Workers Vanguard No 685 - 27 February 1998

7/29/2019 Workers Vanguard No 685 - 27 February 1998

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WfJRKERS ' . I I " .RI ) oeNo.68S ~ ) ( - 6 2 3 27 February 1998

Down With U.S. WarMoves in the Persian Gull!Defend Iraq AgainstImperialist Attack!

We publish below a February 24 state-ment by the Political Bureau of theSpartacist League/U.S.U.S. president Clinton yesterday announced conditional acceptance of thedeal worked out by United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan and Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi leaderhas reportedly offered to comply fullywith imperialist dictates for "weaponsinspection," eliminating the pretext for

Washington's threat to carry out a renewed round of mass murder against theIraqi people. But the threat of a massivemilitary slaughter is far from over. Clinton immediately warned Iraq of "seriousconsequences" if Washington does not

Spartacus YouthClub Protests

-SEE PAGE FIVE-get what it deems to be full "compliance."Washington emphasized that it is notabout to withdraw the massive array offirepower it has assembled in the Persian Gulf-over 300 warplanes, 32 shipsand 30,000 troops. Should bombing andmissile strikes go ahead, the International Communist League' proclaims forthrightly, as we have in protest statementsand demonstrations around the U.S. andinternationally over the last two weeks:Defend Iraq against imperialist attack!Down with the UN starvation blockade!The grudging A merican response to thelatest deal exposes the utter cynicism ofClinton's pratings about desiring a "peaceful," "diplomatic" resolution to this crisismanufactured by U.S. imperialism. The

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bellicose threats and the deployment of ahuge armada are not about inspections oran alleged Iraqi arsenal of biological andchemical weapons or even about SaddamHussein, who was installed in power withthe help of Washington and London. Aswe wrote last issue, "Once again, theAmerican ruling class is intent on butchering Iraqi men, women and children as ashow of 'strength'-i.e. , terror-to therest of the world."Behind the war buildup in the Gulf isthe drive by U.S. imperialism to assert its"right" to ride roughshod over the colonial and semi colonial peoples of theworld and to demonstrate to its imperialist rivals that the massive American arsenal of destruction continues to make it topdog. In a military conflict pitting U.S.imperialism against semi colonial Iraq, itis the duty of the proletariat internationally to stand militarily with the Iraqi people. The Spartacist League, U.S. sectionof the ICL, fights to forge a revolutionaryparty of the multiracial proletariat todefeat U.s. imperialism through classstruggle. Workers revolution is the onlyroad to peace!Whether or rrot America's capitalistrulers decide this time to yet again raindeath and destruction' on Iraqi men,women and children does not change byon.e iota the rapacious and murderouscharacter of this imperialist system. Theliberals, pacifists and reformist "socialists" who are again, as they did at the timeof the 1990-91 Gulf slaughter, pleading"No blood for oil" and begging the imperialist rulers to "let Iraqis live" betraythereby their illusions in the poS'Sibility ofa "peaceful" and "humane" capitalism.Even under conditions of "peace," overa million Iraqis, including more than600,000 children, have died in the pasteight years as a result of UN sanctions. The UN is, as Bolshevik leaderV. 1. Lenin called its League of Nationspredecessor, an imperialist den of thieves,whose purpose is to police the oppressedof the world on behalf of the capitalistmasters.

War is the continuation of politics byother means, wrote the German militarystrategist Clausewitz in the 19th century.Imperialist war is the concentrated expression of the "normal" brutal workings of the capitalist system, which dailycondemns countless numbers of peoplearound the world to death by malnutrition, lack of medical care and industrial' ~ c c i d e n t s . " The threat to bomb Iraq intothe Stone Age is of a piece with the useof the U.S.-dominated International Monetary Fund to impose misery and starva-

APMassive military buildup in Persian Gulf is show of terror by U.S. imperialism.Below: Iraqis protest U.S./UN starvation blockade which has killed over amillion people, mostly children.

tion on the workers of Southeast Asia,Mexico and "elsewhere in order to keepinterest payments flowing into the coffersof Chase Manhattan and Citibank.The counterrevolutionary destructionof the Soviet Union in 1991-92, a worldhistoric defeat for the international proletariat, sharply intensified interimperial-

ist competItIOn, leading to a renewedscramble among the three major powers-the U.S., Japan and Germany-toredivide markets and spheres of exploitation. In the drive to increase their profitmargins, the capitalist rulers hllVe alsoescalated attacks on workers, minoritiescontinued on page 10


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The following letter was submitted forpublication on FebrualY 20 to the NewYork Times, which has not yet deemed itfit to print.To the Editor:

The frenzied reaction of White Houseofficials- in the face 'of questions andopposition at the Ohio State town hallmeeting-which would have been considered a tame day in the British Parliament-is a measure of the government'sintolerance of any dissent against theirplans to terror-bomb Iraq. Instead ofa controlled meeting in the American"heartland" to support the bombing ofIraq, Clinton's war cabinet got an uncensored taste of public opinion questioningwhy the U.S. was going to blast awayIraqis for no credible reason.So now the White House spin doctorsare trying to turn the crowd at OhioState-which ranged from war veterans to antiwar protesters-into "Marxists." A front-page article in today's NewYork Times (20 February) titled "ClintonSets Out to Revive Support for Stand oniraq" quotes an anonymous White Houseaide arguing that there wouldn't havebeen any opposition if there had beenbetter White House advance people who"wouldn't have given tickets to the Spartacist League."The Spartacist League forthrightly

opposes the U.S. war moves and imminent terror bombing of Iraq. Althoughwe had no direct presence at the OhioState town hall meeting, we stand withthose who voiced their opposition to thebloody war plans of the U.S. government. At speakouts and protests aroundthe country we have rallied in defense ofIraq against U.S. imperialist attack andin opposition to the UN's starvationembargo which has killed over one million Iraqi people, including over 600,000children. While standing foursquare onthe side of the Iraqi people against U.S.attack, we say it is the business of theIraqi working class to get rid of the capitalist regime of Saddam Hussein.Behind the reaction of the White Houseto the Ohio State meeting lies the not-soveiled threat of clamping down on anyopposition. This is of a piece with thecontinued erosion of the most elementarydemocratic rights of the populationdirected at squelching any protest againstthe capitalist rulers' war on the workingclass, the poor, blacks, immigrants andothers "at home." Just look at the government's vendetta aimed at destroying thepowerful Teamsters union in the aftermath of last August's successful strike byUnited Parcel Service workers.Since the destruction of the formerSoviet Union, the U.S. rulers have beenbraying that "Communism is dead."

Pacifism, Marxism andImperialist WarThe American rulers' aim ofmass murderagainst the Iraqi people, intended as a show

of terror to the rest of the world, is a harbinger of a future full-scale imperialist war.In the face of these war moves, variouspseudo-socialists seek to pressure U.S. imperialism to be more "humane" and "peaceful." Against such liberal-pacifist appeals,TROTSKY we call for defense of Iraq and the defeat of LENINu.s. imperialism through workers revolu-tion. In the years before interimperialist World War I/-as the social-democratic SecondInternational and Stalinist Third International promoted illusions in the League ofNations, predecessor to the United Nations-Leon Trotsky fought to build the FourthInternational as the world party of socialist revolution and emphasized that the struggle against war could only be carried through by sweeping away imperialist capitalism.

We revolutionary Marxists reject absolutely those prescriptions against war that areissued by the leaders of the Second and Third Internationals. They preach "disarmament" and "accord" through the League of Nations. This means that they believe inthe possibility of changing the nature of capitalism through peaceful reforms, sincethe armed struggle between capitalist states applies just as much to the nature of capitalism as the competition between individual capitalists or-their trusts. There are peoplewho call themselves Socialists or Communists who characterize the capitalist state as athoroughly imperialist set-up but at the same time believe in the League of Nations,that is, in the stock exchange of the imperi.alist states.For Marxists the struggle against war coincides with the struggle against imperialism.The means for this struggle is not "general disarmament" but the arming of the proletariat for the revolutionary overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the establishment of a workers' state. Our slogan is not the League of Nations, but the Soviet United States ofEurope and of the entire world!

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-Leon Trotsky, "To Young Communists and Socialists Who Wish to Think"(July 1935)

r ! ~ ! l ! ! ~ o r . . ~ ! ! ! ~ r ! . ! EDITOR: Len Meyer'sEDITOR, YOUNG SPARTACUS PAGES: Jacob ZornPRODUCTION MANAGER: Susan FullerCIRCULATION MANAGER: Mindy SandersEDITORIAL BOARD: Ray Bishop (managing editor), Bruce Andre, Helene Brosius, George Foster,Liz Gordon, Frank Hunter, Jane Kerrigan, James Robertson, Joseph Seymour, Alison SpencerThe Spartacist League is the U.S. Section of the International Communist League (FourthInternationalist).Workers Vanguard (ISSN 0276-0746) published biweekly, except skipping three alternate issues in June. July andAugust (beginning with omitting the second issue in June) and with a 3-week interval in December, by the SpartacistPublishing Co., 41 Warren Street, 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. POSTMASTER: Send addresschanges to Workers Vanguard, Box 1377, GPO, New York. NY 10116.Opinions expressed in signed articles or letters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint.The closing date for news in this issue is February 24.No.68S 27 February 1998

Thus, it is rather remarkable that theWhite House singles out the SpartacistLeague/U.S., a small Marxist politicalparty, as the source of the oppositionwhich met Clinton's war cabinet at OhioState University. In our over 30-yearexistence in this country, we have openfydisseminated our Marxist views that this

system based on the exploitation of themany by the few can only producewar, unemployment, racism, poverty andother brutal depredations for the majorityof the population. Perhaps the U.S. rulers fear that this understanding mightfind real resonance among the workingclass and oppressed who are beingincreasingly ground down at home whilebeing pressed to serve as cannon fodderfor war abroad.

