Free Abdullah Ocalan!

16 Pages·2010·4.06 MB·English

No.716 9 July 1999
....U 23
JULY 5-From the moment U.S.INATO troops began the plight' of the Kosovo Albanians under Siobodan
rolling into Kosovo last month, the Serb and Gypsy Milosevic's Serbian regime.
(Roma) populations have been subjected to violent In denouncing the predatory imperialist "peace" dic
pogromist attacks aimed at driving them out of the prov tated by the world's bloodiest mass murderers, we
ince. In village after village, imperialist "peacekeepers" warned last month: "It will place the Kosovars-Serbs,
stood by as armed units of the Albanian nationalist Gypsies and Albanians alike-under the direct thumb of
Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK) went house to house the imperialists, exacerbating national hatreds in the
AFP
threatening to kill Serbs if they did not get out, while region" (WV No. 715, II June). This is now amply con- ' As NATO forces moved into Kosovo, tens of
revenge-seeking mobs looted and torched Serb and firmed in every respect. Three days ago, British troops thousands of Serbs were forced to flee as a result
Roma shops and homes. Numerous Serbs, from elderly shot dead two Albanian revelers after one fired his rifle of.pogromist attacks.
villagers to prominent academics in Pristina, have been in the air. While the UCK hopes to be a local gendarme
abducted and shot or beaten to death. In one week, some rie under the NATO occupation, the imperialists have political rivals (New York Times, 25 June). Washington is
80,000 Serb and Roma residents were forced to flee made it clear that they will be calling the shots in also viscerally hostile to the UCK's demand for Kosovo
their homes. Yet not once has this forced population Kosovo. Western spokesmen have begun to take their dis independence, fearing it could destabilize the region.
transfer been described as "ethnic. cleansing" by the tance from their wartime pawns, suddenly discovering, Clinton Balkans envoy Christopher Hill declaims, "We
Western capitalist media which acted'as the U.S.INATO for example, that UCK leader Hashim Thaci has been spent the 1990's worrying about a Greater Serbia. That's
ministr~ of war propaganda in endlessly .etailing carrying out a "campaign of assassinations" against . continued on page 12
Kurdish Leader Sentenced to Death in Turkey
••
Free Abdullah Ocalan!
Four months after his abduction and His lawyers were repeatedly threatened The arrest and sentencing of the PKK Action Party-whose paramilitary Grey
arrest in Kenya by Turkish security and physically attacked, including' in leader has fueled the forces of right 'Wolves have murdered thousands of left
forces, Abdullah (}calan, leader of the the courtroom. As we did during the wing reaction in the Turkish police ists, working-class militants and Kurdish
Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), was sen wave of international protests which fol state, underscoring how anti-Kurdish nationalists-into the coalition govern
tenced to death by a kangaroo court lowed Ocalan's arrest in February, contin chauvinism is wielded as a weapon not ment of "Democratic Left" prime minis
in Turkey on June 29. The sentence was gents of the International Communist only against the long-suffering Kurdish ter Bulent Ecevit following elections
a foregone conclusion. Held in strict iso League joined in protests against the ver masses but against the whole of the work in April. Ocalan 's' sentence met with an
lation on a tiny island since his arrest, dict which have been held in various ing class in Turkey. Ocalan's arrest outpouring of Turkish chauvinism and
Ocalan was denied any real legal defense. countries. helped catapult the fascistic Nationalist continued on page 9
2~
""2511
7 81030 7
Indonesia: Bloody Assault on PRO Demonstrators
SYDNEY, July 3-0n July 1, police and its own class interests. During the elec
military forces launched a brutal attack tions, the PRD sought to build a "united
on a hundreds-strong protest by the front" against Golkar through pressuring
People's Democratic Party (PRD) outside Megawati Sukarnoputri's bourgeois Indo
the National Election Commission in the nesian Democratic Party for Struggle and
Indonesian capital of Jakarta. The PRD the parties of Islamic reaction-Amien
was demanding that the ruling Golkar Rais' National Mandate Party and Abdur
party headed by B. J. Habibie be disqual rahman Wahid's National ·Awakening
ified from the June 7 elections for vote Party-to fight for "democracy." Far from
Jakarta, July 1:
rigging and intimidation. When protesters Riot cops attack opposing the capitalists and their state,
tried to enter the building, police imme People's the PRD accepted election funding of 150
diately opened fire. Protesters could not Democratic Party million rupiah ($21,000) from the very
escape as hundreds of riot cops and mili demonstration. government whose cops and military
tary personnel fired indiscriminately, were to bloody their militants.
using trucks to block side streets. Many Consistent with its illusions in the
were shot in the back. Of the estimated "democratic" credentials of a wing of the
100 injured, 35 suffered gunshot wounds, Indonesian bourgeoisie, the PRD also
some very serious. A young woman PRD various imperialist agencies, have been unionists and East Timorese independ pushes illusions in the good offices of the
leader, Dhyta Caturani, was pulled behind trumpeted as some kind of democratic ence fighters! imperialists, calling for a "UN-sponsored
the police lines, shot in the back and awakening. That this is a lie and a fraud The imperialists' talk of democracy in referendum" on East Timor. This is a
beaten savagely. Two were taken to mili is underscor.ed by the bloody attack ·on Indonesia is a cover for maintaining a direct appeal for imperialist intervention.
tary hospitals, their fate unknown, while the PRD and the fact that many PRD system of brutal exploitation enforced Indeed, on July 2 in Darwin the Australian
50 were reportedly arrested and remain in and trade-union leaders still rot in. the through vicious military repression. There imperialists paraded their largest display
custody. Some 160 are missing. Today, regime's prisons. As we warned last can be no genuine democracy under of armoured military power since the
the PRD office in Jogjakarta was smashed year when the despised Suharto was capitalism in backward, dependent coun Vietnam War, a demonstration of their
up by a group of armed thugs, leaving one replaced by Habibie: "A 'reformed' /ndo tries stfch as Indonesia, saddled by impe readiness to mount a large-scale military
militant in critical condition. These savage 'nesian capitalist regime will be just as rialist exploitation and grinding poverty. operation to "keep peace" not only in
assaults on leftist political protesters must repressive and bloody as its predecessor As Leon Trotsky, a leader with V.1. Lenin East Timor but in Indonesia, too. Revolu
be condemned by the international work and just as determined to force the of the 1917 workers revolution in Rus tionary Marxists say: UN, all imperial
ing class. country's toiling masses to pay for the sia, explained in Marxism in Our Time ists: Hands off! Independence now for
The June 7 elections, overseen by capitalist crisis" (WV No. 691,22 May (1939): "In its expanded manifestation East Timor!
some 500 "international monitors" from 1998). Free all PRD militants, trade- bourgeois democracy became, and con In response to the bloody repression
tinues to remain, a form of government of PRD militants, a class-struggle labor
accessible only to the most aristocratic leadershi{> in imperialist countries such as
and the most exploitive nations. Ancient the U.S., Australia, Japan and Germany
Vanguard Party, Key to
democracy was based on slavery, imperi would organize trade-union boycotts of
Workers Revolution alist democracy....,.-()n the spoliation of arms shipments to the blood-drenched
Reporting on the Fourth Congress of the colonies." Indonesian military and demand freedom
Communist International in 1922, Bolshevik The toilers of Indonesia have already for the many leftist and trade-union activ
leader Leon Trotsky stressed the key role experienced the horrendous consequences ists now languishing in jail. But that
of the proletarian vanguard party demon of looking toward self-proclaimed "dem requires a struggle against the union
strated by the October Revolution of 1917. ocratic" and "progressive" bourgeois misleaders and the likes of the Austra
Despite numerous revolutionary opportu forces. Suharto came to power in 1965 lian Labor Party who embrace the aims
nities-particularly in Germany in 1918-19 through an anti-Communist massacre of of their imperialist masters. The pro
and 1923-the young Communist parties of over 500,000 carried out by the military imperialist Australian union bureaucrats
TROTSKY the West proved themselves too weak and' LENIN and reactionary Islamic gangs with the are demanding a military force of 5,000
inexperienced to lead the proletariat to state direct involvement of the American, Aus Australian troops to "protect" the East
power. With the failure of the October Revolution to extend to Europe, the subsequent tralian and other imperialists. This was Tirriorese. The American AFL-CIO tops
bureaucratic degeneration of the Soviet workers state and the Communist International the bitter fruit of the Maoist Indonesian bleat about "multinational" low-wage
ushered in decades of Stalinist betrayals, culminating in capitalist counterrevolution Communist Party's Menshevik/Stalinist sweatshops in Indonesia, but they do so
and a deep retrogression in proletarian consciousness internationally. This under strategy of "two-stage revolution," which only in order to push protectionist chau
scores all the more the need to forge Leninist vanguard parties to win the working repudiated the struggle for workers rule vinism and otherwise further the interests
class to the fight for new October Revolutions around the world. while chaining the proletariat to the of U.S. imperialism. The U.S. labor
national bourgeoisie-represented in this bureaucracy is notorious for supporting
The working class must be ready for the overturn and capable of accomplishing it.
case by the nationalist Sukarno-in the anti-labor regimes from Southeast Asia
The working class not only must be sufficiently powerful for it, but must be conscious
name of a "democratic revolution." to Latin America in the name of anti
of its power and must be able to apply this power. Today we can and must resolve into
communism.
