WfJ/tIlE/tS ,,1N'IJ,1/t, 25¢ No. 391 .~~~. X·523 15 November 1985

• ea an's umml

While the Russians talk peace and • disarmament, Reagan shouts about anti-Communism and counterrevolu­ tion. Going into the summit, the Reagan gang has been even more warmonger­ ing, insulting' and provocative toward ae mal the Soviet Union than their usual foam­ ing at the mouth about the "Evil Empire." The White House has made it unambiguously clear that there will be no talk at Geneva about "Star Wars," MX missiles, the U.S. Pershing and cruise missiles stationed in Europe­ eight minutes from Moscow-or any other American weapons system, either in place or on the drawing board. As part of his dangerous game of nuclear chicken with the Russians, Re-agan is trying to bully and blackmail Gorba­ chev and roll back armed resistance and anti-imperialist social revolutions, from Managua to Moscow. The Russian leaders cannot under­ stand this behavior, especially before a meeting that is supposedly to "negoti­ ate differences and reduce tensions." In his recent interview with Time maga­ zine, Gorbachev exclaimed: "The summit meeting is designed for UPI negotiations ... on the basis of equality. War-crazy Reagan could blow up the world trying to "roll back" Soviet and not for signing an act of sornconc's workers state. capitulation.... Then the bellicose out­ cries arc all the more inappropriate. bind. Having forsaken the program of clear war. Even Reagan doesn't want Why flex muscles needlessly. why stage proletarian internationalism of Lenin World War III for its own sake; he noisy shows and transfer the methods of and Trotsky, they know no other way to doesn't long to see the U.S. destroyed in domestic political struggles to the rela­ ultimately stay the hand of the blood­ a nuclear holocaust. But the command­ tions between two nuclear powers? Here the language of force is useless and thirsty, war-crazed imperialists than er in chief of American imperialism is dangerous." through the dangerous illusion of both saner and crazier than that. Karl -Nell' Till1e.l (Moscow) No. 37. "disarmament." The only way the im­ von Clausewitz, the great Prussian September 19X5 perialists can be "disarmed" was dem­ military theorist, stated that war is the Dangerous it is; as Gorbachev reminded onstrated in Russia itself in 1917: by continuation of policy by other means. his American audience, "We have not workers revolution. Washington's policy toward the Soviet lost a war. or even a battle to the United The Kremlin tops insist that the Union now is, simply put, to destroy the States. and we owe it absolutely noth­ USSR and U.S. have a mutual interest land of the Bolshevik Revolution of ing." But the Kremlin leadership is in a in these negotiations---:-preventing nu- continued on page 6 Delective Defectors "He's for real," crowed a senior Funny things are happening to from a "captive nation" yearns to Reagan administration official over Ronald Reagan on his way to the "escape to freedom" in the U.S. of A. the su pposed defection of alleged KGB summit, and we're enjoying the specta­ From the Reagan White House to the spy master Vitaly Yurchenko. Senator cle as he tries to wipe the egg off his New York Times editorial offices, it's Patrick Leahy, vice chairman of the face. Redefector Yurchenko didn't axiomatic that every Soviet citizen Senate Intelligence Committee. hailed provide anything "new or sensational" wants to betray his country, or else. To Yurchenko's crossover this summer as after all. claimed the U.S. president, prove their point, the CIA terror a "hell of a blow to the Soviets." And dismissing the affair as a "deliberate international operating out of Lang­ British intelligence analyst Christo­ ploy" by the Soviets. Too bad for ley, Virginia kidnaps, imprisons. pher Andrew opined that Yurchenko Reagan. From the halls of the U.S. drugs, tortures and bribes any poten­ was worth "about 20,000 seduced West embassy in Kabul to the shores of the tial "defecting" Russian they can get German government secretaries" Mississippi. would-be American intel­ their hands on. But it doesn't seem to (Newsweek, 4 November). But last ligence and propaganda coups are work. We wonder, did Yurchenko week the CIA's "prize catch" strolled turning into embarrassing fiascos as reject the CIA's reported offer of $1 away from a Washington restaurant. various Soviet "defectors" seem to million because it wasn't enough for an Au Pied de Cochon (The Pig's Foot), want nothing more than to go home to apartment in Manhattan'! After all. leaving his hosts with the tab and Russia. "I know your side" now. said you have to have a pretty hefty stake to appearing shortly thereafter at a news - the redefecting KGB colonel. "It's enjoy the "magic of the marketplace." conference at the Soviet embassy better than reading a thousand Some Congressional intelligence Emrnert/Af-P to announce his "redefection" to the books." "watchdogs" now say they suspected Vitaly Yurchenko: USSR. The Cold Warriors figure anyone continued on page 8 Back to the USSR! • I es

News Line Workers Press Michael Banda, Healy's long-time Life-sized little Healy (foreground) hatchet man, now claims he was dwarfed by his egomaniacal born yesterday. projection. The spectacular explosion of the' the road, and soon the intrepid four take British Workers Revolutionary Party refuge in the rhododendron bushes. (W RP) is a sweet moment of revenge for Triumphantly, the bombardier then a wide swathe of Trotskyists, ostensible jumps on a wall, raises both hands Trotskyists, embittered ex-members above his head after the fashion of and others who have been abused and football fans, and chants "Healy! Healy! slandered by the Healy/ Banda machine abusing women comrades for the last 19 of Healy as unique interpreter of the Healy!" Then he drops back into the of political bandits over the course of years or so. What gives the event its twin mystifications. "security" and housing estate. decades. The story broke late last month impact is not the "Red in the Bed" angle "dialectics." After the events of the WRP's week, when two warring wings-one led by so lavishly featured in the smarmy, As we continue collecting and evalu­ it's a wonder they haven't been going for Gerry Healy and actress Vanessa Red­ prurient and vicious British bourgeois ating the information, we think WV each other with guns and knives! The grave, the other by Healy's long-time press but the fact that Healy's role in the readers will find informative the article picture of what has happened in the hatchet man Michael Banda and above­ WRP roughly mimicked that of Stalin reprinted below from Socialist Organis­ WRP is now reasonably clear. the-battle intellectual Cliff Slaughter-s­ in the CPSU. The WRP's supreme er No. 251, 7 November 1985. The The organisation has split down the expelled each other. The ostensible basis organizational principle was keeping article. titled "The WRP Proves Us middle. The Healy faction's claim that was the rather remarkable charge that the ranks in line by a combination of Right," appeared under the byline of they have the majority of the members the 73-year-old Healy had been sexually simple physical gangsterism and the cult Sean Matgamna, a sharp-tongued of the old organisation on their side may British centrist. Matgamna and his Socialist Organiser know whereof they speak. And they surely have earned the right to enjoy the WRP's downfall, Fortress of the World Revolution having been hauled into the capitalist courts by Healy/Banda for having Against Stalin. the destroyer of the published "libelous" statements about Leninist Comintern, the. Trotsk vists up­ the WRP which were manifestly true. held the integral relationship between Matgamna's article presents, from his defense of the gains of the Russian Octo­ own political standpoint, as good an her and world proletarian revolution. /n interpretation of the split as we are likely /928. James P. Cannon. veteran Ameri­ early to encounter. And he nails the can communist. launched the Militant. whole WRP cabal for its most corrupt then the voice of American Trotskyism. political act-the explicit justification declaring: TROTSKY LE~I~ of the execution of Iraqi Communist militants by the Ba'ath military regime. Eleven years have gone by since the Russian workers took the hammer of revolu­ "Healyites: Kill a Commie for Qaddafi" tion in their hands and broke the chain of world imperialism at its weakest link .... was WV's headline in 1979 when the The Russian revolution broke forever the unity of the world and divided it into two British gutter press drools over the WRP thus took to the loathsome logical Healy affair. hostile camps-the camp of imperialist exploitation and the camp of social conclusion its corrupt press agentry for even be true. The bourgeois press credits revolution. At one polar extreme stands America, the strongest imperialist world murderous bourgeois-nationalists like the old WRP with five to seven thou­ power. At the other stands the USSR, the land of the workers' rule. The antagonism Libya's Qaddafi, Iran's Khomeini and sand members, but it was probably not between them, and the systems they represent, is irreconcilable. They cannot live the PLO's Arafat. more than one-tenth of that. together permanently side by side. The victory of the Soviet system on a world scale In bringing Matgarnna's article to the So when the Bandaitesjeer that Healy means the liberation of enslaved humanity and its ascent to heights of culture and attention of WV readers we of course only has 250 supporters. they are ad­ achievement beyond our dreams-to socialism and beyond that to communism. The are not endorsing Matgamna's centrist mitting that he has something like half victory of imperialism would hurl civilization into the abyss. Such is the issue of the political views, particularly his stance epoch of wars and revolutions in which we live and fight. ... the organisation. toward the Labour Party-from which. The defense of the Soviet Union is our own fight. It is and will be a central rallying The Healyites have declared their we think, he also derives the characteri­ expelled CentralCommittee minority to slogan of the labor militants of the entire world. "Defend the Soviet Union!" is a zation of Healy as a revolutionary in the slogan leading the workers to follow the example of the Russian revolution. So they be the WRP, and claim to have held a immediate postwar period and the must conceive it. So will the. victory of socialism in Russia and throughout the world special conference which "rejected" evaluation presented of the alignments Gerry Healy's expulsion and instead be finally secured. in the British Trotskyist movement at expelled Michael Banda and the other -James P. Cannon, "Fortress of the World Revolution" (15 November 192X) that time. i.e.• around the demise of the "conspirators" who raised their hands Revolutionary Communist Party. against the great leader. Their resolution explicitly gave Healy REPRINTED FROM SOCIALIST ORGANISER a special place in the WRP. making it an NO. 251. 7 NOVEMBER /985 article of faith to believe Gerry Healy to be "the outstanding leader of the world By Sean Matgamna Trotskyist movement in the post-war DIRECTOR OF PARTY PUBLICATIONS: Liz Gordon period." They have brought out one EDITOR: Jan Norden Kennington Park Road. South Lon­ issue of their own "Newsline" (eight PRODUCTION MANAGER: Noah Wilner don, last Saturday, 2nd. Four people are pages and without any sports section­ CIRCULATION MANAGER: Linda Jarreau selling "Newsline" as they wait for the which undoubtedly points to a propa­ EDITORIAL BOARD: Jon Brule. George Foster. Liz Gordon. Jan Norden. James Robertson. anti-apartheid march to come by. Two gandist deviation by them away from Reuben Samuels. Joseph Seymour. Marjorie Stamberg. Noah Wilner (Closing editor) men and two women; all of them are in mass 'Work) and an issue of "Young Workers Vanguard (USPS 098-770) published biweekly, except 2nd issue August and with 3-week interval December. their late 20s or early 30s. Socialist." They have launched an by the Sparlacist Publishing Co.• 41 Warren Street. New Yorl<,NY t0007. Telephone: 732-7862 (Editorial), 732-7861 (Business). Address all correspondence 10: Box 1377. GPO. New Yorl<.NY 10116. Domestic subscriptions: $5,00/24 Suddenly a half-brick comes whining appeal for £250.000 to bring out their issues. Second-class postage paid at New York, NY. POSTMASTER: Send address changes 10 Workers Vanguard. through the air from the other side of the "Newsline" daily from next January. Box 1377. GPO. New Yorl<.NY 10116, Opinions expressed in signed articles or letters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint. road and lands at their feet. It has been Gerry Healy is accused of sexual thrown by a burly man. also about 30. abuse of 26 and more women. This No. 391 15 November 1985 The brick is only the start. A steady salacious "red-in-the-bed" stuff has rain of stones follows the brick across continued on page 9 2 WORKERS VANGUARD Smash Zionist Stormtrooper Kahane! SAN FRANCISCO-Israeli fascist 'The Wolf' Got His, Smash Fascist of Palestinian Arabs from the Israeli­ united mobilization against Kahane of thug Meir Kahane was met by protest Kahane!" ("Eli" was an American-born occupied West Bank, Golan, Gaza and Arab, Jewish, black, leftist and other demonstrations at his two appearances kill-erazy paratrooper in Vietnam and southern Lebanon as well as the 600,000 opponents of his genocidal terror? here October 28. The Zionist terrorist an FBI agent-provocateur who became Arabs who are Israeli citizens, Kahane's Nationalism. The nationalism of both Kahane, former two-bit Fuhrer of the a Zionist and converted to Judaism and armed thugs, often Jews from the U.S., liberal Zionist and Arab student organi­ Jewish Defense League, is pushing his emigrated to Israel to murder Arabs. In have terrorized Arab communities and zations has stood in the way of giving program of genocide against the Pales­ 1980 this fascist killer was justly dis­ schools. The fascist Kach party has Kahane the Urn el Fahm treatment he so tinian Arab people. in a 12-city patched by a Palestinian militant.) grown rapidly in a country where richly deserves to get here at State. At an fundraising tour of the