie whose stock-in-trade The elections took place in thecontext up (primarily as a result of reduced job friends tried to console themselves that was seducing the workers and minorities of continued chipping away of past opportunities) under the old system of Hubert "really" supported peace nego­ into the illusion that in him they had union gains. The employers, grouped in dispatching. In fact, such cheating could tiations in the high councils of govern­ found a sympathetic ear. the Pacific Maritime Association be eliminated by closer union monitor­ ment. The "Happy Warrior" would Humphrey was probably never the (PMA), have embarked on a campaign ing, without eliminating low-man-out reply, as he once told staff members of most popularbourgeois politican among to reduce Bay Area longshoremen to a bidding. The bureaucracy's support for the American embassy in Saigon, "This American workers. The Kennedys had skeletal workforce through wholesale "rotary" shipping stemmed from thefact is our great adventure, and a wonderful more flair and posed as aristocratic slashing of jobs and forced deregistra­ that it was provided for under the one it is." Left liberal Sherrill reproduces friends ofthe poor. But the senator from tions, at the same time seeking todestroy notorious Supplement 3 ofthe contract, a statement by the ever-present Joseph Minnesota and LBJ's vice president did the union hiring hall. Although the Local which contains provisions for LWOP. Rauh, one of Humphrey's last cronies to represent the classical so-called "friend 10 membership forced their leadership The new dispatching procedure is in break with him: of labor." Those most responsible for last June to retreat from open support to fact a company-promoted measure "I said, 1 know you believe in the war, giving him this reputation are the labor PMA's proposal to declare San Francis- designed to toughen up work rules and and 1 wouldn't question your sincerity but 1believe if you were president you'd fakers of Meany's AFL-CIO and have us out of Vietnam in ninety days. Reuther/Woodcock/Fraser's UAW. He said, 'I just told you 1 agree with These were the real betrayers and the everything the President has done.' 1 principal obstacle to the independent said, 'I think you think that and 1believe organization of the American workers you honestly believe that but you don't have the kind of independent judgement into their own party, counterposed to the about that you would have if you were twin parties of capital. In order to head president and unrestricted by the views off moves toward a party of labor the ofanybody else.' Hedeniedit. Hesayshe union misleaders would always point to agrees with Johnson 100 percent." - The Drugslore Liberal their success in winning piecemeal reforms with the aid of the Humphreys. But eventually it became clear that While Humphrey did not betray Humphrey would sink or swim with the workers and blacks, he certainly did Johnson administration position on deceive them and contribute to their Vietnam. He sank. The denouement oppression. (The same was true, more­ came at the 1968 Democratic Party over. of such prominent doves as convention in Chicago. In battlingfellow McCarthyIMcGovern, whose main Minnesota senator Eugene McCarthy accomplishment for the bourgeoisie was and senator Robert Kennedy (before his to confine theantiwar protests within the assassination) in the primaries, Humph­ bounds of capitalist politics.) In this he rey had no legions of "clean for Gene" was aided not only by the crusty youth but only the doorbell-ringers and Meanyite labor fakers but also by stamp-lickers of the AFL-CIO and reformist would-be socialists, most WV Photo Stan Gow Howard Keylor UAW union bureaucrats. Arrivingatthe notably his old bugbears ofthe Commu­ conventions he relied on the machines to nist Party. The CP's "fight the right" line co a low-work opportunity port enable the PMA to drive longshoremen secure his nomination, declaring he now in the 1964 presidential election led it to felt comfortable with reactionaries like (L WOP), which would enable the out of the industry. Under the guise of give only barely disguised support to the companies to implement mass deregis­ fighting corruption, the Local 10 bu­ Strom Thurmond or Lester Maddox Democrats' Johnson/Humphrey ticket. despite past squabbles. Getting the nod trations, the Local bureaucracy has been reaucracy is continuing to implement Humphrey is dead, but liberalism lives carrying out the LWOP provisions ofthe LWOP provisions through the back from LBJ and Mayor Richard Daley, on. Shunningthe(in anycasesuperficial) HHH steamrollered the opposition, contract in a piecemeal fashion. door. Thus, by putting into practice social reform schemes pushed by HHH After having induced 150 to 200 LWOP/Supplement 3 measures in much of which was gathered outside the such as Medicaid, public works, etc.,_ convention hall in nightly demonstra­ longshoremen to "voluntarily" transfer piecemeal fashion today, the bureaucra­ Jimmy Carter seeks to divert social to other ports, the Local 10 leadership cy is assisting the companies in laying the tions. There they were brutally assaulted discontent more cheaply through "hu­ by Dilley's cops. Humphrey denied that struck its next major blow in December basis for forced transfers and deregistra­ man rights" rhetoric. The task of when it rammed through elimination of tions tomorrow. his friend Daley, the last of the old-time revolutionaries is to break the workers bosses, "did anything wrong." the traditional system of low-man-out While Local 10 bureaucrats have not only from such businessman Democ­ job dispatching, under which men with temporarily succeeded in disguising their Humphrey almost won the election, rats but from the most left-wing of the the least time worked would have first treacherous implementation of LWOP, coming within a fraction ofa percentage phony "friends" of the people such as crack at jobs dispatched through the there has nonetheless been widespread point of topping Nixon, but the antiwar Hubert Horatio Humphrey. As his dissatisfaction among Local members liberals felt betrayed and stayed away career amply demonstrated, it is often with the clearly worsening conditions. from the polls in large numbers. This was the most "progressive" of the bourgeois The victory ofthe Wing faction, which in the origin of the great rift in the rulers who are the most insidious. HHH Workers years past had postured as an opposition ~ , is dead, but strikebreaking, witchhunt­ to the then Bridges-led International, isa SL/SYL PUBLIC OFFICES ing false "friends of labor" live on. Vanguard clear indication ofa desire for change by Proletarian revolution will finally bury longshoremen. This was further con­ Marxist Literature their cadavers, whether already dead or MARXIST WORKING-CLASS WEEKLY OF firmed by the disastrous showing of BAY AREA artificially kept alive through the treach­ THE SPARTACIST LEAGUE outgoing president Cleophus Williams, Friday and Saturday 3:00-600 pm. ery of the Meanys and Frasers. One year subscrlplIon (48 Issues) $5­ who received only 271 votes for executive 1634 Telegraph. 3rd floor Bury all the Humphreys! Oust the Introductory ofJer (16 Issues) $2 Interna­ board. down significantly from last year. (near 17th Street) bureaucrats-For a workers party to 1I0nai rates 48 Issues-$20 dIrmad/$5 sea Oakland. California mad, 16 ;nlroductory Issues-$5 aIrmad The victory of the Wing clique Phone 835-1535 fight for a workers government!. Make checks payable/mad to Spartaclst demonstrates, however, that the bulk of PublIshing Co, Box 1377 GPO. New York, the membership still has illusions that CHICAGO NY 10001 their gains can be preserved without Tuesday ...... 4:30-8:00 The Fight to Implement -Includes SPARTACIST Saturday ,...... 2:00-530 pm. Busing militant struggle. Over the past several 523 South Plymouth Court. 3rd floor N Cl me ._ months the incoming bureaucratic Chicago. illinOIS For Labor/Black Defense to Stop clique has given up any pretensions of Phone 427-0003 Racist Attacks and to Smash Fascist Address _ being an opposition to the ILWU NEW YORK Threats Cily __ International leadership of Jimmy Her­ Monday-Friday...... 630-900 pm Price: 75C man. Wing and his pals like former Saturday. 1:00-400 p.m. Stilte - Z,p - 18ii business agent Herb Mills, the Local's Make checks payable/mail to: 260 West Broadway. Room 522 Spartacus Youth Publishing Co.. Box 825. new secretary-treasurer, have opposed New York. New York Canal SI. Station. New York, NY 10013 Phone 925-5665 SUBSCRIBE NOWI (,Ofl!inued on paKe II

