workers vanguard no 681- 02 january 1998

7/29/2019 Workers Vanguard No 681- 02 January 1998

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50eNo. 681 "'X423 2 January 1998

IMF "Bailout" Means Miseryfor South Korean Workers

For RevolutionaryReunificationof Korea!

DECEMBER 20-Former "dissident" Kim Dae Jung was electedpresident of South Korea two daysago amid one of the sharpest crises inthe country's history. As the seriesof financial collapses which firsterupted in Thailand this summerengulfed the world's eleventh-largesteconomy, South Korea has beenthrown into turmoil. December 3, theday outgoing president Kim YoungSam acquiesced to the onerous termsof a $57 billion "bailout" proposalby the U.S.-dominated InternationalMonetary Fund (IMF), has beendubbed "National Humiliation Day"and compared to the Japanese colonization which ended in 1945. Amongthe working class, there is widespread fear and anger over the threatof massive wage (lUtS and even moremassive layoffs-as many as onemillion in the coming months.

Reuters photosSouth Korean workers protest against austerity measures dictated by U.S.-dominatedIMF. Massive U.S. military presence bolsters Seoul police state, threatens NorthKorean deformed workers state. Below: Clinton during 1993 visit to 38th paralleldividing North and South.

sis has -impelled workers onto thestreets. Suharto's Indonesia has beenhit by strikes on almost a daily basis(see "Capitalist Greed Fuels Worker Unrest-Crisis Rocks SoutheastAsia," WV No. 678, 14 November1997). Meanwhile, the question beingasked everywhere is, "Will China benext?" As the venal Stalinist regimeruling the deformed workers -stateaccelerates capitalist "market reforms," it faces enormous pressureson all sides. Foreign investment hasplummeted this year, helping to undercut Beijing's designs for a "cold" restoration of capitalism, while strikesand protests against layoffs and falling living standards have mounted.The alternatives posed pointblank inChina are proletarian political revolution, creating a regime based onworkers democracy and proletarianinternationalism, or bloody capitalist_ counterrevolution and untrammeledimperialist exploitation.

Even as the IMF deal was being pushed through, the imperialistimposed partition of Korea was againhighlighted, as the U.S., South Korea, China and North Korea beganthe first-ever "peace" talks aimed atbringing to a formal close the 1950-53 Korean War. For the past half century, the Korean peninsula has bee-rdivided at the 38th parallel between'a capitalist police state in the Southand a bureaucratically deformed workers state in the North. To this day,close to 40,000 American troops remain on South Korean soil-including a mammoth garrison right inthe_ heart of the capital, Seoul-forwhich the U.S. demands some $350 million a year from the South Korean government. The North Korean delegation atthe talks rightly demanded the removal ofthis imperialist occupation force. proletarian internationalists, the SpartacistLeaguelU.S. has consistently called forthe immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all U.S. military forces fromKorea.The conditions imposed by the IMF,under direct U.S. diktat, are clearlydesigned to undermine South Korea'scapacity to compete economically-evenas a weak rival-by clipping the wingsof the high-flying industrial/financialconglomerates, the chaebol, and limitingexports of cars and other manufacturedgoods. With the South Korean won plung-

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ing in value against the dollar, the IMFdeal also opens the way to a stream ofimperialist takeovers, as former constraints on foreign investment and banking operations have been pried wideopen. This has provoked a tide of nationalist sentiment, with middle-class housewives taking to the streets to protestimports of foreign luxury items and tocollect donations to keep the won afloat.That wide layers of the South Koreanpopulation see the IMF accord as a pl6t toenforce neocolonial dependence speaksto the history of the country this century,subjugated first by Japanese colonialismand then by U.S. imperialism.While South Korea's capitalist rulersare far from happy about having to bowbefore the IMF, they are sure to use thisopportunity to go after the combativeindependent labor movement organizedin the Korean Confederation of TradeUnions (KCTU). With the chaebol's profitmargins squeezed by competition on theinternational market and their attempts tointensify exploitation at home frustrated

by the power of the unions, already a yearago the Kim Young Sam regime triedto ram through laws codifying the illegal status of the KCTU, allowing masslayoffs and strengthening the draconianNational Security Law. This provokedan upsurge of workers' struggles, whichcould well happen again in response to theimposition of IMP-dictated austeritymeasures.I f the South Korean workers go intobattle, they will not be fighting alone.Throughout Southeast Asia, economic cri-

The workers of South Korea canplay a leading role in the fight for asocialist Asia. Proletarian revolutionin South Korea would not only sweepaway the bloodsucking chaebol capitalists and their police-state terror but,together with workers political revolution in the North to oust the nationalist Stalinist bureaucracy, would bring -about the revolutionary reunificationof Korea. This fight must be basedon a perspective of internationalistunity with Chinese workers facingthe threat of capitalist counterrevolution and with the proletariat of Japan,the industrial powerhouse of Asia.The International Communist Leaguefights to forge Bolshevik parties inKorea and around the world in struggle for new October Revolutions."Democratic" Police State

The South Korean bourgeoisieprides itself on performing a "miracle onthe Han" in developing the country'sindustrial base over the past threedecades. But there was nothing miraculous about this; rather, it was based ongrinding exploitation of the proletariatenforced by an enormous police-stateapparatus backed up by the U.S. militarygendarmerie. Writing about backwardcountries in the epoch of imperialism,Russian revolutionary leader Leon Trotskynoted in his 1940 article, "Trade Unionscontinued on page 8

Part 5: Labor and the Fight for Black Righ


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Last September, the "InternationalistGroup" (IG) posted on its Internet Webpage an "ALERT!" reporting on "NewRepression Against Brazilian Trotskyists." According to the IG, the Braziliancourts had ordered the seizure of the second issue of a union newsletter put outby the Comite de Luta Classista (CLCClass-Struggle Caucus), a group run bythe IG's fraternal allies, the Liga QuartaInternacionalista do Brasil (LQB). TheJG posting proclaimed: "The bosses'courts want to silence the voice that tellsthe truth." An appeal for "urgent solidarity" was addressed "to the workers, tothe unions, to all opponents of repression." This "urgent" call has remained onthe IG's Web page without a word of

update for over three months!What gives? In a telephone interviewwith IG supremo Jan Norden on December 20, a Workers Vanguard reporterasked why, "if the point was to silencethe voice that tells the truth," the IGhadn't circulated the issue of the CLCnewsletter suppressed by the courts.Replied Norden, "We're not basicallypushing for that." Norden and his IG certainly haven't pushed for the truth.Since Norden & Co. engineered theirexpUlsions from the International Communist League a year and a half ago, thishandful of demoralized defectors fromTrotskyism have trumpeted the fictionthat the LQB is building the "nucleus ofa genuine Trotskyist party" and have

For Political Independenceof the Proletariat

The key strategic question in the fight forsocialist revolution is the political independence of the proletariat from the capitalistclass enemy. In an unfinished 19 40 articleintended as a preface to the Chinese editionof his History of the Russian Revolution,Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky outlined howthe policies of class collaboration pursued

TROTSKY by the Stalinists-from the liquidation of LENINthe Chinese Communist Party into thebourgeois-nationalist Guomindang in the 1920s to the "People's Front" in France andSpain in the 1930s-led to catastrophic defeats for the proletariat and set the stage forbloody capitalist reaction. Again in the aftermath of World War II, the Stalinists betrayed revolutionary opportunities in France, Italy and elsewhere by tying the workingclass to the bourgeois order. The International Communist League seeks to hammerhome these lessons as we fight to reforge Trotsky's Fourth International as the worldparty of socialist revolution.The essence of Bolshevism was the class policy of the proletariat, which alonewould bring about the conquest of power in October. In the course of its entire history,Bolshevism came out irreconcilably against the policy of collaboration with the bour

geoisie. Precisely in this consisted the fundamental contradiction between Bolshevismand Menshevism. Still more, the struggle within the labor movement, which precededthe rise of Bolshevism and Menshevism, always in the last analysis revolved around thecentral question, the central alternative: either collaboration with the bourgeoisie orirreconcilable class struggle. The policy of "People's Fronts" does not include an iota ofnovelty, if we discount the solemn and essentially charlatan name. The matter at issuein all cases concerns the political subordination of the proletariat to the left wing ofthe exploiters, regardless of whether this practice bears the name of coalition or LeftBloc (as in France) or "People's Front" in the language of the Comintern.The policy of the "People's Front" bore especially malignant fruit because it wasapplied in the epoch of the imperialist decay of the bourgeoisie. Stalin succeeded inconducting to the end, in the Chinese revolution, the policy which the Menshevikstried to realize in the revolution,of 1917. The same thing was repeated in Spain. Twograndiose revolutions suffered catastrophe owing to this: that the methods of the leadership were the methods of Stalinism, i.e., the most malignant form of Menshevism.In the course of five years, the policy of the "People's Front," by subjecting the proletariat to the bourgeoisie, made impossible the class struggle against war. If the defeatof the Chinese revolution, conditioned by the leadership of the Comintern, preparedthe conditions for Japanese oc.


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Racist Popular Front GovernmentItaly: Mass Deportations

of Albanian RefugeesOn December 3, the Italian Ulivo(Olive Tree) coalition government ofPrime Minister Romano Prodi and Massimo D'Alema' s Party of the DemocraticLeft (P DS) carried out dawn raids on asylum centers in order to deport thousands

ofAlbanian refugees. This racist capitalist government relies on the active parliamentary support of Fausto Bertinotti'sRifondazione Comunista (RC)-a successor, like the PDS, to the reformist Communist Party -whose "left" wing includesthe fake-Trotskyist Proposta group. TheLega Trotskista d'Italia (LTd'/), section ofthe International Communist League,responded with an immediate leaflet,translated below, demanding, "No to theDeportations of Albanian Refugees!"

