WfJ/iIlE/iS·'''"''II·'' 25¢No. 424 20 March 1987

As War-Mad Reagan Goes Down the Tubes...

Gorbachev's Pipe Dream:Peace ·with Imperialism

----- See page 6-----

strategy is to attack on the periphery ofSoviet power. In the 1950sJohn FosterDulles called this "rollback." Today it'scalled the "Reagan doctrine" for export­ing counterrevolution.

But the imperialist war drive againstthe Soviet Union is bipartisan, includingthe Democrats as well as the Republi­cans. "Arms control" honcho Adelmansummed up the immediate aims of the"Reagan doctrine": force Moscow toend "the Soviet occupation of Afghani­stan, the continuation of military sup­port of regimes in Angola, Cambodiaand Nicaragua" (Washington Post, 13November 1986). In other words, thearms race is being used as a means ofpressure on Russia to surrender Af­ghanistan to the CIA-armed Islamicfanatics, abandon the heroic Vietnam­ese people who inflicted upon Ameri­can imperialism the greatest defeat inits history, let the racist butchers inSouth Africa take over Angola, and cutoff support to Sandinista Nicaraguaagainst Reagan's contras.

For the imperialists, a key test ofGorbachev's "desire for peace" is hiswillingness to abandon Afghanistan, onthe southern border of the USSR, to"freedom fighters" who shoot school­teachers for teaching young girls toread. Gorbachev has called the war inAfghanistan a "bleeding wound" andrepeatedly declared his intention towithdraw all Soviettroops in a relativelyshort time. Perhaps the Afghan army­trained by the Russians and bolstered bypopular support for land to the tiller andother democratic measures-can mopup the mujahedin scum by itself. Butthere appears to be an increasing dangerthat the new Soviet leadership will sell

continued on page 10

TurnleyINewsweek

As Pentagon's first-strike missiles target USSR;Reagan and Gorbachev meet at Reykjavik lastOctober.

TaylorlSygma

heads which could be placed on amissile. In the decade following theSALT I treaty, the Pentagon simplymultiplied the number of warheads permissile, increasing its nuclear arsenal tothe tune of three a daylSo much forarms control and detente. -,

America's Main Export:Counterrevolution

Rabid warmonger Richard Pipes,formerly Soviet "expert" for Reagan'sNational Security Council, recentlywrote: "Even a good [missile] dealwould be a mistake, for the root of theproblem is not nuclear weapons" (NewYork Times, 10 October 1986). No, theroot of the matter is revolution andcounterrevolution. Pipes makes no se­.cret of his goal to overthrow the collec­tivized economy of the Soviet Union­the product of the 1917 BolshevikRevolution-and restore "free market"capitalism. However, the Soviet Unionis too strong militarily and the loyalty ofits people too deep for Western imperi­alism to risk a direct assault. Instead the

Detroit Auto Bosses Raped America

did reject it, then. They pointed out the"zero option," while calling for theremoval of almost 500 Soviet missiles inexchange for a promise not to deployU.S. Pershing and cruise missiles, didnot touch the British and Frenchmissiles targeted at their cities, nor did itaffect U.S. submarine-launched missilesin European waters. At the Reykjaviksummit the Soviets insisted that a"Eurornissile" deal depended on limit­ing Reagan's "Star Wars" scheme; nowthey have dropped even that condition.One of the U.S. negotiators who firstproposed the "zero option," SpurgeonKeeny, says the latest Soviet offer "isa far better deal than anyone wouldhave prophesied" (New York Times, 4March).

But all these negotiating moves, theendless offers and counteroffers atGeneva or Reykjavik, in no way reducethe threat of nuclear war hanging overmankind. "Arms control" is a hoaxwhich in fact serves to stimulate thedevelopment of new weapons systems.The NATO powers will not give up orlimit any weapons unless they can bereplaced by comparable or more effec­tive ones. The Soviet Union shouldbuild and acquire whatever weapons itconsiders necessary without being en-

. cumbered by"arms control" agreements. with its implacable imperialist enemy.

Look at the 197~ SALT I treaty,which the Kremlin bureaucracy holdsup as a model "arms control" agree­ment. Visiting the U.S. not long afterthis treaty was signed, Soviet leaderLeonid Brezhnev declared: "Thequarter-century period of the Cold Waris now giving way to relations of peace,mutual respect and cooperation be­tween the states of the East and West."Superficially, the SALT agreementfroze the number of missiles on bothsides. However, Nixon/Kissinger insist­ed on exempting the number of war-

Racist Terror on U.S. Campuses

Black StudentsUnder Attack

----- See page 5-----

Defend the Soviet UnionThrough World Revolution!The Tower Commission report offi­

cially told the American people whatwas always perfectly clear to everyonewho had eyes to see, that RonaldReagan is a moron and a liar. Thevictims of this vicious regime-workerswho've had their unions gutted andbroken, the black and Hispanic poorwho've seen their children starved by theracist cutbacks-are now witnessing thesight of Reagan twisting slowly in thewind. But gloating over the downfall ofthe teflon president is not enough. Hardclass struggle can turn this countryaround, galvanizing the sympathy of theghetto poor and unemployed, farmersdriven into bankruptcy, and all theintended victims of Ed Meese's thoughtand sex police. Now is the time to strikeback, not only against the crippledReagan government but the whole racistcapitalist system.

Instead, Soviet leader Mikhail Gor­bachev holds out his hand to the rabidwarmonger Reagan as a partner insecuring "world peace." Business Week(16 March) breathed a sigh of relief:"Just as the Iran-contra scandal waslaying waste to the Reagan Presidency,the leader of the 'evil empire' held outthe promise of an arms-control break­through on medium-range weapons inEurope." Administration hardlinerKenneth Adelman crowed that the latestSoviet offer "shows that the Russianshave ,not given up on President Rea­gan." Not only has Gorbachev not givenup on Reagan, he has given in to him.The latest Soviet "arms control" pro­posal is the very same one Reagan madein 1981 when NATO was about todeploy the Pershing 2 missiles in WestGermany, a first-strike weapon eightminutes flying time from Moscow.

Washington's so-called "zero option"was so one-sidedly advantageous toNATO forces, it was designed to berejected by Moscow. And the Russians

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We urge WV readers to continue tohelp build the. PDC. Become a sustain­ing contributor. For your contributionof $5 or more you will receive asubscription to Class-Struggle DefenseNotes, newsletter of the PDC. For asingle copy send $.75. Earmarkedcontributions to any of these and othervital cases we support may be sent to:Partisan Defense Committee, P.O. Box99, Canal Street Station, New York,NY 10013.•

For 13 years Canadian abortionrights activist and concentration campsurvivor Dr. Henry Morgentaler hasbeen the target of vicious state prosecu­tion and fanatical fundamentalist vio­lence. The bible-thumping anti-Semitesand abortion clinic bombers have intheir sights not only women's rights butevery working-class gain, from unionsto the Russian Revolution. The PDCcontributed $100 to Dr. Morgentaler'sdefense, and encourage WV readers torender much needed support. As Dr.Morgentaler wrote, "I wish to thank youfor your contribution to cover expensesrelated to my struggle for reproductivefreedom for women in Canada. It is along, arduous and protracted battle. Iappreciate your support and view it asan encouragement to continue in spiteof all the difficulties." Send contribu­tions to: Pro-Choice Defense Fund, 238Davenport Road, Toronto, Ontario,Canada M5R IS6.

dragnet raids, massive wiretaps, RICOconspiracy laws and preventive deten­tion is part of the government's effortsto crush the "independentistas" and tryout Meese's arsenal for criminalizingpolitical opposition on the mainland.The PDC has donated $100 to theirdefense, which is crucial to all workers,oppressed and enemies of colonialism.

John Gottl

and sums up the total as a multiplica­tion of felonies."It has been said that, if such thingscan be done to the Mafia, they can bedone to us all. We would better saythat they ought not to be done toanyone."

-"If RICO Wins, We Lose,"Newsday, 8 March

The government's momentarydefeat in the .Gotti case came after astring of courtroom victories culmi­nating in the conviction of 17reputedMafia leaders in the "Pizza Connec­tion" trial earlier this month. Thistime, the intended victim Gotti waslucky enough to have a jury whichwouldn't buy the bought testimony

continued o!' page 9

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After a seven-month trial inBrooklyn, John Gotti was acquittedof federal charges under the Racket­eer Influenced and Corrupt Organi­zations Act (RICO) of engaging in acriminal conspiracy as a capo (andlater head) of the Gambino Mafia"family." Before leaving the court­house Gatti noted, "They'll be readyto frame us again in two weeks ...just watch" (New York Times, 14March). The very next day, the Timesreported that Manhattan federalattorney Rudolph Giuliani has seizedthe case and is preparing a "new"case, based once again on RICOstatutes, accusing Gotti and his sixcodefendants of running a "criminalenterprise"-the "Gambino crimefamily." So with Giuliani bucking forhigher political office, the govern­ment vendetta continues. As liberalcolumnist Murray Kempton sarcasti­cally observed before the verdict wasin:

"It is an article of faith for civicsclassesthat no man can be tried twicefor the same crime. We can thankRICO for liberating us from thatprejudice ..."John Gotti could be convicted andsent away for 40 years or more if thejury found that he had conspired tocommit a 1975 homicide for whichhe had already served a prisonterm.... RICO arithmetic is the sci­ence that takes one felony alreadyadjudicated, adds one.misdemeanor

working-class education "reform" bill,the Mitterrand/Chirac government wasshaken when the workers hit the bricksfor themselves. The Ligue Trotskyste deFrance (LTF), French section of theinternational Spartacist tendency, wasauthorized by the strikers to raise fundsto assist rail workers arid their familieswho lost wages during the strike. ThePDC contributed $100 to express oursolidarity .with their struggle againstyears of anti-working-class austerity.

John Gotti BeatsRICO Frame-Up

Feds Continue Vendetta

Thirteen Puerto Rican independencefighters face FBI frame-up charges inHartford, Connecticut. The use of

In South Asia, U.S. imperialism'santi-Soviet war drive fuels state terrorand pogromist attacks against SriLanka's hideously oppressed Tamilminority. The capitalist powers such as'Britain who arm and train the deathsquads of Jayewardene's reactionaryregime close their borders to Tamilrefugees. On February 18 the PDCcabled our protest of the Thatchergovernment's attempt to expel 58 Tamilrefugees at London's Heathrow Airportand demanded full political asylum.

All Lankan workers face grinding ex­ploitation to safeguard the profits of im­perialist investors. In 1984 the PDCraised money for the mainly Sinhalesewomen textile workers striking at Mag­num Garment. On 12 December 1986, astop-work action was called against anattempt by Magnum bosses to take backbonuses, one of the gains of the 1984strike. The bosses retaliated by sackingfour founding members of the unionwho had led the stop-work, LeelaSamarasinghe, Indrani Dayananda,Latha Gomes and Renuka. Once againwe call on WV readers to dig deep forfunds to aid our sisters in Lanka andtheir battle to win back their jobs.

LENIN

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20 March 1987

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Following the well-publicized studentupheavals last December, which backedby the threat of labor strike actionforced the withdrawal of the anti-

Partisan Defense Committee has sup­ported a number ofcases ofworkers andoppressed facing state repression acrossthe seas.

Mordechai Vanunu is the Israeli tech­nician who disclosed Israel's arsenal of100-200 nuclear bombs. For this ele­mental defense of all peoples by disclos­ing this danger of a thermonuclearholocaust, Vanunu was kidnapped bythe Israeli secret police, Mossad, andfaces the death penalty as he stands trialfor treason. The POC issued an urgentappeal for an international campaign ofprotest demanding that charges bedropped and Vanunu freed. In a tele­gram protest to the Israeli Embassy, wecharged, "Death penalty threat recallsanti-Semitic McCarthyite murder ofRosenbergs."

Workers Revolution toDisarm the Imperialists

Besieged by imperialism and civil war,the young Soviet republic appealed forrevolutionary action by the internationalproletariat. In March 1919 the ThirdInternational wasfounded, and two weekslater the Russian Communist Party (Bol­sheviks) adopted a program drafted byLenin which stated:

Parti!Mao Defeo8e£ona...ittee

No. 424

TROTSKY

The resistance of the exploiters, which grows simultaneously with the intensifica­tion of the onslaught of the proletariat, and is particularly intensified by the victory ofthe proletariat in individual countries, and the international solidarity andorganisation of the bourgeoisie inevitably cause the combinati~n of civil .war inindividual countries and revolutionary wars between the proletanan countnes andbourgeois countries fighting to retain the rule ofcapital. In view of the class characterof such wars, the distinction drawn between defensive and offensive wars becomesutterly meaningless. -

By and large, this development of international civil war, a process which has beentaking place with exceptional rapidity before our very eyes since the end of 1918is thelegitimate product of the class struggle under capitalism and a legitimate steptowards the victory of the international proletarian revolution.

