workers vanguard no 688 - 10 april 1998

7/29/2019 Workers Vanguard No 688 - 10 April 1998

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sOtNo. 688 .... 10 April 1998

Indonesia SeethesUnder I FAusterityDown Vt(itb ....

Anti ..C h i n 8 ~ ., . ' ( ~ ~ r . ~ ~ I n . e p e n d ~ l 1 ~ e for .....EastiTimor!We print below in edited form a pres-entation by Spartacist League of Austra-lia spokesman Margaret Rodda at anSLiAforum in Sydney on March 27.Two weeks ago, amid growing socialturmoil in Indonesia over the economiccrisis racking Asia, the dictator Suhartowas re-elected to a seventh term as president. In mid-February, the governmentbanned public protests and deployedmassive police and army forces on the

streets in an attempt to ensure order.Nevertheless, large anti-Suharto protestshave occurred almost daily on universities across Java over the past month.These have been met with fierce repression whenever students have tried to takethe protests outside the campuses.Indonesia is a powder keg. Engulfed bythe Asian financial crisis, the Indonesianrupiah has undergone a massive devaluation-some 70 to 80 percent since July1997. Business collapses, soaring pricesand shortages of goods have led to panicbuying and so-called "food riots," raisingthe spectre of economic chaos and furthersocial unrest. Already bridling under theextreme corruption of the Suharto dictatorship, the middle class has had itsexpectations of success under the Asian"economic miracle" utterly dashed asinternational market forces hit home.For the working class, the austeritymeasures dictated by the imperialistbloodsuckers of the International Monetary Fund (1MF) mean deepening immiseration. Millions have already been laidoff, with building and factory workersworst hit. Unemployment is now officially reported to be 8 million, risingfrom 2.5 million in mid-l 997 . The staterun SPSI (All Indonesia Workers Union)predicts that the number of workers whodon't earn enough to cover their dailyneeds will reach 40 million out of a workforce of 90 million this year. The situation has been heightened by the worstdrought in 50 years, with villagers pouring into cities like Jakarta in search ofwork. While the economic crisis hassparked worker unrest, it has also fed thegrowth of Islamic fervour. This has hadserious consequences not only for thelargely Christian Chinese minority, whohave met with violence and arson at thehands of rampaging mobs, but for womenworkers who have played an increasingly

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ReutersRiot police attack student demonstrators in Surabaya, eastern Java, in early March. As prices skyrocket and foodshortages spread under IMF dictates, protests against Suharto regime have swept Indonesian campuses.strong role in strikes and protests.From Thailand and Indonesia to thePhilippines, massive imperialist investment over the past two decades, centrallyby Japanese capital, has created a vibrant,young proletariat. This is the force whichcan and must fight to sweep away thebloodsoaked Suharto dictatorship, not bylooking for an alliance with an illusionary "democratic" wing ofIndonesian capitalism, but through socialist revolutionagainst the entire capitalist-landlord ruling class and its imperialist patrons.To lead this struggle to .victory requiresthe forging of a Leninist-Trotskyist partywhich seeks to link the class struggles inIndonesia with those of workers throughout Asia and across the world. The road tothe emancipation of the working class ofthe region-and with them women, thepeasantry and oppressed ethnic and national minorities-lies in the fight for a

socialist federation of Southeast Asia,linked to the struggle for proletarian revolution in Japan, Australia, the U.S. andother imperialist powers and for workerspolitical revolution in China.to stop thethreat of capitalist restoration there.The Family: Mainstay ofSocial Reaction

Fighting for the right to organise inindependent trade unions and for wageincreases and better working conditions,including maternity leave rights, womenhave played a militant role in workers'struggles against the Suharto dictatorship.over the past decade. This is exemplifiedby the case of Marsinah, a young militantwho became a hero to millions of womenand youth after she was brutally murdered in the wake of labour struggles inEast Java in 1993. Many of these newproletarians are recently arrived from vil-

x'RichburgIWashington PostNike plant in Indonesian city of Serang. Superexploited women workers,drawn into factory production during economic boom, are now threatenedwith mass layoffs.

lages where traditional jobs have beenreplaced by mechanisation or lost throughencroaching urbanisation. While horriblyexploited in the factories, these youngwomen also find some freedom from thesocial pressures of family and village life,particularly the pressure to marry, including through arranged marriages.Central to women's oppression in Indonesia, as in all class societies, is theinstitution of the family-an economicand social unit subjugating women asdependent domestic slaves and serving,along with organised religion, as a mainstay of social reaction. Suharto's "NewOrder" military regime, ushered in withthe horrific 1965 anti-Communist bloodbath in which over half a million peoplewere slaughtered, has strongly inculcated an ideology relegating women tothe role of wife and mother. In 1974, thegovernment passed a national marriagelaw which in its original form provokedwidespread revolt from Islamic leadersbecause it threatened to abolish polygamy and weaken the role of the Islamiccourts which mainly deal with family lawand inheritance. To appease the Islamicists, the final, revised law codified andgreatly expanded the role of Islamiccourts, allowing as weIr for the inst itutionof polygamy, although somewhat circumscribed. The law also codified thewife's role as family housekeeper and thehusband's as the family protector andprovider.The regime's key vehicles for inculcating this ideology have been governmentcontrolled women's organisations suchas Dharma Wanita and particularly thePKK (Family Welfare Movement) whichpermeates both urban and rural areasthroughout the Indonesian archipelago.continued on page 5


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Brooklyn's Maimonides HospitalVictory to the Nurses Strike!

APRIL 6-ln an important labor battlefor all hospital workers in the area, morethan 700 members of the New YorkState N u r ~ e s Association (NYSNA) havegone on' strike at Maimonides MedicalCenter, the second-largest hospital inBrooklyn. Since the strike began onMarch 30, management has brought inscores of scabs from a Denver-basedstrikebreaking outfit, the United NursingCorporation. This union-busting must bestopped through mass picket lines that noone crosses!Rather that carry out this basic act oflabor solidarity, the leadership of thepowerful Local 1199 health and hospitalworkers union has its members waltzingacross the picket lines. Local 1199, whose.contract expires in the coming months,and the Committee of Interns and Residents which is embroiled in a unionorganizing drive at the hospital, must jointhis strike as an elementary act of selfdefense.The multiracial strikers, many of themimmigrants from the Philippines, SouthAsia and the West Indies, had beenworking without a contract since December 31. The hospital bosses provoked thestrike by shelving a popular flexiblework schedule. Despite the fact that Maimonides is raking in huge profits, management is trying to ram down theunion's throat a give-back contract whichwould force nurses to pay for their ownlong-term disability insurance, eliminatepremium pay for senior nurses and gut

Nurses picket lineat MaimonidesHospital (right).April 1 union rallyagainst threat oflayoffs at HarlemHospital. Healthcare workers facemassive cutbacks,union-bustingattacks.

medical and tuition reimbursement plans.In a serious threat to the quality ofpatient care, the Maimonides bosseswant to further cut costs by switching

WV Photonurses to departments for which they arenot trained.The attack on the Maimonides nursesis the latest in a series of assaults on ben-

"I Am Not Now and Have Never Been ... "24 March 1998

Dear Workers Vanguard,Imagine my surprise when a comradetold me I had been selectively quotedfrom my e-mail AND been libeled ashaving been a member of the ISO. WhileI have no objection to the comrades atWV quoting from me, since I am anticopyright, a note saying that you weredoing so would have been comradely.

were referring to me.Let me make my relationship to theISO perfectly clear for you. Theoretically the ISO and I are light years apart. Iactually read Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, etc. I can analyze events for myselfrather than relying on a leadership basedin London to make all my decisions forme. In the real world, I can. fight foractual reforms while keeping my eye onthe prize, revolution. For them, it's therevolution or nothing.The regretful act I took part in, keepingthe SL comrades out of the planning con-

efits and pay scales at hospitals in andaround New York City. The New YorkCity Health and Hospitals Corporationrecently announced plans to layoff 900hospital workers, further eroding thealready dismal health care available tothe city's black and Hispanic poor. OnApril 1, 500 workers from AFSCMELocal 420, representing public hospitalworkers, joined. by other trade unionists,protested plans for layoffs at the HarlemHospital Medical Center, the only publichospital left in Harlem.These cuts are only the latest in aseries of blows by the capitalist rulersagainst health care, particularly for thepoor and working people. While doingnothing to mobilize the real power oflabor to fight these attacks, the procapitalist union tops promote phony"friend of labor'" Democrats like U.S.Senate candidate Geraldine Ferraro, whomade an appearance on the NYSNApicket lines. Local 1199 leader DennisRivera is himself a key leader of the stateDemocratic Party. And long beforeRepublican mayor Rudolph Giulianitook the ax to city services and jobs,Democratic mayor and racist pig EdKoch shoved the closing of SydenhamHospital down the throats of Harlem residents. His successor, black DemocratDavid Dinkins, oversaw the gutting ofthousands of city and industrial jobseven as he hired 6,000 more cops. Austerity is the program of both capitalistparties.The same bosses who oversee thedeadly hospital cutbacks scream thatstriking unionists "endanger" the healthof patients. What chutzpah! It is the capitalist profit system which denies or l i m ~ its health care to vast portions of societyand is responsible for the resurgence ofdiseases of poverty like tuberculosis.Free quality health care for all! Victoryto the nurses strike! _

Lettersference, was done when I was not a member of any socialist organization. At thetime I felt (and still do feel, for that matter) that the SL was showing the studentswho had been busting their butts to putthe conference together a high level ofdisrespect. The SL had not done whatEVERY other group had done, which wasto complete some minor paperwork (sowe knew how much space to set aside foreach group) and pay a small fee.In retrospect, I feel that the SL shouldhave been allowed to set up their littable, if they paid the fee then, whichthey offered to do. We make mistakes,we learn from them, and we fight on.

