Workers Vanguard No 719 - 17 September 1999

7/29/2019 Workers Vanguard No 719 - 17 September 1999

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50C!:No. 719 . . . . 423 17 September 1999

East TimorNo ImperialistIntervention!

AFP

Reuters

IndependenceNow!Indonesian police attack East Timorese on eve of massive vote for independence. Right: Cynically seizing on massacres of East Timorese, Australia prepares"peacekeeping" invasion force under UN fig leaf.SEPTEMBER 13-Yesterday, the Clinton administration announced that theU.S. would join in an imperialist intervention force in East Timor. As the number of East Timorese massacred by Indonesian army-sponsored "militias" grew tothe hundreds and with the capital of Dilivirtually depopulated through forcedexpulsions in the past week, there hasbeen a growing clamor internationally forimperialist "peacekeeping" troops. As theSpartacist League of Australia wrote in aSeptember 4 article in Australasian Spar-tacist (Spring 1999) reprinted below,"Imperialist military intervention meanscontinued neo-colonial oppression, death,destruction and terrible poverty."Imperialist military intervention inEast Timor has no more to do withdefending the population there than didthe U.S.-led war against Serbia and occupation of Kosovo with "humanitarian"concern for the Kosovo Albanians. Onlydays before the U.S. announcement, Clinton aide Samuel Berger cynicallydeclaimed, "Because we bombed inKosovo doesn't mean we should bombDili." Indeed, the only reason the U.S.laid waste to Kosovo and Serbia was toachieve its longstanding aim of inserting a sizeable American military forcethere. In East Timor, Washington's principal concern is to maintain neocolonial"stability" in Indonesia through propping up the blood-drenched p o l i c e - ~ t a t e regime buffeted by two years of politicalupheaval and economic crisis. Fearingfurther turmoil throughout Indonesia asthe army and its militia gangs run amok,the U.S. is promoting a military forcespearheaded by its Australian imperialistally, which has its own very real interestsin the region.Even more flagrantly than overKosovo, liberals and reformists haveembraced "human rights" imperialismin East Timor. Liberal academic NoamChomsky argued for economic sanctionsagainst Indonesia and declared in a recent

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Internet statement, "There is also no reason to shy away from peacekeepingforces to replace the occupying terroristarmy." The Workers World Party's International Action Center participated in aNew York City protest on September 9called by the East Timor Action Networkto demand, "The United Nations mustimmediately send armed peace enforcement personnel to East Timor." In France,Alain Krivine's Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire, which pushed for a European-dominated military intervention inKosovo, now embraces the call for "intervention by an international peace force"in East Timor (Rouge, 9 September).In Australia, there has been a growingfrenzy in favor of imperialist intervention, as more than 10,000 rallied in Sydney on S e p t e m b ~ r 11. The day before,some 25,000 marched on the Indonesianconsulate in Melbourne, burning Indonesian flags and chanting, "Indonesia out!UN in!" Marching in lockstep behind theAustralian capitalist rulers in this orgy of"human rights" chauvinism has been anarray of fake-left groups, notably including the International Socialist Organisation (ISO). As the article below pointsout, the ISO has pushed for sanctionsagainst Indonesia under the guise oftrade-union bans by the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), whoseLaborite leadership has stood at the headof demands for troops into East Timor.Now, the ISO has explicitly lined upbehind military intervention, endorsing aMelbourne demonstration call with the

slogan, "Indonesia Out-PeacekeepersIn," confirming that their call for tradeunion bans was no expression of proletarian solidarity with the East Timorese butpurely a "labor" gloss for Australianimperialist economic sanctions. Thusthe ISO aids the ACTU bureaucracy inchaining the Australian proletariat to itsclass enemy and to the enemy of the EastTimorese and Indonesian masses. We say:No to imperialist sanctions!While the fake left marches for imperialist intervention, the ICL uniquely andurgently fights for internationalist unityin struggle by the proletarians of theregion against the capitalist rulers. Westruggle to win Australian workers to theunderstanding that the capitalist classwhich busts their unions can bring nothing but more bloodshed to the East Timorese. Australia and the U.S. are the veryimperialist powers which helped orchestrate the 1965 slaughter of hundreds Qfthousands of Indonesian workers, peasants, leftists, women and ethnic Chinesewhich installed the Suharto dictatorship.Today, they are the chief patrons ofSuharto's hand-picked successor Habibie.Imperialist intervention is counterposed to mobilizing the powerful Indonesian proletariat, which has waged bitterstruggles against the austerity and massunemployment dictated by the International Monetary Fund. Even under theguns of military terror, there have beenregular protests in Jakarta-includingrunning battles with baton-wieldingpolice-over the Indonesian army massa-

cres in East Timor. One student protestertold a BBC reporter, "We feel for the people of East Timor. They deserve theirfreedom." Proletarian revolution is theonly road to liberation for Indonesia'smyriad oppressed peoples. As Marxistrevolutionaries in the U.S., our struggle isto build the internationalist vanguardparty which can lead the proletariat inending the rule of the world's most powerful and deadly imperialist ruling class.

* * *It has just been announced that anoverwhelming 78.5 percent of East Timorese have rejected a sham autonomy dealoffered by Indonesia in a UnitedNations-sponsored "popular consultation," clearly opting for independence. Inthe months before the August 30 vote,

SPAS.TACISTpro-Indonesia death squad "militias"killed hundreds and forced tens of thoucsands from their homes. In the wake ofthe vote, dozens have been killed whileparts of Dili, the capital, and the townsof Maliana and Liquica have beenburned, in an orgy of spiralling violence.These atrocities are being used as thepretext for imperialist intervention in EastTimor. Already more than 300 Australiancops and military advisers are there, partof a 1,000-strong UN force. Thousandsof Australian troops are on 30-minutestandby in Darwin, the largest Australianmilitary force mustered since the VietnamWar. Currently, 7,000 U.S. troops are taking part in "Exercise Crocodile 99"manoeuvres off North Queensland alongwith 15,000 Australians. A British warship in the South China Sea is reportedlyready to sail to East Timor. As proletarianrevolutionaries and implacable foes ofour "own" ruling class, we demand thatthe Australian imperialists, the U.S., theUN and all their lackeys and camp followers get out of East Timor and stay out!The idea that military interventionby Australian and U.S. imperialismwill bring independence and "freedom" to the East Timorese is a horrible lie. These same imperialists oackedIndonesia's annexation of the formercontinued on page 6


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Labor/Black Detroit RalliesBehind Teachers Strike

For over a week, 11,500 members ofthe Detroit Federation of Teachers (DFT)struck in open defiance of Michigan " nostrike" laws and union-busting "schoolreform" plans. The walkout began onAugust 30, as a union meeting erupted inopen rebellion when DFT head JohnElliott presented a "tentative" givebackcontract and called on teachers to keepworking while he negotiated a final deal.The teachers shouted Elliott down, tookover the microphones and voted overwhelmingly to strike, marching out topicket at the Board of Education. Havingopposed the walkout in the first place,the union tops scrambled to bring it toan end as the government threatened toimpose punitive fines mandated by a1994 law baiming all strikes in the publicschools. They finally corralled the teachers back to work on September 8.Even after two decades of capitalistdevastation, Detroit remains a uniontown. While the bourgeois politicians andmedia tried to whip up popular hostility tothe teachers, the city's overwhelminglyblack and working-class population rallied solidly behind the strike by this integrated union. They knew that this strike

was directed against a drive to furthergut a school system in which 90 percentof students are black and half live belowthe poverty level. The New York Times(1 September) observed: "There is nothing like a last-minute teachers strike tothrow parenthood into chaos, but in thisheavily unionized city, many parentslined up today to support the strike thatleft lots of them unexpectedly spendingthe day with their children." Passing drivers honked their horns in solidarity withpicketing teachers. Despite having to lookafter five kids at home, one woman saidtypically, "I think the teachers deservemore money, and they shouldn't workwithout a contract."On Labor Day, September 6, the striking teachers marched at the head of several thousand trade unionists, includingcontingents of the United Auto Workers(UAW). What particularly rattled the cityrulers was that the teachers strike tookplace in the shadow of the pending expiration of UAW contracts with the BigThree. A Michigan Chamber Of Commerce spokesman worried aloud of theprospect that "there's an illegal teachersstrike and that is followed by the UAW

Proletarian Unity and Defenseof Immigrant WorkersAt its Fourth Congress in 1922, the Communist International of Lenin and Trotskydirected its member parties to vigorouslychampion the rights of immigrant workers. This was in stark contrast to the proimperialist labor bureaucracies, whose anti=immigrant chauvinism served then, as itdoes today, to further the capitalis ts' aim

going on strike later this fall." Militantclass struggle, particularly by the powerful UAW, is precisely what's needed toreverse the attacks which have drivendown wages, slashed jobs and pushedthrough massive speedup from heavyindustry to the public sector. But theUAW misleaders are wedded to theprogram of class-collaborationist "partnership" with the auto bosses. On theeve of the September 14 contract expiration, the UAW bureaucracy is workingovertime to prevent a nationwide autostrike.Doing his share to further "classpeace" with the bosses, DFT head Elliottsold out tIle strike only hours after the. Labor Day march, announcing a new dealwith the Board of Education. The teachers succeeded in beating back an attemptto extend the workday an hour and a halfwith no commensurate pay hike. But theboard could nonetheless brag that ithad won two-thirds of its union-busting"school reform" demands. With 40 students crammed into schoolrooms built forhalf that many, and with classes overflowing into the hallways, the teachers' central demand was to reduce class size. Allthey got was a token reduction in classsize in just 44 of 271 schools. Otherwisethe pact is virtually identical to the oneteachers rejected a week earlier.While the teachers remained solidthroughout the strike, the leaders ofthe 17 other school unions without contracts ordered their members to scab onthe strike. It is a measure of the laborbureaucracy's kowtowing to bourgeois"legality" that this was the first teachersstrike in Michigan in five years, ever

