WfJRNERS ,,IN(J(J,IR' 25¢No. 276 .:~) X·523 13 March 1981

Front Line EI Salvador

Philippot/Sygma

'i ue~tion, to take a stand in the confron­tation between rapacious imperialismand the deg~nerateo/deformedworke:-sstates of the Soviet bloc. It won't do toappeal to liberal "concern" over geno­cide. In the first place, this is not justanother case of the U.S. backing upsome bloodthirsty butchers in its back­yard. When Teddy Roosevelt was ridingroughshod over these little statelets,American imperialism was mainlyconcerned with consolidating its region­al hegemony. The Spanish-AmericanWar and dollar diplomacy were central­ly aimed at turning the Monroe Doc­trine into reality. Building the PanamaCanal enabled the U.S. for the first timeto possess a two-ocean navy. It was partof the carving up of the colonial worldby imperialism in preparation for WorldWar I. The issue half a century ago, thelast time that Central America was bigne\VS, was essentially regional. This timethe stakes are far higher.

So in the last couple weeks we havebeen treated to this outcry over Sovietarms in El Salvador. I have here theState Department's "White Paper." Iguess they have to call them whitepapers because their real purpose is tothrow mud in the eyes of the public, sothey don't see what's going on. So thefirst thing you have to do is to debunkthe imperialist lies. To recall PresidentReagan's words of a few weeks ago: whois it that goes around the world lying,

continued on page 6

drive is concentrated on the tinder ofpopular outrage and the flames begin toleap up.

10 meet this challenge the left, both inLatin America and in the imperialistcenters, has to face head-on the basic

centration camp at El Centro, Califor­nia went on a hunger strike afterlearning about a Christmas Daymassacre of a group of deportees at theSan Salvador airport.

The 2 March New York Timescarried a lengthy story investigatingthis grisly business. In the last fiscalyear, the Times reported, nearly 12,000Salvadorans were sent back to face thesadistic junta torturers and assassins.It noted that some of those deportedwere trade unionists and teacherswhose names have appeared on "whatpurport to be 'death lists'." The articlereports a spokesman for the u.s.embassy affirming "that he had heard

continued on page 11

II

"There isunfortunately noeffective Sovietaid going to theins'\~~f5; n~3 ~;:: ~J

Salvador.Because if therewere, wewouldn't havehad 12,000people who diedat the hands ofright-wing deathsquads and thejunta's army inthe last year.That is theproof."

REPRINTED FROMYOUNG SPARTACUS NO. 89,

MA RCH 198i

While Reagan showers his El Sal­vador butchers with Huey helicoptersand American military "advisers,"back home the U.S. ImmigrationService is doing its bit to contribute tothe bloodbath. In January the Sparta­cist League reported how la migra hasbeen deporting several hundred Sal­vadorans a week to the clutches of themuderous junta and its right-wingexecution squads. This airlift to deathcame to light when 42 Salvadoransawaiting deportation in an INS con-

"Central American masses. Reagan haschallenged Castro and Brezhnev to ashoot-out over El Salvador, and CentralAmerica is now the focal point of theCold War-the point at which all theenergy of imperialism's anti-Soviet war

Asylum lor RelugeesIrom EI Salvador!

lYe prim belOlI Ihe ediled/irsl halfofa speech hr Jan Sorden, edilOr ofWorkers Vanguard and member ollheSparlilci.l! League Cemral Commitree,rcccnrll' dcfinTed in BoslOn and Ne'fYork under the litle, "For ,Yorkersi?e"")!ztrinn in (-.c-'n;raf ~n?er··c:>

Defeat U.S.Imperialism!

Defend Cuba, USSR!

LahmanlVlslons

Deportation often means death.Salvadoran refugees await deporta­tion in Mexican jail.

It's hifh ':000 in Central Americ'a,The \\ hole isthm us IS red'ho!, hUDtllingEke the volcanic chain that forms itsback hone. A string of banana repub­lics, puppet dictatorships and oligar­chic tyrannies have shot their wad, andthere is an historic day of reckoningapproaching. There is a general crisis ofbourgeois rule in the region, such as ithas been practiced over the last halfcentury. And in this explosive situationa new administration has moved intothe White House which is determined tosend a bloody message to the Kremlin.The message consists of Huey helicop­teIs, lOS millimeter bazookas, PT patrolboats and U.S. "military advisers." Theblood is supposed to be that of the

£'.\pandcd H'rsioll 0! Ihe st'cond haj.l()Cwing Oil Nicaragua, l1'i/l he puh­lished uz our next' i,c..;sue.

The Terror TimesFor those who wish on liberal stars to

make the Reagan/Haig war frenzy goaway it's time to wake up. A sign fromthe Times: the respectable good graylady of American journalism hasplunged into Hearst/ Murdoch-style"the Russians are coming" propaganda.The I March Sunday New York TimesMagazine cover story, "Terrorism:Tracing the International Network," byClaire Sterling, was the kind of sleazyyellow journalism that set off reaction­ary wars earlier in the century. TheTimes obviously had this smear jobKremlin gold-and-guns pastiche waitingin the wings, with all the guns, the skimasks, the blood, the old photos.Today "responsible" liberalism onlymeans holding off a few weeks afterGeneral Haig fired off his opening shotto take up the Big Lie campaign that theUSSR is running an internationalterrorist conspiracy-no "decent inter­val" here.

In her "terrorist" potboiler (soon tobe a Reader's Digest book, of course)Sterling poses as a "sadder but wiser"liberal. Until recently (Reagan's elec­tion?), she writes, she would have beenamong those Americans who "shooktheir heads despairingly at whatsounded to them like nothing more thanan old cold warrior's refrain." But nowshe hails Haig for "going public" withthe real "news" about the Kremlin:"There is massive proof that the SovietUnion and its surrogates, over the pastdecade, have provided the weapons,training and sanctuary for a world-wideterror network aimed at the destabiliza­tion of Western Democratic society."BS.

How did Claire Sterling stop shakingher head and learn to love the Haigterror scenario? "Research," she writes,

research. But she doesn't have anyproof, "massive" or puny; she can't evenmarshal effective innuendo to provethat there's some Soviet "terror net­work" stretching from the IRA to thePLO to the Red Brigades to the Baader­Meinhof group to Cuba to EI Salvador.An RAFer sunning himself on a Bul­garian beach-that's "the Russianconnection" in this sordid genre. More"research" like that and she'll bediscovering that the Soviets are equip­ping subway muggers to "destabilize"

. NYC's underground. But she's alreadyway behind the New York governor:"Gold-chain grabbers? Carey blamesSoviet heroin-war strategy," headlinedthe Post last October.

There was some genuinely clinicalparanoia about the Soviets after WorldWar II, but this current propagandablitz is simply a cynical attempt tomanipulate public opinion. So liberalSterling borrows witchhunter JosephMcCarthy's methods, jumbling upeverything in the hope that some of themud will stick. The USSR is much toostodgy for the likes of the German RAF(Baader-Meinhof group) or the ItalianRed Brigades; in fact the Italian Com­munist Party has fulsomely and activelybacked state repression and trade-unionwitchhunting against the Red Brigades.The "discoveries" of a "Russian men­ace" lurking behind the IRA, the PLOand so forth are simply an attempt tofind a global Cold War rationale forbacking the naked state terror un­leashed against the Palestinians by theIsraeli bourgeoisie (and don't forgetThatcher's "H-Block" hellhole for IRAnationalists)-real terrorism whichmakes the IRA and PLO look paCifisticby comparison.

What's really going on here is a

renewed imperialist propaganda driveto denounce all national-liberationmovements as "terrorists" and "crimi­nals." Remember the Western presstreatment of the Algerian FLN fightingFrench colonialism, the AngolanMPLA fighting the Portuguese, etc. Butshould these groups win and come topower, send their people to the UN,have accredited diplomats in Westerncapitals and play by the imperialist rulesof the game, then yesterday's "terrorist"becomes today's "statesman." Remem­ber the sanctimonious mourning for ex­Mau Mau leader turned pro-Western"moderate" Jomo Kenyatta. In otherwords, the imperialists call "terrorist"those people they intend to kill andbelieve they can. That the U.S. leadersnow apply this term to the ever-so­conservative bureaucrats of the RussianPolitburo is a very dangerous signindeed. And they're not just talking:Presidential Directive 58 directly targetsthe Soviet leadership for nuclear death.

"International terrorism" is the Rea­gan code word for a war drive againstthe Soviet Union, just as "HumanRights" was Carter's. The government'slying "White Paper" on EI Salvador isonly the latest "proof" they havemanufactured. But the tragic fact is thatthe USSR is not at all interested in"exporting revolution." The real evi­dence is bitter enough: the blood of12,OOO-plus Salvadorans massacred bythe junta's death squads in 1980. Toobad the Stalinist bureaucracy in Mos­cow hasn't supplied the rebels withadequate arms, just as in Vietnam itstarved the NLF and DRV forces,supplying them only minimal, out­moded military aid and thus prolongingthe agony of the war.

The exporters of "international ter-

~ll'~re'UfUork ~imt's ma!la~int'J..., _

All the CIA "disinformation" that's fitto print.

ror" are well known, as are their trueideologues, listed recently by AlexanderCockburn in an informative VillageVoice (4 March) piece on the RobertMoss/ Arnaud de Borchgrave/WalterLacqueur "small band of extremists."Among the bloody acts of imperialistterror Cock burn points to is the murderof former Chilean ambassador OrlandoLetelier and his American assistant rightin Washington, D.C. by Pinochet'ssecurity forces and their gusano cohorts.(Reagan's response, ratherthan "punishterrorism," was to "de-link" Chile andwelcome it back into the fold with openarms.) Or Cuba, which has been thetarget of an ongoing terrorist campaign,from the abortive Bay of Pigs invasionand at least eight assassination attemptsagainst Castro to the bombing of aCubana Airlines plane, which left over80 dead.

But talking about this official policyof imperialist state terror doesn't fit theCold War purpose of "responsible"liberals like the New York Times. That'sthe "international terrorist conspiracy"story they don't see fit to print..

, "

Workers Power Rotten Bloc

With the Reagan Current

WfJRKERSVANfilJARIJ

It's not unusual in U.S. radical circlesfor a gaggle of academic dilettantes,political losers and renegades from leftorganizations to come together, put outa journal and proclaim themselves thefresh new breeze in town. In general onewhiff ofthe political aroma surroundingsuch groups is more than enough to sendserious Marxists running in the oppositedirection, fast. Against the Current, a"socialist quarterly magazine sponsoredby Workers Power," is no exception to

Marxist Working-Class Biweeklyof the Spartacist League of the U.S.

EDITOR Jan Norden

ASSOCIATE EDITOR Charles Burroughs

PRODUCTION Darlene Kamiura (Manager),Noah Wilner

CIRCULATION MANAGER Karen Wyatt

EDITORIAL BOARD George Fester, lizGordon, Mark Kellermann, James Robertson.Joseph Seymour, MarjOrie Stamberg

Workers Vanguard (USPS 098-770) publishedbiweekly. skipping an issue In August and aweek In December. by the Spartaclst PublishingCo. 41 Warren Street, New York. NY 10007Telephone. 732-7862 (EditOrial). 732-7861(BUSiness). Address all correspondence to. Box1377. GPO. New York. NY 10116 DomesticsubSCriptions: $3.00/24 Issues. Second-classpostage paid at New York. NY

OpiniOns expressed In signed artIcles or leitersdo not necessarily express the edltonalvIewpoint.

2

No. 276 13 March 1981

the general rule. But the story of howthis gang of political burn-outs cametogether serves us well as a cautionarytale for the Reagan years. Demoralizedcentrists: this can happen to you!

The story of Against the Current, twoissues of which have appeared to date, istold in its catalog of 36 editors and"editorial associates." The magazIne isrun by co-editors Steve Zeluck and BobBrenner of Workers Power, formerlyone of the permanent clique/factions inthe workerist International Socialists(IS). Inheritors of the miserable "ThirdCamp" anti-Soviet tradition of MaxShachtman, Workers Power sharestheir piece of political turf with half adozen other disintegration products ofthe IS. What unites Workers Power, theIS, ISO, RSL, LRP, etc. is their refusalto defend the gains of the RussianRevolution against imperialist attack.But what is notable about Against theCurrent is that some of the homeless"boat. people" of ostensible Trotskyismhave sought refuge in this safe harbor of"State Department socialism" duringthe coming storms of the Cold War.

The editorial associates of Against theCurrent include several formermembers of the Socialist Workers Party(SWP) who 'left that organization atvarious times over the past threedecades. There's Milt Zaslow, who splitfrom the SWP in 1953 as a supporter ofthe Michel Pablo-led revisionist factionof the shattered Fourth International.There's Myra Tanner Weiss, long-time

Pabloist, forced out ofthe SWP in 1965.There's Hedda Garza, expelled from theSWP in 1974 as a leader of theInternationalist Tendency (IT), 'theorphaned children of former Pablolieutenant Ernest Mandel. There's JulietUcelli of the Mandelite fellow-travelingNew York Committee for MarxistEducation. These remnants of U.S.Pabloism would claim, of course, todefend the Soviet Union. It's just not a"split issue" for them. That's the kind ofoutfit Against the Current is: to accom­modate both the Shachtmanites and thePabloists the magazine declares itsClf"anti-Stalinist" but does not character­ize the Soviet Union or raise theyuestion of defensism. The second issueof the journal features a lengthy leadingarticle on Poland-without saying whatkind of class society Poland is.