With revolutionary regards,M.L.

The following was written in responseto a Young Spartacus article, "ISOThreatens SYCer at S.F State: Goons forLiberalism" (WV No. 686, 13 March),which noted a flurry of Internet mes-sages prompted by a Spartacus YouthClub leaflet protesting the InternationalSocialist Organization'S thuggery. In thearticle, the writer of this letter was iden-tified (evidently inaccurately) as havingbeen an ISOer when he helped theISO exclude the SL from a 1991 con-ference opposing the Persian GulfWar-an act he has come to regret. None-theless, in asserting that the ISO iscommitted to "revolution or nothing," hemaintains an incapacity to appreciatethe ISO's abject reformism, which is themotor force for the exclusion ism andthuggery they employ to try to silenceour revolutionary politics.

However, what I AM upset about isthat you have- libeled me as a formerISOer. I have NEVER been a member ofthe International Socialist Organization,though I have worked with it on threeoccasions. Nowhere in my post doesit say I was a member of the ISO.While you did not use my name (thankyou), anyone who is a reader of botha.p.s.t. [an Internet bulletin board] andWV could easily figure out that youOn Democratic Rights

S p a r t ~ b i s t ~ BOSTON

Spartacus Youth Club Class SeriesSelected Monday evenings, 7 p.m.Next classes, April 13: China on theBrink: Stalinism-Gravedigger ofRevolutions; April 20: Black Oppression-Bedrock of U.S. Capitalism:The Fight for RevolutionaryIntegrationism; Harvard UniversityMemorial Hall, Room 303Information and readings: (617) 666-9453

NEW YORK CITYSpartacus Youth Club Class SeriesAlternate Thursdays. Next classes,April 9: Black Oppression-Bedrockof U.S. Capitalism: The Fight forRevolutionary Integrationism; NewYork University Loeb Student Center,8 p.m., Room 513

10 APRIL 1998

April 23: Confronting the Death ofCommunism Myth-The Revolutionary Party in the Post-Soviet World;New York University Loeb StudentCenter, 8:30 p.m., Room 411Information and readings: (212) 267-1025

~ ~ { $ t . . 4 ~ 1 ! ; 9 ~ ( # 1 . 4 ' 9 ~ ~ ! 9 # , k ; : , t ~ ..F9rpm i//

TORONTONational Chauvinism Is Poisonto Class StruggleIndependence fo r Quebec!

Saturday, April 18, 7:30 p.m.St. Paul's Centre427 Bloor Street West'Oust west of Spadina subway)For more information: (416) 593-4138

31 March 1998Dear WV,Why is the PDC defending six CIAagents?. I really don't get it!

WV RepliesWarm regards,Bob Malecki

In our article "Star Chamber Hearings-U.S. Moves to Deport Own IraqiAgents" (WV No. 687, 27 March), wenoted that the star chamber deportationproceedings used against the six CIAoperatives represented "a threat not onlyto all immigrants but to the civil libertiesof everyone in the U.S." In this case, thedefense team was even denied the rightto see the government's evidence untilthey were joined by a former CIAdirector-who had a security clearance!The raft of anti-immigration and "antiterrorism" laws adopted over the pastdecade have ominously sought to eliminate basic democratic protections, suchas the right of due process. Because weare opposed to the enhancement of thecapitalist state's machinery of repression,

we condemn these police-state laws andstar chamber proceedings, even whenthose in the dock are Iraqi CIA agents.As Leninists, we understand that democratic rights are indivisible. Our readersmay recall that when the feds went afterthe Unification Church of the sinisterRev. Sun Myung Moon, denying it statusas a "legitimate" religious organizationand aiming to pry into the Moonies'financial records, we saw this as a dan

gerous precedent which would be usedagainst left organizations and unions.The PDC and Spartacist League submitted an amicus brief to the U.S. SupremeCourt in Moon's defense, just a shorttime after his Washington Times hadpublished a deadly libel-subsequentlyretracted-against the SL-initiated labor/black mobilization which stopped theKKK from marching in Washington, D.C.in November 1982.In short, if the U.S. government cando this to the CIA's Iraqi operatives,imagine what they will try .to do toother immigrants, working-class militants and leftist s._

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u.s. Troops Out of Korea Now!Late last month, "peace" talks aimedat bringing the 1950-53 Korean War toa formal close collapsed as the U.S. delegation refused to even discuss NorthKorea's demand for the removal ofAmerican troops stationed in SouthKorea. Beginning on March 26, the Spartacist League and the Spartacus YouthClubs held demonstrations across thecountry in opposition to U.S. imperialism and its military forces in Korea.Since the end of the Korean War, American troops have propped up the brutalcapitalist regime in the South againstthe volatile working class, which isnow chafing under austerity measuresdictated by the International MonetaryFund, and have directly threatened the

hureaucratically deformed workers statein the North.

Spartacist/SYC Speakouts itary defense of North Korea and Chinaagainst the threat of capitalist counterrevolution and imperialist attack!At the same time, the presence of theAmerican military in Korea props upthe authoritarian South Korean regime ofKim Dae Jung. The government in Seoulsurvives with the direct support of theU.S. imperialist army, which enables itto enforce the police-state suppression ofall political dissent. In its brutal repression of labor uprisings and student protests, the South Korean government hasrounded up thousands of trade unionistsand student activists under the draconianNational Security Law for allegedly having pro-North sympathies.It is the elementary duty of the international working class and anti-imperialistyouth to rally to the defense of theworkers and students of South Korea instruggle against capitalist repression. Wedemand the immediate release of alljailed South Korean labor militants andleftist students!

The Spartacist/SYC speakouts-atPasadena City College, the University ofMassachusetts at Boston, San FranciscoState University, New York Universityand the University of Chicago-alsodemanded: Down with IMF bloodsuckers! Defeat U.S. imperialism throughworkers revolution! For the unconditional military defense of the NorthKorean deformed workers state! And onApril 4, our comrades of the SpartacusYouth Group, youth organization of theSpartacist League/Britain, demonstratedat the University of London under thecall, "Protest Kim Dae Jung, president ofSouth Korean police state!" as Kim wasspeaking there.

Young Spartacus photosMarch 30: Spartacist rallies at New York University (above) and PasadenaCity College.Any serious strike in South Koreaimmediately eomes up against the capitalist police state. In May 1980, radicalstudent protesters backed by the powerfulworking class launched a heroic massuprising which took over the city ofKwangju for one week. The South Korean government was only able to putdown the uprising because its U.S. imperialist overlords provided direct support.The South Korean government declaredmartial law and sent in the army to brutally crush the uprising, massacring 2,000people and arresting tens of thousands.American government documents showthat the U.S. was prepared to intervenemilitarily if their South Korean puppetswere unable to crush the Kwangju uprising on their own.

Besides demanding the release of allvictims of police-state repression inSouth Korea, the SYG denounced theBritish capitalist government of TonyBlair's Labour Party, which most recentlyacted as the main backers in the international arena of U.S. imperialism's threatened terror bombing of Iraq in January.As SYG spokesman Melanie Kellynoted: "The Labour Party has alwaysbeen pro-imperialist and anti-communist.We of the International CommunistLeague fight for the revolutionary overthrow of British imperialism. From thedays when the Empire lorded it overthe colonial peoples, to decaying British capitalism today, racist British imperialism has waged war on workers andminorities at home a.nd abroad."

Michelle Oberman at the March 30 Pasa Korean War in 1953 represent the spearhead of the American imperialists' effortsto impose domination over Asia. Thetroops pose a direct threat to the deformed workers states of North Korea andChina. We call for the unconditional mil-

Before the capitalist counterrevolutionin 1991, the Soviet Union served as themain obstacle to imperialist aggressionin Korea. The Spartacus Youth Club callsfor the unconditional military defense ofNorth Korea, China, Vietnam and Cuba!But with the Soviet degenerated workersstate gone, the deformed workers statesin Asia are in great danger.

