The Workers' Advocate

WORKERS, OPPRESSED NATIONS AND PEOPLES OF THE WORLD, UNITE!

NEWSPAPER OF THE CENTRAL ORGANIZATION OF U.S. MARXIST-LENINISTS

P.O. Box 11942, Chicago, Ill. 60611

Vol. 7, No. 4, August 1, 1977 25¢

[Front page:

Hail the 10th Anniversary of the Great 1967 Afro-American Rebellions in Detroit and Newark!;

POWERFUL UPSURGE OF COAL MINERS' STRUGGLE35,000Miners Wildcat: A Just Reply to an Obvious Attemptto SuppressMiners' Movement;

Stearns Miners Persist in Armed Defense of their Right to Organize;

ANDREW YOUNG, MOUTHPIECE FOR IMPERIALIST PACIFISM]

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Hail the 10th Anniversary of the Great 1967 Afro-American Rebellions in Detroit and Newark!

POWERFUL UPSURGE OF COAL MINERS' STRUGGLE

Chronology of the Current Miners' Wildcat Strike

Stearns Miners Persist in Armed Defense of their Right to Organize

A Brief Chronology of the Strike at the Justus Mine in Stearns, Kentucky

ANDREW YOUNG, MOUTHPIECE FOR IMPERIALIST PACIFISM

Oil Monopolists Prepare to Impose Another "Natural Gas Shortage" Next Winter

Ohio Gas Workers Strike Against Increasing Exploitation by the Energy Monopolists

DENOUNCE NEW U.S. IMPERIALIST PROVOCATIONS AGAINST PEOPLE'S KOREA!

U.S. Imperialist-Dominated NATO Forces Practice for Nuclear War in Europe

DOWN WITH THE FASCIST CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE NEW YORK CITY BLACK-OUT REBELLION!

ANTI-FASCIST AMERICAN PEOPLE THRASH NAZIS AND KLAN

Why is UAW President Fraser Talking to the Auto Capitalists About "the Possibility of a No-Strike Clause" in Auto?

Unemployment: Curse of the Capitalist System

CITY HALL ATTEMPTS TO UNLOAD FINANCIAL CRISIS ON CITY WORKERS IN PROVIDENCE

SUPPORT THE JUST STRUGGLE OF THE GENERAL DYNAMICS-QUINCY SHIPYARD WORKERS

Lesson of National Fuel Gas Strike in Buffalo: Uphold Line of Active Resistance

Oppose the Chauvinist Campaign of ILGWU and ACTU Against Foreign Workers!

CONVICTION OF FILIPINA NURSES IS A FASCIST ATROCITY BY THE GOVERNMENT!

Kent State Students Fight to Keep Alive the Memory of the Martyrs of May 4, 1970

HEROIC REBELLION OF PUERTO RICAN PEOPLE OF CHICAGO

AZANIAN PEOPLE'S NATIONAL UPRISING CONTINUES AGAINST RACIST VORSTER REGIME

The Struggle Against the Segregation of Carson Beach

OPPOSE THE GOVERNMENT'S ATTEMPT TO ORGANIZE A RACIST AND FASCIST ANTI-BUSING MOVEMENT

Oppose the Counter-Revolutionary Meddling of the Soviet Revisionist Renegade Clique in the Ethiopian Revolution

Eritrean People's Liberation Front Liberates Decamere and Karen

The Events of the Detroit Rebellion

The Events of the Newark Rebellion

Excerpts From the Editorial of the Newspaper "Zeri i Popullit", "THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF THE REVOLUTION"

Hail the 10th Anniversary of the Great 1967 Afro-American Rebellions in Detroit and Newark!

[Photo: Afro-Americans of Newark boldly denounce National Guard occupying their community during Newark Rebellion of July, 1967.]

The month of July marked the tenth anniversary of the great Detroit and Newark Rebellions of the Afro- American people against racial discrimination and violent repression and for complete emancipation.

These powerful mass revolutionary struggles by the cruelly exploited and oppressed Black people were the most powerful of the 164 Black rebellions which swept the country in 1967 and were among the fiercest of all the rebellions of the 1960's. They dealt a stunning blow to the common enemy of all the workers and oppressed people in the United States-- the government of the reactionary monopoly capitalist ruling class.

In 1967 U.S. imperialism was being exposed as a bloodthirsty, aggressive force abroad and being soundly thrashed by the Vietnamese people. The Afro-American rebellions tore the mask off its fascist character at home and revealed its inner weakness. These rebellions showed that the oppressed masses in the U.S., by rising up in struggle with arms in hand, can certainly defeat the reputedly invincible police and military forces of the government. The Black rebellions forecast the approaching doom of evil U.S. imperialism. The Detroit and Newark Rebellions will shine forever in the glorious history of the Afro-American people's struggle against racial discrimination and violent repression and in the history of the American working class. These great struggles should be commemorated by all revolutionary and progressive people and studied in order to gain inspiration from their heroic example.

The Newark Rebellion was provoked by the brutal beating of a Black cab driver by the Newark police. It broke out on July 12, 1967, and lasted five days. It developed into a bitter clash between the masses of Black people, armed with rocks, bottles and rifles, and the heavily armed repressive forces of the state. Six days after the Newark Rebellion ended, the Afro- Americans of Detroit arose in a titanic struggle. The Detroit Rebellion was triggered on July 23, 1967, by a police attack on a party for Black veterans, who had just returned from fighting in Viet Nam. The rebellion quickly grew, first with hundreds and later with thousands of Afro-Americans and a smaller number of white workers and youth participating in an intense struggle. The masses answered the reactionary, violent attacks of the government with mass revolutionary violence, including widespread rifle fire, throwing the massive forces of the capitalist state machine (13,000 Detroit police, state police, National Guard and federal troops backed up by battle tanks) into utter panic.

The Detroit and Newark Rebellions were outstanding examples of the tidal wave of Black rebellions which swept the country in the late 1960's. These rebellions shook the foundations of monopoly capitalist rule and set the Johnson administration quaking with fear. They showed the tremendous revolutionary force latent in the more than 20 million Afro-Americans. Today, on their tenth anniversary, the bourgeois news media is slandering the rebellions as "race riots", "looting rampages" and "self-destructive rampages of burning". But these slanders simply show that the bourgeoisie is still smarting from the blows struck against it by these rebellions and cannot forget them.

The Detroit and Newark Rebellions took place during the 1960's, when the Afro-American people rose up across the country against the centuries-old bondage of racial discrimination and violent repression. This heroic period of struggle began in 1955 with thefamous Montgomery Bus Boycott, which lasted 381 days and smashed up segregation on the busesin thatcity. The Afro-American struggle developed into a country-wide upsurge in the 1960's. During this period, the Black people were forced to wage a most difficult and prolonged struggle, seeing the best of their sons and daughters beaten, jailed, gassed, lynched, bitten by police dogs and murdered by police andother government agents, just to achieve the most elementary rights-- the abolition of some features of Jim Crow segregation, such as denial of voting rights and the use of public eating places and of publictransportation. It is a big exposure of so-called "democratic" U.S. monopoly capitalism that it took decades of protracted struggle by the Black people to win even the most minimal victories. It has only been this fight which has allowed the Afro-American people to hold their heads high with revolutionary pride and dignity and to be able to step forth as a political power and revolutionary force that has shaken U.S. imperialism to its core.

In the 1960's, the Black people arose in struggle against the intolerable conditions which faced them, conditions which were the common lot of Afro-Americans all across the U.S. The Afro-Americans were (and still are) forced to live under brutal conditionsof racial discrimination, violent repression and classexploitation. They were forced to live in segregated, rat-trap, roach-infested housing. They were forcedto send their children to segregated, substandard schools. In the factories and other places of work, Afro-Americans were given the dirtiest, most backbreaking, menial and despised jobs. They were subject to being shot down by the police at a moment's notice and were constantly,humiliated and spit upon in a thousand ways by the racist authorities. Modern monopoly capitalism has driven large numbers of Afro-Americans off the land in the South and into the factories and residential ghettos in the northern and western cities. They are right at the heart of the industrial proletariat, which suffers vicious exploitation and oppression from the bourgeoisie and is the most revolutionary class in U.S. society. Its class struggle against the bourgeoisie and its organs of police rule is always on the verge of breaking out into civil war.

Newark, with a 55 per cent Black population in 1967, was a sharp example of the ghetto (northern Jim Crow) conditions facing the Afro-Americans. In 1967, the city ranked number one in the U.S. in the following areas: 1. the worst housing; 2. the highest tax burden; 3. the highest rate of crime per 1,000 people; 4. the highest rate of venereal disease; and 5. the highest rate of new cases of TB. It also ranked second in infant mortality rate., Its unemployment rate among Blacks was over 15 per cent. In May of 1967 the Black people of Newark had to wage a struggle against the attempt of the authorities to locate a government medical center in the heart of their community, a move which would have wiped out a large section of housing and forced the Black residents into even more crowded, miserable housing. Violent attacks by the police on the Blacks were a common occurrence. The conditions in Detroit were basically no different. There the Afro-American workers are concentrated in the auto plants where the exploitation is particularly intense. In addition, the Detroit police department has a nation-wide reputation for shooting down Afro- Americans in cold blood, like common street dogs, for such crimes as stealing a pair of pants, or for no cause whatsoever.

In short, the Afro-Americans lived (and still do) in a situation in which the monopoly capitalist ruling class has declared a war--military, political, economic, cultural and social--against them. At the same time, they constitute a powerful, militant, revolutionary fighting force. Such were the conditions which brought about the Detroit and Newark Rebellions and other Afro-American rebellions of the 1960's.

In these great rebellions, the Black people fought against the racial discrimination and violent repression of the monopoly capitalists with mass revolutionary violence.This showed that the Afro-Americans had never been beaten into submission by the attacks of the ruling class, but had always fought them tooth and nail. The U.S. government has never been morally moved by the sight of sit ins, non-violent passive resistance, petitions and protest marches; instead, it always frantically arms itself against the Afro-Americans and callously assassinates leaders of the Black people's movement. Under its COINTELPRO program the FBI vowed to liquidate all "Black messiahs". (Malcolm X, the great Afro-American revolutionary leader, was assassinated in 1965, Martin Luther King was murdered in 1968, and so were many revolutionary members of the Black Panther Party such as Fred Hampton and George Jackson.) During the Black rebellions the government, using massive armed force, attempted to suppress the resistance of the Afro-American people. Feeling that the police and the bourgeois authorities could no longer be allowed to brutalize and slaughter them with impunity, the Black masses heroically rose up, threw off the strangling yoke of non-violence, and fought a tit-for-tat struggle against the reactionary violence unleashed on them by their enemies. It was, as Malcolm X taught, "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth and a head for a head".

During the Detroit Rebellion, the government used 13,000 heavily armed men backed up by tanks to attempt to suppress the Afro-Americans, but the Black people fought back heroically with revolutionary violence. At times, the battles were fought to stand-stills, and on a few occasions the National Guard and Detroit police were forced to withdraw from whole sections of the city after being pinned down by rifle fire. In the Newark Rebellion, the Black masses, with the youth in the lead, attacked in crowds of hundreds against the police, showering them with rocks and bottles. They besieged a police station and fought gun battles with the police and National Guard from housing projects and elsewhere. The U.S. government stood exposed as an oppressor force, not only unwanted abroad, being defeated by the liberation fighters in Viet Nam, but ruling its own cities by sheer force of arms. Yet still it could not suppress the fighting Afro-Americans.

In the Black rebellions, hundreds of thousands of Afro-American workers and youth plunged into vigorous struggle. In Detroit, many white workers and youth joined in alongside the Blacks. More than 7,000 people were arrested in Detroit, 80 per cent of whom were workers. This large percentage of workers participating in the Rebellion showed the growing merger of the Afro-American struggle and the workers' movement as a whole. In 1968, after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Chairman Mao said: "The black masses and the masses of white working people in the United States share common interests and have common objectives to struggle for. Therefore the Afro-American struggle,is winning sympathy and support from increasing numbers of white working people and progressives in the United States. The struggle of the black people in the United States is bound to merge with the American workers' movement, and this will eventually end the criminal rule of theU.S. monopoly capitalist class."The Detroit and Newark Rebellions were important steps on this path.

In the great rebellions, the revolutionary Black masses directed their struggle squarely at the common enemy of all theexploited and oppressed people in the United States, the government of the rich monopoly capitalists, with its armed forces, the police, National Guard and federal troops, protectors of the capitalist system of exploitation and oppression. The masses fought this enemy state machine with the greatest heroism and fury, at times trapping the fascists like rats in an alley. The government, not the white working people as the fascist bourgeois liars claim, was the target of the rebellions. And for this reason the rebellions were fought in the interests of all the exploited and oppressed workers and people in the U.S.

Not only did the Black masses fight heroically against forcible suppression by the government, but they also militantly pushed aside the agents of the bourgeois government who were hidden in the ranks of the people. Times of crisis and revolutionary upsurge reveal the true nature of people -and separate the wheat from the chaff, true friends of the Afro-Americans and working masses from false. The opportunist government agents worked hand-in-glove with the government to liquidate the Afro-American struggle and subject it to the violent attacks of the state. This showed they are nothing but a bunch of agents -- eyes, ears and hands for the state. Forexample, Charles Diggs, Black congressman and presently head of the Congressional Black Caucus, went so far as to threaten to buy air time on national TV to denounce President Johnson if he did not commit federal troops for use against the people. Johnson only made the final decision to do so after urgent phone calls from Diggs and Walter Reuther, then the head labor bureaucrat of the United Auto Workers. And Tom Hayden, a prominent liquidator of the youth and student movement in the 60's and now a Democratic Party hack, sat together with the Governor of New Jersey to plan the withdrawal of the National Guard from Newark. But this collaboration with the enemy by the opportunist agents of the state was militantly rejected by the Black masses. In Detroit, when the liberal Black congressman John Conyers, standing atop a police car bullhorn in hand, told the masses of Afro-Americans that they should go home and that the police were their friends, lie was showered with rocks and bottles by the youth. Similarly in Newark, Black poverty program officials and other opportunists actually sat together with the police to plan tactics to liquidate the struggle of the masses. But when they tried to persuade the people to give up their struggle against the police and fie satisfied with an all-night vigil, a meeting with the mayor and the promotion of a Black to police captain, on two occasions the Black youth sent the opportunists packing under a hail of rocks. None of the political deception of the government, spread among the people by its opportunist lackeys, was able to divert the Afro-American masses from the revolutionary path.

The day the Detroit Rebellion ended President Lyndon Johnson established the blue-ribbon Kerner Commission to cover up the target of the rebellions and distort their nature. This panel was made up of all sorts of bourgeois liberals. It loudly proclaimed the big lie that the rebellions were not caused by the oppression of the government and the bourgeoisie and were not directed against the government. It babbled on and on about "white racism" and "white institutions" but denied that it is the capitalists and the government that organize the white racism ind perpetrate the racist attacks on the Afro-America)! people. By talking of "white institutions" the Kerner Commission covered up the fact that these institutions are institutions of a handful of super-rich white monopoly capitalists that oppress both the Black and white working masses and that both the Black and white working masses were fighting together against their common enemy. Thus the government, through the Kerner Commission, blamed the white working people for the crimes of the racist, capitalist government itself. The Commission proposed that the government, soaked in the blood of the Afro-American 'martyrs, should use political deception to step forward as the savior of the Black people with a few petty reformist programs that leave the Black people still oppressed and enslaved. More recently, the monopoly capitalists have spread the same slander through their newspapers and TV and radio, calling the rebellions "race riots" and "race war". But these futile attempts will never hide the real culprit in the oppression of the Afro-Americans--the government itself--nor will they hide the proud tradition of fighting unity between oppressed Blacks and whites against the government which is represented by the Detroit Rebellion.

The Detroit and Newark Rebellions were part of the massive country-wide wave of Black rebellions which began in1964 and reached high points in1967 and1968. During the year of1967 alone, 164 rebellions broke out, 103 of them occurring in the month of July alone. These heroic struggles showed the great revolutionary force of the Afro-American people, who gave up the road of non-violent passive resistance and took up revolutionary violence to fight the reactionary violent attacks of the government. The Detroit and Newark Rebellions played a great inspiring role for these struggles. Many Afro-American veterans, who had just returned from being used as cannon-fodder in Viet Nam on behalf of asystem that despised them, plunged into these great rebellions, putting into practice the revolutionary line that "Our Enemy Is at Home". 1967 also marked a great upsurge and high point in the movement against U.S. imperialist aggression in Viet Nam. Hundreds of thousands of American masses participated in demonstrations against the war and large numbers of youth refused to serve in the armed forces or struggled against the war inside the armed forces themselves. These two great mass movements won wide support across the country, causing deep problems for the monopoly capitalists and their government. These movements swept away the oppressive ideas of fear and passivity which were imposed on the people by the capitalists in the 1950's. The new watchword spreading across America was: "It's right to rebel!"

Since the great rebellions of the 1960's, the conditions of racial discrimination and violent repression against the Black people haven't gone away. Frightened by the Black people's struggle and other revolutionary movements, the monopoly capitalists are plotting revenge. They have given nothing to the Afro-American people, whose victories have come only through massive struggles and the blood of martyrs. Today the Afro-American people are still enchained and oppressed. The government which preaches about "human rights" is arming itself to the teeth against the Afro-Americans, to the point of bankrupting cities like Detroit with huge expenditures for the police. With this massive build-up of the repressive apparatus of the government, the Black people continue to come under violent attacks daily. In 1971 the Detroit Police Department unleashed the STRESS squad which was responsible for the murder of 22 Afro-Americans. In response to this, the Afro- American youth took up guns in self-defense and heroically shot down several STRESS squad members and other police. In 1975, when a racist Detroit tavern owner murdered a young Black worker, the Black youth rose up in the Livernois Rebellion. This threw the bourgeoisie into a panic, thinking that another 1967was at hand.

Since 1967, the government of the capitalists has not only continued its violent suppression of the Afro-American people, but it has also increased its use of political deception, along the lines laid down by the Kerner Commission, in an attempt to subvert the struggle of the Afro-American people. Detroit is a prime example of the monopoly capitalists' plan to trick the Afro-Americans by putting "Black faces in high places", that is, by grooming a few traitors from the ranks of the Black people to give a cosmetic touch to the racist, lily-white government of the super-rich capitalist exploiters. An example of this tactic is Black Detroit Mayor Coleman Young, a vice-chairman of the Democratic Party, who showed his true nature during the Livernois Rebellion by praising the police department for defending the racist murderer and viciously attacking the Afro-American youth. Young said then: "I'm proud of the Detroit police department." But, like Conyers before them, Young and all other agents of the bourgeoisie will fail to convince the Black masses to put their trust in a government which is the organizer of all the racist attacks against them and is their deadliest enemy.

Inspired by the great Afro-American rebellions of the summer of 1967, a great movement to take up the revolutionary science of Marxism-Leninism broke out among the Afro-American people across the U.S. (as it did among many other revolutionary activists). The Detroit and Newark rebellions sunk deep into the consciousness of the masses and inspired a noble passion to get organized. Various organizations were formed in the following years. It was in this period, particularly in 1968-70, that many members of the Black Panther Party waged heroic armed struggles in self defense against murderous attacks of the police. Revolutionary workers saw the need for revolutionary organization, saw that the working class in the factories is the leading force in revolution and saw that Marxism-Leninism is the guide to action. The Afro-American people gave warm support to the wide-scale dissemination of Mao Tsetung Thought carried out bythe American Communist Workers Movement (Marxist-Leninist) after its formation in May 1969. In Detroit itself, the revolutionary ferment among the Afro-American people centered among the workers in theauto plants and expressed itself through enthusiasm for such organizations as the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. Founded in 1968, the League grew very rapidly. Having widespread support, it established organization in the Detroit auto plants; it took up the distribution of revolutionary literature opposing racial discrimination, violent repression and class exploitation; led several wildcat strikes, and influenced the national Afro-American and workers' movement. But the League made a number of serious mistakes in political line and could never sort out the questions of line for the working class movement, of how to build a solid revolutionary organization, and ofcombating opportunism, and so it collapsed. Since then the movement to take up Marxism-Leninism and organize the proletarian revolution has deepened and broadened and it continues to receive the enthusiastic support of the Afro-American people. Today the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists and other genuine Marxist-Leninists are holding high the bright red banner of building the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party in the working class, opposing opportunism and social-chauvinism, and leading the revolutionary struggle.

The situation in the U.S. today is that the monopolycapitalists are carrying out all-round fascization of the society. As the masses step up their struggle with strikes, resistance to racist attacks, demonstrations, etc., the capitalists increase their suppression of the masses. The rich are bleeding the people white to make them pay for the economic crisis of capitalism, with wage-cuts, unemployment, inflation, speed-up and such schemes for plunder as Carter's energy fraud. Racist attackson the Afro-American people, namely the government-organized fascist anti-busing movement and others, are the cutting edge of growing fascism. They are aimed at suppressing the Afro-Americans and splitting the working class. But this growing fascism does not show strength; instead it shows the desperate weakness and impending doom of the monopoly capitalists. They are scared stiff of the upsurge of the masses, of the youth, even of the memory of the 1967 rebellion. But what is a nightmare for the monopoly capitalist exploiters is a festival for the workers and oppressed people. Let us hail the Detroit and Newark Rebellions of 1967 and pledge ourselves to honor their memory with selfless revolutionary struggle in the turbulent years ahead! Let us smash up all the government-organized racist attacks against the Black people! Let us fight against the shifting of the burden of the economic crisis onto our backs by the rich! Let us dedicate ourselves to overthrowing the rich and their government, the real oppressors of the Afro-Americans, of the entire workers and oppressed people, and ridding the world of evil U.S. imperialism, the root cause of racial discrimination, violent repression and capitalist exploitation ! End.

[Photo: Revolutionary Black masses of Detroit confront the bourgeoisie's police during 1967 Rebellion.]

[Box: FIGHT RACIAL DISCRIMINATIONAND VIOLENT REPRESSIONPoster Issued in Honor of the 10th Anniversary of the Detroit and Newark Rebellions - July 1967 (See Centerfold)]

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POWERFUL UPSURGE OF COAL MINERS' STRUGGLE

35,000Miners Wildcat: A Just Reply to an Obvious Attemptto SuppressMiners' Movement

At the end of June 35,000 coal miners in West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio began a strike against the cut-backs in their medical benefits by the monopoly capitalists. The capitalists cut the miners' health benefits to punish them for their heroic resistance struggle and in an effort to pressure the miners into giving up their strike movement to defend life and limb, against intensified capitalist exploitation in the mines, and to organize the unorganized miners. The U.S. monopoly capitalist class is faced with a sharpening economic and energy crisis. They are trapped in a growing contradiction between keeping their profits intact through massive imports of oil in order to dominate the world oil market and thus continue the control and plunder of the energy resources of the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America and their need to develop U.S. energy resources in preparation for an aggressive imperialist world war with the Soviet social-imperialists. To deal with this they are intensifying the exploitation of the coal min-, ers to maximize their profits from the coal sector and at the same time using ever more nefarious tactics to suppress the miners' struggle in order to have a stable and quiet workforce, "sacrificing" for the "national interests" against the fascist New Tsars of the Soviet Union. The cut-backs in the miners' health care benefits is the latest in a series of attempts to make the miners pay for the monopoly capitalists' economic and energy crises and to suppress the miners' powerful strike movement. The wildcat of the 35,000 miners is an entirely just and appropriate response to this criminal activity of the monopoly capitalists. The struggle has shocked them and thrown them further into chaos and crisis.

At the end of June 35,000 coal miners in West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio began a strike against the cut-backs in their medical benefits by the monopoly capitalists. The capitalists cut the miners' health benefits to punish them for their heroic resistance struggle and in an effort to pressure the miners into giving up their strike movement to defend life and limb, against intensified capitalist exploitation in the mines, and to organize the unorganized miners. The U.S. monopoly capitalist class is faced with a sharpening economic and energy crisis. They are trapped in a growing contradiction between keeping their profits intact through massive imports of oil in order to dominate the world oil market and thus continue the control and plunder of the energy resources of the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America and their need to develop U.S. energy resources in preparation for an aggressive imperialist world war with the Soviet social-imperialists. To deal with this they are intensifying the exploitation of the coal miners to maximize their profits from the coal sector and at the same time using ever more nefarious tactics to suppress the miners' struggle in order to have a stable and quiet workforce, "sacrificing" for the "national interests" against the fascist New Tsars of the Soviet Union. The cut-backs in the miners' health care benefits is the latest in a series of attempts to make the miners pay for the monopoly capitalists' economic and energy crises and to suppress the miners' powerful strike movement. The wildcat of the 35,000 miners is an entirely just and appropriate response to this criminal activity of the monopoly capitalists. The struggle has shocked them and thrown them further into chaos and crisis.

On June 20th, the trustees of the UMW Health and Retirement Fund claimed that the funds were being depleted by the miners' numerous wildcat strikes and for this reason, on July 1st, the coal miners, pensioners from the coal mines and their dependents will have to pay the first $250 of hospital expenses, 40% of professional medical fees and up to $500 a year in medical costs. These trustees are composed of representatives of the monopoly capitalist coal companies (Bituminous Coal Operators Association -- BCOA) and of the big-shot top labor bureaucrats of the United Mine Workers Union (UMW). The miners immediately responded to this obvious attempt by the coal capitalists and their willing labor lieutenants, the top UMW officials, to punish them and suppress their movement with another powerful wildcat strike. By June 23rd, 35,000 miners were out on strike in West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio. As well in Alabama, 10,000 miners who were striking against the firing of a miner indicated that the struggle against medical benefits was strengthening their resolve to carry through their wildcat struggle. The trustees announced the cut-back only four days before the miners' two week vacation in the hopes that they could quell any revolt in the vacation period. But when vacation ended the miners continued their strike. On July 9 and 10 miners from Districts 29 and 17 in West Virginia met and overwhelmingly voted to continue their wildcat. On Monday, July 11, at least 10,200 were on strike. Despite the bourgeoisie's claim that the majority of miners don't want to strike but are only honoring the picket lines of a handful of "agitators" and trouble-makers, miners walked out in mines all over southern West Virginia where no picketers whatsoever appeared. By Wednesday, July 13, every union mine in eastern Kentucky was shut down and the struggle had gained such support that even large numbers of unorganized miners were uniting with the UMW members and going out on strike against the monopoly capitalists. The strike is also reported to now have begun to spread to Pennsylvania as well as Ohio. Despite numerous attempts by the UMW officials to force the miners back to work, including the UMW president, Arnold Miller's claim that he will 'Negotiate" the coal capitalists into giving up their attack on the miners, the coal miners are sticking to mass revolutionary struggle to bring the coal monopolies to their knees.

In making the cut-backs in the miners' medical benefits, the trustees of the UMW Health and Retirement Fundclaimed that the wildcat strikes of the miners had cut the finances of the fund to the extent that by December it would have a cash-flow deficit of $24 million. In fact in March the trustees had already threatened the miners with cuts in medical benefits if they didn't stop their wildcat strikes and increase coal production. This is an obvious attempt to pressure the miners into peacefully accepting increased capitalist exploitation and to suppress their strike movement. In the first place the major financial problems of the Fund come not from decreased royalties due to shrinking coal production, but from inflation due to the crisis of the monopoly capitalist system. Through inflation and soaring prices the monopoly capitalists are making the workers pay for the capitalists' economic crisis. This is precisely what is taking place with the Health and Retirement Funds, and the issue for the miners is not to stop their wildcats but to intensify their resistance to the shifting of the burden of the economic crisis onto their backs.

In the second place, the claim that wildcats are hurting the fund denies the fact that the monopoly capitalists, if given their way, will never put money into improving the working and living conditions of the miners, but only into improving their own monopoly profits. In fact the BCOA viciously refused to transfer funds from the pension trust, which now has huge assets and an income much larger than what it is paying out, to the medical funds to insure that the miners' health is taken care of. BCOA president Brennan said that "to reallocate now would be to ask the industry to subsidize and condone wildcat strikes... The effect would be to encourage wildcat strikes and to destroy any effort to bring them under control." This is the logic of the monopoly capitalists. If the miners will just quit struggling, if they will just accept "peacefully" increasing deaths and injuries in the mines, passively agree to intensified exploitation through speed-up and other forms of intensification of labor, if they will just quietly stop organizing the unorganized miners, then the capitalists may give the miners their own money which has already accumulated in the UMW Retirement Fund.

The UMW Health and Retirement Fund is financed by royalty payments from the coal operators based on a formula that ties the amount of royalties to the amount of coal produced and the number of man-hours worked. Since the UMW contract was signed in December, 1974 coal production has expanded to all- time highs of 648 million tons in 1975 and 665 million tons in 1976 from the 603 million ton production in 1974. Despite this huge growth in coal produced, the UMW funds are going broke. This is due to the fact that the coal monopolies will only increase production where they are insured maximum profits. Over the last ten years the coal monopolies have been increasing production only in the strip mines and mostly in the western United States, where the miners are almost completely unorganized. To maximize profits in these coal fields the monopoly capitalists have continued to intensify exploitation of the miners and have used every manner of reactionary violence to keep the miners unorganized and defenseless before their attacks. Thus the miners in Stearns, Ky. have been forced to wage a heroic armed struggle in defense of their right to get organized.

In the deep mines in the east, where the miners are most concentrated, the most organized and where they have mounted a powerful movement for safety and against intensified capitalist exploitation, the coal monopolies have actually been decreasing the amount of coal production because it is not profitable enough for them. This fact puts the lie to the entire propaganda of the Bituminous Coal Operators Association (BCOA) president, Joseph Brennan, that "a viable, profitable industry can afford to pay better wages, provide better working conditions, give greater job security, and so forth. So to that extent, both management and labor have something in common" and "that everyone connected with coal should have a common interest in making the industry grow because it is so damned important to the future of this nation". Here we have an expanding coal industry, raking in huge monopoly profits, but not only are safety and working conditions deteriorating but even the miners' medical benefits are being cut. It is the drive for maximum profits and not the miners' wildcats that is the source of the deteriorating working and living conditions of the miners today.

The demagogic lie that the miners' wildcats are hurting their own living conditions is also an attempt by the monopoly capitalists to completely mystify what is the trouble and who are the trouble-makers in the U.S. coal fields today. The U.S. monopoly capitalists are facing a severe energy crisis. While there is no shortage of fuel as president Carter claims, the monopoly capitalists are trapped between their necessity to continue to control and plunder the energy resources of the people of Asia, Africa and Latin America in order to keep their monopoly profits intact and at the same time the necessity to develop U.S. energy resources, including coal, to ensure energy supplies in preparation for an aggressive world war with the Soviet social-imperialists. This crisis is manifested in the coal sector in the fact that the production and use of coal is less profitable than the plundered oil from the Mid-East and elsewhere. The oil monopolies, who control the coal industry, will not increase the production of coal unless they are insured maximum monopoly profits in line with those they receive from the control of oil. The Carter administration and the monopoly capitalists have embarked on a campaign to make the miners and U.S. working class pay for this energy crisis. On the one hand the government is throwing the workers' taxes into research and development of systems that will make coal more profitable to use (like greater combustion from burning of coal, coal gasification, etc.) and providing the utilities and industry tax incentives to pay for the new technology. In this way they hope to make the use of coal profitable enough for the utilities to pay the high monopoly prices. On the other hand, through the U.S. Bureau of Mines, the government is spending some $450 million of the workers' taxes on developing systems that further intensify the labor of the deep miners and surface miners, so as to directly increase the profits of the coal companies. Under these programs, which are no different from the Nixon and Ford programs except that they are dressed up in the call for "sacrifices" for the "national interests", the miners have faced increasing dangers from injuries and fatalities in the mines, they are facing speed-up and the most arbitrary and fascist suspension of their basic rights.

But the miners have completely opposed these reactionary programs of the monopoly capitalists and have organized a powerful movement to resist the shifting of the burden of the economic and energy crisis onto their backs. In the period from 1968 to the contract strike in 1974 the miners were averaging some 100 strikes a month. Since the contract strike the miners have waged over 5,000 strikes, including nation-wide strikes of 60,000 miners in 1975 and 100,000 miners in 1976. Already in 1977 from January to May 896,400 man-days were lost from strikes, up from the 453,000 man-days lost to strikes in January to May in 1976. The miners have been fighting consistently to defend their safety and against intensified exploitation. In fact, due to the class struggle of the miners, productivity in the mines has decreased since 1969 pushing back the constant speeding up of production by the monopoly capitalists. The miners have not only fought the monopoly capitalists but have also spearheaded a movement against the government, fighting every attempt by the capitalists' state to suppress their struggles, demanding an end to use of the courts against the strikes, and demanding such things as that the government stop deteriorating the living conditions of the miners and their families. The current wildcat against the cutback in health care benefits is an inspiring part of this upsurge of the miners movement. While arduously resisting the shifting of the burden of the economic crisis onto their backs, the miners are smashing every attempt to suppress their movement, and are steadily, day by day, developing their revolutionary mass struggles. It is this class struggle which is further putting the monopoly capitalists into crisis and is smashing up their sinister dreams of labor "cooperation" for the profit of the capitalists. End.

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Chronology of the Current Miners' Wildcat Strike

BACKGROUND ON THE UMW WELFARE AND RETIREMENT FUND

1946:

Welfare and Retirement Fund established. At this time the mines bad been seized by the federal government during a contract strike, and this agreement was negotiated with the government. Royalties on a a tonnage basis.

1974:

The 1974 contract established four funds. The 1950 Benefit and 1950 Pension Trusts, and the 1974 Benefit and 1974 Pensions Trusts. Basically the 1950 plans covered all mines, widows, and disabled miners who became eligible before January 1, 1976. Funding arrangements for the four funds is unclear, although it is said that the current wildcat movement is hurting the 1950 Funds the most (see UMW Journal, June 1-15, 1976, p. 22)

July-August 1975:

Wildcat strike, shutting down most of eastern coal fields.

September 1975:

The International Executive Board (IEB) of the UMW shamelessly adopts a 10-point program for the suppression of wildcat strikes with the intention of aiding the capitalists and suppressing the upsurge in the miners movement. According to the officialUMWJournal, the plan calls for "specific actions... to reduce the incidence of wildcat strikes and to ensure, that coalfield disputes are settled fairly and quickly at the mine site level." The part of this plan that has been made public includes:

1) A contract education program for local union officers and mine committeemen.

2) A recommendation that, following a walk-out, industry management meet immediately with the mine "communication" committee (including the local union president and chairmen of the mine and safety committees).

