workers vanguard no 795 - 17 january 2003

7/29/2019 Workers Vanguard No 795 - 17 January 2003

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fRS ' . " " . R ' oeNo. 795 ~ X . 5 2 3 17 January 2003

Mass Protests in South Korea - U.S. Troops Out!Reuters Nordell/JB Pictures

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Free the Detainees! No Deportations!

Feds Expand Anti-Immigrant DragnetIn a classic Catch-22, the Immigration

and Naturalization Service (INS) threatened detention and deportation for maleimmigrants from Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Syriaand Lebanon who failed to register byDecember 16 under the Feds' "NationalSecurity Entry-Exit Registration System."But hundreds who did were interrogated,arrested and thrown into detention centers anyway in a stark escalation of raciststate repression under the rubric of the"war on terror." The government alsorequired immigrants from Afghanistan,Algeria, North Korea and ten other countries to register by January 10; thosefrom Saudi Arabia and Pakistan must dothe same by February 21.

the mass roundups of Near Easternimmigrants with the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II. Reportsemerged of teenagers torn from theirmothers at INS centers; of prisonersstrip-searched, hosed down with coldwater, forced to sleep on floors or evenoutside; of some shipped hundreds ofmiles to out-of-state detention centers.While the INS eventually allowed mostdetainees to return home, dozens stillremain in detention and face deportation.We demand: Free the detainees! Stop thedeportations!

A good number of the Iranian immigrants swept up in the Southern Californiaroundups last month were Jews, many ofwhom fled Iran following the 1979 "Islamic revolution." But this evoked only themildest of objections from the ZionistAnti-Defamation League (ADL), whichno doubt feels these people should havegone to Israel and not the U.S. in the firstplace. In a 20 December press release,the ADL called for an "investigation" into"allegations of discrimination" against thedetainees. The statement made clear that

The initial roundups sparked protests'across the U.S., with more than 3,000people, predominantly Iranian Americans, demonstrating outside the FederalBuilding in Los Angeles on December 18.As we reported in "Hundreds Arrestedin Racist INS Roundup in Los Angeles"(WV No. 794, 3 January), protestersraised placards reading "What Next?Concentration Camps?" and compared

TROTSKY

The Struggle AgainstImperialist War

The struggle against imperialist wardemands a struggle fo r workers revolutionto root out the capitalist system that breedswar. This was the central theme in a 1936pamphlet issued by the Workers Party, thenthe Trotskyist organization in the U.S., andauthored by James Burnham (under the

pseudonymn John West), a leading Trotskyist publicist before his defection from theMarxist movement in 1939-40.

LENIN

The most common mistake made in the attempted struggle against war comes fromthe belief that this struggle is somehow "independen t" of the class struggle in general, thata broad union of all sorts of persons from every social class and group can be formedaround the issue of fighting war, since-so the reasoning goes-these persons may beall equally opposed to war whatever their differences on other points. In this way, waris lifted from its social base, considered apart from its causes and conditions, as if itwere a mystic abstraction instead of a concrete historical institution. Acting on thisbelief, attempts are made to build up all kinds of permanent Peace Societies, Anti-WarOrganizations, Leagues Against War, etc ....

War is not the cause of the troubles of society. The opposite is true. War is a symptom and result of the irreconcilable troubles and conflicts of the present form of society,that is to say, of capitalism. The only way to fight against war is to fight against thecauses of war. Since the causes of war are part of the inner nature of capitalism, it follows that the only way to fight against war is to fight against capitalism.

But the only true fight against capitalism is the revolutionary struggle for workers'power. It therefore follows that the only possible struggle against war is the struggle fo rthe workers' revolution ....

To suppose, therefore; that revolutionists can work out a common "program againstwar" with non-revolutionists is a fatal illusion. Any organization based upon such aprogram is not merely powerless to prevent war; in practice it acts 'to promote war,both because it serves in its own way to uphold the system that breeds war, andbecause it diverts the attention of its members from the real fight against war. There isonly one program against war: the program fo r revolution-the program of the revolutionary party of the workers.

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- "John West" (James Burnham), War and the Workers (1936)

! I ! ! ! ! ! ! o r . . ~ ! ! ~ ! ! ~ l ! . ! ~EDITOR: Alan WildeEDITOR, YOUNG SPARTACUS PAGES: Michael DavissonPRODUCTION MANAGER: Susan FullerCIRCULATION MANAGER: Irene Gar dnerEDITORIAL 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 with 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 (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 14 January.

No. 795 17 January 2003

"we do not question the right of the INSto investigate expired visas o r other immigration law violations." To say the least.The ADL is among the most avid proponents of the roundups of Arab and Muslimimmigrants in the "war on telTor," whichthe Zionists embrace as a cover for ratcheting up the murderous repression of thePalestinians in the Occupied Territories. Inthe U.S., the ADL is in the thick of a campaign to vilify student groups and academics who have spoken out in defense of thebesieged Palestinians, slandering all opponents of Zionist terror as "anti-Semitic."

The ADL's tepid protest of the treat- ment ofIranian Jews in the U.S. stands in

stark contrast to the Zionists' rabid campaign in the 1970s and ' 80s to " FreeSoviet Jewry," which played a front-linerole in U.S. imperialism's drive to destroythe Soviet degenerated workers state. TheBush administration is rife with Zionisthawks like Pentagon aide Richard Perleand Reaganite Contragate felon ElliottAbrams who cut their political teethin such anti-Soviet campaigns, often asacolytes of the late Democratic SenatorHenry "Scoop" Jackson.

The hundreds of people arrested in thedragnet since last month add to the manystill in custody stemming from the roundups of at least 1,200 mainly Muslim immigrants following the criminal attack onthe World Trade Center. The kind of hellthey have been put through was describedby Ayub Ali Khan, who was arrested alongwith Mohammed Jaweed Azmath whiletraveling by train to Texas the day after theWorld Trade Center attack. Seized as "terror suspects" for possessing a boxcutterand black hair dye, Khan and Azmathspent over a year in jail. Interviewed inIndia by the Washington Post (10 January),Khan told of months of "maltreatment,denial of rights, no lawyer, no court date,no respite from the solitary cell, severeincarceration in shackles and repeatedquestioning." At interrogation sessions,"five to six men would pull me in different directions very roughly as they askedrapid-fire questions ... Then suddenlythey would brutally throw me againstthe wall." Even after the governmentacknowledged it had no evidenc;e linkingthe men to 9/11, they were indicted oncharges of credit card fraud and deported.

Untold numbers of such immigrantshave been targeted for detention on themost spurious grounds. Shortly after theDecember roundups, the FBI issued anationwide alert for five Near Eastern"terrorists" who had supposedly "infiltrated" the U.S. from Canada. Day afterday, the Feds and the capitalist mediastoked fears in the population of a vaguebut imminent danger in a transparenteffort to bolster support for the increasein state repression. Last week, the Fedsadmitted this was a hoax perpetrated bya jailhouse tipster seeking to ingratiatehimself with authorities.

Now, as the Los Angeles Times (5January) reports, Attorney General JohnAshcroft has initiated a massive speedupin deportations by ordering the Board ofImmigration Appeals-often the court oflast resort for immigrants facing deportat ion- to clear its backlog of 56,000 casesby March 25. The article states, "As thenumber of cases decided by the boardhas soared, so has the rate at which boardmembers have ruled against foreigners."Noting that last October the board rejected 86 percent of appeals, up from 59percent the year before, the articledescribes one board member who on oneday "signed more than 50 cases-a decision nearly every ten minutes if heworked a nine-hour day without a break."

In a 22 December letter to the INS demanding an end to the racist roundups, thePartisan Defense Committee, a legal andsocial defense organization associated withthe Spartacist League, wrote that the antiimmigrant campaign "is but the domesticreflection of the imperialist war drive nowtargeting neocolonial Iraq. The drumbeatof brutal aggression against a more or lessdefenseless country reverberates in transparent assaults on the civil rights ofvulnerable immigrants immediately. But the ultimate target is the rights of all, especiallyworkers and the oppressed."

The extent to which the racist U.S. rulers can get away with trampling immigrant rights and the rights of us all will bedetermined by the level of class struggle.The labor movement and all opponents ofimperialist war and racist repression mustmobilize in defense of immigrants againstthe racist dragnet. Full citizenship rightsfor all immigrants!.

S p a r t a c i s t ~Forums ..

For Class Struggle AgainstU.S. Capitalist Rulers!

Defend Iraq AgainstU.S. Imperialist Attack!

Sunday, January 26, 6 p.m.Mount Hollywood

Congregational Church4607 Prospect Ave.

(Vermont/Sunset Red Line station)

For more information: (213) 380-8239or e-mail [email protected]

LOS ANGELES

Down With UNStarvation Blockade

Down With theAnti-Immigrant Witchhunt!

