WORKERS, OPPRESSED NATIONS AND PEOPLE OF THE WORLD, UNITE!
NEWSPAPER OF THE CENTRAL ORGANIZATION OF U.S. MARXIST-LENINISTS
P. O. BOX 11942, CHICAGO, ILL. 60611
Vol. 7, No. 7 December 20, 1977 25ยข
[Front page:
GLORY TO THE FIGHTING COAL MINERS!
OIL MONOPOLIES STEP UP PLUNDER
The "Labor Reform Act of 1977": Repression of the Workers' Movement by the "Friends of Labor"
Sadat's Ugly Betrayal Will Not Save the U.S.-Zionist Aggressors
Joint Declaration of Five European Marxist-Leninist Parties (See Centerfold)]
CONTENTS
Farm Strike................................................................................................................. | p. 3 |
Energy Debate............................................................................................................ | p. 3 |
Capitalist Terrorism Under Guise of "Anti-Terrorism".............................................. | p. 4 |
CCNY -- Fraud of "declining standards".................................................................. | p. 4 |
English Workers Will Never Accept Fascism............................................................ | p.14 |
Dock Workers Strike.................................................................................................. | p. 7 |
Stearns Miners Strike................................................................................................. | p. 7 |
Hospital Workers, against attacks on......................................................................... | p. 6 |
Boston: Racist Attacks............................................................................................... | p. 4 |
Philadelphia: Fight fascist anti-busing movement..................................................... | p. 6 |
Arab People's Struggle............................................................................................... | p. 2 |
Chile........................................................................................................................... | p. 8 |
Eritreans in North America........................................................................................ | p. 8 |
Against Shah of Iran.................................................................................................. | p. 20 |
Angola........................................................................................................................ | p. 20 |
Albania -- 33rd anniversary of liberation................................................................. | p. 5 |
60th Anniversary of October Revolution .................................................................. | p. 12 |
Against opportunism and the theory of "Three Worlds": OL Supports "De Facto Recognition of Israel"................................................................................................ | p. 2 |
Flimsy Fraud, Desperate Gamble, part 2................................................................... | p. 9 |
Communist Party of Ireland (M-L) Denounces Theory of "ThreeWorlds"............... | p. 15 |
Speech at 5th Consultative Conference of Communist Party of Canada (M-L)........ | p. 9 |
Speech by Mehmet Shehu.......................................................................................... | p. 5 |
GLORY TO THE FIGHTING COAL MINERS!
OIL MONOPOLIES STEP UP PLUNDER
The "Labor Reform Act of 1977": Repression of the Workers' Movement by the "Friends of Labor"
Sadat's Ugly Betrayal Will Not Save the U.S.-Zionist Aggressors
Just Cause of the Arab Peoples Is Invincible
BANKRUPTCY OF THE "THREE WORLDS" THEORY:
OL Social-Chauvinists Praise Sadat's "De Facto Recognition of Israel"
CAPITALIST TERRORISM UNDER THE GUISE OF "ANTI-TERRORISM"
Down with the Skills Test! Oppose the Fraud of "Declining Standards"!
Government-Organized Racist Attacks Denounced in Boston
Hail the 33rd Anniversary of the Liberation of Albania!
SPEECH OF COMRADE MEHMET SHEHU AT NOVEMBER FESTIVALS
Capitalist Moneybags Step Up Exploitation of Hospital Workers
PHILADELPHIA: SMASH THE FASCIST "ANTI-BUSING" MOVEMENT!
DOCK WORKERS WAGE TWO MONTH STRIKE TO PROTECT THEIR LIVELIHOOD
Stearns Miners Fight Reactionary Violence of the State
Communique of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Chile Against New Aggression by Jurquet's Group
AGAINST THE THEORY OF THE LESSER EVIL
Flimsy Fraud, Desperate Gamble
Rallies Celebrate 60th Anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution
BRITISH WORKERS WILL NEVER ACCEPT FASCISM!
IRELAND-- The Theory of "Three Worlds" Is Not Consistent with Marxism-Leninism but with Opportunism
FORCEFUL DEMONSTRATION AGAINST THE SHAH OF IRAN
UNITA Conducts Successful Diplomatic Drive
On December 6, 188,000 U.S. coal miners marched off their jobs in a determined strike for a new contract. Their principal demands are the right to strike and the restoration and guarantee of health benefits.
The coal miners' strike is a militant expression of the growing workers' movement which is sweeping the U.S., vigorously fighting the exploitation and oppression by the capitalists. The miners have played a vanguard role in this movement, waging militant struggles such as the 1974 national coal strike, the growing wildcat strikes for the past three years in a row and the present national strike. Under the difficult conditions of winter weather, with funds and savings depleted in the wildcats, facing sabotage and predictions of doom from the scab union bosses of the United Mine Workers and facing blackmail by the capitalist news media, which is claiming that the miners' strike will cause a national energy shortage, the heroic coal miners have marched militantly into battle once again.
Throughout the coal fields, both in the East and the West, the miners have again unleashed the weapon they developed in the wildcats, the roving picket movement, this time to bring out on strike the workers at non-union mines, which now account for nearly 50 per cent of the country's coal production. According to incomplete reports, roving pickets are active in Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee and Utah, In Ohio the workers engaged the capitalist thugs in a gunfight at an unorganized mine. A group of striking miners tried to block Ohio Route 93 in Tuscarawas County to stop scabs. Several hundred miners traveled in a car caravan in southern Ohio and eastern Kentucky along the Ohio River to spread the strike. In Indiana a mass picket of 500 miners marched on the nonunion mines and the coal-loading docks on the Ohio River, closing them down. State police were called out by the coal capitalists and a fierce clash took place between them and the workers, in which seven workers were arrested. In Lawrence County, Pennsylvania, miners wrecked machinery at a non-union strip mine. 500 to 600 militant miners were reported active with mass pickets in the area, In Indiana County in that state, roving pickets trapped coal trucks and scabs at two mines. State and local police had to be dispatched by the capitalists to escort the strike-breakers through the picket lines. In Clarion County, Pa., 120 car-loads of miners picketed nonunion mines and dumped truck-loads of coal. 800 pickets marched there the next day, smashing equipment of non-union mines and trapping 40 scabs in the headquarters of a non-union coal company until state police came to protect them. The capitalist courts imposed an injunction limiting pickets in Clarion County to three at each mine, eastern Kentucky, where three-quarters of the coal mined is non-union, mass pickets were active. At the Stearns, Ky., mine of the Blue Diamond Coal Co., where non-union miners have been waging a 17-month strike to organize themselves into the UMW, a roving picket of 200 miners marched on the mine and shut it down. About 200 miners picketed the Canada Coal Co. in Kimper, Ky., and fired shots at the firm's equipment. A group of 400 miners besieged a non-union mine in Davies County and fought with rocks against deputy sheriffs sent to suppress them. Two policemen were injured and 15 miners arrested. In Utah, part of the vast western fields which the coal monopolies are attempting to open up with non-union labor, the miners waged a fierce struggle against the employers and their governmental apparatus of oppression. The miners burned a bridge leading to a mine, stranding 50 scabs until a road could be cut to get to them. The miners fought the scabs and the employers' agents with rocks. Frightened by the struggle, the coal companies ordered the Governor of Utah to send 90 state troopers to attempt to suppress the miners. When a court order failed to intimidate the miners, the capitalists were forced to close three scab mines during all but daylight hours to avoid clashes with the workers. Miners also blocked trains from entering non-union mines. At least 30 non-union operations were shut down by roving pickets in eastern Tennessee.
These powerful mass actions by the miners show the falsity of the cowardly whimpering of Arnold Miller and the UMW bosses,that the workers should lie down and beg the employers because "the union is threatened", is "being torn apart", "we are weak", "we are disunited", etc. They show that active mass struggle can stop coal production and defeat the coal capitalists.
The coal miners are fighting against being made to bear the burden of the present economic crisis in general and the energy crisis in particular. The monopoly capitalists want to smash the coal miners' movement in order to protect and increase their profits as well as to have a quiet home front and "safe" supply of coal for the war they are preparing against the world's people. The capitalists describe these evil aims of theirs as "the national interest" in hopes of tricking the people into opposing the miners. But these are the selfish interests of a handful of parasites and war-mongers, not the interests of the vast majority of people, the workers and oppressed masses, who are fighting the robber capitalists.
In the present contract struggle, the BCOA (Bituminous Coal Operators Association) has launched a new attack on the miners. The BCOA is demanding that a no-strike clause be written into the contract and that there be numerous provisions inserted to punish the coal miners who go on strike. At the same time, all medical benefits have been stopped for the duration of the strike and threats are being made of the complete collapse of the health fund. Although the price of coal has sky-rocketed with the energy crisis, this has not satisfied the coal capitalists who wish to extract the absolute maximum profit by destroying the coal miners' movement.
For their part, the miners have demanded the restoration and guarantee of health benefits. They have also demanded the right to strike. As miners use their strike movement to defend themselves from over-work and very hazardous working conditions, to organize the unorganized, and to fight the capitalists in general, without the right to strike, the miners cannot enforce the national contract, which becomes a scrap of paper. The capitalists use the excuse that the miners' strikes are wildcat strikes to slander the miners, fine them, fire them and put them in jail. The demand for the right to strike is aimed at taking away this excuse from the capitalists, so as to promote even more vigorously the miners' struggle against all capitalist attacks. The capitalists, of course, will abide by no agreement, such as one recognizing the right to strike, which is not enforced by mass struggle, but nevertheless the stipulation of such a right would allow the miners a wider field in which to develop their struggle. The demand for the right to strike is therefore both an expression of the miners' will to continue their mass resistance to enforce their just demands against the coal capitalists and at the same time a measure to defend this resistance and expose the attacks of the government. Thus the coal miners' demands are aimed at defending the life and limb of the miners and at defending and strengthening their movement for their vital interests.
The present strike struggle of the coal miners is a focal point for the whole class struggle of the working class against the shifting of the burden of the capitalist economic crisis onto its shoulders. It is an expression of the growing revolt of the revolutionary U.S. proletariat against its class enemy. As such the coal miners' movement is a powerful inspiration to the entire working class to rise in struggle. The capitalists are well aware of this and have undertaken a major national effort to smash the coal miners. This is the issue in the present national strike of the coal miners.
THE COAL CAPITALISTS HAVE STEPPED UP THEIR ATTACK ON THE MINERS' MOVEMENT SINCE THE 1974 CONTRACT
The coal miners' struggle has grown especially sharp since the signing of the 1974 contract. No sooner was the ink dry on the contract than the capitalists broke it. In their drive for maximum profits through exploitation of the workers, the coal companies continually violate safety procedures. Unlike most jobs, the coal miners' work site changes with the face of the mine, advancing some 30 yards deeper every day. The constantly changing conditions, with the threat of explosions from gas seepage, rock falls, etc., bring added danger to the miners' work. Especially rigorous safety conditions must be enforced if the miners are to protect their very life and limb. But the monopoly capitalists realize no profits from investing money to enforce safety conditions. A ton of coal with or without coal miners' blood on it sells for the same the same price. Therefore, every day the capitalists violate safety procedures and carry out frequent suspensions and firings of miners who justly resist these violations.
For example, in the 1974 contract it was agreed, on paper anyway, that individual miners could leave their jobs if they saw conditions of danger to their safety. But the coal operators simply fire any miner who does this. Then the matter is taken to the arbitration board where the miner must prove to capitalist officials that he was justified in walking off the job. Even if the miner wins his grievance, it can be one, two, or even three years before he gets his job back. Against such outrageous oppression, the coal miners have had no recourse but to go on strike to enforce their contract, to enforce safety conditions and to defend and protect their fellow workers.
But when the miners go on strike, the monopoly capitalists immediately call upon their government, which is nothing but an armed instrument of theirs for suppressing the workers, to attack the miners. The courts issue orders limiting pickets, fining striking miners, police are sent to arrest and jail strike leaders, etc. The capitalist courts have even gone so far as to put many mines under injunction against future strikes. By August of 1975 this situation had become so intolerable that the coal miners walked off their jobs in a national wildcat strike, against the opposition of the scab union bosses headed by Arnold Miller. For some five weeks, 60,000 miners continued their strike demanding that the contract be enforced, that the courts stop attacking the striking miners and that the right to strike be granted to the miners.
But the monopoly capitalists continued their attacks on the miners. Not only do they attack the miners' life and limb with deteriorating safety conditions, but they continually attempt to enforce speed-up and barbarous overtime. To maximize their profits, the coal companies try to get the greatest production from the fewest number of workers in the shortest period of time. Through much of the coal fields the capitalists have started continuous operations, working the fewest number of miners compulsory six-day weeks and additional long hours. In other sections of the coal fields, particularly in the operations that produce for the steel industry, the capitalists follow the procedure of working miners at maximum labor intensity and with extended hours for a few days, and then they lay off the majority of the miners and work a handful at the highest intensity to load the coal. In both of the above cases the intensity of the work and the barbarous long hours are destroying the miners' health, increasing black lung problems and stepping up the rate of injuries in the mines.
