Workers Vanguard No 692- 05 June 1998

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No. 692 ~ x ~ 5 June 1998

Workers MusfiRule . . " r r ~ l s k J i s t i P a t ' t y !

Indonesia: Suharlo'sHenchmen Take Over

Down With Islamic Reaction!Independence for East Timor!

Defend Chinese Against Racist Attacks!

JUNE I-The replacement of despisedIndonesian dictator Suharto by his underling B. 1. Habibie changes nothing for theimpoverished toiling masses groaningunder the weight of a severe economiccrisis and savage right-wing repression.Habibie, seen by all as a transitory figure,was installed by the military butcherswho enforced Suharto's 32-year reign of

terror. U.S.-trained General Wiranto has

since proceeded to consolidate his powerby purging his military rival, GeneralPrabowo, Suharto's son-in-law. Having

allowed student protesters to occupy theparliament grounds in Jakarta in order tohelp ease out Suharto, whose flagrantcorruption had antagonized wide layersof the bourgeoisie and middle class, themilitary then moved rapidly to stop theprotests and restore order.

The imperialist media have made muchof the "people power" which supposedlybrought down Suharto, harking back tothe removal of the discredited Marcosdictatorship in the Philippines in 1986.But like that U.S.-inspired coup, whichsimply installed a more reliable regime toenforce imperialist dictates, Suharto's

"resignation" was carried out under thewatchful eyes of American, British and

Australian military/intelligence agencies,working through the Indonesian generalsthey have trained and armyd for decades.The London Sunday Times (24 May)reported:

"As the riots engulfed Jakarta, seniorAmerican officials were on the telephoneto Indonesian staff officers and membersof Suharto's elite in a persistent effort to

urge restraint, warning that if a massacreof protesters took place Indonesia wouldforfeit international financial aid andface economic collapse."Washington's decision to organise a full

military-run evacuation of Americans,setting off a mass flight of expatriatebusiness people, was the final sign thatAmerica had withdrawn its confidencefrom Suharto."

For all the pious talk of a "democratictransition," what the imperialists demandis a regime which can enforce the dictatesof the International Monetary Fund (lMF)and ensure the continued superprofitsgained from the vrutal exploitation of theIndonesian proletariat. The IMF has nowagreed to relax the deadlines for imposing

the draconian austerity measures tied toits $40 billion "bailout." With economic

7"11 25274"81030 7J

cnsls and political instability rackingSoutheast Asia, the imperialists and the

local bourgeoisie are deeply fearful of asocial explosion which. could spreadthroughout the region.

As we warned last issue: "A 'reformed'Indonesian capitalist regime will be just

as repressive and bloody as its predeces-sor and just as determined to force thecountry's toiling masses to pay for thecapitalist crisis." With millions alreadyjobless, unemployment is projected toclimb to 20 percent this year and intlationtoward 50 percent as the IMF dictates arccarried out. Even now, thousands of people are dying of famine, and as foodshortages grow and the cost of daily

necessities skyrockets, millions more. willface the prospect of starvation. ,

Many of the students who charned

SEE PAGE FOUR

AP photos

As Suharto (above,left) hands overIndonesianpresidency to hisformer underlingHabibie (right),military dictatorshipremains in place.Only workers ...revolution cansweep awayblood-drenchedcapitalist regime.

"Hang Suharto!" have embraced thenationalist myth of the Indonesian military as "the tool of the people." In fact,the military shores up a regime whosemandate is to further bludgeon the impoverished workers and rural masses atthe behest of the IMF vultures. Meanwhile, both within and outside the regimethe forces of Islamic reaction are increasingly assertive. Habibie is a fanaticallyanti-Chinese racist who heads the Association of Muslim Intellectuals. Andprominent among the bourgeois "opposition" is Amien Rais, the "moderate" headof the country's second-largest Muslimorganization, who also has a history of

racist bigotry. The growth of political

Islam, in all its variants, poses a particularly deadly threat to the multiethnic proletariat, to the deeply oppressed women,

to the besieged Chinese minority andall the national and religious minorities which make up this prison house of

peoples. .

It is urgently necessary that the prole-

tariat as a class enter the arena of strug-gle fighting for its own historic interests

and as champion of all the oppressed.This is what the International CommunistLeague has stressed at protests and public forums throughout the U.S. and inMexico, Britain and Australia over thepast two weeks. We seek to forge an inter

nationalist vanguard party of the Indonesian proletariat based on the Trotskyisttheory and program of permanent revolution. To achieve emancipation fromthe yoke of imperialism, to sweep awaythe military regime and secure politicaldemocracy, to fulfill the most basic dailyneeds of the masses, requires the prole-tarian seizure of power. But to consolidate proletarian rule in the face of hostileimperialism and to lay the foundationfor socialist economic development in abackward country like Indonesia requiresa perspective of fighting for socialist revolution internationally.

The series of financial collapses whichhave swept through Southeast and EastAsia underlines not only that periodic cri

ses are endemic to the capitalist systembut that the fate of the Indonesian masses

continued on page 12

Pushed by Fascists, Echoed by Reformist Left

Black Book:::"" • ••• :: <

Anli-CommuDlslBig liieSEE PAGE SIX



Defend Student Protesters at UCLA,Students at the Los Angeles campus of

the University of California (UCLA) haveprotested a series of attacks on affirmative action this spring. On May 15, an

integrated demonstration of 500 UCLA

YODngSparlaCDS

students rallied at the inauguration of thenew UC chancellor. Four days later, 600students marched, occupied a buildingand 85 of the protesters were arrestedby campus police wielding truncheons,tear gas and riot shields. Among thosearrested was a member of the SpartacusYouth Club.

First, in 1994, Proposition 187, aimedat all immigrants and Latinos, paved theway for these racist attacks on affirma

tive action. Then in 1995 the Board ofRegents axed affirmative action, and nowlittle more than a year after Prop. 209

May 19: 600 students at UCLA protest attacks on affirmative action. Cops attacked campus sit-in, arresting 85.

TROTSKY

outlawed affirmative action, the bour

geoisie has effected a racist purge ofhigher education in California, making it

even more a bastion of class privilege.

The Revolutions of 1848

The revolutions which swept across Europe in 1848 revealed that the bourgeoisiehad outlived the revolutionary role it hadplayed in the Great French Revolution of

1789 in the struggle against the old feudalaristocratic order. The young proletariatemerged as the only truly revolutionaryclass in modern society. More than a half

century later, Bolshevik leader V. 1. Lenindrew on the lessons of 1848 in forging therevolutionary party which was needed to

LENIN

imbue the proletariat with the consciousness of its historic class interests in overthrowing the rule of the bourgeoisie and taking power in its own name.

The revolution of 1848 struck a deadly blow at all these vociferous, motley and ostentatious forms of pre-Marxian socialism. In all countries, the revolution revealed the var

ious classes of society in action. The shooting of the workers by the republican bourgeoisie in Paris in the June days of 1848 finally revealed that the proletariat alone wassocialist by nature. The liberal bourgeoisie dreaded the independence of this class ahundred times more than it did any kind of reaction. The craven liberals grovelled beforereaction. The peasantry were content with the abolition of the survivals of feudalismand joined the supporters of order, wavering but occasionally between workers' democ

racy and bourgeois liberalism. All doctrines of non-class socialism and non-class politics proved to be sheer nonsense.

The Paris Commune (1871) completed this development of bourgeois changes;

the republic, i.e., the form of political organisation in which class relations appearin their most unconcealed form, owed its consolidation solely to the heroism of the

proletariat. ...The dialectics of history were such that the theoretical victory of Marxism compelled

its enemies to disguise themselves as Marxists. Liberalism, rotten within, tried to reviveitself in the form of socialist opportunism. They interpreted the period of preparing theforces for great battles as renunciation of these battles. Improvement of the conditionsof the slaves to fight against wage slavery they took to mean the sale by the slaves of

their right to liberty for a few pence. They cravenly preached "social peace" (Le., peacewith the slave-owners), renunciation of the class struggle, etc. They had very manyadherents among socialist members of parliament, various officials of the working-classmovement, and the "sympathising" intelligentsia.

2

- V. I. Lenin, "The Historical Destiny of the Doctrine of Karl Marx"(March 1913)

! ~ ! ! ! ' ! . ! o r . . ~ ! ~ ! ! . ~ l ! . ' ! . . EDITOR: Len Meyers

EDITOR, YOUNG SPARTACUS PAGES: Jacob Zorn

PRODUCTION MANAGER: Susan Fuller

CIRCULATION MANAGER: Jane Patterson

EDITORIAL BOARD: Ray Bishop (managing editor), Bruce Andre, Helene Brosius, George Foster,

Liz Gordon, Frank Hunter, Jane Kerrigan, James Robertson, Joseph Seymour, Alison Spencer

The Spartacist League is the U.S. Section of the International Communist League (Fourth

Internationalist).

Workers Vanguard (ISSN 0276-0746) published biweekly. except skipping three alternate issues in June, July andAugust (beginning With omitting the second issue in June) and with a 3-week interval in December. by the SpartacistPublishing Co . 299 Broadway. Suite 318. Ne w York, NY 10007. Telephone: (212) 732-7862 (Editorial), (212) 732-7861(Business). Address ali correspondence to: Box 1377, GPO. New York, NY 10116. E-mail address :[email protected] subscriptions: $10.00/22 issues. Periodicals postage paid at New York. NY. POSTMASTER: Send addresschanges to Workers Vanguard. Box 1377, GPO. New York, NY 10116.

Opinions expressed in signed articles or letters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint.

The closing date for news in this issue is June 2.

No. 692 5 June 1998

The Uniyersity of California at Berkeley

admitted only 191 blacks for the class of2002 (New York Times, 2 May).At the protests, the SYC linked the

struggle against racial oppression in theU.S. with that of the students who hadtaken over the Indonesian parliament thatweek in protest against Suharto's bloodsoaked dictatorship, whose militarydeath squads are trained by U.S. imperialism. SYC supporters carried signsabout Indonesia, and one placard inparticular-"No to Islamic Reaction

Women's Liberation Through SocialistRevolution!"-offended a Muslim organization, which prompted the anticommunist organizers of the rally to try,unsuccessfully, to censor the SYC's revo

lutionary politics.

We reprint below excerpts from a letter written by the Los Angeles SYCto the UCLA Daily Bruin about theseprotests.

* * *The Spartacus Youth Club denounces

the arrests of students protesting theracist purge of the campus. The SYCdemands that all charges against all protesters be immediately dropped! Pack the

courthouse on J u n ~ 15 and June 19 todefend the student demonstrators!

The Affirmative Action Coalition(AAC) and the African Student Union(ASU) claim these protests, dubbed the"Days of Defiance," are only the "begin

ning." The truth is that they are only a

repeat of the same impotent, pressurepolitics used to "fight" Prop. 187 in 1994and 209 in 1996.

These same student leaders at the May19 demonstration worked hand-in-handwith the cops and chancellor in negotiat

ing the terms on which students occupying Royce Hall would be arrested! Cops

are the armed fist of the capitalist statewho mete out brutal and murderous repression against ghetto and barrio youth,student protesters and striking workers.These student leaders did exactly what

the cops and administration wanted. They

corralled and diffused student outrageover the admission rates into impotentappeals to the campus administration and"peaceful," "legal," moral-witness protests and arrests that only work to demoralize protesters and derail any genuinestruggle.

We defend affirmative action againstthe bourgeoisie's racist assaults and havefully participated in the recent protests,but we recognize that it cannot evenbegin to break the chains that have shackled blacks in this country for centuries.The rollback of affirmative action provesthat the gains it achieved were fundamentally limitedand reversible because itdid not address the root cause of racistoppression-the capitalist system. Black

oppression is the bedrock of racist American capitalism, and any fight for blackequality runs smack against the entiresystem of capitalist exploitation. Againstthe sectoralist politics of the variousstudent groups which organize studentsalong racial and ethnic lines, the SYCfights to ally anti-racist students with thereal social power of the multiracial proletariat in the struggle for jobs, educationand a future for all.

While the AAC and ASU chose tocommemorate Malcolm X's birthday bypassing out lists of Democratic Partycandidates to vote for, we solidarize withMalcolm X's statement that "a vote fora Democrat is a vote for a Dixiecrat."The Democrats and Republicans are twin

parties of racist capitalism. We fightto build the multiracial, class-struggleworkers party, the tribune of all the people, necessary to lead the working classat the head of all the oppressed in thestruggle for"equality and socialist revolu

tion. Drop all charges against the antiracist protesters! Defend affirmativeaction and more! Fight for open admissions, no tuition and a state-paid stipend!Full citizenship rights for all immigrants!For black liberation through socialistrevolution! •

Spartacus Youth Club Forum

Thursday, June 18, 7 p.m.New York Univers ity-Bronfma n Center, First Floor Lounge

7 East 10th Street (between 5th Ave. and University Place, Manhattan)

NEW YORK CITY For more information: (212) 267-1025

WORKERS VANGUARD



' A i " G o v ' e f n i r ' S ~ t t ~ 1 B o .

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New Jersey State TroopersGun Down Black Motorists

At 11 p.m., on the night .of April 23,

two New J@rsey State troopers pulledover a van with New York plates occupied by four students, all black or Hispanic. The cops pumped at least elevenbullets into the van, wounding three of

the young men. The four were on theirway to basketball tryouts at North Carolina Central University. Danny Reyeslost the use of his right arm; Leroy Grantrequired a new kneecap. From his hospital bed Grant lamented, "This is the lastshot I had to succeed in the field Iwanted to succeed in."

The day after the shooting State PoliceSuperintendent Carl Williams claimedthe troopers pulled the van over becausetheir radar had clocked it speeding at 74miles per hour. The troopers claimed the

driver of the van put it in reverse afterbeing pulled over.and tried to run downthe police, who then opened fire. But thecops were lying through their teeth. Ascolumnist Jim Dwyer reported in theNew York Daily News (5 May):

"First, there was no radar equipment inthe police car. Second, the van andpolice car showed virtually no damagefrom the collision, suggesting that thevan did not move backward at highspeed. And third, the bullet holes causedby the 11 shots appeared to have beenfired from the side of the van or frombehind-not while it was bearing downon the troopers."

This was yet another instance of "racialprofiling" on the New Jersey Turnpike.Black motorists in the state are almostfive times more likely than whites to

be pulled over by the cops. Nationally, this potentially deadly racist practice

has earned the bitter epithet, "DrivingWhile Black." In 1996, even a New Jersey judge held that the New Jersey StatePolice had a policy of "targeting blacksfor investigation and arrest." Yet Governor Christine Whitman contemptuously declares, "There is no such thing asracial profiling."

The case of the four students is a hintof what would await black political prisoner Assata Shakur (formerly JoanneChesimard) if Whitman and her racistcops succeed in their vendetta to havethe former Black Panther Party activist returned to New Jersey. Shakurand two other former Panthers, ZaydMalik Shakur and Sundiata Acoli-then

all members of the Black LiberationArmy-were stopped by troopers on

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Danny Reyes inhis hospital bedafter being shotby New Jerseytroopers.

the turnpike in 1973, supposedly for a"faulty taillight." Approaching the car,one of the cops drew his gun and orderedthe three to raise their hands. A momentlater, Zayd Shakur was dead and AssataShakur, who was pregnant at the time,had been shot twice, once in the back.

For surviving that assassination attempt, Assata Shakur and Sundiata Acoliwere convicted in 1977 by an all-whiteNew Jersey jury on grotesque frame-upcharges of killing their own comrade anda state trooper who had died in the crossfire, with a bullet from a police revolver.

Assata Shakur had already served over

four years in solitary confinement andhad endured three earlier unsuccessful

attempts by the government to convicther. Following a dramatic escape from-- Australian Waterfront Struggle

Fake Lefts Hail "Victory,"

Alibi Union Tops' BetrayalThe following article is reprinted from

the current issue of Australasian Spartacist (No. 164, Winter 1998), newspaperof the Spartacist League of Australia.

SPASRTACIST

As we go to press, scabs are still atMelbourne's Webb Dock, while Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) members have been working without pay forPatrick Stevedores. Now the MUA's JohnCoombs and Patrick boss Chris Corriganhave emerged from secret talks reportedly agreeing to slash over 600 jobs in

exchange for making the remaining 800"permanent." The MUA leadership's vow

that there would be no return to workunless everyone went back has beenproven empty as at least 30 militantshave been blacklisted by Patrick, targeted as "violent," and five docks havebeen shut down, including Newcastleand Port Adelaide, throwing some 280unionists out on the street.

Wedded to the pro-capitalist AustralianLabor Party, the union bureaucracy's fundamental strategy has been to rely on thecapitalist courts. From the very beginning, the Spartacist League has told thetruth: the courts and cops-the state-are

5 JUNE 1998

enemies of labour and the oppressed. Aswe said in February: "To take on and de

feat this government-orches.trated unionbusting requires a serious, politicallyorganised class-struggle fight." With hundreds of thousands of workers and othershoping to defeat the capitalists' unionbusting offensive, the ACTU (AustralianCouncil of Trade Unions) and MUAmisleaders were and are terrified bythe prospect of a genuine class-againstclass battle. So they consciously and deliberately hung the waterside workers outto dry, demobilising the union and itssupporters, directing the workers' angerinto the well-worn channel of class

collaboration.Thus ACTU head Jennie George hailedthe 4 May High Court ruling (voted 6 to1), which pronounced against Patrick'smass sacking of 2,000 unionists, as a"David and Goliath" victory, while theMUA's Coombs ceremoniously led workers back to Patrick's wharves on a red carpet under a sign proclaiming "Victory tothe Workers!" But everyone knew that farfrom a union "victory" the court's rulingset the MUA up for the kill. Even Corrigan was able to claim it a win, whilethe,Sydney Morning Herald declared ina front-page headline, "Wharfies StillFace Axe."