Saturday. February 1, 6 p.m.University of Chicago

5706 S. University Ave.Reynolds Club, South Lounge

For more information: (312) 563-0441or e-mail [email protected]

CHICAGO

Trotskyist League/Ligue trotskyste Forum

Saturday, January 25. 6:30 p.m.Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

252 Bloor Street West, Room 8200(SI. George subway station)

For more information: (416) 593-4138. e-mail: [email protected]

TORONTO

WORKERS VANGUARD


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ISO: On Their Knees for AnybodyThe International Socialist Organization (ISO) is always willing to crucify thesocialist cause upon the cross of "unity."In an article titled "The Antiwar Movement: A Great Beginning" (InternationalSocialist Review, November/December2002), the ISO argues for building thebroadest possible "movement basedupon uniting disparate forces" under theliberal/pacifist demands of "no war, nosanctions" against Iraq. They state thatantiwar "committees should be able toembrace anyone who supports thesedemands, whether they are socialists whooppose U.S. imperialism in principle orDemocratic. Party sympathizers whobelieve that the UN can be a force forpeace." But these ISO "socialists" do notoppose U.S. imperialism "in principle" orin practice, as is shown precisely bytheir eagerness to get together with imperialist agents and spokesmen like Democratic Party politicians or the UnitedNations.

In an apparent attempt to remain critical, the article gives the reader a historylesson, admonishing that "it's worthremembering" what happened to the antiwar coalitions during the 1991 Gulf War.In this lesson they wag their fingerssternly at the liberals of the NationalCampaign for Peace in the Middle East,stating that "in the name of building the'broadest' movement, the Campaigninsisted on demanding an Iraqi pulloutfrom Kuwait, and pandered to organizations ... that supported UN sanctionsagainst Iraq as an 'alternative' to war."After the fact, now that a million and ahalf Iraqis have already been killed bythose UN sanctions, the ISO grants that"unity" with anyone and everyone maynot be the road to "peace." But when itcounted, the ISO endorsed the Cam-paign's march, which included demandssupporting UN sanctions! Today the ISOis again ready to build a "movement"with the enemies of workers and minorities, which can only mean blocking thedevelopment of a movement to end imperialist war the only way it can be ended- b y ending the capitalist system thatbreeds it.

At San Francisco State University,where the ISO supports and builds agroup called the Students Against War(SAW), it opposed one SAW member'sproposal to adopt an explicitly antiimperialist stance. Indeed, the ISO helpeddistribute a flyer calling for unity of

CHICAGOTuesday, 7 p.m.

January 21: Marxism:A Guide to Action

University of Chicago, 5811 S. EllisCobb Hall, room to be announced

Informationand readings: (312) 563-0441or e-mail [email protected]

LOS ANGELESSaturday, 2 p.m.

February 1: Marxist Economics:From the Dictatorship of th e

Proletariat to Communism

3806 Beverly Blvd., Room 215(Vermont/Beverly Red Line station)

Informationand readings: (213) 380-8239or e-mail [email protected]

17 JAN UARY 2003

UN starvation sanctions and the imminent American war, this demand is not"broad" by the definition of the ISO andother reformists because it would cutthem off from their real hoped-for constituency, the "peace" Democrats. Ofcourse, right now, capitalist politicianswilling to make even the most timid"peace" noises are few and far between.So in the meantime, the ISO will make dowith that other mainstay of "respectable"protest movements, the preachers.

WV PhotoISO at pro-Gore rally in Chicago's Daley Plaza, November 2000. No w IS Olaments Gore's withdrawal from 2004 presidential race.

Along with the ISO, the NationalCouncil of Churches (NCC) belongs tothe "United for Peace" coalition. On 4December 2002, the NCC, which represents the mainstream religious establishment in this country, took out a full-pagead in the New York Times begging Bushnot to go to war against Iraq: "Jesuschanged your heart. Now let him changeyour mind." Immediately, the ISO embraced the churchmen, penning an articlein the 13 December issue of SocialistWorker to address "the perennial question, 'W hat would Jesus do?'' ' about Iraq.In the article, the ISO "exposed" GeorgeW. Bush for using Christianity and theBible as a cover for a (surprise!) conservative agenda which includes launchinga war of conquest. They wrote: "WithChristmas approaching, Bush seems tohave forgotten all about 'Blessed are thepeacemakers' as he plans a war that willtake thousands of Iraqi lives."

.l! "Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians,communists ... leftists, rightists ... pro Ufe,pro choice, cops ... blue-col lar workers,business persons ... cat-lovers .... " Such anappeal to cops and right-to-lifers mayseem ludicrous, but the real programbeing pushed is no joke. During theVietnam War, the ISO's precursors andcounterparts worked overtime to corralantiwar youth into a "peace movement" alongside capitalist politicians andpreachers, who supported the aims o fu.s. imperialism but questioned whetherthat war was really in "America's bestinterests." Huge demonstrations weremobilized to listen to speeches by Democratic "doves." Finally the U.S. was drivenout of Vietnam but the deep social fissures provoked by that losing imperialistadventure were contained within "thesystem."

Sure enough, today the ISO is reachingout to ... Al Gore! So they publish a "W hatWe Think" column in Socialist Worker(3 January), titled "The Dead-End Democrats," that Demoans the withdrawal of theformer vice president as a presidentialcandidate. The ISO writes that "he wasgetting interesting for the first time inhis political life. In early December, AlGore announced that he wouldn't run forpresident in 2004." Gore, we are now told,has "newly discovered liberal positions[which] would have opened up the discussion in mainstream politics-and givenordinary people more confidence to speak

TORONTOWednesday, 6:30 p.m.

January 29: Defend the Palestinians!For a Socialist Federation

of the Near East!University of Toronto, Sidney Smith,

Room 2129, 100 St. George St.Information and readings: (416) 593-4138

or e-mail: [email protected]

VANCOUVERTuesday, 5:30 p.m.

January 21: For Class StruggleAgainst Imperialist War

University of British ColumbiaStudent Union Building, Room 211

Information and readings: (604) 687-0353or e-mail [email protected]

up." I f his ruling-class war criminal wereto change his mind and run, would the ISOsloganeer for "Gore in '04"? Well, whynot- in the last election, they called onpeople to vote for Ralph Nader, candidateof the capitalist Green Party.

The ISO gives their game away withheadlines like "Will the Democrats EverFight?" (Socialist Worker, 18 October2002). The ISO wants "to put pressure onall the politicians in Washington." It's

IS O newspaperprays that th e

words of Jesus canconvert Bush into

"peacemaker. "

Workern",,,,,,mh,,,r 2002

absurd to imagine that the ruling class canbe "pressured" to act against its owninterests! We fight for a socialist systemthat will defend our interests-the interests of the working people here at homeand our class brothers and sistersoppressed by U.S. imperialism all overthe world.

One demand that the ISO's supposedlyall-inclusive "peace coalitions" will neverinclude is the demand, "Defend Iraqagainst U.S. imperialism!" Though millions of people all over the world want tostand in solidarity with the victims of the

We'll leave it to the ISO to try to teachGeorge Bush the true meaning of Christmas, alongside the clergymen whosemain job is to preach "turn the othercheek" pacifism to the oppressed so as toleave them defenseless before their classenemy. As for us, the Spartacus YouthClubs will continue to win young workers and students to the understanding thatthose who hate war must organize to takethe means of production and the meansof mass destruction out of the blooddrenched hands of the capitalist class,through socialist revolution .

Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of the Spartacist League

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Marxism, War and the FightFor Socialist Revolution

Imperial War Museum. LondonMass slaughter of first imperialist world war. Right: Revolu-tionary Karl Liebknecht, who raised slogan "The main enemyis at home," addresses Berlin workers, January 1919.

We publish below. slightly edited, thefirst part of an internal educational pres-entation given at a Spartacist Leaguemeeting in New York City this month byAlan Wilde, editor of Workers Vanguard.

Karl Marx's 1845 "Theses on Feuerbach" is generally considered one of the

PART ONE OF TWO

founding documents of Marxism. Feuerbach was a German materialist philosopher. In one of his works, he wrote, asan expression of his materialist outlook,that for philosophy "the truth is not thatwhich has been thought, but that whichhas been not only thought, but seen, heardand felt." Marx challenged the insufficiency of such an outlook, declaring:"The philosophers have only interpretedthe world, in various ways; the point isto change it."

As Marxists today, our starting pointremains the same as that of Marx andEngels. And this is shown in our approachto the question of waf. It is not enoughto analyze and explain, as important asthat may be. What we have to put forwardis a program, based on material reality,to fundamentally change the nature ofthings, necessarily including a political!economic system that breeds imperialistwar. Everything else-from our understanding of the working class as the onlyrevolutionary force in modern society,to our understanding of the reactionarynature of capitalist imperialism, to theneed to build a Marxist workers partyflows from the question of how to changethe world.

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The U.S. is currently gearing up for awar with Iraq, which is all but inevitable.Some 100,000 American troops and support personnel are already assembled inthe Persian Gulf region. The trepidationabout war that was recently expressed byAmerica's imperialist rivals melts awayas the insatiable appetites of the world'sonly superpower, which outguns them allcombined by orders of magnitUde, confront them. The Arab regimes-venal,pathetic and bloody hacks that enforceimperialism's dictates upon their populations--only,beg for a UN cover for U.S.imperialism's designs. Israel could wellbe planning to drive most of the Palestinians out under the cover of war.

Saddam Hussein is a dangerous manwith weapons of mass destruction, saysthe U.S. government. Never mind thathis armies are a third of what they wereduring the time of the 1991 Gulf War,and never mind the bloody UN sanctionsthat have killed more than a million and ahalf Iraqis and have deprived the regimeof any material to upgrade its military.Never mind that all the crimes that the

. U.S. accuses Hussein of carrying outwere carried out before the 1991 GulfWar, prior to which he. was an ally of theAmericans. It was the U.S. that helpedprovide him with biological and chemical weapons to be liberally used againstthe Iranians during the Iran/Iraq War inthe 1980s.