For this reason, the R.t.P. emphatically rejects the hope of disarmament undercapitalism as the reactionary philistine illusion of petty-bourgeois democrats, eventhough they call themselves socialists and Social-Democrats, and in opposition tothis and all similar slogans which actually play into the hands of the bourgeoisie, itadvances the slogan of arming the proletariat and disarming the bourgeoisie, theslogan of completely and ruthlessly suppressing the resistance of the exploiters, theslogan of fighting until victory over the bourgeoisie of the whole world is achievedboth in civil wars at home and in international revolutionary wars.

-V. I. Lenin, "Draft Programme of the R.C.P.(B.)" (March 1919)

!!~!.'!.!o!A.!1!e.f!! ~DIRECTOR OF PARTY PUBLICATIONS: Liz GordonEDITOR: Jan Norden

PRODUCTION MANAGER: Noah WilnerCIRCULATION MANAGER: Jon Lawrence

EDITORIAL BOARD: Bonnie Brodie, Jon Brule, George Foster, Liz Gordon,Jan Norden, James Robertson, Reuben Samuels, Joseph Seymour, Marjorie Stamberg,Noah Wilner (CloSing editor)

Workers Vanguard (USPS 098~770)published biweekly. excepl2nd issue Augusl and wilh 3'week inlerval December.by Ihe SparlaciSI PubliShing Co .. 41 Warren Slreet. New York. NY 10007. Telephone: 732-7862 (Editorial). 732·7861(Business). Address all correspondence 10: Box 1377. GPO. New York. NY 10116. Oomesl,csubscropllOns: $5.00124issues. Second-class postage paid al New York. NY. POSTMASTER: Send ,ddr_ changes 10 Workers Vanguard.Box 1377. GPO. New YOrk. NY 10116.

OPinIOns expressed in Signed articles or le"ers do not necenerily a.press the editorial vitwpoint.

CLASS-STRUGGLE DEFENSE NOTES

"The movement for non-partisan,unified working class defense is not onlynot confined to anyone country, but isconnected up in a strong ring ofsolidarity which embraces the entireworld. Wherever the class strugglerages, and the capitalist class takes itsvictims from among the workers andfarmers, the movement for labor de­fense grows up out of the struggle andinto an arm for the masses" (LaborDefender, July 1927).

Last year South African workers atMinnesota Mining and Manufacturingdowned tools in support of theirbrothers facing a shutdown of 3M'sFreehold, New Jersey magnetic tapeplant. Salvadoran phone workers struckin the face of death squad terror. Thecourageous struggles .and solidarity ofthese brutally oppressed workers is aninspiration to their brothers and sistersthroughout the world. In the belly ofthis largest imperialist beast, whosebloody hands terrorize workers andoppressed worldwide, U.S" workershave a special duty and capacity to assistour victimized brothers and sistersaround the world. In recent months the

Labor Defense-Wherever theClass Struggle Rages

2 WORKERS VANGUARD

AFPIsraeli soldiers terrorize Arab youth on occupiedWest Bank.

Unholy Allianceof Israel, Syria,

Shi'ite AmalShl'lte Amal slaughters Palestinians InBeirut.

Palestinians Under Siege

3

o $2/4 issues ofWomen and Revolution

0$2/10 introductory issues ofWorkers Vanguard(includes Spartacist)

managed to flee the nearby Baraj alBarajinah camp recounted in. horror:

"Famine is ungodly and wicked. Thechildren were constantly screaming forfood. When there was shelling I prayedto God to take us so we would not feelour hunger anymore."

-Washington Post, II February

Then, in mid-February, fightingbroke out in Muslim West Beirutbetween Amal and the Lebanese Com­munist Party. The initial turf battle wasfollowed by a wave of assassinations oftop CPers (at least nine killed) and thekidnapping and murder of scores ofparty members. Shi'ite clerics reported­ly issued religious edicts calling for thekilling of all Communists in southernLebanon. Lining up with the CP in theBeirut battles were the Druze militias ofWalid Jumblatt and the pro-KhomeiniShi'ite Hezbollah (Party of God), which

. has itself gone after the CP in the past.This "war of the allies" pitted againsteach other forces which had foughttogether against the Maronite ChristianPhalange in 1983-becoming one moreepisode in the endless, shifting commu­nalist civil war among the kaleidoscopicsectarian forces of Lebanon.

The entry of the Syrian army, 7,000strong, into West Beirut late last monthwill bring no respite for the starvingPalestinian camps. On the contrary,while the declared purpose of the Syrianintervention was to stop the fightingbetween Amal and Druze forces, Da­mascus strongman Assad's real target isthe PLO. For all his hardline rhetoricagainst Israel, from his 1976 Lebaneseintervention (initially on the side of the .Christian Maronites) to today, Assad'soverriding aim has been to break up a"Fatahland" in Lebanon under theinfluence of PLO leader Arafat. As theastute Near East correspondent DavidHirst wrote: "A new link-up between thebesieged [Palestinian] camps and WestBeirut was something that PresidentAssad had to prevent at all costs"(London Guardian, 23 February).

For good reason the PLO (nowcontinued on page 11

, 424

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However, Amal, with its greater popula­tion base among Lebanon's 1.1 millionShi'ite Muslims, has placed a strangle­hold around Palestinian camps insouthern Lebanon and West Beirut.Besieged for five months, the 22,000refugees at Rashadiyeh have beenforced to eat cats, dogs, donkeys. Eventhe grass is gone. Young Palestinianchildren who try to slip out to pick greenplants are killed by Arnal- militiamen.

In West Beirut, the Shatila camp­where in September 1982 the Israelisorganized the massacre of thousands ofPalestinians by their Christian Maro­nite henchmen-is now reduced to afew hundred square yards of rubble, itsdrinking water contaminated and ty­phoid running rampant. Amal's tanksstand near the mass grave where thevictims of the earlier massacre areburied. Two-thirds of those killed andwounded are civilians. "The screamingof women and children is mixed with themoaning of the sick and wounded,"exclaimed one Palestinian trapped inthis camp of death. A woman who

AP

Palestinian camp of Shatlla In West Beirut-scene of Zionist genocide In1982-reduced to a few hundred square yards of rubble by Amal artillery.

invasion and subsequent pullback, isdetermined to prevent the restoration ofPalestinian armed force in Lebanon. Asa result there has been the grotesquespectacle of Shi'ites pounding thePalestinian camps with artillery fire andtrying to starve them out, while Israelbombs them from the air and sea. Andnow Syria has sent its army into WestBeirut to break the power of the PLO.

Amid the squalid communalist blood­letting in Lebanon, the struggle ofthe Palestinians for national justice isthe one continuing social struggle whichcan legitimately claim the support of theworld proletariat. Revolutionaries mustsupport the Palestinian fighters defend-

;ing the besieged camps. But backing thePalestinian cause does not mean politi­cal support for the Pl.O, whose petty­bourgeois nationalism has produceddefeat after defeat for the Palestinianpeople. During the Israeli siegeof Beirutin 1982, Arafat even called on theimperialist elite guard-the U.S. Ma­rines, French legionnaires and Italiancommandos-to disarm and escort outof Lebanon the PLO's own fighters,leaving the Palestinian masses defense­less before the Israeli butchers and theirChristian Maronite jackals. The Sabra/Shatila massacre, reminiscent of theNazi Holocaust, was the direct result ofArafat's betrayal. Today, it is the Shi'iteAmal which is carrying on the Zionists'dirty work.

"War of the Camps" and"War of the Allies"

The "war of the camps" began lastSeptember when Amal renewed its siegeof Rashadiyeh, a Palestinian camp nearTyre in southern Lebanon. The PLOfought back effectively,overrunning theAmal stronghold of Maghdusheh over­looking Sidon and carving out a six-

. square-mile "liberated zone" outsidethis strategic port of southern Lebanon,only 35 miles from the Israeli border.

For decades the Palestinian resistancehas been hailed by Arab nationalists andtheir left cheerleaders around the worldas the vanguard of the "Arab Revolu­tion" against Zionism and imperialism.In reality, all the Arab governments­feudal monarchies or "radical" militaryregimes, pro-Western or Soviet clientstates-have betrayed the dispossessedPalestinian people and sought to crushtheir armed militants: the 1970 BlackSeptember massacre by Jordan's KingHussein; the 1976siege of Tel Zaatar byLebanese Christian Maronites backedby Ba'athist Syria; the 1982 Israeliinvasion of Lebanon, when the entireArab world stood by while the PalestineLiberation Organization (PLO) facedalone the full might of the Zionist warmachine. Today, once again, the bloodyevents in both Lebanon and the Israeli­occupied West Bank and Gaza highlightthe unholy alliance of Western impe­rialism, Zionism and the Arab rulersagainst the Palestinian people.

During the 1982 Israeli invasionof Lebanon, imperialist war criminalHenry Kissinger gloated: .

"No Arab government has given morethan verbal support to the embattledPalestinians, and even that lacked thetraditional passion. Even Syria stood bypassively until its own forces weredirectly attacked, and made a separatecease-fire while the PLO was beingsystematically destroyed."

-Washington Post,I6June 1982

However, the Palestinian forces inLebanon have since managed to re­group and grow, in part due to theZionist state's savage repression in theWest Bank and Gazaand continuingexpulsion of Palestinians from-theirhomeland. An estimated half of the12,000 PLO commandos driven out ofLebanon in 1982 have since slippedback. However, the Shi'ite Amal, themain beneficiary to date of the Israeli

Kara/Sipa

Syrian army Intervention In WestBeirut targets PLO.

20 MARCH 1987

Young Sparlacus

300 Protest in Madison

Drive CIA Recruiters

MADISON

Alternate Saturdays, 2:00 p.m.Next classes: March 28, April 11See "Today in the Union" for room

University of WisconsinFor more information: (608) 257:8625

The Fight forSocialism

Spartacus Youth ClubClass Series

Afghan mullahs. Or to get up here and.argue that they're against Soviet aid toNicaragua, which is in fact their posi­tion. Or, you know, they would alsohave a real problem with the Cubantroops in Angola that are fighting SouthAfrican apartheid." Unable to defendtheir politics, the ISO resorted to theirfists in a cowardly attack on 5'2" SYCmember Judith Preston as she wasselling Workers Vanguard a few daysafter the demonstration. The violence ofthese "third camp" social democrats willbe put to a stop. So far, the MadisonSYC has distributed over 1,000copies ofan "Open Letter to Madison Studentsand Labor" exposing and condemningthe ISO's thuggery.

The "workerist" ISO was feelingprickly about our comrades' condemna­tion of their role in producing a scableaflet for the anti-CIA protest. Thisviolated an agreement among theendorsers that the united-front leafletwould be printed by donated labor or ata union shop-a proud tradition of theworkers movement. We challenged theISO, as ostensible socialists, tojoin.us inthe fight for a union-printed leaflet.Not surprisingly, these "State Depart­ment socialists" would rather supportcounterrevolutionary Polish Solidar­nose, the only "union" loved by Reagan,than real trade unions, and flatlyrefused. The SYC had the leafletreprinted with a prominent union label(bug) and mobilized students to makeannouncements and leaflet classes,cafeterias and campus events to buildfor the demonstration.

Meanwhile a dozen ISO and PSNmembers attempted to purge the SYCfrom the united front due to our"divisive" and "uncomradely" insistenceon the trade-union principle! But thestudents who sat in all night in theadministration building voted two toone to have the SYC speak at the rally.So, the ISO (literally) got a bug up theirass, and' antics by other anti-Soviet"leftists" also fell flat. A PSNer au­thored a sinister "Sparticus [sic] Rap"featuring the FBI's preferred misspell­ing of our name, which retailed sinisterviolence-baiting lies and ridiculed ourslogan, "We are the party of the RussianRevolution." Some anti-eommunistsintended to "rap" this ditty during ourcomrade's speech at the demonstration,but gave up when they saw the crowdwasn't interested in their trash.

We in the Spartacus Youth Club areproud to be known as partisans of theRussian Revolution. We are fighting tobuild an international party of theworking class to finish the work begunby the Bolsheviks: abolishing capitalistexploitation, racism and all oppression,and establishing a planned economyand collectivized property. The Sparta­cus Youth Club fights to win youngmilitants to defense of the gains of theworking class internationally, and to alifetime of commitment to the fight fora socialist future. Join us'-

PSN, noting "Sufficient opposition tothe CIA presence may have a decisiveeffect in the agency's decision aboutwhether recruitment here is worth itstime and energy. But the, CIA willcontinue to exist, because' the U.S.government will continue to have as itsgoal the restructuring of global societyto accord with the needs of U.S.capitalism. The goal of protesting theCIA's presence should be directed ... sothat we can challenge the foundationsfor the CIA's existence."

The protest continued into the nightas students occupied the administrationbuilding. The PSN focused on trying topressure the chancellor to ban CIArecruiters. SYC members participatingin the all-night sit-in argued against anyillusions in the administration, pointingout that universities are part of thecapitalist system, training centers forthe managers, technicians and ideo­logues who run it-and the administra­tion's position was made clear at pastanti-CIA demonstrations where anti­imperialist students were met with maceand billy clubs by the campus cops.

