Workers Vanguard No 729 - 11 February 2000

7/29/2019 Workers Vanguard No 729 - 11 February 2000

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50C!:No. 729 .,.X423 11 February 2000

Mobilize Labor Power AgainstState Repression, NAFTA Austerity

AFP ReutersMexico City, February 6: Cops drag off UNAM strike leader Alejandro Echevarria and over 700 others in early morning assault on student strike.Tens of thousands of w c ~ > r k e r s , students and parents have taken to the streets in protesLMexico: Outrage Over CoP.Attack on Student StrikeFEBRUARY 8-As we go to press, thecentral campus of Mexico City's NationalAutonomous Univ.ersity (UNAM) remains under police occupation while hundreds of striking students are in jail, someon charges of "terrorism" which couldbring 40 years' imprisonment. Early inthe morning of February 6, up to 2,500thugs of the Policfa Federal,Preventiva (PFP-Federal Preventive Police)invaded the campus on the orders ofMexican president Ernesto Zedillo. Over700 people, among them leaders of theGeneral Strike Council (CGH), were

thrown behind bars. Five days earli6f,federal police working alongside the"Auxilio UNAM" campus cops, "Cobra"

; P I i I 7 P ~ ~ ! I ' ~ t I O P ~ l i S t - ~ C P Y S , " " ~ ~ ~ j ~ ~ ( I ~ r l ! ' I ~ ~ , c ~ T . ' ,.;i .,'a ~ e " o l u t i O . l l a r ' . Y l o l k e r s l : ' a ..ty!

: " . :. : : ": :.::::' ::":.. : :: : - ::' ":-", :: ". - , - .":->.:" . . . . . . -:: . -'::::".: "::: ":"- . ~ ' . : ,: -.::" ":: :paramilitaries and hired thugs brutallyattacked the struck "Prepa 3" high schoolaffiliated with UNAM, arresting over250.The police occupation of UNAM hashelped shatter illusions in Mexico'swafer-thin bourgeois "democracy." A!lleasure of the volatility of the situationwas', given by the father of one of the

arrested students who told CNN Newsyesterday, "Instead of giving MeXico education, they are oppressing the countryand forcing it into revolution." The "democratic" cover for the cop invasion ofUNAM was a phony "referendum" engineered by UNAM rector Juan Ram6n Dela Fuente last month which he claimed asa mandate to put an end to the strike.

Such attempts to mobilize public opinionagainst the strikers now lie in tatters. Asone woman said at a protest march ofUNAM strikers' parents on February 6,"That plebiscite was pure deceit."For over nine months, the strikers haveheld firm in their struggle against theMexican bourgeoisie's attemp tto imposetuition at UNAM-with 270,000 students, the largest university in the Western Hemisphere-which the U.S. imperialists demanded as a condition for WorldBank loans. Last month, powerful sectorsof the Mexican ruling class, headed bythe Catholic church, stepped up agitationto "re-establish law and order" and endcontinued on page 5

Mass Arrests in Mexico Require Urgent International Protest!Free All Arrested UNAM StrikerslDelend PubliC Educationl

Statement by the International Communist LeagueFEBRUARY 6-At dawn this morning,an army of thousands of the notoriouslybrutal Mexican federal police stormedthe Mexico City UNAM campus andarrested up to 700 students and strikesupporters at a meeting of the General

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Strike Council (CGH). The bourgeoisie'slying claims of the "autonomy" of thelargest university in the Americas havebeen flattened under the iron heel of amilitary occupation of the campus. Parents and strike supporters bravely puttheir bodies on the line to block thebuses hauling students away to dangerous police custody, but they were overwhelmed by military force. Many hundreds are now in custody in the federalpolice headquarters in Mexico City'SPlaza de la Republica.

Our comrades in Mexico City in theGrupo Espartaquista de Mexico (GEM)and Juventud Espartaquista (JE) arefighting now for an urgent mass laborcentered demonstration to demand:Drop all charges! Free the UNAM strik-ers! Defend public education! Internationally, the workers movement and theleft must take action to demonstrate thatthe victimized UNAM strikers do notstand alone. The workers movementeverywhere has a, stake in this 'fightagainst class privilege and state terror inMexico. International protest and exposure is urgently necessary to fight statecontinued on page 5

WVPhotoPOC protest outside Mexican con-sulate, New York City, February 7.


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Ill

The New York Times, a principalmQuthpiece fQr the U.S. capitalist rulingclass, has taken to. acting as press agentsfQr the racist killers Qf the Ku Klux Klan.In a Times (16 January) piece headlined"CQmmunity Finding GQQd in PresenceQf aKlans man," cQlimmist Matthew Purdyserves up a warm and fuzzy PQrtrait QfJames W. Sheeley, a fascist IQwlife fromupstate New YQrk who. heads the regiQnal

Partisan Defense CQmmittee-the classstruggle legal and sQcial defense QrganizatiQn assQciated with the SpartacistLeague-fQr a labQrlblack mQbilizatiQnto. stQP the KK K In the lead-up to. OctQber 23, the Times ran numerous artIcles,letters and QpiniQn pieces depicting thefascists as an irrelevant fdnge group andpreaching that no. Qne shQuld interferewith their "right" to. rally. On the day Qfthe attempted Klan provQcatiQn, a TimeseditQrial alibied these racist terrQristsby arguing that "no. testimQny suggestedthat Klan members were likely to engagein viQlence." Try telling that to. the familyQf James Byrd Jr., a black man dragged to.his death by KKK murderers in Texas in1998. The Klan, America's hQmegrownNazis, "speaks" with lynch ropes, gunsand bDmbs. Their "rallies" are recruitment drives fQr racist murder.

. American Knights Qf the Ku Klux Klan.Purdy depicts the effQrts Qf a IQcalpreacher and friend Qf Sheeley, Qne BrianRandazzo, who. approves Qf the Klansman's "gQQd influence." When thepreacher turned Qver his pulpit to. Sheeleylast NQvember, the Klansman railedagainst the "mQngrels" in the cQngregatiQn. On the Martin Luther Kin,g Jr.hQliday, Randazzo preached a sermQnQn behalf Df Sheeley titled "LQving YQurEnemies," prQmpting Purdy to. repQrtthat this "has given Dr. King's birthday a meaning here that eludes manycQmmunities"!

Sheeley's Klan Qutfit was run Qut QfNew YQrk City last OctQber 23, when atleast 8,000 wQrking peQple, minQritiesand YQuth resPQnded to. the call by the

This Times editQrial was part Qf thefailed effQrts Qf the Democratic Party to.derail the OctQber 23 labQrlblack mQbilizatiQn. New YQrk Civil Liberties UniQnlawyer NQrman Siegel and DemQcraticstate assemblyman SCQtt Stringer CQIluded with Republican mayQr Giulianiand the CQurts to. give the Klan a free

Imperialism and WarIn promoting protectionist chauvinism, theAFL-CIO labor bureaucracy acts to mobilizethe working class behind the interests of the

U.S. imperialist exploiters against their capitalist rivals overseas. As was seen in two cataclysmic interimperialist world wars, tradewars ultimately lead to shooting wars. Meeting in revolutionary Moscow after the end ofWorld War I, the Communist InternationalTROTSKY stressed in the platform adopted at its First LENINCongress that war is inherent in the imperi-alist system, which can only be overthrown through socialist revolution internationally.

The cQntradictiQns Qfthe wDrld capitalist system, fDrmerly hidden deep within it, haveerupted with cDIDssal fQrce in a gigantic eXplDSiQn: the great imperialist WQrld War.Capitalism SQught to. QverCQme its own anarchy by Qrganizing productiQn. Mightycapitalist,assQciatiQns fQrmed, such as syndicates, cartels, and trusts, replacing thenumerous, cQmpeting entrepreneurs. Batik capital merged with industrial capital. Thefinance capitalist Qligarchy came to. dQminate all Qf eCQnQmic life; it used its QrganizatiQn, based Qnthis PQwer, to. achieve exclusive supremacy. MQnQPQly tOQk the placeQf free cQmpetitiQn. Capitalists in assQciatiQn replaced the individual capitalist; QrganizatiQn replaced insane anarchy.HQwever, the mQre that capitalist organizatiQn replaces anarchy within each cQuntry,the mQre acute becQme the cQntradictiQns, cQmpetitiQn, and anarchy in the WQrld eCQnQmy. The struggle amQng the largest, best-Qrganized predatQr natiQns led with irQnnecessity to. the mQnstrous imperialis t WQrld War. Greed fQr profits drove WQrld capitalto. fight over new markets, new spheres fQr capHal-investment, new SQurces Qf rawmaterials, and the cheap labQr PQwer qf cQIQnialslaves. Once the imperialist states haddivided up the whole WQrld amQng themselves andtransfQrmed the many millions 4)fAfrican, Asian, Australian, and American wQrkers and farmers into. beasts Qf burden,SQQner Qr later a iQlent cQlIisiQn was bQund to. Qccur, revealing the true, anarchicnature Qf capital. Thus Qriginated the greatest crime Qf all, the predatQry WQrld War ...The end result Qf the capitalist mQde Qf prQductiQn is chaQs, which Qnfy the largestproductive class, the wQrking class, can QVerCDme. This class must establish a realQrder, the cQmmunist order. It must break the dQminatiQn Qf capital, make wars impQssible, destrQY all' natiQnal bQrders, transfQrm the whQle WQrld into. a cQmmunity thatproduces fQr itself, and make the brotherhoQd and liberatiQn Qf the peQples a reality.

