Workers Vanguard No 735 - 05 May 2000

7/29/2019 Workers Vanguard No 735 - 05 May 2000

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50C!:No. 735 .... 5 May 2000

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" t ~ e r e l s ' ~ N o J u $ f i c e in fhe";ea,pitalistCourtS!'. ~ . AbOlishth@,lJacistD!'CitbPenalty!

Iumia

Mumia Abu-Jamal's fight for freedomis at a critical stage. In the next fewweeks, Pennsylvania federal court judgeWilliam Yohn is expected to rule onJamal's habeas corpus petition to overturn his 1982 frame-up conviction anddeath sentence. If Yohn rules againstJamal, Governor Ridge will most certainly sign an execution warrant. Spearheaded by the Fraternal Order of Police(F.O.P.), the forces of racist "law andorder" represented by both capitalist parties, the Republicans and Democrats, areitching to see this innocent man strappedto the execution gurney. They want thisoutspoken fighter against racist injustice,who has become the focus of international opposition to the racist and barbaric death penalty in the U.S., silencedforever.But there are millions of working people, black people, students and others inthis country and around the world whowant to see Mumia free and the U.S.death penalty abolish,ed. His case hasbecome a clarion call for those fightingcop terror and racist injustice. In defianceof F.O.P. threats, Antioch College students featured a speech by Mumia at lastweek's graduation. In the coming weeks,many people will be making their voicesheard in marches and protests for Mumiafrom New York and Philadelphia to theSan Francisco Bay Area. It is essentialthat the largest numbers possible turn outfor these protests. The Spartacist League

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and Partisan Defense Committee will bemarching to demand: Freedom now forMumia Abu-Jamal! Abolish the racistdeath penalty!These are not, however, the demandsraised by the liberal and reformist"socialist" orgallizers of the upcomingprotests. Instead, the protest calls arerestricted to the demands "Stop the execution!" and "New trialfor Murnia AbuJamal!" or ''The evidence must be heard!"Evidence has been heard, time and again,mountains of evidence proving Mumia'sinnocence. Mumia should not have spenta single day in prison; he should be freednow. As we wrote at the time oflast year'sApril 24 "Millions for Mumia" marchesin Philadelphia and the Bay Area,"Behind the call for a new trial is a political program premised on the belief thatthe capitalist state can be reformed andthat the bourgeois courts can be pressuredto be 'just'" (WVNo. 711, 16 April 1999).There is no justice in the capitalistcourts! That truth was brought home witha vengeance two months ago, when thefour NYPD cops who gunned down Amadou Diallo in a hail of 41 bullets wereacquitted in an Albany court. The killercops walked because by the standards ofbourgeois justice they had committedno crime but were simply "doing theirjob"-which is to enforce racist "law andorder" for the capitalist rulers against theghetto and barrio masses. Meanwhile,other major cities-from Philly and Pittsburgh to Chicago and Los Angeles-havebeen rocked by exposures showing thatracist cop terror and court frame-ups areendemic to this system.Amid seething anger over police killings in New York and around the country, black Democrats like Al Sharpton

o reeU-Jamal!

WV PhotosPOC-initiated mobilization that drove KKKout of New York City on October 23showed the labor/black power needed in .fight for Mumia's freedom.

have scrambled to defuse the outrage andchannel it into liberal police "reform"schemes and Democratic Par.ty electoralpolitics. The calls for the upcoming protests are likewise designed to refurbishillusions in this system of racist injustice. The Mobilization to Free MumiaAbu-Jamal declares, "Let us insist thatwhen the judicial process is perverted toviolate fundamental rights, the government intervene to ensure equal justicebefore the law."The purpose of such liberal appealsis to build a class-collaborationist blocbased on "common ground" with Democratic Party politicians who administerthe apparatus of capitalist state repression. Refuse & Resist!, one of the protestsponsors, made this clear in an 18 January Internet posting reporting the conclusions of a delegation that met with Justice Department officials that month:"Our task now is to broaden and deepenthe international campaign to save thelife of Murnia Abu-Jamal with a focus onPresident Bill Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno .... We must say to them:the evidence is in your hands. The timehas come to act."Reno-who ordered the 1993 Wacomassacre which slaughtered more than

80 men, women and children in an integrated religious commune! Clintonwho consigned millions of . poor andminority women and children to homelessness and starvation by axing welfare,who enacted the 1996 Anti-Terrorismand Effective Death Penalty Act vastlyexpanding use of the death penalty andgutting the right of habeas corpus forJamal and 3,500 other death row prisoners! Even the Rehnquist Supreme Court,which has launched one judicial assaultafter another on the rights of prisoners,recently issued a series of rulings allowing for some exercise of the right ofhabeas corpus. And while Clinton adamantly rejects a federal moratorium onthe death penalty, the exposure of frameups which sent one innocent man afteranother to death row compelled even theRepublican governor of Illinois to putthe state murder machine there on hold.Five of the 13 released from IHinois'death row in recent years were provedinnocent only because they were able toget DNA tests.Appeals to capitalist politicians likeClinton only serve to chain fighters forMumia's freedom to the capitalist classenemy and to contain the struggle withincontinued on page 9


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Feds' Raid Snatches Elianu.s. Imperialism and Miami's Gusanos

On April 22, federal agents stormedthe house of Elian Gonzalez' kidnappers,snatching the kid and reuniting himwith his father and stepmother nearWashington, D.C. While most Americans aroe probably just relieved not tohave to watch "all Elian, all the time"TV anymore, Republicans and someDemocrats and the capitalist media areup' in arms about whether Attorney General Reno used "too much force" andfurther traumatized the little boy, whosince his rescue at sea last fall hasbecome the poster child for both sides ofthe ruling-class debate over how toundermine the Cuban deformed workersstate. No doubt Elian was terrorized bycops in body armor armed with automatic weapons storming the house in themiddle of the night, but by the violentstandards of the U.S. capitalist class, par- .ticularly when it targets black and working people, the three-minute Miami raidwas actually pretty tame.

The Feds justified their "overwhelmingshow of force" as necessary because"intelligence reports indicated that thehouse was being guarded by a shadowynetwork of men who had permits to carryconcealed weapons, a history of violent.crime or a record of anti-Castro violence," including "members of the militant anti-Castro group Alpha 66" (NewYork Times, 28 April). Well, they ought toknow! Alpha 66 and other counterrevolutionary terrorist groups operating out ofMiami have been funded and trained bythe U.S. government for decades, as partof its unending drive to destroy the CubanRevolution and restore capitalism.The whole fiasco, from day one, wasset up by the U.S. government. ElianGonzalez ought to have been returned tohis father in Cuba immediately. But forpolitical (i.e., capitalist propaganda) reasons, the Immigration and NaturalizationService (INS), which impriso ns' anddeports black Haitian and Dominican as

Imperialism and Its"Labor Lieutenants"The chauvinist protectionism of the AFLCIO bureaucracy in the U.S. and theLabourite union tops in Britain stems fromtheir role as agents for their respective bourgeoisies' inside the l abor movement. Writingin the midst of the interimperialist World

War I, Bolshevik leader V.I. Lenin pointed tothe material basis for this labor bureau-TROTSKY cracy, which derives its privil eges from a LENINsmall share of he superprojits gained by the .major capitalist powers through thei r subjugation of he backward countries. The Bolsheviks' political struggle against pro-imperialist social-chauvinism was critical inmobilizing the Russian proletariat to seize power in the October Revolution of 1917.The bourgeoisie of an imperialist "Great" Power can economically bribe the upperstrata of "its" workers by spending on this a hundred million or so francs a year, for itssuperprofits most likely amount to about a thousand million. And how this little sop isdivided among the labour ministers, "labour representatives" (remember Engels'ssplendid analysis of the term), labour members of war industries committees, labourofficials, workers belonging to the narrow craft unions, office employees, etc., etc., is asecondary q u ~ s t i o n . Between 1848 and 1868, and to a certain extent even later, only England enjoyed amonopoly: that is why opportunism could prevail there for decades. No other countries possessed either very rich colonies or an industrial monopoly.The last third of the nineteenth century saw the transition to the new, imperialist era.Finance capital not of one, but of several, though very few, Great Powers enjoys amonopoly. (In Japan and Russia the monopoly of military power, vast territories, orspecial facilities for robbing minority nationalities, China, etc., partly supplements,partly takes the place of, the monopoly of modern, up-to-date finance capital.) Thisdifference explains why England's monopoly position could remain unchallenged fordecades. The monopoly of modern finance capital is being frantically challenged; theera of imperialist wars has begun. It was possible in those days to bribe and con:upt the

working class of one country for-decades. This is now improbable, if not impossible.But on the other hand, every imperialist "Great" Power can and does bribe smallerstrata (than in England in 1848-68) of the ~ l a b o u r aristocracy" ....The fact is that "bourgeois labour parties," as a political phenomenon, have alreadybeen formed in all the foremost capitalist countries, and that unless a determined andrelentless struggle is waged all along the line against these parties-or groups, trends,etc., it is all the same-there can be no question of a struggle against imperialism, or ofMarxism, or of a socialist labour movement.

