WfJ/tIlE/tS",INfiIJ,I/t, 25¢No. 363 28 September 1984

•fica

•81

Rad-Lib Nonsense Over Skulls From South Africa

John Seymour

Gold miners: key to black laborpower in South Africa.

however, the union has been able insome cases to save the jobs of mineworkers fired after getting into fightswith their shift bosses. One black goldminer expressed his beIiefthat some daythe union will be strong enough to tack­le the question of whether migrantscould live with their families (NewYork Times, 15 March 1983)..

The question of leadership is sharplyposed in the mines today. Seven of the

continued on page 10

designed to line them up against theblack African majority and provide amultiracial facade to former primeminister Botha's assumption of a presi­dency with dictatorial powers. Thenearly this month Sharpeville and .otherblack townships in the mining/industrial area of the Transvaal eruptedwhen protests against rem increaseswere met with bullets. It· was atSharpeville in 1960 that police killed 69blacks at a peaceful demonstration,ushering in a period of massive staterepression which stifled black strugglefor over a decade. This time cop andarmy violence only fanned the flames.The enraged township dwellers hackedto death several local black puppets andtorched government offices. The revoltsoon spread to Soweto, with its twomillion inhabitants, which was thecenter of the 1976-77 revolt.

It is, however, the half-million blackgold miners who hold the key strategicposition in the South African economy.Gold has dominated capitalist develop­ment in South Africa ever since it wasdiscovered on the Rand in the late 19thcentury. Today South Africa holds 70percent of the world's gold reservesoutside of the Soviet bloc and goldaccounts for half of South Africa'sexport earnings. The country's large buttechnologically backward manufactur­ing sector depends upon these foreignexchange earnings to import capitalequipment.

Marxists know that any serious laborstruggle challenges capitalist propertyrights and so collides with their armedguards, the police and army. In SouthAfrica this is true with a vengeance,since any black working-class actionchallenges the apartheid system. In themines, for example, black workers arefrequently physically assaulted by theirwhite racist supervisors. Any blackworker who fights back is fired. Now,

Black Revolt Hits the Gold Fields

The current wave of anti-apartheidstruggle began last month when "col­oureds" (persons of mixed race) andIndians defied mass arrests to boycottelections to the phony parliaments,

terror. The very next day 10,000 of themstruck for union recognition at Harte­beesfontein, 100miles southwest ofWes­tonaria. And last weekend, more than600 blacks were arrested across SouthAfrica for attending illegal meetings.

Despite all its weapons and all itssavagery, white-ruled South Africa is indeep crisis. At this crucial momentinternational labor action can be deci­sive in further weakening the apartheidstate and opening the road to theliberation of the enslaved black masses.Transportation unions throughout theworld must boycott all shipping and airtraffic to and from South Africa.Working-class organizations must mo­bilize massive protests in 'solidarity withthe embattled black toilers of SouthAfrica. Free all victims of apartheidterror! The powerful British labormovement, in particular, must demandthat the government grant politicalasylum to the six anti-apartheid activistswho have sought refuge in the Britishconsulate in Durban.

Revolt inTownships,Class War inGold Mines

Anti-Evolution=Racism/6The Taung Baby and the "Piltdown Man"

Engels and Evolution/7

SEPTEMBER 23-The black revoltagainst apartheid rule reached a newlevel this past week 'as class' warexploded in the gold mines, the keysector of. the entire South Africaneconomy. When 40,000 members of theblack National Union of Mineworkerswalked out for a wage increase, the minebosses responded with shotguns, rubberbullets, attack dogs and tear gas, In the'town of Westonaria near Johannesburgstriking miners were massacred, Thepapers claimed seven killed, but policerefused to give details on the number ofdead, saying "clearing up" was stillgoing on. Hundreds of workers werehospitalized with ruptured spleens,fractured skulls and other seriousinjuries. But the black miners were notcowed bythis massive use of police-state

Editorial NotesGuardian Shot Down Over KAL 007

Dirty Stalinoid ConfessionsWhen a Korean Air Linesjetlinerwas

shot down last fall as it overflew some ofthe Soviet Union's most sensitivemilitary installations, Washingtonimmediately began screaming for Rus­sian blood. Reagan accused the Soviet"evil empire" of killing innocent civil­ians and babies as standard practice.Democrats in Congress fell into line,voting a unanimous resolution con­demning the Russians for murder.Much of the left snapped to attention aswell: the Communist Party's DailyWorld shamefully denied the Sovietshad downed the intruder KAL 007aircraft. The worst scumbags were theMaoists and ex-Maoists, long accus­tomed to supporting their own murder­ous bourgeoisie in the name of fighting"Soviet social imperialism." The rad-libGuardian (14 September 1983) wrote

that the USSR must be "held account­able and condemned" for shootingdown the provocateur plane.

From the beginning, WorkersVanguard proclaimed "Reagan's StoryStinks!" We declared and demonstratedthat KAL 007 was a U.S. war provoca­tion,' something that even independentbourgeois "experts" are now discover­ing. We found wide interest in ouranalysis, particularly among blackpeople in the U.S. who know to distrustanything the government tells them. Yetmuch of the reformist left was shame­lessly selling Reaganite war propagandawhile the U.S. used the Cold Warhysteria to install its nuclear first strikePershing 2 rockets in Europe. Nowsuddenly the Guardian (12 September)is eating its own words:

"The Guardian made a mistake last year

when it condemned the USSR forshooting down the [Korean Air LinesFlight Om] jetliner. That position wastaken in haste ... we should have beenbetter informed."

Some "mistake"! The editors claimthey were duped in a moment ofweakness by the hate-the-Russianscampaign. "Reagan administrationassertions" they say "were acceptedwithout question" by the major media... and by the Guardian. So for the lastyear these "independent radicals" havebeen trumpeting imperialist war propa­ganda while the "Trotskyites" told thetruth. Explain that one, John Trinkl!

The Guardian tries to pass off itsyear-later discovery of Americanresponsibility for the KAL affair as theresult of recent revelations by "peoplewith knowledge of U.S. military intelli-

gence matters." What crap! They pointto the presence of the RC-135 spyplanes, the vast U.S. electronic surveil­lance systems in the region, the evasivemaneuver made by the jetliner overSakhalin, etc. But most of these factswere known-at the time. A recent articlein the British military magazine DefenceA ttache and David Pearson's lengthyinvestigative piece in the Nation, whileadding some new elements, mainlyconfirm what we, and the Soviet newsagency TASS, said at the time.

The petty-bourgeois rad-libs aredriven into a frenzy by fear of Reagan,and lacking confidence in the workingclass, the only salvation they can see is toresuscitate the moribund popular frontwith the Democratic Party. But Mon­dale & Co. only have tacficaldifferenceswith Reagan in the drive to war againstthe Soviet Union. And when the chipsare down-as they were last fall-theDemocrats and their groveling campfollowers toe the Class line.

Now these "radicals" admit to aso-called "mistake" but only becausetheir tattered "left" image has been

continued on page 9

CWP: From Workers Viewggintto Jesse's Viewpoint THE LAST ~-"";";';';':;"';";;';;;;--.....J

WORKERS VIEWPOINT

W'ItIlEItS "N"'"Marxist Working-Clan Biweekly of the Spartaclst League of the U.S.EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: Noah Wilner

EDITOR: Jan NordenPRODUCTION MANAGER: Noah Wilner

CIRCULATION MANAGER: Darlene KamiuraEDITORIAL BOARD: Jon Brule, George Foster. Liz Gordon, James Robertson, Reuben Samuels,Joseph Seymour, Marjorie Stamberg (Closing editor for No. 363: Liz Gordon)

Workers Vanguard (USPS 098-770) published biweekly, skipping an issue in August and a week in December. bythe Spartacist Publishing Co .• 41 Warren Street, New York. NY 10007. Telephone: 732-7862 (Editorial), 732-7861(Business). Address all correspondence to: Box 1377, GPO. New York. NY 10116. Domestic subscriptions: $5.00/24issues. Second-class postage paid at New York, NY. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Workers Vanguard,Box 1377, GPO, New York. NY 10116.

Opinions expressed in signed articles Or letters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint.

current election choice, was JimmyCarter's vice president while govern­ment "infiltrators" were egging on,planning, participating in and coveringup for the Greensboro massacre. Andthe same July 4th special Democraticconvention issue of Workers Viewpointdropped its regular editorial statement:"Only socialism can save America." So.goodbye Marx and Lenin, hello Jesseand Fritz.

The liquidationism of the CWPreflects the broader disintegration of theAmerican Maoist movement which be­gan when Richard Nixon clinked glasseswith Chou En-lai in Peking's Great Hallof the Peoples as the U.S. imperialistswere carpet-bombing Hanoi. The crisiswithin the Maoist groups increased withthe deepening reactionary Washington/Peking alliance, marked by Chinesesupport for the South African invasionof Angola and China's role as U.S. eat'spaw in the bloody 1979 invasion ofVietnam. With the onset of the Reaganyears, the logic of the Maoists' bloc withthat most fanatical enemy of "Soviet(social) imperialism" was so devastatingthat the two largest U.S. Maoist groupsgave up the ghost. the RCP's BobAvakian running off to Paris andCPM L's Mike Klonsky quitting.

The group around Jerry Tung,based in New York's Chinatown, splitfrom Progressive Labor in '1969. forhard Maoism against PL's screwbalIStalinism-without-a-country. Later on,calIing themselves the-Workers View­point Organization. Tung's group ex­panded South and managed to recruitblack cadre moving leftward out of the'nationalist milieu. Following their"Death to the Klan" confrontations inNorth Carolina and the tragic events inGreensboro. the CWP swung sharply tothe right. looking for some "friendly"

continued on page 9

As~f thisi~ue?f the Workers Viewpoint, wearesuspendmgpublication indefinitely. InMay weshiftedfrom a weekly to a bi-weekly (every two weeks)schedule ~o that the st~ff could begin a process ofre-evaluatingthe paper s role and direction. The de­cisron to suspend publication altogether is taken soas ~o dev~te all our attention to this process. Sub­scnbers willreceive the equivalent of the remainderof their subscriptions - Editor.

daylight by the KKK/ Nazis in Greens­boro on 3 November 1979. While in thepast the organization had osciIlatedwidely from adventurist substitutionismto crass opportunism, after Greensborothey seemed to turn sharply to Demo­cratic Party politics. Workers View­point turned into an election rag forevery black Democrat from Mel King inBoston, Bill Murphy.In Baltimore toHarold Washington in Chicago. For thelast year they've thrown themselves intothe Jesse Jackson campaign, seeking tocapitalize on his popularity amongblacks. In order to seIl the black massesthe myth of the pot of gold at the end ofthe rainbow, they have systematicaIlycovered up for Jesse's strikebreaking,his anti-Asian protectionism, and nota­bly Jackson's embrace of George "Mr.Segregation" Wallace.

Yet as we wrote last winter, "Anyonewho wants to go 'all the way with J.J.'wiIl soon get rid of all the 'red' trappingsanyhow" ("Donkey Work for theDemocrats-CWP Caboose on theJesse Jackson Train," WV No. 347, 3February). It seems the CWP member­ship has come to the same conclusion.After all. if the party press is just amouthpiece for the Democrats, whybother'! (For that matter. if the partybranches are just local Jackson supportcommittees, who needs them either")This flagrant liquidationism culminatedat the CWP-organized "People's Con­vention" held at Laney College inOakland on the eve of the Democraticconvention in SF to work up an"alternative platform" to present tothisbourgeois party. It was here CWPchairman Jerry Tung called for the leftto work within the Democratic Partybecause "we can get funding from theDemocrats to sustain our struggles"(Guardian. 25 July).

Of course Meridale. the CWP's28 September 1984

are only the latest of numerous ex­Maoist .groups and tendencies (follow­ing Irwin Silber's Line of March,Klonsky's CPM L, the Guardian) whohave made their way back to theDemocratic Party of the Bay of Pigs andVietnam. The CWP's vehicle was theJesse Jackson campaign; thus it is quiteappropriate that the last issue ofWorkers Viewpoint contained a call forelecting Mondale.