U.S. Mean­ Against the pitiful liberalism of the sadistic police, troops and fanatical October 14 meeting called by the while, according to the Los Angeles Marcyite front group PAM-whose "settlers" armed to the teeth get their General Union of Palestinian Students, Times (9 November), the FBI is attrib­ signs read "Say no to Kahane" and who Gestapo-like kicks humiliating, beating a vote was taken to exclude the Jewish uting to Kahane's successors in theJDL tried unsuccessfully to grab our bull­ and killing Arab men, women and Student Action Committee (JSAC) the bombing murder of Alex Odeh, horn and then appealed to the cops-we children. from the planned anti-Kahane protest. head of the American Arab Anti­ Protest organizers pay lip service to "the Discrimination Committee, in Southern spirit of Urn el Fahm." If they had been California a month ago. at Urn el Fahm on 29 August 1984. At San Francisco State University would they have told Jewish anti­ there was a chance to drive the murder­ Kahane protesters to go horne?' Kahane ous scum Kahane off the campus by benefits from this division. militant mass mobilization of students But while the Palestinian students put and labor. This is what the campus forward the nationalism of a terribly Spartacus Youth League called for in oppressed and desperate people, the the leaflet we reprint below. The SYL liberal Zionists echo the nationalism of leaflet was distributed prior to Kahane's the oppressor. JSAC wants to protest appearance at Professor Dwight Simp­ Kahane. At the same time it takes pains son's International Relations class. to put itself forward as the "true" Fearing that Kahane would get the defender of Zionism. But despite treatment he.justly deserves, the SFSU .lSAC's protestations to the contrary; ad ministration cordoned off the class­ Kahane expresses in fascist form the room with riot-helmeted campus cops Zionist consensus for massive state and the meeting was closed to the press terror against the Palestinian people. and all but selected students. Campus From Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir and and SF cops and Kahane bodyguards Moshe Dayan to Begin, Sharon and even set up an elaborate scheme to get Peres-from Deir Yassin 1948 to Kahane off campus after his meeting, ,a\ Sabra/Shatila 1982 and Tunis 1985­ wv Photo involving decoy cop cars and a Kahane October 28: SL contingent at demonstration protesting Kahane outside Israel has been based on robbing the impersonator. St. Francis Hotel in SF.- Palestinians' birthright through state But the liberal Zionist and Arab counterposed our revolutionary strate- As the noted Israeli civil libertarian terrorism. Even the most "leftist" of the student organizations played right into gy for the genuine realization of the Israel Shahak, a survivor of the Bergen- pioneer Zionists carried out the exclu­ the hands of the administration and right to self-determination for both Belsen concentration camp, stated in an sion, dispossession and expulsion of the Kahane. Aping the chauvinist "Peace Palestinian Arab and Hebrew peoples in interview with the Spartacist League's Palestinians in line with the slogan, Now" movement in Israel which ex­ a socialist federation of the Near East. newspaper Workers Vanguard (12 "conquest of land, conquest of labor." cludes Arab participation, the campus October 1984): "Israeli Jewish society is The "Labor" and Likud war criminals Zionists held a soft-core pro-Zionist being more polarized and about half of are following in their footsteps. anti-Kahane rally at noon. Meanwhile, SYL Leaflet it is being rapidly Nazified. The more Doing its best, as always, to fan the the Palestinian nationalists and their the U.S.A. supports Israel, the greater flames of other people's suicidal nation­ Marcyite hangers-on, after staging a The fascistic. murderous Meir Ka­ and more rapid will that Nazification alism is the Workers World Party brief counterdemonstration at the Zion­ hane's scheduled appearance at SFSU be." The Zionist Hitlerite Kahane (WWP), better known in the guises ofits ist rally, held a picket outside Kahane's on October 28 is an outrage and a represents not only a broadly supported myriad front groups (People's Antiwar appearance. provocation against the Palestinian genocidal campaign but the fact that Mobilization, All-Peoples Congress, Both groups Were united only in their victims of genocidal terror and against ultraright Zionism, which is increasing­ etc.). Of course the Marcyites of the opposition to tohe SYL's call for militant all enemies of racism. Kahane should be ly becoming "respectable" in Israel, is WWP are the most gung-ho armchair action to drive Kahane off campus. driven offcampus by a united action of fueled by cadres and money from the fedayeen (Arab commandos). They not John Rothrnann, president of the Arab, Jewish, black, leftist and other U.S. only promiscuously embrace infinite Northern California chapter of the opponents of racism and fascist terror. We solidarize with the Palestinian varieties of nationalism; they revel in its Zionist Organization of America, de­ He should get the same treatment here youth under the Israeli boot who are genocidal logic, endorsing even indis­ nounced "our friends the Trotskyists. that he got on 29 August 1984 in Israel, fighting back. They need a Marxist criminate acts of terror against innocent the Spartacus League" for our leaflet when 20,000 Israeli Arabs and 2,000 leadership, a Trotskyist p-arty, to point civilians. But the bottom line for these and defended Kahane's "free speech." Jewish protesters drove him out of the the way to liberation through Arab/ "Third World" cheerleaders par excel­ And the Palestinian nationalists policed Arab village of Urn el Fahm. Hebrew workers revolution. Not only is lence is: "Uncle Sam to the rescue." their demonstration, attempting to dis­ Kahane had declared he would march Zionist Israel based on denying the When Israel· launched its blitzkrieg into perse students who sought to confront on Urn el Fahm to "register" Arabs for Palestinians their birthright, but it is a Lebanon in 1982, the WWP organized a Kahane as he left campus. SYL mem­ deportation, ranting that the town had deathtrap for the Jewish people. If they protest which called for "effective U.S. bers joined the picket outside the class at "no right to exist," because"there are no are to have a future, the Hebrew action to achieve Israeli withdrawal." 2 p.m. with signs calling for "Drive . Arab towns, only Jewish towns occu­ workers must be broken from their Well, Reagan gave the Marcyites Kahane Off Campus!" and "Arab, pied by Arabs." Deliberately modeling Zionist rulers and exploiters and won to effective U.S. action with the sending of Hebrew Workers, Overthrow Your himself on Hitler, Kahane seeks to the cause of Palestinian nationaljustice. the Marines and the disarming and Rulers!" spearhead the "final solution" to the The anti-Kahane protest at Urn el evacuation of the PLO fighters. The In the evening, Spartacist supporters "Palestinian problem"-genocide. Stop Fahm, a rare demonstration of Arab­ direct result: the Sabra/Shatila blood­ formed the largest contingent at a dem­ Kahane! Jewish unity, shows the real potential bath directed by mass murderer Ariel onstration of 500 protesting Kahane's Kahane, a Brooklyn-born rabbi who for a binational revolutionary party Sharon. appearance at the posh St. Francis for years tried to pass as a gentile, dedicated to the right of self­ The Arab/Israeli conflict is the Hotel. Our chants included "Smash "Michael King," became notorious in determination for both the Palestinian product of the historic interpenetration Kahane's Final Solution, For Arab­ the U.S. for building the ultraright Arabs and Hebrew-speaking people of two peoples on the same territory. Hebrew Workers Revolution!" and "Eli terrorist Jewish Defense League, which within a socialist federation of the Near The Zionist state was created by their attacked black militants, Arabs and East. forcible separation through the national leftists, and bombed Soviet diplomatic Liberal protest organizers "con­ expropriation of the Palestinians. There offices. He wanted to be a full-fledged cerned" for Kahane's "free speech" have is no just, democratic solution under fascist in the U.S., but he had a problem: refused to call for driving Kahane off capitalism to the claims of both the , fascist movements in America not only campus. "Free speech" is a red herring Hebrew-speaking people and the dis­ centrally target blacks, as well as going here. The issue is self-defense against possessed Palestinian people for the after other .minorities, leftists, and fascistic terrorists and organizers for right of self-determination. This can be unionists, but they also seek to kilf Jews. genocide. At the same time it is suicidal achieved only through a binational ,- This was again demonstrated recently to call on the capitalist SFSU adminis­ Palestine in a socialist federation of the by the fascists' machine-gun murder ofa tration to "ban" Kahane. The bourgeois Near East.* The urgent need is for an Jewish talk-show host in Denver, and by state and its minions cannot be "pres­ internationalist workers party, a Trot­ the recent bombing of a synagogue and sured" into becoming "friends of the skyist party, to lead the way forward to a rabbi's home (as well as the Humanist oppressed." This is the same administra­ peace and national justice for all the Party's office) here in SF with the same tion that "banned" the revolutionary peoples of the Near East. type of bomb used [against] an Ethnic Marxist Spartacus Youth League, and 'KAHANE OFF CAMPUS! Studies class at SFSU. which would be only too happy to have *(For an in-depth presentation of the So Kahane emigrated to Israel, where a pretext and "precedent" for going after Trotskyist analysis and program on this he built a bonafide fascist cult called the Arab student militants, other politically question. see "Near East Tangle." Spartacist , 19~O.) Der Spiegel - Kach party, and got elected to the active foreign students, black activists No. 35, Autumn Meir Kahane, fascist ayatollah of Knesset (parliament). Openly cam­ and leftists. Spartacus Youth League Israel. paigning for the expulsion and genocide What has sabotaged the necessary 27 October 1985 15 NOVEMBER 1985 3 racist union-busters. Sto~ In the early 1930s the Communist California Labor: StOI! the Scabs, Scab Goods! Party organized the Cannery and Agricultural Workers Industrial Union (CAWIU), which led a series of militant strikes and organizing drives. The CA WIU embraced farm workers, can­ nery workers and packing shed workers Watsonville Canne,ry Strikers in a single ind ustrial union to wage class struggle against the bosses. And it was a far cry from the pacifism of people like Chavez. In 1933 when vigilantes shot three workers to death and the National Determined to Win Guard rounded up Mexican, Filipino, black and white cotton strikers in the San Joaquin Valley, the CAWIU WATSONVILLE, California-For ten demanded: "Disarm the rich farmer or weeks of bitter class struggle some 2,000 arm the worker for self-defense!" (This striking Teamster Local 912 frozen food history of California farm labor organ­ workers have stood their ground against izing, from the 1870s to WWII, is the bosses of Watsonville Canning and covered in Cletus E. Daniel's Bitter Richard Shaw, the arrogant rulers of Harvest [1981].) this company town. Neither the back­ The pioneer efforts to organize stabbing union -misleaders nor the militant industrial unions of agricul­ scabherding capitalists, their brutal tural workers were defeated by bloody cops and injunction-waving courts have repression. The Stalinist CP long ago broken the militancy of the mainly went the way of reformism, of the Mexican women strikers. At mass "popular front" with the anti-labor meetings workers have elected their own Democrats, while today's union leaders strike committee; two weeks ago they like Chavez try to pretend the old days jeered and voted down Watsonville of class struggle are over. They rely on Canning's "final offer" of a 25 percent liberal Democrats and government cut in base wages by an overwhelming bodies like the Agricultural Labor margin of 800 to I! But the companies Relations Board (controlled by Califor­ hope to defeat this strike by holding out WV Photo nia governor Deukmejian and his until mid-December, when the broccoli Militant strikers and supporters march through Watsonville, November 3. - growers) in a futile effort to keep the season winds down and many workers bosses in line. But it won't work: in return to Mexico until production starts panies are now recruiting scabs all over, panies sellout contracts were "ratified" Watsonville today the bosses' press up again in early spring. The bosses first and foremost in Watsonville itself without union meetings called to discuss smears the strikers with charges of must be brought to their knees now­ Turn the strikebreaking court injunc­ them: Smucker's and Crosetti's are to "arson" and "violence." The cops carry and labor is gonna have to play hardball tions "ordering" token picket lines into have a two-tier wage scale with $1.50 out mass arrests of strikers and student to win. worthless scraps of paper! Bay Area less an hour for new hires, takeaways in supporters, while winking at scabs who On November 12 a busloadof scabs labor-Teamsters who've had it with' health benefits and a pay freeze. Rip up brandish firearms, knives and clubs. was surprised at the South Valley takeaways and union-busting, members the contracts-all the canneries must From the Chinese Exclusion Act to Shopping Center in Gilroy. "Flying of the International Longshoremen's join the strike! the murder of farm strikers by vigilante pickets" reportedlyarrived in five or six and Warehousemen's Union, Farm­ Workers told WV that at the mobs in the '30s, to the incarceration of vans, and the strikebreakers were workers, Machinists, Molders-must beginning of the strike a group of Japanese American farmers, to the apparently badly routed (San Francisco flood Watsonville to shut the canneries women put forward a resolution for a racist "bracero" programs and "rnigra" Examiner, 12 November). The coura­ tight. Remember the 1934 San