3) Locals to hold meetings as soon as possible after walkouts and that "an officer of the district attend the meeting and have the responsibility to direct the men back to work".

4) A denunciation of the 24-hour rule (by which many locals require that if one shift strikes, the other two shifts must also strike), which is arbitrarily declared, as if the IEB were a capitalist court, to be a direct violation of the 1974 Contract and of the Constitution of the UMW.

5) Denies the use of district or international money to defend any members or officers engaged in stranger picketing (picketing at a mine other than one's own) or to pay fines or damages assessed by a court for wildcats.

6) Grants itself the power to, in "emergency situations", charge and try members who violate IEB decisions and "seriously jeopardize the integrity of the union".

7) Declares that the principal responsibility for enforcing contracts rests on the districts and their officers.

8) Piously declares that none of the provisions of the 10-point program of the IEB intrudes on the safety provisions of the 1974 Contract or on the rights of individual members with regard to safety, which are to be miraculously safeguarded without mass struggle against the coal capitalists.

January 1976:

Difficulty in the Anthracite Fund, which is financed by royalties from anthracite production alone. Fund near bankruptcy, with pensions at $30 per month. In 1946, 80,000 anthracite miners produced J2 million tons, while today 2,000 miners produce 6 million tons, royalties from which must finance pensions for 15,000 retirees. Six-point program to bolster the fund.

1. Collect delinquent royalties;

2. Review all applicants carefully;

3. Reduce costs of administration;

4. Raise the royalties;

5. Get help from the government;

6. Loan from the UMW.

BCOA sues the UMW, asking court to order the UMW to suspend the autonomy of local unions and districts, to refuse to defend local unions and individuals in courts, to remove officers of locals and districts, to discipline and remove individual members engaged in wildcats. Other suits also asked for millions in damages due to 1975 wildcat.

UMW asks suit be dismissed saying:

1. BCOA failed to instruct companies in the new contract.

2. BCOA refused to stop member companies from committing flagrant grievances of contract.

3. BCOA failed to tell members to grant authority to mine supervisors to settle grievances at the mine site.

4. BCOA failed to enforce on its members uniform contract interpretations, so every issue had to be fought out at every mine.

5. BCOA permitted its members to unilaterally modify the contract without consultation with union.

Failing to get the suit dismissed, UMW filed a counter-claim basically asking the court to make the BCOA follow a program to live up to the 1974 contract.

June 1976:

Letter from BCOA to UMW President Miller on question of wildcats and the Welfare and Retirement Fund in which the BCOA tries to use the Fund to blackmail the workers into giving up the use of strikes: "Under no circumstances will BCOA agree, if asked, to reopen the 1974 Agreement to make up for a deficit in any of the Trusts that comes about because of unauthorized stoppages. It is clear to us... that the continuation of these unauthorized work stoppages will severely threaten the financial stability of the Funds...While the BCOA has agreed to (certain) administrative changes, we feel strongly that the only guarantee of the Funds' long-term ability to pay contractually prescribed benefits is the ability of the coal industry to engage in uninterrupted production of coal as anticipated by the bargainers of 1974. Any interruption of production represents a direct and immediate threat to the solvency of the Funds. Therefore, we believe the Union should undertake a major educational campaign for its members on the effect of wildcat strikes. We also feel that the Union should take all appropriate action to end wildcats, including the full implementation of the 10-point program adopted by the International Executive Board in September of 1975."

Arnold Miller agrees with the BCOA in his reply: "I am in receipt of your letter. While I do not agree with your analysis, I do feel that unauthorized work stoppages deprive the Funds of badly needed revenues and our members of badly needed wages.

"Unauthorized work stoppages hurt all parties concerned -- both union and management as well as the Funds. Just as they affect a number of different parties, they also have a number of causes and there is clearly joint responsibility among both labor and management for the present state of labor relations in the coal fields."

Speaking of efforts to resolve the wildcat "problem" Miller said "Such efforts on the part of both labor and management will be the best means of accomplishing our common goal of insuring strict adherence to the 1974 (contract) and reducing the unacceptable level of unauthorized work stoppages. " Thus Miller declares that his "goal" in life, a goal held in common with the coal capitalists, is to be a strike-breaker.

July 1976:

Statement by Miller, on the. question of wildcats in Virginia and West Virginia, costing the Funds $500,000 per day in income: "The figures released by the Funds should make all UMW members think again about the damage that is done by unnecessary wildcat strikes. If there's a question of safety, our contracts provide the right to refuse unsafe work, to withdraw miners in danger, and to file safety grievances. Contract grievances should be pursued through the grievance procedure."

October 1976:

Article in UMW Journal which begins "Work stoppages in 1975 and 1976 have threatened the stability of the UMW Health and Retirement Funds, particularly the 1950 Pension Trust and the 1950 Benefits Trust, which support the health benefits of most retired members and their families." To alleviate financial problems, an agreement was worked out to share funds from the more prosperous 1974 Funds, and as a condition of this, the Fund, the UMW, and the BCOA all made statements on the necessity to stop wildcats in order to preserve the funds, which were reprinted in the UMW Journal.

CHRONOLOGY ON CURRENT WILDCAT STRUGGLE AGAINST CUTS IN HEALTH BENEFITS

March 1977:

In March Trustees of the UMW Health and-Retirement Funds sent letters to the miners threatening them that cuts in medical benefits would be made unless coal production -- to which royalties to the Fund are tied -- was substantially increased (at least in essence demanding a stop to the miners' strikes).

June 20, 1977:

Trustees of the UMW Health and Retirement Funds ( who oversee the UMW pension and medical programs) announced that as of July 1st miners' healthcare benefits wall be cut. Miners, pensioners and their dependents, who previously received cost-free health care, will now have to pay the first $250 and up to $500 a year for in-patient services at a hospital or skilled nursing facility. As well, they must pay 40% of the cost of any professional medical care fees.

The trustees claimed the cut was necessary because of a loss of royalties to the fund due to the cut in coal production caused by the miners' strikes. Coal companies pay royalties to the fund based on a formula established by the 1974 contract tied to the amount of coal production and man-hours worked. The trustees claimed that without the cut, the fund would have a $24 million cash-flow deficit by December.

The trustees, who are composed of representatives from the UMW and from the BCOA, announced the cut-back after the BCOA refused to permit the transfer of funds from the 1974 Pension Fund into the medical accounts; even though the pension accounts have more than $300 million in assets, and a monthly income far exceeding its expenditures, and could have easily underwritten the medical program. Joseph P. Brennan, president of BCOA, said "No cut in benefits would be required today were it not for the wildcat strikes. Therefore to reallocate now would be to ask the industry to subsidize and condone wildcat strikes... The effect would be to encourage wildcat strikes and to destroy any effort to bring them under control."

June 21, 1977:

Wildcats began against the reduction in health-care benefits with at least 10,000 miners in seven southern West Virginia counties out and an additional 1,200 miners on strike in eastern Kentucky. Besides these miners, 10,000 miners were out in Alabama in a wildcat that began on Tuesday, June 14, against the firing of a miner from the Jim Walter Corporation Blue Creek No. 3 mine near Birmingham. UMW spokesmen indicated that the struggle against the cut-backs in health-care benefits was strengthening the miners' resolve to continue their Alabama wildcat.

June 22, 1977:

The wildcat spreads, with a total of 27,000 miners out in the southern Appalachian coal fields. Members of five UMW locals (totaling 4,000 members) in southern West Virginia agreed to return to work.

June 23, 1977:

At least 22,000 miners in southern Appalachia remained on strike against the health-care benefits cut-back, including 2,000 in eastern Ky. An indication of the anger and resolve of the miners is that in Local 1827 in eastern Ky. (membership of about 1,000 miners) only two miners voted to return to work. 35, 000 miners in eastern Ky. and W. Virginia out.

June 24, 1977:

Miners begin a two-week vacation, thus temporarily ending the wildcat.

July 8, 1977:

Arnold Miller, president of the UMW, reopened the 1974 UMW-BCOA contract in what he claimed was an attempt to force the BCOA to negotiate to transfer income from the pension funds to the medical funds. Miller refused to comment about the possibility of a national strike.

July 9, 1977:

At a rally in Sophia, West Virginia, 200 to 250 miners, of District 29 voted to continue the wildcat against health-care benefit cuts.

July 10, 1977:

At a rally in Danville, West Virginia, some 300 miners of District 17 voted to continue the wildcat.

At this rally miners pointed out that:

(1) figures obtained from the funds indicated that inflation has cost the funds twice as much as wildcat strikes;

(2) that the cutbacks arc "blackmail" by the coal companies, who forced the cut-backs to get across the message that "if you don't stop fighting us, well, you can't have your welfare. They're trying to hold our people hostage." "If they can get this cut across, if we let them use the benefit cuts to make us work and rob us of our other rights, why then the union will go down";

(3) that the UMW and BCOA "didn't negotiate enough money into the funds to begin with and inflation has robbed the funds... Even if we didn't strike, we willstill have a rotten fund." End.

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Stearns Miners Persist in Armed Defense of their Right to Organize

[Photo: Stearns coal miners on the sand-bag fortifications from which they have been waging a strike and defending their right to organize, guns in hand.]

On July 7, coal miners at Stearns Kentucky wagedanother militant gun battle with the Blue Diamond Coal Company mine guards. After six hours of intense shooting in which the mine guard gun thugs firedhundreds of rounds of ammunition from high poweredrifles and machine guns at the Stearns' strikers, theminers were able to inflict serious wounds on onegun thug and to again successfully defend their rightto organize. For over a year the 150 miners at BlueDiamond's Justus mine have been on strike for safeworking conditions, a UMW contract and in defenseof their right to organize. This strike comes at atime when sharp class struggle is the order of theday throughout the coal fields. The U.S. monopolycapitalists are faced with a severe economic crisis, and energy resources, like coal, are particularlyimportant for them as they prepare to wage an aggressive imperialist world war with the Soviet social- imperialists. In this situation the coal barons aretrying to make the miners pay for the economic crisis, they are bending every effort to suppress thestruggles of the miners and in eastern Kentucky theyare going all out to keep the miners unorganized anddefenseless before this onslaught of capital. At Stearns, Blue Diamond has gotten court injunctions, arrests and fines against the strikers and they havelaunched a furious armed assault against the minersand their picket line. But the Steams' miners haveresponded tit-for-tat to every attack. They havebroadened their support from residents in the areaand miners across the country, they have defied court injunctions and several times trapped and confronted the company officials, and they have persisted in waging armed revolutionary struggle to beat back every attack by the coal barons and their government. Their spirit of defiance and armed resistance is an inspiration to the fighting workers all over the United States.

The strike for a UMW contract and to end unsafe working conditions began one year ago on July 17, 1976 under the slogan of "Remember Scotia". Scotia is another Blue Diamond mine, where 26 miners were brutally killed in two gas explosions in March of 1976; and it is these same kind of unsafe working conditions which is the key issue in the Stearns strike. Even according to the Mine Enforcement Safety Administration (MESA), an apologist for the unsafe mining conditions and a federal agency to insure maximum coal production, the Justus mine is unsafe. Their figures show that the frequency rate for non-fatal injuries in the Justus mine is 31% higher than the national average and the rate for disabling injuries is 72% above the national average. In the first half of 1976 MESA inspectors found 101 violations and 8 times issued closure orders after finding conditions of imminent danger. Even after Scotia mine blew up twice because of inadequate ventilation, this same problem was discovered 15 times at the Justus mine. Coal mining is dirty, back breaking work, and the most dangerous in the country. Every year hundreds of miners are killed and thousands are severely injured, while nearly all miners suffer from long-term diseases like black lung. For the coal capitalists, health and safety conditions are a matter of dollars and cents. There are no profits from improving working conditions; a ton of coal with or without blood on it sells at the same price. As one Steams miner put it "They'll plainly tell you, its cheaper to replace men than machines. My own foreman told me, when the rocks start falling, get the equipment out of the way". The miners have learned from bitter experience that they can depend only on themselves for the protection of their lives and limbs, and to defend themselves they must have organization. It is for this reason that they organized themselves into the United Mine Workers and struck for the right to organize their safety committee (a provision of the national UMW contract) which has the authority to enforce safety conditions and shut down the mine completely whenever the miners determine conditions are unsafe.

From the beginning of the strike in July 1976 up to January of the next year, the Blue Diamond coal barons tried through negotiations to talk the miners into returning to work. But the strikers remain firm in their resolve and refused to give up their just demands, so the coal monopoly capitalists escalated their attacks on the miners. They broke off negotiations and hired a private army of security guards. In February they got the government to issue an injunction to limit pickets to two. And in March they announced their plans to hire scab labor and began a campaign of open reactionary violence against the Stearns' strikers. Nightly the Blue Diamond mine guards fired at the picket line. Miners' cars, their local union hall, and the area surrounding the picket line are completely riddled with bullet holes. On June 23, these gun thugs crept up with a shot gun and at close range shot and wounded one striker. On numerous occasions they have laid ambush and tried to shoot down miners who were away from the picket line. Besides using their private army of gun thugs, Blue Diamond has used the state to try to suppress the miners' strike. The local courts while taking no action against the gun thugs, have issued injunctions limiting pickets and denying the miners the right to bear arms. The local union has been fined over $4,000 for contempt charges and on May 22 Judge Johnson ordered the local to post $100,000 ransom to pay the company and its thugs for damage during the strike. In April, 27 miners were indicted and charged with armed assault, kidnapping and armed robbery for their just armed self-defense struggles. Then in May, the NLRB, while refusing to hear any complaints against the coal barons, charged the UMW with unfair labor practices. All through this period the Kentucky State Police have daily escorted the gun thugs to and from the Blue Diamond mine, they have sent additional police to patrol the property 24 hours a day and have threatened tosend in as many troopers as are "necessary to keep the peace". All of this clearly indicates that the state -- with its courts, jails, police, etc. --is no friend of the miners but an instrument of the capitalists to suppress the miners' struggle and ensure "labor peace".

Despite these broad attacks the Stearns' miners have not retreated one inch. They have waged tit-for- tat resistance to each and every one of these attacks of the coal barons and their state, and have constantly broadened the front of struggle and gained increasing support from the residents of the area and miners across the country. The miners have held a number of militant demonstrations in support of their cause, going as far as Knoxville Tennessee, and twice they have surrounded and trapped Blue Diamond officials, who only escaped with the help of the state police. In one incident the Stearns' Women's Club trapped Blue Diamond officials and officials of the courts and police inside a courthouse where they were conspiring against the miners. When the Steams' mine president tried to escape the women caught him and gave him a stem thrashing. The miners have consistently defied the courts' injunctions and against all threats have absolutely refused to lay down their guns. They have defended their picket line and their right to organize, and time and time again used revolutionary armed struggle to combat the reactionary violence of the monopoly capitalists. The miners have built sandbagged fortifications and bunkers, returned shot for shot with the reactionary gun thugs, and have now inflicted serious wounds onto four of the thugs. Enthusiasm among the miners is so high that many pull double shifts on the picket line and refuse to leave except to go eat. Across the access road to the mine they have hung a huge banner proclaiming "The Stearns Miners Will Win!" Next to the company property is an effigy of a mine guard hanging from a tree stump and a sign declares "Warning, the Stearns Miners Have Determined that Scabbing is Dangerous to Your Health". Due to this spirit of uncompromising struggle against the class enemy and their solid armed resistance not even one scab has dared to cross the picket line, the mine has not yielded even one ounce of coal for over a year and the mine guard gun thugs are completely cut off to the extent that their food, ammunition and replacements have to be flown in by helicopter.

Today, the battle in the U.S. coal fields is increasingly taking on the appearance of all out war between labor and capital. The monopoly capitalists are beset with the most severe economic and energy crises and the Carter administration has stressed that the coal energy resources are an essential element in the monopoly capitalists' preparations for a predatory world war with the fascist New Tsars of the Soviet Union. The monopoly capitalists want to shift the full burden of the economic crisis onto the backs of the workers and they are resorting to increasingly nefarious methods to enforce "labor peace". But the miners are giving them tit-for-tat and constantly developing their revolutionary mass struggles. In eastern Kentucky the battle lines are being drawn over the right of the miners to organize. Kentucky is the largest coal producing state in the country and eastern Kentucky is about the most unorganized, with some 75% of the miners still unorganized. The monopoly capitalists would like nothing better than to keep the miners unorganized and defenseless so that the capitalists can "peacefully" institute their vicious energy program. But the eastern Kentucky miners are increasingly dashing to dust the monopoly capitalists' dreams of "labor peace". And each year the miners become increasingly conscious of the necessity to organize themselves to wage class struggle against the bloody coal barons. In 1974, for example, the Brookside miners waged a particularly determined struggle; a struggle in which one miner was brutally murdered by the monopoly capitalists; and after over a year forced the coal barons to recognize their union. The current strike at Stearns is part of this developing trend and as the coal barons are resorting to more open reactionary violence against the miners, the miners themselves are taking up armed defense of their right to organize. By strengthening their unity, continually broadening and deepening the struggle, and by persisting in armed revolutionary struggle it is quite certain that "The Stearns Miners Will Win!". End.

[Photo: Stearns coal miners give a stem warning to those who would trample on the interests of the proletariat.]

[Photo: Women have vigorously participated in the Stearns strike. Here members of the Steams Women's Club gather outside the union hall during a rally they helped organize.]

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A Brief Chronology of the Strike at the Justus Mine in Stearns, Kentucky

Origin:

On July 17, 1976,.about 180-200 miners walked out of the Blue Diamond Coal Company's Justus mine at Stearns, Kentucky. They were seeking representation by the United Mine Workers (UMW). Safety was the key issue. The key slogan was "Remember Scotia" -- another Blue Diamond mine where 26 men were killed in two explosions in March 1976.

Demands:

(1) Formation of a safety committee (employee-dominated) that would have the authority to "pull men out of the mines" when it deems it too dangerous to work. Safety is not a major consideration in Blue Diamond's operations at the mine. The company's policy is to get machinery out first when there is an accident. One miner, who suffered injuries in a mantrip wreck, says: "They'll (the company) plainly tell you, 'It's cheaper to replace men than it is equipment.'"

(2) The miners are also demanding that the Justus mine in Stearns, owned by the Blue Diamond Coal Company of Tennessee, recognize the UMW as their collective bargaining agent.

(3) The miners are demanding a contract with the "standard provisions of the national contract" between the UMW and the Bituminous Coal Operators Association (BCOA) including wages and contract length.

January 21, 1977:

Blue Diamond Coal Co. broke off contract negotiations, then began to hire security guards (Storm Security System) in preparation for attempts to bust the picket line of UMW strikers. Soon after the arrival of the security guards, the attacks on UMW strikers began. This reactionary violence included shooting incidents and suppression by the courts, police and the whole state machine.

February 23, 1977:

Circuit Judge J. B. Johnson issued injunction limiting the number of pickets at the mine to two.

March 15, 1977:

Stearns President Frank Thonias told nearly 200 strikers the firm will look for permanent replacements if the miners don't report for work by today. UMW official says they don't plan to report to work and there could be trouble if replacements are hired. "We're not going to be pushed off our jobs."

March 16, 1977:

The miners reiterated their intention to buck the company's ultimatum that they return to work by yesterday or permanent replacements would be hired. None returned and no replacements were hired.

McCreary county sheriff Joe Perry found bullet holes in office building and supply shop; and in the picket shack and makeshift union hall at the picket site. Blue Diamond secretary said: "We want things as peaceful as they can be."

March 18-19, 1977:

This month (March) about 75 wives, daughters, sisters, mothers, etc. organized the Stearns Women's Club to support the strike. One of the first actions was a demonstration (March 18-19) protesting the arrest of several miners involved in a shooting incident at the mine.

Although the incident involved both the security guards and the miners (the guards had guns and the miners had rocks), only the miners were kept in jail and fined on disorderly conduct charges. The guards were released (Storm Security Systems).

The women picketed the McCreary County Courthouse for two days to protest the violence of company guards and the use of Kentucky State Troopers to escort guards to and from the mines. Sheriff Perry called in the state police for help on Friday (March 18) when he, the county judge and Stearns President Thomas and others were trapped in the courthouse. When Thomas tried to leave, he was assaulted, kicked, jostled and scratched by some of the demonstrators; his life was also threatened.

The circuit judge has prohibited striking miners from carrying sidearms and/or rifles but security guards are allowed to carry guns when they're on company property.

March 25, 1977:

Harry Patrick, UMW official from Washington, visited Stearns and said the union should throw its full weight behind the striking Justus miners. Patrick recommended bringing in union miners from around the country to support the Stearns miners.

Sheriff Perry said he'd make a request for state police help as soon as he sees "additional people on the scene". Capt. L. Faulconer of State Police London Post said his men will continue "monitoring" the Stearns strike if outside miners arrive... He probably would send in as many troopers as are "necessary to keep the peace".

April 1, 1977:

More than 150 miners and supporters picketed the Blue Diamond Coal Co. 's corporate headquarters in Knoxville, Tenn. The protest focused primarily on Blue Diamond's refusal to agree to key UMW safety proposals.

April 13, 1977:

Two employees of Storm Security System were shot when they drove up to a striker's house to pick up three Stearns, guards. The guards were 10 miles from the mine and stopped at a picketing miner's house to use the phone. (This, in itself, raises questions of what the guards were doing 10 miles from the mine and why they stopped at a picketing miner's house.)

April 22, 1977:

McCreary County Grand Jury handed down 31 indictments (including 27 to striking miners) in connection with the shooting on April 13. The 31 are all charged armed assault, kidnapping and armed robbery and bail was set at $15,000 each.

Indictments were issued for several men who are not known by either the court, or the striking miners or the Storm Security Agency. One was issued for a man who has been out of the state for the past several months.

May 1, 1977:

Another guard wounded at Stearns mine, shot in leg; third Storm employee to be shot.

May 2, 1977:

Spokesman for Storm Security System said that more state policemen are needed at the Justus mine.

May 3, 1977:

UMW organizer Lee Potter said the courts and state police have sided with the coal company. Bourgeois mass media says that two sides exist: 1) striking miners and 2) company, but adds that the Sheriff and the state police are "in the middle".

Potter also said the union has been restrained by the courts while the security guards are allowed to have guns, and the state police have arrested only miners in the months of shooting. The state police have doubled the number of troopers in McCreary county (from 4 to 8) and established 24-hour patrols around the Justus mine.

Sheriff Perry is running for Democratic nomination for county judge. He said the only way to end the tense situation is for the miners and the company to get back to the bargaining table.

May 6, 1977:

300 striking miners and supporters held a rally at Whitley City for miners on strike at Justus mine at Stearns.

May 9, 1977:

Bourgeoisie's editorial, "No One Can Stay Neutral During a Coal-Mine Strike": Describes the two sides: one side is the striking miners and the other side is the coal company and the Storm Security Agency. Then says there are groups caught in the middle of the Justus mine dispute:

1) state police, who contend that they're playing it "strictly down the middle" enforcing the law against both sides.

2) the area's merchants -- business is hurting because/ the miners are living on less money, the mine was the county's largest employer.

3) county politicians are affected by the strike--no traditional public speaking because of the tense situation; one candidate was shot in the hand on April 25th as he drove to a store.

May 22, 1977:

Stearns union found in contempt for violating circuit court judge's order to limit picketing. Fined union $4,050 or $450 for each of nine violations. The judge ordered the union to post a $100, 000 bond as a condition to continue picketing -- to protect the company and its employees from damage during the strike. All of the violations occurred since March. They include;

1) blocking an access road to the mine with logs, rocks, cars, etc.;

2) destroying utility lines, telephone cable and company's main gate;

3) firing shots into company buildings;

4) shooting three security guards.

Judge Johnson issued two warnings to the UMW and its members.

He said law enforcement officials have been ordered to arrest anyone seen violating his order restricting picketing at the mine. Johnson said, "The maximum sentence will be the rule rather than the exception in the event of future contempt citations resulting in convictions".

The second warning concerned the union hall adjacent to the picket line. "If it is again used for a staging area for mass picketing, storing of weapons or any such illegal purpose, its use will be enjoined entirely", Johnson said, lie also directed the Kentucky state police to continue escorting Stearns employees and private security guards to and from work. The court costs from the action were charged to the UMW.

May 24, 1977:

UMW to appeal ruling; the attorney for union will ask Judge Johnson for a stay of his order requiring union to post bond. The attorney will also appeal to state court of appeals Johnson's decision finding union guilty of nine counts of contempt.

May 25, 1977:

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) accused UMW of unfair labor practices. The union will be asked to end any practices found to violate the National Labor Relations Act at hearing scheduled for September 19, 1977.

Meanwhile, Johnson postponed till May 27 the deadline for the order that UMW post $100,000 bond.

NLRB confirmed that a counter-complaint filed by UMW was dismissed last week. The counter-complaint charged the "employer or its agent with being engaged in violence".

May 27, 1977:

The UMW local at Stearns mining company has posted a $100,000 bond in McCreary Circuit Court.

June 25, 1977:

Man picketing near Stearns mine is shot in leg by company guard. Guard arrested and charged with first degree assault. Pickets were "really mad" and were "ready to fight" after shooting.

125 miners and supporters held a four hour demonstration on June 24 at the Blue Diamond headquarters in Tennessee. Personnel officer for the company blocked the demonstrators and called the police on them. The miners denounced company officials peering out of their office windows.

To the present:

The struggle continues. End.

[Back to Top]

ANDREW YOUNG, MOUTHPIECE FOR IMPERIALIST PACIFISM

The interview with Andrew Young, the Black U.S. ambassador the the UN, which appeared in the May issue of Playboy magazine, clearly reveals Young's role as a mouthpiece for the imperialist pacifism of the war-mongering U.S. imperialists. At a time when the U.S. government almost daily reveals the development of new weapons of mass destruction, such as the cruise missile and the neutron bomb, and keeps up a constant barrage of threats about the growing danger of a new world war with the Russian social-imperialists, Andrew Young's job is to "prove" that the U.S. imperialist government is "peaceful", "democratic", "anti-racist" and in favor of "human rights". The purpose of this deception is to dupe the American people, the African people and the people of other countries into supporting the U.S. government, giving up their revolutionary struggles and becoming cannon fodder in U.S. imperialism's wars of aggression for world domination.

As the economic crisis of the capitalist revisionist world deepens without let-up, the two big imperialist alliances -- NATO led by the U.S. and the Warsaw Pact led by Russia--are searching for a way out of the crisis by re-dividing the world through war, each aiming to acquire more slaves to exploit. Each side is jockeying intensively for advantageous positions for this war, while covering its evil aims with deceptive propaganda. The Soviet Union claims to be a "socialist" country while the U.S. claims to stand for "human rights". Andrew Young is a major mouthpiece of this campaign of imperialist pacifism for the U.S. imperialists.

Young's interview with Playboy shows that:

1. He completely embraces and promotes the reactionary goals of aggressive U.S. imperialism -- world domination, the enslavement of nations and the suppression of the revolution in the United States;

2. He uses the method of imperialist pacifism to conceal the war preparations and counter-revolutionary activities of U.S. imperialism on a world scale;

3. In particular, he promotes neo-colonial slavery for the oppressed nations of Africa, Asia and Latin America in hopes of eliminating revolution there and hitching them to the war chariot of U.S. imperialism; and

4. Using Black bourgeois cultural nationalism, Young promotes capitulation to the government at home and tries to split the working masses. His aim is to liquidate the revolutionary struggle of the Afro-American people and of the entire American working class and people so as to free the hands of the U.S. imperialists for war.

YOUNG ADVOCATES U.S. IMPERIALIST ENSLAVEMENT OF THE WORLD

The Playboy interview reveals in depth the full commitment of Young, the civil rights movement "veteran", to the reactionary, enslaving goals of the U.S. imperialist vultures. When the interview was first released, many newspapers headlined Young's statement that "the Nixon administration bent over backward for the Russians and, in a sense, it sold out to the Soviet Union". This statement by a "liberal" shows that the liberal bourgeois "peaceniks" like Young are at bottom no different from such "conservative" bourgeois "hawks" and fascists as Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. Each brand of bourgeois politician is eager to show his masters that he is the most militant in the aggressive rivalry with the Russian New Tsars for world domination. Liberalism in America today, as Young shows, is merely aggressive fascism in concealed form.

The enslavement of scores of entire nations is the life-blood of U.S. imperialist foreign policy. Young, the supposed champion of the oppressed Afro-American and African peoples, embraces this great-nation chauvinist program with the greatest enthusiasm. "I believe in neo-colonialism", he says, "when it's moving in the right direction."(!!) U.S. imperialism relies on neo-colonialism, on financial links and economic and military alliances hidden behind alleged independence, for its widest-scale exploitation of colonial slaves. Neo-colonialism is imperialism's last and most sophisticated means of plunder. Through the lackeys of imperialism, the reactionary bourgeoisie and feudal landlords in various countries, represented by such fascists as Mobutu of the Congo (Kinshasa) ("I like Mobutu a lot", chirps Young about his class brother), Pinochet of Chile, Suharto of Indonesia, Marcos of the Philippines, Hussein of Jordan, etc., U.S. imperialism sucks the blood of the oppressed peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America. But nothing pleases the imperialist "peacenik" Young more than this "democratic" method of mass murder. After all, it even "respects" the "right to self-determination" of the oppressed nations, who are allowed to be "independent" while their blood is sucked and their affairs are dictated by indirect financial and other means! The example of Andrew Young, this supposed champion of the oppressed blacks, shows that one cannot embrace the goals of U.S. imperialism's rivalry with the New Tsars for world domination without becoming a blood-soaked advocate of the enslavement of entire nations of people.

U.S. imperialism cannot fight a war without suppressing the struggles of the working class and oppressed people at home. The revolutionary struggle of the American masses, who long to overthrow' and smash the monopoly capitalist government and system and live free of aggressive war and exploitation, are a big obstacle to the war plots of U.S. imperialism. Therefore, Andrew' Young, whom the bourgeois press calls a champion of the oppressed Afro-Americans, is trying with all his might to liquidate this revolution by instilling in the masses a treacherous love and trust for the oppressor government. When Martin Luther King was assassinated by the U.S. imperialists in 1968, did Andrew Young feel even one particle of revolutionary hatred for the government? No! He even says in the interview that the murder was "a blessing"!! Oh, he "really got angry", he says, but at whom? -- "at Martin for leaving us in all of that mess". As if this were not incredible enough, this outright lackey of the bourgeoisie goes on to say, when asked whom he blames for the assassination: "It was inconceivable to us that the government was capable of doing anything to hurt us."!!! It is absolutely amazing that a grown man would think that the Black people, who immediately fingered the government as the murderer of King and rose up in rebellion against it, would be so stupid as to believe such a fairy-tale. But this fairy-tale represents the attempts of Andrew Young, the instrument of the U.S. imperialist government, to suppress the revolution in the United States.

These examples, which are representative of the content and tone of the entire Playboy interview, show how Andrew Young fully embraces the enslaving goals of aggressive, fascist U.S. imperialism, internationally as well as at home.

ANDREW YOUNG, IMPERIALIST "PEACENIK"

Andrew Young has become U.S. imperialism's most effective mouthpiece for imperialist pacifism. He is the main standard-bearer of Jimmy Carter's "human rights" crusade. Since his appointment as UN ambassador, Young has traveled to Africa and has made numerous "controversial" statements "against" racism -- all aimed at portraying the aggressive U.S. imperialist government as "anti-racist", "democratic", in favor of "human rights" and "peace-loving" in contrast to the Russian devils. This activity is political deception meant to cover up the U.S. imperialist war preparations and mobilize the oppressed peoples abroad and in the U.S. into the "anti-Soviet social- imperialist front" the U.S. is preparing in order to fight the equally aggressive "anti-U.S. imperialist front" the New Tsars of the Kremlin are setting up. Comrade Stalin described imperialist pacifism as follows: "Imperialist pacifism is an instrument for the preparation of war and for disguising this preparation by hypocritical talk of peace." In the present case, the imperialist pacifism of the Carter administration is expressed by Andrew Young in words designed deliberately to appeal to the sincere aspirations of the oppressed and exploited peoples of Africa and other oppressed nations for independence and freedom in hopes of persuading them to hitch their wagons to the U.S. superpower for war against the Russian superpower for world domination.

The statements by Young in the Playboy interview fully bear this out. While, as mentioned, Young aims at strengthening the U.S. hand in the U.S. -Soviet rivalry, his method is to portray the U.S. government under the Carter administration as a "friend" of the oppressed people. Young made headlines declaring that Nixon and Ford are "racists" (what a discovery!). In a later press interview "clarifying" his statements about Nixon and Ford, Young then slandered the American people as racists -- painting the white and Black masses with the same brush as Nixon and Ford, the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazis. But, according to Young in the Playboy interview, it seems that, out of all this mass of racism, both Jimmy Carter and his mother Lillian are both miraculously "free of racism"! Young even claims that the Carter administration has become the savior of the oppressed masses, especially the Blacks: "Carter realizes he never could have become President had it not been for the civil rights movement. In his 1964 Nobel prize address, Dr. King talked about putting an end to racism, poverty and war. And, in a sense, that's what this Administration is doing. We've kind of redeemed the soul of America from the moral lethargy of the Nixon years. And because Jimmy Carter is free of racism, because he struggled throughout his life in an environment that was infected by racism, he has the capacity as President of the United States to do more to put an end to racism than anybody since Martin Luther King." To call the very government which is world-notorious for slaughtering the Black people, and is still doing so, the savior of the Blacks is to be a most servile liar for the bourgeoisie.

According to Young, the very foundations of American bourgeois society, the big capitalist enterprises themselves, are capable of eliminating racism and the imperialist oppression of nations. Young says: "Capitalism has got to separate itself from racism and demonstrate that it's not dependent on racism. I think we demonstrated that to some measure in the South. The enfranchisement of blacks did not hurt the economy. In fact, it created an economic boom." As for the U.S. multi-national monopolies, which are the foundation of imperialist oppression of nations, Young claims: "The multinational corporation has a very positive role to play". In fact, the life of the colonial slaves under the heel of the U.S. monopolies is allegedly so pleasant that Young bubbles with enthusiastic advice for these international vampires: "Companies that work well and want to stay in a foreign country and get a return on their investment really ought to make it a 40-year proposition and not a five-year proposition". Sweet dreams, colonial slaves, as your life's blood is drained from you to fill the coffers of the New York banks! This is Andrew Young's message, once you scratch below its deceptive surface.

