workers vanguard no 778 - 05 april 2002

7/29/2019 Workers Vanguard No 778 - 05 April 2002

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soC!:No. 778 ~ X . 5 2 3 5 April 2002

No U.S./UN/EU Intervention in the Near East!U.S. Hands Off Iraq!Defend the Palestinian People!All Israeli Troops, Settlers

Out of the Occupied Territories!

AFP APLeft: Israeli army assault on Palestinian Authority headquarters in Ramallah, March 29. Palestinian men rounded up in West Bank as Zionistsreoccupy Palestinian ghettos.APRIL I-Following an Arab Leaguemeeting that refused to endorse U.S.plans for an attack on Iraq, Washingtondispensed with its recent pretense of"even-handedness" toward the Palestinians, tacitly approving Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon's invasion of one WestBank town after another. In Ramallah,home to 200,000 Palestinians and unofficial headquarters ofYasir Arafat's Palestinian Authority (PA), whole areas havebeen reduced to rubble, 700 peoplearrested and dozens killed, at least fiveapparently executed "with a single coupde grace administered to the head orthroat" (London Observer, 31 March). AsIsrael further tightens the noose aroundArafat, now imprisoned in his darkenedoffice with little more than a handful ofsupporters and a dying cell phone, Bushcynically chastises him for not doingenough to stop Palestinian terrorism!Now, Sharon has issued an open declaration of war against the Palestinian people.Coming from the butcher of Sabra andShatila, the Lebanese refugee campswhere over 2,000 men, women and children were methodically slaughtered in1982, Sharon's statement is truly chilling. Israeli defense minister BinyaminBen-Eliezer, a leading spokesman of the

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supposedly "dovish" Labor Party, warnsthat the only alternative to a "settlement"(i.e., complete submission by the Palestinians) is total fe-occupation of the WestBank and Gaza. This would entail abloodbath unprecedented even by thevery bloody standards of Zionist repression during the I8-month-Iong AI-AqsaIntifada, which has already seen over1,100 Palestinians killed. Punctuatingsuch warnings is the report in the Israelipress that a General Staff commander"said lately that the army could learnfrom the way the German troops operated in the Warsaw Ghetto" (Ha'aretz,1 April)!The Zionist rulers certainly have"learned" from the Hitlerite exterminators of the Jewish people in Europe. TheNazi-like mentality of Sharon & Co. is ofa piece with their genocidal aims-to lordit over a "Greater Israel," if necessary,through the forcible expUlsion or slaugh-'ter of the Palestinian Arabs. Mirroringthis chauvinist outlook are the pettybourgeois Palestinian nationalists and Islamic reactionaries who do not limit theirattacks to the Israeli occupation forcesthe military and their armed settler auxiliaries-but also carry out indiscriminateattacks against innocent Israeli civilians.Suicide bombings and the like are anexpression of the Palestinians' powerlessness and desperation in the face of theoverwhelming might of the Zionist garri-_son state. Nonetheless, suicide attacks likeHamas' bpmbing on Sunday of a Haifarestaurant managed by an Arab familyand frequented by Jews and Arabs exem-

plified the hostility of nati6nalism andreligious fundamentalism on both sidesto what little social integration currentlyexists under apartheid-style Zionist rule.As we stress in a 30 March Spartacist League/U.S. statement distributed atdemonstrations that day in Washington,D.C. and other U.S. cities, the only roadforward for the Palestinian Arab peoplelies through the internationalist mobilization of the Near Eastern proletariat,Arab and Jewish alike, as well as workersin the imperialist countries. Reformistgroups like the International SocialistOrganization (ISO) instead look to theAmerican imperialists to "Stop FundingIsraeli Terrorism," in the words of anISO sign at the Los Angeles demonstration. Who is the ISO appealing to? Whenit comes to support to the Zionist regime,Democrats like New York SenatorsCharles Schumer and Hillary Clinton areeven more rabid than Bush, while California Senator Dianne Feinstein is cosponsoring a bill to shut down the PA'soffice in Washington and to seize itsassets.In Europe, fake-left groups like theFrench Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire explicitly call on the European Union(EU) imperialists or the United Nations toorganize a "peace and protection force"or to impose economic sanctions againstIsrael. That is the aim of the civilian "protection force" now in Ramallah (headedby French anti-globalization campaignerJose Bove), though those participatingare undoubtedly personally courageous.Those who call for imperialist military

intervention or economic sanctions serveonly to push workers, immigrants andother minorities into the embrace of theirclass enemy. What is urgently necessaryis international protest action drawing onthe power of the proletariat, from theheavily Arab and black auto workersin the Detroit area to the multiethnicindustrial working class of France withits strategic Maghrebin (North African)component, to demand: Defend the Palestinian people! All Israeli troops andsettlers out of all the Occupied Territories now!It is a measure of desperation in theface of untrammeled Zionist terror andthe evident impotence of secular nationalists like Arafat that Islamist influencehas grown among the Palestinian people,historically among the most cosmopolitanin the Near East. Many women at theMarch 30 protests in the U.S. and Canada, as well as at a 9,000-strong rally inBerlin, wore the hijab, the Islamic headscarf. Islamic fundamentalists like Hamasare deadly enemies not only of theHebrew-speaking people but also of thePalestinian working masses. Just look atAlgeria, where .Islamic fundamentali stshave carried out a reign of terror againsttrade unionists, secular intellectuals andunv.eiled women. The goal of Hamas is tosubject women to the enslavement symbolized by the veil and purdah (seclusionin the home) and to otherwise impose aregime of religious reaction akin to Iran orAfghanistan.Many supporters of the Palestiniancontinued on page 9


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Mass Labor Protest in RomeThe following report was written forWorkers Vanguard by our comrades ofthe Lega Trotskista d'Italia, section ofthe International Communist League.

sion cuts and threatening to privatize the'country's schools and health care system.At the same time, an ominous racist lawhas been proposed by Gianfranco Fini ofthe Alleanza Nazionale-currently primarily an electoral vehicle but also heirof the historic party of Mussolini's fascism-and Umberto Bossi of tl1efascistic Lega Nord, both governmental partners of Berlusconi. I f approved, this lawwill make it impossible for immigrantsw!thout a job to stay in Italy, speedup deportations and severely restrictfamily reunifications. Most recently, thegovernment issued a decree on March28 giving it the authority to fire on anyship it suspects to be carrying "illegal"immigrants.

In the largest demonstration in Italysince the end of the Second World War,some 3,000,000 people took to the streetsof Rome on March 23 to protest government attacks on the country's tradeunions. Italy's largest union federation,the Italian General Confederation ofLabor (COIL), which called the protest,helped organize over 9,000 buses, 61special trains, four ships, five airplanesand countless cars.The right-wing government of mediaboss Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's richestman, is seeking to overhaul the country's labor laws, particularly going afterArticle 18, which provides workerssome protection against arbitrary firings.Berlusconi is also proposing further pen- '

Against these fierce attacks, which target the majority of the population, hundreds of thousands of workers, includinga significant sector of the immigrant

Marxism and ReligionFriedrich Engels, in his J878 polemicAnti-Diihring, traced the material originsand historical development of religion fromearly human societies through to capitalistclass rule. As Engels argues, religion, whichserves both as solace for the miseries produced by class society and as an ideologyjustifying class domination, will disappearonly with th$ realization of a classless com-TROTSKY munist society, the product of international LENINproletarian socialist revolution.

All religion, however, is nothing but the fantastic reflection in men's minds of thoseexternal forces which control their daily life, a reflection in which the terrestrial forcesassume the form of supernatural forces. In the beginnings of history it was the forces ofnature which were first so reflected and which in the course of further evolution underwent the most manifold and varied personifications among the various peoples ... But itis not long before, side by side with the forces of nature, social forces b e ~ i n to beactive-forces which confront man as equally alien and at first equally inexplicable,dominating him with the same apparent natural necessity as the forces of nature themselves. The fantastic figures, which at first only reflected the mysterious forces ofnature, at this point acquire social attributes, become representat.ies of the forces ofhistory. At a still further stage of evolution, all the natural and social attributes of thenumerous gods are transferred to one almighty god, who is but a reflection of theabstract man ... We have seen repeatedly that in existing bourgeois society men aredominated by the economic conditions created by themselves, by the means of production which they themselves have produced, as if by an alien force. The actual basisof the reflective activity that gives rise to religion therefore continues to exist, and withit the religious r eflection itself. And although bourgeois political economy has given acertain insight into the causal connection of this alien domination, this makes noessential difference. Bourgeois economics can neither prevent crises in general, norprotect the individual capitalists from losses, bad debts and bankruptcy, nor secure theindividual workers against unemployment and destitution. It is stiII true that man proposes and God (that is, the alien domination of the capitalist mode of production) disposes. Mere knowledge, even if itwent much further and deeper than that of bourgeoiseconomic science, is not enough to bring social forces under the domination of society.What is above all necessary for thi's,-;s a social act. And when this act has been accomplished, when society, by taking possession o f ll means of production and using themon a planned basis, has freed itself and all its members from the bondage in which theyare now held by these means of production which they themselves h ~ v e produced butwhich confront them as an irresistible alien force; when therefore man no longermerely proposes, but also disposes-only then wiII the last alien force which is stillreflected in religion vanish; and with it will also vanish the religious reflection itself,for the simple reason that then there will be nothing left to reflect.

