WfJ/iIlE/iS ",IN",I" 25¢No. 34.5 6 January 1984.

u.s. Hands Off the World!

IIIrazea an s

'{

~ .Der Spiegel NATO

The destructive frenzy of dying capitalism: 16-inch guns of battleship New Jersey.bombard Syrian forces in Lebanon; Pershing 2 missiles deployed in We~tGermany are six to eight minutes flying time from major Soviet cities. .

JANUARY 3-Millions around theworld are wondering whether there willbe a New Year's, 1985. On December 30a high official in West Germany'sforeign ministry declared, "The firstAmerican battery of nine Pershing 2rockets is ready for action in WestGermany." For action'i.So much for theclaim that the U.S. nuclear arsenal isfor"deterrence." The new NATO missilesin West Europe, the Marines in Leba­non, the rape of the tiny black WestIndian island of Grenada, these are notthe whims of one man, Ronald Reagan,but the destructive frenzy of a dyingcapitalist world order.

Reagan came to office promising torestore the "American century" of the1950s. He was going to achieve military"superiority" over the Soviet Union andwipe out the "Vietnam syndrome" inAmerica. But he can't. There will be noreturn to the world before the VietnamWar either in the minds of the Americanpeople or in the real balance of militaryand economic forces. However manybillions are showered on the Pentagon,there will be no return to the time of the1962 Cuba missile crisis when the U.S.had over 2,000 strategic nuclear weap­ons, the Soviet Union only about 70.Today, as Soviet chief of staff marshal

Nikolai Ogarkov warned, "retaliationwill be certain in all cases." And he candeliver. The U.S. imperialists can nolonger practice effective nuclear black­mail. They cannot police the world, theycannot dominate it. The only thing theycan do is blow i~ up.

And they're now acting just crazyenough to do it, like Hitler in his bunker(but Hitler by then was militarilytoothless). From the Pentagon to theWhite House the American rulers havegone absolutely gaga over the "interna­tional terrorist threat." They're mutter­ing about the "truck-bomb gap" withSyria and Iran. First Reagan surroundsthe White House with dump trucksfilled with sand, then concrete barriers.One half expects he'll bring in tanksnext, as Washington comes to lookmore and more like some damn bananarepublic. Of course, there is no terroristthreat to the U.S. rulers. The realterrorists of the world-from Hiroshi­ma to Vietnam to Central America-arethe men in the White House and.Pentagon.

World Policemen Who Can't ~Shoot Straight

The would-be policemen of the NearEast are behaving more like the Key-

stone Cops. On October 23 one man in aMercedes truck filled with explosivesdrove right into the central lobby of theMarine headquarters at Beirutairportand blew it up, killing 24'1 U.S.servicemen. Not only can't the U.S.forces in Lebanon protect themselves;they can't even carry out a simplebombing raid. The "retaliatory" air raidagainst Syria in early December wasitself a mini-disaster. Of the 28 relativelyslow-flying planes sent on the mission,two were shot down by Soviet-suppliedantiaircraft missiles. One pilot waskilled and his navigator (who is black)was captured by the Syrians and held asa prisoner of war, the first sinceVietnam. Syrian strongman Assad wassmart enough to release him to blackDemocratic politico Jesse Jackson justto rub Reagan's face in it.

Even the Pentagon brass want out ofthe bloody mess in Lebanon. Theofficial Long commission report on theOctober 23 bombing actually criticizesReagan's policies for jeopardizing theMarines-an unheard-of thing. Reaganis in trouble over Lebanon. Right afterthe Marine headquarters bombing weraised the call "U.S. Marines Out ofLebanon, Now, Alive!" seeking tointersect the popular feeling that it was

Reagan's senseless criminal policieswhich killed those 241 young men.Especially after the Pentagon report, thepressure is building in this country topull out of Lebanon. Democratic front­runner Walter Mondale has just flip­flopped and is calling for a phasedwithdrawal. So if Reagan cannot winthe elections as the Teddy Roosevelt ofGrenada, he may try an Adolf Hitlerploy and charge the Democrats with a"stab in the back" over the Near East.

If U.S. imperialism is caught in abloody quagmire in Lebanon, it'sgetting creamed in Central America too.When the Reagan gang took office, theytargeted EI Salvador as the place to wipeout the "Vietnam syndrome." Here wasgoing to be a Vietnam in reverse, and onthe cheap. Although the Soviet Unionand Cuba gave little if any military aidto the leftist guerrillas, the Reaganitesdeclared El Salvador the forward pointof Soviet "expansionism," the front lineof Cold War II. But while Washington'spuppet army and rightist death squadskill tens of thousands of defenselesspeople, the leftist guerrillas are winningthe civil war. Repeatedly now, entirearmy companies have deserted enmasse. Last week theguerrillas captured

. continued on page 10

,

Socialist Action's Debut

Ex-SWPersGoon for S.E Labor Fakers

The Trotskyists RemainedFaithful to October

Leopold Trepper was the heroic Sovietspy who created the"Red Orchestra" thatsmuggled invaluable intelligence out ofoccupied Europe and Nazi Germany duringWorld War ll. In his memoirs Trepperrecalled the heroism of the Trotskyists'during the time of Stalin's great purges inthe 1930s. Wereprintbelowanexcerptfromhis account of that period.

black question-s-which is really theAmerican question-like the plague.Which is a revealing omission in acountry where blacks are in the fore­front of labor militancy and the struggleagainst fascism-things which 1 don'tthink you want to have much todo with,except to stop. And 1 think the realproblem that you face in this country isthat the role you want, which is laboritesocialdemocracy, isalready taken up byMichael Harrington. That is your realproblem. You have very little relation­ship to Trotskyism and anybody in thisroom who is interested in Trotskyismshould look to the Spartacist Leaguewhich does represent that continuity,and certainly not to you, who are ifanything a right-wing split from theSocialist Workers Party."

The Bay Area has the most vitaltradition of militant labor struggle inthis country outside of the miners. Soevery couple of years or so the pro­company, pro-Democratic Party unionhacks have a job for pseudo-socialistfinks and g00!1s in order to keep the lid

. on. During the 1981 PATCO strike,Zeltzer played this role when he helpedthe bureaucrats try to corral militantworkers who were surging into thestreets blocking traffic to the SF airport.Mackler's talk of a "workers defenseguard" against militant workers is of apiece with the obscene act of the UAWbureaucracy back in 1973 when theybroke a sit-down strike at Detroit'sMack Avenue plant by mobilizing a1,000-man goon squad. Playing onV AW tradition, they cynically tried topass this off as a "flying squad."

Grovelling before the bureaucrats,the first issue of Socialist Action (whosemasthead imitates the Solidarnosc logoand which does not have a "union bug)assiduously refused to take a position onthe sellout contract which the ATV topsshoved down the Greyhound strikers'throats. This puts them to the right ofthe ATV local president in San Francis­co, who blasted the sellout. And theyrail against "ultraleft" workers- just asGreyhound management is rounding upthe militants for firing and maybeworse! These small-time social demo­crats look back to the big-time social­traitors like Gustav Noske who, in orderto head off red revolution in Germany in1918-1919, was responsible for themurder of.' Communist leaders RosaLuxemburg and Karl Liebknecht."Somebody has to be the bloodhound,"was Noske's infamous remark. In lessthan a month of .existence as a publictendency these little Noskes of "Social­.ist Action" have made it perfectly clearwhere they stand-with the bureau­crats, the bosses, the cops and the com­pany against the workers' struggle.•

WORKERS VANGUARD

right there"-and launched into a frenzyof "outside agitator" baiting worthy ofthe worst Meanyite piecard: "No one inthe socialist movement has the right togo to a striking group of 2,000 workersand take over that picket line, lead the ­slogans, organize the chants and marchthe workers around." Socialist Action,on the other hand.claims the right toorganize an SWP-style "peaceful, legal"parade fOJ the bureaucrats so that theangry workers can blow'ofTsteam whilelecturing them that "we couldn't closedown the thing for the whole-day." Infact it was perfectly obvious that theworkers could have and would haveshut it down except that the bureaucratsand their waterboys acted as Grey­hound's first line of defense. '

Spartacist spokesman Diana Cole-man took the floor to respond:

"I want to talk about the Greyhoundstrike a little bit. 1 think that you see.[SWP national chairman] Barnes'somewhat eccentric positions as abarrier to ending what you call theSWP's 'self-imposed isolation' which 1thirlk means that you want to be moreeffective at becoming the waterboys forthe trade-union bureaucracy in thiscountry."And yes, 1 did see what happened atGreyhound as a test of your organiza­tion when I saw, this last Saturday, JeffMackler standing up there shoulder-to­shoulder not only with trade-unionbureaucrats but the San Franciscopolice department defending the Grey­hound bus station lest angry workersshould get out of hand and do some­thing 'outrageous' like shut downGreyhound or stop the buses. Yes, Ithoughtthat really did show what sideyou were on."And 1am flattered by these somewhatoblique references, if people think thatthe Spartacist League mobilized everykind of militant action that has hap­pened around Greyhound. But let meassure you that there are in fact militantworkers in this area who do want to seethe buses stopped and Greyhound shutdown...."The other point which 1 would makeabout your paper is that you avoid the

San Francisco,3 December 1983:

Mass militant effortsto shut downbus terminals

.terrified Bay Arealabor bureaucrats.

whom there were hundreds) who Want­ed to stop the scab buses-for supposed­ly seeking a bash with the cops.Reflecting the bureaucrats' panic,Mackler went on:

"We had to organize a workers defenseguard so the next week the crazieswouldn't run the demonstration. Wehad a spectacle of a tiny sect of 20people leading the chants to workers of2,000. We needed a little proletariandiscipline;"

At this point another pseudo­Trotskyist reformist, Steve Zeltzer,pointed a finger at the two Spartacistsupporters in the audience. Mackleragreed-"You're pointing ~o the culprits

LENIN

obstinacy with the end of an ice-axe,they fought Stalinism to the death, andthey were the only ones who did. By thetime of the great purges, they could onlyshout their rebellion in the freezingwastelands where they had beendrag~ed in order to be exterminated. Inthe camps, their conduct was admirable.But their voices were lost in the tundra.

Today, the Trotskyites have aright toaccuse those who once howled alongwith the wolves. Let them not forget,however, that they had the enormousadvantage over us of having a coherentpolitical system capable of replacingStalinism. They had something to clingto in the midst of their profound distressat seeing the revolution betrayed. Theydid not "confess," for they knew thattheir confession would serve neither theparty nor socialism.

-Leopold Trepper,The Great Game (1977)

the- crowd was marching down MarketStreet they were enthusiastically chant':'ing "On strike-Shut it down!" and "Noscab buses!" At Seventh Street nearMarket the demonstrators surged to­ward the Greyhound terminal. At thispoint labor bureaucrats rushed to thefront of the building with the cops.Walter' Johnson of the Retail Clerks,perennial leader of every phony "soli­darity" coalition, and ILWU chiefJimmy Herman pleaded with the crowdto disperse. But demonstrators contin­ued to block Seventh Street for anothertwo hours. No buses moved. The unionmisleaders were terrified.

Immediately a whisper campaign wasbegun by the bureaucrats saying that"the Sparts" were causing .. all thetrouble, we were the "rabble-rousers."In reality, the most militant layer of BayArea labor came out to shut downGreyhound, and our class-struggleslogans were eagerly taken up by thecrowd in this spontaneous mass action.Next time, the bureaucrats vowed to be"prepared." At a December 5 strikesupport meeting, Seymour Kramer, anofficial in the UTU, called for more"monitors" to police the pickets at theupcoming rally. And on December 10when militant workers again defied thesellout bureaucrats and set up picketlines at terminal entrances to stop thebuses, a line of bureaucrats, paintersunion heavies, and "socialist" goonsappeared. When the police commandertold the picket captain to disperse thecrowd, he dutifully announced "therally's over." And standing right next tohim telling everyone to go home was oneJeff Mackler, co-national chairman ofSocialist Action and a former teachersunion official.

At its December 16 public debut,Mackler spoke along with SocialistAction's Maximum Leader Nat Wein­stein (the Solidamosc-lover who madeeven the SWP puke). Mackler notedthat at the Greyhound rally theirstrategy was "to have a little march, anice peaceful march" while assailing"ultralefts"-that is, the militants (of

TROTSKY

2

The glow of October was beingextinguished in the shadows of under­ground chambers. The revolution haddegenerated into a system of terror andhorror; the ideals of socialism wereridiculed in the name of a fossilizeddogma which the executioners still hadthe effrontery to call Marxism.

And yet we went along, sick at heart,but passive, caught up in machinery wehad set in motion with our own hands.Mere cogs in the apparatus, terrorizedto the point of madness, we became theinstruments of our own subjugation. Allthose who did not rise up against theStalinist machine are responsible, col­lectively responsible. I am no exceptionto this verdict.

But who did protest at that time? Whorose up to voice his outrage?