Young expresses his imperialist pacifism in its broadest terms in his answer to the Playboy question: "What is your long-range view of what the U.S. role ought to be in world affairs?" Young answers: "My main interest is in developing for the United States a coherent foreign policy and humane world economic order. How do we make a shift from military confrontation to economic competition in the world?" There is only one small hitch blocking these pious hopes -- the capitalist system in the stage of imperialism, which depends on world domination, wars of aggression, the enslavement of nations, the suppression of the revolution at home, to ensure the maximum profits for the big banks. And that small "hitch" can only be removed by the proletarian revolution. This is why all of Andrew Young's talk of "anti-racism", and "peace" under monopoly capitalism is deception to hide the war preparations of the U.S. imperialist gangsters.

YOUNG'S NEO-COLONIALISM: TO HITCH THE AFRICAN AND OTHER OPPRESSED PEOPLES TO THE U.S. WAR CHARIOT

The neo-colonialism promoted by Young and practiced on a world scale by the U.S. imperialists is a crucial ingredient in the U.S. war preparations. The dressing-up of this neo-colonialist slavery as beneficial to the oppressed peoples is part and parcel of the imperialist pacifism of the U.S. ruling circles to hide and assist their war preparations. Young's special role is to promote a "civil rights", "anti-racist?" facade for the U.S. in order to create illusions about the U.S. presence in Africa, and to use this deception to convince other peoples as well, including the Afro-American people, that the U.S. government has peaceful and democratic intentions. Young, this shameless lackey, declares openly that he is a product of U.S. neo-colonialism and is proud of it. He says: "I'm a product of a kind of neo-colonialism in the sense that my education was provided by the people who enslaved my ancestors. I had to fight for my rights, but I was able to get some support from the neo-colonial authority in Washington-- shall we say the Kennedy Administration". But it is no small task to paint U.S. imperialism, the murderer of the Birmingham children, of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, George Jackson, Fred Hampton, Bobby Hutton and thousands of Afro-Americans as "humane"!

This policy of U.S. imperialist pacifism is aimed especially at liquidating the African revolution and enslaving the African people under the heel of U.S. imperialism acting through its black puppets. Young's well-known advocacy of supposed "majority rule" for southern Africa conceals the real aim of the U.S. imperialists. This aim is to smash the liberation movements by force, acting through the racist regimes and directly if necessary, while, as a contingency plan, infiltrating the movements before the overthrow of the racist regimes, so as to bring cliques of black sell-outs to power who will barter their people's land and labor to the U.S. monopoly corporations and impose regimes of neo-colonial slavery upon the peoples who are fighting for freedom. That is, continue to support the racist regimes, while preparing neo-colonial cliques to subvert the revolution under the slogans "majority rule" and "human rights". Young recently declared his confidence that U.S. imperialism would succeed in imposing neo-colonialism on southern Africa: "There isn't a rebel group in southern Africa who won't turn to the U.S. when it gets into power..'.. In order for these countries to survive, they are going to have to sell to the West and they are going to have to ask the West for capital and technology."

The meaning of Young's aims is further clarified by his statements in the Playboy interview. Speaking of South Africa, Young says: "The best the whites can hope for is a situation where the blacks may control the politics but whites still run the economy". Thus, Young's "solution" for the Azanian (South African) people is some "black faces in high places" in the government while the economy (and hence, ultimately, the politics too) is still controlled by the white-settler reactionary bourgeoisie and its U.S. imperialist masters. The only thing which can prevent this neo-colonial solution, with its continued slavery for the African people, is the armed revolution of the masses. This Young is bitterly opposed to. He calls this revolution "chaos" because it would mean the real destruction of racist and imperialist rule in southern Africa. Commenting on the prospects in neighboring Zimbabwe (Rhodesia), where the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) is leading the armed struggle for national liberation and social emancipation, Young says: "You can't just throw Ian Smith out. Ian Smith has power in Rhodesia. There's got to be some negotiated settlement that reasonably transfers power. If Ian Smith falls and runs out and all the whites run with him, you're going to have the very chaos in Rhodesia that we're trying to avoid". Thus -- if direct force fails, avoid a thorough-going revolution by placing cliques of sell-out black reformists in "power" to perpetuate colonial slavery behind a black mask. This is Young's program, the program of U.S. imperialism, for southern Africa.

According to Young, there is no way the African peoples, or any other oppressed people, can live outside the control of imperialism. He relates an incident: "When I was in Congress, some representatives of Marxist governments in Africa talked to me and said, 'Don't force us into the Russian camp as you did with Cuba. We want to be non-aligned. We want relations with East and West' ". Young concludes: "Those countries can reach only a certain stage of development before they require American technology and American consumer goods and capital and know-how." Clearly, for Young, "relations" with the West mean coming under the domination of U.S. imperialism. But, while Young's goals are evil, they cannot be accomplished. The people's revolution will win. The examples of Albania, China and Kampuchea (formerly Cambodia) show that it is fully possible to live free of the domination of imperialism provided one takes up arms and follows the path of self-reliance and hard struggle. In fact, would Young be so concerned to prevent a violent, thorough-going revolution in southern Africa if it were not likely that such a revolution would lead to a clean break with imperialism?

Young's advocacy of neo-colonialism is most clear in his statements about Angola. His remarks that the Soviet-Cuban troops which prop up the MPLA neo-colonial government there provide "stability" are well-known. In his statements to Playboy he added, "When the Cubans arrived, they filled a gap. They provided order". That is, the Cubans opposed the genuine revolutionary national liberation struggle being waged by the Angolan people under the leadership of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). Playboy then asks Young: "Are you saying that all former colonies need some sort of Western-imposed order?" Young answers: "I think they need order. They need a rational transition period." Playboy: "Isn't that neo-colonialism?" Young: "Yes. I've got no problem with that. I believe in neo-colonialism when it's moving in the right direction. I don't think that the Western powers that took over a continent in past centuries, cut up nations, divided and disrupted tribal life, can just pick up their marbles and go home. " Young later adds: "If the Cubans pulled out (of Angola) he (Neto, the head of MPLA) would not be in power." These statements fully reveal that what the U.S. imperialists fear most in Angola (as elsewhere) is the armed revolution of the masses. It was just this revolution, led by UNITA and aiming at the genuine and total independence of Angola, which the Cuban troops were sent by the Russian New Tsars to suppress. Young's statements prove that U.S. imperialism covertly supported and colluded with this invasion, and that U.S. imperialism prefers a neo-colonial regime under control of Soviet puppets to a genuinely independent country under control of its own people, since under Soviet-Cuban control Angola remains within the sphere of exploitation of world imperialism, still open for the U.S. multi-national companies to suck the blood of its people. Young openly admits this fear of revolution in his statement: "With the Cubans in control of Angola, change can literally be negotiated. If you had a civil war going on, there would be nobody to negotiate with. There would be sheer chaos and bloodshed. There's got to be a process whereby Angola is going to be united into one Angola or Cuba will be in exactly the same position as we were in Vietnam." Precisely. Young here admits that the U.S. can negotiate with any neo-colonial lackey, but fears revolution like death. In Viet Nam, the U.S. imperialists and their neo-colonial lackey regimes of Diem, Ky, Thieu, etc. were thoroughly smashed by the Vietnamese people; likewise, in Angola, the Soviet-Cuban-MPLA neo-colonial government will be soundly thrashed by the Angolan people led by UNITA, in the revolutionary war that is already underway.

The cynical nature of U.S. neo-colonialism and Young's advocacy of it are further revealed in his comments on the Neto MPLA regime. Commenting on Neto's alleged "Marxism", Young correctly calls it an "afterthought". As long as you are a lackey the imperialists will let you curse them at the top of your voice, and even swear in the name of Marxism- Leninism, as do Neto and Castro. Playboy then says: "It (Neto's "Marxism") determines the social system under which people live". Young's answer speaks volumes on how U.S. imperialism can even use neocolonialist methods to plunder and exploit countries dominated by pro-Soviet puppet regimes: "There's nothing wrong with their deciding to live under a socialist system. It's a decision that does not interfere with us in any way. In spite of the fact that he's a Marxist, Neto's relationship with Gulf Oil is what keeps the revenues coming in that make it possible for the Cubans to run the country. The Cubans could not run it by themselves. Neither could the Cubans get the oil out of the ground if Gulf dismantled its offshore rigs. The oil is about 12 miles offshore." Young's comments show how the U.S. imperialists can make use of sham Marxists like Neto to keep their stranglehold on the former colonies through the most cynical neo-colonialist means. His comments also expose the line of the Soviet revisionists who claim that Angola is an "independent" "socialist" country. Also exposed are those American social- chauvinists posing as Marxist-Leninists who believe that the superpowers do not collude together to suppress the revolution at the same time as they contend with each other for supremacy. Clearly it is not a real socialist or even people's democratic regime which permits the plunder of Angola on the behalf of Gulf Oil, and from sham socialism U.S. imperialism has nothing to fear. As Young says: "There's nothing the Cubans can do that we cannot thwart". Such is the well-deserved contempt of the lackey of one imperialist superpower for the lackeys of another.

Andrew Young exudes confidence that his masters, the U.S. imperialists, will be able to use their superior economic power to outbid the Russians in the buying-off of sell-out cliques to line up bases and spheres of influence tor the approaching war. His job is to carry on these war preparations using the method of imperialist pacifism, bartering his color and "civil rights" background, plus a large quantity of Yankee dollars,for the allegiance of more running dogs of imperialism. He aims at duping the world's people into thinking that the United States imperialism, despite its slaughters of the Indochinese, Afro- American and other peoples, stands for freedom and democracy and should be supported in a world war against the Russian New Tsars. But Young's real fear in Africa is the armed revolution of the masses. And it is precisely this which is the roadblock to the war the superpowers are plotting and will bury imperialism, social-imperialism and all their lackeys.

ANDREW YOUNG'S RECIPE FOR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE: CAPITULATE TO THE GOVERNMENT AND FIGHT EACH OTHER

In order to start a war, the U.S. monopoly capitalists must first attack the American people and suppress their revolutionary struggles. This is their daily activity. At present the big capitalists and their government are working hard to shift the burden of the economic crisis onto the workers through unemployment, inflation, speed-up, etc. They are hatching plots to suppress the workers' strike movement through a variety of means, including federal "wage-price guidelines", a no-strike agreement in auto to supplement the one already existing in steel, joint labor-management productivity councils, etc. The government has organized the fascist anti-busing movement to attack the Afro-Americans in hopes of splitting the workers' movement. But these reactionary activities are provoking the masses to rise in struggle. The workers' strike movement is undergoing an upsurge; the Afro-Americans and progressive whites have struck heavy blows at the fascist anti-busing movement. A lively situation of upsurge is emerging.

Andrew Young's role is to convince the masses, especially the Black people, to give up their struggle against the government and the bourgeoisie and instead to split on the basis of race and nationality and fight each other. Young is a prominent example of an Afro-American collaborator with the government of the enemy class. We have already seen how it is "inconceivable" to him that the government would try to harm the masses, and how he regards Carter as "free of racism" and the Carter administration as the Moses who will lead the oppressed into the Promised Land. A brief examination of Young's role in the civil rights movement, as described by himself in the Playboy interview, will illustrate this point still more clearly.

Young demonstrates how conscious he is about his role in promoting non-violent passive resistance in the Afro-American struggle in order to prevent it from breaking out into revolutionary civil war against the government. He praises the "order" of the monopoly capitalist system to the skies (peculiarly reminiscent of fascist Nixon's call for "law and order"). According to Young, it was the non-violent, reformist civil rights leadership, and not. the open fascist George Wallace, which was the real force of capitalist "order" at the time. Young says: "We in the civil rights movement created order. In those days, it was George Wallace who was advocating bombings -- of black folk." Playboy: "But he did that only after you'd tampered with the comfortable status quo of white people." Young: "No, we were the forces of order -- the kind of order spelled out by the Constitution". Then Young adds the revealing comment: "If Martin Luther King hadn't used an aggressive nonviolent approach, the South could easily have become another Lebanon or Northern Ireland". Thus Young consciously views his role as preventing the people from using revolutionary violence to oppose counter-revolutionary violence in the U.S., as they did in Lebanon and northern Ireland. But it is well known that the attempt of the reformist civil rights leaders to strangle the Afro-American struggle foiled miserably, that the Black masses rejected non-violent passive resistance, took up active armed resistance to racial discrimination and violent repression and waged the great Black rebellions which shook the U.S. imperialist system and inspired the people of the entire world. Malcolm X expressed the revolutionary attitude of the Black masses towards the "order" of the monopoly capitalist government and system when he said: "...you and I don't want anybody to keep us from getting out of ' control. We want to get out of control. We want to smash anything that gets in our way that doesn't belong there". (Malcolm X Speaks, p. 118)

Andrew Young further details his role in trying to liquidate the Afro-American struggle by collaborating with the government. He describes his role as a "mediator" who sits and makes deals with the racist bourgeois authorities behind the scenes, while the masses wage the struggle against the armed forces of the state. Playboy asks Young: "How did you acquire your reputation as a mediator?" Young: "I understood the dynamics of Southern racism. I also knew which people to go to. I mean, in any given Episcopal church in America, you're dealing with the people who own the town or have contact with those who do. The church was my back door to the Birmingham Better Business crowd, for instance. Playboy: "So you were negotiating with the powers behind the scene while others were confronting the police, the dogs and Bull Connor?" Young: "That's right." Young's role today is merely a continuation of this role in the civil rights movement. Then he sat together with the racist bourgeois authorities to collaborate with them in imposing token reforms on the masses who were waging the struggle, in hopes of inducing the people to remain on the road of non-violent passive resistance. Today Young is part of the government. On a national and world scale he encourages the oppressed masses to regard the American government as "humane", "peaceful" and "anti-racist", to give up their revolutionary armed struggles and enter into collaboration with the government of the U.S. imperialist vultures. According to Young, the racist bourgeois authorities of U.S. imperialism are good and reasonable, and should be collaborated with, while the revolutionary struggles of the masses are regarded as an unthinkable "chaos" to be prevented at all costs. This is advocating capitulation to and collaboration with the main enemy of the Black people and of the entire working class and people -- the state apparatus of oppression of the U.S. big bourgeoisie.

Rather than fight against the government and the bourgeoisie, Young is preparing conditions for the masses to fight each other in a race war which would help the bourgeoisie remain in power. The real meaning of Young's so-called "clarification" of his Playboy interview statement that Nixon and Ford are racists, when he said that all the American people are racists, is to label the white workers as racists in the eyes of the Black masses and thus to sow distrust between the workers of different nationalities and prepare conditions for conflicts. After all, if "everyone" in the U.S. is a racist (and it is already well-known that Nixon and Ford are racists), then what is significant in this assertion is that the white workers are alleged to be racist. Of course, if the white workers, who are a big majority of the working class, are racist as Young asserts, then the Afro-Americans would be totally isolated and without allies for revolution in the U.S. and might as well follow the Andrew Youngs and collaborate with the government, since fighting it would be hopeless. And it just happens, according to Young, that the head of the Government, Jimmy Carter, and his mother Lillian, are the sole white mortals in the U.S. who are "free of racism"! What better recipe for giving up struggle can be dreamed up than this?

Young spells out his aim of splitting the Black and white masses more explicitly still. Arbitrarily slandering the revolutionary struggle of the Azanian people against the white settler regime of South Africa as a "race war", Young declares that the advance of this struggle will provoke a race war in the U.S. He declares menacingly: "If there is a race war in South Africa, there will be a race conflict in the United States. That's the frightening thing about Rhodesia and that's why a columnist like Joseph Kraft is terribly mistaken when he writes that we don't have any interests/ there. If you have 200,000 whites slaughtered in Rhodesia, South Africa will go in there. Then you'll have American volunteers running over there and getting involved. If you have a race war in Africa, there's no way we won't be affected. I think racial tensions are always just below the surface. " Playboy: "That is, on the premise that blacks overrun the whites in Africa?" Young: "Yes. Whites here will begin to panic." Young even goes so far as to threaten the masses with a "scenario" of such a reactionary conflict: Playboy: "Give us a scenario. What happens in Detroit, in Atlanta?" Young: "You start getting white reactions against blacks. You get the American Nazi Party predicting the same thing will happen here as is happening in Africa. It would start with whites attacking blacks. " Playboy: "Where would it start?" young: "Probably in the Northern cities. Probably least in the South."

Thus Young reveals his fear of the upsurge in the Afro-American struggle which a revolutionary war in South Africa would trigger. Young's answer is to tell the American people: capitulate to the government and fight among yourselves. This is Young's message, to the American working masses, in particular stressing to the Afro-Americans that struggle against the enemy government is hopeless, that the government is their friend and the white workers their enemy, and that an advance in the revolutionary struggle of the southern African peoples will inevitably lead to a racial bloodbath in the U.S. The bogey of an inevitable race war in the U.S. following an upsurge in southern Africa is promoted for two reasons, first, to frighten the American people away from developing revolutionary struggle and, second, to actually prepare conditions for such a reactionary conflict in the U.S., in hopes of drowning the American revolution in blood. Young is presenting the counter-revolutionary line of Black bourgeois cultural nationalism, repudiated in the 1960's by the best representatives of the fighting Afro-American people -- Malcolm X, George Jackson, Fred Hampton, the fighting rank and file members of the Black Panther Party and others. It is extremely instructive that the cultural nationalist line of capitulation and splittism is being advocated today by a Black who is part of the highest levels of the reactionary bourgeois state machine and has personal access to the President. This shows graphically the real origin of this line of betrayal of the revolutionary struggle. This is the same line which the bourgeoisie today is promoting through the production of Roots, with its theme of capitulation to slavery and splits among the people, and in countless other ways, for sinister, counter-revolutionary purposes.

The Black bourgeois cultural nationalist line promoted by the big bourgeoisie as the path for the Afro- Americans serves perfectly the development of fascism by the bourgeoisie and its state machine. It sows the spirit of defeat in the ranks of the Afro-Americans just when the government is organizing stepped-up racist attacks on the Black people. While the bourgeoisie tells the Afro-Americans to give up their struggle against the government and regard the white workers as their real enemy, it attempts to incite the white working masses against the Blacks and organizes violent attacks on Blacks by gangs of racists who try to mobilize the white masses behind them. But, as in the case of the Louisville anti-busing events, the fascist movements have met with stiff resistance from the Afro-Americans and progressive whites. And Andrew Young's recipe for the American people -- capitulation and splits -- will also meet with the determined opposition of the revolutionary masses and will never achieve its goal of suppressing the mass revolutionary struggle of the workers, Afro-Americans and all the oppressed and exploited people.

AN OPEN LACKEY BLURTS OUT WHAT THE SOCIAL-CHAUVINIST LACKEYS ARE HIDING

The open lackey of the U.S. imperialist bourgeoisie, Andrew Young, blurts out the truth about the aggressive nature of U.S. imperialism which certain U.S. superpower chauvinists posing as Marxist-Leninists are hiding. According to these worthies, whenever U.S. imperialism uses deception as a tactic in its aggressive maneuvering, this is "appeasement" of the Russians. This "appeasement" is alleged to bring world war closer by showing weakness in the face of the "more aggressive" New Tsars. These worthies hold that it is possible to forestall war and aid revolution by beefing up the U.S. imperialists (militarily, politically, economically) in its contention with the Russian social-imperialists for world hegemony, and by relying on this so-called "balance of power" to preserve peace.

But the statements of Andrew Young, in which he advocates surpassing Russia in the inter-imperialist rivalry, calls Carter's human rights campaign "a legitimate instrument of U.S. foreign policy" and openly advocates neo-colonialism to hitch the oppressed nations to the U.S. war chariot, clearly demonstrate that the imperialist pacifism of U.S. imperialism is simply an aggressive tactic of war preparations aimed at strengthening the U.S. 's hand in the approaching war. Every day U.S. imperialism reveals the development of new weapons of mass destruction -- the cruise missile and the neutron bomb are the latest examples. It makes dramatic offers of "disarmament" at the SALT talks (which, Young admits in the Playboy interview, are known in advance to be totally unacceptable to the Russians). At the same time, U.S. imperialism sends its Black puppet Andrew Young around the world praising the U.S. as "anti-racist" and "democratic". The social-chauvinists posing as Marxist-Leninists call deception "appeasement" and, unbelievable as it may seem, they call on U.S. imperialism to abandon this supposed "appeasement" and beef up its open war preparations supposedly to defend "peace"! Thus the open imperialist lackey Young blurts out the truth about the aggressive nature of U.S. imperialism which the social-chauvinist lackeys are hiding.

******

As the Playboy interview reveals, the role of Andrew Young is to serve as a major mouthpiece of U.S. imperialism to spread imperialist pacifism, with the aim of sowing illusions of an allegedly peaceful U.S. imperialism in order to mobilize support for Uncle Sam in the reactionary world war the two superpowers and their imperialist alliances are preparing. The revolutionary masses in the U.S. must tear the mask off the deception of Young and his masters and wage revolutionary mass struggle to combat the war preparations, exploitation, plunder, racial discrimination and violent repression by the monopoly capitalists. This struggle must and will lead to the overthrow of the capitalist government in an anti-fascist proletarian socialist revolution. This is the only way to eliminate the aggression and war and all the evil activities of U.S. imperialism and contribute to the liberation of all mankind. No amount of deception by the imperialists and their lackeys like Andrew Young can prevent the ultimate victory of this revolution.

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Oil Monopolists Prepare to Impose Another "Natural Gas Shortage" Next Winter

Last month the Federal Power Commission announced that once again major cut-backs of natural gas shipments are being made to inter-state markets. The oil companies who control natural gas production are making these curtailments in gas deliveries in order to prepare to impose another "natural gas shortage" on the people next winter, another phoney shortage engineered by the oil monopoly capitalists in collaboration with the government. Once again the people will be forced to the wall during the cold of winter, bled white with soaring heating bills, for the profits of the capitalist billionaires. All of this is part of Carter's energy fraud to impose sky-rocketing energy prices on the working people and to stockpile energy resources for imperialist war.

The devastating "gas crisis" of last winter, which brought great suffering to the working people, was not a result of the weather. It was a deliberate fake shortage, engineered by a handful of big oil monopolies and by the monopoly capitalist state machine. Throughout the year 1976, the gas producers and pipeline monopolies had broken legal contracts on 23% of the gas which had been contracted for sale in inter-state markets and refused to ship it. Over three trillion cubic feet of gas were withdrawn from the market in the months before the winter's "gas crisis". A big shortage would have broken out even if the winter had been mild. The oil monopolies sat on the gas and hoarded supplies, peculating on the suffering of the working people. This phoney shortage was used to further jack up natural gas prices. For example, during the "crisis", Carter, the Congress and the Federal Power Commission fell all over themselves to more than double the price of some natural gas being sold on inter-state markets (from a maximum of $1.44 per thousand cubic feet to a high of $3.25 for the same amount). Residential natural gas rates in the major cities were 30-40% higher last winter than the previous one, placing an intolerable burden on the working class and oppressed people.

NEW FAKE "SHORTAGE" BEING PREPARED

Now the oil capitalists and the government are preparing to impose an even more devastating "natural gas shortage" next winter than the last one. According to the special report of the Federal Power Commission, for the year from April 1977 to March 1978, natural gas deliveries to inter-state markets will be 27% below what the pipeline companies had contracted to supply. There will be 3. 8 trillion cubic feet less gas available for next winter's heating season. But this is only part of the picture. Certain major pipeline companies (United Pipeline, Columbia Gas Transmission, Transcontinental, El Paso Natural Gas), which have monopoly control of entire regions of the country, are not delivering up to 43-50% of their contracted gas shipments. The oil monopolies are not selling the pipeline companies the gas. The states of Ohio, Pennsylvania and parts of New York will once again be particularly hard hit. No matter what the weather this winter, the oil monopoly capitalists and the state (all natural gas production, shipments, sales, etc., are regulated and controlled by the Federal Power Commission and other government agencies) are already making preparations to impose another "natural gas shortage" on the people. Once again, the oil monopolies will issue, and the state will enforce, their savage dictate -- Pay or Freeze!

A handful of capitalist monopolies have a stranglehold over the lifelines of the U.S. economy. The billionaire lords of oil, which are among the most powerful of the monopolists, are outright refusing to supply a basic necessity of life needed by the people -- natural gas for heating during the winter. The oil monopolies imposed the oil shortage of 1973 and last year's "gas crisis", as well as several minor shortages. They have driven up energy prices, both those "controlled" by the government and those which are "uncontrolled", at twice the rate of prices in the economy as a whole. This is the reality of the situation which all the talk in Congress about whether to "control" or "de-control" prices is aimed at covering up.

The preparations for further energy shortages are part of the energy fraud of the Carter administration and the monopoly bourgeoisie as a whole. They serve Carter's "comprehensive long-range energy plan" to impose sky-rocketing energy prices and stockpile energy resources for war. Carter's energy plan amounts to a complex system of energy price hikes, both directly and through taxation, and tax increases to further fleece the working class and oppressed people and make them pay for the monopoly capitalists' economic crisis. Further, it is a plan to marshal energy resources through tax mechanisms, regulations, government subsidies to the oil monopolies, etc., for aggressive imperialist war, and to make the people pay for these war preparations.

THERE IS NO SHORTAGE OF ENERGY RESOURCES WHATSOEVER!

To force this "comprehensive plan" onto the working people, the Carter administration has resorted to the Big Lie. According to the White House propaganda, the U.S. (and the whole world no less) is rapidly "running out" of oil, natural gas and other energy resources. Carter claims, for instance, that there is less than ten years of natural gas "reserves" left to be produced in the U.S. and not many more years for the entire planet. Carter claims that the phoney gas shortage of last winter, when the masses suffered in cold homes and places of work, when numbers of working people were literally frozen to death and millions thrown out of work, "taught" the people a "lesson" -- that there really is an "energy shortage". Thus, he preaches, the masses should not resist the plunder of the oil billionaires and the state but instead they should make "painful sacrifices" for their capitalist profits.

However, in fact there is no shortage of energy resources in the U.S. whatsoever. The North American continent is virtually floating on natural gas deposits, according to the monopoly capitalists' own statistics. Dr. Chris Knudsen, an official of the federal Energy Research and Development Agency (ERDA), recently testified to the Senate that U.S. natural gas supplies are so vast that "the country could be awash in the future". He predicted that by the year 2. 000 it will be possible to more than triple natural gas production to 62 trillion cubic feet a year (of course, only if the price of the gas increases more than twice to $3.30 per thousand cubic feet). Also, last spring the U.S. Geological Survey released a report, endorsed by the American Gas Association and the ERDA, which showed that, at the present rate of production, there are ample natural gas resources in the U.S. to last another ten to twenty-five centuries! The President of the monopolists' American Gas Association, George H. Lawrence, recently pointed out, "Our industry is capable of providing at least more energy in the year 2,000 than it does now. We are not running out of gas". (AGA Monthly, June, 1977)

It is only the monopoly capitalist system which blocks the way for these vast resources of energy from being exploited for the satisfaction of the needs of the working people. The oil corporations have monopoly control over natural gas production. This monopoly is made even more complete through the collaboration of the monopoly capitalist state. Using their monopoly position and the instrument of the state, the oil monopolies are strangling natural gas production, hoarding and stockpiling in their drive for maximum profits. The farce of "dwindling natural gas reserves" being pushed by the Carter administration clearly exposes this fact. According to Carter, less than 10 years of "proven natural gas reserves" exist. But the category of "proven natural gas reserves" includes only a small fraction of the total gas resources scheduled for production by the gas producers. Gas "reserves" contracted for inter-state markets have rapidly declined over the last six years at an average of 12. 6 trillion cubic feet per year, while inter-state gas production has averaged only 12.7 trillion cubic feet per year over the same period. One might conclude from this ("reserves" declining as rapidly as production) that exploration and drilling for gas has come to a complete halt, or that there is no more gas to be found. But, in fact, drilling and exploration for natural gas are at an all time high, with record levels of successful "strikes". More gas wells have been drilled in the U.S. over the last four years than in any time in history (so far in 1977 drilling is going on at a rate of approximately 10,000 gas wells a year, over twice the 4,724 wells drilled in 1965). Thus, the oil monopolies are rapidly increasing production capacity and actual reserves, but are refusing to market the gas. Carter's farce of "dwindling reserves" only shows that the billionaire oil speculators are not contracting their gas for sale, but are hoarding reserves to drive up the price and realize maximum profits, and that the government is their instrument in concealing their crimes.

The "running out of energy" fraud of the Carter administration and the phoney gas shortage which the monopolies are preparing are both aimed at the same target: to impose sky-rocketing prices on the working people to make them pay for the capitalists' economic crisis, and to stockpile energy resources for imperialist war.

The energy fraud of Carter and the big bourgeoisie is a big exposure of the ugly nature of monopoly capitalist rule in the U.S., showing the reactionary, anti-people, war-mongering character of U.S. imperialism. Imperialism is capitalism in its last phase, capitalism in decay, capitalism on a rampage of exploitation and plunder, war and aggression. It is only the social revolution of the proletariat, the overthrow of the billionaire oil kings like Rockefeller and the entire monopoly capitalist system, which can eliminate economic crises, energy crises and shortages of the basic necessities of life. Only under the socialist system can the oil and gas production facilities and other means of production be seized away from this handful of moneybags and be used to serve the needs of the masses of people. End.

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Ohio Gas Workers Strike Against Increasing Exploitation by the Energy Monopolists

The following is a leaflet issued by the Cleveland Branch of the COUSML, July 19, 1977.

The 2,200 workers of Local 555 of the Gas Workers Union are on strike against the notorious East Ohio Gas Company. The gas workers are standing up to resist the energy.monopolists who have been ruthlessly increasing the exploitation of the workers and jacking up prices to plunder the masses who must pay the monopolists ever increasing tribute to heat their homes.

Since around 1970 the gas company has reduced the number of employees by about 30% while the number of customers has slightly increased. Whenever someone quits or retires no one is hired to take his place, instead his work is assigned to the remaining workers who are forced to work harder and faster each year. In addition the company has closed facilities in smaller towns, forcing the workers to commute long distances to the central offices, incur large moving expenses or quit with only 5 weeks severance pay.

The gas workers are justly demanding an end to such attacks on their working conditions and job security. They are also demanding protection from inflation in the form of a Cost-of-Living Escalator and wage increases acceptable to themselves.

Only by the most determined class struggle will the gas workers be able to force the East Ohio Gas Company to meet their just demands.

The attacks of East Ohio Gas Co. on the gas workers as well as its outrageous price raising are not unrelated phenomena. They are both attempts of the capitalists to shift the burden of their energy crisis onto the backs of the working masses. East Ohio Gas is a subsidiary of the huge Consolidated Natural Gas Company. In its 1974 stockholders report, Consolidated explained it had a policy of cutting back on all expenditures unrelated to "increasing -gas supply" while increasing expenditures to explore for gas and buy up gas fields. This is why East Ohio Gas has cut back its work force by 30%.

In 1970 Consolidated spent $25 million to search for gas, buy new gas fields and develop new gas production. By 1975 it was spending almost $150 million a year on this. And in spite of all this money being spent to so-called "develop gas supplies," Consolidated produced only 16% more gas in 1975 than in 1970. In fact in the period 1965 to 1970, when much less was being spent to "increase gas supplies", gas production increased 50% more than in the period 1970-1975. All this shows that the Consolidated gas monopolists, like their big brother monopolists, Exxon, Gulf, etc., are bleeding their own workers and their customers dry to finance a huge speculative adventure of finding and buying up all the energy resources available and sitting on them in order to ensure the highest monopoly profits.

The whole energy crisis that President Carter talks so much about is caused only by the scramble of the oil monopolists on the world scale to grab up all the energy resources so as to maximize profits as well as by the U.S. imperialists attempts to stockpile energy resources for a new war. There is no material shortage of natural gas, oil, or any other fuel. In fact, just recently Consolidated announced a $425,000,000 program to build the world's largest underground gas storage facility to store the gas they supposedly don't have.

President Carter's energy program is a declaration of war by the government of the big capitalists to make the masses pay for even higher profits for the U.S. energy monopolists and the war preparations of the entire U.S. imperialist bourgeoisie, for a war to decide which imperialist bandits will get the lion's share of the loot, the U.S. ones or the Russian ones.

For several years now the rich and their spokesmen, the Republicans, the Democrats and an army of sold-out union bureaucrats have been telling the workers of this country that if only they quietly bear the burden of the capitalists' crises, things will get better. But life itself is proving that this is not the case. It is absolutely correct that the East Ohio Gas workers militantly resist the attempt to make them pay for the capitalist energy crisis and economic crisis. It is absolutely necessary for the working class to resist the attempts of the rich to make them bear the burden of the crises through higher prices, unemployment, etc. and to prepare for mass revolutionary struggle to shift the burden of these crises right back onto the capitalists. Active resistance is the only way. End.

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DENOUNCE NEW U.S. IMPERIALIST PROVOCATIONS AGAINST PEOPLE'S KOREA!

On July 14 the U.S. imperialists committed another act of aggression and war provocation against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. A U.S. CH-47 helicopter carrying four soldiers invaded north Korean airspace and landed in the territory of People's Korea. As troops from People's Korea approached, the U.S. imperialist helicopter attempted to take off and flee -- it was soon shot down by antiaircraft guns, leaving three U.S. troops dead and one injured. President Carter, State Dept, officials and the U.S. military command in Korea all cried copious tears about the helicopter being shot down, saying that it was "unarmed", "only carrying supplies" and "it accidentally went off course". These are the same flimsy excuses that were used two years ago by Ford and Kissinger to justify the vicious imperialist aggression against People's Cambodia after 'the victorious liberation fighters captured the U.S. spy ship Mayaguez. This is nothing but imperialist double standard. The U.S. imperialists, who will invade any country, assassinate any world leader, overthrow any government, are now expecting People's Korea to welcome a U.S. invasion aircraft with open arms, because it was "unarmed" and "accidentally went off course". If this U.S. imperialist aircraft was so "friendly" and "harmless" then why did it attempt to flee? The armed forces of People's Korea have every right to shoot down any enemy aircraft which invades their country. No matter how many tears are shed, no matter how many speeches about "human rights" are given by Jimmy Carter and Andrew Young, the U.S. imperialists will never be able to cover up the 27 years of aggression and provocation that they have waged against the Korean people.

In June 1950, the U.S. imperialists invaded People's Korea in a vain attempt to seize all of the Korean peninsula as its colony and throttle People's China which had just been liberated. The heroic Korean people under the leadership of Comrade Kim II Sung and the Korean Workers' Party, and with the fraternal support of the Chinese People's Volunteers, soundly defeated the U.S. aggressors.

