workers vanguard no 687 - 27 march 1998

7/29/2019 Workers Vanguard No 687 - 27 March 1998

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WfllIKEIiS """ ' I ID 0eNo. 687 ~ X - 6 2 3 27 March 1998

Yun Suk-Bong/Reuters ReutersSeoul pOlice attack February protest against austerity measures. U.S. occupation force props up South Korean pOlice-state regime, poses mortal threat to NorthKorean deformed workers state. "Demilitarized Zone" marks imperialist Cold War partition of Korea.u.s. Troops Out ofMARCH 22-"Peace" talks aimed atbringing to a formal close the 1950-53Korean War collapsed yesterday as theU.S. refused to even discuss a NorthKorean demand for the removal of nearly40,000 American troops from SouthKorea. A massive U.S. occupation force,armed to the hilt with nuclear weapons,has been stationed on the Korean peninsula since 1945, serving as gendarmes forcounterrevolutionary repression throughout the region. The so-called "Demilitarized Zone" along the 38th parallel is aclass line: to the south is a capitalistpolice state created at the behest of U.S.imperialism; to the north, a bureaucratically deforined workers state issuing outof a social revolution which overthrewthe capitalists and landlords. As the NewYork Times (25 February) commented ina recent report from Korea: "Nearly adecade after the cold war ended in mostof the world, it remains alive and healthyhere."The mortal threat posed by the U.S.military presence was underlined enlyweeks before the four-party talkswhich include delegations from SouthKorea and China-resumed last Mondayin Geneva, Switzerland after a brief initial meeting in December. In late January, U.S. troops in South Korea stagedyet another round of provocative military"drills" to prepare for war against theNorth and for suppressing leftist protestsin the South. As South Korean workerschafe under the harsh austerity measuresdictated by the U.S.-dominated International Monetary Fund (IMF), Clintonadministration spokesmen have made apoint of repeatedly stressing the linkbetween American military and economic interests on the peninsula.As part of our struggle to forge a revolutionary workers party to sweep awaythe rapacious American bourgeoisie, theSpartacist League and Spartacus YouthClubs are organizing protests around theU.S. this month tv demand: U.S. TroopsOut of Korea Now! For UnconditionalMilitary Defense of North Korea! For

I "25274 81030 7 13I

Korea Now!F U "'d",- 'I'Mt't '," ", Or' , ' ~ O ~ i " , J , .. I ! ; ! I , ~ . , ~ ; i ~ " , < 'w')"; . Y:,'O.efense;: of,,,..NorIHK.orea!.

Revolutionary Reunification of Korea!As we declare in a leaflet calling forthese actions:"Forty-five years after the UN-sponsored1950-53 Korean War, in which somethree to four million were killed andNorth Korea was virtually leveled, nearly40,000 American troops remain on SouthKorean soil. This military presence isnot only a dagger aimed at North Koreaand the Chinese deformed workers statebut also serves as a warning to SouthKorea's working masses, threatening todrown in blood any challenge to the capitalist order ..."As proletarian internationalists, theSpartacist League-U.S. section of theInternational Communist League-callsfor the immediate withdrawal of all U_S.forces from Korea!"

Washington welcomed the election offormer "human rights dissident" KimDae Jung as president of South Korea inDecember. Kim immediately saluted theU.S. imperialist forces as "essential topeace in the Korean Peninsula" anef hasalready begun implementing the draco-,nian terms of the IMF "bailout" program, which will inflict massive wagecuts and millions of layoffs on SouthKorean workers. The imperialist jackalsare also using the IMF as their favoredinstrument to force through widespreadtakeovers of Korean companies by foreign firms (see "IMF 'Bailout' MeansMisery for South Korean Workers," wv.No. 681, 2 January). Throughout thecountries of Southeast Asia racked byeconomic crisis, IMF starvation dictatesenforced by the local bourgeoisies have

touched off massive protests. Down withIMF bloodsuckers! Defeat U.S. imperial-ism through workers revolution!u.s. Props Up South KoreanPolice State

From the moment U.S. forces landed atInchon in September 1945, they haveserved as front-line troops in the imperialists' frenzied drive to "roll back Communism" and to project American military power in the Pacific. The Koreanpeninsula was transformed into a principal battleground of the anti-Soviet ColdWar, aimed in the Far East at overthrowing the deformed workers state createdin North Korea under the postwar Soviet presence and at reversing the 1949victory of Mao Zedong's Stalinist forces

over the corrupt, U.S.-backed capitalistregime of Chiang Kai-shek.Carried out under the auspices of theUnited Nations, the U.S.-led war againstNorth Korean and Chinese forces in1950-53 literally devastated Korea. AirForce general Curtis LeMay, who organized the firebombing of Tokyo in WorldWar II and later threatened to "bombVietnam back to the Stone Age," was tobrag afterward: "We burned down everytown in North Korea and South Korea,too." It was during the Korean War thatnapalm was first used on a massive scale,setting the precedent for its use duringAmerica's dirty, losing imperialist war inVietnam some 15 years later. In December 1950, the North Korean capital ofPyongyang was obliterated by Americanbombing. As the U.S. carried out its"scorched earth" policy, many peoplethroughout the peninsula were forced toseek refuge in caves, where tbey livedfor years afterward. But for the fear ofretaliation by the Soviet Union, whichhad developed its own nuclear weaponsbefore the outbreak of the war, the U.S.would have carried out its plans to useA-bombs in the Korean War.The American occupation force hasalso served as a bulwark against any challenge by Korean workers and peasants tothe capitalist regime in the South. In theyears before the Korean War, U.S. troopsbloodily suppressed one peasant uprisingafter another. After the war, the U.S.propped up a series of dictatorial militaryregimes which presided over the brutalexploitation of the growing South Koreanproletariat. In May 1980, Washingtoncontinued on page 8


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Clinton's Vicious Anti-Immigrant Law at WorkTragic Suicide in L.A. County

Late last month, seventeen-year-oldGeraldo Anthony Mosquera Jr. of BellGardens in Los Angeles County committed suicide. Geraldo was despondent overthe deportation of his father, who waskicked out of the U.S. late last year fora 1989 conviction for selling $10 worthof marijuana. Geraldo 'Mosquera Sr. hadfallen 'under provisions of Clinton's1996 racist immigration "reform" whichgreatly expanded offenses for which legalimmigrants may be deported. He hadlived legally in the U.S. for 29 years, supporting his family as a fork-lift driver,before being thrown back to Colombia.Adding another outrageous chapter totheir persecution of this man, U.S. officials would not even allow him back intothe country to attend his son's funeral!

50,000 per year-double the rate just fiveyears ago. Most of the current wave ofdeportees are long-time legal residents,many of whom have been here for decades and have little connection to theircountries of origin. The 1996 law extendsthe racist "war on drugs" to target immigrants, who can be deported if they hadever been convicted of a "crime" with asentence of more than a year. Convictedimmigrants now face double jeopardy:first you do your time, then prison officials release you directly into the arms ofla migra for deportation.It is vital for the labor movement thatit mobilize to fight the capitalists' racistanti-immigrant campaign. Many immigrants have brought experience of hardfought class battles in their home countries to the labor movement in the U.S.Particularly in Southern California inrecent years, immigrant workers haveplayed a key role in a number of spirited

Since the enactment of Clinton's antiimmigrant law, which was heavily backedby both Democratic and Republican parties of capital, deportations have topped

The Communist Manifesto of 1848This year marks the 150th anniversary ofthe publication of Karl Marx and FriedrichEngels' Communist Manifesto, the foundingdocument of he communist movement. Theirunderstanding that capitalism was a crisisridden system which would lead only to further immiseration of the proletariat is evident today in the economic devastationfaced by the young proletariat of Southeast

TROTSKY Asia-and by ever-wider layers of workers LENINin the advanced capitalist countries-aswell as in the growing danger of imperialist war. We seek to forge the world party ofsocialist revolution needed to bring to the proletariat the consciousness of its historicrole as the gravedigger of the capitalist system and to lead it in creating a classless,egalitarian society.

