Workers Vanguard No 779 - 19 April 2002

7/29/2019 Workers Vanguard No 779 - 19 April 2002

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soeNo. 779 ~ X . 5 2 3 19 April 2002

No U.S./UN/EU Intervention in the Near East!

Unprecedented Israeli onslaught on Palestinian people has reduced much of West Bank to rubble, like Jenin above.

u.s. Hands Off Iraq!PRIL 16-Ramallah, Nablus,Bethlehem, Jenin, Qabatya, Qal workers of Iran, working peopleqilya, Yatta, Samua, Ber Zeit:the roll call of Palestinian communities devastated by Israeli Down With Zionist and Arab Bourgeois Rulers!throughout the world must takeup the cause of the Palestinianpeople as their own throughdemonstrations, protest strikesand other class-struggle actions.For a Socialist Federation of the Near East!roops, tanks and hel icopter gunships encompasses almost all of In Morocco, upwards of a mil-the West Bank. Upwards of 200Palestinians have been slaughtered in tneJenin refugee camp alone--where nearly15,000 people are crammed into littlemore than a third of a square mile-as de

fiant fighters armed with automatic rifleshave tried to defend homes and faminesagainst the Israeli juggemaut. LikeningJenin to Vietnam, carpet bombed by theU.S., one Israeli soldier said, "There'snothing left there now."Over 4,000 Palestinians have beenarrested, including Marwan Barghouti,second only to Palestinian Authority (PA)leader Yasir Arafat in the Fatah party.The PA now exists in name only. Estimates of the death toll range to 500-ontop of more than 1,200 killed and 50,000wounded over the previous 18 mqnths.The full extent of the slaughter will onlybe known, if ever, after the Zionist stormtroopers pull out. Journalists have beenbarred froni besi eged ' towns. In Jenin,Israeli troops have reportedly dug massgraves to conceal the actual numberkilled. In most cases, Palestinians are noteven allowed to bury their dead. In Ramallah, nearly 30 decomposing bodies wereburied in a hospital parking lot in orderto make room for more in the morgue.Scores of wounded have been left to diebecause ambulances were not allowedthrough or their drivers were shot.Cities and towns that once had a sem-

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blance of an economy and life have beenreduced to ruins. Old towns and casbahs,some of them with walls dating back tothe Roman EmpIre, have been turned todust. The West Bank is now a massiverubble of twisted metal and destroyedlives, with nearly two million Palestinianseffectively imprisoned in their homes byIsraeli curfews. It will take years, if notdecades, to rebuild what the Israelis havedestroyed: homes, businesses, shops,libraries, hospitals, paved roads, electrical plants, sewage mains, water pipesthe entire infrastructure of the West Bank.The looming health disaster may wellclaim many more lives.As the Palestinian people are sub-

jected to an unprecedented 'ons1aught,imperialist spokesmen engage in hypocritical hand-wringing and the Arabregimes recite their usual litany of emptyUnited Nations resolutions. But in citiesthroughout the Near East, and elsewhere,hundreds of thousands march in outrage,desperate for some way to put an end tothe savage Israeli assault.What is urgently necessary is themobilization of the working class, in theNear East and internationally, in defenseof the Palestinian people against Zioniststate terror. From black and Arab workersin Detroit to the proletariat of France,with its key North African component, tothe port workers of Egypt and the oil

WV PhotoSpartacist contingent at April 11 UCLA protest in defense of Palestinians.

lion people marched through thestreets of Rabat making a zero sign withtheir fingers to express their contempt forthe Arab regimes that do nothing to stopthis new catastrophe against the Palestinians-but the Arab bourgeoisies havealways been enemies of the Palestiniannational struggle. Arafat and an array ofpseudo-socialist groups in West Europeand the U.S. appeal to the UN or theEuropean Union (EU) or even the Zioniststate's American patrons for an "international protection force"-but it was justsuch a force that paved the way for the1982 SabralShatila massacre. EU powersBritain and France once had forces in theNear East-as colonial overlords of theArab masses. It was under the auspices ofa UN intervention force that the U.S. perpetrated its 1991 slaughter of the Iraqipeople.Particularly now, calls for imperialistmilitary intervention serve to legitimizeand facilitate Washington's plans for anew war against Iraq. Secretary of StateColin Powell's "mission of peace" is atransparently cynical attempt to quell thepopular Arab outrage that stands in theway of even nominal support from clientstates like Egypt for the drive to smashSaddam Hussein.The current White House cabal hasbeen itching to "finish the job" begun byBush Sr. in 1991, when tens of thousandsof Iraqis were slaughtered. In the inter-.vening years, one and a half million people, mainly children and the elderly, havedied as a result of the starvation embargoimposed under UN sanctions. Now, underthe rubric of the "war on terror," Bush has

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Hands Off Lynne' Stewart!On April 9, New York City attorneyLynne Stewart and three Arab menAhmed Abdel Sattar, Yasstr AI-Sirri andMohammed Yousry-were indicted oncharges of snpporting "terrorism." Stew

art is facing up to 40 years in prison forthe "crime" of being an attorney for blinaEgyptian sheik Omar Ahmed-Rahman,who is imprisoned for life on "seditiousconspiracy" charges stemming from the1993 World Trade Center bombing.Yousry is included in the indictment forhaving acted as Rahman's interpreter. Theother two are alleged to be members ofRahman's Islamic Group. All four arecharged simply for having communicatedwith Rahman or with each, other. Theywere indicted under the USA-Patriot Actenacted last October, which broadens thedefinition of "terrorist" to include justabout anybody deemed an opponent ofthe government. We demand that allcharges against Stewart, Sattar, AI-Sirriand Yousry be dropped now!

Outside the court she defiantly stated,"My whole entire career has been aboutthe government expanding its powers tomake more and more criminal what couldbe considered political. This is an e x a m ~ pIe of that." In going after Stewart, whofor three decades has represented leftists,black activists and others deemed enemies by the r-acist rulers, Ashcroft is seeking to make a sinister amalgam betweenleftist political activity and "terrorism."As we warned in '''Anti-Terror' Law:Shredding Your Rights" (WV No. 770, 7December 2001): "The purpose of thenew measures is to revive and deepen thebroad-ranging repression and intimidation that marked the Cold War McCarthyite witchhunt of 50 years ago. The aimtoday as then is to coerce the entire population into ideological conformity, withthe government wielding the spectre ofseemingly pervasive 'Islamic terrorism'as a surrogate for Communism."

It was the witchhunt atmospherewhipped up by the government followingSeptember 11 that made Stewart's prosecution possible. The flimsy nature of theSupported by 'dozens of attorneys whofilled the courtroom, the 62-year-oldStewart pleaded "emphatically not guilty."

Against AmericanImperialist Militarism!In the name of he "global war on terror,"the Pentagon has dispatched troops to,among several other countries, the Philippines, an American neocolony and untilthe end of World War II an outright colonyof the U.S. At its founding conference in1938, the then-Trotskyist American S o c i a l ~ ist Wotkers Party emphasized the reciprol'

TROTSKY ca l reliitiofiship between the struggle of the LENINcolonial and semicolonial masses againstAmerican imperialist domination and the fight for proletarian revolution in the u.s.United States imperialism, exploiting the masses within its national boundaries, atthe same time and to an even greater degree, exploits the peoples of Latin and ,CentralAmerica, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Liberia, the Philippines. These people are thus thepotential allies of the American workers in the struggle against U.S. imperialism, andneither they nor the American workers can expect to win freedom except in joint combat against the common enemy. The SWP supports every progressive struggle of thesepeoples. It stands for the immediate and unhampered right of self-determination forthem, free from military, political, or economic intervention or pressure by the U.S.government. It stands for the immediate and unconditional independence of all the territories, colonies, and dependencies of the U.S. and for the withdrawal of all troopsfrom them. It is opposed to any attempt by American imperialism, open or masked, toinfringe upon the right of self-determination of any nation or people.The revolutions in the colonies, semicolonies, and spheres of influence of UnitedStates imperialism are integrally and reciprocally related to the revolutionary struggleagainst that imperialism at home. A successful revolution in the United States would be

decisive for the emancipation of the'toiling masses throughout Latin America; while, onthe other hand, a revolution beginning in one of the Latin A m ~ r i c a n countries, or inone of the colonies or semicolonies of the U.S:, could spread throughout the continentand powerfully accelerate the development of the class struggle and the revolutionwithin the United States. The SWP regards it, therefore, as a central task to aid andsupport the revolutionary movement in these nations and colonies, and to establish theclosest relations with the revolutionists and revolutionary organizations within them.

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-Socialist Workers Party, Declaration ofPrinciples (1938); reprinted inThe Founding of the Socialist Workers Party (1982)

EDITOR: Len MeyersEDITOR, YOUNG SPARTACUS PAGES: Michael DavissonPRODUCTION MANAGER: Susan FullerCIRCULATION MANAGER: Irene GardnerEDITORIAL BOARD: Ray Bishop (managing editor), Bruce Andre, Jon Brule, George Foster,Liz Gordon, Walter Jennings, Jane Kerrigan, James Robertson, Joseph Seymour, Alison Spencer,Alan Wilde'The Spartacist League is the U.S, Section of the International Communist League(Fourth Internationalist),Workers Vanguard (ISSN 0276-0746) published biweekly, except skipping three alternate issues in June, July andAugust (beginning with omitting the second issue in June) and with a 3-week interval in December, by the Spartacist Publishing Co" 299 Broadway, Suite 318, New York, NY 10007, Telephone: (212) 732-7862 (EditOrial), (212) 732-7861(Business), Address all correspondence to: Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116, E-mail address:[email protected] subscriptions: $10,00/22 issues, Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY and additional mailing offices,POSTMASTER: Send addres s changes to Workers Vanguard, Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116,Opinions expressed n signed arncles or letters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint.The closing date for news in this issue is 16 April.

