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. No. 484 .'~)X.52' 1 September 1989 Civil War Threatens in Baltics We print here excerpts from a state­ put any Soviet bureaucrat to shame, dis­ movements seek not merely separation degradation or exclusion of all other ment by the Central Committee of the played by the small numbers who are the with full protection of all peoples within Soviet peoples. CPSU, dated 26 August, distributed by vicious and arrogant American ruling these borders, but a vicious capitalist It is in this context that it is necessary the Soviet news agency TASS. class. restoration, rapidly producing a new to view this often accurate document by These words as printed are fair and Exception must be taken to the state­ and ethnically pure ruling class, and the the Soviet Central Committee. even often true. But they come from an ment's pejorative use of the words "for­ institution which has saturated the eign organizations." Some "foreign or­ Soviet Union since the 1920s with a ganizations" are resolute military mass of unmitigated lies-in the first defenders of the Soviet Union; others Statement of the Central Committee, place by the regime ofthe infamous Sta­ are imperialist spies. The bureaucracy lin, and perpetuated by his successors in does not want to know the difference. Communist Party of the Soviet Union the bureaucracy of which he was the The statement by the CC of the CPS U architect. also leaves out the critical element, The current situation in the Baltic and cultural life, Today the Soviet population must insisted upon by Lenin, that all nations republics is the cause of increasing con­ The Baltic republics actively joined in tend to believe nothing that is pub­ not seeking counterrevolutionary social cern. Developments there affect the vital the process of deep transformation. lished by the Soviet government. Thus change were promised the right to fully interests of the entire Soviet people, our Workers' collectives got moving and the they deeply disbelieve that there is administratively disaffiliate from the entire socialist motherland. intellectual forces of all strata of society poverty, racism, . limited and expensive rest of the Soviet Union. This right was Perestroika pa\';ed the way for the became active. medical care, massive unemployment, incorporated in the founding consti­ rapid growth of the national awareness But at a certain stage nationalist, homelessness and the like in the U.S. tution of the USSR. of peoples, made them confident that extremist groups took advantage of de­ They do not know that there is enor­ In the guise of national separation, they can independently solve the prob­ mocracy and openness and gradually mous ostentatious wealth that· would the Baltic nationalist independence 'lems of their political, social, economic continued on page 11

Stalinists Bow to Counterrevolutionary Solidarnosc • I , I e rln

Burnett/Contact Stalinist general Jaruzelski (left) and Lech Walesa in parliament. Pope John Paul Wojtyla masterminds Solidarnosc' drive to restore capitalism in Poland.

On August 24, the Polish parliament, the CIA and bankers" and demand­ the Sejm, installed an open counterrevo­ ed, "Stop SolidarnosC' Counterrevolu­ lutionary as prime minister. The new tion!" the international Spartacist ten­ premier, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, is a long­ Strikes Break Out dency stood virtually alone on the left. time leading Catholic politiciim and N ow as Solidarnosc takes the reins of close adviser to Solidarnosc leader Lech government, it openly reaffirms its Walesa. The imperialist media trium­ Against IMF AU$terity agenda for capitalist restoration. Lech phantly proclaim "An Epochal Shift" Walesa, in an interview with the Italian (Time) and "Communism Crumbles in newspaper II Messaggero (22 August), Poland" (Newsweek). On American TV, tion would be anything but peaceful. Mazowiecki, in an interview with Izves­ said the new government intended to Barbara Walters interviews Walesa on Already, what happens in Warsaw is tia (24 August), described his politics: pull Poland along the road "from a "the beginning of the end of Com­ being directed by the Polish Pope "Simply put, I'm a Christian, a Catho­ Communist system of ownership to cap­ munism," as tears of joy glisten on her straight from Rome. Columnist An­ lic who follows the social teachings of italism." "Nobody has previously taken cheeks, Jimmy Carter's Polish Cold thony Lewis revealed (New York Times, the Catholic church, which emanate the road that leads from socialism to Warrior Zbigniew Brzezinski foresees a 24 August): "This summer Mr. Geremek from the instructions of Pope John Paul capitalism," he said. "And we are set­ "peaceful revolution" and "evolution­ [Solidarnosc' parliamentary fraction II." Upon taking office, Mazowiecki ting out to do just that, to return to the ary termination of Communist totali­ leader] and another leading intellectual placed a phone call to the Pope to get his prewar situation when Poland was a tarianism." The fast-moving events in adviser to Solidarity, Adam Michnik, "instructions." Many people, not just capitalist country, after having gone Warsaw signal the opening of a termi­ were quietly invited by Pope John Paul Polish Stalinists, might not find life in through a long period of socialism." nal crisis for Stalinist bureaucratic rule II to his summer residence at Castel Poland as a hitter-day Vatican state to Their plans call for a "shock treatment" in Poland. But the announcements of Gandolfo," where the intricate steps of their liking. rivaling that applied to Chile by Pino­ the "death of Communism" are prema­ the Polish parliamentary polonaise were Eight years ago when we called chet after the bloody 1973 coup. ture, and a successful counterrevolu- orchestrated. The new prime minister Solidarnosc a "company 'union' for continued on page 12 Pil.rti§CaD Defeo.... £ ...... ittee CLASS-STRUGGLE DEFENSE NOTES Pratt Parole Denied: Free Geronimo Now! On August 17 the California Board time," and claimed that Pratt refused a of Prison Terms once again refused crucial psychological evaluation. The parole for Geronimo Pratt. It was the Board ignored psychiatric reports rec­ ninth time the panel condemned Pratt ommending parole, such as that of to remain in his prison hellhole, and prison staff psychologist Randall Bruce followed by just five weeks the re­ who in 1987 described Pratt as a "prin­ fusal by the Ninth Circuit Court of cipled individual and an idealist and Appeals to reconsider its decision to supporter of human rights" whose deny Pratt's appeal on an insignificant "prognosis for parole should be excel­ America's foremost class-war prisoner, Geronimo Pratt. legal technicality. lent," and Dr. M. E. Roudebush. whose Board of Prison Terms Commis­ recent evaluation concluded, "Mr. Pratt responded in a statement, distributed Pratt, a former Los Angeles Black sioner David Brown, who started his is believed to have an excellent chance at by the Partisan Defense Committee, Panther Party leader, has been in jail career 25 years ago as a guard at San making a constructive adjustment in the stating: for more than 19 years for a crime he Quentin prison, emerged from the one­ free world." "The Parole Panel's latest attempt to did not commit. And for 19 years he has hour parole board hearing for the ritual To counter growing support for vilify, defame and discredit me must be fought to uncover and expose the FBI/ denunciation of this courageous fighter Pratt, Brown invented a new heinous challenged because of the insidious COINTELPRO campaign of murder for black lib.eration. Brown stated that slander, repeated in a number of news­ image it portrays to our children in the and disruption against the Black Pan­ Pratt "is not suitable for parole at this papers, that Pratt is a heroin user. Pratt midst of the genocidal drug war which is savagely being waged against our ther Party and others. To get Pratt families and communities daily. behind bars the FBI withheld evidence "In closing there is no basis in fact or and concealed from the jury that their reality for these statements that the chief witness was a paid FBI informant. panel has made. The aforementioned For the Rebirth of statements were made during a so­ In 1987, CBS' 60 Minutes program aired Polish Communism! called parole hearing without me or my an expose of Pratt's frame-up in which attorney being present. Therefore, I Polish Stalinism is terminally discredit­ jurors at the initial trial stated they hereby challenge any and all members would have voted to acquit had they ed and 'bankrupt, but authentic commu­ of that panel to face me with their known these facts! FBI wiretap logs nism in Poland had a deeply revolutionary baseless accusations in the open instead which would prove Pratt was in Oak­ tradition, one so strong that in order of hiding in the shadows with these land at the time of the Los Angeles mur­ to root it out Stalin had to dissolve the deceitful and damaging lies." der have been "disappeared." Communist Party in 1938. The Polish Bolstered by recent Supreme Court working class must look back to and Thousands have endorsed Pratt's decisions holding that prisoners have fight for freedom. Congressman Ron reappropriate this legacy which was in- virtually no rights at all, Brown peddles Dellums, chairman of the Congres­ TROTSKY spired by the internationalism of Rosa LENIN his nasty lie in order to justify the con­ sional Black Caucus, has introduced Luxemburg and v.1. Lenin. In a 1957 inter- tinued imprisonment of America's fore­ House Resolution 109, calling for the \'ie\\', Jlarxist historian Isaac Deutscher, one-time leader of the Polish Left most class-war prisoner, and to bury Opposition, described the valorous history ofthis party which led the Polish workers' "immediate release from prison of deeper the very real crimes of the Elmer 'Geronimo' Pratt." On August 26 resistance to Pilsudski's White terror. COINTELPRO criminals who mur­ we wrote to the Parole Board demand­ It was a great and heroic party, the only party in Poland which represented the dered 38 ofPratt's Panther brothers and ing Pratt's freedom. The POC calls on interests of the proletarian revolution, the great Marxist tradition, and a true and sisters and railroaded Pratt and numer­ all of Pratt's supporters, for labor and li\'ing internationalism. In this respect no other Polish party could be compared with· ous other black militants to a lifetime of civil rights activists, to redouble their it. l.:nfortunately, up to this day the history of the Polish Coinmunist Party still prison hell The true reasons for the efforts to generate the widest campaign remains a closed and sealed book.... . parole denial were clearly presented in 9f protest and publicity to demand How did it happen, we must ask, that a Party which had to its credit decades of the last Board of Prison Terms witch­ "Freedom Now for Geronimo Pratt!" underground struggle and a long (seventy years long!) and proud Marxist tradition hunt two years ago, when they viciously submitted meekly to this horrible outrage-without a protest~ without making any attacked Pratt's honorable political past • • • attempt to defend its martyred leaders and fighters, without even trying to vindicate as a Black Panther and humanist. Dep­ Class-Struggle Defense Notes No. II its honor, and without declaring that in spite of the death sentence Stalin had passed uty district attorney Diane Ve.zzani is now available. This issue focuses on it, it would live on and fight on? How could this happen? We must be fully aware of raged that Pratt is "still a revolution­ on international cIass-struggle defense, the moral corrosion to which Stalinism had for so many years exposed Polish ary" and lashed out at the "network of including the lalalabad Civilian Vic­ Communism in order to understand its complete collapse under the blow .... people" who have come forward in the tims Aid Fund and solidarity greetings Stalin saw the Polish CP as the stronghold of hated Luxemburgism-the Polish cause of Pratt's freedom. Like South from fraternal defense; organizations "variety of Trotskyism"-which had defied him as long ago as 1923; the Party in Africa's Nelson Mandela, Geronimo initiated in seven countries. We encour­ which some leaders were close to Bukharin and others to Zinoviev; the Party of Pratt remains unbowed and deeply age WV readers to continue to support incurable heresies, proud of its traditions and of its heroism; the Party, finally, which committed to the cause of the oppressed and build the POC. Become a sustain­ might well in certain international situations become an obstacle on his road. " And in fighting for his own freedom. But ing cOQtributor. Send a donation of $5 so he decided to remove that obstacle by the blade of the same guillotine which, American capitalist "justice" has again or more and receive a SUbscription to working furiously, was already destroying a whole generation of Bolsheviks.... declared that, like fugitive slave Dred . Class-Struggle Defense Notes. For a Not only the historian, but also every militant Marxist, must draw certain Scott, Geronimo Pratt has "no ri~ts single copy send $1 to: Partisan Defense conclusions from the tragic history of the Polish CPo Here, I must of necessity confine which the white man was' bound to Committee, P.O. Box 99, Canal Street myself to one rather general idea: if the history of the Polish CP and of Poland at respect." Station, New York, NY 10013 .• large proveS anything at all, it proves how indestructible is the link between the Polish and the Russian revolutions. -Isaac Deutscher; "The Tragedy of the Polish Communist Party" (1957) ----Women and Revolution Forum----

!~~l!!I!!Y!~!!"1.'!!U.s~ DIRECTOR OF PARTY PUBLICATIONS: Liz Gordon EDITOR: Jan Norden PRODUCTION MANAGER: Jorge Ramirez • Free Abortion on Demandf Free, Quality Health Care for All! CIRCULATION MANAGER: Jon Lawrence • Government Out of the Bedroom! EDITORIAL BOARD: George Foster. Frank Hunter, Jane Kerrigan, Len Meyers. James Robertson. • For Separation of Church and State! Reuben Samuels. Joseph Seymour. Alison Spencer. Marjorie Stamberg The Spartacist League is the U.S. Section of the International Communist League (Fourth • For Women's Liberation Through Socialist Revolution! Internationalist) . Workers Vanguard (USPS 098-770) published biweekly. except 2nd issue August and with 3-week interval December. Speaker: Amy Rath, Associate Editor, Women and Revolution by Ihe Spartacisl Publishing Co.• 41 Warren Street. New York. NY 10007. Telephone: (212) 732-7862 (Editorial). (212) 732-7861 (Business). Address all correspondence to: Box 1377. GPO. New York. NY 10116. Domestic subscriptions: $7.00/24 issues. Second-class postage paid at New York. NY. POSTMASTER: Send address changes 10 Wednesday, September 6,7:30 p.m.--­ Workers Vanguard. Box 1377. GPO. New York. NY 10116. Opinions expressed in Signed articles or letters do not necessarily express the editOTia/ lliewpoinl. Room 302, Barnard Hall, Barnard College Sponsored by For more information: No. 484 1 September 1989 Spartacus Youth Club NEW YORK (212) 267-1025

