workers vanguard no 766 - 12 october 2001

7/29/2019 Workers Vanguard No 766 - 12 October 2001

1/12

WflRltERS"NfJIJ'R' soeNo. 766 ~ . X - 6 2 3 12 October 2001

War-Crazed Imperialists Stalk the WorldFor Class Struggle AgainstU.S. Capitalist Rulers-Defend Afghanistan AgainstI !

OCTOBER 9-As cruise missilesand bombs began raining down onKabul, Kandahar and other parts ofAfghanistan on Sunday, U.S. andBritish forces launched what GeorgeW. Bush vowed to be a "sustainedand relentless" military assault.Some 50,000 imperialist troops,upwards of 400 bombers and fighterjets and dozens of warships are nowin the region surrounding Afghanistan. The absurd lies coming fromthe White House and the capitalistmedia notwithstanding, this massivearray of military might is clearly notintended simply for taking out several hundred "Islamic terrorists" in acountry that is already little morethan a vast, empty expanse of rubble.

Russia, pitted centrally against German imperialism. At the start of thewar, the French and British had noclear plans with regard to the Ottoman Empire. But as soon as Germany got the Turks to declare war onits side, Britain and France developed an appetite for the Near East,much of which was then part of theOttoman Empire.

The pretext for the imperialistbombardment of Afghanistan is retaliation for the indiscriminate terroristattack on the World Trade Center.Messief/U.S. NavyImperialist terror bombers: U.S. fighter jet takes off from aircraft carrier in Arabian

One can expect something comparable to develop now in the CentralAsian region around Afghanistan.Until recently, aside from using theAfghan mujahedin as foot soldiers intheir counterrevolutionary crusadeagainst the Soviet Union, the American and West European imperialistshad somewhat platonic designs onthat region. The U.S. basically lostinterest in Afghanistan once the RedArmy pulled out in 1989. But whenoil and natural gas were discoveredin Central Asia and the Caspian SeaSea to attack Afghanistan. .But far more to the point is that thistakes place in the context of a world capitalist economy that was already rapidlygoing into a tailspin. Whoever carried outthe attack on the World Trade Center onSeptember 11, it was in some ways a "giftfrom god" for the American capitalistclass. As profits drop and competition formarkets stiffens, the American imperialistbourgeoisie-like its rivals abroad-isintent on ratcheting up the rate of exploitation of the working class at home. Thedomestic purpose of the "war against terrorism" is to regiment the population asthe capitalist rulers seek to pay for thecost of recession and military buildup outof the hides of the working people andminorities.Internationally, U.S. imperialism isintent on projecting its military powerparticularly into Central Asia. With itshuge, untapped oil and natural gasreserves, Central Asia is becoming acockpit of rivalries. A thousand U.S.troops have been moved into the formerSoviet republic of Uzbekistan, a precursor of what the U.S. intends to be a permanent military presence, and they arenot there just to go after Osama binLaden. U.S. companies have investedbillions of dollars in oil and gas projectsin the region and plan to invest billionsmore. Kazakhstan just opened a new

4 1

7 25274 81030 7

$2.6 billion oil pipeline financed largelyby Chevron and Exxon Mobil. AnotherAmerican oil giant, Unocal, has hadplans for a natural gas pipeline throughAfghanistan "if conditions in Afghanistan allowed" (Financial Times, 3 October). As in the case of the 1991 Gulf Waragainst Iraq, which the American rulersclaimed was about saving "poor littleKuwait," what is going' on today is notonly a bloody assertion by U.S. imperialism of its overwhelming military cloutbut a drive particularly to maintain itscontrol over the world oil spigot.It is the obligation of the proletariatinternationally, especially workers andminorities in the U.S., to defend Afghanistan in the face of the imperialist attack.The reactionary, woman-hating Talibancutthroats who are today targeted by U.S.imperialism were, along with bin Ladenand his fellow mujahedin, originallybankrolled by Washington as part of itscounterrevolutionary "holy war" againstthe Soviet Union-where there was nocapitalism, unemployment and homelessness-in the 1980s. But the reactionarynature of the Taliban regime does not inany way diminish the duty of revolutionaries to stand in military defense of smallcountries like Afghanistan against themost deadly imperialist power on the faceof the planet.When Mussolini's Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935, Leon Trotsky stressed theneed to "support Ethiopia, despite theslavery that still prevails there and despitethe barbaric political regime ... becausethe defeat of Italy would signify thebeginning of the collapse of the obsoles-

cent capitalist society" ("The FourthInternational and the Soviet Union," July1936). Opposition by the U.S. proletariatto the imperialist depredations of itsexploiters can, in Trotsky'S words, bepursued "only through the revolutionarymobilization of the masses, that is, bywidening, deepening, and sharpeningthose revolutionary methods which constitute the content of class struggle in'peacetime'" ("Learn to Think," May1938). For class struggle against capital-ist rulers at home! Defend Afghanistanagainst imperialist attack!A New "Great Game" ofImperialist Intrigues

In the latter part of the 19th century,as capitalism entered the epoch of itsdecline, Afghanistan was the stage for the"Great Game" of intrigues and rivalriesbetween British imperialism and the Russian tsarist autocracy. A focus of theseintrigues "'(as the decrepit OttomanEmpire under Turkish rule, which wassupported by Britain as a bulwark againsttsarist expansion to the south. By the timeWorld War I broke out in 1914, shiftingimperialist interests had brought Britainand France together in an alliance with

in the mid-1990s, in the wake of the capitalist counterrevolution that destroyedthe Soviet Union, the U.S. sought toextend its influence largely throughinvestment. A now-capitalist Russia hasremained the dominant military power inthe Central Asian republics, with as manyas 25,000 Russian troops stationed inTajikistan. The current massive imperialist military presence in the region bothreflects and stimulates new appetitesamong the U.S. and the West Europeanimperialist powers to get their hands onwhatever they can, including control overthe strategic oil and natural gas pipelinesthat will now be in the offing.The destruction of the Soviet Unionin 1991-92-marking the final undoingof the Bolshevik-led October Revolutionof 1917-ushered in a far more dangerous world, one whose political outlinesincreasingly resemble those in the yearsbefore World War I. As the glue holdingtogether the U.S.-led anti-Soviet consensus disappeared, the conflicting interestsamong the imperialist powers have comesharply to the fore. The competition formarkets, spheres of influence and controlover supplies of oil and other naturalcontinued on page 10

Megawati: Tool of IME, Indonesian MilitaryIndonesia in TurmoilSee Page 4


2/12

At Paris Demonstration for "Women's Rights" in AfghanistanFake Leftists, Feminists Appealto Imperialists Against Taliban

As U.S. imperialism prepared for military action against Afghanistan, supposedly in "retaliation" for the September 11attacks, fake-leftist and feminist groupsin Paris joined with the French government in waving the banner of "women'srights" as a cover for backing U.S. effortsto oust the reactionary Taliban rulersof Afghanistan. On September 29, 5,000demonstrators marched at the Place dela Republique under the main slogan,"For Women's Rights, for Peace andDemocracy in Afghanistan." The 20 September call for the rally, initiated by theorganization Support to Afghan Women,was signed by all the government parties (Socialist Party, Communist Party,Greens) along with a panoply of feministgroups and leftist organizations.

The central thrust of the demonstration was to portray imperialism, particularly French imperialism, as a friend ofwomen's rights and as a force for bringing "democracy" to Afghanistan. The 20September demonstration call began,"For years, Afghan women, denied theirmost elementary rights, have been absolute victims of the obscurantist and totalitarian power of the fundamentalist Taliban militias, with the indifference andoften the complicity of the great Western powers." The rally's sole speaker,Shoukria Haidar, leader of Support toAfghan Women, urged participants tosign a petition asking the U.S. to put anend to the Taliban and to the Pakistanregime which supports it. Flanking thesound truck were five gigantic color

Class Struggle'andImperialist WarThe target of the current war buildup isclearly not simply "Islamic terrorists" inbenighted Afghanistan who were previously'Washington's allies in the war against Communism. Rather, U.S. imperialism seeks tovastly extend its global military reach whilestepping up attacks on workers and theoppressed at home. As Leon Trotsky, in a

TROTSKY resolution of a 1936 conference for the LENINFourth International, stressed in polemiciz-ing against the centrist "London Bureau" in the years before World War II-amidpleas to the "democratic" imperialists to act against fascist Italy's invasion ofEthiopia-only workers revolution can end the threat of new imperialist wars. To thisend, we seek to mobilize the multiracial proletariat in opposition to U.S. militaryadventures abroad and in defense of small, backward countries like Afghanistanagainst imperialist attack.

The "struggle against war" cannot be conducted as something separate and apart fromthe class struggle itself, from the intransigent struggle of the proletariat against impe- 'rialist capitalism, that is, against that social order which inexorably gives rise to imperialist war and oppression and which is inconceivable without these twin scourges. Anyattempt to conduct a struggle "against war" by means of "special, methods" separate or"above" the class struggle itself is at best a cruel illusion and as a rule a malicious deception that facilitates the work of the imperialist warmongers ... .The struggle against war, properly understood and executed, presupposes the uncompromising hostility of the proletariat and its organizations, always and everywhere,toward its own and every other imperialist bourgeoisie. Yet among the announced adherents of the London Bureau congress are to be found such notorious supporters of theLeague of Nations (i.e., imperialist) "sanctions" as the Italian Socialist Party, which ispresumably to organize a common struggle against war with opponents of these "sanctions," such as the British ILP claims to be. A prerequisite for the proletarian struggleagainst war is not unity between pro-"sanctionists" and anti-"sanctionists" but the ruthless separation of them.The struggle against war and its social source, capitalism, presupposes direct, active,unequivocal support to the oppressed colonial peoples in their struggles and warsagainst imperialism. A "neutral" position is tantamount to support of imperialism.