No.n9 19 April 2002

charges against her are evident in the factthat the alleged "crime" took place over ayear ago, and the Feds did absolutelynothing. In fact, what they claim she didwasn't even illegal at the time. Only byviolating the constitutional proscriptionagainst ex postfacto prosecutions (passing laws to outlaw' something that has already taken place) could the governmentcharge her under the USA-Patriot Act.Ashcroft claims that Stewart provided"material support and resources" to Rahman's Egyptian-based Islamic Group during a prison visit with the sheik two yearsago, during which Stewart purportedlymade "extraneous comments" in Englishto "mask" from prison guards a conversation between Rahman and MohammedYousry. Following her arraignment, Stewart remarked: "They have now arrestedthe lawyer and interpreter. Are they goingto arrest the lady that cleans the sheik'scell?" Her other "offenses" were toannounce to the press that the sheik nolonger supported a cease-fire in terroristactivities and to publicly state that he wasbeing denied medical treatment by prisonofficials.Stewart has announced her hope thatthe indictment become "a touchstonecase ... something that points out the limits the government can go through inprosecuting people they don't like." Theframe-up of the four is part of the frontal'attack on civil liberties that accompaniesthe U.S.-led "global war on terror." Usingthe fear born of the attack on the WorldTrade Center as a pretext, the Bush administration, with most Democrats intow, pushed through a package of legislation, executive fiats and Justice Department regulations which marked a q u a l i t a ~ ~ ' tive diminution of democratic rights.The USA-Patriot Act gives the government the authority to declare almost anyone it wants a "terrorist" and enumeratesthe multitude of ways the Feds willdestroy their lives-wiretapping, indefinite detention, rifling through financialrecords, breaking into homes and deporting non-citizens. The law's definition of"terrorists" as those who ~ o m m i t unlawful acts that "appear to be intended tointimidate or coerce a c i v i l ~ a n population" or "to influence a polic,Yof a government by intimidation or coercion"could be applied to postal strikers whomobilize to stop scabs or who disable ascab truck. At least 1,200 immigrants;mostly young men from Arab and SouthAsian countries, have been rounded up inthe "anti-terror" witchhunt so far, andalthough none have been charged withanything to do with the World Trade Center attack, hundreds remain in jail. We

APsay: Free the detainees now!The government's vendetta againstStewart reveals the lengths to which thecapitalist rulers will go to chill any effortsto defend those caught in the "anti-terror"dragnet. Testifying to the significance thegovernment places on the prosecution ofStewart, Attorney General John Ashcroftpersonally announced the indictment.The 11 April New York Post ran a scurrilous attack on Stewart's lawyer, SusanTipograph, trying to connect her to theprison break of the Puerto Rican nationalist FALN leader William Morales ...23 years ago! For Bush & Co., model lawyers for those in the government's gunsights are the kind who typically represent death row inmates in Texas-lawyers who get tanked up on Jack Danielsand sleep through the trial.Equating lawyers with the a l l e g ~ d crimes of their clients is nothing new. Inthe 1950s, when the Communist Partywas declared an illegal organization andits members and anyone having contactwith them were dragged befoftNhe HouseCommittee for Un-American Activities(HUAC), their 'lawyers 'were vilified orindicted as well.While Ashcroft proclaimed that Stewart and the others helped Rahman "direct the terrorist activities of the IslamtcGroup from his prison cell," the 24-pageindictment points to not one single terrorist act resulting from such contactor any criminal act for that matter.The charges of conspiring to "providematerial support" to Rahman stem 'purelyfrom the fact that the State Department designated the I s l a m i ~ Group a"terrorist" organization (although Rahman and his Islamic reactionaries hadearlier received plenty of support fromthe CIA, which deemed him a "valuable asset" in the anti-Soviet war inAfghanistan).The Feds claim that Stewart violatedthe "Special Administrative Measures"she allegedly agreed to in 1999 whichallowed her access to her client Rahmanonly on the condition that she not convey

All Israeli Troops, Settlers Out of the Occupied Territories!No U.SJUN/NATO Intervention in the Near East!U.S. Hands Off Iraq!For a Socialist Federation of the Near East!

Thurs., April 25, 7:30 p.m.Columbia University,

Hamilton Hall, Room 517116th Street and Broadway

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

Sat., April 27, 4 p.m.Mt. Hollywood Congregational Church

4607 Prospect Ave., Hollywood(near Vermont/Sunset Red Line station)For more information: (213) 380-8239

LOS ANGELESSat., May 11, 7:30 p.m. Trinity-St. Paul's Centre

427 Bloor Street West Oust west of Spadina subway) "TORONTO For more information: (416) 593-4138 '

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Welcome Spartacist IrelandWe send internationalist greetings to the com-rades of the Spartacist Group Ireland on theoccasion of the first issue of their press. Wereprint below the introductory article from thenewspaper dated Spring/Summer 2002. Forwardto the reforging of he Fourth International!We are proud to announce the publication ofthe first issue of Spartacist Ireland, newspaper

of the Spartacist Group Ireland (SOI)-formerly the Dublin Spartacist Group-Irish section of the International Communist League(Fourth Internationalist). As stated in our international "Declaration of Principles and SomeElements of Program" (Spartacist No. 54,Spring 1998), the ICL "is a proletarian, revolutionary and internationalist tendency whichis committed to the task of building Leninistparties as national sections of a democraticcentralist international whose purpose is to leadthe working class to victory through socialistrevolutions throughout the world."The establishment of this journal is a modestbut real step in the consolidation and construction of an Irish section of the ICL. As v.1.Lenin explained in Where to Begin (May 1901),the intervention of the revolutionary party isnecessary to make the working class consciousof its historic task to overthrow capitalism.Lenin underscored the importance of a newspaper in building such a party:

the recent war against Afghanistan. Duringthat war we raised the demand for class struggle at home and called on the working class todefend Afghanistan. MshIVN troops ou t ofthe Near East, Balkans and East Timor!Against Labourite chauvinism and Greennationalism, the SOl is committed to raising thebanner of proletarian internationalism, not leastin the context of Northern Ireland. As stated inthe ICL's 1977 "Theses on Ireland" (reprintedin Ireland: Workers to Power! [1991]) the keycomponents of a revolutionary working-classperspective include: For the immediate andunconditional withdrawal of the British Army!Full democratic rights for the oppressed Catholic minority in Northern Ireland! Not Orangeagainst Green, but class against class! No forcible reunification! For an Irish workers republic in a voluntary federation of workers republics in the British Isles! This leaves open thequestion of where the Protestants will fall andhighlights the relationship of the proletarianrevolutions throughout the British Isles and thevirtual impossibility of a resolution of the Irishquestion on a working-class basis outside thisframework.

, "The role of a newspaper, however, is not limited solely to the dissemination of ideas, topolitical education, and to the enlistment ofpolitical allies. A newspaper is not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, itis also a collective organiser. In the last respectit may be likened to the scaffolding round abuilding under construction, which marks thecontours of the structure and facilitates communication between the builders, enabling them todistribute the work and to view the commonresults achieved by their organised labour."-Collected Works, Vol. 5

Subscribe now to Spartacist Ireland! 4 issues/4, order from: DublinSpartacist Group, P.O. Bo)( 2944, Dubli n 1, Republic of Ireland. Forsingle issues, $1, order from: Spartacist Publishing Co., Box 1377GPO, New York, NY 10013.

James Connolly, the internationalist socialist workers leader, aptly characterised womenin Ireland as the "slaves of the slaves." We areincluding in our newspaper a regular sectiondealing with the fight against women's oppression under the Women and Revolution (W&R)masthead. This is continuing in the tradition ofthe Bolsheviks who published the paper Rabot-nitsa (The Woman Worker) and our own journalW&R which was published by the SpartacistLeague/U.S. from 1971 to 1998. The ICL continues to publish articles under W&R mastheadsin our international theoretical journal Spartacistand in the press of various ICL sections.The banner of the ICL was f i t ~ t planted in Ireland inAutuIPn 1990 with the founding of the Dublin SpartacistYouth Group (DSYG). Key to the founding of the DSYGwas the intervention of the ICL into the nascent politicalrevolution which unfolded in the East German deformedworkers state in 1989-90. We fought for unconditionalmilitary defence of the DDR and for a red Germany ofworkers councils, for revolutionary reunification t h r o u g ~ proletarian political revolution in the East and socialistrevolution in the West to overthrow the bourgeoisie. Therestoration of capitalism led to massive immiseration ofthe working class, attacks on the rights of women and therise of racist attacks and communalist wars throughoutEastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

Stalinist bureaucracies whose policies of conciliatingimperialism threaten the gains of the socialrevolutions,in these countries-the collectivised economy, central

The fight for women's liberation is strategicfor socialist revolution in Ireland where social policy,education and healthcare basically remain in the grip ofthe Catholic church hierarchy. Conditions for women inNorthern Ireland are little better: Protestant fundamentalists routinely join the Catholic church in opposing theextension of Britain's 1967 abortion law. The revolutionary party must champion struggles against every

planning and monopoly of foreign trade. .

'form of social oppression to become a "tribune of thepeople": combating not only the oppression of womenbut also that of gays, Travellers and immigrants.

