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No. 564 ~X-623 27 November 1992

How the .. Soviet Workers State Was St~angled

November 7 marked the 75th anniver­ tion!", which was immediately trans­ letarian political revolution. As a result KGB and armed forces, the multinational sary of the Bolshevik Revolution. But lated into Russian and distributed in over of Yeltsin's victory: union is ripping apart as one republic after another proclaims secession. the workers state erected by the Bolshe­ 100,000 copies throughout the Soviet "The first workers state in history, "But while Yeltsin & Co. now see a vik power, far and away the greatest con­ Union, we wrote that workers mobili­ sapped and undermined by decades of clear field to push through a forced­ quest of the international proletariat and zations should have cleaned out the Stalinist bureaucratic misrule. lies in tat­ draft reintroduction of capitalism. lite ters. The state power has been fractured; out('ome is not yeT dctinitil'c/v dccided .... a momentous leap forward for humanity, counterrevolutionary rabble on Yeltsin's the Communist Party-its bureaucratic did not survive its 75th year. The period Opposition from the factories against barricades, thus opening the road to pro- core-shattered and banned from the the ravage,> of capitalist assault could ... of open counterrevolution ushered in by prevent the rapid consolidation of Boris Yeltsin's pro-imperialist counter­ counterrevolution . ., coup in August 1991 has, in the absence --WV No. 533, 30 August 1991 of mass working-class resistance, cul­ In the interim there was no decisive minated in the creation of a bourgeois action to stop that consolidation. Politi­ state. however fragile and reversible. cally atomized by nearly 70 years of The task facing the Soviet proletariat Stalinist usurpation of political life, par­ today is socialist revolution to restore alyzed by the CIA-supported pro-Yeltsin proletarian power and reforge the Soviet "free trade unions" and the virulent Union on the foundation of J-,enin and chauvinist poison of numerous Stalinist Trotsky'S Bolshevik internationalism. remnants, the multinational Soviet work­ The ascendancy of ing class hasheen overwhelmed by ~~ Yeltsin and capitalist­ the counterrevolutionary tide. The Yel­ CI) restorationist forces tsin regime seized the advantage to tear backing him was a away at·every vestige of the Soviet degen­ o erated workers state and push through C') pivotal event in deter­ o mining the fate of the the piecemeal consolidation of the coun­ a:> Soviet Union, but it terrevolution. Quantity has now turned o was not conclusive. into quality. . "­ "<:t In our August 1991 But the situation cannot long continue "<:t article, "Soviet Work­ Spartacist as it is. For Yeltsin and other restora­ ers: Defeat Yeltsin- ICL banner outside January Soviet officers conference in Moscow: "No to tionists to nail down a solid capitalist o Bush Counterrevolu- Capitalist Restoration! Yes to Gains of October!" continued on page 6 ·10 Re$p'oo.se to Crowo Heights Verdict Zionists Seek Race War in NYC The Brooklyn neighb,orhood of Crown NYPD racist killers. Nelson's defense verdict, a mob of 500 Satmar Hasidim up race war. On November 9, Rabbi Avi Heights has erupted again, after a jury attorney was able to point to glaring set upon five black and Hispanic teen­ W,9ss led a march on Gracie Mansion, of blacks, Hispanics and whites returned inconsistencies in the cops' testimony, agers in the Williamsburg area of his followers shouting racist slurs and a verdict of "not guilty" on October 29 and the jury voted for acquittal. One juror .Brooklyn. The same day, 400 mem­ carrying a coffin "fitted to the contours in the case of a black youth charged summed up what every New Yorker bers of the Lubavitcher sect gathered of Mayor David N. Dinkins" (New York with the murder of Yankel Rosenbaum. knows-"The police were not honest." on Ocean Parkway, the dividing line Times, 9 November). They took out a Rosenbaum, a member of the ultra­ But the right-wing Zionists don't care­ between the Hasidic and black commu­ full-page ad in the Times ten days later orthodox Lubavitcher Hasidic sect, was they wanted a guilty verdict, guilty or nities in Crown Heights. When a black to escalate their campaign of race-hate. stabbed by a gang of black youths in not. veteran of World War II appealed to them On November 12, Noach Dear stormed August 1991 during the explosion of After the verdict, a dean of the NYU . that "We rescued you from the concen­ into a City Council meeting demanding rage after a seven-year-old black child, Medical School pointed to the "outra­ tration camps!", Hasidic racists shouted that it condemn the verdict, and then Gavin Cato, was struck down and killed geous medical neglect" that contributed taunts of "You go back to Africa." denounced black councilwoman Mary by a reckless driver in the entourage to Rosenbaum's death that night at Kings There are more sinister, and more Pinkett as an "anti-Semite" when she of Lubavitcher head Rabbi Menachem County Hospital-neglect that the black powerful, forces pushing for race war refused to knuckle under. Pinkett said of Schneerson. and Hispanic poor of Brooklyn are also than the isolated Lubavitchers. Right­ Dear that he was trying to "out-JDL the For three days that August, anger raged routinely subjected to. The 29-year-old wing Zionists in NYC are still seething JDL." in this neighborhood of largely Carib­ scholar died two hours after he was over the acquittal last year of an Egyp­ Who stands to benefit from the re­ bean blacks. Over 2,000 cops flooded admitted, because of what one doctor tian in the death of Zionist Meir Kahane, peated bouts of race and ethnic hatred into Crown Heights. After the stabbing called peripheral lung injuries "that founder of the fascistic Jewish Defense are the WASP Wall Street bankers who of Rosenbaum, the cops pkked up 17- should not kill anyone in 1991." League. In Israel, on the second anni­ really do rule NYC, and their killers in year-old Lemrick Nelson Jr. and charged Now Zionist leaders and right-wing versary of Kahane's death, his followers blue. Just two months ago, 10,000 armed him with murder. The killing of Yanke I politicians like Ed Koch and Brooklyn in "Kahane Chai" threw a grenade into police besieged City Hall in an ominous Rosenbaum was a vicious racist crime. councilman Noach Dear have seized a crowded marketplace in Arab East display of racist cop bonapartism aimed But the case that the prosecution took on the verdict to launch a provoca­ ( Jerusalem, killing one Palestinian and at black mayor Dinkins. Now the media to a Brooklyn jury over a year later was tive escalating campaign for race war wounding a number of others. In Crown is full of accounts of a recent case of a based purely on the testimony of the in New York City. The day after the Heights they paraded with JDL slogans black plainclothes transit cop who was like "Every Jew a .22." Schoolchildren shot at2] times by his white colleagues were given placards reading "Execute who "thought he was a mugger." But Nelson Now." they are silent about the long list of black The Workers State and Certified racist pig and former mayor and Hispanic victims of the NYPD. Proletarian Consciousness Ed Koch went to Crown Heights to whip After the killing of Gavin Cato, the up racist hatred, appearing at a Novem­ anger of black Crown Heights, espe­ Leon- Trotsky emphasized time and again ber 1 rally of 4,500 with vigilante Guard­ cially against the police, was criminally that Stalinism was leading the Soviet Union ian Angel punk Curtis Sliwa, Senator Al misdirected by nationalist demagogues to ruin, opening the floodgates to capitalist D' Amato, and former federal prosecutor like Sonny Carson and Al Sharpton into restoration. In his definitive analysis of the and mayoral candidate Rudy Giuliani. hideous anti-Semitic attacks on the Lu­ bureaucratic degeneration of the Soviet work­ "Wanted for Murder" posters of black bavitch community and individual Jews. ers state, The Revolution Betrayed, he posed mayor David Dinkins were handed out. Black youths marched on synagogues the question: "Will the bureaucrat devour the Koch rails about the "physical fear chanting "Heil Hitler!" It is only the rac­ workers' state, or will the working class clean because of black violence" and declares, ist oppressors who benefit from blacks TROTSKY up the bureaucrat?" The subjective factor, the LENIN "We are on the cusp of a white, which and Jews going at each other's throats. consciousness, and organization of the work- includes Jewish, exodus" (New York Even more grotesquely, in the wake ing masses, was key to defending the gains of October, just as the leadership of Lenin Times, 19 November). and Trotsky's Bolsheviks was key in leading the struggle for power in 1917. In the of the murder of Yankel Rosenbaum, absence ofa rev()lutionary party grounded in an internationalist perspective, the workers The Zionists think they can treat supposed leftists like the defunct state would, sooner or later, succumb to capitalist counterrevolution. blacks in New York like Palestinians on "Fourth Internationalist Tendency" actu­ the West Bank. But this is a dangerous ally applauded such attacks (see "Crown The proletarian revolution not only frees the productive forces from the fetters of illusion.' Moreover, with their racist Heights: FIT Panders to Pogromists," private ownership but also transfers them to the direct disposal of the state that it itself provocations the Zionists are fueling WV No. 538, 8 November 1991). In this crttates. While the bourgeois state, after the revolution, confines itself to a police role, powerful reactionary forces which are they only aid the bourgeoisie in diverting leaving the market to its own laws, the workers' state assumes the direct role of not exactly "friends of the Jewish peo­ the anger of black youth away from the economist and organizer. The replacement of one political regime by another exerts ple." When anti-Semites like Mississippi cops and the racist rulers of this country. only an indirect and superficial influence upon market economy. On the contrary, the governor Kirk Fordice and the likes of As we wrote in "Death in Crown replacement of a workers" government by a bourgeois or petty-bourgeois government David Du.lce proclaim the U.S; a "Chris­ Heights" in August 1991: "It's going to would inevitably lead to the liquidation of the planned beginnings and, subsequently, tian nation," they have Jews as well as take hard class struggle and a revolu­ to the restoration of private property. In contradistinction to capitalism, socialism is built blacks in the~r sights. tionary workers party to defend the myr­ not automatically but consciously. Progress towards socialism is inseparable from that But the Zi~nists poisori the possi­ iad communities which make up this state power that is desirous of socialism ot that is constrained to desire it. Socialism bility of compiori Jewishlblact struggle country, and to win a future for an entire can acquire an immutable character only at a very high stage of its development, when against the fascists. as they ~ to whip generation of youth." _ its productive forces have far transcended those of capitalism, when the human wants of each and all can obtain bounteous satisfaction and when the state will have com­ pletely withered aWay'; dissolving in society. But all this is still in the distant future. At the given stage of development, the socialist construction $tands and falls with the workers' state. '. ....se Committee Benefits The inevitable collapse of Stalinist Bonapartism would immediately call into question the character of the USSR as a workers' state. A socialist economy cannot be con­ structed without a socialist power. The fate of the USSR as a socialist state depends upon that political regime that will arise to replace Stalinist Bonapartism. Only the revolutionary vanguard of the proletariat can regenerate the soviet system, if it is again able to mobilize around itself the toilers of the city and the village. -Leon Trotsky, "The Workers' State, Thermidor and Bonapartism" , (February 1935) Come-,t8"~~a Fundraising Party! MusiC;c e Dancing. Food ~~:,~ Saturday, Dec. 5,1Jtip.m. Sunday, Dec. 6, 3-7 p.m. ~<- UE Hall Please call for informatkm: 37 S. Ashland Ave. !~!'!.!!!m'...~!~!!~/!.! ~ (404) 659-0251 DIRECTOR OF PARTY PUBLICATIONS: Liz Gordon For information: (312) 663-0719 EDITOR: Jan Norden PRODUCTION MANAGER: Joan Parker CIRCULATION MANAGER: Karen Valdez EDITORIAL BOARD: George Foster, Frank Hunter, Jane Kerrigan, Len Meyers, James Robertson, . Friday, Dec. 18, 5-9:30 p.m'. Joseph Seymour, Alison Spencer, Marjorie Stamberg Wetlands The Spartacist League is the U.S. Section of the International Communist League (Fourth 161 Hudson (at Laight) Internationalfst) . For information: (212) 406-4252 ~rkers Vanguard (USPS 098-770) published biweekly, except 2nd issue August and with 3-week interval December. by ,the Spartacist Publishing Co., 41 Warren Street, New York, NY 10007. T~hone; (212) 732-7862 (Editorial), (212) 732-7861 (Business). Address all correspondence to; Box 1377, Gpo, New York. NY 10116. Domestic subscriptions: $7.00124 issues. Second-class postage paid at New York. NY. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to KbrkefS Vanguard, Box 1377, GPo., New York, NY 10116. " Opinions expressed in signed articJes or leiters do I10t necessarily 9Xpfflss tfIec etlitr1riBl riewpoint. $8 at door, $1Q 90ntributing' to Class-Struggle Defens~ Notes for one year.) No. 564 27 November 1992

