workers vanguard no 809 - 12 september 2003

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soeNo. 809 ' ~ - ' . ~ ~ ~ ~ ... " X-523, . . ~ - 12 September 2003

Defend North Korea's Right to Nuclear Weapons!

II II

orIn recent weeks, the U.S. imperialistshave been escalating their threats andprovocations against North Korea. The"multilateral" talks recently held in Beijing are nothing but a diplomatic front fordisarming North Korea. North Koreanvessels have already been interdicted andsequestered on the high seas over the pastyear by Japan, Spain, Australia and Taiwan. Later this month, the U.S. will leadjoint naval exercises in the Coral Sea asthe first coordinated action of a "Proliferation Security Initiative" that threatensa full-scale naval blockade of NorthKorea, which would be an act of war.The Spartacist LeaguelU.S., section ofthe International Communist League,stands for the unconditional militarydefense ofNorth Korea against imperialism, including its right to develop andpossess nuclear weapons-the more thebetter. .Just over 50 years ago, in July of 1953,the U.S. signed the truce with NorthKorea that froze the division of the peninsula into two societies that differed infundamental ways. After a particularlyvicious, 40-year-long Japanese colonialoccupation fronted by Korean collaborators, gigantic social upheavals swept theKorean peninsula following World WarII. In the North, where the uprisings wereabetted by the presence of the armedforces of the USSR, industry was expropriated and the land-owning rentiers whodominated the peasantry were smashed asa class. In the absence of the workingclass contending for power under theleadership of a revolutionary Trotskyistparty, the insurgent masses came to beled by the peasant-guerrilla forces ofKim n Sung, who had fought against theJapanese during the war and contributedtens of thousands of fighters to aidMao Zedong's People's Liberation Army(PLA) in the Chinese Revolution that triumphed in 1949.In 1950, the U.S., which already hadtroops in the south of the peninsula,launched a war under the aegis of theUnited Nations against Kim II Sung'sNorthern army after it had entered theSouth in conjunction with the socialuprisings there, intending to reunify thecountry. During the 1950-53 Korean War,the American imperialists slaughteredsome three and a half million Koreans,charring the country with oceans of napalm and reducing the peninsula to rubble.After the armistice-a peace treaty has

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ornever been signed-the South was ruledby the former capitalist collaboratorswith the Japanese occupation under aseries of outright dictatorships thatextended into the 1980s. These regimeswere propped up by tens of thousands ofU.S. troops, a presence that remains inplace to this day. These troops have beenrepeatedly used to back up the suppression of working-class militancy andsocial uprisings in the South and are asignal of U.S. imperialism's intent toreverse its defeat in the North. Al l U.S.troops and bases out of South Korea!From 1950 until now, North Korea hasfaced unremitting hostile intentions andactions by U.S. imperialism, in partbecause its very existence is a reminderof Washington's military failure in itsdrive to "roll back communism," i.e., toachieve the historic "mission" of overthrowing the gains of the October Revolution in Russia. Those gains, althoughdeformed by bureaucratic caste rule, hadspread throughout Soviet-occupied areasof East Europe after World War II; and inYugoslavia, China, Vietnam and Cuba,peasant-based social revolutions led tothe creation of deformed workers states.The Korean peninsula has always beenseen by the U.S. as a highway on whichto launch a military attack to overthrowthe 1949 Cl1inese Revolution, as witnessed by General Douglas MacArthur'soft-expressed wish during the KoreanWar to attack Chinese Manchuria.Our unconditional military defense ofthe North Korean deformed workersstate, ruled throu gh. primogeniture byKim n Sung's son, Kim Jong n, at thehead of the Stalinist bureaucracy, is, atbase, a defense of the overturn and expropriation of capitalism. As part of thedefense of these historic gains, we fightfor workers political revolution to overthrow the nationalist Stalinist bureaucracies whose opposition to internationalsocialist revolution and futile attempts toappease imperialism undermine the gains

ReutersU.S. soldier patrols "demilitarized zone," marking imperialist Cold Warpartition of Korea. U.S. occupation force in South Korea poses mortal threat toNorth Korean and Chinese deformed workers states.of these revolutions. To abandon defenseof the workers states is to abandon thehistoric purpose of proletarian revolution.That purpose and, thus, the unconditionalmilitary defense of the remammgdeformed workers states in China, Cuba,Vietnam and North Korea form the cornerstone of the program of the ICL, asthey must for any who stand for worldsocialist revolution.It is to be noted that several pseudosocialist organizations,.in this country mostprominently the International SocialistOrganization, base their Qrigins on a refusal to defend North Korea and Chinaagainst U.S. imperialism during theKorean War-i.e., these groups are, intheir origins, based on a betrayal of proletarian revolution. In contrast, our forebears of the then-Trotskyist U.S. Socialist Workers Party forthrightly called forthe defense of North Korea and Chinaagainst their "own" ruling class duringthe Korean War.Bush and Democratson Warpath

To justify its threats against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, theU.S. has invoked Pyongyang's statedintent to develop, produce and, mostrecently, test nuclear weapons. This justification is a smoke screen. From the git-

go, North Korea was included by Bush asa main component of the "axis of evil"supposedly threatening the planet, whileNorth Korea, China and Cuba are amongthe seven countries targeted for a potential nuclear first strike as outlined in thePentagon's "Nuclear Posture Review."The Bush administration's drive againstNorth Korea is a continuation of the ColdWar policies instituted by Democraticpresident Harry Truman, whose administration considered nuking the North during the Korean War. That considerationwas set aside in recognition of the capacity of the Soviet Union to respond in kind.With the destruction of the USSR, Bush isquite capable of revisiting that decision. Itis notable that almost every current aspiring Democratic presidential candidate hasaccused Bush of neglecting the "NorthKorea threae' In February, liberal California Congresswoman Barbara Lee, adarling of reformist antiwar leftists likeWorkers World Party, demanded of Secretary of State Colin Powell: "What will ittake for the Administration to focus asmuch attention on North Korea, whichhas demonstrated its nuclear and missilecapabilities, as it is focusing on Iraq?"In fact, Bush has been no slacker.As frankly stated by John R. Bolton,U.S. undersecretary of state for armscontinued on page J0


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111I11I"_"I!I,lIllfi,Rmlii"'I!IAII.tl;;.I.IIII_SEPTEMBER 7-Los Angeles transitworkers have been working without anew contract after refusing to cave in todemands from a hardlining Metropolitan Transportation Agency (MTA) benton major takeaways. The contract forAmalgamat!,!d Transit Union (ATU) Local1277, which represents the mechanics andmaintenance workers, expired last September. The contracts for the UnitedTransportation Union (UTU), which represents bus and train drivers, and theTransportation Communication International Union (TCIU), which representsclerks, expired at the end of June.

For a Solid Strike! be independent of the bourgeois state.Not satisfied with getting the capitaliststate to say when the union can strike,ATU president Neil Silver obsequiouslyrequested the bosses' courts to rule onwhether mechanics can honor the drivers'picket lines if the UTU goes on strikeafter September 18 while the ATU is still"cooling off'! This is despite the fact thatthe previous contract contains a provisionprotecting ATU members who refuse tocross a picket line. On September 3, thejudge refused to rule on this matter, wanting to wait until the unions try to act intheir own defense. Honoring picket linesis a principle that must be asserted bylabor through action and not made conditional on approval by the capitalist masters against whom it is directed. Strikesand picket lines are the way labor defendsits interests. Labor rights were not willingly granted to the working class by thebosses and their capitalist state, but werewrested from the labor-hating U.S. rulingclass through hard-fought, often bloody,class struggle. But the bureaucrats wantto play by the bosses' rules, which is arecipe for defeat.

MTA. As one worker told a WV salesman, "We know it will take a strike, solet's do it!" Damned right! Transit workers should be demanding a mass meetingof all three unions to hammer out a jointstrategy and organize joint strike action.

While details of negotiations arelargely being kept from union members,the MTA is reportedly demanding thatunion members cough up substantiallymore to pay for health care while gettinga nominal 1 percent pay raise. The MTA .also seeks takeaways from drivers andmechanics in rules governing discipline,work and overtime. Over the last year, theATU health care fund has been dwindlingas the MTA has limited its contributions,while health care costs have skyrocketed.

L.A. transit workers have struck seventimes in the last 31 years. The currentshowdown takes place three years afterthe 32-day strike of UTU bus drivers in2000 which beat back a union-bustingassault by the MTA through the flexing ofunion power on the picket lines. Thatstrike came amid a wave of labor struggles in L.A. and was widely popularamong the black and Latino poor whorely on public transport. Alarmed by thedisplay of union militancy, County Federation of Labor chief Miguel Contrerasand other labor misleaders rushed inDemocrat Jesse Jackson to put out thefire and negotiate a "compromise" dealinvolving significant union concessions,including increasing the number of parttime drivers and the number of "tiers"which divide the workforce.At their last mass meeting in January,the ATU mechanics voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike, as did theUTU bus drivers in June. Now, with a60-day "cooling off' period imposedduring the summer coming to an end forthe UTU on September 18 and for theATU on October 12, the question of astrike is posed point blank. While theunion tops do everything possible todemobilize the membership, many workers understand that a strike will be necessary given the intransigence of the

We wrote at the time, " H e ~ e is anobject lesson in how the labor bureaucracy's allegiance to the DemocraticParty chains the unions to the capitalistclass enemy and is counterposed to militant class struggle" ("Jesse Jackson, L.A.Democrats Defuse Militant Strike: L.A.Transit Workers Face Down UnionBusters," WV No. 744, 20 October 2000).First, the union tops postponed the strikefor months, on orders of Democratic gov-

TROTSKY

Fo r the Political Independe nce ofthe Working Class!