The Trotskyites can lay claim to this!-.onor. -Following the example of their

- leader, who was rewarded for hiS"

The San Francisco Bay Area was thescene of some of the most militant strikeaction against the Greyhound bossesand their attempt to bust the Amalga­mated .Transit Union (ATU). Thisexplosive potential was shown in aDecember 3 demonstration when 1,500­2,000 militant workers, after listening toover an hour of windy bureaucrats'speeches, took off to the Greyhoundterminal to try and shut it down. Thefighting mood of the workers here, as inPhiladelphia and Boston, showed that anational transport strike to bring Grey­hound to its knees was possible. Grey­hound bosses clearly recognized this­the company has announced the firingof at least 100 militant strikers, 34 ofthem in the Bay Area alone.

While AFL-CIO bureaucratsmouthed empty talk of "solidarity,"just

"as in the PATCO strike they stabbed theisolated Greyhound strikers in the backt;y refusing to mobilize their ranks andopposing any real solidarity action. Inthe Bay Area these sellouts got a littlehelp from some ex-members of theSocialist Workers Party (SWP) whorecently formed "Socialist Action" andare advertising themselves as the bestfriends of Polish Solidarnosc, the only"union" Ronald Reagan loves. At themaiden forum to introduce SocialistAction, held in San Francisco onDecember 16. these laborite reformistscynically bragged about setting up a"workers defense guard" (really a goonsquad) to help the union misleadersprotect Greyhound against "crazies"­the militants who wanted to stop thescab buses from rolling!

The Greyhound strike was a real testfor the left. The Spartacist LGague andclass-struggle unionists, from long­shore/warehouse and telephone werepresent at the December 3 SF rally,calling for "Trucking, Rail, Transit,AFSCME ~orkers-All Out to StopUnion Busting!" Our slogans and chants,were picked up by the strikers: we saw"Picket Lines Mean Don't Cross!" and"No More PATCOs!" hand-scrawledon the back of official ATU signs; and as

Over 1,,000 Votes for Karlsen in TWU~EleetioDs

M-ilifant OppositionForged in NYC Transit

Marxist Working-Class BiweE1kly ofthe Spartacist League of the U.S.

happen and was clear was going tohappen.

The dissidents, Arnold Cherry inparticular, had the attitude-you getthis a lot from guys-they had theattitude, well; the worse the better. Themore unemployment the better. Whentheir bellybutton starts hitting theirspinal cords, then they'll begin to wakeup. 'We don't believe that. Becausedefeat breeds defeat.

Muhammad Ali endorsed the Rayand Lauren case. And he knows as aboxer if you go in the ring and you getyour head busted around a little bit

continued on page 9

West Coast who face years in prisonbecause of a vicious racist anti-laborframe-up. Ed Kartsen spoke at a massrally to demand "Freedom and JobsBack" for Lauren and Ray in OaklandOctober 29. Those who voted for usrealize that the larger issues-restoringthe tradition of militant labor solidarity,defending the picket line as the battlefront of the working class, fighting forblack, Hispanic and white workers tomobilize to crush lynch mob terror andstop Reagan's mad-dog drive for warwith the Soviets-are the critical issuesfacing the labor movement. It's going totake mass labor action and our ownworkers party fighting for a workersgovemmentto get rid of capitalismwhich is the .root.of the problem. Whatwe need . is a hard core or: committedpeople that are determined to make the

. kind ofanti-eapitalist program that weran on the action program ofthis union.Join the Committee and help make thatprogram an organized force.

Lawe'ssellout policies are runningthis union into the ground. His big thingis the dues checkoff. It was his sellout ofthe 1980 strike that enabled the courtsand the TA management to attack thecheckoff in the first place. And in order

. to get it back he's let our wages andconditions go to hell. The dues checkoffhas helped to keep the Lawe leadershiplazy and dependent on management.This leadership should have to prove tothe membership why they should paytheir dues each month. The bosses'offensive against the unions must besmashed. For the unions it's fight or die!

The TWU must get off its knees! Tohell with binding arbitration! No morePATCOs! No more sellouts! Bust theunion busters! An injury to one is aninjury to all! Picket lines mean youbetter not cross! Break with the Demo­crats! Build a workers party to fight fora workers government!

-Kartsen, Brewer, Smith and theCommittee fora Fighting TWU

29 December 1983

degenerated workers states. In a sensewe are for political revolution within theunions in this country because they havea: rotten sellout leadership and we haveto get rid of it.

Unfortunately we were not a factor inthe 1980 [NYC transit] strike. The 1980strike was a unique situation in thisunion, where you had a majority so­called "dissident" executive board, theunion out on strike, but there was noclass-struggle opposition among these'so-called dissidents to warn the mem­bership and prepare the membershipand lead the membership out of thesellout situation which was going to

The Fight Continues

WV hotoTWU militants at New York's Port Authority rally last'November 23 for Greyhound strikers-, calling for nationaltransport strike against the union-busters.

We reprint below aleaflet issued by theCommittee fora Fighting TWU follow­ing the elections:

The Local 100 elections are over andthe' Lawe leadership has won anothertwo year term in office. But over onethousand members voted for candidatesof the Committee for a Fighting TWU:1,017 voted for Kartsen for president, 74voted for Brewer for Exec. Board in CarMaintenance, and 72 voted for Smithfor Exec. Board in United Motormen'sDivision. We acknowledge the electionproceedings were run fairly. The shat­tered Cherry opposition ran nobody forpresident and instead campaignedagainst Kartsen who was Lawe's onlyopponent in the presidential race. TheCherry slate was defeated for ~veryoffice. The fact that a significant core ofthe membership cast their votes' forcandidates running on a program formilitant class struggle indicates the basisfor-building a new, fighting leadership.in 'this union.

Our union continues to crumble andin the next two years we must beprepared .to, selectively answer' theincreasingly sharper attacks by manage­ment. Those TWU members whosupported the Committee for a FightingTWU in the elections are the mostconscious militants iit the struggle todefend the TWU against Kiley/Koch/Reagan's war on the unions: We said theissues facing this union would not besettled by an election but by struggle.We need a whole new breed of laborleaders. What was needed to win thebattle with Greyhound was militant

"mass picketing to stop the buses andconcrete acts of labor solidarity by otherunions. That's what we fought for-anational transport workers strike tobust the union busters. The Committeealso circulated petitions and collectedmoney for Lauren Mozee and RayPalmiero, two phone strikers on the

profit system and its replacement with aworkers government:

"The money is there to rebuild transit,our schools and hospitals.' But it's goingto the banks that have run this city intothe ground and to the bosses' war drivethat pours trillions into a fanaticalcampaign to wage nuclear war againstthe Soviet Union. We need TWUleaders with an anti-eapitalist programwho will mobilize black and white inthis city to smash .the Reagan/Kochcuts. Tear out the token machines-s-forfree, safe, rapid transit for the people ofNew York! Cancel the debt­expropriate the banks! Jobs for alIthrough a shorter workweek with no cutin pay!"

Phc>torun In

TWU papershows'

Local 100presldenttat

candidateEd Ka....en

- at 23 Nov.1983 labOr .

rally forGreyhound

strikers InNew York.

tee showed Cherry's slicker brand ofreformism to be no better than Lawe'sconservative business' unionism. Inseveral instances confrontations be­tween former Cherry supporters and theCherry gang were quite dramatic, withunionists angrily waving Committeeleaflets in the faces of Cherry's lieute­nants. Both Cherry and Scott weredefeated for divisional offices.

The campaign leaflets for Kartsen,Brewer and Smith stressed that theattacks on the jobs and conditions oftransit workers are part of a generalcapitalist offensive against the unionsand minorities that can only be foughtwith a class-struggle program thatpoints toward the abolition of the

iWUer David Brewer at S~artacist Forum:

How Labor Can Smash the RacistsWe reprint below remarks bya New

York transit militant during the discus­sion period at an NYC public meetingDecember 9 titled, "The Class Struggleand the Spartacist League. "

I'm David Brewer from the Commit-. tee for a Fighting Transport Workers

Union Local 100. If anyone is notfamiliar with any of the literature we putout, I've got some copies here, hopefullyone of the other brothers in theCommittee has got some of. the Grey-

- hound leaflets because t handed out allof mine at the picket line the other night.

Now the Spartacist League calls forpolitical revolution in the deformed and6 January 1984No. 345

EDITOR: Jan Norden

PRODUCTION MANAGER: Noah Wilner '

CIRCULATION MANAGER: Darlene Kamiura

EDITORIAL BOARD: Jon Brule.Charles Burroughs. George Foster,Liz Gordon, James Robertson.Reuben Samuels. Joseph Seymour.Marjorie Stamberg(Closing editor for No. 345: Liz Gordon)

Wbrkers Vanguard (USPS 098-770) publishedbiweekly, skipping an issue in August anda week in December. by the SpartacistPublishing Co., 41 Warren Street, New York,NY 10007. Telephone: 732-7862 (Editorial).732-7861 (Business). Address all corre­spondence to: Box 1377. GPO, New York. NY10116. Domestic subscriptions: $5.00/24issues. Second-class postage paid at NewYork, NY. POSTMASTER: Send addresschanges to Workers Vanguard. Box 1377.GPO. New York. NY 10116.

.Opinionsexpressed in signed articles orletters do not necessarily express the editorialviewpoint.

WfJRltlRSVINfiIJIltlJ

Class-struggle fighters won a signifi­cant breakthrough in elections in NewYork's transit union (TWU Local 100).Running as the only opponent toincumbent president John .Lawe, EdKartsen of the Committee for a FightingTWU received over 1,000 votes (7.6percent of the total). This impressiveshowing came in a context in whichmany TW Uers (almost two-thirds of the.membership) showed their disgust forthe leadership's policies by not voting atall. In not only rejecting Lawe, but alsothe vicious red-baiting of prominent ex­oppositionist Arnold Cherry, the work­ers who backed Committee candidatesKartsen, Dave Brewer and Jim Smithmade a conscious choice for a hardclass-struggle program.

Kartsen's vote total is a several-foldincrease from what he received in the1981 elections. The Committee hasemerged as the recognized opposition inthe TWU with a hearing and' followingamong key militants. Kartsen didparticularly well in the transportationsection .of the union, which has a highpercentage of black workers. The TWUis a strategic union with enormoussocialpower-American capitalism can't runwithout New York's subways-andrepresents a key intersection of NYC'slabor and blacks. With a class-struggleleadership the TWU could spearheadthe' city's unions and minorities, withpotential national impact, in classstruggle against the bosses and bankers.The advances made by the Committeeare vital and warmly welcomed.

The Committee won authority as theonly group in the union to organizeagainst race terror. When black transitworker Willie Turks was beaten to deathby a racist lynch mob in Brooklyn, themilitants fought to mobilize unionforces in flatbed trucks to establishsafety and order against the race killers.They helped organize and lead the onlyunion protest against the acquittal ofthemurderers of Turks. .

"Dissident" Local 100 bur.eaucratArnold Cherry and his ally Mike-Scott(politically supported- by the Commu­nist Party) took their reformist politicsto their logical conclusion by givingbackhanded support to Lawe. In sharp­ly exposing this maneuver, the Commit-

6 JANUARY 1984 3

U.S. imperialism's trip wires; forWorld War III extend from one end ofthe globe to the other. Reagan is nowengaged in three wars-in Lebanon, ElSalvador and Nicaragua-and in theCaribbean the U.S. troops are finishingoff the rape of Grenada. AmericanPershing 2 nuclear missiles have beendeployed in Europe, aimed directly atMoscow-at six to eight minutesstriking distance. Decaying capitalism isreadying to plunge humanity once againinto global war, and lurching toward anuclear holocaust which threatens theextinction of life on this planet.

Revulsion and opposition to the massslaughter which is endemic to theimperialistsclass rule is a central part ofthe Marxist vision of and struggle for aclassless, stateless society. The hideousthreat of World War III and thebellicose policies of Washington todayengender justified fears and inchoatepacifistic sentiments among the world'smasses, both in the Soviet bloc and thecapitalist countries, sentiments whichcan be turned against the imperialist war­makers. The carnage of World Wadgave birth to the Russian workersrevolution of 19I7-because the Bolshe­vik.Party won the workers, peasants andsoldiers to revolutionary opposition totheir "own" government, and endedRussia's participation in the inter­imperialist slaughter by replacing theexploiters' state with a government ofthe working people.