Having glorified the Laborite MUAbureaucracy from the beginning, themyriad fake-left groups in Australiarushed to cheer along with them. TheCommunist Party of Australia headlined,"High Court: A Huge Moral & PoliticalVictory" (Guardian, 6 May). The International Socialist Organisation (ISO)editorialised, "Don't let the Liberals cheatus of our victory." Two weeks later theywere still wild about this "fantastic victory," as was the Democratic SocialistParty's Green Left Weekly (20 May)which opined that "The MUA's recentvictory gives the union movement thechance to counterattack ... "

The further away from Australia, themore enthusiastic the hurrahs became.In Britain, The Socialist (paper of cothinkers of the Australian Militant group)proclaimed "Australian dockers victoryshows workers can win," while the ISO'sparent group, the Socialist Workers Party,cheered "This is how to fight for ourrights" (Socialist Worker, 8 May). TheU.S. Socialist Workers Party (in Australia the Communist League) headlined,"Triumphant Workers Return to AustraliaDocks" (Militant, 25 May).

The slippery centrists of Workers Power (WP) tried to cover all the bases. InAustralia, where the reality of the MUA's

prison in 1979, she finally made her waytt) Cuba, where she has since completedher master's degree in political scienceand been reunited with the daughter whowas taken from her at birth.

The state authorities seized on thePope's tour of Cuba last January to renewtheir vendetta against Assata Shakur. Onthe eve of the papal visit, aimed at promoting the forces of capitalist counterrevolution in the Cuban deformed workers state besieged by U.S. imperialism,New Jersey police chief Williams appealed to the Vatican to help secureShakur's extradition. This was the open

ing shot in an orchestrated campaign tosee Shakur back in prison-or dead. InFebruary, New York WNBC-TV correspondent Ralph Penza aired a hatchetjob against the black militant. Followingthis, Whitman, who in 1995 offered a$25,000 reward for Shakur's capture,upped the bounty to $100,000. Williamsrailed that "we would do everything wecould" to get Shakur out of Cuba, explicitly threatening to kidnap her. As wewrote in defense of Shakur following her1979 escape, "Shakur is quite literallyrunning for her life-if the cops catchher, they'll do their best to make sure shenever gets a second chance" (WV No.243, 9 November 1979).

In an eloquent "Open Letter" (31 March)

responding to the WNBC-TV smear job,Shakur wrote:

"I am a 20th century escaped slave.Because of government persecution, 1was left with no other choice than to fleefrom the political repression, racism andviolence that dominate the US government's policy towards people of color. ...

"This political persecution was part andparcel of the government's policy ofeliminating political opponents by charging them with crimes and arresting themwith no regard to the factual basis ofsuch charges ..."I guess the theory is that if they couldkidnap millions of Africans from Africa400 years ago, they should be able tokidnap one African woman today. It isnothing but an attempt to bring about there-incarnation of the Fugitive Slave Act.All 1 represent is just another slave that

they want to bring back to the plantation.conJinued on page 15

situation is painfully obvious, WP didmanage to criticise the ACTU's Georgefor creating "the illusion that the bosses'courts can protect workers." What then of

their British outfit, which enthused overthe court decision-headlining a 5 Maystatement "Wharfies 6 ... Coalition Government 1"-and fatuously claimed that"the first round has gone to the Australiandockers"?

Instead of saying what is and whatneeds to be done, the fake-left vied witheach other in who could sound the mosttactically " m i l i t a n t " ~ a l l i n g for "generalstrikes," "national days of action" andthe like, but not for a nationwide MUAstrike that shut down the ports. Theysneered at our insistence that there mustbe a political struggle to break the stranglehold of the pro-capitalist ALP andthe trade-union bureaucracy. These "socialists" eagerly await the upcoming federal election so they can, as they alwaysdo, campaign to "Vote Labor." Underlying the dishonest and cynical victorymongering of these assorted leftists isprecisely their political confidence in thesocial democracy and its representativesin the trade-union bureaucracy. This is atbottom nothing other than a statement of

faith in the capitalist state.The MUA struggle throws into boldrelief the fact that "partnership" betweenlabour and capital is a lie, and the fact

that the capitalist state-with its cops andcourts-is the enemy of the working classand oppressed. Self-proclaimed leftistswho peddle sweet nostrums instead of thebitter truth-that the MUA's strugglewas demobilised and betrayed by theMUAIACTU tops, and that the strategy of

relying on the courts instead of the socialpower of the working class spells defeat,not victory-are not revolutionarie,s, butmere adjuncts to the pro-capitalist unionbureaucracy •

3



The following article is reprinted from

Spartacist Canada (No. 117, Summer 1998),

publication of the Trotskyist League!Ligue TrQtskyste, Canadian section of he

International Communist League.

I· S P A R T A C I S T ~ ~ When particIpants in the Toronto

International Women's Day march onMarch 7 arrived at the IWD fair at Ryerson University, they discovered that thefeminist organizers had given displaystalls to the Canadian army-notorious

for the sadistic torture of Somalis in theirrole as "peacekeeping" troops-and to

propagandists for the murderous IslamicRepublic of Iran. Both the provocationswere quashed by hundreds of protesters.

The protest against the agents of theIranian government-initiated by theWorker-Communist Party of Iran (WCPI)

and led by Kurdish and Persian women

has sharply polarized the Canadian left.Members of the Trotskyist LeaguelLigueTrotskyste, Ontario Coalition AgainstPoverty (OCAP), Socialist Action andNew Socialist Group all joined this actionagainst the deeply reactionary theocraticregime in Iran. Standing on the other sidein defense of the ayatollahs' representatives are several other self-proclaimedsocialist organizations, ranging from theburnt-out Stalinists of the CommunistParty to the longstanding apologists forthe Iranian government in the CommunistLeague.

The first to pick up the cudgel for theIslamic Republic agents were the International Socialists (I.S.), Canadian affili

ates of Tony Cliff's British SocialistWorkers Party. Within days, the I.S. wentinto print with an article in their newspaper Socialist Worker which slanderedthe WCPI and other leftist protestersas thugs who staged a "racist assault"against Muslim women!

This was a direct echo of the IWDorganizers, who had called out the campus cops in a futile attempt to stop theprotests. In a later statement, these feminists condemned the demonstrators for"terrorizing" the Iranian government's

propagandists. Others howled that theprotests-including the one targeting the

Canadian army-were "awash with testosterone"! Thus, in the name of "sisterhood," the feminists take the side of the

armed thugs of Canadian imperialismand of the brutally anti-woman Iranianregime.

Also whimpering about supposed"violence" was Socialist Resistance,affiliated with the British Socialist Partyof Peter Taaffe. When a 16 March meeting of OCAP voted to "unreservedlysupport" the WCPI's action, SocialistResistance members were among the

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4

very few who' opposed it. After years of

maneuvering to install itself as the leadership of this coalition,' Socialist Resistance quit the OCAP executive in

protest. As the WCPI noted in a 28March statement, "Socialist Resistancechose to be on the side of one of the

most notorious and repressive regimeson the globe today."

I.S. Slanders Exposed

But the most frenzied slander campaign continues to be waged by the LS.Initially, Socialist Worker (11 March)

'wonderful and full life' women in Iranenjoy, and all of them bore the logo of

the Islamic Republic of Iran." The statement continued:

"There were two other booths of traditionalist Moslem women's organizationsin the hall, and they participated in thefair without any challenge whatsoever.In fact, one of them was located rightalongside the booth of the W-CPI..""The fact that the International Socialiststhrough their official organ chose to somisrepresent the facts of the incident isnothing less than scandalous. I f theythink that it was proper for the Republicof Iran to have a booth at the IWD fair

The form - religionThe spirit - revolution

PRorAli"NIHSTS Foa Ibc tfII,<apiulKIII.TlII:'"ilolll>"';nlls... . .uld ... cll ... itve'llc t- :k.= ~ ' : : : ! ~ . . .-... g ' ~ < ~ : . ~ ' .. "';':" ...... :" ...... " " ' l ~ s.rn.WI_ A\.wI ... Kio ok_ ... 10.. -. .

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tried to claim that the table in questionhad nothing to do with the Iranianregime, but was just "a booth staffed bysome Muslim women." This lie wasimmediately refuted in a 14 March Trotskyist League leaflet, which was widelydistributed on the left.

A subsequent "Open Letter to theInternational Socialists" by, among others, the WCPI and an LS. member whohad resigned in protest noted that- "all ofthe literature and pictures on the displaytable were full of lies portraying the

Spartacists protestexecution of Iranianleftists, Toronto, 1979.Trotskyists warnedagainst Iranian left'ssubordination ofworkers movement to

Islamic fundamentalists, fought iorproletarian revolution.

WIJRItERI VANIIIAR' 2,.lOon' --

For Workers Revolution In Iran!

Down with the Shah IDon't Bow to Khomeini!

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, •. ~ ~ - # ~ .>'· ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ k ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ .

Canadian CHffite paper hailedKhomeini's 1979 "Islamic revolution"which imposed veil on women andcarried out bloody repressionagainst Kurdish minority (below).

Reza/Sipa

they should say so openly rather thanmisrepresent the truth of the matter inorder to cover their tracks."

Stung by the exposure of their lies, theI.S. held a rapid-fire series of branchmeetings on "Marxism and Islam." These

were no doubt directed at "re-educating"some of their own members who had

taken part in the protest. Repackagingtheir attacks on the WCPI and other leftists, LS. leader Paul Kellogg declared ina full-page article in the March 25Socialist Worker that the real issue was"racist scapegoating of people from theMiddle East." Kellogg asks rhetorically:"Even if there were a booth at IWDthat had some backing from the Iranianstate, would that justify an attack?\' Heanswers that to protest a display sponsored by the Islamic Republic would be"a concession to anti-Islamic scapegoat

ing coming from the ruling class." Soaccording to the I.S., any left-wing protest against the ayatollah regime can onlybe racist and pro-imperialist!

The I.S.'s posture as opponents of theanti-Muslim racism of the Canadian ruling class is the most abject hypocrisy.Week after week, Socialist Worker haslied that the WCPI-a group of leftistexiles, many of whom were themselvesjailed in the ayatollahs' dungeons-is agang of thugs who led a "mob attack" on

women. This plays directly into thehands of the racist rulers, for whom"violence" and "terrorism" are code

words in their'drive to expel desperaterefugees and other immigrants.

As for the I.S.'s purported antiimperial ism, during the 1991 Gulf War

against Iraq the I.S. adamantly refusedto call for the defense of this (predominantly Muslim) neocolonial MiddleEastern country against U.S./Canadianimperialism. Instead they built pacifist"antiwar coalitions" with bourgeois liberals and pro-capitalist New DemocraticParty politicians, who supported UnitedNations sanctions as the "alternative" towar. These sanctions have killed more

Iraqi men, women and children than theterror bombing ever did.

To cover for its scandalous defense of

the ayatollahs' agents, the LS. retrospectively embraces the protest against theCanadian army at IWD. Kellogg writes:"Fortunately some at the fair had the goodsense to know this [the protest against the

Islamic Republic] was wrong. Some triedto defend the right of the Muslim womento stay. Others led an attack on the realenemy-the booth staffed by the Canadian army-and drove it out of the fair."The unnamed "others" who led the actionagainst the Canadian army-the TL andOCAP-were also prominent in theprotest against the Iranian regime, andnumerous WCPI supporters participatedin the anti-army protest. Yet the I.S.,whose own table was right across theaisle from that of the army, only joined inafter hundreds of angry demonstratorshad massed in front of the military

recruitment station.

I.S. Backs Islamic Reaction:

Iran and AfghanistanThe I.S.'s outrageous campaign

against the IWD protest did not fall fromthe sky. For years now, this organizationhas tried to portray Muslim fundamentalism as "anti-imperialist" and even "revolutionary." The current period of ascendant political Islam in the historicallyMuslim world opened with the rise topower of Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran in1979. At the time, the I.S. ran laudatoryarticles on the Khomeiniite "mass movement" which overthrew the Shah, withheadlines like "The form-religion, Thespirit-revolution" (Workers' Action,

February 1979).The criminal support for the Islamic

fundamentalists by the I.S. and other

self-proclaimed leftists in Iran and internationally was a monstrous betrayaLWhile they cheered on the Khomeini"movement," we warned that it was pav

ing the way for a particularly brutal formof capitalist dictatorship. Uniquely onthe left, we said that the mullahs in

power would seek to reimpose the cha-dor (the head-to-toe veil), restore barbaric punishments like stoning and flogging, suppress national minorities andcrush the workers movement and left asruthlessly as had the Shah. We said:';Down with the Shah! Down with themullahs! For workers revolution in Iran!"Tragically, our predictions were all tooaccurate.

Later that year, the Soviet Red Army

intervened in the civil war in Afghanistanin support of a left-nationalist regimewhich had sought to introduce reformslike freeing women from the veil, reducing the bride price and providing education for girls. The I.S. took the side of

the CIA-backed Islamic mujahedin, whofought to maintain women as chattelslaves. Afghanistan was the opening shotin the imperialists' "Cold War II" aimedat the destruction of the Soviet degenerated workers state. While whipping up a

hue and cry against "godless Communism," Washington poured it) arms to support the Afghan Muslim cutthroats. Here

WORKERS VANGUARD



the I.S.'s cheering for Islamic fundamentalist forces came together with their visceral hostility to the Soviet Union. BritishCliffite leader Paul Foot even used hiscolumn in the bourgeois Daily Mirror toattack the Conservative Thatcher government from the right by denouncing thepossibility that British meat exports to theSoviet Union might be going to Sovietsoldiers in Afghanistan.

In contrast, Trotskyists said, "HailRed Army in Afghanistan!" We recog

nized that, whatever the intentions of

the bureaucrats in the Kremlin, this military action offered the possibility of

extending social gains of the OctoberRevolution to the hideously oppressedpeoples of Afghanistan. This understanding stemmed from our recognition that,

despite its degeneration under a Stalinistbureaucratic caste, the Soviet Unionremained a workers state and continuedto embody historic gains of the October1917 Russian workers revolution, notleast for women and the historicallyIslamic peoples of Soviet Central Asia.

We fought for the unconditional military defense of the Soviet degeneratedworkers state against imperialism andinternal counterrevolution, while at thesame time fighting for a proletarian political revolution to oust the Stalinist misrulers, whose deals with imperialism un

dermined the workers state and preparedits destruction. A. decade later, the Kremlin bureaucracy's withdrawal of Soviettroops from Afghanistan helped pave theway for the victory of counterrevolutionin the Soviet Union and East Europe. Italso led to untold horrors for the womenof Afghanistan at the hands of the Talibanand other Muslim fundamentalists.

For the I.S., however, the Red Armywithdrawal was a "victory." They gloatedthat "a defeated Russia will spur thestruggles of the oppressed nationalities

in Eastern Europe and inside Russiaitself" (Socialist Worker, March 1989).From East Berlin to Moscow, theI.S. cheered these counterrevolutionary"struggles" which led to the restoration

of capital ist -exploitation, mass unemployment, racist terror and rampantattacks on women's rights.

loS. Backs Islamic Reaction:Algeria and Indonesia

Trying to justify the presence of theIranian government representatives at theToronto IWD fair, Socialist Worker edi-

tor Kellogg writes: '."In fact, we should r e j e c t ~ j t h e term'Islamic fundamentalism' and talk instead about the mass phenomenon ofIslamism-a part religious, part politicalmovement that has been part of the landscape in Middle Eastern politics for thelast 40 or 50 years. Islamism is a type ofnationalism, a response to the crushinghand of imperialism in the Middle East."

But the rise of Islam is not an expres

sion of "anti-imperialism," but rather ,ofdespair. It is the reactionary reflection of

the evident dead end of bourgeois nationalism and the absence of a communistalternative. As Paul Trewhela wrote in aninsightful a r t i ~ l e on the rise of Islamicfundamentalism in Searchlight South

Africa (July 1989), a leftist journal published by South African exiles in London:

"It is the cry of the oppressed creatureof the late 20th century, wrapping hischains around himself with indefatigablefury because no more substantial projectof emancipation has yet presented itself.The high tide of Islamic reaction is therestilt of the absence over decades of anyinternational politics that would addressthings by the root.. ..

"Orchestrating and manipulating thefears and resentment of the Muslim poor,as so much raw material, the Islamiccampaign in each country is in the handsof this or that stratum of the propertyowners. These are out to strengthen theirposition relative to other classes througha political alliance with the imams, inwhich the mosques serve as nuclei of apolitical organization aimed, above all, atpreventing access to civil society by theyounger generation of Muslim women."

- "Islam, South Africa and 'TheSatanic Verses'," reprinted inWomen and Revolution No. 37,Spring 1990

Algeria provides a clear example. TheAlgerians won a war of independenceagainst France, but the victory over colo-

5 JUNE 1998

nialism produced an anti-working-class,neocolonial capitalis t regime which couldnot alleviate the exploitation and oppression of the masses. Millions turned toIslam as an "answer." The result has beenan all-sided bloodbath between the brutalmilitary regime and Islamic fundamentalists which has cost the lives of tens of

thousands.And the Cliffites have placed them

selves squarely in the Islamist camp. InFebruary 1992, their British journalSocialist Review gushed that the rise of

the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) "reflects the rise of revolutionary feeling."