Sincerely,Len Meyersfor the Spartacist League

Free Jamal Hart!On February 18, Jamal Hart, the 26-year-old son of death row politicalprisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, receiveda mandatory prison sentence of 15-112years for his conviction on bogus firearm possession charges. Hart is noteligible for parole. The transparentframe-up of Jamal Hart, a prominentparticipant in the campaign to free hisfather, continues the deadly state vendetta against Mumia. At the announcement .of the verdict in a Philadelphiafederal District Court, Jamal's halfbrother Chris exploded in outrage:"You already railroaded my father,now you're railroading my brother."Chris was dragged from the courtroomand turned over to New Jersey authorities for prosecution on "drugcharges."While federal prosecutors arguedthat Hart should receive a 20-yearsentence because of his alleged "consistent criminal behavior," even thetrial judge was forced to observe thatthe prosecution and probation report"overstated Jamal's criminal history."In fact, Jamal Hart's passionate defense of his father put him in the crosshairs of the racist Philadelphia cops.Jamal Hart was a featured speaker at anumber of rallies initiated by the Partisan Defense Committee and the Committee to Save Mumia Abu-Jamal. Thefront page of the Philadelphia DailyNews pictured him with Jesse Jacksonon 7 August 1995, the day a deathwarrant issued by Pennsylvania governor Thomas Ridge was stayed.The targeting and monstrous persecution of Jamal Hart is anotherstate provocatioo. aimed at MumiaAbu-Jamal, the former Black Panther,MOVE supporter and_noted journalist,whose case has sparked an international outcry against the racist deathpenalty. In 1995, outside a fund-raiserfor his father in New York City, Hartwas harassed and baited by a gang ofPhiladelphia FOP bigots. Last October, Hart's car was stopped for allegedly rolling through a stop sign on aPhiladelphia street. The arresting copsput a gun to his head, stomped on himwhile he was on the ground and thenclaimed to have found a .357 magnum

WV PhotoMumia's son Jamal Hart at 1995NYC rally initiated by Partisan Defense Committee.in his. waistband. The cop who"found" the gun was the same onewho had taken down a report on thetheft of this very same gun ... three anda half years earlier. After Hart wasreleased without bail, an official police "wanted" poster with Hart's photoand arrest information was circulated,making Hart fair game.When Hart appeared for trial instate court, federal marshals summarily announced the case was beingtaken over by the feds. Had Hart beenconvicted in state court, he is likely tohave only received probation. Thefeds' move against Hart is but oneexample of the ominous expansion offederal jurisdiction over a vast array ofcrimes, almost all of which carry mandatory penalties enormously greaterthan those specified by correspondingstate laws, and indicates that thevendetta against Mumia extends wellbeyond local jurisdictions.

Even on death row, Mumia AbuJamal remains one of Philadelphia's"most wanted" by the cops and theracist capitalist state. In the face of thisflagrantly vindictive persecution wedemand: Free Jamal Hart! FreeMumia Abu-Jamal! Abolish the racistdeath penalty!

Black History MonthMobilize the Integrated Power ofLabor to Fight for Black Freedom!

Break with the Democrats-For aRevolutionary Workers Party!BOSTON CHICAGO

Saturday, February 28, 7:30 p.m.Harvard UniversitySever Hall, Room 101(Take the Red Line to Harvard Square)For more information: (617) 666-9453

, Saturday, February 28, 7 p.m.University of ChicagoReynolds Club, South Lounge, 2nd floor5706 S. University AvenueFor more information: (312) 454-4930WORKERS VANGUARD


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Amistad, Capitalismand the Slave Trade

Library of CongressSlaves seized control of Spanish ship Amistad in 1839, demanding freedom. Right: Joseph Cinque, leader of the rebellion. Schomburg Collection

No one who has seen Steven Spielberg's Amistad can ever forget its portrayal of the Middle Passage, the grimvoyage across the Atlantic of imprisoned Africans being sent into slavery inthe Americas. Chained, stripped naked,packed into a dark hold, the captivesscream, starve and die, as a few joltingmoments of celluloid show what historybooks cannot say in pages of facts andstatistics. A whip strips the flesh off aman, his blood spattering those who are

A Film Reviewby Amy Rathforced to watch. A despairing youngmother jumps overboard, clutching herbaby. When the ship runs short of food,dozens of men and women are chained toweights and thrown into the ocean. Amidthis horror, the dignity and courage ofCinque (played by Beninese actor Djimon Hounsou), leader of the slave rebellion, shines like a beacon.Amistad is a powerful anti-slavery filmbased on the true story of an 1839 mutinyaboard a Spanish slave ship, La Amistad.En route to a sugar plantation in Cuha,over 50 newly enslaved Africans sejzecontrol of the ship, killing most of thecrew and demanding that the two remaining alive sail them back to Africa. Theship instead ends up off the shores ofLong Island, where the rebels are captured by the U.S. Navy and imprisoned inConnecticut on charges of murder, mutinyand piracy. After two years of court cases,in which the Africans' defense was takenup by American abolitionists, the U.S.Supreme Court rules that they are notlegally slaves and are thus immediatelyfree. Along the way, we see some famousfigures from American history, such asformer president John Quincy Adams (ina splendid performance by AnthonyHopkins); abolitionist Lewis Tappan, afounder of the American Anti-SlaverySociety; and John C. Calhoun, a Congressman from South Carolina who hadbeen vice president under Adams. Probably more than any other politician at thetime, Calhoun spoke for the Southernslavocracy, and South Carolina was laterdubbed the "soul of secession."The movie ends with the British Navyblasting to smithereens the notoriousslave fortress of Lomboko in SierraLeone, where Africans were imprisonedto be sold to slave-traders. Such an endis gratifying to the gut-wrenching loathing of slavery the film inspires. But the27 FEBRUARY 1998

movie rests on some fundamental historical falsehoods. 'Fhe small liberties Spielberg takes with the facts-for example,Roger S. Baldwin was no unknown realestate lawyer, but the son of a Connecticut governor and grandson of a prominent Revolutionary War patriot-are notimportant; it's the larger lies that count.

(Coach House Press, Liverpool, 1992),Tony Barley notes:"By the 1850s, wealth from banking,from emigration, from imported timber, sug-ar, and cotton (together with riches froma score of other imported commodities),had taken the place-of slave-trade profit'S,but the banking sector and the sugar-trade had been sustained by slavery, and

Andrew CooperSteven Spielberg's Amistad searingly portrays horrors of Atlantic slave trade.As captured by its mawkish invocationof the Declaration of Independence (written by slaveowner Thomas Jefferson),the film falsely portrays the Americangovernment as open to anti-slavery arguments. In fact, as William W. Freehlingdocuments in The Road to Disunion:Secessionists at Bay, 1776-1854 (OxfordUniversity Press, 1990), from the Revolutionary War to the Civil War, the weakgovernment in Washington was mostlydominated by the slaveowning South.The Supreme Court's decision in favorof the Amistad captives reflected not itscommitment to the "inalienable rights" of"life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," as Adams' speech in the film wouldlead you to believe, but the "free trade"interests of the American slavocracy andBritish merchants. When the Civil Warbroke out, Britain's official neutralitywas simply a cover for support to theConfederacy against the Union; the Southgrew the cotton which fed the profits ofBritain's largest industry, textiles. Anduntil its abolition in 1807, profits from theBritish slave trade provided much of thecapital used to develop Britain's mills andthriving ports like Liverpool. In Myths ofIne Slave Power: Confederate Slavery,Lancashire Workers and the Alabama

of course, the American cotton-trade wasstill dependent upon slave labour."As historian Eric Foner commented,"The truth is that the Amistad case revolved around the Atlantic slave t radeoutlawed by international treaty long

before 1840-and had nothing to do withslavery in this country" (New York Times,20 December 1997). The court systemserved the interests of the Southern planters. In 1841, the Supreme Court washeaded by Justice Roger B. Taney ofMaryland. This was the same Taney who,16 years later, read out the infamous 1857Dred Scott decision that blacks were"beings of an inferior order" with "norights which any white man was bound torespect." Scott was returned to slaveryafter suing for his freedom on the groundsthat his master had taken him to Illinoisand Wisconsin, where slavery was illegal.The Amistad captives were freedbecause they had not been born slaves."We are rightly and justly inspired bytheir passionate struggle for freedomfrom Spanish and U.S. shackles, and theirvictory," wrote black death row politicalprisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal in a commentary on Spielberg's film (WV No. 684,13 February). "For Africans born in theU.S., however, it brought them no closerto freedom." Indeed, the Amistad rulingchanged nothing for the three millionblack slaves laboring in the brutal Southern cotton and tobacco fields. In the film,we never even see the plantation slaves;Spielberg doesn't show their pain anddespair as their families are torn apart andthey are sold "down the river."With several characters' hints of warand a final shot of Union and Confederate soldiers meeting in battle, the filmimplies that the 1841 Amistad decisionwas an immediate precipitant of thecontinued on page 4

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Amistad...(continued from p age 3)American Civil War. In fact, the twodecades between these events were markedby fierce debate throughout American society, increasingly centered on the issue ofslavery vs. free labor and fueled by thegrowing divergence of interests betweenthe industrial North and the plantationSouth. North and South clashed over westward expansion and whether new stateswould be admitted as slave or free; overfree t r a d ~ vs. a national tariff protectingNorthern manufactured goods from European competition; over states' rights andthe power of the federal government.:rhe Confederate volleys fired at Unionheld Fort Sumter in 1861 were the opening shots in a war which precipitated asocial revolution and marked an irreconcilable break with the preceding period ofcompromise. In an article titled "The CivilWar in the United States," Karl Marxwrote later that year: "'The South' is neither a territory closely sealed off from theNorth geograpbically, nor a moral unity. Itis not a country at all, but a battle slogan ."Marx continued:"The present struggle between the Southand North is ... nothing but a strugglebetween two social systems, the systemof slavery and the system of free labour.

