WfJ/iNE/iS ,,1NfifJl1/i, 25¢No. 194 :-::: • 'i]) 24 February 1978

Cartec$trongarms UMWA Bargaining Council

Miners: Stay Out and Win'

District 17 miners and wives demonstrating on the steps of the West Virginiacapitol in Charleston last week.

State of Siege in IndianaCoal Fields .....4

SIP

strikebreaking measures that has beenthe main deterrent to Washingtonimposing a Taft-Hartley injunction. OnFebruary 16 Carter closeted himselfwith a dozen governors, mainly fromeast central U.S., where the impact ofthe looming coal shortages will begreatest and howls from capitalistpoliticians have been the loudest. Whilethe government has announced an"energy-sharing" plan to transport coalstocks and transfer electrical power tohard-hit areas, this has essentiallyprove'l1 a failure. Energy SecretaryJames Schlesinger stated that the

continued on page 4

It is the demonstrated determinationof the miners to resist government

contract was mentioned and somerousing cheers when a speaker called forthe resignation of Miller. ..."If anyone present was pleased with thecontract Miller had asked the member­ship to approve last week, he remainedsilent."

Meanwhile in Rosetraven Townshipnear Pittsburgh some 2,000 westernPennsylvania miners attending a rallydemanded Miller's resignation and hisouster from the negotiating team. Andin Bluefield, West Virginia (UMWADistrict 29) the more than 500 minersattending a rally Sunday were so eagerto sign the Miller recall petition that thebacks of available petitions had to beused.

Significantly these mass rallies havebeen organized spontaneously, by rank­and-file miners and local union officials.The role of the district leaders, whodominate the union's Bargaining Coun­cil, was virtually nil. District 5 officialsdenied any knowledge of the rallyoutside Pittsburgh and at the Bluefielddemonstration no district officials weresighted.

Threats and Cutbacks

Similar sentiments were voiced byspeakers at a rally of District 31 UMWAmembers in Fairmont, West Virginia onFebruary 16.

Most pronounced at the miners'rallies was the universal contempt forUM WA "leader" Arnold Miller. Theoverwhelmingly popular demand thatMiller resign was an expression of thedeeply felt, and quite correct, convictionamong coal strikers that the mainobstacle to victory is the lack of aneffective, militant leadership. At a rallyagainst the Miller contract on the stepsof the state capitol in Charleston, WestVirginia on February 15, Bill Bryant,head of the Miners for Recall, an­nounced that he had 13,000 signaturesdemanding that Miller step down.

At the Fairmont rally the next day thestory was the same. The local Times­West Virginian (17 February) reported:

"While Arnold Miller and his UMWnegotiators resumed contract talks withcoal operators in the plush confines ofthe White House, 3,000 of his unionmembers ral1ied at the Marion CountyArmory here yesterday."And Miller's ears must have beenburning."The United Mine Workers presidentand the contract he presented to themembership last week took a pounding."There were choruses of boos when the

Anti-Miller Rallies inAppalachian Coal Fields

In a series of mass rallies held in thecoal fields this past week minersdemonstrated their determination todefy government strikebreaking mea­sures. At a meeting of over 400 inUniontown, Pennsylvania on Saturdaythe assembled strikers voted unanimous­ly not to work under Taft-Hartley.

ITHRL\RY 21 In the wake 01

mass!\ e denwnstrations in the coalfields aga1l1st Arnold \1illcr's gi\cawa\c('nt I act a nd faced \\Ith the th reat of ~shutdo\\n of \1idweq industry due tofuel shortages. the Carter admimslla­ti()n has taken direct command ofnegotiations in the cleven-week-old coalqnke. As the L'nited \1ine Workers( l' \1 WA) president proved incapable oframming the grotesque sellout downminers" throats. federal officials havethreatened ewrything from invokingthe Taft-Hartley Act to a governmentsei/ure of the mines.

After calling union and managementnegl)tiators onto the White Housecarpet. Carter is employing both theLabor Department and the Federal\1ediation and Conciliation Service(F\lCSI. In parallel negotiations thefederal agencIes are seeking to weardown the L' \lWA Bargaining Council~lnd torce acceptance of an agreementern bodying the esscntial demands of the«)al operators.

On T\1(mday the FMCS came up with~\ ,eparatc agreemem at Pittsburg and\1idway. a major producer with \Vest­C-Tn strip mine holdings. which is notpart of the 1I1dustry Bituminous CoalOperators' Association (BCOA). Fol­lowing approval of this pact by theunion Bargaining Council the pressbegan hading it as a pattern-settingbreakthrough in the deadlocked talks.But although it was reportedly negotiat­ed through the efforts of "militants"from the Council. the P&M settlementstill concedes a company "right to fire"wildcat "instigators," thus negating anylocal right to strike. Mine workermilitants must vote down this "modi­fied" version of the Miller contract.Watch out/or the sellout it portends forthe BCOA bargaining.

By threats of force, legal penalties anddirect manipulation of the UMW A'sdecision-making processes, the U. S.government is acting as if it owned theunion. Having installed Arnold Millerin the presidency through LaborDepartment-ordered and -supervisedelections, it now figures it can write thecontract as well and then rig itsacceptance. U.S. Labor Secretary RayMarshall has sequestered the Bargain­ing Council, issued various "deadlines"for a settlement and announced peremp­torily. "whatever agreement we get herewon't be 'tentative'" (New York Times,17 February). Miners must stand fastagainst this intimidation and manipula­tion. With coal shortages mountingquickly. victory is in sight. If Carterthreatens force they must respond withtheir traditional answer: "You can't minecoal with bayonets."

Trotskyist Faction Plans Fusion Discussions with iSt

Big Walkout at WSL Conference

II. Leena, Maoist organisations (Asia) 1972-74; WSL 1977-78. 21. John Zucker, WSL 1976-78, Birmingham Branch.

STATEMENT OF THE TROTSKYIST FACTION

WorkersVanguard

lation to Nationalism: For a ProletarianPerspective in Ireland" and "Enough ofOpportunism-;- Adventurism, andBundism---For a Trotskyist Perspectivein Turkey," as well as its recruitment ofthree of the four members of the WSL'sIrish Commission and of members ofthe WSL's Turkish Group in London,testify to the TF's break from the WSL'scharacteristic parochialism.

Rejecting the anti-Leninist notion of"the world Trotskyist movement"-thatrubric by which all shades of centrismand reformism uneasily coexist inlowest-common-denominator "unity"blocs--the TF committed itself to theconstruction of a revolutionary interna­tional based on firm programmati<>cohesiveness and has begun discussionswith the London Spartacist Grouplooking toward an early fusion with theinternational Spartacist tendency.

The months of pre-conference discus­sion and factional struggle confirmed inthe eyes of an increasing number ofWSL members that the WSL washardened in its right-centrist accommo­dation to social democracy and in itsphilistine, guilt-ridden workerism-andthat the leadership was determined torenounce altogether any inquiry in thedirection of programmatic clarity.Rarely has there been a more incompe­tent and pathetic response by a centristleadership to the crystallisation of a left­wing opposition. The best the WSLleadership could muster was a docu­ment entitled "Strategy and Tactics·-AReply to Our Petty-Bourgeois Critics."which centred on ineffectual (andinaccurate) class-baiting to obscure thepolitical issues. Thornett's standardresponse to political challenge was tosing hosannas to the much abused"honest worker" and one documenthailed the "daily grind" at the Cowleycar plant as a revolutionary militant'shighest duty.

The British left has already shownsigns of trepidation as the news of thesplit of the TF spreads. And well itmight. The convergence of the TF withthe international Spartacist tendencyprovides a significant prospect ofaccretion of new forces to challenge the"Trotskyist" pretensions of centrists andreformists in England and internation­all\'. Future issues of Workers Van­gu~rd will carry articles detailing theprogrammatic positions of the Trotsky­ist Faction and further accounts of itsstruggle inside the WSL.

Toward a Trotskyist party in Britain!Toward the rebirth of the Fourth

International!

sionism led by the early InternationalCommittee and analysed the Healyitedisorientation over Stalinism (tailism ofHo Chi Minh and the Maoist RedGuards, analysis of Castro's Cuba as"capitalist"), grotesque capitulation toArab nationalism and gyrating oppor­tunism on the Labour Party. Thedocument traced the evolution of theWSL and its congenital liquidation ofthe Trotskyist Transitional Programmein its "mass work." It exposed theWSL's confusionism on such crucialquestions as the class nature of the stateand the WSL leadership's flight fromthe responsibility to elaborate a clearpolitical programme.

The document counterposed to theWSL's confusionis111 a clear Leninistposition on the national question and­particularly important for a Britishorganisation-on Ireland. The TF'ssupplemental documents, "No Capitu-

16. Mike Shortland. Young Communist League 1970-73; IMG1975-76; WSL 1977-78, London Area Committee.

17, Robert Styles. WSL 1976-78.

18. Caroline Walton. WSL 1977-78, Central London Branch.19. Jo Woodward.I.S. 1972-74 (expellcd); LeftOpposition(ex­

IS); WSL 1976-78, Coventry Branch.20. Tim Woodward. 1.5. 1972-74 (expelled); Left Opposition

(ex-IS); WSL 1976-78, West Midlands Area Committee.Coventry Branch chairman. convenor NALGO unionfraction:

12. Paul Lannigan, SLL 1968-72, Derry Branch, NorthernIreland. Irish National Committee (1968-70), full-timeorgani'Ser Liverpool SLL/YS (1970-72); WSL 1977-78,Irish Commission, West London Branch.

13. Cath McMillan, WSL 1977-78, Coventry Branch.14. Joe Quigley. Communist Party of Great Britain, 1969-70;

I.S. 1970-74 (expelled); Left Faction, Left Opposition(both of I.S.); RCG 1975; founder member WSL 1975-78.National Committee, North West Area secretarv. Man-chester Branch secretary, Irish Commission. •

Jim Saunders. I.S. 1974-76; WSL 1976-78. London AreaCommittee, West London Branch secretary, Irish Com­mission. editorial board Socialist Press, Campaign forDemocracy in the Labour Movement, organisingcommittee.

in London and a handful of membersscattered through' Yorkshire.

The left critics who became the earlycore of the TF were initially disturbedover the Iiquidationism epitomised bythe WSL's trade-union front, the Cam­paign for Democracy in the Labou~Movement. They soon generalised theirunease into a principled critique of WSLleft-Labourism on the central questionof voting for the Labour Party while it isin coalition with the bourgeois Liberals.

The left oppositionists' break fromWS L nativist parliamentary cretinismand from the WSL's unseriousnessabout its own history were evident in theTF's major programmatic statement,"In Defence of a Revolutionary Pro­gramme" (16 January 1978). Beginningwith an analysis of the WSL's progeni­tor, the SLL/WRP of Gerry Healy, thedocument solidarised with the correctbut partial fight against Pabloist revi-

7. Clive ,Hills. WRP 1973-76.editorialboardKeep~fi(paper

of the Young Socialists, yout h group of the WRP); WS L1976-78. Oxford Student/Trent Branch.

8. Alan Holford, I.S. 1971-73 (expelled); RevolutionaryOpposition (ex-I.S.) 1972-74: founder member RCG 1974­75. Political Committee: founder member WSL 1975-78,National Committee, West Midlands Area chairman,Birmingham Branch secretary. convenor of Women'sCommission.

9. Dewi Jones. WSL 1976-78. Liverpool Branch.

10. Mark Kinker, WSL 1977-78.

The debate at this conference has exposed in the clearest light the majoritis hostility to the highest task ofMarxists today: the construction of an international cadre hardened in the fight for a communistprogramme. '

The counterposition of the Bolshevik position of the Trotskyist Faction to the hardened right centrism of thecentral leadership has brought forth another shameless defen~eofthe majority's Pabloite attachment to theLabour Party, their capitulationist attitude to nationalism, and in particular Irish nationarism, their all­pervading economism and miriimalism and their parochialism.

It is apparent that the fight for the re-creation of the Fourth International can only take place in implacableopposition to this parody ofTrotskyism.Recognisingthefuodamenta:ldiyergen~el:)l;Wweeobtlflaetlonand

all other tendencies within the Workers' Socialist League that has been confirmed this weekend we resign

from the WSL.We intend to immediately open discussions with the international Spartacist tendency, with the aim ofmoving

toward a fused organisation. Forward to the British section of the refOl:ged Fourth International!

Signers:

I.'unice Aktar. WSL 1978. Liverpool Branch.

2. Richard Brookes. I.S. 1973-75, WSL 1975-78, OxfordGeneral Branch.

3. Carolyn Dixon, WSL 1977-78. Birmingham Branch.

4. E., WSL 1976-78. London AreaCommittee.TurkishGroup,Hackney. Branch.

5. F.. WSL 1976-78, Turkish Group. Hackney Branch.

6. Alastair Green. I.S. 1973-74; Left Opposition(ex-I.S.); RCG1975: founder member WSL. 1975-78. West Midlands 15.Area Committee. Birmingham Branch chairman, com'en-or student fraction. editorial board Socialist Press.

LONDON-The struggle to cohere anauthentic Trotskyist organisation inBritain scored a victory last weekendwhen 24 supporters of the TrotskyistFaction (TF) of the Workers SocialistLeague (WSL) resigned at the annualWSL Conference on February 18-19and declared their commitment toexplore a perspective of fusion with theinternational Spartacist tendency. Intheir principled factional struggle, theseWSLers pointed the way forward toTrotskyist clarity from the program­matic amorphousness and dead-endtrade-union parochialism of Alan Thor­nett's WSL. The departure of the TF­which included two National Commit­tee members, several local and regionalorganisers and Socialist Pressjournalists-may have decisively steri­lised the WSL, effectively reducing it toits Cowley car fraction bailiwick andOxford support group, about 30 people

Another comrade, not a member of the Trotskyist Faction, resigned together with the faction and submittedthe appended statement:

Although not a member of the Trotskyist Faction, and with some reservations, I supported their mainperspectives document, and I stand by that. The discussion and voting at this conference have confirmed for methat the WSL is not to be budged from what I regard as its fundamentally wrong positions, and I therefore also

resign.

