WfJRIlERI "'HIO'R'No. 369 21 December 1984

Eight Face Hangman's Noose in South Africa

December 4: At South African embassy in Washington, AFL-CIO officials demand freedom for leaders of black trade unions.

Free Anti-Apartheid FightersIAt 5: 15 a.m. on December 10, the

South African government releasedeleven anti-apartheid fighters fromprison, only to rearrest six of themimmediately on charges of "hightreason"-charges which could mean

death by hanging for many leaders ofthe current wave of black struggle. Atpress time eight leading activistsassociated with the United DemocraticFront (U DF), the largest anti­apartheid political grouping in South

Africa, are facing the hangman'snoose. In addition to the UDF leaderscharged with treason, five leaders ofthe powerful two-day stay-away strikewhich paralyzed the industrial heart­land of the Transvaal in early Novem-

ber have been imprisoned and chargedwith "subversion," which carries a20-year sentence.. The imprisoned UDF Eight are:

Archie Gumede, Paul David, Georgecontinued on page II

uts,

-em-•Ieagan's

Rollo/Newsweek APReagan's anti-Soviet war drive means unemployment, hunger for blackghetto masses.

Liberal columnist Tom Wicker ob­served that Reagan ran for re-election asPresident Feelgood, promising bound­less economic prosperity. But after hislandslide victory in November, Presi­dent Feelgood turned into PresidentKill 'em All, slashing the wages offederal government workers andcuttingpractically every social program fromveterans' benefits to' Medicare, Asadministration economists talk euphe­mistically of a "growth recession." 125programs are targeted for total elimina­tion under what is being called Reagan'schain-saw budget massacre.

At the core of the federal deficit crisisis the massive arms buildup designed toachieve first-strike nuclear capabilityagainst the Soviet Union. America'srulers are bent on reconquering theSoviet Union for capitalism or destroy­ing the world in the attempt. To thatend, U.S. military spending is slated toincrease $ / 20 billion by 1988. And thePentagon has been resisting even themost minimal reductions proposed bythe budget director and the Treasury."The joke here," said one White Housebudget official, "is that we'll throw achampagne party if the Pentagon agreesto one dollar of reductions."

They can save their champagne. Theonly "cuts" anyone is talking about inthe war budget are "reductions" in theplanned increase for arms spending!

Apart from some right-wing crack­pots, no one took seriously the "supply­side" notion that the trillion-dollar armsbuildup could be financed throughaccelerated economic growth stimulat­ed by tax cuts. No less fantastical wasthe idea that all the MX missiles andTrident. submarines could be paid for by

taking away school lunches. The first­term Reagan cuts were almost surgicallyconcentrated on the poor. And in racistAmerica, poor means largely black andHispanic. While the Reagan gang isintent on finishing their economicholocaust of the nation's ghettos andbarrios, there isn't that much left thereto cut.

So this time around it's not just foodstamps and Medicaid that are under thebudget ax, but also price supports tofarmers, subsidized loans to studentsand small businessmen and much more.

There is even serious talk in Congress ofdoing away with cost-of-living adjust­ment for Social Security. Reaganomicsis about to hit white Middle America,which voted overwhelmingly for Presi­dent Feelgood. Pretty soon they may befeeling like the PATCO air controllerswho were led away in chains and theirunion destroyed when they struckagainst Reagan. But PATCO wentdown to defeat because the leaders ofAmerican labor left rherrr standingalone. The half-million AFL-CIO mern­bers who marched in Washington in

1981 showed the power that could havedefeated Reagan's union-busting, andcould smash his killer cuts today.

A small incident nicely symbolizesthe state of the nation. When Rea­gan telephoned William Schroeder,the recipient of an artificial heart, tocongratulate him on the operation,Schroeder complained that he wasgetting the runaround on Social Securi­ty benefits. "I'm having trouble hearingyou," the president interrupted. Federalofficials said they were checking wheth­er Schroeder's disability paymentscould be reduced because he wasreceiving a federal pension. When thecheck arrived the next day, nine monthslate, he suffered a stroke. Of course, ifMedicaid cuts had prevented Schroederfrom getting an artificial heart in thefirst place, the administration couldhave gotten its savings through"attrition"!

One might think that opposition toReagan's fiscal '86 "chain-saw massa­cre" which affects wide sections of thepopulation would be a perfect issue forthe Democratic Party to make acomeback. But Congressional Demo­crats immediately held out their handsin cooperation. House Speaker TipO'Neill promised: "If the President iswilling to reduce the growth of defensespending, then he will find that we willbe helpful in nondefense areas of thebudget" (New York Times, 6 Decem­ber). It's not just that the Democratsdon't want to buck Reagan so soonafter his landslide victory. Reagan isnow carrying out the Democrats' (}wnprogram.

Since Roosevelt's New Deal in thecontinued on page 8

Letters

Penguin

Trotsky (left) and Zinoviev (center)at 1926 funeral of Felix Dzerzhinsky.

do not endorse any political party, issueor candidate, on campus or off. It ishowever our intention that rules estab­lished to ensure fairness to all points ofview be adhered to by everyone. Thatincludes those who share your point ofview.

At this point, we can not be sure thatyou and/ or your organization condonethe actions of those who expound yourpoint of view which in our opinion is atworst illegal and at least impolite,inconsiderate and in bad taste.

If you do condone this type of con­duct, that is alright too. It is unfortunatehowever that the good points of yourmessage should suffer because of theconduct of your messengers.

Please do not assume that this letter isto imply anything. It is to tell you in as

the impression that because this was asigned review we disavow its contents.While we do not endorse all of Mage'shistorical speculations and judgments,we agree with his basic argument againstDeutscher's fatalism that there were inthe 1920s "repeated instances when itwas, sometimes arguably, sometimesmanifestly, within the power of Trotskyand the Left Opposition to bring aboutthe downfall of Stalin."

In that seminal work of the LeftOpposition, Lessons of October, Trot­sky wrote: "If time is, generally speak­ing, a prime factor in politics, then theimportance of time increases a hundred­fold in war and revolution." He mighthave added: also in combating (in thiscase a political) counterrevolution.

Already at the end of 1922 and thebeginning of 1923, Lenin, mortally ill,recognized the potential danger thatStalin's predilections and the growth ofbureaucratism posed for the party andthe revolution. In his testament heproposed that Stalin be removed fromthe powerful position of general secre­tary. In his last weeks of politicalactivity Lenin formed a bloc withTrotsky against the bureaucratic dan­ger. He urged Trotsky to present hisnotes denouncing Stalin's complicity inthe "Great Russian nationalist cam­paign" against Georgia and to attackStalin, showing "no weakness or vacilla­tion," at the upcoming 12th PartyCongress in April 1923. But Trotskydisregarded Lenin's advice and made ano-contest agreement with the trium­virs, which they broke once it becameclear that Lenin would not recover.

Retrospectively, Trotsky recognizedthat the 12th Party Congress was a lostopportunity, at least in the short run. Inhis 1929 autobiography, My Life, hewrote: ..... I have no doubt that if I hadcome forward on the eve of the twelfthcongress in the spirit of a 'bloc of Lenin

continued on page 10

Associated Students ofSan Francisco State UniversitySan Francisco, CA

November 5, 1984

To: Noah Wilner, Editor in ChiefWorkers VanguardP.O. Box 1377, GPONew York, New York 10116

From: James F. McDuffieBusiness Manager

Please be advised that those who useyour name and sell your newspapers onthis campus continue to conduct them­selves in a manner that is considered bymost on this campus to be contrary tothe ethics of fairness.

It perhaps should be acknowledged inthe beginning that the AssociatedStudents in general and I in particular

to win the leadership of the CPS U.When WV says about the J oint Opposi­tion, "when it would have counted," thisis a slight on the Left Opposition as wellas the Joint Opposition. They countbecause Trotsky rescued Leninism fromthe mire of Stalinist reaction.

This issue brings to mind a very earlyarticle in Spartacist. The article, areview by Mage of a book by Deutscher,repeats from Deutscher a whole series oferroneous criticisms of Trotsky's so­called mistakes in the factional strugglein the 1920s. Since it was a signed articleand the false positions of the article havenot been repeated in Spartacist materialit would be safe to take the issue asburied. However the reference again inWV, although partial, makes the neces­sity of further clarification.

Comradely,Arnie

WV replies: Ignoring the counterposedsocial forces in Soviet Russia that madethe triumvirs (Stalin, Zinoviev andKamenev) an unstable combinationfrom their inception, Arnie Mintzargues that there wasno possibility of abloc between Trotsky and a Zinoviev/Kamenev opposition in the decisive1924 period, or at any time before it wasactually consummated in July 1926.According to Mintz the "facts" ofhistory are immutable. It would havemade no difference what Trotsky andhis supporters did in 1923-26 becausethe triumvirs already held the reins ofpower and the fate of the Left Opposi­tion was sealed. "Leninist program" isseparated from the political struggle forpower. Mintz creates a cult of aninfallibly clairvoyant Trotsky. At thesame time his methodology imitatesIsaac Deutscher in denying the subjec­tive factor in shaping history.

The possibility and desirability of aT rotsky-Zinoviev/ Kamenev bloc in1924-25 is one aspect of a more funda­mental question: could Trotsky havemade different tactical choices in the1920s which would have strengthenedhis hand against Stalin and-therefore hisstruggle against the bureaucratic degen­eration of the Russian Revolution? Weaddressed this question in Shane Mage'sreview of Deutscher's biography ofTrotsky ("Trotsky and the Fate of theRussian Revolution," SpartacistNo. 5,November-December 1965). Mintz has

It's 10 O'Clock-Do You KnowWhere Your Red Avengers Are?

21 December 1984

Britain, which showed the consequencesof Stalin's ascendancy, had not yetoccurred; Trotsky .only joined theBolsheviks in 1917 which was 110timportant in the high tide of revolutionbut underlined his isolation in the lowebb of reaction.

It is wrong to criticize Trotsky for noteffecting a bloc with Zinoviev/ Kamenevearlier than 1925 when the adoption of"Socialism in One Country" putZinoviev/ Kamenev into opposition.This programmatic clarity broughtabout the J oint Opposition. The launch­ing of the Joint Opposition was one ofthe most brilliant principled maneuvresthat Trotsky ever undertook. Byachiev­ing a successful bloc with the unstablecentrist opposition of Zinoviev/ Kame­nev it allowed Trotsky three more yearsto fight inside the Bolshevik Party for areturn to Leninism. As Trotsky said,had the revolution triumphed in Chinaor Britain, despite the conciliationistpolicies of the CI towards the Koumin­tang and TUC Lefts respectively, theLeft Opposition would have found itselfrenewed massively and in a real position

No. 369

EDITOR-iN-CHIEF: Noah Wilner

EDITOR: Jan Norden

PRODUCTION MANAGER: Noah Wilner

CIRCULATiON MANAGER: Darlene Kamiura

EDITORIAL BOARD: Jon Brule, George Foster, Liz Gordon, James Robertson, Reuben Samuels,Joseph Seymour, Marjorie Stamberg (Closing editor for No. 369: Liz Gordon)

, Workers Vanguard (USPS 096-770) published biweekly, except 2nd issue August and with 3-week interval December,by the Spartacist Publishing Co.. 41 Warren Street, New York, NY 10007. Telephone: 732-7662 (Editorial), 732-7661(Business). Address all correspondence to: Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116. Domestic subscriptions: $5,00/24issues. Second-class postage paid at New York, NY. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Workers Vanguard,Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116.

Opinions expressed in signed articles or letters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint.