Most of all, never mind the fact that noone possesses more weapons of massdestruction than the American imperialists, who have not only enough nuclearweapons to destroy the world severaltimes over but the world's largest stockpile of biological and chemical weap-

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1983: CurrentSecretary ofDefense DonaldRumsfeld, then anemissary of Reaganadministration,greets SaddamHussein inBaghdad. In 1980s,U.S. imperialistsarmed hi s regime asa key ally in theNear East.

ons. The U.S. was the only country in theworld to ever use nuclear weapons,against Japan during World War II, andit has repeatedly seriously contemplatedusing them, as during the Vietnamese andKorean wars. And the only thing stoppingthem was the Soviet Union's own nucleararsenal which is a very good reason whywe defend nuclear arms in the hands ofthe workers states, regardless of howbadly bureaucratically deformed theymay be, as in the case of North Korea.North Korea's recent actions, and theU.S.'s guarded response, underline ourpoint that the only real measure of sovereignty left is possession of nukes. Italso indicates how the post-Soviet onesuperpower world is far more dangerousthan what was before. With Bush nowdeclaring the right to carry out "preemptive" strikes against an y perceivedenemy, not only the deformed workersstates, but every tinpot capitaJist dictatorwho doesn't want to be on the receivingend of American "liberation" will probably do everything they can to get anuclear arsenal.

We oppose U.S. imperialism's waragainst semicolonial Iraq. But our opposition differs greatly from the liberal andpacifist opposition of the reformist left,which has organized mass demonstrations against the potential war. The International Socialist Organization, WorkersWorld Party, Revolutionary CommunistParty, etc. have as both their starting andfinishing points simple opposition tothe war. This is an expression of pacifismbecause what they don't express is anymilitary solidarity with Iraq against theUnited States-i.e., they don't take a side.As Marxists, we understand that there isa vast difference between the pacifismof the masses-of the workers or, say, themajority of youth who come out to theantiwar protests, who are in a deformedway expressing distrust in imperialismand bourgeois pacifism (or for that matter the pacifism promoted by fake-leftistoutfits that serves to reinforce in the consciousness of workers and radical youththe political outlook of the ruling class).

As Marxists we reject pacifism because in the end, regardless of what motivates it, it can only serve to disarm workers and the oppressed in the face of awell-armed and very brutal ruling classthat recognizes none of the constraintsof pacifism. Today, any American waragainst Iraq would be reactionary, unjust

Willy Romerand predatory. Our opposition to this waris not based on a general opposition to allwars. In the opening lines of Socialisman d War (1915), written in the midstof World War I, Bolshevik leader V. I.Lenin underlines that Marxists mustassess each war independently. Our lineon particular wars is determined by ourprogrammatic opposition to the imperialist order and our struggle in the interests of the working class internationally.That all wars are bloody and barbarousdoes not determine our political attitudetoward them. Look at the American CivilWar, the bloodiest war of the 19th century. Only the most philistine pacifistsand outright racists could possibly opposethis war on the part of the North againstthe Southern slavocracy.

In the current conflict, the U.S. is likelyto win against Iraq rather easily. But occupation of that country, with its conflictingethnic groupings and well-developed civilsociety, could spark massive resistance.And regardless of how bloody, brutal orbarbaric that resistance is in its methods,it would be just and defensive. Any moveby Iraq to defeat or kick out the imperialist invaders is something any revolutionary would welcome wholeheartedly.Lenin addressed this very point in Social-ism and War: " I f omorrow, Morocco wereto declare war on France, or India on Britain, or Persia or China on Russia, and soon, these would be 'just: and 'defensive'wars, irrespective of who would be thefirst to attack; any socialist would wishthe oppressed, dependent and unequalstates victory against the oppressor, slaveholding and predatory 'Great' Powers."

Revolutionary Defense of IraqAgainst U.S. Attack

In a conflict between the U.S. and Iraq,we are revolutionary defensists-i.e., wehave a military side with Iraq against U.S.imperialism. We want U.S. imperialismto lose and Iraq to win. There are twoquestions here: how and why. Certainlyany military resistance by the Iraqi peopleto the imperialist invaders is somethingwe'd defend. But let's look at reality here.We've noted several times in WorkersVanguard that Iraq hasn't the militarymight to defeat an American imperialistinvasion. Therefore, the main weapon, themain method of defending Irag, lies in thepursuit of the class struggle in the imperialist countries, especially the U.S.

Centrist outfits like the Internationalist

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Group (IG) and Workers Power scream to"defeat" U.S. imperialism. Bear in mindthat they scream mainly in cyberspace,hardly ever when intersecting workers.But be that as it may, we, too, are forthe defeat of U.S. imperialism, in this particular war and generally. But you cannotjus t wave reality away. How do you defeatU.S. imperialism? Is that going to be thework of Iraq, on a military plane? Thepoint that we emphas\ze in our polemicsagainst'the IG about hot air and emptyphrasemongering is that what is disappeared or minimized in their writings isthe instrumentality to bring about thedefeat of U.S. imperialism, not just in aparticular war on the military plane, butpolitically-domestically and internationally. The IG denounces our call forclass struggle at home as nationally narrowand as "counterposed to the call to defeatthe imperialists abroad" (Internationalist,Fall 200 I). This is in fact a position tha truns counter to the ABCs of Marxism.

Capitalism, by its very exploitativenature, creates its own gravediggers in theproletariat, which alone has the socialpower to bring about the downfall of capi talism-by virtue of the fact that it hasits hands directly on the means of product ion-and the objective class interests todo so. Military defeats abroad certainlyhelp to bring about an extreme sharpeningin the class contradictions of a particularcountry-war is the mother of revolutions. But it is fundamentally the workingclass that has the power to accomplishthis historic task. We do not raise the callfor class struggle at home with the pollyannaish belief that this particular waris going to meet its end in immediatesocial revolution in the U.S. We raise it inorder to cut through the "national unity"mongering of the ruling class, to bringthe working class to the understandingthat it alone has the power to defeatthe American imperialist system throughworkers revolution. Out of working-classand social struggle and through the intervention of revolutionary Marxists, theworkers party essential for workers totake power will emerge.

Now, why do we fight for the defeat ofU.S. imperialism in this and all its military adventures? Because every setback,every military defeat the U.S. encounterswould serve the interests of the international working class. And in that sense,with that appraisal, we stand on fundamentally different ground than pacifismand reformism.

Our starting point is how to furtherthe struggles of the working class internationally. A defeated o r weakened U.S.imperialism would mean more roomfor class struggle to emerge at home. Itwould be accompanied by a maJor moral,political and economic shakeup. Weak-.ened U.S. imperialism would mean lessU.S. interventions against peoples of theworld, as the example of U.S. imperialism's defeat in Vietnam has shown. Imagine how much good that would do thePalestinians in their struggle againstIsraeli occupation. It would mean moreroom for struggles by working people inthe semi colonia l world and the opportunity to build revolutionary parties in thecourse of sharpened struggles in suchbackward regions. Also, a weakened U.S.imperialism would mean that workersin Europe and Japan would not as easilyperceive U.S. imperialism as the mainenemy, i.e., it would cut some groundout from under appeals to their capitalist rulers to stand up to the Americanbehemoth. And this would allow for agreater development of the class strugglethere. For all these reasons, we say thatthe international proletariat, everywhere,has a stake in defending Iraq and sidingwith it against U.S. imperialism.

That's the defensism part of revolutionary defensism-now for the revolutionarypart. Our defense of Iraq does not meanany support to the Hussein regime, whichis savage, bloody, dictatorial and all therest. In fact, defense of Iraq demands thesharpest political opposition to the bour-

17 JANUARY 2003

geolSle in Iraq, because it is preciselybourgeois rule that subordinates a countrylike Iraq to imperialism. Try to look at itfrom the point of view of an Iraqi Marxist. A revolutionary party in Iraq woulddemand and agitate for a revolutionarywar to defend the country from imperialism. Such a party would demand the arming of the people, would seek to do revolutionary work in the military. It wouldfight for full rights for the oppressed peoples of Iraq, like the Kurds and Shi'ites,and seek to win them over to the struggleagainst the invaders. It would make absolutely clear that the venal Iraqi bourgeoisie in fighting the U.S. is not leadingsome kind of anti-imperialist struggle,but simply had a falling out with its former patron, and that the very system ofcapitalist imperialism means that thelocal bourgeoisie is tied to and subordinated to the imperialists-i.e., that solong as capitalism remains in the country,Iraq will be subjugated by foreign imperialism, regardless of the outcome of thisparticular war. Such a party would notlose sight for a moment of the fact thatwhile the imperialist invaders are themain enemy, the bourgeoisie at home isalso an enemy. At the same time, such aparty would issue proclamations of solidarity with the international workingclass, especially in the U.S., in order tospur them to oppose the onslaught by theAmerican invaders through concreteclass-struggle actions.

