A SpartacistPamphlet $1 '. ..r '" r-"I '"0' ~ 00 0 "- ..r ..r "- ,0 2 Table of Contents Introduction This edition of Black Hi.lforv and fhe government's destruction of the PATCO Capitalist Rulers Wage War Class Struggle, the fourteenth in the series air traffic controllers union in 1981, which on Blacks, Immigrants ............. 5 of these Spartacist pamphlets, is devoted signaled the beginning of a wholesale to the crucial need for a proletarian inter­ onslaught against the unions. The PATCO Full Citizenship Rights for All Immigrants! nationalist fight against the rising tide of strike was smashed by firing the entire For a Leninist Party, Tribune of the People! racist reaction in the U.S. and around the union membership and jailing union lead­ Immigration and globe. Internationally;the capitalist rulers ers. who were taken to prison in shackles. Racist "Fortress Europe" .......... 11 are shredding social programs for the Having gotten away with busting this working class and the' poor. Everywhere, overwhelmingly white, highly paid union Cops Invade Church, Arrest Immigrants the desperate immigrant has been made of professionals-without provoking even France: Mass Protests Against the first target in this-drive to increase the a token attempt by the trade-union mis­ Racist Deportations . .............. 20 exploitation and oppression of all of the leaders to mobilize organized labor in working class. PATCO's defense-the racist rulers of Historically; social benefit programs America figured they could get away with Farrakhan and have been the product of class struggle. doing just about anything to the impover­ the Sudan Slave Trade ............ 22 with capitalist governments trying .to pac­ ished black masses in the inner cities. ify an aroused working class. For exam­ The social power of the integrated Spartacist Supporter Writes in Black Scholar: ple, in late 19th-century Germany under unions, which have a large black member­ "Million Man March Chancellor Bismarck, vast social reforms ship that could serve as a bridge in linking Appeases Racist Exploiters" . ...... 26 were implemented to undercut the. Social the power of labor to the anger of the ghet­ Democracy, which had become the mass tos. has been sapped by a labor leadership party of the German proletariat. Follow­ which ties the interest of labor to that of Nation of Islam: Bodyguards for ing World War II, what became known as American capitalism. Now, reveling in the Hitler Apologist David Irving . ...... 28 the "welfare state" was introduced in supposed "death of communism," the U.S. Europe to placate a combative workers rulers perceive little in the way of opposi­ Mobilize Labor/Black Power movement and to ward off the spectre tion to continuing to up the ante in grind­ . to Free Geronimo! ................ 29 of "Communism" which, in however a ing the working class and the poor. Setting bureaucratically deformed way, was rep­ the stage for the 1996 presidential elec­ resented by the Soviet Union. tions. which were a veritable carnival of Free Ride for Klan However, as the article "Immigration capitalist reaction, the Democratic White in Chicagt>-Why? ................ 32 and Racist 'Fortress Europe'" notes, the House joined the Republican Congress European bourgeoisies now see these in the inauguration of the "welfare re­ Defend Chicago Antl·Klan Three! .. 33 Cold War social programs as unnecessary form" bill. This racist legislation. which overhead expenditures. Destroyed by cap­ will condemn millions to starvation as italistcounterrevolution, the Soviet Union their meager welfare payments are choked On Chicago Anti-Klan Protest no longer exists as any kind of counter­ off, took immediate aim at immigrants Why Cops Protect Racist Terrorists balance to. the rapactous appetites of the for whom there was no "waiting period" By Mumia Abu-Jamal ................ 34 world's bourgeoisies who are now en­ before all social benefits were axed. gaged in a brutal drive to increase their The anti-immigrant provisions of the Sabo's Court: Racist Capitalist competitive edge against their imperialist new welfare law were foreshadowed in ':Justice" in Action rivals by attacking the wages, living and the passage of Proposition 187 in Califor­ Key Witness for Mumia Abu·Jamal working conditions of the working class. nia in 1994, denying education, health Arrested on the Stand . ............ 35 Immigrant workers who were brought in as care and any social benefits to "illegal" low-wage labor are no longer needed, as immigrants. As we wrote at the time in mass unemployment provides a ready pool "Full Citizenship Rights for All Immi­ Black Churches Torched Across the South of cheap "native" labor. At the same time, grants!" (WV No. 612, 9 December 1994): Mobilize Labor/Black Power to Smash Racist Terrorl ........... 