2

- Leon Trotsky, "Resolution on the Antiwar Congress of the London Bureau", (July 1936), in Documents of the Fourth International:The Formative Y ~ a r s , 1933-1940 (Pathfinder, 1973)

! . ~ ! ! l t ! ! ! y o r . . 4 . ! ! . ' ! ! ! . ~ ! ! . ! EDITOR: Len MeyersEDITOR, YOUNG SPARTACUS PAGES: Anna WoodmanPRODUCTION MANAGER: Susan FullerCIRCULATION MANAGER: Irene GardnerEDITORIAL BOARD: Barry James (managing editor), Bruce Andre, Ray Bishop, Jon Brule,George Foster, Liz Gordon, Walter Jennings, Jane Kerrigan, James Robertson, Joseph Seymour,Alison SpencerThe Spartacist League is the U.S. Section of the International Communist League (FourthInternationalist).Workers Vanguard (ISSN 0276-0746) published biweekly. except skipping three alternate issues in June. July andAugust (beginning with omitting the second issue in June) and with a 3-week interval in December, by the SpartacistPublishing Co., 299 Broadway, Suite 318, New York, NY 10007. Telephone: (212) 732-7862 (Editorial), (212) 732-7861(Business). Address all correspondence to: Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116. E-mail address:[email protected] subscriptions: $10.00/22 issues. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY and additional mailing offices.POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Workers Vanguard, Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116.Opinions expressed in signed articles or letters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint.The closing date for news in this issue is October 9.

No. 766 12 October 2001

pictures of Ahmed Shah Massoud, therecently assassinated leader of the U.S.backed Northern Alliance.The Ligue Trotskyste de France (LTF),French section of the International Communist League, refusing to join in thismarch in support of imperialist warmoves, set up a literature table and held aspeakout. Over the megaphone, our comrades denounced the demonstration'sveiled calls for imperialist interventionunder the pretext of "helping Afghanwomen." We condemned the Frenchgovernment's ongoing "Vigipirate" campaign-which has been stepped up sinceSeptember I I -o f racist state terroragainst minority youth, particularly portraying youth of North African descentas "dangerous fundamentalists," aboutwhich the bulk of the French left has beenscandalously silent. We called for defenseof the besieged Palestinian people underthe jackboot of U.S.-backed Zionist terror in Israel and denounced the crimes ofthe French rulers in the Near East, Africaand elsewhere, saluting the militarydefeat of French imperialism and its torture machine in Algeria and calling forthe destruction of imperialism throughthe fight for socialist revolution at home.Many demonstrators listened attentively as LTF speakers recalled the intervention of the Soviet Red Army inAfghanistan in 1979, which for the firsttime allowed Afghan women to freethemselves from the tyranny of the veiland the bride price, to get an educationand to participate in social and economiclife. It was the spectre of women's liberation, even more than the land reformand other modernizing measures of theRussian-supported Afghan PDPA regime,which enraged the bloodsucking Islamicmullahs, along with the feudal landlords,tribal chiefs and moneylenders, andtouched off the "holy war." When the. USSR intervened militarily, we Trotskyists took a side with the Red Army and theforces of social progress and women'semancipation. When the USSR, with thesuicidal illusion of placating imperialism,

Clovis/lndymediaParis, September 29: Feminists, fakeleftists hail assassinated leader ofU.S.-backed woman-hating NorthernAlliance.pulled out of Afghanistan in 1989, wedenounced this betrayal. The mujahedintook power in 1992, wreaking bloodyvengeance and throwing women backinto "their place" of illiteracy and seclusion. It is essential today that this lessonin recent history be understood, againstthe obfuscations of the imperialist rulerswho -want to portray Osama bin Ladenas not their creation, and against theattempts at collective amnesia by the fakeleft in France and internationally. Infealty to their own capitalist ruling classes, organizations ranging from the LigueCommuniste Revolutionnaire (LCR),which falsely claims to be Trotskyist,to the "state capitalist" followers ofTony Cliff lined up against the USSRin Afghanistan. The Cliffites embracedthe mujahedin, while the LCR's international lash-up, the United Secretariat,condemned the 1979 Red Army intervention and a year later openly demandedthe withdrawal of Soviet troops. Thesesocial democrats in "socialist" clothingcontinued on page 11

s p a r t a c i s t ~ Forumse r " i ~ l l s m - , " ' f i a b r , o a ~ d ~ ; ; ~ ' R e p ~ e s s i " " " j r : ' ~ t ; ; " ' \ ' ..' : ~ 9 r k e evo U, J9J',"

Hands Off Afghanistan, Iraq!Defend ,Immigrants Against Racist Witchhunt!Unchain Labor/Black Power! For a Workers Party!Saturday, October 13, 6 p.m.

BAY AREASaturday, October 13, 4 p.m.

LOS ANGELES

2060 Valley Life Sciences BuildingUC BerkeleyFor more information: (510) 839-0851

Immanuel Presbyterian Church3300 Wilshire Blvd.For more information: (213) 380-8239

Thursday, Octobe r 11, 6:30 p.m. BU-College of Arts and SciencesBOSTON 685-725 Commonwealth Ave., Hm. 326For more information: (617) 666-9453

WORKERS VANGUARD


3/12

CIA Backed Islamic "Holy War" Against Afghan WomenTrotskyists Said:

No to the Veil! Hail Red Army!The following are excerpts from thearticle "Afghanistan and the Left: TheRussian Question Point Blank" published in Spartacist [English-languageedition} No. 29, Summer 1980.Afghanistan is a flash of lightningwhich illuminates the real contours ofthe world political landscape. It hasexploded the last illusions of detente toreveal the implacable hostility of U.S.imperialism to the Soviet degeneratedworkers state. It has stripped away alldiplomatic cover for Washington's alliance with Maoist/Stalinist China. Andit has confronted the left inescapablywith "the Russian question": the natureof the state originating in the BolshevikRevolution and its conflict with worldcapitalism.For revolutionary socialists there isnothing tricky, nothing ambiguous aboutthe war in Afghanistan. The Soviet armyand its left-nationalist allies are fighting an anti-communist, anti-democraticmelange of landlords, money lenders, tribal chiefs and mullahs committed to massilliteracy. And to say that imperialist support to this social scum is out in the openis the understatement of the year. U.S."national security" czar Zbigniew Brzezinski actually traveled to the KhyberPass and rifle in hand incited the insurgents: "That land over there is yours andyou will go back one day because yourcause is right and God is on your side."The gut-level response of every radicalleftist should be fullest solidarity with theSoviet Red Army.

Yet much of the left, with the Maoistsleading the pack, has joined the imperialist crusade against "Soviet expansionism." In fact, the official pro-Pekinggroup in the U.S., the Communist Party(Marxist-Leninist) attacked the CarterDoctrine from the right as too soft on theRussians. Likewise, the "Third Camp"social-democrats, like the British Cliffgroup, which could maintain a certainleft posture in the days of detente, standonce more revealed as State Departmentsocialists. Those leftists, whatever theycall themselves, who deny that the SovietUnion is a proletarian state power (albeitbureaucratically degenerated) find themselves, some more, some less willingly,on the same side of the barricades asU.S. imperialism.

It is not surprising that the Maoists andsocial democrats should rally to imperialist anti-Sovietism, although some maybridle at making common cause with thecrazed anti-communist Brzezinski and hisAfghan cutthroats. But for Trotskyists,support to the Soviet army in Afghanistanshould be an elementary political reflex.Trotsky's last great factional struggle,against the "Third Camp" Shachtman/Burnham opposition in the AmericanSocialist Workers Party (SWP) in 1940,

Women's militia fighters in Kabulin late 1980s. Soviet interventionopened road to women's liberation.was provoked by the imperialist cam"paign against the Soviet invasion of "little, democratic Finland." Drawing thehardest line against social-democraticanti-communism, Trotsky declared: "Thesafeguarding of the socialist revolution comes before formal democraticprinciples." ...With its massive intervention in lateDecember, the Soviet armed forcesbecame the dominant power in Afghanistan, whose present fate will be decided inMoscow, not Kabul. Of course, the conservative bureaucrats in the Kremlin didnot send 100,000 troops into Afghanistanto effect a social revolution, but simply tomake secure an unstable, strategically-

placed client state. No doubt Brezhnev &Co. would prefer a friendly bourgeoisstate like Finland. But Afghanistan is notFinland. There is no way that country cansustain anything remotely like a stablebourgeois democracy. In any case, therightist insurgents and their imperialistbackers are intransigent against any coalition government the Russians wouldaccept. It is possible the Kremlin could doa deal with the imperialists to withdraw,for example, in return for NATO's reversing its decision to deploy hundreds ofnew nuclear missiles in West Europe.That would be a real counterrevolutionary crime against the Afghan peoples.More likely is the Soviet army's prolonged occupation of Afghanistan andwith it the possibility of its transformation along the lines of Soviet CentralAsia or Mongolia. Social revolutionarymeasures (e.g., land to the tiller) wouldbe necessary to erode and win over thepoor peasant supporters of the reactionary insurgency. Only those leftists poisoned by bourgeois-nationalist ideologycould deny that such a social revolution,although imposed from without andbureaucratically deformed, would havean enormously liberating effect for theAfghan masses. Even the New YorkTimes admits that Soviet Central Asiansregard their country's military intervention in Afghanistan as support for the liberation of their backward, oppressedneighbors. (See "Soviet Central AsiansBack Afghan Intervention," Workers Van-guard No. 254, 18 April.)The difference between Soviet Cent ralAsia and Afghanistan is to be measurednot in decades but in centuries. WhileAfghanistan is over 90 percent illiterate,neighboring Soviet Uzbekistan probablyhas a higher literacy rate than JimmyCarter's Georgi a:The average life expectancy in Uzbekistan is 70 compared to 40in Afghanistan. A major reason for this isthat in Uzbekistan there is one doctor forevery 380 people and in Afghanistan onedoctor for every 20,000! Al l social andeconomic comparisons show the samething.Marx and Engels, following the Frenchutopian socialist Charles Fourier, maintained that "in any given society thedegree of women's emancipation is thenatural measure of the general emancipa-

As U.S. launched Cold War II, Trotskyists fought for military defense ofSoviet Union.tion." The status of women in Soviet Central Asia is not only higher than in anyIslamic bourgeois country (let aloneAfghanistan), but in some areas (e.g., representation in the government) comparesfavorably even with the advanced bourgeois democracies. For example, 18 percent of all judges and 45 percent of alllegislative members from the village levelup in Uzbekistan are women.