Arnold MintzLondon8 May 1984

Workers Vanguard,

I want to take issue with an itemwhich appears in the SWP article in the27 April WV ["Barnes Axes LastVeterans of the Old SWP," WorkersVanguard No. 353]. Reference is madeto the Joint Opposition as follows, "thekind of vindictiveness that perhapsprevented a Trotsky /Zinoviev bloc in1924 when it might have counted." It isnot clear if WV is criticizing Trotsky orZinoviev as vindictive but the contextsays it is meant as a criticism of Trotsky.This is wrong. To my knowledge thesituation of Trotsky and his supportersin 1924 was determined by four things;the defeats of the revolution gavecontrol of the Communist Party to theascendant Stalin bureaucracy whichwas being fronted by Karnenev/Zinoviev; the consequent strictures onTrotsky's political activity placed onhim by the CPSU leadership; thecatastrophic defeats in China and

What Every RevolutionaryShould Know About Repression

Victor Serge (1890-i947) was a revolu­tionary proletarian propagandist whobecame a Communist under the impact of"the Bolshevik Revolution. Based on tsaristpolice files and his own experience ofrepression at the hands of the capitalistgovernments of Belgium. France andSpain. Serge wrote a manual on state

TROTSKY repression. first published by the Bulletin LENINof the Communist international:

In the conflicts between capital and labor, the army has often intervened againstlabor-never against capital.

In court the defense of the poor is nothing short of impossible, because of the costof any judicial action; in reality, a worker can neither bring a case nor defend one.

The overwhelming majority of crimes are directly caused by poverty and come intothe category of attacks on property. The overwhelming majority of prison inmatesare from the poor.

To respect legality such as this is to be fooled by it.... Nonetheless, it would be equally disastrous to ignore it. The advantages for the

workers movement are the greater the less one is fooled. The right to exist and to actlegally is, for the organizations of the proletariat, something which must constantlybe re-won and extended. We stress this because sometimes among goodrevolutionaries there emerges tfie diametrical opposite of fetishizing legality-due toa kind of tendency to make the least political effort (it is easier to conspire than to leadmass action) they have a certain disdain for legal action.

We believe that in countries where the reaction has not yet triumphed, destroyingthe previous democratic constitution, the workers will have to firmly defend everyinch of their legal position, and in other countries fight to regain it. In France itself,the legal status the workers movement enjoys must be ex tended, and this can be doneonly through struggle. The right of association and the right to strike are still deniedor contested for state employees and certain other categories of workers; the right todemonstrate is much more restricted than in the Anglo-Saxon countries; theadvanced guards of workers defense have still not conquered the streets and gainedlegality as in Germany and Austria.

-Victor Serge, What Every Revolutionary Should Know About Repression (1926)

Should Trotsky Have MadeA Bloc with Zinoviev in 1924?

2 WORKERS VANGUARD

Norfolk Busing: Government Pushesto Restore Jim Crow

WV PhotoNorfolk: Union contingent marches for busing, May 1983. Signs say, "ILA Allthe Way Against Segregated Schools."

By Cliff Carter

Cliff Garter, a black trade unionist, isafrequent guest contributor to WorkersVanguard.

Whenever there is unity betweenblack and white in the United Statesthere is always opposition from the

ruling class through the U.S. govern­ment and through the individual statespassed on to their respective citizens.The very small minority that runs andcontrols the United States knows that ifthere is unity between the black andwhite working .class, this will be thebeginning of a revolution to change theU.S. into a workers state. This rulingclass knows if they separate the blackchildren from the white children, thenby the time they finish high school, therewill be enough negative differencesbetween them that it will take the next20 years or more to erase.

In 1954, the United States SupremeCourt (with the okay from the rulingclass) ruled in favor of outlawingseparate schools for black and white. In1958, rather than let black and white goto school together, the State of Virginia

straight forward a manner as possiblethat the Associated Students will doeverything that is legally possible to seeto it that the rights of all students areprotected at all times under allcircumstances.

We expect a reply from you regardingthis matter within thirty days of theabove date. If we do not hear from youin that amount of time, we will feel safein assuming one of the following:

I) you concur with the actions ofthose on this campus who use yourname.

2) you are not interested in theactions of those on this campus who useyour name.

3) you are not interested in ouropinion of the actions of those on thiscampus who use your name.

4) all of the above.In any event, we appreciate your

attention to this matter. Thank you.

JFMjpjk

21 DECEMBER 1984

closed schools all over Norfolk. Eversince the year of 1866 the Ku Klux Klan'had preserved white supremacy inNorfolk (and all of the United States).But in the 1950s the United States feltthe pressure of the whole world watch­ing, and it had to make a change.

In the '50s came changes. Separateschools were outlawed. The Ku KluxKlan gave 'themselves a new name,

"segregationist," and added this word inthe American dictionary. Today theKKKer calls himself a "segregationist,"and fools a whole lot of people,including blacks. On February 2, 1983the Norfolk school board voted 5-2 toend school busing. One of the favoringfive was a black lady, and as of today shedoesn't know she voted with the KKK.This black lady didn't know that a votefor a "segregationist" is a vote for aKlansman.

On the date of December 6, 1984 theJustice Department told a federalappeals court for the first time that aschool board could eliminate a court­ordered busing plan, and said the boardwas free to return to a neighborhoodschool system even if segregationresulted. Assistant Attorney GeneralWilliam Bradford Runnells, head of the

cc: Ms. IIda Montoya,Associated Students, President

Dr. Jessellyn Saffold,Dean of Students

Ms. Betsy Adler, General-CounselSan Francisco Socialist ActionSylvia Weinstein

Response shoved under our door:

To: James "Let 'em eat snake"McDuffieBu$ine$$ Manager,Associated Students

From: Above ground friends of theUnderground SYL

. Remote International Center

Please be advised that those who useyour name (and who are in fact you)have had our supporters beaten, arrest­ed and driven underground for distrib­uting Marxist literature at San Fran­cisco Sta te University.- Know where you are, pig. Thoughyou may, in your wettest of dreams,

Justice Department's "civil rights"division, filed a friend-of-the-court briefwith the 4th United States Circuit Courtof Appeals, and argued that the Nor­folk, Virginia school board could end a13-year-old busing program for elemen­tary school students. "

This is just one of the take-offs ofReagan's plan for the racist and segrega­tionist (nearly forgotten that they wereonce called the KKK). The KKKendorsed Reagan already in his firstelection in 1980, and it took him until1984 to refuse to recognize (repudiate)their endorsement. If the' workers areseparated at the elementary age, it ishard to join them at the adult age.Reagan knows this, and so does thepuppeteer ruling class that putls Rea­gan's strings.

On May) 3, 1983 thousands marchedfor busing in Norfolk, Virginia organ­ized by the Ad Hoc Committee ofConcerned Citizens headed by BishopL. E. Willis, a black minister, and otherlocal black leaders. Bishop Willis pipedin Sweet "Jesse James Jackson fromChicago to lead the march. Earlier thatmorning at a breakfast meeting at theHoliday Inn executive center on Green­briar Road, Jackson told more than 225community leaders and supporters ofthe demonstration that he was "not intown marching for desegregation. I ammarching for the voter registrationboost" (Virginian-Pilot, 14 May 1983).

Somebody should tell DemocratJesse Jackson that slavery was ended byrevolutionary struggle (the Civil War),and not by voting. If the Union soldiershad fought with ballots instead ofbullets, they would have surely lost theCivil War.

Sweet J.J. Jackson at this demon­stration spent a great portion of the timehollering and screaming like a mad manfor the marchers to register and vote forthe Democrats. Well, the majority ofblack" people registered and votedDemocratic. But what happened? Noth­ing. Reagan stays in the White House.If Mondale had won, then Reaganwould have left the White House.Nothing good would have happened forthe working people. Mickey MouseMondale returning and Reagan leavingis the same as trouble leaving out yourfront door, but bad luck comes in yourback door.

Any man or woman who stands in avoting line trying to decide whether to

Young SpartacusRed Avengers' Ms. Piggy at SF State.

imagine yourself to be in El Salvadorwith Bobby "Blowtorch" D'Aubuisson,burning leftist lit and leftist people, youare not. Please be advised that SF Stateis situated on the west coast of a countrythat at least formally accords certaindemocratic rights to its populace. Please

vote for a Democrat or a Republicanhas to be confused right from JumpStreet. There is very little differencebetween a fox and a wolf, for one will eatyou slowly, and the other will eat youquickly.

The friend-of-the-court brief by theJustice Department is just one of themany steps to counteract the much­needed revolutionary workers party.The Reagan administration knows theold rule-if you divide, you willconquer. The racist school departmentof Norfolk knows that there is unityamong the workers of the Tidewaterarea, and something must be done tocurtail this unity. The Reagan adminis­tration is out to keep the working peopledown, but we do not need the Demo­cratic Party nor Jesse Jackson with hisvoter registration drive. Jackson said ina speech at Washington, D.C. on May10, 1983, " ... we can change the nation'scourse through elections without goingthrough a revolution." A statement likethis tells the people to register, thenvote, go home and watch TV andeverything will be okay: just leave thingsin the hands of the Democrats.

Everything the working class hasaccomplished has been throughstruggle. On November 27, 1982 whenthe KKK was stopped in Washington,D.C., the Democrats were nowhere insight. They were home watching TV andmaking phone calls to the Republicans(saying we did not have nothing to dowith' them 5,000 people messin' withReagan's Klansmen). These are thesame words an old Uncle Tom wouldsay.

In the Tidewater area, we need thevoice and support of every decentperson around. The support of the tradeunions is needed. If the Tidewater,Virginia Federal Employees MetalTrades' Council of the Norfolk NavalShipyard (with its 17affiliate locals), thelongshoremen of Norfolk (the ILA) andthe United Steelworkers of America ofthe Newport News Shipyard, decided toact against the decision of the Norfolkschool board, this would force the boardto do away with their pro-Klan tactics.And this would cause every decentperson in the Tidewater to respect thetrade unions. We do not need a halt tobusing in the Tidewater area. What weneed is to finish the Civil War, and thebeginning of a workers party.•

be further advised of the convulsivesocial struggle that was waged outsideSan Francisco some two hundred yearsago which smashed "divine rule."Madame De Farge was our kind of gal.

Perhaps y_ou think this is yet anotherexample of our "bad taste." Who areyou, anyway-Emily Post in jackboots?Unlike you and your beansprout totali­tarian ilk, our taste doesn't cater tostabbing smokers in SF State elevators,smashing free speech or enlisting asattack dogs for the loser Democrats.

With our friends on the receiving end,we find your professed concern for theprotection of the rights of all studentssomewhat less convincing than Tor­quernada's concern for the rights ofJews.

Yours truly,Friends of the Rights of theRed Avengers

P.S. Don't call us, the Red Avengerswill call on you.

3

Britain's Winter of Class War

4

French Workers Dig DeepFor British. Coal Strikers

Wolmuth/The Guardian

London Santa Claus, appealing fortoys for miners' children, arrested byThatcher's cops.

WORKERS VANGUARD

tion. Women in the pit villages havenever worked outside the home. Nowthey sit at the strike committee tableswith the men and fiercely argue a causewhich to them has become more than anIndustrial dispute."

The haughty and virulently anti-laborNew York Times (4 December) wasstruck by the almost Dickensian qualityof life in the British coal fields duringthis bitter strike:

"In this normally law-abiding com­muriity, which has seen both mass pick­eting and mass policing, a brick wall onthe road to the colliery was torn up andthrown at the police. The postmistresswho delivered letters from managementurging the miners to return to workneeded a police escort. ...

"The telephones have been turned off,and the savings have run out. Thechildren depend on school lunches andthe mercy of the milkman. There are nostrike benefits....

"The weather is bitter, there is nomoney for heat, and families in thistown in southern Yorkshire [Rossing­ton] dig up and burn the dust over whichthe coal trucks have passed, pressingcoal and oil into the ground.

"T 0 light these fires, they are cuttingdown the trees that provide the only

, shield against dust for the houses thatshoulder up to the edge of the colliery.

"Outraged, one of the residents calledthe police, who arrived with dogs andarrested Sidney Cherry, a strikingminer, and his brother Roy. Both thetrees and the dust belong to theiremployer, the National Coal Board."

The National Union of Miners hasstood virtually alone through this nine­month battle. Earlier this month NUMpresident Arthur Scargill went to theTrades Union Congress to ask for real,effective solidarity action. As the Lon­don Guardian (5 December) quotedScargill as saying:

"The NUM have been to see the TUCgeneral secretary and his colleagues andsaid that the time for mealy-mouthedresolutions in unions or organisations is"t an end ....