APSeptember 3: Detroit teachers strikerally.since the 1994 anti-strike law was passedin the wake of a DFT walkout in 1992.Such cringing before the bosses' antilabor laws was also what killed the long,bitter strike against the Detroit News andFree Press which began in July 1995, asthe bureaucrats hid behind strikebreakingcourt injunctions to disperse mass pickets and channel the struggle into impotent consumer boycotts.The attacks on the Detroit schoolunions are part of a concerted assaultnationwide against teachers unionscarried out with the connivance an


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Proletarian Internationalism in Balkans WarInternational Fund DriveAided Yugoslav WorkersThe following article is adapt-ed and abridged from the currentissue of Spartaco (No. 54155,July 1999), published by theLega Trotskista d'italia, sectionof the International CommunistLeague.From the U.S. to Japan, sections of theInternational Communist League activelyparticipated in the campaign of materialaid launched by the COBAS (Rank andFile Committee) at the Arese, MilanoAlfa Romeo plant, whose goal was to collect a billion lire, some $550,000, for theworkers of Zastava and other factoriesin Yugoslavia bombed by NATO (see

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"As NATO Bombs Factories -CampaignLaunched for Aid to Yugoslav Workers,"WVNo. 713, 14 May). We participated inthis campaign of material aid to the Yugoslav workers in line with our militarydefense of Serbia against the U.S.INATOattack. This campaign gave many' workers in the countries where we are presentthe possibility of making a concrete internationalist gesture in defense of theYugoslav workers and against their "own"imperialist rulers, without giving an iotaof political support to the Serbian capitalist regime of Slobodan Milosevic.Throughout the war, the ICL raised thecall: Defeat imperialism through workersrevolution-Defend Serbia!

Zastava auto plant destroyed by U.S./NATO bombing in April. September 9COBAS letter confirms receipt of "funds collected by the sections of theInternational Communist league (ICl) and its fraternal defense organizations .. equal to 19,690,713 lira and it has been entirely depOSited in thefund for the Yugoslav workers (at Zastava}." Top letter from Zastava toCOBAS confirms receipt of fund drive collections.

We oppose the predatory imperialist"peace," dictated by the world's bloodiest mass murderers, which has turnedKosovo into a NATO protectorate. Thiswas NATO's goal from the beginning,despite its cynical pretense of protectingthe Kosovo Albanians. As we warned,the NATO occupation has led to pogromist terror against Serbs and Roma (Gypsies) and the forcible expUlsion of theoverwhelming mass of the Serbian population, while placing the Albanianmajority directly under the thumb of theimperialists. Today we demand: Downwith the imperialist occupation-AllU.S.INATO/UN troops out of the Balkans now!The campaign of material aid initiatedby the COBAS was an expression ofbroader proletarian opposition to theimperialist war against Serbia, particu-

larly in Italy. More than a million workers took part in the May 13 strike calledby the COBAS against the war; opposition to the war was also evident at thenational metal workers demonstration forthe renewal of their contract and in manyother workers' struggles at a local level.On May 28, pacifist groups in Triestestopped a military train transportingarms in preparation for a threatened landinvasion. In an internationalist gesture,workers in Veneto published leaflets inItalian, English, Serbian and Albanianthat said: "This is not an 'American' war;the European governments, in large partheaded by social democrats, are involvedin it" (Liberazione, 30 May).The leading trade-union bureaucratssupported this war, carried out in Italy bya government led by the reformist Partyof the Democratic Left (PDS). But manyworker militants, local branches of thereformist Rifondazione Comunista (RC)

Money Sent by ICL Sections and Fraternal DefenseOrganizations to COBAS Account for the Zastava CampaignItemization by country of funds collected by the ICL and fraternal organizationsand confirmed by COBAS in their receipt dated 9 September 1999.Country Defense Group or IC l Section U.S. $ Total*

Australia Partisan Defence Committee 834.49Britain Partisan Defence Committee 2,359.23Canada Partisan Defense Committee 756.25France Comite de defense sociale 420.71Germany Komitee fOr soziale Verteidigllng 1,104.30Ireland Partisan Defence Committee 404.77Italy Comitato di difesa sociale e proletaria 348.26Japan Partisan Defense Committee 520.86Mexico Grupo Espartaquista 351.09Poland Platforma Spartakusowcow 79.03South Africa Spartacist South Africa 18.07U.S. Partisan Defense Committee 3,534.40Total $10,731.46

* At September 9 rate of exchange for Italian lira, amounting to a total of 19,690,713 lira.In addition to the above, another US$ 686.30 was wired from New York by the Partisan DefenseCommittee on 7 September, which has not yet been received in the COSAS account.

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and others enthusiastically participatedin the campaign of aid to Yugoslav workers. Meanwhile, the leadership of RC,which until last year had been a key propof the capitalist popular-front government, preached confidence in the UnitedNations and called for a conference ofEuropean capitalist powers to resolve theBalkans crisis when the NATO bombingstarted. The bureaucrats of RC did notlift a finger for this campaign when itcounted, during the imperialist bombing.Only after the NATO occupation begandid RC's Liberazione and the CGILtrade-union federation publicize a tour ofItaly by Zastava workers appealing forsolidarity.Sections of the ICL and their fraternallegal and social defense organizationsraised a total of nearly $12,000 for thecampflign of aid to Yugoslav workers.More importantly, while the campaignwas launched by the COBAS mainly as anational effort, the ICL fought to extendthis important campaign internationally.As a comrade of the LTd'I said at theMay 15 meeting in Bologna setting up theCommittee for Aid to Yugoslav Workers:"The proletariat must be mobilized as aninternational class and as a revolutionaryopposition to the power of the imperialistbourgeoisie. Italy, the United States andGermany are capitalist powers, but theyare also societies divided into classesin which the workers, ethnic andracial minorities and immigrants sufferthe exploitation and oppression of thedominant capitalist classes and have

every reason to desire the defeat of'their' bourgeoisie. In spite of the antiAmerican chauvinism of the Italian left,the proletariat and the oppressed of thatcountry are the best allies of the Serbianand Italian working class."In Germany, Social Democratic chancellor Gerhard SchrOder-whose government sent German troops into combat forthe first time since World War II-triedto stifle popular opposition to the waragainst Serbia, which had suffered underNazi occupation. On May 18, Berlinpolice detained two Spartakist salesmenin front of the Daimler-Chrysler factoryto stop them from collecting funds forthe campaign (see "Support Fund Drive

for Yugoslav Workers UnderU.S.INATO Attack!" WV No.714, 28 May). Meanwhile, theyallowed thousands of buckets tobe passed around for the Kosovorefugees, because that bolsteredthe government's pretext for thismurderous war. A Spartakist WorkersParty protest statement pointed to theZastava workers' history of class struggle, including an important strike two anda half years ago against the bourgeoisnationalist Milosevic regime, which hadfired more than half of the workforce inthe wake of capitalist restoration. Thestatement declared that the "murderousact of NATO terror against them-likethe bombing of other key factories thathave so far destroyed the workplaces of ahalf million workers-was intended as awarning to the proletariat throughout theBalkans."In the imperialist "belly of the beast" inthe U.S., our comrades collected fundsfrom trade unionists outside workplacesand union meetings, including among theheavily black and immigrant New YorkCity transit workforce. In Britain, whereTony Blair's Labour government distinguished itself as the most bellicose of theNATO powers, shop stewards from theCowley car plant, workers at Ford Dagenham near London and London Underground transit workers contributed. So,too, did immigrant workers-in Britainand elsewhere in Europe-who are on thereceiving end of racist state repressionand the fascist terror it spawns and did notbuy into the cynical "humanitarian" pretext for NATO's Balkans war.In Mexico, the Grupo Espartaquistawas invited to address and pass the hatamong 600 delegates of the trade unionof workers at the National AutonomousUniversity in Mexico City; which hasbeen rocked by militant protests againstthe imposition of tuition. In Japan, at a50,OOO-strong protest on May 22 againstrevisions to the Japan-U.S. securitytreaty, metal workers, medical workersand rail workers reached into their pockets to give to the campaign-as did youthsupporters of the Communist Party,despite their leaders' attempts to excludeand silence us. And students from theChinese deformed workers state studyingin the U.S., Canada and A u s t r a l i ~ donatedto the fund drive, at protests againstNATO's bombing of the Chinese embassyin Belgrade.Fake-Left Drummer Boysfor Imperialist War

While anger and revulsion against theNATO slaughter were widespread, thecapitulation of an array of ,so-called"socialist" outfits to their "own" bourgeoisies and their social-democratic lackeys was limitless. A case in point is TonyCliff's British Socialist Workers Party(SWP) and its international co-thinkers,including the International Socialist Organization (ISO) in the U.S. and, in Italy,supporters of the newspaper Comunismodal Basso (who are buried inside RC).When our comrades of the SpartacistLeague/Britain first collected for the funddrive at a May 8 London antiwar protest,a number of SWP members contributed.But the SWP leadership soon brought ahalt to this.After the war, the ISO's SocialistWorker (30 July) declaimed, "U.S. andNATO talk of 'humanitarianism' was acover-for committing the w o r s ~ warcrimes of this disgusting war." But whilecontinued on page 11

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Saffold/Sipa Michael SchwartzCoast Guard seizes Chinese immigrants aboard Pai Sheng, San Francisco, 1993. Garment workers rally against sweatshops in Manhattan's Chinatown, August1998. Labor must organize immigrant workers and combat anti-immigrant racism.