In recent years U.S. imperialism has continually committed acts of aggression against People's Korea. In 1968 the DPRK navy captured the U.S. spy ship Pueblo when it invaded Korean waters and justly imprisoned its 82 spy technicians for a period of 11 months. Last year on Aug. 18th the U.S. imperialists provoked the famous "tree-cutting incident" by sending 14 aggressive troops armed with axes and lethal weapons to cut down a tree maintained by People's Korea in the joint security area. When the north Korean troops protested this action, the U.S. imperialist forces attacked them with the axes and weapons. The DPRK troops waged a tit-for-tat struggle against this attack, taking away the axes and dealing sharp blows to the U.S. imperialist troops. Smarting from this defeat, the U.S. imperialists and their south Korean puppets attempted to whip up war hysteria by dispatching the carrier Midway and other war ships to Korean waters, sending 40 more war planes to south Korea and making provocative flights over north Korea with B-52 bombers.

Today U.S. imperialism continues to occupy the southern part of Korea as its colony and has set up the fascist puppet Pak Jung Hi dictatorship to do its bidding. It still maintains over 40,000 occupation troops and huge quantities of sophisticated weapons in south Korea in complete violation of U.N. resolutions and the armistice. While there is only one Korea, the U.S. imperialists continue to conspire to create "two Koreas" and maintain the north-south division and confrontation. It can be seen from this latest provocation that the U.S. imperialists have not given up hope of gobbling up all of Korea and that all the talk in Washington about troop withdrawals is nothing but a sham.

This latest provocation against People's Korea comes at a time when the U.S. imperialists are frantically preparing for war with their superpower rivals, the Soviet social-imperialists. Every day the S. imperialists are developing war preparations -- beefing up the strength of NATO, increasing military aid to lackey governments such as those of Israel, the Shah of Iran, Pak Jung Hi of south Korea, Pinochet of Chile, debating the development of new weaponry such as the B-l bomber and the neutron bomb, etc. The U.S. imperialists' aggressive expansionism extends throughout the whole world. Using similar incidents to those against People's Korea, U.S. imperialism may try to provoke war anywhere -- against Socialist China, against Socialist Albania, against People's Korea, in the Middle East, in Europe or Africa.

If the U.S. imperialists dare to provoke another war in Korea, they will be completely defeated by the Korean people. On August 5th, 1976 the Korean government pointed out: "Of course the Korean people don't want war, but the Korean people are never afraid of war. If the enemy provokes an aggressive war at last in spite of the repeated warnings of the Korean people and the peace-loving peoples of the world, the Korean people will resolutely answer it with a just war and annihilate the aggressors to the last man." A U.S. war of aggression against Korea will also be met with strong resistance from the American people who waged tremendous struggles against the U.S. imperialist aggression in Viet Nam.

In the name of the American working class and oppressed people The Workers' Advocate strongly condemns the continued war provocations by U.S. imperialism against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and hails the militant armed defense of their homeland by the Korean people against U.S. imperialist aggression. The U.S. occupation forces and their war machinery must be removed from the Korean soil. We firmly support the just struggle of the Korean people for the independent and peaceful reunification of the fatherland. End.

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U.S. Imperialist-Dominated NATO Forces Practice for Nuclear War in Europe

It was recently revealed in a European newspaper that, in their massive military exercises across Europe, NATO forces have been making simulated nuclear bombings of northern Germany and Norway and also practicing the use of chemical warfare in that area. And in the event of war between the aggressive NATO forces and the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Treaty forces, NATO is preparing to drop atomic bombs on civilian targets of western Europe. This clearly exposes what the U.S.-dominated aggressive NATO forces have in store for the people of Europe and the world.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is an instrument of imperialist war. It is a military alliance of western imperialist and capitalist states (including European countries, the U.S. and Canada) under the domination of U.S. imperialism, a big armed force for the suppression of socialism and revolution and the defense of the imperialist system and the interests of war-mongering U.S. imperialism in particular. The NATO forces are a weapon of the U.S.-dominated imperialist bloc for rivalry with the other big imperialist bloc led by the Soviet Union and including the Warsaw Treaty forces.

The rivalry between the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, is acutely sharpening. Through their numerous alliances such as NATO and the Warsaw Treaty, the superpowers are preparing for war for the re-division of markets and spheres of influence, an imperialist war between slave-owners for more slaves, a world war more devastating than the two previous world wars. The massive war exercises of NATOtroops, which have recently included up to one quarter of a million soldiers and simulated atomic bombings, are preparations for such a war.

In the face of the unprecedented slaughter which the war-mongering U.S. imperialists andSovietsocial-imperialists are preparing, the people must not be caught off guard. The strengthening ofNATOin the name of "defense of Europe" and "maintaining the balance of forces" only means accelerating the war preparations of U.S. imperialism. It means subjugating the proletariat and people of Europe to the armed forces of the reactionary monopoly bourgeoisie and the jack-boot of U.S. imperialism. The type of "defense" which the NATO forces will allegedly provide the European people is seen clearly by their simulated atomic bombings of civilian centers and their boasting of such weapons as the neutron bomb which they advertise can wipe out the entire population of a European city. The oppressed people can be provided with no shelter by the aggressive NATO forces.

The proletariat and people of Europe and the world must wage revolution against imperialist war. The imperialist and reactionary bourgeoisie of all countries and especially that of the two superpowers, constitutes the source of imperialist war. It is only the revolutionary struggle of the working class and laboring people against these war-mongers which can prevent the war. NATO must be vigorously combated and the U.S. military bases which string the world must be destroyed. The American working class and people are against NATO and the other aggressive alliances of U.S. imperialism. The American proletariat stands for revolution against imperialist war. If imperialist world war cannot be prevented, the proletariat and oppressed people must turn it into a revolutionary liberation war which will destroy the war-mongering system of world imperialism once and for all. End.

[Box: At left is a page from a confidential report of NATO military telegrams reveals that in military exercises in September 1976 U.S.-NATO forces (here code-named "blue", while Soviet-Warsaw Pact forces are "orange") carried out simulated nuclear and chemical warfare attacks on targets in Norway (the area of Fosslid mentioned in the section entitled "page 2") and northern Germany (the area of Schleswig-Holstein mentioned in the same section).]

[Photocopy of the confidential report:

1. (nc ) political - nil

2. (nc) military

G. land. in namsos- area. blue forces have expanded their bridgehead and continue to land the heavy weapons to be used for full scale attack, the forces in this area are estimated to be one brigade-strength unit. one infantry battalion unit is moving south of altevatnet. a second infantry battalion has reportedly landed with armoured and artillery support, in the roeahammaren area.

page 2 nato confidential

the third infantry battalion has been resupplied in the area of fosslid and has thereby increased its combat effectiveness.

an attack by this force against orange units in the area is considered imminent. the use of chemical agents to gain tactical advantage must be expected. in the baltic area, blue appalled the world by using nuclear weapons against loyal orange soldiers in the schleswig-holstein area last night. in spite of this overwhelming act of aggression, orange ground units in the area continue to hold their positions.

b. maritime, see my marintrep 7609021 for major unit positions. the blue carrier group led by uss john f kennedy has departed the namsos area to the north numerous escorts, possibly for a strike against the orange homeland. hms ark royal continues to provide air cover for the advancing landing force.

o. new report of additional minesweeping activity in the nomsen fjord indicates an imminent reinforcement or withdrawal of amphibious vessels in the amphibious operating area. in view of the heavy casualties inflicted on the invading ships, a withdrawal is considered the likely operation.

page 3 nato confidential

c. air.opr. forces continue to attack blue forces in the air, on land and at sea. our attacks have inflicted heavy casualties to blue units, while also resulting in the loss of several gallant airmen and their aircraft,

exersise exersise exersise

btd]

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DOWN WITH THE FASCIST CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE NEW YORK CITY BLACK-OUT REBELLION!

During the recent black-out in New York City on July 13-14, the masses of working and oppressed people rose up immediately in four out of the five boroughs of the city against their misery, poverty and unemployment. The mass actions of the people struck terror into the hearts of the rich and their government, which unleashed fascist suppression of the people. 25,000 police and 250 state troopers were called out to assault and arrest almost 3,800 people in 25 hours, the largest mass arrests in New York City history. The National Guard was put on alert. Condemned jails were reopened. The DA's, judges and government officials all pledged stiff punishment, thus anticipating the guilty verdicts of their kangaroo courts with their sham bourgeois "justice". The masses fought back. Over 400 police were injured by bricks and bottles and in hand-to-hand fights with the masses who numbered in the tens of thousands. Several police were shot at. The prisoners at the Bronx House of Detention rebelled. In fact, the bourgeoisie was more afraid of the masses' rebellious spirit than concerned about "protecting property". A Bronx DA said, "It's more than a question of looting and burglarizing. It's lawlessness. It's almost anarchy." The New York Post screamed about "24 hours of battlegrounds" and "the spectacle of menacing, destructive anarchy".

In the weeks since these events, the bourgeoisie has waged a national campaign of mystification and hysteria that has been directed at this just rebellion of the masses, seeking to discredit these actions as those of "hardened criminals". This is part of the fascist anti-crime hysteria of the bourgeoisie. This "anti-crime" hysteria is especially aimed at inciting the white masses against the Blacks and other oppressed nationalities and at further fascizing the bourgeois state machine, rapidly increasing the numbers of police, courts and jails, tightening the laws, etc., for use in suppressing the struggles of the masses. The first target of this campaign is the Black youth.

In the first place, the bourgeoisie is mystifying the cause of the recent rebellions and looting. The mass actions are described as "irrational", the result of "poor leadership", the desire to "get something for nothing", etc. In this way the rich and their spokesmen label the masses with their own ugly characteristics and try to hide the depth of the all-round economic, political and social crisis in the U.S. and the depths of misery of the people in New York City. The conditions of the working people have deteriorated through inflation, unemployment, higher taxes and fees, speed-ups and wage-cuts, cut-backs in social programs and other means by which the rich force the poor to bear the burden of the present crisis. The youth and national minorities are especially hard hit by this crisis: young people comprise over 50% of the unemployed and the Afro-American youth suffer from 40% unemployment nationally.

The crisis has been especially severe in New York City, the center of finance capital. Private industries have cut back production and run away, leaving thousands unemployed. Since the spring of 1975, tens of thousands of municipal workers have been fired. The rest have seen their wages frozen and their workloads increased by order of the city and state government and the Emergency Financial Control Board. These so-called "productivity savings" have been ordered to ensure New York City's ability to meet its enormous debt-service payments to the finance capitalists. In addition, welfare payments and social services have been slashed, and the youth are being thrown out of school under the fraud of "declining academic standards" and because of high fees. During this past winter, people literally froze to death in New York City because of the fake natural gas and energy "shortage". Prices are again rising at a 10.8% annual rate.

Meanwhile, the resistance movement to these attacks by the state has been disorganized by the labor aristocracy. These agents of the capitalists hiding in the ranks of the working class have worked overtime to tie the working class to the apron-strings of the rich and their state. Their electoral strategy of backing Carter and the Democrats to "save New York" has already shown its bankruptcy, and these union bureaucrats now sound like jilted lovers. The trade union misleaders have ordered the workers to bear "their share" of the crisis and to wait patiently for the "upturn" in the economy. These labor aristocrats only demand that they be consulted by the banks and the government on how to shift the crisis onto the backs of the workers; for the trade union misleaders, resistance is not even on the agenda.

Naturally the masses were not going to passively starve so that dividends could keep flowing in smoothly and undisturbed on Wall Street. Under these conditions, with the top trade union bureaucrats disorganizing the struggle and with the depth of suffering in New York, resistance among the financially ruined sections of the population took the form of looting during the black-out rebellion. The most oppressed sections of the people took matters into their own hands. They took the food and clothing which their meager earnings or welfare money couldn't buy; they took the furniture and appliances from stores that had bled them white by installment credit's compound interest; and they took the guns needed for self-defense against the police and racist attacks.

The bourgeoisie and their mouthpieces of the TV, radio and press are also attacking the people for being "criminals", despite the common knowledge that most people were arrested in police sweeps through national minority areas, in which the police arbitrarily picked up everybody on the street, looting or not. And now street vendors are being picked up, harassed and jailed for alleged possession of stolen goods, even when they can show receipts for their goods. The bourgeois press is floating all sorts of figures, claiming that 70-80% (later 65%) of those charged had been arrested previously. Who knows if these figures are true, but it is well-known that the police strive to give every active Afro-American or Puerto Rican a "police record", that everyone who refuses to be a slave runs the risk of arrest and legal kidnapping and torture. Sometimes the police run mass arrests of all the minority youth in some area, and then release them, simply to give them all a "prior arrest". In America, it is not the Mafia, but the civil rights workers, strikers, revolutionaries and broad masses of ordinary working people who get arrested and go to jail. These figures testify more than anything else to America being a big police-state, a vast jail with 50 states. But with these figures, the bourgeoisie is insinuating that the "looters" are "hardened criminals". They want to create hysteria over crime and to justify keeping those arrested in jail with no bail or high bail, incommunicado, and in miserable unsanitary conditions that reek of the days when Africans were crammed into slave ships, body atop body, and forced to live in their own excrement. In a Brooklyn cell, one Black man has already died -- more accurately, he was murdered -- as a result of these conditions.

Such barbarous treatment is being justified by Mayor Beame and the whole state machine through the racist, slave-owner lies that those arrested are "animals" and "jackals". Such openly racist propaganda exposes the desire of the bourgeoisie to split the American working class between Black and white workers. This also explains why the bourgeoisie hides the participation of white workers and youth in the recent black-out actions, such as on the upper West Side of Manhattan and in certain Italian communities in Brooklyn.

However the big bourgeoisie is not against crime. The rich and their government are the biggest murderers and criminals of all, and the sole source of social crime. Internationally, the U.S. imperialists carry out wanton plunder and slaughter millions in wars of aggression; at home, the monopoly capitalists cruelly exploit and slaughter the working class and people, organize racist attacks on the oppressed nationalities and push the most reactionary decadent culture, featuring drugs and self-indulgence, in order to stupify the masses, keep them enslaved and incite them to crime.

Just take the case of "looting". Who are the biggest looters?Who, for example, has been looting the municipal workers' pension funds? To bail out the city government and its rich bond-holders, the labor bureaucrats of the municipal workers' unions keep using the workers' money to buy risky bonds to keep the city from defaulting. Last month alone, the union chieftains bought $250 million in New York bonds which the finance capitalists refused to buy as too risky, and they have pledged to buy a total of $2. 5 billion worth of such bonds over 30 months. No government officials or newspapers screamed about the looting of the pension funds of the workers then! Or what of the $1.78 billion in debt-service to be paid to the finance capitalists by the city government in 1977 alone: isn't this just a form of legally looting the masses of working people to gorge the rich on the tax dollars of the workers? And what of the fact that the police themselves, who are well-paid mercenary fighters and not poverty-stricken like the masses, took wide-scale part in the looting? We don't hear the newspapers and government officials calling them "criminals" and "animals" and pointing out that a big percentage of them have prior offenses and blood debts against the Afro-Americans and oppressed masses.

It is not crime the bourgeoisie is against, but revolution. It is the specter of revolution that is haunting the rich and their state! This explains the swiftness with which the armed attack on the masses was carried out. The bourgeoisie is in desperate straits, faced with rebellion at home and rebellion abroad. It wants to suppress the mass struggles of the people so as to load them with more and more of the burden of the international capitalist economic crisis. It wants a stable home front in order to wage an imperialist world war with the Soviet social-imperialists to redivide the world. This is why they are attacking the American working class and people economically, politically and ideologically, and stepping up their fascism.

But the New York City black-out rebellion proves once more that the oppressed masses are rising up again and again in mass struggle against their oppressors. They do not tolerate the criminal rule of the rich and their state but struggle ceaselessly against it. This, and not an outbreak of "crime", is the significance of the New York City black-out rebellion. End.

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ANTI-FASCIST AMERICAN PEOPLE THRASH NAZIS AND KLAN

In recent months, the anti-fascist American people have been rising up to give the nazis and the Ku Klux Klan a sound thrashing. On several occasions, the masses of people have put an end to nazi and Klan racist and fascist activities with militant struggle. Relying on their own initiative, the people have denounced and smashed up whatever these fascist puppets of the capitalist government have tried to organize. On the fourth of July, white and Black demonstrators stormed a KKK rally taking place on the state capitol's steps in Columbus, Ohio. 300 demonstrators marched against the KKK shouting the slogans: "Ku Klux Klan, Scum of the Land!" and "Ku Klux Klan, America's Nazis!". The demonstrators drowned out the KKK proceedings with their anti-fascist chants, including the pledge of allegiance and threw eggs and other objects at the Klansmen. One demonstrator ripped the robes off the "imperial wizard" of Ohio as he tried to address the crowd with his anti-busing racist poison, while another punched him in the throat. The demonstrators charged forward attacking the Klansmen with vigor. During the struggle, the beaten-down, panic-stricken "imperial wizard" implored, "Where are my people?". The only "people" to stand with the robed fascists were the monopoly capitalists' police. Four demonstrators were arrested for their "crime" of giving a beating to fascism.

A day earlier in Plains, Georgia, another incident took place which also showed the same sentiment of the people to actively resist racism and fascism. A mechanic drove his car into the platform from which a Klan leader was spouting racist propaganda at a Klan rally. The worker said he had a lot of Black friends and was going to get even with the Klan leader for what he was saying about Blacks. From ill around the country came expressions of support for the mechanic's attack on the Klan and its vicious slanders of the Afro-American people.

Another such struggle took place this past April in San Francisco. Masses of residents in the neighborhood of a newly-opened nazi bookstore would not rest until the bookstore was demolished. With much publicity-seeking parading to and fro, the nazis had opened the store across the street from a Jewish temple whose congregation included large numbers of survivors of Hitlerite nazi concentration camps. The residents, furious at the presence of these blood- soaked executioners, began their resistance by smashing the bookstore's windows, splashing it with paint and bombarding it with tomatoes. A few days after the store was opened, a group of fifty people, wielding axes and tire irons, broke into and smashed up the store and its contents, cheered on by a crowd of 100. The nazi scum meanwhile squirmed out the back window' and sought police protection. Later, the nazi storefront was attacked again by the people -- and this time set ablaze. A crowd of 150 people fought and prevented police and fire engines from reaching the fire, and by their efforts enjoyed the sight of the flaming destruction of the fascist haven.

These events show the democratic and revolutionary sentiment of the masses of the American people, who time and again have risen up in struggle to oppose racism and fascism and fight for genuine democracy. The only obstacle standing in the way of the realization of these aspirations is the criminal rule of the monopoly capitalist class.

As the monopoly capitalist class attempts to "solve" its economic crisis by shifting its burden onto the people and by preparing for inter-imperialist war, it is stepping up its all-round fascization of society. Part of the program of fascization is to busily organize and promote the nazis and the Klan. To give the nazi and Klan state puppets, whose antics get only hisses, tomatoes and fists from the American people, an appearance of life, the monopoly capitalist class schedules publicity stunts such as the one in Skokie, Illinois. Recently, the capitalist news media whipped up publicity for the nazis by announcing that a band of nazi "stormtroopers" would march through Skokie, Illinois, on the fourth of July. The announcement was calculated to create maximum publicity for the nazis: of Skokie's 69,000 residents, about 7,000 are survivors of Hitler's concentration camps. Such publicity stunts are a means of the monopoly capitalist government to create conditions for a large-scale fascist movement. One KKK "imperial wizard" has appeared on more than 100 talk shows over the monopoly capitalists' mass media. In Detroit, an Afro-American newscaster quit her job to protest the station's interview with a nazi leader. Numerous newspaper articles try to prop up the sickly, state-organized KKK and nazi organizations, while talking up their racist and fascist line of violent attacks on Afro-Americans and other oppressed nationalities, especially through the government-organized fascist anti-busing movement. The bourgeoisie is doing its utmost to promote the KKK and the nazis and their racist and fascist ideology to justify and aid it in suppressing the masses, shifting the burden of the crisis onto them and preparing for world war.

But the KKK and the nazi fascists get no support from the American people. The people will not be fooled by the bourgeoisie's racist and fascist rantings and schemes. On the contrary the recent events in Columbus, Plains, San Francisco and elsewhere show the American people's true anti-fascist spirit and bold determination to wipe out the monopoly capitalists' Ku Klux Klan and nazi scum along with all obstacles oh the road to achieving a genuinely democratic state with the overthrow of the rule of the monopoly capitalists and the establishment of the rule of the majority, the proletariat. End.

[Photo: Anti-fascist demonstrator punishes Imperial Wizard of Ku Klux Klan of Ohio]

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Why is UAW President Fraser Talking to the Auto Capitalists About "the Possibility of a No-Strike Clause" in Auto?

(The following is a leaflet issued by the Detroit Branch of COUSML, July 5, 1977)

Here is a reproduction from the announcement for the upcoming "World Congress" of automobile billionaires: [Graphic plus a photo of Douglas A. Fraser.]

REGISTRATION FORM

Please enroll me at the Automotive News World Congress, July 10-13, 1977, at the Detroit Plaza Hotel in Detroit, Michigan. I understand that the registration fee is $350 per person. "Early Bird" registration is $300. (For all reser-...) COCKTAILS DINNER General Sessions

CAN THE AUTO INDUSTRY AVOID STRIKES?

Douglas A. Fraser, vice president, United Auto Workers, discusses the possibilities of a no-strike clause and the use of binding arbitration.

Notice who is going to be there -- none other than the new UAW president, Douglas Fraser himself... speaking on "CAN THE AUTO INDUSTRY AVOID STRIKES?"..."the possibilities of a no-strike clause and the use of binding arbitration"! How dare the president of the UAW even consider for one second any "possibilities" of eliminating strikes! The strike, the withholding of our labor-power until the capitalist vultures grant wages and working conditions agreeable to us, is one of the most fundamental weapons the working class has. To eventhink about the workers giving up the right to strike is to be one of the most yellow of class traitors!

For obvious reasons there has been no mention of this meeting in the capitalist press. Labor traitor Fraser and his capitalist friends hoped to carry out this plot in dark secrecy at Henry Ford's Renaissance Center, far away from the eyes and ears of the workers. Now that the cat is out of the bag, Mr. Fraser and Messrs. auto capitalists, be warned: If you are foolish enough to try it, there is more than just a "possibility" that great class battles will develop, and that you will be the ones who end up getting burned!

The capitalists are considering this attack on the auto workers because they are in the grips of a severe economic crisis which they cannot get themselves out of. Their "solution" has been to shift the burden of the crisis onto the backs of the workers through inflation and high prices, speed-up, unemployment, etc. But a strike movement has been growing in the auto industry and among broad sections of the U.S. working class to resist these attacks. The capitalists hope to eliminate strikes and stop all resistance by the workers in order to reduce us to being passive slaves.

The fact is, the limiting or abolishing of strikes is far from a new idea to the top UAW labor traitors. Walter Reuther took the first big step towards the elimination of strikes in the auto industry, in the 1950's he came up with the scheme of striking the big auto monopolies in rotation, picking a "target" each time. Thus, several hundred thousand auto workers are forced by the capitalist union into working while their class brothers at the one "target" company take the full weight of the strike on their shoulders. At the same time, two of the big three auto companies are not struck.

The next big anti-strike scheme came from labor traitor Leonard Woodcock. His big dream has been to implement "democratic national economic planning", now represented by the Humphrey-Hawkins "full employment" Bill. Under the guise of creating jobs, this bill would actually set up a board in the White House where "labor, business and government" leaders would collaborate to plan the whole economy. According to Woodcock this would eliminate the "need for strikes" and other "disruptive" events. Thus the union leadership would work even closer with the government to jointly suppress strikes! All sorts of resolutions and speeches at the UAW convention last May endorsed this "democratic national economic planning". This has all led up to the latest anti-strike scheme of the UAW bureaucrats, with Fraser (Reuther's protege), talking secretively to the auto capitalists about the "possibilities" of eliminating strikes. If this isn't proof enough of their class collaborationist policy, just recall the labor bureaucrats' reaction to any wildcat strike the auto workers wage. Probably the most notorious is the example of the club wielding goon squad sent by the UAW leadership to beat up the Chrysler Mack Ave. Stamping Plant workers and force them back to work in their 1973 wildcat. The police then remarked that the labor traitors did a better job than they could have ever done.

The capitalist class has already imposed a no-strike clause on the steel workers, with the cooperation of their labor lieutenant I. W. Abel, causing the steel workers to lose wages and thousands of jobs while preventing a national strike. In the auto industry, the capitalists have already eliminated nearly 100,000 jobs just since 1973. If a no-strike clause were imposed, the auto capitalists would have an easier time stepping up their attacks on the workers through layoffs for some and overwork for the rest, as well as by holding down wages.

The monopoly capitalists are resorting to these attacks in a desperate attempt to make the workers pay for the economic crisis. Instead of fighting these attacks on the workers, the labor traitors such as Fraser are singing the praises of capitalism and plotting to give up one of the workers' crucial weapons, the strike. We workers cannot rely on these labor traitors sold out to capitalism to defend our interests. We must rely on our own efforts. We must wage mass struggles to fight against any "possibilities" of eliminating the right to strike and against the shifting of the burden of the economic crisis onto our backs. Active mass resistance is the only path forward for the working class!

THERE ARE NO "POSSIBILITIES" WHATSOEVER OF THE AUTO WORKERS SUBMITTING TO THE SLAVERY OF A NO-STRIKE CLAUSE AND BINDING ARBITRATION!

DOWN WITH THE CLASS COLLABORATION OF FRASER AND THE UAW LABOR BUREAUCRATS! RESIST THE SHIFTING OF THE BURDEN OF THE ECONOMIC CRISIS ONTO THE WORKERS' BACKS! End.

Schemes Against Hospital Workers in Name of Cutting Medical Costs

The following leaflet was issued June 5, 1977.

For the past several months the Carter administration, various labor misleaders like Leonard Woodcock, the governing boards of many hospitals, and the capitalist news media have been creating a hysteria over the question of rising medical care costs. HEW Secretary Califano declares that American hospitals are "obese", "wasteful", and in need of a "tough cost containment program". This propaganda campaign is aimed at mystifying the cause of rising medical costs and at preparing conditions for a vicious attack on hospital workers and patients in the coming months.

Ever since World War II the U.S. medical care industry has been heavily subsidized by the government for the purpose of providing risk-free, maximum profit avenues of investment for finance capital. One of the most lucrative fields has been the financing of construction and high technology equipment at artificially inflated prices. Beginning with the Hill-Burton Act of 1947, the state has underwritten billions of dollars in hospital construction and expansion through federally guaranteed loans. In 1965 the government took advantage of the impoverishment of masses of American people who could not afford medical care to funnel huge sums of tax money, and also borrowed money, to finance capital through the Medicare and later Medicaid programs. It was the government and financial manipulation, not spiraling wages for hospital workers or excessive demand from consumers, which caused medical costs to skyrocket.

Government health expenditures increased from $7 billion in 1965 to $41 billion in 1975. Blue Cross payments, reflecting this expansion, increased from $3 billion in 1965 to $26 billion in 1975. With the heavy government subsidy of health care (only military spending and the interest on the national debt are larger) the finance capitalists achieved an explosive growth of profits second only to that of their investments in energy resources.

But now the capitalists are caught in an overproduction crisis (including 100,000 hospital beds which they built but can't fill). Unwilling to accept a loss in profit, the capitalists turn to their state to shift the burden of the crisis onto the backs of the workers through cutbacks in services, layoffs, speed-up, and wage freezes.

One example of the government's plans for hospital workers was reported in Business Week magazine of May 16, 1977, in an article called "Hospitals Trim Off Their Staffing Fat". It points out that the Department of Health, Education and Welfare has funded a Hospital Productivity Center in Austin, Texas, which is devising methods to combine jobs (e. g. have nurses pass trays so dietary workers can be laid off), reduce the number of personnel by up to 20%, and brainwash the hospital workers into accepting these attacks in the name of "efficiency" and "productivity".

At our Hospital, such a program is already under way. The administration hopes to conceal its attack with a "suggestion system", participation by a "cross-section of the Hospital's employees", and other transparent gimmicks, but the facts are plain. The administration's Cost Containment Committee is a Committee to Make the Workers Pay for the monopoly capitalist crisis! Here are but a few of their plans:

1. Hiring has been cut drastically. Only a fraction of the usual number of summer replacements has been authorized. The workers arc expected to work "harder and faster" to get the work done and to keep the capitalist profits high. The pressure is already on in those surgery related areas which generate the biggest income for the Hospital. It is certain to affect everyone eventually.

2.Wages will deteriorate further. "Five year raises" have been eliminated. Annual raises are routinely denied on various petty pretexts. And as workers have learned in past years, any cost-of-living raise will come about only as a result of their own struggle.

3. More "efficient utilization of personnel" will mean more speed-up, overtime, shift rotation, floating to different units, increasing fascist rules, regulations and surveillance, etc.

4. The patients will also be made to pay for the crisis. The itemized list of charges to the patient over and above his daily room fee has expanded to include virtually every item imaginable. The number of patients assigned to each nurse will continue to increase while the deterioration in the quality of care will be blamed on the workers' "attitude".

The "medical care crisis" and its reflection at the Hospital are not isolated events but are part and parcel of the all-sided profound economic crisis of monopoly capitalist society. The rich are using their state to shift the burden of the crisis onto the backs of the working class and people and to prepare for war as a way out. The working masses, on the other hand, are awakening andrising in struggle to resist these attacks. The state-organized attack singling out hospital workers for particular sacrifice is bound to meet with fierce and growing resistance.

Already at the Hospital resistance is developing in various areas. Workers are refusing to speed up and are standing up to intensified harassment and intimidation.This is an excellent trend. Active resistance should be organized and consolidated in every department and throughout the hospital as a whole. Exposure and denunciation of the "Cost Containment Committee" should be a daily occurrence.

No one should have illusions. The monopoly capitalists, their high paid lackeys, and their state are bound to step up their exploitation and oppression of the laboring masses. The workers and people have no choice but to actively resist these attacks. The only real solution for the working and oppressed masses is to wage revolutionary' struggle to make the monopoly capitalists bear the burden of all the evils they have created and to overthrow the monopoly capitalist dictators altogether.

WAGE ACTIVE RESISTANCE AGAINST ALL THE ATTACKS OF THE HOSPITAL CAPITALISTS AND THE GOVERNMENT! End.

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Unemployment: Curse of the Capitalist System

The following is a leaflet issued by the Buffalo Branch of the COUSML, February 21, 1977.

The monopoly capitalists in the U.S. are still in deep trouble as the 6th and worst economic crisis since WWII continues and deepens. The only course for the capitalists in trying to solve their problems and maintain their profits is to shift the burden of the crisis onto the backs of the workers. One of the main ways in which they are carrying this out is through unemployment, creating most severe hardships for the working class. The unemployed workers are forced to barely get by on the pittance provided by unemployment insurance or welfare, if they can get it. At the same time, the capitalists threaten the employed workers that "they can be replaced" or "the company may be forced to shut down", in order to force them to work harder and harder for less and less. More and more, the workers face speed-up on the job, forced overtime, job changes or combinations, and various other attacks by the capitalists that increase their exploitation. In order to enforce this increased exploitation, the capitalists impose all kinds of fascist rules and regulations at the place of work. The capitalists use the atmosphere of tremendously intensified job insecurity to try to keep the workers in line.

In an attempt to head off any resistance on the part of the working class, the capitalists have launched a big propaganda campaign to "explain" the crisis and "justify" their attacks. They say that any resistance on the part of the workers will only make things worse; that if the workers just accept the situation and wait out the crisis, then "recovery" is just around the corner, (if not the next corner, then the one after that). They get plenty of help in this effort at deception from the labor aristocrats like Leonard Woodcock of the UAW and, here in Buffalo, George Wessel, AFL-CIO Council President. These "labor" misleaders tell the workers that we should pull together (with the capitalists) and a "solution" to the problem can be found. By all means, the workers are told, don't upset the applecart. Along with this campaign of political deception, the capitalists have developed all sorts of practical plans for "solving" the economic crisis and unemployment. Some of these plans are aimed at "improving the business climate" through the use of tax money to directly subsidize capitalist enterprises so that they can expand and "provide more jobs". Others talk of achieving "full employment" by forcing the unemployed workers into public works programs at slave wages. In reality, all the capitalists' programs to "solve" unemployment are a fraud. They are really plans to further use the state machine (government) to assist the capitalists in increasing the exploitation of the workers, shifting the burden of the crisis onto their backs.

The real cause of unemployment is in the capitalist system itself. Without a reserve of unemployed workers, there would be no competition among the workers for jobs and the workers would be able to name their own price to the capitalists, destroying their profits. The capitalists use unemployment and the situation of competition among the workers it creates, to keep the wages of the workers down and thereby keep their profits up. Also, having a reserve army of unemployed workers means the capitalists can draw upon millions of free hands ready to work at any time industrial expansion may require them. At these times unemployment may decrease for a while. But the process of capitalist production will inevitably cause it to go up again. The capitalists use part of the money they make from the workers' labor to make technical improvements in production. These technical improvements are not made to serve greater or easier production but are made to serve greater profits for the capitalists. When they introduce new machinery, they need fewer workers to carry on production, so it is much cheaper for them. But this new machinery replaces the workers and means more and more unemployment as technological advances take place. So, unemployment and job insecurity are permanent features of life under capitalism for the working class. When economic crisis occurs, the conditions of unemployment and job insecurity get worse. With each crisis, so-called "recovery" is less and less complete and the levels of permanent unemployment go up and up.

The current economic crisis is a crisis of overproduction. These periodic crises are inevitable under capitalism because, in their drive for maximum profits, the capitalists stockpile more goods than they can readily sell on the market. This means that production is curtailed for a period of time and millions of workers are laid off because it is not profitable for the capitalists to keep them on the job. In Buffalo, unemployment is particularly severe due to the sharp decline in production as well as the loss of over 21,000 manufacturing jobs since 1971. At the same time that the workers face unemployment and all of its consequences, their real wages are also declining year after year as they are subjected to the ravages of inflation. And the capitalists say that one of the main causes of the "poor business climate" in Western New York is the high cost of labor, making it necessary for the workers to "sacrifice" wage increases or even face outright wage cuts in some places. All of these worsening conditions for the working class, which are the result of the capitalists shifting the burden of the economic crisis onto their backs, are the reasons for the resistance movement which is developing among the workers. In spite of all their political deception, which is aimed at suppressing this resistance, the capitalists can never entirely prevent it from breaking out. This is shown by the strike movement which has been developing nationally, including the recent strikes of the Rubber Workers, Coal Miners, and Auto Workers. In Buffalo as well, the workers themselves are quite concerned about the effects of the crisis and are beginning to take up resistance. In recent years many strike struggles have been waged by workers in Buffalo against the conditions imposed upon them by the capitalists. The struggles against Buffalo Forge; the strikes of teachers in Orchard Park, Buffalo and many other districts; the Spaulding Fiber workers' struggle and the current strike against National JXiel Gas all reflect the growing resistance on the part of workers in Buffalo to the shifting of the burden of the economic crisis onto their backs.