2 WORKERS VANGUARD Victory to the Cal TA Strike! is a tradition and principle for the per­ nicious RWL. The very first issue of ·'Q~ii.WI"'y, ...... their newspaper carried a front-page . defense of scabbing on the 1977 clerical workers strike in Ann Arbor, using the SaltaCrllZ .. nauseating argument that to risk their own jobs by honoring picket lines Picket lines went up at the University would "deprive the clerical struggle of of California at Berkeley on November leadership." 19 as teaching assistants organized in At Berkeley, the RWL reincarnat­ the Association of Graduate Student ed itself as the "Ad Hoc Committee for Employees (AGSE) walked off the job a Campus-Wide Strike" and issued a to demand union recognition. Facing a leaflet calling for a strike support $225 million budget shortfall, the arro­ "strategy" meeting-to be held on the gant UC administration lavished a pay struck campus! RWLers hysterically raise on Berkeley chancellor Tien on harangued AGSE strikers, urging them the eve of the strike while sneering to leave the picket lines to build sup­ that TAs-who carry 60 percent of the port among scabbing students! The course load-are students, not employ­ strikers stayed at their posts and the ees. And a $650 tuition hike was just RWL blithely waltzed acrQss the class announced! line ... again. United action by students, faculty and Meanwhile, the International Socialist campus workers is needed to defeat the Organization (ISO), which always capit­ university's union-busting, fee-hiking ulates to whatever pressure they feel the frenzy. The Spartacus Youth Club is out most, intended to break the strike and , vvv Photo on AGSE picket lines urging, "Picket UC Berkeley, November 20: Picket lines on second day of AGSE teaching have their national honcho, Ahmed Lines Mean Don't Cross!" and "On assistants strike. Shawki, give a speech on Malcolm X on Strike Means'Shut It Down!" the struck campus. Whining that "the On Monday, November 23, teaching behind picket lines, like at Berkeley! A this widespread scabbing. They view the union leadership says it's OK," the ISO assistants at UC Santa Cruz also struck student sit-in against fee hikes earlier picket line merely as a pressure tactic canceled the forum at the last minute and a mass picket of 300 people (in­ this month politicized the Santa Cruz on "friends" in the state legislature and after grueling confrontations with Spar­ cluding many undergraduates) went up. campus and ended with a police attack administration. While appealing for a tacus Youth Club members on the picket Campus bus drivers honored the lines on the protesters. class boycott, they've yet to try to build line. Imagine what Malcolm X would and other campus workers found their Unfortunately, at Berkeley few under­ pickets to shut it down! have said about scab "socialists" who contractual "no strike" clauses made graduates walk the lines, and the other Working overtime to undermine the honor the battle lines of struggle only at them too ill to report to work. Strike campus unions have told their members picket lines at Berkeley are the scabby their convenience! support meetings at Santa Cruz are held to go on working during the strike. The "socialists" in the misnamed Revolution­ We say: Picket Lines Mean Don't off campus, as they should be-not AGSE bureaucrats are responsible for ary Workers League. Active class treason Cross! Victory to the TA Strike!_ Efrain Lopez: Latest Victim of the LAPD LOS ANGELES-Six months after L.A. city. To the ruling class of this country, exploded in outrage over the acquittal blacks and Latinos are surplus popula­ of the cops who nearly beat Rodney King tion, and their hired henchmen treat them to death, racist cop terror is still raging as such. Family and unabated against the black and Latino Students and community members friends of Efrain Lopez population. At I a.m. on November 9, erupted in a series of angry protests. On protest LAPD nine bullets were pumped into the chest Wednesday, November II, a contingent killer cops. of an I8-year-old Latino youth, Efrain from the Cal State Northridge chapter of Lopez, who held nothing in his hands the Chicano.~ student group MEChA but a broomstick. The trigger-happy joined a crowd of 150 people in front of killer cop, Neil Goldberg, is from the the police station. Protesters faced a notorious Foothill Division station, the brick wall that was hurriedly built after same one the cops who beat Rodney . the upheaval last spring to protect this again, after an open casket wake which police chief, Willie L. Williams, black King worked out of. Lopez' mother had infamous station from the just outrage sharpened everyone's sense of loss and front man for the racist rulers. Los flagged down a patrol car in the hope of of future demonstrators. On Monday, injustice. Angeles is near the edge again, as the getting help to subdue her unruly son. November 16, about 75 people, mostly The murder of Efrain Lopez is only feds plan to "retry" the four cops in the But all she got was a tragic reminder of family, friends and neighbors of the vic­ the latest in a string of atrocities presided Rodney King case who were acquitted in how the LAPD treats non-whites in this tim, returned to the station to protest over by Darrell Gates' replacement as the Simi Valley state court. That the federal "prosecutors" are on the same class side as the racist L.A. cops was shown by a "leak" of the prosecutors' "secret" strategy papers to the defense. While the racist cops may get off again, a verdict is expected shortly in the trial of three black youth charged in the From Malcolm X to the despicable beating of white truck driver Reginald Denny during the riots. Los Angeles Upheaval And in Detroit, black people with Now Available-Issue NO.2: An appreciation of signs calling to "Jail the Killer Cops!" "Malcolm X: Courageous Fighter for Slack L,iberation," and "Avenge Malice Green!" have been and "SNCC: 'Slack Power' and the Democrats." No.2 in this Spartacist pamphlet series focuses on the civil protesting the cop murder of a black rights movement. Must reading for all students of this motorist there on November 3. Green got crucial period and today's fighters for black liberation. the Rodney King treatment, and died after being dragged from his car and Just Out-Issue No.9: The verdict in the Rodney King case threw a spotlight on the racial oppression at the beaten by the cops. With mounting anger root of this capitalist society. No.9 in this series in the city, the authorities rushed to indict explores the significance of America's first "interracial the cops in the hope of heading off a riot," 25 years after the ghetto explosions that shook America. social explosion. From L.A. to Detroit, we need to forge a revolutionary party Single copies of Issue No.2, $.75; Issue No.9, $1 that will act as a tribune of all the Make checks payable to/mall to: oppressed in leading the working class Spartacist Pub. Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 to power and putting an ena to racist ruling-class terror once and for all. _