Signed:P.. WRP 1974-75. expelled as part of the Thornett opposition~

WSL 1975-7H. editorial board Socialist Pres,\. London AreaCommittee.

MARXIST WORKING CLASS WEEKLY OFTHE SPARTACIST LEAGUE

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WSL: Workers Socialist LeagueWRP: Workers Revolutionary Party,

formerly the SLL: Socialist Labour League

YS: Young Socialists, youth group of the WRPReG: Revolutionary Communist GroupI.S.: Intt'fnational Socialists,

now the SWP: Socialist Workers Party

Cl~1,"

::; • , \ ~ f' 7,n

194

2 WORKERS VANGUARD

mgger-Happy' Guardsmen Go After Mine Strikers

State of Siege in Indiana Coal Fields

John Blair/Liaison

Indiana state troopers guard scab coal haulers.

For more information call (604) 291-8993

Trotskyist League ForumQUEBEC:

NATIONALISM AND THECLASS STRUGGLE

"""

Wednesday. February 22 at 12:30 p.mSimon Fraser UniversityPub Seminar RoomSaturday, February 25 at 7:30 p.mBritannia Center. Music RoomCommercial at NapierDonation $1.00 (Saturday only)

VANCOUVER

sellout. For an emergency UMWAconvention to elect a militant bargain­ing committee. Break the state of siegein Indiana! Stop scab coal with massivepickets! Victory to the miners strike! •

more support is needed from outlyingdistricts to counter the National Guard'sstrikebreaking. An Indiana minerbrought this message to 3,000 WestVirginia and Pennsylvania miners at amass meeting in Fairmont, West Virgi­nia last week. ''I'm here to say we mayneed your help if we're going to stop themovement of this coal through Indiana.Can we call on you if we need you?" Thecrowd roared yes.

It is precisely the support of otherUMWA districts which is needed to aidthe beleaguered miners of Indiana.Mass roving pickets must be organizedby elected strike committees from eachUMWA district, both to close theworking mines and stop shipments ofcoal and to protect the pickets them­selves from lethal gun thugs and copassaults. No assistance, however, hascome from the International in Wash­ington or from the district office in TerreHaute. "W,e've not had any districtrepresentation to amount to anythingwhatsoever," one miner said.

Nor have Miller's presidential rivalsin last June's election come forwardwith a program for a strike victory. Infact, both district and Internationalbureaucrats have failed to back theroving pickets-one of the keys to thesuccess of the strike so far-and they'renot about to advocate such militanttactics as appeals to unionized workersin allied industries to boycott scab coal.

This bitterly fought strike can be wonif a militant leadership representing theranks can push aside the defeatist, pro­company Miller bureaucracy. UMWAmilitants must-demand the election ofstrike committees which can mobilizethe membership to resist both govern­ment strikebreaking and bureaucratic

front of a jeep. but as one miner noted,"I ain't seen a magnet yet that'll pick upaluminum nails."

Governor Bowen's show of force hasnot broken the miners' spirit. Twothousand attended John Hull's funeral,and as many as 500 turn out for the dailyarea-wide meetings for strikers. Today amemorial meeting for brother Hull wascalled in Winslow despite rumors of ananti-union provocation by scabs. WVlearned from an Indiana miner thatsC3bs plannea to "decorate" a truck withanti-UMWA banners and park it infront of the gym where the service isscheduled, hoping that enraged unionmembers would attack it and be subjectto arrest.

The Indiana miners are aware that

Indiana National Guard troops protecting scab coal trucks near Evansvillelast week.

spot. Last week a striker's chainsaw wasseized by the cops as a lethal weapon.The scabs, most of them from out ofstate, have no such worries. As oneminer put it. "Just as quick as they [thescabs] shoot somebody, they ship himout."

The repression of the Indiana minersdid not begin with the National Guarddeployment. On January 7. 194 picketswere arrested at the B&M coal dock inRockport. B&M is also owned byTeegarden. While the miners werejailed, state troopers smashed head­lights and windshields and otherwisedamaged the strikers' cars. The miners'drivers licenses were confiscated andused later to fill in identities anddescriptions on the hundreds of blankindictments waiting for distribution tomilitants who crossed the district. Yetcriminals like Teegarden-whose thugsengage in threats, beatings and rape andI~st Saturday even used arson to clear anelderly couple from a piece of propertywhich the coal operator wanted-areportrayed in the bourgeois media asvictims of the coal miners' wrath!

A District II militant told WV thatthe outgunned and frequently outnum­bered strikers are often unable to picket:"Most places aren't even allowed tohave pickets, but I wouldn't want us toget out there with [just] one or two ....Just as soon as everybody turned theirback, they'll kill you and swear thatyou'd had been on their property andprobably drag you on there."

Despite the repression, resistance hascontinued. A few scab coal trucks havebeen burned, and many coal trucks havebeen disabled on the highway. TheGuardsmen have attached a magneticdevice designed to pick up nails on the

Arnold Miller will not mobilize theranks of miners from other states inDistrict II's defense, emboldened thegovernor to dictate anti·strike measuresthat the chief executives in neighboringcoal-mining states hesitate to take.

At a White House governors' meetingon February 16, Pennsylvania's MiltonShapp correctly noted that "It is verydifficult to mine coal with the Taft­Hartley law." But as president Carterconsiders whether to order a Federalseizure of the mines, issue a back-to­work order or impose binding arbitra­tion, the troops in Indiana are a direwarning to all UM WA strikers: whengovernment "persuasion" and bureau­cratic treachery fail, the state will useforce in an attempt to break the strike.

Right now, a striker told WV in atelephone interview, "There's moredamn coal going through this state thanyou can produce out there in WestVirginia." Much of the coal goes out intrucks, and for everyone there are twoguards aboard. state police in front andbehind and a helicopter overhead. Thetrooper told one striker that the copshave "shoot on sight" orders if minersinterfere. One local miner is deadalready: John Hull of Potoka wasmurdered by a scab on February 3. Noindictment has been issued.

Strikers reported that simply drivingdown Highway 57 is enough to draw thefire of Guardsmen parked along theroad. "You can have a major confronta­tion any time you take five people to anyone of these mines. They've got guardsand killer dogs," one militant stated.The strikers suffer endless threats andharassments over their phones, whichthey feel certain are tapped, and theirhomes are frequently buzzed by helicop­ter pilots.

In addition to the uniformed gunthugs. the working scabs are "armed tothe gills." The scabs, of course, are notmolested by the police. Paul Teegarden,the owner of the Bowersock mine whereHull was killed, recently appeared at thecourthouse in Petersburg along withtwo of his goons. Each of the thugscarried M-16 automatics, and all threepacked .45-calibre pistols. In contrast,any miner caught with a weapon isarrested or has it confiscated on the

There are only about 3,500 UMWAmembers. including retirees. in all ofDistrict II. This small number, coupledwith the certainty that union president

MORGANTOWN, West Virginia, Feb­ruary 21-The coal fields of southwest·ern Indiana are presently under amilitary state of siege. One week agoGovernor Otis Bowen deployed 350National Guardsmen and 50 riot­trained state cops to the mining countiesalong the Ohio River, with orders to"protect" shipments of coal headed forlndiana's energy-starved power utilities.The government's uniformedstrikebreakers-equipped with dogs,M-16 automatic rifles and a fleet ofgovernment and privately ownedhelicopters-are "protecting" the scabcoal and terrorizing the strikers with avengeance befitting civil war conditions.

Masquerading as guardians of thepublic welfare, the armed forces standexposed as the bosses' ultimate weaponin the class war. Illusions in the"neutrality" of the government are beingshaken even among staunchly patrioticwhite workers. That Bowen unleashedhis troops in this explosive situation is ameasure of the bourgeoisie's increasingfrustration at the solidarity and effec­tiveness of the coal miners' 78-day-oldstrike. And as they shoot up southernIndiana highways the Guard risksantagonizing the entire localpopulation.

1\'ot since the 1964-68 ghetto explo­sions have the capitalist armed forcesappeared so openly as an army ofoccupation. Now in the heartland ofwhite middle America the state is forcedto transfer troops away from their homeareas for fear of a mutiny, just as in anyLatin American dictatorship. The NewYork Times (15 February) dryly report­ed that the Guardsmen "will come fromall parts of the state except the south­west. where the coal mines are situated"(our emphasis). A United Mine Work­ers (UMWA) militant from Indiana'sDistrict II explained the reason to WV:

"These guys [ the Guardsmen] downhere in southern Indiana. there were 200of them. and 80 some are coal miners.They started going AWOL and theysaid they wouldn't do anything toanybody under any circumstances. andthey would not serve any duty."

24 FEBRUARY 1978 3

Taft-Hartley Won't Dig Coal

Marxist Working-Class Weeklyof the Spartacist League of the U.S.

Federal Tampering With UMWABargaining Council

Miners...

What The Miners Must Do

operators absolutely refused to considerthe union's demand for the establish­ment of a pension fund. Truman seizedthe mines. At the same time, he did not"lay down conditions they could ac­cept." 'He termed their key demand"illegal." But the miners stuck to theirguns. They struck and forced thegovernment to agree to pay a royalty oncoal tonnage; this was the origin of theUMWA Welfare and Retirement Fund.

If the miners surrender and go back towork under Taft-Hartley or a federalseizure. they will win nothing. It wasprecisely by refusing to do so that theunion won substantial victories in the1940's, with wage gains as well as healthand pension benefits that were superiorto those of any other section of theworking class. The miners won becausethey did not rely on the phony promisesof labor bureaucrats that DemocraticParty politicians the Roosevelts andTrumans-- would "give" them what theyneeded. They won by fighting andstriking. in the face of governmentstrikebreaking attempts.

Today, George Meany condones theuse of Taft-Hartley injunctions againstthe UMW A. In 1943, in the context ofsimilar attempts by the government tobreak the UM WA strike. AFL and ciabureaucrats denounced the minersstrike. cia head Phil Murray attackedJohn L. Lewis for "waging a politicalvendetta against the President," whileother bureaucrats accused Lewis ofbeing an agent of Hitler.

Over and over, the miners havedemonstrated their resolve, courage andresourcefulness during this strike. Withno help from the International they havesucceeded in shutting off most coalshipments. Carter's reluctance to em­ploy Taft-Hartley is fundamentally atestimony to the strength and solidarityof the miners. It is the lack of effectiveleadership that poses a mortal danger tothe strike. It is not only Miller, but theIEB, the district officials and theBargaining Council that are responsiblefor this.

Not once have these misleaders doneanything to implement the mass rovingpickets that have shut off scab coal. Notonce have they demanded the UM WAappeal to steel workers, rail workers andtransport workers to hot-cargo scabcoal-actions that would deal a crush­ing blow to the coal operators. Were aserious campaign undertaken to enlistthe solidarity of other unions, it wouldnot be easy for Meany & Co. to continuetheir refusal to aid the miners and theirtoleration of government strikebreak­ing threats.

Last week, in the wake of Miller'sthorough discrediting before theUM WA ranks, we wrote: "I t would be amistake for miners to rely on theBargaining Council as an effectiveguarantee against a contract sellout."Now the Bargaining Council is recom~

mending the rotten P&M settlement tothe miners! The continual succession oflousy deals backed by the union negotia­tors, and now the Bargaining Council,threatens the solidarity of the strike andwill ultimately lead at least a section ofthe union to the conclusion that it is nolonger worth continuing the fight.

It is urgent that the conduct of thestrike be taken out of the hands of Millerand the bu-reaucrats of the BargainingCouncil. Strike committees must beelected in every district and a specialbargaining convention must be electednow! The elected delegates to such aconvention must formulate clear, power­ful strike demands: for the unlimitedright to strike, full funding of the healthbenefit fund, a big wage boost, full cost­of-living protection, equal pensions forall at the highest levels, extend thecontract and bring the unorganizedminers into the union. Only such ademocratically elected leadership cangenuinely defend the interests of theUMWA rank and file.•

liable to hundreds of dollars of"deducti­ble" medical expenses yearly and almostsurely means the discontinuance of theminers' health clinics. Supposedly theissue of medical coverage will be subjectto further negotiations with the BCOA;however, the Bargaining Council'srefusal to demand maintenance and fullfunding of the health plans as aprecondition to accepting any settle­ment with Pittsburg and Midway makesit virtually certain they will not press thiskey issue with the BCOA. ,

Furthermore, miners are justly wor­ried that UM WA officials will permitP&M to resume production before anoverall coal settlement is reached.Pittsburg and Midway operates fourmines in the West and last DecemberMiller permitted the company to sign aseparate agreement and scab on thenational strike. As one militant toldWV: "If P&M wants to work ... all I cantell them is they'll just have to wait. ByGod, we'll not have any more goddamnunion coal run while we're on strike."

Enter George MeanyAfter 78 days of the most important

U.S. labor struggle in years, AFL-CIOhead George Meany finally made hisfirst important public statement yester­day on the miners strike. Did Meanvpromise solidarity with the UMWA i~its bitter battle against the coal opera­tors and the capitalist government? Nota chance. The reactionary labor bureau­crat intoned: "Taft-Hartley is part of thelaw of the land. We don't like it. But ifthe President feels it's his only alterna­tive, then we won't criticize him" (NewYork Times, 21 February). In Meany'sstatement he underscored that resump­tion of coal production was crucial. Thisconcern is touching indeed. It is exactlythe same justification the reactionarycapitalist politicians give when they urgeCarter to invoke Taft-Hartley.

Every year Meany and the AFL-CIObureaucrats ritualistically pass paperresolutions in opposition to Taft­Hartley. They "oppose" this "slave­labor" law at all times ... except when itis posed as an immediate burning issuebefore the working class. Were Meany& Co. to rally the ranks of the AFL-CIOsolidly behind the UMWA and make itclear that strikebreaking efforts by thegovernment would be met with solidari­ty strikes and refusal to handle scab coal,it would quickly demonstrate theimpotence of Taft-Hartley and otheranti-labor legislation. But a seriousstruggle against Taft-Hartley is alien tothese bureaucrats, who prefer to hidebehind such laws as an excuse for theirown inaction and refusal to fight thebosses.