Francis­ "general strike of all the canneries." raids of today, the history of California geous strikers have galvanized support co general strike and the 1946 Oakland Teamster officials blustered that this agribusiness is a history of racist crimes from working people: weekend rallies in general strike! The unions in this area would be "illegal." The strikers report­ against working people. The Spartacist Watsonville have repeatedly drawn were built by class struggle-not by edly asked why they had to toe the line League demands: Full citizenship and several thousand people from the playing according to the bosses' rules. drawn by the bosses, "since the compa­ union rights for foreign-born workers! Mexican community, local campuses, Real solidarity is on the picket lines, nies do illegal things all the time." As This means a struggle against the union and significantly from the labor move­ not in Sunday sermons. As striker Gloria Bettencourt told us: bureaucracy, which pushes racist "Buy ment in the Bay Area (two hours drive Gloria Bettencourt told WV, "A week­ 'That's the only way we'll win: by American" protectionism and refuses to away). Union leaders from Cesar end march does nothing, because the everyone going out on strike. The other lift a finger against racist "migra" raids. Chavez of the Farmworkers to the plants are closed then. They should companies arc helping the struck bosses-like Crosetti's is helping Wat­ (Chavez has actually called on the hated ILWU's Curtis' McClain have felt come during the week." Bettencourt is a sonville Canning fulfill its deals with INS in the past to "stop illegal aliens" compelled to posture as supporters of member of the Strikers' Committee that broccoli growers. Boxes marked 'Cro­ being imported as scabs.) the strike. But meanwhile unionized 500 strikers, fed up with the sabotage of setti' and 'Watsonville Canning' go in Watsonville strikers told WV they farm workers continue to harvest the Local 912 bureaucrats, elected at an on the same trailers." had to fightjust to get union materials vegetables, and heavily unionized rail­ October 15 assembly. The cops are try­ The strikers want to fight and win. At translated into Spanish; at one point road workers, warehousemen, drivers ing to railroad her husband, Amador, a the October 28 massmeeting where they Teamster officials ruled this "out of and grocery workers transport and striker, picking him out of a crowd of 50 overwhelmingly rejected Watsonville order" because "this is the United handle the produce-while the strikers strikers and charging him with throwing Canning's ultimatum, workers stood in States." The bureaucrats havealso been are left to man the picket lines by a Molotov cocktail at a scab bus. He has line to snatch up 500 copies of a content to allow the segregation of themselves. In Watsonville five other been held in jail for one month with Spartacist leaflet in Spanish; a number women workers in the lowest-paid job unionized canneries are working! bail set at $250,000. Free Amador came back to ask for stacks to give out titles. Women cannery workers getting a Decisive labor action now can. win Bettencourt! themselves. Many unionists emphatical­ tasteof power through class struggle are this struggle! Spread the strike-shut ly agreed with our calls for militant, demanding an end to discrimination. down all the canneries! Weekend Strike Together and Win! : mass labor action to win the strike. Sales Free, company-paid childcare available parades won't stop the scabs-for mass at the contract vote and at solidarity Liberal union misleader Cesar 24 hours a day is also a burning need for picket lines at the plant gates! For labor rallies the following weekends raised the Chavez promises victory by urging these workers, many of whom have solidarity-let the scab produce rot! A number of Watsonville subscribers to people to withdraw their money from young children. few truckloads or boxcars of broccoli our press to more than 70 (overwhelm­ Wells Fargo, the ba-nk apparently used It is only by mobilizing the full power dumped on the roadside will win this ingly to Spanish-language Spartacists. by the struck companies. Such consum­ of the working class and all the strike a lot faster than all the hot air er boycott strategies-based on apply­ oppressed against the employers and "solidarity" messages of union fakers Labor Wars in the Fields ing "moral pressure" to the bosses-are their strikebreakers that the bosses' put together. totally impotent. It didn't save striking Our program of class struggle is attacks can be smashed. Screw the Output of frozen broccoli, the plants' air traffic controllers their union or their drawn from the militant traditions of bosses' laws! For mass picket lines! Hot basic product, has been reportedly cut jobs, and it won't win here either, where the Industrial Workers of the World cargo scab goods! Victory to the by up to 60 or 70 percent (San Francisco the big California-based banks, the (IWW) and early Communist Party, cannery strikers! • Examiner, 20 October). But the com- growers and cannery operators are all which fought against racism and for the tied in together. Chavez's Farmworkers principles of industrial unionism and ought to be striking alongside their independence from the capitalist state. sisters and brothers in the canneries. It was the reds who did the first real And railroad workers must stop the organizing Of California farm and Spartacist freight cars from the struck plants that cannery workers, long spurned by the edlcion carry scab produce bound for big imperialist-bribed labor lieutenants of en national supermarket chains. Flying capital like Samuel Gornpers, head of espanol pickets linked up with Teamster and the American Federation of Labor. ILWU workers must keep this scab While Gompers spurred on the murder­ trash out of the warehouses. Retail ous anti-Asian racism that led to 50~ Clerks must block it from getting onto pogroms and expulsion of Chinese the shelves. That's the only "solidarity" workers from agriculture and mining in worthy of the name-the kind that wins California, the IWW advocated "direct strikes. action" by the masses of all races and The Teamster tops kept all seven both sexes, and it practiced the solidari­ _Watsonville canneries working without ty it preached. The IWW fought tooth $-2.00 subscription (4 issues) Bancroft Library. UC Berkeley a contract for three months. All but and nail against the bosses' racist Order from: Spartacist Publishing Co., Communist-led farm workers In Cal­ Watsonville Canning and Richard "divide and rule" tactics by organizing Box 1377 GPO, New York. NY 10116 Ifornia during 1933 cotton strike. Shaw are still working. At three com- on both sides of the border against the 4 WORKERS VANGUARD ~Iartacist Election Rally.; We Are the Party of the Russian Revolution!

The New York City Spartacist Party election campaign culminated in a spirited rally Saturday. November 2 at Borough of Manhattan Community College. In addition to speeches from VOTE SPARTACIST ,~ the candidates, the BMCC event high­ lighted Spartacist campaigns of con­ J!~~~RTAg!~~;: crete internationalist solidarity. in de­ . Mar/one fense of embattled Nicaragua and Stamberg supporting the bitter year-long British f'l'H M;j:¥'l~; miners strike. A slide show depicting important class battles and our mobili­ zations against U.S. imperialism in ,El Salvador and fascist terror at home was a big hit. The party-building red rally closed with the singing of the commu­ nist anthem. the lnternationale. Campaign manager and rally chair­ man Frank Hicks introduced Alison Spencer of the Spartacus Youth League national committee. who told of the S Yl.'s campaign that raised over $27.000 in material aid to Nicaragua against the U.S. trade boycott. "It was about this time a year ago when we learned that the youth of Nicaragua were being pulled from the coffee Nt\J\O~Kun harvest into defense of their revolution fOR1HE from attack by U.S. imperialism and the 'contras'." Spencer said. "We took this \JORK\NG as our signal that it was time to mobilize PEOPlt\ here in this country.' .(. ,;T!\tlf,V Gene Herson. a 20-year member of the National Maritime Union. recalled Ed Kartsen and Marjorie Stamberg (above) wind up Spartacist campaign the campaign of the Partisan Defense with rousing red rally at BMCC, Committee-a class-struggle' defense November 2. organization in accordance with the po­ litical views of the Spartacist League­ labor reporter Mark Lance. Beginning this city are increasingly facing wage day in and day out. which raised over $24.000 to aid with pictures of November 27, 19X2, freezes and wage cuts, disintegration of As far as we are concerned the only striking British miners' families. bring­ when a-Spartacist-initiatcd labor/black union conditions and job conditions proper procedure under these condi­ ing the significance of that strike to mobilization stopped the KKK lynchers across the board. Koch knows that tions of mass cop brutality-from the trade unionists throughout the U.S. He from marching in the streets of Wash­ social services are disintegrating. Koch stun gun torturers in Queens to the displayed a shining brass safety lamp ington. D.C.. he commented. "for us. it is on a campaign to make Manhattan drunken cops who are marauding the which had been presented to the PDC in was a little taste of workers power." One safe for multibillionaires, or million­ streets of Manhattan-is to organize New York by the South Wales National shot showed Stearns. Kentucky coal aires, which is what you need to get an mass defense squads of responsible Union of Mineworkers. Other lamps. miners with a sign proclaiming that apartment. working men and women. linked to symbols of recognition of the interna­ scabbing is dangerous to the health: In order to conduct this war, he also community organizations and unions, tional solidarity rendered to the miners, another showed Morenci. Arizona cop­ needs his army ofkiller cops. Murderers exercising their right of armed self­ are in Moscow. in the office of the per miners with the same slogan. The such as Sullivan and the eleven cops that defense. We demand vengeance for Soviet mine workers; in Odessa. where link was WVand our "Labor's Gotta kicked to death Michael Stewart are Eleanor Burnpurs, for Michael Stewart many mine strikers' children were Play Hardball to Win" supplement. mobilizing day in and day out in the and Edmund Perry. We're running in invited on holidays; in Sweden. in distributedin more than 100.000 copies courtrooms in order to enforce Koch's the New York City elections in order to France. in London. and with the San to militant workers throughout the racist license to kill. And they're getting build a working-class party that will Francisco Bay Area Spartacist League. country. away with it. Koch has of course got the mobilize minorities and the mass politi­ Herson introduced greetings to the We reprint below edited excerpts media behind him, and in fact the New cal power of the working class in order rally from Don Hughes, a militant York Times went so far as to criticize the to stop Ku Klux Klan and Nazi terror. Welsh coal miner and a spokesman of from the speeches by Spartacist candi­ dates Marjorie Stamberg for NYC Spartacist League for making the issue both in and out of blue uniforms. the NUM. Den's telephoned message of cop terror a central focus of its spoke of the vicious cop violence against mayor and Ed Kartsen for Manhattan campaign. The Wednesday issue of the New York City: the strikers which is now being used borough president. New York Times stated as much. that For the Working People! against the ghettos of Britain's cities: we "play up" this issue. Well, black Koch's black Democratic Party lack­ "Throughout the 12-month strike. I saw men on picket lines. mine workers Kartsen: Reagan's America is becom­ people are justifiably outraged at the ac­ eys like Dinkins, who is my major trampled underfoot by police horses. I ing increasingly racially polarized. as I ceptance of racist murder as the normal opponent for borough of Manhattan saw police in riot gear wicldingtrun­ think everyone in this room knows, and way things are supposed to run. Even president, did nothing more than cover chcons and riot shields against men the murder of the eleven MOVE mem­ Koch's extensive campaign hasn't for Koch when he called Farrakhan a dressed only in T-shirts. jeans and bers, including five children, in Philly racist. He's covering for Koch's mass sneakers. The same thing has happened stopped an increasing wave of rage at todav in the black areas of some of the marked this polarization. The black that racist pig Koch-a term and a racist terror. But Farrakhan by support­ cities of my country. But at long last mayor, Democratic Party lackey who headline that we're very proud of. ing Hitlerism is incapable of leading they are giving the cops a little bit of performed this massacre, atrocity, racist Black Democrats can only promise black people anywhere but to race war. what they gave them over the years. and murder, is being ridiculed even by more they will not turn into the kind of which is a dead end. Hitler used Jews as more power to them. Because there's nothing in the world more vile than or less standard Democratic politicians. monster that Wilson Goode is. But no scapegoats. just as the intention is here racism. and the British cops and the Wilson Goode nationally symbolizes matter how militant sounding, dynamic. to use Jews as scapegoats. Metzger of New York cops are equally racist and what Reagan expects from every mayor articulate these black politicians may the Ku Klux Klan makes that clear when vile." thoughout this country. In order to sound, their link to the Democratic he says Jews and blacks are the enemy. Don concluded with fraternal greetings defend this system, you need Philadel­ Party takes all of the forcefulness out of So Farrakhan preaches that Jews and from the National Union of Minework­ phias. And in New York City, Koch is what they propose to do. At the Eleanor whites are the enemy. The flames of ers of Great Britain, and from the South Reagan's man to defend capitalist law Bumpurs memorial meeting this past anti-Semitism are being fanned in order Wales NUM. On the same day of the and order. Tuesday, angry black people including to divert class struggle against the New York City rally, Brother Herson Koch is fully aware, of course, that Mary Bumpurs were offered adherence capitalist system of exploitation. Our added, Don Hughes was marching in according to all the estimates half of to "proper police procedure" by Vernon slogan is "New York City: For the the streets of London together with the the black and Hispanic youth in the city Mason. Well, "proper" police procedure Working People!" Spartacist League and other miners are unemployed. He knows that there is, ofcourse, what was used tojustify the It is defense of the profit system protesting the apartheid regime in are people who are going to live in the murder of Eleanor Bumpurs. And internationally that is motivating Rea­ South Africa. subways, in the tunnels. many of whom "police procedure" is used in order to gan to do everything in his power to A high point of the rally was the slide ­ are going to freeze to death this winter. justify every instance of cop terror launch a war against Nicaragua. Reagan show presented by Workers Vanguard Koch knows that industrial workers in against minorities and union members continued on page 10 15 NOVEMBER 1985 5 en CD Summit... a, (continued from page 1)

