__Australasian ______

Number 147 Summer 1992/1993 50 cents - of the How the Soviet Workers State Was Str.angled

November 7 marked the 75th anni­ The ascendancy of Yeltsin and state power has been fractured, the versary of the Bolshevik Revolution. But capitalist-restorationist forces backing Communist Party-its bureaucratic core­ shattered and banned from the KGB and the workers state erected by the him was a pivotal event in determining armed forces, the multinational union is Bolshevik power, far and away the the fate of the ', but it was ripping apart as one republic after another greatest conquest of the international not conclusive. In our August 1991 proclaims secession. and a momentous leap article, "Soviet Workers: Defeat Yeltsin­ "But while Yeltsin & Co. now see a clear forward for humanity, did not survive Bush Counterrevolution!", which was field to push through a forced-draft reintroduction of capitalism, the outcome is its 75th year. The period of open immediately translated into Russian and not yet definitively decided .... OppOSition counterrevolution ushered in by Boris distributed in over 100,000 copies from the factories against the ravages of Yeltsin's pro-imperialist countercoup in throughout the Soviet Union, we wrote capitalist assault could ... prevent the rapid August 1991 has, in the absence of mass that workers mobilizations should have consolidation of counterrevolution." -Workers Vanguard [WV] No 533, working-class resistance, culminated in cleaned out the counterrevolutionary 30 August 1991 the creation of a bourgeois state, rabble on Yeltsin's barricades, thus however fragile and reversible. The task opening the road to proletarian political In the interim there was no decisive facing the Soviet proletariat today is revolution. As a result of Yeltsin's action to stop that consolidation. Pol­ socialist revolution to restore proletarian victory: itically atomized by nearly 70 years of power and reforge the Soviet Union on "The first workers state in history, sapped Stalinist usurpation of political life, para­ the foundation of Lenin and Trotsky's and undermined by decades of Stalinist lyzed by the CIA-supported pro-Yeltsin Bolshevik internationalism. bureaucratic misrule, lies in tatters. The "free trade unions" and the virulent Special Supplement, November 27

Registered by Australia Post-Publication No. NBF0710 Workers State ~::~b CnaprBKoBlI9B [SPARTACJST]

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·-.._·~~.==.~"':: ... '1...... ,.._D __ .. a "strong state." The recent vicious e...... _ ... r.,.,. __•• &r_.~ ::=..~E.E..~=- E..,...... onp.un~· ___r_r II...". - ... _ .._Mp ...... _. c-- .... __ ,.,...... •• __ ...... -' .... pMo ""'.,. ... o.'"IIIIpo.a:" '"_ no,- • -'::':"~=":'rr.::.. crackdown, using Russian OMON riot ~.~. =':.. cru_",,-_._.UHy...... ir-_---'_11:,.0... ••..., .... ___ .. __ _ _ --r~ ...... _-- "" __.... ~_ --- =---..0.-. __ ___ police, on a strike by air traffic ~-:.:.~:-::...,-=-~ PO_, ""!::='~=.":.= controllers foreshadows the would-be .... ""--...... ~.,...... ,. _--""""',.- r... _ .... _"-<-.,..---., ""-- exploiters' determination to repress any =::~==a;.=.- "---______Jl... «v working-class resistance. The rising racist ...... ~~.:...-:.=- O'...... hysteria against people from Central ...... --_---._t"',._ _._"" ...... - .. ~ Asia and the Caucasus in major Russian ::!""".:=.";::~~=;,:::=== ==:~~"':- cities creates the climate for pogroms. ~~';::"':::~ ----- .. --.._------.._ ....to With ethnic conflicts brewing on a dozen ...... ;:,:.=.:.:-;;:~=-..:..~~ .. =.::::,<---,,"-__ ._-.-- fronts on the periphery of the Russian Spartacist ...-.."....01_'-',.. _...... _,._...... -'--r_~o._---- republic, from the Baltics to Abkhazia in August 1991: Plotters of " coup" kept tanks Idling in Square Georgia and the Transdniester in Mol­ Instead of sending them against counterrevolutionary HQ at Veltsln's White dova to the longstanding nationalist civil House. ICL statement (right) declared: "Soviet Workers: Defeat Veltsln­ war between Armenians and Azerbaijanis Bush Counterrevolution I" in the Caucasus, the possibility of a (Moscow Times) or 20,000 percent Marx, Engels and Lenin are being destroyed through his perestroika "market re­ Yugoslav-style fratricidal bloodbath is all (Commersant). In the month of October in a pure ideological anti-communist frenzy". forms" and acquiescence to capitalist too real. -"For the of restoration throughout East Europe, alone, the ruble fell by half its value. Lenin and Trotsky" The Soviet workers state-which once Gorbachev opened wide the floodgates Since January the price of bread has The conference drew a balance sheet served as a beacon for the exploited and climbed on the order of a hundredfold. to a direct counterrevolutionary on­ oppressed of this globe, which destroyed on these events and unanimously en­ As the economy decomposes, the bulk dorsed a 26 September document which slaught by Yeltsin & Co. Hitler's Holocaust machine, which for The and the Stalinists of the population teeters on the brink of said: "The August 1991 events ('coup' decades kept U.S. imperialism from alike have long sought to identify outright starvation. Any spark could set and 'countercoup') appear to have been turning its nuclear arsenal on the world's off the tinderbox on which Yeltsin and Lenin's October with Stalin's conserva­ semicolonial peoples-is dead. But the decisive in the direction of development his cohorts sit. in the SU, but only those who are under tive bureaucratic rule. But nationalist class struggle is not. The nascent bour­ Stalinism is the antithesis of Leninist We Trotskyists of the International the sway of capitalist ideology or its geois states in , the and internationalism. The Soviet degenerated Communist League, who have fought material perquisites would have been elsewhere are fragile, isolated and intern­ workers state (and the deformed workers tooth and nail against ascendant count- hasty to draw this conclusion at that ally splintered. They do not rest on the states which later arose on the Stalinist solid foundation of a cohered capitalist errevolution, say: Stalinism is dead, but time." It resolved "to note and draw model) was a historic anomaly, resulting communism lives-in the class struggle conclusions from the position that the class. The new entrepreneurs consist of from the isolation of economically of the world proletariat and in the prog- degenerated workers state of Stalin and little more than petty speculators and backward Russia and the failure of pro­ ram of the revolutionary vanguard. The his heirs has been destroyed." mafia gangs, while sections of the old letarian revolution to spread to the ad­ industrial hierarchy of factory managers internationalist program through which In the founding program of the vanced imperialist countries. Stalinism the Soviet Union was created has been Fourth International, written on the eve are in the process of imposing their represented a roadblock to progress weight. The armed forces are bitter and carried forward under the banner of the of World War II, wrote: toward . As Trotsky wrote in . Fourth International. It is the Trotsky- "The historical crisis of mankind is re- demoralized. "Not a Workers' and Not a Bourgeois The only thing which is certain in ists uniquely who warned that the con- duced to the crisis of the revolutionary State?" (November 1937): tinued stranglehold of the Stalinist leadership." This crisis of proletarian the ex-USSR today is increasing uncer­ "That which was a 'bureaucratic deform­ tainty and instability. On the eve of the bureaucracy over the Soviet workers leadership is no less acute today. To the ation' is at the present moment preparing to December 1 session of the Congress of state would lead to the destruction of beleaguered multinational proletariat in devour the workers' state, without leaving People's Deputies, Moscow is awash October, who fought for unconditional: the ex-USSR and socialist-minded el­ any remains, and on the ruins of national­ with rumors of coups, countercoups and military defense of the Soviet Union ements in the army and intelligentsia, we ized property to spawn a new propertied against in;tperialism .aBc!. -counter--:.-··jay: the key task facing you isk).oohere class. Such a ~ibility has drawn extremely ~creeping coups." Mea-nwhile, Yeltsin is near." engaged in furious negotiations with revolution, and called on the Soviet a Leninist-Trotskyist vanguard party, While the Stalinist regime was able to Arkady VOlsky, head of the powerful proletariat to sweep away the Stalinist forged in struggle around the inter- prolong its existence as a result of the industrialists' party, who is in league excrescence through political revolution· nationalist program which led your fore- heroic victory of the Soviet masses over with the militarist Russian vice president while there was still time. bears to victory in 1917. the Nazi invasion in World War II, Aleksandr Rutskoi. The volatility of the The "Rus.sian question" has been the Trotsky's Marxist analysis has ultimately, present situation is captured in the re­ Why Didn't the Workers touchstone for revolutionaries and the Rise Up? unfortunately, been vindicated in the cent electoral victory of the ex-Stalinist defining political question of the 20th negative. Democratic Labor Party in Lithuania, century. Leading up to the Second Inter­ The of the ex-USSR and Why did the not ousting the rightist nationalist Sajudis national Conference ofthe International the world proletariat as a whole must rally to defend its gains? How did the movement from office. It did not take Communist League (Fourth Inter­ digest the lessons of this bitter defeat. counterrevolution triumph and destroy long for the realities of capitalist immis­ nationalist) earlier this autumn, dis­ Since 1917, the social democracy has the workers state without a civil war? In eration to drain away the nationalist cussion focused on an assessment of the served its bourgeois masters by directly his seminal 1933 work laying out the euphoria which had intoxicated the Lith­ developments in the former Soviet aiding and abetting imperialist re­ perspective of proletarian political revol­ uanian people. However, the new Lithu­ Union since August 1991. The main vanchism in seeking to destroy the con­ ution, Trotsky polemicized against social anian leader Brazauskas reportedly has conference document described th~ quests of October. Since riSing to power democrats and proponents or'various the same economic pOlicies as Volsky­ piecemeal consolidation of a capitalist over the backs of the Soviet working "new class" theories who claimed that Rutskoi. state: class through a political counter­ under Stalin's rule, the Soviet Union had Meanwhile, the working class of the revolution in 1923-24, the Stalinist bu­ imperceptibly changed from a workers to ex-USSR is faced with one assault after "Recent developments continue to point in reaucracy imposed a suffocating isolation a bourgeois state without any qualitative a dire direction. Stories abound in the press another. Society is disintegrating, mass of 'primitive capitalist accumulation,' i.e., on th,e first workers state, suppressing transformation of either the state ap­ unemployment looms. Industrial produc­ theft: Managers and former bureaucratsare one international revolutionary oppor­ paratus or the property forms: tion has dropped 18 percent since the . scrambling, using all manner of shady prac­ tunity after another. In the name of "The Marxist thesis relating to the catas­ beginning of 1992, while investment has tices to get their hands on socialized. building "socialism in one cOuntry," the trophic character of the transfer of power plummeted by 50 percent. To prevent a property-encouraged, abetted and advised from the hands of one class into the hands by international imperialism. The recent Stalinists-through terror and lies­ total collapse, the government has been methodically attacked and eroded every of another applies not only to revolutionary strike by air traffic controllers in the periods, when history sweeps madly ahead, pumping credits into industry: the state Russian federation was decisively broken by aspect of the revolutionary and inter­ but also to the periods of counterrevolution, budget deficit is escalating to a trillion the Yeltsin government using the OMON nationalist consciousness which had when society rolls backwards. He who as­ rubles, and debts of industrial enter­ and elements of the MVD and KGB. An made the Soviet working class the van­ serts that the Soviet government has been African student at Patrice Lumumba gradually changed from proletarian to bour­ prises are over 2 trillion. The result hns University was shot down by the Moscow guard detachment of the world been hyperinflation, variously estimated geois is only, so to speak, running backwards militia amidst a hysterical racist press proletariat. the film of reformism." at an· annual rate of 14,000 percent campaign. Tons of volumes of the works of The isolated workers state was sub­ -"The Class Nature of the Soviet jected to the unremitting pressures of State" (October 1933) imperialism, not only military encircle­ There was certainly nothing gradual or ment and an arms buildup aimed at imperceptible about the social counter­ bankrupting the Soviet economy, but revolution in the ex-USSR, which has SPARTAC'IST~- also the pressure of the imperialist world been extremely violent and convulsive market. As Trotsky wrote in The Third throughout the former Soviet bloc. International After Lenin: "it is not so However, Trotsky also advanced the For a workers republic of Australia, part of a socialist Aslal much military intervention as the inter­ prognosis that a civil war would be re­ Marxist journal of the Spartacist League of Australia, vention of cheaper capitalist commod­ quired to restore capitalism in the Soviet section of the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist). ities that constitutes perhaps the greatest Union and undo the deepgoing prolet­ EDITORIAL BOARD: Neil Flannagan, Andrew Giannakis (editor), Peter McLeod, immediate menace to Soviet economy." arian revolution. Phillipa Newman, Margaret Rodda Although the planned economy proved In a wide-ranging discussion in the CIRCULATION: Kathie Tresca its superiority over capitalist anarchy ICL two years ago on the counter­ PRODU~TION: PhillipaNewman during its period of extensive growth, as revolutionary overturns in East Europe Printed by trade union·l~bour. Reaistered.at GPO, Sydney for .post!ng as a publi~on- the need for quality and intensive devel­ and the DDR (East Germany), it was Category B. SubscnptlOn $3. for. 4 ISSUes; overseas airmail $5 for 4· ISSIJeII.. Address all correspondence to:Spartacist ANZ Publishing Co, GPO Box 3473, Sydney; NSW, 2001. Opinions opment came to the fore the bureau­ noted that Trotsky had overdrawn the expressed in signed articles or letters· do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint. cratic stranglehold more and more analogy between a social revolution in Printed by Spotpress Ply Ltd, 105 vICtoria Rd, Marrickville. undermined tqe economy. Finally, capitalist society and social counter- ·2 AUSTRALASIAN SPAR:rACI.S-T "Destruction of Workers' Consciousness Was Key" We publish below a translation of the formed an obstacle to that; the "red­ of introducing stable capitalism, the power. It repeats the bragging of the remarks at the Second International Con­ brown" coalition, which in no way is bourgeoisie is very weak. Weak, because German CP in 1933, who said, "After ference of the International Communist opposed to counterrevolution, but in­ it's without capital backing. The only Hitler, us." It's a suicidal policy. League by 'comrade Volodya K. first stead is against the liberalization of way that strong capitalism can be es­ What is the real perspective that we printed in Workers Vanguard No 564, 27 Stalinist rule. tablished is through nationalism and see before us? Concretely, we have a November IfJ92. In this situation, as Trotsky predicted, vicious anti-war king-class repression, as task-to coalesce the nucleus of a revol­ I think the-key reason for the destruc­ no section of the bureaucracy was we have just seen in connection with the utionary workers party. This means a tion of the Soviet workers state has been capable of opposing the restoration of air traffic controllers. The creation of battle against the capitalists, the existing the destruction of the consciousness of capitalism. Instead, they simply ma­ this National Salvation Front that the bourgeois government. This ,means a the proletariat, a process that began with neuvered to be able to occupy the best comrades know about-should that socialist revolution. Otherwise, if we fail Stalin's liquidation of Leon Trotsky's place with.in the restoration of capi­ Front come to power, that would rep­ in this, there will be consolidated a bour­ Left Opposition, which represented the talism. It's very important to ac­ resent another decisive blow against the geois corporatist state. The key thing is consciousness of the working class. The knowledge tha't a bourgeois state has working class. to explain to .the working class that this tragedy is that the breakdown of Stalinist been established in the Soviet Union. All these Stalinists who think that it's policy of supporting the "national patri­ control was exploited nrt by the working But it's also important to realize that they who are manipulating the national­ ots: as a temporary tactic is suicidal. class for its own end, but by the bour­ this is far from stable, it's very weak. ists, the so-called "patriots," in a tem­ Once these "national patriots" come geoisie for its own purposes, purposes This represents a transitional moment, porary bloc, a bloc by which they can to power, the working class will get for which they actually today have but a transition to what? simply turn the clocle back to before nothing, will get shit from these people. precious little support. Today there is massive opposition to perestroika, are deluding themselves. In If we don't succeed in our propaganda In August 1991 we saw some decisive the post-countercoup period: The im­ fact what they are doing is paving the in this, then this is what the working events. The question was posed: whether miseration and the impoverishment of way for the establishment of a corporate class will receive. the bourgeoisie, or perhaps more ac­ the population evokes the sharpest and fascistic dictatorShip. It's a very Now just a few words about timing. I curately, whether parts of the Stalinist hatred toward Yeltsin, but there is no dangerous illusion to delude oneself into believe that prior to the unification of bureaucracy, which received a death left opposition to guide this. The op­ thinking that there are forces now in the Germany, in the Soviet Union there was blow, would go forward to consolidate a position that does exist today only stands territory of the former Soviet Union a possibility for ICL intervention, at the bourgeois state, or whether the working for a strong state. They share the idea capable of fighting against this counter­ time when the debates and discussions class would step in for its own. In that that communism is an impossible utopia. revolution. In fact, all of these coalitions were about the true heroes o(the Soviet moment the working class could have They are orienting for a strong state, a delude themselves with the fact that after Union and of the , used the opportunity to take the power, strong state based on capitalism. the National Salvation Front comes to and not today's idiocy about how all is but instead the "red-brown" coalition But as the Yeltsin regime is incapable power, then they can resurrect their own swell in the West..