2 WORKERS VANGUARD Lynch Mob Murder in Bensonhurst charged with riot, assault, conspiracy of black leadership. After the Howard strating the power and determination to and with violating Yusef's civil rights. Beach killing, hundreds of black people stop the racist punks in their tracks. No one has been charged with murder, repeatedly took to the streets, but their Such a mobilization, including many of Brooklyn, NY and all are now out on bail. anger was channeled by the liberal­ the thousands of trade unionists who Black mayoral front-runner David nationalist lawyers Maddox and Mason live in Bensonhurst, can have a pow­ A black father grieves and rages at the Dinkins had a point when he said, "It into impotent calls for Democratic gov- erful impact in breaking down the seg­ loss of his child to lynch mob murder. was like, 'Any n----- will do.' If I take .ernor Cuomo to appoint a "special pros­ regation which breeds racist terror. "My-sttn--went to a neighOomood and my tie off I could go there,and get my ecutor." This was done, and now there's In 1982, after Willie Turks was was blown down because' of the com­ behind kicked, too .... The tone and the yet another lynch mob attack. Black clubbed to death after he and some plexion of his skin. Doctors told me climate of this city does get set at City anger was further dissipated in the disas­ friends stopped to buy a bagel on the my son's heart was blown right out of Hall." Dinkins, who has a good shot at trous Tawana Brawley hoax, dragged way home from work at the Coney his body. Why can't he go to Benson­ replacing Koch in City Hall, is calling on forever by the two lawyers and the Island transit barn, fellow members of hurst with his friends?" Moses Stew­ for thousands more cops on the streets charlatan and admitted FBI fink Al TWU Local 100 called for mass inte­ art's 16-year-old son Yusef Hawkins to "fight" crime and cra<;:k. Yet it was Sharpton. grated workers defense guards to defend was shot dead by a racist mob in Ben­ racist killer cops, unleashed by Mayor On August 26, Sharpton led several the right to walk the streets. Transit sonhurst, Brooklyn on August 24. "This Koch, who blew away grandmother hundred black people into Benson­ workers, including supporters of the isn't 1889. It's 1989," Stewart said. "This Eleanor Bumpurs with a shotgun hurst, where isolated and unarmed they Spartacist League, issued a call on this isn't Alabama .... This is New York." because she was behind in her rent, were spat upon and abused by scream­ strategic union to organize hundreds of But in the racially supercharged atmos­ stomped the life out of subway graffiti ing mobs, and depended for their safety flatbed trucks filled with thousands of phere of Ed Koch's New York, parts of artist Michael Stewart, hurled Trevor on the "protection" of the racist NYC union militants to patrol the streets of the city have become crucibles for race­ Francis from a Harlem rooftop on a cops! "'Niggers go home!' shouted some South Brooklyn. But mass mobiliza­ terror rivaling the Klan-infested Jim "drug bust." of the 400 white residents ... including tion of union power was opposed by the Crow South. In Bensonhurst, where lots of cops some holding signs reading 'We're not pro-Democratic Party bureaucrats who At least three other black men have and their friends live, and the punks racist'," reported Newsday (27 August). control the TWU. Then, as now, they died at the hands of lynch mobs in seg­ on the street idolize John Gotti, peo­ On Sunday, black preachers led a vigil preached reliance on Democratic Party regated white neighborhoods hugging ple heard nothing and saw nothing. to the site of the murder and were also pols, the courts and the racist cops. the Belt Parkway from Brooklyn to The suspected triggerman, Joey Fama, met by screaming mobs, some holding Yusef Hawkins, Samuel Spencer and Queens. Willie Turks, a transit worker, reputedly Mafia-connected, has myste­ up watermelons. In response, Koch Michael Griffith might be alive today, dragged from his car and bludgeoned to riously vanished. Meanwhile, the neigh­ lashed out ... against the black march­ and many others unscathed by racist death by a club-swinging racist mob on borhood has turned on Feliciano, ers, accusing them of escalating tension attack, if the cruel lynching of Willie Avenue X in Gravesend, June 1982. daughter of a Puerto Rican father and by marching into Bensonhurst. Turks had been met by mass labor / Samuel Spencer, run down on his bicy­ an Italian mother, "the girl that ruined The workers movement must insist on black defense back in 1982. Now the cle, then beaten to death by four car­ the neighborhood." Some of the punks and enforce the democratic right of lives of black people are even more at loads of young white racists in Coney threatened to kill her even before the anyone to go anywhere in this city. risk. We will finally get rid of the racist Island, May 1986. Michael Griffith, shooting. A neighbor said, "If she That includes black men in Howard rot, in Bensonhurst and throughout this chased into the path of a speeding car wanted friends like that, if she wanted Beach and Bensonhurst and white wom­ country, when the workers take power, on the Parkway by a gang of bat­ black people as friends, she should've en in Central Park. This is not accom­ led by a multiracial revolutionary party wielding teenage racists in Howard went into their neighborhood." plished by "moral witness" marches of which fights intransigently in defense of Beach, December 1986. And now, There is bitter outrage in the black small numbers of protesters defense­ all the oppressed. In the warning words Yusef, an "A" student who was about to community and throughout the city less against the racist mobs. Instead of of Moses Stewart: "It did not start with enter Transit Tech high school, brutal­ against the murder of Yusef Hawkins. a show of weakness, whafs needed my family. It started 400 years ago .... ly murdered by a mob of 30 "corner Yet the organized response, or lack is an impressive show of strength by If you' want to keep your son, you stop boys" on the streets of 93-percent-white thereof, has again highlighted the crisis the integrated labor movement, demon- it now!". Bensonhurst. Hawkins had been watching a video of Mississippi Burning and was stunned by the brutality of the lynch mob shown in the movie. He didn't get to finish because he and three friends, all from a quiet street in the mainly black Brook­ CWA Striker Murdered lyn section of East New York, had an appointment to look at a used car in Bensonhurst. There they ran into the racist punks who had gathered, base­ on the Picket Line ball bats in hand, to waylay blacks they believed had been invited to a party Gerry Horgan, a chief steward in given by a young woman named Gina Communications Workers of America Feliciano. Feliciano had violated the (CW A) Local 1103, and other striking neighborhood "code" by having a dark­ phone workers were picketing a Val­ skinned Caribbean boyfriend and invit­ halla, New York NYNEX facility ing black friends over to her house. access road on August 14 when a scab, Hawkins and his friends were simply the Patricia McNamara, drove at the first blacks to come along, and Yusef picket line. Horgan· was forced onto pai9 with his life. the hood of her car. Horrified union Koch's black police commissioner, witnesses reported McNamara driv- Benjamin Ward, pronounced the lynch­ , ing for over 100 feet accelerating and ing a case of "mistaken identity" set off swerving from side to side, causing by the jealousy of a "spurned lover." Horgan to be thrown head first to This became the argument of those who the pavement. The 34-year-old cable denied racism was involved: in other splicer died the next day, leaving a words, if the killers had only shot widow and two small children. This Feliciano's boyfriend, it would suppos­ was murder. edly be no big deal. But this ambush was The cops called it an "accident" cold-blooded racist murder. In a cruel and refused to press charges against irony, the attack victims included McNamara, while the bosses' press Luther Sylvester, who is related to blacked out news of the killing or Michael Griffith as well as to Curtis obscenely blamed Horgan for his own Sylvester, the driver of the car that death. But Gerry is not forgotten by broke down, forcing its passengers to his coworkers. On August 17, over walk into Howard Beach. 2,000 angry unionists rallied in White The Hawkins case is now being Plains, New York in memory of played out against the background of Gerry Horgan. One sign read: "Cut a the cynical politics ofthe NYC mayoral Cable-Go to Jail; Kill a Picket-Get race. Desperately trying to catch up in Off Free. Where Is Justice?" Evbn in the polls, arch-racist Koch rushed to the face of this scab murder, the CW A Brooklyn to demand the governor union tops have been conducting busi­ ness as usual: sending CW A members WV Photo appoint a special prosecutor. Brooklyn August 17-Two thousand angry workers at memorial rally in White D.A. Liz Holtzman, herself a candidate at AT&T across strikers' picket lines Plains, New York. for Comptroller, recoiled; her office has and turning the strike into a toothless plenty of "experience" in prosecuting consumer boycott. ' automated phone system, workers Some 'selective service cuts-Wall "bias" cases, she said. Holtzman "han­ In the wake of this brutal murder~ have to occupy the offices, pull the bill­ Street, the banks-will bring the dled" the Willie Turks case, too: his strikers must demand a solid national ing tapes and give the public free serv­ bosses to their kn~es! Honor Gerry murderers were slapped on the wrist and' strike against the "Baby Bells" and ice, winning the support of millions Horgan and stop scabs with picket are walking the streets today_ So far, AT&T! To win against the highly against the 'hated phone companies. lines that nobody crosses!. the Bensonhurst suspects have been 1 SEPTEMBER 1989 3 The Great French Revolution of 1789 is not an isolated and remote historical event but has formed the framework for social struggle in France for the past From Jacobinism to Bolshevism 200 years. In 1848, the workers tried to shatter the entente that emerged from the counterrevolutionary reaction to the French Revolution. In response the propertied classes massacred the Paris proletariat in the June Days. These same counterrevolutionary forces shot down the Communards of IN DEFENSE OF THE 1871 and sought to frame up the Jewish military officer Dreyfus, leading to a near civil war in France at the turn of the century. And with the rulers demoral­ ized by the enormous casualties of World War I, they found that the 1936 FRENCH general strike and election of the Popu­ lar Front made capitulation to German imperialism in 1940 the "lesser evil." The issues of the French Revolution, with the shifts in social composition and struggle over 200 years, still live vividly REVOLUTION in France today, especially in the mind­ set and activity of French reaction. Their diminution and derogation of the Revolution serves immediate purposes of the same kind as their forebears, per­ haps with the immigrant labor force the target of appetites to impose a contem­ porary version of serfdom. The claim by revisionist historians that the French Revolution is irrelevant to the modern world is similar in intent to the statement of the reactionary American Zionist Norman Podhoretz that. for him, the American Civil War is as remote as the English War of the Roses. What they mean is quite the opposite. In attempting to exorcise the spectre of social revolutions past, they seek to justify and obscure social and racial oppression in the contemporary bourgeois world. The following is an edited talk on the 'occasion of the bicentennial of the French Revolution, given in Paris on July 22 by Joseph Seymour, member of the Central Committee of the Sparta­ cist League/U.S.