All the preceding classes that got the upper hand, sought to fortify their alreadyacquired status by subjecting society at large to their conditions of appropriation. Theproletarians cannot become masters of the productive forces of society, except by abolishing their own previous mode of appropriation, and thereby also every other previousmode of appropriation. They have nothing of their own to secure and to fortify; theirmission is to destroy all previous securities for, and insurances of, individual property.All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interestsof minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movementof the immense majority, in the interests of the immense majority. The proletariat, thelowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without thewhole superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air ...The serf, in the period of serfdom, raised himself to membership in the commune,just as the petty bourgeois, under the yoke of feudal absolutism, managed to developinto a bourgeois. The modern labourer, on the contrary, instead of rising with theprogress of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of hisown class. He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than populationand wealth. And here it becomes evident, that the bourgeQisie is unfit any longer to bethe ruling class in society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as anover-riding law. It is unfit to rule_because it is incompetent to assure an existence to itsslave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state, that ithas to feed him, instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under thisbourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society ...The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replacesthe isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by their revolutionary combination,due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from underits feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, is its own grave-diggers.

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-Kar l Marx and Friedrich Engels, Communist Manifesto (1848)

r ! ~ ! ! ! ~ ! Y O r . . ~ .' ! ! ~ ~ ' ! . ' ! . . EDITOR: Len MeyersEDITOR, YOUNG SPARTACUS PAGES: Jacob ZornPRODUCTION MANAGER: Susan FullerCIRCULATION MANAGER: Jane PattersonEDITORIAL BOARD: Ray Bishop (managing editor), Bruce Andre, Helene Brosius, George Foster,Liz Gordon, Frank Hunter, Jane Kerrigan, James Robertson, Joseph Seymour, Alison SpencerThe Spartacist League is the U.S. Section of the International Communist League (FourthInternationalist).Workers Vanguard (ISSN 0276-0746) published biweekly, except skipping three alternate issues in June, July andAugust (beginning with omitting the second issue in June) and with a 3-week interval in December, by the SpartacistPublishing Co . 41 Warren Street. New York. NY 10007. Telephone: (212) 732-7862 (Editorial). (212) 732-7861(Business). Address all correspondence to: Box 1377. GPO. New York, NY 10116. E-mail address:[email protected] subscriptions' $10.00/22 issues. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY. POSTMASTER: Send addresschanges to Workers Vanguard. Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116.Opinions expressed in signed articles or letters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint.The closing date for news in this issue is March 24.No. 687 27 March 1998

strikes and union 'organizing battles. Justas the 1948 Taft-Hartley Act served topurge militants by barring anyone convicted of felonies from holding unionoffice, Clinton's 1996 law (inspired byCalifornia's 1994 anti-immigrant Prop.187) will no doubt have a chilling effecton the unions by opening up the moremilitant and class-conscious immigrantworkers for repression.The rulers of this country possess anarsenal of state repression--cops, courts,prisons-to keep minorities and the labormovement down, the better to exploit theentire working class. Even Teamsters

We print below a March 23 letter bythe PDC to Immigration and Naturalization Service head Doris Meissner andAttorney General Janet Reno.The Partisan Defense Committee condemns the star-chamber deportation proceedings 'agai nst six Iraqi nationals inCalifornia. The six, who were agents ofthe CIA in the Clinton administration'sown sinister machinations in Iraq, nowface deportation after a March 9 rulingthat they constituted a "danger" to "national security:" In the hearings, federalimmigration judge D. D. Sitgraves ruledthat defense attorneys for the six were notpermitted to examine "evidence" againstthem or to cross-examine governmentagents. The attorneys have stated thatthey "know no more about the allegationsthan we did when the proceedings beganeleven months ago." Only because a former CIA head, James Woolsey, has nowoffered to defend the six will the defenseeven be able to examine the secret evidence against them as they appeal theruling.These deportation proceedings tookplace as the U.S. undertook its militarybuildup in the Persian Gulf, threateningyet another mass murder of the Iraqipeople. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqishave died at the hands ofU.S. imperialism,

A conference of academics and professionals billed as "A Dialogue with Cuba,"held March 19-21 at the University ofCalifornia at Berkeley, ran afoul of theAmerican government's relentless driveto destroy the Cuban bureaucraticallydeformed workers state. Clinton's StateDepartment-using a measure enactedby Republican president Reagan in the1980s denying U.S. visas to Cuban government officials-excluded 11 of 32Cubans who were to attend the gathering.Reflecting concern among a section ofthe ruling class that the trade embargohurts American business interests, 21Congressmen verbally protested the StateDepartment action.Heavily built by the fake-TrotskyistCastro enthusiasts of Socialist Action(SA), the Berkeley confab was preciselygeared to those favoring a soft-core approach to counterrevolution-und ermining Cuba's economy with dollars-whoseprincipal apostle these days is the Pope.Socialist Action (February 1998) exultedin the Pope's recent visit to the island,bleating: "Media Neglected Pope's Callfor End to Blockade of Cuba."Intent on bolstering bourgeois forcesopposed to Washington's trade ban, theconference organizers were virulentlyhostile to a Spartacist League literaturetable highlighting our call for unconditional military defense of the Cubandeformed workers state against imperial-

president Ron Carey, who rode into officeon the coattails of the Justice Department's takeover of the union, has beentargeted by the anti-labor government following last summer's successful UPSstrike. The capitalist exploiters also pushracism and anti-immigrant chauvinism asideological weapons to poison integratedclass struggle. This points to the burningneed to forge a class-struggle leadershipfor labor-a multiracial revolutionaryworkers party-which champions all ofthe oppressed in the fight to overthrowracist capitalist rule. Full citizenshiprights for all immigrants!.

from the 1990-91 Gulf War and subsequent U.S. missile attacks and particularlythrough the continuing starvation embargoagainst Iraq. Unlike untold numbers ofleftist opponents ofAmerican-backed military regimes around the world who mettorture and death after being deportedfrom the U.S., the six former CIA "assets"were knowing accomplices of Washington's failed dirty. work. Nevertheless, thetreatment they received in the court ofAmerican "democracy" represents a threatnot only to all immigrants but to the civilliberties of everyone in the U.S.Setting the stage for Judge Sitgraves'star chamber is the anti-immigrant witchhunt promoted from Clinton's WhiteHouse on down, which has caught countless Arabs, Africans, Central Americansand Asians in its racist vise. Underthe "Anti-Terrorism and Effective DeathPenalty Act" backed by both the Democratic and Republican parties and signedby President Clinton in 1996, immigrants can be "tried" in "anti-terrorism"courts without ever knowing the chargesagainst them, while decades-old convictions on the most trivial offenses are nowgrounds for deportation.We demand that all deportation proceedings against the six Iraqis be haltednow!

ist attack and internal counterrevolutionand for proletarian political revolutionagainst Castro's Stalinist bureaucracy.Our revolutionary materials on the international class struggle sent SA honchoJeff Mackler into a frenzy, as he camerunning over to enforce their "policy"banning all materials deemed not directlyrelevant to Cuba! Unlike the milquetoastreformists of the Freedom Socialist Party,we refused to submit to this political censorship. Mackler then threatened to callthe cops if our table was not down withinfive minutes. Moments later, the campusadministration came to throw us out.Mackler's appeal to the bourgeois administration and cops is nothing new forthe reformist SA, which has long soughtto curry favor with bourgeois forces andthe pro-capitalist labor bureaucracy. During the Greyhound strike in 1983, Mackler and other Socialist Action supportersorganized a goon squad to prevent militants from stopping scab buses in SanFrancisco. And SA was among the loudest cheerleaders for Polish Solidarnoscthe V a t i c a n ~ s p o n s o r e d company "union"for the CIA-and Yeltsin counterrevolution in Russia. But our Trotskyist politicswere not silenced at the Cuba conference,and we continued to distribute literatureputting forward what is ultimately theonly real defense of Cuba against imperialism and domestic counterrevolution:international socialist revolution.

