25¢ No. 483 ·t~~x .... 4 August 1989 Soviet Workers Challenge Perestroika The powerful strike by Soviet min­ who have amassed wealth and huge ers has not only shaken up the bureau­ resentment under the new economic order that Mr. Gorbachev is trying to crats in Moscow. In an extraordinary build." front-page "news analysis," the New York Times (26 July) had some advice Soviet workers have no love lost for price-gouging speculators and exploi­ for the Kremlin leadets. "Worry for tation by nascent capitalists; they are Gorbachev," it headlined: "Workers, Resentful of His Changes, Could Top­ hostile to Gorbachev's attacks on ple the Crippled Economy." Soviet "wage-leveling." And, the Times arti­ cle noted, "it is not hard to imagine the president Mikhail Gorbachev has been trying to portray the miners' bur­ newly mobilized workers someday geoning strike movement as support using their power to resist the disloca­ for his program of pro-market eco­ tions that are expected to come with nomic reforms that goes by the name perestroika." For example: of "perestroika" (restructuring). But, "Mr. Gorbachev cannot count on warned the Times, the workers' "no­ blue-collar support for closing bank­ rupt industries, deregulating prices on tion of perestroika is not necessanly consumer goods, laying off surplus the one held by Mr. Gorbachev's workers-all measures that leading economic brain trust." economists say are inevitable ifthe So­ The article noted the mood of the viet economy is to be revived." triumphant miners, who raised one We Trotskyists have insisted for "largely overlooked" demand which several years now that the powerful must have caused Gorbachev a "shiver Soviet proletariat is no fan of market­ of disquiet": oriented reforms which would dis­ "Along with soap rations and winter mantle piecemeal the historic achieve­ shoes, night bonuses and greater polit­ ical power, many of the miners called ment of a planned economy. The for abolishing or sharply curtailing the prospect of inflation, speedup, layoffs freewheeling private entrepreneurs continued on page 4 Prokopyevsk, July 15: Siberian miners strike for soap, meat and justice. For Workers Political Revolution in China I Lessons of the Beijing Spring ,We publish below an edited tran­ "the main monumeI1.t to capitalism" in script of a speech by Ray Bishop of the that area. Spartacist League Central Committee It appeared also that the People's Lib­ at a June 29 SLforum in New York. eration Army was splitting right down the middle over the massacre. The army unit that carried it out was the 27th While looking out over the carnage Army, very close to Deng Xiaoping. But in Tiananmen Square on ;June 4, one right after that happened, in Inner Mon­ young Beijing worker said, "This gov­ golia, which is where the 27th Army is ernment is done with." You had troops based, there was a troop rebellion, lead­ patrolling up and down Beijing's boule­ ing to 30 of the officers being shot. vards; you aiso had students and work­ So China was on the verge of civil ers in China's key cities rising up as one war, and at that very time the govern­ in protest. In Shanghai, China's largest ment itself seemingly disappeared. FOr city and its commercial and industrial up to a week foreign diplomats and powerhouse, you had an effective gen­ newspapermen couldn't find anybody eral strike until the end of that week. to get the line on what was going on. In the northeast, in Shenyang, 30,000 . The People's Daily, which is the Com­ aircraft workers commandeered trucks munist Party's main newspaper, could and marched in unison to protest the not be found on the streets of Beijing. massacre. In the center of China, in But five days after the massacre, Deng Xian, the ancient capital, tens of thou­ re-emerged. And he re-emerged with a sands of workers blocked roads. And in vengeance, unleashing a savage repres­ Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan prov­ sion which to date, so far as we know, ince, 30 workers were killed in the has meant 27 workers executed, thou­ course of protests over control of the sands of arrests, including leaders of the Reuters vast underground private market, which Beijing, May 20: Workers flooded into the streets to defy state of siege. was called by one Chinese newspaper continued on page 6 union. Labor had the power to shut down the airports and stop all 'traffic! . Gun control is a way to slowly take Labor and Blacks Have the Power away the arms of all. decent working people. Then black and poor people would be at the mercy of the local