revolution in a deformed workers state workers were wary, if not outright hos­ ,(see Joseph Seymour, "On the Collapse tile, to the pro-Western advocates of a of Stalinist Rule in East Europe," and "market economy." Unlike in Poland Albert St John, "For Marxist Clarity and during the rise of SolidarnoM:, the a Forward Perspective," Spartacist No forces of capitalist counterrevolution 45-46, Winter 1990-91). Where the capi­ were not able to mobilize the Soviet talists exercise direct ownership over the masses in the name of anti-Communism. means of production, and thUS' are com­ At the same time, the bureaucratic pelled to violently resist the overthrow elite (the so-called nomenklatura) was of their system in order to defend their totally discredited by: Jhe flagrant, corrup- own property, the preservation of prolet­ ,tio.n.and cynici~I1.1 of the Brezlmev,era. arian power depends principally on Occasional appeals to defend "social­ consciousness and organization of the ism" made by the more conservative working class. elements of the Gorbachev regime, such Trotsky himself emphasized this point as Yegor Ligachev, fell on deaf ears. The in his 1928 article "What Now?": Stalinist "patriots," organized, for "The socialist character of our state indus­ example in the United Front of Toilers try .. .is determined and secured in a decisive (OFT), were able to mobilize only a measure by the role of the party, thevolun­ relatively small number of worker tary internal cohesion of the proletarian May 1991: vanguard, the conscious discipline of the German and activists. administrators, trade union functionaries, Polish comrades Atomized and bereft of any anti­ members of the shop nuclei, etc." of the ICL capitalist leadership, lacking any co­ -The Third International address 300 herent and consistent socialist class After Lenin Soviet officers consciousness, skeptical about the pos­ And again, in "The Workers' State, and soldiers sibility of class struggle in the capitalist Thermidor and Bonapartism" (February commemorating countries, the Soviet working class did 1935), he stated: "In contradistinction to Red Army victory not rally in resistance against the en­ capitalism, socialism is built not automat­ over Nazi Third croaching capitalist counterrevolution. ically but consciously." Reich, at air base In East Germany. And, as Trotsky noted in The Third When Trotsky wrote these articles, the International After Lenin: "If an army memoryof the October Revolution was capitulates to the enemy in a critjcal still a part of the direct personal ex­ situation without a battle, then this perience of the overwhelming mass of capitulation'completely takes the place the Soviet proletariat, albeit already of a 'decisive battle,' in politics as considerably warped by Stalinist falsifi­ "internationalist duty" in fighting against pointed out at the time, the Kuzbass in war." cation and revision. In the intervening the reactionary Afghan mujahedin on strikes "have quickly generated organiz­ decades, the nationalist bureaucracy did the USSR's border, were then maligned ational forms of proletarian power, in­ The Army and the Bureaucracy much to extirpate any real understanding for perpetratii;J.g "Russia's Vietnam" cluding strike committees and workers What then happened to the armed of what came to be iconized as the against Afghanistan. Gorbachev's ignom­ militias" ("Soviet Workers Flex Their forces, the core of the state in the Marx­ "Great October Socialist Revolution." In inious pullout from Afghanistan and his Muscle," WV No 482, 21 July 1989). ist understanding? In The State. and Soviet mass consciousness, World War green light to the imperialist annexation These developments pointed to the Revolution (1917), written against the II, 'dubbed by the Stalinists the "Great of the DDR served only to further a possibility of authentic soviets, which-by reformist view that the working class Patriotic War" and suffused with the sense of defeatism and demoralization drawing in collective farmers, women, could simply appropriate the bourgeois Russian-nationalist propaganda Stalin among the Soviet masses, while the so­ pensioners, soldiers and officers-could ' state for its own purposes, Lenin em­ churned out during the war, came to called Stalinist "patriots" who denpunced have served as the basis for a new pro­ phasized: "Revolution consists not in the supplant the October Revolution as the Gorbachev's concessions did so only to letarian pOlitical power, ousting the new class commanding, governing with epochal event in Soviet history. In the beat the drums for.Great Russian imper­ bureaucracy through a political revol-.' the'aido.f the old state machine, but in end, Stalin and his heirs succeeded in ial ambitions, explicitly harking back to ution. But when the. Gorbachev regime this class smashing ihis' machine' 'and imprinting their nationalist outlook on the time of the tsars. reneged on its promises to the miners, commanding, governing with the aid of the Soviet peoples; proletarian inter­ Even so, the spontaneous strikes pro-imperialist agitators trained by the a new machine." SimiJarly, social coun­ nationalism came to be sneered at as an which erupted in'the Soviet coal fields in "AFL-CIA" moved into the vacuum of terrevolution requires the smashing of obscure "Trotskyite heresy" of "export the summer of 1989 against the ravages leadership and set up the Independent the proletarian state and the creation of of revolution" or, at best, emptied of any of Gorbachev's "market socialism" dra­ Miners Union, organizing an activist a new state machine serving the bour­ content while paid cynical lip service. matically demonstrated'the potential for minQrity of the miners as a batteririg ram geoisie. This task was vastly facilitated by With Gorbachev's "new thinking"­ militant working-class struggle. As Rus­ for Yeltsin. the Stalinist political counterrevolution, ie, his cringing capitulation to each and sian social democrat Boris Kagarlitsky However, a majority of the miners as which effected a qualitative degeneration every imperialist ultimatum-even lip documents in his book Farewell Peres­ well as the rest of the Soviet working in the workers state issuing out of the service to the ideals of the Bolshevik troika (1990), the strike co.mmittees in class remained passive in the three-sided October Revolution. Revolution went by the boards. The many areas became "the actual centre of contest between the Yeltsin-Ied "demo­ At the base, the Soviet military was Soviet soldiers who had been told, and popular power," organizing food distri­ crats," Gorbachev and the more conser­ affected by the same pressures and par­ believed, that they were fulfilling their bution, maintaining order, ~tc. As we vative wingof the Stalinists. The mass of continued on page 9

.~ ~ , SUMMER 1992/1993 .. l'... ACTULTHC Top-s: Labour Lieutenants of Ca~ital Build a Revolutionary Workers Party!

