WfJlillEliS '.II',.lil 25¢ No. 560 ~X.'23 2 October 1992

Fourth Reich Bankers Detonate ...

uro- aos

Currency speculators dump lire, pounds, francs as European Monetary System shatters.

A single European currency by the end capitalist Europe has evaporated. chequer and German chancellor Helmut ancient sacred idol. The German tabloid of the century-an economic and polit­ "Europe's plans for economic union Kohl exchanged insults that in former Bild-Zeitung. crows "Oh you lovely ical union-a common foreign policy are flying apart before the world's eyes," times would be a prelude to a duel. mark," along with displays showing how backed up by an independent armed understated the Wall Street Journal. In By the time the Maastricht treaty was much cheaper are Scotch whisky, Span­ force-a new European superstate. For Sweden-staid, square, solid Sweden­ nearly voted down (carrying by 51 to ish leather jackets and vacations in Italy months, ever since the West European the central bank was charging 500 per­ 49 percent) in the French referendum than a few weeks ago. summit in the Dutch town of Maastricht cent interest to its member banks to stop on September 20, European monetary The shattering of the European Mon­ last December, the world has been bom­ the run on the krona. The Bank of Eng­ "unity" had already been destroyed by etary System intersecting the near-defeat barded by this kind of Euro-nonsense. land lost a quarter of its total foreign­ the German Bundesbank and interna­ of Maastricht in France signifies a sharp­ But now it's all been blown sky-high. exchange reserves in one day in its hap­ tional financiers. "Sunday's vote will be ening of interimperialist tensions within With the French "yes, but" vote on the less effort to defend the pound, while like kicking a dead body," commented Europe. We are beginning to see the Maastricht treaty and particularly the the French have to date lost half their a Swiss banker a few days before. Mean­ unraveling of the European Community spectacular European currency crisis in reserves trying to hold the line on the while, the Germans are exalting the (EC), the economic glue which for three mid-September, the mirage of a united franc. The British chancellor of the ex- "super" deutschmark as if it were an continued on page 6 Workers Revolt AgainstCap-italist Austerity Red Hoi Aulumn in Iialy MILANO, September 28-From Milano in the north to Palermo in Sicily, hundreds of thousands of workers, pensioners and students are pouring into the streets daily in the largest and most militant strike wave to convulse Italy since the "hot autumn" of 1969. A series of regional general strikes brought 100,000 into the central piazza in Florence on September 22, 150,000 in Milano on the 23rd, tens of thousands more in Naples and Torino on the 24th and 25th, and upwards of 200,000 pensioners marched in Rome on the 26th. For the first time since 1980, 90 percent of the workers at Fiat joined the strike. And these were not bureaucrat­ ically orchestrated events but an explosive working­ class revolt, directed not only against the bosses but also against their own sellout leaders. ~~~~ Newspaper headlines and conver- ~ ~ sations are filled with talk of "la

o brutal cutbacks ordered by Prime ("') Minister Giuliano Amato, who wants iiillo to impose sacrifices of "blood and ,.... co tears" on the working class. Embold­ ened by the collapse of Stalinist rule in East Europe and the Soviet Union i and the fracturing of the once hege­ monic Italian Communist Party (PCI), La Repubblica o . continued on page 9 Angry workers battle police in Torino In mass eru.ption against new capital!st a~s,terlty measures. Parti!iau Defeu§e £o...... ittee CLASS-STRUGGLE DEFENSE NOTES sentinelsan ".1ncisco _ National Lawyers Guild Adapting to the "Death of Communism" line in their rad-Iib milieu, National Anti-Communist Ban on RCP Lawyers Guild refuses to defend Maoists of RCP. The rad-lib National Lawyers Guild, sentence for Cheryl Lessin (see "Defend upholding the ("proletarian") family; in and FDR Democrats. In 1940, the NLG that weather vane of middle-class "pro­ RCP Flag Fetishists!" WV No. 518, 18 line with this they call to "ideologically refused to defend the Trotskyists, the first gressive" opinion, has decided that now January 1991). Following the explosion remold homosexuals." Ludicrously at­ victims of the anti-communist Smith Act, the "Death of Communism" is in, it's of anger in Los Angeles over the acquit­ tempting to "explain" this position today, only to itself be labeled a Communist time to kick reds out. At its August 1992 tal of the racist cops who beat Rodney RCPer Stephanie Tang writes to the SF front group in the McCarthyite witch­ national convention, the NLG upheld King on video and got away with it, L.A. Weekly (5 February) that "women... need hunt. In the '60s, the NLG proclaimed bans by their San Francisco and New authorities singled out the RCP' as insti­ to turn to revolutionary Maoism, not the itself the legal arm of the "Movement"­ York City chapters on defending or giv­ gators of the "riots." And the RCP's sup­ partial solution of lesbianism." This New and sued the trade unions. Reflecting ing legal aid to the Revolutionary Com­ port for the Peruvian Sendero Luminoso Leftover idiocy that equates sexuality the breakup of the New Left, the Guild munist Party (RCP). So in the Big Apple (Shining Path) guerrillas has drawn sin­ with political positions, however, has in became a seething mess of sectar­ and the Bay Area, the NLG will no ister attention. The U.S. and other gov­ practice lately been buried by the RCP, ian tendencies-at one point the Mao­ longer provide legal observers or law­ ernments have been pressured by Peru­ which has defended gay groups and ist October League even attempted to yers for RCP events, nor will it defend vian diplomats to "shut down" foreign women fighting for abortion rights-not exclude homosexuals from the NLG! RCPers arrested at RCP-initiated dem-· supporters of the group. A major piece because of any change in their Stalinist We have plenty of political differences onstrations. Behind the NLG's ban is on Sendero in the New York Times Mag­ "principles," but because these issues with the RCP, and with the National pure and simple anti-communism. At azine (24 May) included photos of the have become so obviously a cutting edge Lawyers Guild, as well as many gay issue is the right of an ostensibly Marxist RCP's Revolution Books and insinuating of capitalist social reaction. and lesbian organizations. Yet the party to exist in the "New World Order." quotes from "experts" on "terrorism." Amid the swirl of charges around Partisan Defense Committee and the It's no. coincidence the NLG ban . The ostensible reason for the Bay Area the Bay Area NLG ban on the RCP, some Spartacist League have consistently­ comes just as the Maoist RCP has NLG's original 1991 ban was the RCP's very sinister slanders were retailed by a and uniquely-defended organizations been increasingly targeted for repres­ supposedly "blatant homophobic poli­ Bay Area gay paper, The Sentinel, whose of labor, the left and oppressed groups, sion. Their flag-burning stunts over the tics." This is a blatant fig leaf. For years, publisher charged in a 7 May editorial irrespective of their political views, Persian Gulf War drew not only media "Chairman Bob" Avakian's RCPhas held that the RCP had a secret "war plan" to which have come under attack by this attention but arrests and a vicious prison the classic Stalinist reactionary position "march down to the Castro and burn it capitalist state, its cops and courts. Our down" in the wake of the L.A. upheaval! defense efforts have included everyone The same Sentinel piece, titled "Jordan from the RCP's Cheryl Lessin (who and Hongisto Deserve Praise;" effu­ burned a flag in Cleveland to protest the For a Socialist United States sively hailed Mayor Jordan and then­ Persian Gulf War) to NAMBLA (North of Europe! police chief Hongisto (who engineered American Man-Boy Love Association, a the seizure of a rival gay paper, the group many gay and lesbian organiza­ The outbreak ofthe first imperialist war in Bay Times). When the RCP responded tions shun). 1914 signaled that the forces of production to these smears, the cop-loving, In our old-fashioned way, we look had outgrown capitalist property relations communist-hating Sentinel printed the back to the IWW tradition that "an injury and the nation-state system. In revolutionary NLG's ban on the RCP. to one is an injury to all." The NLG, opposition to World War I, Trotsky raised A "Statement of Protest" distributed the slogan of a Socialist United States of meanwhile, would do well to ponder the at the NLG's convention in Chicago this Europe, and this was later incorporated in 1945 words of Lutheran churchman Mar­ summer appealed to the Guild's tradition the program ofthe Communist International tin Niemoller, who was sent to a con­ of "progressive legal defense," noting TROTSKY in Lenin's day. Stalin later abandoned this LENIN centration camp by Hitler: "First they perspective in favor ofthe nationalist utopia that "Refusal to defend the RCP sends came for the communists, but since I ofbuilding "socialism in one country." Opposing Stalinism, in 1928 Trotsky reaffirmed a message to the government, police and was not a communist I did not protest. right-wing bigots that they may attack the organic unity ofproletarian revolution in Europe. Then they came for the Jews, but since the RCP without fear of being confronted I was not a Jew I did not protest. Then A more or less complete economic unification of Europe accomplished from above by Guild lawyers." The statement, they came for the Catholics, but since I through an agreement between capitalist governments is a utopia. Along this road signed by lawyers across the country was not a Catholic I did not protest. matters cannot proceed beyond partial compromises and half measures. But this alone, as well as RCP supporters and victims When they came for me, there was no an economic unification of Europe, such as would entail colossal advantages both to of the 1950s McCarthyite witchhunts, one left to protest." the producer and consumer and to the development of culture in general, is becoming noted that the Guild has defended the a revolutionary task of the European proletariat in its struggle against imperialist RCP for nearly two decades. *** protectionism and its instrument-militarism.... In fact, the NLG's legal defense We encourage WV readers to support The United States of Europe represents first of all a form-the only conceivable has always been determined by what's the PDC. Become a monthly sustaining form-of the dictatorship of the proletariat in Europe. acceptable or trendy ("politically cor­ contributor. Send a donation of $5 or -Leon Trotsky, "The 'French' Peace Program" (September 1915) rect") in "progressive," i.e., liberal bour­ more and receive a subscription to Class­ geois, circles. It was founded to support Struggle Defense Notes. For a single Geographically and historically, conditions have predetermined such a close organic the "New Deal," as a petty-bourgeois copy send $1 to: Partisan Defense Com­ bond between the countries of Europe that there is no way for them to tear themselves component of the class-collaborationist mittee, P.O. Box 99, Canal Street Station, out of it. The modern bourgeois governments of Europe are like murderers chained "People's Front" between the Stalinists New York, NY 10013.• to a single cart. The revolution in Europe, as has already been said, will in the final analysis be of decisive importance for America as well. But directly, in the immediate course of history, a revolution in Germany will have an immeasurably greater signifi­ SPARTACIST LEAGUE/U.S. LOCAL DIRECTORY cance for France than for the United State of America. It is precisely from this historically developed relationship that there flows the political vitality of the slogan National Office: Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 • (212) 732-7860 of the European Soviet Federation. We speak of its relative vitality because it stands Atlanta Detroit to reason that this Federation will extend, across the great bridge of the SovietUnion, Norfolk to Asia, and will then effect a union of the World Socialist Republics. Box4012 Box441043 Box 1972, Main PO Atlanta, GA 30302 Detroit, MI 48244 Norfolk, VA 23501 -Leon Trotsky, The Third International After Lenin (1928) Boston Los Angeles Oakland Box390840, Central Sta. Box29574, Los FelizSta. Box29497 Cambridge, MA 02139 Los Angeles, CA90029 Oakland, CA94604 (617) 492-3928 (213) 380-8239 (510) 839-0851 San Francisco Chicago Madison Box77494 !~!'!!!!~~~'l.~!~/!.! ~ Box6441, Main PO Box1492 San Francisco, CA94107 Chicago, IL 60680 Madison, WI 53701 (415) 777-9367 DIRECTOR OF PARTY PUBLICATIONS: Liz Gordon (312) 663-0715 EDITOR: Jan Norden New York Washington, D.C. PRODUCTION MANAGER: Joan Parker Cleveland Box444, Canal St. Sta. Box75073 CIRCULATION MANAGER: Karen Valdez Box91037 NewYork, NY 10013 Washington, D.C. 20013 EDITORIAL BOARD: George Foster, Frank Hunter, Jane Kerrigan, Len Meyers, James Robertson, Cleveland, OH 44101 (212) 267-1025 (202) 872-8240 Joseph Seymour, Alison Spencer, Marjorie Starnberg The Spartacist League is the U.S. Section of the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist). Workers Vanguard (USPS 098-770) published biweekly, except 2nd issue August and with 3-week interval December, TROTSKYIST LEAGUE OF CANADA/LiGUE TROTSKYSTE DU CANADA by the Spartacist Publishing Co., 41 Warren Street, New York, NY 10007. Telephone: (212) 732-7862 (Editorial), (212) 732-7861 (ausiness). Address all correspondence to: Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116. Domestic Toronto Montreal Vancouver subscriptions: $7.00/24 issues. Second-class postage paid at New York, NY. POSTMASTER: Send address changes Box7198, Station A to Workers Vanguard, Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116. C.P. Les Atriums Box2717, Main P.O. Opinions expressed in signed articles or leiters do not necessarily express the editorial Viewpoint. Toronto, ON M5W 1X8 B.P.32066 Vancouver, BCV6S 3X2 (416) 593-4138 Montreal, QC H2L 4V5 (604) 687-0353 No. 560 2 October 1992 (514) 849-6540