We reprint below a speech by LosAngeles Spartacus Youth Club comrade

dena speakout.* * *We demand: U.S. troops out of Koreanow! The almost 40,000 American troopsstationed in Korea since the end of theOther leftist groups, like the ProgressiveLabor Party-which called the formerSoviet Union a "fascist state"-marchright in step with the anti-communism ofcontinued on page 8

Japanese Spartacists' Statement to Korea Protests

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We print below a March 29 statement by the Sparta-cist Group Japan, section of the International Commu-nist League, addressed to the Spartacist League/SYCprotests against imperialist troops in Korea.The Spartacist Group Japan sends revolutionary

greetings to your demonstration.The North Korean deformed workers state was created in 1945 with the rout of fleeing Japanese imperialarmy troops by the Soviet Red Army. Since that time,the Japanese and American bourgeoisies have been ona relentless drive to destroy North Korea. Today, theimperialists are attempting to starve the North Koreansinto submission while the viciously chauvinist Japanese ruling class has refused to ship them one grain ofthe 3.5 million tons of rice it is hoarding.The Japanese occupation of the Korean peninsulafrom 1910 to 1945 was one of untold horror. Morethan 100,000 Korean women were forced into sexualslavery and more than one million men were brought

to Japan to work as forced laborers during the PacificWar, as the Japanese imperialists vied with theirAmerican counterparts for mastery over Asia and thePacific.Today, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, rival

ries between cO.mpeting imperialist powers are heatingup-in the Pacific region, between Japan and the U.S.The ruling class of both countries and their labor lieutenants push protectionist poison preparing for a newinterimperialist slaughter. As Lenin wrote of WorldWar I, this war would be a war "between the biggestslave-holders for the maintenance and consolidation ofslavery." The main enemy is at home! The mainenemy of the Japanese proletariat is in Tokyo! It is thejob of the American proletariat to settle accounts withits own rulers.As the Japanese and U.S. capitalists compete forspheres of exploitation and influence, they are still militarily allied under the ANPO pact, a dagger aimed

at China, Vietnam and North Korea. The proletariat ofJapan and America must join together to defend theseworkers states against imperialism's counterrevolutionary designs. Smash the counterrevolutionary alliancebetween Japanese and U.S. imperialism through workers revoi ution!We, the Japanese section of the International Communist League, seek to build a multinational, multiracial Leninist-Trotskyist party that fights for full citizenship rights for Koreans and other minorities. We fightto build a revolutionary party that will sweep the rapists of Nanjing and the enslavers of the "comfortwomen" into the dustbin of history. It is only under thered flag of a Japanese workers republic that the countless victims of Japanese imperialism will be avenged.For unconditional military defense of North Korea!For a workers revolution in the South and forproletar ian political revolution in the North!For the revolutionary reunification of I):orea!

WORKERS VANGUARD


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Indonesia...(continued from page 1)These organisations promote the doctrineof Panca Dharma Wanita-the "FiveDuties of Women." This is a companionpiece to the regime's Panca Sila doctrine,which has been promoted from the timeof Sukarno, Indonesia's first nationalistruler following independence from theDutch in 1948. Where Panca Sila putsforward the five "principles" of belief inone god, humanism, patriotism, democracy 'lna social justice, Panca DharmaWanita lays out the five basic roles making up the fundamental oppression ofwomen in the family: companion andsupporter of one's husband, caretaker ofthe household, producer of future generations, prime socialiser of children and anIndonesian citizen.At the same time, the contingencies ofeconomic development have required thegovernment to encourage women to takeon employment outside the home, even asthey are supposed to maintain their primary role within the family. Increasedparticipation by women in the workforcehas been accompanied by greater accessto education, at least for a layer ofwomen, along with declining birth rates,delayed marriages and greater populationmobility. qn e reflection of the positionof middle-class and bourgeois womenin Indonesian society, where economic

APChinese shop owner victimized inracist riots.development has taken place alongsidecontinuing social backwardness, is thedevelopment of a distinct but smallIslamic feminist movement which tries tobridge the unbridgeable gulf betweenaccess to the modern world and thedemands of religion and the family.Imperialist capital investment has alsoled to the emergence of an urbanisedand educated, though deeply exploited,proletariat, particularly in manufacturing.Twenty million workers live in urbanareas like the Jakarta-Bogor-TangerangBekasih industrial belt. Women, particularly those who come from villages andhave little education, form the bulk ofsuperexploited workers in the prison-likefactories in such areas. Huge factorycomplexes in Tangerang are surroundedby barbed wire and patrolled by "ex"military guards. Workers housed withinthe compounds-three or four to a cellare not allowed to leave without permission. Despite such hellish conditions, theability of women to work outside thehome means that their relationship tomale workers increasingly becomes one ofcomrades in the class struggle, not household slaves shut away from the world.The struggle for women's emancipation is tied to the proletarian class struggle to overthrow the system of capitalistexploitation. We fight to end patriarchalpractices oppressive to women, like thepolygamy system and the bride pricelegacies of social backwardness which10 APRIL 1998

IMF chief MichelCamdessuswatches asIndonesian dictatorSuharto signsimperialist-dictatedausterity plan.

are today upheld by religious reactionaries in league with the capitalist rulers.Women's liberation can only come aboutthrough socialist revolution extending tothe advanced capitalist countries. In asocialist planned economy, the familyas a social unit will be replaced bysocialisation of childcare and householdduties. Only then can relationships beentered into freely and without economiccompulsion.As in the 1917 Russian Revolution,women workers will be in the forefront ofthe fight against capitalist and semifeudal enslavement in Indonesia. As revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky said in1924 of the newly liberated Muslimwomen of the Soviet East: "There will beno better communist in the East, no better fighter for the ideas of the Revolution ... than the awakened woman worker."

Indonesian Prison Houseof PeoplesAn important question addressing theoppression of women in Indonesia isabortion, which is illegal. This issue washighlighted earlier this year when a number of doctors and nurses were arrested

for performing abortions and their clinicsclosed and files seized. At the same time,abortions are reportedly not uncommonamong middle-class women, who havegreater access to education and a certaindegree of personal freedom, along withthe money to pay for the procedure. Forpoor and working-class women, accessto free, safe abortion is an explosiveissue. There is a huge stigma attached topregnancy outside marriage, with illegitimate children and their mothers shunnedby society. According to a report inthe Sydney Morning Herald (3 January),1994 statistics revealed that 450 out ofevery 100,000 pregnant women died inI n d o n e s i a ~ t h e highest maternal deathrate in Southeast Asia. Sixteen percent ofthese deaths were reportedly from unsafeabortions.The fight for free abortion on demandis closely linked to the struggle for free,quality health care fot all. Medical care inIndonesia is poor even by standards forthe so-called "developing" world. Alongwith very high rates of death in childbirthare high infant mortality rates. In thecountryside, some 80 percent of pregnantwomen and children under five years ofage are undernourished. This situation isaggravated by the collapse of the rupiahand skyrocketing costs for goods likemedical supplies.With a population of over 200 million,Indonesia is the fourth-largest and one ofthe most densely populated countries inthe world. The Suharto regime has pursued an aggressive p o p u l a t i o n ~ controlprogram, from which single women areexcluded. While the government's KB(Keluarga Berencana) program providesfree access to contraception for marriedwomen, many have been threatened orbribed into participating. These pressuresare intensified by the involvement of theIndonesian military (ABRI) in the program as part of its so-called "dual function" in military and civilian affairs-therecipe by which bloody military terrorhas been repeatedly unleashed to regiment and suppress the population.

Another aspect of the population control program is the regime's "transmigration" policy, resettling landless poorfrom densely populated areas, particularly in Java, to outlying and ethnicallydistinct areas such as Irian Jaya and EastTimor. This policy has stoked the flamesof longstanding ethnic and religious un-. rest. For example, the East Timoresehave been struggling for independenceagainst the genocidal Indonesian military occupation since 1975. More than200,000 East Timorese-fully one-thirdof the population-have died eitherby direct murder, such as the slaughterof over 200 demonstrators in the EastTimor capital of Dili in 1991, or fromdisease and starvation.The infant mortality rate in EastTimor is one of the five worst in theworld. East Timorese suffer high levelsof malnutrition, TB, malaria and sexually transmitted diseases, while desperate economic conditions have led youngwomen into prostitution or forced marriage. East Timorese women, who arelargely Catholic and reject birth controlon religious grounds, are often coercedinto compliance, intimidated when visiting health care facilities where doctorsand nurses are often accompanied bysoldiers. Covert sterilisations and injections are widely suspected, such as whenonly female students at a senior highschool were given alleged anti-tetanusinjections. Such barbarity underscoresthe very real fear of the East Timorese that the Indonesian governmentintends to carry out the genocide of theirpeople.Only a revolutionary overthrow of theexisting capitalist imperialist system caneven begin to address 'the oppression,degradation and misery of women aswell as the rights and emancipation ofnational minorities throughout the archipelago. Indonesia is a prison house ofpeoples-home to some 300 differentethnic and national groups who sufferunder the repression of the Java-centredbourgeois regime. Most notably, therehave been struggles for independencewaged by the Acehnese of north Sumatraand the people of Irian Jaya, as well asby the East Timorese. We call for the

immediate independence of East Timor- no t through appeals for some imperialist, UN-brokered deal as pushed by theIndonesian leftist People's DemocraticParty (PRD), but as part of the fight forworkers revolution in Indonesia.The refomist Democratic SocialistParty (DSP) in Australia promotes thePRD's class-collaborationist politics, fostering illusions in "democratic" Australian imperialism. However, we makeclear that the Australian ruling class is nofriend of the East Timorese or Indonesianmasses. In a letter last December to theAustralian immigration minister, the Partisan Defence Committee denounced thedenial of entry visas to East Timoreseactivists at that time as "an act of blatant political censorship, underscoringthe Australian government's complicityin the Indonesian government's slaughter and suppression in East Timor."The letter went on: "Following the 1991Dili massacre the Australian militarystepped up its arming and training ofthe Indonesian military, including of theelite Kopassus counterinsurgency torture/killer units, who are the cutting edge ofrepression throughout the archipelago."We also noted that this ban on East Timorese activists marked another step inthe Australian government's racist war onimmigrants, refugees and Aborigines, thespearhead for broad-gauged attacks onthe trade unions and the working class asa whole.Islam as a Political Factor