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-"PlatfDrm Qf the CQmmunist International" (March 1919), reprinted inFounding the Communist International (1987)

! ~ ! l ! l s ! ! o ! ! 4 . ! ! . ' ! ! ~ ' ! . 1 ! . . EDITOR: Len MeyersEDITOR. YOUNG SPARTACUS PAGES: Anna WoodmanPRODUCTION MANAGER: Susan FullsrCIRCULATION MANAGER: Mara CadizEDITORIAL BOARD: Barty James (managing editor). Bruce Andre. Ray Bishop. Jon Brule.George Foster. Liz Gordon. Walter Jennings. Jane Kerrigan. James Robertson. Joseph Seymour.Alison SpencerThe Spartacist League is the U.S. Section of the International Communist League (FourthInternationalist)Workers Vanguard (ISSN 0276-0746) published biweekly. except skipping three alternate issues in June, July andAugust (beginning with omitting the second issue in June) and with a 3-week interval in December. by the SpartacistPublishing Co., 299 Broadway. Suite 318. New York. NY 10007. Telephone: (212) 732-7862 (Editorial). (212) 732-7861(Business). Address aU correspondence to: Box 1377. GPO, New York. NY 10116. E-mail address:[email protected] subscriptions: $10.00/22 issues. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY. POSTMASTER: Send addresschanges to Workers Vanguard. Box 1377. GPO, New York. NY 10116. 'Opinions expressed in signed arlie/es or etters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpointth e closing date for news in this issue is February 8.

No. 729 11 February 2000

WV PhotoOctober 23 labor/black mobilizationrode KKK out of NYC. Democrats,Times defended Klan's "right" to sowracist terror.ride and to. stQP the anti-KKK protest.- Stringer, black Democrat Al SharptQn andCharles Schumer-Po.int man in the Senate fQr racist "law and Qrder" and guncQntrQl--organized a "rally fQr tQlerance"fQr the KKK, even Qffering to. share asQund permit with the Klan. Meanwhile,fQrmer FBI infQrmant SharptQnjDinedthe 'black establishment Amsterdam News infiling "friend Qf the cDurt" briefs Qnbehalf Qf the KKK! But the multiracialwQrking class Qf New YQrk City wasdetermined to. drive the Klan killers Qutand did, defying Giuliani, the DemQcraticParty establishment, the CQPS and CQurts.The Times (24 OctQber 1999) itself headlined, "Unmasked and Overwhelmed, theKlan Is Besieged at Rally."A recent Times (21 January) article Qnblack radio. talk shQWS gives backhandedacknQwledgement Qf the impact Qf theOctQber 23 anti-Klan victQry Qn the city.The article, which features a phQtQ Qf aparticipant in the labQrlblack mQbilizatiDn hQlding a PDC "StQP the KKK!"placard, quo.tes a radio. listener telling atalk shQW hQst, "When the Klan wasmarching I didn 't see no. respDnsible blackleadership speaking against t h ~ Klan."

Indeed, the "resPQnsible" black DemQ~ ' t ~ \ . ~ , ~ \ ) " - ~ ~ \ . \ \ \ \ . ' t ~ ~ - \ ) . " - \ . \ ) " - ~ \ ) . ' t ~ ~ \ ) . ~ ' t ~ \ . ~ like Dennis Rivera who. is himself aleader Qf the state DemQcratic Party,were preaching "tolerance" fo.r the Klan.The Democrats were acting Qn behalf o.ftheir class, the racist capitalist rulingclass, which keeps the fascist killers inreserve, to. be unleashed against the wQrking class and minQrities in times o.f sharpsocial crisis. As revQlutiQnary leaderLeo.n Trotsky explained in his 1934 wQrkWhither France?:"Finance capital is obliged to create special armed bands, trained to fight the

workers.... The historic function of fascism is to smash the working class,destroy its organizations, and stifle political liberties when the capitalists findthemselves unable to govern and dominate with the help of democraticmachinery."

I

The New York Times and the DemQcratic Party liberals seek to. Qbscure the Klan's role as the histQric American nativist fascist group, which has terrQrizedblacks, o.rganized 1abQr, CathQlics, Jewsand Qther minQrities since it was bQrnfrQm the defeated CQnfederate slavDcracyfQllQwing the Civil War. TQday, withSheeley saying that he wants to. try againto. appear in New YQrk City, the Times .PQrtrays the KKK fascists as s.Qme kindQf poor, "misgui ded" fQlk. Purdy's articleprints withQut CQmmenl Sheeley's linethat "the Klan was nQt viQlent Qr hateful,but was a white separatist group fightingfQr white peQple in the face Qf intermarriage and civil rights fQr minQrities."The Times article is part Qf the QngQingcampaign by the bDurgeQis liberals fQr"tQlerance" fQr the fascist lynchers. ItspurpDse is to. try to. lull the wo.rking classwhile preserving the fascists as thereserve guard dQgs to. maintain the role Dfcapital.On OctQber 23, the PQwer Qf the multiracial wQrking class was mo.bilized in- itsQwn self-interest and in defense Qf allthe explQited and QPpressed against thedeadly KKK threat. The success Qf thatmQbilizatiQn required the Marxist leadership provided by the PDC and the Spartacist League, which fights to. build awQrkers party which will smash the fascist menace Qnce and fQr all throughsQcialist revQlut iQn,.

~ 9 8 9 - 9 0 - R e v o l u t i o n vs.Counterrevolution in Germany, ,Saturday, February 12, 7 p.m.UC Berkeley, 126 Barrows Hall

BAY AREA For more information: (510) 839-0851or (415) 777-9367Seattle WTO Protests PushedAnti-Cominunism, American Chauvinism

Saturday, February 12, 3 p.m.Harvard University, Science Center, Room 109-OSTON For more information: (617) 666-9453Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of the Spartacist League

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FROM THE ARCHIVES OF MARXISMBlack Freedom

.and Proletarian RevolutionOn the occasion of Black HistoryMonth, 'we publish below excerpts fromtwo lectures on "The Negro Struggle andthe Proletarian Revolution" given in 1953by Richard Fraser as a spokesman for thethen-Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party(SWP). These lectures were subsequentlyreprinted by us in Prometheus ResearchSeries No.3, "In Memoriam Richard S.Fraser: An Appreciation and Selection ofHis Work" (August 1990). In these lectures comrade Fraser offers a Marxist,materialist analysis of the oppression ofblack people as a race-color caste inAmerican capitalist society.A veteran of the revolutionary Trotskyist movement going back to the 1930s,Fraser developed' the program of revolutionary integrationism, the fight againstevery instance of discrimination undercapitalism and for the full integration ofblack people into an egalitarian socialistsociety. From our inception this programhas been the cornerstone of our strugglefor black liberation. Fraser was a theoretical mentor of the SL's precursor, theRevolutionary Tendency (RT), whichfought the centrist degeneration of theSWP in the early 1960s. In particular westruggled for an active Trotskyist intervention into the civil rights movement.The RT was formed in opposition tothe SWP majority's uncritical embraceof Cuba's Castro and its tailing of thepro-Democratic Party liberal civil rightsleaders, and subsequently black nationalism. For this opposition, we were bureaucratically expelled in 1963-64. DickFraser's own political trajectory at thetime led him in a different direction. Afterbreaking with the .SWP in 1966, Fraserhelped found and, before being cut offby a split, briefly led the Freedom Socialist Party. Some years later he was amember of the Democratic Socialists ofAmerica (DSA). Toward the end of hislife, Dick distanced himself from theDSA and joined the SL. His last politicalact was to endorse the PDC-initiatedlaborlblack mobilization which stopped

the KKK from rallying in Philadelphia on5 November 1988.These lectures were given when JimCrow segregation was the law of the landin the South, before the emergence of themass civil rights movement of the 1950sand '60s that led to its downfall. Thebourgeoisie eventually acquiesced to thedemand for legal equality in the South.With the mass migration of black peoplefrom the rural South into the Northern

p \ } \ 1 " II I . l{! "1 \ !\.l !! ", 1\ I " I

cities and the increasing concentration ofblacks in the industrial labor force, JimCrow segregation had grown anachronistic. Moreover, it was an embarrassmentoverseas as American imperialism soughtto posture as the champion of "democracy" in the Cold War, particularly incompetition with the Soviet Union in theThird World.The fight for black equality broke apartthe conservative Cold War consensus andprofoundly shook the American bourgeois order. However, the liberal blackestablishment represented by MartinLuther King Jr. sought to contain these

Saturday, February 26, 4 p.m.Emmanuel Presbyterian Church, Geneva Room3300 Wilshire Blvd. (at Berendo)LOS ANGELES For more information, call (213) 380-8239.... ................ .................................................Break withthe Q ~ m o c r a t i c I ' f l r t y o f . l f l r ; ' s l l l . f l r l ~ . W,r7""We


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SYC Joins Picket Lines,Fake Left Organizes Scabbing

