Workers Vanguard No 711 - 16 April 1999

7/29/2019 Workers Vanguard No 711 - 16 April 1999

1/12

50eNo. 711 . . . . 23 16 April 1999

Down With U.S./NATUTerror Bombing!APRIL 12-After nearly three weeksof bombing, the imperialist war againstSerbia is the biggest military conflagration in Europe since World War II. Amida rapid buildup of NATO ground forceson the borders of Kosovo, there is agrowing crescendo among Western ruling circles for a full-scale invasion therump Serb-dominated Yugoslav republic,which would threaten to draw the wholeregion into war. Notably, the New YorkTimes (10 April) devoted a prominentfront-page article to a gruff warning byWashington that Russia had better notintervene in the Balkans on Serbia's side.The deepening conflict in the Balkansunderscores the urgency of forging Leninist vanguard parties to lead the proletariat in socialist revolution to sweepaway rapacious U.S. imperialism and allthe capitalist ruling classes. Defend Ser-bia! Defeat U.S .lNATO imperialism! Forworkers revolution!According to Belgrade, some 300 civilians have been killed and several thousand more wounded by the bombing. OnApril 5, bombs slammed into the smallSerbian town of Aleksinac, devastatingtwo residential areas and killing at leastseven people. In Kosovo, Serbian villagescontinued on page 9

APRIL 12-For the past week, some9,200 strikers at Newport News Shipbuilding in the Virginia Tidewater areahave shut down production at thecountry's only builder of nuclearpowered aircraft carriers. The day thestrike began last Monday, thousands ofmembers of United Steelworkers ofAmerica (USWA) Local 8888 took overthe street outside the plant in a massI 167""25274 81030 7 I

,

AP photosImperialist air war is aimed at sowing terror in Serbian population.'-Residential neighborhood in town of Aleksinacreduced to rubble by NATO bombs.

picket that stretched 14 city blocks. Ashundreds of cops stood glaring, strikerschanted: "88: Close the Gate!"This is the tenth-largest strike in theU.S. since 1995, hitting a major militarycontractor as the U.S. government iswaging a war of imperialist dominationagainst the Serbian people. The NewportNews strike is a critical battle for theentire labor movement and particularlyfor unions in the "open shop" South.Local 8888 was forged as an integrated industrial union through a bitterthree-month strike in 1979 after a unionrecognition vote the year before whichdefeated the former company "union."

WV PhotoUSWA Local 8888 strike at Newport News shipyard can be springboard toorganize raCist, open-shop. South.One veteran of that battle says, "Wewere fighting for recognition then. We'refighting to survive now." With the huge. General Dynamics conglomerate lookingto take over the shipyard, management isintent on inflicting a crippling defeat onthe union in order to keep wages downand get a better selling price.

Wages for this highly skilled workforceaverage o!lly $12-14 an hour. Shipyardworkers haven't seen a pay raise in. sixyears. Some haven't had one in as muchas 16 years. Some workers take home solittle that they qualify for welfare benefitsto help feed their children. Strikers arecontinued on page 8


2/12

TWU: No to Racist, Union-Busting"Workfare" Scheme!NEW YORK CITY-The Transit Authority (TA) recently announced that by theend of this month it will bring in the firstof 1,000 welfare recipients who will beforced to clean the subways to keep theirmeager benefits. The responsibility forintroducing "workfare" slavery into thelargest urban transit system in the country lies squarely at the doorstep of theTransport Workers Union (TWU) Local100 bureaucracy which has continuallyeroded the union's power through classcollaboration with capitalist politiciansfrom both the Democratic and Republican parties. In late 1996, local presidentWillie James reopened the then-existingcontract at the behest of TA managementto push through a sellout that provided for.slashing the jobs of nearly 600 unionized

cleaners and replacing them with desperately poor people forced to work for theirsub-poverty-Ievel welfare benefits. As wewrote at the time in "NYC 'Workfare'Deal: Enslaving the Poor, Busting theUnions" (WV No. 652, 27 September1996): "This betrayal by the Local 100tops is not only a vicious attack on overwhelmingly minority welfare recipientsbut is a dagger pointed straight at theheart of the TWU-and all NYC municipal unions.""Workfare" is a centerpiece in theAmerican rulers' all-sided assault on theliving standards of the working class andpoor initiated by Democratic presidentClinton with his pledge to "end welfareas we know it." In cities like New York,AFL-CIO officials are literally the back-

For a Class-Struggle Fight toFree Mumia Abu-Jamal!Our class-struggle perspective aimed atmobilizing labor's power to free death rowpolitical prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal standsin the tradition of the International LaborDefense (lLD) led by James P. Cannon. Inthe I920s, the ILD and its fraternal organizations in other countries led hundreds ofthousands of workers in protest against the

TROTSKY monstrous frame-up of anarchist workers LENINNicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti inMassachusetts. In article after article, including one written in August 1927 after theywere._granted a brief reprieve on the eve of their execution, Cannon. warned sharplyagainst illusions in the capitalist "justice" system as an obstacle to proletarianmobilization.The lives of Sacco and Vanzetti still hang in the balance and they are in greater dan

ger now than ever before. Every mention of the case should begin with this warning tothe working masses not to be fooled with false hopes and false security ...The militant protest movement has halted the executioners up till now. As the finalhour drew near, the movement assumed such proportions and militancy and expresseditself in mass demonstrations and strikes on such a scale, as to shake the world. It wasespecially the last phase of mass demonstrations and strikes which threw the real powerof the masses into the scale against the murder plans of the Massachusetts hangmen.Those who emphasized this line of action, who understood and pointed out at everyturn the fundamental class issues involved in the case, and who appealed to the masspower of the workers, were entirely correct. This line is the decisive line. The greatesthope now lies in a further development and energetic promotion of this class-strugglepolicy ...All brakes upon this movement must be regarded as the greatest danger. All illusionswhich paralyze the movement must be overcome. All agents of the bosses who try tosabotage and discredit the protest and strike movemeQt must be given their proper name.While the judges of the Supreme Court prepare their decision on the case again, wemust appeal at the same time to the laboring masses of America and the whole worldwho are the highest court Qf all. The workers have a deep conviction for Sacco andVanzetti, and they have the power to compel their release. We must help the workers tounderstand this power, to organize it and to use it. The protest strikes already carriedout, in spite of and against the misleaders of labor, are opening up a new page in thedevelopment ofthe American working class. The unparalleled heroic example of Saccoand Vanzetti has inspired and called forth new resources of courage, class solidarity andsacrifice.

..

-James P. Cannon, "No Illusions!" Notebook of an Agitator (1958)

! ! I w ~ l ! ! ! ! . ! ! ~ ~ ! ! . ~ l ! . ' ! . . EDITOR: Len MeyersEDITOR, YOUNG SPARTACUS PAGES: Jacob ZornPRODUCTION MANAGER: Susan FullerCIRCULATION MANAGER: Mara CadizEDITORIAL BOARD: Ray Bishop (managing editor), Bruce Andre, Helene Brosius, George Foster,Uz Gordon, Jane Kerrigan, James Robertson, Joseph Seymour, Alison Spencer .The Spartacist League is the U.S. Section of the International Communist League (FourthInternationalist).Work9f$ 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 SpartaclstPublishing Co . 299 Broadway, Suite 318, New York, NY 10007. Telephone: (212) 732-7662 (Editorial), (212) 732-7861(BUSiness). Address all corr espondence to: Box 1377, GPO, New Yorl


3/12

What Justice Means...The deadly doorway execution of the Guineanimmigrant, Amadou Diallo in early February in NewYork City has electrified the city, the nation and partsof the world. It has shown, in clearest terms, that thereis a malevolent state of war between the so-called"peace officers," and the African-American community. One side of this fatal conflict is paid and armedby the state, to defend the state's interests; the otherside is largely unarmed, and gripped by an overarching sense of fear, and also one of betrayal, as the veryforces supported by their tax dollars, conspires toinstill terror in their everyday lives. It is, of course, nodefense to this charge that the victim, Mr. Diallo, wasa Guinean, as opposed to an American citizen. In theeyes of his brutal killers, he was perhaps, a Black orPuerto Rican American, who (if they bothered to listen to him) spoke with a funny accent. For them, hisaggravating factor was the walnut-colored complexion, which precipitated a death sentence.His mother and father, like many middle-classedAfricans of the Diaspora, had read of the "Americanway of life," had seen glowing television reportsof American cultural life, of life in one of the West'sgreat metropolises, and therefore felt, perhapswith some trepidation over street crimes by the everpresent poor. But, never, in their wildest imaginings, could they have suspected that the arJ!led servants of the state, the police, could constitute a deadlythreat to their boy, a knowledge felt by every AfricanAmerican family, that learned, not by reading, but bygrim experience.They therefore must have been stunned beyondbelief to hear the news, that young Amadou, who wasin the process of building his new life in America'scapital of capital, was shot in the vestibule of his ownapartment building, with 41 bullets aimed at hisextinction.

cynical pre-ejection stunts to bolster theDemocratic Party challengers for upcoming mayoral and Senate elections-Local100 bureaucrats are always whining aboutthe need to gain more "influence inAlbany," avoiding confrontations withCity Hall, Wall Street and TA management like the plague. Labor must breakcompletely with the Democrats andRepublicans and forge a workers partywhich opposes every machination of thecapitalist rulers and their politicians.