"The time when this movement mustreact is now. I'm not asking for moralsupport or resolutions. We are askingfor practical assistance and we haveasked for the general council of the TUCto be convened to mobilise industrialaction in support of this union....

"That means money, to help ourorganisation function and exist. Itmeans from all over the world, we haveto demand more and more from ourbrothers and sisters."

An article in the London Guardian (6December) reported, accurately, that

continued on page 8

hand in the streets of Yorkshire miningvillages in some of the worst violencesince the strike began.

"In one pit village, Cottonwood, asharp clash ensued recently when theNational Coal Board, which runs thenationalized mines, sought to take alone returning miner past the pickets.Some 4000 strikers hurled bricks andstones at the police. Steel ball bearingswere shot from catapults.

"Last Monday the Yorkshire coal­fields once more erupted. Barricadesand cars were overturned and setafire, shops and garages were looted,and the police station in the village ofDinnington was evacuated after aMolotov cocktail was thrown through awindow. Thirty-three policemen andnine pickets were injured, and 45 minerswere arrested ....

"What now exists in the north ofEngland amounts to an unusual nation­al police force, made up of men fromdistant towns and cities who are busedin or brought by plane. To an outsider itlooks like an army of occupation. IIIfeelings between citizenry of the north­ern villages and the ..visiting police runhigh, and the overall situation has beenlikened to Belfast. ...

"Entire villages have been ringed bypolice, with all traffic in and out stoppedin anticipation of a picket. Police havebarged into houses where out-of-townpickets have been staying overnight, andhave hauled them off. They have goneinto pubs and dragged men out. It iscommonplace in a mining village for apolice car to follow striking miners asthey leave one pub and go to another.Miners walk in pairs going home frompubs ....

"Last week in the Ollerton miners'welfare club bar the strikers gathered asthey do every night to play dominoesand darts and drink beer. Mick McGin­ty, the treasurer of [the] striking group.unwrapped five gold watches sent by anold Tory lady who wanted to dosomething to help the miners. There wasmoney from the Belgian unions. TheFrench unions had promised as agesture of solidarity that every miner'schild would receive a Christmas giftfrom France.... The Indian and Paki­stani communities around London havecontributed about $800....

"The most important support groupfor the strike is made up of women.Miners' wives and other women havebeen providing emergency food baskets.organizing and running soup kitchens,and arranging for Christmas through- .out the strike areas. For these women,the strike has become a social revolu-

The liberal New York Village Voice(27 November), published a lengthyarticle by James Ridgeway in hiscolumn, "Annals ofthe Age of Reagan,"on the '''Civil War' in England":

"In the class warfare that has markedthis strike, the picturesque villages andcountry lanes of northern England havebecome a .battleground. At times it hasalmost seemed like a civil war ... overthe last 10 days thousands of unionpickets have fought police hand-to-

to their class brothers fighting inBritain. Even multimillionaire J. PaulGetty, Jr. has donated £100,000 to theminers' Christmas solidarity appeal.

The Partisan Defense Committee haslaunched a fund drive among Americantrade unions to aid the families of theheroic British miners (see box on page 5).While Workers Vanguard has coveredthe coal strikefrom the beginning, in theface of a news blackout by the Americanmedia, lately even the bourgeois presshas begun to take notice. We reprintbelow for the interest of our readers,some excerpts from recent stories givinga taste of this crucial class battle.

APMiners battle cops outside Ravenscraig steel works in Scotland last May.Extend the strike to steel, power workers, dockers and railwaymen!

Marche D'Aligre, one of Paris'popular markets frequented byworkers and immigrants, the strikersraised 1,300 francs.

At Rouen the Committee toSupport British Miners along withsupporters of the LTF at the Renaultplant in Cleon initiated fund raisingamong the auto workers, and withthe participation of CGT unionofficials quite generous donationswere received. A local newspaper, LeJournal d'Elbeuf, reported on thefundraising campaign. Both theRouen dockers and postal workers inParis gave generously to the miners.One CGT postal worker organized in ,his own workplace a collection of 300francs.

To its credit. the Communist-ledCGT has mounted a major nation­wide campaign of raising funds andorganizing convoys of food andChristmas toys to the families ofstriking miners. Outside Calais,French miners. members of the CGT,dumped truckloads of scab coaldestined for Britain.

PARIS-The Ligue Trotskyste deFrance has hosted two strikingBritish miners on a highly successfulcampaign to raise funds. Paul Brewinand Troy Nattriss, accredited repre­sentatives of the Warsop Main Lodgeof the National Union of Minework­ers (N UM), visited factories, work­places, unions and campuses inRouen and Paris together withcomrades of the LTF. In ten days atotal of more than 17,700 francs($1,900) was raised.

From the Rouen dock workers tobank workers in Paris, Frenchworkers dug deep into their pocketsto aid their embattled brothers andsisters in Britain. One of the mostsuccessful collections was at theBanque National de Paris where thevisiting British strikers raised over1,800 francs: officials from the(Socialist-led) CFDT federation or­ganized a collection of about 1,000francs, the enterprise committeedonated 500 francs and the ChristianCFTC labor group contributed 300francs. On Sunday morning at }he

For nine hard months, 140,000< British coal miners have been fightingPrime Minister Margaret Thatcher'sattempt to destroy their livelihoods andtheir union. It is the sharpest class battlein Britain since the 1926 general strike,also sparked by a bitter miners' strike. Sofar rhis year more than 3,000 minershave been injured by police violence and9,000 arrested. Two strikers have beenkilled on the picket lines and two miners'

'children were buried while scavengingfor scrap coal to heat their home. But asChristmas approaches and coal stocksdwindle with the cold weather, govern­ment attempts to spark a back-to-workmovement have failed utterly. Theminers are solid as ever.

Thatcher has denounced the strikersas "an organized, revolutionary minor­ity ... whose real aim is the breakdownof law and order and the destructionof democratic, parliamentary govern­ment." No doubt the "Iron Lady" isrecalling the fate of the last Tory primeminister, Edward Heath, who wasbrought down by the 1974miners' strike.Last July, Thatcher declared: "We hadto fight the enemy without in theFalklands, and now we have to fight theenemy within." The miners, too, knowthat this is war-class war. And to win itthey have to be prepared to fight to thefinish. Our British comrades haverepeatedly called to spread the strike.The London Guardian (4 September),reporting on left groups at the TradesUnion Congress in Brighton, noted:"The Spartacist League banner wasmore ambitious. It read: 'Shut down thecountry'."

One of the main battlefields in theBritish coal strike has been financial.After judges declared the strike illegaland held the National Union of Mine­workers (N UM) in contempt of court,in a guerrilla war ranging from Dublinto Luxembourg and Zurich, Thatcher'sgovernment has tried to seize more than£9 million in NUM funds which theunion sent abroad to escape this legalrobbery. 'But meanwhile, the miners'struggle has awakened sympathy andsolidarity around the globe. Sovietunions have contributed more than $1million, including food and clothing,and the brutally oppressed SouthAfrican miners have sent contributions

The British MinersAre Fighting This Christmas­

Help Them Win! VI'\{ /3r ':f/r L 1IIt1~rr

/S 1.-1'1' fA a~ ~~" /.

On strike for nine months, Britishminers face a hard winter of class warsolid and determined to defeat theunion-busting Thatcher governmentand National Coal Board. But the "IronLady" has declared the strike "illegal,"impounded union funds and is ruthless­ly trying to starve these courageousworkers and their families into sub­mission. International labor solidarityis urgently needed and the PartisanDefense Committee has launched a$25,000 "Aid to Striking British Miners'Families" fund drive among Americantrade-union locals.

The PDC itself has contributed$5,000 and is assuming all administra­tive costs for the campaign. Severaltrade-union locals have made contribu­tions. Many Workers Vanguard readershave answered our appeal to assist inthis campaign including with checks for$100 and $200. As Eibhlin McDonald

told members of New York TunnelWorkers Local 147, who contributed$274:

"What Thatcher is trying to do to thatunion INliM Jis to smash it and crush itlike Reagan did to PA TeO, the airtraffic controllers union here. Andthat's why international solidarity andfunds from trade unions in othercountries could make a difference tothis union between life and death.Because that's what's going on there. It'sreally a life and death question for theunion. For that reason I want to appealto the union brothers here, particularlythe ones who are. working, to give asgenerously as possible to this cause. Itreally is in the interest of every tradeunionist no . matter what country tomake sure that this type of union ofmaybe 200,000 members doesn't godown the way that PATeO went. Theyhave an expression that developed inBritain in the course of the miners'strike, which is 'Dig deep for theminers.' And that's really what I ask theunion brothers here this morning to do.Thank you.".

Norman, OK 730693 December 1984

Partisan Defen3e Committee

Dear friends,

Please accept this small donation for the Aid to

Striking BritishMiners' Families fund. I intend to send

at least $10 each Monday,

Fraternally,

~ P::Y tAJ ~ grn to-so.J ~~,io. a/~~~~~J 4J-f'_~~ ?~~~.8~~~~. ~¥~~~ L~~ialJk.

~~)

~/'~

WORKERS1lAMMER~

"Break with Labour's Traitors"Workers Hammer (December 1984),

the newspaper of the Spartacist League,British section of the internationalSpartacist tendency, reported on an SLeducational conference held last monthin London on the theme of "Forging aRevolutionary Leadership." At theconference a miner from the CelynenSouth colliery, South Wales NUM,Don Hughes, told the audience:

"We have. a tradition in South Walesthat's been passed down from father toson over many, many generations. TheSouth Wales coalfield has always beeninvolved in struggle against coal ownersand against victimisation. A scab inthem days is no different than a scabtoday, because when a man scabs inSouth Wales he knows, comrades, thathe imprisons his soul for the rest of hislife. You don't have to be shut behindbars to be a villain because I know of aman who died in a village not iar fromme when he was 84.years of age and he .scabbed on the 1926 strike. That mandied with no one at his funeral, and hewas a man of84. We remember in SouthWales over a very long period."

Another miner, Dick Hall, WarsopMain strike committee, North Derby­shire NlIM, spoke on the politics of thecoal strike:

"We've got a TUC which has openlycollaborated with the bosses. They hatehaving struggle, make no mistake aboutit. They come out with empty promises,this that and the other-and it don'tmatter whether it's Lord Feather, VicFeather, Lord Murray, the nameschange but the faces and the policiescarryon. That IS why we suddenly findout that today every single time we havea strike there's a back-to-work move­ment before the strike's even called. It'sbeen an attack on the trade unionmovement, and the bureaucrats havenever tried to fight back because thebureaucrats, and in particular theCommunist Party from after the SecondWorld War, were more interested inwinning positions of power for them­selves, not mobilising the mass of therank and file. They've got these greatpositions, then they get all the fringe

21 DECEMBER 1984

MilitantWelsh miner

addressesSpartacist

educationalin London,

November 10.

benefits, will not move on it, and we'vebeen left to suffer.

"But having said that there's still astrategy to win, cos if there wasn't wemight as well have gone back tomorrow.The strategy to win is-[points toSpartacist banner, 'Miners, T&G, rail:For a fighting Triple Alliance! All-outjoint national strike now! Shut down thecountry!'] So that's the way it is at themoment: we're at the crossroads and wewant a strategy.

"Unfortunately, I'm chairman ofMansfield Woodhouse Labour Party­not very proud of it, to be quite honest,but that nevertheless is how it standstoday. And when I read about NeilKinnock saying that I don't wantanother Gallipoli, when the leader of theLabour Party can get up and make suchstatements as that, then I do getworried.When, strangely, he cannot go to a seriesof five rallies this week because he'shere, there and everywhere, god knowswhat; when he won't come out and givefull support to the miners-and it isthe party, supposedly, of the workingclass-then I do get very, very worried. Imean, you can get marvellous individu­als within the Labour Party. Butin myLabour Party where I come from I getscabs, who sit on the front row. Andlook at me, I've been picketing 'em allweek, they come to the Labour Party, a

socialist party, and see absolutelynothing wrong in being a member of it.