For the Political Independenceof the Working Class

Last year, the centrist League for theRevolutionary Party (LRP) wrote an article on Israel where, speaking of the Arabbourgeois regimes, they declared: "TheArab masses must challenge them toput up or shut up-send arms to the Pal-estinians! The street protests in supportof the intifada are vital, but they needto be joined by massive general strikesin Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan,Iraq, Lebanon, and the other countriesof the Middle East demanding arms forthe Palestinians" (Proletarian Revolution,Spring 2002). Now, we and LRP havefundamental differences on the Near East,but I want to address this one questionbecause it's relevant. As a rule, it's veryrare that Marxists raise positive demandson a capitalist state-demands that thecapitalist state do something; usually westick to negative demands-demands thatthe capitalist state stop doing something.

Lenin speaking in 1918 onfirst anniversary of Russian

Revolution. Bolsheviks underLenin's leadership successfully

mobilized workers' oppositionto World War I, leading socialist

revolution and establishingCommunist International.

The problem is that if you ask the capitalist state to do something, you might actually get it. Except that you 'd get it on theirterms.

If the Arab bourgeoisies were to sendarms to the Palestinians, it would be topursue their own aims, not the strugglefor Palestinian self-determination. Andif you call on them to send arms, thenyou're placing confidence in their abilityand willingness to wage a fight againstZionism, becoming politically responsible for whatever outcomes such a policymight produce. This is not Marxism. Itis capitulation to Arab nationalism. Itsimply amounts to trying to fashion capi talism-and in this case, some of themost obscene, pitiful and pro-imperialistbourgeoisies-to serve your interests. Itdoesn't work.

Having said all that, if Egypt or Iran

in his 1938 essay "Learn to Think":"Let us assume that rebellion breaks outtomorrow in the French colony of Algeriaunder the banner of national independence and that the Italian government,motivated by its own imperialist interests, prepares to send weapons to therebels. What should the attitude of theItalian workers be in this case?. . Shouldthe Italian workers prevent the shippingof arms to the Algerians? Let any ultraleftists dare answer this question in theaffirmative. Every revolutionist, togetherwith the Italian workers and the rebellious Algerians, would spurn such ananswer with indignation. Even if a general maritime strike broke out in fascistItaly at the same time, even in this eventthe strikers should make an exception infavor of those ships carrying aid to thecolonial slaves in revolt; otherwise theywould be no more than wretched tradeunionists-not proletarian revolutionists."At the same time, the French maritimeworkers, even though not faced with any

Kuwait: U.S. forces prepare for imperialist a t t a c ~on Iraq. Revolutionariestake a side in coming war, defend semicolonial Iraq against predatory U.S.

or whoever were to send arms to the Palestinians-or Iraq for that matter-wewould not oppose that. As explained in a1941 article in the Militant, newspaperof the then-Trotskyist Socialist WorkersParty: "There's a difference between notraising any objection, when a capitalistgovernment sends aid, and agitating forsuch aid. The key to the whole questionconsists in the understanding that wecannot rely on bourgeois governments toaid our cause. Neither can we take anyresponsibility for bpurgeois governmental policy." Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky addressed this point. guite powerfully

strike whatsoever, would be compelledto exert every effort to block the shipment of ammunition intended for useagainst the rebels. Only such a policy onthe part of the Italian and French workers constitutes the policy of revolutionary internationalism."

This statement by Trotsky capturesthe gist of the question of revolutionarydefensism: that the international proletariat must do all it can to aid the oppressedcountry against imperialist attack whilemaintaining complete political independence from the bourgeoisie.

Revolut ionary Defeati"smin First World War

The position of revolutionary defensism in this U.S. war against Iraq and similar wars by an imperialist or predatory power against a dependent, colonialor semicolonial country should be contrasted with the Leninist position of revolutionary defeatism worked out in thecourse of the First World War. WhenWorld War I erupted, it was not a surpriseto most socialists. For years, there hadbeen a mad struggle for colonies betweenthe great powers, a mad struggle thatcould easily-and eventually did-spillover into a great war for colonial possessions and spheres of economic influence.Socialists recognized this before 1914,when the war broke out. In 1907, the Second International had its conference inStuttgart, which passed a resolution onwar, written in part by Lenin and RosaLuxemburg, which stated:

"I f a war threatens to break out, it is theduty of the working class and of itsparliamentary representatives in the countries involved, supported by the consolidating activity of the InternationalSocialist Bureau, to exert every effortin order to prevent the outbreak of warby means they consider most effective,which naturally vary according to theaccentuation of the class struggle and ofthe general political situation."Should war break out none the less, itis their duty to intervene in favor of itsspeedy termination and to do all in theirpower to utilize the economic and political crisis caused by the war to rouse thepeople and thereby to hasten the abolition of capitalist class rule."

continued on page 11

5


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Korea ...(continued from pa ge 1)

nuclear weaponry, some 150,000 American troops are already being deployed towage war against Iraq, which denies possession of any nuclear or biological weapons and has allowed United Nations weapons inspectors in.

The North Korean deformed workersstate emerged following the liberation ofthe northern half of the Korean peninsulafrom 35 years of Japanese colonialism.

Following World War II , Korea was partitioned between the Democratic People'sRepublic of Korea in the north and theRepublic of Korea in the south, a capitalist police state under American militaryoccupation. Before the outbreak of the1950-53 Korean War, the South wasswept by massive peasant revolts, andwhen North Korean forces moved in toreunify the country in 1950, they weregreeted as liberators. In a failed attemptto destroy North Korea as well as the1949 Chinese Revolution, U.S. imperialism devastated the peninsula in theKorean War, killing more than three mil-lion people and obliterating whole cities,including Pyongyang. Following Chinesemilitary intervention, the war ended in a

stalemate at the 38th parallel, and eversince the U.S, has maintained a massivemilitary presence in the South, whileNorth Korea has been subjected todecades of imperialist military encirclement and a starvation embargo.

Despite the rule of a nationalist Stalinist bureaucracy, the overthrow of capitalism in the North was a historic defeat forimperialism and a victory for the workingpeople of Asia and the world. The existence of a planned, collectivized economybrought real advances to the working people of North Korea. Until the mid 1970s,North Korea's planned economy significantly outperformed the South, creating amodern industrial' infrastructure. At thesame time, the situation of a nation bifur

cated by a "demilitarized zone" packedwith more weaponry per square meterthan any place on earth severely distortedthe economy in the North. Particularly inthe aftermath of the collapse of the SovietUnion, which provided the vast bulk ofmilitary and technological aid to NorthKorea, the situation became dire. In 1992,China cut off shipments of cheap oil tothe North as a concession to obtain diplomatic and economic relations with SouthKorea. Starting in 1995, the country washit by natural disasters producing afamine of historic proportions.

The disastrous situation in the Northhas been compounded by the extremeform of economic autarky pushed by theNorth Korean bureaucracy under the

rubric of luche (self-reliance). The political outlook of the bureaucracy was andis rooted in the Stalinist lie that socialism- a classless, egalitarian society basedon material abundance-can be built inone or even half a country. This anti-

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w o r k i n g ~ c l a s s ,nationalist dogma undermines defense of what remains of thecollectivized economy and is counterposed to any perspective for internationalsocialist revolution, and particularly to astruggle for workers revolution in theSouth.

Today, North Korea is ruled by a particularly cultish, nepotistic and bizarreStalinist regime centered on "Dear Leader"Kim Jong 11. The only road forward forthe beleaguered working masses of theNorth is through the perspective of international socialist revolution. Capitalist

counterrevolution can only bring evenmore extreme hardship and misery to thepeople of North Korea. Anyone whodoubts that can cast a glance at the devastating statistics of life in post-SovietRussia. By every measure of human

to lean on the Pyongyang regime to"moderate" its policies. Such criminalappeasement, denying North Korea theright to defend itsel f by acquiring nuclearweapons, simply emboldens the rapacious U.S. imperialists in their drive tofoment counterrevolution in China itself.

Imperialist belligerence against NorthKorea is hardly exclusive to the Republicans. It was Democratic president HarryTruman who launched the Korean War.And it was Bill Clinton who in the midstof the 1994 Korean nuclear crisis movedstealth bombers into South Korea. As he

boastfully recalled last month: "We actually drew up plans to attack North Koreaand destroy their reactors, and we toldthem we would attack unless they endedtheir nuclear program" (New York Times,19 December 2002).

Vitali S. LatovNorth Korean capital of Pyongyang devastated by U.S. bombing during 1950-53 Korean War.

progress-infant mortality, life expectancy, income, literacy-the diverse peoples of the former Soviet Union havebeen brutally hurled back. And given the

present economic and industrial backwardness of North Korea, the effects ofcapitalist restoration there could only befar worse. What is desperately needed isthe forging of a Leninist-Trotskyist partyto lead the struggle for the revolutionaryreunification o f Korea-for socialist revolution in the South and workers politicalrevolution to oust the Stalinist bureaucrats in the North. The fight for revolutionary reunification must be linked tothe struggle for proletarian political revolution in China and the extension of proletarian power to Japan, the industrialheartland of Asia.

A central aim of America's rulersremains the r ~ s t o r a t i o nof capitalism inthose countries where it was overthrown

-mainly China but also North Koreaas well as Vietnam and Cuba. For its. part, China's ruling bureaucracy hasrepeatedly emphasized agreement withthe imperialists' demands for a "nonnuclear Korean peninsula," and has sought

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7/12

of the North by the chaebol, the giantconglomerates that dominate SouthKorean capitalism. In an attempt to attractcapital investment from South Korea andelsewhere, the Pyongyang regime is nowpromoting the construction of two largefree-trade zones and has made othermoves toward Chinese-style "marketreforms." Despite continuing severe foodshortages, rationing was abolished andhousing rents and utility charges havebeen introduced. Meanwhile, Pyongyang's pleas for the U.S., Japan and otherimperi!llist powers to adopt policies of"non-aggression" foster dangerous illusions that these imperialists can beappeased.

