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No. 743

Exemplified by a revolt of20,000 molybdenum miners inLiaoning province in the industrialnortheast of the country in February, China has seen a rising tide ofworkers' and peasants' strugglesthis year. These struggles have beenaimed against bureaucratic corruption, growing poverty and continuing inroads into the collectivizedeconomy established as a resultof the 1949 Revolution led byMao Zedong's Chinese CommunistParty (CCP).In August, 20,000 peasants protesting extortionate taxes clashedwith units of the People's ArmedPolice in Jiangxi province in .southeastern China. The protestwas reportedly touched off whenlocal authorities banned a bookwritten by members of the rulingCCP advocating a reduction intaxes on peasants. Earlier this year,a OCP internal report estimatedthat there had been over 2,000 violent protests in the countryside in1999, and several million rural residents had joined in either demonstrations or petitions to Beijing.The social turmoil has found anecho on the ideological and cultural plane. A Chinese televisionseries about a mythic Soviet steelworker in the years after the 1917Bolshevik Revolution, based onthe Soviet novel from the Stalinyears, How Steel Is Forged, hasbeen immensely popular. Earlierthis year, a small theater in Beijingstaged a play about Ernesto "Che"Guevara which ended with theactors leading the audience in thesinging of the "Internationale," theinternational workers' anthem.One member of the audience laterwrote in an Internet posting on theneo-Maoist Web site "China andthe World":

"We want to shout out at the top

. . . . C62350C!:

6 October 2000

councils (soviets). Such a politicalrevolution is premised on uncondi-tional defense of the planned, col-lectivized economy which is thesocial foundation of the (bureaucraticallydeformed) workers state.Social Roots of theB u r e ~ u c r a c y

Last year, the Wall Street Journal(1 November 1999)-the premiermouthpiece of American financecapital-ran an article on Jiang,Mianheng, son of Chinese president and CCP leader Jiang Zemin.Jiang Mianheng was until recentlythe dominant figure in the rapidlygrowing China Netcom Corp., thecountry's largest privately ownedtelecommunications company, andcurrently heads several other private firms. The same article pointedout that the son of Chinese premierZhu Rongji is an executive in ajoint venture with the giant WallStreet investment bank MorganStanley.The implicit message of theJournal article is that since thesons of China's top leaders-theso-called "princelings"-are highflying entrepreneurs and even partners with American financiers, therestoration of capitalism in Chinais proceeding smoothly. Every dayChina is supposedly becoming moreand more capitalist. The fact thatthe ruling party still calls itselfCommunist and pays lip service to"Marxism-Leninism," in this view,has little significance in terms of therealities of China's politics today.But the realities of China's politics today are very different, farmore complex and contradictory.At the same time the Journal article appeared, a Beijing journal published an article by one Wei Wei,"At the Doorstep of a New Century." The article stated:of our lungs: only when the work-' -,ing class united together fightsagainst all the imperialists, revisionists and reactionaries and thosespineless traitors can we workersnot lose our jobs, can we trulybecome the masters of the state."Such sentiments are increas State-owned steel plant in China. Beijing regime's moves to shut down or privatize manystate enterprises have provoked wave of workers' struggles.

"The Russian October Revolutionled by Lenin was of undeniablehistorical significance .. . It openedthe road to a bright future for thewhole human race and it demonstrated the possibility of rootingout private property, eliminatingall exploitation and oppression andingly voiced in China today, if'often in more muted form, includingamong sections of the CCP itself. Anarticle in the New York Times (2 July)reporting on the arrest of a retired partycadre who had led protests against thelocal government in Shenyang, capi'tal ofLiaoning province, was headlined "OldLine Communists at Odds with Party inChina." A popular campaign to securehis release, observed the article, "reflectswidespread popular disillusionment withthe Communist Party over corruptionand lost ideals, even among its rank andfile."The molybdenum miners revolt lastFebruary was triggered by massive lay-, offs resulting from the shutdown or privatization of their formerly state-ownedworkplace. A few months later, in May,some 3,000 workers at a metal alloy fac-

7 2527J.81030 7

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tory in the city of Liaoyang, also inLiaoning province, clashed with policeas they protested unpaid wages and pensions. In July; nearly 50,000 miners, railway workers and others demonstrated inLiupanshui in the southern part of China.Again there were battles reported withthe police, as protesters attacked the CityHall and chanted, "For another revolution in China!"The People's Republic of China isheading toward either proletarian pcllitical revolution or capitalist counterrevolu-

tion. As it pursues "market reforms" andopens the door to exploitation by Westernand 'Japanese imperiali sts and the overseas Chinese bourgeoisie, the Beijingregime is paving the way for capitalistrestoration. It is simultaneously preparingthe ground for a new revolutionary proletarian explosion-not a social revolutionwhich would overturn the economic foundations of society as in 1949 but a politi-cal revolution to oust the ruling bureaucracy and to place political power in thehands of workers, soldiers and peasants

lIVe/vet" Po/ice StaRepression in Prag'* S.C.S.h,l.a

realizing the ideal world."Wei's article ends with a political call toarms:"One must deeply understand that thosewho have already tasted the sweetness ofsocialism a n ~ become the masters of thestate will not keep silent for long as theyare losing their status as masters andtheir lives are deteriorating. Those conscious communists who have been educated by Marxism will also consolidatetheir own forces, again firmly unitetogether, and lead the masses to wage aresolute struggle against the representatives of the capitalist class. It must becontinued on page 8

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OCTOBER 3 -As we go to press, thestrike by 4,300 members of the UnitedTransportation Union (UTU) which hasshut down the Los Angeles MetropolitanTransit Authority (MTA) is at a criticalpoint. The union is fighting MTA plans toshift 400 drivers to a four-day workweek--'-forcing them fO be on duty for 13hours'a day at ten hours' pay-and totransfer many operations to "regionaltransportation zones" which would be runby low-wage outfits. The drivers havebeen joined on the picket lines by transitclerks and Amalgamated Transit Union(ATU) mechanics. On Sunday, Democratic governor Gray Davis signed ameasure long demanded by the uniontops ensuring that the proposed regionalspin-offs would be covered by the existing contraCts for four years. ATU president Neil Silver immediately announcedthe price tag for this measure, orderingmechanics to scab: "I f there's a picket

line, it shall be crossed."ATU mechanics answered Silver thismorning by turning out en masse at thecentral maintenance facility to help UTUdrivers stop any scabs from entering. WV .reporters said the few mechanics whoshowed up for work turned back at thesight of the solid picket lines; only onescab was spotted going in. One workersaid, "You don't cross a line. This is a tradition." In fact, it appears that 99 percen tof the ATU members throughout the cityrefused to break ranks with their UTUbrothers and sisters. Later in the morning,about 45 angry mechanics converged inthe parking lot to confront an ATU officialin an impromptu meeting. Someone hadmade a big sign that read, "United WeWill Stand, Divided We Will Fall. ATUMembers Must Remain United. ImpeachNeil Silver!" Our reporters were told thatdiscussion centered on how to fight theunion-busting transit zones, with some

Permanent Revolution vs."Socialism in One Country"In elaborating his theory of permanentrevolution for countries of belated capitalistdevelopment, Leon Trotsky stressed that thetasks of the proletarian dictatorship couldonly be completed through the spread ofsocialist revolution to the advanced capitalist countries. Repudiating this internationalist perspective which animated the October

TROTSKY Revolution of 19/7, the Stalinists embraced LENINthe anti-Marxist dogma that socialism could..be built in a single country. This nationalist "theory," justifying the accommodation toimperialism which ultimately paved the way to the counterrevolutionary destruction ofthe Soviet Union, is even more patently false in a country like China, which is far moreeconomically backward than was the Soviet Union.

The passing of power from the hands of Tsarism and the bourgeoisie into the handsof the proletariat abolishes neither the processes nor the laws of world economy. To besure, for a certain time after the October Revolution, the economic ties between theSoviet Union and the world market were weakened. But it would be a monstrous mistake to make a generalization out of a phenomenon that was merely a brief stage inthe dialectical process. The international division of labour and the supra-nationalcharacter of modern productive forces not only retain but will increase twofold andtenfold theM- significance for the Soviet Union in proportion to the degree of Sovieteconomic .ascent. ...The strength of Soviet economy lies in the nationalization of the means of productionand their planned direction. The weakness of Soviet economy, in addition to the backwardness inherited from the past, lies in its present post-revolutionary isolation, that s,in its inability to gain access to the resources of world economy, not only on a socialistbut even on a capitalist basis, that is, in the shape of normal international credits and"financing" in general, which plays so decisive a role for backward countries ....A realistic programme for an isolated workers' state cannot set itself the goal ofachieving "independence" from world economy, much less of constructing a nationalsocialist society "in the shortest time." The task is not to attain the abstract maximumtempo, but the optimum tempo, that is, the best, that which follows from both internaland world economic conditions, strengthens the position of the proletariat, preparesthe national elements of the future intel1\ational socialist society, and at the same time,and above all, systematically improves the living standards of the proletariat andstrengthens its alliance with the non-exploiting masses of the couptryside. This prospectmust remain in force for the whole preparatory period, that is, until the victorious revolution in the advanced countries liberates the Soviet Union from its present isolatedposition.