Today we uphold the Trotskyist programme of unconditional military defence of the remaining deformedworkers states: China, North Korea, Cuba and Vietnam.We stand for prole,tarian political revolution to oust the

In addition to the devastating consequences in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the counterrevolution emboldened the imperialists to undertake newimperialist interventions from Serbia to Afghanistan andbeyond. Although Ireland is a very small, weak capitalistcountry, nevertheless its position at the western Atlanticapproaches to Britain and continental Europe gives itstrategic military significance. Despite the nationalistmyth of Irish "neutrality," pushed not least by the fakeleft, Ireland has never been neutral. The Irish b o u r g e o i s i ~ has deployed troops as part of UN imperialist "peacekeeping" missions from Lebanon to the Balkans andEast Timor and regularly makes Shannon airport available for refuelling by U.S. military aircraft including in

We fight to forge a Bolshevik party to lead the working class in its historic mission to liberate all theoppressed and establish a planned economy based onsocialised property forms. We, along with our comradesin the Spartacist League/Britain, fight for workers revolution on both sides of the border and both sides of theIfish Sea. For a reforged Fourth In ternational that Trot-sky would recognise as his own!.

any communications to or from 'him.Stewart's indictment is being used to justify Ashcroft's fiat last fall allowingprison authorities to violate attorneyclient confidentiality by eavesdroppingon their discussions. In dictating whatdefendants and attorneys can say to eachother, Ashcroft is effectively denying theright to any real legal defense.Such moves flagrantly violate therights of prisoners and attorneys alike.But already the nearly two million menand women entombed in America',s prisons, over, half of them black and Hispanic, have virtually no rights. The courtshave repeatedly declared that prison officials can read inmates' mail, censor theirspeech, restrict visits from and communications with family. Class-war prisonerssuch as Mumia Abu-Jamal, Ray Luc

Levasseur, Hugo Pinell and dozens morellre held in "super-max" prisons, lockedup 23 hours a day, with rigid restrictionson the literature they 'tan receive andaccess to the press.The U.S. rulers have a long history ofresorting to conspiracy laws against theirperceived opponents when they can't pinany illegal activities on them. The earlytrade unions in this country were outlawed as "criminal conspiracies." Leftists, union organizers and opponents ofAmerica's entry in.to the First World Warwere imprisoned on charges of "seditiousconspiracy," and in 1943, 18 Trotskyistsand leaders of the Minneapolis Teamsterswere thrown in jail under the Smith Actfor conspiracy because of their oppositionto U.S. imperialism in World War 11.Today, the capitalist rulers sell ~ t h e i r

Saturday, April 27, 3 p.m.Harvard University Science Center, Room 1028

'BOSTON . For more information: (617) 666-945319 APRIL 2002

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assault on civil liberties with the watchword of "national unity," claiming thatonly a small and vulnerable sector of thepopulation would be affected by the"anti-terror" roundups. But as we warnedin December, "In the government's gunsights, however, is just about everyoneperceived as an opponent by the capitalistrulers-from those who oppose U.S.imperialist wars abroad to those whospeak out against racist oppression orfight to defend their unions and live-

lihoods against attacks by the employers." As we noted in that article, what thegovernment is able to get away with willbe determined by the level of socialstruggle. The labor movement, fightersfor black rights and all opponents of capitalist injustice have a direct interestin joining in defense of Lynne Stewart,Ahmed Abdel Sattar, Yassir AI-Sirri andMohammed Yousry and in calling forfreedom for all those detained in theanti-immigrant witchhunt..

Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of the Spartacist League0$10/22 issues of Workers Vanguard 0 New 0 Renewal(includes English-language Spartacist and Black History and the Class Struggle)international rates: $25/22 issues-Airmail $10/22 issues-Seamailo $2/6 introductory issues of Workers Vanguard (includes English-language Spartacist)o $2/4 issues of Espartaco (en espanol) (includes Spanish-language Spartacist)Name ______________________________________________________Address ________________________ __

Apt. # ____City __________ State _'--__ Zip ____Phone (__ E-mail _________ -,-__779Make checks payable/mail to: Sparta cist Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116

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YOUDg SparlacusFrom Korea Through the Vietnam WarThe"Am

We print below the fourth and finalpart of an educational on the Americanleft given over two days by Spartacist League Cen.tral Committee memberJoseph Seymour to a gathering of Spartacus Youth Club members an d youthfrom throughout the International Communist League in New York last summer.The first three parts were published inWV Nos. 773, 775 and 777 (25 January,22 February and 22 March) and areavailable for order at $.50 each fromthe Spartacist Publishing Co., Bo x 1377GPO, New York, NY J01l6.

theury"But the war was propelling tens of thousands of previously apolitical youth likehim toward the far left.

Before discussing the left and the Vietnam antiwar movement, I want to say afew words about the non-left in the antiwar movement because it was a lot bigger than the left. Today, there is a generally held false conceptionof the Vietnamantiwar movement, a conception that isperpetuated by all sides of the bourgeoispolitical spectrum. Liberals claim theantiwar movement as their own and creditthemselves with ending the war. Rightwingers claim the U.S. could have wonthe war in Vietnam but lost it on the homefront due to the opposition of bleedingheart liberals and hippie peaceniks.

Part f o ~ r : The Impact of theVietnam War on the Left

I noted previously that the first majornational antiwar protest took place inWashington, D.C. in the spring of 1965and was organized.by the Students for aDemocratic Society (SDS). At the invitation of the SDS leaders, the rally wasaddressed by two liberal U.S. senators.One of them, the Democrat ErnestGruening of Alaska, denounced the"expansionist" policies of CommunistC h i ~ a while alsO calling for a negotiatedsolution to the war in Vietnam. A fewyears later, it would be inconceivable forthe SDS leadership to invite Democraticsenators to one of its antiwar protests,,.and allYone who spoke of Chinese"expansionism" would have"been booedoff the spea.ker's platform. By 1968, afavorite chant among leftists in the antiwar movement was "Ho, Ho, Ho ChiMinh-NLF is gonna win!"

Some months ago, I was watching aTV biography of the film actor GregoryPeck, a liberal Hollywood icon, who wasone of the first big-name movie stars to .speak out against the war. He explainedhe had done so because the U.S. was"destroying a nation" in the name ofsaving it from Communism. I have nodoubt that Peck was sincerely motivatedby humanitarian concerns for the Vietnamese people.However, the bulk of the hundreds ofthousands of people who by 1968 wereinvolved in the antiwar movement werenot primarily concerned with stoppingthe killing of Vietnamese by Americans,although they certainly wanted that to

Publication of Spartacist supportersin U.S. Army during Vietnam Warsought to intersect growingopposition to war among soldiersforced by imperialists to killand be killed.happen. They were primarily concernedwith stopping the killing of Americansby Vietnamese. The U.S. then had a draftarmy. At the height of the war, half amiIlion U.S. troops were in Vietnam, andthey were constalltly being recycled. Somillions of young American men riskedbeing kiHed, wounded or captured inthe war. It was they, their girlfriends,their brothers and sisters, their parentsand grandparents who took to the streetsdemanding an end to the war. For example, in 1970 the working-class Chicanocommunity in East Los Angeles stageda mass antiwar protest that was murderously attacked by police. Comrade

Doan Cong TinhParade outside Hanoi in October 1973 displays might of Soviet-armed NorthVietnamese military. America lost the Vietnam War on the battlefield.4

Victor G. was an eyewitness to thisevent, called the Chicano Moratorium.More generally, the large majority ofthose participating in the big semi'annual"peace" demonstrations were not leftistsor liberal activists; they were so-called"ordinary people." We were selling Spartacist at antiwar protests to contingentsfrom Methodist congregations in smallNew Jersey towns. A few years earlier ora few years later, we would have had tohave gone to suburban church bazaars tointersect the same people. The main popular slogan of the Vietnam antiwar movement was "Bring Our Boys Home," towhich we said, "Our boys are the NorthVietnamese and the South VietnameseNational Liberation Front." When theAmerican "boys" were brought home in1973 and the draft was abolished shortlythereafter, the size of the antiwar protestsplummeted from hundreds of thousandsto a few tens of thousands.Nonetheless, it's important to appreciate the large-scale youth radicalizationcaused by the Vietnam War, not only onthe campuses but also in the armedforces. In 1968-69, we did some antiwarwork in the military, putting out a newsletter called G.l. Voice. One of the fewpeople recruited through this work was ayoung navy medic named Eric, a verynice, very likable guy. He had no priorbackground as a leftist or liberal activist.He was drafted, or perhaps volunteered,trained as a medic and sent to Vietnam.There he saw his best friend killed upclose. This experience was so traumaticthat it made him willing to join a verysmall revolutionary Marxist propagandagroup. We were not able to keep Eric.