In violation of the 1974 contract, the coal capitalists have designed new, extremely strict, absentee, sick- leave and personal-leave policies in an effort to enforce their speed-up and overtime. In some mines, workers who miss two days in a row are fired for "extended absenteeism". As well, the companies increasingly try to leave jobs vacant or change work rules to multiply the work-loads on the individual miners.
When the miners oppose these contract violations and arbitrary rules of the capitalists through the grievance procedure, the capitalists' arbitration review board, of course, never settles them in the miners' favor. But even on those rare occasions when the miners win a grievance, the coal companies simply violate the decisions of the capitalist arbitration review boards. For example, in one case in 1976 the miners won a grievance over safety at one mine. But the coal company simply ignored the arbitration decision and continued to violate the safety needs of the miners. The miners then took the matter to court, demanding that the company be forced to abide by the arbitration decision. But the capitalists' judge would not even hear the miners' case. So the miners went on strike to enforce this decision themselves and the very same court imposed an injunction and heavy fines against the striking miners. Because this same sort of practice was going on throughout the coal fields, 100,000 miners walked off their jobs over this issue. For five weeks in 1976 they waged a wildcat strike, again without the approval of the union bosses, demanding that the capitalists abide by the contract, that the government stop its attacks on the miners through the courts, and for the right to strike.
Due to the hazardous conditions, the miners' health is in constant danger and protection of it is a life- and-death matter for the miners. This summer the capitalists cut the miners' health benefits to punish them for their heroic resistance struggle and in an effort to pressure them to give up their wildcat strike movement. Claiming that the funds were depleted by the wildcats, the trustees of the UMWA Health and Retirement Fund (who are coal capitalists and scab bosses of the UMW) slashed the benefits drastically. This vicious attack on the miners, was "justified" by an equally vicious fraud. The fund was being depleted -- not by the miners' wildcats, but by the inflation and soaring prices through which the monopoly capitalists have been robbing the entire working class and people. The other reason it was going broke was that the coal companies are shifting production away from the UMW-organized mines in the East to the non-union strip mines in the West, so that the royalties, which are based on the tonnage produced and man-hours worked by the union miners, are declining. Thus it is the capitalists, not the miners, who are the cause of the depletion of the health fund.
Additionally, while the health fund is low, the trustees absolutely refuse to transfer funds into it from the well-endowed retirement fund, which is arbitrarily considered a separate account. Revealing the real purpose behind the health fund cuts, president of the Bituminous Coal Operators' Association (BCOA -- the organization of the coal capitalists) Brennan stated: "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." Thus the coal capitalists slashed the miners' health benefits with the express purpose of destroying the militant strike movement with which the coal miners were defending their very health, their life and limb and their vital interests. This past summer 85,000 miners waged a six-week wildcat strike demanding the restoration of their medical benefits and succeeded in preventing a further cut. This strike marked the third year in a row that the miners have carried out national wildcat strikes. It shows the high level of this vigorous mass movement.
The monopoly capitalists and their government have been thrown into a panic by the powerful mass movement of the coal miners. They have launched an all-out assault on the coal miners. The Bituminous Coal Operators' Association (BCOA) began this year's contract bargaining by threatening the "decline and possible extinction of the United Mine Workers of America as a force in the national collective bargaining". The capitalists also threatened that if the miners were to strike over this contract, they would cut back the pensions of the retired miners and cut off the medical benefits of all the UMW members. In mid-October, the capitalists' arbitration review board passed a ruling giving the coal operators the right to fire any miner who so much as passes out information relating to a grievance in public places anywhere even near a mine -- thus entirely outlawing wildcat strikes and roving pickets. Not to be outdone, the government is also passing laws to outlaw wildcats and roving pickets. On October 6 the so-called "Labor Reform Act of 1977" was passed in the House of Representatives and is now pending in the Senate. This law, which pretends to assist the organizing of the unorganized workers, actually gives the courts the right to order an end to wildcat strikes and roving pickets, to fine and jail workers who even so much as "induce or encourage" another worker to walk off the job. The government has threatened to invoke the Taft-Hartley law to outlaw this year's contract strike. As a further threat to the miners, the government sent 80 Kentucky State Police to attack and attempt to break the strike of the Stearns coal miners in eastern Kentucky, arresting over 100 miners and their supporters and jailing 11 leaders of the strike for six- month sentences.
THE MINERS' STRIKE MOVEMENT HAS GROWN STEADILY IN THE FACE OF CAPITALIST ATTACKS
In the face of all the attacks of the monopoly capitalists and their state machine, the strike movement of the coal miners has continued to grow, vigorously combating the heartless exploitation of the kings of coal, in 1975 the miners waged wildcat strikes for 1,417,000 man days, amounting to 5.30 per cent of their available workdays, in 1976 their struggle grew to 1,950,000 man days or about 6.75 per cent of the available workdays. In just the period of January to August of this year, the miners have already waged wildcat strikes lasting 2,274,000 man days, an amount equal to 10.33 per cent of the workdays available.
Despite daily safety violations by the capitalists, through their struggle the miners have put a limit to the deterioration of conditions in the mines. They have enforced certain safety provisions such as that requiring an extra man operating the continuous miner at the mine face, where a single operator is blinded by the dust. Despite the capitalists' continual attempts to intensify the miners' overwork to the maximum, the miners' mass resistance, including slow-downs, etc., has actually cut the productivity in the coal industry yearly since 1969. All this has hurt the capitalists' profits. Despite suspensions, firings, fines, jailings and all-around reactionary violence by the capitalists and the government, the miners have yearly strengthened their movement and extended it more widely. This has damaged the monopoly capitalists' plans for secure domestic energy resources in preparation for imperialist world war.
To carry out their struggle and enforce their demands, the coal miners have been forced to resort to the tactic of wildcat strikes on a large scale. This is because the top labor bureaucrats have closed off the official trade union channels, especially since the 1974 contract. Therefore, in order to strike the workers have had to defy the labor traitors and wage wildcat Strikes, sending roving picket squads widely from mine to mine to call the workers out, and even confronting armed goons sent by Miller to suppress them.
In order to discredit the miners' movement the capitalists cry crocodile tears about a "handful of radicals" whose roving picket lines allegedly "force the majority" to strike against their will. Let us put an end to this myth. When the miners strike they are opposed by all the forces that Capital can muster. Every day the capitalists run lying propaganda in their newspapers aimed at convincing the miners to return to work. The capitalists bribe, suspend and fire striking miners in order to break their will. The capitalist government levies heavy fines and throws strike leaders in jail. But not only this. Arnold Miller and the UMW International Executive Board consistently order the miners back to work, order the district officials to break the strike, order the local officials to hold meetings to order the miners back to their jobs. In this summer's national wildcat strike Miller and the International Executive Board sent fifty gun thugs to one mine in order to force the miners back to work. Under these conditions, where virtually every force is brought to bear against the miners' strikes, no handful of people can be responsible for the majority of miners marching into battle in wildcat strikes. The trusted militant workers can and do lead the miners' struggle, but only because they express the actual will of the miners, because they know what the miners want and because they have gained the trust of the miners through years of struggle. The roving pickets can shut down a mine, but only the majority of the miners at that mine can keep it closed down. The roving picket is an excellent method for beginning, spreading and organizing the strike struggle of the miners, but it can never substitute itself for the will of the majority of the miners. It is effective only when it is expressing that majority's real interests. The miners' wildcat strikes are militant actions by the mass of coal miners, in their fundamental class interests.
UMW LABOR TRAITORS LED BY MILLER SABOTAGE THE MINERS' STRUGGLE
While the miners' movement against the capitalists' attacks has grown stronger than ever, the miners have had to fight against the sabotage of the top labor bureaucrats of the UMW led by Miller. The labor traitors echo the line of their capitalist masters. When the BCOA threatens "decline and possible extinction" of the UMW, Miller does not issue a call for militant mass struggle to oppose this attack but moans that "we are weak" and the "union is being torn apart". They have spent so many years looking up in reverence to beg crumbs from the table of the kings of coal that they are afraid of the powerful coal miners' movement that has grown up right under their noses. They viciously attack it at their masters' bidding. When the T3COA threatens to cut the pensions and medical benefits still further, Miller does not call for struggle but telephones the capitalist press to echo that the benefits are being cut, surrendering to this attack. When the BCOA demands that "this agreement must help restore stability and improve productivity in coal", Miller parrots his masters, saying that the miners must "bring stability to the industry". And when the BCOA and the government call for the defense of the "national interests", for "energy independence", in preparation for a war of slaughter of the working people, Miller moans that "we have to solve the problems in coal mining and produce the coal necessary to get us in the position of self-sufficiency" -- for what? For the very same aggressive war to enslave and massacre the peoples. Arnold Miller and the top union bureaucrats are mere echoes of the bourgeoisie, agents of the capitalists in the working class movement.
Miller, taking his cue from the capitalists, regards his main problem as ending the strike movement. In order to disguise his objective, Miller calls for a "limited right to strike". In this formulation, the "limitations" are everything and the "right to strike" just window-dressing. Miller revealed this in an interview in the Louisville Courier-Joumal. He was asked by the capitalist press: "how do you propose to end the wildcat strikes that have plagued the industry and cut coal production in the last two years ?" Miller answers: "By establishing majority rule at the local level. This can be accomplished by the limited right to strike, based on the contract and 51% of the vote affirmative. And the same procedure can be used by neighboring locals if they want to support neighboring locals. The situation we have now is that two or three pretty valid problems can effectively shut down a number of operations. This is what limited right to strike can do....Ithink it is in the national interest. Ithink it would bring stability to the industry."
Thus Miller admits that he is not interested in solving the "pretty valid problems" but in using the "limited right to strike" to "end the wildcat strikes that have plagued the industry... " What belly-crawling before the capitalists!
Miller claims to be interested in "establishing majority rule at the local level". Actually, under the signboard of "majority rule" Miller wants to cripple the local unions and subject them to the full control of the top labor bureaucrats. If Miller were so interested in majority rule, then why is it that when the actual majority of the working UMW membership, 100,000 miners, struck in 1976, that Miller did not abide by "majority rule" and call the entire union out on strike? And when 85,000 miners (again a majority) went on strike this past summer, why didn't Miller abide by "majority rule" instead of ordering the men back to work and even sending thugs in an attempt to suppress them ? If Miller is so interested in procedures for formal voting, then why didn't he organize a vote on whether or not to continue these strikes ? This shows that Miller is only interested in suppressing the workers' movement under a thin veneer of "democratic" gloss. He proposes that every local strike must be approved not by the workers "voting" in action by walking off and staying off, nor even on, the authority of a majority of a mass meeting of the miners, but only by a 51% majority of. the entire local union membership. Miller intends to establish procedures to rig the vote and violate the will of the fighting coal miners. Miller's idea of the procedures for "majority rule" can be seen in such things as the 10-point program of the International Executive Committee for the suppression of wildcat strikes, adopted in September 1975. This program was full of devices to intimidate the miners and force them back to work. For example, it specified that locals should hold meetings as soon as possible after walkouts and that "an officer of the district attend the meetings and have the responsibility to direct the men back to work". Precious little here about the "officer of the district" obeying "the majority rule". And the program contained a number of measures against the miners. Miller did not think to submit this anti-miner program to the "majority rule" of the membership. Miller's "majority rule" is as fake as Nixon's "silent majority". It is just a device to suppress the miners' movement from within.
VICTORY TO THE HEROIC COAL MINERS
The class war in the coal fields is but a herald of the class warfare which is now spreading throughout the U.S. The attacks against the coal miners' movement fall on the entire working class movement. Fascist legislation such as the "Labor Reform Act" directed against the coal miners will oppress all the workers. The heroic struggle of the coal miners has the support of the entire working class and oppressed people. The fascist offensive of the capitalists is giving rise to an upsurge of the revolutionary mass movement. Today's resistance to the effects of the international economic crisis is part of the preparation for the coming anti-fascist proletarian socialist revolution by which the workers will overthrow the source of these crises, the monopoly capitalist system itself.
VICTORY TO THE HEROIC COAL MINERS! End.
[Graphic of a miner]
[Photo: Mass roving picket line of striking coal miners force a strike-breaking coal truck to dump its load near Catlettsburg, Ky. The miners were part of a 140-car caravan that traveled from Ohio to Eastern Kentucky.]
A gang of U.S. oil monopolies (Exxon, Texaco, Mobil, Gulf, etc.) which control the energy industry are squeezing the people ever harder this winter. Using their monopoly position in the vital energy industry, the oil billionaires have issued their savage dictate: pay sky-rocketing prices or freeze! The whole monopoly capitalist class is seeking toshare in this bonanza, this rain of gold ruthlessly extracted from the people. To this end, the capitalists are using their federal government, talk-shop Congress and figure-head chieftain Carter to reward the oil kings with still higher prices and also to extract new and higher taxes on energy from the people. These taxes are to be used for the interests of the capitalists as a whole, to pay for stockpiling oil for war preparations and to grant big subsidies to various monopolies. In this way the oil kings and monopoly capitalists as a whole are seeking to rake in billions in super-profits and let the working masses bear the burden of the economic crisis and energy crisis.