Today it is urgently necessary for the
its elements and render more precise this subjective factor. During the postwar years,
Emancipation from the yoke of imperi
Indonesian working class to emerge as
we have observed in the political life of Euro¢ that the working class is ready for the
alism and the achievement of national
an independent revolutionary factor. This
overturn, ready in the sense of striving subjectively toward it, ready in terms of its will,
and social justice for all the peoples in
requires the forging of an internationalist
moods, self-sacrifices, but still lacking the necessary organizational leadership. Conse what is today Indonesia requires the pro
vanguard party committed to leading the
quently the mood of the class and its organizational consciousness need not always coin letarian seizure of power. But to consoli
proletariat to the seizure of state power.
cide. Our revolution, thanks to an exceptional combination of historical factors, afforded
date proletarian rule in the face of hostile
The proletariat must take its place at the
our backward country the opportunity to effect the transfer of power into the hands of
imperialism and lay the foundation for
head of the unemployed poor, the rural
the working class, in a direct alliance with the peasant masses. The role of the party is
socialist economic development in back
masses, women, the brutally oppressed
all too clear to us' and, fortunately, it is (oday already clear to the West European Com
ward Indonesia means a struggle for
ethnic and national minorities in a strug
munist parties. Not to take the role of the P¥lY into account is to fall into pseudo socialist revolution internationally, in
gle for socialist revolution against all
Marxist objectivism which presupposes some sort of purely objective and automatic
imperialist U.S., Japan and Australia,
wings of the capitalist class. This is the
preparation of the revolution, and thereby postpones the revolution to an indefinite and throughout the Asian region. That is
only way to satisfy the aspirations of
future. Such automatism is alien to us. It is a Menshevik, a Social-Democratic world
the perspective of the International Com
the masses and break the stranglehold of
outlook. We know, we have learned in practice and we are teaching others to compre
munist League. For workers revolution
iniperialistexploitation and domination.
hend the enormous role of the subjective, the conscious factor that the revolutionary party
in Indonesia!.
of the working class represents. In spite of mass arrests and cop vio
lence, recent months have seen a wave of
-Leon Trotsky, "Report on the Fourth World Congress" (December 1922)
worker protests as the capitalist eco
nomic crisis continues to drive tens of
millions into destitution. On June 17,
CHICAGO
500 workers from the Mayora Indah bis
!!~!!!!'!J!ll..'!~!l~!!.! .~ cuit factory were arrested for protesting Thursdays, 7 p.m.
the firing of 1,000 workers. On the out July 15: Imperialism and War
July 22: The Russian Revolution
skirts of Jakarta, 600 garment workers on
July 29: Stalinism-Gravedigger 01
EDITOR: Len Meyers June 21 occupied the Arista Latinindo
Revolutions
EDITOR, YOUNG SPARTACUS PAGES: Jacob Zorn factory demanding that nine co-workers
August 5: Black Oppression and
PRODUCTION MANAGER: Susan Fuller fired for union activity be rehired. In
Revolutionary Integration ism
CIRCULATION MANAGER; Mara Cadiz East Java, 2,000 cigarette workers pro 328 S. Jefferson St., Suite 904
EDITORIAL BOARD: Ray Bishop (managing editor). Bruce Andre, Jon Brule, George Foster, tested to demand wage increases. Omi
Liz Gordon, Barry James, Walter Jennings, Jane Kerrigan, James Robertson, Joseph Seymour, Information and readings: [phone]
Alison Spencer nously, just days before the attack on the or [email protected]
The Spartacist League is the U.S. Section of the International Communist League (Fourth PRD, armed forces Commander in Chief
Internationalist) . General Wiranto warned there will be NEW YORK
Workers Vanguard (ISSN 0276,0746) published biweekly, except skipping three alternate issues in June, July and "no gatherings of the masses!"
August (beginning with omitting the second issue in June) and with a 3-week interval in December, by the Spartacist Alternate Saturdays, 3 p.m.
Publishing Co., 299 Broadway, Suite 318, New York, NY 10007. Telephone: [phone] (Editorial), [phone] With its militant reputation, the PRD 'July 10: The Principles of Marxism
(Business). Address all correspondence to: Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116. E-mail address:[email protected].
Domestic subscriptions: $10.00/22 issues. Periodicals postage paid at New York; NY. POSTMASTER: Send address has grown in this volatile situation. Yet and the State
changes to Workers Vanguard, Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116. despite the great courage of its activists July 24: Revolution vs. Reform: The
Opinions expressed in signed articles or letters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint. in the face of heavy state repression, Russian Revolution-How the
The closing date for news in this issue is July 6. Working Class Took Power
the PRD's program of petty-bourgeois
299 Broadway, Room 31'6
nationalism is an obstacle to the needed
No. 716 9 July 1999 Information and readings: [phone]
struggle to mobilize the proletariat in
2 WORKERS VANGI,JARD
Letter
"Workers Rearguard"? Labor Opportunist, Squirms
We reprint the following letter as we longshore workers showed solidarity WVReplies: April 24 was a work stoppage. But, as
received it via the Internet. with locked out stevedores in Australia Jack Heyman totally dodges the cen we wrote:
June 14, 1999 when, in the face of maritime employers tral political point we made in replying "The tremendous potential impact of the
Dear Editor: railing against "illegal dock actions," to his earlier letter in "Labor Opportun longshore work stoppage was indeed
minimized in every way. It was con
Your reply (28 May 1999) to my letter longshore workers honored a picket line ism, the Democratic Party and the
sciously organized to avoid violating 'the
re: ILWU's April 24 West Coast shut of labor activists for two weeks against Defense of Mumia Abu-Jamal" (WV No. contract, under which the ILWU bureau
down for Mumia (as the ILWU newspa the ship Columbus Canada, refusing to 714,28 May): that he worked to provide crats have for many years agreed to a no
per, The Dispatcher called it) is riveted work its scab Aussie cargo. a labor fa~ade for pro-Democratic Party strike clause for the life of the contract.. ..
with distortions and inaccuracies. If in Another "unofficial and illegal" soli class-collaborationist politics, centered "More importantly, there was no real
tentional, this retlects a deeply-imbedded darity action which you disparage,· was on appealing to the capitalist state for a attempt either before or at the union
meetings that day to politically mobilize
political cynicism. If unintentional, it the 1997 picket of the Neptune Jade in "new trial" for Mumia Abu-Jamal. The
the membership in Jamal's behalf."
indicates just how alienated you are from Oakland in support of the Liverpool motion introduced by Heyman in the
As they emerged from the April 24
longshore workers. I'll address only a few dockers, considered by them to be one of ILWU called for the union to support the
Local 10 stop-work meeting, several of
of the more egregious distortions. the highlights of their militant 28 months' April 24 "Millions for Mumia" mobiliza
the lower seniority "B-men"-who have
tion for a new trial, while tacking on the
no voice or vote in union meetings and
slogan "Free Mumia" as a fig leaf aimed
met separately from the "A-men"-told
at deceiving the workers about the real
Labor Organizatigns CalliU for a New Tri.l purpose of this rally. WV salesmen that nothing had been said
at the meeting about Jamal's case. We
for MlIgjia Abu-jamal Heyman can't deny that both the ILWU
don't know about Heyman having to
on tb.:ocusion or the MilliOlt$ for MUlllia leadership and he personally endorsed the
"restrain members angry about WV's
marches, April 14, 1999 call for a new trial, sowing illusions in
distorted coverage," but with 150 or so
I
capitalist "justice." He can't deny that
lad"''''''al labor ~pAArsS!!!!Dtl (.,at1;.J lIf.) longshoremen there at the peak of the
when he spoke :gom the platform on April
April 24 stop-work meeting we sold 47
24 he uttered not one word of criticism of
copies of our issue with the article
this call-the central demand of the
"Mobilize the Power of Labor! Free
rally-nor of the Democratic Party poli
Mumia Now!" (WV No. 711, 16 April),
ticians with whom he shared the plat
where we in fact motivated the need for
form. He can't deny that at a "Millions
class-struggle defense of Jamal.
for Mumia" press conference the week
That Heyman doesn't even refer to the
before he hailed San Francisco Labor
division of the union between "A-men"
Council head Walter Johnson-a pillar of
and "B-men" shows just how distant he is
the Democratic Party in the city and a
from a class-struggle perspective. Way
staunch supporter of Democratic mayor
back before he made his peace with cap
Willie Brown's re-election bid-as "our
italism, when he was still animated by the
secret weapon." He can't deny any of
Trotskyist program, Heyman opposed the
these facts documented in our reply. So,
B-list category, which ghettoizes a large
Labor faker Jack Heyman spoke from platform of April 24 "Millions for
instead, he continues his attempt at
Mumia" rally, endorsed call for "new trial" aimed at appealing to Democratic section of the ILWU membership, and
Party. deception of the WV readership and the fought for full union rights for all long
ILWU Local 10 membership by throwing
shoremen. But, as we wrote in our ex
The Spartacist League, to its credit, struggle. Although PMA's arbitrator on out a bunch of straw-man arguments and change, "now his loyalties lie elsewhere."
blowing a lot of smoke.
was an early defender of Mumia Abu the second day ordered longshore work That seems to be clear to the Local 10
Jamal having covered.his case for some ers to cross the picket line of labor activ Like the labor bureaucrat he is, Hey ranks as well. Here's what one of our
12 years in the pages of Workers Van ists, they refused, initiating an unprece man resorts to slimy insinuations about a comrades reported after selling the WV
guard. You claim to "have fought for a dented solidarity action that followed the PMA "source" to detlect our revolution with our exchange with Heyman to
class-struggle defense strategy centered Neptune Jade to ports in three countries. ary criticism. The March issue of the Dis Local 10 members in May:
on mobilizing the social power of the The ILWU shutdown the Coast with patcher itself reported that the stop-work "Jack Heyman doesn't have many
integrated labor movement, requiring its stop-work meetings in solidarity with the meetings were called "to discuss the stat friends in Local 10. We saw less than
political independence from the capital Liverpool dockers' struggle two times us of the upcoming negotiations, and to 100 longshoremen, and engaged only
ist parties." What class-struggle actions in 1997. These actions were roundly participate in the national actions for with those interested in talking to WV
salesmen, maybe 40, overwhelmingly
have SL supporters in transit unions in applauded by nearly all in the workers Abu-Jamal," noting that "in effect no black. When we showed them the
Chicago and New York called for? In the movement internationally, including the ships will be worked from 8:00 a.m. to exchange with Jack Heyman, with one
nearly four pages of the WV reply you . SL. In an article -cheering the ILWU 6:00 .p.m." (all emphases added). So exception everybody said 'I don't like
never respond to this critical point of my eight-hour work stoppage, WV #660 24 because the stop-work union ~eeting was Jack Heyman: This was not a case of
letter. Why? Because SL trade union January 1997, "West Coast Ports Shut shifted to Saturday, the day shift was telling us what we wanted to hear; we
got into his politics after. Mostly people
supporters don't implement the political Down in Solidarity With Liverpool killed. But Heyman's attempt to create think he's a phoney and not to be trusted.
position published in WV? That's for Dockers" you stated "ILWU members on the illusion that it was a politichlstrike to One man said 'I've known Jack Heyman
your readership. Yet, when the ILWU the day shift attended 'stop-work' meet demand Mumia's freedom is just one for many years and I wouldn't let that
shuts down all West Coast ports in ings rather than loading and unloading more deception. Not only was the ILWU monkey near my wallet' ."
defense of Mumia, WV denies that it some 50 ships at'key ports ...." action explicitly tied to the demonstration Unable to answer our political criti
was a work stoppage! SL hypocrisy and Yet, when on April 24, we took the calling for a "new trial"-a slogan cisms-because he has no defense
hot air knows no limits! . same action for Mumia, a political pris intended to,appeal to liberal Democrats Heyman tries to shift the ground with
What is the source of the SL slanders oner facing state execution, WV refuses but there was little attempt to politically his "recovered memory" of Spartacist
against the ILWU action? WV admits it to·.call it a work stoppage. Do you think mobilize the membership behind Jamal's League history during the Vietnam anti
came from "a spokesman for the bosses' longshore workers have short memories? cause at all. war movement. We'll refresh Heyman's
Pacific Maritime Association (PMA)." It is no wonder that longshore union Heyman's claim to the contrary, WV memory. In 1965, we walked out of the
PMA boss Joseph Miniace in a letter activists refer to your newspaper as never denied that the ILWU action on - continued on page 13
to the editor of the SF Examiner on "Workers Rearguard"!
