Workers Vanguard No 772 - 11 January 2002

7/29/2019 Workers Vanguard No 772 - 11 January 2002

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WfJRIlERS"N'fJ'R' 0No. 772 ~ X . 5 2 3 11 January 2002

IMF Pulls the PlugMass Protests Shake ArgentinaJANUARY 7-The collapse OF thegovernment of Radical Party president Fernando de la Ru a amid massive street protests on December19-20 has ushered in a major socialcrisis in Argentina. As angry demonstrators in Buenos Aires foughtoff police assaults in the Plaza deMayo below, de la Rua staged apanicky escape by helicopter fromthe roof of his besieged presidentialpalace. In his wake, three_ morepresidents came' and went in lessthan two weeks, while the popularunrest continued.

Break with Peronism-For a Revolutionary Workers Party!the Constitution" (La Nadon, 21December 2001), while the dissident CGT-rebelde called on theregime to "adopt political solutions to control the social eruptions" (La Nacion, 20 December2001). When de la Rua fell, theyjoined with the "independent"bureaucrats of the CTA (ArgentineLabor Central) government workers and teachers union federationin calling off a threatened general strike against the state of siegeand rushed to a private t e t e - ~ H e t e with the new (and short-lived) Peronist president, Rodriguez Saa.ow Eduardo Duhalde of thePeronist party has been appointedto head a self-described "government of national salvation." Thenew regime aims to pacify t ~ e masses through rhetorical sops andby easing a small portion of theharsh austerity measures mandatedby the International Monetary Fund(lMF). The attacks dictated bythe imperialists, centrally the U.S.,and implemented by the Argentinebourgeoisie have provoked deepanger throughout the population.The Duhalde government has nowtemporarily stopped payment onArgentina's $155 billion debt to theinternational bankers-the largestsuch default in history. The government also announced a devaluation

of the peso as well as measuressupposedly aimed at allaying theplight of the poor. But no one pretends that this will put an end to theturmoil. Days before he took office,Duhalde himself warned that theKarmina Burana/lndymediaMass protest in Buenos Aires, December 20. Millions of protesters have taken to tnestreets against rising unemployment and starvation wrought by IMF, bringing downsuccessive governments.

For their part, Argentina's various pseudo-Marxist organizations-including relatively sizable fakeTrotskyist groups, some with parliamentary deputies-:-have long beenlittle more than left satellites ofPeronism. Today, while raising various criticisms of Duhalde and hislabor auxiliaries, these groups pushdeadly illusions that workers andthe oppressed can eliminate theirimmiseration within the frameworkof bourgeois rule, seeking merelyto give it more "democratic" trappings. There is a burning need toforge a genuine Trotskyist nucleusin Argentina that fights to link thepresent struggles to a program ofsocialist revolution as the onlysolution to the country's crisis. Inthe present conditions, even a relatively small revolutionary organization could grow explosivelyand sink roots among the proletariat, thereby opening the road tocountry could spiral into civil war.Argentina is at an impasse: the peoplewill no longer accept being governed asbefore, while the rulers can no longergovern as before. Close to half the popu

lation ekes out an existence belO\y thepoverty line, official unemploymenr- is .nearly 20 percent, much of the-workingclass is in desperate straits and the livingstandards of the petty-bourgeois middleclass, once the most prosperous in LatinAmerica, are plummeting. Both majorbourgeois parties-the Radicals and theJusticialista Peronists, who themselvesserved as hardline enforcers for the IMFunder the regime of Carlos Menem in the1990s-are widely reviled among thetoiling masses. And lurking in the shadows is the army, whose brutal dictatorshipfrom 1976 to 1983 saw over 30,000 leftists and labor militants assassinated or"disappeared."The wave of struggles that broughtdown the de la Rua regime began in theprovinces with road b lockad es by unemployed and semi-employed piqueteros(picketers). It then spread to the cities,where hungry masses looted grocerystores and striking workers stoned government offices, leading de la Rua to proclaim a state of siege. It culminated withthe eighth general strike in two years,"quickly followed by mass protests of hun-

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dreds of thousands, from young workers,students and the unemployed to retiredcivil servants and housewives bangingempty pots. Whife street bonfires burnedthroughout Buenos Aires and in othercities, demonstrators chanting "All oft h ~ m out!" faced down riot police firingtear gas and live ammunition outsidethe presidential palace and the Peronistcontrolled Houses of Congress. At least30 protesters were killed, many hundredswounded and thousands imprisoned before the hated president finally fled. Freeall the arrested protesters!The current situation in Argentina hasmany components of a prerevolutionarycrisis. The bourgeoisie is at an impasse,there is sharp dissatisfacti"on among thepetty bourgeoisie and the working classhas demonstrated great combativity. Crucially missing, however, is a proletarian revolutionary leadership which cangive voice to the aspirations of all theoppressed in a struggle to shatter the ruleof the venal Argentine bourgeoisie andthe domination of its imperialist masters.The fightfor a proletarian vanguard partyis therefore the central question facingArgentina today. Critical to this per spec-

tive is the struggle for the coriIplete andabsolute independence of the workingclass from all the parties and agencies ofbourgeois rule.The majority of Argentina's potentially powerful trade unions are directlylinked to the bourgeois-nationalist Peronist party. Today, the nationalist tradeunion bureaucrats are again working to. channel popular discontent into the arms

of the Peronists, whose occasional "antiimperialist" rhetoric serves only to masktheir fealty to capitalist imperialism. Living in deathly fear of the accumulatedtinder at the base of society, the laborbureaucrats have found it necessary tocall repeated general strikes over the pasttwo years. At the same time, they haveworked hand in hand with the Argentinerulers to contain discontent.Only a few months ago, both wings ofthe Per.onist CGT (General Confederation of Labor) signed a pact to controlsocial unrest "in the interests of the country." Amid the mass protests and streetbattles of December 19-20, leaders ofthe mainstream CGT called for "guaranteeing the resolution of this most gravepolitical crisis within the framework of

working-class power.Such a party can only be forged on thebasis of a program of proletarian revO-lutionary internationalism which seeksto extend the struggles of the Argentineproletariat throughout Latin Americanand into the imperialist heartlands ofthe United States and West Europe. InEurope, where many workers are facing mass layoffs and factory closures,there is an identification with, and apprehension over, the plight of the largely European-derived Argentine masses.European newspapers and TVs are filledwith images of"people in what was oncethe wealthiest country in Latin Americastorming the banks, battling the policeand looting stores for the basic necessities of daily survival. There is genuinefear that if hunger riots could erupt inArgentina, then a dramatic plunge in living standards could be the future forEuropean workers too. Although the particular mechanisms of class collaborationare different (social-democratic laborreformism in Europe, bourgeois nationalism in Latin America), the fundamental question is the same: unshackling apowerful proletariat from a pro-capitalistleadership.For their" part, the U.S. imperialis tshave long seen Latin America as theirown private preserve for exploitation.The wall-to-wall military dictatorshipsthat dominated South America in the1960s and '70s were the product of the"Alliance for Progress" institu,ted byDemocratic Party president and liberaldarling John F. Kennedy as part of the"war on Communism." Today, reflecting

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Free the Miami Five!u.s. O ~ t of Guantanamo Bay!

Last month, a U.S. District Court judgein Miami sentenced five Cuban citizensto terms from 15 years to life in prisonon charges of espionage and murder.The Miami Five are supporters of theCuban Revolution who monito red. andinfiltrated counterrevolutionary gusano

(worm) exile groups in Florida in order toreport on their plans, as well as those ofthe U.S. military, for attacks and otherprovocations against Cuba. As proletarian revolutionary internationalists, wedemand the immediate freedom of theMiami Five, whose heroic actions were in

TROTSKY

Trade Unions in DependentCapitalist CountriesArgentina's economic and social crisis,engineered by the IMP, starkly illuminatesthe necessity for proletarian revolution tooverthrow the bourgeoisie and liberate the

country from imperialist bondage. Bu t asBolshevik leader Leon Trotsky pointed out,a key obstacle to independent proletarianstruggle in economically backward countriesis the co-optation of the trade unions bythe nationalist bourgeois rulers, who arebeholden to the imperialist powers. ThefightLENIN

for the complete independence of he unions from the bourgeois state is thus integral toany proletarian revolutionary perspective.Colonial and semicolonial countries are under the sway, not of native capitalism but

of foreign imperialism. However, this does not weaken but, on the contrary, strengthensthe need of direct, daily, practical ties between the magnates of capitalism and the governments which are in essence subject to them-the governments of colonial or semicolonial countries. Inasmuch as imperialist capitalism creates both in colonies andsemicolonies a stratum of labor aristocracy and bureaucracy, the latter requires the support of colonial and semicolonial governments as protectors, patrons, and sometimes asarbitrators. This constitutes the most important social basis for the Bonapartist andsemi-Bonapartist character of governments in the colonies and in backward countriesgenerally. This likewise constitutes the basis for the dependence of reformist unionsupon the state ....Inasmuch as the chief role in backward countries is not played by national but by foreign capitalism, the national bourgeoisie occupies, in the sense of its social position, amuch more minor position than corresponds with the development of industry. Inasmuch as foreign capital does not import workers but proletarianizes the native population, the national proletariat soon begins playing the most important role in the life ofthe country. In these conditions the national government, to the extent that it tries to showresistance to foreign capital, is compelled to a greater or lesser degree to lean on theproletariat. On the other hand, the governments of those backward countries which consider it inescapable or more profitable for themselves to march shoulder to shoulderwith foreign capital, destroy the labor organizations and institute a more or less totalitarian regime. Thus, the feebleness of the national bourgeoisie, the absence of traditionsof municipal self-government, the pressure of foreign capitalism, and the relativelyrapid growth of the proletariat, cut the ground from under any kind of stable democraticregime. The governments of backward, i.e., colonial and semicolonial, countries by andlarge assume a Bonapartist or semi-Bonapartist character; they differ from one anotherin that some try to orient in a democratic direction, seeking support among workers andpeasants, while others install a form close to military-police dictatorship. This likewisedetermines the fate of the trade unions. They either stand under the special patronageof the state or they are subjected to cruel persecution. Patronage on the part of the stateis dictated by two tasks that confront it: first, to draw the working class closer, thusgaining a support for resistance against excessive pretensions on the part of imperialism; and, at the same time, to discipline the workers themselves by placing them underthe control of a bureaucracy.