PART ONE OF TWO

t may seem very presumptuous for an American who neither speaks nor I reads French to give a talk on the French Revolution. Yet in an important sense the true greatness of the French Revolution is felt more outside of France than within France-for within 14 July 1789-French Revolution begins as Parisian working people storm Bastille prison-fortress, freeing prisoners France the Revolution carries the tri­ and seizing arms. . ' .. color, outside of France it still carries the red flag. In France it is celebrated the unity and grandeur of the French freed the prisoners, they took the arms, Square! You want to execute Queen as the birth of the French bourgeois people, of the triumph of the liberal and they strung up the commander. And Victoria! Unfortunately, they didn't. nation-state,. as a commemoration of principles of the Declaration of the they'd say: Right on, man, we gotta do It was only later, and only in France, Rights oLMan-andCitizens.But out­ that here! that the French Revolution was cele­ side of France the Revolution is still It may come as a surprise or even an brated as the birth of the French bour­ seen as an uprising of the oppressed and astonishment for a French audience geois nation. But it's important to exploited for a just and egalitarian today to learn that 50 years after the understand that the chauvinism of a society, the revenge of the have-nots storming of the Bastille the French Rev­ Clemenceau, of a Thorez, of a De Gaulle against the haves. olution was celebrated as the inspira­ and a Mitterrand, was not the patri­ In France Bastille Day is just a patri­ tion for international communism, and otism of Robespierre and Saint-Just. otic holiday like the American 4th of it was only celebrated as the inspiration The Jacobin leaders sought to base July, filled with military parades, for international communism. One of French patriotism, the sense of nation­ marching bands, fireworks and all the Frederick Engels' first writings as a hood, on the universal principles of flag-waving hoopla. But imagine cel­ communi!lt was a report on a celebra­ the Enlightenmellt. Thus Robespierre, ebrating Bastille Day in EI Salvador, or tion of the founding of the French speaking in early 1794: Bolivia, or Pinochet's Chile-or for that Republic by communists and other "Only in democracy is the state really matter even in the United States. Last working-class radicals in London. The the patrie [fatherland] of all individuals weekend the comrades in New York main speaker was Julian Harney, the who compose it and can count as many celebrated Bastille Day in Prospect leader of the Chartists-the first mass interested defenders as it has citizens. That is the source of the superiority of Park, and I can imagine going up to a workers party in history. Harney said free peoples over all others. If Athens black bar in Brooklyn and inviting some that whenever we English workers and Sparta triumphed over the tyrants black people to join us. Maybe they've demand democratic reforms of Parlia­ of Asia; and the Swiss over the tyrants never heard of Bastille Day, so they'd ment, whenever we demand lower taxes, of Spain and Austria, we need not look say: What's all this Bastille business whenever we demand better education for any other cause. "But the French are the first people in about? And I'd say: Two hundred years for our children, the ruling class screams the world who have established real V.I. Lentn claimed Jacobin heritage _ ago a bunch of poor working people like at us: Jacobins! The Terror! You want democracy, by calling all men to equal­ for proletarian revolution. you stormed this prison fortress, they to set up a guillotine in Trafalgar ity and to the full rights of citizenship; 4 WORKERS VANGUARD and there, in my opinion, is the real rea­ son why all the tyrants in league against the Republic will be vanquished." The Jacobin constitution of 1793 granted French citizenship to any for­ eign friend of liberty who wanted it, and in the Jacobin Convention there were foreign radicals who represented the French patrie. Robespierre declared: "The men of all countries are brothers, and the different peoples should assist one another as much as possible like cit­ izens of the same state." What we call nationalism today, in the imperialist era, is not the ideology of the French Revolution. Rather it is the ideology of the reaction against the French Revolution. It was the English conservative Edmund Burke, the main Gracchus Babeuf Filippo Michele Buonarroti ideologist of the European coalition Maximilien Robespierre against the French Revolution, who Credits: Paul Popper Ltd., Radio Times Hulton, Kurt Desch elevated particular national traditions as the highest political value. It was chauvinism and imperialism, the second called sans-culotte-spent 50 to 75 per­ English liberalism, Charles Dickens, Burke who treated Englishmen and in the name of proletarian revolution cent of his income on food. wrote a novel of the French Revolu­ Frenchmen as if they were almost dif­ and internationalism. But since Lenin's Of the four contending classes in the tion, A Tale o/Two Cities. In this work ferent species, incapable of sharing a achievements are considered far great­ Revolution, three no longer exist in the Jacobin terror is portrayed as an common political vocabulary and com­ er than Clemenceau's-except by the the modern world, and the fourth-the orgy of popular bloodlust. (Margaret mon political values. French bourgeoisie-today in most of peasantry-is a small remnant of what it Thatcher gave Mitterrand a copy of this It was the German romantic reac­ the world Jacobinism is associated with was at the time. Clearly the landed novel as a present for the bicentennial.) tionaries against the French Revolu­ Bolshevism, not Clemenceauism. nobility and the artisan proletariat­ In 1904 Lenin declared that a Bolshe­ tion who glorified the mystic unity of the For example, in the United States not an industrial, but an artisan pro­ vik is a Jacobin indissolubly tied to the German Volk going back to the ancient there's a magazine called National Geo­ letariat-don't exist anymore. We talk organization of the working class. In Teutonic forests. In the 20th century the graphic, which is supposedly a popular about the bourgeoisie, but this is a 1933 the Nazi German Minister of Nazis picked up all of this blood­ and nonpolitical magazine. It is read by preindustrial bourgeoisie. This is a Education declared that the victory of and-soil crap. The Nazis called this the millions of schoolchildren, and you can bourgeoisie whose wealth came from National Socialism is a victory over the Blu-Bo literature-Blur and Boden. The even find it in the waiting rooms of doc­ the production, processing, distribution French Revolution. A few years later Jacobins didn't speak of Blut and tors' offices. As you see, the July issue is and financing of agricultural products. Trotsky called the Stalinist bureau­ Boden, they spoke of democracy and cratic counterrevolution the Soviet equality. Thermidor, the equivalent in the Soviet Jacobin ideology had a bourgeois and Union ofthe French Thermidor of 1794 national component, and an egalitar­ which overthrew the revolutionary­ ian and universalist component. After democratic Jacobin regime. When the Robespierre fell, these two components French Stalinists initiated the Popular divided and went off in different histor­ Front in the mid-'30s, they established a ical directions. In a sense these direc­ cult of Robespierre, which to some tions were personified by the Corsican degree they have maintained to this Napoleon Bonaparte and the Italian day-much to the embarrassment of the Filippo Buonarroti. Gorbachevites! Both Napoleon and Buonarroti be­ In the 1950s the American reaction­ gan their political careers as part of ary Henry Kissinger first came to Robespierre's political circle. Napo­ academic prominence when he wrote a leon was originally a protege of Robes­ book which praised the Hapsburg min­ pierre's younger brother. Buonarroti ister Prince Metternich, the main archi­ played the piano at dinner parties tect of the European reaction against in Robespierre's household. It's as if the French Revolution. In the early Robespierre had two sons who divided 1980s the Polish film director Andrzej his inheritance between them. At first it Wajda, a leading supporter of Solidar­ appeared as if Napoleon had got the real nose, produced the movie Danton inheritance and Buonarroti the illusory . which was financed by the Mitterrand inheritance. Napoleon's armies con­ In commemoration of bicentennial of the French Revolution, SL/U.S. Central government. This movie presented quered all of Europe, Buonarroti was Committee member Joseph Seymour speaks in Rouen (above) and Paris. Robespierre as a bloodthirsty paranoid left to organize some handful of follow­ monster like Stalin, and glorified ers in secret societies. Incidentally, when devoted to the French bicentennial, and Recall that the main school of bour­ Danton as a modern liberal-Jacobin­ Napoleon was defeated and went into in it we are told: geois political economy in 18th-century ism with a human face. A few years ago, exile, in his memoirs he claimed that he "It was elsewhere, and not until the 20th France, the physiocrats, maintained when the French Communist Party his­ century, that men of the Robespierrean that land was the only source of wealth torian Michel Vovelle visited China, the had always been a true Jacobin-that he type came into their own, seizing power had fought only to liberate the peoples first in Russia and then in many other and that all other economic activities Beijing authorities told him, "we are of Europe from the dynasties. Needless countries. These modern despots acted were derived from agriculture. Thermidorians." And this bicentennial to say, he never said this when he was the with the same savage violence as the Yet, given the intensity of debates year the archbishop of Poland, Cardi­ Emperor. Paris archetypes to destroy their en­ about the French Revolution, you nal Glerup, participated in the com­ emies, shatter the past, and impose the would think it happened 20 years ago, memoration of the Catholic-royalist But in the end the universalist and total authority of th<; revolution." egalitarian principles of the French Rev­ not 200 years ago. The French Revolu­ uprising in the Vendee. ' olution proved even more powerful than tion looms larger in the consciousness of What is it about this 200-year-old A Political Battleground for Napoleon's armies. Buonarroti was the the modern world than revolutions bourgeois-democratic revolution, that living link between the French Revolu­ Two Hundred Years much closer in time. How many people every generation sees a political parallel tion and Karl Marx, just as in a dif­ In one sense it is meaningless to eyen in France can name the leading fig­ of its own time? Why has this bourgeois ferent sense Marx was the living link ask the question: Who are the heirs ures of the Revolution of 1848 or the revolution, both at the time and later, between the French Revorution and the of the Jacobins today? Because the Paris Commune? Yet Marie-Antoinette been seen by so many as an anti-bour­ Bolshevik Revolution. French Revolution as. such is a closed and Robespierre have entered the polit­ geois revolution? Why has the greatest In the decade before the first imperi­ chapter of history. It cannot be em­ ical vocabulary of the modern world, revolutionary leader ofthe French state, alist world war, both the French bour­ phasized enough that it occurred in a the first as a' symbol of ruling-class Maximilien Robespierre, been vilified geois radical Clemenceau and Lenin preindustrial society, an overwhelm­ arrogance, the second as a symbol of for 200 years as a bloodthirsty monster claimed to stand for the Jacobin heri­ ingly agricultural society. The typical revolutionary intransigence or fanat­ and a forerunner of communism to tage-the first in the name of French French shopkeeper or artisan-the so- icism. Even Danton has become a sym­ boot? bol of moderation, the eternal liberal seeking a middle road between reaction Why Was the French Revolution and revolutionary extremism. So Radical? For the past 200 years every genera­ Solidarnosc tion has fought the French Revolution There is a long intellectual tradition against the anew. In the 1830s James Bronterre from Edmund Burke to Fran~ois Furet French O'Brien, a leader of the British Chart­ which blames the whole thing on the Revolution: ists, wrote a biography of Robespierre, baneful influence of the Enlightenment Polish Archbishop whom he considered one of the greatest philosophes. Somehow, they claim, a Glemp joins with and purest reformers of all history. In group of demented Rousseauians took French royalists the 1840s the young Marx and Engels over France and attempted to establish in the Vendee; believed that the Jacobin regime repre­ the Republic of Virtue through a reign Director Andrzej of terror. Poor Jean-Jacques Rousseau Wajda ,vilifies sented the political power of the work­ Robespierre in ing class of its day, although under con­ has been held responsible for every­ film Danton. ditions fated to serve the historical thing from the September Massacres of interests of the bourgeois revolution. In 1792 to Stalin's Gulag. (He 'might be the 1850s the leading literary figure of continued on page 6 1 SEPTEMBER 1989 5 of the Revolution on the personality of French the royal family. If only Louis had not been so block headed and stubborn, if only Marie-Antoinette had not been so Revolution ... shallow and arrogant, a Bourbon would (continued from page 5) still be in Versailles instead of this amused. Actually, he had no sense· of upstart Mitterrand! But in fact Louis humor-he wouldn't have been amused. was acting as a responsible representa­ A very humorless guy!) tive of his class, and his class was the It is true one can draw very radical nobility. Thus, while in public accept­ conclusions from the notion of the ing the Revolution grudgingly, in pri­ Noble Savage. There's an essay on can­ vate he was writing to the crowned nibals by Montaigne, one of the fore­ heads of Europe to invade Fral}ce and runners of the French Enlightenment. restore his authority. He tells of a Brazilian cannibal who was A key turning point of the French captured and taken to France. He was Revolution was the abortive flight of obviously an intelligent man and soon the king in June 1791, when Louis learned French. One day someone asked attempted to flee France and join his Bulloz him what he thought of French civ­ Working women of Paris lead march on royal palace at Versailles, Hapsburg brethren. This destroyed ilization. And he said that there were October 1789. many of the popular illusions in Louis many wonderful things in France, but and therefore produced a wave of pop­ there was one thing he didn't under­ the time of the Revolution. Beginning to invest and improve crop yields, so ular radicalism on the part of the urban stand: he saw beggars who were starv­ with the 16th century the English peas­ that peasant smallholding was no longer lower classes, the sans-culottes. At the ing, were all skin and bones, and then he antry was driven off the land by the economically viable in England as it still same time a section of the liberal bour­ saw rich people dripping with fat, and he enclosure movement. Much of the was in late 18th-century France. Dur­ geoisie was now convinced even more couldn't understand why the beggars English countryside was turned into ing the English Civil War the Crom­ strongly that the monarchy was a nec­ didn't kill and eat the rich people. pasture for sheep to produce wool for wellian colonel William Sydenham told essary protection against popular rad­ He was obviously a primitive com­ the world market. In the language ofthe Parliament that it was futile to give icalism., Thus a month after the abortive munist-tres primitif. day, "sheep ate men." propertyless soldiers free land: "They flight of the king, a principal liberal But of course the French Revolution A whole section of the English landed are poor, and if you assign lands to them leader of the Constituent Assembly, was not a product of radical ideology. It aristocracy basically became bourgeois they must sell again" (quoted in Chris­ Barnave, stated: was a product of the economic and class landowners. When the Civil War broke topher Hill, The Century of Revolution "Are we going to end the Revolution structure of . French society. And to out a minority of the landed aristocracy 1603-1714 [1961]). The historic com­ or are we going to begin it all over again? ... Any new step forward would understand the radicalism of the Revo­ supported Parliament and a larger promise between the aristocracy and the be a fatal and culpable act, since a fur­ lution it is useful to compare it to the number remained neutral-they just ran bourgeoisie which ended the English ther step in the direction of liberty English bourgeois revolution. Both their estates and continued to make Civil War was possible because English would involve the destruction of the before, during and after the French money. The radical party in the English agriculture had already gone a long way monarchy, while a further step in the direction of equality would mean the Revolution, England with its constitu­ Revolution-the Levellers-demanded toward becoming capitalist. destruction of property." tional monarchy and its Parliament of the breaking up of the enclosures and But the France of the Bourbon mon- ' property owners was held up as a model the resettlement of peasants on the land. archy was still a country of peasant And the very next day after Barnave of what France should be. Even today That is, they wanted to reverse the smallholders, who had to pay a multi­ made this speech, a large group of peti­ Furet laments that a French Tory party course of economic development. But tude of feudal-derived dues both to the tioners who were calling for abolishing did . not cohere and dominate the this was not only politically unfeasible, landed nobility and the many bour­ the monarchy and establishing a repub­ Revolution. it was economically utopian. geois who had purchased land. If in lic were massacred in the Champ de But this is a purely idealist view English agriculture had already be­ England one can speak of the bour­ Mars by the National Guard of Lafa­ because the English economy was rad­ come highly competitive and geared to a geoisification of a section of the nobil­ yette. The massacre at the Champ de ically different at the time of the English market economy. It was not enough to ity, in France you had the feudalization Mars irrevocably split the hitherto Civil War than the French economy at have land, you also had to have capital of a section of the bourgeoisie. And the patriotic bourgeoisie into hostile camps. main function of the absolutist state was Robespierre later recounted that it was to extract rent from the peasantry for only after this massacre that he became convinced the, landed class. So that when the of the necessity for a repUblic. authority of the monarchical state was The splitting of the bourgeoisie en­ destroyed in 1789, French society polar­ abled the plebeian masses of Paris to come forward as a somewhat inde­ Workers Vanguard ized along very different lines than had pendent revolutionary force. Thus the England during the Civil War a century earlier. establishment of a democratic republic Subscription Drive Furet is famous for the thesis that involved the mobilization of the urban the French Revolution was "blown off plebeian masses outside of, and to some course." Naturally, he maintains, it degree against, the representative insti­ should have ended up like England-a tutions of the bourgeoisie. The journee August 31 to October 11 constitutional monarchy with a Parlia- [uprising] of 10 August 1792 not only . ment of property owners. But in fact it overthrew the king but created a condi­ wasn't blown off course, because the tion of dual power between the Paris 1989 Quotas bourgeois liberals had set a course for Commune and the city sections on the never-never land. On the one hand, they one hand, and the Legislative Assembly Quota and later the Convention on the other. Local (In points) proclaimed that feudalism was abol­ ished. On the other hand, they told the At the same time the overthrow of the Atlanta 170 peasants to continue to pay the main monarchy transformed the Revolution Boston 300 rents or else redeem them for 20 to 25 into a European-wide war. Six days Chicago 520 times the annual amount. Well, the after the invasion of the Tuileries Pal­ Cleveland 200 peasants decided that feudalism was ace whifh overthrew the king, an army Los Angeles 270 abolisned and refused to pay any rent to of Prussians, Austrians and French New York' 1,250 their landlords. And the French army emigres invaded France. The com­ Oakland 810 was so divided, faction-ridden and muti­ mander of the army, the German Duke San Francisco 360 nous that it could no longer be used as of Brunswick, threatened a terrible and Washington, D.C. 170 an instrument for suppressing peasant savage vengeance against the people of At Large 200 revolts. Paris for daring to lay hands on the The reason that the French aristoc­ sacred monarch. Brunswick and all the racy refused to accept the liberal revo­ royalists of Europe were supremely con­ National Total 4,250 lution of Mirabeau and Lafayette was fident that they would sweep away this French rabble, march into Paris, and Photo not primarily reactionary ideological prejudices-the belief that they had all restore the king to his throne. r--- descended from Charlemagne. That was The French army encountered this Subscribe Now! ----. not the main factor. Rather, they could largely Prussian army about 70 miles from Paris on the crest of a hill called Name~ ______not accept a revolution whose conse­ quences were depriving them of the Valmy. The French army outnumbered Address __~ ______~_ economic surplus necessary for their the Prussians. The French infantry stood up to the Prussians, the most ______Apt. # Phone ( existence as a class. So the policy of the French aristocracy was to restore a feared, disciplined and well-drilled army City State Zip ______--:--::-: monarchical 'state by encouraging the of the European anciens regimes. The 484 foreign absolutist states to invade and French artillery and artillery officers SPECIAL! A free packet of Spartaclst literature or pamphlet with full occupy France. In France a historical proved superior. At the end ofthe day a subscriptions to both Workers Vanguard and Women and Revolution. compromise between the aristocracy torrential rainstorm broke out and the and bourgeoisie was only possible on Prussian army retreated, its confidence o $7/24 issues of Workers Vanguard o $3/3 issues of somewhat shaken. With the Prussian (includes English-language Spartacist) Women and Revolution the basis of a successful counterrevolu­ tion which suppressed the peasant revolt army that day was the German writer o New 0 Renewal 0$2/10 introductory issues Goethe, and according to one account, International rates: of Workers Vanguard and in some form ,restored the exploita­ $25/24 issues-Airmail $7/24 issues-Seamail tion of the French peasantry both by that night as the rain was coming down (includes English-language he stood in the middle of the battlefield o $214 issues of Spartacist (edici6n e~ espanol) Spartacist) sections of the bourgeoisie and of the aristocracy. and said: "This day and this place open a Make checks payable/mall to: Spartaclst Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 Even sophisticated historians like Fu­ new era in the history of the world." ret continue to blame the radicalization [TO BE CONTINUED] ------~ 6 WORKERS VANGUARD For a Worker-sRep-ublic ! Japan Ruling Party in Disarray TOKYO-l989 has not been a good tary purposes. As a result, food prices in year for the Japanese ruling class. It Japan are outrageously high compared bega.n with the death of Emperor to other advanced capitalist countries. Hirohito, the longest reigning mon­ The urban popUlation subsidizes every arch in the world. Now, battered by farm household in the Japanese islands a financial scandal, then a sex scan­ to the tune of $20,000 a year. dal, facing a public outraged by a In the past year, in response to in­ tax increase while the rich and pow­ creasing American pressure, including erful flaunt their wealth, the reign of the threat to retaliate against Japa­ the longest-ruling party in the ad­ nese industrial exports, the Takeshita vanced capitalist world-the Liberal­ regime relaxed some of the controls on Democratic Party (LDP)-may be food imports. So farmers are up in arms coming to an eoo .. against their former LDP protectors, In June Japan's prime minister, while Doi's ISP has demagogically and Noboru Takeshita, resigned in the face cynically taken up the reactionary ban­ of the Recruit stock and influence­ ner of agricultural protectionism. peddling scandal. Two months later his successor resigned after the right-wing Abolish the Emperor System! LDP lost partial control over the Diet Kogure/Time The current leftward shift in the po­ (parliament) for the first time in 35 Ex-prime minister Uno's two-month reign sunk by geisha scandal. litical mood should not obscure the years. Since the LDP bosses believed danger from the right or the powerful they enjoyed a natural monopoly in run­ of the LDP beneficiaries of Recruit's publicly head .a major Japanese party reserves of reaction in Japanese society. ning Japan, Inc.: the July 23 election largesse: "I was so angry, I couldn't even for the first time ever. Doi herself is in -One has only to consider the intense loss to the Socialists came as quite a look at my place. My whole apartment the right wing of the party. A former emotional outpouring as Emperor shock. "The LDP is in hell right now," would fit into the entranceway of[LDP professor of law, she also represents Hirohito lay dying. When the mayor of moaned one party bigwig. bigwig] Fujinami's house-maybe into the growing number of educated, pro­ Nagasaki, Hitoshi Motoshima, suggest­ The Liberal-Democratic Party is nei­ the bathroom." fessional women who resent the elderly ed that Hirohito bore some responsibil­ ther liberal nor democratic nor a party. Beginning last spring the LDP suf­ patriarchy of Japan's ruling elite. ity for World War II, he received death It is a coalition of ruling-class cliques fered a series of defeats and humilia­ Doi's JSP ran as its candidates a large threats from right-wing fanatics and was based on patronage and "money poli­ tions in various elections. When Take­ number of housewives who had previ- formally censured by the LOP. tics." Its internal structure rather resem­ shita finally announced his intention .ously been uninvolved in politics, an The fascistic right, while currently bles that of the Mafia. The LD P was to go, his popularity rating had fallen electoral strategy the media dubbed small in numbers, is well financed and formed in 1955 under American aus­ to under 4 percent! The first choice to "Operation Madonna." These working­ has influential links to big business, pices to keep the Communists and social replace him was the party's elder states­ class women are being used to further Yakuza gangsters and sections of the man, Masayoshi Ito, who had a reputa­ the careers of social-democratic bureau­ LOP. As the Socialists move toward tion for being a "clean" politician and crats and feminist yuppies. Sections of governmental office, they could well advocate of internal party reform. But the LDP establishment responded to become the target for right-wing terror­ when Ito naively demanded disman­ "Operation Madonna" with obscene ist attacks such as occurred in the 1920s. tling the LDP's clique structure, he expressions of male chauvinism. Agri­ In 1960 a right-wing fanatic assassi­ was out. Next in the batter's box was cultural minister Hisao Horinouchi nated popular JSP chairman Inejiro Foreign Minister Sousuke Uno, a polit­ declared, "It is wrong for women to Asanuma. Last May, two thugs of the ical lightweight whose main credential come to the forefront in politics," and rightist group Seikonguku ("Sacred for being prime minister was being baited the 60-year-old Doi for being Spirit Organization") assaulted JSP "Recruit-free" and no threat to the pre­ unmarried and childless. This outburst general secretary Tsuruo Yamaguchi vailing clique alignment. Uno's appoint­ alone probably cost the LDP millions of while he was making a public speech. mentresembled an 18-inning baseball women's votes.' - The' emperor, supposedly descended game with the manager peering at the . While infuri.ating women of all class­ from the sun goddess, serves as a pow­ end of the bench to see who's left. es, the LOP has also alienated its hith­ erful raUyin.g point for all the reaction­ But far from burying the Recruit erto most solid voting bloc, Japan's ary forces in Japanese society. In a deep­ scandal, Uno's appointment as prime smallholding farm~rs. For decades the going social and political crisis the minister touched off a sex scandal when Japanese ruling class has stubbornly. sacred ruler in the imperial palace could his 1985 affair with a geisha was made maintained a high degree of agricul­ legitimize a fascist or military takeover. pUblic. Apparently the man is a real tural protection, both to preserve a This is what happened in the 1930s. cheapskate who refused to pay the cus­ socially and politically conservative The emperor system symbolizes the tomary "sayonara" money to politely peasantry and to ensure self-sufficiency whole complex of feudal relics which end this type of liaison. The geisha in in .food production for strategic mili- continued on page 11 question, Mitsuko Nakanishi, got her c: :> own back with a vengeance when she .0 E tol~ all to the media. "A person who is i: not considerate of the weak cannot con­ en duct good politics," she lectured the new i: Social democrat Takako Dol (left) prime minister over the Tokyo Broad­ ~ wins upset electoral Victory. casting System. The public furor over the prime min­ democrats out of office, and was able to ister and the geisha reflected the usual maintain a solid 'majority in the Diet for mixture of sexual bigotry and sala­ the next three and a half decades. ciousness. But it also expresses the bit­ But early this year the LDP's tight ter resentment Japanese women have to control over Japan began to unravel the deep-seated oppression they have with the Recruit scandal. This is the suffered for eternity. Japan is notorious most serious in Japan's recent history, in for being the most grossly male­ part because it is so widespread. Recruit chauvinist culture this side of the Third honcho Hiromasa Ezoe managed to World. And the company of geishas­ Railway workers piece off virtually everyone in the bour­ the old world of flowers and willows-is demonstrate, 1987. geoisie'S who's who, even slipping a few strongly identified with the feudal priv­ Powerful Japanese yen into the pockets of the leaders of ileges of Japan's ruling patriarchy. proletariat must some of the opposition parties. Thus the mainstream social dem­ break with "social Moreover, the LDP pushed through ocrats of the opposition Socialist Party democracy and the Diet their 3 percent consumption tax (JSP), under the direction of its woman Stalinism, in at the very moment the Recruit scandal leader Takako Doi, was able to com­ struggle for a workers republic. was heating up. The growing disparity bine popUlism and bourgeois feminism between rich and poor fueled the scan­ in an effective electoral mix. The JSP dal, and the outcry got louder as the simultaneously appealed tothe econom­ consumption tax went into effect. The ic grievances of' working-class house­ Wall Street Journal (20 June) captured wives and the social aspirations of the political mood when it subtitled a yuppie women. Doi was named .party piece on Japan: "'Recruit' Scandal, chairman in 1986 after the Socialists Fortunes in Speculation Give Rise to made a poor showing in the elections. Resentment of Rich." The Journal The JSP tops evidently believed they quoted a housewife railing against one had little to lose by selecting a woman to 1 SEPTEMBER 1989 7