In his statement Meany also claimed,"If I was President, I would seize themines and lay down conditions that theminers can accept."

Federal seizure of the mines is one ofthe alternatives being bandied about asan alternative by the Carter administra­tion if it is unable to ram the P&Msettlement down the throats of theminers. This scheme was first employedbv Franklin Roosevelt in 1943, in anattempt to break the UMWA strikeagainst the wartime wage freeze. Upuntil then, there had never been asuccessful strike against the govern­ment. Only a few years earlier Roosevelthad taunted WPA (Works ProgressAdministration) employees as he broketheir strike, "You can't strike against thegovernment."

When Roosevelt seized the mines on IMay 1943, he did not "lay downconditions that the miners can accept:'as Meany promises Carter might do. Heoffered the miners not one penny more.He simply ordered them back to work,hoping they wouldn't have the courageto strike against the government.Roosevelt was wrong. As a result oftheir successf:ul strike, the UM WA wasthe only union to win a pay increase(and portal-to-portal pay) during thewar after wages were frozen in 1942.

In 1946, UMWA contractnegotiations were deadlocked. The

include three "anti-M iller militants"from the International Executive Board(I EB)-Jack Perry, president of District17 (western West Virginia); Ken Dawes,president of District 12 (Illinois); andTom Gaston, president of District 23(western Kentucky)-was widely ac­claimed as providing a bargaining teammore responsive to the interests of themembership. But who made the deci­sion to include them? Certainly not theUM WA membership. They have notbeen consulted ·once during this strike,neither concerning the composition ofthe bargaining teams nor as to thecontract demands that the negotiatorshave put before the BCOA.

In fact it was the Carter governmentitself that forced M iller to expand thenegotiating team and keep the Bargain­ing Council on call in Washington. Andin whose interest has the governmentacted? This is no secret. As the NewYork Times (16 February) noted:"Paradoxically, they were added to thebargaining team at the request of thecoal operators, who sought to avoidanother experience of negotiating acontract that was approved by theMiller group, then turned down by thebargaining council."

In other words, the government andBCOA are confident that they can weardown the Council's resistance throughusing selected "anti-Miller" bureaucratsto endorse a "modified" contract whichprotects the most important interests ofthe coal operators. This move wasrequired because Miller-the previousfavorite of the Labor Department-isnow so discredited among UM WAminers that his approval of a settlementmeans nothing at all.

Watch Out for the Sellout!The government/BCOA strategem

has worked so far. Perry, Dawes, etc.have knuckled under. The first contractthat the "new" negotiating team present­ed to the Bargaining Council onFebruary 18 aroused such a storm ofprotest that it was voted down unan­imously, 37-to-0, with the entire nego­tiating team, including Miller, beingforced to reverse itself! The main changein this offer, which the BCOA termed its"final offer," was that it lifted theproposed financial penalties againstwildcat strikers. But it preserved theright of coal operators to summarily fire"strike instigators" and discipline min­ers who respected picket lines, therebygutting the right to strike.

Yet only two days later theBargaining Council approved the P&Msettlement by a margin of 26 to 13.Pittsburg and Midway does not speakon behalf of the BCOA, but the Carteradministration made it plain today thatit is pushing for a settlement modeledafter this "pattern." The bosses' press isplaying up the rumor that this settle­ment, whose terms were reportedly"hammered out" in secret caucusesbehind Miller's back, are being bitterlyopposed by a section of the BCOA.Similarly the media made much of theBCOA's initial refusal to attend theWhite House bargaining sessions. Theirpurpose is to lull the miners into seeingCarter as their "friend in Washington."

Nothing could be further from thetruth. The P&M contract is a defeat forthe miners. While it eliminates a few ofthe companies' takeaway demands suchas the introduction of incentive norms,Sunday work and a probationary periodfor new employees, on the central issuesit does not differ fundamentally fromthe pact rejected unanimously by theBargaining Council. On the key issue ofthe right to strike, the "pattern" agree­ment does not mention an employer's"right to fire" miners who respect picketlines; but it does allow them to fire thepicketers under the guise of being"instigators. "

Further, this settlement does not alterthe medical coverage initially offered bythe coal operators association. Thisproposal, under which the health fund isto be abandoned for a commercialcarrier insurance plan, makes miners

24 February 1978

The latest White House maneuversonly bear out the role of the Carteradministration as defenders of the coaloperators' interests. The decision toexpand the union's negotiating team to

Published weekly, except bl-weekly in Augustand December, by the Spartacist PublishingCo. 260 West Broadway, New York. NY 10013Telephone 966-6841 (EditOrial), 925-5665(Business) Address all correspondence to:Box 1377. GPO, New Yo'k, NY 10001Domestic subSCriptions: $5.00 per yearSecond-class postage paid at New York, N.Y

OpinIOns expressed In Signed articles orletters do not necessarily express ti,e edltonalviewpOint.

WORKERSVANfitJARIJ

The clear purpose of Carter's meetingwas to sound out sentiment for invokingTaft-Hartley. But the governors werereportedly almost universally opposedto this measure. The same day, LaborSecretary Marshall declared that therewould be a two-day deadline on thereconvened bargaining. However, whenthis time period lapsed without asettlement, Marshall and Carter quicklyretreated from ordering either courtinjunctions or asking Congress forauthority to seize the mines.

The reluctance of Carter to employTaft-Hartley and other more directstrikebreaking measures is quite under­standable. It is not because they opposesuch compulsion in general. Far from it!Carter and the capitalist politicians areafraid that it won't work and defiance bythe mine strikers may boomerang,revealing to other workers that thegovernment's arsenal of anti-labor lawscould be turned into a dead letter bymilitant defiance. As for dispatching theNational Guard or U.S. Army, theauthorities fear that this could lead tobloody civil war in the coal fields. Andthe day the troops march in could be thespark that rouses U.S. labor in defenseof its class brothers under the gun.

Under no conditions can the minersailow themselves to be hoodwinked intobelieving that Carter is on their side, oreven neutral. It is not accidental thatMarshall and other federal officialsspoke favorably of every rotten propo­sal the BCOA has proposed. Carter'sconcern is the profitability of the coalindustry and the steel, oil and powermonopolies that control it. Any con­tract that meets even the most immedi­ate needs of coal miners is fundamental­ly as unacceptable to Carter as it is to theBCOA. The underpinning of Carter's"energy plan" is the availability ofrelatively cheap domestic coal to substi­tute for oil and natural gas, and aguarantee that production will not beinterrupted by strikes.

(continued from page 1)Midwest was receiving only 6,000-8,000megawatts a day ofelectrical power fromeastern states, while the state of Ohioalone uses 18,000 megawatts daily.

Cutbacks of available electricalpower, notably to large industrial cus­tomers, have escalated during the week.This has meant widespread layoffs,which are now threatening even the giantauto and steel plants. Power and coalshortages have forced U.S. Steel'sClairton coke works to layoff 610workers. Ford and Chrysler have threat­ened to close their Indianapolis plantswithin ten days, Chrysler has predicted ashutdown of its assembly operations byearly March, whileGM is concerned thatclosed own ofOhio parts plants threatensits operations throughout the country.

No. 194L

4 WORKERS VANGUARD

Debate with SL· in Chicag!! "Pa~er Regrougment Ploy" Denounced

RSL Plays withLumpen Rage

Denver LeftistsResign from CRSP

TROTSKYISoT LEAGUEOF CANADA

SPARTACIST LEAGUELOCAL DIRECTORYANN ARBOR (313) 663-9012

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In WV No. 180(4 November 1977) wereported on the efforts of assortedAmerican supporters of the formerInternational Majority Tendency (IMT)ofthefake- Trotskyist United Secretariat(USec) to "regroup" an organization tocompete with the reformist SocialistWorkers Party (SWP) for the USec'franchise." We characterized the pros­pects of the "regrouped" group, theCommitteefora Revolutionary SocialistParty (CRSP), as inauspicious in theextreme~not merely because of itsamorphous centrist politics (and theIMT maneuverers' fratricidal attitudetoward their U.S. co-thinkers) but alsobecause ofits evident inability to attractforces beyond a few small clots whichhad departed the SWP since the mid­1960's. We also noted that a smallgrouping in Denver, the ProgressiveWorkers Organizing Committee(PWOC) loosely derived from SamMarcy's Workers World Party, hadbeenexpected to come into the newformationbut seemed to be holding itself aloof

Last month we receivedfrom Denverthe documents of the three PWOCmembers whom the CRSP had beencourting. In addition to noting seriouspolitical differences with CRSP, thedocuments cited CRSP's attempts toimply it had gathered in the PWOCunder its centrist umbrella as an addi­tional reason compelling their breakwith the stillborn "regroupment." Wereprint below a briefexcerptfrom one ofthe Denver documents along with a hit ofbackground material from the CRSPpress. .

* * *. * *"A bold new revolutionary tendency

committed to the revitalization of U.S.Trotskyism has just emerged on theregroupment front.

"A conference of veteran Trotskyistleaders and youthful revolutionary so­cialists ... culminated in the formationof the Committee for a RevolutionarySocialist Party (CRSP)...

" ... the conference participants includedrepresentatives ofthe LA-based Social­ist Union, the Progressive WorkersOrganizing Committee of Denver, theFSP, members of the former Interna-

ti{)nalist Tendency of the SWP andindependent radicals...."

-Freedom Socialist, Summer1977* * * * *

*****

[undated]

.. .In this,letter, I speak for myself anda few other comrades in Denver,including S. W., the other comrade fromDenver who attended the LARegroupment Conference. The DenverProgressive Workers OrganizingCommittee was never a part of CRSP,contrary to the impression given in theFreedom Socialist newsrag of theFreedom Socialist Party and by proxyof the CRSP formation.

Being isolated in Denver, somemembers of the Progressive WorkersOrganizing Committee were looking fora national groupin~to link upto. Havingmembers whose roots came from theSocialist Workers Party and for a whilebeing close to the tail-ending,opportunistic politics of the WorkersWorld Party, we saw Trotskyism, in ourown confused way, as the only legitimatehistorical Marxist tendency. We werenot familiar with the political history ofthe people involved in the convening ofthe conference scheduled for LA in 1976,and so we attend[ed] looking to build aTrotskyist party in opposition to thereformist SWP. We knew that theorganizers of the conference weresympathetic to the politics of the IMT[International Majority Tendency,recently dissolved faction of the "U nitedSecretariat ofthe Fourth International"]and that general agreement with the linesof the IMT [was] necessary Jorattendance. At that time, we felt the IMTwas the revolutionary wing of the FourthInternational and believed the rumorcirculating that the IMT woulddisenfranchise the reformist SWP, if asizeable Trotskyist organization wasbuilt in opposition to it in the U.S.left....

We characterize the CRSPformationas a rotten,opportunistic bloc with noobjective reason for existing ... their useof the name PWOC as a paperregroupment ploy flows from theirunprincipled opportunistic charac­ter. ... In short, there was no seriousprogrammatic basis for the forming ofthe CRSP, except the commonrecognition ofthe political degenerationof the SWP.

I hereby resign from CRSP because ofmy belief that it lacks any potential ofbecoming a serious revolutionary party.... We encourage all comrades toexamine the Spartacist League as thenucleus of the vanguard party. We alsorequest that this letter be published in theFreedom Socialist and that a reply oegiven.

Comradely,1..5.Denver. Colorado

Excerpted from

Statement toComrades in CRSP

"Editor's Note: The article on "NewNational Tendency Launched" in theSummer 1977 issue of the FreedomSocialist may have conveyed theimpression that the ProgressiveWorkers Organizing Committee ofDenver is a component of theCommittee for a RevolutionarySocialist Party. Some PWOCmembershave joined CRSP, but not theorganization itself."

~Freedom Socialist, Fali 1977

1604) 291-8993

1416) 366-4107TORONTO.Box 7198. Station AToronto. Ontario

VANCOUVERBox 26 Station AVancouver Be

From Shachtmanism to LumpenRage

The RSL which debated the SL lastmonth was a bizarre parody of thegrouping which debated us in August1973. Then, the Sy Landy/Ron Tabergroup gave itself airs of "orthodoxTrotskyism" (of course, never mind theRussian question) and prated about"trade-union caucuses." Now even thisspurious "Trotskyism" has all butdisappeared from view, to be replacedby a frenzied "fight back" rhetoricreminiscent of the old New Left. Butwhereas the New Left's glorification ofspontaneity represented mainly politicalchildishness, for the RSL it constitutes arejection of the Leninist concept of aconscious proletarian vanguard. For theRS L the "vanguard" now consists of themost desperate victims of capitalistoppression, whose "revolutionary" po­tential resides in their powerlessness andtheir rage.

Wayne Pierce provided the "theoreti-cal" justification:

"Our politics and our program, ourorganization, are directed first andforemost to the most oppressed sectorsof the working class because these arepotentially the most revolutionary.Their experience in this society givesthem the best understanding of therotten nature of this capitalist systemand the need to overthrow it. ... Theorientation of the SL is to the better-offworkers. to the aristocracy of labor andto the petty-bourgeois intellectual. It isfor this reason that they pose the gaystruggle as being secondary... as beingof no strategic importance."

But it is not from some moralistic

continued on paRe II

sisters of hate and bigotry in thiscountry. Phyllis Schafly and LouiseDay Hicks, it's quite clear on what sideof the class line the RSL stands. Theyattack the democratic rights of blacksby not supporting busing, and theyattack the democratic rights of womenby not supporting the ERA."