The CWP is an organization which isbest known for its martyrs-the fiveleftist union organizers and civil rightsworkers viciously murdered in broad

No. 363

Communism and Religion

Marx recognized that the illusory sal­vation promisedby religion was inherent ina society based upon exploitation andoppression. The struggle for communismis the struggle to free mankind ofthe needfor religious solace.

Religious suffering isat the same time anexpression of real suffering and a protest

TROTSKY against real suffering. Religion is the sigh LENINof the oppressed creature, the sentiment of

a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of men, is a demand for their real

happiness. The call to abandon their illusions about their condition is a call toabandon a condition which requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore,the embryonic criticism of this vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

-Karl Marx, "Introduction to Contribution to the Critique ofHegel's Philosophy of Right" (1844)

"The Last Workers Viewpoint." Sosaid the Communist Workers Party, off­handedly announcing that it was closingdown its press. This laconic notice in theJuly 4-17 issue said that in May they hadshifted from a weekly to a biweekly "sothat the staff could begin a process of re­evaluating the paper's role and direc­tion." Having re-evaluated, they evi­dently decided to throw in the towel.The kindest expression we can think offor such a move is lightminded. Say acouple thousand people in this countrylook to them for leadership ... and theCWP just folds up shop. Actually, they

2 WORKERS VANGUARD

S.F. Protest Against South Africa Terror

"Break the Chains of Apartheid Slavery!"

Protesters outside South African Airways officeSeptember 19,

SAN FRANCISCO, September 19­"Smash apartheid, this is the hour!Black workers have got the power!"chanted 60 militant anti-apartheiddemonstrators here today. The Sparta­cist League and the Labor Black Leaguefor Social Defense called today's dem­onstration in front of the South AfricanAirways office in solidarity with mili­tant struggles being waged by SouthAfrican workers and youth in recentweeks and to oppose the murderousrepression that has been unleashed byBotha's homicidal cops and troops. Akey theme of the demonstration was theurgent need for international laborsolidarity with the anti-apartheid fight­ers. in the form of an international laborboycott of all cargo to and from SouthAfrica.

Standing by a large SL bannerreading "Smash Apartheid! For Work­ers Revolution!" Spartacist candidatesfor SF Board of Supervisors RichardBradley and Diana Coleman denouncedthe barbarous Botha regime and theanti-Soviet war drive that cements theWashington/Pretoria axis. Bradley,well known for having twice torn downthe Confederate flag of slavery andKKK racism that Democratic mayor"Dixie" Dianne Feinstein had flying inSF Civic Center, linked his actions tothe fight against race-terror internation­ally: "The reason why I climbed that 50­foot flagpole ... was because that Con­federate flag stands for the same thingthe government is promoting in SouthAfrica and the same thing the Reaganadministration along with DianneFeinstein is promoting here." Noting

that South Africa has become a havenfor anti-Communist Polish Solidarnoscemigres, he remarked: "No Russian evercalled me 'nigger'."

Both Bradley and Coleman lam­basted the Democratic Party, liberalwing of V.S. .imperialism, which hasnever wavered in supporting the apart­heid butchers as "free world" alliesagainst Communism. Coleman ad­dressed the liberal-backed Proposition Jon the SF ballot, which calls on the cityto divest itself of stocks in companieswith South African holdings. Coleman,whose speech is reprinted below, calledthis "nothing but a plea to liberalimperialists to act more 'morally' ... acruel hoax" since "capitalism puts

nothing before its profits." In counter­position to such reformist schemes,supported by fake-lefts like SocialistAction's supervisoral candidate SylviaWeinstein, the Spartacists calIed forhot-cargoing all South African cargo,strike action to force recognition of theblack trade unions and the struggleforworkers' rule from South Africa to the

. U.S.Peter Woolston, a member of the

General Executive Board of Interna­tional Longshoremen's and Warehouse­men's Union Local 6 and a spokesmanfor the Militant Caucus, hammeredhome the demonstration's urgent callfor labor action: "Right now thatcountry should be shut down tight.

Nothing should go in; nothing shouldcome out." Other speakers at the rallyincluded Guillermo Bustamante of theSpartacus Youth League, Victor Toroof the Chilean Tendencia Proletarialnsurreccional, a representative of theAlameda County Peace and FreedomParty, and Myra Owens for the LaborBlack League. Owens recalled last year'sSL/LBL demonstration at the same siteagainst the lynching of three heroicmilitants of the African National Con­gress. Today's protest ended with thesinging of the "Internationale," inmemory of-and vowing vengeancefor-the martyrs of apartheid terror.Smash the chains of apartheidslavery! •

Diana Coleman Kicks OffS.F. Election Campaign:

Workers Must~~Divest" the Bosses!

Vindictive Harassment ofSpartacist Candidate:

Hands Off Richard Bradley!

WV Photo

Richard Bradley, in Union Armyuniform, tears down Confederateflag.

stein, orchestrated, with her cops andthe feds, a scare campaign "predict­ing" violence at the DemocraticParty Convention, supposedly ema­nating from the tame liberals plan­ning demonstrations to lobby andpressure the Democrats. This effortto blame demonstrators in advancefor real cop and rightist violenceprominently cited the SpartacistLeague, in dispatches replayed from

continued OfJ page 9

SAN FRANCISCO, September 18­Richard Bradley, Spartacist candi­date for Supervisor, and a heroin black and working-class neighbor­hoods for having twice torn down theConfederate flag in SF Civic Centerlast April, has been subjected tovicious and illegal racist harassmentby the SF cops. On September 10,Bradley, a black man, was driving hisemployer's BM W when he was pulIedover by a patrol car. When the copsrealized who they had in their racistdragnet, one cop said "So, you'reRichard Bradley" and the other copstarted laughing. Bradley wasspread-eagled and searched and hiscar minutely gone over, with noreason ever being offered. Thisoccurred in the vicinity of the city'sNorthern Station whose cops hadarrested Bradley when he tore downthe Dixie flag of slavery and Klanterror. Bradley's trial for the "crime"of ripping down Mayor DianneFeinstein's official display of racismended in a hung jury; then all chargeswere dropped. The cops and the restof the racists haven't forgotten.

This incident takes place in thesinister context of Reagan's "terror"­scare campaign to intimidate thepopulace and repress political oppo­sition. The Democrats have em­braced this new McCarthyism evento their own detriment. The Demo­cratic mayor, "Dixie" Dianne Fein-

We're here today in solidarity withour brothersand sisters in South Africawho are fighting apartheid. Protestsagainst the new constitution and thesham elections were met with massive

. repression by the police and army. Butthe re-emergence ofclass struggle, led bythe black proletariat, poses the realpossibility of workers revolutionthrough smashing apartheid.

We in this country had betterunderstand that the vicious racistregime in South Africa is one ofWashington's closestallies in the.anti­Soviet war drive. When the imperjalistrulers of this country talk about the"free world" what they mean is SouthAfrica! South Africa is a mainstay,along with the Zionist butchers in Israel,of V.S. imperialism's global counterrev­olutionary crusade. Reagan's war drive,which aims at giving decaying capital­ism a new lease on life through overturn­ing the gains of the Russian Revolution,threatens to destroy the world throughnuclear holocaust. As Trotskyists, westand for unconditional military defenseof the Soviet V nion and its collectiveplanned economy from imperialism,despite the bureaucratic degenerationwhich threatens those gains. And weunderstand that despite differences overtiming and tactics, the anti-Soviet wardrive is a bipartisan effort-Democratic

continued on page 9

r­and rJ

Will

Diana Coleman

The following' is a speech by DianaColeman. Spartacist candidate for SFBoard of Supervisors. at a demonstra­tion in solidarity with South Africanblack workers and youth battlingapartheid terror. Thisprotest took placeat the South African Airways office inSan Francisco on September 19.

28 SEPTEMBER 1984 3

British Spartacists IntroduceWa llS

REPRINTED FROMWORKERS HAMMER NO. 61.

. SEPTEMBER 1984

The eighth national conference of theSpartacist League/ Britain, meeting inLondon in mid-August, voted to changethe name of our monthly newspaperSpartacist Britain. Following a meetingof our newly elected Central Committeeand subsequent consultation it wasresolved to rename the paper WorkersHammer.

Through more than six years ofpublication and sixty numbers, Sparta­cist Britain has addressed the key issuesof domestic and international politics

~m~WSl 1IIt!!!!l.·lIIIIIl!I! ~oclst &no!fJ!!!

The rebirth of BritishTrotskyism

First issue announces formation ofSpartacist League/Britain in 1978.

from the standpoint of Marxism. FromNo. I announcing "The rebirth ofBritish Trotskyism" up to the recentextensive coverage of the miners' heroicbattle, it has been an increasinglyeffective collective organiser and tool ofintervention for our organisation. Andin recent months it has reached signifi­cantly broader layers of the workingclass than ever before.

We have chosen the name WorkersHammer in recognition of our tasks infighting to be the nucleus of a revolu­tionary workers party. The hammer isan instrument for change: for reshapingand constructing through force of

'human action. The worker's hammerwas joined with the peasant's sickle asthe symbol of the Russian Revolution of1917, of the new Soviet state and ofCommunist parties throughout theworld in the early years of the Commu­nist International. The figure 4 in ournew masthead insignia symbolises ourfight to reforge the Fourth Internation­al, founded by Leon Trotsky in 1938 tocontinue the fight for world revolutionin the face of the Cornintern's Stalinistdegeneration.

Spartacist Britain, which has identi­fied us for sixty issues as the Britishsection of the international Spartacisttendency, tends to sound like a spin-offpress. Further, it does not adequatelyreflect the fighting history of the Britishworking class or our goal of forgingcommunist leadership for this class.

This country is in a period of deep­going class struggle, and we want ourpress to be expressly and obviously a

WorkersHammer

points theway forward

as six-monthstrike by

heroic minersconvulsesThatcher's

Britain.

champion of the proletariat. We want itto be bold, uncompromisingly Soviet­defencist in the face of the imperialistwar drive, forthrightly against thesmarmy English establishment centredon the Royal Family and Westminster,and sharply counterposed to the prevail­ing, narrow, parochial Labourite mushof the British so-called left.

What we did not want in our choice ofname was the pedestrian, look-and­sound-alike quality of most British leftpapers, reflecting their opportunist pol­itics and appetites. We stand in the foot­steps of the Russian Bolsheviks, of theearly Trotskyists, of the World War IGerman revolutionary internationalistSpartakusbund (Spartacus League),from whom our organisation proudlytakes its name. And we draw inspiration

as well from past great revolutionarieson this island, from Cromwell to theChartists to John Maclean. It wasMaclean, leader of the Clydeside prole­tariat.in its historic revolutionary battlesduring and following World War I, whosummed up the aims which the Sparta­cist League and our Workers Hammeruphold today:

"We witness today what all Marxistsexpected, the capitalist class of theworld and their Governments joinedtogether in a most vigorously' activeattempt to crush Bolshevism in Russiaand Spartacism in Germany. Bolshe­vism. by the way. is Socialism trium­phant. and Spartacism is Socialism inprocess of achieving triumph. This is theclass war on an international basis, aClass War that must and will be foughtout to the logical conclusion-s-theextinction of capitalism everywhere."

-The Call. 23 January 1919_

Miss Moral Majority 1984

CORRECTIONS

~1~/\llli~\

flm~1IIIIwI

cr~~,,-~!

She ain't no Vanessa.

\iCU20M\SSAMfRtCA PA6{ANT

? 4' • ~ It

Brigham Young declared that blacks are"the race of Cain" and any "seedmixing" (miscegenation) deserves"death on the spot." But that's "MissAmerica" in the Reagan years for you,another grotesque and sick example ofdeadly rot of this racist society.

