Workers Vanguard No 727 - 14 January 2000

7/29/2019 Workers Vanguard No 727 - 14 January 2000

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50eNo. 727 .... 14 January 2000

F u l i C i t i z e n s h i ~ Rights for AU Immigrants!Down WilhU.S. Rulers'"Terrorism" Scare!

American imperialism's rulersseized upon the approach of NewYear's Day, 2000 to launch a concerted assault on the immigrantpopulation and on the rights ofeveryone. Conjuring up a shadowyinternational "terrorist" conspiracy,the State Department for monthswarned of threatened attacks onAmericans overseas, on millennium celebrations, on computersystems. U.S. client states from"Pakistan to Jordan detained andarrested scores of alleged t e r r o r ~ ists. From New York City to NewOrleans to Los Angeles, armiesof cops were mobilized on NewYear's Eve, targeting anyone who"fit the profile," particularly immigrants and travelers from the NearEast and North Africa.The terrorism-mongering campaign took off following the December 14 arrest of Ahmed Ressam. An Algerian national living inCanada, Ressam was seized byU.S. customs agents as he tried toenter Port Angeles, Washington byferry in a car -allegedly packedwith explosives and timing devices.U.S. officials immediately claimed

complete with high-tech bomb disposal trucks and rooftop surveillance equipment. Trucks going intoManhattan were checked by bombsniffing dogs. As manholes werewelded shut, trashcans removedand mailboxes sealed, Midtownwas turned into an armed camp.Workers going to their jobs had toshow special IDs.Seizing on the Ressam incidentand the arrest of two people supposedly linked to him who weretrying to cross into Vermont, aU.S. official ranted, "We are seeing terrorists using Canada as astaging area" (Toronto Globe andMail, 21 December 1999). In Montreal, home to more than 15,000Algerians, cops rounded up dozens of Arab residents. In a coordinated sweep on December 30,dozens more were hauled off byU.S. and Canadian police in citiesfrom Vancouver to New York. OneBrooklyn resident victimized inthis racist dragnet said bitterly,"This is a police state. Why arethey blaming Muslims?"

that he was linked to the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA).Washington itself helped arm andtrain the GIA forces who joinedAPManufactured "terrorism" hysteria served as pretext last month for witc;hhunt against Arabimmigrants and massive cop mobilizations in cities around the country, including NewOrleans (above).

Alongside the anti-Arab witchhunt, the U.S. and Canadian governments carried out mass arrestsof impoverished immigrants fromAsia and the Caribbean. On NewYear's Day, the U.S. Coast Guardseized over400 Haitians andhe CIA-backed mujahedin cutthroats fighting against the Soviet Armyand the left-nationalist regime in Afghanistan in the 1980s.The capitalist media tried to churn upanti-terrorist hysteria with screafuingheadlines like "EverywQere at Risk"

(New York Post, 20 December 1999) and"The Terror Countdown" (Time, 27December 1999): In New York City,Republican mayor Giuliani, fresh fromjoining with Democratic state attorneyge!1eral Eliot Spitzer in union-busting

court injunctions and police-state measures against a threatened transit workersstrike last month, imposed a virtual stateof siege in various areas of the city.Nearly all of the NYPD's 40,000 copswere placed on duty for New Year's Eve;

Amadou Diallo-We Will Not Forget!Sharpton/Democrats Seek to Defuse ~ n g e r Over Cop Terror

The death-squad-style cop executionof young black African AmadoiJ Dialloin a hail of 41 bullets in the Bronx nearlya year ago sparked the most sustainedlevel of social protest New York Cityhad seen in years. Hundreds, sometimes

7 25274 t 0 30 7rthousands, demonstrated almost daily toexpress their fury against the indignity,humiliation and raw terror that they aresubjected to every day by the cops. Fearful that this anger could ignite a socialexplosion, Al Sharpton and other blackDemocrats scrambled to get out in frontof the protests in a desperate bid to confrne them to electoral pressure politics,to push illusions in the "justice" of thecapitalist courts and above all to preservethe "integrity" of the police. Sharptonhas cynically boasted how the protests

were brought to a halt when the fourNYPD Street Crime Unit killers wereindicted for Diallo's murder.Now the December 16 court decisionmoving the cops' trial from the largelyblack and Hispanic Bronx to 85-percentwhite Albany in order to ensure the killercops go free threatens to uncork the.seething outrage the Democrats workedso hard to contain. Expressing the consummate contempt of the racist rulingclass for the victims of its police thugs,the court cited "a tidal wave of prejudi-

Dominicans who were packed into afreighter that ran aground off the Floridacoast, while dozens of Chinese immigrants have since been arrested in LosAngeles and Vancouver after spendingcontinued on page 8

cial publicity" and ruled that "this casecannot be tried ih Bronx County or anywhere else in the city of New York, without an atmosphere in which jurors wouldbe under enormous pressure to reach theverdict demanded by public opinion."In his New York Times (27 December)column, "A W h i t e w a ~ h in Albany," BobHerbert observed: 'The reality is.this: Anall-white panel of five judges, one ofwhom is a crony of the lawyer for one ofthe accused cops, took the case out of thecontinued on page 9


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LettersOn the Origins of Women's Oppression in the development of a more advancedtechnology. In the early, biologicallybased division of labor between men andwomen in the hunter-gatherer s o c i e t i e ~ , women, as the gatherers, were likely tohave been key to the discovery that onecan cultivate plants, as well as to theinvention of other arts like weaving."- 13 December 1999Dear Comrades, hold was communa l and the division oflabor between the sexes reciprocal; theeconomy did not il1volve the dependency

of the wife and children on the husband.The labor of both sexes was necessary tolivelihood.

"For Women's Liberation ThroughSocialist Revolution!" (Workers Van-guard No. 725, 10 December 1999)addresses the roots of the oppression ofwomen in the first division of society intoclasses. This insight, fundamental to amateria list world view, is anathema toboth the feminists, who claim that the"battle of the sexes" is eternal, and toanti-woman bigots, who hail the subordination of women as blessed by god andtradition. fo r us Marxists, in contrast, theoppression of women is a social institution that rests on private property, ahuman invention as subject to change asany other.

This primitive social equality wasoverthrown when inventions such as agriculture made possible the social surpluswhich provoked the division of societyinto classes; a ruling, leisured class couldlive off the labor of others. With classescame the development of the institutionof the monogamous family and patrilineal descent. The biological fact of childbeari.ng and child rearing was henceforthtied to the social oppression of women.Society split into antagonistic classes and .the ruling, or property-owning, class governed society through the armed state. Asa means of the consolidation of wealth inthe hands of a tiny minority, the patriarchal family decreed monogamy forwomen to determine inheritance of property. In the most backward class societies,women are literally bought and soldin marriage like cattle-the very word

In a hunter-gatherer society, the division of labor between men and womenwas based not on female dependency'buton the biological reality of childcare ina subsistence world. Women's work hadto allow for pregnancy, breast-feeding(there was no cow's milk or porridge substitute for. human milk) and the care ofinfants and small children. But the house-

TROTSKY

Honor Lenin, Liebknecht,Luxemburg!In upholding the revolutionary traditionsof the early Communist International, theInternational Communist League commem-orates the "Three Ls" this month, markingthe death of Bolshevik leader. V. I. Lenin

in January 1924 and the murder ofGermanSpartakusbund and Communist Party found-ers Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg inJanuary 1919. Liebknecht and Luxemburgwere assassinated by military reactionaries LENINamid the counterrevolutionary terror unleashed by the Social Democratic governmentagainst the Spartakist workers uprising. Two months later; at its First Congress, theCommunist International adopted a resolution authored by Lenin saluting these heroicleaders of he world proletariat and exposing the sham of bourgeois "democracy."

In Germany, the most developed capitalist country of continental Europe, the veryfirst months of full republican freedom, established as a result of imperialist Germany'sdefeat, have- shown the German workers and the whole world the true class substanceof the bourgeois-democratic republic. The murder of Karl Liebkriecht and Rosa Luxemburg is an event of epoch-making significance not only because of the tragic deathof these finest people and leaders of the truly proletarian, Communist International, butalso because the class nature of an advanced European state-it can be said without exaggeration, of an advanced state on a world-wide scale-has been conclusively exposed.If those arrested, Le., those placed under state protection, could be assassinated byofficers and capitalists with impunity, and this under a government headed by socialpatriots, then the democratic republic where such a thing was possible is a bourgeoisdictatorship. Those who voice their indignation at the murder of Karl Liebknecht andRosa Luxemburg but fail to understand this fact are only demonstrating their stupidity,or hypocrisy. "Freedom" in t h ~ German republic, one of the freest and advanced republics of the world, is freedom to murder arrested leaders of the proletariat with impunity.Nor can it be otherwise as long as capitalism remains, for the development of democracy sharpens rather than dampens the class struggle which, by virtue of all the resultsand influences of the war .and of its consequences, has been brought to boiling point.. .In these circumstances, proletarian dictatorship is not pnly an absolutely legitimatemeans of overthrowing the exploiters and suppressing their resistance, but also absolutely necessary to the entire mass of working people, being their only defence againstthe bourgeois dictatorship which led to the war and is preparing new wars.