This resistance sends the capitalists into a panic and they step up their frenzied attempts to suppress it. More and more they are relying upon the force of their state machine to intervene in the resistance struggles of the workers by imposing injunctions, using the police to attack the workers and protect scabs, forcing the workers to submit to compulsory arbitration, and passing fascist anti-labor laws. The labor aristocrats, agents of the capitalists whose job it is to control and suppress the workers' movement from within, also get quite panicky when they don't succeed in this effort. They are the first to point out that if the workers fight back, the capitalists may never recover from the blow and will be forced to close their doors forever. "Don't kill the goose that lays the golden egg!" they say. They also promote that the workers should rely on the state machine; the workers and the capitalists are "equal before the law". This, in spite of the fact that the workers' own experience is that the only thing they can rely on from the capitalist government is to be attacked by it when they resist. In spite of the labor aristocrats' attempts to convince the workers to befriend the capitalist government officials and submit to the capitalist government's "justice", the workers are still beginning to stand up in defiance to the attacks of the state.

But no solution can be found to economic crisis and unemployment within the capitalist system. For the capitalists to solve unemployment is to cut their own throats. And no "reform" under capitalism can change its basic nature -- which economic crisis and unemployment are inherent in. The only answer to the capitalists' attacks on the workers is revolutionary struggle by the workers themselves against lay-offs, job insecurity, and for higher wages; breaking through all the restrictions and reactionary laws which the capitalists and their trade union misleaders use to tie down the workers. Only this can lead the workers to shift the burden of the crisis right back onto the capitalists, overthrowing the capitalist government and the monopoly capitalist system itself. And only by making such a revolution will it be possible for production to be carried on to serve the needs of the masses, without the curse of unemployment. End.

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CITY HALL ATTEMPTS TO UNLOAD FINANCIAL CRISIS ON CITY WORKERS IN PROVIDENCE

The following article is reprinted from Rhode Island Worker, newspaper of the Providence Branch of the COUSML, June 22, 1977.

Comrade workers and friends: Mayor Cianci's plan for ending the financial crisis of Providence is a declaration of class war against the city workers of Providence and the entire working class and people.

To make the workers pay for the huge interest charges on the financial debt owed by the city to the banks of over $6,000,000 ($3,000,000 for past debts plus $3,000,000 just for the upcoming year), Cianci has proposed the elimination of from 300 to 700 city workers' jobs through either lay-offs or cut-backs, plus a tax increase of from $1.90 to a maximum of $4.90.

These two proposals follow closely on the heels of other measures taken by the city government to shift the burden of the economic crisis onto the backs of the workers. More than 700 CETA workers, paid from federal taxes, have been hired to cut back the number of unionized workers in an attempt to undermine the organized resistance of the city workers to the shifting of the burden of the economic crisis onto their backs. The city has also taken steps to increase the city workers' workloads through combining jobs and increasing the intensity of work for them. As well, many of the city workers, such as laborers, equipment operators, etc., who make between $4.05 and $4.30 an hour have been faced with the elimination of overtime work which they needed to get by.

As for taxes, everyone in Providence is familiar with the $5.00 tax increase levied last year, as well as Cianci's ill-fated re-evaluation program which met with such resistance from homeowners that the state was forced to try to cover its tracks by re-adjusting the evaluations by some $2,900,000. Also, because of the severity of the last winter and the high monopoly prices paid by the masses for oil, many of the masses are simply unable to make increased tax payments.

The lay-offs and cut-backs of city workers follow along with the elimination and cut-backs in other services provided by the state machine. In education, the mayor has called for a further reduction of the school budget by $500,000 on a budget already cut by $800,000. Along with this, the heads of the education department have devised a plan which will require students entering public high school to pass an entrance exam before being allowed to attend. This plan is nothing more than the outright refusal of the city to educate the youth whom they have failed to provide education for in the first place. In this way, the city government plans to cut costs in education by attacking the youth and blaming them for the problems in education.

What does Cianci's plan have to do with ending the present financial crisis?

To justify what he calls "bold steps" to solve the financial crisis of Providence, Cianci gives the same view as all reactionaries -- that it is the masses of workers and people who are to blame for the crisis. At a meeting of the city-wide PTA's, he went so far as to remark that a proposed tax break for the elderly would mean an increase in taxes for everyone else. In other words, a tax break for the elderly who receive barely enough money to live on is a cause of higher taxes. What garbage!

First of all, it is Cianci himself who admits that these "bold steps" of his will not eliminate the debt owed by the city to the big banks, but only save its bond rating from falling. This will insure that the city can continue to follow the open dictates of the finance capitalists who hold the bonds for the city's debt and set ever higher interest rates to fleece the masses' and workers' wages which they hold in ransom. His reasons for financial crisis -- rising costs, increased wages, the tax breaks to the elderly, etc. -- are being used to prepare public opinion for further attacks against the masses and to mystify the real cause of the financial crisis. It is not the masses of workers and people who are to blame for the crisis, but the financial magnates and their state machine which exact ever increasing tribute for the monopoly capitalist class off of the sweat and labor of the workers, which is at the root of the present crisis. Ever since the first imperialist war, WW I, and especially after the October Socialist Revolution in Russia in 1917, the world capitalist system entered into the period of general crisis and decay, which will end only with the downfall of capitalism and the victory of anti-fascist proletarian revolution. This means that each crisis, like the Great Depression, and the present crisis, is much deeper and more frequent than the one before, and that capitalism never fully recovers from one when it is beset by another. The present financial crisis of Providence is a reflection of the deepening crisis of monopoly capital as a whole in which the state machine (city government) organizes to shift the burden of the crisis onto the backs of the workers to make them pay for the crisis.

Hand in hand with this, Cianci is beefing up the police force as part of the growing fascization of the monopoly capitalist state at all levels. According to Cianci, the police department will not be touched by lay-offs, and in fact will be increased in size by the addition of 40 new police in the upcoming year. So, while the city workers are faced with having from 300 to 700 jobs eliminated and the workers as a whole are faced with increased taxation, the city government has no qualms about hiring more police to protect itself from the growing rebellion of the masses.

Comrade workers and friends: Cianci's plan for eliminating the financial crisis of Providence is no different than any of the plans for "financial recovery" carried out by the state machine in service to monopoly capital in other cities such as Detroit, New York, San Francisco, Atlanta, etc. All of these plans aim at attacking the workers employed by the state machine through lay-offs, cut-backs, speed-up, etc., and the workers and people through increased taxation, while developing fascism of the state in order to defend itself and its monopoly capitalist masters from the growing resistance of the masses. According to Cianci, his plan is needed to "save" the city of Providence. But just who is Cianci going to save Providence for? While Cianci has been milking a lot of noise about tax breaks to the elderly, etc., he has defended to the hilt the huge tax breaks given to the monopoly capitalists such as Textron and the Outlet Co. for renovation of the Biltmore and Union Station and other such breaks amounting to millions of dollars. For each of these "breaks" given to monopoly capital, the workers of our city are forced to pay more and more of the city debt to these very same capitalists and their banks. What Cianci refers to as "his" plan is actually the plan of the banks themselves for attacking the masses and making them pay for the economic crisis. To expose this, Cianci's chief financial adviser is J. Belcher, senior vice-president of Industrial National Bank. There is probably no worker in the state of R. I. who has not paid tribute to these bloodsuckers for the barest necessities of life such as having a car that runs or money to pay for heating bills. These very same monopoly capitalists have a definite plan as to who is to pay for the economic crisis -- the workers and oppressed masses -- not the rich. It is clear that what Cianci calls "his" plan, is nothing more than another scheme by these moneybags to fatten themselves at our expense.

Comrade workers and friends: Cianci and the state machine he leads in Providence are thorough-going reactionaries whose role is to defend the dictatorship of the monopoly capitalist class over the working class and other people, and over the Black people and other oppressed national minorities. The armed forces, jails, courts, and a huge bureaucracy are the very backbone of this state as a whole, whose mission is to develop fascism in order to enforce the shifting of the burden of the economic crisis onto the backs of the workers, and to provide a quiet rear for U.S. imperialism in its aggression against the peoples of the world in contention with the other imperialist superpower, Soviet social-imperialism.

This state is the state of the big bourgeoisie. It is the dictatorship of the monopoly capitalists and an instrument for the class rule of capital over labor. It is a state which acts entirely in the interests of monopoly capital -- a state which cannot be moved over to the side of the workers, but which must be smashed in order to wipe out monopoly capitalist exploitation and developing fascism.

Comrade workers and friends: The city workers have chosen to resist the shifting of the burden of the economic crisis onto their backs, and to stand up to the threats of attack by the city government through use of their courts and police. They have chosen to stand alongside the thousands of public sector workers throughout the U.S. in the growing offensive of labor against the monopoly capitalists and their state. For this, they have the fullest support and greatest admiration of all who labor or are oppressed by capital. The city government has declared class war against the city workers and the working class and people. The stand of the city workers -- to fight-- is entirely just and in the interests of our class as a whole.

SUPPORT THE JUST STRUGGLE OF THE CITY WORKERS AGAINST THE ATTACKS OF THE OF THE STATE MACHINE!

NO CUT-BACKS! NO LAY-OFFS!

RESIST THE SHIFTING OF THE BURDEN OF THE ECONOMIC CRISIS ONTO OUR BACKS!

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SUPPORT THE JUST STRUGGLE OF THE GENERAL DYNAMICS-QUINCY SHIPYARD WORKERS

The following is a leaflet issued by the Boston Branch of the COUSML, July 17, 1977.

On Sunday, July 17, the workers of the General Dynamics--Quincy Shipyard voted overwhelmingly to reject the company's contract offer and strike. The struggle of die shipyard workers for a substantial wage increase and against intensified exploitation is a just struggle. General Dynamics (GD) is reaping fabulous profits from the labor of the shipyard workers while paying below the industry wage rates. Their final contract offer which "offered" virtually nothing, was simply a continuation of company policy of holding the workers down to the lowest possible wages. The GD shipyard workers, like the whole working class, have only two choices: either they lie down in front of this attack or they stand up united and fight against it. The GD workers have chosen to fight. This is an excellent thing. Only by fighting against capitalist exploitation has the working class ever gained anything.

The GD shipyard capitalists, together with the rest of the small handful of big shipyard capitalists who control most of the shipyard facilities and production in the U.S., reap tremendous profits at the expense of the working class with the direct assistance of the government. For decades the shipbuilding industry in the U.S. has been in perpetual crisis because, while the labor and facilities have been available, U.S. shipyard production has not yielded the maximum profits that the monopoly capitalists strive for. As well, the big shipyard capitalists were unwilling to advance out of their own profits a single penny for retooling the yards and bringing them up to modern standards. For these reasons, more and more shipbuilding was transferred overseas to countries where the workers can be exploited at much lower wage rates, while in the U.S. shipyards closed or cut back production severely and tens of thousands of workers were thrown out of the industry. In 1970 the government passed the Merchant Marine Act to prop up the shipbuilding industry, to serve the ends of the monopoly capitalist class. The U.S. monopoly capitalists are feverishly competing with their main imperialist rivals, the new Tsars of the Soviet Union, to divide the world between them, and are preparing for a Third World War. To prepare for such a war the government wants to re-tool the U.S. shipyards to be able to produce large naval vessels such as aircraft carriers. To accomplish this it is subsidizing the building of 300 super-sized ships such as the LNG tankers in U.S. yards in 10 years. In this way the shipyard capitalists are reaping tremendous profits at the expense of the whole working class. Firstly, the ships are paid for by the tax dollars of the whole working class. Secondly, tremendous profits are reaped by exploiting the labor of the shipyard workers. As well, the shipyard capitalists have been able to re-tool the yards without advancing a penny from their own pockets. With the retooling and introduction of new equipment, the productivity of the labor of the shipyard workers has greatly increased. But under capitalism this has not meant greater benefits for the working class but greater exploitation of the workers and bigger profits for the capitalists. The Merchant Marine Act of 1970 provided for the subsidy rate paid by the government to be cut from the original 55% to 35% by 1976. This requires the big shipyard capitalists like GD to cut costs by about 40% to maintain the same profits. This has been accomplished in part by increasing productivity through the introduction of new equipment. But in the final analysis this cost-cutting is possible only by keeping wages to the minimum. This is the secret of GD's contract offer, the reason why their contract "offer" offers nothing.

Thus the government and the monopoly capitalists work hand in hand to squeeze more and more out of the workers for greater and greater profits. This shows that merely to maintain the same rate of exploitation, and to prevent it from growing more intense, requires a fight by the workers. This also shows that the government, which is the government of the handful of rich, the monopoly capitalist class, is no friend of the workers but the instrument of their exploiters.

GD has a notorious history of suppressing wages to the minimum and enforcing this through the systematic suppression of the workers at every turn. In 1964, when CD bought the Quincy Yard from Bethlehem Steel, their first act was to break the back of the wage rates. Almost all the 1st class mechanics were told: you come back to the yard as 3rd class mechanics or don't bother to come back at all. This meant a substantial wage reduction for men who had worked in the yard for years, many for 20 years and more.

Since that time GD has followed a consistent policy of holding the wages down below industry rates, hand- in-hand with attempting to suppress every struggle of the workers and introduce more and more conditions of suppression in the yard. Thus the hated chit system, which existed in a small way under Bethlehem Steel, has been greatly developed and expanded into a system which holds shipyard workers in conditions more and more slave-like. Virtually any refusal to work under unsafe conditions, any time lost -- even from sickness, any form of standing up to the arrogance and arbitrariness of the bosses, results in a chit. Three chits in the same category means you're fired. The chit system is literally a daily threat against the shipyard workers to hold them in line.

Under these conditions a strike is a means of fighting the slavery experienced by each worker as an individual by uniting and fighting as a group.

The necessity of the shipyard workers to wage this strike was proven by GD itself. At the time of the 1974 strike the company promised: return to work for a pittance now and at the next contract we will give you a substantial increase. It is now that time and the company has again offered -- sub-industry rates, with increases which cannot keep up with inflation. This shows clearly that the workers cannot rely upon the reasonableness or goodwill of the capitalists. The first commandment of the working class movement is that the workers must rely upon the strength of their own class.

The Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists supports the just struggle of the GD shipyard workers. The shipyard workers must rely upon their own unity and strength and persist in their fight. End.

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Lesson of National Fuel Gas Strike in Buffalo: Uphold Line of Active Resistance

The following is a leaflet issued by the Buffalo Workers Revolutionary Committee of the COUSML.

For over 4 months, the 2100 workers of the National Fuel Gas Corporation waged an intense and determined strike struggle against the NFG capitalists. It was the longest strike in NFG's history and the longest in the Buffalo area in the recent period. Now that the strike has ended and the workers are returning to work facing the implementation of the N FG capitalists' hated job reclassification plan, which was the central issue in the strike, the lessons of the NFG strike can assist the whole working class in Buffalo in developing their struggles against the capitalists.

The NFG capitalists' reclassification plan is a plan to increase the exploitation of the NFG Workers in order to make maximum capitalist profits. It will eliminate or change certain work rules that the NFG workers have gained through years of struggle, enabling the company to: 1) reduce the size of the workforce by wholesale elimination of some jobs and crew size cuts on other jobs, resulting in more work for the workers who remain and creating extremely unsafe conditions as well; 2) reclassify some jobs into lower pay grades, meaning a wage cut for the reclassified workers; 3) create a pool of workers free from classification to be moved around to meet the production needs of the company; and 4) prepare conditions for attacking the workers unaffected by the present plan at a future date.

The only thing that has stood in the way of the NFG capitalists' drive to maximize their profits through the exploitation of the NFG workers has been the resistance of the workers themselves. In February the NFG capitalists put forward their hated reclassification proposal, a proposal to "increase productivity" and "cut labor costs". But the NFG workers had had experience with "productivity measures" and "cost cutting" in the past and wanted no part of it. This is what gave rise to their heroic determination to stand up and take on the "all-powerful" gas company and defeat the reclassification plan. The workers own experience had taught them that the company is out to suck maximum profit from their labor and that no compromises are going to satisfy the company's drive for profits or make them cease their attacks. The failure to defeat the company's "productivity measures" in the 1975 strike, which had cost the workers dearly, only strengthened their determination to defeat the reclassification plan.

In the course of their struggle two lines developed among the NFG workers. One line was the line of the workers, the line of active resistance and defeat of the company reclassification proposal, and victory through reliance on their own efforts. The other line was the line of the company, represented by the labor bureaucrats, the line of sabotage and capitulation, of reliance on the "sensibleness" of NFG and the alleged "neutrality" of the government, the line of "settling the strike". These two lines developed and clashed with each other in the course of the strike. In the initial phases of the struggle, the workers developed the tactic of mass picketing against the company, determined to completely close down all operations and stop the scabs from stealing the workers' jobs. When the company got its government to issue a court injunction backed up by armed police to stop the mass picket, the line of capitulation not only refused to mobilize the workers against the company ' and the government but agreed with them, denounced the "violence", affirmed allegiance to the very laws, used against the workers and justified it all by claiming that this "cooperation" would create a more favorable situation for "settling the strike". When the company with the active collusion of the government, who conveniently allowed the company to disregard any safety rules for the duration of the strike, murdered two of its own scabs, there was no outcry against the "violence" or mention of "laws" by the labor bureaucrats. Early in the strike as well, as a result of the company's use of supervisory personnel from Pennsylvania, the workers organized picketing to take place at certain NFG installations in Pa. Picketing was carried out for 3 days with almost 100% effectiveness, an extremely sharp blow to the NFG capitalists. The Pa. workers' contract itself was coming up and a strong possibility of a solidarity strike existed. The line sabotaging the workers' active resistance withdrew the pickets with no explanation, in this way blocking any unity between the N.Y. and Pa. workers. Having done the dirty work of the company in consistently sabotaging the line of active resistance by the NFG workers themselves, midway through the strike the line of capitulation became more active, calling on the workers to rely on the government, the very same government which grants all the gas rate increases NFG asks for, which gives NFG subsidies from the workers' taxes, which allowed NFG to disregard safety rules during the strike and thereby condoned the murder of two supervisors, the same anti-working class government which issued injunctions and sent the police against the workers. The line of capitulation began touting "mandatory arbitration", "mediation", and "a board of inquiry" of the government to "settle the strike", while depriving the workers of all means and methods for developing their struggle against the NFG capitalists and defeating the reclassification plan, thus creating passive waiting among the workers. The workers' own experience with mediation in the 1975 strike as well as the fact that all the so- called "impartial" proposals by the mediators included the company's hated reclassification plan, began to expose this to the workers as yet another attempt to sabotage their struggle. On June 7th, the labor bureaucrats sealed their line of capitulation with their acceptance of the "mediator's proposal", essentially the same proposal presented by the company and rejected by the workers by a vote of over 6-to-l only two weeks earlier because it included the reclassification plan. As part of the show being enacted for the workers, the company ostensibly rejected the mediators' proposal in order to set the stage for the full scale onslaught being prepared against the workers: complete capitulation on all issues, initiation of a back-to-work movement, the implementation of the hated reclassification plan, and even denial of the workers' ability to wage their strike struggle in the winter when the company is affected most.

From all this activity it can be clearly seen that the line being pursued by the labor bureaucrats was a line of promoting political deception among the workers to pacify and demoralize them on the one hand, and carrying out active sabotage of the struggle on the other. To back up these dual tactics and carry out their sellout of the struggle against the reclassification plan, the labor bureaucrats right from the beginning of the strike took up the technique of promoting a big lie: that the strike did not hurt the company, that the workers' resistance was weak and futile and that the company was all-powerful and invincible. The facts show just the opposite to be true.

It was the capitalists who went into a frenzy to attack the workers, using the combined forces of their government and the labor bureaucrats, exposing their utter fear of the workers' resistance. TheNFGcapitalists were forced to severely curtail their operations during the strike, being able to maintain only a skeleton crew of scabs and those at a high price, showing the effectiveness of the workers' struggle against them. And most importantly, the resistance of the NFG workers was preventing the implementation of NFG's reclassification plan, threatening their long range program for maximizing profits in the future.

Not only did the resistance of the NFG workers severely hurt NFG's program for long term maximization of profits, it was also a big blow to the entire capitalist program to shift the burden of the economic and energy crisis onto the backs of the working class and people. The entire capitalist class and their government were afraid of the NFG workers' resistance because the entire working class in Buffalo saw it as the focus of their hatred against the bloodsucking oil and gas monopolies from whom they have suffered so much, especially last winter. This is why the capitalists, the government and news media, along with the labor bureaucrats, sought to prevent the development of any unity between the NFG workers and the rest of the workers. And this is the reason for the final liquidation of the struggle from within. The labor bureaucrats gave up their last pretenses of a "fight" against the reclassification plan and recommended acceptance of the company's proposal in their "tentative agreement". In an attempt to save face and maintain some credibility and influence among the workers, they demagogically voiced their "disgust and disappointment" with the company's offer, all the while continuing to promote the deception that the strike couldn't hurt the "all-powerful" company and therefore there was "no other choice", in order to liquidate resistance to the sellout.

While the strike has now ended and the reclassification plan was not defeated, the line of capitulation could not entirely succeed in getting a stranglehold on the NFG workers, in spite of all the efforts of the capitalists and their agents. Close to half of the workers voted to continue the strike and carry the struggle through to the end, in spite of all the sacrifices they had already made. And the NFG workers are certain to revive and deepen their struggle against the NFG capitalists in the future as they sum up their experience and denounce and repudiate the line of capitulation which sabotaged their resistance.

For the whole working class, the experience of the NFG workers teaches that only by upholding the line of active resistance and developing mass revolutionary struggle against the capitalists can their struggles win victory. Further, only by taking up revolutionary Marxist-Leninist politics can the workers oppose the politics of class collaboration which are used by the capitalists and their agents to liquidate their struggle from within. In order to carry this through, the workers must, in the course of the struggle, build their revolutionary party, a genuine Marxist-Leninist Communist Party, to lead them in battle against the monopoly capitalist class. With such a party at the head of the workers' movement the monopoly capitalists will face a force that they cannot defeat and will go down to their doom once and for all.

WAGE REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLE AGAINST THE CAPITALISTS' ATTACKS!

DENOUNCE AND REPUDIATE THE LINE OF CAPITULATION AND SABOTAGE!

UPHOLD THE LINE OF ACTIVE RESISTANCE! End.

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Oppose the Chauvinist Campaign of ILGWU and ACTU Against Foreign Workers!

The following is a leaflet issued by the Chicago Branch of the COUSML.

On Wednesday April 13th, the International Ladies Garment Workers Union and the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union called a nationwide demonstration of textile and garment workers to whip up chauvinist propaganda against workers overseas. The pretext of the demonstration was to "save" the jobs of garment and textile workers by limiting imports. In Chicago 1000 workers including large numbers of foreign born workers from Asia and Latin America were hauled out of their factories at 11:30 a.m. by union marshals, given picket signs and marched or bused to the demonstration in Daley Center. There they were hounded by speeches by various labor aristocrats blaming the loss of American jobs on foreign workers, workers who are themselves exploited by imperialism, largely U.S. imperialism, the same class which is exploiting the American working class. The solution these labor lieutenants said was to appeal to President Carter to limit imports. Mayor Bilandic read a proclamation praising the demonstration against foreign workers.

A number of workers at the demonstration denounced the politics of the campaign directed against workers overseas as well as the fascist methods the union used to get them to the demonstration. After the brief demonstration in Daley Center, the workers were marched through the loop by the union marshals and returned to work after being docked from their pay for the time lost from work. Along the route of march garbage cans could be seen filled with the chauvinist posters.

This campaign among garment and textile workers as well as campaigns being waged by the television and shoe industries, with the close collaboration of the capitalist trade unions, blames the working people of countries dominated by the world imperialist system for the economic crisis and wide-scale unemployment among American workers.

The garment and textile industries ran a propaganda campaign in the newspapers in coordination with the nationwide demonstration called by the unions, A vicious full-page ad in the Tribune by the Burlington Industries, after pointing out how low the wages are abroad, states: "Should American workers now be forced to subsidize foreign workers with their jobs? Absolutely not." THIS CHAUVINIST PROPAGANDA IS COMPLETELY OPPOSED TO OUR INTERESTS. IT IS IN THE INTERESTS OF THE WORKING CLASS TO UNITE WITH THE OPPRESSED PEOPLES AND NATIONS OF THE WORLD AGAINST U.S. IMPERIALISM, SOVIET SOCIAL-IMPERIALISM, AND ALL REACTION! This attack on severely exploited foreign workers tries to cover up the real source of unemployment to protect the interests of monopoly capital.

UNEMPLOYMENT IS CAUSED BY THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM AND INCREASES IN TIMES OF ECONOMIC CRISIS

Unemployment is a permanent and necessary feature of the capitalist economic system. Capitalism needs a surplus population ready forexploitation in some section of the economy or region of the country. (The building of the Alaskan pipeline is such an example, and when completed, the workers are thrown back into the ranks of the reserve army of labor.)

In times of economic crisis, unemployment increases. The overproduced commodities do not find a ready market and so the capitalists curtail production and throw large numbers of working people into the ranks of the unemployed, shifting the burden of the economic crisis onto the working class. This is a way the monopoly capitalists seek to get out of the economic crisis. The monopoly capitalists are, completely incapable of solving the problem of unemployment. The only way out of the economic crisis and increasing unemployment for the working class is to overthrow the monopoly capitalist system which causes the problem.

In blaming the working people in foreign countries for the problems created by the capitalist economic system and promoting a mass movement to beg Carter for reform, the monopoly capitalists and their lackeys, the labor lieutenants of the capitalist trade unions are attempting to whip up rabid chauvinism amongst American workers against foreign workers and promote class collaboration between the American working class and the monopoly capitalist class instead of class struggle, subordinating the working class to our "own" bourgeoisie to help out American imperialism and liquidate American revolution.

It is the capitalist system which is the cause of unemployment for the American working class. The solution is not to appeal to Carter to limit imports as the labor aristocrats would have us do, but to actively resist the shifting of the burden of the economic crisis, oppose this chauvinist propaganda and the liquidation of the revolutionary working class movement being promoted by the labor aristocracy, and wage revolutionary struggle to overthrow the capitalist system itself. AMERICAN WORKERS HAVE NO INTERESTS IN COMMON WITH THE MONOPOLY CAPITALIST CLASS OF PARASITES WHICH THRIVES BY EXPLOITING AND OPPRESSING THE AMERICAN WORKING CLASS AND OPPRESSED NATIONS AND PEOPLES ABROAD!

It is of vital importance for the American working class to oppose this chauvinist ideology. For with the revolutionary upsurge of the peoples on a world wide basis and the deepening of the economic crisis, the U.S. imperialists and Soviet social-imperialists are arming themselves to the teeth preparing to launch new wars of aggression against the oppressed peoples and nations of the world and against the socialist nations to re-divide the spheres of influence of the world between U.S. imperialism and Soviet social - imperialism to try to get themselves out of the crisis. The monopoly capitalists and their lackeys are organizing this chauvinist campaign to split the proletariat in the U.S. from the working and oppressed peoples abroad in order to prepare conditions for aligning the American working class with the monopoly capitalist class in its aggressive wars abroad. As Lenin pointed out, "Unless the proletariat and, following it, all the toiling masses, of all countries and nations all over the world voluntarily strive for alliance and unity, the victory over capitalism cannot be successfully accomplished".

OPPOSE THE SHIFTING OF THE BURDEN OF THE ECONOMIC CRISIS ONTO THE BACKS OF THE WORKERS!

OPPOSE THE CHAUVINIST CAMPAIGN OF THE ILGW AND ACTU AGAINST FOREIGN WORKERS!

UPHOLD PROLETARIAN INTERNATIONALISM! WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE! End.

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CONVICTION OF FILIPINA NURSES IS A FASCIST ATROCITY BY THE GOVERNMENT!

The Workers' Advocate vigorously condemns the conviction of the two Filipina nurses, Leonora Perez and Filipina Narciso, by a federal court in the Ann Arbor VA hospital case. This conviction is an outright racist and fascist atrocity by the government! By convicting the two nurses on totally fraudulent charges, the government wants to cover up its own guilt in the numerous breathing failures and deaths in the VA hospital (it is well-known that miserable conditions due to under-staffing exist at the hospital, and that the capitalist drug companies, concerned only about their profitable government contracts, often supply bad drugs). The government also wants to whip up racist hysteria in the U.S. against the Filipino people to "justify" U.S. imperialist domination of the Philippines, whose people are fighting an armed liberation struggle for the freedom of their homeland from the U.S.-Marcos fascist dictatorship. The aim of the U.S. government in convicting the nurses is therefore nothing other than to blame the people for its own crimes and to prepare to commit more!

For this evil end, the government is attempting to ruin the lives of two young, hard-working immigrant nurses, who are well-loved by their fellow workers. This case shows that it is utterly impossible for the working people to rely on the courts of the rich to get justice, and that the U.S. government, a government of the monopoly capitalists dedicated to persecuting and suppressing the people to insure profits for the bourgeoisie, is a criminal government to its very core.

The government's case was a fraud. In all, 51 patients stopped breathing between July and August of 1975. The nurses were only working during 32 of these incidents, of which the FBI computer somehow decided 20 were "suspicious" and charged the nurses with only 15 of these. Then, after all the testimony, six of the charges had to be dropped for lack of testimony, leaving nine which the government claimed the nurses "conspired" to commit. The government even had to admit that it had only circumstantial evidence and even that was stretching a point, as most of this consisted of asserting that the nurses were at the bedside of patients who they were tending to as part of their job. The government also admitted that it could show no motive at all. The government went so far as to hypnotize dying patients to get "witnesses" who "remembered" the nurses being in their room. The government even used an FBI doctor (hardly an impartial person) who claimed he had developed a foolproof method and used it to detect the drug pavulon (the alleged poison) in dead, embalmed patients who had been buried for months, while no other doctor had been able to develop such a test! On the other hand, a patient whom the nurses were convicted of poisoning testified that he never even saw them in his room that day! After the trial this patient declared that he owed his life to these two nurses and would fight for their vindication. To have continued the trial for one minute with such flimsy evidence, to say nothing of convicting the nurses, shows how desperate the government is to attack these national minority workers.

To prepare this case, the FBI, the government's gestapo, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and resorted to vicious harassment of the two nurses, to the extent of holding back their citizenship applications, removing them from their patient-care jobs, questioning them for as long as six hours at a time while not allowing them to leave, and even threatening their lives (one of the nurses was told that she had better go to church and light a candle for herself like they do for the dead if she didn't confess). Throughout this fascist treatment the two nurses proudly continued to declare their innocence of the government's charges. And now they have been unjustifiably convicted of crimes which the government itself committed!

But this outrageous crime by the government will not go unanswered! Workers and other progressive people in the U.S., as well as many people in the Philippines and elsewhere, who have been following this case, are filled with the utmost fury at this atrocious act by the U.S. courts. At least one fellow worker of the nurses at the VA, hospital has resigned in protest at the verdict. Demonstrations and rallies involving thousands of people have been held in support of the two nurses. Many people plan activities to denounce the government and support the nurses. Active resistance to racist attacks is the only way to defeat the government. The Workers' Advocate declares its utter contempt for the criminal U.S. government and its court system for the conviction of the two Filipina nurses, Filipina Narciso and Leonora Perez, and calls upon all workers and oppressed people in the Detroit area to give full support to their struggle against this racist and fascist attack. End.

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Kent State Students Fight to Keep Alive the Memory of the Martyrs of May 4, 1970

[Photos: Mass rally of students at Kent State. Militant Kent students rush to occupy site of May 4, 1970, martyrdom of anti-imperialist students.]

Since May, hundreds of students at Kent State University have been waging a determined struggle, firmly resolved to keep alive the spirit of student resistance to U.S. imperialist aggression abroad and violent repression at home. They aim at blocking the University's plans (backed by the government) to construct a gymnasium on the site where seven years ago four students were murdered and nine wounded by National Guardsmen for demonstrating against U.S. imperialist aggression in Indochina. This spring and summer students have staged rallies, seized the administration building, a thousand strong picketed a board of trustees meeting and held a 62- day occupation of the planned construction site which only ended after the police arrested the 194 protesters. Despite the university's obstinate refusal to change its plans, the students have vowed to continue their struggle. In recent weeks they stormed and reoccupied the now fenced-off construction site, following which 61 were arrested. Many of these are waging a hunger strike in jail. Students say that the site of the government murders must be preserved as a memorial, that the spirit of Kent State must be kept alive. The protesters also raised in their slogans the memory of Jackson State College in Mississippi where on May 14, 1970, two Afro-American students were killed and 12 wounded by police fire when rebellion broke out on the campus against racial discrimination, violent repression and exploitation of the Afro-American people and against U.S. imperialist aggression abroad.

On May 12 students moved onto the hill where the gym is to be built and from which the Guardsmen had fired upon the Kent State students in 1970, settled themselves in tents and began what would be a 62-day siege. A court order obtained by the University president, demanding that the students give up their protest, pick up their tents and go, was ripped up to the applause of several hundred supporters. On July 12, police armed with night-sticks dragged away, handcuffed and arrested 194 protesters. In their struggle to save the site of the May 1970 resistance struggle and slaying from being covered over, the students had to defy the government of the monopoly capitalist class which employed its administrative lackeys, courts and police to suppress them. This shows that the government has not and will never change: as always it carries out and endorses aggression abroad and slaughter of the masses at home.

In May 1970 the world was in an upsurge of struggle against the U.S. imperialist war of aggression in Indochina. "Unable to win in Viet Nam and Laos, the U.S. aggressors treacherously engineered the reactionary coup d'etat by the Lon Nol-Sirik Matak clique, brazenly dispatched their troops to invade Cambodia and resumed the bombing of north Viet Nam..." (Mao Tsetung, Statement of May 20, 1970.) These attacks by the U.S. aggressors aroused the furious resistance of the Indochinese people and as well fanned the flames of resistance of the American people against U.S. imperialism. Throughout the United States, students mounted mass resistance struggles on the college campuses.