The same month, their French newspaperSocialisme International declared: "Revolutionaries in Algeria must fight side byside with these people, even in actions

with "anti-imperialist" capitalists andgenerals. Under the Menshevik/Stalinistschema of "two-stage" revolution, theworking class is called upon to supportthe bourgeois nationalists, who areentrusted with the task of creating anindependent capitalist "democracy." Butin the former colonial and backwardcountries of the Third World, the bourgeoisie is so tied to its imperialist masters that it is incapable of carrying outeven the most basic democratic taskssuch as national emancipation. As wasbrought home in blood and fire in Indonesia in 1965, "two-stage revolution" is

a chimera which can only lead to devastating defeat for the oppressed.Ours is the perspective of permanent

revolution: the understanding that in

establishment of a workers' state." Yetthey simultaneously call to "imposeon capitalism the most far-reachingreforms," and end up casting about forother, alien class forces to come to the aidof the oppressed. Take for example theirappeals to the United Nations, an imperialist "den of thieves" (as Lenin called itspredecessor, the League of Nations). As

Washington threatened yet more air raidson Iraq in 1996, the WCPI called on theUN to "put an end to the arrogance of theUnited States," refusing to call for theproletar iat to defend this semi colonialcountry against imperialist assault. More

recently they have demanded that theWorld Court, another imperialist agency,put Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein ontrial. As we have long argued, it is the

Women'sRights,Not Iran'sTortureState

Violence breaks up

sisterhood and solidarity lB..·.· ..iL··:;·····:

It)' Kt.'nny Yum

I.'1." .... /l"J/.\1t1f{

. . ~ : ; : . ! ~ ' i , ; ~ ; ! : : j t · . ~ : ~ ; ~ : l ! l t : ~ : ~ : : : ! ; ; I , I t ~ ; ' ) " J ~ ~ ( I : I I : ~ ~ : : ~ · d l ~ ! : ~ : h.I' r l ' I : " ' : ' ~ ' !I!!II!IIIIIMIIIIIIIP.I!!"",,,piIIIIIl!IIIII!llil l l l l l l l l l l l l ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ J : ~ ~ ~ g ~ : ~ ; ; ~ : i i ~ : ~ ~ : ; ~ ~ ; ~ ~ h ; ; : t ~ : : : : . ~ : ~ I ~ . ~ ~ ~ ~ ' : ~ ; ~ I ~ ~ o l ' \ ' ~ : : y ~ l : i l ~ I ~ ~ : : : ; k ' ; ; ~ : ~ ' d i ~ p ! . l r ~ : ' ~ : ; : ~ : ~ ~ : : ~ : ~ ~ . : ' \ " ~ J l \ " Idt - ~ ' ' ' ~ " O r h ' d h}r"--'---'-----..JIIt-""========-;

~ ~ ~ _ ~ t ~ p . ! o ( ~ . ~ , ' I · k . . " + ' : , f · ~ ~ .. · · ~ ' : _ ; , ; ' ~ : : The Canadian army is the

The Dlsgra.. of The Islamic Republic a' Ihe International .

Women', Day Ceremonies in Toronto enemy, not Muslim womenA ~ ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' o n " " " " , " , ~ , " , , , , , , , ( " I - ' _ I o o l ' D , ~ , , , . _ " " . , .... .oIIu.

Women. o.y ceremonies in Toronto, U every year. look p&ce with lhe pmic:ipalion of 1>1.......... ~ = . 1\ .-W ..

Trotskyl,t Le_suelLlsue trotskyste

International Socialists:etting the repreIC!atatives of the Islamic n"t"1 , . : ~ \ d The dernonstrllion culminlted al Rymoa University, ___ ..-- .__

liP their book-Iables. displayl and worIuhops. How.ver, to our Ihockeddismay.discovered thai representatives oflb e Islamic Republic had set up their WOrk-labie. which

was lillercd with posters and F.nSIlIlh public&riollJ from the l.R.s "CJ\lid.wc:eDepartment"The I R.s symbol and -Imam Khomemis wonts- were openly evident. The preseDte or

RESOLtJTION ON TABLES ATINTERNATIONAL WOMENS' DAl'

OCAP

Vile Lies and Slanders in Serviceof Bloody Islamic Reaction

0._7 ...___ . . . ._'--__ . 0., *_ty __ ..... at ___ ..___ ~ , . . . ...Iltc_,_.......... c-AmooIP.- .... __ ot ..

"'- . . . . . . . . . of "-- ..

....... IIooIa.dfot .. tiIa,..,..,x.n..." ......--.- ........,.-...,. ....,.-~ . . , - . . o t _ · I n . - . ....... _ .. oIo_ _ . drI""' ... _ . .......,. ...........-_.,...,.....n . T r o a k f I o I ~ . . . - , . . I o ..... Il>_.... __ .. - P t " " _ ~ _ .. D.f•• ~ . . . . . . , . w h o o I I o o l .. ... ........ "' .. 1li .......... "'- ___,.....1a__ of.. oIa.i; .......... •.. bI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I W D ~ ...... ..t.,...v . ...,.-....,pooI_ .. ., .......... . .-._ ... . . . . . a I I o d ~ u....!S ......... O.5.I_,...,...taod • ...-d_.:,,:,,_--=-.:..:.r--'" ra ........

n..u.._.s. . .__ I M an o I .....

-""'''-'- oI .. w . . . . , ~ ~ ...~ n ; : : :

h ' ~ ' ~ ' : ' : : : : ~ f ' " : : : ~ ) o M 1 l m __.... h o ~ . . . . . . . . . . . 11o

"'- ' .·- . t . I . ~ r .....'-...,.

. . . . .>lIWD_

,....rui ...... ___ .... .. r.r" ""ioool.,..-. ........

1·1 """' .. ~ . " " " " ~ ..•"" .. J ! : ~ : ~ . : E ~ Z ~ E : ~

Successful protest against propagandists for bloody theocratic Iranian regime at Toronto IWD fair has sharplypolarized the Canadian left.

calIed by the PIS." The "actions" of Algeria's sinister Islamic fundamentalists

include the murders of countless thousands of unveiled women, secular journalists, trade unionists and leftists.

The Cliffites' infatuation with Islamicreaction was captured in a major articleby British SWP theoretician Chris Harman titled "The Prophet and the Proletariat" (International Socialism, August1994). There Harman writes, "Isla mists

have now replaced socialists and the left

in terms of being in the frontline against

the state in many countries" (emphasis inoriginal). Claiming that the Algerian FISis "caught between respectability andinsurrectionism," Harman does not evenhint that the goal of the PIS's "insurrectionism" is a theocratic dictatorship!

More recently, in the face of mass pro

tests against the Suharto dictatorship inIndonesia, the Australian Cliffites havefostered deadly illusions that Muslimleader Amien Rais could create "a rankand file revolutionary movement in thearmy, to split it from below" (SocialistWorker [Australia], 6 March). While promoting Rais today, they have retrospectively embraced the anti-Communist,Islamic mobs that helped to bring downthe left-nationalist Sukarno regime in1965-66. They write:

"Students have rallied on campusesaround the country, demanding the dictator step down.

"The most impressive action was at theUniversity in Jakarta, where studentsonce played a role in bringing down theprevious Sukarno regime."

Grotesquely equating the student protestsagainst Suharto with the reactionary mobsin 1965, Socialist Worker gives its stampof approval to the CIA-backed bloodbathof half a million Communists, workers and ethnic Chinese which installedSuharto!

For Permanent Revolution!

In Indonesia, Iran and other countries,the rise of Islamic reaction was conditioned both by the bankruptcy of thebourgeois nationalists and the betrayalsof the mass Stalinist parties whichpreached an alliance of the proletariat

countries of belated capitalist development, even the achievement of the unre

solved democratic tasks requires sweeping away the rule of capital. The proletariatmust place itself at the' head of all theoppressed in a struggle for socialist revolutIon. This is inextricably linked tobreaking the power of the imperialist rulers through the fight for proletarian statepower in the West. The InternationalCommunist League aims to build Leninist parties as the crucial instrument forimbuing the proletariat with the consciousness and purpose of its historic taskof world socialist revolution.

In investing the forces of Islamic reaction with "revolutionary" potential, theI.S. doesn't even pay lip service to thenecessity of mobilizing the proletariatas an independent class force. The WCPI

correctly denounces them for "defendingthe Islamic state," asking rhetoricalIy,"Do we need to reiterate the shamefulposition of the I.S. in defending Khomeini?" Yet while the WCPI stands far tothe left of most self-styled Marxists inthe region, they have not transcended the deadly framework of "two-stage"revolution.

Neither the WCPI nor its predecessor, the Communist Party of Iran (CPI),

existed at the time of Khomeini's ascension to power in 1978-79. However inwriting about this period they draw anonexistent distinction between the "revolution" that overthrew the Shah and therise to power of the mullahs. For example, a CPI political resolution referred to

the "experience of the suppression of the1979 revolution by the Islamic regime"(Bolshevik Message, February 1989).Workers strikes were key in bringingdown the Shah, but the proletariat waspoliticalIy subordinated to the Khomeiniites by its misleaders-with the decisiveassistance of the Iranian left. Cruciallymissing was a Bolshevik party that couldlead the working class to seize politicalpower against both the Shah and theforces of Islamic reaction.

Today the WCPI's program, "A BetterWorld," calIs for "the overthrow of

the Islamic Republic and the immediate

task of the Iraqi proletariat to overthrowthe butcher Hussein, not the imperialists

who would only replace him with anotheranti-Communist dictator.

While opposing Islamic reaction inIran, in Afghanistan the WCPI refused totake the elementary stance of supportingthe Soviet Red Army intervention againstthe CIA-backed Muslim butchers. Thisflowed from their entirely false view thatthe Soviet Union became "state capitalist" in the mid- I 920s because the Russianworking class failed to completely "revolutionize the economic relations." TheWCPI explicitly accepts the nationalistmyth that it is possible to build "socialism in one country." This is counterposedto the Marxist understanding that the proletariat must extend its rule internationalIy to at least the main imperialis t centers

in order to advance to a socialist society.Rejecting the course fought for by LeonTrotsky'S Left Opposition, which struggled to return the Soviet Union to the proletarian internationalist program that animated the Bolshevik Revolution and theearly Communist International, the WCPImust necessarily falI back on the disastrous schema of "two-stage revolution."

In Iran in 1978-79, the support of thevast majority of the self-proclaimed leftfor the ayatolIah-led "movement" wasconditioned by their rejection of the revolutionary capacity of the proletariat. Inthat instance, they lined up with forcesthat didn't even pretend to be "progressive." Today, the International Socialistsshamelessly continue to portray Islamicreaction as an "anti-imperialist" and "revolutionary" alternative. As we wrote in'''Third Camp' Social Democrats Panderto Islamic Fundamentalism" (Workers

Vanguard No. 613, 30 December 1994):

"The Cliffites' policy is suicidal forthemselves and any workers, youth or

women unfortunate enough to be influenceq by them. The proletariat must begalvanized politically around a programnot to replace the uniformed dictatorswith robed theocrats but to achieve theirown class rule, not to be thrown backinto benighted medievalism but to takesociety forward to socialist emancipationand enlightenment.".

5



Pushed by Fascists, Echoed by Reformist LeftThe publication in France last year of

Le Livre Noir du Communisme (The

Black Book of Communism [Editions

Robert Laffont, Paris)) has served as afocus throughout West Europe for a

renewed campaign of hysterical slan

ders against Communism and the 1917

Bolshevik Revolution. Though not yet

translated into English, the book has

been embraced in the U.S. as well byanti-Communists of all stripes. The fol

lowing article, translated from Spartacist(French edition) No. 32, Spring 1998,exposes the myriad lies in the BlackBook and how they are wielded by bour

geois and reformist ideologues.

Since capitalist counterrevolution inthe Soviet Union and the deformedworkers states of East Europe, the

....4f i *. :li( · : : . · i ~ @ . . , . I I ..Ue!%. ',"

Blael'look:

chorus. But the day after the publicationof the Black Book, an editorial in the PCFnewspaper L'Humanite (7 November1997) railed that "The Russian Revolution gave birth to a monster which yearafter year devoured millions of people."Hue says that the Soviet Union did nothave a "roughly positive balance sheetbut a negative one. Even monstrous inmany respects" (L'Humanite, 5 December 1997). And the so-called "far left" is

largely disarmed in the face of the threadbare lies of the Black Book, mostly owing

to their having made common cause withpro-imperialist anti-Sovietism for the past

two decades or so.

Capitalism and Mass Murder

The purpose of the Black Book (whichinternational bourgeoisies have stepped uptheir ideological offensive against Communism. They would liketo wipe out of the consciousness of the prole-

Anti-Communisthas been translated into13 languages) is to discredit the 1917 OctoberRevolution in order, theyhope, to finally lay torest the danger of new

tariat and the oppressed any lingeringattachment to the program or ideals of

communism. They want to impose the

idea that capitalist society-with itsexploitation and unemployment, racismand poverty, war and the menacinggrowth of fascism-is the only worldpossible.

In countries like Britain, France andItaly, the parties of the so-called "left"have become the prime movers of thebrutally racist, anti-working-class policies demanded by the rulers. To theaccompaniment of rising unemploymentand racism, the dismantling of the "welfare state" and imperialist aggression in

the semicolonial .:ountries, threadbareold anti-Communist shibboleths are the"new" sensation in bookshops and themass media. Tony Blair wants to breakthe historic link !.:letween the British

Labour Party and the unions, D'Alemaof the Italian Party of the DemocraticLeft dumps the hammer and sickle symbol, and in France, social democrats pub

lish a book by a dubious group of "historians": The Black Book of Communism,

846 pages of lies and amalgams aimed atjustifying repression against organiza

tions and individuals who might stilllook to communism, and at contributingto counterrevolutionary efforts to destroythe Cuban, Chinese, Vietnamese andNorth Korean deformed workers states.

The book, most of whose authors areex-leftists (and who, adding insultto injury, still claim that they are left

ists!), is an amalgam of Cold War propaganda and lies which echo those long

retailed by the CIA. It is a list of supposed Communist crimes which lumpstogether death by' famine at the time'of the Civil War after the Russian Revolution with the Stalinist purge trialsof the 1930s, Pol Pot's massacres inCambodia, the victims of the Mengistu

regime in Ethiopia in the 1970s-80s, andeven those of the "Rwandese PatrioticFront," in order to arrive at a fantastictotal which, according to the book's

Big Lie

Penguin Bundesarchiv

Left: Anti-Communist poster during Russian Civil War demonizes Trotsky as

embodiment of ':.Jew-Bolshevism." Right: Election poster on eve of Nazis' riseto power declares, "Only one man can save us from Bolshevism-Adolf

Hitler!" French B/lICk Book retails lies pushed by anti-Semitic counterrevolutionaries, fascists.

editor, Stephane Courtois, "is close to

100 million deaths" allegedly caused byCommunism.

There's nothing new about reactionary ideologues embarking on antiCommunist crusades (see "Leonard Schapiro, Lawyer for Counterrevolution,"Spartacist [English edition] No. 43-44,Summer 1989). Nor about social democrats (and anarchists) vying with bourgeois rightists in anti-Communist fervor(see "Robin Blick: Menshevik Dementia," Spartacist [English edition] No. 49-50, Winter 1993-94). The reformists'

adaptation to the chauvinism of their

own rulers is their basis for enlistingin the bourgeoisie's anti-revolutionary

campaigns.Today the old-style social democrats

are joined in their endeavor by none otherthan Robert Hue, head of the FrenchCommunist Party (PCF). While the PCF

is equally as rotten, chauvinist and reformist as the Socialist Party (SP), nonetheless it takes extraordinary shamelessnessfor the heirs of the very Stalinists whogave "Communism" a bad name to so fulsomely join in the "death of communism"

Octobers. The centraltechnique is to equate Communism withfascism-an old war cry of reactionarybourgeois apologists, who aim thereby

not only to smear the idea of communism but to trivialize the unique andunspeakable crimes of Hitler's Holocaust, when millions were murdered in

the demented effort to eliminate wholepeoples from the face of the earth. Liketheir reactionary forebears, Courtois &Co. amalgamate Communism with fas

cism by elevating bourgeois democracyto a transcendent principle, and thendecrying Communism and fascism as"totalitarian" systems. Fascism is a formof capitalist rule which the bourgeoisieresorts to in extremis, dispensing withbourgeois democracy to maintain itsclass power as the German bourgeoisiedid in handing power to Hitler on theroad to World War II.

The authors of the Black Book pretendthat Nazi Germany was the only major

capitalist state in the 20th century guiltyof crimes against humanity on a massscale. Every Algerian and Vietnameseknows this is a lie! Trying to drown in

blood the Algerian War of Independence,

the French imperialists killed a millionpeople-over a tenth of the total population. This brutal colonial war was prosecuted in good part under the governmentof Socialist Guy Mollet. In Madagascarin 1947, the French imperialists slaughtered some 80,000 people; in Indochinabetween 1946-54, estimates vary from800,000 to 2 million dead (Gilles Perrault in Le Monde Diplomatique, December 1997). Then the American imperial

ists-who had atom-bombed Hiroshimaand Nagasaki, slaughtering hundreds of

thousands of Japanese civilians as partof the "war for democracy"-took overthe Indochina war from France, killingtwo million people, two-thirds of themcivilians.

The undoubted atrocities of Pol Pot inCambodia owe a huge debt to the U.S.imperialists: the Khmer Rouge inheriteda country obliterated by more than half a

Suddeutscher Verlag Sygma

Concentration camp for Jews in France under World War II Vichy regime. Right: Algerian demonstrators massacred by Paris police, October 1961.

6 WORKERS VANGUARD



million tons of American bombs, whichslaughtered an estimated 600,000 people(out of a population of 7 million), destroyed the economy and cultural level ofthe country and swelled the populationof Phnom Penh to five times its prewarsize. Pol Pot's Cambodia was never aworkers state, even deformed. Uponrouting the imperialists and their venalpuppets, the first act of the KhmerRouge-an extremely thin layer at thehead of a peasant army, fearful that theycould not control any social organizationabove the village level-was to raze thecities, destroying the tiny' proletariat andforcing virtually the entire populationinto barely disguised labor camps at themost primitive subsistence level.

The ideology of Pol Pot & Co. was theantithesis of the program of communistsfor whom industrialization and techno

logical progress lay the material basis forthe free and full development of humanpotential in a socialist society of plentyfor all. Indeed, the Khmer Rouge's ideawas to smash urban and intellectual lifeand achieve "equality" through a levelling down to the lowest level. Philosophically they are at one with the "back tonature" ideal of Jean-Jacques Rousseau'

and his modern heirs, the "ecology" enthusiasts who think that everyone including the starving masses of the ThirdWorld ought to consume less.