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- V. I. Lenin, "Theses and Report on Bourgeois Democracyand the Dict;atorship of the Proletariat" (March 1919)

!slt!!,!!!y J ! l / p a l ! ! ' ! . ~ ! ! . ! . EDITOR: Len MeyersEDITOR, YOUNG SPARTACUS PAGES: Alan WildePRODUCTION MANAGER: Susan FullerCIRCULATION MANAGER: Mara CadizEDITORIAL BOARD: Barry James (managing editor), Bruce Andre, Ray Bishop, Jon Brule,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 (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 Spartacist Publishing Co., 299 Broadway, Suite 3t8, 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 editorial viewpoint.The closing date for news in this issue is January 11.No. 727 14 January 2000

"family" coines from the Latin for slave,"familia."However, it is not true that "the newsocial surplus happened to originate inthe traditionally male sphere of humanactivity," as the article says. This historical inaccuracy appeared in some of ourearlier articles on the subject in bothWorkers Vanguard and Women and Revo-lution, for example, "Women and thePermanent Revolution" (WV No. 17,March 1973). When "Women and the~ e r m a n e n t Revolution" was reprinted inW&R No. 40 (Winter 1991-92), we clarified this in the introduction:

"Our knowledge of the development ofearly human society has deepened in theintervening period. We know far moreabout these subjects t han. could Marxand Engels when they were first formulating the principles of historical materialism in The Holy Family and The Ger-man Ideology in the I 840s. It was notuntil later into the 19th century that thestudy of anthropology and archaeologyd e v ~ l o p e d ; in particular Lewis HenryMorgan's Ancient Society (1877) had anenormous impact on Marxist thought.The exciting discoveries of more recentdecades by no means negate the analysisgiven in Frederick Engels' The Origin ofthe Family, Private Property, and theState, the key Marxist text on the subject. Instead, they amplify and reinforcethe materialist understanding of the origins of women's oppression in the institution of the family."I t is now generally agreed-even bythose who agree on little else-thatagriculture was a fairly early discovery

That the husband, rather than the wife,became the head of the family probably has more to do with the demandsof childbearing and childcare than the"male sphere of activity." In early classsociety production was still very muchhousehold-based; primitive agriculturerevolved around the family farm, forexample. While women were sociallysubordinate and dependent on their husbands and fathers, their participation illproduction was essential. With theadvent of industrial capitalism, production moved to the factory, the householdbecame totally private and. women ashousehold drudges became powerlessand wholly excluded from social production. As members of the proletariat, however, working women, at the side of theirclass brothers, now have the social powernecessary to fight for their emancipation.The overthrow of the capitalist orderthrough workers revolution will open theway for the elimination of all oppressionand exploitation based on the abundanceof a worldwide planned economy. It'sonly this that will enable us to replacethe oppressive institution of the familywith socialized domestic services, freeing women to fully participate in socialand political life. Comradely,Amy Rath

" Forum1989-90-Revolution vs.Counterrevolution in GermanySaturday, January 29, 3 p.m.

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Mobilizing labor Againstthe Fascists 1939, 199918 December 1999To the editor:

Workers .Vanguard No. '724 (26 November 1999) reprinted a 1939 reportfrom Socialist Appeal, newspaper of thethen-Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party(SWP)', about an anti-Nazi protest organized by the SWP that year in New York.That rally had some striking parallelswith the October 23 anti-Klan action initiated by the Partisan Defense Committeeand heavily built by the revolutionaryMarxist Spartacist League. In both cases,the demonstrations succeeded becausethey escaped the usual mechanism forsocial control.In 1939, as Democratic Party presidentFranklin D. Roosevelt prepared the country for imperialist war, the SWP was ableto mobilize 50,000 workers, heavily drawing in the Communist Party (CP) ranks,in a militant sho.w of strength against theGerman-American Bund and other Naziand anti-Semitic outfits. At the time, theCP was channeling its considerable influence in the CIO industrial unions intoRoosevelt's New Deal coalition in thename of the "People's Front" against fascism. In New York, the CP had backedthe election of pro-Roosevelt Republicanmayor Fiorello La Guardia-who protected the February 1939 Nazi rally as hebrutally deployed his cops against thethousands of protesting workers. Althoughthe CP was in a position to have mounted

a powerful action against the Nazis, itwas straitjacketed politically. This left anopening for the SWP, which in the aftermath of the anti-Nazi demonstration continued to recruit from the ranks of the CPo

In the case of October 23, with Republican mayor Giuliani trying to deny theKlan rally a permit, Al Sharpton and therest of the liberal Democratic Partyestablishment came out in favor of theKlan's "rights." Sharpton filed a friend ofthe court brief in defense of the Klan, rally, while the Democrats-with the reformist left in tow-called for a demonstration for "tolerance," going so far as tooffer to share a sound permit with thefascist killers. This left an opening forthe PDC, whose call to "Stop the KKK!"had galvanized a significant layer ofNew York City's working people andthe oppressed, tapping into widespread,pent-up anger over the escalation of copreQression and grinding exploitation.In its October 14 call for the antiKlan mobilization, the PDC noted, "The .Klan is making a big mistake by thinkingthey can get away with this racist provocation. There is no way that working people in this heavily black, Hispanic andimmigrant city are going to allow thesehooded terrorists to organize here forlynch mob terror." Likewise, the massiveturnout in 1939 was fueled by outragethat American Hitlerites would dare rallyin New York City six years after Hitler

Letters

Trotskyists mobilized 50,000 workers against 1939 Madison Square Gardenrally by German-American Bund and other Nazis.came to power in Germany.One difference should be noted. In the1930s, the workers who rallied behind theSWP's mass anti-fascist rally were overwhelmingly Jewish workers whose position in society was akin to that of PuertoRican and other immigrant populationstoday. Jewish workers, who were amongthe more class-conscious (in the NewYork region the CP membership waslargely Jewish), were keenly aware of thedeadly fascist threat. Today, Jews are concentrated in the upper middle class.Both the SWP-initiated 1939 anti-Nazirally and the PDC's October 23 labor/

black mobilization against the KKK gavea real taste of the social power of theworking class when it is mobilized independently of all the parties and agenciesof capitalist class rule. What was seen inaction at these demonstrations was thenucleus of the kind of workers party thatis needed to genuinely realize the interests of the working class and oppressedthrough the overthrow of capitalist classrule and the establishment of proletarianclass rule, laying the basis for an egalitarian socialist society. Comradely,Helene Brosius

- - - - - - - t [ etter to New York Times 11------Rehabilitating McCarthy, Eliminating Trotsky.The following letter to the New YorkTimes Magazine, not printed as of thispoint, is in response to a Times (28November 1999) piece on efforts tovindicate 1950s anti-Communist witchhunter Joe McCarthy. Trumpeting the"tradition of liberal anti-Communism,"the Times article joins the chorus of thoseaiming to rehabilitate the McCarthyitewitchhunt by trying to give it the gloss

of refinement and erudition as oppo,sed tothe cruder, more primitive methods of theSenator from Wisconsin: In fact, the liberals played a leading role in the witchhunts: as rabid McCarthyites lumpedthem together with Communists, theysought to exonerate themselves by showing they were the best! most determinedanti-Communists. 'True to its purpose, the article sympathetically portrays a current crop ofanti-Communist academics, many of

PathfinderJames P. Cannon14 JANUARY 2000

them former "radicals," who have furthered their fortunes in the service ofthe bourgeoisie's "death of communism"ideological crusade. These are exemplified by Ronald Radosh, who rose fromobscurity by penning various worksreprosecuting the heroic Julius and EthelRosenberg, framed up and executedas "A-bomb spies" in 1953 in an antiCommunist, anti-Semitic witchhunt.One might ask, if communism truly is, "dead," then why all the fuss? As wewrote in "Celebrating McCarthyismElia Kazan: Hollywood Salutes a Rat"

(WV No. 709, 19 March 1999): "By issuing a whole spate of books and articles're-examining' the Cold War and honoring the witchhunters while vilifying thevictims, the imperialist bourgeoisie andits ideologues seek to ram home the message to a new generation of workers andyouth that any interest in communism isverboten." The current "death of communism" barrage is aimed at imposing theidea that capitalist society is the onlyworld possible. But communism isn'tdead-i t is the program that expressesthe class interests of the workers andoppressed, growing out of their aspirations and struggles for a society of &enu-ine equality and social justice. Trotskyism remains the embodiment of thoseaspirations, which can only be realizedin the fight for new October Revolutions.

* * *15 December 1999The article "The Rehabilitation of JoeMcCarthy" by Jacob Weisberg (28 November) takes present-day proclamations

of the "death of communism" to rewrite~ t h e history and impact of communismin the United States. To this purpose,Weisberg's retrospective on the Cold Warwitchhunt has to eliminate and conceal

Leon Trotsky and the American Trotskyists who oppused Stalinism from the perspective of advancing the cause of proletarian revolutionary inter,nationalism.Outside of the Stalinized AmericanCommunist Party, the only Qrganizationson the American left that are, referredto are in a half-sentence mention of"the anti-Stalinist splinter groups of the1930's and 40's, the Lovestoneites andthe Schachtmanites" [sic]. In the 1930s,Shachtman was still a member of theTrotskyist Socialist Workers Party led byJim Cannon. The Trotskyists' leadershipof the citywide class battles in Minneapolis in 1934 that organized the Teamstersunion doesn't fit Weisberg's declarationsof the supposed irrelevance of communism in the United States. His misspellingof Shachtman's name is another small buttelling indication of his ignorance.More a measure of the absence ofknowledge of the most elementary tenetsof Marxism is Weisberg's assertion that"Communism as a way of organizing anat'ion-state is finished." More than 150years ago, in his draft of the CommunistManifesto titled The Principles of Com-munism (October 1847), Friedrich Engelsresponded to the question, "Will it bepossible for this revolution to take placein one country?" by stating: "No. Largescale industry, already by creating theworld market, has so linked up all thepeoples of the earth, and especially thecivilised peoples, that each people isdependent on what happens to another ...The communist revolution will thereforebe no national one."The material abundance necessary forthe construction of a socialist societycan only be achieved through an international planned economy. The ignorantidea of communism as a means of organizing a nation-state derives not from