The bloody suppression of the revolution-ary Chilean working class 30 years ago byPinochet's military coup underscores thatclass collaboration is the primary obstacleto workers power, politically subordinatingthe interests of the proletariat to those ofthe bourgeoisie. Writing in 1936, at the timeof the Spanish Civil War, Leon Trotskywarned that the People's Front governmentwould strangle the Spanish workers revolu- LENINtion, as i t did, leading to the victory of Franco's reactionary forces in 1939.Incapable of solving a single one of the tasks posed by the revolution, since all thesetasks boil down to one, namely, the crushing of the bourgeoisie, the Popular Front renders the existence of the bourgeois regime impossible and thereby provokes the fascistcoup d'etat. By lulling the workers and peasants with parliamentary illusions, by paralyzing their will to struggle, the' Popular Front creates the favorable conditions for the

victory of fascism. The policy of coalition with the bourgeoisie must be paid for bythe proletariat with years of new torments and sacrifice, if not by decades of fascistterror. ...The conquest of power by the proletariat is possible only on the road of armedinsurrection against the state apparatus of the bourgeoisie. The smashing of this apparatus and its replacement by workers', soldiers', and peasants' councils is the necessarycondition for the fulfillment of the socialist program.

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-Leon Trotsky, "The Popular Front in Civil War" (July 1936), printed inThe Spanish Revolution (1931-39) (Pathfinder Press, 1982)

! . f t ! l l , ! / l ! o f . . 4 . ! ! ~ ! ! ~ I ! . 1 l . IRECTOR OF PARTY PUBLICATIONS: Len Meyers

EDITOR: Alan WildeEDITOR, YOUNG SPARTACUS PAGES: Michael DavissonPRODUCTION MANAGER: Susan FullerCIRCULATION MANAGER: Jeff ThomasEDITORIAL BOARD: Ray Bishop (managing editor), Bruce Andre, Jon Brule, Karen Cole, Paul Cone,George Foster, Liz Gordon, Walter Jennings, Jane Kerrigan, James Robertson, Joseph Seymour,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 Spartacist Publishing 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 9 September.

No. 809 12 September 2003

ernor Gray Davis, to avoid disrupting theDemocratic National Convention heldthat year in L.A. With the presidentialelection looming, the AFL-CIO tops whohad been mobilizing to get out the votefor Al Gore feared an upsurge of laborstruggle in this key state for the Democrats. Finally, Jackson was brought in topreach "reconciliation" with managementand urge an end to the strike.Through their longstanding marriage tothe Democratic Party, the labor bureaucracy demonstrates that it shares the outlook of the capitalist rulers and is committed to the defense of their profit system.The union tops see in the capitalist state anally or neutral arbiter where in fact it isnothing other-with its cops and courtsthan the organized machine of theemployers to suppress the working class.Today, as another strike looms, theunion tops '!Ie pushing the same legalistic, class-collaborationist policies in aneffort to renounce victory before the battle is even engaged. For years, unioncontracts at the MTA expired at the sametime, but in 2000 the ATU leadershipbroke ranks and negotiated a shorter contract, allowing the bosses to divide andweaken the workers. Now, faced with anintransigent MTA management lookingto play hardball, the pro-capitalist UTUand ATU leaderships pleaded with Davisto obtain a court order imposing a 60-day "cooling off' period, justifying thisto the membership as a way of preventing the MTA from using idle schoolbuses in the summer to break a strike.The union bureaucrats were so desperateto give up the strike weapon to the strikebreaking capitalist government that theyin effect asked Davis to prevent theirmembership from walking out. For theunions to be instruments of struggle indefense of the working class, they must

In 2000, when Davis signed a lawdemanded by the union tops that any new"regional transit zones" be covered byexisting contract provisions for four years,Silver immediately bowed to Davis andordered mechanics to start crossing thebus drivers' picket lines! Flouting a30-year history of transit unions honoringeach other's strike lines, Silver declared," If there is a picket line, it shall becrossed." Silver reversed his order lessthan 24 hours later as almost to a man hismembership defied him and refused tocross the pickets! The heroic stand by themechanics and the determination of theother unions forced the MTA to pull backfrom its harshest demands.This time around, in addition to putting the ATU membership'S fate in the

continued on page 10

Trotskyist League/Ligue Trotskyste

TORONTOSaturday, Sept. 20 , 3 p.m.Room 8200, OISE

252 Bloor St. w.(above st. George Station)

VANCOUVERFriday, Oct. 3, 7 p.m.Britannia Community Centre

1661 Napier St.(off Commercial Drive)For more information: (416) 593-4138e-mail: [email protected] For more information: (604) 687-0353e-mail: [email protected]

Web site: www.icl-fi.org 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) 563-044Public Office:Sat. 2-5 p.m.222 S. Morgan(Buzzer 23)

Toronto

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WORKERS VANGUARD


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Thirty years later, the 11 September1973 military coup that overthrew theChilean Unidad Popular (UP-PopularUnity) coalition government of SalvadorAllende remains a lesson in betrayal, written in the blood of the 30,000 workers,peasants and leftists killed in its aftermath by the murderous junta of GeneralAugusto Pinochet. Untold thousands morewere thrown into concentration camps,where many were horribly tortured. Upto 100,000 were forced into exile, wherethey continued to be hounded and assassinated by Pinochet's DINA secret police inleague with the forces of the Argentinejunta and others under the aegis of theCIA's Operation Condor terror campaign.The Allende regime and the Pinochetcoup were defining political events for ageneration of leftists around the world.The UP was a classic "popular front"-acoalition subordinating the Chilean workers to their deadly class enemies througha bloc with a mythical "progressive" section of the capitalist rulers. Historically,the purpose of the popular front hasalways been to head off the threat ofworkers revolution, as in the SpanishCivil War, disarming the working classand buying the capitalists time to beheadthe proletariat. Contrary to the many articles, books and films that idolize Allendeas simply a martyred victim of the CIAand the Chilean generals, Allende and hisfellow reformists led the Chilean workingclass directly into this historic, crushingdefeat.This is not hindsight. The SpartacistLeague, drawing on the experience ofthe Russian Revolution and of Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky's analysis of theSpanish and French Popular Front governments of the 1930s, declared in 1970:"It is the most elementary duty for revolutionary Marxists to irreconcilably oppose the Popular Front in the election andto place absolutely no confidence in itin power. Any 'critical support' to theAllende coalition is class treason, pavingthe way for a bloody defeat for the Chilean working people when domestic reaction, abetted by international imperialism, is ready."- "Chilean Popular Front,"Spartacist No. 19, NovemberDecember 1970Virtually every other political tendencyon the left called in one way or anotherfor political support to the UP.

In the late 1960s, there was animmense upsurge in class struggle inChile: landless peasants were increasingly occupying the vast landed estates

Saturday, Sept. 13, 3 p.m.Boston UniversityGeorge Sherman Union-Rm. 315775 Commonwealth Avenue

Saturday, Sept. 13, 4 p.m.Circle Center, Room 71a750 S. Halsted Street, UIC12 SEPTEMBER 2003

while the number of workers strikesparticularly by the powerful copper miners, steel workers and railway employees-skyrocketed. The historic parties ofthe Chilean working class, the Communist Party and Allende's Socialist Party,united with the bourgeois Radicals and

Etm1l'kI Z,t'lamt.a ,,_1973--SlJIIIsh the Relldiolltlf'/ Junta-

For Worlcers Revolution in Chile!

some minor capitalist parties to form theUP, which won a plurality in the 1970elections with its program of a nationalist and parliamentary "Chilean road tosocialism." This alarmed the Chilean capitalists and their U.S. imperialist patrons,who demanded and received from Allendea "Statute of Constitutional Guarantees"vowing not to touch the military officercorps and to outlaw workers militias. Inhis "First Message to Congress," Allendeproclaimed:"The Chilean Armed Forces and theCarabineros, faithful to their duty and totheir tradition of non-intervention in thepolitical process, will support a socialorganization which corresponds to thewill of the people."Under the UP government, societyincreasingly polarized between the working class and the capitalists. Both the "fa rleft" MIR (Movimiento de Izquierda Rev-

olucionaria-Movement of the Revolutionary Left) and fascist groups likePatria y Libertad mushroomed. The country was in a prerevolutionary situation:in the industrial centers embryonic expressions of dual power-i.e., potentialorgans of workers rule-sprung up, like

1976 NYC protest on third anniversaryof Pinochet coup. Spartacists warnedthat popular front would pave way forbloody defeat, called to mobilizeproletariat to smash military junta.

the cordones industriales (workers committees). Vainly trying to appease the capitalists, the UP government suppressedpeasant land seizures, sent riot cops againststrikes and prevented the workers fromarming themselves. But the UP's inabilityto resolve the deepening social crisis onlyfurther infuriated the bourgeoisie. TheCIA launched a massive "destabilization"campaign as then U.S. president RichardNixon vowed to. "make the [Chilean]economy scream."Raising the alarm with increasingurgency, we declared in 1972: "Asthe forces of repression gear themselvesfor the confrontation and the pettybourgeoisie slides into the camp of reaction, the working class stands naked,without the organs of dual power, withoutarms, without a vanguard" ("Pop FrontImperils Chilean Workers," WV No. 14,