The struggle has broken out because thetwo sides can no longer live peacefullyside by side on the North American continent. It can only be ended by the victory of one system over the other."And it was the participation of 200,000black soldiers in the Union Army whichwas one of the most decisive factors inthe North's victory against the slavocracy.The Middle Passage andthe Atlantic Slave Trade

Spielberg's movie is dead accurate inits portrayal of the brutality of the slavetrade. For example, the deliberate drowning of dozens of captives-mocked asunbelievable by the prosecutor in thefilm-is known to have occurred onother slave ships. In American Slavery,1619-1877 (Hill and Wang, 1993), PeterKolchin describes another such instance:"In 1781, running short on water, thecaptain of the Zong ordered 132 Africansthrown overboard, because his insurancecovered death from drowning but notfrom starvation."

tion to blacks and its ideological reflection in the racist worldview of the slaveholders developed as the cultivation ofSouthern tobacco and cotton with slavelabor proved profitable (sugar cane cannotgrow in most areas of North America).The invention of the cotton gin in 1783solved the problem of de seeding shortstaple cotton, the only cotton that can begrown on the American mainland, andopened the way for cotton to become themain export of the United States. Thisclinched a common economic interest

Library of Congressagitate for an end to the slave trade inorder to cut of f the supply of labor to theFrench colonies. As it waged war againstNapoleon on the continent and at sea,Britain sought to secure naval control ofthe Atlantic against France and the U.S.Indeed, Britain ruled the seas and dominated world commerce throughout muchof the 19th century. Lord Palmerston,British foreign secretary at the time ofthe Amistad events, described the role ofthe Royal Navy: "These half-civilisedgovernments all require a dressing down

But moral outrage, however justified,does not explain the events of history norprovide the lessons for future struggleagainst exploitation and oppression. TheAtlantic slave trade-developing out of awell-established slave trade on both theWest and East coasts of Africa-cameinto being to supply the colonies of theNew World with a labor force. In particular, the African slaves were employedon the vast sugar plantations throughoutthe Caribbean, which made the- islandsamong the most profitable colonies inthe world. In North America, the bulk oflabor needs through most of the 17thcentury was met by indentured servants,mainly white, who were treated little better than slaves. (There were many, complex reasons why the Native Indianswere not forced into servitude, includingmass death from European diseases.)

Leslie's IllustratedFederal troops unleashed on great rail strike of 1877, the same year thatNorthern bourgeoisie sealed defeat of Reconstruction, betraying promise of

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black freedom. "between the plantation owners of theSouth and the Northern bankers and merchants who-profited from the export ofKing Cotton and its manufacture intogoods.

The social system of slavery, its restric-

The Atlantic slave trade as practicedby the Amistad and Tecora in the filmwas banned by the U.S. in 1808, and bymany other countries' in the same period.(Of course, it continued anyway, carriedon by ships-including American onessailing under the flags of Portugaland Spain.) Seeking to defend Britain'smercantile domination of the Caribbean,Prime Minister William Pitt had begun to

SPARTACIST LEAGUE/U.S. LOCAL DIRECTORYNational Office: Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 (212) 732-7860

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every eight or ten years to keep them inorder" (Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade:The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade,1440-1870 [Simon and Schuster, 1997]).But the interests of the European andAmerican merchant trade and the plantation owners were not the only forces atplay in this period. Inspired in part by thewatchwords of liberty and brotherhoodof the French and American Revolutions,the Haitian Revolution of 1791-1804 overthrew slavery there and established ablack republic, touching off a wave ofslave revolts in the Caribbean and galvanizing blacks in the American South.Historians Elizabeth Fox-Genovese andEugene Genovese describe how,"One after another, the southern statesclosed the [slave] trade after the Revolution in response to the moral pressureof the time and, probably much moreimportant, to the panic engendered bythe great revolution in Saint-Domingue[Haiti] and the renewed awareness of theexplosive potential of heavy ratios ofblacks to whites and of African-born toAmerican-born slaves."-Fruits of Merchant Capital:Slavery and Bourgeois Propertyin the Rise and Expansion ofCapitalism (Oxford UniversityPress, 1983)As we wrote in "Toussaint L'Ouvertureand the Haitian Revolution": "The Haitian Revolution was a beacon in the tightagainst slavery and for national independence throughout the 19th century" (WVNos. 446 and 447, 12 February and 26February 1988; reprinted in Black History

Frederick Douglass HouseBlack troops in Union Army playeddecisive role in defeat of South-ern slavocracy in Civil War. Right:Frederick Douglass, revolutionaryabolitionist.and the Class Struggle No.6). In abolishing slavery through a social revolutionsurging up from the very bottom of society, it struck fear into the slavemastersand men of property. America's rulersresponded to the Haitian Revolution withthe same treatment U.S. imperialismmetes out to Castro's Cuba today.

The U.S. immediately sent arms to putdown the black uprising, as GeorgeWashington declaimed, "How regrettableto see such a spirit of revolt among theNegroes." In 1806, under Thomas Jefferson, the U.S. imposed a trade embargoagainst Haiti; economic sanctions isolated the young black republic and contributed to its impoverishment. In 1825,Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Bentondeclared, "We receive no mulatto consulsor black ambassadors from [Haiti]. Andwhy? Because the peace of eleven stateswill not permit the fruits of a successfulNegro insurrection to be exhibited amongthem." It was not until after the CivilWar, when the great black abolitionist.Frederick Douglass was appointed toserve as U.S. Consul in Port-au-Prince,that the U.S. finally recognized the Haitian government.The Struggle for BlackFreedom in the United States

While John Quincy Adams did playapart in the struggle against slavery in theUnited States, it was confined mainly todebates in Congress and reflected theNorth's overall acquiescence to politicalcompromise with the Southern slavocracy. The real heroes of the anti-slaverystruggle were the thousands of militantabolitionists, men and women, white andblack, who risked their lives to take onthe "Slave Power" in the U.S. Many ofthem were escaped slaves, like Douglassand Harriet Tubman, a conductor on theUnderground Railroad.By the 1850s, the revolutionary-democratic wing of the abolitionist movement-personified by Douglass and JohnBrown-recognized that it was going totake a bloody civil war to crush the slavecontinued on page 11

Spartacist LeaguePublic Offices-MARXIST LlTERATURE

Bay AreaThurs.: 5:30-8:00 p.m., Sat.: 1:00-5:00 p.m.1634 Telegraph, 3rd Floor (near 17th Street)Oakland, California Phone: (510) 839-0851Saturday: 2:00-4:00 p.m.123 Townsend St. (near 2nd St.)Dial #826 for entrySan Francisco, CA Phone: (415) 777-9367Chicago ""Tues.: 5:00-9:00 p.m., Sat.: 12:00-3:00 p.m.328 S. Jefferson St., Suite 904Chicago, Illinois Phone: (312) 454-4930New York CitySaturday: 1 00-5:00 p.m.41 Warren St. (one block belowChambers St. near Church St.)New York, NY Phone: (2,12) 267-1025

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Spartacus Youth ClubsProtest u.s. War MovesAs the U.S. imperialists arrayed theirarmada of death in the Persian Gulf, theSpartacus Youth Clubs held campusspeakouts across the country last weekcalling to "Defend Iraq Against U.S.Imperialist Attack!" From New YorkUniversity (NYU), Columbia and Harvard to the University of Chicago and theUniversity of California at Berkeley andLos Angeles, we called for revolutionaryopposition to D.s. war plans, with placards demanding: U.S./UNINATO Out ofthe Persian Gulf! Down With the UNStarvation Blockade of Iraq! Defeat U.S.Imperialism Through Class Struggle atHome! International Communist Leaguecomrades also held speakouts and participated in protest demonstrations in London, Paris, Toronto and elsewhere.Democratic president Clinton's threatened terror bombing was not some aberration but a direct product of the imperialist system, where America's capitalistrulers seek to project their military mightin order to secure spheres of exploitation. At Berkeley on February 18, anSYC speaker pointed out:"We recognize that neither the Republican nor Democratic Party is the party of'peace,' as both serve the interests of thecapitalist ruling class. In 1991 it wasBush and the Republicans, today it isClinton and the Democrats. Their imperialist wars and massacres are not simply aquestion of misguided policy-they arethe essence of the racist capitalist economic system. To fight simply in thename of 'peace,' or to merely put pressure on the Democratic Party of war andracism, is to ignore the fundamentalclass nature of the state. The state is, atits most basic level, special bodies ofarmed men that defend the property ofa handful of capitalist exploiters. Antiimperialism abroad means class struggleat home!'In reporting on our demonstration atNYU, the daily Washington Square News

(19 February) quoted an SYC spokesman:"The United Nations has been enforcinga blockade against Iraq since the GulfWar, starving it and condemning it to misery. Sanctions are an act of war, and sanctions have probably killed more peoplethan the actual Gulf War." Our speakeralso pointed out: "While we oppose imperialist war moves against Iraq, we giveabsolutely no political support to thecapitalist regime there, which has secured its rule through anti-Communist

SYC fights to win youth torevolutionary perspectiveagainst imperialist war. Campusspeakouts (clockwise fromabove): Universityof California, Berkeley;New York University;University of London.

massacres, anti-working-class repressionand bloody subjugation of the Kurdish people." We raised the call: Downwith the Oil Sheiks, Emirs, Kings, Colonels and Zionist Rulers-Workers toPower! For a Socialist Federation of theNear East!Also active on the campuses in organizing protests against the threatenedattack on Iraq was the International

spartacistftl Forum,.Ch.il1aoll . t h e ( . B r l n : . i o : r l ( e ' s } r : o l l ~ i _ . ~ ..........R e " o . l u . t . i o n . . o r C . a . ~ .. ~ t a . l i s t . E . Q S . 1 a ~ . ~ . m . Q Q " .