"We have a Labour MP who'sinfamous, I think. He was the spokes­man on Northern Ireland and his onlyclaim to fame was that he went to BobbySands' deathbed on his 98th day onhunger strike and said, 'I hope you die,kid.' And then he came back and said,'Yeah, solid we are.' That is the kind ofman-whose son, who has been out onstrike for nine months, will not speak tohim. That is the kind of party that we'vegot and it makes me wonder why I am amember, to be quite honest, increasinglyso, and I think that at the end of the dayeveryone within the Labour Party has toexamine their consciences to see wheth­er we can change society. Because ifwe're in the Labour Party to change itthrough parliamentary means, well atthe moment we're not doing very well.

"I'll tell you something else. I'm not asectarian, I have been a member of lotsof other parties. But I think that at theend of the day the proof is always in theeating. And if we look at one or two ofthese so-called groups then I think wehave a very good idea who our friendsand who our enemies are. If you take theSWP [Tony Cliffs Socialist WorkersParty J, I had a violent argument inBarnsley the other week with one oftheir leading members, who tried to.

explain to me why their members shouldcross miners' picket lines to go inRavenscraig-as a 'tactic.' I think it'sabsolutely disgraceful.

"And if you look at the WRP [GerryHealy's Workers Revolutionary Party]and their role, not only have we had thisattack on the trade unions from theright, we have had an attack on the tradeunions actually from the so-called left.Because at the height of the Cold Warwe had a massive attack on Scargill overhis denunciation of Solidarnosc,

"It's the same with the group in theLabour Party, the Militant. Whatthey've been telling me for years is that :what we should do is get the PoliceFederation to join the TUC. Now somewould argue that it would actually turnthe TUC leftwards [laughter]. Now I'mbeing serious, comrades. If we canhonestly think that that's a strategy forwinning working class people towardssocialism-to win these fellows who areknocking our lads in the morning andperhaps voting to support a picket linein the afternoon ... that is absolutelyridiculous.

"The next group-this sounds like anobituary, this-must be the Revolution­ary Communist Party, whose firststrategy was that what we should behaving is a dialogue with the scabs inNottingham, in Leicester, in SouthDerbyshire. And the 1MG [supportersof Ernest Mandel's United Secretariat]in their paper [Socialist Action], at theheight of the strike, the biggest politicalstruggle that we've ever had, they wentoff the presses for six weeks! Wouldn'teven print. The last paper they printed,it's quite true, half their memberswouldn't sell that issue because theythought it was novel to have aninterview with a scab.

"Finally .l'll.come up to the SpartacistLeague. I'm not a member, but what I'vesaid is that you can judge people by whatthey have done, what they have done inthis strike. As far as I'm concerned, inour strike committee we have hadmarvellous assistance from the tendencyon picket lines, on putting our lads up,

continued Of] page 8

5

Why Democrats Went Along

Nation Liberals Hit KAL 007 Cover-Up

Left: New York Post (1 September 1983) picked up initial CIA cover story thatKAL 007 spy plane was forced to land in Russia. Next day U.S. governmentgave go-ahead for campaign of anti-Soviet hysteria.

Make checks payable/mail to:Spartacist Publishing Co., •Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116

Spartacist PamphletTells the Truth!

Mondale administration engineered asimilar KAL spy mission in 1978, whena Korean Boeing 707 deviated drastical­ly from course and overflew the top­secret Soviet military installations atMurmansk (see WV No. 350, 16 March1984). According to the I October DerSpiegel, Pentagon wise guys chortledafter the 1978 KAL overflight, "Forgetthe B-1 bomber, just take the good old707 with a Korean crew."

KAL Flight 007 which left Alaska on31 August 1983 was a landmark in U.S.imperialism's anti-Soviet war drive. Inthis endeavor Ronald Reagan hasstruck a chord of bipartisan capitalistunity, and the bourgeois media willfullyclosed its eyes over the KA L affairbecause it fit so neatly into the anti­Soviet propaganda blitz. Even theCommunist Party, blinded by decadesof immersion in the Democratic Partyand Stalinist detente illusions, couldn'tbelieve that the Soviet Union mightactually defend itself militarily-so theinitial response of the CP's Daily Worldwas to deny that the Russians had shotdown 007! And the liberals of theNation and Der Spiegel, after conduct­ing exhaustive studies which, theyadmit, point overwhelmingly toward aU.S. conspiracy, refuse to draw theconclusion. Even now they leave openthe door of the "tragic error" theory.When WVasked Pearson whether henow thought Flight 007 was on a U.S.spy mission, his liberal faith in theAmerican government was clearlystretched thin when he answered: "Allthe evidence seems to be compatiblewith the 'intentional' explanation andvery, very little of it seems to be 'com­patible with any other explanation"­i.e., the plane must have deliberatelyflown into Soviet airspace.

The Spartacist League, dedicated tobringing down bloody U.S. imperialismthrough proletarian revolution, hasbeen able to tell the truth about 007from the beginning. As Trotskyists, whostand for the unconditional militarydefense of the Soviet Union (in spite ofits anti-revolutionary bureaucracy), weimmediately pointed to the connectionof the KAL provocation to the Warmobilization against the homeland ofthe October Revolution. Those whohave looked carefully and honestly intothis affair and the subsequent cover-upby both capitalist parties must arrive atthe inevitable conclusion: the Americanruling class is hell-bent on war with theSoviet Union, and only internationalsocialist revolution can stop the imperi­alists from sending the planet the way ofKAL 007.•

Fry/LA Times

NSA reported the shootdown was"confirmed by the recorded material,"wrote Der Spiegel. But after thatreport, the magazine reveals, a falsestory that the plane was "safe onSakhalin" was "spread about by CIAliaison people in Seoul, Tokyo andWashington." Even the family of ultra­rightist Congressman Larry McDonaldwas fed the cover story. The U.S.arrogantly demanded the Japaneserecordings-of Soviet transmissions, eventhough the U.S. had its own moreextensive recordings. (For a supposedly"innocent" party, the U.S. was strangelynervous about any independent evi­dence floating around.) And when theNational Transportation Safety Board(NTSB) later tried to initiate an investi­gation of the crash, Keppel notes,"almost immediately the Department ofState called it off and asked the NTSB tosurrender all the documentation that ithad started to acquire, and it did. End ofstory."

Why the CIA cover story? The answercan be deduced from what happenedright after the NSA had confirmed theshootdown. Der Spiegel reports thatshortly after 5 p.m. EDT there was along-distance telephone conference callbetween Ed Meese, Lawrence Eagle­burger, Secretary of State GeorgeShultz, White House troubleshooterR'ichard Burt, and CIA director WilliamCasey. In this conference it was decidedhow to delay the flow of news until thefollowing morning in the United States.Why? In order to buy time to get theirstory straight and above all, as DerSpiegel notes, "in order to see what theRussians had got" (in particular, didthey have the telltale black box record­er") Then, as planned, Shultz could gobefore the world public and launch apropaganda barrage against the "evil"Soviets, cranking up the war machineseveral notches-and, not incidentally,easing the deployment of first-strikePershing missiles in West Europe.

Democrats Take a DiveOver KAL 007

Pearson, Keppel and the Nation havebeen calling for a Congressional investi­gation into KAL 007, but only ran into astone wall. As a WV reporter said in thequestion-and-answer session, noting thespeakers' great public service in publi­cizing the evidence about 007: "It's beenvery obvious that the Democratic Partyhas not taken up this issue," even thoughthe KAL bombshell would have dra­matically exposed the dangerous warmania of the Reagan administration."Why have [Mondale and the Demo­crats] avoided this issue? Becausethey're cornplicit." he managed to getout before being cut off by a hostilechairwoman, who then stupidly suggest­ed to the audience that people shouldwrite letters to Senator Moynihan (theDemocratic Party's liaison with theCIA)!

The Democratic tops have beenblatantly and deliberately silent on KAL007 because-whatever their tacticaldifferences over the "mix" of weapons,the use of contra mercenaries in Nicara­gua, etc.-they are co-authors withReagan of the anti-Soviet war drive.And there is evidence that the Carter/

E"':'il@t', JU K·H It'!3:Q·)D~ lW1UIliill[~~t·~::::;,' . \ . ME,TROTJIitItop".R"~"~_"_' JiO, ..... '., ~_.__ ,__ . _._,_ JaIln ...._... ,,", ..,.-•..~. '",'", -Soviet day- of infamy ,