April 23, the day before the shutdown Before our April 24 union meeting,
falsely claimed the ILWU just shifted Local 10 stewards, including myself, had
its contractually-provided union meeting to restrain members-angry about WV's
date, agreed to by PMA companies. Try distorted coverage of our union's action
ing to minimize the impact, Miniace pre -from chasing off your salespeople.
posterously predicted "minimal" disrup Furthermore, you continue to black
tions knowing all ports would be shut out any coverage of the teachers' work
down for 10 hours! He then sneeringly stoppage in the state of Rio de Janeiro,
referred to ILWU's action in defense of Brazil, surely an important develop
"Mumia Abu-Jamal, ..... convicted of kill ment in the defense of Mumia interna
ing a police officer (and is on death row tionally. Why? Because this laudatory
in Pennsylvania)." That a maritime boss action was initiated by the Liga Quarta
would seek to distort and minimize an Internacion.alista do Brasil (LQB), ypur
important labor action for Mumia is political opponents.
understandable, but why would an osten ~he SL did not march to free Mumia in
sibly Marxist organization echo him the April 24 mobilization. You could have
uncritically? The fact is that PMA in Los carried your own banners criticizing the
Angeles, the largest West Coast port with Democratic Party and the demand for a
SPARTACJST
half the cargo, objected vehemently to new trial. Others did. Abstaining from
PAM Releue:
longshoremen and clerks stopping work class' struggle is surely a sign of political
November-December 1965
on April 24 because they'd already had degeneration. I remember a Spartacist SPARTACIST BREAL" WITH
NEW YORK PARADE COMMITl'BB i
their monthly stop-work meetings on League that used to fight against being
At the third meetinr of the Committee for Fifth
April 1. Despite PMA objections, the excluded from anti-Vietnam war demon Avenue Vietnam Peace Parade, held 01\ September 29, The heritage Heyman distorts:
longshore union prevailed and all ports strations, even those with capitalist party 1966, Albert Neioon speaking for S.,artaciat announced SL fought for revolutionary strategy
Sparlaci.t'.· withdrawal from the Committee on the
on the West Coast were shut down to politicians. bull th.t it W88 politicnlly dominated by rlrht-willl in Vietnam antiwar movement,
paciftllta and lilleraia and had _tabU.heeI • policy of opposed popular-frontist coantions
demand: 1) Stop the Execution and 2) For labor action to free Mumia! exclu.ion of all but the """,t mode ...t . viewpoints In
Free Mumia! Last year, Los Angeles Jack Heyman the IlChedulecJ aetivitlea of October 16. with bourgeois liberals.
9 JULY 1999 3
-
USWA Tops Choke Newport News Strike
JULY 6-While news of the three Local 8888 in Peril not in the union you don't work!"
month-old strike by United Steelworkers Many Newport News strikers recog
(USWA) Local 8888 against Newport nize that "the government is in cahoots
News Shipbuilding in the Virginia Tide with the company," as Navy personnel go
water area has been deep-sixed by the through the gates to work with scabs
capitalist media and played down by in peril: "Shortly after the 4th of July our made in past contracts. Also posed here is while local and state police have been
the USWA International and AFL-CIO membership is just going to drop. The a battle against Virginia's "right-to-work" deployed against the picket lines. ~ut it is
bureaucracy, this is the biggest labor only ones who'll be out here are the ones laws and against racist discrimination necessary for strikers to understand that
battle in the U.S. today. Even as the U.S. who have been on strike before. We by the Newport News bosses. This strike the patriotic sloganeering pushed by the
was waging an imperialist war against struck to get the union then." should be a cause throughout the Tidewa union tops-like "Our ships defend the
Serbia, Newport News workers walked Local 8888 was forged as an inte ter area and for the entire U.S. working country"-is no less deadly to labor's
out against a shipyard which produces grated industrial union through a bitter class. But the union misleaders-from cause. Waving the flag lines workers up
and repairs nuclear aircraft carriers and three-month strike in 1979 that defied the USWA International bureaucrats in behind the bosses' government and leaves
submarines. The outcome of this strike by the state's anti-union laws and an army Pittsburgh down to the local officers the union vulnerable to strikebreaking in
an 8,00D-strong integrated union local is of scabherding cops. Now the USWA have contained this labor action, limiting the name of "national defense." The U.S.
crucial to the future of organized labor, bureaucracy is endangering that impor demands to economic issues and tailor military defends capitalist profits and
especially in the racist "open shop" tant victory and subsequent gains made ing strike strategy strictly in accordance power, enforcing brutal exploitation of
South. working people in the "Third World" and
Management is trying to sow divisions protecting the investments and interests
within the union by proposing separate of the American bourgeoisie against its
pay scales for different job categories, German, Japanese and other rivals.
a move aimed at undermining the strong Glorifying the traitorous policies of
industrial union structure ih the yard. But the pro-capitalist union officials are fake
while most strikers are holding firm, the socialists like the Communist Party,
USWA bureaucrats refuse to organize the whose People's Weekly World (26 June
mass picket lines needed to shut the yard promoted the appeal to stockholders
down tight ~nd win the strike. Instead while exhorting workers to "caIl your
they appeal to the enemies of labor-the congressional representative and sena
capitalist politicians and, most recently, tors." The Socialist Workers Party cheers
even the shipyard owners. On June 25, a whatever the union bureaucrats are doing
thousand workers were bused to a stock and has excused scabbing by "non-union
holders meeting in Richmond as part of contract workers, many of whom face
a "corporate campaign" strategy. Such immediate termination if they do not go
ridiculous appeals to the capitalists who into work" (Militant, 26 April).
care only about profits and diyidends are In contrast, in Workers Vanguard the
a diversion from class struggle. Spartacist League has advanced a class
Strikers are angry that the bureauc struggle strategy and warned against the
racy's mishandling of the strike has led sellout policies ·of the labor bureaucrats,
to hundreds of workers scabbing. A 23- who coIlaborate with the class enemy
year crane operator reported: "I made it because they uphold the capitalist profit
known to people higher up in the union system. We fight for the complete inde
that there are three or four thousand pendence of the unions from the capital
people out there at New Market [a mall Bitter strike in 1979 against Newport News Shipbuilding forged Local 8888 ist state and the capitalist political par
where workers collect strike assistance] as integrated industrial union. ties, the Democrats.and Republicans. We
and there aren't any more than four or fight to forge a workers party which will
six people [picketing] at each gate." With in recruiting Newport News workers with laws which were enacted to defeat link the struggle to defend union rights
reports afoot that federal mediators are including many whites-to the union. strikes and prevent unions. As one rigger and workers' livelihoods to the fight for
leaning on the union leadership to start This strike is not only for higher with 24 years in the yard told WV, socialist revolution to smash the grinding,
up negotiations with the company again, wages, a livable pension and adequate "Because of these 'right-to-work' laws, murderous capitalist system, the basis of
this worker is concerned that the strike is benefits to make up for union concessions what we need is a union where if you're racial and women's oppression .•
North Carolina Textile Mill Organized panic workers turned out to be no less
pro-union.
The struggle for union recognition at
Big Win for Unions in "Open Shop" South Kannapolis underlines the nt!ed for all of
labor to combat anti-immigrant racism
and to demand fuIl citizenship rights for
anyone who has come to this coun
elections was the role played by the try. Instead, the chauvinist AFL-CIO
No Illusions in the NLRB!
growing number of Hispanic immigrant bureaucracy has appealed to the racist
workers. In the 1970s, coming off the tur capitalist government to attack immi
bulent struggles of the civil rights move grant workers, which helps fuel attacks
In an area where the 'unions have failed . to a long, drawn-out organizing effort ment, the company started hiring blacks on blacks and all minorities. The seizure
to make headway for decades despite and will now give the company time to in what had formerly been a lily-white of thousands of foreign-born workers in
many bloody struggles, workers at Field chip away at the workers' hard-won gain. plant. When the black workers demon the South by the Immigration and Natu
crest Cannon in Kannapolis, North Caro Workers at Fieldcrest Cannon must be strated a militant, pro-union stance, the ralization Service in the 1995 "Operation
lina voted in late June for the 5,200 work vigilant that the UNITE tops do not company started hiring immigrants-who South PAW" ("Protect American Work
ers at their six-plant textile complex-the snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. management believed would be more ers") came after the union tops in Atlanta
largest in the country-to be organized by What distinguished this latest vote docile because of their vulnerable legal caIled for raids against undocumented
the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and from four previous union representation status. This too backfired, as the His- workers there.
Textile Employees (UNITE). This is a Speaking of a drive by the United Auto
significant victory for labor throughout Workers to organize a Mercedes plant
the country. The fight to unionize Cannon in Alabama. a Detroit labor academic
began 93 years ago. Kannapolis" located , recently commented: "In a right-to-work
near Charlotte, exemplifies the racist state, you have to have a lot of courage to
"open shop" South. Built by Cannon Mills be a union supporter." This was dramati
as a company town, Kannapolis still has , cally driven home by a KKK-style cross
tiny wooden houses 'originally construct burning outside an Alabama processing
ed for its workers which stand adjacent to plant on the eve of a union recognition
the huge plant rising out of former cotton vote in June 1995.
fields. And Fieldcrest still runs it like a With their legalistic, pro-Democratic
plantation, with workers getting $100 a Spartacist Party policies, the AFL-CIO misleaders
month pension after 30 years' service. League banner are incapable of undertaking the kind of
But this victory remains fragile and at March 1977 militant, mass organizing drive needed to
reversible. Workers face a major battle to protest outside unionize workers throughout the South,
win a contract from th.e company, which J.P. Stevens where the racist cops and KKK lynch
headquarters
has already challenged the union recog ers have been instrumental in keeping
in NYC. For
nition vote with the National Labor Rela unions' out. It is necessary to unleash the
militant, mass
tions Board (NLRB). This is the same social power of the working class, begin
organizing drive
government agency that the UNITE lead throughout ning with existing beachheads of inte
ership has relied .on in organizing the the South! grated union power in the South-from
Kannapolis complex. Looking to the ~ mainly black longshoremen in tbe South
NLRB-whose very purpose is to bind eastern and Gulf ports to shipyard work
the unions to the capitalist state-has led ers and Teamsters truckers .•
4 WORKERS VANGUARD
Steel Workers: Reject Protectionist
Pact with Steel Bosses!