Not surprisiI!gly, those who today holdup Pol Pot as an example of the crimesof "Communism" seem to forget that hewas backed much of the time by theAmerican imperialists, and it was theVietnamese Stalinists who brought anend to his rule.

Nazism and theBourgeois Order

Courtois' "technique" is to generateabsurd "statistics" so as to "prove" thatCommunists have killed more peoplethan the fascists did. His thesis is that "theCommunist system involves, although ina different way, a fundamentally criminal dimension" similar to if not worse

than Nazism: "the facts speak clearlyand show that the crimes committed bythe Communist regimes concern around100 million people, as against roughly 25million victims of Nazism." Courtoistalks about "genocidal logic" and about"mass murder, systematic murder, crimesagainst humanity."

It is striking how similar Courtois'anti-Communist slanders are to the language and content of Hitler's infamous

Mein Kampf There, Hitler wrote that theJews were the founders and organizers of

Marxism who had shown their true facein Russia where they "killed (sometimeswith inhuman tortures) or starved todeath with truly fanatical savagery closeto thirty million people." According to

Mein Kampf, the leaders of Soviet Russia were "bloodstained criminals ... [whohad] killed and rooted 'out millions of

leading intelligentsia in a wild thirst for

blood ... [and] exercised the most crueltyranny of all times" (quoted in Arno J.Mayer, Why Did the Heavens Not

Darken?, 1988).

The Black Book of Communism servesthe purposes of the bourgeoisie today,which would like to revise history anddistance itself from the horrors of Hitlerand the Holocaust. But the Nazis werenot an isolated phenomenon; they adver

tised themselves as and were widely seenas defenders of "the West" against the

perceived "Jew-Bolshevik" threat to theworld order. Hitlerite fascism was the

most diehard, most ideological expression of the bourgeoisie's unremittingworld struggle against Communism.

Courtois openly embraces the theses of

the ideologist of the pro-Nazi right wingin Germany, Ernst Nolte, who insists thatit was the Bolsheviks who really inspiredNazi barbarism, claiming that the degreeand "techniques of mass violence" hadbeen inaugurated by the Communists. In

fact the relationship between the programof communism and that of Hitlerite fascism is that they are opposites. Authentic communism means the full liberationof all of humanity while fascism is the

5 JUNE 1998

epitome of bourgeois racism and capitalist barbarism. Communists are "responsible" for Hitler only in the sense thatanti-communism, along with anti-Semiticracism, was the pillar of Hitlerite ideology. The fear that the powerful Germanworkers movement might emulate the

example of the Russian October was whatimpelled the German bourgeoisie to handover state power to Hitlerite gangsters.

Meanwhile, the French bourgeoisie hasjust concluded the trial of its faithful servant, Maurice Papon who, as a top official of the Nazi-allied Petain regimeduring World War II, organized the deportation of Jews from France to Hitler'sdeath camps. In 1961, as the prefect of

police in Paris, he was responsible for the

massacre of more than 300 Algerianspeacefully demonstrating for Algerianindependence. As a result of the trial,Papon was sentenced effectively to twodays in jail; obviously the court recognized, as Courtois does not, that the keyquestion about "wa r criminals" is: whose

class rule did they serve?For the authors of the Black Book, no

concrete historical situation is worth analyzing with any seriousness at all. Forexample, in the section on Afghanistan,Sylvain Boulouque devotes only twolines to the massacres carried out by theCIA-backed mujahedin cutthroats who,now in power, stone to death women whodare to leave their homes without wearing the head-to-toe veil. In any case, heblames their crimes on the Soviet Union:"The Afghan resistance fighters also conduct massacres and, even though there's

no mention here of the brutalities carriedout by the Resistance, they remain unacceptable and unexcusable .... However theresponsibility for what happened inAfghanistan lies with the Communistsand their Soviet allies."

The book is so unserious that theauthors don't even worry about gettingtheir story straight. Nicolas Werth, one of

the authors of the Black Book, feeding thelie that Stalinism is the legitimate child of

Leninism, claims that the Bolshevik Party

suffocated the powerof

the soviets immediately after taking power: "Within a fewweeks these institutions [factory committees, unions, socialist parties, neighbor

hood committees, Red Guards and aboveall, the soviets] were stripped of theirpowers, subordinated to the BolshevikParty and eliminated." Later, intent onshowing that the Social Revolutionariesand Mensheviks reflected existing opposition within society, Werth maintains theopposite and a little bit of truth comes

out:"In reality, the spring of 1918 was a cru-cial moment when the game was stillundecided. Inside the soviets which hadnot yet been gagged and transformedinto simple organs of state administration, there were real political debatesbetween the Bolsheviks and the socialistmoderates. The opposition papers con-tinued to exist, even though theywere persecuted daily; local political lifesaw a continuous growth of competinginstitutions." ,

Le Monde (14 November 1997) published an article by the historian LillyMarcou showing that Werth multipliedtenfold the number of victims of Stalinistterror which he himself had given onlyfour years before. Why does Le Monde

Popular-frontgovernment ofSocialist primeminister Lionel

Jospin (left)and Robert Hue's

PCF unleashedstrikebreaking

cops againstFrench truckers,November 1997.

(along with the entire "left" when it criticizes the B l ~ c k Book) maintain that thisquack's contribution to the book is themost serious and the most scientific?Because Werth's main task is to identifyLenin with Stalin and make Leninresponsible for the crimes committed by

Stalin, the gravedigger of the OctoberRevolution.

At times, the book is simply grotesque. The Bolsheviks are accused of

having "induced" the 1922 famine and

of having therefore provoked the deathof "five million people." The executionof the Romanov royal family by the Bol

sheviks after taking power is presentedas merely a personal settling of accountsby Lenin, whose brother had been killedby the tsarist regime after an assassination attempt against Tsar Alexander III,and so forth.

But the lies, historical absurdities and

grotesque aspects of the book don't overshadow the fundamentally sinister aim of

the Black Book. In the introduction, Stephane Courtois expressed concern thatthe symbols of the revolution-"the RedFlag, the Intemationale and the clenchedfist-re-emerge every time there's asocial movement of particular importance" and that "various openly revolu

tionary groups continue to be active andto work in full legality." This-together

with the repeated demand for "a Nuremberg trial for the crimes of Communism,"echoed by the fascists of the NationalFront-is a direct appeal for state repression against organizations and individuals who look to communism.

Trotskyism Is theContinuity of the Bolsheviks

Just like their numerous Cold Warpredecessors, the authors of the Black

Book embrace and spread the bourgeoislie that Stalinism was the legitimate childof Leninism. Their main argument is thatthe roots of the Moscow Trials of the

Kyoichi Sawada

AP

1930s and of the Stalinist gulags are tobe found in the October Revolution itselfand, in particular, in the "Red Terror" of

the Bolsheviks during the 1918-1921Civil War.

In reality, the soviets took power at thebeginning of November 1917 with hardlyany human losses. The Russian bourgeoisie was so impotent, so compromised bythe course and outcome of the war, sodemoralized by the Kerensky regime, thatit didn't dare pose any resistance. Kerensky's power in Petrograd was defeatedalmost without a fight. There was somewhat more resistance in Moscow. In theprovinces, a telegram from Petrograd orMoscow was usually sufficient to transferpower to the soviets. There were hardlyany arrests. The ministers of the Kerensky government were freed shortly afterthe revolution. At the beginning, the revolution applied the same kind of generosity as the first Paris Commune. For example, the Cossack General Krasnov, who

had marched on Petrograd with Kerenskyimmediately after the soviets took power,was imprisoned but was freed the nextday. Once freed, he immediately joinedthe ranks of the counterrevolution and,after having killed thousands of Communists, marched on Petrograd again withthe Yudenich army.

The proletarian repression becamemore severe only slowly and progres

sively, keeping pace with the increase incounterrevolutionary activity-after themass execution of Communists during

the Czechoslovakian uprisingin

theVolga organized by the Cadets (the bourgeois Constitutional Democrats), SocialRevolutionaries and Mensheviks; afterthe attempt on Lenin's life, the assassination of Uritsky, etc. Local counterrevolutionaries were backed by the"democratic" imperialists. The Frenchembassy organized the 1918 Yaroslavuprising which inflicted many casualties.

continued on page 8

Ut/AP

U.S. imperialists' dirty war in Indochina resulted in slaughter of over two million Vietnamese.

7



Black Book...

(continued from p age 7)

The "empire" of Admiral Kolchak waspushed by American finance and supported by Czechoslovakian military corpsaided by the French government. Krasnov and Kaledin, heads of the counterrevolution on the Don, were backedfinancially and militarily by Germany. Inall, 14 imperialist armies invaded thenew workers state; side by side withlocal counterrevolutionaries, they devastated the 'Country, massacred reds and

wreaked 'terror on the Jewish villages.The fact that the Russian revolutionary

proletariat, which came out of WW I decimated in an e c ~ m o m i c a l l y devastatedcountry, was able to win the Civil Warwas itself irrefutable proof of the depthof support for the revolutionary cause.The workers fought heroically, sacrificing themselves to the point that the mostconscious proletarian layers were virtually wiped out. The peasants-having tochoose between the Whites who stoleback their land and the Reds who onlyrequisitioned their grain to feed the cities-chose the Reds. It would have beena crime had the Bolsheviks not utilizedall means necessary to ensure victory.Leon Trotsky, commander of the Red

Army during the period of the Civil War,explained it admirably in his work, Ter-

rorism and Communism (1920):

"The working class, which seized powerin battle, had as its object and its dutyto establish that power unshakeably, toguarantee its own supremacy beyondquestion, to destroy its enemies' hankering for a new revolution, and therebyto make sure of carrying out Socialistreforms, Otherwise there would be nopoint in seizing power ...

"The revolution does require of the revolutionarv class that it should attain itsend by ' all methods at its disposalif necessary, by an armed rising: if

required, by terrorism . ,."

And in the 1935 English language preface he added:

"History down to now has not thought

out any other way of carrying mankindforward than that of setting up alwaysthe revolutionary violence of the progressive class against the conservativeviolence of the outworn classes."

The workers state which emergedfrom the Bolshevik Revolution wasfounded on proletarian internationalismand soviet democracy-the power of theworkers councils whose delegates weredemocratically elected by the workers.But the years of Civil War and imperialiststrangulation devastated the economyand the proletariat, in particular its mostconscious layer, allowing the growth of abureaucratic layer inside the party and inthe state apparatus. Not only the Bolshevik leaders but the masses of workerssaw the extension of the revolution to

other countries as the key to the'survivalof the Soviet republic. But numerousproletarian u p r i s i n g s ~ i n Hungary, Germany, Poland, Bulgaria, Italy and elsewhere-were crushed.

Basing itself on the widespread demoralization which resulted from the defeat

8

Just Out!

Spartacist(French edition)

No. 32Spring 1998

$2 (56 pages)

Make checks payable/mail to:Spartacist Publishing Co.Box 1377 GPONew York, NY 10116

of the 1923 German revolution, and withLenin on his deathbed, the bureaucracyheaded by the "troika" of Stalin, Zinovievand Kamenev gained control at the 13thParty Conference in January 1924 and

carried out a real political counterrevolu-tion. After January 1924, the people whoruled the USSR, the way the USSRwas ruled, and the purposes for whichthe USSR was ruled, had all changed(see "When Was the Soviet Thermidor?"Spartacist [English edition] No. 43-44,Summer 1989). Some months later, theprogram of this conservative social layerfound its expression in the anti-Marxistdoctrine of "socialism in one country."Lenin's last political battle, which he conducted in bloc with Trotsky, was against

Stalin and the nascent bureaucracy, inparticular over Stalin's manifestations of

Great Russian chauvinism and brutalarrogance.

Thus, in their defense of the revolu

tionary internationalism of the Bolshevikprogram, Trotsky and the Left Oppositioncarried forward the struggle for Leninismagainst the Stalinist bureaucracy. I t is the

Trotskyists who represent the continuity

of communism and not their butchers, asthe "death of communism" ideologues

would have us believe. The purpose of

Stalin's terror was to repress and intimidate the proletariat whose political powerthe bureaucracy had usurped, and especially to root out and destroy any loyaltyto the Left Opposition and its program of

international socialist revolution. By theend of the purges, out of the entire Bolshevik Central Committee which hadmade the Revolution, only Stalin remained in power! Stalinism represented

not Leninism but its negation; in order toconsolidate his power and establish hisclaim to be "Lenin's successor" Stalinhad to murder the "Old Bolsheviks" anddestroy the entire variguard layer of theproletariat. Significantly, the imperialistbourgeoisies had little problem with the

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Left: Red Army commander Leon Trotsky rallies troops during 1920 warwith French-backed Pilsudski dictatorship in Poland. Right: Soviet troopsenter Ukrainian city of Odessa in 1919 during Civil War against pogromistcounterrevolutionaries.

Moscow Trials at the time, as Trotskynoted in Their Morals and Ours (1938):

"The big bourgeoisie of the democraticcountries watched the execution of therevolutionists in the USSR not without

pleasure, though feigning abhorrence."

Red Army Smashed the Nazis,Despite Stalin

The Black Book, which represents theideological justification for the brutal ruleof capital over labor in the post-Sovietworld, makes the grotesque assertion thatthe Holocaust of the 20th century wasCommunism, not Nazism. The very titleis an effort to eclipse The Black Book of

Nazism, a book which had detailed Naziatrocities on the Russian front.

Hitler and his genocidal terror werestopped by the Red Army which liberated the death camps of Auschwitz,Sachsenhausen, etc. The race to Berlinand the destruction of the Third Reich by

the Soviet Union represented the freeingof Europe from the scourge of Nazism-

8 May 1945 is the day of the victory of

the Red Army against the Nazis. This isthe truth the Black Book is trying to hide.

Courtois is not a beginner at promUlgating such lies. In his 1980 book, Le

PCF dans la guerre (The PCF in theWar), he could not entirely overlook Stalingrad and Kursk, two battles won by theRed Army which decided the fate of theNazis, so he made sure to diminish themby trying to pass off minor skirmisheslike the battle of EI Alamein in Egypt asthe decisive battles. But the Soviet people, at a cost of 27 million dead, borethe main brunt of the war, and it was theRed Army which broke the back of the

Nazi power. Some 80 percent of Germancasualties in the entire war occurred onthe Russian front. The Anglo-Americanimperialists were in fact mainly concerned with fighting for their colonialpossessions and especially with gettingtheir hands on Asia against their Japaneserivals.

The imperialist Allies finally openedthe famous "second front" with the landing in Normandy in June 1944 becausetheir greatest fear was that the whole of

Europe might go Communist in the wakeof the Red Army's victory. The DutchTrotskyists of the Committee of Revolutionary Marxists clearly recognized thatthe Allied landing was aimed against'Soviet expansion and the threat of prole

tarian revolutions in Western Europe,rather than against the Nazis (De Rode

October, February 1943 [see Prometheus

Research Series No.2, February 1989]and Cahiers Leon Trotsky No. 43, September 1990). Indeed the working-classneighborhoods of Dresden and Hamburgwere deliberately destroyed by Alliedbombing just as Allied bombing smasheda general strike in Marseilles in May1944, a few days before an Allied landing. The Nazis themselves were hopingfor a separate peace with the "democratic" imperialists. And in defeat, theNazi war criminals feared only the ven-

geance of the Red Army, as they trippedover each other in a mad scramble tomake it safely to the nearest Americanlines.

Fundamentally, what lies behind the

policies of the so-called "democratic"bourgeoisies since 1917 is fear of thethreat to the world imperialist order represented by the October Revolution ledby those they considered "BolshevikJews." Hitlerism was only the most brutalexpression of the goals pursued by thecapitalists since 1917: to drown the classstruggle in a sea of chauvinism and tooverthrow the proletarian property formsin the USSR. And in 1940 the Frenchbourgeoisie (which has never forgottenthat the defeat of France in the FrancoPrussian War led to the Paris Commune)allied itself with the Nazis through thePetain regime.

As for the bourgeois "democracies,"confronted with the Red Army victory

in 1945 and prerevolutionary situationsin several countries they immediatelyamnestied the worst Nazi war criminalsand established the "rat l ine"-an escaperoute set up by the American intelligenceagencies and the Vatican to place Naziwar criminals in the immediate service of

the Cold War, from scientists like Wernervon Braun whom they brought to theU.S. to Klaus Barbie, whom they resettled in Latin America. Meanwhile, in"de-Nazified" postwar West Germany,Hitler 's spy master Gehlen and his organization continued to ply their tradeagainst the USSR and the East Germandeformed workers state.

The Frenchman Touvier (just like Barbie and hundreds of other Nazis), head

of the "Second Service" of Petain's militia in Lyon, also benefitted. He kept thefriends he had in the police (who hadlet him escape from the offices of theFrench foreign intelligence service in1947) and was approached to work againfor France in Algeria in 1960 helping torepress the struggle for national liberation of the Algerian people.

It is not surprising that the Black Booktakes the side of anti-Semites and Nazisagainst the Red Army. Werth mentionswithout raising an eyebrow the slogansof the anti-Bolshevik Ukrainian leadersPetlyura, Makhno and others: "freeelected soviets without Muscovites orJews;" "Ukraine to the Ukrainians, without Bolsheviks or Jews;" "loog live

soviet power, down with the Bolsheviksand the Yids." Under such slogans, theyorganized dozens of bloody pogromsagainst the Jewish ghettos in the townsand cities around Kiev and Chernigov.We Trotskyi,sts stand proudly on theside of the Bolsheviks who mercilesslysmashed this anti-Semitic scum!