[SPARTACONewspaper of theLega Trotskista d'Italia

November 30 was the expiration dateset by the government for temporaryvisas issued to Albanian refugees lastMarch. Four days ago, refugees living inthe "welcoming centers" (read: concentration camps) went on a hunger strike atCassano delle Murge (Bari province),Caraffa (Brindisi province), Sarnano(Macerata province), Borgo Mezzanone(Foggia province) and Falerna (Catanzaro province). The refugees barricadedthemselves inside the centers, refused toaccept food and turned away Red Crossambulances. Despite their meager forces,they were prepared to put up as muchresistance as possible to the expectedintervention by the Carabinieri [police]and army to deport them by force. Therefugees said, "It's better to die in Italythan to return to Albania," and threatenedto use Molotov cocktails against a possible police attack.The PDS is the core of the racist bourgeois Ulivo coalition government and itenjoys the full support of RC. This is thesame regime that [last spring] sent theNavy destroyer Sibilla to sink a ship carrying Albanian refugees fleeing desperate poverty, drowning 89 of them. Then,under the fig leaf of "humanitarian aid,"it sent imperialist military forces (the first

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OggiDesperate Albanian refugees at Cassano delle Murge center in Bari. Copslater dragged off refugees for deportation in dawn raids.such expedition undertaken by the Italianimperialists since Mussolini) to that tinyBalkan country to prop up its falteringpuppet regime. Their aim was to defendthe interests ofItali an capitalism-threatened by the social chaos that came in thewake of the outrageous Italian!Albanianmonetary speculation-and to increasethe exploitation of the impoverishedAlbanian masses. Now the governmentwants to ship back into this nightmarethose few refugees who escaped andmade it to Italy.Just yesterday the government promised a 300,000 lire [$175] bribe to anyrefugee who agrees to leave, announcingthat only those who "find a jo b .. havefamily ... or are under medical treatment"will be allowed to stay. "As for the restnothing doing." Albanian prime ministerFatos Nano pronounced, "We will helpsupport them for six months so that theycan find work" (Corriere della Sera,2 December 1997). Despite this, today atdawn police carried out violent assaultson the centers, forcibly evicting all therefugees and taking them under guard tothe Falconara Marittima airport and toBrindisi where two Navy ships awaited

Italian imperialist"peacekeeping"troops dispatchedto Albania bypopular-frontUlivo government.

them. We say: Italian troops out of Albania! Full citizenship rights for all Albanan immigrants and refugees!The Italian bourgeoisie has used thespectre of an "Albanian invasion" tofoment racism against all immigrants, todivide the working class and create ascapegoat for rising unemployment. Theresurgence of aggressive Italian imperialism goes hand in hand with the Ulivogovernment's anti-worker, anti-woman,racist austerity. The drowned Albanianrefugees are victims of the same bourgeois regime that is responsible for thesuicides of desperate unemployed workers in the South and the rising toll ofworkers killed in "industrial accidents," atoll that will increase with the signing ofthe "labor pact" by Ulivo, RC and thetrade-union bureaucracy.Ulivo: Imperialist Murdererswith RC and Proposta in Tow!Rifondazione Comunista is a pillar ofsupport for the Ulivo government, whoseforeign minister, Lamberto Dini, demanded the construction of concentrationcamps in Albania to imprison the deported refugees. On July 24, RC's Senatefraction voted for a 45-day extension of"Alba 2" (Dawn 2), which stationed theItalian troops in Albania. Many of theseare the same units which perpetrated torture and rape in Somalia. The Ulivo/RCcoalition covered up for these sadisticbeasts in order to give them a free hand inAlbania in the interests of Italian imperialism. Just a few weeks ago, RC voted infavor of the racist Napolitano law that further restricts immigration and makes iteasier for the state to deport immigrants.Thanks to this new law approved by RC,over 200,000 immigrants face immediatedeportation. Under the Ulivo/RC coalitiongovernment, immigrants make up overone-third of the Italian prison population.This past summer and autumn, theUlivo/RC regime used police to carryout military-style, house-to-house "antiAlbanian" roundups. On May 13, FaustoBertinotti had a friendly, one-and-a-halfhour chat with [National Alliance] parliamentarian Gianfranco Fini, a fascist ina suit, on the Maurizio Costanzo Show.Rather than fight to unionize all immi-

grants and for jobs for all, RC supportsthe Treu Agreement, which imposes alower wage scale in the South andincreases the number of jobs not coveredby union contract. At the same time theysupport the racist laws and deportations.On April 7, the fake-left RC, with Pro-posta's support, voted in favor of a leadership motion calling for "postponing theprojected military mission to Albania,"and for carrying it out under a UN figleaf. This motion supported by Propostaalso called for "limited and temporaryvisas [for Albanian refugees], to berenewable until the end of the emergencyin Albania, with provisions for the prosecution and expUlsion of all criminal elements." RC/Proposta's motion implicitlyguarantees the deportation of the Albanian refugees!Proposta never fights for full citizenship rights for all immigrants, for theunionization of immigrant workers, noragainst the deportations. In Proposta(January 1996), they write that "the rightto vote in administrative [local] electionsshould be granted after one year, and fullsuffrage should be granted after threeyears residence in our country," openlyopposing full citizenship rights for immigrants. Proposta accepts the racist statusquo of this capitalist society, especiallyunder this bourgeois, racist Ulivo coalition. Any RC member who wants to be acommunist must break with this partywhich supports the bourgeois government, its anti-immigrant laws and itscapitalist austerity! Break with the popular front!It is necessary to fight for full citizenship rights for all immigrants and againstthe divisions introduced by the bourgeoisstate with the classifications of "legal"and "illegal" immigrants! Wherever thereare immigrant workers, it is necessary tofight for their union organization in orderto strengthen the workers movement anddefend their rights. It is a basic principlefor any class-conscious worker that therights of the workers and those of themost oppressed layers of society willeither go forward together or be drivenback separately. But parties like Rifondazione Comunista, in allying with theimperialist bourgeoisie, necessarily trample on the struggle for the liberation ofwomen and the struggle for the rights ofimmigrants and all minorities.What's needed is a new, revolutionaryleadership of the working class, a tribuneof the people and fighter on behalf of allthe oppressed. It is necessary to breakwith the class-collaborationist politics ofRC which, in the name of a "lesser evil,"subordinate the vital interests of the proletariat to those of its capitalist exploiters and oppressors. Break with class collaborationism! Stop the racist, capitalistausterity of Prodi, D'Alema, and Bertinotti! No to class collaboration with thebourgeoisie!We of the LTd'I/ICL struggle to forgea Bolshevik party that fights for workers power! Build a revolutionary workersparty, tribune of the oppressed! Forworker/immigrant mobilizations to smashracist terror! Unionize all immigrants!For workers strikes and actions againstthe imperialist intervention in Albaniaand the deportations! The main enemy isat home!.

Spartacist LeaguePublic Offices-MARXIST LlTERATURE

Bay AreaThurs.: 5:30-8:00 p.m., Sat.: 1 00-5:00 p.m.1634 Telegraph, 3rd Floor (near 17th Street)Oakland, California Phone: (510) 839-0851ChicagoTues.: 5:00-9:00 p.m., Sat.: 12:00-3:00 p.m.328 S. Jefferson St., Suite 904Chicago, Illinois Phone: (312) 454-4930New York CitySaturday: 1 00-5:00 p.m.41 Warren St. (one block belowChambers St. near Church SI.)New York, NY Phone: (212) 267-'025

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Victoria's Secret Spies:Deadly Threat to Workers, Minorities, The following statement, issued by theSpartacist League/Australia on October

27, was printed in Australasian Spartacist No. 162 (Summer 1997-1998).The Melbourne Age's exposure in earlyOctober of the [state of] Victoria police'smassive spying operation starkly revealsfor all to see the day-to-day machinations

of "official" capitalist state repression.According to the Age, under successiveLabor (ALP) governments between 1985and 1992 the Operations Intelligence Unit(OIU) targeted more than 1,200 individuals and organisations-socialists, including the Spartacist League, trade unions,Aboriginal, immigrant, civil rights groupsand women's rights activists.Liberal Victoria premier Jeff Kennettrallied to the defence of these sinisterspies, branding their targets "those who

SPA.TACISTNewspaper of heSpartacist League of Australia

are going to pervert the course of justiceand commit acts of crime." Kennett'spolice chief, Commissioner Neil Comrie,boasts that the spying continues, and allpotential opponents of the governmentare targets for state disruption and provocation: "Some apparently innocuous organisations are nothing but front groupsor fundraisers for terrorist activities overseas. And some groups are unknowinglyexploited by extremists who use them asa cover to pursue their own agendas"(Age, 10 October). Kennett & Co. smearpolitical protesters as "violent" and "extremist" yet it is the capitalist apparatusof state repression that is the source of allmanner of violence. The Victoria policeare notorious for gunning down 28 peoplesince 1988-Aborigines, the mentally illand others. In 1995 alone they killedeight.

The great number and diversity of theorganisations listed in the Age demonstrates that this surveillance was aimed atheading off any struggle against the increasingly raw exploitation and oppression of those at the bottom of this society.In fact the ultimate target of the politicalpolice is the organised workers movement. Among the organisations in theAge's list were at least eight trade unions.The current revelations coincide with farreaching state and federal union-bustingin which the right of workers to picket oreven be in a union is under sharp attack.