For the past year, the United Steel cent of all steel workers. Today fewer of anti-union laws. anti-union terror-are deadly dangerous.
workers (USWA) leadership has run than half of the country's 170,000 steel A class-struggle fight to defend jobs A serious campaign to organize plants in
point for the steel corporations in a chau workers are unionized. Since 1987, the and organize the unorganized is counter the South means mobilizing union power
vinist "Stand Up for Steel" campaign USWA has lost 100,000 jobs. In the last posed to the flag-waving class collabora not only to win economic demands but
against foreign competition. Negotia five years, over 15 million tons of steel~ tion and legalism of the union bureauc to actively defend black rights and stop
tions on the union contract expiring July making capacity has come on line, all of racy. An April 27 statement of the the KKK nightriders who are murderous
31, which covers 60,000 workers at five it in non-union mini-mills. Even in union USWA's Basic Steel Industry Conference enemies of integrated labor struggle.
major steel producers, were delayed as ized mills, the companies are literally complains, "All of the large integrated The AFL-CIO bureaucracy's chauvin
the companies and the USWA tops extracting profits out of steel workers' steel companies have to one degree or ist protectionism not only poisons the
waited to see if the Clinton White House blood: 52 USWA members have been another used the extended period of labor needed international solidarity between
and the Congress would act to curtail killed on the job since January 1996. peace associated with the most recent workers in the U.S. and their class broth
steel imports. But after imposing a series That's more than one industrial murder contracts to build or buy into non-union ers and sisters abroad but also fuels
of punitive tariffs earlier this year, on .per month! operations." But it is the union misleaders racism against black and immigrant
June 21 Clinton got the Senate to kill a But the USWA still has enormous themselves who enforced that extended workers here. The USWA tops refuse to
measure for protectionist quotas passed potential power. Steel is at the core of period of "labor peace." Refusing to take wield the union's power to fight rampant
by the House. discrimination against young and minor
Now, after mobilizing the union's ity workers. Despite company pledges to
resources behind a class-collaborationist end discrimination in skilled jobs follow
campaign to fatten the profits of Ameri ing a court-ordered "consent decree" in
can steel bosses, the USWA misleaders the 1970s, those who work the coke
are trying to sell steel workers another ovens and other dangerous and back
bill of goods: a rotten contract deal with breaking unskilled jobs at USX in Gary
USX (formerly United States Steel) and remain heavily black and Hispanic.
Bethlehem which was announced more These workers-who are cut off from
than a month before the old six-year con most of the extra "incentive" pay that
tract expires and is aimed at setting the other workers get for tonnage pro
pattern for workers at the other thcee big duced--continue to be all but frozen out
steel companies. The proposed offer, of skilled trades training, while the com
which is to be voted on by mail ballot pany hires skilled workers off the street
later this month, includes a measly $2 an as helpers at less than top pay. Against
hour raise over five years and weakens such racist discrimination, the USWA
the existing no-layoff clause. must demand union-run recruitment and
Reflecting pressure from union mem training programs especially reaching
bers, the USWA district director for the out to minority workers.
Chicago area had vowed before the set The "Stand Up for Steel" campaign is
tlement to recommend a strike to keep a quintessential expression of the lie
the no-layoff clause. USWA members at USWA tops run point for steel bosses in chauvinist "Stand Up preached by the entire AFL-CIO bureauc
another steel giant, LTV, are bristling campaign, as in recent West Virginia rally. racy that there is a "partnership" between
over its 50 percent stake in the non-union labor and capital. This class collaboration
Trico mill in Decatur, Alabama, and the country's industrial economy-from on the major steel corporations, the finds political expression in the labor
. Ispat Inland's new owner is notorious as military hardware to construction and USWA tops have all the more readily bureaucracy's support to the capitalist
a corporate "cost cutter." A USX worker cars. And the capitalists are doubly fear abandoned a series of local strikes, turn Democratic Party. The fundamental start
in Gary, Indiana told WV that most work ful of a steel strike right now, as the Sep ing them into desperate, drawn-out and ing point for mobilizing the integrated
ers in his unit. intend to vote against the tember 1 expiration of the United Auto isolated battles-from the ten-month labor movement in defense of its own
new offer. Workers contract poses the possibility of Wheeling-Pitt walkout in 1996-97 to the class interests and those of blacks, immi
Steel workers should rip up the pro a shutdown in that strategic industry. strike against Oregon Steel in Pueblo, grants and other oppressed minorities
posed sellout! But to fight the attacks of Straining to avoid a strike, the USWA Colorado, which has drag~ed on since is the understanding that this society
the steel barons through a solid nation leadership offered to engage in early 1997. is divided between' two classes whose
wide strike, the USWA has to be inde negotiations with any company that The very notion of company "neutral interests are irreconcilably counterposed:
pendent from the corporations, not accepted two conditions: a common expi ity" is belied by the history\of; hard, workers who are forced to sell their
working in collusion with them. As one ration date for all contracts and a new sometimes bloody class battles it took to labor power in order to survive and the
economic analyst remarked of the contractual clause holding the major steel build the unions. The 1937 Little Steel property-owning capitalist class to whom
company-union protectionist campaign, outfits to "neutrality" in organizing drives strike against Bethlehem and other com their labor power is sold.
"The last thing you wanted was a strike at at non-union plants partly owned by panies, which laid the basis for the There must be a fight inside the unions
a time you are trying to get quotas-on them. The way to get a common expi USWA, is a case in point: 18 strikers to oust the pro-capitalist misleaders and
imports" (Wall Street Journal, 28 June). ration date is by mobilizing all USWA were killed, scores wounded and hun replace them with a new, class-struggle
The labor bureaucr!lcy's protection steel workers to walk out together on the dreds jailed as company thUgs, police leadership, one committed to the class
ist appeals promote the lie that workers picket lines. That's also what's needed to and the National Guard were mobilized independence of the proletariat from the
in the U.S. share common interests organize non-union shops: such bold to crush the Steel Workers Organizing capitalists, their government and their
with their "own" exploiters against the action asserting the power of the union Committee. Many if not most of the new political parties. To put an end to unem
American capitalists' foreign rivals-and would demonstrate to the tens of thou steel jobs are in the "open shop" South, ployment and racism requires seizing
against workers in other countries. Yet sands of unorganized steel workers what where pervasive racist terror and "right industry from the capitalist class and
while railing about jobs going overseas, the union can do to fight for their inter to-work" laws have kept wages down the creation of a planned, socialist econ
the USWA officialdom has allowed a pro ests. But that would mean stopping scabs and unions out. Here in particular, illu omy. Those who labor must rule! For
liferation of non-union mills in the U.S. through mass, militant pickets and defy sions in the "neutrality" of the capitalist a workers party to fight for a workers
The USWA once represented over 90 per- ing the cops and the government's battery state-whose cops and courts enforce government! •
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9 JULY1999 5
Capitalist Russia in the
"New World Order"
Last month's stand-off at the Pristina the dissolution of the Soviet Union in peasants and soldiers, the Bolshevik Party pseudo-revolutionary tendency on the
airport in Kosovo between 200 Russian December 1991, the American ruling of V. I. Lenin and L.D. Trotsky took face of the planet capitulated to the impe
paratroopers and a British contingent of class triumphantly proclaimed victory the Marxist doctrine of proletarian revo rialist anti-Soviet war drive of the 1980s.
the NATO occupation forces provided a in the Cold War and the "death of commu lution out of the realm of theory and gave Trotsky warned in his 1936 book, The
snapshot of current relations between nism." Washington politicians of both the it reality, creating the dictatorship of the Revolution Betrayed, that the Stalinist
Boris Yeltsin's 'capitalist Russia and the Republican and Democratic parties even proletariat-a society where those who bureaucracy would ultimately devour
Western imperialist powers, chiefly the promised a "peace dividend": a big re labored ruled. From the outset, the capi the workers state if it was not ousted
U.S. One British soldier said, "They had duction in military spending to free up talists around the world, aided by their through a proletarian political revolu
money for other govemment programs and reformist lieutenants within the labor tion. From East Germany to the USSR,
to allow for tax cuts. In a joint statement movement, sought to strangle the Soviet the ICL sought to mobilize the proletar
PART ONE
with U.S. president George Bush in Febru workers state, beginning with the bloody iat against capitalist restoration, stress
ary 1992, Yeltsin declared: "Russia and the 1918-21 Civil War pitting the Red Army ing the need for political revolution to
been telling us for weeks about the Serbs United States do not regard each other as against imperialist intervention forces oust the treacherous nationalist Stalinist
and Albanians, but nobody explained we potential adversaries. From now on, the and Russian counterrevolutionaries. bureaucracies. Having systematically de
had to fight Russia." relationship will be characterized by friend The devastation of the most conscious stroyed the revolutionary-internationalist
In the end, the confrontation was de ship and partnership founded on mutual layer of the proletariat in the Civil War, consciousness of the Soviet proletariat, the
fused through a deal to incorporate Stalinist bureaucracies did finally devour
Russian troops into the U.S.INATO-Ied the workers states. '
Kosovo occupation force. To drive home In 1991-92, the American capitalist
who's in charge, the U.S. would only class and Russia's would-be capitalists,
allow further Russian troops into Kosovo largely drawn from the decomposing
after an overall NATO command struc Kremlin bureaucracy and the intelligent
ture was fully worked out. The Kosovo sia, shared a common interest: the
arrangement is similar to the one which destruction of the Soviet Union and its
has been in place in Bosnia since 1995. collectivized economy. However, their
Indeed, the image of Russian troops subsequent goals and expectations were
jointly policing the region alongside and fundamentally different. Russia's new
effectively under the corrnnand of NATO rulers expected to be showered with
forces-like that of Yeltsin envoy Viktor money by their new "partners" in Wall
Chernomyrdin jetting between Belgrade Street and Frankfurt. They also expected
and Western capitals in an attempt to Washington's support in establishing
push through NATO's "peace" diktat Russia as a regional imperialist power
provide yet other, very different, snap exercising political-military hegemony in
shots of Russia's current relations with the territory of the former USSR. In 1993,
the imperialist powers. Yeltsin demanded: "The time has come
For years, Yeltsin's Russia has been for the relevant international organisa
playing a cynical double game in the Bal tions, including the UN, to grant Russia
kans. On the one hand, the Russians have special powers as a guarantor of peace
Crowley/NY Times
postured as the "great power" protectors and stability in the former Soviet Union"
of their "little Serb brothers," occasion (quoted in Bruce Clark, An Empire's New
ally denouncing American bellicosity Clothes: The End of Russia's Liberal
and "superpower" arrogance. At the same Dream [1996]). While the Clinton admin
time, the Yeltsin regime has acted as istnltion supported Yeltsin's war of sup
a "soft cop" vis-a~vis the Serbs on behalf pression against Chechen separatists in
of the Americans and Germans. As in Bos the Caucasus, by and large American
Russian troops
nia four years ago, Moscow was instru imperialism not only rejected Russian
confront NATO forces
mental in brokering a deal between the imperialist ambitions in the region but
outside Pristina in
NATO powers and Serbian strongman Slo June, after Yeltsin has actively opposed them.