The Workers Power magazine dedi­cates itself to the task of "regrouping"the "non-sectarian" left. But Against the-Current's complaint about the "leftsects" is more than just a rejection ofLeninist organizational discipline andLeninist politics-although it surely isthat. For the Pabloists it is an excuse toabandon even the pretense of Sovietdefensism in order to join the Russia­haters and liberals on Reagan's ColdWar bandwagon. What really scotchtapes this gang to Worker Power is thefact that the Reagan years look liketough times for the left. And eventougher times for authentic Trotskyistswho defend the Soviet Union whilecalling for political revolution against

the Stalinist bureaucracy.With Reagan in the White House and

an anti-Soviet drive well under way, thecrucial test of revolutionaries is thewillingness to stand up in defense of thegains of the October Revolution and ofthe degenerated and deformed workersstates from imperialism. Against theCurrent borrows its name from thecollection of Lenin and Zinoviev'swritings against imperialist war andagainst the reformist and centristbetrayers in the socialist movement whosold out to "their" bourgeoisies in WorldWar I. Despite the name, the newAgainst the Current, floating down­stream on the current of anti-Sovietism,has more in common with the social­patriots Lenin bitterly denounced.•

CorrectionThe headline of the article on the

Ontario Federation of Labourconvention in WV No. 270 (12December 1980) incorrectly statesthat supporters of the CommunistParty voted against the conventionmotion for a labor anti-Klandemonstration. As the article not­ed. supporters of the CP did speakagainst the motion from the con­vention floor, counterposing reli­ance on the capitalist governmentto labor-centered action against theKlan. Characteristically, however,they did not vote against it.

WORKERS VANGUARD

For aB.C. General Strike, Now!strikes, but former labor minister BillKing has condemned the B.c. Fed'saction on Vancouver Island: "I don'tsupport what they are doing. I thinkwhere a contract exists that contractshould be honored" ( Vancouver Sun, 6March). Vancouver's NDP mayor MikeHarcourt is daily scabbing on the CUPEstrike and playing his role as manage­ment to the hilt. He says CUPE isdemanding too much! And lest anyonethink that the NDP's massive 1975strikebreaking Bill 149 was a "mistake,"leader Dave Barrett was explicit Febru­ary 16 at the University of BritishColumbia when he responded to achallenge from a Trotskyist Leaguesupporter: "I make no bones about it,we would pass the same legislation"!

Militants who might look to theCommunist Party of Canada (CP) as analternative will fare no better. Perhapsthe CP will disavow its active elec­tioneering for Mayor Harcourt, butwhat about its long-time favored alder­man, Harry Rankin, who has beencrossing CUPE lines with the bureau­crats' connivance? When Rankin wasaddressing a CU PE rally at City HallMarch 3, cries of "Scab!" greetedsomeone trying to cross the picket.When Rankin turned around, a Sparta­cist Canada reporter heard one CUPEpicketer yell, "Not you, Harry, the otherone!"

Pointing to the organized support ofthe trade-union leadership and buildingon the real need for a vehicle to combatthe parties of the bosses-the Socreds,Tories and Liberals-the NDP occa­sionally tries to pass itself off as theparty of the working people. But theNDP'sjob when in power is to adminis­ter the capitalists' state, including itslaws, cops and courts. The labormovement doesn't need that kind ofparty. We need a class-struggle workersparty that fights for a workers govern­ment. We need a party that would be inthe forefront of the battle against union­busting, a beacon for labor militantsthroughout North America.•

immediate 20 percent catch-up. acrossthe board-as well as full COLA! Settlethe existing disputes on the strikers'terms! Militant British Columbia work­ers can show the way for labor across\iorth America.

Unfortunately, B.C.'s trade-unionleadership doesn't want to launch suchan all-out fight. Despite their militantrhetoric (and occasional action) thelabor brass accepts the framework of thecapitalists and their laws. While some­times the bureaucrats are forced intoaction by pressure from below in orderto keep their authority (for example,TWU president Clark and the occupa­tions), their real program is not classstruggle, but the election of a NewDemocratic Party (NDP) government.That's why Kinnaird stonewalled formonths before marshaling even a smallportion of the Fed's troops behind theTWU, and then only for one day, whileapparently ready to let CUPE and thethousands of other strikers go it alone.

Already the B.C. NDP, seeing powerwithin its grasp, is doing its utmost topreserve its "respectability" in the eyesof the bosses. Not only has the NDPrefused to support the TWU/CUPE

or.....Spartacist Canada

Striking Vancouver municipal workers picket garage entrance.

& Co. have refused to go after thedecisive center, Vancouver. And it willtake more than warning gestures to winreinstatement of the fired militants,cancel the crippling fines and wipe outpossible jail terms hanging over theTWU. No firings, no citations, novictimizations! The flying pickets work,so extend them! But why chase manage­ment scabs across the province? Shutdown B.C. Tel with mass pickets!Enough of this union-busting by smugGeneral Tel executives sitting in Stam­ford, Connecticut: Expropriate B.C. Telwith not a penny for the bosses! Andwhat about CUPE's fight? Throw thenearly 100 anti-picketing injunctionsinto the garbage! Mass picket thedumps!

The Trotskyist League of Canadasays: It's timefor a Vancouver-centered.province-wide general strike! And notjust a sympathy action. All B.C. unionsshould demand: Rehire all victimizedunionists, no reprisals against thestrikers! Drop all charges, contemptcitations and injunctions! Smash theanti-labor laws and win the unfetteredright to strike! Wipe out the results ofTrudeau's wage controls: Fight for a bigwage boost for all B.C. workers-an

VAl\COLJVER, March 6-More than6.000 unionists paralyzed the southernpart of Vancouver Island today, shut­ting it down in a one-day general strikeas a dramatic show of support for theembattled Telecommunications Work­ers Union (TWU). Almost nothingmoved in traditionally militant Nanai­mo in response to the British ColumbiaFederation of Labor's call to protest thephone bosses' latest union-bustingmove. In an attempt to gut the union ofmilitants, B.C. Telephone, having sup­posedly reached agreement with theTWU on all other issues, arrogantlyrefuses to rehire over two dozen TWU­ers fired for picket line "misbehavior."B.C. Fed president Jim Kinnaird haswarned B.C. Tel to sign a back-to-workagreement or "We'll start walking offthe job from one end of this province tothe other" ( Vancouver Sun, 4 March).

While the capitalists' media wail, theBritish Columbia workers are ready tofight-in their tradition as the most mil­itant and class-conscious section oflabor in :\orth America. It's certainly afar cry from the union scene in the Unit­ed States today. TWU and municipalworkers' flying picket squads closeddown hundreds of companies, some­times with just one picket, as unionistsenthusiastically carry out B.c. Fedpolicy: "A picket line means don'tcross." A militant among the 10,000­plus striking members of the CanadianUnion of Public Employees (CUPE)told Spartacist Canada that workersstrangled by court orders limitingpickets to four at the crucial Vancouver­area garbage dump want to "defy theinjunctions" and bring back "masspicketing." The TWU members, whotasted real power during their five-dayoccupation of key phone locations lastmonth, are raring to go. A TWU leaderadmitted, "We've had to sit on a lot ofour workers" (Province, 5 March).

With an angry membership breathingdown their necks, the B.c. Fed leadershave adopted a town-by-town rotatingmini-general strike plan. But Kinnaird

Sellout Herman Redbaits ILWU MilitantsOAKLAl\D, February 28-Loca16, theBay Area warehouse division of theInternational Longshoremen's andWarchousemen's Union (IL WU), heldits 36th convention today in the face ofmOllnting attacks on the union: immi­nent closure of the Colgate plant inBerkeley, representing a loss of over 300jobs, a full 10 percent of the Local6 jobsin the East Bay; a drive by the IndustrialEmployers and Distributors Associa­tion (IEDA) to destroy the union hiringhall; and KKK terror. including a

Spartacist League/Spartacus Youth League

Public Offices-MARXIST LlTERATURE-

Bay AreaFriday 500-800 p.m, Saturday 3:00-6:00 pm.1634 Telegraph, 3rd Floor (near 17th Street)Oakland, California Phone (415) 835-1535

ChicagoTuesday 530-9:00 p.m , Saturday 200-530 p m.523 S Plymouth Court, 3rd FloorChicago, Illinois Phone (312) 427-0003

New York CityTuesday: 6:00-1000 p.m .. Saturday: 100-5:00 pm41 oNarren St (one block belowChambers St near Church St)New York, NY Phone: (212) 267-1025

Trotskyist Leagueof Canada

TorontoSaturday 100-5:00 p.m.299 Queen St oN, Suite 502Toronto, Ontario Phone: (416) 593-4138.. .,

shotgun assault on the home of ILWUbrother Roosevelt Presley in ContraCosta County.

Add ressing the 392 delegates. Local 6president Keith Eickman attempted tosweep these attacks under the rug,managing to not even mention them inhis opening Officers' Report! Posing ableak prospect with Reagan in office,Eickman could offer nothing but hardertimes ahead for the workers, dead-end"community coalition" (read Demo­cratic Party) politics and platitudesabout "unity." The only opposition tothis defeatism came from the MilitantCaucus, which was also the target of avicious witchhunting outburst fromInternational president Jimmy Herman.The Caucus, with a six-year history inthe Local, put forward a class-struggleprogram on the major issues facing theunion and the working class. In con­trast, a lash-up of opportunist "leftists"rushed to give a cover to the Interna­tional's do-nothing bureaucratism.

Responding to Eickman's report,delegate Pete Woolston of the MCtook the floor to point out thatCarter and the Democrats as much asReagan are responsible for anti-laborpolicies, and the ILWU should breakwith both bosses' parties. He alsoexplained that the fascists can bestopped, citing last April 19, when theCaucus helped organize a mass labor­centered demonstration of 1,200 thatforced the Nazis to cancel their planned

ILWU president Jimmy Herman.

Hitler rally in San Francisco. Woolstoncalled for union defense guards againstKlan terror in Contra Costa County,and the Caucus submitted a resolutionto that effect.

Delegate Jackie Clark, MC memberrecently elected to the Local 6General Executive Board (GEB), blast­ed Eickman for letting the hard-wonunion hiring hall be put up for arbitra­tion after the Electro-Coating strikeagainst company hiring off the street.She told the delegates that the employ­ers' association is out to get the hiringhall and the union is going to have todefend it on the picket line. In contrast

oNV PhotosMilitant Caucus member PeteWoolston.

to the International's position that anyunion action from boycott to sitdownwill jeopardize negotiations for a mea­ger severance pay for Colgate workers,Clark called on the union to oppose theclosure with a sit-down strike as the onlyway to stop 'the runaways which aresapping the union.

Midway through the convention,International president Jimmy Hermanstepped to the mike to deliver a 20­minute tirade against militants in theunion. There was no doubt who hissmear attack was aimed at. He de­nounced supposed "anti-ILWU leaflets

continued on page II

13 March 1981 3

9­.-­...,.. Moral MajoritY. Goes Ap..@

Sacramento Monkey Trial

Zip 276

Spartacist Forums

Speaker: D.L. Reissner,Editorial BoardWomen and Revolution

faced with this anticommunism.union-busting and genocide againstblacks is ... to "fight" it only at theballot box. Moreover, in otherelectoral contests (such as againstSouthern California KKK "granddragon" Tom Metzger last year)these reformists boast not of battlingthe race-terrorists, but debatingthem!

The U AW Local 600 GeneralCouncil passed a resolution on the"right of any local member to runwithout intimidation" and for "sup­port in her [Ziers'] battle againstNazis and Klan." Such paper supportis not enough. yet both the SWP andthe UAW bureaucracy oppose thenecessary formation of union/blackdefense guards. As we have pointedout before, the fascists' weapons of"debate" are the firebomb, the bulletand the lynch rope. Only the mobi­lized power of labor and blacks canstop the fascist terrorists. Ballotswon't stop bullets. Stop the attacksagainst Liz Ziers! For labor/blackmobilizations to smash Klan/Naziterror!

arguing over how such evolutionaryprocesses occurred. But the fact of theevolution of species by a process ofnatural selection is not a matter ofdebate among genuine scientists. Dar­winian evolution is a "theory" in thesame rigorously scientific sense thatEinstein's relativity is a "theory": i.e.,not an unproven hypothesis but a testedand accepted fundamental pillar ofscientific thought. Nevertheless, the"creationist" backlash has already hadits effects in the classroom.

Charles Darwin and Karl Marx weretwo of the giant thinkers of the 19thcentury, men whose ideas bear a familyrelation to each other. Both men(despite Darwin's profession of religiousbelief) were thoroughgoing materialistswho took their observations of natureand society as the basis for synthetictheories about the mechanisms ofnatural or social change. Both were"developmental" thinkers who made

. fundamental changes in the way theworld would henceforth be understood.In Anti- Diihring, Engels defendedDarwinism against the assaults ofGerman idealists who "express anger atthe colossal impetus which Science owesto the driving force of Darwiniantheory."

The unresolvable crisis of capitalismin the epoch of imperialist decay, andespecially the current rightward-movingpolitical trend, provide a fertile breedingground for all sorts of irrationalobscurantist ideologies. Even as theyemploy the most advanced scientifictechnique to build world-killing deathweapons aimed at the Soviet Union, theU.S. bourgeoisie finds valuable politicalallies among the Bible-quoting anti­scientific reactionaries. It is tragic that122 years after Darwin published hisOrigin of Species it is necessary todefend the concept of evolution againstpowerful religious rightists. But to makethe classroom safe for Charles Darwin itwill be necessary to further the socialevolution of the human species throughKarl Marx's workers revolution.•

1lI(5T~C'cesJT 6l<H.)6BABIESSEX 6RIl\SSBABICS

I

Illiillill,IIIJii!UWp

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DETROIT-The home of a RiverRouge UAW Local 600 member, LizZiers, was firebombed by Nazi/ Klanterrorists last week. Ziers, a memberof the Dearborn Assembly Plant unitand a supporter of the SocialistWorkers Party (SWP), receivedseveral death threats, including aletter which read in part, "We will killyou, commie.... The only good red isa dead red." This murderous attackwas in response to Ziers' announce­ment that she would run as an SWPwrite-in candidate against Nazi/ Klancandidate Republican Gerald Carl­son in southwest Michigan's FourthDistrict. This attempt to terrorizeZiers is an attack on all unionists,blacks and leftists!