10 DECEMBER: The massive strikes As veteran Trotskyist leader James P imt secretary Jennie George signalled the On 27 November postal bosses citing and 150,000-strongrally in Victoria on Cannon said (see box below): "They cessation of the industrial campaign, the bureaucrats' position, "directed" staff 10 November have spurred strike action want to knock the hell out of the claiming that the "choice will be between to work on 30 November. Immediately across the country to beat back the unions, so the workers will have no the Australian Government and a safety long-time ISO supporter and union bosses' offensive. While ACTU and state means of defense against the cutting of net Tor all working people of award pro­ delegate Peter May called a meeting that Trades Hall Council (THC) bureaucrats wages and living standards. That's what tection and Dr Hewson, deregulation successfully rammed through a motion worked overtime to limit and disorganise is in the cards. No friendly compromises and exploitation" (Australian, 3 Decem­ of "retreat from the 24-hour strike," strike action on the ACTU-called 30 at the bargaining tables, but only mass ber). Crap! There is no "safety net"! proposing workers simply attend the November "day of action," powerful and battles and mass tests of strength." Power workers, for instance are facing ACTU -endorsed rally ins tead, ie, Easson traditionally militant unions across the massive job losses and they already have and Carr's line! A number of militants Smash Arbitration! For Hard a federal award "safety net"! The work­ spoke out against this cowardly betrayal. country struck. Wharfies and seamen Class Struggle! shut down all ports and metal unions ing class has never won anything import­ A Spartacist League supporter put for­ struck nationally. Mines from NSW to The treacherous ALP/ACTU tops are ant through the ballot box or the bosses' ward a class-struggle perspective against Queensland to the Pilbara in Western the chief obstacle to a concerted class- courts. Unions must rip up the court the bipartisan government attacks point­ Australia were closed down. In Wollon­ ing out that strike action should be gong 35,000 workers shut down BHP's linked to the fight against sackings and steelworks, waterfront and coal loader in closures being carried out by the postal defiance of NSW Labor leader Bob Carr bosses. and Trades and Labour Council (TLC) When Socialist Labour League (SLL) secretary Michael Easson who con­ supporter and CWU delegate Keith demned strike action. James was told of this outrageous Large sections of the working class are treachery he alibied his fellow union saying enough is enough! Whilst the delegate May, claiming that the strike Laborite tops are winding down their Melbourne, wasn't the main question! Not surprising "campaign" there is widespread anger 30 November: given that the sinister SLL's paper and bitterness amongst workers across working class Workers News (30 October) denounced the country. A decade of federal and anger across the the Victorian 10 November strike actions country against state Labor government rule has as a "phoney general strike" even as brought widespread capitalist immiser­ government and bosses' workers across the state were fighting ation that has set the scene for the Ken­ against bureaucratic sabotage for the nett government attacks. Hundreds of union-busting offensive. broadest possible strike action. The ISO thousands of jobs have disappeared. and SLL's actions are concrete proof of Officially unemployment now exceeds the the syphilitic chain of popular-front eleven percent mark with at least one in treachery that acts to tie workers to the three youth jobless. Keating now brags imperialist class enemy. The ISO and that bosses enjoy a profit share SLL line up with the most reactionary equivalent to the fifties "golden age" News ltd CIA-loving union bureaucrats like after having overseen the transfer of a struggle fightback. They are preying on ballots and wage hard class struggle. Easson just as they did in supporting mammoth $35 billion per year from mass working class anger offering their Bury Arbitration! capitalist restorationist movements such wages to enterprise profits, reducing services to the bosses as enforcers of The continuing wave of strikes over . as the CIA-funded counterrevolution­ the last few weeks has tapped massive workers' share of national income by bankrupt racist Australian capitalist rule. ary Polish Solidarno~t. In sharp con­ some 20 percent! Victorian THC secretary John Halfpenny working class discontent that threatens trast the Spartacist tendency in 1981 Picking up from where the state Labor is counselling workers to bite the bullet to break the bounds imposed by the proclaim.ed "Stop Solidarno~t government left off the Kennett Tories and prepare for a "long four-year cam­ treacherous union tops. As the special Counterrevolution!" are engaged in wholesale union busting paign"-until the next state election! supplement (reprinted opposite) distrib­ to destroy award conditions, gut penalty This is just fine for Kennett who con­ uted to thousands of workers in Mel­ Workers Revolution rates and workers compensation, remove fidently predicts that he can last it out bourne,Sydney and major regional cities the On~y Solution! holiday loadings and outlaw strikes on while expanding his job slashing plans. warns: workers are being consciously Racist and decaying Australian capi­ top of axing tens of thousands of public Halfpenny engineered the cancellation of subordinated to the class enemy in a talism means intensified exploitation and service jobs. Everyone knows that this is the 9 December Victorian public trans­ popular-front campaign to prop up the oppression of working people and all the a test case for attacks threatened around port and power workers' strikes against Keating Labor government and the oppressed. The position of Aborigines the country. Robe River bosses in the threatened mass saCkings-for power bosses' Arbitration system. The des­ has steadily worsened with increased Pilbara recently sacked 32 mineworkers workers it could mean job losses of up perate need for a working-class fightback racist police terror and murder. Labor­ for striking on 30 November. Working to 35 percent. requires a class-struggle program based inspired racist hysteria against im­ people cannot allow these attacks to go Fearing that Australia's "social co­ on the political independence of the migrants is used to justify round ups and unanswered. In 1969 it took concerted hesion and economic recovery" were worki!1g class from its class enemies. Key incarceration of "illegals." Women work­ mass strike action in Victoria and threatened by industrial conflict, Keating to this is a revolutionary internationalist ers have borne the brunt of capitalist nationally to win the release of union has proposed legislation to undercut the leadership forged in struggle against the recession-first fired and last hired. And leader Clarrie O'Shea and spike strike wave by holding out the possibility pro-capitalist labour-fakers of the ALP. while shackling the working' class at Arbitration's penal powers. National of Victorian workers opting for award As Leon Trotsky wrote in 1940 in home the Labor government has acted strike action built and fought to win can coverage under a strengthened federal "Trade Unions in the Epoch of Imperial­ as regional cops of U.S. imperialism bring the union busters to their knees! Arbitration system. On cue ACTU assist- ist Decay," the unions can no longer be abroad. They are the ever-willing par­ reformist, because the objective ticipants in imperialist military ventures conditions leave no room for any serious abroad from the Sinai to Namibia to Class-Struggle Leadership is Key and lasting reforms. "The trade unions Somalia. In 1991 Australian navy ships of our time can either serve as secondary (and U.S. spy bases here) aided in the In January 1953, at the height ofMcCarthyite social reaction, instruments of imperialist capitalism for slaughter of over 100,000 Iraqis and James P Cannon, veteran communist and the founding leader the subordination and disciplining of Canberra ran point for the reintroduc­ ofAmerican Trotskyism, stressed the decisive role of the revo­ workers and for obstructing the tion of imperialist troops into Cambodia lutionary Marxist party in forging a class-struggle leadership of revolution, or, on the contrary, the trade that directly threatens the Vietnamese the working class. His remarks take on a special relevance unions can become the instruments of deformed workers state. The Australian today as the Australian Laborite union bureaucrats seek to the revolutionary movement of the ruling class is full of triumphalism over shackle workers sl1itggles to the bosses' Arbitration courts. proletariat." the imperialist lie of the "death of com­ These labor "statesmen" will not be fit for leadership in munism." They groove over capitalist the new situation, any more than the old AFL skates were ISO/SLL Dance to Postal counterrevolution in Eastern Europe fit for the leadership of the insurgent movement of the Bosses' Tune and the former Soviet Union which has workers in the mass production industries in the sit-down As noted in our supplement, the brought mass uneIl,lployment, massive strikes of the thirties. There will be no bargaining tables. treacherous Laborite misleaders are poverty, nationalist fratricide and the rise No government boards to settle things amicably, recognise given eager assistance by a swag of fake of fascist terror. But with the rise of James P Cannon the union and give the workers a few more cents. That's socialists, all zealous participants in the imperialist rivalries between the U.S. and not going to be the bosses' program at all. They don't want pro-Keating popular-front lash up. The Japan, the Australian rulers are in to give a few more cents; they don't want to recognize unions. They want to knock anti-communist social democrats of the the grip of an international capitalist the hell out of the unions, so the workers will have no means of defense against the International Socialist Organisation disorder. cutting of wages and living standards. That's what is in the cards. No friendly com­ (ISO) recently rendered their services by Today every major workers struggle promises at the bargaining tables, but only mass battles and mass tests of strength. sabotaging strike action at the Eastern becomes a political fight requiring a class The workers, under such conditions, must and will turn to militancy and throw up Suburbs Mail Centre in Sydney. The struggle leadership. The fight to oust the leaders of a new mold, just as the workers in the thirties threw up new trade-union workers, members of the Com­ sellout union bureaucrats must therefore leaders out of the ranks. And it is in just such a situation, when class collaboration munication Workers Union (CWU), had be linked to the building of a revolution­ is out the window and the class struggle is on the agenda, that the supreme expression voted to strike on 30 November. But ary workers party that can galvanise of the class struggle, the revolutionary Marxist party, will get a hearing and become after TLC secretary Easson denounced working class power uniting women, the mentor of the militant new staff of leaders arising out of the shops and the strike action in favour of "prayer action" youth and all the oppressed in the fight factories. -"The Coming Struggle for Power," America's Road to Socialism (1953) the CWU bureaucrats refused to call or for workers revolution. For a workers endorse any strike. government! • 4 AUSTRALASIAN SPARTACIST __Australasian

SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT 26 November 1992 10 cents Miners, Transp-ort, Maritime, Power Workers: Strike Together Now! From Kennett to Keating, Bury the Union Busters!