Marxism but from the very Stalinists thatWeisberg's article so reviles. "Socialism in one country" was proclaimed bythe consolidating Stalinist bureaucracy in

MaxShachtman

:gQ.'0ii ic:oo

1924, which recommended that theworkers of the world make peace withtheir exploiters on behalf of defending"socialism" in the Soviet Union. TheTrotskyists fought for the unconditionalmilitary defense of the Soviet Unionagainst the imperialist ruling classesthrough fighting to advance the cause ofproletarian international class struggle.Len Meyers,Editor, Workers Vanguard

SYC Class SeriesCHICAGO

Saturday. January 15. 3 p.m.Fundamentals of Marxism-The Working Classand the Fight for Socialism328 S. Jefferson St.. Suite 904(corner of Jefferson and Van Burennear Clinton stop' on Blue Line) ,Information and readings: (312) 454-4930 [email protected]

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AustralianlUN ImperialistTroops Out of East limor!Independence Now for East limor!We reprint below, in abridged form, aDecember 1999 Australasian Spartacistsupplement, issued by our comrades ofthe Spartacist League of Australia.Under the guise of a "humanitarian"mission, Australian imperialism howrules over the desperately poor people ofEast Timor in all but name, and they planto continue for at least the next three,years. In the largest Australian militarySPAiTACISToperation since its participation in thedirty, losing war against the Vietnameseworkers and peasants three decades ago,Australian troops sweep through thestreets as armoured vehicles rip up theroads and F-III warplanes scream overhead. With brutal racist arrogance, theAustralian neocolonial occupiers enforcemisery and squalor-lack of food, medical care and education-for the sufferingpeople of East Timor while moving todisarm the independence fighters ofFalintil.This is what virtually every ostensiblysocialist organisation in Australia calledfor as they lined up behind the racist Australian rulers. The International SocialistOrganisation (ISO), Socialist Alternative(SA), Militant, Workers Power (WP) andespecially the Democratic Socialist Party(DSP) leapt into hailing, attending, and insome cases ~ e a d i n g the September chauvinist demonstrations of "national unity"which were screaming for "Peacekeepersin!" The fake left wildly cheered theracist anti-Indonesia actions [union bansagainst Indonesian goods] led by theLaborite union bureaucrats which wereexplicitly designed to hurry Australianmilitary intervention and were promptlycalled off as soon as the army wentin. Hostile to any independent mobilisation of the proletariat in its own classinterest and to the socialist principle of"not one man, not one penny for theimperialist military," these "socialist"groups unashamedly subordinated themselves to the pro-imperialist Labor Partyand trade-union bureaucracy who aggressively campaigned for troops.Against these drumbeaters for whiteAustralian imperialism, the SpartacistLeague has from the beginning campaigned in both word and deed againstAustralian intervention into East Timor,demanding that the Australian imperialists, the U.S., the UN and all their lack-

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eys and camp followers get out of EastTimor and stay out! The demand forthe immediate withdrawal of imperialisttroops is the precondition for the fightfor East Timorese independence. As pro- 'letarian internationalists, opposed aboveall to our "own" ruling class, we call forthe Australian workers movement toblack ban [boycott] arms and supplies tothe Australian-led military forces. Independence now for East Timor!The idea that military interventionby Australian and U.S. imperialism canbring independence and "freedom" forthe East Timorese is a horrible lie. Thesesame imperialists backed Indonesia'sannexation in 1975 and for 30 yearssupported and armed the bloody Indonesian regime. These are the imperialistswho devastated tiny Serbia and whoslaughtered millions in their losing effortto defeat the Vietnamese Revolution.Whether under the fig leaf of the UN(a den of imperialist thieves and their victims) or otherwise, the imperialists aremass murderers who will stop at nothingto preserve their system of plunder and'robbery.

As to the Australian rulers' credentialsas opponents of genocide, one need onlylook at the barbarity they have meted outfor the last 200 years to the Aboriginalpeoples who were nearly exterminated,their lands and even children stolen fromthem. During World War II, the Libyanpeople knew the Australian troops as themost brutal racist marauders to marchacross that country. What the Australiancapitalists have in mind for East Timorcan be seen in Papua New Guinea [PNG]and Fiji, neocolonies where the racistimperialist pigs lord it over the peoplewho they brutally exploit while robbingthe natural resources of these tiny countries. Australia out of PNG, Bougainville, Irian Jaya, Fiji! The main enemyis our "own" ruling class-for workersrevolution!Revolutionary Marxists understand, asBolshevik leader V. I. Lenin explained inImperialism, the Highest Stage of Capi-talism, that imperialism is not a "policy"but the inevitable product of the capitalist system. The ruling class doesn't"choose" whether or not to be imperialist-the pursuit of profit ultimatelycompels the capitalists to wage waragainst small, dependent countries andagainst their imperialist rivals. The imperialist system of brutal exploitation anddegradation cannot be reformed or' pres-

UN imperialist"peacekeepers":Australian occupationforces impose reign ofterror in East Timoresecapital of Oili.

sured into serving the interests of the oppressed-it must be swept away throughinternational proletarian revolution.Despite the best efforts of the Laborite traitors and their left tails, the proimperialist rallies were overwhelmingly. petty-bourgeois and white, and workingclass support to the Australian imperialists' occupation of East Timor is shallow.Workers seething under union-bustingattacks, minorities subjected to racistabuse, Aborigines denied even the mostbasic necessities of life, all have goodreason to be distrustful of the Australianruling class. So now the fake lefts are desperately attempting to disappear theirtreacherous cheerleading for Australianimperialism. The ISO, for example, isrunning articles about "Anger at UN arrogance" and "Labor and Militarism," whileWP says, if you look hard enough, "Australian and UN troops out now."The fake lefts' current attempts to paintthemselves in "anti-imperialist" coloursis just whitewash. Everyone of themhowled with the imperialist wolves,cheering capitalist' counterrevolution inthe Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.This historic defeat for the internationalproletariat has meant ho'rrific destitution for the working people, especiallywomen, unleashed murderous communalist bloodletting and intensified interimperialist rivalries. While the fake leftrallied behind "democratic" imperialism,we Trotskyists, revolutionary Marxists,fought for the unconditional militarydefence of the bureaucratically degenerated and deformed workers states in theUSSR and East Europe against imperialist attack and internal counterrevolution.We fought for proletarian political revolution to oust the conservative, nationalistStalinist usurpers who undermined andultimately strangled the gains of the Russian Revolution of 1917, the first and todate only successful workers revolutionin history.

11n leadup to militaryoccupation of EastTimor, Australian ISO(far left) called forimperialist economicsanctions againstIndonesia in guise of"union bans" andOSP/Resistance (left)openly called forsending in troops.SpartacistLeague/Australiaforthrightly opposedchauvinist mobilization.

Having supported the anti-Soviet ColdWar drive of the imperialists and theirsocial-democratic front men, the fakeleft traitors in short order were openlyembracing the war aims of the NATOimperialists in the Balkans. Fuelled byand in turn fuelling murderous nationalism, capitalist counterrevolution rippedapart the deformed workers state ofYugoslavia, leading to all-sided reactionary "ethnic cleansing." As the imperiali'Stpowers manoeuvred to extend their influence, self-proclaimed "socialists" consistently lined up behind whoever "their"imperialist rulers were backing. In 1999,most of the "left" took up the imperialists' war cry over "poor little Kosovo."Workers Power, for a grotesque example,marched in London alongside those calling for NATO bombing of Serbia.We in the SL along with our comrades throughout the International Communist League fought against the NATOimperialist attack, declaring: Defeat U.S.!Australian imperialism through workersrevolution! Defend Serbia! We gave nota shred of support to Milosevic & Co., agang of capitalist, nationalist murderers. While the left hailed NATO's pawnsin the Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK),we said that there was a just cause forself-determination for Kosovo, but it,had become subordinated to the NATOimperialists. Today, the imperialists andthe UCK are now reversing the termsof oppression, beating, torturing anddriving out Serbs and Roma (Gypsies). Against al l the bloody nationalistregimes, we fight for the proletarianinternationalist perspective of a socialist federation of the Balkans. We say:U.S'/UN/all imperialists out of theBalkans!The Fraud of "Human Rights"Imperialism

As we stated in our I October 1999leaflet, "East Timor Independence Now!All Indonesian and All UN ImperialistTroops Out Now!":"The UN intervention has nothing to dowith defending the East Timorese peopleand everything to do with defendingthe interests of the imperialist powers,chiefly the U.S. and its Australian junior partner. The UN mission's name'Operation Stabilise'-captures its trueintent: to enforce neocolonial stability inAustraiia's 'backyard' and prop up the'Indonesian police-state regime in theface of massive social unrest."We say that the real and only allies of thedesperately poor people of East Timorare the international working class, fromthe multi-millioned proletariat of Indonesia to the workers of the imperialistcountries in the region, . Australia andJapan.In Indonesia, the road to overthrow theblood-drenched regime requires that theWORKERS VANGUARD