27 NOVEMBER 1992 3 Leftists, Unions Protest Nazi Murder Attacks in Germany BERLIN, November 23-The continu­ The blind anti-working-class sectoral­ ing wave of terror by bands of fascist ism of the Autonome is downright sui­ killers, kindled by the capitalist reunifi­ cidal. The Nazis are the reserve troops cation of Germany, reached a frenzy last of the Fourth Reich, who have flourished weekend with the brutal murder of five on the nationalist breeding grou,nd of people. In response there have been capitalist reunification. They cannot be counterattacks by militant leftists and fought with impotent declarations of spontaneous anti-fascist demonstrations, "rage" any more than with popular-front including the hesitant beginnings of demonstrations headed by racist politi­ action by the trade-union movement. cians concerned about "the image of The Spartakist Workers Party is fighting Germany abroad." The fascist scum for worker/immigrant mobilizations to won't be defeated by random brawls, and crush the fascist terrorists. certainly not by anti-communist assaults. On Friday night, November 20, In recent weeks, tens of thousands of 27-year-old squatter Silvio Meier was youth have gone into the streets to pro­ knifed to death by a clot of Nazis in test not only against Nazi attacks but Berlin. He and some friends were going also against the parliamentary debate to a disco when they came across the over gutting the right to asylum, includ­ fascists at an East Berlin subway stop. ing the vile role of the SPD in the rac­ When the squatters went after the ist anti-immigrant popular front (see Nazi punks, they were stabbed amid "Germany: Mass Outrage Over Fascist shouts of "leftist pigs!" Silvio died from Terror," WV No. 563, 13 November). wounds to the lungs, while his two These youth must be won to fight for friends were taken to the hospital with the independent mobilization of the severe injuries: working class, including the key com­ One of the attackers wore a patch pro­ ponent of immigrant workers, who are claiming ''I'm Proud to Be a German." increasingly the target of the fascist sl attacks. This is the program of the SpAD. As Silvio's friends wrote of this fascist Spartakist Workers Party contingent in protest against the racist pogrom slogan the next day in a leaflet titled in Rostock, August 29. Banner of the Committee for Social Defense says, In fact, the unions are feeling intense "Rage and Mourning": "This stands for "Workers/Immigrants: Stop the Nazis Now!" pressure to act. A demonstration yester­ the pogroms' in Rostock, Mannheim and day in Berlin which attracted some 5,000 elsewhere, for the murders of Nguyen strengthen the repressive apparatus of and Stalinists let Hitler march to power people was called by the DGB (German Van Tu in Marzahn, of Antonio Amadeu the capitalist state. Thus after months of unhindered. trade-union federation), as well as the in Eberswalde, of Thorsten Lamprecht pointedly ignoring rightist attacks, the As the murder of Silvio Meier became Alternative Slate/Greens and immigrant in Magdeburg, of Mete Eksi in Charlot­ VerJassungsschutz (Office for the Protec­ known, there was a spontaneous march groups. There were union contingents tenburg, of almost 30 people since tion of the Constitution) suddenly inter­ of several hundred protesters on Satur­ with shop stewards and factory council 1990." vened in the investigation of the Molin day evening. On Sunday, some 5,000 members, notably from the teachers Then, on Sunday night, Nazis in the attack. marched, mostly semi-anarchist Auto­ union, and a delegation of metal workers. west German town of Molin, in the state Meanwhile, federal chancellor Kohl nome and squatters, to denounce the Teachers union representatives said of Schleswig-Holstein near Hamburg, has threatened to declare a "state emer­ Nazi murder. The SpAD marched under that after the Rostock pogroms, the staged an arson attack on two houses, gency" in order to "modify" (eliminate) a red banner calling to "Stop the Nazis phones at DGB headquarters were ring­ murdering a family of Turkish immi­ the constitutional right to asylum, thus with Workers United-Front Action! Full ing off the hook with requests from the grants: 51-year-old Bahioy Arslan, her handing the Nazis a victory in their "for­ Citizenship Rights for Immigrant Work­ plants for buses to take protesters to lO-year-old grandchild Yeliz Arslan and eigners out" drive. And federal interior ers and Their Families!" Spartakist signs demonstrate at the Baltic port, but the her 14-year-old niece Atze Yilmaz. Min­ minister Seiters is calling for limitations recalled how the SPD former mayor of DGB tops refused. The heavily immigrant utes after firebombs were thrown, fas­ on the right to demonstrate. Berlin, Momper, had unleashed the fed­ metal workers union together with the cists called the police, claiming credit Some Social Democratic (SPD) eral border police against East Berlin bTV public employees union could de­ and crying, "Heil Hitler!" The Turkish spokesmen and the ex-Stalinist PDS squatters in November 1990. fend the refugee hostels and make the sub­ family had been living and working in (Party of Democratic Socialism) are call­ During the demonstration, Autonome ways secure with workers defense guards. Germany for six years. Nine others were ing for banning right-wing "extremist" repeatedly physically attacked the Spar­ The Spartakist Workers Party and wounded in this murderous attack on the organizations. But as the Marxist anal­ takist contingent and attempted to de­ the International Communist League immigrants' houses. ysis of the state explains, and historical stroy SpAD signs and banners, because uniquely fought against capitalist reuni­ It also became known last week­ experience shows, such measures will they consider workers to be just as fication of Germany, and we have con­ end that a 53-year-old worker, who had inevitably be used mainly against the reactionary as the fascists. However, tinued to fight against its consequences, called some skinheads in a pub "Nazi left. the Spartakists stood their,ground, and including mass unemployment, attacks swine," was kicked to a pulp by the fas­ The situation cries. out for mass a number of immigrants and groups on women's rights, anti-Semitism and cists with their military boots, drenched united-front working-class mobilization, helped in the successful defense of the racist terror. At the Berlin protests, the with schnapps and then lit afire. The inn­ to bring out the social power of workers SpAD contingent. The Spartakists also Spartakists shouted out: "The working keeper whipped up the attack, saying the and immigrants against the Nazis and to defended a small group of TKP-ML class will avenge Silvio Meier!" We are man was a Jew, and then helped'to hide defend refugees. This is the program Turkish Maoists who were attacked. fighting for socialist revolution, which the body, which was later dumped in the Leon Trotsky repeatedly called for in "Down with anti-communist censor­ will sweep away the fascist plague once Netherlands. ' . the early 1930s, as the Social Democrats ship!" the SpAD chanted. and for all .• 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 Trotskyists Say: "Freedom for Erich Honecker!" guns into a squatters community in Rathenow, firebombed a refugee home in Schoningen, and threw a hand grenade into a home for refugee children in Ham­ burg. 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 fascist killers. In Brandenburg, there was a street fight between skinheads and left­ ists. leaving one injured on each side. In Rudolstadt, leftists took a bat to one of the rightist scum. And in Erfurt, a group of two dozen leftist radicals broke up a neo-Nazi bar. The bourgeois press is comparing The anti-Communist show trial of Erich Honecker and other leaders of the former DDR (East Germany) opened in these clashes between leftists and right­ Berlin on November 12. Sections of the International Communist League protested this witchhunt, in Paris (left) on ist thugs with the latter days of the November 7, anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, and outside the courtroom in Berlin (right). The Trotskyists Weimar Republic. The comparison is declared: "Defending the DDR Was Not a Crime, Selling It Out Was," and "Stalinism Is Dead, Communism Lives." greatly overstated, and its purpose is to 4 WORKERS VANGUARD The Melbourne strike action came a year after the one-day general strike in New South Wales (NSW) against then Tory premier Greiner's proposed anti­ union laws, laws which nevertheless sailed through Parliament and stand today. Now the ACTU tops are planning a 24-hour "day of protest" on November 30, designed to channel the spate of strikes and workers' actions across the country into the "safe" channels of ALP parliamentary maneuvers. As workers from the wharves to the mines to the metal trades are demanding and trying to organise a fight, as the state of Victoria is racked by "rolling" strikes of public transport, hospital, maritime, and other workers, NSW Trades and Labour Coun­ r;t cil secretary Michael Easson is urging that November 30 be a day of "lunchtime f~A rallies, pamphlet drops and prayers for i; good industrial relations." Easson has declared that "a lot of people wanted people on their legs in the street. I wanted them on their knees" (Australian, 12 November). Leon Trotsky, writing in the 1930s, accurately captured the nature of such maneuverings in fake general strikes called by reformist bureaucrats: " ... the leadership of the strike pre­ viously, i.e., without a struggle, arrives at an agreement with the class enemy as to the course and outcome of the strike. The parliamentarians and the trade unionists perceive at a given moment the need to provide an outlet for the accu­ mulated ire of the masses, or they are simply compelled to jump in step with a movement that has flared over their 150,000 March in heads. In such cases they come scurrying through the backstairs to the government and obtain permission to head the gen­ eral strike, this with the obligation to conclude it as soon as possible, without any damage being done to the state crockery." Melbourne Strike Rally - "The ILP and the Fourth International" (September 1935) MELBOURNE-On November 10, over outlaw all strikes and pickets. of the working class. Long gone are The power of the Australian working 150,000 people marched through the At the base the working class wanted the years when the mining-based Aus­ class must be unleashed, both against streets here and rallied outside the to respond to the anti-labour onslaught tralian economy-which drew fabulous capitalist attacks at home and to link up parliament building (Melbourne is the with all-out strike action to defeat profits from the exports to the major with workers' struggles internationally. capital of the state of Victoria). It was Kennett's plans. But the union bureau­ imperialist powerhouses of Europe, North Just as Australian waterfront workers one of the biggest demonstrations seen crats, with Victorian Trades Hall Council America and Japan-could generate once fought in solidarity with the in Australia since the Vietnam antiwar (THC) secretary John Halfpenny at the sufficient wealth to give the working Indonesian independence struggle in protests. This was the culmination of helm, sabotaged the mobilisation of the class a relatively high and comfortable 1946-48, just as Australian workers a day of statewide strike action by full power of labour on November 10. standard of living. The international struck against the dirty losing war of U.S. some 800,000 workers, including tens While maritime workers went out, many crisis which has hammered these coun­ imperialism and its Australian junior of thousands of teachers, nurses and workers under federal awards were told tries has left the Australian economy a partners in Indochina, so today the power public employees, as well as maritime to stay at work, including the strategi­ shambles. of Australian mine and transport workers and metal workers. Immigrant and cally placed public transport workers. Labour relations in Australia are gov­ could be brought to bear in strike action women workers were a highly visible With only a third of the workforce on erned by the Conciliation and Arbitration against the mining barons, in solidarity part of this massive show of anger strike, most of private industry as well system----:a corporatist structure which with the struggles of British, South Afri­ directed at the declaration of war on the as the business and retail heart of Mel­ has evolved over the course of decades. can and Fijian mine workers. state's workers and poor by the newly bourne continued to operate. The courts of the capitalist state regulate But this means centrally a fight to elected Liberal Party government of Vic­ After years of gruelling austerity, job the unions in every sphere, from wages forge a revolutionary, internationalist toria premier Jeff Kennett. slashing and union-busting, the widely and conditions to the conduct of. strikes leadership in struggle against the pro­ After years of escalating unemploy­ hated federal government of Australian to the election of union officials and capitalist social-democratic fakers of the ment and austerity under state and fed­ Labor Party (ALP) chief Paul Keating the disbursement of union funds. For eral Labor Party governments, the Tory ALP, and for independence from the rac­ is facing electora1 defeat. Halfpenny and years, under the federal Labor Party ist Australian capitalist state. As the Kennett regime has announced the axing Australian Council of Trade Unions governments of Robert Hawke and now SL/A leaflet stated: of tens of thousands of government jobs, (ACTU) bureaucrats are trying to divert Paul Keating, the Arbitration Court­ "Keating and Kennett are waging a bi­ along with savage cuts t~ public trans­ w9rkers' anger into a campaign to get sanctioned Accord has imposed give­ partisan war on the working class and port, education, health and social serv­ the union-busting Keating government backs and job slashing which have poor. It is desperately necessary to forge ices. Kennett's battery of legislation re-elected. Thus the Nov~mber 10 rally eroded workers' livelihoods and their a revolutionary leadership of the work­ aims to replace existing conditions under had a real popular-frontist character, ing class to fight for a workers govern­ organizations. This has paved the way ment that can provide jobs and a decent existing awards (court-sanctioned con­ ranging from Halfpenny and his reform­ for today's Tory government attacks. The living wage and life for working people tracts between unions and bosses) with ist "left" tails, such as the International labour fakers have turned Karl Marx's through smashing the profit system root individual contracts, putting everything Socialists, to assorted church hierarchies famous observation that '''the working and branch .... up for grabs-holiday and sick leave and the major Melbourne bourgeois class has nothing to lose but its chains" "For revolutionary class struggle on entitlements, length of the workweek, the road to a racially integrated workers daily, the Age. on its head-they want the workers in republic of Australia, part of a socialist overtime rates, workers' accident com­ In the last two weeks, comrades of the Arbitration chains. Asia!". pensation entitlements. Massive finan­ Spartacist League/Australia (SL/A) have cial penalties are planned to virtually distributed 20,000 copies of a leaflet entitled "From Kennett to Keating, Bury the Union Busters!" which declared: Spartacist League "It is going to take hard class struggle that stops Kennett and Keating in their tracks, and it has to be organised across Public Offices (federal and state award) industries Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of the Spartacist League -MARXIST LlTERATUR'E­ throughout the state and spread nation­ ally. For a general strike that closes" the 0$7/24 issues of Workers Vanguard 0$3/3 issues of Bay Area state down tight! No to THClACTU sell­ (includes English-language Spartacist) Women and Revolution Thurs.: 5:30-8:00 p.m., Sat.: 1 :00-5:00 p.m. out deals! Throw out the labour traitors! o New 0 Renewal 1634 Telegraph, 3rd Floor (near 17th Street) For a class-struggle leadership! For a international rates: 0$2/4 issues of Oakland, California Phone: (510) 839-0851 working-class offensive that rolls back $25/24 issues-Airmail $7/24 issues-Seamail Espartaco (en espano!) Kennett/Keating's union busting capital­ (includes Spanish-language Chicago ist austerity and job slashing!" o $2/10 introductory issues of Workers Vanguard Spartacist) Tues.: 5:00-9:00 p.m., Sat.: 11 :ooa.m.-2:oo p.m. The Australian ruling class is full of 161 W. Harrison St., 10th Floor Name ______~------Chicago, Illinois Phone: (312) 663-0715 triumphalism over the imperialist lie of Address ______the "death of communism." But caught lew York City in the grip of the interimperialist rivalry ______Apt. # Phone ( ____ ) ______Tues.: 6:30-9:00 p.m., Sat.: 1:00-5:00 p.m. between the U.S. and Japan, burdened 41 Warren St. (one block below City State Zip ______~:;;_:_ Chambers St. near Church St.) with debt and squeezed by its interna­ • 564 New York, NY Phone: (212) 267-1025 tional creditors, it is driven to enor­ Make checks payable/mall to: SpartacIat PublIshIng Co., Box 1377 Gpo' New York, NY 10118 mously increase its rate of exploitation 27 NOVEMBER 1992 5 Workers State _a.61OI1I1eT8HbCnapraKOBIl8B lSPARTACIST) Strangled ... •...... ,3 • •Atl* (continued from page 1) .....li .... regime, sooner rather than later a bloody COBBTCKIB PBlo.IB' reckoning is likely, signaling to the 1I000i BObqIHCKO-IYIUBBCKYIO masses that there is a new order. With KOHTPPBBOOlOql101 explosions of struggle by workers driven ~~...=.-~. ~~~':""-=-=...... "..~.--...... --.,...---­~.--.~ to desperation, or even without them, the --.------...... ------. .. -- ...... -. """-,...... "...... ~.5.::::5=-:"~ -_0_11:",,"~~.:=-s- __- r..,...... _...... -.--..--.- __',..-.- ....., nascent bourgeois forces will move to --~.~.-....------....---...-. .... - ..... _- impose heavy-handed· order through a :::..:.w:--===:---. ,.,,!:.:-...:.~T_.~ o-..'1'O __ ~.__..... -... _.n..----~. __ ,...._ -----_...... -~- .. .".,.. ~--,--- "strong state." The recent vicious crack­ ~---.--...... - ... =::n...-==:",---=-._- _---- :::.-_._----.._'-"'-=i:.:i:: _---­ down, using Russian OMON riot police, =--=--':""".:::'"a:::'- "~--=--..,-=- ~-::.:~:=a::.'":::._.~ ...... - ..... --- ""'---.---==-~;.::a on a strike by air traffic controllers fore­ ...... _...... -.-__ --...- - -~.-..... --...... - ... shadows the would-be exploiters' deter­ --.....,,-",<. ""------'--"..-.-..- """'--..--..,.--.~ ,-­ ... -.... - mination to repress any working-class 0....;,.,;;;-;;;""";.:;:...-",:,:::,::---'- .;.::::.-- -=.....--..:... ----..- ~..:::... _-----...... -.,.-- • ...--,.-""'". ------"...... --._-- ... '10 resistance. The rising racist hysteria --r=d-:=':"'-=:='-=--==.. _A-. __ ...... ,.,.._ -...... _.;:,:.:::::~ __ • __ .. ..--.-,--....-~ against people from Central Asia and the ~.------.--.-----.~-- '-I!.o ______- .• ..... --..-".....-. .-...-,.- Caucasus in major Russian cities creates August 1991: Plotters of "perestroika coup" kept tanks idling in Red Square ------..-...... -..- _- --~C-~o._ ...... " ..~.-...-~- .. """'(I'I ...~-) instead of sending them against counterrevolutionary HQ at Yeltsin's White --.. _:tltOl.t...... _, ..... " the climate for pogroms. With ethnic House. ICL statement (right) declared: "Soviet Workers: Defeat Yeltsin-Bush conflicts brewing on a dozen fronts on Counterrevolution!" the periphery of the Russian repUblic, from the Baltics, to Abkhazia in Georgia total collapse, the government has been air traffic controllers in the Russian fed­ served its bourgeois masters by directly and the Transdniester in Moldova, to the pumping credits into industry: the state eration was decisively broken by the Yel­ aiding and abetting imperialist revanch­ tsin government using the OMON and ele­ longstanding nationalist civil war be­ budget deficit is escalating to a trillion ments of the MVD and KGB. An African ism in seeking to destroy the conquests tween Armenians and Azerbaijanis in the rubles, and debts of industrial enterprises student at Patrice Lumumba University of October. Since rising to power over Caucasus, the possibility of a Yugoslav­ are over 2 trillion. The result has been was shot down by the Moscow militia the backs of the Soviet working class style fratricidal bloodbath is all too real. hyperinflation, variously estimated at an amidst a hysterical racist press campaign. through a political counterrevolution in The Soviet workers state-which once annual rate of 14,000 percent (Moscow Tons of volumes of the works of Marx, 1923-24, the Stalinist bureaucracy im­ Engel§ and Lenin are being destroyed in served as a beacon for the exploited and Times) or 20,000 percent (Commersant). a pure ideological anti-communist frenzy." posed a suffocating isolation on the first oppressed of this globe, which destroyed In the month of October alone, the ruble - "For the Communism of workers state, suppressing one inter­ Hitler's Holocaust machine, which for fell by half its value. Since January the Lenin and Trotsky" national revolutionary opportunity after decades kept U.S. imperialism from price of bread has climbed on the order The conference drew a balance sheet another. In the name of building "social­ turning its nuclear arsenal on the world's of a hundredfold. As the economy on these events and unanimously en­ ism in one country," the Stalinists­ semicolonial 'peoples-is dead. But the decomposes, the bulk of the population dorsed a 26 September document which through terror and lies-methodically class struggle is not. The nascent bour- teeters on the brink of outright starva- said: "The August 1991 events ('coup' attacked and eroded every aspect of the and 'countercoup') appear to have been revolutionary and internationalist con­ decisive in the direction of development sciousness which had made the Soviet in the SU, but only those who are under working class the vanguard detachment the sway of capitalist ideology or its of the world proletariat. material perquisites would have been The isolated workers state was sub­ hasty to draw this conclusion at that jected to the unremitting pressures of time." It resolved "to note and draw con­ imperialism, not only military encircle­ clusions from the position that the ment and an arms buildup aimed at bank­ degenerated workers state of Stalin and rupting the Soviet economy, but also the his heirs has been destroyed." pressure of the imperialist world market. In the founding program of the Fourth As Trotsky wrote in The Third Inter­ International, written on the eve of national After Lenin: "it is not so much World War II, Leon Trotsky wrote: military intervention as the intervention "The historical crisis of mankind is of cheaper capitalist commodities that reduced to the crisis of the revolutionary constitutes perhaps the greatest imme­ leadership." This crisis of proletarian diate menace to Soviet economy." leadership is no less acute today. To the Although the planned economy proved its superiority over capitalist anarchy Bloody ethnic conflicts fueled by advancing counterrevolution. Above: Bu beleaguered multinational proletariat in of an Armenian worker massacred in Yerevan. the ex-USSR and socialist-minded ele­ during its period of extensive growth, as mentsin the army and intelligentsia, we the need for quality and intensive devel­ geois states in Russia, the Ukraine and tion. Any spark could set off the tinder­ say: the key task facing you is to cohere opment came to the fore the bureaucratic elsewhere are fragile, isolated and inter­ box on which Yeltsin and his cohorts sit. a Leninist-Trotskyist vanguard party, stranglehold more and more undermined nally splintered. They do not rest on the We Trotskyists of the International forged in struggle around the internation­ the economy. Finally, through his pere­ solid foundation of a cohered capitalist Communist League, who have fought alist program which led your forebears stroika "market reforms" and acquies­ class. The new entrepreneurs consist of tooth and nail against ascendant coun­ to victory in 1917. cence to capitalist restoration throughout little more than petty speculators and terrevolution, say: Stalinism is dead, but East Europe, Gorbachev opened wide the mafia gangs, while sections of the old communism lives-in the class struggle Why Didn't the Workers floodgates to a direct counterrevolution­ industrial hierarchy of factory managers of the world proletariat and in the pro­ Rise Up? ary onslaught by Yeltsin & Co. are in the process of imposing their gram of the revolutionary vanguard. The The working class of the ex-USSR and The bourgeoisie and the Stalinists weight. The armed forces are' hitter and internationalist program through which the world proletariat as a whole must alike have long sought to identify demoralized. the Soviet Union was created has been digest the lessons of this bitter defeat. Lenin's October with Stalin's conserva­ The only thing which is certain in the' carried forward under the banner of the Since 1917, the social democracy has tive bureaucratic rule. But nationalist ex-USSR today is increasing uncertainty Fourth International. It is the Trotskyists and instability. On the eve of the Decem­ uniquely who warned that the continued ber 1 session of the Congress of People's stranglehold of the Stalinist bureaucracy Deputies, Moscow is awash with rumors over the Soviet workers state would lead of coups, countercoups and "creeping to the destruction of October, who fought coups." Meanwhile, Yeltsin is engaged for unconditional military defense of the in furious negotiations with Arkady Soviet Union against imperialism and Vol sky, head of the powerful indus­ counterrevolution, and called on the. trialists' party, who is in league with Soviet proletariat to sweep away the the militarist Russian vice president Stalinist excrescence through political Aleksandr Rutskoi. The volatility of the revolution while there was still time. present situation is captured in the recent The "Russian question" has been the electoral victory of the ex-Stalinist touchstone for revolutionaries and the Democratic Labor Party in Lithuania, defining political question of the 20th ousting the rightist nationalist Sajudis century. Leading up to the Second Inter­ movement from office. It did not take national Conference of the International long for the realities of capitalist immis­ Communist League (Fourth Internation­ eration to drain away the nationalist alist) earlier this autumn, discussion Faces of capitalist euphoria which had intoxicated the focused on an assessment of the devel­ opments in the former Soviet Union restoration: Boris Lithuanian people. However, the new Yeltsin (abOve) and Lithuanian leader Brazauskas reportedly since August 1991. The main conference document described the piecemeal con­ sometime rivals has the same economic policies as Arkady Volsky Volsky-Rutskoi. solidation of a capitalist state: (right), head of the "Recent developments continue to point industrialists' Meanwhile, the working class of the in a dire direction. Stories abound in the ex-USSR is faced with one assault after press of 'primitive capitalist accumula­ party, and Russian another. Society is disintegrating, mass tion,' i.e., theft: Managers and former vice president Aleksandr Rutskol unemployment looms. Industrial produc­ bureaucrats are scrambling, using all manner of shady practices to get their (far right). tion has dropped 18 percent since the hands on socialized property---encour­ beginning of 1992, while investment has aged, abetted and advised by interna­ plummeted by 50 percent. To prevent a tional imperialism. The recent strike by 6 WORKERS VANGUARD !JlJllirtiiroa: :'m:lae··ofiUSSR············ "Destruction of Workers' Consciousness Was Key" We publish below a translation of lition, which in no way is opposed to it's without capital backing. The only man CP in 1933, who said, "After Hitler, the remarks at the Second International counterrevolution, but instead is against way that strong capitalism can be estab­ us." It's a suicidal policy. Conference of the International Commu­ the liberalization of Stalinist rule. lished is through nationalism and vicious What is the real perspective that we nist League by comrade Volodya K. In this situation, as Trotsky predicted, anti-working-class repression, as we see before us? Concretely, we have a I think the key reas-on for the destruc­ no section of the bureaucracy was capa­ have just seen in connection with the air task-to coalesce the nucleus of a rev­ tion of the Soviet workers state has been ble of opposing the restoration of capi­ traffic controllers. The creation of this olutionary workers party. This means a the destruction of the consciousness of talism. Instead, they simply maneuvered National Salvation Front that the com­ battle against the capitalists, the existing the proletariat, a process that began with to be able to occupy the best place within rades know about-should that Front bourgeois government. This means a Stalin's liquidation of Leon Trotsky's the restoration of capitalism. It's very come to power, that would represent socialist revolution. Otherwise. if we fail Left Opposition, which represented the important to acknowledge that a bour­ another decisive blow against the work­ in this, there will be consolidated a bour­ consciousness of the working class. The geois state has been established in the ing class. geois corporatist state. The key thing is tragedy is that the breakdown of Stalinist Soviet Union. But it's also important to All these Stalinists who think that it's to explain to the working class that this control was exploited not by the working realize that this is far from stable, it's they who are manipulating the national­ policy of supporting the "national patri­ class for its own end, but by the bour­ very weak. This represents a transitional ists, the so-called "patriots," in a tem­ ots" as a temporary tactic is suicidal. geoisie for its own purposes, purposes moment, but a transition to what? porary bloc, a bloc by which they can Once these "national patriots" come to for which they actually today have pre­ Today there is massive opposition to simply turn the clock back to before power, the working class will get noth­ cious little support. the post-countercoup period. The immis­ perestroika, are deluding themselves. In ing, will get shit from these people. If In August 1991 we saw some decisive eration and the impoverishment of the fact what they are doing is paving the we don't succeed in our propaganda in events. The question was posed: whether popUlation evokes the sharpest hatred way for the establishment of a corporate this, then this is what the working class the bourgeoisie, or perhaps more accu­ toward Yeltsin, but there is no left oppo­ and fascistic dictatorship. It's a very dan­ will receive. rately, whether parts of the Stalinist bu­ sition to guide this. The opposition that gerous illusion to delude oneself into Now just a few words about timing. reaucracy, which received a death blow, does exist today only stands for a strong thinking that there are forces now in the I believe that prior to the unification of would go forward to consolidate a bour­ state. They share the idea that commu­ territory' of the former Soviet Union Germany, in the Soviet Union there was geois state, or whether the working class nism is an impossible utopia. They are capable of fighting against this counter­ a possibility for ICL intervention, at the would step in for its own. In that moment orienting for a strong state, a strong state revolution. In fact, all of these coalitions time when the debates and discussions the working class could have used the based on capitalism. delude themselves with the fact that after were about the true heroes of the Soviet opportunity to take the power, but in­ But as the Yeltsin regime is incapable the National Salvation Front comes to Union and of the October Revolution, stead the "red-brown" coalition formed of introducing stable capitalism, the power, then they can resurrect their own and not today's idiocy about how all is an obstacle to that; the "red-brown" coa- bourgeoisie is very weak. Weak, because power. It repeats the bragging of the Ger- swell in the West..