Since January, campuses in Ontario,British Columbia and elsewhere in Canada have been hit by worker and student protests against austerity attacks bythe federal and provincial governmentsand university administrations. For threeweeks in January, more than 2,000 teaching a s s i ~ t a n t s struck the elite and filthyrich University of Toronto (U of T), demanding better wages, a tuition waiverand increased benefits. For the last several weeks, B.C. campuses have seenrotating strikes by campus workers. Andon February 2, tens of thousands of students protested across the country againsthigh tuition fees, which have more thandoubled in several provinces over the lastten years. The Spartacus Youth Clubsin Vancouver and Toronto intervened inthese struggles, fighting to win studentsand workers to our class-struggle perspective. At the February 2 demonstrations, SYC members also mass distributed a leaflet in defense of the UNAMstrikers in Mexico.SYC comrades walked the picket lineswith the U of T TAs, emphasizing that inorder to win, they needed the active solidarity of campus workers and students,aiming to shut down the campus. Butinstead, the university kept functioningwith littIo disruption. The national leadership of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE)-the TAs' ownunion-ordered other CUPE-organizedcampus workers to work behind the TAs'lines, and student leaders like studentcouncil president Matt Lerner denouncedthe strike! The TAs' local leadershipitself encouraged students to attendclasses, if only they'd walk the lines for afew minutes. As a result of all this, theTAs went back to work on January 31with almost nothing gained. -.At the root of these losing, divisi.vestrategies is the reformist, pro-capitalistpolitics of the Canadian labor bureaucracy and its "political arm," the socialdemocratic New Democratic Party (NDP)..The NDP is what Marxists call a bourgeois workers party-linked to the working class through the bureaucratic leadersof the trade unions, but thoroughly committed to upholding racist capitalism.Speakers for the NDP graced severalTA strike rallies at U of T, ,trying to propup their party's abysmal popularity ratings. But when it is in power, the NDPimposes the same austerity and repressionas its Tory and Liberal counterparts. TheTrotskyist SYC calls to break with theNDP and to build a. revolutionary workers party.As the SYC said in a widely distributed January 14 leaflet titled "Victoryto U of T Strikers!": "Capitalism can'tbe reformed-it must be overthrown byworkers revolution. The Spartacus YouthClubs fight to win students and youngworkers to a lifetime of partisanship forthe struggle of the working class. Key tothis is actively championing the cause ofall those who are oppressed by capitalism: youth and women, immigrants, gays,Native people, the Quebecois." Addressing a TA strike support rally on January 7,an SYC speaker motivated this point: "If4

you hate the racism, exploitation and warwhich are endemic to this capitalist system, you belong on the picket lines,because that's where the power to dosomething about it is." Emphasizing thatcapitalism means the oppression of the

Toronto SYC speakerat U of T strike rally inJanuary. 1.5. scab"socialists" crossedpicket lines, spewedracist filth at SYCsupporter.

e?u2'0CII::i:.r;!l

many by the few, she concluded: "Theonly way to end this is to get rid of theprofit system and the exploitation' andoppression it entails. Key to that is building a revolutionary workers party thatfights for all the oppressed. To studentswho want an end to the endless cutbackswe say: Victory to the campus workers!Join the pickets! Shut it down to win!"During the strike, the InternationalSocialists (I.S.--co-thinkers of the American ISO) sponsored "strike support"actions that included crossing the TAs'picket lines, i.e., scabbing. As the SYCdenounced these scab "socialists," the I.S.went into a frenzy, culminating ina racist,male-chauvinist attack on an SYC member and U ofT trade unionist by I.S. honcho Ritch Whyman. We reprintbelow aJanuary 30 Toronto SYC leaflet denouncing this bigoted outburst.

Condemn InternationalSocialist's Racist,Anti-Woman Provocation!On January 21 at a rally of striking Uof T teaching assistants at Simcoe Hall,Spartacus Youth Club supporter Stephanie Cheddie was the target of an uglyanti-communist tirade. The perpetratorwas one Ritch Whyman, a leading member of the International Socialists (I.S.),who denounced Cheddie to a rally marshal as a "Nazi" and screamed profanitiesin her face. Not satisfied with slander andmale-chauvinist bullying, W h y m ~ n thenyelled at Cheddie, who is a non-whitedaughter of Guyanese immigrants, "Whydon't you go back to where you camefrom"!Such racist, male-chauvinist abuse hasno place on picket lines, at strike ralliesor anywhere else! Stephanie Cheddie iswell known as a strike supporter, not

only as a member of the SYC but as amember of CUPE Local 3907 (GraduateAssistants), where she played a key rolein her union's decision to respect TApicket lines. We call on TAs, strike supp o r t e ~ s and all who oppose racism and

sexism to vigorously protest Ritch Whyman's outrageous attack.What drove Whyman berserk wasCheddie's denunciation of the International Socialists' longstanding policy ofcrossing picket lines, i.e., scabbing. At a"strike support meeting" on January 14,in direct response to SYC interventionscalling to shut down U of T, Whymanopenly advocated crossing the TA picketlines en masse at Sid, Smith to "organizesolidarity." The I.S. did exactly that fivedays later. In contrast, 'from the beginning of the strike, the SYC has joined TApicket lines and called on other studentsto do the same. Picket lines are the fundamental battle lines of the workers'class struggle against the capitalist rulers: that's why we fight for the elementary principle that picket. lines meandon't cross.This has not been the perspective ofthe TA union leadership, who have bentover backwards to maintain "businessas usual," refusing even to call for a boycott of classes by' undergraduates, or forother campus workers to respect theirpicket lines. That recipe for defeat hasbeen backed by all manner of self-styled"leftists," who loudly oppose our Trotskyist insistence on the need for a classstruggle policy to win this importantstrike. Most frenzied of all have been thepro-NDP social democrats of Whyman'sI.S., whose anti-communism is truly bredin the bone.Scratch a social democrat like RitchWhy man hard enough with a revolutionary program of class struggle andhe oozes racism, misogyny and antiimmigrant chauvinism; Why? Becausethe reformist I.S. takes its lead from theNDP and union bureaucracy, who fundamentally share the "values" of the capitalist ruling class. The pro-imperialistsocial democracy is the transmission beltfor all manner of reactionary bourgeoisideology into the workers movement. Thesocial democrats are the enemy of anticapitalist class struggle, committed as

they are to the maintenance of the necessarily racist, anti-woman profit system.NDP speakers Rosario Marchese andHoward Hampton have regularly gracedthe platform at strike rallies, hypocritically pledging their support. While I.S.members have literally acted as cheerleaders for them, a 14 January SYC leaflet pointed out: "As attorney-general inBob Rae's NDP government, Hamptonjailed striking postal workers for defending their picket lines. It was the 1990-95NDP regime that paved the road to MikeHarris through austerity attacks like theunion-busting Social Contract and theracist attempt to eliminate health care forrefugees and foreign students."Whyman's gross outburst thereforeaccurately reflected the politics of theeternally NDP-IoyaII.S., refracted throughhis own particular personal pathology.

For years, the I.S. championed all mannerof reactionary, anti-Communist outfitswhich aimed at the destruction of theSoviet Union and the deformed workersstates of East Europe. Among their heroeswere the Vatican-inspired anti-abortionbigots of Polish Solidarnosc, and themurderous CIA-backed Afghan religiousfanatics who fought the Soviet army andmurdered schoolteachers for teachingyoung girls to read.The same politics played out at the1998 International Women's Day fl\ir inToronto, when the fair's feminist organizers authorized a booth staffed by propagandists for the anti-woman Iranianregime. The I.S. defended these mouthpieces for Islamic fundamentalism-wholauded the practice of stoning women todeath for "adultery"-after they wereconfronted by outraged Iranian and Kurdish women supporters of the WorkerCommunist Party of Iran (WPI). The SYCis proud to have participated in the WPIled action, which drove the mullah-loversfrom the fair. In revolting contrast, the I.S.denounced the protesters as "racists" and"violent," ugly slanders which amountedto an invitation to the racist capitalist stateto send the Iranian leftist refugees "backwhere they came from."Once again, the I.S. has taken its placeon the wrong side of the class line, crossing picket lines at U of T and embracingsome of the worst excrescences of bourgeois society-like Ritch Whyman, awalking negation of proletarian morality.Students and campus workers who wantto fight against the oppressive capitalistsystem epitomized by the' wealthy andarrogant Bob Prichard [U of T president]must reject with disgust any "socialist". organization that harbors a creep likeWhyman in its leadership. They shouldlook instead to the'SYC for a revolutionary proletarian-internationalist programto sweep away capitalism and its manifold injustices. Down - with I.S. anticommunist slanders and scabherding!Picket lines mean don't cross!.

WORKERS VANGUARD


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UNAM ...(continued from page 1)the strike by whatever means necessary.Now the government of Zedillo's Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), working in tandem with the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) ofCuauhtemocCardenas which runs Me:Jtico City, hasmoved to crush the strike on behalf of theMexican capitalists and their U.S. imperialist overseers.But while the police occupation ofUNAM cQnlinues, the city is not undersiege, and masses of working people continue to rally almost daily in defense ofthe students. On February 4, at least20,000 protesters gathered in MexicoCity's main square, the i6calo, in defenseof those arrested at Prepa 3. Two daysearlier, some 2,000 marched to the Reclusorio Norte prison where those arrestedstudents are being held. As the crowdyelled out, "Son, listen to me, your fatherhas joined the struggle!", hundreds ofvoices from within the prison walls wereheard shouting "We are not alone!"When the police stormed onto themain UNAM campus on February 6,students' parents bravely attempted toblock buses carting strikers off to prison,shouting "Let our children go!" "They arenot criminals!" That evening, parentsorganized a demonstration of 20,000 people, including contingents of the STUNAM campus workers and other unions,which marched to the Plaza de la Republica to demand unconditional freedom for the arrested students. Protesterschanted, "La UNAM no es cuartelFuera Ejercito de el!" (UNAM is not abarracks-Army out!).At a STUNAM press conference earlier that day, the union announced that itwould refuse to return to work as long asthe campus is under police occupation. Arepresentative of the Grupo Espartaquistade Mexico, section of the InternationalCommunist League, made an urgentstatement to the workers gathered there:"Because of its role as the motor force ofthe capitalist economy, only the workingclass has the social power to stay therepressive hand of the bourgeoisie and itsstate" (see article, page 6). Addressing thepresence of the Auxilio UNAM cops inthe STUNAM union, our comrade wascheered when he raised the call, "AuxilioUNAM out of STUNAM and UNAM!"The GEM and its youth group, the J u v e n ~

,leL Statement...(continued from page ,] )repression of the left, the labor movementand the students in Mexico!

