Workers Vanguard No 706 - 05 February 1999

7/29/2019 Workers Vanguard No 706 - 05 February 1999

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soC!:No. 706 ..,.XQ3 5 February 1999

Imperialists Mobilize for Occupation of losovoU.S./UN/NATOHands Off the Balkans!JANUARY 31-The United States andother imperialist powers threatened yesterday to launch massive air strikesagainst the Serbs if the Yugoslav government does not accord "substantial autonomy" to that country's Albanian-majorityprovince of Kosovo. Hundreds of planes,mainly American, and dozens of shipsunder NATO command are poised forattacks against Serbia. The U.S.-imposeddiktat requires that both Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic and the ethnicAlbanians in Kosovosend representatives. o a "peace" conference in France laterthis week. The imperialists threaten terrorbombing of Serbia if the negotiations arenot "satisfactory." The rebels in landlocked Kosovo would also be "punished"by the blockading of Albanian ports inorder to cut off their arms supplies.The imperialists are also planning tosend a U.S'/NATO force of some 30,000ground troops to Kosovo to enforce any"peace" agreement. The Clinton administration is promising to contribute some5,000 ground troops. The German FourthReich under Social Democratic chancellor Gerhard SchrOder also wants to bepart of any NATO occupation force inKosovo. German imperialism has hithertobeen restrained by the memory, searedinto the consciousness of the Balkan peoples, of the orgy of mass murder carriedout under the Nazi occupation ofYugoslavia during World War II. Whether or notthe U.S.-dominated NATO alliance carries out its threats, the Spartacist Leagueforthrightly declares: All imperialist

ClintonthreatensSerbia withNATO air strikesto imposeimperialistdiktat overKosovo.

forces out of the Balkans!The same day the imperialists delivered their diktat to Milosevic, waves ofAmerican warplanes attacked Iraqiinstallations near the northern city ofMosul in the largest air offensive againstthat country since the U.S. and Britainlaunched a four-day missile assault inDecember. Such attacks have become analmost daily occurrence in recent weeks,including the bombardment of a residential quarter of Basra last week that left at

least eleven civilians dead. Tens of thousands were slaughtered in 1991 by U.S.led forces acting under a United Nationsfig leaf. Today, the blood of the Iraqipeople is still being spilled to cementU.S. control over vast oil and natural gasresources which are vital to Ametica'simperialist rivals, Germany and Japan.Over a million children and hundreds ofthousands of other Iraqis have died frommalnutrition and disease resulting fromthe imperialist embargo. Down with U.S.

Brutal Murder 01South Alrican AIDS Activist

JOHANNESBURG-After announcingthat she was HIV-positive on WorldAids Day last December, Gugu Dlamini, a mother and AIDS awarenessactivist, was beaten senseless by a rabidmob claiming to be "cleaning the area."She died of her wounds a few weekslater. Dlamini lived in eastern KwaZulu-Natal, a province at the centre ofthe AIDS epidemic in South Africa.She was lynched for having the courage

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to talk about her disease, to talk abouther sexual life in a society wherewomen live under patriarchal p r a c t i c ~ s such as polygamous marriages, femalegenital mutilation and lobola (brideprice)-"traditions" upheld by tribalreactionaries in league with the capitalist rulers.The killing of Dlamini near the cityof purban illuminates the immensesocial backwardness and material deprivation underlying the spiralling AIDSpandemic in sub-Saharan Africa, whereover 22.5 million carry HIV, the virus

that causes AIDS. By current statistics, more than a fifth of the South African black working class-the bedrockof the capitalist economy-are HIVpositive. In KwaZulu-Natal, some 5,000HIV cases emerge every month, including 1,000 babies whose life expectancies are between two and five years.While the African National Congressled bourgeois-nationalist government ofNelson Mandela has put on paper someof the broadest liberal democraticlaws-striking down prohibitions onhomosexual sex, legalising abortion

fIr a Leninist Partl, tribune olille Pellle!

Gammaimperialist terror bombing! Down withimperialist sanctions against Serbia andIraq! U.S. get your bloody hands off theworld!For years, Washington denied Iraqiaccusations that UN "weapons inspectors" were part of an American spy operation. But last month it was revealed thatthe search for supposed "weapons ofmass destruction" provided U.S. intelligence with information used to plan thecontinued on page 8

and promising free health care to pregnant women and their children-allthese legal provisions amount to a cruelhoax. Far from improving the lives ofthe impoverished masses, the ANCregime, acting as front men for thewhite capitalists, has laid off thousandsof workers, kept education as a privilege for the children of a few ANC cronies and the white racist ruling class,and shut down many hospitals. Thiscapitalist government cannot and willnot deliver on promises of qualityhealth care for women, housing, jobs,education or anything else the population desperately needs.South Africa is an' extreme case ofwhat Marxists call combined anduneven development. A large-scale,modern industrial base and mining. complex were built through the superexploitation of the black toilers by thewhite capitalist class. Yet the blackmasses remain mired in "Third World"conditions of extreme poverty, superstition and vestiges of tribalist loyalty

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Ian Donovan Is a Dangerous Lunatic!Condemn ,Violent Assault by Pro-Imperialist "Socialist"at Bloody Sunday Demonstration

We reprint below a February 2 statement by the Spartacist League/Britain,section .of the International Communist League, protesting a cowardly thugattack on a Spartacist comrade at a London rally marking the anniversary ofthe 1972 Bloody Sunday massacre of14 Catholic marchers in Derry, Northern Ireland. Our comrade was bloodiedby one Ian Donovan, a recent ex-memberof the dubious International BolshevikTendency. Donovan is now chairman ofthe London Socialist Alliance, a groupdominated by the Labourite SocialistParty (formerly the Militant tendency).

British Army which carried out theBloody Sunday massacre.* * *At the 30 January demonstration inLondon commemorating Bloody Sunday,Ian Donovan of Revolution & Truth violently assaulted Spartacist League cotprade Eibhlin McDonald, an Irish woman.Ian Donovan is currently the chair of theLondon Socialist Alliance, a group whichis politically dominated by the SocialistParty. Unable to politically defend theSocialist Party's support to the RoyalUlster Constabulary in Northern Ireland,Donovan responded by driving his fistinto McDonald's face, in the midst of a500-strong protest against British oppression in Northern Ireland. When McDonald shouted that she had been hit, demonstration stewards came quickly, found thecowardly bully Donovan and cautionedhim. Dripping blood from the gash overher right eye, McDonald was taken to anearby hospital where she was x-rayedand given stitches.

Donovan assaulted our comradeafter she exposed the Socialist Party'schauvinist support to the Protestantdominated Royal Ulster Constabulary(RUC), British imperialism's police forcein Northern Ireland. As the statementnotes, the Socialist Party also sponsors amember of the sectarian Loyalist UlsterVolunteer Force (UVF) and refuses todemand withdrawal of the occupying

Black Liberation ThroughSocialist Revolution!Since the defeat of Radical Reconstruction in the decades following the Civil War,black people have faced brutal and systematic segregation, constituting an oppressedrace-color caste in American society. But asa strategic component of the proletariat,black workers are slated to playa leadingrole in the American socialist revolutionTROTSKY which will eradicate the material basis of LENIN

racial oppression. In two 1953 lectures cen-tered on the fight against Southern Jim Crow segregation, American Trotskyist RichardS. Fraser put forward the perspective of revolutionary integration-the fight for theassimilation of black people into an egalitarian socialist society. The SpartacistLeague carries forward Fraser's pioneering work in our struggle to forge a multiracialrevolutionary workers party in the U.S.

The racial division of society was born with capitalism and will die only with thedeath of this last system of exploitation. Before capitalism there was no race concept.There was no skin color exploitation, there was no race prejudice, there was no idea ofsuperiority and inferiority based upon physical characteristics.It was the advent of Negro chattel slavery in the western hemisphere which firstdivided society into races. In a measure the whole supremacy of western capitalism'isfounded upon this modem chattel slavery. The primary accumulation of capital whichwas the foundation of the industrial revolution was accrued largely from the slavetrade ....The "Negro Question" in the United States exists because of the failure of the capitalist class to solve the most elementary problems of the democratic revolution in theSouth: the problems of land tenure and democratic rights. Thereby it has left the socialheritage of color slavery intact as a malignant feature of social life.But .capitalism, even in the southern United States, has created the conditions necessary for its own destruction: It has disrupted the old agrarian pa ttern, undermined theprivileged white middle class, thus weakening the whole .fabric of social repression. Ithas created great industries, proletarianizing white, urbanizing black. This process hascentralized the Negro community in positions of great strategic advantage in large citycommunities, whereas before they were dispersed over the countryside. Capitalism haslikewise created the conditions for the overthrow of race prejudice by working classsolidarity.