Stalinism is the antithesis of Leninist out during the war, came to supplant the internationalism. The Soviet degener­ October Revolution as the epochal event ated workers state (and the deformed in Soviet history. In the end. Stalin and workers states which later arose on the his heirs succeeded in imprinting their Stalinist model) was a historic anomaly, nationalist outlook on the Soviet peo­ resulting from the isolation of econom­ ples: proletarian internationalism came ically backward Russia and the failure to be sneered at as an ohscure "'Trotsky­ of proletarian revolution to spread to the ite heresy" of "export of revolution" or. advanced imperialist countries. Stalin­ at best, emptied of any content while ism represented a roadblock to progress paid cynical lip service. toward socialism. As Trotsky wrote in With Gorbachev's "new thinking"­ "Not a Workers' and Not a Bourgeois i.e., his cringing capitUlation to each and State?" (November 1937): every imperialist ultimatum-even lip "That which was a 'bureaucratic defor­ service to the ideals of the Bolshevik mation' is at the present moment prepar­ Revolution went by the boards. The ing to devour the workers' state, without Soviet soldiers who had been told, leaving any remains, and on the ruins of nationalized property to spawn a new and believed, that they were ful­ propertied class. Such a possibility has filling their "internationalist duty" in drawn extremely near." fighting against the reactionary Afghan While the Stalinist regime was able to May 1991: mujahedin on the USSR's border, were prolong its existence as a result of the German and then maligned for perpetrating "'Rus­ heroic victory of the Soviet masses over Polish comrades sia's Vietnam" against Afghanistan. the Nazi invasion in World War II, Trot­ of the ICL Gorbachev's ignominious pullout from sky's Marxist analysis has ultimately, address 300 Afghanistan and his green light to unfortunately, been vindicated in the Soviet officers the imperialist annexation of the DDR negative. and soldiers served only to further a sense of defeat­ commemorating Why did the Soviet working class not ism and demoralization among the Red Army victory Soviet masses. while the so-called Sta­ rally to defend its gains? How did the over Nazi Third linist "patriots" who denounced Gorba­ counterrevolution triumph and destroy Reich, at air base the workers state without a civil war? In in East Germany. chev's concessions did so only to beat his seminal 1933 work laying out the the drums for Great Russian imperial perspective of proletarian political rev­ ambitions, explicitly harking back to the olution, Trotsky polemicized against time of the tsars. Even so, the spontaneous strikes social democrats and proponents of var­ and undo the deepgoing proletarian party, the voluntary internal cohesion of which erupted in the Soviet coal fields ious "new class" theories who claimed revolution. the proletarian vanguard, the conscious in the summer of 1989 against the rav­ that under Stalin's rule, the Soviet Union In a wide-ranging discussion in the discipline of the administrators, trade had imperceptibly changed from a work­ union functionaries, members of the ages of Gorbachev's "market socialism" ICL two years ago on the counterrevo­ shop nuclei, etc." ers to a bourgeois state without ~ny qual­ dramatically demonstrated the potential lutionary overturns in East Europe and - The Third International for militant working-class struggle. As itative transformation of either the state the DDR (East Germany), it was noted After Lenin Russian social democrat Boris Kagarlit­ apparatus or the property forms: that Trotsky had overdrawn the analogy And again, in "The Workers' State, sky documents in his book Farewell "The Marxist thesis relating to the cata­ between a social revolution in capitalist strophic character of the transfer of Thermidor and Bonapartism" (February Perestroika (1990), the strike commit­ society and social counterrevolution in power from the hands of one class into 1935), he stated: "In contradistinction to tees in many areas became "the actual a deformed workers state (see Joseph the hands of another applies not only capitalism. socialism is built not auto­ centre of popular power," organizing to revolutionary· periods, when history Seymour, "On the Collapse of Stalinist matically but consciously." food distribution, maintaining order, etc. sweeps madly ahead, but also to the peri­ Rule in East Europe," and Albert St. John. ods of counterrevolution, when society When Trotsky wrote these articles, the As we pointed out at the time, the Kuz­ "For Marxist Clarity and a Forw~rd Per­ rolls backwards. He who asserts that the bass strikes "have quickly generated spective," Spartacist No. 45-46, 'Winter memory of the October Revolution was Soviet government has been gradually still a part of the direct personal experi­ organizational forms of proletarian changed from proletarian to bourgeois is 1990-91). Where the capitalists exercise power, including strike committees and only, so to speak, running backwards the direct ownership over the means of pro­ ence of the overwhelming mass of the workers militias" ("Soviet Workers Flex film of reformism." duction, and thus are compelled to vio­ Soviet proletariat, albeit already consid­ -"The Class Nature of the Their Muscle," WV No. 482, 21 July lently resist the overthrow of their system erably warped by Stalinist falsification Soviet State" (October 1933) 1989). in order to defend their own property, and revision. In the intervening decades, There was certainly nothing gradual or the preservation of proletarian power the nationalist bureaucracy did much to These developments pointed to the imperceptible about the social counter­ depends principally on consciousness extirpate any real understanding of what possibility of authentic soviets, which­ revolution in the ex-USSR, which has and organization of the working class. came to be iconized as the "Great Octo­ by drawing in collective farmers, been extremely violent and convulsive Trotsky himself emphasized this point ber Socialist Revolution." In Soviet mass women, pensioners, soldiers and offi­ throughout the former Soviet bloc. How­ in his 1928 article "What Now?": consciousness, World War II, dubbed cers-could have served as the basis for ever, Trotsky also advanced the progno- _ "The socialist character of our state by the Stalinists the "Great Patriotic a new proletarian political Rower, oust­ sis that a civil war would be required to industry ... is determined and secured in War" and suffused with the Russian­ ing the bureaucracy through a political restore capitalism in the Soviet Union a decisive measure by the role of the nationalist propaganda Stalin churned continued on page 8 27 NOVEMBER 1992 7 seeking to buy off broader layers of the officer corps with salary increases. Workers State At the same time, there was a self-purge, as numbers of pro-socialist officers left Strangled ... the army in disgust over the anti­ (continued from page 7) Communist ban. In any case, as Trotsky remarked in The Revolution Betrayed revolution. But when the Gorbachev (1937): "a bourgeois restoration would regime reneged on its promises to the probably have to clean out fewer people miners, pro-imperialist agitators trained [from the state apparatus] than a revo­ by the "AFL-CIA" moved into the vac­ lutionary party." uum of leadership and set up the Inde­ The juridical dissolution of the USSR pendent Miners Union, organizing an in December 1991 left the all-Union activist minority of the miners as a bat- armed forces-nominally under. the tering ram (or Yeltsin. . command of the stillborn "Common­ However, a majority of the miners as wealth of Independent States"-sus­ well as the rest- of the Soviet working pended in midair, a "sixteenth republic," class remained passive in the three-sided as some dubbed it. An officers con­ contest between the Yeltsin-Ied "demo­ ference in the Kremlin the following crats," Gorbachev and the more conser­ month registered overwhelming senti­ vative wing of the Stalinists. The mass ment for maintaining the military as a of workers were wary, if not outright multinational institution. But, as we hostile, to the pro-Western advocates of warned at the time, "to preserve the a "market economy." Unlike in Poland multinational Soviet state and army during the rise of Solidarnosc, the forces Lenin at First Congress of the Communist International, March 1919. requires salvaging the socialized prop­ of capitalist counterrevolution were not erty upon which it was created." Had the flanks would be flung to the different able to mobilize the Soviet masses in the At the base, the Soviet military was working class moved, sections of the name of anti-Communism. affected by the same pressures and sides of the barricade." -"The Class Nature of the military would undoubtedly have gone At the same time, the bureaucratic paralysis as the rest of society. The upper Soviet State" over to its side. Instead the centrifugal elite (the so-called nomenklatura) was strata of the military command, on the In the case of the 1956 Hungarian Rev­ forces set into play by Yeltsin's coun­ totally discredited by the flagrant cor­ other hand, were a component of the olution, the bulk of the bureaucratic stra­ tercoup and formalized by the December ruption and cynicism of the Brezhnev Soviet bureaucracy. Trotsky explained tum went over.to the side of the insurgent 1991 decree moved to tear the military era. Occasional appeals to defend that the bureaucracy was a brittle, con­ pro-socialist proletariat. In contrast, apart and eliminate what remained of "socialism" made by the more conserva­ tradictory caste whose role was that of more recently in the Soviet Union, the the workers state. Nationalism, as in the tive elements o(the Gorbachev regime, an intermediary between the workers steady pressure of conciliation to impe­ chauvinist drum-beating over Moldova, such as Yegor Ligachev, fell on deaf ears. state and hostile imperialist encircle­ rialism and internal market forces has been a driving force in cohering The Stalinist "patriots," organized for ment. This contradictory position gen­ pushed ever-greater sections of the an armed force loyal to the new capital­ example in the United Front of Toilers erated within the bureaucracy a range bureaucracy into the camp of capitalist ist order. (OFT), were able to mobilize only a rel­ of contradictory political impulses: "all restoration, for whom Yeltsin early on atively small number of worker activists. shades of political thought are to be The use of Russian OMON forces became the chief spokesman. to break up an anti-Yeltsin protest in The utter incapacity of the bureauc­ February marked the emergence of a racy to play any independent role was repressive apparatus loyal to the new forcefully demonstrated in the events regime. With the Ukraine and other of August 1991. Behind the seeming republics creating separate armies and incompetence of the "Emergency Com­ demanding loyalty oaths from Soviet mittee" (made up of Gorbachev's chief troops stationed on their territory, in lieutenants)-its failure to arrest Yeltsin May Yeltsin decreed the formation of a or even to cut off his direct line to Wash­ distinct Russian Army, appointing the ington-lay the fact that these stodgy relatively young general Grachev, a bureaucrats had no alternative to the strident Russian nationalist who pro­ program of restoration and their refusal claimed his allegiance to Yeltsin during to in any way antagonize the imperial­ the coup, as the new Russian defense ist powers. Had the workers sprung minister. An article in the CIA's "Radio into action, mobilizing to clear out Free Europe/Radio Liberty" RFEIRL the despised profit-gouging "coopera­ Research Report (21 August) observed: tivists," speculators and ruble million­ "In many important respects, the aires who manned Yeltsin's barricades, appointment of General of the Army this would have indeed directly posed a Pavel Grachev to the post of Russian defense minister on 18 May 1992 marked civil war between the proletariat and the the beginning of the post-Soviet period Stalinist myths: Poster proclaims that active forces of counterrevolution, and in the security sphere, much as the cre­ "Victory of Socialism in Our Country marked the beginning of a proletarian ation of the CIS in December 1991 had Is Guaranteed." Leonid Brezhnev and political revolution. Fearing proletarian marked the end of the Soviet period in Henry Kissinger celebrate "detente." mobilization far more than counter­ the political sphere." revolution, not a single element of the Navy Day, on July 26, was marked Atomized and bereft of any anti­ found among the bureaucracy: from so-called "hardline" Stalinist "patriot" by the hoisting of the old tsarist capitalist leadership, lacking any co­ genuine Bolshevism (Ignace Reiss) to opposition to GorbachevlYeltsin tried naval emblem, the St. Andrew's Cross, herent and consistent socialist class complete fascis'!l (F. Butenko)" (Transi­ to organize resistance to the Yeltsin­ throughout the fleets, while Navy chief consciousness, skeptical about the pos­ tional Program). Reiss was a leading ite forces, hiding instead behind the Admiral Chernavin proclaimed: "The sibility of class struggle in the capital­ cadre of the Soviet intelligence service impotent proclamations of the coup Russian fleet must retrieve its flag, not ist countries, the Soviet working class who declared for the Fourth International committee. because Soviet sailors were ashamed of did not rally in resistance against the and was murdered by Stalin in 1937; Having seized the reins of power, the old flag but because it no longer cor­ encroaching capitalist counterrevolu­ Butenko was a Soviet diplomat who the Yeltsin regime immediately moved responds to the spirit of the Russian tion. And, as Trotsky noted in The Third defected to Mussolini' s fascist Italy. to reorganize the top echelons of the navy" (Independent [London], 27 July). International After Lenin: "If an army The dual character of the Stalinist military; putting in a layer of younger The flying of the tsarist banner over the capitulates to the enemy in a critical sit­ bureaucracy, and the conflicting political officers who were marked either by sub­ Kronstadt naval garrison, a bastion of uation without a battle, then this capit­ appetites it harbored, remained even servience to Yeltsin (e.g., Shaposhnikov) Bolshevism in the October Revolution, ulation completely takes the place of a after the bloody purges of the 1930s or by strident Russian nationalism, while and atop the cruiser Aurora, whose fusil- 'decisive battle,' in politics as in war." exterminated any remnant of the Bolshe­ vik "Old Guard." But while resting on The Army and the Bureaucracy and deriving its privileges from prole­ What then happened to the armed tarian property forms, the Stalinist forces, the core of the state in the Marxist bureaucracy was not irrevocably com­ understanding? In The State and Revolu­ mitted to their defense. It could play no tion (1917), written against the reformist independent role in society. Under the view that the working class could sim­ impact of any sharp frontal assault, ply appropriate the bourgeois state for either from the revolutionary proletariat its own purposes, Lenin emphasized: or the counterrevolution, the bure,auc­ "Revolution consists not in the new class racy would shatter. As Trotsky wro!e: commanding, governing with the aid of "When the proletariat springs into action, the old state machine, but in this class the Stalinist apparatus will remain sus­ Gorbachev's smashing this machine and command­ pended in midair. Should it still attempt treacherous to resist, it will then be necessary to withdrawal from ing, governing with the aid of a new apply against it not the measures of civil machine." Similarly, social counterrevo­ war, but rather the measures of a police Afghanistan lution requires the smashing of the pro­ character. ... emboldened U.S. imperialism letarian state and the creation of a new "A real civil war could develop not be­ state machine serving the bourgeoisie. and demoralized tween the Stalinist bureaucracy and the Soviet masses. This task was vastly facilitated by resurgent proletariat but between the pro­ the Stalinist political counterrevolution, letariat and the active forces of the coun­ terrevolution. In the event of an open which effected a qualitative degenera­ clash between the two mass camps, there tion in the workers state issuing out of cannot even be talk of the bureaucracy the October Revolution. playing an independent role. Its polar 8 WORKERS VANGUARD' --Wahlt __ SPARTAklST --- Hein zur kapitalistischen Spartakists initiated Wiedervereinigung! January 1990 demonstration of 250,000 in Treptow Park, East Berlin protesting Nazi desecration of Red Army monument. Sparta kist Workers