With the wave of strikes centred in Victoria and now spreading across the country the opportunity is presented to turn around the one-sided war against the working class and poor that has been waged over the last decade by the capi­ talist rulers of this country. But these actions are being carefully dispersed, limited and sabotaged by the union bur­ eaucrats. Workers are being consciously Melbourne, subordinated to the class enemy through 10 November: \ 'P('f,~ IlfCl a popular-front campaign to prop up the Massive rally during day of ~i Keating government and the Arbitration j courts as the "best" mechanism to cut state-wide strike action against jobs and conditions whilst avoiding the Kennett's Tory threat of a massive working class res­ government. ponse to Hewson/Kennett's "confron­ Sellout union tationist" approach. It is crucial to fight bureaucrats want for the political independence of the to channel workers working class from its class enemies and outrage Into their agents within the workers move­ campaign to ment, the Laborite union tops. What is re-elect the needed is a revolutionary leadership! union-busting Keating government. As our leaflet/supplement (see page 2) I warned, Victorian Trades Hall Council y~ .•-.j secretary John Halfpenny successfully ASp photo J turned 10 November in Melbourne into "an ACTU-endorsed public relations nett is forging ahead confident that "New World Disorder" months ago Ford, BHP and textile bos- I 'day of protest,'" with the 150,000 strong union opposition will exhaust itself. He Barbarism ses came out in support of the Labor has announced the axing of 6,800 jobs in government's decision to maintain high rally having a conscious cross-class char­ The Australian ruling class is full of acter ranging from Halfpenny and his education, the closing of 52 schools, levels of protectionism for manu­ thousands more jobs to go from hospi­ triumphalism over the imperialist lie of facturing industries. Now even the pro­ reformist "left" tails such as the Inter­ the "Death of Communism." But caught national Socialist Organisation, through tals, transport, and the public sector in Tory Victorian Employers Chamber of general. Meanwhile, even as they in the grip of the inter-imperialist rivalry Commerce and Industry is expressing· to assorted church hierarchies and the between the U.S. and Japan, burdened major bourgeois daily, the Age. The (mis)lead strikes the union bureaucrats "qualified dissent" at Kennett's industrial . continue to push through their own "re­ with debt and being squeezed by its in­ relations program (Financial Review, 25 rallying call of this popular-frontist lash­ ternational creditors, it is driven to enor­ up is "Defend the Australian way of structuring" agreements with the bosses. November). There is a rotten popular The communication and metal union mously increase its rate of exploitation front ranging from major industrial com­ life." Meanwhile, NSWTrades & Labour of the working class as well as the super­ Council secretary Michael Easson urges tops are currently ramming through panies, the Keating Labor government, deals that exchange paltry wage increases exploitation of its Pacific neocolonies. In sundry church hierarchies through to the workers not to strike on the 30 Novem­ Europe attacks on the working class are ber ACTU "national day of action," but for long standing union rights and con­ union bureaucracies that is cynically ditions, agreeing to speedups, company being met with workers' and anti-fascist manipulating workers' anger against the to limit action to "lunchtime rallies, struggles including massive contingents pamphlet drops and prayers for good rationalisation schemes and job losses. KennettlHewson Tories into re-electing of young people from Germany, to Italy Keating. industrial relations." Easson declared Workers across Victoria were pushing to Greece. The power of the Australian that "a lot of people wanted people on to join the 10 November strike. Shop working class must be unleashed at The ACTU's "national day of action" their legs in the street. I wanted them on floor and delegates' meetings in in­ home and linked up with workers' strug­ for 30 November is directed solely their knees" (Australian, 12 November)! dustries "exempted" from the strike, as gles internationally. The years when the against Kennett and Hewson, pushed Victorian workers are front line in a in Telecom and the tramways, voted to mining-based Australian economy­ under the -waving slogan "Defend ., class confrontation that affects all work­ go out, but were overruled by their which drew fabulous profits from exports the Australian way of life." The Aus­ ing people in Australia. It was the Vic­ union tops. It is necessary to oust these to the major imperialist powerhouses of tralian way of life! Tell that to unionists torian-centred mass strikes in 1969 over "labour lieutenants of the capitalist Europe, North America and Japan­ who have seen their unions busted over' the jailing of union leader Clarrie class." Forge a class-struggle leadership! could generate sufficient wealth to the last decade. Tell that to Aborigines, O'Shea which successfully freed him and The Russian revolutionary LD Trot­ give the working class a relatively high subject to racist police terror and mur­ led to the shelving of penal powers for sky, writing in the 1930s, accurately cap­ and comfortable standard of living are der under the Labor governments. Tell over a decade. Instead of Halfpenny, tured the nature of the bureaucrats' long gone. The international economic that to women forced out of jobs and Easson and Co's social-democratic manoeuvring: crisis which has hammered these econ­ back into the home, or slaving in low- - grovelling, what is needed is for the " ... the leadership of the strike previously, omies has left the Australian economy wage non-unionised jobs then heading strategic big battalions of the working ie, without a struggle, arrives at an agree­ a shambles. back to the stifling family hearth to toil ., class to come out in united national ment with the class enemy as to the course It is in this context that a wing of the on the "second shift" of household strike action to defeat the union busters and outcome of the strike. The parliamen­ drudgery. Tell that to the unemployed, tarians and the trade unionists perceive at ruling class exemplified by Peko­ from Kennett to Keating. Miners, trans­ a given moment the need to provide an Wallsendand Western Mining bosses is the students, foreign-born workers, all port, maritime, power workers: strike outlet for the accumulated ire of the masses, attempting to abolish the historically victims of years of Labor government­ together now! Build militant mass pick­ or they are simply compelled to jump in step evolved corporatist system of "labour run capitalist austerity and official ra­ ets and flying pickets to ensure strikes with a movement that has flared over their relations" embodied in the Arbitration cism. Talk about Australian "democracy" ' are solid! heads. In such cases they come scurrying to the Pacific island slaves of Australian through the backstairs to the government system and is aiming to slash high tariff On 10 November some 800,000 of and obtain permission to head the general protection to industry. On the other imperialism, or to the Bougainvillean Victoria's two and a half million workers strike, this with the obligation to. conclude hand others want to use Arbitration people being starved and tortured to went on strike for the day. Most private it as soon as possible, without any damage to slowly chop away the gains of the death by the Papua New Guinea neo­ to the state crockery." colonial servants of Canberra. industry, business and the city continued -"The ILP and the Fourth working class, its organisation and con­ to function, as was Halfpenny's inten­ International, " sciousn~ss, as the Hawke/Keating gov­ The "day of action" is focused around tion. The predictable result is that Ken- 18 September, 1935 e~nment .has done since 1983. A few continued on page 7 SUMMER 1992/1993 5 .. b'~";:O"... ' i'!i~; .~<[... i:'/'l~~r".-·t!~,.j;J-...1j-~ ~ ·;,.:YUr-~ ------I!sPartacist Supplement-, 6--N~- ovember 1992 11------All Out! Shut Victoria Down Tight! We reprint below a leaflet distributed by exempt "emergency" industries from the that no-one dares cross are needed to is increasing its brutal exploitation of its Spartacist supporters to striking workers strike, including public transport, power make sure that everything is shut down Pacific neo-colonies, with the Keating in Victoria on 10 November. Nationally, workers and health workers-precisely tight! Elected strike committees are government braintrusting and arming 20,000 copies of the leaflet have been those at the top orKennett's hit list, and needed to run the strike, taking it out of the Papua New Guinea government's handed out to workers and students. with some of the most power. The big­ the hands of the union bureaucrats and savage war against the Bougainvillean gest obstacle, not just to smashing this ensuring that the scab-herding machi­ separa tis ts. * * * attack, but to a fight against the decay­ nations of the CIA-loving grouper bu­ Workers in this country and across the Kennett's Victorian Liberal govern­ ing capitalist system is the treacherous reaucrats of the ironworkers and shop globe are increasingly combative, from ment has proclaimed war on the state's Labor misleaders. assistants unions amount to zero. the German public workers strike earlier workers and poor. Tens of thousands of In 1969 it was the tramworkers' re­ Immigrant workers form a strong force this year, the massive strike wave in public service jobs are to be axed along fusal to buckle down under the Arbi­ in the public transport unions, metal Greece to the biggest workers mobilis­ with savage cuts to public transport, tration Court which sparked the suc­ plants and manufacturing industries. ations in Italy since the "hot autumn" of education, health and social services. cessful 1969 Victorian-centred general They have been the victims of the most 1969. Defying the clerical-nationalist Egged on by the Murdoch empire's strike which freed jailed union leader savage cuts in conditions and vicious job Solidarno~t "free market" regime, media hyenas, Kennett's legislation aims Clarrie O'Shea and resulted in the shel­ slashing over the years of Labor govern­ Polish workers are resisting their sys­ at destroying existing award conditions, ving of penal powers for over a decade. ment "restructuring." Solid union-wide tematic subordination to the IMF. A gutting penalty rate entitlements, remov­ Now Halfpenny calls to defend the action could in turn be the spearhead of strike wave during recent months ing holiday loadings, gutting workers "independent umpire," the Arbitration desperately needed battle to organise the embraced coal and copper miners and compensation and outlawing strikes in workers who chanted "Down with "vital" industries. This is a political on­ Walesa!" slaught which must be fought by the To sabotage workers international trade unions and their allies. Already a solidarity the Laborite bureaucrats push groundswell of working class outrage has racist protectionist schemes, lining them forced the Victorian Trades Hall Council up with their "own" bosses. This under­ (THC) to announce state-wide general mines the necessary class unity of the strike action on 10 November. It is going multiracial Australian working class, to take hard class struggle that stops setting them up against their class Kennett and Keating in their tracks, and brothers and sisters in Asia and around it has to be organised across (federal and the world. Most recently the Waterside state award) industries throughout the Workers Federation bureaucrats, who state and spread nationally. For a general have consistently "negotiated" away hard strike that closes the state down tight! No won union conditions, joined the union­ to THC/ACTU sellout deals! Throw out busting squattocracy of the National the labour traitors! For a class struggle Federation of Farmers in reactionary leadership! For a working class offensive threats to blockade French goods over that rolls back Kennett/Keating's union the breakdown of the recent GATT busting capitalist austerity and job talks. Alongside the Laborites' protec­ slashing! tionist poison comes their racist scape­ goating of immigrants at home. Keating A general strike, even a defensive one Melbourne, 1969: of limited duration, poses the question Mass workers (spurred on by the ACTU tops) has of which class shall rule. From the begin­ action won the massively increased round-ups of ning THC secretary John Halfpenny has release of "illegals" and their incarceration in con­ pleaded to be given the chance to call off jailed tramways centration camp detention centres. Down the strike, if only Kennett will "nego­ union leader with racist protectionist poison! Unions tiate." Desperate to undercut the real Clarrie O'Shea must fight for full citizenship rights for all potential of an all-out state wide action and secured a foreign-born workers! Halfpenny is out to transform the day historic victory The Spartacist League (section of the against bosses' into an ACTU -endorsed public relations International Communist League) is Arbitration fighting to forge a Leninist!Trotskyist "day of protest," the first step in a Court. "campaign. " party. In contrast, ostensibly socialist Halfpenny's job as an agent of the groups such as the International Social­ bosses within the unions is precisely to ist Organisation (ISO) cover Halfpen,ny's put the reins on working-class militancy left flank with tactical advice on the as the bureaucrats did in the NSW gen­ "campaign" to defeat Kennett and fed­ eral strike last year. The real campaign eral Tory leader Hewson, that is to re­ Halfpenny and the Laborite union elect the despicable Keating government. leaders are interested in is next year's Court, against Kennett. In contrast, what unorganised-predominantly the tens of Meanwhile the sinister bandits of the federal election campaign to re-elect the is needed is working-class independence thousands of mainly women immigrants Socialist Labour League having written rightly hated Keating Labor government. from the capitalist state. Bury Arbi­ in non-unionised sweatshops acrOss the off unions as "bankrupt organisations" But both Keating and Kennett are tration! Nothing important was ever won country. Students who have fought educ­ denounce the planned strike itself as a waging a bi-partisan war on the working by the working class through the ballot ation cutbacks, youth facing a bleak "phoney general strike" -an open in­ class and poor. It is desperately necess­ box or the bosses' courts. Screw the future of unemployment, oppressed vitation to scab. ary to forge a revolutionary leadership of anti-labour laws! The only "illegal" strike minorities have to be drawn into a com­ All of these organisations have sup­ the working class to fight for a workers is one that loses! mon fIght. ported the counterrevolution now raging government that can provide jobs and a Kennett has threatened to use his new throughout the former deformed work­ Recession-ridden Australian capitalism ers states of eastern Europe, bringing decent living wage and life for working legislation against the strike, throwing is today transforming an increasing num­ people through smashing the profit sys­ devastation to the working people. So strikers and picketers in jail. Greiner ber of workers into chronically unem­ tem root and branch. tried outlawing last year's NSW general what can they possibly have to say to ployed paupers. What's needed is a fight workers in Australia? In contrast, from Full of triumphalism over the "Death strike too, but a massive turnout from for a sliding scale of wages and hours to of Communism" this degenerate ruling across the state spiked him. There must Berlin to Warsaw to Moscow the Inter­ fight unemployment! Make the bosses national Communist League has fought class now proclaims the "Death of be I'uch a massive turnout of maritime, pay through spreading the available work unionism!" But already, faced with a transport and power workers that Ken­ the capitalist-restorationist drive all around! Fight for massive wage increases along the line. storm'of working-class anger, they are nett's cops don't dare show their faces to make up for the years of Accord wage getting nervous. Halfpenny has tried to on the streets. Militant mass picket lines Reformism is a dead end. What's nec­ slashing! Such a struggle is key to essary is to forge a Leninist/Trotskyist uniting and organising the unemployed party in the course of sharp class in a working class fightback. struggle, splitting the working class from The aftermath of has the pro-capitalist tops of the Labor brought a capitalist disorder with prep- ~ Party. For revolutionary class struggle on SPARTACIST ~ arations for inter-imperialist war, a rising I the road to a racially-integrated workers world wide tide of racism and fascism republic of Australia, part of a socialist For a workers republic of Australia, part of a socialist Asial and renewed attacks on unions. The Asia!. Marxist journal of the Spartacist League of Australia, Australian ruling class, with an economy section of the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist). slipping deeper into recession, is caught EDITORIAL BOARD: Neil Flannagan, Andrew Giannakis (editor), Peter McLeod, in the vice of growing inter-imperialist Contact the Spartacist League Phillipa Newman, Margaret Rodda rivalries between the U.S. and Japan. Sydney CIRCULATION: Kathie Tresca Their solution is to savagely increase PRODUCTION: Phillipa Newman GPO Box 3473, Sydney NSW 2001 attacks on working people whilst enfor­ Phone: (02) 281 2181 Printed by trade union labour. Registered at GPO, Sydney for posting as a publication-Category B. cing strong state reaction against work­ Subscription $3 for 4 issues; overseas airmail $5 for 4 issues. Address all correspondence to: Melbourne Spartacist ANZ Publishing Co, GPO Box 3473, Sydney, NSW, 2001. Opinions expressed in signed ing people, students, women and the articles or letters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint. GPO Box 2339, Melbourne Vic 3001 deeply oppressed Aboriginal population. Phone: (03) 654 4315 Printed by Spotpress Ply Ltd, 105 Victoria Rd, Marrickville. Meanwhile racist Australian imperialism o AUSTRALASIAN SPARTACIST in the Soviet Union. We called for mo­ Keating ... bilising Soviet workers to clean out the (continued from page 5) counterrevolutionary rabble, thus open­ ing the road to proletarian political revolution. defence of the "independent umpire" of On the other hand the pathetic rem­ the Arbitration court. The Arbitration nants of Stalinism in Australia washed system is a corporatist structure which their hands of the Soviet Union as soon has evolved over decades. The courts of as Yeltsinjs countercoup was successful. the capitalist state regulate the unions The "left" union bureaucrats who split in every sphere, from wages and con­ from the Socialist Party of Australia ditions to the conduct of strikes to the (SPA) during the Hawke years such as election of union officials and the disbur­ Tom McDonald and Stan Sharkey of the sement of union funds. Under the fed­ Building Workers Industrial Union and eral Labor governments of Hawke and Pat Geraghty of the Seamen's Union now Keating, the Arbitration Court­ pimped for Gorbachev whose perestroika sanctioned Accord has imposed give­ was the antechamber to outright capi­ backs and job slashing which have talist restoration. The SPA itself could eroded workers' livelihoods and organ­ do little more than hope for a revival of Spartacist photo isations. This has paved the way for bankrupt Stalinism. Of late they have today's Tory government' attacks. Vic­ August, 1991: Australian fake-left cheered Yeltsln's counterrevolution. taken to supporting the "red-brown SL called for Soviet workers to clean out the counterrevolutionary rabble, torian Labor ex-Premier Kirner now coalition" in the ex-Soviet Union-the thus opening the road to proletarian political revolution. reveals that her government wanted to alliance of leftover Stalinists with Rus­ carry out wide ranging attacks similar to sian nationalists, monarchists and out­ courts, the two key questions on which Cain Labor governments smashed the Kennett's and Halfpenny agrees that right fascists. The SPA waxes lyrical that the union bureaucracy is running its BLF. Hawke used the air force to smash there must be cuts. The labour fakers "The flag of Peter the Great emblazoned popular-frontist campaign. the pilots' strike in 1989. The ALP's role have turned 's famous obser­ with its blue cross, snapped in the wind The sinister SLL postures as Trotsky­ is to tie the working people to this racist vationthat "the working class has beside the of the Soviet Union" ists. For years the SLL have sold their capitalist system. nothing to lose but its chains" on its (Guardian, 1 April). It has been the services to any and every anti-working Down with the rigged two-up game in head-they want the workers in Trotskyists of the International class force that was willing to pay, from which heads or tails, Labor or Liberal, Arbitration chains. Nothing important Communist League who have fought Arab bourgeois regimes to Vietnamese the working people lose! The urgent was ever won by the working class capitalist counterrevolution from Berlin fascists. They have distinguished them­ task of the hour is to forge an inter­ through the ballot box or the bosses' to Warsaw to Moscow and against the selves by rabid anti-Sovietism and craven nationalist Leninist-Trotskyist party courts. The unions need to defy the ravages and immiseration of capitalist loyalty to the ALP, lobbying ACTU based on the working class to act as a bosses rules, rip up the court orders restoration now facing working people. conferences and demanding a non­ tribune of the people and lead a revol­ and wage hard class struggle. The Union bureaucrats like McDonald and existent "left wing" of the ALP "expel utionary struggle for workers power, a only "illegal" strike is one that Sharkey were. instrumental in putting the right" and fight for a "Labor govern­ workers state. The 1917 October Revol­ loses·! The whole system of Arbitration together and enforcing Hawke and Kea­ ment with socialist policies." Now all this ution showed the way out of capitalist needs to be smashed! Down with racist ting's Accord. This included spearhead­ has disappeared as they decree the chaos. What "failed" in the Soviet Union protectionism! ing the Labor government's smashing of unions "bankrupt" and "mechanisms for was not communism, but the Stalinist the Builders Labourers Federation the intensification of exploitation." In bureaucratic antithesis of proletarian Beware Halfpenny's Fake-Left (BLF) in 1986. Today Tom McDonald is 1986 they crossed BLF picket lines as internationalism and the mismanagement Toadies! on the board of the rad-lib New Left the. union was being smashed. On the of the planned economy. Today we are Various pseudo-socialist groups have Party's Broadside newspaper. Broadside eve of the 1984-85 British miners' strike seeing the true face of the capitalist enlisted as foot soldiers in a popular­ (11-17 November) worries that Kennett's they set up union leader Arthur Scargill, restoration in the former deformed/ frontist campaign to re-elect the Keating moves actually "threatens a wages break­ denouncing his correct statement. that degenerated workers states of eastern government. Tiny fake-left grouplets like out." The 18-24 November issue frets Polish Solidarno~c was "anti-socialist"-a Europe and the Soviet Union: unem­ Paul White's Workers Revolution Group that "industrial havoc" will destabilise campaign picked up by the gutter Tory ployment, massive impoverishment, (WRG) clutch at the International Soc­ the current national "wages" (ie, give­ press and the Thatcher government. nationalist fratricide and the rise of fas­ ialist Organi~ation (ISO), who clutch at back) campaign. Meanwhile the SPA . Their major international campaign is to cist terror. Halfpenny and other "left" bureaucrats, sees that the "immediate task" is "to see support the U.S. capitalist state's frame­ A couple of five-year economic plans who clutch at ACTU secretary Kelty, that Hewson does not get elected" up of leftist union organiser Mark Cur­ as part of a collectivised, planned econ­ who clutches at Keating, head of the (Guardian, 28 9ctober). tis. They denounced the 10 November omy, in concert with our proletarian Australian imperialist government. For The ISO, which "rejoices" over the strike as a "total fraud" -an open in­ brothers and sisters in the other all the varied hues of this syphilitic "death of communism," also eager to vitation to scab. The SLL's relationship countries of this region, could easily chain, they all act to tie workers to the join Keating's election campaign, says, to the class line is that of a man in a provide jobs and a future for all. For a imperialist class enemy. The price of "Defeating Kennett in Victoria is the revolving door. socialist federation of Southeast Asia! admission to this club, as with social basis for defeating Hewson." The ISO The Spartacist League/Australia is a democracy everywhere, has been hyster­ specialises in piddling "militant" advice ALP-Party of Racism, section of the International Communist ical anti-Sovietism. to Halfpenny's "ongoing campaign." Just Depression and War League. We stand for the communism of For the last decade the Spartacist as they hailed Yeltsin's victory in the Lenin and Trotsky. As Trotsky wrote in League (SL) has stood uniquely on a Soviet Union, they hail every Laborite Earlier this year ACTU secretary Kelty the founding document of the Fourth program of class opposition to the racist, betrayal as a "victory," from the sell­ warned Keating that he couldn't possibly International: "The present crisis in union busting anti-Soviet Hawke and Out of APPM workers in Tasmania to win the next election with 11 per cent human culture is the crisis in the Keating governments. Anti-Soviet groups the British TUC's capitulation to unemployment. Now Keating's "approval proletarian leadership. The advanced such as the' ISO, Socialist Labour government plans to decimate the rating" has shot up and he figures he workers, united in the Fourth Inter­ League (SLL) and the WRG joined mining industry. The WRG of Paul can maybe win the next election as the national, show their class the way out of Hawke in proclaiming "solidarity with White differentiates itself from their "lesser evil" to Hewson's Tories. The the crisis. They offer a program based on Solidarno~c," the Polish clerical­ fellow anti-Soviets in the ISO with end­ ALP is the party of racism, depression international experience in the struggle nationalist outfit that is today doling out less calls for an "indefinite general and war-from two world imperialist of the proletariat and of all the capitalist misery to the Polish masses. strike"- to be initiated by "pressuring" wars to innumerable smaller reactionary oppressed of the world for liberation. The SL forthrightly stated: "Stop Soli­ the THC! Behind their "militant" ver­ wars from Korea to Vietnam to Iraq; They offer a spotless banner" ("The from the 1930s depression to every other darno~c counterrevolution!" In August biage, they do not so much as mention Death Agony of Capitalism and the of last year the fake left supported the Keating Labor government, or for attack on the working class this century. Tasks of the Fourth International," Yeltsin's counterrevolutionary barricades that matter the bosses' Arbitration It was the Chifley Labor government September 1938). Reforge the Fourth which used the army to break the 1949 International, world party of socialist miners strike. In 1986 the Hawke and revolution!. ets to shut down the mines-not just in Fiji ... Fiji but at all of Western Mining's oper­ ations across Australia. (continued from page 8) Our fraternal defence organisation, (who led the 1987 coup which drove the the PDC/Australia, has protested the Fijian Labor Party from power, only to arrests and collected money for and SPARTACIST ~ be elected in May with Labor's support) donated to the striking miners. They has sought to co-opt the union tops to have fought to bring the miners' struggle o $5 for 4 issues (1 year) of Australasian Spartacist and 10-issue introductory subscription ram through a sweetheart deal. Faced to the attention of the international to Workers Vanguard, Marxist fortnightly of the Spartacist League/U.S. with the miners' overwhelming support working class-mos t importantly power­ o $3/4 issues (1 year) of Australasian Spartacist o $5 if overseas airmail for the union, the Fijian government ful sectors of labour in Australia (min­ o $15/24 issues (1 year) of Workers Vanguard claimed the scabs had to be included and ers, metal workers, seamen, dockworkers the union tops, at the government's and electrical trades) where workers o $6/6 issues (one year) of Workers Hammer, paper of the Spartacist League/Britain direction, brought in 650 of the strike­ have been struggling against the union­ The above subscriptions include Spartacist, organ of the International Communist breaking scum. Now the government has busting, anti-working-class Hawke/ League (Fourth Internationalist) ordered Emperor Mining to recognise Keating Labor governments. Free the o $4/3 issues of Women & Revolution the union and settle-leaving the strik­ Vatukoula Six! Victory to the Fijian ers out on the street while the scabs strikers! Name ______work the mines. Only the company's Address ______outright refusal to recognise any union­ Donations to support the striking even one including union-busting scabs­ Vatukoula miners can be deposited at has forestalled this outright betrayal of Westpac branches in Australia under the State ____ P'code Phone ______-'-- ______the courageous Fijian miners-for now. following account: Fiji Mineworkers What's needed is to mobilise the labour Union, Westpac bank, Tavua Branch, Mail/make cheques payable to: Spartacist ANZ Publishing Co, GPO Box 3473, Sydney. NSW, 2001 movement and build mass, militant pick- account number 380 46000.• SUMMER 1992/1993 7 SPASiTACIST ~