Spartacist/SYC Forums

For more information: (617) 666-9453e-mail: [email protected]

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

Saturday, Sept. 13, 3 p.m.Centro del Pueblo, 474 Valencia St.San Francisco (16th/Mission BART)

Thursday, Sept. 25, 7 p.m.322 West 48 St., 1st Floor(Take E or C train to 50th 8t. stop,

Between 8th and 9th Avenues)

December 1972). As the putschists actively plotted to overthrow him, Allendeappointed General Pinochet, one of theforemost "constitutionalist" officers, ashead of the army and brought him into thegovernment. Only weeks later, Pinochetled the reactionary coup, annihilating theorganized workers movement.We fought urgently to break the Chilean workers from this death trap. Inan SL/U.S. leaflet issued on 4 September 1973, a week before the coup, wedeclared:

"The government of the Unidad Popularis not a workers government. It is a coalition of workers and capitalist parties. Thepresence of the 'radical' bourgeoisie andthe 'democratic' generals is a guaranteethat the Allende government will notstep beyond the bounds of capitalism ...Rather than pressuring Allende ..we mustinstead call on the workers to breaksharply with the bourgeois popular frontand the government parties, to fight fora workers and peasants government basedon a revolutionary program of expropriation of the agrarian and industrialbourgeoisie."In a special Workers Vanguard supplement (13 September 1973) published twodays after the coup, we declared: "I t is theduty of all U.S. working-class organizations, both trade unions and parties, tolaunch an immediate, united-front protestagainst the counterrevolutionary coup.Smash the reactionary junta-For workers revolution in Chile!" The SL initiatedprotests and fought for and participated ininternational labor solidarity actions indefense of the Chilean proletariat.The centrist organizations.of the "far

left"-including the pro-Castro, guerrillaist MIR and many (like Ernest Mandel'sUnited Secretariat) who claimed the heritage of Leon Trotsky'S Fourth International-gave the UP treachery a left coverwith their "critical" political support toit. They share responsibility for delivering the workers to Pinochet's butchers.Castro himself, representing the Stalinist bureaucracy of the Cuban deformedworkers state, embraced Allende's UPgovernment and even invited "constitutionalist" army officers, including Pinochet, to visit Cuba-betraying not onlythe Chilean workers but the Cuban Revolution, which was desperately in need ofinternational extension to break out of itsisolation.

In Chile, the "peaceful road to socialism" was put to a decisive test. Thecatastrophe brutally demonstrated-in thecontinued on page 11

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Twell,,?, "..... :.:: . : . , ... ... ....... : .......... " . : . ; .DsSRWhy We Fought to Defend. the S"o"viet UnionWe print below an edited and expandedversion of a presentation by comrade Vic-tor Gibbons at a public Spartacist educational in New York City on April 27. Inparticular we have added a more extensive account of the intervention of theInternational Communist League in theUSSR in the early I990s, which was taken

PART ONEfrom a later presentation by comradeGibbons in Lomjon on July 12. As a member of the ICL's Moscow Station at thetime, the speaker was centrally involvedin the struggle to carry out the Trotskyistprogram in the Soviet Union at that crucial moment in world history.

Millions around the world burn withrage at the sight of Iraq reduced to rubble and humiliated by old-style colonial pillage. The images of U.S. troopstrampling with their jackboots over acountry which American imperialismfirst starved, then bombed and bledwhite in a display of global dominanceby the "world's only superpower" aretruly obscene. This just outrage must beraised to a political understanding thatthe enslavement of Iraq is yet anotherprice that the international working classand the oppressed peoples of the ThirdWorld are paying for the destruction ofthe Soviet Union through capitalist counterrevolution in 1991-92. Today's imperialist global rampage was impossiblewhen the USSR still existed.It is especially important to understand this because among the main organizers of the current antiwar protests arereformist "socialists" who today proclaimthemselves antiwar and "anti-imperialist"but who yesterday joined with the American and West European imperialists incheering the demise of the USSR. WeTrotskyists of the International Communist League fought to the end in defenseof the Soviet workers state and the c()llectivized economy ushered in by the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. This defensewas despite and against the Stalinist misrule that had undermined the foundationsof the workers state for six decades andhad opened the door to counterrevolution.Uniquely, the ICL intervened in theSoviet Union beginning in the late 1980sseeking to mobilize the working classagainst the powerful forces, backed byworld (centrally American) imperialism,driving toward capitalist restoration. Thiswas part of our struggle for new OctoberRevolutions around the world.

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Spartacist pamphletHow the Soviet WorkersState Was StrangledAlso includes:Stalin Drowned theCommunist Party of Leninand Trotsky in Blood$2 (64 pages)Order from/pay to:Spartacist Publishing. Co.Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116

Above: International CommunistLeague (Fourth Internationalist)banner raised in Moscow at 1991demonstration on anniversary ofOctober Revolution. Right: HistoricICL leaflet was mass-distributedin USSR following August 1991Yeltsin coup, calling to defendgains of October.

Just as we Trotskyists had alwayswarned would happen, the demise ofthe USSR decisively altered the politicallandscape on this planet in many ways.Despite the Stalinist bureaucratic degeneration, the Soviet Union representedthe industrial and military powerhouseprotecting every other country that hadoverthrown capitalist rule, from China toVietnam to Cu1;1a. It was only fear of possible Soviet retaliation that held American imperialism back from using nuclearweapons against North Korea and Chinain the Korean War of the early 1950s andagainst North Vietnam in the 1960s.While the U.S. rulers are now grabbingmore of the oil wealth of the Near East,their main and ultimate target is the People's Republic of China, by far the largest and strongest of those remainingstates where capitalism has been overthrown. China is confronting mountingAmerican military pressure, from theexpansion of U.S. bases in the Philippinesto new U.S. bases across Central Asia.China (and North Korea) are among those

~ S P A R T A C J S T ~ ' T . - I ' \ / : m ! j f j

How theSoviet Workers StateWas Strangled

- - - -For Socialist Revolution to ISweep Away Yeltsin Counterrevolution!--- -- - -------AVg


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than Pakistan's, has seen its greatestreversal in a 1,000-year expansion fromthe country's origins in medieval KievanRus.The death rate is not centered on thevery young or old, as is fypical of impoverished societies, but rather on men intheir prime. In 2002, the State StatisticalCommittee predicted as its "most probable forecast" that the population of theRussian Federation would fall from 144million to 10 1 million by 2050. In a worstcase scenario, the population would fallto 77 million, a reduction of almost50 percent! This holocaust is loomingnot over a marginal hinterland, but thenuclear-armed colossus of Eurasia.What is behind this catastrophe? Theeconomic collapse of post-Soviet Russiawas unprecedented for a modem society:gross domestic product fell by over 80percent from 1991 to 1997; according toofficial (understated) statistics, capitalinvestment dropped over 90 percent. Bythe middle of the decade, 40 percent ofthe population of the Russian Federationwas living below the official poverty lineand a further 36 percent only a littleabove it. Millions were literally starving.This massive economic and socialimmiseration has combined with thedestruction of the public health system.Tuberculosis (TB), which had been effectively eradicflted in the Soviet Union, hasreturned as a scourge of Russia's poor.Recent estimates put the number of Russians with TB at 88 per 100,000, compared to a rate of 4 to 10 per 100,000 inWest Europe and America. The number ofthose infected with HIV AIDS is increasing faster in Russia and Ukraine than anywhere else in the world.Capitalism has wiped out a centuryof social progress, and what a century!What is being destroyed in Russia todayis everything that Soviet workers andrural toilers had built, everything thattheir parents and grandparents beforethem had constructed with such sacrifice and heroism in the face of theCivil War and imperialist interventionsof 1918-21, the murderous excesses ofagricultural collectivization and forcedmarch industrialization, the invasion byNazi Germany in the Second WorldWar, the horrors of Stalin's terror whichreached into every family. All of this hadbeen endured in the bitter resolve thatit would someday, somehow lead to a better, socialist society. Now the proletariat'svery will to live is being tom away, aseverything they had built over the generations is smashed to pieces and looted asthe officially sanctioned and celebratedprivate property of vulgar capitalist gangsters-who in many cases are the verysame Communist Party leaders and apparatchiks who had so long been falselyidentified with "socialism."Red October 1917

To understand the social catastrophethat has befallen post-Soviet Russia andto save the banner of socialism, it is necessary to understand the origins of the