-Leon Trotsky, Introduction to the German edition, The Permanent Revolution(March 1930); reprinted in The Permanent Revolution and Results and Prospects (1969)

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! ~ ! ~ ! ! ! Y . r . . ~ ! ~ ! ! ~ l ! l ! . . EDITOR: Len MeyersEDITOR, YOUNG SPARTACUS PAGES: Anna Wood manPRODUCTION MANAGER: Susan FullerCIRCULATION MANAGER: Mara CadizEDITORIAL BOARD: Barry James (managing editor). Bruce Andre, Ray Bishop, Jon Brule,George Foster, Uz Gordon, Walter Jennings, Jane Kerrigan, James Robertson, Joseph Seymour,Alison SpencerThe Spartacist League is the U.S. Section of the International Communist League (FourthInternationalist).Workers Vanguard (lSSN 0276-0746) published biweekly, except skipping three altemate issues in June, July andAugust (beginning with omitting the second issue in June) and with a 3-week interval in December, by the Spartacist Publishing Co., 299 Broadway, Suite 318, New York, NY 10007. TelephOne: (212) 732-7882 (Editorial), (212) 732-7861(Business). Address all correspondence to: Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116. E-mail addres.s:vanguard@tiac.nel.Domestic subscriptions: $10.00/22 isSUl!S. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY. POSTMASTER: Send addresschanges to Workers Vanguard, Box 1377, GPO, Ne w York, NY 10116.Opinions expressed n signed articles or etters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint.The closing date for news in this issue is Octc;?ber 3.

No. 743 6 October 2000

September 21:Transit workersat L.A. strikerally chanted,"No contract,no buses!" and"l,Inion, union,union!"

.:a..

people saying that Davis' bill does nothing but postpone the fight.Republican mayor Richard Riordan,who appeared at the strike negotiationsfor the first time over the weekend,admits ,that the sole purpose of the"regional transit zones" is to undercut thepower of the unions. A similar schemeacceded to by the transit unions in 1987led to the creation of Foothill Transit inSan Gabriel Valley, whose drivers makelower wages and have fewer benefits thanfUll-time MTA drivers. Privatization oftransit further fragments the unions,already divided along craft lines. WhileFoothill's Teamster-organized drivershave not taken over entire MTA lines asthey did during the 1994 transit strike,Foothill Transit and UTU-organizedSanta Monica buses have been drivinginto the struck Gateway transit plaza to letpassengers off. What's needed is a singleindustrial transit union from Santa Monica to Foothill, San Fernando Valley toLong,Beach!One of the issues keenly felt by thetransit workers, who are subjected tomulti-tier wage scales-including manyforced to work part-time for $8 an hour and have to support families on as little as$20,000 a year, is the threatened loss ofovertime pay. Black Congressman Maxine Waters demagogically said, "Theirwhole economic family structure hasdepended on the dollars they learned toearn." The answer a dismal standard ofliving is not to workuntil you drop while.others have no jobs at ~ l l , but to fight fora hefty wage increase coupled with a fullcost-of-living escalator and a shorterworkweek to create jobs for all. Downwith multi-tier wages-Equal pay forequal work!The strike remains enormously popularamong the city's working people, despitethe fact that the heavily working-classand minority MTA ridership has had toscramble for alternative means of transport. On Friday, September 29, more than2,000 transit workers and other tradeunionists rallied outside City Hall. At thisrally, the union tops handed the stage over. to an array of Democratic Party politi-cians-including Waters, no fewer thanseven City Council members, eight statelegislators and two mayoral candidateswho led chants of "Mayor Riordan, endthe strike!" As black city councilmanMark Ridley-Thomas addressed the rally,one black transit worker turned to a WVsalesman and said, "This is a bunch ofcrap. They've done nothing for us." Infact, the most vociferous opponents of theUTU during this strike have been liberalson the MTA board like black Democraticcounty supervisor Yvonne BrathwaiteBurke.The trade-union tops preach relianceon legislation by Democratic politicians,but the capitalist Democratic Party is no"friend of labor," and the government ina capitalist society is the agency for thesuppression of workers and minorities.Workers can win only by exercising theirpower and mobilizing the support of theentire labor movement. Even as the pro-

capitalist union misleaders work hand inglove with the Democrats to bring thetransit strike to an end, a number of otherunions are poised to walk out. Last Thursday, the 43,000-member UTLA teachersunion voted to authorize a strike: Yesterday, 47,000' SEIU Local 660 countyworkers launched a series of rollingstrikes and threaten an all-out walkoutbeginning October 11. But the rollingstr\ke planned for tomorrow includes ja ilguards in the SEIU. Prison guards andcops are the hired thugs of the capitaliststate. They have no place in the labormovement! Cops and prison guards out ofthe unions!The current wave of labor struggle hasshaken the capitalist establishment inthis historically "open shop" town. In thelast few years, there have been significant organizing efforts among the manyMexican and Central American workerswho are exploited in low-wage, backbreaking jobs, including the unionizationof over 90,000 home health care andother workers last year. A column in theLos Angeles Times (29 September) washeadlined: "Building Up a Head ofSteam in Striketown USA." Another article in the same issue reported, "Not forat least a generation have so many strikesand potential strikes converged in LosAngeles in one season." Noting that therecent strikes have been a "great unifier"cutting across racial and ethnic lines, thearticle added that "the wave of unrest hasbrought with it a new sense of unity andcommon purpose,"But the determination and sense ofclass unity shown by the workers in struggle are undermined by the class collaboration of the union bureaucrats. Puttingteeth in the County Federation of Labor'scall to honor the UTU pickets meansshutting down all mass transit within thecity. But that would immediately alienatethe Democratic Party politicians wholined the podium at last Friday's rally.The fight for jobs for all and the defenseof even the most basic workers' interestspoint to the need for a struggle to sweepaway the entire system of capitalistexploitation and racist oppression. It isnecessary to forge a class-struggle leadership of the unions which recognizesthat the interests of labor and capital areirreconcilably counterposed. We fight tobreak working people and minoritiesfrom the Democratic Party and build amultiracial revolutionary workers party.Victory to the L.A. transit strike!.

M ?. oVlng.To receive Workers Vanguardwithout interruption please let usknow at least three weeks beforeyou move. Send your new andold address to:

Spartacist Publishing Co.Box 1377 GPONew York, NY 10116WORKERS VANGUARD

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It could have been a scene straight outofMississippi Burning, the movie depicting cop/Klan terrorizing of civil rightsactivists in the '60s. Except this time ittook place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,not Philadelphia, Mississippi. On September 18, Ernest Ford joined in a weeklydemonstration for death row politicalprisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal near the Center City headquarters of the PhiladelphiaFraternal Order of Police (F.O.P.). Drivinghome, with a protest placard visible fromhis pickup truck, Ford noticed a policecruiser with three cops tailing him. As hegot out in front of his home, the copscame up to him and loudly threatened,"Mumia is dead-and so are you!"Ford's black and Latino neighborsstarted screaming at the cops, who left.Less than an hour later, the same copswere spotted cruising the block andchecking out Ford's home, even as he wason the phone to register a complaint withthe Philly Police Department. Ford'sneighbors again emerged from theirhomes to scream at the cops, who droveaway."This isn't something I'm takinglightly," Ford told the twice-weeklyblack Philadelphia 'Tribune (22 September). "I was scared. My wife is scared.Who knows what these cops haveplanned for me?" Ford and his wife havegood reason to fear. His family fled fromHaiti years ago after his father wasmarked for death by the death squadpolice of the U.S.-backed Duvalier dictatorship. And as Ford told Workers Van-

guard, "The cops in America are henchmen like the TontoIis Macoutes in Haiti."Speaking of the Philly cops, he added:"Police here are terrorists. They terrorize anyone who speaks- out for Mumia.Where I live is the cradle of terror, torture and lynching."Ford has been active in Jamal's defensesince the protests in 1995 when Mumiafaced an imminent threat of execution.Ford initiated the Caribbean AmericanCoalition to Abolish the Death Penaltyand has promoted Jamal's fight for freedom in neighborhood newspapers. Hehas exposed the cop threats against himthrough articles in' the Tribune and aninterview on WHAT radio and has calleda noontime demonstration at the comer ofKensington and Allegheny for October 7.Ford told WV, "I'm not going to just laydown and let them walk all over me."The Philly cops are notorious for theirracist frame-up and killing machinefrom their vendetta against Mumia andother Black Panthers in the 1960s to the

1985 Mother's Day bombing in whicheleven black MOVE members were murdered to the videotaped beating of a blackman by a horde of cops shortly before theRepublican National Convention (RNC).Employing the same sort of "red squad"surveillance carried out against the Panthers and other radicals in the '60s, forweeks before the RNC police photographed and infiltrated just about everyleftist event in the city.During the convention, protesters wereswept off the streets by a massive police

San Francisco,May 13:RevolutionaryContingent builtby SL, SYC andLabor BlackLeague calledfor mobilizinglabor's socialpower in fightto free Mumia.

dragnet. Many of them were thrown intojail and some held for weeks on bail ofup to $1 million. Refuse & Resist spokesman Clark Kissinger is threatened withprison for speaking at a Mumia rally out-