How could this happen, they may have wonderedin America?These parents, tom beyond belief. are they notvictims?Those four killer cops who leveled their weaponsagainst an innocent man, are they not murderers?The legal discourse that flows from capital's mouthpieces concerning the DiaUo case, will be illuminating.Already, the white majoritarian media are trying tosell the story of how these "good officers" were in"fear." Who has the best reason in America to havefear-a cop or a Black man facing him?Where are the perennial calls for the death penaltythat are bellowed from the press when presumablyinnocent people are called gUilty within hours of theconflict?Where are the animalistic condemnations that follow such acts, about "wolf packs," "gorillas in themidst," or "wild beasts"?These cold and silent killers, are "good and decentmen," or "fine officers" who are '1ust doing theirjob." What is their job? Murder? Assassinations?They excel in this practice!It is unsafe for a columnist to offer any predictionof how this case will tum out, but it is relatively safeto say that they will never face murder charges. Theywill never join New York State's newly-brandishedDeath Row. They will probably never see the insideof a jail cell.At best, the taxpayers of the great city of New Yorkwill ultimately foot the bill for a civil suit settlement,and several million dollars in blood money will bepaid to the Diallo family.That, unfortunately, is the only stunted measure of"justice" that this African family will ever see, andeven that twisted degree will be more than that everseen by many African-Americans or Puerto-Ricans,

\for, whom justice in the naked city is just anotherword.For them, for their progeny, prisons are constructedand filled when people go awry. For agents of thestate, there is another kind of justice, where they massage politicians, where "unions" pay their legal fees,and where, even if a judgment is entered in a civilsuit. not a dollar comes from their wallet.Indeed, if the past is any measure, they may bepromoted for "coolness under fire," and for "doing agood job," or for "protecting the citizenry." Watch.What is' their job?Their job is the same job of the troops in post:colonial Vietnam: to keep the natives in control; toinstill terror in the dark, poor, working class population; and, in furtherance thereof, to kill.Pleas from Black leaders for the intervention ofClinton or Reno will undoubtedly fall on deaf ears.Isn't it ironic that Blacks beat the floorboards ofAmerica, and raised their sweet voices to the vaultsof heaven to protect Clinton, but now, in their hour ofneed, he is silent?For him, for the system, they are just doing theirjobs.1 March 1999

1999 by Mumia Abu-Jamal

Join the fight to free Mumia Abu-Jamal! Contactthe Partisan Defense Committee. In New York:PDC, P.O. Box 99, Canal Street Station, New York,NY 10013-0099; phone (212) 406-4252; E-mail:[email protected]. In Chicago: PDC,P.O. Box 802867, Chicago, IL 60680-2867; phone(312) 454-4931. In the Bay Area, PDC, P.O. Box77462, San Francisco, CA 94107-0462; phone (510)839-0852.Urgently needed contributions for Mumia's legaldefense, which are tax-deductible, should be madepayable to the Bill of Rights Foundation, earmarked "Mumia Abu-Jamal Legal Defense," andsent to the Committee to Save Mumia Abu-Jamal,163 Amsterdam Ave., No. 115, New York, NY10023-5001. I f you wish to correspond with Jamal,you can write to: Mumia Abu-Jamal, AM8335, SC IGreene, 1040 E. Roy Furman Hwy., Waynesburg,PA 15370.

and black rights either march forwardtogether or fall back separately. Welfareslashing is aimed at grinding down thealready miserable living standards ofworkers and the poor. As revolutionaryleader Leon Trotsky wrote in the Transitional Program (1938) during the devastation of the Great Depression:"The question is one of guarding the proletariat from decay, demoralization andruin. The question is one of life or deathof the only creative and progressiveclass, and by that token, of the future ofmankind. If capitalism is incapable ofsatisfying the demands inevitably"arisingfrom the calamities generated by itself,then let it perish."

"Workfare" is most threatening to theunion's most exploited members. Since1995, the number of cleaners-whoseranks include the highest concentration ofblack and women workers in the TA":"-hasbeen cut by 22 percent. Management hasalso sliced up this workforce into fourseparate job titles: those with some seniority have a "civil service" job title, newhires are defined as "labor class" cleanersand now, in addition to non-union "workfare" laborers, there will be a category of"lead cleaners," who will be paid $1.70more per hour to act as straw bosses overthe WEP work gangs. Such tiers and divisions are clearly designed to underminethe unity and strength of the union.

Over 2,500 NYC transit workers protested cutbacks outside TA headquartersin, downtown Brooklyn, March 1996. TWU's power to shut down NYC isshackled by pro-capitalist union tops.The overthrow of this capitalist system ofexploitation, racism and imperialist warrequires the forging of a revolutionaryworkers party.

With their contract expiring in December 1999, transit workers are fumingover the introduction of "workfare" andother attacks, such as the TA's moves toterminate injured workers on restrictedduty, an escalation in "disciplinary" victimizations and drug testing, ceaselessharassment of union' safety reps anddeteriorating work conditions. So what'sWillie James doing about it? He wants tobilk every union member for $60 inorder to hire a public relations firm toboost the "public image" of transit workers through radio and TV ads. Transitworkers heading into a contract meetinglast month told WV salesmen that Jameswants to hire a PR huckster who specializes in boosting racist cop "unions"and produced a nauseating pro-cop, prodeath penalty ad for imperialist terrorbomber Clinton in the 1996 election.16 APRIL 1999

The way the union brass intends tofleece the membership for the $60 specialassessment is through the companycontrolled dues checkoff. This systemshould be abolished! Collection of uniondues by elected shop stewards would helpmake the union leadership accountable tothe membership and prepare the union fortaking action against management. Aswas shown in the 1980 NYC transitstrike, when the state government seizedunion dues to payoff fines imposed underthe Taylor Law, allowing managementto act as the union's collection agencyensures that the money will get cut offwhen it's needed most.Many transit workers look to the inhouse New Directions "opposition" as analternative to the Local 100 "old guard"bureaucracy under James and fonner localhead, now TWU International president,Sonny Hall. But ND shares the sameclass-collaborationist, pro-capitalist politics. All these junior bureaucrats reallywant is to ride their lawyers' coattailsinto power in the local. NDhas repeatedly launched suits against the union inthe bosses' courts and has heaped praiseon "striking" Rikers Island prison guards.W.e say: Cops and courts out of the

unions! Labor must clean its own house!The capitalist class relies upon its laborlieutenants in the union J:>ureaucracy topolice the workers and contain or preventstruggle. For organized labor to reversedecades of givebacks and restore its loststrength requires that the unions be mobilized on behalf of all the oppressed. As isparticularly clear in the case of the heavily black transit workforce, union rights

As Marxists, we oppose the destructionof welfare and other social programs benefiting the working class and poor. Butour goal is not simply to reintroduce programs that were designed to sustain theunemployed in permanent poverty. Oursis the fight for proletarian revolution andthe establishmentof an egalitarian socialist economy where everyone will have aplace in social and economic life

Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of the Spartacist League0$10/22 issues of Workers Vanguard 0 New 0 Renewal(includes English-language Spartacist and Black History and the Class Struggle)International rates: $25/22 lssue&-AirmaU $10/22 issues- Seam ail .o $216 introductory issues of Workers Variguard (includes English-language Spartaclst)o $214 issues of Espartaco (en espaflol) (includes Spanish-language spartac/st)Name ____________________________________________________A d d ~ s s _________________________________________________- - - - - - -__ Apt. # Phone (__ _____ _

~ p - - ~ - - ~ 711Make check. payable/mall to: Spartaclat Publishing Co., Box 13 n GPO, New York, NY 10116"3


4/12

France, Spain-Down With Anti-Basque Repression!For the Right of SelfDetermination

for the Basque People!- - - - - -PARTTWO--- - - -The following is the conclusion of anartic(e translated from Le BolcMvikNo. 146 (Summer 1998), newspaper ofthe Ligue Trotskyste de France (LTF),section of the International CommunistLeague. Part One appeared in WV No.710 (2 April).In the epoch of imperialism, renewedimpetus has been given to separatistmovements seeking to escape the economic dislocation and political chaoswrought by capitalism in its decline. As

UBoIHmItS1Trotsky wrote in "War and the FourthInternational" (June 1934), "Having usedthe nation for its development, capitalismhas nowhere, in no single corner of theworld, solved fully the national problem."This is particularly true of Spain, wherethe bourgeois revolution was much morepartial than in France. .Despite their strong sense of regional and ethnic identity, the mainly ruralBasque provinces did not aspire tonationhood until the late 19th century,when rapid industrialization led tothe transformation of Basque society.The massive immigration of workersfrom Asturias, Castile and elsewhere tothe steel mills and mines of Vizcayameant that formerly Basque-speakingareas were now predominantly Spanishspeaking. Moreover, Spanish workerswere organized by the Socialist PSOEand its General Workers Union (UGT),both avowedly Marxist organizations.The founder of Basque nationalism,Sabino Arana Goiri, was alarmed by thethreat posed by these socialist-mindedworkers to traditional Basque bourgeoissociety, which was characterized by theextreme Catholicism of the Basque Ignacio Loyola and his Jesuit order.The party founded by Arana, the Partido Nacionalista Vasco (PNV-BasqueNationalist Party), espoused reactionaryclericalism and. chauvinist bigotry fromits inception. Arana considered Spaniardsto be racially inferior to Basques, andmembership in the PNV was restrictedto those who could demonstrate that allfour grandparents had Basque names. Theparty opposed mixed marriages andcalled for the expUlsion of non-Basqueworkers from Euskadi. Given the strengthof Madrid centralism relative to Basqueseparatism, the PNV came to adopt aposition which fell short of demandingfull independence., In this way thePNV was able to win support from keyelements of the Basque bourgeoisiethe Vizcayan industrialists and financialelites who'leaned toward regional autonomy within a unitary Spanish state.After the fall of Alfonso xm and theproclamation of the Second Republic in1931, the PNV convened a meeting toproclaim a Basque Republic which wasstopped by force. Ever fearful of the proletariat, the nationalists gravitated towardalliance with the right-wing opposition inMadrid, but the likes of Gil Robles, andlater Franco, were to prove even moreimplacable foes of the Basque nationalistcause than the liberal Republicans. Notsurprisingly, when the Civil War eruptedin July 1936 in response to Franco's mil- .itary uprising, the PNV found itself in anequivocal position, pressured on one s ide4