"State Department Socialists"See Red

The anti-Soviet ISO was caught withtheir political pants down during thetwo-day anti-CIA protests. Under­handed maneuvers to exclude theSoviet-defensist Spartacus Youth Clubblew up in their face; they shrank fromopen political debate and did not evenattempt to speak at the rallies. As SYCspokesman Richard Genova stated atthe rally following the sit-in, "It wouldbe pretty hard for the ISO to explaintheir positions, like how they back the

and held a teach-in in the corridor.Members of the PSN and CALA spokeabout the CIA's crimes in Africa andNicaragua, but avoided the issue of theSoviet Union-the main target of theU.S. war drive. Spartacus Youth Clubspokesman Judith Preston made theconnection:

"What linkstogether the CIA's crimes,U.S. support to South Africa, and theContra International which the CIAfinances and operates, is the bipartisandrivefor war against the SovietUnion.Andinorderto regiment thepopulationto go along with their war plans, socialreaction at homemeansattacksongays,abortion clinic bombings, the drugwitchhunt, the defeatof schoolbusing.From Howard Beach to Cumming,Georgia to Tampa, Florida, the racistsand fascists are emboldened with theirtwice-endorsed favorite presidential'Klandidate' in the White House.Internationally, U.S. imperialism seesthe Soviet Union, homeland of the firstsuccessful workers revolution, behindevery struggle of the oppressed, andsends their CIA dogsof war to crush it.Sincethe internationalworkers victoryof the Russian Revolution in 1917, theU.S. and other imperialist powers havemade it their number one target intrying to get back that one-sixth of theearth for capitalist exploitation andprofits."

The PSN consistently tries to duckthese issues and limit opposition to theCIA to complaints that it's "not alegitimate employer" because it "vio­lates the law." Thus in a statementprinted in. the Daily Cardinal (24February), PSN spokesmen decry theCIA's crimes around the world whileconceding its possible "value" as an"intelligence-gathering agency"! In a 26February staff editorial the DailyCardinal came out to the left of the

Off CampuslI '1//-,', •..... .. j) . 'ii''"l~"i<@

MADISON-On February 25, 300students at the University of Wisconsin­Madison rallied at the Memorial Union,demanding "CIA Off Campus!" Thetwo-day demonstration, endorsed bythe Spartacus Youth Club, the liberalProgressive Student Network (PSN),Community Action on Latin America(CALA, a CISPES affiliate), Women'sInternational League for Peace andFreedom, and the reformist Interna­tional Socialist Organization (ISO), wasalso attended by 20 students from theUniversity of Minnesota at MInneapo­lis, where the CIA was successfullyprevented from recruiting last month.The two demands of the united-frontdemonstration were "CIA Off Cam­pus!" and "Drop All Charges Againstthe Anti-CIA Protesters!" Five studentsstill face charges from an October 1985anti-CIA demonstration where thecampus cops attacked protesters, injur­ing one and arresting others on phony"disorderly conduct" charges.

As the demonstrators marched upBascom Hill to where the CIA wasrecruiting, many picked up the Sparta­cus Youth Club's chant "Roach motelsfor the CIA-They check in and therethey stay!" The SYC stood out as thebright red contingent in the march withplacards reading, "Break with theDemocrats-Build a Workers Party!""For Labor/Black Action to StopRacist Terror!" "Free Abortion onDemand! Union Defense of AbortionClinics!" "Hail Cuban Troops Defend­ing Black Angola!" and "CommunistRevolution is America's Last Best­Hope!"

The marchers moved inside thebuilding where the CIA was ensconced

4 WORKERS VANGUARD

RacistTerror on U.S.Cam~uses

Black Students Under Attack

Carter/ hicago Tribune

Black Student Union at Northern Illinois U. led targe, integrated protestagainst racist threats on March 5 after Nazi swastikas appeared on campus.

San Francisco, 1984: We tore downthe Confederate flag of slavery!

OBERLIN

(Exco Course)Alternate Tuesdays, 7:30 p.m.Next olasses: March 31,April14, 28Wilder Hall, Room 212Oberlin CollegeFor more information: (216) 775-5858

Trotskyism:Revolutionary

Marxism Today

attacks through militant action. What'slacking is a revolutionary leadership toget the unions off their knees andfighting in defense of their own classinterest and that of all the oppressed. Onthe campuses and elsewhere, the Sparta­cus Youth Clubs seek to win anti-racistmilitants to the side of the working class,to fight for revolutionary integration­ism. The racist oppression endemic tothis society can only be eradicated byoverthrowing the capitalist systemwhich breeds it. We are dedicated tobuilding the party to lead these strugglesto finish the Civil War through socialistrevolution.•

Spartacus Youth. ClubClass Series

ed of the highest black enrollment in theIvy League (a paltry 8 percent), minorityadmissions plunged 25 percent in oneyear after sledgehammer-wielding ra­cists of the Dartmouth Review crowdleveleda shantytown, unable to tolerateeven a symbolic gesture of solidaritywith the black freedom struggle againstapartheid. To eliminate the race andclass privilege in higher education, theSpartacus Youth Clubs demand thenationalization of private universities.For open admissions and free tuitionand a state-paid stipend for all!

What this country needs is somegood old-fashioned class struggle­now, while the Reagan gang is widelydespised as brutal, incompetent, war­

.crazed criminals. If labor flexed its mus­cles, the racist vermin crawling aroundthe campuses would slink back to theirholes, and frat rats now hoisting theConfederate flag of slavery wouldn't bewhistling "Dixie." Impossible? Not atall. In 1982, the Spartacist Leagueinitiated a successful united front oflabor, minorities and students whichswept the Nazis off the streets of AnnArbor.

On their own, students have no socialpower, but united with Detroit autoworkers and other sections of the labormovement can beat back these racist

Black History andthe Class StruggleSaturday, April 4,1:00 p.m.Blackburn Center, Room 150Howard UniversityFor more information: (202) 636-3537

violence on the campuses in this countrytoday reflects the frenzy of the petty­bourgeoisie whose economic positionhas eroded with the rot of Americanindustrial capacity. Yuppies grow upand become "dinks" ("double income,no kids"-'cause they can't afford them)and middle-class families finance col­lege educations the way they'd buy ahouse, by going into massive debt.

The intensified racial polarization onthe campuses is also a direct result ofgovernment policy. The fascist scum gottheir green light. under Democraticpresident Jimmy "ethnic purity" Carterwith the 1979 slaughter of five leftistsand union organizers in Greensboro,North Carolina. The Klan-endorsedRepublican president Ronald Reaganhas continued state-sponsored terror­ism against black people asa policy. Thebombing of the black PhiladelphiaMOVE household, legally sanctionedcop murder of black people iii. the streetsof New York City, gutting busing forschool desegregation, banning "secularhumanist" textbooks-s-these are theemblems of a willfully vicious rulingclass.

Government slashing of financial aidhas hit black families the :hardest.Universities get whiter while the armedforces are disproportionately black andHispanic. Union-busting attacks by thebosses have given rise to a two-tier wagesystem in this country where youngworkers employed at a lower pay scaleare wielded as a club against the unionsthemselves. Newsweek On Campus(February 1987) reports that at "many'integrated' colleges blacks are fastbecoming missing persons.... In the1984-85 school year. .. the proportionof blacks in college decreased 20 per­cent. And this happened even as thenumber of black high-school graduateswas rising."

At Dartmouth, where officials boast-

Spartacist Class Series

WASHINGTON, D.C.

The next day, over 100 students whocame out to protest this assault becamethe target of another attack as racists ina pickup truck tried to mow down themarchers. Another punk in a whiteCadillac smashed the camera of a Bos­ton Globe photographer. Outrageouslyblaming the victim, university officialsare denying that the attack on Kremer(who was sent to a local emergencyroom from the school infirmary thatnight) ever occurred, claiming that thesnow where Kremer was beaten showedno trace of a scuffle!

• At UMass Boston, liberal profes­sors have received hate mail onuniversity stationery and swastikas havebeen plastered on their office doors.Professor Kevin Whitfield, the facultyadviser for InCAR (Progressive La­bor Party's "International CommitteeAgainst Racism") received a threatstating that his "case" has been assignedto the "werewolf section of the SS inUrbana, Illinois."

• The elite University of Chicago isno safe haven from menacing bigotswho take their cues from the KKK/Nazifascists who've targeted that city forattack. Stickers reading "Stop AIDS:Castrate Gays" appeared in the blackneighborhoods around Hyde Park andon the campus- Gay and leftist studentleaders received letters which were alsosent to their parents, roommates andemployers threatening "strong meas­ures" against their "deviant" behav­ior-the return address was stamped"The Great White Brotherhood of theIron Fist, Botha Boulevard."

• At UCLA, an outfit named the"White Student Alliance" posted flyersfor a racist rally on minority professors'doors and in Campbell Hall where theaffirmative action center is located.Student groups organized a rally againstracism, drawing some 400 predominant­ly black and Hispanic students out tocombat this threat. This mobilizationkept the racists from rearing their uglyheads that day.

Campus administrators are trippingover themselves hurrying to "fix" thedamage by avowing their commitmentto "diversity" and attribute the "troub­les" to the fact that youth are young (!)and haven't lived through the civil rightsstruggles of the 1950s and '60s. Since the1930s political activism on Americancampuses has been predominantlyliberal rather than right-wing. But as apetty-bourgeois strata, isolated from thereality of working-class struggle, stu­dents can swing pretty far to the right. InGermany in the '30s, the campuses were-breeding grounds for the ideologicalstorm troops of Hitler's Third Reich.

To some degree, the increase in racist

WV PhotoUnited front of labor and students,initlaited by SL, drove Nazis out ofAnn Arbor, March 1982.

from a dormitory along the marchroute. Racist graffiti is now common­place in study carrels in the library; abook by Mark Twain.was defaced withswastikas and pictures of lynched blackshanging from trees. In early February

I the campus radio station was (tempo­rarily) shut down and a "deejay" firedfor broadcasting vile racist "jokes"complete with "laugh track."

• In Austin, Texas, two students,wearing Ronald Reagan masks andcarrying a gun, cornered a prominentblack student activist and tried to pushhim through a plate glass window.

• Just after midnight on February 18at Tufts University near Boston, IanKremer, a student well known for hisanti-racist views, was attacked by thugswho beat him to the ground screaming,"nigger lover," "pinko" and "Jew boy."

Racist terror in America is not con­fined to the mean streets of HowardBeach and Forsyth County. From themob rampage against black students atUMass Amherst following the Red Soxloss in the World Series, to the KKK­style cross-burning in a black cadet'sroom at The Citadel, there has been anominous surge of racist violence oncampuses across the country. Theseattacks have evoked outrage by minori­ty and anti-racist students who've

c organized large rallies and "racialawareness symposiums." In severalinstances, the racist punks have. beenidentified and been let off with a slap onthe wrist.

If even one of these bigots werenabbed and displayed with a yellowstripe painted down their naked back,it would do more to improve the "cli­mate of opinion" than a thousand"consciousness-raising" sessions. Rac­ist terror will not be stopped bymoral suasion-it must be smashedby the social power of the workingclass, united with the intended vic­tims of race-terror and all anti-racistfighters.

• At the University of Michigan inAnn Arbor, a former hotbed of radicalstudent protest, racist flyers declaringthe end of deer-hunting season andannouncing "open season" on blackswere shoved under the door of a loungewhere black women students weremeeting. The scum responsible arefeeling so emboldened that when severalhundred students marched in protest ofthese threats, Klan outfits were hung

20 MARCH 1987 5

Detroit Auto Bosses Raped America

Such views have become fashionablein American intellectual and also busi­ness circles. The doyen of liberal econo­mists, John Kenneth Galbraith, hailsThe Reckoning as an "impressiveachievement" and endorses Halber­starn's analysis. Critics of the Americanauto industry now apportion the blamemore or less equally between the greedand shortsightedness of the Big Threeexecutives and the UAW. MaverickJohn DeLorean, once a GM vice pres­ident, declares that "monopoly led tolavish overhead, including lavish unioncontracts and lavish salaries for man­agement" (New York Times, 7 Decem­ber 1986). Consider how lavish the lifeof a typical Detroit auto worker is com­pared to DeLorean's. One Christmas hegave his wife three sable coats of differ­ent lengths, one for every occasion.

Halberstam does not especially con­demn the UAW leadership, though hedoes argue that the union pushed upwages to a point that damaged theindustry's competitiveness. Still, he isdeeply respectful toward Walter Reu­ther and his successors in SolidarityHouse: "If there was a certain nobility ofpurpose-a vision of a better and morejust society-that drove the union, thenmuch of that came from Walter Reu­ther." No, it is the rank-and-file autoworkers Halberstam condemns for get­ting too much money for doing toolittle.