This morning's police raid was ..preceded last week by the cops and hiredthugs storming a striking high schoolaffiliated with UNAM. High-school students and UNAM strikers were savagelybeaten, hundreds were jailed and faceserious felony charges of "rioting" and"terrorism" that could incarcerate themfor decades. From the beginning of theUNAM strike, the GEM and JE haveinsisted that the police, including thecampus police ("Auxilio UNAM"), arethe hired thugs of the capitalist class anddo not belong in the labor movement.These bloody police attacks add urgencyto our call: Cops out of he unions! Military/Police of f campus!The attempts t6 restrict access to highereducation for thousands of working-classyouth-and the unleashing of brutal staterepression, from the campus to the Zapatistas and peasants in Chiapas-arepart of the intensification of the exploitation of the Mexican working class andoppressed by the Mexican bourgeoisie inline with the dictates of its U.S. imperialist masters through the InternationalMonetary Fund and North AmericanFree Trade Agreement. As the GEM/JEwrote in a February 4 leaflet distributedat a 20,OOQ-strong protest march to theZ6calo: "Currently facing a wave of callsfor strikes, the bourgeois regime wants tosmash the UNAM strike so that it doesn't11 FEBRUARY 2000

APMexico City, February 4: At least 20,000 march to demand release of over 250students arrested two days earlier when police and hired thugs attackedPrepa 3 high school.tud Espartaquista, have fought for thiselementary class principle from thebeginning of the strike as well as forextending the student strike to the powerful Mexican proletariat, which faces abarrage of privatizations and other attackson its jobs and livelihoods dictated by theimperialist vultures of the, InternationalMonetary Fund.The actions of the thousands of Mexican workers who have taken to the streetsto protest the police crackdown haveblown apart the lies of the capitalistmedia that state authorities are committed to "peacefully" resolving the strikeand that the UNAM strikers are crazed"ultras" with no support in the society.This is the same Mexican ruling classwhich unleashed the 1968 TlatelolcoMassacre in which hundreds of studentswere slaughtered and army troops occupied UNAM. Cynically trying to defuseintersect the struggles of the workingclass, especially in this election year whenthe different bourgeois parties (PRD[Party of the Democratic Revolution],PRI [Institutional Revolutionary Party],PAN [National Action Party]) want toprove to their imperialist masters thatthey are capable of maintaining capitalist'law and order,' even i f the cost is theblood of workers and students ... Whilethe popularity of [the PRD] has decreasedamong sectors of workers and students asaresuIt of the continuous attacks that itsriot police have perpetrated against thestrikers, it is necessary to give this disillusionment in the PRD a class character:the PRD is a bourgeois party, and itsnationalism and democratic pretensionsreflect nothing other than its bourgeoisclass interests. The fragile Mexican bourgeois regime cannot offer workers andthe oppressed anything but hunger andrepression."The government has bloodied andrepressed the students because they thinkthey can get away with it. The stqdentstrike has held out for many months andthe students have fought valiantly. Butstudent protest on its own is insufficient.To go beyond verbal protest and changesociety, students and all those seekingsocial justice must be anchored in thesocial and economic realities of thecountry and must mobilize the tremendous social power of the proletariatagainst the Mexican rulers and theirimperialist overlords. We say: No new-1968 massacres! Mobilize the power ofthe working class! Forge a revolutionaryTrotskyist party!.

protest and anger by parents and others,the Mexican government announced today that several hundred of those arrestedhave been released. The New York Times(7 February), a mouthpiece of U.S. imperialism, peddles a portrayal of the brutalcop attack on UNAM as a school picnic,talking of a "peaceful" end to the strike.Nothing could be farther from the truth.The arrested students are in dire danger.Meanwhile, the cops continue to roam thestreets rounding up militants on their hitlist and any student strikers they can gettheir hands on.It is urgently necessary for the workers movement and the left internationallyto show that the victimized UNAM strikers do not stand alone! The tCL hasappealed to unions around the world forsolidarity with the UNAM strikers andhas organized emergency demonstrationsinternationally, both last week after theattack o'n Prepa 3 and this week following the assault on the main UNAM campus. We demand: Free all the arrestedUNAM strikers! Drop all '(:harges!Defend public education! No new 1968massacre!The Mexican Volcano

Particularly with the approach of thefederal elections later this year, Mexico'sruling parties had been reluctant to makea decisive move to end the strike, fearingit could touch off a social explosion.Likewise, the regime has refrained so

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far from unleashing a full-scale bloodbathto drown the Zapatista (EZLN) peasantrebellion in Chiapas. A crisis in Mexicowould be no less welcome to the Mexicanbourgeoisie's godfathers north ofthe border as the U.S. presidential election cam-'paign heats up.The fact that the UNAM strike hasbeen able to last for nine and a halfmonths is fundamentally due to the bourgeois regime's ,..worry that unleashingmassive repression could spark resistanceby the powerful Mexican working class.The UNAM strike has taken place not ina vacuum but on the volatile ground ofsocial unrest. A few months ago, 50,000sugar cane workers went on strike whilethe SUTERM electrical workers union,threatened, with privatization of the electrical industry, began to raise its headafter years of inaction. This demonstratesthat the proletariat is beginning to breakits chains, even within the corporatistunions controlled by the corrupt charros(old-line bureaucrats) of the PRJ. As theGEM!JE wrote in a 4 February leaflet:"Currently facing a wave of calls forstrikes, the bourgeois regime wants tosmash the UNAM strike so that it doesn'tintersect the struggles of the workingclass, especially in this election yearwhen the different bourgeois parties(PRD, PRJ, PAN [National Action Party])want to prove to their imperialist masters

that they are capable of maintaining capitalist 'law and order,' even if the cost isthe blood of workers and students."As it attacks the student strikers atUNAM, the Mexican government is massively escalating its bloody repression inChiapas, which has been under militaryoccupation since the New Year's 1994uprising launched by the Zapatista guerrillas when the North American FreeTrade Agreement (NAFTA) was imposed.Meanwhile, the government has been expelling most foreign visitors in Chiapas.In this framework, the secretary of theMexican army is now coming to the U.S.,which has been shipping massive quantities of arms and military "advisers"to the Mexican regime to help suppress

the insurgent peasants. While our comrades have defended the heroic EZLNfighters against state repression, the pettybourgeois Zapatistas have been tied tothe PRD, hoping through this agencyto pressure the bourgeois state for concessions through negotiations. The GEM!JE demands: Stop' state provocat ionsagainst the Zapatista rebels! Army out ofChiapas!Well before the police occupation ofUNAM, the regime made death threatsagainst strikers, kidnapped strike leadersand supporters, including a supporter ofthe GEM, and unleashed violent attacksby strikebreakers. Throughout the strike,the Mexican bourgeois, media railedagainst the "ultras" and "mega-ultras,"helping to prepare the ground for bloodyrepression. Outrageously, this was alsothe stance taken by the American Socialist Action, which is associated with thefake-Trotskyist United Secretariat. In its

continued on page 6

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UNAM ( continued from page 5)January issue, this social-democraticoutfit retails stories of the "isolation ofthe CGH before public opinion" andshrieks that "the strike is swiftly losing asense of purpose and -there is a danger itwill become merely the modus vivendi ofa shrinking group of uItralefts."Break with BourgeoisNationalism!

Now, prominent personalities whohad earlier called on the students toend the strike denounce the plebisciteand subsequent crackdown, every party,even the right-wing PAN, has criticizedZedillo's moves to end the strike. ThePRD in particular has cynically adopted aposture of support" for the CGH's "just"demands. Trying to refurbish its credentials as a populist, "anti-imperialist" alternative to the PRI and PAN, the PRDhas called a February 9 protest againstthe cop seizure of UNAM, while MexicoCity PRD mayor Rosario Robles hasdemanded the removal of the federalpolice from the campus. But the partyshowed its "support" to the students withthe truncheon blows of its granadero riotpolice sent out to crush UNAM strikers,as early as last August and as recently asthe assault on Prepa 3.The 4 February GEMIJE leafletpointed out, "While the popularity of thisparty has decreased among sectors ofworkers and students as a result of the .continuous attacks that its riot policehave perpetrated against the strikers, it isnecessary to give this disillusionment inthe PRD a class character: the PRD is abourgeois party, and its nationalism anddemocratic pretensions reflect nothingother than its bourgeois class interests."The GEM/JE has fought throughout thestrike to shatter illusions in thePRDwhich are widespread among CGH activists and militant workers.These illusions are a reflection of thenationalist ideology which has servedhistorically to tie the Mexican proletariatto its "own" exploiters. In an eyewitnessreport on the strike at a Boston SpartacusYouth Club forum last fall, a GEMspeaker noted, "The biggest obstacle wehave to comqat in Mexico is bourgeoisnationalism .... Nationalism leads you tosupporting your own capitalist rulersbecause they are Mexican, rather thanlooking to solidarity with your classbrothers, for example, across the borderin the United States" (WV No. 721, 15October 1999).In a societyso directly under the yokeof U.S. domination, this ideology runsvery deep, reinforced by ceaseless propaganda extolling the bourgeois 'MexicanRevolution of 1910-20 and the waving ofthe Mexican flag at itudent and workerdemonstrations. The real nature of Mexican nationalism as false consciousness