Party poster in W_doe"'~'.J hnoo l ..u.necl".LU.ONazi Germany, "reforms"-Gorbachev's perestroika. -"The Class Nature of the the Spartakist Workers Party of Germany We sharply opposed resurgent anti­ While the August 1991 "Emergency Soviet State" and the Spartakusowska Grupa Polski Semitism and Great Russian chauvinism Committee" offered nothing but "pere­ And that is what the International Com­ held a joint forum for several hundred and warned that women have the most stroika without glasnost," today Stalin­ munist League has done. To the extent Soviet military personnel at an air base to lose under capitalist restoration. ist leftovers like Viktor Anpilov's our limited forces permit, we have outside Berlin (WV No. 526, 10 May Following Yeltsin's unleashing of the RKRP, Kryuchkov's RPK, Prigarin's SK fought to provide a revolutionary pole 1991). Then, a month before Yeltsin's OMON and Moscow militia (police) and Nina Andreyeva's VKPB et aI., who to win the Soviet working class to a pro­ countercoup, ICL representative Martha against protesters in February 1992, we today posture as an opposition to Yeitsin, gram to reverse and defeat the counter­ Phillips addressed the Moscow Workers issued an urgent statement: '''White offer nothing but a "red" cover for revolution. Our comrade Martha Phil­ Conference, calling for the formation of Tsar' Boris Wants a New Bloody Sun­ capitalist counterrevolution. They have lips, murdered in Moscow last February, genuine soviets to stop capitalist coun­ day." With the threat of widespread hun­ made no attempt to mobilize class strug­ made the ultimate sacrifice in fighting terrevolution, for opposition to all forms ger posed by draconian price increases gle, not only because their chauvinist for that cause. of chauvinist reaction, and for interna­ on food and other necessities, we raised politics make them incapable of appeal­ Five years ago, when the first openly tional socialist revolution. a fighting program: ing to the still multinational proletariat, counterrevolutionary force-the anti­ Our August 1991 call, "Soviet Work­ "Through their own independent com­ but because they are opposed to any Semitic nativist fascists of Pamyat­ ers: Defeat Yeltsin-Bush Counterrevo- mittees, composed of delegates elected continued on page 10 reared its head in Moscow and Lenin­ grad, we called for proletarian-centered mass mobilizations to crush these latter­ day Black Hundreds in the egg. When, in August 1990, Gorbachev endorsed a plan for full-fledged capitalist resto­ ration drawn up by Yeltsin', our first Russian-language leaflet raised the Our comrade call "Soviet Workers: Smash Yeltsin/ Martha Phillips Gorbachev 500-Day Plan!" (WVNo. 510, fought to defend the October Revolution. 21 September 1990). That November, at Protesting against the Revolution Day commemoration in closing of the Leningrad, the banner of the Fourth Lenin Museum (right) International was openly unfurled for and addressing the first time in the Soviet Union. delegates at Despite our meager resources· and July 1991 Moscow limited Russian-language capacity, we Workers Conference sought to intervene directly in the tur­ (far right). bulent situation which opened up after Gorbachev took over. Following the dra-

27 NOVEM~ER 1992 9 ,...... <'.. ~:.~,.~".'~::;:'\; the proletariat. Basing ourselves on this Workers State Marxist understanding, we pointed to the contradictory character of the initial Gorbachev reforms: "Gorbachev's pere­ Strangled ... stroika not only goes against the imme­ (continued from page 9) diate material interests of most workers but also affronts their deep reservoir of struggle which would disrupt capitalist collective feeling. At the same time, the class "peace." This was explicitly stated regime's call for glasnost permits a de­ in the March 1992 "Declaration on the gree of organized 5iissent against official Founding of the United Opposition," policies" (Spartacist League/U.S. con­ signed by all the Stalinist leftovers as ference document, "Toward Revolution­ well as Medvedev and Denisov's SPT­ ary Conjuncture," June 1987). formalizing. the repulsive' "red-brown" For the first couple of years, Gorba­ coalition with Great Russian chauvinists, chev's neo-Bukharinite reforms had monarchists and outright fascists­ some effect in reviving the Soviet econ­ which called for "salvation of the Father­ omy. Harvard economist Marshall Gold­ land ... on the basis of civil peace and man, in his book What Went Wrong with national trust." Thus all these groups Perestroika (1991), notes of Gorbachev's opposed the recent air traffic controllers 1985-86 program of "intensification" strike. and "acceleration" that "initially these With their call for privatization reforms seemed to be working" and through the "work collectives," the Sta­ "industrial growth seemed to rebound." linist has-beens seek to be the "left" He even achieved the largest grain har­ flank of the counterrevolution's cor­ vest in Soviet history (240 million tons poratist wing, whose most powerful in 1990). But the subsequent introduc­ representative is the Volsky-Rutskoi Red Army's International Iron Battalion honors German Spartakists Luxemburg tion of enterprise self-management on Civic Union bloc. Aligned with them is and Liebknecht after their murder in January 1919. Proletarian internationalism New Year's 1988 proved to be the deci­ the former official trade-union bureauc­ was the cornerstone of the Soviet Union under Lenin and Trotsky. sive step finally leading to collapse. The racy, now calling itself the Federation of abandonment of planning in a planned Independent Trade Unions of Russia as a last-ditch defense against unemploy­ ist anti-Communism is evident, but the economy led to a breakdown in eco­ (FNPR). Where Yeltsin's prime minister ment and immiseration. "state capitalIst" logic is absurd. Here nomic administration and widespread Gaidar grovels. to the West' for infu­ Soviet workers should entertain no we have supposedly just witnessed the shortages and looting. The result, Gold­ sions of capital and promotes a fantas­ illusions that their livelihoods will remarkable spectacle of an entire "cap­ man writes, was "the undermining of the tical scheme for privatization through be secure under a corporatist regime. italist class" which simply committed planning system and the collapse of the distribution of shareholding vouchers Capitalism, whether under VolskylRut­ suicide rather than seeking to defend its economy." As perestroika reforms failed, to the entire population, the Volsky/ skoi or Yeltsin/Gaidar or some variant property. And the millions upon millions in August 1990, Gorbachev openly Rutskoi faction hopes to maintain a in between, necessarily means the whip of working people in East Europe and declared his support to capitalist resto­ strong military-industrial sector by plac­ of brutal exploitation and widespread the ex-USSR who are now being dragged ration by endorsing the "500-Day Plan," ing ownership directly in the hands of unemployment. down by immiseration, unemployment only to back away from it later in his the former managers. and fratricide aren't about to buy the constant zigzagging. In the name of building the derzJwl'a, "State Capitalism": notion that they are just going from one Gorbachev's evolution from "market the tsarist watchword for a Russian Anti-Communist Myth brand of capitalism to another, much less socialism" reforms to a program of strong state, the RKRP & Co. have will­ If the destruction of the Soviet Union hail it. outright capitalist restoration proved ingly \ubmerged themselves in every has placed a final epitaph on the sordid "Third campists" of the second mobi­ yet again the impossibility of "reform­ reactionary lash-up, from the fascistic history of Stalinism. it has also demol­ lization, like the political bandits of ing" the Stalinist regime, a conception Russian National Sobor of the anti­ ished the numerous false "theories" David North's "International Commit­ advanced by the likes of Ernest Man­ Communist, anti-Semite Sterligov (who behind which various renegades from tee" and others, argue that Stalinism del in his book Beyond Perestroika is now pushing restoration of the tsarist Trotskyism sought to mask their refusal is "counterrevolutionary through and (1989). Whatever their quibbling differ­ throne) to the newly founded "'left-right" to defend the gains of the October Rev­ through." This flatly denies Trotsky's ences, support for Yeltsin counterrevo­ National Salvation Front. Indeed, every olution. The "theory" that the Soviet understanding of the "dual position" of lution brought together all of these grouping which issued out of the for­ Union was a "state capitalist" society the bureaucracy. More to the point, revisionists, from Cliff to North to Man­ mer CPSU-from the RKRP to the stands the Marxist analysis of capitalism like Cliff's theory, the purpose is to del-as well as the Militant group in SPT-accepts the "inevitability" of the on its head. It posits a truly bizarre form wash their hands of defense of the Soviet Britain (formerly led by Ted Grant), "market economy" (restoration of capi­ of "capitalism"-one in which capitalist Union. North claimed that from the associated with Sergei Beits' Rabochiya talism). They're simply squabbling over competition and the law of value are beginning Gorbachev was bent on "the Demokratiya (Workers Democracy) in the terms-who gets to feed at the external to the system, one marked not political, economic and social liqui­ Russia. The bottom line for all of trough (see "Stalinist Has-Beens: Left by cyclical crises of overproduction but dation of all that remains of the these outfits has been capitulation to Wing of Nationalist Counterrevolution," by distortions and bottlenecks due to conquests of the October Revolution" social-democratic anti-Sovietism, just as WV No. 561, 16 October). Meanwhile, administrative fiat, one characterized not (Perestroika Versus Socialism [1989]). a decade ago they were all united in the explicitly social-democratic Labor by chronic mass unemployment but North then rushed to proclaim that it is their cheering for counterrevolutionary Party (PT) of Boris Kagarlitsky is in bed by labor shortages. The purpose of the "impossible to define ... any of the repub­ Solidarnosc in Poland and their denun­ with a section of the FNPR bureaucracy, terminological sleight of hand, whether lics" of the ex-USSR "as workers states" ciations of the Red Army intervention and participates in the All-Russian Toil­ from the pen of Tony Cliff or his pred­ the moment Yeltsin decreed its juridical into Afghanistan. ing Assembly, which is heavily popu­ ecessors, was to deny any basis for dissolution ("The End of the USSR," In contrast, the Spartacist tendency lated by Volsky's people and whose defense of the Soviet Union. Bulletin, 10 January 1992). proclaimed "Hail Red Army in Afghan­ chairman Konstantinov is vice president While claiming to occupy a "third The various theories defining the istan!" and declared "Stop Solidarnosc of the Sobor. camp" ("neither Washington nor Mos­ Stalinist bureaucracy as a "new class" Counterrevolution!" in Poland. In re­ Everyone of the numerous Stalinist cow"), today the "state capitalists" join or "counterrevolutionary through and sponse to Gorbachev's 1989 pUllout and social-democratic outfits has fallen the imperialists in rejoicing over the through" unite in appealing to knee-jerk from Afghanistan in order to appease into step behind the corporatist option, "death of Communism." In August 1991, moralism. In contrast, Trotr,ky's dialec­ Washington, we warned it is far better appealing for privatization through the the Cliffites cheered that "Communism tical and materialist anal ysis of the to fight imperialism there than within "work collectives" (i.e., factory manag­ Has Collapsed" and hailed the Yeltsin­ Soviet degenerated workers state, elab­ the borders of the Soviet Union. But the ers). With their backs against the wall, ite ascendancy as "The Beginning, Not orated in The Revolution Betrayed and Gorbachev regime didn't want to fight many workers may look to their factory the End" (Socialist Worker, 31 August other writings, has stood the test of time imperialism anywhere. "The decision to managers taking ownership of industry 1991). The identification with imperial- and provides a program for action for leave Afghanistan was the first and most