RSL debater Wayne Pierce, trying tosmear the SL as anti-homosexual,recalled the Red Flag Union comrades'statement upon fusing with the SL,"We are no longer gay activists, now weare communists." Pierce demagogicallyproclaimed, "We in the RevolutionarySocialist League, everyone of us,whether gay or straight, are gay activ­ists." He then raised the spectre of theSL's "closet rule" (designed to preventpolitical questions from being obscuredby "life style" biases), charging the SLwith capitulating to backward con­sciousness by "never" acknowledgingthat it has gay members. Shofner, whotoured the country in fusion forumsbilled as "From Gay Liberation toTrotskyism," had to laugh. Then hescored the RSL's boundless hypocrisy:

"This is what Wayne had to say [to theRFU before its fusion with the SL]about the closet question: 'We bring ourworker contacts and so on around theLeague and they find out not only do wehave a position on gays, but there aregays there. They don't know everyonethat's gay. Not everyone's open at work.I'm not open at work.' ... You have thesame position. ..."And so you are all gay activists in theRevolutionary Socialist League? ...Well Trotsky was a Jew and Trotskywas in the Communist Party, butTrotsky was not a 'Jewish activist.' Hewas a revolutionary Communist...."We seek to be known primarily by ourprogram and ... we will do what we haveto do to speak to the workers. TheBolsheviks did work among the womenin the East [of the Soviet Union] afterthe revolution. And they didn't go inand merely say 'tear off the veil!' ...Bolshevik women put on the veil. Wewill put on the veil if we have to, tospeak to the workers, to win them to ourprogram."

CHICAGO, January 29~The Revolu­tionary Socialist League (RSL), thrash­ing wildly in the quicksand of impend­ing political oblivion, debated theSpartacist League here today on thesubject of "Revolutionary Leadershipand the Oppression of Gay People." Thedebate, attended by over 125 people,demonstrated the degeneration of thestillborn RSL sect from "born again"Shachtmanism to cynical tailism oflumpen rage.

The occasion recalled another debatebetween the two organizations held inAugust 1973, also in Chicago. There, SLNational Chairman James Robertsonconfronted then RSL head Sy Landyshortly after the RSL's emergence as aleft split from the social-democraticInternational Socialists. Blandly unper­turbed by the SL's predictions that theRSL could be nothing but a parasiticanti-Spartacist League, distinguishedfrom the far larger SL mainly by itsShachtmanite line of anti-materialist"third camp" moralism on the Russianquestion, Landy dismissed his politicalforerunners as irrelevant and blithelypostulated a rosy future for an RSLwhich would be more "Trotskyist" thanTrotsky himself. Now, three and a halfyears and several splits later, the RSLhas virtually abandoned its "theoreti­cal" pretenses and fled from its optimis­tic promises of"Trotskyist" trade-unionwork into the hysterical and provocativelumpen-"rebellion" rhetoric which nowconstitutes the totality of its "revolu­tionary strategy" of writing off theindustrial proletariat.

Perhaps the RSL's last gasp was itsdesperate attempt last year to block thepolitical convergence of the SL and theRed Flag Union (RFU), a New Left/Maoist grouping of "gay activists"whose study of the Trotskyist positionon the Russian question enabled theRFU majority to reject the RSL'sShachtmanite "third campism" and tofuse with the SL on the basis of wide­ranging programmatic agreement.Demonstrating that the RSL's only"principle" is anti-Spartacism, the RSLslandered the SL as "anti-gay" and putitself forward as the defender of homo­sexuals' rights. This "democratic" pos­turing is rendered ludicrous by theRSL's opposition to the defense ofelementary democratic rights againstominous reactionary and racist mobili­zations around busing and the EqualRights Amendment~simpledemocrat­ic measures which the RSL opposes.

It was poetic justice, then, that theSL's debater was Gene Shofner, a leader­of the former Red Flag Union. Shof­ner's presentation demonstrated thatthe SL has always upheld full democrat­ic rights for homosexuals, emphasizingthe connection between homosexuals'and women's oppression based on thebourgeois nuclear family:

"This has been a part of our programgoing back to the Russian Revolutionwhen the Russian party wiped away.through the Bolshevik Revolution, allanti-gay laws. So it raises the questionof the struggle for democratic rights.The SL seeks to be the most consistentdefender of democratic rights. We wantto be the 'tribune of the people' and wehave always stood for the democraticrights of homosexuals. And we alsodefend wherever possible the democrat­ic struggles of homosexuals. So it is notby chance we defended Gaylord andGish to get their teachingjobs back; andit is not by chance that we marchedagainst Anita Bryant."But the RSL. on the other hand, like allcentrists. were consistent in theirinconsistencv.... Thev will march withsigns that say 'Smash"the Nazis. Smashthe Klan. and Smash Anita while wecan.' But when it comes to the other two

24 FEBRUARY 19785

an•

usslanee

•ueslon

Demonstrating workers in 51. Petersburg in 1917 carry Bolshevikslogans, "Down With War! Down with Capitalist Ministers!"

Weekly PeopleArnold Petersen

mitted socialists; and 3) Russia was toobackward economically to establishsocialism. Although the SLP prideditself on the rigor of its Marxist views, itsanalysis of Soviet Russia lacked anypositive scientific characterization ofthe revolutionary regime and the socialorder it had established.

The SLP was organically incapable ofanalyzing the society emanating fromthe October Revolution because itdenied that the dictatorship of theproletariat was the general form ofsociety transitional from capitalism tosocialism. The SLP in effect denied theexistence of any objective criteriadefining a workers state. The "dictator­ship of the Russian proletariat" wasviewed as an ad hoc measure arisingfrom the particular situation in thatcountry.

The event which forced the SLP tosay something substantive about theclass nature of the Soviet regime

Louis Fraina's Socialist PropagandaLeague and the IWW.

The SLP reacted to the BolshevikRevolution with a combination ofuncritical support to Lenin's regimecombined with a know-nothing attitudetoward the nature and problems ofSoviet Russia. The SLP's understand­ing of the Russian Revolution waslimited to three propositions: I) thecapitalists had been overthrown; 2) thegovernment was in the hands of com-

about the Bolsheviks' chances ofsuccess:

"So long as the Bolsheviki was inopposition it was doing excellent work.Now that it is in power it faces failure.The day of its victory was the day of itsdefeat."

- Weekly People.24 November 1917

Petersen did, however, recognize that agenuine socialist party had come topower. Surprisingly he does not dealwith the Bolsheviks' program nor withthe soviets. For the SLP, the revolutionwas progressive and should be support­ed because of the socialist intentions ofits leaders rather than the institutionswhich would emerge from it.

According to the present editors ofthe Weekly People, Petersen's articlewas criticized internally at the time forits pessimistic outlook and implicitposition that the Bolsheviks should nothave taken power. The then SLP leaderdefended himself against the charge offatalism, asserting that he merely meantthat the Bolsheviks could not retainpower and certainly not establishsocialism without a revolution in theadvanced capitalist countries.

One could not, of course, expect anAmerican socialist to produce a full­blown analysis of the Bolshevik Revolu­tion on the day after it occurred.However, the SLP produced no inde­pendent analysis of the Russian Revolu­tion for almost two years. In themeantime the Weekly People articles onRussia were almost all reprints fromofficial Soviet sources or of pro­Bolshevik writers, like Arthur Ran­some. In December 1918 the SLPreprinted the newly adopted constitu­tion of the All-Russian Soviet Republicwithout commentary. This generalizedsupport for Soviet Russia was height­ened by reports that Lenin thoughthighly of De Leon and regarded theconcept of socialist industrial unionismas anticipating the soviet system.

That the SLP had no program orpolicies of its own concerning whatsocialists should do in Russia is clearlystated in an open letter to Lenin, "A FewEarnest Words to Our Comrades inRussia" (Weekly People, i2 April 1919):

"Let us hasten to assure you that we arenot going to deal with matters Russianwhich concern Russia only. we have nodesire to run your Revolution and wehave no advice to offer. We know onlytoo well that your problems have to bemet in your own way by the means youhave at hand."

The purpose of this address was to makea case for the SLP against its Americanrivals. the Socialist Party left wing.

Confusionist Analysis of SovietRussia

Petersen produced a brief analysis ofthe Bolshevik Revolution shortly after itoccurred which laid out many of themain elements of what would be theSLP's rudimentary position on SovietRussia for six decades. However, theSLP later moved away from the article'spessimistic attitude toward the Bolshe­vik seizure of power. Petersen's initialreaction to the news of the taking of theWinter Palace was not unlike theplaintive cries of social democrats fromPlekhanov to Kautsky: "They shouldnot have seized power!"

Petersen began by defining the aim ofa genuinely socialist revolution as theimmediate leap into socialism, thenpointed out the obvious fact that Russiawas too backward economically toestablish socialism. He was fatalistic

backdated the "betrayal" of the Bolshe­vik Revolution from 1939 to 1921. Inparticular. it now champions the Work­ers Opposition as the best representa­tives of proletarian socialism and thegroup most closely in accord with theSLP's own program.

This revision of the traditional SLPposition is not a disinterested re­evaluation of an important historicquestion. Rather it is the direct result ofthe pressure upon the SLP by the fake­Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party(SWP). Petersen's support to Stalin.including explicit endorsement of mur­dering the old Bolshevik cadre. isnaturally a great embarrassment for thepresent-day SLP. Thus a recent WeeklyPeople series on the "Russian question"has criticized the old SLP line and evennoted that Trotsky had Stalin's numberlong before Petersen broke with theKremlin autocrat.

But the Karps go on to condemnLenin and Trotsky as progenitors ofStalinism. particularly for institutingone-party rule in 1921 and smashing theWorkers Opposition. This new positionon the Russian Revolution is actuallymore consistent with the SLP's social­democratic, semi-syndicalist outlookthan was Petersen's pro-Stalinist fellow­traveler posture. In both cases, however,the rudimentary SLP "analysis" of thisdecisive question is fundamentally anti­materialist, resting on an evaluation ofthe intentions of the leaders and thepolitical superstructure rather than onthe fundamental economic changeswrought by the October Revolution andtheir subsequent fate.

During the past two years the long­ossified, sectarian social-democraticSocialist Lahar Party (SLP) has put ona trend.!' nel\' look in an attempt tocompete H'ith more active currents onthe left. As part of this face-Wting it isnOlI' attempting to present De Leonismas a serious revolutionary Marxistalternative to l.Rninism and Trotskyism.In the first part of this series (" Was DeLeon a De l.Ronist.?" WV No. 192, 10Fchruan) we dealt H'ith the latter-daySLP's exploitation of' the great Ameri­can .Hanist Daniel De Leon, who diedin 1914, in the sen'ice ofanti-Leninism.This article considers the SLP's sC\'eralpositions on the Russian Revolutionand the class nature of the Soviet state.The concluding part will focus on thequestion of the dictatorship of theproletariat.

The new SLP leadership of Nathanand Stan Karp has undertaken a

. significant revision of the party'sposition on the "Russian question."Until 1939 the SLP held that whateverLenin and later Stalin did was good forRussia. but not good enough for theU.S. Only when Stalin shocked petty­bourgeois "progressive" opinion bysigning a pact with Nazi Germany didlong-time SLP leader Arnold Petersenconclude that the Soviet leadership hadbetrayed socialism. With the Russo­Finnish border war the SLP denouncedthe USSR as an "imperialistdespotism. "

While maintaining the position thatthe USSR is a "bureaucratic statedespotism." the new SLP regime has-THESLPUS.LENINISM

PART2

6 WORKERS VANGUARD

occurred in the U.S., not in Russia. Inthe spring of 1919 the Hillquit regime ofthe Socialist Party expelled a significantportion of the pro-Bolshevik left wing.The expelled groups then issued a call tofound an American Communist partywhose central aim would be the dicta­torship of the proletariat. This forcedthe SLP's hand. Petersen responded bydeclaring that the dictatorship of theproletariat was legitimate on.ly forbackward countries with a peasantmajority, like Russia. In advancedcapitalist countries, above all the U.S.,the overthrow of capitalism would leadimmediately to a socialist industrialunion government, i.e., to socialism:

"In Russia the problem facing theSocialists was the destruction of afeudal absolutism, and the overthrow ofa merely rudimentary capitalist class.Russia is not sufficiently developedindustrially to make genuine Socialismpossible as yet. ..."In the U.S., however. we have a full­fledged. highly developed capitalistsystem ... with all the material condi­tions ready for the immediate transfor­mation to the Socialist IndustrialRepublic, without any need or realpossibility of achieving the so-calleddictatorship of the proletariat."

- Weekly People, 30 August 1919This position fundamentally separatedthe SLP from the international Com­munist movement.

In succeeding years the SLP ranarticles with diverse positions on thenature of the Soviet regime. A 17 April1920 Weekly People article on "TheSoviets and Socialism" claimed that"the crude and inefficient dictatorshipof the proletariat" had been thrownaside and there now existed a "Workers'Republic in the form of Soviets" whichare "temporary structures necessaryduring the erection of the SocialistIndustrial Republic of Russia...." Theconfusionism of this article is mind­boggling. In broad terms, the SLPregarded Soviet Russia as a society suigeneris (of its own unique kind), Whichwas progressing toward socialism main­ly because the Bolsheviks were commit­ted socialists and particularly becauseLenin thought highly of De Leon.

For Petersen's SLP, the expropria­tion of the bourgeoisie and stateownership of the means of productionwere not of particular importance incharacterizing post-revolutionary Rus­sia. Soviet democracy was not evenespecially important. A 1923 pamphletby Weekly People editor Olive Johnsonstated:

"The Dictatorship [of the Soviet gov­ernment] ceases to inspire horror whenit is clearly understood that it is an agentof progress and the only agent ofprogress existing and possible in Russiatoday. A revoluton. as long as it islogically on the path of progress, doesnot have to apologize for its tactics."

Revolution: "Dictatorship"and "Suppression" InCidentalto Social Progress

This is not wrong per se. But the SLPnever provided objective social, eco­nomic or political criteria to indicatewhether the Soviet regime was in factstill "on the path of progress."

It is true that because of the civil warand resulting economic collapse theBolsheviks were forced to depart sharp­Iv from the norms of the dictatorship~f the proletariat presented in Lenin's1917 work, The State and Revolution.But the Bolsheviks under Lenin andTrotsky were committed to achieving acentralized collectivized economy and agovernment based on soviet democracy.The SLP, in contrast, simply denied thatthere were economic and politicalnorms for the transitional society.Hence its consistent refusal to distin­guish between Lenin's Russia and thedegeneration of the revolution underStalinist bureaucratic rule.