Defeated in another Congressionalbid in the Detroit-area 15th Districtlast fall, Carlson nevertheless gar­nered over 53,000 votes (32 percent!)running on his program for the "finalsolution." "Negroes do not work likewhite people," he said. "Corruptcommunist-led unions protect Ne­groes" (Detroit News, 7 August1980). Yet the strategy of the SWP

Firebombing in Detroit

KKK/Nazis Attack SWPCandidate's Home

but that fact is a historical footnote tothe real impact of the case. Darrowhumiliated the fundamentalist Bryan ina brilliant cross-examination recreatedin the play and movie "Inherit theWind." The narrow-minded Tennesseebigots were fighting a rearguard action

against the advancing forces of scientificacceptance, and the "monkey trial"drove them back into the darker cornersof rural backwardness.

Today the new religious right is on theoffensive, winning victories even instates like California and New York.They are on the cutting edge of the right­wing revival. They have shed theirbackwoods image for leisure-suitedsuburban respectability. Instead ofhanding out grimy crank tracts, theypeddle slick "creationist" textbooks andsomething called the "Handy DandyEvolution Refuter." Attempting tomasquerade as "scientific" debunkers ofan unproved "theory," the anti­evolutionists point to scientists' debatesover evolutionary processes as proofthat the Bible myth has as much validityas Darwin's The Origin of Species.

There are still many unansweredquestions about "macroevolution" lead­ing to major species differentiation, andpaleontologists and geneticists are still

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room were widely regarded as harmlesskooks of the sort who saw a communistplot behind fluoridated water. Buttoday the fundamentalist reactionaries,with "their" president in the WhiteHouse and the country's political tideflowing to the right, are an important

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Scopes II?

The Segraves suit was universallycompared to the famous Scopes "mon­key trial" of 1925. in which a youngTennessee teacher challenged thatstate's ban on teaching evolution. Butdespite apparent similarities, the histori­cal and political context is very differentfrom what it was when Clarence Darrowand William Jennings Bryan squared off56 years ago. Scopes lost the originaltrial (H.L. Mencken paid his $100 fine),

and dangerous part of the "new right"campaign to morally rearm America fordomestic austerity and Cold War.

The Reagan administration includesseveral important spokesmen of the"right to life" legions. Health andHuman Services secretary RichardSchweiker backs the campaign for ananti-abortion constitutional amend­ment. His assistant secretary and acandidate for surgeon general is Dr.Everett Koop, a board member of theNational Right to Life Committee. Thenew head of the Office of AdolesclmtPregnancy Programs is one MarjoryMecklenburg, president of AmericanCitizens Concerned for Life, an anti~

abortion lobby. Even without thecampaign dollars and political clout ofgroups like the "Moral Majority," itwould be no surprise to see faces likethese on the "Reagan team." Thefundamentalist version of the moralityof the bourgeois family, with its opposi­tion to women's rights, welfare and"godless communism," is made to orderfor the Reagan years.

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In a Sacramento, California court­room last week, 13-year-old KaseySegraves took the witness stand totestify that he did not believe that he wasdescended "from apes ... or fish, orreptiles." "I believe," he told the judge,"that God created man as man and puthim on the earth." The trial the pressdubbed "Scopes II" was on. On one sidestood the State of California, defendingelementary-school science guidelinesthat hold evolution responsible forhaving "produced all the groups andkinds of plants and animals." On theother side was the fundamentalistChristian "Creation Science ResearchCenter" headed by young Segraves'grandmother Nell. "We want the au­thority and endorsement of the stateremoved from evolutionary theory," shesaid. "If man is taught he is descendedfrom animals. he will behave like ananimal."

The danger represented by the anti­Darwin crusaders is not scientific butsocial. Along with the "M oral Majority"and other "new right" religious outfits,the "creationists" are on the fundamen­talist flank of Reaganite reaction, cam­paigning to roll back secular educationand the separation of church and state.The same bible-thumpers hammeringaway at evolution are on the offensivefor prayer in the schools, against"immoral" library books, against abor­tion and the ERA.

Judge Irving Perluss decided for thestate on March 6. But the verdict washardly a ringing victory for science overthe fundamentalist yahoos. In rulingagainst the Segraves suit, Judge Perlusssimply held that it was unnecessary asCalifornia already has textbook andteaching guidelines undercutting the"dogma" of Darwinism. During histenure as California governor, RonaldReagan backed a suit which would haverequired teaching the biblical creationmyth in science class. While the suitfailed, the Reagan administration for­bade the use of texts reflecting evolutiontheory "dogmatism" and allowed reli­gious fundamentalist "creationism" tobe taught in social science classes.

Thus Judge Perluss' decision simplyreaffirmed that California is one of afrighteningly long list of states and citieswhere fundamentalist religion has infil­trated the public schQols. A number ofstates and school districts, includingSouth Dakota, Wisconsin, Missouri,Dallas, Atlanta, Tampa and Chicago goas far as mandating that the Bible storybe presented alongside the Darwiniantheory in biology and science classes!Not so long ago people who advocatedthrowing Darwin out of the school-

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--4 WORKERS VANGUARD

French Communist Party FeedsAnti-Immigrant Racism

Atlan/Sygma

(Top) French CP mayor of Vitry bulldozed black African immigrants' homes.(Below) CP demonstration in Vitry tries to alibi Stalinist chauvinism.

setting one section of the proletariatagainst another to demobilize anddemoralize' it. Figl\ting racism meansfighting the bourgeoisie's chauvinistpolicy of expelling immigrants andclosing borders; it means fighting for therights of immigrants, especially fullcitizenship rights. Thus they could joinfully in the struggles of the rest of theproletariat against capitalist austerityand unite with the mass organizations ofthe working class. Only through com­mon struggle against the same bossesand the same state power can racismwithin the French working class befought.

But there is no solution to theimmigration question under capitalism.Its resolution lies in the overthrow ofcapitalism and the establishment ofsocialism, a society that will liberate theproductive forces from the shackles ofprivate property.

Racism, Chauvinism and thePopular Front

Aulnay-sous-Bois, Nanterre, Leval­lois-Perret, Venissieux, Bagnolet, Saint­Denis, Ivry, Rennes, etc. There is a longlist of cities and towns where theCommunist Party has been campaign­ing "against ghettos" (read: "Immi­grants Out of PCF Municipalities")since the summer of 1980. The 5November 1980 declaration of the PCFPolitical Bureau, which set the tone andthe theme of the present campaign,explains its rationale:

"The ·authorities, by this concentrationLofforeign workers], are trying to makethe municipalities and their Communistmayors responsible for the difficultiesthus created. They want to weaken theirinfluence. But it is in the interest ofFrench and immigrant workers thatsolid Communist-run municipalitiesshould exist."

-CHurnanile, 6 November 1980

So the PCF decided upon this "anti­ghetto" campaign to maintain its"influence." This is the treacherouspolicy of a chauvinist party, devoted todefense of the bourgeois order, seekingto strengthen its social base by exploit­ing and encouraging the racism alreadyexisting among the most backwardsocial layers.

In fairness to Marchais, it must berecognized that the PCF position onimmigration is neither new nor surpris­ing. With its 1934 turn to the politics ofthe popular front and its corollary,national defense, the PCF passed overdefinitively to the side of the bourgeoisorder, supporting the colonialist andimperialist policy of its "own" bourgeoi­sie. In 1937 it backed the popular-frontgovernment's ban on the Etoile Nord­Africaine, the main organization of theAlgerian workers. In 1947 CommunistParty ministers (in the name of the"French Union") voted credits for theIndochina War. And again, after WorldWar II, the same ministers covered upthe massacres perpetrated by Frenchimperialism in Setif and Madagascar.

These days, the PCF likes to recallthat the social democrats intensified therepression of the Algerians' struggle fortheir national independence. True. Butit "forgets" that this colonialist repres­sion was maQe possible thanks to thespecial powers that PCF deputies votedto give the government of social demo­crat Guy Mollet in 1956. The PCFrefused to call for immediate independ­ence for Algeria (calling only for"negotiations") and refused to mobilizethe French working class in support ofthe Algerian struggle. That is the realstory of the "anti-colonialist past"

continued on page 10

5

immigration. Thus [right-wing social­democratic union chief] Bergeron didn'tmiss his chance to remind us that thePCF defends today what it accused himof yesterday; as for the PS [SocialistParty], it says that the Communist Partyis basically correct to raise the problemof immigration.

Today the PCF administers thecapitalist crisis on the municipal level,aspiring to administer the capitalistsystem on a national scale tomorrow. Itcomplains of "clashes between differentnationalities and ethnic groups," ofbackwardness in the school system,rising municipal taxes, unemployment,the housing crisis, etc. For the Commu­nist Party, who is responsible? Capital­ism? No, it's the presence of immigrantsrising to the level of a "flood alert." (Notto be confused, says Marchais, with "theunscientific, racist notion of a so-called'threshold of tolerance'." Is there adifference?!) How convenient, this"flood alert"-in the guise of limitingthe number of foreigners for fear ofracist reactions among the population,it means encouraging racist prejudicesunder the pretext of fighting them!

For the bourgeoisie, the immigrantworkers constitute above all an indis­pensable industrial reserve army whichcan be drawn upon almost limitlessly inperiods of economic expansion, theneasily disposed of in periods of crisis.The bourgeoisie can subject them towell-nigh forced labor to reap itssuperprofits, but its immigration policyalso serves to divide the working Class,

Fight Racism, Not Immigrants

Vitry has served as the pretext for aviolent anti-Communist campaign. Thebourgeoisie and their social-democraticlieutenants immediately seized theoccasion to feed their Cold War cam­paign: "Just look at the Communists­in France they use bulldozers, inAfghanistan they use tanks." Socialdemocrats. Gaullists, Giscardians, notto mention the far right (the racist ragMinute screaming about "red fas­cism"!), all responsible for anti­immigrant actions far worse than Vitry,used the situation to touch up their"liberal" image on the cheap. EvenStoleru, author of the immigrant expul­sion decrees! The fascist swine Le Pen,however, showed the greatest modera­tion. criticizing the Communists loronly wanting to drive the immigrantsout of town. All these criticisms of thepeF's methods poorly camouflage anagreement on the essentials: stopping

Vitry the symbol of its policy onimmigration. Witness the January 10demonstration: while with great diffi­culty it drew 4,000 participants (includ­ing few immigrants and many tricolorsashes [of elected officials]), it nonethe­less presented an impressive display ofnational Communist Party leaders, evencandidate Marchais in person. AsL'Humanite (12 January) emphasized,such a presence "meant the entire partywill not budge one inch in its policy onimmigration." The naive are warned:Vitry was no "slip."

13 MARCH 1981

EXCERPTS TRANSLA TED FROMLE BOLCHEVIK, 2 FEBRUA R Y 1981

The bourgeois electoral pot has begunto bubble in the past few weeks. Eventhough the main candidates all agree onone fundamental point-the workersmust pay for the crisis of Frenchcapitalism-the campaign that is shap­ing up could be more chaotic and"divided" than expected.

Vitry was the latest spectacularcontribution to the "presidential cam­paign" by the Stalinist bureaucrats andtheir candidate Marchais. The scandal­ous racist attack against black workersfrom Mali shook up the political worldfor a month. Today the [CommunistParty newspaper] Humanite hasstopped publishing daily articles onVitry, and the bourgeois candidateshave other fish to fry for the moment.But the workers whQ traditionally lookto the PCF [French Communist Party]and the CGT [PCF-dominated GeneralConfederation of Labor] to lead theirstruggles against the bosses and whoregularly vote PCF at election time mustclosely examine this "incident" andfirmly denounce it, especially beforeconsidering casting their ballots forMarchais. While in the past theCommunist Party has made pretensionsof supporting the immigrants' struggles,even participating (symbolically) insome struggles and opposing BonnetlStolt':ru's anti-immigrant actions, withthe events at Vitry and its "anti-ghetto"campaign the PCF has now explicitlytaken up a struggle against theimmigrants.

The Vitry affair is an importantquestion because behind it is the PCF'sna t ional-cha uvinist, protect ionistpolicy-"Buy and Produce French"-apolicy that binds the workers in thestraitjacket of their capitalist masters'interests. At Vitry the Communist Partygave the bourgeoisie a shameful "guar­antee," once again proving its readinessto take on the most despicable tasks todefend the interests of its "own" bour­geoisie. What's more, this particulardemonstration of its reformist aspira­tions was practically gratuitous, for thePCF has little chance of finding abourgeois electoral partner in the midstof the imperialists' current Cold Warrevival.

On 24 December 1980 Vitry's Com­munist Party mayor Paul Mercieca ledsome 50 people in a commando raid on ahousing project where a few days before300 Malian workers had been trans­ferred from another project in [theneighboring Giscardian-run suburb of]Saint-Maur. After demanding that theyreturn to their Saint-Maur slum, orderswere issued [by the PCF mayor of Vitry]to sack the place. Telephones, water,electricity, heat were all cut off, while abulldozer ripped out the front staircaseand blocked the doors.

But Communist Party memberswon't find out what really happened inVitry last December 24 by readingL'Humanite. The PCF's daily paperfirst ignored the facts, speaking only of"racist violence ... in Saint-Maur" andthe anti-Communist campaign. Then,after publishing the CGT's 2 Januarycommunique "deplor[ing] the Vitryincidcnts," ['Humanite's editorial thenext day recognized that "regrettableincidents" and "deplorable acts" hadoccurred. The beginning of self­critici,m? No, just an evasion.