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-Leon Trotsky, "Trade Unions in the Epoch of Imperialist Decay," 29 September1938, reprinted in Leon Trotsky on the Trade Unions (Pathfinder, 1975)

! ~ ! ! l . l ! } ! . ~ ! ! . ~ ' L ~ ! ! EDITOR: Len MeyersEDITOR, YOUNG SPARTACUS PAGES: Michael DavissonPRODUCTION MANAGER: Susan FullerCIRCULATION MANAGER: Irene GardnerEDITORIAL BOARD: Ray Bishop (managing editor), Bruce Andre, Jon Brule, George Foster,Liz Gordon, Walter Jennings, Jane Kerrigan, James Robertson, Joseph Seymour, Alison Spencer,Alan Wilde .The Spartacist League is the U.S. Section of the International Communist League(Fourth Internationalist).Workers Vanguard (ISSN 02760746) published biweekly, except skipping three alternate issues in June, July andAugust (beginning with omitting the second issue in June) and with a 3week interval in December, by the SpartacistPublishing Co., 299 Broadway, Suite 3t8, New York, NY tO007. Telephone: (212) 732-7862 (Editorial), (212) 732-7861(Business). Address all correspondence to: Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116. E-mail address:[email protected] subscriptions: $10.00/22 issues. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY and additional mailing offices.POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Workers Vanguard, Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116.Opinions expressed in signed articles or letters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpointThe closingoate for news in this issue IS 8 January.

No. 772 11 January 2002

Free the Five CommitteeFidel Castro standing before portraits of Miami Five at Havana rallydemanding their freedom.defense of the Cuban Revolution againstU.S. imperialism and its counterrevolutionary agents.The FBI arrested ten Cubans in 1998,claiming that they were part of an espionage network in Florida which aimedto infiltrate the U.S. Southern Command,pass military secrets to Havana and penetrate Cuban American groups. Prosecutors later added a charge of "conspiracyto commit murder" in connection withthe deaths of four pilots from the Brothers to the Rescue gusano outfit. The latterwere shot down by the Cuban air force in1996 after repeatedly and provocativelyflying into Ct.J.ban airspace in a brazenchallenge to the country's air defenses_These gusanos are descendants of theformer bourgeoisie and its henchmen inthe brutal regime of Fulgencio Batistawho fled the Cuban Revolution and haveever since waged a campaign of terrorism supported by their CIA masters.The prosecution's case was based on"evidence" illegally seized during FBIbreak-ins in a three-year period beforethe arrests. Threatened with long prisonterms, five of the original defendantscaved in and agreed to plea bargains in

exchange for reduced sentences. Bu t theothers stood firm, despite being kept insolitary confinement for more than ayear and a half before their trial.Three of the Miami Five-AntonioGuerrero, Gerardo Hernandez and RamonLabanifio-were sentenced to life imprisonment, the maximum allowed. Theprosecution claimed that Guerrero, whoworked as a janitor at the Boca ChicaNaval Air Station in Key West, hadendangered secret U.S. military plans bywatching aircraft take off and land intraining exercises. Hernandez was hitwith a second life term for allegedly providing Havana with flight informationabout the Brothers to the Rescue operation. The other defendants, FernandoGonzalez and Rene Gonzalez, received19 and 15 years respectively. Rene Gonzalez had flown planes for Brothers to theRescue in order to monitor the group'sactivities and report them to Cubanauthorities.In a statement issued shortly after theirconviction last June, the Cuban government affirmed that the Miami Five werepart of an operation to "discover andcontinued on page 9

William ("Bill") Moultrie

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hatever Happened to "Stalin as Commander in Chief"?IG Disappears Red Army Fight AgainstIslamic Reaction in Afghanistan

The fopflding leaders' of the Internationalist Group (IG) have, since defecting 'from our organization some yearsback, long and loudly proclaimed thatthey uniquely carry forward the revolutionary program of Spartacism. The manifest fraud of this posture is easily demonstrated by a mere glance at the objectsof the IG's political affections since itsinception. These have r a n g e ~ from tradeunion opportunists in Brazil who turnedto the bourgeois courts to preserve theirpositions in the leadership of a municipal workers union that includes cops; toan assortment of petty-bourgeois nation- .alist forces in the colonial and semicolonial countries; to a wing of the Stalinist bureaucracies in China and Cubawhich the IG invests with revolutionarycapacities.

tionate fee hikes-part of the anti-immigrant witchhunt that has accompaniedthe U.S. bombing of Afghanistan-the IGcompletely disappeared any and all mention of the Red Army in Afghanistan.Those Who Can't DefendPast Gains Will Never Fightfor New Ones

The Spartacist League and SpartacusYouth Club endorsed the November28 protest, which was called around theslogans "Down With CUNY's AntiImmigrant 'War Purge'! Stop Racist Tui-

military defense of China, and it meantdefense of the Soviet Union and theother deformed workers states. All of theleft groups now talk about how the U.S.armed and funded the mujahedin againstthe Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the'80s. But what they don't say is that theyall capitulated to the imperialist antiSoviet war drive, with, for example, theISO hailing the mujahedin as 'freedomfighters.' Only we Trotskyists said: 'HailRed Army in Afghanistan! ."

This is hardly an academic question orone irrelevant to the defense of the working class and the rights of all the oppressed today.

ter, Washington seized on the Red Armyintervention to launch a renewed ColdWar offensive, bankrolling and armingthe woman-hating Islamic fundamentalists in the largest CIA covert operation inhistory.

The Soviet intervention in Afghanistanoffered the prospect of extending thegains of the Octobe r Revolution to. thehideously oppressed peoples ofthat country. Although certainly not the intent ofthe Kremlin Stalinists, the intervention inAfghanistan cut against their nationalist,anti-Marxist dogma of "building social-

Some years ago the IG's central leader,Jan Norden, conjured up the notion t!1atthe geriatric remnants o f the former Stalinist bureaucracy of the East GermanDDR deformed workers state-who hadsold out the DDR to imperialism-weregoing to lead a "fightback" against theravages of capitalist counterrevolution!As an appeal to the sensibilities of suchtypes, Norden insisted on heralding Stalinhimself as "commander in chief" of theRed Army forces that defeated Hitler'sThird Reich. (More accurately, the RedArmy prevailed despite Stalin, whobeheaded the Soviet general staff onthe eve of World War II and whose constant attempts to appease the imperialistsundermined the defense of the SovietUnion.) But now the IG is working adifferent side of the street. Seeking toingratiate itself with the various reformists and renegades who ha\'e headed upthe "peace" coalitions in response to U.S.imperialism's terror bombing of Afghanistan, the IG has deep-sixed one of thefew truly progressive acts of the SovietStalinists-the 1979-89 Red Army intervention in Afghanistan against CIAbacked Islamic reaction ..

Paris Match UPI WV PhotoSoviet military presence in Afghanistan opened road to social progress for Afghan women. As our sign at HunterCollege protest proclaims, Trotskyists said: "Hail Red Army in Afghanistan!"

In our article "The InternationalistGroup: Centrist Pathology" (WVNo. 767,26 October 2001), we noted that while theIG might make passing reference in writing to professed agreement with bur callto "Hail ~ e d Army in Afghanist


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A s part of a propaganda campaignto justify the U.S. war againstAfghanistan, over the past fewmonths the New York Times has opened itsop-ed page to liberal opponents ofIslamic fundamentalism in the Near Eastand South Asia. Among them is writerSalman Rushdie, the foremost "heretic"in the Islamic world, who contributed apiece titled "Yes, This Is About Islam" (2November).Born into a.Muslim family in India,Rushdie has-for many years lived andworked in England. His satirical 1989novel, The Satanic Verses, involving thefigure of. Mohammed, provoked a murderous reaction from the self-proclaimedguardians of the Islamic faith. Ayatollah Khomeini, then the supremeleader of Iran, issued an edict that "all

those involved in its publication and wereaware of its contents, are sentenced todeath." Prominent religious leaders inthe West, such as New York's CardinalO'Connor, also denounced The SatanicVerses.Bush's "war on terror" has provided abroad and sympathetic American audience for Rushdie to express his deeplyfelt hostility-indeed, visceral hatredfor Islamic traditionalism. He argues:"For a vast number of 'believing' Muslimmen, 'Islam' stands, in a jumbled, half-examined way, not only for the fearof God-the fear more than the love,one suspects-but also for a clus-ter of customs, opinions and prejudices that include their dietary practices;the sequestration or near-sequestration of'their' women; the sermons delivered bytheir mullahs of choice; a loathing ofmodern society in general, riddled as it iswith music, godlessness and sex; and amore particularized loathing (and fear) ofthe prospect that their own immediatesurroundings could be taken over'Westoxicated'-by the liberal Western-style of life."

As a liberal idealist, Rushdie seesIslamic fundamentalism only as irrational hatred for personal freedom andsecular-humanist values, which he identifies with the advanced capitalist countries ofNorth America and West Europe.In reality, Western, centrally AmeriCan,imperialism is largely resPQnsible for therise of Islamic fundamentalism in recentdecades, not least in funding the mujahe- .din to fight the Soviet Army in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Even the conservative London Economist (15 September)pointed out: "America may be tempted tooverlook one uncomfortable fact. Its ownpolicies in Afghanistan a decade andmore ago helped to create both Osamabin Laden and the fundamentalist Talibanregime that shelters him."