4 WORKERS VANGUARD . _. --Letters,----- 3,000 Cops Guard Paris matic betrayal of the struggles of the 13 January 1978 Vietnamese proletariat and claims that Ho Chih Minh was not "au courant" of Dear Comrades, the Stalinists' assassination of the Hated Iran Empress The article on the Vietnam­ Vietnamese Trotskyists. Rousset Cambodian border war (WVNo. 187,6 ascribes a revolutionary characterto the On herthird visit to the U.S. in the last January) points out that "Third World" Stalinist bureaucracy by virtue of the clatlOn of repression against Iranian year, Empress Farah Pahlavi, wife ofthe writers. The CAIFI "picket" included buffs must be pained by this spectacle of empirical fact that they militarily bloodthirsty Shah of Iran, was met by such liberal literary notables as Nat mutually bloody nationalist aggression defeated the capitalist state. some 1,000 chanting protesters when she Hentoff, Kate Millet and Arthur Miller. on the part of their Stalinist peasant For Trotskyists,. who demanded arrived at the New Yod Hilton for a However, filmmaker Andy Warhol at­ guerrilla heroes. A rather pitiful expres­ "Victory to the Vietnamese Revolution" January 12 dinner in her honor spon­ tended the banquet. His companion, sion of centrist discomfort was found in while warning against Stalinist betray­ sored by the Mobil Oil Company, Ford actress Paulette Godard, commented: the 2 January issue of Rouge, newspa­ als, the development of nationalist Motor Company and Exxon Corpora­ "It bothers me that peoplearetortured in per of the arch-Pabloist Ligue Commu­ squabbles between two deformed work­ tion, among others. While a claque of Iran or anywhere, but we're personal niste Revolutionnaire (LCR). The ers states will not damage our faith in toadies and SAVAK (Iranian secret friends ofthe Empress"( New York Post, LCR's Indochina specialist, Pierre revolutionary internationalism. We police) agents-about 300 in all, report­ 12 January). Rousset, prime peddler of illusions in never propagated illusions in the "revo­ edly flown in for the occasion at the The "illustrious" diners included the Indochinese Stalinists, now asks lutionary" nature of these regimes. The expense of the Iranian government­ Mayor Koch, who commented about plaintively: "The death of international Spartacist tendency has shouted "We love, we love, we love repression and torture in Iran, "I'm very Internationalism?" always held that only political revolu­ Shah!" and "Long live his majesty!"they big on human rights, but I think it's How "bitter" the news, anguishes tion in the deformed workers states and were far outnumbered by three rival probably better than the Soviet Union." Rousset, "particularly for this political the extension of the revolution could groups of masked anti-Shah Another guest was former Secretary of generation to which many of us belong safeguard the military victory of the demonstrators. State Kissinger, who, according to the and which recently rediscovered inter­ Indochinese revolutions. But for those The protest against the imperialist fete Post, "glared stonily when asked about nationalism by taking to the streets with in constant search of social forces other for the empress was organized by torture, stalked offto his limousine, then the cry 'Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, than the working class led by the Indochina will win!'" He frets about the vanguard party to make the revolution, "disastrous effects the Vietnam-Khmer their path will always be mined with conflict could have on the consciousness demoralizing surprises: the Stalininsts of militants in the capitalist countries, will continue to betray the proletariat, fostering the development of a profound each other's nationalist regimes and cynicism and a turning to local their Pabloite cheerleaders. struggles." Rousset, the Pabloites'professional Since the dubious honor of systemat­ apologist for Ho Chi Minh, lays most of izing the Pabloites' anti-Marxist em­ the blame at the doorstep of Cambodia brace of Vietnamese Stalinism is in large and China and criticizes, a bit belatedly, part his own contribution, Rousset "the Stalinist revisionism of 'building might well worry: he who sows illusions socialism in one country' carried to its reaps cynicism. absurd caricature by the CPK [Khmer Shortly after the conclusion of the Rouge] leadership." His medicine for Paris Peace Accords in 1973-which, as the current malaise inflicted by the the WV article points out, already Vietnam-Cambodian conflict on the included a clause selling out the Cambo­ centrists is a typical specimen of dians by the Vietnamese, a fact that Pabloite phraseology: what is needed, Rousset leaves out ofhis little dirge over he says. is "a systematic refurbishing of the death of internationalism­ true internationalism." What was Rousset's comprehensive political de­ needed all along was indeed true WV Photo fense of the Stalinist bureaucracy internationalism-the steadfastness to Trotskyist principles upheld by the iSt. 3,000 cops stand guard over angry demonstrators as the Empress Is toasted appeared in his book, Le parti commu­ by oli magnates and celebrities. niste vietnamienne. In it, Rousset slides Comradely, over the Vietnamese Stalinists' syste- J.W. competing IranianStudent Associations paused to reply in his carefulIy measured and included participantsfrom a number way: 'I think IranisagoodfriendandalIy of American leftist groups, among them of the U.S.''' UAW Bureaucrats set UR Militants Youth Against War and Fascism Farah Pahlavi is a gilded, jet-setting (YAWF) and the Maoist Revolutionary public relations agent for her husband's Communist Party (RCP). The smalIest murderous regime, assigned to give his organized contingent, including YAWF, dictatorship a cosmetic "human face." was made up ofguerrilIa enthusiasts and Her trip to the U.S., folIowing Carter's Chrysler Judge chanted "Armed Struggle Shakes the New Year's visit to Teheran, serves to Fascist System Down!" A larger RCP­ mask the Iranian government's increas­ dominated group counterposed "Mass ing repression ofoppositionat home. On sentences Trenton 7 Uprising in Iran Shakes the Fascist November 15, at the time of the Shah's System Down!" AlI three groups joined Washington visit (where protesters were DETROIT--Exploiting the scandalous of "criminal contempt" of a federal re­ in "People Yes, Shah No-He's a lacky, viciously attacked by riot-equipped D,C. abandonment of its own members by the straining order barring picketing at the He must go!" and "Death to SAVAK, police), more than 60 students demon­ United Auto Workers (UAW) leader­ plant. The conviction and now the Death to the Shah!" strating in Teheran were reportedly ship, on ~December 12 Judge John sentencing of the Trenton 7 is meant as a The anti-Shah demonstrators were murdered by the SAVAK and army Feikens sentenced seven auto workers message to all UAW members: violating surrounded by 3,000-plus riot-helmeted troops. Last week the New York Times from the Chrysler engine plant at the no-strikecontractclause will cost you cops onfoot, horseback and motorscoot­ (10 January) reported that 20 persons Trenton, Michigan to a week in federal a job and maybe even jail time. er who were there to protect the empress were kilIed and 300 injured when police prison. "This is not a labor question," The UAW tops who opposed the and the Shah'slackeys. Channel II News opened fire on a protest demonstration Feikens declared during the sentencing. Trenton strike from the beginning also reported that the U.S. was paying in southern Iran. Farah Pahlavi cannot "It is significant that not the union deserted the workers' defense. The ranks approximately $250,000 a day to protect whitewash these massacres! International or the Local supported of Local 372 and several other Detroit­ the empress during her trip here. This The Spartacist LeaguejSpartacus these defendants ...." But the railroad­ area locals passed motions demanding massive deployment underlines the close Youth League intervened in the demon­ ing of the Trenton 7 is not only a "labor reinstatement of the Trenton 7 with full ties between Washington and the Iranian stration to pose its proletarian­ question." Their firing and frame-up back payand clean records, thedropping torture regime, giving the lie to Jimmy internationalist opposition to "Her conviction is the result of the criminal of court charges and that the full weight Carter's pho:1y "human rights" talk, Majesty" Farahand the bloody totalitar­ complicityofthe UAW International ina of the International be thrown behind which is fundamentalIy directed against ian regime she represents. The leaflet direct assault on labor's most basic their defense. Local 372 also overwhel­ the Soviet Union. which it distributed concluded: weapon: the right to strike. mingly passed a motion threatening to About a block north of the main "Militants of the ISA! If any country Thousands of auto workers walked strike for the reinstatement oftheir fired demonstration the Committee for Artis­ today resembles Czarist Russia in 1917, out of Detroit-area plants during last union brothers and demanded authori­ it is certainly Iran. But the Russian tic and IntelIectual Freedom in Iran Revolution above all demonstrated that summer's intense heat wave, unable to zation from the UAW International (CAIFI), which is supported by the in economically backward countries the work in these bake ovens where temper­ Executive Board. But Solidarity House reformist Socialist Workers Party, held a basic tasks of the bourgeois-democratic 0 0 atures reached 120 to 130 . At Chrys­ provided no money, no legal assistance smalI, brief "informational picket line" revolution can only be accomplished ler's Trenton Engine Plant (UAW Local and not so much as a press release on' devoted to "peaceful and legal" denun- through the consolidation of the dicta­ torship of the proletariat. It is only the 372). the firing of several union stewards behalf of the militants under attack. As genuine Trotskyism of the international much as the auto bosses and the courts. for one such walkout led to another SUBSCRIBE Spartacist tendency that points the way week-long wildcat. Of the hundreds of the UAW hacks are interested in reinfor­ for the Iranian proletariat to topple the pickets who kept the plant shut down. cing the no-strike clause. One of the YOUNG SPARTACUS Shah and establish a workers and seven were picked out for persecution. Trenton 7 defendants, Jim Hart. told peasants government of Iran. part of the monthly paper of the socialist federation of the 1\1 iddle East." ~tT: Though nearly 60 workers fired for "Between it all. management and Spartacus Youth League heat walkouts at various Detroit-area the union are sleeping together." Carter's "human rights" backs Iranian $2/10 issues plants were subsequently rehired in a The Trenton 7. denied a jury trial and terror regime! Down with the butcher Chrysler Solidarity House deal. the convicted by a judge who is a former Make payable/mal! to. Spartacus Youth Shah! Avenge the Shah's victims Publishing Co. Box 825, Canal Street P.O. through proletarian revolution in Trenton 7 were not reinstated. Instead Chrysler stockholder and whose son \.. New York. New York 10013 they were dragged into court on charges continued on paRe I J Iran' •

20 JANUARY 1978 5 • owar e ommunlS i

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nternationa ~Y.~:j5~:·."::";";j L::,' '.: ,.: PART 7