, l I ~ ~ { } .. t t. ,t i .. ) Jalalabad, July 7-Chanting "Afghanistan Zindabad!" (Long Live Afghanistan) and "Marg ya Watan!" (Death or Country), thousands' march to celebrate their victory over the months-long mujahedin siege. For the past decade, the once their embassies out. But the Afghan obscure country of Afghanistan has army fought tenaciously, along with been the focus of the international Exclusive Photographs women's militias and youth battalions, Cold War. Washington and its allies and the PDP A government continues have poured billions of dollars into From Our Correspondent to stand, while the CIA's mujahedin the counterrevolutionary insurgency cutthroats spiral into disarray. aimed at drowning in blood the Soviet­ From the beginning, the Spartacist backed People's Democratic Party disinformation, ongmating from the last February, these were replaced press has told the truth ahout the civil of Afghanistan (PDPA) government. CIA supply base in Peshawar, Pak­ by equally fantastical predictions of war raging in Afghanistan. On one side Meanwhile, the Western press has istan, retailing lurid "Soviet atrocity" the imminent downfall of the Kabul stood the Soviet Union, the reform­ spewed out a steady stream of lies and stories. With the Soviet withdrawal regime, as the U.S. and its allies pulled minded PDP A regime, and the cause of

Kabul, city under fire. Left: Women amid destruction caused by rocket attack on their home. A grand­ mother and several children were hospitalized. Right: Terrorist car bomb blast near " Pashtoonistan Square killed nine people and wounded 49 in busy shopping street.

8 WORKERS VANGUARD ".""".. ,., ..,,,",,, .~ .. -(,. ,,::at;i{¥'J;.lf .~'- "-o~ ,,,,~,~ •.. Karesimir: Youth battalion guards northern approach to Kabul. "They come, we are ready," vowed one young fighter, "each one of us to fight against ten of them."

social progress and women's emanci­ pation; on the other, the imperialist powers, the feudal khans and mullahs, and a reactionary crusade to keep women enslaved and young girls illit­ erate. We stood firm against the pre­ vailing winds of Cold War, denounc­ ing Carter's anti-Soviet hysteria and cutting through Reagan's grotesque lie that the mujahedin murderers were "freedom fighters." We greeted the December . 1979 Soviet intervention, proclaiming "Hail Red Army in Af­ ghanistan!" and calling to ~'Extend social gains of the October Revolution to Afghan peoples!" Nine years later, we denounced Gorbachev's with­ drawal as a betrayal not only of the Afghan people, but also of the defense of the Soviet Union and of the interests of the international p~oletariat. Far from ensuring the Kremlin's pipe dream of "peaceful coexistence," Soviet withdrawal only emboldened the imperialists to escalate their bloody jihad (holy war). In February, the Par­ War over women's rig'hts: CIA-backed tisan Defense Committee offered to mujahedin would force all women to wear organize international brigades to join head-to-toe chadors (above); women are in fighting against the counterrevolu­ fighting to defend right to cast off veil tion. In response to a request from the of enslavement (right). Afghan government and in concert with fraternal legal and social defense organizations, the PDC initiated an international campaign of humanitar­ ian assistance to the civilian victims of the mujahedin siege of Jalalabad, rais­ ing over $44,000 in less than two months. In immigrant communities, at factory gates, on campuses, at May Day marches, many thousands of working people and supporters of women's rights came forward to give what they could. As part of our efforts in solidarity with the struggle against the CIA's cut­ throats, the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist) dis­ patched a special correspondent to Afghanistan for four weeks in July to counter the lies of the imperialist press with reports direct from the civil war. Now Workers Vanguard is proud to present for our readers the photo­ graphic images of "Front Line Af­ ghanistan." In the face of a decade of destruction, showing their determina­ tion as well as their grief, the people ofr Afghanistan stand proudly in defense of their gains. Those who contributed their dol­ lars, pounds, francs, marks, lire, pesos and yen can see the vindication of their stand in these vivid scenes of a long­ suffering people fighting for elemen­ tary social progress. This campaign helped inspire the heroic defenders of Jalalabad, who held out and then vic­ toriously broke the mujahedin siege. When our correspondent arrived in J alalabad, the governor of the prov­ Above: Children in Kabul. Left: Soldier ince warmly greeted him, "Ah, Parti­ standing guard outside children's home san." Make your stand known-send a for boys and girls in Maimana. Any contribution, payable to the Jalalabad institution representing social progress Civilian Victims Aid Fund, to the has to be protected against the CIA's barbaric cutthroats. Partisan Defense Committee, P.O. Box 99, Canal Street Station, New York, NY 10013 .•