Haydar Haydar's Arabic novel ispowerful testament to failure of Arabnationalism and rise of Islamic fundamentalism. To order review in WVNo. 170 (7 December 2001), send$.50 to Spartacist Publishing Co.,Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116.4

And then there's Washington's supportand massive military aid to Zionist Israel,whose leaders now threaten a massacre ofPalestinian Arabs. But Rushdie does notso much as mention this in his article!U.S. support to Israel's colonial-styleoccupation of the West Bank and Gaza isa major factor underlying the growth offundamentalist groups like Hamas andIslamic Jihad among the oppressed Palestinian people. Does anyone think that Pal- .estinian youth are joining Hamas todaysimply out of loathing for Western musicand sexual mores?! 'At the same time, the main fundamentalist political-military organizations inthe Near East-AI Qaeda, the Hezbollahin Lebanon, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, etc.are fueled, so to speak, by oil money fromthe Saudi Arabian or Iranian governmentsand ruling elites, which are economicallydependent on the Anglo-American oilcartel and the banks of Wall Street, theCity of London, Frankfurt and Tokyo. Itis the "godless materialism" of the Westthat provides the money for the clericswho denounce the "godless materialism"of the West as a threat to' the "purity" ofIslam.At the most fundamental level, the eVA)-lution and structure of world capitalism has arrested the development ofNorth Africa, the Near East and SouthAsia, thereby perpetuating the backwardsocial and economic conditions that sustain Islamic traditionalism and have nowgiven rise to militant fundamentalism. A10 percent fall in the world market piiceof oil causes millions of people in Iran,Iraq; Yemen and elsewhere in the NearEast to lose their livelihood; driving theirfamilies to the brink of starvation andcausing their children to die of disease forlack of medical treatment.For such people, religion-especiallythe belief in an afterlife-is a needed solace for the seemingly unchangeable miseries and horrors of their earthly life. AsKarl Marx wrote in a amous passage:"Religious distress is at the same timethe expression of real distress and alsothe protest against real distress. Religionis the sigh of the oppressed creature, theheart of a heartless world, just as it is thespirit of spiritless conditions. It is the

opium of the people."To abolish religion as the illusory hapRi-ness of the people is to demand their rialhappiness. The demand to give up illu-sions about the existing state of affairs isthe demand to give up a state of affairswhich needs illusions." .-"Contribution to the Critique ofHegel's Philosophy of Law"(1843)And to eliminate that state of affairsrequires a socialist revolution against capitalist imperialism.Rushdie writes of the Islamic East as ifa world capitalist economy doesn't exist.For decades, Saudi Arabia, with its hugeoil reserves, has been, from an eco-

,nomic standpoint, America's most important client state in the Near East. TheArab engineers who oversee the PersianGulf oil fields are trained at ExxonMobil,Chevron et al. The enormous wealth ofthe Saudi royal family (with its 700princes) is managed by Western-educatedfinancial technocrats whose careersinclude stints with J. P. Morgan, theDeutsche Bank or the IMF.

Osama bin Laden is not some Bedouinwhose youth was spent tending camels inthe Arabian desert. He is just as much aprivileged product of modern globalizedcapitalism as George W. Bush. Both arescions of wealthy families in major oilproducing regions of the world, SaudiArabia and Texas respectively. The men

all evil in that part of the world where itis the prevalent religion:"Suppose we say that the ills of our societies are not primarily America's fault,that we are to blame for ourown failings?How would we understand them then?Might we not, by accepting our ownresponsibility for our problems, begin tolearn to solve them for ourselves? ..."An Iraqi writer quotes an earlier Iraqisatirist: 'The disease that is in us, is fromus.' A British Muslim writes, 'Islam hasbecome its own enemy'."Rushdie writes as if the countries of the

Islamic East are the only impoverishedand culturally backward parts of theworld. Hardly. Is predominantly HinduIndia, Rushdie's original homeland, moreeconomically developed and culturallyenlightened than Egypt or Iran? As Rushdie knows perfectly well, the British ruledIndia from the mid-18th to the mid-20thcentury. It was precisely during these twocenturies that Britain was transformed(in part by plundering India) into anadvanced industrial economy and a parliamentary democracy. India, however,remained benighted by the Hindu castesystem, with such barbaric practices assuttee (the ritual burning alive of widows), and riven by murderous enmityd e l i b e r a t ~ l Y manipulated and aggravatedby the British colonial rulers-betweenHindus, Muslims and Sikhs. There isa deep causal connection between British colonialism and the present 'social,economic and cultural backwardness ofIndia, Pakistan and Bangladesh.And what of sub-Saharan Africa, thepoorest and most economically backward region of the world? Does the basiccause of the untold human misery inCongo or Uganda lie in the traditionaltribal cultures and animistic religions ofthe black African peoples? Such a viewof black Africa was propagated fordecades by the former white-supremacistregime in South Africa.And how does one explain the vastsocioeconomic gulf between the United

Der SpiegelBitter fruit of British colonialism: 1947 partition creating Hindu-dominatedIndia and Islamic Pakistan triggered one of history's bloodiest communalistslaughters.who handle the money for Al Qaeda orthe Lebanese Hezbollah are more thancompetent to teach corporate finance atthe Harvard Business School or LondonSchool of Economics.The "Islamic revolution" in Iran thattoppled the Shah in 1979 did not significantly change the economic relationshipbetween that country and Western capitalism. The Iranian economy under Khomeini, despite his ranting agains t Americaas the "Great Satan," remained dependent on the export of oil purchased anddistributed worldwide by Exxon, BritishPetroleum et al. The Shi'ite theocracy inTeheran along with the Wahabbi theocracy. in Riyadh continued to attempt(though without much success) to manipulate the world market price of oilthrough OPEC. Iran today accounts forroughly 10 percent of world oil exports,about the same as it did under the proAmerican regime of Shah Pahlevi.For Rushdie, the cultural attitudes andvalues inculcated by Islam are the root of

States and Canada on the one side andthe countries of Latin America on theother? Is the poverty and economic backwardness of t h ~ Dominican Republic orPeru rooted in the doctrines and culturalattitudes of Catholicism?Wherein then lies the basic difference between the First World and the ThirdWorld? During the 19th century, industrialcapitalism was pioneered and developed inWest Europe and North America. The onlynon-European country which transformeditself from a feudal to an industrial capitalist economy was Japan in the latter partof the 19th century. By the beginning ofthe 20th century, the countries of NorthAmerica, West Europe and Japan hadamassed sufficient economic and militarypower to subjugate and exploit the rest ofthe world. Insofar as industrial development takes place in Third World countries, it does so under the domination ofAmerican, European or Japanese capital.Thus the current recession in the U.S.continued on page 10

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Mumia...(continued from page 12)might be commuted, Cannon warned ofthe flilers' duplicity:"The rumor is being cautiously spreadthat the governor of Massachusetts, inwhose hands the final decision on Saccoand Vanzetti is placed, may commute thesentence of death to one of life imprisonment. It is being spread so that the enemies of Sacco and Vanzetti may feel outthe reaction to this prospect among thedefenders of the two Italian rebels. Theywant to ..know if this splendid movementof solidarity, which has time and againstruck heavy blows at the Massachusettsreaction, will allow itself to be dissolved

w i ~ h the bait of a commutation .. ."The workers who have thus far, by theirpower and solidarity, prevented the execution of the two rebels must continuetheir great fight with more consciousness and determination. The workers- who have snatched Sacco and Vanzettifrom the chair of death must snatch themfrom the cell of death by slow torture.No unfounded joy must dull the sharpedge of the movement. It must continueto fight forward with its million-armedpower until this great issue is settledwith a great victory."The hearts of the Massachusetts executioners have not softened with kindness,and their desire to murder our comradeshas not changed. On the contrary, theyseek for new methods of torment. Theworking class. must reply:"Not the chair of death, but life forSacco and Vanzetti!"Not imprisonment of death, but freedom for Sacco and Vanzetti!"- "Death, Commutation orFreedom," Labor Defender(July 1927)

Don't let them bury Mumia alive!Workers, minorities and all opponents ofracist capitalist repression must nowredouble their efforts to mobilize massprotests centered on the social power ofthe labor movement to demand Jamal'simmediate freedom.* * *

We are here as part of the fight to freea courageous fighter for the oppressedMumia Abu-Jamal. From the time hewas 14 years old, protesting a presidential campaign rally for Alabama'ssegregationist governor George Wallace,Mumia has fought relentlessly for thepoor, oppressed and disenfranchised.After more than a decade of surveillance and harassment, Jamal was sentenced to death in 1982 on manufacturedcharges of killing a Philadelphia policeofficer.At trial .he faced the notorious judgeAlbert Sabo, known as the "king of deathrow" and a "prosecutor in black robes."It was recently revealed that Sabo promised to help "fry" Mumia, using the "N"word to describe his anticipated victim,Jamal faced a D.A.'s office which trainedits attorneys to kick black people offjuries; he faced a prosecuting attorneyexperienced in the art of frame-up whocited Mumia's background as a BlackPanther as grounds for a death sentence.Denied the right to represent himself,Jamal went up against the state with a

11 JANUARY 2002

lawyer he didn't want-and who wantedhim even less.From Mexico City to Johannesburg,workers who daily experience grindingexploitation and brutality have taken tothe streets in Mumia's defense to demandthe freedom o f a man whose struggle mirrors their own. But a host of Jamal's professed "socialist" defenders in this country have demobilized and demoralizedJamal's supporters by promoting illusions in tlie capitalist courts and tethering Jamal's struggle to Democratic Partypoliticians-what they call "the mainstream." These capitalist politicians haveno interest in seeing Jamal walk out ofprison a free man but only in preservingthe integrity of their justice system.We take to heart lessons passed downby our forebears, such as James P. Cannon, founder of the early CommunistParty's International Labor Defense,which organized massive protests forSacco and Vanzetti. As the Americanbourgeoisie was putting the finishingtouches on its plans to execute thesecourageous anarchist workers, Cannonwarned: "Put no faith in capitalist justice! Organize the protest movement on awider scale and with a more determinedspirit! Demonstrate and Strike for Saccoand Vanzetti!" This is no less urgent nowin the fight for Mumia's freedom.Capitalism Is a System ofBrutal Repression