When the first black Miss Americawas viciously attacked by organizers ofthe Miss America pageant racket afterPenthouse published some sexy nudephotos of her and a white womantogether, we said "Viva Vanessa!" Theattack on Vanessa was anti-sex, anti­woman and anti-black, and we stated,"It's too bad Miss Williams didn'tdecide to tough it out and refuse toresign. Those Penthouse pictures do alot more for her and 'American woman­hood' than anything that's happened inAtlantic City" (WVNo. 360, 3 August).This whirlwind of sanctimonious hypoc­risy was so repulsive that even TV Guidepublished an article decrying the self­righteous "Mrs. Grundys" who "public­Iy... denounce our carnal appetites asinstruments of the devil" while privatelyreveling in the "juicy little scandal."

To quote a tongue-in-cheek letterwriter commenting on complaintsagainst Sports Illustrated's annualbathing suit issue: "If god wantedwomen to run around naked, theywould have been born that way.".

In that same issue, a typographi­cal' error in the article "N icaragua:CIA Mercenaries Blown Away"listed eleven people killed in theSeptember I contra terror-bombingraid. The correct figure is seven. Andthe article"Auto Workers: Strike theBig 3!" should have said that VincentChin was bludgeoned to death by aChrysler foreman and his stepson(and not nephew, as we incorrectlystated).

more, she's against smoking, drinking,gambling, premarital sex, the EqualRights Amendment and abortion. "I amvery much in support of PresidentReagan," she added (Washington Post,17 September). What a surprise.

Of course, "Miss America" hasalways appealed to the most prurient,genuinely obscene aspects of Puritan­ism, but this time the reactionaryreligious aspects were explicit. TheMormons not only excommunicated awoman for supporting the Equal RightsAmendment, but also kicked out a malemember for trying to ordain a blackman as a minister. Mormon founder

We are informed by a spokesmanfor the Pan-Africanist Congress thatin our article, "Anti-Apartheid Pro­test at South African Embassy" ( WVNo. 362, 14 September), he wasmisquoted as advocating '.'culturalautonomy." He called instead for theright of self-determination for SouthAfrican blacks and equated "culturalautonomy" with the apartheid re­gime's brutal schemes of "separatedevelopment." Our apologies.

"Are you now, or have you ever been... naked?" was the question of the yearfor the new 1985 Miss America. Shar­lene Wells, the daughter of a Salt LakeCity Mormon minister, won handsdown. Wells, who absolutely denies anynude skeletons in her closet, plays theharp and collects bars of soap. And justto keep it really clean she appearedbefore the judges in what they called a"Utah" swimsuit (double-lined, with nolow-eut top or high-cut legs). Thejudges"were looking for someone like me," shesaid. Boy, were they. This MissMormon/ Moral Majority says "I followthe flag with my whole body." Further-

Here ·She Comes.._

4 WORKERS VANGUARD

Auto Workers: Rip It Up!

UAW members on the picket lines at Van Nuys, California.

SPARTACIST LEAGUE/ U.S. LOCAL DIRECTORYNational Office Cleveland New YorkBox 1377. GPO Box 91037 Box 444New York,.NY 10116 Cleveland, OH 44101 Canal Street Station(212) 732-7860 (216) 621-5138 New York, NY 10013

(212) 267-1025Ann Arbor

Detroit Norfolkc/o SYLP.O. Box 8364 Box 32717 Box 1972, Main P.O.

Ann Arbor. MI 48107 Detroit, MI ·48232 Norfolk. VA 23501(313) 961-1680

OaklandAtlanta p.o. Box 32552Box 4012 Los Angeles Oakland, CA 94604Atlanta. GA 30302 Box 29574 (415) 835-1535

Los Feliz StationBoston Los Angeles, CA 90029 San FranciscoBox 840. Central Station (213) 384-9716 Box 5712Cambridge. MA 02139 San Francisco, CA 94101(617) 492-3928 .(415) 863-6963

MadisonChicago c/o·SYL Washington, D.C.Box 6441, Main P.O. Box 2074 P.O. Box 75073Chicago, IL 60680 Madison. WI 53701 Washington. D.C. 20013(312) 663-0719 (608) 257-8625 (202) 636-3537

TorontoBox 7198. Station AToronto, Ontario M5W lX8(416) 593-4138

spewing racist poison against Japaneseworkers, the UAW bureaucracy isbeating the drums of trade war for theAmerican bosses. Vituperating against"outsourcing" is Bieber-talk forprotectionism-the "solution" of theMondale Democrats. They seek toshore up auto and steel through tariffs,quotas and "content" laws, while arm­ing U.S. imperialism to the teeth withconventional as well as nuclear weap­ons. In the current line-up, Bieber andLee lacocca, who sold most of Chrys­ler's overseas manufacturing plants, areprotectionist, while GM and Ford. withtheir "captive" imports, joint venturesand ownership of Japanese auto com­panies, are opposed to it. But theprogram of both sides to "rationalize"the American auto industry is speedup,layoffs and union-busting.

Far from "saving jobs" the UAWbureaucracy's racist protectionismchains auto workers to their enemywhile whipping up hysteria againstforeign workers, the hysteria whichmurdered Chinese American VincentChin in Detroit. And black workers,including auto workers, will be primevictims of thisjingoist campaign. It's theKu Klux Klan terrorists who wrapthemselves in the red, white and bluecalling for war against "foreigners."This chauvinist poison, coupled withyears of beating back the UAW rankswith givebacks and layoffs, gave rise toresignation on the picket lines. It alsofostered anti-communism, which onlyfeeds the bipartisan anti-Soviet wardrive, and its domestic reflection inReagan's class war on blacks and labor.

Jobs for the hundreds of thousands ofauto workers thrown on the street in thelast five years, and for the Big 3'sintended future victims, will only comethrough a fight against capitalism whichdrives out the pro-eompany UAWmisleaders and returns the union to themembership. By forging an alliancebetween the plants and the ghettomasses in cities like Detroit, a class­struggle leadership can fight for jobs forall! For 30 hours work for 40 hourspay-a sliding scale of wages and hours!Bieber wants GM workers to eat th iscontract to keep things quiet forMondale. We say: screw Mondale!Defense of blacks and labor meanssmashing the bureaucratic pro­capitalist chains which tie the unions tothe Democratic Party. A class-struggleworkers party must be forged which canrip industry out of the hands of a dyingcapitalism and create a rational plannedeconomy under a workers government,with jobs for all. •

AP

TROTSKYIST LEAGUE 1

OF CANADA

Don't Buy Protectionist Poison!

Meanwhile, after years of milking theindustry dry for profits and letting theplants go to hell, the Big'3 now facesuperior competition from their capital­ist rivals in Japan and Europe. That'swhat these auto negotiations areabout-the company cops who head theUAW have jumped to the defense of"their" bosses with screams for protec­tion of theU .S. auto industry's profits.

Wrapping themselves in the flag, withcries of "Remember Pearl Harbor!" and

talk of "job security" coming from thegang that made damn sure GM, Fordand Chrysler could quietly close plantafter plant-from Dodge Main toFlatrock to South Gate and Mahwah.And they have been well paid for theirtreachery-Woodcock got the job ofambassador to Peking, Fraser got hisseat on the Chrysler board.

For four decades, the UAW bureauc­racy, consolidated by Walter Reuther

and hardened through the purges of thereds who led the class battles which gavebirth to the union, has been theideological leader of the American labormovement, binding the working class toclass collaboration through the Demo­cratic Party. From the mobilization ofwar production in World War II,through the postwar anti-communistpurges to the shackling of civil rightsprotests, the UAW bureaucrats havebeen the capitalists' political policemenat home and abroad.

Phony StrikeAcross the country Bieber tried to

take down picket lines as fast as theywent up. A local official in Syracuse,New York was tongue-lashed for pullinghis local out when the contract expired.By the afternoon shift Bieber had themback in the plant. When the deadlinepassed on Friday night at Lordstown,Ohio local officers kept passing the hotpotato of who would tell the workersthat they were not among the targetplants and would have to keep working.In Flint, Buick was only partially struck,and strikers fumed while V-8 and MetalFab continued to work next door topicket lines at Truck.. At the Van Nuys, California assembly

plant, G M workers voted overwhelm­ingly on Tuesday, September 18 to stayout after the International tried to whipthem back to work and finish theproduction of'84 models, under viciousspeedup and harassment. And afterBieber's sellout pact was announced,Van Nuys was the only plant where thepicket lines stayed up. Despite thetreachery of the UAW bureaucracy,picketers at some G M plants wereitching to fight. "What are we strikingfor-this is bullshit, only 20 plants out,"a black worker at Pontiac Truck andBus bitterly complained. Another toldWV, "It's got to start somewhere, ,why.not right here? Auto is the leader of theunions, the others will go the way wedo."

The givebacks and union-busting ofthe '80s began with auto. Since theChrysler "bailout" five years ago,300,000 UAW members, over 20 percentof the union, have been chopped. Thiswas Carter/Mondale's supposed aid toauto workers-foisted on them byUAW misleader Doug Fraser-a bail­out for the bosses, brutal wage cuts andlayoffs for the workers. What a joke:

it out of the COLA! What about thebillions Doug Fraser, Bieber & Co.forked over to the Big 3 in the last fiveyears? No wonder GM veep Warrencrowed that "We come out of thesenegotiations in a better competitiveposition than we went in."

replaced by a robot, and if there is anymoney left, you give up any protectionon job descriptions and seniority rightsfor job bidding and shift preference.

For those left in the plants, there's a1.3 percent wage increase for themajority .of assembly line workers thefirst year, with nothing in wages for therest of the contract, only one-time two­bit payments based on company profits.And even this is being paid for by taking

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Labor's Gotta PlayHardball to Win!

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Guest Speaker: Kevin QuirkMember, ATU Local 241

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In a "strike" that only the Wall StreetJournal could love, United Auto Work­ers tops pulled out a mere 13of 147GMlocals across the country when thecontract expired September 14. WithGeneral Motors sitting on profits ofover six billion dollars, now isthe timeto fight! But for UAW ·president OwenBieber ir was an "informational strike"as he handed out back-to-work orderslike some company-owned judge hand­ing out strikebreaking injunctions. Autoworkers have got G M over a barrel, andBieber and his gang are trying to sell acontract that looks like it was written byReagan. UAW members: tear up thiscrap and throw it back in G M's face witha real auto strike! GM and the rest of theBig 3, including Chrysler, should be shutdown tight!

The day Bieber announced theagreement, he was echoed by UnitedMine Workers president Rich Trumka,who pointing to his Walter Mondalewristwatch announced that for the firsttime in 20 years coal miners would makeit under the wire and settle without astrike. Auto workers and coal minershave the power to lead labor insmashing the last five years ofgivebacksand union-busting. But it will take ahard political fight, first against thegiveback artists in "Sacrifice House,"who can't even strike one company. ForBieber & Co. it's "elect Mondale, fightthe Japanese." For auto workers, thisMondale contract is the kiss of death.

This contract is a sellout that rivalsFraser's worst givebacks! The 24 Sep­tember Wall Street Journal, mouthpieceof finance capital, gloated over thesettlement: "The old saw that what'sgood for General Motors is good for thecountry may turn out to be true in thecase of the giant auto maker's new pactwith the United Auto Workers." Timemagazine called the settlement "avictory for GM," and worried that itmight be rejected by GM workers. Forgood reason-the total pay increasefalls below the average of major unionsettlements in the U.S. and amounts tobarely half the 4-5 percent wage hikereceived by Japanese auto workers thisyear!..

The Journal article crowed: "It isespecially good because of the produc­tivity improvements that G M couldachieve under the pact. In internaldocuments that leaked out earlier thisyear, GM indicated that it hopes toreduce its hourly work force by 60,000to 120,000 workers in the nexttwoyears." The Journal quoted an MITauto industry expert who concluded,"I n essence, G M has paid a billion for anunlimited license to automate andoutsource."