When over 240 U.S. Marines wereblown to pieces at the Beirut airportcompound in October, the largestnumber of American troops kilIed in asingle day since the height' of the Tetoffensive in Vietnam, the Americanpublic reacted with outrage. There wereelements of pacifism, isolationism andpatriotism, and there was a broad graspthat the Lebanon intervention wassenseless. The outrage was mainlydirected at the imperialist commanderin chief (who immediately launched theracist bully-boy invasion of tiny Grena­da for an easy "victory" to "distractattention from the debacle in Beirutj.Tointersect this conjunctural anti­government sentiment evocatively, theSpartacist League raised the slogans"Marines Out of Lebanon, Now, Alive!"and "U .S. Out of Grenada, Dead orAlive!" There were those among ourreadership who-objecting particularlyto the word "alive"-denounced ourLebanon slogan as a "social-patriotic"capitulation to American chauvinism,counterposing the supposedly radicalsentiment: "the only good one is a deadone." But far from radical, this vicariousbloodthirstiness (reminiscent of some ofthe more dim and despicable elements ofthe old New Left-draft-dodgers turnedaccountants) challenges a fundamentalattitude of Marxism as well as undercut­ting the central Leninist proletarianstrategy to fight against imperialist war.Our critics have nonetheless served apurpose in prompting us to restate somebasic Marxist truths, beginning with the

Marxismand

Bloodthirstiness

Dougherty amera

October 23 bombln9 of Marine headquarters In Beirut killed 241 U.S.servicemen. Spartaclst slogan "Marines Out of Lebanon, Now, Alive!"Intersected widespread outrage against Reagan's criminal and senselesspolicy. . -,

fact that Marxists are not bloodthirsty. imperialist troops (a suicidal demandWe are for the victory ofjust causes. supported by virtually the entire refor-

Necessarily and above all, the centrality mist left in this country, and sharplyof just causes is the shattering of the opposed of course by us revolutionists).exploiting and oppressing classes and Now the U.S. is there, having disarmedthe victory of socialism. We are social- the PLO and prepared the way for theists not least because we are passionately Israeli/ Phalange massacres at Sabraopposed to war, the gathering together and Shatila. Arafat's organization hasof large numbers of young workingmen split into bloody rivalry, dispersed andto be slaughtered in the interests of the evacuated (under the UN flag and Israelirulers. In this savagely class-divided shells). The Israelis precipitously with-world, dominated by the mass murder- drew from Beirut, leaving the Ameri-ers of My Lai, the struggle for the cans to take the casualties. The warringvictory of just causes will have a big Lebanese communal militias can't tellphysical component. We must stand the difference between the Americanstherefore for the maximum assembling and the Russians and couldn't care less.of effective force on the just side, Where is the just, anti-imperialist side inhopefully to demoralize. and deter the Lebanon today?

r: forces of reaction so that the actual What about the- allies of Arafat'scasualties are minimized. organization? In Tripoli where he was

But in Lebanon at the moment, there besieged by Syrian-backed PLO dissi-is little evidence of justice on any side. dents, Arafat allied with .the IslamicAt bottom, the present fighting there is a Unity Movement of Sheikh Shaaban,continuation of the centuries-old which last October massacred some 50communal/sectarian conflicts betwe~n members of the Lebanese CommunistMuslims and Christians, Sunnis and Party. What about the Shi'ites, who areShi'ites, Druze and others. There is no at the bottom of the social scale inknown force fighting against the U.S. Lebanon, totally deprived of politicalimperialists-they are alI jockeying for power although they are the largestposition with the imperialists. Those group in the country? Shortly before thewhose cause is clearest-the Palestine Israeli invasion of June 1982, the Shi'iteLiberation Organization (PLO)-in Amal carried out murderous attacksfact requested the intervention of the against the PLO in Beirut and southern

Lebanon. As for the Syrians, who vaunttheir rejection of any negotiations withthe Zionists, they made a separateceasefire with the Israelis early in the1982 invasion, leaving the Palestiniansto fight alone.

To be sure, our Lebanon slogan washighly conjunctural; the situation in theNear East is changing rapidly. The U.S.is already drifting in the direction of adirect conflict with Syria, thanks ingood part to the Reaganites' irrationalnotions of "Soviet surrogateship."Should the U.S. go to war against Syria,a complete reevaluation would beindicated, not least because such a warcould become a de facto U.S./USSRconflict in which Marxists would defendthe Soviet side.

Lebanon is a quagmire for U.S.imperialism-and this is a good thing.But we do not gloat over those 240aluminum caskets, those dead youngmen many of whom were consideredexpendable in the first place becausethey were black. We can only despisethose who call for the death of Americansoldiers for the crimes of their rulers.For Marxists there is'illl the differencebetween the men in the field and thosewho sent them there to die. We are notper se interested in the annihilation ofeveryone who is executing Washing­ton's global bloodthirsty policies. Leb­anon has aroused strong opposition inthe U.S. population; sending in theMarines was a stupid act which couldbackfire on the U.S. ruling class.

A very different situation obtains inGrenada, Reagan's diversion from theLebanon disaster. We viewed the U.S.invasion of Grenada in terms compar­able to the 1982 Israeli invasion ofLebanon: racialist atrocities againstanother nationality. We had a side in1982: the defense of the Palestiniansagainst the attempt to wipe them out.And we.had a side in Grenada: with the700 Cuban construction workers whoresisted the Yankee invaders. It took6,000 U.S. troops to "take" Grenada inthe face of the Cubans' heroic self­defense, and most of the Cubans wereover 40 years old! The same issue ofWorkers Vanguard which our criticsbelieve marks our decisive capitulationto "social-patriotism" hailed the Cubanfighters who-unlike anyone in Leba­non today-fought'the main enemy,U.S. imperialism. In Grenada, we had aside, and our call was "U.S. Out, Deador Alive!"

And in Vietnam! The side of justicethere was unambiguously that of theNational Liberation Front (NLF)/North Vietnamese forces against U.S.imperialism. At stake were the nationalrights of the Vietnamese people and thesocial revolution whose victory was theonly way to definitively drive outcolonialism. Our call for "Victory to theVietnamese Revolution!" was notbloodymindedness but a recognition ofwhat was necessary to bring peace toVietnam after three decades ofimperial­ist war. In Lebanon, it is precisely the

4

asE~

CIl

We are for thevictory of justcauses. Left:IIberatiol"l ofSaigon (nowHo Chi Minh City)by the NorthVietnamese armyin 1975 was ahistoric victory forworld reVOlution.Right: duringReagan's rapeof Grenada, wesaid, "U.S. Out,Dead or Alive!"

WORKERS VANGUARD

, AP

New Iranianstamp commemorates1979 seizure of U.S. embassy.

on Grenada during the recent U.S.pirate invasion, wherein the Sovietstaff was held for hours and searchedwith their hands behind their heads.Wars have been started by lesserprovocations.

The Soviet leaders understand thatviolence against embassies is notto betaken lightly. In the Teheran embassycrisis the Soviets, while pointing outthat "this act cannot be taken out ofthe overall context of American­Iranian relations," stated correctlythat the seizure was "not in keepingwith the international convention onrespect of diplomatic privileges andimmunity" (New York Times, 6December 1979). We necessarily sharethis view, as must any state power oraspirant to state power, such as theinternational Spartacist tendency.

war,th~NLf c.ommando attack on theembassy was ,{ revolutionary act.Indeed, that single act broke the0lllJlipotent image of American impe­ri~ism worldwide, and that was a verygoodthing.

But that had nothing in commonwith the Iranian seizure, which was a

-diversion designed to enhance KhQ~meini's reactionary . holq.on .themasses-lei. them eat "anti-imperial­ist"rhetoric.The Iranian leftists, who.had enthusiastically backed the riseand consolidation of the mullahs' rule,mainly hailed' the embassy seizure;within weeks many of them werethemselves the target of the sameKhomeiniite fanatics.

The Soviet Union, the world's firstworkers state, had to struggle for manyyears against diplomatic quarantinebefore its embassies were recognizedby the imperialist powers. The refusalto recognize a foreign government isthe diplomatic posture of war. Indeed,the barbarous treatment of Sovietdiplomatic personnel of late is anindex' of the. Reagan administration'sdrive to smashSoviet state power: e.g.,(I) the invasion of the 'soviet diplomat­ic retreat on Long Island during theKAL 007 hysteria by a mob led by theMoonie cult with the connivance oflocal authorities; (2) the outrageouslyillegal denial of landing rights forSoviet foreign minister Gromyko, who.was scheduled to address a UN session;(3) the humiliating prisoner-of-wartreatment of Soviet embassy personnel

'Teheran EmbQssy8e"isitedBut there's ariothero~~rridirig

aspect to this which was totallyignored by the rad-lib suppojters ofKhomeiniite fanaticism whOi.'ni~yerhave to think about the queSiioh'lqfstate power. In the present-day worId;divided as it is among nation-states,the basis for any international rela­tions is the diplomatic' convention of"extraterritoriality" for embassies.Diplomats, are, inany case, nothingbut certified spie~ in any and an cases.Nonetheless, as we wrote at the time ofthe Teheran embassy seizure:

"Diplomatic immunity.and territorialsovereignty of embassies are seldomviolated even by nations at war,though every diplomatic office con­ducts. its share of spying and intelli­gence gathering. These diplomaticrules of the game are.riecessar:r tomaintain international relations be­tween nation-states, until the nation­state itself has disappeared in asocialist world."

-"Iran Embassy Crisis," WVNo. 244, 23 November 1979

At the same time, we called for theextradition of the criminal shah,whose presence in the U.S. provokedthe embassy seizure, and.:-ve.QJ' cOurseopposed any U.Sc;imper~~list -aita¢konIran in the name of "releasing thehostages." .

To be sure, certain attacks onimperialist embassies are clearly sup­portable: during the Tet offensive inVietnam in 1968, for instance, wherethe U.S. embassy had become, thecommand headquarters for the half­million-strong imperialist army in the

U.S. postmaster general WilliamBolger is calling on true-blue Ameri­cans to refuse to accept letters postedwith a new Iranian postage stamp

. because it is ."repulsive, a viciousdistortion of a criminal act by Iran,and an insult to all Americans." Thestamp depicts the Iranian seizure of theU.S. embassy in Teheran on 4 Novem­ber 1979 with the caption, "TheTakeover of the U.S. Spy Den."During the 1980 presidential electionsReagan promised to wipe out the"humiliation of Teheran" by reassert­ing American.militarism around theworld, primarily directed at the SovietUnion. And now that Reagan's introuble domestically over the bloodyLebanese mess, he would no doubt liketo rekindle the chauvinist war feverproduced in America when the Kho­meiniite Islamic fanatics seized theTeheran embassy.

Certainly the American embassy inTeheran was a preeminent symbol ofAmerican imperialism-the homeofthe CIA station which mastermindedthe overthrow of the nationalistMossadeq regime in 1953 and guidedthe shah's bloody police state. Papersseized by the Iranian "students" (andlater published in book form in Iranbut barred from entering the U.S.)documented the extensive contactsbetween the American embassy andthe hated SAVAK secret police. Inshort, there could be enormous justifi­cation for the seizure of the Teheranembassy.

Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of the Spartacist League

Make checks payablelmall to: Sperlaclst Publishing ce, Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116

345

o $2/4 issues ofWomen and Revolution

Q$2/10 introductory issues ofWorkers Vanguard(includes Spartacist)

dors who were then in Petrograd), thetotal number of victims on all sides wasten." It was when the tsarist generalsbacked by 13 imperialist armies beganthe Civil War that the killing reallybegan. In sheer arms, the Bolshevikswere infinitely inferior to the imperialistpowers who intervened to crush therevolution along with the contras of theday, the White Army. The Bolsheviksemerged victorious; Deutscher wrote:"They agitated; they appealed to the .consciousness of the soldiers, of theworkers in uniform in those interven­tionist armies. The French navy, sent tosuppress the revolution, rose in mutinyin Odessa and refused to fight againstthe Bolsheviks...."

While the bourgeoisie can onlymaintain its rule over the laboringmajority through the massive use ofintimidation, force and violence, forMarxists violence is a necessary evil­one imposed upon the defense of thestruggle for socialism by the bloody­minded ness of the exploiting class inpower. After the Cuban people defeatedthe CIA's Bay of Pigs invaders, theCastro regime traded the capturedgusanos for needed medical supplies. InEI Salvador, the leftist insurgents havefollowed a policy of turning captured

continued on page 9

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mately 8 millions. If we assume the av­erage weight of a soldier to [be] ISO lb.,this means that between I August 1914,and 1 January 1918, the capitalists hadbrought to market twelve hundredmillion pounds of putrid human flesh."

- The A BC of Communism

Or as Rosa Luxemburg put it in herJunius Pamphlet (1916):

"Dividends are rising-s-proletariansfalling.and with each one there sinks afighter of the future, a soldier of therevolution, a savior of humanity fromthe yoke of capitalism, into the grave."

An end to this slaughter is the goal ofMarxist revolutionists. And we hope toput an end to the bourgeoisie's rule withas little bloodshed as possible. We wishwe could be pacifists, but wecan't-s-theold social order does not giveway to thenew in a peaceful and orderly 'fashion.Isaac Deutscher noted that, "In embrac­ing the vision of a nonviolent society,Marxism ... has gone further and deeperthan any pacifist preachers of nonvio­lence have ever done. Why? BecauseMarxism laid bare the roots of violencein our society, which the othershave not done" ("Marxism and Non­violence," 1966).

Certainly, the Russian Revolutionwas a nearly bloodless event, carriedout, Deutscher writes, "in such a waythat, according to all the hostile eyewit­nesses (such as the Western ambassa-

educate their class brothers in the armyabout the imperialist character of thewar and their own interest in opposingit.

The global conflict between theantiquated imperialist order and theemancipation of the proletariat does notreduce itself to a division between"good" and "bad" peoples. In battlesbetween just and unjust causes, Marx­ists have a side but nevertheless do notpropose as our program the exterrnina­tion of all those sent to fight for thewrong side (a program which, if carriedout, would long ago have done awaywith the proletariat of most of theWestern .capitalist nations). In warswhere no side represents an advance forelementary justice, we stand for revolu­tionary defeatism on both sides. Consid-.er, in addition to-Lebanon, the Iran-Iraq!war. Is it "social-patriotic" to advise theIranian and Iraqi troops not to slaugh­ter each other for their respectiveregimes, to turn the guns around and gohome? The squalid Falklands/Malvinaswar was another such case. Neither theArgentine nor the British workingmasses had anything to gain from thevictory of their "own" murderous rulersin the Falklands; they only stood to losetheir lives. (In fact, Argentina's defeatled straight to the downfall of themilitary regime; Britain's victory led.tothe re-election of Margaret Thatcher.)Those who want bloodthirstiness mustlook to Thatcher, who ordered thegratuitous sinking of the Argentinecruiser Belgrano, taking the lives ofmore than 320 young men in the icywaters of the South Atlantic.