Some 90 percent of Indonesia's 203million inhabitants describe themselvesas Muslim, making Indonesia the largestIslamic country in the world. However,particularly on Java where Islamic beliefs were syncretised with pre-existinganimist, Hindu and Buddhist traditions, alarge proportion of Muslims have beendescribed as abangun (nominal). Alongside the abangun are the santri, or devout, Muslims. Approximately 56 millionbelong to two organisations reflectingthe main strands of santri Muslims:the traditionalist Nahdlatul Ulama (NU),based on the rural Islamic schools calledpesantren, and the urban-based, "modernist" organisation Muhammadiyah. Withwidespread resentment among the newmiddle classes at the nepotism, cronyismand corruption of the Suharto clique,there has been an increasing "santrification" of abangun Muslims.The Suharto regime has nurtured a special relationship with the "modernists,"reflected in shifts in the army leadershipand in the formation in 1990 of the Indonesian Association of Muslim Intellectuals (ICMI), led by Suharto's newlyappointed vice president Habibie. Suharto has also sought to appease conservative Muslim interests by elevating thestatus of the Islamic courts and passinglaws mandating, for example, compulsory religious instruction in the schools.In the late 1980s, registry offices were nolonger permitted to perform marriages,making marriage between people of different religions virtually impossible tocontinued on page 6

AFPMarch 26: Malaysian security forces stand over bodies of "illegal" Indonesianimmigrants they gunned down at detention camp. Thousands of mmigrantsare slated for deportation as financial crisis deepens.5


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Hatred of Suharto regime has fed growth of bourgeois-nationalist and Islamic "opposition." Left: January march by supporters of Megawati Sukarnoputri,banned leader of Indonesian Democratic Party. Right: May 1997 election rally for Islamic United Development Party (PPP).

Indonesia...(continued from page 5)obtain. The rise of Islam as a political factor in Indonesia can only be as a force forreaction. It is necessary to fight for theseparation of state and religion and tocombat theocratic reaction, includingopposing discrimination against all religious minorities.The past few years have seen an increasing number of violent attacks byIslamic mobs on Sino-Indonesians andChristian churches, such as the attacksthat broke out in towns around Tasik-

malaya in West Java in 1996. Today, theChinese minority, which includes a fabulously wealthy elite, is being made ascapegoat for the economic crisis besetting Southeast Asia. The British television program [TN World News ca(ried areport recently that at least one of therecent anti-Chinese pogroms, in the townof Praya on the island of Lombok, wasorganised by government security forces.In the wake of the attack, many Chineseresidents simply fled, too frightened toreopen their shops. Muslim shopkeepersinterviewed by ITN described how theywere warned in advance by cops to stayout of the marketplace that day. Theysaid that the "rioters" had never beenseen in the village before, but had beenbused in by the police. It was only whenthe mob, finding Chinese shops closed,moved on to non-Chinese areas thatsecurity forces stepped in.The capitalist rulers have long fosterednational and communal divisions to wardoff multiethnic class struggle. ChineseIndonesians have historically been thetarget of racist reaction. In the 1965bloodbath, ethnic Chinese were singledout by anti-Communist mobs. In the wakeof the massacres, Chinese organisationsaffiliated with the Stalinist regime inBeijing were proscribed and all Chineselanguage schools closed down. Onlysince the re-establishment of diplomaticrelations between Indonesia and Chinaand the expansion of tourism and tradebetween the two countries has Jakarta -been compelled to make some conces-6

sions. In 1994, the ban on teaching Chinese was eased and Chinese-languagetourist pamphlets were permitted. However, restrictions on the import, sale ordistribution of Chinese-language materialremain in force, and the prominent display of Chinese characters on buildings isbanned. This year, the Suharto government even banned public celebrations ofthe Chinese New Year.Today, anti-Chinese attacks are reaching a level not seen since 1965. In theabsence of a revolutionary proletarianparty uniting workers across ethnic andnational lines, discontent is likely to befurther deflected in the direction of

pogroms. Every manifestation of antiChinese chauvinism must be foughtdown the line by class-conscious workers throughout Indonesia. Down withanti-Chinese terror!Throughout Southeast Asia, there aremillions of poor and working-class Chi-. nese who are class brothers in the struggle against capitalist exploitation. Theneed for united, internationalist proletarian struggle is underlined by the fact thatincreasing numbers of Indonesian workers have been compelled to cross the

straits to Malaysia and Singapore, whereChinese make up 30 and 78 percent ofthe population, respectively. There theyoften replace Chinese, Malay and Indianworkers in the lowest-paid, hardest anddirtiest jobs. Over a million Indonesianslegally worked overseas in 1997. Alongside them are an estimated equal numberof so-called "illegal" workers, whoseranks have been swelled in the past yearas thousands cross the straits to findwork and even food. In the past threeweeks, almost 4,000 Indonesians havebeen rounded up by Malaysian securityforces, part of the mass of foreign workers throughout Southeast Asia who have()o33c:: >

a.0-o

East Timorese incity of Dilidemonstratingin 1991 for endto Indonesianmilitary rule,moments beforetroops massacreover 200people.

been deported since last. summer. Wesay: No deportations! Full citizenshiprights for all immigrants!For Permanent Revolution!

Just as the Dutch plundered massivewealth from Indonesia during its colonialrule, the country today is a rich sourceof superprofits for the imperialists, withimpoverished workers brutally exploitedin the factories, oil fields, mines andrubber plantations. Particularly in landstarved Java, industrial expansion has trans-

TempoWomen workers have played key role in labor struggles throughoutSoutheast Asia, as in this strike in Indonesia.

formed the rural sector, with peasanthouseholds displaced by developmentprojects. One result has been a significant depopulation of villages, particularly of women. Those from rural areasmoving to the cities in search of work cannot fail to notice the vast gulf betweenthe rich and poor. In Jakarta alone, millions live in shantytowns without running water or electricity.Indonesia is a country where LeonTrotsky'S theory and program of permanent revolution is manifestly applicable.In the backward countries in this century,the epoch of imperialist decay, the democratic gains achieved by the earlier European bourgeois revolutions, such as political democracy and agrarian revolution,can no longer be carried out by bourgeoisnationalists, who are weak and dependent on their imperialist masters. The1917 Russian Revolution showed the wayforward for countries like Indonesia.Under the leadership of the BolshevikParty of Lenin and Trotsky, the capitalistclass was expropriated and a workersstate erected on the foundations of aplanned, collectivised economy-theprecondition for an egalitarian socialist society. This happened in a country with asmall but socially concentrated workingclass, alongside a large, backward peasantry and many national minorities.The Bolshevik Revolution representedan enormous leap forward, particularlyfor women. The new Soviet governmentimmediately removed all impediments tolegal equality for women, giving themthe right to vote, making marriage anddivorce simple matters of civil registration, legalising abortion and outlawingdiscrimination against homosexuals. Daycare facilities and communal diningrooms and laundries were established tofree women from household drudgery.But in an isolated, backward country,these efforts could only hint at the possibilities for women had socialist revolution spread to the advanced industriarcountries. In 1923-24, a consolidating,conservative bureaucracy led by Stalinusurped power through a political counterrevolution. Under the nationalist dogma of "socialism in one country," the Stalinist bureaucracy opposed the fight forinternational extension of the revolution.It glorified the backwardness of theyoung Soviet state and reversed manyof the Bolsheviks' measures to liberate women. Strangled by the Stalinistbureaucracy, the Soviet Union was finallydestroyed through capitalist counterrevolution in 1991-92. This was an enormoussetback for workers and oppressed theworld over. However, it was not communism that died in the Soviet Union, but itsnationalist perversion, Stalinism. Today,we raise the call for new October Revolutions-the only solution to the wars andpoverty rooted in capitalism.No to Class Collaboration!