by the Vatican and on the other by theBritish imperialists who feared for theirinvestments in Vizcaya and doubted thatFranco was strong enough to exorcise thespectre of proletarian revolution. TheBasque Statute of Autonomy, which hadbeen held in abeyance, was now profferedby the Madrid government in an attempt

had acquired class consciousness.With the death of Franco in 1975,Spain entered a prerevolutionary crisis,as a massive strike wave throughout thecountry was accompanied by tremendousoutpourings of nationalist and regionalistsentiment in Catalonia and the Basqueprovinces in particular. With neighboring

three western Basque provinces inSpain-Alava,Guipuzcoa and Vizcaya. has some limited powers over finance.It also has its own police force, theErtzaintza, which operates almost as aprivate army of the PNV and is the preferred force for suppressing the moreradical nationalist groups. The Basqueregional parliament of Ajuria Enea andthe Catalan Generalitat are the devicesthrough which the local bourgeoisiesextract concessions from the central government in Madrid. But national oppression, especially of the Basques, has continued unabated. In the five years from1990 to 1995, almost 2,000 politicalevents were repressed, over a thousandpeople were wounded in clashes withpolice-including a number of peopleblinded by rubber bullets-and almost800 others were arrested under the antiterrorist laws. Upwards of 500 ETA [separatist Basque Homeland and Freedom]prisoners are dispersed in jails throughout Spain and are not even allowedto communicate with family membersin Euskara!The Popular Front Against theBasque People, in France.

MagnumIntense national oppression in industrialized Basque region of Spain has ledto wide support for separatist Herri Batasuna and ETA. Proletarian rulewould guarantee right of self-determination for Basques in Spain and France.

When, in October 1983, Felipe Gonzalez's PSOE became the first "left" government in Spain since the Civil War, itimmediately entered into collaborationwith the Mitterrand administration inFrance to crush the Basque separatists.Under the first Mitterrand popular-frontgovernments from 1983 to 1987, theGAL ["anti-terrorist" death squads], withthe complicity of various French statesecurity services, killed 27 and wounded30 ETA members who had sought refugein the Northern Basque country or whowere from that area. Then, there wereroundups and deportations to Spainwhere torture of Basque nationalists iswidespread-not to mention a higher proportion of police per inhabitant than inany other region of France (P. Cassan, IePouvoir franrais et La question basque(1981-1993) [1996]). These policies havebeen maintained today by the capitalistgovernment of Socialist prime ministerJospin, [French Communist Party (PCF)transport minister Claude] Gayssot and[bourgeois politician Jean-Pierre] Chevenement. In late 1997, Chevenement,the ultra-chauvinist minister of the interior, negotiated with his Spanish counterpart the continuing deportation of ETArefugees in return for a strengthening ofsurveillance at Spain's southern borders

to keep the Basques within the Republican camp. The Carlists [supporters of theroyal family] in Navarre, who had longbeen associated with military conspiracy,joined Franco and Mola.Unlike in Catalonia, the factories werenot seized by the proletariat. The Basquegovernment ordered the repression of theanarchist CNT [trade-union federation]and closed its print shops, while PresidentAguirre proposed sending Basque troopsto Barcelona to act as a "moderatingforce" on the workers movement there.The reformist misleaders of the working class-Stalinists, social-democrats,anar chis ts-a nd the centrist POUM strangled the proletarian revolution in Spainby tying the workers to their capitalistrulers through the medium of the people'sfront, thus paving the way for the victoryof Francoist military bonapartism. Assoon as they felt able to do so, the Basquebourgeoisie handed the key cities of Bilbao and Donostia (San Sebastian) intactto the Francoists.In the immediate wake of Franco's victory, a frightful revenge was exactedagainst all the vanquished forces ofthe Republic. Hundreds of thousands ofworkers throughout the peninsula weresummarily executed. The Basque andCatalan statutes of autonomy were revoked and the use of Catalan and Euskarawere forbidden as part of Franco's program to forcibly Castilianize the entirepopUlation. By 1954, the number ofspeakers of Euskara had fallen from700,000 to 525,000. Attempts to celebratethe Basque national festival of AberriEguna were brutally suppressed by theGuardia Civil and the political police.Meanwhile, the Basque exile governmentwas expelled from Paris. While theserepressive measures humiliated the entrepreneurial industrialists and financiers ofBarcelona and Bilbao, they were'centrallyaimed at the highly combative proletariatof the northern industrial regions, which

Portugal also in the throes of workers revolution, this was the moment to galvanizethe working class and oppressed of thewhole peninsula in a struggle to overthrow the rotting capitalist ~ y s t e m andestablish a soviet federation of Iberianworkers republics, which would haveopened the road to a Socialist UnitedStates of Europe. Proletarian rule inSpain would guarantee the rights of theBasques, Catalans and others to nationalself-determination and would championthe liberation of women and the cause ofall the oppressed. Unfortunately the keyto victory was absent in both Spainand Portugal-a genuinely revolutionary,communist leadership of the proletariat.The scale of nationalist agitation inthe north of Spain compelled the bourgeoisie to accord limited autonomy tothe Basque and Catalan regions. Fifteenother regional political authorities werecreated; including an autonomous government in Navarre. The ComunidadAut6noma Vasca (CAV-Basque Autonomous Community), which unites the

Le BolchevikPublication of the LlgueTrotskyste de FranceSubscribe! $5 for 4 issuesIncludes Spartacist (French edition)Order from/make checks payable to:Spartacist Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPONew York, NY 10116--- Also available - - - - - - IThe Truth About theInternationalist Group (in French)A collection of articles from Le Bolchevik andarticles translated from Workers Vanguarddocumenting the IG's defection fromTrotskyism and the LaB's class betrayalin Brazil 20 FFOrder from: Le Bolch9vik, BP 135-1075463 Paris Cedex 10, France

..... Pindipendaa du ........0Urier face i l'Etat bourgeois!

WORKERS VANGUARD


5/12

(meaning ever more Moroccans drowningin the Straits of Gibraltar as they try to getinto racist Fortress Europe). And hes i g n ~ d a new extradition order against ahistoric ETA leader, Jose Luis AnsolaLarranaga.The PCF participates in the popularfront government as it did when thenGeneral Secretary [Georges] Marchais'launched an attack in 1984 against a"Soviet historian who spoke of diversepeoples in France: "For us ... any man orwoman who has French citizenship isFrench. France is not a multiethnic country. It is one country, one nation, one pea-,pIe, the product of a long history" (quotedin James Jacob, Hills ofConflict: BasqueNationalism in France [1994D. Defenseof "the Republic, one and indivisible" issimply a cover for chauvinism and repression by the centralizing French state. Toembrace the myth that national questionswere supposedly resolved by the FrenchRevolution can only lead to support for thecentralizing French state, chauvinism anddenial of the right of self-determination.The PCF propagates this myth within theFrench workers movement, and the entirefar left follows suit. Even the LTF recognized the right of self-determination forthe Basques in Spain while refusing thisright for the Northern Basque country, thepart of the Basque country in France. Thisposition was examined and rectified during our last conference. We now call forthe right of self-determination for theBasque people south and north of thePyrenees (see our bulletin, la Lutte pourune section fran raise de fa LCI dans femonde post-sovietique [The Struggle fora French Section of the ICL in the PostSoviet World]).... And in Spain

The Castilian-chauvinist stance of themain reformist workers parties in Spainechoes the Francoists' call for "Spain,one and indivisible." This is also theposition of so-called "far left" groupslike Ted Grant's Militante group in Spainand the French Morenoite Ligue Socialiste des Travailleurs (LST). A leafletdistributed by Ef Militante shortly afterthe shooting of Blanco Garrido [towncouncilman from the right-wing Popular'Party (PP)] has the shameful headline"Against the Terrorism of ETA, AgainstState Terrorism," as if the two wereequivalent, and argues:"Defense of the right of self-detenninationmust also be a demand of the wholeworking class-a right which does notimply the right of independence. Marxists are against the independence of Euskadi at this moment because it would notsolve the problems of the Basque working class nor the working class of therest of the state, but we want a voluntaryunion of the peoples."

This line of capitulating to the dOIni-nant Castilian chauvinism is shared bythe economist Lutte Ouvriere (LO) andby Voix des Travailleurs [VdT, a splitfrom LO]. Regarding the assassination ofBlanco Garrido, VdT puts the Spanishstate and ETA on the same level under theheadline: "The Spanish State and ETA:Same Methods and Same Contempt forthe Population" (VdT, 18 , December1997). Meanwhile, LO denounces ETAand speaks of "disgusting and barbaricterrorist acts which justifiably provokedisgust and indignation" (Lutte OuvriereNo. 1543). LO denounced ETA and allthe other nationalists (Basque, Catalan,Andalusian, Galician, etc.) for "issuingreactionary nationalist propaganda whichcontributes to dividing the working class"and "lines the workers up behind thebourgeoisie of each region and sets themagainst each other by invoking ridiculousregional borders either inherited fromanother age or even completely artificial"(Lutte de classe, October 1997).Such declarations recall Lenin's remark:"Mx questions a socialist belonging toan oppressor nation about his attitude tothe oppressed nation and at once revealsa defect common to the socialists of thedominant nations (the English and theRussian): failure to understand theirsocialist duties towards the downtroddennations, their echoing of the prejudices16 APRIL 1999

no credit Cambio 16Basque refugees massacred in September 1985 by Spanish GAL death squad. Capitalist governments of Spain andFrance, including under former social-democratic leaders Felipe Gonzalez and Franc;ois Mitterrand, collaborate inbrutal anti-Basque repression.acquired from the bourgeoisie of the'dominant nation'" ("The Right of Nations to Self-Determination," FebruaryMay 1914). LO does not take on theSpanish bourgeoisie, which oppresses thenational minorities; LO takes part in theFrench and Castilian chauvinist campaigns against the ETA, which are carriedout jointly by the PP, the PSOE, the PCF,the Basque bourgeoisie in Spain and theJospin-Gayssot government in France.And, of course, LO does not call for selfdetermination for the Basque people.These chauvinist positions are theexact opposite of that of Lenin and

the PSOE to "adopt a genuine program ofMarxism in relation to the national andother class questions" and demandsworkers control of the Guardia Civil andSpanish army academies! The idea thatthe core of the capitalist state-the army.and police-can be subjected to "workerscontrol," rather than that it must besmashed ihrough the revolutionary insurrection of the proletariat, has been therefrain of reformists since the time ofKarl Marx. Militante is here repeating thelongstanding position that the Grantitesshare with the likes of the Cliffite Socialismo Internacional, that cops and

JuliO Fuentes1988 steel strike' in Bilbao in Spain's Basque country. A Leninist vanguardparty of the proletariat would champion national rights as part of struggle forworkers revolution.authentic Marxism. In his 1916 theses on"The Socialist Revolution and the Rightof Nations to Self-Determination," Leninwrote::'The right of nations to self-determination implies exclusively the right to independence in the political sense, the rightto free political separation from theoppressor nation."