1917-the same goal that the U.S. and 15 other imperialist powers had when they invaded Russia to crush the early Soviet state in the egg. the same goal Adolf Hitler had when he launched Operation Barbarossa against the So­ viet Union in 1941. Remember that last year Reagan The "workers' "joked" on an accidentally open mike: bomb": Soviet "My fellow Americans. I'm pleased to military parade tell you today that I've signed legislation in Moscow. that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes." Oddly enough, the Europeans were not at all amused, and Reagan's fellow Ameri­ cans also can kiss their asses good-bye powerful example of the October ed to the United Nations a proposal to weakening of U.S. imperialism-mili­ should he ever go over the edge and Revolution-whose 68th anniversary reduce long-range nuclear missiles by 40 tarily. economically and politically--at launch a first strike. Of course, Reagan we commemorate this month-are the percent, Reagan called for global coun­ the hands of the victorious Vietnamese & Co. don't sit around planning when to main obstacle to world capitalist domi­ terrevolution. He singled out five Revolution. ABM and SALT I were push the button. Both they' and the nation and exploitation. Crudely put­ countries-Afghanistan. Cambodia, negotiated at the same time that Democrats want to get global counter­ no Russia, then no Cuba, no Vietnam: Ethiopia, Angola and Nicaragua­ Moscow was pressuring North Vietnam revolution on the cheap by financing these anti-capitalist upheavals and the claiming they are cases of "Marxism­ to sign the Paris "Peace" Accords. their "contra" international. But these resulting deformed workers states Leninism's war with the people" (New Architect of mass murder in Vietnam "free world" terrorists can lead to a would have been reduced to irradiated York Times, 25 October). Except for the and of detente Henry Kissinger called head-on military confrontation between rubble were it not for the military/ Moscow-allied military dictatorship in this "linkage": in the Paris Accords the the U.S. and the Soviet Union. industrial powerhouse of the Soviet Ethiopia, each of these are arenas of North Vietnamese agreed to a ceasefire­ The U.S. imperialists believe that if Union. The vision of a communist armed struggle for the social emancipa­ in-place in exchange for the withdrawal they continue to escalate an all-out arms future, toward which the first great step tion of the workers and oppressed, of U.S. troops. In his memoirs Kissinger race, economic warfare, confrontations was taken in Russia in 1917, continues struggles for national liberation and makes clear that had Moscow not and provocations in the colonial and to inspire the working masses and survival. For the U.S., they are, most helped the U.S. secure an "honorable neocolonial 'Third World," if they keep oppressed peoples the world over. That importantly, places to fight a proxy war settlement" in Vietnam, Nixon & Co. trying to slam the Kremlin up against future-the only alternative to barbar­ against the Russians. would have torpedoed detente entirely. the wall in a game of nuclear chicken the ism or worse-depends in the most The enormous expenditure of the Russians will finally crack under pres­ urgent and literal sense on defense ofthe From Detente to Star Wars Vietnam War, however, retarded the sure and the U.S. will prevail. Don't bet Soviet Union against U.S. imperialist Pentagon's development of strategic on it. Hitler applied rather more attack. In previous summit meetings, U.S. nuclear weapons and allowed the pressure on the Soviet Union and look Since Reagan does not da.e to actu­ presidents have made at least a show of Soviets to catch up and achieve rough what happened to him! American ally begin bombing Russia in five pretending to seek someagreement with nuclear parity. SALT I was carefully militarism will not cow the Soviet minutes, U.S. imperialism has focused the USS R. But there will be no "spirit of designed to brake the Soviet nuclear people or even the bureaucrats in its attacks on the periphery of Soviet Camp David" in Geneva. Reagan has buildup while giving U.S. imperialism Moscow, who are very conciliatory power and influence. During Cold demanded unconditional surrender on time to develop more advanced weap­ indeed. War I this was called the strategy of all fronts. In his Time interview, ons systems. Kissinger explained: "If Despite bureaucratic degeneration "rollback." Thus, the day after the Gorbachev stated, "It appears that even there had been no agreement, we could under Stalin, the remaining gains and Soviet foreign minister recently reiterat- the slightest headway depends exclu­ have done no more: and we would have sively upon concessions by the Soviet been worse off because the Soviets were Union, concessions on all questions­ in a position to add numbers immediate­ on armaments, on regional problems ly and we were not" (Economist, 3 and even on our own domestic affairs." February 1979). Why then go to Geneva at all just to Reagan came to office vowing to listen to Reagan's anti-Communist rav­ achieve military "superiority" over the ings? Because the Soviet bureaucracy Soviet Union-i.e., first-strike capabili­ hopes and believes that things can be ty. Pershing 2s were deployed in different. They look back with longing Western Europe-over a certain to the Brezhnev-Nixon summits and the amount of popular opposition-just "detente" period of the early 1970s as a eight minutes flying time to Moscow. ­ golden era of U.S.-Soviet collaboration The highly accurate MX missile and second only to the alliance with Roose­ now, above all, the Star Wars project velt and Churchill during World War II. were rammed through. Even Reagan (Reagan's trip to Bitburg gives more admitted that Star Wars produced than a clue about what side the U.S. "distrust in the world" because the U.S. ruling class would choose-.now.) In rulers "appear to be seeking the poten­ particular. the Kremlin tops holdup as a tial for a first strike" (New York Times, model of arms control the Anti-Ballistic 7 November). No kidding! UPI Missile Treaty (ABM) and Strategic "Star Wars" flagrantly violates-and Reagan's blood brothers: Nicara­ Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I) indeed simply rips up-the 1972 ABM guan contras butcher prisoner (left); negotiated in 1972. treaty. as Gerald Smith, the chief U.S. Afghan mullahs at home in the White But the short-lived detente of the negotiator of that pact. has flatly stated. House. early '70s was a result of the severe A report by the U.S. Congress' Office of

New York Times, 8 October 1985 Copyright © 1985 by The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission. The Editorial Notebook folder was a clipping from The Chi­ Thus prompted, I finally found cago Daily News, dated Dec. 8, 1958, what seems to have been President The Elusive Lenin describing the quote as a fake butgiv­ Reagan's source: "The Blue Book of President Reagan was asked the a Nazi invention once exposed by the ing no source. the John Birch Society," compiled in other day if he still thought the Soviet commentator Alistair Cooke. Mr. Just then, an indirect reference to 1958 by Robert Welch. On page 10,his Union was an evil empire. Yes, he Cooke, sitting at hand, seemed to the same idea turned up in a new book book says: told Ted Koppel of ABC, because of smile in assent. on South Africa by our colleague J0­ "Lenin died in 1924. But before he things like the downing of a South Ko­ When later asked for details, Mr. seph Lelyveld. He wrote thathe heard died he had laid down for his follow­ rean airliner in Soviet airspace. Cooke said he couldn't recall what, if ers the strategy for this conquest. It Moreover, he said, Soviet leaders re­ anything, he had ever broadcast was, we should readily admit, bril­ peatedly proclaimed their global about the quote. He had his own Where Ronald Reagan liant, farseeing, realistic and majes­ ambition, which is why "1 have often theory: the line might have come.to tically simple. It has been para­ quoted" Lenin's statement that: Mr. Reagan from an old movie script. Read of the Plot phrased and summarized as follows: "We will take Eastern Europe. We The White House press office wanted 'First, we will take Eastern Europe. will organize the hordes of Asia. And to be helpful, but it could not docu­ To Conquer America Next, the masses of Asia. Then we then we will move into Latin America ment the quotation either. shall encircle the last bastion of capi­ and we won't have to take the United At the Library of .Congress, re­ the same language attributed to talism, the United States of America. States; it will fall into our out­ searchers found an old folder showing Lenin by right-wing generals in Weshall not have to-attack; it will fall stretched hands like overripe fruit." they had been asked several times to Pretoria. He said that they appar­ like overripe fruitinto our hands.' " When did Lenin say that? The quote check the citation some years ago. It ently learned it from a book called So there it is: an undocumentable fell like an overripe fruit into a tele­ failed to tum up, as promised, in The "None Dare Call ItConspiracy," pub­ Birchite' "paraphrase" offered vised discussion that followed Mr. Collected Works of Lenin, Volume X, lished in Rossmoor, Calif., in 1971 and "often" as a live quotation by a Presi­ Reagan's appearance. A Soviet offi­ page 172 - or in any Russian or Eng­ avidly read by members of the John dent of the United States. cial, Georgi Arbatov, denounced it as lish edition of the works. Also in the Birch Society. KARL E. MEYER

6 WORKERS VANGUARD persecution of citizens for purely ideo­ logical "crimes"; the parasitic bureauc­ MY the Traitors Sakharov! racy which perverts and disorganizes the economy and demoralizes the working class is a far greater internal danger to the remaining gains of the revolution than the repulsive pro-imperialist "dissi­ dents." But Sakharov and Bonner are a Why Let Bonner GO? very different case. TASS, the Soviet news agency. put Dripping with "human rights" hypoc­ the matter succinctly: risy, U.S. secretary of state George "It has been repeatedly pointed out in Shultz gloated over the Soviet Union's the Soviet press that. by virtue of his recent announcement that Yelena Bon­ scientific activity. Sakharov is a per­ son possessing important state and mili­ ner, wife of "dissident" Andrei Sakha­ tarv secrets. For this rcason and in rov, will be permitted to go abroad the interests of national sccuritv, he allegedly for medical treatment. Gloat­ is deprived of the possibiliry t'o go ing is surely the order of the day for the abroad." U.S. imperialists and media jackals who Yelena Bonner vs intransigent defenders of the gains of have mounted a frenzied years-long and Sakharov­ the October Revolution against imperi­ "Free Sakharov" campaign, trying traitors. alism, we denounce the Kremlin's every ploy in the book to pressure the decision to let Bonner flee into the Russians, even at one point retailing the waiting arms of the atom-bombers of "disinforrnation" that Sakharov was Hiroshima. This piece of detente di­ dead. Bonner and Sakharov, the father plomacy is a deadly dangerous"gesture" of the Soviet ll-bomb. are traitors to the of appeasement to the nuclear madmen Soviet peoples. They are avid advocates rov!" (WV No. 356,8 June 1984). Bonner to get "asylum" at the embassy in Washington who see every act of of American nuclear weapons expan­ Izvestia had earlier warned that "new concurrent with Sakharov's latest hun­ Russian "reasonableness" as a confes­ sion who eagerly sought to pass infor­ provocations are expected of him and ger strike. She was then sent to join her sion of Soviet weakness and a proofthat mation to the U.S. embassy and not for free, of course. A traitor is a husband in Gorky, under circumstances America uniquely possesses the will to Western "correspondents." We ask: traitor precisely because he sells himself which correspond not at all to the gulag prevail. The truly evil creatures lurking Why are the Russians playing Reagan's out." The Soviet government organ nightmare 'portrayed in the Western in Langley must be lining up already to Kame? charged that Sakharov had "repeatedly "free press." Gorky, though off limits to beat a path to Bonner's hospital bed. Sakharov and Bonner are a far cry blabbed about things that any state foreigners, is no Siberian tundra but a Last year WV made a modest pro­ from the usual Soviet "dissidents" as protects as important secrets" during thriving city of one million. The Sakha­ posal: "Since the Reaganites claim their presented in the U.S. press-a down­ numerous "intensive unofficial meet­ rovs have a four-room apartment, and only concern is 'humanitarian' and not trodden intellectual shivering in a ings" with U.S. diplomats and corre­ his membership in the Soviet Academy strategic-military, the Kremlin might pathetic unheated cubicle, listening for spondents (New York Times, 24 Janu­ of Sciences secures them access to all the suggest a simple trade of 'aging' scien­ the footsteps of the GPU while fondly ary 1980). And it's no secret who most special stores that make life nice for the tists: Sakharov in exchange for Edward recalling the days of the tsar. Sakharov U.S. "correspondents" in Russia. are bureaucracy. Teller, the father of the American is a top Soviet physicist who has openly really corresponding with! The stultifying repression of Soviet hydrogen bomb and now a prime mover called for U.S. imperialism to develop When Sakharov was banished to intellectual life is a continuing legacy of of Reagan's plans for the 'Star Wars' first-strike nuclear capacity: in the Gorky, Bonner remained in Moscow, the usurpation of political power by a program to annihilate the Soviets from Summer 1983 issue of Foreign Affairs, frequently in the company of Western conservative bureaucratic caste headed space." Here's another: Bonner comes Sakharov came out for the MX missile journalists. Last year she was caught by Stalin which smashed workers to the U.S. and in exchange Nancy and U.S. deployment of Pershing 2 and plotting with the U.S. embassy: after democracy, physically liquidating the Reagan goes to Afghanistan-where the cruise missiles in Europe. "This is letters from Bonner to the American Old Bolsheviks, to embrace counter­ CIA is instrumental in running much of concrete aid to the enemy," we observed ambassador were discovered, the U.S. revolutionary and anti-internationalist the world narcotics network-to carry in our article "Try the Traitors Sakha- was forced to admit that the plan was for policies. We adamantly oppose state on her battle against drug abuse.•