The leftward radicalization withinthe antiwar movement was mirrored inthe propaganda we directed at thatmovement. Our tlrst antiwar leaflettitled "What Gives in Vietnam?"-wasput out for the 1965 SDS rally. We hereaddressed a left-liberal position on thewar. Thus, we argued for an immediateand unconditional withdrawal of U.S.troops from Vietnam in opposition to thenegotiated withdrawal advocated by theliberal bourgeois politicians speaking atthis rally.By 1968, in a Spartacist supplementfor one of the big antiwar demos, wewere taking on the widespread illusionsin the revolutionary virtues of Vietnamese Stalinism:"There has been an understandable butnevertheless unfortunate tendency on thepart of the American left to idealizeHo Chi Minh and the leadership of theNLF [National Liberation Front], and forradicals to tum their correct demandsfor military victory against imperialismand its puppets into uncritical politicalsupport for these leaders and their politics. This is a grave error, for not onlydo these would-be revolutionaries notunderstand the deformities of those theysupport-and are extremely likely to feelpersonally betrayed when the inevitableoccurs-but are likely to carryover theStalinist hallmarks of class-collaborationand murderous opportunism into the

American revolutionary movement."The transition from the New Left liberalism of the mid 1960s to the New LeftMaoism of the late ' 60s was not a suddenand inexplicable conversion but ratherwas an organic evolution. When paleontologists study the evolution of species,they look for the fossil remains of ani n t e r m e d ~ a t e species. This species hassome of the distinctive characteristics ofboth its forerunner and its successor.. I'm pretty sure few youth have heard ofCarl Oglesby. Yet, in my opinion, he wasa significant figure in the intellectualhistory of the American left in thisperiod because his political ideology was

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an intermediate species between NewLeft liberalism and New Left Maoism.Oglesby was a leader of SDS who in 1967wrote a book on the Cold War calledContainment and Change. In it, he cameout for defense of t h e ~ A s i a n Communistregimes and movements against American imperialism by arguing from radicaldemocratic principles, centrally the rightof national self-determination. Oglesbydid not claim to be a Marxist-Leninist. Infact, he re"jected Marxism, and especiallyLeninism, -as an inadequate set of ideasfor explaining the contemporary world.Oglesby maintained that the Cold War,at least in the 1960s, was fundamentallya national conflict, not a conflict betweencapitalism and socialism. He viewed theAsian Communist countries of China andNorth Vietnam as the most radical expressions of the anticolonial revolution. Hewrote, "One should be able to showsomehow that the issue of the Vietnamwar is not Western freedom versus Eastern slavery, but foreign versus local con- -trol of Vietnam." Similarly, he assertedthat the Chinese Revolution "has nothingat all to do with communism, but ratherwith the independent organization ofChina and her acquisition of modern fire."Oglesby argued that Mao's China andHo's Vietnam were fundamentally closerto (though more radical than) Nehru'sIndia and Nasser's Egypt than to SovietRussia.Furthermore, he maintained that theSoviet Union and the United States wereworking together to keep in check revolutionary forces in the Third World:"With the Soviet Union, we have gonefrom confrontation to detente .... Directmilitary collision is feared and avoidedequally by both sides, crises are referredto hot lines instead of war rooms, andone sometimes wonders if there is notsomething still springier in the air: aslow convergence of political .aimj\., TheEuropean Cold War no longer finds Russians and Americans peering at eachother through gunsights. Instead, wehave had the experience of virtually integrated aid programs in Afghanistan andIndia. We are in open solidarity on thevexatious Kashmir question-and behindit, perhaps in essential agreement on -theChina question."

As is evident, Oglesby was not veryprescient. The important point is thathis identification of Asian Stalinismwith modernizing nationalism and ofSoviet Stalinism with American imperialism represented an intellectual bridgebetween New Left liberalism and NewLeft Maoism.The Rise of New Left Maoism

The question remains: why did somany radical activists t r a v e r ~ e thatbridge? There are a number of explanatory factors, both negative and positive.I already discussed one of _the mainnegative factors: the demise of "revolutionary" black nationalism signalt:d bythe split in the Black Panther Party. Political and organizational support to blacknationalism was a core element of theNew Left that distinguished it from "oldleft" radicalism. Defense of the Panthers,like defense of North Vietnam and theSouth Vietnamese NLF, was common

19 APRIL 2002

War was of decisive importance.By 1970, it was clear that the U.S. waslikely to lose the war. U.S. forces wouldprobably pull out of South Vietnam,which would then be taken over by the~ t h V ~ n a m e s e and NLF. Th-at-wasin fact what h,appened between 1973and '75. With the looming defeat of U.S.imperialism, the Vietnamese Stalinistleadership acquired enormous politicalauthority among young American leftistradicals. Ho Chi Minh, who died in1969, and his colleagues were viewed asdemonstrably the world's best revolutionaries. They had inflicted an unexpectedhistoric defeat on American imperialism.

Howard Ruffner4 May 1970: Ohio National Guard advances on student antiwar protest atKent State University. Massacre of four students sparked nationwide wave ofcampus strikes.

Whereas the leaders of the CubanRevolution-Castro and Guevara-wereNew Leftists in the world Communistmovement, the leaders of the VietnameseRevolution were very much "old" leftists.Ho Chi Minh had joined the CommunistInternational in Lenin's day. The Vietnamese Communists always had beenorthodox Moscow-line Stalinists. UnlikeMao, Ho did not even claim to have mademajor original contributions to "MarxistLeninist" doctrine.

to the entire spectrum of New Left radicals, from drugged-out anarcho-hippietypes to earnest young would-be communists grappling with the pseudo-dialecticsof Mao's On Contradiction. The manifest failure of black nationalist-inspiredlumpen vanguardism impelled manywhite radicals, as well as black radicals,toward proletarian vanguardism.Concurrently, "student power" demonstrated its impotence by its very success. What do I mean by this paradoxicalstatement? By 1969-70, antiwar sentiment among students and also facultyhad become so widespread that campusbased leftist radicals were able to disruptthe normal functioning of the universitysystem.In the spring of 1970, U,S. presidentRichard Nixon ordereG American troopsin South Vietnam into neighboring Cambodia. This move was seen as a signifi-cant escalation of the war. In the ensuingcampus protests, Ohio National Guardsmen opened fire and killed four studentsat Kent State University. Ten days later,white police and state patrolmen killedtwo black student protesters at Jackson. State University in Mississippi.These events triggered a nationwideantiwar strike which shut down hundre9sof colleges in the country. Four and a halfmillion students-more than half theentire U.S. student population-were involved in these protests. Many collegesremained shut down through the end ofthe semester. Yet the war continued asbefore. The more serious and intelligentmovement activists recognized that afterthe Kent-Cambodia events "student power" could go no further. Other sections of.American society had to be mobilized.

I f the Kent-Cambodia events demonstrated the impotence o( "student power,"the May '68 events in France demonstrated the actual power of the workingclass. A leftist student protest triggered a workers general strike that shookthe semi-bonapartist regime of Charlesde Gaulle to its foundations. For over amonth, France was engulfed in a prerevolutionary crisis. Finally, the French

Communist Party managed to sell out thestrike and bring it to an end in exchangefor some comparatively minor economicgains. ,What was important to the Americanleft was that the "old left" traditionalMarxist view of the working class wasclearly and dramatically vindicated. Tobe sure, many American radicals, andespecially black nationalists, maintainedthat France was not the United States.They argued that, unlike in France, thewhite majority of the American workingclass was racist because they benefitedmaterially from the oppression of blacks.Nonetheless, the French May '68 eventsexploded one of the central premisesof New Left ideology-that the workingclass in the advanced capitalist countrieshad become completely bourgeoisifiedand no longer had any revolutionarypotential.- Furthermore, there also was in thisperiod a heightened level of labor struggle in the U.S., in part conditioned by thewar. Economically, the war was generating rapid price inflation, which meantan erosion of real wage value. Simultaneously, a layer of young workers-someVietnam vets, some college dropouts,some both-injected a mood of rebelliousmilitancy and hostility toward establishedauthority into the labor movement. Forexample, in the spring of i970 a_ nationwide postal strike took p1llce, the firstnational strike of federaI'-governmentemployees in U.S. history. It was a bigdeal because it was illegal under the government's anti-labor legislation prohibiting strikes by government employees.We wrote a leaflet on the strike that isincluded in the first bound volume ofSpartacist.The French May '68. events and theheightened level of labor struggle inthe U.S. do much to explain why manyNew Left radicals turned toward theworking class in the early '70s. But thisdo not explain why most of themnot all, but most-did so under the ideological and organizational banner ofMaoism-Stalinism. Here _ he Vietnam

'1l:::T

ooThe SL and its

The enhanced authority of Vietnamese Stalinism led to a resurgence in theauthority of orthodox Stalinism amongyoung American leftists. By the early'70s, it was common in Maoist organizations and circles to study the work of Stalin along with that of Lenin and Mao.In 1973, a major bourgeois publishinghouse, Doubleday, brought out a paperback edition of the selected theoreticalwritings of Stalin with an introduction bya Maoist intellectual. There was now amarket for such a book. I remember someliberal academic complaining indignantlythat while Harry Truman's memoirs wereout of print, Barnes & Noble was displaying the works of Stalin. Incidentally, ifyou are ever in a masochistic mood andwant to inflict mental torture on yourself,read Stalin.The New Left Turns to theLabor Movement

The final chapter of our story can becalled "the New Left goes to the working class," Most of these young radicalsentered the factories with the expectation that they would soon be leading significant numbers of workers, just as theyhad been leading significant numbers ofstudents. Also, many of them had collegeor even graduate degrees, so they couldalways pursue petty-bourgeois livelihoodsif their careers as professional revolutionaries did not-play out as expected. Inshort, most young radicals joined thelabor movement with a short time horizon, which made them especially susceptible to opportunism.The political culture of America's factories in the early '70s was very differentthan that of America's campuses. Whilethe Vietnam War had become generallyunpopular, the large majority of whiteworkers and many older black workerswere still American patriots. I f hey wereliberals, they supported detente-that is,better relations-between the U.S. andcontinued on page 6

youth group, theRevolutionaryCommunist Youth, putforward anti-imperialistprogram at march inBoston, 1972. SocialistWorkers Party leaderFred Halstead (right)headed effort to buildclass-collaborationist"antiwar" bloc withliberal bourgeoisie.

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"___ _0.< __ ._. __ _____________ __ _, __


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AustraliaWe reprint below the leaflet issuedby our Spartacus Youth Club comradesin Sydney, Australia to build for a speak-out at the University of Sydney on March

20 to protest a city cop attack on leftistswho were demonstrating against right-wingers and military recruitment stalls atthe school. The speakout demands were"Cops/Military Recruiters 0ffCtimpus!"and "Down With Capitalist State Repres-sion Against the Left-Drop the ChargesAgainst Sydney University ProtestersNow!" Earlier in the month, a Spartacist-initiated protest at RMIT, a Melbourneuniversity, caused military recruiters toleave campus.

