workers vanguard no 794 - 03 january 2003

7/29/2019 Workers Vanguard No 794 - 03 January 2003

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soC!:No. 794 ~ X - 6 2 3 3 January 2003

"War on Terror"=War on Immigrants, Blacks, I . a l n ~ r , Fight lor aWorkers America!DECEMBER, 20-Moving a step closer towar, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell hitthe airwaves last night to declare that Iraq hadcommitted a "material breach" of the recentlypassed United Nations Security Council resolution. The supposed breach came in the formof the 12,000-page report submitted by Iraqearlier this month detailing the country'sweapons programs. From the moment thereport was issued, before even one word of itwas translated from the original Arabic, theU.S. and British imperialists went on a propaganda rampage, declaring it all to be "lies."As an Iraqi official noted, "Obviously theyhaven't read it. They didn't even bother." TheBush administration is intent on waging areactionary imperialist war against Iraq; allthe UN resolutions, the weapons inspectionsand the like are merely meant to provide acover for U.S. imperialism's designs.The weapons inspections themselves arenothing more than a pretext for war. I f chiefinspector Hans Blix and his cohorts findsomething, then the U.S. will have its ostensible reason to go to war; if nothing is found,then Iraq is obviously "hiding something"and war is needed to disarm it. In fact, it wasnot until Blix condemned Iraq's report thatPowell made his comments, declaring: "Theinspectors said that Iraq has failed to providenew information. We a g r e e . ~ ' And even whilethe inspectors roam the country, U.S. andcontinued on page 8

SL/SYC contingent at September 28 demonstration in San Francisco protesting war moves against Iraq andcalling for defense of Palestinian people. .

Defend Iraq Against U.S. Attack!Hundreds AFrested in RacistINS Roundup in Los Angele$Free All the Detainees!

LOS ANGELES, I;lecember 21-More than3,000 people, predominantly Iranian Americans, gathered at the federal building in Westwood on December 18 to protest the arrest ofhundreds of Near Eastern men and boys whohad been ordered to register with the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Some putthe number of arrests as high as 1,000. Detainees were herded into mass holding cells andthreatened with deportation. Arrests have also

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taken place in Houston, Cleveland, Washington, D.C. and other cities. This adds a chillingnew chapter in the U.S. government's escalating racist state repression urler the rubric ofthe "war on terror."The arrests took place when thousandscomplied with an order by Attorney GeneralJohn Ashcroft that all males 16 and over fromIran, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Sudan who are, not citizens or permanent residents register atan INS office by December 16. Those whoshowed up were photographed, fingerprintedand subjected to humiliating "interviews."Many of these men have lived in the U.S.for over 20 years and had valid worker,student or visitor visas; many had pendingapplications for permanent residency. As thecontinued on page 2

WV PhotoDecember 18: Thousands rally outside Westwood Federal Building inLos Angeles to protest anti-immigrant roundups


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INS Roundup..(continued from page 1)Chicago Tribune (20 December 2002)reported, this INS "program is part of theNational Security Entry-Exit RegistrationSystem, designed to track millions offoreigners on temporary visas." Residentsfrom 15 additional countries must alsosubmit to this draconian program in thenext two months. Ranging from Mghanistan and Pakistan to Yemen, Tunisia andother Islamic bourgeois societies, the listalso inclqdes North Kore'a, a bureaucratically deformed workers state in the crosshairs of U.S. imperialism's drive for capitalist counterrevolution.Many in L.A. and Orange County weredetained on the basis of alleged "visa violations" which were in fact caused by thefailure of the INS to process its ownpaperwork in a timely fashion. Accordingto the Los Angeles Times (20 December2002), the INS "claims it had to locksome people up because it couldn't process the crush that showed up too close tothe December 16 registration deadline."The detainees were strip-searched, hosed'down with cold water and in many casesforced to sleep outside or on bitterly coldconcrete floors in rooms holding 50.

Some detainees were shipped hundreds ofmiles away to an INS holding facility inArizona. One 16-year-old was seen beingpulled from his crying pregnant mother,who was told by a sadistic INS agent thather son would never return home. Mostwere held for at least three days, oftendenied drinking water and given limitedfood rations. L.A. radio reported that oneman died after being denied medicine.Protesters at the December 18 demonstration chanted, "Free our people now!"arid raised placards demanding, "Free OurFathers, Brothers, Husbands and Sons."Some banners pointedly asked, "WhatNext? Concentration Camps?" Manyraised the similarity between the currentmass roundup of Near Eastern immigrantsand the internment of Japanese Americansduring World War II. At that time, the U.S.government coupled its war in the Pacificagainst its Japanese imperialist rival withthe roundup of its perceived JapaneseAmerican "enemies witbin." Now, as U.S.imperialism prepares a new devastatingwar against semi colonial Iraq, immigrantsfrom the Near East in particular aredeemed suspect, with legal residents fromIraq and even U.S. citizens of Iraqi descenttargeted for mass detention. According tothe New York Times (17 November 20(2),"In the event of an American invasion of

Those Who Labor Must Rule!The counterposed interests of labor andcapital invariably lead to class conflict.In his 1891 introduction to Karl Marx'sWage Labour and Capital, Friedrich Engelsexplained that only the working class hasboth the objective interest and social powerto sweep away the inherently exploitativeand irrational capitalist system and replace

it with an egalitarian socialist society.TROTSKY It is the working class alone which pro- LENINduces all values. For value is only anotherexpression for labour, that expression whereby in our present-day capitalist society isdesignated the amount of socially necessary labour contained in a particular commodity. These values produced by the workers do not, however, belong to the workers.

They belong to the owners of the raw materials, machines, tools and the reserve fundswhich allow these owners to buy the labour power of the working class. From thewhole mass of products produced by it, the working class, therefore, receives backonly part for i t s ~ l f . And as we have just seen, the other part, which the capitalist classkeeps for itself and at most has to divide with the class of landowners, becomes largerwith every new discovery and invention, while the part falling to the share of the working class (reckoned per head) either increases only very slowly and inconsiderably ornot at all, and under certain circumstances may even fall.But these discoveries and inventions which supersede each other at an everincreasing rate, this productivity of human labour which rises day by day to an extentpreviously unheard of, finally give rise to a conflict in which the present-day capitalisteconomy must perish. On the one hand are immeasurable riches and a superfluity ofproducts which the purchasers cannot cope with; on the other hand, the:; great mass ofsociety proletarianised, turned into wage-workers, and precisely for that reason madeincapable of appropriating for themselves this superfluity of products: The division ofsociety into a small, excessively rich class and a large, propertyless class of wageworkers results in a society suffocating from its own superfluity, while the great majority of its members is scarcely, or even not at all, protected from extreme want. Thisstate of affairs becomes daily more absurd and-more unnecessary. It must be abolished, it can be abolished. A new social order is possible in which the present classdifferences will have disappeared and in which-perhaps after a short transitionalperiod involving some privation, but at any rate of great value morally-through theplanned utilisation and extension of the already existing enormous productive forces ofall members of society, and with uniform obligation to work, the means for existence,for enjoying life, for the development and employment of all bodily and mental faculties will be available in an equal measure and in ever-increasing fulness.

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-Friedrich Engels, "Introduction" to Karl Marx,Wage Labour and Capital (1891)

! . ~ ! ! ! ! ! M ~ ~ ~ . . ' ! ! ! . ~ l ! . ! EDITOR: Alan WildeEDITOR, YOUNG SPARTACUS PAGES: Michael DavissonPRODUCTION MANAGER: Susan FullerCIRCULATION MANAGER: Irene GardnerEDITORIAL BOARD: Ray Bishop (managing editor), Bruce Andre, Jon Brule, Karen Cole, Paul Cone,George Foster, Liz Gordon, Walter Jennings, Jane Kerrigan, Len Meyers, James Robertson, JosephSeymour, Alison SpencerThe Spartacist League is the U.S. Section of the International Communist League(Fourth Internationalist).Workers Vanguard (ISSN 0276-0746) published biweekly, except skipping three alternate issues in June, July andAugust (beginning wHh omitting the second issue in June) and with a 3-week interval in December, by the SpartacistPublishing Co., 299 Broadway, Suite 318, New York, NY 10007. Telephone: (212) 732-7862 (EdHorial), (212) 732-7861(Business). Address all correspondence to: Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116. E-mail address:vanguard @tiac.netDomestic 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 etters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint.The closing date for news in this issue is 23 December 2002.