Soviet Union in the October 1917 Revolution, led by the Bolshevik Party underLenin a nd Trotsky, and its subsequentbureaucratic degeneration under J. V. Stalin and his heirs.The October Revolution arose out ofthe imperialist slaughter of the FirstWorld War. It was the signal act of the20th century, which Lenin described asthe epoch of imperialist decay and socialist revolution. It took the question ofsocialist revolution out of the realm oftheory and made it real in the former Russian tsarist empire.The October Revolution created a workers state based on workers councils (soviets) and roused the toilers to forge a RedArmy that triumphed in a civil waragainst the counterrevolutionary Whiteforces and the expeditionary forces ofevery major imperialist power. The Sovietgovernment of Lenin and Trotsky expropriated both the Russian capitalist andWestern imperialist holdings and repudiated outright Russia's massive debt to foreign bankers. It proclaimed the right ofworking people to jobs, health, housingand education, and took the first steps tobuilding a socialist society.The revolutionary government gaveland to the peasants and self-determinationto the many oppressed nations (themselves largely made up of peasants) ofthe former tsarist empire. It tore downthe whole edifice of Russian patriarchalmedievalism upon which the tsarist autocracy had rested. The early Soviet government not only separated church and state,it poured funds into secular education andscience, promoting a thoroughly materialist worldview. It eliminated all laws discriminating against national and ethnicminorities and women. Soviet Russiaeliminated all discriminatory laws, including against homosexuals. Soviet Russia wasthe first country of significance to give thevote to women, causing the Western capitalist "democracies" (e.g., the United Statesand Britain) to scramble to catch up.The Bolshevik Revolution was seenfrom the beginning as only the start ofwhat was to be a European-wide workersrevolution. On the eve of the Octoberuprising in Petro grad, the workers of thegiant Putilov munitions factory and thepro-Bolshevik soldiers of the Pavlov skyRegiment exchanged banners of solidarity. The Putilov banner read: "Long Livethe Russian Revolution as the Prologueto the Social Revolution in Europe!"Internationally, the Bolshevik victoryinspired revolutionary uprisings throughout Europe, most notably in Germany,Italy, Finland and Hungary. Its thunderous message of national and social emancipation also inspired the workers andrural toilers of the colonial world. TheBolsheviks- launched the CommunistInternational (Comintern), which by 1921had attracted six million workers toits banner. And during its first fourcongresses, the Comintern educated andtrained workers around the world inthe program and strategy of revolutionary struggle. This was a massive

1989. 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999Capitalist death agony hits Russian proletariat with pauperism andplagues. Right: Chechen capital of Grozny shelled to rubble in 1995 asRussian Army reimposes capitalist prison house of peoples.12 SEPTEMBER 2003

AP28 August 1940 memorial meeting for Leon Trotsky in New York reaffirms theFourth International's mission to lead cause of October Revolution to worldvictory factor in the world political arena.

To give just one example: in the relatively politically backward USA, it wasthe leaders of the Russian Revolutionwho made the important connectionbetween the cause of black liberation andworkers revolution. Black poet ClaudeMcKay tells the story of his 1922 visit toSoviet Russia, where he was feted byfactory workers and Red Army soldiers:"At every meeting I was received withboisterous acclaim, mobbed with friendlydemonstration. The women workers ofthe great bank in Moscow insisted onhearing about the working conditions ofthe colored women of America ... WhenI got through, the Russian women passeda resolution sending greetings to the colored women workers of America, exhorting them to organize their forces andsend a woman representative to Russia."McKay saw that this revolutionaryspirit was not just a popular mood butalso expressed the principles of the earlySoviet government and Comintern:"When the Russian workers overturnedtheir infamous government in 1917, oneof the first acts of the new Premier, Lenin,was a proclamation greeting all the oppressed peoples throughout the world,exhorting them to organize and uniteagainst the common international oppressor-Private Capitalism. Later on inMoscow, Lenin himself grappled with thequestion of the American, Negroes andspoke on the subject before the SecondCongress of the Third International. Heconsulted with John Reed, the Americanjournalist, and dwelt on the urgent necessity of propaganda and organizationalwork among the Negroes of the South.The subject was not allowed to drop."

In short, a workers state, stretching acrossEurasia, had emerged victorious fromwar and civil war and had launched. amovement of the world's exploited and

oppressed to expropriate the entire bourgeoisie and smash their imperialist order.The Stalinist PoliticalCounterrevolution and theTrotskyist Left Opposition

The bourgeoisie and its lackeys havedone everything in their power to poison,or wipe out entirely, any memory of whatthe Bolshevik Revolution and the Sovietworkers state were really about. Theycynically push the lie of the "death ofcommunism," but their real oath againstthe October Revolution is "Never again!"The biggest lie, the most effective slander, the one that weighs most heavily onthe minds of workers and youth lookingfor an effective way to fight capitalism, isshared by open imperialist ideologues,social democrats, Stalinists and anarchists alike. They all claim that "Leninism led to Stalinism." The best answer tothis is a Marxist materialist analysis ofthe qualitative changes in the USSR thatmade it possible for the Stalinist bureaucracy to usurp political control from therevolutionary core of the party and begina process of anti-Leninist degeneration.This analysis also shows that againstthe Stalinist reaction, the banner ofLeninism was carried forward by Trotsky's International Left Opposition, continuing with the Fourth Internationalfounded in 1938 and, today, our ownInternational Communist League.

As powerful as the Bolshevik Revolution's international impact was, especiallyin Europe, the insurgent workers failed totake power elsewhere due to a lack of sufficiently capable revolutionary partiescontinued on page 8

Anthony Suau

5


6/12

Young SparlaeusBlack L.A. Anarchist Imp'risoned for Thought 'Crimes'.Free Sherman Austin Nowl

We reprint below a 28 August leafletbJl the Los Angeles Spartacist League andSpartacus Youth Club. Sherman Austinwas incarcerated on September 3.In recent years in Southern California,cops have savageiy attacked anarchistsat May Day, antiwar and other demonstrations, framing up the most outspokenyouth on concocted criminal charges.The state crackdown on these young,especially black and Latino, anarchistsas a "political fringe" to be harshly dealtwith is meant to chill dissent by all leftwing activists. It intersects the "war onterror" pursued by the Bus h government,with the Democrats in tow, to escalateattacks on working people and minoritiesas well as to carry out imperialist warsabroad. We Marxists of the SL/SYC say:Down with government persecution ofleftist youth!In the latest such attack, Sherman Austin, a black anarchist youth and webmaster of Raisethefist.com, was outrageously railroaded by the capitalist courts. OnAugust 4, he was sentenced to 12 monthsin federal prison and three years of probation and fined $2,000 by District CourtJudge Stephen V. Wilson on the trumpedup felony charge of "distributing explosives information with the intent that itbe used in furtherance of a violent federalcrime," based on a law originally sponsored by California Democratic SenatorDianne Feinstein. Under his probationary"supervised release," his computer activity, telephone conversations and interactions with political activists will be underthe thumb of federal probation officials.Even if he obtains official permission, useof a computer is grounds for the state tostorm his residence unannounced andseize the equipment.After enduring over two years ofsystematic state harassment, Austin wasstrong-armed into pleading guilty toa crime he did not commit under threatof additional "terrorist enhancement"charges, which cou1d bring up to 20 yearsin prison, if he went to trial. The evidence.provided was a link on his anarchist Website to another site offering a "reclaimguide" with instructions on how to makesimple, small incendiary devices. More

6

NEW YORK CITYAlternate Tuesdays, 7 p.m.September 16: Socialism orBarbarism: Marxism, War and theFight for Workers Revolution

Columbia University, Location TBAInformation and readings: (212) 267-1025or e-mail: [email protected] ANGELESMeet the Marxists

Tuesday, September 16, 12 noonStudent Lounge, CC BuildingPasadena City College

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

detailed bomb-making information canbe found on any number of Web sites,from Amazon.com to neo-Nazi sites, inany bookstore or in a public library.Sherman said in an interview on Pacifica Radio (6 August) after the sentencing, "What they have to prove is that youhave intent. It's almost like thought crimebecause of the way they prove it. .. youhave 'intent' if you disagree with the current political system in this country rightnow." There is simply no way to provethat Austin "intended" for the informationto be used by anyone for any purpose.Even the fictional cops of the sci-fi movieMinority Report would have a hard timetrying to pull this one off!The political intent of the court was tomake an example of Austin. Judge Wilsoncriticized the prosecutor as being toolenient for agreeing to a plea bargain offour months in jail and four months in ahalfway house, insisting that the prosecutor review the case with FBI directorRobert S. Mueller and higher-ups in theJustice Department! At one point, thejudge exclaimed: "This should be lookedat with more of a deterrence outcometo future revolutionaries wanting to act ina similar manner." J. Edgar Hoover, notorious former director of the FBI-theCOINTELPRO state spying agencythundered in the 1960s that "the Negroyouth and moderate[s] must be made tounderstand that if they succumb to revolutionary teachings, they will be deadrevolutionaries." The FBI's COINTELPRO vendetta meant dozens of black militants like the Black Panthers were gunneddown. Austin must report for incarceration in the first week of September. Dropthe charges against him now!

In the Pacifica interview after the sentencing, Austin's mother, Jennifer Martin,stated that her son was railroaded, commentingbitterly that "in our justicesystem .. here is only justice for therich." Austin was set up o n bogus chargesbecause he is a left-wing activist whohas dared to stand up to1he capitalists andtheir government and because his defiantideas were read by thousands throughhis Web site. Now only 20 years old,Sherman Austin has been an active sup-

TORONTOAlternate Saturdays, 3 p.m.