From Verdun to Hiroshima, 'theimperialists wage their barbaric, cyclicalwars for profit, turning entire genera­tions into cannon fodder. Bukharinwrote about the hideous carnage of thefirst World War:

"The leading characteristic of the warwas that it was murderous to anunparalleled degree. The levying oftroops advanced with giant strides. Theproletariat was positively decimated onthe battlefields. The reports show thatdown to March, 1917, the number ofdead. wounded, and missing totalled25 millions: by 1 January. 1918, thenumber of the killed had been approxi-

question of social revolution, or evennational liberation, that is missing.

The flip side of the dimwitted NewLeft bloodlust exemplified by the SDSWeathermen was the Socialist WorkersParty's Vietnam slogan, "Bring OurBoys Home Now!" Tailored to appeal toliberal defeatism within sections of thebourgeoisie, the slogan was a classbetrayal precisely because the interna­tional proletariat had a side inVietnam-"our" boys were the NLF/North Vietnamese. There were two waysthe Americans could come home:withdrawal or in body bags. A commonthread runs through the SWP's social­democratic slogan and the New Leftistcalls for exterminating the Yankeepigs-both despair of mobilizing theproletariat to wage class struggle againstimperialist war, and both renounceappealing to the ranks of the army alongclass lines.

Imperialism's hemorrhaging in Viet­nam and the consequences of itsdefeat-the profound demoralization ofthe U.S. armed forces, the convulsionsthroughout American society, the fearof "another Vietnam" which has stayedthe hand of imperialism-were goodthings from the standpoint of theworld's toiling masses. The "Vietnamsyndrome" here at home provided abreathing space for national liberationstruggles such as those in the formerPortuguese colonies of southern Africa,tending to prevent a direct Americanintervention into Angola in 1975-76. Ithas inhibited Reagan. thus far fromtrying a wholesale assault with U.S.troops against the Nicaraguan regimeand the Salvadoran' leftist insurgents.But we do not gloat over the deaths ofrank-and-file U.S. soldiers. Among theGis and Marines who were sent toVietnam were to be found, as the losingwar dragged on, some of the angriest,most bitter and most important oppo­nents of the government's war. Unlikethe New Left radicals who went, withoutblinking an eye, from counseling draft­ees and giving Gis flowers to glorifyingtheir being blown to bits, we sought todo Marxist propaganda work amongthe American troops. We said thatantiwar youth if drafted should seek to

. 6 JANUARY 1984 5

~~artacist League Press Release

Moonie God Apologizes to. Marxist "Satan"group known as the Spartacist League(SPL) was alleged to have been involvedin the violent portion of the anti-Klandemonstration," in fact, "investigationby the Washington Metropolitan PoliceDepartment and the United StatesCapitol Police has not uncovered anyindication that the 'aforementionedgroup did more than urge participationin the anti-Klan demonstration byresidents of the District of Columbia,who were and are unsupportive of theKlan's goals."

Wolkenstein noted that the letterprinted today by the Washington Timeswas a resubmission by the SL/SYL. Theoriginal letter included the SL's funda­mental Marxist position that: "Webelieve, and we believe that historyshows, that the liberation of the mass ofthe working people and other oppressed

-comes only through the conscious masseducation and organization of theworkers. Therefore, any attempts atsubstituting 'heroes' or any 'desperatedeeds' of such heroes (actually despair­ing individuals in most cases) derails thevalid and necessary path of socialliberation. Naturally enemies of suchliberation are wont to falsely projectMarxists as violent crazies, bombthrowers and surrogates for sinisteralien forces."

SL spokesman Walt Senterfitt addi­tionally stated: "It's no accident that it iswe Marxists who have ended updefending the liberties we all cherishagainst the Moonies' attempts to sub­vert them. We've defended those liber­ties in a small way via this lawsuit, but ina larger way through our consistentdefense of the right of the working classto organize, and to fight against race­terrOL".

Klan/Nazi terror without being subjectto vicious frame-ups."

Jonathan Lubell stated, "This settle­ment is extremely significant in light ofthe fact that the media will not-generallysettle cases of this nature. The Washing­ton Times' libels against the SL/SYLwere dangerous as well as false. Thissettlement is recognition of the essentialfact that the SL/SYL were not-involvedin provoking violence." Lubell is anationally known libel lawyer whosuccessfully took the case of Herbert v.Lando to the Supreme Court.

The SL/SYL has overwhelmingevidence exposing the Moonies' libel,including a statement submitted by FBIdirector William Webster to the 1983FBI Oversight Hearings of the SenateSubcommittee on Security and Terror­ism. Webster's March 10 submissionincluded the statement that though "a

Unification Church's attempt to give arespectable, conservative cover toMoon's plans for theocratic dictator­ship-in the name of fighting 'the GreatSatan' of Marxism, of course. But theMoonie 'Lord of the Second Advent'had to apologize to his most hated'Satan,' revolutionary Marxism."

"Our successful fight against theMoonies' libel is an important victoryfor all those who hailed the Labor/Black Mobilization's stopping the ter­rorist Klan march on November 27,"said SL counsel Wolkenstein, "This wasa libel that kills. In falsely targeting theSL/SYL as would-be cop-killers, theMoonies were trying to set up theorganization's members and supportersto be shot first and questioned later. Wetook up the suit in self-defense, toprotect not only our good name, but theright of anyone to organize against

hoto27 November 1982: Moon's press saw Satanic horror In thousands of blackyouth, unionists and revolutionary Marxists triumphantly marching the routethe Klan had vowed to take.

SPARTACIST LEAGUE/U.S.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEMonday, 26 December 1983

Sun Myung Moon's Washington"D.C. daily newspaper, the WashingtonTimes, was forced today to retract itslibelous attack on two Marxist organi­zations, the Spartacist League (SL) andits 'youth affiliate, the Spartacus YouthLeague (SYL).

Attorneys for the SL/SYL hadbrought a libel suit on June 14, 1983against Moon's Times-Tribune Corp.,owner of the Washington Times. Thesuit filed by attorneys Jonathan W.Lubell of Cohn, Glickstein, Lurie,Ostrin, Lubell & Lubell and Rachel H.Wolkenstein, General Counsel for theSL, charged that the Washington Times'November 30, 1982 article "Left winggroup linked to D.C. riot" had mali­ciously and falsely libeled the SL/SYLas criminal provocateurs, as "provokingviolence" against the police during theNovember 27, 1982 anti-Klan protestsin Washington, D.C.

Today, December 26, the Washing­ton Times, in a settlement won by theSL/SYL, published a letter by the SL/SYL detailing the activities of the SL­initiated "Labor/Black Mobilization toStop the KKK in Washington, D.C.November 27," along with its ownintroduction, including the key state­ment: "We no longer charge that theSpartacist League/Spartacus YouthLeague provoked violence on that day."

Spartacist League spokesman WaltSenterfitt commented on the settlement:"This victory has helped spike thesinister, ultraright Moonies' bid forrespectability and influence in America.The Washington Times is the Moonie

Only six months after we flied the complaint on June 14,wegot a retraction from the WashIngton Times.

~~::~:::;'s-he~~~~((h 10 put a dent In ~~a~~e~e~~~. volunteer the bolt wore a

TheSPilrlaCISIS were handing pl'OJec· The volunteer, who went to 15th and H

~i~~I~;~:.nt~:n~o~~~e~~~~~ [hem, even Streets NWfln Sa[urdar,had a,'khed [heo r e pro

be published about the SpartacistLeague in preparation for anything tobe done to us. But now the press of theMoonie god has been forced to apolo­gize to the Marxist "Satan."

• WV PhotoLegal team brings case to successful conclusion:Jonathan Lubell (right) and Spartacist Leaguegeneral counsel Rachel Wolkenstein.

WORKERS VANGUARD

The Spa h League, an

out political posters to non-members,handing them rocks instead. This packof lies was indeed libel that kills. In itssupreme arrogance the Moonie pressassumed the most grotesque libels could

,: COMPLAINT

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The Moonie press framed up theLabor/Black Mobilization in an articleon 30 November 1982, accusing itsorganizers of provoking violenceagainst the police. The WashingtonTimes charged the SL/SYL had "car­ried containers of heavy metal bolts andother missiles to be handed out in thecrowd for throwing." They claimed,"The Spartacists were handing projec-

, tiles to anyone who wanted them, evenchildren...." The article portrayed us as­SOme kind of paramilitary outfit whosemembers wear "blue, black or red beretsaccording to their rank." The Washing­ton Times claimed we refused to hand

6

lawyers knew our record of successfullyfighting against such dangerous set-updefamations. They knew that in 1981,we 'sued California Attorney General(now governor) George Deukrnejjan forincluding the Spartacist League on a listof "terrorists" with which "law enforce­ment would have to deal." As a result ofthe suit and campaign, the AttorneyGeneral's office was forced to retractand send the retraction to policeagencies around the country.

And they knew of the successfullawsuit in the case of Jane Margolis, asupporter of the SL and an electeddelegate to the Communications Work­ers of America (CWA) 1979convention,who was pulled off the convention floor

_and held incommunicado by the SecretService when Jimmy Carter addressedthe union. This outrage was meant tobrand her as someone too dangerous tobe in the same room with the president.The lawsuit forced the Secret Service toofficially apologize and hand over$3,500 which Margolis donated to theCWA Defense Fund.

The Spartacist League didn't ask forthis case. We took it on to defend ourparty and its supporters from a set-uplibel that kills. As we said on 14 June1983 when we filed the suit: "We do notintend to be nameless, faceless victimswho can, with impunity, be blown awayin the dead of night." We fought to win. ~And we did win, against the mostvicious, anti-Communist, and vindic­tively litigious outfit in the world.•

(continued from page 12)

MooniesRetract DeadlyLibel ...

What the Moonies Refused to Print

FBI Direc;tor's TestimonyExposes Moonie Libel

WV Photo27 November 1982: Labor/Black Mobilization stopped the Klan!

We reprint below our statement ofpolitical purpose on the successful anti- 'Klan action on 27 November 1982.refuting the libelous charges that theSL/SYL provoked violence against thepolice. Submitted as a leiter to bepublished with the Washington Times'retraction/introduction. this statementwas rejectedby the Moonie press.

To The Editor:The Spartacist League (SL) and the

SpartacusYouth League (SYL) submitthis letter to the Washington Times insettlement of our libel lawsuit againstthe Times-Tribune Corporation forpublishing an article on the anti-Klandemonstrations in Washington, D.C.,November 27, 1982accusing the SL andthe SYL of provoking violence againstthe police. We here describe the SL andSYL initiated Labor/Black Mobiliza­tion to Stop the KKK, summarizedfrom our public press, Workers Van­guard and Young Spartacus, writtenimmediately after this demonstration.Our description of the events is a fulland accurate accounting of the SL andSYL initiated demonstrations. More­over, our description is verified by thewidely shown videotape of thatdemonstration.

The Labor/Black Mobilization wasbuilt through the participation oforganized labor-over 70 union locals,officials and executive boards endorsed.A permit for the rally at Constitutionand First Avenues, near the CapitolBuilding and the beginning of the Klan'sroute of march, was secured from theappropriate police authorities on No­vember 22. During the next four days,the SL and SYL posted thousands ofplacards and distributed hundreds ofthousands of leaflets announcing theLabor/Black Mobilization rally.

The Labor/Black Mobilization rallybegan at about 9:30 AM on November27 and continued until about 12:40PM,engaging the participation of 5,000,predominantly black and trade union­ist, who listened to speeches and tookpart in militant chanting, favorites being"KKK-Ain't no way! You ain't gonnamarch today!" and "1,2,3,4-Time tofinish the Civil War! 5,6,7,8-Forwardto a workers state!"

We reprint here excerpts from FBIdirector Webster's recently publiclyreleased testimony and submissionbefore the Senate Subcommittee onSecurity and Terrorism.

For approximately one and one halfhours, the demonstrators were face toface with the police who had lined theConstitution Avenue side of the rallysite. At 12:40 it was learned that theKlan would not march and, as the policewithdrew, the demonstrators spontane­ously entered Constitution Avenue,proclaiming, "We stopped the Klan! Westopped the Klan!" Protesters rushed tothe top of Capitol Hill and then wheeledaround and headed toward Pennsylva­nia Avenue to Lafayette Park, theKlan's intended destination. Thousandsstreamed up what was to have been theKKK march route, stopped traffic, andexchanged victory salutes with drivers.

Prior to and at the time the Labor/Black Mobilization demonstrators en­tered Lafayette Park,on the oppositeside of the-Park, a police riot, includingthe use of tear gas, was in progressagainst others who had assembled near

, Lafayette Park. The Labor/Black Mo­bilization demonstrators were directedby our monitors to the center of Lafay­ette Park, away from police charges andtear gassing. A brief rally was held toassert the absence of the Klan.After this spirited rally, the crowdwas dispersed quickly and peacefully;monitors led the demonstrators awayfrom the police and tear gassing and outof the park, without incident. Manyhundreds of protesters then attended avictory party at the Bellvue Hotel in the,Capitol area.