Rome's Jewish Community Routs Fascists Italy: Thousands March Against Racist Terror

Two hundred thousand people-over­ and coins. Sixty thousand anti-fascists whelmingly youth-in 31 cities across poured through the streets of Rome. Italy took to the streets November 9 to Young leftists in Palestinian keffiyeh mark the anniversary of the Nazis' 1938 scarves linked arms with Jewish youth Kristallnacht pogrom and to protest the in yarmulkes and slapped the number rising tide of racist terror in the country. 174517 on their jackets-the number the Capitalist reunification of Germany and Nazis tattooed on Primo Levi in Ausch­ the collapse of Stalinism throughout witz. In tribute to this remarkable man, East Europe and the former Soviet a noted Italian author, concentration Union have plunged Italy into deep camp survivor and anti-fascist fighter, economic and political turmoil. "Polar­ young leftists chanted, "Primo Levi ised" is an understatement; the country taught us! We won't forget the Holo­ is bursting at the seams. caust!" and "It is not a crime to kill a Emboldened by startling electoral fascist!" Leaders of the Italian student support for the fascistic Lombard movement are demanding that Primo League headed by U mberto Bossi, Levi's books be assigned reading in the fascists have escalated racist violence public schools. against Jews and immigrants all over the Our comrades from the Lega Trotskis­ country. The police have turned a blind ta d'Italia participated in the demonstra­ eye. In Rome last June, as angry Jewish tions in Rome and Milano, carrying demonstrators confronted a fascist mob, placards reading, "Proletarian Revol­ one cop yelled, "They didn't make enough soap out of the Jews."· , ution Will Avenge the Holocaust!" "Full Meanwhile, without any leadership­ Citizenship Rights for Immigrant Work­ indeed, against their existing reformist ers!" and "Smash Anti-Semitic, Anti­ Jewish students among the 30,000 union workers and youth who pro­ Immigrant Terror!" Youth eagerly leaderships-the industrial working class tested anti-Semitism In Rome, November 9. and high school youth have been in full­ snapped up copies of Spartaco, news­ scale revolt for nearly two months now, appeals to "ignore the Nazis," several ly hoisted in the air and carried through paper of the LTd'I, and picked up shutting down city after city in general hundred Jewish youth and concentration the neighborhood atop the captured our chants. st.rikes against the government's savage camp survivors, armed with iron bars fascist flag. As one youth who partici­ There is militant proletarian oppos­ austerity program dictated by the Maas­ and chains, carried out a successful light­ pated in the action said, "It was the most ition to fascism and capitalist rollbacks tricht treaty (ie, German bankers). On ning raid on the headquarters of the beautiful moment of my life. If he has to in Italy today-with no leadership. Jews October 10, Torino was shut down by fascist "Movirnento Politico Occidentale" die, let's hope not for a hundred years, and immigrants have been left to face workers and students who filled the (Western Political Movement) on Nov­ at least he'll go knowing that something the fascists alone, as the reformist par­ streets and marched on the town hall ember 5. One fascist wound up in the has changed" (Corriere della Sera, 7 ties and trade-union tops have done chanting, "Here we are with our red hospital and one cop emerged from the November). everything possible to keep their banners! Go fuck yourself Umberto fray with a black eye. This dramatic and militant self-defense working-class base away from confron­ Bossi!" The fascist flag was ripped down off action electrified anti-racist fighters all tation with the fascists. It is urgently After 50,000 fascists marched unim­ the wall and carried back to the Jewish over Italy. On November 9, some 25,000 necessary to construct a genuine peded through the streets of Rome last quarter as a war trophy. Death camp high school students bobbed up and Bolshevik party to serve as a tribune of month, the ancient Jewish ghetto and survivors, their children and grand­ down through the streets of Milano the people and direct these struggles to African quarter were plastered with children stayed in the streets until dawn yelling "Jump if you're not a fascistl" victory. racist graffiti and yellow Stars of David. celebrating their victory over the fascists. and showered the headquarters of Bos­ Reprinted from Workers Vanguard In response, rejecting "responsible" . An Auschwitz survivor was tri~mphant- si's Lombard League with ball bearings No 563, 13 November 1992