To be sure, the workers and peasants ofSoviet Central Asia suffer the sameinequalities and bureaucratic oppressionas their class brothers and sisters in GreatRussia. There is some pressure for Russification in Uzbekistan, Tadzhikistan,Khirgizia, etc. and, of course, the MoscowStalinist regime denies all nationalities thedemocratic right of self-determination,i.e., the right to secede and form a separate state. Should Afghanistan be transformed into a Soviet-satellite deformedworkers state, it is possible a future revolutionary crisis could find the Afghanworkers and peasants battling against aSoviet army under command of theKremlin Stalinist bureaucracy. And ingeneral proletarian political revolutionwithin the Soviet bloc will be interwovenwith the struggle for the right of nationals e l f ~ d e t e r m i n a t i o n and other democraticrights and freedoms. But to raise the banner of "national self-determination" forAfghanistan today is to provide a democratic cover for imperialist-backed socialcounterrevolutionof the most brutal, barbaric kind ....For unconditional military defense ofthe deformed and degenerated workersstates through socialist revolution in thecapitalist .countries and political revolution against the Stalinist bureaucracies!Extend the gains of the October Revolution to Afghan peoples!

Workers V.nguard Subscription Drive Suce$s!August 23 to October 3 Subscribe Now!

Local Quota Final %(in points) Totals o Renewal$10/22 issues ofWorkers Vanguard 0 New(includes English-language Spartacist .and Black History and the Class Struggle)Bay Area. 750 699 93Boston 150 168 112

international rates: $25/22 issues-Airmail $10/22 issues-Seamailo $2/6 introductory issues of Workers Vanguard (includes English-language Spartacist)Chicago 450 581 129 o $2/4 issues of Espartaco (en espanol) (includes Spanish-language Spartacist)Los Angeles 300 322 107 Name ____________________________________________________ ___New York 900 773 86 Address ______________________ ____________ _____________At Large 250 435 174 Apt. # _____ City___________________ State__ Zip____

Phone ( - - ) E-mai l - - - - - - - - , 7=66National Total 2,800 2,978 106 Make checks payable/mail to: Spartaclst Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116

12 OCTOBER '2001' 3


4/12

Indonesia in TurmoilWe reprint below a slightly abridgedarticle from Australasian Spartacist No.176 (Spring 2001), newspaper of theSpartacist League ofAustralia, publishedin late August. On September 19, Indonesian president Megawati Sukarnoputrimet with U.S. president George W. Bushin the White House. Having risen topower with Washington's backing, Megawati rushed to express her support forthe imperialists' "anti-terrorism" wardrive in the wake of the September 11attack on the World Trade Center and thePentagon. However, any involvement byJakarta in Washington's drive againstAfghan Islamic forces would threaten toset off a powder keg in Indonesia, hometo the world's largest Muslim population.Ruling over a desperate population

As calls for Wahid's removal insideand outside Indonesia grew louder, various imperialist powers signalled theirwillingness to treat with vice-presidentMegawati. In early July, police refusedWahid's order to arrest the national andJakarta chiefs of police. When he tried todeclare a state of emergency and dissolveparliament, the military refused to backhim. Instead, on the evening of 22 July,

nesses of Suharto and his cronies.It is only the proletariat, standing at thehead of the toiling masses, which has thesocial power and historic interest to breakthe yoke of imperialist servitude throughestablishing its own class rule. During the1998 upheavals the International Communist League insisted on the urgentneed for the working class to emerge as anindependent revolutionary factor, along

Suharto to power. The PRD must bearsome political responsibility for their partin preventing workers and the oppressedfrom breaking from their capitalistexploiters, as they do for the capitalistmisery and repression Megawati's regimewill bring.Megawati: Imperialist Lackey

Megawati, the woman the PRD championed for so many years, is a deeplyconservative Indonesian nationalist. Astrident proponent of a unitary Indonesian state, she holds in contempt Indonesia's oppressed minorities and national-

Sydney Morning Herald Reuters

made more desperate by a four-year-Iongeconomic crisis, the Megawati regimerests on the support not only of the blooddrenched military but of increasinglyassertive Islamic political forces, including her vice president. In recent weeks,there have been repeated Islamist mobilizations to protest U.S. war threatsagainst Afghanistan. Groups like theIslamic Youth Movement Brigade and theHoly War Front are openly recruiting volunteers in Jakarta and elsewhe re-i ncluding among veterans of the army's murderous East Timor "militia" auxiliaries-foran anti-American jihad. In 1965-66, suchIslamic gangs-with the direct assistanceof the American CIA-joined with themilitary in carrying out the massacre ofhundreds of thousands of Communists,ethnic Chinese and others.

Megawati (left), imperialist lackey, civilian face of Indonesian military dictatorship. Jakarta police attack studentsprotesting fuel price hikes in June.

* * *On 23 July, hard-line Javanese chauvinist Megawati Sukarnoputri was installed as Indonesia's president followingthe ouster of her rival AbdurrahmanWahid. For 21 months the Wahid regimecarried out brutal capitalist austerity dictated by the International Monetary Fund(1MF) and Indonesian bourgeoisie. ButIndonesia is a boiling social cauldron,and Wahid did not deliver the stabilitydemanded by the Indonesian capitalistsand their imperialist overlords to enSurethe smooth flow of profits. In particular,Wahid failed to suppress the separatistinsurgencies in resource-rich Aceh andWest Papua, major sources of imperialistplunder.

\ S P A R T A C ) S T I ~ - = -tlUM1l1I n E Q U5 1 mmoM

The Stalinist Thermldor, the left Oppositionand the Red Army .... . ... . .. ........ ......... .On Trotsky'. Concept of "Rell' Faction" .. 25In the Soviet Bureaucracy .......................~ l r u ~ ~ ~ = ~ o o ; ~ = ~ : n o ~ ~ I . Balkans Nowl .. ,,40t i : ; ; : I ~ ' ; : ~ : ; : = t ; : ; r = ; ~ ~ ; : ~ I : n _ .. 43Oefend Serblal . . . . . . .............; ~ ; : ~ = . = ~ = r : ; ~ ~ ~ r : ~ ~ ~ I ' I I 8 t "evolutlon! .. 51

thousands of heavily armed soldiers andtanks surrounded the presidential palacewhere Wahid was holed up. The "People's Consultative Assembly" impeachedhim, Megawati was sworn in and, dayslater, under threat of arrest, he left for theU.S. for "medical treatment."Over three years ago, the brutal 32-year military dictatorship of Suharto'sNew Order was brought to an end bymassive student-centred demonstrations.In response to skyrocketing unemployment and inflation-the result of thedevastating economic crisis that hit Asiain 1997-turbulent plebeian protestsswept the -country. When the government, in accord with brutal IMF dictates,slashed subsidies on fuel and othernecessities, sending prices soaring byover 70 percent, the Indonesian powderkeg exploded. Student protesters, oftenjoined by workers, faced down murderous military repression while starvingslum masses targeted mansions and busi-

I. ~ = = I I ~ ~ : : ; ' ~ " l I P Ko .... II.'el'llblo ..1. krldo K ........pl _ K. . ,J. K...IAdaIIaII ... ra1fln.o, . . . . . . ... g : : . . ! : . ~ : : ' " ~ ~ ~ : Up X_unk ]IIeem tlOtIII50 SIf,U1a&el'nadollllRe..IuASIKbIUI'- ~ ~ ~ k a : I a s " " " " u l l . p I " ' l o p o r " ' ~ " ' M " ' M I I o K 7 O"rlorJ .. -iIUYlIIoall ..... "' r j_npn M ....... PIt,..", hnptrlalitt. ~ ~ ~ ! . t ......... Hak s.m ....... UIItnt. MII"ttllalulnIe. ....."" . kDIolIJ",lWwolllJ Perm .. _,,"Jal .. Cui.,..

= ~ ~ ~ : : A " ~ ~ ~ : ~ ~ u ~ ~ : : ~ : : : . ~ : , N ~ n T ~ r b r ..rU. Xlml Ab a I"' , Andll UatuIL ltIeruhail SejJlraI!!

Declaration of Principles andSome Elements of Program, InternationalSpartac ist No. 55, Autumn 1999 Communis t League (Fourth Internationalis t)$1.50 (56 pages) Bahasa Indonesia $1 (16 pages)Make checks payable/mail toSpartacist Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York,.NY 10116