city police and the rest of the racists. Remember, lynching decreased when Stop Racist Terror in Norfolk! black people became owners of guns. Labor must destroy gun control. The • Portsmouth, March 18 • Virginia Beach, June 30 police and National Guard troops are By Cliff Carter At approximately 10:35 on a Satur­ For the third time in a week, a Viet­ not geared to protect working people. day night, a cross was set afire on the namese man found his yard ripped apart The drug testing of the workforce is lawn of an elderly retired black woman and his house spray-painted with racial The racism of the eighties has shaped just a way to control who works and who recently moved into a predomi­ insults. The driveway was also painted the year of 1989 into a free-for-all for WhO doesn't. If a shop or cotp.pany nantly white neighborhood. with racial insults and had these words: the racists in the Tidewater area. In the wants to get rid of a militant worker, "DIE HO CHEE" and "GO BACK TO early 1980s, segregated schools sud­ • Portsmouth, May 30 label this worker a drug user and he is CHINA SIGNORA." denly became "neighborhood schools" At a playground, a 26-year-old white gone. Want to have a family become and the racists saw a green light that man fired seven shots with a pump shot­ • Virginia Beach, July 11 homeless? Accuse just one member of hasn't changed. gun at black children. Police arrived, A cross was reported burning shortly the family of being a drug user and the On July 9, 1984, United States Dis­ questioned the shotgun man, but did not before 6:40 a.m. The police traced the landlord can request the door keys. trict Court judge John A. MacKenzie arrest him, saying he DID NOT pose a wood to a nearby resident's yard, where Labor must stop the drug witchhunt. approved the Norfolk schOOl board's serious threat. some gasoline also had been stored. The Supreme Court' has shown its plan to end cross-town busing and • Portsmouth, June 4 These same police determined that the true face where abortions are con­ return to neighborhood (segregated) A 32-year-old black man found his wood and gasoline had been stolen. cerned, by letting the decisions and wel­ elementary schools. The labor unions 1986 Mazda RX7 messed up with spray The police sergeant's final assumption: fare of women be made by men who care could have defended busing, but since paint. On the hood were words "NIG­ "We don't think it is racially motivated little or nothing about working women they didn't, the advocates of the neigh­ GER MOBILE" and a picture of male because there are no black families liv­ of today. Is it strange that every Con­ borhood schools have been feeling genitalia. On one door was a Ku Klux ing in the immediate area. But as a pre­ gressman in Washington that is anti­ welcome to continue to bring back Klan insignia, and the other door had a caution, we did notify the FBI." abortion is for the death penalty? the old Jim Crow discrimination laws picture of a pitchfork, the symbol of a . In the 1880s the Republicans with­ The death penalty is the "legal" lynch­ and ways. satanic cult. drew the federal troops from the South ing of black and' poor people. When the state wants to rid itself of an unwanted In the Tidewater cities several ugly • Portsmouth, June 4 and placed the control of law and order person, this person, guilty or not, can be incidents have taken place this year: A 19-year-old white man was arrested into the hands of the Ku Klux Klan. placed on death row. Labor must defend • Chesapeake,. January 31 for burning a cross on the front lawn ofa Today in the 1980s, while the control of the right for free abortions and fight to A cross was burned in the yard of a 43-year-old black longshoreman who black and poor people is a little more 32-year-old black lady and her four has lived at his present address for the sophisticated, once again we see the abolish the death penalty. children. last ten years. nightriding of the Klan. With the "go ahead" given to racists in The Reagan administration contin­ the form of Congressmen, city councils, ued with Bush (with the backing of the school board members, KKK and Nazi Democrats) and controls black and skinheads, and aided by Uncle Toms and other so-called black leaders, it is Soviet Workers and poor people with: 1) union-busting past time for labor to show its strength, Political Revolution 2) gun control unchained from the grip of the Dem­ ocratic Party. From East Europe to the USSR to 3) the drug witchhunt 4) control of abortions and the death The labor movement of Tidewater China.