Like other former British colonies Fiji :;:,. is a powderkeg of communal-racial div­ ision, mainly between indigenous Fijians (Melanesians) and Indians originally im­ Free· Jailed Fijian Miners! ported by the British as indentured labour for the sugar plantations. The The following article is reprinted from cognition of their union. They've been a bailiff killed during the police assault, Vatukoula miners' struggle has coincided Class-Struggle Defense Notes, No 18, met with a series of eviction threats, was jailed for four months before char­ with strikes by predominantly Fijian­ Fall/Winter 1992-93, journal of the attacks on their picket lines and constant ges were dropped. Indian sugar workers and women textile Partisan Defense Committee/U.S. The harassment by the company and cops. In the Australian neo-colony of Fiji, workers across Fiji, despite vicious anti­ Partisan Defense Committee is a class­ These attacks culminated in ft police the Vatukoula gold mine is run with union laws. These struggles need to be struggle, non-sectarian legal and social assault on February 4, when 30 riot apartheid-like brutality. The mainly eth­ linked. Unity of' the working class, defence organisation which champions squad police using tear gas attempted to nic Fijian miners earn a pitiful $1.30 per cutting across the institutionalised cases and causes in the interest of the evict strikers from company housing. hour under unsafe work conditions. anti-Indian chauvinism of the Fijian­ whole ofthe working people. This purpose This provocation was met by a cour­ Along with their families the miners live dominated government which came to is in accordance with the political views ageous defence. But six miners, Viliame in a company-owned shantytown without power through the rigged electoral sys­ of the Spartacist League. Rokoraiba, Vereniko Batikalou, Josua electricity, adequate water or the most tem established by the 1987 CIA­ Vunisa, Eferemo Caketi, Usaia Seniu basic facilities. As in South Africa, where supported coup, is crucial to defeating • • • and Etuwate Matawalu, denied legal and black miners earn a fraction of white the government's vicious austerity that For the past 19 months Fijian miners union representation, were brutally workers' wages, dark-skinned Fijians are targets all the oppressed throughout the have waged a heroic struggle against the beaten into forced confessions. They treated like dirt. In its Australia home Fijian islands. Emperor Gold Mining Company. In the now languish in jail convicted and sen­ base Western Mining, a major share­ Having failed to crush the strike longest strike in Fijian history, miners at tenced for up to two-and-a-halfyears on holder of the Vatukoula mine, tramples through state terror and repression, and Emperor's Vatukoula gold mine are charges of assault, obstruction and dam­ over the rights of Aborigines and wages fearing a loss of foreign investment, the fighting for better wages, safety condi­ aging a police vehicle. One more miner, war on Australian miners' wages and government of prime minister Rabuka tions, living standards and company re- charged with murder over the death of hard-won working conditions. continued on page 7 a AUSTRALA~I~~ ~!:~~r~9~~!,. workers state "will fall under the joint blows of its internal and external Workers State enemies": "But in the event 'of this worst possible Strangled ... variant, a tremendous significance for the (continued from page 3) subsequent course of the revolutionary struggle will be borne by the question: where alysis as the rest of society. The upper are those guilty for the catastrophe? Not the slightest taint of guilt must fall upon the strata of the military command, on the' revolutionary internationalists. In the hour other hand, were a component of the of mortal danger, they must remain on the Soviet bureaucracy. Trotsky explained last barricade." that the bureaucracy was a brittle, con­ -"The Class Nature of tradictory whose role was that of the Soviet State" an intermediary between the workers And that is what the International Com­ state and hostile imperialist encircle­ munist League has done. To the extent ment. This contradictory position gener­ our limited forces permit, we have ated within the bureaucracy a range of fought to provide a revolutionary pole contradictory political impulses: "all to win the Soviet working class to a shades of political thought are to be program to reverse and defeat the coun­ found among the bureaucracy: from terrevolution. Our comrade Martha Phil­ genuine Bolshevism (Ign~ce Reiss).t0 lips, murdered in Moscow last February, complete fascism (F. Butenko)" (Tran­ made the ultimate sacrifice in fighting sitional Program). Reiss was a leading ICL banner outside January 1992 Soviet officers conference In Moscow: for that cause. cadre of the Soviet intelligence service "No to Capitalist Restoratlonl Yes to Gains of Octoberl" Five years ago, when the first openly who declared for the Fourth Inter­ program of restoration and their refusal 1991 decree moved to tear the military counterrevolutionary force-the anti­ national and was murdered by Stalin in to in any way antagonize the imperialist apart and eliminate what remained of Semitic nativist fascists of Pamyat­ 1937; Butenko was a Soviet diplomat powers. Had the workers sprung into the workers state. Nationalism, as in the reared its head in Moscow and Lenin­ who defected to Mussolini's fascist Italy. action, mobilizing to clear out the de­ chauvinist drum-beating over , grad, we called for proletarian-centered The dual character of the Stalinist spised profit-gouging "cooperativists," has been a driving force in cohering an mass mobilizations to crush these latter­ bureaucracy, and the conflicting political speculators and ruble millionaires who armed force loyal to the new capital­ day Black Hundreds in the egg. When, appetites it harbored, remained even manned Yeltsin's barricades, this would ist order. in August 1990, Gorbachev endorsed a plan for full-fledged capitalist restoration after the bloody purges of the 1930s have indeed directly posed a civil war The use of Russian OMON forces to drawn up by Yeltsin, our first Russian­ exterminated any remnant of the Bol­ between the proletariat and the active break up an anti-Yeltsin protest in Feb­ shevik "Old Guard." But while resting forces of counterrevolution, and marked ruary marked the emergence of a repres­ language leaflet raised the call "Soviet on and deriving its privileges from pro­ the beginning of a proletarian political sive apparatus loyal to the new regime. Workers: Smash YeltsiniGorbachev 500- Day Plan!" (WV No 510, 21 Septem­ letarian property forms, the Stalinist revolution. Fearing proletarian mobiliz­ With the Ukraine and other republics bureaucracy was not irrevocably com­ ation far more than counterrevolution, creating separate armies and demanding ber 1990). That November, at the mitted to their defense. It could play no not a single element of the so-called loyalty oaths from Soviet troops Revolution Day commemoration in Len­ independent role in society. Under the "hardline" Stalinist "patriot" opposition stationed on their territory, in May Yel­ ingrad, the banner of the Fourth Inter­ impact of any sharp frontal assault, to GorbachevlYeltsin tried to organize tsin decreed the formation of a distinct national was opeQ.ly unfurled for the first either from the revolutionary proletariat resistance to the Yeltsinite forces, hiding Russian Army, appointing the relatively time in the Soviet Union. or the counterrevolution, the bureauc­ instead behind the impotent procla­ young general Grachev, a strident Rus­ Despite our meager resources and racy would shatter. As Trotsky wrote: mations of the coup committee. sian nationalist who proclaimed his al­ limited Russian-language capacity, we "When the proletariat springs into action, legiance to Yeltsin during the coup, as sought to intervene directly in the tur­ Having seized the reins of power, the bulent situation which opened up after the Stalinist apparatus will remain suspen­ Yeltsin regime immediately moved to the new Russian defense minister. An ded in midair. Should it still attempt to article in the CIA's "Radio Free Europe/ Gorbachev took over. Following the resist, it will then be necessary to apply reorganize the top echelons of the mili­ dramatic coal miners strikes in the sum­ against it not the measures of civil war, but tary, putting in a layer of younger Radio Liberty" RFE/RL Research Report rather the measures of a police character .... (21 August) observed: mer of 1989, we sought to get our officers who were marked either by sub­ Trotskyist propaganda into the hands of "A real civil war could develop not between servience to Yeltsin (eg, Shaposhnikov) "In many important respects, the appoint­ the Stalinist bureaucracy and the resurgent these combative workers, whose struggle or by strident Russian nationalism, while ment of General of the Army Pavel Grachev proletariat but between the proletariat and had electrified the Soviet working class seeking to buy off broader layers of the to the post of Russian defense minister on the active forces of the counterrevolution. 18 May 1992 marked the beginning of the and shaken the Stalinist bureaucracy. In the event of an open clash between the officer corps with salary increases. At the post-Soviet period in the security sphere, ICL representatives intervened in a two mass camps, there cannot even be talk same time, there was a self-purge, as much as the creation of the CIS in Decem­ miners conference in Donetsk in Oc­ of the bureaucracy playing an independent numbers of pro-socialist officers left the ber 1991 had marked the end of the Soviet role. Its polar flanks would be flung to tbe tober 1990, where they succeeded in army in disgust over the anti-Communist period in the pOlitical sphere." different sides of the barricade." Navy Day, on July 26, was marked by temporarily spiking a CIA-orchestrated -"The Class Nature of ban. In any case, as Trotsky remarked in the Soviet State" the hoisting of the old tsarist naval em­ effort to enlist Soviet workers in a red­ The Revolution Betrayed (1937): "a bour­ baiting witchhunt against British miners In the case of the 1956 Hungarian Rev­ geois restoration would probably have to blem, the St Andrew's Cross, throughout leader Arthur Scargill. olution, the bulk of the bureaucratic clean out fewer people [from the state the fleets, while Navy chief Admiral stratum went over to the side of the apparatus] than a revolutionary party." Chernavin proclaimed: "The Russian During the 1989-90 upheaval in the insurgent pro-socialist proletariat. In The juridical of the USSR fleet must retrieve its flag, not because DDR, as part of the ICL's struggle to contrast, more recently in the Soviet in December 1991 left the all-Union Soviet sailors were ashamed of the old effect apro/etarian political revolution in Union, the steady pressure of con­ armed forces-nominally under the com­ flag but because it no longer corres­ East Germany, we issued Russian­ ciliation to imperialism and internal mand of the stillborn "Commonwealth ponds to the spirit of the Russian navy" language propaganda addressed to and market forces pushed ever-greater sec­ of Independent States"-suspended in (Independent [London], 27 July). The widely disseminated among Soviet troops tions of the bureaucracy into the camp midair, a "sixteenth republic," as some flying of the tsarist banner over the stationed there, and later spoke to as­ of capitalist restoration, for whom Yel­ dubbed it. An officers conference in the Kronstadt naval garrison, a bastion of semblies of Soviet officers and soldiers. tsin early on became the chief Kremlin the following month registered 'Bolshevism in the October Revolution, In 1991, on the anniversary of the Red spokesman. overwhelming sentiment for maintaining and atop the cruiser Aurora, whose fusil­ Army's victory over Nazi Germany, the The utter incapacity of the bureauc­ the military as a multinational insti­ lade against the Winter Palace signaled Spartakist Workers Party of Germany racy to play any independent role was tution. But, as we warned at the time, the victory of the Petro grad proletarian and the Spartakusowska Grupa Polski forcefully demonstrated in the events of "to preserve the multinational Soviet state insurrection, aptly if grotesquely sym­ held a joint forum for several hundred August 1991. Behind the seeming incom­ and army requires salvaging the socialized bolized the dismantling of the Soviet Soviet military personnel at an air base petence of the "Emergency Committee" property upon which it was created." Had workers state by the triumphant forces outside Berlin (WV No 526, 10 May (made up of Gorbachev's chief lieu ten­ the working class moved, sections of the of counterrevolution. 1991). Then, a month before Yeltsin's ants)-its failure to arrest Yeitsin or military would undoubtedly have gone Yeltsin and his counterparts in the countercoup, ICL representative Martha even to cut off his direct line to Wash­ over to its side. Instead the centrifugal other republics now have the beginnings Phillips addressed the Moscow Workers ington-lay the fact that these stodgy forces set into play by Yeltsin's counter­ of bourgeois armies. But the loyalty of Conference, calling for the formation bureaucrats had no alternative to the coup and formalized by the December these armed forces to capitalism has yet of genuine soviets to stop capitalist to be tested in blood. !'loting that "the counterrevolution, for opposition to all entire military could fragment along forms of chauvinist reaction, and for political or ethnic lines," one ob&erver international socialist revolution. noted that "Russian leaders will be ex­ Our August 1991 call, "Soviet Work­ tremely wary of using the army to main­ ers: Defeat Yeltsin-Bush Counter­ tain domestic order" (Mark Kramer, revolution!", was the first statement "The Armies of the Post-Soviet States," widely distributed throughout the Soviet Current History, October 1992). Union in opposition to Yeltsin's restor­ ationist drive. We advanced a program Who Is Guilty for the for independent working-class struggle Catastrophe? against capitalist restoration and for There was no lack of "Trotskyists" genuine soviets as organs of a new prole­ who took their stand on Yeltsin's bar­ tarian political power: ricades (in some cases, literally) and/or "Independent workers committees must be formed in factories, mine~, railroad yards . moved with shameless haste to declare and other enterprises to prevent layoffs and the Soviet Union dead and buried. Thus privatization by taking over the plants and they finally disencumbered themselves of controlling production .... Committees of sol­ the albatross of (ever more formal and diers and officers must be formed to oppose empty) defense of the Soviet Union, the purges and prevent the army from being Charlo/Gamma used to attack the workers' interests .... which the bourgeoisie has hated and Stalinist myths: Poster proclaims Workers militias must be formed ... todefend that "Victory of Socialism In Our sought to destroy since the October against and crush the lynch mobs and pog­ Country Is Guaranteed." Leonid Revolution. romists .... In this hour of dire need more Brezhnev and Henry Kissin'ger In his 1933 article, Trotsky warned of than ever, the key to successful defense of celebrate "d6tente." the "tragic possibility" that the Soviet continued on page 10 SUMMER'f992/1993< ,~, ,.-.-, 9 camp" ("neither Washington nor Mos­ Workers State cow"), today the "state capitalists" join the imperialists in rejoicing over the "death of Communism." In August 1991, Strangled ... the Cliffites cheered that "Communism (continued from page 9) Has Collapsed" and hailed the Yeitsinite ascendancy as "The Beginning, Not the the Soviet proletariat is the forging of a new, authentically communist vanguard party of End" (Socialist Worker, 31 August 1991). the working class. Return to the road of The identification with imperialist anti­ Lenin and Trotsky!" Communism is evident, but the "state We sharply opposed resurgent anti­ capitalist" logic is absurd. Here we have Semitism and Great Russian chauvinism supposedly just witnessed the remarkable and warned that women have the most spectacle of an entire "capitalist class" to lose under capitalist restoration. which simply committed suicide rather than seeking to defend its property. And Following Yeltsin's unleashing of the the millions upon millions of working OMON and Moscow militia (police) against protesters in February 1992, we people in East Europe and the ex-USSR who are now being dragged down by issued an urgent statement: "'White immiseration, unemployment and fratri­ Tsar' Boris Wants a New Bloody Sun­ day." With the threat of widespread cide aren't about to buy the notion that they are just going from one brand hunger posed by draconian price in­ of capitalism to another, much less hail it. creases on food and other necessities, we raised a fighting program: "Third campists" of the second mobil­ ization, like the political bandits of David "Through their own independent com­ mittees, composed of delegates elected by North's "International Committee" and the enterprises, the working people must Red Army's International Battalion honours German Spartaklsts Luxem­ others, argue that Stalinism is "counter­ take control of food supplies and oversee burg and lIebknecht after their murder, January 1919. Proletarian Internat­ revolutionary through and through." distribution. What is needed once again is Ionalism was the cornerstone of the Soviet Union under Lenin and Trotsky. This flatly denies Trotsky's understand­ to form authentic soviets, not talk shops like ing of the "dual position" of the bu­ the fake soviets and impotent parliaments cause they are opposed to any struggle plicitly social-democratic Labor Party of t"day, but organs for struggle composed which would disrupt capitalist class (PT) of Boris Kagarlitsky is in bed with reaucracy. More to the point, like Cliffs of deputies elected by and recallable to the "peace." This was explicitly stated in the a section of the FNPR bureaucracy, and theory, the purpose is to wash their workplace and barracks. Formed into hands of defense of the Soviet Union. powerful soviets-internationalist, egali­ March 1992 "Declaration on the Foun­ participates in the All-Russian Toiling ding of the United Opposition," signed Assembly, which is heavily populated by North claimed that from the beginning tarian, revolutionary-the working people Gorbachev was bent on "the political, will be able to sweep away the shaky regimes by all the Stalinist leftovers as well as Volsky's people and whose chairman of the capitalisl-restorationisls with a flick Medvedev and Denisov's SPT -formal­ Konstantinov is vice president of the economic and social liquidation of all of the finger. No new tsars-away with Yel­ that remains of the conquests of the tsin-/or a republic o/the working people!" izing the repulsive "red.-brown" coalition Sobor. with Great Russian chauvinists, monar­ Every one of the numerous Stalinist October Revolution" (Perestroika Versus These demands retain their full force chists and outright fascists-which called and social-democratic outfits has fallen Socialism [1989]). North then rushed today, though the consolidation of a for "salvation of the Fatherland ... on the into step behind the corporatist option, to proclaim that it is "impossible to bourgeois state poses the struggle not basis of civil peace and national trust." appealing for privatization through the define ... any of the republics" of the ex­ for political revolution but for socialist Thus all these groups opposed the recent "work collectives" (ie, factory managers). USSR "as workers states" the moment revolution to sweep away the nascent air traffic controllers strike. With their backs against the wall, many Yeltsin decreed its juridical dissolution ca pita lis t class. With their call for privatization workers may look to their factory man­ ("The End of the USSR," Bulletin, 10 Who is guilty for the catastrophe? through the "work collectives," the Stal­ agers taking ownership of industry as a January 1992). First and foremost it is the Stalinists who inist has-beens seek to be the "left" flank last-ditch defense against unemployment . The various theories defining the bear responsibility. Beginning with the of the counterrevolution's corporatist and immiseration. Stalinist bureaucracy as a "new class" or "counterrevolutionary through and political counterrevolution led by Stalin wing, whose most powerful represen­ Soviet workers should entertain no through" unite in appealing to knee-jerk in 1923-24, the state apparatus was, as tative is the Volsky-Rutskoi Civic Union illusions that their livelihoods will be moralism. In contrast, Trotsky's dialec­ Trotsky wrote, "transformed from a bloc .. Aligned with them is the former secure under a corporatist regime. Capi­ tical and materialist analysis of the Sov­ weapon of the working class into a official trade-union bureaucracy, now talism, whether under VolskylRutskoi or iet degenerated workers state, elaborated weapon of bureaucratic violence against calling itself the Federation of Indepen­ Yeltsin/Gaidar or some variant in be­ in The Revolution Betrayed and other the working class, and more and more a dent Trade Unions of Russia (FNPR). tween, necessarily means the whip of writings, has stood the test of time and weapon for the sabotage of the country's Where Yeltsin's prime minister Gaidar brutal exploitation and widespread provides a program for action for the economy" (Transitional Program). By grovels to the West for infusions of unemployment. the later Brezhnev years, bureaucratic capital and promotes a fantastical proletariat. Basing ourselves on this mismanagement of the planned, central­ scheme for privatization throughdistrib­ "State Capitalism": Marxist understanding, we pointed to the ized economy had resulted in a sharp ution of shareholding vouchers to the Anti-Communist Myth contradictory character of the initial decline in Soviet economic growth, while entire population, the VolskylRutskoi Gorbachev reforms: "Gorbachev's peres­ If the destruction of the Soviet Union Jampant corruption fueled the appetites faction hopes to maintain a strong troika not only goes against the immed­ has placed a final epitaph on the sordid of the pampered children of the bu­ military-industrial sector by placing own­ iate material interests of most workers history of Stalinism, it has also demol­ reaucracy to live like Western capitalists. ership directly in th~ hands of the former but also affronts their deep reservoir of ished the numerous false "theories" collective feeling. At the same time, the Given its mortal dread of workers managers. behind which various renegades from democracy which would abolish their regime's call for permits a de­ In the name of building the derzhava, Trotskyism sought to mask their refusal gree of organized dissent against official privileged positions, the only option the the tsarist watchword for a Russian to defend the gains of the October Rev­ bureaucracy saw for intensive economic policies" (Spartacist Leagu~/U.S. con­ strong state, the RKRP & Co have will­ olution. The "theory" that the Soviet growth was to experiment with a neo­ ferencedocument, "Toward Revolution­ ingly submerged themselves in every Union was a "state capitalist" society Bukharinite program of market-oriented ary Conjuncture," June 1987). reactionary lash-up, from the fascistic stands the Marxist analysis of capitalism "reforms" -Gorbachev's peres troika. For the first couple of years, Gor­ Russian National Sobor of the anti­ on its head. It posits a truly bizarre form bachev's neo-Bukharinite reforms had While the August 1991 "Emergency Communist, anti-Semite Sterligov (who of "capitalism"-one in which capitalist some effect in reviving the Soviet econ­ Committee" offered nothing but "peres­ is now pushing restoration of the tsarist competition and the law of value are omy. Harvard economist Marshall Gold­ troika without glasnost," today Stalinist throne) to the newly founded "left-right" external to the system, one marked not man, in his book What Went Wrong with leftovers like Viktor Anpilov's RKRP, National Salvation Front. Indeed, every by cyclical crises of overproduction but Perestroika (1991), notes of Gorbachev's Kryuchkov's RPK, Prigarin's SK and grouping which issued out of· the former by distortions and bottlenecks due to 1985-86 program of "intensification" and Nina Andreyeva's VKPB et ai, who today CPSU-from the RKRP to the SPT­ administrative fiat, one characterized "acceleration" that "initially these re­ posture as an opposition to Yeltsin, of­ accepts the "inevitability" ofthe "market not by chronic mass unemployment but forms seemed to be working" and "in­ fer nothing but a "red" cover for capital­ economy" (restoration of capitalism). by labor shortages. The purpose of the dustrial growth seemed to rebound." He ist counterrevolution. They have made They're simply squabbling over the terms terminological sleight of hand, whether even achieved the largest grain harvest no attempt to mobilize class struggle, not -who gets to feed at the trough (see from the pen of Tony Cliff or his prede­ in Soviet history (240 million tons in only because their chauvinist politiCS "Stalinist Has-Beens: Left Wing of cessors, was to deny any basis for 1990). But the subsequent introduction make them incapable of appealing to the Nationalist Counterrevolution," WVNo defense of the Soviet Union. of enterprise self-management on New still multinational proletariat, but be- 561, 16 OctOber). Meanwhile, the ex- While claiming to occupy a "third Year's 1988 proved to be the decisive step finally leading to collapse. The abandonment of planning in a planned economy led to a breakdown in eco­ nomic administration and widespread shortages and looting. The result, Gold­ man writes, was "the undermining of the Our comrade planning system and the collapse of the Martha Phillips fought to defend the economy." As perestroika reforms failed, October Revolution. in August 1990, Gorbachev openly de­ Protesting against clared his support to capitalist res­ closing of the toration by endorsing the "500-Day Lenin Museum (right) Plan," only to back away from it later in and addressing , his constant zigzagging. delegates at Gorbachev's evolution from "market July 1991 Moscow socialism" reforms to a program of out­ Workers Conference (far right). right capitalist restoration proved yet again the impossibility oE "reforming" the Stalinist regime, a conception ad­ vanced by the likes of Ernest Mandel in his book Beyond Perestroika (1989).