1 SEPTEMBER 1989 9; Stop Baltic Counterrevolution! Bloody counterrevolution is brewing the USSR came following the Red Tallinn. But the strike continued for vik Revolution. In 1919, the armies of in the Baltic republics of Estonia, Army's heroic defeat of Nazi fascism. nine days, until the central government newly independent Poland marched LithUania and Latvia. Their appetites We warned recently: "The stage is set agreed to review the local legislation. into and seized sections of Byelorussia whetted by Gorbachev's policy of pe­ for a bloody civil war in which capital­ Latvia and Lithuania have already and Lithuania, including Vilnius, and restroika--encouraging market forces ist counterrevolution will disguise itself passed legislation aimed at restoring imposed Polish as the official language. and private enterprise-'-bourgeois na­ as a struggle for 'national liberation private property in agriculture by allow­ The following year, Pilsudski invaded tionalist movements in this relatively and self-determination'" (Spartacist ing lifetime possession and inheritance the Ukraine, provoking a Soviet prosperous region of the USSR have No. 43-44, Summer 1989). Last Novem­ of "family farms." When in late July the counteroffensive. openly set course for restoring capital­ ber, the Estonian parliament passed a Supreme Soviet in Moscow endorsed a Today, the nationalist resurgence in ism under the slogan of complete inde­ resolution-subsequently ruled uncon­ new program of "economic auton­ the Baltics poses once again the dangers pendence from the Soviet Union. The stitutional-asserting a "right" to uni­ omy," giving the Baltic republics con­ of war and counterrevolution. In a Estonian and Latvian People's Fronts laterally reject Soviet laws. Two months trol of trade, industry and resources and sharp warning foreshadowing the Au­ and the Lithuanian Sajudis-overlap­ later, it decreed Estonian the sole the right to run their economies on a gust 26 Central Committee statement, ping with nationalist wings of the Baltic Communist parties-seek to resurrect the reactionary "independent" bour­ geois republics of the interwar years, vassal statelets of German and British imperialism noted for repression of Communists and Jews. To this end, these supposed "democrats" have enact­ ed discriminatory restrictions on lan­ guage, voting and employment rights, and "immigration" controls directed against non-Baltic peoples. What apparently finally provoked the Central Committee statement of'the Soviet Communist Party excerpted here was the August 23 "human chain" protest linking the capital cities of Vilnius, Riga and Tallinn on the occa­ sion of the 50th anniversary of the Lithuanian nationalists march under flag of Hitler-Stalin pact. The protests were reactionary interwar bourgeois state (left). marked by flagrantly anti-Russian and Russian-speaking workers strike in July anti-Communist manifestations, in­ against discriminatory measures of Estonian cluding the now omnipresent flags of the parliament. Sign says: "We strike! For equality interwar bourgeois republics, banners of nations-without privileges." reading "Soviet occupation army go home!" and signs equating the Nazi offICial language. Fully 40 percent of market basis, Estonian economist Mi­ Valentin Falin, head of the CPSU's swastika with the hammer and sickle. Estonia's popUlation and half of Lat­ khail Bronshtein cheered: "It opens the international department, said: "If the Echoing the CIA's "Captive Nations" via's are ethnic Russian, Byelorussian road for us to begin realizing our pro­ striving to divide what cannot be crowd, protest organizers declared that or Ukrainian, predominantly concen­ gram of independence" (New York divided continues, as was characteristic the Soviet Union had "infringed on trated in the working class. In May, Times, 28 July). But these tiny coun­ of the period before the previous two the historical right of the Baltic nations Lithuania followed suit with a law tries, necessarily dependent on the world wars, if lands and frontiers are to self-determination.:. occupied them asserting its veto power over USSR leg­ Soviet economy, cannot hope fora sem­ being recarved while the lives and safety with overwhelming military force." The islation and its right to control migra­ blance of independent economic life, of people are neglected, the worst, and Sajudis declared that Lithuania "is no tion into the repUblic. On August 8 should they win the local civil war nec­ this time, the final disaster will be longer under the administrative or ju­ Estonia passed legislation-again ruled essary to restore capitalism. Like Hong brought on" (New York Times, 23 dicial jurisdiction of the USSR with unconstitutional-demanding a five­ Kong vis-a.-vis China, the Baltic states August). Worried about developments immediate effect." year residency requirement for the right could only serve as a spearhead for: in the Baltic, and responding in part to Stalin's "non-aggression" pact with to vote and ten years for the right to imperialist penetration into the Soviet West German concerns over the flood of Hitler did not prevent the Nazis from stand in elections. These chauvinist Union. . ethnic Germans seeking to emigrate, the invading the Soviet Union in 1941: but measures strike at the heart of the On the right flank of the People's Gorbachev regime has recently mooted the Soviet annexation of the region in multinational Soviet state. Fronts stand even more extremist establishing an autonomous ethnic July 1940 cannot be separated from the There has been significant resistance nationalist formations. According to a German homeland around Kaliningrad exigencies of the German war threat at to these reactionary measures by work­ TASS dispatch reported in Die Wahr­ (the former East Prussian city of the time. Trotsky argued that although ers in Estonia. The predominantly Rus­ heit (25 August), newspaper of the Konigsberg). This would conveniently the territory was strategically impor­ sian "Internationalist Movement," co­ West Berlin Socialist Unity Party, the ' establish a bulwark between the Baltic tant, the Red Army occupation would led by a Russian and, interestingly, a Estonian city of Kohtla recently un­ republics and Poland. be seen as an act of violence, not libera­ Siberian Estonian (a group also looked veiled a public monument to a group Decades of Stalinist nationalism and tion, and in the long run would do more down upon by "pure" Estonians), called of World War II Nazi collaborators Great Russian chauvinism have created harm than good. In any case, Stalin's a strike for the second time in less than a called Counterintelligence-2-" Erna." a sea of bitter nationalist sentiments, annexation lasted only until Hitler month in protest against the discrimi­ The monument was erected on the site and Gorbachev's perestroika has now invaded and occupied the Baltics a year natory voting restrictions. Some 30,000 of an earlier monument put up by the opened the floodgates. The leadership later, at which time many bourgeois workers walked off the job, shutting Hitlerite occupiers in 1942! At the of the "Inter-Movement" seeks to pres­ nationalists enthusiastically joined with down dozens of factories in Tallinn and unveiling ceremony a former member of sure the Kremlin to act as guardians of the Nazis in hunting down and murder­ bringing rail and air cargo transport to a "Erna" was given a platform to rant that the Russian-speaking popUlation in the ing Communists and Jews. The social halt. The Estonian government immedi­ Estonia must "be liberated from the Baltics. But strikers are careful to call revolution 'fhich marked the real ately moved to ban the protest strike Reds." Even mainstream nationalist for "equal rights for all nations" and to integration of the Baltic republics into and brought in scabs to run buses in spokesmen like Estonian economist Tiit eschew privileges for any language. A Made echo disgusting Nazi rhetoric: the proletarian challenge reasserting the New York Times (10 August) reports principles of Leninist internationalism that he sees "Russians as aggressive peo­ against all variants of nationalism-and ple whose primitive behavior he traces particularly Great Russian chauvin­ to centuries of breeding with Mongol ism-could polarize the ethnic Baltic occupiers." According to the racist gopulations as well, at least some of Made, Russian "aggressiveness and whom must be shocked by the direction violence is manifested even in love .... in which this reactionary nationalist After rape, comes a feeling of love and crap is heading. delight." ~ Potentially, the greatest nationalist On the eve of the August 23 protest, threat to the unity of the Soviet peoples the National Independence Movement is that of Great Russian chauvinism, of Latvia (LNKK) staged a two-day now spearheaded by the fascists of conference in Riga, as the Washington Pamyat. The Soviet working people Post (22 August) put it, "to plot pub­ must smash Pamyat and, with that licly the downfall of 'the Soviet em­ authority, easily destroy more margin­ pire'." Speakers included Republican al fascists and counterrevolutionary U.S. Senator Robert Kasten and a rep­ threats. It will take proletarian political resentative of Polish SolidarnoSc. The revolution to oust the nationalist Sta­ rabid Baltic nationalists would do well linist bureaucracy and re-establish Bol­ to recall what this region looked like shevik internationalist principles, guar­ and Liveright the last time it was "liberated from anteeing full and equal rights for all the Working masses of Latvia staunchly Supported the Bolshevik Revolution. Reds," under the sponsorship of impe­ nations and peoples of the Soviet Latvian Smolny Battalion arrives in Petrogi'ad, November 1917. rialist intervention against the Bolshe- Union.- 10 WORKERS VANGUARD ., I • j. It must be said that the leaders of unequal position, the republics secede Statement of the Central Committee, these republics failed to do everything from the USSR. This is an obvious lie. in order to contain the process in the This is delusion. Communist Party of the Soviet Union normal channel of perestroika re­ Each republic, each region are forms. They failed to stem the negative linked by thousands of economic, tendencies, to redress the situation, to social, cultural, scientific, technolog­ Continued from page 1 Soviet people across the country uphold the principled positions, to ical and simply human ties with oth­ watched and read with astonishment convince people of the harmfulness of ers, with the entire country. What will began to introduce an unhealthy as­ and bitterness about things that in no the plans and practice of opposition happen if these ties are cut at one fell pect into the development of events. way agreed with what they knew of forces. The genuine line, consolidat­ swoop? IUs absolutely clear that none Having misappropriated the part of Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian ing society on an internationalist basis, will be better off. true proponents of the national inter­ national traditions and would appear on nationwide and universal values of The Baltic republics, which are the ests, they, step-by-step, steered the insulting to the national character of perestroika taking maximum account first in our country to get the oppo·r­ course of affairs toward an alienation these· people known for their hon­ of national peculiarities and require­ tunity to organize truly independent of the Baltic republics from the rest esty, sober-mindedness and respect ments, came against obstacles which management, to go over to self­ of the country and the disruption of for standards of civilized human are yet to be cleared. reliance and cost-accounting, today long-standing organically formed links relationships. One also has to admit that some face the broadest vistas for initiative, with other Soviet nations. Their posi­ The activity of forces that are Party committees and functionaries innovation, economic development tions became more and more openly destructive, anti-Soviet and anti­ gave in to difficulties and lost heart. and better life. Accretions and dis­ extremist and separatist. The anti­ national in their core, the atmosphere Some even began to play up to nation­ tortions of the past, which prevented socialist and anti-Soviet nature of their of nationalism led to the promulga­ alist sentiments, weakened counterac­ state bodies and the popUlation of the projects became evident very soon. tion, at the level of bodies of state tion to separatist plans. republics from feeling and acting as In some places, organizations re­ authority in the republics, of uncon­ The situation that arose calls for a masters in their house, are being sembling political formations of the stitutional acts contradicting our deep analysis, real and serious assess­ removed. bourgeois period and the time of state's principles of federation and ment and resolute urgent measures to The CPS U Central Committee Nazi occupation sprang up. Actually, envisaging discrimination against the clean the perestroika process in the hopes that the working class, working parallel bodies of power began to non-indigenous popUlation of these Baltic republics from extremism, de­ people of Latvia, Estonia and Lithua­ be ~t up ..Intimidation. deception repUblics. structive and harmful tendencies. nia, who have glorious revolutionary and disinformation became routine, On August 23, 1989 attempls were The CPSU €entral Gemmittee ur­ interna.tionlliist traditions of struggle and even moral terror and defama­ made to fan up emotions to a point of gently calls on the peoples of Lithua­ for the happiness of their and all tion of all. who disagreed, all who actual nationalist hysteria. Slogans nia; Latvia and Estonia, all those who peoples of our great country will say remained true to internationalism and foisted upon thousands of people were cherish their homeland, peace and their weighty word this time as well, the idea of an integral Soviet Union. brimful of animosity toward the Soviet national accord to realize the full defend the new revolution and uphold Some of the mass information media system, Russian people, the Com­ extent and reality of impending disas­ perestroika. served as sources fostering national­ munist Party of the Soviet Union and ter, to display responsibility and wis­ We appeal to the common sense of istic attitudes. the Soviet Army. dom at this turn of the history of the the peoples of the multinational Soviet Abusing freedom of international The activities of the nationalist entire country. Baltic region. It' is time, in our com­ relations, nationalist leaders con­ forces have already led to serious The Central Committee appeals to mon interest, to put an end to the fate­ tacted foreign organizations and cen­ economic losses in the economy of the the working class, peasants, and those ful course of events, to come to your tres, seeking to involve them in what Baltic republics, as well as to inter­ who create the material base oflife and senses, go over from confrontation to was in fact the internal affair of their ethnic and social tensions. In some are always the first to suffer most of all dialogue and a painstaking search for republics and treating them as con­ places, a real threat of a civil conflict from social and national upheavals­ expedient decisions and compromises. sultants and advisers, as if people in and mass street clashes which will in­ we need jointly to seek and find a way The Central Committee of the Com­ the West were better aware of the volve grave consequences, has arisen. out of the situation, to stop the hyster­ munist Party of the Soviet Union is actual needs of the Baltic. nations, Things have gone far. The fate of the ical elements and not to give in to appealing to all communists of Lithu­ as if they were guided not by their Baltic peoples is in serious danger. nationalist hysteria. ania, Latvia and Estonia, to Party vet­ own open or concealed projects with People should know into what abyss We all share many difficulties. The erans and those who recently joined respect to our country, but were in fact they are being pushed by the national­ country and its economy are in a diffi­ their fate with that of the Leninist concerned about the Soviet people's ist leaders. The consequences could be cult situation. 00 not believe those party: you must set an example of welfare. disastrous for these peoples, if the who try to prove that the life of good-will and human communication It came to direct acts of vandalism, nationalists managed to achieve their Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians and persuade people of the necessity of mockery of state insignia, desecration goals. The very viability of the Baltic will be better off and comfortable, concord and consolidation. of sacred things viewed as inviola­ nations could be called in question. once the migrants are evicted, the Let's preserve the single family of ble by any decent individual-monu­ We should say it openly and with a Russians, Ukrainians, Byelorussians, the Soviet peoples and the unity of ments to those who fell in the Civil and feeling of responsibility before the Bal­ . Poles, Jews and others who live and the Communist Party of the Soviet the Great Patriotic Wars. tic and all Soviet peoples. . work together with you put in an Union.