,

For a Leninist-Trotskyist Party!Saturday, March 14, 4 p.m.

Hollywood United Methodist Church6817 Franklin Avenue(Highland Ave. exit off 101 Frwy.)LOS ANGELES For more information: (213) 380-8239

27 FEBRUARY 1998

Socialist Organization (ISO), with itspathetic pleas to Clinton, "Don't bombIraq!" The reformist ISO's touching faithin the ability to pressure Clinton's Democrats to pursue a more "peaceful" imperialist policy was made abundantly clear atits February 19 protest at NYU, wherethe ISO objected to an SYC chant denouncing the Democratic Party of racismand war.That same day, the ISO sent a salesteam to the SYC speakout at Columbiabut refused our invitation to address thecrowd. The clash of opinion and test inaction of the various forces claiming tobe socialist is a crucial element in raisingthe consciousness of working people andyouth. But this is exactly what the ISOdoesn't want. All too frequently, the ISOresorts to physical thuggery to resolvethe glaring contradiction produced by itssocialist pretensions and its abjectly reformist practice. At San Francisco StateUniversity last week, four ISOers surrounded a female SYC member andthreatened to break her ankles if shespoke to any of them again! When theSYC energetically protested this cowardly threat, we found many studentsrepulsed by the ISO's vile antics.In the tradition of revolutionary Marx-

Workers Hammerism, we say: Not one man, not one pennyfor the imperialist military! After beingdriven off many campuses during theVietnam War protests of the 1960s and'70s, the Reserve Officer Training Corpshas been reinstituted to help bolsterskilled cadre for the imperialist military.At UCLA last year, ROTC staged a"mock occupation," replete with armed,black-booted thugs invading the campus.At our February 19 speakout at UCLA, aspeaker from the Los Angeles SYCnoted:

"We oppose the use of the universitiesfor military training and recruitment, andso we demand: ROTC off campus! Thenucleus of the military is the officercorps which regiments and polices theranks. ROTC is designed to provide specialized training for the next generationof imperialist butchers, to produce aneducated officer caste which will planand execute the capitalists' war driveswhile working-class and minority youthare hurled to the front lInes to serve ascannon fodder in their wars of profit."As long as capitalism exists, there willbe imperialist wars. The Spartacus YouthClubs seek to win youth who oppose thebrutal exploitation and terror of this capitalist system to join the side of theworking class in the struggle for communism. Join us!.

5


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Enlightenment !tationalism and,OriginsIBf M a r - ~ ! ~ -

F.G. NordmannWorkers' barricades in Berlin, 1848. Fearing the rising proletariat, the bourgeoisie refused to carry through the Revolution of1848. In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels outlined the role of the proletariat as the gravedigger of class society.We publish below the concluding part

of this series, which is based on twopresentations given by Spartacist LeagueCentral Committee member Joseph Sey-mour during an SL internal class serieslast summer on the origins of Marxism.The first five parts were published inWV Nos. 673, 674, 675, 683 and 684(5 September, 19 September and 3 Octo-ber 1997, 30 January and 13 February1998).

PART SIX

Krl Marx first enters political history as a contributor, staff writerand finally editor of the Rheinische

Zeitung in the early 1840s. He'was at thattime in the political mainstream of theYoung Hegelians, heing a radical demo- .crat but not a communist. There was a circle of left Hegelian communists, centeredin Berlin, who called themselves dieFreien (the Free). They included, amongothers, the young Friedrich Engels and ayoung Russian nobleman, Mikhail Bakunino Marx rejected the communism of"die Freien" as theoretically vacuous andgiven to empty phrasemongering. In a letter to Arnold Ruge, he joked that he hadthrown out more contributions by themthan had the government censor. Nonetheless, the views that Marx did publish inthe Rheinische Zeitung, his own and others, proved too much for the Prussianauthorities to stomach, and the paper wasofficially suppressed in early 1843.Unable to publish his views in Germany, Marx emigrated to France in thefall of that year. On arriving in Paris, hemoved into a kind of commune for German radicals which included a leader ofthe Paris branch of the League of the Just.Marx attended meetings of the Leagueand also of its French counterparts. Thisexperience had a profound effect on him,as he recorded at the time in his Economicand Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844:

6"When communist artisans associatewith one another, theory, propaganda, etc.

is their first end. But at the same time, asa result of this association, they acquire anew need-the need for society-andwhat appears as a means becomes an end.In this practical process the most splendidresults are to be observed wheneverFrench socialist workers are seen together ... The brotherhood of man is nomere phrase with them, but a fact of life,and the nobility of man shines upon usfrom their work-hardened bodies."In late 1843, Marx declared himselfin favor of communism and proletarianrevolution.There are two points I want toemphasize in this regard. First, Marx'stransition from radical democrat to communist was conditioned by his actualencounter with a communist workersmovement in France; it was not a selfcontained intellectual development. Second, Marx's theoretical and political

views in 1843-44 were very differentI would say fundamentally differentthan in 1847. In the first period he stilloperated within the theoretical framework of Hegelian philosophy in its leftinterpretation. Communism was for Marxwhat absolute knowledge was for Hegel:the final stage in the self-development ofman's intellectual maturation, in whichall previous contradictions are resolved.Thus he writes in his 1844 Manuscriptsthat communism is"the complete return of man to himselfas a social (i.e., human) being-a returnaccomplished consciously and embrac-

ing the entire wealth of previous development. This communism, as fully developed naturalism, equals humanism,and as fully developed humanism equalsnaturalism; it is the genuine resolution ofthe conflict between man and nature andbetween man and man-the true resolution of the strife between existenceand essence, between objectification andself-confinnation, between freedom andnecessity, between the individual and thespecies. Communism is the riddle of history solved, and it knows itself to be thissolution."Communism is here presented as asynthesis of certain abstract categories, such as existence and essence,which were regarded -as, antagonisticin Hegelian and earlier philosophies.There is no consideration of the historical and economic. preconditions for

communism. There is no considerationof the actual socioeconomic structure ofEuropean society, its class divisions, thestate of the class struggle, the consciousness of the proletariat and the like. Furthermore, the notion that history setsmen riddles to solve implies that history has a consciousness of its own ends,a view that Marx would soon totallyreject.Similarly, Marx's view of the proletariat in this period is framed by a leftHegelian outlook. In his 1844 "Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophyof Law: Introduction," (Marx and Engels,

Georg Hegel(far left) andLudwig Feuerbach,the first of Hegel'sfollowers tocriticize his idealistphilosophy froma materialiststandpoint.

Collected Works Volume 3 [1975]), hewrites:"The emancipation of the German is theemancipation of the human being. Thehead of this emancipation is philosophy,its heart is the proletariat. Philosophycannot be made a reality without theabolition of the proletariat, the proletariat cannot be abolished without philosophy being made a reality."The proletariat is here regarded as a kindof ready-made instrument to realize thegoals set for mankind in Hegel's philosophy. In a sense, the proletariat is forMarx at this point what the state was forHegel: the material manifestation of reason in the contemporary world.The Impact of Feuerbach

In the development of Marx's thoughttoward historical or dialectical materialism, two other left Hegelians played crucial, albeit very different, roles: LudwigFeuerbach and Friedrich Engels. Prior toFeuerbach all Hegelians accepted theaxiom that what is rational is real. Theleft Hegelians maintained that since theChristian church, the Prussian monarchical state and, for some, the capitalistmarket economy were not rational, theseinstitutions were soon fated to disappear.Feuerbach challenged the central premise of Hegel's teleological idealism: thenotion that the self-development of spiritgoverns the actual conditions of mankind. He argued that Hegel's spirit is simply a metaphysical version of god, towhich real living men are supposed to besubordinate. Men are not subordinate tothought as an independent entity, saidFeuerbach, rather thought serves the interest and needs of men: "The new philosophy deals with being as it is for us,not only as thinking, but as really existingbeing .... It is the being of the senses,sight, feeling and love" (quoted In DavidMcLellan, The Young Hegelialls alld KarlMarx [1969]).Feuerbach 's general world view is essentially similar to that of Jean-Jacques. Rousseau, though there was no directinfluence. Like Rousseau, Feuerbach believed that man is naturally good and has

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a natural affinity with other members ofhis species. Indeed, the term "species" iscentral to Feuerbach's conceptual framework. What property was for Rousseau,religion is for Feuerbach: that pointwhere mankind turned down the path oferror leading to all the wretchedness andevils of the modern world.In Feuerbach's view, men ascribe to asupernatural entity called god the actualand potential powers which they themselves possess. Men ascribe to an otherworldly place called heaven the happinessand social harmony which is possibleon earth. Feuerbach advocated what hecalled the "religion of humanity." Hecalled on all men to give up their illusionin an otherworldly god as well as theirindividual egoism and live for the collective well-being of the human species."Only community constitutes humanity,"he insisted, "that the thou belongs to theperfection of the I, that men are requiredto constitute humanity" (quoted in JohnEdward Toews, Hegelianism: The PathToward Dialectical Humanism, 1805-1841 [1980]).