On March 6, the Marxist, SpartacistLeague/SYC led a protest demanding"Army recruiters off the campus!" inresponse to the Australian army havinga recruitment stall at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT)on the "Big Festival Day." As our fiery

red protest marched. through campus,chants of "Army recruiters-imperialistlooters-off the campus now!" and "Australian troops out of East Timor now!"rang out. Our placards included: "U.S.!UN/Australia Get Out of Afghanistan,Persian Gulfa nd Central Asia Now!" and"Defend China, North Korea, Vietnamand Cuba! For International SocialistRevolution !"Some campus workers, rank and filemembers of the Liquor, Hospitality andMiscellaneous Workers Union,' encouraged our action. Later, student bureaucrats and their specially hired securityguards complained that we had infringedon the army's "freedom of choice" andthat they had felt "harassed" and "pressurised" by our protest and had to packup .and leave. Good!The Democratic Socialist Party (DSP)pointedly did not join our protest, despitehavingpeople cringing behind their stallas we marched past. Of course, the DSPcalled for "Australian army in" to EastTimor, so why would they protest itrecruiting? Members of Workers Power(WP) and Socialist Alternative (SA)initially joined our protest, which weacknowledged. But we pointed out that in _1999, while claiming "Peacekeepers arenot the answer," these fake-left groups,19 APRIL 2002

- - - ~ - ---- --- - - - ~ - - - ~

.along with the International SocialistOrganisation (ISO), joined chauvinistdemonstrations calling for Australiantroops into East Timor, helping to feedthe climate of increased bourgeois militarism. In contrast, we protested againstthe Australian/UN imperialist occupationof East Timor. The main enemy is thecapitalist class at home. Soon afterour polemic, as security guards orderedSYN FM [campus] radio (who had turnedmusic. off for our protest) to turn theirmusic back on to drown out our ,protest,WP and SA withered away.The Laborite National Union of Students [federation of campus studentgovernments, supporters of pro-capitalistAustralian Labor Party (ALP)] had posters up on the campus against increaseddefence spending reading: "Join thearmy .. gain self esteem .. meet interestingpeople .. then kill them." The RMIT student bureaucrats fervently claimed to,agree with our opposition to militarism,then in the next breath they complainedbitterly about the fact that we audaciouslyand loudly protested for army recruitersoff campus!

:0mSmCi

Australian soldierterrorizes EastTimorese civilian inSeptember 1999as part of UN"peacekeeping"force that included'U.S. military. Muchof fake left, inAustralia and theU.S., endorsed callfo r imperialistintervention.

Outrageously, a week earlier, copsattacked and arrested four leftists-supporters of the ISO, SA and [anarchoid]Love and Rage-at the University ofSydney's orientation week for protestingagainst Liberal Club [adherents of thegoverning right-wing Liberal Party] andarmy recruitment stalls. After a provocation by Liberal Club students, city cops,who were on campus to "train" theirsecurity guard mates, suddenly appearedand viciously attacked the leftists. Theyviolently arrested a woman for "swearing"(!!), twisting her arm, and later stripsearched her. When the others went toher assistance, they too were summarilyarrested. three students face charges ofindecent language, resisting arrest andassault. While the "troops ini' DSPreported on the arrests in an article, theymanaged to omit any mention that thearmy was also a target of the protesters(Green Left Weekly, 6 March)! Despiteour political differences, we defend thevictimised students against the capitaliststate. Drop Al l Charges Now! Cops/Mili-tary Recruiters Off Campus! CampusSecurity Guards: Hands Of fLeftists!These attacks against leftists are not anaberration. The job of cops is to violentlysuppress workers and leftists! Such capitalist .state repression, along with racist

Spartacist-Ied protestagainst militaryrecruiters on RMIT .campus, Melbourne.

attacks on immigrants, especially of NearEastern background, has sharply intensified in th


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Bloodbath...(continued from page 1)openly declared his intent to attack Iraq in. order to topple Saddam Hussein and installa pliant client regime in Baghdad. Underlying the war plans against Iraq is the driveto strengthen U.S. imperialism's controlover Persian Gulf oil fields in order to reinforce American strategic interests againstits European and Japanese rivals.A victory for American militarism inIraq-or anywhere else-will emboldenthe power-mad U.S. ruling class to wreakmore death and destruction around theworld and will mean further misery forworking people and the oppressed in theU.S. The international working class hasa vital interest.in the military defense ofIraq against U.S. imperialist attack, without giving any political support to theanti-working-class, bourgeois-nationalistSaddam Hussein regime.Defend the Palestinians! Al l Israelitroops and settlers out of the OccupiedTerritories now! Al l U.S.lUN forces ou tof he Persian GulfandNear East! Downwith the starvation blockade-U.S. handsof f Iraq!Protests Sweep Arab East,West EuropeFrom Cairo tO'the Jordanian capital ofAmman to Ankara, Turkey, pro-Palestinian demonstrators have clashed with riotpolice. In Egypt, protests have spreadbeyond the capital to Alexandria in thenorth and Sohag in the south; thousandsupon thousands have defied a nationwideban on demonstrations, facing down copsfiring tear gas and water cannon. Eventhe small, oil-rich Emirate of Bahrainwhere the U.S. Fifth Fleet is based-hasseen an upsurge of mass protest, withdemonstrators demanding the closure ofthe U.S. naval base after one protesterwas killed while trying to approach the'American embassy.The Arab rulers could well seek todeflect this popular unrest by steppingup anti-Zionist and even anti-Americandemagogy, as they have done so often inthe past. The solidarity of the Arabmasses with the oppressed Palestinianpeople must be directed toward proletarian revolution against their own Arabrulers who, whether bourgeois nationalists or Islamic traditionalists, are fundamentally the political agents of Westernimperialism. I f this does not happen,the intense hostility toward Israel andits American protector will only continue to strengthen the forces of Islamicfundamentalism, which posture as the"radical" opposition to the mainly proWestern Arab regimes.Huge protests have also eruptedthroughout West Europe, and to a'l6$Ser extent in the U.S. In Paris on April6, some 40,000 people' took to thestreets, shouting "Bush, Sharon-Assassins!" Though overwhelmingly Maghrebin (North African), the demonstrationalso included black African, Turkish,Kurdish and French protesters, amongthem the Union of French Jews for Peace.The Maghrebin population is besieged byunemployment, "terrorist"-baiting in thepress and stepped-up cop repression. Yetamong the thousands who marched inParis were entire families, including children and grandparents, Who overcametheir fear and defied the segregation thatkeeps them restricted ,to the workingclass suburbs (banlieus).The J ospin government has seized ona series of reprehensible firebombings ofJewish schools and synagogues to justifyits police-state measures against Maghrebin youth. It is not at all clear who isresponsible for these heinous attacks,especially given the sizable fascist movement in France. What is clear is that thefascists benefit when justified hatredfor the racist capitalist rulers of Israelis turned into vile anti-Semitism, the"socialism of fools." Commendably, as atprevious pro"Palestinian protests, Arabcommunity organizers on April 6 madepublic statements condemning the antiSemitic attacks.8

In contrast, a huge pro-Israel marchthe next day was an orgy of anti-Arabchauvinism, with mobs howling forArafat's blood. Armed thugs from theJewish Defense League and Betar, whichidentified with Mussolini's fascists in the1930s, savagely beat any Arab or Africanthat they could lay their hands on, alsoattacking a secular Jewish demonstrationthat included supporters of the Israeliarmy reservists who have refused toserve in the Occupied Territories.Fake Lefts Plead forImperialist InterventionIn appealing for imperialist "peacekeepers" or economic sanctions, thereformist and centrist left groups promotethe illusion that their respective imperialist rulers can be pressured into serving theinterests of the oppressed. In France, thefake-Trotskyist Ligue Communiste Rev-

UP)

were demanding sanctions by the Leagueof Nations (predecessor of the UN)against the Italian invaders of Ethiopia,"Workers' action can begin only by absolute opposition to the national bourgeoisie and its international combinations.Support of the League and support ofworkers' actions are fire and water; theycannot be united" ("Once Again the ILP,"November 1935).The campaign to get the American government to end aid to Israel is closelyrelated to agitation for campus administrations-which have been handing overthe names of Arab and Muslim studentsto the FBI or INS-to "divest" theirstocks in companies doing business inIsrael. This demand was raised in a recentbuilding occupation by the UC BerkeleyStudents for Justice in Palestine (SJP),whose main spokesman is a member ofthe ISO.