2 WORKERS VANGUARD used the swiftness and cruelty of Herod. To non-whites like the writer, the notion IS mes­ capable that the U.S. Government, as it stands, is already white supremacist. Even though one of their officials was killed in the initial shoot-out, the government didn't call in an air strike, didn't fly in a helicopter, and dropped no bombs, in this rustic far-away-from-the-big-city site. When the alleged gunman (not Weaver) emerged, he Patience in Idaho vs. wasn't slamdunked like Delbert Africa in 1978 (or Rodney King even, in 1991!). He was treated like a Overkill in Philly human being-a white human being. In Philadelphia, America's fifth largest metropolis, they ripped a house apart with people (black) in it "The mountainous regions of Idaho, huddled in the mous patience. When Weaver was finally tired out, in 1978; and in 1985, transformed it into a death nation's Pacific Northwest, became home briefly to and surrendered to what they call "ZOG" (Zionist oven, killing at least II MOVE people, including bloody conflict between the government and a member Occupation Government), he wasn't beaten, kicked, babies, who, like the 1978 crew, were guilty of noth­ ofthe White Supremacist Christian Identity Movement. pummeled, nor rifle-butted into submission. ing, but a civil eviction notice, and killed no one. Latest reports state that c.l. follower, Randy He was presumably searched, handcuffed and put The survivors of 1978 got 900 years in prison. Weaver, after the death of his teenage son and wife under arrest, and his three surviving daughters were The one rebel who survived 1985 got seven years, by government officials following a shoot-out, sur­ turned over to other C.l. folks in the hills of Idaho. for surviving. rendered to the government after an l l-day standoff, What a contrast between the government's treat­ The rest gotdeath by incineration. in late August, 1992. ment of MOVE and c.l.! Who's really opposed to this government? Christian Identity, which reportedly merges Old In the 1978 MOVE confrontation, the MOVE men, Testament beliefs with more modern 20th Century upon arrest, were shot, beaten (on videotape!), and 2 September 1992 white racist teachings, has been bubbling and brewing the women were threatened with death. The babies in Idaho and the Pacific region for decades. were ripped from mothers and sent to government Mumia Abu-Jamal, a Philadelphia blackjournal­ The strike that lit the match was a tightening net centers where they were harassed, probed, interro­ ist, is on death row at Pennsylvania's Huntingdon of surveillance on Weaver by government agents, who gated, and several forcibly shorn and fed foods which state prison. Framed up because of his political claimed the c.l. follower violated a bench warrant violated their faith. The "reason"? They said a cop views, Jamal faces death for his defiance of the for not showing up for court on weapons charges. was killed, hence over-reaction. racist, capitalist order. His columns appear periodi­ Weaver was quoted as saying the government set him In the infamous May 13th (1985) confrontation, cally in Workers Vanguard and other newspapers. up with the gun case, and a mid-month shoot-out the police, armed with U.S. Government weaponry, To get involved in the fight to save Mumia between the Weaver party and the feds left two dead: hardly waited 11 hours, much less II days, (and here, Abu-Jamal and abolish the death penalty, contact Weaver's son and a U.S. Marshal. no cops were killed!) before dropping a bomb on a the Partisan Defense Committee, P.O. Box 99, Federal and State cops rung the Weaver compound house that they knew was inhabited by half a score Canal Street Station, New York, NY 10013. If in a textbook case of the "wait-tern-out" theory, and of men, women and babies. you wish to correspond with Jamal, you can except for the later sniping of his wife, and wounding In one instance, to borrow an Old Testament figure, write to: Mumia Abu-Jamal, AM8335, Drawer R, of him by government gunners, they displayed enor- the state used the patience of Job; in another, they Huntingdon, PA 16652. Remembering Bill Edwards We print below excerpted remarks demonstrated in 1985 against the racist his son had just come from Germany, of comrades Don Alexander and Gene provocation at San Francisco General and had witnessed the increased bold­ Herson at the memorial meeting for Hospital in which the bosses and their ness of fascists in Berlin. Bill liked our Bill Edwards at the San Francisco hall union flunkeys attempted to build a sep­ anti-fascist action at Treptow, and came of the International Longshoremen's and arate Jim Crow toilet for black electri­ through. Along with other LBLers, he Warehousemen's Union. Bill died on cian Jeff Higgins. provided money for me to travel there August 5 at age 72. He was a retired In 1984 when Democrat "Dixie" on behalf of the SL and the LBL, which member of the National Maritime Union, Dianne Feinstein flew the Confederate is in fraternal alliance and programmatic and this year he was the vice presidential flag of slavery from SF City Hall, the solidarity with the Spartacist League. candidate of the Socialist Party. In the LBL mobilized twice to tear down and It is fitting to remember Bill's actions 1930s Bill was a member of the Young keep down the Confederate flag of slav­ and solidarity with the SL/LBL which Communist League, and during the '50s ery. We tore it down and Bill Edwards intersected our fight for black liberation McCarthyite witchhunt was victimized was a proud participant in this campaign. through proletarian revolution. by the FBI while working at the Oakland Bill also was a foe of apartheid slavery. Gene Herson (statement read at the Naval Base. Bill was also a member of He marched alongside labor and black memorial meeting): Bill Edwards was a the Bay Area Labor Black League for militants in our emergency demonstra­ decent man who wanted to make the Social Defense since its founding in tions to save the lives of anti-apartheid world a decent place. He called himself 1983. The August 14 memorial, organ­ militants. a socialist and he was active throughout ized by Jack Heyman and attended by In 1985 and 1987 he stood with us in his life in causes of labor and black lib­ 75 of Bill's relatives, union brothers and rallying for the freedom of Geronimo eration. Bill worked in any way he could comrades, was also addressed by trade Pratt, America's foremost class-war pris­ to further these ends. He tried every­ unionists who fought alongside Bill oner. Bill was concerned that we fight thing. He traveled all avenues to pursue through his more than five decades as a . to abolish the racist death penalty, and his goals, often admitting (with an union militant and anti-racist activist. through his efforts we got a regular embarrassed smile) that some of his for­ Statements were read from Congressman column for Mumia Abu-Jamal in the Sun ays were futile and counterproductive. Ron Dellums and the Socialist Party. Reporter. He believed in democratic trade unions Recently, in the aftermath of the Rod­ controlled by the rank and file. He par­ *** ney King verdict, Bill felt very strongly ticularly involved himself in the struggle Don Alexander: We in the Spartacist about our program of mobilizing labor of blacks in South Africa. He understood the inextricable connection between the WV Photo League, Labor Black League and Parti­ to defend blacks and Latinos against rac­ Bill Edwards at 1985 San Francisco san Defense Committee extend our con­ ist state oppression. Bill visited L.A. dur­ class struggle and the black struggle. demonstration. dolences to the family and friends of Bill ing this period, talked to many desperate I met Bill in 1968 in the National Edwards, whose sudden death saddens black youth who have been written off Maritime Union. He was a steward on Undaunted, he would murmur something us all. Bill had a long history in the labor by the racist rulers. Bill wanted to fight the Moore McCormack Lines and I was about his good intentions. That's how I movement. Bill had various interests for a militant mobilization of L.A. labor, in San Francisco organizing a union remember Bill: an irrepressible optimist which took him in many directions. Over especially for the ILWU to defend the oppositional group, the NMU Militant­ and eternally committed to the greatest a number of years he was active in besieged black population. He talked to Solidarity Caucus. Bill felt very con­ good for all working people. He never the struggle for the rights of working us about this, and then with Dave Arian, flicted about supporting a reformist maneuvered for his own personal bene­ people, black people and other oppressed ILWU International president, and with oppositional leader, Jim Morrissey, and, fit; he worked for whatever he thought minorities. Local 13 in L.A., which got nowhere. at the same time, our Caucus which had would bring some gains or even the pos­ Bill joined the Labor Black League in Bill took seriously his membership in a class-struggle orientation. Nonethe­ sibility of gains for his ideals. 1983 following the Spartacist campaign the LBL. He was attracted to our class­ less, Bill backed our Caucus against Bill was an extremely intelligent, of Martha Phillips for Oakland city struggle program for black freedom and Morrissey when it came to taking a stand capable guy, He could have succeeded council. Bill was active in the work of working-class emancipation. In 1990 the supporting the Vietnamese struggle in any number of fields, but he devoted the LBL, attending demonstrations and LBL raised money for me to go on a against U.S. imperialism, defending the himself to advancing the conditions of rallies. Some of the photos on display tour of East Germany, to the former DDR victimized Black Panther Pauy, or call­ black people and the cause of labor. Over are indications of some of his actions to help mobilize revolutionary class ing for a labor party counterposed to the the' years, whenever I or anyone in the with us. In 1983 he joined with us and opposition to the drive toward capitalist Democrats. Bill also worked with the Partisan Defense Committee or the LBL many other anti-racists in fighting to reunification, and to inform the East Ger­ electoralist Socialist Party. would call Bill to work on a campaign keep two phone workers-an interracial man working class about the brutal real­ Then, from time to time, Bill and I or project, Bill always pitched in, couple, Ray Palmiero and Lauren Mozee­ ities of race and class oppression in the would have a drink and he would approaching his many contacts in the -out of jail for defending their picket U.S. When I told Bill that we wanted good-naturedly hear out my criticisms labor movement. I'll miss him and I'll lines against racist union-busters. He his support for this trip, he told me that of his sometimes conflicting strategies, miss our work together.• 2 OCTOBER 1992 3 Der Spiegel Yeltsin regime smashed August 15 strike of Russian air controllers, now prosecutes leaders on criminal charges. Yeltsin Breaks Russian Air Controllers Strike MOSCOW-In its first direct assault on untrained personnel to direct air traffic, lieutenants of U.S. imperialism. When Yeltsin regime, while we underline the the workers movement here, the coun­ the union called off the strike after one AFL-CIO chief Lane Kirkland visited need for a genuinely communist van­ terrevolutionary regime of Russian pres­ day on the basis of a personal assurance Moscow in May 1991, the air controllers guard that fights Yeltsin-Bush counter­ ident Boris Yeltsin is engaged in a by Yeltsiri's vice president Aleksandr informed him that they would have revolution down the line. Such a leader­ vindictive campaign to crush a union that Rutskoi that there would be no reprisals guided his plane even if they had struck. ship would seek to expand strikes into crossed it. Last week, the government against the workers. The AFL-CIO Bulletin (May 1991) re­ a working-class offensive throwing up began criminal prosecution of the Fed­ Rutskois promise to the air controllers ported that, "at a dinner at Spaso House, soviet organs of proletarian power to re­ eration of Air-traffic Controllers Trade was immediately revealed to be a lie, as the American Ambassador's residence, store the USSR on the basis of Leninist Unions (FPA), which carried out a one­ the government launched criminal pro­ President Kirkland saluted the leaders of principles. day strike on August 15, shutting down ceedings against the strikers. One union the Independent Miners Union, the air Criminally, the various has-been Sta­ more than 40 of the country's airports. leader in Kursk was arrested the day traffic controllers, and air line pilots." linist losers, who masquerade as "com­ Union headquarters were raided and ran­ after the walkout, and some 15 others Yet now the air controllers are threatened munists" while tying themselves to the sacked, documents seized and officials have been victimized through transfers, with the PATCO treatment by Yeltsin, most reactionary nationalist and out­ hauled in for questioning. The impact of demotions and firings. FPA president another favorite of the "AFL-CIA." right fascist forces, have lined up with this is all the more telling as the air con- Vladimir Konusenko has threatened Except for the coal miners, these Yeltsin and Rutskoi in opposing the another strike, to be joined by the "free" unions are based on the labor aristocracy strike. A representative of Toiling Rus­ miners, pilots and other unions, if the (air controllers, pilots, railwaymen, etc.), sia, the coalition dominated by the Rus­ victimization continues. highly skilled workers in strategic sec­ sian Communist Workers Party of Viktor Yeltsin and Rutskoi, as part of their tors of the economy. They thought they Anpilov which has been behind the anti­ drive to erect a capitalist state, are clear­ would have considerable economic lev­ Yeltsin protests in Moscow and else­ ly intent on a calculated provocation erage in a capitalist market economy. For where, also denounced a similar strike against this union, which represents their part, the coal miners have a central in the Ukraine in early September of 7,000 of Russia's 8,000 air traffic con­ role in the Soviet industrial economy and miners, railway engineers, pilots and air trollers. With the prospect of mass un­ were recognized as the heart of the work­ traffic controllers because the leadership employment in the coming months, as ers movement by the old Stalinist rulers. of the "independent" unions which the capitalist-restorationist government Thus many miners, too, believed they called them is anti-Communist and begins its plan to privatize the bulk of would have a strong bargaining position pro-Yeltsin. Russian industry, the possibility of an in a capitalist labor market. In reality, The old official trade unions, led by upsurge of mass workers struggles is capitalist restoration will bring massive entrenched Stalinist hacks, tell the work­ evident to all. If the counterrevolution­ deindustrialization, reducing Russia, the ers not to make trouble but rather to sup­ ary regime succeeds in crushing this Ukraine and other former Soviet repub­ port the more nationalistic and conser­ relatively well-off workforce-remem­ lics to neocolonial suppliers of raw vative figures in the new regime like ber Reagan's destruction of the Ameri­ materials to West Europe.North America Rutskoi and Arkady Volsky, head of can PATCO air traffic controllers in and Japan. the Union of Industrialists (ex-Stalinist 1981 !~this will set an ominous prece­ Miners-who had economic security managers seeking to become capital­ dent, and put in place the legal ma­ in the planned, collectivized Soviet sys­ ists). In an interview with the ICL, a chinery to take on the inevitable workers tem-would find themselves competing spokesman for the independent railway struggles to come. with the highly mechanized strip mines drivers union remarked about the offi­ The showdown over the air controllers in the western U.S. and Australia as well cial unions, "the prevailing sentiment strike is also important for the actors on as South African coal extracted by super­ among them is conservatism and embar­ the government side. Rutskoi has pre­ exploited black workers. Key to the eco­ rassment." The resulting opposition to sented himself as a friend of the working nomic viability of Aeroflot-the largest strikes plays into the hands of the coun­ people by demagogically denouncing the civilian air carrier in the world-is that terrevolution, and is an important factor "free market" extremism of Yeltsin's aviation fuel was made available at a in explaining the passivity and disorien­ economic policymakers, notably acting small fraction of the world-market price. tation of the Soviet workers in the face prime minister Yegor Gaidar. But during Now, the IMF (the world bankers' cartel) of Yeltsin's catastrophic assault on their American PAlCO air traffic control­ the August strike, Rutskoi called a press is demanding that Russia increase the livelihoods. lers dragged off in chains in 1981 as conference "at which he waved an air­ internal price of oil five-fold, which It is necessary for workers in the Reagan government smashed strike. traffic controller's payslip for 40,000 among other devastating effects would "free" unions to draw the lessons of roubles, claiming bogusly that the union ground most of Aeroflot's planes. Thou­ Yeltsin-Rutskoi's breaking the air con­ trollers had actively aided Yeltsin's was striking for a wage of 70,000 rou­ sands of Soviet air controllers would find trollers strike. Capitalist restoration will countercoup in August 1991, supplying bles, 20 times the national average. In themselves without a job. Meanwhile, bring not prosperity and freedom but information about military movements. fact he had got hold of a payslip repre­ the unions set up to carry out counter­ Third World-level poverty and police­ Now they're experiencing what capital­ senting two and a half months back-pay" revolution are now finding out that cap­ state repression. Workers in the old ist counterrevolution is really about. (Guardian [London], 19 'September). italism means union-busting. Stalinist-led unions must understand that As reported below in an interview Soviet workers should note well the In his interview with the ICL, the differences between Rutskoi and Yel­ given by FPA vice president Vladimir actions of this phony "friend of labor." Brodulev emphasized that the air con­ tsin, between Volsky and Gaidar, are Brodulev to representatives of the Inter­ The air controllers and other "free" trollers were not demanding higher squabbles over who will serve as agents national Communist League in Moscow unions-which broke away from the wages, their main concern was improved of Wall Street, Frankfurt and Tokyo in on August 25, the regime unleashed a official unions that in fact were an flight safety. But if the Yeltsin-Rutskoi exploiting and degrading the workers of full panoply of strikebreaking forces arm of the Stalinist bureaucracy­ regime met this union's demands, it Russia and other former Soviet repub­ against the one-day walkout. KGB secret have been militantly pro- Yeltsin and would encourage other Russian workers lics. At a recent demonstration against police and OMON special militia units openly support the restoration of capi­ to strike against the restorationist regime .the privatization of the mammoth Zil were called out against the strikers and talism. Their model is Lech Walesa's as their living conditions are ravaged auto plant in Moscow, a spokesman for military personnel were ordered to act Polish Solidarnosc, favorite "union" of by hyperinflation and mass unemploy­ the ICL told the assembled workers: as scabs. Faced with this onslaught the CIA and the Vatican. The Independent ment looms. We Trotskyists support. "l 'rn from the former DDR where a and the danger of civilian aircraft catas­ Miners Union (NPG), the most important the air controllers strike, whose pro­ counterrevolution took place already two trophes posed by the criminal use of of them, is directly tied to the "labor" Yeltsin leaders are now up against the continued on page 11 4 WORKERS VANGUARD· I