Western left groups like the U.S. Workers World Party (WWP) which act ascheerleaders for the North Korean regimealso play into the hands of the SouthKorean bourgeoisie and U.S. imperialism. Workers World (9 January) hails thePyongyang rulers' "skill at defending thesocialist base of their society even whileopening political and commercial relations with the south." Meanwhile on theground in the U.S., WWP fosters illusionsthat the Democratic Party is in some waya progressive alternative to the Republicans, most recently by building platforms for Democratic politicians at ralliesagainst Bush's threatened war on Iraq. Yetif anything, the Democrats today have aharder posture toward North Korea thanBush's Republicans. Thus Warren Christopher, former secretary of state in theClinton administration, recently called onBush to "step back from his fixation onattacking Iraq" because "the threats fromNorth Korea and from international terrorism are more imminent" (New YorkTimes, 31 December 2002).

Democratic Labo r Party: LeftCover for Korean Nationalism

During last month's South Koreanelections, various left groups in SouthKorea and abroad touted Kwon YoungKil's new Democratic Labor Party (DLP)as an alternative to both the traditionalright wing and bourgeois liberals likeKim Dae Jung and Roh Moo Hyun. Inthe 1997 elec tions, K won, a formerKCTU leader, ran for president under therubric "People's Victory 21." This was aclass-collaborationist lash-up with various liberal groups that promoted nationalist opposition to "foreign interference"and similar rhetoric seeking to deflectclass anger away from the domesticexploiters. This time, Kwon won 3.9 percent of the vote as the DLP's presidentialcandidate. While the DLP is based inlarge part on the KCTU union federation,Kwon from the outset defined it as a"party of progressives" which sought tocreate a "coalition of liberal forces" with

groups such as the Green p,arty(loong

Ang !lbo, 29 June 2002). -Echoing the reformist verbiage tradi.

tionally associated with West Europeansocial-democratic parties, the DLP 's fundamental role is to act as a pressure groupon the "liberal" wing of the South Koreanbourgeoisie. Thus, K won saluted fo rmerpresident Kim Dae Jung's "Sunshine Policy," saying: "He achieved historic featssuch as reducing military tension on theKorean peninsula and setting the foundation for a peace regime between the twoKoreas." The DLP also cosigned a June2002 "Solidarity Message for Peace fromKorean Peace Groups" which stated that"North Korea's nuclear and missile development must be settled to build [a] peace

ful Korean Peninsula." Such calls for disarmament of the North and "peacefulrelations" ultimately reflect the interestsof South Korea's chaebol bourgeoisie andits drive for capitalist reunification.

The International Socialists of SouthKorea (ISSK), affiliated to the late TonyCliff's Socialist Workers Party in Britain,supported Kwon's 1997 candidacy andhas more recently liquidated its forcesinto the DLP. An article on the SouthKorean elections in the 11 January British Socialist Worker (which is entirelyuncritical of Roh) states: "The divisionof the Korean peninsula into two statesis a relic of the Cold War." And the Clif-

17 JAN UARY 2003

fites would like nothing more than to getrid of that "relic" through "democratic"counterrevolution.

In fact, the origins of the Cliffite tendency lie in its refusal to defend the NorthKorean workers state against the counterrevolutionary invasion by U.S., Britishand other imperialist troops in 1950-53,for which it was rightly expelled from theTrotskyist movement. Under the rubric"Neither Washington nor Moscow," theCliffites went on to embrace every conceivable CIA-backed anti-Soviet force,from Lech Walesa's Solidarnosc inPoland to the Islamic fundamentalistmujahedin who fought the Red Army inAfghanistan to the Yeltsin-led counterrevolution in the Soviet Union itself.

In South Korea, the Cliffites have longgone out of their way to make clear thatthey share the chaebol bourgeoisie'shatred for the North Korean deformedworkers state. The ISSK demonstratedthis in 1993 even as their own comradeswere dragged off to prison under theNational Security Law (see "Free Choi 11Bung and All South Korean Class WarPrisoners!" WV No. 574, 23 April 1993).They assured the deeply anti-Communistregime that ISSK leader Choi "had notbroken the National Security Law byreading banned literature from the Northor belonging to a foreign organization.On the contrary, he had published bookscritical of regimes like North Korea"(Socialist Worker [U.S.], February 1993).

Striking a much more left posture isthe British Workers Power (WP) group.While also presenting support for theDLP as a "positive development," WPcalls "for the immediate withdrawal ofthe USA's troops and for scrapping allmilitary treaties with it," and states that"revolutionaries should stand for theunconditional defence of North Korea.

This includes its right to possess nuclearreactors and to develop nuclear weapons,if it can" (Workers Power Global,22 December 2002). This principleddefensist position on North Korea standsin sharp contrast to WP's refusal todefend China, whose fate is of evengreater significanc.e for the internationalproletariat. WP declared "Capitalist Restoration Triumphs in China" (WorkersPower, November 2000). Despite massiveinroads by overseas Chinese and imperialist capital, encouraged by the venalStalinist bureaucracy, China remains adeformed workers state based on a collectivized economy. It must be defendedagainst capitalist counterrevolution.

In fact, far from having a principledTrotskyist position in regard to thedeformed and degenerated workers states,WP has a history of sashaying back andforth across the class line depending onthe prevailing political clirnate and itsown political appetites. With widespreadpopular opposition among South Koreanworkers and youth to the American military presence and significant sympathy for the North, WP today calls fordefense of North Korea. At the time of theSoviet intervention into Afghanistan in1979, WP took a step to the left, breakingwith its Cliffite origins and acknowledging that the Soviet Union was a degenerated workers state. But in the end whatwas definitive for WP was the anti-Sovietpolitical climate at home. Thus, WPsimultaneously joined with the Cliffites

and other social-democratic apologistsfor imperialism in denouncing the Sovietmilitary intervention. By the late 1980s,WP was apologizing for anti-Soviet Baltic nationalists and touring Russian fascists in Britain. At the time of Yeltsin'spro-imperialist power grab in August1991, WP boasted that one of its supporters stood on the barricades of counterrevolution outside Yeltsin's headquartersin Moscow.

Well to the right ofWP's current stanceon Korea is an Internet statement by theInternational Bolshevik Tendency (IBT)titled "South Korean Presidential Election: Vote for the DLP!! Oust Its Reformis t Leadership!!" (18 December 2002).The IBT was formed two decades agoby a handful of defectors from the Spartacist tendency who couldn't stomach ourhard Soviet-defensist line at the height ofRonald Reagan's Cold War II. In itslengthy treatise, the IBT nowhere callsfor U.S. troops to get out of South Koreaor for the right of North Korea to possess nuclear weapons!

The IBT admits that the DLP's standfor "reunification of the fatherland"would mean capitalist reunification. Butthis doesn't stop the IBT from giving"critical support" to a party that advocatescapitali;t counterrevolution. The IBT hasa pro forma paragraph saying that reunification of Korea under capitalism "wouldbe a defeat for the proletariat internationally" and noting that "the working classshould defend North Korea against thedesigns of the South Korean and international bourgeoisies to plunder thedeformed workers' state." At the sametime, the IBT waxes eloquent about thesupposed virtues of the South Koreanrulers' "Sunshine Policy": "The realization of the 'Sunshine policy' would haveremoved a major justification for the

December 31 Tokyoprotest against U.S.troops in Korea.Spartacist GroupJapan sign on farleft reads: "SmashCounterrevolutionaryAlliance BetweenJapanese andAmericanImperialism ThroughWorkers Revolution!"

37,000 U.S. troops stationed in SouthKorea. It would have brought about economic advantage to the North Koreanregime and closer relationships betweenit and South Korea, Russia, Japan, Chinaand EU member nations." Seven pageslater, the IBT laconically concedes thatsuch policies "aim to exploit Pyongyang's endemic difficulties with theobject of capitalist reunification."

However, even its warnings againstcapitalist reunification are motivatedsolely by the effect it would have onworkers in the capitalist South: "Workersin the South would suffer higher unemployment and suppression of wages,while at the same time bearing the socialcosts of capitalist reconstruction of theNorth." It speaks to the IBT's sneeringindifference to the fate of the workersstate itself that it says not a word aboutthe devastating impact counterrevolutionwould have on the already impoverishedNorth Korean working masses.

Reforge theFourth International!

The common hostility of U.S. and Japanese imperialism to the North Korean andChinese deformed workers states doesnot moderate interimperialist rivalry buton the contrary serves as an arena for itsintensification, as they jockey over whowould get the spoils in the event of capitalist restoration. The fact that Tokyo iscurrently seeking to counter Washington's bellicosity toward North Korea with

Seoul: Militant rally last February insupport of electrical utility workersstrike against privatization threat.

attempts to broker a "normalization" ofrelations does not mean that the Japanesebourgeoisie's approach is in any way"peaceful." This was underlined when theJapanese coast guard one year ago sank aNorth Korean ship in Chinese waters.While certainly not excluding militaryconfrontation, Tokyo is today concentrating on economic penetration of NorthKorea. Japan is North Korea's secondlargest trading partner, and Japanese capitalists are increasingly entrusting production to North Korean plants, wherelabor costs are low and the quality ofwork is high.