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- V I. Lenin, "Imperialism and the Split in Socialism" (October 1916)

! " ~ ! ! ! ! ! J ! . 4 . . ' ! . . f ! ! ! . ~ . l ! l ! . . EDITOR: Len MeyersEDITOR, YOUNG SPARTACUS PAGES: Anna WoodmanPRODUCTION MANAGER: Susan FullerCIRCULATION MANAGER: Mara CadizEDITORIAL BOARD: Barry James (managing edit or), Br uce Andre, Ray Bishop, Jon Brule,George Foster, Uz Gordon, Walter Jennings, Jane Kerrigan, James Robertson, Joseph Seymour,Alison Spen,cerThe Spartacist League IS the U.S. Section of the International Communist League (FourthInternationalist).Workers Vanguard (ISSN 0276-0746) pu blished biweekly, excep t Skipping three atternate 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., 299 Broadway, Suite 3t8, New York, NY t0007. Telephone: ( 2t2) 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 13n, GPO, New York, NY 10116. .Opinions expressed in signed artiCles or etters do nOI necessa;;/y express the editorial viewpoint.The closing date for news in this issue is May 2.

No. 735 5 May 2000

well as Chinese immigrants daily, gavethe photogenic little Cuban boy a muchdifferent treatment, handing him over tohis great-uncle'S clan of rabid counterrevolutionary gusanos (worms) withouteven a hearing. However, things got outof hand in Miami, the negotiations-soured, and the whole arrangement withthe gusanos blew up in Reno's face. Having created a mess, the Feds aft er monthsof dithering resorted to the bourgeoisie'susual heavy-handed methods, sending inthe INS thugs in riot gear and armed withassault weapons to grab the kid.Although Elian has been removed fromthe clutches of the Miami horde, the factis that he and his family, sequestered inMaryland at the government-owned WyePlantation estate, are still held captive inthe United States while waiting for thecourts to rule on the appeal of the "asylumrequest" by Elian's gusano relatives, Elianand his father have been through enoughat the hands of the U.S. government andtheir anti-Communist fanatics. Let theGonzalez family return to Cuba now!As every resident of America's ghettosand barrios knows, the usual result whenthe U.S. government storms your housewith automatic weapons is very different than what happened in Miami.Black Panther Party leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, shotgunned to deathin their beds by the Chicago police andFBI in 1969 as part of the government'smassive, brutal drive to wipe out fighters for black freedom-that's the normin this country. Now, the dispatch of athousand Marines to Vieques in PuertoRico threatens a very bloody attack onopponents of U,S. imperialism's militarybases on that island. That the toll ofinjuries in Miami amounts to a couple ofbruises reflects the kid-glove treatmentlong accorded to the counterrevolutionaryMiami Cuban community.These Miami gusanos, the Cuban capitalist class and their hangers-on who fledthe revolution with their money and anti-

Communist obsessions, have for 40 yearsbeen the pets-of the U.S. government,regularly working as assassins for theCIA throughout Latin America for thepromise that the U.S. will install themas the ruling class again if Cuba is reconquered for capitalism. I f restoredto power, the gusanos would wreakbloody vengeance, slaughtering workersand peasants, and especially CommunistParty members. But feeling their statusthreatened by the turn of a wing of theU.S. rulers toward a policy of "constructive engagement" with Castro as amore effective way to undermine theCuban deformed workers state throughinvestment, cheap consumer goods andfomenting internal counterrevolution, thegusanos' level of hysteria has risen.The Cuban counterrevolutionariescame to the U.S. complete with theirown ruling class, They have been giventhe run of Miami for decades, replicatingin "Little Havana" a microcosm of whatCuba was like before the revolution, withall the attendant corruption, racism andreligious obscurantism. Having beencoddled by the U.S. ruling class for solong, the gusanos literally don't get whatcountry they're living in, and are widelyperceived as an alien irritant on theAmerican body politic. In the EMn case,their hubris got a little out of hand asthey blatantly flouted the authority of thefederal government: rabid gusano Miamimayor Joseph Carollo openly vowed todefy the Feds. After the raid he fired thecity manager for refusing to sack thepolice chief (who resigned the next day),who had failed to alert the mayor ofthe planned raid. The police chief hadalso had the temerity to arrest severalhundred rioters the day after the raid.The government's raid was a reminderby the American bourgeoisie to theMiami gusanos of who's the boss andwho pays the bills.The hypocrisy of the racist U.S. ruling

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s p a r t a c i s t ~ Forum

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WORKERS VANGUARD


3/12

Twenty-Fifth AnniversaryVietnam Was aVictory!Tvlo, Three, Many Defeats

.S. Imperialism!

Foreign Languages Press WV PhotoHeroic Vietnamese workers and peasants inflicted stunning battlefield defeat against U.S. imperialism. Spartacistsfought for victory to the Vietnamese Revolution.In celebrating the 25th anniversary ofthe military victory of the Vietnameseworkers and peasants against U.S. imperialism and its South Vietnamese puppetforces, we reprint an excerpt from ourstatement hailing the entry of the NorthVietnamese military and the South Viet-namese National Liberation Front intoSaigon on 30 April 1975 ("CapitalistClass Rule Smashed in Vietnam, Cambo

dia!" WV No. 68, 9 May 1975). Thiswas a victory for the exploited andoppressed internationally, serving to staythe hand of blood-soaked Americanimperialism around the world. Today,the vengeful u.S. rulers seize on theanniversary for a vindictive displayof imperialist arrogance, recirculatingtheir lying war propaganda about Viet-namese "atrocities." In response to arabid diatribe by Senator John McCainduring his recent visit to Ho Chi MinhCity, a Vietnamese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman bitterly stated: "It runs counterto the norms of morality that those people who brought bombs and shells to sowdeath among our people and wreakhavoc with a country now pass themselves of fas having the right to critici.zetheir victims-cum-saviors."In their relentless driveto strangle theVietnamese Revolution, the u.S. rulerssubjected the devastated country to animperialist embargo. Washington helped

arm the genocidal Pol Pot's Khmer Rougein Cambodia after his ouster by Viet-namese forces in 1979, which ended areign, marked by mass murder andwholesale destruction of urban areas,that proved to be not even the mostdeformed type of workers state. Particularly following the destruction of theSoviet Union in 1991-92, which deprivedVietnam of an economic and militarylifeline, the Hanoi Stalinist regime hasresponded to imperialist pressure by pursuing "market reforms" and inviting foreign investment. Today as before, it is theduty of the international proletariat toextend unconditional military defense tothe Vietnamese deformed workers stateagainst imperialist attack and internalcounterrevolution.

On April 30 the armed forces of theDemocratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV)and the National Liberation Front (NLF)rode triumphantly into Saigon as leadersof the defeated puppet regime and theSouth Vietnamese bourgeoisie fled thecountry by e v ~ 1 J ' - available means. Themilitary victory of the DRVINLFmarksthe end of 30 years of civil war againstcolonialism and imperialism and theirloeal allies. It means the overthrow ofcapitalist rule in South Vietnam, a historic conquest for the working peopleof the entire world and one which must

be unconditionally defended by c1assconscious workers against imperialistattack.We hail this stunning defeat of U.S.imperialism, the first in a major war during this century, and greet the victory ofour class brothers and sisters in Indochinawith internationalist proletarian solidarity. The struggle against the imperialists'Vietnam war has also been a major task ofsocialists in the imperialist centers, dominating the political experience of a wholegeneration of young aspiring revolutionaries. And it is as fellow combatants inthe international class struggle that wewarn the Indochinese masses that theymust place no confidence in their Stalinist leaders.The victory in Vietnam,. like that inCambodia two weeks earlier whenthe Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh,belongs to the heroic worker and peasantfighters in Indochina who have struggledresourcefully and tenaciously for-decadesin order to break the grip of i m p ~ r i a l i s t domination and capitalist exploitation onthe peninsula. But while a victorioussocial revolution has occurred, the struggle to establish revolutionary and i.nternationalist workers states in the region is farfrom over. A phantom coalition withvenal rightist generals and a playboy"neutralist" continues to "rule" in.Vientiane, although it is clear to all that it

On 13 May 1985, the Philadelphia Police Department under black Democratic Party mayor WilsonGoode-conspiring with the FBI, the Bureauof Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and RonaldReagan's White House-perpetrated racist massmurder against the'MOVE organizati(;m, killingeleven black people, including five children, andsetting an entire black neighborhood ablaze.

guish in prison, convicted on trumped-Up chargesfollowing a 1978 cop assault on MOVE's formerhome in Powelton Village. Mumia Abu-Jamal courageously spoke out in MOVE's defense at the timeand became a MOVE supporter. Mumia was railroaded to death row four years later, after an FBI!cop vendetta going back the time when he was aspokesman for the Black, Panther Party in the late1960s. Free Mumia! Free all the MOVE prisoners!fter hundreds of cops had laid siege to theMOVE home on Osage Avenue, firing thousands

of rounds, a police helicopter dropped a bomb ontothe house while a barrage of bullets forced thoseattempting to escape back inside the inferno. Thisact of calculated murder was the culmination ofyears of harassment, beatings, arrests and policeassaults against MOVE members who only wantedto defend their rights to exist and practice theirbeliefs in Philadelphia.The sole adult survivor of the attack, RamonaAfrica, was then railroaded to prison for sevenyears. To this day, eight MOVE members still lan-

5 MAY 2000

Just as the racist murder of MOVE members in1985 was the signature of the Republican Reaganadministration, so the 1993 massacre of more than80 men, women and children of the integratedBranch Davidian religious commune outside Waco,Texas remains the signature of the Democratic Clinton administration. As part of our struggle to buildthe multiracial workers party needed to leadthe socialist revolution that will sweep away thisentire racist capitalist system, we are committed tosearing the memory of these atrocities into the consciousness of all working people and the oppressed.