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- Friederich Engels, Anti-Diihring (1878)

EDITOR: Len MeyersEDITOR, YOUNG SPARTACUS PAGES: Michael DavissonPRODUCTION MANAGER: Susan FullerCIRCULATION MANAGER: Irene GardnerEDITORIAL BOARD: Ray Bishop (managing editor), Bruce Andre, Jon Brule, George Foster,Liz Gordon, Walter Jennings, Jane Kerrigan, James Robertson, Joseph Seymour, Alison Spencer,Alan WildeThe Spartacist League is the U.S. Section of the International Communist League(Fourth Internationalist).Workers Vanguard (ISSN 02760746) published biweekly, except skipping three alternate issues in June, July andAugust (beginning with omitting the second issue in June) and with a 3-week interval in December, by the SpartacistPubliShing Co., 299 Broadway, Suite 318, New YorR, 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 2 April.

No. 778 5 April 2002

workforce, have held militant strikes anddemonstrations in the past few months.The stability of the Berlusconi government is seriously in question, as an antiBerlusconi movement has been burgeoning in the country for some months.Attendance at demonstrations againstgovernment austerity has continuallyexceeded expectations by many magnitudes, stunning their organizers as well asthe government. Now, an eight-hour general strike by Italy's three biggest unionfederations, r epresenting over 12 millionworkers, is projected for April 16.The situation shifted abruptly following the March 19 assassination of MarcoBiagi, an economist who was working asan adviser to the Labor Ministry in instituting its new anti-labor legislation. TheItalian bourgeois press claims that theassassination was carried out by an offshoot of the leftist Red Brigades. In fact,many in Italy believe the assassinationwas a provocation by the government.Not only is there a long history of suchp r o v o c a t i o n ~ in Italy, but this particularkilling has served as a convenient rallying point for the Berlusconi regime,which has used it to intensify the campaign of repression against leftists, particularly in Florence and Rome.In response to the assassination, theCGIL trade-union bureaucrats changedthe slogans of the March 23 Rome demonstration from opposition to governmentattacks on the unions to "Against Terrorism, For Democracy, For Rights" (referring to union rights currently underassault). The demonstration itself beganwith the playing of the Italian nationalanthem and the observance of a momentof silence in memory of Biagi. Earlier, thetrade-union tops had called a reactionarystrike against "terrorism" the day afterBiagi's assassination in honor of thisclass enemy. '. " .In reponse to .the Rome protest,Umberto Bossi blamed the, unions forBiagi's assassination, ranting: "First theykilled him, now they are appropriatingto themselves the victim." This statem ~ n t has sparked outrage among workers throughout the country. Enragedunion officials canceled talks with thegovernment scheduled for March 26 andcalled for more demon'strations. CGILhead Sergio Cofferati is demanding thatthe government retract its accusation thatthe labor movement breeds terrorists.Reflecting worries in the bourgeoisie thatBerlusconi & Co. are provoking upheavals, Italian president Carlo Ciampi praisedthe Rome demonstration as "the salt ofdemocracy."

Wed., April 10, 6:30 p.m.1634 Telegraph, 3rd floorOakland(near 19th St. BART)

For more information: 510-839-0851BAY AREA

APRome, March 23: Three million pro-test government attacks on unions.The capitulation of the pro-capitalisttrade-union bureaucracy as well as massreformist organizations like Democraticidi Sinistra (DS-Democratic Left) andRifondazione Comunista (RC) to Berlusconi's "anti-terror" campaign is deadlydangerous for the proletariat. The government's purpose is to divide and weakenthe workers movement by targeting immigrants, anarchists and other leftists as"terrorists." A direct assault on the mostmilitant sectors of the labor movement,the "anti-terror" drive is ultimately aimedat the whole of the working class.The LTd'l intervened into the Romeprotest with our revolutionary Leninistprogram, raising placards with slogansincluding, "Break the National UnityAgainst Terrorism!" and "For the Revolutionary Unity of the Working ClassAgainst the Bourgeoisie!" In our discussions with workers and youth, we underlined how the trade-union tops did notraise the call for a strike when anarchist protester Carlo Giuliani was killedby the "carabinieri" police during lastyear's protests against the G-8 in Genoa.continued on page J J

Sat., April 27, 4 p.m.Mt. Hollywood Congregational Church4607 Prospect Ave., Hollywood

(near Vermont/Sunset Red Line station)For more info and readings: (213) 380-8239

LOS ANGELES

Saturday, April 6, 2 p.m.Columbia University, Hamilton Hall, Room 602116th Street and Broadway (#1 train to 116th Street)

NEW YORK CITY For more information: (212) 267-1025WORKERS VANGUARD


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LetterReligion and theDevelopment of Capitalism

activity or cleverness, but upon circumstances uncontrollable by him. It is not ofhim that willeth or of him that runneth,but of the mercy of unknown superioreconomic powers; and this was especiallytrue at a period of economic revolution,when all old commercial routes and cen-tres were replated by new ones, whenIndia and America were opened to theworld, and when even the most sacredeconomic articles of faith-the value ofgold and silver-began to totter and tobreak down. Calvin's church constitutionwas thoroughly democratic and republican; and where the kingdom of God wasrepublicanised, could the kingdoms ofthis world remain subject to monarchs,bishops and lords?"

To: Workers VanguardDear comrades,

N-ewYork28 March 2002

"Salman Rushdie's Verses for Imperialism" (WV No. 772, II January) is apowerful polemic against the liberalopponents of Islamic fundamentalism inthe Near East and Asia who have signedon to U.S. imperialism's "war on terror." However, in asking "how does oneexplain the vast socioeconomic gulfbetween the United States and Canadaon the one side and the countries ofLatin America on the other," the articlewrongly posits that the differences in economic development between these countries have no roots in the doctrines andcultural attitudes of Catholicism. Suchan assertion is ;:tbistorical and one-sided,ignoring the connection between religious ideology and the development ofcapitalism.Writing in the 1892 Introduction to theEnglish Edition of Socialism: Utopianand Scientific, Friedrich Engels notedthat as Europe emerged from the MiddleAges the nascent bourgeoisie collidedwith the feudal system and that:"The great international centre of feudal-ism was the Roman Catholic Church. Itunited the whole of feudalised WesternEurope, in spite of all internal wars, intoone grand political system, opposed asmuch to the schismatic Greeks as to theMohammedan countries. It surroundedfeudal institutions with the halo of divineconsecration. It had organised its ownhierarchy on the feudal model, and,lastly, it was itself by far the most power-ful feudal lord, holding, as it did, fullyone-third of the soil of the Catholicworld. Before profane feudalism couldbe successfully attacked in each countryand in detail, this, its sacred centralorganisation, had to be destroyed."

Engels goes on to note that the classmost directly interested in the struggleagainst the Roman Church was the bourgeoisie and that the struggle against feudalism took on a religious guise. Thisbattle led to the Protestant Reformation,the rise of Calvinism and the EnglishRevolution, and culminated in the' greatFrench Revolution. In contrast, Catholic reaction, wholly embraced by theSpanish monarchy, played a major rolein retarding capitalist development- inSpain and its colonies.Spain was the first of the great unifiedabsolutist monarchical states to arise inEurope. But unlike the other great monarchical states in Europe, the Spanishmonarchy did not serve to pave the wayto the rise of the middle classes. As Marxnoted: "In Spain, on the contrary, whilethe aristocracy sank into degradationwithout losing their privilege, the townslost their medieval power without gainingmodern importance" (Karl Marx, Revolu-tionary Spain, 1854).The long struggle (La Reconquesta)over almost eight centuries against Moorish domination imbued, Spanish Catholicism with a messianic crusading militancy not to be found in the rest ofWestern Europe. The first monarchs ofunified Spain (Aragon, Castile and Granada), Ferdinand the Catholic and Isabella I, relied on Catholicism as the ideological glue to unify and cement thenation to the new monarchy. Abandoningthe feudal nobility, the church threw itslot in with the monarchy, and through theinstrument of the Spanish Inquisitionbecame a powerful tool for enforcingmonarchical absolutism. The Jews (1492)and then the last of the Moors (1609)were expelled, with the forced converts toChristianity, the so-called "New Christians," being the main objects of Inquisi-5 APRIL 2002

torial persecution. The country was thusdeprived of much of its economicallyvital and cultured populace, 'and subjected to a reign of terror that stultifiedintellectual life. While most of the expelled Jews made their way to the Ottoman Empire, others wound up in theLow Countries (which were soon tobecome heavily Protestant) where Josephde la Vega, a Dutch Sephardic Jew,penned the first book on the workings ofthe stock market in the 1600s. Spanishmercantile capitalism was stunted and