forcing the company to bring them in by helicopter. that the D.A. drop the charges against Ray, it noted: Women have organized in CLASS, the CASAW Ladies "Not only has the TA refused to install modern com­ Victory to Yellowknife Association Support System. puter switching and speed controls as have other transit Gold Miners! The companies, their cops, courts and media are systems, at Union Square even the antiquated signals bringing their full power to bear, trying to crush this and tripping devices were positioned so they couldn't VANCOUVER-For over four months, 240 miners in militant strike as a warning to all labor. In a July letter stop the derailment. Overworked and underpaid like Canada's Northwest Territories have been fiercely bat­ of solidarity to the NWT Federation of Labor, the Par­ his co-workers who drive, maintain, repair and clean tling an all-out union-busting attack by Royal Oak tisan Defense Committee in Toronto called for "coor­ the trains, Mr. Ray is being used as a 'scapegoat by the Mines Inc .. , owner of the Giant gold mine in the dinated, mass labor action-in Vancouver to shut down TA and city officials whose budget cuts are preparing territorial capital of Yellowknife, just 300 miles south Pro Con's anti-union outfit, in Northern Alberta to close future 'accidents'." Militants in the Committee for a Fighting TWU, who

° have campaigned in Local 100 to institute elected union safety committees with the power to shut down unsafe jobs on the spot, are calling on transit workers to fill the courtroom in solidarity with Ray, and to demand that their union take up his defense. The Committee has blasted the dirty job that Local 100 president Sonny Hall has done on Ray. Within hours of the accident, Hall capitulated to the TA's demand for drug testing of the entire workforce, setting up militants and minor­ ities for firings. Cops and Courts Out of the Union! Glaringly absent from the Centre Street courtroom RCMP assaults picket has been any organized solidarity from the New Direc­ line of striking gold tions caucus-but not because they don't know where miners in Canada's the courts are. In fact they have made a habit of drag­ Northwest Territories. ging the union through the capitalist courts, while prais­ ing the "fightback" of racist Rikers Island prison guards, in order to advance their penny-ante bureau­ cratic careers. When Hall imposed drug testing on the Local, New Directions leader Tim Schermerhorn ran of the Arctic Circle. Despite being shot at and tear­ their airstrips. An injury to one is an injury to all! The to the courts. Now ND is using federal anti-labor laws gassed by Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), organized working class has the power to do it, but to sue Local 100 for $7 million! despite over 100 arrests and 42 firings, the strikers not if it plays by the bosses' rules. The Royal Oak As soon as he rammed through the TA's contract last have held firm in their determination to bring scab­ bosses are playing hardball. To win, labor's got to do spring, Sonny Hall turned his guns on New Directions. herding Royal Oak to its knees. Now the members of the same." Four members of this mealy-mouthed "opposition" Canadian Association of Smelter and Allied Workers Expressing "deep appreciation for the support you were brought up on ludicrous charges that they "kid­ (CASAW) Local 4 face their greatest test as the com­ have shown us," CASAW Local 4 president Bill Schram napped and held hostage" some of Hall's geriatric cro­ pany, cops and the capitalist press have launched a appealed for further assistance: "The battle we fight nies! What really infuriated the Hall gang was that deadly witchhunt. here could be repeated in your own area, if other hundreds of transit workers swept into their own union On the morning of September 18 there was an explo­ employers follow the example of 'our' scabbing com­ hall to confront the bureaucrats over the rotten sellout sion at the 750·foot level of the mine. Nine scabs died. pany. Help us defeat this corporate assault!" Criminally, contract. One of Hall's racist hacks called a black worker "boy," and another threatened ND leader Cor- While the company didn't even notify the police for the brass of the Canadian Labour Congress has turned 90 minutes, the RCMP quickly declared it a case of a deaf ear to this plea, refusing to flex labor's power. "criminal homicide" and "multiple murder," looking to Left isolated, some CASAW leaders are appealing for hang the union. Encouraged by company bosses to the federal government (which ultimately controls the "kick some ass," scabs unleashed a reign of terror that Northwest Territories) to intervene. But the feds have night, attacking strikers in the bars and on the streets. already intervened, sending in the RCMP to protect At the union office two women were injured by flying scabs and to witchhunt the union. glass. One striker told WV that he'd "been threatened While going after unionists in Yellowknife, the gov­ to be shot" and related that the wives and children of ernment and the RCMP are protecting and covering up others have been forced to flee the town, fearing for for the owners of the Westray mine in Pictou County, their safety. All labor must rally to the defense of the Nova Scotia. There, on May 9, a ghastly fireball of embattled Yellowknife unionists! methane gas and coal dust blew the roof clean off the CASAW spokesmen immediately, emphatically minehead: 26 miners working deep underground had denied any union involvement in the incident and no warning and no chance. As the Trotskyist League pointed to Royal Oak's history of dangerous safety of Canada wrote in its newspaper Spartacist Canada violations, especially concerning explosives. Union (Summer 1992): "This was cold-blooded capitalist mur­ members have learned that the scabs were traveling der, a straight exchange of workers' lives for cash and with explosives on a "man car"-a violation of a car­ votes! The Westray mine was a deathtrap and everybody dinal rule that you never transport explosives with involved knew it, from the profit-gouging mine bosses workers. This hasn't stopped the RCMP-"Gestapo for who pushed it through to the venal politicians who Royal Oak," as signs at the mine entrance put it-from swung the funding." Lock up the Westray murderers targeting strikers for questioning and investigation. and throwaway the key!