WORKERS VANGUARD


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Canadian I.S. Press Agentsfor Ayatollah RegimeWe publish below a leaflet issued onMarch 14 by the Trotskyist LeaguelLigue

T r o t s k y s ~ e , Canadian section of he Inter-national Communis t League.On March 7, the feminist organizers ofthe Toronto International Women's Dayfair openly embraced agents of raciststate terror and anti-woman violence. Forthe first time, both the imperialist Canadian Armed Forces and agents of theblood-drenched Islamic Republic of Iran-which has butchered thousands of leftists, gays, Kurds and other minoritieswere accorded prominent display stalls.Militant protests by hundreds of women'srights activists and leftists succeeded indriving out both the military recruiters

and the mullahs' propaganda officers.[See "Toronto Protesters Say: 'Army Recruiters Out!'" WVNo. 686,1 3 March.]The Trotskyist LeaguelLigue Trotskyste is proud to have stood with thosewho sought to rescue International Wom-en's Day as a working-class holidaywhich celebrates the struggles of all theoppressed. Not everyone was so pleased.In defense of the Islamic Republic'spropagandists and the besieged armytable, the feminist IWD organizers dispatched their marshals and Ryerson University security police to try to quell theprotests. Now the so-called InternationalSocialists (I.S.) have published a despicable diatribe which slanders those whoprotested the Iranian government as amob of violent racists!The I.S. newspaper, Socialist Worker(11 March), denounces the expUlsion ofthe Islamic Republic's representatives asa "racist assault," singling out the WorkerCommunist Party of Iran (WCPI), as wellas Socialist Action supporter Joe Flexer.To justify its vile slander, Socialist Work-er prettifies the Iranian regime's propaganda display as simply "a booth staffedby some Muslim women." Then the I.S.howls that "The booth was attacked andthe women expelled from the fair on thebogus argument that the religion they represent is sexist. This is just racist."No, this is just a pack of lies.In fact, the booth in question was covered with pamphlets and glossy photos,bearing the emblem of the IslamicRepublic, which glorified the treatment ofIranian women under the fundamentalist

Just Out!This pamphlet reprintspresentations given by SLCentral Committee memberJoseph Seymour on theorigins of Marxism in theFrench Enlightenment andin left Hegelianism. Also

included are "150 Years ofthe Communist Manifesto"and "Marxism and Religion."

In the retrograde climateof post-SOViet reaction, thestruggle to reassert thevalidity of the program andpurpose of revolutionaryMarxism is crucial forour fight for new OctoberRevolutions.$2 (48 pages)

Make checks payable/mail to:

regime, including the imposition of theveil. The women purveying this trashopenly defended the barbarous practiceof stoning women to death for adultery.Chanting "Down with the Islamic Republic!" in English and Farsi, and led byKurdish and Persian women supporters

January 1979THE FDRM-RELI61DUSTHE IiPIBIT-REVOLUTION!

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The International Socialists are liarsand slanderers. And we have to ask-whobenefits? Certainly not the brutally oppressed women and minorities of Iran.By defending the agents of the IslamicRepublic against the outrage of itsvictims, the I.S. offers a "left" cover for

Der SpiegelCliffites promote "anti-imperialist" credentials of Islamic fundamentalistregime which enslaves Iranian women in veils.of the WCPI, a multiracial group of wellover a hundred women and men angrilydenounced the Iranian government asdeadly enemies of women and minorities.The only "racist assault" came at thehands of IWD marshals, who tried todrag away an Iranian protester and thenhad him physically removed from thecampus by Ryerson police. Of this, theI.S. breathes not a word.Socialist Worker proclaims that "Fortunately the honour of IWD was partiallysalvaged when some others at the fairorganized a protest outside the Canadianarmy booth and drove it from the fair.""Some others"? Supporters of the WCPIand Socialist Action were prominent inthe anti-army protest, which was initiated, organized and led by the TrotskyistLeague, the Ontario Coalition AgainstPoverty and Anti-Racist Action. In contrast, the LS.-whose own table was just- a few feet away from the Armed Forcesrecruiting station-played no role at alluntil hundreds of demonstrators shouting"Army out!" confronted the uniformedkillers of the Canadian imperialist state.

that repressive regime spawned by thesupremely violent system of imperialism.Moreover, as the Canadian governmentgears up its anti-immigrant machineryof deportation to expel thousands-notleast Iranian refugees-the LS.'s sinisterviolence-baiting of the WCPI is an openinvitation for racist state repression offoreign-born leftists.The LS.'s defense of the Iranian government and Islamic reaction is not anaberration. This outfit has spent yearspainting up Muslim fundamentalism as"anti-imperialist" and even "revolutionary." In 1979, they supported the fundamentalists' seizure of power in Iran underAyatollah Khomeini. Anti-Communist tothe bone, the LS. howled against theSoviet Red Army intervention in Afghanistan, hailing the CIA-backed IsJamic

BOSTONU.S.fUN Hands Off Iraq!Defeat U.S. ImperialismThrough Workers Revolution!

Monday, March 30, 7:30 p.m.Harvard, Emerson Hall, Room 305Spartacus Youth Club Class SeriesSelected Monday evenings, 7 p.m.Next class, April 6: South Africa andthe Lessons of the Russian Revolution: For Workers Revolution toSmash Neo-Apartheid Capitalism;Harvard University Memorial Hall,Room 303

Information and readings: (617) 666-9453NEW YORK CITY

U.S.fUN Hands Off Iraq!Defeat U.S. Imperial ismThrough Workers Revolution!Saturday, March 28, 3 p.m.New York Law School, Room C-20047 Worth St. (north of Chambers)

Spartacus Youth Club Class SeriesAlternate Thursdays, 8 p.m. Next

Spartacist Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116

class, April 9: Black Oppression-Bedrock of U.S. Capitalism: TheFight for Revolutionary Integrationism; New York University Loeb StudentCenter, Room 513Information and readings: (212) 267-1025

27 MARCH 1998

mujahedin who fought to maintainwomen as chattel slaves, and who murdered schoolteachers for the "crime" ofteaching girls to read.In contrast, Trotskyists said "Hail RedArmy-Extend social gains of OctoberRevolution to the Afghan peoples!"Andwe fought for unconditional defense ofthe Soviet Union against the threat ofcapitalist counterrevolution, noting it wasbetter to fight imperialism in Afghanistanthan inside the USSR itself. As wewarned, the withdrawal of Soviet troopsfrom Afghanistan under Mikhail Gorbachev opened the door to the destruction ofthe Soviet degenerated workers state, andleft Afghan women at the mercy of thereligious terrorists. In its own small way,the LS. bears direct responsibility for thehorrors of Islamic rule in Iran and Afghanistan, and for the immiseration of theworkers and minorities under BorisYeltsin's Russian capitalist regime.The Trotskyist League has manypolitical differences with the WorkerCommunist Party of Iran, which we havelong made clear. For example, the WCPIhas on several occasions fostered illusions in imperialist agencies like theUnited Nations, calling in 1996 for theUN to "put an end to the arrogance ofthe United States" as Washington threatened another military attack on Iraq.

We have also argued against theWCPI's thoroughly retrograde positionon abortion. Their program states flatlythat their party "is against the act ofabortion." The Trotskyist League fightsfor free abortion on demand as a key element in the struggle to break the gripof the family, the main institution ofwomen's oppression. In Sweden, theWCPI endorses capitalist governmentprohibition of the Islamic headscarf inschools. We oppose such interventionby the imperialist state, which can onlyfuel anti-immigrant racism and fascistterror, as in France today. At the sametime, we reject Socialist Worker's disgusting insinuation that leftists whooppose the veil-symbol and instrumentof female servitude-are accomplices ofFrench fascist Jean-Marie Le Pen and hismurderous National Front.On March 7, however, the WCPI tookthe right side in defense of women'srights. Every organization of the left andworkers movement must stand withthem against the poison spewed by theInternational Socialists, which can onlyserve the interests of the enemies ofall the oppressed-imperialist capitalismand its "Third World" underlings. Downwith LS. lies and slanders! Women's liberation through socialist revolut ion! .

CHICAGOU.S./UN Hands Off Iraq!Defeat U.S. ImperialismThrough Workers Revolution!