It isn't that Halberstam is blind to thepresent suffering of the Midwest's bluecollar workers and their families. Hepaints a powerful and moving picture ofDetroit in the early 1980s-skilledcraftsmen pawning their tool kits, someworth $2,000 apiece; hundreds standingin the freezing cold all night to apply fora handful of jobs as department storeclerks; the marked increase in brokenhomes and wife beatings asjobless mentake their anger and frustration out ontheir families.

But for Halberstam, auto workersbrought these terrible conditions downon themselves. Pointing to the break­down of labor discipline in the early'70s-the rash of wildcat strikes, in­creased absenteeism-he retrospective­ly warns that "these alienated, compla­cent workers, whether they knew it ornot, were under challenge from pur­poseful, disciplined workers around theworld, and their jobs and their wholeway of life were in the balance." Hal­berstam writes of Midwestern autoworkers, a large number of them ghettoblacks, as if they were "me generation"yuppies into their BMWs, tennis les­sons and aerobics classes. The fact thatDetroit is a largely black town is barelymentioned in this 700-page study of thepostwar American auto industry. Whilecondemning auto worker militancy inthe early 1970s, The Reckoning gives aglowing account of Nissan's new andnon-union plant in Smyrna, Tennessee:"Morale was unusually high among theworkers ... it seemed as if fifty years of

Levin/Black Star

Flag-waving blowhard Lee lacoccapushes protectionism ... and Japa­nese imports.

WORKERS VANGUARD

device of parallel histories of Ford andNissan, the number two auto makers intheir respective countries. But this is nota narrow, dual corporate chronicle. TheReckoning ranges far and wide, fromthe politics of the postwar Americanoccupation ofJapan to the economics ofOPEC.

At its core The Reckoning is a slick,ideological apology for economic aus­terity and giveback unionism. Halber­starn blames Detroit's economic col­lapse on geology and the Americannational character, or rather lack ofcharacter. The American people, hemaintains, became soft and spoiled bythe easy prosperity of the 1950s-'60sbased on cheap oil, making the U.S.unfit to compete in the leaner andmeaner world of the 1980s: "America,facing competition from hungrier, moredisciplined Asian nations, seemed un­able to discipline itself." Basically Hal­berstam agrees with Nissan head Ta­kashi Ishihara, who told the UAW'sDoug Fraser a few years ago: "Yourproblem in America is of your own mak­ing. It is your work force-it is yourwhole American system. Nobody wantsto work."

An Apology forGiveback Unionism

voked Japan into war and then ended itwith one of the most cold-bloodedatrocities in modern times: dropping thefirst nuclear weapons on the defenselesscivilian populations of Hiroshima andNagasaki."The answer to Pearl Harbor and Hiro­shima is for the American and Japa­nese workers to unite and wage classwar against their own exploiters onWall Street and in Tokyo ......

-"Workers: Don't BuyProtectionist Poison!"WVNo.416,21 November 1986

v PhotoModern Japanese manufacturing plants dominate world markets, Wall Streetspeculators drive American industry into the ground.

The "secret" to Tokyo's economicsuccess is a hot topic from corporateboardrooms to the shopfloor. Soexplaining Japan's evident industrialsuperiority has become a cottage indus­try for American academics and jour­nalists of late. There's Ezra Vogel'sJapan as Number One, Herman Kahn'sThe Japanese Challenge, etc. The mostrecent contribution to this literature isjournalist David Halberstarn's The

- Reckoning, which sets out to tell "theparallel stories of the Japanese ascentand the American malaise." He uses the

A Review:The Reckoning

by David HalberstamWilliam Morrow & Company,

New York, I~86

Slick apology for givebacks,austerity.

6

PART ONE OF TWO

In the early 1970s a business friendtold Lee lacocca, then president ofFord, that he'd been offered a bigToyota dealership in Houston. "Don'ttake it," lacocca advised him. "Whynot?" he asked. "Because," the blow­hard Detroit auto man declared, "we'regoing to kick their asses back into thePacific Ocean." In the next decade it wasthe Japanese who kicked the asses oflacocca and his colleagues back into the­Great Lakes. So now the Chrysler chair­man is selling cars with "Born inAmerica" flag-waving ... and Japaneseimports. (Incidentally, lacocca's friendtook his advice. and later said it was theworst business decision he ever made­cost him $10 million at least.)

Today the U.S. is running a whop­ping $170 billion annual trade deficit,half of it to Japan. Democrats threatentrade war by pushing protectionist bills ­in Congress while Reagan's TreasuryDepartment wages currency war, tryingto make the yen expensive and the dol­lar cheap. As auto bosses push theirJapan-bashing "Buy American" ads,United Auto Workers (UA W) officialsare bashing Toyotas, whipping updeadly chauvinism in the ranks of labor.:Already one Chinese American, Vin­cent Chin, was beaten to death by aChrysler foreman screaming aboutstealing American jobs. And now, asJapanese investment in the U.S. in­creases, the media are handing outadvice on "Working for Japan Inc.""Keep your union card in your wallet,"suggests Newsweek (2 February).

With U.S. industry increasingly"uncornpetitive,' turning out shoddyproducts while the companies sinkbillions into takeovers instead of pro­ductive investment, anti-Japanese pro­tectionism has tied American workers tothe bosses and the Democratic Party.Last year, AFL-CIO tops scheduled achauvinist demonstration on PearlHar­bor Day, December 7, demanding thehiring of more union labor in building aToyota plant in Kentucky. And Dem­ocrat Mondale appealed for unionsup­port to his '84 presidential bid ranting,"If you try to sell an American car inJapan, you better have the United StatesArmy with you when they land on thedocks!" We denounced this war talk,and pointed out:

"Japan was driven into [World War 11]by protectionist barriers raised againstits exports by the Western powers dur­ing the Great Depression of the 1930s.The attack on Pearl Harbor was a directresponse to the American, British andDutch embargo of oil shipments toJapan without which its economy couldnot survive. U.S. imperialism thus pro-

and unexpected event on the other sideof the Sea of Japan: the victory of Mao'sRed Army over Chiang Kai-shek inearly 1949. This immediately produceda reversal of alliances. Japan becameAmerica's "best friend" in Asia, RedChina its demonic enemy. Halberstamsummarizes U.S. imperialism's changedpolicy toward Japan:

"The policy changed not so muchbecause of events in Japan but becauseof events in the world. The Cold Warhad. intensified in Europe, the Com­munistswereabout to wininChina,andWashington, which was already in theprocessof strengtheningand reindustri­alizingWestGermany, suddenlybeganto see Japan differently: It shouldbecome a free-world bastion in Asia. Itshould be industrialized. Its traditionalbusiness structure should be strength­ened, not undermined. Assaults uponthe zaibatsu were to stop."

Significantly, the Korean War, begin­ning in mid-1950-"a gift from thegods," prime minister Yoshida calledit-both consolidated the new Wash­ington/Tokyo axis and pulled Japanout of its prolonged postwar econom­ic depression. The zaibatsu, becameMacArthur's quartermasters, supplyingarms to the U.S. forces in Korea. Nissanproduced jeeps and trucks for the Amer­ican army.

Initially, however, the U.S. ReverseCourse toward Japan was associatedeconomically with the "Dodge Line."In early 1949 Joseph Dodge, a right­wing Detroit banker, designed an eco­nomic program for Japan similar toMilton Friedman's post-19i3 "shock

continued on page 8

Japan. Instead the JCP obeyed MacAr­thur's orders and called off the generalstrike. By surrendering when they werestrongest, leading the most militantelements of the Japanese workers move­ment, the Stalinists soon lost the posi­tion of strength that they had.

After the aborted February 1947 gen­eral strike, the American occupationswitched to a "Reverse Course." In Hal-

o berstam's words, its earlier "New Dealliberalism" was scrapped. MacArthurorganized a red purge of Japaneseunions, enlisting for this purpose thefanatically anti-Communist bureau­crats of the American Federation ofLabor. A top official of the AFL, JamesKillen, was sent to Japan to set up ,"democratization leagues" which actedas anti-Communist cells within the mil­itant labor movement. Today, when theAFL-CIO tops shriek about "unfairJapanese competition" due to Japan'scompliant corporatist unions, Ameri­can workers should know that the"labor" agents of U.S. imperialismhelped split the Japanese unions andbreak their power. In 1948 MacArthuroutlawed all strikes by governmentworkers. This affected wide sectors ofthe economy, for example the state­owned railroads.

While the U.S. occupation forcesmoved against the left and workersmovement from early 1947 onward,Washington was not yet prepared torestore Japanese imperialism as a full­fledged Cold War ally. That develop­ment was precipitated by a momentous

Kyodo Photo Service

Striking workers surround JapanBroadcasting Co., 1946. Stalinistunion leader Yashiro Ii (above) callsoff planned general strike, 30 Jan­uary 1947.

tarists' drive toward war. Under theseconditions Japan experiencedan explo­sion of pent-up class struggle ,unique inits history. Within a year and a half afterthe surrender of August 1945, fivemillion workers were enrolled in tradeunions, more than ten times the prewarpeak. The most militant union federa­tion, Sanbetsu, was strongly influencedby the pro-Moscow J_CP.

The workers were clearly on theoffensive. An American liberal, who vis­ited Japan in this period, wrote:

"In the early days of the occupationmost disputeswere settled quickly, andusually with a victory for the union.Employers were stunned by the defeat,disorganized and uncertain, fearful ofantagonizing the occupationforces, andin some cases, no doubt, apprehensiveof revolutionary developments."

-Miriam S. Farley, Aspects ofJapan's Labor Problems (1950)

In addition to strikes, Farley reportedthatmilitant unions employed an effec­tive tactic called "production control" inwhich the workers "take over the plantand run it until management meets theirdemands ora compromise is reached."

The rising line of class struggle cul­minated on I February 1947 in a call fora general strike not only around eco­nomic demands but also for the ousterof the right-wing Yoshida government.On the eve of the planned strike MacAr­thur ordered it banned. The StalinistJCP, like its counterparts in West Eu­rope, was unwilling and unprepared tofight for power. Such a fight meant tak­ing on the American occupation army,the effective bourgeois state power in

Ayukawa) were imprisoned for a time orotherwise barred from public life. TheJapanese ruling class was demoralizedby the foreign occupation of their coun­try for the first time in history, blamedby the masses for the disastrous war andfearful of the intentions of the Ameri­can victors.

At the same time, thousands of left­ists and working-class militants werereleased from prison. The JapaneseCommunist Party (JCP) emerged fromthe underground with great moralauthority among advanced workers andradical intellectuals as the only politicalforce which had opposed the mili-,

~

Schell/Youngstown VindicatorSteel mills demolished in Midwest rust belt. Wall Street is deindustrializingAmerica.

only did these new workers have verygood basic schooling, particularly inmathematics, on a level well above theircounterparts in American industry, butthey were much more driven by socialambition." Halberstam is impressed bythe "cohesiveness" of Japanese society,the almost "familial" sense of nationalloyalty.

However, Halberstam's own nar­rative account of Nissan and early post­war Japan explodes these very mythswhich he otherwise perpetuates. This isthe most valuable aspect of The Reck­oning. In particular, it demonstrates thedirect link between the creation of com­pany unions in Japan and the Cold Waralliance with U.S. imperialism againstthe Soviet bloc.

That alliance came to defeated Japana few years later than to defeated Ger­many. Almost as soon as Hitler's aidespoured gasoline on his corpse, the U.S.'set about rebuilding occupied westernGermany' as a bastion against Russia."Denazification" was a joke. Apartfrom a handful of top figures likeGoring and Goebbels, the masters of theThird Reich were co-opted en masseinto the "free world." Reinhard Gehlen,chief of anti-Soviet intelligence for theReichswehr, was recruited by the Amer­icans with such dispatch that some of hisagents never missed a payment.

The situation in the Far East afterWorld War II (the "Pacific War" to theJapanese) was somewhat different.There, Chiang Kai-shek's China wasAmerica's main "free world" ally, andWashington viewed the resurgence ofJapanese militarism asa potential threatto America's sphere of influence. Thusthe American occupation under mega­lomaniac General Douglas MacArthurtook certain measures to weaken the tra­ditional Japanese elite, notably a landreform which created a class of mid­dling peasant proprietors.. Steps were also taken to break up thezaibatsu, the .big industrial monopolieslike Mitsubishi and Mitsui. A goodlynumber of prewar Japanese politicians,military men and industrialists (includ­ing the founder of Nissan, Yoshisuke

Press AssociationU.S. occupation forces under Gen­

- eral MacArthur (with EmperorHirohito) helped break combativeJapanese labor movement.

labor-management bitterness had beenwiped away."

The core of Halberstarn's argument istaken over from Jimmy Carter's late '70santi-OPEC hysteria: namely that therelative prosperity of the 1950s-'60s­the vaunted "American way of life"­was based on cheap oil, much of it by ahappy accident of nature located underAmerican soil:

"The oil culture, with itseasyaffluence,was like an addiction. Americans hadbeen rich for some sixty years, andseveral generations had become accus­tomed to prosperity."The postwaryears, the immense mate­rial strength and physical might, twogenerations of unrivaled prosperity-ithad all lulled America into thinking ithadattained an economicutopia, a kind 'ofguaranteednational prosperity,likea ­concession won in somemarathon bar­gainingsession with God, a guaranteedannual increase in the standard of liv­ing. In those few postwar decades,America had taken a temporary histor­ical accident and construed it as a per­manent condition."