SLAUGHTERIN THE SKYC~ming inside story: How Redpilot downed jet& killed 265

~~~~=~~~~~~~.~._- .... - ·----1Of:" ~=: ..... ' ...... - ............" _............. _. ............--- ........_... ......... u._ ----..._...----... ~.:::.. .........__. ._--- ........ ,_..--. _..

together point inexorably toward aconscious design. He noted how one anda half hours before the takeoff of theKorean airliner, an electrical mainte­nance worker at Anchorage was told toturn off one of the military radar feedsto the civilian air traffic controllers,reducing their ability to notice KALOOTs deviation from the prescribedcourse. Pearson noted that the much­touted "finger error" theory-that the007 crew had accidentally entered thewrong coordinates in each of threeindependent inertial navigation systemsbefore takeoff-would have required an"extraordinary" level of incompetence.He traced the peculiar flight pattern,turning twice to fly over the Soviets'most sensitive military installations inKamchatka and on Sakhalin island,

which cannofbe explained by any of the"accident" theories. As Pearson andmany others have noted, such a penetra-

. tion of Soviet airspace would (and did)raise Russian defenses (radar, aircraft,etc.) to maximum alert, giving the U.S. agolden opportunity to record the re­sponses with its massive array ofelectronic eyes and ears.

White House Cover-UpFormer U.S. diplomat John Keppel

revealed some of the extraordinaryefforts made by the Reagan cabal tocover up details of KAL 007. (Keppelought to have a good eye for cover­ups-the New York Post of 27 Augustsays he "took part in the botched cover­up of the 1960 U-2 incident.") While theofficial White House version asserts thatit took about eight hours for Washing­ton to find out what had happened,Keppel unveiled the revelation in the 15October Der Spiegel magazine (in aseries by Wilhelm Bittorf and AnthonySampson)-ignored by the U.S. press,of course-that the National SecurityAgency base at Misawa, Japan hadinformed NSA headquarters at FortMeade, Maryland about a plane downover south Sakhalin within thefirst half'hour after KAL 007 plunged into thesea.

"Toward 5 o'clock Eastern time" (alittle over two hours after the crash), the

You know things are getting repres­sive when even "respectable" liberalshave trouble getting their voice of"dissent" heard in the New York Times.And if the subject is the Americans'KAL 007 war provocation against theSoviet Union, dissent is suddenly not"fit ' to print" at all. When the liberalNation magazine took out a full-page adin the 25 October New York Times topublicize their - sensational findingsabout Korean Air Lines Flight 007, theTimes shot back three days later in theunusual form of a "news" story, liberallyquoting from Richard Burt/WhiteHouse handouts, and claiming it hadreviewed the charges and "found noevidence." Of course, neither the NewYork Times nor the White House wouldaddress the specific evidence. So theNation crowd, together with SANE,that letterhead organization of "StateDepartment pacifists" from 20 yearsago, actually went to the lengths ofgoing out and renting a hall for a pre­election forum October 31 about the 007affair.

Needless to say, the Times did notshow up, as the speakers bitterly noted,nor did the rest of the bourgeois media.

And the State Department failed to senda representative despite SANE,'s eagerentreaties. The forum started off with anintroduction by Nation editor VictorNavasky, one of the few decent liberalswho in such matters as KAL and theRosenberg case has continued to standfor truth against Reaganite anti-Soviethysteria. The two main speakers pro­vided a wealth of information about the007 affair: David Pearson, a Yaleteacher who wrote the excellent exposein the Nation last August; and JohnKeppel, a 22-year veteran of the U.S.foreign service (who was once listed inJulius Mader's Who's Who in the CIA).The audience of a few hundred liberalsand pro-Moscow Communist Partysupporters bought over 50 Spartacistliterature packets containing the SLpamphlet, "KAL 007: U.S. War Provo­cation" and subsequent Workers Van­guard articles on the case published inthe past year. (While our Marxistnewspap~r slasted out the truth aboutthe 007 spy mission from day one, ittook a year for even this tiny band ofliberals to have their eyes opened-andthen only after they had their nosespointed in the right direction by someex-CIA types.)

In his presentation, David Pearsonlaid out the list of innumerable so-called"accidents" and "coincidences" sur­rounding the flight of 007 which taken

6 WORKERS VANGUARD

Congratulations on VictoryAgainst· New McCarthyism

The November 30 settlement of the Spartacist League lawsuit against the 1983Attorney General's Guidelines for Domestic Security/ Terrorism Investigations wonan important admission from the FBI: Marxists are not terrorists. Numerousindividuals prominent in the legal defense ofcivil liberties, as well as union officials,fighters for black freedom and even an occasional left spokesman have written usstressing the importance ofthis victory in defending the democratic rights ofall. Wepublish below some of their letters and statements ofsupport, and look forward topublishing more in our next issue.

Turn Back GovernmentSubversion of People's RightsThis settlement represents a victory.

Any type of victory against the govern­ment in the current environment isgreat. The Spartacist lawsuit alsobrought out an admission on the part ofthe FBI that they are carrying out a lotof activity that is illegal. Otherwise theywouldn't have made the settlement.

This victory, even a minimal oneagainst the government, is cause forcelebration. Hopefully it will inspire anew push and new drive to turn back thetrue subversive force in this country.Most certainly the government's "ter­rorist" drive and harassment of blacksand left groups is really action to subvertthe constitutional and human rights ofthe people of this country.

Robert F. WilliamsAuthor of Negroes With Guns

A Defense of theWorking-Class Movement

Congratulations on your legal victoryagainst the new FBI guidelines. Thisstrikes an important blow against the

Reagan administration's attempt tocriminalize political opponents. As atrade unionist, I appreciate your effortsto defend the democratic rights of theworking class movement.

Randy JohneseSenior Field Rep.SEIU Local 535*

*Organization listed for identificationpurposes only.

Freedo.., from FBI InterferenceThis is another step in a long road

toward achievement of American free­dom from interference from FBI andother surveillance agencies. It is particu­larly illuminating at this time, when aneffort is being made to justify domesticrepression on "terrorism" grounds.

Frank DonnerFormer UE General Counsel,Author of Age of Surveillance

A Civil Liberties VictoryThis settlement is a civil liberties vic­

tory. Under the Levi Guidelines the FBIneeded a reasonable suspicion of crimi-

nal activity before they could conduct adomestic security investigation. TheSmith Guidelines changed that byadding a principle which said that theFBI in some circumstances couldconduct an investigation based onadvocacy of illegal activity alone. TheSpartacist decision, by first of all recog­nizing that the Spartacist organizationis a Marxist group and not engaged inviolent activity now, and then sayingthat there is no on-going investigation,implicitly says that the SpartacistLeague, or a Marxist organization, doesnot meet the current guidelines.

Jerry BermanACLU Legislative Director

Blow Against Cold WarRepression

. Congratulations on the successfulconclusion of your lawsuit against theF.B.I. This legal victory accords someprotection not only to your organiza­tion but to all those who would bejudged "political opponents" by thegovernment.

I, along with all defenders of demo­cratic rights, viewed with real alarm theannouncement of the Attorney Gener­al's new "Domestic Security" guidelines,which attempt to paint legitimatepolitical opponents as "criminal con­spiracies" or "terrorists." Especiallywith the Reagan administration's cam­paign to combat "terrorism" (whileinvading black Grenada and backingterrorist counter-revolutionaries in Ni-

caragual) these guidelines posed a chill­ing danger to all those potentiallytargeted.

Your success is a modest but genuineblow to the government's attempts tostifle domestic opposition in the escalat­ing Cold War climate. Much morestruggle will be necessary.

Sincerely,Wilson Riles, Jr.Oakland City Councilmember

For RevolutionaryReconstruction of America

The settlement on your case againstthe F.B.I. on November 30, 1984 was agreat victory for the people who knowthat a revolutionary reconstruction ofAmerican society is on the order of theday.

When I forecast on channel 6 inPhiladelphia at the beginning of theReagan Administration that he wouldprove to be the American fascist leaderin Brooks Brothers clothes, the state­ment was blasted in many corners as tooextreme. However, four (4) years later ithas. become clear that with the viciousand unprincipled backing of his "MoralMajority," Reagan is developing hisprogram to impose a specifically Ameri­can form of fascism in this country.

His first weapon was to chargeanyone advocating fundamental changewith being a terrorist. With this tech­nique, the F.B.I. expects to have theUnited .States Supreme Court reversecourse and hold that any advocacy ofrevolutionary means is ipso factoterrorism and unprotected by the FirstAmendment.

Your settlement is the first victory inthis war. Congratulations!

Sincerely,Conrad J. LynnCivil rights attorney

FBI Admits: Marxists Are Not Terrorists

What's Fit to Print in the New York Times?17 December 1984

Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Publisherand

A.M. Rosenthal, Executive EditorThe New York Times229 West 43rd StreetNew York, New York 10036

Dear Mr. Sulzbergerand Mr. Rosenthal:

In today's increas.ingly conservativesocial climate, the fact that "FBIAdmits: Marxists Are Not Terrorists" iscertainly newsworthy. The SpartacistLeague's successful settlement of itslawsuit against the FBI on November 30was a modest but genuine blow againstthe FBI and Attorney General's 1983Guidelines on Domestic Security/Terrorism. Yet thus far the New YorkTimes, the paper of record in the U.S.,has not seen fit to print this importantstory.

We do recall that three years ago theTimes (26 December 1981) printed asubstantial article by Robert Lindsey onour successful effort to get the then­attorney general of California, GeorgeDeukmejian, to remove the SL's namefrom a list of "terrorist organizations"published as part of his "organizedcrime" report in 1979. Our settlementwith the FBI is certainly of broadersignificance today, as the first successfullegal challenge to the 1983 national FBIGuidelines.

The legal Complaint filed by the SLdirectly challenged the pretexts thesecret police have used for over 60 yearsto harass and victimize the Marxist _movement for "crimes" of ideology. Aswe noted in our press release announc­ing the settlement, the FBI in agreeing to

21 DECEMBER 1984

change its definition of the S L concedesthe central claim of our lawsuit-thatMarxist politicalprinciples andadvoca­cy cannot be equated with violence,terrorism or a criminal enterprise.

This was not just a victory for ourorganization. In defending ourselves,we in fact are defending the democraticrights of everyone perceived by thisgovernment to be political opponents.Believe it or not, this may even extend tothe New York Times, which isn't lookedon too kindly in some parts of thisnation, you know (remember the "Pen­tagon Papers" case).

We do not pretend to know whatinterpretation or importance the FBIattaches to its agreement. We have noillusions that the government hasstopped its malicious "surveillance" ofourselves and others. But our case hasstruck a blow at the deadly equation ofconstitutionally protected political dis­sent with "terrorism," and most every­one we have spoken with who admits toan interest in civil liberties issuesexpresses enthusiastic interest in thisnews.

Is it an oversight that the New YorkTimes, which in 1981 gave adequatecoverage to our legal fight in Californiaagainst the "terrorist" slander targetingour organization, shows no apprecia­tion of the importance of our nationalcase against the FBI Guidelines directly?Is it simply that the political climate inthis country has moved so sharply to theright in this period? Perhaps the Times'commitment to providing a platform forClaire Sterling's disinforming anti­Communist conspiracy fantasies is seento demand that any news that runscounter to right-wing hysteria is just

news that doesn't fit. It sure has been the"Terror Times" lately, with a seeminglyendless stream of four-part front-pageseries retailing as fact the.handouts fromReagan's bunker.

Or can it simply be that the SpartacistLeague is unpopular (not to mentionhated in certain circles)? So we're old­fashioned Leninists and Trotskyists,whose defense of the Soviet Unionagainst imperialism is seen as moreobnoxious at a time of ideological warmobilization, while our forthrightnessand elementary Marxist opposition tothe capitalist two-party system irritatesand embarrasses rad-lib types. And for ayear after Reagan set up the passengerson Korean Air Lines Flight 007 fordeath in a calculated war provocation,our newspaper was the only place in thiscountry where anyone could find thetruth told. So maybe the New YorkTimes et al. simply consider us to be soobnoxious that we don't exist andtherefore our democratic rights to be ofno interest. This although, in thestraightforward necessity of acting inour own defense, we have gained amodest victory for basic rights whichmost Americans cherish.

We are aware that this would not bethe first time the Times has buriednewsworthy action on our part. Forexample the Times did not find itappropriate to report on the defense ofthe working people and oppressedwhich the Spartacist League has initiat­ed outside the courts: e.g., the substan­tial mobilization of militants, mainlyblack workers and'youth, which the SLinitiated in 1982 to stop the first an­nounced KKK march in Washingtonsince 1925, or the earlier labor-based

rally in San Francisco against the Nazis,who haven't show their faces there since.