4

with the forging of an internationalistvanguard party committed to leading theproletariat to the seizure of state power.Instead, the enormous anger of the plebeian masses was directed into supportinga supposedly more "democratic" sectionof the bourgeoisie under the banner of"reformasi," the reform of the capitaliststate apparatus.Scrambling to impose stability, in May1998 the imperialists and sections of theIndonesian bourgeoisie installed Suharto's deputy B. J. Habibie, a fanaticallyanti-Chinese racist, as president. To contain the explosive social discontent in parliamentarist channels, a year later stagemanaged elections were held. WhileMegawati, the daughter of Sukarno,Suharto's predecessor, got the most votes,after much horse-trading Wahid, formerhead of-Nahdatul Ulama (NU), Indonesia's largest Islamic organisation, wasmade president.Among those who sought to ensurethat the courageous struggles againstSuharto and Habibie stayed within thebounds of capitalism were the left nationalist People's Democratic Party (PRD).From its inception the PRD's perspectivehas centred on a class-collaborationiststrategy of chaining the Indonesian proletariat and toiling masses to its classenemy. Early on they sought allianceswith Megawati and even urged membersto distribute her pictures and writings,openly backing her call for an alliancewith so-called "moderate" Islamic for.cesin the United Development Party (PPP).But once Wahid was in power, the PRDheavily promoted him as a "lesser evil,"pushing illusions in his rambling "promises" of greater political liberality whilepainting him as a "moderate," secularminded Muslim leader. Backing firstMegawati, then Wahid, these pettybourgeois nationalists would take the proletarian and oppressed masses down thesame deadly road of class-collaborationthat produced the bloody anti-Communistmassacres of 1965-66 that brought

ities and supported Suharto's 1975 brutalannexation of East Timor.Backed by the blood-drenched military, Megawati touts her links with themand was pictured last year struttingaround in the uniform and red beret ofthe murdering Kopassus special forces.Propped up by the Golkar party ofex-dictator Suharto, her new cabinetincludes two former high-ranking Kopassus officers. One of them, A. M. Hendropriyono, head of the State IntelligenceCo-ordinating Body, is infamous for hisinvolvement in a massacre of scores ofvillagers in Lampung, Sumatra in 1989.With good reason, the imperialistsexpect Megawati to do their bidding andharshly crack down on the working classand oppcessed. The day after her victorythe rupiah shot up, reflecting guardedimperialist approval, and in late July theAustralian and U.S. imperialists agreedto re-establish "limited" contact with theIndonesian military.The government is nearly bankruptwith a staggering 80 trillion rupiah budget deficit (A$13 billion). Indonesia'sforeign debt is US$154 billion-102 percent of the country's gross domestic product! Half the budget services this imperialist debt bondage. Promised IMF loanshave be:n repeatedly held up as the IMFvultures demand more cuts to fuel andother subsidies, deepening the alreadydesperate poverty endured by the masses.Indonesia is a dependent neocolony. Ithas fabulous natural resources-oil, gas,gold, timber-and in particular the U.S.,Australian and Japanese imperialists seekruthlessly to remove all obstacles to theirplunder of this wealth. Straddling themajor sea lanes between the Indian Oceanand the South China Sea through whichJapan's oil and Asia's exports to Europemust move, Indonesia also has enormousstrategic importance to the contendingimperialist powers. The U.S. and theirAustralian lackeys, as well as their rivalJapan, Indonesia's largest trading partner,want a stable, unified I ~ d o n e s i a . This

WORKERS VANGUARD


5/12

is not only to rake in vast profits butalso as part of the imperialists' counterrevolutionary drive against the Chinesebureaucratically deformed workers state.This was underscored in a proposed.new defence link between the U.S., Australia, Japan and South Korea recentlyannounced after a meeting of U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell and Australia'sforeign minister, Alexander Downer. AU.S.lAustralia communique reassertedthe imperialists' long-standing support toIndonesia's "territorial integrity."For years the Javanese-chauvinist bourgeoisie has ruled over this prison house ofpeoples through bloody military repression. At the same time, ruling-class elements have stoked communal violencesuch as in the Maluku Islands. The verystorms they whip up undermine neocolonial stability and the "orderly" pursuit ofprofit-making. Aiming to prevent separation, the Australian and U.S. governmentssuggested offering Aceh and West Papuasome kind of autonomy deal. Accordingly, on 16 August, while arrogantlydeclaring that Aceh and West Papua"should remain within the context of preserving the territorial integrity of the unitary state of the Republic of Indonesia,"Megawati introduced a sham "autonomy"law which the Acehnese separatists, notsurprisingly, rejected. Proletarian revolutionaries in Indonesia must struggleagainst the Javanese chauvinism whichpoisons the unity of the working class.

I f the Indonesian bourgeoisie is unableto suppress the struggles of the exploitedand oppressed peoples of the archipelago,then "foreign intervention," as U.S. deputy secretary of state Richard Armitagerecently hinted, is a possibility (Austra-lian Financial Review, 19 June). Enforcing neocolonial stability was precisely thepurpose of the 1999 Australian-led invasion and occupation of East Timor. Inaddition to acting as "deputy sheriff' forthe U.S., Australia's leading role markedits aim to suppress the struggles of thepeoples of the region to free themselvesfrom imperialist exploitation. Rallyingaround the flag, virtually the entire fakeleft joined marches and demonstrationsscreaming for the racist Australian imperialist military to occupy East Timor.They hailed the chauvinist Labor Party andtrade-union bureaucracy who whippedup anti-Indonesian racism as they mobilised to demand Australian imperialistintervention. It was the Marxist SpartacistLeague which upheld the banner of proletarian internationalism against our "own"ruling class, demanding: Australian/UNtroops get out! Independence now forEast Timor!

Last year as communalist bloodshedswept the Malukus and separatist movements in Aceh and West Papua strengthened, the danger of imperialist intervention in Indonesia sharply escalated.Underscoring that it was the occupationof East Timor that opened the door widefor this, we declared:"The Australian workers movement hasa particular duty to oppose the interven-tion of our 'own' rulers-anti-woman,anti-Aboriginal, anti-immigrant union-busting bigqts at home, racist overlordsof oppressed neocolonies abroad, fromPapua New Guinea to the Solomonsto Fiji. Australian imperialists get outof East Timor and stay out! Hands offIndonesia!"-Australasian SpartacistNo. 172, Spring 2000Capitalist Crisis FuelsIslamic Reaction

In 1997, industrial workers in Indonesia comprised just 19 percent of the workforce, but contributed almost half of thecountry's gross domestic product. In conditions of severe repression workerswaged many militant battles. However,the massive 1997 economic crisis threwmillions out of work, plunging at least100 million people in Indonesia into horrific destitution. By 1999, halfof childrenunder five were underfed. As the bloodsucking IMF's "rescue package" kickedin, large-scale privatisations were carriedout, subsidies for essentials like food, fueland education were slashed and virtuallyall restrictions on imperialist investmentwere removed.12 OCTOBER 2001

Workers protestIMF austerity,May Day,Jakarta.Proletariatholds key toemancipation ofall the oppressedfrom imperialistsubjugation.

As a result of the economic crisis, therehas been a growing tide of communalistviolence which has served to undercutworking-class struggle. Feeding off thedestitution and human misery, a numberof Islamic religious parties also emerged,such as the National Mandate Party of thevicious anti-Chinese, anti-Christian bigotAmien Rais and Wahid's National Awakening Party.Wahid, Rais and Megawati have allstoked the flames of communalism andIslamic reaction. Rais has led rallies calling for jihad (holy war) against Christiansin the Malukus. Wahid repeatedly threatened to mobilise his NU base againstthose who sought his downfall. Suicidesquads were formed at massive prayerrallies as NU leaders debated whether itwas proper to kill Wahid's opponents.Megawati sought to discredit Chinesewomen who had been brutally raped during the pogroms instigated by the armyduring the communal violence that followed Suharto's fall in 1998. Today herposition rests heavily on an Islamic alliance which answers to Rais.In Indonesia as elsewhere, the rise ofreligious fundamentalism is a reactionaryreflection of the absence of a communistalternative and the bankruptcy of nationalism. Bourgeois nationalist leaders suchas Megawati, unable to alleviate masspoverty or advance towards social justice,offer chauvinism and religious obscurantism. For the masses religion becomes notonly a consolation but an illusory opposition to an unbearable status quo which iseasily put to the service of capitalist reaction. In Indonesia the growth of politicalIslam, in all its variants, is a deadly threatto the multiethnic proletariat and especially to the deeply oppressed women ofthe archipelago.During the 1990s women enteredthe workforce in large numbers, playing aleading and often heroic role in numerousclass battles. Coming into the factoriesfrom the villages, many of them founda measure of freedom from the stricturesof family and village life. Yet thesewomen are still subject to harsh Islamicdictates, many enshrined'in law, including a ban on abortion while arranged marriages remain common. The doctrine ofPanca Dharma Wanita, the "Five Dutiesof Women," encompasses measures designed to keep Indonesian women shackled to the patriarchal family. The economic crisis hit women workers withdouble force as many were thrown out ofwork and compelled to return to their villages. And the rising tide of Islamic reaction has seen more and more women donthe Islamic headscarf (jilbab).The fight for women's emancipationis integral to the proletarian class struggle to overthrow the system of capitalist exploitation. Communists fight toend patriarchal practices oppressive towomen, like the polygamy system andbride price-legacies of social backwardness today upheld by religious reactionaries in league with the capitalist rulers. Wefight for full equality for women, for freeabortion on demand and for the separation of mosque and state.For Proletarian Independence!For Permanent Revolution!

When the Wahid government ordered a30 percent increase in fuel prices in June,

angry protests and strikes broke outacross the archipelago. Police tear-gassedand fired "warning shots" at protestingstudents while bus drivers and othertransport workers struck in cities acrossthe country, facing down threats of massive state repression. Later that month,the Wahid government retreated from itsplans to abolish severance pay for retiringand resigning workers in the face of moreworker protests. In response, the imperialist investors who had demanded thismeasure screamed about labour "terror"and denounced "union rights" and "assertive" workers. In July, 9,300 workers atthe strategically important Bandung stateaircraft factory struck against companycorruption and graft and for a three-foldwage increase.Indonesia is a country where capitalistdevelopment was belated. Unlike inEurope, for example, where the emerging national bourgeoisie had to sweepaway the accumulated rot of the ancienregime in order to come to power, incountries such as Indonesia the domesticcapitalists developed under colonial andthen imperialist rule, which was based

A millionCommunists,workers, peasantsand ethnic Chinesewere massacred in1965-66 bloodbaththat ushered in therule of Suharto.

'"DEF"'"f!CDZ

upon and utilised deep social backwardness and diverse forms of oppression thatare a heritage of pre-capitalist times. Farfrom fighting to achieve social modernisation, the weak Indonesian bourgeoisie, tied to and dependent upon imperialism, fears the threat the proletarianm ~ s s e s pose to its private property morethan it desires to free itself from theimperialist yoke. The bourgeoisie cannotresolve the burning democratic needs ofthe masses-such as political democracy,equality for women, separation of religion from the state-much less alleviatethe misery and poverty that consignshundreds of millions to a life of desperatestruggle to survive.