bodan Milosevic over Kosovo. Only a few regime helped impose With the demise of the USSR, the
days before publishing alarmed reports on NATO diktaton Serbia. American ruling class saw itself as
the Russian military move in Pristina, the Russian envoy'Viktor supreme master of a "one superpower
New York Times (9 June) had lauded Chernomyrdin (far left) world." Washington disdainfully treated
Moscow's diplomatic efforts, headlining with German defense Yeltsin's Russia as if it were an impover
"Moscow Envoy's Peace Efforts, Praised minister Rudolf ished Third World country. At one point
Scharping.
in West, Are Panned at Hom~." the U.S.-dominated International Mone
YeltsinlChernomyrdin's efforts on be tary.Fund (IMF) cited as a precedent for
half of the U.S. and NATO were indeed loan conditions to the Russian govern
widely reviled in Russia. Nor is Russian ment the terms it had recently imposed
trust and respect and a common commit the pressure of imperialist encirclement
hostility to the U.S. limited to traditional on a loan to Guatemala!
ment to democracy and economic freedom." on the isolated and economically back
anti-Western nationalists like the Com But American ruling circles know per
Seven years later, the same Yeltsin ward workers state and the failure of
munist Party of the Russian Federation fectly well that Russia is not Guatemala.
thundered: "I told NATO, the Americans, the young Communist parties of the
and its fascistic bloc partners in the They expect and fear the re-establishment
the Germans, don't push us toward mili West to seize on manifold revolutionary
"'red' -brown coalition." In the past, the of a strong Russian state, moreover, one
tary action. Otherwise, there will be a opportunities-particularly in Germany
Russian populace was generally indiffer vengeful over its recent humiliation at
European war for sure, and possibly a in 1918-19 and 1923-set the stage for a
ent to the wars precipitated by the coun the hands of the West. In 1994, leading
world war." At the height of the air war political counterrevolution in 1924, as
terrevolutionary breakup of Yugoslavia Cold War strategist Zbigniew Brzezinski
against Serbia-particularly after Wash a conservative, nationalist bureaucratic
and Moscow's maneuvering in the Bal denounced the policies of the Yeltsin
ington pushed through a call for a naval caste headed by Stalin usurped political
kans. But the terror bombhlg of Serbia regime as "proto-imperial." To make sure
blockade of oil shipments, including from power. The Stalinist bureaucracy's false
produced a sea change in the political Moscow's imperial aspirations remain
Russia-the possibility of a military con dogma of building "socialism in one
climate in Russia, generating an intense "proto," he advocated extending NATO
frontation between Russia and NATO was country" meant in practice an accommo
and widespread fear of and hostility toward into East Europe, as has recently been
being talked about not only by politicians dation to imperialism and a betrayal of
America. The New York Times (12 April) done. The U.S.INATO war against Serbia
and generals in Moscow and Western cap the proletarian, revolutionary, interna
quoted an unemployed truck driver in was in part intended to forestall Russia's
itals but also among the public at large. tionalist program of Bolshevism. That
Moscow: "Now Yugoslavia, next us; that's re-emergence as a major European power
Tensions between the U.S. llnd Russia program was carried forward by the
what I think." Such views were in no way with its own client states in the Balkans.
had been ratcheted up to a point that International Left Opposition, and later the
unusual. A supporter of the International
the cover of the London Economist (17 Fourth International, organized by Trotsky.
Communist League who was in Moscow Post-Soviet Russia and the
April), house organ of Anglo-American Nonetheless, the social foundations
during the first week of the war reported: New "Co,ld War" Propaganda
financiers, bluntly poses the question: "A of the workers state--embodied in the
"There is a great deal of just rage in Rus
New Cold War?" Why is this happening? planned, collectivized economy and the The increasing tensions between the
sia at NATO bombing. If the 17 August
monopoly on foreign trade-remained U.S. and Russia have resulted in a reinter
1998 financial crisis put the final nail in
From Cold War to
the illusions of many Russians in market intact, mandating the need for uncondi pretation and rewriting of the Cold War
capitalism, the Balkan War has con Counterrevolution tional military defense of the Soviet by the ideological spokesmen for Amer
vinced them that the u.s. is a truly evil The origins of the Cold War lay in the workers state, despite its bureaucratic ican imperialism. They used to describe
and rapacious power. The problem is that
October Revolution of 1917. In leading degeneration, against imperialist attc:tck this global conflict as one between
the answer being offered is not Lenin
and Trotsky's communism but pan- the working class of Russia to the seizure and internal counterrevolution. This is . "democracy" and "communist totalitar
Slavic militarism." - of state power and the consolidation of its what the ICL fought for right through ianism," or between "free market" capi
When Yeltsin, having taken over the own class rule through workers councils to the final undoing of the October Rev talism and a Marxist "command econ
Kremlin with U.S. baclcing, announced (soviets), supported by soviets of poor olution in 1991-92. In contrast, every omy." Now, however, the Cold War is
6 WORKERS VANGUARD
increasingly presented in national tenns - of East Europe (and Cuba, China, North
as a conflict between two "great powers": Korea and Vietnam) as "state capitalist"
America as "leader" of the Western world in order to justify their refusal to defend
and a Russia eternally striving to domi those states against imperialism. Writ
nate the Eurasian land mass from eastern ing of the capitalist counterrevolutions
Europe to eastern Siberia. which swept East Europe and the Soviet
Henry Kissinger, for example, asserts Union-and which it "celebrated"-the
that the ideological doctrines professed ISO declares: "The revolutions in Eastern
by the Kremlin's rulers-whether East Europe were a step sideways-from one
ern Orthodox Christianity and Slavo fonn of capitalism to-another" (Socialist
phile nationalism or Marxism-Leninism Worker, 23 April). Any worker in the for
and proletarian internationalism-were mer USSR who was told that he had sim
merely legitimation for Russian impe ply taken a "step sideways" in the last
rial expansionism. In his i 994 opus, ten years would simply spit in the ISOer's
Diplomacy, Kissinger quotes the 19th face, or worse.
century Russian Slavophile writer Mik One-third of the urban labor force in
hail Katkov: Russia today is effectively unemployed;
"The Russian tsar is more than the heir 75 percent of the population lives below
of his ancestors; he is the successor of Gigory Dukor or barely above the subsistence level and
the caesars of Eastern Rome, of the Soviet cartoon after Bolshevik
15 million are actually starving. Malnu
organizers of the church and its councils Revolution shows Lenin sweeping
which established the very creed of the away kings, priests, capitalists. trition has become the nonn among
Christian faith. With the fall of Byzan schoolchildren. Some two million chil-:
Boris Yeltsin hosts Russian Orthodox
tium, Moscow arose and the greatness of Patriarch Alexy II after capitalist dren have been abandoned by families
Russia began."
counterrevolution. who can no longer support them. Life
Immediately following this quote, Kis
V. Deni and M. Cheremnykh expectancy, especially for men, has fallen
singer writeS: "After the Revolution,. the
enment which underlies the Marxist prin Trotsky in The Revolution Betrayed. sharply, while the overall population has
passionate sense of mission was trans
ciples of the Bolshevik-led workers rev Speaking of the corruption of the Stalin actually declined by two million since
ferred to the Communist International."
olution. And, in fact, the present tenden ist regime and the appetite of the bureau 1990.
So according to this self-styled master of
cy of both American bourgeois and crats to ensure their privileged status In the chaotic condition of post-Soviet
global realpolitik, the Communist Inter
Russian nationalist intellectuals is to deny through legal ownership of the means of Russia, the laws of capitalism have re
national of Lenin and Trotsky was but a
that Marxist principles had anything to production, Trotsky noted that "a bour sulted in total economic collapse: gross
secular version of the Eastern Orthodox
do with the Bolshevik Revolution and geois restoration 'would probably have to domestic product has fallen at least 50
church!
instead claim Red October for Great Rus clean out fewer people [in the state appa percent since 1991, capital investment by
A variation on· the same theme was
sian nationalism and imperialism. In ratus] than a. revolutionary party." 90 percent. Statistics alone cannot con
composed by another prominent Ameri
the past few years, American and Brit But Steele's use of the vague, generic vey the scale and intensity of immisera
can Cold War ideologue, Samuel P. Hunt
ish journalists and academics have been tenn "elite" to describe both bureaucrats tion in Russia today. The infrastructures
ington. According to Huntington, despite
churning out books asserting an essen in the fonner Soviet Union and capitalist of production, technology, science, trans
the demise of the Soviet Union, Western
tial continuity of the Russian state entrepreneurs in Russia today serves the portation, heating and sewage have disin
civilization still confronts a world of
tsarist, Communist and post-Soviet same ideological purpose as when right tegrated. Once-eradicated diseases are
potential enemies-the Islamic states of
and its antagonism to the West: Bruce wing demagogues in the U.S. denounce again becoming epidemics.
the Near East, "Confucian" China, East
Clark's An Empire's New Clothes: The trade-union officials as labor "bosses," "State capitalism" is an ignorant, anti
ern Orthodox Russia-based on ullalter
End of Russia's Liberal Dream, Jona thereby identifying them with capitalist Marxist notion intended only as a
able and unbridgeable differences in
than Steele's Eternal Russia: Yeltsin, exploiters. In the case of Russia, it serves flimsy "theoretical" justification for the
national cultures:
Gorbachev, and the Mirage of Democ
"The great divisions among humankind
and the dominating source of conflict racy, Robert Donaldson and Joseph
will be culturaL Nation states will Nogee's The Foreign Policy of Russia:
remain the most powerful actors in world Changing Systems, Enduring Interests.
affairs, but the principal conflicts of
Jonathan Steele, veteran Moscow cor
global politics will occur between
nations and groups of different civiliza respondent for the London Guardian,
tions. The clash of civilizations will presents a somewhat different argument
dominate global politics. The fault lines for an essential continuity between the
between civilizations will be the battle
Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia,
lines of the future."
claiming that the same old Communists
- "The Clash of Civilizations?"