In order to attack the organised working class, the bourgeoisie is targeting themost vulnerable sections of the population. In this country, dominated fordecades by an official policy of "WhiteAustralia" racism, it is unsurprising thatthe OIU's surveillance singles out Aboriginal groups who have protested againstblack deaths in custody, and immigrantand minority political organisations. Theinclusion of some fascist terrorists cannotdisguise that the cops' operation wasaimed at those whom the fascists alsohave in their sights. The rights of labourand minorities must go forward together,or they will fall back separately.In August 1996, thousands of tradeunionists came to the defence of Abo-

Spartacistcontingentat antifascistprotest,Melbourne,March 1997.Secret policespy operationtargeted labor,Aboriginal andother minoritygroups,socialists,includingSpartacistLeague.

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rigines under police attack at the massive Canberra demonstration. Such powerful actions, historically all too rare, aredeeply alarming to the racist Australianrulers. The state responded by launchinga sinister witchhunt, "Operation Veneer,"against trade unionists, Aborigines andstudent activists. The ALP/ACTU [laborfederation] tops, seeking to prove theirloyalty to capitalism, joined hands withthe bosses, and actively set up andpurged their ranks.Now, in response to the large protestsagainst vile racist demagogue PaulineHanson, the government has increasingly turned to brutal state repression,as mounted cops charge demonstrators,arresting dozens. Even as the cops arecaught out for their earlier spying, the"Protective Security Intelligence Group"(PSIG), the OIU's successor, is unabashed

SPARTACIST LEAGUE/U.S. LOCAL DIRECTORY

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National Office: Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 (212) 732-7860BostonBox 390840, Central Sta.Cambridge, MA 02139(617) 666-9453ChicagoBox 6441 , Main POChicago, IL 60680(312) 454-4930

Los AngelesBox 29574, Los Feliz Sta.Los Angeles, CA 90029(213) 380-8239New YorkBox 3381 , Church St. Sta.New York, NY 10008(212) 267-1025

OaklandBox 29497Oakland, CA 94604(510) 839-0851San FranciscoBox 77494San Francisco, CA 94107(415) 777-9367

TROTSKYIST LEAGUE OF CANADA/LiGUE TROTSKYSTE DU CANADATorontoBox 7198, Station AToronto, ON M5W 1X8(416) 593-4138

VancouverBox 2717, Main P.O.Vancouver, BC V6B 3X2(604) 687-035 3

about continuing to monitor "extremist"political groups, anti-Hanson rallies anduniversity protests.A Workers Party Has the Rightto Organise!

The government brands leftists as "terrorists" so as to set them up as nameless,faceless victims of capitalist state terror.In 1983 in the U.S. the FBI issued new"Domestic Security Terrorism Guidelines" which sought to equate Marxistpolitical opposition to the capitalist government with criminal "terrorism." A yearlater, cOJUfades of the Spartacist League/U.S. successfully concluded a lawsuitagainst the FBI, forcing it to retract its"definition" of the SL, which tried to

paint us as conspiratorial outlaws. TheSL's legal brief noted that we and ourpolitical predecessors have been "investigated" by the FBI since the Russian Revolution without the state ever finding anyevidence of violent crim.inal activity. TheFBI conceded the basic claim of our suit,that Marxists are not terrorists, and thatthe Spartacist League is what it says it is:"a Marxist political organization," thusdepriving the deadly dangerous secretpolice thugs a legal cover for violentmeasures against us.The OIU, PSIG and their ASIO (Australian Security Intelligence Organisation) big brothers operate in the shadows, seeking to conceal their sinisterpurpose: the legitimisation of state terroragainst those who struggle against orexpose the machinations of this capitalistsociety. Unlike these stealthy state criminals, we state our aims and programopenly. The Spartacist League, Australian section of the International Communist League, stands proudly under thebanner of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky inour fight to forge a party to lead theworking class to state power throughsocialist revolution.The State and Revolution

The Age's exposure is surely useful,but while exposure may sometimes hamper the cops in pursuing their disruptionagainst the left, as Marxists we understand that the bourgeoisie will never doaway with its political police. They arean essential part of the repressive apparatus on which its state power and classdictatorship rest. To argue otherwise isreformist dreaming. In every state inAustralia, starting in the early 1970s, thespecial branches were "disbanded." Re-

named and refurbished, their spooks andprovocateurs were restocked with theirbugs, black bags and guns, and sent outto hunt reds again.For the bourgeois liberals of the Victorian Council for Civil Liberties the problem with all this spying is that it undermines public confidence in the state andits police. "We understand the need foran Operations Intelligence Unit. .. ," theysay, urging that "the priorities of thepolice must be made more transparent sothat community confidence in their activities can be re-established." Just as theillusions created by the hoopla aboutLabor premier Cain's "abolishing" Victoria's political police gave the cops bettercover, so do calls for "accountability,"community control, inquiries, etc. serveto streamline police operations, rendering them more credible and strengthening the bourgeois state.Our own organisation is among thoseagainst which the state of Victoria hassent its prying cops. This is not the firsttime the Spartacist League has been targeted for surveillance and disruption. In1977 ASIO paid an agent, one Janet Langridge, to spy on our organisation. Aftertwo months as a candidate member ofthe SL, she voluntarily revealed her spyrole, because, she claimed, she came to"respect them and ... what they stand for."We immediately expelled her and made aconcerted effort to let the workers movement and left know about this ASIOdirty work and the existence of this particular individual.As we said then, this spying was "anintolerable violation of our democraticrights. We are a fully legal political organisation, entitled to carry on our activities, openly propagating our politicalviews, without subversive infiltration bygovernment bodies." Our aggressive campaign garnered front-page and major TVnews coverage across the nation. ASIOand the government were very embarrassed by it. Two years later new lawswere introduced which made publiclyidentifying an agent or employee of ASIOillegal, punishable by jail and fines.Our forthright campaign was in sharpcontrast to the actions of the reformist Socialist Workers Party (forerunnerof the Democratic Socialist Party-DSP)around the same time. Instead of expelling self-confessed police spy LisaWalter, they trumpeted her "conversion" to socialism and kept her in theorganisation.Unlike the DSP and others of its ilkwe revolutionary Marxists take as ourstarting point the fact that society isdivided into two hostile classes whoseinterests are irreconcilably counterposed:workers who must sell their labour power in order to survive, and the propertyowning capitalist class to whom theirlabour power is sold. The state consistsin essence of armed bodies of me ncops, courts and prisons-whose purposeis the repression of the working classand oppressed to protect the wealthand power of that tiny minority whoexploit the labour of the overwhelmingmajority. As V. I. Lenin, leader of theRussian Revolution, wrote in State andRevolution, "The state is an organ ofclass rule, an organ for the oppression ofone class by another." The state and itspolitical police cannot be "cleaned up,"reformed or pressured ipto acting onbehalf of workers and the oppressed. It

WORKERS VANGUARD


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must be shattered by workers revolution,replaced by a workers state which expropriates the capitalist class. -Labor Party Whitewash

The Victoria Labor opposition andNew South Wales Labor premier BobCarr denounced the secret police spyingand called for an inquiry (a demandsince met), all the while claiming theirhands are squeaky clean. The VictorianCouncil for Civil Liberties even says theOIU existed "without, it appears, theknowledge of the Government of theday" (Age, 7 October). While much ofthe fake left is happy to play along withthe charade that the Cain and KirnerLabor governments were unaware ofthese ,massive spying operations, it's acrock!Completely committed to the defenceof the capitalist system, the AustralianLabor Party in power administers thebourgeois state, including, necessarily,its spies and cops. It has an unbroken history of anti-Communist, anti-workingclass subversion. In fact it was the Laborgovernment of Ben Chifley in 1949which established the infamous ASIO,the same year the ALP called out thearmy to break the coal miners strike.Also in the ALP's sights at that timewere the waterfront unions which hadbeen staging strikes not only over economic demands., but also in support ofthe Indonesian independence struggleagainst the Dutch. Today Australia's secret police work hand in glove with theblood-drenched Suharto regime againstleftist Indonesian and Timorese studentsand exiles. The White Australia rulersvery much need their spies, not leastas they feel their imperialist enclavethreatened by the very existence of thepeoples of Asia. At the same time theylord it over the dark-skinned peoples ofthe region from Bougainville to Fiji andbeyond. Their "intelligence" agencies aredeeply enmeshed in attempts to keep itthat way.By 1983 Labor was in power in Victoria and federally. This was during ColdWar II, the imperialist offensive againstthe bureaucratically degenerated and

'7urnec/" agent exposes infiltration,-

Aboriginalprotesters addresstrade unionists(below) duringAugust 1996Canberra protestagainst welfarecuts, anti-unionlaws. Thousands ofangry protestersjoined in stormingParliament building.