\V .l r {> h 0 II . (- U n i 0

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"It Is Up .to the Working Classto Take Up This Struggle"We print below a speech by a sup-porter of the Grupo Espartaquista deMexico at a February 6 press confer-ence of the STUNAM campus workers

union executive committee. At the pressconference, held the same day as thebloody police crackdown at UNAM, theunion announced its refusal to work aslong as the campus is under policeoc.cupation.In attacking the students, the bourgeoisie and its state think that they canget away with this given students' lackof social power. The attacks againstfree, public education are in reality anattack against the working class and allthe poor. It is up to the working class totake up this struggle and show the bourgeoisie that this brutal assault on thestudents will not pass with impunity.Because of its role as the motor force ofthe capitalist economy, only the work-

for the exploited and oppressed is captured in the fact that students' parentshave been massing in the Plaza de laRepublica, where hundreds of subjectively revolutionary students are nowimprisoned for demanding access for thechildren of workers and the poor to thisnational institution.Tied by a thousand threads to theirimperialist masters, the Mexican bourgeoisie is incapable of achieving the fundamental democratic gains historicallyassociated with the bourgeois revolutions,such as national emancipation, agrarianrevolution, political democracy and legalequality for women. Instead, followingthe dictates of their imperialist overlordsand fearing above all any challenge by theproletariat and the oppressed, the Mexican capitalist rulers seek to smash eventhe smallest democratic gains won by themasses through militant struggle.The only road to the resolution of theburning democratic tasks in Mexico is theconquest of power by the Mexican pro-letariat, which would place the tasksof socialist construction on the agenda,requiring a fight to extend workers rule tothe advanced capitalist countries: This isthe perspective of permanent revolutiondeveloped by Leon Trotsky and embodied in the Russian October Revolution of1917. KeytO"this perspective in Mexico isthe political struggle to break workersand radical youth from the bourgeoisnationalistPRD and to build a Leninistvanguard party as the champion of all theoppressed.

*' SYNDICAT CGT CEGELEC*,A.-oe4e' .................~ 7 C 4 3 0 S t V l p r d ' " Y ~ Till F u , Ol.35.!l5.01.O11. .SYNIIICATIMCIUT A U U ! Q l T o l u : D D ' ~ & L s o u t y : InIIIDiOnn

" * - 7 1 . ~ S1!iUtdarlll- ..-~ - = ' : n u ~ : - .110

ing class has the social power to stay therepressive hand of the bourgeoisie andits state. The Spartacists call on theworking class to carry out mass mobilizations in defense of the UNAM strikeand for the immediate freedom of all thearrested activists. The working classmust use its muscle against bourgeoisrepression. This attack must not passwith impunity.This shows, yet again, that the policeare the armed fist of the bourgeois state,its guard dogs and bloodhounds. Thepolice are not part of the workers movement and have no place in the unions.The presence of Auxilio UNAM andof any security agencies in STUNAMis a threat to the very existence of theunion. Police out of the unions! AuxilioUNAM out of STUNAM and UNAM!All Federal Preventive Police and policeagencies ()ut of UNAM!

The Spartacist LeaguelU.S. fights tobring down the American imperialistbehemoth through socialist revolution.The anti-Mexican chauvinism pushed bythe AFL-CIO misleaders, the labor lieutenants of U.S. imperialism, was evident at the Seattle WTO protest, wherethe Teamsters tops tried to rally American workers against Mexican truckers.Against this chauvinist poison which tiesU.S. workers to their "own" capitalist rul-

ing class, we fight for internationalistclass-struggle unity between workers inthe U.S. and Mexico. In a 1991 joint declaration of the SLIU.S., the GEM and theTrotskyist League of Canada on NAFTA,we said: "Stop U.S. 'Free Trade' Rape ofMexico" (WVNo. 530, 5 July 1991). Wewrote:"Yankee imperialism wants to turn Mexico into a giant maquiladora, or freetrade zone-' ree , of unions, and ~ f r e e ' for capital.. .."The 'free trade' assault on Mexicoposes pointblank the need for buildingTrotskyist parties as part of a revolutionary Fourth International which can leadthe proletariat of the region to power."The fight for workers revolution inMexico and the U.S. is directly linked,including by the human bridge of millions of Mexican and Central American workers who have "gone north."Mexico's proximity to the U.S., whichhas cost it hal f its territory and subjectedit to repeated Yankee aggression, can be apowerful lever for international socialistrevolution. With Latin America currentlyin turmoil, as workers, peasants and students fight IMF-dictated austerity measures, social upheaval in Mexico couldspark proletarian struggle throughout thehemisphereLessons of the UNAM Strike

The GEM/JE have actively participatedin the UNAM strike from the beginning,helping occupy buildings and defendingpicket lines against strikebreakers. Instrike meetings and in our propaganda,

To wield its ~ s o c i a l power in its owninterests, the working class must breakthe shackles that chain them to thebourgeoisie, especially the ideology ofbourgeois nationalism and the politicalsubordination to its principal exponent,the bourgeois PRD, whose only interestis to maintain the capitalist order ofexploitation and oppression. The working class needs a party of its own. WeSpartacists fight to build revolutionaryworkers parties throughout the worldthat are capable of leading the workingclass to taking state power in the internationalist, revolutionary union of theproletariat of the world. For workersmobilizations against repression, privatizations and in defense of free education! Free the arrested activists now!Drop all the charges! For new October revolutions! Forge a revolutionaryworkers party!

our comrades have insisted on the needto extend the strike beyond the walls ofthe university, so that the struggle forfree education is taken up by the industrial working class which has the socialpower to win this battle. Our call forAuxilio UNAM cops out of the u.lion andoff the campus has increasingly foundresonance among sections of the workingclass. The Mexico City daily La lornada(4 February) ran a statement signed by

Mexican workersoccupy Ford plantin Nueva laredo,1995. Againstchauvinist poisonof AFL-CIO tops,we fight for classstruggle unity ofworkers in U.S.and Mexico.

a grouping within the powerful teachersunion and other organizations whichcalled to "disband the police body 'AuxiIio UNAM'." The statement was titled"For Public and Free Higher Education!Reject Police Repression Against theWorkers of Chapingo, the Prepa 3 and theStudent Teachers!"It is crucial for every working-classand left tendency to rally in defense ofall the arrested strikers, regardless ofpolitical affiliation. The arrested includesupporters of many leftist tendencies,including the Partido Obrero Socialista

(POS-Socialist Workers Party), EnLucha, Liga de Trabajadores Socialista(LTS)/Contracorriente, Militante and theInternationalist Group (IG). But it is necessary as well to draw a balance sheet ofthis tumultuous battle, whose lessonsmust inform the struggles to come.After more than nine months of resistance against the police and strikebreaking thugs, the student strike went as far asit could go on its own. Despite theirremarkable combativity, the studentscould not achieve the power of a workersstrike,that paralyzes production and stopsthe flow of profits. This has demonstratedin a raw way the limits of the CGH leadership, which opposed linking the studentstruggle to the power of the workingclass. Serving up the myth of the student"vanguard," CGH leaders pushed utopian schemes to turn the uQiversity intoa "liberated zone." This notion buysinto the bourgeoisie's myth of UNAM's

WORKERS VANGUARD


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"autonomous" status, a central component of nationalist ideology in Mexico.This illusory notion has been shatteredunder the iron heel of military occupation.What unites the reformist and centristleft groups active in the strike is theirshared embrace of bourgeois nationalismas purveyed by the PRD. This is overtlythe case with the Militante group, whichworks within the bourgeois PRD ofCardenas to make it "more militant."When the PRD's vicious strikebreakingmade it unpopular with students, as whenCardenas, then mayor of Mexico City,sent the riot police against the strikers inAugust and again when his PRD successor unleashed the cops in December, theMilitante outfit could only rarely be seenat strike support actions. But when thePRD tried to distance itself from the. attack on Prepa 3, Militante took it uponitself to reintroduce the PRD as a "supporter" of the students.Just as it embraces this party of bourgeois nationalism, so does Militanteembrace the bourgeois cops as "workers"in uniform, a line also sold by the POS.Meanwhile, the STUNAM bureaucracy,which admits that it sent seven AuxilioUNAM cops to Prepa 3 at the requestof the rector, contrasts the "bad" Cobrathugs with the "good" Auxilio police.When the thugs of Auxilio UNAMcracked students' heads or spied on thestrike, they were doing their job as thearmed guardians of the capitalist state.The cops have one and only one role: toprotect private property and the capitalist

order. The cops are not part of the work-ers movement! .The POS was notorious for calling asearly as last July for ending the strike, justwhen the powerful electrical workers wereshowing support for the students. In itsnewspaper El Socialista (January 2000),the POS welcomed the January plebiscite, writing, "Hundreds of thousandsdemand it: The solution at UNAM shouldarise from dialogue." These opportunistsare far behind the consciousness of themilitant Mexican workers who have cometo recognize in the sham plebiscite acover for bloody capitalist repression.No Student VanguardistIllusions

Responsibility also falls on the moreradical-sounding left groups such asEn Lucha and the LTS/Contracorriente,which are hostile to a proletarian orienta-'tion and have dedicated themselves tonourishing student messianism, dreamingof a return to the "marvelous years" of1968. Both En Lucha, which does noteven pretend to fight for a Leninist partyand acts instead as the aide-de-camp forother reformists and nationalist organizations, and the self-proclaimed "Trotskyists" of the LTS push student vanguardism and a touching faith in the bourgeoisstate. Disdaining working-class struggle,the LTS/Contracorriente raises as itsmaximum slogan that workers supportthe students' struggle, calling on the CGHto "unify" the struggles of workers andthe oppressed.