ning on the sole platform of creating a The LOP head of the Tokyo Municipal defense spending within the equivalent Japan ... ministry of sports, whomped his LOP Assembly screeched: "The Tiananmen of I percent of the country's gross na­ opponent. Since these elections were incident has caused a rain of blood in tional product" (Japan Times, 16 July). (continued from page 7) limited to half the seats in the upper China-if the JCP gets power they will Given the enormous size of Japan's prop up the Japanese bourgeois order, house of the Oiet, the LOP still retains do the same in Japan" (Far Eastern national output, even 1 percent 'financ­ beginning with the family. Women have control of the more powerful lower Economic Review, 6 July). These red­ es one of the most powerful armed a polite form of language they are house, for which elections are to be held scare tactics had their effect, and the forces in the world. And the JSP spokes­ expected to use when addressing men. n'o later than July 1990. In the wake of Communists lost a few seats in the men go on to say that they have "ruled Their role is not to partake in family the July 23 debacle the hapless Uno elections. out the possibility of unilaterally abol­ functions but merely to cater them. resigned, the prime niin:istership going For the moment all the growing ishing the security treaty" with the U.S. Family members are more often than to an obscure politician, Toshiki Kaifu, discontents and resentments in Japa­ For its part, Washington does not not addressed by their title as their who at 58 is being advertised as repre­ nese society have benefited the Socialist seem to be worried about Ooi's foreign name. The Japanese language contains senting the younger generation. Party. The JSP's present constituency policy, which is staunchly anti-Soviet. many honorifits, and social intercourse One party which was expected to taJlges from deeply conservative peas­ What worries the American bourgeoi­ is marked by bowing, the inferior party benefit from the LOP's troubles but did ant smallholders to bourgeois fem­ sie far more is the JSP's now rabid trade always bending a little further. From . not is the Japanese Communist Party. inists, while the party retains its protectionism-much worse than the language and social mores to politics, Long a super-reformist "Eurocommu­ traditional support within the working LOP's. A JSP-led coalition govern­ the bourgeoisie seeks to use the vestiges nist" party, the JCP has openly de­ class. Now the main goal of Ooi's JSP is ment in Tokyo would almost certainly of Japan's feudal past to sap the will for clared its primary loyalty to Japanese to reassure the bourgeoisie (both Japa­ escalate the U.S.-Japan trade war. social struggle. But there is also enor­ imperialism. Thus these shamefaced nese and American) that it can respon­ Whatever its relations with Washing­ mous resentment against the rigid Stalinists demand that the Soviets sibly run\the wealthiest capitalist state ton, a JSP-led coalition government will feudal-derived hierarchy weighing upon return to Japan the Kuril (Northern) in the world. These social democrats be no victory for the working class and present-day Japanese society. Islands, which they occupied at the end have veered sharply to the right to the oppressed women of Japan. Social Only the proletariat in the struggle for of World War II. (These islands arestra­ ally with the rabidly anti-Communist democracy in Japan as elsewhere serves the workers republic can purge Japan of tegically key for the USSR, controJling 'Democratic'Socialists and Buddhist­ only to bind the exploited and op­ the reactionary remnants of its not-so­ the sea lanes which if blocked would supported Komeito as potential part­ pressed to the decaying and war-driven distant feudal past. But to achieve this keep the Soviet Pacific Fleet bottled up ners in a coalition government. imperialist order. The liberation of historic task, the working class must be in Vladivostok.) Nonetheless, the JCP is Thus Ooi's Socialists have supported Japan's proletariat, of women and broken from social democracy and widely viewed as the "reds" and has been LOP candidates against the Commu­ oppressed minorities (such as the Stalinism. the target of a red scare by the bour­ nists (for example, in the Nagoya may­ Korean community and immigrant geois media and LOP establishment. oral contest). And the JSP is scrapping workers from other Asian countries), Dol's Socialists Move For over 20 years the JCP's relations what remains of its lip service to the demands the construction of a revolu­ Rapidly Rightward with the Beijing regime have been frigid pacifistic radical and anti-nuclear senti­ tionary vanguard party based on Len­ The July 23 election result was not so to hostile. (By contrast, the Japanese ments which' were widespread in the inist principles. The Spartacist Group much a mandate for the Socialists as a bourgeoisie has been the major foreign population for decades after the war. It Japan, sympathizing section of the protest vote against the LOP. Thus an investor in Oeng's China.) Yet Japan's has dropped all talk of ending Japan's .International Communist League, is unusual number of independents and ~ruling class has sought to identify the military alliance with U.S. impe(ialism, dedicated to building such a party in the small, single-issue parties gained seats. JCP with the June 4 massacre in much less abolishing the armed forces: struggle for international workers For example, a former wrestler, run- Tiananmen Square by the Oeng regime. "We would for the time being limit power .• 1 SEPTEMBER 1989 11 Poland ... (continued from page 1) The first victims would be the Polish workers, who are already paying the price of brutal austerity dictated by Western bankers and carried out first by the Stalinists and now by Solidarnosc. The economy is in chaos-prices are skyrocketing and the shops are bare, the black market flourishes and the floating of food prices on the "free market" has doubled and tripled the cost of staples such as meat, cheese and milk. Despera­ tion has spawned bitter strikes. Thou­ sands of coal miners have occupied two mine complexes in Silesia in a strike which Solidarnosc warns could "dy­ namite" the new government. Thou­ sands of rail workers struck in Lodz, the second largest city, only going back after Walesa denounced their action as a "provocation aimed against the first Reactionary Polish nationalists thirst for blood: "Fighting Solidarity" cheers U.S. imperialist chief Bush in Gdansk last Prime Minister elected on the initiative July (left). Warsaw university group hails Marshal Pilsudski, fascistic dictator of interwar Poland. of Solidarity." While Walesacalls on the workers to halt all strikes for six number one by transforming them­ Baltic would not be some "peaceful" and class. But the further development of the months, the new government's plans selves into private capitalists, now that "evolutionary" process, as Brzezinski bureaucratic regime can lead to the will mean mass layoffs on top of the they have run the socialized economy .and others paint it, but a bloody inception of a new ruling class: not triple-digit inflation. into the ground. A prototype is the pogrom. For as Polish Catholic nation­ organically, through degeneration, but The Polish United Workers Party former minister of industry, Mieczyslaw alism gains the upper hand, virulent through counterrevolution." The stran­ (PZPR), the mouthpiece of the Stalin­ Wilcez, who is both a millionaire private anti-Communism and anti-Semitism gulation of the party, soviets and trade ist apparatus, talks of the new govern­ entrepreneur and PZPR party mem­ come to the fore. Walesa is an open unions, he points out, atomizes the ment as a "grand coalition." A majority ber. Timothy Garton Ash writes in the admirer of Polish prewar fascistic dic­ proletariat: of the PZPR parliamentary fraction New York Review of Books (15 June) tator Pilsudski; he asked the Solidar­ "The first social shock, external or even voted for Mazowiecki. In the deal that "the process whereby members of nose parliamentary fraction to open its internal, may throw the atomized the nomenklatura advance into private first meeting by singing, "We, the First Soviet society into civil war. The work­ worked out between the church and Po­ ers, having lost control over the state lish president General Jaruzelski, Soli­ enterprise, using the power and connec­ Brigade," the marching song of Pilsud­ and economy, may resort to mass darnosc has the prime minister and most tions that go with their official posi­ ski's legions. Just how deep these strains strikes as weapons of self-defense. The of the cabinet while the Stalinists hold tions, proceeds apace." Ash notes the run is seen in the case of Bronislaw discipline of the dictatorship would be advantages of "compensating some on to the critical posts of defense and -" interior ministries, and Poland will members of the nomenklatura for their loss of political power, and dividing it ~ remain in the Warsaw Pact. For any­ ~ between those who stand to lose and Q) one familiar with even the "A" of the E those who stand to gain. One might call C> "ABCs" of Marxism, this does not (yet) c constitute a counterrevolution. The Sta­ this the 'nomenklatura buyout' theory." 'c ~ linists still head the police and army, Crisis of Stalinist Rule o those "armed bodies of men" which con­ stitute the core of state power. This is The Polish events reflect a broader not a "coalition," but a state of dual crisis of Stalinism. In Hungary the rul­ Bush and Reagan power at the governmental level. It ing party is split, the majority now call­ see Gorbachev's could even last for a while as the com­ ing themselves social democrats, while a "new thinking" as ponents dither around in parliamen­ myriad of rightist opposition parties green light to tary maneuvers. However, the Stalinist sprout up. And not far in the back­ reconquer East bureaucratic apparatus is disintegrating ground is Soviet president Mikhail Gor­ Europe for as Poland slides toward economic chaos bachev. When PZPR chief Mieczyslaw capitalist , exploitation. and political anarchy. Rakowski tried to hold out for more The Polish Stalinist bureaucracy has ministerial portfolios, Walesa told him created a situation where it is impos­ to "stop rocking the boat" and a 40-' sible for it to continue to exist as a minute phone call from Gorbachev parasitic caste balancing between world delivered the same message. On a more capitalism and the socialized economy. fundamental level, 'the Polish events are Geremek, Walesa's chief brain-truster, broken. Under the onslaught of the , whom many 'considered the obvious workers and because of the pressure of To pay the Western bankers means a logical outcome of the Gorbachev economic difficulties, the trusts would imposing a level of hardship that guar­ perestroika "reforms." We have warned candidate for prime minister. The Lon­ be forced to disrupt the planned begin­ antees massive strikes, slowdowns, the that this program of "market social­ don Guardian (18 August) noted that nings and enter into competition with breakdown of labor discipline. Added ism" emboldens counterrevolutionary Geremek "has come under attack from one another. The dissolution of the to this is the prospect of a popular upris­ elements, and in Poland they are now on the Roman Catholic right because of his regime would naturally find its violent early membership of the Communist and chaotic echo in the village and ing. As a desperate maneuver, the top the threshold of power. This will have a would inevitably be thrown over into echelons of the bureaucracy around direct influence on the situation in the Party and because he is a Jew." the army. The socialist state would col­ Jaruzelski have sought to get Walesa Soviet Union, particularly the Baltic The virulent anti-Semitism of Po­ lapse, giving place to the capitalist & land's Catholic hierarchy has been regime or, more correctly, to capitalist Co. to share responsibility for the states, where behind calls for "self­ chaos." economic shock treatment. determination" forces of counterrevo­ exposed by the dispute over a Carmelite At the same time, a number of well­ lution are mounting. convent on the site of Auschwitz death Yet this does not mean the situation is placed apparatchiks are looking out for Counterrevolution in Poland or the camp: A few years ago, under pressure hopeless, Trotsky insisted. As the work­ from international Jewish groups, ing class entered into action, the Stalin­ church officials from France and Bel­ ist apparatus would be suspended in gium as well as Poland agreed to move midair: the convent to a center for Christian­ "A real civil war could develop not 'Jewish. dialogue to be built nearby. between the Stalinist bureaucracy and 'SPARrACJSTI~ After a small group of American Jews the resurgent proletariat but between NUMBER "3~" ENGLISH rDmON $UMMEA= ,1ft JUST OUT! : protested the continued presence of the the proletariat and the active forces of .WFMfbji4.1Mt.IIL4 .. =.I&.aA... convent at Auschwitz last month, Po­ the counterrevolution. In the event of an open clash between the two mass Sgartacist lish Cardinal Glemp spoke at the camps, there cannot even be talk of the national shrine of the Black Madonna in bureaucracy playing an independent English Edition Czestochowa August 26, accusing Jews role. Its polar flanks would be flung No. 43-44 of "offend[ing] the feelings of all Poles." to the different sides of the barri­ Glemp ranted about Jewish-controlled cade .... The victory of the revolution­ Summer 1989 ary camp, in any case, is conceivable media spreading "anti-Polish feeling," (56 pages) only under the leadership of a prole­ and vituperated: "dear Jews, do not talk tarian party, which would naturally be $1.50 with us from the position of a people raised to power by victory over the raised above all others." While the Po­ counterrevolution ... lish hierarchy has reneged on the prom­ An opening to build a revolutionary (Spartacist is ise to move the convent, the French and proletarian party now exists in Poland, sent to all WV Belgian prelates involved insist the especially because the workers are strug­ subscribers.) in the USSRI agreement is still in force. gling not just against the despised seE PAGE 5 Fifty years ago, Leon Trotsky in his Stalinist regime but also against Wa­ ,\$-]1[[1::1:( ]1 l11AU ..:I.1I1tl;0 seminal article on "The Class Nature of lesa & Co. Make checks payable/mail to: When Wa. the Soviet Thermldor? , KorAl npoII3OWen C08eTC"Mi TepIIlfAOP? : the Soviet State" (October 1933), which Spartacist Publishing Co, ~~.f.?S~~.;::::i:~~':::,;:.;.:" Box 1377 GPO he characterized as a bureaucratically Workers Strike Against New York, NY 10116 degenerated workers state, foresaw a Solidarnosc Orders process remarkably similar to what is happening in Poland today. Trotsky The present events in Pohlnd go back notes: "The bureaucracy is not a ruling to the outbreak, of workers strikes last 12 WORKERS VANGUARD year. The Stalinists tried to negotiate their way out via a series of "Round o J:::o Table" discussions which led to the (l. legalization of Solidarnosc and the call­ ~ ing of elections for June 4. The June elections produced a total rout of the Stalinists. While virtually everyone of the Solidarity candidates got through on the first round, almost all of the PZPR's "national list" was defeated, Almost a decade ago, international even though they ran unopposed, as vot­ Spartacist tendency ers crossed off their names from the exposed Solidarnose ballot in disgust. Solidarnosc took 99' as a Polish company out of 100 seats in the upper house of union for the CIA parliament, and now holds a third of and Wall Street: the seats in'the Sejm. This arrangement demonstration outside was supposed to guarantee a PZPR­ Solidarnose office led government, but when the Stalin­ in New York, ists' prevjously complianLsatellites.(the September 1981. United Peasants Party and Democratic Party) went over to Solidarnosc, Gen­ eral Kiszczak gave up his attempt to form a cabinet. Solidarnosc leaders "came home" to Gdansk on Sunday, August 20, as Mazowiecki and Walesa attended an ornate celebratory mass. In the church­ yard, Walesa had to silence a group of hecklers who shouted, "We want bread, not a prime minister." The protest was led by "Fighting Solidarity," a split-off connected with the ultra rightist clerical­ nationalist KPN. At the first congress of Solidarnosc in 1981, these were the peo­ ple who led opposition to any positive reference to "socialism" in its pro­ gram. When Bush came to Gdansk in July, "Fighting Solidarity" welcomed him with signs proclaiming, "A Good Communist is a Dead Communist." The Polish economic crisis is so sharp that it no Poland's revolutionary Communist tradition: Rosa Luxemburg and the "Three has fueled support for these violent anti­ W's"-Adolf Warski, Henryk Walecki and Wera Kostrzewa of the early Polish Communists who reject the "Round Communist Party. Table" agreement. At the same time, the Stalinist-led unions have also won sup­ port by protesting austerity policies, working-class base. As 'an analyst from N ow that Solidarnosc leaders have mass of the Polish industrial working while Solidarnosc unions have grown the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations explicitly avowed that their aim is to class adhered to the Polish Socialist slowly, with only about a fifth the mem­ put it: restore capitalism in Poland, it lays the Party-Left, a centrist formation which bership they had in their heyday of 1981. "As Prime Minister, Tadeusz Mazo­ objective basis for defenders of socialist significantly did not agitate for the SolidarnosC' economic calculations wiecki is going to have two problems. property to seek unity with the prole­ restoration of an independent Polish are based on somehow getting massive First, he is going to have to stab his tarian base of Solidarnosc in genuine state. The nationalist wing of Polish aid from Western capitalism. When adversaries and then he is going to have class opposition to the Stalinist bureau­ socialism, led by Josef Pilsudski, was Bush visited Poland in July, Walesa to stab his supporters ... he is going to have to shut down inefficient, over­ crats and former leaders of Solidarnos~ supported by only a minority of the Po­ repeatedly asked him for $10 billion to manned state enterprises, such as the who aspire to form a neo-bourgeoisie on lish workers in this period. The Bolshe­ save his country from a "great, great Gdansk shipyards, where Solidarity the backs of the workers. But as Lenin vik Revolution in Russia and the defeat upheaval." Yet the American president was born, or some mines and steel noted, politics is concentrated econom­ of Germany by the Western powers in promised only $115 mills ...." million, barely one ics, and,militant labor struggles won't go World War I led to the establishment of percent of what Walesa asked for. The architect of SolidarnosC' economic . very far without forging an authentic an independent Polish bourgeois state, Imperialist aid is crucial for Solidar­ plans is Harvard professor Jeffery . Marxist party, for which Poland has with Pilsudski at its head, in late 1918 . nosC' plans: with all of the talk about Sachs, whose claim to fame was advis­ ample traditions. At the' same time the Polish Com­ restoring capitalism how can they do it ing the Bolivian government on how to munist Party was formed through a without big infusions of capital? There's defeat hyperinflation in 1985. Sachs' Internationalist Tradition fusion of Luxemburg'S SDKPiL and the nobody in Poland with any capital to solution: firing two:..thirds of the tin Polish Socialist Party-Left. buy up state-owned industry, even at miners, the key section of the Bolivian of Polish Communism Roman Werfel, who joined the Po­ bargain-basement prices. Yet Washing­ proletariat. This program could be The Western press depicts the entire lish Communist Party in. 1923, told ton and Wall Street are loaded up with explosive if tried in Poland, a bureau­ Polish people as always and irrevocably of the CP's internationalist spirit in debt-from the federal deficit, bank­ cratically deformed workers state where ardently nationalist and piously Catho­ an interview with a pro-Solidarnosc rupt S&Ls and Latin America-and capitalism was abolished and the lic. Communism is presented as a totally journalist: workers' interests are supposed to be those that have the cash, like Frankfurt alien element in the Polish body politic, "The most important thing for commu­ and Tokyo bankers, are reluctant to paramount. As we pointed out in imposed solely by the Russian Red nists at the time was not the issue of pour it into the sinkhole of Poland. "Solidarnosc/Stalinist Pact Against the Army in 1945. For example, a histor­ frontiers, but that of an all-European And now Solidarnosc will have to Workers" (WVNo. 479, 9 June), "The ical sketch of postwar Poland in the socialist revolution, whose outbreak take responsibility for the economic workers are beginning to recognize that was perfectly conceivable. There seems New York Times (18 August) is titled to be an implication, in what you've just policies which spell misery for its Walesa & Co. are traitors to their class." "40 Years of Communism in Poland: been saying, that a great nation, a Stalin's House on a Soft Foundation." nation worthy of note, is one which The reality is just the reverse. It was Sta­ appropriates the greatest possible num­ lin and his followers and heirs who ber of territories populated by foreign SPARTACIST LEAGUE/U.S. LOCAL DIRECTORY nations. But this view is false. It may be destroyed and discredited Communism correct from the point of view of the National Office: Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 • (212) 732-7860 in Poland. exploiting classes, which profit from For decades Poland had one of the such territories, but certainly not from Atlanta Detroit Norfolk oldest and strongest traditions of the point of view of the people; they get Box 4012 Box 441794 Box 1972, Main PO Marxist proletarian socialism of any continued on page 14 Atlanta, GA 30302 Detroit, MI 48244 Norfolk, VA 23501 European country. The first Marxist Boston Oakland working-class party in the tsarist em­ Los Angeles pire, the party Proletariat, was formed Box 840, Central 8ta. Box 29574, Los Feliz 8ta. Box 32552 Spartacist League Cambridge, MA 02139 Los Angeles CA 90029 Oakland, CA 94604 in Warsaw in the 1880s. Ludwik Wa­ (617) 492-3928 (213) 380-8239 (415) 839-0851 rynski's Proletariat rejected the tradi­ Public Offices tional Polish radical program of a Chicago San Francisco Madison national uprising and worked closely -MARXIST LlTERATURE­ Box 6441, Main PO Box 5712 with the Russian popUlists for a social Box 2074 Bay Area Chicago, IL 60680 8an Francisco, CA 94101 revolution throughout the tsarist em­ (312) 663-0715 Madison, WI 53701 (415) 863-6963 Thurs.: 5:30-8:00 p.m" Sat.: 1:00-5:00 p.m. pire. Warynski's anti-nationalist tra­ 1634 Telegraph, 3rd Floor (near 17th Street) Cleveland New York Washington, D.C. dition was taken over in the next Oakland. California Phone: (415) 839-0851 Box 91037 Box 444, Canal 8t. 8ta. Box 75073 generation by the greatest Polish prole­ Chicago Cleveland, OH 44101 New York, NY 10013 Washington, D.C. 20013 tarian revolutionary leader of all, Rosa Tues.: 5:00-9:00 p,m., Sat.: 11:00 a,m.