More recently, in 1992 under Labor'sJoan Kirner, Victoria police raided thehomes of seven students, including members of the International Socialist Organisation (ISO). A smear campaign blamedleftist groups for "violence" at studentprotests against education cutbacks, naming the ISO, Left Alliance and the "Sparticist" League (the designated misspelling favoured by the FBI), and the copslaunched a "special investigation unit

St>eciaI .uppl .... lf24 JUlie 1977

ASIO targets Spartacist Spartacist Leaguelaunched campaignof public exposureagainst ASIOsecret police" " " ~ ' : f ' ' ' ' : : : ' < ; ~ : ! ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ . ~ ' ; : y ~ ~ ~ : , , ~ ~ ~ "",t.,,, ~ o > " " } ' 1 1 " ' ~ ' J . t > " : ... 1 . > . ~ ~ . I U l i " " t : : : . , . . ~ . ... = . ~ " ~ v ~ : " , " . l " > ~ 1 'NIJ ,I( > t ~ t ' < ' , ~ _ , , < 1 ' ' ' ' . . , ' il ... ,.. : " t : , ~ : " ( : : . . . , .. : 4 1 ' ~ ' " < " , * , , o " x ~ ' . : 4 J . ~ ) _ " t v < " ....."". b"~ v " ""W'H


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Wall Street andthe War Against LaborWe publish below the concluding partof this 'series. The first four parts ap-

peared in WV Nos. 676, 677, 679 and680, 17 and 31 October, 28 Novemberand 12 December 1997.The 1960s was the most significant,sustained period of mass social struggleand leftist radicalization in the U.S. sincethe 1930s. However, the social and political character-as well as the outcome

of the struggles during these two periodswere very different. In the '30s, the battles had centered on the formation (exceptin the South) of mass industrial unions,overcoming in part the racial-ethnic divisions which had hitherto crippled theAmerican working class. In many cases,these unions were led by self-describedcommunists or socialists. In contrast, the1960s saw a widening racial divide withinthe AmeriGan working class while themain currents of young radicals emergingfrom the civil rights and Vietnam antiwarmovements were indifferent or hostile toorganized labor. Primary responsibilityfor this development lay with the racist,anti-communist trade-union bureaucracy.The Spartacist League, which originated in the early 1960s, fought for a different outcome. In the civil rights movement and subsequent black struggles, weintervened around the program and perspective of revolutionary integrationism,linking the struggle for racial equality tothat for proletarian power:'The vast majority of Black peopleboth North and South-are today workers who, along with the rest of the American working class, must sell their laborpower in order to secure necessities oflife to those who buy labor power inorder to make profit. The buyers of laborpower, the capitalists, are a small minority whose rule is maintained only bykeeping the majority who labor for themdivided and misled. The fundamentaldivision treated deliberately along raciallines has kept the Negro workers whoentered American capitalism at the bottom, still at the bottom. Ultimately theirroad to freedom lies only through struggle with the rest of the working class toabolish capitalism and establish in itsplace an egalitarian, socialist society ..."Because of their position as both themost oppressed and also the most conscious and experienced section, revolutionary black workers are slated to playan exceptional role in the coming American revolution."

- "Black and Red: Class-StruggleRoad to Negro Freedom"(1966), reprinted in MarxistBulletin No.9, "Basic Documents of the Spartacist League"The Southern civil rights movement, inwhich entire black communities mobilized against the local white-supremacistregimes, provided an exceptionally favorable opportunity to finally unionize thestates of the old Confederacy. This wouldhave immeasurably strengthened the labormovement on both the economic andpolitical levels and could have crackedthe solid front of racist reaction in theSouth along class lines. However, theAFL-CIO tops still did nothing toorganize the South because doing so

would have shattered their political alliance with the Dixiecrats, on which thenational dominance of the DemocraticParty depended.At the 1964 Democratic Party convention in Atlantic City, a group of predominantly black civil rights activistscalling themselves the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party demanded to beseated in place of the official, whitesupremacist Mississippi delegation. Hu-", bert Humphrey, the party's leading liberal figure and darling of the AFL-CIOofficialdom, successfully maneuvered todefend the Dixiecrats against the black6

Part 5: Labor and theFight for Black Rights

Top: Civil rights protesters attacked by cops in Birmingham, 1963. Above:1960s strike by Charleston, South Carolina hospital workers. AFL-CIObetrayed struggle for black rights, union organization in South on altar ofalliance with racist Democrats.challenge. This, along with innumerablesimilar actions, rapidly alienated youngcivil rights militants from the liberalismof the Democratic Party and its laborlieutenants.Furthermore, the AFL-CIO had its ownsegregated sector: the building trades, thestronghold of the pre-1930s craft unions.Membership was passed down from fatherto son and uncle to n e p h e ~ . Liberalbureaucrats like Victor Reuther occasionally criticized the openly racist practicesof the construction unions but did nothingabout them. By the 1960s, major industrial unions like-the United Auto Workers(UAW) and the United Steel Workerswere heavily-even disproportionatelyblack. But in the eyes of many blacks,especially those outside the unions, thewhites-only building trades discreditedthe labor movement in general.The politics of the 1960s cannot, of

course, be understood solely in terms ofstruggles within the United States. Theblacks who defied the Klan and WhiteCitizens Councils in Alabama and Mississippi and who battled the cops in theghettos of Los Angeles and Detroit identified with and were partly inspired by therevolt of the dark-skinned peoples ofAsia, Africa and Latin America againstWestern imperialism. The Cuban Revolution, the Algerian War of Independenceand, above all, the bloody imperialist warin Vietnam had a profound effect onAmerican politics, especially the consciousness of young leftists. While blacksoverwhelmingly opposed the war, theanti-Communist fanatics in the AFL-CIObureaucracy, headed by George Meany,remained Vietnam War hawks even afterRepublican president Richard Nixon hadgiven it up as a lost cause by the early1970s.

The Spartacist League fought for independent working-class action-includinglabor strikes against the war-in opposition to the reformism of organizationslike the formerly Trotskyist SocialistWorkers Party, which pushed a strategyof pressuring liberal bourgeois politicians. A wave of important strikes, including the 1970 national postal strike,public employee strikes and Teamsterswildcats showed the potential power oflabor in contrast to the impotent "peacecrawls" favored by the liberals. To turnthis power against the war would haverequired a break with class collaborationin hard opposition to the liberal, Democratic Party-loyal wing of the laborbureaucracy.The Rise of Black Nationalism

All of these factors led a significantcurrent of black militants in the mid-1960s to break to the left from MartinLuther King Jr. and Democratic Partyliberalism under the slogan of "blackpower." We wrote in 1966:"In contrast to the reform program of thecivil rights movement, the demands ofthe black masses are necessarily andinherently class demands, and demandswhich the ruling class cannot meet. Thecall for jobs, for housing, and for emancipation from police brutalization (attacking the very basis of the state)-thesecannot be answered by another civilrights bill from Washington. Their pursuit leads inevitably to a sharper andsharper confrontation with the rulingclass. It is this transition which is repre- .sen ed by the black power slogan. Itspopularization represents the repudiationof tokenism, liberal tutelage, relianceon the federal government, and the nonviolent philosophy of moral suasion."-"Black Power-Class Power,"reprinted in Marxist Bulletin No.S (Revised): "What Strategy forBlack Liberation? Trotskyismvs. Black Nationalism" (1978)At the same time, we warned that the"black power" slogan "can be used bypetty bourgeois black nationalist elements who want to slice the social cakealong color rather than class lines and topromote reactionary color mysticism.More seriously, it can be degraded tomean mere support for black politiciansoperating within the system." And that is,in fact, what happened.

In the mid-to-Iate 1960s, the big urbanghettos-Harlem, Watts in L.A., Chicago, Newark, Detroit and elsewhereexploded, as black youth took to thestreets, battling the cops and lootingstores. These rebellions were savagely repressed by the police, National Guard andeven army units. At the same time, theruling class moved to buy off a layer ofcommunity activists, including nationalist demagogues, with federal money provided by "poverty" programs. Aiding inthis were pseudo-nationalist operators, adevelopment termed "porkchop nationalism" by the more radical Black PantherParty. Over the next few years, manymajor cities would acquire black Democratic mayors to oversee the ghettos onbehalf of Wall Street and the Fortune 500corporations.A manifesto of porkchop nationalismwas Stokely Carmichael's 1967 BlackPower: The Politics of Liberation inAmerica, co-authored with black academic Charles Hamilton. Carmichael (nowKwame Ture) had been a leading militantin the Southern civil rights struggles.Now, he and Hamilton demanded thatblack politicos be given a free hand torun the ghettos while being generouslyfunded by the U.S. Treasury. They werepredictably hostile to the trade unions,identifying the racist and 'pro-imperialist

WORKERS VANGUARD


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policies of the AFL-CIO bureaucracywith organized labor as such:"Organized labor has participated in th-eexploitation of colored peoples abroadand of black workers at home. Black people today are beginning to assert themselves at a time when the old colonialmarkets are vanishing; former Africanand Asian colonies are fighting for theright to control their own natural resources, free from exploitation by Western and American capitalism. With whomwill economically secure, organized laborcast its lot-with the big businesses ofexploitation or with the insecure poor colored peoples?.. The answer, unfortunately, seems clear enough."The vie\ys expressed here were by nomeans peculiar to Carmichael and Hamilton but in fact were part of the conventional wisdom of late-1960s American radicalism. The Black Panthers, whowere influenced by Maoism, thought thatall employed workers, black and white,had been bought off by the ruling classand that black lumpens were the revolutionary vanguard.A prominent leftist intellectual of theday was Paul Sweezy, whose journal,Monthly Review, introduced many aleftward-moving young liberal to Stalinist ideology in its Maoist incarnation.Sweezy sought to provide a sophisticated,"Marxist-Leninist" rationale for prevailing New Left/black nationalist anti-laborprejudices. Noting that Lenin had "arguedthat the capitalists of the imperialist countries could and do use part of their 'booty'to bribe and win over to their side an aristocracy of labor," Sweezy maintained:"As far as the logic of the argument isconcerned, it could be extended to a majority or even all the workers in the industrialized countries" (Monthly Review,December 1967).This assertion was made at the verymoment when American capitalism couldno longer concede significant improvements in the economic conditions of itsworking class. The next decade wouldsee stagnating wages followed by theintensification of the rate of exploitation and a frontal assault on the labormovement.The Bankruptcy of Liberalismand Ascendancy of the Right