September 20: Down With ColonialOccupation of Iraq! Canadian TroopsOut of Afghanistan!Ontario Institute for Stuc;liesin Education, Room 8200252 Bloor8t . West (above S1. G e o ~ g e Station)

Information and readings: (416) 593-4138or e-mail: [email protected]

Alternate Tuesdays, 6 p.m.September 23: Marxi sm: AGuide To Action

BU College of Arts and Sciences,Room B25A725 Commonwealth Avenue(BU East/Central on Green Line B)Information and readings: (617) 666-9453. or e-mail: [email protected]

porter of the struggles of workers and theoppressed since a teenager, joining LaborDay celebrations, protests against theimperialist slaughter in Iraq and ralliesin support of the longshoremen's union(ILWU) during last y ear's contract battleand union-busting lockout.The government's targeting of Austinbegan on May Day 2001 when he and95 other youthful demonstrators werearrested ,at gunpoint during a cop riotagainst an anarchist "Carnival AgainstCapitalism" march in Long Beach, California. This marked the beginning of awell-organized effort by local police andcounty sheriffs, with the likely involvt


7/12

UMass C o ~ , National Guard Attack Antiwar Professor

Drop the Charges AgainstTony Van DerMeetlBOSTON-Africana Studies professorTony Van Der Meer was race-baited byNational Guard military recruiters, thentackled, thrown to the ground and arrested by cops at UMass-Boston on April3, as he came to the defense of a studentbeing harassed by the Guardsmen forhanding out flyers for a commemorationhonoring Martin Luther King Jr. Outrageously, Van Der Meer, a well-knownlocal activist, now faces up to five yearsin prison on totally bogus charges ofresisting arrest and assault on a policeofficer. This attack by the Guardsmen andcops on a black professor and a studenton their own campus happened at theheight of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Theassault starkly illuminates the deadly connection between American capitalism'simperialist slaughter abroad and racistterror at home.UMass student Tony Naro, wearing his"Military Recruitment Off My Campus"t-shirt, was handing out the flyers near aNational Guard table in the McCormickHail lobby when a military recruitercharged up to him with the racist rant (ina reference to King's assassination): "Youshould be shot in the head too." WhenProfessor Van Der Meer, passing by,came over to defend Naro, the Guardsman poked him, saying he should also getshot in the head. Then the UMass copsjumped in, throwing Van Der Meer to theground so hard his jacke t was ripped anda lens popped out of his glasses. Van DerMeer was chained to a wall at the campus

Yale Strike ...(continued from page 12)increases for workers who after 20 yearsof employment receive $621 a month as apension! In contrast , Yale presideQt Richard Levin is guaranteed a pension of asmuch as $42,000 a' month when heretires, while currently he rakes in overhalf a million dollars a year.In addition to starvation wages andpensions for union members, Yale continues to insist on its right to subcontractunion jobs to non-union contractors. Asone Local 34 member noted: "It's moreof like a plantation mentality that theyhave. It's like we're just here to do thework, and we should be thankful for thecrumbs that fall from the table" (NewHaven Register, 27 August). Indeed, theYale bosses stand not too far removedfrom the plantation mentality of the slaveholders who helped found the universityand after whom most of its residentialcolleges are named.Members of the New York SpartacusYouth Club have gone to New Haven tojoin the picket lines in support of thestrike. Reflecting the animosity of mostNew Haven residents toward the Yalebosses is a high level of community support for the strike-SYCers report that achorus of supportive car horns wouldgreet workers carrying "On Strike" placards everywhere they went. Union members told us many stories about howblack people are the last hired and thefirst fired by Yale, and are consigned tothe worst shifts. They also told us of the12 SEPTEMBER 2003

police headquarters, photographed, fingerprinted, then taken to the Dorchestercourthouse, where he was put in legshackles and locked up until his arraignment. "The way I was treated, I felt like arunaway slave," Van Der Meer said. "As ateacher of black history, how could I not?"The brutality unleashed against TonyVan Der Meer for standing up to thegovernment's military thugs and cops oncampus is just one small example of themassive violence used by the capitalist chiss to ram through its imperialist agenda. The plan: to send poor andworking-class youth, blacks and Latinosto die in wars of imperialist aggression,while tightening the screw.s on the working class and chilling dissent at home.Professor Van Der Meer received manyharassing telephone messages after hisarrest, including one proclaiming supportfor "Bush and the Boys," and an audioclip from the movie Full Metal Jacketwith a scene of a soldier saying his gunhad no regard for "N-----s, S---s andJews." That this government's "war onterror" is a war {)n blacks is reaffirmeddaily, from the police occupation of theblack neighborhood of Benton Harbor,Michigan, to the recent wave of cop killings of black people, many in their ownhomes. The power of the integrated working class must be mobilized in the fightagainst racist police terror.As part of its drive for world dominance, the U.S. capitalist state is making, a renewed push to get its military tentacles

many union-busting strategies employedby Yale, including paying non-union newhires at the hospital more than unionemployees with greater seniority. Unionbusting threats and harassment culminated last fall in the arrest by hospitalpolice of eight union members for leafletting outside a building shared by theYale-New Haven Hospital and Yale, School of Medicine (the charges werelater dropped). Working hand in glovewith the company town bosses they arehired to serve, the ~ e w Haven cops havearrested more than 100 protesting strikesupporters since the current strike began.We demand: Drop the charges against allYale strikers and strike supporters!The Spartacus Youth Club calls on allthose students who are repulsed by Yale'sarrogant and racist contempt for theworking people they routinely exploit tomobilize in support of the unions. Thathundreds of classes have been moved offcampus by sympathetic professors andTAs is a well-intentioned gestur,e. However, it still continues the busine&s of theuniversity with a minimum of disruption.What is needed is united action by students, teachers and staff to build masspickets that nobody crosses. The wholeuniversity should be shut down! Studentscan concretely forge an alliance with theworkers through a full-scale boycott ofclasses and joining the pickets. The sloganraised by SYCers, "Picket lines meandon't cross!", has been met with wideapproval from the strikers. Victory to thestrike!The SYC seeks to link the struggles ofstudents with the power. of the labor

firmly gripped around college campuses.Of course, the nation 's elite universities,including many in Boston, have alwaysbeen bases for research and developmentin the service of American imperialism'smilitary machine. The Spartacist Leagueand its youth affiliates, the SpartacusYouth Clubs, call for military recruitersoff c a m p u ~ as part of our fight againstU.S. capitalism. Military recruiters, theNational Guard and ROTC are integralparts of the 'armed fist of the capitaliststate, stretched out on campus to suckyouth into the maw of the imperialist warmachine.The Boston Spartacus Youth Clubjoined protests against this outrageousassault, pointing out in a letter to theUMass-Boston chancellor that was printedin the campus paper, The Mass Media(24 April):. "As the U.S. imperialists rain thousandsof cruise missiles on Iraq and deploy over200,000 troops for colonial occupation,the forces of the state are deployed inBoston to harass antiwar students andprofessors seeking to exercise their democratic rights. The attack on ProfessorVan Der Meer is part of the campaign to

criminalize dissent as the governmentwages war abroad and ravages the working class, blacks and immigrants at home.Increasingly, the only 'right' the government sees fit to grant students and working class youth is the right to enlist ina branch of the military as fodder for U.S.imperialism's wars. We deIl,land: Military recruiters off campus now! Drop thecharges against Tony Van Der Meerl"At a united-front demonstration called

movement as a wpole. That includes thestruggle against the inhet:ent race andclass bias of higher e d u c a t i o ~ ' under capitalism of which Yale is a prime example.A look at the list of some of Yale's moreprominent graduates (including the lastthree U.S. imperial presidents) demonstrates that this is a training ground forthe children of the ruling class and thetacticians and technocrats whose jobs areto perpetuate the racist status quo. TheSYCs fight for free, quality educationfor all, for open admissions and notuition with a living stipend so that allhave access to a decent education. Privateinstitutions such as Yale should be nationalized-that means that Yale's iron gatesshould be thrown open, including tothose who work there and their children!As Marxists, we recognize that theinterests of workers and the oppressed arecounterposed to those of the capitaliststhe entire capitalist system is premised onthe exploitation of workers by the ruling ,class. However, the leaders of the strikingunions have paraded capitalist Democratic Party politicians at their rallies,including two presidential hopefuls,. Joseph Lieberman and Howard Dean, andJesse Jackson, who was arrested at astrike rally.This is part of the AFL-CIO tops'efforts to revive the Democrats for nextyear's presidential elections. Proving thatthey are no less a party of racism andwar than the Republicans, the Democratsbacked the U.S. war of colonial conquestagainst Iraq, and in fact have been themost vociferous advocates of U.S. imperialist intervention in Liberia. The Demo-

Steven Sunshineby the SYC at Boston University on April14 , under the slogans "All U.S. troops outof the Near East now! Down with attackson antiwar protesters!", SYC speakersraised the need to defend Tony Van DerMeer. The SYC and Spartacist Leaguealso participated in a solidarity demonstration of over 60 people outside theDorchester courthouse on July 16. Thenext hearing on his case is set for November 6 at the same location.We urge our readers to join in defenseof Tony Van Der Meer. You can mailcontributions toward his defense to: Professor Van Der Meer's Support Committee, P.O. Box 1014, Boston, MA 02117.Or check [email protected] formore information

crats have also stood foursquare behindthe panoply of anti-immigrant, anti-labor"war on terror" laws at home. By pushing the Democratic "friends of lapor,"the union misleaders are pushing the liethat there is a unity of interests betweenthe working class and the racist imperialist rulers. As in any labor struggle, whatis posed is, the need to break the unio ns'ties to the Democrats, the "soft cops" ofAmerican capitalism.Workers need to forge a party thatfights for their interests-a party committed to sweeping away the capitalistsystem that is predicated on unemployment, poverty, racial oppression and war.The SYC seeks to win youth to the perspective of building such a party, whichwill tum defensive struggles into anoffensive for socialist revolution andworkers power. It is as part of that struggle that we call on pro-working-classstudent youth to join us in supporting theYale strikers. Build picket lines-don'tcross them! Boycott classes! Shut downYale! Victory to the Yale strikers!.