LO has never called for the right ofself-determination for national minoritiesin France (except for Corsica). In apolemic against the [French Mandelite]Ligue Communiste (predecessor of theLCR), which spoke of "regionalists," LOput forward its own version of the myththat the French Revolution settled thenational questions in France:"The efforts by the Capetian kings toenlarge their domain and extend theirpower, and the development of the bourgeoisie which took place in their shadow,were indeed the starting point for theformation of a French nation, while theOccitan and Breton nations never existedas such except in the heads of some nostalgic intellectuals."-Lutte de classe, June 1973LO solves the problem by claiming thatonly the French nation exists. And LOcalled ETA "maximalist" because "ETAclaims the French provinces of Labourdand Soule" (Lufte de classe, November1986).Militante plumbs the depths of reformist stupidity when it calls on theUnited Left [Spanish Communist Partydominated popular-front formation] and

prison guards are simply "workers inuniform."The suicidal policy of reliance on a"reformed, democratic" bourgeois policehas been amply exposed by Spanish history, for example during the BarcelonaMay Days of 1937 when the Republicanasaltos acted, as counterrevolutionarystormtroopers against the insurrectionaryproletariat. The Spanish military, withFranco's handpicked successor-theBourbon king Juan Carlos-at its head, isthe most implacable enemy of the working class and national minorities. The1981 tejerazo-an attempted coup by elements of the Guardia Civil and army gen

erals-had as one of its principal objectives a halt to concessions to thenationalists, which it by and largeachieved with the promulgation shortlyafterwards of the LOAPA, a law designedto "harmonize" the autonomy process.The Cliffites of Socialismo Internacional denounce ETA's "disastrous" policy for, in their words, "paying no attention to the massive rejection" of theassassination of Blanco Garrido. Thus,they solidarize with those who participated in the "massive" anti-ETA demonstrations, whiCh included a number of fascists. The Spanish Morenoite PartidoRevolucionario de los Trabajadores (PRT)also denounces the "terrorists" of ETAand HB [Herri Batasuna]. The PRTdemands a classless-that is, bourgeois-Basque republic, and in a special

pamphlet on Euskadi (22 February 1997)joined with the hysterical bourgeois presscampaign in demanding that ETA freeone of its hostages, the prison officialOrtega Lara. The PRT's French sisterorganization, the Ligue Socialiste desTravailleurs, has gone so far as to arguethat the Spanish bourgeoisie has "by andlarge" resolved the national question inthe peninsula.In the Morenoites' fairy-tale world, "theBasque and Catalan languages are notonly recognized and their use encouraged, but the autonomous parliaments areelected on the basis of universal suffrage ... . So a number of national demandshave in fact been satisfied by the ,bourgeoisie." The LST conspicuously fails todemand the right of self-determinationfor the Basques in Spain, much less thosein France. This organization recently dissolved into the French VdT group, whichhas no public position on the colonies ofits own imperialism. For the Morenoites,the main enemy is ETA, whom theyaccuse of "barbarity" and "aggravatingconfusion in the minds of many workersand youth" (Coordination, I September1997).The ex-Vargaite [fake-Trotskyist] Partido Obrero Revolucionario (POR), in aleaflet dated 14 July 1997, called for anegotiated political solution in theBasque country and expressed its "understanding" for participants in the reactionary anti-ETA demonstrations and itsopposition to attacks on members of thePP. A "negotiated political solution" isthe "democratic alternative" proposed bythe petty-bourgeois nationalists ofETAotherwise known as the "KAS Alternative"-a call for an independent bourgeois Euskadi. The POR tails HB as the"best representatives of the Basque people" while at the same time refusing todefend it against the witchhunt directedagainst it. Indeed, the POR is a memberof the Catalan Unitat d'Esquerres, part ofthe IU popular front, which in turn is partof the Ajuria Enea, whiCh initiated thewitchhunting.ETA was founded in the 1950s by agroup of PNV youth, disillusioned withtheir party's timid opposition to the dictatorship. By the mid-1970s, with therenewal of militant working-class struggle, there was a polarization within ETA,which began to pay lip service to theproletariat, even proclaiming itself Marxist at its Fourth Congress. By the FifthCongress, ETA was expelling groupswho were "attempting to build a workersparty with a Spanish dimension." Afusion with a section of ETA helpedestablish the Liga Comunista Revolucionaria as one of the largest sections ofErnest Mandel's fake-Trotskyist UnitedSecretariat. Today, Zutik, the remnants ofthe LCR in the Basque country, has alsoenlisted in the a n t i ~ E T A campaign.The betrayals of the reformists andcentrists who derailed the working-classstruggles of the 1930s and 1970s have leftthe ground open to petty-bourgeoisnationalists like HB, who recruit militantyouth but can only envisage some kind ofBasque autonomy-court esy of the European Union. It is laughable to suggesnhat

continued on page 85


6/12

Mumia...(continued from page 12)labor flexing its muscle in political struggle on behalf of all the oppressed.Since taking up Jamal's cause some 12years ago, the Spartacist League and thePartisan Defense Committee have foughtfor a perspective centered on the powerof the multiracial working class. As wewrote in an SL statement to a PDCinitiated labor/black protest for Jamal inChicago last November:"Based on the only significant integra

tion in racist America-the workplaceand the factory floor-the trade unionshave the social power and potential tobecome battalions in the struggle againstracism and exploitation and to shake thefoundations of this decaying capitalistsystem. If undertaken with a mobilization of the union movement, the fight tofree Mumia, to abolish the racist deathpenalty, would be a first, giant step inthat direction. To that end, labor mustbreak the chains forged by the tradeunion misleaders that have' shackled theunions to the political parties and thestate agencies of the enemy class."It is elementary that if labor's power isto be brought to bear in a mighty blowon behalf of Jamal, it must be mobilizedindependent of the very forces of thecapitalist state that worked for years toframe up this innocent man. In taking upthe cause of Jamal's freedom, the working class mu'st understand not only thenature of the capitalist state as a force fororganized violence against the exploitedand oppressed but also the unity of theinterests of labor and the fight for blackfreedom in America.But the perspective of the organizersof the "Millions for Mumia" protests andtheir "labor committee" hangers-on isprecisely the opposite. Behind the callfor a new trial is a political programpremised on the belief that the capitaliststate can be reformed and that the bourgeois courts can be pressured to be"just." By centering the struggle on reliance on the capitalist state to freeMumia, it is directly counterposed to' amobilization of working-class power.The Policy of theClass Struggle

Working-class militants, fighters forblack freedom and leftist youth whohave enlisted in Mumia's cause mustlearn the lessons paid for by the bloodand struggles of the past. In particular,they can learn from the writings ofJames P. Cannon, who led the earlyCommunist Party's International LaborDefense (lLD) as it campaigned to freeimmigrant workers Sacco andVanzettianarchist militants who had been framedup and were ultimately executed onphony murder charges amid mass arrestsand deportations of reds and immigrantsunder the Palmer Raids. In his_ 1927article "Who Can Save Sacco and Van-zetti?" Cannon laid ollt the counterposition between the sort of liberal appealspursued today by those who focus on a"new trial" for Mumia and the princjplesof non-sectarian class-struggle defenseon which the PDC bases itself:"One policy is the policy of the classstruggle. It puts the center of gravity in

Contents include: Mumia Abu-Jamal's Life of Struggle

i!'ItSclJl::len

Reformists pushillusions in "fairtrial," but thereis no justice inthe capitalistcourts. Jamaldefense attorneyRachelWolkensteln wasarrested duringsham 1995Philadelphiacourt hearing.

the protest movement of the workers ofAmerica and the world. It puts all faithin the power of the masses and no faithwhatever in the justice of the courts.While favoring all possible legal proceedings, it calls for agitation, publicity,. demonst ration s-orga nized protest on anational and international scale ..."The other policy is the policy of'respectability,' of the 'soft pedal' and ofridiculous illusions about 'justice' fromthe courts of the enemy. It relies mainlyon legal proceedings. It seeks to blur theissue of the class struggle ... It tries torepresent the martyrdom of Sacco andVanzetti as an ' unfortunate' error whichcan be rectified by the 'right' people proceeding in the 'right' way."