During the 1950s and early '60s, thestructural weakness of the trade-unionmovement and treacherous nature ofits pro-capi talist .leadership was partlymasked by the fact that American capitalism was still strong enough to raiseliving standards for a majority of theworking class while maintaining a highlevel of profits. By the late 1960s thiswas no longer the case. The underlyingsources of weakness-an aging industrialplant, declining international competitiveness-were exacerbated by the inflationary pressures of the Vietnam War.During the second half of the 1960s,average real weekly earnings of ' nonsupervisory workers increased by a minuscule 2 percent and actually declinedslightly in two of the years. Union leaders were no longer delivering to theirmembers at the basic bread-and-butterlevel, while rhetoric by liberal intellectuals about an "affluent society" provokedbitter resentment among blue-collar workers, black as well as white.This period also saw the entry of a newproletarian generation-the post-WorldWar II "baby boomers"-into the labormarket. Their social and political consciousness, unlike that of their parents,was not shaped by the experience of theGreat Depression and the labor battles ofthe 1930s and ' 40s. They had no strongloyalties to either the AFL-CIO or theDemocratic Party. Young white workerswere thus open to right-wing demagogyand to blaming the country's social andeconomic ills on black radicalism and"welfare liberalism," while young blackworkers and unemployed ghetto youthwere receptive to nationalist denunciations of organized labor as a bastion ofwhite privilege.The ghetto rebellions and Vietnamantiwar protests have in retrospect obscured the fact that the late '60s-early'70s was also a period of considerable2 JANUARY 1998

WV Photolabor discontent and unrest on the shopfloor. In 1968, one out of eight contractsnegotiated by the union bureaucrats wasrejected by the members, whereas thisalmost never happened in the 1950s.More importantly, that same year markeda postwar high in wildcat strikes, mostdramatically in the auto plants of theMidwest.However, rank-and-file hostility to theWalter Reuther regime in the UAW andkindred union bureaucracies polarized,on the political level, along racial lines.In Detroit, black militants involved in thewildcats formed the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, which wasstrongly influenced by Maoist ideology.The League called for a separate unionfor black auto workers and combined

Abandoned steelfurnace in Cleveland,1980. Faced withdeclining rate ofprofit, U.S. capitalistsshifted production tolow-wage operationselsewhere, turningMidwest industrialheartland into RustBowl and layingof f hundreds ofthousands.

cant amounts of federal tax money weregoing to the black ghetto poor via President Lyndon Johnson's Great Societyprograms was a lie. In 1968, the last yearof the Johnson-Humphrey administration, slightly less than $12 billion wasspent on welfare and all other such programs (the bulk of which went towhites), an amount equal to one-seventhof the military budget. Interest on thefederal debt amounted to $11 billion, aform of welfare for Wall Street financiers. The Great Society "poverty" programs were very small potatoes compared to programs from the 1930s NewDeal, like Social Security.Phillips was correct, however, in thatliberal Democrats no longer even promised significant economic reforms to ben-

Auto workers protest outside Detroit Chrysler headquarters over closing ofDodge Main plant, July 1979.legitimate demands against the auto bosses ' racist practices (e.g., for more blackapprentices in the skilled trades) withdemands for more black foremen andother supervisors. At the same time,many of the white workers involved inthe wildcats against the Big Three automakers voted for the racist Alabamademagogue, George Wallace, or the victorious Richard Nixon against Democratic "friend of labor" Hubert Humphrey in the 1968 presidential elections,in part out of hostility to the Reutherbureaucracy.Immediately following these elections, Kevin Phillips, a right-wing, selfdescribed "populist," published an influential book, The Emerging RepublicanMajority, in which he argued:

"The principal force which broke up theDemocratic (New Deal) coalition is theNegro socioeconomic revolution .... Thegeneral opposition which d e p o s e d ~ theDemocratic Party came in large partfrom prospering Democrats who objected to Washington dissipating their taxdollars on programs which did them nogood. The Democratic Party fell victimto the ideological impetus of a liberalismwhich had carried it beyond programstaxing the few for the benefit of themany (the New Deal) to programs taxingthe many on behalf of the few (the GreatSociety)."

Phillips here combines partisan distor. tion and demagogy with important elements of truth. The notion that signifi-

efit the majority of working people. Johnson's Great Society did not includesocialized medicine, free universal highereducation or the massive construction oflow-rent public housing. Liberals nolonger even talked about redistributingincome from capital to labor. Insofar asthey advocated expanding social programs, they proposed financing thesethrough higher taxes across the board. As

James P. Cannonand the Early Years of

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real wages declined over the next decade,right-wing attacks on "tax and spend" liberalism would gain increasing potency.Seeking to regain the White House, theDemocrats ran an avowedly pro-businessSouthern Democrat, Jimmy Carter, former governor of Georgia, as their presidential candidate in 1976. The AFL-CIObureaucracy and black liberal politicosduly mobilized their constituencies forthe most right-wing Democratic presidential candidate in half a century. Seekingto polish the tarnished image of the U.S.after the Vietnam War, Carter laid theideological basis for Cold War II underthe guise of a "human rights crusade." Hishapless administration would oversee theworst deterioration in the economic conditions of American working people sincethe 1930s.The world economic downturn of1974-75 exposed the weaknesses ofAmerican capitalism, as the after-taxprofits of U.S. corporations plummetedover 20 percent. The American rulingclass responded with a concerted drive toreduce labor costs through "downsizing,"speedup, two-tier wage systems and theshift of production to the low-wage, nonunion South and Southwest as well as toLatin America and the Far East. In 1978,UAW president Douglas Fraser accusedthe leaders of big business of "waging aone-sided class war in this country."It was indeed a one-sided class war,because Fraser and his fellow laborbureaucrats were fighting on the side ofcapital. This was clearly demonstratedthe following year when Chrysler, thecountry's third-largest automaker, was onthe verge of bankruptcy. The corporation's management, working closely withthe UAW tops, successfully lobbied theCarter administration for a governmentbailout. As part of this deal Carter andthe Democratic-controlled Congress demanded that Chrysler workers take a cutin wages and benefits. The Chrysler dealopened the floodgates to giveback contracts throughout unionized industry,using the labor bureaucrats as active anddirect agents of capital in intensifyingthe exploitation of union members.The last year of he Carter administration

continued on page J0

7


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Korea ...(continued from pag e 1)in the Epoch of Imperialist Decay":"The feebleness of the national bourgeoisie, the absence of traditions of municipal self-government, the pressure offoreign capitalism, and the relativelyrapid growth of the proletariat, cut theground from under any kind of stabledemocratic regime. The governments ofbackward, i.e., colonial and semicolonial, countries by and large assume aBonapartist or semi-Bonapartist character; they differ from one another in thatsome try to orient in a democratic direction, seeking support among workers andpeasants, while others install a formclose to military-police dictatorship. Thislikewise determines the fate of the tradeunions. They either stand under the special patronage of the state or they aresubjected to cruel persecution."

South Korea is a prime example of this.For years, independent trade unions werecompletely outlawed, while the proletariat was saddled with a corporatist formation, the Federation of Korean TradeUnions, which was set up under the auspices of the Korean CIA (now named theAgency for National Security Planning)and under the tutelage of the Cold WarAFL-CIO bureaucracy. It was only as aresult of a wave of militant workers' struggles in 1987 that the South Korean bourgeoisie aQandoned open military rule andproceeded to implement presidential elections every five years. It was out of thisupsurge that the KCTU, which now hasover a half million members, emerged.These developments have fostered illusions in the democratic credentials of thechaebol bourgeoisie, which are promotedas well by self-styled leftist organizations like the United Secretariat. Recently,these fake Trotskyists claimed: "Ten yearsafter the end of authoritarian rule, thepolitical landscape in South Korea haschanged enormously. The country is nolonger a police state" (International View-point, 15 July 1997). This will come asnews to the many radical students andtrade-union militants who continue to beimprisoned by the regime. The NationalSecurity Law, which bans even vaguelyleftist activity as aiding the North Korean"enemy," continues to be wielded by theregime against militant workers and political opponents, including during the recent elections. In July, the governmentused the law to outlaw the Hanchongnyonstudent federation after riot cops had brutally suppressed a series of student protests. And in November, members of ayouth group which calls for organizing aworking-class party were rounded up,while 500 cops invaded Hanyang University Hospital to crush a strike and dragaway the union leaders.Korea andPermanent RevolutionA prime b e n e f i ~ i a r y of "democratic"illusions in South Korea is newly electedpresident Kim Dae Jung, who was jailed-and nearly assassinated-under theformer military dictatorship of Park

Newly electedpresident KimDae Jung, toutedas "democracycampaigner,"with electoral allyKim Jong Pil (farright), founder ofmurderous KCIA.

c..u..