We are a small organization whichhas scored an impressive series ofmodest legal victories. While the rea­sons for this aren't entirely clear to us,we believe that our legal strategy, basedon neither expecting nor seeking anendorsement of our revolutionary poli­tics in the capitalist courts, has served uswell. And we believe also that we benefitfrom our outspoken and forthrightavowal of our Marxist program, aquality which was recognized by no lessa bourgeois figure than Daniel PatrickMoynihan, who in an address atHarvard University in 1972 noted thatthe Spartacists "sail under their owncolors."

Copies of this letter are going to thevarious Times reporters to whom wehad already delivered our November 30press release.

We await your response with someinterest.

Yours truly,Marjorie Stambergfor the Spartacist League

Attachmentscc: Anthony Lewis

Tom WickerPaul DelaneyEd GraveleyBill Serrin

,David MargolickDavid BurnhamRobert PearBernard GwertzmanPhilip TaubmanRobert LindseyRussell BakerStuart Taylor, Jr.Leslie Maitland Werner

7

CHICAGO TEACHERS AX GIVEBACKS-Mayor Harold Wash­ington poses as a defender of black Chicago, but the recent teachersstrike showed how the black Democrats are on the bosses' side. InNovember, 500 teachers were laid off when the federal governmentslashed over $100 million in desegregation funds. At the same timethe Board of Education demanded hundreds of millions in cuts fromthe mainly black Chicago Teachers Union. Fighting for their jobs andtheir union, Chicago teachers went out on strike December 3demanding a wage increase to boot.

The teachers resisted attempts by the board to split the 18-unioncoalition on race lines while the largely white craft unions refused tobuckle under threat of court injunctions. So as temperaturesdropped, the legislature discovered some "tax amnesty" money. OnDecember 17 a tentative settlement was reached restoring fullmedical benefits and granting a 4.5 percent wage increase. By hangingtough, the 40,000 members of the CTU and allied unions struck ablow against Reagan-style austerity, givebacks and union-busting.

Reagan...(continued/rom page 1)

1930s, the Democrats have traditionallyfavored deficit spending while theRepublicans have postured as thebalance-the-budget party. But in thiselection these roles were seeminglyreversed. Mondale ran as a fiscallyresponsible representative of Americancapitalism, proposing over $100 billionin cuts in federal spending to reduce themammoth deficit. In fact, fiscal austeri­ty was theDemocratic candidate's entiredomestic program. President Kill 'emAll's cuts will face no serious oppositionin Congress, where the Democrats arewelcoming Reagan's conversion to"economic realism," and even Treas­ury's "modified flat tax."

The social programs now underbipartisan attack-Social Security andMedicare, food stamps and publichigher education-are not philan­thropic gifts to the American peoplefrom the ruling class but were wonthrough decades of struggle by the labormovement and oppressed minorities."And this grotesque budget-cuttingspectacle demonstrates the tremendousinsecurity produced by the "free enter­prise system." If you don't have amillion bucks stashed away somewhere,after you lose your job through layoffs,you stand to lose your house, your car,your existence. In the richest country onthe planet, "fairness" is sharing thecutbacks. In the Soviet Union, whichstill preserves the economic conquests ofthe Bolshevik Revolution despite itslater Stalinist degeneration, with thebenefits of a planned economy noworker need fear unemployment and noelderly are reduced to eating dog foodbecause they've lost their pensions.

Blacks Need a RevolutionaryWorkers Party

While white America was swept up inReagan's "new patriotism" demagogy,

blacks were not. For the ghetto poor hewas always President Kill 'em All, andalthough blacks were far from enthu­siastic about Mondale they votedDemocratic. So black people felt shaft­ed by the Reagan landslide and arecynical about Democratic Party elector­al politics. To refurbish their tarnished"anti-racist" credentials black Demo­cratic politicians are flocking to theSouth African embassy in Washington'and its consulates in other cities in orderto sit-in and have themselves arrested.Certainly, there is a burning need formilitant, mass actions in solidarity withthe courageous fighters against whiteracist terror in South Africa. However,for three months, while unarmed blackAfricans were shot down in Sharpevilleand Soweto, the Jesse Jacksons andRon Dellums were too busy stumpingfor Walter "cut the budget" Mondale tonotice.

Now being arrested on the steps of theSouth African embassy along withblack leaders are top-level labor offi­cials. One of the protest organizers,Harriet Michel of TransAfrica, ob­served: "It is an easy issue to rallyaround, to build the coalitions that have

worked so well in the past." That is, it's alot easier for black Democratic officialsand conservative union bureaucrats toprotest apartheid in Botha's SouthAfrica than to fight racism and union­busting at home, in Reagan's America.

Rabidly anti-Communist and anti­Soviet, the top level of the Americanlabor bureaucracy stands on the ex­treme right wing of the DemocraticParty in terms of foreign/militarypolicy. George Meany's AFL-CIOsupported the war in Vietnam whenNixon and Kissinger were alreadygiving it up as a lost cause. In the late1970s, Meany's hand-picked successor,Lane Kirkland, was a member of theCommittee on the Present Danger,which attacked Carter/ Mondale forbeing too "soft" on Russia and de­manded an accelerated nuclear armsbuildup. And last year Kirkland waspart of the Kissinger Commission whichcalled for massive U.S. intervention tostave off the "Communist menace" inCentral America. The AFL-CIO bu­reaucracy stands foursquare behind thePentagon's trillion dollar budget.

For blacks especially, the imperialistwar budget spells desperate poverty,

illiteracy, disease and hunger. Andblacks understand this. Yet the BEOs(black elected officials) playa crucialrole in helping Reagan to carry out hiscutbacks. Increasingly, America's bigcities with their sprawling, poverty­stricken ghettos-Chicago, Philadel­phia, Detroit, Atlanta, Washington,D.C.-are administered by black Dem­ocratic mayors, who serve as the frontline officers in Reagan's economic waron black America.

The job of the black' Democraticmayors is to enforce capitalist austerityas U.S. imperialism builds for war withthe Soviet Union. Our job is to smashthis rotten system based on exploita­tion, racism and militarism. Thestruggle for black freedom and theproletarian class struggle are cruciallyintertwined in racist America. There­fore, black workers occupy a strategicposition in the American workersrevolution and in building the party thatcan lead that revolution. What is neededis a multiracial revolutionary party tolead the working class to power and putan end to the miseries ofcapitalism onceand for all. That is the goal of theSpartacist League.•

Make checks payable/mall 10:Spartaclsl Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116

Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of the Spartacist League

NOTICEWorkers Vanguard

skips a week inDecember.

Our next issue will bedated January 11.

which necessarily raises the question ofpower-which class shall rule:

"In a sense the miners' struggle isbreaking out of these old frameworksand that's a good thing, but it also has tobe given some coherence and directionand it has to go beyond simply tradeunion militancy. What we have arguedfor is bringing other forces in theworking class out in action-which was!losed concretely with the dockersstrike, with the BL strikes-i-to bring thattogether in joint strike committeeswhich are rich in possibilities. Thesestrike committees would allow theunemployed and the women's commit­tees to take part. They would provide anorganisational basis which could coor­dinate workers defence guards to stopthe police rampage. They would providea check on the leadership, on what itdoes and doesn't do, and they wouldprovide a place for a new leadership tobe forged. They would be embryonicallythe basis of a future state power even,soviets.

"We have to use this strike to goforward and that means going forwardto a workers government that willexpropriate the capitalist class, a SovietBritain if you like, the dictatorship ofthe proletariat.

"We would have a planned economywhich would use the precious humanmaterial resources that are still left onthis island for the betterment of thewhole society. And we'd link up with thesocialist federation of Soviet Europe.".

but in terms of spirit, which is nearlytribal. Although there is hardship thereis also an atmosphere of intense com­radeship and altruism."

And finally, the Guardian (16 N0­

vember) reported:"Santa Claus was arrested outside

Hamley's toy shop in Regent Street,London, yesterday. while he waslaunching a Christmas toy appeal forminers' children.".

(continued/rom page 5)on collecting money, in fact anything wehave asked for has been there for theasking. They've educated lots of ourmembers in certain ways. which hasbeen very good. and it's been aneducation for me as well. That is thereason why I stand on this platformtoday, and quite proud of it."

David Strachan of the SpartacistLeague Central Committee summed upthe tasks posed by the miners' strike,

WorkersHammer...

369 ./

[J $2/4 Issues ofWomen and Revolution

LJ $2/10 introductory Issues ofWorkers Vanguard(includes Spartacist)

Miners' wivescatch Iron Lady

Thatcher armin arm with

other FUhrerHitler.

getting back to the bedrock of socialismin the mining communities. It's like thedays when the Welsh valleys sentthousands of miners to the Spanish CivilWar. ...

"It's strange, but our kids are going tohave the best Christmas they have everhad-not in terms of consumer goods

_____________ Phone (

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(continued/rom page 4)"The media comes a close second to thepolice on the striking miners' list of pethates." No wonder, since the entirebourgeois press-and particularly theTV -has spewed out a solid stream ofviolence-baiting against the strikers andlies about mythical back-to-work move­ments. But apparently the Guardian'seditors decided they needed a fig leaf of"objectivity" and published a report byDavid Hearst, titled, "Strike spiritunbroken after 39 weeks," quotingDavid Millar, NllM branch secretary ofKeIlingley colliery: -

"There is a sense of victory among ouryoung miners. Everything has beenthrown at them, the police, the courts,the DHSS and the propaganda of themedia. They feel there is nothing morethat anyone can do to them. They havestood up against the whole statemachinery and they have come out ontop....

"There is a new feeling about. We are

Britain...

8 WORKERS VANGUARD

Pinochet to the Wall, Workers to Power!

The Chilean Volcano

I

Smash Pinochet­For Chilean Soviets!

Under the guns of the dictatorship,the Communist Party has been forced toadopt a semblance of militancy. Theparty of arch-peaceful roader LuisCorvalan today speaks of "armedstruggle" and hails the Manuel Rodri­guez Patriotic Front, a guerrilla organi­zation which has claimed credit forbombing a number of governmenttargets in recent months. Their purposeis not to build a movement for arevolutionary insurrection, however,but to pressure the bourgeois oppositioninto "recognizing" the Communists! Infact, the MOP itself was formed onlyafter the Christian Democrat-led AD

refused to admit the Communists. Andthe communique on the CP's nationalconference last June calls for an agree- .ment of all "civilian and military" Circlesfavoring "the earliest possible return to .democracy," even suggesting participa­tion of the armed forces-"purged of thefascist leadership," of course-in afuture government (International Bul­letin, September 1984).

The "minimum program" of theStalinists and other reformists is one oranother version of "democratic" gov­ernment: "popular democracy" says the

continued on page 10

ern Cone'''! The London Guardian (23October) posed the question, and gave apartial answer:

"How then has Pinochet survived whilethe generals in Argentina, Brazil andUruguay have gone or are going'! ..."Whereas in Argentina. Uruguay andBrazil the middle and upper class areconfident that with the return ofdemocracy they will be able to containthe Left. in Chile they are not so sure."

In Chile, class divisions are so sharp thateven a decade of military rule has notbeen able to root out the parties of theworking class. But the combativity andconsciousness of the Chilean proletariatworries not only the capitalists and thegenerals. The Communist, Socialist andMIR (Revolutionary Left Movement)leadersare terrified at the prospect of aworking-class upsurge becoming "iso­lated" from the bourgeoisie.

Under the Unidad Popular, thereformists treacherously called for faithin "democratic" bourgeois politiciansand "constitutionalist" generals (likeAllende's last defense minister, AugustoPinochet). Today these traitors aredesperately trying to bind the workingclass to the Christian Democrats andeven ultrarightists of the NationalParty-the same people who beat thepots and pans for the 1973 coup. Thusthe May 1984 manifesto "The PopularDemocratic Movement to the People ofChile" calls for a "National DemocraticAgreement" with all anti-Pinochetforces, in particular the DemocraticAlliance (AD). And in the face ofChristian Democratic opposition, theCP-Ied MOP and former copper work­ers leader Rodolfo Seguel's CNT put offthe national work stoppage for sixmonths until their hand was forced byunion militants.

o:0Ecoo

Live by thesword, die by

the sword:the days ofPinochet's

junta arenumbered.

resistance has grown strong as soupkitchens serve tens of thousands, illegalleftist organizations maintain officesand every time there is a protesta thebarricades go up anew.

The background to this outcry is theworst depression since 1929. Evenaccording to official statistics, between1981 and 1984 per capita consumptionfell by 21 percent. Even with the backingof Pinochet's guns and massive loansfrom New York banks, the "free mar­ket" economic model of the "ChicagoBoys," followers of monetarist econo­mist Milton Friedman, has proved adisaster-not only for the working classand poor, but for the petty bourgeoisieand many domestic capitalists as well.First a wave of cheap imports destroyedlocal manufactures while a speculativewave sucked capital into real estate.