The PCF leadership will go on loudlyapplauding Mercieca, even making

(Above) January 22, 1980: 200,000 take to thluprising. (Below) The bloody aftermath: jur

WORKERS VANGUARD

wing and revolutionary forces. When itgets down to the nitty-gritty, theyparalyze effective action by the workersorganizations, because they seek toavoid the fundamental contradictions.Whereas the main thing Marxists havealways pointed out about politics is thatwhen all is said and done, it comes downto a class division: you're on one side orthe other on a picket line. In a civil waryou stand on one side or another, orbecause there's no qualitative differencefrom the point of view of the proletariatyou're opposed in a revolutionary wayto both sides. But these reformists try tohide that distinction. So the question Iwould pose here is what happens whenthere's a new Cuban crisis-all thoseliberals talking now about "Let theSalvadoran People Decide," where willthey and coalitions built on thosepolitics stand then? You can't escape theclass question.

So Reagan has chosen El Salvadorand Central America as the axis aroundwhich he's revving up his Cold War.And what's gomg to be at the center ofthe political battic IS the question of theSoviet Union and the degenerated anddeformed workers states. As Trotskyistswe have a side there. We criticize thedetente illusions of a Brezhnev orCastro-Castro, by the way. supportedCarter against Reagan last November,but who laid the bas.is for what'shappening in El Salvador if not Carter?We call for the ouster of a Stalinist castewhich weakens the foundations ofproletarian rule by its attempts toconciliate imperialism. And that is partof our overall political program for theunconditional defense and extension ofthe gains of the October Revolution. So

are not seeking to achieve "stability" inthe region or anything of the sort. Theonly solution that they have in mind forthe Central American left is a "finalsolution." Reagan's spoiling for a fight;he wants the blood to flow in rivers. Andsince the most powerful imperial powerof this epoch wills it, the blood willflow.That is a fact. So why all this talk abouta political solution? The Latin Ameri­can populist regimes, like Mexico, andEuropean social democrats are talkingabout it. It's so much pipe-dreaming.And they'd better take that DetenteGold out of their hookahs, because thisis serious business. But the same sort ofdangerous utopianism is coming fromthe intended victims, from the Sandinis­ta leadership in Nicaragua and spokes­men for the Salvadoran left. Theyshould draw some conclusions from theU.S.' brush-off. Reagan stands by hisbutchers.

The Salvadoran junta is not going toget a "human rights" slap on the handthis time. And the reason is that what'sposed here is a class battle on aninternational scale. And therefore theonly answers which make any sense areclass answers-the program and per­spective of proletarian revolution.That's why we say what at first struck alot of people on the left as "off the wall,"that "Defense of Cuba and the SovietUnion Begins in El Salvador!" And,comrades, the events of the last weekhave emphatically confirmed that warn­ing. For example, one li!:leral Congress­man complained it was a return to"gunboat diplomacy"-he's so right.Spanish radio reported last Tuesdaythat there are presently more than 40American ships in the Caribbean tryingto stop arms shipments to Nicaraguaand El Salvador's leftists. Reagananswers the liberal concern aboutgetting embroiled in a "new Vietnam"saying he intends to deal with theproblem at its "source," which he claimsis Cuba and the USSR. Now in factthat's baloney, but it is U.S. policy. Sonow Washington is telling Moscow thatSALT depends on the junta winning inEl Salvador. Havana's being told thatunless they stop arms shipments to theSalvadoran leftists they will face a navalblockade.

And then what? Recall what theSoviet diplomat said who negotiated theRussian backdown over the October1962 missile crisis. He said, "We willnever permit this again." And theKremlin meant it. So where will theliberals and social democrats stand in anew Cuban missile crisis? I recall verywell how things stood the last time. TheSocialist Workers Party, the SWP,which used to be a Trotskyist organiza­tion until it started tailing after Castro­ism in the early '60s, had been buildingup a pro-Cuban front group, called theFair Play for Cuba Committee. With aneye toward the liberals, they talked onlyabout "self-determination" and "handsoff" Cuba. But when the missile crisis'came around, when push came to shove,big surprise: all of the liberals just fadedaway. There was no more "fair play" forCuba-it was "which side are vou on,brother?" for it was a class question.And the SWP capitulated to the liberalpacifists by refusing to criticize Khrush­chev. even though Castro himself, theirbig hero, was opposed to the dealand the Cuban masses were incensed atthe deal which left them without essen­tial protection against Americanimperialism.

So that's what's wrong with theseclass-collaborationist coalitions andpolitics on the part of supposed left-

GLMfNmlD £mUl

In 1932 EISalvador's whiteterror sent 30,000to their graves;newspapersannounced theexecutions of theleaders of theinsurgency.Below: Nicaragua'sSandino (left) withFarabundo Marti.

NACLA

EX H MURa "lim

going to the insurgents in El Salvador.Because if there were, we wouldn't havehad 12,000 people who died at the handsof right-wing death squads and thejunta's army in the last year. That is theproof. Hopefully there are some armsfrom Cuba and the Soviet Union there.But the fact of the matter is that there isnot adequate protection for the massesfacing bloodthirsty dictators. And thenthe Soviet ambassador to the U.S. getsup and says, "We're innocent." Unfortu­nately he was telling the truth. If he didlie, cheat and steal in order to further thecause of world revolution, we'd feel a lotbetter. But it's not so.

Now what we are seeing here is theattempt by the leading capitalist worldpower to reassert a claim to globalhegemony after being badly mauled inIndochina. The unraveling of thevarious dictatorships in the region isintimately connected to the relativeweakness of U.S. imperialism followingVietnam. Then came Jimmy Carter's"human rights" crusade, which in LatinAmerica waS essentially a passing phaseof bourgeois hypocrisy. But as wepointed out from Day One, its realdirection was against the Soviet Union.In other words it was imperialist moralrearmament, in preparation for war.And it wasn't just goingto be Cold War,it would be hot war. And Reagan hasdecreed that this is where the hot warstarts. So Central America is a substi­tute for the Persian Gulf or Berlin orsomewhere else. Poland, for example.That's the place that's uppermost inWashington's mind. And by "drawingthe line against Communism" in ElSalvador, what they are really preparingfor is to "roll back," in Foster Dullesphraseology, the historic gains of theRussian proletarian revolution.

Secondly, as we wrote in the last issueof Workers Vanguard, the U.S. rulers

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(continued from page 1)

cheating and stealing? Well, we have acandidate for that. It's the UnitedStates. And this is really attemptNumber 2. Number I was back inJanuary when they had "definitiveproof" that Nicaragua was the "realsource" arming the Salvadoran rebels.And the proof was a couple of rowboatson the Bay of Fonseca. The wood, theysaid, was a kind that's not foundnormally in El Salvador, and this wasthe proof of Nicaraguan aggression. It'sobviously ridiculous, but this was thebasis on which they cut off $15 million inaid to Nicaragua, and $5 million in"lethal" military aid was resumed to EISalvador. Well, that flopped prettybad-the correspondents rushed downthere and couldn't find any evidence ofarms or anything. So now we havesupposed reports by t-he head of the ElSalvador Communist Party.

Now the unofficial voices ofAmerican imperialism have even morefantastical things to say. There was aterrific one in the February 2nd editionof Business Week. They said:

"The recent arrival of North Koreans[to aid the Salvadoran guerrillas, theysaid] was discovered when four of themwere killed in a traffic accident inNicaragua in early January. BuenosAires has also identified larger numbersof Montoneros, Argentina's left-wingguerrillas. It has been reported thatAmerican-made 105 howitzers, cap­tured by the North Vietnamese in 1975,have been landed by a Lebanese shipchartered by the Palestine LiberationOrganization to bring them up fromSaigon.'"

Whew! So my first reaction is to ask,"Where is Carlos in all this?!" And whatabout the Baader-Meinhof gang?! Butas proletarian revolutionaries we havemore to say than just exposing inven­tions. The reality is that there isunfortunately no effective Soviet aid

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~ts of San Salvador to commemorate the 1932arpshooters murder 21, wound 120.

to prepare the proletariat for its tasks,key slogans are: "Defense of Cuba andthe USSR." Enough of this talk about a"political solution" with the bloodyjunta: "Military Victory for the LeftInsurgents in EI Salvador!" and "Breakwith the Bourgeoisie!" In Nicaraguathere's no middle way, the only road is"Expropriate the Bourgeoisie!" and"Set Central America Aflame withWorkers Revolution!"

EI Salvador 1932So let's look a little bit at EI Salvador

and go through some of the last 160years since independence was won fromSpain. Now, first of all, EI Salvador isnot a banana republic, it's a coffeerepublic. Since the late 1800s its mainexport has been that little green beanthat turns to gold for the coffee barons.But more than anything else, it's thequintessential country run by an oli­garchy. The ruling class consists of avery small number of families-thebiggest one is called the Hills, theAlvarez are another. These are dynasticfamilies who control everything.They're the landlords, the generals, thebishops, the presidents and so on. In ElSalvador they call this oligarchy the 14Families. Someone did a study onit recently and they discovered therewere 60. So if you want to make adistinction....

If you really want a picture of EISalvador sometime, I suggest that yousee a movie that was around some timeago called Viva Maria.' It stars BrigitteBardot, Jeanne Moreau and GeorgeHamilton. It's a spoof on Latin Ameri­can revolutions: Brigitte Bardot is thedaughter of some IRA terrorist who

13 MARCH 1981

emigrates to Central America becausenothing's happening in Ireland, andyou've got to throw bombs somewhere.So they lead a revolution, all thosebeautiful girls wearing bandoliers,George Hamilton martyred against across and Jeanne Moreau cuddling upto him in jail. It's really a schlock movie,of course, but it's got all the stereotypesabout a typical oligarchy-run LatinAmerican society. They have torturewheels with peasants on them slowlyturning in the wind; they've got peasantsmarching single file, all barefoot, downdusty roads with brutal foremen ridingup and down the line with whips andrifles. Well the point is, if you go up anddown the roads in EI Salvador you cansee just that.

. It's a murderous society with manysemi-feudal characteristics. But onlysemi-feudal, because it's been producingfor the world market ever since at least acentury ago. So in this situation you getdeeply felt democratic demands. To getrid of these butchers, right? Why should14, or 60, families lord it over everyone?The demand for land to the peasantswho till it. And for national emancipa­tion from the imperialist overlordshipthat's exercised by the U.S., directly andthrough its local intermediaries. InLatin America today bourgeois"democratic demands are burning revo­lutionary issues. But as Trotskyists wedon't therefore calf for a "democraticrevolution" as the social democrats andStalinists do. The fundamental contri­bution of Leon Trotsky and the RussianRevolution to Marxism is that weunderstand that in this imperialist epochyou can't have real democracy (particu­larly for the oppressed masses) unlessthe workers win it by achieving theirown class rule.

The reason is that if some of these"democratic" capitalist forces finally getpower, they're going to have to carry outa repression that's not that differentfrom what the previous tyrants andpatriarchs did. Why? Because the reasonthat these dictators are the norm inLatin America in the first place isbecause there is a very tiny bourgeoisiesitting on top of a very big oppressedpeasant and proletarian or plebeianpopulation whose miserable conditionsare continuall~' leading to revolutionaryferment. And the only way that they cankeep them down is through one kind oranother of bonapartist regime-youknow, the "man on horseback," militarydictatorships which ultimately comedown to mass terror. In line with this, Iwas doing some translating the otherday and it occurred to me that there arean awful lot of words in Spanish forcoup. So I looked it up and there were297 nouns for coup. If you add theverbs, it's over 580! So there's actuallymore words than there are for snow inEskimo. Of course, the reason is there'sa lot of snow in the Arctic, and in Latin

EI Salvador's left-wing guerrillas.

America you have a lot of coups. Andthen in El Salvador they just got theirfirst civilian president in 50 years. Hisname? Jose Napoleon Duarte-JoeNapoleon!

In EI Salvador, the quintessentialland of the coffee oligarchy, thistendency to bonapartist rule is showndramatically. For the country has beencontinually subjected to military ruleever since 1932. It's the longest continu­ous period ofarmy rule anywhere on thecontinent. And it's not an accident.Why? Well, EI Salvador is the mostproductive area of Central America,producing commercial crops from oneend of the country to the other-it's likeone giant plantation. And when theywent into coffee, they just threwhundreds of thousands of peasants offtheir land, so that the percentage oflandless peasants who have becomeagricultural workers in EI Salvador isfar higher than anywhere else in LatinAmerica. The conditions are verysimilar to what they were in Zapata'sMorelos around the time of the Mexi­can Revolution, and of course theMexican Revolution had a big impact atthis end of the Central Americanisthmus.

So when there was an internationalfinancial crash, the capitalist economiccollapse of 1929, the traditional terrorwas lifted and the landless laborersbegan to lift their heads. The oligarchysaw the storm clouds gathering anddecided to dump the reformer, replacinghim with a bonafide hangman-generalnamed Maximiliano Hernandez Marti­nez; The Communist Party called for anuprising to which the rural massesresponded massively. And the result wasan indescribably bloody repression.Thirty thousand people died, in acountry of a little over 2 million people.It's like shooting down 3 million peoplein the United States by comparison.And ever since then that has been thedominant theme of Salvador:m politics.Everybody knows that if things get outof hand, it's going to be 1932 all overagain. So that is what revolutionaryorganizations that claim to lead theproletariat have to prepare for-foranother 1932, but this time one in whichthe workers and peasants can win!