The austerity measures dictated by theU.S.-dominated IMF clearly illustrate thedependent nature of the national bourgeoisie in backward countries like Indonesia. With unrest mounting under therule of the aging Suharto, the U.S. andWORKERS VANGUARD


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P..os... ..... : .. . ,.::"u.s. Trains Indonesian Death SquadsWhen protests triggered by IMFimposed austerity broke out in Indonesialast fall, the Suharto regime was quick tocall out the army to ensure "order." Bat

talions of the dreaded Kopassus RedBerets, which are notorious for widespread torture and killing of suspectedpolitical opponents, were rushed to thecapital city, Jakarta. Lurking in the shadows were U.S. operatives, who weretraining Indonesian special forces inurban combat and carrying out joint military exercises with Jakarta's assassination teams.The role of the U.S. special forces inIndonesia, where the capitalist regimehas a long history of unleashing militaryterror against national and ethnic minor- .ities, trade unionists and leftists, wasrevealed by journalist Allan Nairn in theNation (30 March). Barely two daysafter the article appeared, and onlyhours after Nairn had held a press conference with opponents of the regime,he was seized by Indonesian policeintelligence officers and summarilydeported.

other imperialists are likely to playa bigrole in deciding his succession. We warnagainst any support to such bourgeois"oppositionists" as Megawati Sukanl0putri-the daughter of Sukarno-who wasbanned in 1996 from running in theregime's rigged presidential "elections."A recent historical analogue was Washington's promoting of the aristocraticCory Aquino in the Philippines as a suc-'cessor to the venal, hated regime of Ferdinand Marcos in the mid-1980s. Backedby fake leftists such as the DSP, who mislead the workers movement into the trapof class collaborationism, Aquino wholeheartedly defended the interests of herclass, the capitalist rulers, and their imperialist patrons against the working classand oppressed masses.Reformist "socialists" who seek totie the working class and oppressedto a "progressive" wing of the capitalist class follow the Menshevik/Stalinistschema of "two-stage" revolution: fightfor "democratic" capitalism today andsocialism some time in a future thatnever comes. As repeatedly demonstrated by history-from the defeat of theChinese Revolution of 1925-27, whichwas drowned in blood by ChiangKai-shek's Guomindang Nationalists,to the Chilean military's overthrow ofAllende's popular-front government in1973-this program means the massmurder of communists and workers.

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In his article, Nairn described how forthe past five years the Pentagon has beenrunning a secret training program forIndonesian military units, including Suharto's presidential guard as well as Kostrad, the army command unit responsiblefor Jakarta. But the main recipients ofU.S. military training have been theKopassus death squads. Since 1992, of28 joint exercises carried out by theIndonesian military and U.S. GreenBerets or Air Force units, 20 have beenwith Kopassus. In the summer of 1996,as military forces were brutally suppressing mass protests following anarmy/police assault on the headquartersof Megawati Sukarnoputri's IndonesianDemocratic Party, a team from U.S. Special Operations Command-Pacific wasflown in to train Kopassus and otherunits in their terror operations.Several Democrats in Congress havewaxed indignant over the continuedtraining of Indonesian special forcesdespite a 1992 Congressional ban onfunds for such efforts following theSuharto regime's massacre of more than

Hundreds ofthousands weremassacred in1965 antiCommunistbloodbath whichushered inSuharto's rule.

II )Q)Ei=""z

In Indonesia in 1965, the predominantly Javanese-based PKI was the largest Communist Party outside the SovietUniun and China, comprising some 3 million members and another 14 million supporters in trade-union, peasant, women'sand youth organisations. But the PKI'spolitical support to Sukarno under thewatchword of gotong royong-"nationalunity" with the "progressive" bourgeoisie-paved the way for the massacreswhich decimated the organised workingclass and destroyed the PKI. UnderSukarno, the PKI gained cabinet posts,while using its authority to repeatedly banstrikes and suppress militant peasantmovements. Pledging to enforce "the cooperation between the people and theArmed Forces, in particular the PoliceForce," the PKI served to strengthen thevery repressive apparatus which lalt!rcame down on it.This regime was an example of a popular front, a class-collaborationist coalition in which the proletariat and oppressed are chained to the class enemy.The Indonesian masses were politically,organisationally and militarily disarmedwhen the generals, backed by imperialism, struck to behead the PKI. In carrying out the repression, reactionary Islamic fundamentalists were unleashedagainst the PKI, its allies and the Chinese minority. Members of Gerwani, the

200 people in East Timor the yearbefore. In fact, the Pentagon's collaboration with the Indonesian military butchers has been vastly expanded under asubsequent program, known as "JointCombined Exchange and Training."While occasionally pontificating about"human rights" violations, the U.S.imperialists have long propped up thebloody Suharto dictatorship, beginningwith the 1965 military coup and subsequent massacre of over half a millionCommunists and others-with hit listssupplied by the CIA (see "CIA's Hit Listfor 1965 Indonesia Massacre," WV No.503, 1 June 1990).Today, Washington is moving to shoreup its military presence from Indonesiaand Malaysia to the Philippines, reflecting intensified U.S.-Japanese imperialistrivalry in the region. This only underscores the neeessity for internationalistproletarian struggle from Indonesia toJapan and the U.S., led by Trotskyistparties fighting to end imperialist depredation and police-state terror throughworld socialist revolution.

PKI-linked women's organisation, wereparticularly targeted for murder, tortureand imprisonment. Those who survivedwere blacklisted and ostracised by theircommunities.The U.S. and Australian imperialistswere up to their necks in the 1965 massacres, providing the Indonesian generalswith a hit list of 5,000 Communists. Themobilisation of Islamic reactionaries was

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also promoted by Washington. In 1950,John Foster Dulles, who later becameU.S. president Eisenhower's secretary ofstate, explained:"The religions of the East are deeplyrooted and have many precious values.Their spiritual beliefs cannot be reconciled with Communist atheism and materialism. That creates a common bondbetween us, and our task is to find it anddevelop it."-quoted in Paul Baran, ThePolitical Economy of Growth(1973)

This "bond" was cemented in the bloodof Indonesian workers and peasants.The smashing of the PKI and stabilisation of Indonesia as an anti-communistbastion both emboldened Washington tomassively escalate its war in Vietnamand created the conditions for the development of a "defeatist" wing of U.S.imperialism, which felt that withdrawalfrom its losing war in Vietnam would notjeopardise its strategic interests in theregion. Since that time, Indonesia hasplayed a key role in the counterrevolutionary ambitions of imperialism in Eastand Southeast Asia, for example as thecentral local player in the ASEAN antiChina bloc.Today, the Stalinist regime in Beijinghas brought the Chinese bureaucraticallydeformed workers state to the brink ofcapitalist counterrevolution. As Trotskyists, we call for the unconditional militarycontinued on page 8

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7


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Indonesia...(continued from pag e 7)defence of China and the other deformedworkers states-Vietnam, North Korea,Cuba-against imperialism and internalcounterrevolution, while fighting forproletarian political revolution to stopthe bureaucracy's drive toward capitalistrestoration.Vast amounts of military equipment,training and funds have been provided bythe U.S. and other imperialist powers toprop up .Suharto's generals and crushinternal'dissent. Agreements for joint military exercises between the U.S., Indonesia and Australia reflect not only theimperialists' strategic interest in Chinabut their fears of instability in Indonesiaitself. This is critical for the U.S. as it pursues its ambitions in the region againstrival Japanese imperialism. The postSoviet world is marked by the intensification of such interimperialist rivalries,which had previously been restrained inthe greater interest of Cold War antiSoviet unity.Indonesia has special importance to theimperialists because of its strategic location. The Malacca Strait, running between the Indonesian island of Sumatraand the Malaysian peninsula and Singapore, provides the quickest shipping routebetween the' Pacific Ocean and the oilrich Persian Gulf. In the event of imperialist conflict, control of the strait will bevital. Indonesia is also the largest supplierof oil to Japan outside the Near East,while 90 percent of Japan's oil importspass through Indonesian waters. Reinforcing the appetites of Japanese imperialism toward Indonesia is the memory ofthe U.S. naval blockade of oil whichimpelled Japan's entry into World War II.For a Leninist-Trotskyist Party!

Over the last decade, workers' struggles in Indonesia have led to the formationof independent trade-union organisationssuch as the Indonesian Workers' WelfareUnion (SBSI), founded in 1992 by Muchtar Pakpahan, and the Indonesian Centrefor Working-Class Struggle (PPBI). ThePPBI is led by Dita Sari, who has repeatedly been imprisoned for her role in

Korea...(continued from page 4)the American ruling class and refuse todefend the collectivized property formsof these deformed workers states. Andwhile their newspaper, Challenge, notesthe presence of the American troops stillstationed in South Korea with their gunspointed north, Progressive Labor_doesn'tcall for U.S. troops out of Korea!The fate of the Korean workers onboth sides of the 38th parallel is linkedto the fate of workers' struggles throughout Asia, especially in the Chinesedeformed workers state and in the industrial powerhouse of Japan. We fight forworkers political revolutions to oustthe nationalist Stalinist bureaucraciesin North Korea and China, to put political power directly in the hands ofthe workers through the formation ofsoviets, or workers councils. Key to this

8

Declaration of Principles adoptedby September 1966 foundingconference of the SpartacistLeague/U.S. now available inChinese/English edition.Order now!$1 (10 pages)

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the workforce. We champion the complete equality of women. The eliminationof women's oppression requires a tremendous leap from the existing material conditions. And this can only be achievedthrough socialist revolution, leading tothe creation of an international plannedeconomy based on elevating human production to meet the needs of all.

First meeting of young women's polit ical group in Tashkent, Central Asia,fol lowing October Revolution of 1917. Bolshevik victory was giant steptoward l iberation of women throughout former tsarist empire.