This contract is a monster giveback,designed to split the union and greasethe skids for GM's layoffs. Bieber'sbillion dollar "job security" fund(spread over six years) excludes thoselaid off by plant closings and productioncutbacks, as well as the hundreds ofthousands still on the street from pastlayoffs. If GM says you are being

28 SEPTEMBER 1984 5

Rad-Lrb Nonsense Over Skulls From South Africa• •

n I- VO UIon --•

aClsm

Wide World

, NY Times

Karl Marx (top) and Charles Darwin.Marx wrote to Engels in 1869 thatDarwin's On the Origin of ~p-ecies

"contains the basis in natural historyfor our view."

her kind-hominids who walked up­right three and a half million years agoand so had gone beyond their apeancestors but were not yet really humanlike our own genus, Homo-then gethold of the book Lucy by herdiscovererDonald Johanson and Maitland Edey.The other name we want to give you isthat of Stephen Jay Gould, an enor­mously intellectually powerful biologistwho thinks dialectically and writescharmingly. He has a column in NaturalHistory magazine, which you cansubscribe to by becoming a member ofthe American Museum of NaturalHistory. Collections of these essays willbe found in his books Ever SinceDarwin, The Panda's Thumh and Hen'sTeeth and Horse's Toes. A deeperexplanation of his view of evolution isfound in Ontogeny and Phylogeny, Heis also-not just coincidentally-to ourknowledge the most profound theoreti­cian of anti-racism alive in this country.If you want the real hard-core stuff,based on the most rigorous science, readhis book The Mismeasure of Man.

We're sure our readers share ourthirst for knowledge of what reallymakes us tick and for insight into man'shistorically evolved role in the world.The fascinating developments in thestudy of human evolution have impor­tant implications for Marxists. And it'sfun. "Ancestors" at the Museum ofNatural History was perhaps the mostextraordinary family reunion ever heldon the face of the earth. We went ape .•

the fact that one or more populations ofAustralopithecus africanus, or later oneor more populations of the robustusline, found the region a nice place to livetwo million or so years ago.

But wait-could there be another,undeclared motivation for Rev. Foster& Co.'s seemingly impotent gesture?When you dig up the real evidence ofwhat makes us what we are, what comescrashing down with a great thud is notonly those evil myths of racial superiori­ty. So does Creationism, every funda­mentalist preacher's bread and butter.(With no god that created us all, whoneeds his messengers on earth? By theway, as far as we know, South Africa,Iran and the U.S. are the only countriesin the world that countenance Creation­ism in their official school texts.)

This is pretty fundamental stuff. Theright to know is central to every strugglefor social justice, bar none. In the '70sNew Left in general, Progressive LaborParty in particular, and everywhere thatthe hard reality of the class struggle doesnot make itself felt, the philistines canget away for a while with stupidlydeclaring along with PL's Milt Rosenthat "all knowledge serves the rulingclass." Wanna bet? Karl Marx said thatignorance never did anybody any good,and that's the truth.

We could go on at great length aboutthe lessons of "Ancestors"-aboutPeking man and Java man and Lucy.Not to mention Fred (Engels) whoalready in the 19th century saw theprime importance of upright posture,with its freeing of the hands for tool­making and labor, in the developmentof humankind as we know it ("The PartPlayed by Labor in the Transition fromApe to Man," written in 1876, publishedposthumously in 1896). We hope ourjournal WOII/en and Revolution willconsider the subject for an upcomingissue. Meanwhile we can recommendsome authors highly worthy of yourattention.

If you want to know about Lucy and

Australop-ithecus robustus, one of the fossil skulls rad-Iibs would haveexcluded from Natural History Museum's once-in-a-Iifetime family reunion.He's neither ape nor human, but that's not why he's not invited. He's gUilty ofbeing "South African"!

of evidence included therein happenedto come from within the boundaries ofthe present racist South African state,the militant know-nothingists wouldhave censored the exhibit and penalizedits organizers. In fact, there is a racistflavor to some of the exhibit's ancillarymaterial. The exhibitors have suppliedimaginative reconstructions of thevarious"Ancestors," and the earlier thefossils, the hairier and more Negroid arethe artists' reconstructions of what thesepeople might have looked like. But thebones speak for themselves.

The so-named "Rev." WendellFoster, black city councilman from theBronx, introduced two bills before thatbody. One-demanded that the museumremove the "South African" fossils fromits exhibit, while the other called forcutting off city financial aid to anyinstitution (read: museum) havingbusiness, cultural or athletic exchangeswith South Africa.'

Taken at face value, as a supposed"blow" against apartheid, this strategycan only be characterized as australo­pithecine in intelligence. (To call itNeanderthal would be to grievouslyinsult what were most likely our fellow,although early-and equally canny­HOII/o sapiens.) It's not only ironic, it'smoronic, Skulls are not Krugerrands!Johannesburg can claim no credit for

Single Issue $.50 (32 pages); Subscription $2/4 issuesMake checks payable/mail to: Spartacist Publishing Co.,Box 137] GPO, New York, NY 10116

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• In Honor of the Women of the Paris Commune• Hamburg: Women Spark Shipyard Occupation• Labor Black Leagues Formed

• Silkwood: A Review• Fight the New McCarthyism!• Women and Permanent Revolution in China (part Two)

• Something About Incest

\\To",'-" and~Re"olutj9D -~~____ , __' - -- ---; . ,-'-'.,:'.0- _

By Elizabeth Jannar

'1984 marks the 125th anniversary ofDarwin's publishing of On the Origin ofSpecies but the battle for a materialistunderstanding of our world and humansociety is, if anything, heating up allover again. The most fascinating,enlightening-and irrefutable-dem­onstration of what Darwin called"descent with modification" (the word"evolution" can, and has, been usedwrongly to imply "progress" towardsome lofty ideal-invariably white andmale) is an unprecedented collection ofprimate fossils which was exhibited lastspring and summer at the AmericanMuseum of Natural History in NewYork. The" Ancestors" exhibit broughttogether for the first time in history fourmillion years of our fossilized fore­bears-an education in itself.

This threatens some people. In Berlinof 1936, a floodlight like the "Ances­tors" exhibit-illuminating the stygiandarkness of Nazi-imposed ignoranceand its myth of Aryan racial superiorityby demonstrating that all of us togetherare part of the human race, good orbad-would promptly have landed theexhibit's organizers in a concentrationcamp for showing that Adolf Hitler andhis bully-boys, just like all the rest of us,are descended from early apes. The veryexistence of this remarkable fossilrecord is the most powerful, concreteproof of the oneness of humanity.

And so it was particularly ironic that,in the name of anti-apartheid, this truly

No fake. Eclipsed by Piltdownfor decades, Taung Babyin South Africa in 1924 is now rec­ognized as 2-million-year-old Aus­tralo~ithecus africanus youngster.

liberating exhibit came under attackfrom forces akin to those that broughtyou the Scopes Monkey Trial, exceptthis time in left/liberal drag. Ostensiblybecause some of the most crucial pieces

6 WORKERS VANGUARD

Frederick Engels.

The Taung Baby and the"Piltdown Man"

Engels and EvolutionBy Alice Grange

~Senzer/Newsweek

Stephen Jay Gould and friends.

Engels considers three essential fea­tures of human evolution: speech, a

with its molars carefully filed down andotherwise suitably altered. Both wereonly about 500 years old. How embar­rassing for the English scientists-andfor the French Jesuit priest and cultfigure Teilhard de Chardin who appearsinextricably enmeshed in the hoax.Belatedly, the edifice of phony "objec­tivity" crumbled and the South AfricanAustralopithecus fossils assumed their.rightful role in the evolutionary record.

Recent' finds of Australopithecus ineastern Africa, including the skeletonnamed Lucy, confirm this conclusion:our hominid ancestors first walkedupright, while the brain remained smalland apelike. It was cultural bias that hadled the scientific establishment to drawthe wrong conclusion of cerebral prima­cy. Yet as far back as 1876, FrederickEngels, approaching the subject on thebasis of dialectical materialism, was ableto expose this conceit and anticipatepresent scientific discoveries by acentury. Stephen Jay Gould comments,in his book Ever Since Darwin (W.W.Norton & Company, lnc., 1979), onEngels' essay "The Part Played byLabor in the Transition from Ape toMan." We publish some excerpts fromGould's book below:

One of the exquisite ironies of thecontroversy surrounding the NaturalHistory Museum's "Ancestors" exhibitis that one of the "South African" skullsthe leftl liberals would have excluded isthe Taung Baby itself. Discovered byRaymond Dart in 1924, it was the firstspecimen ever uncovered of a wholenew, more primitive and previouslyunknown hominid genus, Australo­pithecus. The British paleoanthropolog­ical "establishment," for its own rea­sons, remained convinced it was nomore than an extinct ape. For decadesthe lords of British anthropologyrefused to acknowledge this importantfind as an early hominid. Why?

Between the year 1856, when the firstNeanderthal remains were found, andthe time of the Taung discovery, fossilfinds in Europe and Asia (includingJava, Peking and Heidelberg man, allexamples of Homo erectus, and theHomo sapiens Cro-Magnon) werewhetting the appetites of paleoanthro­pologists everywhere to uncover and layclaim to the sought-after "missing link."Presented with a candidate for "oldestman" on their own national soil, theleading British paleoanthropologists in1912 had leaped upon the so-called"Piltdown Man." It had going for it,among other things, the blessing ofbeing an Englishman. Moreover,though dentition and jaw structure were

more ape-like than any specimen foundso far, the skull flatteringly showed amuch greater cranial capacity than anyof the specimens from elsewhere. Nevermind that this feature was in flatcontradiction to the conclusions beingdrawn from the discoveries then pour­ing in from the Chinese sites. Piltdownwas accepted because it was oh-so­comforting to believe that our most"noble" feature, the brain, should befound in relatively abundant quantity(even if one had to concede a more ape­like face) on the first Englishman. Withsimilar fatuous reasoning it was foundnatural that 'peking man, not being ofthe white race, should have a brain onlytwo-thirds the size of "Piltdown Man."The Piltdown "fossil" was celebrated asthe crown jewel of the benighted Englishscientific establishment because it pur­ported to show them what they wantedto see: a large-brained progenitor,conveniently found in England. Whatthe strictures of racist imperialism·demanded, they saw-for they owedtheir positions to it.

Not until the 1950s was the plaintruth acknowledged. Piltdown's renownturned to embarrassment and thesubject was hurriedly buried when the"fossil" was shown to be a readilyrecognizable concoction of a modernupper human cranium artfully stainedto match the lower jaw of an orangutan

* * * * *

large brain, and upright posture. Heargues that the first step must have beena descent from the trees with subsequentevolution to upright posture by ourground-dwelling ancestors. "These apeswhen moving on level ground began todrop the habit of using their hands andto adopt a more and more erect gait.This was the decisive step in thetransition from ape to man." Uprightposture freed the hand for using tools(labor, in Engels's terminology); in­creased intelligence and speech camelater.

"Thus the hand is not only the organ oflabor, it is also the product of labor.Only by labor. by adaptation to evernew operations ... by the ever-renewedemployment of these inherited improve­ments in new, more and more compli­cated operations, has the human handattained the high degree of perfectionthat has enabled it to conjure into beingthe pictures of Raphael. the statues ofThorwaldsen, the music of Paganini."

... The importance of Engels's essay lies,not inits substantive conclusions, but inits trenchant political analysis of whyWestern science was so hung up on thea priori assertion of cerebral primacy.

As humans learned to master theirmaterial surroundings, Engels argues,other skills were added to primitivehunting-agriculture, spinning, pot­tery, navigation, arts and sciences, law

continued on page 9

Liberal Moralists Can't Fight Apartheid

Black Workers Will Smash South African Racist Rule!The protest against the Museum of

Natural History's "Ancestors" exhibitis an especially silly example of therad-lib campaign to boycott all thingsSouth African, from Krugerrands to.sardines to the innocuous musical fpi .Tombi. In particular, liberals appeal tothe universal outrage against apart­heid racism in demanding that col­leges and other institutions divest theirstocks and bonds of any corporationsoperating in South Africa. The onlyeffect of such schemes is to producemore business for Wall Street stock­brokers as they shuffle investorportfolios.