The SL chant "1,2,3,4-Time tofinish the Civil War! 5,6,7,8-Forwardto a workers state!" caught the spirit ofthe day. Black chattel slaves wereemancipated by that great war only tobe stripped of political rights and eco­nomically subjugated. Blacks wereintegrated into American economy butsequestered at the bottom. That is why itis going to take the working-classconquest of power, a socialist revolu­tion, to lay the basis for black freedom.While the liberal-led civil rights move­ment held out the promise of blackequality, black people continue to beground up by unemployment andpoverty, and kicked in the face by theKlan's preferred candidate in the WhiteHouse. Furthermore, Washington, D.C.is not simply 75 percent black, it's aSouthern black town. Feelings ran deep

Mr. Chairman, it is my understand­ing that the violence which occurredon November 27, 1982, has not beentracked to any group or organization. Ibelieve that all of those arrested for

that day because many of the partici­pants had first hand experience of racistterror of the KKK nightriders. That'swhy so many people turned out and whyour chant was so popular.

The SL and SYL initiated Labor/Black Mobilization rally near theCapitol and spontaneous march to'Lafayette Park were controlled, orderlyand passed without, any incidence ofviolence. A monitors squad had beenformed, including several members eachfrom the Laborers, AFSCME, Team­sters and Transit unions, as well as tenInternational Longshoremen Associa-

Our slogan"Finish theCivil War-

Forward (0 aWorkers State!"

caught themilitant spirit of

November 27.

tion members from Norfolk and union'supporters of the SL. It is a credit to themonitors and participants in thatdemonstration that there were noincidents of provocation or violencedirected at the police.

Nevertheless, the media-with thenotable exception of the black press­portrayed the anti-Klan demonstrationas widespread violence and looting. Infact, there was a minimum amount ofdisorder and it was provoked by thepolice. What happened on November 27was that the Klan was stopped. But itwas only the Washington Times thatnamed the Spartacist League and theSpartacus Youth League as provoca­teurs or the source of looting andviolence against the police.

Many of the victims of the police riothad been at other anti-Klan demonstra­tions that day. Aside fr~m the Labor/

\., '

engaging in violent activity were foundto be residents of the District ofColumbia; whereas, the groups thatwere petitioning for parade rights were'from outside the District of Columbia,I cannot say at this point that there wasno manipulation of the District ofColumbia residents at that time, norcan I say with certainty that there wasmanipulation. It is the current consen­sus of all law enforcement agencies

, that the violence which occurred was, spontaneous and a reflection of out­rage that the Ku Klux Klan peoplewere not going to march, were notgoing to be exposed to whatever formof protest these organizations intendedto register, whether it was simply toboo or chant or actually throw rocks,stones, or shoes. (p. 38)

A group known as the SpartacistLeague (S PL) was alleged to have beeninvolved in the violent portion of theanti-Klan demonstration....

Investigation by the WashingtonMetropolitan Police Department andthe United States Capitol Police has

Black Mobilization, there were severalsmaller demonstrations, the largest ofthese the rally called by the All PeoplesCongress (APC), of Sam Marcy'sWorkers World Party' (WWP) whichtook place at /McPherson Square.There, the young blacks who had beenmobilized and promised anti-Klanaction were frustrated by the politicalreformism of that rally and lack ofproper outlet for their rage against theKlan.

Having stopped the Klan by its meremilitant presence, neither the SL, theSYL, nor any other component of our

mass Labor/Black Mobilization dem­onstration sought, participated in orcondoned any violence against police­men or any other persons. This attitudeand kind of activity flows from theMarxist belief which separates us fromany species of terrorist or anarchist. Webelieve, and we believe that historyshows, that the liberation of the mass ofthe working people and other oppressedcomes only through the conscious masseducation and organization of theworkers. Therefore, any attempts atsubstituting "heroes" or any "desperatedeeds" of such heroes (actually despair­ing individuals in most cases) derails thevalid and necessary path of socialliberation. Naturally enemies of suchliberation are wont to falsely projectMarxists as violent crazies, bombthrowers and surrogates for sinisteralien forces.•

S HIIG,9~~287

~, FBI_O~~SIGHT AND AUTHORIZATION

HEARINGBEFORE THE

SVBCOMMlTTEE ONSECURITY AND TERRORISM

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARYUNITED STATES SENATE'

NINETY,EIGHTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

ON

RESPONSIBILITIES, AUTHORITI, AND ACTIVITIES OF THEFEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION

FEBRUARY 2, 19K1

Serial No. J-98-4

Printed for th!, use of tm- Commit1M' on the Judiciary

rs GO\-lHN'.U:NT I'llINTING OFHCE

WA!';IiINGTON 1'l~3

not uncovered any indication that theaforementioned 'group did more thanurge participation in the anti-Klandemonstration by residents of theDistrict of Columbia, who were andare unsupportive of the Klan's goals.The SPL is not the subject of a fBIinvestigation.. <•• (p. 68)

6 JANUARY 1984

An Unusual.al1d Gratifying VietoryOur victory against the Moonie

press is certainly unusual andgratifying.: It is also a little per­plexing to. have secured thisapology from a group which hasdeclared revolutionary Marxismthe root of all evil: indeed "Satan"

himself. At bottom we knew theWashington~Time'Slib~l'wo"Uldt>epatentlyopviolisrlD .:Jurors ... ofnearlyanypolitical.persuasion oxsocialcoI'l1Position;',IJut we~lsQknewtnith'W~~Q9tel}()ugh to gi"y:eus victory.' Finally, we cannot

know for certain why they did it.All we can say is that we.are damnglad it's over. But we will do it allover again if wehave to-e-asan actof self-defense. We have a re­markable record of success inbeating back the attempts to label

us as "terrorists." Once again wedeclare: "A Workers Party Hasthe Right to Organize!" And wewill continue to use every resourceatourdisposal to protect the partyand program of the future prole­tarian revolution.

Fear of Discovery?

and

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,..... \" ....,.

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- ..... - IIlIIIII s::c_==-.....==--._~_Moonie Press Empire

1ic""W 'MOODie Machinations in Latin America

The Moonles have plenty to hide. Our press, WV and Young lp-artacus,exposed the sinister designs and connections of this ultraright-wing cult.

IN!jI!I.IM SInict II..... lic!I!'WiIIlmr

Fascists, Gusanos and MooniesSubpoenas were served on the

Washington Times: the pre-trial 'discovery process was started inJuly, before the Moonies an':swered our legal complaint. TheWashington Times editors andreporters who prepared, wroteand edited the article were servedwitha Notice to Take Depositionand Demand for Production ofDocuments on the preparation,investigation and decision-makingprocess preceding the publicationof the article. The WashingtonTimes faced legal" and publicscrutiny and disclosure of. itseditorial and publishing stan­dards, guidelines and procedures.Attorney for the SL JonathanLubell stated: "We felt thatthrough our own extensive investi­gation and the anticipated resultsof pre-trial discovery, we would beable to uncover sufficient informa­tion concerning the manner inwhich their article had been puttogether that we could establishthe required fault by the Washing­ton Times in publishing thearticle." The Washington Timeschose to retract and publish theSLjSYL letter.

: C.It.. 061JS~n

; IIOTICE TO T,uEDEPOSITIOlt UD

: DEMNID FOJlPRODUCTIONOF >

.; DOCUJIIE)ITS

PLEASE TAICE NO'!'ICE TflAT. 'pur.u.an~ ~o aule 30 of the

superior Court Rule. _Civil, plaintiff. THE SNIlTACIST LEAGUE

and 'tHE SPAJt'I'ACUS YOU'l'H LEAGUE.•hall take the depodtion upon

oral ex_ination of defendant NEWS WORLD COI9IUIUCATIONS. I~C ••

by i~a ellployee, the editor who .upervisedthe prep.....tion.

writing and/or editing of the newap.aper .rUele publi.hed in

,ft_ Wa.hinqtGn Ti_. on -Nov_berlO. 1912. un4er the h.adline

"~ft-wing 9rouP' linked to D.C. rio~", on ~he lrd day.of,AUCJuat.

1911, e~encing at, 10;00 A.M., before' .. no~.ry publie or other

per.on authoriaedby la" to adMini.ter oath., at the office

of '1i9ar ·.nd Buffone, 1102 18t:hStreet, N.W •• Sui~e 60,1 •

....hington. D.C. 20016, and that ••id deponent is requested

to pToduce at said deposition the docwnentli set. forth in the

Dated; New York, flew yorkJuly n, 1913

RACHEL H. NOLII:ENSTEIN299· BroadwayN.. York, New York 10001un) 213-1886

___, ~ ~~ X

TIGAR'" BUFFONE1302 18th Street. Ill.W.Washington, D.C. 20036(202) 185-8900

COHN••~L1CKSTEIN. LURIE, OST IN,

LUBELL, LU~~~ I,By;

Jonathan W.LUbel~J.]/l,venue of the AmericasN York. New York 10019(212) 1H-4000

Attorneys .for plaintiffs

MDlS MORLO COMIIUNICATIONS. INC., andISAIAH POOLE,

I;)efendan~••

SUPERIOR COURT OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA_________..: ._~,;. ~~ ~ ~ - x

'tHE: SPJl,RTACIST LEAGuE; and THE SPfUlTACUS'OUTHLEAGOE, "

"Moonies Against Our Children"

-, • UPIMoonle mass marriage in Madison Square Garden. The "True Parent"designates the couples, who consummate the act only at the behest ofUnification Church authorities.

The deadly threat behind the Moon­ie Washington Times' libel against ourorganization generated widespreadconcern and anger among manyparents, relatives and friends of SLjSYL supporters and members. Weprint below a draft letter, intendedforpublication in the New York Times,worked on by parents 'and closerelatives of members.

Beyond expressing obvious concern 'for their children's safety in the face ofthis ominous Moonie set-up attempt,this draft parents' letter also makes abroader and fundamental point: thatunlike Moon's cult of the "great GodFather," the SLjSYLjinds repugnantsuch cults' attempts to forcibly breakmembers' deep personal connectionswith theirfamilies. For us, the person-

01 relations of children and theirparents are solely .0 matter for theindividuals involved. Our organiza­tion is based on a political program:whether or not you agree with it, atleast with us you can have rationalpolitical- discourse. In fact someparents thought the letter's commentthat they "do not necessarily like orapprove of" their children's participa­tion in the SL!S YL was too categori­cal, noting they found that commit­ment admirable.

Parents and relatives from wide­ly varying backgrounds-includingworking-class families, former Com­munist Party supporters, business­men, former government employees,and conservatives-expressed willing­ness to sign and publish such aletter.

We were preparing to proceed withpublication-while seeking to suitablytake into account protection forsignatories from the Moonies' well-

Draft StatementOur children are political supporters

and in many cases active members ofthe Spartacist League and the Sparta­cus Youth League (SLjSYL).

The cult of Sun Myung Moon,known as the Moonies, has criminallylibeled the SLjSYL in its newspaper,the Washington Times (30 November1982).The Moonies charge the Sparta­cists with "provoking violence" againstthe police at a protest against the KuKlux Klan in Washington, D.C. onNovember 27, 1982. The Moonieshave thus set up our children for policeharassment and repression.

We do not necessarily like orapprove of our children's participationin these Marxist Trotskyist organiza­tions. But whatever our differenceswith our children, we know that the SLand SYL are not violent, criminal orterrorist organizations. They do notprovoke attacks on the police.

Sun Myung Moon is a self­appointed "new messiah" from aSouth Korean munitions plant whodemands absolute worship of himselfas ~d. Additionally, Moon himselfand his senior followers have long beendeeply involved, internationally and

- domestically, in sinister financialchicanery. The Moonies threaten ourcultural values whatever our ethnic or

known vindictiveness toward individ­uals opposing them-when the suc­cessful settlement was reached. Wewould like here to express our thanksto all the parents and relatives in­volved in working on this letter fortheir thoughtful comments andsuggestions.

religious origin. The Moon-cult breaksits young members from their mostdeeply felt values, family loyalties andcultural heritage. We have seen theresults in the glassy-eyed stares offlower-selling children and the massmarriages arranged by Moon himself.

Marxism does not lead our childrento break personal ties with theirfamilies. The Spartacist League doesnot rob parents of their children.

Our children do not engage indeception in their political work; theyare clear about what they stand for.We can agree with U.S. SenatorDaniel Patrick Moynihan who re­marked duringa Harvard speech whenhe was U.N. Ambassador, that theSpartacists "sail under their owncolors." He read from a 'Spartacistleaflet which stated the intention "tobuild a socialist youth organizationwhich can intervene in all socialstruggles with a revolutionary pro­gram based on the politics of Marx,Lenin, and Trotsky." And he added:"It is doubtless perverse to do so, but Ihappen to find that an honorablestatement of purpose" (Commentary,December 1912).

As parents ofSLjSYL members andsupporters, we endorse the legal fightof the SLjSYL against the Moonieframeup and criminal defamation.