Above: Survivors of 1970 Black September massacreof Palestinians by Jordan's King Hussein.Cops attack pro-Palestinian demonstration inBeirut early this month. Arab bourgeois regimesare enemies of Palestinian national rights.olutionnaire (LCR), among others, callson the same imperialist government thatwaged a colonial war of terror in Algeriaand today rounds up -and terrorizes Araby o u t ~ in the banlieus to protect Palestinian Arabs in the Near East.The LCR and other left groups call fordelegations of European and Americancivilian observers in the Occupied Territories. Many of the participants areundoubtedly courageous and are riskingtheir lives out of humanitarian concernfor the Palestinians. But such idealisticefforts are being used as a way of bringing about imperialist "peacekeeping"intervention.In the U.S., with neither the Democratsnor Republicans even feigning to sympathize with the Palestinians, reformists likethe International Socialist Organization. (ISO), the Workers World Party (WWP)and Socialist Action focus on the call toend U.S .aid to Israel. These groups peddle the illusion that by changing its policy toward Israel, American imperialismcaQ. be a force for "peace" and "justice" inthe Near East. Thus the ISO's SocialistWorker (5 April) declares: "We have aresponsibility to stand up for justice-anddemand that the U.S. government end itssupport for Israel's terrorist regime." Theclear implication here is that the American government is somehow less of a terrorist regime.Massive military and economic aid toIsrael has been a cornerstone of American foreign policy in the Near East fordecades. Israel today has a highly mechanized military apparatus that dwarfsthose of the Arab regimes that surroundit. And Sharon's recent rebuff to Bush'scall for a truce demonstrates that whileIsrael is a junior partner of U.S. imperialism, it is a regional power with its owninterests.Marxists fight to mobilize labor inconcrete acts of class-struggle solidaritywith the besieged Palestinian masses,including political protest strikes andlabor action to prevent the shipment ofmilitary goods to the Israeli rulers. Butsuch a perspective can only be realizedby mobilizing workers in the U.S.against their own rulers, not by fosteringillusions in the potential benevolence ofthe American state. As Leon Trotskywrote in the 1930s, w h ~ n many leftists

The Israeli economy is dependent notso much on U.S. corporate investment buton direct aid from the American government, to the tune of over $5 billion a year.Thus the pathetic campaign promoted bythe ISO over how best to manipulateendowment portfolios is ultimately aimedat redirecting American government policy and, implicitly, appealing for U.S.intervention in defense of the Palestinians. The SJP group at New York's Columbia University made this explicit by sponsoring an April 5 talk on "The Need forInternational Intervention to Hold IsraelAccountable."The Bankruptcy of'PLO Nationalism

For its part, the Stalinoid WorkersWorld Party, which is prominent iIi organizing Palestinian solidarity protests, hasalways been characterized by its enthusing over Third World nationalist movements. One will not find a critical wordabout Arafat or his appeals for imperialistintervention in Workers World. Moreover, following the Israeli invasion of+..ebanon in 1982, the WWP organized aprotest that called for "effective U.S.action to achieve Israeli withdrawal." Afew months later, American and otherimperialist "peacekeeping" forces wentinto Lebanon and took "effective action,"disarming the Palestinian fighters andpaving the way for the Israeli-organizedmassacre of some 2,000 refugees in theSabra and Shatila camps.Today, Workers World (11 April) enthuses that in the wake of the first Intifada, in the early 1990s "Washington andTel Aviv were forced to recognize thePalestine Liberation Organization after20 years of struggle," calling this a "victory they had won on the battlefield."The outcome of what the WWP hails asa "victory" was the U.S.-brokered Oslo"peace" accord between Israel and thePLO in 1993. We forthrightly denouncedthis accord as a "grotesque bargain overthe subjugated Palestinian people" that"would place the PLO's seal on thenational oppression of the long-sufferingPalestinian Arab masses" ("Israel-PLODeal for Palestinian Ghetto," WV No.583, 10 September 1993).Underlying this betrayal of the Palestinian masses was a world-historic defeat

for the international proletariat, thedestruction of the USSR through capitalist counterrevolution in 1991-92. Without the diplomatic and financial supportpreviously provided by Moscow, thePLO (like other Third World nationalistmovements and regimes) quickly cameto terms with U.S. imperialism.The 1993 "peace" accord served onlyto deepen the oppression of the Palestinian people. The entire Gaza Strip was surrounded by an electrified fence, literallyturning it into a glorified concentrationcamp enclosing over one million Palestinians. The Israeli capitalist rulers drastically curtailed access to low-wage jobsin Israel, which had been the source ofincome for most Gaza residents. Thenumber of Israeli settlers-the heavilyarmed, ultra-chauvinist auxiliaries to themilitary occupation forces-has doubledsince 1993: A series of internal check-

APpoints and fortified "Jewish only" highways has carved up the Palestinian population into a multitude of isolated ghettos.The WWP particularly glorifies thePopular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) as "the largest PalestinianMarxist organization" (Workers World, 10January). Despite its occasional verbalopposition to Arafat's conciliationism,the PFLP is simply a petty-bourgeoisnationalist formation fundamentally akinto Arafat's Fatah. Like Arafat, PFLPleader Ahmad Saadat looks to the UN, ashe said in an interview in AI-Hadat lastyear, to "force Israel to implement UnitedNations resolutions." At Palestinian protests in Berlin, PFLP supporters havedenounced our comrades for calling forclass struggle on the grounds that thatwould divide the Palestinian people. Inthe early 1970s, the PFLP was notoriousfor airline hijackings and indiscriminateterror attacks against Israeli civilians.While scorning any notion of proletarian class unity between Arab andHebrew-speaking workers, the "Marxist"PFLP readily unites with Islamic fundamentalists like Hamas. And iI. its January article, WWP cheers that support"has been growing dramatically" for"nationalist, left and Islamic Palestinianorganizations." The anti-Semitic reactionaries of Hamas and Islamic Jihad area deadly threat to Palestinian leftists andespecially to women who refuse to submit to the dictates of sharia (Islamiclaw). In fact, many Palestinians seeimperialist intervention as a way ofmaintaining Arafat's rule in the Palestinian Authority as a lesser evil to Hamas.But it is precisely the utter bankruptcy ofPLO nationalism that has driven so manyamong the historically cosmopolitan Palestinian people into the arms of theIslamic fundamentalists.WWP's vicarious nationalism goes sofar as to en thuse' indiscriminately overPalestinian suicide attacks: "The determined campaign of suicide resistancebombings shows the determination to endthe occupation has taken such deep rootamong the people, young. and old,women, children and men, that after 35years there is no way to eradicate thestruggle" (Workers World, 11 April). Infact, these are acts of desperation inthe face of an overwhelmingly superior

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military force. Moreover, WWP draws nodistinction between attacks on IsraelItroops and settlers, who are part of theoppressive military occupation regime,and innocent civilians in Israel. Criminalsuicide attacks on civilian populations aretypical of nationalist struggles, just orotherwise.As noted .in a 30 March SpartacistLeague statement titled "Defend the Palestinian People! All Israeli Troops, Settlers Out of the Occupied Territories!"(WVNo. 778, 5 April):"Now, not just Islamic fan.atics but secular Palestinians, including women, see noother option than to immolate themselvesand random, others in suicide bombings.But such attacks only serve to seal anyfiss\lres in Israeli society, such as the recent protests among Israeli army reservists and their supporters against the occupation, and drive the Hebrew-speakingpopulation into the arms of the Zionistnationalist madmen."Popular support for the butcher Sharonamong the Hebrew-speaking popUlationclimbed significantly in the wake of therecent series of suicide bombings, withan overwhelming majority supporting thecurrent onslaught. Indeed, Sharon hasalways sought to provoke Palestinian terror attacks in order to have a pretext forhis far more deadly campaign of terroragainst the Palestinians.The "Mini-State":A Palestinian' Ghetto

Behind the reformist left's appeals forimperialist intervention and support toPalestinian nationalism lies the utter incapacity to conceive of any solution to thePalestinian question outside the framework of the bourgeois nation-state system. They reject the prospect of ArabiHebrew workers revolution to sweepaway both the Israeli and Arab bourgeoisies as utopian. In fact, that is the onlyroad to national emancipation for the Palestinian people. It is patently clear thatthe Palestinians cannot prevail in a military conflict with the Zionist state. Yetthere can be"\10 genuine e x p ! e ~ s i o n ofPalestinian self-determination withoutthe destruction of that state: which isinherently oppressive to the Palestinianpeople. Every "solution" to the Palestinian national question under capitalismeither perpetuates the oppression of thePalestinian Arab people or envisions areversal of the terms of oppression, denying the legitimate national rights of theHebrew-speaking people.In 1974, the PLO leadership declaredits support for the creation of a Palestinian "mini-state" in the West Bank andGaza. Palestinian left-nationalist leaderslike George Habash of the PFLP opposedthe mini-state solution, but could offer noalternative other than continued .warsbetween the Arab regimes and Israel.Th iswas premised on the perspective that .theArab regimes could be pressured to fightfor Palestinian rights. The reality, however, is that the Arab bourgeois regimesare no less hostile to Palestinian nationalaspirations than the Zionist rulers.Protesters in Arab cities have demanded, "Where are the Arab armies?"But when Arab armies went to war withIsrael in 1948, it was not to "liberate" Palestine but to carve it up among themselves. And the Zionist leaders were wellaware of this fact. In November 1947,Jewish Agency leader Golda Meir hadsecret negotiations with King Abdullah ofTransjordan, who informed her of hisplans to take over what was then easternPalestine: "I want to annex the area to mykingdom. I don't want to create anotherArab State that would ruin my plans. Iwant to ride, not to be ridden!" (quoted inDan Kurzman, Genesis 1948 [1970]). Indeed, between 1948 and the 1967 ArabIsraeli War, the West Bank and Gaza wereoccupied by Jordan and Egypt respectively. And the Palestinians there remained politically dispossessed and subject to brutal repression.Stunned by their defeat at the hands ofIsrael in 1967, the Arab regimes had theirauthority sufficiently shaken to allowmore freedom of maneuver for Palestinian nationalist forces. But the Arabregimes could not long tolerate indepen-19 APRIL 2002