At Kent State, students angered by the expansion of the war into Cambodia held demonstrations, marches through the town of Kent and burned the Army Reserve Officers Training Corp building to the ground. On May 4, 1970, following a night of struggle in which 60 students were arrested, 1,000 Kent State protesters gathered for a rally. The crowd was ordered to disperse by the National Guard called in by the Ohio governor; then canisters of tear gas were fired. Students and National Guardsmen clashed, the students throwing rocks and the steaming tear gas canisters back at the government troops until the Guardsmen retreated up the hill. As the Guardsmen, moving up the hill in single file, reached the crest, they suddenly turned in unison, forming a skirmish line and without warning opened fire on the demonstrators. The volley of rifle fire killed four students and injured nine.

This fascist atrocity was furiously condemned by the broad masses of American people and people of the world. The people were still further enraged when the government tried to justify its slaughter by fabricating a "sniper", and when President Nixon "deplored" the four deaths by blaming the violence on the student protesters, all the while double-talking about the Cambodian invasion bringing peace. The lesson was stark: the "democratic" government of the United States is a body of armed men in service to the monopoly capitalist class, in absolute support of U.S. imperialist aggression abroad and exploitation and oppression at home. Whenever the deception of its sham "democracy" can no longer contain the people's resistance, the government puts down the rebellion by brutal force.

However, rather than intimidating and suppressing the mass movement against the war and the government, the Kent State murders only added fire to the protests. Students in hundreds of thousands all over the country battled police and National Guard troops, attacked ROTC facilities and activities, occupied school buildings and closed down campuses with strikes. 400 campuses were struck, many until the end of the term. Protests moved off the campus and into the streets. Demonstrators against the war and the Kent State killings merged with demonstrators against racial discrimination and violent repression of the Afro-Americans. High school students took to the streets in protest. Within a few days of the government's repression of the Kent State protest 100,000 were mobilized for an anti-war demonstration in Washington D.C. Demonstrators in Canada, India, Venezuela, Australia, Italy and New Zealand took up active resistance in support of the American students' struggles and in opposition to U.S. aggression in Indochina.

Part of the wave of rebellion sweeping the country, Jackson State College students rose up against the U.S. imperialist government, opposing its imperialist war and its racial discrimination and violent repression. Mississippi highway patrolmen, backed up by the National Guard slaughtered two students and wounded 12. Three days later in defiance of an order of the governor, 1,000 demonstrators marched on campus following a memorial service for the two dead students.

In his May 20th Statement, Chairman Mao Tsetung characterized the situation: "Whi1e massacring the people in other countries, U.S. imperialism is slaughtering the white and black people in its own country. Nixon's fascist atrocities have kindled the raging flames of the revolutionary mass movement in the United States. The Chinese people firmly support the revolutionary struggle of the American people. I am convinced that the American people who are fighting valiantly will ultimately win victory and that the fascist rule in the United States will inevitably be defeated.

"The Nixon government is beset with troubles internally and externally, with utter chaos at home and extreme isolation abroad. The mass movement of protest against U.S. aggression in Cambodia has swept the globe...".

The monopoly capitalist class is still embarked today on its crisis-ridden course of intensification of exploitation and violent suppression of the masses at home and abroad. Deeper in economic crisis and shaken by the national national liberation struggles in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, the monopoly capitalist class is attempting to shift the. entire burden of the crisis onto the working and oppressed masses and preparing for war with the other superpower to suppress the people's liberation struggles and re-divide the world. In order to attack the people abroad the monopoly capitalist class must create a quiet "home front"; it must attack the American masses with its armed state machine. The lessons of Kent State hold true today: massive active resistance to the monopoly capitalist class and its government is the only way forward; the fascist repression by the government of the moribund monopoly capitalist class will only give rise to larger and more powerful resistance struggles of the democratic masses.

On July 25 the Ohio State Supreme Court gave the o. k. to the university to start construction of the Kent State gymnasium and the following day the board of trustees of the university announced its plans to go ahead with building the gym on the historic site. To further this aim the government set up a roadblock to intercept a car caravan of demonstrators returning to the campus. Additionally the government has warrants out for the arrest of 27 protesters based on a video tape of the protest. There is no end to the state's Hitlerite tactics to suppress the students' just struggle, clearly pointing out the government's terrible frenzy at the resistance it is meeting. Nevertheless students marched once again on the site and defiantly occupied it.

Victory to the students' struggle to keep the spirit of Kent State and Jackson State alive! End.

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HEROIC REBELLION OF PUERTO RICAN PEOPLE OF CHICAGO

[Photo: Puerto Rican masses wage active resistance to the fascist attacks of the state.]

On June 4th the people of the Humboldt Park community waged a heroic resistance struggle against the premeditated fascist attacks of the police. June 4th was Puerto Rican Day and the Puerto Rican people were gathered in Humboldt Park celebrating and having picnics. The city government had already interfered with this day of celebration by moving it ahead one week in order to get political capital for their elections. The police throughout the day were hanging around on street corners harassing the people, grabbing Puerto Rican flags, etc. Police cars were seen to drive by before any fighting broke out with windows taped up and rifles in the back seat, clearly indicating their intentions of launching an attack. In the early evening, they invaded the park and began shooting indiscriminately, killing two youths by shooting them in the back and wounding many others. They attempted to clear the park, attacking and beating the people. Later the authorities invented the excuse that they had intervened to stop a gang fight -- a fight which in reality never happened -- to justify their cold-blooded murders.

The masses responded with a resolute and fierce resistance struggle, showering police with any weapon at hand -- sticks, rocks and bottles. They burned and overturned two police cars and damaged 17 others. Nothing could halt the valiant people's struggle, not mounted police, not helicopters, not reinforcements. So fierce was the people's counter-attack that nearly 60 police were injured and the police were forced to retreat down Division Street. Despite the attempts to split the community and working class by singling out the Puerto Rican people for attack, many nationalities joined the Puerto Rican people in resistance. Clearly the police did not expect such fierce resistance. The truth of Chairman Mao's statement: "U.S. imperialism, which looks like a huge monster, is in essence a paper tiger in the throes of its death bed struggle", was demonstrated again Saturday night in Humboldt Park. The police, armed thugs in service to the monopoly capitalist dictators, feared the people.

It is not an accident or an isolated incident that such an attack was planned and carried out against the Puerto Rican people by the fascist state machine. Puerto Rico suffers under U.S. colonial domination. The U.S. monopoly capitalists steal the resources and labor of the Puerto Rican people. Because the Puerto Rican people are robbed and impoverished by the U.S. moneybags, large numbers of people are forced to emigrate to the U.S. where they face racial discrimination, high unemployment, low wages, etc. Because of the resistance of the Puerto Rican people to U.S. colonial domination and to the oppression and racist attacks they are faced with in the U.S., the U.S. monopoly capitalists and their state are in a frenzy, attempting to liquidate these struggles. Recently, they set up a grand jury "investigation" deliberately to harass the Puerto Rican people and to create public opinion against their struggle.

Throughout and since the glorious resistance to police attacks, the bourgeoisie, its media and spokesmen, have been viciously slandering the Puerto Rican people. Clearly, the bourgeoisie has been severely shaken by the resolute resistance to fascist attacks waged by the masses of the people and by the recognition that the resistance was unquestionably directed at their private army of fascist thugs -- the police. But in order to mystify this and try to cover up their crimes they have heaped abuse and slanders on the Puerto Rican community and are directing their fire especially at the youth. They are attempting to blame the "riots" on "gang violence" and to label the Puerto Rican youth as criminals. The bourgeois press is directly declaring that the people have no right to resist fascist attacks and launch militant struggle against oppression. In an editorial on June 7, the Tribune rabidly accuses "urban teenagers" of "using the streets as a battle ground, terrorizing their own neighborhoods, and keeping the stage set for a full-scale riot." Thus, they blame the crimes of the U.S. fascist state and their armed thugs, the police, on the masses of youth.

The bourgeoisie has been utilizing this uprising to step up their fascist and racist attacks on the Latino people, to strengthen the role of the fascist state machine and to thoroughly divert the revolutionary sentiment of the people into counter-revolutionary activity. Police Superintendent Rochford has not only justified the fascist slaughter of the two youths by the police, but complained there were not enough police and vowed that in the future the police "will act more aggressively". Rochford and other fascist spokesmen continuously refer to the youth as "hooligans", 'lawless", etc. Clearly, the only "crime" they are referring to is revolutionary mass struggle and it is this, above all else, that they are desperately trying to wipe out. It is this kind of struggle that shakes the foundations of the monopoly capitalist system that constitutes a "crime". The fascist bourgeoisie are thus putting forward their program -- that is to strengthen the fascist state machine in the Latino community, enlarge the police patrols and expand and deepen the infiltration of various organs of the state machine into the community. Further, through the use of deception, they are trying to hoodwink the masses of people into participating in the state machine. Their program is to put more Latinos in top government positions, in the fascist police department, etc. This is to use political deception in order to carry out further fascization of the society. At the same time they are attempting to develop a sold out strata among the people and use them to attack the people's struggles. Meanwhile the problems of the Latino community deepen as these are caused by the monopoly capitalist system itself.

Certain confusion-mongerers are calling for "raising the struggle to a higher level and attacking the capitalist system as the enemy". According to them this struggle is not directed at the capitalists. And they have some panacea to offer which according to them is better than active resistance to police attacks. But it is not in the interests of the Puerto Rican people or of any working and oppressed people in the U.S. to put an end to this type of struggle. Rather it is in our interests to intensify this type of struggle. IT IS RIGHT TO REBEL AGAINST REACTIONARIES!

These problems which the Puerto Rican people face are inherent features of the capitalist system. They are similar to the problems faced by the Afro-American and Chicano national minorities. To solve these problems revolutionary struggle must be launched and capitalism overthrown. On June 4, the Puerto Rican people displayed an excellent spirit of active resistance to the attacks of the police, flunkeys of the monopoly capitalists and agents of the state. They answered counter-revolutionary violence with revolutionary violence. Such active resistance is extremely important. It is the only way to answer the attacks of the monopoly capitalists and their state. Without embarking on the path of active resistance, revolution cannot be developed, capitalism cannot be overthrown and the problems that this system is causing cannot be solved.

HAIL THE HEROIC STRUGGLE AGAINST THE REACTIONARY VIOLENCE OF THE STATE!

LONG LIVE ACTIVE RESISTANCE TO FASCISM! End

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AZANIAN PEOPLE'S NATIONAL UPRISING CONTINUES AGAINST RACIST VORSTER REGIME

[Photo: Black youth demonstrating militantly in Soweto Township during continuing national uprising of the Azanian people against the racist Vorster regime and its U.S. imperialist backers.]

During the month of June, the people of Azania launched powerful demonstrations to commemorate the first anniversary of the Soweto uprising of June 16, 1976, which sparked the mass revolutionary struggle that is continuing on an unprecedented scale throughout Azania. This June's demonstrations marked one year of national upsurge of the Azanian people's struggle for the overthrow of the racist and fascist Vorster regime and U.S. imperialist domination and for national liberation. Hundreds of thousands of youths, students and workers took to the streets raising slogans denouncing the hated settler regime, racist oppression and state terror. Numerous army and police forces who were rushed into the streets to savagely suppress the massive demonstrations were met with heroic resistance by the Azanians.

In Soweto alone,3,000youth and workers marched in demonstrations on June 14th and 15th. Battles between the police who used all sorts of riot gear and weapons and youth who used stones as weapons lasted for hours. Barricades were erected by the people to protect the demonstrations from police attack, and all attempts by the police to clear away these barricades were resisted with barrages of rocks. Opening fire on the masses, the fascist police wounded many seriously and killed at least two. On June 16th an even more powerful demonstration was launched in Soweto. Similar fierce clashes took place also around Johannesburg and Pretoria, in Orlando and other cities.

Demonstrations in Johannesburg defied the apartheid regulation which restricts Azanians' presence in this city to going to and from work. The police were frenzied at the demonstrators' contemptuous disregard of the racist regulation and repeatedly opened fire. On June 15th explosions were set off on the rail line between Soweto and Johannesburg. A general strike of workers brought the business of the reactionary bourgeoisie and the foreign imperialists in Johannesburg to a halt on the 16th.

In the southeastern part of the country, fierce struggle erupted on June 16th and 17th in Kwanobuhle and Kabah, two segregated areas where the Azanian workers in the auto plants in Uitenhage live. Demonstrators in these townships destroyed more than$1.5million worth of buildings and other property of the racist and fascist Vorster regime and the bourgeoisie. Here police killed nine people and wounded more than twenty. 400 workers and students were arrested, showing the mass scale of the uprising and the frenzy of the Vorster regime.

The brutal reaction of the Vorster regime to the June 16th commemoration demonstrations aroused the Azanian people to launch an even more powerful offensive against the racist and fascist regime. On June 23 hundreds of Azanian youths in the heartof Johannesburg and thousands in Soweto participated in what the bourgeois press admitted was "one of the biggest demonstrations ever staged by militant students." The demonstrators demanded the release of leading revolutionary activists who had been arrested prior to the June 16th demonstrations and the hundreds arrested during the massive action. So powerful was this demonstration that the Vorster government called in fascist police from Pretoria to reinforce the already massive police force in Soweto and Johannesburg. The youths also raised slogans condemning the decadent colonialist education system as "Education for Slavery", and marched into Johannesburg chanting, "We Want Our Land Back." Vehicles and buildings of the racist colonial settlers and the foreign imperialists were smashed.

Demonstrations have continued to erupt in Soweto and elsewhere. The funerals of those slaughtered by the colonialists have been occasions of further mass struggles. These massive demonstrations and valiant resistance struggles throughout Azania continuing the year-long national uprising show the firm resolve of the Azanian people to carry on their revolutionary mass struggle until the racist and fascist South African regime and imperialist domination are overthrown.

The 1976 uprising in Soweto was a response to the savage attack of the racist and fascist Vorster regime on a peaceful demonstration of black high school students protesting the forced use of the white-ruling minority Afrikaans language in the schools. The Soweto uprising gave rise to one massive revolutionary struggle after another against the apartheid regime and imperialism. In defiance of the barbaric repression of the Vorster regime, throughout the year the Azanian people carried out demonstrations of thousands of people, strikes and assaults on police stations, schools, railroads and other establishments of the fascist regime. The Pan Africanist Congress of Azania reports the number of those massacred by the Vorster regime since the national uprising broke out June 16th, 1976, to be in the thousands. In January, 1977, the national uprising assumed a new character as the first armed groups of Azanian liberation fighters were established in the mountains and forests. The unsuppressible upsurge in the cities and the mounting armed struggle in the countryside are striking severe blows against the colonialists and their imperialist backers.

Since the bloody suppression of demonstrations in defiance of the pass-law in Sharpeville and elsewhere in 1960, the Azanian people, under the leadership of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania, have discarded any illusions that the racist regime can be "reformed" and have raised high the glorious banner of the complete overthrow of the racist and fascist South African rule and of national liberation. The experiences of the past year of continuing national uprising has confirmed to the Azanian people a thousand-fold that they can realize their aspirations for freedom and independence only through armed struggle.

The revolutionary determination of the Azanian people is also a blow to the imperialist-colonialist plots whose aim is to extinguish the flames of national uprising with demagogy. The U.S. imperialists, while never ceasing to applaud and support the violent suppression of the Azanian people by the settler regime, sent first Henry Kissinger and then Andrew Young (U.S. ambassador to the U.N.) to southern Africa to pose as "friends" of the Azanian and other African peoples. These spokesmen for U.S. imperialist plunder and exploitation of the African people talk of "a peaceful solution", "majority rule" and "opposing racism" in the hopes of propping up racist rule and maintaining imperialist domination by persuading the Azanian people to give up the path of revolutionary armed struggle. But the Azanian people are not to be fooled. Kissinger's visit to South Africa last September was protested by a general strike involving hundreds of thousands of workers and by massive demonstrations. Thousands of demonstrators marched in Soweto under the banner, "Kissinger, Murderer". The powerful demonstrations this June in commemoration of the Soweto uprising were the Azanian people's answer to Andrew Young's recent trip to Africa.

The struggle of the Azanian people is against the racist settler regime, against racism, colonialism and imperialism. Since 1652 the Azanian people have waged fierce resistance struggles against Dutch, British and U.S. colonialism and imperialism. Today the reactionary white settler bourgeoisie with its apartheid system under which the twenty million Azanian people have no rights and the four million settlers have all the rights, is the social base of the international bourgeoisie inside South Africa for the plunder and exploitation of the masses in the interest of the imperialist powers headed by U.S. imperialism. The task which the Azanian people have taken up is to carry through to the end the struggle for national liberation through the violent overthrow of the settler regime and U.S. domination.

This struggle of the Azanian people enjoys the fervent support of the democratic and progressive people on a world-wide scale. South Africa has long been held up to the world by the international bourgeoisie as a symbol of imperialism's allegedly inviolable strength and of the supposed "right" of the of the white man to rule the earth. U.S. imperialism has put its faith in the apartheid system and South Africa's army, which is the largest and most modern on the continent, to maintain racist "order" and to protect U.S. interests. The U.S. super-exploits the labor of the Azanian people, plunders South Africa of its gold, diamonds and metals crucial to missile construction and has sunk $2 billion worth of investments into South Africa. But the unconquerable revolutionary struggle of the Azanian people is shaking U.S. imperialist domination and showing that the future of Azania belongs to the Azanian people, not to the racists and imperialists. The more the Vorster regime lashes out at the people with its terror, demonstrating its state of pure panic, the more resistance it meets and the more powerful the people's offensive movement grows. The downfall of this "fortress" of racism, colonialism and imperialism will be of tremendous significance to world revolution. The Azanian people's victories are giving great inspiration to the struggles of entire Africa and oppressed people everywhere. The overthrow of this bastion of reactionary rule will hasten the liberation of all of Africa and contribute to the liberation of all the world's people.

The liberation of Azania will also be a blow to the war preparations of the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. The two superpowers are desperately colluding in southern Africa to suppress the national liberation struggles, while contending to dominate Africa to reap maximum profits as they prepare for inter-imperialist war to "solve" their political and economic crisis. The liberation of Azania will be a blow to the superpowers' war preparations by denying to both a valuable base for suppression of the African revolution and for command over the sea route between the Indian and Atlantic Oceans.

The struggle cf the Azanian people is part of world proletarian socialist revolution and stands in the camp of socialism, independence and national liberation struggles in resolute opposition to the camp of imperialism, social-imperialism and all reaction.

In particular, the struggle of the Azanian people is a great inspiration to the Afro-American people, who are subjected to the vicious system of class and national oppression, racial discrimination, violent repression and cruel exploitation at the hands of the 'Common enemy of the whole U.S. working class and the Azanian people. As Chairman Mao Tsetung pointed out, "The evil system of colonialism and imperialism arose and throve with the enslavement of Negroes and the trade in Negroes, and it will surely come to its end with the complete emancipation of the black people." The Afro-American people, the whole American working class, and the African people have a common objective--the overthrow of U.S. imperialism. They find strength and inspiration in each other's victories, as well as learn lessons from each other's struggles. The Afro-American people's own experience that teaches that the only way forward is mass revolutionary struggle is confirmed again by the experience of the Azanian people. Furthermore the Azanian people's struggle teaches that the common enemy, the U.S. monopoly capitalist class, is not the steel bulwark it wishes the people to believe it is, but a flimsy plasterboard wall, vulnerable to the impact of the people's blows. The upsurge of the Azanian people's struggle is bound to inspire an upsurge of the Afro- American people's struggle. This is why the U.S. bourgeoisie is frantically trying to mystify the content of the Azanian people's struggle, promoting the lie that the upsurge in Azania is a "race war", not a revolutionary war against the common enemy of the Azanian and Afro-American people.

But this mystification will never prevent the Afro-American people and the entire American working class from supporting the Azanian people and waging revolutionary struggle in the U.S. To prepare conditions to oppose the inevitable upsurge of the Afro- American struggle, Andrew Young said in his interview with Playboy that "if there is race war in South Africa, there will be a race conflict in the U.S." Young went on to say that the conflict would start with "whites attacking blacks". What Young is trying to do is scare the American people into giving up struggle and opposing the Azanian revolution. He istrying to conceal the fact that in the U.S. it is the monopoly capitalist class and its state machine, not the working class, that organizes racist and fascist attacks against the Black people such as the government organized fascist anti-busing movement. The aim of the state is to stir up racism against the Black people and split the unity of the American working class and the American and African people. But despite the deception of bourgeois lackeys like Young, the unity of the American and African people is growing.

The COUSML hails the fighting people of Azania and calls on the American working class and oppressed people to support the Azanian people's struggle by waging revolutionary struggle in the heartland of U.S. imperialism. The heroic struggle of the Azanian people is bound to end in victory over the racist and fascist Vorster regime and U.S. domination and will be a significant contribution to the emancipation of all mankind. End.

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The Struggle Against the Segregation of Carson Beach

On Sunday, July 24, a group of Black and Spanish speaking people from the Columbia Point housing project in Boston went to use nearby Carson Beach. There they were attacked not only by a racist gang but also by the police, who defended the rock-throwing racists and eventually forced the people back to the Columbia Point project, using motorcycles and horses. This was the second time in two days that residents of Columbia Point had gone to the beach, which is right next to where they live.

What is the issue here? It is that Carson Beach is segregated, that this means that the residents of Columbia Point cannot exercise their most elementary right to take their children to the beach, that because of this situation in the past week three young children at Columbia Point have been hit by cars while playing in the hydrants. People at Columbia Point have stood up to this intolerable situation, not simply by sending their children to the beach, but also by accompanying them in large numbers to protect them against racist attacks. The struggle of the Columbia Point residents against the segregation of Carson Beach is a just struggle and deserves the support of the entire working class.

It is common knowledge that Carson Beach has not always been segregated. In the past the beach was used not only by residents of South Boston and Columbia Point -- which was once an integrated housing project -- but also by many people from Dorchester and Roxbury. Carson Beach became segregated only since the fascist anti-busing movement organized racist attacks on Black people using the beach.

In the summer of 1975, a number of attacks were made on Black people driving to and from the beach. Finally, in the end of July, a group of 6 Black bible salesmen from out of state were violently attacked and beaten by racists when they attempted to use the beach. Two weeks later residents of Columbia Point, together with supporters from throughout Boston, held a picnic to assert their right to use the beach. They were attacked by organized racist gangs armed with rocks, bottles and sticks. Similarly to Sunday, July 24, when the racists attacked, the police also went into action -- against the people from Columbia Point. Using motorcycles and clubs they attacked the people and forced them off the beach. That night police staged an armed occupation not only of Columbia Point, but also of the Mission Hill and Orchard Park projects. Since that time, Carson Beach has remained segregated.

The history of the attacks at Carson Beach teaches a number of lessons about the fascist anti-busing movement. Firstly, these attacks show the racist character of the fascist anti-busing movement. The politicians and spokesmen of the fascist anti-busing movement demagogically claim that their concern is "forced busing" or neighborhood schools, etc. The attacks at Carson Beach, however, which have nothing to do with riding buses to schools, show that the anti-busing movement is a racist and fascist movement, that the organizations of the fascist anti-busing movement are nothing but racist gangs organized to attack Black people and return them to the most rigid conditions of Jim Crow segregation. Any talk about neighborhood schools, buses, etc. is hot air to be reported in the newspapers and to sow confusion while attacks on Black people and their democratic rights remain the order of the day.

Secondly, these attacks give an excellent example of the role of the government in the racist and fascist attacks. This week the politicians and government spokesmen are hypocritically preaching to the newspapers, pretending to be "neutral" and concerned for the good of all. The Metropolitan District Commission (MDC) police spokesmen are piously proclaiming that they will enforce the right of all people to use the beach. Mayor White called upon all sides to "use common sense and decency to put a permanent stop to incidents of this nature". This "neutrality" of the government is a sheer lie.

In fact both in 1975 and this past week it was the MDC and Boston City police who attacked the Columbia Point residents with motorcycles and clubs and forced them off the beach. This is a curious way of enforcing the rights of all people. It is a curious sort of "neutrality" where every attack by the racist gangs against Columbia Point residents and other Black people is followed by police action against the Columbia Point residents and other Black people. It is a curious sort of "neutrality" where Mayor White calls upon both the racist attackers and the people from Columbia Point attacked by them to "put a stop to incidents of this nature." At every step at Carson Beach and in the whole history of the fascist anti-busing movement the government has hypocritically called for "peace" while actually attacking Black people and defending the racists.

The government is not in the business of enforcing the rights of all people. The government is the instrument of the rule of a tiny handful of rich parasites, the monopoly capitalist class. The only right the government enforces is the "right" of the monopoly capitalists to exploit and crush the working class and people. All the machinery of the government -- the police, the courts, the bureaucracy, the talk-shop politicians, etc. -- is geared to this and only this purpose. Today the monopoly capitalist class is caught in a deep crisis that it cannot get out of. In desperation the monopoly capitalists are seeking a way out by trying to shift the entire burden of their crisis onto the backs of the working class and by preparing for a world war with their main imperialist rivals, the New Tsars of the Soviet Union.

To carry this out they must ruthlessly suppress the struggles of the working class. The fascist anti-busing movement was brought into being by the monopoly capitalist class to attack the Afro-American people, in an attempt to split the working class as a whole and weaken the working class movement and every struggle against the government. From the very beginning, the entire machinery of the government has been used to develop and support the fascist anti- busing movement, while the liberal politicians wring their hands and play at being friends of the people. Thus in Boston for years the fascist anti-busing movement was organized directly out of City Hall chambers, while politicians such as Mayor White hypocritically moaned about "peace", "moderation" and "the common welfare".

The Black people, the entire working class and all progressive people cannot rely upon the government in their struggles. The government is the instrument of the rule of the monopoly capitalist class, to exploit and crush the people. The people can only rely upon their own organization and strength to fight racist and fascist attacks.

The Black people and other national minorities in Boston have a proud tradition of fighting back against the racist attacks of the anti-busing movement and police. The Afro-American youth have never ceased fighting against the racist thugs who attacked them at the integrated' schools. In the fall of 1974, the residents of the Columbia Point housing project took up armed self-defense to combat the racist attackers. Their persistent efforts to re-integrate Carson Beach show that they will not give up the struggle against racist attacks. Active resistance to government-organized racist attacks is the only path to defeating them.

SUPPORT THE JUST STRUGGLE OF THE COLUMBIA POINT RESIDENTS AGAINST THE SEGREGATION OF CARSON BEACH!

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OPPOSE THE GOVERNMENT'S ATTEMPT TO ORGANIZE A RACIST AND FASCIST ANTI-BUSING MOVEMENT

SEATTLE:

During the past month, the Seattle School Board (SSB) openly acknowledged the bankruptcy of their "voluntary desegregation plan". They finally admitted that the Magnet Programs will not integrate the schools, but instead will maintain segregation and racial discrimination there.

The Seattle School Board has no intentions whatsoever to integrate the public school system. Furthermore, the SSB and other governmental agencies have been inventing all sorts of Magnet Program schemes in order to bombard the people with false and confusing propaganda on the desegregation issue. Instead of clarifying the just and democratic character of school integration, the government has been literally screaming about the necessity to voluntarily desegregate the schools so as to "at all costs" avoid having a mandatory busing program imposed by the federal government. This is a set-up. The SSB fully expects a federal court order requiring a mandatory desegregation program. The monopoly capitalist class, which controls the federal and local government including the SSB, is trying to establish an inflammatory situation among the people so that when a federal court order is imposed, a racist and fascist "anti-busing" movement can be incited to attack Black people and their democratic right to attend integrated schools.

As recent events in Boston and Louisville clearly show: first the "liberals" create maximum panic and confusion; then the open fascists start yelling against "forced busing", which is their basic rallying cry to incite a section of white working people to participate in racist attacks on Afro-Americans. These attacks are not "spontaneous", but are organized by the state.

"ANTI-BUSING" FORCES RE-EMERGE

In Seattle we are witnessing another such set-up. Recently the capitalist news media announced the formation of the American Constitutional Liberties Association (ACLA). The emergence of ACLA marks the beginning of an open drive by the capitalist class to incite a racist and fascist "anti-busing" movement in Seattle.

ACLA, a white fascist anti-busing organization, represents the anti-Black, anti-working class aims of the monopoly capitalist class. It admits to being the successor to the former "anti-busing" organization in Seattle, the Committee Against Mandatory Busing (CAMB). ACLA has been established under the hoax of defending "freedom of choice" and of opposing "forced busing". These are the same two slogans around which the open racists and fascists of the "anti-busing" movement in Boston and Louisville launched violent, racist attacks against the Afro-American people.

CAMB came into being in Seattle at exactly the same time as Richard Nixon was leading a furious attack against school integration in 1970. Nixon's fiendish attacks led to the racist "anti-busing" movement in Pontiac, Michigan.

Now, the American Constitutional Liberties Association has come into being at the beck and call of the fascist demagoguery of Jimmy Carter -- the chief political representative of the monopoly capitalist class. Carter's defense of "ethnic purity" and neighborhood schools heralds the intentions of the government of the rich to step up its attacks not only against the Black people but also against all working people. By promoting splits within the working class with this racist mass movement, the government hopes to smash the workers' resistance struggles and shift the burden of the economic crisis onto their backs. They are also attempting to suppress all opposition of the American people to their preparations for a world war with Soviet social-imperialism (socialism in words, imperialism in deeds).

15 YEARS OF LIP SERVICE TO SCHOOL INTEGRATION BY THE SSB

On June 8, the SSB passed a resolution to end racial segregation in the public schools by the 1979-80 school year. Over the last 15 years, since the first Voluntary Racial Transfer Program began in 1963, the board issued 14 "quality integrated education" statements of one kind or another. During this whole time period, the schools have become increasingly segregated. These "talk shop" activities have served as camouflage for the real aim of the rich capitalists and their government (including the SSB) which is to keep the Black and white working masses divided and disorganized through racially segregated schools.

The state has never lifted a finger to actually integrate the schools. It was only the heroic mass struggle of Black people and their white allies against racial discrimination in 1968 through 1970 that forced the local government to make various concessions and integrate the schools to a certain extent, such as the busing program for the Middle Schools. The capitalist state is opposed to integration because it helps the oppressed people in learning how to unite, Black and white, against the rich oppressors.

Integrated schools are necessary in order to achieve equality of education. History shows that the rich capitalists impose segregated schools on Black people so as to give them the worst possible education. This is a basic method used to suppress the Afro-American people, keep large numbers of them unemployed, and the rest in the lowest-paying jobs where their labor is super-exploited. Only with the victory of the proletarian socialist revolution and the end of capitalist exploitation can full equality of education to all nationalities be fully achieved.

BRIEF HISTORY OF THE "ANTI-BUSING" MOVEMENT IN SEATTLE

Presently, the white fascists in ACLA are busy organizing vicious propaganda against Black people as preparation for launching violent attacks. They are again concentrating their mischief in the north end of Seattle. However, it is not possible for the fascists to make a straightforward racist appeal to a section of the white working people because they are not racist and are not so easily fooled. So the fascists must cover up their real intentions by making anti-government appeals. They wave the U.S. Constitution in people's faces and pose as its great defenders, saying that the federal government is acting like a dictatorship in imposing "forced busing" on the Seattle School District. These racists have to make it appear that they are opposed to the government, do not get financed by them, are not led by its agents, are not really that racist, but are merely opposing "arbitrary dictatorship" defending "freedom of choice" and upholding the blood-soaked American Constitution!

A brief look at the past activities of the Committee Against Mandatory Busing further clarifies what can be expected from the present "anti-busing" organization, most of whose members were admittedly active in CAMB. CAMB did basically two things from 1970- 73: 1. opposed the democratic right of Black people to attend integrated schools by doing massive propaganda against "forced busing"; and 2. provided a "legal", "respectable" movement through which organized fascists (like the American nazis, KKK, John Birch Society, etc.) spread their filthy racism and white chauvinism and agitated for violent attacks against Black youth in north-end schools (which occurred at Eckstein Junior High and Lincoln High Schools in 1971).

CAMB completely mystified the issue of school integration in order to pursue its aims. It made the busing of children the issue. But this in itself is a big self-exposure. Without busing children to school, the public educational system would be thrown into complete and utter chaos. Busing is a modern means of transportation, which the masses use to get to work, school, stores, recreational activities, etc. Buses are convenient because they hold large numbers of people and are inexpensive in comparison to driving a car. Today the School District primarily uses busing to segregate the schools. They have consistently established school boundaries to maintain segregation and bused the children on this basis. It was recently revealed that the School District has provided for the busing of several dozen white children out of the predominantly Black Central Area to attend schools miles away! But the champs of "neighborhood schools" have never raised an eyebrow nor shed a tear over this type of ''busing". But when it came to busing Black students to north-end schools and the busing of white students to Central Area schools, a great howl of protest was let loose by the "anti-busing" fanatics.

All the "respectable" capitalists and their politicians (Chamber of Commerce, Municipal League, City Council, Mayor, School Board) are pushing the Magnet Programs and paying lip-service to integration. However, behind the scenes, they are desperately trying to infiltrate the working class with their tools (i.e. the open fascists such as the KKK, nazis, and John Birch Society) by using a "respectable" sounding umbrella organization ("American Constitutional Liberties Association") to openly attack integration, attack Black people, and attack the unity of the working class. Also behind the scenes, the SSB, the Seattle Police Department and others are beginning to whisper about the need for "peaceful desegregation". In Boston and Louisville, the "liberals" stood on the sidelines preaching "peace" while the Black people including children were attacked by the nazis.

COMBAT THIS GROWING FASCISM

But the people of Seattle will not "peacefully" submit to fascist attacks. They will never tolerate ACLA and its plans for a fascist movement. The masses of people are democratic minded and oppose racism. The revolutionaries of COUSML have consistently fought the racist and fascist organizers of the "anti-busing" movement and we call on the broad masses in Seattle to participate in this crucial struggle. State-organized attacks on the Afro-American people are the cutting edge of the growing fascism of the U.S. government. The working class and other progressive people are determined to resist this growing fascism!

SMASH THE ATTEMPT OF THE MONOPOLY CAPITALISTS TO INCITE A FASCIST "ANTI-BUSING" MOVEMENT!

DEFEND THE DEMOCRATIC RIGHTS OF THE AFRO-AMERICAN PEOPLE!

SAFEGUARD AND STRENGTHEN THE UNITY OF THE WORKING CLASS! End.