Of course, we protest against thegenuine representatives of SouthAfrican racist rule. The all-white"national" rugby team, the Spring­boks, for example, serve as semi­official ambassadors of the apartheidstate. When the Springboks made theirfirst-ever tour of the U.S. in 1981, rightafter South Africa had attackedAngola. we wrote:

"The Springboks tour provides animportant opportunity for massiveprotests against the U.S./South Afri­ca Cold War axis. By driving theSouth African 'national' team out ofthe country. militants can demon­strate support to the guerrilla fightersof SWAPO. to the Angolan andCuban soldiers and Russian advisers

28 SEPTEMBER 1984

now battling racist imperialism inAfrica."

-"Drive Springboks Out!" WVNo. 288, I I September 198I

At the same time, we do not treat allwhite South African athletes as racistpariahs to be barred from internation­al competition. The Afrikaner heavy­weight boxer Gerrie Coetzee, forexample, has publicly spoken outagainst apartheid and has sponsoredand worked with young black athletes.

What's wrong with the rad-lib"boycott everything South African"campaign is not just that it's stupid,indiscriminate and ineffectual, butthat implicitly it prettifies Americanimperialism. Are the Reagans andRockefellers more humane, moredemocratic than the Bothas andOppenheirners? Are the U.S. rulerslesser enemies of humanity? SouthAfrica is ajunior partner of Americanimperialism. In their wildest ambitionsthe rulers in Pretoria seek to dominateand exploit the surrounding blackAfrican states. The masters of theWhite House and Pentagon are pre­pared to destroy all of mankind todefend capitalism ("the free world")against Communism. The main enemyis at home!

The liberal moralists who want toboycott everything South Africanhave no understanding at all how to

WV PhotoSpartacists protest racist terror inSouth Africa.

shatter white racist rule over 20 millionblack toilers. South African capital­ism's increasing dependence on blacklabor is the Achilles' heel of the entireapartheid system. Witness the explo­sive growth of black trade unions in

recent years and the gold miners' revoltagainst murderous police-state repres­sion. A recent survey conducted by areputable liberal sociologist indicatedthat 75 percent of black South Africanfactory workers oppose divestment asharmful to their economic interests(New York Times, 23 September).Real, not bogus, solidarity demandsthat the American and West Europeantrade-union movements force multina­tionals operating in South Africa (likeFord and G M) to recognize blackunions and to abolish the color bar andall racist practices. In the presentemergency, urgent international laboraction can provide powerful aid to theblack masses rising up against their.apartheid oppressors. That, not divest­ment and cultural boycotts, will bringthe day of reckoning for South Africa'sracist rulers much closer.

Under a communist vanguard party.South Africa's black proletariat will bethe gravedigger of apartheid capital­ism, giving rise to a black-centeredworkers and peasants government.Committed to this perspective, we donot want to cut South Africa off fromthe rest of humanity but just theopposite. We seek to integrate theforces in South Africa strugglingagainst apartheid into the worldsocialist revolution.

7

Shockley PreachesNazi Race "Theories"

----,IIIIIIII

UPIWilliam Shockley, an ideologue forracist terror.great XYZ debate, or the attempt toexplain urban riots by diseased neurolo­gy of rioters." But here we are in theReagan years and such racist claptrap isseriously debated in court. Historian C.Yann Woodward has pointed to thecorrelation between the theories of the"natural inferiority" of blacks with theimposition of Jim Crow laws in theSouth.

Shockley had sought the Atlanta trialin order to broadcast and popularize hisdangerous theories of racial inferiority."It would be worth everything, even if Idon't get one cent," he said. "Mycomplaint is that people have not takenme seriously, you see?" (WashingtonPost, 12 September). When the juryawarded him one lousy buck, however,he complained bitterly: "The Constitu­tion has not in any way been punishedfor libel. ..." Shockley is an "ideologue"for fascist terror. The nightridinglynchers, cross burners and bombersmust be smashed through massivemobilizations of labor/black power. Itwill take victorious socialist revolutionto sweep away this murderous racistfilth.•

WEEK TWOTOTALS

Local Quota Week %(In points) Two

Atlanta 120 50 42Boston 350 193';' 55Chicago 280 125V, 45Cleveland 170 97 57Detroit 160 42'/, 27Los Angeles 110 32 29New York 900 226 25Oakland 500· 214';' 43

San Francisco 250 112 45WaShington, D.C. 120 72 60

National totals 2,960 1,165 39

WV Photo

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did this stuff. At what is now called theCenter for Disease Control in Atlanta,syphilis experiments were carried out onblacks in Tuskegee County, Alabamafor over 40 years, involving 400 share­croppers and day laborers to determinethe effects of untreated syphilis. Theexperiment ended only in 1972,30 yearsafter a cure for syphilis had been found.These men were told they had "badblood"~"bad blood," "bad genes."

In the climate of Reagan's America,opponents of this racist garbage whotestified for the defense were viciouslyred-baited. When prominent anthropol­ogist Ashley Montagu appeared incourt, Shockley's attorney MurraySilver denounced Montagu as a Com­munist for writing in Man's MostDangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race( 1942) of the Soviet Union as a model ofhow to deal with nationalities and races.Silver told the jury not to believeProfessor Mehler because he was "left­handed," "liberal" and "anti-Reagan"!When the defense argued that theNational Academy of Sciences refusedto touch Shockley's "research," helikened the academy to the Russiangeneticist Lysenko, who under Stalinhad his opponents banished to Siberia.

In his 1981 book, The Mismeasure ofMan, noted biologist Stephen, JayGould dismissed these crackpot biologi­cal determinists: "Who even remembersthe hot topics of ten years ago: Shock­ley's proposals for reimbursing volun­tarily sterilized individuals according totheir number of IQ points below 100, the

-----------------------------------

r---

Nazi doctorstest for "pureAryans."Those labeled"geneticallyinferior" weresterilized.

it over. During the last month, twoAtlanta abortion clinics have beenbombed. To the Birmingham churchbombers and lynchers the Shockley planis no "thinking exercise," as he likes to

.call it. They want to carry it out, throughmurder if necessary.

Shockley and his fellow travelerArthur Jensen maintain that 85 percentof American blacks fall below the meanof "white intelligence" and qualify forhis "voluntary bonus sterilization plan"in which people with IQs below 100would be bribed to undergo steriliza-

tion. He also helped set up (andcontributed to) a sperm bank matchingNobel Prize winning donors with highIQ recipients, alleging that some of hisown children (one of whom is aphysicist) are genetically inferior be­cause his first wife was allegedly not asintelligent as he. However, all is notvoluntary in Shockley's "brave new(Aryan) world." He also proposes a"voluntary-compulsion" plan targetingthose with genetically transmitted dis­eases such as sickle-cell anemia, whichaffects mainly blacks (and Sicilians).

If his plan is not implemented, thisdangerous nut incredibly looks forwardto a "dirty nuclear war" as civilization'slast best hope. In a 1980 phone conver­sation with reporter Witherspoon.introduced as evidence in the trial,Shockley said that in a nuclear war"those who survive will be peopleendowed with far above average intelli-

. gence and foresight .... Disproportion­ately large fractions of the Swiss andSwedish populations 'will emerge fromshelters tunneled into their mountains."

Shockley had also favorably quotedportions of a letter from one Richard L.Masland, director of the "NationalInstitute of Neurological Diseases andBlindness": "It has concerned me that tomy knowledge there has never been anyattempt at an objective evaluation of theresults of the Nazi eugenics program.Whatever the ethics of that undertaking,it certainly represented a vast and I'msure systematic experiment in racialimprovement through the eliminationof the unfit. ..."

Testifying for the defense.: BarryMehler, a historian who has studied theracists' pseudo-science of "eugenics,"stated that the Shockley plan doesindeed parallel the Nazi experiments inmany ways. The Nazis started out with a"voluntary" plan; three years into powerthey had sterilized 56,000 people. In theconcentration camps, sterilizations wererunning at the rate of 1,000 per day,while often anesthesia was not used sothe doctors could "study" reaction topain. But it wasn't only the Nazis who

the transistor, he was "totally incompe­tent" as a geneticist. The jury didn't buythe argument of damage to Shockley'sreputation and said if he wantedpublicity he ought to "pay for it outof his pocket." Ever since the 19605Shockley has been pushing his sillyracist theories, trying to "prove" thegenetic inferiority of blacks and propos­ing his final solution-e-rvoluntary ster­ilization." But it says something aboutReagan's America that in 1984 expertwitnesses had to be dragged into courtto "debate" whether or not blacks are"inferior" and to show that apologistsfor Nazi race theories are racist.

Shockley had singled out onesentence in particular from Wither­spoon's 31 July 1980 column "DesignerGenes by Shockley," as a "damnable,evil lie": "The Shockley program wastried out in Germany during Worid WarII, when scientists under the direction ofthe government experimented on Jewsand defectives in an effort to studygenetic development." Many peoplehave said exactly this and worse aboutShockley before. So why did he decide(o.....~~sue a lawsuit in 1981'1 Could ithave anything to do with the fact that aKu Klux Klan-endorsed president hadjust entered the White House? Reaganhas given the green light to Cold Warracist reaction; in a letter to Reaganupon his election, Shockley urgedgovernment Implementation of hissterilization plan.

The currency being given toShockley's racist theories is closelylinked to the rise of KKK terror andattacks on blacks throughout thecountry. On the stand Shockley em­braced the Thunderbolt, organ of J.B.Stoner's white-supremacist NationalStates Rights Party, which often quoteshim favorably. In mid-August thefascists were called before a grand juryinvestigating a wave of terrorist break­ins and beatings of interracial couples inGeorgia. When the National Anti-KlanNetwork held a press conference on thecourthouse steps, the KKK race­terrorists forcibly disrupted it and took

ATLANTA-William Shockley, thepseudo-scientific ideologue of whitesupremacy, had sued the Atlanta Jour­nal Constitution and black journalistRoger Witherspoon for $1.25 million inlibel damages for printing that Shockleyadvocated Nazi race theories. OnSeptember 14, a jury of five whites andone black in Atlanta federal districtcourt held that Shockley had beenlibeled, yet awarded him only one dollarin damages. At the trial, experts testifiedthat while Shockley had been awardedthe Nobel Prize for his part in inventing

8 WORKERS VANGUARD

. WV hotosLeft: Diana Coleman speakingwith SFphoneunionists. Right:RichardBradleyatrally forstrikingrestaurant workers.

GuardianShot Down..-.(continued from page 2)

challenged by the liberal Nation, whichat least has the guts to take a controver­sial position and defend it. Even theNew York Times' Tom Wicker beat theGuardian to the punch. And now thesewould-be leftists have come out in their8 August issue explicitly endorsingMondale/Ferraro in the Novemberelections. (How do you like yourcand-idate's call for a "quarantine" ofSandinista Nicaragua and his year-laterendorsement of Reagan's Grenadainvasion") Don't expect a "correction"on this one soon, though.

At the Democratic convention in SanFrancisco last July, assorted socialdemocrats sponsored a "Whose Party IsThis Anyway?" forum where CaliforniaAssemblyman and ex-SDS leader TomHayden described his district as"frumpies-formerly radical upwardlymobile professionals." This is just theconstituency that the Guardian isappealing to. Today even it admits theKAL 007 affair was "a milestone eventin the current cold war." But at thismilestone these ex-radicals took a sharpright down the road to a third imperial­ist world war against the Soviet Union.It is the Guardian that must be heldaccountable and condemned for beatingthe war drums for Reagan.js

DianaColeman...(continued from page 3)

and Republican.From South Africa to Central

America. Reagan stands by his butch­ers. And from South Africa to CentralAmerica, the working masses arestruggling desperately to overturn theserepressive capitalist regimes. CentralAmerica is the front line in thishemisphere of the anti-Soviet wardrive-where-Reagan plans counterrev­olution from Nicaragua to Cuba, andthen to tfie Soviet Union. We say:Military victory to Salvadoran leftistinsurgents! Defense of Cuba and theUSSR begins in EI Salvador! InNicaragua, where the U.S. is fundingcontras and soldier-of-fortune-typemercenaries, the SL says: Kill theinvaders! Defend, complete and extendthe Nicaraguan revolution!