To underslalld Ihe principle of'the commll/lisl I'anguard part\', it is necessarr to liberal reformism appeared to affect recogni::e the C1'olution of' Lenill from a re\,(llutionarr social democrat to the only the intellectual elements in the .f(ilmding leader of'the Communist International. Various rCl'isionists, notably the social-democratic movement. The SPD British 1I0rkerist-re(ormist Tonr ClW: han' a((empted to deny or obfuscate the as a whole seemed solidly Marxist in its prinCljlle ofthe democratic-centralisl \'anguard pany hI' pointing to those elements .IAlIuuatl\1 rolicies, while Marxism gained against of'classic social democraCl' relained hI' the pre-1914 Bolsheviks andconditionedhr old-fashioned socialist radicalism (e.g., the liQnicularilies of the Russian situation. Pan 7 is Ihe concluding anicle of this flat1 .. Jauresism) in other sections of the ~ . ,'-' - .. - - ~:. series, lI'hich has traced the dCl'elopment of' Lenin's position on the party question. International (e.g., the French, Italian). 71ll'.first lian (WV Ao. 173, 16 Septemher I977).f(lcused on the Kautskyan doctrine August 4th was the first great internal ofthe "partl' oOhe \\'hole class" andits rele\'OlIce to early Russian social democracy. conterrevolution in the workers move­ Pan 2 (WV Ao. 175,30 Seplemner 1977) c()\wed the 1903 Bolshevik-Menshevik I ment. and all the more destructive split and il.l aftermath. Part 3 (WV So. 177, 14 Octoner 1977) dealt with the 1905 L-c because it was so unexpected. The Remlutio/l. Pan 4 (WV /\'0. 178,21 Octoher 1977) dealt with democratic centralism triumph of chauvinism and class col­ and "freedom of criticism." And Pan 5 (WV No. 182, 18 Novemher 1977), "The most important tendency in the interna­ laborationism in the major parties of the Struggle Agai,;.,t the Boyco((ers," describes Lenin's fight with the ultra-left tional workers movement, the official Socialist International shattered the Bolshel'ik.I, including the relationship of'philosophr to politics. Pan 6 (WV No. doctrine of mass proletarian parties in shallow, passive optimism of Kautsky­ 186,23 December 1977) is entitled "The Final Split with the Menshel'iks." Central and East Europe. It is under­ anized Marxism. After the SPD's great standable therefore that Kautsky and betrayal. going over to the side of the social democrats should regard its "own" bourgeoisie, revolutionary he event which transformed l.enin's and Luxemburg's generation, Marxism as the natura!, inevitable Marxists could no longer regard oppor­ Lenin from a Russian revolu­ the progress of social democracy, best political expression of the modern labor tunism in the workers movement as a Ttionary social democrat into the represented in Germany, had seemed movement. marginal or episodic phenomenon or as founding leader of the world communist steady, irreversible and inexorable. Britain, it is true, had a mass labor a product of particular historic political movement can be precisely dated -4 movement which was politically liberal backward ness (e.g., Britain). August 1914. With the start of World The Historic Significance of the and openly class-collaborationist. How­ The established leaderships of most War I the parliamentary fraction of the Second International ever, Marx and Engels themselves had mass socialist parties could hardly be German Social Democracy (SPD) explained the political backwardness of dismissed as unstable, petty-bourgeois \oted unanimously in favor of war The era of the Socialist (Second) the British labor movement as the democratic intellectuals, as fellow credits for the Reich. Having now International (1889-1914) represented product of particular historic circum­ travelers of social democracy. This is experienced more than 60 years of later the extraordinarily rapid growth of the stances (e.g., Britain's dominance in the how Kautsky had characterized the social-democratic and then Stalinist European labor movement and of the world economy, English-Irish national Bernsteinian revisionists and how Lenin betrayals of socialist principle, it is Marxist current within it. Except for the antagonism, the Empire). Furthermore, had dismissed the Mensheviks. But the difficult today for us to appreciate the British trade unions (which supported Marxists in the Second International. chauvinist leaders of the SPD in /914 { absolutely shocking impact of August the bourgeois liberals), the organiza­ including Lenin, regarded the founding Friedrich Ebert, Gustav Noske, Philipp 4th upon the revolutionaries in the tions making up the First International of the Labour Party in 1905 as a Scheidemann-had worked their way Second International. Luxemburg suf­ (1865-74) were propaganda groups significant progressive step toward a up from the party's ranks beginning as fered a nervous collapse in reaction to numbering at most in the thousands. mass proletarian socialist party in young men. All three had been workers: the wave of national chauvinism which By 1914 the parties of the Socialist Britain. Thus the relative political Ebert had been a saddler, Noske a swept the German social-democratic International were mass parties with backwardness of the British workers butcher and Scheidemann a typesetter. movement. Lenin at first refused to millions of supporters throughout movement did not fundamentally chal­ Ebert and Noske began their SPD believe the report of the Reichstag vote Europe. lenge the orthodox social-democratic careers as local trade-union functionar­ in the SPD's organ, Vorwiirts, dismiss­ In the period of the First Interna­ (i.e., Kautskyan) worldview. ies, Scheidemann as a journalist for a ing that issue as a forgery by the Kaiser's tiona!, there were perhaps a thousand To be sure, the pre-19l4 Marxist local party paper. The leading chauvin­ government. Marxists on the face of the globe, movement was familiar with renegades ists and opportunists were thus very For revolutionary social democrats o\erwhelmingly concentrated in Ger­ and revisionists-the Bernsteinians in much of the flesh and blood of the August 4th did not simply destroy their many. Significantly. there were no Germany, Struve and the "legal Marx­ German Social Democracy. illusions in a particular party and its French Marxists in the Paris Commune ists" in Russia. Lenin would have added )\or could the actions of the SPD leadership but challenged their entire of 1871, only the Hungarian Leo Plekhanov and the Mensheviks to this leadership be explained as a reflection of political worldview. For Marxists of Francke!. By 1914 Marxism was the list. But these retrogressions toward the historic political backwardness of the German working class. Ebert. Noske and Scheidemann had been trained as Marxists by the personal followers of Marx and Engels. They had voted time and time again for revolutionary social­ ist resolutions. In supporting the war, the SPD leaders knell' they were violating their party's long-standing socialist principles. Right up to the fateful Reichstag vote, the SPD engaged in mass antiwar agitation. On 25 July 1914 the party executive issued a proclamation which concluded: "Comrades. we appeal to you to express at mass meetings without delay the German proletariat's firm determina­ tion to maintain peace.... The ruling classes who in time of peace gag you. despise you and exploit you, would misuse you as food for cannon. Ev'erv­ where there must sound in the ears of those in power: 'We will have no war' Down with war' Long live the interna­ tional hrotherhood of peoples"" reproduced in William English Walling.ed .. ThI'5;(lcia!ilrsalld rhe War (1915) In considering the social-chauvinist hetraval of thc (Jerman Social Ikmoc­ r'tcy. l.cnin camc to rcalill: that thc Holshn iks werc not simply a Russian countcrrart of thc SPD with a prinCI­

Dietz pled rcvolutlonary leadership. Thc sclcction, testing and training ofcadre in The German Reichstag in 1914.

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6 WORKERS VANGUARD Lenin's party was fundamentally differ­ ent from Bebel's and Kautsky's party. And in that difference lay the reason why in August 1914 the parliamentary representatives of the SPD supported "their" Kaiser, while their counterparts in the Russian Social-Democratic La­ bor Party (Bolsheviks) were instead clapped in the tsar's prisons. Lenin Breaks with Social Democracy

Lenin's basic policy toward the war and the international socialist move­ ment was developed within a few weeks after the outbreak of hostilities. This policy had three main elements. One, socialists must stand for the defeat, above all. of their "own" bourgeois state. Two, the war demonstrated that capitalism in the imperialist epoch threatened to destroy civilization. So­ cialists must therefore work to trans­ form the imperialist war into civil war. into proletarian revolution. And three, the Second International had been destroyed by social-chauvinism. A new, revolutionary international must be built through a complete split with the opportunists in the social-democratic movement. These policies, which remained cen­ tral to Lenin's activities right up to the Klinger, Eberlaine, Lenin and Platten at the first congress of the Third International at the Kremlin in 1919. October Revolution. were ckarly ex­ pressed in his very first articles on the turned into a tremendous deception of various centrist and left-reformists who Marx often arrived at theoretical war: the workers and a tremendous hin­ want to eradicate or blur the line generalizations well in advance of the "It is the dutv of everv socialist to drance to the working-class movement. between Leninism and pre-1914 ortho­ immediate' programmatic, tactical and conduct propaganda of the class strug­ Undisguised opportunism, which im­ mediately repels the working masses, is dox social-democracy (Kautskyism). organizational conclusions which gle... ; work directed towards turning a . flowed from his new socio-historical war of nations into a civil war is the onlv not so frightful and injurious as this socialist activity in an era of an theory of the golden mean.... Kautsky, Among the Bolsheviks, however, it premises. Thus in late 1848, after nine imperialist armed conflict of the bour­ the most outstanding spokesman ofthis was generally recognized that Leninism months of revolution, Marx concluded geoisie of all nations.... Let us raise theory. and also the leading authority in originated in 1914 and not before. In a that the German bourgeoisie was the Second International, has shown high the banner of civil war! Imperial­ commemorative article following Le­ incapable of overthrowing absolutism. ism sets at hazard the fate of European himself a consummate hypocrite and a mast,~r nin's death, Evgenyi Preobrazhensky, culture: this war will be followed bv past in the art of prostituting However. it was only a year later in exile others unless there are a series of MarXism. one of the leading Bolshevik intellectu­ that Marx developed a new strategy successful revolutions.... -"The Collapse of the Second als. wrote: corresponding to his changed view International" (Mav-June "The Second International is dead. 1915) . "In Bolshevism or Leninism we must of German society. In contrast, Le­ overcome by opportunism. Down with make a strict distinction between two nin's revolutionary thrust frequently led opportunism. and long live the Third In considering the growth of oppor­ periods-the period roughly before the him to break with opportunism International, purged not only of tunism in the West European social­ world war and the period ushered in by and false policies well before he at­ 'turncoats'.... but of opportunists as democratic parties. Lenin naturally the world war. Before the world war, well. Comrade Lenin, although he held to the tained corresponding theoretical "The Second International did its share reviewed the history of the Russian real. genuine. undistorted. revolution­ . generalizations. of useful preparatory work in prelimi­ movement and of Bolshevism. He ary Marxism, did not yet consider the narily organizing the proletarian masses realized that the Bolshevik organization social-democrats to be the agents of 1914- I6 was a period when Lenin's during the long. 'peaceful' period of the had not, in fact, been built according to capital in the ranks of the proletariat. theoretical analysis lagged behind his most brutal capitalist slavery and most During this period. you will find more the Kautskyan formula. It had com­ political conclusions and actions. Le­ rapid capitalist progress in the last third than one article by Comrade Lenin in nin'searliest writings on war and the of the nineteenth and the beginning of pletely organizationally separated for­ which he defends this German social­ the twentieth centuries. To the Third mally from the Russian opportunists, democracy in the face of those accusa­ International identified social­ International falls the task of organiz­ the Mensheviks, two and a half years tions and reproaches which it received, democratic opportunism only as a for instance, from the camp of the political-ideological current. The only ing the proletarian forces for a revolu­ before the outbreak of war and in tionary onslaught against the capitalist populists. syndicalists, etc., for unrevo­ attempt to relate the growth of oppor­ practice long before 1912. Lenin now governments. for civil war against the lutionary opportunism. for betrayal of tunism to objective historical conditions bourgeoisie of all countries for the took the Bolshevik party as a model for the revolutionary spirit of Marxism.... was the observation that the West capture of political power, for the a new, revolutionary international: "If, to our misfortune, Comrade Lenin triumph of socialism!" "The Russian Social-Democratic La­ had died before the world war, it would European socialist parties functioned -"The Position and Tasks of the bour Party has long parted company never have entered anyone's head to under a long period of bourgeois Socialist International" with its opportunists. Besides, the speak of 'Leninism,' as some kind of legality. (November 1914) Russian opportunists have now become special version of Marxism, as it was subsequently to become. Lenin was the The absence of a sociological and While Lenin was optimistic about chauvinists. This only fortifies us in our most consistent revolutionary Marx­ historical explanation for social­ winning over the mass base of the opinion that a split with them is essential in the interests of socialism.... ist. ... But there was nothing specific in democratic opportunism was a serious official social-democratic parties, he our Bolshevism in the realm of theo­ We arc firmly convinced that. in the weakness in Lenin's campaign for a understood that he was advocating ry ... to distinguish it in any way from present st