It is that second policy which is pursued by a host of left groups-WorkersWorld (WWP), Socialist Action (whichis a major force behind the April 24march in the Bay Area), the International

cutors, are at the core of the capitalist state. This is not some "neutral"agency which serves society as a wholebut rather, as Friedrich Engels wroteover a century ago in The Origins ofthe Family, Private Property, and theState, "an organization for the protectionof the possessing class against the nonpossessing class." To achieve social justice and equality, to put an end toexploitation and oppression, requires thesmashing pf the capitalist state throughproletarian revolution and its replacement by a workers state which ushers inan egalitarian socialist society.The reformists take their cue frombourgeois liberals who paint the frame-upof Jamal as a "miscarriage of justice," inthe same way as they try to pass off theheinous police killing of Amadou Diallo

WVPhotoILWU International president Brian McWilliams addresses emergency protestfor Jamal, Oakland, June 1995.Socialist Organization (ISO) and Solidarity, to name a few-which championthe call for a new trial as the centerpieceof their efforts around Mumia. Renouncing the fight to win the proletariat to arevolutionary struggle against capitalist. injustice and oppression, they preach the.reformist notion that the capitalist statecan be pressured to .act on behalf ofworkers and the oppressed.This reformist outlook is a flat repudiation of the Marxism such groups occasionally claim to uphold. The courts,along with the cops, prisons and prose-

as an "aberration" in an otherwise justsystem of "democracy." Reporting on an"Emergency Leadership Summit Meeting" held in New York City in January,Solidarity's Steve Bloom approvinglywrote in Against the Current (MarchiApril 1999): "Everyone who spoke fromthe podium sounded a similar theme: Wemust build a broader and more inclusivemovement, one which reaches out to theAmerican mainstream." Bloom evenfavorably cites a petition to Clinton's Justice Department to carry out a federal"civil r i g h t s ~ ' inv.estigation of Mumia's

case! Only the truly naive or completelycynical would conceive of expecting justice for Mumia from a Democratic Partyadministration which has dramaticallyincreased the number of crimes punishable by death while loosening legal constraints on the state's executioners.For Bloom et aI., the "American mainstream" they seek to reach out to arethose squeamish liberals who can't tolerate the call for Jamal's freedom; thesetypes want a new trial simply so thatthey can rest easy that the state will beexecuting-or at least imprisoning forl ife-a man they believe has been"proven" guilty. In this regard, the organizers of the April 24 protest have notonly dumped any opposition to the racistdeath penalty but even give it backhanded support. This was put quitebaldly in the "What We Can Do to Buildthe Struggle" column that accompanied an article by Bloom in the January/February 1999 Against the Current,which appeals: "Demand a new trial forMumia Abu-Jamal and that no executiontake place until after a new trial is held"!As Mumia himself wrote after he wasgranted a stay of execution in August1995: "Let us utilize this precious timeto build a stronger and broader movement, to not 'stay' one execution, but tohalt them all! Down with the racist U.S.death penalty!" The PDC has foughtfor united-front demonstrations to freeMumia-at times including DemocraticParty liberals-but on the basis that allparticipants also agree with the slogan"Abolish the racist death penalty!" AsMarxists, we do not accord the state theright to determine who lives or dies.It was an international outpouring ofsocial protest that stayed the executioner's hand in 1995. As the scheduleddate of execution neared, the PDC initiated emergency united-front protests,centered on bringing to bear the powerof organized labor, in New York City,Chicago and Oakland, as well as inCanada and Australia. The protests drewhundreds of trade unionists and wereendorsed by dozens of unions andlabor officials and a range of otherorganizations. Such united-front actionsallow not only for the greatest possibleunity in struggle but also for the freedebate of contending strategies and programs, which is vital to advancing the

SPARTACIST LEAGUE/U.S. LOCAL DIRECTORY Court Hearings: New Evidence of Frame-Up National Office: Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 (212) 732-7860

6

From Death Row, This Is Mumia Abu-Jamal"La Amistad and American Law"

The Frame-Up of Mumia Abu-Jamal For Non-Sectarian, Class-Struggle Defense! Death Row Speedup Targets Minorities Philly Cops' Reign of Terror Desperation, Segregation and the"Ebonics" Controversy Down With "English Only" Racism! Coleman Young: From CIO UnionOrganizer to Overseer for Auto Bosses

$1 (48 pages)!:!FUI.lr.

Order from: Spartacist Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, Ne w York, NY 10116

BostonBox 390840, Central Sta.Cambridge, MA 02139(617) 666-9453ChicagoBox 6441, Main POChicago, IL 60680(312) 454-4930

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

OaklandBox 29497Oakland, CA 94604(510) 839-0851San FranciscoBox 77494San Francisco, CA 94107(41 5) 777-9367

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

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

WORKERS VANGUARD


7/12

consciousness of the working class andanti-racist youth.Motivating its call for a new trial,Workers World (I8 February) tries todraw a parallel with the Scottsboro case ofthe 1930s, writing: "What will it take tostop the execution and win a new trial forAbu-Jamal? Mass protests. That's the lesson of the Scottsboro Nine trials." TheScottsboro defendants-nine black youthframed up on rape charges in the DeepSouth-won two new trials, only to besentenced to death in the Jim Crowcourts each time. Although mass protestsinitiated by the ILD stayed the executioner's hand, the last of the Scottsboro'Nine was not released from Alabama'sprison hell until 1950. And the liberalNAACP boycotted the Scottsboro defenseat the outset, finaUy getting involved onlyin order to block growing Communistinfluence among black workers.Or take the case of boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter. Framed up on false murdercharges in the mid-1960s for his advocacy of the right of black armed selfdefense, Carter finally won a new trial in1976 after an international protest campaign. When he was convicted anew, theliberals fled his cause and Carter spentanother decade in prison for a crime hedid not commit.Democratic Party-Enemy of Labor, Blacks

In an article titled "How to Fight theRight," Workers World (18 February)claims, "Instead of tying themselves toDemocratic Party politics, Abu-Jamal'ssupporters have taken the road of building an independent movement based onthe power of the communities, workers'organizations and progressive fdrces."But just who are Workers World and theother forces behind the "Millions forMumia" protests desperately trying toappeal to by making their demands palatable to the "mainstream"? Certainly notblack youth or working people who haveno trouble understanding there is no justice in the capitalist courts, whichtogether with the cops are racist to thecore. On the contrary, the politics of thisso-called "independent movement" aredeliberately designed to make themacceptable to Democratic Party liberalswho embrace the bourgeois state and thecapitalist "justice" system as their own.This has been clear at numerous recentgatherings of Jamal supporters, includinga March 6 "Millions for Mumia" conference at UC Berkeley heavily built bySocialist Action and the ISO. Among thepanelists in a workshop on black liberation was former Oakland DemocraticParty city councilman Wilson Riles Jr.,who met no opposition when he called forlife imprisonment without parole as an"alternative" to the death penalty. This iswhat the politics of the "lesser evil"come down to, accepting the alternativesoffered by the bourgeoisie's' machinery ofrepression-in this case, a living deathfor Mumia and the 3,500 other prisonersincarcerated on the nation's death rows.In the same vein, a recent leaflet by theISO's "Campaign to End the Death Penalty" for a March 17 New York Cityprotest in defense of former Black Panther Lawrence Hayes raised the grotesqueslogan "Hands off the parole system," acall to maintain a system of virtual slavery for those released from prison beforetheir full term.Speaking out of the left side of itsmouth in an article on 'The Democratsand the Death Penalty" (InternationalSocialist Review, Spring 1999), the ISOwarns that support to the "lesser evil"Democrats "actually undermines the fightagainst the right." Yet in hailing a resolution for a brief "moratorium" on executions recently passed by a committee ofthe Illinois legislature, the ISO argues to"keep up the pressure on weak-kneed politicians to stop them from backsl iding anyfurther" (Socialist Worker, 12 March).These social democrats see in capitalistpoliticians not the class enemy but ratherallies who can "do the right thing" if onlythey are subjected to a bit of pressure.How this misleads fighters against16 APRIL 1999

oppression was addressed by the LBLspokesman at the SL Black HistoryMonth forum:"The problem is that decade after decadein this country, every single time theworkers, blacks and the oppressed haveentered the road of struggle, sometimesquite courageously-,-like the civil rightsmovement, going up against the Klanand the cops and the whole goddamnedmachine at the risk of your life-everytime the leadership diverted the struggleand the most conscious fighters rightback into support for the DemocraticParty."It's not inevitable or automatic thatpeople who enter the road of struggleagainst this brutal system have to end upin the Democratic Party. They get backthere because people like the organizersof this [April 24] Mumia protest don'ttell the truth; they try to make out that'Well, you can gradually modify andreform and create better conditions forstruggle'-and the best way to do this isto get so-called friends of labor back intooffice. What we really need to do isbegin the difficult but extremely essential work of building a multiracial revolutionary workers party in this country."

Forge a RevolutionaryWorkers Party!Integrated unions representing millions

of workers have gone on record in support of Jamal. That these millions havenot been mobilized in action to combatthis racist frame-up is the responsibilityof the pro-capitalist trade-union misleaders, who fear calling their members intoaction to defend their economic interests,much less in defense of blacks, immigrants and others who are cast off tostarve in the streets or locked away inprison hellholes. As an SL spokesman atthe Berkeley labor workshop said, "Thebarriers to mobilizing labor in action forMumia are the current labor misleaders,who shackle the unions to the classenemy, the Democratic Party. And it's socalled leftists, like many on the paneltoday and in this room, who provide a leftcover for these bureaucrats."