On August 17, Jamal's new attorneys-Marlene Kamish, Eliot Grossmanand British barrister Nicholas Brownappeared before Pennsylvania state judgePamela Dembe in an effort to presentdramatic new evidence of Jamal's innocence, centered on the sworn confessionof Arnold Beverly that he, not Mumia,shot Philadelphia police officer DanielFaulkner in 1981. One month earlier,William Yohn, the U.S. district courtjudge deciding Mumia's habeas corpusappeal, ruled in effect that a court of lawis no place for evidence of Jamal's innocence! Yohn went il step further, gratuitously advising his Pennsylvania court

Victims of state frame-upmachine: Black' Pantherleader Ger.onimo ji Jaga(Pratt) spent 27 years inprison. American IndianMovement leaderLeonard Peltier stillimprisoned after 25 years.colleague Dembe to do the same.Beverly's confession stated: "I washired, along with another guy, and paid toshoot and kill Faulkner. I had heard thatFaulkner was a problem for the mob andcorrupt policemen because he interferedwith the graft and payoffs made to allowillegal activit,y including prostitution,gambling, drugs without prosecution inthe center city area ... I shot Faulkner inthe face at cloSe range. Jamal was shotshortly after that by a uniformed policeofficer who arrived on the scene."Mumia's innocence has been evidentfrom the outset. We have repeatedlyexposed the D.A.'s case, which rested onthree legs: eyewitness accounts that weresecured through police manipulation,coercion and outright terror; a purported"confession" by Jamal while he was lyingnear death in the hospital, which didn'tsurface until two months after the killing; ballistics "evidence" concocted bythe police that the bullets that killedFaulkner were fired from Jamal's gun.The Post-Conviction Relief appeal filedby Jamal's attorneys in Pennsylvaniastate court on July 3 demolished everylast vestige of the discredited "three legs."Jamal's new legal team was assembledafter he fired his lead counsel LeonardWeinglass and assistant counsel DanielWilliams when he learned of the lyingcontents of a so-called "inside account"Williams was preparing to publish, aptlytitled Executing Justice. In a chapter ofhis book, "Fighting Ideology," Williamsdenigrates the Beverly "Confession as"bona fide lunacy," "patently outrageous"and "absurd." Pages of this section havebeen quoted by the prosecutors as theircentral argument for barring Beverly'sconfession and other new evidence frombeing heard in court. Williams and Weinglass had been aware of Beverly's confession since 1999. Outrageously, theyfought to bury it and the volumes of corroborating evidence.Williams' central premise is that thecops never could, never would, knowingly frame up an innocent man. But asany inner-city resident-actually, as any

reader of daily newspapers-can tellyou, cop corruption, murder and frameup is a fact of life. In Philadelphia hundreds of convictions based on concoctedevidence, coerced confessions, policetorture and manipulation of witnesseshave been thrown out in the last several years. Most notorious was the caseof a 53-year-old black grandmother,Betty Patterson, who the cops set up oncharges of drug dealing in order to manufacture evidence against her sons in amurder investigation.The history of American bourgeoisjustice is a history of the frame-ups,imprisonment and execution of labormilitants, black activists and partisans ofthe oppressed. That's a fact! The Haymarket Martyrs: Anarchistsand labor organizers of the protests for aneight-hour workday in 1886-executed inChicago. Innocent! _Joe Hill: IWW organizer legallymurdered by a Utah firing squad in 1915.Innocent! Sacco and Vanzetti: Anarchist workers framed for a murder during a bankrobbery and executed in 1927-roundedup as part of the anti-red anti-immigranthysteria that followed the Bolshevik-ledRussian workers revolution of October1917. They were nowhere near the crimescene. Innocent!Do you think it's "ancient history"? Black Panther leader Geronimo jiJaga (Pratt): Before his release in 1995,27 years in prison for a killing the government knew all along he didn't commit-they had wiretap logs showing hewas 400 miles away. Innocent! Leonard Peltier: This AmericanIndian Movement leader has spent 25years in federal prison on charges of killing two FBI agents during the government's brutal siege of the Pine Ridge reservation in 1975. Even the governmentattorneys conceded during one of Peltier's appeal hearings that they had noidea who shot the agents-but Peltiercontinues to rot in a prison hell which hasstolen most of his eyesight and destroyedhis health. Innocent! Black Panther, MOVE supporterand award-winning journalist MumiaAbu-Jamal: Innocent!But what does the innocence of thisman who has dedicated his life to thecause of black freedom mean to a rulingclass whose hands are stained with theblood of over a million Iraqis killedby U.S. bombs and a starvation blockade,of thousands of Serbs and countless others-in U.S. cities and across the globe.The prosecutors and the capitalist rulersthey represent want to inject Mumia withthe same lethal dose which snuffed outthe life of Shaka Sankofa (Gary Graham),also an innocent black man, at the heightof George W. Bush's presidential campaign. They want to execute Jamalbecause they see in this black journalist,MOVE supporter and former Black Panther Party spokesman a symbol of defiantopposition to their system of racialoppression. They want Mumia dead incontinued on page 6

James/Philadelphia InquirerPhiladelphia police raid on Black Panthers, 1970, part of FBI's muraerousCOINTELPRO operation. Jamal (above) as young B l a c ~ Panther Party leader,targeted since age of 15 by Ph illy cops.5


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Mumia...(continued from page 5)order to send a chilling message to allthose who challenge cop terror in theghettos, who stand up for labor's rights onthe picket lines, who protest U.S. imperialist mass murder abroad.No Illusions in theCapitalist Courts!

The rulers .put their machinery of staterepression- in high gear particularly ifthey sense any potential evidence of theexplosive combination of black and red.This was expressed clearly by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, who announced inthe 1960s: "The Negro youth and moderate[s] must be made to understand that ifthey succumb to revolutionary teachings,they will be dead revolutionaries."

Mumia's role as an articulate youngspokesman for the Panthers put himsquarely in the sights of the Philly copsand the FBI. The FBI amassed at least900 pages on Jamal in its COINTELPROfiles. Jamal had been in the cross hairs aswell of the Philadelphia Police Department's Civil Defense Squad, formed inthe mid-1960s. He was placed under dailysurveillance by the CD unit, which notonly closely collaborated with the FBI,but also served as a model for the deadlyFBI's COINTELPRO operation of disruption and provocation against the leftwhich resulted in the murder of 38 Panthers around the country. Philadelphia'spolice commissioner and then mayor,Frank Rizzo, became an icon of racist"law and order" among cops nationwide,particularly for his attacks against theBlack Panther Party.

William Loren Katz Collection1917 march in New York City protested riational wave of lynchings by race-terrorist Ku Klux Klan. '

Mumia survived the rulers' onslaughtagainst the Panthers in the '60s and '70s.Unlike Fred Hampton and Mark Clark,Jamal wasn't assassinated in his sleep inthe dead of night. But the Feds and Phillycops did not call off their vendetta againstMumia. They continued to hate him forhis eloqu(!nt and impassioned defense ofblack rights, and particularly because heremained defi ant and unbowed in the faceof state repression and raoist oppression.The drive to execute Mumia is the extension of the COINTELPRO terror campaign by the FBI. It is a demonstration ofthe machinery of repression wielded bythe capitalist rulers against any perceivedthreat to a system based on the exploitation of the many by the few, which in theU.S. is rooted in the forcible subjugationof the black population at the bottom ofsociety.Working-class militants, fighters forblack freedom and leftist youth who haveenlisted in Mumia's cause must learnthe lessons paid for in blood in the,struggles of the past. In particular they canlearn from the writings Of James P. Can-

non. In his 1927 article "Who Can SaveSacco and Vanzetti?" Cannon laid out thecounterposition between liberal appealsand the principles of non-sectarian classstruggle defense 'On which the PartisanDefense Committee-a legal and socialdefense organization associated with theSpartacist League-bases itself:"One policy is the policy of the classstruggle. It puts the center of gravity inthe protest movement of the workers ofAmerica and the world. It puts all faithin the power of the masses and no faithwhatever in the justice of the courts.While favoring all possible legal pro-ceedings, it calls for agitation, publicity,demonstrations-organized protest on anational and international scale.' .."The other policy is the policy of 'respectability,' of the 'soft pedal' and ofridiculous illusions about 'justice' fromthe courts of the enemy. It relies mainlyon legal proceedings. It seeks to blur theissue of the class struggle .... It tries torepresent the martyrdom of Sacco andVanzetti as an 'unfortunate' error which

can be rectified by the 'right' people pro-ceeding in the 'right way'."Abolish the RacistDeath Penalty!