'i! m UEoiIII

20 JANUARY 1978 7 ;

conference in Berne. Switzerland in ment and transformed the country into tution through which able, ambitious Toward the March 1915: an aggressive imperialist world power. young workers could reach the top of a "Certain strata of the working class (the Germany's expansionist goals could highly class- and caste-stratified society. bureaucracy of the labor movement and only be realized through a major war. Zinoviev's major 1916 work corrects Communist the labor aristocracy. who get a fraction of the profits from the exploitation of And Germany could not win a major the emphasis on ideological revisionism the colonies and from the privileged war if faced with the active opposition of as the cause of opportunism which is International ... position of their 'fatherlands' in the its powerful labor movement. Thus the found in Lenin's earliest war writings. In (continued from page 7) world market). as well as petty­ .objective needs of German imperialism fact, the SPD's official doctrine and bourgeois sympathizers within the required the cooperation of the social­ program failed to reflect its increasingly social-chauvinism. The task ofsocialists socialist parties. have proved the social mainstay of these [opportunist] tenden­ democratic leadership. The defeat ofthe reformist practice. Many of the social­ was to cure the sickness and save the cies. and channels of bourgeois influ­ German bourgeois-democratic revolu­ democratic leaders, overwhelmingly of patient. ence over the proletariat." tion in 1848 and the resulting semi­ working-class background, retained a .. The main spokesman for amnestying This capsule analysis was not developed autocratic class-political structure made sentimental attachment to the socialist the social-chauvinists and minimizing in any theoretical or empirical depth a rapprochement between the ruling cause long after they ceased believing in the problem of opportunism was. of until the following year, principally in circles and labor bureaucracy more it as practical politics. Only the war course. Kautsky. In Neue ·Zeit (15 Lenin's pamphlet, Imperialism: the difficult. less evolutionary than in February 1915) he advocated an atti­ Highest Stage of Capitalism (written in Britain. Hence the shock effect of tude of comradely tolerance for those early 1916), and his article, "Imperial­ August 4th. who "erred" in defending German ism and the Split in Socialism" (October But Lenin recognized that the under­ imperialism: 1916). and in Zinoviev's book, The War lying historic process which led in 1914 "It is true I saw since the 4th of August to the SPD's vote for war credits and to that a number of members of the party and the Crisis of Socialism (August were continuously evolving more and 1916). British Labour Party cabinet ministers was similar. In Imperialism he wrote: more in the direction of imperialism. Given the Stalinist cult of Lenin and but I believed these were only excep­ "It must be observed that in Great tions and took an optimistic view. I did the individualistic interpretations of Britain the tendency of imperialism to this in order to give the comrades bourgeois historiography, it is not split the workers. to strengthen oppor­ confidence and to work against pessi­ generally recognized that Lenin worked tunism among them and to cause mism. And it was equally important to as part of a collective. During the war temporary decay in the working-class movement. revealed itself much earlier years he had a literary division of labor than the end of the nineteenth and with Zinoviev in which the latter beginning of the twentieth centuries.... concentrated on the German move­ "The distincti\'e feature of the present ment. Reading only Lenin's writings of situation is the prevalence of such this period. one gets a seriously incom­ economic and political conditions that are bound to increase the irreconcilia­ plete picture of the Bolshevik position bility between opportunism and the on the imperialist war and international general and vital interests of the i socialist movement. That is why in 1916 working-class movement. ... both Lenin's and Zinoviev's war writ­ "Opportunism cannot now be I ings were collected in a single volume completely triumphant in the working­ class movement of one country for I published in German, entitled Against ! decades as it was in Britain in the second Emile Vandervelde .. the Stream. The principal Leninist half of the nineteenth century; but in a ! analysis of opportunism in the German number of countries it has grown ripe, forced the SPD to break openly with Social Democracy is Zinoviev's The overripe and rotten. and has become completely merged with bourgeois socialist principle. War and the Crisis of Socialism, which policy in the form of 'social­ Zinoviev recognized that social­ contains a long section entitled "The chauvinism'." [our emphasis] chauvinist ideology was false Social Roots ofOpportunism." This key Lenin's Imperialism deals with those consciousness arising from the SPD section of Zinoviev's important work changes in the world capitalist system officialdom's actual role in Wilhelmini­ was reproduced in English in the which strengthened opportunist forces an German society: American Shachtmanite journal. New in the workers movement international­ "When we speak of the 'treachery of the International (March through June ly. It is Zinoviev's 1916 work that leaders' we do not say by this that it was 1942). concretely analyzes the forces of oppor­ a deep-laid plot, that it was a conscious­ ly perpetrated sell-out of the workers' Marxists had long recognized the tunism in the German Social interests. Far from it. But consciousness :: existence of a pro-bourgeois, pro­ Democracy. is conditioned by existence, not vice imperialist labor bureaucracy in Britain. versa. The entire social essence of this Karl Kautsky Zinoviev showed that the SPD's huge Engels had condemned the bourgeoisi­ treasury supported a vast number of caste of labor bureaucrats led inevita­ bly, through the outmodedpace set for fied leaders of the British trade unions functionaries who led comfortable urge the comrades to tolerance. follow­ the movement in the 'peaceful' pre-war ing the example of [Wilhelm] Lieb­ more than a little, relating this phenom­ petty-bourgeois lives far removed from period, to complete bourgeoisification knecht in 1870." enon to Britain's world dominance the workers they supposedly represent­ of their 'consciousness.' The entire ~William English Walling, ed .. economically. However, Marxists in the ed. In addition to a relatively high social position into which this numeri­ The Socialists and the War Second International regarded the standard of living, the social-democratic cally strong caste ofleaders had climbed over the backs of the working class . Centrist softness toward the Second class-collaborationist British labor officialdom had begun to enjoy a made them a social group which International also expressed itself with­ movement as a historic anomaly. a stage privileged social status. The German objectively must be regarded as an in the Bolshevik party early in the war. which European social democracy had ruling elite began to treat the SPD and agency of the imperialist bourgeoisie." The head of the Bolshevik group in happily skipped over. In beginning his trade-union leaders with respect, differ­ [emphasis in original] Switzerland. V. A. Karpinsky, objected section on the labor bureaucracy in entiating between the "moderates" and The anarcho-syndicalists applauded to Lenin's position that the Second Germany, Zinoviev states that Marxists radicals like Karl Liebknecht. The the revolutionary Marxists' attack on International had collapsed and a new, had regarded social democracy as corrupting effect on an ex-printer or an the social-democratic bureaucracy and revolutionary international must be immune from this corrupt social caste: ex-saddler of being treated as an proclaimed: we told you so. Thus the built. In a letter (27 September 1914) to "When we spoke of labor bureaucracy important personage by the Junker Bolsheviks in attacking official social Lenin he wrote: before the war we understood by that aristocracy was considerable. Referring democracy carefully distinguished their a/most exclusive/" the British trade "... we believe that it would be an to Scheidemann's memoirs of the war position from the anarcho-syndicalists. exaggeration to define all that hap­ unions. We had in mind the fundamen­ tal work of the Webbs, the caste spirit. period, Carl Schorske in his excellent Zinoviev pointed out that the existence pened within the International as its of a powerful reformist bureaucracy 'ideological-political collapse.' Neither the reactionary role of the bureaucracy German Social Democracy 1905-1917 by volume or content would this in the old British trade unionism, and (1955) comments; "No reader of was, in one sense, a product of the definition correspond to the real hap­ we said to ourselves: how fortunate that S~heidemann can miss the genuine development and strength of the mass penings. The International ... has suf­ we have not been created in that image. how fortunate that this cup of grief has pleasure which he felt in being invited to labor movement. The anarcho­ fered an ideological-political collapse. if discuss matters on an equal footing with syndicalists' answer to bureaucratism you like. but on one question only. the been spared our labor movement on the military question. With regard to the continent. the ministers of state." The German amounted to self-liquidation of the "But we have been drinking for a long social democracy had become an insti- workers movement as an organized rest there is no reason to consider that time out of this very cup. In the labor the ideological-political position of the movement of Germanl'-a movement force objectively capable of over­ International has wavered or. more­ which served as a model for socialists of throwing capitalism. If the reformist over. that it has been completely destroyed. This would mean that after all countries before the war-there has bureaucracy suppressed the revolution­ arisen just as numerous and just as ary potential of the workers movement, losing only one redoubt we are unnec­ reactionary a cast of labor bureau­ essarily surrendering all forts." the anarcho-syndicalists proposed to crats." [our emphasis] ·-Olga Hess Gankin and H.H. disorganize that movement into Fisher. eds.. The Bolshe\'iks The triumph of social-chauvinism in impotence. and the World War (1940) the Second International caused Lenin Zinoviev maintained that a bureauc­ To overcome such centrist attitudes. to reconsider the historical significance racy was not identical with a large Lenin had to demonstrate that August of the pro-imperialist British Labour organization of party and trade-union 4th was the culmination of opportunist leadership. He came to the conclusion functionaries. On the contrary. such an tendencies profoundly rooted in the that the class-collaborationist trade apparatus was necessary to lead the nature and history of West European unionism of Victorian England antici­ working class to power. The decisive social democracy. patcd tendencies that would come to the task was the subordination of the fore when other countries. above all Imperialism, Social-Chauvinism leaders and functionaries of the labor Germany. caught up with Britain movement to the historic interests of the and the Labor Bureaucracy economically and became competing international proletariat: Lenin's analysis of the social oases of imperialist powers. "At the time of the crisis over the war. the labuf hureaucracy played the role of opportunism lf1 the Second Internation­ (iermany's very rapid industrial a reaction,H\ factor. That is undouhted­ ai v,as first presented in a resolution growth. following its victorious war in ly correct. Rut that docs not mean the ("Opportunism and the Collapse of the IR70. simultaneously created a powerfuI lahor mu\ement \\ill he able to get Second International") for a Bolshevik mass social-democratic labor move- Jean Jaures along withuut a hig organi7atio~al