A while back, CASAW's newspaper, Foots Gold, As the battle of Royal Oak so clearly illuminates, WV Photo wrote that the battle at Royal Oak "is developing into the bosses' state is the conscious enemy of working Transit workers march over Brooklyn Bridge in one of Canada's historic labour struggles.... It has pit­ people. To take on that state and win, the working class February in demonstration against sellout contract. ted a group of determined, rugged miners against the must also become conscious. Organized into a revolu­ U.S.-style union-busting tactics of Royal Oak's presi­ tionary workers party, courageous and determined mil­ ine Scott. Hall finally kept protesting TWUers out of dent, Margaret Witte." This is the first time in Canadian itants can triumph not only against the likes of Royal their own hall by calling in the NYPD! history that there has been scabbing on a hard rock Oak but against the whole capitalist system and shed But instead of mobilizing the membership against mine strike. Witte has explicitly modeled her strike­ their blood no more for the profits of the bosses. Victory Hall, New Directions ran to the courts, filing a suit in breaking operation on the Phelps-Dodge rampage to the CASAW strike! June asking the government to intervene against Hall against Arizona copper miners in 1983-84. and award them huge punitive damages out of union Giant is the sixth largest gold mine in Canada, pro­ funds. But both ND "militants" and the Hall bureaucrats ducing 190,000 ounces per year. Royal Oak has spent are united in pushing and begging the Democrats, when over $2 million hiring scabs from Pro Con Mining and NYC Traonsit Militants it's the Democratic Party of Cuomo and Dinkins that's Tunneling and turning the site into an armed camp putting the screws to the transit workers. patrolled by Pinkerton cops imported from the U.S. Demand: "Stop The Committee for a Fighting TWU has denounced complete with vicious dogs, night-vision cameras and both Hall's kangaroo court charges and ND's use of "intelligence-gathering equipment." These thugs-for­ the Scapegoating the bosses' state against the union. The Committee put hire have been backed up by the courts and nearly 75 of Robert Ray!" forward a motion in union division meetings this sum­ RCMP cops who at every step of the way act "as agents mer, calling on workers to "oppose and condemn the of the company," as CASAW president Ross Slezak With stunning hypocrisy, Manhattan D.A. Morgen" Sonny Hall officers and New Directions for using the said. thau has gone all out to make transit worker Robert bosses' courts and cops against our union. Keep the Enforcing an anti-picketing injunction that was Ray the scapegoat for the deadly dangerous conditions government out of the unions!" slapped on the union right from the start, the "Royal the capitalist rulers of NYC have created in the In a leaflet during the explosion of anger against Oak Mounted Police," as strikers call them, fired shots subways. Ray, a member of Transport Workers Union Hall's sellout last winter, the Committee pointed to the as they confronted angry unionists on June 2. But the Local 100, was the motorman in the horrible derailment political struggle that must take place to forge a new strikers were not cowed-they defended themselves of an IRT train at the Union Square station which killed leadership: "The key to unleashing our power is break­ with baseball bats, clubs and axes. They've met each five passengers in August 1991. He is now on trial on ing from the gang of Democrats and their flunkeys in attack with renewed resistance. Strikers drove out the five counts of second degree murder, facing jail for the union leadership who are cracking the whip for the first group of "security guards" brought in by Royal 25 years to life. capitalists.... We need a fighting workers party that Oak and successfully stopped the busing in of scabs, When the Partisan Defense Committee demanded will fight for a workers government.". 2 OCTOBER 1992 5 » "U an artificial unit of account which is actually the D-mark in drag. Member Euro-Chaos... states could change the value of their (continued from page 1) currency vis-a-vis the ECU only within and a half decades Held together com­ a narrow range. peting West European capitalist states in The creation of the European Mone­ the American-dominated NATO alliance tary System was part of a general pro­ against the Soviet Union. But with the gram in the dominant capitalist countries collapse of the Stalinist-ruled deformed to eradicate the inflationary conditions workers states of East Europe and the of the 1970s. New right-wing regimes­ ascendancy of capitalist counterrevolu­ Thatcher in Britain, Reagan in the U.S., tion in Russia, the Cold War imperialist Kohl in West Germany-came to power alliances are coming apart. pledging tight money and cuts in gov­ Commenting on the Euro-currency ernment spending for social programs. crisis, New York investment banker and Glorification of These deflationary policies helped push publicist Jeffrey Garten noted: "What deutschmark the capitalist world into the depression we've seen in the last 18 months is the symbolizes of 1982-83 as unemployment in North lowest level of international financial annexation of East America and West Europe reached the and economic cooperation possibly since German workers state highest levels since the 1930s. The the end of World War II" (Wall Street by capitalist West depression also broke the boom in com­ Germany in 1990. modity prices, forcing poor Third World Journal, 17 September). Two and a half Costs of reunification years ago the postwar era came to an have destabilized countries to repay their loans from Wall end when the disintegrating Soviet bu­ West European Street, the City of London and Frankfurt reaucracy under Gorbachev abandoned bourgeois order. at far higher real interest rates than when East Germany, thereby reversing the these loans were contracted. Red Army's victory over the Nazi Third In the early 1980s, France under the Reich. In March 1990, West German new social-democratic regime of Fran­ chancellor Kohl won a decisive election cois Mitterrand at first tried to swim in the German Democratic Republic against the economic stream with expan­ (DDR) by falsely promising instant world order" as the U.S. war machine war of 1914-18, and the effort to resur­ sionary fiscal and monetary policies in prosperity with reunification under the devastated Iraq. Kohl and French presi­ rect it was buried under the wreckage of the face of world deflation. The French deutschmark. dent Mitterrand promised a "United the Great Depression of the 1930s. Socialists' attempt at "Keynesianism in West Germany was transformed from States of Europe." But the end of the At the 1945 Bretton Woods conference one country" led to massive capital a Cold W~r ally of American imperialism Cold War has brought increasing disor­ after World War II, the victorious and flight, forcing successive devaluations of into an aggressive Fourth Reich seeking der and interimperialist conflict. The predominant American imperialist state the franc. In 1983, the Mitterrand regime mastery of Europe. Germany's rulers uprising of black and Hispanic poor in installed an international monetary sys­ did a sharp U-turn and has since carried envisaged an empire of the D-mark Los Angeles last spring, the German tem based on its own national currency. out austerity policies in the name of the stretching from the Balkans to the Baltic, public workers strike, the Tokyo stock The dollar was fixed and exchangeable franc fort (strong franc) which would from Siberia to Iberia. In the summer of crash and now the crisis of the European into gold at a set price ($35 an ounce); meet the exacting standards of right­ 1991, the Bonn regime strong -armed Community all point to growing insta­ other currencies were supposed to be wing monetarists. French workers paid its EC partners into recognizing the in­ bility in the centers of world capitalism. pegged to the dollar. The subsequent the price with a decade of mass unem- dependence of Croatia and Slovenia­ The immediate prospect is of a period traditional German clients-thereby of turmoil, giving rise to sharp class precipitating the bloody breakup of struggles. Yugoslavia. Half a year later at Maas­ A harbinger is the explosion of work­ tricht, Kohl triumphantly proclaimed a ers'rage in Italy following the devaluation new era of West European unity marked of the lira and devastating austerity meas­ by a common currency and a new mili­ ures proclaimed by the Italian government tary force independent of the American­ under orders from Frankfurt bankers. dominated NATO. Hundreds of thousands of workers have But since then, things have not been poured into the piazzas denouncing the well for the masters of the Fourth Reich, sellout union tops. And Greece, the poor­ who are now squabbling among them­ est country in the European Community, selves and with the rest of the world. is now convulsed by massive strikes of more than a million workers, from bus The German-instigated breakup ofYugo­ Rostock: slavia has led to uncontrollable, expand­ drivers to bank clerks. murderous ing nationalist warfare in the Balkans. Monetary Order and Disorder pogroms against The Kohl regime's efforts to force Ger­ immigrants by man working people to pay more for the From Bretton Woods to Nazi-led gangs annexation of the DDR provoked a par­ Maastricht heightened alyzing strike of half a million public International bankers demand a sys­ European fears service and transport workers in May­ tem of fixed foreign-exchange rates so of a resurgent the biggest strike since the late 1940s that debtor countries cannot repay by nationalist -which ended in a stand-off. Mur­ inflating and devaluing their currencies. Germany. derous attacks on immigrants by Nazi Instead, debtor states have to pay by skinheads in Rostock and elsewhere extracting real wealth-in Marx's term intensified fears throughout Europe of "surplus value"-from their working a strong nationalist Germany. And the class and other toilers. This bankers' Bundesbank's high interest-rate policy order was embodied in the gold standard further depressed the already depressed of 19th century capitalism. All major weakening of U.S. economic and polit­ ployment, particularly among youth and West European economy and has now national currencies were fixed in terms ical power in the capitalist world, accel­ immigrant workers. thrown world financial markets into of gold, which was used to offset imbal­ erated by the defeat in the Vietnam War, Having humbled the French social chaos. ances in trade. The gold standard was led to the breakdown of the Bretton democrats, the Frankfurt bankers­ In an orgy of imperialist triumphalism, killed off by the "inflationary explosion Woods system. In 1971, U.S. president backed up by Wall Street-were able to only yesterday Bush proclaimed a "new accompanying the first imperialist world Nixon devalued the dollar in terms of keep the poorer Mediterranean countries gold, ushering in a period of interna­ of the European Community in line. An tional monetary anarchy. economist with the central bank of Freed from the "discipline" of fixed Greece noted that the European Mone­ exchange rates, capitalist governments tary System (EMS) "imposed greater financed their budget deficits by printing discipline on the policies of inflation­ more money. Balance-of-trade deficits prone countries." The ruling classes of were "adjusted" by currency devalua­ Italy, Spain and Portugal accepted the tion. The 1970s was a decade of accel­ discipline of the EMS in exchange for erating global inflation, fueled by the the financial backing of the D-mark. In price boom in oil and other natural principle, the Bundesbank was commit­ resource commodities. World bankers ted to defending the existing exchange began screaming for the restoration of value of the lira, peseta and escudo, thus monetary "discipline." But American making the southern tier of the European capitalism was no longer strong enough Community more attractive to foreign to enforce such discipline on a global investors. scale. Amid the mood of capitalist trium­ West European finance capital, dom­ phalism over the ascendancy of counter­ inated by the banking houses of Frank­ revolution in East Europe and the Soviet furt, moved to restore a fixed exchange Union, the rulers of capitalist West rate system on a regional basis. Set up Europe proclaimed their intent to estab­ in 1979, the European Monetary System lish a common currency. However, un­ was later exalted by British Tory .derlying the Maastricht agreement were (Conservative) leader John Major as "a conflicting programs as to how a cur­ modern-day gold standard with the rency union would operate in practice. Der Spiegel deutschmark as the anchor." Formally, . French and Spanish social democrats Trainloads of refugees flee nationalist bloodletting in Bosnia. German national currencies were pegged to the envisaged a European central bank imperialism instigated breakup of Yugoslavia. so-called ECU (European Currency Unit), which would dilute the present power of 6 WORKERS VANGUARD the Bundesbank and more generously must have known that's exactly what provide ECUs to cover their budget and would happen. balance-of-payments deficits. The unraveling began in the northern Fat chance! German bankers insist tier of capitalist Europe. In early Septem­ that a European currency union must be ber, the Finnish markka was devalued and a dictatorship of financiers, dedicated to speculative pressure spilled over the bor­ tight money and free from even a sem­ der into Sweden. Since Finland and Swe­ blance of democratic or popular control. den are not members, only satellites, of In the words of former Bundesbank head the European Community, the currency Karl-Otto Pohl: turmoil in Scandinavia did not directly "If we are to have a European monetary threaten the EMS. Italy, however, was regime, then it has to be as good as, another matter; for the Germans were sup­ for example, the Bundesbank's. And a posedly committed to defending the value European central bank can only achieve price stability if it is independent in its of the lira. After the Bundesbank shelled monetary policies of the EC institutions out 24 billion marks trying to repel the and governments." . speculative sharks in the Mediterranean, . -Alberta M. Sbragia, ed., the Germans cut their losses. On Septem­ Euro-Politics: Institutions and Policymaking in the 'New' ber 13, the lira was devalued by 7 percent European Community against the D-mark. (Brookings Institution, 1992) As a sop to international opinion, the Pohl's colleagues have now destroyed Bundesbank, reportedly after a secret the existing European monetary regime visit from Kohl, announced the long­ Le BolchBvik demanded cut in interest rates ... by 1/4 even as the Maastricht treaty is being Trotskyist League of France calls "For workers mobilizations to crush the of one percent. This was so insultingly debated. fascists! Full citizenship rights for immigrants!" in demonstration against Le Pen's fascist National Front in 1988. minimal that it was a signal to interna­ Bundesbank Torpedoes tional financiers that Italy, Britain and European Monetary System ernment transfers to east Germany totaled sies (see "Strikes Rock Kohl's Ger­ the rest were on their own. For the espe­ cially obtuse, Bundesbank head Helmut In the 1960s, the Common Market 180 billion D-marks (equivalent to $130 many," WV No. 552, 29 May). billion). This amounted to a mammoth In the aftermath of the strike, the Bun­ Schlesinger told the business press was viewed by many Europeans as an straight out that additional currency American plot to economically dominate internal export subsidy for west German desbank ratcheted interest rates still realignments were necessary. the continent. This was the theme of manufacturers. Additionally, Bonn spent higher. Carlo de Benedetti, chairman of So the lira took a further beating and French journalist Jean-Jacques Servan­ 75 billion D-marks to support the coun­ Italy's Olivetti, explained this move was currency traders along with major for­ Schreiber's famous book, Le defi terrevolutionary Yeltsin regime in Russia "designed < to brake internal demand, eign investors in Britain-s-e.g., Ameri­ americain (The American Challenge). and another 105 billion in East Europe attract foreign capital and unload some can mutual and pension funds-dumped Today German publicist Theo Sommer, to turn the former deformed workers states of the cost of reunification on to Ger­ pounds like crazy. The Tory government chief editorial writer for Die Zeit, whose into Deutsche Bank neocolonies. many's neighbours" (Financial Times of John Major, with bitter recriminations publisher is former Social Democratic Germany's previously small budget [London], 15 September). against the Germans, announced that chancellor Helmut Schmidt, writes of a deficits ballooned up to 3.5 percent of Instead of the supposed "locomotive" Britain was suspending its membership united Europe as a bulwark against the gross national product (proportionally pulling forward the West European econ­ in the EMS and devaluing sterling. There U.S. and Japan: greater than the deficits of France or omy, Germany became the great com­ Britain) and absorbed 50 percent of per­ pressor. Countries with 10 percent plus is a nice irony here. A couple of years "The danger cannot be completely dis­ ago Major opposed and ousted Margaret missed that the triangular cooperation of sonal savings. Last year, for the first time unemployment, like Italy and Britain, Europe-North America-Japan may give in a decade, Germany ran a balance-of­ had to increase their own interest rates, Thatcher in the name of greater cooper­ way on three sides and the trilateral trade deficit. German publicist Josef further depressing their economies, to ation within the European Community­ cooperative world of today could be Joffe summarized the economic conse­ prevent a massive outflow of capital to i.e., closer links between the City of Lon­ replaced by a world of three colliding don and Frankfurt banks. blocs .... If the fatal course of events quences of reunification: "massive def­ Frankfurt. "High German rates are hurt­ cannot be prevented, then a single, icit spending, massive borrowing and a ing everybody," exclaimed one British The European Monetary System-a united, unified Europe of the peoples of nasty bout of inflation." As Joffe businessman. key element in the financial order of cap­ the Old World would at least offer the quipped, Germany had become a junkie All central bankers are contemptuous italist Europe for over a decade-is kaput. best chance for self-assertion." in charge of the coke supply. of everybody else. But the directors of The ECU is as dead as the dodo. Sure, Hitler, too, saw a Festung Europa (For­ Not everyone in German ruling circles the Bundesbank act as if they were gods Kohl and Mitterrand are pretending that tress Europe) as the Old World's best shared the illusion that the country's eco­ of the deutschmark ruling over a profane the system can be salvaged and even that chance at "self-assertion." nomic strength was great enough to dom­ humanity. German bankers and their plans for a currency union can go forward However, German reunification and the inate Europe from Moscow to Lisbon. political agents responded to interna­ at a slower pace. International financiers collapse of Soviet power, far from giving Back in 1990, the Bundesbank criticized tional complaints over high interest rates know better, Foreign investors in Britain an impetus to greater European "unity," Kohl for offering too much in the lev­ with snarling defiance. "We cannot lost billions because they took the EMS had just the opposite effect. These devel­ eraged buyout of the DDR and its pres­ accept that others push us around on at face value, believing the pound was opments sharply increased the conflicts ident resigned in protest. Subsequently interest rates," snapped a high official as good as the D-mark. If next month of interest among the bourgeois national the Bundesbank jacked up interest rates in Bonn's finance ministry (New York Kohl, Mitterrand and Major signed in states comprising the European Commu­ to postwar highs to finance the reunifi­ Times, 22 July). their own blood a treaty pledging that nity. During the Cold War, West Germany cation deficit without depreciating the One has to wonder whether the man­ the deutschmark, franc and pound will served as paymaster of the NATO alliance sacred deutschmark. The discount rate darins of the Bundesbank did not delib­ exchange at a fixed rate forever more, against the Soviet Union. In a 1979 state­ charged to member banks jumped from erately sabotage the Maastricht treaty, not a single financier on the face of the ment by the international Spartacist ten­ 3.5 percent in 1989 to 8 percent at the fearing that the proposed currency union planet would believe them. dency urging a boycott of the elections beginning of this year. At the same time, would threaten their bureaucratic fiat to the phony European parliament in the Bundesbank-backed up by the Popular Revolt Against and eventually devalue the' financial Maastricht Strasbourg, we wrote: International Monetary Fund (the world assets of German capital. It took no spe­ "The EEC [European Economic Com­ bankers' cartel)--demanded that the cial insight to see that sky-high German The Maastricht treaty was killed by munity] was originally set up in the mid­ 1950s as part of the American-directed Kohl regime slash the budget deficit at interest rates were putting pressure on the increasing conflicts of interest be­ reorganization of West Europe.. against the expense of German working people. the weaker currencies in the EMS, like tween the major European bourgeois the Soviet bloc. Washington policyrnak­ German capital has tried to ease the the lira and pound, and were fueling pop­ states under the pressure of international ers were concerned that French opposi­ economic overextension by increasing ular opposition to European "unity" finance capital. Nonetheless, the pros­ tion to German dominance of Europe could lead to a revival of Paris' tradi­ the rate of exploitation of its own work­ under German dominion. The "no" vote pect of a European capitalist super­ tional alliance with Moscow, as in the ing class, organizationally the most pow­ on Maastricht in the Danish referendum state-although in fact illusory-pro­ 1935 Stalin-Laval pact. The Common erful proletariat in Europe. This led to in June set off alarm bells in European duced considerable political turmoil for Market was and remains an economic the transport and public workers strike capitals, and Mitterrand staked his polit­ months, polarized public opinion, and compromise essentially between the last spring, which ended in a political ical future on the upcoming French ref­ led to bitter rifts in the major bourgeois French and German ruling classes in the context of their political/military alliance defeat for the Kohl regime and an eco­ erendum. So when German bankers told and social-democratic parties. against the USSR." nomic defeat for the European bourgeoi- the rest of Europe to go to hell, they continued on page 8 - "Down with the Common Market of NATO Europe!" WV No. 233, 8 June 1979 In the 1960s, for example, french president Charles de Gaulle could pres­ sure Bonn into granting better economic terms in the Common Market by threat­ ening to pursue friendlier relations with Moscow. Germany's perpetual and large trade surpluses provided the financial resources to prop up the weaker cur­ rencies in the EMS, funnel some aid to French auto the poorer Mediterranean countries, and workers at piece off the restive French farmers Renault-Cleon through the Common Agricultural Pol­ strike in 1991 icy. But German reunification led to against Mitterrand, a sudden redirection of international social-democratic capital flows to the detriment of West agent of French Europe. capital. After dismantling the industrial base of the former DDR, Bonn had to put mil­ lions of impoverished and unemployed east Germans on the dole. Last year, gov- 2 OCTOBER 1992 7 Community is an agency of the Paris 35-hour workweek and points to a uni­ whatend?Onlyfor the purposeofjointly -bourse and Frankfurt bankers. fied minimum wage of a thousand suppressing socialism in Europe, of Euro-Chaos... jointly protecting colonialbooty against The maverick social democrat Che­ ECUs" (Dossier Rouge No. 42, June Japan and America...." (continued from page 7) venernent and the. Communist Party 1992). "A thousand ECUs," Your Maj­ - V.I. Lenin, "On the Slogan Mitterrand, Kohl and the other archi­ sought to exploit opposition to Maas­ esty, and nothing less-that's what these for a United States of Europe" (August 1915) tects of Maastricht expected to push the tricht in the name of nationalistic refor­ valiant "revolutionaries" demand! But so treaty through the various national par­ mism. Chevenement declaimed dema­ long as capitalism remains, the rights of As has been widely noted, the "post­ liaments with little public debate. Only gogically: "How many million more the working people and poor will be Cold War world" is tending toward two of the smallest countries in the unemployed people will have to pay for crushed by the market. Talk of turning the formation of three main economic European Community, Denmark and Ire­ the blindness of European technocrats in the EC into a "social Europe" is to lull blocs: German-dominated Europe, U.S.­ land, originally scheduled popular refer­ the service of financial capital?" How­ the workers with reformist pipe dreams. dominated North America, and Japanese­ endums on the question, and approval ever, his program of economic autarky Far worse was the abstentionist line dominated East Asia. In the short run, was assumed to be automatic. and inflationary finance will not reduce of the workerist philistines of Lutte the collapse of the Maastricht project Yet as the implications of the new EC unemployment one whit; it will simply Ouvriere, LO has made its trademark will tend to politically favor America, treaty became clear, there emerged a repeat the debacle of the early Mitter­ tailing after the moods of the backward which can more easily playoff the Euro­ groundswell of opposition expressing all rand regime in which he was a leading sections of the working class (often put­ pean bourgeoisies against each other. But manner of popular discontent. There is figure. ting it in close proximity to racist right­ even if German imperialism emerges fear of German dominance in Europe as While this was clearly Mitterrand's ists). But this time their fear of the Mit­ from a period of post-Maastricht turmoil well as national egotism in Germany referendum, the conservative bourgeois terrand regime falling carried the day. strengthened and more able to impose itself ("We won't give up our beloved opposition campaigned for ratification of Since LO candidates have gotten about its will economically (and militarily), this deutschmark"). Fascists and right-wing the EC treaty (although the neo-Gaullist 2 percent of the vote in recent French would point not to an era of harmony demagogues appealed to chauvinist hos­ Chirac did so reluctantly and half­ elections, their call for abstention may and prosperity but to interimperialist war. tility to immigration, supposedly to be heartedly, with his party split on the well have prevented the outright rejec­ The European workers are in a race liberalized under Maastricht. On the question). The intellectual elite and tion of the EC treaty-which would have against time. Economic conditions and other hand, class-conscious workers media superstars (Alain Delon, pop been a decisive political defeat for the official policy are pushing toward class recognized that the proposed currency battles in which the labor movement union was intended to hold down must mobilize its strength or face and slash wages and social benefits. sharp cuts in its living standards. More generally, Maastricht became a Employer/government attacks on health symbol of the arrogant European rul­ care in Germany, the bosses' final assault ing elites-the jet-setting bankers and on the scala mobile (sliding scale of corporate executives, the high govern­ wages, to compensate for inflation) in ment officials with their bodyguards Italy, a concerted union-busting offen­ and limos, staying in posh hotels as sive in France are already underway. And they made the rounds of endless EC throughout Europe, racist attacks on conferences. immigrant communities are rampant. "Why should Brussels make our The biggest obstacles to workers laws?" was the main line of the victori­ struggles and defense against racist ous Danish opposition. In fact, no laws attacks are the reformist leaders hips of are made in the EC headquarters at Brus­ the mass workers parties and unions. sels, only agreements between the mem­ Italian worker militants have expressed ber states which can and do tear them this in pelting the sellout labor chief up at will. Both right-wingers (Britain's Trentin with coins. But such outbursts Thatcher) and left-wingers (France's of justified anger and rage are not Jean-Pierre Chevenement) peddle the enough-a genuinely communist leader­ ship must be forged on a revolutionary false notion that the European Commu­ • AP nity is run by a clique of faceless tech­ program. German public service and transport workers strike in May fought Kohl Capitalist counterrevolution has nocrats. The real locus of policymaking regime's attempt to make working class pay costs of capitalist reunification. in the EC is the Council of Ministers, brought untold misery and fratricidal consisting of the foreign ministers of the singer Johnny Halliday) were mobilized social-democratic lackeys of the Paris nationalism to the peoples of East member states. The foreign ministers for a "yes" vote by Socialist cultural czar bourse and a humiliation for the entire Europe. Yet the nascent bourgeois states, meet behind closed doors, without press Jack Lang. All the beautiful people in European bourgeois order. from Walesa's Poland to Milosevic's coverage, and their deliberations are not France were, bien sur, for Maastricht. The most striking thing about the ref­ Serbia, are extremely weak and fragile. made public. This allows them to blame With haute-bourgeois arrogance, the erendum was the clear and overwhelm­ The Yeltsin regime in Russia, Kravchuk unpopular policies on those famous face­ director of Le Monde, Jacques Lesourne, ing class division between "yes" and in the Ukraine, etc., are ripping apart the less Brussels bureaucrats. wrote: "Maastricht seems to have "no," with the working class voting 60 USSR in order to transform the remnants into neocolonies of Wall Street, Frank­ The European Community is not an become for a number of our fellow cit­ percent against. Le Monde (22 Septem­ furt and Tokyo. To prevent this catastro­ embryonic superstate; it is an alliance izens the scapegoat for all our ills, the ber) headlined that in the Paris region phe, the multinational Soviet working of bourgeois national states balancing referendum the occasion for a great let­ "Only the Red Belt Voted Against." The class must defeat the forces of capitalist their often-conflicting interests. When ting off of steam." But the men who run results illuminated the economic geog­ restoration and restore the USSR on the those interests become seriously out of the European Community are not scape­ raphy of France today. Bourgeois Paris basis of Leninist principles. ,balance, then EC treaties, policies and goats; they really and truly exploit and and ski resorts of the Rhone-Alpes voted institutions count for nothing at all. Wit­ degrade the working people of France "yes"; the depressed Nord de Calais, suf­ The workers of East Europe face not only economic immiseration but also ness the present spectacular collapse of and the rest of Europe. They are respon­ fering the decline of its traditional heavy imperialist-manipulated wars such as the European Monetary System. sible for the unemployed steel workers industry, and the poor port of Marseilles those now raging in the Balkans. The Even the smallest member states can of Lorraine and dockers of Marseilles. voted "no." In one sense, the opposition workers of West Europe face attacks on negotiate their own terms. Look at Ire­ The Maastricht referendum gave un­ won even before the vote was taken. The their living standards as their imperialist land. The Dublin government demanded employed steel workers and dockers a prospect of a "no" vote fed into the cur­ rulers move to establish neocolonial and got a special dispensation that small opportunity to defy the masters of rency crisis which exposed the fraud of regimes in the East. Like the pre-1914 EC policy could not override Ireland's Europe. the project for an economic and political period, the stage is set for intense inter­ constitutional ban on abortion. So much The Ligue Trotskyste de France, union of capitalist Europe. imperialist rivalry and war. The blood­ for the efforts of social democrats French section of the International Com­ sucking banks and multinationals must be and liberals to portray the European munist League, stated: For a Socialist United States defeated and expropriated through revo­ Community as a bastion of "human "We call for a no vote...knowing that a of Europel lutionary class struggle. Only a Socialist rights"! victoryof the 'no,' by weakening a little In the heady days after Maastricht, more this anti-working class, anti­ United States of Europe-based on a After the Danish "no," the European immigrant andanti-Soviet regime, would Kohl declared: "What I want is a United planned and equitable division of labor­ bourgeoisies realized they had to do open a breach which the working class States of Europe." But even Rudolf can provide a decent and secure life for some heavy political damage control. So could take advantage of." Augstein, editor of the influential Der all working people from the coal miners Mitterrand, self-assured of easy approval -Le Bolchevik No. 120, Spiegel, noted that this is not possible September 1992 of Siberia to the agricultural workers of in a country that had been the prime without war: "To found a state like in Portugal. • mover of the Common Market, called In urging a "no" vote against Maastricht, the 19th century, which Italy, the German a popular referendum in France.' But the LTF emphasized the need for class­ Reich and the U.S.A. accomplished then, everything Mitterrand touches these struggle opposition to anti-immigrant is today no longer a conceivable under­ days turns to crap. A maneuver intended racism, calling for union-based mass taking without war" ("L'Europe oui, Spartacist League to bolster the EC helped shatter the exist­ mobilization to crush the fascists and for Maastricht non," Der Spiegel, 14 Sep­ ing financial order of West Europe. full citizenship rights for "immigrants" tember). Of course, it was not possible Public Offices Even more so than in Denmark, the (including the hundreds of thousands then, either, without the wars waged by -MARXIST LlTERATURE­ referendum in France tapped into ele­ who have lived and worked in France Cavour, Bismarck and Lincoln. More­ mental-centrally working-class-hos­ for decades). . over, attempts to create a united capital­ Ba, Area tility to the ruling establishment. The The pseudo-Trotskyist Ligue Commu­ ist Europe are inherently reactionary. Thurs.: 5:30-8:00 p.m., Sal.: 1:00-5:00 p.m. 1634 Telegraph, 3rd Floor (near 17th Street) media portrayed this opposition as an niste Revolutionnaire, supporters of Lenin wrote in 1915: Oakland, California Phone: (510) 839-0851 infatuation with "national sovereignty" Ernest Mandel, favored a "no" vote as "From the standpoint of the economic stoked by fear of German dominance in a pressure tactic to renegotiate the EC conditions of imperialism-i.e., the Chicago a "united" Europe. The fascist Le Pen, treaty in a social-democratic spirit, put­ export of capital and the division of the Tues.:5:00-9:00 p.m., Sat.: 11:00a.m.-2:00p.m. world by the 'advanced' and 'civilized' 161 W. Harrison St., 10th Floor of course, was ranting that Maastricht ting forward a program which did not colonial powers-a United States of Chicag~, Illinois Phone: (312) 663-0715 would flood France with immigrants even speak of "socialism," much less Europe, under capitalism, is either and got a hearing even in working-class proletarian revolution. Instead the LCR impossible or reactionary .... New York City areas. While there was certainly nation­ called for "a social Europe" which "Of course, temporary agreements are Tues.: 6:30-9:00 p.m., Sat.: 1:00-5:00 p.m. possible between capitalists and between 41 Warren St. (one block below alistic sentiment motivating the "no" "instead of crushing rights by the laws states. In this sense a United States of Chambers St. near Church St.) vote, this was combined with an in­ of the market, creates harmony from the Europe is possible as an agreement be­ New York, NY Phone: (212) 2~7-1025 stinctive recognition that the European top," "for a Europe that generalizes the tween the European capitalists ...but to 8 WORKERS VANGUARD boss Agnelli to "Socialist" prime minis­ Maastricht in Ireland and France, the up many of the most combative sectors, ter Amato-launched a violence-baiting sections of the International Communist by abandoning the unions they have left Hot Autumn campaign against Rifondazione Com­ League have put forward internationalist the bulk of the working class in the hands unista (RC), the "left" split from the opposition to a Europe of the bosses of the pro-capitalist bureaucracy. During in Italy... defunct PCI. In the recent demon­ while fighting for a Socialist United the Milano strike rally of September 24, (continued from page 1) strations, militant workers have gravi­ States of Europe, which will grow out after UIL leader Veronese fled from the tated around the RC's red banners. Yet of sharp class struggles such as the Ital­ platform, the Cob as from Alfa staged a the Amato government thought it could Rifondazione leader Armando Cossutta ian workers are now waging. breakaway march of a bare 2,000 work­ finally break the back of the combative condemned the "violence," and appealed Meanwhile, in the boardrooms of ers, leaving the rest behind to listen to Italian proletariat. Instead they lit a to the government to come to its senses: more left-talking labor fakers. match, and like the fires of the popular "The parties of the majoritymust realize With the -bourgeoisie attempting to upheaval in Los Angeles, or the union what the situationis. No one is in control throw the working class back 30 years, of the factories. And if we are able to what's needed is a powerful general power displayed in the recent German do our part, it's now time for them to public workers strike, the red flags flying begin to do theirs. Otherwise, within a strike to bring down the Amato govern­ in the piazzas throughout Italy show that week, no one will be able to say how it ment and its austerity plans and to re­ capitalist triumphalism about the "death will end." store key gains such as a real scala of communism" has not overcome the -La Repubblica, 25 September mobile. Such a political mass strike, class struggle. while beginning as a defensive action, Italy on the Razor's Edge Indeed, the Italian bourgeoisie and its would inevitably and very quickly pose the question: which class shall rule? To labor lieutenants have clearly lost con­ As we noted last summer amid the counteract the bureaucrats and provide trol of the situation. At Florence on Wave of Mafia bombings, Italy is in the a framework to mobilize and organize September 22, Bruno Trentin, general grip of a far-reaching economic and mass participation, it would be necessary secretary of the CGIL trade-union fed­ political crisis (see "Italian Capitalists to form elected strike committees at eration, was pelted with a hail of Demand 'Strong State'," WV No. 554, every level. In a sharp confrontation, eggs, tomatoes, red paint and bolts from 26 June). The bourgeoisie has literally these could develop into factory coun­ workers shouting "sellout" and "traitor." stolen the wealth of the country-the cils, as in 1920, and soviets. Such bodies The scene was repeated in Milano's politicians alone are estimated to purloin of dual power would have to organize Piazza Duomo the next day, as workers some $6 to 12 billion a year. The high­ workers defense guards, in the first tossed worthless, devalued coins at ways out of Milano, the banking capital instance to defend the factories and union speakers. Likewise in Piacenza of the country, are jammed on Friday smash the fascists. In the process, they and Ferrara, while in Bologna they added afternoons when the bourgeoisie smug­ La Repubblica could make short shrift of the Nazi skin­ potatoes and in Genova stones. The gles their tangenti (bribes and kickbacks) Sellout trade-union leader Bruno heads who have been terrorizing African ranks were up in arms over the agree­ over the border to Swiss bank accounts. Trentin was pelted with worthless immigrants. ment by the union tops to end the scala Much-publicized corruption trials have coins, driven out of strike rally in But the key to victory is a revolu­ mobile (the 'cost-of-living escalator-a filled the cells of San Vittore prison with Florence. hard-fought gain of the 1969 class bat­ members of Milano's most powerful tionary leadership. Too many times­ in 1920-22, 1943-45, 1948, 1969-the tles) in exchange for the lying promise families. Leaders of virtually every par­ Milano and Torino calls are being raised workers have risen up, forming factory that the lira would not be further deval­ liamentary party, including the ex-PCI, for an "emergency government" to "save ued. As an added insult, Trentin sealed are under indictment. Meanwhile, the Italy." Fiat chiefGiovanni Agnelli called councils, militias, etc., only to see the struggle dissipated or derailed by red­ the deal on July 31, just as workers were country is running an annual budget def­ at a meeting of the European Monetary flag-waving reformists intent on rescu­ leaving on August holidays. icit of almost $140 billion-about 11 Union for a "strong government to take ing the bourgeoisie. What's needed is a Yet on September 13, Amato devalued percent of the entire gross national unpopular measures... cuts in expendi­ Bolshevik party. the lira by 7 percent against the Ger­ product. tures, above all pensions and health" (La man mark, and three days later it fell The current dramatic events in Italy Repubblica, 27 May). After a govern­ Popular Front Against sharply again in the Europe-wide mon­ are not nationally isolated. Far from it. ment crisis lasting three months, they Workers Revolt etary crisis. Italy is on the verge offinan­ They are the direct result of the financial came up with the Amato cabinet, which cial collapse (several European banks crisis shaking the continent and the con­ despite its narrow parliamentary base Meanwhile, the Italian rulers are des­ now refuse to deal in lire). Meanwhile, flict over the Maastricht treaty, which has proceeded to decree the measures perately seeking to find 'I way out of following the dictates of the Bundes­ go straight back to the capitalist reuni­ demanded by Agnelli & Co. Now, as their own leadership crisis into which bank in Frankfurt and in order to slash fication of Germany. And the Italian cries for a general strike are heard in the workers' protests have thrown Italy's astronomical budget deficit to bourgeoisie's drive for a "strong state" every piazza and factory in Italy, the them. The "Socialist" (PSI) prime min­ comply with the Maastricht treaty limits, has been fueled by the Stalinist collapse labor bureaucrats of the CGIL, CISL and ister Amato is threatening to resign the Amato government decreed a pack­ since 1989. Today Italy is the weak link UIL come to the aid of the bourgeoisie if his social services cuts are "thrown age of $75 billion in drastic spending of imperialism in West Europe. And the with their policy of "rotating general off course." The Christian Democrats, cuts and tax hikes. This includes a wage outcome of workers' struggles in the strikes" region by region in order to whose clientele feeds from the trough of freeze and hiring freeze in the public peninsula will have an impact from Paris avoid a showdown with the Amato government welfare spending, are wor­ sector, abolition of health benefits like to Moscow. government. ried that Amato's package could end up free medicine, and vicious cuts in pen­ Yet in the face of Amato's cuts, the While the union tops are doing their destroying their own base. And if the sions. Retirees whose lifetimes of toil Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), best to sabotage the strikes, opposition Republican Party (PR!) of La Malfa, made millions for the Agnellis and the main remnant of the PCI, supinely within the unions and in the plants is which includes Fiat boss Agnelli, is Pirellis are now watching their savings accepts "sacrifices" in the name of being expressed by sections of the work­ opposed to the government program, and pensions eaten up by galloping "European unity." But talk of capitalist ers leaving the unions to escape the it's only because it doesn't go far inflation. "unity" ofEurope is a fraud by the bank­ bureaucratic straitjacket. Part of this dis­ enough. The Italian bourgeoisie by itself Amato was assisted by the treachery ers and bourgeois politicians which content has been channeled into various doesn't have the cohesion to confront of the union tops, who are now justly means immiseration of the working peo­ "comitate di base" (rank-and-file com­ the enormous pressures generated by a despised by the workers. The bourgeoi­ ple. It means an offensive against immi­ mittees), which arose first among gov­ deep economic crisis, a hypertrophied sie, on the other hand, has extended its grant workers waged by the capitalist ernment workers and spread to the state apparatus and a combative work­ fullest solidarity to its labor flunkeys. governments and racist mobs. And it is factories, in the first instance the Alfa ing class. After Trentin was booed out, of the an attempt to gear up for trade war Romeo plant in Arese, led by union mil­ So "far-seeing" capitalists are now strike rally in Florence, Italy's leading against the American and Japanese impe- itants coming out of Democrazia Pro­ looking to the PDS to pull their industrialists and politicians-from Fiat .rialist rivals. In recent referendums on letaria. While the "Cobas" have picked continued on page 10