Moving?To receive Workers Vanguardwithout interruption please let usknow at least three weeks beforeyou move. Send your new andold address to:

Spartacist Publishing Co.Box 1377 GPONew York, NY 101167


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Soviet Union (continued from page 5)similar to the Bolshevik Party in Russia.This meant that by the end of 1923 SovietRussia for the first time had come face toface with an indefinite but prolongedperiod of isolation. Although the Bolshevik Red Army had successfully repulsedall of the imperialist invasions and wonthe Civil War, Soviet Russia emergedfrom this exhausted and bled white.Industry was in ruins and the vibrantproletariat that had accomplished the1917 Revolution had practically ceasedto exist as a class. Soviet Russia hadcounted on the material resources of.aEuropean workers revolution to help itquickly rebuild its infrastructure andindustries, which had been devastated byseven years of interimperialist war andthen civil war. And this was all the moreurgent as Russia was shackled with atechnically and socially backward agricultural base. And now the postwarfamine in the countryside had reachedthe point of cannibalism.Not only had the revolution's socialbase arid the world context changed, sohad its leadership. The most consciousand experienced layers of revolutionaryworkers, and many of the Bolshevik cadreof 1917, had died on the front lines of theCivil War. By the time of Lenin's death in1924, only about 2 percent of the Communist Party had pre-revolutionary experience, extensive Marxist schooling or afamiliarity with what the European workers movement was really like. Many ofthe veteran Bolshevik militants who survived the Civil War were co-opted intothe state and ruling Communist Partyapparatus (and necessarily so). But thisdid tend to tear them away from whatremained of the working class.Under these conditions, a new conservative and bureaucratized layer in theparty and state apparatus came to the fore,intent on preserving its relatively privileged status amid extreme poverty, scarcity and imperialist hostility. The defeatof the emerging Left Opposition by theseforces at the rigged 13th Party Conference in January 1924 marked the qualitative point at which the bureaucratic casteseized political power-from then on, thepeople who ruled the USSR, the way theUSSR was ruled and the purposes forwhich it was ruled all changed. This wasa political counterrevolution rather than asocial one, because the nascent bureaucracy hijacked the governmental apparatusbut did not overturn the socialized property forms created by October. But thestruggle did not end there. It took a seriesof bloody purges through the 1930s forthe Stalin clique to consolidate its rule.Throughout, Trotsky's Left Oppositioncontinued the fight for authentic Bolshevism and in defense of October.In place of the October Revolution'sbanner of world socialist revolution,Stalin in the autumn of 1924 put forward the false dogma of impossible economic autarky and isolationism known as"socialism in one country." As the Kremlin bureaucracy gradually became moreconscious of its position, this "theory"

On eve of 1917 OctoberRevolution: Putilov >factory workers'banner (right) reads,"Long Live the RussianRevolution as thePrologue to SocialRevolution in Europe!"Workers rally inPetrograd train stationto form Red Guards.

became the ideological justification fortransforming the foreign Communist parties into bargaining chips in an illusorysearch for "peaceful coexistence" withimperialism. Over the coming decades,it meant the strangulation of one afteranother opportunity for socialist revolution in the capitalist countries.From the mid 1920s until he was assassinated by a Stalinist agent in 1940, LeonTrotsky----co-Ieader with Lenin of the October Revolution-sought to rally communist militants throughout the world on thebasis of the authentic principles and program of Bolshevism (i.e., revolutionaryMarxism). In 1933, when the Stalinists'failure to prevent Hitler's rise to power inGermany did not even precipitate anyfundamental struggle within the Comintern to change course, Trotsky called fornew parties and a new, Fourth International. The 1938 Transitional Program

of the Trotskyist Fourth Internationaldefined the Soviet Union under Stalin asa bureaucratically degenerated workersstate and laid out the two basic historicalalternatives confronting it:"The USSR thus embodies terrific contradictions. But it still remains a degener-ated workers' state. Such is the socialdiagnosis. The political prognosis has analternative character: either the bureaucracy, becoming ever more the organ ofthe world bourgeoisie in the workers'state, will overthrow the new forms ofproperty and plunge the country backto capitalism; or the working class willcrush the bureaucracy and open the wayto socialism."

Just Out! Marxist Studies No. 9

8

This volume of Marxist Studies, a series of bulletins for the educationof Marxist cadres, contains the transcripts of four classes given in1998-99 throughout the International Communist League dealing withthe first four (1919-1922) Congresses of the Communist International.lAlso included are the list of related readings and a general chronology(1912-1924) of relevant events.

Under the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky's Bolsheviks, the firstfour Com ntern Congresses addressed the tasks faCing the newlyformed Communist parties and codified the lessons of the October 1917Revolution. The decisions of the Congresses provide precious materialfor those seeking to carry forward the international working-classperspectives of Marxism and fight for new October Revolutions.$4 (78 pages)Make checks payable/mail to:Spartacist Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116

Trotsky posed a program to resolvethis contradiction in the positive throughthe program and methods of Bolshevikinternationalism. As he put it in the lastgreat political struggle of his life, the1939-40 fight against an anti-Sovietopposition led by Max Shachtman andJames Burnham in the American Socialist Workers Party:"We must formulate our slogans in sucha way that the workers see clearly justwhat we are defending in the USSR(state property and planned economy),and against whom we are conducting aruthless struggle (the parasitic bureaucracy and its Comintern). We must notlose sight for a single moment of the factthat the question of overthrowing theSoviet bureaucracy is for us subordinateto the question of preserving state property in the means of production in theUSSR; that the question of preserving state property in the means of production in the USSR is s.ubordinate forus to the question of the world proletar-ian revolution." .'- "The USSR in War"(September 1939), In Defenseof Marxism (Pathfinder, 1973)Contradictions ofSoviet liconomic Growth

Even though strapped by imperialistencirclement and bureaucratic parasitismand mismanagement, the USSR provedthe superior capacities of a collectivizedplanned economy to unleash productiveforces. In The Revolution Betrayed, written in 1936 when the capitalist worldwas mired in an economic depression,

MandstStudies or cadre education no.9

The First Four Congresses ofthe Communist -InternationalA lass s ~ l i e s gfvenf!.>t tQJIlrades of ....thelntematlonal Communistleal:lue{Fi)

Trotsky pointed out that over the previous six years the Soviet Union hadincreased its industrial production bythree and a half times. Over the previousten years (1925 to 1935), heavy industryin the USSR had increased its productionmore than tenfold:"Socialism has demonstrated its right tovictory, not on the pages of Das Kapital,but in an industrial arena comprising asixth part oLthe earth's surface-not inthe language of dialectics, but in the language of steel, cement and electricity.Even if the Soviet Union, as a result ofinternal difficulties, external blows andthe mistakes of its leadership, were tocollapse-which we firmly hope will nothappen-there would remain as an earnest of the future this indestructible fact,that thanks solely to a proletarian revolution a backward country has achieved inless than ten years successes unexampledin history."

But in contrast to the Stalinist lie thatsocialism-aclassless, egalitarian societybased on material abundance-could bebuilt in a single country, Trotsky warnedthat:"The dynamic coefficients of Sovietindustry are unexampled. But they arestill far from decisive. The Soviet Unionis lifting itself from a terribly low level,while the capitalist countries are slippingdown from a very high one. The correlation of forces at the present moment isdetermined not by the rate of growth, butby contrasting the entire power of thetwo camps as expressed in material accumulations, technique, culture and, aboveall, the productivity of human labor.When we approach the matter from thisstatistical point of view, the situationchanges at once, and to the extreme disadvantage of the Soviet Union."The question formulated by LeninWho shall prevail?-is a question of thecorrelation of forces between the SovietUnion and the world revolutionary proletariat on the one hand, and on the otherinternational capital and the hostile forceswithin the Union. The economic successes of the Soviet Union make it possible for her to fortify herself, advance,arm herself, and, when necessary, retreatand wait-in a word, hold out. But in itsessence the question, Who shall prevailnot only as a military, but still more as aneconomic question --confro nts the Soviet

Union on a world scale."The same Bolshevik internationalismthat guided the October Revolution determined the Left Opposition's economicperspectives for the USSR: the international productive forces had to be tom outof the hands of the imperialists; the profitsystem and the bourgeois nation-state hadto be scrapped by an international socialist revolution.Trotsky also explained that the Stalinist bureaucracy was capable of extensivebut not intensive economic growth. Whatdoes that mean? I t means that the Kremlin oligarchy could and did expand theSoviet economy by crudely transplantingadvanced capitalist methods and evenentire factories from abroad, but it wasincapable of constantly raising the overall level of technology and labor productivity. As Trotsky put it in The RevolutionBetrayed: "Under a nationalized economy, quality demands a democracy ofproducers and consumers, freedom ofcriticism and initiative----conditions incompatible with a totalitarian regime of fear,lies and flattery."I can tell you a firsthand story abouthow the Stalinist bureaucracy blockedhigh-tech advancement. In 1991, I wentto the editorial offices of Pravda, themain CPSU newspaper, in Moscow aspart of my job and got a tour of the printing plant. To my amazement, I saw typesetting was still done in "hot type," thatis, a technology superseded decades ago inthe West. The bureaucrats preferred thislumbering, laborious method because itwas so much easier to politically monitor, and control than computerized printingprocesses. After the tour, I was takenupstairs to Pravda's "emergency room"housing two' parallel state of the artMacintosh-Linotronic systems allowing aspecial crew to supplant the entire operation below in the event of strikes andother disruptions. That was the heart ofit: only a specially vetted and monitoredcrew could be trusted with powerfulinformation technology. ,Nonetheless, the USSR was able tosustain a bounding, extensive economic