The proletariat is capitalism'S gravedigger. B r o u ~ h t together in huge modemindustries, the workers uniquely possessthe class interest to overcome the communal, national, religious and other divisionswhich are manipulated by the capitaliststo "divide and rule." A Trotskyist party inIndonesia today would struggle againstthe hold of Javanese chauvinism whichpoisons and obstructs proletarian unity,upholding the right of self-determinationfor oppressed nations. The proletariat isthe social force capable of accomplishingthe democratic tasks, but only if it drawsbehind it the oppressed masses and establishes its own class dictatorship, abolish-

ing the system of capitalist exploitation.Mobilising around its own interests,the working class must struggle for theestablishment of political liberties, forwomen's rights and for an end to theimperialist SUbjugation which sucks thelifeblood from the workers and peasants.Its ally in this is not some mythical "democratic" or "anti-imperialist" section ofthe bourgeoisie, but the proletariat andoppressed throughout Asia and beyond,from Japan to South Korea to Australia.I f it is not to be strangled by backwardness and imperialist intervention, a victorious socialist revolution in Indonesiawould necessarily have to extend to themajor imperialist centres, appealing tothe proletariat to throw out their own capitalist exploiters.This is the Trotskyist program ofpermanent revolution. The InternationalCommunist League fights to build a revolutionary Leninist-Trotskyist party inIndOliesia, a tribune of the people, toraise the working class to consciousnessof its historic task, built on the granitefoundation of complete independence ofthe proletariat from all wings of the capi-talist exploiters."Reformasi Total" Means ClassCollaboration and Defeat

As the drive to oust Wahid gatheredforce, the PRD built pro-Wahid blocscentring on Nahdatul Ulama. Prostratinghimself before the leaders of this hugeMuslim organisation, PRD leader Budiman Sujatmiko called on NU to help"build a movement to destroy the remnants of the new order as the key platform in accelerating the process of reformasi total" (PRD statement, 23 January).The PRD is allied with the AustralianDemocratic Socialist Party (DSP), and,like the DSP, ardently supported Australian troops in East Timor. The DSP alsobacked Megawati in 1998, and this yeargave Wahid "their critical support" urging "progressive forces" to "take sides

against the anti-democratic and deeplycorrupt N e ~ Order forces, who are gathered behind the push for vice-presidentMegawati Sukarnoputri to replace Wahidas president" (Green Left Weekly, 20June).During Wahid's regime there was anescalation of deadly anti-communistIslamic violence of which the PRD itselfhas repeatedly been the target. Wahidbriefly mooted overturning the 1965 banon Communism, but backtracked in the. face of virulent anti-communist protests.The works of novelist Pramoedya AnlmtaToer, imprisoned by Suharto for elevenyears on Buru Island, are being removedfrom bookstores after threats from an outfit called "United Islamic Youth." In June,a Jakarta conference sponsored by PRDgroups was viciously attacked by copsand anti-communist thugs. At the time ofWahid's ouster, 19 PRD supporters werelanguishing in jails.With Megawati in the presidential palace, the PRD is pushing yet another coalition with bourgeois forces, this timeembracing Megawati's sister Rachmawatiand her National Forum party, 75 NGOs(non-governmental organisations), the student wing of NU and ... "radical sections"of Megawati's own Indonesian Democratic Party for Struggle (PDIP). Backingcontinued on page 9

5


6/12

SYCs Say...( continued from page 12)

Similarly a decade ago, other "coalitions" including the same cast of characters were set up during the Persian GulfWar. And then too, professed "socialists"like the ISO and Socialist Action eagerlyjoined with pro-imperialist liberals whodemanded that "peaceful" means insteadof bombs be used to pursue the U.S. government's aim of bringing down Iraq'sdictator Saddam Hussein. The "peaceful"means presented as the "alternative" tothe bombs were sanctions against Iraq,which were. implemented ... and whichhave killed an estimated million and ahalf Iraqi civilians.WWP and the ISO implicitly share therulers' premise that the U.S. imperialistshave a right to "retaliation." While theWWP's Intermitional ANSWER coalitionbleats that "war is not the answer," theISO dementedly declares: "US BombsWon't Bring Peace." No shit! At the September 29 San Francisco march, a Spartacist comrade bullhorned:

"The groups organizing this demo fromWorkers World to the International Socialist Organization and Socialist Actionwhine that war is not the answer. Theyaccept the liberal notion that imperialism is just a policy and that capitalistscan be pressured to pursue more humaneand peaceful policies. This is a lie!Imperialism is a system that can beended only through socialist revolution.Workers World and the ISO capitulate tothe prevailing climate of national unity,appealing to all classes to give peace achance. We say no to the hosses' nationalunity. We stand for class war against ouroppressors, the capitalist class."As the ISO and WWP jockey for position in the "new antiwar movement"through their rival coalitions, WWP hasbeen able to score some points against the

ISO's more overt social-chauvinism. Forexample, they ridiculed the ISO's call tosettle accounts with Osama bin Ladenthrough a "court of law" by asking whichblood-drenched imperialist power theISO looked to for "justice." This is prettyrich coming from WWP, which for yearscalled for a "new trial" for black deathrow political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal,peddling the illusion that Jamal couldfind justice in the very capitalist courtsthat condemned him to death for hisopposition to the racist terror and violence through which the American imperialists preserve their rule.

6

BAY AREATuesdays, 7 p.m.

October 16: The Economics ofCommunism and the Transition PeriodUC Berkeley, 155 Kroeber HallInformation and readings: (510) 839-0851

BOSTONAlternate Thursdays, 6:30 p.m.

October 18: We are the Party of theRussian RevolutionBo&ton UniversityBack Court Lounge, GSU CafeteriaInformiltion and readings: (617) 666-9453

CHICAGOAlternate Thursdays, 6 p.m.October 18: The Victory of theBolshevik Revolution and theFight for a Workers PartyUniversity of Illinois at Chicago215 Behavioral Sciences BuildingInformation and readings: (312) 563-0441

MADISONSaturday, 2 p.m.

October 13: U.S. ImperialismWorld's Biggest Exploiter, World'sBiggest Terrorist!University of Wisconsin, Memorial UnionInformation and readings: (312) 563-0441

WWP's differences with the ISOdo not flow from any attachment, however remote, to the Marxist perspectiveof bringing down imperialism throughsocialist revolution in the "belly of thebeast." Rather, it is the expression of theirsupport for "Third World" nationalism,painting petty-bourgeois and bourgeoisnationalist forces such as the PalestinianPLO and Serbia's Milosevic as genuineopponents of U.S. imperialism.And let us not forget the WWP of thesecond mobilization, the InternationalistGroup (IG). These defectors from theInternational Communist League sharethe same accommodation to Third Worldnationalism. In a special supplement tothe IG's journal, The Internationalist,they assert that the 12 SeptemberSL/U.S. Political Bureau statement, "TheWorld Trade Center Attack," did notcall "to defend the countries (notablyAfghanistan and Iraq) which werealready targeted by Wa!'hington." In thecase of Iraq, this is a blatant lie. Ourstatement made clear that we have"stood for the military defense of Iraqagainst U.S. imperialism during the GulfWar and in the face of the subsequentterror bombing" as well as our opposition to the UN/U.S. starvation blockade.In the case of Afghanistan, the IG

NEW YORK CITYAlternate Tuesdays, 7 p.m.October 16: For the UnconditionalMilitary Defense of ChinaAgainst Imperialism and CapitalistCounterrevolution!

Columbia University302 Hamilton HallInformation and readings: (212) 267-1025TORONTO

Alternate Wednesdays, 5:30 p.m.October 17: Imperialism: RaCism,Repression and War

York University Student Ctr, Room 313Information and readings: (416) 593-4138

VANCOUVERWednesday, 7 p.m.

October 17: Anglo Chavinism andCanadian Capitalism-Why MarxistsAdvocate Quebec IndependenceUniversity of British ColumbiaStudent Union Building, Room 211Information and readings: (604) 687-0353

February 2000NYC protest afterpolice killers ofAmadou Diallowere let off."War againstterrorism" willmean morevictims of racistkiller cops.

objects because we didn't join them intheir call to defend a country that wasnot yet under military attack. As one ofour youth members quipped, the IG'sposition could be encapsulated in theslogan: "Defend Afghanistan before thewar-Third World nationalism is whatwe're for!"There is no real contradiction betweenred-white-and-blue pro-imperialist pacifism and vicarious cheerleading for ThirdWorld nationalist forces. The ISO, a political tendency whose origins lie in anembrace of the imperialists' Cold Wardrive aimed at destroying the formerSoviet Union, has also championed manyof these same forces. Falsely declaringthat the Soviet degenerated workers statewas "state capitalist," they lined up withany force arrayed against it, such asKhomeini's reactionary Iranian mullahsand their even more vicious Afghan counterparts. In 1994, Chris Harman, a leaderof the British Socialist Workers Party(SWP), which was until recently the leading light of the ISO, wrote a pamphletcalled The Prophet and the Proletariat, agrotesque and puerile apology for Islamicfundamentalism. And the SWP's Social-ist Worker (20 August 1994) declared:"Islamists have now replaced socialistsand the left in terms of being in the front-line against the state in many countries"(emphasis in original). One may expectthe ISO to soft-pedal this aspect of theirline in order to swim more comfortably inthe present anti-Islamic, anti-"terrorist"stream, although we note that ISO members at a recent Chicago rally were handing out green armbands in solidarity withIslam.Reformists SquirmOver Afghanistan, The civil war in Afghanistan wasignited over the woman question. Themodernizing left-nationalist governmentthat took power in 1978 introducedreforms, not least including the loweringof the bride price, which provided a modicum of progress for the desperatelyoppressed women and drove the reactionary mullahs into rebellion, fomented bythe CIA. The Soviet Union enteredAfghanistrn to bolster the regime and toprotect the USSR's southern flank fromimperialist penetration. It was one of thefew progressive acts of the Soviet Stalinist bureaucracy. The Red Army was theonly force that could have pulled Afghanistan-a desperately poor country without any economic infrastructure, which in1978- had a quarter of a million mullahsbut only 35,000 industrial workers-outof the seventh century and into the modem era by extending the gains of the Russian Revolution there. As one Afghaniwoman who became a doctor during theSoviet intervention told the LondonObserver (30 September), "Life was good