In considering the years-long struggleand' sacrifices of the Soviet peopleagainst the Nazi invaders (to which hedevotes exactly 18 pages out of his 240on the USSR), Nicolas Werth focuseson the deportation of peopl\!s by Stalin.The Nazis' genocide of more than two

WORKERS VANGUARD



million Soviet Jews is mentioned in onesentence and is presented as reprisalsagainst alleged massacres by the SovietNKVD: "Using as a pretext 'the JewBolshevik atrocities,' the Nazi Sonderkommandos rushed to immediately murder tens of thousands of Jews." Werthcounts as "victims of the gulags" themembers of the Ukrainian OUN andUPA (fascistic anti-Semites who cooperated with the Nazis against the RedArmy), the Estonian Forest Brothers andeven Vlasov and his army, who wentover to Hitler. For Werth, the epitome of

horror was when thousands of Nazicriminals were at last jailed' and executed

by the Red Army:"Never had the 'special populations: thegulag camps, the control and filtrationcamps and the Soviet prisons containedso many inmates as in that year of thevictory: about five and a half millionpeople, all categories included. A recordthat was eclipsed for a long time by thefestivities of victory and the 'Stalingradeffect' ."

Stalin's postwar gulags held many inno

cent people, but Werth equates thesewith the Nazi murderers in order toabsolve the latter. What he and the bourgeoisie hate is that only in the SovietUnion did the fascist criminals receive ameasure of justice.

During the Nazi siege of Leningrad,over a third of the city's population was

wiped out through bombings and starvation. The ultimate Soviet victory tookplace in spite of Stalin, who had decapitated the Red Army in the purges of

1937. After relying for a time onthe bloody "democratic" imperialists likeFrance, Stalin then turned to an equallyunprincipled alliance with Germany, theHitler-Stalin pact of 1939. He placedsuch faith in this undertaking that heignored the information of heroic Sovietspies like Leopold Trepper and RichardSorge, who warned of Hitler's impending invasion of the USSR.

Trotskyists understand that a workersstate might have to make temporary military blocs with one or another imperialist

power at particular junctures, but never

at the cost of giving up the only ultimatedefense of the Soviet Union: the strugglefor proletarian revolution against all theimperialist nations. As Trotsky wrote in

1939 in In Defense of Marxism:

"The entire foreign policy of the Krem-lin in general is based upon a scoundrelly embellishment of the 'friendly'imperialism and thus leads to the sacrifice of the fundamental interests of theworld workers' movement for secondaryand unstable advantages. After five yearsof duping the workers with slogans forthe 'defense of the democracies' Mos-cow is now occupied with covering upHitler's policy of pillage. This in itselfstill does not change the USSR into animperialist state. But Stalin and his Com-intern are now indubitably the most valu-able agency of imperialism."

The Trotskyists Stayed at TheirPosts in Defense of USSR

The Trotskyists resolutely maintainedthe unconditional military defense of theUSSR against imperialist attack andinternal counterrevolution despite theparasitic Stalinist bureaucratic caste. Atthe same time they understood that theonly real and long-term defense of theUSSR required proletarian political revolution to sweep away the Stalinist usurpers who undermined the gains of theOctober Revolution at every turn throughtheir regime of repression and lies, theirbureaucratic privilege, their atomizationof the Soviet proletariat, their instillingof nationalist ideology in place of the

internationalism which animated the Bolsheviks. The Trotskyists demanded restoration of soviet power (workers and soldiers councils) and sought to mobilizethe Soviet working masses against thebureaucracy on the basis of socialist egalitarianism and revolutionary internationalism, the foundations of the Soviet workers state.

This policy was codified in the Transitional Program, the founding documentof the Fourth International, and has beena cornerstone of the politics of the International Communist League since ourinception as a tendency in the 1960s.

5 JUNE 1998

On every major battlefield of "ColdWar II"-launched by American imperialism in the attempt to recover from itshumiliating defeat in Vietnam-the ICL(formerly called the international Spartacist tendency) fought resolutely for

the unconditional military defense of theSoviet Union and all the deformed workers states, while fighting uncompromisingly against the Kremlin bureaucracy'scapitulations to imperialism.

The war in Afghanistan from 1979onwards was a focal point of the ColdWar. On one side was the Soviet army andits left-nationalist allies who sought toinstitute reforms against the buying and

selling of women and against the veil thatprevented Afghan women from ever see

ing the sun. On the other side werethe CIA-sponsored mujahedin cutthroatswho assaulted unveiled women and murdered teachers for the "crime" of teaching girls to read and write. For the imperialists, the civil war in Afghanistan wasseen as the best chance in decades to killSoviet soldiers and officers on a largescale and to support a virulently reactionary regime on the border of the USSR.

We took a side, raising the slogans"Hail Red Army in Afghanistan!" and"Extend gains of the October Revolutionto Afghan peoples!" The bourgeois liber-

the DDR Stalinists as an expression of

the will to resist Anschluss (annexation)by West German imperialism. Our callsfor a new, egalitarian communist party

and for the immediate formation of

workers and soldiers soviets pointed to

the real alternatives for the DDR: proletarian political revolution or capitalistcounterrevolution. The bankrupt Stalinistbureaucracy chose the latter.

We also sought to resist capitalistcounterrevolution in the homeland of

October itself. In August 1991 we calledon the Soviet workers to "Defeat YeltsinBush Counterrevolution," stressing thatthe Moscow proletariat should have

smashed Yeltsin's counterrevolutionarybarricades in Moscow, and we distributed

tens of thousands of leat1ets throughoutthe Soviet Union. Today we are fightingto build a Trotskyist party to lead the Chinese proletariat in revolutionary resistance to the Stalinists who are determinedto take China all the way down the "capitalist road."

Stalinism, the Popular Frontand World War II

Although Courtois likes to presenthimself as a repentant communist, he isno newcomer to the business of anti

Communist propaganda. He was trained

Basil Blackwell Inc.

Banners raised by Left Oppositionists in Siberian exile on anniversary of1917 Bolshevik Revolution read: "Turn the Fire to the Right Against Kulak,Nepman and Bureaucrat, Not in Words but in Deeds," "Long Live theDictatorship of the Proletariat."

als and the "left" supported the Islamicfundamentalist terrorists, including theTaliban. In the section of the Black Book

devoted to Afghanistan we can find allthe arguments spread at the time by theleft and "far left" to line up the proletariat behind the anti-Soviet campaign.Needless to say, these forces today haveno unfavorable comments to make about

this section of the Black Book; they allagreed.

When Solidamosc, the Polish companyunion bankrolled by the Pope and theCIA, tried to take power' at the end of

1981, we demanded "Stop Solidarnosccounterrevolution!" Eight years later, theStalinists, headed by the bureaucrat Jaruzelski, handed over power to Walesa& Co. The so-called "left" worldwidemainly lined up with Wall Street and international social democracy as the champions of Solidamosc; today, we do not

hear. apeepof protest from the French leftabout the section on Poland in the Black

Book.·

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, theICL fought the sellout of East Germany

which was being engineered by the leaders of the Stalinist SED (Socialist U'1ityParty). In the virtual power vacuumwhich followed the collapse of the Stalinist regime, we threw all our forces intothe struggle for a red Germany of workers councils. After fascists desecrated theSoviet war'memorial in Berlin's TreptowPark, we initiated a united-front demonstration on 3 January 1990, which theStalinist leaders felt obliged to join andwhich drew 250,000 people to honor theSoviet soldiers who died liberating Germany from the Nazis. This outpouring of

anti-fascist sentiment was rightly seen by

and educated by Annie Kriegel, an exStalinist who became a specialist on thePCF and the Soviet Union for the rightwing anti-Communist Le Figaro. Kriegelwon her spurs in the aftermath of May1968 in France-a prerevolutionary situation sabotaged by the treachery of the

PCF.A clear-sighted section of the bour

geoisie, with Mitterrand as its spokesman, drew the lessons of May '68 and

initiated the Union of the Left. This wasa popular front: a class-collaborationistalliance of the mass reformist workersparties with bourgeois elements, whosepresence acts as a guarantee (and aready-made excuse) that the reformistswill do nothing to call into question the

domination of the capitalist class. Longpracticed by social democrats, whosedream is to loyally administer bourgeoisstates whether in their own name or incoalition, class collaboration became theaccepted "Communist" policy under Stalin, especially with the inauguration of

the "People's Front" in 1935. The FrenchUnion of the Left, set up in 1972, led to

the 1981 victory of the popular front of

F r a n ~ o i s Mitterrand, head of the SocialistParty and a longtime bourgeois politicianwho also had been in intimate relationswith the Nazi-allied Vichy regime.

Against this move to the "left," AnnieKriegel stood out at the time for herfiercely anti-Communist diatribes, takingup the themes of the "red menace" and"PCF, agents of Moscow." In her book

Communismes au miroir franrrais (Communisms in a French Mirror), written in1973, only a year after the formation of

the Union of the Left, she claimed thatwhat the PCF did in 1944 "could only

make sense in the context of a perspective of a direct seizure of power by astrategy like that which assured the vic

tory of the Russian Revolution"! It wason this foundation that Stephane Courtois wrote his first book, The PCF in the

War. There, he ranted that the HitlerStalin pact "marked the birth of a Sovietimperialism, which had the particularityof likening imperialist expansion carriedout by force to the expansion of theworld revolutionary movement."

Here, Courtois placed himself inthe tradition of Cold War ideologueslike Leonard Schapiro, Hannah Arendtand George Orwell who saw Soviet "to

talitarianism" as a powerful force benton world domination. Not too long ago,anti-Communists of this sort were loudlyinsisting that Mikhail Gorbachev's enthusiasm for capitalist "market reforms"was simply a lie intended to lull the partisans of "democracy" to sleep while theKremlin plotted ever more nefariousschemes for the destruction of the West.

The PCF in the War devoted many of

its 600 pages to trying to "prove" its delir

ious anti-Communist fantasy with lots of

quotes and exegeses of PCF statementsof the time. Courtois managed only to

accumulate proof of the repugnant antiGerman chauvinism of the PCF, as hequotes, without raising an eyebrow, dozens of PCF declarations against the

"Boche." (But still he suspected the PCF,as an agent of Moscow, of not being sincere enough in its chauvinism.)

The truth is that the PCF had long sincechosen its camp: that of its own bourgeoisie. More than 15 years earlier, LeonTrotsky had explained in his seminalwork, The Third International After Lenin

(1928), how Stalin's nationalist theory of

"socialism in one country" would lead thedifferent parties of the Third International, founded in 1919 to lead the worldrevolution, to choose the camp of theirown bourgeoisies:

"The conception of the building ofsocialism in one country is a social-patriotic conception ...."This is a mortal blow to the International ...."The communist party of any capitalistcountry, which will have become imbuedwith the idea that its particular countrypossesses the 'necessary and sufficient'prerequisites for the independent con-struction of a 'complete socialist soci-ety,' will not differ in any substantialmanner from the revolutionary socialdemocracy which also did not begin witha Noske but which stumbled decisivelyon August 4, 1914, over this very samequestion."

With the Stalin-Laval Pact in 1935,the PCF definitively chose the bourgeois order in France and put into practicethe "People's Front." In other words,the PCF, which came out of the proBolshevik split in the social democracyat the 1920 Congress of Tours, had,15 years later, definitively rejoined the

social-democratic camp. On this questionwe have a sharp difference with the reformist groups who tail the PCF, like LutteOuvriere and Voix des Travailleurs,who moan about a possible liquidationof the Congress of Tours, which is infact already far behind us. Thus, Voix des


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9



Black Book...

(continued from page 9)

travailleurs (20 November 1997) saysthat the recent PCF declarations regarding the Black Book were only "onemore

step in its transformation into a socialdemocratic party ... Up until now ... ithadn 't yet made the choice to completelyrid itself of its ties to the working class,and to become a real governmental party."

It was on the basis of its popular-frontalliance with the bourgeoisie that thePCF would betray the prerevolutionary

situation in France in 1936, putting on. thebrakes and stopping a powerful generalstrike which would have posed the ques

tion of proletarian power, while in Spainthe Stalinists were, in Trotsky's words,"the fighting vanguard of the bourgeoisrepublican counterrevolution" ("Class,Party and Leadership," August 1940). ThePCF's policies during the war were in

pursuit of this subordination to its ownbourgeoisie.

The "Resistance" is largely a bourgeoismyth built up thanks to the PCF to hidethe truth that the French bourgeoisie col

laborated almost without exception withthe Nazis. In fact, in 1940-41, the Frenchbourgeoisie put in place its own antiSemitic policies of its own free will, and

it tried to extend them into the zone thatwas directly administered by the Germanoccupation forces in order to get its ownhands on the property of the Jews itexpropriated and sent to the death camps.Without the French state apparatus, thesame one .that sent Captain Dreyfus toDevil's Island, the Nazis wouldn't havebeen able to lay their hands on thousandsof Jews. In fact it was Vichy whichpressed the Nazis to take Jewish childrenin the death convoys, rather than the otherway around.

anti-German chauvinism, making no distinction between German workers drafted into the Wehrmacht and racist SSbutchers.

In contrast, the Trotskyists, despitetheir numerical and other handicaps,

opposed fascism from the standpoint ofthe interest of the workers of all countries, actively seeking to contact rankand-file German soldiers and sailors towin them to the perspective of socialistrevolution in France and Germany, andof defense of the USSR. An importantrole in the Fourth International's workduring World War II was played by theJewish Trotskyist Abram Leon-author

of the seminal Marxist work, The Jewish

Question-who was to be murdered in

Auschwitz in 1944 at the age of 26.

The end of the Second World Waropened up a prerevolutionary situation inItaly and to a lesser extent in France andelsewhere. The bourgeoisies were discredited and hated for their crimes.It was the Stalinists who used theirimmense authority within the proletariat,based on that of the Soviet Union, to restabilize this new situation for the bour-

left ... The PCF has never lifted a handagainst liberties in France."

-L'Humanite,13 November 1997

The "Death of Communism"and Anti-Scientific

. Obscurantism

The Black Book situates itself firmly onthe reactionary terrain of the French "newphilosophers" who indicted not onlyCommunism but its precursors of thebourgeois Enlightenment and the 1789French Revolution. Writing of Courtois'

predecessors, such as F r a n ~ o i s Furet, weexplained:

"After the Revolution of 1848 the European bourgeoisie-centrally the German-became counterrevolutionary ..."Thus the radical democratic heritage of

the French Revolution was taken overalmost exclusively by the internationalworkers movement in this period ...."[After 1917] the anti-Bolshevik hysteriareawakened all the old hostility of European reaction to the French Revolution,which is seen as the original sin givingbirth to this terrible event."

- "In Defense of the FrenchRevolution," WV No. 486,29 September 1989

And after the war, Vichy criminals likeMaurice Papon, far from being punished,

received promotions and the entire stateapparatus of Vichy France was put backinto service. Another Vichyist, decorated

with the Francisque Order by Petain, wasnone other than F r a n ~ o i s Mitterrand. Aswe wrote in "Touvier: A Trial to Absolvethe Crimes of Vichy" (Le Bolchevik No.128, May-June 1994):

Spartakist

ICL fought for political revolution against capitalist restoration in EastGermany. Banner at December 1989 protest in Berlin reads: "For the Communism of Lenin, Liebknecht and Luxemburg! For a Leninist-Egalitarian Party!"

"Whether as a senior Vichy functionarywho, in 1942, defended the 'national revolution'; as founder and head of a Resistance network which from 1943 to 1944fought to kick the 'Boche' out of France;as Interior Minister who in 1954 declared: 'Algeria is part of France' and ledthe repression against FLN combatants;or as 'leftist' president, elected in 1981with the support of the PCF reformistsand the anti-Soviet 'far left': from oneend to the other, the anti-CommunistMitterrand defended the power and theprofits of his class-the bourgeoisie."

It is a bit ironic that the PCF-which

really did participate in the Resistance,and whose members often paid with theirlives-should have promoted the myth of

the "anti-Nazi" French bourgeoisie. Butclass collaboration-which requires thefiction of a "progressive," "anti-fascist"or "anti-imperialist" bourgeoisie-was

the cornerstone of the PCF's policy inworld war as in times of "peace." The

Stalinist-led Resistance, subordinated toAnglo-American imperialism, fought todefend "France" in the spirit of virulent

,

geoisie. The Italian CP organized a "victory celebration" where they stripped thepartisans of their arms. The PCF managed to stop the proletariat from overthrowing the French bourgeoisie in 1944(see our article "The Bitter Fruits of the1944-47 Cohabitation," Le Bolchevik No.

61). Even Courtois recognizes in his1980 book (in small type, in a footnote):"Disciplined, these Communists turnedin their arms when the party, throughthe voice of Maurice Thorez, asked themto." With PCF "Communists" as ministers, the French bourgeoisie massacredthousands of Algerians at Setif on 8 May1945.

And Socialist prime minister Jospintoo knows perfectly well that the PCFwas on the side ofthe bourgeois order andnot for revolution; Jospin, echoing RobertHue and to the applause of the PCF, cameto the PCF's defense in parliament overthe Black Book in November 1997:

"For me the PCF is within the left bloc,in the Popular Front, in the battles of theResistance and the Liberation, in theparticipation in the government of the

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10

Courtois adds a new dimension to thereactionaries' denunciation of all earlierprogressive social thought as he indictsegalitarianism in general as the root of the"crimes of Communism," not sparing inhis ravings such figures as Thomas More,big-time. witchhunter on behalf of theCatholic Church, and Plato, ardent defender of an idealized version of a slavesociety. Evidently, anyone who comparedan existing society unfavorably to someconception of a different social order orever wrote a book about "utopia" is a dangerous radical in Courtois' eyes!

In the conclusion of his book, Stephane Courtois launches a broad attackagainst the Marxist analysis of history:

"These scientific presuppositions appliedto history and society-the proletariat asthe bellwether of the course of history,etc.--come from a millenarian and planetary phantasmagoria and are omnipresentin Communism. It is these which determine a crime-producing ideology."