This cablegram was sent on the daythe U.S. air attacks against NorthVietnam were begun:Sunday,] February 1965

President Ho Chi Minh,Democratic Republic of VietnamHanoi, North VietnamSpartacist in fullest solidaritywith defense of your countryagainst attack by United Statesimperialism. Heroic struggle ofVietnamese working people fur-thers the American revolution.

Spartacist Editorial Board

could be quickly eliminated by a resoluteoffensive of the Pathet Lao.Meanwhile, in Cambodia and Vietnam(botli North and South) political power isnot in the hands of the working masses, expressed by democratic rule through soviets (workers councils) as was achievedby the Russian Revolution of 1917. Nor isthere in Indochina today a Bolshevikparty which could lead the revolutionarystruggle forward by extending it internationally to the centers of world capitalism. The new Stalinist rulers in PhnomPenh and Saigon are as committed to thetreacherous policy of "peaceful coexistence" with imperialism as those in Moscow and Peking, or Hanoi and Havana.Instead, what has been created in SouthVietnam and Cambodia are deformedworker states, qualitatively equivalent tothe degenerated workers state whichemerged in Russia with the consolidationof the Stalin-led bureaucracy. The rulingbureaucracies of the deformed workersstates are narrowly nationalist in outlook,attempting to balance precariously between i m p e r i ~ l i s m and the working class.Based on the property forms of a workersstate, they occasionally put up a limitedand distorted defense of the social conquests achieved by the overthrow of capitalism in order to preserve their ownprivileged position.But because their rule is based on thepolitical expropriation of the workingclass, these petty-bourgeois bureaucraticcastes are incapable of mobilizing theproletarian masses for an internationalrevolutionary assault on the bastions ofworld capitalism, since it would simultaneously mean their own demise. The Stalinist rulers in Hanoi, Saigon and PhnomPenh must be overthrown by a workers'political revolution led by a Trotskyistparty in order to establish the organs of .proletarian democracy and open the roadto socialism. All Indochina Must GoCommunist! _

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4/12

Chinese Miners RevoltAgainst "Market Reforms"When reports of an upnsIng in lateFebruary by laid-off Chinese miners inthe town ofYangjiazhangzi surfaced earlier this month, the capitalist media internationally expressed alarm over moun'ting labor struggles in China. An editorialin the New York Times (7 April), mouthpiece of the U.S. bourgeoisie, cynicallyacknowledged that "the current phase of

selling off state factories and mines iscreating hardships for many longtimeemployees" and lectured Beijing that it"should heed the message from Yangjiaczhangzi." The imperialist rulers rightlysee the resistance of the Chinese proletariat to the ravages of "market reforms"as the chief obstacle to their schemes forthe capitalist reconquest of the Chinesebureaucratically deformed workers state.The scale of that 'working-class resistance was evident in the revolt by some20,000 workers and their families inYangjiazhangzi, located 250 miles northeast of Beijing. The upheaval began whenworkers at a huge state-owned molybdenum mine which had been shut downin November massed at the enterpriseheadquarters, demanding to speak toplant managers about thc:i, paltry severance pay-$68 for every year of servicein the mines. The managers failed to showup, and a speech by the town's mayoronly infuriated the workers more. Minersand their families took to the streets, setting up barricades, burning cars, smashingthe windows of government buildingsand setting oil drums ablaze.Authorities moved cautiously lest theworkers decide to use the stock of dynamite in the mine to defend themselves.For two days, the workers battled thePeople's Armed Police, a force created inthe mid-1980s specifically to p ~ t downgrowing social unrest. Finally, armyunits were brought in, firing live a m m u ~ nition over protesters' heads aJ1d.quellingthe rebellion.Sixty-eight dollars can barely supporta family of three for a month even in thiseconomically depressed region, yet workers also have to pay for their own pensionbenefits and health insurance out of thatmoney. A man who worked in the minefor 35 years along with his wife estimatesthat their severance pay will last about tenmonths. "After that, what am I going todo? How are we going to eat?"Last year, Chinese premier Zhu Rongjipointed to the mine as a prime exampleof a money-losing enterprise that wouldhave to be shut down. But the mine is"unprofitable" only by the measure of acapitalist market. Molybdenum is a valuable metal used to toughen sted, and themine's managers have been enrichingthemselves by taking over parts of themine or piecing off other parts to theircronies. One worker bitterly recounted:"They have sold parts of the mine totheir friends. They have sold all themine's trucks. But we haven't seen thismoney .... They eat it and drink it away"(Washington Post, 5 April).The deepening of "free market" measures is setting the stage for a monumental clash between the Stalinist bureaucracy and the proletarian and peasantmasses. The Chinese Labor Ministry reports more than 120,000 labor disputes4

T ~ . U . DefelJseQf .Chinaiilg!.,. .n."ftl .L" 'CoullterrevolutiOI1!>to Oust S t a l i n i $ t B g r ~ ~ M ~ r a ~ J !

last year-14 times more than 1992-from petitions to strikes (Japan Times, 25April). A senior police official in the central province of Anhui reports that it isnow common to see "workers collectivelybesieging enterprise leaders, hurlingabuse at them, and even detaining themunder duress." In December, a thousandminers fought with police and blocked arailway line in northern China to protestnot having been paid in months. Aroundthe same time, 2,000 retired steel workersin the southwestern city of Chongqing(Chungking) closed off the main road tothe steel mill to protest cuts in pensions.In the vast rural hinterland, the immiseration of the poor peasantry, as a result ofthe decollectivization of agriculture in thelate 1970s, and the growing class dividewith the creation of a class of rich farmers have led to rampant attacks on tax collectors and other officials.In its article on the Yangjiazhangzirevolt, the Washington Post wrote that itwas "severe for a disturbance in a Chi-

chy and to place political power in thehands of workers, soldiers and peasantscouncils (soviets). The urgent task facingthe Chinese proletariat is to build aLeninist-Trotskyist party as part of areforged Trotskyist Fourth International,to prepare and lead this political revolution, standing at the head of the massesand direct'ing the spontaneous and localized workers' struggles toward the seizureof political power.Since the destruction of the SovietUnion, the international proletariat hasbeen thrown back economically andpolitically by the bourgeois onslaught andtriumphalism over the so-called "death ofcommunism." Proletarian political revolution in China-premised on defenseof the planned, collectivized economywhich is the social foundation of theworkers state-would have a tremendousimpact in reversing this assault, reverberating among the proletariat from Indonesia and South Korea to Japan-the industrial powerhouse ofAsia-and the U.S. It

Wo-Lap Lam/AsiaweekState-owned auto factory in China. Workers in state industry are in forefront ofstruggle against ravages of "market reforms."nese city but was indicative of unrestbedeviling the Communist Party" andobserved that "in the countryside, how--ever, authorities appear more willing toorder security services to smash protestsand fire on demonstrators." This is a starkindication of the fragility of the bureaucratic caste in the face of an aroused proletariat, which has already shown itspotential to win over entire sections of theconscript army of the deformed workersstate in struggle against the Stalinistregime. When the working people enteredinto the student demonstrations, centeredon Tiananmen Square in May-Jupe 1989,marking an incipient political revolution,both officers and ranks of numerousPeople's Liberation Army regiments refused orders to suppress the protests,forcing the regime to bring in other unitsto crush the workers' uprising.The bureaucracy which is paving theway for capitalist counterrevolution issimultaneously preparing the ground fora new revolutionary proletarian explosion-not a social revolution whichwould overturn the economic foundationsof society as in 1949 but a political revolution to oust the parasitic ruling oligar-

would revive the working people ofRussia who have been ground down bynearly a decade of capitalist counterrevolution. At the same time, a revolutionaryChina of workers and peasants councilswould face virulently hostile imperialistreaction. The International CommunistLeague fights to reforge the Fourth International, world party of socialist revolution, to lead the overthrow of capitalistclass rule internationally, smashing theimperialist system and laying the materialbasis for tpe development of China in asocialist Asia.China on the Brink

Some of the Yangjiazhangzi minersunderstand that their layoffs and loomingimpoverishment stem from the "marketreforms" imposed by the Beijing regime,which are undermining the gains of the1949 Chinese Revolution. That revolution liberated the country from capitalistexploitation and imperialist SUbjugation,ushering in a planned, collectivizedeconomy which guaranteed workers lifetime employment and social benefitsthe "iron rice bowl." State enterprisesprovide workers not only with a liveli-

hood but with housing, medical care andschooling for their families. Thus the privatization, closure or retrenchment ofstate-owned factories, mines and otherenterprises threatens workers with utterdestitution. "We miners have been working here for China, for the CommunistParty, since the revolution," said oneworker. "And now suddenly my part ofthe mine is private." These workersunderstand tnat such state propertybelongs to the working people. Who gavethe managers the right to sell it off?It is crucial to understand that the 1949Revolution was deformed from its inception under the rule of Mao Zedong'sbureaucracy, patterned after the Stalinistbureaucracy in the USSR which usurpedpower in a political counterrevolution in1924. Mao's regime excluded the proletariat from political power and baseditself on Stalin's nationalist dogma ofbuilding "socialism in a single country."That meant accommodation to world imperialism and opposition to the strugglefor socialist revolution in other countries.This nationalist perspective is expressedtoday in the Stalinist regime's embrace ofthe offshore Chinese bourgeoisie in thename of forging a "greater China."The Stalinist bureaucracy is not a possessing class but a parasitic caste: restingon the proletarian property forms, thebureaucracy simultaneously acts as atransmission belt for the pressures of thecapitalist world market on the deformedworkers state. In response to those imperialist pressures, which have sharplyincreased following capitalist restorationin the former Soviet Union, the bureaucracy has expanded the "market reforms"initiated by Deng Xiaoping in the late1970s. Recently, the pace of privatizationand retrenchment of state-owned enterprises has accelerated in anticipation ofentry into the World Trade Organization(WTO), a move which if implementedwould open China to a greater degree ofimport competition from Western andJapanese multinationals and also to foreign investment in certain industries. Wefight against imperialist penetration of theChinese deformed workers state anddefend the state monopoly of foreigntrade.Writing of the Soviet Stalinist bureaucracy in The Revolution Betrayed (1937),Leon Trotsky noted: "I t continues to preserve state property only to the extent thatit fears the proletariat." Faced with boiling anger at the base, the Beijing bureaucracy has trod warily, imprisoning or evenexecuting some officials for blatant corruption and occasionally reversing someof its own proposed "free market" measures. An article in the New York Times (16April) on a joint venture between Volkswagen and the Shanghai municipal government complained:

"China continues to shelter many of itsindustries from true competition, in tumperpetuating too many factories and poormanagement. Though the governmentwarns that China's state-owned companies must prepare for global competition,most sectors of the economy remainstuck in their socialist past."The U.S. and the other major capitalist powers are intent on a capitalist counterrevolution which would entail the suppression of the Chinese proletariat inblood and the smashing of the Communist Party-dominated state apparatus. Tothat end, while pursuing "constructiveengagement" with the Beijing regimewith the aim of furthering economic penetration, Washington brandishes its military might against China and sponsors arange of forces-from the CIA's "FreeTibet" crowd to pro-imperialist "dissidents"-aimed at fomenting counterrevolution from within. The U.S. is proposing a "theater missile defense" in EastAsia which would target the Chinese andNorth Korean deformed workers states inthe first instance, and has maintainedcapitalist Taiwan over the past 50 yearsas a bulwark against China.The Trotskyist ICL fights for theunconditional military defense of Chinaand the other deformed workers statesNorth Korea, Vietnam and Cuba-againstimperialist attack and interna) counterrevolution. As stated in the ICL's "Declara-

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tion of Principles and Some Elements ofProgram" (Spartacist [English-languageedition] No. 54, Spring 1998):"Our position flows from the proletarianclass character of these states, embodiedin the collectivized property relationsnationalized property, planned economy,monopoly of foreign trade and banking,etc.-established by social revolutionsthat destroyed capitl!,lism. Despite thebureaucratic deformations of these states,our defense of them against the classenemy is unconditional, i.e., it does. notdepend on the prior overthrow of the Stalinist bureaucracies, rior does it dependupon the circumstances and immediatecauses of the conflict."Bewarelmperialism'sLabor Front Men!

A key role in U.S. imperialism's counterrevolutionary drive is played by theAFL-CIO labor bureaucracy, whose antiCommunist operations against militantunions in Latin America, South Koreaand elsewhere earned it the epithet"AFL-CIA" throughout the Third World.This goes hand in hand with the labortops' class collaboration in the U.S.,where they act as the capitalists' politicalpolice inside the unions.In East Europe and the former USSR,these "labor lieutenants" of American imperialism promoted and helped organize"free trade unions" as battering ramsfor capitalist restoration. In the early1980s, the AFL-CIO bureaucracy acted asa conduit to fund Polish Solidarnosc, aphony "union" which spearheaded capitalist counterrevolution in East Europe.Later, in the Soviet Union, AFL-CIOoperatives sought to channel workingclass discontent over Mikhail Gorbachev's m a r k e t ~ o r i e n t e d perestroika "reforms" into support to anti-Communistdemagogue Boris Yeltsin. Yeltstn's proimperialist coup in August 1991 culminated over the following months, inthe absence of mass working-class resistance, in capitalist counterrevolution.Capitalist counterrevolution in theSoviet degenerated workers state and thedeformed workers states of East Europe,prepared by decades of Stalinist misrule,has brought mass unemployment, fallinglife expectancy, increasing immiseration and social degradation. It has alsoemboldened the imperialist exploiters inattacking the working people and minorities in the U.S. and other capitalist countries. It is in the direct class interest of theproletariat in the U.S. and internationallyto oppose the imperialists' drive to reconquer China for capita list exploitation,.The American labor tops are trying torepeat in China the scenario played out inEast Europe and the ex-USSR. A keyagency in this regard is the AmericanCenter for International Labor Solidarity(ACILS). According to one of its Washington paymasters, the National Endowment for Democracy, in China the ACILShas "helped labor groups and underground activists educate workers abouttheir rights"-Le., organizing counterrevolutionary "free trade unions." Meanwhile, back home the AFL-CIO tops arein the vanguard of protectionist and antiCommunist opposition to China's entryinto the WTO, joining with liberal Democrats, right-wing Republicans and incipient clerical-fascist Pat Buchanan.It won't be easy for the "AFL-CIA"to sell American "free enterprise" toChinese workers. Many workers in EastEurope and the former Soviet Unionbought the lie peddled by the likes ofYeltsin and Solidarnosc leader Lech Walesathat "free market" capitalism would bringunparalleled prosperity and living standards comparable to West Europe andNorth America. But many Chinese workers have already experienced the miseriesof "free mar ket" exploitation, slaving inlarge plants owned by Western and Japanese firms and offshore Chinese businessmen or in sweatshop operations often runby native-born exploiters, where conditions are generally far worse than those instate-owned enterprises.A major concentration of privatelyowned factories producing textiles,clothing and other light manufacturesis located in the Pearl Riyer deltain Guangdong province opposite Hong5 MAY 2000

Kong. Workers in the "Special EconomicZones" (SEZs), mainly young womenfrom the countryside, slave in these fac-tories 12 hours a day; seven days a week.Their salary is often withheld for the firstsix months and forfeited altogether ifthey leave before a year! China's lawsstipulate that overtime is limited to 36hours a week and must be paid at a rate50 percent higher than regular time. Butthe bosses in these factoties openly floutthe country's labor laws, bribing government officials for this privilege. Suchconditions are only a small taste of whatthe Chinese masses would face undercapitalist rule, which would qualitativelyextend and deepen the exploitation andimmiseration now being experienced byworkers in the SEZs.It is telling that even anti-Communist"dissidents" feel compelled to criticize"free market" capitalism in order to gain

a sympathetic hearing from Chineseworkers. A prime example is Han Dongfang, a Hong Kong-based "labor organizer" with a regular program on the CIAfunded Radio Free Asia. Han denouncesthe Clinton administration from the rightfor "de-linking trade from human rightsissues."Yet this bellicose anti-Communisthypocritically pays lip service to theintense hostility among Chinese workersto privatizing the economy, writing thathe does not believe "large-scale and rapidprivatisation is the only way forward forthe reform process" (China Labour Bul-letin, September/October 1997).Han and his ilk posture as defenders ofthe economic interests of the Chineseworkers, condemning the official AUChina Federation of Trade Unions forfailing to defend the workers. Indeed, thisadjunct of the Stalinist bureaucracy doesnot defend the interests of Chinese workers. But what Han stands for is the smashing of the Chinese deformed workersstate and the introduction of brutal capitalist exploitation throughout the country.Forge a Leninist-Trotskyist Party!

'A proletarian political revolution willbegin under the banner of strugglesagainst social inequality' and politicaloppression, as in 1989. The struggle forfreedom of the trade unions-based onthe defense of socialized property-aswell as for the right of assembly andfreedom of the press, will unfold as partof the fight for soviet democracy, for theformation of workers councils opposingthe bureaucratic parasites and suppressing counterrevolutionary elements. Thecentral question is that of revolutionaryleadership, which can only be resolvedby forging a Leninist-Trotskyist party tobring revolutionary socialist consciousness to the working class. Such a partywould combat Han chauvinism ~ n d imbue the proletariat with the understanding that it must fight for the interests of all the oppressed-from womento homosexuals to the poor peasantryand migrant workers.Workers in the state sector, currentlyin the forefront of the labor struggles,constitute a majority of the Chinese proletariat. But two-thirds of the populationstill lives in the countryside as peasantsmallholders or is otherwise engaged inthe agricultural economy. The workingclass cannot wrest political power from

the bureaucracy without the sympathyand support of the peasant masses, especially the rural youth who make up amajority of China's conscript army.The drive toward capitalist restorationhas led to increasing immiseration ofboth rural toilers and the urban industrial proletariat. Bankrupted peasants andyouth who cannot find a livelihood in therural areas- have flooded into Cities looking for work-a vast army of migrantlabor estimated at up to 130 million people! Lacking official household registration (hukou), migrants are not entitled tothe housing, medical care and schoolingfor their children available to legal urbanresidents. Most migrants are men wholeave their wives and children in the villages and try to eke out a living in thecities by taking the most menial jobs.These developments have acted tocreate a major division within the work-

Entry of workingclass into studentprotests inTiananmen Square,1989, signaledinCipient proletarianpOlitical revolution.

ing class as many urban workers arecontemptuous of the rural migrantsand also fearful that they will take theirjobs because the migrants are desperateenough to work for next to nothing.Meanwhile, millions of migrants arerounded up and forcibly removed to theirvillages every year. The unity of theworking class demands the defense ofthese migrant workers. The fight to winfor these workers the same legal rightsand benefits as longtime urban residentscould serve as an initial step in the crucially necessary task of linking theurban-centered proletariat and the peasant masses in struggle against mountingdepredations.In the countryside, there has emergeda class of rich farmers-Le., petty capitalists who hire labor and lease additional land from their n e i ~ h b o r s andhave expanded into non-agriculrur!ll businesses-who are a bridge to the capitalistworld market and a dangerous force forcounterrevolution within Chinese society.The Beijing government itself calculatesthat up to ten million peasants will losetheir livelihoods if China enters the WTOdue to increased imports of grain andother produce, mainly from North America. The capitalists must be driven out ofthe SEZs and off the land. This poses thequestion of forming workers and peasantscouncils to oust the parasitic bureaucracy.Such councils would recollectivize agriculture, providing cheap credit and farmequipment to peasants who form cooperatives, and reinforce the state monopolyof foreign trade, a vital means of defend-

Available in ChineseFor a Leninist-Trotskyist Party!China on the Brink:Workers Political Revolutionor Capitalist Enslavement?