University of California, Santa Barbaradecisively subordinated to the parasitic,tribute-extorting and reactionary Catholicmonarchy.The consolidation of the Spanish statetook place under the reign of the Hapsburgs, beginning with Charles V (1516-56), also crowned the Holy RomanEmperor in 1519, and continued by hisson Phillip II (1556-98). These were theglory days of the Spanish state, when theInquisition and the colonization of LatinAmerica marched hand in hand. Theambitious Hapsburg monarchs spearheaded the Counter Reformation across,Europe, a rearguard action against therise of capitalism expressed religiouslyin the Reformation. Under the Hapsburgmonarchs Spain waged war acrossEurope for empire and Catholicism, anenterprise acknowledged by the Papacy'scustom of addressing the Spanish king ashis "Most Catholic Majesty."Spain waged wars in the Mediterranean against the Ottoman Turks, in Italyand France (assisting the Catholic causein the wars of religion and also wagingwars against the Catholic French monarchy), against the Protestant Reformationin Germany, in the Low Countries andagainst England. Under Phillips III andIV this continued, with Spain participating in the Thirty Years War. But by thereign of Phillip III Spain was in a decline.For a century Spanish blood and treasure(extracted from its New World colonies)had been drained by the Hapsburg monarchs in pursuit of their wars to maintainand extend empire and defeat the Protestant powers. The drain of capital wasultimately so acute that Spain's internalcirculating currency was copper-at atime when Spain controlled Potosi, one ofthe world's most productive silver mines,in what is now Bolivia! At sea, powerfulSpanish Armadas were crushed by boththe English and the Dutch. On land theSpanish tercios were the most fearedipfantry in 16th-century Europe. But by1643 they were definitively defeated byFrench troops at Rocroi. Ultimately, thearchaic political economy of Spain and

its retrograde monarchical power wereunable to reverse the country's decline.It was the legacy of Spanish economicand political backwardness, completewith the Inquisition, that Spain bequeathed to its Latin American colonies.Thus, at the beginning of the 19th centurythe populations of Mexico and the UnitedStates were about equal. But that was allthat was equal. In America, as Engelsnoted, "feudalism was unknown, and society at t h e ~ very beginning started from abourgeois basis." Mex.ico in contrast was

"In Calvinism," Engels went on topoint out, "the second great bourgeoisupheaval found its doctrine ready cutand dried." Engels was referring to theEnglish Revolution and attendant civilwar (1642-1649), whose whole coursebears out his analysis. There is a very

Theodore de BryLeft: Spanish Inquisition's reign of terror stultified country'sintellectual life, economic vitality. Pizarro (depicted above) andothers extended legacy of Spain's backwardness to Latin America.mired in semi-feudal backwardness. TheMexican Revolution of 1810:1821 didnot mark the victory of bourgeois trendsover outmoded and' essentially semifeudal modes of production, but insteadhad to content itself with the removal ofall v ~ s t i g e s of Spanish colonial tributarydespotism and its attendant bureaucraticmonarchical centralism.In the 1860s, Lincoln won in theAmerican Civil War and Juarez was thevictor in the war against the Frenchoccupation of Mexico. But t h ~ ' o u ~ c o m e s were very different. The victory of theNorth in the American Civil War openedthe road to an explosion of immigrationand capitalist industrial development.The victory of Juarez (whose earlier revolutionary struggle was aimed at endingthe impediments to capitalist development by forces centered on the reactionary Mexican Catholic church) wasmerely the antechamber to the rule ofPorfirio Diaz, who in his decades-longreign sold as much of Mexico as hecould to tLe highest imperialist bidders.The false assertion that ideology cannot serve as a brake on capitalist development effectively cancels out any notion of interaction between ideologicalsuperstructure and material base, and isanti-Marxist. In his battles with antiMarxist opponents-who falsely equatedMarxism with vulgar economic determinism-pioneer Russian Marxist GeorgiPlekhanov wrote very intelligently andpersuasively on the role of superstructureand its interaction and effects on thecourse of historical development and itsunderlying motor force-the corresponding productive forces of society.For capitalism to take root you neededat least an accommodating ideology andconsciousness. Writing on Calvinism,Engels noted in his introduction toSocialism: Utopian and Scientific:"Calvin's creed was one fit for the bold-est of the bourgeoisie of his time, His pre-destination doctrine was the religiousexpression of the fact that in the com-mercial world of competition success orfailure does not depend upon a man's

rich body of historical studies that illustrates and elucidates these developments, most notably the writings ofChristopher Hill and also, for example,Religion and the Rise of Capitalism byR.H. Tawney.But with the rise of imperialism inWest Europe, America and Japan inthe early 20th century the independentindustrial development and modernization of the rest of the world was foreclosed. Instead the colonial and semicolonial countries remain mired ineconomic impoverishment and culturalbackwardness, all reinforced by imperialism. But as the Rushdie article notes, recognizing the role of imperialism in theThird World "does not exculpate the indigenous ruling c lasses of those countries."From World War Ion, and before inEgypt, Arab nationalism represented theattempt to modernize countries of theNear East. But that road was blocked byimperialism. Instead, the region becameBritish and French protectorates and,later, objects of the world market mainlyorchestrated from the United States. Theimperialists, the nationalists and theIslamic fundamentalists all conspiredagainst the working classes of thesecountries coming to power. The Stalinistled Communist Parties of the regionthrew their lot in with the nationalists aspart of the supposed "two stage revolution," leading to massive defeats andwholesale massacres of the proletariatThe failure of Arab nationalism, andthe continued brutal depredations ofimperialism, led to the rise of Islamic fundamentalism with religion here serving asa solace for the seemingly unchangeablemiseries and horrors of-daily life.

Comradely,George FosterP.S. Today the most backward religious'zealots populating Latin America are thefundamentalist Protestant missionariesfrom the United States. In contrast, "liberation theology," Catholics appear relatively benign.

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Open Letter to Lutte Ouvriere onThe upcoming May 5 French presidential elections are taking place in acontext of social polarization in thecountry. Since coming to power in 1997,the popular-front government of Socialist prime minister Lionel Jospin, whichincludes the French Communist Party(PCF) and the Green Party, has led acampaign of deportations of immigrantsand Qrutal police repression againstminority ghettos. After the September 11attacks, the Jospin government immediately moved to intensify the de-'spised "Vigipirate" campaign, a massivemobilization of the police and military tosow terror in minority communities. BothJ ospin and his neo-Gaullist bourgeoisopponent, current president Jacques Chirac, are pushIng "security"-i.e., racistrepression against immigrants and minor

ities-as the domi nant 'theme. At thesame time, the Jospin government iswidely hated among working people inFrance for its austerity, layoffs andattacks on pensions and social services.The fake-Trotskyist Lutte, Ouvriere(LO) is running its presidential campaignon the basis of opposition to the popularfront government of Jospin. While opinion polls show Jospin and Chirac in a virtual dead heat in the run-up to the firstround of voting on April 21, LO candidate Arlette Laguiller is credited withfully 10 percent of the vote, far outstripping the PCF which has 6 percent. ThePCF is being punished by its workingclass base for the party's continuing participation in a government of anti-workerausterity. In addition to declining electoral support, the PCF is also sufferingsplits and defections in its historic tradeunion base, including among lifelong Stalinist cadre; the entire PCF fraction in theRenault plant in Cleon just publicly splitto form its own independent group. Inresponse to LO's electoral gains, the PCFhas denounced Laguiller as a "spoiler,"claiming that she is playing right intoChirac's hands. At the same time, thewidespread hatred of the Jospin government has also profited the far right; thefascist Jean-Marie Le Pen is neck andneck with LO for the third place spot inthe elections, also garnering about ro percent of the vote.We reprint below a lO March openletter to LO by our comrades of theLigue Trotskyste de France, section of theInternational Communist League. LO isopposed to this exceedingly unpopularpopular-front government, but has noopposition to class collaboration in principle. This is best expressed by Laguillerin her own words. At a March 17 campaign meeting of some 2,000 people inParis, Laguiller concluded her reIl}arks byurging her supporters "not to wait for therevolution" but to "impose it" because

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French Elections"the bourgeoisie is so rich right now andso powerful that if it is seriously challenged it would prefer to share than tolose it all" (Liberation, 18 March). Thus,for LO, the purpose of socialist revolutionis to share power and wealth with thebourgeoisie! In opposition to LO's ref-

"Anti-terror"patrol in Paristrain stationfollowingSeptember 11attacks. Protest- at St. DenisUniversity inParis againstroundup ofundocumentedimmigrantstudents,March 2000.

ormist power-sharing schemes, in whichthe class interests of the workers willalways be subordinated to those of their.exploiters, we say that the working peo-ple who have created the wealth of thissociety can only enjoy lhe fruits of theirlabor when they achieve power through asocialist revolution and establish a society based on a planned collectivizedeconomy and egalitarianism.The LTF open letter to LO explainsthat opposition to the racist oppression ofthe large "immigrant" population-whichincludes second and third generationminorities-is key to opposing classcollaboration and the politics of theFrench bourgeoisie. LO's posture of anti-

Arlette Lag ,1 iller,presidentialcandidate of LutteOuvriere, is silenton government'sVigipiratecampaign againstminorities.

capitalism is vitiated by their capitulationto the French bourgeoisie's repressiveanti-immigrant measures, their silenceon the brutal Vigipirate campaign andtheir open support to reactionary police"strikes." That is why, as the open letternotes, so long as LO refuses to oppose

Vigipirate and reactionary cop mobilizations, the LTF cannot support theircampaign.Our letter to LO represents an important means of intervention into a situationwhere there is increased polarization anddefiance of the implementation of capitalist austerity by popular-front or socialdemocratic governments which have heldpower throughout most of West Europefor the last five to ten years. Not only inFrance, but also in Germany, Britain andelsewhere, popular discontent, especiallyamong the proletariat, has resulted inwidespread disenchantment among workers and the emergence of a substantialminority casting their ballots with partiesostensibly to the left of the mainstreamsocial democracy, such as LO in France.Our comrades in ICL sections throughoutEurope have sought to intervene intothese polarized arenas with our revolutionary program, fighting for the politicalindependence of the proletariat and theforging of revolutionary workers partiesto fight for workers power.