The generalized attack against the application of science to history and againstthe very concept of progress necessarilyleads to the glorification of religiousobscurantism. The Black Book poses theproblem of deciding the criteria to "tellgood from evil" and to resolve it citesPius XI in 1931, head of the Catholichierarchy which later gave its silent sup

port to the Nazi Holocaust.

At the outset, it was F r a n ~ o i s Furetwho was supposed to write the introduction to the Black Book. He had just published an 809-page diatribe entitled Le

passe d'une illusion [The Past of an Illusion], which was nothing more than anignorant digression against Communism,constantly trying to compare it to fascism. Furet claimed to be a historian, butin this thick volume he never stoppedcomplaining that he understood nothingabout the outbreak of World War I, hisonly "contribution" being to dismiss thescientific (Marxist) explanation that thiswas the inevitable product of the grow-

ing interimperialist rivalries to redividethe world. Furet wrote:

"The more that an event is heavy withconsequences, the less it is possible tothink of it in terms of its causes. The1914 war doesn't escape this rule. Noone has really succeeded in showing thatit was an inevitable result of the economic rivalries of the big powers .... TheSecond is not, like the First, the improbable, or in any case unforeseen, productof international rivalries which couldhave been handled more wisely."

Furet is -a well-known figure. He

was the chief ideologue in Mitterrand'sFrance for the bicentennial celebrationsof the 1789 French Revolution. Already

then we warned the workers movementagainst this person who cursed the diver

sion of the Revolution from its respectable course with the execution of LouisXVI and the Jacobin Terror whichsmashed the counterrevolutionary feudalmonarchy. Furet saw in this great revolutionary episode the source of all evil andof all later revolutions. And rightly so-i t

was an example of an insurrection of the

oppressed and exploited for a just andegalitarian society, the revenge of thedisinherited against the rich. Furet is thesymbol of the decadence of French capitalism, which is today fiercely opposedto its own revolutionary origins.

In The Past of an Illusion, Furet notonly settled his accounts with Bolshevism

but also with Jacobinism. According tohim, as long as the revolutionary JacobinTerror is not denounced and eradicatedfrom the collective consciousness a tendency toward revolution can persist andthe French bourgeoisie in particular willnot be able to sleep soundly. And this isalso the central idea of the Black Book:"Still today, the business of mourning theidea of revolution, as it was envisaged in

the 19th and 20th centuries, is far fromover."

The Black Book:The Left's Passport to"Death of Communism"

The Italian fascists of the NationalAlliance have organized a Rome tour for

Stephane Courtois in order to publicizethe Black Book which was translated byright-wing politician Berlusconi's publishing house. As well, Courtois complacently allowed himself to be interviewedby the magazine Inquiry into History("created by people close to the farright," as Le Monde [31 March] modestly

put it). The fascists descended onto theNice campus on March 19 with leaflets

in support of Courtois' book.All the orchestrated debate about the

Black Book has demonstrated how farthe French left has gone toward embracing the "death of communism," led of

course by the PCF and those who tailthe PCF. Many organizations which stillvaguely claim to be Marxists or parti

sans of the working class have writtenarticles lamenting the publication of theBlack Book. In fact, when they contest afew particularly grotesque details in

the book it is in order to better make theirpeace with its fundamental theses. Especially after the counterrevolution inthe USSR which all these groups supported, the Black Book provided an opportunity to bring their various "theories" into line with their role in theimperialists' anti-Soviet campaign of the1980s, culminating in support to Yeltsin's

counterrevolution.The Pabloite Ligue Communiste Revo

lutionnaire (LCR) of Alain Krivine andDaniel Bensai"d is the organization whichhas taken the most care to "reply" to

the Black Book. What they say is only avariation on the themes of Robert Hue. Inhis "reply," Bensai"d mentions Trotskyonly in passing and only to turn him into a social democrat preoccupied solelywith defendjng the values of "democracy"against Stalin. In one passage Bensai"dquotes the characterization of Hitler andStalin as "twin stars," without mentioningthat Trotsky made this comment during a

pitched battle inside the American Socialis t Workers Party (SWP) over unconditional military defense of the USSR. Inthis fight, SWP leader James P. Cannonand Trotsky fought against and parted

WORKERS VANGUARD



ways with a petty-bourgeois minoritywhich flinched from defending theUSSR, capitulating to the pressure of

American imperialism on the eve of

World War II.In perfectly social-democratic style,

Bensa'id complains of the "Cold War"tone used by Stephane Courtois whichBensai'd considers "anachronistic." (Forhim, obviously, the experience of October is really dead and buried!) And following in the footsteps of Karl Kautsky,he poses the question of whether theBolsheviks shouldn't have renouncedpower, bending to the rules of bourgeois"democracy":

"We can retrospectively discuss the consequences of the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly by the Bolsheviks, ofthe respective representiveness of thisAssembly and the Soviet Congress at theend of 1917, in order to know whether itwouldn't have been preferable to maintain on a long-term basis a double formof representation (a sort of prolongeddual power). We can equally ask ourselves if free elections shouldn't havebeen organized, as soon as the Civil Warhad ended, at the risk, in the context of

destruction and international pressure, ofseeing the militarily defeated Whitestake the upper hand."

-Communism against Stalinism:A Reply to the Black Book of

Communism

In other words, for Bensa'id & Co.,"maybe" the Bolsheviks should just have

liquidated the world's first workers state,handing power back to the reactionarybourgeoisie and handing over the workers and peasants defenseless, to a terriblevengeance, in order to spare the LCR theembarrassment of being in any waylinked to the defense of Bolshevik power.

With the reinforcement of the Stalinistbureaucracy and the transformation of

East Europe into deformed workers statesafter the Second World War, MichelPablo-the political father of the lateErnest Mandel, Alain Krivine, DanielBensa'id, etc.-liquidated the very purpose of Trotskyist parties. Predicting"centuries of deformed workers states,"they entered the CPs, arguing that the Stalinists would follow a roughly revolution

ary course. Now, in the midst of the bourgeois triumphalism of the post-Sovietperiod, the quintessentially impressionistic Pabloites see "thousands of years" of

stable capitalist domination. They wanteven to remove the words "communist"and "revolutionary" from the name of

their French organization, the better toliquidate themselves into class collabora

tion, tailing Jospin. Krivine tried to geton the "pluralist left" electoral lists of

Jospin-Gayssot, and Bensai'd has becomeone of the pet philosophers of L'Human

ite, even making the keynote speech onthe 80th anniversary of the OctoberRevolution.

Meanwhile, Lutte Ouvriere (LO) had abig meeting on 7 November 1997 where

LO spokesman Arlette Laguiller ,correctly criticized the Black Book for trying to "demonstrate that the failure of theSoviet Union was the failure of Communism itself." This being said, nowhere

does LO defend "Red Terror" against theWhite counterrevolutionaries, thus leav

ing the field to Courtois in his attack onLenin and Trotsky. Lutte Ouvriere failsto mention the struggle of Trotsky andthe Left Opposition against the Stalinistbetrayal of the October Revolution. Butperhaps this is not surprising in an organization which deserted the FourthInternational during Trotsky's lifetimeand which also joined the Cold War chorus against the USSR in the 1980s, goingso far as to call Afghanistan the Rus

sians'Vietnam.The group Pouvoir Ouvrier (PO), affil

iated to the British Workers Power (WP)organization, published a short editorialnote on the Black Book (?ouvoir ouvrier,

March 1998), where they don't evenclaim to disagree with anything in theBlack Book. As far as the gross lies of

Courtois, Werth & Co. about the post-1920 USSR are concerned, all PO has tosay is that it was Trotsky who was thefirst to denounce the crimes of Stalin.So, PO would have "Trotskyists" vying

with professional anti-Communist redbaiters for credentials in anti-Sovietism!

5 JUNE 1998

PO's efforts are reminiscent of many earlier ventures by social-democratic "academics" and others to turn Trotsky into abourgeois democrat, painting his struggleto oust Stalin and Stalin's nationalist,

anti-revolutionary program as opposition

to Soviet power.PO's dive on the Black Book points

straight back to WPIPO's origins in theso-called "third camp" (i.e., the Tony

Cliff wing o f pro-imperialist social democrats). Concomitantly, WPIPO have just

revised their "theoretical" analysis of theUSSR (see "Third International Conference of the ICL," Spartacist [English edition] No. 54, Spring 1998; '''Death of

Communism' Centrists," WVNo. 691, 22

May). Indeed, their new theory fits betterwith WPIPO's actual, operational antiSoviet program throughout "Cold WarII": support to Solidarnosc in 198 I, to theLithuanian nationalists in 199 I and to themonarchists and yuppies on Yeltsin's barricades in August 199 I, which they boastof participating in.

In a March 1996 pamphlet, PO claimedthat the "fall of Stalinism, despite the victories for the reactionary forces which

followed in the short term, can only liberate the enormous revolutionary potential of the oppressed and exploited massesof the whole planet." Now, in their editorial on the Black Book, they go on:

"Today, the effects of the bourgeoisie'scounterrevolutionary victory in East Europe are fading in consciousness, toleave in their place disillusionmentand then revolt against the oppressionand misery which are rampant everywhere. In the past few years, the working class has found again the paths of

struggle: the [strike] movement in 1995,the sans-papiers [undocumented workers], the unemployed movement-there

is no lack of examples of this kind ofcombativity."

PO is certainiy not alone on the left intrying to portray the Black Book as an

ideological counterattack by the bourgeoisie to the latest wave of s t r u g g l ~ s bythe workers and oppressed, ignoring thefact that these admirable and inevitablestruggles are at present defensive actionsin the face of capitalist attacks on themasses. It is true that the rulers' evidentthirst to drive more ideological nails intocommunism's supposed coffin hints attheir never-ending fear of red revolution.However, it is not "the struggles themselves" that will generate the commu

nist consciousness necessary for socialistrevolution but the intervention of a Trot

skyist party introducing that conscious-

CD

Ci

III>

33

New York Citymemorial meetingfollowing Trotsky'sassassination, 1940.

ICL fights to reforge aFourth Internationalthat Trotsky wouldrecognize as his own.

ness and rooting the revolutionary program in the proletariat.

PO's professed optimism about the

post-Soviet world really reflects its embrace of "the left wing of the possible":the centrist groups in France, like theirlarger, reformist cousins, all think thatthe election of a "left" government issome kind of victory for the workers. Infact, the Jospin-Gayssot "left" in office

has managed in a few months to do morethan [the previous right-wing government of] Juppe ever dreamed of: whilethe latter had to retreat after the strikewave of December 1995, and never recovered from it, the new governmentbroke the 1997 truckers strike (thanksto PCF transportation minister Gayssot),smashed the movement of the unemployed without having to make any concessions and is endorsing the austeritymeasures of Maastricht Europe to makeFrench capitalism more competitive withits imperialist rivals. And now this viciouscapitalist government is organizing thedeportation of more than 100,000 undocumented workers. For the umpteenthtime, experience shows that reformist

politics is no step toward revolution butan obstacle to the mobilization of theworking class.

As for the anarchists, they invited twoof the authors of the Black Book, Sylvain Boulouque and Jean-Louis Panne, to

come spew their anti-Communist venomon Radio Libertaire. The anarchists told

these two individuals that they were thefirst anti-communists, even before the

Russian Revolution, and that the BlackBook only confirmed their own antiBolshevik vituperations. This is notsurprising. Werth's and Courtois' antiBolshevik heroes of the Civil War (Kronstadt mutineers, Makhno and his filthy

anti-Semitic bands) are exactly those of

the anarchists. Panne and Boulouque tookadvantage of the opportunity on RadioLibertaire to explain that the Red Perilstill exists in China, North Korea andCuba, seeking to fuel the cause of counterrevolution there.

While some frustrated youth may beattracted to anarchism as a vehicle forrebellion against the wretched reformist

record of so-called "socialists," today'sanarchist ideologues are the heirs of avery particular selection: when revolutionvs. counterrevolution was posed in life,revolutionary-minded anarchist supporters like Victor Serge came over to theside of the Bolsheviks en masse. Rejecting that example, currents like RadioLibertaire and the anarcho-syndicalistCNT look to those Russian anarchistswho persisted in anti-Bolshevik violencein league with the most sinister forces(see our series "Marxism vs. Anarchism,"WV Nos. 640-643, 646, 649-650, especially Part 7, "Red October and theFounding of the Communist International," WV No. 650, 30 August 1996).

Build a Leninist Party!Approaching the 2 I st century, the

imperialist ruling class and its apologistsare bent on spreading the most despicable anti-Communist lies in the hope of

finally putting an end to the spectre of

new October Revolutions. Strengthening

their ties to reactionary and obscurantistforces such as the Catholic church, they

embark on a generalized attack on science and proselytize for religion. All thisserves to regiment the population andfacilitates the present attacks on the limited social gains won by workers and

minorities after World War II.The reformist parties of the working

class, above all when they are called on toadminister the affairs of the bourgeoisie

in government posts, participate directlyin the bourgeoisie's reactionary campaigns. These parties perpetuate the existence of capitalism in a context where theimperialist powers are fighting each otherto redivide the world into spheres of

influence, which can only lead to thenuclear destruction of society. In preparation for the latter, they and their"far left" tails endorse the appetites andadventures of their own imperialism, forexample by touting the "humanitarian"

cover for France's forays in the Balkansand Rwanda. At the same time, a newgeneration of youth who haven't been

burdened by the baggage of Stalinism, arebeginning to fight against the horror andracist injustice of imperialist capitalism.To fight for a decent future they mustlearn the lessons of the past, and notablylearn from the biggest victory ever won inthe interests of the working class and of

human progress: the Bolshevik Revolu

tion. The key lesson is the need to buildLeninist-Trotskyist vanguard parties, sections of a reforged Fourth International.

This is what the International CommunistLeague fights for..

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11



Indonesia...(continued from page 1)

is strongly linked to workers' struggleselsewhere. The interdependence of theregional economies is highlighted by the

millions of workers who have migrated toother countries to find work during the"boom" which has now gone bust. Asthese workers are thrown onto the streetsor expelled, it is urgent for the workersmovement everywhere to fight deportations and call for full citizenship rightsfor all immigrants. The ICL fights for asocialist Asia-for proletarian revolutions from Indonesia to South Korea,from Australia to Japan, the industrialpowerhouse of the region. Central tothis perspective today is the struggle forproletarian political revolution in Chinato stop the galloping danger of capitalistrestoration.

Leninist Party:

Tribune of the PeopleAs a result of the current turmoil, atleast for the moment there is a greateropening for political dissent than at anytime since the 1965-66 bloodbath whichushered in the Suharto dictatorship overthe corpses of a half million Communists,workers and ethnic Chinese. According tothe Washington Post (28 May), the rulingGolkar party is itself "showing signs of

splintering" and "a half-dozen new political parties have formed, ranging froma worker's party to groups representingbusiness, opposition intellectuals, Muslim social organizations and ethnic Chinese." As Suharto stepped down, studentprotesters demanded that he and his family be brought to trial for the massive cor

ruption and nepotism through wQich theyamassed a fortune of billions. Protestshave also called for the release of politi- .cal prisoners, some of whom have languished in the regime's dungeons forthree decades or more.

Habibie recently freed Muchtar Pakpahan, head of the Indonesian Workers forProsperity Union (SBSI), which wasformed in opposition to Golkar's corporatist All-Indonesian Workers Union. Butleftist trade unionists like Dita Sari, imprisoned two years ago for her role inleading strikes, and others ,associatedwith the banned People's DemocraticParty (PRD), including leader BudimanSudjatmiko, remain in prison. Also imprisoned are East Timorese independ

ence fighters like Xanana Gusmao andmembers of the Indonesian CommunistParty (PKI) who were rounded up following Suharto's 1965 coup. The international labor movement must demand:Free all victims of right-wing repression!

While P.akpahan and the PRD activists have demonstrated enormous courage in defying the military dictatorship,their perspective is centered on a classcollaborationist strategy which wouldchain the Indonesian proletariat to itsclass enemy. Pakpahan has been politically linked to the former military commander in Jakarta and to Islamic reac-

12

WVMap

tionaries. Abdurrachman Wahid, leader ofNahdlatul Ulama, the largest Islamic organization in the country, gave the opening address at the SBSI's founding conference in 1992. And many of the strikeswhich have broken out since 1990 haveincluded demands for building places of

worship on factory grounds.The PRD, founded in 1994 by radical

student youth who extended their organizing efforts to the factories and the urbanand rural poor, harks back to the nationalism of Sukarno, the founding leaderof the Indonesian Republic. While suppressed by the regime as "communists,"the PRD does not even talk of socialism.Rather it calls for a "democratic coalitiongovernment," a program which wouldtie the working class to a mythical "pro-

gressive" wing of the bourgeoisie. Itopenly supports Megawati Sukarnoputri,Sukamo's daughter and former leader of

the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI),one of the two legal "opposition" partiesthat were props of the Golkar regime. ThePRD also embraces her call for allianceswith Islamic opposition forces. Megawatiis a Javanese chauvinist who supportsSuharto's 1975 annexation of East Timor.

The PRD's petty-bourgeois nationalism is an obstacle in the needed struggleto mobilize the proletariat around itsclass interests. Nor can it even resolvethe fundamental democratic questionsfacing the Indonesian masses. We opposethe ban on political parties and counterpose to the phony parliament, which isunder the direct sway of the military, the

call for a revolutionary constituent assembly based on universal suffrage. How

ever, we stress that such demands canonly be achieved in the frame\;Vork of astruggle for proletarian state power. Aswe wrote last issue:

"There is no democratic wing of thebourgeoisie, and there can be no genuinedemocracy under capitalism in backward,dependent countries saddled by imperialist exploitation and grinding poverty.The proletariat must be made consciousof its historic role as the leader of the dispossessed masses and the gravedigger ofthis system of capitalist exploitation. Itis the task of a Leninist-Trotskyist vanguard party to bring that understanding tothe working class."