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-R . S. Fraser, "The Negro Struggle and the Proletarian Revolution,"In Memoriam-Richard S. Fraser (Prometheus Research Series No.3, 1990)

! ~ ~ ! ! . . ! ! o r . . ~ ! ~ ! ! . ~ f ! . ! EDITOR: Len MeyersEDITOR, YOUNG SPARTACUS PAGES: Jacob ZornPRODUCTION MANAGER: Susan FullerCIRCULATION MANAGER: Mara CadizEDITORIAL BOARD: Ray Bishop (managing editor), Bruce Andre, Helene Brosius, George Foster,Liz Gordon, Jane Kerrigan, James Robertson, Joseph Seymour, Alison SpencerThe Spartacist League is the U.S. Section of the International Communist League (FourthInternationalist).Workers Vanguard (ISSN 0276-0746) published biweekly, except skipping three alternate issues in June, July andAugust (beginning with omitting the second issue in June) and with a 3-week interval in December, by the SpartacistPublishing Co., 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 etters do not necessarily express the editorialviewpOint.The closing date for news in this issue is February 2.No. 706 5 February 1999

Donovan's thuggery was witnessed bymany demonstrators. Dismayed that anEnglish male had battered an Irishwoman at this demonstration, severaldemonstrators shouted at Donovan,"You're a nutter!" Representatives fromother leftist organisations carne forwardto denounce the attack. The despicableexception was Workers Power, whoserepresentative on the spot said our comrade brought it on herself, which is inkeeping with their own record of violence and exclusion of the SpartacistLeague.Hugh Stephens of the CampaignAgainst Sanctions and War on Iraq sent awritten statement which, while expressing political differences with the Spartacist League, declared: "I have discussedthis with my own comrades and we wishto express our solidarity with your defence of your democratic rights, and ourdisgust that violence should have marredthe otherwise very successful demonstration. We have never used violence againstother comrades as you know, and we havealways found your comrades to be principled in discussions even with us who havevery different views, a fact which weappreciate and which we endeavour toreciprocate." Ian Donovan is a danger tothe workers movement. This attack mustbe exposed and condemned.In the argument which preceded theattack, comrade McDonald cited theSocialist Party's grotesque line on theRUC, whom they described in the wakeof the Omagh bombing as "a bunch ofscared young men, thrown into a horrorthey couldn't cope with." She suggestedDonovan should form a contingent withthe Socialist Party and write on their banner "'Socialists' for the RUC!" Donovanis a former member and perpetual hangeron of the dubious "International Bolshevik Tendency" (IBT) who have anobsessional hatred of the Trotskyist Spartacist League. The IBT are social chauvinists conspicuous for their arrogantindifference to the oppressed, not leastthe Catholic minority in Northern Ireland.Not surprisingly, therefore, they are a culture mediumfor violent misogynist, anticommunist nutters like Donovan.Just before he lunged at her with hisfist, Donovan ranted that comradeMcDonald acted as a "cop" towards .himand other IBT supporters, suppose-ctly"fingering them" to the leadership of theSocialist Labour Party (SLP). In fact, weexposed the IBT for being to the rightof [SLP leader Arthur] Scargill's leftLabourite reformism. The outfit whichtoday calls itself the IBT was founded byembittered and hostile ex-members whoindividually quit our organisations in_ theU.S. and Canada in the early 1980s inthe face of the escalating imperialist antiSoviet war drive. It had no sooner setfoot in the SLP than the IBT was forming electoral slates with virulently anticommunist elements, including thosewho had cheered on counterrevolution-

ary Polish Solidarnosc, outright apologists for Ukrainian fascism in World WarII and supporters of "Workers Aid forBosnia," which has run point for imperialist intervention in the Balkans. In thesame time period, a leading member ofthe IBT's American group scabbed on astrike of New York City building maintenance workers in 1996 (see "The IBT:Social Chauvinists Looking for Labourite Host," Workers Hammer No. 166,January/February 1999).The IBT is led by a sexual sociopathand massive liar, Bill Logan, whowas expelled from our organisation in 1979 forgross crimes against communist moralityand its substrate, elemental humandecency. One account from a survivor ofLogan's organisation, Phil Ferguson,notes: "His behaviour is the textbook caseof the little ratbag in a private boys schoolwho gets to be head boy or head of somelittle gang;' and adds that "every bone inhis body is alien to the working class"(Internet posting, 21 December 1998).A Spartacist League statement issuedon the day of Donovan's assault said:"We refuse to involve the capitalist statein the affairs of the workers movementand made clear to the cops on site that wewill not press any charges against Donovan." We also made clear our intention towidely expose and condemn his thuggery,as an act of principle and a service to theleft. We call on others in the workersmovement to do likewise. Donovan ismentally unhinged and dangerous. Politically he is a Labourite toady and apologist for British imperialism, in the tradition of [former Labour leader] ArthurHenderson who led the cheering in parliament when [Irish revolutionary] JamesConnolly was shot by a British firingsquad. The Labourite Socialist Partywhich Donovan defends upholds thischauvinist tradition-they are notoriousfor refusing to call for British troops outof Northern Ireland and for sponsoringfascistic Loyalist Billy Hutchinson intheir meetings. Hutchinson's LoyalistUlster Volunteer Force has connections to .the British fascists, who routinely stageprovocations against the annual BloodySunday demonstration in London anddidso again on Saturday, where Donovanhad earlier staged his provocative attack.Our statement concluded:

"Political debate is necessary to clarifywhat programme and leadership theworking class needs to fight for its interests: we oppose the imperialist 'peace'deal in Northern Ireland which is premised on the continued rule of bloodyBritish imperialism, and the continuedpresence of British troops maintainingthe oppression of the Catholic minority.We demand the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of the British troops!Not Orange against Green, but classagainst class! For an Irish workersrepublic as part of a voluntary federationof workers republics in the British Isles!"We repeat: acts of violence such as IanDonovan's against political opponentson the left have no place in the workersmovement!".

'n MemoriamRichard S. Fraser. .....-... -100., ..-

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Report from RussiaThe Grim Face ofCapitalist CounterrevolutionWe print below excerpts from a 5December 1998 report by a visitor tothe Russian Far East (RFE) recountingthe devastating effects in this region ofthe capitalist counterrevolution whichdestroyed the Soviet degenerated workersstate in 1991-92. As the mass of workingpeople in the former USSR are plungedinto deepening misery, the new capitalistexploiters and the Yeltsin regime whichserves them have sold off, looted ordriven into the ground the country's massive industrial infrastructure. In August1998, after years of economic disintegra

tion, Russia experienced a total financialmeltdown which further ground down themass of the population and sowed panicin world financial markets (see "Chaos inRussia, Depression in East Asia-Wall. Street Bubble Bursts," WV No. 696, 11September 1998).We recently published a brief accountof political activities during the fall inMoscow and St. Petersburg ("Reportfrom Russia," WV No. 703, 25 December 1998). The report below centers onVladivostok and Khabarovsk, key citiesof the RFE which serves as a crossroadsfor Pacific Rim trade. In the aftermath of

Part Onecounterrevolution, the economic links ofthis area with the capitalist economies ofSouth Korea, the U.S. and Japan paveincreased, while the European powers .also view the area with avid interest. Aswell, the RFE has economic ties withthe bordering Chinese bureaucraticallydeformed workers state, where the threatof capitalist restoration looms ever larger.These factors underscore the crucial needfor forging Trotskyist parties to reawakenin the shattered working class the proletarian internationalist consciousness thatanimated the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution .

* * *The Russian Far East does indeedseem to be a "once and future place,"like a boom town that has gorre-bust. Butin spite of its current state, the region'srole as a central trade link for Pacific'Rim powers is sure to increase in thenear future. Before going into the particulars, I think it is helpful to step backand look at the international setting.WVMap

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Vyacheslav Voyakin photosVladivostok today: pensioner rummages through garbage. Unpaid workers blocking Trans-Siberian Railroad trackscarry placard reading: "We can no longer look into the eyes of our hungry children. We have nothing left to lose."At the moment, there is a "corridor"war over how to link up Russia's TransSiberian Railroad to provide a fast landconnection between East Asia and Europe. This war is developing alongsidethe power struggle over Caspian Sea oiland has particular importance for EastAsia. The 9 November 1998 issue of theRussian-language Ekspen magazine laysout a thoughtful perspective on this question from the vantage point of a Russianwould-be imperialist. It points to Japan'sconcern that China, having come throughthe current Asian depression intact, isincreasingly seen as the rising power ofAsia and could form a new axis withEurope. Chinese trade with Europe in thelast six months has increased by 25 percent, and China has promised to place apart of its gold reserves in the new eurocurrency.It is against China that Japan hassought not only to upgrade the Russianport of Zarubino but to build a bridge and"chunnel" (channel tunnel) rail link, viathe Kuril Islands and Sakhalin island, to

the Russian mainland city ofKornsomolskon-Amur and then down to Khabarovsk,linking up with the Trans-Siberian Railroad. For Japan and South Korea, a raillink to Europe would mean that theirproducts could -reach stores in France inten days instead of the month it takes to

sail by way of Africa. Japan would dominate both Asian trade with Europe andPacific access to northern China.According to Ekspert, only the U.S.has the money for such grandiose projects, and the U.S. is pushing for an alternate rail link: through a reunified Korea toVladivostok, which would deny China itsown direct link to Europe. "Russia mustbecome a buffer between ChinaandEurope," Zbigniew Brzezinski, who in thelate 1970s was U.S. president Carter'snational security adviser, is quoted assaying. The South Korean rulers also seekthe destruction of the North Koreandeformed workers state and its assimilation into the capitalist South. In the wordsof Choo Kang Soo, president of the new$100 million Hotel Hyundai in Vladivostok: "We expect' that Korea will beunited in the near future .... We hope thatin the near future, the resources of Russiawill reach Korea by land" (RussiaReview, November 1998).European powers, for their part, haveprojected a rail link to China that circumvents Russia altogether, using circuitousbut existing lines through the Carpathians, Ukraine, the Caucasus and CentralAsia to the northwest border of China,where there is only one last stretch toconnect to the Chinese rail terminus inUrumqi. So it is not just from the positionof a social and economic basket casealbeit possessing natural resources andmilitary hardware-that Russia bargainswith West and East. It can also use itsstrategic geographic importance and itstransport infrastructure as bargainingchips in the context of rising internationaltrade wars.The Looting of Vladivostok