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Whatever their quibbling differences, world order which led to the slaughter­ racist terror. What is required above all period of isolation, which allowed the support for Yeltsin counterrevolution house of World War I, but this time is a revolutionary leadership capable of bureaucratic layer headed by Stalin to brought together all of these revisionists, posing the threat of a nuclear confla­ overcoming the divisions inspired by usurp political power. Thus was the from Cliff to North to Mandel-as well gration. Imperialist unity, maintained for chauvinism and nationalism, clearing revolution betrayed_ as the Militant group in Britain (former­ decades by the "Communist menace," away the decades of false consciousness But this betrayal did not go unchal­ ly led by Ted Grant), associated with has broken down as the contending fostered by Stalinism, and linking the lenged. The Left Opposition of Leon Sergei Beits' Rabochiya Demokratiya powers fall upon each other, and vie to struggles in the ex-USSR to that of the Trotsky continued the struggle for the (Workers Democracy) in Russia. The carve up the former Soviet bloc into world proletariat. authentic program of . In its bottom line for all of these outfits has neocolonies. While social democrats squeal that struggle to defend and extend Soviet been capitulation to social-democratic At the same time, there is opening up "Soviet Communism" discredited social­ power, the Left Opposition urged a anti-Sovietism, just as a decade ago they a new period of intensified class struggle. ism in the eyes of the masses, an even policy of planned industrialization to greater crime of Stalinism was the way were all united in their cheering for The semicolonial peoples of the world, revive the enervated proletariat and counterrevolutionary- SolidarnoM: in it warped the consciousness of pro­ now that the imperialist powers do not enable the isolated workers state to hold Poland and their denunciations of the feel constrained by a Soviet counter­ socialist workers, filling their heads with out against imperialist encirclement. The Red Army intervention into Afghanistan. weight, are being subjected to outright anti-Marxist illusions such as "building Trotskyists fought uncompromisingly In contrast, the Spartacist tendency socialism in one country," the "popular starvation. In the imperialist West, grow­ against the nascent bureaucracy's Great proclaimed· "Hail Red Army in Afghanis­ front" and the utopia of "peaceful co­ ing trade war and exploitation have Russian chauvinism. They fought against tan!" and declared "Stop SolidarnoM: existence" with imperialism. "Socialism already led to major class battles in Ger­ the treacherous policies emanating from Counterrevolution!" in Poland. In res­ in one country" meant not only the sup­ "socialism in one country," in the first many, Italy and Greece. The multiracial .ponse to Gorbachev's 1989 pullout from pression of revolutionary struggle instance the subversion of the Chinese upheaval in Los Angeles following the Afghanistan in order to appease Wash­ abroad, but the isolation of the Soviet Revolution of 1925-27 and the Anglo­ verdict freeing the racis t cops in the ington, we warned it is far better to fight working class from any connection with Russian trade-union bloc which led to Rodney King beating testifies to the imperialism there than within the bor­ the international class struggle. For the knifing of the 1926 British General social instability in the United States. ders of the Soviet Union. But the Gor­ more than 60 years, Soviet workers were Strike. This led to the subordination of In East Europe and the ex-USSR, the bachev regime didn't want to fight submerged in a cocoon walling them off the German working class to Hitler's working class will soon recover from the imperialism anywhere. "The decision to from political developments around the jackboot, to the outright suppression of numbing experience of counter­ leave Afghanistan was the first and most world. In the course of fighting to re­ revolution and begin to fight against the the Spanish revolution in the late 1930s. difficult step," remarked Gorbachev's verse the counterrevolution which has By selling out revolutionary oppor­ ravages of capitalist exploitation. Poland foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze plunged it into poverty and misery, the tunities at the end of World War II, recently, "Everything else flowed from already has been swept by one major strike after another over the past year. Soviet working class will necessarily have particularly in Italy, France and Greece, that." A year after the Afghanistan with­ to reappropriate the revolutionary heri­ Stalinism enabled capitalism to survive, drawal, Gorbachev gave the green light The workers of Russia, the Ukraine ~age which has been taken from it. and thus prepared the way for its own to capitalist reunification of Germany. and the other former Soviet republics The proletariat which made the Oc­ ultimate demise. The ICL was unique in its unam­ still have time to regroup and strike back tober Revolution learned from Lenin With the utter liquidation of the Com­ biguous and forthright opposition to before anything approaching a viable and Trotsky'S Bolsheviks that it was part munist International as an instrument imperialist annexation of the DDR: the system of capitalist exploitation is con­ of an international struggle. It under­ for world revolution, Trotsky organized power of the Trotskyist program to show gealed. Hatred and bitterness toward stood that its only prospect for survival the founding of the Fourth International the way out of the collapse of Stalinism Yeltsin and his ilk are seething. Unlike lay in the extension of the revolution to in 1938. Today the International Com­ found a massive expression in the in the ex-DDR, where masses of working more advanced industrial powers, chiefly munist League fights for the rebirth of 250,000-strong anti-fascist, pro- bought the lie that D-mark Germany. The opportunities were mani­ the Fourth International, whose cadre demonstration on 3 January 1990 at Anschluss (annexation) would bring fold, but the revolutionary parties out­ were decimated by Stalinist and Hitlerite Berlin's Treptow Park, which was in­ prosperity, in the former USSR there side Soviet Russia were too weak and terror and which finally succumbed in itiated by the German Spartakists. The are few such positive illusions. There is, politically immature to pursue them. The the early 1950s to an internal revisionist Stalinists, for their part, thought they however, a widespread view that there is German Spartakist uprising of 1918-19 challenge which denied the need for an could have counterrevolution in one no alternative to the "market," for which and the 1919 Hungarian Commune went independent revolutionary leadership. country. But the sellout of the DDR the bankrupt Stalinists bear the main down to bloody defeat. The possibility of Only as part of the struggle to reforge directly prepared the destruction of the responsibility. the Red Army marching to the aid of the an authentic world party of socialist Soviet Union. The road to recreating a full-fledged German workers in 1920 by unleashing revolution can the workers of the former capitalism is not as smooth as the Nev­ proletarian revolution in Pilsudski's Soviet Union cohere the leadership they Reforge the Fourth sky Prospekt. To free itself of its would­ Poland was foiled. Finally, with the de­ need to sweep away the grotesque hor­ International! be exploiters and oppressors, the feat of the German October in 1923, the rors they now confront. The collapse of the Soviet Union and working class must also assert itself as a Soviet proletariat succumbed to the Reprinted ·from Workers Vanguard the ensuing sharpening of interimper­ "tribune of the people," opposing every demoralizing prospect of a lengthy No 564, 27 November 1992 ialist rivalries have made the world a far manifestation of anti-Semitism and anti­ more dangerous place. The "New World woman and anti-homosexual bigotry, Disorder" ~proclaimed during the U.S.­ rising to the defense of all those-in­ phones at DGB headquarters were ring­ led imperialist slaughter in the Persian cluding African and Asian students, and Germany ... ing off the hook with requests from the Gulf, to which Gorbachev gave his ap­ the Central Asian peoples in Russia­ (continued from page 12) plants for __l?uses to take _protesters to proval-has the hallmarks of the old who are increasingly exposed to violent demonstrate at the Baltic port, but the Terror," Workers Vanguard No 563, 13 DGB tops refused. The heavily im­ November). These youth must be won migrant metal workers union together Marxist Working-Class Biweekly WIINEIS 'AIIIIIAI/} '" to fight for the independent mobilization with the (lTV public employees union .. - -- of the working class, including the key could defend the refugee hostels and Shutdown Threat t'rOVUtI;CZi "u'BrnmeR. &:rtslS of the Spartacist League/US component of immigrant workers, who make the subways secure with workers No 562, 30 October 1992 British Miners Under the Ax are increasingly the target of the fasc­ defense guards. • British Miners Under the Ax ist attacks. This is the program of The Spartakist Workers Party and • TB Epidemic: Crime of Capitalism the SpAD. the International Communist League • JCR-the New Anti-Spartacists In fact, the unions are feeling intense uniquely fought against capitalist re­ from USec Swamp pressure to act. A demonstration yester­ unification of Germany, and we have • Racist Backlash at UC Berkeley day in Berlin which attracted some 5,000 continued to fight against its consequen­ • Algerian Trotskyist Denounces people was called by the DGB (German ces, including mass unemployment, at­ USec Opportunism trade-union federation), as well as the tacks on women's rights, anti-Semitism • Workers League: Freddy & the Mob II~~~~I Alternative Slate/Greens and immigrant and racist terror. At the Berlin protests, Subscribe! 24 issues-$15 groups. There were union contingents the Spartakists shouted out: "The work­ with shop stewards and factory council ing class will avenge Silvio Meier!" We (single issues-50¢ea) members, notably from the teachers are fighting for socialist revolution, ~- union, and a delegation of metal which will sweep away the fascist plague Mail/make cheques payable to: Spartacist ANZ Publishing Co .• workers. once and for all. GPO Box 3473, Sydney, NSW 2001. ~ Teachers union representatives s'aid Reprinted from Workers Vanguard that after the Rostock pogroms, the No 564, 27 November 1992