No. 794 3 January 2003

Iraq, officials would intensify the program's mission through'-afrests and detentions of Iraqis or Iraq sympathizers if theyare believed to be planning domestic terrorist operations" (see "Government Threatens Roundup of Iraqi Americans," WV No.792, 29 November 2002).While immigrants from Christian Armenia were initially included in the registration requirements, this was quicklywithdrawn as a "mistake." Many of theIranian men arrested in L.A. were Jews,including those who fled Iran after thevictory of Ayatollah Khomeini's "IslamicRevolution," and are now being persecuted as perceived Muslims. Combining sheer ignorance with racist contempt, the INS in the Dallas-Fort Wortharea, according to one Arab Americanspokesman, "informed" the Near Easterncommunity about the registration requirements by contacting the local "IndoAmerican Business Association," assuming that Indians are Arabs because "theirwomen are covered" (Los Angeles Times,17 December 2002)!As of December 20, most of the victims of the racist INS dragnet in L.A.have reportedly been released after theirharrowing ordeal. However, the INS,which has never revealed the number ofthose arrested, claims that 20 remain incustody due to expired visitor visas. Thisis on top of the many detainees still incustody stemming from the roundupsof at least 1,200 immigrants following9/11, hundreds of whom have alreadybeen deported. We demand: Free all thedetainees-No deportations! Full citizenship rights for all immigrants!A common placard at the December18 demonstration in Los Angeles read,"Detain Terrorists Not Innocent Immigrants." But the bipartisan "war on terror"proclaimed in the aftermath of the criminal September 11 attack on the WorldTrade Center is nothing but a pretext forimperialist war abroad and a war at homeagainst immigrants, black people and ultimately the entire working class. Follow-. ing 9/11, the government has pushedthrough its "anti-terror" laws by claimingthat they would "only" target immigrantsfrom Near Eastern and South Asian countries. But as the Bush administrationshreds ever more constitutional rights, itis clear that the domestic "war on terror"is using the victimization of the most vulnerable as the opening shot in intimidatingthe population as a whole. The government has already set its sights on the trade

L.A. protest. Hundreds were detainedand brutalized in INS dragnet.unions in the name of "national interests,"invoking the slave-labor Taft-Hartley lawin October against locked-out members ofthe West Coast International Longshoreand Warehouse Union (ILWU) and gutting membership in federal employeesunions with the establishment of theHomeland Security Department.

It is crucial for the labor movementto mobilize in defense of immigrantsand all those in the cross hairs of thecapitalist government's "war on terror."This understanding was demonstrated inaction last February when the PartisanDefense Committee and the Bay AreaLabor Black L e a g u ~ for Social Defenseinitiated a united-front mobilization,with ILWU longshoremen at its core, indefense of immigrants and in oppositionto the USA-Patriot Act and MaritimeSecurity Act. As the call for that demonstration pointed out (WVNo. 773, 25 January 2002), Bush and his governmenthave "created the spectre of an 'enemywithin' in order to strengthen the powersof their own consummately violent state.But what America's racist rulers can getaway with will be determined by classstruggle. We must fight now to defend ourrights and jobs, and the rights and jobs ofour immigrant brothers and sisters." Whatis urgently posed is the fight for moreand larger such mobilizations in defenseof our rights against the racist rulers ofAmerican imperialism

SWP Editor Ihreatened with DeportationR6ger Calero, associate editor ofthe Socialist Workers Party's Spanishlanguage publication Perspectiva Mun-dial and a staff writer for the Militant,was seized by the INS at Houston International Airport as he returned fromreporting assignments in Guadalajara,Mexico and Havana, Cuba. After beinglocked up in a crowded Houston-areaINS jail for ten days, Calero was released on bond on December 13 afterprotests from immigrant rights and laborgroups, including the president ofCalero's former union, United Food andCommercial Workers Local 789 in St.Paul, Minnesota. The INS still seeks to

deport Calero, a permanent resident ofthe United States who has lived heresince 1985, to his native Nicaragua.The government claims to be attempting to exclude Calero on the basis ofa 1988 minor drug conviction from whenhe was in high school, but this is an uttersham. In fact, when Calero applied forpermanent resident status in 1989-which was approved in 1990-heincluded information about his conviction, which the INS waived when theygave himhis green card. The INS isclearly going after this journalist forpolitical reasons. As a 14 December Partisan Defense Committee letter in defense

of Calero noted, "This outrage is meantto intimidate any dissenters; it is a frontalassault on all political activists whowould oppose the current imperialist wardrive or defend the Cuban people fromthe U.S. stranglehold embargo."The threatened deportation of Calerocomes in the context of a vicious nationwide dragnet following September 11aimed at immigrants, Palestinian activists and people of Arab and South Asiandescent. Under the "war on terror,"hundreds have been thrown into INSdetention without even the pretense of dueprocess or respect for constitutional rights.In Southern California, the INS recentlyordered that immigrants from North African, Near Eastern and Muslim countriesbut also North Korea-register with thegovernment, and at least 500 have alreadybeen arrested (see front-page article).The arrest of a leftist immigrant guiltyof nothing but practicing political journalism is a highly dangerous development'for all opposed to the depredationsof this rotten system. Letters demanding that deportation proceedings againstCalero be dropped should be sent to Hipolito Acosta, District Director, Immigrationand Naturalization Service, 126 Northpoint Drive, Houston, TX 77060; fax (281)774-5989. Hands of fRoger Calero!.

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u.s. Senate: White Bigot Millionaires' ClubTrent Lott "just got caught with hismouth open," said Ramon Verdejo Jr., anaid officer at New Rochelle, New York'sMonroe College, reflecting black andminority reaction to the media's revelation that the U.S. Senate contains-braceyourself-a pack of reactionary racists.At a celebration of the 100th birthday

of stone seg regation ist Senator StromThurmonu this December, MississippiSenator Trent Lott gushed over theancient all-purpose reactionary: "WhenStrom Thurmond ran for president, wevoted for him. We're proud of it. And ifthe rest of the country had followed ourlead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either." Thurmond ran for president in 1948 as thecandidate of the breakaway "Dixiecrat"faction of Southern Democrats galvanized into reaction by the Democrats'adoption of a mild civil rights plankand President Harry Truman's announce-'ment that he would integrate the armedforces following World War II. Whitesupremacist Thurmond declared then:"All the laws of Washington and all thebayonets of the Army cannot force then-----s into olir homes, our schools, ourchurches."Lott was forced to resign as Republican majority leader for spilling the beansin an unguarded moment before reporters, for talking in public the way theclubby Senators do among themselves.He openly expressed the deep racistcontempt for and cruelty toward blackpeople of this country's bourgeois politicians, whether Republican or Democrat.With dizzying hypocrisy, the Bushadministration ostentatiously distanceditself from Lott's disgrace. This from agang of "good old boys" whose narrowelectoral victory involved keeping largenumbers of black people from voting inFlorida, whose attorney general JohnAshcroft is an open admirer of the Confederacy and who are riding roughshodover the rights of immigrants, black people and workers in their brutal drive todominate the world. Meanwhile, stungconservatives began digging skeletonsout of Democrats' closets, like SenatorRobert Byrd, another wizened Washington fixture. Byrd, held up today asa noble antiwar patrician, began hispolitical career as a Kleagle (recruiter) inthe Ku Klux Klan of his native WestVirginia. He filibustered for 14 hoursagainst the 1964 Civil Rights Act andran amok on Fox News last year, babbling uncontrollably about "white n-----s"in a performance reeking with race andclass viciousness.This public eruption of Senatorial contempt for blacks and the poor recallsSouthern novelist William Faulkner'scomment, "The past is not dead. In fact,it's not even past." Thurmond's namealone, arch-representative of a generationof vicious racists, calls up unquiet ghostsand the great unfinished business ofthe Civil War. From America's origin asa slaveholding nation through the socialrevolution of the Civil War, the subsequent betrayal of black aspirations inthe defeat of Radical Reconstruction,the battles against Jim Crow segregationin the 1950s and 1960s and on to today,the burning fault liI1e in U.S. history isthe question of black freedom. The racialoppression of black people is used todivide the working class and weaken thelabor movement as a whole.By holding celebrations for StromThurmond today, the Senate (and theBush White House) thereby spit on thosewho battled segregation, the heroes andmartyrs of the civil rights movement.Birmingham, Alabama, 1963-four little black girls dead in the bombing ofthe 16th Street Baptist Church; Philadelphia; Mississippi, 1964-civil rightsworkers Michael Schwemer, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman murdered bythe sheriff's department and Ku KluxKlan; young black children dressed in3 JANUARY 2003

White-supremacist Senator Strom Thurmond (seated) celebrated byBush, Lott and others at White House birthday party in December.

Undead R'acistZombiesof Mississippi(and Beyond)their best clothes and clutching schoolbooks walking gauntlets of shrieking,spitting, hysterical white adults; Eugene"Bull" Connor unleashing firehoses andGerman shepherd attack dogs on civilrights marchers in Birmingham; torture,brutal beatings by police and KKKers,firebombings and murders-that's what"Dixiecrat" means.

Scratch a Democratand Find a DixiecratThat the Republican Party is an overtparty of racist.repression and big businessis not news to our readers. One need only

recall the 1988 elections, when GeorgeBush Sr. used the "Willie Horton" affair-. the escape of a black convicted murderer'while on furlough from a Massachusettsprison who later raped II white womanto portray his Democratic opponent,Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis,as "soft on crime." Yet illusions remainthat somehow the Democrats are better,or at least a real "lesser evil." They aren't,as their sordid history of smashing blackaspirations makes clear. From its inception the Democratic Party was the partyof the slaveholding Old South and of Dixiecrat segregation. After 1948, when Truman won the election, most of the Dixiecrats, formally known as the "StatesRights Democratic Party," came back intothe fold (Thurmond switched .to theRepublicans in 1964).Exposing the alliance between Southern Dixiecrats and Northern liberals thatwas forged by Franklin D. Roosevelt,Malcolm X said in the 1960s: "A votefor a Democrat is a vote for a Dixiecrat."In a challenge to the old status quo,militant civil rights workers in SNCC(Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) organized the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which registered80,000 Mississippi blacks previouslykept off the voter rolls and fought to havetheir delegation replace the usual allwhite Jim Crow one at the 1964 Demo-