It is true that oil is a limited naturalresource. But for now and the foresee­able future there is plenty available inthe ground and it can be extracted for avery smallfraction of the going price. Itcosts around 20 cents for ARAMCO(the American oil consortium) to pumpa barrel of oil out of Saudi Arabia,which has by far the world's biggestknown reserves (Alessandro Ronca­glia, The International Oil Market[1985]). That barrel sells for $19, almost/00 times the cost of production! A fewyears ago during the manipulated "oilcrisis" the price was twice that. WhileHalberstam takes Detroit's Big Three totask for artificially propping up auto­mobile prices, he ignores the' far morepowerful and dangerous Seven Sis­ters-the American/ British/ Dutch oilcartel. In fact, he blames the oil-priceexplosion of the 1970s entirely on theArabs (he also thinks Iranians areArabs).

But all this is totally irrelevant toJapan's competitive superiority overAmerican industry, especially since theU.S. produces some oil and much coalwhile Japan imports all its oil andscrapped most of its coal mines in thelate 1950s. True, the oil shocks of the'70s first turned American consumersaway from Detroit's big gas-guzzlersand toward smaller, more fuel-efficientcars which the Japanese produced welland cheaply. But the flood of Toyotasand Nissans into the American marketwas by no means based solely on sizeand price. The Japanese simply makebetter cars. By the late 1970s HertzRent-A-Cars' maintenance reports indi­cated that Japanese cars were twicethe quality of comparable Americanmodels.

And what does the price of oil have todo with Japan's superiority in steel mak­ing, machine tools, consumer electron­ics, office equipment ... ? Japan has nowovertaken the U.S. in high-tech,microchip-based electronics. A recentreport by the CIA concluded: "Webelieve the U.S. semiconductor indus­try is at a crucial turning point in its his­tory. It fundamentally cannot competein its present form" (New York Times, 5January). In short, Japan has a clearedge over the U.S. in every branch ofmanufacturing not directly related tothe military, like aircraft. If, in Halber­stam's words, by the late '70s "the entireAmerican industrial core was vulner­able to relentless challenge from a con­fident, disciplined Japan," this had

I absolutely nothing to do with OPEC.

The Cold War and JapaneseCompany Unions

While Halberstam sees the Americanpeople spoiled during the era of cheapoil, he sees in the Japanese people mod­els of every economic virtue. They areportrayed as combining the disciplineand spirit of self-sacrifice of ancientSpartans with the intellectual rigorand intensity of nuclear physicists. TheJapanese "were exceptionally well pre­pared for an industrial society." "Not

20 MARCH 1987 7

Fraser took a seat on the Chrysler boardas part of the "government bailout/give­back deal. Why was Japanese autounionism totally' broken by the com­panies in the early 1950s while a quarterof a century passed before the leaders ofAmerican auto unionism became opencompany cops?

First of all, the Japanese unions in thelate 1940s were far more radical thananything seen in Detroit in the postwarera. Reuther's UAW negotiated workrules that in no way obstructed theeffective exploitation of its member-'ship by the auto bosses. From the timehe became UAW president in 1946,Reuther advocated active class collab­oration between the union, auto bossesand government. In the I960s, for exam­ple, he proposed to the Johnson admin­istration that it waive the anti-trust lawsso that the BigThree could join forces toproduce a small car to compete with theGermans and Japanese! So it's hardlysurprising that the head of the Nissancompany union, Ichiro Shioji, declaredrepeatedly that his role model was noneother than Walter Reuther!

But more fundamentally, U.S. impe­rialism was top dog. In the early 1950s,Detroit dominated the world auto mar-

[TO BE CONTINUED]

WORKERS VANGUARD

ket and so could easily tolerate a strongbut decidedly unrnilitant union like theUAW. The far poorer Japanese autoindustry, struggling to break into for­eign markets, could not afford any kindof unionism. The advantage in laborcosts Toyota and Nissan had over GMand Ford (and that has disappeared)was achieved not by "worker­management cooperation" and calis­thenics but by old-fashioned strike­breaking. With the help of the Americanoccupation forces, the Japanese cap­italists were able to impose a higher rateof exploitation on their labor force.

Halberstam wholeheartedly agrees,and argues that the UAW pushed wagesup to a point that did much to destroyDetroit's competitiveness. But let's lookat the record. Between 1955 and 1983,real wages in the American auto indus­try increased about 50 percent (U.S.Department of Labor, Handbook ofLabor Statistics, 1985). Between 1955(when Toyota and Nissan couldn't giveaway a car in the U.S.) and 1983, realwages in the Japanese auto industryincreased over 300 percent (JapanStatistical Yearbook, 1985). As Toyotaand Nissan have sped past the Ameri­can Big Three, the wages of Japaneseauto workers have risen sharply relativeto UAW rates.

The key to this seeming paradox isthat over the past three decades indus­trial productivity inJapan has increasedrelatively rapidly, in the U.S. at a snail'space. Why? Because Japan investsalmost twice as much of its national out­put in new plant and equipment as doesthe U.S. The masters of Wall Street havesystematically looted this country'sindustrial wealth and deindustrializedAmerica. Detroit dominated the worldauto market in the late I940s-'50s for thesame basic reason that the United Statesdemolished Japan in the Pacific War: itenjoyed overwhelming superiority inindustrial productivity. How and whyAmerican capitalism lost that superior­ity is key to understanding the ascenden­cy of Japan Inc.

APVictory of Chinese Revolution in1949 cemented Washington-Tokyoaxis.

yakuza, and the police were called. Thestruggle went on day after day. The firstbarricade had been flimsy; the next bar­ricade was stronger, and again Masu­da's people charged it. Masuda wasarrested."

In the end the union was defeated by amanagement, supported by the power ofthe state, that was determined to starvethem into submission. By the end ofSeptember Masuda admitted he wasbeaten and advised his people to return

to work to save their jobs.Could the Nissan strike have been

won? Yes, but only by extending itbeyond the confines of Nissan. At theminimum Toyota and Isuzu also had tobe struck, thus crippling Japanese autoand truck production, some of whichwas still going to the American forces inKorea. But such a strategic blow to theJapanese economy would have been apolitical challenge to the Yoshida gov­ernment, posing the question: who willrule Japan? Thus Masuda's syndicalistanti-political prejudices contributed tohis undoing. Halberstam insists thatMasuda was not just a militant unionistbut a genuine radical fighting for anew democratic and egalitarian Japan.Doubtless he was. But he conductedthat fight within the framework of mil­itant unionism, and that is why he lost.In the final analysis he who controls thestate also controls the shopfloor.

Still, one might argue, the unions inNorth America and West Europe arefarfrom revolutionary but neither are theyJapanese-style company unions. Theydefend the workers' interest to somedegree; they have some independencefrom management. Since the mid-1950sunion leaders in Japan have sat on theboard of directors of their companies.The UAW did not descend to this levelof class collaboration until 1979, when

3lc:Q)

Q;o'0"EQ)

Et:osa.Q)

c

During KoreanWar Japan

became supplybase for U.S.

imperialist army.

A'<oa.o"UzrosfC< Right-wing£' Detroit banker

Joseph Dodge(far left) drew upprogram formass layoffs,red purges inpostwar Japan.

shut indefinitely, many workers be­came demoralized and defeatist. Afternine weeks Kawamata made his move,launching a second, pro-company unionand locking out Masuda's people.

"It caught the union completely by sur­prise. The management put. up barri­cades, and the union, perplexed, re­sponded with force. Its people crashedthrough the barricades and, led byMasuda, poured onto the factory floor.There were fist fights everywherebetween Masuda's people and the

Tokyo,May Day

1953­Demonstrators

demand U.S.troops outof Japan.

social democrats.Masuda met his nemesis in Katsuji

Kawamata,a functionary of the Indus­trial Bank of Japan. In 1947 Kawamatawas assigned to Nissan's managementby the bank to bring the troubled com­pany into line. He first successfully chal­lenged the union during the Dodge Lineby laying off 2,000 workers. However, adecisive showdown was postponed forthe duration of the Korean War boom.The company was finally makingmoney, and the last thing managementwanted was a long strike. The workersneeded all the overtime they could get to"keep up with the war-generated infla­tion. During the Korean War years theunion remained strong and militant onthe shopfloor. Abusive foremen wereground down by the suribachi (mortarand pestle) treatment. They were sur­rounded by angry workers, who ha­rangued them for hours, not even let­ting them go to the bathroom.

With the end of the American occu­pation in 1952 and the Korean Warwinding down, the Japanese ruling classwas determined to reestablish itself asunchallenged master in its own house.There would be no deals and compro­mises with labor radicals like Masuda.At stake at Nissan was not simply thefate of one medium-sized company butthe shape of the postwar bourgeoisorder in Japan. Knowing the entirebourgeoisie was behind him, Kawamataprepared carefully to destroy the union.He borrowed his own strike fund fromthe banks of $1.5 million, an amountalmost equal to the company's annualrevenue. He extracted promises fromToyota and Isuzu, his major compet­itors, not to take Nissan's regular cus­tomers in case of a strike. He hiredgangsters (Yakuza) as strikebreakers.And, not least importantly, he con­spired with Masuda's right-wing oppo­nents in the union to split it and set up apro-company union.

When it finally came in May 1953, theNissan strike was, in Halberstam'zwords, "like a small war." Kawamataflat out refused to negotiate with Masu­da. His demand was unconditional sur­render, no compromises. As it becameclear that Nissan was prepared to stay

Japan Inc...(continued from page 7)

treatment" for Pinochet's Chile. His de­clared aims: "increase in unemploymentwill in turn lead to increased efficiencyof labor and a greater production....Get the country into hard condition forthe struggle in the export market."Government expenditure was cut to thebone while taxes were raised. Centralbank credit was frozen while loans werecalled in. A third of. small Japanesebusinesses went bankrupt; by mid-1950industrial production had fallen to lessthan a third the level of 1931, at thedepth of the Great Depression!

Hundreds of thousands of workers,almost 200,000 in the government sec­tor alone, were thrown onto the streets.The mass layoffs greatly facilitatedpurging leftists from the workplace andbreaking the power of the radicalunions. Halberstam pinpoints the originof Japan's company unions and sub­missive labor movement in the DodgeLine and red purge:

"In 1949, with MacArthur's support,there was an all-out assault upon Com­munist leadership in the unions whichbecame known as 'the Red Purge.' Inunion after union the Communists andsome of their colleagues were simplyarrested and removed from their jobs.As many as ten thousand workers werefired during these purges, and hun­dreds of thousands were pulled backfrom union membership ...."As one radical union after another fell,the Japanese industrialists replacedthem with unions that to Americansseemed company-sponsored. What wasemerging were management-union(or, some would say, management­management) relations that Americanscould not match, an advantage thatAmerican industrialists did not them­selves enjoy."

Halberstam notes the historical ironythat a Detroit banker helped create inJapan an economic power that threedecades later would reduce the U.S.auto capital to an industrial ghost town.

8

The 1953 Nissan Strike:A Historical Turning Point

While the Dodge Line and red purgegreatly weakened the radical unions,

they Were not decisively broken andreplaced by company unions until afterthe Korean War. The lOO-day Nissanstrike in 1953was a crucial event in post­war Japanese history. For at NissanJapanese unionism was its most mili­tant. Halberstam recounts that in theearly postwar years, "There were strikesalmost all the time. The union wasstronger than the management, andmanagement feared it." The company'spresident, Genshichi Asahara, literallyhid from the union leaders rather thanconfront them!

The Nissan union was dominated by aradical intellectual, Tetsuo Masuda, agraduate of the elite Tokyo University

<, (Todai). Masuda served as a medic inChina during the Pacific War, where hecontracted malaria. His mother and sis­ter were killed in the American bomb­ing raids. For this personal tragedy heblamed not the Americans but Japan'sown rulers: "They ruined us, they ruinedour lives. They left us with nothing."Masuda saw in the radicalized workersmovement a weapon against the menwho had ruined the lives of so manyJapanese. Unusually for Japan in­this period, Masuda was ideological­ly an anti-political syndicalist, ratherhostile to the JCP as well as to the

Watsonville...(continued from page 12)

a company "offer" was rejected 800 to 1at a tumultuous union meeting. When agovernment labor board "certification"vote was held after a year on strike,workers came back from as far away asMexico to defeat scab votes and save theunion.

Suffering hundreds of arrests andbrutal attacks by the cops, Watsonvillestrikers tried repeatedly to stop thescabs brought in from' surroundingtowns. Amador Betancourt, a strikerand husband of Strikers' Committeepresident Gloria Betancourt, was jailedfor eight months for defending thepicket lines. Even now the capitalistcourts are threatening to imprisonAmador again, for supposed "viola­tions" of draconian probation terms.Scandalously, the Teamster bureaucratsdid nothing to defend Betancourt, evencutting off his strike benefits while hewas in jail!