Screaming forMumia's blood,Philly copsbesiege hospitalworkers unionhall in 1995.

side the RNC, supposedly for violatingprobation conditions stemming froman earlier mass arrest of Jamal supportersduring a civil disobedience protest atthe Liberty Bell last year (see "Outrageous Persecution ofMumia Supporters,"WVNo. 737, 2 JUl)e). Meanwhile, a stateagency is withholding charitable status tothe International Concerned Family andFriends ofMumia Abu-Jamal in a continuing effort to cripple fundraising forJamal's legal defense.To grease the skids for Jamal's execution, the F.O.P. has spearheaded a sinistercampaign aimed at intimidating Mumia'ssupporters. Ernest Ford is but the mostrecent target of this campaign. Followinga 1990 Partisan Defense Committee rallyfor Jamal in Philly, F.O.P. chief RichardCostello ranted that Mumia's defenderswere "misfit terrorists" who deserved an"electric couch." Aiding the F.O.P. arebourgeois mouthpieces like ABC News,the yuppie Vanity Fair magazine andright-wing rags like the New York Postand Philadelphia Daily News, whichhave repeatedly churned out Big Liepropaganda seeking to demonize Jamaland to silence the growing ranks of hisdefenders. A Web site titled "Justicefor Daniel Faulkner"-the p o H ~ e m a n forwhose 1981 killing Jamal was.' falselyconvicted-baldly promotes the racistdeath penalty with patently absurd lieslike the claim that not one of thethousands of people executed in the U.S.

Down With Union-BustingAgainst Philly Teachers!On September 28, Democratic mayorJohn Street decreed the unilateral imposition of a giveback contract on the

21,000 members of the PhiladelphiaFederation o f Teachers (PFT), who havebeen working without a contract sinceschools opened last month. Hundreds ofangry teachers protested outside theBoard of Education that night as it implemented the dictate, tearing up eventhe pretext of "collective bargaining." Ifallowed to stand, this union-bustingmove poses a dangerous threat to publicemployee unions around the country.The dictated "contract" would gutteachers' seniority rights, increase medical co-payments and add an hour to the

6 OCTOBER 2000

.workday and two days to the schoolyear-a 16 percent increase in workhours. At the same time, the five-yearcontract grants an insulting "raise" averaging just over 3 percent a year, with awage freeze the first year, with Phillyteachers even now earning 20 percentless than those in the suburbs. And the8,000 non-teaching PFT memberssecretaries, nurses, counselors-wouldget even less. One teacher who comesfrom Uruguay told the PhiladelphiaInquirer (29 September), "I came froma country where we are used to fightingback dictatorships. I f we have to work,you should have to pay."A to,OOO-strong union rally on Sep-

tember 5 voted unanimously to strike,but PFT head Ted Kirsch repeatedlyrefused to call out the membership, hiding behind Governor Ridge's threat totake over the school district and denycertification and pensions to any teachers who went out on strike. Black Democrat Street worked hand in hand withRepublican Ridge against the PFT,whose membership is nearly 40 percentblack or Hispanic. Street was electedlast year with the support of the PFTtops and the PhiladelphiaAFL-CIO. ButStreet had demonstrated his anti-unionstand long before the election. As a citycouncilman in 1981, Street acted asa scabherder against the last teachers

this century was innocent.The decades-long vendetta againstJamal by the cops,courts, media and capitalist politicians refutes those, likeRefuse & Resist, who promote liberal illu-

sions that Mumia can win his freedomthrough a "new trial" in the bourgeoiscourts or through pressuring the Democrats. That no reliance can be placed inthe "justice" system which sent this innocent man to death row in the first placewas underlined by the latest court rulingin Jamal's case. In a decision currentlybeing appealed, in August federal judgeWilliam Yohn rejected four "friend of thecourt" briefs in support of Jamal's habeascorpus petition to have his convictionoverturned which were submitted by theNAACP, the National Conference ofBlack Lawyers, the American Civil Liberties Union and British Members of Par-. liament, among others. Yohn dismissedthese briefs-which pointed to racistjury-rigging and other blatant frame-upprocedures in Jamal's 1982 trial-as"unnecessary and unhelpful," bringingto mind the 1987 U.S. Supreme CourtMcCleskey decision that overwhelmingevidence of the racist application of thedeath penalty was "irrelevant."Mumia is innocent and should be free.The power that must be mobilized in thefight tQ win his freedom lies in the multiracial working class, which in taking upthis struggle will strike a blow against theentire capitalist system that is- predicatedon the brutal exploitation of labor andin which the racist oppression of blackpeople is rooted. Hands off Ernest Ford!Free Mumia now! Abolish the racist deathpenalty!.

strike in Philly. He also helped forcegiveback contracts on the city's municipal unions as an aide to former Democratic mayor Ed Rendell in the 1990s.The bipartisan assault on the PFT issanctioned by Pennsylvania's anti-unionAct 46, passed two years ago. New YorkState's Taylor Law, which outlawsstrikes. by all public workers, wasrecently used to railroad Buffalo teachers union presidentPhilip Rumore, whowas fined $1,000 and sentenced to 15days in jail for leading an "illegal"strike. Drop all charges against Rumore!Down with Act 46 and the Taylor Law!The teachers have won supportamong many working people who. arefed up 'with dilapidated schools, badhospitals, crumbling infrastructure andthe concessions wrung out of theirunions through successive Democraticmayors.. ~ t r e e t ' s union-busting un.derscores tile need for working people andminorities to break with the racist capitalist Democratic Party and forge aparty of their own, a workers party thatfights for a workers government.

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AP BreedThousands of youth who turned out for anti-Uglobalization" protests in Prague were met with a massive mobilization of police. Of the more than 900 arrested,many were brutally mistreated and some are still being held.lIVe/vet" Po/iceStateRepression in Prague

An international team of young ICLcomrades from Germany, Poland and theU.S. went to Prague to intervene in andreport on the recent protests against theIMFlWorld Bank which drew youth fromall over the world. These protests wereadvertised as the continuation of the"Battle of Seattle." Our purpose was tocounterpose our revolutionary proletarian internationalist perspective to theillusion that the imperialist powers canbe pressured to serve the interests of theexploited and oppressed a,round theworld. The opening paragraph oT the ICLstatement for the Prague protests had.great impact on those who were able to 'make it in to the Czech Republic:'''Tum Prague into Seattle'? Were it notfor the capitalist counterrevolution whichdestroyed East Europe and the formerSoviet Union a decade ago, the WorldBank and the International Monetary

Fund would not be meeting in Prague!The 'velvet revolution' ripped Czechoslovakia apart and now the working people, women and national and ethnicminorities suffer the raw exploitation,impoverishment and depredations of thecapitalist market. As for the illusions of'freedom,' today police forces speciallytrained by the American FBI and backedup by NATO threaten labor and leftistdemonstrations with a brutal enforcement of 'law and order' for the imperialist bankers,"Youth who tried to come to Prague toparticipate in these protests got an objectlesson in the class nature of the policeforces that "serve and protect" the Czechcapitalist state. The Czech border washeavily policed, and countless peoplewere held or turned'away, either becausetheir names were supposedly on a list of"undesirable persons" or simply for looking like potential demonstrators. In thetrain our team was on, police ransacked

Rally point before march on September 26 at Namesti Miru.4

all luggage in the second-class compartments. These actions severely reduced thenumbers who might have attended.Among those who did make it in, over900 were arrested. As reported in the ICLstatement demanding the release of theseprotesters (see page 5), those arrestedwere subjected to police torture and manyare still being held. Siu'ce the statementwas issued, there have 'been furtherreports of Israeli prisoners being subjected to brutal anti-Semitic attacks; ofwidespread vicious beatings resulting inbroken bones and teeth; women being,forced to perform sexual acts for prisonguards; and police letting in a group ofNazi skinheads to join in "the party." InItaly, Switzerland, England, Germany,Sweden and elsewhere, demonstrationshave been held protesting the arrests andthe brutal mistreatment of the imprisonedyouth by the Czech government. Free allimprisoned leftist protesters in Praguenow!What follows is based on reporters'notebooks by our comrades who were inPrague for the protests.* * *Sunday, S e p t e m b ~ r 24: Our team arrivedin Prague and went immediately to aWorkers Power (WP) meeting on "Global Trade Union Work." While nominallyclaiming to be a Trotskyist organization,Le., to be fighting for'a world party ofsocialist revolution that can lead theworking class to victory in smashingimperialist exploitation and oppression,Workers Power's actual positions haveput them in the camp of imperialism. WPbacked the forces of counterrevolutionthat destroyed the former Soviet Unionand the former deformed workers states

of East Europe. Last year, they stood onthe side of the Kosovo Liberation Armywhich served as a tool for the NATOimperialists during the terror bombing ofSerbia.