• $i !'BpIiP. rrcN1M m'W W~$_iM * -if ~a-lIrzmm & 8 WORKERS VANGUARD apparatus, without an entire spectrum important a role in Germany as in there is any such thing as a worker's of the argument is concerned, it could of people devoted especially to scrvice Britain. On the other hand, rural aristocracy, here it is." be extended to a majority oreven all the the proletarian organization. We do not' - World Communism (1939) want to go back to the time when the backwardness loomed large in the workers in the industrialized countries. political life of Germany right up until In any case it is clear that taking into labor movement was so weak that it Lenin's position on the labor aristoc­ account the global character of the could get along without its own employ­ the war. The rock-solid base ofthe SPD racy was an important corrective to the capitalist system provides strong addi­ ees and functionaries, but to go forward right wing was the party's provincial to the time when the labor movement traditional positive social-democratic tional reasons for believing that the will be something different, in which the organizations. Right-wing bureaucrats orientation to that stratum, an orienta­ tendency in this stage of capitalist tried to counter the radicals, who were development will be to generate a less strong movement of the proletariat will tion which was in part a conservative rather than a more revolutionary subordinate the stratum of functiona­ always concentrated in the big cities, by reaction to the rapid growth of the proletariat." [our emphasis] ries to itself, in which routine will be gerrymandering the party's electoral destroyed, bureaucratic corrosion unskilled labor force from among a wiped out; which will bring new men to districts in favor of the smal1 towns. A politically conservative and socially The New Left is quite wrong in simply the surface, infuse them with fighting farmer's son working as an unskilled backward peasantry. While workers identifying the labor aristocracy with courage, fill them with a new spirit." laborer in a South German town was from a rural background can be ex­ the better-paid sectors ofthe proletariat. There is no mechanical organization­ more likely to support the SPD right, tremely militant, they are highly volatile In the first place many of the relatively al solution to bureaucratism in the represented by Bernstein and Eduard and difficult to organize on a stable higher-paid workers (e.g., auto workers workers movement or even in its David, than was a Berlin master basis. For example, migrant farm labor or truckers in the U.S.) are members of vanguard party. Combatting bureauc­ machinist. and similar groups (e.g., lumberjacks) industrial unions of the unskilled and ratism and reformism involves continu­ However ifZinoviev was too mechan­ drawn into the syndicalist American semi-skilled, who won their wage levels al political struggle against the many­ ical in imposing a British model of the Industrial Workers of the World through militant struggle against the sided influences and pressures bourgeois sociological bases of opportunism on before World War I demonstrated great bosses rather than imperialist bribery or society brings to bear upon the workers the SPD, the basic Leninist position on combativity, but also great organiza­ jOb-trusting. Nor can all craft unions be movement, its various strata and its the stratification of the working class in tional instability. counted among the labor aristocracy. vanguard. the imperialist epoch remains valid. In No self-professed Marxist today The needle trades, organized alongcraft advanced capitalist countries with a maintains as positive an orientation to lines, are among the lowest-paid union­ The Leninist Position on the large well established labor movement, the highly skilled, well-paid sections of ized workers in the U.S. Labor Aristocracy In Imperialism and related writings The Marxists of the Second Interna­ Lenin emphasized again and again that tional were ful1y aware that the entire the labor aristocracy represented a small working class did not support socialism. minority ofthe proletariat. And this was Many workers adhered to bourgeois ( not an empirical estimate but a basic ideology (e.g., religion) and supported sociological proposition. A group can the capitalist parties. Pre-1914 social occupy a privileged social position only democrats general1y associated political I in relation to the working masses of the backwardness with social backward­ society of which it is a part. The New ness. In particular, they saw that . Left Third Worldist notion that the workers newly drawn from the peasant­ proletariat in the imperialist centers is a ry and other small proprietors tended to labor aristocracy in relation to the retain the outlook of the former class. impoverished colonial masses denies Thus Kautsky in his 1909 The Road to that the European and North American Power wrote: workingclass is centrally defined by its "To a large degree hatched out of the exploitation at the hands of "its" small capitalist and small farmer class, bourgeoisie. It is methodological1y many proletarians long carry the shells similar to the argument of apologists for of these classes around with them. Thev do not feel themselvcs proletarians, but apartheid in South Africa that black as would-he property owners." workers in that country are better off than those in the rest of Africa. In other words, the classic social­ democratic position was that those However, Sweezy's revisionism is not workers who had a low cultural leveL limited to extending the category of were unski lied, unorganized, came from labor aristocracy to the majority of a rural background, etc., would be most workers in the a.dv.an~!:dr?~pit~bg, submissive toward bourgeois authority. countries. Hc also distort·s· LenTn's In thc contcxt of latc nineteenth century attitude toward the actual labor aristoc­ Germany and France, this political­ racy, which is a sociological not a Leaders of the first Weimar government in 1919: Scheidemann, Noske and political category. For the upp_ermost sociological generalization was valid. Ebert. However, with the development of a stratum of the working class, defense of its petty privileges often dominates its strong trade-union movement social the upper strata ofthe working class will the working class as did the social consciousness and action. It is thus a and political conservatism appeared at frequently tend toward social and democracy. On the contrary, during the culture medium for the false conscious­ the top ofthe working class and not only political conservatism relative to the past period New Left "Marxism" has ness which sees the workers' interests as at the bottom. Skil1ed workers in strong mass of the proletariat. Moreover, gone to the opposite extreme, dismiss­ tied to those of "their" bourgeoisie craft unions insulated themselves to a within certain -economic limits, the ing the entire organized proletariat in (support for imperialist war, protection­ certain degree from labor market and bourgeoisie and labor bureaucracy can the advanced capitalist countries as a ism, "profit-sharing" schemes, etc.). But cyclical unemployment and tended to widen the gap between the labor "labor aristocracy" bought off by the the labor aristocracy is also a part ofthe express a narrow corporate outlook. aristocracy and the class as a whole. spoils of imperialism. Just as at one time working class, sharing common class The phenomenon of a labor Zinoviev is certainly correct when he the revolutionary Marxists' attack on interests with the rest of the proletariat, aristocratic caste, like that of the labor writes: the social-democratic bureaucracy was and thus cannot be considered as bureaucracy, first manifested itself in exploited by the anarcho-syndicalists, "To foster splits between the various ultimately inherently pro-imperialist. Victorian England. The narrow corpor­ strata of the working class, to promote . so in our day Lenin's critical analysis of Under normal capitalist conditions, the ate spirit of the British craft unions was competition among them, to segregate the role of the labor aristocracy is labor aristocracy may well seek short­ well known. Furthermore, the upper the upper stratum from the rest of the distorted and exploited in the service of proletariat by corrupting it and mak­ term economic advantages at the ex­ stratum of the British working class was anti-proletarian petty-bourgeois radi­ ing it an agency for bourgeois pense of the class as a whole. However, almost exclusively English and Scots, 'respectability'-that is entirely in the calism, particularly nationalism. under the impact of a major depression, while the Irish were a significant part of interests of the bourgeoisie.... They A leading intel1ectual inspirer of New a devastating war, etc., the long-term the unskilled labor force. [the social-chauvinists] split the work­ Left Third Worldism (more or less ing class inside of every country and interests of this stratum as a section of The composition of pre-war German associated with Maoism) has been Paul thereby intensify and aggravate the split the proletariat wil1 tend to come to the Social Democracy consisted largely of Sweezy of Monthly Review. His revi­ between the working classes of various fore. skilled, better-offworkers. Zinoviev saw countries." sionist distortion of Lenin's analysis of in this sociological composition an The uppermost stratum of the work­ the labor aristocracy is presented with Leninists even seek to win over important source of reformism: ing class is not always and everywhere especial angularity in a centenary article exploited sectors of the petty bourgeoi­ " ... the predominant mass of the politically to the right of the mass of the on the publication of the first volume of sie proper (e.g., teachers, small farmers) membership of the Berlin social­ proletariat. Sometimes the greater Capital, "Marx and the Proletariat" to the cause of revolutionary socialism. democratic organization is composed of economic security of highly skilled (Month~r Revie...... December 1967). Therefore they can scarcely consign a trained. of skilled workers. In other workers produces a situation where they Here Sweezy claims Lenin's Imperial­ section of the working class, albeit a words, the predominant mass of the ism for the proposition that the princi­ membership of the social-democratic maintain a more radical political atti­ relatively priviliged, petty-bour­ organization consists ofthe better-paid tude than the mass of organized work­ pal social force for revolution in our geoisified section, to the camp of strata of labor-·-of those strata from ers, who are more concerned with their epoch has shifted to the rural masses in bourgeois counterrevolution. In the which the greatest section of the labor day-to-day material needs. Thus in the backward countries: October Revolution the relatively privi­ aristocracy arises. [emphasis in Weimar Germany in the 1920's, Com­ "His [Lenin's] major contribution was leged railway workers provided a base original] his little book Imperialism: The Highest - The War and the Crisis of munist support among skilled workers Stage ofCapitalism which, having been for the Mensheviks' counterrevolution­ Socialism . was relatively greater than among the published in 1917, is exactly half as old aryactivities. However, the oil workers Zinoviev makes no attempt to dem­ basic factory labor force, which looked as the first volume of Capital. There he in Mexico, likewise an elite proletarian argued that 'Capitalism has grown into onstrate empirically that the labor to the Social Democrats for immediate group in a backward country, have long reforms. Franz Borkenau wrote of the a world system of colonial oppression been among the most advanced sections aristocracy provided the base for the and of the financial strangulation of the SPD right wing; he merely asserts it. He German Communist Party membership overwhelming majority of the people of of that country's labor movement. In an can therefore be criticized for mechani­ in 1927: the world by a handful of "advanced" important article written shortly after cally transposing the political sociology "... skilled workers and people who countries... .' He also argued that the Imperialism, Lenin explicitly states that have been skilled workers make up two­ capitalists of the imperialist countries what fraction of the proletariat wil1 of Edwardian Britain onto the very fifths of the party membership; if their could and do use part of their 'booty' to different terrain of Wilhelminian Ger­ womenfolk were added they would bribe and win over to their side an eventual1y side with the bourgeoisie can many. Craft unionism never played as probably make up nearly half. ... If aristocracy of labor. As far as the logic continued on page 10