This was the first Communist-leduprising in America, and it was met withthe longest-lived military dictatorship inthe Western hemisphere. There's a closerelationship here, and the point is thatEl Salvador expresses in concentratedform the conditions of bourgeois rulethroughout Latin America. This is whatis at the heart of the Trotskyist theoryand program of permanent revolution,namely that in the backward capitalistcountries the very weak bourgeoisiecannot rule independently of andagainst imperialism and the semi-feudalelements. In fact, they're intimatelyallied, and they cannot install a

_ 1Montes

bourgeois-democratic revolution; thehistory of the French and EnglishRevolutions cannot be repeated here.Because the ruling class is not muchmore than a branch-office bourgeoisie.All of the "experiments" in bourgeoisdemocracy have failed miserably inLatin America. A few decades ago,Uruguay was supposed to be theSwitzerland of Latin America. Or Chile,a little piece of Europe transported toSouth America. And they had theAlliance for Progress to boot. Well,look at Uruguay and Chile~now.

So why does this happen everywhere?That's what the Trotskyists understandwhile the Stalinists and social democratsare always bitterly surprised. You see,these reformists always maintain thatyou can have some kind of a bourgeois­democratic stage, or an anti-imperialiststage, or an anti-oligarchic, anti­feudalist, anti-fascist stage, etc., etc.When you hear all that rhetoric youshould stop and ask yourself, what'smissing here'? It's anti-everything andfull of Marxist-sounding terminolngy,but there's no reference to proletarianrevolution. Right? So all of this fancylanguage is essentially to cover up thefact that they refuse to struggle forproletarian revolution. In fact, they aresimply trying to put over some kind ofmore liberal or "progressive" capitalistregime which will ultimately turnaround and repress the workers just likeits predecessors did. And only theTrotskyists tell the truth, that to win theclassic demarids of the bourgeois revolu­tion today it's necessary for the workingclass to take power and establish its ownclass rule. This is the only alternative tobloody counterrevolution.

The classic case in Latin America isChile. Now Chile actually does have amore European class structure, and eversince the 1930s it's had large reformistand even centrist workers parties.Consequently they also had their Peo­ple's Front experience. They had a seriesof popular fronts from 1936 to the late1940s, and the last one was headed byGeneral Gonzalez Videla, whose mainsupport was the Communist Party. Hecame into power in 1945, and by 1947 hehad thrown the entire CP into concen­tration camps. There's also the otheralternative, the Pinochet variant, wherethe Allende Unidad Popular acted as abarrier to going beyond the limits ofcapitalism. The UP was brought topower by a working-class upsurge­initially very enthusiastic-but as itgradually played its forces out, imperial­ist reaction and the domestic bourgeoi­sie str~ck back. In either variant thepopular front is a roadblock torevolution.

Break with the Boufgeoisie!

l'0 come back to the case of EISalvador, there are other limitations tobourgeois economic development andthe achievement of any kind of realprosperity or social progress in theregion. And that is that the whole area isBalkanized into tiny countries. Basical­ly, all of Latin America is in many sensesone big nation, with the exception ofBrazil. But in the case of CentralAmerica, this is even more extreme. Itemerged from colonial rule as a singlefederal state, but the bourgeoisie was sodispersed that it soon split up. But theresult is that you now have Costa Rica,EI Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras andPanama, none of them economicallyviable. Oh, they all have their own oilrefinery. Every single one of them has aCoca-Cola bottling plant-though nowthat the Republicans are in, they'llprobably change hands and becomePepsi-Cola. (The Times noted the otherday that things ahyays go better forPepsi under the Republicans.) And theyall have their Sears Roebuck stores forthe tiny middle class that lives insuburban divisions named ColoniaKennedy, Colonia Country Club or

continued on page 8

7

EI Salvador: New Vietnam?

EI Salvador...(continued from page 7)

Colonia Sears. Which are all laid outlike Levittown. But meanwhile you gotwo streets over and you have a mass ofalmost unbelievable poverty. Eventoday it's real progress when you can get~ tin roof! In other words, the condi­tions of life for the masses are ifanything worse than they were 30 yearsago.

Now part of the reason why you havesuch overwhelming poverty, such a tinymiddle class, is that the narrow nationalframework doesn't allow for genuineeconomic development. And any at­tempt at development within the capi­talist framework is doomed to failure,because you set up a canning plant here,a Revlon factory there and pretty soonthey're all competing and the localbourgeoisies are getting at each other'sthroats because there's no market fortheir produce. Let me give you anexample, this so-called "football war"between El Salvador and Honduras in1969. This was one of the most ridicu­lous wars in Latin American history, butit had nothing to do with football. Whathappened is that the Central AmericanCommon Market was set up as pan ofthe Alliance for Progress; you weresupposed to produce widgets in onecountry and gizmos in the other, andthen you would get to the "take-offstage" and Walt Rostow would comedown and give you a prize.

That's the theory, but El Salvadorheing a little more advanced began

A t the Spartacist League forum inNew York on Februarl' 28, a memberof the audience noted:"There's been alot of talk in the bourgeois press aboutReagan saying there is not going to beanother Vietnam, and among a lot ofso-called leftists of not wanting tobring back Vietnam. Would youcomment on how vou think thesituation in Central America differsfrom Vietnam and ... the idea thatwe're ~oing to rerun Vietnam and theantiwar movement." Comrade Nordenreplied:

On the Vietnam question, there areimportant differences that have to bestressed. As I mentioned, the coalitionin EI Salvador is a bourgeois popularfront. Now, like in Spain, we call forthe military victory of the popular­front forces against the right-wing re­actionaries, because if the junta winsagainst the left-wing rebels it will leadto the obliteration of the working classand all active elements in it. As anexample, in Spain 100,000 proletari­ans were killed after Franco won. Sofrom the point of view of the workingclass, even though both forces arebourgeois, that's a qualitative differ­ence, and so we call for the militaryvictory of one side.

In the case of Vietnam it's a little bitdifferent. The South VietnameseNational Liberation Front and theNorth Vietnamese behind them had apopular-front program and even hadsomething that looked like a popularfront. But in fact all they had in thispopular front were a couple of Bud­dhist monks and an architect. The re­ality was that on the one hand you hadthe North Vietnamese deformed work­ers state going up against Americanimperialism, and you had this NLF inthe South that was connected essen­tially to the North Vietnamese. So interms of the class forces concernedhere, the nature of the civil war wasdifferent.

What you find with many leftgroups is that they try to cut thecorners'so they don't have to take the

8

industrializing like crazy, and soonHonduras complained that their marketwas being invaded. Meanwhile therewere also a lot of peasants spilling overthe border, because land pressure in ElSalvador is very great. So Hondurasaccused its Maryland-sized neighbor ofimperialism and threw out thousands ofsquatters. Both countries were whippingup popular hysteria and after a contest­ed football game in Mexico City it blewup into a war. But the fundamentalthing was competition between theseeconomically unviable statelets. This"football war" put an end to the CentralAmerican Common Market and sincethen there's been hardly any industriali­zation at all. If the working class tookpower, of course, it would not be sometiny "socialist republic of El Salvador,"but in the framework of a socialistfederation linking all of Central Ameri­ca with Mexico, which is the realpotential industrial powerhouse of theregion. And that is the precondition toany real economic development.

Now another important aspect of thesituation in EI Salvador is the extremelysharp left-right polarization, reflectingthe deep abyss between the classes.Another dramatic example: in LatinAmerica there's a certain code on how torun a dictatorship. It used to be, forinstance, that when leftists got jailedthey would be relatively well treated,because everyone knew (including thejailers) that after they sold out, one ofthese fellows might be the next presidentor a cabinet minister. Now that's allchanged after the Alliance for Progress,which led to the systematic dissemina-

hard positions. And what this leads toin the protest movements in the UnitedStates over El Salvador and Vietnam isa similar sort of thing. So a comradeover here spoke about CISPES, theCommittee in Solidarity with thePeople of EI Salvador. They call for"Let the People of El SalvadorDecide," and "Self-Determination forthe Salvadoran People," and "NoIntervention." Now you listen to thosethings and you ~ay, "How can anybodybe against that." I mean, shouldn't theSalvadoran people be allowed todecide?

Well, raising these things which seemlike what "all men of good will" couldsupport, really is bourgeois liberal­ism. Because, for example, CISPESand the people who support it like theCommunist Party and the SocialistWorkers Party, are supporting a bill,H R 1509, which calls for no militaryaid to the junta. "N 0 military aid to thejunta" means that they accept econom­ic aid to the junta, which is what'skeeping that junta running. That placeis bankrupt-their economy's beenshot to hell for months. But they putforward this program which essential­ly approves of economic aid, becauseliberals don't oppose that. They justdon't want to give guns to badbutchers, or something of the sort.And thus they have policies that areliterally enabling the junta to stayalive.

And their overall program is for"self-determination." That came up atthe beginning of the Vietnam War,too. They said, "No foreign troops inVietnam." Right? "Self-determinationfor the South Vietnamese." Well, whatdid that mean? That meant no NorthVietnamese troops in Vietnam. But wewere for North Vietnamese troops inSouth Vietnam. And in the last days ofthe war we said, "Viet Cong On toSaigon!" Now, at the same time wesaid, look, these are the representativesof a deformed workers state; if they getin they are going to suppress workersdemocracy. But they will carry out a

tion of Nazi-style torture methods by"enlightened" American imperialism.Okay, so another rule of the game is thatthere is a certain cycle to these things. Aslong as you're going to keep the massesin abysmal poverty, it's inevitable thatperiodically they will have waves ofmass protest sweeping through thepopulation. And the rule is that when itreaches a higl1 point you let it pass over,let 'em march past and wait for anotherday. Not in El Salvador.

Last year, on January 22, there were200,000 people marching into down­town San Salvador. They have thetraditional central plaza, with thenational palace and then the cathedral(you know, god blesses El Benefactor);and then there's the national bank(Mammon blesses El Benefactor), andfinally the defense ministry (the gunsbless El Benefactor). Anyway, so thecrowd pulls into the central plaza, theyturn right around the cathedral and startgoing past the national bank andpresidential palace. Two hundred thou­sand people and what does the govern­ment do? It puts sharpshooters on theroofs, and they gun down the crowd.They killed 200 people and woundedanother 300. Now that is playing withfire-it's not in the Dale Carnegie rulesfor tinpot Latin American dictators. Butthere's a reason for it. The Salvadoranbourgeoisie knows that its situation hasbeen precarious for a long time, andthat's why there has not been any realattempt by dissident bourgeois elementsto challenge military rule for fivedecades. And so this kind of shamelessmassacre is also taken for granted-it's

fundamental social transformation,the expropriation of the bourgeoisie,and the duty of all Trotskyists andclass-conscious proletarians is tosupport that militarily.

So we said you've got to take a side,and the slogan for which we were mostnotorious in the Vietnam antiwarmovement was, "All Indochina MustGo Communist!" We took a class sidethere. Today we are for the militaryvictory of the left-wing insurgents in ElSalvador. But we also say of thesituation in Nicaragua that it isnecessary to go beyond their programand expropriate the bourgeoisie, thatthere is no middle road. The whole ofthe Central American isthmus musterupt in a volcano of workers revolu­tion, in order to set the whole conti­nent afire. And it's doubly importantin this case. I'll tell you why.

In Vietnam what the SWPconnected up with was bourgeoisdefeatism. And one thing aboutbourgeois defeatism, you never get itunless the bourgeoisie is gettingdefeated. Now in Vietnam they hadSoviet aid. It came through NorthVietnam. But in the present circum­stances it is quite true that Fidel Castrohas been counseling "moderation,"and a "political settlement" and all ofthese things. Obviously they're gettingtheir arms somewhere, although themain supplier, unfortunately, is theU.S. Defense Department. Becausemost of those guns they seem to havecaptured from the Salvadoran govern­ment forces. But even though they maygive some arms, fundamentally they'restarving them of arms, just like Stalinstarved the Spanish workers andpeasants in the 1930s of arms. And it'sbecause of their overall politicalprogram.

So at the global level, in terms of theconfrontation with the Soviet Unionand Cuba; at the level of the internalpolitics of El Salvador and Nicaragua;and at the level of the struggle in theUnited States, this kind of popular­frontist program, class collaboration,is a program for defeat.

necessary from their class point of view.There are all sorts of other examples.

The assassination of Archbishop Ro­mero, for example. You're not supposedto shoot archbishops either, especiallywhen he has friends here. He was a goodfriend of Father Drinan, the Congress­man from Massachusetts; but then thepope kicked out Father Drinan, so Iguess they figure it's alright to kill thearchbishop. Now Archbishop Romerogot very upset with President Romero(no relation) when the army startedshooting off his priests several yearsago. And when the "human rights" juntaput in by Washington about a year and ahalf ago did the same thing, pretty soonhe began sounding like a Maoist. Allfrom the scriptures of course-youknow, Epistle of Paul, Chapter I, Verse13. "God says don't kill, so if they kill it'sright to rebel." Well, the day after hesaid that he was shot down in the middleof saying m~ss. Incidentally, the hit menare supposed to have been Cubangusanos trained by the CIA-so if youwant to talk about exporting terrorism,that's a pretty good example.

And then there were the heads of theopposition popular-front coalition, theFOR, the Revolutionary DemocraticFront. Their top leader, his name wasAlvarez Cordova, was a scion of one ofthe 14 Families. And you don't normallyshoot down members of the oligarchy.Or the Catholic missionary women: youshouldn't shoot nuns, it's not accepted,remember Stanleyville and all that. AndCarter's ambassador Robert White­after the November election, all ofReagan's advisers were calling him a"social reformer" and he accused themof trying to get him killed. That's whathappens to all the other "social reform­ers," even when they're connected to theCIA, like the land reform guys theybumped off in the San Salvador Hiltoncoffee shop.