From just about any vantage point inVladivostok, the first city I visited, youget a breathtaking panorama, the dramatic sweep of the harbor naval base,transport and fishing docks. Several strategic assets remain in spite of the devastation wrought by capitalist counterrevolution. Besides the terminus of theTrans-Siberian rail line, which uniquelylinks the Russian Pacific coast to E.uL9pe,there is a vast natural harbor that is hometo the Russian Pacific Fleet, the Far Eastern Shipping Company and some ofRussia's largest fishing-industry facil-.ities. Until recently, Vladivostok also hadthe RFE's largest ship repair and construction enterprises. But above all,

Vladivostok has its geographic advantage: it is the trade crossroads for Japan,South Korea and China. These factorsresulted in a boom in port trade in 1992-93, when many Soviet-era restrictionswere dropped.In addition, Vladivostok is the administrative center of the Primorsky Krai(Maritime Region). And here it is worthmentioning some characteristics of thePrimorsky Krai as a whole. While Vladivostok's population is estimated between.650,000 and 800,000, the krai has 2.2million people (1.7 million urban). Thegross regional domestic product for 1997was $3.5 billion, which dropped 8 percent in the first half of 1998. This is ofcourse the official economy; the blackmarket economy is many times greater.I found that the biweekly VladivostokNews provided an excellent source ofinformation and window into the area'spolitical life.The Primorsky Krai's industrial centersare Ussurisk (pop. 162,000) and Arseniev(pop. 71,000). The latter is where militaryaircraft such as the Black Shark helicopter and navigational equipment areor were produced. The KavalerovoDalnegorsk mining center turns out tin,lead, zinc and boron. Of particular interest for foreign exploitation are the neighboring. Sakhalin Island Shelf Oil ProjectsOne, Two and Three, which represent thelargest concentration of foreign investment in all of Russia. There are an estimated 2.5 billion barrels of oil and 15trillion cubic feet of natural gas thatExxon, with a series of Russian consortiums and the Japanese company Sodeco,seeks to extract. Vladivostok is expectedto provide machine-building and othersupport services-if the project evermanages to cut through frozen seas andthe frozen Russian bank accounts.With the destruction of the Soviet Unionand subsequent implosion of military/industrial production, the Primorsky Kraihas been devastated. The industrial collapse is probably even greater therethan the national average, which NewYork University professor Steven Cohenrecently estimated to be 50 to 83 percentin ihe post-Soviet period. Unemploymentfor the RFE as a whole is actually 1.5times the national average-and giventhe state of Russia, that is saying something. An American think tank recentlyestimated real unemployment in Russiaat a minimum of 18 million out of a total

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working population of 68 million.What does remain viable in the Primorsky Krai is, in the first place, fishingrelated industry. Annual catch is still twomillion tons-half the total for the RFE.But processing is down from 1.5 millionto 200,000 tons. The workforce on theVladivostok fishing docks has beenreduced to 2,000, half of its former size,because federal taxes have driven muchof the processing overseas or into thedomestic black market. As the father ofthe family I stayed with described, fishing factory ships that come into port arerequired to pay tax on their haul in casheven before it is sold. But in the cashstrapped Russian economy that is impossible. So a major part of the catch is solddirectly to ports in South Korea andAmerica. It is only the government quotafor domestic sale of fishing hauls thatkeeps the fishing industries of the Vladivostok port alive.According to the son of my host family, there remains a constant demand forworkers on the fishing docks, but for miserable pay, certainly not enough to raise afamily. He is indignant that the Far Eastexports timber, oil, coal, ferrous metals,fish, submarines and whole factory assembly lines, and in return imports soft drinksand chicken legs. Timber extraction alsoremains important at three million cubicmeters annually.-second only to theneighboring Khabarovsk Krai. Coal wasimportant, but it is undergoing the samedrastic contraction that is taking placethroughout Russia. The nearby coal townof Partizansk, which ten years ago employed 12,000 miners, shut all four of itsprimary shafts this spring. Of the 3,162miners who stayed in town, 250 now sewT-shirts for a South Korean-owned firm,a subcontractor for Gap stores.Just up the coast from Vladivostok isthe town of Nakhodka, where Russia'sfirst Free Economic Zone (FEZ) wasestablished in 1991. The idea was toemploy highly skilled, low-paid Russianworkers to assemble computer components and so forth. After receiving $90million in investment, the failure to comethrough with federal tax privileges forthe 450 South Korean-, Japanese- andAmerican-registered enterprises resultedin the FEZ going to the brink of bankruptcy this year, even before the Augustfinancial crisis hit. So instead of beingsuperexploited at Third World levels, thebulk of the highly skilled industrial proletariat there, too, has been thrown into astruggle for survival through trade, pettybusiness and subsistence farming.Many skilled workers are like thefather in my host family, an engineer nowon "unpaid vacation" for over a year. Hesurvives by tourism and subsistence farming. "You can shout down the barns of oursilent factory and hear your echo. It is likea ghost town," he lamented. This family isnot nearly as poor as many, but nonetheless speaks of how much comes "fromour own garden." They eat fish they catchand even bake their own bread in a modem bread cooker. In fact, they are relatively well-off: two cars, all modemappliances, a home computer and an

apartment in the center of town. But theyare cash-strapped and barely able to provide for their teenage daughter.Something like 90 percent of the population in Vladivostok lives in poverty.The outskirts look more like Kiev thanMoscow: there are many long-establishedfamily dachas and fewer of the strip-garden plots that provide subsistence farming outside Moscow for the ex-proletariatthere. My host noted that this seasonmushroom-picking areas looked like theyhad been thoroughly trampled by peopleforaging for food. Nonetheless, Vladi'vostok's black market and construction have actually attracted immigration.And not many people leave Vladivostok;most people simply have nowhere betterto go.Industrial Ruin andBlack Market Enterprise

The Pacific Fleet is still stationed inVladivostok, but shipbuilding and repairare at a complete standstill. I overheardfrom local businessmen on my flight backto Moscow that the fleet is slated to be. moved out of the city harbor. It is not justthe implosion of the Russian military thathas devastated the shipbuilding and repairindustry of the region. The lack of classcohesion within Russia's l o o ~ i n g eliteand the parasitism of the central government have driven this work to foreigncountries. Moscow has set up 44 differenttaxes that claim 85 percent of the profitsfrom local enterprises. It is cheaper torepair fishing factory ships in SouthKorea or Alaska than in Russia!There is a secondary factor: industry directors and workers prefer postings abroad to exploit channels for blackmarket trade. But the main thing is thatwith the destruction of a centralized economy, in this area based on the high-techmilitary-industrial complex, gang warfare over looting the industrial sector forprimitive accumulation has taken over.This loot is what fills the cargo bays of upto 75 percent of the port's outgoing ships.And this is the main source of income forthe young racketeer types hanging out infront of casinos in their dark-windowedsports utility vehicles.An example of what has happened toVladivostok's ship repair facilities can beseen in the case of a facility in the centerof town. I had a chance to visit it brieflyand to observe the workforce coming andgoing. While they did not look as impoverished and demoralized as in manyplants in Moscow, it was reminiscent ofthat. I saw only one stumbling drunkard,but there were very few people in generalon this cold Monday. The facility hasbeen sold to a commercial group thatplans to demolish it to make way for adock to off-load profitable foodstuffs. ButMoscow regulations stipulate that purchased enterprises cannot change their"specialty" for a period of five years. So,while they are waiting, space has beenrented out for business oft:ices. They areliquidating the trade-union library tomake way for this.With the disintegration of national economic links, Moscow has sought to keep

Moscoop _ Veron PublishingDeadly outgrowth of capitalist counterrevolution: rally of Russian NationalUnity faSCists; Cossack rides in Vladivostok main square near monumentcelebrating Bolshevik victory in Civil War.5 FEBRUARY 1999

Veron PublishingTop: Port of Vladivostok was center of maritime industries before ravages ofcapitalist restoration. Below: As shipbuilding and repair have halted, wreckedships spill oil and industrial waste into harbor.

its grip on Vladivostok by fostering areally nasty war between the governor ofthe Primorsky region, Evgenny Nazdratenko, and the Vladivostok mayor, ViktorCherepkov. In contrast to the singlehanded control of Moscow's mayorLuzhkov, their fight over federal andlocal budgets and business kickbacks haswreaked havoc on the region'S infrastructure. But other aspects of life in Vladivostok reminded me of Moscow. 1992-95:much is done under the table, in dark corridors of buildings owned by no oneknows who.In 1994, of the half billion dollarsof trade going through RFE ports,' Japanaccounted for 44 percent, while Chinaand South Korea each accounted for15 percent.' The trade boom continuedthrough the first half of 1998 when itreached $820 million, but by midyear ithit a sharp downturn. Even before thepivotal crisis of August 17, U.S. tradewas down 50 percent from the previousyear.' After the August ruble devaluation,imports into the RFE went down another50 percent. There is still a trickle ofimported foodstuffs and constructionmaterials, but cargos that brought 500 to1,000 containers before the Augustcrisisnow bring in 10 percent of that. Exportsof timber, seafood products and ferrousmetals continue, but at a fraction of the1994 volume. That is to say, trade at themoment is at a virtual standstill.This is evident on the Vladivostokcontainer cargo docks, where there is buta handful of ships in port. When myhosts and I stood on "Krestovaya Hill"overlooking the docks, tliey commentedthat just a few years ago there were hundreds of ships lined up outside the baywaiting their tum to offload. Here we aretalking about official trade; in 1994,according to the Russian Far East Direc-tory (AutumnlWinter 1996-97), "Unofficial statistics indicate trade is two tothree times greater" than the official figure. This includes the looting of wholefactory and military complexes. Thisblack-market looting has increased, ifanything. In the freight ports, it provideslow-paid work for many who have been