When comrades from our German section intervened in the meeting to arguethat WP's claims to fight against the ravages of capitalism are belied by their support to the forces of capitalist counterrevolution, we were threatened and silencedby the chair of the meeting. Outside themeeting, several people bought copies ofour English-language Spartacist (No. 55,Autumn 1999) with its article exposingthose who took the side of imperialism, opposing the Trotskyist position ofunconditional military defense of thedeformed workers states. Today this fightis centered on the defense of the gains ofthe 1949 Chinese Revolution against capitalist restoration and for building a Trotskyist party that can lead the Chineseworkers in a proletarian political revolution to oust the Stalinist bureaucrats whohave undermined these gains and openedthe door to imperialist penetration.Workers Power's international, theLeague for a Revolutionary Communist International (LRCI), declares that"China's long march to capitalism hasbeen completed" ("Make Red Septembera Month to Remember! A Manifesto forRevolutionary Change," 27 July). Yet thecurrent issue of Revolution (the paper oftheir youth group Revo) calls to "Haltthe market 'reforms' that are restoringcapitalism in Eastern Europe, the formerUSSR, China, Vietnam, Korea and Cuba.For working class democratic socialismbased on the rule of workers' councils."In the short time our comrades had tospeak at the WP meeting, we exposedthis contradiction. Obviously this stungthe leaders of Workers Power. In a demomarking the conclusion of the "countersummit" later that day, they tried tophysically intimidate and verbally harassus as we pursued discussion with theiryouth members. Such thuggery is commonly resorted to by those who cannotdefend the contradiction between theirWORKERS VANGUARD

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claims to Marxist revolutionary politicsand their actual practice.In the evening we went to Strahov Stadium, where many of the activists whohad come to the Prague protests werestaying. There we encountered a widedivergence of political views, from thosewho thought capitalism could be reformed, to a youth who described himself as somewhere between anarchismand Marxism, because he was disaffectedwith the r.eformism of groups like theBritish SoCialist Workers Party (SWP).This would not be the last time that weencountered protesters who had disdainfor the SWP and other left groups thatposture as Marxists while supportingsocial-democratic governments. We hadan impact in driving home the basic tenets of Marxism, the understanding thatthe social power to genuinely defeatimperialist exploitation lies in the handsof the working class mobilized behind arevolutionary leadership.Monday, September 25: Workers Powerheld another meeting, this one called"World Revolution Youth Forum." Weran into Revo members who obviouslythought that their organization did, andshould, defend the Chinese deformedworkers state; .they were not able toexplain the contradiction between thisand the official position of their international that China i1' already a capitalist state.The meeting centered on tactics for thedemo and people's "experiences" in theanti-"globalization" movement. It was soapolitical and boring that participantsdidn't pay much attention to the presentation. Instead several were poring overICL literature they'd gotten beforehand.We had spoken to several Czech members .of their youth group who either didn'tknow or couldn't believe that WP hadsupported the forces of capitaJist counterrevolution and had gone so far as to jointhe reactionary rabble-who were thespearhead for the destruction of . theSoviet degenerated workers state-onYeltsin's barricades in August 1991. Thefollowing day, while we were continuingthis discussion with a Revo member,proo f was provided as just at that momenttheir very representative on the barricadeswalked by! In contrast to the traitors ofWorkers Power (who now claim that theynever supported counterrevolution) the

Young SpartacusCliffites hailed capitalist counterrevolution in East Europe, peddledillusions in Prague that imperialismcould be made more humane.ICL said the Moscow workers shouldhave cleared out the pro-capitalist forceson the barricades, which would haveopened the road for a proletarian politicalrevolution (see Spartacist pamphlet Howthe Soviet Workers State Was Strangled,August 1993).During the discussion at this meeting,the WP chair once again tried to censor our politics. He gleefully crowedthat since we don't support the call forthe demonstration, we should not beallowed to speak and should leave themeeting. We argued that we should havethe right to put forward our revolutionaryprogram, which is indeed counterposedto the efforts of the leaders of the so-6 OCTOBER 2000

, . : r ~ J : " \" \. ' . ' ~ " ~ ' , , 1' ' . /\ 1. . ' ~ ~ I . '1," . ~ f ,. /

Krist/Udove Noviny Young SpartacusItalian "autonomes" of Va Basta (left) in face-off with cops. Anarchists enter demo on morning of the 26th.called anti-"globalization" movement toamnesty imperialist rulers who are theauthors of the mass poverty and oppression of the "Third World." Reinforcing such illusions, Workers Power published an appeal which they signed alongwith the Czech Komsomol (CommunistParty youth group) calling to "Establisha democratically controlled internationaldevelopment bank which would provideneeded investment to education, healthservice, infrastructure and housing!"Good luck creating an imperialist institution that doesn't serve the interests of theimperialists!Faced with our protests against WP'spolitical censorship, the chair had to takea vote. The overwhelming majority of theaudience voted to hear our views. Ourspeaker pointed to our resolute oppositionto agencies such as Polish Solidarnosca counterrevolutionary "union" backed bythe Vatican, the CIA, and the Westernbanks. He pointed to the struggle wagedby our international tendency in 1989-90for proletarian political revolution in theformer East German (DDR) deformedworkers state against the capitalist annexation of the DDR by the Fourth Reich ofGerman imperialism. Workers Power. argued at the time that all tendencies inSolidarnosc sought the restoration of capitalism .. but supported it anyway!In the midst of whispers of disbeliefthat their organization had supported Solidarnosc and literally stood on the Yeltsinbarricades, the chair of the meeting triedto shut us up. But a member of theirCzech organization who was the translator at the meeting insisted that there besilence so he could finish translating ourremarks. Our !;peaker continued, notingthat WP's support for the forces of capitalist restoration derives from accommodation to the rule of their own bourgeoisie, as is expressed particularly in theirfealty to the social-democratic parties,like Tony Blair's Labour Party, who areepforcing the dictates of capitalist austerity throughout Europe. We exposed theirsupport to Blair' s Labour .party in the waragainst Serbia, which they gave in thename of defending the national rights ofthe Kosovar Albanians. The ICL haddefended these rights long before the restof the left had taken up their cause to lineup behind NATO's call for war againstSerbia. But during the war, the defense ofthe right of self-determination for theKosovar Albanians was subordinate to,and became the clarion call for, theNATO imperialists' terror bombing. TheICL called for defense of Serbia and thedefeat of the NATO imperialists, whilenot giving any political support to Serbian nationalist strongman MiloseviC.There was a: meeting later that My to"Refound the Fourth International," withspeakers from the Italian group Propostaand the Greek Workers RevolutionaryParty, which would have been comical ifit hadn't been so pathetic. As we arguedin the meeting, these groups are a walking repudiation of Trotsky's Fourth International, whose purpose was to forge therevolutionary leadership of the worldproletariat in the fight to overthrow capitalist imperialism. Having stood in thecamp of imperialist anti-Sovietism, at themeeting they made clear that they have

now dumped any defense of the Chinesedeformed workers state, which theydeclare to be capitalist.What really got their goat waswhen we pressed them to answer a question about their position on the "antipedophilia" witchhunts in Britain andItaly which are direct assaults on therights of gays and women. As Leninargued, a revplutionary party is' a "trib

une of the people," defending the rightsof those victimized by the capitaliststate. After trying to ignore the issueof this reactionary bourgeois campaign,when asked again what their positionwas the Greek translator left the room inapparent disgust, and then returned to theroom to claim that we Spartacists abstainfrom struggle on behalf of the workingclass and oppressed!

That night at Strahov, we met an Italian student who had been put off bywhat she understood to be Trotskyismbased oil her experience with the UnitedSecretariat and its support to the refor-

We publish below a protest lettersent by the International CommunistLeague on September 30 to Czechpresident Vaclav Havel, the Ministryof he Interior and Czech embassies invarious countries. .The International Communist League(Fourth Internationalist) demands theimmediate release of -'all leftistsarrested while protesting ag'ainst theWorld Bank and IMF summit inPrague on September 26 and 27,2000. We further demand that allcharges against them be dropped. TheCzech-based OPH (Obcanske PravniHlidky) legal observers report 859overwhelmingly Czech prisoners andmost are being denied legal recourse.Other. reports indicate that the actualnumber of prisoners may be muchhigher.Released prisoners and other witnesses have reported extreme policebrutality. The Italian Liberazione (30September) reports that one woman,Silvya 10landa Machova, was thrownfrom the window of a Prague policestation and required surgery (policereports say that she "fell"). Otherreports, including in the Germanjunge Welt, indicate severely violentbeatings, denial of water and food,"disappearance" of prisoners, denialof medical attention to injured demonstrators as well as medicine to thesick, extreme overcrowding withreports of 22 demonstrators crammedinto a 4 square meter cell while 30demonstrators were kept in an outdoorcourtyard overnight without blanketsor food. Liberazione reports that thepolice released 500 foreign prisonersyesterday, leaving them in the middleof desolate countryside. Eyewitnessreports by released prisoners also

mist parties who have joined in capitalist governments. She was thrilled to seethe front page of our Italian newspaper,Spartaco, calling to break with the classcollaborationist policies of RifondazioneComunista, which had supported the italian government and continues to serve theinterests of the bourgeoisie as particularlyexemplified in its grotesque argumentsfor the racist expUlsion of refugees fromNorth Africa and the Balkans from Italy.Thesday, September 26: Demonstratorsgathered at Namesti Miru in the center ofPrague at 9 a.m. The crowd was made upof various left organizations, anarchists and independent activists. Slogansranged from "Make Love not Trade"to "WB&IMF Cause Poverty" to "UnityIs Strength." Some 13,000 cops werebrought from around the Czech Republic. Three marches pulled out aroundII a.m. with the stated goal of trying toget as close as possible to the CongressCenter (the meeting place of the IMF)

continued on page 6

describe processing rooms wheregroups of 40 to 60 people werespread-eagled while being beaten,their heads knocked back, groinskicked and punched, while handcuffedprotesters were thrown downstairs.The police brutality was obviouslylong planned. The Czech governmentworked overtime before the protests toseal the borders against protesters.FBI and Scotland Yard advisers provided lists of potential demonstrators.The Czech government banned thedemonstrations while borrowing teargas grenades from Germany and watercannons from Greece. Some 12,800armed police were mobilized, twice asmany as the official police count ofdemonstrators. This was clearly aimedat punishing the demonstrators toprove that this former deformed workers state has a reliable bourgeois stateapparatus to defend capitalism againstits working class and plebeian victims. This inhuman treatment ofyqung leftist demonstrators exposesthe lies of "freedom" of opinion andpress put forward as bait by proponents of the so-called "velvet revolution" which was actually a socialcounterrevolution which has broughtwidespread misery through the restoration of capitalism. Capitalist counterrevolution has led to a surge inanti-Semitism and terror directed atthe Roma people.