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proletariat struggle to transcend the dominant Javanese chauvinism fostered bythe bourgeoisie, championing the right ofself-determination for all the oppressedpeoples in the archipelago. Tbis means astruggle. against bourgeois forces likeMegawati Sukarnoputri, a vicious chauvinist who supported the annexation ofEast Timor and to whom much of thefake left has given backhanded support.As the new government of AbdurrahmanWahid, Megawati and Amien Rais demonstrates, all wings of the bourgeoisie incountries of belated capitalist development are so tied to imperialism and fearful of the t>roletariat that they are incapable of fulfilling the tasks historicallyassociated with the bourgeois-democraticrevolution. Achieving these tasks and putting an end to the brutal exploitation ofthe masses requires the proletarian seizure of power-the Trotskyist program ofpermanent revolution. To this end; theworking class must forge a revolutionaryleadership-a Leninist-Trotskyist party.If it is not to be strangled by economicand social backwardness and imperialistintervention, the struggle for proletarianrevolution in Indonesia must be linked tothe fight for workers rule in the advancedcapitalist countries, not least Australia,Japan and the U.S.The imperialist occupation of East Ti"mor is also a dagger aimed at the bureaucratically deformed workers state inChina, where the Stalinist bureaucracy isdriving headlong toward capitalist restoration. Their seeking to join the WorldTrade Organisation is their latest movein a series of attacks which threatenthe gains of the 1949 overthrow of capitalist barbarism. For the imperialists,the "magic of the market" means driving fully one-third of all workers inChina's state industries out into thestreets. We stand for the unconditionalmilitary defence of China-as well as ofNorth Korea, Vietnam and Cuba-againstimperialist attack and internal counterrevolution. We fight to mobilise the proletariat of China and the other deformedworkers states to prevent capitalist counterrevolution through a political revolution which ousts the nationalist Stalinistbureaucracies.The Australian-led occupation of EastTimor underscores that Southeast Asiais a hotbed of interimperialist rivalries.As our comrades"in the Spartacist GroupJapan wrote on 20 October 1999, "TheJapanese ruling class is bankrollingthis imperialist military 9peration whilesimultaneously using it as a pretext to further expand and strengthen its imperialistmilitary." There are 200 Japanese soldiersnow in [the Indonesian city of] Surabayaand West Timor. Meanwhile, the Australian imperialists' armed forces are n6wmuch closer to resource-rich Aceh, whereagitation for independence from Indonesia is growing. Reportedly, Indonesianradar has detected Australian militaryaircraft "intrusions" around Aceh-mostlikely from the Butterworth airbase inMalaysia. Aceh sits directly astride theStraits of Malacca, a strategic waterway through which most of Japan's oil passes,including its major operations in Acehitself. While having their own particularinterests in the region, the Australianjackal imperialists very much act as

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Washington's "deputy sheriff' in Asia.Anti-Asian racism is the bedrock ofAustralian capitalist imperialism. Evenas the Australian rulers posture as"defenders" of the East Timorese, theyhave launched a campaign of racist hysteria against refugees from Asia andIraq-victims of continued bombingand a starvation blockade by "humanrights" imperialism. Screel:hing about "anational emergency," immigration minister Philip Ruddock has tried to outdo thefascistic One Nation party of PaulineHanson in targeting nonwhite people. Thegovernment, fully supported by Kim Beazley's ALP [Australian Labor Party] hasall but abolished the right of asylumwhile mandating Australian interceptionof foreign ships in international waters!Recently arrived East Timorese refugeesare being pressured to rdurn-with onlya blanket and a sack of rice. Against thisbipartisan war on immigrants we say:Down with the racist immigration laws!No deportations! Immigrant workers, abridge to the toilers throughout Asia, area vital component of the forces capable ofdestroying this racist capitalist s)"stem.The multiracial working class, sufferingunder the profit-gouging bosses, has aspecial duty to take up the struggle todefend refugees and to fight for full citizenship rights for all immigrants!

Meanwhile, ALP/Liberal unity extendsto [right-wing prime minister] Howard'snew tax-an increase in the Medicarelevy for those earning more than $50,000

Asian immigrantsimprisoned in PortHedland, WesternAustralia, 1995.

Ig>"Eo:::!:

of the proletariat but the material privileges of an "aristocracy of labour," bribedby crumbs from the profits the imperialists reap from exploiting and oppressingmillions of people around the world.Fully imbibing the "values" of thecapitalist rulers of this white imperialistenclave in Asia, the ALP has been in theforefront of racist anti-immigrant, antiAsian hysteria, from the founding "principle" of "White Australia" to today targeting desperate refugees. Ruling for thebosses, the federal ALP in power oversawa hideous escalation of the murder of

lian military adventures under the guiseof providing "humanitarian" assistancefrom Somalia to Cambodia to Irian Jaya.Sneering that opposition to their grotesque support to Australian imperialismwas "'left-wing' dogmatism," the DSPbragged that they "forced" the imperialists to act, declaring the occupation ofTimor a "Victory."The International Socialist Organisation repeatedly joined the "Send in theTroops" crowds, describing one suchrally as "fantastic," and endorsed two"Peacekeepers In" demonstrations inMelbourne on 8 and 10 September. Nowthey want to cover their tracks over EastTimor. So Socialist Worker has hadnumerous articles warning against any"reliance" on the UN, detailing thebloody nature of UN interventions overthe years, and even a few criticisms ofthe ALP's "gung-ho support for AustraHan militarism" (22 October 1999).

AMPOAborigines chained and treated as slaves by colonial settlers. White Australiaracism meant genocidal oppression of Aboriginal people.

It was the union bans against Indonesiacarried out by the pro-imperialist Laborite union bureaucracy which the ISOcheered most of all, as they marched inthe chauvinist rallies with "trade unionbans now" banners. To this day, the ISOwants the bans not only reinstated butincreased. The very grotesqueness of the"union bans" was shown by the fact thatthe MUA [Maritime Union of Australia]banned wheat shipments to Indonesia,where workers are facing starvation dueto the Asian capitalist economic crisis.

to fund the imperialist occupation ofEast Timor and increase .the size of thearmed forces. Raising money for imperialist murder in the. name of "health"is truly Orwellian. But even this is notenough for Beazley: he wants thebosses to grant leave for workers to jointhe Army Reserve and stand alongsidethe gun-toting Australian army thugs inoppressing the East Timorese! Downwith HowardlBeazley's war tax!From its very origins, the ALP hasbeen even more-aggressive than the outright bourgeois Liberals in pushing Australian imperialist military interventionsin the name of the "national interest."Preaching the lie that there is a "partnership" between the working class, forced tosell its labour power as its sole means ofexistence, and the tiny minority of capitalist exploiters, the social democrats aredefenders of the capitalist order. Thoroughly bourgeois in its program, outlookand leadership while based on the tradeunions, the ALP is a bourgeois workersparty, representing not the class interests

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6/12

FROM THE ARCHIVES OF MARXISMBreak with the Democrats!Build a Workers Party!

The capitulation of the TransportWorkers Union Local 100 bureaucracy,to the court injunctions leveled by Republican New York City mayor RudolphGiuliani and Democratic state attorneygeneral Eliot Spitzer against the transitworkers on the eve of a potential walkoutlast month, criminalizing not only theright to strike but even advocacy of strikeaction, was a stark demonstration ofhow the class collaboration of the labormisleaders is counterposed to a defenseof workers' interests. As we wrote ,in aDecember 14 leaflet in response to thebipartisan union-busting assault, "Labor'spower has been shackled by the unionmisleaders who tie the unions to the capitalist class enemy, its government andpolitical parties, particularly the Democrats" ("Defend Labor's Right to Strike!Bust the Union-Busters! Break with theDemocrats-For a Workers Party!" reprinted in WV No. 726, 31 December1999).

Roosevelt's~ ' N e w Deal" Coalition andthe "People's Front"

Indeed, the chief political expression ofthe labor bureaucracy's all-sided programof class collaboration is its support to thecapitalist Democratic Party, going back tothe "New Deal" coalition under PresidentFranklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s.Elected president in 1932, Roosevelt, himself a millionaire scion of the moneyedaristocracy, promised American workingpeople a "New Deal"-a return to fullemployment and a future of permanentand general prosperity, enacting limitedsocial welfare measures like the WorksProgress Adininistration (WPA). To thisday, the AFL-CIO bureaucracy and its lefttails continue to peddle the myth thatRoosevelt's New Deal marked the heydayof "progressive" politics in the U.S.In fact, the aim of the New Deal coalition was to co-opt the new industrialunions through a series of governmentlaws and regulatory agencies and, morebroadly, to buy "class peace." The impactof the Great Depression, combined withthe victory of fascism in Germany, led toa leftward radicalization of the Americanworking class. In 1934, there were threecitywide general strikes-in San Francisco, Minneapolis and Toledo, Ohio-allled by "reds," respectively the Communist Party (CP), the Trotskyists and A.J.Muste's American 'Workers Party, whichsoon thereafter fused with the Trotskyists.The next few years saw the formationof the mass industrial unions, again inmany cases under the leadership of selfdescribed communists and socialists. Thestrikes in this period, especially in theauto industry, were virtual wars involving

mass pickets, plant occupations and secondary labor boycotts of scab goods. TheCIO organizing drives broke down theracist barriers which characterized the oldAFL craft unions, as hundreds of thousands of black workers took their place asa powerful new strategic component ofthe industrial proletariat.The burgeoning labor militancy expressed a broader political grounds wellthat could have led for the first time to aworkers. party independent of the twocapitalist parties. But this surge towardindependent political action was insteadchanneled by the leaders of the newindustrial union movement into Roosevelt's D ~ m o c r a t i c Party, not only by oldline labor bureaucrats like John L. Lewis

and social democrats like Walter Reutherbut also by the Stalinist CP, by 'far thestrongest force on the American left.The CP's support to Roosevelt was part

of an international policy-dubbed "thepeople's front against fascism"-promulgated in 1935 by the Stalinized Communist International. The Soviet bureaucracy under Stalin was then seeking analliance with the Western "democratic"

October 23 labor/black mobilizatton that drove KKK out of NYC was amicrocosm of a workers party in action. Democrats colluded with Republicanmayor Giuliani and capitalist courts in failed attempt to give Klan a free ride.6

S O ~ l A Y S I , , , , 4 J f t A L " . ' ~ ' ' ' ' ' > ;,I!,""" ~ c :.,p" ,. , ; 1 t ~ ~ " y' ". . ' , , ~ .