thrown out of production jobs.Potentially far more important as aregional port is the town of Zarubino, justsouth of Vladivostok where Russian territory tapers off along the Chinese borderand meets North Korea. It is slated for a$200 million investment from Japanaimed at creating a shipping corridorto northern China. China's own closestdeep-sea port, Dalian (Dairen), is to .thesouthwest, on the other side of the Koreanpeninsula, and far from the center ofChina's northern market, the city of Harbin (population 3.5 million). The finaldecision on the Japanese inve'stment isdue by March 1999, but last week the firststage was given a go-ahead. The U.S. alsohas a keen interest in the Zarubino project. American trade with northern Chinahas far outweighed its trade with the RFE.Even the used car trade has frozen forthe moment, as is evidenced by the Customs Point Parking Lot next to the SeaPassenger Terminal that is full of carswaiting to be sold. Ninety percent of allcars on the roads of Vladivostok andKhabarovsk are secondhand Japanesemodels, with steering on the right, whichare relatively cheap and high quality.One of the few remaining productiveindustrial sectors in Russia as a whole isauto manufacture; 70 percent of all carsare domestically produced. But even so,these Russian cars are inferior to andmore expensive than used foreign cars.So, many Russians had been coming toVladivostok to buy cars and ship themhome by train. Many hustlers made theirstart-up capital traveling by passengerboat to South Korea or Japan, bringingback up to 20 cars using a sailor's dutyfree privileges. These cars would sell for$3,500 to $6,000. As in Khabarovsk, theVladivostok auto parts open-air market isanother place that the ex-proletariat hasgone to ~ a k e a living as petty traders.The Chinese and KoreanMinorities

One neighborhood in Vladivostok isstill called the "Chinese Millions.",Thisisa block of buildings where Chinese hadcontinued on page 65


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Russia...(continued from page 5)lived and worked in service trades before,as one local resident casually put it, "theywere driven out." In some ways, the treatment of Chinese in Vladivostok is evenworse than the racism Caucasians andCentral Asians experience in Moscow. Atleast Moscow allows its 600,000 Azeristo live, work and trade throughout thecity. But in Vladivostok, only a smallnumber of Chinese are allowed in at all,and those seem to be segregated in certainmarket areas and housing compounds.In contrast to Khabarovsk, I rarely sawany Chinese in the rest of the city.Throughout the Primorsky Krai, Chineseworkers were rounded up in trucks formass deportation in a campaign knownas "Operation Foreigner" that officially"ended" in February 1997.There is all economic basis for this difference. In Moscow, few Russians wouldtry to take on the miserable social nicheof the vegetable traders from the Caucasus and Central Asia. In the Russian FarEast-from Magadan down to Vladivostok-ex-proletarian Russians seek survival by taking over the small stalls of theChinese. This is reminiscent of therevanchist drive by the fascistic regime ofgeneral :losef Pilsudski in Poland duringthe 1930s to have ethnic Poles take overthe social niche of the poorest Jews there.The Vladivostok "Chinese Market" wasin fact formerly predominantly Chinesebut there are now only about 200 Chinesetraders there; today Russians, who sellthe same wares from China, predominate.In a chauvinist drive against the Chinese, the Primorsky Krai Duma voted$11 million this summer to establish astring of 60 Cossack hamlets, just as intsarist times, along a stretch of thesparsely populated border with China,allowing 73,000 local Cossacks to patrolalongside conventional border guards.This is an obscene resuscitation of Rus-

WV Photorail line to Khabarovsk (and 60 kilometers from the Chinese border). In thisindustrial town the Chinese market hasup to 2,000 traders who never leave thewalled-off compound where they cookand sleep inside shipping containers,working 16 hours a day. The ruble devaluation has seriously cut into their profitmargins and many are now struggling tosell off what they have-even at a lossand return to China.The state of siege that the Chinesemarket traders feel in both Vladivostokand Khabarovsk is so heavy that they cutoff conversation with me the moment Itried to talk about anything beyond simply bargaining over prices. The goods onsale are strictly clothing and simplehousehold materials-no electronics thatwould have to be tested and covered bywarranty. The goods in city electronicstores that I saw were all Japanese andKorean.In addition to the traders, there are Chinese laborers who are often highly skilledand work for wages even lower than thosefor the notoriously undisciplined Russianconstruction workers. I caught a glimpseof some Chinese construction workers ona site in the Vladivostok city center, butthat was the only instance. A Chinese

Soviet Encyclopedia photos

Red Korean partisan unitin Soviet Far East, 1922.Alexandra Kim, KoreanBolshevik organizer inKhabarovsk. Moscownewspaper reportsformation of Chinese-Bolshevik Red Armybattalion in 1918.

sian chauvinist traditions, harkening backto the Cossacks' rape and pillage of Koreaand China in tsarist times.Illegal Chinese entry into the Primorsky Krai is minuscule, considering thevast border, and in the RFE'there are onlyabout 100,000 undocumented Chineseworkers and traders. In all of August,only 17 "iIIegals" were arrested in Primorsky. With increased patrolling, arrestsof immigrants in the southernmost Russian Pacific coastal town of Khasanhave dropped from 137 per month tothree. But the sorry mentality of the Russian petty-bourgeois and lumpenizedpopulation leads them to believe that therising tide of China's regional strengthcan be abated by sweeping back pettytraders and laborers.In Khabarovsk, the main Chinese market seemed about three times as large asVladivostok's. In Nakhodka, there is aChinese market street that is a kilometerlong. The largest Chinese market in theregion is in the city ofUssurisk, about 90kilometers outside of Vladivostok on the6

construction company has bid to build abridge over one of the coves of Vladivostok harbor. In Khabarovsk, they havebuilt whole modern office complexes.Economic links of petty trade with Chinaare stilI vital but immediately and directlyaffected by the ups and downs of Russia'sshort-term problems. Larger-scale tradesuch as timber is actually on an upswing.Russian protectionism and chauvinismmake the border far from open from theRussian side, but if trade routes to Chinathrough the RFE are opened up, the economic weight of the Chinese as well asthe Korean minority in the RFE is boundto grow.Near Zarubino south of Vladivostok,just where Russian territory along theChinese border ends at the North Koreanborder, lies the town of Khasan wherethere is a large Korean diaspora. Therewere other concentrations of Koreans (inKhabarovsk and other Siberian towns),but 95 percent of today's 112,000 ethnicKoreans in Russia are in the PrimorskyKrai. As many as 250,000 had fled the

TrukhanenkoChinese market in Vladivostok. Imprisoned Chinesenationals await deportation. Chinese and Koreantraders and workers are victims of intenSifyingRussian chauvinism.

Japanese occupation of Korea before the1917 Bolshevik Revolution and achievedlegal status in tsarist Russia. In the main,they fought on the Soviet side of the CivilWar against Japanese and other imperialist intervention forces. But in 1937 Stalindeported all 171,781 of them on chargesof "spying for Japan." As of last year,26,000 ex-Soviet Korearis had returned tothe RFE from Uzbekistan, Tajikistan andother points, from which they wereexpelled by nationalist pogroms. Russianderzhqva (strong state) chauvinists todayfear that the Korean minority will concentrate and press for regional autonomy oreven territorial unification with Korea atsome point, so Koreans are discouragedfrom returning to the RFE through racistdiscrimination.An indicator of the level of anti-Japanese paranoia is the case of environmentalist, journalist and navy captain GrigoryPasko, who was jailed by federal authorities in November 1997 in Vladivostok.He was charged with treason for allegedlyproviding Japanese media with information about the navy's dumping of radioactive waste into the Sea of Japan.As for other minorities, I heard fromone businessman that there are 30,000Moslems in Vladivostok, about 5 percentof the official population. There is greatreligious diversity in Vladivostok-a legacy of its long and complex history as aport. Protestant, Lutheran and Catholicchurches are being renovated today noless noticeably than Russian Orthodoxones. There is a mosque, a Buddhist andeven a Hare Krishna shrine, but there areno listings for Jewish synagogues orConfucian temples.Signs of P o l i t ~ c a l Life

There is a real "wild west" feelinghere, with, for example, a very high rateof contract killings in commercial disputes. In contrast to Moscow, where bigmoney is more firmly and officially inthe saddle, here one feels that the degreeof economic collapse, the thinness of thefrail upper crust, the large black-marketcomponent all contribute to an atmosphere of volatile social hatred that sooneror later is going to arc down in a bolt ofviolence against somebody.The fumes of mass discontent areexplosive, but the explosion can go moreways than one. Over the past year, Vladivostok has seen several labor actions bycoal miners, teachers, defense, oil, medical and scientific research workers, todemand wages unpaid for over a year.These included sit-ins, demonstrations inthe central city square and sensationalhighway/rail occupations. The freeze inspending on social services, in part coming out of the war between the governorand the mayor, provoked protests overthe unprecedented collapse of socialservices. These actions were dramaticand very popular but, in keeping with thenational pattern, they did not lead toindependent or ongoing movements, theywere desperate appeals that evaporated.The fumes linger and will yet ignite, butthere is no class organization or axis.In the summer, there wasa . : ~ r e d -brown" demonstration, which echoedRussia's own would-be imperial ambitions, against joint exercises with the .American navy in the port of Vladivostok. Its popularity succeeded in movingthe action some distance outside of theport, but the maneuvers did go on. At no