The right-wing Koizumi governmentused North Korea's recent admission ofthe bizarre and senseless kidnapping ofJapanese citizens years ago to whip up anatmosphere of anti-Communist, chauvinist hysteria. Revolutionaries in Japan havea special duty to defend the North Koreandeformed workers state and to opposegrowing Japanese militarism and the bourgeoisie'S persecution of Japan's ethnicKorean minority. On December 31, ourcomrades of the Spartacist Group Japan(SGJ) joined with other Japanese andKorean leftists at a Tokyo demonstrationagainst the U.S. troops in South Korea.Our comrades raised placards callingfor U.S. troops out of South Korea, forthe right of China and North Korea tohave nuclear weapons, for the unconditional military defense of China and NorthKorea against Japanese imperialism, and

for citizenship rights for Koreans, Chineseand all foreign workers in Japan.Fundamentally, the defense of those

states where capitalism has been overthrown requires the extension of proletarian rule to the advanced capitalist countries. Yet it is this perspective that is notonly alien but anathema to the nationalistbureaucratic castes that rule in NorthKorea and China. The Stalinist bureaucrats in Pyongyang and Beijing fear thatsocialist revolution in South Korea andJapan would quickly inspire proletarianpolitical revolutions that would result intheir forced evacuation from their positions of privilege and power. Likewise, apolitical revolution in China or NorthKorea would have an enormous impact on

South Korea and Japan, the industrialpowerhouse of Asia.What is needed above all is the forging

of internationalist proletarian partiesaround the world. Our comrades of theSGJ are committed to the struggle toforge a Leninist vanguard party to leadthe fight for proletarian revolution inJapan. For our part, the Spartacist League/U.S. fights to build a revolutionary workers party-part of a reforged Fourth International-that can lead the multiracialproletariat in socialist revolution to sweepaway U.S. imperialism, the most dangerous force on the planet. U.S. troops ou t ofSouth Korea now!

7


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Longshore ...(continued from page 1)

The proposed contract was negotiatedwith a gun held to the union's head by aviciously right-wing government, determined at all costs to enforce labor peaceas it prepares to launch war against Iraq.But the ILWU is saddled with a leadership that was predisposed to backingdown from any struggle in the face of amere water pistol. Before the fight couldeven begin, the leadership's allegiance tothe capitalist order undermined the capac

ity of the union to defend itself and thelivelihoods of the membership.How was the union to combat the gov

ernment's attacks, waged in the name of"national security," when its leadershiphad already signed on to the "war on terror," endorsing calls for increased security on the waterfront and proposing thatthe ILWU ranks be the policemen? TheILWU bureaucracy pledged its allegianceto the bloody aims of U.S. imperialism bypromising to keep military cargo moving.How could the power of the union havebeen mobilized to fight the capitalists ofthe PMA when its leadership was mobilizing to round up votes for the capitalistsof the Democratic Party? As the ranksslaved on the docks under Taft-Hartley,

30 ILWUers were dispatched across thecountry to campaign for a vote to theDemocrats on November 5-this despitethe fact that Senator Dianne Feinstein andother Democrats supported the use ofTaft-Hartley against the ILWU.

PMA head Joseph Miniace was out tobreak the union's control over work at theports. But it appears that the PMA and theBush administration decided, for the timebeing, to reach a truce with the ILWUleadership with a contract offer that widens the gap between the ranks on thedocks and the increasingly highly skilledand highly paid "steady men," whobypass the union hiring hall and reportdirectly to their employer.

Two roads lie before the IL WU. There

is the bureaucrats' program of class collaboration which has seriously undermined the union's strength and nowthreatens its potential destruction as anindustrial union. Or there is the roadof class struggle. As we wrote in themidst of the ILWU contract negotiations("ILWU Threatened by 'National Unity'Crusade," WV No. 785, 9 August 2002):

8

"In the midst of an economic recessionand with an aggressively hostile government, the longshoremen are indeed in atough position. But it is false to thinkthat if you just keep your head down,they'll leave you alone. There's no hopeif the union surrenders its power inadvance. Every concession won by theworkers took hard struggle against thebosses and their government. A prerequisite is to remove the roadblocks to class

struggle, beginning by waging apoliticalfight against the present labor leadership,which sees the world through the samelens as the ruling class and whose purpose is to ensure the subordination of theworkers to the 'national interests' of theenemy class."

[ S P A R T A C J S t 1 ~=UMIIER57 EIIIGlISHEDIT'ON W'mEII2002-


9/12

nationally while their numbers haveshrunk by a factor of ten. To the extent theunion becomes the representative of onlythe most privileged layer, it underminesits capacity to struggle against the bosses.The union bureaucracy, however, basingitself on the most privileged, aims only toprotect that job trust within capitalism,accepting its dwindling numbers as newtechnology is introduced. Abolish the category of steady man and trash the wholeinvidious tier system! No second-classunion workers-get rid of the system ofB-men and casuals!

OneOf

the gains of the mass strugglesthat built the ILWU was a six-hour workday on the docks. Long in abeyance-dueto .the bureaucracy's refusal to defend i t -enforcing the six-hour shift for eighthours' pay would not only make thedocks a lot safer for the workers; it wouldcreate more jobs, enabling all longshoremen to get enough work. For higher manning scales to put more workers on thedocks! Against the mass unemploymentcreated by the capitalist system with itsinevitable recessions and depressions, itis necessary to fight for a sliding scale ofhours to divide the available work amongall workers, uniting the employed andunemployed in the fight for jobs.

For Industrial Unionism-Organize the Port Truckers!The Achilles' heel of union power on

the waterfront remains the port truckers,who are not organized by any union. Thelockout showed clearly that in any strike,the solidarity of the port truckers will bekey to shutting down the docks if thePMA should attempt to move cargo withscab operators, whether renegade steadymen, Operating Engineers or Navy personnel. Nothing moves on or off thedocks without the truckers except whererail lines reach into the terminals, whenthe solidarity of rail workers also becomes critical.

Organizing the port truckers wouldenormously strengthen the power of allworkers on the docks. It would also counteract the movement to tum the waterfront into a craft-union operation byorganizing the entire industrial base at theports. Most importantly, it would jointogether in struggle the union and immigrant workers in the face of mountinganti-immigrant attacks. But despite themuch ballyhooed "tripartite alliance" ofthe ILWU, International Longshoremen'sAssociation and Teamsters tops, whoclaimed to be organizing port truckers,the bureaucrats have not lifted a finger inthis regard. On the contrary, they haverejected efforts by port truckers to jointhe ILWU or another union over the lastdecade. The labor tops regard them withutter contempt and have actively joinedthe witchhunt against these overwhelmingly immigrant wprkers who are inthe gun sights of the government postSeptember 11.

A telling example is the ILWU tops'collaboration in writing the new Maritime Transportation Security Act (MSA),passed by both houses of Congress withno opposition and signed by Bush onNovember 25. Under the guise of fighting"terrorism," this law directs the Department of Transportation to develop secureareas of the ports and to limit access foranyone convicted of a felony 'within thelast .seven years, based on the government's determination of who isl"a terrorism risk." This directly threatens thejobs of black and Latino longshoremenwho have been on the receiving end ofracist cop harassment in the so-called"war on drugs." The new law mandatesthe issuance of a "transportation securityidentification card" that will containevery port worker's photo, fingerprints,signature, driver's license number andcriminal background (Los Angeles Times,16 December 2002). It also calls fordeterring any "transportation security incident," which specifically includes "economic disruption," a direct threat to unionactivity at the ports.

But instead of fighting this assault onthe union, the ILWU bureaucrats signedon to the government's "security" witch-

17 JANUARY 2003

break with the capitalist government andits parties.

Th e situation facing the ILWU today isa stark example of what Leon Trotsky, oneof the central leaders of the Russian Revolution, observed more than 60 years ago:

"The trade unions of our time can eitherserve as secondary instruments of imperialist capitalism for the subordination anddisciplining of workers and for obstructing the revolution, or, on the contrary,the trade unions can become the instruments of the revolutionary movement ofthe proletariat."

- "Trade Unions in the Epoch ofImperialist Decay" (1940)

WV PhotoLongshoremen were at core of Oakland united-front mobilization lastFebruary in defense of immigrant rights and in opposition to repressive "antiterror" laws.

Unionized workers are now down tosome 13 percent of the workforce. Without a renewal of the labor movement,American workers are facing a return tothe brutal conditions of the 1920s, beforethe great labor struggles that led to industrial union organization. But even thesimple question of organizing the unorganized across the country requires taking the struggle off the narrow terrain oftrade unionism. The very fact that theU.S. South remains a bastion of the "openshop" is testimony that any organizingeffort requires a battle for black rights.This would immediately pose the need tobreak with the Democratic and Republican parties of racist American capitalism.

hunt, with Spinosa vituperating against"unknown truck drivers" being "allowedfree access to our work environment."During negotiations the ILWU misleadersrepeatedly offered up their members tohelp police the ports, while at solidarityrallies they raised placards calling to"Fight Terrorism, Not American Workers." At the same time, the AFL-CIO tops,pitching themselves as the government'smost loyal servants, sent a letter to Congress demanding that the shipping "industry giants stop being a dangerous roadblock to safety on our docks."