Chung Hee. In the past, much of thepetty-bourgeois nationalist student lefthas looked to Kim, as has the KCTUleadership. They are echoed by the In:ternational Socialists of South Korea(ISSK), tied to Tony Cliff's SocialistWorkers Party in Britain and the International Socialist Organization in theU.S. An interview with a "South Koreansocialist" in the British Socialist Worker(22 November 1997) parroted the standard liberal refrain that Kim "was ademocracy campaigner in the 1970s and1980s," while complaining that he hassince "moved to the right." In fact, theCliffite social democrats agree with thiscapitalist politician on fundamental questions, sharing the anti-Communist hatredby South Korea's capitalist rulers for thedeformed workers state in the North. Cliff

was expelled from the Fourth International in 1950 for publicly opposingdefense of the Soviet Union, China andNorth Korea during the Korean War.Kim traces his origins to the KoreanDemocratic Party set up by U.S. occupation forces in 1945. His bloc partners inthe recent elections included Park TaeJoon, head of one of the largest chaebol,and Kim Jong Pil, who founded the KCIAand served as prime minister under dictator Park! Just a year ago, Kim Jong Pilwas screaming for a crackdown on the"burgeoning leftist activism on campuses"(Korea Times, 26 April 1996). Now he isabout to be appointed to a top governmentposition. A Clinton aide welcomed the

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election outcome as a "big opportunity,"while the New York Times (20 December 1997) noted that the South Koreanleader's "credibility with the unions"places him in a "good position to convincehis followers that they need to endure ayear or two of pain." And the return togovernment of Kim Jong Pil underscoresthat this will involve intensified repressionagainst the workers movement.Appealing to populist/nationalist sentiment, Kim Dae Jung vowed to "renegotiate" the terms of the IMF agreementduring the election campaign, but backedoff as soon as the imperialists put theirfoot down. Indeed, Kim had called forIMF intervention in early November, wellbefore the regime did. A revolutionaryworkers government in Korea wouldcancel the imperialist debt outright as

:DCDt:CDen

Amid wave ofnationalistsentiment, middle-class SouthKoreanhousewives aremobilized todonate personalpossessions toprop up deCliningcurrency.

part of the expropriation of industry andinfrastructure.The fact that Kim Dae Jung and theother two leading presidential contenderswere forced to drop calls for renegotiatingthe IMF accord underscores the dependentcharacter of the South Korean bourgeoisie.Korea in this century is' an archetypalexample of uneven and combined development: modern industry coexists alongside rural backwardness, where manyremain as impoverished tenant farmers,with a police-state regime, albeit withsome trappings of parliamentary democracy. South Korea's political structure ismanifestly closer to that of Malaysia andIndonesia than to Japan's.As Trotsky explained in advancing theperspective of permanent revolution, incountries of belated capitalist development, the bourgeoisies-tied to the imperialist powers on the one hand and confronted by a growing proletariat on theother-are incapable of throwing off theyoke of imperialism and resolving theother tasks of the bourgeois-democraticrevolution. These tasks can only beaccomplished by overthrowing the bourgeoisie and placing the proletariat inpower. This was confirmed by the Russian Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.Socialist revolution in the backwardcountries would necessarily have to linkup with-and would act as a powerful impetus for-the fight for proletarian powerin the imperialist centers. In the 1938Transitional Program, Trotsky stressedthat in backward countries "the strugglefor the most elementary achievements ofnational independence and bourgeoisdemocracy is combined with the socialiststruggle against world imperialism." Thisis posed particularly acutely in Korea,

where the imperialist-imposed partitionplaces the question of national unificationdirectly on the agenda. A proletarian vanguard party in Korea would be in directcompetition with bourgeois and pettybourgeois nationalists who seek to unifythe country on a capitalist basis, destroying the collectivized foundations of thedeformed workers state in the North.Trotskyists call for unconditional militarydefense of North Korea against capitalistattack and internal counterrevolution aspart of the fight for revolutionary reunifi-cation through socialist revolution in theSouth and workers political revolution inthe North.Coming atop decades of imperialistmilitary encirclement and starvation embargo, the demise of the Soviet Union andthe Beijing bureaucracy's drive towardcapitalist restoration have pushed theNorth Korean deformed workers state intonear-terminal decline, with wide swathesof the country beset by famine. Under theregime of Kim Jong II and his father,"Great Leader" Kim II Sung, the Pyongyang bureaucracy has pursued the autarkic program of luche (self-reliance), avariant of the Stalinist nationalist dogmaof "socialism in one country" infused withKorean mythology. Until his death in1994, Kim II Sung was idolized by manyradical students in the South as a Korean"patriot" who fought Japanese colonialism and later U.S. imperialism. In fact,the North Korean Stalinists have alwaysopposed the fight to extend social revolution throughout the peninsula, callinginstead for "peaceful reunification" undernationalist colors-a recipe for capitalistreunification. Today, Kim Jong II pleadsfor better relations with the U.S. andSouth Korea as an "urgent requirement."The South Korean proletariat has timeand again demonstrated its capacity formilitant struggle, not least in last year'sgeneral strike against Kim Young Sam'santi-labor law. But it has lacked a political party organized independently of thecapitalist rulers. This year, the KCTUfielded a candidate in South Korea'spresidential elections. But far from seeking to rally the working masses in struggle against South Korea's capitalist rulers, the "People's Victory 21" campaignheaded by former KCTU leader K wonYoung Kil is a class-collaborationistlash-up, including various liberal groups,which promotes nationalist opposition to"foreign interference," blending in withbourgeois rhetoric which seeks to deflectclass anger away from the domestic exploiters. This has not prevented the SouthKorean International Socialists from supporting Kwon's candidacy as a "step forward" (Socialist Worker [Britain], 22November 1997).The South Korean proletariat can goforward only on the basis of completeand unconditional independence fromthe bourgeoisie. This is all the moreurgent today, as the South Korean rulingclass seeks to line the workers up to sacrifice their livelihoods and struggles inorder to appease imperialist dictates.u.s. Imperialismand IMF Austerity

The IMF package imposed on SouthKorea is so severe that no less an authority than Harvard economist Jeffrey Sachsdenounced it. Describing the IMF as a"small, secretive institution" which hasthe power to "dictate economic conditionsof life to 75 developing countries," Sachsfumed: "The IMF threw together a dra-conian programme for Korea in jus t a fewdays, without deep knowledge of thecountry's financial system and withoutany subtlety as to how to approachproblems" (London Financial Times, 11December 1997). Sachs ought to knowwhat's drastic-he is the architect of the"shock therapy" which has driven millionsof workers in the former Soviet Union tothe brink of starvation. Sachs expected theimperialist rulers to adopt a rational, farsighted approach to capitalist counterrevolution and pour billions into Russia toerect a stable capitalist economy there aspart of a post-Soviet "New World Order."WORKERS VANGUARD


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But capitalism is anything but rational.As we have repeatedly observed, Hiecounterrevolutionary destruction of theSoviet Union in 1991-92 ushered in anera of heightened interimperialist competition, as the conflicting interests of themajor imperialist powers were no longersubsumed in a (U.S.-led) anti-Soviet alliance. Germany, Japan and the U.S. haveeach sought to carve out trade blocs andspheres of influence, with the latter twoin particular engaged in fierce competition in the Asian Pacific region. Seekingto reassert the imperialist hegemony itexercised in" the aftermath of World WarII, the U.S. proclaimed a "one superpower" world following the collapse ofthe USSR. While continuing to ratchet upthe nite of exploitation of workers andslashing social programs benefiting thepoor and all manner of minorities in theU.S., the American ruling class has alsoengaged in an aggressive trade war, ominously manifested in Washington's threattwo months ago to embargo Japaneseshipping on the West Coast.Displaying unalloyed imperialist arrogance, the New York Times (14 December1997) ran a front-page headline exultingin "Asia's Surrender," while a piece inu.s. News & World Report (8 December1997) was titled "How the Far East WasWon"! The American bourgeoisie hasseized on the burgeoning financial crisisin Southeast and East Asia to imposeits interests in the region, using the IMFas its instrument of choice. In the wakeof the IMF bailout of Thailand, foreigninvestors have been busily buying uplocal banks. And the "opening" of SouthKorea-with an economy bigger thanthose of Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia combined-could be a bonanza forU.S. and Japanese moneymen alike.But Wall Street brokers may not begrinning for long. In commenting on lastOctober's stock market crash in '''Death ofCommunism' Myth Goes Splat" (WV No.677, 31 October 1997), we wrote: "Thequestion yet to be answered is whether thelatest crash is also a prelude to depression." In the wake of the South Koreancollapse, that question is being raised bybourgeois commentators as well. Japan,already beset by seven years of economicdownturn, has been plagued by a seriesof financial collapses in recent weeks,including the century-old Yamaichi Securities. I f he devaluation of the won-whichplunged 72 percent against the dollar inthe past month alone-is combined with asustained economic collapse in Japan, thiscould put enormous pressure on the U.S.economy. "There is nothing to stop thecoming shock to U.S. trade," the SalomonBrothers brokerage firm recently warnedinvestors (U.S. News & World Report,8 December 1997). The article observed:

"As a declining currency makes exportscheaper, trading partners begin to retaliate with tariffs and beggar-thy-neighborpolicies. ."The last time a major industrial countryfaced these conditions was 1929-andthe result was a worldwide depression."

Financial TImesWorkers took to the streets in general strike one year ago against anti-laborlaws. At January 1997 solidarity demonstration in Tokyo (below), a Koreanlanguage sign carried by Spartacist Group Japan contingent read, "KoreanWorkers Need a Bolshevik Party!"