EspartacoPublication of the GrupoEspartaquista de Mexico If" ,!t{-]No. 13, Autumn-Winter 1999$.50 (32 pages)Subscription:$2 for 4 issues(includes Spanish-languageSpartacist)Order fromlmake checks payable to:Spartacist Publishing Co.Box 1377 GPONew York, NY 10116

11 FEBRUARY 2000

.......,,, ~ l J E t _ aBlCOt2.00 l!SUO... .....-.........iPor aeelenes h U 8 I g U j s t f e l \ O b r e r ~ para derrorar las prjvaillaei,ne1Jdefender la edueaei6nb a d p h l ~ _ . t ~ I I f U ) ' I I . , , , ~ . " d l l e a l l n n , ~ * & o s ~ _ i w : r . -IiIIrioIdelSt'tJN..\M,.... ~ d e l S M l ! y c l l l o s ......... C-O .. .......,to.......... lDbjdiyo............. leIIalao .. . e I ~ . , ~ .. . NAM. ....pMC._ ........ ~ I a __ _ ,do ... dIcrUoI.. .. '-' - ~ ( F M J ) . __

. In contrast, the GEMIJE called toextend the strike to key sectors of the proletariat and worked to win students to theside of the working class in the strugglefor socialist revolution. Some studentstold our comrades that the call for workers strikes is utopian, given that theunions are controlled by mafia-type char-ros or by nationalist demagogues of the"left." But this only underlines the necessity of the fight to build a revolutionaryworkers party to politically defeat thesemisleaders, who do everything they canto keep the workers in the straitjacket ofbourgeois nationalism and prevent themfrom using their social power. In pushingstudent-vanguardist politics, the LTSIContracorriente in fact serve as accessories to the union bureaucracy in isolatingthe strike.

The GEM/JE addressed illusions in"student power" and university "autonomy" in a 5 July 1999 leaflet (x:eprintedin WV No. 717, 6 August 1999) Whichstated:"As Marxists, we understand that theuniversity is an important pillar of bour-geois society and that its primary func-tion is to train the future administrative,technical and cultural personnel for thecapitalist system ...."Tpe democratic demands we advancefor education are inextricably linked withthe understanding that only when thesystem of capitalism is destroyed throughthe seizure of state power by the workingclass led by a revolutionary party will thebasis be laid for genuine equality in allspheres of society. We call for full openadmissions made economically meaning-ful by providing all students with a livingstipend!. .. Abolish the rectory! National-ize


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Archives...(continued from page 3)of maintenance of labo{ made it possibleto utilize slavery profitably in spite of itswastefulness.The native labor supply of the American, Caribbean and other West Indiantribes was neither extensive enough norso easily adaptable to agriculture as toprovide an adequate working force ofplantation labor. European peasant laborwas inefficient in the sub-tropical zoneand expensive to maintain and replace.Labor from Africa, on the other hand, wasplentiful, accustomed to agriculture and~ f f i c i e n t in the heat of the sub-tropicalzone.Furthermore a slave trade had beengoing on in Africa for years, organizedby the Arabs. It was by no means anextensive trade but it could serve as astarting point.Another advantage of African laborwas that as a chattel slave-i.e., a pieceof property-a Negro could be identifiedby his skin.

It was upon this foundation that the"science" of physical anthropology builtits structure. In service to the Americanplanters, the international slave tradersand colonial exploiters, fake scientistsand politicians took 'a set of pervertedsocial relations based upon a discardedsocial system and made them into thefoundation stones of a science. They justified slavery as natural and completelydesirable for those with a colored skin.And they had great need for such ajustification. At the beginning of theslave trade the idea of spreading Christianity to the heathen was sufficient justification for Negro slavery. Slave traderswere the missionaries and the slaveowners the priests of a crusade to bringthe word of God to heathen "savages"who would otherwise be doomed to eternal torment in their awful ignorance.But the revolutions in Britain, Americaand France stripped away the veil ofreligion from knowledge and initiated

entific justification, what then remains ofrace? Race is a relation between peoplebased upon the needs of capitalist exploitation. The race concept in anthropology'grew out of the social relations of slav'-ery. It was congealed by the adaptationof these obsolete social relations to theneeds of capitalist production.The concept of race .has now beenoverthrown in biological science. Butrace as the keystone of exploitationremains. Race is a social relation and hasonly a social reality.The basic form of race relations issegregation. In the colonial countriesit is expressed by the voluntary selfsegregation of the white agents of empire. But it would be an error to judgerace relations as a whole by their expressions in colonial exploitation. Race relations in the colonies are derived primarily from the existence of the racequestion in America and particularly inthe United States.

Chattel slavery was a system of production which had been outgrown byEuropean society because it was asystem of low productivity and wastefulness. Therefore, the very existence of amode of production based upon the absolute ownership of one human being byanother, after it had been so long outgrown, was repulsive to progressive people. Particularly when the world wasbursting with revolutions proclaiming theequality of all men. This slave systembecame so repulsive in fact that onlyweird and perverse social relations couldcontain it. To despise the black skin asthe mark of the slave was the principaland focal point of these social relations.Thus, around the question of skincolor, society in the West Indies andNorth America proper began to divideitself, as social relations degeneratedunder the slave system. First the blackskin was despised because it was themark of a despised mode of production.But this despised mode of productionwas the creator of untold wealth andprosperity, and capitalist society cannotdespise riches for long. So they turnedthe whole matter on its head.

5,OOO-strong labor/black mobil ization initiated by Spartacist League stoppedKlan provocation in Washington, D.C., November 1982. Finish the Civil War -For black l iberation through socialist revolution!

The slaves were in an inferior positioneconomically. Gradually, white slaveowning society constructed a wall ofcolor: that it was not the mode of slaveproduction which was to be despised, butthe slave: that the reason the black skinwas the mark of the slave was that it wasfirst the mark of human inferiority.In this manner the class problem ofslavery became complicated and confused by the color question. The slaves,besides being ail exploited ocial class,became, in the perverted thinKing of thedominant society, an inferior race as well.

the age of science and rationalism.Social relations could no longer beexplained by reference to God. So a fake"scientific" explanation of the socialrelations of slavery grew up to justifythem. This is the actual foundation of thescience of physical anthropology.Slavery itself was overthrown in theCivil War and Reconstruction. But theneeds of the American capitalists for compulsory agricultural labor in the Southremained. A new semi-capitalistic modeof agriculture grew up in which the semislave condition of the freed Negroes wasmade permanent by the re-establishmentof the social relations of slavery: colordiscrimination buttressed by segregationand race prejudice.Race thus became a fetish of American capitalism, a system of special exploitationoased upon the social relationsand customs of a previous mode ofproduction, which had itself been anabomination to society. Stripped of sci-

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In the colonies the question of race isdependent upon the specific needs ofcolonial exploitation. In the United Statesspecial exploitation is dependent uponrace relations. In the colonies race isdependent upon exploitation, but here theexploitation is dependent upon race ....The special colonial exploitation towhich the masses of Asia, Africa andSouth America are subjected is dependent primarily upon the financial, military and political control which theimperialists are able to maintain. Theestablishment of race relations reflectingthe concept of white superiority is animportant instrument of this domination,but not fundamental.With or without segregation the special exploitation of colonies would continue upon the basis of the economic,military and political power which theU.S., Great Britain, France, etc. wieldover the colonial world.* . * *The Bourbon rule of the South todayis founded upon the destruction of theglorious revolutionary movement of theReconstruction and the subsequent failure of the Populist revolt. The wealthywhites could not possibly have subduedthese movements with their own smallnumbers. A mass support in a significantsegment of the population was necessaryto organize the Ku Klux Klan and to elevate the ruling classes to their presentposition. This mass base of support wasto beJound primarily in the white middleclasses of the southern cities and towns,and the better-off section of the small

farmers.One striking feature of the Southunder slavery was the absence of thecommercial and industrial towns whichwere so characteristic of the North. Thiswas quite normal in an agrarian societydominated by huge plantations, whichprovided no basis for a rich internal market. Without towns it follows that therewas no sizable urban middle class.Commercial towns arose during theReconstruction under the impulse ofcapitalist economy in agriculture. The development of these towns produced amiddle class.Everybody knows something of the

. fierce competition which goes on amongthe middle classes all the time. Theymust compete not only against eachother, but also against big business.which has more efficient and cheaperways of doing things.But the middle class of shopkeepers,farmers, independent artisans, doctorsand lawyers-small businessmen of allkinds-furnishes the only avenue ofescape froIll wage slavery into the ranksof the capitalist class. Consequently, thelower the middle class the more intenseand feverish is the competition forsurvival.It is .not hard to see that a tremendousadvantage would be gained by a sectionof the actual or potential middle class if itcould arbitrarily exclude half of the population from the right to compete withthem for these occupations.Immediately after the Civil War privileged poor w h i t e ~ established themselvesin middle class occupations. They madeof these positions a white monopolyby the organized terrorism of the KuKlux Klan. One of the most importantachievements of terrorism during thelater days of the Reconstruction was thecomplete exclusion of the Negroes fromthe general middle class.It was principally this movement ofthe middle class organized into the Klan,channelized and controlled by the capitalists and landowners, which gave tothese new rulers complete political control over the South.The white monopoly of privilegedmiddle class positions tended to extenddown into the higher skilled sections ofthe working class itself, gaining additional points of support for the rule ofthe new Bourbons.A further expression of the privilegesheld by the white middle class of theSouth is to be found in their traditionalexploitation of domestic servants.