CLEVELAND:

For a year and a half the Cleveland school desegregation case has been in federal court. Almost every month a new "plan" is announced, almost every week a new rumor, and almost every day the bourgeois news media carry stories about the "evils" of "forced busing". Through this show the government has generated confusion about what is going to be done and public opinion against school integration.

Workers, Afro-American people as a whole, students and progressive people, look out! The government of the rich is trying to organize a racist and fascist "anti-busing" movement to attack the democratic rights of the Black people and to split and suppress the working class! That is why it is raising the question of school integration in a distorted and bureaucratic way and holding it up as some sort of spectacle for years, stalling, and creating confusion with one hand, while with the other hand it sets its political spokesmen and the mass media to work to create an "anti-busing" hysteria.

In the 1950's and 1960's millions of Afro-American people supported by large sections of the white workers and students, fought heroic battles against the racial discrimination and violent repression of the rich and their government. One of the Black people's major battles was for school integration and against being forced off into segregated and inferior schools as if they were some sort of "untouchables". Right here in Cleveland in the 1960's there was a powerful movement of hundreds of thousands of Black people supported by large sections of the whites demanding integration of the Cleveland schools. This movement was violently suppressed by the government and the federal courts threw out cases demanding integration of the schools. But today when the mass movement of the Black people is at a low level, the monopoly capitalist government is turning around and raising the question of school integration in a distorted way. It is doing this not for the purpose of actually integrating the schools but for the purpose of setting the Black people up for attack. The "liberals" in the government mainly through the courts raise the question of school integration in a distorted, bureaucratic and legalistic way. They refuse to explain the democratic nature of school integration to keep the masses from being mobilized in support of it. Instead they present school integration as if it were some arbitrary quota demand from on high. In addition the courts stall around for years. All this creates conditions for the open fascists or "conservatives" in the government like Congressman Mottl and Councilman Basil Russo to organize a fascist movement against integration under the guise of opposition to "forced busing", giving their racism a phoney anti-government mask. Through the debates between its "liberal" and "conservative" faces the capitalist government seeks to create segregationist public opinion and a violent fascist movement to drive the Black people back into brutal Jim Crow segregation and split and suppress the working class.

Another of the government's methods of creating this racist "anti-busing", anti-integrationist hysteria is the holding of public hearings and meetings to get "citizen input" on desegregation plans, such as the meetings held by the Cleveland Board of Education in December, 1976 and the meetings and hearings recently held by Cleveland Heights-University Heights Board of Education. In these meetings government officials present school integration in the most bureaucratic, disruptive, and arbitrary way, and they always tell the people the government is going to raise their taxes to pay for school integration. They refuse to explain the democratic nature of integration. Very often they will say "I don't like it any better than you do but it's the law". Of course, such a presentation invites a lot of opposition to school integration to be expressed. Then the capitalist media picks up every backward, racist remark uttered at such meetings and promotes them for the purpose of creating mass racist hysteria.

The capitalist government wants to create the impression that all white people are racists, violently opposed to school integration. This is done for the purpose of drumming a section of the white workers into the shameful activity of attacking the democratic right of Black people to attend integrated schools. It is also done in an attempt to intimidate the Black people and those whites who already support their struggle, to make them feel isolated. Federal Judge Battisti is so impressed with "information meetings" and "hearings" as a means to create racist hysteria that he has suggested that the Cleveland Board of Education hold some more of them, and he is presently holding some "hearings" of his own.

If anyone doubts that the ruling class could be so consciously and systematically evil, let it be pointed out that the same pattern of government activities which gave rise to violent racist and fascist movements in Boston and Louisville, complete with nazis and KKK cross burnings, are being carried out right here in Cleveland. The ruling class definitely knows what it is doing. It is a class of Hitlerite nazis.

The capitalist government and its spokesmen are creating a lot of hysteria about "forced busing" and "forced integration", but in reality it is racial discrimination and segregation that are forced. Over the last 80 years in Cleveland and other northern cities the monopoly capitalists through their government have systematically and forcibly segregated the Afro- American people in housing and in education, so that today the Black people are confined to live in only certain neighborhoods and go to only certain schools. The segregation of schools and neighborhoods does not take place simply because "Blacks and whites choose not to live together", but is enforced by the government through administrative orders and pupil assignment, through racist propaganda in the media to isolate the Black people, and through reactionary violence of the police and the police-supported vigilantes who are used to prevent Black people from moving into certain neighborhoods and going to certain schools.

The capitalists and the government segregate the Black people in order a) to keep the Black people in an inferior position, b) to disrupt the unity of the working class by systematically and physically separating the Black workers and people from the rest and attacking them. The question of integration is both a democratic question of equality and one of uniting the working class in the revolutionary struggle against the monopoly capitalist dictators. All progressive people, especially workers must militantly defend the right of the Black people to attend integrated schools and oppose the government's "anti-busing" hysteria.

The monopoly capitalists are attempting to develop a fascist mass movement to attack the Afro-American people on every question and drive them back to barbaric Jim Crow segregationist system once again, and in doing so to split the working class. This is the cutting edge of the U.S. monopoly capitalists' drive to consolidate fascism in the United States. Their aim is to smash the resistance of the working masses, shift the entire burden of the economic crisis onto them, and create a secure home base for the world war they are preparing to slaughter the world's people.

It is among the white workers that the monopoly capitalists are hoping to build this fascist anti-Black movement. For this reason and in order to break down the walls of distrust it is especially important that white workers militantly oppose the government's attempt to organize the fascist "anti-busing" movement and to take up the Black people's struggle as their own. This is the only way that the workers' movement and the Afro-American movement can be merged into an irresistible force against the monopoly capitalist oppressors.

Black and white workers, all progressive people! Smash the government's attempts to organize a fascist mass movement! This will bring about a powerful upsurge in the revolutionary movement in the U.S. and will bring closer the proletarian revolution which alone can smash the evil rule of monopoly capitalist dictators and emancipate the Afro-American people and the working class! End.

[Centerfold poster: "The evil system of colonialism and imperialism arose and throve with the enslavement of Negroes and the trade in Negroes, and it will surely come to its end with the complete emancipation of black people." Mao Tse-tung

FIGHT RACIAL DISCRIMINATION AND VIOLENT REPRESSION

Issued in Honor of the 10th Anniversary of the Detroit and Newark Rebellions - July, 1967

Statement in Support of the Afro-American Struggle Against Violent Repression

Chairman Mao Tsetung

(April 16, 1968)

Some days ago, Martin Luther King, the Afro-American clergyman, was suddenly assassinated by the U.S. imperialists. Martin Luther King was an exponent of non-violence. Nevertheless, the U.S. imperialists did not on that account show any tolerance towards him, but used counter-revolutionary violence and killed him in cold blood. This has taught the broad masses of the black people in the United States a profound lesson. It has touched off a new storm in their struggle against violent repression sweeping well over a hundred cities in the United States, a storm such as has never taken place before in the history of that country. It shows that an extremely powerful revolutionary force is latent in the more than twenty million black Americans.

The storm of Afro-American struggle taking place within the United States is a striking manifestation of the comprehensive political and economic crisis now gripping U.S. imperialism. It is dealing a telling blow to U.S. imperialism, which is beset with difficulties at home and abroad.

The Afro-American struggle is not only a struggle waged by the exploited and oppressed black people for freedom and emancipation, it is also a new clarion call to all the exploited and oppressed people of the United States to fight against the barbarous rule of the monopoly capitalist class. It is a tremendous support and inspiration to the struggle of the people throughout the world against U.S. imperialism and to the struggle of the Vietnamese people against U.S. imperialism. On behalf of the Chinese people, I hereby express resolute support for the just struggle of the black people in the United States.

Racial discrimination in the United States is a product of the colonialist and imperialist system. The contradiction between the black masses in the United States and U.S. ruling circles is a class contradiction. Only by overthrowing the reactionary rule of the U.S. monopoly capitalist class and destroying the colonialist and imperialist system can the black people in the United States win complete emancipation. The black masses and the masses of white working people in the United States share common interests and have common objectives to struggle for. Therefore, the Afro-American struggle is winning sympathy and support from increasing numbers of white working people and progressives in the United States. The struggle of the black people in the United States is bound to merge with the American workers' movement, and this will eventually end the criminal rule of the U.S. monopoly capitalist class.

In 1963, in my "Statement Supporting the Afro-Americans in Their Just Struggle Against Racial Discrimination by U.S. Imperialism" I said that "the evil system of colonialism and imperialism arose and throve with the enslavement of Negroes and the trade in Negroes, and it will surely come to its end with the complete emancipation of the black people." I still maintain this view.

At present, the world revolution has entered a great new era. The struggle of the black people in the United States for emancipation is a component part of the general struggle of all the people of the world against U.S. imperialism, a component part of the contemporary world revolution. I call on the workers, peasants and revolutionary intellectuals of every country and all who are willing to fight against U.S. imperialism to take action and extend strong support to the struggle of the black people in the United States! People of the whole world, unite still more closely and launch a sustained and vigorous offensive against our common enemy, U.S. imperialism, and against its accomplices! It can be said with certainty that the complete collapse of colonialism, imperialism and all systems of exploitation, and the complete emancipation of all the oppressed peoples and nations of the world are not far off.

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Oppose the Counter-Revolutionary Meddling of the Soviet Revisionist Renegade Clique in the Ethiopian Revolution

The Workers' Advocateis serializing the Statement of the Central Committee of the Ethiopian Students Union in North America (ESUNA) which came out under the above title in Vol. VI, No. 2, of the Journal Combat dated March 1977. This excellent statement provides vivid material exposing Soviet revisionism and the aggressive meddling of the Soviet New Tsars in Ethiopia. It shows how the Soviet revisionists collaborate with the fascist Mengistu regime, praise its suppression of the people and outrageously slander the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party, and the statement refutes a number of revisionist theories, such as the road of "non-capitalist development" to socialism.

Today in Ethiopia both superpowers, U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism, are competing with each other to strangle the Ethiopian revolution and keep Ethiopia as an object of plunder and control by the world system of imperialism. In our opinion, this is a good example refuting the opportunist theses of those who have capitulated to one superpower on the plea of allegedly fighting the other superpower, but who are really fighting the revolution. The Statement by ESUNA restricts itself to criticizing the Soviet revisionists. But, in our opinion, the statement's description of Soviet meddling and refutation of the Soviet revisionist theses provide good material to illustrate the utterly reactionary nature of the social- chauvinist and revisionisttheories that are creating disunity in the U.S. Marxist-Leninist movement.

There are those revisionist yellow journalists who claim that although the Soviet Union may have bad intentions, nevertheless it is much weaker than U.S. imperialism and thus out of selfish reasons it will aid the liberation movements. On this plea, they prettify Soviet aggression and subversion and seek to impose revisionist sabotage on the people's movements. The situation in Ethiopia refutes this fallacy. The Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party is valiantly fighting the U.S. imperialist-dominated Ethiopian regime. The Soviet social-imperialists did not, however, back the EPRP in order to weaken the U.S. imperialists. On the contrary, they seek influence among the reactionary classes in Ethiopia, among the classes which are the local base of imperialist domination, and help these classes attempt to suppress the Ethiopian revolution and the Eritrean national liberation struggle. The Soviet social-imperialists seek influence on the basis of being better able to suppress the revolution than the U.S. imperialists, thus showing once again that Soviet social-imperialism is an aggressive superpower.

There are also those U.S. great-power social-chauvinists who deny the existence of the U.S. neo-colonial empire, prettify the U.S. imperialist puppets around the world, take refuge under the U.S. nuclear umbrella and oppose revolution. Exposure of the Soviet revisionist theses distorting the class character of the Ethiopian regime and of the revisionist "road of non-capitalist development" also strikes straight at the heart of U.S. social-chauvinism and of its denial of the existence of U.S. neo-colonies. Both Soviet revisionism and U.S. social-chauvinism prettify the same fascist Mengistu and paint imperialist lackeys as "anti-imperialist fighters". Both theories negate the road of the new-democratic revolution. Both hold that the way out for the neo-colonies is to develop the productive forces by a series of reforms within the old neo-colonial system. Of course, U.S. social-chauvinism is adapted to serving U.S. imperialist interests, while the road of "non-capitalist development" is advocated by the New Tsars, but their theoretical and ideological basis is similar. This is no accident, as revisionism is the main danger in the international communist movement. This exposes U.S. social-chauvinism as revisionist and opportunist and totally opposed to Marxism-Leninism.

We hold that everyone should pay attention to the developments in Ethiopia. We are convinced that by committing aggression in Ethiopia, the Soviet social-imperialists are only putting a noose around their neck, and the revolutionary masses led by the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party will give them the same beating that they are administering to the U.S. imperialists.

EDITORIAL NOTE

This material exposing Soviet revisionist intrigues and subterfuges against the Ethiopian revolution was prepared in the first half of January. Between then and now, several important events have taken place in rapid succession, all confirming the fact that a' radical realignment of forces is in progress in and around Ethiopia.

The bloody dog-fight which took place on February 3 and which resulted in the victory of the Mengistu Haile Mariam-Haile Fida faction, the visit of Fidel Castro to Addis Ababa to confer with the victorious faction of the Derg, the arrival of 200 Cuban mercenaries to prop up the shaky rule of the military regime, the decision of the Soviet Union to supply the military Junta with 100 to 200 million dollars worth of military hardware, the intense Soviet-Cuban diplomatic activities to reconcile the border disputes between Somalia and Ethiopia and their clashing interests over the future of the Territory of the Afars and Issas (Djibouti), prove that the Soviet Union is engaged in an all out effort to convert Ethiopia into its neo-colonial stronghold at the expense of its rivals--the U.S. imperialists.

Meanwhile, the increased support of the U.S. imperialists and reactionary Arab states to counter-revolutionary Eritrean groups (like the Sabbe faction (1) and to the so-called Ethiopian Democratic Union, coupled with the intensified military activities of these right-wing forces in northwestern Ethiopia show that the U.S. imperialists are desperately attempting to maintain their neo-colonial control of the country by using reactionary warlords, and separatists as their pawns.

Though contending for power among themselves, the various cliques of reactionaries inside Ethiopia and their imperialist backers have all stepped up their attacks against the people's democratic revolution which is led by the Marxist-Leninist E.P.R.P. The unprecedented Fascist terror unleashed by the victorious factions of the Derg against the E.P.R.P. under various watch words ("house-to-house search", "search and destroy operations", "renunciation campaigns", etc.) have resulted in the death of between 2,000 and 4,000Communist and non-Communist revolutionaries in the past two months alone.

In view of this, the Editorial Board of E.S.U.N.A. pays tribute to all fallen martyrs and vows to continue its relentless struggle to expose the Soviet revisionists, U.S. imperialists and all criminal accomplices of the blood-thirsty regime.

The people's democratic revolution in Ethiopia is bound to win. Imperialists, revisionists and reactionaries are bound to be defeated.

INTRODUCTION

Many months have passed since Soviet propaganda organs unleashed a barrage of vicious slander and misinformation directed against the Marxist-Leninist Ethiopian Peoples' Revolutionary Party. Throughout this period, all major organs of the Soviet press and media such asPravda, New Times, Radio Moscow andTasshave issued one statement after another which slander the E.P.R.P. on the basis of completely groundless and outrageous charges.

The campaign of vilification which the Soviet press and media have been engaged in for a long time reached a high tide last September, which was precisely the period in which the Fascist clique of army officers headed by Mengistu unleashed a most unprecedented white terror and committed most outrageous crimes in a desperate attempt to "wipe out" the E.P.R.P.

Since then, the Soviet press has sunk so low as to give publicity to and echo many of thepreposterous charges which are being hurled on the E.P.R.P. by. the desperate clique of Fascist officers and the Haile Fida clique. These include such outrageous and slanderous charges as "E.P.R.P. is a C.I.A. tool"(!!), "E.P.R.P. has carried out price hiking"(!!). In sum, short of accusing the E.P.R.P. of "controlling the rain in order to subvert the revolution" (!!)--as the Junta did--the Soviet press has echoed almost all the brazen lies which the shaky regime fabricated in its vain attempt to damage the prestige of the E.P.R.P.

Apart from slandering the E.P.R.P. on the basis of absurd and trumped up charges, the Soviet press and media have issued one statement after another which shamelessly laud the blood-thirsty Junta by putting forth such notorious propositions as the "Junta has adopted a socialist orientation", "the Junta is leading the Ethiopian revolution, etc...."

In addition, the Soviet press and media have trumpeted all sorts of sinister views and analysis clearly intended to whitewash the monstrous crimes of the Junta, turn facts upside down, mix up the class lineup in Ethiopia and spread ideological confusion.

In our opinion, the all-out campaign being carried out by the Soviet press to laud the Junta to the skies and madly oppose the E P.R. P. is not something accidental but is a reflection of the growing counterrevolutionary collusion between the Soviet Union and the Ethiopian Military Junta.

The growing counter-revolutionary collaboration between the U.S.S.R. and the military Junta is taking place against the background of an excellent revolutionary situation in Ethiopia.

In Ethiopia, we witness the uninterrupted growth of the revolutionary struggle of the broad masses and the sharpening of all social antagonisms. The intensification of the Ethiopian Peoples' Revolutionary Party's armed struggle in the rural areas against the organs of rule of the military regime, the emergence of armed self-defense squads in urban areas to mount attacks against enemies of the people, the tremendous growth of E.P.R.P.'s influence on the masses of workers, revolutionary intellectuals, oppressed soldiers, etc., show that the people's democratic revolution is gaining strength and momentum despite the feverish efforts of imperialists, revisionists and local reactionaries to turn back the wheel of history.

The growing counter-revolutionary collaboration between the U.S.S.R. and the military Junta, which is taking place against the background of excellent revolutionary situation in Ethiopia, has led to a steady deterioration of relationships between the U.S. imperialists and the Junta. The military Junta is still connected to U.S. imperialism politically, militarily and financially. But, if present trends continue, it will be only a matter of time before the U.S.S.R. squeezes out the U.S. imperialists as the chief prop of the military regime.

In the face of their diminishing influence over the military Junta, the U.S. imperialists and their lackeys (such as Saudi Arabia and Sudan) have stepped up their support to and collusion with diehard warlords and aristocrats grouped around the arch-reactionary organization called the Ethiopian Democratic Union and counter-revolutionary groups in Eritrea (witness Osman Sahle Sabbe's recent appeal for military "aid" from the U.S. imperialists). With the increased backing of the U.S. imperialists and their lackeys, the E.D.U. is now waging powerful armed struggles in several provinces and has fielded 0,000 troops in the province of Begemdir alone.

This show's that the contradiction among the different cliques of reactionaries in Ethiopia is growing.

In light of all the above, it is clear that the intensive campaign being conducted by the Soviet press and media to eulogize the military regime and slander the revolutionary opposition is not something accidental, but is part and parcel of the overall Soviet strategy to contend for spheres of influence, drive a wedge into Ethiopia and squeeze out the U.S. imperialists. To accomplish this same objective, the Soviet revisionists are using other methods including military pressure (through Somalia), giving economic "aid", sending group after group of "experts", and offering military "assistance".

Naturally, the Soviet press and media have done and are doing everything they can to cover up the hegemonic and counter-revolutionary schemes of the Soviet Union in Ethiopia. In fact, the Soviet press has continuously bragged that its views and analysis are based on "Marxism-Leninism", that the Soviet Union is a "natural ally" of the Ethiopian revolution, that the Soviet Union is "anti-imperialist", ad nauseum.

But, in our opinion, all this bragging is a hoax designed to deceive people and to lull the vigilance of our freedom loving people.

Far from supporting the revolutionary struggle of the Ethiopian people, the Soviet Union has rendered all-out support to the most criminal acts committed by the Junta to liquidate Communist and non-Communist revolutionaries. To see to what depth the Soviet revisionists have degenerated, suffice it to note the following incident.

When the military Junta announced in September that it had executed 23 members of the E.P.R.P. and when it simultaneously unleashed a barbarous and large-scale white terror which resulted in the massacre of hundreds of revolutionaries and the inhuman torture and imprisonment of thousands more, all democratic and anti-imperialist forces in the world were filled with grief, sorrow and indignation. However, Radio Moscow and other organs of the Soviet press shamelessly hailed the Junta's execution of "23 anarchists (sic) found guilty of political assassination, economic sabotage, and subversive actions against the Ethiopian revolution."(!!)

This incident proves that the Soviet revisionists harbor a mortal dread and hatred for the revolutionary struggle of the Ethiopian people. It also proves that far from being a natural ally of the Ethiopian revolution, the Soviet revisionists are, in reality, a rank bunch of shameless traitors and renegades who do not support the Ethiopianrevolution, who do not approve of it and who are against it.

Similarly, the repeated bragging by the Soviet press that its views and analysis on Ethiopia are based on "Marxism-Leninism" is an out-and-out hoax.

The views advanced by the Soviet press that Ethiopian military regime is "a national democratic regime of the radical petty-bourgeoisie", that "it is marching along the non-capitalist path to socialism", ad nauseum, have nothing in common with Marxism-Leninism. In fact, as we will show later, such views fully expose the anti-socialist, counter-revolutionary and revisionist stands of the Soviet press.

Here, we must state in all seriousness that with the dark clouds of Soviet revisionism hanging over Ethiopia, our revolutionary and anti-imperialist student movement is faced with new and urgent tasks. We feel very strongly that in the Ethiopian Student Movement today, one's attitude towards Soviet revisionism is not a minor question that concerns not just the future but the immediate direction and orientation of the Ethiopian revolution. It is a question that concerns not just one or two details but all major questions of the Ethiopian revolution.

It is a question of whether to distinguish real friends from real enemies or be incapable of doing so. It is a question of whether the anti-imperialist struggle of the Ethiopian people will be carried through to the end or be discontinued half-way.

It is a question of whether to uphold the New Democratic Road or to uphold the so-called Non-capitalist Road; whether to uphold the leading role of the proletariat (and its Communist Party) or to uphold the leading role of the "radical petty-bourgeois state power", whether to uphold the road of people's revolutionary struggle or to uphold the road of bourgeois reformism, whether to uphold the road of violent revolution or to uphold the road of "peaceful transition", and whether to uphold class struggle or whether to uphold class collaboration. In the final analysis, it is a question of whether to adhere to Marxism-Leninism or to wallow in the mire of modern revisionism.

For this reason, we strongly believe that all Ethiopian revolutionaries must urgently carry out the task of concentrated exposure and repudiation of Soviet revisionism.

For our part, we have issued this brief statement for the purpose of laying out some preliminary ground work for this most urgent task, which in the future must be carried out in an all-round, deep-going and sustained way.

In this statement, we will not offer "rebuttals" to the totally absurd and defamatory allegations hurled by the Soviet press on the Marxist-Leninist E.P.R.P. The said allegations are so preposterous that they only serve to reveal the vileness and effrontery of their fabricators. Therefore, they are not worth refuting.

Furthermore, in this short statement, we do not propose to refute all the distorted facts and counterrevolutionary views trumpeted by the Soviet press. Here, we shall only provide a number of examples of how the Soviet press turns facts upside down and then expose the anti-Marxist and counter-revolutionary nature of their views on several key questions of the Ethiopian revolution; namely, the question of the class character of the statepower in present-day Ethiopia, the question of nationalization of industry and the question of the road to socialism in Ethiopia.

II

HOW THE SOVIET PRESS DISTORTS ETHIOPIAN REALITY

In order to step up their flirtation with the Fascist clique of army officers running the Ethiopian state, the Soviet revisionists have used and are using their press, radios and journals as a weapon of political cajolery. In line with this sinister aim, the Soviet press and media have turned facts upside down, confounded truth and falsehood and reversed right and wrong, thereby, distorting the objective reality in Ethiopia.

Below we will provide some glimpses of how the Soviet press distorts the February Upsurge and also the situation in present-day Ethiopia.

Soviet accounts and analysis of the February Upsurge in Ethiopia are filled with all sorts of distortions and omissions clearly designed to glorify and eulogize the "revolutionary" and "vanguard" role of the military Derg and downplay and denigrate the role of the people.

The military coordinating committee is portrayed as the initiator, organizer and leader of the people's revolutionary upsurge which toppled successive "new cabinets" and finally led to the dethronement of Haile Selassie. The mammoth mass uprisings in both cities and rural areas which united all oppressed classes and sectors into an invincible revolutionary avalanche are either ignored altogether or presented as having had a mere supportive role to the army rebellion.

To have a good idea of how the Soviet press tampers with the history of the glorious February Upsurge, suffice it to note the following example.

It is common knowledge that before it finally usurped state power, the military coordinating committee harbored all sorts of illusions about tyrant Haile Selassie. In fact, for many months, it attempted to make one dirty deal after another with that despicable tyrant with the purpose of strangling the people's revolutionary struggle at an early stage.

Only under the pressure of the unyielding revolutionary struggle of the people did the military committee finally make its move. However, Soviet journals, in complete disregard of the facts, claim that the Derg's equivocations, waverings and double-dealings were all tactical moves dictated by the lack of consciousness of the masses. (!!)

Concerning this, Boris Pilyatskin, in aNew Times article said:

"At the first stage, the leaders of the revolution (i.e. the military committee) thought it precedent not to remove the Emperor and demanded only a reform of the monarchy and the ousting of the most compromised officials. It was a tactical move dictated by the fact that for decades official propaganda had been building up in the Emperor's image until millions of illiterate people came to regard him as a demigod, infallible and unassailable."

What shamelessness!

Needless to say, this account of the February Upsurge is a gratuitous slander against the oppressed masses, who alone waged a bitter and uncompromising struggle against the monarchy, despite the ferocious repression to which they were subjected by the military committee which not only wanted "to give time" to each so-called "new cabinet" but also wanted to sabotage the people's revolutionary upsurge by a compromise with the monarchy.

Let us compare Pilyatskin's views with the following candid confession of one of the members of the military council which appeared on a Stern magazine interview. Stern: Why did you let Haile Selassie, even when under the control of the military, play so long, at least formally, the role of head of state?

Council Member: Listen, we had offered the Emperor, to place himself at the head of our movement -- he refused. We reminded him of the Shah of Persia, who made a revolution from above, as his throne and land were endangered by a revolution from below -- the old man didn't listen to reason.

This candid confession of a council member thoroughly exposes the out-and-out fraud which is peddled by Pilyatskin and his likes. It shows clearly that it was the military committee and not the oppressed masses who considered that man-eating tyrant as a "demigod", "infallible" and "unassailable".

It also shows clearly that the committee's protracted waverings and equivocations on the question of the monarchy were not tactical measures made to advance the revolution, but counter-revolutionary tactics clearly intended to sabotage the people's revolutionary upsurge by winning minor concessions from "above".

These are the facts.

Therefore, when Soviet journalists so brazenly attempt to turn facts upside down, they only expose themselves as counter-revolutionary collaborators with the fascist military dictatorial regime in Ethiopia and an enemy of the masses.

In respect to the more than two year period of the Junta's rule, the Soviet press has trumpeted and continues to trumpet even more distorted and fallacious statements.

Here is a brief summary of the overall picture presented by Soviet newspapers and journals about Ethiopia under the military rule. (Source: Soviet New Times magazine)

1. "The military government is leading the Ethiopian revolution along the non-capitalist path to socialism. "

2. "The programme drawn up by the provisional Military Administrative Council sets the task of uniting all the progressive forces for the building of a society in which there will be no exploitation of man by man."

3. "The Derg's main document, the Programme to the National Democratic Revolution...specifies the immediate tasks, placing political education of the masses and achievement of a greater measure of their organization among the priorities."

4. "The military government... launched an all-out offensive against... the domination of the economy by private capital. At the beginning of 1975 banks and insurance companies were nationalized and hundreds of leading firms placed under the people's control."

5. "In March, 1975, the military Junta made "the long awaited land reform proclamation" which "gave land to the illiterate and ignorant peasants", "who are not aware of their class interests".

6. "The Ethiopian government devotes much attention to the satisfaction of the people's vital needs. For the first time in the history of that country, a law has been passed guaranteeing the right to work and limiting the working day to eight hours."

7. As a result of the above measures "Socialist Ethiopia is casting off the burden of her feudal past, poverty and backwardness and is ever more confidently catching up with the times."

8. "The Council and the Provisional Military Government are looking for ways of peacefully settling one of the most acute problems, that of Eritrea. The Ethiopian leaders are seeking to get the people of Eritrea to take part in progressive transformations."

9. "As has to be expected, the efforts of the revolutionary government have met with bitter resistance from the reactionaries who are directed by the so- called Ethiopian Democratic Union, established in London by feudals and other followers of the overthrown monarchy who had fled the country."

10. Another relentless foe of the military regime "which seeks to frustrate socio-economic is the E.P.R.P. which "despite the superficial appeal of its high-flown slogans, intended chiefly for the gullible...in fact, speaks for the former ruling classes." (!!)

11. "The policy of the Provisional Military Administrative Council enjoys broad popular support... Impressive demonstrations of workers and peasants in support of the government... were held recently in the capital and other parts of the country."

This, in brief, is how Soviet renegades portrayed the reality in Ethiopia in consecutive issues of their New Times magazine.

Ignoring altogether New Times' absolutely absurd slander against the E.P.R.P. and postponing for later examination of its views on land reform, state ownership of industry, and the non-capitalist road, we select just four main fallacies for refutation and exposure below.

First, as could be seen from the above, Soviet renegades have the audacity to claim that the military Junta is "leading the national democratic revolution", and that it places high "priority" on the "political education" and "organization" of the masses.

Needless to say, there is nothing further from the truth.

Far from leading the Ethiopian revolution, the demagogic and dictatorial Junta has done and is doing its utmost to sabotage and strangle at birth the New Democratic Revolution which the masses of workers, peasants, revolutionary intellectuals, etc., are waging under the leadership of the working class (and its Communist Party).

Far from placing "priority to the political education" of the masses, the demagogic Junta, with the help of the traitorous and nefarious Haile Fida clique, has and is striving to disarm the working class and sow ideological and political confusion in the ranks of the people. The regime has also done everything in its power to restrain the revolutionary impetus and paralyze the combative spirit of every oppressed group, class and strata.

Finally, far from placing "priority" on the "organization of the masses", the fascist Junta has done everything possible to convert every mass organization into a servile and obedient tool of the bourgeois state power, and failing in this it has dissolved virtually all revolutionary organizations of the masses (workers, teachers, students, women, etc...). Hand in hand with all the above, the regime has carried out savage persecution of Communist and non-Communist revolutionaries in a vain attempt to deprive the masses of revolutionary leadership.

All these are indisputable facts known to the world at large.

We would like to ask those who are bent on denying hard facts: Unless it is your intention to confuse people, how can you claim that the Junta is "leading the revolution", "organizing the people", "politicizing the people", etc...?

Second, Soviet journals also claim that the Junta has issued a "progressive labor legislation" which, among other things, "guarantees everyone the right to work", "improves the well-being of the workers" and "gives them freedom".

This is sheer nonsense.

The legislation being referred to is the labor law issued by the Junta in December, 1975.

First of all, the claim that this law "guarantees the right of everyone to work" is an outright fallacy. This fantastic claim is contradicted by facts and also by elementary Marxist theory which states that the bourgeoisie has neither the interest nor the ability to wipe out unemployment.

Secondly, the law which New Times magazine calls "progressive" is, in reality, a law which has been vigorously and unequivocally opposed by the heroic working class right from the outset. Defying arrest, torture and mass shootings, workers in both urban and rural areas have staged repeated strikes, factory occupations and demonstrations in opposition to this law which they have dubbed the "law which legalizes our slavery".

The workers have vigorously opposed and continue to oppose this law because, among other things, 1) it deprives them of the right to strike, 2) it legalizes the dissolution of the Confederation of Ethiopian Labor Unions, 3) it denies the workers the right to freely form their own labor unions and 4), it does not meet their minimum demands on wages, social security, etc....

Again, these are indisputable facts.

We would like to ask those who are bent on denying facts: Unless you are speaking from the class angle of the imperialists and local bourgeoisie who are sucking the blood of the Ethiopian working class, how can you call the December law "progressive"?

Third, the Soviet journal, New Times also tells us that the military Junta is looking for ways of peacefully settling" the Eritrean problem.

Here again, the facts are just the opposite.

If pouring reinforcements into Eritrea and escalating the war is a peaceful solution, if strangling Eritrean youth with piano wire in the streets of Asmara is a peaceful solution, if napalming populated villages by saturation air strikes is a peaceful solution, if deliberately poisoning water wells and destroying farmlands is a peaceful solution, if imposing a food blockade on famine-stricken Eritrean regions is a peaceful solution, if coercing tens of thousands of "peasant volunteers" to march into Eritrea and if strangling Eritrean youth with piano wire in the streets of Asmara is a peaceful solution, if napalming populated villages by saturation air strikes is a peaceful solution, if deliberately poisoning water wells and destroying farmlands is a peaceful solution, if imposing a food blockade on famine-stricken Eritrean regions is a peaceful solution, if coercing tens of thousands of "peasant volunteers" to march into Eritrea andcommit genocide is a peaceful solution, then we would like to askNew Timeseditors: What in your opinion constitutes a military solution?

Fourth, Soviet journals also claim that the Junta's terroristic rule "enjoys broad popular support" and that "impressive demonstrations of workers and peasants" are held in Addis Ababa and other cities "in support of the government".

This is another preposterous lie.

As is known to the world at large, the barbarian and anti-people Junta has not yet succeeded to establish a stable social base despite its terrorism, demagogy and reformism.

The dictatorial rule of the Junta is opposed by the broad masses of workers, revolutionary intellectuals, peasants, women, soldiers, etc.... Through endless strikes, demonstrations, rallies, uprisings and fierce armed struggle, the masses have shown and continue to show their opposition to the regime.

The so-called "impressive" pro-Junta demonstration which Soviet journals have referred to are actually ones staged by the Junta. The participants of such "impressive" demonstrations and "spontaneous" rallies are none other than people who have been forced through the bureaucracy, the "political office" neighborhood associations and spies, to come out and demonstrate. The rest are plain-clothesmen, units of the Nebelbal (flame) brigade, social-fascists, freaks, rightists, hired hooligans and other scum.

Again, these are indisputable facts.

In conclusion, we would like to reiterate the point that these are not the only facts about Ethiopia which the Soviet press has attempted to distort. In fact, whether speaking about the Zemetcha campaign, or the peasant militia or whatever question, Soviet newspapers, periodicals and radio stations have always confounded truth and falsehood. Some Soviet journals have even gone so far as peddling with the rotten ideas of the landlord class (such as the Queen of Sheba legend) and passed it as "Ethiopian history".