When Timothy McVeigh was put todeath in June, the federal governmentcarried out its first execution in 38years. This unrepentant mass murdererwas a perfect model for the re-impositionof federal executions, especially at atime when reservations about capitalpunishment have become increasinglyprominent. One week later a more representative example of those on the government's hit list-one of the 80 percentof those on federal death row who isblack or Hispanic-Juan Paul Garza wasexecuted. In a statement issued on June 5,the PDC protested the executions ofMcVeigh and Garza, stating:

Web site: www.icl-fi.org E-mail address:[email protected] Office Los Angeles Oakland. Box 1377 GPO, Box 29574, Los Feliz Sta. Box 29497

6

New York, NY 10116 Los Angeles, CA 90029 Oakland, CA 94604(212) 732-7860 (213) 380-8239 (510) 839-0851BostonBox 390840, Central StaCambridge, MA 02139(617) 666-9453ChicagoBox 6441, Main POChicago, IL 60680(312) 563-0441Public Office:Sat. 2-5 p.m.222 S. Morgan (Buzzer 23)

Public Office: Public Office:Sat. 2-5 p.m. Sat. 1-5 p.m.. 3806 Beverly Blvd., Room 215 1634 Telegraph, 3rd FloorNew YorkBox 3381, Church St. Sta.New York, NY 10008(212) 267-1025Public Office:Tues. 6:30-8:30 p.m.and Sat. 1-5 p.m.299 Broadway, Suite 318

San Francisco .Box 77494San Francisco, CA 94107(41 5) 395-9520Public Office:Tues. 6-8 p.m.564 Market StreetSuite 718

VancouverBox 7198, Station AToronto, ON M5W 1X8(416) 593-4138Box 2717, Main P.O.Vancouver, BC V6S 3X2(604) 687-0353

"We recoil at this spectacle of vengeful,state-sanctioned murder. Capital punish-ment is a barbaric legacy of medievaltorture, and in the U.S. of black chattelslavery. It is a system of legal murderthat reinforces the brutalization of society in all respects. We oppose the deathpenalty on principle-for the guilty aswell as the innocent."In the U.S., where the decaying capitalist system offers no future to millions

of inner-city youth, the death penalty, themass incarceration of black men and theelimination of welfare speak to the bourgeoisie's impulse to genocide. For morethan a decade, Democrats and Republicans did everything in their power toincrease the number of victims and speedthe pace of state-sanctioned murder.Habeas corpus was virtually eliminatedand death penalty appeals were hastenedwith Clinton's 1996 Anti-Terrorism andEffective Death Penalty Act. Funds todefenders' offices dedicated to poor people charged with capital crimes wereslashed, leaving many defendants stuckwith such representation as lawyers whosleep through trials, who are drunkenKKK kleagles, and even lawyers whobrag about how many clients they sent tothe death chamber. Clinton 's 1996 federalcrime bill, which expanded by dozens theoffenses punishable by death, includedimposing the death penalty in states thathad rejected it. Bush's attorney general,John Ashcroft, an open ~ u p p o r t e r of theConfederacy, made this explicit, promising that the Feds are going to (!.ggressivelyseek death sentences in those states. Thisrecalls the Fugitive Slave Act'of 1850which extended the reach of the slaveowners into the "free states" of the North.Confronted almost weekly with exposures of innocent frame-up victims,public support for capital punishment,although still a majority, has significantly waned over the past two years. InJanuary 2000, after the thirteenth casecame to light of a death row inmate inhis state who had been falsely convicted,Illinois' Republican governor, GeorgeRyan, decreed a moratorium on executions pending review of death penaltyprocedures. Other municipalities havefollowed suit. Even nine cities and townsin North Carolina, in the heart of the oldConfederacy, have passed nonbindingresolutions for a moratorium. Howeverbrief the Illinois moratorium may be, andwhatever reasons the Illinois state author

ities had for its institution, a curtailmentof state-sanctioned murder is somethingMarxists welcome. But we also recognizethat it does not change the fundamentallyracist and oppressive nature of bourgeoisclass rule.Some liberal bourgeois politicians,most notably Jesse Jackson, have pushed"life without parole"-i.e., a livingdeath-as an alternative, portrayingthe death penalty as "ineffective" andtoo costly. At the same time, reformistgroups like the International SocialistOrganization (ISO) and its Campaign toEnd the Death Penalty have built platforms for Chicago Democratic Con-

gressman Jesse Jackson Jr., and his callfor a nationwide moratorium on executions. The ISO's entire strategy is premised on appealing to the capitalist stateand its representatives for justice. Cravenly, Campaign spokesman Alice Kimpleaded with Clinton last year: "Have aheart this Valentine's Day .. Stop all federal executions!"We don't play .that game-our startingpoint is not what is the most effectivemeans for the capitalist rulers to repressthose they exploit. We seek to explain thetrue nature of the capitalist state-at itscore made up of the cops, military, prosecutors and courts-as an instrument toprotect the property, profits and class ruleof the handful of capitalists against theworking class and oppressed. We fight tobring .to the working class an understanding of the class-struggle methods bywhich they can organize to fight. Our purpose is to imbue the proletariat with theunderstanding that the capitalist statemust be smashed through socialist revolution and replaced with a workers state.For the most part, as a recent WallStreet Journal (22 May 2001) articlepoints out, the debate today isn't primarily about whether capital punishmentshould exist, but how it's applied in practice . "Opponents want stronger safeguards because it will mean fewer executions. Supporters will tolerate fewerexecutions as a means of stemming theerosion of public confidence in the deathpenalty."Behind this is the worry by a section ofthe bourgeoisie that the high-profileexposures of a series of bogus deathrow convictions will undermine the"authority" of the state's killing machine.In early July, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor conceded to a grO\lpof women lawyers in Minneapolis that theU.S. "may well be allowing some innocent defendants to be executed." Notingthat Minnesota has no death penalty,O'Connor told them, "You must breathe abig sigh of reli ef every day." A few weeksafter her speech O'Connor voted touphold the execution of Napoleon Beazley, a 25-year-old black man convicted ofkilling oilman John Luttig during a carjacking when he was 17. Luttig's son, anappellate judge in Texas and a vocaladvocate of the death penalty, assisted theprosecution in securing an all-whitejury-including an outspoken whitesupremacist and the president of theUnited Daughters of the Confederacy.

Of course, the concerns voiced by thecapitalist rulers are laced with a heavy.dose of hypocrisy. Oklahoma governor Keating proposed that the colirtsuse a standard pf proof more rigorousthan "beyond a reasonable doubt" incapital cases, pontificating, "the peoplenow expect moral certainty." That hasn'tstopped Keating from ordering more executions this year than even Texas.The ISO's Campaign to End the DeathPenalty adapts to bourgeois liberals bysubordinating the call for abolishing capital punishment to calling for "moratorium now, abolition next." But onedoesn't necessarily follow the other.Britain's conservative news magazine theEconomist perceptively pointed out,"Such reform could drive a stake throughthe heart of the abolitionist movement.The more the public becomes convincedthat every person who sits on death row isguilty, the less of a grounds well there willbe for ending capital punishment."

There have been prior moratoriums inAmerican history. Between 1907 and1917 nine states either abolished orseverely restricted the death penalty andother states saw a sharp drop in executions. But corresponding to the antiimmigrant hysteria during the "Redscare" which followed the October 1917Bolshevik Revolution, five of those ninestates restored the death penalty. In the1920s, the American capitalist state , fearing that the black masses were "seeingred"-the words they used to describepopular black support for the, RussianRevolution-constructed a deadly apparatus of political repression. This' vast

WORKERS VANGUARD


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Powerless at the Post Office

This started Tuesday. Now I'm having difficulty breathing. And just to move any distance I feel like I'm goingto pass out.. .. It was-a woman found the envelope andI was in the vicinity. It had powder in it. They never letus know whether that thing had-was Anthrax or not.They never treated the people who were around this particular individual and the supervisor who handled theenvelope. So I don't know if it is or not. I'm just-I'venever been able to find out. I've been calling. But thesymptoms that I've had are what-was described to mein a letter that they put out almost to the T ... The doctor thought that it was just a virus or something ... . [fr.911 call, Oct. 21, 2001]

In the wake of the mid-October 2001 Anthrax scare,the imagery of Congressional members and staffersfleeing their Washington offices and chambers spokevoI'umes about the power of fear that motivates humanconduct. This was quickly reinforced by the almostunprecederited evacuation of the august SuprerrieCourt as word leaked out of the suspected presence ofAnthrax spores at an off-site mail facility that servicedthe nation's highest judicial body.

Although some postal areas were cleaned anddetoxified the rank-and-file postal' employees weren'tinformed of the results of any testing done in theirwork areas.

Thomas L. Morris, his words an eerie electronicecho from the grave, spoke in ways that resonateddeeply with his fellow postal employees when heexpressed his feelings about USPS management: " ... 1have a tendency not to believe these people."Members of the New York Metro Area Postal Unionsued in Federal Court to force the Postal Service tofully clean, detoxify, and close the Morgan postalfacility in Manhattan until this could be assured. TheU.S. District Court denied the injunction, sayingpostal workers had not "demonstrated that there is alikelihood of irreparable harm." By noting that theMorgan facility was the busiest in Manhattan, thecourt seemed to be balancing the harms to both sides.In reality it was a balancing of power, for although theunion is vast it is forbidden by law to strike. And aunion tmable to withdraw its labor lacks a powerfultool.

The evacuation of Capitol Hill and the SupremeCourt building brought an eerie silence to an area thatwas long unaccustomed to such a hush, save onnational holidays, weekends or seasonal vacations.

Such clearly disparate responses and treatment hasleft postal workers feeling like the low men (andwomen) on the totem pole; thus, angry, resentful andscared.It is perhaps impolite to point out the obvious, butan undeniable truth emerges from the varied responsesto the Anthrax scare: many, if not most, postal employees are black and of Latin origin. By contrast, postmen cannot strike.Imagine their fears multiplied tenfold when a postman died, but his 911 call recording remained tobroadcast his fears:What it also revealed was the power' of the powerful to protect their interests, no matter how infinitesimal the threat, while relegating those perceived to belower on the food chain to the possible exposure of asignificantly greater threat. For although no traces ofAnthrax wer!'! found in the offices or mail rooms of theHouse of Representatives, both Senators and Representatives closed up shop, and left.