Then the 1981 crash destroyed thedomestic market as unemploymenttopped 30 percent. And commodityprices for Chile's exports continue tofall. Today Pinochet's regime has thehighest per capita foreign debt in LatinAmerica, and no dollars to payoff hisfriends at Chase Manhattan.

The dictator has alienated the verysectors who placed him in power in1973. So why haven't the repeatedprotestas, often mobilizing tens ofthousands in the streets, driven himfrom office, as has happened to themilitary gorilas elsewhere in the "South-

Carrion/Sygma

Santiago is burning: working-class youth defy bloody military dictatorship inthe Chilean capital,

the shantytown of 50,000 inhabitantsthat has been the center of anti-juntaprotest. Soldiers went methodicallydoor to door, ransacking homes andhauling out every male over age 16.They were herded into military busesand taken to soccer stadiums where theywere forced to stand for hours under themachine guns as the CNI (ex-DINA)secret police carried out identity checks.More than 600 were sent to the prisoncamp at Pisagua, 1,000 miles to thenorth of Santiago in the barren Ataca­ma desert. Through this hard line policythe Pinochet regime hoped to intimidatemilitant opposition.

The crackdown reached its zenithduring the November 28-29 protestinitiated by the center-right DemocraticAlliance. Pinochet called up the reservesand placed the entire capital area underarmy occupation the day beforehand:soldiers were stationed every 100 yardsin the slum districts and concentrated atevery major intersection. With theleaders forced underground and thismassive display of force, the oppositionwas hemmed in: demonstrations weresmall, and there were fewer bonfires ofburning tires at the entrances of theshantytowns. Even so, the regime wasrattled. The roundups continue: onDecember 7, more than 5,000 men weredetained in a raid on the slum districtnamed after leftist folksinger VioletaParra. And the U.S. is nervous: after amonth-long top-level review in Wash­ington, a State Department spokesmanexpressed concern over "a cycle ofterrorism, repression and protest" in'Chile.

Repression, Depressionand Protest

For the last 18 months, there hasindeed been a cycle of protests andrepression, ever since the 1983 "MayDays" 'when middle-class housewivesbegan banging their pots against thetyrant Pinochet who seized power withthe backing of the bourgeoisie and theUnited States a decade earlier. Thestronghold of opposition to the dicta­torship has been the working-classshantytowns where 70 percent of able­bodied males are jobless, where house­wives root through garbage dumps forscraps to eat and their children sniff glueto cut the hunger pangs. But here, too,

Once again, there is' deadlock inChile. Over the last month and a half theleft staged a successful national strike,the first in eleven years of junta rule, andthe Pirtochet dictatorship responded byreimposing the infamous "state ofsiege." Once again the soccer stadiumsare filled with thousands of young menseized after army troops cordon off theslum districts. Once again hundreds aresent to concentration camps. To preventa repeat of the opposition's Octoberstrike, during the last week of Novemberthe capital was placed under militaryoccupation for the first time since thebloody 1973 coup. But despite Pino­chet's military success, the Yankeepatrons of Chile's Caesar Augustus areworried. Without any real social back­ing, the regime can't last on the supportof its bayonets alone. The alternative issharply posed: either continuation ofbrutal junta rule or revolutionarystruggle to bring it down. And mostChileans are convinced, as their chantproclaims, "se va a acabar, la dictaduramilitar"-the military dictatorship isgoing to end.

Last August General Pinochet an­nounced he was going to hold on topower until 1989 in order to block theCommunists. After a year of demon­strations and catastrophic economicdepression, he vowed, "if it's necessarywe will have another September II" (£1Diario j La Prensa, 21 August). Follow­ing a crackdown on the anniversary ofthe overthrow of Salvador Allende'sleftist Unidad Popular, apologists of themilitary regime proclaimed the failureof the monthly one-day protestas. Buton October 30, the National WorkersCommand (CNT) and the Communist­led Popular Democratic Movement(MOP) called a nationwide workstoppage. The strike brought the capitalof Santiago to a halt; public transporta­tion was crippled, metal factoriesreported 80 percent absenteeism, attextile plants it was almost total; and thetruckers kept their vehicles off the road.This was achieved despite brutal gov­ernment repression (eight dead andhundreds arrested) and the refusal of theDemocratic Alliance, led by the Chris­tian Democrats and including someSocialist sectors as well, to participate.

Pinochet's answer was the state ofsiege. On November 5, Interior MinisterJ arpa, a near-fascist leader of theNational Party, resigned as architect ofthe failed "opening" of the militaryregime. The next day he signed on againas the interior minister for a "crack­down." But these are only two sides ofthe same policy. Earlier Jarpa sought toentice the bourgeois opposition awayfrom the left with the carrot of dialogue.Air force general Matthei made somecooing noises and soon "moderate"dissidents were talking of a split betweendoves and hawks in the junta. But whenChristian Democrats began seekingcooperation with the Communist Partyafter the successful October 30 strike,when bishops of the Chilean Catholicchurch held a meeting with 200 leftistexiles in Rome in early November,Pinochet and his front man switchedover to the stick of repression.

The real target was the left andworkers movement. Soon the raids onthe slum shantytowns began. Shortlybefore 5 a.m. on November 10, residentsof the Silva Henriquez barrio heard thehelicopters and saw the armored per­-sonnel carriers pull up. Five days laterthe scene was repeated in La Victoria,

21 DECEMBER 1984 9

SPARTACIST LEAGUE/ U.S. LOCAL DIRECTORYNational Office Cleveland New YorkBox 1377, GPO Box 91037 Box 444New York, NY 10116 Cleveland. OH 44101 Canal Street Station(212) 732-7860 , (216) 621-5138 New York, NY 10013

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Ann Arbor, MI 48107 Detroit, MI 48232 Norfolk, VA 23501(313) 961-1680

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TROTSKYIST LEAGUEOF CANADA

Chile...(continued from page 9)

Communist Party, "full democracy"says the Combate group. More militanttypes call for "revolutionary populardemocracy." What this all means is thatthe immediate goal is not workersrevolution against the bloody dictator­ship, but the establishment of a "demo­cratic" regime with sectors of thebourgeoisie. As the CP puts it iPuntoFinal Internacional,. August 1984):"democracy now, socialism tomorrow[manana]"! What would be the programof such a bourgeois-democratic regime?The MOP manifesto calls for a provi­sional democratic government to re­place the dictatorship, annul Pinochet's1980 constitution and dissolve the CN I/DINA secret police; for a constituentassembly, human rights and an "emer­gency economic plan" that would com­bat unemployment.

Who will dismantle Pinochet's mur­derous se~ret police? A parliamentarycommission as next door in Argentina,where a few of the assassins are mildlypunished while most of these pathologi­cal killers walk free? The Chileanworkers and poor are burning to avengethe tens of thousands murdered in cold

Trotsky/Zinoviev...(continued from page 2)

and Trotsky' against the Stalin bureauc­racy, I should have been victorious evenif Lenin had taken no direct part in thestruggle."

At the same time, Trotsky pointed outthat the ultimate outcome in the strugglewould be determined by broader fac­tors, both within Russia and without.The most decisive of these factors wasthe German revolution. Mintz refers to"the catastrophic defeats in China andBritain" attempting to show that theinternational ramifications of Stalin'srise to power were not yet apparent in1924. He fails to mention the no lesscatastrophic failure of the October 1923German revolution which sealed Sta­lin's ascent to power. A proletarianvictory in either China or Britain wouldhave enormously strengthened the LeftOpposition. But the victory of theGerman October would have shatteredthe nationalist bureaucratic casteformation.

After the triumvirs decisively de­feated the 1923 Opposition (forerunnerof the Left Opposition) at the l Jth PartyCongress in May 1924, a schismbeganto open up between Zinoviev andKamenev on the one hand and Stalin onthe other. Mintz's assertion that thenature of this fight was unclear until

10

blood, the untold numbers torturedand "disappeared," the 100,000 sent torot for years in hellish concentrationcamps. The insurrectionary masses willhead for. the offices of the CNI/DINAto carry out revolutionary justice. Anda CP/Christian Democratic/ military"democratic" government will try tostop them from striking such a bodyblow to the capitalist state apparatus.

How will mass unemployment befought? Chile's depression has beenbrought on by rock-bottom worldcopper prices (the lowest in this cen­tury), impossible interest payments tothe imperialist banks (more than halfof annual export earnings), the bank­ruptcy of hundreds of industrial andfinancial companies. A different eco­nomic policy will solve nothing. Thereconstruction of this disaster-struckland can only be accomplished bysocialist economic planning. It requiresbreaking the stranglehold of the imperi­alists and expropriation of the capital­ists who put Pinochet in power andbrought about the ruin of Chile.

Because of the abject capitulation ofthe reformist misleaders, Allende'sUnidad Popular was brought down withhardly a fight. To avoid a repeat of thiscatastrophe for the working class theremust be a political reckoning with the

Zinoviev openly came out againstStalin's doctrine of "socialism in onecountry" in late 1925 is at best formalis­tic. The first appearance of Stalin'sdoctrine of "socialism in one country"was in an article entitled "October andComrade Trotsky's Theory of Perma­nent Revolution," published in Pravdaand Izvestia in December 1924. Stalinsought a formal endorsement for hisdoctrine at the 14th Party Conference inApril 1925 when the breakup of thetriumvirate was already in progress. ButZinoviev and Kamenev objected and,still avoiding a show of disunity, thetriumvirs presented an ambiguouslyworded resolution to the conference.Zinoviev did not openly attack Stalin'sdoctrine until September, soon after hetogether with Kamenev, Krupskaya andSokolnikov drew up the "Platform ofthe Four." The attack was contained inZinoviev's Leninism and even there it isnot a major theme of the book. EvenZinoviev's speeches to the 14th PartyCongress in December made littlereference to "socialism in one country."

At bottom the deepening factionalstruggle represented the different socialbases of the two groups. Zinoviev andKamenev were respectively heads of theLeningrad and Moscow party organiza­tions. Leningrad was the Russian citymost dependent on heavy industry andStalin was not able to destroy Zinoviev's

. base there until the winter of 1925-26. In. addition, Moscow was the most power­ful base of support for the Left Opposi­tion. Stalin's base was in the governing

TorontoBox 7198, Station AToronto, Ontario M5W 1X8(416) 593-4138

Pinochet'scops brutalize

protester asgeneral strike

paralyzesSantiago,

October 29.

popular front which paved the way forPinochet. The international Spartacisttendency was unique in warning of theimpending disaster in Chile from thevery beginning, calling for revolution­ary Marxists "to irreconcilably opposethe Popular Front in the election and toplace absolutely no confidence in it inpower" (Spartacist No. 19, November­December, 1970). In making this pro­phetic call we based ourselves on the

apparatus, hence his bonapartist role.The market-oriented economic policiesof the New Economic Policy (NEP) didlittle to revive heavy industry from thedevastation of the Civil War and imperi­alist intervention. Objective economicconditions under NEP tended to pushZinoviev toward Trotsky's positionsregarding industrialization and eco­nomic planning, and Stalin toward thepro-peasant policies of the Bukharinright wing.

Mintz seems to think that personalbitterness could not have played anyrole in the delay of a Trotsky/Zinovievbloc. It is impossible to determineexactly what motives may have delayedthis bloc, but certainly there was greatanimosity on both sides. During 1923­24, Zinoviev considered Stalin a second­rate figure and the elimination ofTrotsky as key to succeeding Lenin.During this period Zinoviev was by farthe most bloodthirsty member of thetriumvirate toward Trotsky. Stalin,recognizing that the elimination ofTrotsky then was premature and wouldbe unpopular with the Russian workingmasses and Red Army, wasable to win abase in the party and governmentapparatus as the sober leader whoavoided extremes.

After the 13th Congress, the Lenin­graders were in opposition over many ofthe same issues that Trotsky had donebattle over in the preceding two years.Certainly Stalin was worried that theLeningrad opposition and the 1923 LeftOpposition would get together, andworked to head this off. He nowrevealed that in 1923 Zinoviev hadwanted to expel Trotsky and that he hadopposed this. In this period Stalinhypocritically praised Trotsky as anhonorable if errant revolutionist, con­trasting him favorably to the demago­gic, highhanded and widely despisedZinoviev.

Trotsky did not forget that it wasZinoviev who demanded his blood inthe period following Lenin's death.Trotsky adopted an above-the-battleposition. He took no part in the fiercedebates within the leadership in the fallof 1925 and watched silently as theLeningrad opposition was smashed atthe 14th Party Congress in December.Trotsky's personal notes made duringthe Congress refer to the Leningradersas "vociferous, vulgar; and rightlydiscredited," We can only conjecturewhether Trotsky would have beensuccessful in an attempt to form a blocwith Zinoviev in 1924-25. But thepotential that existed for such a bloc wasnot put to the test. When Trotskyrecognized that Stalin's conciliation of

lessons drawn by the great RussianCommunist Leon Trotsky from Stalin'ssabotage of the Spanish revolution.Today a Trotskyist party must beforgedin Chile to carry out a successfulworkers insurrection, to establish revo­lutionary soviet democracy through aworkers and peasants government,defended by a communist Red Armythat will crush Pinochet and his ilkforever. •