cratic Party convention in Atlantic City.Northern liberal darling Hubert Humphrey and his protege Walter Mondale(who rose from the dead to run for theSenate this fall) were assigned to put theboot in the face of these black voters,keeping them from being seated. As hisreward, Humphrey got the vice-presidential nomination under Lyndon Johnson.Mild as it was, Lyndon Johnson's 1964Civil Rights Act broke the historic Democratic Party hold over the South;. ever since,the only real domestic contest betweenRepUblicans and Democrats is over whocan best appeal to the Southern whiteracist vote, veering from Nixon's "Southern strategy" to Jimmy ("ethnic purity")Carter back to the Republicans, withan interlude of Southerner Bill Clinton,who proved his loyalty to the legacyof the Old South during the 1992 campaign by personally ensuring that a braindamaged black man on Arkansas death rowwas executed. It was under Clinton that"welfare as we know it" was smashed,affirmative action programs were furthergutted and a huge expansion in prisonsand speedup on death row were instituted.It's rather bitterly amusing to watch

these cynical D.C. politicians sling lots ofmud at each other. But such periodic openoutbursts of racism are no aberration, butreflect the reality of intensifying blackoppression in this society, where thedeath penalty has replaced the lynch ropeand prisons have replaced plantations asinstruments of race subjugation. Blacksand Latinos are the majority of prisoners, and one out of every four black menin their 20s is either in prison, on probation or on parole.,The present rate ofjoblessness for blacks is 11 percent, anine-year high. Social researcher DaltonConley points out in his article "Thurmond's Loss Hasn' t Mattered M u ~ h AfterAll" (Newsday, 19 December 2002):"The story of racial inequality is not thatdifferent than it was at the start ofthe civil rights struggle. In 1950, blackswere about twice as likely to be unemployed as whites. Today that figureremains unchanged." He points out that ablack man earns about 70 cents for awhite man's dollar, and the typical blackfamily owns only one-eighth the networth of the typical white family. And defacto, if not legal, segregation in schoolsand neighborhoods is still the norm.U.S. Senate: Bulwark Against"Swinish Multitude"

The liberal Nation whines, "Lott ShouldResign" because he's hurting "preciousstandards of government probity ande q u i t y ~ ' (30 December 2002). Well, hedid. However, those "precious standards"the Nation is so concerned about are thestandards of capitalistclass rule. TheAmerican Constitution of 1787, whichlegitimized black chattel slavery, wasconsciously designed as a bulwark ofsocial control over what Thomas Jefferson called "the swinish multitude," especially urban workingmen, whom hebelieved to be "the panders of vice andthe instruments by which the liberties ofa country are generally overturned.!!JJwThe U.S. Senate, American equivalentof the British House of Lords (thoughlacking the requirement of hereditary insanity), was created as a bulwark againstthe "rabble" and is an extremely undemocratic institution. Each state gets twoSenators regardless of size, which disen. franchises large urban areas with lots ofminority, black and working-class peoplein favor of Deep South or Western thinlypopulated and more conservative regions.In fact, all the main structures of U.S.government, including the imperial presidency, the Electoral College system, theU.S. Supreme Court and other appointedfor-life court systems were designedas barriers to democratic freedoms .The vile racist zombies lurching aroundthe Senate won't be laid to rest, and ourown martyrs and heroes won't be fullyhonored, until we win our fight for a thirdAmerican revolution, a proletarian revolution led by the multiracial working classthat will put an end to this racist nightmare. Only then will the unfinished business of the Civil War and the brokenpromises of Reconstruction be fulfilledand the way finally opened to a socialistsociety of equality, dignity and freedom.

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Little Rock, 1957:Black studentjeered by rabidwhite mob as sheenters CentralHigh School.Dixiecrats vowed:Integration, never!

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Waselchuk/i-AfricaUnemployed miners fromLesotho, part of South Africa'simmigrant workforce. South Africa: OscarGLindelani immigrantdetention center.Down With ANC Government.Anti-Immigrant Dragnet!The following article is adapted froma Spartacist South Africa presentation atthe University of the Witwatersrand inApril 2002 to protes t immigrant murders.The poisoned fruit of neo-apartheidcapitalist rule is seen in the unremittingroundup, detention, deportation and murder of immigrants and the massive obstacles thrown up to political asylum. Theanti-immigrant witchhunt starkly revealsthe reactionary face of the bourgeoisnatjonalist African National Congress(ANC) and its allies. In March, Nigerian

and Malawian immigrants were killedat the Lindelani detention centre in Kru-,cgersdorp on the West Rand. Five guardsbeat and sjambokked [bullwhipped] themto death. Detainees said the guardsresponsible had taken money to releasethe men but brought them back to thecentre instead. In April a Zimbabwean,who had fled the firebombing and looting of an "informal settlement" in Zandspruit [north of Johannesburg], also diedin detention at Lindelani, where he fellill. Roundups like "Operation Crackdown" routinely target immigrants forhaving skin deemed "too dark" or for, not speaking "South African" languages.The front page of the Johannesburg Star(5 April 2002) carried a dramatic photoshowing a documented Burundian ensnared in one such dragnet, with-a caption including his plea: "Don't send meback-just kill me now."The ANC-led government orchestratesand manipulates an anti-immigrant backlash, fomenting countless attacks. Therewere pogromist attacks against Angolans in the Du Noon suburb in theWestern Cape and Somali-ownedshops in Port Elizabeth. Nor arethese atrocities simply a recent phenomenon. In the late summer of1998, a rabid mob, whipped, intofrenzy against "foreigners" at a rallyof unemployed in Pretoria, brutallymurdered three immigrants fromother African couritries on a commuter train (see "South Africa:Protest Lynch Mob Murder of Immigrants," WV No. 696, 11 September1998). The bourgeois press feedsinto rising fratricidal hatreds, asexemplified by a typical headlinefrom the Sowetan: "Nigerian Criminals Must Be Expelled" (4 August2002). Anti-immigrant racism is atimeworn method to divide the proletariat and deflect class struggle.Spartacist South Africa stands forfull citizenship rights for all whomanage to cross the borders, andseeks to drive home the understand-ing that the source of exploitation of4

all labour is the capitalist system.The South African capitalists havelong exploited migrant workers, comingmostly from Mozambique, Lesotho, Zimbabwe and Swaziland, who form a strategic component of labour in the goldand diamond mines. These neighbouringcountries often sheltered South Africanexiles during the apartheid era and identified strongly with the ANC. Followingthe ANC's rise to power in 1994, SouthAfrica became a magnet for labourers andmerchants from across the continentlooking for jobs and shelter. Some immigrants are refugees from war and faminein places like Rwanda, Nigeria andCongo--countries where the South African bourgeoisie has sought to realise itsown regional expansionist ambitions, andto act as t h ~ junior partner of AngloAmerican imperialism. The ascendanceof a layer of ANC politicians as blackfront men for white capitalist rule hasfacilitated South Africa's growing appe-, tite to dominate the region.To maintain capitalist order, the ANCincreasingly relies on even the most reactionary and repressive aspects of the

previous white-supremacist regime. In ascene reminiscent of Nationalist Partyrule, 1998 video footage showed copsfrom Benoni, east of Johannesburg,laughing as they used three immigrantsfrom Mozambique as training bait forpolice dogs. The essential continuityfrom anti-immigrant policies of the apartheid rulers and the neo-apartheid Tripartite Alliance is readily apparent. Thus,even the bourgeois-liberal Mail andGuardian (24-30 May 2002) characterised the recently enacted immigration lawas "just a more sophisticated version of the Aliens Control Act of 1991."In an article titled "Home Affairs DeniesTargeting Africans" (Sowetan, 5 April2002), the deportation of Zimbabweanmusician Adrian Anesu "Apple seed"Muphemhi of the. highly successfulBongo Maffin band is "justified" underthe apartheid-era Aliens Control Act,because "illegal immigrants had floodedthe country and were impacting negatively on its resources."For all President Thabo Mbeki's obscurantist and reactionary talk about an"African Renaissance," the new 1egisla-

tion is decidedly anti-African, sending aclear message to African governments 'that their citizens are not welcome inSouth Africa, legally or otherwise. Thebill empowers raids in communities andworkplaces and institutionalises theidentity card, or hated dompas [passbook]. The possession of documentationguarantees nothing, as it is common forpolice raids to seize and destroy identitypapers and to extort money from theirvictims. The enforcement strategy hasbeen likened to the apartheid-era InfluxControls Act, which restricted the movement of Africans out of the so-calledhomelands. The deportation figures forimmigrants from southern Africa arealready staggering. The state "repatriated" about 24,000 people in January andFebruary to Mozambique and Zimbabwe.The latest official composite figuresavailable are from the year 2000, when146,000 immigrants were deported. Bycontrast, the number of legal immigrantsto South Africa in 1999 was less than1,400 from all other countries.Depredations of capitalism and imperialism inevitably mean a surge of immigration to South Africa, which is the economic hub of the continent. In a countrywhere "official" unemployment amongthe African majority hoyers around 50per cent, the ANC-led regime has soughtto blame "foreigners" for rising unemployment caused by mine closures andjob losses due to its massive privatisationdrive. The devastating HIV AIDS pandemic, accelerated by the cruel and crim-

APJohannesburg, October 1: March by COSATU union federation at start of two-daystrike against government privatization plans.

inal obstructionism of the ANC/SACP [South African CommunistParty] regime, is straining to thebreaking point the social fabric. Thepolitical climate is rife with resurgent tribalism, reflected in references to the domination of the"Xhosa nostra" and in chauvinistcalls for anti-Indian pogroms, embodied in Mbongeni Ngema's song"Amandiya." As we wrote in BlackHistory and the Class Struggle No.12, "South Africa Powder Keg,"given the massive and stark inequalities between the white capitalistclass and the impoverished blackAfrican ' toilers, "so long as thestruggle over the redistribution ofthe country's wealth is defined innational-ethnic terms and limited to.a purely South African framework, itcould well trigger race war, bloodytribalist conflict and economic collapse. Only a proletarian inter-nationalist perspective, .linking thereconstruction of South Africa toa world socialist revolution, can