From "Friends of Russia" toEnemies of "Soviet Imperialism"

By the mid-1920's the SLP attitudetoward the Soviet Union was essentially

24 FEBRUARY 1978

similar to that of the liberal and moreorthodox social-democratic "friends ofRussia." The Soviet regime was con­ducting a "progressive social experi­ment" in Russia, which however had norelevance for economically advanced,bourgeois-democratic countries. More­over the SLP was hostile to theCommunist International, condemningit as "anarchist." Significantly, thesupposedly orthodox Marxist SLP didnot reject Stalin's doctrine of "socialismin one country." Quite the contrary, theSLP stood for establishing socialism inthe U.S. as soon as it was elected. TheSLP's concept of socialism did notinvolve the all-round economic andcultural development of society but amere change in the form of governmen­tal administration.

The SLP's support to St~lin was not

Lenin, August 1918.

simply an unthinking continuation ofpast policy. It also reflected the megalo­maniac Petersen's identification with a"strong-man" "socialist" regime. Peter­sen himself was literally' a would-beStalin who (happily) lacked state power.In a 1939 pamphlet, Soviet Russia:Promise or Menace? he defended theStalin purges by identifying them withthe SLP's treatment of its own dissidentmembers:

"The SLP is not unduly impressed withthe fact, deplorable as that is,of some ofthe most prominent men in Russiahaving turned traitors. In our Party wehave had similar experiences, yet theSLP has had no qualms in dealingproperly and effectively with traitorsand disruptors.... And in our ability tomaintain discipline, and dispense SLPjustice, with complete Party, i.e., rankand file, democracy and publicity wehave found proof of our strength, our'indestructibility.' And so too SovietRussia."That men go wrong in great causes is afact too well known to require proof.The Russians who have paid with theirlives for their errors (whether theseresulted from serious disagreement withprinciples or from baser errors) serve asa warning that revolutions are not to betrifled with, even though the revolution­ists in command are themselves far frombeing spotless or correct in all details."

Petersen obviously resented and wasenvious of Stalin's command of statepower which allowed him to dictate toforeign socialists. In a letter (16 March

1932) to the Soviet academic L.G.Raisky, Petersen boasted that when theSLP came to power in the U.S., Stalinand everyone else would be takingorders from him:

"Leninism, if it means anything, meansMarxism applied to Russia, that is, to acountry economically backward. DeLeonism means Marxism applied to theUnited States, that is, to a country themost economically advanced to date. Itis from the United States that revolu­tionary directions, and eventually in­structions, will proceed. Eventually youin Russia will do what we, the De Leon­Marxists in the U.S., tell you to do."

-reproduced in L.G. Raisky,The Struggle Against Oppor­tunism in the American LaborMovement: An Appraisal ofDaniel De Leon (1959)

Petersen's ridiculous megalomaniaargues for dismissing the SLP after the

early 1920's as a bad joke on theAmerican left. However, there may besome subjectively revolutionary ele­ments in the SLP today who take theirparty's history on the "Russian ques­tion" seriously. What follows is ananalysis directed at such elements gen­uinely seeking a Marxist path of theevolution of the SLP's position towardStalin's Russia.

The SLP first criticized Stalin'sinternal policies around the new 1936Soviet constitution. As an ideologicalby-product of the bureaucratic coun­terrevolution, Stalin formally aban­doned workers (soviet) democracy. The1936 constitution proclaimed Russia"socialist" and established territorialelectoral constit,\encies based on equalvotes for all citizens. In reality, ofcourse, the 1936 constitution changednothing; the government remained aone-man despotism.

But for Petersen's SLP this formalideology was all-important, the realityof Soviet society irrelevant. As long asthe Stalinist bureaucracy paid lip serviceto "replacing the government of peoplewith the administration of things," theSLP regarded Russia as "progressingtoward socialism." But when Stalinidentified "socialism" with a territorialstate administration, the SLP began to

\

have its doubts about where the USSRwas going.

These doubts are expressed 10

Petersen's 1939 pamphlet, where heargues that unless the Soviet Unionchanges course it will become an"Industrial Feudalism" (a meaninglessterm) like Nazi Germany:

"... the definite conclusion would seemto be inescapable that in the face ofincreasing Leconomic1 productivitySoviet Russia is definitely movingtoward an intensified State bureaucracywhich even the fondest admirers ofSoviet Russia will find it difficult todistinguish from a trend toward Indus­trial Feudalism, producing a conditionwhich ... m4ght easily [!] be transformedinto fascism."

--Soviet Russia: Promise orMenace?

And how did the Soviet leadership allowthings to go so far? Because, accordingto Petersen, Stalin, a sincere but simplesocialist, is ignorant of De Leonism. Hemust go to school with the SLP orRussia is doomed:

"Yet, again it should be noted, there isno proof that the Stalin regime con­sciously is aiming at fascism, but ratherthat the logic of events is driving Russiatoward that point which undoubtedlywill be reached, if not checked. And itcertainly will not be checked so long asthe Russian leaders remain ignorant ofthe true nature of the form that theSocialist government must take, and thenecessity of aiding the process toward it,by taking a leaf out of America's bookand by learning the lesson taught byAmeI;ica's great Marxist, De Leon."

It was not, however, Stalin's ideolog­ical vagaries which finally caused theSLP to turn against him. Like mostliberal and social-democratic "admirersof Soviet Russia" the SLP broke overthe Stalin-Hitler pact. This fact indicat­ed the essentially social-democraticnature of the SLP despite its peculiardoctrines. Despite its sectarianism,Petersen's SLP was not insensitive toAmerican public opinion. The SLP'sattitude of "for Soviet Russia, butagainst international communism" wasquite in keeping with "progressive"American opinion in the 1920's and'30's. But with the 1939 military diplo­matic accord between Stalin's Russia

. and Hitler's Germany "progressive"opinion turned sharply against theUSSR. It was not coincidental that theSLP did so at the same time.

Predictably the SLP deepened itsbreak with Stalin's Russia over theborder war with Finland in 1939-40,when it denounced the USSR as"imperialist." Needless to say, the SLPmade no attempt to give the term"imperialist" a class-economic content.Like petty-bourgeois democrats, theSLP' defined "imperialism" as a bignation bullying a little one:

. "In true imperialist fashion StalinistRussia assaulted a small peacefulnation, for reasons prompted by imperi­alist necessities, and, after a cruelslaughter of thousands of proletarians,imposed a 'peace' upon Finland in thebest imperialist traditions."

-Socialist Labor Party, StalinistInternational Anarchism( 1940)

There is no concern here that "small,peaceful" Finland is a capitalist state insemi-alliance with capitalist-imperialistBritain.

When Nazi Germany invaded theSoviet Union in late 1940 the SLP issueda pamphlet, The World War and SovietRussia, whose main theme was thatStalin was getting what he deserved. TheSLP lacked the political clarity andcourage to openly call for the defeat ofthe Soviet Union. It simply stated thatHitler's invasion of the USSR did notchange the imperialist character of thewar, implying a defeatist position. TheSLP went from support of Stalin'sregime to anti-Soviet defeatism inWorld War II without any kind of classanalysis of the USSR. In fact, Petersen'sSLP neyer produced such an analysis.

Arnold Petersen's major statement onthe Soviet Union was his 1956

continued on page 8

7

Had free, multi-party soviet electionsbeen held in 1921 it is likely that amajority would have voted for theMensheviks, Social Revolutionaries oreven parties further to the right. And ananti-Communist soviet government in1921 would have been but a brieftransition to bloody capitalist coun­terrevolution. A large part of theMenshevik cadre and a majority of theSocial Revolutionaries had foughtagainst the Bolsheviks in the Civil War,in tacit or open alliance with the Whites.In 1921 independent, Menshevik-ruledGeorgia was collaborating with Britishimperialism.

As for the Kronstadters, what the realconsequences of a victory for themutineers would have been was revealedby the Qehavior of their leaders afterthe island fortress fell. Injoining up withthe White forces of General Wrangel inHelsinki, they put forward a six-point

demoralized. The economic effects ofsix years of war devastated Russianurban society. The population of thecities emigrated en masse to the country­side in the hope of a more secure foodsupply. Between October 1917 andAugust 1920 the population of Moscowdecreased by one-half and that ofPetrograd by two-thirds! The remainingworkers were forced to lead a semi­lumpenized existence. Many, if notmost, workers had to engage in pettytrading to survive. In 1921 the workingclass which made the October Revolu­tion in a sense no longer existed.

In addition to the qualitative socialdisintegration of its proletarian base,the Communist government made aserious policy error which causedconsiderable friction between it and theremaining urban workers. It decided tocontinue "War Communism" after themain White armies were defeated in thespring of 1920. With the immediatethreat of a White victory (and thus of areturn of the landowners) removed, thepeasants resisted the Soviet authorities'requisitioning of foodstuffs. With thesupply of food to the cities faIling andrations cut back, many workers wentout to the countryside to trade directlywith the peasants. The Soviet govern­ment, unwisely trying to suppress allprivate trade, often arrested suchworkers or confiscatoed their food. Thusthe perpetuation of "War Communism"into 1921 produced a strong reactionamong the urban as well as ruralpopulations.

In the winter of 1920-21 the Bolshe­viks lost the support of the majority ofurban workers for the first time since theOctober Revolution. Many, ifnot most,workers blamed the Communists fortheir unprecedented material hardships.The factories were rife with discontent.In February 1921 a strike wave brokeout in Petrograd. The Soviet govern­ment quelled this through a combinationof concessions (allowing workers totrade directly with peasants) and repres­sion (arresting Menshevik agitators).

basic governmental-state apparatus.The Workers Opposition program thusrepresented a semi-syndicalist deviationfrom the economic norm of a workersstate. Only when the state has disap­peared under socialism will an associa­tion of producers be the organ for "theadministration of things."

For Marxian socialists the funda­mental question concerning 1921 mustbe: were the Leninists justified insuspending soviet democracy or shouldthe vanguard party have allowed itselfto be voted out of power? Compared tothis theoretically and historically deci­sive question, the issues raised by theWorkers Opposition were distinctlysecondary.

By 1921 a large proportion of theclass-conscious workers who had madethe October Revolution were eitherkilled in the Civil War, absorbed into thegoverning apparatus or had become

Penguin

Lenin and Trotsky, center, at the Second Congress of the Third Internationalin 1920.

maintain its dictatorship, regardless ofthe temporary wavering in the spon­taneous moods of the masses, regardlessof the temporary vacillations even in theworking class.... '"It is completely superficial to dismissthis and countless similar incidents withreferences to the 'hardships of the time.'These attacks on the very premise ofworkers' management rellect the funda­mental flaws of Bolshevism."

- Weekly People,3 December 1977

In typical SLP fashion these passagesare utterly, hopelessly confusionist. Inparticular, they confuse workers democ­racy with decentralized administrationof the economy. Yet the norm for adictatorship of the proletariat advan­cing along the road to socialism wouldbe the centralized administration ofindustry by a government elected byrepresentative organs of all workers. In1921 the Bolshevik government depart­ed from this political norm-a necessaryand correct step, in our view, given thechaos in the country and the virtualdestruction of the revolutionary prole­tariat of 1917, dispersed and ground upby the Civil War and attendant catastro­phic economic decline-and ruledwithout the democratic sanction of themajority of the workers.

The Workers Opposition fullysupported the Communist Party estab­lishing a monopoly of political powerand organizations at this juncture, for itwas obvious to all-even to a number ofanarchist-leaning figures such as VictorSerge-that the Bolsheviks were theonly organized obstacle to counterrevo­lution. The leaders of the WorkersOpposition did not caIl for the restora­tion of multi-party soviet democracy asexisted in 1917-18. To their credit theytook prominent places in the suppres­sion of the Kronstadt mutiny, whosemain slogan was "AIl power to thesoviets but not the parties." Where theWorkers Opposition differed with theLeninists was over centralized adminis­tration of industry. It proposed thatindustry be administered by an autono­mous "association of producers" basedon the trade unions coexisting with the

\ \ .\ \

theory of Stalinist-ruled societies inopposition to both the Trotskyistconcept of bureaucratically degeneratedand deformed workers states and to thesocial-democratic and Maoist statecapitalist positions. In their new viewthe S LP has backdated the degenerationof the Soviet state to the end of the CivilWar.

In 1921 Lenin's regime adopted aseries of measures which caused afundamental rift between it and diversepolitical tendencies which supported theBolshevik side in the Civil War. Thesemeasures involved the de facto suspen­sion of soviet democracy and theillegalization of the Mensheviks andSocial Revolutionaries; concessions todomestic and international capitalismembodied in the New Economic Policy(NEP); the suppression of the Kronstadtmutiny; and the increased statificationof economic administration associatedwith the defeat and condemnation of theWorkers Opposition in the CommunistParty.

The suppression of the Mensheviksdestroyed much of the sympathy for theSoviet government among left socialdemocrats internationally. Some leftcommunists, such as A. Bogdanov,regarded the NEP as tantamount to therestoration of capitalism. Kronstadtbecame the great cause celebre foranarchists like Emma Goldman whohad hitherto supported the BolshevikRevolution. And the rejection of theWorkers Opposition program in favorof state administration of industry drewa hard line between Leninism andrevolutionary syndicalism. (AlexandraKollontai's pamphlet, The WorkersOpposition, was first published in theU.S. by the IWW.)

It is consistent with the SLP'sessentially social-democratic methodol­ogy that it has chosen to date the criticalturn toward Stalinist bureaucratismwith the institution of one-party rule in1921. It is also in line with the SLP'ssemi-syndicalist notions that it solidar­izes with the Workers Opposition. Inparticular, the Karps are interested inindicting Trotsky as a bureaucratic b'adman just like Stalin. Here is the SLP'spresent version of the Russian Revolu­tion "betrayed" by Lenin and Trotsky:

"... the usurpation of proletarian powerby the party-state apparatus was de­fended by the Bolshevik party longbefore Stalin was in command."The struggle over how the sovieteconomy was to be integrated andmanaged was the most fundamentalarena in which the different conceptionsof proletarian power were fought out.Progressively the Bolsheviks opted foran imposed state management bybureaucratized planning ministries ... inplace of the workers' own organiza­tions. They supported one-man man­agement from above, rather thandelegated authority responsible to theproducers themselves. Even after thecivil war had been won, Trotskyproposed the 'militarization of labor' inthe service of the state and the transfor­mation of the trade unions into stateagencies to spur productivity."In doing this, the Bolsheviks made afundamental, programmatic attack onproletarian power. ...