We stand as proletarian internationalists in the tradition that "an injury toone is an injury to all." Once again wedemand the immediate release of allthe leftist demonstrators and the dropping of all charges against them. We. will .publicize these atrocities to theworking classes throughout Europe,the Americas and Asia.

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Columbia ~ ~ e c t a t o r Witchhunts. Edward SaidWe publish below a leaflet headlined"Edward Said, Eloquent Champion ofPalestinian Rights-Spectator, Apologists for Zionist State Terror" whichwas.issued by the New York Spartacus

Youth Club on September 21 and submitted for publication to the SpectatorOpinion page.On Septeinber 5, Columbia studentsread a scurrilous attack on noted scholarand Columbia professor Edward Saidin the Columbia Daily Spectator. TheSpectator takes Said to task for tossinga stone (!) into Israel from across' theborder with Lebanon. An editorial goeson about Said's "violent act." Anotherpiece, by professors Awi Federgruen-(a senior vice dean of the GraduateSchool of Business) and Robert Pollack(a former Columbia College dean), denounced as "abhorrent and primitive"Said's "gratuitous act of random violence ... aimed at innocent bystanders."Federgruen and Pollack threaten: "Hereat Columbia, the 'Rules of UniversityConduct' would classify the same actcommitted on the Columbia campus asa 'serious violation' and would sanctionit with suspension or dismissal fromUniversity service."The hysteria in the Spectator aboutSaid's "violent aot" is a Zionist witchhunt. In his response, 'Professor Saidproperly indicted "the enormous ravagesand suffering caused by decades of mil-

Prague...(continued from page 5)and blocking roads leading to it. Themarches took different routes and haddifferent ideas for what actions to take.Cops began attacking the demonstrators at 1: 10 p.m., a battle that lasted forhours. Two thousand demonstrators, laterswelling to three thousand, held a bridgeagainst a line of cops for several hours.At 3:24: the first flaming barricades builtby demonstrators went up. Czech TVreported that the delegates inside theconference center were "very nervous."Police were using water cannons andtear gas. At 4:28, Czech president Vaclav Havel denounced the demonstrators. At 5: 15, police charged into demonstrators near the conference ,center anddemonstrators threw cobblestories fromthe street. Video, footage has shown.agents provocateurs dressed as anarchistssmashing shop windows and then scurrying safely through police lines, to beseen arresting demonstrators later. At6:30, INPEG (Initiative Against Economic Globalization) organizers calledto stop the blockade of the conference center, and demonstrators wentto the State Opera to prevent delegatesfrom attending a scheduled performance,which they succeeded in doing.That night at Strahov, reactions to theevents of the day varied widely. Therewas a lot of talk about tactics; whether themost effective protest is to engage instreet battles, or if the fighting detractedfrom the "message" of peaceful appealsfor the reform of the IMF and WorldBank. Most were easily persuaded to discuss the politics of the demo, and theywere very up front about their goals,which were often simply to build largerand more frequent demos. Protesterswere surprised to hear that on that sameday, two thousand truckers in Berlin hadsucceeded in completely shutting downthe city in protest over high fuel prices,while the protests in Prague had simplycaused a disturbance, leaving them tohope that someone had noticed.A group at Strahov were thrilled that6

itary occupation and dispossession."The Zionist rulers hurl not stones butbullets and bombs at innocent civilians.For 18' years, Israeli troops and theirLebanese mercenaries occupied Southern Lebanon. Israel has repeatedlybombed Lebanese towns and cities, killing thousands and driving hundreds ofthousands more from their homes. In1982, the Israeli rulers orchestrated themassacre of well over a thousand Palestinians in the refugee camps of Sabraand Shatila. Thousands of Palestinianslanguish in Israel's torture chambers,and thousands more have been killed byoccupation forces in the West Bank andGaza. But the only "violence" the Zionist apologists at the Spectator see is astone falling on empty ground in Israel.The Spartacus Youth Club says: Defendthe Palestinian people against Zioniststate repression! All Israeli troops andsettlers out of the Occupied Territories!

What chutzpah for Columbia topreach about "violence" to EdwardSaid over his courageous, symbolic actof defiance in solidarity with theoppressed. This elite institution, infamous racist slumlord in its own backyard, whose business is training thenext generation of capitalist ideologuesand exploiters, is up to its elbowsinflicting suffering and death abroad.Who knows what services the Schoolof International and Public Affairs and

there had been a comparison made in themedia between the Prague protests andthe student protests in Paris in 1968. But'68 wasn't simply a matter of throwingcobblestones and building barricades.Rather, what happened was a generalstrike, a mobilization of the proletariatwhich directly posed the possibility ofworking-class revolution. That opportunity was betrayed by the Stalinist misleaders of the working class, whose classcollaborationist politics preserved therule of the bourgeoisie. Those are the lessons that need to be learned by a new generation of youth who genuinely do wantto fight the depredations of imperialismaround the globe.Groups like the International Socialists(Socialist Workers Party in Britain) call to"Stop the IMFIWB." Similarly, WorkersPower states in the July/August issue oftheir British paper that "We don't need toreform the IMF, we need to get rid of it."These outfits believe that somehow theseinstitutions have t r ~ n s c e n d e d the imperialist powers. And by thattoken,.they peddle the illusion that we would have a justand humane world if the IMF and WorldBank ceased to exist. This is a lie! Evenbefore the existence of these institutions,the division of the world between competing imperialist powers meant brutalexploitation and oppression, and the competition for markets resulted in bloodyworld wars where the working class wassent out to fight and die for the interestsof their capitalist rulers.The activists who engaged in streetbattles with riot cops in an effort toblockade the Congress Center' and makedemands On the IMFIWB in Prague werecourageous in seeking to make a fightagainst injustice. But for all their militancy, their politics simply come down topleading with the world bourgeoisie toreform itself and to stop acting like capitalist exploiters. An Italian anarchist wasquoted as having declared to the Russiannews agency ITAR-TASS: "This is ageneral storming. We are attacking so asto break into the palace and lock up therethe World Bankers until they adopt thedecision of self-dispersal of the IMF andthe WB." As we argued, this sentiment is

its graduates have rendered to rapaciousU.S. imperialism as 'it starves and terrorizes workers and peasants abroad?The Spectator is in bad company. TheJuly 14 Daily News featured a version ofthis attack on Said by Jaime Sneider,editor of the Spectator editorial page, inthe op-ed section. Then Federgruen andPollack, charging "a pattern of misrepresentation and deception," picked upfrom the execrable right-wing ZionistCommentary a smear about "lies" inSaid's autobiography.These types hate Said not leastbecause he has refused to go along withthe U.S.-sponsored "peace" sham in theNear East, which means the continuedSUbjugation of the Palestinian people,now in collusion with Yasir Arafat's Palestinian Authority. In his 1996 bookPeace and Its Discontents, Said calledthe Palestinian Authority a "kingdom ofillusionS( with Israel firmly in command." Said, in admirable contrast tomost political figures in the Near East,does not wallow in the communalist particularisms of religion and nationality,but advocates a single, binational, andthus secular Palestinian state.Unfortunately, no such solution ispossible within a capitalist framework.IsraellPalestine is a case of interpenetrated peoples: two or more peoplesoccupying the same territory. Undercapitalism the democratic right of

an utterly utopian dream. It is the systemof capitalist imperialism in its relentlessdrive for profit that causes poverty andexploitation.The anarchist and idealist youth inPrague were handed a big lesson: there'ssomething called "the state" and it standsbetween them and human freedom. Without a Marxist program, they have no way

national self-determination cannot beachieved for one people without violating the rights of the other. The only roadto peace in the region lies throughsocialist revolution. Zionist Israel,which counts on its American protectorsand its nukes to preserve its "right" tolord it over a hundred million or soArabs in the region, is a deathtrap forJews. It must be shattered from withinby workers revolution led by a Leninistvanguard party which breaks theHebrew-speaking workers from Zionistracism and wins the Palestinian Arabmasses from petty-bourgeois nationalism and Islamic fundamentalism, uniting them in struggle against their common capitalist enemies. Not Jew againstArab, but class against class! For asocialist federation of the Near East!Professor Said lends distinction toColumbia's prestige as an institution ofhigher learning. But he falls too farafoul of the politics of the American ruling class for his worldwide reputation asa scholar and author to protect himmuch.We are glad to see some Columbiaprofessors now coming out in defenseof their colleague. The Spartacus YouthClub also stands with Edward Saidagainst the vicious slurs raised by theSpectator editors, who seek to silenceany criticism of the Zionist rulers andtheir senior partners in Washington and'to whitewash their truly violent crimes.