8 WORKERS VANGUARD

Victories Cost Money•

Women and Revolution No. 27Winter 1983-84

9

Single issue: 50¢Subscription: $2/4 issuesMake checks payable/mail 10:Spartacist Publishing Co.Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116

gut reaction of the union leadership, inthat shop, that next morning, when theyfound out that one of their members hadbeen murdered by the racists up the hill,should have been to call everybody out.Out on the sidewalk, We're going upthere and we're going to tell these peoplethat you're not going to get away withthis stuff anymore.

That's the Jind of strategy thatArnold Cherryand the[TWU Local 100president] John Lawes don't want tohear. But that's our strategy. Ourstrategy is to mobilize the rank and fileof this union and through that mobiliza­tion to forge a leadership which can takepower in this union. If we had been asignificant factor during the 1980strikewe would have been fighting like crazyfor strike committees in each location­terminal, bam, depot-to decide whatwe're going to do. We're going to goback to work? Let's see what theconditions are. Let's read it, do what thecoal miners do-you read it out wordfor word and discuss it. If you don't likeit you take it outside and burn it. Thenyou go back to work if you do like it. Butyou don't go back unless you know whatyou're going to go back for.

I asked one of Cherry's main support­ers, Roger Nichols, "Well, if you guyshad tried to keep out guys after thesellout came down, how much do youthink you could have kept out?" He said,"Oh, I think only about half of thetransportation system." I said, "Roger,half of the transportation system notgoing back to work? Now listen, first ofall even before, during the strike, you'dhave to get the strike committees, you'dhave to get guys in carpools going toother unions, newsletters, a strike­bulletin-from the rank and file fromthe opposition, knowing that there is asellout coming down the line. Warningthe workers, telling them what is goingon, . sending delegations to the LongIsland Rail Road, Metro-North, StatenIsland railroad, PATH, trying to shutthese places down." And he said, "Halfthe subways." I said, "You stupid fool,you might have had to make a fastretreat, but if you had kept out half ofthe subways you may have been able toturn it around and bring out the rest ofthe system.rThey think that defeat isgood because everyone will vote for usthe next time around. But no, JohnLawe got an overwhelming vote becausepeople got conservative. They didn'twant to fight anymore. Because theyhad gotten beat so bad.

So you've had a lot of defeats.November 27th was a victory. Thepolicies that the Spartacist League callsfor, and supporters in the unions fightfor, can lead to victory. And of course alot of guys say, "Well, we agree with 75percent, but when you start talkingabout Russia people say 'oh, shit'." Butthat was a victory. So we have totalk about Russia. Because, like KarlMarx said, the working person has nocountry. And so we are international­ists, we're working class and we'rerevolutionary.•

(continued from page 3)you'll be less likely to come out lookingfor the knockout punch the next roundbecause defeat breeds defeat and victorybreeds victory.

So Reagan is looking for a victory. Hegot it in Grenada. But we had a victoryin Washington, D.C. [on 27 November1982]-a very important victory, a sensethat you can win something. TheSpartacist League and its supporters arecoming to be seen as the major forcein anti-fascist work in this country,increasingly drawing in the labor move­ment. Now you hear this term "labor/black defense." Now, what does thatmean? The labor movement is blackpeople's best ally in this country.Increasingly through these anti-fascistactions the labor movement has come inmore and more to play an active role,including what we saw in Washington­where heavily black unions endorsed,mobilized and brought their membersout to stop the Klan.

Now Arnold Cherry doesn't seethings this way. He has no intention ofmobilizing the ranks of the union. It's abasic difference we have with him, Herelies on other forces: the DemocraticParty, the courts, the arbitration pro­ceedings which he has now denouncedafter he had initially supported them.But mobilize the rank and file? No way,no way. Because he's got ajob to do forthe capitalists. He's the Jesse Jackson ofour union.

If Willie Turks [black NYC transitworker murdered by a racist lynch mob]had had a gun he might still be alive. The

Trotskyist secret cell within the German­navy at Brest.

Today there are a halfa million youngmen in the Bundeswehr (West Germanarmy) and, as in the past, they are likelyto be sent off to fight for unjust causes.We would work fortheirdefeat, but thatdoes not mean that we propose theextermination of every German workerin uniform. We seek rather the burstingasunderfrom within, i.e., from below, ofthe imperialist armed forces as part ofthe struggle to realize comrade Lenin'sprofoundly humanist view of the "so­cialist system _of society, which, byabolishing the division of mankind intoclasses, by abolishing all exploitation ofman by man, and of one nation by othernations, wilt inevitably abolish allpossibility of war,".

Our successful suit is a victory forthe democratic and cultural valuesprized by many Americans, valueswhich the sinister Moonle cultseeks to destroy.

the killing of innocent civilians-be it onboard KAL 007, an Israeli bus inJerusalem, a pub in Northern Ireland.With KAL, the fact is that the Sovietsdid not knowingly down a civilianpassenger jet. Had they done so, we said,it would have been - worse than abarbaric atrocity, it would have been anidiocy worthy of the Israelis. Thisseemingly uncontentious positionagainst wanton bloodshed provokedcharges of "softness" from critics whosevicarious bloodthirstiness tends to bedirectly proportional to the distancefrom their own appetites. From a safedistance, the petty-bourgeois radicalsembrace the "good" peoples (if neces­sary first inventing them, as in Lebanontoday) and for the "bad," well, the onlygood one is a dead one. Reactionary initself, such an attitude-completelydivorced as it is from Marxist classanalysis-necessarily gives way to anti­communist public opinion. Thus we seemany of yesterday's "radicals" joiningup ideologically with U.S. imperialismover the plight of "poor little Afghani­stan" and the crushing of counterrevolu­tionary Polish Solidarnosc, (In Afghan­istan, the "freedom fighters" arefanatical Islamic defenders of the brideprice, while the "evil superpower"defends the rights of the Afghan peopleto emerge from the ninth century,including the right of women to learn toread. In Poland, "underdog" LechWalesa and Solidarnosc represent theVatican, Western bankers and the CIAin league against the Polish Stalinistbureaucracy, _threatening a bloodyreturn to capitalist "democracy," i.e.,wage slavery and NATO missiles.) I

On another level, there is the conflictbetween the nationalist/Stalinist andthe Trotskyist approaches to the anti­Nazi resistance during World War II.The policy of the French Resistance wasto attack lone German privates standingout on lonely streets at night trying to'pick up girls; a typical "tactic" was tbcutoff their genitals and stuff them in theirmouths, Predictably, this didn't lead totoo many German recruits to the causeof the Resistance. The French Trotsky­ists sought to appeal to the classconsciousness of the German soldiers(many of whose parents were Commu­nists and Social Democrats), carryingout at great cost a policy of fraterniza­tion. Around the publication of Arbei­-ter und Soldat ("Worker and Soldier"),a clandestine newspaper for Germanclass-conscious soldiers, they formed a

including legal and printing, publicityand other expenses, have amounted toover $30,000. Only a fraction of thishas been raised so far. We need yourgenerous contributions to pay fortoday's victory, preparing the way towin tomorrow's battles.

It's 1984 in Reagan's racist,capitalist America. And the PartisanDefense Committee needs your help.Money is urgently needed to defendLauren Mozee and Ray Palmiero,phone strikers fired and framed up onfelony charges for defending theirunion picket line against a racist scabassault. Our successful lawsuit againstthe Moonie "libel that kills" helps toundercut the concerted attempt to setup as "terrorists" leftists and otherperceived political opponents of thegovernment. Now the PDC is backing

. the SL legal suit against the new FBIGuidelines which mean increasedwitchhunting of groups and individu­als labeled as "terrorist" and "violent."

Celebrate this victory against theMoonie press with a contribution tothe PDC. Send your checks to thePartisan Defense - Committee, P.O.Box 99, Canal Street Station, NewYork, NY 10013.

The successful conclusion of thelibel suit against the Moonie;. Wash­ington Times newspaper is not only atremendous success for the SpartacistLeague / Spartacus Youth League. It isa victory for the more than 5,000 blackcitizens of Washington, D.C., Norfolkshipyard workers, New York Citytransit workers arid .other unionistswho joi-nedwith us in the Labor/BlackMobilization that stopped the KuKlux Klan on 27 November 1982.

This victory also belongs to all whohave opposed the fanatical ultra-rightMoon empire and its "respectable"mouthpiece for Central Americandeath squads, South African apartheidbutchers, Argentine and Uruguayanmilitary torturers, Japanese fascists,South Korean spies and the anti­Soviet lynch mobs staged by theMoonies.

Many have been afraid to openlytake on the Moonies, with their vast'billions, prestigious lawyers, influen­tial and sinister connections. We haveshown they can be fought, and can bedefeated. But this victory did not comecheap. Legal fees alone were over$24,000, investigative costs over$4,000. Total costs for this lawsuit,

Marxism...(continued from page 5)

enemy soldiers over to the Red Crossunharmed-an effective incentive tomass desertion from the junta's army.Contrast this with the fascistic deathsquads who operate against the popu­lace under the principle of "the onlygood one is a dead one." The principalweapon in the proletariat's arsenal is notforce per se, but the ability to underminethe capitalist regiments by appealing tocommonclass interests. Even in defenseof just causes, Marxists are guided by arational calculus and not by bloodlust.

There are situations in whichinsufficient force. used initially leads togreater bloodshed ultimately. Had theNicaraguan Sandinistas beheaded thecounterrevolutionary pro-Somocistaorganizations, e.g., by trials -of Somo­za's torturers by revolutionary tribu­nals, the Nicaraguan masses todaywould not be forced to fight and dieagainst the contra invaders. We raise theslogan "Kill the Invaders!" not becausewe want to see a lot of dead bodies lyingaround, but because if every little bandthe CIA sends over is wiped out, and-thecounterrevolutionary capitalist "fifthcolumn" in Nicaragua is expropriated asa class and its power broken,bloodshedwill be minimized, while conciliationstrengthens the hand of the U.S.-backedcontras who aim to drown in blood thepossibility of socialist revolutionarydevelopment in Nicaragua.

Or consider the U.S.' Korean AirLines Flight 007 Cold War provocationagainst the Soviet Union last summer, agrotesque example of the ruling class'swillingness to cynically squander hu­man life. The Soviet military took theonly course of defensive action possible,under the circumstances-i-i.e., given therefusal of the jet to communicate, the .Russians were unable to identify it whileat the same time a U.S. spy plane wasclearly in contact with it. But we do not"hail" the shooting down of 200-plusinnocent civilians; we solidarize with theTASS statement of 2 September 1983:

"Tass is authorized to state that in theleading circles of the Soviet Unionregret is expressed over the loss ofhuman life and at the same time aresolute condemnation of those whoconsciously or as a result of criminaldisregard have allowed the death ofpeople and are now trying to use thisoccurrence for unseemly politicalaims."

Marxists do not support nor advocate

6 JANUARY 1984

Greyhound<StrikersWere:SofdrOut!Every ingredient necessary for victory

in the Greyhound strike was thereexcept one: a leadership determined towin. After the labor tops had pushedthrough their sellout and the strike wasover, the leader of the ATU Council ofGreyhound Local Unions, Harry Ro­senblum, admitted: "It was a game ofhardball and they played harder ballthan we did" (New York Times, 20December). Certainly no one can faultthe ranks. In the face of the company'sannounced intention to replace themwith scabs, they went on strike. Theytook hundreds of arrests and onemilitant picketers' leader, Ray Phillips,was murdered, crushed to death underthe wheels of a scab-driven bus.' Therewas wide sentiment throughout theranks of labor to fight alongsideGreyhound workers to smash the union­busting. But the ATU and AFL-CIOtops did everything to quash strikemilitancy. They acceded to injunctionslimiting picketing, and in many casesvolunteered to limit the picketing. TheLane Kirkland gang refused to call othersections of the working class out onstrike, instead pushing the same impo­tent consumer boycott that led to defeatat PATCO.

Only a few days- after Greyhoundworkers rejected the company's latestsurrender terms by a 96 percent margin,unionleaders in connivance with federal­mediators cooked up a' virtually identi­cal deal to shove down their throats. Inthe end, strikers voted to return to workbecause they felt there was no way towin with the leadership they had. Thesettlement was a massive sellout: wageand 'benefit cuts averaging at least$13,000 per striker over three years, andanew two-tier pay structure thatdrastically slashes wages for new hires

even more. The 1,500scabs hired duringthe strike' have all been retained on thepayroll, while some 100 strikers havebeen fired! The bureaucrats .sacrificedthe strike militants, among the bestunion fighters, in order to ram throughthe sellout. This criminal betrayalreflects the commonality of interestbetween union tops and the company.. The Spartacist' League called formobilizing the broad power of labor-tobeat back the scabherding and govern­ment strikebreaking: for mass, militantpicket lines to stop the buses and anationwide transport workers strike ofTeamsters, rail and airline workers;longshoremen and transit workers. Thebureaucrats instead preached relianceon the capitalist Democratic Partypoliticians, petitioning Mayor Feinsteinin San Francisco, Governor Cuomo inNew York and others to "ban"scabbing-and all the while the Demo­cratic city bosses were launching copassaults on the pickets. The laborbureaucracy's alliance with the Demo­crats is a knife in the back for theworkers. With the class struggle heatingup in a presidential election year, theunion tops' job is to prevent laborstruggle from embarrassing their bud­dies, the Democratic Party "friends oflabor."