Trotsky and the Workers' Opposition

"This process was defended and con­solidated by all the Bolshevik leaders,including Trotsky. The extent to whichit paved the way for Stalinism can beunmistakably seen in Trotsky's famousanswer to the Workers' Opposition in1921. In response to the Opposition'scontention that the way to halt thegrowing bureaucratic degeneration ofthe revolution was to put managementof the economy in the hands of the tradeunions, to end practices like top-downappointments, and to restore workers'democracy in general, Trotskydeclared:"The Workers Opposition has comeout with dangerous slogans. They havemade a fetish of democratic principles.They have placed the workers' right toelect representatives above the party, asit were, as if the party were not entitledto assert its dictatorship even if thatdictatorship temporarily clashed withthe passing moods of the workers'democracy.... The party is obliged to

UPI

Vishinsky, Stalin's prosecutor InMoscow Trials. SLP backed purges.

trials. At the height oftheCold War andMcCarthyism, Petersen now soundedlike a milksop liberal: "Socialism andsocialists condemn brutality and massmurders, whatever the end." As for itstheoretical "merits," Petersen's 1956pamphlet has none. He offers noscientific analysis of the Soviet econom­ic system or form of political rule,simply saying that it has nothing to dowith socialism and is an "imperialist"power as bad as, if not worse than, theU.S.:

"The Russian dictators are locked withWestern capitalism in a desperatestruggle for supremacy, but it is astruggle, not between Socialism andcapitalism, but between two ruling­rivals.... From the Marxist viewpoint itis of little moment who wins, for bothcamps are retrogressing toward indus­trial feudalism."

For the present SLP leadership,which has to compete with groupsclaiming the Trotskyist tradition, therecord of the Petersen era on the"Russian question" is a disaster, quiteapart from its support to the Moscowtrials. Its phrase, "bureaucratic statedespotism," is an empty label, a theoret­ical nullity. That the SLP only brokewith Stalin when the latter broke withthe "democratic" imperialist powers in1939 must be regarded by all seriousrevolutionaries as opportunism for thesimple reason that it was. While theTrotskyist movement has seriouslydebated the crucial question of the classnature of Stalinist Russia for decades,the Petersen SLP had little more to offerthan name calling.

In Defense of Post-Civil WarLeninism

In defending itself against Trotsky­ism, the Karp-led SLP has in effectrepudiated the party's past support toStalin's Russia, but also to the post­Civil War Lenin-Trotsky regime. It hasalso attempted to develop a general

(continued from page 7)pamphlet, Marxism Versus SovietDespotism, still distributed by the "newlook" SLP. To begin with, it is athoroughly dishonest document, cover­ing over the SLP's past support toStalin's reactionary terror. The authorstates that the SLP denounced Stalin'scrimes many years earlier. What he didnot say is. that he had endorsed Stalin'sgreatest crimes against the RussianRevolution and the Soviet people-theexecution of an entire generation ofBolshevik revolutionaries, the murderof millions of workers and peasants, theterrorization of the labor force andsavage cut in living standards, theoppression of the Ukrainians and othernational minorities.

Writing in the late 1930's Petersencame on like Vyshinsky prosecuting theOld Bolsheviks in the Moscow show

The SLP and theRussianQuestion ...

___ LJlJC&!Wi&;;~_~~~it*"*, =.... _~lElli"'~ ...T_c;~ .........~ ....,~E& .......

8 WORKERS VANGUARD

Wide World

Stalin and Ribbentrop exchange congratulations after signing Stalin/HitlerPact.

DebateChallenge

29 December 1977

Arnold BabelNew York Branch SLP Organizer

Dear Comrade: .

We were pleased to see. in vourrecent series of articles on' the"Russian question." the SpartacistLeague (SL) referred to as the most"consistent" defenders of Trotsky'sviews. This is no accident. We havefought for that position. in the maindirecting our attacks against theorthodox pretensions of the Social­ist Workers Party (SWP), since ourexpulsion from that organizationfifteen years ago. In the context ofyour recent turn away from a self­induced isolation and toward amore interventionist perspective inday-to-day struggles, a review ofyour previous (and current) posi­tions. as well as those of youropponents on the left. is quite apt.

It is an open secret that a sectionof your membership has becomeinterested in the political positionsof the SWP. The facade of "mass"acti~ism maintained by the SWPmay seem to these members anantidote to the decades of isolationthat are the heritage of the SLP.The SWP is. however, thoroughlyreformist. Its persistent reliance onthe bourgeois state and bourgeoisdemocracy is demonstrated by itscall on the bosses' cops and army to"defend" black people from racistassault, by its eagerness to insurefascists their "right" to spread theirracist venom, and by its immersionin Carter's anti-Soviet "humanrights" crusade. Since the days ofthe antiwar movement the SWP hasdoggedly used its "single issue" one­step-at-a-time "strategy" as a but­tress against Marxist interventionsin those struggles where it hasplayed an active role.

We regard the differences be­tween the SLP and the SL as essen­tially those between an ossifiedversion of classic social democra­cy and Leninism which guided theOctober Revolution. From yourDe Leonist viewpoint you may seethe SWP and ourselves as political­ly similar. Our view, however, isthat the SWP is revisionist of thegenuine revolutionary tradition ofLenin and Trotsky. Your willing­ness to debate these issues in yourpress indicates to us that we shouldseek a format in which the differ­ences between De Leonism andTrotskyism could be explored ingreater depth. The question of statepower. i.e., the dictatorship of theproletariat (of which the "Russianquestion" is a specific example), is,on the level of theory, the issuewhich, both historically and today,most sharply differentiates ourtendencies. Thus it is perhaps thebest place to begin. We would notobject and, indeed, would be quitepleased if the SWP participated insuch discussions in order to defendtheir politics in front of thosemembers of your organization towhom they appeal. Your organiza­tion is. of course, the one on whichthe initiative for such debate vis avis the SWP appropriately falls. Wehope you will seriously consider thisproposal and are ready to meet withyou as necessary to discuss thismatter further. Please inform us ofyour decision.

Comradely.Ed ClarksonNew York Spartacist League

dictatorship of the proletariat) as atransition to socialism; nor that underthe Petersen regime it excused the worstStalinist excesses in suppressing prole­tarian democracy through bloodypurges. We will only point out that hadthe SLP leadership read and assimilatedKautsky's The Dictatorship of theProletariat when it first came out in1918, they could have avoided wander­ing almost 60 years in the theoreticalwilderness before rediscovering thestandard social-democratic position onthe "Russian question."

The position that the replacement ofthe capitalist economic system byexpropriation of the bourgeoisie andinstituting collective state ownership ofthe means of production is not aqualitative step toward socialism, andthat "without workers democracy therecan be no workers state," is an abandon­ment of historical materialism in favorof democratic idealism. The struggle forsocialism is thus seen as simply an aspectof the struggle for democracy in general.This inverts the Marxist dialectic, withthe political superstructure determiningthe economic base.

A state apparatus based on proletari­an democracy is a necessary means ofadministering collectivized property soas to create the material and culturalconditions for socialism. We do notregard workers democracy as merelypreferable to bureaucratic bonapartism;the narrow, nationalistic Stalinist bu­reaucracies must be overthrown byworkers political revolution and re­placed by democratic soviet rule inorder to open the road to socialism,which is a world system. At the sametime, for materialists the class nature ofthe USSR is determined by its economicbase.

The SLP's rejection of Trotskyism isin good part motivated by the hostilityof American workers to Soviet Russia,by their sentiment that Stalinism is moreoppressive than capitalist democracy:

"... to call a society in which theworking class has fewer democraticrights than in the capitalist democra­cies, where it is blocked even fromforming independent trade unions,where it lives under police censorshipand repression, where it is in fact a statecrime just to advocate (let aloneorganize for) revolutionary social­ism-to call such a society a 'workersstate' smacks of sophistry. In some waysit is not fundamentally different fromcalling it socialism."

-1bid.

In other words, to call the USSR anykind of workers state is to besmirch thegood name of socialism before theAmerican people. It is certainly true thatthe popular identification of socialism, aworkers state and the dictatorship of theproletariat with Stalinist Russia is aserious obstacle to winning Americanworkers to a revolutionary Marxistprogram. But the economic systemupon which the Soviet bureaucracy restsremains historically progressive, and assuch we defend it against imperialism.Popular hostility to the USSR affectshow we propagandize and agitatearound the "Russian question"; it doesnot influence our program.

Some members of the SLP are nowsympathetic to Trotskyism, and moreare likely to become so. Therefore theKarp regime cannot limit itself todecades-old vulgar social-democraticarguments but must seek to demon­strate that Trotskyism is invalid in itsown terms. Thus the Weekly Peoplemakes much of the fact that Trotsky didnot regard Stalin's Russia as a stablesocial formation and at one point ar­gued that the parasitic bureaucracywould be overthrown either by theproletariat or imperialism in the wake ofWorld War II. The Karps argue that thefact that neither of these prognoses hasoccurred to date is definitive proof thatthe Trotskyist theory is wrong:

"What has occurred is the more or lessstable, steady growth of the Soviet

continued on page 10

New-Style SLP Against Trotskyon the "Russian Question"

1930's was an apparatus of corrupt andterrorized bureaucrats who had come topower through overthrowing and sup­pressing the Bolshevik revolutionariesof 1917. It is true that Stalin exploitedthe actions of Lenin's regime in 1921 as"precedents" to justify his own bureau­cratic counterrevolutionary rule. Butthis is utterly irrelevant.

In the degeneration of every revolu­tionary movement opportunists willalways cite "precedents" which werecorrect in their day. Thus in 1870 Marxsupported Bismark's Germany as pro­gressive in its war with Napoleon Ill'sFrance. As late as the 1890's Engelsadvocated that the social democratsdefend Germany in a war with tsaristRussia. In World War I the chauvinistleaders of the German social democracycited these Marxist "precedents" tojustify their collaboration with Germanimperialism. To argue that Lenin andTrotsky were forerunners of Stalin isequivalent to arguing that Marx andEngels were forerunners of the coun­terrevolutionary butchers Ebert andNoske.

The new SLP leadership's attack onthe Trotskyist concept of bureaucrati­cally degenerated/deformed workersstates rests on two basic arguments. Oneis the standard social-democratic oppo­sition to the dictatorship of the proletar­iat, reinforced by an adaptation to theanti-Communist prejudices of Ameri­can workers. The second is a moreserious argument centering on Trotsky'sprediction about the future of Stalin'sRussia in the holocaust of World War II.The SLP's basic argument is that anysocial order without democracy hasnothing to do with a transition tosocialism. The Karps' position couldhave been written by any social demo­crat from Karl Kautsky in 1918 toMichael Harrington today:

"... in order to produce evidence of aworkers state, it is not enough to provethe absence of capitalist property oreven the disappearance of some of itseffects.... Without workers democracythere can be no workers state."

- Weekly People,10 December 1977

We will not belabor the point that inthe past the SLP denied the verylegitimacy of a workers state (i.e., the

$

program which retained their slogan,"all power to the Soviets but not theparties." However, according to liberal­anarchist historian Paul Avrich:

"the slogan was to be retained only as a'convenient I?olitical maneuver' untilthe Communists had been overthrown.Once victory was in hand, the sloganwould be shelved and a temporarymilitary dictatorship installed to pre­vent anarchy from engulfing thecountry."

---Kronstadt 1921 (1970)

Trotsky's statement, which theWeekly People quoted in order tocondemn it, is absolutely correct. Thehistoric interests of the socialist causestand higher than the exercise ofworkers democracy in any given circum­stance. The proletarian vanguard isjustified in suspending soviet constitu­tionalism if its electoral defeat would betantamount to counterrevolution. Butthis emergency measure-defended byLenin, Trotsky and the WorkersOpposition-is a far cry from Stalin'ssuppression of all opposition bothoutside and inside the Communist Partyas a vital element of bureaucratic rule.

The present SLP leadership avoidsdiscussing the consequences of fullsoviet democracy in Russia in 1921, thusproving they are irresponsible phrase­mongers. Do the editors of the WeeklyPeople believe that any soviet majoritywill defend the interests of the proletari­at? History has proved differently(Germany 1918). Or do they believe thatthe Bolsheviks should have allowedthemselves to be voted out of powereven if this led to capitalist counterrevo­lution? Or perhaps they believe thateither capitalist restoration or "bureau­cratic state despotism" was inevitable inany case, and that socialists had nothingto choose between them? The realanswer is that the SLP-today as in thepast-doesn't care about the fate of theRussian Revolution. From Petersen in1917 to the Karps today, the SLP'stheorizing about Soviet Russia has beengoverned solely by its relations withother American left groups.

The argument that Stalinism was butthe logical extension of the single party­state apparatus established in 1921 iscompletely anti-materialist. The Com­munist Party of Lenin and Trotsky wasthe genuine vanguard of the Russianproletariat, which had just led the firstsuccessful socialist revolution in history.Stalin's "Communist Party" of the

24 FEBRUARY 1978 9

From a Former SLPer:

The SLPand theRussianQuestion ...(continuedfrom page 9)

economy under bureaucratic rule with­out a fundamental change in the natureof the state or the property forms.Today the U.S.S.R. is neither backwardnor isolated, yet the bureaucracy's ruleis as secure as it ever was. Neither theStalinist bloodletting, the second WorldWar, the trauma of 'de-Stalinization'nor any number of other social shockshas produced a serious challenge tobureaucratic domination or a restora­tion of capitalism...."Equally significant, the Soviet socialformation has emerged in over a dozenother nations. Revolutionary develop­ments and processes quite unlike thosediscussed by Trotsky in analyzingStalinist Russia have produced similarsocieties. "

-Ibid.Trotsky's belief that World War II

would be the terminal crisis of the worldcapitalist system, the definitive test ofthe Marxist program, turned out to be

10 February 1978

Dear Comrades,As a former member of the

Socialist Labor Party (SLP) whostill maintains an interest in thatorganization and other parties andtendencies of the left (including theSpartacist League), I was quiteexcited and interested to re'adWorkers Vanguard No. 192, 10February 1978. Indeed, I am im­pelled to offer some minor com­ment, particularly concerning thepiece 'SLP Goes Trendy.'