Foreign Affairs, Summer 1993 are still running the show, only now
In Europe, Huntington maintains, that they've become capitalists:
fault line is the "eastern boundary of "By comparison with 1917, the Yeltsin
Western Christianity." 'revolution' was less of a change. Many
Huntington's views-though not, of of his political team, including Yeltsin
himself, as well as many of the new
course, his loyalties-are identical to
entrepreneurs who emerged iJ;! the transi
those of anti-Western Russian Slavophile tion to a market economy, were members
nationalists who see the U.S.INATO of the old elite. There was no great redis
war against Serbia as militant Protestant tribution of wealth and power."
expansionism. "This is a clash of civiliza The above passage contains an impor
tions," exclaimed Alexei Podberezkin, an tant element of truth, but it obscures
influential member of the Russian Duma an even more important truth. To be sure, Moscow street market. Restoration of capitalism has brought terrible.
(parliament). "They offer us an aggres many, perhaps even a majority, of Rus immiseration to the working people.
sive and virtually Protestant model of sia's big-time capitalist operators and top
democracy-no, they impose it on us. government officials were apparatchiks to minimize the monumental historical Cliffites' embrace of social-democratic
What is happening in Yugoslavia and during the regime of Leonid Brezhnev fact that a capitalist counterrevolution anti-Communism. An industrial manager
what is happening in Bosnia and Cro in the 1970s. Viktor Chernomyrdin epit occurred. in the USSR obeyed fundamentally dif
atia is an attempt to impose the West omizes the transition from Stalinist bu' Steele's argument is paralleled by a ferent economic imperatives than a Rus
ern understanding of values" (New York reaucrat to capitalist mogul. When the host of fake-leftist groups who likewise sian capitalist today even if they happen
Times, 2 May). economy was denationalized following seek to downplay or deny the signifi to be the same individual. The goal of a
The identity of views, and indeed of capitalist counterrevolution, Chernomyr cance of capitalist restoration-in order capitalist is to maximize profits, i.e., the
language, between well-known spokes din parlayed his position as minister to amnesty their own support to counter difference between labor costs and market
men for American imperialism and of gas production to become CEO of Gaz revolution. An example is the British price. The main goal of a Soviet factory
for nascent Russian imperialism, while prom, one of the largest corporations centrist Workers Power group, which director, on which his future career
ironic, is perfectly understandable. Both in the world, and make himself one of cheered on the pro-imperialist "demo depended, was maximizing the planned
oppose, as they must, the universalism the wealthiest individuals in the world. crats" on Yeltsin's barricades in 1991 and output of goods although often to the det
and rational humanism of the Enlight- Such developments were anticipated by had earlier supported an array of anti riment ofq uality and variety. The system
Communist forces from Polish Soli thus generated full employment. In fact,
darnosc to the fascist-infested Lithua Soviet enterprises were typically over
, ~PAATACJSTptl@@ nian Sajudis. To this day, Workers Power manned. And despite bureaucratic mis
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;lII!liIilllillII!liIiIIill~WI1i11111lil11iillllllillli' ~@'lifj;¥Mii,j,iflj
21MbidU#!! continues to deny that capitalist counter management and corruption, the planned,
Spartacist pamphlet -Wfffikiuldtl#m revolution has triumphed in the Soviet collectivized economy provided for uni
Union, ludicrously labeling it a "mori versal medical care, housing, education
HOWlhe
How the Soviet Workers bund workers state." In any case, this and child care. The working masses of
State Was Strangled Soviel Workers Siale centrist gobbledygook has no program Russia now look back on the Brezhnevite
matic import: Workers Power likewise era-for all its inequalities, shortages and
Was Sirangled
Also includes: called Milosevic's Serbia a "moribund drabness-as a "golden age."
workers state" while embracing the U.S.!
Stalin Drowned the
Russian Tsarist. Reaction and
NATO imperialist war cry over "poor lit
Communist Party of Lenin
Western Imperialism
tle Kosovo."
and Trotsky in Blood
The refonnist tendency headed by The currently fashionable notion of a
Tony Cliff's Socialist Workers Party centuries-old, deeply rooted antagonism
$2 (64 pages) in Britain, represented in the U.S. by between Russi;t and the West is a histor
the International Socialist Organization ical falsification. In the mid-19th cen
Order from/
(ISO), explicitly denies that there has tury many Western liberals, among them
make checks payable to:
been a capitalist counterrevolution in the Abraham Lincoln, detested tsarist Russia
Spartacist Publishing Co.
Soviet Union and East Europe. The Cliff as the embodiment of an oppressive
Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116
ites described the Soviet Union and the tyranny under the sway of medieval
bureaucratically defonned workers states continued on page 14
9 JULY 1999 7
7rotskyism
VS.
PHH Nationalism
We reprint below a 24 June supple the Kurds, arming and training the death
ment to Spartakist, newspaper ofo ur com squadrons" (see WVNo. 708, 5 March). It
rades of the Spartakist Workers Party of demanded: "Drop the Charges! Free the
Germany (SpAD). Kurdish Prisoners! No Deportations!
Full Citizenship Rights for All Immi
The hair-raising image of the chained
grants! Down With the Ban on the PKK
and humiliated Abdullah Ocalan follow
and the Kurdish Associations!"
ing his capture by the murderous Turkish
state in February highlights the con the Kurds by the Turkish rulers-who are Berlin city parliament decreed an emer
NATO Ally Turkey:
tinuing national oppression of the Kurd unswervingly backed by German and gency situation and banned all demon
Prison House of Peoples
ish people. Hounded from country to U.S. imperialism! strations having to do with the "Kurdish
country and refused asylum by the After Ocalan's kidnapping, mass problem."'The cops arrested more than a The explosiveness of nationalist
arrests of Kurds began in the cities of thousand Kurds, while hundreds more enmities in the Near and Middle East is
western Turkey. His arrest sparked street were beaten. Hoping to intimidate the the direct result of imperialist machina
fighting in Diyarbakir [in Kurdish Kurdish minority into silence, SPD chan tions. When the British and French impe
populated eastern Turkey] and the Gazi cellor Gerhard SchrOder and his interior rialists carved up the Ottoman Empire
social-democratic governments of Brit Mahallesi slums of Istanbul, where Kurd minister, Otto Schily, threatened to use after World War I, they divided the Kurd
ain, France, Italy and Germany, the ish demonstrators defended themselves the "full force of the law" to deport Kurds ish homeland among four bourgeois
leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party against cop attacks. Across Europe and to the Turkish torture chambers. Since states: Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria. Even
(PKK) was seized by Turkish elite com
mandos in Kenya. Incarcerated in the
notorious prison island Imrali in the
Marmara Sea, Ocalan has now been put
on trial by the bloody Turkish regime,
which threatens him with the death pen
alty. We demand: Freedom for Ocalan!
For decades, the Western imperialists
have propped up the Turkish state, giving
it military and political assistance to sup
press the Kurds. The U.S. connived with
its Turkish clients to get Ocalan, provid
ing intelligence that led to his abduction.
For its part, German imperialism delivers
weapons to Turkey and trains Turkish
elite troops at the Bundeswehr leadership
academy. Fearing instability in the Near
East, where they hope to reap fabulous
profits from oil and natural gas pipelines,
the German capitalists support their
Turkish ally's every move against the
PKK and the Kurds. And by whipping up
a racist anti-immigrant campaign against
Kurdish workers, the German bourgeoi
. Reuters photos
sie works to divide and weaken the multi PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan sentenced to death in Turkish c04rt, June 29. Funeral procession in Berlin in February for
national working class at home. four Kurdish protesters killed during demonstrations against Ocalan's arrest.
Just weeks after the Turkish regime
kidnapped Ocalan, NATO forces, spear around the· world, tens of thousands of 1993, the SPD has backed to the hilt the the highly truncated Kurdish state man
headed by the U.S. and including German Kurds demonstrated and occupied embas ban 01'1 the PKK, labeling it and other dated by the 1920 Treaty of Sevres was
warplanes, launched a massive -bombing sies to protest Ocalan'sabduction. In Kurdish organizations as "terrorist." gutted three years later by the Lausanne
campaign against Serbia in the phony Hamburg, the SPD [Social Democratic From Britain and France to Canada and Treaty, which created modern Turkey and
guise of providing ·"humanitarian" sup- . Party] headquarters was occupied. In Ber 'Australia, the International Communist stipulated that all persons in the country
port to the Kosovo Albanians against lin on February 17, Ahmet Acar, Sema League joined Kurdish demonstrators in were Turkish except those who belonged
"ethnic cleansing" by Slobodan Milose Alp and Mustafa Kutt were gunned down demanding ()calan's freedom. The Spar to one of the landless religious minorities
vic's Serb forces. Justifying terror bomb by Israeli security guards who opened fire takist Workers Party protested alongside (Armenians, Greeks or Sephardic Jews).
ing in the Balkans in the name of "human on Kurdish protesters at the Israeli consu Kurdish demonstrators in Germany, dis Soon after its inception, the Turk-'
rights" is the height of imperialist hypoc late. Sixteen other demonstrators were tributing a declaration in Turkish, Ger ish state founded by Mustafa Kemal
risy. Milosevic's despicable nationalism injured; one of them, Sinan Karakus, died man, Italian, French and English that (Atatiirk) sought to destroy the Kurds'
toward the Kosovo Albanians pales in ten days later. stressed: "German imperialism, along national identity. In March 1924, speaking
comparison with the barbaric and mur In cracking down on the Kurds, the with U.S. imperialism, is the godfather of and publishing in the Kurdish language
derous treatment dishe<,l out every day to SPD/CDU [Christian Democratic Union] the Turkish campaign of extermination of were banned, and the constitution cod
ified the Kemalist doctrine that Turkey
was strictly Turkish. Eventually Kurds
were forcibly renamed "Mountain Turks."
In the early 1960s, the Turkish rulers
enacted a law to change Kurdish place
names into Turkish ones and proclaimed
that no Kurdish nation existed. When
major demonstrations broke out in May
1961 in Mardin, Diyarbakir and other cit
ies to protest the wholesale assault on
Kurdish rights, the government shot down
more than 300 demonstrators.