For Indonesian workers, revolutionaryinternationalism is a matter of life anddeath. A proletarian revolution wouldimmediately face hostile imperialism.Thus the fight for proletarian power mustbe linked to a perspective of workersrevolution in the imperialist centresJapan, Australia, the U.S.-a perspectivewhich requires the construction of internationalist vanguard parties. The Spartacist League of Australia, section of theInternational Communist League, standswith our class brothers and sisters of theregion in opposition to all the imperialistmachinations of the Australian rulingclass-from its depredations in Bougainville to its role in spying for and trainingSuharto's military terror regime. We seekto break the most class-conscious elements away from the racist Labor Partythe key obstacle to forging the vanguardparty necessary to lead the workers tovictory in this country. For a workersrepublic of Australia, part of a socialistAsia! Reforge the Fourth International,world party of socialist revolution!.

organising strikes and protests, such as a1995 demonstration against the occupation of East Timor. It is aligned withthe left-nationalist PRD, which like thePPBI was formed in 1994. An umbrellagroup of student, worker and peasantassociations, the PRD includes many students who have gone on to organisetrade unions, strike struggles and antigovernment protests in key industrial centres. A number of them have beenarrested in the course of these struggles.Free all class-war prisoners in Suharto'sdungeons!The courage and dedication displayedby these militants in the face of military repression is evident. However, thePRD's political support to Megawatireveals its class-collaborationist strategy.The PRD explicitly calls for allianceswith the two legal non-government parties, the Islamic-based United Development Party (PPP) and the bourgeoisnationalist Indonesian Democratic Party(PDI), and all other so-called "democraticforces." Political groups which are simplythe left wing of the existing capitalistorder cannot offer any perspective forthe liberation of women, or anyone elsefor that matter. As part of the fight toforge a revolutionary vanguard party ofthe working class, we seek to win themost advanced workers to the understanding that the political independence

struggle is the formation of LeninistTrotskyist parties founded on the principle of revolutionary internationalism inKorea, China, Japan and throughout theregion.The SYC seeks to mobilize youthbehind the power of the labor movementin class struggle to demand: U.S. troopsout of Korea now! For the unconditionalmilitary defense of North Korea! Forrevolutionary reunification of Koreathrough workers political revolution inthe North combined with proletarian revolution in the South! Anti-imperialist,radical youth must align themselves instruggle with the social power of theintegrated labor movement because student movements alone cannot fundamentally change things in this society. Onlythe multiracial working class has boththe class interest and social power to putan end to capitalist oppression and imperialist war once and for all throughsocialist revolution!.

I S P A R T A C J S T I ~ =arrl-ol9 17 1997lt-MI

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of the proletariat from the ruling class isa necessary precondition for successfulstruggle against the capitalist system ofexploitation and oppression.We seek to build an internationalistrevolutionary party to act as a tribune ofthe people, mobilizing the proletariat indefence of all the oppressed against thecommon class enemy. Particularly inAsia, the fight for the emancipation ofwomen is


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"English Only"Racism ...(continued from page 12)for school districts to choose to teachsolely in English. Several districts inSouthern California, including Westminster with its large Vietnamese population,have already ended bilingual programs.Today in California, which has the largestproportion of immigrants of any state inthe country, some 36 percent of studentsspeak a lauguage other t h ~ m English athome, but only one-third of those withlimited English capacity are in bilingualclasses.This latest referendum comes hardon the heels of Proposition 187, passedin 1994, which banned undocumentedimmigrants in the state from attending public schools and receiving nonemergency medical care. While a recentruling by the federal courts declaredProp. 187 unconstitutional, the referendum had its intended effect: opening thefloodgates of racist reaction against allimmigrants and setting the stage forrenewed attacks on the black ghetto poor.In 1996, voters approved Proposition209, which eliminated affirmative actionprograms in public education and government hiring and contracting. Black,Latino and Native American admissionsto the University of California system,which had earlier abolished such programs, have been decimated-droppingover 60 percent at DC Berkeley and 36percent at UCLA for 1998.The Spartacist League calls to vote noon Proposition 227! But we warn that thebourgeoisie's assault on those at the bottom of this society will not be stopped atthe polls. A barrage of racist attacksagainst immigrants and blacks has beenunleashed by the capitalist ruling classas the front line of an offensive againstthe working class as a whole. Intent onratcheting up the rate of exploitation tobetter compete with its imperialist rivals,the U.S. bourgeoisie seeks to eliminatethe costs of social services, to break theback of the unions and to keep workers divided along racial and ethnic lines.The multiracial working class must beactively mobilized against Proposition227 and all forms of anti-immigrantchauvinism. For full citizenship rightsfor all immigrants!As Marxists, we oppose all attempts toimpose English as an "official" language.We stand in the tradition of V. I. Lenin,the leader of the 1917 Russian Revolution, who wrote: "The national programme of working-class democracy is:absolutely no privileges for anyonenation or anyone language." At the sametime, we understand that it is vital forthose who live here to be able to karnEnglish-the only means. for incorporation into an English-speaking industrialsociety that requires a common languagefor production and commerce.The problem is not the ability ordesire of immigrants to learn English butthe cruel reality that poor and darkskinned immigrants are segregated into

ghettos which lie outside the economy ofthis society. This makes learning Englisha fairly tenuous prospect. In the so-called"post-industrial" economy of decayingAmerican capitalism, the racist rulerswill not spend money to educate or provide other social services to those theydeem just a surplus population. In thebarrios and vast black inner-city ghettos,funds for education have been slashed tothe bone. Meanwhile, billions are pouredinto the prison system where black andHispanic youth are incarcerated way outof proportion to their numbers in thiscountry.We advocate free, quality bilingualprograms as a rational approach to providing a bridge for students from theirprimary language to standard English.Learning a new language can be donethrough immersion, but that's prettybrutal, especially for young people asthey simultaneously seek a basic generaleducation. Knowledge of two languages,

which is common in many industrialcountries outside the insular NorthAmerican continent, is an asset. Inwealthy school districts outside Washington, D.C. and in San Francisco, thepublic school system offers "immersion"schools in French and a number of Asianlanguages-the rich and powerful knowhow to give their children an edge.We fight for free, quality, integratededucation for all children. But even sucha just and basic demand runs up againstthe capitalist economic system of production for profit, with its inherentinequalities, ruled by an exploiting classwhich controls the means of production,distribution and finance. What is necessary is to break the power of the bour-geoisie through a social revolution. Thisrequires the forging of a revolutionaryworkers party to fight for an egalitariansocialist society, which will eradicate thematerial basis for all discriminationbased on race and ethnicity.Education U.S.A.- .Separate and Unequal

Proposition 227 is the brainchild of oneRon Unz, a Silicon VaHey businessmanand former Republican candidate for gov-

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ernor, and Gloria Matta Tuchman, a former Orange County school board president who has actively campaigned againstbilingual education since 1985. Theinitiative would require that all publicschool instruction be conducted in English, replacing current bilingual programswith "English immersion" classes. Children under ten with little English capacity would be grouped together by Englishproficiency regardless of age or nativelanguage. After one year, the kids wouldbe transferred to mainstream Englishonly classes. Those who don't manage topick up enough English would be trackedinto classes where "underperforrning"children are warehoused, branded as incompetent, stupid or worse.The racist measure includes a "waiver"allowing children to be taught in a bilingual setting, but only in very limitedcases, e.g., older children deemed to have"special physical, emotional, psychological, or educational needs." Even then,

among other restnctlOns, there wouldhave to be 20 or more such children in agiven grade level in the school. The proposition would also allocate $50 millionfor each of the next ten years to fund Eng-1ish language instruction for parents andothers who "pledge to provide personalEnglish language tutoring to California school children." In other words,trained-and unionized-bilingual educators are to be replaced by a kid's relative who is supposed to teach Englishwhile looking for a job or after putting in12 hours of backbreaking .labor.According to a recent poll, Prop. 227has the support of two-thirds,.of California voters, including among Asians, and isbacked by a significant (but diminishing)number of Latinos. Its claim that "publicschools of California currently do a poorjob of educating immigrant children" is atruism that echoes widely among parentswho know that their kids will never makeit without fluent English and a real education. A recent major study noted that inthe U.S. "40 percent of minority childrenattend urban schools, where more thanhalf of the students are poor and fail toreach even 'basic' achievement levels"(San Francisco Examiner, 1 March).