So what is the response to that? AsMarxists, communists, we say that it'snecessary to organize the oppressed andthe exploited around that social forcewhich has the class interest to do awaywith the system that leads to suchsadistic killers. But unfortunately theSalvadoran left has been influenced bydecades of nationalist and Stalinist­reformist ideology so that its effortshave mainly been directed at paperingover the very deep abyss between theclasses there. That's what their wholepopular-frontism policy is about. In thename of "democratic unity" they get theworkers and peasants committed torespecting the private property of thecapitalists, the "integrity" of the armedforces, the "serene guidance" of thechurch, and so forth. So you tack on ahandful of dissident Christian Demo­crats and a couple of limp-wristedSocial Democrats-actually bourgeoisliberals masquerading as socialdemocrats-all in order to keep themasses in check. Then supposedly youwon't frighten off the "progressivebourgeoisie" and maybe you can strike adeal with Washington.

So they get a popular-front coalitionwith a few liberals and priests andreformists. And the masses, who areoverjoyed at the ouster of the previousgang of murderers, initially give themtheir support. Now they've already hada version of this in El Salvador with theso-called reform junta that was put in byCarter in October 1979. They had liberalarmy officers, liberal civilians; theCommunist Party supplied a laborminister, and there were two hard-linecolonels. So what happens? The liberalsall get shunted aside, one after another,in what's called a "creeping coup," andthe military hawks unleash the worstbloodbath in decades. Oh yes, and youhave a "land reform" that is brought toyou by the same people who broughtyou "pacification" in Vietnam. Thisland reform consists of handing outparcels to the members of a fascistorganization called ORDEN, which haslinks to the military and is used to spy onthe peasants. And the rest of the peoplewho used to be there, the agricultural

WORKERS VANGUARD

CIA's "Truth Squad"for Death Squads

laborcrs, etc., all get thrown out, sent upinto the hills where they are labeledgucrrillas and then shot down by thearmy. It's called "Reform by Death" inEl Salvador.

So today they have another version ofthis class-collaborationist coalition, theRevolutionary Democratic Front. Atfirst it was headed by the landownerAlvarez and now by the "social demo­crat" Ungo, both of whom were mem­bers of the original "human" rightsjunta"of October 1979. Lately the FDR hasalso bccn angling for an agreement withColonel Majano, who was also amember of that junta but has now beenarrested. It's a more left-wing coalition,more like Allende's UP perhaps. Butwhat does it stand for? What about theland question, for example. The juntahas a "land reform"-what does the leftsay to that? Now Bolsheviks call foragrarian revolution, not land reform.The peasants are not going to fight forpieces of paper that say "title to land" onthem, so that they keep on paying 50percent of the harvest, only now it's notsharecropping but paying off the landbank. History shows that the only timethe peasants really believe that anythinghas changed is when they rise up in arcvolutionary insurrection and burndown the hacienda or manor house, andburn the land records. That's whathappened in France in 1789 or Russia in1917, or also in the defeated peasantrevolution in Mexico in Morelos.

The reason is quite obvious. Inaddition to the "title" in the peasant'shand there is another piece of paper,right? It's in the national archives in thecapital. And when the wave of reformpasses, the landowners are going toreturn from Miami. Then it's going to betheir piece of paper against the peasant'spiece of paper. And guess what-theirpiece of paper has more guns behind it.So the peasants are rightly skepticalabout these various reforms. Whereas ifthey are mobilized around a program ofland to the tiller and led by the socialforce that has the power to impose thatagainst the bourgeoisie, namely by theworking class, they can be a tremendousauxiliary force and even the bulk of thenumbers supporting proletarian revolu­tion. But not if you have a popular front.Senor Alvarez is in the coalition; heholds thousands of hectares of land andrepresents a social class.

Furthermore, it's not that there aresome bad landowners over there andsome good industrialists over here, andthose people are for social reactionwhile these people are for social pro­gress. They're all the same people. In thetypical Latin American oligarchic fami­ly the oldest son inherits the estate, ayounger brother becomes a colonel inthe army, a third son goes into bour­geois politics and number four goes intothe chur;;h. If they have five sons, thelast one is a revolutionary. Oh, and theone who gets the Coca-Cola franchise, Iforgot about him. So there's a divisionof labor, they all come from the samefamily. In El Salvador they're namedRomero or Alvarez, and in Nicaraguathey're all Chamorros, but they're notgoing to carry out an agrarianrevolution.

Internationally it's the same thing. Sorecently the Second International hasbeen mucking around in the U.S.'backyard, recognizing all sorts ofliberaland populist parties as members of theirsocial-democratic international. NowAlan Riding, a very perceptive reporterfor the New York Times, was writingabout this recently. There's a very smallgroup in EI Salvador called the NationalRevolutionary Movement, the MNR, abunch of liberals headed by GuillermoUngo, who is a vice president of theSocialist International. Thus they'reconnected with the Social DemocraticParty of Germany, which sends them D­marks and acts in some respects for theinterests of West German capital. SoRiding remarked that the actual numberof social democrats in EI Salvador couldprobably fit into one Volxswagen. What

13 MARCH 1981

As United States intervention in ElSalvador picks up steam, the Reaganadministration is mounting a cam­paign to hoodwink the public intobuying its fairy tale of Communist"indirect aggression" as the source ofthe masses' discontent. Among theapologists for the murder junta are theSocial Democrats USA, notorious fortheir earlier support of the Bay of Pigsinvasion and U.S. imperialism's waron Vietnam. On February 24, theSDUSA youth group, Young SocialDemocrats (YSD), held a forum atColumbia University in New YorkCity on the topic "El Salvador: Terroror Reform?" Apparently these ostensi­ble State Department "socialists" arefor both. Their featured speaker wasone Mary Temple, now touring thecountry as a consultant for thepacification program known in ElSalvador as "Reform by Death." Butthe Spartacus Youth League (SYL)spoiled this charade by exposingTemple for what she is, a collaboratorin CIA-sponsored mass murder.

The social-democratic CIA sympsare promoting the U.S.' big lie that theEI Salvador junta is nothing more than"liberal-minded military men" (so saida YSD spokesman). Temple lashed outat the "extreme left" which she claimedwas trying to "discredit" the presentSalvadoran regime as a gang of right-

they're angling for is for HelmutSchmidt and Willy Brandt to pull theirchestnuts out of the fire, and in returnthey promise to be good boys, pay all theimperialist debts and so on. But what doyou suppose Schmidt and Brandt aregoing to do when Reagan's gunboatsstart coming down the coast? Not a hellof a lot.

So the question of popular-frontismruns through all aspects of the situationin El Salvador, including the recentfailed offensive. This was billed as the"final offensive," and Time magazinequoted one guerrilla leader saying it wasthe "final, final offensive. Finally!" Nowit sounds like a joke, and partly it's formilitary tactical reasons, but behind allthe stop-and-go offensives and retreats

A:\N ARBOR-Two hundred fiftyrallied on the University of Michigan's"diag" March 6 for a noontime rallydemanding, "U .S. Hands Off EI Salva­dor! Stop U.S. Aid to the MurderousJunta! Military Victory to the Left­Wing Insurgents!" The united-frontprotest was initiated by the SpartacusYouth League (SYL) and endorsed byover 40 campus organizations andindividuals, including members of manygroups that refused to endorse. Thedemonstration was successful despite

wing murderers rather than a "cen­trist" coalition committed to reform.As an example of this far-left conspira­cy she held up a copy of WorkersVanguard. In the ensuing discussion,however, these paragons of "democra­cy" (whenever directed against theUSSR) refused to call upon SYLsupporters. Our comrades were unde­terred at this attempt at suppressionand rose to point out that Temple is thecurrent version of the government­sponsored "truth squads" that touredthe college campuses early in theVietnam War spouting about "NorthVietnamese aggression" (in their owncountry!).

Who is Mary Temple? The CIAwatchers of CovertAction recently(December 1980) published a memosecured from the Hudson Institutesuggesting that the State Departmentdispatch Temple and Roy Prostermanas land reform experts to convinceEuropean social democrats to supportthe junta. The Hudson Institute is thecreation of Herman Kahn, author ofThinking the Unthinkable and one ofthe original nuclear first-strikers. Asexecutive secretary of The LandCouncil ("a private group devoted tosupport for agrarian reform in devel­oping countries"), Temple co­authored with Prosterman an articleon El Salvador in the June 1980 AFL-

in El Salvador there is a politicalprogram. Now it appears to be thecase-and it's hard to tell because of theblackout in the imperialist press-thatthere was little response to the call forinsurrection. And certainly that was thecase with the general strike. A leader ofthe left-wing insurgents, whose coalitionis called the Farabundo Marti NationalLiberation Front, or FMLN, AnaGuadelupe Martinez said that "Themasses felt that they lacked the supportto massively carry out the strike, and forthe political-military organizations, itwas too weak to have been able to growover into an insurrection.... The strikecall at this point in time was a politicalerror. "

But this is not the first time such an

WV Photo

actin opposition from the StalinistYoung Workers Liberation League andits liberal cronies on the student govern­ment, who ironically argued that theSYL was trying to "split the movement"by demanding the military victory of theleftist insurgents! Despite the sectarianefforts of a few, popular outrage at U.S.imperialism's deadly role in CentralAmerica was expressed by the hundredswho came to the spirited rally andchanted, "Stop Reagan's Cold War!U.S. Out of EI Salvador!"

c/o Free Trade Union News. Proster­man, in turn, is a consultant for theAFL-CIO sponsored American Insti­tute for Free Labor Development(AIFLD), a U.S. government-fundedoutfit that has served as a cover forCIA disruption throughout thehemisphere.

But most of all Roy Prosterman isinfamous for his role as a CIA"agrarian reformer" in Vietnam. Ac­cording to Philip Wheaton ("AgrarianReform in El Salvador," November1980), Prosterman "helped draw upthe legal document of the Phoenixpacification program in Vietnam.... "Under the CIA-run Phoenix programpeasants were forcibly resettled in"strategic hamlets" while more than30,000 of them were singled out forassassination as "Viet Cong suspects."Now this mastermind of mass murderis at it again in Central America. It isnoteworthy that the day after theSalvadoran program was decreed, themilitary clamped the country under a"state of siege" (see "El Salvador:'Reform by Death'," WV No. 272, 16January). Yet this barely disguised"counterinsurgency" program is hailedin the Prosterman/Temple article as"the most sweeping agrarian reform inthe history of Latin America." Reformby sweeping away the peasants, that is.

Of course, not so long ago the sameProsterman referred to Vietnam paci­fication as "probably the most ambi­tious and progressive non-Communistland reform of the twentieth century."And everyone knows what happenedthere.

error has occurred. The general strikelast August was also a failure, and forsimilar reasons. In that case they weretrying to negotiate with various bour­geois forces to broaden their popularfron~. And on the eve of the strike thebus owners pulled out. Shortly after thestrike one of the more "moderate"groups, the FARN, left the militarybody of this multi-faceted left-wingcoalition, the DRU, in the hopes ofmaking a deal with Colonel Majano.Now the deal did not come off, becausesignificant sectors of the Salvadoranbourgeoisie are not willing to be part ofa left coalition. But the point is that it'sthe constant effort to try to get such adeal which has held them back frommobilizing the masses in a truly revolu­tionary insurrectionary direction. Forexample, in the recent final/generaloffensive they never intended to carryout a countrywide uprising. Action inthe cities was always supposed to beauxiliary, and not because they are somekind of Maoist "prolonged people'swar" guerrillas.

What they were after was to get apiece of territory where they could set uptheir alternative FDR government, andthen the Helmut Schmidts and LopezPortillos could recognize it and if theywere lucky maybe it would come upbefore the UN or the OAS. In otherwords, the military action was con­ceived fundamentally as a pressuretactic on the international bourgeoisie.However, such a strategy is hopelessunder the circumstances of Reagan rule.And in any case even if it did come topower, what it would mean is eventuallythat the workers and peasants would becheated out of a victory for which theyhad shed a lot of blood. And everythingwould all end up back in the hands of theruling class. So while the bulk of the lefttries to mas\< the class division, theTrotskyists say that it is necessary tomobilize the working class, with thesupport of the peasants, to overthrowthis very tiny bourgeoisie, which how­ever has the backing of imperialism.And in the new Cold War context, thetasks posed by tiny El Salvador are on aglobal scale.

[TO BE CONTINUED]

9

Leon Davis Sabotages 1199 Strike"How would you like it, if in the middleof serious negotiations, the presidentof your union walked in with his handsin the air and said, 'I surrender' ...Well, your president. Leon Davis.surrendered .... "

So began a leaflet handed out onFebruary 12 by some of the 175 strikinghospital workers who had traveled 100miles from Sullivan County to demon­strate outside the New York Cityheadquarters of their union, District1199 of the National Hospital andHealth Care Union. The strike atCommunity General Hospital in theCatskills began October I when service,maintenance and technical workerswalked out over the issue of wages andbenefits. Abandoned by District 1199'sever so "progressive" misleadership,these workers have withstood fivemonths of vicious union-busting orches­trated by the politically well-connectedhotel and department store owners ofthis wealthy, backwater resort county.

Twenty-four hours a day all winterlong, even in sub-zero weather. thestrikers picketed Community General.Two solitary women pickets had an armand a finger broken in an unprovokedcop attack at I a.m. one freezingNovember night. Then 70 days into the

French CP...(continuedfrom page 5)

vaunted by the PCF today to prove itsso-called "anti-racism."

By its deep-going chauvinism, theCommunist Party has always sought toprovide guarantees to its "own" bour­geoisie in order to carry out its popular­front politics. This same function isfulfilled by its campaign to stop immi­gration, even today when it is isolated bythe bourgeoisie's intransigence towardthe Moscow-loyal parties and when theroad to a new Union of the Left seemsblocked by the virulent polemics be­tween the PCF and the PS. In a similarsituation in the early 1950s (with thePCF thrown into the "ghetto" andvomiting social democracy), on thebasis of "anti-Kraut" chauvinism theStalinists held popular-frontist meet­ings with the Gaullists against Germanrearmament.