Feuerbach was an extremely contradictory thinker in that he was simultaneouslymore advanced and more backward thanHegel. He rejected Hegel's idealism infavor of a thtlroughgoing materialism.But in doing so, he also rejected Hegel'sunderstanding of the dialectical development of man's social nature. Instead,Feuerbach reverted to a crude version ofEnlightenment materialism based on thenotion of an unchanging human nature.In later years, Marx would point to boththe progressive and retrogressive influence of Feperbach on German intellectuallife. In the 1860s, he wrote to the Germanworkers' leader and radical J. B. Schweitzer: "Compared with Hegel, Feuerbachis certainly poor. Nevertheless he wasepoch-making after Hegel because he laidstress on certain points which were disagreeable to the Christian consciousnessbut important for the progress of criticism, points which Hegel had left in semiobscurity" (Marx and Engels, CollectedWorks Volume 20 [1984]). However, afew years later Marx commented in a letter- to Engels: "The gentlemen in Germany (with the exception of theologicalreactionaries) believe Hegel's dialectic tobe a 'dead dog.' Feuerbach has much onhis conscience in this respect" (CollectedWorks Volume 42 [1987]).The difference between Marx's dialectical materialism and Feuerbach's naturalistic materialism is clear in their respective views of religion. Here is Marx'sjustly famous position on this question:"Religious distress is at the same timethe expression of real distress and also

the protest against real distress. Religionis the sigh of the oppressed creature, theheart of a heartless world, just as it is thespirit of spiritless conditions. It is theopium of the people."To abolish religion as the illusory happiness of the people is to demand theirreal happiness. The demand to give upillusions about the existing state ofaffairs is the demand to give up a state ofaffairs which needs illusions."- "Contribution to the Critique ofHegel's Philosophy of Law:Introduction"

The key phrase here is a "state of affairswhich needs illusions." For Feuerbachand the entire tradition of Enlightenmentrationalism, there are no conditions whichneed illusions. Illusions are deemed always and everywhere unnecessary andharmful, and can always be dispelled byscientific evidence and rational argument.Marx understood that life, alas, is notso simple. Religion is what Engels latercalled false consciousness. False consciousness is a distortion or denial of objective reality necessarily conditioned bya given stage of social development. Allruling classes operate with some form offalse consciousness. Thus slaveowners inthe American South believed that blackswere innately inferior to whites. Andthey had to believe that in order to ownand operate their slave plantations. Whiteslaveowners could no more be convinced27 FEBRUARY 1998

Dietz Verlag BerlinFriedrich Engelsof racial equality through rational argument than they could be convinced toemancipate their slaves and devote theirown lives to the well-being of humanity.Therein lay the basic fallacy of a "religion of humanity" which would be embraced by the oppressors as well as theoppressed, the exploiters as well as theexploited.Marx's Early Viewof the Proletariat

Feuerbach's influence on Marx waspartial and transient. But in 1845 Marxentered into a political and intellectualpartnership with Friedrich Engels whichwould last for four decades and alter thecourse of world history. As previouslynoted, Engels was initially part of "theFree," a coterie of extreme left-Hegelianradicals. Like Marx, his political andtheoretical views underwent a significantchange when he was forced to leave thehothouse atmosphere of German academia and confront the real world of theclass struggle. In 1843, Engels was sentby his father to learn the family businessin a textile factory in Manchester, England. He thus acquired firsthand experience of an advanced industrial capitalisteconomy and of a mass movement of theindustrial as well as artisan proletariat,the British Chartist movement.

no particular wrong but wrong generallyis perpetrated against it... which does notstand in anyone-sided antithesis to theconsequences but in all-round antithesisto the premises of the German state; asphere, finally, which cannot emancipate itself without emancipating itselffrom all other spheres of society andthereby emancipating all other spheres ofsociety."Here the revolutionary role ascribed tothe proletariat is presented entirely innegative terms, as the antithesis of existing society. Such a view was by no meansunique to Marx but was then current inthe left wing of the Hegelian left. Forexample, Edgar Bauer, a leading figure in"the Free," wrote at that time that the"poor, working and laboring classes ofhumanity" were destined to "destroy thepresent condition of the world" and"establish a new form of life" (quoted inNicholas Lobkowicz, Theory and Prac

tice: History of a Concept from Aristotleto Marx [1967]). For Marx at this point,just as for Edgar Bauer, there was no consideration of the objective condition ofthe proletariat in Germany, its relativesocial weight, its relation to other, morenumerous classes such as the peasantry,its political consciousness.In fact, the term "proletariat" is quiteambiguous as applied to Germany in the1840s. Only a minority of wage laborersworked in factories. The majority workedin small shops. Many owned the tools oftheir trade and intended togo into busi-

to consider a contemporary young European radical intellectual, Alexander Herzen, the founder of Russian populism.Herzen, then living in St. Petersburg, readHegel and left Hegelians like Cieszkowski. He dubbed Hegelian philosophy "thealgebra of revolution." But since therewas no proletariat to speak of in Russia atthe time, Herzen assigned to the peasantry the revolutionary role of overthrowing the tsarist autocracy and, on the morrow, establishing a new socialist society.Had a left-Hegelian intellectual lived inthe American South of the time, he doubtless would have seen in the black slavesthe force destined to emancipate not onlythemselves but all of humanity.All leftist radicals who adhered to orwere influenced by Hegelian philosophysought to locate that social group whichcorresponded to the "negation of existingsociety." However, the fact that a groupof people are exploited and oppresseddoes not in itself imbue them with thecapacity to overthrow the existing oppressive social order, much less to reconstructsociety on a just and egalitarian basis.Class Struggle andCommunist Consciousness

Engels' experience in England was ofcritical importance in moving from leftHegelian idealism to a materialist anddialectical understanding of the proletariat. Because British Chartism was a genuine mass workers movement, it reflected

It was Engels who introduced Marx tothe importance of bourgeois economictheory (mainly British) in understandingthe class structure of modern Europe andthe struggle between labor and capital.However, I want to discuss another aspectof Engels' contribution to the development of scientific socialism because it isnot generally recognized. As I've alreadyindicated, upon becoming a communistMarx still viewed the proletariat through"the prism of left-Hegelian idealism. In hisfirst published work as a communist, the"Introduction" to his cntique of Hegel'sphilosophy of law, he described the proletariat as

Dietz Verlag BerlinBritish textile mill in mid-1800s. Rapid growth of industrial proletariat shapedthe development of scientific socialism by Marx and Engels.

"a class with radical chains, a class ofcivil society which is not a class of civilsociety, an estate which is the dissolutionof all estates, a sphere which has a universal character by its universal sufferingand claims no particular right because

ness for themselves. Thus aspiring andpotential members of the petty bourgeoisie made up a sizable proportion of theGerman proletariat. When the politicalsituation opened up for a time during theRevolution of 1848, the mass of the German working class did not embrace thecommunist cause but rather supportedeconomic policies, such as trade protectionism, intended to arrest industrialization and preserve a small-scale manufacturing sector. It was not until the 1870sthat the socialist program acquired masssupport among the German proletariat.To better understand why Marx's initial attitude toward the proletariat wasleft-Hegelian, not materialist, it is useful

Illustrated London News- Chartist demonstration in London, 1848. Engels was actively involved inBritish Chartism, the first mass movement of the industrial proletariat.

the political heterogeneity of the actual proletariat, with factions ranging frommoderate reformers on the right to Jacobin communists on the left. Many workers were devoutly religious, respectfultoward the monarchy and supportive ofthe British empire, while others were "redrepublicans" who commemorated theFrench Revolution. Workers with suchdifferent outlooks might well be employed in the same factory and even workside by side.The revolutionary capacity of the proletariat is not simply given by the condition of exploitation but is a product of itshistorical development in which consciousness plays a central role. It mayseem odd and unnecessary to quote atlength from a work as famous and widely read as the Communist Manifesto of1848, but it is not generally appreciatedor recognized how different the treatmentof the working class is in the Manifestothan in Marx's first writings as a communist. Here the analysis of the proletariat isgenuinely materialist and dialectical,sketching out the interrelation between itsobjective and subjective development:"The proletariat goes through variousstages of development. With its birthbegins its struggle with the bourgeoisie.At first the contest is carried on by individual labourers, then by the workpeopleof a factory, then by the operatives ofone trade, in one locality, against theindividual bourgeois who directly exploits them. They direct their attacksnot against the bourgeois cqnditions of

continued on page 87


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Enlightenment ...(continued from page 7)

production, but against the instrumentsof production themselves; they destroyimported wares that compete with theirlabour, they smash to pieces machinery,they set factories ablaze, they seek torestore by force the vanished status ofthe workman of the Middle Ages."At this stage the labourers still form anincofierent mass scattered over the wholecountry, and broken up by their mutualcompetition ...."But with the development of industrythe proletariat not only increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greatermasses, its strength grows, and it feelsthat strength more .... The unceasing improvement of machinery, ever more rapidly developing, makes their livelihoodmore and more precarious; the collisionsbetween individual workmen and individual bourgeois take more and morethe character of collisions between twoclasses. Thereupon the workers beginto form combinations (Trades' Unions)against the bourgeois; they club togetherin order to keep up the rate of wage-s;they found permanent associations inorder to make provision beforehand forthese occasional revolts ...."Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit oftheir battles lies, not in the immediateresult, but in the ever-expanding union ofthe workers."