Technology Assessment understated the about Third World nationalist regimes obvious: "A strategic defense which and movements. Archetypal is Jack. could assure the survival of all or nearly Barnes' Socialist Workers Party, dyed­ all U.S. cities in the face of uncon­ in-the-wool parliamentary cretins who strained Soviet-nuclear offensive forces occasionally don Fidelista or Sandinista does not appear feasible." But the real fatigues for some vicarious guerrillaist aim of Star Wars is to protect U.S. land­ cheerlead ing. You can read pages of based missiles, reducing the effective­ SWP paeans to the ever-upward "radi­ ness of a Soviet retaliation to a U.S..first calization" and "freedom movements" strike. Responding to this latest massive from South Africa to the Caribbean provocation, Marshal Sergei Akhro­ (e.g., Militant, 13 September) without a meyev, chief of the general staff of single mention of the Soviet Union as a USSR armed forces, warned the Ameri­ serious factor in world events, much less can people that "Washington underesti­ the main target of U.S. imperialism's mates the potential of the Soviet war drive. . Union." No one outside the blinkered popular-front "progressive" milieu can Proletarian Revolution: take such willful blindness seriously. The Road to Peace Who is gullible enough to believe that all Peter Turnley At bottom the Cold War, including the MXs, Pershing Zs, cruise missiles, Soviet leader Gorbachev with French president Mitterrand in Paris. the resurgent arms race, is a class war, a etc. are directed at Managua, not war which began in 1917 between world Moscow'? Who would buy the line that it imperialism. Trotsky and American the altar of abstract ideas or 'absolute capitalism and the state issuing out of was a threat to imperialist profits or SWP leader James P. Cannon fought a principles" like anti-communism, de­ the Bolshevik Revolution. This imperi­ imperialist domination of the Carib­ bitter faction fight against a petty­ fense of the market economy or hatred alist war, alternating hot and cold, bean that led Washington to launch a bourgeois opposition which refused to of revolution. The "main danger." he against the Soviet workers state exacts a flotilla against the tiny island of Grena­ defend the USSR in the midst of a opines, is "foreign interventions against horrible toll on the economy and masses da'? Yet when the Spartacist League liberal outcry over the Soviet invasion revolutions in progress" in the Third of the Soviet Union, and in America raises slogans like "Defense of Cuba of Finland in 1940. Yet today in World. In a December 1983 forum in where the victims of race-terror, unem­ and the USSR begins in Central nationalist- and social-democratic-led Frankfurt, West Germany this pseudo­ ployment and social decay are supposed America," the pop-fronters go berserk, European disarmament movements, in Trotskyist was even more explicit in to find anti-Sovietism their opiate. Yet resorting to thug violence and even Central American "solidarity" move­ responding to interventions by com­ the so-called socialist left in this country calling the capitalist cops against the ments, the Mandelites never mention rades of the international Spartacist and internationally denies the anti­ reds. Why'? Because denying the rele­ defense of the Soviet bloc. How do they tendency: Soviet war drive is at the root of vance ofthe Russian question is the key solve this contradiction'? By explicitly ..... my organization has predicted since Reagan's militarism and shamelessly to their hoped-for politicalhloc with the denying that defense 01' the Soviet the late 'JOs-and this prediction has Democrats. . Union is posed. been proven true-that beyond any ducks or eschews defense of the Soviet doubt it is targeted against the colonial Union. These would-be leaders of a The once-Trotskyist SWP has now Writing in the New Left Review revolution. We have stated that a war movement for "peace and disarma­ become openly and explicitly anti­ (September-October 1983), Mandel with the Soviet Union is not now on the ment" in fact support or adapt to Trotskyist, though still remaining mar­ supports the East German "peace" agenda." imperialist anti-Sovietism. ginally in the more-divided-than-ever movement which calls for the disar­ This latter-day social-democratic In the liberal imperialist, pro­ "United Secretariat of the Fourth mament of this (bureaucratically de­ Karl Kautsky has an incredible faith' Democratic Party "solidarity" mi­ International," led by Ernest Mandel. formed) workers state. The task is to in the rationality of the class enemy. lieus-whether it's over the Near East, Manders USec still maintains a hollow "prevent world nuclear war," he says, by The Pershing missiles will not be South Africa or Central America­ pretense of identification with Trotsky­ relying on "the instinct for survival (in launched in the next five years, he various rad-libs and reformists try to ist tradition, but the last thing they want the physical sense of the term) in the assures his listeners, because "the ignore the Soviet Union, pretending is Leon Trotsky's uncompromising possessing classes," claiming the latter American imperialists know that the that U.S. militarism is mainly concerned > defense of the Soviet Union against would never unleash their missiles "on continued on page 8 15 NOVEMBER 1985 7 rhetorically, "Can the Reagan adminis­ Summit... tration policy of putting profits before (continued/rom page 7) peace be turned into a policy of peace without corporate profits'?" Yes, says moment they push the button someone Hall, through "mass protests and public in Moscow will push the button too." demonstrations across our land.... The Thus Mandel assures us that in all the people and Congress can force Reagan numerous times since World War II the to meet Gorbachev halfway at the U.S. has seriously posed or threatened Summit in November" (Dailv World,24 use of nuclear weapons against the October). Hall's faith in the "contra Soviet bloc-from Vietnam in 1954 to Congress"-which has tried to out­ the 1973 Israel-Arab war-the imperial­ Reagan Reagan in support to Nicara­ ists were simplv bluffing guan mercenaries-is consistent with As for the rationality of the Reagan the CP's historic policy of groveling gang, consider their behavior last month before the Democrats. when they hijacked an Egyptian airliner Whether it's Stalinist-style class over the Mediterranean; after forcing it collaboration with a non-existent "pro­ down at a NATO air base in Sicily, gressive" wing of the bourgeoisie or American commando troops tried to flagrant anti-Sovietism masquerading seize the plane and for several hours as Trotskyism, none of these ostensible faced off against several hundred Italian socialists offer a road to peace. The most troops with guns drawn. If they will do vital task for the peoples of the world that with allies, what are they capable of today is irreconcilable class. struggle leading toward workers revolution against Nicaragua, Cuba or anyone else Star Wars: Reagan's first-strike Fantasyland. they consider a "Soviet surrogate"? Not against the despots, dictators and to mention what could happen if today's democracy. In his Frankfurt forum, nas to Reagan's and the pope's favorite imperialist mass murderers who are on a gung-ho Cold Warriors in Washington Mandel accuses the Spartacists of "union"-end up four-square in the course leading to the annihilation of the ever went eyeball-to-eyeball with the "covering for Stalinist crimes against imperialist camp. planet. Central to defeating this murder­ Soviets in the replay of the Cuban the working class" in Poland. On the And what of the Moscow-loyal Sta­ ous "unholy alliance" is the forging ofan missile crisis they have been yearning for contrary, the Mandelite pseudo­ linist Communist Party? The CPUSA authentic Leninist-Trotskyist vanguard all these years. Trotskyists-from their opposition to has ducked every important issue posing party, dedicated in words and deeds to Inveterate tailists, the Mandelites for Soviet intervention against U.S.­ defense of the Soviet Union, from defense of the gains and heritage of the the past several years have been follow­ financed Islamic feudalists in Afghani­ Afghanistan 10 Poland to KAL 007. October Revolution against Reagan's ing in the wake of West European social stan to Poland,'where they sing hosan- Now general secretary Gus Hall asks hoped-for American Reich.•

Q) Times salivating over lurid tales of c: :l Soviet soldiers defecting to the blood­ >. Defectors... o'" thirsty mujaheddin, (They came up with ~ (continued/rom page 1) l/J a handful, out of the several hundred Q) thousand Soviet troops who have served E from the beginning it was "too good to f= in Afghanistan.) The Times mentioned l/Jc: be true"-the KGB's supposed No.2 in passing that there were not more ~'" man for North American operations defections because the Islamic feudalists o going over to the West for political ;: routinely scalp or slit the throats of zQ) reasons. But especially with the ongoing '<, captured Soviet soldiers. And it alluded Q) secretaries scandal in Bonn and the ol/J to the fact that the CIA's Afghan a: "Walker affair" of Navy non-coms "freedom fighters" are major sources for allegedly selling the Pentagon's deepest international drug trafficking, sup­ secrets for a few bucks, most took planting the Company's former Laotian Yurchenko as good coin. He represents poppy fields. "the Macleans and Philbys of 50 years While the Reagan administration was ago," said analyst Andrew. The British trying to get over Private Sukhanov's Soviet seaman intelligence apparatus is still smarting refusal to take the anti-Soviet plunge, a Medved (with over the fact that Kim Philby, their head Ukrainian sailor jumped ship near New beard) being of anti-Soviet ops during the postwar Orleans. Here was a chance to recoup, seized from years, was a KGB "mole." freighter by thought Washington-only local offi­ U.S. officials. Over at Foggy Bottom, the State cials didn't seem to catch on. Seaman Department wasn't having much better Miroslav Medved, described by a luck than the bumbling vicarious government-hired psychiatrist as an COAST GUARD cowboys in William Casey's CIA. Take impulsive lad "grabbing for the glitter the case of Aleksandr Sukhanov, a and gusto," was returned to the Marshal said Helms.) After unsuccessfully trying Ukrainian parents decided to return to private in the Soviet army in Afghani­ Konev. Thereupon Reagan threatened to serve the papers for an entire day, the Soviet Union after discovering that stan who wandered into the U.S. to seize the Konev by force and the State they hid them in a carton of cigarettes life in Chicago wasn't all the "free embassy in Kabul. Despite inducements 'Department kidnapped Medved and delivered to the captain as a "gifL" A world" was cracked up to be. from the embassy staff, which in a held him overnight while the Coast Helms aide commented, "It appears that It's not that the Americans are always "nonintimidating atmosphere" (i.e., Guard surrounded the Soviet ship. But this is just another sacrifice in cold hospitable to KGB defectors, either. locked up in solitary with the CIA) when the seaman still insisted he wanted blood to the black mass of summitry." Yuri Nosenko, the bugbear of Nixonite attempted to convince him to defect, to go home, he was reluctantly returned. But on November 9 the ship sailed. New York Times columnist William Sukhanov was only interested in return­ . The ultraright went crazy. A boatload The script for the double defection of Safire and his hero James Jesus Angle­ ing to the USSR. That he was not of Ukrainian emigres approached the Vitaly Yurchenko could have been ton, was held in solitary for [our years secreted away in a diplomatic pouch Konev, yelling, "Defect.! Defect!" The borrowed from the film Night Flight while the CIA tried to figure out if he probably had something to do with the crew turned them down, asking instead from Moscow. The international inci­ was real. (To this day, former CIA fact that Afghan troops surrounded the for beer and pizza. Meanwhile, Senator dent around Miroslav Medved's "joy counterespionage chief Angleton claims embassy and cut off all utilities. Jesse Helms subpoenaed the sailor to swim" reads like a Frederick Forsyth that the Sino-Soviet split isjust a ruse to The Kabul non-defection coincided appear before the Senate Agriculture novel. But as bizarre as aspects of the fool the West.) Perhaps the most telling with a three-part series in the New York Committee. ("It's a grain ship, isn't it'?" story may be, attempting to detain a comment of all, in this spate of defec­ Russian ship and holding a Soviet tions and redefections, came from a soldier hostage in a U.S. embassy are career CIA officer, Harry Rositzke: "I provocative acts of piracy and war. have never seen a political defector in 30 Imagine what would happen if an years." American ship were bottled up in We suspect there were quite a few Leningrad harbor: Washington would hearty toasts passed around in the KG B Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of the Spartacist League threaten to unleash World War III! Nor offices at Dzerzhinsky Square in Mos­ is this anything new: the U.S. Navy cow when their man Vitaly held his D.C. o $5/24 issues of Workers Vanguard o $2/4 issues of routinely tries to cripple Soviet subs on press conference. In Washington, the (includes Spartacist) International rates: Women and Revolution the high seas. owner of Au Pied de Cochon an­ o New 0 Renewal $20/24 issues-Airmail . An earlier Soviet "defector" who nounced plans for a new drink, a $5/24 issues-Seamail 0$2/10 introductory issues of returned to the USSR in 1984-01eg "Yurchenko shooter," consisting of Workers Vanguard Bitov, an editor of Literaturnaya Stolichnaya vodka and Grand Marnier o $2/9 issues of Young Spartacus (includes Spartacist) Gazeta-also said he had been drugged liqueur. And in Senator Durenberger's Name _ and kidnapped, as did three apparent "oversight" committee (so-called be­ deserters from the Soviet army in cause of the vast amount of CIA Address _ Afghanistan. When Soviet ballet dancer skullduggery they overlook), a bogus ______Phone (__)__""'---- _ Aleksandr Godunov defected a couple leaflet. was circulating reporting the of years ago, Washington held an defection of CIA director Casey ... with City State Zip ~ Aeroflot jet with his wife aboard though "mixed" effects on U.S. intelligence. 