20 JANUARY 1978 ~ was in a sense a resurrection of the anarchist Ferdinand Domela­ Polish Socialist Party, and similar Toward the Communist League of 1848 on a mass :'\ieuwenhuis, he wrote: parties in the Baltic regIOn and foundation. "It is mv conviction that the critical T ranscaucassus. How does one account for the juncture for a new International Work-. The organizational principles of Communist absence of the vanguard party principle ing Men's Association has not yet arrived and for that reason I regard all Plekhanovite social democracy thus had in classic, late nineteenth century workers' congresses or socialist con­ a dual character. With respect to the International ... Marxism? Stalinist writers sometimes gresses, in so far as they are not directly proletariat, early Russian social demo­ (continued from page 9) deny this fact, distorting history so as to related to the conditions existing in this crats sought to become "the party ofthe make Marx/ Engels out as advocates of or that particular nation, as not merely whole class" emulating the SPD. But only be determined through political useless but actually harmful. They will struggle: Leninist organizational principles. On always ineffectually end in endlessly they also sought to become the van­ "Neither we nor anyone else can the other hand, it would be ahistoric repeated general banalities." guard of all the diverse anti-tsarist calculate precisely what portion of the idealism to criticize Marx/Engels for --Marx/Engels, Selected forces in the Russian empire. proletariat is following and will follow their organizational policies and to Correspondence (1975) From Plekhanovite social democracy the social-chauvinists and opportunists. maintain that the equivalent of the In Western Europe the transition from Lenin inherited vanguardist concep­ This will be revealed only by the struggle, it will definitely be decided Communist InternatiDnal could and the revolutionary bourgeois-democratic tions absent in the West European only by the socialist revolution." should have been established in the socialist parties. The significance of the . -"Imperialism and the Split in 1860's-90's. fight against Economism, which was Socialism" (October 1916) The formation of the Communist initiated by Plekhanov not Lenin, was in The Leninist attitude toward the League of 1847 was predicated on an preserving the vanguard role of social labor aristocracy is significantly differ­ imminent bourgeois-democratic revolu­ democracy in relation to the broad, ent than toward its leadership, the labor­ tion. The task of organizing the people, heterogeneous bourgeois-democratic bureaucracy. In the imperialist epoch, including the urban artisan-proletariat. forces. Because Lenin split Russian the age of capitalist decay, successful was being accomplished by the broader social democracy (in 1903) before it reformism is impossible. Thus whatever revolutionary democratic movement. achieved a mass base, he did not fully their background and original motiva­ The task of the Communist League was recognize the significance of what he tion, unless they explicitly adopt a to vie for leadership of an existing had done. He regarded the split with the revolutionary course the leaders of the revolutionary movement against the Mensheviks as a legitimate continuation labor movement are forced by their bourgeois democrats (as well as utopian of the struggle to separate proletarian social role to subordinate the workers' socialists). The Communist League thus socialism from petty-bourgeois democ­ interests to the bourgeoisie. As Lenin defined itself as the proletarian socialist racy. In reality he had separated the later wrote ofthe "labor lieutenants of vanguard of the revolutionary revolutionary socialists from the re­ the bourgeoisie": bourgeois-democratic movement. With formists, both seeking a working-class "Present-day (twentieth-century) im­ the definitive end ofthe 1848 revolution­ base. perialism has given a few advanced ary period (signaled by the 1852 Co­ The world-historic significance of countries an exceptionally privileged logne Communist trial), Marx's strategy pre-1914 Bolshevism was that it antic­ position, which, everywhere in the Second International. has produced a and its organizational component be­ ipated the organizational principles certain type of traitor, opportunist, and came unviable. required for victory in the epoch of social-chauvinist leaders, who champi­ Between the revolutions of 1848 and imperialist capitalism and of proletarian on the interests of their own craft, their the Russian revolution of 1905 the revolution. As the epoch of capitalist own section of the labour aristocra­ degeneration opened up with World cy. . .. The revolutionary proletariat possibilities of a successful bourgeois­ Eduard Bernstein cannot be victorious unless this evil is democratic revolution had been ex­ War I, the principal obstacle to proletar­ combated, unless the opportunist, hausted while the economic bases for a movement to mass proletarian socialist ian revolution was no longer the social-traitor leaders are exposed, proletarian-socialist revolution were parties required an entire epoch involv­ underdevelopment of bourgeois society discredited and expelled." still immature in the principal countries and of the workers movement. It was "Left Wing" Communism, An ing decades of preparatory activity. Infantile Disorder ( 1920) of Western Europe. (Britain presented The situation facing Marxists in now the reactionary labor bureaucracy, its own exceptional problems in this resting upon a powerful workers move­ In contrast, skilled, well-paid workers, tsarist Russia was fundamentally differ­ ent. There a bourgeois-democratic ment, which preserved an obsolete while more susceptible to conservative social system. The first task of revolu­ bourgeois ideology, are not "agents of revolution appeared a short-term prospect. A revolutionary bourgeois­ tionary socialists was henceforth defeat­ the bourgeoisie in the workers move­ ing and replacing the reformists as the ment" (Ibid.). Like the rest of the democratic movement existed in the form of radical (socialistic) populism leadership of the mass workers move­ proletariat, they must be won away ment, the precondition to leading that from their treacherous misleaders. with broad support among the intelligentsia. movement to victory over capitalism Classic Marxism and the leninist -.In important respects the conditions and laying the basis for a socialist Vanguard Party facing Plekhanov's Emancipation of society. This task has a dual character. Labor group in the 1880's paralleled The establishment of a revolutionary By 1916 Lenin had developed both those facing the Communist League vanguard party splits the working class the programmatic and theoretical basis before the revolution of 1848. Plekhan­ politically. However, a vanguard party for a split with official social democracy ov projected a proletarian party (initiat­ seeks to lead the mass of the proletariat and the creation of an international ed by the socialist intelligentsia) which through united economic organizations vanguard party modeled on the Bolshe­ would act as a vanguard in the of class struggle, the trade unions. In a viks. The actual formation of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, while revolutionary situation a vanguard Communist International in 1919 was, sharply demarcating itself from all party seeks to lead a united working of course, decisively affected by the petty-bourgeois radical currents. This class to power through soviets, the Bolshevik Revolution and establish­ vanguardist conception is clearly stated organizational basis of a workers ment of the Soviet state. However, this in the 1883 program of the Emancipa­ government. • series concerns the evolution of Lenin', tion of Labor group: position on the organizational question "One of the most harmful consequences away from traditional revolutionary of the backward state of production was social democracy. And that process was and still is the underdevelopment of the essentially completed before the Rus­ middle clas'>. which. in our countn. is incapable of taking the initiatil't' in the sian Revolution. We therefore conclude struggle against ahsolutism. with a discussion of the relationship of "That is why our socialist intelligentsia the l.eninist vanguard party to the has been ohliged to head the present­ previous Marxist experience around the day emancipation movement, whose direct task must be to set up free organizational question. Gregory Zinoviev political institutions in our country, the With respect to the vanguard party, socialists on their side being under the the history of the Marxist movement obligation to provide the working class regard. Even though Britain was far with the possibility to take an active and appears paradoxical. The first Marxist fruitful part in the future political life of organization, the Communist League of more advanced than France or Ger­ Russia." [emphasis in original] 1847-52, was a vanguard propaganda many, in the 1850's house servants still _·-G. Plekhanov, Selected group which clearly demarcated itself outnumbered industrial workers.) The Philosophical Works Volume 1 from all other tendencies in the socialist task of socialists was to create the ( 1961) and workers movements (e.g., from precondition for a socialist revolution In Bismarckian and Wilhelminian Blanquism, Cabet's Icarians, German through the organization of the prole­ Germany all bourgeois parties were "true" socialism, British Chartism). By tariat from an atomized condition. hostile to social democracy, which contrast, the International Working­ Furthermore, in the decades immediate­ represented both the totality of the men's Association (First International), ly following the defeat of 1848, mass, workers movement and by far the most established a generation later, sought to stable working-class organizations in significant force for democratic political be an inclusive body embracing all Germany and France were impeded by change. The Catholic Center Party, working-class organizations. A central effective state repression. National-Liberals and Progressives pillar of the First International was the A Leninist-type vanguard party in were only episodically viewed as a British trade-union movement, which Germany or France in the 1860's-90's challenge to the semi-autocratic govern­ politically supported the bourgeois would have existed in a political vacuum ment. By contrast, Russian social liberals. The Socialist (Second) Interna­ unrelated to any broader potentially democrats had to compete for cadre and tional. although its dominant section revolutionary movement. Thus in the for popular influence, including among was the Marxist German Social Democ­ period following the dissolution of the the industrial proletariat, with the TROTSKYIST LEAGUE racy. sought to be inclusive of all First International, Marx opposed the radical populists and at times even with OF CANADA proletarian socialist parties. In 1908 the re-establishment of an international the liberals. Moreover, since Russia was TORONTO. .1416 \ 366-4107 center as a diversion from the task of a multi-national state, the social demo­ Box 7198 Station A Second International even admitted the Toronto. Ontario crats also 'had to compete with left newly-formed British Labour Party building a workers movement actually VANCOUVER (604) 291-8993 which did not claim to be socialist. Thus capable of overthrowing capitalism. In a nationalist parties like the Ukrainian Box 26. Station A the Communist International of 1919 letter (22 February 1881) to the Dutch Radical Democratic Party and the \. Vancouver. BC