to get rid of it and even less of an idea ofhow to replace it. Our task is to build therevolutionary party that seeks to mobilizethe working class as an independent political force against the capitalist exploitersof each country, on the road to worldsocialist revolution, which is the onlypossible way to bring an end to the ravages of imperialism

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BOSTONImperialism, theBolshevik Revolution and theFight for CommunismSaturday, October 14, 12 noonHarvard UniversityScience Center Room 109

For information: (617) 666-9453CHICAGO

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MINNEAPOLISRevolutionary MarxismAlternate Fridays, 4:30 p.m.October 13: Marxism and the Fightfor Socialist RevolutionCarlson 1127, Minneapolis CampusUniversity of MinnesotaFor information and readings:(312) 454-4930

NEW YORK CITYRevolutionary MarxismAlternate Thursdays, 7 p.m.October 12: The State, BourgeoisElections and the Need for a

Workers PartyHamilton Hall, Room 302, ColumbiaFor information and readings:(212) 267-1025

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Immigrants...(continued from page 12)construction and landscaping jobs in theeastern Long Island town of Farmingville and other Suffolk County suburbs.Living in fear of la migra, the hatedImmigration and Naturalization Service(INS), such undocumented workers arevulnerable to the most vicious exploitation and racist abuse.Many of those who hire these workersfor 12-hour jobs at $100 (when the workers aren't short-changed .or stiffed outright) are cockroach capitalist contractorsor well-heeled yuppies too lazy to cleantheir own swimming pools or weed theirown gardens. After a day's work, theseimmigrants go back to apartments wherethey are forced to pay extortionate rentsand live with 15 or 20 others. As hundredsstand every morning at the corner of a 7-Eleven parking lot, waiting desperately tobe picked up for a day job, the esquineros(from the Spanish word for corner) aresubjected to insults, harassment and racistslurs. Every Saturday, the Sachem Quality of Life (SQOL) group, local affiliate ofthe sinister Federation for AmericanImmigration Reform (FAIR), stages aracist "picket" at the Farmingville cornerwith signs reading "Go Home!" and"Stop the Crime!"The a ttack. against the two Mexican laborers came only a few weeks afterthe Suffolk County legislature narrowlyvoted down a bill pushed by SQOL toforce the INS to carry out raids in Farmingville. A few years ago, the legislaturepassed a measure to impose an "Englishonly" policy in the county, which wasspiked only through an executiye veto. Ascurrilous column in the liberal LongIsland Newsday (25 September) following the Farmingville attack was headlined"Immigration-Synonym for Lawlessness" and ranted that "illegal immigrantsdescend on certain communities" andcreate a "state of anarchy."This demonstrates the racist reality ofthe supposedly new, liberal climate forimmigrants in the U.S. touted by the capitalist media. As often happens during periods of economic expansion, theAmerican ruling class has loosened someof the draconian immigration restrictions enacted during the 1980s and '90s,and the INS h a ~ cut back on its gestapolike roundups of undocumented factoryworkers. But when the economy turnsdown, especially in a prolonged and deepdepression, the bourgeoisie will move toround these workers up en masse andthrow them out. The capitalists use thesevulnerable, superexploited workers tokeep wages down for all workers. At thesame time, they seek out highly trainedcomputer and software speciillists fromIndia and elsewhere. Meanwhile,the militarization ofthe border with Mexico continues apace, driving scores of desperateimmigrants to their death through drowning or in desert wastelands every year.Despite their precarious situation, the

Suffolk County laborers have sought todefend themselves against the racists. Afew weeks before the attack on Escamillaand Perez, the immigrants chased off theSQOL rabble with yells of ''fascistas!''On September 19, hundreds marchedthrough Farmingville to protest the murderous assault. Another protest was heldin New York City'S Union Square onSeptember 26, organized by the Workplace Project and the Tepeyac Association. A central demand raised by the protest organizers was to call on the JusticeDepartment and FBI to investigate theFarmingville attack, sowing illusions inthe very government that has enactedand enforced draconian anti-immigrantlegislation.A call issued by the Coordinadora 96-2000 coalition for an immigrant rightsrally in Washington, D.C. on October 14appeals to the federal government fora series of reforms, including unconditional amnesty for all undocumentedimmigrants. But the unvarnished aim ofthe Coordinadora, endorsed by CAS AAztian, La Raza and other Latino andimmigrant groups as well as a handfulof labor organizations, is to pressure theDemocratic Party in the lead-up to theNovember elections and, implicitly, tohustle Latino votes for this racist capitalist "lesser evil." The call amnestiesthe Latino and other Democratic Partypoliticians who voted for the bipartisan1996 Illegal Immigrant and ImmigrantResponsibility Act signed by Clinton,claiming they never "imagined the devastating effects"-i.e., the deportation ofhundreds of thousands of undocumentedworkers. Coordinadora explicitly appealsto Clinton to "execute an ExecutiveDecision" to give imIlligrant workersand their families "full human and civilrights" under the provisions of the 1964Civil Rights Act, while cynically asking:"Did we even exist in the eyes of the leaders and participants of the Civil Rightsmovement?"This thinly veiled attack on the struggle for black equality serves only to further the capitalists' schemes to pit onesector of the oppressed against another,in particular black and Latino workerscompeting for the same miserable, lowwage jobs. The forcible segregation ofthe majority of the black population at thebottom of this society is the cornerstoneof racist American capitalism. The colorbar is a fundamental dividing line, akey prop for obscuring the irreconcilabledivide between labor and capital. Thefight for immigrant rights and the emancipation of the working class as a wholecan only go forward hand in hand withthe fight for black freedom. For black lib-eration through socialist revolution!Appealing to the capitalist DemocraticParty and the -agencies of the same capitalist state which terrorizes and deportsimmigrants is a dead end. The proletariat. is the one force in this society. with ~ h e social power and class interest to defendimmigrant rights. Immigrant workersmany with traditions of combative class

struggle in their homelands-now makeup at least 12 percent of the workforce,heavily represented in such industries asconstruction, hotel and restaurant, garment, agriculture and meatpacking. Themultiracial labor movement must bemobilized to defend immigrant workers,on and off the job. Anyone who hasmade it to this country should have theright to stay here! Labor must demand:Full citizenship rights for all immigrants,"legal" or "illegal"!In a letter to the New York Times (29September) on the Farmingville outrage,NYC Central Labor Council presidentBrian McLaughlin, whose base is in theconstructiori trades, wrote, "For us in thelabor movement, this is a call to act." Butthe only "action" McLaughlin proposedis to support an AFL-CIO resolutioncalling for amnesty for three millionundocumented immigrants and "to pushfor improved public policy to protect therights and enhance the lives of immigrant workers in New York." What isneeded is to unleash the kind of powerseen on the streets of New York twoyears ago, when 40,000 constructionworkers fed up with the increasing useof non-union contractors surged throughMidtown Manhattan, sweeping asidean army of cops as they chanted, "Herecomes the union!" and "Whose city? Ourcity!" A militant rally of NYC areaunionists in Farmingville could quicklyput a stop to the anti-immigrant attacksand act as a launching pad for organizingday laborers with full union wages, benefits and working conditions.The organization of immigrant workers, from Los Angeles to North Carolina,has accounted for much of the recentincrease in trade-union membership.After . decades of supporting tighterimmigration controls and INS roundups,under John Sweeney the AFL-CIObureaucracy has been forced to takenotice of this vibrant new ,component ofthe working class, if largeiy to maintainits dues base. But far from championingthe cause of undocumented immigrants,the pro-capitalist labor tops propose "analternative policy to reduce undocumented immigration and prevent employer abuse": an amnesty for immigrants currently in the country, the betterto keep out future immigrants.Meanwhile, the AFL-CIO misleaders

Protest outsideNew York City INSoffice againstdetention ofimmigrants,September 1999.

continue to push chauvinist protectionism-like the Teamsters' crusadeagainst a NAFTA provision allowingMexican truckers to operate on U.S.highways-which further fuels antiimmigrant racism. The labor tops seek toline up U.S. workers behind the interestsof the American ruling class and againsttheir class brothers and sisters in Mexico. We communists stand for joint classstruggle on both sides of the border andoppose NAFTA from the standpointof proletarian internationalism. NAFTAmeans U.S. imperialism's "free trade"rape of Mexico, driving millions ofworkers and peasants there into evengreater poverty.What is needed is a massive organizingdrive around the country, both to defendimmigrant and minority workers againstracist abuse and discrimination by thecapitalists and to strengthen the unions,which today cover barely 10 percent of allworkers in private industry. A successfulorganizing drive would cost the employers billions in increased wages and benefits. To win, it would have to defy anddefeat Southern "right to work" laws andthe whole panoply of anti-union legislation enforced by the cops and courts ofthe capitalist state. This is anathema tothe AFL-CIO tops, who act to chain theunions to the capitalist class enemy andthe capitalist state, particularly throughtheir support to the Democratic Party. Thefight to organize the unorganized anddefend the unions can only go forward ina struggle to oust the pro-capitalist laborbureaucracy and build a class-struggleleadership of labor.Full and equal rights for immigrants,blacks and other minorities, decent housing and jobs, free quality health care andeducation for all can only be achievedthrough a workers revolution whichsmashes the capitalist profit system andushers in an egalitarian socialist society.That is the aim of the Spartacist League.As we wrote in "Capitalist Rulers WageWar on Blacks, Immigrants" (WV No.653, 11 October 1996) on the eve of amass immigrant rights march initiated byCoordinadora 96: "Workers and minorities do not need a 'lesser' evil party ofracist capitalism but a revolutionaryworkers party which champions the causeof all the oppressed, fighting for full citizenship rights for all immigrants!".