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ensure that a just and egalitarian sOCietywill be erected" (February 1995).Anti-Immigrant Attacks andBourgeois Triumphalism

Anti-immigrant bigotry has come todefine racist, right-wing politics fromWest Europe to South Africa to EastAsia. In the western countries, as. muchas in South Africa, many immigrants areactually refugees from imperialist wars,for example in the Balkans and Afghanistan, or from fratricidal conflicts inAfrica. The South African bourgeoisiebears particular responsibility in theCongo, where, under the rubric of UN"peacekeeping," it has sought to furtherits aims as a regional gendarme.Capitalism needs a bogeyman. Sincethe demise of the Soviet Union, the"red menace" has been largely replacedwith an orchestrated hysteria against theimmigrant "hordes" and in Europe andAmerica, since September 11, against the"green menace" of Islamic fundamentalism. The ascendancy of counterrevolutionin the former Soviet Union a decade agowas a monumental defeat for the international proletariat. In its wake camebourgeois triumphalism hailing the supposed "death of communism" and a reactionary social climate with a resurgenceof nationalism, a sharp rise in antiwoman, anti-homosexual bigotry, fratricidal war and "ethnic cleansing" especially in Europe, but also in Africa. Aswe wrote in the International CommunistLeague statement "Capitalist Europe'sWar on Immigrants Is a War on All Workers" (WV No. 784, 12 July 2002):

"According to its economic needs, capitalism brings into the p r o l ~ t a r i a t at itsbottom new sources of cheaper labour,principally immigrants from poorer countries .... We in the ICL fight for the unityand integrity of the working class againstchauvinism and racism. The struggle indefence of immigrant labour today is a

on Jews accused of poisoning wells.Then too, poor people from rural areaswho flooded the cities were labeled as"misdoers." Along with Jews, they weremade the scapegoats and victims ofpogroms. Today, it is immigrants andasylum-seekers who are the "misdoers"of sub-SaharanAfrica-at whose feet thescourge of AIDS is falsely laid-but witha crucial difference.Immigrant workers, including "illegal"immigrants, are not simply defencelessvictims of the capitalist exploiters andtheir state. They are a living link betweenthe South African proletariat and theworkers throughout the region. Detaineesat the Lindelani centre conducted a courageous protest against the two murdersin March, which was suppressed bypolice lockdown. In May, the immigrantdefence organisation International Association of Foreigners (lNOF) brought outthousands to protest these murders andcalled for the shutting down of Lindelani.At a subsequent INOF protest, SpartacistSouth Africa salesmen saw Nigerians,Mozambicans and Zimbabweans hovering in separate clots waiting for

Durban: AIDS activists demand desperately needed medications in protestoutside July 2000 world A I D ~ conference.vital task for the -working class as awhole. We fight for: Full citizenshiprights for all immigrants! No deporta-tions! Organise the unorganised! Cops,prison guards and security guards out ofthe unions! For labour/immigrant mobi-lisations against fascist attacks!"

Since the criminal and indefensibleattack on the World Trade Centre on September 11, capitalist governments aroundthe world, not the least South Africa, haveseized upon the U.S.-led "war on terrorism" to bolster the repressive apparatus of .the state against immigrants, workers andthe oppressed. In every country wheJ;e weexist, the ICL has fought to expose thelie of "national unity" between workersand bosses and to rally the proletariatin class solidarity with immigrants andminorities. The "war on terrorism" is apretext for a stepped-up offensive againstthe working class as a whole.North of the Limpopo River and southof the Sahara, joblessness frequentlyruns as high as 70 per cent and yearlyper capita income may fall to 2,865 rand[$330] a year. AIDS is eliminating a disproportionate number of breadwinnersand leaving behind an army of orphansand dependents unable to tend to fieldsas effectively as their parents. In the -Middle Ages, the ravages of the "BlackDeath" (bubonic plague) were blamed3 JANUARY 2003

a chance to speak, and heard appeals. to Pan-African "unity." Some demonstrators lamented the non-participation ofChinese or Pakistani immigrants. PanAfricanist rhetoric is counterpoised to aninternational working-class fight againstcapitalism or any appeal to Chinese,South Asian or Arab immigrant workers.To cite one hideous historical example,the persecution and expUlsion of Indiansfrom Idi Amin's Uganda was p e r p ~ t r a t e d under the banner of "Africa for.Africans."In the hands of South Africa's Mbeki,"African unity" serves the South Africanbourgeoisie's regional interests and alsomeans continued domestic oppression.At the INOF protests we have seen norepresentation from the COSATU unionfederation, a fact consistent with the perspectives of its pro-capitalist leadership.The unions should be a crucial bulwark against South Africa sliding into avortex ofracial and tribal strife and antiimmigrant racism, but this won't happenas long as the union leadership is a partner in the Tripartite Alliance governmentwith the reformist South African Communist Party and the bourgeois-nationalistANC. COSATU makes noises about opposing attacks on black foreigners fromsouthern Africa and calls for an immigration policy that "reflects South Africa's

::I:I:!3IIISouth Africanpresident Mbeki withBush, June 2001.Forced from theirhomes, residentsof Thembilihlesquatter camp nearJohannesburg burnMbeki's image,July 2002.

c::I:Q)cZ

democratic transition." The politicallydominant force in COSATU is the SouthAfrican Communist Party, whose chairman, Charles Nqakula, is the Safety andSecurity Minister directing the hated copsspearheading terror against immigrants.In press statements, COSATU evincesconcern for immigrant workers in mining and farming, saying that the "Department of Labour must take full responsibility to insure the enforcement ofimmigrant workers rights." But this ispaper-thin. For example, in Gauteng inAugust, inspectors from the Departmentof Labour raided several chemical andtextile plants. COSATU condemned theconditions under which the immigrantworkers toiled as "tantamount to slavery"even as they were deported. Such actionsare typical of reformist union bureaucrats, thus allowing the cruel exploitationto continue. Immigrants without paperscan therefore be mercilessly exploited,which is why the fight for full citizenship rights for all' immigrants is allthe more critical. In 1999, miners unionleaders pushed for a moratorium onhiring Mozambicans during wage negotiations. And at a COSATU congress,a furore was raised against union capsproduced in China. Such anti-Chinesediatribes are not only protectionist butanti-Communist, dovetailing with thethreats of imperialism against the Chinese bureaucratically deformed workersstate. The working class in South Africaand internationally should defend Chinaagainst imperialist attack and internal capitalist counterrevolution. The Beijing Stalinist bureaucracy driving capitalist market restoration must be ousted throughproletarian political revolution to establish a regime of workers democracy committed to proletarian internationalism andto reviving the planned economy.On May Day, COSATlJ'"an'f}ounced itslaunch of the "Buy South African" campaign against what it called a backdrop of"rising unemployment and poverty." Thiscampaign pushes the lie of the essentialidentity of interests between the employers and the working class. Its basic premise is that consumer purchases expandingthe profitability of the employers willlead to hiring of more South Africans.Such chauvinist poison only reinforcesthe' false consciousness that non-SouthAfricans steal "our jobs" and is an obstacle to organising immigrant workers enmasse into COSATU.Only a Leninist-Trotskyist vanguard. party, committed to an internationalistperspective, can effectively mobilise theworkers movement and oppressed against

the forces of tribalism and murderousnationalism. This requires a fight for revolutionary leadership of the trade unions,against the nationalist class collaborationwith the bosses' parties. A party with a perspective of workers revolution in SouthAfrica would militantly fight the chauvinist attacks on immigrants and seize everysuch means to extend the struggle beyondthe b o r c ~ e r s of the country.Fake Socialists Push Illusionsin ANC Capitalist State

The Anti-Privatisation Forum (APF)has drawn various disaffected elementsbehind Trevor Ngwane, an expelled ANCcouncillor, into struggle over basic services like electricity, housing and clean tapwater. The APF includes pseudo-Trotskyistgroupings like Keep Left!, followers ofthe late Tony Cliff, and the Democratic Socialist Movement (DSM), formerly known as "Militant Workers Tendency of the ANC." The APF stock intrade has been to pressure the ANCgovernment for structural adjustmentswithin the framework of capitalism. Morerecently, the APF has spouted somesocialist rhetoric, denouncing the ANCgovernment. But the APF does not addressimmigrant rights in its programme,despite the fact that many victims offorced removals and electricity and watercut-offs include immigrant workers.In their publications, Keep L e f t h h ~ s opposed the "new racism againstimmigrants." In the more recent period KeepLeft! has even acknowledged that thisgovernment is not acting in, but ratheragainst, the interests of workers, blacksand immigrants. The October issue ofKeep Left! says the Mbeki regime "attacksthe workers to please the capitalists andadvance South African economy amongthe world's capitalists." The fact remainsKeep Left! supported the bourgeoisnationalist ANC coming to power in thefirst place by campaigning for them in thelast two general elections. And until quiterecently, Keep Left! was in t:p.e SACP, acomponent of the Tripartite Allianceimplementing capitalist austerity andracist attacks. Keep Left's attempt to distance themselves from the governmentparties (while burying their own trackrecord) reflects the reality that jn theunions and among the plebeian poor thereis increasing disillusionment with theANC-Ied government and they deem itsmarter to take up a more oppositionalstance. Instead of warning the Africanmasses against support to the bourgeoisnationalist ANC and its allies when itcontinued on page 7SPARTACIST s f . l i l . ~ ~ S1 ......... '"4!,Disease, Bigotryand Imperialist HyPOCrisySouth Africa Torn by

AIDS Crisis... ". .11

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Youth Sp'eak at poe H o l i d a y ~ p p ' e a l s ""Take a Side Against theOppressors and Exploitersl

We print below the speech of SpartacusYouth Club spokesman Erica Jones atthe New York Partisan Defense C o m m ~ t -tee Holiday Appeal on December 6 andexcerpts, slightly edited for publication,from two speakers at the December 8 BayArea PDC Holiday Appeal.Erica JonesNew YorkSYCThe Spartacus Youth Club, which is theyouth group of the revolutionary MarxistSpartacist League, U.S. section of theInternational Communist League, seeksto mobilize young people and studentsbehind the social power of the multiracial working class to fight. the capitalist system. Without labor, the capitalistsystem cannot function, and it is theworking class that has the power to bringthe wheels of capitalism to a halt. Ourrevolutionary program is built upon theunderstanding that capitalism and U.S.imperialism can only be defeated throughworkers revolution.