Anti-imperialism abroad means classstruggle at home. Labor has the powerto stop imperialist interventions aroundthe world. Militant postal, auto and coalstrikes could not only smash Reagan'swar on labor and minorities but also goa long way toward spiking the sinisteranti-Soviet war drive. This time aroundthere can and must be labor strikes fromDay I of a U.S. invasion of CentralAmerica. This is what the SL fightsfor-political strike action againstimperialist war. But so long as thecapitalists have the weapons and statepower, the threat of war is ever-present.Imperialist war will end only when theproletariat takes power and establishesits own class rule. Class struggle, notDemocrats, is what we need to bringdown Reagan reaction. On this, the 50thyear anniversary of the SF GeneralStrike, it's time to stop eulogizing the

SYL Class Series

Trotskyism: RevolutionaryMarxism Today

Tuesdays, 7 p.m.beginning September 25146 Dwinelle, UC BerkeleyFor more information: (415) 835-1535

BAY AREA

28 SEPTEMBER 1984

CWP...(continued from page 2)

Democrat to give them cover. TheSpartacist League responded to theGreensboro massacre with nationwidedemonstrations. Since then the SL hascarried out a number of importantlabor/black mobilizations in northerncities which have effectively interdictedthe KKK from expanding out of theirSouthern bailiwick. Most notably, on27 November 1982 in Washington,D.C., 5,000 predominantly black work­ing people responded to our call to stopthe KKK at the Capitol, while the CWPwandered haplessly between the Demo­cratic Party windbags' rally at McPher­son Square and the SL-initiated Labor/Black Mobilization.

Closing down Workers Viewpoint isself-evidently a statement of politicalbankruptcy. The CWP's letter to sub­scribers claimed that "we are lookingforward to the start of something new."Something new, something old-thepopular front has been the main line ofStalinist liquidationism from FDR toMondale. We don't pretend to knowwhat's going on inside the CWP. But fora party with a revolutionary will, therewill always be a core of comrades whofind a way to get the paper out.Everyone from the tsarist censors to hisleftist detractors tried to shut downLenin's Iskra, but he fought for thepaper because it was the voice of theparty. As Lenin wrote in What Is To Be

General Strike as the labor bureaucratshave been doing, and to realize that wehave to do it again!

Now here in SF in this election, SouthAfrica is a big issue. And let's see howsome of our political opponents addressthis question. We have Julianne Mal­veaux who is being supported by the"Rainbow Coalition." She's putting aproposition on the ballot that calls fordivestment of city funds from compa­nies that do business in South Africa.This is nothing but a plea to the "liberal"imperialists to act more morally-acruel vhoax because capitalism putsnothing before profits.

The kind of divestment we'reinterested in isfor the workers ofSouthA/rica to divest the imperialists andcapitalists 0.1' their property throughworkers revolution! We seek to mobi-

.Tize the American working class toexpropriate the capitalists here as well.

Then, there's Sylvia Weinstein ofSocialist Action-she's for liberal di­vestment schemes, too. Her other biglove is Polish Solidarnosc-i-companyunion for CIA and Western bankers. It'srevealing, isn't it, that the Solidarnoscactivists who have been trying to restorecapitalism in Poland are now emigrat­ing en masse to South Africa, thatbastion of the "free world."

So let me suggest to Sylvia Weinsteinthat she ask anti-apartheid militants inSouth Africa what they think of Polishanti-communists who go to SouthAfrica to live well amid the superexploi­tation and misery of blacks. For ourpart, we believe that black workers musttake the lead to smash the apartheidregime. And for this, a revolutionary

Done? the paper must be the "scaffold­ing" for the construction ·of "therevolutionary organization that is everready to support every protest and everyoutbreak"; that it must be not only acollective propagandist and a collectiveagitator but also a collective organizer.

But of course, if you don't want tobuild a communist party, an organiza­tion of professional revolutionaries, tosupport and lead every protest and everyoutbreak; if instead you're working forMondale and Ferraro ... then who needsit? From the closing down of WorkersViewpoint, can the demise of the CWPbe far behind?-

Evolution...(continued/rom page 7)

and politics, and finally, "the fantasticreflection of human things in the humanmind: religion." As wealth accumulated,small groups of men seized power andforced others to work for them. Labor,the source of all wealth and the primaryimpetus for human evolution, assumedthe same low status of those wholabored for the rulers. Since rulersgoverned by their will (that is, by feats ofmind), actions of the brain appeared tohave a motive power of their own. Theprofession of philosophy followed nounsullied ideal of truth. Philosophersrelied on state or religious patronage.Even if Plato did not consciouslyconspire to bolster the privileges ofrulers with a supposedly abstract philos-

vanguard party is a prime necessity.Such a party would seek to win overmilitants of the African National Con­gress to the Trotskyist program ofpermanent revolution; that is one-stagerevolution-socialist revolution, inSouth Africa.

It is this perspective which links thestruggle for workers revolution in eachcountry to world socialist revolutionagainst imperialism. This is the onlyway forward for the working classinternationally. -

RichardBradley...(continued from page 3)coast to coast, as a group fomentingconvention "violence." We were target­ed despite our emphatic public state­ments expressing our essential indiffer­ence to the proceedings of thatbourgeois gathering, at the same timevigorously defending the rights of theDemocrats and their demonstrators tofree assembly and free speech.

Feinstein's cops turned San Franciscointo a militarized zone during theconvention, beating and arresting hun­dreds; Now the emboldened SF cops arerunning amok, against gays, blacks andanyone they hate.

The Spartacist candidates' legalcounsel, Valerie West, protested-the copharassment of Bradley to the chief ofpolice:

"While Mr. Bradley's removal of theConfederate flag received wide publici-

ophy, his own class position encouragedan emphasis on thought as primary,dominating, and altogether more nobleand important than the labor it super­vised. This idealistic tradition dominat­ed philosophy right through to Darwin'sday. Its influence was so subtle andpervasive that even scientific, butapolitical, materialists like Darwin fellunder its sway. A bias must be recog­nized before it can be challenged.Cerebral primacy seemed so obviousand natural that it was accepted asgiven, rather than recognized as a deep­seated social prejudice related to theclass position of professional thinkersand their patrons.. Engels writes:

"All merit for the swift advance ofcivilization was ascribed to the mind, tothe development and activity of thebrain. Men became accustomed toexplain their actions from theirthoughts. instead of from their needs ....And so there arose in the course of timethat idealistic outlook on the worldwhich. especially since the downfall ofthe ancient world. has dominated men'sminds. It still rules them to such adegree that even the most materialisticnatural scientists of the Darwinianschool are still unable to form any clearidea of the origin of man. because underthat ideological influence they do notrecognize the part that has been playedtherein by labor."

The importance of Engels's essay doesnot lie in the happy result thatAustralopithecus confirmed a specifictheory proposed by him ... but rather inhis perceptive analysis of the politicalrole of science and of the social biasesthat must affect all thought.ja

ty and much favorable response fromthe public in general, nonetheless it wasapparently not popular with many ofthe officers at Northern Station. Whenhe was arrested for taking down theConfederate flag. officers at NorthernStation subjected Richard Bradley toracial abuse and harassment. ... All ofthese facts were the subject of testimonyduring the course of Mr. Bradley'strial. ..."In recent months. most notably' sincethe brutal treatment of demonstratorsduring the Democratic Convention.there has been widespread concernabout police abuse of the public.Therefore. [ insist that you take all stepsnecessary to insure that Mr. Bradley, aswell as his fellow candidate DianaColeman, and their campaign workersare not subjected to any further policeharassment and abuse."

The Bradley and Coleman campaign isin defense of the democratic rightscherished by labor and its allies, rightswhich are integral to the right of aworkers party to organize. Hands OffRichard Bradley!_

o Please send further information on thecampaign.

o I endorse the campaign of Richard Bradleyand Diana Coleman for SF Board ofSupervisors.

o Enclosed is $ contribution to thecampaign.

Help build the campaignI Call (415) 863-6964.

Name _

Phone (

Address _

City -:-_State __ Zip _

Make checks payable to! mail to:Spartaclst Party Campaign Comml""55 Sutter St., Suite 421. San Ffancisco, CA 94101

9

Labor: Stop Ships, Planes to South Africa!

London, June 1984-Spartacist League/Britain joins thousands confrontingapartheid terrorist chief P.W. Botha.

As tens of thousands of black goldminers and township residents arefighting the full fury of South Africa'sapartheid state terror, solidarity actionby the international labor movement isurgently necessary. Since the eruptionof mass, anti-apartheid black protestsearly this month, the internationalSpartacist tendency and class-struggleunion' militants have called for anemergency international labor boycottof all cargo to and from South Africa.In Australia, maritime workers hadalready undertaken such an action.

On September 20, militants of theInternational Longshoremen's andWarehousemen's Union (lLWU) in theSan Francisco Bay Area distributed aleaflet headlined "Longshoremen: HotCargo All South African Shipping!"The leaflet, issued by 25-year ILWUveteran Stan Gow, stated, "Blackworkers in South Africa have the powerto break the chains of apartheidslavery-we must stand shoulder toshoulder with them in their fight. Local10-take the lead! Stop all cargo to orfrom South Africa! Call on the ILWU,ILA and international transport unionsto do likewise." The leaflet concludedwith a call to "strike a blow against

South Africa...(continued from page J)

eight mines struck last week are ownedby Anglo-American, a huge conglomer­ate which is the core of the Oppenheimerfamily empire. The Oppenheimersrepresent the so-called liberal wing ofSouth African capitalism. Faced withthe labor upsurge of the 1970s, Anglo­American's board saw that black unionsof some sort were inevitable. Instead ofwaiting for bitter strikes it decided to letorganizers into the mine compounds"on the theory that it is easier tonegotiate with recognized leaders oforganized unions than to confront anangry mob" (New York Times, 15March 1983). The National Union ofMineworkers (NUM) is a product ofthis company union strategy. Its generalsecretary Cyril Ramaphosa was once onthe board of the Urban Foundation, anAnglo-American-funded body whichpromotes elite housing and training forthe black petty bourgeoisie. The N UMgets most of its funds from that ColdWar creature of the American laborbureaucracy and CIA, the InternationalConfederation of Free Trade Unions.But in the explosive conditions ofSouth Africa today even this tameblack union can' easily get out of'control. '

Much of what has happened in themines in the past few weeks is murkyfrom a distance. According to theLondon Financial Times, the periodleading up to the strike and contractsettlement was carefully choreographedby management, complete with a face­saving additional 2.3 percent last-

Spartacist LeaguelSpartacus Youth League

Public Offices-MARXIST LlTERATURE­

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

New York CityTues.: 6:00-9:00 p.m., Sat.:12:00-4:00 p.m.41 Warren St. (one block belowChambers St. near Church St.)New York. N.Y. Phone: (212) 267-1025

Trotskyist Leagueof Canada

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

10

apartheid and the racist, anti-SovietWashington/ Pretoria axis!"

At the September 24 New York portmeeting of the National MaritimeUnion (NMU), members of theMilitant-Solidarity Caucus presented aresolution calling for effective solidaritywith South African blacks from allmaritime workers. "It is in the interest ofthe labor movement," the resolutionstated, "to smash all forms of racism andracial oppression, including the viciousSouth African apartheid regime whichhas subjugated and butchered millionsof non-whites." The militants called for"stopping all ships and cargo to andfrom South Africa." Despite poisonous"honky" race-baiting of caucus spokes­man Gene Herson by Port Agent AndyRich, the motion was signed by 15unionmembers, mainly blacks, as well as by adelegate supported by the CommunistParty's DaiZI' World.