the pro-kulak, pro-NEPman right wingwas driving Russia to catastrophe andthreatening the social gains of October,he consummated a bloc with all leftoppositional forces which became theJoint Opposition.

Mintz implies that the breakup of thetriumvirate in the fall of 1925 leddirectly to the formation of the JointOpposition. In fact, neither group madeany overt move toward rapprochementuntil March or April 1926 when Trotskyand Kamenev met privately for the firsttime since 1923. The Joint Oppositionwas actually formed a few months later.And contrary to Mintz's assertion thatthe bloc with Zinoviev "allowed Trotskythree more years to fight inside theBolshevik Party," in less than a year anda half both Trotsky and Zinoviev wereexpelled from the party.

What do we mean when we say thatthe Trotsky/Zinoviev bloc did not takeplace "when it might have counted"?The formation of the Joint Oppositionhad little effect inside the Russian party,since this was by then bureaucraticallycontrolled by the Stalin/Bukharin bloc.Certainly the Joint Opposition greatlystrengthened Trotsky's position interna­tionally in the struggle against thedegeneration of the Communist Inter­national and later in the fight for theFourth International. But that is not theIssue.

Had Trotsky been able to consum­mate a bloc' with the Zinoviev group in1924-25, this would have posed thequestion of power within the Sovietstate. Had a revolutionary leadershipdirected the Soviet government andCommunist International in the mid­1920s, this could have changed worldhistory. The British general strike of1926 and more importantly the Chineserevolution of 1926-27 could well havebeen victorious, ending the terribleisolation of the Soviet Union.

1\s in all things, Trotsky maintained acritical and scientific attitude toward thehistory of the Left Opposition which hesummed up in conclusion to his de­finitive reappraisal of the StalinistThermidor:

"Our tendency never laid claim 10infallibility. We do not receive ready­made truths as a revelation. like the highpriests of Stalinism. We study. wediscuss. we check our conclusions in thelight of existence. we openly correct theadmitted mistakes and-we proceedforward. Scientific conscientiousnessand personal strictness are the besttraditions of Marxism and Leninism.We wish to remain true to our teachersin this respect as well."

-Leon Trotsky. "TheWorkers' State. Thermidorand Bonapartism"(February 1935)_

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[in preparation1

The struggle to break the chains ofapartheid slavery in South Africa andthe struggle for black freedom in racistAmerica have a tremendous reciprocalimpact on each other. The dependenceof South African capitalism on blacklabor and the strategic concentration of'black workers in the American economyimparts to elementary race and classsolidarity against the oppressor anenormous revolutionary potential. Theemerging proletarian centrality of blackrevolt in South Africa as demonstratedby the Transvaal general strike serves torouse the restless black masses in thefactories and ghettos of the U.S. WhenBay Area longshoremen, despite thevictimization by maritime bosses andsabotage by union tops and their "left"flunkeys, refuse to unload South Afri­can cargo which sat in the SF harbor forten days, this must fortify black toilerssuffering under the U.S.-backed apart­heid police state.

Black workers in South Africa andthe U.S. can be the motor force forsocial revolution in their respectivecountries. The explosive potential oftheir class solidarity has everyone fromBishop Tutu to the U.S. labor bureau­crats and black Democrats terrified andpleading with Reagan and Botha thatit's time to "Adapt or Die." But theSouth African capitalist rulers cannot"adapt"-for the apartheid system is asfundamental to their existence as anexploiting class as racial oppression isfor the American rulers. They can andmust be brought down through socialrevolution.

Just how interlocked the struggles ofAmerican blacks and South Africanfreedom fighters are.can beseenfromthe Defiance Campaign against .apart­heid in the 1950s. Led by Mandela arid .the Congress Alliance,it had a profounqinfluence on the emerging Americancivil rights movement-just as Ameri­can black radicals like Malcolm X andthe Panthers had an enormous impacton the developing South African "blackconsciousness" movement when thoseblack radicals were breaking from theliberal preachers like Desmond Tutu.And while the black liberals talk about"divestment," black workers in the U.S.who've seen their strikes smashed, seenthe givebacks and takeaways gut theirwages and working conditions, have noillusions in "enlightened" Americancapitalism. One hundred twenty majorcapitalist corporations in the U.S.­including Union Carbide (!), the massmurderer of Bhopal, India-now weepcrocodile tears about apartheid whilebusting union contracts, then ruthlesslylaying off black workers at home.

Coloured auto workers of FordMotor Co. in Port Elizabeth, blackworkers at Detroit's River Rouge­same enemy, same fight. In the U.S., asin South Africa, the key is building agenuinely communist party, a Trotsky­ist party, at the head of the workersmovement, leading behind its bannersall the oppressed, from the ghettos andthe sprawling bantustans, the women,the revolutionary youth, in the fight forsocialist revolution. Real "solidarity"with our embattled class brothers inSouth Africa is the fight to bring downReagan and racist American capitalismhere at home! •

WV PhotoCleveland, December 15: spiritedSpartacist contingent protests out­side South African consulate.

Contrast Tutu's anti-Communistappeal to imperialist chieftain Reaganto the heroic leader of the ANC, NelsonMandela, in his speech at the 1964Rivonia trial, where he was sentenced tolife imprisonment. (He has been inprison ever since, most of it on thenotorious Robben Island.) While stat­ing he was not a communist himself,Mandela went on:

"It is perhaps difficult for White SouthAfricans, with an ingrained prejudiceagainst Communism, to understandwhy experienced African politicians soreadily accept Communists as their

friends. But to us the reason is obvious.Theoretical differences amongst thosefighting against oppression is a luxurywe cannotallord at this stage. What ismore, for many decades Communistswere the only political.groupin SouthAfrica who were prepared to treatAfricans as human beings and theirequals: who were prepared to eat withus: talk with us, live with us and workwith us.. .. Because of this. there aremany Africans who. today, tend toequate freedom with Communism.They are supported in this belief by alegislature which brands all exponentsof democratic government and Africanfreedom as Communists and bans manyof them (who are not Communists)under the Suppression of CommunismAct."

-reproduced in Thomas Karisand Gwendolen M. Carter.eds.. From Protest toChallenge. Vol. 3 (1977)

While the ANC and South AfricanCommunist Party have many coura­geousand dedicated cadres; the strategyof these organizations is one of pressur­ing the liberal bourgeoisie in SouthAfrica and especially in West Europeand the U.S. to oppose apartheid.However, white-ruled SouthAfricahasalways been an important part of the"free world," all the more obviously sounder Reagan's stepped-up anti-Sovietwar drive, and the liberals are not aboutto cut the ties that bind -these strategicallies. It is South Africa's powerful

. black proletariat, which, under a revolu­tionary vanguard, will be the gravedig­ger of apartheid capitalism. And on thatgrave will rise a black-centered workersand peasants government.

embassy in Washington continued,spreading to the consulates in NewYork, Chicago and other cities. Every"constituency" of the Democratic Partywas encouraged to come out. There wasa "labor day" in which AFL-CIObureaucrats showed up to get busted; areligious leaders' day in New York,marked by the appearance of figures asdiverse as black race-baiting demagogueRev. Herbert Daughtry and liberalZionists from the American JewishCongress (hoping nobody would re­mind them that Israel is a majorweapons supplier to South Africa); anda "yuppies" day as Gary Hart showedup. Even arch-segregationist Alabamagovernor George Wallace endorsedthe protests (Washington Post, 7December)!

The strategy of the black liberalpoliticians and their allies is to pressureU.S. imperialism to force South Africato make cosmetic reforms which deflectblack struggle but which do not chal­lenge the capitalist (and therefore whitesupremacist) status quo. This policy isnot only utterly utopian on its ownterms, but it is obscene to demand thatthe American ruling class, the biggestracist criminals in the world, pressure itsjunior partner South Africa into clean­ing up its act. As part of the blackliberals' call to "divest" everythingSouth African, the Free South AfricaMovement is now planning a.stepped­up campaign for (obviously wealthy)Americans to sell off their gold Kruger­rands. The only effect would be todrive down their price slightly so theycan be bought at a profit by someDutch speculator or other capitalistentrepreneur.

Organizers for the Free South Africacommittee quite openly admit theyneeded a quick fix following the blackpols' disastrous support for loser Dem­ocrat Mondale, who said not one wordabout South Africa during the wholecou rse of the campaign. "We were downso far we had to do something-youcan't fall off the ground," says RandallRobinson of the TransAfrica foreignpolicy lobby and brain truster of thedemonstrations (Washington Post, 12December). And Congressional BlackCaucus head Walter Fauntroy told theWashington Afro-American (II De­cember) that the black pols had deliber­ately put off the South African cam­paign until after the U.S. electionsbecause "we felt it would be a diversionfrom ... concentrating our energies onvoter registration:'

It's cheap for the black Oems to talkabout a new "civil rights movement"over faraway South Africa, conven­iently avoiding the heat of a struggleagainst the- racist budget ax here athome (see "Reagan's Kill 'em All Cuts,"page I). Likewise their role during the1960s struggles was to keep the move­ment confined within the "respectable"-.liberal capitalist framework from whichthe black radicals of SNCC and thePanthers were already breaking.

Smash Apartheid-For Workers Revolution!

Paralleling the Fauntroys and Del­lums, black South African Anglicanbishop Desmond Tutu has pleaded withReagan to protect South Africancapitalism by forcing it to "adapt"before it is brought down through socialrevolution. After his visit to the WhiteHouse last week, Tutu said he waspleased that Reagan "spoke as he hadnever before" in criticizing apartheid.When it wasannounced that he had wonthe Nobel Peace Prize last October,Tutu appealed to the "enlightened"imperialists, declaring that apartheidand communism are "equal evils," andbegged the apartheid rulers to reform.because it is "our last peaceful chance."No wonder this Cold War bishop wonthe Nobel Prize; for his sermons"sanctify" the' Reagan/ Botha anti­Soviet war drive, whose victims are thethousands of freedom fighters fromNamibia to Mozambique.

Sewpersadh, Mewa Rarngobin, Mur­giah Naidoo, Curtis Nkondo, AubreyMokoena and Essop Jassat. Gurnede,age 72, was also a defendant in theinfamous Treason Trial of the AfricanNational Congress (ANC) in the late1950s.

Many of the arrested UOF leadersnow facing the death 'sentence were firstarrested last August during the success­ful election boycott/ protest againstSouth African president P. W. Botha's"constitutional new deal" for impotent,separate, segregated "coloured" (mixedrace) and Indian parliaments. This wasthe beginning of an explosive blackrevolt which for four months has rippedthrough the apartheid police state, fromthe impoverished townships to the highschools to the black workers in the goldmines and industrial plants. SouthAfrica's racist rulers are seeking tobehead this widening struggle.

Now is the time for mass mobili­zations and international labor action insolidarity with our embattled classbrothers and sisters in South Africa!Free the UOF Eight, the organizers ofthe Transvaal Regional Stayaway Com­mittee, and all victims of apartheidrepression! Smash apartheid slavery­for workers revolution!

New York CityTues.: 6:00-9:00 p.m .• SaI.:12:00-4:00 p.m.~1 Warren St. (one block belowChambers St. near Church St.)New York, N.Y. Phone: (212) 267-1025

Trotskyist Leagueof Canada

Torontosat.: 1:00-5:00 p.m.299 Queen St. W.. Suite 502Toronto. Ontario Phone: (416) 593-4138

Anti-ApartheidFighters...(continuedfrom page 1)

Spartacist LeaguelSpartacus Youth League

Public Offices-MARXIST LlTERATURE­

Bay AreaFri.: 5:00-8:00 p.m.• Sat.: 3:00-6:00 p.m.1634 Telegraph, 3rd Floor (near 17th Street)Oakland. California Phone: (415) 835-1535

ChicagoTues.: 5:00-9:00 p.m., Sat.:11:00 a.m.-2:00 p.m.161 W. Harrison St., 10th FloorChicago. Illinois Phone: (312) 663-0715

Reagan, Black LiberalsTake Credit. .. For What?

The treason charges against the U0 Fleaders and "subversion" chargesagainst the Transvaal stay-away com­mittee come in the face of the widelypublicized sit-ins at the South Africanembassy. in the U.S. by prominentmembers of the American black liberalestablishment. When a number of SouthAfrican anti-apartheid activists werereleased from prison in early December,these black Democrats naturallyclaimed their actions were responsible.Not to be upstaged, Reagan quicklyclaimed it was a triumph for his policy of"constructive engagement." While Rea­gan and his black liberal opponentswere vying {or credit in securing therelease of anti-apartheid militants, theleaders were rearrested and threatenedwith the death penalty!

Botha used the occasion to declare hisdefiance of American pressure, whetherReagan's "quiet diplomacy" or the blackliberals' more militant tactics: "N 0 quietdiplomacy or hard shouting will keep usfrom ... the retention of civilized values"(New York Times, 14 December)! ForSouth Africa's racist masters, "civilizedvalues" mean police-state terror-againstthe black toilers whose superexploita­tion gives the white minority thecomforts of "civilization."

Last week the demonstrations led byblack Democratic elected officials(BEOs) outside the South African

21 DECEMBER 1984 11