I'DII ~ i t i z e n s t i i p Rigtits for ~ I I Immigrants!Throughout its history, the Americancapitalist class has amassed untold riches

through the blood, sweat and toil ofwave after wave of immigrant workers.From Michigan auto plants and Ckicago slaughterhouses to New York Citygarment factories, immigrant workerslaboring in grimy, debilitating and lifethreatening conditions have helped produce the vast wealth which pays for theyachts and mansions of the Rockefellersand Kennedys, and for the vast police andmilitary forces which exist to repressany rebellion by capitalism's wage slaves.Today, a mere five-minute walk fromthe glittering skyscrapers of Wall Street,immigrant workers from China slaveaway in garment sweatshops and restaurants under conditions on a par with thosefaced by their predecessors a century ago.The plight of these workers is graphically depicted in a recent book -titled For-bidden Workers: Illegal Chinese Immi.grants and American Labor (1997) byPeter Kwong, chair of the Asian American Studies Program at New York City'SHunter College. In this book centeringon New York City'S Chinatown sweat-

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Spartacist LeaguePublic Offices-MARXIST LlTERATUREChicagoTues.: 5-9 p.m. and Sat.: 12-3 p.m.328 S. Jefferson St., Suite 904Chicago, IL . Phone: (312) 454-4930

Los AngelesSaturday: 2-5 p.m.3806 Beverly Blvd., room 215 (near Vermont)Los Angeles, CA Phone (213) 380-8239OaklandSaturday: 1-5 p.m.1634 Telegraph, 3rd Floor (near 17th Street)Oakland, CA Phone: (510) 839-0851New York CityTues.: 6:30-8:30 p.m. and Sat.: 1-5 p.m.299 Broadway, Suite 318 (north of Chambers SI.)New York, NY Phone: (212) 267-1025San FranciscoSaturday: 11 a.m.-1 p.m.564 Market St., Suite 718San Francisco, CA Phone: (415) 395-9520

Garment sweatshopin Manhattan. UNIT!;:labor tops betrayinterests of thesemainly womenimmigrant workers,collude withsweatshop bosses.

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shops, the third in his series of historiesof Chinese workers in America, Kwongtells a story that has seen the light of dayas rarely as the workers themselves did.He focuses on the most recent wave ofChinese immigrants-from the coastalprovince of Fujian-who literally mortgage their lives to human smugglersknown as "snakeheads." Kwong describes how, after arriving in the U.S.,these immigrants are "exploited by theiremployers, mistreated by the snakeheads, misunderstood by their fellowChinese, unwelcomed by the Americans,and unprotected by the law_"The main catalyst for this latest wave ofimmigration is the economic desperationon the Chinese mainland fostered by theStalinist bureaucracy's program of "market reforms." With collectivized agriculture destroyed in the 1980s and withwhole swathes of industry being privatized, the "iron rice bowl" of guaranteedjobs, housing and benefits has been shattered. As Trotskyists, we call for unconditional military defense of the bureaucratically deformed workers state inChina against imperialist attack and internal counterrevolution. The social gains ofthe 1949 Revolution are under increasingattack by the Beijing'bureaucracy as itrushes headlong toward capitalist restora-

tion. As China teeters on the brink of capitalist counterrevolution, what is urgentlyneeded is a proletarian political revolution to oust the Stalinist bureaucracy,revive and defend the nationalized economy and fight to promote socialist revolution internationally. The InternationalCommunist League seeks to forge theTrotskyist party needed to lead that political revolution to victory.The horrific conditions suffered byChinese smuggled into the U.S. werehighlighted when the Golden Venture ranaground off Rockaway Beach in the NewYork City borough of Queens in 1993.The 286 Chinese immigrants on boardwere immediately arrested; many remained in Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) prison hellholes foryears. Coming just two weeks after thearrest of 200 Chinese immigrants disembarking in San Francisco from thefreighter Pai Sheng, the grounding of theGolden Venture added fuel to the virulent, bipartisan anti-immigrant campaignpushed by the Clinton White Houseand Congress. In defense of these immigrants, the Spartacist League and PartisanDefense Committee initiated protests outside INS offices in New York City andSan Francisco, which received coveragein the Chinese-language press. The pro-

tests demanded: Free the Chinese immigrants-Stop racist INS deportations!Full citizenship rights for all immigrants!Deprived of legal rights, undocumented Chinese immigrants are forced toslave away for crumbs, serving to drivedown wages and worsen conditions for allworkers. In our protests, we stressed theneed to mobilize the labor movement totake up the fight against anti-immigrantracism and to bring these immigrantworkers into the unions. But the procapitalist trade-union tops join the capitalist rulers in pushing calls for strongeranti-immigrant laws. In his book, Kwonggraphically depicts how Chinese immigrant workers in the garment sweatshopshave been ignored, betrayed, vilifiedand sold out by the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees(UNITE) misleaders, giving Chinatownbosses fertile ground to warn workers tostay.away from the "white man's unions."As we noted in the ICL Declaration ofPrinciples (Spartacist [English-languageedition] No. 54, Spring 1998):"Modern capitalism, i.e., imperialism,reaching into all areas of the planet, in thecourse of the class struggle and as economic need demands, brings into the proletariat at its bottom new sources ofcheaper labor, principally immigrantsfrom poorer and less-developed regionsof the world-workers with few rightswho are deemed more disposable in timesof economic contraction. Thus capitalismin ongoing fashion creates different strataamong the workers, while simultaneouslyamalgamating the workers of many different lands. Everywhere, the capitalists,abetted by aristocracy-of-Iabor opportun

ists, try to poison the class consciousnessand solidarity among the workers byfomenting religious, national and ethnicdivisions. The struggle for the unity andintegrity of the working class againstchauvinism and racism is thus a vital t askfor the ~ r o l e t a r i a n vanguard."Labor Must ChampionImmigrant Rights!

, Seeking escape from the devastationwrought by "market reforms," many Fujianese fork over up to $5,000 to thesnakeheads as a down payment, promising under penalty of death to pay as muchas $30,000 later. This is 'flO far beyondtheir means that it requires years ofWORKERS VANGUARD


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indentured servitude to payof f. To evadeU.S. immigration agents, the immigrantstravel under conditions Kwong likened tothe Middle Passage of the African slavetrade. He describes the ordeal of Mrs. Linand her husband as representative:"Some 217 people were squeezed underthe deck, lined up head to head withbarely enough space to lay down. Mostpassengers suffered from seasickness assoon as the ship sailed into open water,but there were no adequate bathroomfacilities. They were not allowed to getfresh air on deck because the snakeheadenforcers feared detection and escape.They were given only a few mouthfuls ofrice, some pickled vegetables, and asmall glass of water a day."

This nightmarish journey is just arehearsal for what's in store once theimmigrants reach U.S. shores to partakeof the "American Dream." The Fujianeseinterviewed by Kwong said they wouldnever have made the decision to come tothe U.S. if they had known what thingswould be like. While some have foundjobs in construction or in electronicsshops in New York City, the vast majority of men are farmed out to work in restaurants as dishwashers and making.deliveries, while most women end up insmall garment factQries. In the Chinatown garment sweatshops, which generally work under contract to majordesigners, these women work such longhours-often with their children besidethem-that they sleep in the factories orbring work home. They are paid belowminimum wage, if they see their pitifulwages at all. The Department of Labor,which is responsible for "enforcing"what minimal labor laws exist, acts incahoots with the INS by reporting workers who complain about their hideousexploitation.Kwong describes how these immigrants typically have such little interaction with anyone outside of their ethnicenclave that some of them refer tonative-born Americans as lao wai-"foreigners." Preying on and fostering thisisolation, Chinatown bosses wield fearsof anti-immigrant repression and antiAsian racism to quell class conflict in thename of "ethnic solidarity." The Chinesesweatshop owners justify the starvationwages they pay by pointing to the lowprices they get from the lao fan (barbarian) manufacturers they produce for.Conditioning the drastic decline ofconditions in this industry has been thesurrender by the AFL-CIO bureaucracy ofhard-won union gains in major industrieslike steel, auto and trucking. In an industry with many small shops engaging incutthroat competition, garment workerswho demand better wages and conditionsface threats of closure or "bankruptcy"from the employers. With debilitatingpiecework the norm, the price per garment is constantly plummeting. Kwongcites the case of a typical New York Chinatown worker who now labors 12 hoursa day for $30. In the early 1980s, sheaveraged $40-50 per day. Practices like

home work and child labor, outlawedlong ago, are widespread. Kwong reportsthat several Hong Kong manufacturershave relocated their operations to NewYork City to take 'advantage of cheaperlabor costs!Despite self-serving appeals to "ethnic solidarity" by Chinatown capitalists,Fujianese immigrants often face viciousreaction from bourgeois layers in the Chinese community. Currently in Vancouver,Canada, Chinese businessmen and professionals are in the forefront of a chauvinist campaign for stricter immigrationlaws sparked by the arrival of hundreds ofmainland immigrants smuggled into thecountry this summer by ship. Everywherethey turn, the message is clear: immigrantworkers have no rights.The Fujianese are but one segment ofthe growing immigrant component ofthe U.S. proletariat, from Haitians and