It was in the Manifesto that Marx forthe first time defined the main obstaclesto communist consciousness among anindustrial proletariat which no longerhad illusions about restoring small-scaleartisan production:"The Communists are distinguished fromthe other working-class parties by thisonly: 1. In the national struggles of theproletarians of the different countries,they point out and bring to the front thecommon interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. Inthe various stages of development whichthe struggle of the working class againstthe bourgeoisie has to pass through, theyalways and everywhere represent theinterests of the movement as a whole."One hundred and fifty years later this isstill a pretty good definition of the difference between us communists and allother working-class tendencies.

Marxism Is Not TeleologyI want to conclude by discussing a common misconception about Marxism. Thereason that it's common is that it represents the convergence between the falsification of Marxism by bourgeois ideologues and by Stalinist ideologues. This isthe notion that Marx held communismto be the necessary final stage of socialdevelopment, that Marxism is a socialistversion of Hegelian teleology. Thus the

Scottish Hegel scholar IN . Findlay asserts: "There is certainly also a strongstrain of teleological idealism in the supposedly scientific materialism of Marx."While Stalinist intellectuals would never have described Marx as a teleologicalidealist, in substance that is how they presented his views. The English-languageCollected Works of Marx and Engels wasedited by a team of high-level Soviet,

NEW YORK CITYAlternate Thursdays. Next class, March12,8 p.m.: South Africa and theLessons of the Russian Revolution:For Workers Revolution to SmashNeo-Apartheid Capitalism. NYU LoebStudent Center, South Lobby TheaterInformation and readings: (212) 267-1025

BOSTON

8

Selected Monday evenings, 7 p.m.Next classes, March 2: FinancialCrisis in Southeast Asia: Imperialismand the New World Disorder; March16: Anti-Labor Attacks, Cop Terrorand the Capitalist State. HarvardUniversity Memorial Hall, Room 303Information and readings: (617) 666-9453

Young Sparlaeusoung Sparlaeus

E. SchaumannMarx at 1864 inaugural meeting of International Workingmen's Association inLondon. The First International marked the recovery of European workersmovement after defeated Revolutions of 1848.British and American Stalinist academicsand intellectuals. The preface to Volume5, which contains The German Ideologyand was published in 1976, informs us"that the development of the class struggle must necessarily lead to a communistrevolution carried out by the proletariat."What makes this statement especiallyironic today is I'm dead certain that all ofthose Soviet academics involved in thisproject who are still alive now think thatcommunist revolution is a utopian fantasyand that capitalism is forever.From their first writings to their last,Marx and Engels rejected the idea thatproletarian revolution leading to communism was guaranteed in advance, so tospeak, by some impersonal and transcendent law of history. Their first joint work,The Holy Family, written in 1845, states:"History does nothing, it 'possesses noimmense wealth,' it 'wages no battles.' Itis man, real, living man who does allthat, who possesses and fights; 'history'is not, as it were, a person apart, usingman as a means to achieve its own aims;history is nothing but the activity of manpursuing his aims."The Holy Family was and remains an obscure and little-read work. But one of themost famous passages in Marx's mostfamous work, the Communist Manifesto,states that while the class struggle isinevitable its outcome is not:

a prolonged period of capitalist development before reaching socialism.In a letter to a Russian populist journal, Marx repudiated any such positionand any such methodology. He criticizedMikhailoysky for metamorphosing "my

historical sketch of the genesis of capital-

labour, the most complete development ofman." Marx went on to dismiss Hegeliantype teleology as "a general historicophilosophic theory, the supreme virtue ofwhich consists in being super-historical"(Marx and Engels, Selected Correspon-dence [1965]).Engels, who survived Marx by 12 yearsand died in 1895, was a keen student ofthe developments in modern technology;he was one of the first people in Londonto get a telephone. By the late 1880s,Engels recognized that new military technology meant that a major European warwould be qualitatively more destructivethan in the past. He predicted:"The only war left for Prussia-Germanyto wage will be a world war, a worldwar, moreover, of an extent and violence hitherto unimagined. Eight to tenmillion soldiers will be at each other'sthroats and in the process they will stripEurope barer than a swarm of locusts.The depredations of the Thirty Years'War compressed into three to four yearsand extended over the entire continent;

f a m i n ~ , d i s e ~ s e , the universal lapse intobarbansm ...- Marx and Engels, CollectedWorks Volume 26 (1990)With the development and deploymentof nuclear weapons, it is obvious thatan all-out war between capitalist states

"Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master andjourneyman, in a word, oppressor andoppressed, stood in constant oppositionto one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, afight that each time ended, either in arevolutionary re-constitution of societyat large, or in the common ruin of thecontending classes."

Novosti1917: Revolutionary soldiers march through Moscow under the banner ofCommunism. The Bolshevik Revolution in Russia marked the first successfulconquest of political power by the proletariat.During the late 19th century, a vulgar

misinterpretation of Marx's theory of historical development gained widespreadcurrency. According to this notion, Marxsupposedly held that all peoples had togo through certain fixed stages of development: primitive communism, slavery,feudalism, capitalism, socialism. In the1870s, a Russian populist intellectual,M. K. Mikhailovsky, denounced Marx formaintaining that Russia had to go through

Trotskyist League/Ligue trotskyste EventsTORONTO

Alternate Tuesdays, 7 p.m.Next classes:March 3: The Leninist StruggleAgainst Imperialism; March 17: TheFamily and Women's Oppression;March 31: The Fight for a LeninistVanguard Party Today.University of TorontoInternational Student Centre33 St. George Street(north of College Street)Information and readings: (416) 593-4138

ism in Western Europe into an historicophilosophic theory of the general pathevery people is fated to tread, whateverthe historical circumstances in which itfinds itself, in order that it may ultimatelyarrive at the form of economy whichensures, together with the greatest expansion of the productive powers of social

New EditionFirst published in 1978, thispamphlet provides a detailedhistorical and theoreticalaccount of Lenin's strugglefor a vanguard party.Includes: "In Defense ofDemocratic Centralism"This edition also includes:"The Fight for a LeninistVanguard Party"

$2 (56 pages)Order from/make checkspayable to:Spartacist Publishing Co.Box 1377 GPONewYork, NY 10116

would likely destroy civilization andmight well lead to the annihilation of thehuman race. There is no god, there is nonatural law, there are no laws of historywhich ensure the victory of communismor even the survival of mankind. That's upto us, nothing and no one but us. With thatuncomforting truth, I' ll conclude.

A Spartacist Pamoh/etHCKe\IXX::;WI(.\.1 t j J : ; B " . ~ ; . . H A A " K : " ' h ' < ' l I : ' { ~ ; ' ; I ; J ! H l""""'_""">l M : n - o I 4 : 1 1 M ' ~ ' j ~ L ' ... , > " + " > , , , . . . . , . ' - ~ , - + -.-._ ... - - , , ._---- ..

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Castro ...(continued from page 12)in one country" was a lie in the SovietUnion-which encompassed one-sixth ofthe globe-"socialism" on one smallCaribbean island was far more so. Theanti-working-class Havana regime hasblocked the possibilities to extend socialrevolution outside Cuba's shores-fromCastro's embrace of Chile's popularfront government in the early 1970s,which paveo the way for a bloody military dictatorship, to his admonition adecade later to the petty-bourgeois Nicaraguan Sandinistas not to follow the"Cuban road" of expropriating the bourgeoisie. To place the working class inpolitical power and open the road tosocialist development in Cuba requires asupplemental political revolution led bya Trotskyist party.It was only under exceptional circumstances that Castro's petty-bourgeoisforces were able to smash capitalist property relations. With the counterrevolutionary destruction of the Soviet degeneratedworkers state in 1991-92, the narrow historical opening in which such forces wereable to overturn capitalism has beenclosed. This underscores the Trotskyistperspective of permanent revolution forsemicolonial and backward countries:that national liberation and agrarian revolution can only be achieved through theseizure of power by the working class,which must proceed toward the socialistreorganization of society, fighting toextend proletarian revolution to the advanced capitalist countries.The collapse of the Soviet Union castCuba into a deep crisis from which it hasnot emerged. In 1990, as he was pushingtoward capitalist restoration in the USSR

population now dependent on tourism fortheir livelihoods. The rest have to get byon a diet of rice and beans.While the harsh economic rigors of the"special period" imposed after the collapse of the Soviet Union-and the lossof some $4 billion annually in aid-haveeased somewhat, this has been accompanied by galloping inequality in Cubansociety. The average Cuban worker paidin pesos earns the equivalent of about $6a month, but a taxi driver can make $50 aday. Women and blacks have been amongthose hardest hit by the "dollarization" ofthe economy. Black Cubans are far lesslikely to have relatives in the U.S. whosend them greenbacks. Meanwhile, thousands of women desperate to feed themselves and their families have been forcedinto prostitution at the edges of the booming tourist industry. Up to 400,000 peoplehave migrated from the provinces to