This policy continued unabated in the
1980s and 1990s. In December 1982, the
education minister decreed that since
folk songs in east and southeast Anatolia
could serve subversive purposes, they
could be sung only in Turkish. In Octo
ber 1983, Law 2932 prohibited the very
use of the Kurdish language. David
McDowall notes in his bOOK A Modern
Sparta kist WV Map
Berlin: Spartakists call "For a Socialist Republic of United Kurdistan!" at February demonstration for Ocalan's freedom. History of the Kurds (1997), "Already
8 WORKERS VANGUARD
the term 'Kurdish' was such a bogey that "Rather than assaulting the agha class as
the law found a form of words to make a whole, the PKK operated with fine cal
its prohibition explicit without mention culation, exploiting blood feuds where
ing the offending word." Kurdish names these existed, helping to create them
that contradicted the "national culture, where they did not." One close associate
morality and traditions" and "insulted of Ocalan remarked that whenever the
the public" were outlawed. By the mid- PKK won one person from a family or
1980s, almost 3,000 villages in Adiya tribe, "the whole family or tribe came to
man, Gaziantep, Urfa, Mardin, Siirt and our side."
Diyarbakir had been renamed. To be sure, the petty-bourgeois nation
State repression skyrocketed. Between alist PKK has waged a heroic military
September 1980 and September 1982, at struggle against the far better equipped
least 81,000 Kurds were 'locked away in Turkish army, winning mass support
Turkish prison hellholes. Meanwhile, the among the Kurdish people in Turkish
army deployed two-thirds of its troops Kurdistan, the urban centers of western
in Kurdistan, increasing the number to Turkey and the diaspora in West Europe
200,000 by the early 1990s. Dead set on and elsewhere. Nevertheless, the PKK
destroying the Kurdish nation, the Turk uses guerrilla war only to fight its way to
ish military destroyed thousands of Kurd the bargaining table, where it hopes to
ish villages, prompting huge forced pop compel the Turkish bourgeoisie to grant
ulation transfers and killing tens of concessions. At the same time, it seeks to
thousands. Numbering 25 to 30 million ; put pressure on the Western imperialists to
AP
throughout the region, the Kurds are one then pressure their Turkish NATO allies.
In its war of extermination against PKK, Turkish regime has razed over 3,500
of the world's largest people without a The PKK's strategy is in line with
Kurdish villages and driven over three million from Kurdish area of south
state of their own. Consisting overwhelm eastern Turkey. Below: Kurds protest police repression in Istanbul, March 21. that of other petty-bourgeois nationalist
ingly of hideously downtrodden peasants movements like the Palestine Liberation
Winter/NY Times
and landless sharecroppers, the Kurdish, Organization (PLO) and African National
masses in southeastern Turkey have his Congress (ANC). Since the nationalist
torically been under the heel of the aghas perspective of these movements is em
(the Kurdish landed gentry), the Sunni phatically not linked to a fight for prole
clergy and the bloodthirsty Turkish mili tarian revolution in the developed capital
tary. Kurdish society itself is highly class ist countries, they necessarily look to the
stratified-in the early 1990s, 8 percent good graces of Western imperialism
of farming families owned over 50 per with disastrous consequences for the
cent of the land, and 38 percent were oppressed,masses. Today, following U.S.
landless. brokered "peace" accords, Yasir Arafat's
Reinforcing economic inequalities PLO has sold itself as police auxiliaries
between Turks and Kurds is one reason to the racist Zionists in Israel. In South
for the Turkish regime's reign of terror Africa, the now-bourgeois nationalist
in eastern Anatolia. Per capita income ANC presides over a neo-apartheid
in the southeastern Kurdish Iegions in system where the black masses are just as
the early 1990s was 42 percent of the exploited and oppressed by the Randlords
national average and a quarter of that in as they were under white racist rule. If the
the AegeanlMarmara region. Literacy in PKK were to cut a deal with the Turkish
many Kurdish provinces was less than 50 henchmen, it would strive to use its newly,
percent compared to the national average found position to exploit its own people
of 77 percent because education was and would serve as Kurdish gendarmes
conducted in Turkish, a foreign language for the Turkish state. In his speech before
to most rural Kurds. the Turkish court, Ocalan laid out such a
Behind the unremitting national op essential to raise the "Third World" to the porter of the leftist youth group Dev perspective, which was endorsed by the
pression suffered by the Kurds is the drive economic level of the "First." rimci Genc at a time when Maoism was PKK.
of the bourgeois rulers in the Near East popular among radicalized youth. During the Cold War, when the Soviet
to create nationally homogeneous states PKK Nationalism: Its "Marxist-Leninist" rhetoric not Union faced hostile encirclement by the
by depriving the Kurds of their own Dead End for Kurds withstanding, the PKK never had any imperialist countries, petty-bourgeois
nationhood. The very acknowledgment of Defense of the right of self-determi thing' to do with genuine Marxism. . nationalist forces like the PLO and ANC
Kurdish identity threatens the stability of nation for the Kurdish people is a crucial Rejecting the struggle for a revolutionary were often politically and militarily
the bourgeois regimes in the region. For obligation for would-be communists-in Leninist party based on the growing backed by Moscow, giving them some
this reason, it is unthinkable that the Turkey. The Turkish working class must ' Turkish and Kurdish proletariat, Ocalan, room to maneuver. The PKK, for its part,
Kurdish people can achieve national self be won to a perspective of upholding the like many Turkish and Kurdish leftists of enjoyed a modicum of military support
determination in the framework of the national rights of the Kurds, defending the late 1960s and early 1970s, embraced from Soviet-friendly Syria, where Ocalan
capitalist nation-state system. the PKK and other Kurdish organizations Third World guerrillaism. Alienated by found a safe haven and established PKK
As Marxists who forthrightly defend against state terror, and championing full the Turkish left's rotten, chauvinist guerrilla bases. After the counterrevolu
the equality of nations and combat all and equal rights for the Kurdish lan refusal to champion the caus,e of Kurdish tionary destruction of the Soviet Union in
manifestations of nationalism and chau guage. Only by fighting all manifesta liberation, Ocalan and his' supporters 199 I -92, however, the petty-bourgeois
vinism, we emphasize that the rights of tions of Turkish chauvinism and national retreated to the countryside, abjuring the nationalists were left suspended in mid
the Kurdish people can only be guaran oppression, ca!1 the road be opened for workers of Istanbul, Ankara, Sivas and air. The PLO responded by looking ever
teed by proletarian socialist revolutions joint struggle by the Turkish and Kurdish Adana. This was doubly criminal, for more openly to Washington to broker a
to smash the capitalist states which workers against their common capitalist unlike other Kurdish groups the PKK "peace" deal, which has not relieved the
oppress them-Turkey, Iran, Iract and oppressors. drew its support from proletarian ele suffering of the Palestinian masses one
Syria. To achieve this, it is necessary to . As Lenin stressed, communists in ments who hated the class domination of iota. Without Soviet backing, Syria suc
build Leninist-Trotsky'ist parties which an oppressor country must emphasize the Kurdish aghas and merchants. cumbed to pressure from Turkey, which
unite the working people of different opposition to the chauvinism of their Although its supporters hate the land threatened to invade its Arab neighbor if
national and ethnic backgrounds. Such "own" bourgeoisie, while communists in lord and feudal hierarchy of the Kurdish it continued to harbor the PKK leader and
parties will inscribe on their banner the the oppressed country must in particular village, the PKK itself has engaged in his guerrilla units. Last year, Syria knuck
call for a Socialist Republic of United combat petty-bourgeois nationalism, fight crass clan-based politics, playing one led under to this provocation and Ocalan
Kurdistan, part of a socialist federation ing for the unity in struggle of the work family or village off another in the was forced to leave the country.
of the Near East.
ers of both nations: Anatolian backwater. McDowall writes: continued on page 10
This perspective is a concrete expres
"People who have not gone into the
sion of Leon Trotsky's program of penna
question thoroughly think that it is 'con
nent revolution, the only road to the tradictory' for the Social-Democrats of
emancipation of the masses in the semi oppressor nations to insist on the 'free
PKK banner read: "NATO Fights Ethnic
colonial world from pre-capitalist' slavery dom to secede,' -while Social-Democrats Ocalan ...
Cleansing in Kosovo. NATO Supports
of oppressed nations insist on the 'free
and capitalist exploitation. In countries of
dom to integrate.' However, a little Ethnic Cleansing in Kurdistan. How
belated capitalist development, the tasks reflection will show that there is not, and (continued from page 1) Long Do You Accept This Double Stan
of the bourgeois-democratic revolution cannot be, any other road to internation dard?" Addressing such illusions in the
accomplished long ago in the West can alism and the amalgamation of nations, anti-Kurdish provocations, including an
"humanitarian" pretensions of the NATO
any other road from the given situation
not be solved by the local bourgeoisies, ominous march by some 1,000 Turkish
to this goa\." ' imperialists, a TLC speaker declared:
which are entirely dependent on imperial men through the main Kurdish city of
- "The Discussion on ~ "The fact that the Western imperialists
ism and fearful that any move toward Self-Determination Summed Diyarbakir.
unswervingly back the Turkish rulers
social progress will encourage the work Up" (July 1916) Backed by the U.S. and Germany, the illustrates that there is no such thing as
ers to overthrow them. In these countries, Thus, while defending the right of Turkish bourgeoisie has waged a war 'f\umanitarian' imperialism. They may
the unsolved tasks of the bourgeois self-determination of the Kurds, commu of extermination against the PKK and click their tongues hyp~~ritically against
democratic revolution-such as agrarian nists strongly oppose the petty-bourgeois the oppressed Kurdish national minority the death penalty for Ocalan, but they
carry out deportations, political repres
revolution, women's rights and national nationalist program of the PKK. Arising (see "The Fight for Kurdish Liberation:
s,ion and racist state terror against immi
Iiberation-can only be achieved through in response to the all-sided oppression Trotskyism vs. PKK Nationalism," page
grants at home. As Marxists who forth
the dictatorship of the proletariat at the of the Kurds, the PKK was formed by 8). Yet it is to Turkey's imperialist spon rightly defend the equality of nations and
head of the peasant masses. In order to Ocalan (nicknamed Apo, or "uncle") sors that the petty-bourgeois nationalist combat all manifestations of nationalism
survive and flourish, socialist revolutions in the mid-1970s. The movement that PKK appeals for support. At a June 29 and chauvinism, we emphasize that the
_r ights of the Kurdish people can only be
in the backward countries must be would adopt the name PKK in 1978 Vancouver protest against the sentencing
guaranteed by proletarian revolutions to
extended to the advanced capitalist states - claimed to be "Marxist-Leninist," reflect of Ocalan called by the PKK and joined
smash the capitalist states which oppress
of the West and Japan, whose economic, ing Ocalan's urbanized roots as a student by the Trotskyist League of Canada and them. For a Socialist Republic of United
technological, and scientific technique is in Ankara" where he had been a sup- the Worker-communist Party-Iraq, a Kurdistan! Free <'kalan!".