Calls for union boycotts of transportand commerce with South Africa arenot the usual empty liberal rhetoric. InAustralia, maritime workers have begunto put solidarity into action. In responseto the apartheid butchers' murderoussuppression of mass protests in Sharpe-

minute pay offer, which the NUM lead­ership apparently accepted just afterthe strike deadline had passed. TheWall Street Journal (19 September)lauded the settlement, which, it said."demonstrated-for the first time-s-thatat least some mining companies in SouthAfrica were willing to deal with a blackunion." But the superexploited black

miners did not dance for their masters.Tens of thousands of them wildcattedwhile unorganized workers went out ontheir own. The mining bosses reacted, asusual, with massive police violence. Thisis a sign not of the strength and stabilityof apartheid but of its weakness.

For Permanent Revolutionin South Africa!

As Marx wrote in Capital, modernsociety "greets gold as its Holy Grail, asthe glittering incarnation of the veryprinciple of its own life." It was the ex­traction of this Holy Grail that gaveSouth African capitalism its peculiar ex­pression of combined and uneven de­velopment. The profitability of miningin South Africa has been historicallymaintained not through capital invest­ment, which increases the productivityof labor, but through brutalization andenslavement to increase the superex­ploitation of labor. To supply the rawmuscle power and lifeblood to extractthese riches from the bowels of the earththe black peoples of southern Africahave been stripped of their birthrightand land, and transformed throughapartheid into a migratory labor forcewith its barracks-like compounds andonerous pass controls. The gold minesare a concentrated microcosm of theprison camp that South Africa is for

ville, beginning on September 6 workersin the port of Sydney "blacked" (hot­cargoed) the South African vesselSasocean Nederburg. First the Water­side Workers Federation boycotted theship for 24 hours and then tugboatworkers in the Firemen and Deckhands'Union of New South Wales refused tohandle the ship for two more days.

In contrast to liberal "divestment"schemes, which only prettify U.S.

Oakland,June 1983­West Coast

longshoremilitants

seek to stopSouth African

ship to protestexecution of

anti-apartheidfighters.,

black toilers.Though' apartheid has forcibly

uprooted 3.5 million blacks anddumped them into the bantustan hell­holes, though it arrests hundreds andthousands a year for not having permitsin their passbooks to be in "white"South Africa, the lifeblood of thecountry's mines, ports and factories is

black labor. Apartheid is, above all, asystem for keeping black labor cheapand vulnerable. It leaves all those it doesnot need-the children, the women, theold, the maimed, and an ever-increasingreserve army of the unemployed-to thedesperate poverty of the bantustans.Thus workers are paid little more than isneeded to keep them slaving from oneday to the next, always with a threat ofdeportation to the bantustans with anote in the passbook "idle anct'undesirable."

Yet the very "success" of the system i$driving it into crisis. The boom of the1960s has given way to stagnationcaused by an acute skilled labor short­age, low productivity and a weakdomestic market. As an economist atthe Chamber of Mines put it, "Y04cannot run this economy on whitesalone" (Wall Street Journal, 19 June),While discontent among the oppressednon-white masses, from Indian tradersto coloured students to black Africansmall farmers, is nearly universal, it isthe five-million-strong black proletariatwhich has the power to bring thearrogant white supremacists to theirknees.

Key to centralizing and organizingthe enormous social power of thisnascent black labor movement againstthe apartheid state is the organization of

imperialism, Trotskyists have called onlabor internationally to refuse to handlemilitary cargo to South Africa. Today aboycott of all transport is called for tosupport the black revolt against apart­heid. Come to the aid of our blackworking-class brothers and sisters fac­ing murderous police-state repression inSouth Africa! Words are cheap. Now isthe hour for concrete acts of laborsolidarity! •

its class-conscious vanguard into aTrotskyist party, as the leader of theoppressed nation. Such a party mustbase itself upon the lessons of theRussian Revolution, the only successfulworkers revolution and one which hadto address the uncompleted bourgeoisnational democratic tasks. Theselessons generalized in Trotsky's theoryof permanent revolution demonstratethat the tasks of national reconstructionand emancipation, agrarian revolutionand genuine democracy require for theirresolution the seizure of power by theproletariat at the head of the urban andrural toiling masses: For a black­centered workers and peasants govern­ment in South Africa!

South Africa is ajunior partner of themajor imperialist powers as well as aregional imperialist power in its ownright. The U.S. and its imperialist allies'war to overturn the gains of the RussianRevolution is at the very heart of theWashingtcn/ Pretoria axis, as demon­strated in Angola, where Soviet-backedCuban troops defend Angola from theapartheid sjambok (whip). From thegold and uranium mines of the Rand tothe docks and industries of the Cape,every blow struck against apartheid is ablow against Reagan/ Botha's sinisteranti-Soviet war drive. The black prole­tariat of South Africa is destined notonly to be the liberators of theiroppressed nation, but by placing thecountry's vast mineral resources andindustrial wealth at the service of socialand national emancipation, it can be thepowerhouse for social revolutionthroughout deeply oppressed and eCO­

nomicaUybackward black Africa.The oppressed throughout the world

see in apartheid the mirror of their owneolonial, national and racial oppression,and therefore keenly solidarize withevery blow that is struck against thewhite supremacist regime. In the U.S.,because of their concentration in theindustrial proletariat, black people cantranslate racial and class solidarity intopowerful labor action against apartheidterror. As Trotsky told his supporters inthe U.S.: "We must say to the consciouselements of the Negroes that they areconvoked by the historic developmentto become a vanguard of the workingclass." Thereby they become a strategiccomponent of the leadership of theAmerican workers revolution that canturn this country, the most wealthy andbrutal slavemaster of the colonialmasses, into a powerfu,l ally of theircomplete liberation.•

WORKERS VANGUARD

InGOLD We Trust

The American Revolution of 1776 \t'as to a large degree led bv men steepedin the rational humanism ofthe Enlightenment who consideredall establishedreligion a form of barbaric superstition. Thus their insistence on theseparation of church and state, which was universally regarded as the mostradical aspect of the American Revolution.

Defend theGains of 1776!

ThomasJefferson

.....,~j"

. .~GeorgeWashington

went past the "melting point"-that is,due to inflation the value of the silver indimes and quarters exceeded theirpurchasing power-the Treasury De­partment, all the while flatly lying aboutits intentions, secretly grabbed up thecoins, thereby looting their own curren­cy. Indeed, U.S. currency backed by"trust in god" rather than gold (or evensome other commodity) is just fiatmoney backed by state power-thenumber of aircraft carriers you have. Sothe Marines can land on some Caribbe­an island and force the local merchantsto accept their currency or else.

"In God We Trust"'!-as the"founding fathers" would have said,whose god? Defend the separation ofchurch and state! Keep god's hands offother people's money!

"In God We Trust" say those dollarbills. But U.S. money hasn't alwaysrelied on divine intervention to back it.The motto first appeared on a bronzetwo-cent piece, in 1864 when U.S.money all but stopped existing due tothe Civil War hyperinflation; god is a lotcheaper than real money. The mottocreated a political furor in 1907-08whenTeddy Roosevelt issued a new goldeagle, designed by the great sculptor St.Gaudens, without "rn God We Trust"on it. Roosevelt objected to putting godon coins, but Congress overruled him.Then in the Cold War climate of the1950s, trust in god was applied to thedollar bill.

You'd better trust god, because yousure as hell can't trust the government!In the 1960s when the price of silver

"Who does not see that the sameauthority which can establish Chris­tianity, in exclusion of all other Re­ligions, may establish with the sameease any particular sect of Christians,inexclusion of all other sects'!That thesame authority which can force acitizen to contribute three pence onlyof his property for the support of anyone establishment, may force him toconform to any other establishmentin all cases whatsoever'!"

-"Memorial andRemonstrance AgainstReligious Assessments"( 1785)

and Mondale-a no longer progressivecapitalisml-c-cannot tolerate the prom­ise that all men are entitled to life, libertyand the pursuit of happiness, thepromise upon which this republic wasfounded. For the America of 1984 is themain force for world reaction andcounterrevolution from Central Ameri­ca to South Africa to Southeast Asia. Itis the present-day analogue of the tsaristRussia which the American FoundingFathers held in contempt as the bastionof world reaction in their day-thetsarist Russia against whose tyrannyLenin and the Bolsheviks organized theproletariat. The American workingclass, too, will destroy the tyranny ofU.S. imperialism. And all the prayers ofall its priests will not save the masters ofWall Street and Washington from thedustbin of history.•

"M illions of innocent men, womenand children, since the introductionof Christianity, have been burnt,tortured, fined, imprisoned: yet wehave not advanced one inch towardsuniformity. What has been the effectof coercion? To make one half theworld fools, and the other halfhypocrites. To support roguery anderror all over the earth."

-"Notes on the State ofVirginia" (1781-82)

" ... the priests indeed have hereto­fore thought proper to ascribe to mereligious, or rather anti-religioussentiments, of their own fabric, butsuch as soothed their resentmentsagainst the act of Virginia forestablishing religious freedom. Theywished him to be thought atheist,deist, or devil, who could advocatefreedom from their religious dicta­tions. But I have ever thoughtreligion a concern purely betweenour God and our consciences, forwhich we were accountable to him,and not to the priests."

-Letter to Mrs. HarrisonSmith (6 August 1816)

JamesMadison

~~.'.)\.~

JohnAdams

"Eight millions of Jews hope for aMessiah more powerful and gloriousthan Moses, David, or Solomon;who is to make them as powerful ashe pleases. Some hundreds of mil­lions of Mussulmans expect anotherprophet more powerful than Ma­homet, who is to spread Islamismover the whole earth. Hundreds ofmillions of Christians expect andhope for a millennium in which Jesusis to reign for a thousand years overthe whole world before it is burnt up.The Hindoos expect another andfinal incarnation of Vishnu, who is todo great and wonderful things, I

. know not what. All these hopes arefounded on real or pretended revela­tion .... You and I hope for splendidimprovements in human society, andvast amelioration in the condition ofmankind. Our faith may be supposedby more rational arguments than anyof the former."

-Letter to Thomas Jefferson(24 September J821)

"We have abundant reason torejoice that in this Land the light oftruth and reason has triumphed overthe power of bigotry and supersti­tion, and that every person may hereworship God according to the dic­tates of his own heart. In thisenlightened Age and in this Land ofequal liberty it is our boast, that aman's religious tenets will not forfeitthe protection of the Laws, nordeprive him of the right of attainingand holding the highest Offices thatare known in the United States."

-Letter to the membersof the New Churchin Baltimore(27 January 1793)

"Letter to American Workers" (1918):"The : history Dfmodern, civilised.America opened with one of thosegreat, really liberating, really revolu­tionary wars of which there have beenso few compared to the vast number ofwars of conquest which, like the presentimperialist war, were caused by squab­bles among kings, landowners orcapitalists over the division of usurpedlands or ill-gotten gains."

Certainly, Marxists do not idealizethe "spirit of'76." The U.S. Constitutionsanctioned black chattel slavery andmany of the Founding Fathers wereslaveholders. It took the second Ameri­can revolution, the Civil War of 1861­65, to abolish slavery. And it will takethe third American revolution-a prole­tarian socialist revolution-to liberateblack people from racist oppression.