Strikers' Committee member Cha­velo Moreno, who along with CarlosHernandez faces trumped-up chargesfrom a picket line arrest on February 17,spoke of the strikers' experience withcapitalist "justice" in a solidaritymessage to the February 21 Oaklandrally demanding freedom for impris­oned Black Panther Geronimo Pratt: "Iknow the injustices that the law and thepolice have against the workers, andhow they work for the bosses." Drop thecharges against Betancourt, Moreno,Hernandez, and all victimized strikersnow! .

The election of the Strikers' Commit­tee was a crucial factor in mobilizingpickets and defending the strike againstthe capitalist cops and courts, and theirlackeys in the labor bureaucracy. Butworkers were unable to wrest control ofthe strike from the "official" leadership,although at the end of the strikeCommittee members were brought ontothe union bargaining committee. TheWatsonville strike showed the burningnecessity of politically defeating andousting the labor traitors-class battlescan't be won with the bosses' agents atthe head of the strike.

RICOFrame-Up..-.(continued from page 2)

of so-called witnesses-described byGotti's lawyer Bruce Cutler as "paidGovernment informants who lie, whouse drugs,' who kill people" ... and' whogot reduced sentences or even newidentities in return for' fingering the"dapper don." A master of understate­ment, Cutler told the jury, "I never saidmy client was a saint." But the federalprosecutors are hardly interested inwiping out crime. Otherwise they couldgo after a really big-time criminalconspiracy, Reagan's Iran/contra guns,drugs and murder operation.

What Reagan, his top cop Ed Meeseand the feds are after is expanding theirlaws of repression, to be used against theworking class, minorities and politicalopponents. As we wrote a year ago:

"But this crackdown doesn't have muchto do with justice: they are actuallytrying toframe the Mob. The RICO ...'conspiracy' dragnet lets the G-men pickand choose who they feel like setting upand when; they don't need evidence ofany actual crime. The Reaganites wantto institutionalize the frame-up prin­ciple, and what easier target for aframe job than vicious parasites likegangsters?"Why are we Marxists commenting onthese mobster trials? For one thing, wedon't believe justice is only for theinnocent."

-"Feds Frame Up Mob,"WV No. 400, 28 March 1986

In the RICO racket the victim is snarednot for committing a crime but for"patterns of racketeering activities" and

20 MARCH 1987

The reformist Teamsters for a Dem­ocratic Union, a prominent oppositionduring the strike, provided no alterna­tive to the class collaboration of theTeamster tops. The TDU bases itsstrategy on appealing to the samebosses' courts that imprison strikers to"clean up" the union. Scandalously, inWatsonville the TDU sued the unionunder the notoriously anti-laborLandrum-Griffin Act. Labor must cleanits own house! The precondition forunion democracy and militant classstruggle iscomplete independence of theworkers movement from the bosses'state.

After months on strike the "peaceful,legal, play by the bosses' rules" line ofthe Teamster fat cats and the utter de­featism of the fake-left strike "support­ers" took their toll. Instead of laboraction to hot-cargo the scab produce,strikers were sent on far-flung pickets ofWells Fargo banks in Northern Califor­nia, in an impotent attempt at aconsumer boycott of the cannery'sbiggest creditor. The Wells Fargocampaign was the brain child of UFWhead Cesar Chavez, who pushed it tocover his own strikebreaking refusal tostop harvesting the crops for the plant.The last days of the strike saw adesperate hunger strike and a Chavez­style "pilgrimage" of workers on theirknees to a local church.

In the end, the plant was sold to aconsortium of growers, Norcal FrozenFoods, in February. The new owners,who retained most of the old hatedmanagers, were under pressure to settle.Instead of squeezing when it would hurt,the Teamster tops conspired withNorcal to present a "final" offer thatwould have deferred medical benefitsfor up to three years. Local 912 headSergio Lopez tried to pass off thissellout with the line that it's "mucheasier to fight from the inside than fromthe outside." Gloria Betancourt toldWV the strikers' sentiment:

"Eighty-six percent of the workers inthis cannery are women, the majoritysingle women with four or six childrenin the family to support. So at $5.85 anhour without medical benefits we won'tbe able to live."

The Teamsters even cut off theworkers' $55 weekly strike pay! Lopez

participation in a "criminal enter­prise"-nebulous categories which havebeen applied against leftist andworking-class organizations. Then theyseize your assets as "proceeds of crime"before the trial has taken place, toensure you can't defend yourself!

A recent article in the WashingtonTimes' publication Insight (16 Febru­ary) lauding the "new" (post-Watergate)FBI crowed that under William Websterthe agency doubled its budget, doubledits wiretaps and doubled its undercoveroperations to become "once again aconfident and vigorous national policeforce." The mouthpiece of the ultra­right Sun Myung Moon sect singled out

noThe Star Chamber, in Britain'sWestminster Palace, where arbitraryroyal "justice" was meted out. It wasabolished by the Puritan Revolutionin 1641.

WV Photo

November 1985 rally for Watsonvillestrikers. SL banner in Spanish:"Labor's Gotta Play Hardball toWin'"was aided in his betrayal by the fake­left League of Revolutionary Struggle(LRS) and their newspaper Unity. Evenafter the strikers refused to buy Lopez'"final" offer, the LRS supporters at aMarch 9 strike rally told the crowd itwould be a "victory" to "get it over" andgo back to work without medicalbenefits. The pro-Peking and anti­Soviet LRS's "unity" has always beenwith the labor tops and the racist,capitalist Democratic Party politi­cians, like Jesse Jackson, who madetwo grandstanding appearances inWatsonville.

Jackson, like the rest of the Demo­cratic Party, pushes racist protection­ism to "save American industry," bydirecting the hatred of U.S. workers attheir class brothers and sisters abroad.The Teamster brass fought tooth andnail to stop Spanish translation at unionmeetings and "pledged that the unionwould work with Norcal 'to save thefrozen food industry in California.Together we will stave off foreigncompetition'" (California AFL-CIONews, 6 March). This despicable classcollaboration is particularly dangerousfor the Hispanic women at Watson­ville, who face the terror of "La Migra"

RICO as "by far the most powerfulweapon in the FBI's drive." Thiscatchall "conspiracy" law is of a piecewith the rest of the feds' "legal"paraphernalia, including entrapmentoperations (which netted one Senatorand five Congressmen in the late '70s)and preventive detention (now beforethe Supreme Court in the case of TonySalerno, reputed boss of the Genovesefamily). Add to this Meese's determina­tion to get rid of the Miranda prisoners'rights ruling and decree a federal deathpenalty, and you get a blueprint for apolice state.

Naturally, "organized crime" IS

equated with "organized labor." TheMoonie profile declared, "This year, theFBI will take aim at labor racketeering."Already in 1986, the government used acivil provision of RICO to take directcontrol of Teamsters Local 560 in NewJersey. And although the Teamsterswere one of the few unions to endorseReagan, the feds are going after IBTpresident Jackie Presser, himselfan FBIinformant, even while admitting thatPresser's alleged payroll padding wassanctioned by his FBI controller.Meanwhile, the U.S. Labor Departmenthas embarked on a wholesale Attemptto "discipline" the labor movementthrough criminal investigations, as arecent legal study noted (David Elbaorand Laurence Gold, "The Criminaliza­tion of Union Activity," 1985). Onefederal prosecutor drooled over thepossibility of putting "the entire Team­sters union into receivership" (Newsday,20 June 1986).

As always, leftists are also high on thegovernment's hit list. Former FBI finkReagan (informer code number T-IO)

and the bipartisan racist Simpson­Mazzoli immigration law. FromCha­vez' calls to deport undocumented non...union farm workers, to the UAWcompany cops and their "yellow peril"war cries against the Japanese, thisprotectionism is dangerous poison.

Racist terror has gone hand in handwith union-busting in Watsonvillethroughout this century; the 1930s saw awave of anti-Filipino and anti-Mexicanriots and deportations, mass trials ofunion organizers and red scares. It wasthe Communists who first organized thecannery and field workers long scornedby the imperialist-bribed labor lieuten­ants of capital. A vital part of a class­struggle program is the fight for fullcitizenship rights for foreign-bornworkers and their families. ManyWatsonville workers migrate to Mexicoduring the off-season at the canneries,underlining the need and potential formilitant, internationalist labor organi­zations on both sides of the border.

Build a Workers Party toLead the Oppressed to Victory!

Since Reagan smashed the PATCOair traffic controllers strike in 1981,bringing the anti-Soviet war drive homewith stepped-up union-busting andracist terror, millions of workers havebeen looking for a victory, a chance tobreak the cycle of defeats and betrayals.Like the Morenci copper miners andHormel meatpackers, an isolated can­nery workers union in a small companytown was left to fight alone. Thistestifies to the utter bankruptcy of theleadership of the powerful industrialunions-auto, steel, longshore, trans­port, mine workers.

Today the American government is indisarray as a political crisis racks theirimperial presidency. To seize thisopportunity, and strike back at thelabor-hating racist criminals who ruleAmerica, requires a revolutionary lead­ership forged in the fight for a workersparty to lead all the oppressed tovictory. A workers government willexpropriate the factories and fields,ending the criminal rule of the capital­ists who coin their millions from thesweat and blood of the workingpeople.•

wrote in the New York Times Magazine(12 January 1986)that his experience inrunning a red purge of the Screen ActorsGuild taught him that "the tactics usedby mobsters and totalitarian ideologueshave a lot in common." Following theMcCarthyite witchhunts of the 1950s,inthe '60s FBI boss J. Edgar Hooverlaunched the COINTEL program whichwas responsible for the murder of BlackPanther leaders. Reagan/Meese havegone a long way in openly reinstatingsuch police-state tactics. One FrankVarelli, an ex-FBI informer currentlytestifying before Congress about hisinfiltration of the CIS PES solidaritygroup in Dallas, has stated that betweenbreaking into offices, electronic surveil­lance, taping meetings and compiling hitlists, the government's repressive cam­paign now includes "everything Cointel­pro covered before" (Nation, 7 March).

The feds' attempt to frame John Gottifailed-and that's a good thing, just likewhen in 1984a Los Angeles jury foundformer auto magnate John DeLoreaninnocent of a federal drug "sting." Gottireturned to his home in Howard Beach,Queens, the same community where ablack man, Michael Griffith, waslynched by a racist mob of white youthlast December. But the feds aren'tinterested in pursuing that heinouscrime. After all; in the 1985 bombing ofthe black MOVE commune in Philadel­phia, all levels of the government, fromthe local police and black Democraticmayor right up to the FBI and Meesehimself, were involved in a horrificracist mass murder. They did it simplybecause they wanted to. That isperhapsthe most damning indictment of capital­ist "justice" in Reagan's America.•

9

ping the limited Soviet support torevolutionary and national liberationstruggles from Southeast Asia to Cen­tral America.

The Spectre of Trotskyism

Gorbachev's "peace offensive" is not acynical ploy to gain the favor of Westernpublic opinion, nor is it motivatedsimply by a desire to free up economicresources now expended on the armsrace. The Soviet bureaucracy is genuine­ly frightened of nuclear war, and rightlyso. They also reflect the mass sentimentof the people of the Soviet Union in adeep-seated, desperate desire for peace.But there is also a sense among elementsin the Soviet officialdom, intelligentsiaand working people that appeasement,capitulating to the "Reagan doctrine,"or allowing U.S. imperialism to isolateand starve heroic Vietnam and take overAfghanistan are not the road to peace.In a broadcast from Moscow lastmonth, TV talk-show host Phil Dona­hue had a wide-ranging discussion withscores of Soviet youth on god, Commu­nism, nuclear war-and couldn't get asingle one to condemn Soviet interven­tion in Afghanistan as unjust.

Gorbachev sees Trotskyism behindany opposition to his headlong drive for"peaceful coexistence" with Reagan. Atthe Communist Party congress in Feb­ruary 1986, he denounced "revolution­ary wars" as a "Trotskyite" heresy andwent on: "Today, too, we are firmly con­vinced that pushing revolutions fromoutside, and doubly so by militarymeans, is futile and inadmissible" (NewTimes, 10 March 1986). The wars nowbeing fought, by the Vietnamese inKampuchea, the Soviet army in Af­ghanistan, the Cubans in Angola andthe Sandinistas in Nicaragua are resis­tance to the export of counterrevolu­tion. There probably are people in theSoviet hierarchy who are less willingthan Gorbachev to sell out Vietnam orAfghanistan for the sake' of betterrelations with Washington. However,the answer to Gorbachev's version of"peaceful coexistence" is not support tomore hard line elements in the Kremlin,who will betray and weaken the defenseof the Soviet Union in other ways.