10 WORKERS VANGUARD The stranglehold of the International cord in organizing-like that of his bureaucracy paralyzes the UAW. Work­ former allies-turned-adversaries Lee Essex ... Kentucky Coal Roy Patterson and Harry Patrick~-isas (continued/rom page 12) ers in the auto industry alternate between grueling hours of forced overtime, painful as the history ofbroken wildcats. emerged as a popular strike leader, said intensifying speed-up and long periods Fields ... which all three feuding bureaucrats that the workers at that point wanted to of layoff. If they strike against these (continued from page 12) helped to defeat. call on other UAW locals to help mass conditions. the union leaders join hands Although non-union coal constitutes picket the plant and keep the scabs out: a mortal threat to the U MWA, the Miller with the corporations and courts todrive got shot by being peaceful," the miner "Our local president felt we should. we bureaucracy has in some cases ignored the workers back into thefactories orfire said angrily. "We're going to be prepared all felt that way. They [other locals] the organizing efforts of rank and filers them. When. on occasion, a local leader the next time." asked to. but the Regional office told even when non-union miners asked to them not to. Our [International UA W] stands with the ranks instead of the No doubt emboldened by this wanton join up. The Pike County miner contin­ rep. James Johnson. said they were not International brass, his head goes on the execution ofa loyal UM WA retiree. non­ ued: "We were on strike for acontract[in to come. He said they would just get chopping block as well. As a result, union truck drivers are increasing their arrested and get in trouble. They sent almost all local and regional UAW 1974 and] we pulled a non-union mine letters of support, they sent money and efforts to run scab coal. WVlearned that officers march in lockstep tothe Interna­ out. The men were willing to sign the food, but the union officials would not coal haulers have organized a "truckers cards and everything and go union, but allow mass picketing or a large group of tional's tune. forming a bureaucratic association" and appealed to Kentucky the International wouldn't recognize people .... The scabs just took over." roadblock implacably hostile to auto governor Julian Carroll for assistance them. We got 150 men fired." Faced with a mounting number of workers' interests. against roving pickets, who have con­ scabs. strike leaders traveled to Detroit The clear lesson of the Essex strike is vinced many drivers to put up their The currentstrike, in which many non­ seeking help. In a mid-November the urgent and overdue need to build a trucks for the duration of the strike. In union pits are already shut down, meeting at Solidarity House with the class-struggle opposition to the betray­ one case 40 scab drivers with rifles hid in presents a crucial opportunity to organ­ UAW International Executive Board ers in Solidarity House and their water the bed ofa coal truck hoping to ambush ize the unorganized mines. But as the and in private meetings with UAW boys. Caucuses must be constructed picketing miners. experience of Kentucky miners in 1974 president Doug Fraser and Region 3 throughout the union which oppose not While gun thugs and cops have failed demonstrates, this task cannot be en­ director Dallas Sells, the strikers were only the obvious strikebreakingsellouts. to intimidate the miners, Miller's abys­ trusted to the likes of Miller & Co. The promised that the International would but the arm-in-arm colloboration with mal preparations forthis strike(there are job of closing all North American coal put pressure on the Big 3, who purchase the Democratic party which shapes the neither health benefits nor a strike fund) mines must be taken up by the election of 80 percent of the Elwood plants' auto bureaucracy's pro-capitalist policies. and his treachery since December 6 have authoritative strike committees which parts, not to buy the scab goods and that Most of the American left, however, left UM WA militants bitter. The most would exert the will ofthe membership in the strikers would get additional legal busies itself in pursuit of demagogic sacred tradition in the 88-year history of the face of the bureaucracy's treachery and financial assistance. bureaucrats barely to Fraser's left as the the union is respect forthe picket line. yet and bungling. Such bodies would pos­ But bureaucrats unwilling to mobilize easy road to power and influence. A few Miller has ushered thousands of western sess the credibility necessary to approach the union ranks for mass picketing were years ago the fake-left United Nationa1 U.S. strip miners back to work under a the ranks of the steel workers, seamen equally unwilling to muster the force Caucus was the darling ofsuch groups as "separate peace" agreement. "People feel and railroad unions, appealing for necessary to shut off the flow of scab the Communist Party (CP) and the suspicious: people feel Arnold Miller solidarity actions--in particular a labor parts. Ford, Chrysler and GM were not International Socialists (I.S .). Never really is trying to betray them." the boycott of all U.S. and Canadian coal. about to voluntarily deprive themselves more than a bloc between disgruntled Kentucky miner told Wv. Many of,the measures needed to win of critical pans, particularly to aid an skilled-trade parochialists, aspiring bu­ Such sentiments are the fruit of five this battle and beat back the growing embattled UAW local. It would have reaucrats and leftist sycophants. the years of Miller's pro-capitalist leader­ danger of scab coal come from the taken UAW members at the Big 3 U\'C predictably fell apart under the ship. during which union coal has fallen miners' own arsenal of tested strike refusing to handle Essex products to strains ofconflicting bureaucratic ambi­ below 50 percent of the national total. weapons. It is by forging a class-struggle give the Elwood strikers the vital tions and different constituencies. Unless hundreds of new and old non­ leadership which can apply these tactics assistance necessary to win the strike. The current favorite of the CPo I.S. union pits are brought under UMWA on an industry-wide basis and oust the Such action would endanger the cozy and Socialist Workers Party (SWP), contract. scab operations will sabotage defeatist Miller gang-along with its relationship between the auto bosses newly arrived on the trade union scene. is strikes and threaten the union's existence bureaucratic opponents-that U MWA and UAW hacks. So nothing was done. Frank Runnels, head of Cadillac Local altogether. Unfortunately, Miller's re- militants can lead the strike to victory.• After months of inaction, Solidarity 22 in Detroit. The vain and ambitious House swung into action only when Runnels is seeking to advance his Essex filed a $600,000 damage suit in bureaucratic career by sponsoringa pan­ eleven as provided for in the constitu­ early December against Local 1663 and union "ShorterWork Week Committee" tion. When Bridges undertook to stifle Trenton 7... the International. Two officials were and has received uncritical praise in the Local 10 opposition to his policies in (continued from page 5) sent in from UAW headquarters just a press of the reformist pseudo-socialists. 1973, the Wing forces squawked loudly. few days before Christmas to hammer With auto sales slipping seriously in But today they want to make peace with handles Chrysler legal cases, are appeal­ the Essex workers into accepting an the last quarter of 1977 and some auto the International and are content to do ing their case and asking other unions to offer almost identical to that which they plants already beginning to furlough Herman's bidding. file legal briefs in their favor. While all had rejected in five previous votes. workers. theshorterwork week will bean Howard Keylor and Stan Gow, legal channels must be pursued to Georgia Ellis explained the sellout: increasingly popular idea in the UAW, publishers of "Longshore Militant." overturn this outrageous conviction, no "They came in late Tuesday night and and Runnels knows it. But desiring at all were re-elected to the executive board. faith can be placed in the "justice" ofthe said we had to have a meeting 9 a.m. costs to avoid a clear break with Fraser, receiving 295 and 277 votes respectively, courts or legislative halls, wherethe right Wednesday morning and said we had to Runnels is careful to avoid specifying a slight improvement overpast elections. to strike is under severe attack. As have a vote. Well, my god, we couldn't how many hours the workweek should Keylor also got 95 votes in his first bid for another of the Trenton 7. Al Larcinese, get ahold of our people. most of them had their phones disconnected and had be cut, hopes a DemocraticCongress will the Local presidency. "Longshore Mili­ remarked: "In the 1930's, they were using moved in with relatives and all sorts of do it and wants Doug Fraser to be the tant" has clearly established itself as a mobsters. state troopers and everything things. We wound up with 117 out of keynote speaker at a "Shorter Work credible left pole in the Local. This was to break a strike. Now they just use the our 200 people. They got up and told us Week" convention this spring. the fourth consecutive year in which courts." what they had done, that's all they had Gow and Keylor were elected to the The same labor fakers who refuse to got--this language-that's all Essex A fighting leadership for the UAW will was going to give them and that's all we not be fashioned out ofthe likes ofFrank Local 10 executive board on a class­ defend workers' strikes against attack by were going to get and we might as well Runnels or other climbers interested in struggle program. These militants. the capitalist state look to the state for give up. And our people asked them. if enhancing their rise in the bureaucracy. uniquely in Local 10. opposed the new union protection. The union bureaucrats we stayed out. would they stay with us, There will be more Elwoods, and worse, LWOP-stipulated dispatch system. are currently touting the "Labor Reform we didn't want to go back. They said we would get strike benefits but there was until auto workers forge a new and They campaigned vigorously for a Act," which has already passed the nothing they could do to help and there militant leadership committed to a coastwide strike for a shorter workshift House and is under consideration by the was nothing we could do ourselves. complete break with the politics of class at no loss in pay, full manning scales on U.S. Senate. Like the 1935 Wagner Act. That was it. collaboration.• all operations; abolition of the "steady this bill purports to be a boon to union "None of the promises that were made were kept.... I feel they cooperated man" system and all other attacks on the organizing by speeding up the proce­ completely with the company. They hiring hall; for an end to the no-strike dures for certification elections. But agreed to put pressure on, and they S.F. Longshore clause. for democratically elected strike Section 12 of the bill empowers the did-on us. They just simply wanted to (continued/rom page 4) committees and a break with the capital­ National Labor Relations Board to get us off their back and get it done as ist parties. obtain court injunctions against solidari­ quickly and as easily as possible. Part of every attempt by militants to fight for the deal was to drop the law suit. And jobs for all through a coastwide strike. The principled program of Gow and ty or so-called "stranger pickets" in the that was dropped. It was just plain They have 'endorsed the voluntary Keylor stood in sharp contrast to that of face of expressed or even implied no­ blackmail." transfers as well as the new dispatch Communist Party (CP) supporters, who strike agreements. Isolated and betrayed, the Essex work­ system. and thus helped open the way for have time and again attempted to give In its early years, when memories of ers voted 70 to 44 to end their fight. full-scale implementation of LWOP. themselves a "militant" face only to end the sitdown strikes which built the auto Having battled the company for nine And during the recent ILA strike of East up supporting Herman and the Local 10 union were still fresh, the UAW exercised long months, the strikers were not and Gulf Coast longshoremen Mills, leadership on every crucial issue. The the right to strike over all grievances. beaten dow n by the bosses they were who had pre\iously campaigned on a Local 10 membership gave a sharp This was traded away by Reuther/ strangled by their "leaders." demagogic promise to "shut the coast rebuke to these unprincipled hacks. Woodcock/Fraser and replaced by the The tragic defeat at Essex is appalling down" for a shorter workshift at no loss Well-known CP supporter Billy Proctor no-strike clause which today is used to in its extent. The workers and only a in pay. meekly accepted the role of received only 142 votes. failing to make fire and convict militants like the minority of them return with no gains Herman's flunkey in Local 10, responsi­ the executive board, while his bloc Trenton 7. Not through reliance on the and a shattered union. Doug Fraser and ble for implementing the International's partner Leo Robinson got only 281 bosses' courts or faith in the pro­ the LA \V hierarchy have, of course, farcical "defense pact" with the ILA. votes. down from last year. company bureaucrats but only on the sold out a lot of strikes. In the last year This phony deal ended in ignominy when As the bosses tighten the screws, the terrain of the class struggle can the right alone. Fraser sabotaged major strikes in picket lines were pulled down on the policies of Proctor and Wing become to strike be \\on. In the coal fields Indianapolis. Fremont, Ca!Jfornia and West Coast as soon as the PMA predict­ virtually indistinguishable from those of militant miners are demanding the local Trenton, Michigan. leaving union offi­ ably sought injunctions. Herman and Williams. The upcoming right to strike in their contract. On the cers and rank-and-file workers fired and Even more revealing is the support of contract battle poses the need onceagain Mesabi Range. iron ore workers struck disciplined. But compared to the big Wing & Co. for Jimmy Herman's for longshoremen to throw off the for four and a half months in defiance of locals in the assembly plants and attempt to limit the number Local 10 stranglehold of the pro-capitalist bu­ the no-strike"Experimental Negotiating foundries, the small Essex local was delegates to be elected to the upcoming reaucrats and their reformist hangers­ Agreement." In Detroit defense of the considered expendable and was allowed contract caucus (the longshore contract on. and fight for the class-struggle Trenton 7 must be the rallying point for to be thoroughly smashed. expires next June) to six, instead of policies of "Longshore Militant.". auto workers to join this struggle.•