Thursday, April 2, 7 p.m.University of Chicago, Cobb Hall,Room 102For more information: (312) 454-4930

TORONTOSpartacus Youth Club Class Series

Alternate Tuesdays, 7 p.m. Next class,March 31: The Fight for a LeninistVanguard Party Today; InternationalStudent Centre, 33 St. George StreetInformation and readings: (416) 593-4138

VANCOUVERIndependence for Quebec!National Chauvinism IsPoison to Class Struggle

Friday, March 27, 7:30 p.m.Britannia Community CentreRoom L4, 1661 Napier Street(off Commercial Drive)For more information: (604) 687-0353

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We publish below the second an d con-cluding part of an edited presentation bycomrade Joseph Seymour on the originsand development of the imperialist sys'-tem. Part One appeared in WV No. 686(13 March).PART TWO

In West Europe and also Japan, thedevastation of World War II combinedwith the leftward radicalization of theworking class militated against a return,tothe "free trade" and "free market" policies of the pre-1914 era. In 1947, U.S.president Harry Truman told a group ofAmerican Congressmen, "We'll have toprovide a program of interim aid reliefuntil the Marshall program gets going,or the governments of France and Italywill fall, Austria too, and for all practicalpurposes Europe will be Communist"(quoted in Philip Armstrong et aI., Capi-talism Since World War 11 [1984]).Except for the U.S., all the majoradvanced capitalist countries engaged ina high degree of state intervention ineconomic activity in the early postwarperiod. To prevent the massive flight ofcapital to the U.S., where the rate ofreturn was far higher, all West Europeangovernments imposed tight 'restrictionson foreign-exchange transactions. T h i s ~ in turn, discouraged the movement ofcapital from the U.S. to Europe, sinceAmerican investors were uncertain as towhether and on what terms they couldget their money out again.Consider a wealthy American in the1950s who had inherited some bondsof the big Italian automaker Fiat. I f hewanted to sell those bonds and reinvestthe money in an American corporation, hewould have to bribe the top officials of 15different Italian miniskies. Under theseconditions, wealthy Americans were notexactly breaking down the door to investin Europe. It was not until the late 1950sthat the pound, franc, deutschmark andlira became freely convertible into dollarsas well as into one another. And it wasonly after this that big U.S. manufacturing firms like General Motors and Fordopened factories in West Europe.I want to digress here on the relationbetween currency convertibility and theinternational movement of capital in itsdifferent forms, in part because this is akey element in the present financial crisisin East Asia. The single most valuablepiece of foreign property American capitalism has are the oil fields in Saudi Arabia leased by a consortium of four U.S.oil companies. Yet nobody knows or cares4

about the exchange rate of the Saudi riyal.That's because the oil extracted fromSaudi Arabia is sold on the world marketfor dollars. However, the cars producedby General Motors factories in Germanyare sold to Germans for deutschmarks;the cars produced by Honda factories inthe U.S. are sold to Americans for dollars.This kind of foreign investment will beundertaken only if the deutschmark isconvertible into dollars, and dollars intoyen, at a stable rate. This same principleholds true for investment in the securitiesof foreign firms. American and Japanesefinanciers will purchase bonds issued byHyundai and Samsung only if the SouthKorean won is convertible into dollarsand yen at a stable rate.A basic precondition for the economicboom in East Asia during the last decadewas that the governments of this regionnot only pledged currency convertibilitybut pegged their currencies to the dollar.The present crisis began last summerwhen Thailand reneged and devalued itscurrency to increase exports and reduceimports. When other countries in the region followed suit, this triggered a massive and panicky capital flight.U.S. Imperialismand the Cold WarBut let's return to our historical analysis which allows us to place recent economic developmen.ts in a broader perspective. The outcome of World War IIhad an even more profound effect on theeconomically backward regions of theworld than on the advanced capitalist

countries. To begin with, major regionswere removed from the sphere of capitalist exploitation altogether. In East Europein the late 1940s, the Soviet bureaucracy,under pressure from American imperialism, created deformed workers statesstructurally similar to the StalinizedSoviet Union, based on planned, collectivized economies, state monopoly offoreign trade, etc. Bureaucratically deformedworkers states also emerged in China,North Korea and Vietnam as a result ofindigenous peasant-based revolutions ledby the Stalinists.At the same time, significant politicalchanges also took place in those economically backward countries whichremained within the sphere of capitalistexploitation. The weakening of the WestEuropean imperialist states caused byWorld War II combined with the radicalization of the colonial masses led to the"decolonization" of Asia, the Near Eastand Africa. State power now passed intothe hands of the indigenous bourgeoisies,who sought to pursue their own nationalinterests within a glob'a ! context dominated by international finance capital.Despite some CIA-organized coups(such as that against the left-nationalistMossadeq regime in Iran in 1953), theability of U.S. imperialism to controlgovernments of former colonial countries was limited by the countervailingpower of the Soviet Union. Moscow'sbacking allowed bourgeois-nationalist regimes like Nasser's Egypt, Nehru andIndira Gandhi's India and Saddam Hussein's Iraq to exercise a certain degree

General strike against anti-labor laws and threat of mass layoffs in winter of1996-97 demonstrated combativity of South Korean proletariat.

Ross{Tony Ston e

of political and economic independencefrom the imperialist powers which theycould not have attained on the basis oftheir own national economic resources,Western and Japanese corporations werediscouraged from investing in countrieslike Egypt and India for fear of punitivetaxation, restrictions on the repatriationof profits and the possibility of nationalization without adequate compensation.The 1960s and '70s marked the heyday ofeconomic nationalism and statified capitalism in what was then called the "AfroAsian bloc."At the same time, the bourgeoisies ofcertain American client states also utilized the Cold War conditions to attain asemblance of economic independence.Here I want to talk a bit about SouthKorea because it is now the focus of amajor economic crisis with global repercussions. The rapid industrial growth inSouth Korea over the past three decadeswas subsidized by U.S. and Japanese imperialism because it was a front-line statein the Cold War. South Korea is conventionally described as a prime example ofexport-led growth. However until themid-1980s South Korea normally ranbalance-of-trade deficits, not surpluses. Itwas importing large amounts of high-techmachinery and equipment, mainly fromJapan, to construct an industrial infrastructure and plant. These deficits werefinanced by American aid and Japaneseloans on soft terms.Beginning in the 1960s, under the military dictatorship of Park Chung Hee, theSouth Korean capitalist groups-the socalled chaebol-undertook an ambitiousindustrialization drive through a highlevel of state intervention and nationalistic economic policies. For example, in the1970s the Seoul regime decreed that alloil shipped from the Persian Gulf toSouth Korea had to be carried in Koreanowned ships. This and similar measureswere harmful to U.S. and Japanese economic interests. But Washington andTokyo were constrained from puttingeconomic pressure on South Koreathreatening to cut off aid or loans-forfear of destabilizing the right-wing dictatorship and strengthening the left andanti-American oppositional forces.Today, Wall Street spokesmen and theAmerican and British financial press aredenouncing "crony capitalism" in SouthKorea, denouncing its unregulated andirresponsible banking practices. This hasbeen going on for a quarter of a century.So what's different now? What's differentnow is that the Soviet Union no longerexists and North Korea is in dire straits.

WORKERS VANGUARD


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So the American and Japanese imperialists are ripping up their old agreementswith the chaebol and dictating new terms:We used to let you have 50 percent of thesurplus from South Korean workers; nowyou can only have 25 percent and thenonly if you do exactly what we tell you.That's called the "globalization" of capital, otherwise known as imperialism.Historical Developmentand Dialectics

In examining the development of a second generation of imperialist states-theU.S., Germany and Japan-one might askwhy a third generation could not emergetoday froni the more industrially developed Third World countries like SouthKorea or Brazil. This raises the questionof methodological approach. Historicaldevelopment is dialectical, not cyclical.History does not consist of a continualrepetition of set patterns without significant change. One has to comprehendimperialism in its historically concrete,complex and ever-changing dimensions.What is possible and probable at anygiven time is determined and conditionedby the entire previous course of development. How people think and act isdetermined and influenced by their understanding of past ex perience. They seekto emulate activities and policies deemedto be successful and avoid those seen as arecipe for failure or disaster.Let me give a' few examples of what Imean by the dialectical nature of historyin regard to modern imperialism. WhenLenin wrote Imperialism, the HighestStage of Capitalism in 1916, the imperialist bourgeoisies were not particularlyworried about social revolution in theircolonies and semicolonies. There hadbeen numerous revolts by the native peoples against colonial rule-the Sepoymutiny in British India, the Philippineliberation struggle against U.S. imperialism, the uprising of the Herero people insouthwest Africa against their new German colonial masters-but these had allbeen suppressed through overwhelmingly superior military force. In no casehad such colonial revolts driven out theimperialists and expropriated their property. But, as we have seen, after the Bolshevik Revolution, American, British andFrench bankers were extremely cautiousin lending money to colonial and especially semicolonial countries. In otherwords, the proletarian revolution led byLenin in Russia changed in significantways the behavior of the capitalists andtheir governments which Lenin had analyzed before that revolution.Another example is that the Germanruling class in the late 19th century couldnot build a great industrial power likeBritain by adhering to the same economicpolicies that Britain had earlier-precisely because they were confrontingBritain as the dominant world industrialfinancial power. Thus industrial capitalism as it developed in late 19th-centuryGermany had to be-and was---quite different in its structure and character thanthat of the pioneer country of industrialcapitalism. In fact, by 1900 some spokesmen for the British ruling class regrettedthat they had not opposed the unificationof Germany in the I 860s, or that they hadnot formed an alliance with Russia andFrance to crush Germany in the 1880swhen it was still relatively weak. Theyregretted that they had not put up high tariffs against German imports, just as Germany put up high tariffs against Britishimports.Or consider Japan in this respect. Inthe decades before the Second WorldWar (called the Pacific War in Japan),the House of Morgan and major Britishbanks like Barings and the Rothschildslent large sums of money to Japan, therefore helping finance its industrialmilitary development. Wall Street andthe City of London did not demand inreturn for these loans that American andBritish industrialists be able to buy upthe productive resources of the zaibatsuon the cheap. .That is now exactly what is happeningto South Korea. Over the past threedecades, the South Korean ruling class27 MARCH 1998