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10 WORKERS VANGUARD "Trotsky Continued Lenin's Cause" On July 2, the Soviet television Out of international goodwill, we program Mister/Comrade. carried a renounce in advance any ideological segment featuring' an interview with arguments, no matter wherever and Victor Granovsky, spokesman for the whatever they concern. We will limit International Communist League. Titled ourselves to philosophical and historical "Trotskyism: Next Stop Moscow?", the themes, and in this manner get ac­ segment waS broadcast by the main all­ quainted with contemporary Trotskyists. Russian channel and was seen in other Victor: I came here above all because of republics as well. It was rerun several my political interest in the situation times over the course of the summer. here. All genuine communists, that is, For the first time, a mass audience in Trotskyists, around the world have the former Soviet Union was presented always felt a sense of duty toward the with authentic Trotskyism embodying the Soviet working class, toward the heroes program of defense of the gains of the of the October Revolution, of the Civil October Revolution, the continuity of War and the war against German fas­ Lenin's internationalist cause in struggle cism. But to participate in political life against the nationalist and bureaucratic here in the period of the Stalinist terror perversion of Stalinism. The interview or during the time of the bureaucracy's thus pierced through the slanders pur­ political monopoly was simply impossi­ veyed for decades by the Stalinist bu­ ble. Only when the situation here had reaucracy, which grotesquely sought to opened up a little could we return to the paint Lenin's comrade-in-arms as a coun­ International Communist homeland of the October Revolution terrevolutionary agent of Western impe­ League defended the because we consider it our duty. rialism. It also belied the image of Trot­ program of Trotskyism Stalin managed to wipe out all of skyism as warmed-over social democracy, in TV interview widely Lenin's political collaborators, and the pushed by the likes of Ernest Mandel. broadcast in the former Soviet Union. genuine policies of the October Revolu­ Appropriately, the interview was tion within the borders of the Soviet filmed at the first monument erected by Union. But abroad he wasn't quite as the Bolshevik government, dedicated to successful. Trotsky was the continuator historic leaders of the international rev­ of Lenin's cause, and he educated and olutionary workers movement like Marx, politics is not nearly so predictable. catch fire and return to Russia in order to trained a new movement to defend the Engels, Liebknecht, Blanqui and others. Could our fathers and grandfathers have save her? Our broadcast tonight turns gains of the October Revolution and the We print below a translation of the foreseen that their contemporaries, the our viewers' attention to the continuators banner of internationalism. And it is on TV interview. exporters of revolution, would find co­ of I1yich and his comrades-in-arms. Of account of this, on account of our inter­ * * * thinkers toward the end of the 20th cen­ course we can't help but notice the nationalism, that we have come back Narrator: Has the world really been tury, and that they would return to the arrival of American Trotskyists on Rus­ here; for us it is our duty to share the "turned upside down"? No, the sun still homeland of revolutionaries? That in sian soil, and regard this as an extraordi­ fate and the struggle of the Soviet rises in the east and sets in the west. But the great West the cause of Lenin would nary matter. continued 011 page 12 difficult step," remarked Gorbachev's already led to major class battles in ex-USSR to that of the world proletariat. usurp political power. Thus was the rev­ foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze Germany, Italy and Greece. The multi­ While social democrats squeal that olution betrayed. recently, "Everything else flowed from racial upheaval in Los Angeles following "Soviet Communism" discredited social­ But this betrayal did not go unchal­ that." A year after the Afghanistan with­ the verdict freeing the racist cops in ism in the eyes of the masses, an even lenged. The Left Opposition of Leon drawal, Gorbachev gave the green light the Rodney King beating testifies to greater crime of Stalinism was the way Trotsky continued the struggle for the to capitalist reunification of Germany. the social instability in the United it warped the consciousness of pro­ authentic program of Leninism. In its The ICL was unique in its unambig­ States. In East Europe and the ex-USSR, socialist workers, filling their heads with struggle to defend and extend Soviet uous and forthright opposition to impe­ the working class will soon recover anti-Marxist illusions such as "building power, the Left Opposition urged a pol­ rialist annexation of the DDR: the power from the numbing experience of coun­ socialism in one country," the "popular icy of planned industrialization to revive of the Trotskyist program to show terrevolution and begin to fight against front" and the utopia of "peaceful co­ the enervated proletariat and enable the the way out of the collapse of Stalin­ the ravages of capitalist exploitation. existence" with imperialism. "Socialism isolated workers state to hold out against ism found a massive expression in the Poland already has been swept by in one country" meant not only the imperialist encirclement. The Trotskyists 250,000-strong anti-fascist, pro-Soviet one major strike after another over the suppression of revolutionary struggle fought uncompromisingly against the demonstration on 3 January 1990 at Ber­ past year. abroad, but the isolation of the Soviet nascent bureaucracy's Great Russian lin's Treptow Park, which was initiated The workers of Russia, the Ukraine working class from any connection with chauvinism. They fought· against the by the German Spartakists. The Stalin­ and the other former Soviet republics the international class struggle. For more treacherous policies emanating from ists, for their part, thought they could still have time to regroup and strike back than 60 years, Soviet workers were "socialism in one country," in the first have counterrevolution in one country. before anything approaching a viable submerged in a cocoon walling them instance the subversion of the Chinese But the sellout of the DDR directly system of capitalist exploitation is con­ off from political developments around Revolution of 1925-27 and the Anglo­ prepared the destruction of the Soviet gealed. Hatred and bitterness toward Yel­ the world. In the course of fighting Russian trade-union bloc which led to Union. tsin and his ilk are seethirig. Unlike in to reverse the counterrevolution which the knifing of the 1926 British General the ex-DDR, where masses of working has plunged it into poverty and misery, Strike. This led to the subordination of Reforge the Fourth people bought the lie that D-mark the Soviet working class will necessar­ the German working class to Hitler's International! Anschluss (annexation) would bring ily have to reappropriate the revolution­ jackboot, to the outright suppression of The collapse of the Soviet Union and prosperity, in the former USSR there are ary heritage which has been taken the Spanish revolution in the late 1930s. the ensuing sharpening of interimperial­ few such positive illusions. There is, from it. . By selling out revolutionary opportuni­ ist rivalries have made the world a far however, a widespread view that there The proletariat which made the Octo­ ties at the end of World War II, partic­ more dangerous place. The "New World is no alternative to the "market," for ber Revolution learned from Lenin and ularly in Italy, France and Greece, Sta­ Disorder"-proclaimed during the U.S.­ which the bankrupt Stalinists bear the Trotsky'S Bolsheviks that it was part of linism enabled capitalism to survive, and led imperialist slaughter in the Persian main responsibility. an international struggle. It understood thus prepared the way for its own ulti­ Gulf, to which Gorbachev gave his The road to recreating a full-fledged that its only prospect for survival lay in mate demise. approval-has the hallmarks of the old capitalism is not as smooth as the the extension of the revolution to more With the utter liquidation of the Com­ world order which led to the slaughter­ Nevsky Prospekt. To free itself of its advanced industrial powers, chiefly Ger­ munist International as an instrument for house of World War I, but this time would-be exploiters and oppressors, the many. The opportunities were manifold, world revolution, Trotsky organized the posing the threat of a nuclear 'conflagra­ working class must also assert itself but the revolutionary parties outside founding of the Fourth International in tion. Imperialist unity, maintained for as a "tribune of the people," opposing Soviet Russia were 100 weak and polit­ 1938. Today the International Commu­ decades by the "Communist menace," every manifestation of anti-Semitism ically immature to pursue them. The nist League fights for the rebirth of the has broken down as the contending and anti-woman and anti-homosexual German Spartakist uprising of 1918-19 Fourth International, whose cadre were powers fall upon each other, and vie to bigotry, rising to the defense of all and the 1919 Hungarian Commune went decimated by Stalinist and Hitlerite ter­ carve up the former Soviet bloc into those-including African and Asian down to bloody defeat. The possibility ror and which finaily succumbed in the neocolonies. students, and the Central Asian peoples of the Red Army marching to the aid of early 1950s to an internal revisionist At the same time, there is opening up in Russia-who are increasingly ex­ the German workers in 1920 by unleash­ challenge which denied the need for an a new period of intensified class strug­ posed to violent racist terror. What is ing proletarian revolution in Pilsudski's independent revolutionary leadership. gle. The semi colonial peoples of the required above all is a revolutionary . Poland was foiled. Finally, with the Only as part of the struggle to reforge world, now that the imperialist powers leadership capable of overcoming the defeat of the German October in 1923, an authentic world party of socialist rev­ do not feel constrained by a Soviet coun­ divisions inspired by chauvinism and the Soviet proletariat succumbed to olution can the workers of the former terweight, are being subjected to outright nationalism, clearing away the decades the demoralizing prospect of a lengthy Soviet Union cohere the leadership they starvation. In the imperialist West, grow­ of-false consciousness fostered by Sta­ period of isolation, which allowed the need to sweep away the grotesque hor­ ing trade war and exploitation have linism, and linking the struggles in the bureaucratic layer headed by Stalin to rors they now confront. _ 27 NOVEMBER 1992 11 Lenin's Cause ... (continued from page 11) working people. We know the horrific reality of capitalist chaos, and unfortu­ nately we see exactly this threat before the Soviet Union. We must return to the road of Lenin and Trotsky. This is our slogan. I am here not as an individual, but as part of an organization, the International Communist League (Fourth Internation­ alist). We look to the politics of Lenin and Trotsky; this is the kind of commu­ nism we think is needed in the Soviet Union. What is needed in the world today is a planned economy, socialized forms of property, workers democracy­ meaning real workers soviets, which can collectively work out economic policy in the interests of the toilers. What we are seeing today is capital­ ism's real face. But our opposition is unique. We don't share the political course of the present-day Stalinists, who Leon Trotsky, elected chairman of Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies in September 1917. Red virtually without exception have entered Guards from the Putilov factory at Smolny, command center of the 1917 Revolution. the "red-brown" coalition. We think that this coalition between the Stalinists and multi-party system, they'll say, "Yes, the real terrorists. Narrator: In your Spartacist Bulletin, the monarchists and fascists is simply we're in favor of it, but only for socialist I should also mention that in East you talk about how women are oppressed shameful-it represents a mortal danger parties." How do Trotskyists view a Germany, the former DDR, on 3 January by all regimes other than a soviet one, to the multinational Soviet workers multi-party system? 1990, when a potential political revolu­ and that only under communism can movement. We're talking here about Victor: We're in favor of soviet democ­ tion was beginning under the Honecker women achieve equality, or words to that groups like the RKRP & Co. racy. During Lenin and Trotsky'S time all regime, it was our comrades, the Trot­ effect. It also says that in Vietnam, where Neither do we share the politics of parties which supported soviet power­ skyists in East Germany, who initiated a war took place which lasted for 20 those groups /who are oriented to social i.e., supported collective ownership of the call for the most powerful anti-fascist years, women are allowed to participate democracy. They welcome the restora­ property, workers democracy-el}joyed demonstration in the history of Ger­ in military activity. Is that your idea of tion of capitalism-they just want to full rights to publish their newspapers many-250,000 people demonstrated in women's equality? make sure that yesterday'S nomenklatura and set up their parties. But those who defense of a monument to the Soviet mil­ Victor: Women must not be merely elements get to participate in it. I mean took the road of savage and bloody ter­ itary forces. And it's no coincidence that unpaid household slaves. They must be groups like the Socialist Party of Labor, ror against the workers-strikebreakers, immediately after this demonstration, citizens in the real sense, and must have the Labor Party and the like. Black Hundreds, pogromists, real coun­ Gorbachev gave the green light to the every right and privilege that men have. Against these two tendencies, our terrevolutionaries who waged a civil capitalist unification of Germany, the so­ Today we can see how the Stalinist International Communist League repre­ war against the Soviet Republic-that called Anschluss (annexation). bureaucracy has propagated the notion sents an alternative that is thoroughly was something different. We're for full Narrator: And you were against this? that the natural place of women is in the workers democracy, for a multi-party unique: that of Bolshevism, Leninism, Victor: We were against the capitalist kitchen, at home with the children. We system within the framework of the dic­ think that genuine revolutionary interna­ Trotskyism. reunification of Germany. Narrator: Victor was born in China, tatorship of the proletariat. tionalists have to be at the same time Narrator: Here in your Spartacist publi­ Narrator: So you were for BRD (West defenders of full equal rights for women. where his family had to emigrate. Some Germany) going over to the DDR? 35 years ago, the Granovskys moved cation you speak, for example, about Narrator: How do your friends, I mean to America. Prior to the Vietnam War, "taking the great stores of products" into Victor: We were in favor of a socialist your non-political friends in America, Victor had no interest in politics, but it your own hands. Do you think that this reunification of Germany, for political how do they relate to you? Do they think was America's military activity against too is democratic? revolution in the East and a socialist you're not quite OK, because you've an underdeveloped country that lit a Victor: It's a measure of self-defense, so revolution in the West. taken up these ideas? spark which later grew into the flame of it's the most legal and "constitutional" of Narrator: About how many of you Trot­ Victor: Of course, communists are a Leninism-Trotskyism. He came to the actions. Just as the October Revolution skyists are there around the world? How minority in America. But people in Amer­ International Communist League having was the most lawful of measures. What many are for your party? ica do understand that there are .class become interested in the classics of it means is the defense of the working Victor: Our numbers are not enough. contradictions there, that we have real Marxism-Leninism and in the history people from the thieves. Fewer than a thousand people, say, fewer problems. And today the word "capital­ of the land of the soviets. Victor is an Those who are the most criminal-the than Lenin and Trotsky had in the First ism" has really become a term of abuse, artist by profession. In his soul he is a most vile criminality that we see today­ World War. When they assembled the especially since the upheaval in Los romantic. are the privatizers who are grabbing conference of internationalists in Swit­ Angeles-and it wasn't limited to Los He did not think twice before leav­ everything for themselves. It's not just zerland they had very few people. But Angeles. Dissatisfaction has reached ing his former job and home to come the black market or the hidden economy, they had something more important. such a high point now in America that to Moscow to work as a designer the it's a whole section of the bureaucracy They had the program of international­ even friends of mine who don't share my moment that the opportunity arose. -It who are today simply bragging that they ism, expressing the interests of the work­ political views still have a pretty good would be interesting to find out whether are. about to privatize industry and take ers. And with this program they won. idea of what we're talking about._ Granovsky recognizes any equiva­ it over for themselves. They are abso­ lence between the war in Vietnam, lutely destroying industry now; they're which so affected him, and the war in , talking about a decline of something like Afghanistan? 50 percent in production taking place. If SPARTACIST LEAGUE/U.S. LOCAL DIRECTORY Victor: Having experienced a real impe­ the working people are to defend their National Office: Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 • (212) 732-7860 rialist slaughter in Vietnam, we know workplaces, if industrial production is to beyond a doubt that the Red Army in continue, this can only be organized Atlanta Detroit Norfolk from below by the working people. Afghanistan was not an army of occupi­ Box 4012 Box 441043 Box 1972, Main PO ers; on the contrary, we hailed the Red Narrator: Now, you make several calls Atlanta, GA 30302 Detroit, MI 48244 Norfolk, VA 23501 Army in Afghanistan. And I'll explain for revolution, and you regard it as Boston Oakland why: it's because, in the first place" the perfectly normal, something necessary. Los Angeles Box 29497 war in Afghanistan was really a civil war. Doesn't that mean you are actually ter­ Box 390840, Central 8ta. Box 29574, Los Feliz 8ta. Cambridge, MA 02139 Los Angeles, CA 90029 Oakland, CA 94604 On one side was a progressive nationalist rorists, since you are after all against the (617) 492-3928 (510) 839-0851 and liberal government of army officers. powers that be right now? (213) 380-8239 Chicago San Francisco Now this was hardly a Trotskyist govern­ Victor: We are not terrorists. This is a Madison Box 6441, Main PO Box 77494 ment, nor even a soviet government, but term that is often used to outlaw people. Box 1492 at least they did try to introduce certain Chicago, IL 60680 San Francisco, CA 94107 No, what we are for is action of the work­ (312) 663-0715 Madison, WI 53701 (415) 777·9367 reforms in the interests of women. They ing class. We have our political views, regarded women not as animals, slaves, and we propagandize honestly and Cleveland New York Washington, D.C. but proposed that women should be openly for them. When Black Hundreds, Box 91037 Box 444, Canal 8t. Sta. Box 75073 educated. Afghanistan was never a real nationalist extremists and fascists attack Cleveland, OH 44101 New York, NY 10013 Washtngton, D.C. 20013 nation; it was a territory, within which the workers movement, the workers (216) 781·7500 (212) 267-1025 (202) 872-8240 various tribes, actually prefeudal tribes, movement must defend itself. were at war. The only possibility for In America, when the Ku Klux Klan progress in this desperate region was the threatened to march in front of the TROTSKYIST LEAGUE OF CANADA/LiGUE TROTSKYSTE DU CANADA extension of real Soviet power. American White House, we organized Toronto Montreal Vancouver Narrator: I often meet communists and the unions, American blacks, civil Box 7198, Station A C.P. Les Atriums, Box 2717, Main P.O. other people who support this position, rights groups and students in a huge Toronto, ON M5W 1X8 B.P.32066 Vancouver, BC V6S 3X2 and I find it really interesting. People demonstration, and we simply drove the (416) 593·4138 Montreal, QC H2L 4V5 (604) 687·0353 now have the right to a free vote, but as Ku Klux Klan out of there. This was a (514) 849-6540 soon as you ask them if they are for a most basic act of self-defense against 12 WORKERS VANGUARD Young Sparlacus