At present, it is urgent to stand againstthe U.S. ruling class's "war on terror,"which is being used to attack immigrants,the labor movement and black people athome and as a pretext for increasinglyopen imperialist aggression abroad. Mostconcretely, this is posed by the U.S.'simminent war on Iraq. Each time the U.S.goes unchallenged in its quest to exploitand bully defenseless countries, it alsoemboldens the capitalist rulers to furtherexploit workers and oppressed minoritieshere. Therefore, every strike and laboraction against U.S. war aims is a threat tocapitalism and its thirst for war.On the campuses, the "war on terror"has meant increased surveillance ofimmigrant and minority students. And theReserve Officers' Training C o r p ~ (ROTC)has begun to creep back onto campusesfrom which it was banished by antiVietnam War protests. In September, theSYC organized an impromptu demonstration at Columbia University's activitiesday demanding "Military recruiters offcampus!" when representatives of ROTCwere spotted.It is because of our revolutionary program of mobilizing the working classindependently from the ruling class thatwe differ from other leftist organizationssuch as the International SociaHst Organization (ISO), who have organized students and youth against the war on Iraqthrough class-collaborationist peace coalitions. In the words of Socialist Worker(4 October 2002): "When Washingtonpoliticians voice doubts about Bush's wardrive, it opens the way for genuine opponents o( he war on Iraq to be heard."Although it is great to see people protesting the war on Iraq, groups like theISO seek to pressure a wing of the liberalbourgeoisie to become more "enlightened" and adopt less war-mongering politics, as if it would be in the nature orinterest of the capitalists to do so. Forexample, the October 26 antiwar demonstration in Washington, D.C. organized bythe Woikers 'World Party's ANS WERcoalition featured Democratic Party politicians like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jack-6

son, who pushed the illusion that changecan be won by voting and told protesters:"Come alive on November 5 [midtermelections day]!"Imperialism is not a policy, but anintrinsic part of the capitalist system. TheDemocratic Party, to which our fakesocialist opponents adapt themselvesthe party of two world wars, of Kprea, ofVietnam, Bosnia, Haiti (twice) and otherimperialist rampages-has no interest inending the brutal imperialist system. Infact, as a capitalist party,it has everyinterest in preserving it.By contrast, our intervention into theantiwar movement has aimed at breakingyouth opposed to U.S. imperialist depredation away from a perspective of pressuring the liberal wing of the DemocraticParty and winning them over to a revolutionary socialist perspective. For the demonstration on October 26 in Washington,

opponents, offer a solution to end classoppression through our program of building a workers party that fights for workersrule. I f you are a youth who hates the system of capitalism and all forms of oppression that flow from it, join the SpartacusYouth Club.Roberto HernandezPro-Palestinian activist of the Wheeler32, UC Berkeley

The Wheeler 32 are student protesterswho face administration reprisal for anApril 9 Wheeler Hall demonstration andsit-in calling for the university to divestits holdings in Israel.I want to first thank all of you here forallowing me to come and just share alittle bit about what's been going on atBerkeley with the understanding that thisis not just about Berkeley, but ratherabout larger attacks on civil liberties that

SYC helped organize Revolutionary Inter"ationalist Contingent at OctoberWashington, D.C. antiwar demonstration.D.C., we organized the RevolutionaryInternationalist Contingent' under threeslogans including "Defend Iraq againstimperialist attack!" Unlike the ISO andthe Workers World Party, we call for theworking class in the U.S. to take a side.We call for the military defense of Iraqagainst imperialist attack, while at thesame time giving absolutely no politicalsupport to the vicious Saddam Husseinregime. Defeat of the imperialist aspirations ofthe U.S. and its allies would be avictory for the workers in the U.S. andoppressed throughout the world.'The struggle against war is e s ~ e n t i a l l y a struggle against the capitalist rulers. Thecapitalists use war to protect the profits they make on the backs of the world'sworkers. It is in the interests of the workingclass to eliminate the system that makessuch wars inevitable. Only socialism canfree the working class and oppressedinternationally from the threat of imperialist war and from the exploitation of capitalism. The SYCs fight for new OctoberRevolutions across the globe, like that ledby the Bolshevik Party under V. I. Leninand Leon Trotsky. We, unlike our leftist

have been going on since September 11primarily.Now the reason there's been someattention around my case. There was atotal of 79 arrested--41 were students,but nine had informal resolutions. Of the32 still pending, there's about five of usthat were seniors at the time, and the unive.rsity has chosen to block our degrees.There's also another dynamic to minethat is different, and that shows the punitive nature of this whole case. I wasadmitted to a graduate program, also atBerkeley. I was admitted into the Ph.D.program in the Department of Comparatiye Ethnic Studies, and I was scheduledto start this fall. Without a B.A., you cannot start a Ph.D. program, so basicallywith this whole thing all semester I'vejust been in limbo-in limbo not reallyknowing as to my status, not knowingwhether I'll be able to continue as a student, and without being officially registered, I also have not been able to receivemy fellowship, a fellowship that I earned.I wanted to mention briefly about theday of the actual arrests and why we thinkthis has gone down as it has. On April 9,

SYC speaker at Bay Area HolidayAppeal.there was first a rally, then a march andthen eventually a sit-in in Wheeler Hall.Since things went down as they did, Iended up with charges of assault and battery. A cop claims that I bit him eventhough I don't eat pork.Once we had received the police videosto prepare for first the criminal proceedings and now the student conducthearings, my first instinct was to go to theportions of the arrest where this copclaims this incident happened. So I didthat, and I reviewed these tapes andthere's no evidence to it, nothing like that.Another friend of (Iline, though, actually was watching the whole video. It'ssix hours of footage, and those six hoursof footage revealed something that for alot of us is always a matter of suspicion,but never really confirmed, yet here wehad evidence confirming it. Four minutesinto the police video they're already zooming in on me, and they follow me. Thishappens actually about four times throughout the police video prior to even goinginto Wheeler Hall. They're zooming in onme, and they're following me around as Iwalk around in the crowd.I'm not yet even part of the rally, yet thetJCPD is already focusing in on me overat the table. And the reason I want to pointthat out is because of the targeting that weknow for a fact has been going on prior toSeptember 11, but even more so since.And here with this video we realize thatit's literally really close to home, that theyare in fact targeting specific individuals.It shows where we're headed. It showswhere we are at right now with this newera of fear and the Patriot Act.Zoltan RymanBay Area SYC

Our interventions here in the Bay Areashow our working-class perspective aswell as how we differ from the rest of theleft. After September 11, the "war on terror" frenzy was used against labor, immigrants and student activists. When over200 university administrations, includingthat of San Francisco State University(SFSU), handed over the records of foreign students to the Feds, the SYC initiated a united-front demonstration at SFSUwith the General Union of Palestine Students around the demands: "Down withSFSU collaboration with FBI witchhunt!Defend immigrant rights!" We call for fullcitizenship rights for all immigrants!Across the bay, the UC Berkeley administration faced mass opposition by students,including the SYC, after 79 pro-Palestiniandemonstrators were arrested and the Students for Justice in Palestine organizationsuspended. The charges were dropped bythe Alameda County Court, b,ut the schooladministration is determined to punish 32of the pro-Palestinian activists. We say,

WORKERS. VANGUARD


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WV Photo

If You Stand For-1 Full rights for black people and foreveryone else in jobs, housing andschools! Defeat the racist assault onaffirmative action! For union-run minority job recruitment and training programs! For union hiring halls! Open upthe universities to all-for open admissions, free tuition and a full living stipend for all students. Free, quality, inte:'grated public education for all!2 A fighting labor movement-picketlines mean don't cross! Defeat policescabherding and strikebreaking through mass pickets and union defense guards!For sit-down strikes against mass layoffs! Fight union-busting, keep the capitalist courts out of the unions! Organizethe unorganized, unionize the South!Jobs for all-for a shorter workweek atno loss in pay with full cost-of-livingescalator clause! Cops and prison guardsout of the unions!3 Fight for women's rights! Defendabortion clinics! Free abortion on de-

South Africa ...( c o 7 1 t i ' : ! ' : l e t l 4 ~ ! J ! page 5)counted (and was unpopular), now thatthere is widespread discontent with thearrogant Mbeki regime, the reformists tooexpress criticism. Keep Left! are inveterate tailists whose approach of tyingthe working masses to the bourgeoisnationalistANC was simply imitating themuch larger SACP, which has played amore critical role in that regard.In a similar vein, the DSM (affiliatedwith the Committee for a Workers International of Peter Taaffe) programme correctly calls for "an end to persecution" ofimmigrants and for housing, jobs andlegal rights. Yet it was only in W96 (!),after decades of so-called entryism, thatthe Taaffeites launched DSM after leaving the ANC, which they suddenly dis-