The Communist Party inauguratedits electoral campaign with the "dis­covery" that the popular fronts of '36,'44 and '72 had led to a victory for thebourgeoisie and defeat for the proletari­at. But with its outbursts of repulsivechauvinism, from "Produce French" to"Housing for the French" and "FrenchDefense," the PCF leadership says loudand clear that it is always ready todefend the interests of French capitalistsand, whenever the occasion arises, toconstitute a popular-front coalitionwith bourgeois representatives.

"Far Left" Populism

Lutte Ouvriere (LO) denounces theanti-Communist campaign unleashedover Vitry and declares it will notparticipate at any price. This (verylaudable) intention leaves room forskepticism if one recalls that thisorganization never hesitated a momentat participating in the violently anti­Communist Cold War campaign un­leashed by imperialism over Afghani­stan and Poland. But this is moreunderstandable when it becomes clearthat this sub-reformist group (whichcalls itself Trotskyist only through anunfortunate accident of history) basical­ly approves of the PCF's municipalpolicy on immigration!

"The French Communist Partycomplains of the fact that these townshouse a far greater proportion ofimmigrant workers than the towns runby the right wing or, we might add,

10

strike. management imported 230"permanent" scabs. Sitting safe andwarm in his ;\IYC office, 1199's presi­dent Leon Davis caved in, telling thestrikers they had lost and to settle on thespot. Instead, the strikers responded bysitting down in the hospital corridors tokeep the scabs from working! Their sit­in was broken when brutal sheriffsdeputies came barreling in, makingsome 65 arrests. On two other occa­sions, the strikers have repeated theirmilitant sit-ins. Another striker wascritically injured when he was hit by ascab car at a rally January 17.

Facing cops, scabs and sellout bytheir own union leaders, the strike hastaken on the character of a crusade. Inearly January the members voted downthe hospital's offer (endorsed by 1199)to rehire 105 out of384 strikers (the restto be placed on a preferential hiring list).A second "compromise" was voteddown February 4 on the hospital's newoffer of 190 jobs back. The ranks weren'tbuying when Leon Davis came to theJanuary 17 county AFL-CIO supportrally. Disregarding an elected 25-mannegotiating committee. Davis led arump delegation into "bargaining"­there to make his infamous "I surren­der" statement. And they still weren't

those administered by the SocialistPan\. ""The French Communist Party calls fora maximum quota of immigrant work­ers for all towns...."Obviously. the PCF is not a revolu­tionary pa"rty. it is a reformist pany, andnationalist moreover, and its vocabu­lary. like its positions ... could providethe opportunity for many criticisms."However. at bottom, we cannotcriticize it because what it is saying isvalid and well-founded."

-Lutte de C1asse No.8!. 22December 1980

A logical position on the part of anarrowly national group whose essen­tial characteristic is capitUlation to themost backward layers of the proletariat,and even to their racism.

All that LO can find to say aboutVitry is that "the way the PCF presentsthe Malian and immigrant workers iscertainly ambiguous," that it is"shocked" by these methods and thatthey are "questionable actions" (LutteOuvriere No. 657,3 January). Question­able?! What's to discuss with the mayorof Vitry, how to expel the Malians-bybulldozer or mortar shel!'!

For the social democrats of the OCI[Organisation Communiste Interna­tionaliste]. there is no room for doubts:Vitry is nothing but the consequenc(' ofthe Communist Party's policy of"refus­ing PC-PS unity to oust Giscard." Butthe article in [the OCI weekly] 1nforrna­tions Ouvrieres reporting on Vitrycarefully avoids any reminder of theOCI's position on immigration: "PCF­PS unity. a workers united front todefend the rights of immigrant workers,an integral part of the French workingclass, would immediately ban racistprovocations, raids, etc." (informationsOuvrieres No. 978, 6-13 December1980). Much as the OCI is a sect livingoutside the reality of the class struggle, itis more prudent, right after Vitry, not totrumpet that "PC-PS unity will defendthe interests of immigrants," since suchunity was achieved precisely to stopimmigration!

"Let's make 1981 the year of hope"says Rouge [newspaper of the LigueCommuniste Revolutionnaire] No. 950,3-9 January. This proclamation­headline of an editorial by Krivine (whoexplains how PCF-PS unity is the key toa better tomorrow)-was printed direct­ly opposite an article on Vitry. What abeautiful example of cynicism andelectoral cretinism! The opportunistillusions fostered by the LCR promiseabove all (and perpetually) "hope for thefuture" [the title of Marchais' campaign

buying when executive vice presidentJessie Olson threatened and carried outthe threat to cut off the $50jweek strikebenefits. All that is left now is to takeaway local organizer Reginald Fant'ssalary (he's already been fired once),pull out the phone and put a lock on thedoor of the rented hall. But theCommunity General workers arc deter­mined to stay out until they getguarantees that all the strikers will berehired.

These embattled strikers need fullsupport from the 45,OOO-strong District1199 and the entire labor movement. Ifanyone has earned it, they have. But astatewide AFL-CIO convention sched­uled for March 5-6 at the posh ConcordHotel (a Catskill resort whose owner ispresident of the hospital board oftrustees) was only cailed off at the lastminute after the strikers promised toth row up a picket line around theConcord and lined up the prior pledgesof numerous local unions that theywouldn't cross. To date the strike hasgotten almost no publicity in J\iYc.

At press time, picketing was continu­ing outside Community General Hospi­tal. But the sheriffs were hard lining it,enforcing court injunctions limiting

potboiler is Hope for the Present]! Itsright-centrist program cannot offer theleast alternative to the CommunistParty's treacherous policies. Who cantake seriously the LCR's litanies onPCF-PS unity and "desistement" [ced­ing to the "best-placed left candidate" inthe second round of French elections] asan answer to the immigrant workers'situation? Rouge itself is forced torecognize that "the PC and PS are inagreement on demanding an end to a1limmigration. on sending the 300 Mali­ans back to Saint-Maur, on refusingcomplete equality of political rights.especially the right to vote, for immi­grants." So, comrades of the LCR, theunity of the reformist bureaucrats isdirected against the workers, in this casethe immigrant workers?

Vitry and the PresidentialElections

Unlike previous years with the Unionof the Left, the PCF (for reasons of itsown) decided to run independently ofbourgeois partners in the 1981 presiden­tial elections. while the PS is seeking toconstitute a new popular front, particu­larly \Iith the Gaullists. Under theseconditions, we declared that we \vercprepared-if the PCF continued on thiscourse-to vote for Marchais. a vote forMarchais being. albeit in a deformedfashion, a vote for the representative ofthe workers camp as against the bour­geoisie (see LR Bolchevik No. 20,November-December 1980). Withoutany illusions about the tactical andconjunctural character of the PCFsposture of independence and withoutillusions in its reformist program,just asclass-collaborationist as that of the PS.The savagely critical aspect of ourelectoral support was aimed particularlyat the PCF's social-chauvinist policies(see "PCF et immigres: flagrant delit dechauvinisme," LR Bolchevik No. 21,January).

Vitry and the PCF's campaignaround this raise the question ofwithdrawing critical electoral support toMarchais. Just as yesterday we said tothe militants of the Communist Party:"We Trotskyists are for a c1ass-against­class vote. If your party maintains itsposition of independence, we will callfor a vote to it in April 1981," today wesay to them: "If your party chooses tocenter its electoral campaign againstimmigrants, we will refuse to vote forit." To us a vote for Marchais can meannothing other than a working-class vote.

pickets at the gates. The scaqbing at thehospital must be stopped. SEIU­organized nurses who have been work­ing must join the strikers. And whileTeamster drivers have been respectingthe picket lines, all truck deliveries mustbe stopped. Militants in 1199 mustdemand their leadership stop the back­stabbing and come to the defense oftheir union brothers. Above all thismeans mobilizing the labor movementfor mass picket lines to keep the scabsout and shut the facility down tight.Nobody works-no doctors, no nurses.no orderlies, no service workers, nomanagement-nobody.

Of course the media will scream abouthow the strikers are "endangering thepatients"-but that is the responsibilityof management which provoked thestrike and can end it any time it wishes,by simply acceding to the strikers' justdemands. H'orkers Vanguard urgesreaders who wish to support the strike tocontact Ms. Joyce Cappazoli at (914)794-6742 or (914) 794-6596. Contribu­tions may be made payable to STRIK­ING WORKERS EMERGENCYFUND and sent to Mrs. Marie Topol­ski, 6 Vicki Lane. Monticello. :\Y1270 I. Victory to the Sullivan Countyhospital strikers! -

If. due to the wishes of the PCFleadership, it becomes above all areferend urn on its chauvinist policies,we will eall for no vote to Marchais. Inthe CGT, which is covering up thePCF's action in Vitry, trade-unionfractions of a Trotskyist organizationimplanted in industry would in such asituation lead a fight for the union localsto take a position against the racistaction in Vitry, against the stamp ofapproval given by the CGT federationleadership and for opening debatethroughout the union on"immigraTIon. adecisive question for the proletarianstruggle in France. Communist Partyand CGT militants, demand an ac­counting from your leadership aboutVitry!

What the workers need is not toreform Marchais. for the PCF and CGTbureaucrats are reformists totallywedded to the maintenance of thebourgeois order, whether they areindependent or ~ a popular front. Onlythe Trotskyist program, the program ofproletarian internationalism, can-bybreaking the grip of social-democraticand Stalinist reformism on theproletariat-unite all workers in aconsistent revolutionary struggleagainst capitalism. Workers of theworld. unite!• No deportations of foreign workers!• No to immigration controls!• Full citizenship rights for immigrants

in France!• Equal pay with French workers!

Equal rights to social services!• Jobs for all! For a sliding scale of

wages and hours-divide the avail­able work among all workers withoutreduction in pay!

• Shorter working hours with no loss inpay!

• For big pay boosts! For a sliding scaleof wages!

• Against police and fascist repression,for worker j immigrant" ~lf-defense"

guards!• French troops out of Africa! Inde-

pendence for French colonialpossessions!

• For real international workers soli­darity, the unions must fight for:-the right to organize trade unions inthe backward capitalist countries-the formation of internationalunions in certain industries!

• No to protectionism and Frenchchauvinism! No to the PCF's chau­vinist policies! PCF members, de­mand an accounting from yourleadership about Vitry!-

WORKERS VANGUARD

TROTSKYIST LEAGUE OF CANADA

SPARTACIST LEAGUE LOCAL DIRECTORY

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Los AngelesBox 26282Edendale StationLos Angeles, CA 90026(213) 662-1564

Madisonc/o SYLBox 2074Madison. NI 53701(608) 257-2950

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letter to Reagan to explain ... ourposition on El Salvador."

Needless to say, Reagan is notinterested in a debate, and he's going toarm his "El Salvadoran people" to theteeth to make sure they win. Thecounterposed MC resolution called forhot cargoing of military goods to ElSalvador by American and other un­ions, military victory to the insurgents, aworkers and peasants government andU.S./GAS hands off El Salvador!Predictably, the bureaucrats/Coalitionresolution for an "independent laborparty" was in fact neither for anindependent nor a labor party, but.rather for a coalition with "progressiveforces" (Democrat Ron Dellums wascited as an example). Again the Coali­tion blocked the Militant Caucusresolution, which called for a breakfrom the Democrats and Republicansand the forging of a workers party basedon the unions to fight for a workersgovernment.

While the Militant Caucus failed towin the resolution votes, it was clear thatthe bureaucrats' attempt to i~olate theCaucus failed. With six delegates, theMC was the effective left-wing pole atthe convention and they received ahearing each time they spoke. And thatevening some 34 ILWU membersattended a victory party hosted by theMilitant Caucus to celebrate a string ofrecent Caucus victories, including therecent election of Clark and Kasian tothe GEB, the reinstatement of Chapmanto his job with full back pay and gains inthe Longshore division as well. Moreand more, despite McCarthy-stylebaiting by Herman & Co., ILWUers arecoming to understand that on every vitalissue-from runaway houses to defend­ing the union hiring hall to Klan terrorto EI Salvador-the Militant Caucus isthe only force in the union with aprogram for the workers to win.•

EI SalvadorRefugees ...(continued from page 1)

many reports of mistreatment or killingof Salvadorans returned from theUnited States.... " When asked foraddresses of those refugees returned onChristmas Day, the INS refused, "say­ing it was concerned that any inquiriesin EI Salvador about their well-beingmight jeopardize their lives."

The deportations to El Salvador aredeliberate murder. In contrast to thefate of refugees from the terror of theReagan-backed, U.S.-armed junta, theUnited States has always welcomed thescum of the earth: Nazi war criminals,Croatian fascists, Cuban gusanos,Vietnamese torturers and, under Jimmy"Human Rights" Carter, Nicaraguanmercenaries. The Spartacus YouthLeague calls for militant protestsagainst this bloody trafficking in butch­ery. Asylum for the refugees from juntaterror! Stop deportations to EISalvador! •

VancouverBox 26. Station AVancouver, B. C.(604) 224-0805

ChicagoBox 6441. Main POChicago. IL 60680(312) 427-0003

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election. Constituting one-third of thenew GEB, the Coalition and its support­ers fell to their knees at this conventionto ingratiate themselves with the Eick­man regime. With union posts in handand no programmatic scruples, theynow grab at the chance to become (orremain) part of the bureaucracy.