Dominicans on the East Coast to Mexicans and Asians throughout the country.Hispanic immigrant workers played acrucial role in UNITE's recent organizingvictory at Fieldcrest Cannon in Kannapolis, North Carolina, whose owners hadrepulsed repeated unionization efforts for93 years. As the basic defense organizations of the working class, the tradeunions must take up the demand thateveryone who makes it to the U.S."legal" or "illegal"-has the right to stayhere, and must champion the call for fullcitizenship rights for all immigrants. Successful struggle against the exploitersrequires a fight to defend and organizeforeign-born workers into the unions withfull rights and protections.The defense of immigrant rights is necessarily intertwined with the fight againstthe racist oppression of black people,which is central to American capitalism.To prop up their system of exploitation, the racist rulers seek to pit whiteagainst black, and all against the desperate immigrant. Aggressive union organizing drives, with special measures torecruit black, immigrant and other minority workers, are crucial to revitalizing the

labor movement. But this requires astruggle inside the unions against thechauvinist, pro-capitalist labor bureaucracy and for a new, class-struggle leadership which recognizes that the interests ofcapital and labor are counterposed.UNITE Tops' Partnershipwith Garment Bosses

Immigrant garment workers, mostlywomen, have played a vital and inspiringrole in building the unions in this industry which gave rise to the epithet "sweatshop." The International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) was builtlargely by young East European Jewishand Italian women, many of them socialists, who braved arrests, court injunctionsand imprisonment. Their struggles arecommemorated around the world byInternational Women's Day, March 8,which originated in a march in Man-

1993 Spartacist/POC protests inSan Francisco(left) and New YorkCity followingarrest of Chineseimmigrants aboardPai Sheng andGo/den Venture.

hattan's Lower East Side in 1908 bywomen needle trades workers demandingan eight-hour day, an end to child laborand equal suffrage for women. In 1909,some 20,000 seamstresses walked offtheir jobs in protest against horrific workconditions. Two years later, 146 seamstresses perished in the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire because the exits had beenlocked by the employer. Popular outragein response to this heinous crime of capitalist greed compelled the bourgeoisie toimplement the country's first factoryreform laws. By the end of World War I,clothing workers were among the bestorganized in the U.S., with 100,000 duespaying union members by 1920 and overdouble that a dozen years later.But the gains won through courageous battles were squandereQ' by theclass collaborationism of the union'santi-Communist leaders, exemplified byright-wing social democrats David Dubinsky of the ILGWU and Sydney Hillman of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers (ACWA), who tied the unionsto Franklin D. Roosevelt's "New Deal"Democratic Party. While occasionallyspouting "socialist" rhetoric, Dubinsky

was a practiced master in class collaboration who feared any sign of labor militancy like the plague. Despite massiveupsurges of labor struggle in the 1930sand '40s, the ILGWU did not have a single major strike from 1933 to 1958.Hillman was, if anything, even moreslavishly pro-Democrat, serving on agovernment anti-labor board under Roosevelt during World War II.As the garment workforce in New Yorkbecame largely Puerto Rican and black inthe 1950s, the ACWA and ILGWU-topsincreasingly abandoned even the pretenseof representing the workers' interests.Today, Chinese women workers make upa significant part of the membership ofUNITE, which resulted from a 1995 merger of the ILGWU and the AmalgamatedClothing and Textile Workers Union(itself the product of an earlier mergerof the ACWA and the Textile Workers

Union). These Chinese immigrant workers have demonstrated tremendous courage and fighting capacity, braving thecops and the Chinatown gangs who act asthe bosses' capos as well as the hatedINS. In 1982, 20,000 workers pouredout for an ILGWU rally in Chinatown.Kwong estimates that almost 90 percent of seamstresses working in Manhattan's Chinatown are members of UNITELocal 23-25.But the UNITE leadership under JayMazur carries on the DubinskylHillmantradition of class treachery, working inconcert with the garment bosses andshunning any fight for their members'most basic rights. While the union haswon health care for its members, a 1992survey showed that non-union workersearn on average $4.97 per hour whileILGWU members made only $3.73. TheUNITE bureaucracy has literally sold outits members in pursuit of class peacethrough a scheme called "liquidated damages"-with top American clothing retailers and designers who regularly gracethe pages of Cosmopolitan, Vanity Fairand the New York Times. The Villagecontinued on page 8

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East Timor .. ElSTT.MOR(continued from page 1)Portuguese colony in 1975, leading tothe deaths of more than 200,000 EastTimorese. For 30 years they supportedand armed the bloody dictator Suhartowhile training the Indonesian army,including the Kopassus special forceskillers. These are the imperialists whodevastated tiny Serbia and are now occupying Kosovo, overseeing brutal ethniccleansing and pogromist terror againstSerbs and Gypsies there. These are theimperialist mass murderers who slaughtered millions in their losing effort todefeat the Vietnamese revolution.

Stop the KillingIndonesia OUTPeacekeepers INSocial-chauvinismvs. Trotskyismin Australia:DSP/Resistanceat September 11Sydney rally andleaflet forMelbourne demodemandingimperialist"peacekeepers"endorsed bySocialist Worker(ISO); right ,September 9Spartacist campusspeakout.

II HtII i: WIII .... _"'''--''---'''

Imperialist military intervention meanscontinued neo-colonial oppression, death,destruction and terrible poverty. For theimperialist rulers, who make fabulousprofits exploiting the masses of the Asianregion, an overarching purpose of military intervention is to prop up capitalistrule and suppress social struggle, particularly in Indonesia with its militant working class. In the context of the drive forcapitalist counterrevolution in China and'imperialist sabre rattling over Taiwan, amove into East Timor raises the spectre ofa military threat to China and the otherbureaucratically deformed workers statesin Asia, Vietnam and North Korea. Forthe racist Australian rulers, occupation ofEast Timor would not only forcibly asserttheir "interests" in the region, but wouldalso provide a means of keeping out desperate refugees. Portugal wants its pieceas well.In laying the basis for what they wantto ensure is stable neo-colonial rule, theimperialists are assisted by the East Timorese petty-bourgeois nationalist leaderswho have been demanding armed imperialist intervention. Agreeing that EastTimor should become a UN "protectorate" for the next five years, they are bidding to become frontmen in the exploitation of their "own" people.We say that the real and only allies ofthe desperately poor people of EastTimor are the international workingclass, from the multi-millioned proletariatof Indonesia to the workers of the imperialist countries in the region, Australiaand Japan. This is the program of prole-tarian internationalism. The Australianworkers movement has a particular dutyto oppose the intervention of its "own"rulers, racist overlords of oppressed neocolonies from Papua New Guinea to Fiji.We fight for union bans on Australianmilitary goods as part of the struggle todefeat imperialism. The maritime workers refusing to handle war goods destined for the imperialists' attack on Vietnam stands as a proud example ofinternationalist solidarity.

In Indonesia, a prison house of peoples, the proletariat must struggle to trimscend the dominant Javanese chauvinismfostered by the bourgeoisie. A Trotskyistparty in Indonesia would fight to mobi-

John Reidlise the working class in urgent protestand struggle to demand Indonesia get outof East Timor, while opposing imperialistintervention. Championing independencefor East Timor, it would fight for theright of self-determination of all theoppressed peoples in the archipelago.In Indonesia, a country of belated capitalist development, all wings of thebourgeoisie are so tied to imperialismand fearful of the proletariat, that theyare incapable of fulfilling the tasks historically associated with the bourgeoisdemocratic revolution-national liberation, agrarian revolution, legal equalityfor women and political democracy.Achieving these tasks and putting an endto the brutal exploitation of the massesrequires the proletarian seizure ofpower-the Trotskyist program of per-manen t revolution. To consolidate proletarian rule in the face of hostile imperialism and lay the foundation for socialisteconomic development in backwardIndonesia requires a struggle for socialistrevolution internationally, in imperialistAustralia, Japan and the U.S., andthroughout the Asian region.Laborite Left: "CriticalSupport" to ImperialismThe Labor Party, notably its foreignaffairs spokesman Laurie Brereton, hasbeen the most hawkish in demanding theAustralian military go into East Timor,while the ACTU union bureaucrats havecalled for 5,000 troops to be sent andthe Northern Territory Trades and LaborCouncil calls for economic sanctionsagainst Indonesia. This is chauvinism andclass treason, the effect of which is to callon the Australian rulers to wage war onneo-colonial Indonesia. In the wake of theALP/ACTU come the Laborite left. Theseleftists do not oppose imperialism as asystem, but instead seek to pressure thecapitalists into aqopting a "progressive"foreign policy. They are purveyors of thedeadly fiction that there can be "humanitarian" imperialism.The Democratic Socialist Party (DSP)has long demanded that Australia "act" indefence of the East Timor.ese, and their