First, let me state that despitesome minor personal reservations(e.g., the vague feeling that theassessment of the SLP somehowexaggerated the SLP's "trendiness"and failed to impart the SLP'srevolutionary vision, howeverutopian that may appear to be), thepoints raised do indeed tell much ofthe story of the SLP truthfully. Forinstance, concerning the SWP's"interest" in the SLP, and vice­versa. I can verify the veracity ofmany of these statements frompersonal experience. Thus, theSLP's Section New York candidatefor mayor this past fall. a prominentmember. has been heard canvassingfor the Militant. paper of thereformist SWP. Indeed. just afterNathan Karp. National Secretaryof the SLP. delivered a Thanksgiv­ing speech repudiating. inter alia.rdormism. vanguard ism and Len­inism. this SLP member wassoliciting subscriptions for theaforementioned weekly paper! Iknow because I was approached. (\declined the "invitation.") While itis to the credit of the SLP thatArticle I, Section 44 of its constitu­tion clearly proscribes such activity.it is doubly saddening that nocharges ever resulted from suchincidents, nor are contemplated.(This is in sharp contrast to the dayswhen members were brought up oncharges-for ludricrous reasons.)

If the SWP is fishing (or raiding)in the SLP, it should be noted thatthe SLP is not alone. Indeed, theSWP initiated overtures to the(recently) defunct, small SocialistForum (SF). It did so with greatgall. asserting there was muchcommon ground. The comrades ofSF, I am told, politely (and not-sopolitely) corrected them on this.

Meanwhile, if the SLP is errone­ously following "average radical" or"progressive" policies and views, itseems interesting to point out a

10

wrong. Given the extreme weakness ofthe revolutionary vanguard (the FourthInternational), both Western capitalismand Stalinist Russia survived the warand immediate post-war revolutionarywave with their social structures basical­ly intact. Paradoxically, it is the empiri­cally evident continuity of both theWestern capitalist and Soviet Stalinistsocieties from the 1930's to the presentthat gives Trotsky's 1938 TransitionalProgram its continuing validity.

That a'theoretical analysis and itsprogrammatic conclusioRs retain theircorrectness despite an erroneous timescale is certainly nothing new in thehistory of Marxism. Far from it. TheCommunist Manifesto, written in late1847, stated that Germany "is on the eveof a bourgeois revolution" which "willbe but a prelude to an immediatelyfollowing proletarian revolution." Doesthe failure of this prognosis invalidatethe essential theoretical outlook embod­ied in the Communist Manifesto?Almost every anti-Marxist writer pointsto the absence of a successful proletari­an revolution in the advanced capitalist

personal impression; namely, thatthe SLP's Weekly People is also"borrowing" stands even from theSpartacist League! (Notably, theseare the ones that Workers Van­guard complimented, confirmingthis suspicion.) Most salient amongthese are the positions on 'no defenseof Nazis' free speech' and, possibly,coverage of the mine workers strikesand/ or the British fire­fighters strike (i.e., the lessons). Iam sure the irony of this will notescape the Spartacist League, if thisis true: The only current stands onthe SLP which would be in signifi­cant agreement with the SL, mightbe ones lifted by the SLP from thepages of Workers Vanguard orYoung Spartacus!

While I resigned at the same timeas the nearly two dozen members of:"Jew York's "Petersenite cult"which left last summer, I was arelatively new member leaving forsomewhat opposite reasons. Andthough. for whatever reasons, Imade the correct decision then, it isstill saddening to have to acknow­ledge this account of the SLP asreported in Workers Vanguard.

Fraternally. Michael W. Ecker

I1T replies: Broadly confirmingour analysis of the recent evolutionof the SLP. the writer notes thecurious behavior of the SLP candi­date for mayor of \ew York. JamesBrinning. who has been hawkingthe SWP's Jlilitant. It is not just theSWP's newspaper which he hasbeen pushing publicly. but also itspolitics. In our article. "SWPInvites De Leonists to Build Partyof the Whole Swamp" (WV No.192, 10 February), we erroneouslystated that the SLP had supportedEd Sadlowski's liberal reformistcampaign for president of theSteelworkers, which was the posi­tion taken by Brinning in a speechlast October.

We had assumed that the SLPmayoral candidate was presentingthe position of the Socialist LaborParty. Evidently we underestimatedthe opportunism of Brinning. whopresented the S WP position, andthe degeneration of the SLP, wholet him get away with it, Actuallythe SLP's Weekly People (5 Febru­ary 1977) denounced the SWP'sendorsement of Sadlowski for"opportunism and ... readiness totail anyone opposing the presentreactionary union leadership."

countries, predicted by the Manifesto130 years ago, as definitive proof thatsocialism is a utopian illusion. But forMarxists, the Communist Manifestoretains its validity as a general theoreti­cal exposition of the contradictions ofcapitalist development and their resolu­tion through proletarian socialism,despite the fact that Marx's belief thatcapitalism could be overthrown in 1848proved false.

Trotsky's position that the SovietUnion is a degenerated workers state isnot a dogma impervious to any and allhistorical developments. But this theorycannot be invalidated by the mechanicalpassage of time, by the survival ofStalinist bureaucracy for x or y decades.The Trotskyist theory of bureaucrati­cally degenerated/deformed workersstates, like Marxist theory in general,must be tested by the way in which thecontradictions it speaks to are ultimate­ly resolved.

Thus in his 1940 article, "The USSRin War," Trotsky lays out the historicaldevelopments which would indicate thatthe Soviet Union was indeed a new formof exploitative class society. If a prole­tarian revolution comes to power in anadvanced capitalist country and thenundergoes a bureaucratic degenerationsimilar to that in Soviet Russia, Trotskyconcludes: "we would be compelled toacknowledge that the reason for thebureaucratic relapse is rooted not in thebackwardness of the country and not inthe imperialist environment but in thecongenital incapacity of the proletariatto become a ruling class." And with thatone would have to throw Marxism outthe window.

A New Class Society forBackward Countries Only?

The new SLP leadership's own posi­tion on the "Russian question" is a pe­culiar amalgam of Shachtmanite "bu­reaucratic collectivism," classic socialdemocracy/Menshevism and "ThirdWorldist" Stalinism. It most closelyapproximates "bureaucratic collectiv­ism" in maintaining that societies likeSoviet Russia, China, Cuba, etc. arenei~her capitalist nor in any sensetransitional to socialism. However, theSLP's view of the world-historic signifi­cance of "Soviet-type societies" is quitedifferent from that of Shachtmanism.

In its developed form Shachtmanite"bureaucratic collectivism" was project­ed as a reactionary system capable ofreplacing capitalism on a world-historicscale. Thus Shachtmanism posited thedistinctly un-Marxist notion of twoclasses. the proletariat and bureaucracy­to-be, vying for power on the basis of theselfsame property form, collectivizedstate ownership. In contrast, the Karps'SLP limits "bureaucratic state despot­ism" to bacbvard countries. where thissocial system is seen to play theprogressive role which capitalism onceplayed in Wcst Europe and :"orthAmerica:

", " the Soviet-type societies haveemerged precisely where capitalism hasbeen unable to develop on its ownterms, The social and historical taskswhich in the past fell to capitalism havebeen accomplished in these countries bya different form of social organization.These tasks include the overthrow offeudalism, the transformation of agri­cultural society, the process of primitiveaccumulation and industrializationand~- perhaps most important-thecreation of a proletariat. They mark thenew social formation as one which ishistorically analogous to the capitaliststage and which occupies roughly thesame historical position between feu­dalism and socialism."

-- Weekly People. 7 January 1978

Furthermore the SLP denies thepossibility of proletarian revolutionsand workers states in backward coun­tries like China, a classic social­democratic position:

"In the non-proletarianized countries.the anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist revo­lutions fall either under the control ofvarious class alliances (in which theproletariat has had a subordinate role)

or under the direction of the new rulingclass in theJrocess of formation."

-~/bi .

Thus the SLP is either defeatist or, in itsown terms, class-eollaborationist to­ward revolutionary struggles in back­ward countries. What advice does theSLP have to give to proletarian social­ists in the Chinese revolution of 1925-27,in the Saigon insurrection of 1945, in the

Daniel De Leon

Bolivian revolution of 1953? For theAmerica-centric social democrats of theSLP this question is academic, but forTrotskyists-genuine proletarian revo­lutionary internationalists-this is avital and critical question.

In reaction against Stalin/Bukha­rin's false, class-collaborationist policyin the Chinese revolution of 1925-27-inwhich they insisted that the first stagemust be bourgeois rule through ChiangKai-shek's Kuomintang-a significantcore of Chinese Communist Party cadrecame over to Trotskyism. The C.hineseTrotskyists were an important compo­nent of the Fourth Internationalistmovement until they were killed off bythe joint efforts of Chiang and Mao. TheSLP's message to these revolution_aryMarxist fighters in one of the world'smost important countries would be toemigrate to the U.S. or to join Mao'speasant army, supposedly the embryo ofa new but progressive exploitative classstate. To judge by the lyrically laudatoryobituary for Mao issued by the SLP'sNational Executive Committee (WeeklyPeople, 9 October 1976), Maoist "bu­reaucratic state despotism" was the bestthing that could have happened toChina..

The obvious, fatal flaw in the SLP'stheory of Stalinism is that it abstractsfrom the question of socialist revolutionin the imperialist centers. Even if wewere to grant the SLP's contention(which we adamantly do not) thatproletarian revolutions cannot succeedIn countries like China and Vietnam, theStalinist system would be removed fromthe realm of historic possibility byproletarian revolutions in the advancedcapitalist countries. Had the proletariatcome to power in Germany in 1923, thebureaucratic degeneration of the SovietUnion simply would not have occurred.Thus the SLP presents us with a newform of class society which a) mightnever have come into being at all; and b)might be swept away at any time byproletarian revolutions in the imperial­ist centers. Or does the SLP maintainthe ultra-Menshevik position that Chi­na would still have to go through anepoch of "bureaucratic state despotism"even if a socialist revolution occurred.for example. in Japan?

Thus it is only by denying thepossibility of proletarian revolution inthe imperialist centers that one canforesee a new form of bureaucraticcollectivist society first emerging inbackward countries. This is the perspec­tive of reformist, not "Marxistrevolutionaries.

[TO BE CONTINUED]

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with revolutionary implications, TheSL, while calling for "free the 4,000"(arrested for looting), recognized loot­ing as a self-defeating and ultimatelyanti-social act, directed not againstcapitalism but against the immediate,felt misery of ghetto life,

Mindless enthusing over randomviolence among the most oppressedstrata has increasingly become thekeystone of RSL politics. The RSL'srecent frenzy over a black lesbianaccused of beating up her landlord, onthe grounds she "took matters into herown hands," recalls the Livernois Fivecase in Detroit', The RSL's idea of howto "defend" these black youth-pickedup in a racist round-up and facingframe-up murder charges-was tojustify the killing of a white bystander ina ghetto explosion as a byproduct ofblack people's indignation againstcapitalist society.

Perhaps the most grotesque exampleof the RSL's infatuation with violenceby the oppressed was an article in arecent Torch which lauded womenkilling their brutal husbands as apolitical act. The article, headlined"Battered Women Fight Back," ap­plauded incidents like this one:

"Francine Hughes also fought back.Her former husband punched herregularly for 13 years and threw her outof the house in her nightclothes. Hethreatened to follow her everywhere ifshe left him. Finally, Francine Hughestook her four children and left. To makesure lJe couldn't follow her, she burneddown her house with him in it."

.- Torch. 15 November-15 December 1977

Scarcely an Issue of the Torch goes bywithout an article like "Make thePrisons Schools of Revolution" or atleast a letter or two from a prisoner. Anisolated sect utterly irrelevant to theworking class and its struggles, the RSLsees the most powerless as the mainrevolutionary force in society. In hispresentation. Pierce even quoted from apoem, "In weakness there is strength."An SL supporter replied that "Inweakness, comrades, there i.s onlyweakness. "

The disoriented RSL is correct aboutone thing: it has nothing to offer theworking class, As one steelworkerangrily told the Chicago audience:

"You guys masquerade yourselves asreal defenders of democratic rights. Letme tell you what the federal governmentgave the coal miners. It gave themArnold Miller and you guys backed himevery step of the way. So we're going toshove Arnold Miller down your throattill he comes out of your ears. ArnoldMiller is yours. That's your trade-unionpolitics. That's your ·brothers·...

The unifying themes of RSL politicsare moralism and despair. Morallyrepelled by the Stalinist deformation ofthe USSR, the RSL labels it "capitalist"and washes its hands of the problem.Outraged by the sanctimonious "lawand order" of the racist system, they hailany and all violence by oppressedpeople. Their answer to sexual oppres­sion is to vacuously shout "Down withBourgeois Morality." In the fightagainst the lumpenization which doomsblack youth to poverty and powerless­ness, they discern only an attempt tobecome "middle-class." Despairing ofthe struggle for communist conscious­ness. they champion militant sectoral­ism (like "gay pride") and spontaneousrage. Denying the material basis ofoppression. they can find no linkbetween segregation and racism. Theirattribution of anti-capitalist conscious­ness to the victims of oppression"whether they know it or not" showsonly cynical contempt for the revolu­tionary potential of the working people.