20 JANUARY 1978 11 WllillEliS ,,1N'1J1l1i1J

Doug Fraser's Most Shameful Sellout UAW Strangles

Essex Strike Earl Dotter/UAW Solidarity Essex workers picket in Elwood, Indiana where striker was shot by security guards.

The most shameful defeat in the rehire eleven strikers accused of "mis­ tance to our people in order to go the picket line from slits cut in sand­ recent history of the United Auto conduct" on the picket line. Their cases back ...at the bottom of the list was bagged factory walls. Striker Carol Frye Workers (UAW) has been inflicted on a rotation of operators and additional will go to arbitration. grievance time and those were the only was shot in the back and is permanently small local in Elwood, Indiana. For two things we got. No cost of living. no disabled with a bullet lodged near her nearly nine months 200 strikers, 80 It's a Doormat, not a Contract pensions. we didn't get anything." spine. Pickets were beaten and hit by percent of them women, militantly Before they struck, Essex workers' This "contract" is a declaration of scabs' cars. Over 80 strikers were resisted the attacks ofarmed guards and base pay was a shocking $2.76 per hour, unconditional surrender by the union. arrested by county police; many still scabherding police, their desperate particularly outrageous when compared Strike leaders told WV that many face court appearances. battle virtually ignored by the UAW to the $7-plus fellow UAW members workers will simply pull up stakes and The strike was not lost due to a lack of bigwigs. But when Essex Incorporated make at Ford, GM and Chrysler. move elsewhere rather than return on militancy on the part of the strikers. brought a $600,000 law suit against the Essex offered a miserable wage increase thesc humiliating terms. Those who do Together with husbands, sons and International in early December, Solid­ of 62 cents over three years. But thanks return face the conditions of a prison boyfriends, the workers armed them­ arity House bureaucrats rushed in to to Solidarity House, the workers are camp. The small plant, which never had selves with clubs and baseball bats and impose substantially the same terms the returning now for even less than that: 61 guards or even a fence before the strike, fought back. When Carol Frye was shot strikers had been offered before they cents! A penny an hour was diverted is now enclosed by an eight-foot-high in July, the company claims a four-day walked out last April and which they from the original company offer to wire fence, with two armed guards on siege ensued, with hundreds of rounds had rejected in five subsequent votes. increase sickness benefits from $35 to the gate. Two other guards take every of gunfire pouring into the barricaded The strikers' union, UAW Local $37.50 a week. As one striker told WV: worker's name and ID number as they plant. It was then that Essex obtained a 1663, has been broken. One hundred "There was no gain whatsoever finan­ clock in and out. Armed thugs patrol up federal injunction limiting picketing to twenty scabs hired during the strike will cially. We don't have shift preference, and down the plant aisles constantly. six strikers. Sixty Indiana state troopers continue on the job and do not have to we don't have our classifications back, These are the same hired guns who were rushed in to keep the plant open to join the union. Of the 200 strikers, only we don't have anything. We were just subjected the strikers to repeated violent the scabs. losing in every negotiation; they gave 50 have been recalled to work; the rest away something else and never asked assaults. When the company decided to In an interview with WV, Georgia will be reinstated over the next three for anything in return. We took a listing re-open the plant last June with scabs, Ellis, a 57-year-old grandmother who years "as needed." Essex flatly refuses to of things that were of utmost impor- private guards were hired who shot up continued on page 11 ~g!!JI~ Unorganized Miners! Kentucky Coal Fields Seethe Over Picket-Line Murder MORGANTOWN, West Virginia, Jan­ roving pickets at any mine site. As word called and the roving pickets will again be Diamond Coal weeks ago, another scab uary 17--Bargaining resumed Thursday of this wholesale capitUlation to the sent out. The strikers' determination to outfit which shares Diamond's gate was in Washington between representatives operators reached the coal fields the win has been increased by the cold­ still working. Lewis' assailant's home is of the striking United Mine Workers of resulting protest forced union bargainers blooded murder onJanuary 6 of65-year­ on company property, and he was America (UMWA) and the Bituminous to back off, at least temporarily. Hoping old retired miner Mack Lewis, gunned responsible for unlocking the gate which Coal Operators Association (BCOA) to avoid a repetition of the ranks' down by a company guard in Pike admits coal trucks, according to District after a l2-day lapse. Far from signaling "intrusion" into the talks, negotiations County, Kentucky. 30 UMWA members. progress in the six-week-old strike, are now being conducted under a news In addition to the shooting itself, According to a Pike County miner however, the re-opened talks are cause blackout to prevent press leaks. No new miners are incensed by the reportage in interviewed by WV, four elderly un­ for daily worry by the ranks as they wait developments have been officially the capitalist media which portrayed armed union men were picketing the gate to see what UM WA president Arnold released. Lewis' death as an inexplicable tragedy at the time of the murder while cursing Miller will give away next. Among the rank and file, however, virtually unrelated to the coal strike. the guard whodrawsa UMWA pension. Prior to December 30, when the militants' efforts to stop scab coal began Pro-company newspapers pondered A few minutes after Lewis arrived at the BCOA walked out of negotiations, the in the first days of the walkout and have why Lewis would be shot by an off-duty site with sandwiches for his union "broad outline" of a settlement was continued on an even larger scale after guard employed by the Diamond Coal brothers. the guard "walked up, didn't widely reported which would have the holidays. (M ilitants in southern West Company, and wondered why there were exchange three words till the guy was outlawed the vital right to strike by Virginia, eastern Kentuckyand southern pickets present at all, since Diamond shot-five times-with a .44." "They providing for individual financial pen­ Ohio last week told WV that as soon as Coal shut down early in the strike. The were peaceful old men, and one of them alties for wildcatting and instant firing of the weather breaks meetings will be truth is that although pickets closed continued on page 11 12 20 JANUARY 1978