* * *In this election campaign there is onlyone candidate who seeks to draw a crudeclass line against the capitalist government: it is Arlette Laguiller, spokesmanfor Lutte Ouvriere. We agree with herwhen she says that the Socialist Party(SP) leaders are from the same world as

Seilliere and other bosses who exploit theworkers in the factories and that Jospinhas the same policies as Chirac. In herplant bulletin editorial of 18 FebruaryLaguiller says unambiguously: "In thechoice proposed to us, the workers do nothave to lick the hands of their oppressorsand they should vote neither for the rightwing politicians nor for the left ones"(Lutte Ouvriere, 22 February). For theseelections LO is breaking with its frequenthistory of supporting the popular front (acoalition of reformist workers partieswith bourgeois parties to administer capeitalism, a coalition which we on principlerefuse to support) to "fight the right" orthe "far right." In this same issue of theirpaper, they have a eulogy of their latecomrade Pierre Bois, in which they recallthat he had refused to obey LO's ownline of voting for Mitterrand in 1981.This is in contrast with Olivier Besancenot, the candidate of the Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire (LCR), who stateda month ago "that he would personallyvote 'for the left' because 'there is a difference between the left and the right'"(Le Monde, 1 February). This is consistent with the political line of the LCR,which has always supported the popularfront of Mitterrand and then Jospin for.more than 25 years.But LO does not oppose the government because they are opposed to classcollaboration: they empty their correctopposition of all its content by their tacitsupport to Vigipirate and their explicitsupport to the reactionary mobilizationsof cops in November. LO's attitude onthis question is all the more crucial inthat "security"-i.e., the government'sracist campaign against immigrants andtheir families-is at the center of theelectoral campaign. The SP launchedJospin's electoral campaign by callingon the cops to throw Younis Trabelsi,an undocumented Libyan who was onhunger strike, out of SP headquarters inRouen. As for the PCF, they are askingfor a doubling of the security budget forthe banlieues [working-class and minority suburbs]. In this context, LO's refusalto fight against Vigipirate represents aloyalty oath to the racist bourgeoisorder and to the anti-working-class austerity of the Jospin government. But if,in its campaign, LO came out clearlyagainst Vigipirate and the cop terror, wewould envision calling for voting for LO,without muting our criticisms of theirprogram.Down With Vigipirate!

Racism against workers of immigrant origin, in particular those fromNorth Africa, has always been poisonused by the bourgeoisie (those whoown the means of production-factories,machines, etc.-.-as their private property)to divide the working class. For the capitalists it's a good way to divide the workers-those who produce the wealth inthe industry of this country-between"French" and "immigrants" (althoughmany of the latter were born here). TheFrench bourgeoisie seized on the criminalattacks of September 11 in New York todecree "national unity" against "terrorism" and to widen and deepen their racistcampaign, and the working class is supposed to join in. In fact what's going onhere is a racist war against all immigrantsand above all against the substantialpopulation of North Africans find youthof immigrant origin.

continued on page 8WORKERS VANGUARD


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--- As Oakland Police Thugs Face Tr i a l - - Anger Mounts Over Cop Terror in Bay AreaOAKLAND-Three former cops facetrial this month in what the Oakland Trib-une (22 September 2000) called "one ofthe worst cases of Oakland police misconduct in .decades." The scandal brokeafter a disaffected rookie cop unveiled agang of police thugs who terrorized blackWest Oakland and called themselves "theRiders" in unmistakable reference to themurderous nightriders of the KKK. Evenafter prosecutors threw out dozens ofcharges in an effort at damage control, thethree were charged with more than 60counts stemming from their savage beatings of handcuffed victims, planting drugsto frame them up and covering it all upwith falsified reports. One of the manyvictims who courageously came forward totestify during a preliminary hearing lastyear, Delphine Allen, told of a harrowingnight during which the "Riders" arbitrarily arrested him and repeatedly beat himuntil he had to be sent to the hospital.Oakland's blas:k police chief, RichardWord, fired the three and their reputedringleader, who has reportedly skippedthe country. Democratic mayor JerryBrown subsequently joined Word inpushing for an official probe, which onecity official held up as pr oof that the copscan "police and investigate themselves."Brown & Co. portray the fired cops as afew "bad apples." But the four had beenset loose on West Oakland in a specialpolice campaign in the racist "war ondrugs." Altogether, 25 cops have reportedly been named in lawsuits by victims ofOakland cop brutality.Far from being the exception, the racistterror exemplified by the "Riders" is thenorm for the police, who are the hiredthugs of the capitalist ruling class. Evenas details of the "Riders" scandal weretrickling out last April, Oakland cops beatto death a young black man, Jamil Wheatfall. Two months later in San Francisco,police gunned down Idriss "Scotty" Stelley, a mentally ill youth, in a barrage ofmore than 20 shots in a downtown theater complex.Now, in the wake of the September IIattack on the World Trade Center, thecapitalist ruling class has dramaticallyescalated racist repression in the name ofthe "war on terror." Taking first aim atimmigrants, the government has roundedup more than 1,200 people of Near Eastern descent or Muslim faith for indefinitedetention. Hundreds of immigrant workers have been fired and arrested- ordeported; thousands have. been harassed.Polls of layers of the black populationfollowing September 11 show support for"racial profiling" ofArab and other immigrants. Black antipathy toward immigrants is encouraged by racial and ethnichostilities fomented by the capitalistrulers and often echoed by black politicalmisleaders. But as the Partisan DefenseCommittee and Bay Area Labor BlackLeague for Social Defense wrote in theircall for the February 9 labor-cen.teredmobilization in defense of immigrantrights in Oakland: ."Assaults on the immigrant workforcehave always gone hand in hand withstepped-up oppression of blacks and thepersecution of the most militant workers.Don't forget-here in California the anti-immigrant Proposition 187 led directlyto the racist, anti-affirmative action Prop-osition 209 two years later."

The Oakland protest mobilized morethan 300 people-trade unionists, immigrants, blacks, youth and others-inopposition to the anti-immigrant witchhunt and the Maritime Security Act,which threatens a racist union-bustingpurge on the waterfront. In building thisdemonstration, we sought to tear throughthe straitjacket of the capitalist rulers'"national unity" campaign, whose aim isto regiment the population in the service5 APRIL 2002

of U.S. imperialist depredations abroadand grinding exploitation of workers athome. We fought as well to break downthe poisonous racial and ethnic divisionsamong the exploited and oppressed whichthe capitalists promote in order to maintain their power.As the recent freeing of three of thefour New York City cops jailed for the1997 torture of black immigrant AbnerLouima starkly shows, police terroragainst black people remains "as American as apple pie." This was chillinglybrought home in San Francisco on Janu-

ary 21, Martin Luther King Day, in anincident that has provoked widespreadoutrage locally. Shortly after midnight,police with drawn guns assaulted fiveblack youth aged 12 to 14 outside theirhomes in heavily black Hunters Point,throwing them to the ground, gropingtwo girls and severely beating 14-yearold Jerome Brown for daring to questionthem. As frantic parents and neighborsgathered, one cop snarled at the motherof one of the victims: "As long as youpeople are here, we will act like this."Like the "Riders," the SFPD thugs weresimply "doing their job" as a racist occupying army in the inner cities. Along withthe courts, prisons and armed forces, thepolice are at the core of the capitalist state,whose role is to protect the property, profits and rule of the capitalist class. And inracist America, this necessarily meansterror against black people. Two yearsago in New York, following the acquittalof the cops who gunned down African immigrant Amadou Diallo, the NewYork Spartacist League and Labor BlackLeague i ~ s u e d a statement pointing out:

"There will be no end to police brutalityshort of the destruction of the system ofcapitalist exploitation and racist oppression which the cops serve as armedguard dogs. But a protest based on theorganized muscle of the labor movementwould give the cops and their capitalistmasters some pause. More importantly itwould serve to imbue the working classwith the understanding that its interestsare inseparably linked to the defense ofthe ghettos and barrios and the fight forblack freedom."

But to mobilize labor's social power inprotest against cop terror and in the fightfor black freedom, what is required is apolitical struggle within the unions againstthe trade-union tops wh o are bound to thecapitalist class enemy, particularly in itsDemocratic Party face.In the Bay Area, which has seen repeated protests against racist cop terror,the mounting anger is being diverted intoworthless schemes for police "reform,"such as more "effective" civilian reviewboards. With the "Riders" trial looming,Oakland NAACP leader Shannon Reeves

Mother of Idriss Stelley,killed in hail of COpbullets, addressesSepternJ:)er 2001 pressconference outside SFCity Hall. Oaklandprotest against policekilling of Jamil Wheatfall,May 2001.