point, in either Vladivostok or Khabarovsk, did I ever encounter a sentimentsuch as that expressed by the 2,500 Russian residents of the South Kuril Islandswho petitioned for Japan to take overcontrol of the area along the lines ofBritish rule in Hong Kong. Just theopposite. I heard only: 'T d sooner starvethan see Russia cut apart."I was told in Vladivostok that theKPRF (the so-called Communist Partyof the Russian Federation, really abourgeois-nationalist party) has only twolocal Duma deputies who enjoy littlesupport. They appear somewhat isolated,as they are in moneyed Moscow and St.Petersburg, arid less popular than theyare in the industrial wasteland of Siberia.In contrast to Moscow, I did not see asingle opposition paper in any of thekiosks or bookstores and practicallynothing on Soviet history. Yeltsin carriedboth the Primorsky and KhabarovskKrais during both rounds of the 1996presidential elections.It is indicative of the character ofthe Federation of Independent Unions(FNPR) and the KPRF that, despite therelatively high level of spontaneous laboractions recently, neither seems to havemuch of a presence. As one Vladivostok resident told me: "People have longstopped turning to the union with anyillusions that they'll get anything out ofit." I only saw a couple of leaflets callingfor a demonstration in the city square onRevolution Day, November 7, signed bythe "Trudovaya Primorye" (Toiling Maritime) movement. More numerous werethe leaflets posted for the fascist RussianNational Unity (RNE) led by AlexanderBarkashov. I passed a hangout on a pier,which was plastered with them, andthere was a clot of young punks outsidewho looked like lumpen RNE types.The family I stayed with, which hadbeen working class but is now declasse orintegrated into the petty bourgeoisie, ispart of a politically volatile layer, movingin a reactionary direction. My hosts maderepeated anti-Chinese comments whichI of course objected to. One of the firstthings that my host said to me was, "Whatwe need is an army of the working people to wipe out all this scum," by whichhe meant not just Russia's new robber barons but certain foreigners andminorities as well. Over dinner one nighthe argued that someone like ex-generalAlexander Lebed or ex-Chilean dictatorAugusto Pinochet was what the countryneeded. I asked him if he knew thatPinochet had killed 10,000 workers. Ofcourse, he didn't know anything of it.It really sent a shiver up my spine whenmy host said that he was glad that theliberal "democrat," State Duma deputyGalina Starovoitova, was killed. "She wasthe richest woman in Russia," he said. Hedid not care who killed her or for what,and that's dangerous. But I don't want topaint them in one color; my host is veryproud of his family's heritage of fightingfor the Reds in the Civil War, for example. As with many, they might well beattracted to a communist pole in the event,of p r o l e t a r i a ~ class struggles, but thatpole does not now exist. What they needabove all is the proletarian internationalist program of Lenin and Trotsky to unitethe cause of the ex-Soviet working classwith the class struggle of the region andthe world.[TO BE CONTINUED]

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South Africa... -(continued from page 1)and enmity. This is starkly demonstratedby the spread of the AIDS epidemic fromcentral Africa through southern Africaand now to South Africa, where it is devastating the black population. At thesame time, the privileged white minoritycontinues to enjoy living standards comparable to the wealthiest enclaves inNorth America and West Europe, including the best medical care money can buy.

In 1994, open white-supremacist rulewas replaced with the dismantling ofapartheid, legalised segregation, and theelection of Nelson Mandela as thecountry's first black president. Mandela's"tripartite alliance" with the misnamedSouth African Communist Party (SACP)and the Congress of South African TradeUnions (COSATU) is a nationalist popular front in which the black working classis chained to its exploiters and oppressorsthrough the bourgeois-nationalist ANC.The pro-capitalist COSATU leadershipperiodically pays lip service to the causesof the working class, while brutallyenforcing capitalist austerity.The black and also Indian and coloured(mixed race) working class has resistedthese attacks by the white Randlords andtheir ANC/SACP front men, and SouthAfrica is now experiencing a majorupsurge of labour struggle. However,popular disillusionment with the ANCregime and its broken promises has alsotaken reactionary forms: the scapegoatingof AIDS victims and activists and thelynching of immigrants from Mozambique and other neighbouring countries,who are often blamed for transmitting theAIDS epidemic to South Africa.The post-1994 neo-apartheid setup inSouth Africa is fragile and deeply contradictory. It cannot last. The future ofSouth Africa depends critically on theconstruction of a multiracial proletarianvanguard party based on the Trotskyistprogramme and perspective of permanent revolution. In West Europe andNorth America, social and economicmodernisation was brought about by thebourgeois-democratic revolutions of the17th, 18th and 19th centuries. But progressive bourgeois revolutions are notpossible in the backward countries ofAsia, Africa and Latin America in thepresent epoch of capitalist imperialism.Social and economic modernisation aswell as national liberation can beachieved in these countries only throughproletarian revolution.A proletarian revolution in SouthAfrica, by expropriating the Randlords,would liberate resources to alleviate desperate social conditions both in thatcountry and throughout sub-Sah_aran

LeUer to the New Unity Movemenl:Two Letters 10 lila Workers Orgaf Isa on lor Socialist ActionT'-ing the ANC'$ Neo-Aparthetd NationalismLett8l to the Workers Interroal()Oal to Rebuild the Fourth InternationalGreetings to WOSA ConlCfence .a..a'''en'Ij'''IIiiiAffltan ReVO!!UtlOnarIU 1- - ~ . = Polemics on theSouth African Leftletters and articles presenting theMarxist position on key questionsof debate on the South African left.Publication of the ICl, April 1997

$1 (40 pages)

5 FEBRUARY 1999

rights. Sexual bigotry and racism in theU.S. have meant indifference to thedeadly disease, which is seen as theproblem of marginalised groups likehomosexuals and the ghetto poor. InSouth Africa today, blaming immigrants,women and gays for the spread of AIDSand other social ills can mean murder, asshown by the cases of Dlamini and theMozambicans. T4.e fate of women andthe struggle for their full emancipation istied to the proletarian class struggleagainst capitalism. For women's liberation through socialist revolution!Criminal Negligence of theANC/SACP Regime

Government fired 60,000 nurses after September 1995 wildcat in whichstrikers carried signs reading ''Away with Mandela."

Last fall, in a public relations move thegiant Glaxo-Wellcome pharmaceuticalcompany offered free three-day kits of theanti-AIDS drug AZT to health care workers who had been exposed to the HIVvirus. Yet the Department of Health criminally refused this offer, presumablybecause the government was unwillingto spend the money to continue treatment after the three-day supply was usedup. Although more than 20 percent ofpregnant women ~ r e estimated to be HIVpositive, the government also scuttled amultimillion rand pilot programme toprovide them with AZT, which has beenshown to reduce by at least 50 percent thelikelihood of a mother's passing the AIDSvirus to an unborn child. Some govern-

Africa. Among the enormous gains ofthe 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russiawere bringing literacy, basic education,modern medical care and women's equality to the backward, Turkic-speaking andtraditionally Islamic peoples of SovietCentral Asia. Ultimately, overcoming thehideous impoverishment and culturalbackwardness of sub-Saharan Africa requires an internationally planned social-ist economy based on proletarian revolutions in the advanced capitalist countriesof North America, West Europe andJapan.AIDS Epidemic inNeo-Apartheid South Africa

The AIDS crisis in South Africa iscompounded by dangerous, widely heldsuperstitions and backward social beliefs,stemming particularly from the oppression of women, and the effects ofmass poverty-prostitution, illiteracy,lack of education. The AIDS virus istransmitted through semen or other secretions during unprotected sex, throughintravenous drug use and blood transfusions, from a pregnant woman to afetus, or through breast milk to a baby.Though there is no cure at present, thespread of the disease could be reducedthrough condom use, the distribution ofsterile needles for drug users, drug therapies for pregnant women and providinginfant formula. Because good medicalcare and especially drug therapies areextremely expensive, AIDS has increas-.ingly become a disease oj poverty aroundthe globe, from Southeast Asia to theblack ghettos of the U.S. The AIDS pandemic in southern Africa is so acute thatthe rate of new infections is over tentimes that of West Europe and the U.S.Most medical insurers refuse HIV treatment, which costs from 1,500 rand. (roughly U.S. $250) to 4,500 rand perday, while the average black llliner earns

Hate Trotskyism,Hate the Spartacists No.1A Reply to the Workers InternationalVanguard leaguePublication of Spartacist SouthAfrica, July 1998$2 (36 pages)

700 rand a month.On the streets of Durban, purveyorsof muthi ( t r ~ d i t i o n a l medicines) offeringmystery powders and ground bones ascures for the ravages of AIDS are foundside by side with the advanced technology and technique necessary to operatethe world's ninth most-active industrialport. Inyangas (traditional healers) aremore often than not called upon to"throw the bones" to diagnose the disease. Worse still, "some healers endup sucking the blood from the infected