This winter the working class and oppressed masses will pay a steep price to maintain the capitalist class in the luxury to which it has become accustomed. Every utility bill will reveal in glaring form the irreconcilable antagonism between labor and capital. The high cost of fuel is making for a very difficult situation for the laboring masses. Already residential natural gas rates have jumped 20% and home-heating oil has risen by 16% over last year's prices. And as Congress passes Carter's "number one priority", the various energy bills, prices and taxes will climb yet higher. Once again this winter millions of the poor will not be able to pay their heating bills and will face shut-offs. Millions of others will be forced to suffer in cold homes or else cut back on other necessities of life. Energy costs make up an ever-bigger part of the high cost of living. They are an ever more intolerable burden on the working class.
The U.S. oil kings are carrying out their plunder under the fraud of an "energy shortage". Brutally enforcing their price hikes, the oil monopolies organized two phoney "energy shortages" which brought great hardships to the people: the phoney Nixonite "oil shortage" of the fall-winter 1973 and last winter's devastating Carterite "natural gas shortage". And now, once again, despite an admitted oversupply, a surplus of fuel for this winter, the oil monopolies are threatening even worse "shortages" than before. They are talking out of both sides of their mouths, admitting the gluts and stockpiles one day and predicting dire shortages the next, in order to confuse matters and soften the people up so that the U.S. oil kings can enforce price hikes, tax increases and attempt to suppress the coal miners' movement.
This big hoax of "shortage" is being carried out under two disguises. The Carter administration is pushing the hoax that "oil and gas reserves are running out" so that the people must be forced to pay through the nose so as "to conserve dwindling reserves." The other disguise is the twin fraud of "increasing production" in which the people must be forced to pay through the nose so as to give an "incentive" to the oil billionaires to stop them from abandoning the highly-profitable oil industry (fat chance, that!) and have them pump more oil out of the ground (during a time of overproduction in the U.S. and world oil markets!). The two frauds mean the same thing: let the people be squeezed for the profit of the capitalists. The whole "debate" is simply to hoodwink the masses while squabbling over exactly how much of the loot extorted from the people will be given to this or that particular group of monopolists, how much for war preparations, hew much for dividends for the coupon-clippers of the oil industry, and htw much will be set aside for the use of the capitalist class as a whole.
In fact, there is no energy shortage whatsoever. It is not a question of "conservation" or of "increasing production" as the capitalists claim. On the contrary, it is a question of the monopoly capitalists imposing higher prices on energy in order to preserve their profits during a period of glut. According to The Oil and GasJournal, mouthpiece of the oil capitalists: "During the last few months, the global crude-oil market has been in a state of glut" and this is "a period of surplus world (oil) production and brimming storage tanks in consuming areas." (11/7/77) Oil is finally coming through the Alaska pipeline, but there is no market for oil on the U.S. West Coast and the oil speculators want to divert the Alaskan oil to Japan. For this winter, there is a bigger supply of natural gas than last year, storage facilities are fuller, while demand for gas has been reduced because many factories, etc., have switched to oil and coal. Heating-oil stockpiles are at all-time highs. Refinery runs of heating oil are 19% above last year at this time and refinery capacity for heating oil is 7% higher than last year. The oil monopolists themselves claim that: "This winter, petroleum refiners as well as gas- pipeline companies are prepared for the worst" and that imports from their fuel stockpiles abroad would be more than sufficient to deal with any shortages that might develop" (Oil and Gas Journal, 11/7/77).
Nevertheless the rich are cynically playing with people's lives, hanging over their head the threat of fuel "shortages". From time to time the media will flash an alarming report that massive fuel "shortages" this winter are looming. One week the Department of Energy (D.O.E.) will announce cut-backs in natural gas shipments signaling a gas shortage even worse than last year's. And then the following week the same D.O.E. reports more than sufficient supplies. After that, Senator Muskie releases a "study" claiming that "another cold winter is on its way and we are not ready for what it may bring...in direct contrast to reports from the D.O.E. that supplies of natural gas are adequate". The evening news even broadcasts that there is an imminent danger of a heating oil shortage, despite the fact that for the last half year the newspapers have been reporting a fuel oil surplus. This bombardment of propaganda about "shortages" is intended to create insecurity among the people, to leave them unsure if they will be able to heat their homes or will be thrown out of work, to soften the people up for further price hikes. At the same time, when it serves their drive for maximum profits, the oil trusts and the government are fully prepared to hit the masses with devastating artificial "shortages".
Because of this barbaric blackmail and plunder of the oil monopolists and the government, energy prices have been increasing at double the pace of commodities as a whole, pushing up prices throughout the economy, In the period from 1973 to 1977, the well-head price of crude oil has risen by 143%, residential gas rates have risen by 110%, the price of home-heating oil is up 102%, gasoline at the pump is up 70%, electricity rates have risen by 69%, etc. In the future too, under Carter's energy plan, energy prices are predicted to rise by over 15% a year.
The oil trusts have been raking in enormous profits from this orgy of price-hiking. The five biggest U.S. oil monopolies took in 4.6 billion dollars in net profits just in the first nine months of this year. In the face of the capitalist economic crisis, the oil billionaires have since 1974 maintained their profit margins at double the pre-crisis, pre-1973 level.
Thus the oil companies have been able to preserve and increase their profits at a time of economic crisis and overproduction in general and overproduction of oil in particular. In the long-gone days of competitive capitalism in the nineteenth century, whenever there was a crisis of overproduction and markets were glutted, then the workers were laid off and left to starve or shift for themselves while the prices of the overproduced commodities fell on the glutted markets. Today the situation has changed: competitive capitalism has become monopoly capitalism, capitalist imperialism. Today a handful of capitalist monopolies have divided up the country and in fact the world market among themselves. Industrial capital and bank capital have merged into monopolistic finance capital. Today when a powerful monopoly overproduces a commodity and gluts the market, the workers are still laid off and left to starve or shift for themselves, but the monopolies strive to maintain or even increase the prices of their products in order to maintain their profits. The most powerful monopolies strive to maintain their prices and profits by shoving the burden of the crisis onto the working class and small farmers and by crushing the smaller capitalists and even other monopoly groups. Today a handful of oil kings dominate the entire U.S. energy industry. Faced with a glut on oil on both the domestic and the world market, faced with stagnation in the use of oil due to the economic crisis of the last few years, they have maintained and increased their profits by fantastically increasing the price of their overproduced commodities, of oil and other energy resources. The economic laws of capitalism have been supplemented by the laws of monopoly capitalism. The yoke of a handful of financial oligarchs has become a hundred times heavier, more burdensome and intolerable.
But, the capitalist apologists cry, there is no overproduction of oil. Why, they say, oil is being frantically imported into the U.S. It is true that oil imports have risen dramatically in the last few years and now almost half of all oil used in the U.S. is imported. But this is not at all because the U.S. oil fields have suddenly run out of oil. This is because precisely in the last few years the world oil market has become glutted. The U.S. oil kings have a dominant position in the entire world oil market of Western imperialism. In order to keep control of this most profitable section of the oil business, they are importing oil in order to soak up the glut, to maintain control of the glut.
In pursuit of maximum profits, the imperialist U.S. oil monopolies attempt to seize the sources of oil on a world scale. Control of oil plays a crucial role in U.S. imperialism's subjugation and plunder of the peoples and nations around the world. Oil is also a crucial material needed in order to wage a modern war. The U.S. multinational oil companies buy up and control, directly and indirectly, the oil production of whole countries in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, Latin America, Canada, etc. The U.S. imperialist plunderers covet these sources of oil as much to keep them out of the hands of the rival imperialist powers as anything else. Huge amounts of oil are being imported in the U.S. from the Middle East and Africa in order to keep intact the monopoly positions and maximum profits of the U.S. imperialist oil magnates in these areas.
But imperialism is in a deep international allround crisis. The policy of the oil kings of imperialist plunder and control of world oil has begun to be caught up in its own contradictions, giving rise to the severe energy crisis. U.S. imperialist plunder is being resisted by the forces of revolution, by the Palestinian revolution and the other national liberation movements, by the struggle of the oil-producing countries to control their natural wealth, etc. U.S. imperialism is also facing the deepening of the inter-imperialist rivalries, both between the U.S.-led Western imperialist bloc and the Soviet-led social- imperialist bloc and inside the Western imperialist bloc between the U.S. imperialists and its allies in Western Europe and Japan. This too is endangering the U.S. stranglehold on world oil. The massive oil imports, serving U.S. imperialist plunder of oil abroad, are causing record U.S. trade deficits and a ballooning outflow of dollars. In 1976, the U.S. spent 500% more on oil imports than it did in 1973, a sum of 38 billion dollars. Also, the record oil imports, which now make up 48% of the U.S. market, means that domestic oil production is cut back. This puts the U.S. imperialist war machine in the position of lacking strategic domestic supplies of oil for war.
Thus U.S. imperialism is bogged down in an energy crisis. This crisis is not a crisis of lack of oil, but a crisis of overproduction of energy resources combined with a crisis of deepening inter-imperialist rivalry. It is a crisis deepened by the successes of the world revolution in striking at world imperialism. The energy crisis is part of the over-all crisis gripping the U.S. monopoly capitalist system, weakening its economic, financial and strategic positions. The insanity of the capitalist system, the fact that capitalism has become overripe and ready for its overthrow and the transition to socialism, is vividly seen in that monstrous contradiction: an energy crisis taking place in the midst of a country, the U.S., that is overflowing with energy resources, a country full of coal, oil, natural gas, uranium, hydropower potential, etc., and a highly productive working class and developed technology for the exploitation of these resources. U.S. monopoly capitalism will never solve its energy crisis by peacefully developing its own resources. Capitalism would not be capitalism if it did not engage in wild plunder abroad. Therefore the rich have no solution for the energy crisis except to suck ever more tribute from the people under the banner of a fake "shortage" in order to make the masses pay for the energy crisis.
Through such means of plunder as sky-rocketing energy costs, the rich money-bags are growing ever richer and the poor are growing more impoverished, just as Marx predicted. The class antagonism between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is sharpening. The laboring masses are being driven into ever worse slavery, with no way out but waging resistance, struggle and revolution.
This struggle comes up directly against the growing fascism of the government. The government, headed by the Carter administration, is not "fair", "compassionate" or in any way against the "biggest rip- off in history", as Carter hypocritically describes the price-hiking of the oil kings as he writes legislation to increase this "rip-off". From his first week in office, Carter exposed his false mask of being "for the working people" by his own admission of "working cooperatively" with the oil monopolists to enforce last winter's phoney "natural gas shortage". Carter claims that the number one priority of his administration is his "national energy plan" which is nothing but a big scheme to soak the people with higher prices and more taxation. The government is nothing but an instrument for the suppression, plunder and exploitation of the working, class and oppressed people by the monopoly capitalist class, nothing but a tool of the financial oligarchy.
FIGHT THE FRAUD AND PLUNDER OF THE OIL KINGS AND THE MONOPOLY CAPITALIST DICTATORS! End.
It is a curious fact that at the present time, under the Carter administration, every new attack on the working class is announced as a great victory for labor. Such is the case with Carter's proposed "welfare reform". This Nixonite "workfare" scheme aims at using the unemployed workers as a pool of slave labor, forced under pain of losing all benefits and starving to work at whatever wages and under whatever conditions the employers and government bureaucracy dictate. Yet it is being presented as a victory for the poor and the minorities, as a source of "better jobs and income". Such is the case with Carter's proposed racist immigration bill. This bill seeks to step up the inhuman exploitation of the so-called "illegal immigrants" by legalizing a part of them as a special caste of slave-laborers, openly denied all rights and forced under pain of immediate deportation to work at whatever wages and under whatever conditions the employers and the government bureaucracy dictate. This bill is being presented as "compassionate" and "humanitarian".These bills are designed to suppress the entire workers' movement andundercut the wages and working conditions of all workers by singling out different sections of the workers for attack. Yet these bills are being presented as something for which labor should be grateful. And such is the case with Carter's so-called "Labor Reform Act". Carter and the other self-proclaimed"friends of labor", along with the labor traitors like George Meany, make lying claims that this law will make it possible for the working class to use the government bureaucracy to help it carry through the organizing of the unorganized workers. When the bill was passed in the House of Representatives on October 6 (it will be voted on in the Senate at the beginning of 1978), it was hailed far and wide as a "major victory" and a "political comeback for labor forces". But this is all lying propaganda, political deception, meant to hoodwink the working class and "restore confidence" in the capitalist government. In fact this bill, as amended and passed in the House:
1. does nothing to repeal any section of the fascist Taft-Hartley Act or any other anti-labor law;
2. strengthens existing anti-labor laws and provides for a series of exceptionally severe regulations against the workers' movement, including forcing unions to pay double-back-pay to any scab for every day he is unable to cross a picket line, forcing unions to allow employers to send representatives (labor spies) to union meetings, outlawing roving (stranger) pickets and wildcat strikes, prohibiting even talking about striking to a worker covered by a contract with either a written or an "implied" (!!) no-strike clause, etc.;
3. enlarges and streamlines the government's administrative apparatus so that the capitalist government can more quickly and flexibly suppress the workers' movement; and
4. grants a small number of minor "reforms", all of which are on minor matters and are subject to innumerable exceptions, qualifications and interpretations by the government bureaucracy.