The end result of the bureaucrats'pledge of allegiance to the "war on terror"is that now all dock workers are facing asinister government witchhunt. To unitethe workers to stop it, it is necessary toorganize the port truckers. But this canonly be carried out in a fight to break theunions from the bureaucracy's protectionism and anti-immigrant chauvinism, raising on the union's standard the demandfor full citizenship rights for immigrants.Fighting to mobilize the ILWU againstthe MSA and in defense of immigrantrights last February 9 in Oakland, the callfor a mass labor-centered protest issuedby the Labor Black League for SocialDefense and the Partisan Defense Committee declared: "We must fight againstdeportations, for unionizing the unorganized and for a shorter workweek with noloss in pay in order to spread the availablework. Let our motto be class strugglejoining forces against our common enemy,the capitalist ruling class!"

Bush's recent ruling permitting Mexican truckers across the U.S. border wasgreeted with howls of outrage by manyofficials in AFL-CIO unions. The trade onwhich the longshoremen depend for theirwork is by its very nature international.In any showdown with the bosses, longshoremen rely on the support of theirinternational counterParts. For U.S. unionsto align with the rapacious U.S. rulingclass in "national unity" against foreignworkers creates a fundamental obstacle tosuch solidarity. Instead labor must bemobilized in concrete actions of proletarian internationalism in the fight for theunionization of all dock and transportworkers so that work is performed byunion labor at union scale, no matterwhere; only union hands should touchany container from the point of loading tothe point of discharge.

The Portworkers Solidarity Committee(PWSC), a group of union supportersincluding self-proclaimed socialist organizations convened by a more left-talkingwing of the Bay Area Local 10 bureaucracy, has made a pretense of defendingimmigrant rights and opposing the U.S.war moves against Iraq. But the overwhelming majority of the work of thePWSC consisted of building "solidarityrallies" that provided an uncritical platform for the bureaucracy to spout its flagwaving patriotism and stump for theDemocratic Party. This only serves togive a left cover to the bureaucracy's program of support to "national unity," inwhich they try to sell to the workers the

lie that they have interests in commonwith the U.S. rulers.

The International Socialist Organization (ISO), which was a central organizerof the PWSC, aims to promote a more"militant" wing of the bureaucracy. The10 January issue of the ISO's SocialistWorker prints a statement by ILWU Local10 business agent Jack Heyman demanding that "longshore workers should rejectthis contract and send our negotiatingcommittee back." Some alternative!! Thisputative oppositionist can summon upnothing more than sending back the verybureaucrats he postures at denouncing for"acquiescing to government intimidation."

In this article, Heyman invokes the"principled legacy" of the ILWU inopposing reactionary government policies domestically and internationally. Awhole wing of the ILWU bureaucracywas schooled in the "progressive" tradition of the Harry Bridges leadership,which was forged in the crucible of theCommunist Party's popular front withFranklin D. Roosevelt's "New Deal"Democrats. T hese bureaucrats sometimestalk left, professing solidarity with theworld's oppressed. But since they don'tmobilize the membership in action, thisamounts to little more than a distractionto keep the ranks busy while the tops conduct business unionism as usual.

Build a RevolutionaryWorkers Party! .

All wings of the ILWU bureaucracyand their reformist tails expressed dismaythat the government was "colluding" withthe PMA. But in this capitalist system thegovernment exists to enforce the bosses'interests against the working class hereand to defend the capitalist rulers' interests abroad. Karl Marx described the government as the executive committee ofthe capitalist class, and the first step inany workers struggle must be a sharp

The savage attacks on the living standards of the working class and on the veryability of the poor and helpless to live, theslashing of health care at all levels, theempty futures of youth for whom there islittle education and few jobs and the rampant racist attacks are no less the productof the bureaucracy's class-collaborationistpolicies that have sapped the organizedstrength of the unions. Armed with aclass-struggle program, a union with thepower of the ILWU could spearhead afight against these ravages and begin totum the tables on the bosses.

The catastrophe of joblessness, threatening the disintegration of the workingclass, can be done away with-but notwithout getting rid of production forprofit. It is necessary to fight for a workers government, where the means of production have been taken away from thecapitalists and made the collective property of the working class. Under suchconditions, labor-saving technology wouldmean less time at work and a vast improvement in conditions of life for thepopulation as a whole.

The road forward requjres a politicalstruggle against the labor misleaders andthe forging of a new leadership that willfight to mobilize union power independently of the bosses' government and theirparties. Such struggles are necessary toconstruct a revolutionary workers partythat will be the champion of all the exploited and oppressed against the bloodyU.S. capitalist class, the enemy of theworld's peoples. We seek to build such anorganization, as a section of an international party, which can seize power andoverturn the decaying capitalist system sothat those who labor will rule .

Web site: www.icl-fi.org E-mail address:[email protected]

National 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) 839-0851

ChicagoBox 6441, Main POChicago, IL 60680(312) 563-0441Public Office:Sat. 2-5 p.m.222 S. Morgan(Buzzer 23)

Toronto

Public Office: Sat. 2-5 p.m. Public Office:3806 Beverly Blvd., Room 215 Sat. 1-5 p.m.

Ne w YorkBox 3381, Church St. Sta.New York, NY 10008(212) 267-1025Public Office:Tues. 6:30-8:30 p.m.and Sat. 1-5 p.m.299 Broadway, Suite 318

1634 Telegraph3rd Floor

San FranciscoBox 77494San FranciscoCA 94107

lDA&IGUe.IBQ1'SKYSTE'DUCANAD'

VancouverBox 7198, Station AToronto, ON M5W 1X8(416) 593-4138

Box 2717, Main P.O.Vancouver, BC V6B 3X2(604) 687-0353

9


10/12

Iraq ...(continued from page 12)

who is running for president in oppositionto an Iraq war, these liberal DemocraticParty politicians seek to position themselves to get ahead of and contain theincreasing discontents that the capitalistrulers' war at home and abroad will generate among working people and minorities. It is small wonder that the majorityof these politicians are black Democratswho are more attuned to the fact that there

is enonnous anger and disaffection particularly among black people and the poor.

The January 18 demonstrations arescheduled for the weekend of MartinLuther King Day. The protest organizersinvoke the legacy of Martin Luther Kingto draw the link between the fight againstracial oppression at home and war abroadin order to promote liberal opposition towar. To be sure, there is an inextricablelink between the two. Just look around.From the get-go, the "war on terror" hasbeen brought home in a racist witchhuntagainst immigrants, primarily Muslimsand Arabs. And as the U.S. amassesforces for war against Iraq abroad, it isrounding up male immigrants over theage of 16 from 20 different countries

while threatening Iraqi Americans andIraqis in the U.S. with mass incarceration.

The fight against imperialist war cannotbe divorced from the struggles of workingpeople and minorities against all manifestations of capitalist oppression: The multiracial working people of America andthe semicolonial masses of Iraq have acommon enemy in the exceptionally warcrazed, labor-hating gang in the WhiteHouse and the capitalist class it repre-

Asahi Shimbun

sents. America's colossal military advantage over Iraq underscores the importanceof class struggle in the imperialist'centersas a chief means to defend Iraq. We lookto the example of the Japanese dockworkers in Sasebo, who refused to handleJapanese military goods destined for usein the war against Afghanistan in the fallof 2001, But the aim of the demo organizers is not to promote a class-struggledefense of immigrant rights and opposition to imperialist war, but rather to promote the idea that positive social changecan come through liberal Democrats.

An ANSWER leatlet for the upcomingrally declares that King "believed it wasimpossible to wage a war on racism andpoverty at home while waging a racistwar against poor people in Vietnam." TheU,S, ruling class never had the intentionof waging a "war on racism and poverty,"then or today, While King was houndedby the Feds and assassinated for being asymbol of the struggle for black equality,his political role was to keep the civilrights movement firmly tied to the racistDemocratic Party of John F. Kennedy andLyndon B. Johnson,

Another ANSWER leatlet for the January 18 protests argues: "Like Dr. Kingdid during the Vietnam War, we willdemand that hundreds of billions of dollars be spent on jobs, education, housing,healthcare and to meet human needsnot for wars of aggression in the ThirdWorld." In case these reformist idiots

10

AFPIsraeli military terrorizes West Bank town of Nablus. U.S.-led "war on terror" hasgiven Zionists green light to intensify murderous repression of Palestinians.

haven't noticed, the U.S. capitalists haveacquired their untold billions of dollarsthrough the exploitation of labor andthe immiseration of the oppressed. If youwant to get your hands on the money,you have to break the power of the bourgeoisie and place the means of produc

tion in the hands of those whose laborcreates the wealth of society.

LRP: "United Front"with Imperialist Liberals

Neither WWPI ANSWER nor any ofthe other reformist groups endorsingthese protests raises the necessary call forthe defense of Iraq against U.S. attackbecause to do so would mean antagonizing Democratic Party liberals. The cen-

gram against imperialist war with representatives of the very capitalist class inwhose interests such wars are waged. Toattempt to do so can only mean subordinating the working class, the only forcethat can actually defeat imperialism, tothe interests of its capitalist exploiters.