As Marx said. liberation is anhistorical, not a mental, act. Theemancipation of the oppressed will beaccomplished by a conscious, organizedproletariat, rallying to its banner themost dedicated and conscious from allsections of the oppressed, led by thevanguard party of professional revolu­tionists. Forging the cadres of this partyis the task to which the SpartacistLeague is committed.•

Pierce revealed the RSL's Fanonistline when he said: "The SpartacistLeague sees oppression not as fuel forthe revolution but the struggles of theoppressed are seen as an obstacle to therevolution." From this position flowsthe RSL's anti-democratic "leftist" lineon reform struggles: gains by theoppressed would dampen their "revolu­tionary" anger. Thus the RSL mustoppose the SL's advocacy of "revolu­tionary integration" as part of a liberalplot to "make all blacks act in accord­ance with middle-class values" ("SLFront for Bourgeoisie," Torch, Decem­ber 1974), Thus the SL's orientation tothe industrial proletariat and the tradeunions becomes an orientation to "thearistocracy of labor." Thus the ERAmust be opposed lest it make women lessangry.

A letter from the RSL to a Red FlagUnion member in late 1976 made thisoutlook clear:

"[The SL's] position on the Blackstruggle in the U.S. is for 'integration.'The struggle for liberation is reduced to'integration.' The actual content of thisis for Blacks to seek middle-class orlabor-aristocratic status in U.S. society.This is further shown by the argumentthey present for it-- integration will haltthe 'lumpenization' of Blacks. i.e .. makethem more middle-class. (More white.)... Fundamentally. the Spartacists viewthe hatred of the Black masses for U.S.society as 'lumpenization'-as disturb­ing and threatening-whereas we see itas a profoundly revolutionary factor."

This idiotic "the worse, the better"analysis has been a constant feature ofthe RS L since its inception, as it soughtto carve out a niche to the "leJt" of theSL. But the group's glorification oflumpen violence as a rejection of"middle-class values" has reached gro­tesque proportions. For the RSL, everyviolent explosion of rage by the op­pressed is "political"-and"revolutionary."

In the debate. Pierce put forward thelooting that occurred during the sum­mer 1977 New York City blackout as afull-scale anti-capitalist rebellion:

"The people who were doing the lootingwere potential revolutionaries becausethey were pissed off at the system andthey were fighting in the only way theyknew how.... The looting was directedagainst the capitalist system whetherthey saw it that way or not."

Here the RSL tries to turn a manifestlyapolitical explosion in the devastatedslums into a social protest movement

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(continued/rom page 5)barometer of oppression that the partymust judge from where the mainrevolutionary forces will come, butrather from an understanding of thecentral dynamics of the class struggle.We do not belittle the cruel anddebilitating oppression of homosexualswhen we insist that the homosexualquestion does not hold the samestrategic weight as, for example, theblack question in this viciously racistsociety. Shofner exposed the petty­bourgeois moralism behind the RSL'sstatement that "For us the working classis the key force for revolution preciselybecause it is oppressed" and explained:

"If we are looking to the group tochange society because it is the mostoppressed it is not the working class.Let's go to the peasants of Ethiopia ....Because there you get oppression wedon't see in this country.... Marxismstands behind the proletariat because itis the only class that has the socialpowerto overthrow capitalism and to destroy itand,create socialism."

RSL ...

7:30 PMSATURDAY, MARCH 4BUCHANAN YMCAGEARY & BUCHANANSAN FRANCISCO

SL/SYL PUBLIC OFFICESMarxist Literature

BAY AREAFriday and Saturday 300-6:00 pm.

1634 Tele~raph. 3rd floor(near 17th Street)Oakland. CaliforniaPhone 835-1535

Speakers:

Martha Phillip~

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Ruth RyanCommittee for a Militant UAW

CHICAGOTuesday .... 430-8:00

Saturday. 200-5:30 pm.

523 South Plymouth Court. 3rd floorChicago. IllinoIsPhone 427-0003

Monday-Friday 6:30-900 p.m

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260 West Broadway, Room 522New York. New YorkPhone 925-5665

Building theRevolutionary PartyAlternate Wednesdays beginning

February 15, 7:30 p.m.California State Los Angeles

Student CenterLOS ANGELES

Women andRevolution

in meetings. picket lines. leallet distri­butions and other anti-Nazi actions."

The role of the cops has been clearlydemonstrated as they line up billy-club­to-billy-club to protect the Nazi head­quarters in Detroit. From Boston toChicago to Houston to Detroit, theracist cops have time and again turned ablind eye to the outrages committed bythe Nazis and the Klan. while in manyinstances actively participating withthem while "off duty." Those who callon the state for aid against the fascistsare leading the masses to betrayal.

The vicious razor attack on JanFriedman must not go unanswered.These fascist criminals should not beable to walk the streets. Such cretinousdegenerates are no joke. While thedemented Hitler lovers are a tiny clottoday. they have their crosshairs fixednot just on leftists or Jews but on blacks,labor and anyone else who stands in theway of their genocidal fantasies. Todaythese perverted cowards cut up youngwomen with razors and pay communitykids 50 cents to distribute their race-hateliterature: tomorrow they will be aready-made scab-herding, union­busting army for the bosses and shocktroops for militarist plotters-if they arenot stopped in their tracks.

The Nazis will not be put out of actionby endless small left-wing demonstra­tions. and certainly not by appeals to thecity government or legalistic appeals tothe judicial system. Big business, theircops and courts will protect these fascistterrorists as the last line of defense ofcapitalist rule. Instead what is needed isthe lIlass mobilization of 5,000, 10,000members--blacks. Arabs, Jews,whites through their unions andbacked up by community and leftgroups to close down the vile "whitepower" "bookstore." Detroit labor mustuse its tremendous strength to cleansethis union town of the fascist vermin andteach these sworn enemies of democrat­ic rights a lesson they will not forget..

TEMPEST INA CRACKED

POTIn the throes of a paranoid

fantasy worthy of the crackpotFuhrer of the u.s. Labor Party,Lyndon LaRouche (a.k.a. LynMarcus), the sectarian opportunistWorkers League has proclaimedthat the recent blizzard was actuallya "cover for military maneuvers"("State of Siege in Boston," Bullet­in, 14 February 1978)!

The article, reverberating withSturm und Drang and Healyitecrisis mongering, interprets theremoval of snow from Bostonstreets by the National Guard as amilitary takeover and "a virtualstate of siege for millions ofresidents."

While the National Guardsmen,who are serving as armed thugs ofthe capitalist state against strikingminers in southern Indiana, wereundoubtedly guilty of abuses, clear­ing roads, arresting looters andeven riding around in "jeeps, trucksand bulldozers as tall as a house" donot add up to a military coup-noteven if they shoHI the snow inuniform.

In the hysterical view of theWorkers League, the street-cleaning operation was:

"a dress rehearsal for military ruleaimed at disciplining the workingclass. Its main fear is not a snowstorm but the power of the organ­ized working class expressed in thethe miners strike."

The state does indeed fear thepower of the organized workingclass and it will respond to threatsto its authority with militaryforce-real military force, nottractors and dump trucks! It isgenuinely pathetic that the WorkersLeague cannot tell the differencebetween a military maneuver and aclean-up operation.

Incidentally, the National Guardwas also used to clean snow fn mthe streets of New York. At onepoint, 15 military vehicles weremassed in front of the nationalheadquarters of the Spartac}!,tLeague. What does the WorkrrsLeague make of that?

(continued/rom page 12)

militant proposal from members ofLocal 140. All McCullough couldsuggest was the setting up of stillanother do-nothing committee-a "la­bor committee"-which Boatin obligedhim with on the spot. Meanwhile, thegutless social democrats of the SWP,whose supporters in Local 140 hadrefused to sign the petition on thegrounds that it was "provocative,"maintained an embarrassed silencethroughout the meeting.

The only decision of any consequencethat Boatin allowed to be made was afurther appeal to the state for protectionagainst the Nazis. In response to theslashing of Jan Friedman the committeepassed a resolution which included thesupportable demand for the arrest andprosecution of the Nazi scum whocarried out the attack. But the statementto the media which Boatin & Co.subsequently cooked up, while mention­ing the need for self-defense against theNazis. placed its main emphasis on thecall for police protection:

"We also demand full-time policeprotection for residents of the area inwhich the Nazi storm troop headquar­ters is operating. We demand policeprotection for all persons participating

Nazi' SlashesWoman...

24 FEBRUARY 1978 11

WfJlillEliS "'NfilJlllilJ

WV Photo

Women wounded by Nazi thug's razor attack being aided at UAW meeting.WV Photo

Militants demanded Nazi (left) be thrown out of Local 600-initiated anti­fascist meeting.

Unions Must Crush Detroit Fascists!

Razor-Wielding Nazi SlashesWoman at UAW Meeting

DETROIT. February 20-0n Sundaythe Detroit Nazis revealed their trueterroristic faces. seriously wounding ayoung woman under the noses of theLocal 600 UAW-initiated Labor­Community Council Against the Nazis.At a steering committee of the Councilyesterday a Nazi attacked Jan Fried­man. a supporter of the WorkersDefense Committee. slashing her legwith a straight razor.

In the two months since the fascistscum opened their headquarters insouthwest Detroit they have movedbeyond spewing out their racist filth tointimidation and now to drawing blood.The Nazi threat cannot be taken lightly.It must be combatted by organized massaction to run the razor-wielding fascistsout of Wayne County!

Instead. while UAW bureaucratsengaged in idle bluster about driving theNazis out of town. these scum broughttheir provocations right to the doorstepsof the labor movement. For the secondtime in as many weeks the fascists havebrazenly shown up at these anti-Nazimeetings. Four Nazis walked intoSunday's meeting at Sammy's PizzaHall. A trade unionist identified themand called for immediate action againstthe Nazis. A number of those presentadvanced on the greatly outnumberedfascists. However. at this point PaulBoatin. the Local 600 tops' handpickedchairman for the Council. intervenedwith his bureaucratic cronies and therestaurant manager and broke up theconfrontation. The Nazis were permittedto leave unscathed. enabling them tocontinue their terroristic work at the nextopportunity.

This opportunity immediately pre­sented itself. As the Nazis departed, one

12

af them set upon a Workers DefenseCommittee supporter distributing liter­ature. When Friedman courageouslyattempted to come to the defense of theWDCer. she was slashed viciously with arazor. producing a ten-inch gash in herleg and profuse bleeding. SL supportersand others came running to aid theinjured woman as the cowardly Nazi ranoff.

A supporter of the SL, a trained nurse,had the woman moved inside and treatedthe wound to stop the bleeding. Thecomrade underlined the seriousness ofthe attack: "I t was clear that she had twofairly deep lacerations, between aquarter- and a half-inch deep where therazor had slashed her leg .... If she hadbeen cut on the inner side it could havecut the femural artery and she could havebled to death within minutes." Friedmanwas later treated at a hospital andreleased.

That a handful of fascists couldsuccessfully commit such an atrocity at ameeting of an "anti-Nazi" committeewhich includes leaders of unions andorganizations with a combined member­ship of over 150.000 is testimony to theutter spinelessness of the labor bureauc­racy. Only two weeks earlier UAW Local600 president Mike Rinaldi had de­fended the right of two Nazis to remainatthe first meeting of the committee.claiming they could be present "as long asthey don't disrupt." This disgustingpacifism. combined with the bureau­crats' whimpering pleas to the capitaliststate for help, has only emboldened the\f azi vermin.

Moreover. the razor attack on JanFriedman graphically demonstratesprecisely what the Nazis will dowith the"democratic rights" which the liberals

and civil libertarians are so eager toguarantee them. In mocking tribute tothe defense of their "rights" by liberals,the fascists have even taken to swagger­ing around with buttons bearing aswastika and the slogan "free speech."Let the Mike Rinaldis and their reformistechoes on the left. the Socialist WorkersParty (SWP)-whose Detroit organizerMack Warren publicly defended theright of the Nazis to attend and speak atmeetings of the National Student Coali­tion Against Racism (NSCAR) asrecently as January 30-now appearbefore auto workers and minorities andtry to justify their willingness to extend"free speech" to fascists!

At the Labor-Community Councilmeeting itself Boatin & Co. offered littlemore than they had at the initiatingmeeting February 6. when they attempt­ed to cover up their bankrupt strategy ofappealing to Mayor Young and the cityand state legislatures with vague talkabout the need for "mass demonstra­tions." This meeting. however. wasattended by only about 100 persons,about half the turnout at the precedingone. A number of militants. clearlydisgusted by the inaction of the Council.stayed away. Noticeably absent. also.were a claque of UAW hacks who hadturned out for the speechifying andbackslapping at the first meeting.

Boatin and his fellow bureaucratsannounced to the amazed assembly thata total of 15 committees had been setup complete with 15 handpickedchairmen. as well as five additional vicechairmen! This blatant device was I

designed to enable the bureaucrats tosafely pigeonhole any conceivable reso­lution they did not approve of.

The only serious cha llenge to theCouncil's inaction was a motion raisedby rank-and-fiJe militants from UAWLocal 140 at Chrysler's Dodge Truckplant. The proposal, which had beenendorsed by 550 UAW members in apetition circulated in the local, read asfollows:

"That the steering committee immedi­ately call on the Detroit labor move­ment and all minority organizations­Jewish. black and Arab alike---as wellas other sympathetic groups andindividuals-to build a mass picket lineand rally in front of the Nazi headquar­ters around the slogan 'Smash the NaziThreat'!"

The resolution received considerablesupport. It was spoken to favorably by amember of Local 600 and a number ofother militants, including a member ofthe Spartacist League, a member of theWorkers Defense Committee (a tinygroup led by the Revolutionary Social­ist League) and Pat Korth of theHubbard-Richards Community Coun­cil. Boatin bluntly refused to allow avote on the motion, however. declaringit tabled to the "activities committee,"which met later and predictably took noaction on the proposal. Boatin wasaided in this bureaucratic squelching byJohn Sollenberger. an executive boardmember and official delegate to theCouncil from Local 140, who hadpreviously signed the petition calling forimmediate action!

The reformists of the left at themeeting proved no better. Dave McCul­lough. vice president of UAW Local 869and a frequent contrihutor to Workers'PO\\w. published by the InternationalSocialists (I.S.). did not endorse the

(Oil! i/1l1cd 0/1 pagc II

24 FEBRUARY 1978