Mendel/MatrixVolunteer instructs South African high-school students on AIDS prevention.Over 22.5 mill ion in sub-Saharan Africa are already infected with HIV.person" (The Star [Johannesburg], 1December 1998). Some AIDS sufferersare led to believe that they are bewitchedby a girlfriend or wife.In K w a Z u l u ~ N a t a l and "throughoutSouth Africa, immigrants from Mozambique and elsewhere "north of the Limpopo" are increasingly being used asscapegoats for the vast spread of AIDS.In early January in Tembisa, northeast ofJohannesburg, six Mozambicans were"necklaced"-burned alive-by a 400-strong "street committee" mob run by theANC, as a direct consequence of the government campaign of blaming immigrants for escalating crime born of desperate poverty. Spartacist South Africademands: full citizenship rights for allimmigrants!With elections impending after fouryears in power, ANC deputy president Thabo Mbeki took pains to kiss HIVpositive babies at AIDS Day photo-ops,hypocritically donned red ribbons andpontificated on the "African renaissance."Mbeki launched an 80 million rand"awareness" campaign, which has as itsmain theme a call on youth to refrainfrom sex until marriage. This "family values" crusade is part and parcel of theANC campaign for "moral renewal,"which is meant to camouflage theregime's manifest inability to deliver realimprovements for the masses. Bourgeoisnationalist politicians, the church andother institutions push the lie that sexoutside marriage is "dangerous" and"immoral" in order to shore up the institution of the family, the key prop ofwomen's oppression under capitalism.In the advanced capitalist countries,those with HIV are stigmatised and oftendenied care or even simple democratic

ment officials obscenely argued that "i fthe baby does not have HIV, it will live,and the mother will die of AIDS. Whowill look after the orphans?" (SundayTimes [Johannesurg], 24 January).There is no way that the mass of SouthAfrican blacks infected with HIV canafford the expensive, life-prolonging drugtreatments called "AIDS cocktails." Buteven the effective use of condoms to prevent infection, literally a matter of lifeand death, is blocked by the negligence ofthe South African regime. The government imports large quantities of condomsfrom East Asian factories, which are supposedly inspected for quality control bySouth African medical officials. Yet alarge fraction of these condoms turn outto be old, inferior or otherwise defective,splitting apart when used. Even theJohannesburg correspondent for the NewYork Times wrote, "Government officialswere using a procurement system thatalmost invited manufacturers to ship theircastoffs here" (27 December 1998).While doing little to prevent the spreadof AIDS, the ANC-Ied government isusing this terrible medical tragedy to promote reactionary social values. ThusKwaZulu-Natal health minister ZweliMkhize warned parents and communities"not to exploit young women for labour,"claiming women are "vulnerable to sexualabuse" in industry-an order for womento stay jobless, at home and pregnant.The left face of the MandelalMbekiregime' is provided by the reformist South African Communist Partywhich also exercises leadership overthe COSATU union federation. LinkingAIDS to the left's "globalisation" shibboleth, the SACP wrote: "The lack ofcontinued on page 8

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Balkans...(continued from page 1)"Desert Fox" December bombing. TheWashington Post (17 January) specified:"The heart of the Desert Fox list (49 ofthe 100 targets) is the Iraqi regime itself:a half-dozen palace strongholds and theirsupporting cast of secret police, guardand transport organizations." As withClinton's terror bombing of Sudan andAfghanistan last August, the continueddeath and devastation being inflicted onIraq-and the threats of renewed bombing against the Serbs-underline thatimperialism is not merely a "policy" carried out by a particular wing of the bourgeoisie. Imperialism is, in the words ofBolshevik leader V. I. Lenin, the "higheststage of capitalism," a rapacious systembased on the exploitation and oppressionof the workers and semicolonial masses.Since the counterrevolutionary destruction of the Soviet Union in 1991-92,the rulers of U.S. imperialism feel theyhave a free hand to carry out invasions orlaunch terror-bombing campaigns a:gainstsemicolonial countries from Haiti toSomalia to Iraq. These repeated acts ofterror by U.S. imperialism are aimed atenforcing the subjugation of the semicolonial peoples of the world and demonstrating' to its capi talist rivals that theAmerican bourgeoisie remains top dog.From the nuclear incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 to the long,losing war against the heroic Vietnamesepeople, U.S. imperialism is the mainforce of oppression in the world. Thissystem cannot be "reformed'? or pressured into becoming more "humane" butmust be overthrown through socialistrevolution. The Spartacist League fightsto forge an internationalist proletarianvanguard party modeled on Lenin'sBolshevik party, which led the workers -to power in the Russian Revolution ofOctober 1917.Imperialist Hypocrisy andMilitary Terror

As usual, the imperialists couchtheir threats of military terror against theSerbs in the name of "humanitarian" concerns-in this instance, the murderousoppression of Kosovo's Albanian majority by Milosevic's security forces, which

South Africa ...(continued from page 7)autonomy that accompanies poveny isa major contributor to the spread ofHIV AIDS" and blames policies "advocated by the World Bank/IMF" (Umse-benzi, NovemberlDecember'1998). TheSACP has some nerve! It's these socialdemocratic ex-Stalinists who help administer the starvation, poverty and death ofcapitalist rule in South Africa.The SACP/COSATU bureaucrats' ant ilabour, anti-woman, anti-health-care programme was underscored when theybranded one of the earliest labour struggles against the regime, the 1995 nursesstrike, "counterrevolutionary." The strikeof these women workers, who are onthe front lines of the fight for decenthealth care, was smashed by the ANC/SACP/COSATU alliance. In the aftermath, 6,000 nurses were dismissed bythe Eastern Cape provincial governmentheaded by then SACP national chairmanRaymond Mhlaba.The black South African working classcontinues to defy and challenge the masters of t r ~ Jo'burg stock exchange, theirANC junior partners and SACP henchmen. Last year, three million workingdays were lost by strikes in transport,auto, chemical, garment and other industries-the highest level of strike activitysince Mandela became president. Whatis needed is a revolutionary party whichcan channel the raw militancy of theworking class, and its growing disillusionment with the ANC/SACP regime,into a struggle against the neo-apartheid8

AFPIraqi victims of U.S. missile attack near Basra in January.are trying to crush a secessionist insurgency by the Kosovo Liberation Army(UCK). But this is the most abject cynicism. No less than their West Europeancounterparts, the U.S. rulers are categorically opposed to self-determination forKosovo's Albanian population becausethey fear that further break-up of the Balkan states along national lines couldignite a conflagration throughout thewhole region. This is fully understood inBelgrade. As Serbian government officials indicated to the New York Times(31 January), "Kosovo is a political andfinancial drain for Belgrade, and ifNATO is willing to take responsibility forrestraining the rebels and keeping Kosovofrom independence for three years, Mr.Milosevic may see that as an advantage."I f so, it is a highly dangerous gambit. TheU.S. is fully prepared to unleash untolddestruction on any semicolonial countrywhose leaders are not 100 percent undertheir thumb, as the Iraqi people can attest.When the U.S. threatened air strikesagainst Serbia last summer, we wrote:"We defend the right of the Albanianpopulated areas of Kosovo to selfdeter mination-tha t is, the right to secedefrom the Serb-chauvinist regime in Belgrade. However, should the imperialistsstage a military intervention over Kosovo,

capitalist system. This requires combating reactionary prejudices such as hostility to immigrants and AIDS victimswhich pervade large sections of the proletariat. As Lenin insisted, a revolutionary party must be a tribune of the people,fighting for the democratic rights andinterests of all the oppressed.AIDS and theSouth African Left

Standing to the left of the ANC/SACPregime are a number of groups identifiedwith or claiming to be in the Trotskyisttradition which act as left tails of thenationalist popular front. The Interna-. tional Socialist Movement (ISM), a splitfrom the tendency- led by Tony Cliff' sBritish Socialist Workers Party, recentlywrote in an article titled "Socialists andthe AIDS Epidemic": "Obvious steps tocounter this problem would be to launchan international campaign featuring presidents, general secretaries, archbishopsand even the Pope talking openly aboutsex and sexual practices; it would involvethe mass, free distribution of condoms aswell as ensuring that drug addicts wouldhave access to clean needles" (Revolu-tionary Socialist, New Year 1999). Onemight rightly wonder what world the ISMinhabits thinking that"the religious and. political leaders of capitalist reaction areabout to hand out condoms and give drug _users clean needles. But these reformistshave long tailed such forces, from cheering counterrevolutionary Solidarnosc inPoland to supporting the woman-hating,anti-Soviet mujahedin in Afghanistan.Meanwhile, the centrist Workers International Vanguard League (WIVL) has

the issue of self-determination wouldbe subordinated to our military defenseof Serbia against U.S.INATO forces"(WV No. 693, 3 July 1998). This is precisely what has come to pass. Today, tocall for self-determination for the KosovarAlbanians can only be a cover for supportto imperialist intervention.We also defend the right of the Serbianminority to live in Kosovo on the basisof full equality. In contrast, liberals andthe reformist left, who divide the worldinto "progressive" and "reactionary" peoples, dismiss with a wave of the hand therights of the Serbs. In fact, the Serbianminority in Croatia has already beenalmost enti'rely driven out through "ethnic cleansing" there. The Serbs inKosovo, like the Jews of pre-World War IIPoland, make up some 10 percent of thepopulation. With the Albanian Kosovarsabout to become the pawns of the imperialist occupation force, the stage is set forreversing the terms of oppression.The Kosovo "peace" process beingbrokered by Washington is modeled onthe NATO-imposed Dayton accords,signed following imperialist air strikesagainst Bosnian Serbs in the summer of1995 and policed by an imperialist occupation force in Bosnia. As we warned atthe time: "The U.S.-imposed pact and

issued a 1999. election manifesto whichbarely mentions health care and completely omits any mention of AIDS andwomen! While the WIVL likes to sound"left" compared to the reformists andnationalists, they similarly capitulate tothe pervasive social backwardness inthis society and reject the fight tobreak the working class from bourgeoisnationalism, including by t ~ i l i n g thereactionary communalist vigilantes ofPeople Against Gangsterism and Drugs(see the Spartacist South Africa pamphlet Hate Trotskyism, Hate the Sparta-cists No.1).The killing of Dlamini and the recentanti-immigrant lynchings are symptomatic of an escalation of ethnic/tribalisthostilities. Only the forging of a revolutionary proletarian party that fights fora black-centred workers government toexpropriate the Randlords and all of