The answer is the organization of theworkers ofthe world by an internationalrevolutionary party to overthrow thewar-driven capitalist system. And herethe spectre of Trotskyism really doeshaunt the Soviet bureaucracy. Witness arevealing article by one Nikolai Vasetskiin the Moscow-based America Latina(No.3, 1986) which polemicizes againstan article in Workers Vanguard("Carter/Reagan Nuclear War Fever,"WV No. 264, 19 September 1980):

"On the cardinal question of the day­defense of the USSR against imperial­ist aggression-the Trotskyists of theUnited States considerthat Trotskyismis distinguished both from petty­bourgeois pacifism as well as reformismand centrism, because it recognizes thefact that the 'Eurornissiles' are aimedatthe Soviet Union."But after recognizing thisobviousfact,they draw the following conclusion: inorder to defendthe USSR it isnecessaryto carry out a permanent world revolu­tion. The American Trotskyists areagainst all disarmament' that isn'tundertaken by the workers themselves.In their press organ they say that 'the

official in the Carter administration,wanted to get into a crowded sessionfeaturing Andrei Sakharov. When hepulled strings in order to hear in personthe Soviet dissident, an aide to GaryHart quipped his efforts had all thedignity of trying to get backstage at aRolling Stones concert.

Aside from Gorbachev, the othersuperstar at this "peace" confab wasSakharov, a man who had urged theU.S. to deploy the MX missile (anacknowledged first-strike weapon) andto economically blackmail the SovietUnion into withdrawing from Afghani­stan. Before releasing Sakharov fromcomfortable internal exile in Gorky lastDecember, Gorbachev may havemanaged to turn him from his patrons inWashington. At the Moscow conferenceSakharov spoke out against Reagan's"Star Wars" and applauded the newSoviet leader. However, he also spokefor Soviet collaboration with imperial­ism to maintain the global status quo:

"There must be a settlementof regionalconflicts on the basis of compromiseand restoration of stability wherever ithas been disrupted. Support for desta­bilizing and extremist forces and all ter­rorist groups should be ended."

-Time, 16 March"Terrorist groups" are what Reagan andhis racist allies call national liberationmovements around the world. Thewhite supremacist rulers of South Afri­ca label the African National Congress a"terrorist group"; the Zionists say thesame of the Palestine Liberation Organ­ization. To its credit, the Soviet Unionhas provided arms for the ANC andPLO. Sakharov's talk of "regionalstability" means abandoning SouthAfrican blacks and Palestinian Arabs inorder to restore the stability of two ofthe most murderous, racist 'states onearth.

Sakharov's latest pronouncementswouldn't be all that important exceptthey converge with Gorbachev's line. Inhis biography of the new Soviet leader,liberal Soviet dissident Zhores Medve­dev notes that the Brezhnev regimeplayed up its international successes,from the U.S. defeat in Vietnam toaiding nationalist regimes in Africa andrevolutionary movements in LatinAmerica. By contrast, Medvedev writesapprovingly: "if Gorbachev's foreignpolicy intentions are to be judged by thenew Party programme, there will be lessideological expansion of the USSR infuture, compared to what was promisedin previous programmes.i .. The pro­gramme promises solidarity and coop­eration with the 'N ewly-Free Countries,'but no new substantive help" (Gorba­chev [1986]).

Not all Soviet actions abroad in thename of "socialist solidarity" serve thecause of social progress and nationaljustice. In particular, we strongly con­demn the Kremlin's support to Ethi­opia's Haile Miriam Mengistu, a left­talking Idi Amin who has crushed thenascent workers movement, extermi­nated an entire generation of radicalintellectuals and committed genocidalterror against the Eritreans and othernational minorities. But the NATO cap­itals are not much concerned about theMoscow-Addis Ababa connection. Theimperialists are concerned about stop-

NorfolkBox 1972, Main PONorfolk, VA 23501

OaklandBox 32552Oakland, CA 94604(415) 839-0851

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

Washington, D.C.Box 75073Washington, D.C. 20013

, (202) 636-3537

Toronto 'Box 7198, Station AToronto, Ontario M5W 1X8(41E?) 593-4138

While Gorbachev certainly hasn'tgiven up on Reagan, he is also appealingto out-of-office Western politicians,capitalists and media stars (the "glittera­ti"). His effort to sponsor a globalpopular front for "peace" was launchedin mid-February with a "Forum for aNuclear-Free World and the Survival ofHumanity." There were 250 business­men, 215 clergymen, hundreds ofscientists and a slew of retired NATOgenerals. Returning the compliment,retired high-ranking military officers inthe USSR have formed a new group,Soviet Generals and Admirals for Peace

DPA Haqiqat Enqelab SawerCIA-armed Islamic cutthroats in Afghanistan shoot schoolteachers for teaching young girls to read (left). Atright: Soviet soldiers in Kabul. Hall Red Army In Afghanistan-Extend Social Gains of Bolshevik Revolution toAfghan Peoples!

and Disarmament.For a few days this winter Moscow

was the "in" place to be for the jet set.Former Canadian prime minister PierreElliott Trudeau, leading West GermanSocial Democrat Egon Bahr, liberalAmerican economist John KennethGalbraith rubbed elbows with NormanMailer, Claudia Cardinale and YokoOno. Actor Kris Kristofferson, fresh

.from starring in the vile anti-Soviet soap'opera A merika , was there, too. Theatmosphere was that of a political rockfestival. David Aaron, a former high

DetroitBox 441794Detroit, MI 48244

Los AngelesBox 29574, Los Feliz Sta.Los Angeles, CA 90029(213) 380-8239

Madisonc/o SYL, Box 2074Madison, WI 53701(608) 257-8625

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TROTSKYIST LEAGUEOF CANADA

SPARTACIST LEAGUE/U.S. LOCAL DIRECTORY

AtlantaBox 4012Atlanta, GA 30302

BostonBox 840, Central Sta.Cambridge, MA 02139(617) 492-3928

ChicagoBox 6441, Main POChicago, IL 60680(312) 663-0715

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National Office: Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116. (212) 732-7860

Der Spiegel conomlstGorbachev (left) addresses glitterati at "no nuke" extravaganza In Moscow.Participants Included actor Krls Krlstofferson (right), starof demented anti­Soviet soap opera Amerlka.

nuke" extravaganza in Moscow lastmonth, the new Soviet leader declared:

"Before my people, before you andbefore the wholeworld, I state with fullresponsibility that our internationalpolicyis more than everdetermined bydomestic policy, by our interest inconcentrating on constructive. endeav­ors to improve our country."

-Moscow News, I March

For the last decade, U.S. imperialismhas tried to browbeat; threaten or trickthe Soviet Union into retreating fromthe international scene. No wonder thisstatement was greeted by Washington.

Gorbachev'sPipe Dream...(continued from page 1)

out Afghanistan for the illusion of"peaceful coexistence" with Washing­ton. After a meeting with Gorbachevlast month, Henry Kissinger wrote:

'" had arrived in Moscow persuadedthat the Soviet Union would neverpermit the overthrow of a regimeestablished bySovietpower.... I am nolonger so sure. Our Soviet hostsemphasized their desire for total with­drawal. Theyalso affirmed the goalofagovernment of national reconciliationthat would include representatives ofthe guerrilla groups."

-s-Newsweek, 2 March

We Trotskyists say: Hail Red Armyin Afghanistan-Extend the gains ofthe Bolshevik Revolution to Afghan'peoples!

Gorbachev, Sakharovand the Glitterati

The Kremlin bureaucracy haspreached and tried to practice "peacefulcoexistence" with imperialism ever sinceStalin, with his reactionary, nationalisttheory of "socialism in one country."And the Gorbachev regime has playedthis theme over arid over. Addressingthe assembled celebrities at the "no

10 WORKERS VANGUARD

-MARXIST LlTERATURE­Bay AreaFri.: 5:00-8:00 p.m.• Sat: 3:00-6:00 p.m.1634 Telegraph. 3rd Floor (near 17th Street)Oakland, California' Phone: (415) 839-0851

Chicago _Tues.: 5:00-9:00 p.m.. Sat: 11:00a.m.-2:oo p.m.161 W. Harrison St.. 10th FloorChicago, Illinois Phone: (312) 663-0715

New York CityTues.: 6:00-9:00 p.m., Sat.: 1:00-5:00 p.rn.41 Warren St (one block belowChambers St near Church St.)New 'York, N.Y. Phone: (212) 267-1025

Spartacist LeaguePublic Offic'es

social gains of the October Revolution.The Zionist state, carved out of the

living body of the Palestinian Arabpeople, offers Jews not a haven but adeathtrap. Many Israelis do not want tolive in a permanent armed camp ever onthe brink of war ... and not all of themcan emigrate to drive taxicabs in NewYork City. Recently, a number of jointPalestinian Arab and Hebrew demon­strations have taken place despiteincreased repression on the part of theIsraeli rulers. Defense of the democraticrights of all the peoples of the Near Eastrequires a revolutionary struggle, withthe working class and its vanguard partyat the head of the exploited andoppressed, that would smash the Zioniststate, bring down the rotten medievalstructure in Lebanon and sweep awaythe Hashemite kingdom in Jordan andbloody Ba'athist bonapartes in Syria.The right to self-determination for boththe Palestinian Arab and Hebrew­speaking peoples, if it is to lead togenuine national emancipation andsocial progress, can only be realized inthe framework of a socialist federationof the Near East.•

Nazi concentration camps in the lastyear of the Third Reich! In an act of.courageous working-class defiance ofIsrael's draconian martial law, in lateFebruary Gaza Palestinian carpenters(supported by Israeli unionists and civilrights fighters) formed a 400-strongunion.

As lran/Contragate investigationsshow, Israel has placed itself in theforefront of U.S. imperialism's anti­Soviet war drive, doing itsdirty work inthe Third World. In return Israel gets $3billion a year from Uncle Sam, two­thirds of it in direct military grants. Therevelation by Mordechai Vanunu. thatIsrael has 100-200 nuclear warheadsmeans that the Zionist rulers want thecapacity to nuke not only every Arabcapital but also Moscow and Leningrad.To justify itself and "unify" the nation, agarrison state like Israel must ever be onthe brink of war. And the most likelyZionist target is Soviet-backed Syria.Meanwhile, Reagan has the U.S. SixthFleet sitting off the coast of Lebanonand would very much like a militarydiversion. A war between Israel andSyria could rapidly escalate into nuclearworld war, especially given Israel'ssizable nuclear arsenal, urgently posingdefense of the Soviet Union and the

CPparticipated in. the recent Syrian­engineered massacre of the SunniTawhid sect (which itself massacredscores of CPers three years ago).

The politics of the pro-MoscowLebanese CP reflect the orientation ofthe rulers of the Soviet Union, abureaucratically degenerated workersstate. Repudiating and fearing proletar­ian revolution in the Near East (aselsewhere), the Kremlin backs Arabnationalist regimesand movements whoinvariably end up at one another'sthroats. Infact, all of the combatants inthe recent fighting in Beirut are armedwith Soviet weapons! And while Mos­cow proclaims undying support to thePalestinian cause, it has publicly en­dorsed the entry of the Syrian army intoWest Beirut, designed to break the PLO.

For Proletarian Revolutionin the Near East!

While Amal militiamen try to starveout Palestinian camps in Lebanon, theZionist state is escalating its reign ofterror both in the Occupied Territories,seized by Israel in the 1967 war, andwithin Israel itself. In the West Bank lastDecember Israeli soldiers opened fire on200 students conducting a nonviolentprotest. Two students were killed and at

WV PhotoSan Francisco-SL contingent in protest against ZlonisUascist Meir Kahane,October 1985.

least eleven wounded. The followingday the occupation troops struck again,murdering a 14-year-old boy, allegedlyfor throwing stones. A few days later a12-year-old boy was found murdered,either by soldiers or clerical-fascistIsraeli "settlers" who are issued auto­matic weapons by the army. Theshootings were so viciously cold­blooded and obviously-state-sponsoredthat even the UN Security Councilcondemned them 14-0 with the U.S.abstaining.

West Bank protests soon spread tothe occupied Gaza Strip where 550,000Palestinians, half under the age of 15,live in an area 27 miles wide and fivemiles long. Here also Israeli soldiers andtheir "settler" auxiliaries fired at un­armed Palestinian youths, woundingmany, but this did nothing to quell thespirited protests. The Palestinians inGaza and the 700,000 on the West Bankare disenfranchised in their own land,like blacks under South African apart­heid except that they have even fewer"rights." As the Zionist rulers havesought to transform Israel into agarrison state where the main industryisarmaments, the "dirty" (i.e., productive)work of construction, agriculture andtransport is increasingly allocated toPalestinians, especially superexploitedlabor from the Occupied Territories.

Tens' of thousands of workers aretrucked in daily from these Zionistbantustans since they are not allowed to .