NOforeign Rice if FujifotosJapanese farmers protest imports of U.S. rice, American laborbureaucrats push Japan-bashing protectionism. As interimperialist rivalries intensify, capitalist rulers and labor lackeys promote chauvinist poison.consciously tried to emulate the economic program-such as massive government subsidization of and guarantees forloans for industrial investment-whichhad transformed Japan into a major capitalist power in the late 19th and early20th centuries. However, as recent dramatic events have shown, the SouthKorean chaebol could not follow in thefootsteps of the Japanese zaibatsu inlarge part because they were blockedfrom doing so by Japanese industrialfinancial power. South Korea is not beingallowed to borrow money to subsidize itsown national bourgeoisie. The conditionsof the recent International MonetaryFund (IMF) loans to South Korea arethat the Americans and> Japanese-andthe Germans, too, if they are interestedcan buy the most productive resources ofthe chaebol very cheaply. The Americanimperialists have no intention of allowing another country to surpass them bytheir own actions or inactions.In short, the South Korean bourgeoisieis too reliant on imperialism to embark onthe road of independent national development. However, the influx of capitalinto countries like Thailand, Indonesiaand particularly South Korea-what iscurrently termed "globalization"-hascreated a combative, young proletariat.In such countries of belated capitalistdevelopment in the imperialist epoch,we advance the program of permanentrevolution: only under the rule of the proletariat-standing at the head of the poorpeasantry and other oppressed sectors andfighting to promote socialist revolution inthe more advanced capitalist powerscan the yoke of imperialism be overthrown.The way economic development hasproceeded in these countries in the pastfew decades-particularly in regard to thechanged role of agriculture in the worldeconomy-also has a programmaticimplication in advancing the perspective of permanent revolution. Today, theclassic agrarian slogan orthe bourgeois-

Scherschelmme Life

U.S. general GeorgeMarshall (above left)oversaw plan toreconsolidate WestEuropean capitalism aspart of anti-Soviet ColdWar. Coal shipments_ were airlifted behindSoviet lines to WestBerlin, 1948.

democratic revolution-"land to the tiller"-is no longer adequate. The way inwhich the agrarian revolution unfolded inRussia in 1917-21, with the peasants simply seizing and dividing up the land, isnot likely to recur in many backwardcountries today. In the 19th and early 20thcenturies, labor productivity developedmuch faster in industry than in agriculture. Tsarist Russia was a major exporterof grain, produced by labor-intensivemethods by peasants using techniqueswhich had scarcely changed in a century.But since World War II, labor productivity has grown faster in agriculture thanin industry. There is more capital perworker in American agriculture than inthe American steel industry. Many ThirdWorld countries now export light manufactures, such as clothing and consumerelectronics, to North America and importbasic foodstuffs from North America. Asa consequence, many backward countrieshave experienced massive deruralization.The mass of toilers no longer live inrural villages, but in the shantytownsaround the major cities. Peasant smallholding is no longer economically viablewithout large amounts of capital investment and significant technical training.In countries like Mexico, the program ofagricultural collectivism-supported bysocialized industry and intensive technical education-is key to a genuine agrarian revolution.The Collapse of theSoviet Union

The economic roots of what is nowcalled "globalization," especially thegrowth of manufacturing in-East Asia,can be found in the declining profitabilityof American industry beginning in thelate 1960s and in Japan during the following decade. With the devastation ofGermany and Japan in World War II, theU.S. attained a degree of economic dominance in the early postwar years thatcould not be long sustained. In 1950, theU.S. accounted for 60 percent of indus-

SanderS/life

trial output and over half of the capitalstock of all advanced capitalist countriesand for one-third of world trade in manufactured goods.However, as Germany and Japan rebuilt their industrial economies, theybegan to cut into ever larger shares ofworld markets and even the U.S. domestic market. At the same time, the U.S.industrial plant, largely built during andimmediately following World War II,was becoming increasingly obsolete. Thecompetitive position of American capitalism was further eroded by the inflationary pressures of the Vietnam War. By1970, the U.S. share of world trade inmanufactured goods was only half whatit had been 20 years earlier. The rate ofprofit fell from 19 percent in the early 1960s to I3 percent in the late '70s.Corporate America responded with ananti-labor offensive combined with a certain shift in operations to low-wagecountries. Between 1977 and 1994, therewas a fivefold increase in manufacturingplant and equipment directly owned byU.S. firms in Third World countries.

By the mid-1970s, the so-called Japanese "economic miracle" was clearlyneeding further divine assistance as profitability was sharply declining. Therewere a number of contributing factors:higher labor costs resulting from virtually full employment, the big jump in theprice of oil, protectionist measures inthe U.S. and West Europe. The basiccause, however, was that analyzed byMarx in Volume III of Capital: rapidaccumulation drives down the rate ofprot t because the additional incrementof capital does not generate a corresponding increase in surplus value. Inthe case of Japan, the rate of profit fellfrom 23 percent in the 1960s to 15 percent in the second half of the 1970s.

So the keiritsu, too, decided to go offshore. Japanese direct investment in EastAsia skyrocketed from $100 million ayear in the early 1960s to $2.7 billion ayear in the late 1980s. Matsushita wasnow making many of its TV sets and airconditioners in Malaysia, Yamaha itssporting goods in Taiwan, Minebea itsminiature ball bearings in Singapore andThailand, TDK its magnetic tapes in Taiwan and South Korea, etc.Nonetheless, during the 1980s Westernand Japanese investment in neocolonialcountries was still inhibited by the uncertainties of the Cold War. A popularrevolution or even an election or militarycoup could bring about a left-nationalistregime backed by Moscow. A fundamental political condition for the present triumph of capitalist "globalization" wasthe retreat of Soviet power under Gorbachev in the late 1980s, followed by thecountenevolutionary destruction of theSoviet Union in 1991-92. It was no accident, for example, that the toppling of theradical-nationalist Sandinista regime inNicarag!la in 1990, capping the contrawar organized by Washington, coincidedwith the beginning of a massive investment boom by U.S. banks and corporations in Mexico. At the same time, capitalist counterrevolution in the Soviet bloc

continued on page 105 ,


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YODDg SparlaeDSIG on" NPAC Vietnam Antiwar Coalition

Centrist Sophistry andthe Popular FrontAs Democratic president Clinton prepared to terror-bomb Iraq in February,the Spartacist League called for militarydefense of Iraq against imperialist attackand stressed that only workers revolu

tion under the leadership of a Leninist vanguard party could destroy U.S.imperialism. In contrast, the reformistleft sought to appeal to bourgeois liberals to pressure the Clinton administrationand looked to past class-collaborationist"antiwar" vehicles such as the "NationalPeace Action Coalition" (NPAC) whichhelped derail protest against the VietnamWar in the 1960s and early 19-70s intothe arms of the capitalist DemocraticParty.U.S. imperialism's long, bloody andultimately losing war to defeat the forcesof the North Vietnamese bureaucraticallydeformed workers state (DRV) and theSouth Vietnamese National LiberationFront (NLF) radicalized broad layers ofyouth in the U.S. and internationally.While Saddam Hussein's Iraq is a semicolonial capitalist country, what wasposed in Vietnam was a social revolution. The Spartacist League called formilitary victory to the NLF/DRV andfought to win antiwar radicals to a revolutionary proletarian perspective. We agitated for labor political strikes againstthe war and raised the call, "All Indochina Must Go Communist!"Our line was sharply counterposed tothat of the ex-Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party (SWP), the main force behindNPAC. The reformist SWP deliberatelylimited NPAC to the single demand "OutNow!" in order to draw in imperialist"doves" like Indiana Democratic SenatorVance Hartke, who was on NPAC's steering committee. These bourgeOIs politicians wanted to cut U.S. imperialism's.losses once it became clear that the heroicVietnamese workers and peasants werewinning on the battlefield. We characterized NPAC as a form of popular fronta class-collaborationist alliance tying theorganizations of the left and workersmovement to the class enemy--anddemanded: "Bourgeoisie out of the anti-