Indeed, this labor workshop washeaded by a veritable rogues' gallery ofputative "leftists," many of them formermembers and supporters of the SpartacistLeague who have since made somethingof a career out of their hostility to ourorganization. This is merely an expression of their visceral hatred of oUr revolutionary program and purpose. Now thiscrew is trying to give a labor falradeto the class-collaborationist politics thatdefine the "Millions for Mumia" protests. To this end, at the labor workshopthey were primed to go after the SL andPDC because we fight for the independent class mobilization of the proletariat against the capitalist exploiters andtheir agencies of repression.Taking umbrage at our statement thatthe trade-union bureaucrats stand asobstacle to such a mobilization of theworking class, Jack Heyman, who postures as the left wing of the ILWU Local10 executive board, later went on todeclare that the PDC was a "sectarian"obstacle to Jamal's defense. As supposedproof of this smear, Heyman complainedthat the PDC had refused to hand over thenames of various unions and union officials who have endorsed our calls forlabor-centered protest demanding. Jamal'sfreedom. A month earlier, the PDC hadresponded in writing to Heyman's request

InternationalLabor Defenseled campaign ofmass laborprotest in 1920sto demandfreedom forimmigrantanarchistmilitantsBartolomeoVanzettiandNicola Sacco.

for such a list. As was noted in this February 10 letter: "Surely you must knowthat each endorsement we have requestedand received is for a specific purpose andspecific slogans .... These endorsementsare not seen either by the PDC or by theunion or union official as a standingendorsement for subsequent events andcertainly not as a blank check or part of a'list' to be passed around to any organization upon request."Bur the question itself, which had

already been answered, was simply a redherring. I f Heyman had truly wanted toknow which unions had endorsed previous efforts by the PDC in order to pursue them for his own purposes, he neededto do no more than peruse the pages ofWorkers Vanguard where they are readily available. But that wasn't and isn'this purpose. Rather, the aim here is togo after the reds, in the service of thelabor bureaucracy (whose seats Heymanet al. desire to fill) and of concealing thetrue nature of the capitalist state.Another featured speaker at this laborworkshop was Gerald Sanders. A professional anti-Spartacist who for some yearswas hooked up with the InternationalBolshevik Tendency, Sanders more recently has b e ~ n plying his trade in therealm of electoral office-seeking. Nowhe wields his knowledge of the history ofthe revolutionary movement in the service of ustifying appeals to the classenemy. Thus, at the Berkeley conference Sanders went to some trouble totry to find precedents for the call fora "new trial" from Cannon's International Labor Defense, claiming that Cannon himself had raised this demand inthe campaign for Sacco and Vanzetti.We'll let Cannon answer this one himself. As he wrote following the denial ofSacco and Vanzetti's appeal by the Massachusetts Supreme Court: "Only foolsput faith in the courts of the enemy"("From the Supreme Court of the Capitalists to the Supreme Court of theLaboring Masses," May 1927).Despite mass labor protests around theworld on their behalf, Sacco and Vanzettiwere ultimately sent to the electric chair.But in struggling for the lives and freedom of Sacco and Vanzetti, the workingclass gained an understanding that this isa class-divided society where the courts

James P. Cannonand the Early Years of

American CommunismSelected Writings an dSpeeches, 1920-1928

624 pages, smyth-sewn bindingPaperback $14.50 ISBN 0-96338 28-1-0New York State residents add 8.25% sales taxShipping and handling: $3.50Order from/make checks payable to:

Spartacist Publishing CompanyBox 1377 GPO, Ne w York, NY 10116

serve the interests of the exploitersagainst the mass of the exploited andoppressed. To stand up on behalf of thesetwo immigrant workers also meant aconscious rejection of the vicious racismthat the ruling class uses to weaken anddivide the working class.In contrast, the "Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal," whichis animated by much of the same crewthat headed the labor workshop at theBerkeley conference, obscures the classnature of the capitalist state, deep-sixesany mention of the Democratic Party andcompletely obviates the centrality of thefight for black liberation to the cause ofthe emancipation of all of labor. A leafletput out by this committee calls on"workers, unions, labor organizations" to"Join Labor Contingent April 24th toFree Mumia!" Here they appeal to theunions to join the ILWU at the head of ademonstration whose whole premise isnot the cause of mobilizing the socialpower of the multiracial working classfor Jamal's freedom but rather one whichappeals to the agencies of the classenemy for "justice."As Cannon wrote in "A Living Monument to Sacco and Vanzetti" (October1927), written after their execution:"In this act of assassination the rulingclass of America shows its real face tothe world. The mask of 'democracy' isthrown aside .... It is the vengeful, crueland murderous class which the workersmust fight and conquer before the regimeof imprisonment, torture a.nd murder canbe ended. This is the message from thechair of death. This is the lesson of theSacco-Vanzetti case."Our fight to free Mumia and alJ classwar prisoners is an integral part ofour struggle to forge a Leninist vanguardparty to lead the multiracial working classto power. Such a party must be based onthe understanding that the fundamentaldivision in this society is between thewealthy capitalists who own the means ofproduction and the workers who produceall the wealth, that the. state exists to protect the profits and rule of the bourgeoisie. Such a party must act as a tribune ofthe people, recognizing that the socialistliberation of labor from the chains of capitalist exploitation is inextricably linkedto the fight for black freedom. FreeMumia now! Abolish the racist deathpenalty!.

7


8/12

Newport N ~ w s (continued from page 1)fed up with being underpaid and overworked in dangerous and demanding conditions. A nuclear fueling worker whomakes only $12.59 an hoursaid bitterly:"There's real suffering going here. It'stearing families apart."It can take up to 20 years to make toppay under the company's multi-tieredwage scheme. Workers on the same jobcan be in different pay categories, andtJIey cannot reach the top of their wage.scale except through further raises basedon "merit"-at the foremen's discretion.This setup is designed to drive down thewages and conditions of all workers bypitting workers against each other overwages and job assignment. And in thisdeeply racist society, such a systemmeans rampant discrimination againstblack and also women workers.One picketer described to a WorkersVanguard team how the shipyard was runlike a plantation. The workforce is majority black, and some 40 percent of workers are women. The arrogant, racist management-and there are almost as manywhite-collar managers as there are workers-is virtually all white, laced with former Navy officers. The Navy, historicallythe most racist arm of the U.S. military,oversees and inspects work at the yardevery step of the way.The strike is widely popular in the area.

Bitter threemonth strike byNewport Newsshipyardworkers in 1979defied racistcop terror.

ll..

.'2

UPS Teamsters and Bell Atlantic telephone workers have refused to crosspicket lines. Indeed, this strike involvesmany of the issues in the August 1997UPS Teamsters strike, which broke a longpattern of losing strikes and showed anew fighting spirit in the labor movement.Local 8888 is demanding an across-theboard raise of $3.95 an hour over threeyears as well as improved health and pension benefits. The pension is so low-topping out at $506 a month for a 30-yearworker-that it barely covers rent payments for retirees.But not a single contract demandaddresses the rampant company discrimination against black and women workers. This discrimination has to be tackled

Washington PostNovember 1982: 5,OOO-strong, Spartacist-initiated labor/black mobilizationwhich stopped KKK from marching in Washington, D.C. Black unionists fromVirginia Tidewater area played key role.

Basque...(continued from page 5)the Basque people will gain thei r freedomfrom the French imperialists-whobrutally oppre,ss their own Basque population as well as other national and ethnic minorities in France-or from theGerman bourgeoisie which annihilatedGuernica. In recent months, the Aznargovernment has obtained collaborationfrom both France and Germany in the"fight against terrorism." In return forexpelling ETA suspects, the French government has demanded tough actionagainst "Islamic fundamentalists" andclosing the door on immigra nts from theMaghreb [NoFth Africa] and elsewhere.Fortress Europe targets not only desperateasylum-seekers, like Kurds fleeing Turkish army terror, but also the nationalminorities in the European Union itself.Herri Batasuna's maximum program isthe so-called KAS Alternative, which;'alls only for amnesty and a new statutefor the four Basque provinces in'Spain.Behind the repression in the Basque:'ountry is a far-reaching assault on theNorking class of the whole country, as:he Spanish bourgeoisie seeks to carveout a niche in racist Fortress Europe. As: n other European countries, the systemof social welfare is being dismantled in:he wake of the collapse of the USSRand the deformed workers states of EastEurope. A large-scale privatization planhas caused mass layoffs in a country8

which already has the highest rate ofunemployment in West Europe. In theBasque country, the destruction of industry and economic decline have exacerbated nationalist sentiments. There hasbeen a flow of capital out of Euskadi,with many Basque industries moving tomore profitable markets. Unemploymentis almost 25 percent higher than in therest of Spain and reaches a shocking53.4 percent among youth under 24.The working-class struggles of the1930s and the 1970s demonstrated thatresolution of the national question inSpain is inextricably linked with thestruggle for workers power throughoutthe peninsula. Trotskyists defend the rightof self-determination for the oppressednationalities of the Spanish state, whichmeans their right to form separate states.Only a Leninist vanguard party defendingthis democratic right will be able to unitethe Basques and Catalans with workersthroughout the country""""':as well as withworkers across the Pyrenees in Francein a common struggle for workers revolution which sweeps away the heritage ofFrancoism by overthrowing the Spanishbourgeoisie, including its Basque andCatalan components, and establishing aworkers government.Down with the witchhunt against Basquenationalists! Release the Mesa Nacional[National Command] of Herri Batasuna!Defend the right of self-determination forthe Basque people! For a Trotskyist partyin Spain as part of a reforged FourthInternational!

head-on if the union is to carry out a solidstrike and defeat inevitable attempts bymanagement to divide the workers. TheUSWA tops' failure to take on these questions directly undercuts the union'spotential to galvanize trade unionists andblack people throughout the Tidewaterarea to join strikers in the mass picketsneeded to win. And workers must notbe taken in by the "America first" flagwaving of the USWA Internationalbureaucracy, which will leave them disarmed as management and the government try to break the strike by appealingto the "national interest.", Victory to theLocal 8888 strike!Build Mass Militant Pickets!