1937 cartoon inTrotskyist newspaperexposed "People'sFront AgainstFascism" as propfor U.S. imperialism.At bottom, CP headEarl Browder crawlsbehind pacifistsand liberals.

imperialist states (Britain, France and theU.S.) against Nazi Germany. To this end,Communist parties were instructed tosupport a supposedly "progressive" and"anti-fascist" section of their own bourgeoisie. Where Stalinist parties had amass base as in France, the popular frontmeant a coalition with bourgeois partieslike the Radicals. As was seen mostclearly in the case of the Spanish CivilWar in the late 1930s, the role of the popular front in power.was to suppress proletarian revolution.We publish below . ~ x c e r p t s from the1937 pamphlet The Peop!es' Front: TheNew Betrayal by James Burnham, thena leading Trotskyist publicist, exposing the Stalinist program of class collaboration, particularly as applied in theUnited Stales. Since' the American CPwas relatively small, its popular-frontpolicy was manifested through electoral support to the Democrats, beginning with Roosevelt's 1936 re-electionbid against Republican opponent AlfLandon. A few years after writing thispamphlet, Burnham broke with the thenTrotskyist Socialist Workers Party, joining with Max Shachtman in leading apetty-bourgeois opposition which repudiated the Marxist position of unconditional military defense of the SovietUnion against imperialism and internalcounterrevolution. Burnham soon becamean anti-communist renegade and eventuaIly an extreme rightist. However, this1937 pamphlet remains an excellentpolemic, from a revolutionary standpoint,against reformism and class collaborationon the American terrain.Three generations have now passedsince the newly formed industrial unionscame under the political sway of theDemocratic Party. What is the result?Today, "new" Democrat Bill Clinton andthe Republican-dominated Congress aremoving to dismantle the limited socialreforms of the 1930s made as concessions to labor militancy. Welfare has beenabolished, Social Security is under attackThe level of unionization has steadilydeclined in recent decades. A major rea-

son for this is the AFL-CIO's servile obedience to harsh anti-labor laws such asTaft-Hartley, enforced by Republicansand Democrats alike.The allegiance of the labor bureaucracy, as well as the majority of the working class and also the oppressed blackand Latino minorities, to the DemocraticParty is the main obstacle to successfulclass struggle in the U.S. It is necessaryto break with the Democratic Party and toforge a workers party, one modelled onthe Bolshevik Party of Lenin and Trotsky,which led the workers of Russia to powerin the October Revolution of 1917, creating the first workers state in history. Westrive for new October Revolutions-forthe overthrow of the capitalist system andits replacement by an egalitarian socialistsociety internationally."The Peoples' Front: The NewBetrayal" by James Burnham

It would be a great mistake to imaginethat the Peoples' Front is a new policy. Itis, it is true, a new slogan; but, in actualcontent, it is simply an old policy in a newdisguise, an old strategy dressed up forthe new occasion.The words of its defenders makeentirely clear what the real content of thepolicy of the Peoples' Front is; and itis, therefore, not necessary to give elaborate external proof. The Peoples' Frontis merely a re-wording of the theoriesand practises of class collaboration andcoalition government, as these have beenadvocated by reformists since the beginning of the modern labor movement.Class collaboration is what the Peoples'Front specifically proposes: the union oforganizations and parties representingvarious classes and sections of classes onthe basis of a common program to defendbourgeois democracy ...The united front, however, has nothingat all in common w ~ t h the Peoples' Front.

Almeida/NY TimesAI Gore embraced by John Sweeneyas October AFL-CIO conventionendorsed his presidential bid. Classcollaborationist labor bureaucratsshackle workers to capitalist Democratic Party.The united front consists in an agreementreached between two or more partie s andorganizations, which have different pro-grams, for joint action on specific issues.In this agreement there is absolutely noquestion of a common political program.Each organization retains intact its entireprogram; retains the right to put it forward; retains the right to criticize theother organizations in the united frontagreement, either in general, or for failure to carry out properly the united frontagreement. Thus, in the united front eachorganization guards its full independence;while at the same time the widest possible unity can be achieved for carrying through some actiQn accepted asdesirable by all of the constituent organizations of the united front.. ..

WORKERS VANGUARD


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RevO'lutiO'nary sO'cialists dO' nO't merelyaccept the united front passively. They arethe mO'st active and the O'nly cO'nsistentadvO'cates O'f the united frO'nt; whereasrefO'rmists always resist the united frontand must he fO'rced intO' i t - just as theStalinists nO'w, in basing their pO'licy O'nthe refO'rmist PeO'ples' FrO'nt, resist andfight against the genuine united front O'factiO'n. HO'w cO'uld it be O'therwise? Theideas and principles 0'1' the revO'lutiO'nary Marxists represent the histO'rical interests O'f the proletariat. CO'nsequently, anyjO'int struggle by specific actiO'ns to' theadvantage O'f the proletariat will be welcO'med by t h e ~ M a r x i s t s ; and the broaderthe basis, the better. At the same timethe Marxists are anxiO'us to' have an everbroader mass arena fO'r the presentatiO'n 0'1'their O'wn ideas and a demO'nstratiO'n O'ftheir O'wn methO'ds, cO'nfident that a trueunderstanding O'f them will turn themasses away from the refO'rmists tO'wardthe revO'lutiO'nists.

The PeO'ples' Front, O'n the O'ther hand,is nO't merely, nO't even primarily,an agreement for jO'int actiO'n O'n specific issues. It first and fO'remO'st invO'lvesthe acceptance by all members 0'1' thePeO'ples' FrO'nt 0'1' a common program.This difference is the key to' the gulfwhich separates the PeO'ples' Front fromthe united front.

What program? We have already seenthe answer. The program O'f the PeO'ples'Front is a prO'gram fO'r the dt;fense O'fbO'urgeO'is demO'cracy: that is, fO'r thedefense 0'1' O'ne fO'rm O'f capitalism.WhO'se program is this? It is O'bviO'uslynot the prO'gram O'f the proletariat. Theprogram O'f the proletariat, accepted byrevO'lutiO'nists since the publicatiO'n 0'1' theCommunist Manifesto, can be summed upin twO' slO'gans: for wO'rkers' pO'wer and

fO'r sO'cialism. Naturally the immediatetactic O'f the proletariat is not O'n all O'ccasiO'ns the struggle fO'r state pO'wer: that ispO'ssible O'nly in a revO'lutiO'nary crisis.But at all times and O'n all O'ccasiO'ns thefundamental program remains the same-fO'r the O'verthrow O'f .capitalism, fO'rwO'rkers' pO'wer and fO'r sO'cialism. This.program expresses the basic class cO'nflictin mO'dern sO'ciety; recO'rds' the Marxistunderstanding that the problems O'f sO'ciety can be sO'lved O'nly by sO'cialism, andthat sO'cialism can be achieved O'nlythrough the cO'nquest O'f pO'wer by the proletariat. The duty 0'1' the revO'lutiO'naryparty, the cO'nsciO'us vanguard O'f the proletariat, is to' keep this full and fundamental program always to' the fO're and alwaysuncO'mpromised. In its program, the revO'lutiO'nary party thus sums up the independence O'f the proletariat as a class, andasserts its independent historical destiny.FO'r the proletariat, through its parties,to' give up its O'wn independent program means to' give up its independentfunctiO'ning as a class. And this is precisely the meaning 0'1' the PeO'ples' Front.In the PeO'ples' Front the proletariatrenO'unces its class independence, givesup its class aims-the only aims, asMarxism teaches, which can serve\itsinterests. By accepting the program O'fthe PeO'ples' Front, it thereby accepts theaims O'f anO'ther sectiO'n 0'1' sO'ciety; itaccepts the aim of the defense of capitalism when all history demonstrates thatthe interests of the proletariat can beserved only by, the overthrow of capitalism. It subO'rdinates itself to a middleclass version of how best and mO'st cO'mfortablyto preserve the capitalist O'rder.14 JANUARY 2000

@J T ~ ~ P : ! ! k ~ X ~ ! ! T PeLl l la:VII ,. . . . l - . . . . _1 .. . y-., . . . . . . . .y.JUy...... .....MINNEAPOLIS SHOWS THEWAY-------_r.. _ Mass Picket line Routs Scabs,Cops,Special D ~ u t i c s and Thugs and StopsAll Commercial T aMport

, Minnesota Historical'SocietyThe PeO'ples' Front is thus thO'roughlyand irrevO'cably nO'n-proletarian, antiproletarian ....

Marxism always approaches everysO'cial, pO'litical, and histO'rical questiO'nfrom the pO'int O'f view 0'1' the class struggle. The basic cO'nflict in mO'dern sO'ciety-capitalist sO'ciety-is, accO'rdingto' Marxism, the cO'nflict and strugglebetween the bO'urgeO'isie and the prO'letariat. This cO'nflictmust cO'ntinue, and progressively deepen, until capitalism, O'n awO'rld scale, is O'verthrown, and the bO'urgeO'isie defeated, and liquidated as aclass. Only the twO' basic classes O'f modern sO'ciety-the bO'urgeO'isie and the proletariat-are capable O'f independent histO'rical actiO'n, and thus O'f fO'rmulating

O'lutiO'nary crisis, as is France, nO'r is itin the midst O'f a Civil War, as is Spain.ThO'ugh the histO'rical issue fO'r the UnitedStates, as is the case fO'r every natiO'n atthe present time, is sO'cialism vs. capitalism, thO'ugh O'nly the workers' revO'lutiO'nand sO'cialism Can sO'lve even a singleO'ne O'f the major problems facing UnitedStates ecO'nO'my; nevertheless the issue isnO't yet pO'sed in terms O'f the immediatestruggle fO'r state pO'wer. The Americanproletariat is still faced primarily withthe mO're elementary immediate demands:the struggle fO'r the right to' O'rganize, fO'rindustrial uniO'nism, fO'r the exercise 0'1'demO'cratic rights generally, fO'r a pO'werful trade, uniO'n and unemplO'yed mO'vement, fO'r relief and uniO'n cO'nditiO'ns, fO'r

-nr,-Q AFL leaderso William Greenand GeorgeMeany withDemocraticpresidentRoosevelt.StalinistCommunist PartyjOined labor topsin mobilizing theworking classbehind U.S.imperialism inWorld War II.