"Drop the charges against the Wheeler32! No administration reprisals againstthe protesters!" Uniquely we intervened atdefense organizing meetings to encouragethe participants to bring their struggle tothe then locked-out dock workers. Wepointed out that getting the social power ofmilitant labor behind them would r ~ p r e s e n t the best possible defense for these persecuted students.Another example of the SYCs intervening on the side of workers and theoppressed was during the clerical workers strike at UC Berkeley, which protested poverty wages and unsafe working conditions. The SYC argued to extendthe strike and shut down the university.We called on students to respect thepicket lines by not going to classes, whilethe falsely named International SocialistOrganization betrayed the workers bydeliberately crossing the picket lines togo to class and work. We said, "Picketlines mean don't cross!" The picket lineis the battle line of class struggle! Whichside do YOil stand on? The truth is that theISO is neither international nor socialist.Their objective is to push capitalist poli-3 JANUARY 2003

The first Labor Black Leagues wereformed as a result of the Spartacist Leagueinitiated, 5,OOO-strong labor/black mobi-lization that stopped the Ku Klux Klanfrom marching in Washington, D.C. inNovember 1982. We standfor mobilizingthe masses of minority and working peo-ple in militant integrated struggle againstmand; free, quality 24-hour childcare!Equal pay for equal work! For free, quality health care for all!4 Full citizenship rights for all immigrants; everyone who made it into thiscountry has the right to stay and livedecently! Stop deportations! No to racist"English only" laws! Down with antiHispanic, anti-Semitic, anti-Arab andanti-Asian bigotry!5 Down with anti-gay laws! Full democratic rights for homosexuals! Government out of the bedroom!6 Mass laborlblackIHispanic mobilizations drawing on the power of the unionsagainst the racist terrorists. Stop theNazis! Stop the KKK!7Abolish the racist death penalty! FreeMumia Abu-Jamal! Free all victims ofracist capitalist repression! No faith inthe capitalist courts! No to gun control!Defend victims of cop terror and racistpolice frame-up! For class-struggle, nonsectarian legal and social defense; support the work of the Partisan DefenseCommittee!

covered was a capitalist party. In addition, this outfit ardently argues thatpolice are really "workers in uniform"and potential allies of the working classand the oppressed-a view held in common with the Cliffites. In 1993 underthe government of F.W. De Klerk, writing as Congress Militant, they demanded:"Hands off Popcru!", championing thestruggles of the union for police andprison guards as a question of "labourrights." They demanded that the ANCand COSATU "defend Popcru with allof our strength. Cosatu should make Popcru a full affiliate, and pour as muchresources as possible into strengthening the union" (Congress Militant No.13, September 1993). They have neverrenounced support to Popcru.Political support of the cop "union".reveals the utter incapacity of the Taaffeites to recognise a central premise of

ticians to have better policies, insteadof teaching that capitalism itself is theoppressor and exploiter of the masses, thatit necessarily breeds war. They attemptto tie youth and workers to the capitalistDemocratic Party and its Green Party tail,which serve to keep this system alive.The SYC has protested recent brutalattacks on gays and trans genders like themurder of Gwen Araujo in California;and we have protested the anti-gay reactionary followers of Fred Phelps, whosecongregation travels around the- countryto whip up anti-gay hysteria. When theycame to UC Berkeley's campus, tIiey raninto gay rights activists and a militantSYC contingent. We sought to answertheir provocation and make sure thesereligious bigots never set foot in Berkeleyagain. We chanted for the working classto take up the struggle for gay andwomen's rights as their own because thesame ruling class that exploits workerslooks upon gays and trans genders as"qeviant." We call for government and- church out of the bedroom! Down withreactionary "age of consent" laws! Forfull democratic rights for gays!.

the brutal system of racist oppressionthat is capitalist America. Initiated byand fraternally allied with the SpartacistLeague, a multiracial revolutionary Marx-ist organization, the Labor Black Leaguesare part of the revolutionary movementof he workers and oppressed against thebosses and for socialism.

8 Unconditional OpposItIOn to everyattempt to abolish welfare! Down withslave-labor, union-busting "workfare"schemes! Fight any and every attemptof the government to take away or cutback even more social programs suchas Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid,public health and aid to education andhousing! For a massive program of public works-high-quality integrated housing, schools, libraries, hospitals for theworking pe9ple and the poor!9 Down with the chauvinist poison ofprotectionism! For international workingclass solidarity! Support revolutionarystruggles of working people abroad!Defend Cuba, Vietnam, China and NorthKorea against capitalist restoration andimperialist attack! For labor action againstU.S. imperialist war moves and militaryadventures! For the right of independence for Puerto Rico! U.S. troops out ofPuerto Rico and the Caribbean!10Down' with the Democrats andRepublicans! For a revolutionary workers party that champions the cause of allLenin's State and Revolution-that theworkers cannot lay hold of the readymade machinery of the bourgeois state;it must be smashed by the working classand replaced by the dictatorship of theproletariat. Genuine communists knowthe police and security guards are thehired thugs of the bourgeoisie who breakworkers strikes and smash the heads ofimmigrants. Lindelani, the prisons, cops,courts and laws are the core of the stateapparatus. Anti-immigrant racism is akey component of capitalist rule. Itwill take workers socialist.r:evolution tosweep away the capitalist s t ~ t e and tobring an end to anti-immigrant racism.Under ANC rule, the cops, courts andmilitary that enforced apartheid have remained intact.Any pretence the Taaffeites mighthave to being any kind of "tribune of thepeople" is given the lie by the attitudetaken by their British and Irish affiliatesto the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland. Oppression of the Catholic minority is at the very foundation of the bourgeois order in Northern Ireland; it isreinforced by British imperialism andenshrined in the so-called peace deal,which rests on the British Army presence. Spartacist Group Ireland and theSpartacist League/Britain call for theimmediate, unconditional withdrawal ofBritish troops from Ireland as a necessary starting point for a proletarianrevolutionary perspective. No good cancome of British troops there and the British working class cannot make a revolution against their "own" capitalist rulersif they accept imperialist oppression inIreland. The Socialist Party (Taaffeitegroup in Britain) refuses to oppose theBritish Army in Northern Ireland. Theneed to combat the oppression of Catholics is a critical point that Protestantworkers must understand in order tofight in their own class interests. TheSocialist Party in Ireland is known fordefending the . reactionary ProtestantOrangemen's "right" to stage their antiCatholic marches. Both Taaffeite groupshave done their best to give credibility

WV Photothe oppressed! Finish the Civil War!Those who labor must rule! For a workers government to take industry awayfrom its racist, incompetent and corruptowners! Rebuild America on a socialistplanned economy!-Join theLabor Black Leagues!Membership pledge is$3/year unemployed; $1 O/year employed.For more information, contact:CHICABO (312) 563-0441Labor Black Struggle LeagueBox 6938, Chicago, IL 60680NEW YORK (212) 267-1025Labor Black League for Social DefenseBox 2502, Church St. StationNew York, NY 10008OAKLAND (510) 839-0851Labor Black League for Social DefenseBox 29497Oakland, CA 94604

within the workers movement to BillyHutchinson, who is a spokesman forLoyalist death squads.The nationalist ANC defends the samestate borders that the British colonisersarbitrarily drew in 1910 for the oldUnion of South Africa-borders whichhave no relationship to tribal or ethnicgroupings. As we noted in "South AfricaPowder Keg":"Anglo American and the other Randlords economically dominate all of southern Africa. A large percentage of thegold miners on the Witwatersrand-akey value-producing pro1etariat in theregion-comes from outside the bordersof South Africa, mainly from Lesotho andMozambique ... Clearly, a democratic,egalitarian and rational solution to suchquestions can be worked out only in theframework of a socialist federation ofsouthern Africa.... The struggle for asocialist federation of southern Africalinked to international proletarian revolution is the road to the social and economicemancipation of the continent."

Under the leadership of a revolutionaryparty that is armed with the programmeof permanent revolution, the powerfulSouth African proletariat can use itsdecisive social weight as the producers ofwealth in society in defence of all theoppressed and exploited. The workers canplace themselves at the head of a struggle to sweep away the system of capitalism and to reorganise society on a socialist basis. Socialist revolution in SouthAfrica would not long survive without itsinternational extension to the imperialistcentres in Europe, the U.S. and Japan.The industrial and mineral wealth of arevolutionary South Africa would not belimited to the region south of the Limpopo River, but would be used to enablethe impoverished masses of all of Africato escape famine and destitution. Thusthe fight of Spartacist South Africa toforge a genuine Leninist-Trotskyist partythat would place the struggle againstracism and chauvinism at the centreof the fight against capitalism is inseparable from the struggle of the ICL to reforge an authentically Trotskyist FourthInternational.