The "Democrats" and the top labor hacks are trying to prettify the "Labor Reform Act" as a "reform". But it is actually part of the growing fascism in the U.S. Carter and the Democrats are the monopoly capitalists' main tool for the deception of the workers and the oppressed nationalities. The "Democrats" present themselves as the "party of the workers and the minorities". They blame all life's evils on the Republicans, who are more open in their role as reactionary tools of monopoly capitalism. But today, with a "Democratic" President and big "Democratic" majorities in both houses of Congress, the millenium has not arrived, the promised "recovery" from the economic crisis is nowhere in sight, and there is no change from the Ford-Nixon administration. No, there is change -- Carter is pushing through fascist legislation that is worse than the original models of these bills proposed by Nixon. These fascist bills will intensify the class war in the U.S. to the extreme. Now is the time for all the oppressed masses to throw away illusions and prepare for struggle!
THE "LABOR REFORM ACT" PROVIDES FOR EXCEPTIONALLY SEVERE MEASURES AGAINST THE WORKERS' MOVEMENT
In order to provide "labor peace" and turn the entire working class into servile, broken wretches ready to accept any cut in wages and the most dangerous working conditions, the "Labor Reform Act" provides for fascist suppression of the workers' movement. The capitalists want to shift the burden of the economic crisis onto the backs of the workers, and for this reason they are trying to suppress the workers' movement.
A) The Act outlaws wildcat strikes and roving pickets, this way the Act seeks to liquidate all the struggles of the workers that take place outside of the government-regulated legal trade unions. The Act seeks to reinforce the hold of the top trade union bureaucrats over the mass of workers. All struggles that begin to break out of the entangling web of the government's rules and regulations are outlawed. The bill even gives the capitalist kangaroo-courts the right to order injunctions, and hence fines and jail sentences, against those who even so much as talk (called "induce or encourage") to another worker about walking off the job where the workers have a contract with a no-strike clause, even if that clause is not even written down but just "implied".
The workers resort to wildcat strikes because their official strikes are outlawed and the trade union channels blocked. The capitalists block the trade union channels by use of both fascist labor laws and also by their labor lieutenants, the top trade union hacks. The capitalists not only suppress strikes directly with scabs, troops and injunctions, they also use the top trade union hacks to sell-out and destroy the struggles from within. Despite these vile maneuvers of the capitalists and the labor traitors, the workers have never resigned themselves to being slaves to the monopoly capitalist dictators. The workers' movement is breaking out into a number of mass struggles. The giant is stirring,, breaking the puny legal shackles and sending its false friends running. When the official trade union channels have been closed, the workers' struggles have not stopped but have broken through into wildcat strikes and other forms of struggle. This is sending the capitalists into a panic.
An example of this is the struggle in the coal fields. Every major struggle of the coal miners is attacked through injunctions, fines and jailings of the striking miners. Even to accomplish such an apparently modest goal as to organize one single coal mine, the Blue Diamond Coal Company's Justus Mine in Stearns, Kentucky, the miners are forced to resort to armed struggle. The top trade union bureaucrats like Miller and Boyle before him have collaborated with the capitalists, in the last contract in 1974 Miller sold out the miners' legal right to strike over safety conditions, violations of the contract by the employers, etc. But the miners did not lie down and play dead. With their official trade union channels blocked, they turned to a tremendous number of wildcat strikes. In 1975 and 1976 they even organized national wildcat strikes of 60,000 and 100,000 respectively, demanding that the government and courts stop their repression. With proletarian ingenuity, the miners developed their roving picket movement to organize their movement outside the official trade union channels. The miners' movement is a powerful part of the whole workers' movement and, according to bourgeois statistics, it leads the entire workers' movement in strikes.
The capitalists wish to suppress the coal miners' movement. They tried political deception by replacing the hated aristocrat Tony Boyle with the social-democratic, smooth-talking hack, Miller. But the miners' movement kept surging forward. The Labor Reform Act is especially designed to provide a legal pretext for stepped-up government terrorism against the miners. Its outlawing of roving pickets is especially directed at the heroic miners. But the Act will be used against the entire workers' movement.
B) Besides strengthening the laws against the struggles that take place outside the trade union channels, the Act also seeks to break the official trade unions and to prevent the workers from organizing themselves. To this end, the Act provides that the organized workers must pay "double backpay" to the scabs and gun thugs of the capitalists that are kept out of the workplaces by the workers' mass picketing.
It is a well-known practice of the capitalists to pay huge sums of money to bring scabs and thugs into the workplaces in order to break strikes. Once the strike weapon is broken, the organized workers are powerless. Their unions are either broken or turned into complete playthings of the capitalists. U.S. fascist law already, since 1947, protects this monopoly capitalist practice by virtually all but outlawing mass picketing, by which the workers defend their struggles against the capitalists. This new fascist anti-labor "reform" strengthens the laws against mass picketing. Oh, yes -- the law allows symbolic picketing in legal strikes -- as long as you peacefully allow the scabs to spit in your face and to take your job.
C) Under the so-called "equal access" provision, the Act gives the monopoly capitalists the right to legal surveillance or legal spying on the workers' own union meetings.
The capitalists have done everything to undermine trade unions. They seek to break up the unions even though they have as their agents the top labor lieutenants. They send in labor spies, they bug the workers' meeting places, they use bribery, etc. They especially want to spy out the most militant workers, in order to single them out, fire them and put them in jail. The "Labor Reform Act" requires the unions to allow the capitalists or their representatives to attend and give their lying, slanderous ideas at trade union organizing meetings. This is in reality a legal right to spy on the workers and intimidate them.
A SMALL NUMBER OF MINOR "REFORMS", ALL SUBJECT TO INNUMERABLE EXCEPTION, QUALIFICATIONS AND INTERPRETATIONS BY THE GOVERNMENT BUREAUCRACY
Above we have gone into a few of the repressive provisions of the "Labor Reform Act". This act also carries a show of concessions to the workers. These "concessions" are political deception, designed to sugar-coat the fascist nature of the act. All of those provisions supposedly in the interests of the workers are written in vague terms, watered-down, and made dependent on all sorts of conditions. They are all dependent on interpretations by the government bureaucracy. The strike is the central issue in organizing the unorganized, and the "Labor Reform Act" seeks to destroy that weapon and ensure "labor peace".
For example, the act provides that a worker "illegally" fired for trade union activity must be paid double back-pay instead of ordinary back pay as present law allows. To qualify for this, the worker must abide by various rules and regulations. At the end of a long, drawn-out legal process, which lasts years, he may be reinstated to this job and provided with the double back-pay. This provision which would increase the amount of money to the worker may help various individual workers who succeed in fighting their way through the courts and hearings, but it will be of insignificant effect on any organizing drive. It is well known that the capitalists pay huge sums of money to hire gun thugs, security guards, scabs, spies, lawyers, etc., to break organizing drives. The capitalists will be more than willing to pay double back-pay to a worker, if his firing assists the capitalists in smashing the organizing drive. The ineffectiveness of double back-pay may be judged from the present ineffectiveness of ordinary back-pay.
Another provision allows, but does not require, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to force the capitalists to reimburse the workers for the delay in bargaining, if it has been decided by the NLRB that the capitalists have refused to bargain. This reimbursement would be based on the wages and benefits received at the time of the unfair labor practice multiplied by the percentage change in the average wage and benefit settlements for that quarter of the year. This is called the "make whole remedy". This remedy is left to the arbitrary whim of the NLRB. At best, it only forces, the employer to pay out a sum of money no greater than what he would have had to pay anyway if he had negotiated right from the start. So an employer will still not lose anything by delaying negotiations even if the remedy is applied. In actual practice, the period after a union wins recognition and before it gets its first contract is often quite critical for any organizing drive. The workers are forced to strike to enforce their demands for a contract with increased wages and benefits. This provision will not in the slightest do away with the need to strike or prevent delays.
Another provision concerns debarring firms with unfair labor practices from government contracts. This provision is supposed to convince the workers that the government will pressure employers into negotiating so the workers can give up their mass resistance. The Secretary of Labor is directed by this provision to act upon request of the NLRB against employers who have repeatedly violated NLRB or court orders. This provision is a big sham. First of all, a company must be judged by the capitalist authorities, the NLRB, to be engaged repeatedly in unfair labor practices. The Secretary of Labor then must act. Then the debarment from government contracts applies only to single factories, not to the corporations as a whole. Since today most big capitalists do not own one factory, but many, this provision becomes even more meaningless. Finally, the debarment can't last longer than three years, during which period at any time the Secretary of Labor can revoke it. To make sure that this provision will not help organizing the unorganized, it was amended so that labor unions that violate orders of the NLRB or the courts can also be debarred from government contracts, for example for the job training programs that some unions run.
In the act the only definite provision is the one that sets time limits on when trade union certification elections must be held. But this too is watered-down. The bill sets the limit of 25 days to hold an election after the workers have filed with the NLRB to hold one. But if there are any complications the NLRB can put off the election for 75 days and, further, the NLRB can extend the time limit an additional 21 days if it considers the number of workers involved too large, or the distance too far to the election site, for the election to be held within 75 days. Thus this provision ends up as a 96 day limit. However, as a matter of fact, the question of the time period to hold the initial elections is in most cases not the crucial question in the organizing drives. It is notable that 82% of the 9000 elections held in 1975 were held within the period of 12 to 45 days. Thus the "Labor Reform Act" is no big benefit. As a matter of fact, the act makes it easier to hold up matters after the election is held by challenges to the election. No time limit is set on challenges and certification of the union can be held up pending challenges. So the "concession" is just a sham, which will have little effect in speeding up union certification.
Another provision, which the labor traitors are making a big fuss about, is the "equal access" provision. this provision the labor organization trying to win union representation rights is supposedly given the right to rebut the anti-labor venom of the capitalists right at the workplace. If an employer addresses the workers against the union at the workplace, allegedly the union has "equal access" to reply. In the first place, this right to address the workers is limited to "an equivalent manner" to the meetings organized by the capitalists. Of course, this is a matter of interpretation for the government bureaucracy. Furthermore, this is "subject to reasonable conditions, including due regard for the needs of the employer to maintain the continuity of production. As a matter of fact, this provision actually restricts the "equal access" rules and ensures that they will not even be as liberal as the hostile, capitalist courts have already granted labor unions in several court cases.
Furthermore, just in case the NLRB makes a mistake and establishes some rules favorable to the workers, this Act has a provision making these rules subject to veto by either the House or the Senate acting individually.
What are the labor traitors and the false "friends of labor" hiding when they praise these "reforms" and go into raptures of ecstasy? They are hiding the minor nature of these "reforms", which are as flexible as a rubber band. But they are also hiding the fact that the key question in organizing the unorganized is the strike. The employers will not voluntarily agree to higher wages or better working conditions, because these things cost the employer money and cut into his profits. The employer doesn't want to see the workers united at all, no matter how "reasonable" their demands, because he prefers to intimidate them one by one, each one isolated individually. The employers will never agree to anything but a company union or a "sweet-heart" contract at most, unless the threat of a strike hangs over his head, fact, usually this threat must turn into a reality. This is the central issue.The "friends of labor" are trying to foist upon the workers a "Labor Reform Act" which all but outlaws the strike and the workers' mass struggles. Once the strike and mass struggle is gone, all the other provisions of the Act are just window-dressing. Perhaps if a particular struggle excites the public interest and brings national outrage against the capitalists, the NLRB may intervene at its discretion in order to make the government appear as a savior and perhaps to put a little pressure on one capitalist to yield a little for the benefit of the whole capitalist class. In this way it will hope to take the steam out of the mass struggle and tie it up in legalities and the court. But in the overwhelming majority of cases, the NLRB will use its "discretion" to the utmost to openly smash the struggle.
STRENGTHENING THE ADMINISTRATIVE APPARATUS TO BE BETTER ABLE TO ATTACK THE WORKING CLASS
Other provisions in the "Labor Reform Act" are aimed at strengthening the government's administrative apparatus (bureaucracy) so that the monopoly capitalists can more quickly and flexibly suppress the workers' movement. For example, the size of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is expanded from five to seven members, to be able to handle the labor law cases more quickly and efficiently.
The labor traitors have hailed this as a most important reform because, they claim, the chief problem in organizing the unorganized is the delays caused by the capitalists and by red tape of the bureaucracy. These labor traitors assure the workers that if only there are more NLRB members, then delays in elections, negotiations, etc., will be gotten rid of and the workers will be able to successfully carry through the organizing of the unorganized.
In fact, the expanding and strengthening of the NLRB bureaucracy will allow it to act more quickly in suppressing the drives to organize the unorganized, act more quickly in fining the unions under the provisions of the "Labor Reform Act" and in seeking injunctions. For example, under the "Labor Reform Act" it is the NLRB that must seek the injunctions against wildcats and roving pickets. Hence enlarging the NLRB will allow it to see about keeping closer tabs on the workers and getting injunctions faster.
Meany himself has to admit that all the fine words of the government about aiding the struggle to organize the unorganized have only been just that. He states: "The belief at that time (1934, the Wagner Act -- ed.) was that if the federal government told employers 'you may not interfere with, restrain or coerce employees in the exercise of their rights to organize and you may not discriminate against them for doing so', that employers would no longer misuse their economic power.