As interimperialist rivalries sharpen,we fight to win workers in the U.S.,Japan and other imperialist countries tothe understanding that the main enemy isat home. This means, first and foremost,a sharp political struggle against the procapitalist labor tops. Even as it turnsa blind eye to the barrage of attacksbeing leveled at the labor movement inthe wake of the victorious UPS strike,the AFL-CIO bureaucracy is wallowingin its successful protectionist campaignto stop Democratic president Clinton's"fast track" trade proposal. Along withtheir latest phony "friend of labor," Democratic Congressman Richard Gephardt,the union misleaders seek to rally working people behind the banner of imperialist chauvinism. The Spartacist Leaguefights to break workers and minoritiesfrom the racist, capitalist. Democrats andto forge a revolutionary workers party to

sweep away the U.S. bourgeoisie, themost rapacious power on earth.Front Line in the Cold War

In a recent spread on South Korea, theBritish Socialist Worker (22 November1997) claims that in 1953 "Korea was partitioned between the pro-Russian Northand pro-US South after a war betweenclient states of the superpowers whichclaimed four million Korean lives." This"third camp" rendition of the Korean Waris part of the Cliffite school of falsification, aimed at alibiing Cliff's capitulationto Anglo-U.S. imperialism.In fact, U.S. occupation forces, withStalin's criminal acquiescence, dividedthe country at the 38th parallel only daysafter landing on the peninsula in 1945.In the North, the Kim II Sung regime,basing itself on the Soviet Army, proceeded to expropriate the capitalists and

UPI photosProtester attacked as troops drowned 1980 Kwangju insurrection in blood. U.S. gave green light for slaughter of 2,000workers and leftists by military dictator Chun 000 Hwan, seen here with Reagan at White House in 1981.2 JANUARY 1998

landlords, carrying out a social revolution from above. In the South, the U.S.imperialists and their local lackeysJapanese soldiers, colonial police and thecapitalists, who had previously loyallyserved the brutal Japanese occupationproceeded to suppress a series of massiveworker/peasant upheavals. The 1950-53war-in which some three to four millionpeople were killed and North Korea wasvirtually leveled-was a continuationof this counterrevolutionary policy byU.S. imperialism, targeting as well theChinese deformed workers state whichhad issued out of the victory of MaoZedong's peasant-based guerrilla forcesin 1949. While the last Soviet forces hadbeen withdrawn from the North by 1948,U.S. troops remained in the South toprop up its hand-picked puppet, Syngman Rhee, followed by one dictatorialregime after another.While Washington poured billions ofdollars into South Korea to maintain amilitarily strategic base of operations forits Cold War designs, on an economiclevel the U.S. sought to make SouthKorea subordinate to Japan. As late as the1970s, the North Korean economy wasstronger than that in the South. At thesame time, South Korea's position as akey Cold War asset gave the weak localbourgeoisie some leeway. When militarystrongman Park Chung Hee took power ina 1961 coup, he embarked on a programof forced-pace industrialization, funneling the huge funds derived from the U.S.military presence, as well as Japanesefinancial and technological assistance,to develop the chaebol, many of whosefounders had gotten their start servicingthe American occupation. Between 1965and 1973, Seoul got more than $2 billionfor services rendered to U.S. imperialism's dirty war in Vietnam, through lucrative contracts to supply American forcesand as payment for the 300,000 SouthKorean troops shipped off to fight there.Japanese investment in South Koreatook off in the 1960s, especially afterPark signed a 'normalization" treaty in1965. Park used some $800 million inJapanese aid and investment to build themost efficient integrated steel mill in theworld--despite American objectionslaying the basis for large shipbuilding andauto industries. South Korea importedparts and equipment from Japan andexported finished products to the U.S.When South Korea faced a serious financial crisis-and IMF demands-in 1980,it was bailed out with Japanese assistance, including a massive $4 billion loanpackage on favorable terms.However, as the huge chaebol operations-epitomized by the gigantic shipworks of Hyundai Heavy Industriesbegan to compete with Japan and theU.S. on the world market, Japanese capitalists began to withhold the most modern technology from their South Korean"partners." As long as the Soviet Unionexisted, U.S. ruling circles were unwilling to risk destabilizing South Korea byimposing protectionist measures againstHyundai or Samsung, or by pressuringSeoul into opening up financial markets.With the counterrevolution in the SovietUnion, the interests of the U.S. in thepeninsula have shifted. Counterrevolution in North Korea remains one of itsgoals, but a stronger South Korean bourgeoisie is not. When South Korea's rulers pleaded for assistance from Washington and Tokyo this time around, they hadthe door slammed in their faces.

The American military presence on thepeninsula is not only a dagger aimed atthe North Korean and Chinese deformedworkers states but an assertion of U.S.interests in the region against the SouthKorean bourgeoisie and Japanese imperialism. It also serves as a warning to SouthKorea's working masses, threatening todrown in blood any challenge to the capitalist order. From their suppression ofthe "autumn harvest" rising in 1946 toorchestrating the bloody Kwangju massacre of 1980, in which some 2,000 peoplewere killed to put down an i n s u r r ~ c t i o n a r y continued on page 109


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Wall Street ...(continued from page 7)witnessed the unusual combination of asharp recession with accelerating inflation, approaching 20 percent a year. Therapid inflation pushed working-class families into higher income-tax brackets sothat take-home pay was falling even faster than real wages before taxes. Rightwing Republican Ronald Reagan won theelection by promising large tax cuts alongwith cuts in social programs, perceived asmainly b ~ t l e f i t i n g the bhick and Hispanicpoor (e.g., welfare, food stamps). Thisdemagogy worked, as half of those whiteunion members and their families whobothered to vote in the 1980 electionssupported Reagan over Carter.Some months prior to the election wepointed out that "the 'tax revolt' is thewhite backlash at two or three removes."But in contrast to the liberals we insisted: "The white backlash is not howeverthe result of Reagan the Republican, butof decades of betrayal of class strug-gle by the labor bureaucrats and liberalblack leaders who are tied to the Demo-'cratic Party. And it is only through unitedclass struggle that racist demagogy andattacks can be fought and reversed" ("Behind Friedmania," WV No. 260, 11 July1980).For a Workers Government!

Despite fulminations about "Reaganomics" on the part of liberals and unionleaders, the main policies of the Reaganadministration expressed the generalinterests of the American ruling class,including those sections and factionsrepresented by the Democratic Party. Indeed, all of Reagan's major policies andprograms, from the massive arms build-

Korea ...(continued from pa ge 9)revolt, U.S. forces have been a key bulwark for counterrevolutionary repressionon the peninsula. Yet not once in nine articles on Korea over the past two years hasthe American Cliffite Socialist Workerraised the call for U.S. troops out.(Indeed, only vne, reporting on SouthKorean student protests, even mentionedthe U.S. military presence.) This underscores our characterization of the "thirdcamp" as the camp of imperialism.Acting as "third campists" of the second mobilization is a group grandioselycalling itself the "International BolshevikTendency," formed by defectors from theSpartacist tendency who couldn't stomach our hard Soviet-defensist line at theheight of Reagan's Cold War II. In alengthy article on last year's strikes inSouth Korea against the anti-labor laws,these counterfeit "Trotskyists" do notonce raise the call for defense of theNorth Korean deformed workers state,nor do they so much as mention the U.S.military presence in the South, even asthey scream to "dislodge the crumbling

10

Washington PostLabor/black mobilization organized by Spartacist League stopped Klanprovocation in Washington, D.C., 27 November 1982. Fight for black freedomis key to the struggle for socialist revolution.up against the USSR to tax cuts for therich, were endorsed by the Democraticcontrolled Congress. As we wrote in adocument adopted by the 1987 NationalConference of the SL/U.S.:

"The core goals of the Reagan presidencyconform to a reactionary bourgeois con-sensus, the basic elements of which are: I)overcoming at the level of popular attitudes the 'Vietnam syndrome: i.e., disillusionment with the Cold War against theSoviet bloc and unwillingness to makesacrifices for the sake of anti-Communism; 2) increasing military and economicpressure on the Soviet Union, its allies andclient states;, . 3) decisively weakeningthe organized labor movement through acombination ofgiveback contracts, unionbusting and the extension of non-unionshops; and 4) reversing the limited andtoken gains of the civil rights movement,and cutting back and dismantling socialprograms beneficial especially to theblack and Hispanic poor and the aged."

bureaucratic dictatorship in the North"(1917, [March] 1997).In the first instance a capitulation toimperialism, the line of the "third camp"in South Korea represents an embrace ofthe interests of the chaebol bourgeoisie.The Cliffites demonstrated this even astheir own comrades were dragged offto prison under the National SecurityLaw (see "Free Choi II Bung and AllSouth Korean Class-War Prisoners!" WVNo. 574, 23 April 1993). At the time ofISSK leader Choi's arrest, the Cliffitesassured the anti-Communist regime that"he had not broken the National SecurityLaw by reading banned literature fromthe North or belonging to a foreignorganization. On the contrary, he hadpublished books critical of regimes likeNorth Korea" (Socialist Worker [U.S.],February 1993).

At the same time, the Cliffites upholdthe social-democratic notion that the. bourgeois cops can be won to the side ofthe working class. This line is particularlygrotesque in South KQrea, where everystrike or student protest comes up againstbattalions of murderous police clad inDarth Vader outfits. Cliff's followers arealso notorious internationally for crossing

"T1."

Poor crops haveexacerbatedeconomiccollapse in NorthKorea, leadingto widespreadfamineconditions.

This reactionary bourgeois consensuswas clearly demonstrated when a Democrat returned to the Oval Office, after 12years of Republican rule, in the person ofanother former governor. Under Bill Clinton-not Reagan nor his Republican successor George Bush-the core welfareprogram, Aid to Families with DependentChildren, has been eliminated. And thecurrent bipartisan agre.ement to balancethe federal budget by 2002 can beachieved only by massively slashingSocial Security and Medicare. Havingsucceeded in their decades-long goal ofdestroying the Soviet Union, a workersstate albeit deformed, and having batteredthe trade unions at home for two decades,the men who rule this country believethey can now do anything to the workers,the poor, the elderly, the black and Hispanic communities without the slightest

picket lines, including during the momentous year-long miners strike in Britain in1984-85.For a Trotskyist Party in Korea!The Korean proletariat must reappropriate the history of the pioneer labor militants who were won to the CommunistInternational of Lenin and Trotsky andfought heroically against Japanese colonialism from the standpoint of proletarianinternationallsm. In its "Statement ofMission," the Korean Labor Federation,founded in 1925, proclaimed: "Our purpose is to liberate the working class andto build a completely new society. Wewill fight with the capitalist class with thecollective power of the workers until afinal victory is won" (quoted in MartinHart-Landsberg, The Rush to Develop-ment: Economic Change and PoliticalStruggle in South Korea [1993]).