Nonetheless, the America of Reagan

Recently, when Reagan met with theapostolic delegate after the Democraticconvention last summer, the WhiteHouse explained that the presidentregularly consults with the pope overPoland. While the role of the Vatican inCold War II is every bit as reactionaryand important as in Cold War I, theresponse of the self-styled left is quitedifferent. Thus practically the entireWestern left rallied to the clerical­nationalist Solidarnosc in Poland, amovement inspired and to alarge degreedirected by Pope Wojtyla. Solidarnosc'bid for power in the fall of 1~81 markedprobably Western imperialism's great­est opportunity to "roll back" Commu­nism in the entire postwar period.Fortunately, the plans of Reagan andWojtyla to reconquer Poland for "thefree world" were frustrated for themoment ...

For the Separation ofChurch and State!

In the name of fighting "godlessCommunism," America's rulers todayare attacking one of the most basic gainsof the first American revolution: separa­tion of church and state. As therespected liberal historian Henry SteeleCommager recently said:

"We tend to forget that separation ofchurch and state and rejection ofreligious establishments were, in thelSth century, the most revolutionaryexperiment on which the new UnitedStates embarked. It commanded moreattention. applause and censure thancreation of the new nation or therejection of colonialism. No otherWestern nation had ever tried soreckless an experiment."

-New York Times,If> September

While Reagan, Falwell and CardinalO'Connor loudly proclaim the UnitedStates "a Christian country," many, if

. not most, of the Founding Fathers ofthis country were nor Christians. Theywere men who believed in the rationalhumanism of the Enlightenment andwho opposed all revealed and estab­lished religion. Thomas Jefferson, JohnAdams and many other signers of theDeclaration of Independence "polemi­cized at great length against Christiani­ty. Adams, for example, wrote toJefferson: "This would be the best of allpossible worlds, if there was no religionin it." Nor were these views limited to ahandful of wealthy and educated men.It's estimated that a third of thepopulation of colonial America at. thetime of the Revolution did not practiceany kind of religion. Ethan Allen ofVermont's Green Mountain Boys, forexample, is today known as an auda­cious guerrilla leader in the Revolution­ary War. He was also the author of alengthy tract debunking the Bible fromthe standpoint of rational humanism.

Why are America's present rulersattacking the secular humanism of therepublic's Founding Fathers and he­roes'? Because the American bourgeois-

_ democratic revolution of 1776 was aprogressive development in the historyof mankind. As Lenin wrote in his

In McCarthy's Cold War, the Vati­can's Catholic hierarchy played a similarrole in supporting American imperialistreaction. Then their main task was to dothe dirty work in driving Communistsand socialists out of the labor move­ment, via scores of Jesuit and otherCatholic "labor schools" which trainedtrade-union bureaucrats in anti­Communist purge tactics. The "highroad" of American Protestant anti­Communism was taken by theologianReinhold Niebuhr, the "thinking man's"anti-Communist, who inspired theliberal Cold Warriors like HubertHumphrey-and Walter Mondale.

President Truman tried back then toappoint an American ambassador to theVatican. (It was General Mark W. Clark,who idiotically butchered mainly Amer­ican soldiers driving up Italy againstentrenched German positions in WorldWar 11.) Truman couldn't get away withit, but Reagan's already done it. JamesP. Cannon, the founder ofTrotskyism inthis country, made some fundamentalpoints regarding Truman's attempts togive the Vatican special privileges:

"All the people of this country whocherish the freedoms they have inherit­ed have a stake in the controversy. Theleadership of this fight belongs by rightto the labor movement. for the tradeunions cannot live and breathe withoutfreedom from the control of bothchurch and state. They will not escapeeventual involvement. although theentire leadership is trying to evade theissue in craven silence. The simple truthis that the labor skates are afraid of theCatholic Church, whose cardinals andbishops are already reaching gut forcontrol of the unions. Woe to theAmerican labor movement if theysucceed! ..."The First Amendment to the Con­stitution is our amendment; and wemust defend it tooth and nail againstall aggressions, whether secular orreligious."

-"Church and State" (1951),Notebook ofan Agitator

Cannon recognized that the Vaticanwas uniquely important as a Cold Warally of U.S. imperialism. Writing aboutformer Socialist Workers Partyspokes­man Grace Carlson, who, broken anddemoralized by the anti-communistwitchhunt, returned to the fold of thechurch, he recounted:

"I reminded her that the policies of theCatholic Church are not determined bythe parishioners nor by the parishpriests. but by the Catholic hierarchy,which is first of all a political power. themost reactionary and obscurantist forcein the entire world. I reminded her ofCardinal Spellman. who broke thestrike of cemetery workers in NewYork. and who has just recently been toSpain. where he paid homage to thebloody dictator Franco."

-"How We Won Grace Carlsonand How We Lost Her" (1952)

A few years later Cardinal Spellmanbecame a major force involving the U.S.in the Vietnam War on behalf of hisprotege in Saigon, Ngo Dinh Diem.

Religion...(continued/rom page 12)

28 SEPTEMBER 1984 11

W'liIlEliS "II(itJlllilJKeep- God Out of It!

•• •e I Ion In

They want a Cold War Inquisition.Last month there was the spectacle offundamentalist revival preaching at theDallas Republican convention, withthousands of businessmen and theirwives gloating that "God is a Republi­can" and his anointed spokesman isRonald Reagan. And with the U.S.commander in chief's key ally, the anti­Communist Polish pope Karol Wojtyla,spearheading 'Cold War \I in EasternEurope and Latin America, the Vaticanis also aggressively exerting its reaction­ary influence in the United States. Itused to be that the Democratic Partywas denounced by the Republicans asthe party of "rum, Romanism andrebellion." But today you have Catholicbishops openly campaigning for theRepublican right and attacking middle­of-the-road Democratic Catholic ethnicpoliticians like Gerry Ferraro andMario Cuomo for (horror of horrors)"secular humanism." Religious bigotryis being unleashed by the Americanruling class to goad the Americanpeople into line behind the war driveagainst the Soviet Union. In order todestroy the gains of the Russian Revolu­tion of 1917, the greatest victory for theworld working class, the Americanrulers must now attack the gains of theAmerican bourgeois-democratic revo­lution of 1776, namely, the separation ofchurch and state!

The Protestant fundamentalists andCatholic hierarchy are pounding hard atone of women's most fundamentalrights, the right to abortion. whileattempts to enforce prayer in the publicschools are reaching frightening propor­tions. If the Republicans do get theirway and pass a constitutional amend­ment forbidding all abortions, you canbet there will be a lot of praying inschool (please, god, let me not bepregnant). And, bitterly, there will be alot of dead and mutilated teenagers whoin desperation get butchered in back­alley operations. Aboveand beyond thisvast increase in human misery, therewould be the terror and humiliationenforced on kids who maybe don'twant to pray. particularly when the "of­ficial" prayer is probably going to besome variant of General Midwinter's"barbecue-the-Commies" diatribes outof Len Deighton's Billion Dollar Brain:"Dear Heavenly Father.... help us toawaken our beloved country to its greatdanger; Help us to cleanse it and hold itsafe from the godless forces of Commu­nism that surround it and threaten itfrom within."

The tidal wave of enforced intoler­ance is scaring a lot of people. As JosephKraft noted in an article titled "ElmerGantry Time" (Washington Post, 6 Sep­tember): " ... religious zealots in thiscountry see in Russia the shrine ofatheism-the enemy incarnate. It waslogical, not far-out, for the president tostigmatize the Soviet Union as 'the evilempire' in a speech to a religious group.Insofar as he continues to play to thefundamentalists, it will be impossible toreach accommodation with Moscow."But of course Reagan doesn't want to

12

reach accommodation with Moscow; hewants a holy war and nuclear Armaged­don. And he could do it: this ElmerGantry's got the bomb.

But not to worry, Reagan tells theAmerican people: like the old song says,"We never can lose, boys, with god onour side." There's a one word answer tothat: Vietnam. America's rulers are stilltrying to recover moral ,momentum

Above: Reaganleads pray-in

in Dallas, while. Moral Majority

demagogueJerry Falwell

(right)proclaims

God is aRepublican.

after that stunning defeat. Much of thisreligious hysteria is intended to over­whelm the American public's justifiedmistrust and unwillingness to get in­volved in any more such debacles. Thusall the "God is an American" rhetoric,combined with appeals to primitivemacho anxieties about sex and thehome: send women back to the hearth,grab your gun and shield the wife andkids from the "pinko-Commie" enemywithin. But there's the enemy without,too, hence the "evil empire" rhetoricand Reagan's alliance with the Vaticanfor whom Soviet Russia is the"anti-Christ,"

Just because Reagan's zealots arescaring the hell out of people is noreason to think Democratic liberal Cold

. Warrior Mondale is any better. Lookingincreasingly like a wimpy loser, Mon-

dale's "answer" to this barrage is towhine that he himself is the son of aminister, while letting his running mateFerraro take all the heat. Mondalepresided as vice president under thatother inept hypocrite Jimmy Carter,whose administration (including thesinister Polish Catholic irredentistZbigniew Brzezinski) coincided with theemergence of a politically bellicose

,;n••• Johnson/Time

religious fundamentalist movement.Carter, a born-again Baptist and part­time Sunday school teacher, set out torejuvenate the "moral fibre" of ademoralized and economically declin­ing nation under the slogan of "humanrights," his administration's ideologicalcover for war preparations against theUSSR. What Carter sowed, Reagan isreaping with a vengeance.

Whose Bigotry Will Prevail?Of course, the current alliance be­

tween the Catholic hierarchy and Rea­gan's collection of nativist Ameri­can holy rollers, revivalists and Protes­tant fundamentalists has its peculiarfeatures, which more thoughtful (or atleast practical) politicians like MarioCuomo recognize. Responding to Arch­bishop John O'Connor's assaults on

Ferraro and himself for refusing to banabortion, Cuomo made the simplepoint: "With regard to abortion, theAmerican bishops have had to weighCatholic moral teaching against the factof a pluralistic country where our view isin the minority" (New York Times, 14September). "Whose Christianity?" herightfully asked regarding pleas todeclare America a "Christian country."Indeed, it was only with the election ofJohn Kennedy in 1960 that Catholicswere for the first time admitted nation­ally into the mainstream of Americanpolitical life. Whether this is enough toovercome a century of anti-Catholicprejudice and WASP ethnic hostility to.Italian and Polish immigrants is still atender question.

If the Catholic hierarchy's anti­Communist alliance with Moral Ma­jority fundamentalism may reboundagainst the ethnic Catholic populationin this country, this danger is muchgreater for right-wing Jewish Zionists.The Commentary crowd may find thattheir worst enemies are not the Com­mies after all. For Jerry Falwell and hisilk, the United States is a whiteChristian country and Jews don'tconform on either count. One delegateat the recent B'nai B'rith convention,where Reagan and Mondale exchangedbarbs, said half jokingly, "sometimes Ithink he [Reagan] wants to make Israelstrong so that when he makes the UnitedStates into a Christian country, he cansend us all over there" (New YorkTimes, 7 September). For faithfullyserving the New Right, Norman Pod­horetz and wife Midge Deeter couldeven find themselves in the PromisedLand whether they want to go thereor not. Not many American Jewswould like living in Israel with itsconstant military mobilization, 400percent a year inflation and theocraticdictatorship.

The Catholic hierarchy railing againstabortion and the American Zionisthierarchy railing for war with Russiahelp fuel a social climate in whichabortion clinics are bombed and unionorganizers and reds are murdered incold blood in broad daylight, i.e., asocial climate in which the terroristultra right flourishes. A mass fascistmovement in America would be nativ­ist as well as racist sparing neitherCatholics nor Jews while it targetsblacks, reds and unionists.

The Second Time Around

In Cold War \I Reagan & Co. want toreplay the late '40s-'50s anti-CommunistMcCarthyite hysteria, with guns drawn.Only this time the country's in muchworse economic shape, with the cap­italists therefore contemplating moredesperate measures to restore their prof­it system. The leading characters areincreasingly drawn from whatused to beknown as the "lunatic fringe" of Ameri­can political life, which under Reagan isbecoming the mainstream. And thenuclear bombs are bigger and betterthan ever this time.

continued on page 11

28 SEPTEMBER 1984