9 JULY 1999 9
I
(Islamic Movement). More recently,
~l.~"
~~'L~~~~~~~~
bers of Ocalan's exile parliament. The
(continued from page 9)
PKK pushes the reactionary lie that "the
All this has impelled the PKK to inten Islamic movements need us and they
sify its overtures to the archenemies of breathe through our struggles. We do not
Kurdish freedom: the Western imperial forget that the workers party aspires to
ists and the Turkish state. Wooing the genuine Islam" (Junge Welt, 20 Novem
European bourgeoisies, the PKK declared ber 1995). In his Med-TV report, Ocalan
last year: "The PKK can solve the Kurd asked of the Virtue Party: "Where is your
ish question either by continued fighting loyalty to Islam, how can you describe as
in the mountains or with an appeal to Islamic your attitude of supporting the
Europe" (Kurdistan-Rundbrief, 2 Decem war under all circumstances? Where is
ber 1998). It has also offered up the Kurds the Islam in that?"
as pawns in the rivalry between the Euro Religion serves to chain the oppressed
pean Union (EU) and U.S. imperialism: to the old order by imbuing them with
"The lack of a political approach to the superstitions and conservative morality.
Kurdish question on the part of the coun Nowhere is this truer than in the Islamic
tries in the EU ... just like the passivity on world, where the Koran and the reaction
the Yugoslavia problem, means once ary weight of the family keep hundreds
again giving the USA the occasion to get of millions, particularly women, in a
the upper hand" (Kurdistan-Rundbrief, 10 state of isolation, ignorance and hideous
February). SUbjugation. In embracing Turkey's reac
Ocalan has been no less shameless in tionary Muslim parties, the PKK is sig Bernhard Rudolph Der Spiegel
his appeals to the U.S. In a report deliv naling to the clerical establishment that it COPS unleashed on refugee home by SPD state government in Hamburg,
ered on the Kurdish station Med-TV on can be trusted to tighten the hold of March 1998. Fascist firebombing of Turkish home in Molin in 1992 killed three
15 October 1998, he implored Washing Islam on the Kurdish masses, which is people.
ton: "Assume that all the power lay in already very strong in the backward
struggles by infecting the workers with role in the Balkans as a counterweight
your hands, would you then grant the regions of Turkish Kurdistan.
Kurds any right to peace? Would you Kurdish militants confronted with the the poison of chauvinism and racism. to U.S.-dominated NATO and counsels
grant them a few democratic rights? Your bankruptcy of PKK guerrillaism and Screaming that "the boat is full"-the German foreign minister 10schka Fischer
racist war cry that Germany has too many to "crawl out from under Madame
partner is there, I give you my word. its blatantly reactionary politics must
Make the preparations for a political solu grapple with the fundamental difference "foreigners"-the rulers have sought to Albright's skirts" (Junge Welt, 20121
create the ideological climate in which February). Advising German imperialism
tion, I will riot make any pre-conditions." between the PKK's petty-bourgeois strat
refugees and other immigrants can be on how to carve out a place for itself in
In this craven kowtowing to the big pow egy and the Marxist perspective that only
driven out with impunity. the oil-rich countries of the Near East
ers, the PKK is following in the footsteps the working class-Turkish, Kurdish,
of the large, aristocratic Barzani and Arab, Persian, and Hebrew-speaking Fed up with almost 17 years of Chris with Turkey as a springboard, the PDS
tian Democratic governments headed by demands that a "European initiative" and
Talabani clans in Iraqi Kurdistan, which has the social power, numbers and organ
have always sold their services to a ization to topple all the bourgeois states in Helmut Kohl and' the increasing anti German imperialism "solve" the Kurdish
changing spectrum of regional powers the Near and Middle East through social- working-class onslaught, millions of question. Thus the PDS seeks to subordi
workers voted for the SPD in the last nate the working class and its savagely
national elections, bringing the Social persecuted Kurdish component to its
Democrats to power for the first time class enemy.
v.1.
since 1982. Doing the bourgeoisie's bid Following Lenin, leader of the
ding, the SPD took the reins of the capi Russian Revolution, we characterize toe
talist state to shove the givebacks de SPD and PDS as "bourgeois workers
manded by the rulers down the throats of parties"-parties based on the trade
the powerful trade unions, whose bureau unions, the mass organizations of the
cratic misleaders have prevented the proletariat, but with a leadership which
workers from defending their livelihoods. has a thoroughly bourgeois program. We
Anti-woman
In administering the bourgeois state, the fight to split the working-class base of
Islamic
SPD pursues no less reactionary, racist these parties from the pro-capitalist lead-
reactionaries
policies than the COU. The unbridled
march in Istanbul,
December 1997. repression meted out to Kurdish protest
ers in the streets of Berlin, Hamburg and SPARTAKIST
KOln is but one example of what the SPD
government of Gerhard Schroder is all
about.
Having definitively gone over to the
side of German imperialism in World War
and Western imperialists in exchange for ist revolution. Only this road is capable of I by voting for the war credits that sent
military and political backing. freeing the oppressed Kurds from the countless workers to die in the trenches,
Implacably hostile to the perspective chains of national oppression and guaran the Social Democrats have devoted them
of uniting the Kurdish and Turkish work teeing their right to self-determination. selves ever since to chaining the proletar
ers against their common class enemies, The PKK's nationalist program is a dead iat to its class enemy. In \1992, the SPD ~>';~~.!,o;jSj!"~,;%I;-~
the PKK has progressively tailored its end-only the Trotskyist strategy of per~ once again proved its fealty to the Frank
~~jS.sN
politics to the reactionary climate of manent revolution can liberate the Kurd furt bankers by voting to abolish the right
the post-Soviet world, replacing even its ish masses.' to asylum, which encouraged the Nazis to I~~~
s_
formal call for the independence of unleash a raging pogrom against immi
SPD: Bourgeois Workers Party
Turkish Kurdistan with the demand for grants in Rostock. In Hamburg and
"autonomy." It has ,even offered to aid . of Racism and War Schroder's own state of Lower Saxony, For. Splrt.ciIt GRtaoeup,.ug.M toe kouln UsiIhn CoInItoendrnc-. ....,
the murderous Turkish rulers in their In Germany, tens of thousands of SPD governments have orchestrated furi ~T""""""I
expansionist drive to control the Turkic Kurdish workers belong to large trade ous police sweeps against Africans and
speaking lands of Central Asia, declaring unions together with their Gem1an and other immigrants. Now the SPD and their ICL fights for class unity of Turkish
in Kurdistan-Report (lanuary/February Turkish class brothers and sisters. The Green coalition partners have bombed the and Kurdish workers. Spartacist 1984
1998): Turkish and Kurdish workers in Europe people of Serbia, in the largest military statement "For a Socialist Republic
"The solution in Turkey is a regional can be a living bridge linking the fight conflict in Europe since World War II. In of United Kurdistan!" in Turkish and
solution, That should not worry Turkey. for Kurdish independence and socialist last year's elections, we refused to give an Kurdish.
It would mean a secure bridge to the revolution in the Near East to workers iota of support to the SPD or the Party of
Near East and Central Asia up to the
rule in the industrialized West. German Democratic Socialism (PDS), the former ers as part of the struggle to forge a revo
Turkmanian countries. For the first time
in its history Turkey could be, thanks and ethnic Turkish workers must take a East German Stalinists who sold out the lutionary party, a tribune of all the
to this Kurdish bridge, a very strong stand in defense of the rights of Kurdish DDR to German imperialism in 1990 and oppressed dedicated to the struggle for
power," organizations. This is particularly urgent transformed themselves into unabashedly socialist revolution in the industrial pow
The more pronounced the PKK's today, as the racist German state will use pro-capitalist social democrats. We de erhouse of Europe. For a workers Ger
appeals to the imperialists and the Turk its attacks on the PKK to go after all clared: "SPDIPOS: Racist Deporters and many in a Socialist United' States of
ish state have bec9me, the less use it has immigrants and the workers movement Imperialist Warmongers! No Vote for Europe! Kurdish and Turkish workers
had for the "Marxist-Leninist" verbiage more generally. However, the social SPD, PDS!" (Spartakist No. 133, Fall who have fewer illusions in the social
and secularism that animates many of its democracy and the trade-union bureauc 1998). democracy than the native-born proletar
members. Although the PKK has criti racy are obstacles to mobili~ing the For its part, the PDS administers state iat because of the rampant, virulent
cized women's oppression in its publica power of the proletariat against racist terror against immigrants in Saxony racism they experience every day-can
tions and is known for placing women deportations, fascist provocations and Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, play a vital role in breaking the entire
under arms in its guerrilla groups, its aggressive attacks on the working class. thereby paving the way for the Nazis. It working class from the pro-capitalist
petty-bourgeois outlook and contempt Since the counterrevolutionary de also pushes crass anti-Americanism in SPD and PDS. They are key to the per
for Turkey's proletarian masses have led struction of the Soviet degenerated work the service of German imperialism. After spective of socialist revolution.
it to turn to the most reactionary forces ers state and the absorption of the East proving its loyalty to the bourgeoisie of
Fake Trotskyists: Enemies of
in the Turkish political landscape: ele German deformed workers state (DDR) Auschwitz by leading the counterrevolu
Kurdish Freedom
ments of the Sunni clergy and Necmettin into the Fourth Reich in the early 1990s, tion in the DDR, the PDS now rushes to
Erbakan's Welfare Party (now called Vir sharply intensified interimperialist rival advise the German imperialists on how Amid the unremitting national oppres
tue), a mass Islamic organization. ries have propelled the German bourgeoi best to outmaneuver their U.S. rivals. sion of the Kurdish people in Turkey and
In the late 19808 and early 1990s, the sie to intensify its attacks on the working PDS foreign policy spokesman Wolfgang bourgeois state repression in Germany,
PKK established a group led by a cleric' class in order to better compete with its Gehrcke demands that the European the test of any organization claiming to
in Bitlis and was associated with the Par imperialist rivals. To do so, the ruling centered Organization for Security and be revolutionary is its attitude toward
tiya Islami Kurdistan and Islami Harekat class has sought to cripple proletarian Cooperation in Europe play a broader international proletarian class struggle,
10 WORKERS VANGUARD