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WorkersAmerica ...(continued from page 1)British jet fighters continue to pummel the U.S.-imposed "No Fly" zones inIraq while' tightening the UN starvationembargo that has already killed some 1.5million people. Now, the Pentagon hasannounced the deployment of another50,000 troops to the Persian Gulf, doubling its arsenal of -war in the region.Defend Iraq against U.S. attack! Downwith the starvation blockade! All U.S.!UN forces out of he Near East!, The fact that Iraq's military capacitystands at a third of where it was duringthe 1991 Gulf War underlines that defense of Iraq means, above all, pursuing class struggle against the imperialistrulers at home. To wage war abroad, U.S.imperialism demands class peace at home.This was demonstrated in October whenBush, invoking "the security of our country," imposed the strikebreaking provisions of the Taft-Hartley Act against ,theWest Coast longshore union following alockout by the bosses. At the same time,the "national unity" hoopla propagated bythe rulers following 9/11 is wearing thinunder the weight of recession, mass layoffs and grotesque corporate corruption.Earlier this month, members of the powerful transit union in New York Citythreatened to strike in defense of theirlivelihoods and bring the financial capitalof the world to a screeching halt.The "war on terror" has meant a racistwitchhunt against Muslims and people ofNear Eastern and South Asian descent,as well as a- wholesale assault on immigrant rights and the civil liberties of thepopulation in general. Earlier this month,nearly 1,000 immigrants from Iran andelsewhere were rounded up when theyappeared at INS offices following anorder to register by the Justice Department. It is in the vital interest of the multiracial American working class to fightagainst the government's anti-immigrantwitchhunts, for these attacks are alsoaimed at the labor movement as a whole.The defense of Iraq against imperialistattack is integrally linked to the defense ofthe working masses here against increasing exploitation and oppression, whichultimately requires the overturn of theimperialist order through workers revolution. The task is to forge a Marxist workers party to educate and mobilize the proletariat to that end.We print below a speech by SpartacistLeague Central Committee member DonAlexander given at the 17th annual Partisan Defense Committee Holiday Appealfor Class-War Prisoners held in New YorkCity on December 6.* * *This is the time of year that the nau- 'seating, hypocritical capitalists throwsops to the poor. We are here because weare rightly devoted to remembering andrendering concrete material assistanceto those class-war prisoners who are languishing in the prison holes of this racistcapitalist system: Mumia Abu-Jamal, the

members of the MOVE commune, militant mine worker Jerry Dale Lowe andmany others. Today, the jails are alsoincreasingly filled with Arabs, Muslimsand people of Near Eastern descent. Thefight for freedom for all class-war prisoners is an inseparable part of waging classstruggle against the capitalist rulers andfighting for the rule of the working class.What we mean by class struggleagainst the capitalists is mobilizing thepower of labor and its allies independently of the capitalist rulers and parties,and having confidence in only that. Thismeans having no illusions whatsoeverin the supposed "benevolence" and "neutrality" of the capitalists and their state.The current capitalist government is presided over by a very nasty and violentright-wing Republican regime, whoseconstant refrain is "We are at war." Andwe are at war. Working people and theoppressed are facing a brutal, bipartisan class war at home, while abroad, U.S.imperialism is calling for pre-emptivestrikes against its perceived enemies. Andthe Chinese deformed workers statedespite the Stalinist bureaucracy's slavishsupport to the so"called "war on terror"is high on U.S. imperialism's list.The imperialist ruling classes wantnothing less than ~ h e liquidation of thecollectivized property and the plannedeconomies of the remaining bureaucratically deformed workers states of China,Cuba, Vietnam and North Korea. Andeverybody here knows that if the U.S.didn't think North Korea might havenuclear weapons, U.S. imperialism rightnow would be trying to figure out how toinvade that country. We stand for unconditional military defense of these workers

states against imperialist attack and internal counterrevolution. We fight for proletarian political revolution to oust thetreacherous Stalinist bureaucracies whoundermine_and endanger the defense ofthose gains against imperialism.In the eyes of the capitalist exploiters,immigrants, black people, women, gays- they all belong permanently beneaththe jackboot of capital. And to the rulers,the labor movement is the ultimate socalled "enemy within." At the same time,the U.S. imperialist rulers-the massmurderers of Japanese in Hiroshima andNagasaki, of over three million Koreans,

of millions of Vietnamese-are gearingup to kill more Iraqis. They aren't sati-

Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of the Spartacist League

8

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APDecember 8: U.S. military exercises in Kuwait in preparation for attack on Iraq.ated by their United Nations-sponsoredstarvation sanctions, which have killedover a million and a half Iraqis. In theimpending war against Iraq, U.S. imperialism is striving to grab a biggerportion of oil wealth and to send a message to their imperialist rivals: like it ornot, U.S. imperialism is the world's only"superpower" and things are going tostay that way.As revolutionary opponents of our ownruling dass , we say that "anti-imperialismabroad means class struggle at home."The Bush administration and the Democrats seized on the criminal killing ofthousands of innocent civilians at theWorld Trade 'Center to launch their socalled "war on terror." The bipartisan cryof "national unity" was used to mobilize the population behind U.S. imperialism's murderous imperialist adventurein Afghanistan. We opposed the U.S.

Poverty andhomelessnessin U.S. are onthe rise withcontinuingworld capitalistrecession.

imperialist war in Afghanistan, whichkilled thousands of Afghanis, and we callfor U.S.fUN troops out of Afghanistan,Central Asia, the Persian Gulf and theNear East.Today, Bush goes on the airwaves tocall for "regime change" in Iraq. In a U.S.war against Iraq, we have a side. We standfor the military defense of Iraq againstU.S. and allied imperialism without giving an ounce of political support to thebutcher Saddam Hussein, who has murdered Iraqi workers, leftists, Shi'i te Muslims, Kurdish people and others. Husseincame to power with the assistance ofbloody U.S. imperialism. We say: Downwith the UN starvation blockade! DefendIraq against imperialist attack! Fight forclass struggle against the capitalist rulers!For a Workers Party ThatFights for All the Oppressed!

With a deepening worldwide capitalist economic recession and plummetingstock market, hundreds of thousands ofworking people are being laid off andface a bleak future. Congress recentlyadjourned without extending unemployment benefits to thousands of peoplewhose benefits have been exhausted.Federal workers are having their jobs privatized and face being stripped of civilservice protection-all in the name of theso-called "war on terror." Homeless people who freeze and starve are treated likecriminals by the capitalist politicians andjailed by their cops. And then you havethe Central Park jogger case, a vicious,savage rape of a young white woman thattook place in 1989 for which five black

and Latino youth were framed up throughcoerced confessions and other means.This is the face of racist American capitalism, and this is precisely why it is veryimportant to look at all of these cases aspart of fighting for a program of united,integrated revolutionary struggle againstthe capitalist system.We know that, especially in racist capitalist America today, there's deepeningoppression. There is the constant andrelentless assault against abortion rights,but it's not just that. You have the case ofArlene Russell, a black woman bus driver, in Chicago who was viciously harassedand arrested by the police. Then you havethe so-called "bad mothers" who havebeen thrown in jail, blamed for the deathsof their children. Remember the recentarticle about the woman whose childwas killed by her spouse while she slept.She's been in a jail for seven yearsbecause supposedly she should haveknown that her boyfriend was going tokill her child!The Bush government came down onthe International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), which was slappedwith a union-busting Taft-Hartley injunction after the Pacific Maritime Association bosses imposed a lockout. This wasan open declaration of war against theentire l ~ b o r movement. Liberal Demo-' t : ~ a t ~ ! ; l i J { ~ l 'Dianne F e i H s ~ 8 n r ~ p ~ r I f y ' 1 t i p -ported the Taft"-Haitley injunction whileBarbara Lee, the darling of the left andlabor bureaucrats, just said the time toapply Taft-HartleybadKI{ yet arrived.We in the Spartacist League say: Downwith slave-labor Taft-Hartley! Government hands off the union!It matters what program you haveif you're fighting for power. Instead ofunionizing the largely immigrant porttruckers and mobilizing independentworking-class action against the TaftHartley injunction, the ILWU leadershiplooks to "labor-friendly" Democrats toassist the workers. This is because of theirprogram of class-collaborationist unitywith the capitalist exploiters, which is aprogram to stifle and quell social struggle. And you know that a couple ofmonths prior to the lockout of longshoremen, Homeland Security head TomRidge, the same Tom Ridge who as Pennsylvania governor signed a death warrantagainst MumiaAbu-Jamal in 1995, madea series of threats warning the longshoremen not to strike.Even though they were locked out bythe maritime bosses, the ILWU showedthat workingpeople are the power insociety. The working class produces thewealth of society and has the social powerto bring capitalist profit to a halt. But thatpower is crippled by the absence of aclass-struggle leadership committed to arevolutionary struggle to abolish capitalism and replace it with a workers govern-

WORKERS VANGUARD


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George II-The "Son-King"

be little more than a vast gasoline station, with a flag.To the charge that it is in violation of internationallaw, business has a straight-forward, simple, and,from its perspective, compelling retort: it's good forbusiness!

"L' etat c' est moi." ("I am the state")_ .' - Louis XIV, (1643-1712) The Sun Kingof France

are facing a war for oil, a war for capital. The Bushdynasty, and those that rule them, believe in thedivine right of cash.

When one listens to the White House these days, ifyou listen closely, you'll hear the nation's 30th president, Calvin Coolidge, saying, "The chief business ofthe American people is business." He praised the rampant speculation that fueled the stock market. He alsopresided over the Great Wall Street crash of 1929,when the economy tanked. Coolidge is back!No empire lasts forever. Rome didn't. The Britishdidn't. The French didn't. Neither will the U.S.Empire.nder Louis XIV, all France existed merely toreflect his luster. All around him were but satellites tohis greater glory. Wars were fought, and lands wereseized as soldiers were slain, for the glory of Louis,who shone like the sun.

Iraq stands as a dark straw man, while personalizedin the singularity of Saddam, who is in the maleloquent words of the Commander in Chief, "a badman." Query: Would there be these rumors of war ifIraq were-oh, I don't know, oil-free? In Africa? InLatin-America?