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growth well into the 1960s. As long asadditional layers of workers were drawnfrom Russia's vast countryside into thecities, it also meant that overall laborproductivity in the Soviet Union continued to rise as well. However, the limitsand contradictions of Soviet economicgrowth came to the fore in the last partof the lengthy regime of Leonid Brezhnev, who occupied the Kremlin from themid 1960s until the early 1980s.During the first half of this period,American imperialism was. bogged downin the long, losing war in Vietnam. Oneconsequence was that the USSR was ableto achieve approximate nuclear militaryparity ~ i t h the U.S. The Soviet economyalso got a big boost in the early 1970sfrom the multiple increases in the worldmarket price of oil. H ~ w e v e r , in the late1970s the new Democratic administrationof U.S. president Jimmy Carter launcheda renewed Cold War offensive againstthe Soviet bloc in the name of "humanrights," combining increased military,economic and p olitical pressure.The Brezhnev regime responded bycontinuing to invest heavily in defense,

spending by offering "partnership" toimperialism. Hostile from the outset toworkers democracy and the fight forinternational extension of the revolutionas the road to socialist development,Stalin's heirs now repudiated the ideology of "socialism in one country" in thenegative, in favor of increasingly openexpressions of belief in the economicsuperiority of Western-type capitalism.Underlying this ideological attitude wasthe appetite of these privileged socialstrata, especially the younger layer ofintellectuals and bureaucratic functionaries, to further enrich themselves at theexpense of the working class.The accelerating rightward slide ofthe Soviet bureaucracy and affiliatedintelligentsia was represented by thenew regime of the younger CPSU leaderMikhail Gorbachev, who took over theKremlin in 1985. Restraints were easedon intellectual and, later, political lifeunder the banner of glasnost (openness).Centralized economic planning and management were scrapped and replaced bymarket -directed mechanisms under therubric of perestroika (restructuring). A

Hulton/Getty1930 meeting of CP-initiated International Labor Defense, Washington, D.C.James P. Cannon: "Everything new and progressive on the Negro questioncame from Moscow, after the revolution of 1917, and as a result of therevolution."seeking to maintain nuclear parity withthe U.S. It also continued to buy domestic stability by maintaining and evenimproving the living standards of theSoviet working class and collective farm.ers. But these economic policies came atthe expense of investment in the techno-logical renewal of Soviet industry. By thelate 1970s, the steady annual economicgrowth rate of 5 percent of the past twodecades had fallen to about half that. Andby the beginning of the 1980s, the economy was clearly stagnating, in theface ofthe imperialist anti-Soviet offensive.The Final Undoing of theOctober Revolution

As the USSR began to fall behindWestern capitalism dramatically, growing sections of the bureaucracy becameconvinced that the Soviet economy couldnever catch up on its own, and chose tocut back the massive burden of military

ir"I

global policy of appeasing and capitulating to Western (centrally American)imperialism was carried out in the nameof "new thinking."The war in Afghanistan during the1980s was a crucial turning point in thefate of the USSR and therefore of worldhistory. In December 1979, Brezhnev'sKremlin intervened militarily in Afghanistan to shore up a strategically important client state along the southernborder of Soviet Central Asia. The m o d ~ ernizing bourgeois-nationalist regime inKabul had repeatedly requested Sovietaid against a reactionary Islamic insurgency-backed and armed by the U.S.which had been provoked by the regime'smodest social reforms, especially thosewhich improved the horribly oppressedcondition of Afghan women.

It came as a surprise to Moscow whenthe Americans escalated this insurgencyinto a massive proxy war against the

Bolsheviks beganOctober Revolutionmission of liberatingoppressed womenof the East withliteracy campaigns.

Soviet Union, launching the biggestCIA covert operation in history. JimmyCarter's chief foreign policy adviser,Zbigniew Brzezinski, later bragged abouthow they had long planned to bleed theSoviets. Texas Democratic CongressmanCharles Wilson spelled it out at the time:"There were 58,000 [American] dead inVietnam, and we owe the Russians one."This should have been an easy war forany leftist to take a principled stand on. Itwas doubly progressive, posing both thefate of women and elemental socialprogress in Afghanistan together with thedefense of the USSR's southern flank.But under the onslaught of the war hysteria cranked out by the U.S. rulingclass-beginning with Jimmy Carter's"human rights" demagogy and escalatingto Ronald Reagan's crusade against theSoviet "evil empire"-a defining momenttook place for the "left" internationally.Here in the U.S., Vietnam War-era prodigal sons of the Democratic Party rushedto redeem themselves before their imperialist rulers by showing how ferventlythey now opposed the "Soviet Vietnam."Against the liberals and their "left"hangers-on, we raised the slogans: "HailRed Army in Afghanistan!" and "Extendgains of the October Revolution to Afghanpeoples!" Against all the demagogy about"Afghan national rights," we explainedthat Afghanistan was not even a nationbut an extremely backward countryinhabited by diverse and mutually hostileethnic groups. The only possible basis forsocial progress in Afghanistan at that timewas the extension of Soviet military andpolitical power. The Red Army intervention cut against the grain of the nationalist dogma of "socialism in one country."Our internationalist line, while aimed primarily against the CIA-backe.d mujahe-din, at the same time promoted politicalrevolution against the Kremlin Stalinists.Contrary to the imperialist Big Liecampaign, the Soviet armed forces werewinning against the CIA's mujahedin. Itwas not out of military necessity butfor the sake of Gorbachev's hoped-forstrategic "partnership" with Americanimperialism that the Soviets pulled thelast troops out of Afghanistan in 1989.Gorbachev's policy in Afghanistan gavea green light to dumping Soviet-era"socialist and national liberation" pretensions. What we heard in the USS.R at thispoint was outright racist Russian chau-

vllllsm like, "Afghan 'blacks' are notworth the blood of our Russian boys."These types were fed up with the massiveSoviet subsidies to Cuba, Vietnam, EastEurope and Mosc ow's Third World capitalist client regimes.Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze later conceded that surrendering Afghanistan was the key to what followed globally: "The decision to leaveAfghanistan was the first and most difficult step. Everything else flowed fromthat" (Washington Post, 16 November1992). Indeed, after Afghanistan Gorbachev threw East Europe to the imperialistwolves as well. Finally, he oversaw thedestruction of the USSR.As we declared in 1990 in the firstissue of our Russian-language Byulleten'Spartakovtsev (Spartacist Bulletin): " Farbetter to have fought imperialism throughan honorable fight in Afghanistan thanto have to now fight it within the borders of the Soviet Union" (see Spartacist[English-language edition] No. 45-46,Winter 1990-91). Days before Gorbachev pulled out the last Soviet units, thePartisan Defense Committee, the classstruggle legal and social defense organization associated with the SLIU.S., senta 7 February 1989 letter to the Afghangovernment offering "to organize an international brigade to fight to the death"to defend "the right of women to read,freedom from the veil, freedom from thetyranny of the mullahs and the landlords,the introduction of medical care and theright of all to an education." Though thisoffer was declined, the PDC and fraternaldefense organizations allied with othersections of the ICL raised over $44,000 to.aid civilian victims of an all-out mujahe-din offensive later that y ear against Jalalabad, the Afghan city closest to the CIA'sguerrilla bases in Pakistan. ,Those emergency funds were gathered from workingpeople throughout the world, including ofMuslim origin. They rejoiced when theattack on J alalabad was defeated!But our campaign had an even greatersignificance. It signaled that the bannerof communism trampled in the mud ofAfghanistan by the defeatist Stalinistshad its true champions in the Trotskyists!It was at that moment in 1989 that theinternational Spartacist tendency becamethe International Communist League(Fourth Internationalist).

[TO BE CONTINUED]

no credit WV PhotoAfghan women took up arms against Islamic reactionaries to defend gains made possible by Soviet Army intervention. Trotskyists hailed Red Army inAfghanistan, organized support for besieged women and leftists following Kremlin's treacherous 1989 withdrawal.12 SEPTEMBER 2003 9


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North Korea ....(continued from page 1)control and international security, in testimony before Congress this summer, thegoal of the Bush administration's naval"interdiction" and "seizure" provocationsis to develop "new means to disrupt theproliferation trade at sea, in the air, andon land" (New York Times, 18 August).More concisely, the destruction of theNorth Korean deformed workers state isthe goal Qf these efforts.Bolton is a super hawk, provided bythe American Enterprise Institute (AEI),a neoconservative think tank, to justifyA ~ e r i c a iiber alles policies. Currentlythis ghoul is on a short leash as the Bushadministration's most recent pretense isto be open to negotiations with Pyongyang,e.g., at the Beijing talks. The worldconquering aspirations of U.S. imperialism are in part currently mitigated by thefact that its ground forces are boggeddown in the bloody occupation of Iraq.The New York Times (3 September)reported an interview with Bolton las,tyear in which he was asked to accountfor seeming U.S. policy inconsistenciesin dealing with North Korea. Bolton"strode over to a bookshelf, pulled off avolume and slapped it on the table. Itwas called 'T.he End of North Korea,' byan American Enterprise Institute colleague. 'That,' he said, 'is our policy'."The bible of U.S. imperialism as translated by the AEI intellectual lackeys hasseveral books-The End of the USSR,The End of China, The End of Cuba, etc.In pursuit of their own imperialistaims, Korea's former Japanese overlordshave also been on an offensive to bringNorth Korea to its knees and to pursuetheir regional military ambitions. Seizingon North Korean missile and nuclearcapacity as a pretext, Tokyo has allocated $1.2 billion to begin .building a"missile defense system" that wouldthreaten both the North Korean and Chinese deformed workers states, while anumber of leading government figuresopenly talk of acquiring' a nuclear arsenal. The Japanese coast guard is joiningthe U.S. and Australia in the upcoming"Pacific Protector" exercises in the CoralSea. Days before the Beijing talks, Japanese authorities at the port of NiigataNishi seized the North Korean ferryMangyongbong-92, which ethnic Koreans heavily rely on. In Japan, the antiNorth Korea offensive has taken the formof a chauvinist frenzy against ethnicKoreans and their schools and organizations, including over 300 bombing andother attacks and threats. This chauvinisthysteria was particularly whipped up following recent revelations of bizarre andindefensible abductions of Japanesenationals by the Pyongyang regime inthe 1970s and ' 80s. As our comrades ofthe Spartacist Group Japan have repeatedly stressed, defense of North Koreaand of the Korean minority in Japan gohand in hand.Beijing Stalinists' Treachery