911 Operator: What's the problem?Mr. Thomas L. Morris: My breathing is'very, verylabored.

Distrustful, and largely unheralded, they wait foranother deadly shoe to drop.Q: How old are you? 29 November 2001

Postal workers, however, perhaps closest to the contaminating agent, worked on, blissfully unaware of;and uninformed of, the real and deadly risks facingthem.

A: I'm 55. Ah, I don't know if I have been, but I suspect that I might have been exposed to Anthrax. 20OJ Mumia Abu-JamalSend urgently needed contributions for Mumia'slegal defense, earmarked "Mumia Abu-Jamal," to:Q: You know when or what-Humanitarian Law Project, 8124 W. 3rd Street,Suite 105,Los Angeles, CA 90048.Neither were they tested or given the long-termregimen of the antibiotic, Cipro, as were their Congressional colleagues.

A: Ah, it was last what, last Saturday, a week ago lastSaturday [Oct. 13] morning at work. I work for thePostal Service, I've been to the doctor. I went to thedoctor Thursday. He took a culture but he never gotback to me with the results. I guess there was somehangup over the weekend. I'm not sure. But in themeantime, I went through achiness and headachiness.I f you wish to correspond with Jamal, you canwrite to: Mumia Abu-Jamal, AM8335, SCI Greene,175 Progress Drive, Waynesburg, PA 15370.

Labor DefenderMass mobilizations were key in saving the nine youths framed up in 1930sScottsboro case from legal lynching.army of spies and informers, local police"red squads," and a system of wiretapsand mail interceptions was later deployedby Hoover's FBI in the '60s. (For moreon state activities against black militantsfollowing the 1917 Russian Revolution,see "The Russian Revolution and theBlack Free dom Struggle," WVNo. 751, 2February 2001.)In 1967, as a result of the mass civilrights movement and protests against theU.S.'s dirty, losing imperialist war inVietnam, the capitalist rulers felt compelled to put the death penalty on hold.Five years later the court ruled that thedeath penalty was "wanton and freakish"and ordered the states to rewrite theirlaws. By 1976 the protest marches hadstopped, and the same court gave thegreen light to resume executions. Nearly600 people have been legally murderedsince.Amid growing apprehension aboutcapital punishment, the American rulers'killing machine plugs on with its dirtybusiness. Bush, who in his six years asgovernor of Texas carried out over 15011 JANUARY 2002

executions-one every two weeks-wentahead with the Garza execution despitecharges of racial disparities in meting outdeath sentences. And figure this out: with14 blacks and two Hispanics on federaldeath row compared to three whites,Attorney General Ashcroft declared thatit was white people who were more likelyto be targeted under federal laws!American Capitalism andBlack Oppression

The U.S. and Japan are the only advanced capitalist countries to retairi thedeath penalty. In Japan it is used infrequently, although quite sadistically. Noadvance notice is given. One day the victim is taken from his cell and his life isterminated. Weeks later his family is senta letter informing them that their lovedone is no more.The recent spotlighfon capital punishment in the U.S. was a bit more luminousthis spring, when Bush made his first tripto Europe. Stung by the contempt the'Bush administration has shown its imperialist competitors/allies-like the about-

face on the Kyoto accords and U.S. plansfor a missile shield program, for example-the Europeans eagerly, and accurately, portrayed Bush as an ignorant,bloodthirsty, spoiled frat boy. The European powers were relishing the opportunity to posture as more civilized thancrude Americans.The U.S. ruling class is barbaric andthe greatest enemy of the world's working people. However, this doesn't meanthat the European imperialists treat theirexploited and oppressed any less brutally. The horrendous crimes committedby the French, British and' other imperialist powers against their coloniai vassalsand working masses are not merely subjects for history books. Citizenshi'p rightsfor those second and third generationsborn in these imperialist countries haslong been denied. Today, faced with agrowing pool of ethnic minorities, thesepowers have stepped up deportations andincreased brutal attacks on immigrantsand asylum-seekers.Witness the attacks in Britain on thebrutally impoverished and oppressed immigrant communities in Oldham, Bradford and Burnley in the last few months.Across the Channel in France the copshave carried out a systematic campaign ofterror against the North African g h ~ t t o s surrounding every major'French city. InSweden, a place social democrats like topoint to as some sort of socialist paradise,cops opened fire with live ammunitionagainst anti-globalization protesters inJune. In late July outside the G-8 meetings in Genoa, Italian cops killed pro-

tester Carlo Giuliani in cold blood andarrested hundreds, with many of them tortured. This is the real face of "civilized"capitalist Europe.But if the death penalty stands at thepinnacle of a state apparatus whose purpose is to repress with force any threat tothe capitalist social order, why have theEuropean capitalist powers eliminatedcapital punishment and the U.S. hasn't?The central difference lies in the uniquehistory of American capitalism-built onthe unpaid labor of millions of chattelslaves. The origins of capital punishmentin the U.S. are rooted in the Southernslave system which was smashed by theCivil War. Today 43 percent of those ondeath row are black-triple the representation of blacks in the general population.In the infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision, the Supreme Court announced thatblack people "had no rights which thewhite man was bound to respect."Exactly 130 years later, when black Georgian Warren McCleskey challenged hisdeath sentence by presenting indisputable facts of the racist application of capital punishment in the U.S., the SupremeCourt declared it to be an "inevitable partof our criminal justice system." The courtrejected McCleskey's appeal, declaring that its premise "throws into seriousquestion the principles that underlie ourentire criminal justice system," including "the validity of capital punishment inour multiracial society."In their ownlegalese, the black-robed justices are confirming the old saying among blackcontinued on page 8

Trotskyist League/Ligue trotskyste Forum"Anti-Terror" Witchhunt Targets Immigrants,Workers and the Left'

~ ~ t i Q t i ' ~ p ~ I , ; P Q i ; d U ~ ! m m ~ g ~ d n t ! : ; B , g h l ~ : ~ ' l TORONTO Saturday, January 26, 7:30 p.m.Trinity-8t. Paul's Centre, 42 7 Bloor 8t. West

(west of Spadina)For more information: (416) 593-4138 or e-mail [email protected]

7


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Mumia (continued from page 7)people: "They got the capital, we get thepunishment."

CAUTION!!COLORED PEOPLEo r IIOIITOK, ONE A 11L,101 are hereby rtspectfllllJ (}!IlTIONED aMadflsed to afold cootenlo, with theWatchmen and Police Ofticersof Boston,'l'or , I_e .lIe nee.' OBDER OF :-!l:- ...ALBERMEl', tbe)" ar e e. ......KIDNAPPERSAJI:DSlave Catchers.

Aad tIle1 b . . . . . l r e ~ I _ G ~ ' g = { . ~ = KIDNAPPING, ()A' . ~ ~ . . , - - TYVES. Tlaerefere, if f ",al_ T.. LIB- - . ,aLA. w-eu ... ofJAe "'8'''''' a ~ 5 70u ,S'*-0 tr ..er l ....Ible .... er, .. 10 . H01 l8 ~ : e . r a d L or tile ..... r.ra_te.r"ear aee.Keep a Sharp Look Ou t fo rKIDN APPERS, an d haveTOP EYE open.

APR I L 114, 18o'iL

The early Slave Codes defined theblack slave as chattel-property-to beslaughtered with about the same "safeguards" as might befit a recalcitrantmule. Under the Southern slavocracy,special "Negro courts" were set up forslaves who, in the words of a South Carolina statute, could expe


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Miami Five ...(continued from page 2)inform on the terrorist plans hatchedagainst our people" (Granma, 20 June2001). The defendants themselves proudly acknowledged their role in a message to the American people published inthe same issue of Granma. They assertedthat Cuba, which "has heroically survivedfour decades of aggressions and threats toits national security, of subversive plans,sabotages and d e s ~ a b i l i z a t i o n , has everyright to defend itself from its enemieswho keep u ~ n g the U.S. territory to plan,organize and finance terrorist actions."Adding that they were "in no way repentant of what we have done to defend ourc o u n t r y ~ " they stated: "We declare ourselves non guilty and simply take comfortin the fact that we have honored our dutyto our people and our homeland."During the trial, the defense called aretired u.s. Air Force colonel to the witness stand, who testified that NationalSecurity Agency records show that theBrothers to the Rescue planes were wellinside Cuban airspace when they wereshot down in 1996. This flatly contradicts Washington's claims that they wereover international waters at the time. The

IG ...(continued from page 3)Gorbachev, trying to placate the imperialists, pulled the Red Army out of Afghanistan in 1989, this was not only a deadlybetrayal of Afghan women but a directprecursor to capitalist counterrevolutionin the Soviet Union itself.The restoration of capitalism in theSoviet Union in 1991-92 was a worldhistoric defeat for the international working class. In East Europe and the formerSoviet Union, capitalist counterrevolution has brought an unparalleled plungeinto mass immiseration, disease and fratricidal nationalist bloodletting. It alsobrought about a much more dangerousworld. Without the counterweight of theSoviet Union, the U.S. imperialists havesince been riding high in the saddle asthe "world's only superpower," wagingterror wars from Iraq to the Balkans toAfghanistan. The domestic price beingpaid for the imperialists' victory in theCold War is the all-sided class waragainst the working class, immigrants,blacks and the poor, which has been dramatically ratcheted up with the imperial'ists' "war on terror."IG Deep-Sixes Red Army