reactionary utopian "never-never land" at a time the uty Chief Inspector said, "No one man should have Malcolm X... whole of American capitalism has been contracting and that much power") and saw to it that he remained vul­ shriveling. nerable to attack. New York City'S stringent gun control (continued from page 16) laws date directly from legislation rushed through the foster homes. Malcolm grows up with whites who call A Spokesman for Militant Self-Defense City Council against carrying rifles or shotguns in pub­ him "nigger" so routinely he doesn't even know it's a After seven years in prison, Malcolm was released lic-the bill was aimed at preventing Malcolm X from fighting word. He excels in school and hopes to become and quickly became the most devoted and able minister carrying his carbine in his car. . a lawyer, but is dissuaded by a patronizing white for Elijah Muhammad. To see Spike Lee tell it, you Still, as Malcolm himself acknowledged, the Mus­ schoolteacher who reproaches Malcolm for aspiring to would think that Malcolm X attracted supporters to lims were perceived as people who "talk tough, but a station in life beyond what white society has ordained Harlem's Temple Seven and nationally by preaching they never do anything, unless somebody bothers Mus­ as proper for the black man. the faith. Not! It was because he departed from Muslim lims." It was true. While Malcolm preached against After a series of dead-end jobs, shining shoes and mysticism and talked with razor-sharp clarity about any kind of integration, the masses of blacks were fight­ slinging sandwiches while working on the railroad, present-day race relations and the black struggle that ing to smash Jim Crow and achieve social, political Malcolm (aka "Detroit Red") finds a more lucrative he attracted a personal following in Harlem and beyond. and economic integration into American society. Mal­ hustle as a sidekick to "West Indian Archie" running Malcolm X attacked the submissive Christian leader­ colm X was an outside critic of the movement for black a small-time numbers racket and shacks up with a blonde ship of the civil rights movement and its sacred cows equality. The young activists in the Student Nonviolent in Harlem. A falling-out among thieves sends Malcolm in a way no one else did before or since. Describing Coordinating Committee (SNCC) were growing weary running to Boston, where he sets up his own burglary King's sellout of the 1963 March on Washington to of silently enduring racist crackers who smeared mus- ring. A young man who has suffered the mental lashes of the white man's whip, Malcolm has internalized racist oppression. He burns his scalp with lye to "conk" his hair, then smiles and says, "looks white, don't it?" Busted for burglary, a crime which normally carried a two-year sentence, Malcolm and his buddy "Shorty" are sentenced to ten years. Malcolm realizes that in the eyes of the racist judge (played, in one of the movie's many in-jokes, by radical lawyer William Kunstler) his real crime was sleeping with a white woman. September 1960: Malcolm was so angry and defiant that his nickname Cuban revolutionary leader in prison was "Satan." To break him, the guards throw Fidel Castro stayed at Malcolm into "the hole"-solitary confinement. Ernest Harlem's Hotel Theresa in Dickerson-the talented cinematographer of all Spike solidarity with oppressed Lee's films-brilliantly captures what a racist hellhole American blacks. Here he America's prisons are. You feel the unremitting terror dines with hotel staff. of solitary, the fear of losing your mind as you're envel­ oped in darkness, filth and inchoate noise. When a broken Malcolm slumps into blinding light and mumbles his prison number for the guards, you feel rage for the Kennedy administration for a tame "farce on Wash­ tard into their hair at lunch counter sit-ins, or worse, how he has been dehumanized. (This sequence ought ington," Malcolm X thundered: fired shotgun blasts into their homes. They were fed to spur youth to check out the Partisan Defense Com­ "If you think I'm telling you wrong, you bring me Martin up with King's pacifism and derisively referred to him mittee's fight on behalf of the many militants who still Luther King and A. Philip Randolph and James Farmer as "De Lawd." languish behind bars in this country for no crime other ·and those other three, and see if they'll deny it over a microphone. No, it was a sellout. It was a takeover. ... This army of civil rights militants was Malcolm X's than running afoul of the racist American government­ They controlled it so tight, they told those Negroes what real audience. Lee simply has no comprehension of men like former Black Panthers Mumia Abu-Jamal and time to hit town, how to come, where to stop, what how convulsive and polarized was the period in which Geronimo Pratt, and West Virginia striker Bob Buck.) signs to carry, what song to sing, what speech they could Malcolm came to prominence. The entire black com­ In prison Malcolm becomes a convert to Elijah make, and what speech they couldn't make; and then munity was politically mobilized, as well as a whole Muhammad's Black Muslims, a religious sect which told them to get out of town by sundown. And every one of those Toms was out of town by sundown .... It generation of white liberal/radical youth. In the film, appeals to some looking for a way out of the social was a circus, a performance that beat anything Hollywood these people do not exist for Malcolm X-but they pathology of America's ghettos by preaching self­ could ever do, the performance of the year. Reuther and were his real mass base, not the handful of blacks who respect, and forgoing drugs, crime and a host of other those other three devils should get an Academy Award joined the Nation of Islam. In fact, Malcolm's mem­ things from pork to sex. The Black Muslims' puritanical for the best actors because they acted like they really loved Negroes and fooled a whole lot of Negroes. And bership in the Nation, which abstained from social moral code is lathered thickly with rhetoric about the six Negro leaders should get an award too, for the struggle, was a major impediment to increasing his "white devils" and "black empowerment"-a posture best supporting cast." influence-a fact which underlay his split. that looks defiant but in reality acquiesces to the racist -"Message to the Grass Roots," As we wrote in our 1984 tribute, "Malcolm X: Malcolm X Speaks status quo by endorsing complete and total segregation Courageous Fighter for Black Liberation": of the races. Malcolm X shows this in one scene: when Lee's movie shows the respect and support Malcolm' "Malcolm personified to an extreme degree the funda­ Jackie Robinson smashed the color bar in the major earned from non-Muslims in Harlem for organizing the mental contradiction of black nationalism. As a doctrine, leagues, black prisoners swung their bats with joy and dramatic protest outside the 28th Precinct, where a . nationalism can sometimes attract militant blacks deeply trounced a white team in a prison yard ballgame. But Muslim brother lay bleeding after being beaten by the alienated from this racist society and who have no illu­ Malcolm's Muslim prison mentor sneers at this; Mal­ police. As Malcolm tells it in his Autobiography, "Hun­ sions that it can be reformed. But American blacks are colm says later, "There is only one thing I like inte­ dreds of Harlem Negroes had seen, and hundreds of not a nation. They are an oppressed color-caste integrated into American capitalist society while forcibly segregated grated. My coffee." As to "empowerment," what the thousands of them had later heard how we had shown at the bottom of it. Elijah Muhammad's call upon the Black Muslims seek are black-owned businesses so that almost anything could be accomplished by black United States government to grant several states for a that a layer of "upstanding" blacks can exploit the men who would face the white man without fear." The separate black nation was more pie-in-the-sky than any ghetto masses themselves. Black nationalism 'seeks a government feared Malcolm (the 28th Precinct's Dep- continued on page 14

By Minilter. Louil X ffiuhammad Slleaks ffiuhammad Slleaks (Bolton, Mall.) 9nlstcr~nin News 4 December 1964 TIM __ a&.c:II. Yiew Gil Noble urges Farrakhan "TO .'OLLOW MAU~OLM Tell us about your role IS TO BE DOOMED" in Malcolm X's murder If any Musltm-wht'tht'r ht' be an Imam or just a rich man-backt'd a fool like Mal- ·colm In bUilding a Mosqut'. he would be a fool htmst'lf. Only those who wish to be led to hell, or to their doom, will to.How Malcolm. The die is st't, and Maleolm shall not escape, especially aftt'r such evB. foolish talk about his bent'factor (Elijah Muham­ mad) In trying to rob him of the divine glory which Allah has be s towed upon him. Louis Farrakhan (far left) wanted Such a man as Malcolm Is Malcolm X dead. Muhammad worthy of death. and would Speaks portrayed Malcolm as hav£' met with death If Ithad "traitor" and called for his head not bE'en tor Muhammad's to roll. confldt'nce in Allah for vic· tory over the ent'mit's.

27 NOVEMBER 1992 13 Right to SPARlACIST SAYS: self-defense was key issue for 1960s ARMED SEL.F'" black radicals. DEFENSE FOA Many opposed Vietnam War, solidarizing with Vietnamese toilers fighting racist U.S. imperialism.

(J) Q) (fJ u E Qi ~ I m x Q (1) ~ u::