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2 OCTOBER 1992 9 Chicago Defend Abortion Services at Cook County Hospital! Starting on September 16, abortion for the Christmas 1984 clinic bombings Rally for abortion services were offered at Cook County in Pensacola, Florida. rights, Cook Hospital for the first time in 12 years, In the face of this threat, NOW and County Hospital, under an executive order issued by other abortion rights groups tied to the September 17. County Board president Richard Phelan. Democratic Party have merely counseled Anti-abortion bigots were quick to tar­ reliance on the police to "do their job." get the poor and minority women who All supporters of women's rights, and tory counseling of "alternatives," and run. Meanwhile, Democratic presiden­ rely on the public hospital as their sole particularly Chicago's powerful labor only one abortion per year for each tial candidate Bill Clinton wants to keep source of medical care. "The hospital movement, must be prepared to defend woman. Even women with Medicaid abortion "as rare as possible." will be a battleground. This means war," Cook County Hospital and stop the anti­ cards have to fork over $250-for The interests of poor and minority declaimed Joseph Scheidler, who is abortion crusaders! mothers on welfare that means hungry women will never be represented by this notorious for terrorizing abortion clinics In Chicago, over a quarter of a million children. Yet in the first ten days over capitalist party with its racist "family around the country. Cardinal Joseph poor women have no access to gyneco­ 4,000 women called the hospital seeking values." And while the Democrats talk Bernardin denounced Phelan for an logical care: infant mortality in the abortions! of guaranteed health care, they praise the "immoral action" that "separates him­ ghetto is 23 per 1,000 births, worse than Effective access to abortions is Oregon system which amounts to ration­ self' from the Roman Catholic church. many Third World countries. For welfare increasingly a privilege available only ing hospital treatment for the poor. The Threatening to "blockade" the hos­ recipients and those without medical to white, middle-class women. Under the Cook County Hospital abortion battle pital and picket physicians' homes, insurance, Cook County Hospital is it. impact of the "anti-abortion drive, the highlights the desperate need for free Scheidler said he.would summon anti­ Cook County was performing 3,500 number of hospitals performing abor­ abortion on demand, as part of the fight abortion groups-Operation Rescue, abortions a year in 1980 when Phelan's tions nationwide has plummeted. Today for free quality health care for all. This Lambs for Christ, Missionaries to the predecessor George Dunne ended the only 18 public hospitals in six states basic right will only be won by a workers Preborn , Rosaries for Peace and Life, medical service declaring, "The hospital offer publicly-funded abortions, accord­ party that sweeps away the profit system, etc.-to Chicago later in the fall. should not be an abortion mill." ing to the Chicago Tribune (3 Septem­ under which the rich expect the finest Scheidler, who calls his outfit the "Pro­ Currently, hospital administrators are ber). Abortion services are unavailable care at Northwestern Memorial while Life Action League," was previously planning only 30 abortions a week, sub­ in one-half of all urban and 93 percent underfunded Cook County Hospital with arrested for wrecking abortion clinics in ject to a slew of infuriating restrictions: of all rural counties in the U.S. Phelan's its overworked staff is hard-pressed to Florida and works in league with Ku abortions only in the first three months, decent but utterly inadequate act is provide even the most basic services for Klux Klansman John Burt, responsible after a 24-hour waiting period, manda- related to plans for a 1994 gubernatorial the poor.js