It has been usual in the South that for acouple of dollars a week, carfa,re and oldclothes a white family can have a maid.And for slightly more, a gardener or acook.In this way, due to the extreme degradation of labor, it has been possible forthe southern middle class to live in acondition of luxury and freedom fromall domestic labor which is found onlyamong the ruling classes of other socialsystems and the colonial agents ofimperialism.Thus, the mass base of the naked ruleof the capitalists and landowners isrevealed as a privileged middle class andlabor aristocracy which owes its specialposition to the racial division of American society.Herein is revealed the sociological andhistorical antecedent of German fascism.The Nazi Party and the Storm Troopersare almost the exact prototype of theBourbon Party and the Ku Klux Klan.The Nazis, like the Klan, were essentially of the middle class. They servedthe basic interests of the large capitalistswhile defeating and demoralizing theworking class and creating the basis forthe totalitarian dictatorship, just as theKlan operated against the Negroes andthe white Populists. The principal ideological weapon of both was racism andtheir principal organizational weapon,terrorism.It is well known that the Nazis sentofficial and unofficial observer:s to theUnited States to study and learn American methods of racial discrimination andsegregation t9 be applied to persecutionof the Jews.But the comparison of the South withNazi Germany must take account of twoimportant differences. First, the whitemiddle class had a genuine advantage toexploit in the southern states in maintaining a racial monopoly of its privileges. InGermany the "Aryan" middle class foundonly complete destruction and humiliation by the capitalists after the destruction of the labor movement and the Jewish people was completed.The s,econd difference. is that Negroesare a fundamental part of the southernworking force. The object of terrorism is

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China...(continued from page 12)1949 Chinese Revolution that smashedcapitalist class rule and marked a historicdefeat for U.S. imperialism. The Seattleprotests were marked by foam-fleckedspeeches denouncing Chinese "slavelabor," by signs promoting the CIA's"free Tibet" crusade and by the dumpingof Chinese steel into }luget Sound. Asproletarian internationalists fighting tobuild a world party of socialist revolution, we call for unconditional militarydefense of the Chinese deformed workersstate against imperialist attack and internal counterrevolution and are unalterablyopposed to the pro-imperialist chauvinism which permeated the Seattle protest.Defeat CapitalistCounterrevolution in China!

The immediate backdrop to the Seattleprotest was the deal worked out weeksearlier between the Clinton administration and the Stalinist regime in Beijingfor China's entry into the WTO. The,ICL warns that this deal is a mortal danger to the Chinese deformed workersstate. China's entry into the WTO wouldpose a frontal assault on what remains ofthe state monopoly of foreign trade,allowing foreign firms to own up to 50percent of strategic economic sectorssuch as telecommunications and slashingtariffs protecting state-owned industryand agriculture, leading to millions moreunemployed.These measures, which follow on theChinese Communist Party's 1997 decision to sell off most state-owned industry,are part of the Beijing regime's yearslong march toward a full-scale marketeconomy. The Chinese Revolution was aworld-historic event, destroying the ruleof the rapacious landlords and wretchedbourgeoisie and replacing it with a centrally planned, collectivized economywhich lifted the workers and peasants outof entrenched poverty and degradation. Anation which had been ravaged anddivided by foreign powers for a century

to make them more profitable workers.In the case of the Jews the object of theNazis was not to put the Jews "in theirplace" but t o exterminate them.* * *The police state of the South is' administered by the Bourbons through theDemocratic Party machinery under theprotection of the national government.But it must be remembered that if it was

the Democratic Party which created thesemi-fascist southern system, it wasthe Republican Party which voluntarilyturned the South over to the Klan.The Democrats, it is true, are the mainupholders of white supremacy. But it wasthe Republican Party which, during itspurge of the Black Republicans dur;ngthe 1890's, caused the coining of the epithet "lily white."The so-called struggle between theRepublicans and Democrats in the Southis essentially a struggle between twocapitalist political cliques for the allegiance of the most reactionary section ofsouthern political society, the Dixiecrats.11 FEBRUARY 2000

SL denounced circus of proimperialist protectionism and antiCommunism at Seattle WTO protestwhich was hailed by fake lefts.Below: contingent organized by"progressive" ILWU bureaucracy atanti-WTO protest.

Mediacan't bury

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WV PhQto Uchtenstein/Corbis Sygmawas unified and freed from imperialist require first and foremost smashing thesubjugation. However, that social revolu- resistance of the powerful and combativetion was deformed from its inception, Chinese proletariat.with political power held not by the pro- As we wrote in "China: WTO Entryletariat but by a nationalist bureaucracy Means Mass Unemployment, Imperialistcentered on Mao's peasant-based Com- Plunder" (WV No. 725, 10 Decembermunist PartylPeople's Liberation Army 1999), "What is urgently posed is strugglehierarchy. Today, Mao's heirs are leading by the Chinese proletariat to defend thethe country toward capitalist restoration. already greatly attenuated gains of theAmong those hit hardest by the market 1949 Revolution." For nearly a decade"reforms" are women, who are often the now, China has experienced an unprece-first fired by state industries now forced dented level of strikes and other laborto compete in the market. In rural areas, protests, as desperate working peoplebarbaric prerevolutionary practices like struggle to maintain their jobs and liveli-the buying and selling of "wives" are hoods in the face of the bureaucracy's dis-again in evidence, while peasant girls are mantling of the planned economy. What isincreasingly denied an education because necessary is the forging of an internation-their families cannot afford tuition. Such alist Leninist-Trotskyist vanguard partyhorrendous conditions would be vastly which can direct the spontaneous, local-magnified by full-fledged capitalist res- ized protests and strikes toward a proletar-toration, which is the aim of the imperial- ian political revolution which ousts theists, the overseas Chinese bourgeoisie Stalinist regime-repladng it with a gov-and their allies in the Beijing bureauc- ernment of democratically elected work-racy. But to carry out that aim would ers, soldiers and peasants councils-and

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c:illTeletubby toyfactory insouthern China.As Beijing regimeopens China toincreasedimperialistexploitation,women workersare amonghardesthit.

Whatever the ups and downs of thisstruggle, the basic political structure willremain intact until the working class,jointly with the Negro people, vanquishes and destroys the RepublicanDemocratic dictatorship.One of the main struggles of theNegro movement in the South sinceWorld War II has been directed towardsachieving the right to vote. This has hadsome success. However, it would be amistake to assume that the mere additionof an increasingly larger number ofNegroes to the voters list will materiallychange social conditions in the South,Votes don't determine or control anything of great importance in the South.The battle for the vote is an absolutelynecessary part of the Negro struggle inthe South. But as long as it finds expression merely in the right to support one oranother wing of the ruling Bourbon dictatorship, its scope is extremely limited,_ and it will change nothing essential.There is no progressive tendency inthe reactionary southern dictatorship.The Bourbons enjoy sending their "liber-

fights for socialist revolution throughoutthe region, particularly in the industrialpowerhouse of Japan.Our opposition to the WTO deal ispremised on defense of the gains of the1949 Revolution. The AFL-CIO labortops, in concert with liberal Democratsand right-wing Republicans, denouncethe WTO deal in order to push a morebellicose line for U.S. imperialism. In astatement just before the Seattle protest,Sweeney railed that "the fevered rush toadmit China to the WTO is a grave mistake" and criticized the White House for"prostrating itself in pursuit of a tradedeal with a rogue nation." He continued,"The agreement reached this weekendwould deal away our democratic principles and most cherished values and we

als" to Congress as a malicious joke onthe nation. But at home they are unitedon the fundamental questions. To theNegroes' demand for equality they unanimously reply with the doctrine of "separate but equal," for they well know thatthere is no equality with segregation.The effectiveness of the struggle forthe right to vote in the South will remainlimited until it is coupled with the struggle for the right of the southern workersto establish their own independent partyof labor with no compromise on thebasic question of civil rights.However, equality is not enough, eitherin the North or South. The Negro has theright to ask: "What is it to be equal to theundernourished white sharecropper inSouth Carolina? What is it to be equal inthe disease-infested slums of Detroit?" ...In the North and West, equality of Negroes as wage workers can never become areality under capitalism. For capitalism isa system of scarcity, and the Negroes, thelast to be hired by modern industry, willcontinue to be the first victims of the p ~ r i -odic spasms of unemployment which

l ~ f s . J r - ~ i = 1 1 P ro t e s t ss i n k lNTO- r:'::{::r; --T,;:,: : : : : : : : : F T f > ' ~ r r f r ~ : r B

will fight it."This is an anti-Communist war cry bythe labor lieutenants of Wall Street. InSeattle, trade-union placards demanding"People First Not China First" mingledwith banners like one screaming "For theBasic Human Rights in Vietnam-Killthe Red Evil." From the podium, Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa Jr. railedagainst "slave labor" in China and Vietnam. Shortly before the protest, Hoffahad saluted incipient clerical-fascist PatBuchanan as "the only candidate that isspeaking out about the issues of worldtrade, of China and the fact that Chinais ... almost a rogue state that is threatening Taiwan, that is persecuting peopl,e inTibet, that is persecuting Christians."Hoffa's anti-Communist tirades wereoutdone only by the United Steelworkers(USWA) bureaucracy, which organizedan obscene "Seattle W-Tea-O Party"where Chinese and other foreign-madesteel was dumped into Puget Sound asonlookers chanted, "USA! USA!"Today the Clinton administration ispursuing a policy of "engagement" withthe Beijing regime, aiming to encourageit farther along the road of capitalist restoration while steadily increasing the economic penetration of China by Americancorporations. This is in no way counterposed to a more belligerent stance towardChina; rather these policies are complementary and share a common aim: bloodycapitalist counterrevolution. Indeed, whilethe White House opposes the overwhelming vote in Congress recently tostrengthen military ties with capitalistTaiwan, Clinton himself has repeatedlybrandished American military mightagainst the Chinese deformed workers. continued on page 10

characterize capitalist production.What would equality bring to theNegro middle class at a time monopolycapital is squeezing out the white middleclass? A hundred years ago it would havehad meaning. But today equality, even ifpossible under capitalism, which it isnot, would' be only the equality of destitution which is the future of the middleclass of the United States.Each of these examples demonstratesthat discrimination against Negroes in theUnited States is so ingrained in the socialstructure that only complete destructionof capitalism can lay the foundation forthe solution of the Negro question.A hundred years ago Karl Marx, inurging the American workers to supportthe struggle of the slaves for emancipation 3;nd to support the northern cause inthe Civil War, proclaimed the followingtruth: "Labor cannot emancipate itself inthe white skin where in the black it isbranded." This is just as true today in the 'modern context of racial discriminationas it was during the struggle againstslavery

9


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China...( continued from page 9)state, from the deployment of U.S. warships in the Taiwan Strait in 1996 to thecurrent plans for an East Asia "theatermissile defense."The greater the imperialist economicpenetration of China, the more this willbuttress calls for military intervention inthe eventof a working-class upheaval, asthe American rulers and their labor lieutenants call to "protect our economicinterests." The American labor bureaucracy, known throughout the Third Worldas the "AFL-CIA" for its role in helpingto smash militant and Communist-ledunions and setting up "labor" fronts forU.S. imperialism, joined in fomentingcapitalist counterrevolution in the USSRand the deformed workers states of EastEurope. Today these labor bureaucratsare lining up behind their own rulingclass in the drive to bring full-scaleimperialist exploitation back to China.Down With NationalChauvinism!