Those self-professed "Marxists," likethe ISO and most of the rest of the fakeleft, who stood on the side of imperiillismand its Frankenstein monsters in Afghanistan should be scathingly exposed asnothing other than reformist servants ofthe capitalist order. That is exactly whatwe did in our speeches, propaganda andplacards at the Hunter protest. An understanding of the dearly bought lessons ofthe past is crucial to the consciousnessthat is necessary if the proletariat is tobe mobilized in the struggle to shatterthe rule of capitalist imperialism. For revolutionary Marxists, polemical combatagainst the various reformists and 'renegades who make pretensions to Marxismis critical to breaking the false consciousness that serves to tie the working class toits "own" bourgeoisie.Not so for the IG. Whatever they mayon occasion write in their propagandastands in sharp contrast to their effortsto conciliate the reformists, liberals andothers on the ground. In his speech to theprotest, the IG's "commander in chief'Norden lamely declared: "We foughtagainst the Taliban, we fought against theIslamic fundamentalists when the UnitedStates was pushing them." Completelyeliminated was any mention of the RedArmy intervention or that the "we" wasthe Spartacist League, of which Nordenwas a member at the time. And we stoodwith the Red Army against imperialism as11 JANUARY 2002

defense also called Brothers to the Rescue leader Jose Basulto, who turned backhis plane in 1996 and was not pursued bythe Cuban air force. Basulto admittedunder questioning that he "broadly supports exile groups bent on overthrowingFidel Castro violently."From the CIA-backed invasion at theBay of Pigs in 1961, to the bombing of aCubana airliner by U.S.-trained counterrevolutionaries which killed 73 people in1976, to the ongoing starvation embargo,the American imperialists and theirgusano creatures have not ceased in theirattempts to overthrow the Cuban Revolution. As well as arresting the Miami Five,last fall the FBI imprisoned Ana BelenMontes, a senior U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency analyst, on charges of providing classified material to Havana. Sheis being held without bail and could facethe death penalty if convicted.Tbe smashing of capitalist class ruleand the creation of a workers state, albeitdeformed under the rule o( the Stalinist Castro bureaucracy, brought tremendous gains to the Cuban population,from free medical care to jobs, housingand education. It alSo delivered a huge'blow to racist discrimination againstblack Cubans, who had been the lowestof the low under the mafia-infested

part of our unflagging commitment to theTrotskyist program of unconditional military defense of the Soviet Union.What was left out of Norden's speechwas hardly an oversight. Not one of theIG's placards, not one of their speakers and none of the propaganda theyproduced for the Hunter protest said aword about the Red Army or the Russianquestion. Subsequently, an entire 32-pageIG pamphlet (December 2001) devotedto the CUNY protest went so far as toedit out any reference to the Soviet intervention in the SL speech at the rally andcompletely eliminated the SYC speaker.Obviously the IG did not want tooffend those like the ISO, the Leaguefor the Revolutionary Party or the Revolutionary Communist Party who had endorsed and attended the rally and who toa man were on the imperialist side againstthe. Red Army in Afghanistan. Here is atextbook example of what Trotsky spoketo in his article "Centrism and the FourthInternational" (Writings, 22 February1934): "A centrist always remains in spiritual dependence on rightist groupingsand is inclined to cringe before those whoare more moderate,. to remain silent ontheir opportunist sins and to color theiractions before the workers." As Trotskyalso noted, the centrist-revolutionary inwords, reformist in deeds-seeks to coverhis tracks by reserving his polemical firefor the Bolshevik-Leninists. This, too,aptly characterizes the IG which, whilenot wanting to remind the reformists oftheir criminal embrace of the aims of theimperialist rulers, deliberately lies thatthe Spartacist League capitulates to jingoist warmongering in the U.S.This is for the benefit of distant cyberspace audiences who cannot ascertainthe truth on the ground. The IG's uttersilence in front of several hundred protesters at Hunter College on the forcethat could have defeated the forcesbacked by U.S. imperialism in Afghanistan-the Soviet Red Army-certainlydemonstrates that its oh-so-revolutionarycalls for the defeat of U.S. imperialism isso much hot air.In attacking our propaganda on theU.S. war against Afghanistan, the IG'sInternationalist No. 12 (Fall 2001) fuFmi-nates against our call for "Class StruggleAgainst Capitalist Rulers at Home,"declaring that the "emphasis on 'at home'is counterposed to the call to defeat theimperialists abroad." But the IG's call to"Defeat U.S. Imperialism" in its waragainst Afghanistan is nothing morethan empty rhetoric. The notion that theworld's most powerful imperialist countrywas going to be defeated at the hands oftribal forces in one of the world's mostbackward countries is truly deranged. Theeasy win for the U.S. in Afghanistan dem-

Batista puppet regime.The Bush administration's drive todestroy the Cuban Revolution carries forward that of successive U.S. regimesstarting with the Kennedy Democrats,who imposed the economic embargo. in1962. We oppose the U.S. blockadeagainst Cuba. But at the same time wewarn that this will hardly put a stop to theefforts of the imperialists to penetrate Cuba with the aim of the counterrevolutionary restoration of capitalism.Indeed, a whole wing of the American. ruling class argues for ending the embargo in order to flood the Cuban economy with dollars and strengthen theforces for counterrevolution from within.Following the 1991-92 destruction ofthe Soviet Union, once Cuba 's economiclifeline and chief international ally, theCastro regime has increasingly openedthe country to imperialist economic penetration, thus far from Europe and alsoCanada. This has meant a big increase ininequality, notably for the black population. While standing forthrightly indefense of Cuba against imperialism andcounterrevolution, we call for workerspolitical revolution to oust the Stalinistbureaucracy, whose nationalist programof building "socialism in one country"has placed the gains of the Cuban Revo-

onstrated that the Taliban was' a creatureof Pakistani intelligence services, withno base of local support. And while dispatching Special Forces to track down bin'Laden, U.S. imperialism is not interestedin a large-scale deployment of Americanground troops in Afghanistan. Indeed, theinternational "peacekeeping" force has, British, French, Italian, Spanish, Turkishand other troops, but not an Americanamong them.The IG's elevation of military struggleagainst imperialism over and above thepolitical struggle to mobilize the proletariat to smash imperialism from within issimply a measure of its despair in therevolutionary capacity of the workingclass. Norden has always had proclivities toward a fatuous optimism aboutthe capacity of forces very distant fromTrotskyism, or the proletariat for thatmatter, to "struggle" in some successfulmeasure against the depredations of U.S.imperialism. Correspondingly, this meansseriously downplaying the crucial andrelated factors of political consciousnessand material economic reality.The slogans used by the revolutionary party to lead the working masses tothe seizure of state power are necessarily conjunctural. In 1941, wheir J ~ m e s P.Cannon, leader of the then-TrotskyistSocialist Workers Party (SWP), and 27other Trotskyists and Minneapolis Teamsters leaders were tried for their opposition to U.S. imperialism in World War II,an ultraleft critic in the Fourth International, Grandizo Munis, chastised Cannon for not stressing during his trial theneed for the "orgallized violence of thepoor masses." Cannon replied that it wasfoolish to engage in such phrasemongering. Noting that the SWP was still a smallparty whose task was to organize the pro-

Espartaco

lution in mortal danger. Crucial to thedefense of the Cuban Revolution is thestruggle for proletarian power throughout Latin America and beyond, especially in the belly of the American imperialist beast.The railroading of the Miami Fivecomes in the context of U.S. imperialism's "war on terror," which has seenmore than a thousand people, chieflyMuslims, thrown in jail, with only a handful even being charged. The "anti-terror"campaign is being used to strengthen theforces of state repression, including evenbroader powers for the FBI to conductbreak-ins, electronic eavesdropping andother hitherto "illegal" activities. Now,the Bush administration has declared thatit is planning to hold prisoners from itswar against Afghanistan at the naval baseit continues to maintain at GuantlinamoBay in Cuba, while sending in an additional 2,500 American troops. U.S. out ofGuanttinamo now!In defending the Miami Five, we takea stand in defense of democratic rightsat home and of the gains of the CubanRevolution against the predations of U.S.imperialism. These are both crucial aspects of our fight to forge a revolutionaryworkers party that can lead the Americanproletariat to victory._

letarian masses to carry out a revolution,he referred to Bolshevik leader Lenin'swritings in May 1917. Having alreadywon the Bolshevik Party leadership to theperspective of "All Power to the Soviets!"and no support to the bourgeois Provisional Government, which was in powerfollowing the fall of the tsar in February,Lenin argued that this did not mean thatthe Bolsheviks should immediately raisethe slogan "Down with the ProvisionalGovernment!" He wrote that since theBolsheviks were still a minority in theworking class, "such a slogan is either anempty phrase, or, objectively, amounts toattempts of an adventurist character."Today, the IG hotly denies that therehas been any retrogression in class consciousness following the counterrevolutionary destruction of the Soviet Union.But they themselves are the product of aclimate in which it is preached that thetheory and program of Marxism haveproved to be a "failed experiment." TheIG's politics are those of accommodationto the existing consciousness, trying togive a "progressive" veneer to all mannerof alien class forces and retrograde ideologies. Our politics serve a different purpose. As we wrote in our leaflet for theHunter demonstration: "Unlike the revolutionary phrasemongers of the IG, wefight to awaken class combativity in theproletariat, and through patient education and in the course of class struggle toimbue the working class with revolutionary class consciousness." In its own way,the very existence of the IG as "deathof communism" centrists underlines thevital necessity of this task, including andespecially polemical combat to removethe obstacles on the road to the successful seizure of state power through proletarian socialist revolution ._

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Argentina ...(continued from page J)the heightened interimperialist rivalriesthat have come in the wake of thecounterrevolutionary destruction of the SovietUnion, the U.S. has sought to extendits NAFTA "free trade" rape of Mexicothroughout all of Latin America underthe proposed Free Trade Agreement ofthe Americas (FTAA).As proletarian revolutionaries in thebelly of the U.S. imperialist beast, theSpartacist League/U.S. fights to mobilizethe social. power of the' proletariat toshatter the rule of American imperialismfrom within. The pro-imperialist AFLCIO trade-union bureaucrats who fordecades have done the bidding of U.S.imperialism in its war on the workersand oppressed of Latin America nowpush the chauvinist poison of protectionism against these workers. Breaking thechains, forged by the labor tops, thatshackle the proletariat in the U.S. to its"own" ruling class is central to a revolutionary perspective throughout the hemisphere. Down with NAFTA and theFTAA! For socialist revolution throughout the Americas!Argentine Capitalismat a Dead End