Marxist program of revolutionary integrationism at the Party fell over themselves offering condolences to the Malcolm x... critical juncture is in large part due to the capitulation First Lady). And Elijah Muhammad, despite all the of the Socialist Workers Party to black nationalism and "white devil" rhetoric, was outraged that his disciple (continued from page J 3 ) its criminal abstention from the struggle in the South let loose with such an affront to the white ruling class, of King's dreams. Separatism is not a program for social (for a fuller analysis of this period, see Spartacist pam­ because it would be very, very bad for business. struggle in racist America." phlet, "On the Civil Rights Movement," Black History But since Lee does not show the bloody terror per­ -Black History and the Class Struggle No.2 and the Class Struggle No.2, advertised on page 3). petrated by the U.S. government on black marchers While the Black Muslims remained aloof from strug­ "Chickens Come Home to Roost" throughout the South, on Africans in the Congo, against gle, young black radicals were attracted to the demand the Cuban Revolution and against the people of Vietnam, for "black power" precisely because of the inability of While Spike Lee plays up Malcolm's moral revulsion how are youth today to understand what is coming the liberal civil rights movement to address the sys­ at the discovery of Elijah Muhammad's sexual exploits home to roost? Moreover, the film never indicates that tematic racist oppression inherent in this capitalist sys­ with young Muslim women and ostentatiou~ high liv­ Malcolm's attacks on the Kennedy/Johnson White tem. This came to a head in the North, where it was ing, an immediate cause of Malcolm X's split with the House were central to his political stance and his appeal clear despite formal legal equality blacks were still Nation of Islam was his bold and unsparing assessment to the radicalizing youth in the black struggle. Searing forcibly segregated at the bottom of American society, of the Kennedy assassination, that it was a case of speeches, like "The Ballot or the Bullet"-where Mal­ through economic factors such as jobs, education, hous­ "chickens coming home to roost." The film shows the colm exposes the hand-in~glove workings of the South­ ing. Their frustration exploded in the '60s ghetto riots, tremendous courage it took for Malcolm X to make ern Dixiecrats with the Northern liberals, and declares, and in their wake despair over the failure of liberal such a statement in the midst of a national orgy of "A vote for a Democrat is a vote for a Dixiecrat"-have integration led to the spread of hardened black nation­ patriotic mourning (even ostensibly "socialist" groups no place in Lee's film. Indeed, when interviewed about alism. That l)lack militants were not introduced to the like the Communist Party and the Socialist Workers the cause of the L.A. riots, Spike Lee said, "The Dem­ ocratic administration tried to help the poor, but Reagan and Bush are not concerned" (Liberation [Paris], 5 May). Refusing to be silenced by Elijah Muhammad for 1965 Spartacist Statement on the Assassination speaking out on the Kennedy assassination, and increasingly aware that the Nation was responsible for reprinted from Spartacist No.4, May-June 1965 the death threats he and his family received, Malcolm split from the Nation of Islam. He formed his own organizations, Muslim Mosque, Inc. and the OAAU (Organization of Afro-American Unity), and made clear that. he would engage in secular political struggles. At an OAAU meeting the next year, Malcolm read aloud a telegram he had sent to the American Nazi leader MALCOLM X George Lincoln Rockwell: "This is to warn you that I am no longer held in check from fighting white supremacists by Elijah Muhammad's Of all the national Negro leaders in this countl')', charisma. When you heard Malcolm speak, even separatist Black Muslim movement, and that if your the one who was known uniquely for his militancy, when you heard him say things that were wrong and present racist agitation against our people there in Ala­ intransigence, and refusal to be the liberals' front­ confusing, you wanted to believe. Malcolm could bama causes physical harm to Reverend King or any man has been shot down. This new political assas­ move men deeply. He was the stuff of which masa other black Americans who are only attempting to enjoy sination is another indicator of the rising current leaders are made. Commencing his public life in the their rights as free human beings, that you and your Ku of irrationality and individual terrorism which the context of the apolitical. irrational religiosity and Klux Klan friends will be met with maximum physical decay of our society begets. Liberal reaction is pre­ racial mysticism of the Muslim movement, his break retaliation from ~hose of us who are not handcuffed dictable, and predictably disgusting. They are, of toward politicalness and rationality was slow, pain­ by the disarming philosophy of nonviolence, and who course, opposed to assassination, and some may even ful, and terribly incomplete. It is useless to speculate believe in asserting our right of self-defense-by any contribute to the fund for the education of Mal­ on how far it would have gone had he lived. He bad means necessary." colm's children, but their mourning at the death of entered prison a burgler, an addict, and a victim. He -Malcolm X Speaks the head of world imperialism had a considerably emerged a Ml18lim and a free man forev8i'. Elijah greater ring of sincerity than their regret at the Muhammed and the Lost-Found Nation of Islam Back from Mecca murder of a black militant who wouldn't play their were thus inextricably bound up with his personal Shortly after his split from the Nation of Islam, Mal­ emancipation. In any event, at tbe time of his death game. colm made the Muslims' pilgrimage to Mecca. This he had not yet developed a clear, explicit, and ration­ trip and a subsequent lengthy tour through Africa con­ Black Muslims? al aocial program. Nor had he led bis followers in vinced Malcolm that it was wrong to narrowly define The official story is that Black Muslims killed Mal­ the kind of transitional struggle necessary to tbe !olm. But we should not hasten to accept this to creation of a 8ucce88ful mass movement. Lacking the struggle against oppression in racial terms. In Spike date unproved hypothesis. The New York Police, such a program, he could not develop cadres based on Lee's movie, this fundamental break from black sepa­ for example, had good cause to be afraid of Malcolm. program. What cadre he had was based on Malcolm ratism is portrayed simply as a realization that Muslims and with the vast resources of blackmail and coer­ X instead. 'Hated and feared by the power structure, come in all complexions, therefore not all white people cion which are at their disposal, they also had ample and the focus of the paranoid feelings of bis former colleagues, his charisma made him dangerous, and can be "devils," and true "spiritualism" can forge a opportunity, and of course would have little reason brotherhood of humanity. You'd think Malcolm was to fear exposure were they involved. At the same his lack of developed program and cadre made him ready to link arms with the Kennedys and sing "We time, the Muslim theory cannot be discounted out vulnerable. His death by violence had a high order of hand because the MusliJD8 are not a political of probability, as he himself clearly felt. Shall Overcome"! Hardly. group, and in substituting religion for science, and A more realistic picture of the times is provided by color mysticism for rational analysis, they bave a Ha-oie and Tragic Figure SNCC activists John Lewis and Donald Harris, who world view which eould encompass the efIica,cy and The murder of lIaleolrn, and the disastrous COJl8e­ met up with Malcolm in Ghana in 1964, and wrote morality of assassination. A man who bas a direct queDCes 1Iowin. from that murder for Malcolm's or­ home that people would tell them, "'If you are to the pipeline to God can justify anYthing. paization and black militancy in general, does not right of Malcolm, you might as well start packing right mean tilat the militam black movement can always now 'cause no one' II listen to you'.... After a day of No Program be decaUitated with a shotgun. True, there i. an agonizin. lap in blaek leadership today. On the one this we found that we must, immediately on meeting The main point, however, is not who killed Kal­ people, state our own position in regard to where we colm, but why could he be killed? In the literal hand there are the respectable servants of the liberal establishment; men like James Farmer whose con­ stood on certain issues-Cuba, Vietnam, the Congo, sense, of aourse, any man can be killed, ~l1t why was Malcolm partiaulariy vulnerable't The answer temptible effort to blame Malcolm's murder on "Chi­ Red China and the UN, and what SNCC's role, guide­ to this question makes of Malcolm's death trapdy nese Communists" will only hasten his eclipse as a lines and involvement in the rights struggle was" (Mal­ leader, and OD the other hand the ranks of the mili­ of the sharpest kind, and in the literal Greek senae. colm X Speaks). Liberals and Elijah have tried to make Malcolm a tants have yet to produce a maD with tbe leadership potential of Malcolm. But such leadership will even­ Malcolm wrote that "travel broadens." Meeting fight­ victim of his own (non-existent) doctrines of vio­ ers from successful revolutionary wars against British, lence. This is totally wrong and totally hypocritical. tually be forthcomin •• This is a statistical as well as Malcolm was the most dynamic national leader to a social certainty. This h.dership, buildin. on the French and U.S. imperialism got him thinking about have appeared in America in the. last decade. Com­ experience of others such as Malcolm, and emanci­ how to redefine the struggle against racist and colonial pared with him the famous Kennedy per80nality was pated from his religiosity, will build a movement in oppression. After a conversation with a man who helped which the black masses and their allies ean lead the a flimsy cardboard creation of money, publicity, drive the French out of Algeria, Malcolm said: makeup, and the media. Malcolm had none of thes., third Jl'eat American revolution. Thea Malcolm X will be remembered by black and white alike as a "He was an African, but he was Algerian, and to all but a righteous eause and iron eharaeter for.ed h3' appearances, he was a white man. And he said if I define white America in the fin of diacrimination, addic­ heroic and trqie ftp1'e in a dark period of our c0m­ mon histery. • my objectiveasthe victory of black nationalism, where tion, prison, and incredible calumny. He had a dif­ does that leave him? Where does that leave revolution­ ficult to define but almost tanlible attribute called Bay Area Spartacist Committee, :I Karch, 1965 aries in Morocco, Egypt, Iraq, Mauritania? So IJe showed me where I was alienating people who were true revolutionaries, dedicated to overthrowing the system of 14 WORKERS VANGUARD exploitation .... I had to do a lot of thinking and re­ Lee interviewed Farrakhan before making the movie pIe took to the streets around the country, they were appraising of my definition of black nationalism .... I and confronted him with the damning evidence-the busted by black mayors who waved their "nonviolent" haven't been using the expression for several months." civil rights credentials in one hand and waved in vicious - "Young Socialist Interview," death threats against Malcolm X-issued by Farrakhan By Any Means Necessary himself in Muhammad Speaks and reprinted here. But police assaults with the other. One last speech by But Malcolm's x-ray vision, which had never failed when the cameras rolled, Lee pulled his punches and Malcolm X seems particularly prescient: "In 1963, one of their devices to let off the steam of to see through the hypocrisy of American bourgeois Farrakhan is not mentioned in this film. As black historian Clayborne Carson wrote, "Some frustration was the march on Washington .... In '64, what politics, went myopic on him in Africa. It's almost was it? The civil-rights bill .... What will they give us embarrassing to read his accolades to the Saudi mon­ viewers may even see Farrakhan as a modem-day in 1965? I just read where they planned to make a archy-the last state on the planet to practice legal Malcolm" (San Francisco Examiner, 22 November). black cabinet member. Yes, they have a new gimmick chattel slavery of black Africans and women! And he Carson also noted: every year. They're going to take one of their boys, black boys, and put him in the cabinet, so he can walk had big-time illusions in the United Nations (a den of "By ignoring the political Malcolm in favor of the per­ sonal story, Lee makes it difficult for viewers to under­ around Washington with a cigar-fire on one end and thieves and their victims) as an ostensibly independent stand why FBI and CIA surveillance of Malcolm fool on the other." and moral entity. increased rather than decreased after he abandoned the -"Prospects for Freedom in 1965," Thus Malcolm had a plan to press charges in the anti-white teachings of Elijah Muhammad. During his Malcolm X Speaks UN against the United States for its heinous crimes last year, Malcolm was considered a major threat by these agencies because his talents were no longer confined Black Liberation Through against the 20 million descendants of Africans brought within a small, apolitical religious cult." Socialist Revolution! to America's shores in bondage. Although the UN's Malcolm X was a compelling figure, and every­ Conditions for black youth in America today are composition was changing with the admittance of a body wants a piece of him-indeed, the most diverse much worse than in Malcolm's time. Ghettoized youth host of former black African colonies, even at the time political tendencies claim this remarkable man as are considered by the ruling class to be a "surplus" the UN was complicit in the assassination of Patrice "theirs" and assert that at the time of his death he was Lumumba, the radical nationalist Congolese leader. population. There are no jobs for them and thus no inexorably moving toward their own political positions. need to educate them. Some two million manufacturing And Malcolm was basically blind to the nature of the Clayborne Carson's own angle is to say that Malcolm African regimes which talked of so-called "nonalign­ jobs have disappeared in this country over the past was coming around to reconciliation with M.L. King ment" and even "socialism" as they exploited and decade, and the real incomes of black working parents and "nonviolence." But this remarkable man's life was repressed the workers and peasants. Now, after the U.S. under the age of 30 were driven down by a staggering tragically cut short; he was robbed of the chance to slaughter of 100,000 Iraqis and the destruction of the 48 percent between 1973 and 1990. But while the black evolve politically, in what direction we do not know. country (carried out under the "neutral" UN flag with poor were being ravaged, a layer of black yuppies As we wrote in our 1965 obituary (Spartacist No.4, the active support of African and Arab states), such a emerged,moving out of the ghettos. Currently the top May-June 1965): perspective is grotesque. 20 percent of black families account for almost half of "He was the stuff of which mass leaders are made. Com­ all black income-a degree of inequality greater than The Legacy of Malcolm X mencing his public life in the context of the apolitical, among whites. irrational religiosity and racial mysticism of the Muslim Malcolm X opens with a powerful sequence of movement, his break toward political ness and rationality These facts alone explode the black nationalist myth images-the horrific and familiar clips of the police was slow, painful, and terribly incomplete. It is useless of a common interest of all black people. While the beating of Rodney King give way to a giant American to speCUlate on how far it would have gone had he overall conditions for black people have gotten much. lived .... In any event, at the tim~ of his death he had much worse, there is a growing perception-from white flag that ignites and smoulders into a giant "X." It's a not yet developed a clear, explicit. and rational social Caterpillar workers in the Midwest, to Latinos in L.A., promise that this film will have relevance to the urgent program. Nor had he led his followers in the kind of problems plaguing black America today. It's a promise transitional struggle necessary to the creation of a suc­ to black youth in Harlem-that the fundamental divi­ unfulfilled. By omission, this film is a conscious cover­ cessful mass movement." siont" this country is not between black and white, up of some very sinister enemies of black rights and Still, Malcolm's intransigent commitment to the truth but between haves and have nots. And despite the loot­ a perversion of Malcolm's greatest strength-the ability and his uncompromising opposition to racist America ing and deindustrialization of America by the ca~italist to see the two-party political system in America for make him a hero for Marxists like us who see the fight class, black workers still play a strategic role in the the con game it is. for black liberation as strategic to a workers revolution American economy and organized labor movement. All This film shows that both the FBI and the Nation against the whole hideous and irrational profit system. those basic jobs which k.eep American society function­ of Islam wanted Malcolm dead. Yet a cameo role is As the voice of the angry black ghetto, Malcolm X ing-bus drivers, hospital worken;. subway motmmen, given to avowed FBI fink Al Sharpton, who wore a knew that the Southern-based civil rights struggle for saaitatjon workers, longshoremen, postal carriers-'"--are wire for the feds to spy on other black activists! That formal equality could not achieve freedom for black dispropoffignately ~Jd by blacks. And therein fie~ their Spike Lee can get away with such a maneuver speaks people in capitalist America. No new civil rights bill tremenoous poteR~tlaj power, as Nark workers, as part volumes to the dearth of struggle and the low level of could begin to address the systematic racist discrimi­ of an integrated wOrking class leading all the oppressed. political consciousness today. Twenty years ago, audi­ nation and dehumanizing conditions that the black pop­ As we wrote at the time of the Los Angeles riots ("L.A. ences would have walked out or thrown something at ulation was forced to suffer in big Northern ghettos Upheava1 Shakes America,~ WV No. 551, 15 May): the fat fink the moment he appeared on the big screen! like Detroit, Roxbury and Harlem-where blacks were, "'lbeseblact pmJetarians can serve as a bridge between As to the Nation of Islam's involvement, Malcolm of course, "equal" under the law. the$hett-o poor and the organizect ~t:lbof movemeBLCon­ ditWiIs lIreoverri¥e for a massive social expWslon tn this X clearly shows that Elijah Muhammad and his very The avalanche of blows by police billyclubs on a crnlflifyext<:fWing: from tfu! gRettOl'l ~~~ Hispanic banios disciplined followers wanted Malcolm dead and gone. black man named Rodney King, and the outrageous ro .W14ite skitled:workers, ~otthi':m ooe paycheck But the sinister figure who replaced Malcolm as min­ acquittal of his cop tormenters, taught a lot of people a.way from bankfl;lptcy and evlCtiicQ .... Decisive in the ister in Harlem's Temple Seven, and became the Nation that there is something fundamentally wrong with this otJtcUffie wiH be the construction :pl amuhiracia~com­ mtnHst vanguard party such as ~afid the BolSheviks of Islam's hatchet man for the savage hate campaign society that no piecemeal reform can change. It was a built in tsarist 'Russia's 'prisoo R.OOse m natwns,' wh.ich against Malcolm X, is still around. He now heads the clear racist atrocity. And the mass upheaval of anger led the mutlinatiDnal working.cfass·jft a~"s!61fn$uf­ Nation of Islam. His name is Louis Farrakhan. Spike against it was plebeian and multiracial. As young peo- recttc)U agaiMt the capitaliSollMoor.!:'.

Malcolm X: The Man, the Mylb,the .. I Spartacist ~ Forums I· lIm .....6.... Speaker: Brian Manning, Spartacist League Saturday, Dec. 5, 2:30 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 12, 4:00 p.m. Undergraduate Library Lecture Room Emerson Hall, Room 305 Howard University Harvard University • For more information: (202) 872-8240 For more information: (617) 492-3928 WASHINGTON, D.C. BOSTON

Speaker: Gene Herson, Organizer of Labor/Black Anti-Klan Mobilizations in Philadelphia and Atlanta Thursday, Dec. 10, 12:15 p.m. Friday, Dec. 11,7:00 p.m. Baskerville 03 Hamilton Hall, Room 602 City College of New York Columbia University 138th St. and Convent Ave. (#1 train to Broadway & 116th St.)

NEW YORK CITY For more information (212) 267-1025

Guest Speaker: Bernard Branche, Member ATU Local 308 Date and time to be announced UIC Circle Center For more information: (312) 663-0715 (see Activities Board for room) CHICAGO

27 NOVEMBER 1992 15 WfJllliEIiS ,,1."'111)

Y~DDg SparlacDs Film Review

A biographical film on Malcolm X has been more the Cuban Revolution, the colonial revolts in Asia than 20 years in the making, a project almost as con­ and Africa, Vietnam, the civil rights movement-are troversial as the man himself. Now Spike Lee has nowhere in this film. finally brought it to the big screen. Starved for black As the voice for self-defense for black people, Mal­ leadership, and finding in Malcolm X a legend who colm X didn't play by the rules of bourgeois politics. refused to submit to the racist white ruling class, He named names and denounced Martin Luther King, inner-city youth are hitting the books and fueling a Jr., Bayard Rustin, et aI., as the "Uncle Toms" who self-motivated literacy drive that school librarians never counseled the suffering black masses to "turn the other dreamed of. This year alone, more than a million copies cheek" in the face of murderous racist attacks perpe­ of The Autohiography of Malcolm X have been sold-ten trated by Dixiecrats. And he saw clearly the hypocrisy times the number sold when it was first published in the of Northern white liberal Democrats like John and Rob­ mid- '60s. It's a damn good thing youth are reading ert Kennedy who "came to the aid" of blacks by sending Malcolm X in his own words, because despite great the FBI and federal marshals ... to clamp down on their sound and vibrant color, Lee's Malcolm X is a celluloid struggles. In the film, there's no conflict between black blank space in history-the mass struggles for black radicals and "respectable" black leaders, no names rights are missing from the movie. named. Yet it was precisely Malcolm's strident oppo­ It is something. in this racist society, to make a film sition to the entire liberal political firmament that that gives humanity back to a black militant who established him as the voice of the angry black ghetto the entire power structure feared, hated and demon­ and gave him, eventually, a mass appeal and signifi­ Gordon Parks ized. But Lee's reverence for Malcolm X becomes 70 cance in history. pretensions to be one "bad" black filmmaker, Spike millimeter mythology. Removed from the convulsive Stripped out of any social context, Lee's Malcolm X Lee has managed to turn Malcolm X into a .. . liheral! political struggles of the times which defined him and plays like a "Booker T." remodeled for.the '90s-mag­ Through Lee's lens, Malcolm X emerges from Mecca formed the context in which he emerged as black Amer­ netic Denzel Washington is a Malcolm whose message as a combination of Gandhi and Martin Luther ica's uncompromising truthteller, Lee's Malcolm is a is to uplift the race by pulling yourself up by your own King, Jr. A generation after the defining battles of the cardboard messiah. The domestic and international bootstraps, living clean and emancipating yourself from civil rights movement, black revisionist history casts battles which tore this country apart and politicized the "prison in your mind." Hardly a program for rev­ Malcolm and Martin as partners in a joint struggle for an entire generation of youth, black as well as white- olutionary social change! Despite his intentions and black rights. But Malcolm X's political role was defined against King and all the preachers of liberal accommodation to the racist power structure. The present generation of black intellectuals is over­ whelmingly remote from mass political struggle, so that they cannot think programmatically and strategically. Nonviolent resistance vs. armed self-defense, support for the liberal wing of the Democratic Party vs. independent political action, the relation of national liberation struggles in Africa and Asia to the American black movement-these are the issues which defined Malcolm X and determined his appeal. Since Lee does not present the political climate of the '60s, the evolution of Malcolm X and the specific positions he takes in the film remain inexplicable. Lee views Malcolm X through the perspective of the self-conscious black intelligentsia of the renovated brownstones of Bed-Stuy and Fort Greene. From his previous films produced through his 40 Acres and a Mule Productions, to Spike's Boutique at Macy's, to Malcolm X, Lee focuses on personal development and promotes "black capitalism." If he draws the line at marketing "X Air-Freshener" ("eradicate odors by any means necessary"), it is only because this product is too downscale for Lee's target audience. Ultimately this world view is not hostile to American capitalist rule. Thus it's no accident that Lee's Malcolm emerges as no threat to the bourgeoisie: Malcolm X received rave reviews in the Wall Street Journal, among other places. , From Street Hustler to Muslim Minister The film is best, and most faithful to the Autohiog­ raphy, in capturing Malcolm's early years. Malcolm Little's family home is burned to the ground by robed, WVii hooded Klansmen who later murder his father, a fol­ Racist cop beating of Rodney King (left). Black youth look to lower of Marcus Garvey and a proud man who refused Malcolm X, as depicted in mural at Locke High School in South to submit to white supremacy. His mother is then Central Los Angeles. judged unfit to fend for her children, and the state takes Malcolm and all his siblings and splits them up in continued on'page 13 George Holliday Video

16 27 NOVEMBER 1992