COMMUNISTS PLEDGE GOVERNMENTTHEIR ILL IN COUNTRY'S DEFENSE

," '!- ',_O='" Dal-111 'Morker ....!",;.:.:.;;:.:: . .... ;"3 ,..... -,..._ = , ~ . _ ..=-. ~ ~ ~ = ~ D f ~ . _ " ' t Q ....JAPAN OPENSWAR ON U.S.Japanese Planes t. S. 1)''''/lIrflliotl(!( Jf(trc.P.National CommitteeBomb H a ~ a j i &ell Malter (!f lloursVows ~ \ l P P o . : ' t ; I 1 _ ~ r ; s i s ... ; : : ; ~ ~ . n : , : , ; ~ : : ' : ; , ~ ' ; : 2 : : : : ~ . ~ ~ : : ' : : - : ' ' ' ~ : : ' ; ; : : ~ : ~ ; ~ : : ' : ' ; : ? : ; ; ~ / = : : ' : ~ r : : ~ t . i . : : : . ~ : : ~ ~ - : : : ; ~ ~ ~ : : : ' : ; ~ : : - : : ~ ~ ~ . ~ : ' = : : t : . S r ~ i : ~ ~ ; : g ~ : i ; ' ' ~ : : ~ ~ j j 2 ~ : : ~ : ; ; ~ - ' : ; ; ~ : ; ; ; :

~ ~ ~ I ~ I ~ ; i ~ ; i i independent sO'cial and political programs. Reduced to simplest terms, theprogram O'f the bO'urgeO'isie is the defenseof the capitalist order; the program of theproletariat, its overthrow. The intermediary classes, howeYer they may try toescape it, always in actuality support oneside or anO'ther in the basic conflict.In the light of these elementary firstprinciples of Marxism, the Cominterndivision O'f the world intO' "war makers"and "peace lovers," its statement that thetwo great hO'stile camps are "demO'cracy"and "fascism," its contentiO'n that theissue is "between democracy and fascism," are seen to' have nothing in common with Marxism. Its propagation ofa program fO'r the defense of capitalistdemO'cracy represents merely the extension of O'ne type of bourgeO'is ideologyinto the ranks of the wO'rking class ....BO'urgeO'is demO'cracy, Marxism t e ~ c h -es further, is a fO'rm O'f capitalism, on eO'f the pO'litical fO'rms through which thedictatorship O'f the bourgeO'isie O'ver theproletariat is exercised. It is, in a sense,the "nO'rmal" form of bO'urgeois dictatO'rship during the progressive phase O'f capitalism. But Marxism is as unalterablyO'ppO'sed to' bourgeois democracy as to' anyO'ther fO'rm O'f capitalist rule; it is O'pposedbecause it is O'ppO'sed in general to capitalism and to bO'urgeO'is rule, and aims atthe overthrow of capitalism and the defeatO'f the bourgeO'isie ....

The Peoples' Front has nO't, of cO'urse,advanced as far in the United States asin France O'r Spain. In the formal sense,there is not yet in the United States anestablished "Peoples' Front." The UnitedStates is not faced with a developing rev-

a consciO'us mass revolutionary party 0'1'struggle.But just as the issue of state power canbe settled in favor O'f the proletariat O'nlyby the independent revO'lutionary classstruggle of the wO'rkers, and is 100st forthe proletariat through the refO'nnist strat

egy of the PeO'ples' Front; in the sameway, at the mO're elementary stages, theinterests O'f the proletariat can be servedO'nly by the appropriate methods O'f classstruggle, and are fatally u n d ~ r m i n e d bythe dass collaboratiO'nist methods O'f thePeO'ples' Front. The PeO'ples' Front in thiscO'untry, seeping intO' the labor movementunder the spO'l)sorship O'f the CommunistParty, has made cO'nsiderable headway;and already its disastrous effects are

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"Battle of Deputies Run," May 1934.Trotskyists led victoriousMinneapolis strikes which laidbasis for exptosive growt h of theTeamsters and helped Inspire themilitant struggles which formed CIOindustrial unions.

becO'ming apparent in a dozen fields.Up to' the present, the best known andmost conspicuous result of the Peoples'Front strategy emerged during the 1936election campaign. From the pO'int ofview both O'f the social compO'sitiO'n O'f hissuppO'rt and likewise O'f the political content O'f his program. Roosevelt was in-effect a PeO'ples' Front candid ate. No O'necO'uld dO'ubt that he was a staunch andO'utstanding defender O'f capitalist democracy, nO'r that the bulk O'f the proletariat,the farmers. and the lower strata O'f therest O'f the middle classes, were solidlybehind him. Thus the upholders of thePeO'ples' Front ideO'IO'gy fO'und themselves, willingly O'r unwillingly, driveninto the RO'osevelt camp: either O'penly,as was the case with many, or, like theCO'mmunist Party itself, through a backhanded and ambiguO'us formula.

The Communist Party was compelledto define the issue of the campaignas "Progress vs. ReactiO'n," "Democracy vs. Fascism." It had to discover theforces of fascism in the "Landon-HearstLiberty L eague" combinatiO'n. It was thenrequired to raise as the central slO'gan,"Defeat LandO'n at all costs!" And theO'nly realistic interpretation of this slogan-the interpretation which the majO'rity O'f even its own sympathizers madewas to vO'te fO'r RO'osevelt. Browderadmits quite openly that this was the central directiO'n of the Stalinist campaign.In his pO'st-election analysis of the electiO'ns, delivered to the Central CommitteeO'f the party, he boasts as fO'llows: "Thefirst O'bjective was the defeat of Landon.This was accO'mplished to a degree farsurpassing all expectatiO'ns ... this aim weshared with the largest number O'f peopIe .... WithO'ut exaggerating our role inbringing abO'ut this result, we can safelysay that the weight O'f each individualCO'mmunist in the struggle was far higher.many fold. than that of the membersof any other pO'litical group in America."He apologizes at length for the nominallyindependent Communist Party ticketthat was in the field. If only "a nationalFarmer-Labor party .. " had "decided to

cOlllinued on page 11

Hate Trotskyism,Hate the Spartacist LeagueNUMBER 12English-language translation 01 "Hale Trotskyism, Hate the Spartaclsts"Bulletin NO.1, publIshed by the SpartaclSI Group 01 Poland (SGP).section of Ihe Inlernalional Communisl league (FOUfh Imernalionahs l)

leL Trotskyism vs. Mandelite"Left" Polish NationalismIntrOductionOn the Spartaclst Renegades

Reproo! 01 a polemIC Dy a Supporter ol1lle NlR [Revoluhonary left CUrrenT]undated. ChSrt[ued111 December 1998For New October Revolutions!ICL Trotskyism YS. Mandellte "Left" Polish Nationalism

Reply of ile Spartac,s! Group of Poland. 14 Marcil 1999

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"Terrorism" ...(continued from page 1)weeks aboard cargo ships literally packedinto shipping containers.The campaign against "terrorism" andthe broader assault on immigrant rightsare pareand pan;el of the drive by boththe Democratic and Republican partiesto regiment the population and beef upthe repressive powers of the capitaliststate. This drive is a reflection of sharp'shifts in the profile of the American capitalist system, whose massive redistribution of wealth over the past two decadeshas impoverished whole layers of thepopulation and made the filthy rich farricher. Today the U.S. has the greatestdisparity of income and wealth of anymajor industrial country, and correspondingly the largest number of peopleoverwhelmingly black and Hispanicbehind bars anywhere.Fearing explosions of discontent, thecapitalist rulers bring the iron heel ofrepression down ever harder. That iswhat's behind the "war on drugs" whichtargets ghetto and barrio youth and the

"war on terrorism" which is particularlyaimed at immigrants. The rulers calculatethat they can get away with going afterthe most vulnerable layers of society, whohave little or no social power and oftenfew formal rights. But the intensifyingrepression is ultimately aimed at theworkers movement, as seen not only inthe massive growth of professional strikebreaking outfits but also in the draconianmeasures wielded against NYC transitworkers last month.Historically, the American ruling classhas exploited racial, national, ethnic l!-ndreligious differences to divide the working class, pitting one section againstanother. Today, anti-black racism andanti-immigrant chauvinism are used tohold down the most oppressed, impoverished and exploited sections of the proletariat. Immigrants, mainly from LatinAmerica, the Caribbean and East Asia,make up a large pool of low-wage laborwhose intense exploitation depresses theliving standards of working people as awhole. Thus it is vitally necessary for thelabor movement to take up the strugglefor immigrant rights. This in turn requiresa fight within the trade unions againstthe racist and chauvinist policies of theAFL-CIO bureaucracy. Moreover, immigrant workers are not simply powerlessvictims of capitalist exploitation. Theyoften bring with them a tradition of classstruggle militancy as well as far fewerillusions in the "benevolence" of the capitalist state. No deportations! Fullcitizen-ship rights for all immigrants!Bipartisan War on Immigrants