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Indeed, an international comparison ofhigh-school seniors has found the performance of American youth at the bottomof all industrial nations considered in thestudy.The nationwide decline in educationhas been exacerbated in California by theeffects of Proposition 13-a 1978 measure which substantially cut the propertytaxes that fund many of the social programs in the state;' Prop. 13 was a "tax revolt" by older, white, middle-class property owners who didn't want their "taxdollars" going to programs perceived asbenefiting blacks and Latinos. Thus, inthe last decade the state budget haslargely remained the same, while theschool-age population has seen huge increases. Califo rnia's school system ratedlast year as one of the very worst in thecountry. Although all poor and workingclass kids suffer, the hardest hit have beenin the inner-city schools. A couple ofyears ago, the mainly Latino parents of

Bulow/SABAU.S. rulers' anti-immigrant drivemeans increased terror alongborder with Mexico, feeds racistmobilizations l ike Los Angelesdemonstration against"i l legal" immigrants.children attending Oakland 's Lazear Elementary School led a three-week boycottin protest against its 40-year-old "portable" classrooms with no windows, poorventilation, leaking roofs and rats.Given the drastic cuts in educationfunding, it's no surprise that there is adearth of bilingual education teachers. Ina majority of school districts, many if notmost classes are taught by a teacher-intraining or an English-only teacher aidedby a bilingual assistant. According to onelongtime Oakland teacher, even withexisting bilingual programs, teachershave to fight to get the additional stipends due them-$2,200 a year-muchof which they use for necessary materials. In many school districts, they receiveno extra pay. Meanwhile, the grosslyoverworked teaching assistants, largelyminority men and women working theirway through college, receive no benefitsand will face massive layoffs if the proposition passes.Functionally, today, bilingual education does not exist. Seventy percentof Latino students attend segregatedschools, isolated from English-speakersfor the better part of their elementarycontinued 011 page 10

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"English Only"Racism (continued from page 9)school years. One fourth-grade bilingualeducation teacher in San Jose describedto WV how half of his class enters withreading skills below grade level, some aslow as first grade. A third-grade bilingualeducation teacher in Oakland noted theabsence of any curriculum, program orteaching aids. Furthermore, segregationoften t.akes place within the school itself.A former bilingual student who grew upin Southern California in the 1980sdescribed the degrading treatment of nonEnglish-speaking students:"When I was in high school, the recentimmigrants were physically segregatedto one little section of the school. Thebus loading zone was 20 yards from theirclassroom, so they basically came andwent without anyone even noticingthem. I f they ate in the cafeteria, theywere guided in separately by theirteacher so they never ate with the rest ofthe students."

15 states designated English as the solelanguage of instruction in all schools.German-Americans were denounced asbeing agents of the Kaiser, Germanowned businesses were burnt out andvigilantes aided government authoritiesin shutting down any and all Germanlanguage institutions.In states like California and Texas,anti-immigrant racism goes back to theperiod when these territories were seizedfrom their Mexican-Spanish settlers, ascodified by the 1848 Treaty of GuadalupeHidalgo. The Tejanos and Californios,seen as the "issue of Spanish and Indianblood," were the subject of both linguistic and ethnic discrimination. Tejanoswere harassed for refusing to learn English while at the same time being segregated into Spanish-only schools. The

quarter of its 30,000 students speak limited English. Moreover, the area is adjacent to the state's southern metropolitancenter, Los Angeles, which is now 40percent Latino (about the same proportion as whites).The New Social Darwinism

Proposition 227 really has nothing todo with the utter failure of what passesfor public education in this country, andeverything to do with racist reaction.Proposition sponsor Gloria Tuchman isa former board member of the nativist "U.S. English" organization, whosefounder, John Tanton, denounces the"great storm from the Third World"threatening America. The Arizona Re-public published a memo by Tanton in1988 which lays out the vile racism

For Latinos, the results of these policies are staggering. Latinos score one totwo grade levels below the national normin academic tests for reading, math andscience. High-school dropout rates are ashigh as 40 percent, while 56 percent ofstudents ar.e functionally illiterate. Anillustration of the utterly racist characterof this system of public education isthat black children and American-bornHispanics who speak only English areoften dumped into bilingual educationclasses as "filler." As in the days of strictJim Crow segregation in the South,today's public schools are "separate andunequal": the bourgeoisie ensures that asmall minority get the requisite technicaltraining to become the future administrators and skilled workers capitalismneeds; the rest are recipients of society's"malign neglect."

WV Photo1996 Oakland teachers strike won widespread support from workers, minorities in fight fo r more pay and against dismal conditions in schools.Bilingual Education andAnti-Immigrant Chauvinism

racist logic behind these policies wasexpressed by an agricultural boss inTexas: "The illiterates make the bestfarm labor" (Hold Your Tongue: Bilin-gualism and the Politics of "EnglishOnly", James Crawford [1982]).There were times in the past when thecapitalist rulers saw a need to teach immigrants English. The long history of bilingual education in this country dates fromthe middle of the 19th century, when anopen-door immigration policy broughtsome 15 million new immigrants into theU.S. Beginning in 1839 in Ohio, lawswere passed in various states authorizingbilingual public education in areas withsignificant numbers of newly arrivedEuropean immigrants. Thus, by the turn

of the century, there were at least 600,000children-4 percent of elementary schoolenrollment-receivingpart or all of theireducation in the German language.However, in the age of imperialism andwar beginning around the turn of the lastcentury, immigration and all its derivative aspects have been subject not only to.capitalist economic crises but also tothe political exigencies of bourgeoisrule. With the onset ofWorld War I, Theodore Roosevelt's cry that "a hyphenatedAmerican is not an American at all"exemplified the anti-immigrant xenophobic wave which saw the end of all bilingual education. During this time,

In California, while the proceedings ofthe 1849 constitutional convention werepublished in Spanish and English, antiMexican laws were promulgated shortlythereafter. Beginning in the 1860s, black,Asian and Native American children werebanned from California public schools fortwo decades. And in 1879, three yearsbefore the federal government adopted alaw barring Chinese immigration and inthe context of racist riots by nativistwhites, the anti-Chinese Workingmen'sParty succeeded in getting the state's first"English only" statute adopted.

EspartacoPublicationof the GrupOEspartaquistade MexicoNo.10Fall-Winter 1997$.50 (24 pages)Subscription:$2 for 4 issues(includes Spanishlanguage Spartacist)

This gives the historic dimension tothe current anti-immigrant frenzy in theU.S. which is being promoted by thecapitalist ruling class in order to split theproletariat and derail any possibility ofunited class struggle. It's no accident thatthe base for those pushing Prop. 227 isOrange County. The area has long beensynonymous with white, right-wing conservatism. But now in one jurisdiction,the Orange Unified School District, one-'if.' :7!' i i f!I


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bilingual education. At the same time,immigrants are taught to believe thatblacks are responsible for the miserableconditions of life in the ghettos. Facedwith Prop. 209's attack on affirmativeaction, many immigrants bought the linethat either they get education and jobs orblacks do, but not both. Thus, blacks,Latinos and Asians are turned againsteach other for the benefit of the racistrulers.The sUbjugation and segregation ofmuch of the black population at the bottom of this society is an essential foundation stone of American capitalism.Blacks in the U.S. form a race-colorcaste which has historically been used asa "reserve army" of the unemployed, tobe hired only during labor shortages.Today; the ghettos have simply been cutoff. Immigrants are dropped right in themiddle of the American racial divide.Upon arrival, they are left to eke out ameager subsistence with a standard ofliving often worse than blacks. Lightskinned immigrants tend to assimilateafter a generation or two, with the possibility of advancement. Those with darkskin remain mired in poverty, trappedbehind the color bar which is fundamental to capitalist rule in this country.Unchain Labor's Power!

The question of education particularlyresonates among workers, who know thattheir children are not receiving even thelevel of education and skills training thatthey themselves struggled to attain. Butas long as the fight for the right to qualityeducation remains within the frameworkof the capitalist profit system, it willonly boil down to a squabble over the reallocation of scarcity, in which the children of both blacks and immigrants lose.This is precisely the strategy offered by. the bourgeois-liberal opposition to Prop.227, notably the Mexican AmericanLegal Defense Fund-which advocatesrights for legal immigrants only-and theNational Association for Bilingual Education. These groups are reduced.to arguing that bilingual education "costs nomore and often considerably less thanEnglish-only alternatives" and bemoan-

Berkeley...(continued from page 12)Latinos, Asians and other minoritiesagainst each other. With the inner-cityghetto population increasingly marginalized, outside the capitalist economy, thebourgeoisie no longer believes it has tooffer even a token appearance of racialequality.From the beginning of the current affirmative action battle in 1995, we have putforward a class-struggle perspective andwarned that the liberal pressure politics ofbegging the Democrats and the UC Regents is a dead end that could only bringdefeat. Reformist and liberal studentorganizers concentrated first on pleadingwith the Board of Regents to resuscitatethe affirmative action programs they hadjust killed, then focused on an impotentvoter registration campaign to defeatProposition 209 which outlawed affirmative action throughout the state. The principal demand of the SCSC on April 2 wasthe truly pathetic call on UC Berkeleychancellor Berdahl to "break" the unjustlaw. But the university administrationexists precisely to ensure that the dictatesof the capitalist masters are enacted oncampus. We say: Abolish the administration and Board of Regents! The universityshould be controlled by those who workand study there!At the protest, the SCSC organizershanded demonstrators reams of petitionsto get the "Equal Educational Opportunity Initiative" (EEOI) on the June ballot. But in fact, the EEOI accommodatesthe very forces of racist reaction whohave destroyed affirmative action. Written by students at Berkeley's Boalt LawSchool in an attempt to allow the UCchancellors a way around Prop. 209, theEEOI states only that "in order to pro-10 APRIL 1998

interests of capitalist law and order:"Language restrictions also would makeit more difficult for law enforcementofficials to gather information frominformants or victims who do not speakEnglish.... (CIA operatives could notspeak with foreign informants in theirnative tongue)"!