-2:00 p,m. (216) 781-7500 (212) 267-1025 (202) 636-3537 161 W. Harrison St., 10th Floor Luxemburg. The Social Democracy of Chicago, IllinoiS Phone: (312) 663-0715 the Kingdom of Poland' and Lithua­ nia (SDKPiL), led by Luxemburg and New York City Toronto Tues.: 6:30-9:00 p,m .. Sat.: 1:06-5:00 p.m, TROTSKYIST LEAGUE Box 7198, Station A Leo J ogiches, united the vanguard of 41 Warren St. (one block below Toronto, Ontario M5W 1X8 the Polish proletariat and left-wing Chambers St. near Church SI.) OF CANADA New York, N.Y. Phone: (212) 267-1025 (416) 593-4138 intelligentsia. In the decade before World War I the 1 SEPTEMBER 1989 13 Jews radically changed the political bal­ epics. Wajda's interesting film Man of Western capitalist governments for Poland~ .. ance of forces in Polish society. Jews Marble, made in the late '70s, depicts the salvation. Solidarnosc arose out of the constituted 10 percent of the prewar socialist idealism of many young work­ "dissident" circles of workers and intel­ (continued from page 13) popUlation, proportionally greater than ers in the early postwar years. lectuals nurtured and protected by the some scraps from time to time, but later in any other country. As an oppressed That idealism was sOon eroded by church hierarchy, now directed by Po­ they pay for those conquests with sweat and urbanized people, Jews played an Stalinist police-state terror amid the lish Pope Karol W ojtyla. and blood." important role in all Polish left-wing economic privileges enjoyed by the -quoted in Teresa Toranska, Build a Bolshevik Party! Oni: Stalin's Polish Puppets organizations. Thus the Nazi Holo­ bureaucracy. Yet the mass of Polish (1987) caust destroyed a powerful counter­ workers and intellectuals continued to The formation of a Solidarnosc-led In the early 1920s the Communist weight to the clerical-nationalist forces believe in socialism. The crisis of "de­ government in Poland has heightened Party under the leadership of the "Three of Polish reaction. Stalin and Hitler, Stalinization" in 1956 brought Poland the triumphalist mood in Western W's" (Warski, Walecki, Wera Kostrze­ along with Pilsudski, are the three god­ to the brink of a proletarian political ruling circles that the end of Commu­ wa) was stronger within the Polish fathers of Solidarnosc. revolution. It was headed off by the nism is at hand. The latest rage at liberal-national Stalinist Wladyslaw working class than the Pilsudskiite Bitter Fruits of Bureaucratic Rule Washington cocktail parties is the apoc­ social democrats. There was a saying in Gomulka. Once Gomulka had consoli­ alyptic vision of State Department the Communist International: "The Nonetheless, Communism was by no dated his power, in part by conciliating "theoretician" Francis Fukuyama who German party is the biggest; the Polish means an insignificant and despised the Catholic hierarchy, he suppressed claims we are now witnessing "the end party. is the best." In fact, the Polish force in Poland when the Soviet Red both the workers councils and leftist of history as such: that is, the end party offered more resistance to Stalin­ Army liberated the country at the end of intellectual circles which had arisen dur- point of mankind's ideological evolu­ ization than any other large Commu­ tion and the universalization of West­ nist party. In December 1923 its central ern liberal democracy" (New York committee sent a letter of protest to the Times, 27 August). Russian party which stated: This kind of "the West has won the ..... for our party, nay for the whole Cold War" triumphalism rests on two Comintern, for the whole revolution­ fatal illusions: that the people of East ary proletariat the name of Comrade Europe, the Soviet Union and China are Trotsky is insolubly connected with the victory of the Soviet Revolution, with longing to transform their societies the Red Army, with communism." along the lines of "free world" capital­ -quoted in M.K. Dziewanowski, ism; and that the Soviet government, The Communist Party of under Gorbachev, will not or cannot ~ Poland (1976) prevent capitalist restoration in East The Polish American h,istorian Dzie­ Europe. The latter view is strongly wanowski observes: "A pro-Trotsky espoused by Zbigniew Brzezinski, who undercurrent continued to remain a fac­ combines the blustering arrogance of tor of some importance until the party's American Cold Warriors with the anti­ dissolution '[in 1938], particularly Russian chauvinism and Great Power among the Jewish membership." illusions of the Polish petty nobility. In the late 1920s the Communists led Yet many of the social struggles which the opposition to Pilsudskj's fascistic have convulsed the Communist world dictatorship, while the social dem­ in the past year have been not for ocrats served as Pilsudski's shock but against the efforts of the Stalin­ troops. The growing White terror forced ist bureaucracies to introduce elements ever larger numbers of Polish Commu­ of capitalism into the collectivized nists to take refuge in the Soviet Union. economy. The massive strikes of coal While many foreign Communists were miners in Siberia and the Ukraine killed in the Great Purges of the late last month were directed against the '30s, Stalin's war against the Polish Silesian copper miners strike in May against IMF-dictated economic effects of Gorbachev's market-oriented shock treatment being carried out by bankrupt Stalinist bureaucracy party was exceptional. Practically all and Solidarnosc. perestroika. The upheaval in China Polish Communists in Soviet territory was fueled by the resentment of work­ were either physically liquidated or sent World War II. Many young workers ing the 1956 "Polish O~tober." ing people over the gross corruption to labor camps. The entire leadership­ and intellectuals looked forward to the As the economy stagnated in the and inequalities generated by Dehg's Warski, Walecki, Wera Kostrzewa, socialist reconstruction of their devas­ 1960s, Gomulka's once-great popular­ policy of "building socialism with capi­ Unszlicht-was killed. In 1938 in an tated country. Significantly, a number ity declined. In 1968 a faction within the talist methods." Even in Poland work­ unprecedented act Stalin dissolved the of prominent figures now in Solidarnosc bureaucracy around secret police chief ers' are now striking against the IMF­ Polish Communist Party as a "nest of were once ardent Communists. As a Moczar sought to channel the growing dictated economic shock treatment Pilsudskiite-Trotskyites." teenager in the early 1950s, Jacek popular discontent into traditional anti­ being carried out by the Solidarnosc­ The destruction of Polish Commu­ Kuron, today a pro-Western social dem­ Semitic Polish chauvinism. Under the led government. nism begun by Pilsudski, carried for­ ocrat, was a fanatical Stalinist who rubric of "anti-Zionism," the few tens of While Western imperialist ideo­ ward by Stalin, was continued by Hitler. enjoyed publicly baiting Pilsudskiite thousands of Jews who had survived the logues imagine the masses in so-called Many Communist cadre were killed reactionaries. Filmmaker Andrzej Waj-' Nazi Holocaust, many of them loyal Communist countries yearning for cap­ during the Nazi occupation. No less da, currently a Solidarnosc senator, Communist cadre, were driven out of italism, they have also convinced them­ important, the extermination of the began by directing "socialist-realist" the country. This reactionary and cyn­ selves that the Soviet government has ical campaign further alienated the 'become a "paper tiger" which will no ,intelligentsia from the "Communist" lon~er protect its postwar sphere of regime and strengthened the forces of influence in East Europe. The talk in clerical nationalism. Washington is that the 1945 Yalta agree­ ______S~p_a_r~m~c~~~t,~.~~-o-ru-m--s------­ In 1970 the Baltic ports exploded ment has become null and void and East when the Gomulka'regime raised food Europe is up for grabs. Plans are "Ma rket Socialism" Breeds More Misery prices a few weeks before Christmas. mooted about to bring Poland and inde­ Led by the shipbuilders, thousands of pendent Baltic republics into the IMF. workers, some singing the Interna­ But if unfolding counterrevolution men­ tionale, attacked police and burned aced the Soviets along their vital West­ down the Party headquarters in Gdansk ern borders and threatened to blow and Szczecin. Gomulka ordered in the apart the multinational USSR, Mos­ army:' over a hundred workers were cow would have little choice but to Speaker: George Foster, Spartacist League Central Committee killed. Once again Poland stood on the respond militarily. Thus Gorbachev's brink of a mass workers uprising. And appeasement of imperialism, far from BERKELEY SAN FRANCISCO once again Polish Stalinism presented easing or ending the Cold War, has Saturday" Sept. 16, 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 21, 5:30 p.m. to the workers a new face and a new increased the danger of World War II I. 126 Barrows Room to be announced deal. Gomulka was replaced by Edward Restoration of capitalism in East UC Berkeley San Francisco State University Gierek, an ex-coal miner with a reputa­ Europe would not introduce a new For more information: (415) 839-0851 For more information: (415) 863-6963 tion as a liberal reformer. Gierek per­ global order based on "liberal democ­ sonally went to the Baltic ports and racy"; it would mean bloody counter­ vowed his government would never use revolution, nationalist pogroms and -----Stalinism in Crisis ----- force to suppress workers' protests. He wars, which could lead to nuclear holo­ further promised an era of unparalleled caust. The struggles now taking shape in economic prosperity. Walesa recounted East Europe will determine not only the that he, like most Polish workers, wel­ near-term future of this region but pos­ comed and believed Gierek's promises. sibly the fate of mankind. The bank­ Gierek's- "economic miracle" of the ruptcy and internal demoralization of • Return to Lenin's Communism! For Workers Soviets! early '70s was financed by massive bor­ Stalinism has opened the road to cap­ Oust the Bureaucrats! rowing from Western banks. When in italist restoration. But it also brings to • Poland on the Brink-Defend Deformed and Degenerated 1976 Gierek imposed an austerity pro­ the fore the possibility for proletarian Workers States Against Imperialist Attack and Domestic gram to pay back the loan sharks of political revolution establishing work­ Counterrevolution I Wall Street and Frankfurt, Polish work­ ers (soviet) democracy. For the work­ ers reacted even more strongly because ing class of East Europe and the Soviet Speaker:.Ed Clarkson, Spartacist League Central ~ommittee they felt betrayed. It was only after 1976 Union to triumph, over both the para­ that the mass of the Polish proletariat sitic Stalinist bureaucracies and the MADISON See "Today in the Union"'for room and intelligentsia became totally disil­ counterrevolutionary natiQnalists, re­ UW-Madison lusioned with the "real existing social­ quires the leadership of a genuine com­ Saturday, Sept. 9, 2:00 p.m. For more information:.(312) 663-0715 ism" as practiced in their country. Grad­ munist party modeled on the Bolshevik ually, they turned to the Vatican and Party of Lenin and Trotsky:. 14 WORKERS VANGUARD left PATCO strikers to hang, we called Labor:Use on the unions to shut down the airports by pulling out all airline workers. And repeatedly, when the KKK lynchers Your Muscle ... tried to march in America's major cit-. (continued from page 16) ies, notably in Detroit (1980), Washing­ ton (1982) and Philadelphia (1988), turnT' (Washington Post, 20 August). united-front mobilizations initiated by All the '80s talk of the "death of the SL and Partisan Defense Commit­ labor" was cut short by the immensely tee brought out the labor/black power popular and explosive strikes at East­ that stopped the fascists cold. ern Airlines and in the coal fields. When I t is just this kind of militant workers' the Eastern strike began in March, the Machinists' call for flying pickets to struggle, but on a mass scale, which built the- powerful industrial unions in the hit railroads from Boston to Chicago electrified the labor movement. That U.S. And it was reds who took the lead then as well. The CIO was preceded by mouthpiece of finance capital, the Wall three citywide general strikes led by Street Journal (3 March), called sec­ avowed communists in 1934 (San ondary picketing the unions' "atom bomb." But lAM chief William Winpi­ Francisco, Minneapolis and Toledo). The sit-down strikes, which the U A W singer, this self-styled "seat-of-the;'pants socialist," never had any intention tops like to claim as their own, were of challenging the bosses' anti-strike initiated by reds, while Reuther & Co. injunctions-his threats of secondary scrambled to keep on top. But the Sta­ linist Communist Party threw away its strikes were pure bluff designed to pres­ credentials as labor militants when it sure Bush to intervene and call off the strike. enforced Roosevelt's no-strike pledge during World War II, even organizing The current strike by Pittston miners is a do-or-die battle for the UMW. The scabs to break miners strikes. This only made the anti-Communist witchhunt­ mine operators are intent on wiping out ers' job easier when the CP's services the industrywide contract. Miners know were no longer needed. And all along, this is class war-50,OOO UMW mem­ the reformists, social-democratic or Sta­ bers wildcatted in solidarity with the linist, looked to the capitalist state and Pittston strike across eleven states, defy­ the Democrats. ing federal marshals, coal company' Sixty years ago, in another period judges and the UMW misleaders. But' union' president Richard Trumka is when the labor movement in the U.S. WV Photos was in retreat-with craft union bu­ disorganizing the Pittston workers' From Detroit auto to PATCO, Spartacistssay: Labor's Gotta Play Hardball to reaucrats abandoning workers in mass struggle by splitting them off from the Win! To unleash their power, workers must sweep away sellout bureaucrats production industries while trying to rest of the union ("selective strikes") and and company cops like lAM's William Winpisinger and UAW's Owen Bieber pushing instead civil disobedience and and Doug Fraser (below). preserve their job trusts; when black' useless "corporate campaign"-style ap­ workers were barred from unions by racist "whites only" provisions, or seg­ peals to bankers, paving the road to regated in separate locals; when the another defeat like the one he engi­ Mine Workers, once the powerhouse of neered at A.T. Massey in 1984-85. American labor, had been decimated­ It is a truism in the labor movement James P. Cannon, an early leader of the today that "if we'd all gone out when CP who went on to found the Trotsky­ Reagan fired PATCO, we wouldn't be ist movement in this country, pointed to in this fix today." But who let PATCO the key task confronting class-struggle hang? Who dug this hole for labor? The militants in the unions: same sellout bureaucracy that is sabo­ "The fight for a class movement of tbe taging the Eastern and Pittston strikes American workers is in the first place a today. For years they tried to buy social fight against the capitalist ideology peace by skimming off some crumbs for whicb dominates them. The labor a labor aristocracy of white workers, bureaucrats of the AFL and the unaf­ while blacks were "last hired, first fired" filiated unions of the same type are the direct bearers of this ideology in tbe and AFL job-trusting went unchal­ become the instruments of the revolu­ "progressive" alternative to the rabid tionary movement of the proletariat." ."AFL-CIA" Cold Warriors around working class and must be fought as lenged. Then when the post-Vietnam -'"Trade Unions mthe Epoch such. The labor bUreaucracy is a part of recession hit, these "labor lieutenants of of Imperialist Decay" Lane Kirkland. They criticize the activ- the capitalist rationalization and war the capitalist class" saluted General (August 1940) o ities of the American Institute for Free madline-its 'labor' win&- De Leon's classic definition of tbe RaCtionary Motors and began ripping up their own Labor Development (AfFLD), notori­ labor leaders as 'lieutenants of ~ cap­ union contracts, handing over billions Today as well, the only way to break the ous for backing anti-Communist coups These italist class' bolds doubly JOod today. to the bosses, and all the time herding stranglehold of the AFL-CIO mis1ead­ in Latin America. committees The distinctive features of tbae labor labor to the polls to vote for the partner ers, who police the unions for the bosses, were initiated by union officials, largely leaders in comparison to the soc:ial­ parties of American imperialism. is to build a solid leadership with the affdiated with the DSA social dem­ reformist leaders of Europe consists in program and determination to wage the ocrats, around protests for Central the fact that they are outspoken defend­ class struggle through to victory. American unionists seized and tortured en of the whole capitalist regime and all For Union Independence from of its institutions, without 'socialistic' But the self-styled alternatives to the by U.S.-backed death squad regimes. pretense or class-struggle phraseology. the Bosses' Statel present gang of loser bureaucrats are But while opposing the AIFLD's u1tra­ Their program is a program of stark no less wedded to the capitalist state. reactionary policies, they only want to reaction. They repudiate the class strug­ Today they are replaying the PATCO The reformist "left" is currently trum­ realign it with the liberal Democrats. gle in words as weD as deeds. They defeat, as Eastern strikers are hung out oppose any kind of independent polit­ peting an outfit called New Directions, Thus at the 1987 AFL-CIO con­ to dry. The labor bureaucracy bows ical action. They support the wbole mil­ an "opposition" formation in the vention, the liberal/reformist bloc com­ before injunctions barring secondary itary program of American imperial­ promised with Kirkland and voted for a ism and wiD indubitably be a powerful strikes, and .begs Congress to impose the U A W which is backed by the social­ resolution that opposed aid to the loser ally of the capitalists in lining up the no-strike machinery of the Railway democratic lAbor Notes crowd. On the contras but attacked the Nicaraguan workers for the coming war and demor­ Labor Act. In the coal fields, cops carry eve of the June U A W convention in Los alizing the struggle against it .... Angeles, New Directions candidates Revolution by opposing Soviet and out thousands of arrests, courts order "The struggle for a labor party, as part Cuban military aid to the Sandinistas! union leaders ,jailed and levy million­ won a number of early delegate elec­ of the struggle for the development At home, these same social democrats of a class movement of tbe American dollar fines on union treasuries-and tions, whereupon the U A W Interna­ tional raised a war chest of over tuive been prominent in labor support workers, requires an intransigent fight the Trumka leadership of the UMW just rallies for Greyhound, Hormel, Eastern against the AFL leadership and the eats it. They don't lift a finger for the $400,000 to defeat them. In May, Soli­ Socialist Party, who represent obsta­ darity House mobilized a rare picket and Pittston strikes. Yet their "solidar­ courageous Kentucky miners impris­ cles to this development." ity" rings hollow, consisting mainly of -"Platform of the Communist oned for 40 years for defending their line-against a lAbor Notes conference! New Directions is nothing but a useless consumer boycotts or pleas to Opposition" (February 1929) union in the Massey strike. vehicle for out-of-office bureaucrats. It lobby Congress. When it comes to Today as in the post-WWII McCar­ From PATCO to Pittston, every is the creation of Jerry Tucker, a UAW organizing hard strike action, they're thy witchhunts and the post-WWI red strike has come up against the state-its rep for 14 years, and brain-trusted by nowhere to be seen. And when it's scare, the domestic war on labor and cops, courts and capitalist politicians. Victor Reuther, the former UAW blacks is directly linked to a global cru­ The American labor bureaucracy can't necessary to use labor's muscle to stop international affairs director who. car­ racist terrorists, the social-democratic sade against Communism. The socialist fight the capitalist state because it was ried out anti-Communist union-bu~ting "solidarity""networks, like the social­ revolution in Russia in 1917 for the first installed as willing lieutenants in U.S. in Europe for the CIA. New Directions time in history established workers rule. imperialism's Cold War against the democratic out-bureaucrats of New offers auto workers nothing but a Directions, prefer talkfests with liberal Ever since, the bourgeoisie and their Soviet Union abroad and the purging of warmed-over Reutherite program of labor flunkeys have been haunted by the reds from the unions at home. Fifty Democrats. red baiting, rabid protectionism and reli­ The key to victory for labor's cause, at spectre of Bolshevik revolution promis­ years ago, Leon Trotsky wrote of the ance on the Democratic Party. Notably, home and abroad, is forging a class­ ing the end of capitalist class rule and unions in one of his last articles: their campaign literature is marked by a struggle leadership. The Trotskyists of the paltry privileges the labor bureauc­ "They can no longer be reformist, because the objective conditions leave deafening silence on the fight against the Spartacist League and our sup­ racy derives from it. Working-class mil­ no room for any serious and lasting racism. Yet this is key in the U A W as in porters in the unions have waged this itants must fight for a workers party, reforms. The trade unions of our time other key industrial unions, where black fight in a number of key battles. When ousting the current pro-Democratic can either serve as secondary instru­ workers form the strategic core of sup­ the U A W tops were giving back billions union misleaders, to lead the revolu­ ments of imperialist capitalism for the tionary struggle against capitalism and subordination and disciplining of work­ port for militant class struggle. to Chrysler, the SL calIed for sit-down ers and for obstructing the revolution, - Then there are the networks of soli­ strikes to save Dodge Main and stop its scourges of war, unemployment and or, on the contrary, the trade unions can darity committees which pose as a mass layoffs. When Winpisinger & Co. racist oppression.. ' 1 SEPTEMBER 1989 15 W,/iNE/iS "'.(;"'111)