Argentina was long one of the mosteconomically ahd socially advancedcountries in the former colonial world.Having substantial natural resources anda highly educated workforce, and free ofthe leaden weight of pre-capitalist remnants such as a large peasantry, by 1930it had far outdistanced the rest of LatinAmerica in per capita income and wagelevels. The urban working class enjoyed aliving standard superior in some respectsto that of most workers in continentalEurope. By 1945, as it grew wealthy fromselling food to the imperialist armies inWorld War II, Argentina had about thesame per capita income as Canada. Nowthe average Argentinean earns one sixthas much as the average Canadian.The country's current prostration provides a vivid illustration of one of thecentral premises of the theory of permanent revolution elaborated by revolutionary Marxist leader Leon Trotsky: that thebourgeoisies of the dependent capitalistcountries are too weak and beholden toimperialism and too fearful of the powerof the proletariat to be able to breakthe yoke of imperialist domination. Theforms of bourgeois rule in Argentina

Rushdie ...(continued from page 4)and the even sharper economic downslidein Japan are devastating the economies ofSouth Korea, Thailand and the rest ofcapitalist East Asia. .To recognize that the fundamentalresponsibility of Western (and Japanese)imperialism for the economic impoverishment and cultural backwardness of theThird World does not exculpate (to useRushdie's term) the indigenous rulingclasses of these countries. Quite the contrary. All of the ruling groups in the NearEast, whether Islamic traditionalists ormodernizing nationalists, whether theyread the Koran or Rushdie's The SatanicVerses, act as the political agents of theimperialists. And as long as these countries are part of the world capitalist system, it cannot be otherwise.The only country which during the 20thcentury transformed itself from a backward, semi-feudal, predominantly agricultural economy to an advanced industrial society was Soviet Russia. This waspossible because-and only becausecapitalism was overthrown in Russiaby the Bolshevik Revolution of October1917, laying the basis for a plannedsocialized economy. Even today the distance between the socioeconomic andcultural conditions in the former SovietCentral Asian republics like Uzbekistanand Tajikistan and those of Afghanistanare to be measured in centuries.10

APTrade union demonstration in Buenos Aires, August 2001, demands un-employment benefits. Powerful Argentine proletariat is shackled to bourgeoisstate by Peronist labor tops.have run the gamut: from laissez-faireliberalism (the age of the agrarian bourgeois estancieros and British-dominatedexport economy in the early 20th century), to bourgeois nationalism and statesponsored industrial development behindprotect ionist barriers (Peron ism in the1940s and '50s), to unbridled imperialistdomination under the recent neoliberalregimes. And this has been the case underboth the trappings of bourgeois democracy and the jackboot of military rule.With the destruction of the SovietUnion and the end of the Cold War configurations, the minimal autonomy thatthe Argentine ruling class thought itpossessed-as displayed, ror example,during the Malvinas/Falklands War withBritain-has evaporated. There is no wayto break out of the cycle of crises, coupsand state repression which has been thelot of Argentina since at least the 1930sshort of a successful proletarian strugglefor state power. The tasks of the proletariat in Argentina cannot be separated fromthose of the working class in the rest ofLatin America. Elaborating on the perspective of permanent revolution in theregion, Trotsky wrote:"The theses of the Fourth Internationalstate:'''South and Central America will be ableto tear themselves out of backwardnessand enslavement only by uniting all theirstates in one powerful federation. But it

However, the Soviet Union wasthroughout its history confronted by hostile and powerful capitalist states, aboveall the United States. Weakened internallyby decades of Stalinist bureaucratic misrule and under the unrelenting economic,military and political pressure of worldimperialism, the Soviet Union was destroyed by capitalist counterrevolution in1991-92. .Rushdie concludes his piece: "I f terrorism is to be defeated, the world ofIslam must take on board the secularisthumanist principles on which the mod- -ern is based, and without which Muslimcountries' freedom will remain a distantdream."

It is Marxism that is the heir-the onlylegitimate heir-to the secular humanismof the Enlightenment that was the ideological driving force behind the bourgeoisrevolutions of the 18th century in theWest. Fearful of proletarian revolution,the imperialist bourgeoisies have sincesupported or embraced all manner, ofsocial obscurantism and religious fundamentalism; in the U.S., this prominentlyincludes the bigotry of the Christianright, which is heavily represented in thecurrent White House. The only road to thesocial, economic and cultural modernization of the countries of the IslamicEast lies through proletaria'n r e v o l u t i o n ~ new October Revolutions-leading to aninternationally planned socialist economyextending from the oil fields of the Persian Gulf to the industrial plants of theAmerican Midwest and German Ruhr..

is not the belated South American bour-geoisie, a thoroughly venal agency offoreign imperialism, who will be calledupon to solve this task, but the youngSouth Amtrican proletariat, the chosenleader of the oppressed masses. Theslogan in the struggle against violenceand intrigues of world imperialism andagainst the bloody work of native com-prador cliques is therefore: the SovietUnited States of South and CentralAmerica'."Trotsky continued:"Only under its own revolutionary'direc- .tion is the proletariat of the colonies andthe semicolonies capable of achievinginvincible collaboration with the prole-tariat of the metropolitan centers, andwith the world working class as a whole.Only this collaboration can lead theoppressed peoples to complete and finalemancipation, through the overthrow of- imperialism the world over."-"Imperialist War and theProietarian World Revolution,"May 1940IMF Starvation AusterityEnrages Argentine Masses

For more than a decade, Washingtonand the IMF touted Argentina as a primeexample of a "fiscally responsible emerging economy." In turn, Argentina has beena staunch ally of U.S. imperialism, mostrecently pledging to send 800 "peacekeeping" troops to aid the U.S. war inAfghanistan. But now the country isbankrupt and in turmoil (and the troopsare staying home). .In a 1 January New York Times op-edpiece titled "Crying With Argntina,"columnist Paul Krugman wrote: ."Argentina, more than any other develop-ing country, bought into the promisesof U.S.-promoted 'neoliberalism' (that'sliberal as in free markets, not as in TedKennedy). Tariffs were slashed, stateenterprises were privatized, multinationalcorporations were welcomed, and thepeso was pegged to the dollar. Wall Streetcheered, and money poured iIi: for awhile, free-market economics seemedvindicated, and its advocates weren't shyabout claiming credit. Then things beganto fall apart ...."Now Argentina is in utter chaos-someobservers are even likening it to the Wei-mar Republic. And Latin Americans donot regard the United States as an inno-cent bystander."So tightly tied to the fortunes of theAmerican dollar, the Argentine economywas severely damaged by the U.S. financial/economic boom of the mid-late '90s.This saw capitalist investors worldwideflood into the Wall Street bull market,causing the value of the dollar to risesharply in relation to nearly every othercurrency ..except Argentina's. The Argentine peso-and thus the price of Argentine goods on the world market-alsorose sharply compared to almost all othercountries, including its main trading partner, Brazil. This made Argentine goodsuncompetitive and produced mountingbalance-of-trade deficits. The normalcapitalist market mechanism to redressthis would be currency depre.ciation,which reduces the world market price ofexports and increases the domestic price

of imports. But in an attempt to stabilize

the economy, the Argentine governmentand many large businesses had denominated most of their new bond issues indollars, so any peso devaluation wouldhave proportionately increased Argentina's debt.Thus the country slid into a deep recession four years ago, well before the current worldwide slump. Layoffs and plantclosures grew by the month. By July oflast year, the economy was collapsing atan annual rate of 11 percent and themasses were desperate. But the U.S.made clear that it expected all the loansnegotiated by the Menem and de laRua regimes to be repaid with interest.In August, Washington put together an"emergency rescue package" throughthe IMF-not to bailout Argentina, but tobail out the Wall Street banks that holdArgentine government (and private)bonds. As usual, this involved harsh austerity conditions, including a suspensionof the social security system. But theworkers and poor, together with anincreasingly impoverished middle class,were not willing to take any more andtook to the streets in protest. The IMF'sresponse was to freeze $1.3 billion in aidearly last month, whereupon the government stole $700 million from the government workers' pension funds to pay theinterest on the debt. All this led to the yetbroader protests that brought down the dela Rua government.The situation cries out for the repu-diation of the foreign debt, which fordecades has lined the imperialists' coffersat the expense of Argentina's workers.But no capitalist Argentine governmentwould take such a step, since this wouldbring down unremitting hostility from itsimperialist patrons and undermine thewhole basis of its rule. IMF spokesmennow claim that whatever the governmentdoes, it will take a further cut of 30 percent in real wages, plus another five to tenyears of recession, for Argentina tobecome internationally competitive!

KeystoneArgentine strongman Juan Peron,1952.From the bourgeoisie's class standpoint, it is hard to see any regime short

of a military dictatorship being able toenforce such gouging austerity againstan already enraged population. Yet anymove toward a military coup would bemet by immense opposition from a population which remembers vividly the lastarmy dictatorship, whose' brutal ruleended only after its ignominious defeatin the 1982 MalvinaslFalklands War.Since 1977, protesting mothers havebeen meeting at the Plaza de Mayo everyweek to memorialize the thousands killedand "disappeared" by the military government, which worked closely with theCIA against leftist insurgencies throughout Latin America. The mothers were inthe forefront of the huge December 19-20anti-government protests, where demonstrators chanted, "Madres de la Plaza, elpueblo las abraza!" ("Mothers of thePlaza, th'e people embrace you!").Peron sm: Deadly Trap. or the Workers

To try to control the upsurge, theArgentine bourgeoisie has turned, fornow, to the Peronists, specifically theWORKERS VANGUARD

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Workers Vanguard No 772 - 11 January 2002