SAN FRANCISCO-In.arareand.welcome act of labor solidarity with thebesieged Palestinian masses againstIsraeli state terror, on March 11 the SanFranc;isco Labor Council passed amotion that "condemns the bombingof civilian and political targets, mostspecifically, but not limited to, the Palestinian trade union offices in Nablus,Palestine and remind(s) the U.S. government that this is both a moral andlegal crime." Noting that the February17 bombing of the Nablus union headquarters was carried out by Americansupplied F-16s, the resolution decriedthe U.S. for "supplying the Israeli statebillions of dollars in arms to suppressthe Palestinian struggle for both Statehood and ancestral lands while oppressing and dividing the Jewish and Arabworker for the benefit of national andinternational capital."Introduced by Charles Minster ofNational Parks and Public Employees(LIUNA) Local 1141, this resolutionwas an important statement of international working-class solidarity asagainst the pro-imperialist "nationalunity" front promoted by the Democrats and Republicans in their "waron terror." Predictably, it provoked a

dent armed forces operating on their territories. With occasional prodding by theZionists, the Arab rulers suppressed thePalestinian resistance. In the decade following the 1967 war, nearly 50,000 Pales-tinians were slaughtered by Arab govern-ments, including some 10,000 militantskilled by the Jordanian monarchy in the1970 Black Sepfember massacre.When the PLO came out for a "twostate" solution in 1974, we declared"West Bank Mini-State No Solution,"while acknowledging it as "a very partial

storm .f opposition from the Zionists,who cited their "close and longstanding relationship" with the Labor Council tops in an article in the JewishBulletin of Northern California (29March) and vowed to "undo" the resolution. The labor tops do indeed haveclose ties to such staunchly pro-Zionistlocal Democratic politicians as SenatorDianne Feinstein and CongressmenNancy Pelosi and Tom Lantos.Describing how the bureaucratsspiked his resolution to the audience ata Bay Area Spartacist League forumon the Near East on April 10, Minstersaid: "The Democratic Party politicians and the bosses' politicians called:when they bark, the labor lieutenantssnap to. And that's exactly what happened. I'm sure Pelosi, and Lantosespecially who is among the mostarch-Zionist in the Congress, probablywent rabid and told Johnson: you'dbetter do sOplething about this, orwe're going to cut off your luncheondates." S.P. Labor Council head WalterJohnson told the Jewish Bulletin thathe "isn't exactly thrilled" about .theresolution, but had to sign and submitit as it had been "taken care of in ademocratic manner." But Johnson &

lion in Jordan, 1.5 million in Israel andone million in Lebanon and Syria.A "Democratic, Secular"Palestine?

While most American left organizations today reject the mini-state solution,the Isd; \'vWP, the Maoist RevolutionaryCommunist Party (RCP) and othe'rs clingto the call for a "secular, democratic Palestine'; proposed for many years by thePLO. For example, the ISO's SocialistWorker (12 April) declares: "We must

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Philippines... -(continued from page 12)were trapped in the crater of an extinctvolcano. Mark Twain denounced thisimperialist butchery in a scathing essaytitled "Gr ief and Mourning for the Night."The expropriation and marginalization ofthe Muslim population intensified in thepost-colonial era, escalating particularlyunder the dictatorial regime of FerdinandMarcos. We say: Down with right-wingand anti-Muslim state terror! Down withthe military occupation of Mindanao!U.S. and Philippine troops out now!Filipino Left Pushes Nationalism,C l a ~ s Collaboration

The presence of United States troopshas not gone-unchallenged. Marches andrallies contiriue to erupt in several cities,with protesters calling Arroyo a lapdogof the imperialists. On several occasions,protesters have scuffled with cops. Withrestiveness over layoffs, the high cost offood and utilities and other austeritymeasures dictated by the World Bankand International Monetary Fund blood-suckers, the Philippine bourgeoisie hasall the reason to fear the outburst ofprotest. Terrified that these could ignite aplebeian explosion similar to the bloodyMay Day unrest last year, Arroyo haspublicly baited opponents of the Balikatan war games as "terrorist lovers." Sheeven banned AKBAYAN and BISIG, twofake-left outfits that supported her rise topower, from the government-sponsoredrally commemorating the 16th anniversary of the first "People Power" revolt,which led to the downfall of Marcos in1986.Arroyo's determination to strengthenmilitary ties with U.S. imperialism wasknown well before she came to power.Yet the alphabet Soup of organizationsthat make up the Philippine left-fromSison's CPP to its breakaway groups,i ~ i i ' d i n g the 'Socialist Party of Labor(SPP)-hailed "People Power Two" as a"victor yfgr the people" (seeWVNo. 763,31 August 2001). Bayan Muna even campaigned for Arroyo's senatorial ticketduring last year's ballot.

Bloodbath...(continued from page 9)return to their homeland-necessarilyentails workers revolutions to sweepaway the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordanand the bloody Ba' athist bonapartis ts inSyria, to bring down the capitalist rulersof Lebanon and to shatter the Zioniststate, establishing a socialist federation ofthe Near East. _In the 1970s and early '80s, we raisedthe call for a bi-national workers stateencompassing both the Palestinian Araband Hebrew-speaking peoples, but wehave not since raised that tactical perspective. We cannot project the particularnational configuration which would bestexpress the democratic aspirations ofboth peoples under conditions of proletarian power in the region. This might welltake the form of a bi-national workersstate or two or more workers states.It is only the working class of Israelthat has the capacity to destroy the Zionist citadel from within. Unless theHebrew-speaking workers are brokenfrom Zionism and won to defense of thePalestinian people, there is no future for

Available in ArabicOppose Domestic RepreSSion,Imperialist "Retaliation"The World TradeCenter AttackTranslation of 12 September 2001Statement of the Political Bureau ofthe Spartacist League/U.S.

Now such groups are channeling protests against the American military into atug-of-war for the red, white and bluemantle of Filipino nationalism instead ofa class-struggle challenge to the Philippine bourgeoisie and its imperiali st backers. This is evident in the position takenby the Sisonite-influenced Junk VFAMovemenf. In a 19 January Junk VFAMovement press release, its spokesman, aretired Philippine Navy officer, decriesthe U.S. military deployment as "an insultto the fighting capability and competenceof the Filipino soldier"-the same troopsthat are hunting down leftists and Muslims! A subsequent press release dated 26January raised the call for withdrawal ofall U.S. forces and demanded instead that"non-commissioned officers be allowedto conduct unimpeded combat operationsagainst the Abu Sayyaf in Basilan." It isalso significant that no Philippine leftgroup raised the call to oppose the 500-strong Philippine contingent that is takingpart in the imperialist occupation of EastTimor.By taunting Arroyo as "anti-Filipino"and engaging in cheap anti-Yankee potshots, the Sisonites and others are merelypitching for an "anti-imperialist unitedfront" with those members of the bourgeoisie who are uncomfortable withArroyo's hawkish posture and the government's closeness to Washington. Teofisto Guingona, Arroyo's vice presidentand secretary for foreign affairs, has beenbickering with her and her generals overthe U.S. military involvement in Mindanao and the signing of the MLSA. Sison,in his role as "chief political consultant"of the National Democratic Front-whichis engaged in on-and-off peace negotiations with the government-has made aclear overture to Guingona. From hisexile in the Netherlands, Sison predictedArroyo's "peaceful removal" from powerwithin a year on the basis of a broadunited front-provided the vice presidentis wilJing to succeed her.Sison's followers have launehed theOUT NOW! Coalition with mainstreamProtestant and Philippine Independentchurches, while their rivals have groupedthemselves in the Gathering for Peace.The latter melange includes SANLAKAS

the Hebrew-speaking people in the NearEast. If the Israeli bourgeoisie is notswept away through socialist revolution,sooner or later the bloody course ofZionist expansionism wi11lead the Israelirulers to launch their arsenal of nuclearweapons and turn the whole region intoa devastated wasteland.Israeli society is not a seamless reactionary mass. Even in the face of the current anti-Arab hysteria, some 10,000 people turned out for an April 3 "Peace Now"demonstration in Tel Aviv to demandwithdrawal from the. Occupied Territories. Sephardic Jews, though largelyunder the sway of right-wing and religious parties, suffer widespread discrimination and poverty; the Palestinian Arabswho are nominally "citizens" are consigned to segregated, impoverished areasand low-paid, unskilJed jobs. More fundamentally, the class interests of theHebrew-speaking workers impel them tostruggle against their capitalist exploiters,as witnessed by a number of strikes justin recent months.We have no illusions that it will be easyto shatter the chauvinism of the Hebrewspeaking working class. Probably onlygreat historic events such as Israel's

$.25 (4 pages) Make checks payable /mail to:Spartacist Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 1011610

-which is aligned with the politics ofFelimon Lagman, the Philippine WorkersParty (PMP) leader assassinated last year-a s well as the SPP, AKBAYAN, varioussocial democrats and the rump PartidoKomunista ng Pilipinas-1930. The common thread that runs through these fakelefts is their bent for class collaborationon the basis of Filipino nationalism.The Lagmanites and SPP (who haveannounced plans to merge) and othersseek to "unify different pluralist forces inthe country" and to "forge the broadestunity," including with bourgeois LiberalParty politicians Jovito Salonga and Wigberto Tafiada, Catholic religious organizations and the anti-abortion bigots ofPro-Life Philippines. The SPP et al.joined with Pro-Life Philippines in cosigning a Gathering for Peace declarationthat opposed the U.S. military presenceand worried about "driving away in theprocess thousands of potential touristsand investors."In this 80 percent Catholic country, thewoman question is a central and explosive issue. The 1987 constitution includesone of the most severe anti-abortion lawsin the world, and a bill to legalize divorcelast year provoked howls from the Catholic hierarchy and Arroyo. Religiousbackwardness -whether Catholic, Muslim or any bther-serves to bolster thefamily, the key institution for the oppression of women in class society. Marxistscall for free abortion on demand andstrict separation of church and state,opposing every manifestation of discrimination against women, homosexualsand ethnic, national and religious minorities. But to even begin to emancipatewomen from domestic slavery and allsided oppression, the system of capitalistexploitation must be swept away throughsocialist revolution.This perspective is counterposed to theMenshevikcStalinist dogma of "two-stagerevolution" put forward by the SPP, aswas made clear at a conference in Sydneyin late March sponsored by the SPP'sAustralian co-thinkers!" the DemocraticSocialist Party. A Spartacist League/Australia comrade challenged SPP leaderSonny Melencio over the SPP's supportfor the Gathering for Peace declaration-