~MMER 1.992/199;J 11 Australasian , SPARTACIST ~ Nazi Murder Attacks in Germany

BERLIN, November 23-The continuing Stalinists let Hitler march to power un­ wave of terror by bands of fascist killers, hindered. kindled by the capitalist reunification of As the murder of Silvio Meier became Germany, reached a frenzy last weekend Leftists, Unions Protest known, there was a spontaneous march with the brutal murder offive people. In of several hundred protesters on Satur­ response there have been counterattacks day evening. On Sunday, some 5,000 by militant leftists and spontaneous anti­ marched, mostly semi-anarchist Auto­ fascist demonstrations, including the nome and squatters, to denounce the hesitant beginnings of action by the Nazi murder. The SpAD marched under trade-union movement. The Spartakist a red banner calling to "Stop the Nazis Workers Party is fighting for worker/ with Workers United-Front Action! Full immigrant mobilizations to crush the Citizenship Rights for Immigrant Work­ fascis t terrorists. ers and Their Families!" Spartakist signs On Friday night, November 20, 27- recalled how the SPD former mayor of year-old squatter Silvio Meier was knifed Berlin, Momper, had unleashed the to death by a clot of Nazis in Berlin. He federal border police against East Berlin and some friends were going to a disco squatters in November 1990. when they came across the fascists at an East Berlin subway stop. When the During the demonstration, Autonome squatters went after the Nazi punks, they repeatedly physically attacked the Spar­ were stabbed amid shouts of "leftist takist contingent and attempted to de­ pigs!" Silvio died from wounds to the stroy SpAD signs and banners, because lungs, while his two friends were taken they consider workers to be just as reac­ to the hospital with severe injuries. tionary as the fascists. However, the One of the attackers wore a patch Spartakists stood their ground, and a proclaiming "I'm Proud to Be a Ger­ number of immigrants and groups man." As Silvio's friends wrote of this helped in the successful defense of the fascist slogan the next day in a leaflet SpAD contingent. The Spartakists also titled "Rage and Mourning": "This defended a small group of TKP-ML stands for the pogroms in Rostock, Mann­ Turkish Maoists who were attacked. heim and elsewhere, for the murders of "Down with anti-communist censorship!" Nguyen Van Tu in Marzahn, of Antonio the SpAD chanted. Amadeu in Eberswalde, of Thorsten Spartakist The blind anti-working-class sec­ Lamprecht in Magdeburg, of Mete Eksi Spartaklst Workers Party contingent In protest against the racist pogrom toralism of the Autonome is downright In Rostock, August 29. Banner of the Committee for Social Defence says, in Charlottenburg, of almost 30 people "Workers/Immigrants: Stop the Nazis Nowl" suicidal. The Nazis are the reserve since 1990." troops of the Fourth Reich, who have Then, on Sunday night, Nazis in the group of two dozen leftist radicals broke "foreigners out" drive. And federal in­ flourished on the nationalist breeding west German town of MOlin, in the state up a neo-Nazi bar. terior minister Seiters is calling for limi­ ground of capitalist reunification. They of Schleswig-Holstein near Hamburg, The bourgeois press is comparing tations on the right to demonstrate. cannot be fought with impotent declar­ staged an arson attack on two houses, these clashes between leftists and rightist Some Social Democratic (SPD) ations of "rage" any more than with murdering a family of Turkish im­ thugs with the latter days of the Weimar spokesmen and the ex-Stalinist PDS popular-front demonstrations headed by migrants: 51-year-old Bahioy Arslan, her Republic. The comparison is greatly (Party of Democratic Socialism) are racist politicians concerned about "the lO-year-old grandchild Yeliz Arslan and overstated, and its purpose is to calling for banning right-wing "extremist" image of Germany abroad." The fascist her 14-year-old niece Atze Yilmaz. Min­ strengthen the repressive apparatus of organizations. But as the Marxist scum won't be defeated by random utes after firebombs were thrown, fas­ the capitalist state. Thus after months of analysis of the state explains, and his­ brawls, and certainly not by anti­ cists called the police, claiming credit and pointedly ignoring rightist attacks, the torical experience shows, such measures communist assaults. crying, "Heil Hitler!" The Turkish family Verfassungsschutz (Office for the Protec­ will inevitably be used mainly against In recent weeks, tens of thousands of had been living and working in Germany tion of the Constitution) suddenly inter­ the left. youth have gone into the streets to pro­ for six years. Nine others were wounded vened in the investigation of the MOlIn The situation cries out for mass test not only against Nazi attacks but in this murderous attack on the im­ attack. united-front working-class mobilization, also against the parliamentary debate migrants' houses. Meanwhile, federal chancellor Kohl to bring out the social power of workers over gutting the right to asylum, in­ It also became known last weekend has threatened to declare a "state emer­ and immigrants against the Nazis and to cluding the vile role of the SPD in the that a 53-year-old worker, who had gency" in order to "modify" (eliminate) defend refugees. This is the program racist anti-immigrant popular front (see called some skinheads in a pub "Nazi the constitutional right to asylum, thus Leon Trotsky repeatedly called for in the "Germany: Mass Outrage Over Fascist swine," was kicked to a pulp by the fas­ handing the Nazis a victory in their early 1930s, as the Social Democrats and continued on page 11 cists with their military boots, drenched with schnapps and then lit afire. The innkeeper whipped up the attaCk, saying the man was a Jew, and then helped to Trotskyists Say: "Freedom for Erich Honecker!" hide the body, which was later dumped in the Netherlands. Also this weekend, a former official of the Italian Communist Party who has been working in Germany for 27 years was attacked in his apartment by Nazis. In the space of two days, rightists fired guns into a squatters community in Rathenow, firebombed a refugee home in ScMningen, and threw a hand gren­ ade into a home for refugee children in Hamburg. In Rostock, scene of the anti­ Roma (Gypsy) pogrom last August, a dozen skinhead toughs roamed through the city smashing cars and terrorizing passers-by. Today another Turk was reportedly knifed. At the same time, in various towns of the ex-DDR (East Germany), left-wing youth have responded by going after the Le Bolchllvik CNN fascist killers. In Brandenburg, there was The anti-Communist show trial of Erich Honecker and other leaders of the former DDR opened In Berlin Nov­ a street fight between skinheads and ember 12. Sections of the International Communist League protested the wltchhunt, In Paris (left) November 7, leftists, leaving one injured on each side. anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, and outside courtroom In Berlin (right). The Trotskyists declared: In Rudolstadt, leftists took a bat to one "Defending the DDR Was Not a Crime, Seiling It Out Was," and "Stalinism Is dead, Communism Lives." of the rightist scum. And in Erfurt, a 12 SUMMER 1992/1993