"We have learned to the contrary... economic reprisal is as much the order of the day in 1977 as it was for the steel and auto companies in 1934." Thus Meany admits that the illusions which the liberal-labor politicians inculcated in the middle of the revolutionary crisis of the '30's of belief in the government are totally unfounded. His conclusion: inculcate new illusions in the government standing "above classes" and aiding the workers in the present. What a lackey of the capitalists!
LABOR TRAITORS, SERVANTS OF THE INTERESTS OF MONOPOLY CAPITAL
The top labor bureaucrats, such as George Meany and the other labor traitors, are agents of the capitalists trying to sabotage the workers' movement from within. They not only work to weaken the struggle of the workers, but they are also actively pushing the government to be more forceful in suppressing the workers' movement. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the "Labor Reform Act". This Act is a product not of the Reaganite open reactionaries, but of the AFL-CIO officialdom, of its notorious "electoral strategy". Social-democratic union hack Fraser, President of the United Auto Workers, who likes to parade around as the liberal "alternative" to Meany, is issuing verbal threats to Seantors who fail to vote for the House passed bill. And what a bill. Even George Meany admits that "the fact is labor law reform would not change the union certification requirements in the present law. Moreover, not a single one of the current restrictions on unions are lifted by the bill. Nor are any new restrictions imposed on employers. (But "new restrictions" are imposed on unions and workers -- ed.)
"What the bill does is provide remedies that take the profit out of violating employee rights and to assure that when a substantial number of employees ask for a NLRB election that election is promptly held". In short, the labor traitors admit this bill does not remove any provision of the hated fascist anti-labor laws. The labor hacks aren't interested in fighting the Taft-Hartley Act. They want to add fascist measures under the guise of strengthening the NLRB to allegedly let it take on the companies. But a football player doesn't block his own side, and neither will the NLRB.
Let us examine the AFL-CIO electoral strategy that led up to the "Labor Reform Act". In 1976 the AFL-CIO chieftains pushed heavily for the election of Carter and the anti-Democratic Party. The "Democratic" Party has long posed as a "friend of labor" in order to mobilize the workers against their own interests. The AFL-CIO alone spent $11 million of the workers' funds in the election and urged the workers to look to Carter to solve their problems.
But what happened after Carter and the Democratic "friends of labor" won the election? Meany set out a program of legislation for their "friends" to pass. But none of it passed. This legislation included the "common situs" picketing bill, which would have returned to individual construction unions the right to picket entire construction sites and thus assist the construction workers in their struggle against the construction capitalists. The program also included a raise in the minimum wage from about 47% to about 60% of the average manufacturing wage by 1978 and also an escalator clause by which the minimum wage would rise automatically with the rise in the cost of living. As well, a top priority of this legislative program was the repeal of the Taft-Hartley 14(b) so- called "right-to-work" provision, which has allowed some 20 states to pass laws that keep workplaces as open shops despite the will of the majority of the workers to be unionized. Repeal of the "right-to- work" law is only the tip of the iceberg as far as the fight against the fascist Taft-Hartley law is concerned. Repeal of 14(b) would leave untouched such provisions as the law against mass picketing, the law that gives the U.S. president the right to completely suppress strikes in the so-called "national interests" for a 60-day "cooling-off period", the law against "secondary boycott" which bars the workers from organizing most sympathy strikes, etc. Nevertheless, the repeal of 14(b), the labor traitors claimed, was the beginning of the fight. "Friend of labor" Carter promised to support this legislation, but when the "common situs picketing" and minimum wage bills came to a vote before the heavily Democratic Congress they were both defeated with Carter refusing to lift a finger to back them. Once again the "electoral strategy" had gone bankrupt.
The American labor traitors have long been known as among the most corrupt in the world. Their "friends" among the capitalists don't even bother to give them a few minor legislative bills, but keep kicking them in the teeth, knowing that these labor traitors will come back asking for more.
And this is just what happened. For the sake of political deception, right after their bills were rejected in Congress the labor traitors made "big" talk about how maybe they were betrayed, maybe theirsupport of their friends in the 1976 elections was a mistake, a mistake which they of course make regularly every election. But this was just sham. The labor traitors had gone crawling to their "friend", fast-talking Carter. In July, Carter had taken "mercy" on the labor traitors and a deal was struck in which the trade union bigwigs gave up the attempt to repeal even the "right-to-work" section of the fascist Taft-Hartley Act, and in return for this Carter would back the so-called "Labor Reform Act". What a good bargain! In return for the labor traitors going all out for the "Labor Reform Act", which grants the NLRB and the capitalists new powers to suppress the workers' movement, they would receive in return -- the right to drop even the pretense of fighting 14(b) of the Taft Hartley Act. And then the real comedy began. In the House one amendment after another was added to the bill, removing even the most minor favorable provisions for labor and adding on such restrictions as banning wildcats and roving pickets, and making the unions pay double back-pay to scabs prevented from getting to work. The "friends of labor" themselves wrote these restrictions. The labor traitors adopted the "tactical" position of avoiding a "defeat" in Congress by throwing out as fast as possible anything in the bill that could aid the workers. When the open reactionaries put forward an amendment barring wildcats and roving (stranger) pickets, the "friends of labor" didn't fight it. Instead the liberal-labor politicians proposed a counter-amendment which was the exact same except that only the NLRB, and not the capitalists concerned, could ask the courts to issue injunctions against the wildcats and roving pickets. What a marvelous victory for labor!
Having turned the "Labor Reform Act" into a fascist monster and lobbied it through the House, the labor bureaucrats then openly dropped their grumbling at the results of the '76 elections and patted themselves on the back. At the just-concluded AFL- CIO convention a report was given lauding the great political power of the labor traitors and their great successes in electing most everyone they wanted in the 1976 elections. For, it seems, they had gotten what they wanted -- a new Taft-Hartley Bill in the guise of a "Labor Reform Act" to suppress the workers' movement.
FIGHT AGAINST THE GROWING FASCISM OF THE CARTER ADMINISTRATION
The "Labor Reform Act" is part of the growing fascism of the Carter administration. Faced with a severe all-round crisis, the capitalists are waging a fascist offensive against the working class and oppressed nationalities. They want to shift the burden of the crisis onto the toiling masses and to secure a "quiet" home front as the most important preparations for plunging the world into the threatened inter-imperialist world war. Carter's program, his energy, welfare, immigration and labor reform bills, are designed to enrich the capitalists and smash the workers' movement.
The top labor bureaucrats are out to hide this growing fascism. They have played the role of creating illusions about Carter in order to paralyze the workers' resistance to the capitalist offensive. They are teaching the workers that the government will help them to organize the unorganized at precisely the moment when the capitalists are going all out to smash the workers. These labor traitors are actually writing the provisions of the Labor Reform Act which will be used to suppress the workers.
The growing crisis is leading to a massive upsurge of the workers' movement. The repression of the Carter administration will lead to drawing millions upon millions of more people into struggle, into life, into the revolution. The American workers will smash the fascist offensive of the capitalists on the road to the anti-fascist proletarian socialist revolution.
Denounce the "Labor Reform Act"! Oppose all the sinister schemes of the self-proclaimed "friends of labor"! Fight the growing fascism of the Carter administration! End.
[Photo: Palestinian guerrillas, the staunch resistors of U.S.-Israeli aggression.]
The recent visit to Israel by Egyptian President Sadat and the upcoming Cairo meeting with the Zionists arranged by him are a shameful betrayal of the national liberation struggle of the Palestinian and other Arab peoples, a cowardly capitulation to Zionism and its master, U.S. imperialism. Sadat's betrayal is, in fact, a big attack by Zionism and U.S. imperialism aimed at splitting the Arab peoples and smashing their struggle to liberate their zionist-occupied lands and smash the artificial racist state of Israel and return the Palestinians their entire homeland.
Speaking before the Zionist parliament November 20, Sadat recognized the "right" of Israel to exist and welcomed the Israeli fascists to continue their occupation of Palestine and other Arab lands "with full security and safety". Never since imperialism and its Zionist thugs expelled the first Palestinians from their homeland and established the lackey "state" of Israel have the Arabs recognized or accepted this aggression, but have always stood firm against it, fighting four wars and the 12-year-long armed struggle of the Palestinians to expel and destroy the Zionist usurpers. Sadat's betrayal at the call of his U.S. masters does a great dishonor to this glorious militant tradition of the Arab peoples.
But the Arab peoples will not beg their oppressors for mercy. Sadat's betrayal aroused a furious uproar of indignation among Arab people everywhere, as well as among progressive public opinion worldwide. The Arab masses held large-scale demonstrations at Egyptian embassies in Algeria, Iraq, Libya, Lebanon, and Syria denouncing the treachery. In Beirut, Lebanon, Palestinian and Lebanese workers and students held a protest march which was addressed by Yasir Arafat, Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization. In Libya, a furious crowd stormed the Egyptian embassy and raised the Palestinian flag in place of the Egyptian flag. Students in Baghdad, Iraq, declared a 24-hour strike, and Palestinians forced to live as refugees by the Israeli butchers burned pictures of Sadat and denounced him as a traitor to the Palestinian and other Arab peoples. In London, New Delhi, Tunis, Madrid, Bonn, Copenhagen, Paris, Sri Lanka, and Kuala Lumpur, anti-Sadat demonstrations were staged. Students and Egyptian guards and police clashed in Athens when Arab students launched a protest at the Egyptian embassy.
Reflecting the sentiment of the Arab masses, the Palestine Liberation Organization, Libya, Algeria, Syria and South Yemen formed the "Pan-Arab Front for Resistance and Confrontation" to face the Zionist enemy and American imperialism. The declaration of the allied Arab nations condemns Sadat's visit to Israel as "high treason" and " a flagrant violation of the principles and aims of the pan-Arab struggle against the Zionist enemy and a betrayal of the rights of the Arab people ..." which renders "a great service" to " Zionism and American Imperialism". The new front of Arab nations froze relations with the Egyptian government and imposed the Arab boycott of the Zionist enemy on Egypt. Even the Egyptian government itself was wracked by protest of Sadat's betrayal as Sadat's chief advisor and two other high officials resigned in protest.
Sadat is trying to make the Arab people capitulate to zionism and imperialism, promising that the way will lead to "a permanent peace based on justice". He has been saying that the solution to the problems in the Middle East lies in the Arab people giving up their armed struggle, renouncing their title to Palestine and other Arab lands occupied by Israel, and waiting patiently to pick up any crumbs the Zionists may throw their way. This, he says, is the road to peace. But as long as Israel exists, there will be no peace in the Middle East. Israel is the outpost of U.S. imperialism, the U.S. imperialists' main tool for grabbing up spheres of influence in this region. On behalf of U.S. imperialism, Israel has waged four wars of aggression against the Arab people, exterminating masses of Arabs and robbing their land and resources to establish and expand the artificial state of Israel. Right now, as Israel proclaims its alleged desire for peace, it is stepping up its program of annihilation of the Lebanese and Palestinian people and annexation of their land. History has shown that the Arab people have only been able to defend and recover their national rights by waging war against the Zionist aggressors. Yet Sadat is openly calling for the Arab people to quit shedding their blood for their just cause -- so that the Zionists in service to their U.S. masters can murder the Arab masses at will and overrun their land. This is Anwar Sadat's "peace with justice".
As errand boy for U.S. imperialism, Sadat's real mission is to split the Arab people's unity against the Zionist aggressors in preparation for the Geneva Conference that the U.S. and Soviet social-imperialists cooked up to impose their hegemonic "solutions" on the Middle East. Sadat's visit to Israel and his plans for the pre-Geneva conference in Cairo with the Zionists are designed to propagate the myths that Israel is a legitimate nation, that Israel wants to be peaceful if only the Arabs will let it, and that anyone who doesn't want to negotiate with the Zionists on these terms is an obstructionist to peace, a terrorist.
Sadat is working as an agent of Zionism and U.S. imperialism to convince the Arab nations to give up all claim to their national rights by recognizing Israel and declaring their willingness to regard their stolen lands as an object of bargaining. In fact,, these are the preconditions of the Geneva "Peace" Conference for which Sadat is doing the groundwork.
Sadat's pre-Geneva meeting in Cairo, which is being boycotted by all other Arab nations, is directed against the Palestine Liberation Organization, the force leading the Palestinian people in armed struggle to dismantle Israel. The PLO is recognized by the Arab peoples (at the Rabat Conference) and the peoples of the world as the sold legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. Sadat hopes to be able to use the Cairo meeting to influence a few Palestinians to capitulate to Zionism and U.S. imperialism and to elevate them to the position of "representatives" of the Palestinian people to go to Geneva in an attempt to bypass and eliminate the PLO. In previous years when U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism tried to convene the Geneva "Peace" Conference on the Middle East, the Arab nations refused to participate unless the PLO was present to represent the Palestinian people. This smashed the superpowers"plans. So U.S. imperialism has employed Sadat to try to break this Arab unity behind the stand of the PLO and force the Arab people to prostrate themselves before the superpowers at the Geneva Conference.
Sadat has threatened that if no other Arab countries choose to follow him down the path of capitulation, he is ready to make a separate deal with Israel. The U.S. imperialists have instigated this and are vigorously applauding, fearful that the Geneva "Peace" Conference will collapse and not wanting to put all their eggs in one basket.