The courage and combativity of theSouth Korean proletariat have beenamply demonstrated in the struggles toforge independent unions in defianceof the police-state regime over the past30 years. Thousands were imprisoned orkilled for labor's cause. To this day,South Korean workers commemorateChon Tae-il, a Seoul textile worker whoimmolated himself in November 1970 toprotest anti-labor repression. Followinghis death, Chon's mother founded theChonggye Garment Workers Union, oneof the first independent unions. Through-

Declaration of Principles adoptedby September 1966 foundingconference of the SpartacistLeague/U.S. now available inChinese/English edition.Order now!$1 (10 pages)

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

danger of social turmoil-not to speak ofrevolution.However, the sudden collapse of theEast Asian economic "miracle," which iswreaking havoc on world financial markets, has exposed the fragility of thepost-Soviet global capitalist order. Andthe Teamsters strike of UPS last summershowed on a small scale the power oforganized labor, producing worries abouta "worker bacIslash" on Wall Street.The desire to fight and a mood ofanger at the arrogant CEOs of corporateAmerica are certainly there. But that initself is not enough. There also needs to

be leadership and organization, based onthe understanding that union rights andblack rights go forward together or fallback separately. As we wrote in a specialWV supplement (27 August 1997) on thelessons of the UPS strike:"Two possible roads lie before the working class. There is the revolutionarystrategy proposed by us Marxists. In thecourse of sharp class struggle andthrough the instrumentality of a revolutionary party that patiently educates theworking class in the understanding notonly of its social power but of its historicinterests, the workers will become conscious of themselves as a class fightingfor itself and for all the oppressedagainst the entire capitalist class and itsgovernment. Or there is the continuationof the bureaucrats' acquiescence to what

is possible and 'practical' under capitalism, which over the past two decadesand more has led to disaster."The mobilization of the proletariat inpursuit of its own class interests requiresa political struggle against the procapitalist labor tops. This is integrallylinked to the construction of a revolutionary workers party to fight for a workersgovernment which will expropriate theproductive wealth now monopolized bythe capitalists, in order to construct anegalitarian, socialist society. _

out the 1970s, young women workersmany of them brought in from the countryside to work up to 16 hours a day in stifling sweatshops for no more than theprice of a cup of coffee-played a keyrole in organizing trade unions. Theirheroic efforts, in the face of brutal degradation and terror by company thugs andlegions of cops, paved the way for thesubsequent formation of unions in heavyindustry in the 1980s.To become conscious of its historictasks, the South Korean proletariat mustchampion the cause of all the oppressed,from the fight for women's emancipationto the defense of Filipino and other immigrant workers. As we wrote in "For Revolutionary Reunification of Korea!" (WVNo. 612, 9 December 1994):"Only a party grounded in revolutionaryinternationalism can lead the South Korean proletariat to power against thechaebol bourgeoisie and oust the bureaucratic caste in Pyongyang through workers political revolution. ATrotskyist partywould draw in all the oppressed behindthe working class, basing itself on theprogram of permanent revolution. Onlyproletarian state power can emancipatethe country from the stranglehold of U.S.and Japanese imperialism and resolvethe belated tasks of the bourgeois revolution. Against the Stalinist/Confucianglorification of the family, which servesto maintain the age-old subjugation ofwomen, a revolutionary workers partywould act as a tribune of the people,fighting all manifestations of socialoppression."

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Dockers...(continued from page 12)associated. The PMA has also demandedthat the Laney College Labor Studiesgroup, through its coordinator, AI Lannon, turn over all documents that refer orrelate to the "composition and mission"of the organization, including membership lists, minutes of meetings, names ofstudents who participated in demonstrations, etc. Lannon has refused to complywith this witchhunt.Demonstrating that college administrations are in fact the agents (jf the capitalist class, the Laney College administration has now unilaterally imposed newrestrictions on student club activities.Students are now required to get permission from the administration before participating in off-campus political activities such as union organizing, while theLabor Studies group has been bannedfrom using its banner. All defenders oflabor and democratic rights must demandan end to the Laney administration's outrageous attacks on the right to free speechand assembly.Waterfront Bosses Target ILWU

The PMA's real target in the victimization of the Neptune Jade protesters is theILWU. All around the Pacific Rim, longshore unions are coming under increasing attack by the big shipping lines asthey seek to increase their profits bybreaking union wage scales and workrules. Singapore-based Neptune Orientrecently purchased the Oakland-basedAmerican President Lines, which is thebiggest shipper in the Port of Oakland,with 1,000 employees in the Bay Area,and a major player in the PMA. The combined company will rank third by marketshare in the immensely lucrative Pacificcargo trade (Oakland Tribune, 23 November 1997). The waterfront bosses' vendetta against the union was highlightedwhen an ILWU Local 10 official wasreportedly dragged from his house bycops in October and tossed into jail fora night-on instructions from the PMA-after a confrontation with a processserver.

Chicago...(continued from page 12)the Chicago Committee Against PoliceBrutality, formed by Rev. Paul Jakesalong with State Senator Rickey Hendonand other bourgeois liberals. The centraldemand of this group, for a civilianreview board to oversee the cops, istouted by the Communist Party (CP) in itsnewspaper, the People's Weekly World(8 November), which gushingly notesthat Hendon "called for cpmplete independent citizen accountability also for theFBI, the CIA and the military"! Thisreductio ad absurdum underlines theessential fallacy of reformism: does anybody in his right mind think the Pentagonis going to let John Q. Public control thenuclear trigger? Civilian review boardsare designed to curb, not cop terror, butindependent working-class action againstit, by fostering illusions that a supposedly"neutral" government can be pressuredto rein in police "excesses." Such "excesses," however, are no aberration but adeliberate policy aimed at suppressingmilitant social struggle by minorities andworking people.Thus Hendon's plan isn't about "controlling" the cops but about making themmore effective. "We have to get the badcops out because they destroy the moraleof Black and good white officers," he said(Chicago Defender, 6 October). Jakesmeanwhile calls for more police lieutenants and sergeants while demanding thatblacks get their "fair share" in this racistand repressive apparatus. Advising thepowers that be on the benefits of reform,the National Alliance Against Racist andPolitical Repression, associated with thesocial-democratic Committees of Corre-2 JANUARY 1998

Liverpool dockers have waged bitter two-year struggle after being fired forrefusing to cross picket lines in 1995.The PMA's McCarthyite vendettacomes in the context of escalating attackson the labor movement in the wake ofthe successful and widely popular Teamsters strike against UPS. In retaliation forthe union's victory, the government hasousted Ron Carey as Teamsters president,while the Wall Street Journal has rabidlyredbaited the ardently pro-DemocraticParty AFL-CIO president, John Sweeney.. The U.S. bourgeoisie will brook no opposition to its "inalienable right" to intensify the exploitation of the working class.But the AFL-CIO bur eaucracy-we ddedto the racist capitalist order through its

alliance with the Democratic Party-continues to sabotage class struggle in favorof continued reliance on the same capitalist state that is carrying out these attackson the workers organizations.In the case of the Oakland protests,there should have been a union picket lineput up by the ILWU. Having r.efused tosanction union action in defense of theLiverpool dockers, after the port demonstrations, ILWU International head BrianMcWilliams hypocritically intoned that"an injury to one is an injury to all" in aletter to the All Japan DockworkersUnion. In the letter, McWilliams wrotethat the Neptune Jade "was not unloadedin Oakland" because longshoremen refused to cross a "picket line" in solidaritywith the Liverpool dockers!ILWU officials refused to picket outthe Neptune Jade because they fear retal-

spondence, dots the i's and crosses the 1's:"A democratically elected Police ControlAuthority could go a long way towardhelping the police department regainsome respect and cooperation from thepeople. Without this, there could be atotal breakdown of law and order in ourcity" (Chicago Defender, 11 October[emphasis added)).The need to put on some kind of showof taking action against "rogue cops" wasnot lost on Chicago mayor Richard Daleyand his police superintendent, Matt Rodriguez. While Rodriguez blustered thatbigotry and excessive violence wouldn'tbe tolerated, Daley appointed a "blueribbon panel" headed by a former federalprosecutor to recommend changes -in thepolice department. Some 200 angry protesters packed a meeting of the ChicagoPolice Board on October 9. But instead ofexposing the Daley administration's dogand-pony show, the reformists who i n t e r ~ vened simply called for "real" action bythe politicians. Thus one RevolutionaryCommunist Party (RCP) supporter toldRodriguez: "We're tired of you pretendingto hear us and saying you're going togive justice when you haven't done athing" (Revolutionary Worker [RW], 26October). Similarly, a spokesman for theInternational Socialist Organization wasquoted by the Chicago Sun-Times as saying, "Mayor Daley is the No. 1 cause ofpolice brutality because he tolerates it"(10 October). The implication here is thata different mayor and police superintendent, ones committed to some version ofsocial justice, could stop the terror emanating from the station houses. This is aliberal pipe dream that ignores the cops'social function as henchmen of capitalistlaw and order._One group