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pointed out that, in this struggle, MaoZedong's theory of anti-revisionism, preventing revisionism, anti-capitalist restoration, will be the most powerful andeffective weapon."This article was not published in anobscure underground journal put outby a handful of old-line dissident Maoists. It was published legally in the Cen-tral Current, a nationally known andwidely read journal founded in 1990with the approval of the CCP's CentralDepartment of Propaganda. Despite arecent crackdown on political oppositionand dissent, Central Current continuesto ,appear. Clearly, this' publication,whose stated intent is to "use Marxism-

PART ONE OF TWOLeninism-Mao Zedong Thought as guidance," has friends and protectors in very _high places. The existence of this kindof journal is a surface manifestation offactional differences within the Chinesebureaucracy. And those differences areundoubtedly sharpening in the faceof the current mass upsurge in workerunrest, as hundreds of thousands ofworkers are being laid off from stateowned factories and other enterprises.These divisions within the CCP illustrate the Trotskyist understanding ofChina as a deformed workers state. Fromthe time it seized power in 1949, theCCP patterned its rule on the bureaucratic regime which usurped politicalpower from the proletariat in the SovietUnion in 1924 through a political counterrevolution led by Stalin. The rise ofthis relatively privileged layer grew outof the backwardness and poverty inherited by the Soviet state from tsarist Russia and the failure of the socialist revolution to spread to the advanced capitalistcountries, particularly Germany. Whilenot overturning the proletarian propertyforms established as a result of the October Revolution of 1917, the Stalinistregime repudiated the revolutionaryinternationalism that animated the Bolsheviks and embraced the anti-Marxistdogma of "socialism in one country."Common to the Stalinist bureaucracywhich ruled -the Soviet degeneratedworkers state and that which has ruledthe Chinese deformed workers state fromits inception is its nature as a brittle,contradictory caste, not a possessingclass. Parasitically resting on the proletarian property forms from which itderives its privileged position, thebureaucracy simultaneously acts as atransmission belt for the pressures of thecapitalist world market on the Chinesedeformed workers state. Thus, ;,n anticipation of China's entry into the-WorldTrade Organization (WTO), Beijing hasaccelerated the pace of privatizations andretrenchment of state-owned enterprises.At the same time, the regime hasattempted to mollify the angry workersand peasants through "anti-corruption"campaigns, even executing some highranking officials, and has occasionally

reversed some of its own "free market"measures. This is not because the Stalinists are irrevocably committed to defenseof the collectivized economy. As Trotskywrote of the Soviet bureaucracy in TheRevolution Betrayed (1936), "I t continues to preserve state property only to theextent that it fears the proletariat.""Market Socialism" andNeo-Maoism

To be sure, Wei's article does notopenly denounce the Jiang/Zhu regimeand its pro-capitalist, pro-imperialist policies, e.g., China's drive to join the WTO.That's not permitted in a public journalwhich has to have at least the unofficialsanction of the Communist Party. Butreaders of Central Current get the message-written, so to speak, between thelines. While exalting Mao as a great revolutionary, Wei's article does not evenmention his successor, Deng Xiaoping,who introduced "market socialism"which he called "socialism with Chinesecharacteristics"-and invited large-scaleinvestment by Western, Japanese' and offshore Chinese capitalists in Taiwan, HongKong and elsewhere. Deng is thus condemned by conspicuous omission.

Ming BaoWomen workers in Hanchuan, Hubeiprovince protest layoffs. Bannersread: "We Want to Eat" and "We Wantto Live."Wei also praises Mao for opposing the"revisionism" of Soviet leader NikitaKhrushchev in the late 1950s and early'60s. But Wei's real target is the postMao Chinese "revisionist" leaders Dengand his successor, Jiang. At least theolder generation of Chinese know thatduring the "Cultural Revolution" of the1960s, Mao branded Deng as "the second leading 'person in authority takingthe capitalist road" and stripped him of

his political power for several years.Wei Wei is not just a nostalgic, oldline Maoist intellectual whose writings. have no bearing on power politics in Beijing. Central Current is the public voiceof conservative Chinese Stalinist bureaucrats, like former propaganda ministerDeng Liqun, who worry that the restoration of "free market" capitalism will produce massive and incalculable social dis-

Lansner/Black StarGarment factory in China. Influx of imperialist and overseas Chinese capitalhas meant brutal exploitation for millions of workers.locations. It could even lead once againto the subjugation and dismembermentof China at the hands of Western andJapanese imperialism.Many top Chinese government officials and military men look at what happened to the Soviet Union with genuinehorror. As a consequence of capitalistcounterrevolution in 1991-92, a "superpower" sesond only to the United Stateswas broken apart along national lines, itsindustrial base dismantled, its militarypower gutted, its society beset by political turmoil. They see demobilized former Soviet military officers reduced topenury and homelessness. They see former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev,once a respected world figure, now acting as a public relations man for anAmerican pizza company!But even more than they fear theunhappy fate of their former Soviet counterparts, Beijing Stalinist bureaucrats fearthe Chinese working class. And rightlyso. The protesting molybdenum minersand their families literally took over thetown of Yangjiazhangzi for three daysbefore being quelled by the army.According to one police report from thecentral province of Anhui, it has becomecommon to see "workers collectivelybesieging enterprise leaders, hurling abuseat them, and even detaining them underduress." The Chinese Labor Ministryreports that there were more than 120,000labor disputes last year-14 times morethan in 1992-from petitions to strikes.The Chinese bureaucracy instinctivelyknows that it cannot suppress this level oflabor unrest just by using the police andarmy. Some army units, mainly consisting of the conscripted s o n ~ of poor peasants, might even go over to the side of therebellious workers. So the bureaucracyalso tries to politicaliy pacify the workersby promising them a better future. Jiang,Zhu & Co. promise prosperity throughChina's greater integration into the worldcapitalist economy. But having experienced the ravages of "market reforms" forover two decades now, much of the Chinese working class is skeptical or outrighthostile toward the'advocates of a "social-ist market economy." .So other sections of the bureaucracypresent a left face as represented by Cim-

tral Current. This neo-Maoist journaloffers a kind of reformism of tITe left. Itsays in effect that there are influentialfigures in the CCP who, if they gainedthe upper hand, would eliminate the rampant corruption and nepotism and curbthe increasing economic power of Western, Japanese and offshore Chinese capitalists. They might even reconstruct the"iron rice bowl" (guaranteed lifetime employment in state-owned enterprises) andreturn to the supposedly more egalitarianpolicies of the Mao era.In reaction to the extreme inegalitarianism promoted by Deng, who oncedeclared, "To be rich is glorious," anidealization of the Mao era has developedin the popular consciousness of Chinesesociety. During the 1989 student-centereddemonstrations in Tiananmen Square, acontingent of young workers who joinedthe mass protests carried placards withMao's picture. The London Independent(24 May 1989) commented at the time:"While few would relish any return todogmatic Maoism, the past does offer anappealing if highly romanticised visionfor many Chinese: prices were stable,crime was low and unemployment wasunheard of."Stalinism with ChineseCharacteristics

Such idealization ofthe Mao era is certainly understandable. But Mao's regimewas far from egalitarian and far fromsocialist. Mao's "Great Leap Forward" inthe late 1950s was an insane economic adventure, exemplified by backyard steel furnaces, which ended in totalcollapse and widespread starvation. Thedestructive frenzy of the "Cultural Revolution" which began in the mid-I960s-adecade-long, convulsive factionalstruggle within the bureaucracy-took manymore lives than the massacre carried outby the Deng regime to crush the Tiananmen protests.In both China and the West, Mao andDeng are viewed as polar opposites, the'one a communist visionary, the other apragmatic modernizer. In reality, bothrepresented the interests of the parasitic. bureaucracy which has governed Chinasince the 1949 Revolution and restson the planned collectivized economy

Joseph. ___ .____ .__ .._.. ,Bombay slum (left): India remains mired in poverty more than 50 years after independence. In China, 1949 Revolution overthrowing capitalist rule broughtenormous economic and social gains. Woman with bound feet in prerevolutionary China, students at Qinghua University in contemporary China.8 WORKERS VANGUARD