has organized a series of public hearingson police abuse designed to let angryresidents let off steam, announcing that"it is not our mission to have a beat-upon-police session" (Montclarion, 22 February). In San Francisco, the MLK Dayassault came two weeks after "an agreement for better cooperation between thePolice Department and black communityleaders" spearheaded by the NAACP wassigned (Oakland Post, 13 January).For its part, the liberal People Unitedfor a Better Oakland (PUEBLO) has beenpushing to revamp Oakland's discreditedcivilian review board, whose real job isto whitewash the cops. Outrage overthe rampant racist terror of the Oaklandpolice in the 1960s, out of which theBlack Panther Party developed a largefollowing, led to the creation of the city'sfirst review board. As continued policeatrocities eroded its credibility, the boardhas been repeatedly "reform ed" ... untilagain discredited. PUEBLO now calls for"independent" investigations to "restorethe public's faith and trust in the OaklandPolice Department."PUEBLO and other reform outfits likethe Ella Baker Center, with its associatedgroups PoliceWatch and Let's Get Free(formerly Third Eye Movement), preachthat the cops can be something other thanpaid enforcers of the racist capitalistorder. PUEBLO is aided in sowing thisillusion by fake-left groups like the selfproclaimed "revolutionary communists"of the Progressive Labor Party (PL).In its rhetoric, PL often comes off as

revolutionary opponents of liberalism. Itsnewspaper Challenge (16 February 2000)correctly noted that "PUEBLO's reformist leadership tries to divert all effortsinto working within Oakland's CPRB(Civilian Police Review Board)." In its 23May 2001 issue, PL made the rudimentary Marxist assertion that "racist cop terror is a necessary part of capitalist rule."Challenge (20 June 2001) took to task an"Oakland Comrade" who submitted a letter baldly proclaiming: "I have also seena few 'good cops,' those willing to standup for principle ... What about policereform? Is it possible to organize withinthe police? What did the Bolsheviksdo? What should be our strategy in massorganizations like PUEBLO?" Challengecorrectly replied, "The primary functionof all police departments is to protect thebosses' criminal attacks on the workingclass, not to fight 'crime.' It's almost likesaying there were a few decent Gestapocops; it really didn't matter."But PL tramples all over the basicMarxist understanding of the police byactively working within PUEBLO, whoseWeb site unambiguously proclaims itsintent "to offer a progressive alternativeto overly punitive and ineffective publicsafety policies." PL thus provides a leftcover for those who reinforce bourgeoisconsciousness by preaching the reformability of the police. Such illusions canonly disarm the struggle to sweep awaythe system of racist police repression.Much of the black population understands that the institution of the police isnot in place to serve them. On the otherhand, the race-caste oppression of blackpeople in this society ensures that manylive in ghetto hellholes where life is cheapand the "enemy" is the gang-banger, thepimp and the dealer. Today's liberal reformers of ghetto life are frequently blackactivists who have been co-opted by thebourgeois powers that be to keep thingscool. Waves of oJltrage against cop terrorare followed by penny-ante, meaninglessliberal "reforms," with the ghetto massesreceding into bitterness and despair.The only successful working-classsocialist revolution to date, the OctoberRevolution of 1917, was led by theBolshevik Party of V. I. Lenin and LeonTrotsky, which fought to raise the consciousness of the working class by com-batting the illusion that the capitalist statemachinery can be wielded in the interestsof the toilers. Of no less importance, theBolsheviks recruited strongly from amongthe oppressed minorities in the tsarist"prison house of peoples" and had amongits cadres and leaders Jews, Poles, Georgians and Azerbaijanis. Under Bolshevikleadership, the multiethnic working classseized power, smashing the capitaliststate and forging a workers state that laidthe foundations of a planned, collectivized economy, the prerequisite to socialequality and progress.In the U.S., where the bedrock of capitalist rule is the special oppression ofblack people, it is doubly important thatblack militants playa central role in leading a revolutionary workers party. Withoutsuch leadership, it will not be possible todecisively break the political ties thatbind the working people and oppressedblack and Hispanic masses to the capitalist Democratic Party. It is preciselythrough such a leadership that the powerof labor can be welded to the anger of theghettos and barrios in order to uproot thiswhole system based on exploitation andoppression and enforced by racist copbrutality. When those who labor rule, wewill begin to build an egalitarian socialistsociety where racist terror and oppressionwill be eliminated once and for ,all, andthe tremendous wealth of this society willbe used to provide a decent life for all .

5


6/12

Young SparlaeusBig Brother's Little Sisters Run to "The Man"

Feminists Ban Marxists fromChicago ConferenceINCITE! Women of Color AgainstViolence, a national feminist organization founded two years ago, held its second "Color of Violence" conference fromMarch 15-17 at the University of Illi-.nois at Chicago Circle Center. Called onthe theme of "Building a Movement," theconference attracted hundreds of people,but the INCITE! leadership made certain

it didn't include any reds.INCITE! may appear to the left of thetypical bourgeois feminist group simplyby numbering racial oppression, policeterror and imperialism among the formsof "violence against women of color."

Reuters"Woman of color" Condoleezza Rice,member of Bush team busy direct-ing "war on terror" at home andabroad.But like the Black Radical Congress andCritical Resistance with whom they sharesupporters (such as rad-lib academicAngela Davis), INCITE's radical rhetoricdoesn't go one step beyond the boundsof Democratic Party pressure politics.Tellingly, conference organizers wastedlittle time before contacting the cops andbuilding administrators to remove Spartacist supporters from the premises afterour revolutionary program for women'sliberation received a warm welcome froma number of people at the Saturday workshops, including one-ironically enoughon "State Violence Against Women ofColor."The next morning, the SYC hit thepavement outside the Circle Center witha statement protesting the cop-enforcedcensorship of our political views. Sixconference organizers scurried outside toshepherd the incoming crowd away fromus. Still, we distributed some 300 copiesof our statement, asking people to read itand decide for themselves why the copswere called on conference attendees.Much to the dismay of INCITE's juniorMcCarthys, many did. Our statement isprinted below.

* * *Did you buy a Workers Vanguard thisweekend? Then you better watch outfor Big Brother (and Sister) who havedeclared this revolutionary newspaper ofthe Spartacist League illegal, unsafe andjust not nice! Accused of the "crime" of6

telling people that bourgeois feminismis no answer in the fight for women'sliberation (guilty as charged), the Spartacist League/Spartacus Youth Club werebanned from the conference Saturday andphysically escorted out of Circle Center!Hiding behind the lie that our Marxist discussions were creating an "unsafeenvironment" for the conference attendees, the organizers called the campuscops and had our interracial team ofwomen and men thrown out! "Unsafeenvironment?!" Calling the cops intoa conference attended by many noncitizens caused a genuine threat to theconference participants. The liberal organizers were threatened when attendeessnapped up over 100 pieces of our communist literature, thus being exposed toa revolutionary perspective (GASP!). Bycalling in the state, they put scores ofwomen in the cross hairs of the capitaliststate! But that's what happens when youseek common cause with the powers-thatbe against the communists. The haunting spectre of a 19-year-old red selling apaper sent them running to the "man."So much for "empowerment of women!"Anti-communist expulsion is a statementof loyalty to the capitalist, imperialistorder at home and abroad. John Ashcroftwould be proud.As part of their absurd justificationto ban us, the Carrie Nation wannabesaccused one of our male comrades of"smelling like alcohol." This provocativesmear serves to hide the fact that thisexclusion was political, plain and simple.It is no accident that the only peoplebanned from the conference this weekend were the revolutionary Marxists. Forinstance, a fundamentalist Muslim organization, IMAM, was welcomed. Like allreligions, the Jslam ic religion is antiwoman to its core. Politics breeds strangebedfellows. Let's be clear, their attempt tosilence us is based on the politics that weput forward. In 1979, we hailed the SovietRed Army intervention into Afghanistan.For the first time the question of bringingAfghanistan into the twentieth centurywas posed, laying the basis for extendingthe gains of the Russian Revolution forwomen. Women were educated, allowedinto the workforce and given guns to fightfor their own liberation against the CIAbacked mullahs. The Stalinist bureaucracy's pullout of the Red Army was abetrayal of the people of Afghanistan,women in particular. Internationally,the feminists and fake left sided withtheir own bourgeoisie against the Soviets.RAWA, part of today's conference, hasbeen in the forefront of the pro-imperialistoutcry. Today they call for the r e i n ~ t a t e -ment of the monarchy and denouncethe Soviet imposed rights of "having aboyfriend or dancing in a nightclub"(Z Magazine, January 2002).As the brutal bombing campaign ragesagainst Afghanistan, we say: U.S.lUN/NATO Out of Afghanistan and CentralAsia Now! For Class Struggle Against theImperialists at Home! "National unity" isa lie because it ties the exploited withtheir exploiters. The capitalist system is- based on the ruthless exploitation of themany by the few. Bush and company haveseized on the criminal attack of the World

Trade Center as a way to terrorize theAmerican population. The "war on terrorism" means war on blacks, immigrantsand labor! As Bush jigs into town for St.Patrick's Day, those leading the conference are doing their part in silencing revolutionary opposition to racist Americanimperialism.What the, conference organizers findparticularly hard to swallow is our opposition to the Democratic Party, a capitalist party of war and racism and our forthright program of revolutionary action. Itis not enough to criticize Bush. That'seasy. It was the Clinton .administrationthat axed welfare and threw tens of thousands of single mothers out onto thestreets, that incarcerated more peoplethan any other administration before themand that filled the streets with hundredsof thousands of additional cops to terrorize the ghettos and barrios. The Republicans are the party of repression, theDemocrats of hypocrisy. What is neededto even begin to address the genuine liberation of women, blacks and all theoppressed is the fight against the capitalist system. We need our own party, a multiracial, revolutionary workers party tofight for a works government. Capitalism cannot be reformed into ajust society.Imperialism is not an administrative policy subject to pressure. The feminist organizers of this conference feel "unsafe"because we expose their support to capitalism, expressed in the pipe dream thatthe imperialists can be pressured into acting in the interests of the oppressed.Bourgeois feminism obscures the maindivision in society, which is the divisionbetween the proletariat and the bourgeoisie not men versus womeh. Sorry,but "woman of color" Condoleezza Rice,helping to carry out the brutal war againstAfghanistan is not our sister. We seek tomobilize our class brothers and sisters inthe fight for women's liberation throughsocialist revolution. Not until we build anegalitarian, socialist society can you evenbegin to truly lay thematerialist basis forthe liberation of women.The same is true for the brutal oppres-