working class. Occhetto would help push hopes for a socialist future, making Yeltsin at the time of the August 1991 Hot Autumn through Amato's drastic cuts, and the possible capitalist reconstruction (see Moscow coup, but this is purely theo­ elimination of the "scala mobile" would "Resistance and Betrayal: Italy 1943­ retical. When the question was posed be driven home by state power in the 45," WV No. 525,26 April 1991). Even sharply in Poland a decade earlier, in Italy... ~ke name of propping up "democracy." Per­ from outside the government, Berlin­ Grisolia's LOR refused to L a mili­ (continued from page 9) haps the PDS will ask for the post of guer's "historic compromise" with the tary bloc with the "Thermidorean section "justice" minister, like Togliatti in 1946, DC in the 1970s meant fingering worker of the bureaucracy" represented by Jaru­ chestnuts out of the fire. And indeed, so they can prosecute RC for "terrorism" militants in the factories as "brigadisti" zelski and instead supported the pro­ these ex-t'Comrnunists" turned open on charges of involvement in the throw­ (Red Brigades). capitalist clerical-nationalist Solidarnosc social democrats are holding out their ing of coins at Trentin. But the explo­ As for Rifondazione Comunista, these of Walesa. Indeed, in February 1982 the hand for a government coalition with the sion of workers' rage against the union longtime PCI reformists who stand on LOR and LCR went into the streets bloodsuckers of the PRI and other sec­ tops all across northern Italy makes it the betrayals not only of Togliatti in Milano together with the Christian tions of the bourgeoisie. As a first clear that putting a few reformists in cab­ but also Berlinguer, they are also push­ Democrats to protest against the Jaru­ stage, in elections in Mantova a joint inet seats will not suffice to calm the ing for a popular-front government. zelski countercoup. Instead of blocking PDS-PSI-PSDI slate brought together storm. An iron fist will be needed to They are seeking to build an opposition with "conservative bureaucrats" they all three parties of the Second Interna­ break the opposition to capitalist auster­ mini-pop-front with the camouflaged preferred the Black Madonna of Czes­ tional. And in a speech before a crowd ity, and they may dispense with the Christian Democrats of anti-Mafia/anti­ tochowa and her CIA/Vatican-backed of 100,000 in Reggio Emilia, PDS leader velvet glove. " corruption "Rete," the Greensand "the admirers! Achille Occhetto declared "we are ready Various pseudo-Trotskyists have made advanced forces of the Catholic" move­ From calling to defeat Solidarnosc to govern," and called for "a government a standard practice of calling for a PC­ ment"(statement of the RC national counterrevolution in Poland in 1981, to to turn things around." Occhetto limited PS (Communist-Socialist) government, leadership, 19 September). And at the fighting tooth and nail against the his criticisms of Amato and repeatedly and then find a way of giving back­ RC's annual festa, PDS parliamentary capitalist reunification of Germany in called for "sacrifices." Austerity? "Give handed support when the reformists join leader D'Alema was applauded when he 1989-90, to calling on Soviet workers to today to receive tomorrow," was his with sections of the bourgeoisie in called fqr an alliance of the RC and PDS disperse the Yeltsinite counterrevolu­ response. PDS in the government? Chris­ exchange for ministerial portfolios. But and for a general strike for a "real gov­ tionary rabble in 1991, it is the Interna­ tian Democratic president De Mita it is the workers who pay the price. ernment to turn things around." But as tional Communist League which has opened the door: "They made the choice The Mitterrand popular front in France French CP leader Maurice Thorez said uniquely upheld the revolutionary Trot­ to be a government party with the deci­ was "elected amid a wave of euphoria, in selling out the 1936 general strike on skyist program of defense of the gains sion to change" their name (La Repub­ with masses singing "La vie en rose" in the altar of the popular front, "It is nec­ of the October Revolution despite the hlica, 20/21 September). the streets, but instead it brought mass essary to know how to end a strike." Stalinist betrayals. And today we insist We Trotskyists warn that if the gov­ unemployment, racist attacks on "immi­ And if Occhetto, like French Socialist that what Italian workers need is not a ernment coalition is expanded in the grants," the rise of Le Pen's fascists and leader Leon Blum, intends to be inside shadow of the PCI of Togliatti and present crisis to include representatives virulent anti-Sovietism. In Italy after the government, the RC, like Thorez, Berlinguer but a new Bolshevik party of the PDS, such a "popular front" will World War II, Togliatti's PCI disarmed will support it from the outside. like that of Lenin and Trotsky. be an instrument of capital against the the partisans and betrayed working-class What Trotsky wrote in the 1930s is The image of tens ofthousands of mil­ no less true today: '''People's Fronts' on itant workers milling around the piazzas the one hand-fascism on the other; of Florence and Milano, spontaneously these are the last political resources of mobilizing against the reformist tops yet imperialism in the struggle against the not knowing where to tum, is excruciat­ proletarian revolution." ing. The situation in Italy cries out for For a Leninist-Trotskyist Party! revolutionary leadership, yet none is being offered. In the Transitional Pro­ Inside Rifondazione Comunista, in gram, Trotsky writes: "the crisis of pro­ turn, one will find all manner of pseudo­ letarian leadership, having become the Trotskyists, notably the Assoziazione crisis in mankind's culture, can be Quarta Internazionale (formerly Livio resolved only by the Fourth Interna­ Maitan's LCR). And ensconced inside tional." The ICt and its Italian section, Speaker: Don Alexander, Spartacist League Central Committee the AQI one can even find ostensible the Lega Trotskista, are seeking to build left-wingers like Franco Grisolia and his a communist party based on the lessons Thursday, October 8, 6:30 p.m. Friday, October 9, 7:30 p.m. Faction for the Trotskyist International, of the historical experience of the work­ UCLA First Unitarian Church who are today posturing to the left of ers movement, of the early Communist Room 5422, Boelter Hall 2936 W. 8th St. (near Vermont) their past incarnations. Thus Grisolia's International, the International Left FTI raises the possibility of "a bloc with Opposition and Trotsky's Fourth Inter­ the 'conservative' bureaucrats" against national, which must be reforged as the the open capitalist restorationists around world party of socialist revolution. _ 10 WORKERS VANGUARD not even order any disciplinary action ists loot and bankrupt the American From liberals like Dinkins to the racist against police officers. economy. From being the "last hired, Giuliani, bourgeois politicians all agree NYPD ... Civilian review boards are designed first fired," black workers have become on the "right" of the ruling class to main­ (continued from page J2) to curb the independent mobilization the "first fired, never rehired." Routine tain its monopoly of armed force. New If there are any cops indicted (unlikely) of workers and minorities against po­ cop terror is the means by which Amer­ York has one of the most stringent gun for the September 19 brawl, the PBA 'lice terror by fostering illusions that ica's rulers resolve the contradiction control laws in the country-this means threatens a "Blue Flu" sickout. "neutral" government can "moderate" between the lying assertion of formal only the criminals and the cops have A measure of the depraved cop vio­ the "excesses" of the police. Yet the equality for blacks and their forcible seg­ guns. The Spartacist League stands for lence now in full sway was the bizarre "excesses" of the NYPD are not an aber­ regation at the bottom of society. From the right of self-defense against racist incident of official vandalism in the ration, but the deliberate means by which chattel slavery to wage slavery, this terror: gun control kills blacks! We fight Bronx September 18, when sanitation the working class and especially the whole system has been built on the bed­ for a program of integrated class struggle cops deliberately smashed and totally oppressed and combative black and His­ rock of racist oppression. Today, with an against racist attacks as we seek to forge flattened a dozen cars which allegedly panic poor are kept down. And Mayor entire generation of black youth cal­ a multiracial workers party that can lead did not have current registration stick­ Dinkins, who has slashed every social lously tossed on ghetto streets with no the difficult battles on the road to the ers! Next morning Hispanic business­ service and shredded every municipal hope of obtaining.education or employ­ socialist revolution, which alone can put men were. dumbfounded' to find their labor contract, has tried to balance be­ ment, deemed an economically unneces­ an end to racist terror forever. cars twisted like tin cans and the street tween the impoverished ghetto poor and sary, burdensome and politically danger­ An article titled "The Police as a littered with glass and metal like Bei­ the Wall Street financiers by adding ous population, it should be clearer than Mayor's Political Nightmare" in the New rut after a car bomb explosion. A TV 10,000 new cops-more than the com­ reporter asked the Sanitation Department bined totals of the Dallas, Baltimore, spokesman why he didn't just put a boot Denver and San Francisco police forces! on the wheels? "I have no boots. That'd Now black clergy and politicians, be Traffic Department," he responded, including the newly "respectable" FBI with perfect cop logic. "I don't think fink Al Sharpton, are pushing for more they would do this in any other commu­ black cops and a requirement that all nity," commented an irate Hispanic police new hires reside in NYC. In a city Bronx resident. which is now majority Hispanic and With the cops acting like mad dogs, black, the cops are three-quarters white, the liberals are once again floating meas­ most of whom live outside the city in ures to try to rein them in. Right now, lily-white cop havens like Rockland Former federal six cops sit on the "Civilian Complaint County, or in Staten Island, which is prosecutor and Review Board" (CCRB). While the pro­ really a 'burb not a borough. But regard­ mayoral candidate posed all-civilian review board will not less of race, the police are the over­ Rudolph Giuliani u~ whelming source of violence against whips NYPD put a stop to the rampant police brutality, racist thugs on the bill has essentially become a refer­ minorities. Moreover, the black nation­ September 16. endum on racism and cop bonapartism alist reverends pushing the "more black in New York City. As Marxists, we are cops" line are every bit as racist against not neutral in this conflict: the Spartacist Asians (whose stores they lead racist League called to mobilize the power of boycotts against) and Hispanics who labor in defense of Washington Heights, have been the majority of victims of and we would vote for the removal of deadly police force since Dinkins took ever that the only way to eliminate the York Times (27 September) pointed to cops from the review board. For if the office. "pattern" of cop brutality is to do away the tensions in America's cities where symbolic measure before the City Coun­ with racist American capitalism whose black Democratic mayors were installed cil is defeated, the already brazen police Black Liberation Through thugs in blue uniforms are the front line after the ghetto explosions of the 1960s will be so emboldened that last week's Socialist Revolution defense of a system of inequality. and the entrenched white racist police cop riot will look like a tea party by New York City, this center of U.S. It will take a political mobilization forces grew increasingly bonapartist. In comparison with what they will inflict (and world) finance capital, is of vital of the working class in mass social Los Angeles, Tom Bradley presided over upon the minority neighborhoods of the concern to the highest levels of the struggle, organizing behind it the masses the reign of racist terror unleashed by city. capitalist rulers. Their current strategy of the ghettos and barrios, and led LAPD chief Daryl "Chokehold" Gates New York's rulers are desperate for to keep the lid on the largest American by a multiracial revolutionary party to and his paramilitary police force which some democratic window-dressing for city is through a popular-front alliance wage the fight for socialist revolution. set off a full-scale multiracial ghetto police terror because they fear that of "Democratic Socialist" mayor Din­ Labor/black mobilizations, drawing on uprising in America's second largest city. the blacks and Hispanics are about to kins with his labor lieutenants like the power of the big integrated city As we wrote in our special WV supple­ explode. Yet not even the cosmetic sur­ Dennis Rivera and Stanley Hill who unions such as transit, hospital, hotel and ment (4 May) when L.A. exploded in gery pushed by Dinkins (replacing the keep the exploited and oppressed tied to city workers, have the social power to outrage over the racist acquittal of the cops with mayoral appointees) will fool their oppressors. The big multiethnic stop the racist terrorists in their tracks. cops who beat up Rodney King: anyone into believing they will get unions-hospital workers, transit work­ Cops would think twice about riding "The Rodney King verdict has illumi­ justice through the CCRB. Ninety-nine ers, state and municipal employees, roughshod through the South Bronx or natedthe whole system of American cap­ percent of the cases brought before the teachers-have been betrayed by their Bushwick if they knew the residents had italism, built on a bedrock of racist oppression. It cannot be reformed. it board are thrown out. Of 121 complaints leaders on the altar of the Democratic behind them the active backing of com­ must be smashed. The question is how. of police brutality stemming from the Party. And the assault on the labor move­ bative unions thJt defended working The situation cries out for revolutionary August 1988 Tompkins Square cop ment goes hand in hand with the rise of people and the unemployed, on and off leadership, to organize the social power riot against the homeless, which was cop terror, as the Daily News strike the job. This requires the forging of a of labor and unite behind it all the graphically showed. oppressed in a struggle for state power amply videotaped, there was not one class-struggle leadership in the labor that gets rid of the whole rotten racist indictment of a cop, let alone a con­ Across the country, state repression of movement that champions the cause of capitalist system and opens the road for viction. Moreover, the review board can- minorities has intensified as the capital- all the oppressed. genuine emancipation for all."_