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paper Green Left Weekly has featured regular calls for UN intervention. Now, inthe person of Jon Land, spokesman fortheir front group Action in Solidarity withIndonesia and East Timor (ASIET), theDSP openly calls for a UN military force:"In the context of the unrelenting violence by the pro-integration militias, aUN peacekeeping force for East Timorshould be given critical support. Anarmed UN peacekeeping force would actas a deterrent to the destabilisation campaign by the militias and the Indonesianmilitary."-Green Left Weekly, 1 SeptemberThe DSP's support is "critical"because, they say, "Interventions by UNforces elsewhere have often had disastrous consequences." This is a revoltingalibi for UN-sanctioned slaughter, starvation and political subjugation. Look atIraq. In the name of the UN, this countrywas bombed to oblivion in 1991, andsince then, the UN's embargo has killedwell over a million people. Australiannavy vessels to this day patrol the PersianGulf enforcing UN sanctions against Iraq.From the Korean war to the Congo,Somalia and Cambodia, UN "peacekeeping" interventions are aimed at imposingthe diktats of the imperialist powers.The International Socialist Organisation (ISO) have said they are opposed toAustralian troops to East Timor, but theyrefuse to call for the Australian cops andmilitary advisers there now, much lessthe UN, to get out. Prettifying Australianimperialism, tney write, "Instead of sending troops, the government should besending unconditional aid" (SocialistWorker, 12 March) and they back theunion tops' pro-imperialist calls to ban alltrade with Indonesia. .Workers Power (WP) claims to opposeAustralian imperialism, but t h ~ y too, donot demand Australia get out. In fact theygive tacit approval to the UN presence inEast Timor, demanding the recent vote beoverseen "by representatives of not justthe UN, but of the world labour movement" (Workers Power, August-October)!WP seems to think that imperialist occupation is a pre-condition for workers revolution. As in Kosovo, where WP's British co-thinkers conjure up the possibility

of socialist revolution under NATO bayonets, in East Timor they call for a "popular militia," "councils of workers', peasants' and students' delegates," and "aWorkers' and Peasants' Government," allunder the eye of the UN!The DSP have long been the local press

AustralaSian Spa rtacistagents for the People's Democratic Party(PRO) in Indonesia. Recent months haveseen waves of worker protests and strikesin Indonesia, and in this volatile situationthe PRD has grown. PRO militants haveshown great courage in the face of heavystate repression, and workt


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Defend China Against Imperialist Attack and Internal Counterrevolution!"Chinese Spy" HysteriaWhips Up Anti-Asian RacismThe months-long witchhunting campaign against Taiwanese-born scientistWen Ho Lee, fired from Los AlamosNational Laboratory in March on suspicion of providing classified informationon the W-88 U.S. nuclear warhead toChina, has now fizzled out in the absence

of even a shred of evidence of espionage.Lee, an American citizen, was the central(but unnamed) focus of the recent reportof the House select committee headedby California Republican CongressmanChristopher Cox. Released in late May,the Cox Report, which was endorsedby every Democrat on the committee,labeled each and every one of the tens ofthousands of mainland Chinese students,scientists and others residing in the U.S.as potential "Communist agents." ThisMcCarthyite witchhunt was championedin particular by the mouthpiece of the"liberal" wing of the American rulingclass, the New York Times.The manufactured hysteria over Chinese espionage is patently aimed atincreasing belligerence toward the Chinese bureaucratically deformed workersstate. Even if Lee had, with purpose ornot, given military secrets to the People'sRepublic of China, this is no crime fromthe standpoint of the international working class. The peasant-based 1949 Chinese Revolution led to the expropriationof the domestic and imperialist bourgeoisie in China, ushering in a planned, collectivized economy providing jobs, food,housing and education to all. Althoughthe working class was excluded frompolitical power, the 1949 Revolution wasa gain for the proletariat internationally.Our unconditional military defense ofChina and the other remaining deformedworkers states-Vietnam, Cuba andNorth Korea-against imperialism andinternal counterrevolution necessarilyincludes defense of the right of thesestates to amass and test nuclear weaponsand to obtain them by whatever meansnecessary.We recall the persecution of Julius andEthel Rosenberg at the height of theCold War. Driven to frenzy when t,heSoviet Union tested its first atomic bombin the late 1940s, A m e r i c a ~ s rulers targeted, not by accident, this Jewish couple as supposed Communist spies, toserve as sacrificial victims for their lossof a nuclear monopoly. Amid a barrage

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of anti-Semitic agitation, the Rosenbergswere electrocuted in 1953 in the faceof worldwide opposition to this lynching. Heroically, the Rosenbergs spurnedgovernment offers to call off the exe-, cutions if they "confessed" and "namednames" (see "The Death Penalty, AntiCommunism and Anti-Semitism: ThePolitical Execution of Julius and EthelRosenberg," WVNo. 626,28 July 1995).There is little doubt that Wen Ho Leedid nothing except engage in U.S. government-sponsored junkets of Americanscientists meeting with their peers inChina. There is no doubt that he was targeted because of his Chinese origins.Robert Vrooman, who himself faces disciplinary action for failing to unearth thesupposed security breach while counterintelligence ch ief at Los Alamos, noted that"a lot of Caucasians" were not investigated even though they had access toweapons secrets, "and they made contactwith the same people that Lee was in contact with."Wen Ho Lee is not just without a job;he is now without a future in this country.And he is not alone. All those of Chinese extra ction -whether they are graduate students from the mainland or Taiwanor American citizens-are facing exclusion from government-connected jobsrequiring some level of security clearance. A Singapore-born physicist at the

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Amid witchhunt over Chinese"espionage," Los Alamosscientist Wen Ho Lee was drivenout of his job.

City University of New York remarked,"It would take a brave lab administrator tohire someone with a Chinese name." Wesay: Hands off Wen Ho Lee! Give himback his job!Anti-Communism and"Yellow Peril" Racism

The timing of the Cox Reportreleased only weeks after the U.S.bombed Beijing's embassy in Belgrade,touching off furious protests in Chinano doubt conditioned the Chinese government's spirited response. With rarehumor and panache, at a May 31 pressconference in Beijing, the regime broughtout a young computer engineer namedFang Nan, who proceeded to click ontothe Web site of the Federation of American Scientists. As described by the Wash-ington Post (1 June): "The results ofFang's efforts, including a list of everyU.S. nuclear weapon and its specifications, were projected on a large screen.He then searched for W88. Up popped theexplosive yield, weight, length and diameter of the warhead, as well as a description of the specific materials used and itskey design features."Ironically, it was an earlier "Chinesespy" scare that led to the development ofChina's nuclear weapons capacity. Inthe aftermath of the 1949 Revolution,Chinese-born Qian Xuesen, perhaps theforemost jet propulsion expert in the U.S., 'was stripped of his security clearance andremoved from his missile research forsupposedly being an undercover memberof the American Communist Party. Thisseemingly baseless charge relied onQian's personal associations with suspected "reds" at the California Institute ofTechnology, where he was employed andhad been educated. Hounded and threatened with deportation, he requested thathe be allowed to return to China, a country he had left 20 years earlier. In 1955,the U.S. finally agreed, swapping him forAmericans held in Mao's China. Theleading role in the U.S. missile programfell to "former" Nazi Werner Von Braun,a choice far more congenial to the rulersof racist American imperialism.Taking four other Chinese-born scientists with him, Qian soon organized andbuilt virtually from nothing the Chinesemissile program. In 1960, China launchedits first rocket. Lacking eve,n metalworking lathes, workers forged its large circular frame by pushing against it manually.(An interesting account of this little-

known e"pisode in the Cold War can befound in Iris Chang's 1995 book, TheThread of the Silkworm [BasicBooks].)Today, China has the capacity to take outLos Angeles should the U.S. attempt anuclear first strike, making Washingtonthink twice about exerting its "humanrights" pretensions over Tibet against thePeople's Republic as it did against Serbiain the name of the Kosovo Albanians.Despite this history, the racist assumption implicit in the Cox Report is that theChinese are incapable of matching thescientifIC achievements of (white) America. Interviewed by the New York Times(7 September), Cox arrogantly dismissedthe notion that China could "indigenously" develop a miniaturized nuclearwarhead akin to the W-88 even thoughother countries like France did. The official Chinese response to the Cox Report,published in Beijing Review (26 July),pointedly observed that "Cox and othershave underestimated the creativity of theChinese people and Chinese scientists.Even today, they still cling to this manifestation of racial discrimination."The "yellow peril" racism surroundingthis spy scare goes right back to the firstwave of Chinese immigration to the U.S.some 150 years ago. It found extremeexpression when 120,000 Japanese Americans were interned in concentrationcamps in the western U.S. following theoutbreak of World War II in the Pacific.Forced to work in slave-labor conditions,many had everything they owned, including some of America's most valuable farmland, confiscated and soldby the government, without recompense,to white entrepreneurs. Only the thenTrotskyist Socialist Workers Party, andthe Quakers, opposed this racist atrocity.Among those spearheading the currentspy furor is the consummately racistRepublican Senator Jesse Helms. It is noaccident that the anti-Communist, antiAsian witchhunt against Lee has beenpromoted by those with the most obvioussympathies for the Ku Klux Klan.At base, American capitalism rests onthe cornerstone of the race-color casteoppression of black people. Attacksagainst Asian and Hispanic immigrantsnecessarily lead to intensified racismagainst the black masses. With its chauvinist protectionism-directed at the"threat" of cheap labor in Asia, Mexicoand elsewhere-the labor bureaucracyfuels racist reaction not only againstimmigrants in the U.S. but also blackpeople. The first loyalty of the AFL-CIOtops lies with the U.S. imperialist rulingclass, as witnessed not least by their virulently anti-Communist tirades againstChina.Promoting Counterrevolutionin China