Such a party must act as a tribune

Steve Cox

Java-centered bourgeoisie rules over Indonesian prison house of peoples.Above: Victim of military terror in East Timor.

of the people, advancing the cause of

women's liberation, calling for the ·right

of self-determination for the numerousoppressed nations of the archipelago andfor immediate independence for EastTimor, combatting all forms of discrimination based on religion, language or

ethnic origin. Both Irian Jaya and Aceh, aprovince on the northern tip of Sumatra,have seen sporadic separatist strugglesfor decades. At least 2,000 Acehnesewere killed or abducted by the Indonesian army in the early 1990s. East Timorhas been the scene of unremitting jackboot terror, including the infamous 1991massacre in the capital of Dili, leading tothe deaths of one-third of the population.A revolutionary workers and peasantsgovernment would cancel the imperialist

Sukarno (left)cedes office in

1967 to GeneralSuharto, whoorganized 1965-66slaughter ofSukarno's formerCommunist"allies."

debt and seize the vast holdings of theimperialists, the Suharto clan and all thedomestic capitalists. People's tribunals

would be established to mete out revolutionary justice to the military butchers

those who have perpetrated untold horrors on the East Timorese would be sentto Dili to be tried by their victims!

The fight to bring down the Indonesian prison house of peoples will require a sharp struggle against widespreadnationalist prejudices, reflected in thechant raised by student protesters asthey left the parliament following Suharto's ouster: "We are one people, onenation, one language." The nationalismpromoted by the Java-centered Indonesian bourgeoisie is heavily intertwinedwith Islamic reaction, which most directly targets women and the largelyChristian Chinese minority.

Women have entered the proletariat inever larger numbers in recent years, playing a leading role in numerous class battles. Yet they remain subject to harsh Islamic dictates-many enshrined in law-including a ban on abortion and othermeasures intended to keep them chainedto the patriarchal family. We fight for fullequality for women, for free abortion ondemand and for separation of religion andstate.It is crucial to mobilize the proletariat

to defend the ethnic Chinese againstpogroms and all forms of discrimination,including their virtual exclusion from

government and academia and banson Chinese-language publications. AntiChinese bigotry runs deep in Indonesiansociety, including among the plebeianmasses. The Chinese minority makes upless than 5 percent of the popUlation butincludes a small elite which controls up

to 70 percent of the country's economy.Regarded as the "Jews of Asia," Chinesethroughout the region have long beenused by the capitalist rulers and nationalist and Islamist movements as scapegoatsfor the misery of the masses. As withanti-Semitic outrages directed against theJews of Europe, such "populist" racismis truly the "socialism of fools," poisoning opportunities for proletarian unityand playing into the rulers' hands.When asked by a reporter for the Phila-delphia Inquirer (31 May) if the recent"orgy of anti-Chinese arson and looting"in Jakarta had been orchestrated by elements of the military, one Indonesiangeneral admitted, "Yes, I think it wasorganized."

Unless the proletariat marshals itsforces in defense of the Chinese minority, plebeian anger could easily be channeled into another round of pogroms.Moreover, the vast majority of ethnicChinese in the region are part of theworking class and have historicallyplayed a leading role in social struggles.As the London Independent (16 May)noted, "Unpopular regimes have somereason to fear the Chinese because theyhave often led revolutionary movementsin Asia." Ethnic Chinese were prominentin the Philippines independence struggleat the tum of the century, in organizingthe first trade unions in Thailand and informing Communist parties in Thailand,Malaysia and elsewhere.

Islam and Early IndonesianCommunism

The 1965-66 anti-Communist bloodbath crushed the three-million-strong PKIand its affiliated organizations-whichhad the support of 14 million workers andpeasants-and atomized the proletariat.Books were banned for so much as mentioning the word "communism." Amongthose imprisoned was the writer Pramoedya Anata Toer, whose "Buru Quartet" of novels depicting the early struggles against Dutch colonialism is alsobanned. The military regime sought toensure that anything smacking of communism was buried under a mountain of

corpses. This is now reinforced by the lie

of the "death of communism" promotedby the capitalist rulers worldwide following the counterrevolutionary destructionof the Soviet degenerated workers state.

The Indonesian working class continues to live, under the shadow of 1965.However, the last two decades have seenthe rise of a young, literate and urbanizedproletariat. In 1958, the industrial proletariat numbered some 500,000 and thecountry's manufacturing base was largelycentered on handicrafts. Beginning in

, the mid-1980s, huge factory zones werebuilt-largely by foreign capital-trans

forming rural towns and small cities in

WORKERS VANGUARD



West and East Java and northern Sumatrainto massive concentrations of industrialproduction. The population ofTangening,just west of Jakarta, leapt from 228,000

in 1980 to over 1.5 million just ten yearslater. Today, more than eight millionworkers are employed in manufacturing,

over 40 percent of them women.

There has been a growing number of

strikes against the slave-like conditionsand starvation wages in these factories.Between 1990 and 1994 the number of

officially reported labor actions increasedby more than a factor of six (Vedi R.Hadiz, ~ o r k e r s and the State in New

Order Indonesia [1997]). Out of this hasemerged a range of new trade-union formations, such as Pakpahan's SBSI andthe PPBI associated with the PRD. I f theproletariat is to defeat its imperialistand domestic capitalist exploiters, classconscious militants and radical activists

must learn the lessons of the strugglesand defeats of the past, not least throughstudying the history of Indonesian Communism itself. Chief among those lessons is the iron necessity for the politicalindependence of the proletariat frombourgeoisllsiamist forces.

Even in its early revolutionary period:the PKI was flawed by a political accommodation to bourgeois nationalism. ThePKI was founded by Dutch Marxist Hen

ricus Sneevliet and others out of theIndies Social Democratic Association(ISDV) in the years immediately following the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution inRussia. The largely Dutch ISDV wassteadfast in its opposition to colonial rule.But in seeking a road to the indigenousmasses, the ISDV entered the nationalistSarekat Islam. The ISDV called on thispeasant-based movement-founded in1911 to advance the cause of Javaneseshopkeepers and traders against their Chinese rivals-to "become the organizationof the worker and small peasant class"(Ruth McVey, The Rise of IndonesianCommunism [1965]).

While courageously reaching out insolidarity to the oppressed Chinese mi

nority, the early PKI continued theISDV's policy of immersion in the Islamic group. After being expelled in1921, the PKI even set up its own "RedSarekat Islam" groups. This ran counterto the Theses on the National and Colonial Question passed at the Second Congress of the Communist International (CI)

in 1920. In the Theses, Bolshevik leaderV. I. Lenin stressed the need to "under allcircumstances uphold the independenceof the proletarian movement, even if it isin its most embryonic form" and warnedof "the need to combat Pan-Islamism andsimilar trends, which strive to combinethe liberation movement against European and American imperialism with anattempt to strengthen the positions of the

khans, landowners, and mullahs, etc."At the Fourth Congress in '1922,

PKI leader Tan Malaka defended theentry into Sarekat Islam, even declar

ing that pan-Islamism "corresponds tothe national liberation struggle." ThePKI's futile strategy was conditioned bythe absence of any sizeable indigenousproletariat in Indonesia at the time. Nevertheless, the PKI's political accommodation to Islamic nationalism was pro

foundly disorienting for those strugglingto implant Communism in the colonialand semi colonial world.

Such opportunist appetites would soonbe transformed by Stalin into a full-blownstrategy of class-collaborationist blocswith a supposedly "anti-imperialist" na

tional bourgeoisie. With the degenerationof the Communist International followingthe political counterrevolution in theSoviet Union in 1923-24, the Stalinist

bureaucracy promoted the nationalistdogma of building "socialism in onecountry," repeatedly sacrificing revolu

tionary opportunities abroad in the vainhope of securing bourgeois "friends" andwarding off imperialist hostility. The Chinese Revolution of 1925-27 ended in adisastrous defeat for the proletariat as theStalinized CI ordered the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to literally disarm the -proletariat as part of their liquidation into

5 JUNE 1998

Chiang Kai-shek's bourgeois-nationalistGuomindang, which then slaughteredthousands of Communists and workermilitants. (For a fuller discussion, see"Permanent Revolution vs. the 'AntiImperialist United Front': The Origins of

Chinese Trotskyism," Spartacist [Englishedition] No. 53, Summer 1997.)

PKI Embraces SukarnoA failed uprising in 1926 led to the

crushing of the PKI. In the two decadesleading up to World War II, Dutch colonial repression was especially intense, asmany nationalists and Communists wereimprisoned in the notorious Tanah Merahconcentration camp in the swamps of

Dutch New Guinea. When Japan invadedin 1942, many Indonesians even viewedit as opening the road to "liberation," anillusion that was soon shattered by thebrutality of the new occupying power.Typical of many nationalist politicians inthe colonies of the West European "democratic" imperialist powers, Sukarno lenthis services to the Japanese occupationforces and Suharto was a young officerin the Japanese-sponsored "self-defensecorps." The collaboration by Sukarnoand other Indonesian leaders with theJapanese occupiers underscores the factthat bourgeois nationalism in the colonial and semicolonial countries is.neces

sarily dependent on oneor

another imperialist power.The StalinistCI had long since adopted

its "popular front" policy submerging theproletariat in class-collaborationist alliances with bourgeois forces. In WorldWar II, this meant support to the wareffort of the "democratic" imperialistbourgeoisies momentarily allied with theSoviet Union against Germany and Japan.In contrast, Trotskyists called for unconditional military defense of the SovietUnion while opposing both the Allied andAxis bourgeoisies in the interimperialistconflict.

Following the Japanese invasion, theretreating Dutch had transported hundreds of PKI members and other political

prisoners to Australia. The PKI militants,who had been in complete isolation since1926, were "instructed" by the AustralianCommunist Party (CPA) on the need to

subordinate the struggle for national independence to the Allies' war effort. Afterthe war, the CPA led a four-year-Ionglabor boycott-"black ban"---'of Dutchshipping in solidarity with the renewedindependence struggle. But even thisinternationalist effort was designed todovetail with the aims ofAustralian imperialism, then under a Labor government,which sought to extend its influence toIndonesia in the waning days of Dutch

colonial rule.By the time the Dutch imperialists

ceded control to Sukarno's nationalists

in 1949, the PKI was marching in lockstep behind the neocolonial bourgeoisrulers. The Stalinists embraced Sukarno's"Nasakom" doctrine-the union of na-

s-o.

OJcc

3III:J

Left: Islamicstudents outsideJakartaparlia.ment.Islamic reactionbuttressesoppression ofwomen and fuelsracist terror

againstpredominantlyChristian Chineseminority. Below:ethnic Chineseshopkeepers inJakarta followingpogromist attackin May.

AP

Henricus Sneevliet(far left) and Tan

Malaka, foundingleaders of PKI. 1925PKI meeting inJakarta with bannerin Arabic, Chineseand Dutch.

Tokyo University Press

tionalist, religious and communist organizations-and PKI leader D. N. Aidit proclaimed in 1951 that the party must"place the national interest above theinterests of class" (Donald Hindley, The

Communist Party of Indonesia 1951-1963[1966]). The PKI renounced a revolt ithad led in the provincial city of Madiunin 1948, which was suppressed by Sukarno's forces, who imprisoned more than

35,000 PKI members and sympathizers.The general who had crushed the uprising was even elevated to the PKI rosterof "Heroes of the Working Class" (Leslie

Palmer, Communistsin

Indonesia 11973]).Aidit became an official adviser toSukarno, while other PKI leaders wereappointed as regional and local administrators. The PKI repeatedly bannedstrikes, opposed peasant land seizuresand preached confidence in the regime'smurderous police and military. Despitethe PKI's wholehearted support to Sukarno, Communist militants, particularlyin the trade unions, continued to facefierce repression. Nonetheless, when thegovernment in 1961 ordered all parties to

furnish it with membership lists, the PKIleadership dutifully handed over namesand addresses, thus helping to seal thefate of tens of thousands who would beslaughtered four years later.

This was the bloody fruit of the PKI'sMenshevik/Stalinist strategy of "twostage revolution," which repudiated the

struggle for workers rule until an illusoryfuture "second stage" while chaining theproletariat to the national bourgeoisie inthe name of a "democratic revolution."From China in 1925-27 to Spain in1936-39 to Indonesia, the "second" stagewas always the massacre of Communists.

The PKI upheld Maoism, the Chinesepeasant-based variant of Stalinism, andthe Beijing bureaucracy was the directadviser to the Indonesian Stalinists intheir capitulation to Sukarno. The 1949Chinese Revolution, in which Mao's

peasant-guerrilla army expelled the Chinese bourgeoisie from the mainland, was

a historic victory for the internationalproletariat. But this revolution wasdeformed from its inception, ushering ina workers state in which a nationalistbureaucracy-akin to that in Stalin'sUSSR-excluded the proletariat frompolitical power. Confronted by unremitting hostility from U.S. imperialism, in

its early years the Beijing regime main

tained a f a ~ a d e of militant "antiimperialism" while seeking allianceswith "neutral" capitalist regimes andhailing Third World bourgeois nationalists like Sukarno.


13



Indonesia...(continued from- page 13)

At the time of the 1965-66 bloodbath,Beijing refused to even protest thedestruction of the PKI, its staunehest

supporter and the largest Communistparty in the capitalist world. Followingthe massacre, Washington became opento a rapprochement with China, particularly as Beijing's rift with the equallynationalist Stalinist regime in Moscowhad grown into an open split. In explain

ing a possible change in U.S. policytoward China, Secretary of State DeanRusk gloated: "We know-the wholeworld knows-that the Chinese Communists -have suffered setbaeks duringthe past 14 months .... They have suffered a major setback in Indonesia-the

Indonesian Communist party has beendecimated."

leL Protests

For Workers

Revolution

in Indonesia!

In a 1969 document, the SpartacistLeague warned against "the growingobjective possibility-given the tremendous industrial and military capacity ofthe Soviet Union-of a U.S. deal withChina." Indeed, this deal was soon con

summated with the reactionary antiSoviet alliance between U.S. imperialismand Mao's China. Meanwhile, over the

years the peasant-based Beijing bureaucracy has veered from the utopian autarky of the 1950s "Great Leap Forward" and the bureaucratic frenzy of the

1960s "Cultural Revolution" to the "getrich" gospel of Deng Xiaoping and hissuccessors. The rule of Chinese Stalinism has today brought the country to thebrink. The stark choice is capitalist reenslavement or proletarian political revolution based on a program of internationalist communism.

Young Spartacus Workers Hammer

As protests against Suharto dictatorship erupted in Indonesia, ICL launched international campaign ofdemonstrations and forums. Protests in Sydney, Australia (top), Boston (above, left), London.

destruction in the face of the relativelystrong Indonesian capitalist state, withits cohesive military. While the PKI andits Chinese patrons hailed Sukarno as an"anti-imperialist," Sukarno readily abandoned his former Communist "allies" asthey were hunted down by the military

Jeff Ballinger

Protest march by Nike workers, April 1997. Imperialist exploitation has led to

wave of strikes by combative, .young proletariat including many women.

Mao's peasant forces had been able totopple the weak and disintegrating Guomindang regime despite the CCP's class

collaborationist program. But in Indonesia this program led to the PKI's

\ S P A R T A C J S T I ~ NQ\.lSHEDITION SUIIIMERtW

r ,UIl.,. . I l.' ,\- China on theBrlnk-Workers Political Revolution

or capitalist Enslavement?""1IIEe",.a.1!2

'III'manellt RlIYolution vs..ttle "btl-Imperialist United Front"

lile Origins 01 Chinese TrotskYism: E PA QE2

Original Documents published from Soviet Archives

Trotsky's Fight Against Stali nist Betrayalof Bolshevik Revolution

SEE P,t,GE38

Revolutionary Regroupment or ICentrist Alchemy?

SEEPAGES '

"".T _ ..." .. " ~ " " " C O M " ....... . .... 'ovrn"·'c".' ........".

No. 53, Summer 1997, $1.50 (56 pages)

and Islamic mobs using hit lists supplied

by the CIA.As part of its international crusade to

"roll back" Communism, the U.S. hadtrained fully half of "non-aligned" In-

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14

donesia's officer corps and a third of itsgeneral staff. The imperialists also consciously cultivated Islamic fundamentalism as an anti-Communist weapon. In1950, U.S. Secretary of State John FosterDulles pointed to a "common bond" withthe "religions of the East," whose "spiritual beliefs cannot be reconciled withCommunist atheism and. materialism."Three years later, the National SecurityCouncil called for "using the forces of

nationalism and Islam in opposing communism." The Cold War American "AFL

CIA" t rade-union' bureaucracy, whichwas up to its neck in anti-Communistintrigues from Italy to East Europe,helped prepare the ground for the massacre by setting up anti-Communist "labor"operations for the military regime.

Under Suharto's "New Order," Indonesia was a linchpin in the U.S.-organizedASEAN alliance directed particularlyagainst the Chinese deformed workersstate. In turn, Washington backed itsbutchers in Jakarta to .the hilt. The 1975invasion of East Timor came one dayafter U.S. president Fordand Secretaryof State Kissinger visitedSuharto, and

the U.S., Australian and British imperialists continue to ply the Indonesian military with arms and "advisers." The

JCET program under which the Pentagon has trained Suharto's murderous Kopassus "Red Berets" is also usedto organize "counterinsurgency" deathsquads in Colombia. Imperialists: Keepyour bloody hands of f Indonesia!

Toward the IndonesianRevolution!

Indonesia remains a classic case ofcombined and uneven development, withmodern industry grafted onto a societywith manifold forms of oppression thatare a heritage of the pre-industrial pastand were reinforced by Dutch colonialism. As the 1917 Bolshevik Revolutiondemonstrated, the democratic tasks facing such backward, dependent countries

can only be resolved under the dictatorship of the proletariat supported bythe rural masses and as part of a strugglefor socialist revolution internationally,particularly in the advanced capitalistcountries.