No PRO in this picture: IG calls to"Break with the Popular Front!" atNYC Mexico protest, deep-sixingopposition to bourgeois-nationalistPRO of Cardenas.6

war movement!" Thousands of radicalized youth who solidarized with the Vietnamese struggle grew to despise the SWPfor its rightist "peaceful, legal" line,exemplified by its embrace of imperialistpoliticians.The SWP's class collaborationism wassealed in blood at a 1971 NPAC confer-

.i-

YoungReformism VS. Marxism duringVietnam War: SWP honcho FredHalstead pushed SOCial-patriotism,Spartacists raised call, "All Indochina Must Go Communist!"ence in New York City, where an SWPgoon squad launched a violent attackagainst supporters of the SL and the Stalinist Progressive Labor Party who wereprotesting Hartke's presence on the platform. In a July 1971 leaflet distributedimmediately after the NPAC conference,we stated:

"The Spartacist League opposes thepresence at anti-war actions of consciousrepresentatives of our class enemy, thecapitalist class .... Hartke represents theclass enemy pure and simple. He has nomore place in the anti-war movementthan [then-president) Nixon, for both areconscious agents of the same class: thecapitalist class which aims to smash theVietnamese social revolution and all revolutions which threaten world capitalism. They differ only as to tactics."Our principled opposition to NPACwas recently taken up in the pages of theInternationalist (January-February 1998),published by the coterie of defectors fromthe SL who call themselves the "Internationalist Group" (IG), in a piece titled "SoHow About the NPAC Popular Front?"The purpose of this article is to cover up

their opportunist appetites toward a spectrum of reformist and petty-!:)()urgeoisforces around Cuauhtemoc Cardenas'Party of the Democratic Revolution(PRD) in Mexico, which the IGlets justify by huffing and puffing about a "Cardenista popular front." In fact, the PRD isan outright bourgeois-nationalist party.In a polemic against the IG which corrected our own earlier characterization ofthe PRD, we noted that in the absence ofa mass reformist workers party the Mexican proletariat is politically subordinatedto its "own" ruling class not through anon-existent "popular front" but through

the direct vehicle of bourgeois nationalism, including the "leftist" PRD variety.This elementary observation provokedthe IG to sputter that we are revising"key Spflrtacist positions from the past"and to denounce us for refusing to fightthe PRD "popu lar front."Expressing its own opportunist out-

look, the IG insinuates that if we don'tcall the PRD a popular front, that meanswe tail it. Of course, the IG labels thePRD a popular front pr:ecisely in orderto capitulate to it. This Was clear at aJanuary protest in New York City againstthe recent massacre of 45 peasants inChiapas. The IG failed to raise a singleslogan against either Cardenas or thePRD, finally producing a sign whichvaguely called only to "Break with thePopular Front!" In contrast, an SL placard declared clearly, "No Support to theCapitalist PRD-Build a RevolutionaryWorkers Party of the Bolshevik Type!"(see "Tailing Mexican Nationalism, IG'Disappears' the PRD," WV No. 683, 30January).In its latest attempt to throw up aconfusionist smokescreen around thisquestion, the IG argues that the SLdeclared the SWP to be reformist overits "popular-front coalition with 'antiwar' bourgeois politicians as early as1965." To even draw an analogy betweenNPAC and the Cardenistas is a measureof the IG's sophistry: where the formerwas essentially a front group for the reformist SWP including a handful of bourgeois politicians, the PRD is a capitalistparty with "left" tails. In fact, the SWPwas not able to consummate a popularfront with bourgeois poiiticians likeHartke in 1965, because at that point nosignificant bourgeois politician opposedthe war. Bourgeois "defeatist" sentimentover Vietnam was prepared by the antiCommunist bloodbath in Indonesia inlate 1965-which reassured more farsighted imperialist spokesmen thatAmerican interests in the region were

secure even if the U.S. pulled out ofIndochina-and only came to full flowerafter the punishing 1968 "Tet Offensive"by the NLF/DRY.We characterized the SWP as reformist in 1965 because of its social-patriotic politics-which expressed its classcollaborationist appetites. We split fromthe Fifth Avenue Peace Parade Committeethat year when its SWP organizers pushedthrough a policy excluding any expression of revolutionary opposition to U.S.imperialism in favor of the single, "classless," liberal-pacifist appeal to "Stop thewar in Vietnam now!" Where the SWPpushed the social-patriotic call to "Bringour boys home," we said our side was theheroic Vietnamese workers and peasants.But by the IG's logic, it would have beenokay to tail after the SWP unless and untilthese reformists had actually pulled someDemocratic Party politicians into their"antiwar" lash-up.In forming a political bloc with thecapitalist politician Hartke, the SWPtook a page from the reformist Communist Party (CP), which had been buildingsimilar class-collaborationist coalitions

Young Spartacussince the 1930s. The CP was applyingthe Stalinist policy of the popular front-which in Europe meant cementingelectoral coalitions with bourgeois politicians with the aim of beheading proletarian revolutions-to American conditions, where there was no massreformist party. Thus the CP supported Democratic president Franklin D.Roosevelt's "New Deal coalition" andorganized a class-collaborationist "antiwar movement." In a 1937 polemic,The People's Front: The New Betrayal(excerpted in our recently re-issuedpamphlet, On the United Front), JamesBurnham of the then-revolutionary SWPwrote:

"TIlfough a multitude of pacifist organizations, and especially through thedirectly controlled American Leagueagainst War and Fascism, the Stalinistsaim at the creation of a 'broad, classless,People's Front of all those opposed towar.' The class collaborationist characterof the People's Front policy is strikinglyrevealed through the Stalinist attitude inthese organizations. They rule out inadvance the Marxist analysis of war asnecessarily resulting from the inner conflicts of capitalism and therefore genuinely opposed only by revolutionaryclass struggle against the capitalist order;and, in contrast, maintain that all persons, from whatever social class orgroup, whether or not opposed to capitalism, can 'unite' to stop war."

This description fit NPAC to a T.It is also a telling polemic against thecentrist IG, whose appetites to tail afterliberal/reformist "antiwar movements"are evident in its February leaflet on the. Persian Gul f war buildUp. The I G'sempty call to "Build a RevolutionaryParty!" on the front page of its statement

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~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I ~ j l l ! i j l ! ~ I S j ; e t 4 ! ~ I ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

u.s. Bloody Imperialist War in Vietnam1968 My La; MassacreOn March 14, U.S. Army veterans

Hugh Thompson Jr. and Lawrence Colburn returned to the Vietnamese villageof My Lai, revisiting with local residentsthe site of an infamous massacre ofunarmed civilians by American troops 30years before, which they had tried tostop. For four hours on 16 March 1968,U.S. soldiers led by Lieutenant WilliamCalley raped, tortured and systematicallymurdered over 500 villagers. Most werewomen and children; 56 of those killedwere less than five months old. Thompson, Colburn and Glen Andreotta, thecrew of an H-23 helicopter which arrivedafter the massacre was well under way,managed to save a handful of Vietnamese from the slaughter by training theirguns on the rampaging troops.