The fake-leftists share this perspectiveof a Democrat-led "progressive alli­ance." So they glorified the AFL-CIOrallies designed to do anything exceptstop the buses. In San Franciscomembers of Socialist Action offeredtheir services as goons against militants(see article on page 2). The MarcyiteWorkers World Party, which was up toits neck in the phony support commit­tees,failed to call for a "no" vote on thesettlement and now claim, incredibly,

that "there are unfortunately somedamaging features in the proposedcontract which cloud and obscure [!!!]what would otherwise be a full-scalevictory" (Workers World, 15 Decem­ber). The Communist Party, too, hadpraise for the Lane Kirkland gang: "Butthe labor movement deserves congratu­lations [in] progressive quarters forits solidarity with the Greyhoundworkers. It is a far cry from the attitudeshown by organized labor during thePATCO struggle ... " (Daily World,24December).

In apologizing for the bureaucrats,the reformist left was far to the right ofsome ATU officials who forthrightlyblasted the sellout. One such examplewas David Mix, president of ATU LocalDivision 1225 in San Francisco. ThoughMix' call for a proxy fight amongGreyhound shareholders was a deadend, at least he knew a rat when hesmelled one, and wanted to fight. In aleaflet issued December 7 to his mem­bers; Mix wrote:

"It appears to be a repeat of the Chryslerand UAW situation. Approximately 3­1/2 years ago they-gave concessions tosave jobs. That was just the beginning;they have made concession after conces­sion and today they have less than 50%of their employees. So much forconcessions to save jobs ...."I t is'not time to retreat-retreat at thistime will be devastating and wewiU notbe given the opportunity to return to thebattlefield ...."

But despite the Greyhound defeat, theprospects are for sharper class struggle,With an upturn in the economy, themorale of the working class hasIm­proved. The companies are still seekingto exact the same massive concessions,thereby setting the stage for sharpconflict. Workers are more willing to

fight back against the fake bankruptcyscams and open union-busting of thebosses. The government's own figuresshow that strike activity is up 50 percentfrom a year ago. But: the labor leaderswho yesterday falsely claimed that "youcan't strike during a depression" are stillsabotaging the strikes.

The powerful labor upsurge of the'30s that smashed the open shop in basicindustry depended on the intersection ofincreased combativity of workers withthe presence of tested militants to leadthe battles. The initial onset of theDepression enabled the employers toextract massive wage cuts. In the firstperiod most of the strikes-essentiallydesperate rearguard battles-were de­feated. But with a slight economicrecovery in 1933-34, hundreds of thou­sands of workers flocked to the AFL.Yet the AFL leaders refused to fight.

The bureaucracy and reformiststoday claim that Roosevelt 'saved theday by then passing legislation enablingthe unions to organize. Far from it! Theindustrial unions were built by great

."illegal" strike struggles that beat backgovernment strikebreaking by Roose­velt liberals. In 1934three crucial battleswere won: at Toledo Auto-Lite, theMinneapolis Teamsters and San Fran­cisco General Strike. All were led byrevolutionaries or professed revolution­aries and were successful despite thesabotage of AFL officials. The cruciallesson of the great class battles of the1930's, which forged industrial union­ism in this country, was that meremilitancy is not enough. Necessary is aclass-struggle leadership based on .aprogram of class independence from thestrikebreaking capitalist state and itsparties.•

Sponsored by the Partisan Defense Committee ~

Proceeds to the Partisan Defense commntee. For more information: (202) 636-3537.

Houston Person & Etta Jones

should be very thankful for those SS l8sand SS20s.. At the. same time, theKremlin Stalinists disarm the worldworking class politically by preachingthe illusion of "detente" and "peacefulcoexistence" with imperialist militar­ism. The Soviet bureaucrats hope that ifonly Reagan is replaced by Mondale orSOIJle other Democrat, detente willbloom again. But anti-Sovietism hasbeen a bipartisan policy for U.S.imperialism ever since 1917. RememberHarry Truman who A-bombed Hiroshi­ma and Nagasaki to intimidate theSoviet Union. And John, F. Kennedywho was ready to destroy the worldduring the Cuba missile crisis. AndJimmy Carter who first declared ColdWar II when the Red Army intervenedagainst the Islamic feudalists in Afghan­istan. It's not the man, it's the class. Theworld working class must take powerfrom the war-crazy capitalists before it'stoo late-and time is running out.•

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Wednesday, February 1, 8 p.m. to 2 a.m.5832 Georgia Avenue, N.W.

• Celebrate the victory against the Moonies' Washington Times libel of theNovember 27, 1982 Labor/Black Mobilization that stopped the KKK.

• Defend Lauren Mozee and Ray Palmiero-victims' of racist union-bustingframe-up! Lauren and Ray must not go to jail!

-----------Tickets ($5) available at: -----------The Ibex Pyramid Book Store Common Concems

5832 Georgia Ave., N>W. 2849 Georgia Ave.• N.W. 1347 Connecticut Ave., NW.

against the Nazi siege. And someof thesurvivors marched into Berlin as theFUhrer committed suicide in his hunker.

The world of Reagan's first-strikestrategists is the world of Dr. Strange­love and General Jack D. Ripper. Allthese plans assume pinpoint accuracyfor ICBMs travelling thousands of mileswhile leaving and re-entering the earth'satmosphere. Yet they have never beentested over the North Pole, the coursethey would have to take to reach theUSSR. The notion of a surgical first­strike is insane. If Reagan really wantsto wipe out the Soviet Union, he mightput all his $l-trillion-plus missiles inIowa and explode them, because inthree or four days Moscow and Lenin­grad would be gone from theaftereffects.

The only thing preventing U.S.imperialism from carrying out its madfirst-strike plans is fear of the Sovietsecond strike. The peoples of the world

Reagan campaigned for the presi­dency on a program to restore military"superiority" over the Soviet Union, acodeword for first-strike capability.This aim is openly stated by Colin Gray,now an "arms control" adviser to thePentagon and State Department, in anotorious article entitled, "Victory IsPossible" (Foreign Policy, Summer1980). Gray and his fellow Pentagonstrategists are planning to decapitate theSoviet leadership:

"Thus, the United States should be ableto destroy key leadership cadres, theirmeans of communication, and some ofthe instruments. of domestic control. ...If the Moscow bureaucracy couldbe eliminated, damaged, or isolated.the USSR" might disintegrate intoanarchy....

Hitler, too, believed that the SovietUnion would collapse at the first blow... and remember what happened tohim. Facing almost total isolation fromthe rest of the country, the people ofLeningrad held out for three years

Dr. Strangelove'sFirst-Strike Plans

gua and El Salvador are anxious toconciliate U.S. imperialism. The Sandi­nistas are making more and moreconcessions to the bourgeois fifthcolumn, the contras from within, andthe State Department. The SalvadoranFDR wants a "negotiated solution" withthe kill-crazy U.S. puppet rulers. ButReagan isn't letting them sell out. Hewants them dead.

To 'overthrow the Sandinistas inNicaragua and suppress the leftist in­surgents in El Salvador, Reagan is facedwith se-nding in tens of thousands. ofU.S. combat troops. This would risk apopular explosion within the UnitedStates where memories of Vietnam-along, losing, dirty war in some far-offland-remain very much alive. But that

.doesn't mean the U.S. imperialists won'tgo inanyway.

lGrontoSat.: 1:00-5:00 p.m.299 Queen St. W., Suite 502Toronto, Ontario Phone: (416) 593-4138

~War Crazy...(continued from page 1)the courrtry's most modern army baseand held it for 12 hours. And today byblowing up the last major bridge overthe Lempa, the insurgents have effec­tively cut the country in half. This couldbe the beginning of the end for the U.S.puppet regime.

With things going badly in ElSalvador, early last year the CIAstepped up its contra terrorist warfareagainst the radical nationalist Sandinis­ta regime in Nicaragua.zln May CIAchief William Casey told Congressmenthat his Nicaraguan contras would beinManagua by New Year's. Well, time'sup. Nicaragua has become a roachmotel for the CIA's terrorists: theycheck in but they don't check out.

The immediate danger for the revolu­tionary masses is that the petty-bour­geois nationalist leaders in both Nicara-

Spartaclst LeaguelSpartacus Youth League

Public Offices~MARXIST LlTERATURE­

Bay Area .:Fri.: 5:00-8:00 p.m., Sat.: 3:00-6:00 p.m.1634 Telegraph, 3rd Floor (near 17th Street)Oakland, California Phone: (415) 835-1535

ChicagoTues.: 5:30-9:00 p.m., Sat.: 2:00-5:30 p.m.523 S. Plymouth Court, 3rd FloorChicago, Illinois Phone: (312) 427-0003

New York CityTues.: 6:oo~00 p.m., Sat.:12:00-4:00 p.m.41 Warren St. (one block belowChambers St. near Church St.)New York, N.Y. Phone: (212) 267-1025

Trotskyist Leagueof Canada

10 WORKERS VANGUARD

Western Press Admits'lt

Soviets Mop Up CIA's Afghan Cutthroats

SPARTACIST LEAGUE LOCAL DIRECTORY

1n tact, one insurgent leader ac­knowledged in an interview that an at­tack on the Kandahar base, which bebad scouted, was well beyond the re­sources of any one of the insurgentgroups or, in the unlikely event thatthey acted in concert, "all of them."

Soviet ground and air streD&tb in Af·ghanistan is estimated at 110,000 to120,000 troops. Army units are rotatedevery six months. The units now de­ployedare lQ8in1y from the Russianand Baltic republics. Earlier in the oe­cupation, the Soviet high command badwhat analysts describe as disciplinaryproblems with Moslem troops broughtfrom the Soviet Union's Islamicrepub­lics into an Islamic country.

Western analysts agree that onlyabo\lt 12,000 to 15,000 Soviet troops arefighting Afghan resistance and that ofthese only 500 to 700 are' involved indaily operations. This minimal use ofSoviet military power can be attributedto the Ubiquity and effectiveness of airpower in the form of fighter-bombersand helicopter gunships and to the will­ingness of the reconstituted AfghanArmy to carry 'out ground operationsagainst the insurgents.

That army has suffered from casual­ties and defections. But, analysts re­port, it is still in being, stiffened byoffi­cers and noncommissioned officerstrained by the Russians and providedwith modern weapons.

The Soviet Unit That FightsThe most active Soviet force is the

201st Motor Rifle Division, which hasbrigades at Jalalabad, Bagram andKandahar and independent companiesat Ghazni, Kunduz and Faizabad. TheJalalabad brigade was called out re­cently to liquidate an insurgent forcethat had taken but could not hold a postat Torkham in the Khyber Pass.

What are described by insurgents asmajor Soviet operations seldom in­volve more than 5,000 to 6,000 troops ofthe201st.

Western analysts put Soviet losses atabout 1,000 a year from all causes,ranging from enemy fire through dis­-ease to poisoning from the local moon­shine.

The failure of promised Westernarms and equipment to reach the insur­gents through Pakistan is one reason .for the insurgents! weakness. A secondis the failure of the movements to unitein battle. Some of the movements areIslamic fundamentalists who look toTeheran and Ayatollah Ruhollah Kho­meini for leadership. Others depend onthe West for political and military sup­port.

These differences are worsened bylongstanding tribal feuds.

An American expert on the countryand the Soviet occupation took a pessi­mistic view of prospects for the rebels.

The insurgents, he said, do not nowhave, and have little prospect of receiv­ing, the sort of weapons, antiaircraftand antitank missiles, that they need tocurb Russian aircraft and armor. But,he added, "even if they get them, theSoviets will increase their efforts andtheir numbers."

"We got tired of Vietnam," he said."The Russians are not going to get

. tired. of Afghanistan. It's too close tothem and too close to the Indian Ocean.They'll stay."

Four years ago this week two Sovietmotorized rifle divisions crossed fromSoviet Central Asia into northern Af­ghanistan. Kabul, the capital, lmd al­ready been seized by an airborne divi­sion. The Soviet intervention in Af-

ghantstanbad begun.Western correspondents

MiUtary are barred from Afghani­Analysis stan. A balance sheet at

the end of four years mustrely on the reports of

European and other intelligence serv-ices, the claims of the rebels fightingthe Soviet-backed Government and oc­casional admissions in Soviet militarypublications.

The most significant conclusion thatcan be drawn from these sources isthat, whatever else it is, Afghanistan isnot the Russians' Vietnam. The SovietUnion faces many military and politi­cal problems in. the country, but noneare of a magnitude to suggest that theRussians face military defeat or politi­cal turbulence.

Militarily, the Soviet Union has madewhat intelligence ~ analysts in theUnited States and in NATO capitals re­gard as important strategic gains.

As Henry Bradsher says in "Afghani­stan and the Soviet Union," a publica­tion of Duke University, the threat,real or imaginary, of the establishmentof an anti-Communist, Islamic countryon the borders of the Soviet Union'sMoslem republics in Soviet CentralAsia made the Russians move. The re­sult, analysts say, is an importantstrategic and political gain for Mos­cow.

The New York TimesMonday, 26 December 1983

4 Years ofAfghan Battle:No Vietnam for Moscow

By DREW MIDDLETON

Copyright @ 1983 by The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.