under the Soviets. Every girl could go tohigh school and university. We could gowherever ~ w e wanted and wear whatwe liked." The International CommunistLeague said: "Hail Red Army in Afghanistan!" All those groups which todaydenounce U.S. support for the mujahedinwere at the time-when it counted-onthe side of U.S. imperialism and thefanatical, woman-hating reactionaries.Since the September 11 attacks, ithas become fashionable on the left todenounce U.S. support for the mujahedinduring the 1980s war against the SovietRed Army. In its September 11 statementon the attacks, the ISO writes: "The CIAtrained Bin Laden as a commander in itsproxy army that fought the USSR afterits invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 ....Another close collaborator with the CIAin Afghanistan was the Taliban militia."Similarly, the more left-sounding Progressive Labor Party (PLP), in.an undatedstatement on its Website after the September 11 attacks, writes: "Osama BinLaden, who some are blaming for thisterrorism, was, after all, trained by theCentral Intelligence Agency to wage

a 'holy war' against the Soviet armyin Afghanistan. Islamic fundamentalismwas built by the U.S. bosses and theirallies in oil-rich Saudi Arabia to wage ananti-Soviet crusade in the 1980s."Too true! But what's missing from thispicture? The U.S. organized the mujahe-din and armed them to the teeth as part ofthe class war waged by imperialism since1917 to finally undo the Russian Revolution and reinstitute capitalist exploitation. And the ISO and PLP bought intothat reactionary crusade. PLP had turnedits back on the defense of the USSRmany years earlier, claiming it wasjust another "imperialist" great power.And the ISO frankly celebrated the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, whichabandoned unveiled women and all leftistand secular forces to the bloody revengeof the mujahedin, writing: "We welcomethe defeat of the Russians in Afghanistan.It will give heart to all those inside theUSSR and in Eastern Europe who wantto break the rule of Stalin's heirs"(Socialist Worker, May 1988). Indeed, itdid "give heart" to the counterrevolutionthat destroyed the Soviet Union and thedeformed workers states of East Europewithin a few years, bringing in its wakemass impoverishment, "ethnic cleansing"and an all-sided rollback of socialprogress and women's rights.Another organization that consideredthe USSR "state capitalist" as the excuseto avoid defending it against U.S. imperialism is the League for the RevolutionaryParty (LRP). Like the ISO, the LRPseems to be having an attack of amnesiaover Afghanistan. A 13 September LRPstatement correctly notes bin Laden's"leading role in Afghanistan's mujahedin,the Islamic fundameHtalist military forcethen waging war against the Sovietbacked regime in Afghanistan," observing that the mujahedin "received massive organizational, military and financialbacking from the U.S. government."However, at the time the LRP's Social-ist Voice (Summer 1980) ludicrouslyclaimed that the Soviets "hail Islam andcrush women's gains" and argued that "tosupport the Russian military interventionis to line up with the side of imperialism,stability and counterrevolution."Anarchism Has No Answer

The U.S. rulers are making it clearthat they will brook no opposition, nomatter how tame, to "national unity"and the war mobilization. The chancellorof the City University of New Yorkviciously attacked an October 2 teach-inas a "teachers' hate rally," particularlysingling out Walter Daum, a supporter ofthe LRP (New York Post, 6 October). Conservative columnists are using the September 11 suicide bombings a pretextto attack the anti-globalization movementin general and its militant anarchist contingents in particular. For example, an op-

WORKERS VANGUARD


7/12

ed piece in the 22 September International Herald Tribune by one ReginaldDale grotesquely compares anarEhist protesters with those who carried out theattacks in New York, writing: "Even iftheir tactics are different in scale and innature, there is a not entirely coincidentalsynergy between the actions of the terrorists and the aims of the anti-globalizationforces-particularly the most violent andanarchistic among them." The stage forsuch diatribes was set by the leaders ofthe "anti-globalization" movement andthe reformist left who joined the imperialists' witchhunting chorus targeting the"Black Bloc" anarchists after the Genoaprotests.Many anarchists have stood to the leftof the pseudo-Marxists in the wake of theSeptember 11 attacks. An undated statement by the Boston Local of AnarchoCommunists rightly noted:

"As the most powerful capitalist State(politically, economically, and militarily), the United States has been a primemotivating force behind many devastating terrorist campaigns. From the atomicbombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, tothe more recent bombing of the Al ShifaPharmaceutical company in Sudan; fromthe installa!ion of dictatorships in LatinAmerica, to the financial and militaryaid of murderous regimes in Israel, Turkey, Colombia, and elsewhere; from thedeliberate cluster-bombing of a crowdedYugoslav marketplace to ongoing economic sanctions against Iraq which haveculminated in over 500,000 childrendead; and now, in a new 'war against terrorism' abroad, we can expect to see anew chapter in the terrorist legacy of theUnited States. These events are not historical exceptions, rather they are a necessary component of maintaining theeconomic and political dominance of apowerful capitalist State."

That is all quite true. But the anarchistshave no program for ending the politicaland economic dominance of capitalistclass rule. Their rejection of the Leninistvanguard party and the perspective of the

The International Bolshevik Tendency(IBT) responded to the attack on theWorld Trade Center with a supplement toits journal 1917, titled, "U.S. ImperialistRule: An Endless Horror." Notably, if notthe least surprisingly, the IBT says not aword in opposition to the red-white-andblue social-patriotism of the liberals andreformists whose "antiwar" coalitionsare defined by bleating appeals to theimperialist rulers that "war is not theanswer." On the contrary, they reservewhat polemical fire they have to attackthe Spartacist Leagut!/U.S. as "socialpatriotic," citing our refusal to hail theattack on Marine barracks in Lebanon in1983 as "defensible blows against imperialism." In verbal exchanges, particularly with our younger members at recentprotests, the IBT has demanded to know"our position" on the attack on the Pentagon which took place coincident with thedestruction of the World Trade Center.Youth comrades in our Canadian section,the Trotskyist League/Ligue Trotskyste,report this went so far as having IBTmembers pressing them to agree that allthose killed in the attack on the Pentagon"deserved to die."

Such vicarious bloodthirstiness is nothing new for this outfit, which wasfounded by people who quit our organization in the early 1980s when they caughtthe first whiff of the heightened reactionand repression of the imperialist's antiSoviet Cold War II. It'is a posture that hasalways been in direct proportion to theirown adaptation to the labor tops, socialdemocrats and liberals. Today, the IBTamnesties the "war is not the answer"reformists in the U.S. In Britain they arefirmly in the tow of the Labourite "left"of Socialist Alliance, which ran point inthe r ~ c e n t elections for Blair's LabourParty-the most stalwart ally of U.S.imperialism in its "war on terrorism."12 OCTOBER 2001

class rule of the proletariat means theyhave no way of fighting for the verythings the best of them aspire to. At bottom, anarchism is an impotent if moremilitant expression of the fake left's liberalism and pacifism. A 20 Septemberstatement by the Anti-Capitalist Convergence (CLAC) declared that for the September 29 demonstration in Washington,D.C., they would create a "TemporaryAutonomous Zone" which "will be a hatefree zone, war free zone, and a capitalistfree zone." Just how manifestly ludicrousthis conception is was demonstrated inWashington, D.C., where the CLAC contingent was surrounded by thousands ofcops who attacked their supposed "capitalist free zone." On a larger scale, theanarchist talk of "autonomy" peddles thetreacherous illusion that one can escapethe exploitation, oppression and repression of bourgeois class rule while capitalism remains intact.In place of building a revolutionaryparty, anarchists seek to win over themasses through the "propaganda of the

:cc3ITco

ooNil:::T

en

Delegate att920 SovietBaku Congressproposesprogram forliberationof women ofthe East.

deed,". where the masses are supposed toemulate the self-sacrifice and at timesheroism of anarchist fighters. But as weexplained in "Radicals Without a Compass" (WV No. 764, 14 September):"What especially white middle-classyouth have yet to learn is that setting yourself up as an easy target forstate repression is hardly inspiring tothe oppressed masses who face factory exploitation and police terror ona daily basis. This is part of the reason why the most militant contingentsof anarchist youth are overwhelmingly petty-bourgeois and the movementagainst 'globalization' as a whole hasyet to attract much from the barrios andthe ghettos. It is the potential for victory,not for victimization, that will rallythe oppressed masses to a revolutionarymovement, and in 1917 it was Lenin'sBolsheviks who did exactly that."Nothing is leaderless. Anarchists, rejecting the fight for leadership, leave theworking class in the grip of their currentlabor misleaders. The organized violenceof the capitalist state demands an organized response. Just as the proletariatmust be organized in trade unions to wage

On the Pentagon.AttackEvidently they seek to cover their tracksin fervid efforts to demonstrate that wehave "flinched" on the question of theattack on the Pentagon.Unlike the World Trade Center, whichwas simply a complex of buildings housing various businesses employing tens ofthousands of working people, the Pentagon is the command and administrativecenter of the U.S. imperialist military,and rather quintessentially represents themilitary might of U.S. imperialism, themain enemy of the working people andoppressed of the world. That recognitiondoes not translate this attack into an "antiimperialist" act, nor do we think theplaneload of innocent passengers whichwas used as the massive bomb "deservedto die" (or the janitors and secretarieswho were employed at the Pentagon).As Marxists we oppose terrorism as astrategy, even that which derives fromreal, if misguided, anti-imperialist impulses. It is counterposed to mobilizingthe proletariat in class struggle againstthe imperialist rulers. The fact that innocent civilians are often killed in terrorattacks, and that the end result onlyserves to bring down the jackboot of thec a p i ~ a l i s t state on the necks of the working class and oppressed, underline thefutility, and stupidity, of terrorism as astrategy for the liberation of the masses.Moreover such acts merely serve to provide the bourgeoisie a bloody shirt towave in order to cement the workers tocapitalist class rule.The Pentagon is a genuine militarytarget, representing the brutal attacks ofU.S. imperialism on the world's work-

ing class and oppressed. The planeloadof random innocent civilians that washijacked and used as a bomb was not. Inany case, the attack on the Pentagon wasa sideshow to the attack on the WorldTrade Center. As the Spartacist League/U.S. Political Bureau wrote in its 12September statement, "The World TradeCenter Attack":

"It 'is not simply that the target wasn'teven an institution representing the brutal and murderous U,S. imperialistrulers. Those who perpetrated this horrific attack (and there is still no evi-.' dence at all as to who that was) embracethe same mentality as the racist rulersof America-identifying the workingmasses with their capitalist exploitersand oppressors!"Correspondingly, the U.S. rulers haveseized on the destruction of the WorldTrade Center to try to rally the workingclass around "united we stand" patriotism. The attack on the Pentagon couldhardly serve such a purpose, as is demonstrated irt the fact that it barely gets amention by the capitalist rulers or theirmedia mouthpieces.