In the aftermath of the WTO protests,the ISO's Socialist Worker (7 January)lauded the c.all for a "new internationalism" in an article in Foreign Affairs(January/February 2000) by Jay Mazur,the protectionist president of the UNITEgarment workers union. In a similar vein,the fake-Trotskyist United Secretariat(USec) saluted what it called an "interna-

female workforces in factories in ThirdWorld countries generates billions inprofits for American and other imperialistcorporations. But the operational conclusion of the AFL-CIO's "anti-sweatshop"campaign is a call to ban imports fromcountries like Pakistan and Indonesia,which would mean shutting down factories there and driving the workers intoutter destitution. Meanwhile, the UNITEbureaucracy which is in the forefront ofthe campaign against overseas sweatshops does nothing to fight pervasivesweatshop conditions in the U.S. garment industry.The protectionist chauvinism of thepro-capitalist labor tops was on full display in Seattle. One Teamster bannerread, "Keep the Borders Closed to UnsafeNAFTA Trucks," alluding to'the unionbureaucracy's racist crusade against implementing a provision of the 1994NAFTA "free trade" deal allowing Mexican truckers to operate on U.S. highways.This campaign directly feeds the antiimmigrant chauvinism being whipped upby the American bourgeoisie as it militarizes the border with Mexico and carries out roundups of immigrant workersin order to bust union organizing drives.We demand full citizenship rightsfor all immigrants and fight for the internationalist class unity of the workingpeople throughout the hemisphere andbeyond. It is from that standpoint thatwe oppose NAFTA, which has meantimpoverishment for millions of working people in Mexico. Against the pro-

1tt ' J .4ot" ~ . f l : 1 l 1 L !iif.]: ~ ~ ! : : I m ".l Il i t16.l1i!i l ! lIl II: i'I .. ... .t eI!IIif .t .fk .t. lI. R2l, . ~ 1 I . 1 I ' J r . 1 1 ? r t ' J I I . ~ ... -J.".' .6 -~ t l f . e " ' k ~ ? f . ! l l t " ' ~ ' :)... :titi.l'1:1\!:!!1'f .it .'! ff 11. II 7.i:!: tj) . ...... ~ ' ! . " 1:1:Ill .. i t . J,It IQ It lI. ::s:06 .. ....-r ". L It- - ..eIp =-lllllt:.tt'H .- ., " ' ~ .. *"l;t.J-,-."IlII1'Jlir.ABi!i -, -J\. ,, - ! i ~ JIlif*.I . -QRIi:Ut ' " III A I"a': !l c . I ' t I t . .*1&.1. 1I!4m9It 'l ... 1 .t 'h'I1-1 ! - ; : t ""q ' : ; l f !J

Chinese-language NYC newspaper ran photo of SL literature table, reporting:"Fourth International Still Exists Today, Spreading Marxism-Leninism on theStreets of Chinatown," Placard in picture reads: "Defend the Chinese Deformed Workers State Against Imperialism and Internal' Counterrevolution!" .tional dynamic" (International Viewpoint,January 2000), while its Japanese groupclaimed that the "AFL-CIO leadershiphas changed due to working-class animation ... base


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the counterrevolutions which destroyedthe Soviet Union and the deformedworkers states of East Europe ~ a d e c a d e ago. Today they line up behind the imperialist crusade for capitalist counterrevolution in China.In its article on the AFt-CIO's "newinternationalism," the ISO says thatSweeney & Co. "rightly argue that Chinais run by a dictatorship that represseslabor and human rights" (Socialist Worker,7 January). Trying to present a bit of a leftface, the ISQgoes on to intone:"The only political forces that will gainfrom China-bashing are right wingersbent on starting a new Cold War."If .the labor movement plays into thiscampaign, it will simply give a 'progressive' cover to the labor-hating Buchanansand Helmses."

The ISO would be hard put to explainwhy "China-bashing" aids the Cold Warright wing, since this social-democraticoutfit has itself been bashing China foryears.The ISO and its British mentorTony Cliff have been animated by antiCommunist hatred ' for the degeneratedand deformed workers states since theinception of Cliff's political tendency,when he and his followers refused todefend China and North Korea againstthe U.S. and British imperialists duringthe 1950-53 Korean War. When BorisYeltsin's August 1991 coup opened thefloodgates for counterrevolution in theSoviet Union, the Cliffites exulted:"Communism has collapsed.... It is afact that should have every socialistrejoicing" (Socialist Worker [Britain], 31August 1991). When U.S. warships pliedthe Taiwan Strait in 1996 in a provocation against Beijing, the Cliffites aimedtheir guns in the same direction as thePentagon-against the Chinese workersstate-proclaiming: "We would opposeany Chinese invasion of Taiwan as an actof imperialist aggression" (SocialistReview [I:lritain], April 1996).Despite its nominal pretensions toTrotskyism, the centrist British WorkersPower (WP) group sings much the sameanti-Communist tune as the Cliffites fromwhom it split in the 1970s. In its "Special Millennium Issue," Workers Power(December 1999-January 2000) hails thechauvinist Seattle protests as "an international symbol of "deep discontent withcapitalism." In the same issue, WP warnsthat the U.S'/China WTO deal "spellsmisery" for the Chinese masses, writing:"Although the attempt to force throughthe decisive stages of capitalist restoration will bring terrible threats to thelivelihoods of millions, it will also undermine that dictatorship and give workersthe opportunity to settle scores with theold regime ."Thus Zhu's chosen road to capitalistrestoration also opens the road to a revo

lutionary struggle that can stop it." , _.Despite lip service to "revolutionarystruggle," WP declaimed' in its international journal, Trotskyist International(July-December 1997), that "there are nogrounds for expecting workers to mobilise in defence of what remains of post-

$2 (32 pages)Make checks payable/mail to:Spartacist Publishing Company,Box 13 77 GPO, New York, NY 1011611 FEBRUARY 2000

capitalist property relations that werecreated and imposed on them by anessentially rural-based Stalinist bureauc"racy." This logic leads WP to tail openlycounterrevolufionary forces against Stalinist "dictatorship." In Russia in 1991,WP joined Yeltsin's barricades of counterrevolution, even as it acknowledgedthe "socially counterrevolutionary natureof Yeltsin's programme" (WorkersPower, September 1991). In his 1940work In Defense of Marxism, LeonTrotsky stressed that "the question ofoverthrowing the Soviet bureaucracy isfor us subordinate to the question of preserving state property in the means ofproduction." For the Labourite Stalinophobes of WP, conversely, the preservation of the collectivized ecdnomy is

the IBT has to say about the USWA stee1-duinping rally: "At the Steelworkers'rally, the largest banner was carried bythe IWW [Industrial Workers, of theWorld] reading 'Capitalism Cannot beReformed'."The IBT singles out for particularpraise the ILWU leadership, which stageda stop-work action at the West Coast portsin support of the Seattle protests. But thiswas only "America first" chauvinism witha "militant" twist. The ILWU tops organized a contingent in Seattle under the slogan "Fair Trade Not Free Trade," and inhis speech at the protest, ILWU presidentBrian McWilliams repeatedly denouncedthe WTO's "takeover of the world economy" while not once mentioning, letalone opposing, the American capitalist

ImperialismTHE HIGHEST STAGE

OF CAPITALISM J'OJ'UL", . OOTL1

V. I. Lenin

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"Protest Police Repression in Seattle!For International Labor Solidarity, NotNational Protectionism!" In a supplement posted on their Web site at the endof December, the IG fumed over our supposed "smears" and "fabrications" forwriting in WV No. 726 that it "says not aword of criticism" of the Seattle protest.So, yes, their last-minute placard didconstitute "a word of criticism." Only inthat supplement did the IG finally notethat thoSe mobilizations were "built on achauvinist program of protectionism andproletarian internationalists would notparticipate in them."In an attempt to cover for its failure toaddress illusions in the Seattle protest byUNAM students, many of whom look tothe Zapatista rebels who were represented

W. Plier Imperial War Museum, londonWritten amid the slaughter of World War I, Bolshevik leader V.I. Lenin's 1916 pamphlet explained how imperialismbreeds war and exposed role of social-chauvinist labor misleaders as servants of capitalist rulers.decidedly subordinate to the overthrowof the Stalinist bureaucracy. This, in turn,is simply an expression of their embraceof the interests of their own ruling class.It is a measure of how far to the rightthe fake left has moved under the impactof the bourgeoisie's "death of communism" triumphalism that the thoroughlyreformist American Socialist WorkersParty (SWP) of Jack Barnes could posture as

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Workers Vanguard No 729 - 11 February 2000