. stay overnight in the "Jewish state."They pay income tax and social security,but receive no benefits-their paymentsgo toward the costs of the militaryoccupation! At least another 50,000,often mere children, are paid a pittanceand are kept in locked huts overnight.Israeli civil rights fighter Israel Shahak,a survivor of the Bergen-Belsen deathcamp, noted that these Palestinianlaborers ate given cooked marrow toeat-the same food given to Jews in the

headquartered in Baghdad, Iraq)de­nounced the Syrian move "since Syriais a basic party to the blockade ofPalestinian refugee camps and theannihilation and starvation of thou­sands of our people there" (New YorkTimes, 23 February). This was verifiedimmediately when the first major moveof the Syrian army in. Beirut was toattack the Hezbollah, which for its ownreasons had provided a certain bufferfor the PLO camps. The only "peace"that the Syrian army will bring to Beirutis the peace of the dead. Only lastDecember the Syrian army organizedthe massacre of the Sunni fundamental­ist Tawhid sect (a PLO ally of the.moment), in the northern Lebanese cityof Tripoli. Today, after 12 years of all­sided communalist slaughter, a full­scale Israeli blitzkrieg and direct imperi­alist military intervention, Lebanon'scities look like they've experienced asmall-scale nuclear war.

Palestinians...(continued from page 3)

The Lebanese Cockpit

The slaughterhouse called Lebanon isa classic product of colonial divide-and­rule policies. France, which along withBritain carved up the Ottoman Empirein the Near East after World War I,created a separate Lebanon in order tomaintain a base of support among theMaronite Christian community whichfeared incorporation into a predomi­nantly Muslim Greater Syria. The 1943National Covenant imposed uponLebanon a government in which thespoils were allotted along religious/communal lines with Christian Maro­nites on top and Muslims, especiallyShi'ites, on the bottom. Adding fuel tothe Lebanese tinderbox were the hun­dreds of thousands of Palestinianrefugees who fled the Zionist terror bywhich the state of Israel was consolidat­ed in 1948. Tens of thousands morepoured into Lebanon after the 1970Black September massacre in Jordan.

In the mid-'70s all the pressures frombelow finally blew apart the fragileLebanese system, .a bankers' republicwhose rulers gorged themselves on oilmoney while keeping the masses ingrinding poverty. Growing out of aseries of strikes, and initially fueled bylegitimate grievances over Maronitedomination, the brewing social explo­sion was transformed into a squalidcommunalist civil war by the traditionalleaders of the Muslim camp, such as thehereditary chieftain of the Druze sect,Kamal Jumblatt. Had a revolutionaryMarxist party stood at the head of theLebanese Muslim and Palestinian toil­ers, it would have put forward a pro­gram capable of attracting the have-notsin the Christian community, splittingand weakening the base of the fascisticPhalange and other reactionary Maro­nite forces. But a genuine communistparty does not exist in Lebanon.

The Lebanese CP is one of the oldestand relatively largest Communist par­ties in the Arab world. With a heavilyChristian leadership and Shi'ite base,

. the Lebanese CP is uniquely placed tocut across the sectarian/communalistdivide. It is just about the only move­ment spanning the largely Shi'ite southLebanon and the Christian/Sunninorth, leading the trade-union move­ment and dominating several Christiantowns before 1976. However, because ofits Stalinist politics the Lebanese Cp hastailed after the bourgeoisie for morethan half a century, from abandoningthe struggle for independence inthe late1930s and '4Os to getting caught up inthe maelstrom of communalism in the'70s and '80s. In the 1975-76 civil war itsubordinated itself to Muslim confes­sionalists like Jumblatt (who masquer­ades as the "Progressive SocialistParty") through the so-called LebaneseNational Movement. And while it is the

- target of a Shi'ite murder campaign inBeirut and the south, in Tripoli the

wars at home and in internationalrevolutionary wars."

What Trotsky wrote in 1940, when.Stalin was trying tciappease NaziGermany, retains its full force today asimperialism is preparing a nuclearOperation Barbarossa against the So­viet Union:

"The Fourth International can defendthe USSR' only by the methods ofrevolutionary class struggle.... Weflatly reject the theory of socialism inonecountry,that brainchild ofignorantand reactionary Stalinism. Only theworld revolution cansavethe USSR forsocialism. But the world revolutioncarries with it the inescapable blottingout ofthe Kremlin oligarchy."

Return to the road of Lenin and_ Trotsky!.

WV PhotoSpartaclsts protest ABC's Cold Warmega-series Amerlka In Washing­ton, D.C., February 15.

possible destruction of the worldbythemissiles and other components of theimperialist war machine can only beaverted by the worldwide victory of theworking class'....'''Disarmament'Trotskyist-style isa figleaf to cover very different objectivesfor the Trotskyist leaders: to presentTrotskyism as the far left pole of theantiwar movement (opposed to thesupposedly reformist program of theCommunists) in order to attract thoseworkers whose class consciousnessdoesn't suffice to quickly understandthe Trotskyist ideology."

It is perhaps no accident that aStalinist polemic which admits thatTrotskyism can attract .revolutionary­minded workers appears in a publica­tion directed at Latin America. For inthis part of the world hatred for Yankeeimperialism runs very deep and is nearuniversal. "Peaceful coexistence" withWashington means Pinochet's torturechambers, Central American deathsquads and Citibank sucking the life­blood of the workers and peasants. Atthe same time, a victory for U.S.imperialism in its "backyard" wouldspur on the war drive against the SovietUnion. Truly, as we have proclaimed,"Defense of Cuba/ USSR Beginsin Cen- .tral America!" And a socialist revolutionin Latin America would send massiveshock waves to the imperialist colossusto the North, panicking Wall Street andelectrifying the millions of Hispanicworkers in America's factories andfarms.

While Reagan is on the rocks, thethermonuclear-armed ruling class herepresents is still in the saddle. The fateof the homeland of the October Revolu­tion, the emancipation of the oppressedand toiling masses, and the very survivalof humanity are inseparably bound toworking-class revolution in the domi­nant imperialist countries, above all theUnited States. World revolution is noutopia but the only reality which candisarm the Pentagon. Lenin himselfauthored the plank of the 1919programof the Russian Communist Party(Bolsheviks) which denounced "disar­mament under capitalism" as a "reac­tionary philistine illusion of the petty­bourgeois democrats," calling insteadfor "arming the proletariat and disarm­ing the bourgeoisie" and achievingvictory over the capitalists "both in civil

20 MARCH 1987 11

WIIINEIiI ,,1.(;UIIIIIJDefiant Cannery. Workers Go Back

Watsonville: Hard 18-Month Strikeing injunctions into worthless scraps ofpaper. And unionists must go after theemployers' weak spot: their product isseasonal and highly perishable. Thismeans a strategy of labor boycott, notimpotent consumer boycotts.... Team­ster drivers, railway workers, ware­housemen and retail clerks must hot­cargo (refuse to handle) the scabproduce."

-"Victory to the WatsonvilleCannery Strike!" WV No. 389,18 October 1985

At thebeginning of the strike, a groupof women workers put forward amotion for a "general strike of all thecanneries," and in January 1986strikerspassed a motion demanding the Team­ster tops stop the vegetables pouringinto the struck plant. But Local 912leaders declared the strikers' motion adead letter, bowing before the slave­labor Taft-Hartley law' "illegalizing"secondary boycotts. The Teamster tops'sabotage was so blatant that they keptthe plant's own "waterhouse" freezeroperators on the job-"because they'reunder a separate contract"-whileTeamster drivers and warehousemencontinued to ship and store frozen foodproduced by the scabs in the plant!

Fed up with this backstabbing, anassembly of 500 workers elected aStrikers' Committee. They demonstrat­ed their determination time and again:in 18 months not one striker crossed thepicket lines. Two months into the strike

continued on page 9

sters against the UFW. Early in thestrike, we put forward a program ofmilitant labor action to bring canneryowner and Reagan buddy Mort Consoleto his knees:

"All the canneries must be brought outon strike-6,OOO Local912 members arestill working without a contract at fiveother canneries.... What is needed isdaily mass pickets of area unionists tostop the scabs and turn the strikebreak-

WV PhotoMilitant cannery workers, predominantly Mexican women, march throughWatsonville, California, November 1985.

saved their union.The Watsonville strike could have

been won. Strike rallies and marchesdrew hundreds of members of powerfulunions in the San Francisco Bay Area,two hours drive from Watsonville. Thepresence of Farmworkers (UFW) un­ionists who pick the vegetables frozen inWatsonville was significant, given thehistory of vicious raiding by the Team-

WATSONVILLE-After 18 months ofbitter class struggle, the Watsonvillecannery strike ended March II. Thestrike of 1,000 mainly Mexican womenfrozen-food workers against the arro­gant agribusiness bosses of this com­pany town became a symbol of resis­tance to the union-busting and give­backs of the Reagan years. It was thestrikers' hard-bitten . tenacity on thepicket lines that beat back the bosses'attempt to crush the strike outrightand destroy the union. In a dramat­ic eleventh-hour effort, the strikersstunned the 'company, Teamster brassand media by defeating a "final offer"that would have robbed the workers ofmedical benefits for up to three years.

The Watsonville strikers were at­tacked by the cops, betrayed by thebureaucracy of theirunion, TeamstersLocal 912, and isolated by Californialabor officialdom that preached "soli­darity" and practiced betrayal. Yet theworkers hung tougn" finally driving outthe labor-hating ~s and forcing thenew owner to restore benefits. The strikeended with a concession contract whichslashes wages to $5.85 per hour-fromthe already miserable pre-strike wage of$6.66-and cuts the workforce by athird. But unlike the Hormel strike inAustin, Minnesota, where the meat­packers' local was ripped up and themembership fired, the Watsonvillestrikers' militancy and determination

British Ferry Tragedy

Free EnterpriseSinks Free Enterprise

A 1980 report by the UN's Inter­national MaritimeCouncil noted thatthese ro-ro vessels suffer twice thenumber of losses as other ships; overthe last twenty years, 35 of them havecapsized.

So why are ships launched withconstruction decidedly worse than thatwhich was proven deadly dangerousand unseaworthy almost 75 years ago?The answer is encapsulated in thenames of Townsend Thorensen'smajor ferries: the Herald of FreeEnterprise, Spirit of Free Enterpriseand PrideofFree Enterprise. And nowthe British government has come upwith a new and macabre use for-the ro­ro's: to refit them as prison ships to penblack and Asian immigrants refusedentry into the country. Such is theprivate profit motive and the decayingsystem of capitalism.

Ferry Herald of Free Enterp-risecapsizes, March 6, plunging hundreds intoicy waters off Belgian port. Passengers and crew members were killed bydecrepit British capitalism.

Within a day of the disaster marineengineers confirmed what is widelyknown: the ferry design, utilized forfaster loading-i.e., to cut costs-isnotoriously unsafe. Incredibly, as oneBritish paper observed, they have thesame fatal design flaw as the Titanic:

"It is right that we should recall theworst and most famous mercantiledisaster of them all now, because itwas that which imposed a fundamen­tal principle on steel-ship construc­tion: that watertight bulkheads (steelwalls) should extend crosswise atintervals from the bottom of the hullto the upper deck. The 'unsinkable'Titanic had such bulkheads, but theydid not rise high enough. Roll-on; roll­off (ro-ro) ships are the first majorcommercial type to ignore this ax­iom.... If water ever penetrates thesebox-like compartments in any quanti­ty, it can cause a fatal list and the ro-rorolls over in a few moments."

-London Guardian, 9 March

side. Within a minute the vessel cap­sized, making it impossible to launchlife rafts. After the fact, port offi­cials have acknowledged that leavingthe docks without securing loadingdoors is standard operating procedurefor companies out to make a fasterbuck by cutting turnaround times.

According to one report the Zee­brugge docks are among the lowest inthe Channel; water is pumped intotheforward ballast tanks to facilitateloading cars and trucks. The inquiryconfirmed that the ferry left "slightlytrimmed down by the bow, whichwould accentuate the scooping effectof the bow." That more people weren'tkilled is testimony to the heroic rescueefforts of the crew. Half of the 84 crewmembers perished, many because ofoverexposure. As one seaman inter­viewed at the headquarters of theNational Union of Seamen in Dovernoted: "It was the cold water thatkilled them.... They died because theystayed behind to help others" (LondonGuardian, II March).

In the worst marine disaster inBritish peacetime history since thesinking of the Titanic in 1912, some134 crew members and passengerswent down with thecarferry HeraldofFree Enterprise when it capsized onMarch 6 just outside Belgium's Zee­brugge harbor.

A catastrophe-but no accident.Rather it was the horrible outcome ofutilizing a notoriously unsafe shipdesign and then disregarding one ofthe most elementary procedures ofmaritime safety: ship openings andports must be secured watertightbefore leaving dockside. Early on the.shipowner, Townsend Thorensen,tried to claim that "somehow" thebow-loading "doors burst open." Butas survivors have testified and apreliminary inquiry affirmed, the ferryaccelerated across the outer harborbefore the crew on the lower vehicledeck could close the apparentlyjammed doors. The ship became agiant scoop and rapidly destabilized aswater poured in and surged to the port

12 20 MARCH 1987