391 she wanted to return. And don't forget The American imperialists are just­ Make cheCks payable/man to: Sparteelat Publishing Co., Box 13n GPO, N_ York, NY 10116 the State Department's kidnapping of ly victims of their own anti-Soviet 12-year-old Walter Polovchak when his hysteria.• 8 WORKERS VANGUARD and fell apart under the leadership of Healyites Ted Grant and Jock Haston. If today there is poetic justice in his treatment at the hands of his pupils, as Blow Up ... well as essential truth in what they say (continued/rom page 2) against him, that is the measure of how been spread all over the tabloid press for degenerate Healy had become. the last week. But by far the most "The way Machiavelli might draw the lesson for important and interesting developments they were": him thus: "He who rules by fear and have been the other charges, that the Vanessa terror should jiot live to get old and Bandaites have laid against Healy and Redgrave, feeble." implicitly against their own organisa­ Michael Banda Politically the Bandaites are in a tion and its entire history. and the Qaddafi hopeless situation. Everything they say In "Newsline" and in-interviews with connection. against Healy condemns them too. They the bourgeois press, 'WRP general were not rank and file activists or raw secretary Michael Banda has repeated youth, but Healy's close associates for sa's [Socialist Organiser] comments on many, many years. the WRP-phrase for phrase and some­ claim to have evidence that at least one Healy has politically "executed" other And what WRP tradition exists apart times word for word. person was so denounced to the Iraqi long-time associates for a lot less than from the one Gerry Healy made and

Banda has: I government. forcing him to retire. For example, Tim shaped for three decades'! What do they I. Denounced Healy's followers such Wohlforth, leader of the U.S. clone know about politics except what he as the Redgraves as peoplewho have the Explosion group for a dozen years, was purged taught them? What have they ever been attitude of religious cultists towards because he was slow to join Healy when but Gerry Healy's stooges, deferring their "guru" Healy. We were sued for There are also some political shifts by Healy denounced Wohlforth's wife as a when they felt inclined to take a view saying that. the Bandaites, adding up to a small CIA agent. different from his? 2. Denounced Healy for systematic move away from the lunacy of Healy If Healy regained control, his defeat­ and routine violence and brutality and towards a slightly more realistic ed opponents would not have lasted Teeth against members of the organisation. appreciation of the world they actually long. So Banda and his allies acted as Some of them may have gritted their We were sued for saying that. live in. It is still too early to assess this, , Healy had long taught them to act: teeth at various times-but if so, that's 3. Denounced Healy for using pres­ because many things are obviously brutally and without concern for de­ all they did. Whether or not the WRP sure, intimidation and violence to being said for effect, and the anti-Healy cency, credibility or consistency. turned would-be communists over to coerce young women comrades into WRP has not settled down politically The WRP's atmosphere was saturat­ the Ba'athist execution squads in Iraq, sexual activity with him. We were sued yet. ed with incipient or actual violence, the WRP's public justification of the for saying that the organisation "ex­ The probable reasons for the explo­ intimidation and terror. The organisa­ execution of CPers by the Iraqi govern­ ploited" raw young people. sion and its dynamics are now pretty tion was a cult, built on the leader ment was there in black and white in 4. Newsline now denounces the Healy clear also. Healy had agreed to take a principle around Healy. Within it Healy "Newsline." faction for having a morality of "any­ back seat or retire, no doubt under did more or less what he liked. And "party discipline" is no excuse thing goes for the organisation." pressure, but apparently with the agree­ It is as certain as anything is that in for going along with Healy and the 5. They challenge the Healy­ that organisation sexual exploitation, ment of some who are 110W his support­ WRP across the class line-in glorify­ Redgrave faction to sue them if what ers. But Healy is a half-crazy-and and where necessary harassment, in­ ing the Iraqi regime, or Gaddafi for they say is not true. "In the days when sometimes completely crazy-old man, timidation, or worse, would be part of example. they dominated the Workers' Revolu­ who would not find that congenial. the great leader's way of life. Banda's attempt to "blame Healy" is tionary Party, newspapers, political op­ There may have been political differ­ In one notorious case-I know the already going to preposterous lengths. ponents, trade unionists and individuals ences or nuances in play, but that would people involved-Healy beat up a wom­ Did Michael Banda and others beat up a who happened to cross them were show­ have had no autonomous weight. Healy an comrade, a full-time organiser, be­ Central Committee member in the ered with writs" ("Newsline" 5.II.S5). seems to have been forced to sign a cause she wanted an abortion rather north-west last June'! Yes. "But Healy You can say that again! written agreement to retire. But the than to have his baby. (This is probably told me to," says Banda! Political Committee bloc that had the case that got to the Control Com­ Nobody who went through Healy's Paranoid pushed for his retirement then began to mission. in 1964-she had two brothers "machine for maiming militants" will 6. Banda describes Healy as "a clas­ break up. and a husband in the organisation, one fail to find some satisfaction in the sic case of schizoid paranoia." Classic Two prominent WRP leaders, Mitch­ on the Central Committee.) present explosion. Public vindication case or not, he has been publicly para­ ell and Torrance, seem to have changed But nevertheless it is also true that a for Socialist Organiser's stand against noid for at least a quarter of a century. sides, and perhaps others did too. The considerable part of the ballyhoo the WRP is, of course, satisfying. 7. Banda denounces Healy's works Political Committee reversed the deci­ against Healy's sexual antics is both But if the Healyites and Bandaites eat on dialectical materialism, long the sion that Healy would retire. A minority frame-up and an appeal to backward­ each other up like the Kilkenny cats, bible on which WRP members were led by Banda revolted and appealed to ness. Insofar as anything was voluntary that won't undo the damage they have trained, as "an outrageous piece of the Central Committee, whose majority in the WRP, many of the "harem 26" done to the Marxist movement and to charlatanism." • backed them. must have acted voluntarily. the name of Marxism in the British S. Banda denounces Healy for justify­ They decided on drastic action Revolutionary labour movement. ing the execution of Communist Party against Healy, and grabbed the weap­ We can only undo the damage by members by the vile Ba'athist regime in ons to hand. Hence the charges. Despite the political and personal building the Marxist movement. Iraq. Reports have appeared in one For the Bandaites it was probably a weaknesses and inadequacies that over Honest members of the WRP can bourgeois paper that militants from matter of survival. Theirs is a world 20 years ago turned Gerry Healy into a take the word of the Banda faction Iraq who came to the WRP school were where nobody has the right to disagree bitter enemy of the Trotskyism he set in leaders for nothing. They should study later turned over to the Iraqi regime, with the caliph, where disagreement is in his youth to fight for, Healywas once the record, debate the issues that have which killed them. Banda is quoted as heresy against the leader in his capacity a revolutionary. He was one of a small divided the WRP from other leftists­ saying that the motive was to get "bags as pontiff and treason against him in his group at the end of the '40s and the like those who support Socialist of money." capacity as monarch. To "conspire" and beginning of the '50s who had the Qrganiser-and break out of the WRP It is not clear whether this is true or lose, or to usurp and be overthrown, is courage to set out to rebuild the ghetto and into discussion with other not, though people within the WRP to lose your head. Trotskyist movement when it collapsed socialists.•

courtroom bore the atmosphere of the "Underlying the prosecutor's theory Deep South. Carter later, recalled the and summation is the insidious and Hurricane repugnant argument that this heinous little he knew about law at that time: "I n crime is to beunderstood and explained New Jersey it's against the law to give a solely because the petitioners are black Carter... black. man a fair trial." The 400 and the victims are white." (continued/rom page /2) prospective jurors from whom the jury Prior to the 1976 retrial, Carter's case Black neighborhoods." For stating this was selected contained only eight had gained much media attention and elementary truth, Carter became a blacks. After Judge Larner dismissed a public support. Bob Dylan had a song, marked man to the cops, and the FBI black prospective juror for having a "Hurricane," about the frame-up, and began monitoring his whereabouts for sixth-grade education, he refused to initiated a number of benefit concerts on ' the local police. dismiss a white juror with a fifth-grade his behalf. Muhammad Ali spoke up for The constant harassment of Carter education. Carter, and other luminaries like Harry culminated in the early- morning hours In 1974, Bello and Bradley recanted Belafonte and basketball star Walt of 17 June 1966 when he and Artis were their testimony, revealing that it was Frazier had endorsed his defense. But picked up by New Jersey cops and bought by Passaic County prosecutors following the second "trial," Carter was questioned about a Paterson triple for promises of leniency on a string of virtually abandoned. The defense com­ murder. Carter was held for 17 hours pending criminal charges and a reward mittee dissolved, public attention dissi­ and released after passing a lie detector of $10,500. Two years later Carter was pated, leaving the defense without funds test. An eyewitness to the killings could granted a new trial but it was nothing to even rep rod uce the transcripts for his AP not identify Carter, and the physical but a rerun of the earlier railroad job. appeal. In 1981 John Artis was released Rubin "Hurricane" Carter in 1964. Middleweight boxing contender was descriptions of Carter and Artis did not Under pressure from the prosecutor, on parole after serving nearly 15years of framed up at height of his career. fit those given by witnesses. Two grand Bello recanted his recantation and a life sentence. But Hurricane remained juries failed to return indictments. returned to his earlier story. A poly­ behind bars. no black man can walk down the mean Nevertheless, four months later, graph test which revealed this story to be Eighteen years of Rubin Carter's life streets of racist America without fear, based on the testimony of two previous­ a lie was suppressed by the prosecution. have been criminally destroyed, his none of us can be free. Hurricane's ly convicted crooks, Alfred Bello and Regarding the prosecution's conduct in career ruined, his family broken up. He freedom must be labor's cause-for Arthur Bradley, Carter and Artis were 'this trial, Judge Sarokill said in his had better not be abandoned now. As mass class-struggle legal defense! All tried and convicted. The New Jersey ruling: long as Carter's freedom is endangered, out to keep Hurricane out!. 15 NOVEMBER 1985 9 the Bronx because she was supposedly the Comintern said, must take up all The point is that it's necessary to Election behind on her rent. His Republican mass actions, strikes, demonstrations oppose U.S. militarism everywhere, and opponent wants to treat homosexuals and whatever the fight is of the masses not get involved in shuffling one or two like the new lepers. And from the most and the working people of its time. And battleships in the Pentagon's arsenal. Rally ... conservative to the most liberal, all