NATO occupation will produce yet morebloodshed, while further hardeningnationalist hatreds among the South Slavpeoples" (WV No. 634, I December1995). Today, with hardline Serbiannationalists viscerally opposed to autonomy for the Albanian Kosovars and theUCK equally opposed to any solutionshort of independence, imperialist intervention can only lay the basis for furtherbloodshed.The machinations in the Balkans are aharbinger of escalating interimperialistrivalries, whose logic ultimately pointstoward a nuclear third world war. Despitethe conjunctural show of unity among theWestern powers, all are pursuing theirown interests in the region. Britain andFrance were the main big-power allies ofSerbia against Germany in both worldwars and are trying to restore influence inthe region. Bonn's drive to restore its preWorld War I sphere of influence in thenorthern Balkans is aimed at the region'swealth of minerals which have strategicimportance to German industry. As arecent study pointed out, Kosovo "contains the greatest concentration of mineral wealth in the whole of south-easternEurope." During Hitler's occupation ofYugoslavia, Kosovo's mines producedmassive amounts of lead, zinc, nickel andother strategic minerals for the ThirdReich's war industries (Noel Malcolm,Kosovo: A Short History [1998]).While the U.S. has no such strategicstake in the Balkans, it seeks to wieldthe military power of NATO, which itdominates, as a means of furtheringWashington's global interests. With interimperialist rivalry incrt;:asingly comingto the fore following the destruction ofthe Soviet Union, the U.S. fears thatthe European powers may conduct independent military operations, bypassingNATO. TQday, there are more than 25,000U.S.-commanded troops under UN auspices stationed in Croatia and Bosnia.Two thousand more soldiers occupy Macedonia, including 350 Americans whohelp police the border with Kosovo.Washington also worries that the conflict in Kosovo could spread to Macedonia, where ethnic Albanians constituteover 25 percent of the population. Thebreakup of Macedonia could well triggera war involving Albania as well as Bulgaria and Greece, which both have claims

Mozambicansawaitingdeportation inSouth Africanjail. ANCregime'spolicies fuelviolent attackson immigrantswho are blamedfor AIDS andother social ills

the parasitic capitalists can cut throughthe hatreds born of superexploitationand the divide-and-rule policies of thebourgeois masters. A victorious proletarian revolution in South Africa would laythe basis for smashing imperialist domination throughout sub-Saharan Africa.At the same time, it would immediatelyface the military might of world imperialism, especially the U.S. This underscoresthe burning urgency ofa revolutionaryinternationalist programme and perspective. Spartacist South Africa fights fornew October Revolutions as the precondition for an egalitarian socialist society which will marshal the world'sresources in eradicating hunger andpoverty and advancing the struggleagainst deadly disease. For a LeninistTrotskyist workers partx! Reforge theFourth International, world party ofsocialist revolution!.

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on Macedonia. The Balkan Wars of 1912-_13, which were mainly fought to determine which Balkan states would get Macedonia and Kosovo as the OttomanEmpire fell apart, were the prelude to theFirst World War.

this plan would significantly augment therepressive powers of the capitalist state.The plan met with immediate oppositionfrom a range of civil libertarians. Inresponse, one Pentagon official claimedthat the measure would avoid such "overreactions" as the locking up of some120,000 Japanese Americans in concentration camps during World War II. Yetconcentration camps have been an integral part of the repressive apparatus inthe U.S. as elsewhere, especially duringwar time.

The endless cycle of ethnic slaughterin the Balkans underscores the fact that ademocratic resolution of the conflictingnational claims in that region can only beachieved under the rule of the proletariat,the only class without an interest in pursuing and exacerbating national claims.This was demonstrated by the 1917 Russian Revolution which laid the basis forthe numerous nationalities which hadbeen under the boot of the tsarist empireto achieve self-determination. The Bolshevik Revolution opened the road togenuine national equality by expropriating the capitalists and landlords andfighting to extend proletarian powerinternationally.

WV PhotoDecember 1995 Spartacist demonstration outside UN headquarters in NewYork City protests imperialist occupation of Bosnia.

During and immediately after WmldWar I, thousands of German Americans, antiwar socialists and anarchistswere rounded up and imprisoned, whileforeign-born radicals were deported.Currently empowered to carry out suchmass roundups of "undesirables" is theFederal Emergency Management Agency(FEMA). Originally charged with overseeing disaster relief, FEMA was transformed by Republican president Reaganinto an apparatus to put down urbaninsurrection. A top-secret master plan,Rex 84, called for the detention of up to100,000 political dissidents and immigrants in several concentration camps inthe event of "social unrest."

Left Face of ImperialistWarmongeringIt is striking that the most virulent antiSerb warmongering in the Western imperialist countries often comes not from theright wing of the political spectrum butfrom liberals, social democrats and eventhe "far left." In the U.S., rad-lib nota

bles like Susan Sontag and ChristopherHitchens were. prominent in callingfor bombing Serbian forces in Bosnia,while the liberal Nation (30 March1998) has called for a "U.S. military reaction" against the Serbs in Kosovo. InEurope, fake-Trotskyist groups like CliffSlaughter's Movement for Socialism inBritain and the West European-centeredUnited Secretariat (USec), tailing themass social-democratic parties, call forWestern governments to act against Serbian "aggression."The left's support for bloody imperialist terror cloaked in "humanitarian" garbgoes back to the 1991 Persian Gulf Waragainst Iraq. At that time, the SpartacistLeague, U.S. section of the InternationalCommunist League, called for defeat ofthe U.S.-led onslaught and defense ofIraq while appealing to the Iraqi proletariat to lead the Kurds and otheroppressed peoples in the overthrow ofthe despot Saddam Hussein. But manyliberals and leftists, echoing the imperialist hue and cry over "poor littleKuwait," donned yellow ribbons in solidarity with the imperialist troops andbacked the starvation blockade of Iraq asa "peaceful alternative" to bombing.By the time it came to "poor little Bosnia" a couple of years later, many of thesetypes were among the most bellicoseadvocates of imperialist intervention. The

most active agency on the left promotingimperialist military intervention againstthe Bosnian Serbs was the "Workers Aid". campaign, dominated by the Slaughterites and the USec. Under the guise of providing humanitarian aid for the "multiethnic" working class in Bosnia, WorkersAid was in reality a pressure group on theimperialists to attack the Serbian forcesbesieging the cities controlled by theMuslim regime.The centrist Workers Power (WP)group in Britain, one of the boosters ofthe "Workers Aid for Bosnia" campaign,scandalously refused to defend the Serbsin the face of imperialist attack. In a 5September 1995 statement, WP declaredthat "each side's strategic goals are reactionary," repudiating the Leninist positionof military defense of small nations andsemicolonial peoples against imperialist aggression. Marxists understand thatimperialism is not a question of one oranother "strategic. goal" but a system ofdomination over the vast masses of theworld's people by a handful of powerfulcapitalist classes.That WP, the USec et al. genuflectbefore the imperialists' "democratic" pretensions harks back to their support tothe Cold War campaign against theSoviet Union. As Trotskyists, the ICLstood for unconditional military defenseof the USSR, a degenerated workers state,and the deformed workers states of EastEurope against capitalist counterrevolution and for proletarian political revolution against the Stalinist bureaucracies.Groups like WP and the USec, on theother hand, bought into the imperialists'drive to restore capitalism in the name ofabstract "democracy," supporting Polish

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BAY AREASaturday, February 20, 6:30 p.m.Place to be announcedFor more information: (510) 839-0851 or(415) 777-9367

LOS ANGELESSaturday, February 27, 4 p.m.Hollywood United Methodist Church6817 Franklin Ave.For more information: (213) 380-8239

. 1 ! ; , ( ) e a l l d ' 9 ' a ~ " I J $ ~ g ~ ~ g a t l o ' ! c l t i : H ; : ( I ) ' : ! ! i k Tbe .Class,:StruggI8 R i j ~ d . I O 8 . l a c k , : L ' a ' r a i I Q .. 'i'Saturday, February 20, 7 p.m_University of ChicagoReynolds Club, South Lounge

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CHICAGOFor more information: (312) 454-4930

I l J a ~ e ~ S e l : @ I I ~ . ~ " ~ . : ' I I . ~ a ) J i ~ a ~ i s t 4 m i t r i Q @ ; Thursday, February 18, 7:30 p.m.New York University School of LawVanderbilt Hall, Room 214

NEW YORK CITYFor more information: (212) 267-1025

All forums will include an update on thefight to free Mumia Abu-Jamal.5 FEBRUARY 1999

Solidarnosc, the fake "union" backed bythe Pope, the CIA and Western bankers,and hailing the forces on Yeltsin's barricades of counterrevolution. From Yugoslavia to the former Soviet Union, capitalist counterrevolution has meant massprivation, continual nationalist bloodletting and socia! disintegration. Howeverlimited their influence, those "leftists"who championed the forces of capitalistrestoration bear their share of responsibility for these horrors.. mperialist War Moves Abroad,Escalating Repression at Home

The imperialist military intervention inthe Balkans and the Near East is carriedout by the same racist American rulingclass that has ruthlessly driven down theliving standards of working people in theU.S., that brutally oppresses blacks, Hispanics and immigrants, that has condemned millions to homelessness andstarvation through the axing of welfareand other social services. Seeking to contain the explosive contradictions betweena handful of filthy rich and those at thebottom, the parties of capital-Democrats and Republicans-join in ratchetingup capitalist repression. This has translated into an explosion of the prison population, mounting racist cop terror in theghettos and barrios, and the grislyspeedup on death row.Most recently, in an interview with theNew York Times (22 January), Clintonrevealed a Pentagon proposal to appointa high-level military commander fo rdefense of the continental U.S. against"terrorists" using chemical or, biologicalweapons. Veiled as a means ofeijsuringtransport of medical supplies and such,