Especially following the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing-when the Fedscarried out a racist drag.net against ArabAmericans before two white, right-wing"militia" types were finally arrested-theClinton White House used the spectre of"international terrorism" to push throughlaws vastly expanding the state's repressive powers against immigrants andthe rest of the populace. The passage in1996 of the "Anti-Terrorism and Effec-8

tive Death Penalty Act" and the "IllegalImmigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act" in particular have led toan enormous increase in deportations,reaching nearly 180,000 last year. Inaddition, the bipartisan axing of welfaredeprived hundreds of thousands of impoverished immigrants-both "legal" and"illegal"-:-of even the most meager socialbenefits.The immigration "reform" act createdthe "expedited removal" process bywhich asylum-seekers and others entering the country can be instantly expelledwithout any legal recourse. A littleknown provision of that law, brought tolight by the December arrests, mandatesthe "tracking of every foreigner enteringthe United States" as of next year (Wash-ington Post, 26 December 1999).More than 62,000 people, many ofwhom had lived in the U.S. since childhood, were deported in the year endingJune 1999 for having been convictedsometime in the past on charges as' pettyas shoplifting or turnstile-jumping.Among the 14,500 who are currentlyimprisoned without bail is 37-year-oldMaria Wigent of Rochester, New York,

who, after several shoplifting convictions,faces deportation to Italy, a country sheleft when she was five. Another of thenumerous cases publicized by liberal NewYork Times columnist Anthony Lewis isthat of Mary Anne Gehris of Georgia,who has lived in the U.S. for 33 of her 34years and is the mother of a child withcerebral palsy. Gehris faces deportationto Germany because she pleaded gUilty in1988 to pulling someone's hair in a spatover a boyfriend!The 1996 "anti-terrorism" law, in addition to vastly expanding the use of thedeath penalty, sets up immigrants forprosecution in special courts on chargesand, "evidence" kept secret even fromtheir lawyers. The new law expands theprovisions of a witchhunting law adoptedduring the 1950s Cold War. An exampleof how such measures are used is the caseof the Los Angeles Eight-seven Palestinians and a Kenyan woman who havebeen threatened with deportation since1987 simply for their alleged politicalsympathies for the nationalist PopularFront for the Liberation of Palestine.Under the new law, the L.A. Eight wouldhave been thrown onto a plane in 1987without ever even knowing the chargesagainst them. We demand: No deportation of the L.A. Eight!A document leaked during one proceeding in this case revealed governmentplans to herd Arab residents into concentration camps in the event of a "nationalemergency." Under the Reagan administration, the Federal E m e r g e ~ c y Management Agency, originally charged withdisaster relief, was transformed into anapparatus to put down urban insurrection, with the power to set up concentration camps for those the ruling classdeems "undesirable."In addition, as seen in the Operation"Urban Warrior" exercises carried out bythe Marines last year in Oakland andother cities, there is growing evidence ofplans to deploy the armed forces fordomestic use. Noting that "this would bea significant step since the U.S. bourgeoi-

sie has long upheld the formal (and mythical) separation of the military fromdomestic repressive duties as a benefit ofbourgeois democracy," we warned thatthe Oakland exercise represented "anominous display of the state forces to bemobilized against the working class,blacks and all of the oppressed in theevent of any p e r c e i v ~ d challenge to therule of racist American capitalism"("Marines Invade Oakland," WVNo. 710,2 April 1999).Recently, the head of the Senate Y2Kcommittee asked Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre if the armed forceswould be ready "in the event of a Y2Kinduced breakdown of community services that might call for martial law" (Sol-dier of Fortune, January 2000). Now theNew York Times (9 January) reports thecreation of a "sensitive new militaryoperation" to be deployed domesticallyin response to a "terrorist" attack.Unions Must OrganizeImmigrant Workers

The fight against anti-immigrantracism is critical to the defense of theinterests of the entire working class

In 1994 protestagainst Californiaanti-immigrantProp. 187, Latinotruckers' sign reads,"Long Live theImmigrant Workers'Struggle-UnitedAgainst Racism andDiscrimination."Teamsters tops'anti-Mexicanprotectionism ispoison to classsolidarity andundermines unionpower.

against the capitalist exploiters. The capitalists manipulate the flow of immigration as economic need demands, allowing large-scale immigration when theyrequire new sources of low-wage workers, who have few rights and are deemedmore disposable in times of economiccontraction. At the same time, the exploiters foster anti-immigrant chauvinism topit native-born workers-black as wellas white-against immigrants. In racistAmerica, where black oppression is thecornerstone of the c'!pitalist system, suchchauvinist bigotry redounds heavilyagainst black workers' and the ghettomasses.With low-paid immigrant workersfrom Latin America and elsewhere making up a growing sector of the unorganized workforce, any serious union organizing drive immediately poses the needto fight against deportations and forfull citizenship rights for all immigrants.And that means taking on the chauvinist policies of the pro-capitalist laborbureaucracy, which has often been in theforefront of promoting anti-immigrantlegislation.A recent article in the Washington Post(6 December 1999) reported on a unionorganizing drive among miserably exploited maids in a Minneapolis hotel lastyear. After the union won recognition,the employer, invoking a 1986 law requiring employers to verify the immigration status of their workforce or facepenalties, called in the Immigration andNaturalization Service which arrestedhalf the workers involved. The articlewent on to note: "In 1986, the AFL-CIOpushed Congress to pass the employersanctions law on the grounds that undocumented workers steal jobs from American workers and undermine labor standards. But this summer, a series of locallabor councils passed resolutions callingfor a repeal.of employer sanctions and anamnesty for the nation's estimated 5 milolion illegal immigrants. In response, atthe AFL-CIO's annual convention in LosAngeles in October, federation leaders

for the first time debated the issue."While AFL-CIO chief John Sweeneyand others now occasionally talk aboutdefending the rights of immigrant workers, the union tops' support for the 1986law was no aberration but rather anexpression ofthe labor bureaucracy's program of class collaboration. The laborbureaucracy is the top layer of he unions.which long ago separated itself from itsworking;class base, and which sees theworld through the same lens as the capitalists and their government. This layer isbeholden to the capitalist system becauseit derives its privileged position from thesuperprofits reaped by the U.S. imperialists through their exploitation of workersaround the globe. The purpose of thesetop union officials is to ensure the subordination of the workers to the "nationalinterests" of the enemy class. This collaboration with the capitalist rulers is codified in the labor bureaucrats' fealty to the'Democratic Party.Exemplifying the AFL-CIO tops' allegiance to corporate America are theirongoing appeals for protectionist measures which pit workers in the U.S.against their class brothers and sisters inother countries. The flag-waving protectionism expressed in calls for impoitquotas and chauvinist tirades against"foreign workers stealing Americanjobs" is aimed at bolstering the interestsof U.S. imperialism against its rivals.Such poison is directly counterposed tothe need for international class-strugglesolidarity.Carrying on where his predecessor RonCarey left off, James Hoffa Jr.'s most concerted effort as Teamsters president haS'been to demand that Washington keepU.S. borders closed to Mexican truckers.On January 1, Hoffa issued a grotesquestatement hailing Clinton's ban on "unsafe" Mexican trucks from U.S. highwaysas a "bold step" to "protect Americanfamilies." Last week, to the cheers of theHoffa bureaucracy, Clinton extended theban on Mexican trucks in a move to currysupport for Al Gore's candidacy.The pro-imperialist chauvinism of thetrade-union bureaucracy was on fulldisplay in the Seattle protests againstthe World Trade Organization (WTO).Encompassing everything from the CIAsponsored "Free Tibet" crowd to ecologytypes and phony "socialists," these protests were politically dominated by theAFL-CIO tops, who mobilized thousands'o f union members to promote "Americafirst" protectionism shot through withanti-Communism directed against theChinese bureaucratically deformed workers state, including dumping Chinesemade steel into the harbor (see "Seattle:National Guard, Cops Attack WTOProtesters-AFL-CIO Tops Push AntiCommunism, Protectionist Poison," WVNo. 725, 10 December 1999).The Spartacist League had nothing todo with this chauvinist mobilization,which served to renew the labor tops'ties to Clinton's Democratic Party whilefomenting counterrevolutionary agitationagainst China. We call for the unconditional military defense of China againstimperialism and internal counterrevolution. The working class in China andinternationally must rally to the defenseof the gains, however attenuated, of the1949 Chinese Revolution which sweptaway capitalist exploitation. As Trotskyists,we fight for proletarian political revolution to oust the Stalinist bureaucracyin Beijing, which pushes entry into theWTO to further its drive for the restoration of capitalism in China.