of that is what we have sought to do in this So, while sharply criticizing this utopian (continuedfrom page 5) the capitalist candidates in this city are campaign, from our protest against nonsense, we would have voted for invaded Grenada to teach Latin Ameri­ hard opponents of labor, all of them call "New York's own" cover-up coroner Proposition 6 to keep the battleships out ca a lesson. But 700 armed Cuban for more cops. That's a program for Elliot Gross the ghoul to our emergency of New York. But Koch got himself construction workers nearly beat back more racist murder in this city. demonstration to try to save the life of some compliant judges and he just the forces of 6,000 combined elements of The Spartacist Party has been the black South African anti-apartheid knocked it off the ballot, just like they the U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force. campaigning in these elections on fighter Benjamin Moloise, to our found that compliant so-called adminis­ And you can pet that staggered Rea­ November 5 for a revolutionary answer support to the hotel strikers back in, trative law judge who squelched the gan's attempt to teach Latin America a to Crazy Eddie Koch and Mad Dog June in New York, and also the recent investigation of the cover-up coroner bloody lesson in Yankee' imperialism. McGrath. We've been fighting, as the Columbia workers campus strike. Elliot Gross. So much for democracy Defense ofthe profit system, in the form banners and the signs that you see American-style. of the International Monetary Fund, around here show, to smash the racist The Russian Revolution in For anyone who genuinely opposes which is one of the biggest loan sharks in terror from Soweto to Harlem, for a Our Program and Our Blood Pentagon militarism, who wants to fight the world, is why Reagan is out to force New York City where the working Yankee imperialism, the only way is . a war in Latin America. Defense of the people can live. And that is, as every James P. Cannon, the founder of through workers revolution. Because as apartheid capitalist system leads him to speaker here tonight has said, a fight to American Trotskyism, said in a speech Trotsky said more than half a century solidarize with Botha in South Africa. build the revolutionary party of the in 1939, and this was in the midst of an ago, the question for revolutionaries is: And the primary threat to capitalist working class. earlier war buildup, "We are, in fact, the whose hands are the weapons in? For us domination of the earth remains the A large part of the Spartacist Party party of the Russian revolution. We the Soviet arsenal, the bomb, the Soviet Union, the home of the first campaign in these elections has been a have been the people, and the only missiles-we are for them, we defend workers revolution in history and the fight for simple human decency. Take people, who have had the Russian them, we want them. That is the reason strongest non-capitalist economy on the phenomenon of the bag ladies. revolution in their program and in their to this date that the U.S. has not been earth. Under the massive impoverish­ Those tens of thousands of homeless on blood." Well, comrades, the Spartacist able to go through with its schemes to ment, isolation and devastation of the the streets of New York did not just League today in this country and roll back those revolutions from Eastern young Soviet Republic following World happen. They are the product of the the international Spartacist tendency Europe to Southeast Asia. And that is War I, the revolution, the civil war and why we hail the Cuban troops in o following the invasion of the European (5 Angola, why we say "Hail Red Army in and American armies, that revolution a.J:: Afghanistan!" and why we say a > suffered a setback. That setback was in ~ hallmark of our campaign is defense of the form of a political abandonment of the Soviet Union against imperialist an internationalist, revolutionary strat­ attack. egy and the leaderof that setback was Stalin, who led the physical liquidation Return to the Road of of Lenin's central committee including Lenin and Trotsky! Leon Trotsky. 125th St. and Today a bureaucracy retains power. Adam Clayton Now the Spartacist League has re­ But Russia has moved ahead historical­ Powell Blvd.: vived a tradition of the Third Inter­ ly in a very important way. Capitalism Soapboxing in national in election campaigns that has been abolished and a planned Harlem during we've engaged in over the past several economy has given that society in many Spartacist years. Because you know the Second areas a remarkable power of industrial campaign. International had become reformist in strength. You can see factories being large part due to the corrosive influence ripped down in this country, but of parliamentarism. So that despite all industrial development continues in their high-sounding resolutions, when World War I broke out these social Russia. Russia needs a political revolu­ around the globe is- the party of the crisis of American capitalism, and of patriots ended up backing their own tion to place the interests of working Russian Revolution. It's in our program deliberate state action-by Koch, by bourgeoisie in that imperialist war. people fully in command, through and it's in our blood. And when all the first Governor Carey and now Governor When the Third International was set up reinstitution of Soviet democracy. But a - Cuomo, who threw thousands, up to rad-libs and the liberals try to avoid the under Lenin and Trotsky, in order to social revolution is needed here, to 15,000, mental patients out of the state Russian question, for instance over check this danger the Communis! abolish the profit system. In Russia hospitals onto the streets. And they are Nicaragua, our platform says "Defense parties required in advance from all the there are no unemployment lines. The the product of Reagan, who since the of Cuba and the USSR begins in Central party candidates that they sign ar KKK and Nazi-lovers don't dare ride in beginning of his reign has knocked America." undated resignation from any electec Moscow. 150-200,000 people off the Social Secu­ Lenin wrote in What Is To Be Done? post to deposit with the Central Com­ Reagan's trying to break the Soviet rity disability rolls. that a revolutionary socialist party must mittee to be used whenever it's neces economy by forcing it to devote more What you've got in New York is a be a tribune of the people. It must react sary. So here are our signed resigna­ and more resources to arms production. Tale of Two Cities, much like the . to every manifestation of tyranny and tions, and this is a guarantee, comrade! Without this arms race the USSR could situation in Paris on the eve of the oppression no matter where it appears. and friends, that when you're voting get on with the business of devoting its French Revolution. So last week when And here in Reagan's America with the Spartacist, you're voting for the part) resources economically to improving the UN celebrated its 40th anniversary, so-called Moral Majority ridinghigh, in and its program. the living standard of its people. But you tuned in WINS radio and it told you the generalized climate of social coun­ Reagan is stupid enough to believe the how there was dreaded limousine terrevolution, our struggle has: focused We have mounted this campaign ir CIA propaganda about how the Soviet gridlock on the Upper EastSide. on the most vulnerable. Our fight for New York City to build the revolution economy is on the verge of collapse. Diplomats and plutocrats and Demo- ' full democratic rights for homosexuals ary party. We do want people to go tc Workers must act internationally to crats running around town in their' has become quite urgent in this city, the polls on Tuesday-I've been tellin oppose Reagan's imperialist.terror bulletproof smoked glass limousines, especially as the AIDS issue has become everybody, look for the symbol ( international, from the hijacking of so that nobody could see in and they the focal point for all-sided bigotry. Spartacist, that's the hammer of worl airplanes to terror-bombing of Tuni­ didn't have to see out at the misery of It's in a revolutionary tradition. When ers power, the four of the Fourt sia. Workers must fight to abolish people huddled in the doorways or the Bolsheviks came to power in Rus­ International. But mainly and mos racist capitalism at home, which means sleeping in the tunnels of the subways or sia, they abolished reactionary anti­ important, we hope to win many of OUI firmly standing against the anti­ in abandoned subway cars under Grand homosexual legislation. friends and sympathizers here to the Soviet war drive and the redbaiting Central Station. To paraphrase Anatole We've been saying that the anti­ Spartacist League. Because our task is anti-communist policies of the labor France, in New York City today the rich Soviet war drive is at the heart of it all. . to build the cadres to forge a revolution­ misleaders. and the poor have an equal right to sleep That Reagan's war on what he calls the ary workers party as the tribune of the We need a workers party in this on the subway gratings. "evil empire" was behind his war on people, the memory of the working class country and in all countries. And that So here we are running a socialist labor, was behind his smashing of in struggle, as the combat party to lead means mobilizing workers to smash the campaign in the Reagan years. As I go PATCO, behind his war on blacks the working class and the oppressed to cop terror in New York City. That . around speaking, people always say to at home, behind the firebombing of power and to open the doors to a means mobilizing against the "contras" to me, "Are you communist?" Andl say, MOVE. You saw this in this election socialist future.• in Nicaragua. It means in Afghanistan "Yes, sir, we're as red as they come." campaign. Let me take a moment totalk fighting to crush the pro-slavery mul­ These are capitalist elections, and about the ill-fated Proposition 6, which lahs. It means mobilizing to smash the everybody better understand that. will not be on the ballot. A bunch of Nazis and KKK terror throughout this Spartacist Leaguel They're totally rigged against the work­ pacifists and liberals worked very hard Spartacus Youth League country. It means achieving working­ ing people and the working-class par­ this summer and rounded up tens of class justice with vengeance for the ties. If you've got a cool six million thousands of signatures. All they want­ Public Offices victims of the Philly bombing and the dollars from the landlords and the ed was to put a referendum on the ballot -MARXIST LlTERATURE­ victims of cop terror in this country. It banks like Ed Koch, if you're a rabid against having a nuclear battleship Bay Area means reinstitution of the understand­ Republican gay-baiter like Diane stationed on Staten Island. Fri.: 5:00-8:00 p.m., Sat.: 3:00-6:00 p.m. ing that a picket line means you hetter 1634 Telegraph, 3rd Floor (near 17th Street) McGrath, if you're a raving "Right to Well, we thought this whole thing was Oakland, California Phone: (415) 835-1535 not cross. I'm calling on everybody Life" bigot running on the slogan of pretty absurd: you know, if the Iowa to join in this fight to build a work­ "Fetus Power" like Rabbi Levin, then isn't stationed here, supposedly New Chicago ers party. Join us in protest and strug­ Tues.: 5:00-9:00 p.m., Sat.: 11:00a.m.-2:oo p.rn. you're going to get some publicity in the York is going to be safe from the anti­ 161 W. Harrison St., 10th Floor gle, for the rebirth of the Fourth media. But if you're a working-Class Soviet war drive and meanwhile New Chicago, Illinois Phone: (312) 663-0715 International! party, forget' it. These elections are Jersey's going to get zapped! Besides the New York City A Tale of Two Cities enemy territory. But we seek to use them fact that if these bases ever -get built, the Tues.: 6:00-9:00 p.m., Sat.: 1:00-5:00 p.m. as the early Communist International Russians could take it out with one 41·Warren St. (one block below Chambers St. near Church St.) Stamberg: We have a racist mayor in -said, as a platform to reach the masses cruise missile-which we say is a good New York,' N.Y. Phone: (212) ;267-1025 this city who praises the cops for with the program of workers revolution. thing, and in addition it would solve the shooting down a black grandmother in Revolutionary election campaigns, as Staten Island question definitively. 10 WORKERS VANGUARD explain how they could run on the same platform with a race-baiting Democrat like George McDonald. Tyner avoided CP's McDonald Fiasco the question. but McDonald was unre­ pentant: "I'm a Democrat and proud to In our recent "Open Letter to the muttering in the heavily Jewish audi­ be in the Democratic Party," he pro­ Communist Party" (see WVNo. 389,18 ence, and one elderly woman yelled out claimed, explaining his presence on the October) we took the CP's People "They're three millionaires!" McDonald PBP as a marriage of convenience. "It Before Profits (PBP) slate to task for was undeterred. He went on to de­ you're in a bloc with the capitalists, dropping their candidate for New York nounce the makeup of the Board of that's what you're going to get," com­ city council president in order to put on Estimate for including "Ed Koch, Andy mented Starnberg, calling on labor and George McDonald, a self-proclaimed Stein, Jay Goldin, Donald Manes, minorities to break from the Democrats "independent Democrat." Some CP Howard Golden, Stanley Simon...." and build a workers party. supporters may have been more than a And after this recitation of Jewish Earlier. at a Spartacist forum in little unhappy about running a candi­ names he attacked real estate developers Harlem September 24. Stamberg re­ date whose name appeared around town for throwing old women on the street WV Photo called that during WWll, when in the CP's running mate: anti-Semitic on red. white and blue striped campaign "so they can get a few more shekels." interests of "the war effort" the CP Democrat George McDonald. stickers. But they were really squirming Following McDonald's speech, PBP rejected class struggle and the fight in their seats October 20, when at the mayoral candidate Jarvis Tyner felt whose family fell to Nazi terror, and against racial oppression at home, "It PBP's Borough of Manhattan Commu­ compelled to criticize, without naming who was invited by the CP to speak here was the Trotskyists who called on the nity College rally they heard with their names, those who say the problem is last spring, would say if he knew who working people to defend Japanese own ears McDonald's anti-Semitic that there are too many Jewish officials. Gus Hall and Tyner have been running Americans and protest their incarcera­ ravmgs. When McDonald signed on the PBP around with lately. tion in concentration camps. It was the There was no mistaking his racist slate, he was a big star in the pages of the The anti-Semitic outburst at the Trotskyists who demanded the U.S message. Less than a minute into his Daily World. Yet in an October 22 DW People Before Profits rally was shame­ open its doors to Jewish refugees from speech, McDonald began ranting that article on the BMCC rally, McDonald ful, and many CPers are ashamed. At Hitler's terror." From the election plat­ "It's a travesty that in the city of New was virtually disappeared. We're not Schomburg library in Harlem the night form the Spartacist campaign followed York. we are about to elect three white, surprised. In fact, we wonder what before the November 5 election, Sparta­ in the tradition of Lenin's Bolsheviks-s­ Jewish males to run the city-wide offices Soviet Red Army hero David Dragun­ cist Party mayoral candidate Marjorie mobilizing workers and the oppressed of this city." There was plenty of sky, the highly decorated Jewish general Stamberg challenged Jarvis Tyner to for proletarian revol ut ion .•