The attempt to recreate a McCarthyite"red scare" over China was launched byyahoo Republicans seeking to further theongoing campaign to discredit ClintonThe Cox committee, in fact, was initiallyformed to investigate supposed contributions by the Chinese regime to Clinton's1996 election campaign. But for all theright-wing histrionics, Clinton's "softline" toward China was U.S. policyunder his Republican predecessors Reagan and Bush. Indeed, it was initiated byRepublican Richard Nixon in the early1970s, when he sealed an alliance ~ i t h continued on page 10

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ImmigrantWorkers...(continued from page 5)Voice (14 April 1998) reports: "Giantcompanies like Liz Claiborne, DonnaKaran, Calvin Klein, and Anne Klein paymillions each year to UNITE for the rightto produce garments more cheaply overseas. And it's allowed the union to bankwell over $100 million in pure cash flow."Meanwhile, the corrupt labor tops cynically scream about "foreign sweatshops."Last year, when Liz Claiborne closeda Brooklyn plant, the UNITE Local 600leadership pushed through a deal inwhich the workers who lost their jobsgot a mere $1,200 apiece while the unionreceived $20.5 million from the companyfor services rendered. Indeed, according to the Voice, "Dues from membersnow count for only about a quarter ofUNITE's revenue. Earnings from a $225million securities portfolio along withliquidated damages enable UNITE to runthe highest administrative expenses ofany U.S. union." Less and less beholdento their members even as a dues base, theUNITE misleaders increasingly act simply as lahor contractors for the bosses.The labor tops' cynicism was evidentwhen UNITE members fought to preventa factory in Lower Manhattan from shutting down in late 1997, a tactic commonly used by Chinatown bosses toavoid paying workers after withholdingmonths of wages. Two dozen workerscamped out in front of t h ~ factory to tryto block the removal of machinery andthe garments their labor had produced.The union brass showed their faces onlyafter the workers appeared on the GoodMorning New York TV show. A unionofficial named May Chen told workers tomove away from the building entrance toa police pen down the block and to shout"Boycott sweatshops!" for the TV cameras as they impotently watched moverstake out the factory's machines.Facing hellish conditions, feeling besieged and sensing no interest from theracist, pro-capitalist union bureaucracy,many of these Chinese workers lookto the chimera of "community organizing." This strategy separates workersfrom their potential power as part of theintegrated labor movement and leadsthem to look to the capitalist governmentfor redress. Typical in this regard isthe community-based Chinese Staff andWorkers Association (CSWA). In theearly 1980s, the CSWA was instrumental in organizing pickets against the Silver Palace restaurant management andlater against that at Jing Fong, two ofthe largest restaurants in Manhattan'sChinatown. But lacking a perspective

Just Out!This pamphlet assesses recentchanges in the world economy ina historical perspective, from theorigins of modern imperialism inthe late 19th century through thecapitalist counterrevolution in EastEurope and the former USSR andits aftermath. Reformist ideologuesof "globalization" seek to obscurethe role of the capitalist nation-state and the danger of interimperi-alist war which is inherent in capi-

talism, while amnestying therefusal of the labor bureaucraciesto wage class struggle againsttheir respective bourgeOisies.Exploitation, poverty and socialdegradation can be eliminatedonly through proletarian revolu-tions in the imperialist centers aswell as the neocolonial countries,laying the basis for an interna-tional planned socialist economy.

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mobilizing workers across ethnic linesthroughout the city, the CSWA leaderslook to the capitalist state, relying on enemies of labor and immigrants like theNew York State Attorney General's officeand the Department of Labor.In December 1997, Congressionalright-wingers held hearings on UNITEand the sweatshops at which some disgruntled workers testified against theunion, while some Southern CaliforniaUNITE members have sued the union. AtNew York University (NYU), the Chinese Construction Workers Associationhas regularly protested at constructionsites to demand a quota of Chineseworkers. This effort included appeals tothe NYU administration to force construction unions to comply-an implicitcall on the bourgeois university administration to bust the unions. The racist,job-trusting practices of the craft unionbureaucracies, particularly entrenched inthe construction trades, must be combatted and reversed through a political fightwithin the unions. Instead of anti-union

Imperialism.the IIGlobal Economy"and LaborReformism

Spartacist Publishing Company, Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 101168

Depiction of1885 massacre ofChinese minersin Wyoming.Chinese railroadworkers inCalifornia, 1889.Over 1,200 diedin building oftranscontinentalrailroad.

"community organizing," what is neededis a union fight against discrimination,for union-run minority recruitment programs and for jobs for all.In his book, Kwong states that "protection of the rights of immigrants" is "theultimate challenge for labor," rightlyarguing: "The only way American unionscan survive is by organizing the unorganized; the only way unprotected workingpeople can look to a better future is bybeing part of the larger American labormovement-a revitalized one." But torevitalize the unions, Kwong looks to thelikes of AFL-CIO chief John Sweeney,who follows in Dubinsky's and Hillman'sfootsteps (and is himself a member of theDemocratic Socialists ofAmerica), and to"reform" outfits like Teamsters for aDemocratic Union which specialize indragging the unions into the bosses'courts. Placing his hopes on such ardentadvocates of class collaboration, Kwongnot surprisingly hails the communitybased CSWA and himself appeals to thegood graces of the capitalist state toenforce labor standards as well as measures to prevent runaway shops and callsfor "an international convention againstforced labor migrant trafficking."You canpass all the laws you want, but the economic laws of capitalist production mandate that capital will seek out laborwherever it is cheapest.To do away with the hellish sweatshops, here and abroad, requires sweeping away the entire system of capitalistexploitation.We fight to mobilize labor indefense of the rights of immigrants andall the exploited and oppressed as part ofthe struggle for socialist revolution in theU.S. and around the world.Hideous ExplOitation ofChinese Workers in America

Chinese workers, one of the earliestimmigrant groups, have always facedbrutal racism and discrimination in theU.S. The first significant numbers ofChinese workers in the U.S. came toCalifornia in the l840s-spurred bymassive social turmoil inside China-towork in the gold mines, where theyworked in segregated work gangs. Chinese immigrants were denied citizenshipand the most minimal rights.From the time of the initial influx of

Chinese immigrants before the CivilWar,their treatment was largely conditionedby the defining issue of slavery and thestatus of blacks. The Civil War smashedthe slavocracy in the South, ushering inthe most democratic period in American history, Radical Reconstruction (see"Defeat of Reconstruction and the GreatRail Strike of 1877: The Shaping ofRacist American Capitalism," WV No.701, 20 November 1998). It also allowedindustrial capitalism to develQP throughout the U.S. The Northern bourgeoisie'sbetrayal of Reconstruction-sealed bythe withdrawal of the last Union troopsfrom the South in 1877-also initiated aperiod of intense anti-Chinese racism. AsKwong wrote in the first book in hisseries, Chinatown, N. Y. (1979):"In the congressional debates over Chinese immigration during the 1870s, theissues and antagonism of the war yearsremained very much alive, and any question affecting the Chinese was apt toraise the whole complex specter o f blackliberation. Without a single exception,the anti-Chinese measures were carriedin Congress by a combination of southern and western votes."The years after the Civil War weremarked by a tremendous increase in thepower of American capitalism, mostnotably in the development of the railroads. In the mid-1860s, the CentralPacific Railroad hired thousands of Chinese workers to do the hardest, mostdangerous work for less pay than whiteworkers. Describing the deadly conditions in which the Chinese workers wereforced to slave by the railroad magnates,Kwong writes: "The Chinese carved apath out of the perpendicular cliffs abovethe American River by lowering oneanother in wicker baskets by a pulleysystem to drill holes, inserting gunpowder in the rocks, and then lighting thefuses, quickly hoisting themselves up theline before the explosion." More than1,200 Chinese died while building thetranscontinental railway.This was also a period of intense classwar, as the "Robber Baron" capitalistsfought tooth and nail against the nascentworking-class movement. In June 1867,5,000 Chinese railroad workers struck,demanding equal wages with white workers, a reduction in hours, the abolition ofwhipping and the freedom of any workerto quit at will. The workers surrenderedonly after the Central Pacific cut off foodsupplies to the workers' camp in theSierra mountains. Chinese workers alsoorganized strikes during the late 1800s invarious other industries.With the connivance of the newlyfledged labor bureaucracy, Chinese workers were made scapegoats for a seriesof economic crises during the late 19thcentury. The American Federation ofLabor (AFL) leadership, especially inCalifornia, campaigned to ban Asianimmigration. Rallies in support of the

1985 NYC garment workers rally."Made in U.S.A." protectionismpushed by union tops is poison toclass struggle.WORKERS VANGUARD


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Great Railroad Strike of 1877 degenerated at times into anti-Chinese pogroms.In 1882, Congress passed the ChineseExclusion Act, which all but cut off Chinese immigration and banned naturalization of Chinese immigrants. AFL chiefSamuel Gompers, an outright racistwho is lionized today by "progressive"AFL-CIO chief John Sweeney, arguedthat the "maintenance of the nationdepended upon maintenance of racialpurity and strength." Gompers strove toexclude both black and Asian workers from the unions. "Yellow peril" xenophobia ran deep in the early Americanlabor movement. Thus, the Knights ofLabor, founded in 1869 as one of thefirst national trade-union organizations,accepted black workers into membershipbut barred Chinese workers.Gompers represented what Bolshevikleader V. I. Lenin described as the aristocracy of labor-a stratum which developedwith the advent of the imperialist stage ofcapitalism in the late 19th century. Gompers & Co. derived their privileges as alabor bureaucracy parasitically restingatop the workers movement by acting asthe agents of U.S. imperialism within theworking class. Starting with the 1898Spanish-American War, where the U.S.captured Cuba, ruerto Rico and the Philippines, the American rulers' imperialistwars of racist conquest abroad wereaccompanied by the intensification ofracist repression at home, marked by theconsolidation of Jim Crow segregation,and the cultivation of the chauvinist laborbureaucracy. In 1904, the Exclusion Actwas made permanent, and in 1,907 theU.S. government signed a "Gentlemen'sAgreement" with the Japanese government cutting off Japanese immigration. Itwas not until the middle of World War IIthat the Chinese Exclusion Act wasdropped.For a Class-Struggle FightAgainst Racist Discrimination!