We seek to mobilize the American proletariat against its "own" bourgeoisie.What is needed is a new leadership of theunions committed to the class independence of the proletariat from the bosses'government and from the capitalist Democratic and Republican parties. We fightto forge a workers party which wouldcombat every manifestation of racist discrimination and chauvinist bigotry in thecourse of mobilizing the multiracial proletariat for socialist revolution. Thosewho labor must rule j Workers of theworld, unite!.WORKERS VANGUARD

l,.', " ~ I " " ' ; ' \ , . ~ .. t. . . . . . . .. t,. it-';-


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Diallo...(continued from page 1)Bronx (and out of the hands of a blackjudge) and sent it to a place where allthe judges and nearly all of the potentialjurors are white." The court ruling is areplay of what happened following thebrutal videotaped beating of black LosAngeles motorist Rodney King, whenthe trial of his cop tormentors got movedto lily-white Simi Valley. When thosecops were '!ctjuitted in ] 992, L.A. wasrocked by a: huge, multiracial explosionof anger, and cities across the countrywere hit by massive protests.Serving the interests of the racist rulers, Sharpton and the other black Democrats are working precisely to preventsuch an upheaval in the center of worldfinance capitalism. Joined by HarlemCongressman Charles Rangel, Sharptonis pushing for Janet Reno's JusticeDepartment to take over jurisdiction ofthe case. Meanwhile, the AmsterdamNews (23 December) reports that NewYork State NAACP spokesman HazelDukes argued "that if the public is togive full faith to legal proceedings andtheir outcome, the trial must be held inBronx County." While there would infact be no more fitting place to pick ajury for this case'than the Bronx, wherethe vast majority have daily, firsthandexperience with the racist NYPD, thecapitalist courts exist not to mete out justice to the killer cops but to protect them.It was a Bronx judge who last summeracquitted off-duty cop Michael Meyer,tried for pumping a bullet into the chestof defenseless "squeegee man" AntoineReed when he tried to wash Meyer'swindshield.Democratic Senate hopeful HillaryClinton has also chimed in, saying it was"unfortunate that the trial, apparently forlegal reasons, had to be moved.'" But the

" ..' v ... "' ...

'V

........ ' "

main instrument through which theychain labor to the capitalist class enemy.During the Diallo protests last spring,SEIU Local ]] 99 hospital workers union, head Dennis Rivera, himself a former cochairman of the state Democratic Party,said baldly, "The terror that some of ushave is that if we don't channel this intoa solution, this will fizzle, and there willbe a sense of frustration and an increasedpolarization." A polarization between theworking masses and the racist rulers isthe last thing the pro-capitalist labor topswant. Their job is to preserve the capitalist status quo, and thus their "solution" isto try to channel the outrage against thecops into support for the Democrats andthe preservation of police-enforced "lawand order."Cops: Enforcers of RacistCapitalist Rule

To this end, Rivera joined with Sharpton last spring in pushing a ten-point program for police "reform" which included

NYC, April 1999: Local 1199 head Dennis Rivera (far left) joined with blackDemocrats AI Sharpton and ex-mayor David Dinkins (at right) in pushingwhitewash schemes to "clean up" racist cops, seeking-to quell outrage overDiallo killing.-,"more important issue," Clinton stressed,is "making sure we have good relations ", with our police and law enforcement" (New York Post, 22 December1999). Indeed, what these' capita list politicians are concerned about is any challenge to the institutions of racist "lawand order" which the Democrats, underBill Clinton's White House, have donemore to augment and reinforce than eventheir Republican predecessors. It is therole of black Democratic politicos likeSharpton to quell the anger of the ghettomasses, while the labor bureaucrats actas the capitalists' political police withinthe trade unions. The union misleaders'allegiance to the Democratic Party is the

CHICAGO (312) 454-4930Labor Black Struggle LeagueBox 6938, Chicago, IL 60680NEW YORK (212) 267-1025Labor Black League for Social DefenseBox 2502, Church St. StationNew York, NY 10008OAKLAND (510) 839-0851Labor Black League for Social DefenseBox 29497, Oakland, CA 94604

14 JANUARY 2000

calls Jo r more black and other minoritycops, for a stronger civilian review boardand for federal oversight of the NYPD.But the whole purpose of this ten-pointprogram-as was clear from its demandfor a pay raise for the cops-was to preserve the authority of the strikebreaking,racist "law and order" system by makingit appear as if it is simply a matter of afew "bad apples" in an otherwise finepolice force. Tailing the Democrats andtheir labor lackeys, the InternationalSocialist Organization (ISO), operatingthrough the instrumentality of a "Citywide Network Against Police Violence,"put forward a virtually identical ten-pointprogram for reforming the police, minusonly the call for a pay raise.Black or white, the cops are the anpedenforcers of racist capitalist rule; theycannot be "reformed." From the federalgovernment on down, whether underDemocratic or Republican administration, the capitalist state-whose core isthe cops, ,courts, military and prisonsystem-is an instrument for organizedviolence against the working class andminorities. As we wrote at the time ofthe Diallo protests last year, "There willbe no end to police brutality short ofthe destruction of the system of capitalist exploitation and racist oppressionwhich the cops serve as armed guarddogs" ("As New York Seethes Over

Sign at October 23NYC anti-Klanmobilization. In wakeof Diallo killing,SL fought for masslabor-centeredprotest against racistcop terror.

Diallo Killing: Beware Democratic PartyHustlers-Enemies of Labor, Blacks,"WVNo. 710, 2 April ]999).At the same time, we noted: "But amassive mobilization of labor would givethe cops some pause." Against the Democrats and their reformist hangers-on, wefought for mass labor protests .againstracist cop terror:

"The mass outrage against the cops doesneed an organized political expression.Not one aimed at strengthening the handof the Democrats, the political tool of thevery capitalist rulers whose interests thecops 'serve and protect: but one whichprovides a proletarian class axis that canweld the social power of the multiracialworking class to the anger of the innercity through mass labor-centered protestagainst cop terror."The ranks of powerful unions like theTransport Workers Union in New York, include thousands of black workers whoknow that it could just as easily. havebeen them as Amadou Diallo. Our callfor labor protest has found deep resonance among the transit union membership. They have the power to stop theworld center of finance capital dead inits tracks."That kind of organized political expression was seen a few months later in themass labor/black mobilization initiatedby the Partisan Defense Committeeendorsed by dozens of unions and unionofficials and built by hundreds of workers and others throughout the city-which rode the KKK out of New YorkCity on October 23. The PDC's call tostop the KKK galvanized wide layers ofNYC working people and minorities, whoknow they are all in the gunsights ofthe nightriding racist terrorists. -It tappedinto the accumulated anger, patti,cularlyamong blacks and Hispanics, against themarauding, racist cops and more generally among working people who are fedup with being pushed around for years inthe one-sided war against workers andthe poor.Working feverishly to try to preventthis mobilization of the social power ofthe working class against the KKK werethe very Democratic Party politiciansjoined by labor bureaucrats like Riverawho tried to quell the outrage over theDiallo killing. Sharpton and the publishers of the Amsterdam News filed a"friend of the court" brief on behalf ofthe Klan's "right" to rally for genocide.Eagerly assisted by the social-democratic

ISO, Sharpton joined hitherto-unknownstate assemblyman Scott Stringer and therest of the state Democratic Party establishment in organizing an obscene demonstration of "tolerance" for the nightriding KKK in a failed bid to deflect themore than 8,000 people who turned outwith the aim of stopping the KKK. Andtoday, the man who served as lawyerfor the KKK, N ~ w York Civil Liberties Union executive director NormanSiegel, worries that moving the trial ofDiallo's executioners to Albany undermines the authority of the capitalist "justice" system, warning that the move"gives material to people who don'tbelieve in the legal system or want toundermine the legal system."Fight for a Workers Party!

The Democrats' role as the main forceagainst the anti-Klan mobilization wassimply an expression of the class intereststhat they represent, those of the racistcapitalist rulers against the working class.But they did not succeed, and what wasseen on the streets of New York that daywas the microcosm of the kind of workers party needed to lead the struggles ofthe working class and the oppressedagainst the whole system of capitalistexploitation and racist injustice. The forging of such a workers party will go handin hand with the fight for a class-struggleleadership of the unions, one built inopposition to the class-collaborationismof the pro-capitalist union tops. Breakwith the Democrats-Build a workersparty!The bitter fruits of the union misleaders' class collaboration was seenrecently in the betrayal of the TransportWorkers Union (TWU) Local 100 membership in the face of union-busting courtinjunctions brought by Giuliani and Democratic state attorney general Eliot Spitzer. Both the TWU Local ]00 leadershipunder Willie James and the New Directions "opposition" caved in to the injunctions, instructing transit workers not toeven uiier the word "strike." Both of thesewings of the TWU bureaucracy supportthe presence of Transit Authority securitycops in the union. And while Jamesinvited NYPD "union" spokesmen tospeak from the platform at transit workers rallies before the contract expiration,New Direetions' whole strategy has beento drag the union into the bosses' courtsto further its own bureaucratic aspirations. The cops are not workers but racist,strikebreaking thugs for the bosses. Theyhave no place in the labor movement.COP!i, courts out of he unions!The union-busting court orders and thearmy of cops unleashed against the TWUexpose what the capitalist state really is:a machinery of repression for the defenseof capitalist profits and power. That statecaimot be pressured or reformed to servethe interests of workers and the oppressedbut rather must be smashed through asocialist revolution which sweeps awaythe racist capitalist system and erects inits place a workers government wherethose who labor rule. Under a government of workers councils, people 's courtsin the Bronx will surely be in the forefront of dispensing proletarian justice tothose who had served as hired killers forthe capitalist exploiters.

Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of the Spartacist Leagueo $10/22 issues of Workers Vanguard . 0 New 0 Renewal(includes English-language Spartacist and Black History and the Class Struggle)international rates: $25/22 issues-Airmail $10/22 issues-Seamait .o $2/6 introductory issl!es of Workers Vanguard (includes English-language Spartacist)o $2/4 issues of Esparlaco (en espanol) (includes S p a n i s h ~ l a n g u a g ~ Spartacist)Name ______________________________________________________Address _____________ _ __:_-------------

Apt. # Phone (__ ____________--;--_City State ______ Zip____ --==727Make checks payable/mail to: Spartacist Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116

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East Timor .. -(continued from page 5)Lab.our government for doing too littletoo late in East Timor and complainedthat Britain had contributed only "a fewGurkhas"!Po

Workers Vanguard No 727 - 14 January 2000

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Transcript of Workers Vanguard No 727 - 14 January 2000