The My Lai atrocity was no isolatedoccurrence. In'its attempt to drown theVietnamese Revolution in blood, U.S.imperialism regularly carried out suchmass murder, killing more than two million Vietnamese. "Free-fire zones" werecreated through large swathes of thecountryside. The CIA's "Operation Phoenix" assassinated at least 100,000 in itsfailed attempt to destroy the South Vietnamese National Liberation Front (NLF),while American bombing runs laid wasteto farming and forest areas. Indeed, evenas Calley directed the carnage at My Lai,GIs were slaughtering up to 155 women,children and elderly men two miles awayat the town of My Khe.What sets My Lai apart is that persistent government efforts to conceal thisbloodbath failed. For months, the Armytried to cover up the massacre in the faceof growing evidence from journalists andeven GIs. Unable to keep up their stonewalling, Army brass reluctantly pressedcharges against some of the officers. But

only Calley was convicted. Sentenced to"life imprisonment at hard labor," Calleyspent only three and a half days in jailbefore being returned to his private

imperialist war-or to racial oppression,cop terror, unemployment and all theother ills produced by capitalism-shortof a socialist revolution that places theworking class in power and disarms therapacious imperialist rulers once and for

Kyoichi Sawada

Massacre of500 Vietnamesevillagers inMy Lai (top) wasno aberration.U.S. imperialismslaughtered overtwo millionVietnamese inwar of terroragainst workersand peasants.

apartment through the direct interventionof then-president and fellow war criminal Richard Nixon. (Later, he spent a fewmonths in the "disciplinary barracks" at

all. As proletarian internationalists, wecall for unconditional military defense ofthe Vietnamese deformed workers stateagainst imperialism and internal counterrevolution while fighting for proletarianpolitical revolution to oust the Stalinist

Fort Leavenworth.) Today Calley drivesa Mercedes and manages a Columbus,Georgia jewelry store.As we said at the time in an articletitled "My Lai Mass Murderer Must NotGo Free!" (WVNo. 48, 5 July 1974):"Calley was not simply a scapegoatmany men were sent to Vietnam and didnot become torturers, rapists and murderers. To say that what Calley did wasinevitable or meaningless is a vile insultnot only to the Vietnamese dead, but alsoto the many soldiers who went throughthe agony of Vietnam without becomingsadists and mass murderers. The workersmovement must hold Calley and hiscohorts accountable for their crimes."Ever since its humiliating defeat at thehands of the North Vietnamese Army andNLF, the capitalist rulers of the U.S. havefeared that they would be unable to generate popular support for their imperialistadventures around the world. As part oftheir efforts to overcome the "VietnamSyndrome," imperialist spokesmen havepeddled the lie that antiwar protesters inthe 1960s and '70s "spat on" Vietnamveterans. The broader lie-that U.S. imperialism was not defeated on the battlefield but "stabbed in the back" by protesters at home-was drummed up again as

Washington sought to discredit antiwarprotests during the 1990-91 "DesertSlaughter" of Iraq. In fact, Vietnam antiwar activists often sponsored coffeehouses near army bases so they could discuss the imperialist nature of the war withthe working-class youth being sent off tokill and die for the capitalist rulers.Meanwhile, as opposition grew amongthe ground forces in Vietnam, hundredsof American officers were "fragged"killed by their own troops.Today, Washington seeks to providea "humanitarian" sheen for projectingits military might internationally. In aceremony dripping with hypocrisy, theU.S. Army recently honored Thompson,Colburn and the surviving family ofAndreotta, portraying the My Lai massacre as an aberration. In fact, My Laishowed the true face of U.S. imperialism. To end the threat of new imperialistwars requires the overthrow of the rapacious capitalist ruling class throughsocialist revolution.

bureaucracy in Hanoi. We fight for theperspective of international socialist revolution against "socialists" who fosterillusions in capitalism, and against thoselike the IG who willfully confuse the linebetween reformism and revolution .

and in signs carried at protests was conspicuously not linked to the need tobreak workers and minorities from thecapitalist Democrats. Their statement isfull of phony agitation for trade-unionactions-like a boycott of military shipments-without once making the essential point that only workers revolution inthe U.S. can put the imperialist warmon-gers out of business. These charlatansseek only to put a "working-class" glosson pro-Democratic Party reformist protest politics.

Defend South African Student ProtesterslOf a piece with this is a trade-unionresolution which, according to the IGleaflet, is being pushed by its Brazilianallies in the "Class-Struggle Caucus,"whose idea of "struggle" is to drag thetrade unions into the capitalist courts(see "IG Lawyers for Brazil Betrayal:Caught in a Web of Lies," WV No. 672,8 August 1997). While denouncing'"Yankee imperialists," the motion decries"the scandalous material support by the[Argentine] Menem government to imperialist aggression." Scandalous?! This

capitalist government is slavishly supportive of its U.S. imperialist patronsand has been carrying out vicious attackson the working class on behalf ofthe International Monetary Fund. Atbottom, the IG's "disappointment" overthe actions of the Menem governmentreveals its touching faith in the "antiimperialist" credentials of the LatinAmerican bourgeoisies and promotesillusions in a class-collaborationist "antiimperialist united front" with bourgeoisnationalists.For our part, we will not preach the liberal lie that there can be a solution to27 MARCH 1998

We reprint below a March 8 letter tothe Vice Rector of Student Affairs atthe University of the Western Cape(UWC) in South Africa. The letter,which was enthusiastically distributedby students at UWC, protests the arrestof student demonstrators and leftists bythe SAPS national police force of thegovernment led by Nelson Mandela'sAfrican National Congress (A NC),which is supported by the CommunistParty (SACP) and COSATU trade-union federation.Dear Sir:The Partisan Defense Committeevehemently protests the arrest of studentdemonstrators and leftist activists at theUniversity of Western Cape on 2 March1998. The activists were part of ademonstration against the Universityadministration's plans to enforce feepayments that will result in excludinghundreds of the poorest students, overwhelmingly black African, from theregistration rolls. The protesters facecharges of public disruption and contempt of court.

This is an open political attackon leftists at UWe. Of the studentsarrested on campus this week, sevenout of nine are leaders of various leftistorganizations on campus, including theSocialist Students Action Committee,the Student League and the Pan AfricanStudent Organisation. The administration sought out these individuals forharassment because they formed theleadership of the protest opposition tothe fee plan. The administration mobilized campus security and the SAPSto demonstratively smother oppositionto the impending purge. We demand:Hands off student activists and leftistsat UWC! Cops off campus!At all levels, education for theoppressed is a cruel joke in the "new"South Africa. The apartheid laws preserved higher education as a bastionof white privilege. The ANC/SACP/COSATU Tripartite Alliance government has done nothing to change this.Black and poor students remain overwhelmingly excluded from highereducation. A grotesque rationale forcontinuing and deepening this racist

inequality is the Alliance call to "endthe culture of non-payment" throughthe Masakhane campaign, where thosewith nothing must pay their own way.The UWC administration is more thanwilling to throw students off campus inthe name of financial responsibility.The SRC student government, which ispolitically dominated by Alliance partner SASCO [South African StudentCongress], has cosigned the fee payment plan, endorsing the administrationcall for Masakhane bootstrapping. Education should be a right, not a privilegefor those who can afford it. For free,quality education for all!This year, as last, the ANC government and their colleagues in the campus administration have shown howthey intend to deal with opposition totheir slash-and-burn educational policy-with cops and arrests. End the political harassment of student activists atUWC! 'We demand the immediatedropping of charges against all studentprotesters! Richard GenovaPartisan Defense Committee

7


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Korea...(continued from pa ge 1)orchestrated the massacre of some 2,000civilians in the southern city of Kwangju,as the South Korean military drowned anuprising there in blood (see "KwangjuMassacre: Washington Gave the GreenLight," WV No. 646, 24 May 1996).Open military rule was only swept awayas the result of a massive labor revolt in1987. But despite its "democratic" trappings, the South continues to be ruledthrough police-state terr-or.