defeat and humiliation in war or a cataclysmic economic crisis could breakthe Israeli working class from its Zionist rulers and lay the basis for a massrevolutionary workers party. Alternately,the conquest of power by the proletariat in one of the major Near Eastern states-such as Egypt, Iraq or I r a n ~ u n d e r arevolutionary internationalist, i.e., communist, leadership would dramaticallychange the consciousness of the Israeliworking class.The mass protests from North Africa tothe Persian Gulf in solidarity with thePalestinians point to the fragility of theArab bourgeois regimes. The nationalistsand Islamists look to a "holy war" of ~ h e Arab peoples against Zionist Israel.Marxists fight to bring the class questionto the fore, to mobilize the proletariat ofthe Islamic countries of the Near East instruggle against their own bourgeoisies.That possibility was clearly demonstratedby the revolutionary upheavals in Iran andIraq in the 1950s. However, these revolutionary opportunities were betrayed bythe Stalinist-led Communist parties, subordinating the proletariat to an alliancewith "progressive" bourgeois nationalistswho, once in power, launched a bloodbath against the Communist-led workers.More recently, there have been significant workers struggles throughout theregion, from Algeria to Egypt and Iran.In Algeria, 14,000 oil workers went onstrike on April 9 over wages and workingconditions, shutting down the Skikdarefinery, which processes 70 percent ofthe country's oil. Working-class strugglesmust be directed toward a fight for soCialand national emancipation against thei m p e r i ~ l i s t oppressors and the domesticbourgeoisies that serve as their agents.Key to that task is the political independence of the working class, requiring

with its concern over imperialist investment-and argued instead for a programof workers revolution to expropriate thecapitalists. In response, Melencio avoweda two-stage program and talked of theneed for tactical alliances. But what theSPP leader describes as a tactic is in facta program that subordinates the prole arja t to a mythical "progn!ssive" or "antiimperialist" wing of the bourgeoisie in thefight for "democratic" capitalism, leadingto a second "stage" not of "socialism" butof the slaughter of workers and leftists.By chaining the working class and theoppressed masses to one or another wingof the Philippine bourgeoisie, these fakeleftists wiIJ not and cannot lead themasses to break free from imperialistenslavement. And history has proven this,one lesson being Indonesia in -1965,where the capitalist rulers massacreda milJion Communists, workers and ethnic Chinese. As Leon Trotsky outlinedin the theory of permanent revolution,the bourgeoisies in countries of belatedcapitalist development are more fearful of the super-exploited masses thanthey are of the imperialists, on whomthey depend to secure their class rule.Democracy, freedom from the imperialist yoke and emancipation of theoppressed can only be realized through asocialist revolution that overthrows bourgeois rule and is based on a perspectiveof proletarian revolution internationally,particularly in the imperialist centers. Thekey to victory lies in the forging of aninternationalist Leninist-Trotskyist partyagainst all variants of nationalism andclass collaboration.Workers and oppressed in the Philippines should look to the multiracialAmerican proletariat for a powerful ally.The United States and Philippine bourgeoisies have enjoyed a neocolonial "special relationship" spanning decades. Thespecial relationship that the Philippineand American workers must have is oneof internationalist working-class solidarity. Led by a revolutionary workers party,the American working olass wiIJ fulfillits task of aiding the enslaved masses ofthe semicolonies by carrying out a proletarian revolution in the bastion of worldimperialism

intransigent struggle against all forms ofnationalism and religious fundamentalism. What is necessary is the forging ofMarxist vanguard parties based on theperspective and program of Trotsky's permanent revolution:"With regard to countries with a belatedbourgeois development, especially_ thecolonial and semi-colonial countries, thetheory of permanent revolution signifiesthat the complete and genuine solutionof their tasks of achieving democracyand national emancipation is conceivable only through the dictatorship of theproletariat as the leader of the subjugatednation, above all of its peasant masses ...."In a country where the proletariat haspower in its hands as the result of thedemocratic revolution, the subsequentfate of the dictatorship and socialismdepends in the last analysis not only andnot so much upon the national productive forces as upon the development ofthe international socialist revolution."- The Permanent Revolution(1929); reprinted in ThePermanent Revolution andResults and Prospects (1969)

The fight for a socialist federation ofthe Near East is part of the struggle tosweep away the system of imperialisminternationally. In turn, the struggle forproletarian power in the Near East, aregion which supplies the oil on whichthe industrial economies of North America, West Europe and Japan are dependent, would clearly confront imperialisthostility. The liberation of the peoples ofthe Near East -is therefore integrallybound up with the struggle for proletarianrevolution in the imperialist West. Aboveall, this poses the need to build revolutionary workers parties in the imperialist countries, especially the most powerful and deadly imperialist power, theUnited States. Reforge Trotsky's FourthInternational, world party of socialistrevolution!Ii

WORKERS VANGUARD


11/12

CHICAGO-In a vivid display of classcollaborationist treachery, the leadershipof Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU)Local 308 has joined hands with the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) in a unionbusting lawsuit against sister union ATULocal 241. The suit seeks to force Local241 (bus) to implement the pension provisions of a giveback contract foisted onLocal 308 (rail) members last year, aftertheir leadership broke from joint bargaining with the bus drivers' local and thecraft unions that represent other CTAwage workers. Continuing anger over thatbreach of labor unity combined with discontent over the new contract have reportedly fueled opposition to the lawsuitwithin Local 308.This lawsuit, however, is not just abreak in working-class solidarity. It isan open invitation for the bosses' government to step in and assert control of unionaffairs. It poses a deadly danger not justto Local 241", but to Local 308 and thelabor movement as a whole. Far frombeing neutral, the capitalist courts, a crucial arm of the state, represent the organized machinery of violence. and repression wielded against the working classand oppressed on behalf of those wholive off the exploitation of labor. The ruling class welcomes such opportunities tocome into the unions as a way to gut theirindependence and dictate how they arerun. Government, cops, courts out of theunions!The revised pension- plan at issueholds out the promise of higher pensionpayments for older workers-if the fundmeets. ~ ' a c t u a l 1 i l l l a s s u m p t i o n s ~ ' - w h i l e curtail.jug pension benefits for new hireswhen they retire, in particular denyingthem hospitalizatiqn insurance. The suitalso seeks to change voting.:rules forthe pension board by getting rid of blocvoting, allowing the CTA to get a majority by luring just one union representative to its side. It doesn't take a rocketscientist to figure out why the CTA isso anxious to gain decisive control ofthe billion-dollar pension plan. With thetransit pension fund generally seen asfinancially healthy, attempts to pilfer thecoffers are nothing new.In 1981, the Byrne administrationmanaged to finagle a "loan" of $33 million from the plan. In 1983, Chicago'sfirst black mayor, Harold Washington,successfully extended repayment{)f this. "loan" and further looted the pensionfund of $100 million through the passageof HB 1805. This viciously anti-labor

bill, which Washington worked aggressively to push through the Illinois statelegislature, also outlawed what remainedof the cost-of-living allowance (COLA)and gave the company the right to hirepart-timers. When he tried to defend thisblatant anti-union attack at a Local 241meeting in January 1984, Washingtonwas shouted down and driven out bypredominantly black bus drivers andmechanics.Today ATU leaders habitually blameanyone-downstate RepUblicans, stateDemocratic leader Michael Madigan,Madigan's daughter-anyone, that is, ex- .. cept Harold Washington, for HB 1805.The trade"union bureaucrats need such"progressives" to sell the lie that theDemocratic Party can be pressured toserve the interests of workers and oppressed minorities. Democrats are nofriends of labor or black people! They,like the Republican Party, are a party ofthe ruling class, no less committed tomaintaining racist capitalism, just morewily about getting the job done. The capitalist class has their parties to administertheir state. Workers need a party of theirown, a party that will fight for all theoppressed-a workers party. Instead oftrying to ameliorate the racist profit system by reforming the bosses state, such aparty would fight for a workers government to expropriate the capitalists andconstruct a planned economy based onsocial need.Local 308's court action comes aftera similar action by elements of the Local241 bureaucracy. Last May, Local 241First VicePrsident Richard Stomper

.filed a complaint with the U.S. LaborDepartment that led to its takeover ofunion convention delegate elections (see"Labor Department Out of the ATU," WVNo. 761, 6 July 2001). Simultaneously inLocal 308, an "oppositional" newslettercalled Union Watchdog admitted turning over union material to the attorneygeneral, setting off an FBI " investigation"of alleged corruption in the union (see"Chicago Transit Workers at a Boil," WVNo. 756, 13 April 2001). Through morethan two years of contract talks, laborboard complaints, arbitration hearingsand lawsuits, the misleaders of bothlocals have worked overtime at every turnto head off and defuse an increasinglyangry workforce.Both local leaderships used the binding arbitration clause of the expiring con. tract-which supposedly outlaws striking-as a club to k e ~ p their members

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19 APRIL 2002

in line. When the contract expired inDecember 1999, shutting the city downthrough solid strike action was not onlyposed but possible. Subsequent unionmeetings were packed with hundreds ofangry workers chanting "Strike, strike!"The union tops flat out refuse to wield thesocial might of this powerful, heavilyblack union. Their commitment to the nostrike stranglehold of binding arbitrationis based on the fantasy that the statecan be used to reconcile the counterposedinterests of labor and capital.From inviting government intervention to binding arbitration and supportfor capitalist politicians, this program ofclass collaboration acts to subordinatethe unions to the class enemy. Praisin

Workers Vanguard No 779 - 19 April 2002

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Transcript of Workers Vanguard No 779 - 19 April 2002