Sadat's task is also to aid U.S. imperialism in its fierce rivalry with the Soviet social-imperialists for spheres of influence in the Middle East. While conspiring together to hatch up the Geneva "Peace" Conference to camouflage their aggressive aims, suppress the Arab peoples and impose on the Middle East the state of "no war, no peace", favorable to their domination, each superpower is at the same time eager to edge out the influence of the other and increase its own. The U.S., the superpower with the firmest grip on the Middle East, is using its agent, Sadat, to try to get a hold of all the cards before the Geneva "Peace" talks.
Sadat's traitorous actions come at a time of greatly increased U.S. imperialist influence in Egypt, reflected in new deals with U.S. imperialism, including promises by the U.S. imperialists to overhaul Egypt's air force and to supply Egypt with $1 billion in economic and military aid in 1978. As the price of these deals, Sadat has bargained away his stand with the Arab cause. This shows that one cannot rely on one or the other superpower without eventually selling one's soul.
The massive resistance to Sadat's betrayal is putting the U.S. imperialists in a dither; it is causing them to worry that their long-plotted Geneva "Peace" Conference is in danger of falling apart. For this reason Secretary of State Vance is making diplomatic visits to Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia to persuade these countries to follow in Sadat's footsteps, and the Carter administration is loudly broadcasting its enthusiasm and support for Sadat's "peace" initiative. At the same time, U.S. imperialism's servant, Sadat, is taking fascist measures in retaliation for the resistance to his capitulationist policy. He has expelled many Palestinians from government positions for their criticism of his stand, suspended the "Voice of Palestine" radio program after it had assailed his visit to Israel and broke relations with the countries forming the new Pan-Arab alliance and Iraq. Presently Sadat is trying to. frighten-the other Arab nations into submission by threatening a separate deal with Israel that would secure a large part of Israel's border and jeopardize the other Arab nations.
Sadat's monstrous betrayal of the Arab peoples is isolating him and his masters more and more. The Arab peoples' spirit to wage battle against Zionism, U.S. imperialism and their internal reactionary servants is borne out by the recent resistance to Sadat's traitorous moves and by the mounting protests and armed struggle of the Palestinian and other Arab peoples. End.
Following is thefull text of the Zeri i Popullit editorial of November 24, 1977. Zeri i Popullit is the Organ of the Central Committee of the Party of Labor of Albania. The text is taken from ATA, Tirana.
In recent days, the problems of the Middle East have become a topic of great interest for all international public opinion. The reason is the visit the Egyptian President Sadat paid to Jerusalem and the talks he had with the Israeli Prime Minister, Begin.
A great deal is spoken about "peace", but the true and correct solution of the Middle East problems is not in view. Israel, this armed tool of the political, economic and military interests of the U.S. imperialists in the Middle East, continues to maintain occupied the Arab territories; the Palestinians continue to be without homeland; the superpowers continue to hatch up intrigues and interfere in the internal affairs of the peoples of that area.
Time and again, the enemies of the Arab peoples pompously come out with the most diversified plans and drafts to allegedly "solve" the problems preoccupying the Middle East and to put an end to the Arab- Israeli conflict, which is continuing for 30 years running. A great deal has been spoken and heard about these plans, Rogers and Kissinger plans, Gromyko and Vance plans, sheiks' and UN envoys' plans. But nothing has changed and it could not change. All these plans have aimed and are aiming to extinguish the liberation struggle of the Arab peoples, to force them to give up their supreme national interests, to abandon the Palestinian people and leave them on the cross-roads, to capitulate before the Israeli blackmail, to fully and finally subjugate the Arab peoples to foreign imperialist domination.
The Arab peoples recognize and are well aware of their enemies; they are conscious that the aggressors should be exposed, isolated and fought against. They are aware that a savage and insatiable aggressor against the Arab peoples, against their freedom and independence, is Israel. It has often drenched the fraternal Arab peoples in blood, has occupied their territories and has constantly made threats of new expansions. From day to day constantly, Israel attacks, kills and massacres an ancient and glorious people, as the fraternal Palestinian people are, who have been left without shelter and homeland by the Zionists, which have been incited and supported by the U.S. imperialists. Contrary to any historic, international and human right they have forcefully been displaced from their hearths, from the lands where they have been born and where they have lived for centuries, where they have developed their high civilization from which all mankind has benefited. Now they are dispersed and are leading a miserable life as refugees, as friends in the houses of their fraternal Arab brothers. But, though murdered and massacred, the Palestinian people have preserved the inextinguishable militant spirit and the high national consciousness intact. They have never given up their weapons to win their freedom, their rights and homeland. The heroic liberation struggle that the Palestinian people have waged and are waging will go down in history as a great example provided by those small peoples, who are intimidated by no enemy whatsoever, no matter how big it may be, who, when the question is to defend their freedom and rights, are ready to make every kind of sacrifice, to shoulder every suffering and difficulty, no matter how long and heavy the struggle will be.
The Albanian people, for whom the struggle of the Palestinian people is very close, nurture a sincere love, a great respect and admiration for this valiant and painstaking people and they are firmly convinced in their final victory.
Numerous efforts have been and are being made by various sides to come to terms and reach a compromise with Israel, to set aside and trample under foot the vital interests of the Arab peoples, particularly the interests of the Palestinian and Syrian peoples. This is condemnable and it cannot be accepted either by the Arab peoples, or their true friends, and all those for whom the freedom and independence of the peoples are sacred. Our people who are a close and loyal friend of the Arab peoples consider these attempts for agreements as an activity directed against the interests of the Arabs, as pro-imperialist and which further incites Israeli aggression.
All progressive and patriotic Arab opinion, from the Palestinians down to the Syrians, from the Algerians down to the Iraqis, from the Libyans down to Egypt have openly pronounced themselves against the coming to terms and the compromise with Israel. Likewise, all those who are genuine fighters against U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism, who are against reaction and oppression, all those who are for the freedom of peoples and support their liberation struggle, have criticized and condemned without hesitation the agreement with Israel, have adopted a clear-cut stand towards every compromise with it.
But contrary to this broad public opinion, to this sound opinion, one notices that the card of the non- aligned is not at all being played at present. They keep silent and awkwardly maneuver to come out of the difficult position in which the plan of coming to terms with Israel is putting them. What was done with all those speeches and swearing for the defense of the rights of the Arab peoples and the Palestinians, what was done with those resolutions and decisions for the "correct solution" of the Middle East conflict, those oppositions from the rostrum of the conferences on the imperialist interference in that area?
This silence is not accidental for these unrestrained amateurs of words. The concrete events, the development of the class struggle bring to the fore the falsity of the "theories" or "movements" which are destined to stamp out the revolutionary and liberation struggles of the peoples and to deceive the peoples. This falsity is also revealed by the imperialists themselves, who when the question is to defend their own interests, do not care at all about the difficult positions they place their friends. What can the theoreticians and supporters of the non-aligned movement say when standard-bearers of the non-alignment openly show that they have allied with and are dependent on imperialism, that they play its game, that the policy they pursue is formally independent, but in fact is dictated by the others and defends interests which run contrary to those of the Arab peoples?
The non-aligned movement may still live in conferences, meetings and propaganda, but it has long since died out in the Middle East and the Ogaden Deserts, in Angola and Zaire. It was unable to hide the fact that many governments of the countries which pose as non-aligned are linked with this or that big capitalist and imperialist power, that in many cases they play the game of imperialism and defend its neo-colonialist and expansionist interests. It is already unable to hide and justify with empty sophisms the interferences, intrigues and maneuvers of the imperialist superpowers in many "non-aligned" countries, to hide and justify the pro-imperialist acts and against the liberation struggles carried out by many chieftains of these countries.
Concerning the agreement and compromise with Israel, the activity of the so-called "third world" is not in view as well. We are not seeing the advocates of the "theory of three worlds", who are raising a hue and cry and are trying to prove through quotations that they unreservedly support the liberation struggles and defend the interests of the peoples of the world, coming out in defense of the just cause of the Arab peoples and supporting them. Why? Is it perhaps that the interests of the Arabs, their territories, the destiny and lives of Palestinians are to be sacrificed for the sake of the alliance with the "second world" and the U.S.A.? Or is this perhaps required by the lofty interests of the imperialist superpowers, which the small and the rank and file people do not succeed in realizing?
It is understandable that the position of the advocates of the "theory of three worlds" is not at all pleasant because the agreement and compromise with Israel undoes and makes a mish-mash of the scheme which links their "worlds". The question is very simple: in whose favor is! this agreement ? The "first world", "second world" or of the "third world"? Does it serve the liberation of the peoples or national oppression, the anti-imperialist war, or its extinction? Silence shows that this agreement is included in no form of propaganda, that in this case the slogans and "theories" cannot make facts change their nature.
Can the policy of the U.S. imperialists, which defends and backs up its most aggressive satellite, Israel, be considered as a non-aggressive and retreating policy ? At present the aggressive war is prepared step by step through partial wars, by instigating special aggressions and kindling local struggles. If the U.S. imperialists advertise that they allegedly are for the "status quo", this does not mean that they have given up their aggressive and expansionist aims, but that the status quo serves their hegemonistic aims to the detriment of the Arab peoples and in favor of the imperialist interests of the U.S. A. and its ally, Israel.
We are against and expose the fact that Carter tries to hide his aggressive policy. We are also against the presentation of the U.S. policy of the "status quo" as a non-aggressive, but defensive policy. The teeth have not yet fallen and the claws have not been cut from U.S. imperialism. To defend the policy of status quo, that is, to defend the imperialist occupations, to defend the division of the world between the big powers, to defend neo-colonialism and the exploitation of the oppressed peoples by imperialism and all the other capitalist powers, to defend the status quo means to bless the occupation of Arab territories by the Israelis and the displacement with violence of the Palestinians from their homes, it means to defend the military bases in foreign countries, the aggressive blocs of imperialism, the multinational monopoly companies, the entire oppressive and exploiting imperialist system.
The Party of Labor of Albania and the Albanian people contemptuously turn down all the imperialist calculations. Our people have stood and will always stand for the just cause of the Arab peoples and will be side by side with them in every situation, in weal and woe, in happy days and victories, in times of grief and temporary setbacks. Our people are few in numbers, but they are loyal and unflinching brothers of the peoples who are fighting for freedom and justice, as the Arab and African peoples are.
Everyday facts and international life clearly show that the general policy pursued by the imperialist superpowers has been built in compliance with their selfish interests, proceeding from the aim of who will better and quicker establish its hegemony over the peoples and on the continents. Each of the imperialist superpowers, when they have got their claws deep into foreign flesh as well as when any of them posts the first pickets of their expansion, strives to impose its own policy on the countries and groups of countries.
The Soviet social-imperialists have gone all out to deceive leaderships of various countries of Africa, hiding behind "the socialist country" signboard and passing themselves off as champions of freedom. They sell arms to those countries and in return they wrest from them the right to set up military bases for their vested interests and to further step up their imperialist expansion.
At the same time, another imperialist power, the United States of America, maneuvers and leaves no stone unturned to send the Soviet social-imperialists packing, through its agents, credits, arms and dollars. The superpowers' contention for domination and hegemony knows no bounds, rule or morality, deception and perfidy go hand in hand with crime and violence.
The peoples, the various countries which become a target of the savage Soviet-U.S. rivalry fall victim to these dangerous games of the superpowers. Now we see that Ethiopia and Somalia, two freedom-loving and peace-loving peoples, with an ancient culture and hit hard by the Italian colonialist invaders, are at war and slaughtering each other. Do these peoples want this war which is inflicting so many sufferings and misery on them? No. Can they solve their disagreements without the need of fighting and slaughtering one another? Of course, they have the possibility ofsolving these disagreements by finding the most suitable ways. Then why do they fight? It is clear that in war these peoples are instigated by others, the imperialist powers and superpowers for the sake of their predatory and hegemonic interests.
At a time when the blood of these suffering peoples is shed in torrents and hatred between them grows, there are imperialist and capitalist powers who sometimes side with one and at other times with the other, sometimes applaud one country, and at other times another, without making the slightest effort to help these much suffering peoples to win peace and the possibility to build their life in complete freedom and independence.
The policy of the PLA has always been in support of the national liberation struggle of the peoples, in defense of their interests. It has always been and is open and principled. "Our Party", said Comrade Enver Hoxha at the 7th Congress of the PLA, "is of the opinion that the peoples must be told openly about the situations, because it is only thus that their true unity, the unity of the truly anti-imperialist and progressive states and governments is aided. In order to unite the peoples in the fight for freedom, independence and- social progress, against any oppression and exploitation by whomsoever, first it is necessary to establish the dividing line, to make clear who is their chief enemy, against whom they must fight, and with whom they must unite."
The peoples must guard against the intrigues of the imperialist superpowers, who come as friends and well-wishers, but their true aim is to establish their domination, to lay the foundations for the establishment of their hegemony. This is happening in Angola, Zaire and elsewhere. It has also been going on for a long time in the Middle East with the drama which is being played with the fate of the Arab peoples, where the imperialist superpowers pull the strings and take turns to realize their expansionist and exploiting ambitions.