sion of blacks in this country-the bedrock of American capitalism. Segregatedat the bottom of society, blacks are integrated at the point of production andare fated to playa strategic role in leading the American working class onbehalf of all the oppressed. Oppressioncannot be compartmentalized into "sectors," and to do so only plays into thehands of the bourgeoisie. Every attemptto separate these specially oppressedgroups from their economic roots leadsto reliance on the class enemy in theform of the Democrats and the capitaliststate. They preach "separate but safe."We seek to unite all the oppressed underthe common banner of revolutionaryTrotskyism. The real question at hand ishow to get rid of the system that breedsoppression, the capitalist system, andmobilize the social power of the workingclass. Black Liberation Through Socialist Revolution!Our demonstration in Oakland on February 9 gave a taste of a workers party inaction. This was the first time anywherethat organized labor was mobilized to flexits muscle in defense of its immigrantbrothers and sisters under the U.S. rulers'"war on terrorism." Hundreds of unionists, blacks, Latinos and youth came outunder the slogans "Anti-Terrorist LawsTarget Immigrants; Blacks and Labor!","No to the USA-Patriot Act and MaritimeSecurity Act!" and "Down With the AntiImmigrant Witchhunt!"Everything the working class andoppressed have ever won was the resultof militant class struggle. Women andblacks will be a key component of therevolutionary leadership of a multiracial,Leninist vanguard party on the road toa socialist future. We urge those ofyou interested in Marxism and leadinga fight against capitalism to check outthe Trotskyist program of the SpartacistLeague/Spartacus Youth Club. Join u s -we have a world to win! Women's Liberation Through Socialist Revolution!Down With the Anti-Communist Expulsion! Subscribe to Workers Vanguard,the paper they don't want you to read!.

VAAPWomen workers demonstrate in Petrograd, 19 March 1917. Banner reads, "AsLong as the Woman Isa Slave There Can't Be Feedom-Long Live Women'sEquality." After working class took state power in October, Bolsheviks movedrapidly on pledge of full social equality for women.WORKERS VANGUARD


7/12

Dinesh D'Souza, slavery apologist andall-purpose Reaganite pig, appeared atColumbia University's Law School onFebruary 27 to push U.S. imperialism's"war on terrorism" in a speech titled"Why They Hate Us: America andIts Enemies." To refute the racist, proimperialist filth he spews, the SpartacusYouth Club called for a united-frontprotest outsi.de the Law School based onthe demands: "Protest Dinesh D'Souza,Racist Ideologue of u.s. Imperialism!U.S.lUNINATO Out of Afghanistan,Central Asia, the Persian Gulf and theNear East! Down With the Racist Anti-Immigrant Witchhunt! Defend BlackRights!"The SYC built for the protest on campus and in work throughout the city.Campus activists and student organizations, including the president of Liga Filipina at Columbia University and theAfrican Student Union of Hunter College,professors and left groups endorsed ourunited-front call. Notable for its refusal toendorse was the International SocialistOrganization (ISO), whose actions duringthis campaign are a case study in opportunist accommod.ation to liberalism.At a protest organizing meeting it 'hadcalled, the ISO ludicrously objected tothe inclusion of anti-imperialist slogansamong the united-front demands we putforward because this would "raise thebar too high," frightening away liberalswho might oppose D'Souza but notthe imperialist slaughter that he: cheers.This might seem strange to those whoheard an ISO spokesman at a February20 speakout at Columbia state, "I thinkit's really important that everyone who'sinterested in fighting racism fight the warabroad because that's a war allowingracist attacks." The D'Sou za protest leaflets that ISO members did distributefailed to raise any slogan against U.S.imperialism, even though this was thetopic of D'Souza's speech!In its press, the ISO can pontificate on"Why we oppose all U.S. interventions"(Socialist Worker, 2 November 2001), buton the ground the ISO "fights" against thewar in Afghanistan by building liberal"peace" coalitions that aim to pressurethe imperialists to be kinder and gentler.For example, the ISO endorsed the April20 "Stop the War" march on Washington.This mobilization centrally calls for "aU.S. foreign policy based upon social andeconomic jus-tice, not military and corporate oppression," a demand premised onthe deadly illusion that the racist American ruling class can act in the interests ofworkers and the o p p r e s s e d . .Our protest, exposing the vile bIgotD'Souza, was also aimed.at winning students to the understanding that only international workers revolution can end racistoppression, class exploitation and imperialist war. The very purpose of a unitedfront is to mobilize in common actionaround specific demands, while each organization puts forward its own politicalprogram. Such political debate advances

BAY AREAAlternate Saturdays, 2 p.m.

April 6: Revolutionary Oppositionto Imperialism1634 Telegraph, 3rd Floor, OaklandInformation and readings: (510) 839-0851

LOS ANGELESAlternate Saturdays, 2 p.m.

April 6: The Fight for aRevolutionary Workers PartyApril 20: The Russian RevolutionBetrayed and the Struggle ofthe Left Opposition

3806 Beverly Blvd., Suite 215Information and readings: (213) [email protected]

5 APRIL 2002

the development of revolutionary consciousness. Fear of confronting communists politically is exactly why thereformist ISO tries routinely to excludethe SYC from their "public" events.Clearly, the ISO was bothered bythe widespread attention and supportaccorded our campaign against D'Souza.Showing they felt pressure from our criticism of their dive on the war, the ISOcame to our protest with slogans that tookup imperialism: "D'So uza's racism feedsthe war machine" and "The D'Souzaagenda: racism, imperialism, war." Theseslogans sound rather more militant thanthe ISO's perennial call for "Money forjobs, not for war," which treats imperialist wars as some kind of aberration orexcess that the capitalist system couldchoose to eliminate in favor of other,more humane "priorities." The ISO contingent briefly joined the demonstration,but fled when we chanted: "1, 2, 3, 4-Time to finish the Civil War! 5, 6, 7, 8-Forward to a workers state!"The ISO's gyrations over our D'Souzaprotest are a measure of-the contradictionthis group faces when they seek to posture as opponents of American imperialism. The ISO's staunch anti-communismled them to line up in the first place on thesame side as D'Souza in openly supporting the CIA-backed mujahedin cutthroatsas "freedom fighters" against the RedArmy in 1980s Afghanistan. Later, theISO would declare they "welcome thedefeat of the Russians in Afghanistan"(Socialist Worker, May 1988).In contrast, we hailed the Soviet military intervention, which represented the

CHICAGOAlternate Tuesdays, 6 p.m.April 9: Finish the Civi l War!Black Liberation ThroughSocialist Revolution!

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Alternate Tuesdays, 7 p.m.April 9: Defend China Against.Imperialism, Counterrevolution!For Workers Political Revolution!

Columbia University (116th and Broadway)- Hamilton Hall, Room 306Information and readings: (212) 267-1025

Young Spartacusonly hope for emancipation of the hideously oppressed women of Afghanistan.This action by the Moscow Stalinists wasone of their few truly progressive acts,both as a basic measure in defense of thehomeland of the October Revolution andas the first step to extending the gains ofthe USSR's planned, collectivized economy to the Afghan peoples. Despite grossmismanagement by the repressive Stalinist regime, collectivized property and theplanned economy were the material basis

for guarantees of full employment andsocial benefits for the whole of the working people.Opposition to imperialism meansdefending those gains the internationalworking class already has made. The Stalinist bureaucratic caste sitting atop theworkers state sabotaged that defense byconciliating imperialism but was constrained in its actions by its mortal fear ofthe proletariat. We Trotskyists foughtpolitically, to the limits of our smallforces, to rally the working class of theformer USSR and East Europe to defendthe social gains embodied in these states,to rise in political revolutions to oust thesellout Stalinists who declared "communism has failed" and in the end handedpower back to the imperialists. Today, wedefend the remaining deformed workersstates of Cuba, China, North Korea andVietnam against imperialist attacks andinternal counterrevolutionary forces.The ISO (and many others) proved tobe "Cold War socialists." Alongside theU.S. State Department, they rode thecoattails of reactionary forces, like Solidarnosc in Poland and the Afghan muja-hedin, that tried and ultimately did succeed in fomenting counterrevolution inEast Europe and the Soviet Union. Thatthe ISO is not now in a hurry to boast ofits contributions to this outcome testifiesto the devastating effects of counterrevolution: massive impoverishment of theworking class, hideous "ethnic cleansing," frontal assaults on the rights ofwomen, wholesale destruction of basichealth care and public education.We stand in the tradition of the October1917 Russian Revolution, in which theworking class, led by the Bolshevik Party,amid t h ~ bloody chaos of imperialist wartook state power away from the capitalistclass and established its own class rule.Today, we fight to break the grip of theimperialist system around the globe onceand for all as we seek in struggle tocohere a worldwide revolutionary party tolead new October Revolutions .