Kef to Victory' -A Class-Struggle Leadership- • aoor • se

and Striking Pittston miners massed outside Moss No.3 in Clinchfield, Virginia. Longshoremen, rail and steel workers must ref·use to handle scab coal!

Last year saw the lowest total of· the bosses' rules, and it's not hard to fig- percent in the last decade, as unioniza- ical and welfare benefits keep mount­ major strikes since the government ure out why. They know in their bones tion has fallen to the lowest point in half ing. In the ghettos and barrios, the lid is began keeping statistics over 40 years that in a wave of sit-down strikes, mass a century: less than one worker in six kept on the pressure cooker with racist ago. This year the picture is very differ­ picketing, "hot-cargoing"-the mili- belongs to a union. Meanwhile, the sell- cop terror, built through the bipartisan ent. As the pro-business U.S. News & tant tactics which built the big indus- out and giveback artists sitting atop the "war on drugs." On the picket line, scab­ World Report (22 May) noted, "Strikes trial unions-they would be quickly AFL-CIO are ripping up hard-won herding is a booming business. Scabs are breaking out all over." Eastern Air­ swept aside. union gains left and right. A solid strike are rebaptized "replacement workers" lines workers are engaged in a life-or­ If ever there was 'a, time for militant victo'ry could turn the labor movement and allowed by the courts to vote in death fight against corporate raider union solidarity in action, this is it. If around after a decade of defeats, but union certification elections while strik­ Frank Lorenzo. In the coal fields, min­ steel workers refused to handle scab that means a hard fight against the ers are barred. ers are waging class war against the coal coal, if rail workers and longshore- defenders of capitalism who have hog- In recent years, a series of bitter, hard­ bosses-the existence of their union is men refused to ship it, Pittston would ,tied the labor movement. fought strikes have gone down to defeat: on the line. In August, phone workers quickly be brought to its knees. If lAM Meanwhile, millions of workers, in- Phelps Dodge copper miners, Grey­ struck profit-bloated regional Bell com­ airline mechanics and Teamster fuel cluding the bulk of doubly oppressed hound workers, Hormel meatpackers, panies which were slashing vital med­ haulers walked out in solidarity with the black, Hispanic and women workers, International Paper workers. Others, ical plans. Across the country there have Eastern strikers, this would shut down have never seen the inside of a union like the Colt Industries strike or the been big labor rallies; unionists have the airports and whip Lorenzo's ass. hall. From NYC to L.A., the sweatshop NY C longshoremen's tug strike, drag on poured into the United Mine Workers' After a decade of wage slashing, is thriving, filled with undocumented for years, as scabs roll past token picket Camp Solidarity to show support for massive scabherding and g(}vernment workers without legal rights. Rather lines. These strikes were defeated the Pittston strikers. strikebreaking, the working class is than organizing the unorganized and because the die-on-your-knees labor Fed up with Reaganite union­ eager to strike back. There is an acute fighting for full rights for immigrant bureaucracy knifed them in the back. busting, their backs to the wall, the shortage of skilled labor, and the cap- workers, labor officialdom whips up a This generation of labor traitors has ranks of labor are ready to fight. They ita list press worries about tQe enor- protecti"nist frenzy against Japanese, done the bosses' bidding for so long they are fighting. But all of these strikes have mous pressure to drive up wages. Yet the Mexican and all' foreign workers in don't know how to win strikes. An AFL­ been left to turn in the wind. Over and New York Times (4 August) brags about order to protect American bosses' CIO lobbyist, lamenting the state of the over, the union tops capitulate as soon "The Wage Jump That Never Came" profits. For the lowest paid, Bush vetoes Eastern strike, asks: "Where do we go? as the first judge whispers the word despite years of a tight labor market. In any increase in the minimum wage, We had a solid strike. Where do we "injunction." The labor fakers play by fact, real wages havefallen more than 12 while Reagan-era cuts in housing, med- continued on page 15

16 1 SEPTEMBER 1989