24 October 20022002 Mumia AbuJamal

An American state, Louisiana, was named for him.Under his reign, the idea of the divine right ofkings, their inherent and eternal right to rule, reachedits highest form.Louis XIV was busy basking in the "glory" of hisFrench Empire. George II is trying to realize"Poppy's" dream-a New World Order-with theUnited States as the eternal Empire, Pax Americana.

I f you wish to correspond with Jamal, you canwrite to: Mumia Abu-Jamal, AM8335, SCI Greene,175 Progress Drive, Waynesburg, PA 15370.Today, such ideas seem almost laughable.This is the age of the divine right of capital, of theinherent and eternal right of amassed capital to ruleall things. Corporate wealth and economic interest isthe ruling -principle of the day, and states are butinstruments of their lust for gain.

The brilliance of Louis has been succeeded by thedullness of George W., who boasts of his C-averageswhile a tudent of privilege at Yale ..Funds for Jamal's Legal DefenseWe wish to inform our readers of a change inwhere to send urgently needed funds for the legaldefense of death row political prisoner MumiaAbu-Jamal. Checks made payable to "SEE Mumia

Free" should be sent to: Social an a EnvironmentalEntrepreneurs, 20178 Rockport Way, Malibu, CA90265.George W. Bush, like his father, is hungry forreflected glory, and no glory shines in America like

that of wa!. But we are not facing a war for glory. We

Louis was the ultimate peacock in Versailles;George is the boring manager of a business; his pedigree is, in truth, his business degree. And the construction of an empire is the objective of business, -sothat Iraq, with its 24% of the world's oil deposits, will

ment that expropriates the capitalists.That's where the money for food, housing and decent education is initial ly goingto come from.In New York City, we have the contractof the Transport Workers Union (TWU)that's going to expire very soon. Theyface a determined capitalist enemy, amultibillionaire mayor and his Democratic Party city council partners whoseresponse to the mounting deaths of transit workers is: "It's your fault! Eat it!" Aleadership that places its faith in theDemocrats, such as the "die on yourknees" New Directions TWU leadershipas well as theuruon's "old guardrare thelabor lieutenants of capital in the workersmovement. They play by the bosses'rules, which is a losing game. The misleaders of labor; the black preachers andpoliticians, like Jesse Jackson and AlSharpton, they sell the same "lesser evil"poison.Despite their occasional differences,the dual parties of capitalism are unitedin defending and extending the worlddominance of U.S. imperialism, whichmeans continued imperialist aggressionagainst the working people around theworld and intensified assaults againstworkers and the oppressed at home. Theonly difference between the parties is intheir rhetoric. The Republicans openlyflaunt their ties to the Wall Street bloodsuckers; they revel in attacking the unions

and oppressing minorities. The Democrats do the same thing, but lie about it,using differen.t rhetoric to fool workingpeople and oppressed minorities. As oneblack comedian once said, "The only difference between conservatives and liberals, is that the latter, the liberals, hang youfrom the lower part of the tree."Those Who Labor Must Rule!

With the counterrevolutionary destruction of the Soviet Union, the world isa much more dangerous place becausethere is no military counterweight to monstrous U.S. imperialism-the bloodiestruling chiss in the world, the main enemyof workers and the oppressed throughoutthe world. As the U.S. plans its bloodyassault against Iraq, interimperialist rivalries between the United States, WestEurope and Japan are sharpening. This isdriven by their competition for additional sources of profit and spheres ofeconomic influence. Despite their differences, however, all of the imperialistruling classes _are waging war againstworkers and immigrants in their countries. Tony Blair's union-hating government has been mobilizing to crush theBritish firefighters, whose recent strikesthreaten to put a dent in "national unity"and hurt Britain's alliance with the U.S.against Iraq.Another major question intersectingwar with Iraq is the continued Zionist

Web site: www.icl-fLorg E-mail address:[email protected] Office: Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 (212) 732-7860Boston 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) 839-0851ChicagoBox 6441, Main POChicago, IL 60680(312) 563-0441Public Office:Sat. 2-5 p.m.222 S. Morgan(Buzzer 23)

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3 JANUARY 2003

bleeding of the Palestinian people. It isnot at all precluded that the bloody Zionist rulers might use the war against Iraqas a cover for the ethnic cleansing of theOccupied Territories. We call for Israelitroops out of the Occupied Territories.We look at the defense of Iraq asbeing directly linked to the defense ofthe Palestinian people. We are intransigent defenders of the Palestinian peopleagainst U.S.-backed, Zionist state terror.Because of the bankruptcy of nationalism and the absence of a communist alternative, the murderous, womanhating, anti-Semitic Islamic fundamentalists have acquired increased authorityamong the historically cosmopolitan Palestinian population. The desperate andcriminal suicide attacks against Israelicivilians carried out by reactionary fundamentalists as well as Palestinian nationalists only serve to drive the Hebrewspeaking people further into the armsof the Zionist rulers. As revolutionaryMarxists, we fight to forge revolutionaryinternationalist Trotskyist parties in theNear East that can unite'the Arab andHebrew-speaking workers in commonstruggle against the Israeli and Arab rulers, who are also oppressors of Palestinian people. Only in the struggle for asocialist federation of the Near Eastcan national self-determination for bothpeoples be equitably realized. Only withthe revolutionary overthrow of the Zionist rulers, the sheiks, the colonels andthe monarchical parasites in the regioncan the road be opened to genuinenational and social liberation. To achievethis goal means politically confrontingand defeating anti-Semitism, bourgeois

New Evidence ExplodesFrame-Up: Declarations andaffidavits of Mumia Abu-Jamal,Arnold R. Beverly, RachelWolkenstein and othersprove that death row politicalprisoner Mumia Abu-Jamalis an innocent man.Published September 2001$.50 (32 pages)Order from/pay to:Partisan Defense CommitteeP.O. Box 99, Canal Street StationNew York, NY 10013

nationalism and illusions in imperialistdemocracy.Here in the U.S., the belly of theimperialist beast, every struggle againstthe government's assaults on democraticrights and on civil liberties, every strikein defense of labor rights is a blowagainst the bipartisan war drive. Ourinterests lie in forging a class-struggleworkers party that will rally labor andminorities to stop the Klan, the racist terrorist fascists; that will fight for full citizenship rights for immigrants; that willchampion black and women's liberation;that will defend gays against the attacksof foul anti-homosexual bigots like thefascistic, Kansas-based Fred Phelps clan.It is critical to look at all these struggles as part of building a party to breakthe chains of capitalist wage slavery andestablish a workers government thatoverturns the rule of the capitalist class. Iwant to mention Colin Powell. Recently,Belafonte called him a "house slave."That's not half of it. Powell is a conscious representative of U.S. imperialism. He was gloating in an-interview thatcommunism is the vestigial remains ofa dead ideology. Well, we know thatcommunism is not dead and class struggle is not a relic. That's precisely whythe capitalists are intensifying their repression. And that's precisely why wehave to build a party like the BolshevikParty and reforge a Fourth Internationalthat fights for a revolutionary internationalist program to bring the workingclass to power.

We say: Free all class war prisoners!Workers of the world unite-you havenothing to lose but your chains!

PilrtiilO ~ e D e onanait tee

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NYC Transit.1I.(continued from page 12)same courts threatened massive finesagainst the TWU criminalizing strikeaction and even talk of a strike, unlike theJames leadership ND at least challengedthe injunction in court. But ND leaders instructed workers at an ND rallythe next day to obey it and not use theword "strike."Once in office, Toussaint made clearhis aim of turning Local 100 into a political machine for the Democratic Party.To this end, he opened the doors of theunion to Hillary Clinton, whose Senatorial election campaign was marked byher avid support for the use of the TaylorLaw against the TWU in 1999.Today, the self-styled militants groupedaround Rank and File Advocate (RAFA)are calling to vote against Toussaint'ssellout, as is the Revolutionary TransitWorker (RTW) supported by the Leaguefor the Revolutionary Party (LRP). Butthe RAFA crew were founders andcentral leaders of New Directions rightthrough Toussaint's election; indeed,they were instrumental in linking up withthe AUD and launching a number ofND's court suits against the TWU. Andthe Revolutionary Transit Worker urged"critical support" for Toussaint in his bidfor the local presidency based on nothingmore than his empty rhetoric. The LRPclaimed that this was necessary "to help

I/)I/)

a.xwooHillary SidesWith RudyIn 1999,then-Senatorialcandidate HillaryClinton supporteduse of strikebreakingTaylor Law againstTWU. Toussainthosting Clinton atunion meeting

OJ().3cMrs. Clinton Backs Anti-StrikeLaw

()

r::Q)

The Taylor Law is a "wise law,"said Hillary Clinton. "Publicemployees should not legallybe allowed to strike."For Marxists, critical support in unionelections is premised on a candidate'spolitical break with some aspect of classcollaborationism. In fact, Toussaint'ssellout last week was the culminationof the political program on which heran-reliance on the capitalist state andcapitalist politicians. At bottom, theRTW LRP opportunists supported Toussaint simply because he was popular. Farfrom opposing anti-union court s u i t ~ onprinciple, the LRP writes in ProletarianRevolution (SummerlFall 1998): "Revolutionaries cannot absolutely rule outthat there may arise exceptional andextreme situations under which using thecourts in a union s.truggle may be necessary." As far back as the early 1970s, theLRP's predecessor organization extendedcritical support to Miners for Democracycandidate Arnold Miller, who was catapulted into the United Mine Workers

J:

in 2001.

principle in the pursuit of opportunistappetites is to cut away the very basis ofcommunist opposition to the reformistbureaucracy!"The starting point for a class-struggleleadership of the unions is opposition toany intervention by the capitali

workers vanguard no 794 - 03 january 2003

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