38 anti-immigrant racism is used to divide "While the anti-Latino nature of Prop. and divert the proletariat from united 187 is perfectly obvious, it is less clear struggle against the capitalist offensive. to many that this measure is part of a broader racist offensive whose main Courageous Fighter Against Racist Terror In the U.S., the social programs of and central target is the hiack ghetto Robert F. Williams, 1925·1996 .... 43 Franklin Delano Roosevelt's "New Deal" poor. Depriving 'illegal' immigrants of were launched during the 1930s as a food stamps and their children of school means to buy social peace in the face of lunches will legitimize eliminating these NYC Transit "Workfare" Deal programs entirely. The bipartisan drive to the pitched labor battles of the time which Enslaving the Poor, 'end welfare as we know it: in the words Busting the Unions ........... .' ... 46 built the industrial unions in this country. of Bill Clinton, has been given an enor­ In the I 960s;Lyndon Johnson's "War on mous boost by the passage of Prop. 187." Poverty" was aimed at trying to quell the mass ghetto upheavals which broke out in Capitalist Rulers Play the Race Card response to the failure of the civil rights Whipping up racial and ethnic hatred movement to ameliorate the desperate has long served the American ruling Spartacist Publishing Co. conditions of life in the inner cities. Such class in furthering the exploitation of all Box' 1377 GPO calculations no longer figure in the ac­ workers. The article "Capitalist Rulers New York, NY 10116 count books of the American bourgeoisie. Wage War on Blacks, Immigrants" cites January 1997 A key turning point was the Reagan 19th-century American robber baron Jay 3 Gould's boast: "I can hire one half of the population are their own "fault," reflect­ education and government jobs and· con­ working class to kill the other half." ing-insufficient "values" placed on educa­ tracts-speaks to the depth of the racial Well into the early years of the 20th tion, work and advancement. divide fostered by the capitalist rulers. The century, the central divide in the working Playing on such divisions, the capitalist spearhead for a racist purge of the univer­ class was' one which pitted "native" Prot­ rulers seek to pit the white working class sity campuses. Prop. 209 is also aimed estants against the mainly Catholic Ger­ against both blacks and immigrants by directly at the heavily integrated govern­ man, Irish, Italian. and other European portraying them as a drain on the tax dol­ ment workers unions. As Workers Vdn­ immigrant workers who were brought in lars of "hard-working white folks." Wel­ guard (No. 654, 25 October 1996) w'rote to provide the cheap labor and raw mus­ fare recipients have always been portrayed in "California: Vote No on Prop 209!": cle power for the factories, mines and as "sponges" with the purpose of both 'Taken together with the devastation of mills of this country. (On the West CQast, humiliating the poor and cheapening all welfare by Clinton and Congress and the Chinese laborers who were employed as labor by exalting the moral value of work­ widespread destruction of manufacturing virtual slave labor in building the rail­ ing at any wage and under any conditions. jobs. Prop. 209 is a declaration that no roads were the target of vicious "yellow In racist America, where the words "wel­ black person need ever be hired again." peril" racism.) With the mass migration of fare queen" have long served as code Hoping to discredit the right-wing blacks from the American South to the words for the black ghetto poor, the ruling forc~s mobilized behind Prop. 209, liberal industrial cities of the North, particularly class thinks it can get away with shredding student bureaucrats at California State during World Wars I and II, religious and welfare by playing the race card. Leaving University at Northridge invited David ethnic hostilities in the proletariat came to aside the fact that the majority of those on "Klan in a suit" Duke to "debate" affirma­ be supplanted by anti-black racism. welfare are white, the "welfare reform" tive action in September. This suicidal Brought to America in chains, blacks bill is aimed at driving down the wages "electoral tactic"gave Duke both the were emancipated from slavery by the sec­ and further immiserating the entire work­ mainstream respectability he craves .as ond American Revolution, the Civil War. ing class. This fact is being brought home well as a national platform to recruit to.his But the promise of black equality was with a vengeance in the implementation of program of lynch-mob terror, Elsewhere. betrayed by the Northern capitalists. The "workfare" programs aimed at busting the the fascists also seized on the opportunity Compromise of 1877, under which the last unions by forcing welfare recipients to provided by the labor bureaucrats, and Union Army troops were withdrawn from work these jobs at starvation wages. black Democratic Party officials. who the South, brought to an end the tumultu­ The "workfare" deal signed by the worked desperately to stop any p'rorests or ous decade of Radical Reconstruction.