In contrast, revolutionaries seek tobreak the disastrous unity of antiwarmilitants with the most deceptive wingof the bourgeoisie and replace it with aworking-class uni ty-a unity based on aprogram of international class struggle.As V. I. Lenin, leader of the BolshevikParty which led the only successful antiwar movement in history by overthrowing the rule of capitalist imperialism inRussia at the height of World War I,

HaeberleU.S. imperialism's trail of mass terror: A-bombing of Japane se city ofHiroshima, 1945; massacre of Vietnamese villagers in My Lai, 1968.

trist League fgr the Revolutionary Party(LRP) strikes an oppositional posture,declaring: "We stand for the defeat ofimperialism and the defense of the Iraqi

'people in any war against the imperialistpowers" (Proletarian Revolution, Fall2002). The LRP article' also polemicizes

. against WWP/ANSWER for "pushing theliberal imperialist line" and providing aplatform for the Democrats. However, wecan't help but note that the LRP's defenseof Iraq and calls to defeat imperialism areburied within an article that at bottompromotes the same class-collaborationistunity pushed by the reformist groups itattacks:

"The task of genuine revolutionaries isnot just to 'build the movement,' althoughwe are of course in favor of the largestand strongest anti-war protests possible.We need also to fight for them to be builtas genuine united fronts, where all voicesare heard, including that of revolutionaries-not just those who support theDemocrats and other pro-imperialist liberals. We also fight within the movementfor revolutionary proletarian leadership,so that it points to a lasting challenge tocapitalist attacks and imperialist war."

By its own admission, the LRP promotes an alliance with the class enemy"Democrats and other p r o ~ i m p e r i a l i s tliberals." The idea of building a "revolutionary proletarian leadership" out of sucha cabal is downright absurd; however, itis a measure of the opportunist impulsesthat animate the LRP. There cannot be acommon movement and a common pro-

explained in Socialism and War (1915):"To rally these Marxist elements, how

ever small their numbers may be at theoutset; to reanimate, in their name, thenow forgotten ideals of genuine socialism, and to call upon the workers of alllands to break with the chauvinists andrally about the old banner of Marxism-such is the task of the day," .

The LRP's professed "stand for thedefeat of imperialism" is a manifest fraudconsidering that this organization capitulated to the imperialists down the line intheir drive to destroy the Soviet Union.Although bureaucratically degenerated,the USSR was a workers state, based oncollectivized property forms which repre-

San Francisco,October 26:

Reformist ISOseeks "unity" withliberal imperialist

politicians topressure U.S.

rulers for "peace."

.8o

.s::

c..

~

sented real gains for the working classinternationally. It was the elementary dutyofrevolutionaries to unconditionally militarily defend the Soviet Union againstimperialism and internal counterrevolution, as it is necessary today to defendthe remaining bureaucratically deformedworkers stales-China, Vietnam, Cubaand North Korea. But the LRP howledalong with tbe imperialist wolves inopposing the Soviet military interventionagainst the CIA-backed woman-hatingIslamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan inthe 1980s and stood with the counterrev

olutionary forces headed by Boris Yeltsinthat destroyed the Soviet degeneratedworkers state in 1991-92.

IG: Empty Bombast,Opportunist Practice

Another group that claims to standapart from the reformist swamp is thecentrist Internationalist Group (IG),which raises the call "Defeat U.S. Imperialism! Defend Iraq!" (Internationalist,September-October 2002). At the time ofthe U.S. military adventure in Afghanistan over a year ago, the IG loudly andindignantly took us to task for supposedly"flinching" in the face of jingoist warmongering because we did not emblazon"Defeat U.S, Imperialism!" across thefront page of Workers Vanguard. Theyattacked our slogan, "For Class StruggleAgainst Capitalist Rulers at Home!" writ"ing in the Internationalist (Fall 200 1) that"the emphasis on 'a t home' is counterposed to the call to defeat the imperialists abroad" and claiming that our line"amounts to nationalist.- economist socialpacifism." But these days, the IG itselfseems to have fallen into "economistsocial pacifism," writing in its currentissue: "Our call for defeat of the imperialists means class struggle at home."

But this is all just cynical wordplay.As we noted at the time of the U.S.war against Afghanistan ("No to Bosses''National Unity'! For Class Struggle atHome!" WVNo. 768, 9 November 2001):

"At bottom,the IG deliberately muddlesthe question of a military defeat in a particular war with the proletarian defeat ofone's bourgeoisie through socialist revolution. The latter is the program animating any truly revolutionary party inpeacetime as in wartime. The slogansused to proceed toward that end- to leadthe working masses from their currentlevel of consciousness to the seizure ofstate power-are, however, necessarilyconjunctural. Thus, upon returning toRussia after the overthrow of the tsar inearly 1917, Lenin had to fight againstthose in the Bolshevik Party who wishedto lend support to the bourgeois Provisional Government. Having won this battle, he then had to caution left proletarian elements of the party who wanted toimmediately call for the overthrow ofthe Provisional Government. On 5 May1917, the Central Committee passed thefollowing motion authored by Lenin:'The slogan "Down with the ProvisionalGovernment!" is an incorrect one at thepresent moment because, in the absenceof a solid (i.e., a class-conscious andorganised) majority of the people on theside of the revolutionary proletariat sucha slogan is either an empty phrase, or,objectively, amounts to attempts of anadventurist character'."

And the IG's phrasemongering is ofthe most empty sort-fraudulent bombast which they peddle to impress theunwary in cyberspace while on theground they practice pure opportunist

WORKERS VANGUARD


11/12

Marxism, War...(continued from page 5)

Comrades know of the historic betrayalof the Second International, when nearlyevery section supported its own imperialist rulers in the war. This betrayalfirst emerged on 4 August 1914, whenthe entire parliamentary fraction of the

German Social Democratic Party (SPD)voted for war credits so that the rulerscould finance their war. The vote for warcredits by the SPD marked a fundamentalbetrayal of Marxism. The SPD helped topush the international proletariat into theslaughterhouse. In her wartime pamphlettitled The Crisis in the German SocialDemocracy, but better known as the Jun-ius Pamphlet since it was written underthe pseudonym of Junius, Rosa Luxemburg powerfully described how the warshowed the true nature of capitalism, ripping apart all the hypocrisy that imperialism uses to pursue its aims:

"Shamed, dishonored, wading in bloodand dripping with filth-thus standsbourgeois society. And so it is. Not as weusually see it, pretty and chaste, playingthe roles of peace and righteousness, oforder, of philosophy, ethics and culture.It shows itself in its true, naked formas a roaring beast, as an orgy of anarchy,as a pestilential breath, devastating culture and humanity."

Right after the war credits vote, Lenindeclared the Second International dead;Luxemburg characterized it as a "stinkingcorpse." And it was in this peri od that thepolicy of revolutionary defeatism wasadvanced. This was a reactionary war onevery side, a gruesome fight by big and

accommodation. For example, on paperthe IG claims to share our position hail

ing the Soviet Red Army interventioninto Afghanistan in the 1980s. But at anIG-initiated united-front protest at NewYork City's Hunter College in November2001 against the anti-immigrant witchhunt accompanying the U.S. war againstAfghanistan, not one of the IG's placards, not one of their speakers and noneof the propaganda they produced for theprotest said a word about the Red Armyor defense of the Soviet Union. In hisspeech to the protest, IG leader Jan Norden made no mention of the Red Armyintervention, only declaring lamely: "Wefought against the Taliban, we foughtagainst the Islamic fundamentalists whenthe United States was pushing them."The IG did not want to offend those, like

the International Socialist Organization(ISO), the LRP or the RevolutionaryCommunist Party Who had endorsed andattended the rally and who to a man wereon the imperialists' side against the RedArmy in Afghanistan.

The IG's utter silence in front ofthe crowd of several hundred peopleat Hunter on the force that could havedefeated the U.S.-backed reactionaries inAfghanistan-the Soviet Red A r m ydemonstrates that its oh-so-revolutionarycalls for the defeat of U.S. imperialismare so much hot air. When they produceda 32-page IG pamphlet (December 2001)devoted to the Hunter protest, the IGwent so far as to edit out any reference tothe Soviet intervention in the SL speech

at the rally and completely eliminatedany mention of the SYC speaker, whohad said:

"All of the left groups now talk abouthow the U.S. armed and funded themujahedin against the Soviet Union inAfghanistan in the '80s. But what theydon't say is that they all capitulated tothe imperialist anti-Soviet war drive,with, for example, the ISO hailing themujahedin as 'freedom fighters.' Onlywe Trotskyists said: 'Hail Red Army inAfghanistan!' "

Lessons of the VietnamAntiwar Movement

An understanding of the dearly boughtlessons of the past is crucial to the con-

17 JANUARY 2003

Young Sparlacus

little imperialist powers over how manycountries and peoples they would hold asslaves. Marxists had no side in this war,and in fact, the defeat of one's own bourgeoisie was the lesser evil. The aim wasto tum this imperialist war into a civil warbetween the exploited class, the proletariat, and the warmongering exploiters, theimperialist bourgeoisie.

But there is an interesting point tonote here. Working for the defeat of yourown imperialists did not mean advocatingthe victory of the other side. The position of revolutionary defeatism was tobe taken up by the working classes in allthe belligerent countries-i.e., they wereall supposed to work for the defeat oftheir rulers. And this w

workers vanguard no 795 - 17 january 2003

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