The history of the revolutionary and liberation struggles, as well as the practice of the everyday international life, teaches us that the enemies must never be left in peace in order to have enough time to come to agreement, to group their forces and organize themselves in their struggle against the peoples. We are fully convinced that all those who are oppressed by and suffer under the imperialists and reaction, all those who desire the freedom and independence of their countries, will mobilize themselves even more to expose the plans and aims of the imperialist superpowers to strangle the revolution and enslave the peoples, will raise higher their revolutionary struggle to face up to and defeat the enemies. End.
[Photo: Street poster in Beirut expresses wrath of Arab people against Sadat's ugly betrayal. Sadat, with the eye patch of the Zionist butcher, Moshe Dayan, has the word "peace" inscribed above him.]
In recent weeks, U.S. imperialism and their Israeli zionst henchmen have unleashed a dangerous conspiracy against the Palestinian revolution and the cause of the Arab people. As part of this conspiracy, Anwar Sadat, President of Egypt, has committed an ugly betrayal, kneeling before the Zionist butchers and offering to sell out the Palestinian and Arab cause in the name of "peace" with the Israeli aggressors. Sadat's visit to "Israel" and the kisses he has lavished on the bloodstained Zionists, who illegally occupy all of Palestine, as well as part of the territory of Syria and Egypt, and who at this time are stepping up their murderous bombings of villages in southern Lebanon, has aroused the fury of the Arab people and the people of the whole world.
However, in the U.S., the OL social-chauvinists have rushed to the aid of their friends, the U.S. imperialists and the Israeli Zionists, in an attempt to pacify the people's anger under the signboard of a "dialectical" distortion of Marxism-Leninism allegedly in accord with new conditions. Guided by the opportunist theory of "Three Worlds", the OL has jumped out in support of Sadat's betrayal and treacherous de facto recognition of the U.S. imperialist colonial settler state of Israel. This activity exposes, once again, the complete bankruptcy of OL's revisionist theory of "Three Worlds" as a theory of capitulation to imperialism and reaction in general and alliance with U.S. imperialism in particular.
In the December 12th issue of their newspaper, The Call, the OL social-chauvinists heap praise on Sadat's great treachery. These pro-imperialist fanatics describe Sadat's efforts to sell out the Palestinian people's struggle to liberate their homeland and his attempts to split the Arab front of struggle against the Zionist occupiers as "a step against superpower hegemonism". Despite all of OL's fine words in support of the cause of the Palestinian and Arab peoples, despite all their noise about support of die struggle against Zionism and colonialism, at the crucial moment, when U.S. imperialism is unleashing a sinister scheme to wipe out the Palestinian revolution and the Arab people's struggle, OL betrays the struggle and jumps out to support imperialism.
The OL social-chauvinists have given up the struggle against the U.S. neo-colonial empire and have gained notoriety for denouncing the struggles against the fascist butchers of imperialism like the Shah of Iran, Mobutu of the Congo (K) and Pinochet of Chile. According to their theory of "Three Worlds", the national liberation struggles in these countries should be outlawed as attempts to "overthrow third world governments", a term under which they include neo-colonial puppet states of imperialism, which they consider to be "the motive force" of world history.
However, these opportunists still must give lip-service to the struggle against old style colonialism, but this is nothing but lip-service. At the crucial moment, they will come out in support of the colonialists as can be seen in their support for the new unequal treaty which Carter is trying to impose on the Panamanian people, a treaty to keep forever the Panama Canal Zone under U.S. military occupation and control and which the OL hails as a "victory" for the Panamanian people. Now, too, they have come out in support of what they themselves describe as Sadat's "de facto recognition of Israel".
These great champions of the so-called "third world struggles" are in fact the most unprincipled collaborators with imperialism against the national liberation struggles of the people of Asia, Africa and Latin America. It was barely two months ago, October 3, that The Call carried a blaring front page headline -- "NO PEACE TALKS WITHOUT PLO!". This article criticized in particular the attempts of the Soviet Union to keep the PLO out of the negotiations in Geneva. In the November 28 issue of TheCall, they even denounced Sadat's betrayal as follows: "Sadat's recognition and 'acceptance' of the Israeli settler state, standing on stolen Palestinian land can do nothing but weaken the Palestinian people's just struggle for their national rights...his unilateral action serves to weaken the precious cause of Arab and third world unity... what purpose can abstract talk of 'peace' serve as long as the Israeli expansionists occupy Arab lands and make bombing runs over civilian villages in Lebanon?" In conclusion the article proclaims that this is "a time to reaffirm our Support to the Palestinian cause and to heighten the struggle against imperialism, social-imperialism and Zionism".
However, these grand pronouncements proved inconsistent with the opportunist theory of "Three Worlds" and came in conflict with their strategy of alliance with U.S. imperialism. Revolutionary people the world over are condemning Sadat's betrayal of the Palestinian people, however, the "theoreticians" of the "Three Worlds" find themselves in direct opposition to the world's people. With the developments of the class struggle in the real world, at the crucial moment, these opportunists find themselves in an impasse and betray the struggle. They haven't finished "reaffirming) our support to the Palestinian cause" before they are sacrificing this cause to the dirty deals and maneuvering of the U.S. imperialists, the Israeli Zionists and Arab reaction. The "precious cause of Arab and third world unity" is abandoned in favor of the splitters of Arab unity. Sadat's "abstract talk of 'peace' " becomes of great value for which everything else should be given up. Now "Sadat's actions represent a step against superpower hegemonism"
The advocates of the "Three Worlds" theory claim that the struggles of the "countries and peoples of the third world" constitute the "motive force of world history". With this eclectic formulation -- "countries and peoples" -- the opportunists are combining into one whole, on the one hand, socialist countries and the national liberation movements based on the struggle of the proletariat and peasantry, and on the other hand, enemies of socialism and the national liberation movement, the neo-colonial states and the capitalist and landlord lackeys of imperialism. It is becoming increasingly clear that what is to be taken as the "motive force" are the reactionary governments of the so called "third world" and their negotiations and dealings with imperialism and the aggressors. Socialism and the revolutionary socialist movement of the proletariat and the national liberation movement are to be sacrificed for the sake of the dirty deals struck between the imperialists and their lackeys in each country.
Of course, it is only the professional confusion mongers who write for The Call, with their brilliant "dialectics", who are able to properly analyze allegedly "complicated developments" and have the ability to explain how Sadat's betrayal, on the one hand, is a big blow at the imperialist superpowers, and on the other hand undermines the Palestinian revolution and the Arab cause. These "dialecticians", who never tire of denouncing the Marxist-Leninists for "metaphysics", can write in one sentence that Sadat's betrayal is "in opposition to the aims of the Palestinian struggle", while at the same time "represents a step against superpower hegemonism". In a single paragraph they attempt to combine what is obvious, that "his trip.. had the effect of undermining the common front of Arab countries and the Palestinian liberation movement" with what is absurd -- "Sadat's diplomacy has caused turmoil for the superpowers". The only conclusion that can be drawn from this "dialectical" confusion is that the way to fight the "hegemonism of the two superpowers" is to betray the Palestinian and Arab peoples and to collaborate with the conspiracies of U.S. imperialism and their Zionist puppets.
The OL is trying to portray Sadat's activities as something independent of imperialism, even taking Washington by surprise. The Call innocently declares that "the ruling circles of this country are not fully pleased with these developments" and quotes from the imperialist press that Sadat's "solo diplomacy had thrown the American administration into temporary disarray". But all this is bluff as the whole world knows who is pulling the strings behind the scenes.
In reality, OL is excited about Sadat's betrayal because they have become a shameless cheering squad for U.S. imperialism in its rivalry with Soviet social - imperialism. According to their sick logic, anything, no matter what, which Moscow protests, the OL concludes must be supported. Sadat's betrayal has been a real coup for U.S. imperialism in its rivalry with Soviet social-imperialism for the domination of the Middle East. The OL is particularly excited about the prospect of the Geneva Conference being put off because of Sadat's Cairo talks with the Zionist butchers, thus excluding the Soviet Union from any negotiations. So much for The Call's front page headline "NO PEACE TALKS WITHOUT THE PLO!" So what that the U.S. imperialists, the Israeli Zionists, and Sadat are making dirty deals behind the backs of and against the interests of the Arab people and the PLO. The Soviets are being edged out, what more can one ask for? The Call is thrilled because "The Soviet Union is panicked not only because its own schemes have been pushed out of the limelight, but because it is Sadat (read U.S. imperialist schemes -- ed.) who has catapulted forward". What unabashed enthusiasm these social-chauvinists express for this victory which U.S. imperialism has scored over the Soviet New Tsars in their inter-imperialist rivalry.
Sadat's "initiative" was not only inspired by the religious letters Carter sent to the Egyptian President, but his betrayal also corresponds to the theory of "Three Worlds" which is an opportunist theory of capitulation to imperialism and which calls for an alliance with U.S.-led imperialism, and even the most savage reactionaries such as the Israeli Zionists, against Soviet social-imperialism. Sadat's treachery was carried out in the name of "non-alignment", which, like the "Three Worlds" theory, is a deceitful slogan under which various lackeys of imperialism sell out their peoples under the guise of being independent of imperialism. It is no accident that the "non-aligned" revisionist countries of Yugoslavia and Romania have played an active part in the recent U.S. imperialist-zionist plots. The Zionist terrorist, Prime Minister Begin, sent a personal message of gratitude to President Ceausescu of Romania, that card castle of anti-Soviet social-imperialism, thanking him for helping to arrange Sadat's shameful trip to Israeli occupied Jerusalem.
The opportunist theory of "Three Worlds" is becoming increasingly exposed in the eyes of the people. Under the guidance of this so-called "great strategy for world revolution", the OL opportunists have advanced the open social-chauvinist theory of the U.S. proletariat striking its "main blow at the Soviet Union"; they have denounced the Carter administration for not building enough B-l bombers; they have come out to support the new unequal treaty of Yankee enslavement with Panama and have carried out an entire series of similar treachery. And now, these opportunists have jumped out to hail Sadat's betrayal and the U.S. imperialist schemes to drown in blood the Palestinian and Arab peoples. These are the logical consequences of coming under the discipline of the counter-revolutionary theory of "Three Worlds", which means of necessity abandoning the anti-imperialist struggle. End.
For your reference:
So long as Israel exists and the imperialist powers have their claws in the Arab nations, there can be no peace in the Middle East. The recent activities of Zionism and imperialism, both outright military aggression and sweet-talking demagogic deception, show this to be the truth.
While U.S. imperialism and Israeli Zionism plot the liquidation of the Arab cause through Sadat's betrayal, which allegedly will lead to "peace", the Zionists have been steadily escalating their racist and fascist program of extermination of the Arab people and annexation of Arab land to the artificial state of Israel. The U.S. imperialists and the Soviet social-imperialists, the main instigators of the Zionists' crimes, are escalating their clamor for reconvening the Geneva "Peace" Conference so that they, co-chairmen of the conference and co-conspirators in suppressing the Palestinian and Arab liberation movement, can come as "arbiters" and impose their domination on the Arab people. Carter, the silver-tongued "human rights" preacher, hopes to hypnotize the Arab people into giving up their just struggle and capitulating at Geneva like faithful children of U.S. imperialism. He has been promising to champion the "legitimate rights" of the Palestinian people and is even pretending that he will put "pressure" on Israel. The Arab people, however, are not handing over their destiny to the aggressive imperialists, but are strengthening their protests and armed struggle to smash Israel and expel the imperialist powers from the Middle East.
Israel is the outpost of U.S. imperialism in the Middle East. It was created by the U.S. and other imperialists to serve their aggressive aims by driving the Palestinian people out of their homeland with fascist terror. Since its creation, Israel has never ceased to carry out the U.S. and other imperialists ' program of genocide of the Arab people and robbery of their land and riches. The Zionists have recently been launching more and more brutal attacks on Lebanon and stepping up their colonization program of the occupied Arab territories, building military and economic settlements there to fortify their positions.
On November 8 and 9, the Israeli Zionist aggressors staged a major air offensive on southern Lebanon. Two Lebanese farm villages were razed. The port city of Tyre was bombarded 18 times in 35 minutes. Palestinian refugee camps in the Tyre area were heavily hit. Numbers of Lebanese people, many of whom had previously been forced from their villages closer to the Lebanese-Israeli border by Zionist and zionist-instigated Phalangist attacks, were again expelled from their homes. These barbaric attacks made on behalf of U.S. imperialism are aimed at eliminating the Palestinian people, the most active force opposing Zionism and imperialism in the Middle East, at splitting the Lebanese and Palestinian people and at forcing the Lebanese people from their land so that the Zionists can plunder and colonize it.
Since November 1976, when a ceasefire was established in the Lebanese civil war, the Israeli Zionists have been escalating their aggression against the Lebanese and Palestinian people in Lebanon. In September this year the Zionists established three additional fortified areas within Lebanese borders and sent their troops and tanks into Lebanon to patrol, terrorize and slaughter Lebanese villagers. The Zionists repeatedly pounded Palestinian strongholds with battle tanks stationed on hill crests inside Lebanese territory. They blockaded the southern port of Tyre to prevent ships from entering with reinforcements and supplies for the Palestinian forces and flew bombing missions over Lebanese towns. These aggressive activities took place in coordination with zionist-instigated attacks by the fascist Lebanese Phalangists, armed and trained by Israel. The Zionists have continuously shelled Lebanese villages all along the border for several months previous to the September escalation. Despite the Zionists' announcement on September 26 that they were withdrawing their forces and ceasing aggressive activities, they continued to attack Lebanese villages and in November waged a massive air attack over Lebanon that killed and uprooted large numbers of people.