North Korea's current plight-malnutrition, the absence of access to criticalresources and the decay of its industryis the direct product of the 1991-92 capitalist counterrevolution, led by BorisYeltsin and Bush Sr., in the USSR,which had been the North's main economic partner. For a quarter century afterthe Korean War, the North prospered incontrast to the imperialist-dominatedSouth. In fact, as the London Guardian(11 March) reports, "During the 1970sNorth Korea was the 20th-richest country in the world."The North Korean bureaucracy's current policy-to use the threat of nucleararmaments to demand U.S. assistanceand a peace treaty "guaranteeing" thatthe American imperialists foreswear anyhostile intervention-is simply militantsounding begging. I f codified, such adeal would be substantially less valuablethan a deed to the Brooklyn Bridge. Sucha deal would entail the return of international "nuclear inspectors" to North10

Korea, whose only purpose would be toensure that the country is incapable ofdefending itself against an Americanattack-just as the UN inspectors did inIraq.As we wrotein "Defend North Korea!"(WV No. 784, 12 July 2002), "The international working class must defend theright of the deformed workers states tohave nuclear weapons to defend themselves against the imperialist war criminals. Had the Soviet Union not possesseda nuclear arsenal capable of deterringU.S. imperialism, there would have beenno Cuban Revolution, no VietnameseRevolution, and China and Korea wouldbe irradiated rubble." A big reason thatthe U.S. felt it could just roll over Iraqwas that that small capitalist countrydid not have any nuclear weapons, whichare about the only real measure of sovereignty in today's world.The only guarantee for the survival and

talist elements on the mainland, into thenexus of imperialist economic obligations.No small factor in Beijing's treacherous offer to broker the disarmament ofNorth Korea is the growing trade betweenmainland China and the South Koreancapital. In March, China, which providesNorth Korea with upwards of half itsimported grain and enough fuel oil to provide one-third of its energy needs, cut o fffuel oil supplies for three days inrt


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March onWashington ...(continued from page 12)was the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action & Integration, And Fightfor Equality By Any Means Necessary(BAMN), which organized a contingentof students who marched over fromHoward University. Initiated by the tiny,fake-Trotskyist Revolutionary WorkersLeague, the liberal BAMN fits right inwith the-preachers and black Democrats,as it campaigns for "a new civil rightsmovement."Karl Marx remarked that if everythingin world history occurred twice, the firstwas tragedy, the second time farce. If thefirst March on Washington was a "farce,"as radical black nationalist Malcolm Xput it, what does that make the latestwarmed-over, scaled-down medicine showfor the Democratic Party enemies ofblack freedom? Break with the Demo-crats! For a revolutionary workers partythat fights for all the oppressed!The Farce on Washington

At its base and in its early years, themass of black and white activists whowere the foot soldiers of the civil rightsmovement wrote a heroic chapter in thefight for black equality in racist America.Protesting black masses faced viciouspolice repression and a bloody campaignof KKK terror. Rejecting the pacifismof King & Co., courageous militants likethe Deacons for Defense and Justice andRobert F. Williams organized armed selfdefense against the Klan and racist copterror. But from its inception, the civilrights movement was dominated by ablack middle-class leadership allied toDemocratic Party liberalism, exemplifiedby King. Their aim was to pressure theDemocratic Party administrations ofKennedy and Johnson to grant formal,legal equality to blacks in the South andto keep the struggles within the bounds ofthe capitalist system.Even the most conservative civil rightsleaders initially saw the March as ameans to put the heat on the Kennedyadministration, which was dragging itsfeet on a civil rights bill and otheranti-discrimination legislation. But whenKennedy called the "respectable leaders"into the Oval Office for a conference,they quickly dropped even the posture ofpressure. The march destination wasdiverted from the White House to the Lincoln Memorial. They issued a handbookfor the march, omitting a planned "statement to the president" and a call to confront Congress. Participation was deniedto "subversive" groups and speeches werecensored. Although John Lewis,(today aDemocratic Congressman from Georgia)of the Student Nonviolent CoordinatingCommittee (SNCC)-which was thenbreaking to the left of the mainstreamcivil rights leadership-was invited tospeak, he was pressured into deletingfrom his prepared text the sentence "We

cannot depend on any political party forboth Democrats and Republicans havebetrayed the basic principles of the Declaration of Independence," DisgustedSNCC staffers took to wearing "I Have aNightmare" buttons.As Malcolm X described, the originalimpetus for the march came from theblack masses, in the wake of black self-

decaying capitalism cannot meet thepromise of black freedom. The civilrights movement came up against this factharshly when it swept out of the Southinto the North in the mid 1960s. The hellish conditions of ghetto life-tqe masschronic unemployment, racist cop terror,crumbling schools, poverty and hungerare rooted in American capitalism and

APMartin Luther King (second from left) with John F. Kennedy (second fromright) in 1963. Liberals sought to divert struggle for black rights into relianceon capitalist government and Democratic Party.defense efforts against KKK and cop terror in Birmingham, Alabama:

"I t was the grass roots out there in thestreet It scared the white man to death,scared the white power structure in Washington, D.C. to death: I was there. Whenthey found out that this black steamrollerwas going to come down on the capital,they called in [NAACP leader] Wilkins,they called in [head of the Brotherhoodof Sleeping Car Porters] Randolph, theycalled in these national Negro leadersthat you respect and told them, 'Call itoff.' Kennedy said, 'Look, you all areletting this thing go too far.' And OldTom said, 'Boss, I can't stop it, because Ididn't start it.'... 'I'm not even in it,much less at the head of it.' ... And thatold shrewd fox, he said, 'I f you all aren'tin it, I'll put you in it. I'll put you at thehead of i t I'll endorse it I'll welcome itI'll help it. I'll join it'."

Malcolm added:"They controlled it so tight, they toldthose Negroes what time to hit town,how to come, where to stop, what signsto carry, what song to sing, what speechthey could make, and what speech theycouldn't make; and then told them to getout of town by sundown."

-Malcom X Speaks(Grove Press, 1966)The bourgeoisie eventually acquiescedto the demand for legal equality in theSouth, both because Jim Crow segregation had grown anachronistic and becauseit was an embarrassment overseas asAmerican imperialism sought to posture

as the champion of "democracy" in theCold War, particularly in competitionwith the Soviet Union in the Third World.While the civil rights movement challenged white racist America and gave riseto a generation of young radicals, it didnot and could not open up a new period ofblack equality and advancement. Fot a

can only be eradicated through a thoroughgoing social revolution. What waskey then, as now, is the mobilization ofthe multiracial working class to link thefight for black freedom with the strugglefor workers revolution. We fight to mobilize the working class on the program ofrevolutionary integrationism-thefull integration of black people in an egalitariansocialist society in which those who laborrule.Forty years after the March on Washington, by every material standard, thecondition of life for the ghetto masseshas worsened: average family income

C h i l e . ~ . (continued from page 3)negative-the basic Marxist understanding that the capitalist state at its core is arepressive apparatus composed of thecops, the courts, the military and theprison system which serves to defendprivate property and the class rule of thebourgeoisie. The working class cannotsimply seize control of, this repressivecapitalist state and wield it for its ownvery different purposes-the bourgeoisstate must be smashed through workers revolution and replaced by organs ofworkers rule.Despite the transition to "parliamentary democracy" in 1990, Pinochet onlyretired as head of the military in 1998,and workers strikes and protests continue to be met with brutal repression. InAugust, a one-day general strike by some640,000 workers against "30 years of

has plunged, schools are more segregated nationwide than before civil rightsprograms were implemented, and theunemployment rate among black youth istwice that among white youth. The racist"war on drugs," which was heavily promoted by black Democrats like Jacksonand Sharpton, has meant an Americanprison population of over 2 million, 44percent of whom are black. An astounding 28 percent of all black men are destined to spend time behind bars.Cops prowl the ghettos, routinely invading black families' homes and gunningdown black youth on the street with impunity. Poverty, chronic joblessness andjail, schools that are no more than holding pens, AIDS, crime and cop terrorthese are the standard aspects of life forthe black population under decaying American capitalism. It is a measureof the horrendous conditions faced byblack people that the Democratic Partyand other organizers of the August 23rally could not mobilize more than a few'thousand to "celebrate" the March onWashington.Even the most mi

workers vanguard no 809 - 12 september 2003

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