This 'was underlined recently whenKim made a post-inaugural gesture ofreleasing several dozen among the manyhundreds of political prisoners who languish in South Korean dungeons. Butthis "democrat"-whose running matewas the former head of the KoreanCIA-did not even wait for his inauguration to amnesty former dictators ChunDoo Hwan and Roh Tae Woo, who werefinally brought to trial two years ago fortheir role in the Kwangju massacre.Under the all-encompassing NationalSecurity Law and similar measures,thousands of labor organizers, studentprotesters and others deemed to expresssympathy with North Korea or with"communism" have been thrown intoprison. Prominent among those notreleased by Kim is the world's longestserving political prisoner, Woo YongGak, who was arrested 40 years ago oncharges of being a North Korean commando and remains in jail for refusingto renounce Communism. Free all victims of police-state repression in SouthKorea!North Korea Under the Gun

Years of militant struggle by the SouthKorean proletariat, defying not onlydirect military repression but the corporatist, KCIA-sponsored "Federation ofKorean Trade Unions," led in the late1980s to the formation of independenttrade unions, now grouped together inthe SOO,OOO-strong Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU). We havewarned that economist militancy alonecould not defeat the attacks of the mammoth chaebol conglomerates backed bya formidable apparatus of capitalist stateterror and the U.S. Army. In fact, theKCTU leadership does not even callfor the withdrawal of American militaryforces-only for troop reductions-andhas long looked to "liberal" bourgeoisoppositionists like Kim Dae Jung. Following Kim's election, the union federation called off a general strike andhas joined with the government and thechaebol in enforcing layoffs and wagecuts.The combative South Korean proletariat can go forward only on the Qasis ofclass independence from the bourgeoisie,requiring intransigent political struggleagainst the nationalism promoted by thelabor misleaders and the left. Socialistrevolution against the chaebol capitalistswould not only emancipate South Koreanworkers, women and all the oppressed,but is the surest defense of the collectivized economic foundations of the NorthKorean deformed workers state. Afterdecades of embargo and military encirclement of the North, the Seoul bourgeoisie and its imperialist patrons in

8

Available in Chinese!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 13T! GPO, New York, NY 10116

For Proletarian Socialist Revolution in South Korea! For Proletarian Political Revolution to Oust theStalinist Bureaucracy in North Korea! Down With IMF Bloodsuckers!Defeat U.S. Imperialism Through Workers Revolution!

BOSTONThursday, March 26, 12:30 p.m.UMass/Boston (between Wheatley& McCormick bldgs.)For more information: (617) 666-9453

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SAN FRANCISCO LOS ANGELESMonday, March 30,12 noonSF State University Monday, March

30, 5:30 p.m.Pasadena City CollegeMalcolm X PlazaFor more information:

Front of campus (Colorado Blvd.,1/2 block east of Hill Street)(415) 777-9367 or (510) 839-0851 For more information : (213) 380-8239

Washington and Tokyo hope to literallystarve North Korea into submission. Asfamine spreads through the North afterthree years of abysmal harvests, the Japanese bourgeoisie has refused to ship onegrain of its hoard of 3.5 million tons ofsurplus rice.North Korea has been pushed intonear-terminal decline by the collapse ofthe Soviet Union and the Chinese Stalin-

reunification with the South. A leadingPyongyang spokesman, Pak Hyon Jae,made very clear what this means whenhe called recently for "one nation, onestate, two systems and two governments,"promising to "leave intact the presentpolitical and economic systems in thenorth and south of Korea" (People'sKorea, 27 December 1997). This is arecipe for capitalist restoration and

TimesRelatives call for release of political prisoners, many of them workers andleftists. After election as president, Kim Oae Jung (inset, left) "amnestied"bloodsoaked former dictators Roh Tae Woo and Chun 000 Hwan.ist bureaucracy's drive toward capitalistrestoration. First under Kim II Sung andnow under his son and successor KimJong II, the Pyongyang bureaucracy haspromoted its nationalist program ofjuche ("self-reliance"), an extreme, autarkic variant of the Stalinist dogma of"socialism in one country." Far fromseeking proletarian struggle to overthrowthe South Korean bourgeoisie, the NorthKorean Stalinists call for "peaceful"

~ P M f ~ j m t ; 1tJfE3itsSl/fiJJgJW-P1U1ir -a-eclaration of Principlesof the Spartacist League

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9/12

Northite Pirates Run for Cyberspaceit enhances his ability to bury his wildlyopportunist zig-zags of yesterday in flickering digital documents that may appeartoday and be wiped out tomorrow. Andthe Northites no longer have to face

the road to oblivion. Among the flotsamand jetsam of anti-Spartacist groupletsin the U.S., both the "Bolshevik Tendency" (BT) and Workers' Voice recentlyannounced (hopefully fatal) splits. The

After years of hysterically trumpetingthe need tu build a weekly, then twiceweekly, then daily Bulletin, DavidNorth's fake-Trotskyist "Socialist Equality Party" (SEP-formerly the WorkersLeague, and before that the "AmericanCommittee for the Fourth International")has now officially thrown in the towelon what was always a grotesquely fakenewspaper. A February 13 "Dear Reader"letter announcing the SEP's latest grandiloquent scam, "the launching of theWorld Socialist Web Site," mentioned inpassing: "We ... will no longer be publishing The International Workers Bulletin."North's British SEP satellite has similarlyannounced the end of its InternationalWorker.

1 I i ' - u . e - T ~ L i w " , - -_ ._--- [' arly122 nPage3)Rally Pledges Fight To Build Daily Bulletin

So much for the Northites' "mass paper"pretensions. Since anointing himself supreme leader of the "International Committee of the Fourth International" following the ouster of the discredited (nowdeceased) Gerry Healy a dozen years ago,North has followed in Healy's corrupt,thuggish and megalomaniacal footsteps.When in 1976 Healy launched a fancy,four-color, daily paper modeled on theBritish tabloids, we asked: "Where's theClass Line in the News Line?" (WV No.114, 18 June 1976). That soon becameclear, as Healy-and his American flunkey North-began running paeans toLibyan strongman Muammar Qaddafiand other oil-rich Arab bourgeois regimes (see "Healyites, Messengers ofQaddafi," WV No. 158, 20 May 1977).Two years later, Healy and North openlyhailed Saddam Hussein's execution of 21Iraqi Communists, while Healy's outfitsecretly spied on Iraqi oppositionists inBritain.When the flow of petrodollars forservices rendered dried up, Healy's regime imploded. North stepped into thebreach, soon proclaiming himself, ever somodestly, the leader of the internationalproletariat.Humbug

The Northites are now rhapsodizingabout the Internet as a "revolutionarymedium" which is supposedly "relativelycheap and accessible" to "potentially millions." This pompous dismissal of thevast majority of the world's workers andpoor-especially minorities and immigrants-who don't have up-to-date computers, modems and netsurfing capacitysums up the Northites' appetites as"middle-class radicals" (an epithet theyare fond of throwing at the SpartacistLeague in an attempt to deflect ourpolemical attacks). For North, the Internet is a "revolutionary medium" because

Fake "mass" paperevaporates intocyberspace, moresuited to coveringup Northite politicalbandits' constantopportunis t zigzags.Fake-TrotskyistDavid North (right)apes deceasedmentor Gerry Healy(far right) incorruption, thuggeryand megalomania.

attacks from angry trade unionists whonoticed that the Bulletin was a scab paper,published without a union "bug."The new SEP Web site, rapidly expand- .ing via the gaseous "great thoughts" ofDavid North, is the latest in a growingjunk belt of virtual fantasy worlds, whereposturing little grey men with giganticegos and dubious politics can play at revolution. Nowadays it's become quite therage for burnt-out drop-outs to set upPotemkin Village Web sites as outpostsof retreat. It's fitting, indeed, that the"Internationalist Group" of Jan Norden,a shamefaced defector from Trotskyismwho was formerly editor of WorkersVanguard, has also created its own littleworld within the Net.The liquidation of the Bulletin is partof a broader phenomenon as a host ofreformists and centrists, buying into theimperialist lie that "communism is dead,"submerge themselves in larger socialdemocratic formations or split up on

SPARTACIST LEAGUE/U.S. LOCAL DIRECTORYNational Office: Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116' (212) 732-7860

Boston Los Angeles OaklandBox 390840, Central Sta. Box 29574, Los Feliz Sta. Box 29497Cambridge, MA 02139 Los Angeles, CA 90029 Oakland, CA 94604(617) 666-9453 (213) 380-8239 (510) 839-0851Chicago New York San FranciscoBox 6441, Main PO Box 3381, Church St. Sta. Box 77494Chicago, IL 60680 New York, NY 10008 San Francisco, CA 94107(312) 454-4930 (212) 267-1025 (415) 777-9367

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

27 MARCH 1998

VancouverBox 2717, Main P.O.Vancouver, BC V68 3X2(604) 687-0353

I

orpnJulhilllten(th."Youth will not take the buujlel cu:a,the- police ill the schools, and tbe druglaws. Workers will not take the "Hick ontheir (ivl", standards. We licht for theU'. .vu........ UI IUO: U'''''6 daily Piper' as a weapon in thill sl:ni,eie.". ._. .. . . . . - . . . ...... _ - Editor Lucy St. Jofn prell, '1tfi1

send liK tnulblu:in, t&msto bulld tM clrcu

workers vanguard no 687 - 27 march 1998

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