For some of them such as well-knownStalinist hacks like Joe Figuereido andJoe Lindsay, beingjunior partners in thebureaucracy is an old game, but othersin the Coalition like Roberto Flotte arestill learning the bureaucratic tricks ofselling out. Their bankruptcy is glaringat Colgate, where virtually the entirehouse committee are Coalition mem­bers. Assistant chief steward and Coali­tion member Rich DeGolia was so readyto abandon even his pathetic call for animpotent consumer boycott when thebureaucrats called it "premature" that itcaused uneasy stirrings among someCoalition members. DeGolia is dead-setagainst the Militant Caucus call for a sit­down, and resigned to the plant closure.At the convention he could only advo­cate casting a vote against the shut­down in a Berkeley city referendum!

Sensing their fundamental reformist"unity," the Coalition and the Herman/Eickman leadership blocked on theirresolutions and repeatedly counter­posed them to those of the MilitantCaucus. And whenever Eickman lookedabout for a motion to close debate on aCaucus resolution, some Coalitionspokesman was always ready to leap tothe microphone to oblige him.

When MC member and delegate TimChapman motivated a resolution to liftthe ban on candidates' own Iiterature­an undemocratic prohibition, peculiarto Local 6, which benefits theincumbents-People's World supporterVicky Mercado, a business agent electedon the Coalition ticket, opposed itbecause then "only people that havemoney and lots of advertisements canget elected"! This statement was really aslanderous accusation that the member­ship can't think on its own. Her realpolitical purpose£ (and dead-end oppo­sition to workers democracy) wererevealed last year when she moved toclose debate on anti-Klan/Nazi a~tivity

to prevent discussion on union partici­pation in the April 19 demonstrationthat stopped the Nazis!

The bureaucrats/Coalition resolutionon El Salvador called for a telegram tothe State Department to stop U.S. aid tothe junta "so that people of that nationmay decide their own destiny." MC andGEB member delegate Mike Kasianargued, "We should be calling forvictory to the left-wing insurgentsagainst the right-wing military dictator­ship!" When Kasian went on to call for aworkers and peasants government,apoplectic Coalition leader Jim Rydercalled it "absurd if not obscene that weshould tell the people of El Salvadorwhat kind of government they shouldform!" Ryder then pulled out his"friendly amendment," a petition spon­sored by Walter Johnson's Bay AreaTrade Union Committee for an "open

NV PhotoUMWA president Church holds ex­Klansman Sen. Byrd's hand.

Democrats while the reformists weretailing after the traitor Miller and thesellout Church. The vital lessons of thisstruggle are brought together in the WVpamphlet, The Great Coal Strike of1978, which is must reading for everyUMWA militant today.

• Shut down all coal operations,union and non-union! No extensions­No contract, no work-All out onMarch 27!

• For the unlimited right to strike!Sweep away the pro-company Arbitra­tion Review Board!

• Not continuous operations and aseven-day workweek, but a shorterworkweek at no loss in pay! Jobs for theunemployed! No to the BCOA's' killer"productivity" schemes! A full COLAand a big wage boost!

• No to Reagan's anti-labor "austeri­ty" cuts against the workers and thepoor! No Black Lung benefits means nocoal! We can't live on jelly beans and thebosses can't live without coal!

• Restore the UMWA health cardand cradle-to-grave medical coverage,controlled by the union! A big boost foran industry-wide pension, equalized atthe highest level!

• Organize the unorganized! A bigsettlement here is key to winningWestern miners!

• End racial and sexual discrimina­tion! For union control of hiring andupgrading! Defend the union senioritysystem!

• Smash the parasite energy con­glomerates! Expropriate oil and coalbarons without compensation!

• Break with the Democratic andRepublican parties! Build a workersparty, based on the unions, to fight for aworkers government!.

The Rank and File Coalitionin Power

While Herman, Eickman & Co. donot have great popular support, theywere able to find protection against left­wing attack with the help of the "Rankand File Coalition." The Coalitionconsists of ex-Maoist "Trend" support­ers, long-time backers of the Commu­nist Party (CP) West Coast weekly,People's World, and various would-be"progressives" who formed a reformistelectoral bloc at the time of last year's

ILWU...(continued from page 3)that continually find fault" and "a lackof discip'Jine among those people whocall themselves activists" and also"arguments about why the union didn'tgo far enough or why the union isn'tdoing enough or the things that theunion should do in their point of view."He company-baited his unnamed oppo­nents and thundered, "A condition ofpreserving this union is ... everybody inthe union [must] march to the sameorders!" And further, "The time hascome for people who have alreadydemonstrated by their conduct a deter­mination to harm the union ... [to] takea hike!"

WorkersVanguardPamphlet

the "no contract, no work" tradition ofthe union.

Even the official union demands areinadequate and have already beeneroded. UMWA negotiators are de­manding a catch-up raise, a cost-of­living escalator (bargained away byMiller and Church in '77), improve­ments in pension and health coverageand reduced work time. Missing is thekey issue of the right to strike, whichChurch does not even pay lip service to,although he does claim to be forelimination of the unpopular Arbitra­tion Review Board. (This "neutral"body ruled in 1977 that participants inso-called "unauthorized" strikes can befired for picketing or even leafletting insupport of such a walkout.) In theWestern states, the UMWA leaders havealready signed an agreement withPittsburg & Midway which doesn'tinclude a COLA. This deal then becamethe pattern for a contract'with Peabody,ending a one-month walkout of 900workers who were forced to strikeagainst the top coal producer while therest of the union miners, East and West,remained on the job.

Miners ...(continued from page 12)

Here is the truestory of theGreat Coal

Strike 01 1978­from the miners'

side of thebarricades. Not

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For a Fighting Program!

Various phony leftists have repeated­ly acted as waterboys for the Millers andChurches. Most notable is the SocialistWorkers Party (SWP), now building an"anti-nuke" March on Harrisburg forMarch 28 in conjunction with the MineWorkers and other unions. This isintended to bring together ecologyfaddists with "America firsters" (U.S.coal, not Arab oil) and provide aplatform for Church to sound militantthe day after the strike deadline. In themiddle of the 1977-78 strike, as coalminers turned down two rotten con­tracts .negotiated by the BargainingCouncil and voted heavily against thethird, the SWP acted as cynical cheer­leaders for Arnold Miller. When theUMWA chief couldn't show his face inthe coalfields, the SWP erased anti­Miller slogans from pictures of miners'picket signs. Even after the strike wasover, their misnamed Militant newspa­per had the gall to label the settlement a"victory." How many UMWA minerstoday think the speed-up and wagelosses caused by the '78 contract are avictory?

The fake-socialist SWP also makes apractice of crossing picket lines, clai­ming they are only "informational," andeven ran a scab, Andrew Pulley, for U.S.president in 1980. But Workers Van­guard, newspaper of the SpartacistLeague, defends the basic union princi­ple that "picket lines mean don't cross."Where the SWP and other opportunistssupported Labor Department interven­tion in the 1972 UMWA elections, theSpartacist League demanded: bossesgovernment out of the labor movement!In the crucial 1977-78 coal strike WVnot only provided hard-hitting, on-the­scene coverage but also a class-struggleprogram for victory. Thus we warned ofthe need to fight Taft-Hartley and the

13 MARCH 1981 11

t

WI/iIlE/iS ,,1.'(JI1/i,Stgg Reagan's Black Lung Cutbacks" Coal Cornp.any. TakeawaY.§

Miners: Don't Beg, Strike!

"Black lung kills!" 10,000 miners protest Reagan's cutbacks in Washington, March 9.

WASHINGTON, March 9-Thou­sands of miners marched shouting andsinging through the streets of the capitaltoday to protest President Reagan'svicious cutbacks in Black Lung (pneu­moconiosis) benefits for disabled min­ers. "Coal Dust KILLS Coal Miners"said many of the union signs. Othersbitterly challenged Reagan's "welfarebum" mythology. asking "If 88 PercentDon't Have Black Lung, Why Can'tThey Breathe?" Ten thousand membersof the United Mine Workers of America(UMWA) participated in the Washing­ton demonstration as part of a two-day"memorial" work stoppage in thecoalfields. It was the first labor protestagainst the Republican administration'smassive anti-working-class, anti­minority budget cuts. And it comes asbargaining reaches the critical point incompany-union negotiations on thenational bituminous coal contract that·expires March 27,

But in the face of the jointgovernrncr,: employer off~nsivc a pow­erful protest was urgently needed toserve notice on the b<:,,\cs, from the coaloperators to the capitalist politicians,that the miners are ready and willing tolaunch a solid national strike, TheUM WA contract allows for up to tendays of "memorial" shutdowns tomourn those murdered by the compan­Ies through the most dangerous workingconditions in American industry. Butinstead of using this opportunity toorganize a powerful strike, by drawingdown the companies' huge coal stock­piles, union president Sam Church tookoniy two days-a gesture. And with his"I love America" speech, Church fell tohis knees before the bosses. To no avail.Everything that has been won so far inthe Black Lung struggle was wonthrough struggle, not begging. It's nodifferent now.

In an all-out coal strike, there's nodoubt what side Reagan will take-thesame side as that phony "friend oflabor" Democrat Jimmy Carter. But theUMWA leadership tried to dress up theWashington demonstration in Reagan­ite super-patriotism: union headquar­ters decked out with a three-story-highstars and stripes, and hundreds ofAmerican flags passed out to marchers.So eager were Church & Co. to avoideven a hint of confrontation with theadministration that the march almostsprinted past the WhiteHouse. And thisfrom the union that twice dared to strikeduring World War P braving all thecapitalist "war effort propaganda andslanders about a "pro-Nazi fifth col­umn"! Where is the combative spiritthat built the UMWA, that said "youcan't dig coal with bayonets"? That'swhat kept the 1978-79 coal strike goingthrough 110 days of bitter struggle, andthat's the spirit needed today.

Instead, Church brought onto theunion balcony endless DemocraticParty politicians, ranging from "scabRepublican" Jay Rockefeller to formerKlansman Robert Byrd. But the crowdwas not moved by the two hours of long­winded flag-waving about "Amer' nenergy security." They sang "SolidarityForever" with gusto, and the emotional

12

high point came when a young minermounted the podium to speak of hisfather who died this morning of BlackLung. The killer respiratory disease is afighting matter in the coalfields. It wasthe Black Lung movement, beginningwith mass demonstrations of tens ofthousands at the West Virginia capitalback in 1969, which set off a wave ofpolitical strikes and wildcats, sparkingthe reform movement which toppledcorrupt, murderous union chief TonyBoyle. Sam Church is sitting on avolcano.

Militant UMWA members mustdemand a no-holds-barred strike, begin­ning March 27! District-wide meetings(which began to take place midwaythrough the last strike) must be heldnow to hammer out demands, strategyand tactics. A national strike committeemust be elected so the membership cancontrol negotiations and block a sellout.Stop the flow of coal through unior.solidarity actions-"Ilot cargoing"! AllU.S. labor must rally to the UMWA'sdefense! If the energy conglomeratesand a violently anti-labor governmentcan crush the miners inthis battle, it willbe the opening salvo of a biggeroffensive against the unions across thecountry. But if a militant coal strike,backed up by inter-union solidarity,brings the coal bosses to their knees itwould tremendously aid labor strugglescoast-to-coast!

Company/GovernmentOffensive

In Reagan's Cold War drive thedomestic targets are labor, minOritiesand the poor. In this atmosphere the

coal bosses are ill no mood for dealswith the unions. With wildcat strikesdown by 85 percent from the tumultu­ous years of the 1974-77 contract, theBituminous Coal Operators Associa­tion (BCOA) sees 1981 as the year totame the combative miners for good.Seeking to make UMWA mines more"competitive" with non-union pits­especially surface mines in the Westernstates-industry bargainers are pressingfor continuous, seven-day operationsand the institution of rotating shifts.Other BCOA takeaway demands are toweaken the seniority system, for man­datory overtime, extension of probationfor new hires and elimination of theindustry-wide pension in favor ofcompany-by-company plans. And thebosses are perfectly candid about theirdesire to bloody and break the power ofthe union. Without "productivity," saidBCOA chief Bobby Brown, "there willbe no future for UMW-representedcoal" (Wall Street Journal, 22 Decem­ber 1980).

Capitalist spokesmen like BusinessWeek are optimistic about reaching a

.national settlement without a strike forthe first time since 1964. Since thebitterly fought strike three years ago, theUMWA's share of U.S. coal productionmined under BCOA contract hasshrunk to 44 percent of the total (downfrom 70 percent in 1974). What's more,the operators have stockpiled close to200 million tons of coal-one-thirdmore than in 1977-in order to black­mail, and if necessary starve, the minersinto submission. On top of this, whileproductivity rose by 7.7 percent last

year, for a record production of 825million tons (at a cost of 124 miners'lives), there are currently 25,000UMWA miners on layoff. In additionthe bosses are united in a way theyweren't last time. Brown is fromConsolidation Coal, one of the mostvicious anti-union outfits in the industryand the biggest coal mine employer inthe U.S. Consol quit the BCOA in 1979complaining that smaller companieshad a disproportionately large voice inthe bargaining and were too soft on theunion. They returned only when thelarge energy trusts were given exclusivecontrol of negotiations.

UMWA Leaders Retreat

But the miners have not forgotten themilitant tactics which kept the 1977-78strike solid for almost four months. InFebruary roving pickets in southernWest Virginia donned ski masks andpulled 5,000 miners out of the pits, indefiance of arbitrators' no-strike rul­ings, to resolve unsettled local griev­ances. The danger comes from theInternational leadership under SamChurch, which is actually a continua­tion of the hated sellout Arnold Millerregime. Church was vice-president in1977-78 and actually ran the show whileMiller was holed up in hospital beds andCharleston hotel rooms to escape angryminers. Since becoming president he hascontinued wooing the Democratic Partyenemies of labor (West Virginia was oneof the fev,tates which voted for Jimmy"Taft-H: 'ey" Carter in 1980) and hasrepeated' ,ropped hints of violating

continued on page 11

13 MARCH 1981