Strikers are largely fighting to regainground lost with the 1995 contract, whichfroze wages and cut vacation days. Wavesof layoffs led to worsening working conditions. Driving the message home, theshipyard president produced a videotapetelling workers that if they didn'1 like itthere they could gotake a minimum wagejob at the Hardee's fast food chain! Thecompany's arrogance backfired, as hugenumbers of workers-including manywhites who formerly had softer jobs began joining the union during aggressiverecruitment drives. Despite Virginia'sviciously anti-union "right to work" laws,the level of union membership amonghourly workers in the shipyard hasclimbed from 50 percent to 83 percent inthe past four years.While the 1979 strike was eventuallysold out by the USWA tops, it establishedthe local as a single industrial unionencompassing all categories of workers.In contrast, workers at most unionizedshipyards in the U.S. are divided amongten or more craft unions. This placesLocal 8888 in a strong position to fightthe company's racist divide-and-ruleschemes. That strength must be reinforced through demands like equal payfor equal work. In racist America, andespecially in the non-union South, labor'sstruggle can only move forward by takingup the fight against racist oppression. Significantly in this Southern city, the WVteam saw not a single confederate flagnot even a bumper sticker--on or near thepicket lines.The union membership has shown it isgeared up for a fight. This strike will bewon or lost on the picket lines. Thatmeans mobilizing mass militant picketlines drawing in all of Tidewater laborincluding the thousands of ILA longshoremen, Teamsters and unionists atNorfolk Naval Shipyard and private shipyards like' Norshipco. Even before thestrike began, the company, the cops andthe bosses' media launched an anti-strikepropaganda offensive screaming aboutstrikers' "violence" in .I979. That strikewas plenty violent, but it came fromthe cops' side, as police launched teargas attacks and unleashed dogs againststrikers.The USWA tops are buying into thebosses' anti-union violence-baiting. Earlyon, the USWA International moved in totake direct control of the strike in order topolice the union ranks. Two key drive-in'gates remain open, allowing managers,engineers, painting and sandblasting contractors, as well as Navy inspection personnel, to waltz into the plant. Picketerstold WV that non-union shipyards havebeen busing in scabs to join the handful of

scabs from the Newport News yard. Thisscabbing can and must be stopped,through mass pickets that no one darescross! But the USWA bureaucracy refusesto mobilize mass pickets because thatwould mean a confrontation with the capitalist government and its scabherdingcops, and therefore with the labor tops'friends in the Democratic Party.Meanwhile, the suits in the USWAbureaucracy have set up a paltry strikebenefits fund which will only go to thosethe bureaucracy deems "neediest," making strikers and their families beg forrelief. This can only hurt the union bycausing dissension among the membership and playing into any back-to-workmovement promoted by the company.The USWA International should be pouring in massive amounts of money to sup-. port the strikers.The USWA tops claim that the federalgovernment will back the workersbecause they work for military industry.This is a false and dangerous illusion. Assoon as the strike started, federal laborofficials announced that the ClintonWhite House could seek a strikebreakingcourt order under the Taft-Hartley Actif it decided that the walkout would"imperil the national health or safety"(Newport News-Hampton Daily Press,6 April).The pro-capitalist AFL-CIO misleaders

, claim the Democrats are "friends oflabor." But the Democrats are no less aparty of the capitalist class than are theRepublicans. Whichever party administers it, the capitali st government is at bottom an apparatus of repression-including the cops, the courts, the prisons andthe military-against the working classand the oppressed on behalf of thewealthy handful who live off the profitsextracted from exploiting workers."National Interests" AreCapitalist Interests

Pushing American "national interests," the USWA International replacedstrikers' hand-lettered picket signs withred-wIiite-and-blue printed placards andplanted American flags at picket locations. The bureaucracy has also printedt-shirts for strikers reading, "Our shipsdefend the country. The union defendsus." The purpose of the U.S. military is toenforce the "right" ofAmerican capitaliststo exploit workers overseas just as thesame ruling class sucks the lifeblood outof the workers at home. The "nationalinterest" is the class interest of the bourgeoisie. It is the "national interest" thatthe government will invoke if it decidesto use its war against Serbia as a pretextto break the shipyard strike. It is in theclass interests of the U.S. proletariat tooppose the imperialist military adventures of this government and the capitalist ruling class it represents. The waragainst tiny Serbia is part of the Americanbourgeoisie's ruthless drive for worlddomination. That is why we Marxists callfor defense of Serbia against U.S.INATOterror bombing.Fittingly, one of the projects ground toa halt by the strike is the building of theaircraft carrier Ronald Reagan, namedfor the p r ~ s i d e n t whose' crushing of the1981 PATCO air traffic controllers strikeopened the door to a series of wrenchingdefeats for labor. That action showed howthe government uses the watchword ofthe "national interest" to bust unions.PATCO leaders were dragged away inshackles when the union used its powerto cripple air transportation. But it did nothave to be that way. I f he Machinists andother unions had thrown up pickets, theycould have shut down the airports anddefeated Reagan's union-busting. But theMachinists leadership, under the phony"socialist" William Winpisinger, refusedto strike, sending PATCO to defeat.The AFL-CIO labor tops also use tradeprotectionism to line workers up behindthe interests of the capitalists, as seen inthe recent caf!lpaign by the USWAbureaucracy for quotas on steel importsfrom Japan, South Korea, Russia andelsewhere. Amid essalating trade warsamong competing capitalist powers, suchprotectionist campaigns pit American

WORKERS VANGUARD


9/12

U.S./NATO...(continued from page 1)are being targeted by anti-personnel cluster bombs which rip through homes andbarns maiming and murdering civilians.NATO bombing has also devastated Pristina, the capital of Kosovo. Washingtontalks of "collateral damage," but the aimof the NATO bombing is precisely to sowterror among the Serbian population.Among the "military targets" singled outfor attack have been large numbers of factories and bridges-incl uding One whichwas a monument to Serbs and Jews killedby the Nazi Holocaust-devastating thelivelihoods of the working people andcutting off commerce with neighboringcountries. Today, in a deliberate act of terror, a video-guided missile cut a passenger train in half in Grdelica, Serbia, incinerating three cars and killing some tenpeople.

With Serbia's Slobodan Milosevicrefusing thus far to capitulate to NATOdiktat, Washington has mooted the possibility of using Yeltsin's Russia as a "softcop" to impose a deal on Belgrade, as itdid following NATO air strikes againstthe Bosnian Serbs in 1995. But this isovershadowed by continuing preparationfor a NATO ground invasion. The flood ofpropaganda in the Western media aboutthe plight of ethnic Albanian refugees isaimed at providing a "human rights"screen for the U.S.INATO war of terrorand building up popular support for aground war.This war is not about the Kosovo Alba-nians. It is a war of domination aimed atrealizing longstanding American pla'1s toinsert a substantial U.S.INATO militarypresence in Serbia through subduing, orif necessary dislodging, Milosevic. Thatis what is behind the proclamations byWestern spokesmen, even those whoinitially opposed Clinton's Balkans adventure, that NATO must win this war atall costs if it is to preserve its "credibility." Today, the Pentagon approvedNATO's request for hundreds more warplanes, bringing the total deployment tonearly 1,000 planes. A former member ofClinton's National Security Councilargued bluntly, "I f this mission fails,NATO fails."The interests of Serbia's working classare objectively counterposed to those ofthe new capitalist ruling class whichexploits them. But this is a war of imperialist aggression against a tiny countryabout the size and population of Ohio.Like the continuing bombing and starvation blockade of Iraq, it is a bloody message from America's rulers that they willstop at nothing to prove they are top copsof the world. It is in the urgent interest ofworkers and the oppressed in all countries-:especially in the U.S.-to oppose'by words and deeds the war aims of allmembers of the NATO alliance in theBalkans and to strive for the defeat ofworkers against their class brothers andsisters abroad and serve to bind workersin each country to their "own" exploiters. "America first" chauvinism is adeadly enemy of integrated class struggle. It emboldens the racist, anti-unionKlan terrorists who believe the only"good American" is white, Anglo-Saxonand Protestant. It fuels attacks on immigrant workers. Protectionism serves notto "save American jobs" but to fatten theprofits of the big corporations. That iswhy the major steel companies eagerlyjoined with the USWA in pushingthrough quotas on steel imports.With its lie of the "partnership" oflabor and capital, the union bureaucracyseeks to obscure the truth that the classinterests of the workers are counterposedto those of their exploiters. As we notedin an exchange with a Machinists unionofficial on the 1995 Boeing strike (WVNo. 634, 1 December i995):"The labor bureaucracy is the top layerof the unions which long ago separateditself from its working-class base, andwhich sees the world through the samelens as the capitalists and their government. The purpose of these top union16 APRIL 1999

their "own" capitalist rulers. As we-emphasized in a Spartacist LeaguelU.S.statement at the beginning of the war(WV No. 710, 2 April):"I f America's capitalist rulers getawaywith imposing their diktat in Kosovo, itwill give them a freer hand to sow terrorand destruction around the world. It willalso strengthen their hand in breakingstrikes, busting unions and flooding theghettos and barrios ofAmerica with evenmore cops. On the other hand, every blowagainst U.S. imperialism in the Balkanswill help to weaken the class enemy, providing an opening for the working classand oppressed here to fight against thetorrent of attacks being leveled by WallStreet and its political agents, the Democratic and Republican parties."