Gamma-LiaisonLech Walesa with Vatican sponsors of Solidarnosc counterrevolution inPoland.itself, Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev cut back the amount of oil that theSoviet Union sold to Cuba and drasticallyraised the price to world market levelswhile slashing the price that Moscowpaid for Cuban sugar. Following Gorbachev's ouster, the pro-imperialist Yel-tsin regime canceled all economic andmilitary aid, leaving Cuba completelyisolated against U.S. imperialism.In response, the Castro regime hasgone ever further down the road of capitalist "market reforms." The country nowhas $5 billion in foreign investment, andone American businessman told Timemagazine (25 August 1997), "It is actually easier to do business in Cuba than inthe free world." A recent article in Time(26 January) reported:"Today Havana blooms with chicly renovated hotels, neon signs, crowded restaurants and nightclubs. The U.S. dollarhas swallowed the Cuban peso. Farmer'smarkets and mom-and-pop entrepreneursfuel a production boom of sorts. Carsoutnumber bicycles again in Havana,and many of them are 1990s Nissans,not 1950s Chevys. Foreign investors notonly share ownership of new projects butalso own some outright and ship much oftheir profits home."The newfound prosperity described byTime is largely reserved for the smallminority of the 10 percent of the Cuban27 FEBRUARY 1998

Havana and other tourist areas in searchof dollars in recent years.The "market reforms" have not onlydeepened racial divisions in the countrybut have also sown desperation and demoralization among much of the population while fueling the forces of capitalistrestoration. Castro's accommodation ofthe Vatican only further strengthens internal counterrevolutionary forces. TheCuban Communist Party (CCP) helpedorganize large outdoor audiences to hearthe Pope rant against abortion, contraception, atheism and materialism, whileCastro warned CCP members to "notexpress the slightest manifestation ofdisgust at any phrase that displeases usor seems unjust." While the Catholicchurch doesn't have the social or political weight it had in Poland even bHorethe counterrevolution there, it nonetheless provides a focus for reactionary opposition to the regime.Cuban Revolution atthe Crossroads

Over nearly four decades, U.S. imperialism has tried every "dirty trick" in theCIA's books to undermine and overthrowthe Castro regime, from the failed 1961- Bay of Pigs invasion to a gusano provocation in Cuban airspace two years ago.

Q::JIIIC.iii'::J"1lm(/)(/)

Empty pharmacyin Havana. Evertightening U.S.embargo hasincreaseddeprivation forCuban masses.

CIA papers released last year documented not only the numerous assassination attempts against the Cuban leaderhimself, but also plans for U.S. forces toshoot down civilian aircraft or sink boatloads of Cubans bound for Miami andthen blame the atrocities on Cuba in orderto justify an American military attack.And since taking over the White House,Clinton has twice tightened the economicembargo aimed at squeezing Cuba intosubmission, which was first imposed in1962 under another Democratic president, John F. Kennedy.While such measures play well withdie-hard reactionaries like South Carolina Senator Jesse Helms and the hardbitten gusano rabble in Miami, significant sections of the U.S. bourgeoisienow favor the development of capitalistmarket forces to destroy the Cuban Revolution from within. The Bay of Pigsfiasco continues to haunt America's capitalist rulers-witness the release of a 36-year-old CIA document which describesthe operation as "unmitigated and almostwillful bumbling and disaster" (New YorkTimes, 22 February). When gusano godfather Jorge Mas Canosa died last fall,the New York Times (25 November 1997)used the occasion to argue that "HelmsBurton has done more harm to theUnited States than to Mr. Castro." EvenHelms has now endorsed a legislativeproposal to loosen the embargo byallowing U.S. companies to sell food andmedicine to Cuba. Opponents of sanctions today include the U.S. Chamber ofCommerce, the National Association ofManufacturers and hundreds of othercorporate spokesmen. Various reformist"socialists" who focus solely on opposition to the embargo effectively tail suchbourgeois forces.The ex-Trotskyist and now eccentrically reformist SWP of Jack Barnes seeksto attract radical-minded youth by posingas the "best defenders" of the Cuban Revolution. But far from advancing a program to defend the gains of the revolution, the Barnesites are simply pressagents for the Castro bureaucracy whichis pushing Cuba to the brink of capitalistrestoration. Typically, the SWP's Militant(9 February) headlined its report on JohnPaul II's visit, "Confident Revolutionary

Gov't Hosts Pope in Cuba"! Avoidingeven a hint of criticism of the dyed-inthe-wool Polish counterrevolutionary, theSWP lambasted the "big-business media"for daring "to portray the Pope's visit asa blow to the Cuban revolution."Such treachery masquerading as pollyannaish idiocy is nothing new for theSWP, which proclaimed that the U.S.had "lost" the Cold War after theUSSR had collapsed! About the onlytimes the Barnesites have disagreed with"comrade Fidel" was when they stoodto his right in championing capitalistrestorationist forces arrayed against theSoviet degenerated workers state, including Pope Wojtyla's favorite "union," counterrevolutionary Polish Solidarnosc. TheSWP also hailed Boris Yeltsin's proimperialist countercoup in 1991, whichushered in the destruction of the SovietUnion. Now the Barnesites are helpinggrease the way for the restoration of capitalism in Cuba.Seemingly on the other end of thespectrum from the adulatory SWP is thesocial-democratic International SocialistOrganization (ISO), which opposes theCastro regime from the standpoint of virulent anti-communist hostility to theCuban workers state itself. The ISO'sBritish mentor, Tony Cliff, broke fromTrotskyism at the outbreak of the KoreanWar in 1950 over his refusal to defend theNorth Korean deformed workers stateagainst imperialist attack. The Cliffites'American forebear was Max Shachtman,who repudiated the Trotskyist positionof unconditional military defense of theSoviet Union at the start of World War IIand went on to earn the epithet "StateDepartment socialist" by endorsing the1961 Bay of Pigs invasion.This characterization applies perfectlyto the Cliffites, who cheered Polish Solidarnosc and hailed Yeltsin's counterrevolution as the "New Russian Revolution."Now the Canadian Socialist Worker (28January) gives full vent to the Cliffites'hatred for the Cuban Revolution, exulting how the Pope's call for freeing counterrevolutionary "political prisoners" inCuba "met with enthusiasm from tens ofthousands who listened to him." And, aswe reported in "ISO: Gusano Socialists?"(WVNo. 606,16 September 1994), a fewyears back the Canadian Cliffites hailed acounterrevolutionary riot in Havana as asign that "Cuban workers and peasantshave begun to break the hold of a repressive regime" (Socialist Worker [Canada],September 1994). The same issue of theirpaper echoed the gusano scum in claiming that Cuban "refugees" are "desperatefor a taste of freedom." As we have notedbefore, the Cliffites' "third camp" is nothing other than the camp of "democratic"imperialism!

The Cuban Revolution today stands ata crossroads. Revolutionaries in the U.S.have a special duty to defend Cubaagainst capitalist restoration and rapacious American imperialism. This is integrally tied to the struggle for socialistrevolution to sweep away the racist capitalist U.S. rulers. The Spartacist Leagueis dedicated to building the Leninist vanguard party needed to lead that struggleto victory

Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of the Spartacist Leagueo $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. # Phone (__ _____City State --,-_________ Zip____ =:=685Make checks payable/mail to: Spartaclst Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116

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Iraq ...(continued from page 1)and immigrants in their own countries,ratcheting up the rate of exploitation,slashing social programs, stepping upracist repression. In statements issued byother national sections of the ICL denouncing the threatened bombing of Iraq,our comrades have stressed the need tomobilize the proletariat of each countryin struggle against its enemy, its "own"national bourgeoisie.The outlines of the world political situation are more and more coming to resemble those before the first interimperialistworld war of 1914-18. The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, whose final undoing isthe work chiefly of the social-democraticand Stalinist misleaders, pointed the wayout of this system of exploitation, racismand war. Amid the slaughter of WorldWar I, as the social-democratic SecondInternational wallowed in national chauvinism, Lenin's Bolsheviks persevered inforging a workers party committed to theprogram of world socialist revolution. Inhis 1915 pamphlet, Socialism and War,Lenin wrote: ."Without a series of revolutions, what iscalled a democratic pcace is a philistineUtopia. The purpose of a real programmeof action can be served only by a Marx-

ist programme which gives the masses afull and clear explanation of what hastaken place, explains what imperialism isand how it should be combated, declaresopenly that the collapse of the SecondInternational was brought about by opportunism, and openly calls for a MarxistInternational to be built up without andagainst the opportunists."The threat to blow away countless Iraqicivilians as a display of America's military might, like the enormous "desertslaughter" perpetrated seven years ago,is a harbinger of future, even bloodierconflicts-ultimately including the spectre of nuclear war- if capitalism is notswept away.Big Lies for Mass Murder

The Ohio State "town hall" meetingwhich turned into a public relations fiasco

lar to that needed to produce food supplies and other basic products, eliminatingIraq's ability to produce them wouldrequire leveling the country's entire economic infrastructure. Furthermore, theU.S. and Britain have long supplied theIraqi regime with such materials, asrecently as 1992. During the Iran-Iraqwar in the 1980s, Washington approvedsales to Baghdad of the germs that causeanthrax, botulism, gas gangrene and otherdiseases. The U.S. leads the world inmanufacturing and stockpiling chemicaland biological weapons, not to mention anuclear arsenal capable of destroyinghumanity many times over. And only theU.S. has used nuclear weapons, when itincinerated over 200,000 Japanese andKorean civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.Republican Congressional leaders havetried to one-up the Democratic presidentby demanding that the aim of any military action be to topple Saddam Hussein. "Time To Off Saddam?" asked Time(16 February). It is a measure of theimperialist arrogance of America's capitalist rulers that they openly moot theassassination of foreign leaders. But theground invasion likely needed to "off'Saddam Hussein would risk massiveAmerican casualties, something the U.S.