When over 240 U.S. Marines wereblown to pieces in the bombing of acompound in Lebanon in October 1983,it provoke widespread outrage withinthe American population against theReagan administration which had sentthese troops to Lebanon. Seeking tointersect and direct this outrage into conscious opposition to the U.S. imperialistrulers for whom the lives of workingclass troops are considered expendable,we raised the slogan; "Marines Out ofLebanon, Now, Alive!" The IBT's pred-

defensive economic struggles, so its mostadvanced sections must be organized in arevolutionary vanguard party to wage thepolitical struggle for power. In turn, asuccessful workers revolution has everyright to defend itself against counterrevolution, and that requires a workers statethe dictatorship of the proletariat.But rejecting "all states," anarchistsrefuse to defend already-won gain.s, suchas the social revolutions that smashedcapitalist rule in China, Vietnam, NorthKorea and Cuba, however bureaucratically deformed by Stalinist misrule. Theright wing of the anarchists are as hostileto communists, and often violently so, asthe social democrats, and wield theirbelief in classless "democracy" in orderto enlist alongside the AFL-CIO leadership in the bourgeois crusade againstChina in particular. But even the moreleftist anarchists are incapable, to paraphrase Trotsky, of defending past gainsor making new proletarian conquests.Communists struggle to destroy theimperialist system through socialist revolution by the working class, the onlyclass with the social power and consistent class interest to uproot bourgeoisrule and private ownership of the meansof production. Only socialist revolutioncan establish the equality of nations in aninternational planned economy and putan end once and for all to poverty,racism, sexism and war. As part of winning the working class to the communistprogram, we fight for the union movement to throw out its chauvinist, proimperialist "leaders" and to stand in solidarity with colonial and semicolonialpeoples against our "own" bourgeoisie.The Spartacus Youth Clubs fight to winstudents and young workers to build therevolutionary workers. party under whoseleadership the working class will bringdown this system of capitalist exploitation and imperialist plunder-join us!.

ecessors in the "External Tendency"denounced us as "social patriotic" andsolidarized with whatever forces blewup the Marines as "anti-imperialist." Bu tat the time, no side in the squalid intercommunal conflict in Lebanon was fighting imperialism! And to this day it isby no means clear who undertook thisattack.As we wrote at the time in our article"Marxism and Bloodthirstiness" (WV No.345,6 January 1984):"We are for the victory of just causes.Necessarily and above all, the centralityof jm;t causes is the shattering of theexploiting and oppressing classes and thevictory of socialism. We are socialistsnot least because we are passionatelyopposed to war, the gathering together oflarge numbers of young workingmento be slaughtered in the interests ofthe rulers. In this savagely class-dividedworld, dominated by the mass murderersof My Lai, the struggle for the victory ofjust causes will have a big physical component. We must stand therefore for themaximum assembling of effective forceon the just side, hopefully to demoralizeand deter the forces of reaction so thatthe actual casualties are minimized."

Our purpose is to bring revolutionaryconsciousness to the working class-theunderstanding that the "main enemy" istheir "own" capitalist class rulers-inorder to build the revolutionary workersparty that can realize Lenin's profoundlyhumanist view of the "socialist systemof society, which, by abolishing thedivision of mankind into classes, byabolishing all exploitation of man byman, and of one nation by other nations,will inevitably abolish all possibilityof war." In contrast, the IBT's vicarious bloodthirstiness and conspicuoussilence on the social patriotism of thereformist left merely serve the interestsof the class enemy, insofar as their insignificant forces are capable of serving anycause.

7


8/12

u.s. Government'sDomestic Terror Machine

Just after the September 11 attacks onthe World Trade Center and Pentagon,Secretary of State Colin Powell sinisterlyintoned: "The enemy is in many places.The enemy is not looking to be found.The enemy is hidden. The enemy is, veryoften, right here within our own country"(New York Times, 15 September). TheU.S. rulers are now dropping bombs onAfghanistan, declaring their purpose is todrive Osama bin Laden out of his "terrorist hide-out." But this manhunt is hardlylimited to the shadowy bin Laden, anIslamic fundamentalist who himself wasarmed and bankrolled by the CIA. Ridinga wave of "national unity" patriotism, theU.S. bourgeoisie is retooling its vastdomestic state machinery of violence andrepression. They're loading their gunsand they're aimed directly at you.Defense secretary Donald Rumsfelda man so crazed he even scared Nixon'sDr. Strangelove, Henry Kissinger-declared in the New York Times (27 September): "When we 'invade the enemy'sterritory,' we may well be invading hiscyberspace. There may not be as manybeachheads stormed as opportunitiesdenied. Forget about 'exit strategies';we're looking at a sustained engagementthat carries no deadlines. We have nofixed rules about how to deploy ourtroops .... 'Battles' will be fought by customs officers stopping suspicious personsat our borders and diplomats securingcooperation against money laundering."

with destroying public property for purposes that are deemed to be aimed atinfluencing or changing the government.Carrying sentences of up to life in prison,this provision could be used against anyone from an antiwar protes ter who throwsa stone at a government building to astriking worker who disables a scab vehicle. As the president of the CriminalJustice Policy Foundation noted: "Even kids

money to the African National Congress-which currently heads the SouthAfrican neo-apartheid governmentwhen it was fighting apartheid in the1980s could be deported. The government would be given freerein to use wiretaps, with restrictions onInternet monitoring virtually eliminated. The government would be allowed toseize the property of anyone accused of

The most immediate target of this allpurpose "war against terrorism" are immigrants. Hundreds of Arabs, Muslims,Sikhs and others have been hauled offbuses, trains and airplanes, or snatched onthe streets or in their shops by the FBIand local cops on no other grounds thanthat they look like they come from theNear East. The FBI is on a fishing expedition against foreign students. At SanFrancisco State University, the administration rushed to hand over all availablerecords on students of Near Easterndescent and, reportedly, any others withknown "connections" to the region.

Jane ThereseTrenton, New Jersey cops surround passengers dragged off bus as "terroristsuspects" because they spoke "little English."

A new Office of Homeland Securityhas been set up. With ardent death penalty advocate Tom Ridge at its head, thisagency is charged with coordinating awide range of forces including the FBI,BATF, INS, CIA and military, openly violating the Posse Comitatus Act banningthe use of the army in domestic operations. Now, Attorney General John Ashcroft is trying to rush a new "anti-terrorism" law through Congress that willvastly expand the capacities of the government to spy on, intimidate and terrorize the population.The proposed legislation would define"terrorist" to include anyone charged

New!New Evidence Explodes Frame-Up:Declarations and affidavits of

carrying Boy Scout knives who vandalizetraffic signs can be labeled terrorists"(Village Voice, 2 October).Black Panther leaders Fred Hamptonand Mark Clark got a full blast of what itrneans to be labeled "terrorists" in capitalist America. The secret police infiltratedtheir organization, set them up, and in1969 Chicago cops kicked in their doorand machine-gunned them in their beds inthe dead of night.Today, the government's proposed"anti-terrorism" law, alternately known asthe "Patriot Act" (House) or "U.S.A. Act"(Senate), includes the following deadlyprovisions: Any non-citizen-pe rmanent resident,legal or "illegal" immigrant-who thegovernment deems "may endanger thenational security" could be imprisonedand/or deported without charges and withno hearing. Any non-citizen could be deportedJorproviding financial support for the lawfulactivities of a "terrorist" organizationincluding retroactively! For example, apermanent resident of the U.S. who gave

:a ....r ti8!'O Def eoe..... onl ln l t t ee

Mumia Abu-Jamal, Arnold R. Beverly,Rachel Wolkenstein and othersprove that death row politicalprisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal is