Q: I represent the International Commu­ at 10 a.m., Moscow time. Before the What else happened during the strike? nist League. I would like to learn what strike started, we had received confirma­ First, the chairman of the air controller Russian Air h~ppened exactly. tions from 97 participating air traffic union of the Kursk airport had to A: We appealed to the President of the control centers from different cities­ undergo such an ordeal-very much like Controllers..'. Russian Federation, Boris Yeltsin, with telegrams, protocols of secret ballot, in 1937 [during Stalin's purges]. On (continued from page 4) our demands on July 4. Our demands etc. There were 97 air traffic control August 16, at II p.m., when the strike years ago. I want to tell you that as a did not imply the improvement of social centers out of 130 in Russia. was already over, militiamen came to his result of that 50 percent of the workers facilities or any change in the existing However, developments took such a place, showed him a warrant for his are now unemployed and 80 percent of social conditions. Nor did we require any tum that the state machine-you can't 'arrest, and he spent two days in prison the women. We see racist terror against rise in wages. However strange it may call it any other way: the government, pending trial. immigrants, with almost daily fascist the attorney general, the judicial bodies, attacks against immigrant hostels. sound, our major concern, the corner­ The military, with no special training, "I'm a memberof the International Com­ stone, is now flight safety. Some people the KGB, the Ministry of the Interior­ were ordered to take places at air con­ munist League. We are against the pri­ don't quite understand why the trade came together and formed a single front trol panels usually operated by civil air vatization and against the counterrevo­ union seeks not wage raises nor the to fight the 8,000 air controllers of Rus­ controllers. They were not licensed to lution. Wefight to bring the workers into sia. What did it mean in practice? Vice power. For that we have to unite all the improvement of its conditions, but the control air traffic in these air sectors. It workers. The multinational Soviet work­ enhancement of flight safety in the skies President Rutskoi immediately sent gov­ was done by order. And it's mere luck ing class has to fight. of Russia. ernment telegrams to local authorities there were no accidents. It's just luck "The workers have totake the powerinto The means of communication, radar ordering criminal prosecution of the people were not killed, and there are no their hands in a fight against counter­ and navigation facilities used by the air strikers. Heads of the Department of Air coffins. revolution. For that they have to build Transport, in their tum, instructed the workers and soldiers soviets. And the controllers are very worn out and out­ local bosses to keep the airports and air We understand that in calling a strike workers need a leadership which is dated. No modernization is undertaken, the air controller union took all passen­ opposed to all forms of nationalism, sectors open by all means. our channels of communication perma­ gers captive. But we did not expose their racism and fascism! [applause] nently go out of order, there are also Q: SO they mobilized the militia and "We have to return to the road of Lenin lives to danger. Rutskoi and his men took andTrotsky! Downwiththe Yeltsin gov­ constant failures in control of the situa­ forces of the KGB against the workers the passengers captive, too. But they did ernment! For proletarian international­ tion in the air. In general, there's a direct on strike? " expose their lives to danger, and, as a ism!" [applause] threat to the safety of flights; while we A: They presented this as maintaining matter of fact, they potentially sentenced are at control panels and radars, control­ order at the airports, but as a matter of all passengers to death. Making the *** ling the air traffic, there's stress, perma­ fact, in certain cases OMON [special crews board the planes and fly to the Following are excerpts ofan interview nent nervousness. militia teams] forced our leaders out of closed air zones and airports, and even with Vladimir Brodulev, vice president Q: Where did the strikes take place, and flight control rooms, saying "you have more, placing untrained personnel at of the Federation ofAir-traffic Control­ what was the military doing to replace nothing to do here." The strike commit­ flight control panels. I think they are lers Trade Unions of Russia, conducted the air controllers? tees were also forced out, in the presence criminals. There's no other word: they on August 25 in Moscow. A: August 15 came. The strike started of procurators [state attorneys]. are criminals. _ 2 OCTOBER 1992 11 WfJlillERS ""'II'li' renz