OPATurkish troops stand over slaughtered Kurdish guerrillas. U.S.-backed regimehas waged war of annihilation against Kurdish nationalists.when Clinton's spokesmen were barragedwith chants, jeers and embarrassing questions manifested the absence of even athreadbare ideological fig leaf for thethreatened terror bombing bf Iraq. Havingproclaimed that "communism is dead,"the U.S. rulers no longer have that ideological standby to justify imperialist military adventures. Instead, the WhiteHouse has thrown up a smokescreen ofcynical and contradictory lies. Claims thatair strikes were needed to open up Iraq's"presidential palaces" to UN inspectorswere a farce from the beginning. Evenbefore Annan had gone to Baghdad, Saddam Hussein had opened up those areasto UN teams. U.S. plans for a four-day,around-the-clock onslaught were drawnup months ago, complete with a "bodycount" target of 1,500 Iraqi dead.Moreover, American spokesmen conceded that an air assault would not becapable of eliminating Iraq's supposedchemical and biological warfare c a p a c i t y ~ And since the technology for makingsuch weapons is very rudimentary, simi-10

ruling class has feared ever since itshumiliating defeat by the heroic Vietnamese workers and peasants. Such amilitary operation could have explosiveconsequences throughout the Near East,as well as within the U.S. military itself,which is overwhelmingly composed ofblack, Hispanic and other working-classyouth with little ideological motivationfor conquering and occupying ThirdWorld countries.There is another reason why the U.S.didn't "finish the job" in 1991 by gettingrid of the Iraqi leader. As the British ITNWorld News (17 February) reported: "Policy makers fear that if they fatally weakenSaddam Hussein, the country could fragment" with the Kurdish north and Shi'itesouth breaking away, destabilizing theentire region. Washington has favored amilitary coup to install a more amenablejunta of colonels-just as Saddam Hussein himself came to power. But the CIAand British MI6 are hardly likely to enlistany Iraqi military officers in another suchventure after their last bungled attempt

New York City,February 17:Reformist leftpleads tomurderous U.S.ruling class to bemore "peaceful";Spartacistsfight for classstruggle to defeatU.S. imperialism.

almost two years ago ended in the execution of as many as 80 conspirators.Near East Cockpit

What is really behind the U.S. militarybuildup in the Gulf is the growing competition among the imperialist bourgeoisies.This is particularly evident in the NearEast, where the U.S. vies with other capitalist powers for control of oil fields andpipeline routes. The destruction of theUSSR has not only heightened these tensions in ~ e n e r a l but particldarly so in thisregion, as vast natural gas and oil reservesin the former Soviet Central Asian republics are opened to capitalist eKploitationand Russia joins with France, Germanyand other powers in seeking to expand oiloperations to Iran and Iraq. It is no accident that the last U.S. buildup in the Gulf,in November, began only days after theFrench oil giant, Total, joined with Russia's Gazprom and a Malaysian firm insigning a $2 billion contract with Iran topump offshore natural gas.In 1990-91, Washington not only managed to strong-arm other capitalist governments to join its war "coalition," buthad them foot the bill for the onslaught.Today, among the major imperialist powers, only Britain (joined by Canada andAustralia) has fulsomely backed Clinton's moves. Among the cynical calculations at work here is that Britain, after theU.S., is the world's largest arms exporter:the murder of its former colonial slaves inIraq is seen as a way to showcase itsgoods and boost international sales.The extent to which the imperialists arebeginning to openly clash was seen inU.S. threats last fall to embargo Japanesecargo vessels in American ports in a tradedispute. Now the New York Times (22 February), under a headline denouncingTokyo as the "New Villain in Asia Crisis,"quotes leading U.S. governillent spokesmen lecturing imperialist Japan as thoughit were an American semicolony andwarning that it is fomenting "protectionist pressure"-i.e., sharpened trade war.Germany reluctantly endorsed the latestplan to bomb Iraq only after the U.S.threatened to pull its "peacekeeping"troops out of the Balkans. And followingAnnan's deal, a German (Social Democratic) spokesman said bluntly: "This dealmust be accepted. The Americans wouldfind themselves in dangerous isolation if,pointing to some trifling detail or another,they insisted on a military strike."At the same time, there are significantdifferences within the American rulingclass itself over Near East policy. ManyAmerican corporations have chafed atthe prospect of their international competitors closing deals with Iran and Iraqwhile U.S. firms are constrained by economic sanctions. An editorial in BusinessWeek (16 February) declared bluntly,"Bombs Can't Make Up for a BankruptMideast Policy."This also reflects widespread frustration, from the Clinton White -House ondown, with America's chief ally in theNear East, Zionist Israel. As usual, theZionist rulers enthusiastically supportU.S. threats against an Arab regime. Butthe Netanyahu government's provocativeflouting of the U.S.-sponsored "peaceprocess" with Yasir Arafat's PalestinianAuthority threatens to derail Washington's designs in the region. Even normally

WV Photospliant Arab client states like Egypt andSaudi Arabia have opposed the U.S. overIraq. Referring to the Pentagon's euphemism for civilian casualties, one Jordanian woman legislator remarked bitterly,"I feel insulted and baffled when I hearthese American generals talk of 'collateraldamages' as though it is a few pieces offurniture that will be damaged" (New YorkTimes, 20 February). At the same time,the Arab bourgeois regimes fear the riseof Islamic fundamentalist movements,which have been fueled by the growingimpoverishment of the worker and peasant masses combined with the patentbankruptcy of "secular" Arab nationalismand Stalinist reformism. Tapping into"anti-Zionist" and "anti-American" sentiment, the fundamentalists promote vileanti-woman and anti-Semitic reaction.At the time of the 1990-91 Gulf War,the U.S. tried to whip up support by shedding tears for the multibillionaire oilsheiks of "poor little Kuwait" and hypocritically proclaiming the rights of theIraqi Kurdish minority brutally subjugatedby Saddam Hussein. Even then, when thetreacherous Kurdish nationalist misleaderstook Washington at its word, not for thefirst time, and tried to stage an uprising innorthern Iraq, the U.S. effectively invitedthe Iraqi strongman to put it down. roday,White House spokesmen do not even talkabout Iraq's Kurdish population. Meanwhile, U.S. ally Turkey, which has slaughtered hundreds of thousands in a war ofannihilation against Kurdish nationalistswithin its own borders, has subjected IraqiKurdistan to one bloody invasion afteranother in recent years. Yet now evenTurkey has expressed opposition to a newU.S. military assault, fearing that thiscould weaken Saddam Hussein's holdand encourage Kurdish separatism.While calling for military defense ofIraq against an imperialist attack, weoppose any political support to SaddamHussein's capitalist regime. He came topower through anti-Communist massacres with the blessing of the imperialistcapitals, and he has stayed in powerthrough savage anti-working-class repression and brutal oppression of the Kurdishpeople (see "Iraqi Rulers' Bloody Road toPower," WV No. 511, 5 October 1990;"Saddam Hussein's War on Kurds, Leftists," WVNo. 517,4 January 1991). It isthe task of the Iraqi proletariat, leadingall the oppressed-women and ethnic,national and religious minorities-to oustSaddam Hussein's bloody regime. Ours isthe perspective of permanent revolution,the understanding that social justice andnational emancipation for the workers andthe myriad national minorities of theregion will only come about by sweepingaway all the murderous colonels, sheiksand Zionist rulers through proletarian revolution, linked to the struggle for workerspower in the imperialist centers. Israel outof the Occupied Territories! Turkey outof Kurdistan! For a socialist republic ofunited Kurdistan in a socialist federationof the Near East!Reformists Beg Clintonfor "Peace"

At speakouts and protests across the. country, we have fought for the Marxist understanding that the struggle todefeat U.S. imperialism means fighting for socialist revolution against thisWORKERS VANGUARD


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Amistad...(continued from page 4)system and break the chains of blackoppression. When Brown and his menseized the federal arsenal at HarpersFerry in 1859, they were aiming to gatherthe forces to begin a guerrilla war againstthe Slave Power. The federal governmenthanged Brown for his insurrectionaryaction. For the majority of the Northerncapitalist class, represented by AbrahamLincoln, the aim of the Civil War was notto end slavery but to put down the secession of tne 'South and establish its classrule from coast to coast.When the war came, Douglass tirelessly organized around the calls to allowblack' soldiers to fight and to immediatelydeclare the emancipation of the slaves.The Republican Party was split on theseissues, but battle losses gave the radicalwing of the party a political advantage."With every reverse to the national arms,"declared Douglass in 1863, "with everyexulting shout of victory raised bythe slaveholding rebels, I have imploredthe imperiled nation to unchain againsther foes, her powerful black hand" (see"John Brown and Frederick Douglass:Heroes of the Anti-Slavery Struggle,"WV No. 319, 10 December 1982; reprinted in Black History and the ClassStruggle No. I).The Civil War was the second American Revolution, the last of the greatbourgeois-democratic revolutions. It tookfour years and the deaths of some600,000 Americans-more than havedied in all other U.S. wars-to at lastbreak the Slave Power. The North's victory in 1865 ushered in the most democratic period of U.S. history. Enforced bythe occupying Union Army and directedby the left wing of the Republican Party, Reconstruction opened up a vista ofequality for blacks, who for the first timewere able to go to school, to vote, to runfor office. The establishment of publiceducation and other measures vastly benefited poor whites in the South as well.

The promise of black equality wasbetrayed by the Northern capitalists. TheCompromise of 1877, under which thelast Union Army troops were withdrawn

capitalist system. Addressing 300 peopleat a February 19 protest meeting at NewYork University, a Spartacist Leaguefloor speaker declared:"There is a banner of revolutionarystruggle in the belly of the beast of U.S.imperialism that says forthr

Documents

Workers Vanguard No 685 - 27 February 1998