While Gompers and his ilk were virulent in their anti-Asian chauvinism, thereis also a history of interracial class struggle against discrimination and exploitation. The Industrial Workers of the World(IWW), founded in 1905 with the understanding that "the working class and theemploying class have nothing in comm-on," organized across ethnic and raciallines. Their motto was "An open unionand a closed shop." In contrast to Gompers' AFL, the revolutionary-syndicalistIWW fought for industrial unions whichorganized all the workers in an industry,irrespective of skill or race. An IWWpamphlet, Japanese and Chinese Exclu-sion or Industrial Organization, Which?stated:"We the Industrial Workers of the Worldhave organized the Japanese and Chinesein lumber camps, on the farms,' minesand railroads, and the United MineWorkers of America have organizedJapanese in the coal fields of Wyoming.This is proof that they can be organized."-quoted in Philip S. Foner, TheIndustrial Workers of he World,1905-1917 (1965).Many of the best IWW militants, such asJames P. Cannon, joined the early Communist Party (CP) following the 1917Bolshevik Revolution in Russia.The Communist International of Leninand Trotsky, founded two years after theBolshevik Revolution, 'waged a merciless struggle against the chauvinist andclass-collaborationist policies of the pro

imperialist labor bureaucracies and thesocial-democratic parties. In the "Theseson the Eastern Question" passed at itsFourth Congress in 1922, the Comintern specifically warned against thepoisonous influence of anti-immigrantracism within the workers movement inthe U.S., Canada and Australia. Notingthat anti-immigrant "legislation deepensthe antagonism between the colouredand white workers, and splits and weakens the workers' movement," the thesesinstructed the CPs in those countries to"conduct ail. energetic campaign againstlaws prohibiting immigration" (quoted17 SEPTEMBER 1999

in Jane Degras, The Communist Inter-national 1919-1943: Documents, Vol. I[1971]).Breaking down racial and ethnic barriers was integral to building the massCIO industrial unions at the height of theGreat Depression. This included a successful attempt to organize Chineseworkers by the National Maritime Union(NMU). When thousands of Chinese sea- .men were stranded in New York duringthe 1936-37 NMU strike, the unionstrike committee approached the Chineseseamen's organization to urge its members to join the strike. The Chinese seamen agreed, asking in return for equaltreatment, equal wages and the right toshore leave. When the NMU agreed tofight for these demands, 3,000 Chinese

ACWAseamen joined the strike. By fighting forthe rights of black and Asian seamen, theNMU soon surpassed the corrupt andracist AFL seamen's union.But the Stalinist leadership of theNMU, as elsewhere in the CIO, chainedthe union to Roosevelt's DemocraticParty. In their support to U.S. imperialism in World War II, the Stalinists joinedin pushing the vilest anti-Japanese chauvinism, even ordering their JapaneseAmerican members to go into the concentration camps set up by the U.S. government and hailing the A-bomb incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at theclose of the war.Labor Tops in Service ofU.S. Imperialism

The formation of the industrial unionswas a historic gain for the multiracialAmerican working class. But these gainshave been undermined by the procapitalist labor bureaucracy. In the redpurges of the late 1940s and '50s, thousands of militants were driven out of theunions, with social democrats like Dubinsky and Hillman and Walter Reuther inthe United Auto Workers taking the leadin the Cold War witchhunt. Today, theSweeney AFL-CIO bureaucracy turns ablind eye to sweatshop labor in the U.S.while spearheading a chauvinist campaign on behalf of the capitalist rulers to"buy American" and boycott clothingmade abroad, especially in China.In a speech to college students lastyear, Sweeney paid lip service to theplight of sweatshop workers in the U.S.but reserved the bulk of his talk for atirade against China. Expressing theAFL-CIO t o p s ~ concern for the profits

of the American capitalists, Sweeneylamented the unfairness of sweatshoplabor to "the corporations that live up totheir responsibility to share the wealth.""Made in the U.S.A." protectionism isdeadly poison for workers in the U.S.,spreading the illusion that their enemiesare the workers of other countries and notthe American capitalist class. Wieldedagainst China, it also serves the imperialists' drive for capitalist counterrevolution and the reopening of that society tounbridled exploitation.In their appeals to boycott productsmade by foreign sweatshop labor, theAFL-CIO and UNITE bureaucrats conveniently hide the faCt that the "code ofconduct" they push for U.S. capitalistsoperating abroad is routinely violated in

M.E. Sharpe

ACWA

1915 garment strike inChicago. Unions built inheroic struggles wereshackled to capitalistsby pro-Democratic Partybureaucrats SydneyHillman (far left) ofACWA clothing workersand David DubinskyOf ILGWU.

shops organized by UNITE, where garment workers work 70 hours at subminimum wages and without overtime pay.Moreover, in their role as "labor lieutenants" of U.S. imperialism abroad, theAFL-CIO tops have helped to' createthe slave-like working conditions whichdraw American manufacturers to repressive, anti-labor regimes like Indonesiaand the Philippines. Beginning with theclose of World War II, CIA "labor" operatives like Jay Lovestone and IrvingBrown waged war on Communist-led andother militant unions from France andItaly to South Korea at the behest of

American imperialism. Dubinsky longhelped funnel funds and personnel intoCIA anti-Communist plots like the splitting of the French union movement afterWorld War II. One Harry Goldberg wasan operative for Lovestone in Indonesiain the period leading up to the bloodyanti-Communist 1965 coup, which wasbacked by the CIA:The counterrevolutionary destructionof the Soviet degenerated workers stateand the deformed workers states. ofEast Europe has resulted in utter destitution and fratricidal slaughter for theproletariat, while emboldening the imperialists to engage in ever bloodier military adventures, like the recent U.S.!NATO war against Serbia. At the sametime, the capitalist rulers have sought todrive down workers' living standardsworldwide.This only serves to underscore theurgency of the fight to stop the drivetoward capitalist restoration in China,which would plunge a fifth of all humanity into counterrevolutionary chaos andbring to a white heat growing rivalriesamong the major imperialist powers,especially the U.S. and Japan, as theycompete for the spoils. Meanwhile, theAFL-CIO bureaucracy's protectionisttirades have served to fuel anti-Asianracism in the U.S., which has historicallyrun deep particularly in California. Amida huge growth nationwide in racistattacks against Asian Americans, twoyears ago a white street gang in SanFrancisco carved swastikas into thestorefronts of Asian businesses in theSunset District.The pro-imperialist labor tops chainthe workers' power to the capitalist classenemy, chiefly through their support tothe Democratic Party. The working people need their own party. The SpartacistLeague seeks to forge a multiracial revolutionary workers party which champions the cause of all the exploited andoppressed as part of the struggle forproletarian revolution. We fight for aworkers government to expropriate thebourgeoisie and construct an egalitariansocialist society. Only when those wholabor rule can the tremendous wealth ofthis society be used to provide a decentlife for working people, the poor, blacks,the young, the aged and immigrants. Aswe wrote at the time of the Golden Ven-ture (WV No. 578, 18 June 1993):"From the chemical-drenched farmlandsand orchards to the dangerous anti-unionsweatshops and factories throughoutthe country, immigrants and 'illegalaliens' have built this country. The answerto the horrendous conditions these workers labor and live under is not racistINS imprisonment or more corrupt coppatrols against 'crime.' We need a fightinglabor movement that will launch massive campaigns to organize the unorganized workers. It will take revolutionarysocialist leadership to break from theracist traitors in the labor movement andbuild an international workers movement that will be a powerhouse for socialjustice." _ '

,...------- Bound Volumes ----------,Spartaclst (English edition)Volume 1: Issues 1 to 20, Feb. 1964-July 1971Volume 2: Issues 21 to 30,Autumn 1972-Autumn 1980Volume 3: Issues 31 to 40,Summer 1981-Summer 1987Spartaclst (German edition)Volume 1: Issues 1 to 10,Spring 1974-Winter 198182

Organ of the SpartacistLeague/U.S.Volumes 1 to 29, 1970 through 1998include one year of WV except:Volume 1 includes 1970-73Volumes 4 to 9 include six months each,1976-78All volumes are Indexed andavailable on microfIlm.