Halasy/NY Post Cop siege of City Hall: capitalism's hired thugs stage bonapartist mobilization against minimal reform proposal to remove police representatives from "civilian" review board.

SEPTEMBER 28-After acting as an nounced the black mayor as a "wash­ Dinkins in the 1988 election and hopes the black mayor and the whole city. army of occupation in Washington room attendant" and "crack addict" and to win the next one by whipping up a Hours after the downtown rampage, Heights all summer, the NYPD descend­ carried racist caricatures of David Din­ racist frenzy. four drunk white out-of-uniform cops ed on lower Manhattan. Their sinister kins with swollen lips and an Afro. Black But the big hero for this police riot on a Brooklyn-bound M train picked display of force spells escalating cop reporters were beaten and punched, was cop Michael O'Keefe who killed out a black youth, Yunas Mohamed, and war on the ghettos and barrios of New black city councilwoman Una Clarke Jose "Kiko" Garcia in Washington deliberately tripped him as he walked York City, and a clear and present danger was called a "nigger," women in lower Heights last July, touching off days of through the train. They called him "boy" to the population at large. After weeks Manhattan were pawed and harassed by turbulence in the Dominican community. and then punched him. Mohamed had no of sparring with the black mayor, and cops spilling out of the bars with beer O'Keefe was exonerated by a secret way of knowing the white racists were the resignation of the black police com­ bottles in one hand and guns in the other. grand jury in September and. is the cops. Like all street-wise city kids he missioner, the cops chose September 16 A dozen cars, including those of city symbol of cop bonapartism, the latest carried something for self-defense and for their provocation. On that day the councilmen, were damaged by the racists­ example that this killer force stands slashed one of his assailants, good, with City Council opened discussion of a in-blue, who with a wink from their above the law as judge, jury and exe­ a box razor. Mohamed was hustled out bill to replace the cops on the sham on-duty ilk, trashed everything around cutioner in the streets of NYC. Enraged of the subway car and into a police Civilian Complaint Review Board with City Hall. From the speakers' platform on that Dinkins consoled the Garcia fam­ cruiser and bludgeoned with repeated civilians appointed by the mayor. In Murray Street, the cop rabble was roused ily and used city funds to fly their blows to the head. Mohamed now lies a massive mobilization, ten thousand by Rudolf Giuliani, the vicious former son's body back to Santo Domingo for handcuffed to a hospital bed, his jaw white cops broke through police barri­ federal prosecutor who narrowly lost to burial, the cops went "wilding" against wired shut, his face swollen beyond cades and stormed the steps of City Hall, recognition, and his future an uphill swarmed up exit ramps and took over battle against being sent up the river on the Brooklyn Bridge, stopping traffic false charges of attempted murder of a and terrorizing motorists. police officer! An eyewitness to the cop For three hours downtown New York attack, Miguel Matos, is now himself the was held hostage by this vicious, mer­ target of cop terror. Police cars with cenary layer of bribed lowlifes. For "death" written in tape across their one day, Wall Street bankers and gov­ windows circle his Brooklyn home every ernment bureaucrats saw the cops the night. way young black men see them every day-a marauding pack of armed thugs. New York City Under Siege This rampage touched off a first-rate The city's rulers are worried because political crisis in the city. "MUTINY!" the cops are not playing by the rules. screamed the Post. The lead editorial After a decade of racist big-mouth in New York's Spanish language daily Koch and a city ready to blow, the captured what every black, Hispanic and soft-spoken liberal black Democrat Jew saw when they flicked on the eve­ Dinkins was elected mayor with Wall ning news: "All that this out of control Street backing, promising to keep labor mob of drunken racists was lacking was and minorities in line ("they'll take it a flag with a swastika waving over their from me"). But now the racist cops empty heads" (El Diario, 20 September). are slipping the leash. Even the black Even that haughty voice of the ruling police organization, the Guardians, de­ class, the New York Times, which prac­ nounced the cop riot as a "19th century tically hailed the crackdown on Wash­ southern lynch mob" and are demanding ington Heights, was worried about this arrests of fellow cops and a special challenge to any semblance of civilian AP prosecutor to investigate Giuliani and control. NYPD rampages against Dominican protest in Washington Heights following the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association. The badge-toting white hoodlums de- cop killing of Jose "Kiko" Garcia in July. continued 011 page 11

12 if I' ! ' ;';'" 2 OCTOBER 1992