The brutal killing of black AfricanAmadou Diallo by four New York Cityplainclothes cops has sparked broad outrage against cop terror. Meanwhile, evenamid the cacophony of patriotic war feverbeing drummed up by the mass media,9,200 workers have gone on strike againstNewport News Shipbuilding in Virginia,which produces and services thePentagon's nuclear aircraft carriers. It isthe task of Marxist internationalists tobring to the proletariat the understandingthat imperialist terror abroad goes hand inhand with racist terror and union-bustingat home. The Spartacist League, U.S. section of the International CommunistLeague, is fighting to build the multiracial revolutionary workers party neededto lead the proletarian overthrow of thisentire system based on racism, exploitation and war."Humanitarian" WarPropaganda

Since the counterrevolutionary destruction of the Soviet Union in 1991-92,Washington has sought to redefine theaims of NATO, originally established asan anti-Soviet military alliance, to serveas a vehicle for reinforcing U.S. militarypower in Europe. The purpose here is tobetter position U.S. imperialism in theface of growing competition from itsmajor capitalist rivals, Japan in thePacific and Germany in Europe. WhenGermany, seeking to reclaim its formersphere of influence in the Balkans, instigated the breakup of the former multinational Yugoslav deformed workers stateby promoting independent Croatian andSlovenian states in the early 1990s, theU.S. immediately moved into the regionto stake out its claim. Thus, Washingtonsponsored the Islamic nationalist forcesin Bosnia, orchestrated the 1995 NATOair war against the Bosnian Serbs andengineered the Dayton "peace accords"which imposed a massive NATO militarypresence in Bosnia.Nonetheless, Serbian strongman Milosevic has remained a- thorn in the side toU.S. imperialism, both politically andmilitarily. Reviving the rhetoric of theCold War, former U.S. ambassador toNATO Robert Hunter denounces Milosevic as "Europe's last Communist thug."

officials is to ensure the subordination ofthe workers to the national interests ofthe enemy class. This collaboration withthe capitalist rulers is codified in thelabor bureaucrats' fealty to the Democratic Party-and it has led to an unending string of defeats for organized labor."Labor Must Champion theFight fo r Black Freedom

The class battle at the Newport Newsshipyard, one of the biggest industrialconcentrations in the South, can be agateway for organizing this "open shop'"region. One of the signs carried by p i c k - ~ eters read, "Support the Avondale Workers." Avondale Industries, which has amerger pending with Newport NewsShipbuilding, has refused to accept a1993 union recognition vote in its Gulfport, Mississippi shipyard won by theAFL-CIO Metal Trades Council. It is ameasure of the horrendous conditionsfaced by workers in the South that manyNewport News workers drive up to twoh o u r ~ , including from North Carolina, towork in one of the very few major unionized industrial facilities in the region.Unionization of the South is a crucial

Young SpartacusMarch 29: Spartacus Youth Clubspeakout at UC B e r k e l ~ y stressedproletarian-internationalist opposition to U.S. imperialism.With 100,000 American troops based inWest Europe and the U.S.-sponsoredexpansion of NATO to include three former Warsaw Pact countries (Hungary, theCzech Republic and Poland) on the western reaches of the former Soviet Union,Washington is now intent on extending itsmilitary tentacles to the last remainingholdout in East Europe-Serbia. Britishjournalist Timothy Garton Ash, wholaunched his career in the 1980s as apress agent for Polish Solidarnosc andother anti-Soviet counterrevolutionaryforces, laid out the scale of this operation in a piece in the London Independent(31 March):

"This is to take on not just a province of2 million suffering people, but a wholeregion. It will mean an internationalcommitment of at least 10 years, tens ofthousands of military and civilian personnel, billions of dollars. But what isthe alternative?"The alternative is for the mightiestalliance of democracies in the historyof the world to be defeated on its 50thanniversary."

Clinton claimed the air war waslaunched as a response to Serb "ethniccleansing" of Albanians in Kosovo. Thereal reason is that Milosevic refused toaccede to a NATO occupation. An articlein the San Francisco Chronicle (7 April)reported: "Despite the appearance ofimpromptu intervention, the UnitedStates and its allies have actively prepared for this crisis. That it will'.almostcertainly lead to ground i n t e r v e n t i o n ~ t o the Western occupation of Kosovo---:.hasbeen quietly part of NATO's policyassumptions since the mid-1990s." Weeksbefore the bombing began, the U.S. andits NATO allies began concentrating morethan 12,000 troops on the Macedonianborder with Kosovo and moved the headquarters of NATO's Rapid Reactiontask for . he labor movement, and itmeans confronting head-on the racismthat the ruling class uses to divide theworking class and depress the wages ofall workers. The integration of white andblack workers at the point of productioncreates the basis for united class struggle, which must necessarily be linked tothe fight for black freedom. The openshop and the KKK go hand in han.d. Thiswas graphically brought home in 1995when supervisors at an Alabama Perduepoultry plant burned a cross on companyproperty to intimidate 1,100 mainlyblack workers and defeat a Laborersorganizing drive. The last concertedeffort to organize the South, a campaignin the late 1940s obscenely titled "Operation Dixie," foundered on the shoals ofracism, the Cold War purge of reds andother militants from the unions, and thelabor bureaucracy's loyalty to the Democratic Party.We need a class-struggle leadership ofthe unions, forged thr9ugh politicalstruggle against the pro-capitalist unionbureaucracy which chains workers to theDemocratic Party. In 1984, when ILA

Corps there from Germany. The U.S. hassince deployed another 12 Stealth F-117 A fighters and is moving in 24 antitank Apache helicopters and over 3,300support troops equipped with surface-to:" .surface missiles, while 8,000 more NATOtroops have been sent in to supposedly aidrefugees. Albania has been turned into aNATO military base.Clinton & Co. might well have miscalculated that Milosevkwould capitulate totheir demands after a few days of bombing. Now, with the prospect of a groundwar posed ever more acutely, the U.S. rulers face a serious domestic obstacle in thepersistence of the "Vietnam syndrome"-widespread popular resistance to thecommitment of combat ground troopsand significant American casualties whichfollowed from U.S. imperialism's dirty,losing colonial war in Vietnam. In theabsence of any motivating ideology tojustify a wider imperialist war againstSerbia, the capitalist media have milkedthe sight of tens of thousands of ethnicAlbanian refugees stumbling across theborders of Kosovo to bols ter popular support in the U.S. and West Europe. It isabundantly clear that the current outpouring of refugees not only is no surprise, butwas a calculated anticipated outcome ofthe NATO attack on Serbia.This whole propaganda blitz reeksof the most transparent cynicism andhypocrisy. We don't underestimate theruthlessness of Milosevic and the Serbchauvinist paramilitaries in dealing withthe Albanians in Kosovo. But die Western governments-not least Germany,France and the U.S.-now clucking theirtongues about Albanian refugees havebeen busily deporting hundreds of thousands of immigrants in recent years.After Western spokesmen railed forweeks about how Milosevic and Serbchauvinist pogromists in Kosovo were"driving out" ethnic Albanians, when theexodus stopped last week, these sametypes screamed that Milosevic was "preventing" the refugees from "fleeing."And even as TV newsmen grimly reportthat the streams of refugees containedonly women, children and old menbecause the young men had been "takenaway to some unknown fate," the crowdsseen in: the background are filled withyoung men! As comedian Richard Pryoronce said, "Who are you going tobelieve, me or your lying eyes?"FearfUl that the massive exodus of ethnic Albanians into the tiny impoverishedmultinational statelets. of Macedonia andMontenegro could plunge the entireregion into social turmoil, the NATOpowers are making noises about taking in100,000 refugees. Britain prepared tohouse its allotment in a former prisoncamp! But first prize for hypocrisy goesto the U.S., which was planning to stowits 20,000 "tragic refugees" from thefreezing, mountainous Albanian border inthe blistering hot and humid tent city incontinued on page 10longshoremen and other trade unionists,overwhelmingly black, mobilized inmass demonstrations to defend a busingplan for school integration in Norfolk,that struggle was sold out when JesseJackson flew into town to steer it intoa Democratic Party voter registrationdrive. The defeat of school busing was acrystal-clear demonstration of the bankruptcy of looking to the capitalist Democratic Party as the "friend" of labor andblacks.Two years earlier, longshoremen's andnaval shipyard unions in the Tidewaterarea played a key role in the 5,000-strong laborlblack mobilization in Washington, D.C. in November 1982. Initiatedby the Spartacist League, this mobilization stopped the KKK from carrying outa race-hate march targeting immigrants.With trade, unionists championing theblack masses and marching under theleadership of reds, this demonstrationgave a vivid snapshot of the kind of multiracial revolutionary workers partyneeded to fuse the fight again st' theexploitation of labor with the struggle forblack emancipation.

9


10/12

U.S./NATD...(continued from p a g ~ 9)the American naval base at Guantanamo,Cuba-where even thousands of Haitianexiles used to living badly in that climaterioted because conditions were so intolerable. In the upshot, it appears none ofthe Western powers will take in a singleAlbanian refugee!While the Western media have foryears railed against Serbian "genocide" inBosnia and now Kosovo, "ethnic cleans. ng" has been perpetrated by all sides inthe fratricide among Serbs, Croats andBosnian Muslims. In fact, the largest single act of "ethnic cleansing" was the b r u ~ tal expulsion-on the' eve of the 1995NATO air strikes-of hundreds of thousands of Serbs by the Croatian regime ofHolocaust apologist Franjo Tudjman withWashington's connivance! The nationalist bloodletting in the former Yugoslaviawas a direct result of capitalist counterrevolution, which dismembered that bureaucratically deformed workers statealong national lines. Under capitalism,such forced population transfers arethe way homogenous nation-states arecarved out of formerly interpenetratedpopulations.In any case, as a Jewish Holocaustsurvivor in Belgrade, who stressed thathe is no supporter of either Milosevic orSerb attacks on ethnic Albanians, toldthe New York Times (9 April): "I don'tat all agree that this is genocide. There\Vas no effort to exterminate an entirerace-men, women and childrenmerely because of their relig

Workers Vanguard No 711 - 16 April 1999

Documents

Transcript of Workers Vanguard No 711 - 16 April 1999