$1 (24 pages)Make checks payable/mail to:Spartacist Publishing Co., Box 1377GPO, New York, NY 10116

ing industrial workers and rural toilersagainst the predations of world imperialism. Defend and extend the planned, collectivized economy! Expropriate withoutcompensation the bloodsucking imperialistand offshore Chinese bourgeoisies!Some Chinese opponents of "marketreforms" uphold Mao's "socialism" as an-alternative to the present regime. But theMaoist perversion of socialism wasnational economic autarky and primitiveegalitarianism, in which the masses wereequal because all were equally poor.Writing in the mid-19th century, KarlMarx explained that in the absence of aninternational socialist society based onthe highest level of technological andindustrial development, "only want willbe generalized, and with want the struggle for necessities begins again, and allthe old crap must revive." Flatly repudiating Marx, the Stalinists preached theidiocy that socialism could be built in asingle country if only imperialist militaryintervention were thwarted. Refuting thisin his 1928 work The Third InternationalAfter Lenin, Trotsky wrote:"The capitalist world shows us by itsexport and import figures that it has otherinstruments of persuasion than those ofmilitary intervention. To the extent thatproductivity oflabor and the productivityof a social system as a whole are measured on the market by the correlation of

prices, it is not so much military intervention as the intervention of cheapercapitalist commodities that constitutesperhaps the greatest immediate menace toSoviet economy. This alone shows that itis by no means merely a question of anisolateq economic victory over 'one'sown' bourgeoisie."In practice, "socialism in one country"meant opposition to the perspective ofworkers revolution internationally. Thus,like Stalin, Mao sought alliances withvarious "anti-imperialist" Third Worldbourgeois-nationalist regimes and thenwith the imperialists themselves. Thiswas exemplified by the criminal alliance

of Mao's China with U.S. imperialismagainst the Soviet degenerated workersstate, forged as the U.S. rained bombson the heroic Vietnamese workers andpeasants in the early 1970s. In "China onthe Brink" (Spartacist [English-languageedition] No. 53, Summer 1997), wenoted: "China's alliance with the U.S.,initiated by Mao and Zhou Enlai, helpedset the stage for Deng's 'open door' toimperialist exploitation in the nextperiod. Today, Mao's heirs don't evengive lip service to the goals of socialism,instead openly offering themselves ascompradors (agents) of imperialism."Opposing workers democracy and international extension of the r ~ v o l u t i o n , both the Soviet and Chinese Stalinistsincreasingly opted for capitalist marketmeasures to spur productivity. The roadof the Stalinist bureaucracy would returnthe Chinese masses to the prerevolutionary days of impoverishment and imperialist subjugation. The modernization ofChina-providing the basis fo,," a decentlife for all its inhabitants on the basisof access to the advanced technology andproductive resources now concentratedin North America, West Europe andJapan-requires proletarian socialist revolution in the imperialist centers, layingthe basis for an internationally planned,socialist economy. That is the task ofthe ICL as it fights to reforge Trotsky'SFourth International.

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ISO Cold Warriors Squirm OverThe International Socialist Organization's recent set of articles on China,including "Why China-Bashing HurtsU.S. Labor" (Socialist Worker, 3 March),"We Need International SolidarityChina-Bashing Only Hurts Our Movement" (Socialist Worker, 14 April) and"China and the WTO-Target the Enemyat Home" (International Socialist Review.Spring 2000), could make a reader wonder what they're up to, given that the ISOhas never defended China. The organization originated in taking the side ofimperialism in its efforts to destroy thegains of social revolutions that overthrewcapitalist rule, from Russia in 1917 toChina in 1949. They split from Trotskyism at the onset of the Korean War in1950, abandoning defense of China andNorth Korea amid a ruthless U.S. andBritish bombing campaign. These fakesocialists arc attempting to put on a leftface in their recent articles by criticizingthe AFL-CIO's anti-China campaignsan issue that in the wake of the WTO andIMF protests has embarrassingly putthem in bed with far-right politicians likePat Buchanan, who also call to "spreadthe spirit of Seattle." They argue that thelabor bureaucracy is campaigning against

Giase/Seattle Post-IntelligencerAFL-CIO tops spearheaded antiCommunist crusade against Chinaat Seattle WTO protests with chauvinist signs: "People First Not ChinaFirst." SL denounced pro-imperialistmobilization; ISO hailed it.

-7 January 2000China because it is interested in protecting Chinese workers, saying that AFLCIO president "Sweeney's call for keeping China out of the WTO is tied to aneffort to promote labor rights around theworld" (Socialist Worker, 3 March).In fact, when the A F L ~ C I O misleadersbrought thousands of unionists to Washington, D.C. on April 12 to protest theU.S. normalizing trade relations withChina, they expressed both their virulentideological anti-Communism and theirchauvinist protectionism, portrayingChina as a "rogue state" whose workersthreaten American jobs. The "rogue state"language comes straight from the mouthsof U.S. government spokesmen as a code6

China-Bashingword for any country which the U.S. aimsto destroy, usually by the bloodiest ofmeans. Revolutionary Marxists opposeand actively fight against imperialisteconomic penetration of the Chinesedeformed workers state. China's entrywould be an attack on what remains of thestate monopoly of foreign trade, undermining the economic foundations of thecollectivized economy and further encouraging internal counterrevolutionaryforces.Sweeney's protectionist call posits thatthe U.S. is a model defender of "humanrights" that should spread its "democracy" throughout the world. The onlything the U.S. ruling class spreads isimperialist exploitation and plunder,backed by its military might. This ideology of "human rights" imperialism isused to tie workers to support of theirown bourgeoisie in preparation for newimperialist wars. And siding with U.S.imperialism against China is a programto bring misery and starvation to Chineseworkers and peasants. While the ISOpleads with U.S. imperialism to regulateaway sweatshops-an impossibility inand of itself-a counterrevolution inChina would turn the entire nation intoone big sweatshop. So when the ISO saysthat "the best way to help Chinese workers win their rights is to organize solidari ty-not to unite with U.S. politicians tobash China" (Socialist Worker, 14 April),they try to disappear the fact that theiropposition to the defense of Chinaagainst imperialism means deliveringChinese workers into the hands of thosewho intend to bring back capitalistexploitation.The question for China is imminentlyposed; after 50 years of imperialist encirclement aIid two decades of "marketreforms," China is at a crossroads. TheStalinist bureaucracy today offers itsservices as brokers to the imperialistsand offshore Chinese bourgeoisie but isconstrained by fear of the working class,which militantly coritinues to resist theattacks on its jobs and living standards.We Trotskyists fight for unconditionalmilitary defense of China against imperialist attack and internal capitalistcounterrevolution. What is urgentlyneeded is a Leninist-Trotskyist party inChina which can lead the working classin struggle to defend the gains of the Revolution and to oust the Stalinist bureaucracy through a political revolution.The ISO peddles the lie that the April12 demonstration was a1\ effort to promote labor rights and offers only onecriticism: that "focusing on China aloneputs legitimate concerns about ~ a b o r andhuman rights at the service of right-wingChina bas hers like Sen. Jesse Helms"(Socialist Worker, 31 March). Theyworry that it is bad publicity for theAFL-CIO bureaucracy (and the ISO) tobe in bed with Buchanan and Helms.Having hailed the protectionist, virulently anti-Communist protests againstthe WTO and IMF, the ISO wants todistance itself from the Republican wingof the leadership of these mobilizations.They admonish the union tops thatthe April 12 rally was "full of anti-

communist rhetoric that could onlywarm the hearts of the Republican rightwingers who want a new Cold War withChina" (Socialist Worker, 28 April).This is exquisite, coming from anorgat:lization whose stock in t rade, fordecades has been to put a "socialist" faceon the Cold War anti-Communist crusade of the' U.S. bourgeoisie, especial1yas purveyed by the pro-capitalist U.S.labor bureaucracy. Throughout the Cold

AFL-CIO presidentJohn Sweeneywith Vice PresidentAI Gore at 1996Democraticconvention.