8

an innocent man.$.50 (32 pages)Order from/pay to:PDC, P.O. Box 99, Canal Street StationNew York, NY 10013

any crime.This measure has yet to be passed. Butalready the Supreme Court is busy handing down decisions upholding lower courtrulings condoning workplace discrimination against Muslims and police "racialprofiling" of black people. In the latterdecision, the Supreme Court upheld the1992 roundup of every single black malein Oneonta, New York as robbery suspects. This gives a green light for morecop street executions, like the killing ofblack African immigrant Amadou Diallo,who was cut down in a hail of 41 bulletsoutside his South Bronx apartment doortwo years ago. Cruise missiles launchedagainst Afghanistan bore the insignia"NYPD." At home, this deadly policeforce has set up an "anti-terror" squadwith orders to "shoot to kill."Democrats, Republicans: Two~ i n g s of the Property Party The lunatic right-wingers in the Bushadministration, which rode into theWhite House with no popular mandate,were described as representing the "reinauguration of the Confederacy." Indeed,Attorney General Aschroft is an opensympathizer of the Southern slavocracy.Now they are using the attack on theWorld Trade Center to revive "nationalpride." The purpose is to ratchet upe x p l o i t a t i o n ~ racial oppression and staterepression. Certainly, they face littleopposition from the other party of American capitalism, the Democrats. In astatement echoing Kaiser Wilhelm on theeve of World War 1-"1 no longer knowparties, I know only Germans"-Democratic Senate leader Tom Daschledeclared, "There is no difference in ouraim. We are resolved to work together,not as Democrats or Republicans, but asAmericans." New York liberal CharlesSchumer was among the backers of aSenate "Combatting Terrorism" bill.A precursor of Ashcroft's proposed

legislation was the New York State"Anti-Terrorism Act," which was rushedthrough a special session of the state legislature on September 17. This lawextends the death penalty to "terrorist"crimes which, as an article in the VillageVoice (2 October) quipped, "allows forvengeance, but will likely do little to discourage future suicide missions." Butthis is no joke. The target is not "suicidebombers," but the mass of the Americanpopulation, particularly working peopleand the ghetto and barrio poor.In the aftermath of the Oklahoma Citybombing, the Clinton administr"ation's1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective DeathPenalty Act broadly extended federalcrimes punishable by death while effectively gutting habeas corpus rights. Alegacy of chattel slavery, the death penalty is the lynch rope made legal. It standsat the pinnacle of state repression in theU.S., the ultimate means for the capitalistrulers to terrorize the population and tosilence through death any perceivedthreat to their system of exploitation andvicious racial oppression.On the West Coast, Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein introduced a new"Maritime Security Act," mandatingintensive background checks of the workforce, which have long been sought bythe maritime bosses to weed out militantsand anyone else they want to get rid of.This recalls the "screening" laws instituted at the time of the Korean War aimedat keeping militants and reds out of thelongshore and seamen's unions.The pro-Democratic Party labor bureaucracy stands foursquare behind thecapitalist rulers. An ad by the AFL-CIOtops in the New York Times (9 October)boasts: "Through our unions, we're organizing relief efforts and helping rebuildour country. And we're standing behindour President in the counterattack on terrorism." Transport Workers Union Local100's "progressive" president RogerToussaint has allowed the NYC transitbosses to loot pension funds in order tobailout Wall Street while uttering not apeep in protest against management'sefforts to further discipline and regimentthe union ranks. Transit workers are beingchecked and their cars searched as theygo into work, while management tries topush through closed-circuit TV and otherspying measures. All of these measuresare aimed at trying to break the back of aunion that has the power to bring thefinancial center ofAmerican capitalism toa standstill.Unleash Labor/Black Power-For a Workers Party!

As we wrote in "The World Trade Cen-ter Attack" (WVNo. 764,14 September):"The ruling parties-Democrats andRepublicans-are all too eager to be ableto wield the bodies of those who werekilled and wounded in order to reinforcecapitalist class rule. It's an opportunityfor the exploiters to peddle 'one nationindivisible' patriotism to try to direct theburgeoning anger at the bottom of thissociety away from themselves and towardan indefinable foreign 'enemy,' as well asimmigrants in the U.S., and to reinforcetheir arsenal of domestic state repressionagainst all the working people."

This is all the more convenient for thebourgeoisie as their economy was alreadyin a nose dive into recession before September 11. Since then, close to 200,000more workers have lost their jobs whilecorporations line up like pigs at thetrough for billions in government hando u t ~ , which will be paid out of theSocial Security "lockbox" and by fleecing the working class. The threadbare"safety net" that once existed was shredded by the Clinton administration, whichinstituted "the end of welfare as weknow it."But the rulers are only too well awarethat the current chauvinist consensus behind its "war on terrorism" isextremely fragile. In Minnesota, 22,000state workers launched their first strike in20 years on October 1. Denouncing theworkers for striking when "we are copingwith a possibility of a long and difficultwar," Governor (and former Navy Seal)Jesse Ventura deployed National Guardcontinued on page 10

WORKERS VANGUARD


9/12

Indonesia...(continued from page 5)one or another Javanese-chauvinist bourgeois politician, the PRD and their reformistAustralian acolytes in the DSP contribute to the strengthening of the repressive,unitary Indonesian state.The PRD are petty-bourgeois nationalists who rarely mention socialism.As Sujatmiko told an April 2000 Melbourne meeting, "We cannot defeat imperialism and advocate socialism at thesame time." This is but a more overtlyright-wing version of the "two-stage revolution" originally pushed by the Mensheviks (the pro-capitalist wing of Russian Social Democracy who opposed the1917 Bolshevik Revolution), then later bythe Stalinist betrayers and all manner ofpetty-bourgeois nationalists. This classcollaborationist trap for the proletariathas always meant tying the masses to thecapitalist class enemy. As the tragedy of1965 proved, the first stage means murder of the communists; there never is asecond stage.In one of the most savage massacres inmodern history, over a million Communists, workers, peasants and ethnic Chinese were slaughtered in 1965-66. Theleadership of the pro-Beijing IndonesianCommunist Party (PKI)-the largestCommunist party in the capitalistworld-preached "joint unity" with thenpresident Sukarno and his IndonesianNationalist Party to form a "unitednational front, including the nationalbourgeoisie" which would carry out "notsocialist but democratic reforms."Politically disarmed by this program of"two-stage revolution," the working classwas unable to defend itself when theIndonesian generals, backed by imperialism, struck to behead the PKI after thecounterrevolutionary October 1965 coupled by Suharto. The 1965-66 bloodbatha holy war against Communism-was thework of an alliance between the armyand Islamic fanatics directly aided by theAmerican CIA and Australia's ASIS[Australian Secret Intelligence Service].Neither Megawati nor Rais have criticised, much less repudiated, the horrificmassacres of 1965-66. Indeed, Rais hasdeclared that Indonesia must guardagainst reviving communist teachings.Between 1962 and 1965, Megawati's newvice-president Hamzah Haz, leader of thePPP, was head of the Yogyakarta Muslimstudent movement and prominent in NU.It was NU's youth who played a leadingrole in the bloodbath of 1965.Opponents of the Strugglefor Proletarian Power

The central lesson of 1965 is thatthe proletariat and bourgeoisie have nocommon class interests. For the proletarian party to proceed otherwise is suicidal and a betrayal. Trotsky'S programof permanent revolution is the alternative to placing confidence in fantasiesresting upon the backward, imperialistdependent bourgeoisie as a vehicle forliberation. We Trotskyists of the International Communist League uniquely standon this program. Fake leftists in bothIndonesia and Australia either openly. oppose the program of permanent revolution or claim to "defend" it while gutting its revolutionary content. The DSP,for example, published a lengthy pamphlet in 1999 on Trotsky's "errors" on permanent revolution and the IndonesianPRD echoes these views.So too does the Indonesian DemocraticSocialist Association (PDS). In November 2000, the PDS split from the PRD

NYC NOTICEThe New York Spartacist League'spublic office hours have beenindefinitely suspended. If you areinterested in meeting or picking upliterature you can do so between7:30 p.m. and 9 p.m. every Tuesdayon the third floor of the StudentEvents Center at New York University,5 Washington Place. Please contactus at (212) 267-1025 [email protected].

12 OCTOBER 2001

used over and over to justify suicidal subordination of the proletariat to the bourgeoisie, starting with Stalin's liquidationof the Chinese Communist Party in the1920s into the Guomindang, Chiang Kaishek's party of the nationalist Chinesebourgeoisie (see "Permanent Revolutionvs. the 'Anti-Imperialist United Front 'The Origins of Chinese Trotskyism,"Spartacist [English-language edition]No. 53, Summer 1997).

Australasian SpartacistMelbourne 1997: Spartacists warn against illusions in Megawati. Sign inI n d o n e s i a ~ reads: "Independence for East Timor! For Workers Revolution inIndonesia! Down With Australian Imperialism!"

Like the ISO, WP also ultimatelylooks to "democratic" imperialism to liberate the masses in the colonial world. InSeptember 1999, WP hailed the ch"auvin-ist anti-Indonesia trade-union bans andmarched cheek-to-jowl with the DSP, theISO and the Labor Party in the "Peacekeepers In" mobilisations. To cover theirleft flank, WP has called, at times, for"Australian and UN troops out now" andeven denounced the DSP for being "atthe head of the chorus calling for imperialist intervention in East Timor" (Inde-pendence for East Timor: For a workingclass solution, undated pamphlet).based on the latter's support to Wahid andmaking the struggle for women's liberation and work in the labour movement a"non-priority." But the PDS shares thePRD's nationalist outlook, advocating aprogram that begins and ends with "refor-masi total." PDS leader MuhammadMa'ruf may praise Trotsky's "brave opposition to Stalin," but he does "not agreewith the basic idea of Trotsky-the theory of permanent revolution-which is adividing line between those who belongto the Trotskyist tendency and thosebelonging to others" (Socialist Review,May 2001).Permanent revolution is indeed a dividing line. Against the Stalinist bureaucracy's anti-Marxist dogma of building "socialism in one country"-whichmeant the subordination of the proletariatto the bourgeoisie and the appeasementof imperialism internationally-LeonTrotsky, the Left Opposition and laterthe Fourth International fought for thecontinuity of the revolutionary internationalist program of Bolshevism. Permanent revolution was the core of the program on which the 1928 Left Oppositionwas formed following the crushing defeatof the 1925-27 Chinese Revolution, adirect result of Stalin's policy of subordinating the working class to the Chinesebourgeoisie.ISO, WP: Permanent L a ~ o r i s m

With the PRD so obviously jumpingfrom one bourgeois faction to another,the International Socialist Organisation's(ISO) Tom O'Lincoln takes theopportunity to posture against the "stages theoryof revolution," declaring,"In practice, there is never completedemocracy under capitalism, so we neverget to the socialist stage ...."Our own approach, based on the theoryof permanent revolution, attempts to

develop struggles that may initially belimited to democracy and take them in asocialist direction, without any sharpdivision between stages."-Socialist Review, May 2001This has nothing to do with the programof permanent revolution, but is literally aregurgitation of the two-stage program:first, struggles "limited to democracy,"then a "socialist direction."In Indonesia and .elsewhere the ISOand its co-thinkers do exactly that, andmany of the "struggles" they championare not remotely "democratic." In 1998this outfit promoted the ill