An internationalist perspective is aquestion of life and death for revolutionary militants in Indonesia, where proletarian rule would immediately be threatened by the overwhelming economic andmilitary might of the imperialist powers.At the same time, the ongoing economiccrisis underscores the strong ties linkingworkers in Indonesia with their class

brothers and sisters in the region-andaround the world. The fallout from theAsian financial collapse has been feltfrom Japan, whose economy is alreadyreeling from years of recession, toYeltsin's Russia and elsewhere. Japan'shuge industrial proletariat is now chafingunder record unemployment levels.

The recent two-day strike by theKorean Confederation of Trade Unionsagainst IMF austerity being imposed bythe police-state regime of U.S.-backed"democrat" Kim Dae Jung points to

the opportunities for proletarian struggle throughout the Asian Pacific Rim.On the other hand, the distinct possibility that the dispossessed massescould be turned into fodder for chauvinistfratricide was underscored by the nuclear weapons tests by the Islamic theocratic regime in Pakistan and the virulently anti-Muslim Hindu-fundamentalistIndian government.

Key to a revolutionary-internationalistprogram is the call for unconditional military defense of China-as well as NorthKorea, Vietnam and Cuba-against capitalist attack and internal counterrevolution, including its right to nuclear weapons. The Beijing regime's drive towardcapitalist restoration and the cracking of

the "iron rice bowl" of guaranteed lifetime employment and social benefits

have triggered a wave of defensivestrikes. But to stop the counterrevolutionary tide, it is necessary for the prole

tariat to oust the Stalinist bureaucracythrough a political revolution.

The fate of the Indonesian proletariat-and of all humanity-hinges on oneoverriding factor, the need for revolutionary leadership. Against the chauvinistpoison pushed by the national capitalistrulers and their labor lieutenants, communists seek to unite workers everywherearound their historic interests in sweepingaway this system of imperialist exploitation, war and oppression. The International Communist League fights to build

Leninist vanguard parties from Indonesia,the Philippines and China to Germany,Japan and the U.S. as part of a reforgedTrotskyist Fourth International..

NOTICEWorkers Vanguard skips

alternate issues in June,July and August.

Our next issue will

be dated JuIY,3.

WORKERS VANGUARD



NYC ...(continued from page J6)

the entire financial district and a bigchunk of Midtown would be "cleansed"

of the sidewalk food vendors that thousands of working people and students relyon for coffees and lunches, deprivingsome 350 families of a livelihood. This

gratuitous measure was carried out in thename of making the city less "chaotic"and more "civilized"!

Three days later, the NYPD hauledoff 24 supporters of open admissionsat CUNY. in handcuffs.' Among thosearrested were a state assemblyman and62-year-old Brooklyn College professorRenate Bridenthal, who came to the U.S.as a refugee from Nazi Germany. Their"crime" was to protest at a "public"hearing-which was cleared of the public

-where the CUNY Board of Trusteesrammed through plans to shut down remedial classes at the four-year collegesand exclude any student who fails any of

the four entrance exams. This will effectively end the open admissions policyin augurated in 1969, as CUNY chancellorAnne Paolucci made clear when shesneered about "cleaning out" the collegesafter "30 years of neglect." Open admissions provided an avenue to higher education for working-class youth, particularly minorities and immigrants. Thisracist new polic'y will bar more than halfof all Hispanic and Asian applicants and46 percent of black students from thefour-year colleges.

Philly...(continued from page 16)

heavily minority union aimed at reachingout to other city workers and particularlyto the black and Hispanic population,who are subjected to pervasive segregation and a notoriously racist police force.

Yet during the last strike in 1995,

the TWU leadership openly embracedthe racist cops. The union misleadersappealed to the sinister Fraternal Order ofPolice (EO.P.) for "support" and hailed

these armed guardians of the capitalistprofit system as "brothers." The copswere welcomed at a strike rally, where theTWU tops broadcast the EO.P.'s cynicalstatement of "solidarity" from the platform. At the time, the EO.P. was actively

courting the TWU as part of a rabid,nationwide effort to whip up support forthe execution ofblack death row politicalprisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal. In an articlelaying out a strategy for victory in the1995 strike (WV No. 620, 7 April 1995),we stressed:

"From hauling off arrested air traffic

controllers in their 1981 strike, to the1985 bombing of Philadelphia MOVEand the destruction of the Osage Avenueneighborhood, to running scabs throughTeamster picket lines during the 1994trucking strike, the cops are the swornenemies of labor and the oppressed."

It will be these same racist cops who willbe called out against the transit strike to

enforce the scabherding carried out by

Partisan Defense Committeepamphlet exposes in detail theprosecution's case of lies, thecoercion of witnesses and theFBI's COINTELPRO terrorcampaign against Mumia and

the Black Panther Party.

50¢ (16 pages)

Bundles are available:25 copies for $10

Order from/make checks

payable to:

Partisan Defense CommitteeP.O. Box 99

Canal Street StationNew York, NY 10013

5 JUNE 1998

As the capitalist rulers slash welfareand other social services, attack municipal unions with slave-labor "workfare"schemes and decimate the living standards of working people, they have simultaneously intensified police repression in order to deter even the mildestprotest. This is what is behind the racist"war on drugs," the massive increase inprivate strikebreaking forces and theburgeoning-and overwhelmingly blackand Hispanic-prison population. Commenting on Giuliani's arrest of CUNYstudent protesters in his column in theNew York Times (28 May), Bob Herbertasked acerbically, "Who needs remedialclasses when you can send studentsstraight to jaiJ?"

Just about any protest in New York isnow routinely sealed off by police barricades, intimidating those who may wishto join in from doing so. Giuliani's latestthreat to eliminate newspaper standsposes a broader assault on the right to distribute political literature on city streets.And the new arrest procedures implemented by Giuliani embolden the police,

as the 80,000 New Yorkers who are issued"desk appearance" tickets each year forso much as looking cross-eyed at a copwill now find themselves in jail for a couple of days or more while fingerprintsand other ID are checked. Even a high

ranking CUNY official criticalof the newadmissions policy refused to let Bob Herbert publish his name, saying: "I saw Giuliani with the taxicabs. I don't want to bea taxicab driver." And a cabdriver fromBangladesh told the Times (21 May),

SEPTA management.With utmost cynicism, the big busi

ness press is trying to pit the ghetto pooragainst the union, railing that the strike"promises to be painful" for "workfare"recipients who won't be able to get totheir slave-labor assignments. The capitalist rulers' destruction of social welfareprograms not only serves to cut off eventhe minimal support for the unemployed,

but is meant to help drive down thewages of the entire working class. Yetthe pro-capitalist union tops not only

refuse to fight these attacks but have inmany cases signed on as overseers forthe bourgeoisie's union-busting "workfare" schemes.

What is needed is a class-struggleleadership of the unions which wouldmobilize labor in a fight for jobs for allat union wages, for free mass transit andagainst racist oppression and cop terror.In particular, this means mobilizing laborto demand freedom for Mumia AbuJamal-and the countless other fightersfor the oppressed as well as trade-unionmilitants locked behind bars-and abolition of the racist death penalty. It was

only through an outpouring of protestand publicity-including from labor

internationally that Mumia won a stay of

execution in August 1995.SEPTA is one of the. largest public

transit systems in the U.S. Yet Local 234

members are among the country's worstpaid transit workers. Since 1992, the

TWU tops have rammed through "pro-

.!:'"p......................tiliftn a.eten.e £onanai.k.-e... .., 'lIN PAMPHLET lOt

·• 1 9 8 2 l i j a 1 ~ - - : 1 f 0 C f ~ " , ~ ~ c e .•r

Free Mumia Abu-Jamal!Abolish the Racist Death Pena!fyf

"Giuliani is running a dictatorship. I don 'tknow how people here are toleratingthis."

Giuliani can get away with acting likea tinpot dictator because he knows themunicipal labor tops are in his hippocket. For decades, the NYC unionbureaucrats were accustomed to mouthing off against proposed cutbacks only togo behind closed doors and emerge

hours later with a repackaged version of

the same givebacks, as they did underblack Democrat David Dinkins. "They'lltake it from me," the liberal Dinkinsassured the city's rulers before proceeding to put 6,000 more cops on the streetsand slash thousands of municipal jobs.But Giuliani rode into office on hisrecord as a labor-hating prosecutor andas the candidate of racist "backlash" andunrestrained cop terror. Faced with amayor who showed no interest in posturing as a "friend of labor," the union topsjust caved in from the start. As a New

York Post (21 May) editorial laudingGiuliani put it, "It is a measure of howcompletely the mayor has altered thecity's mindset that when he makes a direthreat, no one for a moment doubts hisseriousness."

In a message clearly directed at all of

NYC labor, Giuliani boasted as he shutdown the c a ~ b i e s ' protest: "The message

is: you don't get to close down the cityof New york .. . Don't think about it."But the leaders of the unions which infact have the power to shut down thiscity would never dream of doing that.Giuliani wields the power of the capital-

ductivity" schemes and other conces

sions putting tens of millions of dollarsinto SEPTA's coffers. Emboldened bythese capitulations, the SEPTA bossesare now demanding an "overhaul" of

work rules, increased use of part-timeworkers, a cut in wages for new-hiresand a freeze in medical insurance payments. Despite these massive cutbackdemands, the TWU tops kept the mem

bers working for eleven weeks after thecontract expired before finally launching

the strike.It is necessary to spread the strike to

all PhiIIy-area transit, particularly regional rail lines which transport suburbanites to their office jobs in the city.SEPTA has been able to continue itsVictory-Red Arrow buses running withoperators organized in the United Transportation Union (UTU), who are beingallowed to go through TWU mechanics'

New Jersey...(continued from page 3)

Well, I might be a slave, but I will go tomy grave a rebellious slave."

Like countless others, Assata Shakurwas targeted by the cops because shewas among the best of a generation of

radical black militants who courageouslyfought against this racist system. Dozensof Panthers were assassinated outright

in the FBI's infamous COINTELPRO terror operation, many more thrown behind

bars. Among those was Geronimo ji Jaga(Pratt), who was finally released last yearafter serving 27 years in a Californiaprison for a crime the government knowshe did not commit. Another is MumiaAbu-Jamal, who remains on death row inPennsylvania following a 1982 frame-upconviction for his history as a young

Black Panther leader, a MOVE supporterand an outspoken journalist who hasearned international prominence as the"voice of the voiceless." Shakur's com

rade Sundiata Acoli remains behind barsto this day.

From the victimization of these militants to the daily terror meted out to blackpeople in the ghettos and on the streetsand highways, the racist capitalists amplyconfirm Shakur's statement, "The basic

reality in the United States is that beingblack is a crime and black people arealways 'suspects' and an accusation is

usually a conviction." But despite their

ist state apparatus, the cops and courts.But in the first instance, it is the cravenlypro-capitalist union bureaucracy whichacts to police the workers movement.AFSCME District Council 37 chie f Stanley Hill not only backs the Republicanmayor at the polls but has served as aslave-labor contractor for his capitalistmasters, enforcing a sweetheart dealwhich has led to the replacement of

20,000 unionized municipal workers byconscripted "workfare" labor. And theleadership of Transport Workers Union(TWU) Local 100, whose 32,000 members keep the city's buses and subwaysrunning, signed a contract two years agoexplicitly allowing for the use of welfarerecipients as subway cleaners.

A solid strike by the TWU or other

major NYC unions could galvanize widespread support among the city's minoritypopulation, particularly through raising

demands such as full union wages andbenefits for al l workers in the city's transit system, schools and hospitals, andopposing the racist cutbacks in educationand other social services. But mobilizing the power oflabor to defend the interests of the working class and of all theoppressed requires a class-struggle leadership forged through political struggleagainst the union misleaders who chainworkers to the partner parties of capital

ism, the Democrats and Republicans. TheSpartacist League seeks to build a revolutionary workers party to fight for aworkers government which wiII expropriate the bourgeoisie and use the wealth of

this society for the benefit of all. •

picket lines. This treacherous scabbingmust stop: Picket lines mean don't cross!One out, all out!

All of this points to the need for a pro

gram which looks to the mobilization of

labor's social power and not to the cops,courts and politicians of the class enemy.The current vendetta against the Teamsters is an object lesson in the dangers of

court intervention: having invited the

bosses' courts into the union, the formerCarey leadership was forced out by the

capitalist government as punishment forthe union's successful strike against UPSlast year. The Spartacist League fightsfor a revolutionary workers party forgedthrough political struggle against thelabor misleaders who chain workers tothe capitalist Democratic and Republicanparties. Such a party must champion thecause of all the oppressed as part of thestruggle for socialist revolution. •

Vasta

Former Black Panther Assata S'hakurin exile in Cuba.

personal courage, the Black Panthersrejected the only strategy to sweep away

the racist bourgeois order-socialist revolution by the multiracial proletariat

opting instead for a reformist programwhich included the utopian caIJ for "com

munity control" of the police. As thearmed enforcers of the capitalist profitsystem, the cops' job is to violently suppress workers and minorities. RacistrepressLon and cop terror wiIJ be endedonly when the working class seizes statepower under the leadership of a multir a c i ~ 1 Leninist vanguard party. Hands off

Assata Shakur! Free Sundiata Acoli! FreeMumia Abu-Jamal! Abolish the racistdeath penalty!.

15



WfJIIIlEIiS """'111)

Giuliani's NYC

"Quality of Life" Police State

Albans/Daily News Franco/NY Times

Racist NYC mayor Giuliani (left) unleashes cops against protesting taxi drivers, May 21.

Harlem preacher Calvin Butts may nothave been politically precise when hedenounced Mayor Rudolph Giuliani for"moving toward a fascist state" in NewYork City last month, but he sure captured the sentiments of much of the city'sdowntrodden and increasingly besiegedblack, Hispanic and immigrant population. In the space of one week, the racistRepublican mayor unleashed his cops tobreak up a demonstration by the city'slargely immigrant taxi drivers, orderedthe arrest of two dozen opponents of

the racist purge of City University(CUNY), announced plans to bar foodvendors from many Manhattan streetsand implemented new arrest procedureswhich effectively amount to "preventivedetention." Giuliani's intentions wereunderlined when his top cop ranted thatprotesting cab drivers were "terrorists"

and a planned protest by street vendors

was denounced as "violence." "That'swhy we have a 38,000-member PoliceDepartment," Giuliani warned ominously.

Under the Orwellian guise of improving the Big Apple's "quality oflif e," Giu

liani and his cops are fostering a climateof fear and intimidation throughout the

city. This comes as nothing new to theresidents of the city's ghettos and barriosfor whom police terror is a daily fact of

life. Increasingly, black and Hispanicfamilies refuse even to allow their kids toplay in the streets for fear they will begunned down by a trigger-happy cop.Now it isn't even safe to stay indoors.Barely a week has gone by recently with

out at least one report of cops breakingdown apartment doors without warning,terrorizing black families and wreckingtheir homes on the basis of bogus "tips"by drug "snitches." In the latest of theseGestapo-like "drug raids," a SWAT team

busted in the front door of a Brooklynfamily in the early morning hours of MayI, detonated a concussion grenade, handcuffed 62-year-old Basil Shorter, his wifeand two children and ransacked the apart

ment for an hour and a half.The self-styled "pro-immigrant" mayor

has also taken his ax to the city's largeimmigrant population. Giuliani was furious when the city's cabdrivers-many of

them Caribbean, South Asian and Russian immigrants who drive 12 hours aday, seven days a week in order to makeends meet-staged a hugely successfulone-day strike to protest new regulationsjacking up fines and insurance payments

to such exorbitant levels that many drivers would end up working for literallynothing. Giuliani's "payback" came when

cabbies assembled at the entrance to theQueensboro Bridge eight days later for aprotest motorcade to City· Hall. They

were met by a wall of cops. Those whomade it to City Hall on foot were shovedoff by the cops to a corner several blocksaway. Cabs trying to cross into Manhattan without passengers were summarilystopped and their drivers dragged out andarrested. Giuliani reveled, "We broketheir strike-destroyed it, really." This

former U.S. Attorney was unruffled wheneven a federal appeals court later ruledthat his action was a violation of the constitutional right to assembly.

Meanwhile, sidewalk artists have beendriven off the pavement outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the BlackIsraelite sect has been forced to end its20-year tradition of soapboxing in TimesSquare, and in traditionally free-wheelingGreenwich Village the cops will nowseize your car if the radio is too loud. On

May 23, a mayoral panel announced that


Victory to Philly Transit Strike!Free Mumia Abu-Jamal!

JUNE 2-Philadelphia buses, subways

and trolleys ground to a halt at noonyesterday as 5,500 members of Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local 234

went on strike against the SoutheasternPennsylvania Transportation Authority(SEPTA). In the face of managementattempts to ram through attacks onwages, jobs and working conditions,workers on several suburban linesjoined the walkout, the fifth transitstrike in the city since 1977.

With much of the city's populationreliant on public transit, the impact of

the strike was felt immediately. Demo

cratic mayor Ed Rendell openly railedagainst the strike, hailing SEPTA's"outstanding offer." With Philly a pos-

sible venue for both the Democraticand Republican national conventions in2000, Rendell threatened that if anyTWU pickets show up at possible con

vention sites "the police will be there"to clear the way. Already, courts have

issued injunctions limiting pickets, andat least two strikers have been arrested.Drop the charges now!

A victory for the TWU against SEPTA'sdrive to cripple the union would strike ablow for all city labor and the minoritypoor. In the first instance, this meansbuilding mass, militant picket lines,defying the strikebreaking cops and

anti-union court injunctions. But thisrequires a conscious strategy by this


MacMillan/Philadelphia Daily News

TWU protest outside City Hall on first day of transit strike.

Workers Vanguard No 692- 05 June 1998

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Transcript of Workers Vanguard No 692- 05 June 1998