A Soviet Eye on the Gulf

From the military standpoint, Sovietgains are even more impressive;' mili­taI'}} and diplomatic analysts agree.The Soviet Air Force has taken overand expanded the military air bases atKandahar, Shindand, Farah, Kabul,Bagram, Jalalabad and Herat. Sovietreconnaissance aircraft and bombers,consequently, can fly over the PersianGulf and the Arabian Sea at will andmonitor American and other Westernnaval operations in those areas.

A senior NATO officer said he re­garded this "expansion of the Soviet airreach" as Moscow's most importantmilitary gain. In a crisis, he said, SaudiArabia and other Persian Gulf coun­tries might make air bases available toWestern air power but, he emphasized,"the Russians are there now." OnlyOman, he predicted, would have thecourage to provide basesin a crisis.

Analysts think that from the Krem­lin's viewpoint the most important re­sult of the occupation may be the clos­ing ofWakhan, the panhandle of north­east Afghanistan that borders onChina. Not only has the frontier beenclosed and heavily fortified, but the in­digenous inhabitants of the valley qavealso been moved and settlers fromSoviet Central Asia have moved in totake over their lands.

Sign of Rebel WeaknessSymptomatic of the extent of Soviet

control is that neither the expansion ofthe air bases nor the clearance of theWakhan corridor has encountered thebitter resistance that insurgent state­ments .issued in Islamabad and NewDelhi might lead analysts to expect.

San FranciscoBox 5712San Francisco, CA 94101(415) 863-6963

NorfolkP.O. Box 1972Main P.O..Norfolk, VA 23501

Washington, D.C.P.O. Box 75073Washington, D.C. 20013(202) 636-3537

TROTSKYISTLEAGUE OFCANADATorontoBox 7198, Station AToronto, Ontario M5W 1X8(416) 593-4138

called "golden triangle" in SoutheastAsia, until victorious revolution in In­dochina drove the CIA's private army ofdrug-trafficking Meo tribesmen out ofLaos and into Merced, California.

For four years we have been readingdispatches from New Delhi quoting."well-informed sources" reporting thou­sands of Soviet soldiers killed. Now themost. authoritative imperialist mouth­piece reveals that these were a pack oflies. So what is their conclusion? ATimes (I January) editorial on "BigBrother's War" calls on the U.S. toprovide more sophisticated weapons totheir ineffective mercenaries, raising theprovocative (and desperate) suggestionof airdrops inside Afghanistan. ThePentagon. points to Soviet air bases inAfghanistan to justify a naval adventurein the Persian Gulf.

Four years ago, most of the left(including many who fraudulentlyclaimed to be Trotskyists) joined theimperialist chorus against the "Sovietinvasion" of "poor little Afghanistan."The international Spartacist tendency,however, greeted Soviet interventionagainst the imperialist-backed feudalreactionaries with the headline "HailRed Army in Afghanistan!" At theheight of Jimmy Carter's anti-Soviet"human rights" hysteria we demanded:"Extend social gains of the OctoberRevolution to Afghan peoples!" Sovietintervention in Afghanistan, eventhough undertaken for defensive pur­poses, has meant land for peasants,education for youth, a chance forwomen to emerge from the centuries-oldoppression and enforced exclusion fromsocial life symbolized by the veil.Decidedly, as we wrote four years ago,"the liberation of the Afghan masses hasbegun!"

ClevelandBox 91954Cleveland, OH 44101(216) 621-5138

Los AngelesBox 29574Los Feliz StationLos Angeles, CA 90029(213) 663-1216

Madisonc/o SYL, Box 2074Madison, WI 53701

New YorkBox 444Canal Street StationNew York, NY 10013(212) 267-1025 ~

. DetroitBox 32717Detroit, MI 48232(313) 961-1680

National OfficeBox 1377, GPONew York, NY 10116(212) 732-7860

Ann Arborc/o SYLP.O. Box 8364Ann Arbor, MI 48107

AtlantaBox 4012Atlanta, GA 30302

Berkeley/OaklandP.O. Box 32552Oakland, CA 94604(415) 835-1535

BostonBox 840, Central StationCambridge, MA 02139(617) 492-3928

ChicagoBox 6441, Main P.O.Chicago, IL-60680

\(312) 427-0003

. Lochon/Gamma

Soviet forces at Kabul airport, December 1979~ Spartacists hailed Red Armyintervention against Islamic fanatic counterrevolutionaries.

We reprint at right an article from the26 December 1983 New York Timeswhere the Times' military. writer anddimwit Drew Middleton publicly ad­mits what has been known in thecorridors of the Pentagon for sometime: the Soviet Army has won inAfghanistan, effectively mopping up orisolating the CIA-backed tribalistbands. In an earlier article (New YorkTimes, 4 December 1983) Middletonreported that American and Britishintelligence sources believe "the Rus­sians, with the Afghan Army's help, canpolice the country with one division,about 10,000 men." The remaining 90percent of the Soviet forces are reputed­ly "being trained"! This is a bitter pill forthe U.S. imperialists to swallow, afterseveral years of funneling millions ofdollars of machineguns and antiaircraftmissiles to Afghan mullahs via Wash:ington's Egyptian, Pakistani and "Red"Chinese allies.

For the last four years the Western, press has been inundated with the most

blatant lies on Afghanistan fabricated inthe disinformation mills of Langley,Virginia. Bloodthirsty tribesmen whoskin Communist teachers alive for the"crime" of teaching little girls to readand write are passed off as "freedomfighters." Reams of copy are producedon alleged Soviet "yellow rain" chemicalwarfare for which there is not theslightest shred of scientific evidence.Meanwhile, there has been barely amention of the fact that the Afghan­Pakistani border areas where theAmerican-financed and armed guerril­las operate have since 1980 become "thebiggest supplier of heroin to the UnitedStates and the rest of the world" (NewYork Times, 30 June 1983). Previouslythe main source of heroin was the so-

6 JANUARY 1984 ' 11

W'ltlliltl 'AN'UA/i,

LanelNewsweekSun Myung Moon: "I will conquerand SUbjugate the world."

near the reformist diversion rally (see"What the Moonies Refused to Print,"page 7).

We secured this important victoryagainst a group widely known andfeared for its vindictive use of lawsuitsagainst its opponents. With Moon'sseemingly bottomless reservoir of mon­ey, multinational corporate interests,batteries of lawyers and connections inhigh places, the Moonies have becomeinfamous, and regarded as making thecourts a battlefield of harassment andintimidation in their holy war.

Why did the Moonie god apologize tothe Marxist "Satan"? First of all, theirarticle was a pack of lies. The thousandswho were there on the spot knew it.Nearly all of black Washington knewwhat happened on November 27. That iswhy the Moonie lawyers used an archaic.law to force the case out of Washington,D.C. to New York City. Even the copshave said that the SL did not provokeviolence (see "FBI Director's TestimonyExposes Moonie Libel," page 7).

We knew we had the truth on our side.But we also knewhowlittle the truth canmatter in court, especially in libel cases.Our legal counsel was Jonathan Lubell,Spartacist League general counselRachel Wolkenstein, and the firm ofTigar and Buffone as local counsel inWashington, D.C. Lubell is one of themost experienced lawyers in the countryin dealing with libel suits. Our lawyersunderstood the importance of fightingthis dangerous libel when the press isused to set up political opponents of thegovernment. As Jonathan Lubell said,"I am particularly pleased that we wereable to correct a falsehood whichinvolves political issues and govern­mental activities, which are the coreconcerns of the First Amendment."

The Moonies understood that, if theypursued this case, they were in for a hellof a fight. We had top legal counsel andprivate investigators. Our lawyers hadbegun the process of "discovery," tosubpoena the documents and thoseresponsible for putting the libelousarticle together. We hit them where theylive-in their attempt to gain respecta­bility and political influence through theWashington Times. Our own press wasexposing the Moonies' sinister opera­tion, and they have a lot to hide. And wehad launched a broad-based campaignthat was reaching out to a wide spec­trum of Moon's many enemies, includ­ing parents (see "Moonies Against OurChildren," page 8).

Importantly, the Moonies and theircontinued on page 6

•I eto

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dus operandi of the witchhunters ofCold War II. In the forefront of thisfight against the new McCarthyism witha drawn gun, the SL has also initiated asuit against the FBI's ominous new Do­mestic Security/Terrorism Guidelines.

In reaching a settlement agreement,our bottom line in the negotiationsbetween the lawyers was that theWashington Times 'Publicly retract itscharge that the SL/SYL provokedviolence on November 27. They rejectedour initial letter for publication whichsets out the political context: keystatements on Marxism vs. terrorismand on the cop riot on November 27

onstrators were directed by ourmonitors to.the center of LafayettePark. A brief rally was held to as­sert the absence of the Klan. Afterthis rally the monitors successfully,peacefully, and in an orderly man­ner led the demonstrators awayfrom the police .and tear gassingand out of the park, without inci­dent. Many hundreds of protestorsthen attended a victory party at theBellvue Hotel in the Capitol area.

What happened on Nov. 27 wasthat the Klan did not march. Themedia- with the notable exceptionof the black press - portrayed theanti-Klan demonstration as wide­spread violence and looting. But itwas only The Washington Timesthat named the SL and the SYL asprovocateurs of violence againstthe police.

Webelieve that through the mili­tant presence of the Labor-BlackMobilization the Klan was stopped.Neither the SL, the SYL nor anyother component of our massLabor-Black Mobilization demon­stration sought, participated in, orcondoned any violence against po­lice.

JAMES M.ROBERTSONNational Chairman

The Spartacist LeagueEMILY TURNBULLNational Secretary

Spartacus Youth LeagueWashington

and trade unionists, who listened tospeeches and took part in militantchanting. A monitor squad, includ­ing several members each from theLaborers, AFSCME, Teamsters,and Transit Unions, as well as 10International Longshoremen Asso­ciation members from Norfolk and .union supporters of the SL, hadbeen formed to maintain an orderlyand controlled demonstration.

For approximately one-and-one­half hours, the demonstrators wereface to face with the police who hadlined the Constitution Ave. side ofthe rally site. At 12:40 it waslearned that the Klan would notmarch and, as the police withdrew,the demonstrators spontaneouslyentered Constitution Ave. pro­claiming, "We stopped the Klan!"Protesters rushed to the top of Capi­tol Hill and then wheeled aroundand headed toward PennsylvaniaAve. and Lafayette Park, the Klan'sintended destination. Thousandsstreamed up what was to have beenthe KKK march route, stopped traf'­fie, and exchanged victory saluteswith drivers.

Prior toand at the time the Labor­Black Mobilization demonstratorsentered Lafayette Park, on the op­posite side of the Park police oper­ations were in progress with policeusing tear gas against others whohad assembled near Lafayette Park.The Labor-Black Mobilization dem-

t:-mfJe.M~!!!~n m~a=M_- 26 December 1983...iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

Washington Times retraction is not onlya victory for the Spartacist League, butfor all the participants of the powerfulmass mobilization of 5,000 which put astop to the Klan's plans to march in thenation's capital.

The Moonie libel fits the .pattern offalsely branding socialists and other po­li~ical opponents of government policyas violent terrorists ("Moonie LibelThat Kills," WVNo. 332,17 June 1983),The Reaganites recognize only twocategories' of opposition: wimpy collegeprofessors who write an occasionalletter to the New York Times, or ... ter­rorists. Our victory cuts across this mo-

•OODleS oreeetraet

Editor's note: On Nov. 30, 1982,The Washington Times ran a storyon the Nov.27,1982 anti-KKK dem­onstration in Washington, D.C. Theletter published below describesthe activities and position of theSpartacist League-Spartacus

'uth League .in regard to its dem­onstration. We no longer chargethat the Spartacist League­Spartacus Youth League provokedthe violence on that day.

The Spartacist League (SL) andthe Spartacus Youth League (SYL)initiated the Labor-Black Mobiliza­tion to "Stop the KKK" in Washing­ton, D.C. on Nov. 27, 1982. TheLabor-Black Mobilization was builtthrough the participation of orga­nized labor - over 70 union locals,officials, and executive boards en­dorsed. A permit for the rally atConstitution and First Avenues,near the Capitol Building and thebeginning of the Klan's route of themarch, was secured from the ap­propriate police authorities on Nov.22. During the next four days, theSLand the SYLposted thousands ofplacards and distributed hundredsof thousands of leaflets announcingthe Labor-Black Mobilization rally.

The Labor-Black Mobilizationrally began at about 9:30 a.m. onNov, 27 and continued until about12;40 p.m., engaging the participa­tion of 5,000, predominantly blacks

LettersThe Labor-Black Mobilization march story

Being god is supposed to mean neverhaving to say you're sorry. So it is rareindeed when a self-appointed messiahlike "Lord of the Second Advent" SunMyung Moon makes a public apologyto the very forces he has identified as"Satan." Yet with the simple statement,"We no longer charge that the Sparta­cist League/Spartacus Youth Leagueprovoked violence on that day," theMoonies' Washington Times (26 De­cember 1983) was forced to eat its libel­ous words against the SL and the La­bor/Black Mobilization which stoppedthe Ku Klux Klan on 27,November 1982(see SL press release on page 6). The

SVSYL Vindicated

12 6 JANUARY 1984