This prompts the question: Why are Soviet journals and the media distorting the objective reality in Ethiopia in such a big way ?

Is it, perhaps, because they lack information ?

No. We don't think so.

To think that the Soviet press and media are distorting the Ethiopian reality because they lack information is tantamount to spreading a supra-class view of the press and journalism. Marxism teaches that journalism has a class character and partisanship, and supra-class "objective reporting" and "objective analysis" does not exist.

This means that the political tendency of a given system of press and journalism, in the last analysis, represents either the views of the proletariat or those of the bourgeoisie; it propagates either Marxism-Leninism or bourgeois, revisionist ideas, it reflects the demands and serves the interests of either the overwhelming majority of working people or that of the few exploiters.

In examining the ulterior motives of the Soviet press and media, if one firmly keeps these principles in mind, there can be no confusion as to whom they serve.

CLASS CHARACTER OF THE STATE POWER IN PRESENT-DAY ETHIOPIA

The Soviet revisionists distort and adulterate fundamental principles of Marxism-Leninism, first of all, on the question of the class character of the state-power in present-day Ethiopia.

Soviet revisionists claim that the coming to power of the Ethiopian military Junta represented the "coming to power of the radical petty-bourgeoisie". They say that the present Ethiopian state (just like Burma, Egypt and other states allegedly following the "noncapitalist road") is a "national democratic state of the radical petty-bourgeoisie". They also say that the class character of the state in such countries is "classified as a revolutionary dictatorship of the progressive middle strata". (V. Solodov-Nikou, Noncapitalist Development)

The renegade and arch-traitorous Haile Fida clique who have turned themselves into informers, executioners and hatchetmen of the military Junta, echo precisely this same fallacy when they say the class character of the military regime is petty-bourgeoisie".

According to the above-mentioned theory, since state-power has now passed into the hands of the radical petty-bourgeoisie, the Ethiopian state is no longer the instrument of imperialism and the domestic reactionary classes for oppressing the overwhelming majority of working people, but has become an instrument "leading the revolution" or has developed "two aspects", etc...

A natural compliment of this is that the armed forces of the Ethiopian state are no longer the instruments of imperialism and the domestic reactionaries for repressing the people. In fact, according to Yesefew Hizb Dimtz, "The Army as a whole is now on the side of the people".

From this it is crystal clear that the "theory" of "petty-bourgeois state power" is not something new but is simply a refurbished version of the stock arguments and "theory" of the old-line revisionists like Bernstein and Kautsky who saw the bourgeois state as an organ of class reconciliation and who, therefore, repudiated the Marxist principles of class struggle, repudiated the Marxist principles of class struggle, violent revolution and the necessity for the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Clearly in attempting to refurbish these bankrupt theories in the form of "petty-bourgeois state-power", the Soviet revisionists and their local running dogs are -- like their predecessors -- repudiating the Marxist-Leninist teaching on the state which among other things says that:

"the state is an organ of the rule of a definite class which cannot be reconciled with its antipode", that "the forms of bourgeois state are extremely varied, but their essence is the same; all these states, whatever their forms, in the last analysis are inevitably the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie". (Lenin: The State and Revolution)

Evidently, the Soviet revisionists and their likes feel that these basic Marxist teachings are outmoded and need to be discarded. But whatever cunning argument they may contrive, the reason why revisionists of all stripes trumpet this out-and-out fallacy is not hard to seek.

The Soviet revisionists use this fallacy, among other things, to justify their counter-revolutionary collaboration with regimes such as the one in Ethiopia who are savagely suppressing the people's revolutionary struggle under the demagogic signboard of "socialism".

The renegade and arch-traitorous Haile Fida clique, on their part, use this "theory" to justify their complete renunciation of revolution and class struggle, and their open desertion to the camp of bourgeois counter-revolution as its servants, and their complete betrayal and sellout of our people and country. But is the "theory of petty-bourgeois state-power" something that can be defined from the angle of Marxism-Leninism?

No. It is not.

The theory of "petty-bourgeois state-power" has been refuted long ago by Ethiopian revolutionaries. Therefore, for our purposes, suffice it to note the following points. Lenin said:

"the petty bourgeoisie do not wish and cannot take power alone and independently, as has been proved by experience of all revolutions, and as is proved by economics, which explains that in a capitalist country it is possible to stand for capital and it is possible to stand for labor, but it is impossible to stand for long, in between". (Lenin: Collected Works, Vol. 26, p. 125)

Here, Lenin shows in a clear-cut manner that a petty-bourgeois state-power (which is independent of both the big bourgeoisie and the working masses) cannot exist.

Upholding this Leninist theory and developing it further, Chairman Mao Tsetung brilliantly expounded the view that in neo-colonial countries too, the intermediate class is objectively incapable of holding real state power alone or independently.

In this respect, Chairman Mao said: "its aim (that of the intermediate class) of establishing a state under its own rule is impossible". (Mao Tsetung: Analysis of Classes in Chinese Society)

This Marxist-Leninist principle is universally applicable and, of course, applicable to Ethiopia, too.

In the case of Ethiopia, no one denies that the class origin of many members of the military Junta is petty-bourgeois.

However, only diehard revisionists can conclude from this that the class character of the present state-power is petty-bourgeois. The fact of the matter is the military officers in power have long ago ceased to be part of the intermediate strata. By virtue of their new position in the state, they have become an integral part of the domestic bourgeoisie.

One last point. It is true that under the relentless pressure of the people's revolutionary struggle, the military Junta was forced to take several measures which deprived the monarchy, the royal family and the aristocracy of their former economic and political power.

But even this does not mean that a fundamental change in the class character of the state power has taken place. This is because the Junta still uses the old state machinery to oppress the masses; and also because bureaucrat-capitalists, comprador-capitalists (and even certain representatives of the landlord classes) still hold key positions in the various sectors of the state, including the Army.

Therefore, contrary to the sermons of the Soviet revisionists and the local renegades, the present state power in Ethiopia is not the state-power of the petty-bourgeoisie, but is still the state-power of the bureaucrat-capitalists, the comprador-capitalists and the imperialists. Similarly, the armed forces of the Ethiopian states are not forces "on the side of the people" or "forces leading the revolution" but are still instruments of violence of the imperialists and the domestic reactionaries for repressing the masses of workers and peasants.

Therefore, Lenin's dictum that

"the liberation of the oppressed classes is impossible not only without a violent revolution, but also without the destruction of the apparatus of state which was created by the ruling classes"

is still applicable to the Ethiopian revolution. End.

1) The U.S. imperialists have been promoting the Osman Sabbe faction, a faction with no base whatsoever inside Eritrea, as a "third force". This clique is denounced in a pamphlet issued by the Eritreans for Liberation in North America entitled "Reactionary Clique Forced Out of E.P.L.F.!" --Note by The Workers' Advocate

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Eritrean People's Liberation Front Liberates Decamere and Karen

The fighters of the Eritrean People's liberation Front have liberated Decamere from the clutches of the Ethiopian fascist regime of Mengistu! EPLF fighters smashed the Ethiopian fascist garrison in the town, consisting of 2,500 troops, on July 7 and entered the city. This brilliant victory of the Eritrean liberation fighters was announced on July 9 by a spokesman of the EPLF. The spokesman pointed out that Decamere is the second largest city in Eritrea, with a population of 50,000, and that it is located only 22 miles from the Eritrean capital Asmara. Decamere is at the key control point between Asmara and the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. Decamere was also, before liberation, used as a training center and staging area for the Ethiopian fascist troops. The spokesman also said that the liberation fighters of the EPLF have been waging a fierce battle for the liberation of Karen, 56 miles north of Asmara, since July 6. Later reports said that Karen too has now been liberated by EPLF fighters.

These glorious victories against the last strongholds of the Ethiopian fascists near the capital Asmara, follow reports in June that the EPLF fighters had staged successful actions right inside the capital. From June 14 to June 16, units of EPLF fighters entered Asmara and attacked army posts of the Ethiopian fascists. After wiping out the fascist troops in these posts, large quantities of arms, munitions and other supplies were seized by the liberation fighters. With Decamere and Karen liberated, Asmara is the last major city held by the Ethiopian fascists.

The last four months have been months of a fierce offensive of the Eritrean people in their struggle for national liberation from the vicious and barbaric oppression of the Eritrean people by the Ethiopian fascist regime of Mengistu and his superpower masters. On March 22, the capital of Sahel Province, Nacfa, was liberated. Heavy losses were inflicted on the fascist regime of Mengistu during this battle, including the shooting down of 14 jet fighters supplied to the Ethiopian fascists by the U.S. imperialists, and the wiping out of thousands of fascist troops. The fascists retreated from Nafca to Afebet, where EPLF fighters defeated them. The fascists retreated to Ela Bered, only to suffer another defeat before they could even get dug in. The Ethiopian fascist troops retreated to Karen where they were besieged by the EPLF fighters. This latest report indicates that Karen is now liberated and the fascists again defeated. At the time of the liberation of Nacfa, an EPLF spokesman said, "After our successful achievements in the military field, especially with the complete liberation of Sahel, we are preparing ourselves for another big offensive. " This plan of EPLF is being successfully implemented, and the complete liberation of Eritrea from the Ethiopian fascists will soon be realized.

In their 15-year-long armed struggle against the various Ethiopian fascist regimes propped up in Ethiopia by imperialism and social-imperialism, the Eritrean people's fighters have relied on their own efforts and the efforts of the people to carry out their liberation war. The recent victories in Sahel Province released massive stores of military equipment, supplied to the Ethiopian fascists by the two superpowers, for use by the Eritrean liberation fighters. The liberation of Sahel also enabled the EPLF to recruit large numbers of patriotic men, women and youth into the EPLF fighting forces for the assaults on Karen, Decamere and for the coming offensive against Asmara.

The Ethiopian fascists and the two superpowers, the U.S. imperialists and the Soviet social-imperialists, are not content to admit their defeat at the hands of the Eritrean people and to give up their vicious attacks on the people. Victories of the people always arouse more furious, death-bed convulsions from the reactionaries. It is within this context that the two superpowers are arming the Ethiopian fascist troops to the teeth for their final battle for Eritrea. Although already in receipt of massive amounts of military equipment from the U.S. imperialists, Mengistu went to Moscow recently to get further military aid from the Soviet social-imperialists. Tanks, guns, munitions and other equipment have arrived in Ethiopia from the Soviet Union, for use not only against the Eritrean people, but also against the heroic fighters of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party which is leading the armed struggle of the Ethiopian people and which is also winning many victories on the battlefield. The Soviet social-imperialists have also sent their Cuban lackeys to Ethiopia to train the 100,000-man "people's militia" which Mengistu's fascist regime has press-ganged into service for use against the EPLF, EPRP and against the broad masses. 100,000 "people's militia" troops are being prepared by the Ethiopian fascists and the superpowers for a "campaign" in Eritrea, and regular troops are being airlifted into Asmara on aircraft supplied by the U.S. imperialists.

This last-ditch effort the Ethiopian fascists and the superpowers are preparing to make in Eritrea is bound to fail. The Eritrean people, led by the EPLF, will certainly march on to victory in their national liberation struggle. End.

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The Events of the Detroit Rebellion

[Photo: The bourgeoisie was so terrified by the 1967 Detroit Afro-American Rebellion that it sent Army tanks like this one, together with 13,000 armed men, in an attempt to suppress the masses.]

On Sunday, July 23rd, 1967, at 3:45 AM, the Detroit police unjustifiably raided a private party for Black veterans who had just returned from fighting in Viet Nam. The police broke up the party, arresting 82 Afro-Americans present. As the police took away the 82 people in patrol wagons, about 200 angry neighbors loudly protested this invasion and attack upon their community. Using nightsticks the police brutally pushed and shoved the last of the people into the patrol wagons. This further angered the 200 onlookers, and they smashed out the windshield of the last patrol car by throwing bricks at it as it sped off into the night. News of this attack by the police quickly spread throughout the neighborhood, and people began gathering on the sidewalks and street-corners. Anger intensified and the smashing of the store windows of gouging merchants could be heard along 12th Street. By morning, 3,000 Afro-American workers and youth slowly moved up and down 12th Street discussing the attack that had occurred a few hours earlier and denouncing any police that could be seen.

Shortly before noon, several events took place. The police wanted to get the 3,000 angry masses off the street, so they called one of their agents among the Afro-American people to help them, Black Congressman John Conyers. Using a police bullhorn, standing on the hood of a police car, Conyers told the people that they shouldn't worry about the situation and that the police were their friends Hearing this, a 50- year-old man shouted to Conyers: "Why are you defending the cops and the establishment? You are as bad as they are!" Feeling the same way, hundreds of youths began throwing rocks and bottles at Conyers, who quickly fled with the police.

When Conyers couldn't talk the people into leaving the streets, 90 police were ordered to clear 12th Street, using a "v" formation to attack. The Black masses quickly moved on to side streets and alleys, circling around the police and hitting them in the back with rocks and bottles. Seeing the situation getting worse for the police, the Commissioner put the whole department on 12-hour shifts and had blockades set up on 12th Street, hoping to seal off the Rebellion.

By 3 PM the Rebellion began to spread from 12th Street onto many other main streets. By 4 AM Mayor Cavanagh frantically called in 360 state troopers and 7,000 National Guardsmen. By 9 PM the National Guard and state troopers were on the streets, systematically beating and shooting people. This only served to further incite the masses of workers and youth, who responded with rifle fire directed at the police and National Guard. Within a period of one to two hours, the Rebellion spread throughout the entire city, covering an area of 25 square miles (11 of 13 police precincts reported rebellion). Some of the rifle fire at police was carried out by white workers: the first government murder during the Rebellion was of a southern white worker, who with three friends took up guns to fight the National Guard. He was shot by a Guardsman when he refused to surrender. The police were in a panic at the masses' struggle. Detroit Police Inspector Donnelly desperately called for help from anyone to help suppress the Rebellion: "We're using everybody who volunteers including special police and civilians with firearms. "

During the day on Monday, July 24, widespread rebellion continued throughout the city. Police and National Guard shot many people, killing nine. That evening widespread gunfire by the masses was clearly directed at the enemy, the government forces, the police and National Guard. The police station on Mack Ave. (7th precinct) was under heavy fire from about 10 PM on; the Southeastern High School National Guard Command Post was pinned down for long periods. Massive revolutionary violence was inflicted upon the police at Linwood and Vicksburg, where large numbers of armed Afro-Americans fought against 12 police who used machine guns and high-powered rifles, leaving three police lying wounded in the street.

The Rebellion was so intense and out of control that by 4 AM on Tuesday Governor Romney was forced to call in federal troops. The 82nd and 101st airborne divisions, battle-hardened from fighting against the Vietnamese people, soon arrived, backed up by battle tanks, in attempts to suppress the great Rebellion of the Afro-American people. (Cyrus Vance, today the Secretary of State in the Carter administration, was sent by President Johnson to act as his personal representative in arranging for the federal troops. Johnson made the final decision to commit the troops to action against the people after urgent phone calls from Walter Reuther, then head of the UAW, and Charles Diggs, Black Congressman. Diggs, today the head of the Congressional Black Caucus, had even gone so far as to threaten to buy air time on national TV to denounce Johnson if he did not commit the federal troops! All this shows the shameless collaboration of the UAW labor bureaucrats and Black bourgeois politicians with the armed attacks of the monopoly capitalist government on the Black people.)

During the next three days, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, the forces of the state (2,000 police, 7,000 National Guard and 5,000 federal troops) viciously attacked the masses of people, beating and shooting people on the streets and executing the youth. 4-year-old Tanya Blanding was instantly killed by a burst of machine-gun-fire from National Guardsmen who saw her father light a cigarette in a darkened window and shot up her home. William Dalton, stopped by the police on the street, was told by them to run away and was shot dead -- in the back. Police cold-bloodedly executed three young Afro-Americans in the famous Algiers Motel incident, on the pretext that police had been shot at in the area.

These savage attacks were unable to intimidate or suppress the Afro-American people, who courageously fought back using mass revolutionary violence. During those three nights and days the Afro-Americans launched counter-attacks with unstoppable fury. Two command posts of the federal troops (Kiefer Hospital and Southeastern H. S.) and the police station on Mack Ave. (7th precinct) were under heavy siege of rifle fire, off and on for three days. Police and National Guard were forced to withdraw from whole areas of the city after being pinned down by rifle fire (W. Grand Blvd. and Hazelwood area and Chicago-Livernois area).

Friday, July 27, 1967, the Rebellion ended. The Afro-Americans of Detroit, heads held high, recounted the battles of previous days. Lyndon Johnson, president of a government deeply shaken by the Detroit Rebellion, ordered the establishment of the Kerner Commission to "investigate" and cover up the causes of the Rebellion. End.

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The Events of the Newark Rebellion

[Photo: A fascist policeman felled by the fighting Black people of Newark during 1967 Rebellion.]

On Wednesday evening, July 12th, cab driver John Smith was arrested by the Newark police for passing a parked police car and driving with an expired drivers license. The police hand-cuffed Smith and took him to the police station, beating him along the way. Severely beaten in the groin, Smith was unable to walk from the squad car to the station across the street, so he was dragged, hand-cuffed and screaming, in full view of the many residents of the Hayes Housing Project.

Once inside the station, Smith was still further viciously beaten, kicked and clubbed by a group of 10- 15 policemen. Black representatives of various poverty programs soon arrived at the station to collaborate with the police. One of these was Oliver Lofton, administrator for the Newark Legal Services Project (formerly a U.S. attorney, after the rebellion he was appointed to serve on the Governor's "blue-ribbon panel" to "study" the rebellion).

The police soon realized that a crowd of Afro-Americans was gathering and growing rapidly outside the station and that the Afro-American youths were denouncing any and all police in the area for the attack on Smith. Worried, the police plotted together with their Black agents, the poverty program officials, deciding that the best way to "cool off" the angry youth and to "guard against violence" was to have a "militant" "angry" demonstration (note: a "protest" demonstration planned by the police!) that would turn into an all-night vigil at city hall where it would meet with the mayor in the morning. This action was designed to get the furious masses away from the police station where they might take matters into their own hands and intensify the struggle. Sent by his masters, Lofton got on the hood of a police car, took a police bullhorn and proceeded to lay out the well-planned scheme to the angry youth on the street. Very quickly the revolutionary youth saw through this scheme, showered Lofton and his cohorts with rocks and bottles, and began stoning the police station and breaking all its windows. A few people marched off, but the overwhelming majority of youth continued to stone the police station.

The Black masses, with the youth in the forefront, rose up in a vigorous struggle. Fire-bombs smashed into the police station; an abandoned car was set ablaze next to the housing project and the police and firemen were stoned when they arrived to put it out. Police from inside the station were stoned when they attempted to set up a secure cordon around the station. Throughout the rest of the evening the Afro-American youth attacked the police on foot patrols with rocks and bottles. After midnight a group of about 25 cab drivers demonstrated in their cabs at the police station, honking their horns, protesting the arrest and beating of their fellow driver. By this time the police station was battered from the attacks of the people (102 windows broken, etc.).

At 5 AM the police were put on 12-hour shifts, while, at the same time, the city tried frantically to put on an outward air of normalcy and cover up the signs of the raging struggle. The streets were cleaned of rocks and bottles, broken windows were quickly replaced at the 4th precinct. The mayor met with the poverty program officials who made three "militant" demands -- that the police who attacked John Smith be suspended, that a "blue-ribbon" panel be set up to investigate the events of Wednesday night, and that an Afro-American police lieutenant be promoted to captain. The mayor immediately accepted all three "militant" demands of the opportunists. This revealed the role of the opportunists who, in a time of revolutionary upsurge, formulate and promote petty reformist demands totally acceptable to the bourgeoisie in hopes of blunting the revolutionary struggle and diverting and pacifying the masses.

Thursday afternoon a leaflet entitled "Stop Police Brutality" was distributed by the NCUP ( a "community-organizing" project set up in Newark in 1964 by Tom Hayden of SDS, famous liquidator of the youth and student movements in the 1960's and now a Democratic Party hack). This leaflet called for the people to meet for a rally at the 4th precinct that evening at 7:30 PM. While the leaflet seemed to call for a militant struggle, in fact NCUP's intent in calling this rally was to "militantly" oppose police brutality and then the people would be satisfied and return home. As Hayden wrote in his book Rebellion in Newark: "Some organizers of the demonstration probably thought it might channel energy from violence. Others knew the violence was there, not to be channeled into symbolic protest, yet the conventional protest was the only avenue of expression familiar to them. So they proceeded. " That is, none of them were the least bit interested in developing the violent revolutionary struggle that was growing before their eyes.

Thursday evening a picket line marched in front of the station and about 300 youth watched from across the street. At 8:00 James Threatt, Black Director of the Human Rights Commission, arrived and told the masses of the great "victory" that had been won earlier when the poverty program officials had met with the mayor and obtained the promotion of a Black police lieutenant to the rank of captain. Having long suffered under the brutal suppression of the city government and its police, the Black people were enraged ten-fold when this deception was offered to them by this lackey of their oppressors. The youth responded by filling the air with rocks and bottles. Again all windows of the 4th precinct station were broken. About 200-300 people had the police trapped inside for about 20 minutes before 50 charged out in a vain attempt to disperse the people.

At this point the rebellion swiftly began to grow. Throughout the evening large groups of fighting masses gathered at ten major intersections with a thousand people at each one. On Springfield Ave. the masses had the police outnumbered and at their mercy -- the police could do nothing. From time to time a police car would drive up, only to be descended upon by hundreds of angry people. Several police cars were unable to pull away quickly enough and the windows were immediately smashed out by a storm of rocks. By midnight the police were able to restore relative quiet to the area around the 4th precinct, but the rebellion had spread to other areas.

The police were in a panic. The Rebellion was spreading with great speed and force. Over the police radio a frantic announcement was made, "Use your shotguns and revolvers! Use your shotguns and revolvers! That's what you have them for!!!" The police made announcements from the loudspeakers atop their squad cars. "Anyone on the street after 1 AM will be shot!". They then began to shoot their weapons into the air to disperse the people. At 2:30 AM the State Troopers and the National Guard were called in and at 5:30 102 State Troopers and 4,000 National Guard arrived, and an 11 PM to 6 AM curfew was imposed. By noon Friday, 137 roadblocks were set up and the total number of State Troopers increased to 600.

At this point a systematic campaign of terror was unleashed by the government forces against the masses of Afro-American people. People were beaten at random on the streets and at the roadblocks. Small businesses owned by Blacks were shot into and destroyed. Homes and apartments in housing projects were shot into on a wide scale. Many Black youth were simply executed in cold blood by the police. On Friday night alone, 100 people were shot, 10 were killed, 500 injured and 500 arrested.

Enez King, the owner of a small dry-cleaning store with "soul sister" painted on the front window, testified that jeep-loads of State Troopers and National Guard pulled up to her store, smashed the windows with their rifle butts, filled the store with 30 cal. M-l carbine fire and turned over the racks of clothing -- stomping them into the floor. This is one of many such reported incidents.

The police and National Guard carried out systematic murders. William Furr stood outside a burnt-out tavern drinking beer with a Life Magazine photographer, when State Troopers arrived on the scene. William ran, and was shot in the back at a distance of 15 feet with a 12-gauge shotgun. On Sunday afternoon James Rutledge and a few friends were hiding in a burned-out tavern when they were caught by the State Troopers and the National Guard. James was executed and his body was found with 45 bullet holes in it.

This vicious attack by the government forces did not suppress the revolutionary struggle of the Afro- American people of Newark. They responded with rifles on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights. Rifle fire was reported all along Springfield Ave. Some of the most valiant fighting took place from the roofs and upper floors of the Hayes Housing Project, from which riflemen had a fire station pinned down for long periods of time. A running gun battle at the Stella Wright Housing Project was considered by some to be the most fierce of all. There a policeman was shot dead, receiving a bullet below the heart.

On Monday the Rebellion tapered off and the State Troopers and the National Guard were gradually withdrawn. During the Rebellion 1510 people were arrested and 24 of the Black masses heroically gave their lives. The mass revolutionary struggle of the Afro- American people of Newark shook the very foundations of the U.S. imperialist system. Little did the monopoly capitalists know that in six short days the Afro-Americans of Detroit would also rise up in violent revolutionary rebellion. End.

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Excerpts From the Editorial of the Newspaper "Zeri i Popullit", "THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF THE REVOLUTION"

In his brilliant works on imperialism, V.I. Lenin arrived at the conclusion that imperialism is capitalism in decline and decay, the final phase of capitalism and the eve of the social revolution of the proletariat. Analyzing the phenomena winch characterize imperialism, he wrote: "All these factors transform the present stage of capitalist development into an era of proletarian socialist revolution", that "That era has dawned", that "Objective conditions make it the urgent task of the day to prepare the proletariat in every way for the conquest of political power in order to carry out the economic and political measures which are the sum and substance of the socialist revolution". (Works, vol. 24, p. 469)

In defining the present epoch, Lenin proceeded from the class criterion. He said that it is important to keep well in mind "which class stands at the hub of one epoch or another, determining its main content, the main direction of its development, the main characteristics of the historical, situation in that epoch, etc.". (Works, vol. 21, p. 145) Defining the fundamental content of the new historic epoch, as the epoch of imperialism and the proletarian revolutions, he remained consistently loyal to the teachings of Marx about the historic mission of the proletariat as the new social force which will carry out the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist society of oppression and exploitation and build the new society, classless communist society.

"The Communist Manifesto" of Marx and Engels and their call 'Worker s of all countries, unite!' came out to announce that the fundamental contradiction of human society was now that between labor and capital, and the proletariat was called on to resolve it by revolution. With this analysis of imperialism, Lenin showed that the contradictions of capitalist society had reached their culmination and that the world has entered the period of proletarian revolutions and the triumph of socialism.

The Great October Socialist Revolution confirmed the brilliant conclusions of Marx and Lenin in practice. [After the death of Lenin, too, the international communist movement resolutely adhered to his teachings about the present epoch, adhered to his revolutionary strategy. The triumph of the socialist revolution in a number of other countries confirmed that the Leninist thesis on the present epoch, as the epoch of the transition from capitalism to socialism, reflects the fundamental law of the development of present-day human society. The collapse of the colonial system, the winning of political independence by the overwhelming majority of the countries of Asia, Africa, etc., is another confirmation of the Leninist theory on the epoch and the revolution. The fact that the teachings of Marxism-Leninism and the revolution were betrayed in the Soviet Union and a number of former socialist countries does not alter the Leninist thesis on the character of the present epoch in the least, because this is nothing but a zigzag in the course of the inevitable victory of socialism over capitalism on a world scale.

At present, there is a great deal of talk about the division of the world into the so-called "first", "second" and "third" worlds, about the "non-aligned world", the world of "the developing countries", the "North-South" world, etc. Each of the supporters of these divisions presents his own "theory" as the most correct strategy, which allegedly responds to the real conditions of the present international situation. But as Comrade Enver Hoxha stressed at the 7th Congress; "all these terms, which refer to the various political forces acting in the world today, cover up and do not bring out the class character of these political forces, the fundamental contradictions of our epoch, the key problem which is predominant today on a national and international scale, the ruthless struggle between the bourgeois-imperialist world, on the one hand, and socialism, the world proletariat, and its natural allies, on the other." (Enver Hoxha, Report at the 7th Congress of the PLA, p. 172)

When Marxist-Leninists speak about the world and various countries and classify them, their judgment is according to the principles of dialectical and historical materialism. They judge, first and foremost, from the social-economic order existing in various countries, they judge according to the proletarian class criterion. Precisely from this angle V.I. Lenin, in 1921, that is, when only one socialist country existed in the world, Soviet Russia, wrote: "there are now two worlds: the old world of capitalism, that is in a state of confusion but which will never surrender voluntarily, and the rising new world, which is still very weak, but which will grow, for it is invincible." (Works, vol.33, p. 150) On his part, J.V. Stalin, in his well-known article "The Two Camps" published in 1919, also stressed, "The world has definitely and is irrevocably split into two camps: the camp of imperialism and the camp of socialism... The struggle between these two camps constitutes the hub of present-day affairs, determines the whole substance of the present home and foreign policies of the leaders of the old and new worlds. " (Works, vol. 4, p. 240)

The view of our Party is that today, too, we should speak about the socialist world, as Lenin and Stalin did, that the Leninist criterion is always correct, as Leninism itself is vital and correct. The argument of the theoreticians of the "three worlds", the "non- aligned world", etc., who have eliminated the existence of socialism from their schemes, referring to the fact of the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union and some other former socialist countries, hence the disintegration of the socialist camp, is without foundation. It is in complete opposition to the Leninist teachings and the class criterion. By ignoring socialism as a social system, the so- called "theory of three worlds" ignores the greatest historic victory of the international proletariat, ignores the fundamental contradiction of the time, that between socialism and capitalism. It is clear that such a theory, which ignores socialism, is anti- Leninist; it leads to the weakening of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the countries where socialism is being built, while calling on the world proletariat not to fight, not to rise in socialist revolution, and this is not to be wondered at: departure from the proletarian class criteria in assessing the situation, can lead only to conclusions in opposition to the interests of the revolution and the proletariat.

However, the so-called theory of "three worlds" does not lay down any tasks for the revolution; on the contrary it "forgets" this. In the scheme of the "three worlds", the fundamental contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie does not exist. Apart from this, another thing that strikes the eye, in this division of the world, is its non-class view of what is called the "third world", its ignoring of classes and the class struggle, its treatment of countries which this theory includes in this world, the regimes which dominate there and various political forces which operate within it as a single entity. It ignores the contradiction between the oppressed peoples and the reactionary and pro-imperialist forces of their own countries.

But to speak in general terms about the so-called "third world" as the main force of the struggle against imperialism and the revolution, as the supporters of the theory of the "three worlds" are doing, without making any distinction between the genuine anti-imperialist and revolutionary forces and the pro-imperialist, reactionary and fascist forces in power in a number of the developing countries, means a flagrant departure from the teachings of Marxism-Leninism and to preach typically opportunist views, causing confusion and disorganization among the revolutionary forces. In essence, according to the theory of the "three worlds", the peoples of those countries must not fight, for instance, against the bloody fascist dictatorships of Geisel in Brazil and Pinochet in Chile, Suharto in Indonesia, the Shah of Iran or the King of Jordan, etc., because they, allegedly, are part of the "revolutionary motive force" which "is driving the wheel of world history forward". On the contrary, according to this theory, the peoples and revolutionaries ought to unite with the reactionary forces and regimes of the "third world" and support them, in other words, give up the revolution.

Not only does the theory of the "three worlds" not take account of the contradiction between the two opposing social systems, socialism and capitalism, or the great contradiction between labor and capital, but neither does it analyze the other major contradiction, that between the oppressed peoples and world imperialism, which it reduces to the contradiction with the two superpowers only, and indeed mainly with one of them. This "theory" totally ignores the contradiction between the oppressed peoples and nations and the other imperialist powers. What is more, the partisans of the theory of the "three worlds" call for alliance of the "third world" with these imperialist countries and with U.S. imperialism against Soviet social-imperialism.

It can never happen that the so-called countries of the "Second World", in other words the big monopoly bourgeoisie ruling there, become allies of the oppressed peoples and nations in the struggle against the two superpowers and world imperialism.

The countries of the so-called "second world" are the main economic and military support of the aggressive and expansionist alliances of the two superpowers.

The absolutization of inter-imperialist contradictions and the underestimation of the basic contradiction, that between the revolution and the counter-revolution, the placing of the exploitation of the contradictions in the enemy camp alone in the center of the strategy and forgetting the main thing -- the increase of the revolutionary spirit and the development of the revolutionary movement of the working people and the peoples, neglecting the preparation of the revolution, are in total opposition to the teachings of Marxism-Leninism. It is anti-Marxist to preach unity with the allegedly weaker imperialisms to oppose the stronger, to side with the bourgeoisie of the country to oppose that of another country, under the pretext of exploiting contradictions. Lenin stressed that the tactic of the exploitation of contradictions in the ranks of the enemies should be used "in order toraise-- not lower -- the general level of proletarian class- consciousness, revolutionary spirit, and ability to fight and win." (Lenin, Works, vol. 31, p. 74)

The Leninist strategy considers the world proletarian revolution as a single process, made up of several great revolutionary trends of our era, at the center of which stands the international proletariat.

Soviet social-imperialism is a savage, aggressive imperialism, thirsty for expansion, which is pursuing a typically colonialist and neo-colonialist policy, which is based on the power of capital and arms.

In rivalry with U.S. imperialism, this new imperialism is struggling to seize strategic positions and to get its grip on all the regions and continents. It stands out as a fire extinguisher of the revolution and suppressor of the liberation struggle of the peoples. But this in no way means that the other enemy of the peoples and of the whole world, U.S. imperialism, is less dangerous, as the advocates of the "three worlds" theory claim. Distorting the truth and deceiving the peoples, they claim that U.S. imperialism is allegedly no longer war-mongering, that allegedly it has been weakened, is in decline, that it has become a "timid mouse", in a word, U.S. imperialism is turning peaceful. Matters have reached the point that even the U.S. military presence in various countries such as Germany, Belgium or Italy, in. Japan and other countries is being justified and described as a factor for defense. Such views are extremely dangerous to the freedom of the peoples and the fate of the revolution. Such theses foster illusions about the aggressive, hegemonic and expansionist nature of both U.S. imperialism and Soviet imperialism.

The proletariat and the proletarian revolution are faced with the task of overthrowing every imperialism, and, especially, the two imperialist superpowers. Any imperialism, from its very nature, is always a savage enemy of the proletarian revolution. Therefore, to divide imperialisms into more or less dangerous, from the strategic viewpoint of the world revolution, is wrong. Practice has proved that the two superpowers, to the same degree and to the same extent, represent the main enemy for socialism and the freedom and independence of the nations, the greatest force defending exploiting systems, the direct danger that mankind will be hurled into a third world war. To ignore this great truth, to underestimate the danger of one or the other superpower, or even worse, to call for unity with one superpower against the other, is fraught with catastrophic consequences and great dangers to the future of the revolution and the freedom of the peoples.

The present day anti-Leninist theories of the "three worlds", "non-alignment", and so on, are also aimed at undermining the revolution, extinguishing the struggle against imperialism, especially against U.S. imperialism, splitting the Marxist-Leninist movement, the unity of the proletariat advocated by Marx and Lenin, creating all kinds of groupings of anti-Marxist elements to fight the true Marxist-Leninist parties which stand loyal to Marxism-Leninism, to the revolution.

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