Harvard ProtestAgainst Racist IdeologueThe united-front picket against racist ideologue David Horowitz, a cohort of Dinesh D'Souza, initiated bythe Boston Spartacus Youth Club atHarvard University on March 14, wasjoined by some 20 people. The protesters, including individuals from theBlack Men's Forum and the HarvardLiving Wage campaign and two members of Progressive Labor, mobilizedoutside Horowitz's speech at the Science Center under the demands:"Protest David Horowitz, Racist Ideologue for U.S. Imperialism! DefendBlack Rights! Down With the AntiImmigrant Witchhunt! U.S. and AllImperialist Troops Out of Afghanistanand Central Asia!"The SYC's call for the protestsparked widespread debate on campus, especially among black students,which escalated when Horowitz tookout a paid ad in the Harvard Crimson

on March 11 with the outrageouslyracist title: "Harvard U: No Republicans Or Conservatives And (Few)White Christians Need Apply." Thisrevolting screed echoed Horowitz'sgrotesque claims from his campus tourlast year that blacks actually benefitedfrom slavery and that racism no longerexists (except against "Whitey").Horowitz's current speaking tour ispart of a calculated provocation, aneo-McCarthyite campaign by rightwing organizations to witchhunt allthose who oppose U.S. imperialism'swar on Afghanistan. By exercising ourright to free speech and defending thetargets of his vicious "fifth column"terrorist-baiting, the SYC led a militant, organized protest that politicallyrefuted Horowitz's right-wing garbageand sought to win youth to the causeof black freedom through socialistrevolution.

7


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France...(continuedfrom page 4)

The LTF reacted immediately afte r September 11 by opposing domestic repression and upcoming imperialist "reprisals."In a 13 September leaflet we denouncedthe implementation of reinforced Vigipirate. When the war against Afghanistanbroke out we caIled for breaking the reactionary and racist national unity and forclass struggle at home against the capitalists and their government. We defendedAfghanistan against imperialist attackand today we say: U.SJFrenchIUN troopsout ofAfghanistan! The anti-woman reactionaries of the Ta1iban were from thebeginning the proteges of imperialism; in1979 we hailed the Soviet interventionagainst the fundamentalist mujahedin,because the Soviet intervention opened upa real possibility of liberation for the oppressed masses of Afghanistan, especiaIlythe women. In contrast, our opponentsenlisted in the anti-Soviet Cold War campaign, with LO going so far as to characterize the Soviet intervention in headlinesas "Russia's Vietnam," thus putting it onthe same plane as the bloody war lost bythe French and American imperialists.One strike here against imperialism,against Vigipirate and in defense of thepopulation of North African origin wouldhave more impact than a thousand demonstrations caIling for the racist Frenchimperialists to support the PalestinianArabs. But what did LO say on Vigipirate? Nothing. Not a word in their pressfor six months. When we queried ArletteLaguiIIer about it recently, far from saying that she opposed Vigipirate, she triedto minimize Vigipirate by saying that thiswas the "normal" functioning of capitalism. As Trotskyists we fight against "normal" police terror, while LO minimizes itto justify its economist refusal to mobilize the working class against this cop terror. Beneath its silence LO hides a capitulation to the special powers of thecapitalist state represented by Vigipirate,the Law on Daily Security and the "antiterrorist" agreement of the EuropeanUnion. Try teIling the youth in .the ban-lieues that nothing changed for them afterSeptember 11 ! Try teIling it to the undocumented immigrants, for whom deportations have increased by at least 30 percent! AIl those who would reaIly want tofight for the interests of workers and oppressed peoples must oppose this growing terror and racist state repression. AIlthese "anti-terrorist" measures ultimatelytarget and serve to intimidate the workingclass, which is fed up with layoffs, privatizations, threats to pensions, speedup, etc.COpS Are Not Workers inUniform but the Watchdogs ofCapitalist Order

While being silent on Vigipirate; LOenthusiasticaIly and prmptly stated itssolidarity with the police "strikes" lastfall. These were reactionary strikes

against the Guigou law on presumption ofinnocence. As we noted in our polemicagainst LO on this subject (Le BolchevikNo. 158, Winter 2001-2002):"LO explains: 'the police, but also thegendarmes, carry out functions that areuseful to society as a whole, by doingsecurity tasks that are necessary to collective life, for lousy wages' (LutteOuvriere, 7 December 2001). One wouldthink we are in a scene from 'Cordier,Judge and Cop' [TV show]! The 'usefulness' of the cops is to attack picket lines,terrorize youth of immigrant origin inthe banlieues and hunt down the undocumented immigrants. What 'usefulness'can the mortal enemies of the workersmovement have except to guarantee capitalist 'security' and private property?"In response to our arguments on thisquestion, Arlette LaguiIIer in her forumsin Le Havre and Creil claimed that LO'ssupport to the police was a Bolsheviktactic straight out of the Russian Revolution of 1917. She maternalisticaIly advised us to re-read Trotsky's History ofthe Russian Revolution. What chutzpah!It is in this book in particular that Trotskyexplains the difference between the army

and the cops, during the February 19 I 7revolution:"Toward the police the crowd showedferocious hatred. They routed the mounted police with whistles, stones and pieces. -of ice. In a totally different way theworkers approached the soldiers .... Thepolice are fierce, implacable, hated andhating foes. To win them over is out of thequestion."And in What Next? (1932), Trotskyadded: "Consciousness is determined byenvironment even in this instance. Theworker who becomes a policeman in theservice of the capitalist state, is a bourgeois cop, not a worker." The LTF says:Cops out of the unions! LO, on the otherhand, in their election propaganda, promises cops bulIe1proof vests. I f LO wantsto improve their working conditions, wiIILO also demand automatic rifles nextrime? Are they courting the police in thehope that the cops wiII vote for Arlette?Another aspect of LO's fundamental

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!;... g'o" " ~ minationof North Africa and its consequences. Butfor LO the cause of the undocumentedimmigrants is simply a question of democratic rights that their dear RepublicanFrance must grant. For us it is a questionof addressing the systematic racial discrimination and segregation of the NorthAfricans as manifested in chronic, astronomical unemployment in the ghettos,racial discrimination in hiring, jobs andhousing, lack of schools and social services, and the whole legal system of"justice" with its police and courts whokiIl andjail dark-skinned immigrants andtheir children. It is the capitalist systemitself that is at issue. What is necessaryis to forge a real Bolshevik party to leadthe proletariat in a struggle to defend allthe oppressed against the capitalist system, a Leninist party that wiII be a tribuneof the people, denouncing all forms ofoppression.As long as "French" workers acceptthe oppression of their dark-skinned classbrothers, they wiII not be able to fightfor their own historic interests. Racistoppression is at the heart of the Frenchbourgeoisie's policies to divide andweaken the muItiethnic working class andmaintain its own rule. Workers of NorthAfrican, African, Caribbean and otherorigin continue to be integrated in industry, particularly in private industry likeautomobile and construction, where theyplaya crucial role. Far from being only"victims," workers of immigrant origin have key social power for revolution

here, and also represent a living bridgetoward revolution in their countries oforigin.Here again, LO's speeches on immigrant rights and their participation indemonstrations for undocumented immigrants are nullified by their silence onVigipirate and their support to the copmobilizations. Indifference to racial oppression is the direct consequence of aperspective of class collaboration. Thefundamental method of reformists is tolook for allies in one or another sector of"their" national bourgeoisie. In any casethey are not looking for allies among thelayers of the working class who are victims of special oppression.Reforms or Revolution?

It is striking that in Laguiller's electoral speeches and in her recent book,Mon communisme [My Communism] shenever talks about workers revolution. Herwhole program can be summed up as aseries of measures that the government(of the left or of the right, but in any casecapitalist) should take under the pressureof the workers. Her most famous sloganis to ban layoffs in companies makingprofits. This demand openly accepts thenotion that capitalism could be rational,although as any Marxist knows it is aprofit-driven system driving to reducewages and impoverish the proletariat, asystem which leads to periodic crises of"overproduction," i.e., mass unemployment. Capitalists resort to what Marxcalled "the reserve army of the unemployed" as a weapon against the workersmovement and to drive wages down.Against the reformist illusions sowedby LO in the capitalist state we demand:A sliding scale of wages and workinghours! Al l the work on hand should bedivided among all existing workers with-out any reduction in wages! Organize theunorganized in unions! For professionaltraining organized by the unions foroppressed youth and oppressed minor-ities! In fact, demands such as thesewould mean extraparliamentary classstruggle with factory occupations andestablishment of factory committees. AsTrotsky said in the Transitional Program(1938):'''Realizability' or 'unrealizability' is inthe given instance a question of relationship of forces, which can be decidedonly by the struggle. By means of thisstruggle, no matter what its immediatepractical successes may be, the workerswill best come to understand the necessity of liquidating capitalist slavery."To "Always Side with theWorkers" It Is Necessary toBreak with the Racist Policiesof the Government!