I -Black History lI ~ ! ~ . ~ ~ ~ I

Liberals have opposed Clinton's proposal on the basis of the Posse Comitatuslaw, which bars the U.S. military fromengaging in domestic police activity.But this law, enacted in 1878 to preventUnion soldiers from enforcing the right ofblacks to vote in the post-Civil WarSouth, has repeatedly been ignored by thegovernment. The militarization of theU.S.-Mexico border, which resulted inthe Marines gunning down a Hispanicyouth in Texas two years ago, was madepossible by an exception to the PosseComitatus law allowing troops to be usedin the racist "war on drugs." And according to the New York Times (28 January), a"little-noticed" bill passed by Congresssome years back already "gives the Pentagon power to step in domestically in theevent of chemical and germ attacks."As Marxists in the belly of the imperialist beast, we seek to mobilize the multiracial proletariat against the rapacious, bloodsoaked capitalist rulers.This requires a political struggle insidethe labor movement against the classcollaborationist AFL-CIO bureaucracy,which chains workers to the capitalistDemocratic Party and embraces the aimsof the imperialist rulers. In opposition tothe Democratic and Republican partiesof war and racism, we fight to build arevolutionary workers party as the essential instrument in the struggle for socialistrevolution to sweep away this system ofexploitation and imperialist oppression

Order copies of Black History and ihe Class StruggleNo.2 $.75 (32 pages); No.5 $1 (32 pages); No.12 $1 (48 pages); No.15 $1 (48 pages)Make checks payable/mail to: Spartacist Pub. Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 101169


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BOstOD .(continued from page 12)a state-paid living stipend for all!Our program is revolutionary integrationism-the struggle to smash the colorline once and for all through the assimilation of black people into an egalitariansocialist society.Boston: Hardcore Segregationin the "Deep North"

In Boston, where racist mobs attackedblack schoolchildren during the fight toimplement school busing in the 1970s,the white bourgeois rulers today feel confident that they can drop even the pretense of school integration and take backthe few crumbs thrown to the city'sbesieged minority schoolchildren. InNovember, the federal First Circuit Courtof Appeals declared tQe affirmative actionadmissions policy of prestigious BostonLatin High School unconstitutional.Boston Latin is one of three "examination" schools-virtually the only decentpublic schools in Boston-which hadreserved a certain number of seats forminority students. Long seen as a gateway to success, Boston Latin has beenthe target of choice in a series of attacksagainst school integration in the last fewyears. In the 1995 McLaughlin case, awhite yuppie lawyer successfully suedthe city to get his daughter into theschool, contravening the quota system.Pending a Supreme Court appeal of theFirst Circuit Court ruling, the BostonSchool Committee has. announced that"all students invited to the city's threeexam schools for next September willbe admitted strictly on merit, withoutconsidering race" (Boston Globe, 3December 1998). Two months after theruling, Mayor Thomas M. Meninopledged to construct five "neighborhoodschools"-long the code word for schoolsegregation.Whatever its pretensions to academic

/;/}/'\.

Forman/Boston Herald Americanbusing riots. Joining him is Councilor atLarge Albert L. "Dapper" O'Neil, wholauds the Council of Conservative Citizens-a Southern group that is the directheir to the Klan-infested White CitizensCouncils which fought against schooldesegregation in the 1950s-as "a goodgroup" (Boston Globe, 15 January).To this day, racist politicians andnewspaper pundits heap scorn on thebusing program and the judge whoordered it, Arthur Garrity Jr. Menino'scaB for neighborhood schools coincided

WVPhoto1,500 turned out for integrated united-front protest initiated by the PartisanDefense Committee against Klansman David Duke in Boston, 1991. SYCs callfor youth to ally with labor in fight against racist terror.liberalism, Boston has always been a hubof hardcore urban segregation and nastyDeep North racism. For the past 25years, the political leadership of the cityhas been a veritable rogues' gallery ofthose who built their careers' on the racistmobilizations against busing. Late CityCouncil president Louise Day Hicks,who threw herself in front of buses carrying black' schoolchildren, rode herdemagoguery into a Congressional seat.Raymond Flynn, cofounder of ROAR("Restore Our Alienated Rights"), thereactionary umbrella group that organized the racist anti-busing mobs, went onto become the city's "liberal" mayor andthen Clinton's ambassadorto the Vatican.Carrying on the fight for segregation isJames M. Kelly, who has just been reelected Boston City Council presidentfor the sixth time. Kelly began his careeras leader of the South Boston Information Center, the front for the fascisticSouth Boston Marshals-paramilitarygangs that showered rocks on buses ofblack schoolchildren during the anti-10

with Garrity's donation of his papersdocumenting the implementation of busing to a local university. This touched offa flurry. of anti-Garrity and anti-busingtirades in the press, with right-wingGlobe columnist Jeff Jacoby denouncingGarrity as "the Most Hated Bostonian"and "a megalomaniac, intoxicated withhis own power and blinded by selfimportance" (Boston Globe, 4 January).Vehemently opposing t ~ e desegregation program, even in its r e ~ e n t vestigialforms, many white parents nave sent theirchildren to either private or parochialschools. This has given the Boston publiceducation system a rather peculiar character considering the racial demographicsof the city. While Boston is almost 53 percent white according to the 1990 census,the school system is now 49 percentblack, 26 percent Hispanic, and 9 percentAsian (Boston Globe, 1 December 1998).Ironically, South Boston High School, acenter of the a n t i ~ b u s i n g racists duringthe 1970s, is now largely black. But parochial schools cost money, and racists

WVPhoto

Boston:Spartacistcontingent at1974demonstrationcalls forlabor/blackdefense of blackschoolchildren.RaCist antibusing mobattacks blacksin the streets,1976.

who would never send their kids to overwhelmingly minority schools wouldlike to get "their schools" back. Hence,the calls for a return to "neighborhoodschools."The Battle Over Busingin Boston

The defeat of busing in Boston, aquintessential Democratic Party stronghold, foreshadowed its defeat nationwide. During the first year of the plan,the only neighborhoods affected werepoor, black Roxbury and poor, heavilyIrish Catholic South Boston. When a federal court implemented a limited busingplan to desegregate Boston's schools in1974, it was immediately met with awhite boycott of South Boston HighSchool which rapidly escalated into citywide racist mobilizations and lynch mobterror. Frenzied mobs roamed the streetsintimidating ~ n d assaulting blacks,shooting at black housing projects andfirebombing the NAACP headquarters.The Spartacist League and SpartacusYouth League immediately mobilized indefense of busing, despite the severe limitations and bureaucratic implementationof the desegregation plan. The busingprogram was consciously designed toprovoke racial polarization by busingblack children from deteriorating innercity black schools to decrepit inner-citywhite schools-the "Brahmin bourgeoisie" made sure that no black kids wouldbe bused to swanky suburban schools.Nevertheless, busing was a step againstthe rigid segregation of the schools. Weraised the call, "Implement the Busing

Plan! Extend Busing into the Suburbs!Integrated Quality Education for All!"and agitated for the key integratedunions-including teachers, bus driversand meatpackers-to organize laborlblackdefense of black schoolchildren. Wedeclared:"A victory for the racists would representan enormous defeat for the oppressed.black masses in this country. The busingof schoolchildren, which represents astep toward ensuring black people'sdemocratic right of equal access to publiceducational facilities, mut be implemented this fall and, moreover, extendedthroughout Boston and into the suburbs."The development of an organized labor/black defense force to intimidate anddemoralize the racist vigilantes, to ensurethe implementation of busing, to protectblack people and especially the schoolchildren threatened with racist attacks, tochannel the just rage of black youth awayfrom random retaliation into an effective,organized counteroffensive, this remainsthe urgent need of the hour!"

- Young Spartacus No. 35,September 1975Of the many leftist groups in Boston atthe time, the SUSYL was unique in ourperspective of labor-centered defense ofbusing. Some "leftists" opposed busingoutright, most outrageously the MaoistRevolutionary Union (RU), forebears ofthe Revoilltionary Communist Party.Catering to backward white workers, theRU paper Revolution (October 1974)capitulated to the racist mobs, declaring:"People Must Unite to Smash BostonBusing Plan"! The International Socialists (I.S.), predecessors of today's International Socialist Organization, also capitulated to white racist backlash on thebusing question while claiming to supportthe right of black children to attend anyschool they wanted. The I.S. railedagainst "two-way" busing because whitekids might be sent to ghetto schools,while its paper Workers Power (10 November 1972) denounced "the 'pro' -busingand 'anti ' -busing forces, both of whomuse racism to further their own ends."The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) initially opposed busing out of its appetite totail black nationalists who sought "community control" of the schools, i.e., segregated ghetto schools presided overby black administrators. However, whenpro-busing protests swelled, the SWPreversed itself. Joining with liberalslike the NAACP, the SWP preached reliance on the forces of the capitalist stateto stop the racist mobs, calling for "federal troops to Boston" and denouncingour call for labor/black defense as"unrealistic "In their appeal to the armed forces ofracist American capitalism, the.SWP consciously rejected the basic Marxist understanding that the capitalist state is thedefender of the bourgeois order. Thepolice, army and state bureaucracy cannot be pressured to serve the interests ofthe exploited and oppressed. The capitalist state machinery must be smashedthrough a socialist revolution placing themultiracial working class in power. Thereformist SWP promoted the illusion thatthe racist capitalist government, which in1973 pulled its troops out of its dirty, losing war against the Vietnamese workers

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

Boston lo s Angeles OaklandBox 390840, Central Sta.Cambridge, MA 02139(617) 666-9453ChicagoBox 6441, Main POChicago, IL 60680(312) 454-4930

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

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

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

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

WORKERS VANGUARD


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Mumia...(continued from page 12)force notorious for vIctImIzmg blackmotorists, which was brought home inthe hail of bullets fired into a van carrying black and Hispanic college studentslast April. New Jersey governor ChristineWhitman, who has placed a bounty onthe head of exiled former Black PantherAssata Shakur, is calling for people todemand refunds for their tickets.The fight to free Mumia Abu-Jamal isurgently posed! Th

Workers Vanguard No 706 - 05 February 1999

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