War, the "labor rights" the AFL-CIOpromoted internationally were the"rights" ofU.S. imperialism to break upmilitant labor organizing efforts and havelabor leaders jailed by repressive U.S_client regimes, work that earned theAFL-CIO the nickname "AFL-CIA"throughout the Third World. The American labor bureaucracy did the biddingof the U.S. govemment'-infighting todestroy the , Soviet Union" supportingand funding Polish Solidamosc as a "freetrade union" to spearhead capitalistcounterrevolution and promoting allmanner of pro-Western "Soviet dissidents" and reactionary nationalist agitators in East Europe.Groups like the ISO and other socialdemocratic outfits followed along inanti-Communist fervor behind the"labor" face of their "own" bourgeoisie,cheering for Solidarnosc counterrevolution and embracing the "democracy" ofthe rapacious U.S. imperialist rulers.The ISO enthused over the final destruction of the USSR, which enormouslyincreased the dangers of imperialist economic penetration and capitalist counterrevolution in the remaining deformedworkers states, including China, writing:"Communism has col1apsed.... It is afact that should have every socialistrejoicing" (Socialist Worker [Britain], 31August 1991). Apparently, after the devastating consequences of the counterrevolution in Russia, with mass pauperizationand the destruction of the country's basicinfrastructure visible to al1, the ISO feelsconstrained to conceal its years of service to the imperialists' Cold War.n is no accident that the ISO ColdWarriors are attempting to distinguishSweeney's China-bashing from that ofthe RepUblicans at a time when labor'sprotectionist campaigns are "deeply worrying for Democrats," as the New YorkTimes (12 April) notes, because the

unions are the Democrats' most activeconstituency, and their efforts againstChina have split the party in an electionyear. The ISO worries that the laborbureaucracy is straying too far from theDemocratic fold: "AFL-CIO officialsannounced that they were willing to workwith union-hating Republican membersof Congress in order to block China'sentry" (Socialist Worker, 3 March). Andthe ISO even complains that Clintonis too soft on China: "In 1991, presidential wannabe Bill Clinton attacked thenPresident Bush for 'coddling dictators'and maintaining trade relations withChina. But after posing as labor's friend

and being elected to the White House,Clinton quickly dropped any idea of sanctions against China and adopted Bush'spolicy" (International Socialist Review,Spring 2000).At bottom the ISO is simply askingthe labor bureaucrats to be kinder tothe Democrats. And they write: "I f theAFL-CIO is serious about fighting forlabor rights, it's got to faee the fact thatthe main enemy is at home" (SocialistWorker, 3 March). This famous proclamation by Karl Liebknecht is an admonition to oppose one's "own" ruling class.It is entirely ludicrous to appeal in suchterms to the AFL-CIO tops, who function internationally as the agents of the"main enemy at home." As Lenin taughtus, the pro-capitalist labor bureaucratsare a "labor aristocracy" bribed out ofthe profits of imperialist plunder.When revolutionary Marxists say "themain enemy is at home," we express ourperspective of mobilizing the proletariatin revolutionary struggle to smash thepower of our "own" bourgeoisie, therichest and most dangerous imperialistforce on the face of the earth. Thisinvolves breaking with the Democratsand forging a class-struggle leadership inthe unions. It also means the unconditional military defense of revolutionaryconquests already won, such as continueto exist in China, as part of the fight forthe socialist conquest of power by theproletariat worldwide, which will lay thematerial basis to ending the poverty, disease and social oppression that imperialism inflicts on millions around theworld. While the ISO seeks to line upyouth to be waterboys for the reactionaryAFL-CIO bureaucracy which itself linesup behind the counterrevolutionary aimsof U.S. imperialism, the Spartacus YouthClubs fight to win youth to a program ofworking-class revolution against U.S.imperialism. '

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Revolutionary' Marxism vs. Anarchoid Anti-Communism- ~ - . . . . ...Noam Chomslcy: Imperialism's. . I ~ r m c h a i r Anarchist"

We reprint below an April 25 leaflet bythe Boston Spartacist League/SpartacusYouth Club distributed at Chomsky'srecent talks in Boston and New York.Just as the slimiest rocks are revealedonly by low tides, so it is only the lowlevel of class struggle today that allowsBoston's prominent academic NoamChomsky, a liberal dressed in anarchoidclothing. to appear to students as somesort of "radical" pole of attraction. Chomsky is full of self-congratulation for his

incredible bravery in publishing somecriticisms of the. more bloody excesses ofU.S. military and foreign policy. alongwith endlessly explicating his amazingdiscovery that politicians actually lie. Butmuch is always forgiven those who. likeChomsky, line up faithfully with theirown ruling class on the key loyalty testfor Americans: better hate the Reds if youwant to get ahead. The red-baiting professor and his ilk spit on every social revolution including the Bolshevik Revolutionled by Lenin and Trotsky. " If the left isunderstood to include 'Bolshevism,' thenI would flatly dissociate myself from theleft. Lenin was one of the greatest enemies of socialism, in my opinion," saysthe anti-Communist Chomsky.It was Len in's Bolsheviks who' tookMarxism out of the realm of theory andgave it flesh and blood. creating theworld's first workers state, smashingcapitalist exploitation and replacing itwith a collectivized, planned economy,a world-historic victory. The young revolutionary state a beacon of hope andinspiration to the oppressed peoples ofthe world; it was hated by the imperialists who worked to destroy it, not onlythrough direct invasion, but with theeager assistance of the Chomskys of theirtime, like the renegade Karl Kautsky wholikewise raised a hue and cry against theBolsheviks for violating "democracy"by which of course he meant "bourgeoisdemocracy," the class dictatorship of thecapitalists.Today Chomsky joins the imperialistbourgeoisie in hailing the capitalist counterrevolution that plung'ed the formerUSSR into misery and fratricidal bloodletting, stating: "My response to the endof Soviet tyranny was similar to my reaction to the defeat of Hitler and Mussolini.In all cases, it is a victory for the humanspirit" (Red & Black Revolution No.2,1996). Fascism itself was the desperatemeasure of the tottering bourgeois orderin Europe to try to drown the class struggle in blood and overturn the 1917 Russian Revolution, that revolution Chomskyso despises. And it was the Soviet Red

VANCOUVERSaturday. May 13, 3 p.m.HDP Rules for the Bosses:Break with the Strike-Breaking HDP!

Build a Revolutionary Workers Party!La Quena1111 Commercial Dr. (at Napier)Information and readings: (604) 687-0353VI.1t f i le l e I . Web S l te lwww.ic. . i .org

5 MAY 2000

:;:;::::: : : : : : : : : : : : : ~ : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : ; : ; : : . ::;:::;:; : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : ; : : : : ~ : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : ~ : : : : : ~ : : : : : ; : ; : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : ; : : : : : ~ : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : :

On the 1991 Gulf War:"I f the goal had been to secure Iraq's withdrawalfrom Kuwait, settle regional issues, and movetowards a more decent world, then Washingtonwould have followed the peaceful means prescribedby international law: sanctions and diplomacy."

On U.S./NATO "peacekeeping"forces going into Bosnia in 1995under United Nations authorization:"I probably would have voted forsending the troops."Class Warfare, 1996"The Gulf Crisis," Z Magazine, February 1991

Karen Robinson ReutersThe sanctions Chomsky called for have killed over one and a half million Iraqis, depriving them of food and medicine(left). August 1995: British soldiers in Sarajevo fire at Bosnian Serb positions.Army, despite Stalinist misleadership,which smashed Hitler-and liberatedNazi death camps like Auschwitz. Thisattempt to equate Communism with fascism, the hoary refrain of reactionarybourgeois apologists, in fact trivializesthe unique and unspeakable crimes ofHitler's Holocaust, when millions wereslaughtered in the demented effort toobliterate whole peoples from the earth.But that doesn't seem to bother Chomsky, who, exemplifying liberal "evenhandedness," in the early 1980s publicly defended Nazi Holocaust apologistRobert Faurisson, a French academic.When criticized by French leftists forthis vile stand, Chomsky sniffed this wasjust because they were under the "greatinfluence of Leninism."The destruction of the USSR hasspawned heightened interimperialist rivalries and war. The collapse of the USSR'scollectivized economy was a great defeatfor the world working class, the resultof unrelenting imperialist encirclement,pressure which the Stalinist bureaucracy,a parasitical caste which usurped politicalpower from the working class, ultimatelywas a product of and capitulated to. It waswe Trotskyists who fought for unconditional military defense of the USSRagainst imperialism. We stood for political revolution to oust the Stalinist bureaucracy. This is our program today for China,Cuba, Vietnam and North Korea.Chomsky, of course, is a hero of the"Spirit of Seattle" crowd. Those protestsin Seattle were a circus dominated bynational chauvinism, racist protectionismand counterrevolutionary attacks on' theChinese deformed workers state. Bothin the Seattle anti-WTO protests andin the Washington, D.C. April 15-16anti-IMFIWorld Bank protests, the procapitalist AFL-CIO labor bureaucracy,manipulated liberal student youth whoseconcern for global poverty is mixed withillusions in the "democratic" nature ofthe American state, for their own reactionary ends: chauvinist trade protectionism and anti-Communist China-bashing.Today we continue to unconditionallymilitarily defend China against imperialist attack and internal counterrevolution,

based on the gains of the 1949 ChineseRevolution, which smashed capitalist exploitation and neocolonial s u b j u g a t i o ~ in the most populous nation on earth. Therelentless hostile pressure of imperialism has made big inroads into China'seconomy, while Washington pursues atwo-pronged attack, militarily threatening over Taiwan while pushing China'sentry into the World Trade Organization(WTO) in order to promote unbridledcapitalist exploitation within. We call forw o r k i n g ~ c l a s s political Tevolution to oustthe treacherous Stalinist bureaucracywhich has ruled China ever since the1949 Revolution, which createp a bureaucratically deformed workers state. Onlythe working class under authentic communist leadership can defend the collectivized economy, creating a governmentbased on workers democracy and revolutionary internationalism, which alone canopen the road to socialism.War is a key test for any self-styledsocialist. At the height of the U.S.INATOterror bombing of Serbia last spring,Chomsky, along with his fellow "Socialist Scholar" panelists, dutifully kept silenton the question at the, opening discussion of their c'onference, as DemocraticSocialists of America (DSA) head Bogdan Denitch (who supported the bombing) decreed. In this confab of supposed