tion outside the Bronx courthouse last Campaign ••• February, a bonapartist threat which successfully intimidated the city into Election Night (continued from page /2) letting cop triggerman Stephen Sullivan off the hook for the wanton killing of MOVE members slaughtered in the Eleanor Bumpurs. at Small's Paradise hideous government bombing of that And the next day a suit filed by the Philadelphia black commune, Eleanor Legal Aid Society revealed the city is Bumpurs' daughter Mary and Edmund snatching hundreds of children of Perry's mother Veronica spoke out homeless parents and placing them in powerfully at Spartacist forums. foster care. In a truly sadistic Catch-22, There was effective censorship of after the kids are nabbed. the parents are leftist parties by the major media. An arrogant New York Times (3 Novem­ ber) editorial endorsing Koch com­ plained about an election in which "minor party candidates litter the ground." A mayoral "debate" held in the Times offices excluded four of the eight parties from participation. Independent TV Channel II interviewed all the mayoral candidates, but the network stations blacked us out. We got some coverage from the smaller black week­ lies, and radio appearances on the leading black station WLIB and Pacifi­ ca affiliate WBAI, one-minute "equal WV Photo time" spots on WCBS and a statement After four months of good, hard member Francis Haynes the week on WEVD. Carroll/NY Daily News communist campaigning, Spartacist before. Beaver Harris spoke of the At an election eve candidates night at NYC cops on the loose: 5,000 armed thugs surround Brooklyn D.A. Liz comrades and friends wrapped it up deep personal and professional loss the Schomburg black history center in with an election night celebration at the band felt with the death of Holtzman November 7, demanding Harlem, Spartacist candidate for NYC unlimited license for racist murder. Small's Paradise in Harlem. Beaver Haynes, the only jazz steel drummer mayor Marjorie Stamberg told the 0 Harris, Dave Burrell and the 360 in the world. audience that ourprogram in a nutshell then knocked off eligibility lists for Music Experience provided three sets In a brief presentation, the candi­ is to "defend black rights, defend the family housing on the grounds they of superb freewheeling jazz, and the dates and principal campaign organ­ unions, and defend the Soviet Union." are simply "homeless individuals"! So accommodations at Small's insured a izers were awarded party badges-i­ Reformists like the Socialist Workers grotesque and intense are New good time for those who worked so silver lapel pins in the shape of the Party want to debate with the Ku Klux York's social contradictions that even hard to bring our revolutionary pro­ "Rammer and four't-i-the hammer of Klan. The Communist Party, running New York Senator Daniel Moynihan gram to the working people of New workers power and the four for the on the popular-front "People Before picked up the "two cities" theme, York. Trotskyist Fourth International, Profits" ticket, looks to the capitalist warning that seething misery amidst The benefit performance took which was the symbol of the Sparta­ state to "ban the Klan" and thinks glittering wealth would lead to social place despite the death of band cist Party campaign. civilian review boards can "control" and explosion. "democratize" the police. The Sparta­ At an election night party at Small's cists organize labor/ black mobilizations Paradise in Harlem, Spartacist Party to smash the racist terrorists. candidates Marjorie Stamberg and Ed SPARTACIST LEAGUE/U.S. LOCAL DIRECTORY Based on the fragmentary unofficial Kartsen summed it up. "This campaign National Office: Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 • (212) 732-7860 returns available, the votes for the leftist has been a significant step forward for parties were uniformly infinitesimal, the Spartacist League," said Kartsen. Atlanta Detroit Norfolk hardly going beyond their close sup­ "We've called for a workers party. Box 4012 Box 32717 Box 1972, Main PO porters. This reflected one of the lowest We've posed the right ofworking people Atlanta, GA 30302 Detroit, MI 48232 Norfolk, VA 23501 election turnouts on record-38 percent to defend themselves. We have been Boston Los Angeles Oakland of the registered voters. In New York recognized for our opposition to cop Box 840. Central Sta. Box 29574. Los Feliz Sta. Box 32552 City, where 86 percent of the voters are terror, for mobilizing the communities, Cambridge, MA 02139 Los Angeles. CA 90029 Oakland. CA 94604 registered Democrats, the "real" race is the working class, the homeless. We (617) 492-3928 (213) 384-9716 (415) 835-1535 the primary, and even then Koch had it represent the future. And you comrades sewed up. David Dinkins, the black have put those slogans on the streets." Chicago Madison San Francisco flunkey they ran for Manhattan bor­ "We ran in this campaign to build the Box 6441. Main PO c/o SYL, Box 2074 Box 5712 ough president, was such a shameless party that can lead the socialist revolu­ Chicago, IL 60680 Madison, WI 53701 San Francisco, CA 94101 running dog for Koch that blacks in tion," said Stamberg. While the refor­ (312) 663-0715 (608) 257-8625 (415) 863-6963 particular stayed away from the polls. mists were talking about the Board of Cleveland New York Washington, D.C. But as soon as the elections were over. Estimate, "we were talking about Box 91037 Box 444. Canal St. Sta. Box 75073 Koch & Co. were back slamming their soviets. And when they were talking Cleveland, OH 44101 New York, NY 10013 Washington. D.C. 20013 killer cops and killer cutbacks down about fax abatements, we were talking (216) 621-5138 (212) 267-1025 (202) 636-3537 New Yorkers' throats. On November 7, about organizing for the workers to take 5,000 armed "offduty" cops surrounded power." Noting that it was two days Toronto Brooklyn district attorney Liz Holtz­ before the November 7 anniversary of TROTSKYIST LEAGUE Box 7198, Station A man's office, calling her a "persecutor of the Russian October Revolution, Stam­ Of CANADA Toronto, Ontario M5W 1X8 cops, not a prosecutor of criminals," berg concluded: "So let's drink a toast (416) 593-4138 and screaming for her resignation. It and go forward with the struggle. was a repeat ofthe sinistercop mobiliza- comrades." • 15 NOVEMBER 1985 11 WfJRNERS,,1NlfJI1RIJ S~artacists in NYC Elections "A Bright Red Campaign"

So here we are, the Spartacists, a o'" o s: principled early communist party of the c, Lenin-Trotsky persuasion, with a few > hundred members, which just ran an ~ election campaign in Reagan's America, in Koch's New York. We told it like it is; some people liked what we had to say, we had a good time saying it, and what it's all about is building the party of workers revolution: socialism is what we NElJ \( "on; want, and communism is how to get it. The Spartacist Party was campaign­ Spartaclst fORJHf ing deep into the second term of the Party most right-wing administration since candidates WORKING Herbert Hoover-and at least he was Marjorie isolationist. If you add up everything Stamberg and PtE! negative from Woodrow Wilson, Calvin Ed Kartsen Coolidge and Hoover-racism, blow up campaign for )\t sr4N6fRG the world, hate the working class, socialist \,)\ t: KAJUSfN glorify the rich-in Reagan's America, revolution. we've got it all, and in a virulent T superpower that's on its way down. We were already gearing up for the campaign a year ago, as the wave of police terror, the housing strangulation, the uproar over the Bernhard Goetz case with our October 3 protest against "New rallying in nearby Newark. But should the Depression. We stood with labor. reflected a city on the razor's edge. York's own" cover-up coroner, Dr. the KKK lynchers and cross burners leafletting from the garment center and Unlike the reformists, who spend half Elliot Gross; an emergency demonstra­ insist on committing suicide in heavily the 207th Street transit repair shop to their time collecting signatures to "put tion October 17 to try to save South black Newark, we are ready to assist the NM U hiring hall and CW A union an independent on the ballot," we were African black militant Benjamin Mo­ them. meetings. ready with our brochure "New York loise from the apartheid hangman; We took the campaign wherever And people who met us found that we City: For the Working People!" when our support for hotel strikers back working people were struggling, from a are a party that isn't afraid to take hard the petitioning period officially opened in June and the Columbia campus memorial for Eleanor Bumpurs in the positions, from hailing Cuban troops in July 9. So we. hit the streets with workers in October. South Bronx to tent cities on the Lower Angola to denouncing both the racist our revolutionary propaganda from the The bourgeoisie did everything pos­ East Side and squatters taking over pig Koch and sinister demagogue Louis get-go. sible to keep the lid on. The city actually abandoned housing in East New York. Farrakhan. We campaigned for defense The early Communist International hired new workers for the first time in While soapboxing outside Woolworth's of homosexuals against the AIDS insisted that revolutionary election years, and on the advice of his media at 125th Street we had heated polemics hysteria. We provided a platform for the campaigns must take up strikes, demon­ advisers, Koch kept his lip zipped. The with pro-Farrakhan anti-Semitic na­ victims of racist cop terror: LaVerne strations, all the burning issues of the state called off its Gross hearings, and tionalists, recalling Communist run-ins Sims and Louise James. relatives of day. And that's what we sought to do Mayor Gibson "banned the Klan" from with the Garveyites in Harlem during continued on page II lmp-risoned for 18 Years in Racist Frame-Up- Hurricane Carter Must Not Go. Back to Jail!

RubIO "Hurricane" Carter, former Judge Sarokin appropriately admon­ ciary, for whom racist railroad jobs are middleweight boxing contender, was ished that "I cannot, in the face of. .. particularly inviolable. Only the mobili­ the victim of a racist frame-up in the the injustices found, permit Mr. Car­ zation of unions, black organizations, prime of his life, at the height of his ter to spend another day or even an socialists and all opponents of racism UPI Rubin "Hurricane" Carter career. Locked up in the hellhole of New hour in prison." "H uman decency.I' he and defenders of democratic rights can Jersey's Rahway State Prison for 18 said, "mandates that he be released ensure his freedom. Every move by the success in the ring was no protection long bitter years, Carter has finally been immediately." state of New Jersey to put Hurricane from the racist state authorities when released. Treating Carter like black But despite Judge Sarokin's unusual back behind bars must be met by mass Carter spoke out against injustice. chattel, the New Jersey authorities had and courageous decision, there is no protest, including organizing the power Carter was framed up and imprisoned him brought to his bail hearing in "human decency" or justice for blacks. of labor through strike action. for two consecutive life sentences for his manacles. But U.S. district judge H. Lee workers and the poor in the racist Boxing is one of the few occupations advocacy of black self-defense against Sarokin, citing the outrageous racism of capitalist court system. The vindictive where blacks are permitted to "make it" . cop terror. Following the Harlem police the Passaic County prosecutor's office. prosecutors who framed up Hurricane in racist America. Rubin Carter was a rampage of 1964, Carter told a Saturday granted Carter's habeas corpus petition Carter almost two decades ago immedi­ leading contender for the middleweight Evening Post reporter, "Self-defense and on November 8 ordered him ately appealed the order releasing him crown when he was railroaded to prison is the absolute right of every living being released immediately on his own recog­ without bail, and have vowed not to rest along with his friend John Artis in 1967. on earth.... The Black public ought to nizance. Rejecting prosecution objec­ until they have him shackled again. But like Muhammad Ali, who was protect its own against this. type of tions that Carter should remain behind Rubin Carter's fate must not be left in stripped of the heavyweight crown for tyrannical invasion by white cops into bars pending an appeal of his decision, the hands of the Reagan/Meese judi- his opposition to the Vietnam War, continued un page 9 12 15 NOVEMBER 1985