LO's positions on special oppressionhave been poisonous for a long time. Withtheir bourgeois moralism they excludedthe ACT-UP group from their fete in1992, a typically homophobic action.They line up with the state against youthby opposing legalization of cannabis, aquestion which is used as a pretext forracist repression in the banlieues. Theyare indifferent to the fascist danger represented by Le Pen and the National Front:on February 4 Laguiller participated in atelevised debate with Le Pen, therebycontributing to legitimizing his calls forracist murder, as if these were ideas onemight "discuss."There are times when such questionsare in the center of political debate. TodayVigipirate and police repression, especially against .banlieue youth, are at thecenter of French politics. Before the 1981presidential elections, we considered giving PCF candidate Georges Marchaiscritical support because at that time theUnion of the Left had coIlapsed andMarchais was running alone against thebourgeoisie (moreover, he was refusingto condemn the Soviet intervention inAfghanistan). So a vote for Marchaiscould Have represented a class vote. Butwhen the PCF attacked a dormitory housing immigrant workers from Mali with abulldozer in Vitry-sur-Seine, we necessarily withdrew our critical support becausea vote for Marchais would have meantsupport for this racist atrocity which was

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P a l e s t i n i a n s . ~ . (continued from page 1)people were stunned by the ArabLeague's refusal even to allow ~ r a f a t toaddress their summit by phone from hisRamallah prison. For all their lip serviceto the Palestinian cause, the Arab bourgeois regimes are bloody oppressors oftheir own working people and historicenemies of the Palestinians. Protests insolidarity with the Palestinians in Egypt,Jordan and Syria were suppressed withpolice batons, teargas and water cannons.In Jordan, the tiny Bedouin-derived ruling elite lords it over a population that ismajority Palestinian, while in Lebanonand elsewhere hundreds of thousands of"stateless" Palestinians have languishedin squalid refugee camps for three generations, denied even the right to work.The inherently oppressive Zionistbourgeois state must and can only beswept away from within, through a proletarian revolution uniting-Palestinian andHebrew-speaking workers against thecommon class enemy. But social andnational emancipation for the PalestinianArab people requires as well the overthrow of the bourgeois order in Jordan,Egypt and the other Arab countries. In thestruggle to forge the r e v o ~ u t i o n a r y internationalist workers parties needed to fightfor a socialist federation of the Near East,the Hebrew-speaking proletariat must bebroken from the reactionary chauvinismof the Israeli rulers and won to thedefense of the Palestinians, and the Palestinians and other Arab workers must bebroken from petty-bourgeois nationalismand Islamic fundamentalism.

* * *The following statement of the Sparta-cist League/U.S. was issued on March 30.The international working class musturgently rally to the defense of the Palestinian people against the Zionist militaryterror machine. Seizing on the killing of22 innocent Israeli civilians at a PassoverSeder in the working-class town ofNetanya by a Hamas suicide bomber-acriminal attack worthy of the murderousnationalist mindset of the Zionist rul

ers-Israeli prime minister Sharon unleashed hundreds of troops, dozens oftanks, and helicopters in an assault onPalestinian Authority headquarters inRamallah, where Yasir Arafat has beenconfined since December. After a fiercefirefight, Israeli troops occupied Arafat'scompound, forcing the PLO leader intoalmost complete solitary confinement ina windowless room. Meanwhile, Israelitroops have made other incursions intoPalestinian towns throughout the WestBank.The Zionists' genocidal impulses werecaptured in the heaqline for an op-ed

a pledge given to the bourgeoisie so thatthe PCF could again find its place in Mitterrand's popular front.More recently, last year our Britishcomrades gave critical support to theSocialist Labour Party (SLP) of ArthurScargill. This was the only party openlycampaigning against any support toBlair's Labour Party governing Britishimperialism. (The misnamed SocialistAlliance, supported by, among others, theBritish co-thinkers of LO-WorkersFight-and of the LCR, called for votingLabour wherever the Socialist Alliancewas not themselves running:) Our comrades distributed the SLP 's election propaganda door to door and on the street,calling for a vote to the SLP, while intervening in the SLP's public election meetings to polemicize against ScargiII's narrow national reformism and Stalinism.We are not anarchists who refuse onprinciple to consider participating in elections; in this way the anarchists evade thefight against workers' parliamentaristillusions, thereby abandoning the workerso Jospin, Hue and Laguiller. At the Creil -meeting Arlette Laguiller told us that wehad a contradiction because we consid-5 APRIL 2002

piece by former prime minister BenjaminNetanyahu in the 29 March JerusalemPost: "End Game." Sharon has called upmore than 20,000 reservists for activeduty in the Occupied Territories. Takingaim at the Palestinian Authority, whichwas created by the sham Oslo "peace"accords in order to police the Palestinianghettos f o ~ the Zionist rulers, Sharon'sbloody incursion into Ramallah couldvery well be a first step toward a completeIsraeli re-occupation of the entire WestBank and Gaza Strip. The logic of reactionary Zionist nationalism has alwaysbeen equivalent to Hitler's lebensraum("living space"), i.e., the clearing of areasoccupied by Israel of all Palestinians. Thefascistic settlers, armed to the teeth, arethe advance guard of this policy. TheSpartacist League stands in defense of hePalestinian people against the Zionist

and detaining hundreds of Arab andMuslim immigrants as part of the "waron terror."It is widely recognized that Bush'srecent turn to a diplomatic solution ispurely in the service of a massive U.S.attack on Iraq. The latest Israeli attackscome in the wake of the Arab Leaguemeeting which opposed any U.S. attackon Iraq.The United Nations is hardly an "alternative." It was the UN that ratified thevery foundation of the state of Israel;whose troops oversaw the disarming ofPalestinian militants who were thenslaughtered at the hands of fascistic Lebanese militias mobilized by ,Sharon atSabra and Shatila in 1982; and which hassanctioned the more than decade-longstarvation blockade of Iraq that has killedover one million people. As for the Euro-

blance of a livable life for the Palestiniansentrapped in the ghettos. Many feel likethey have nothing left to lose and are prepared to strap their bodies with explosivesto get the perceived "enemy," which inthe minds of anti-Semitic outfits likeHamas includes the entire Israeli Jewishpopulation. Indeed, the Zionists look tothese atrocities to advance their aims. Infact, until Sh

ered giving LO critical support if theywould oppose Vigipirate while at thesame time characterizing LO as reformist. I f the condition for critical supportwas having a revolutionary program, we. wouldn't be able to support anyone unlesswe could immediately fuse with them! Itmay be appropriate to give critical support to a reformist party when that partyis running independently of and in opposition to the bourgeois parties and bourgeois formations (which includes popular fronts). Critical support allows aLeninist organization to solidarize withworkers who want to draw a class line,while showing these workers the crucialdifference between a revolutionary program and a reformist program. Such atactic can raise the consciousness of theworking class toward a communist understanding of its historic task of overthrow-ing capitalism-a task to which reformism is an obstacle.In spite of its call to oppose the government, LO finds itself tailing Jospin andChirac when it capitulates to the climateof racist hysteria they fuel and whichdominates the political life of this country. So long as LO does not oppose Vigi-

pean powers, their current objectionsto Israeli and U.S. policies are simplyin the service of trying to reassert theirown imperialist interests in the region~ e y once controlled. All U.S.lUN/NATOforces out of the Near East now! ,While the Arab League meeting in Beirut passed empty resolutions supposedlyin defense of the Palestinians, the policyof the Arab regimes has a l w a y ~ been tosuppress Palestinian refugees in theircountries. In 1970, some 10,000 Palestinian militants were slaughtered by the Jordanian monarchy in the "Black September" massacre. In f a c t ~ such support thatexists for the Palestinian "right of return"by these regimes is aimedatdriving thePalestinians out of these countries. Immediately following the 1991 Gulf War, theKuwaiti regime expelled nearly 200,000Palestinian workers and their families.The Zionist occupiers and their imperialist backers have destroyed any sem-

pirate and the reactionary and racist copmobilizations, the LTF cannot supportLO's campaign. There is no party runningin these elections presenting a candidatewho represents in any real sense theworkers' interests. We will neverthelessintervene in this election campaign fight-

There can be no justice for the Palestinian people within the framework ofcapitalist rule. On the contrary, the system o ~ J B r , y a t e property and private ownership of the means of production necessarily contains within it the componentsof nationalism and religion, which makeimpossible the settlement of the conflicting national -claims of the PalestinianArab and the Hebrew-speaking populations. Only through the overthrow ofboth the Israeli bourgeoisie and all theArab ruling classes can the right ofnational self-determination for these peoples and the many other peoples of theregion be equitably realized. This necessarily calls for the leadership of internationalist Marxist workers parties, notleast to defeat the intruding foreignimperialisms, particularly the American.Defend the Palestinian people! For asocialist federation of the Near East!.

ing to win the working class, minoritiesand youth to the understanding thatthey need a revolutionary internat ionalistworkers party fighting to unite the workers struggles throughout the whole worldto put an end to capitalist exploitation andracism once and 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 issues-Airmail $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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9


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Detainees...(continued from page 12)

This understanding was key to mobilizing organized labor in defense of immigrants in Oakland on February 9 in aunited-front rally initiated by the BayArea Labor Black League for SocialDefense and the Partisan Defense Committee, a social and legal defense organization associated with the SpartacistLeague. As the call for the protestexplained:"Just as the fight for black freedom is

central to the liberation of all workingpeople, the labor movement can only de-fend itself if it defends the rights of immigrants. In this country, the raw exploitation of labor has always come wrappedin the envelope of racial and ethnicreligious hostilities fomented by the capitalist rulers. Black oppression is thecornerstone of American capitalism. Butblack and immigrant workers are nothelpless victims; they're a vital component of the multiracial working class."The February 9 Oakland demonstrationwas the first time in the U.S. that organized labor was mobilized in defense ofimmigrants victimized in the U.S. rulers' .

"war on terror." Several unions from theU.S., Canada, Mexico and elsewhere

WV PhotoSpartacist contingent at ~ q : h 23demonstration in Brooklyn,"NY. Signin Arabic'demands "Full CitizenshipRights for All Immigrants!"endorsed the rally, including the powerfulILWU LoCal 10 longshore union in Oakland. Since then, several other demonstrations in defense of immigrants havebeen held, including a March 23 "NYCLabor Solidarity with Immigrant Detainees" rall

workers vanguard no 778 - 05 april 2002

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