socialists, the Spartacus Youth Club rosein opposition to the bombardment, raisingsigns demanding "Defeat U.S. Imperialism Through Workers Revolution!" and"Defend Serbia Against U.S.INATOAttack!" Now, a year later, Chomsky justcan't resist scratching that itch to be anadviser to the powerful. Speculating on"Another Way for Kosovo?" (Le MondeDiplomatique, 14 March), Chomsky advises that "a serious concern for protecting Kosovars" might have led to morediplomatic negotiations. or even sanctions. He complains, "NATO also madelittle effort to pursue other peacefulmeans; even an oil embargo, the core ofany seriOils sanctions regime, was notcorlside'f&I until after the bombing." Soit's not the supposed war aims of theNATO imperialist military alliance heobjects to, just the method. Indeed, whenU.S.INATO "peacekeeping" forces wentinto Bosnia in 1995 under United Nationsauthorization, Chomsky announced: "Iprobably would have voted for sendingthe troops" (Class Waifare, 1996).As for Iraq, today Chomsky weepscrocodile tears over the murderous effectsof UN sanctions, signing "A Call toAction on Sanctions and the U.S. WarAgainst the People of Iraq" (8 January1999). But he supported sanctions in

continued on page 8

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Chomsky..(continued from page 7)1991! Chomsky wrote in 1991 on "TheGulf 'Crisis": "I f the goal had been tosecure Iraq's withdrawal from Kuwait,settle regional issues, and move towardsa more decent world . then Washingtonwould have followed the peaceful meansprescribed by international law: sanctionsand diplomacy" (Z Magazine, February1991). But sanctions kill and diplomacy isjust war by other means.Runnirfg like a cowardly yellow threadthroughout Chomsky'S critiques ofAmerican policy is a repetitive assurance(to whom?) that the U.S. "has limitedresources of violence to employ againstrelatively privileged groups"; that intellectuals here "will not suffer the fate ofOrwell's Winston Smith or his real lifecounterparts ... . They will face unpleasantness, vilification, a degree of risk,sometimes loss of substantial privilege,but not torture, decapitation or psychiatric prison"; that "a feature of Americandemocracy" is "the inability of the stateto use massive violence against its owncitizens"; and that this is a "society thatlacks the forms of coercion and punishment found elsewhere." So it seemsfor this armchair anarchist only somestates-"totalitarian" ones-are foundedon coercion, 'whereas American "democracy" needs only "ideological control"of the population by intellectuals. Whatreactionary, self-serving nonsense!This rosy picture is not one any blackperson in this viciously racist societywould recognize. As Leninists-and evenconsistent anarchists-know, all statesare instruments for the forcible domination of one class over another, resting onbodies of armed men to maintain control.The American state, under its electoralfalfade, is an extremely violent terrormachine, with the highest percentage ofits population in prison of any so-called"Western society." To be considered aserious presidential candidate, enthusiastic participation in a legal lynching is arequirement, as executions under the barbaric death penalty reach new records.America's police are armies of occupation in black, minority and poor cityneighborhoods-ask Abner Louima orRodney King about torture, ask Amadou.Iraq .. .(continued from page 12)

Iraqi hospitals have literally becomeholding pens for the dying-the cancerward at Saddam Children's Hospital inBaghdad has a 100 percent death ratebecause the UN has deliberately blockedentry of vital equipment, antibiotics,painkillers and c h e ~ o t h e r a p y drugs intothe country. They do this under theincredible pretext that these medicinescould be used to manufacture "weaponsof mass destruction." The head of theWorld Health Organization's cancer program told Pilger that when he returnedfrom Iraq last year he drew up a list ofdrugs needed for cancer treatment: "Weinformed the UN that there was no possibility of converting these drugs intochemical warfare agents. We heard noth-ing more:" ,Toxic pollution, malnutrition and lackof medical care, all attributable to thebombings and sanctions, have created apublic health crisis. Hospitals have recorded a fivefold increase in cancer,including the appearance of new types ofcancers. Among the suspected causes forthis explosion in cancer cases is thehighly toxic and radioactive residue ofdepleted uranium (DU) ammunition thatwas fired by American and British troopsduring the 1991 Gulf War. Iraqi doctorsestimate they could treat successfullyfully one-half of the cancer cases if theyonly were given the basic medical supplies the embargo has withheld fromthem. "Oil for food" provides a pittancefor medical expenditures of only $11 perperson for an entire year!8

VMPRussian factory workers at 1917 May Day demonstrationcarried Bolshevik slogans. Five months later, Russian workerssmashed capitalist rule, ripping one-sixth of the globe out ofthe sphere of imperialist domination.

Diallo's surviving parents about murderous police killings. You don't have to beblack, either-remember -Waco, whereClinton and Janet Reno's federal killers inthe BATF and FBI slaughtered over 80men, women and children in an integratedreligious commune. Cops regularly seekto smash workers' picket lines, too. EvenBoston's famous fugitive gunrunnerWhitey Bulger knows far better than thisfancy professor what the story is in thisviolent society.Chomsky can even justify imperialistwar if it is carried out with good intentions or by some mythical good worldbody which meets the "heavy burden ofproof . .in undertaking the threat or useof force in violation of the principles ofinternational order." "In the real world,"Chomsky informs us with a straight face,

The embargo perpetuates the devastation of the Gulf War in countless otherways. Typhoid, cholera and dysentery aresweeping the country. These deadly infectious diseases were all but eliminated fromIraq a decade ago. But sewage systemshave collapsed from damage sustained inthe bombings and the absence of anyspare parts for repairs. As a result, rawsewage collects in the streets and infectsthe waterways, triggering outbreaks ofdisease. Chlorine to treat the water wouldhelp contain the spread of disease, but theUN has banned its purchase.

Leftover mines dotting the landscapeof southern Iraq, along the routes wherethe U.S. slaughtered thousands of fleeingIraqis in 1991, daily kill travelers. Theinfrastruc ture- the bridges, roads, canals,water filtration and power plants andcommunications center s--of the countryis in ruins. The consequence is the complete implosion of the economy, nowmarked by widespread poverty, highunemployment and hyperinflation. Agriculture is failing on an unprecedentedscale because the imperialists put "onhold" fertilizer and seed. The, currentprice of staples, such as rice anQ lentils,is 1,000 times higher than in 1990. I f itwere not for food rationed out by theregime at 1991 prices, the starvationwould be even more widespread. Meanwhile, wealthy Iraqis among the rulingcapitalist elite get all they desire throughthe black market and other means.

When Secretary of State MadeleineAlbright was asked if she thought thatthe death of half a million Iraqi childrenwas a price worth paying, she replied:"This is a very hard choice, but we thinkthe price is worth it." The U.S. ruling

either "the powerful do as they wish" orelse we must set up "some kind of framework of world order, perhaps the U.N.Charter, the International Court of Justice, and other existing institutions, orperhaps something better if it can bedevised and broadly accepted" (TheNew Military Humanism: Lessons fromKosovo, 1999). Anything else, he writes,is just "abstract discussion" fit only for'"graduate seminars in philosophy." Well,it was Karl Marx, nemesis of Chomsky'shero Bakunin, who pointed out that rightscannot stand higher than the material conditions for them, and that '''Liberation' isa historical and not a mental act, arid it isbrought about by historical conditions."The world today, outside of the remaining deformed workers states, is dominatedby competing imperialist states and

class views the Iraqi people with thesame racist contempt with which i tviewsblacks, Hispanics andother minorities inthis country. America's rulers have written off the entire Iraqi people as "collateral damage" to its deadly d e ~ i g n s . In recent years, a growing number ofliberals in the U.S. have been pushingfor an end to the embargo. But in 1991the liberals were in the vanguard of thosepushing for sanctions against Iraq as an"alternative" to war. And the International Socialist Organization dutifullytailed behind the liberals, endorsing a 26January 1991 "Campaign for Peace"march in Washington which called forUN sanctions against Iraq.At bottom, these reformists believe theimperialist ruling class can be pressuredto pursue more "humanitarian" ends. Butimperialism is not a bad "policy" that canbe changed through pressure, as our reformist opponents on the left pretend. It isa brutal system of oppression, economicexploitation and military SUbjugation. Aswe declared in a statement of the Spartacist League Political Bureau in responseto one of the many times the U.S. hasthreatened or perpetrated mass destruction in Iraq (WV No. 685, 27 February1998): "Whether or not America's capitalist rulers decide this time to ye t againrain death and destruction on Iraqi men,women and children does not change byone iota the rapacious and murderouscharacter of this imperialist system."Against the reformist "socialists" whoperpetuate illusions in "humanitarianimperialism," we asserted:"As Lenin stressed in polemicizingagainst similar views advanced by German Social Democrat Karl Kautsky,imperialism is the 'highest stage of capi-

their occasional junior partners, sometimes allies, sometimes enemies, andtheir corrupt neocolonialist regimes,all aimed to the teeth and jockeying foradvantage. Schemes for "world peace"which leave this system intact are at bestan ivory tower pipe dream; at worst, asin the Chomsky version, a thin cover fordespair and a fig lea f for continued imperialist plunder.Actually, the.... eminent professor hasmore in common with his anarchist heroMikhail Bakunin than merely rantingsagainst ,"Red bureaucracy" and hostilityto Marx and Engels' historical materialistunderstanding that the industrial workingclass is the motor force for revolutionagainst capitalism, which must result inthe "dictatorship of the proletariat" toensure the success of the revolution. Afterall, Bakunin was the only prominent 19thcentury Russian revolutionary to everaddress an abject personal appeal to TsarNicholas I, head of Russia's absolutistempire-and not merely when he was inprison, but upon his release ten yearslater, in an 1862 pamphlet: "We shouldmost gladly of all follow Romanov, ifRomanov could and would transformhimself.. .. he alone could carry out andcomplete a great, peaceful revolutionwithout shedding one drop of Russian orSlav blood." Neither NATO, the UN, theWTO, the World Bank nor the other agencies of imperialism are any more likelyto "transform themselves" than the Tsarwas. Just as it took Lenin and Trotsky'sBolshevik Party, a vanguard party leadingthe working class, to create the first revolutionary workers state in history outof the ruins of the autocratic Russianempire, so today it will take a revolutionary internationalist vanguard party to leadthe fight for successful workers revolution against rotting American imperialism. That is the fight to which the Spartacist League, American section of theInternational Communist League (FourthInternationalist) and Spartacus YouthClubs are dedicated. Those who set theirsights higher than a comfortable academic career as an ideologist for theimperialist war machine should join us inour fight for a communist future for-humanity.