Hernandez/SF ExaminerDay-care workers in San Francisco's Mission District who were harassed,threatened with disciplinary action for speaking Spanish on the job.

Last year's successful UPS Teamstersstrike gave a taste of the potential to linkthe power of labor to the anger of theghettos and barrios, as tens of thousandsof black, Hispanic and immigrant workersmanned picket lines which brought thewheels of profit to a halt. Translating thatpotential into a conscious, fighting labormovement requires a political struggleagainst the trade-union misleadershipwhich keeps the working class tied to thecapitalist rulers. The key to unlocking thechains that bind labor to its exploiters isthe creation of a revolutionary party ofthe working class which seeks to mobilize labor in defense of blacks and immigrants against racial oppression, combatting the false consciousness that thebourgeoisie uses to keep the workers passive and divided along racial and ethniclines. The multiracial working class mustbe won to the understanding that thesource of exploitation and oppression isthe capitalist system, whether administered by Democrats or Republicans. Thestate-the courts, cops and army-existsto keep the ruling class in power.

ing that the Unz initiative would "violatethe principle of local control." A host ofreformist "socialist" groups tail after theliberals, despairing of the ability to mobilize the working class around a programof revolutionary change. Seeking to pressure the capitalist rulers to shift somemoney into education and other socialprograms, these outfits are in effect calling for a defense of the racist status quo.To win the right to free, equal educational opportunity for all requires asocialist revolution which rips the wealthof society out of the hands of the tinyclass of capitalist exploiters and creates aplanned economy where production isbased on the needs of all. Those wholabor must rule! The only force that canachieve this is the multiracial workingclass, which derives its power from itsplace in production. In freeing itselffrom exploitation, the proletariat willalso liberate all sections of society fromthe manifold forms of oppression rooted..in class divisions.Thousands of students went out on thestreets to protest Propositions 187 and209, but their struggles were containedwithin the realm of electoralist pressure

vide equal opportunity, promote diversity, and combat discrimination in public education, the state may considerthe economic background, race, sex, ethnicity, and national origin of qualifiedindividuals." The initiative asks the verystate which is dismantling affirmativeaction programs to ameliorate the racistpurge of the campuses and would actually restore less than the pre-Prop. 209programs. The EEOI explicitly echoesthe racist assumption that affirmativeaction has meant-that "qualified individuals" have been dumped in favor of"unqualified" minorities, while its statedgoal of "diversity" is a thoroughly meaningless concept that ducks the questionof racial oppression. And nowhere doesthe EEOI even begin to address the question of discrimination in employment.SCSC speakers at the sit-in invokedthe "spirit of the '60s," which never transcended liberal protest politics. They putforward the perspective that minoritystudents should organize for "empowerment" in "their" communities-Filip inosfor Filipinos, blacks for blacks, Chicanosfor Chicanos. This liberal sectoralismthe idea that each oppressed sectorshould "organize" itself-is no threat tothe bourgeois social order. In fact, for thecapitalists it is a positive boon, as the"sectors" fight each other for a piecf( ofthe shrinking pie. Sectoralism is counterposed to the class consciousness necessary to build a revolutionary party whichcan unite the multiracial working classagainst exploitation and all oppression inthe fight for socialist revolution.Despite its occasionally militantsounding rhetoric, the SCSC politelyhanded the mike to City CouncilmanKriss Worthington-a member of Clinton's racist Democratic Party which haspledged to "mend" (i.e., slowly strangle)affirmative action-while denying the

politics. The AFL-CIO union tops andliberal groups leading these demonstrations sought to channel opposition intovotes for the capitalist Democratic Party,which has presided over the all-sidedattack on workers and the poor. Thesame union tops who have allowed theintroduction of two-tier wages and themassive expansion of part-time laborwithout a fight have not lifted a fingeragainst the destruction of social welfareprograms that has condemned millionsof blacks and immigrants to starvation,disease and death. Many AFL-CIO officials openly support anti-immigrationlaws and appeal to anti-Asian racism inthe name of "protectionism." The labortops share the fundamental outlook ofthe racist capitalist rulers, embracing theaims of U.S. imperialism.The California Teachers Association,representing 280,000 teachers throughout the state, remained neutral on thequestion of Prop. 227 until four monthsago and has since offered only tokenopposition. For its part, the NationalEducation Association issued a statementin March 1996 which "defends" bilingual education with an appeal to the

communists of the SYC and the liberalradicals of the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action By Any Means Necessary(BAMN) the right to speak. SYC members heckled Worthington, a representative of the class enemy.BAMN is a front group of the selfstyled "Revolutionary Workers League,"which claims to be T r o t s k y i ~ t . But theBAMN journal, the Liberator, has nary aword to say about capitalism or the working class. BAMN has tried to stake out arole for itse lf as the "militant" wing of theaffirmative action struggle, but its mainslogan-"Don'tResegregate Higher Education"-merely yearns for the racist status quo before the dismantling of affirmative action. Imploring Democratic Partypolitician Jesse Jackson to "build a massmilitant civil rights movement," BAMN'sstrategy is in essence no different fromthe liber.allegalism of the SCSe.The UPS strike last summer gave a

Doubly oppressed black workers, whoare integrated into strategic sections ofthe proletariat, can and must playa leading role in the fight for proletarian revolution in the U.S. Latino immigrantworkers often bring with them a traditionof militant class struggle, which hasalready enriched labor battles of drywallworkers and janitors in Southern California. Immigrant workers are, in turn, aliving bridge to the proletariat of Mexico, Latin America and Asia. We in theSpartacist League/U.S., then, take up thefight against Proposition 227 not leastbecause we want to arm workers andthe oppressed with the educational andlinguistic tools necessary for them tobecome members and leaders of an internationalist, revolutionary party of theworking class.

small but real taste of the potential tounlock the social power of the multiracialworking class. This social power-currently shackled by the pro-capitalist tradeunion bureaucrats-must be unleashed tobeat back the racist assault. This requiresthe leadership of a Leninist revolutionaryparty which fights for a socialist future.The SYC seeks to win students to the sideof the working class in this struggle. Aswe wrote in a 1995 leaflet:"The elimination of affirmative action inhiring means students already have pow-erful allies in the workforce at every UCcampus and beyond .... We need toappeal to these workers to join us in ourstruggle. We also need to appeal directlyto the ghettos and barrios throughout theBay Area. We can do that if we make ourfight at Cal their fightfor an educationfor every child.... The strategy neces-sary to win this struggle against theracist assault is one which seeks to buildstudentllaborlminority mobilizations foropen admissions and jobs for all.".

Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of the Spartacist Leagueo $10/22 issues of Workers Vanguard 0 New 0 Renewal(includes English-language Spartacist and Black History and the Class Struggle)international rates: $25/22 i ssues- Airmai l $10/22 issues-Seamailo $2/6 introductory issues of Workers Vanguard (includes English-language Spartacist)o $2/4 issues of Espartaco (en espanol) (includes Spanish-language Spartacist)Name _________________________________________________Address ____________________________ ________________ ___

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688Make checks payable/mall to: Spartaclst Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116

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WfJ/lllE/I1 "",,,,/1,Down With"English Only" R a c i s m ~ !

In a frontal assault on immigrants, areferendum for the California state elections in June called the "English forthe Children" initiative would ban bilingual education in public schools andeliminate the pitiful amount spent eachyear for special language programs. The"English-only" bigots behind Proposition 227 are riding the wave of antiimmigrant frenzy pushed by America'sracist capitalist rulers who have massively increased state repression againstlegal and undocumented immigrants, militarized the border with Mexico and condemned millions to starvation throughaxing welfare benefits.Prop. 227 directly targets the estimated 1.4 million students in Califor

nia-one-quarter of the student population-who have limited capacity inEnglish. Although the U.S. SupremeCourt ruled in 1974 that schools must

Bilingual first-grade classroomin New York City.Spartacist protestin San Franciscoin defense ofimmigrantrights, 1993.

provide some instruction in a child's primary language, "English only" has moreand more become a reality in Californiaschools. In 1986, English was made the"official" language by a state constitu-

Rios/photo Researcherstional amendment, and last year, at theurging of Republican governor Pete Wilson, California officials mandated thatstatewide academic standardization testsbe given only in English.

WV PhotoIndividual school districts have longbeen able to opt out of bilingual programs, and just last month, the stateBoard of Education made it even easiercontinued on page 9

DC Berkeley.: Hundreds Protest Racist P u r ~

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For.Open Admissions, No Tuition!The extent of the racist purge at theUniversity of California (UC) was exposed last week when the elite Berkeley campus announced the racial break-liiill!, at (J Ifi; 61g! tildown for those admitted to next fall'sentering class. These will be the firststudents selected since the Board ofRegents axed affirmative action. in1995. And the figures are staggering.Of the 8,000 students admitted, only191 are black-some 2 percent of thetotal. Berkeley accepted 66 percentfewer blacks this year, 58 percent fewerChicanos and 61 percent fewer American Indians.Administration spokesmen tried topaper over the damage done by pointingout that the overall drop in minority admissions wa