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ushered in by the revolution. That revolution shattered capitalist rule, seized t h ~ land from the rapacious landlords andthrew off the yoke of imperialist subjugation. The creation of a planned economy laid the basis for enormous gainsfor the workers and peasants.But there was a qualitative differencebetween the ] 949 Chinese Rev.ol utionand the Russian Revolution led by Leninand Trotsky's Bolshevik Party. The October Revolution was carried out bya class-conscious proletariat which sawthe seizure of power as the first steptoward world socialist revoiution. In contrast, Mao's CCP came to power throughpeasant-based guerrilla war and propounded the nationalist Stalinist dogmaof building "socialism in one country"from the outset.Writing in the mid-] 9th century, KarlMarx explained that in the absence of aninternational socialist society based onthe highest level of technological andindustrial development, "only want willbe generalized, and with want the struggle for necessities begins again, and allthe old crap must revive." Flatly repudiating Marx, the Stalinists preach theidiocy that socialism, which both Marxand Lenin identified as. the lowest stageof classless communist society, could bebuilt in a single country if only imperialist military intervention were thwarted. Inpractice, "socialism in one country"meant opposition to the perspective ofworkers revolution internationally. Itexpressed the nationally limited interestsof the bureaucratic caste which usurpedpolitical power in the Soviet Union in

1923-24 and turned the Communist International from an instrument of the worldrevolution into a tool for the bureaucracy's illusory search for "peaceful coexistence" with imperialism. Leon Trotsky's Left Opposition fought againstthe Stalinist betrayers to restore the revolutionary, proletarian, internationalistprinciples which animated the OctoberRevolution. .Within the nationalist framework of"socialism in one country," which iscounterposed to the perspective of international proletarian revolution, the regimes of Mao and Deng pursued different policies in different internationalcontexts. Nonetheless, in one very important respect their policies were substantially identical: the alliance withU.S. imperialism against the SovietUnion. Thus it is both ironic and 'hypocritical that today the neo-Maoist WeiWei writes: "The change of the nature inEast Europe and the breakup of theUSSR in the late 1980s and early '90swas the greatest tragedy o f this century."In the late 1960s-and Wei certainlyknows this-Mao labeled the SovietUnion a "social imperialist" power evenmore dangerous to China than the U.S.New Left radicals around the worldhailed Mao's China as a revolutionaryalternative to the stodgy Kremlinbureaucracy at the time. We Trotskyistsdescribed Maoism as "Khrushchevismunder the gun." We insisted that giventhe Mao regime's hostility to the SovietUnion, "the danger of an imperialist alliance with China against the Russianscannot be dismissed" ("Chinese Menshevism," Spartacist No. 15-16, April-May6 OCTOBER 2000

] 970). That alliance was sealed in 1972when U.S. president Richard Nixon visited Beijing and embraced the Chairmanat the very moment that U.S. warplaneswere bombing Vietnam!The alliance with the U.S. was continued and deepened under Deng. In 1979,Deng ordered the People's LiberationArmy (PLA) to invade Vietnam, the mainSoviet ally in East Asia, with the approvaland encouragement of Washington. TheVietnamese resisted effectively and inflicted 20,000 casualties on the PLA,which retreated across the border. Duringthe final years of the Cold War in the1980s, China bolstered American imperialism in weakening and undermining theSoviet Union-for example, giving aid tothe CIA-backed mujahedin cutthroatsfighting Soviet troops in Afghanistanthereby furthering the counterrevolutionary drive which destroyed the USSR. Sowhen the neo-Maoist We i now lamentsthat this was "the greatest tragedy of thiscentury," .he is being deeply hypocritical.Chinese workers and left-wing intellectuals must be won to the understanding that it is Trotskyism-not Maoism,i.e., Stalinism with Chinese characteristics-which genuinely represents the revolutionary Marxism of today. The Trotskyist International Communist Leaguestands for the unconditional militarydefense of the Chinese'deformed workersstate against imperialist attack and internal counterrevolution. Our defense ofChina against the class enemy does notdepend on the prior overthrow of the Stalinist bureaucracy nor on the circumstances and .immediate causes of a mili-

Workers in 1989Tiananmen Squareprotests carriedportraits of MaoZedong, lookingback to his claimsof egalitarianismas they protestedeffects of "marketreforms."

tary conflict The parasitic bureaucracywhich is paving the way to capitalist restoration must be ousted through a proletarian political revolution. It is urgentlynecessary to build a Leninist-Trotskyistparty in China to lead the combative proletariat to the conquest of political power.There is no nationally limited road tosocialism in China. The modernization

of .China-providing the basis for adecent life for all its inhabitants on thebasis of access to the advanced technology and productive resources now concentrated in North America, West Europeand Japan-requires proletarian revolution in the imperialist centers, layingthe basis for an internationally plannedsocialist economy.Maurice Meisner andNeo-Maoist Idealism

The regime of Jiang Zemin has to dateeffectively suppressed organized politicalopposition, whether from the left or right,and even widespread intellectual dissent.A neo-Maoist like Wei Wei can publishonly by presenting his views in a highlyguarded manner. Given the absence ofopen political debate in China itself, themost comprehensive and systematic analysis of present-day China from a neoM a o i s ~ standpoint turns out to be thework of an American academic, MauriceMeisner's The Deng Xiaoping Era: AnInquiry into the Fate of Chinese Socialism, 1978-1994 (1996).Whereas Wei cannot publicly attack_the leaders of post-Mao China, Meisneroperates under no such constraint. Hecondemns Deng for "the indiscriminatesweeping away of all the quasi-socialist

Magnuminstitutions and values inherited from theMao era." And he goes on: ."For the savage capitalism that operatesunder the cloak of a socialist market economy is bringing Irbout enormous social

transformations and upheavals-mass iveproletarianization, more intensive formsof exploitation, greater alienation, enormous gaps between rich and poor, andgrowing economic and social differencesbetween town and countryside."In his article, Wei cites Meisner's workwith approval, especially for his positiveattitude toward Mao's ideas and towardChina during the Mao era. Nonetheless,there are very important differencesbetween them. As can be seen from theabove quote, Meisner contends that capitalism-he callS it "bureaucratic capitalism"-was restored to China under Deng,although he concedes that "glaringlyabsent is a developed system of privateproperty." Wei maintains that China isstill "socialist" although threatened bythe forces of capitalist restoration.This difference reflects something farmore important than the theoretical outlooks of these two particular leftist intellectuals. Because of his geographicallocation and social role, Wei seeks toappeal to the Chinese working classwhich is now engaged in elemental struggles against the effects of a "socialistmarket economy." Chinese workers knowthat the privatization of state-ownedenterprises will result in mass unemployment and destitution for many of them.Following the closure of much of thestate-owned molybdenum mine.in Yangjiazhangzi in February and the sale of theremainder to the managers' friends, oneworker declared: "We miners have been

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Broadway. Suite 318, New York, NY looo7; ManagingEditor-Barry James, 299 Broadway, Suite 318, NewYork, NY looo7.10. Owner: Sparracist PubliShing Co, (Unincorporated Association), 299 Broadway. Suite 318, NewYork, NY 10007.II . Known bondholders, mortgagees, and othersecurity holders owning or holding I percent or moreof total amount of bonds, mortgages, or other securities: None.12. For completion by nonprofit organizationsauthorized to mail at nonprofit rates: Not applicable.13. Publication title: Workers Vanguard.14. Issue date for circulation data below: 22 September 2ooo.15. Extent and nature of circulation: Average no.copies each issue during preceding 12 months: a. Totalnumber of copies (Net press run): 14,ooo; b. Paid and/orrequested circulation: (I) Paid/requested outsidecounty mail subscriptions stated on Form 3541: 1,985;(2) Paid in-county subscriptions: 0; (3) Sales through

Beijing, 1972: Mao fetes U.S.president Nixon as Americanimperialists rain death anddestruction on Vietnam.

working here for China, for the Communist Party, since the revolution. And nowmy part of the mine is private." He isexpressing the attitude of many Chineseworkers, who understand that such stateproperty belongs to the working class. If,as Meisner contends, state property inChina belongs to the bureaucrats, whyshould workers protest if it is taken overas private property?Nonetheless, Meisner's work shouldbe considered seriously, for it is wellregarded among Chinese students andother intellectuals who are opposed to orcritical of the existing regime from theleft. It purports to be a theoretical analysis of China, from a "critical Marxist"perspective, from the 1949 Revolutionthrough the last years of the Deng regime.Meisner, now in his 60s, is a representative of that current of Western leftistintellectuals (e.g., Paul Sweezy, CharlesBettelheim) who endorsed and publicized Mao's idealist criticism of bothMarxism and of "orthodox" Soviet Stalinism. The Soviet variant of "socialismin one country" always involved a largeelement of technological dynamism: afaith that backward Russia, through itsplanned economy, could catch up withthe advanced capitalist countries in ageneration or so. Stalin's Problems ofLeninism (1933) asserted, "We are fiftyor a hundred years behind the advancedcountries. We must make good this lag inten years."Mao's China in the 1950s was qualitatively more economically backward thanwas Stalin's Russia in the 1930s. The

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