-25 April 2000Spartacist LeaguelSpartacus Youth Club

tal ism,' marked by the concentration anddomination of finance capital, the preeminence of the export of capital andcompetition among the advanced capitalist countries to control markets andspheres of exploitation. War is a necessary product of the capitalist system."The U.S. imperialists paint SaddamHUl!sein as "another Hitler." But all theimperialists' chatter about "weapons of

mass destruction" in the Iraqi arsenalserves as a smokescreen to mask the enormous stockpile of chemical, biologicaland nuclear weapons amassed by the U.S.imperialists, the biggest mass murdererson the planet. The nationalist butcherSaddam Hussein came to power with thebacking ofthe U.S. imperialists, who sawin him a weapon against the combativeIraqi proletariat. Washington providedHussein with arms during his 1980-88war with rival Iran. Meanwhile, SaddamHussein consolidated his rule throughanti-Communist massacres, anti-laborrepression and bloody pogroms of theKurds.It is the task of the Iraqi proletariat,standing at the head of the oppressed

women, ethnic, national and religiousminorities-to sweep away this capitalistregime through socialist revolution andestablish a socialist federation of the NearEast. Only international socialist revolution can bring an end to the profit-hungryimperialist 'system. The InternationalCommunist League is committed to reforging Trotsky's Fourth International asthe' world party of socialist revolution,which would link the struggle to emancipate the workers and oppressed of theNear East with the fight to smash capitalism in the advanced industrial countries,particularly the U.S.. WORKERS VANGUARD


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Mumia...(continued from page 1)the "respectable"-i.e., losing-boundsof the capitalist justice system. I f we areto prevail against the powerful forceswho scream for Jamal's legal lynching,we need to mobilizeOtlle-power we haveon our side. The only thing the capitalistrulers understand is when their profitsare stopped. The social power to do thatresides in the multiracial working class,with its pumbers, organization andcapacity to stop the wheels of production. The ranks of labor have got to bebrought out in the streets and in strikeactiop to demand Mumia's freedom.Mobilize Labor/Black Power!

I f labor's power is to be brought tobear in a mighty blow on behalf ofJamal, it must be mobilized independentof the very forces of the capitalist statethat have worked for years to frame upthis innocent man. A taste of that powerwas seen on the streets of New York Citylast October 23, when at leasr-8,OOO people, with a solid core of disciplined contingents of trade unionists, rode the KKKout of town in response to the PDC callto stop the fascists. Democratic Partypoliticos like Al Sharpton, who did allthey could tQ spike that laborlblackmobilization and give the Klan killers afree ride, are today among the personalities being featured at a May 7 rally forMumia in Madison Square Garden.What made that victory against theKlan possible was the Marxist leadershipof the SL and PDC. We warn workingpeople and anti-racist youth that the capitalist Democratic Party is no less anenemy of labor and black people than theRepublicans. When Mumia's 1995 deathwarrant was stayed by an internationaloutcry of protest, he wrote: "Let us utilizethis precious time to build a stronger andbroader movement, to not 'stay' one execution, but to halt them all." To do thatrequires a break with the DemocraticParty and the forging of a workers party. to lead a proletarian revolution whichsmashes the capitalist state-whose coreconsists of the cops, courts and prisonsand replaces it with a workers state whichushers in an egalitarian socialist society.The death p e n a l ~ is the ultimate sanctionin the arsenal of capitalist state repression. We oppose the death penalty onprinciple: we do not accord the state theright to decide who shall live and whoshall die.While supporting all legal actions enhis behalf, since taking up Jamal's causeover 13 years ago, the PDC and SL havefought for a strategy centered on mobilizing the power of labor. We have initiatednumerous labor/black mobilizations onMumia's behalf, seeking to imbu6- theworking class with an understanding ofnot only the nature of the capitalist stateas a force for organized violence againstthe exploited and oppressed but also theunity of the interests of labor and the fightfor black freedom in America.This perspective is diametrically

5 MAY 2000

opposed to that of reformists like theInternational Socialist Organization(ISO), Workers World Party (WWP) andSocialist Action (SA). Renouncing thefight to win the proletariat to a revolutionary struggle against capitalist injustice and oppression, the ISO, WWP, SA,et al. preach the reformist notion that thecapitalist state can be pressured to act onbehalf of workers and the oppressed. Allof them endorse the liberal politics of theupcoming protests. A featured speaker atnumerous past rallies was Ron Hampton,of the National Black Police Officer'sAssociation. These groups would undoubtedly tell anti-racist youth that they,too, support the call to free Mumia now.But the reformists claim that to build "abroader and more inclusive movement,"it is necessary to reach out to the "American mainstream," as Solidarity's SteveBloom put it last year. And how they dothis is to tailor their demands to what'sacceptable to bourgeois liberals whowant a new trial not to free Mumia, butto restore the "integrity" of the capitalistjustice system, because Mumia's originaltrial and subsequent Post-ConvictionRelief Appeal under the notorious judgeSabo was such a blatant travesty, markedby racist jury-rigging, coercion of witnesses and d i s a p p e ~ r a n c e of evidence.They seek to paint the frame-up of Jamalas a "miscarriage of justice" in the sameway as they try to pass off the heinouspolice killing of Amadou Diallo as an"aberration" in an otherwise just systemof "democracy."Break with the Democrats-Forge a Workers Party!

Unlike social democrats like the ISOand SA, the Progressive Labor Party doestalk of a "communist revolution" by theworking class. PL's posture of militantopposition to racist and capitalist repression is belied by its gross.sectarian refusaluntil recently to defend Jamal on the spurious grounds that he is a "black nationalist"- i .e . , not a member of PL. Morefundamentally, PL despairs of mobilizingthe working class for socialist revolut ion-or anything else, for that matter.Instead, PL pushes liberal anti-racismworking in such institutions as the churchand PTA !-and a strategy of individual orsmall group actions against the fascists.On October 23, PL crowed about managing to land a blow against an isolatedKlansman, while sneering at the mobilization which brought out the thousands ofworking people who held the cops at bayand drove the Klan out. Dismissing theunions, the mass organizations of theworking class, as "pro-boss," PL consignsthe organized proletariat to a role as passive observers of its "direct action" anticsand leaves the unions in the hands of thepro-capitalist misleaders.We aim to win the vanguard layer ofthe working class to an understanding ofthe proletariat's historic role as the champion of black freedom and the grave-~ d i g g e r of capitalism. This can happenonly by means of a revolutionary partyutilizing all available methods to raise the

Left: February 26NYC protest againstacquittal of pOlicekillers of AmadouDiallo, whichbrought home tomany that there isno justice in thecapitalist courts.Reformist leftpromotes relianceon capitalist courtsin fight for Mumia'sfreedom.

class consciousness of the workers byincreasing their trust in their own forces,by destroying their illusions, by reinforcing their revolutionary will and selfconfidence and by organizing the overthrow of all the forces standing in the wayof the conquest of power.Above all, that means a fight to breakthe chains forged by the trade-union misleaders that have shackled the unions tothe political parties and the state agenciesof the enemy class and to expose thosewho cover for this class collaboration.For example, the "Labor Conference forMumia" to be held in Oakland on May 12is endorsed by the Central Labor Councils of San Francisco and AlamedaCounty and a range of union officials,including ILWU longshore union president Brian McWilliams. But their aim isnot to mobilize the unions in a class-

Elian...(continued from page 2)class is mind-boggling. Senate Republican leader Trent Lott of Mississippidemanded a Congressional investigation,thundering that the Miami raid "couldonly happen in Castro's Cuba"-but he'sproud to speak before gatherings of the"Council of Conservative Citizens," adirect descendant of the KKK-infestedWhite Citizens Councils that terrorizedcivil rights activists in the SOl!th. "Stormtroopers!" shrieks notorious 'New YorkCity mayor Rudolph Giuliani':"-whose"Operation Condor" anti-drug squadshares its name with Hitler's CondorLegion. Just look at New York City,where Giuliani's cop commandos-theracist killers of Amadou Diallo, MalcolmFerguson and Patrick Dorismond, toname only a few of their recent victimsroutinely kick in doors, beating, terrorizing and killing black and minority people.Unsurprisingly, as the polls came inshowing that the majority of Americansapproved of the government raid, theRepublicans withdrew their demand foran investigation.

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Workers Vanguard No 735 - 05 May 2000