$25 each Discounts available for larger o r d e ~ s of any combination of WV and Spartacistbound volumes: 3 to 10 volumes $20 each; 11 or more volumes $18 each (includes postage).Now available: I\in I t i' j It I iJ4i" Mit" i

The first bound volume of Women and Revolution, jourr;Jal of the Women's Commissionof the Spartacist League/U.S. The fully indexed clothbound volume contains issues

No.1 (May/June 1971) through No. 20 (Spring 1980). $27 (includes postage)

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"Chinese Spy" . - ~ . (continued from page 7)Mao's China aimed against the SovietUnion. With the Soviet degeneratedworkers state destroyed by capitalistcounterrevolution, U.S. imperialism hasbeen increasingly brazen in its threatsagainst China.The furor over "Chinese nuclear spies"and the supposed missile threat fromimpoverished North Korea, which lastyear launched a ballistic missile thatpassed over Japan, was used to pushthrough a bipartisan bill to revive a limited version of the "star wars" antimissile defense system Reagan had triedto get. The Clinton administration issimultaneously promoting a "theater missile defense" including China's closestneighbors':"-Japan, South Korea and pos- .sibly Taiwan. Such "defense" schemesare aimed at preventingChina-as well as,in the future, Washington's imperialistrivals-from targeting the U.S. in response to an American nuclear first strike.The bipartisan outrage over espionagewhich emanated from Congress was thepurest theatrics. Every government spies,and everyone knows it. Among its innumerable covert operations against China,U.S. imperialism (with the "AFL-CIA" inthe lead) promotes anti-Communist "freetrade unions" in the service of counterrevolution. And the cause of "independence" for Tibet has long been sponsoredby the CIA as a potential lever to smashthe Chinese workers state. U.S. imperialism threatened to invade China during the1950-53 Korean War and has maintainedTaiwan (and South Korea) as a heavilyarmed fortress targeting the mainland.The "hard line" toward China advocated by both the Republican right andliberal Democrats and their lackeys inthe labor officialdom and the "engagement" strategy favored by much of corporate America are complementary, notcounterposed policies. Their shared goalis the overturn of the 1949 Revolution. With the Stalinist bureaucracy driving headlong toward capitalist restoration, American imperialism has, forthe present, opted for a carrot-and-stickpolicy toward the Beijing regime.Although a U.S. military attack on Chinais not currently in the cards, this could

Detroit...(continued from page 2)income of the richest 1 percent of Americans doubled, while the average takehome pay of the poorest 20 percent ofhouseholds dropped from $10,000 to$8,800. While American workers aremaking less money,' they are workinglonger hours than workers in any otherindustrialized country.The attacks on labor take a double tollon black workers, who are "last hired,first fired"-segregated at the bottom ofAmerican capitalist society, generallyconsigned to the worst jobs, the worsthousing, the worst schools. The Detroitarea is one of the most segregated in thecountry. Racist state legislators use"Detroit" as a code word for "black." Arecent study rated the city one of thethree worst in the country in whichto raise a child, while white suburbanLivonia received an "A plus." CapitalistDetroit offers youth no future except alifetime of grinding poverty and unemployment, or death at the hands of racist

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Visitthe le I .Mfeb Site lwww.ic.- f i .org

quickly change if, for example, a fullscale counterrevolution is met by proletarian resistance.The Beijing bureaucracy has beenclamoring for membership in the WorldTrade Organization (WTO) to facilitatefurther capital investment. In holding out

1945 A-bomb incineration of Hiroshima by U.S., world's deadliestnuclear power.WTO membership-which would entaileven deeper encroachments by foreigncapital and further privation of the Chinese masses-the imperialists look toencourage the bureaucratic caste holdingpolitical power in China as it continuesto reintroduce capitalist "discipline" intothe economy. Having already destroyed awide swath of state-owned industry, theStalinist regime under Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Jiang Zemin nowprojects further slaughtering of the state.sector of the economy, with 1.2 milliontextile workers alone scheduled for thescrap heap.The bureaucracy's drive toward capitalist restoration poses a clash with thepowerful Chinese proletariat. The CCPbureaucracy has made very clear its intentto squash opposition by the proletariat,which has displayed its capacity to speakand act militantly in its own name. In theevents around Tiananmen Square in 1989,it was the workers who, throughoutChina, raised demands which challengedthe rule of the venal bureaucracy and militantly resisted the regime's repression.

killer cops like the ones who beat MaliceGreen to death in 1992.The contingents of black and whiteworkers who marched down WoodwardAvenue on Labor Day went past vacantlots and hulks of abandoned buildings.The devastation of Detroit speaks to thetruth that labor and black rights marchforward together or they will surely fallback separately. The trade-union bureaucracy has let these racist, anti-laborassaults continue unabated because of itsallegiance to the capitalist system, expressed through their political support tothe Democratic Party. The anti-union roleof black Democratic Party mayor DennisArcher was obvious to many strikingteachers. As one black striker told Work-ers Vanguard, Archer "is a stooge for bigbusiness and the corporate structure."Yeteven strikers who despise Archer stillhark back to the "good old days" of blackDemocrat Coleman Young, whose "progressive" reputation was promoted by thelabor tops and their reformist tails like theCommunist Party.Young presided over the devastation ofDetroit in the 1970s and '80s , withthe able assistance of the UAW tops inparticular, who helped ensure that thecapitalists would get away with theirattacks without a massive explosion ofclass struggle. While th_e streets wereflooded with cops, 200,000 auto jobswere lost, thousands of city workers laidoff and social services and school funding slashed. In 1982, Young went afterthe teachers union, demanding an 8 per-_ cent pay cut. As we wrote in "ColemanYoung: From CIO Union Organizer toOverseer for Auto Bosses" (WV No. 689,

The most savage repression, includingsummary executions, was exerted againstthe workers who dared to rebel.Buffeted by the centrifugal forces arising from its capitalist market measures,the CCP bureaucracy lashes out at any-thing in society that raises its head.Recently, the regime has cracked downon the reportedly millions-strong FalunGong meditation sect, which has a substantial membership in the growing pettybourgeoisie and in the ranks of the CCPitself. At the same time, the workingclass has continued to wage strugglesagainst the ravages of "market reforms."Defense of the workers' interestsdemands, with immediacy, a proletarianpolitical revolution to oust the Stalinistbureaucracy. Crucial to this prospect isthe building of a Chinese section of theInternational Communist League, firmlygrounded in the revolutionary internationalism of Lenin and Trotsky andarmed with a perspective of promotingsocialist revolution to overthrow theneighboring capitalist states, particularlyby the powerful Japanese proletariat.For New October Revolutions!

Despite the anti-Communist hue andcry by American imperialist reactionariesover Chinese espionage, breakthroughsin nuclear weapons technology-as inscience generally-are never the exclusive preserve of one nation-state. AsPrinceton a c a d ~ m i c Frank von Hippelobserved in response to the spy furor,"No secret stays secret forever" (Scien-tific American, June 1999). In any case,spying itself is at bottom simply a modeof information exchange, an exchangewhich would be open in a world socialistorder.One measure of the power of theplanned economies created by the revolutionary social transformations in backward Russia and China is that scientistswere able in the space of two generationsto achieve the pinnacles of theoreticalprowess in the hard sciences. But, asTrotsky. emphasized in his book The Rev-olution Betrayed, in the absence of proletarian revolution in the advanced capitalist countries, the isolation of theUSSR would inexorably lead to thethrottling of the October Revolution.Promoting the utopian and self-servingnotion of building "socialism in one

24 April 1998; reprinted in Black Historyand the Class Struggle No. 15):"The 'Motor City' was nQt only the center of American capitalism's principalindustry, but also the bastion of Ii powerful and combative black proletariat.When Young was elected mayor in1973, Detroit had experienced yearsof labor ferment and social strugglefrom the 1967 ghetto upheaval to awave of wildcat strikes. Young wasinstalled in office precisely in orderto put a lid on the city's rebelliousblack population and to quell the multiracial workforce in auto, as the bossesmoved to dismantle and decimate theplants which had once provided alivelihood for tens of thousands ofunionized workers. By the time heleft City Hall in 1993, Detroit hadbeen transformed into a crumbling shell,

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

(their) country," the Stalinist bureaucracyopposed proletarian revolution in thecapitalist countries and instead offered amutual co-existence pact to the imperialists. In 1941, Stalin preferred to rely onGerman "promises" of "non-aggression"rather than accept the hard evidence ofthe impending Nazi invasion secured byheroic Soviet spies Leopold Trepper andRichard Sorge. A half century later,Stalin's heirs led the capitalist counterrevolution in league with imperialism.While the Soviet Union existed, itsnuclear arsenal acted to stay the hand ofU.S. imperialism, which had incinerated200,000 civilians in Hiroshima andNagasaki when it had a nuclear monopoly and repeatedly threatened to launchnuclear attacks to "contain Communism"during the Cold War. Today, the marchof U.S. imperialism's military juggernaut has all-sided support in both rulingclass parties. It is aimed not just at theremaining deformed workers states but atthe imperialist competitors of the American capitalist class, despite their currentstatus as U.S. "allies." Born within theconfines of the nation-state, the imperialist powers can only expand in competition with each other, a competition ultimately realized in interimperialist war,the next of which can only end in nuclearholocaust.The human debris of capitalist counterrevolution in East Europe and the former Soviet Union-the jobless, thehomeless and those sick and dying withno access to medical care-are livingtestament that the Trotskyist call forunconditional military defense of thesestates against imperialism and counterrevolution was, in fact, a fight for theprogress of humanity. No less, it underscores the urgency of the fight to stopcapitalist restoration in China today. Theonly road to a secure, plentiful future forhumanity is the overthrow of the capitalist order-centrally U.S. imperialismthrough proletarian revolution, laying thebasis for an internationally plannedsocialist economy. But to begin on theroad to such an order, it is necessary forthose who detest oppression, exploitationand injustice to embrace the program ofTrotskyism and join the fight for areforged Fourth International to lead theproletariat to state power internationally.That is the purpose of the ICL..

emblem of the Midwest 'Rust Bowl'devastated by plant

Workers Vanguard No 719 - 17 September 1999

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Transcript of Workers Vanguard No 719 - 17 September 1999