The Palestinian people, led by the Palestine Liberation Organization, use the camps they have established in Lebanon after being forced from their homeland by the Zionists as a base from which to wage struggle to smash the artificial state of Israel and regain their entire national homeland. The Palestinian cause has the full support of the Lebanese people. For these reasons the Zionists are bent on exterminating the Palestinian and Lebanese people. However, the large- scale aggression being carried out by the Zionists is being met with strong resistance from Lebanese patriots and Palestinian forces. Fierce battles on the scale of those of the Lebanese civil war have raged, in which the Arab people have stood up heroically. As well, the progressive forces in Lebanon have blasted Israeli towns with rockets and, in the November offensive, Palestinian aircraft turned back an air mission on the refugee camp of Rashidiye.
To thwart the resistance in Lebanon, the U.S. imperialists and their Zionist handmaidens engineered a scheme to disarm and split the Palestinian and Lebanese peoples. The U.S. imperialists, playing the role of a great "peacemaker", pressured Israel into a "ceasefire" (in words only), promising that the so- called "peace-keeping" Lebanese Army would take over Palestinian positions in southern Lebanon. This "peace-keeping" force was in fact newly created by $100 million in U.S. military credits to the Lebanese government for the purpose cf suppressing the resistance movement in southern Lebanon. Meanwhile the Israelis have been insisting that the Palestinians retreat 14 miles into the interior of Lebanon away from the Israeli-Lebanese border. This scheme of the U.S. and the Israelis is aimed at confusing the Lebanese people about the necessity to rely on their own efforts to defend their national rights, to throw cold water on their support for the Palestinian struggle and to justify the stationing of troops in Lebanon. This also shows how the U.S. imperialists use the tension they create to allow their Zionist lackeys to penetrate deeper into Arab countries. The U.S. military aid does not come without strings attached to hitch the Lebanese government to U.S. imperialism. The leader of the PLO, Yasir Arafat, denounced this U.S. -Israeli plot and proclaimed the Palestinians' determination to continue to wage armed struggle from their positions in southern Lebanon.
Throughout Palestine, Palestinian liberation fighters have been stepping up their armed actions against the Zionist state. Palestinian fighters have recently ambushed Zionist troops and wiped out several soldiers. They have also successfully blasted a Zionist military fueling station and other Zionist military centers, a military factory in Bersheba, a police center at Bethlehem, wiping out numbers of police, as well as a railroad station and the main military centers, a military factory in Bersheba, a police center at Bethlehem, wiping out numbers of police, as well as a railroad station and the main military garage in the Zionist stronghold, Tel Aviv. The Palestinian news agency WAFA reported that in the period from January to September, Palestinian fighters carried out more than 130 actions against the Israeli Zionists. These actions show the determination of the Palestinian liberation fighters to keep hammering at the Zionist state with armed actions until it is destroyed.
The Zionists turn truth on its head, calling these just actions of the Palestinian people "acts of terrorism" in order to justify their own attacks as "defense" of Israel's "security". These Israeli nazis and their imperialist backers believe that they have every right to slaughter the Arab people and steal their land and that the Palestinian and other Arab people have no right to hit them back.
The Palestinian people are also firmly resisting the Zionists' escalation of the settlement program in occupied Arab territory. A series of powerful demonstrations were carried out in all the towns of the West Bank and Gaza regions on October 20th and 23 where the Zionists had authorized 30 more settlements to be built. The Israeli Zionists have already constructed over 100 settlements in the West Bank, Gaza, Egyptian Sinai and Syrian Golan Heights regions which were taken during Israel's wars of aggression. Five cities for 50,000 people are presently being constructed in the West Bank region. Numerous military camps have also been built. In this manner the Zionists plan to permanently colonize these Arab lands.
The intensification of this annexationist program has aroused powerful protests in recent months. The demonstrations on Oct. 20 and 23 were characterized by fierce clashes between the demonstrators and the racist and fascist occupation forces. While the U.S. imperialists supply Israel with the funds and military equipment to carry out this colonization plan, the Soviet social-imperialists provide the manpower. The Soviet Union has in recent months increased the number of Jews sent from the Soviet Union to Israel from 275 to 400 a week. This exposes the Soviet social-imperialists' complicity in instigating the Zionists to trample on the Arab people's national rights.
On October 28 the U. N. General Assembly adopted a resolution denouncing the Zionists for carrying out this program of colonization of Arab territories. The resolution was approved by a vote of 131 to 1, the Zionists casting the only vote against the resolution while the U.S. abstained. The strong support given this resolution expresses the total isolation of the Israeli Zionists and the strength of the resistance movement of the Arab people.
Recently the Carter administration has stepped up its demagogy on the Middle East and has been promising to defend the "legitimate rights" of the Palestinian people at the Geneva "Peace" Conference on the Middle East that the U.S. and Soviet social-imperialists have cooked up. The U.S. imperialists hope that Carter with all his charms will be able to convince the Arab and other people that the U.S. has changed its colors and is now standing up for the Palestinian cause. Carter is claiming that now the U.S. has grave contradictions with Israel, in par- which would give them important military advantages the next time their masters order them to wage another aggressive war. Then Carter's plan is really is the program of the U.S. imperialists to more efficiently suppress the liberation movement of the Palestinian people and to prepare for future aggression and annexation of more Arab land.
Carter has called the Zionists' racist colonization program of the occupied Arab territory "illegal" and "an obstacle to peace". He has even talked of Israeli withdrawal from almost all the land taken from Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. When the resolution denouncing the Zionist settlements was put forward in the General Assembly of the U.N., the U.S. abstained hoping to preserve the illusion that it does not support Israeli occupation and annexation of the Arab territory. But the real commitment of U.S. imperialism to the continued occupation and annexation of the Arab territory obtained by U.S. instigated aggressive war is borne out by the fact that in October the U.S. appropriated 1.8 billion dollars of aid -- $1 billion in military credits and $800 million in economic aid -- to Israel. This is more than any other country receives from U.S. imperialism. In addition Israel is required to repay only 1/2 of its U.S. military credits, a privilege not enjoyed by any other country. This aid is used to sustain Israel's present program of colonization and aggression, as well as to prepare for future aggressive wars. Carter and other representatives of U.S. imperialism have assured Israel repeatedly that "whatever the political differences, the U.S. will provide Israel with all its needs." These alleged "political differences" are something cooked up by Carter, Vance, Begin and Dayan in their gangsters' dens to create the illusion among the Arab masses that U.S. imperialism is the "friend" of the Palestinian and Arab people and to set the stage for the Geneva Conference. Meanwhile, the Israelis are assured speedy delivery of the goods.
To contend with Soviet social-imperialism in the Middle East in plundering the riches of this region, especially oil, the U.S. must carry out aggression to suppress the resistance of the Arab people to enslavement. Israel is the U.S. imperialists ' main tool of aggression in the Middle East. While the Israeli Zionists and the U.S. imperialists may have small differences of opinion on how best to carry out genocide of the Arab people and steal their land, there can be no fundamental contradictions between them.
The superpowers are presently demanding the resummoning of the Geneva "Peace" Conference so they can play the role of "superpeacemakers", hypnotize the Arab people to put down their arms, and further impose on Hie Middle East the conditions favorable to their hegemonic yearnings. The Soviet-American statement on the Middle East released October 1, affirming the superpowers' intention to convene the Geneva "Peace" Conference no later than December 1977, exposes the U.S.-Soviet collaboration to prop up Israel and eliminate the real issues from the Geneva Conference, while hiding behind a smokescreen of demagogy. The statement calls for the "termination of the state of war and establishment of normal peaceful relations on the basis of mutual recognition of the principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity, and political independence." This is double-talk. As long as the state of Israel exists there can be peace in the Middle East because of Israel's inherent aggressive, colonialist nature. Israel was founded on the lands stolen by fascist terror and expanded through aggressive war. It is right now carrying out aggression and preparing for future aggression. Even if it agrees to a cosmetic retreat from some small part of the stolen territory, this is only to prepare public opinion to aid it in waging further aggressive wars.The superpowers' concern for "insuring the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people" is just a flourish of words. Nor are they truly interested in "strengthening peace" or in implementing a "fundamental solution". Their sole concern is to use the Geneva "Peace" Conference as a tool for propping up Israel and perpetuating the state of "no war, no peace". Under such conditions the superpowers can use military and economic "aid" as a lever to interfere in the internal affairs of the Arab countries and contend for spheres of influence, with the aim of controlling the strategically important Middle East and plundering its rich oil resources.
The Geneva "Peace" Conference was hatched by U.S. and Soviet social-imperialism in 1973 as part of their desperate scheme to put a stop to the victorious advances of the Arab people in the October War and reimpose the state of "no war, no peace". The Zionists had launched their fourth aggressive war only to find themselves losing ground. The superpowers recognized that if the war was permitted to be carried through to the end, the Zionists and the imperialists would suffer a terrible defeat. For this reason the superpowers rammed through the U. N. Security Council Resolution 338, liquidating the victorious advance of the Arab people's struggle in the October War, proclaiming Israel's right to "secure and recognized boundaries", regarding the Palestinian issue as a refugee problem by reaffirming and calling for the immediate implementation of resolution 242 of 1967. Resolution 338 set up negotiations that were to become the Geneva "Peace" Conference. Resolutions 242 and 338 obliterating the Palestinian cause are the official framework for the Geneva "Peace" Conference.
The PLO, which stands staunchly for liberating the Palestine land through all means and particularly through armed struggle, was excluded from the negotiations. The PLO correctly made use of this situation created by the imperialists to expose the Geneva Conference and unify the Arab people by justly demanding that it be the representative of the Palestinian people at the "peace" talks. This brewed up a storm. The fighting stand of the PLO had gained it the unified support of the Arab and all the world's people. In October 1974 in Rabat, Morocco, the Arab heads of state affirmed the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. In November 1974 the UN passed a resolution recognizing the self-determination, national independence and sovereignty of the Palestinian people, their right to their home and property and affirmed the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. This unity of the masses of people throughout the world was a severe blow to the superpowers, smashing their Geneva Conference plans at that time.
The U.S. imperialists and the Soviet social-imperialists are hoping to reconvene the Geneva Conference by the end of 1977 on firmer ground. Their main tactic towards this end is to split the unity of the Arab people behind the stand of the PLO. The Sadat betrayal is a major part of the U.S. 's strategy to bring this about and to edge out its Russian rivals. Both superpowers have been making frantic diplomatic visits to the Arab countries, trying to strike up deals with Arab leaders to press them into acting as spokesmen for the imperialist powers and to lure them to the Geneva Conference on the imperialists' terms without the PLO. But the Arab peoples are firmly resisting all these schemes. This shows that the Arab people will will not be taken in by this superpower scheme, and will never let down their arms in exchange for fraudulent negotiations. End.
Like a thief in the night trying to hide his crimes by shouting thief at passers-by, the world imperialist bourgeoisie, the most savage and murderous class known to mankind, is engaged in an alleged "anti-terrorist" campaign. Righteous statements are appearing in the capitalist press, penned by the bloodstained hands of the various heads of government, about the horrors of violence. Throughout the world, state after state in the capitalist countries have announced the necessity of passing new laws and setting up special military squads to "stop the spread of terrorism". While this "anti-terrorist" campaign is centered mainly in Europe, the U.S. imperialists have joined the chorus as well.
Starting with the Task Force on Disorders and Terrorism established last year, the Carter administration has furthered the campaign by setting up a Cabinet Committee to Combat Terrorism. These efforts are part of the growing fascization of the capitalist state machine in the U.S. and are aimed at attacking the revolutionary upheavals developing in the working class, among the oppressed nationalities and the youth and students. Being forced more and more to discard their "democratic" mask and bare their fascist fangs, the U.S. imperialists have plans to "legally" remove the most minimal rights they still have on the books. In a report issued by the Task Force on Disorders and Terrorism released by the federal government, the monopoly capitalists have made some recommendations to "safeguard" the masses from terrorist attacks. What are these "safeguards" that our "saviors", the bourgeois, have in mind? Fearing that the "U.S. will experience... a new road of violent political protests similar to the urban and campus riots of the 60's" and predicting that "economic conditions and labor unrest must be particular areas for concern." The Task Force calls on all levels of the state to do their utmost to crush the growing revolutionarymovement brewing in the U.S. To that end, the Task Force proposes:
1. suppression of "potentially" violent assemblies;
2. city-wide curfews;
3. power to detain individuals who are "likely" to be detrimental to the public safety;
4. the establishment of protective zones in large cities;
5. search and seizure without a warrant;
6. allow police to enter private homes by force without a warrant;
7. legalize "excessive force" Tty freeing police from any penalties they may suffer for acting in "good faith" in exceeding their duties; and
8. extend all emergency powers granted above from pertaining just to periods of "unrest" to a permanent feature of the law.
The increased fascization of the state comes at a time when the monopoly capitalists are suffering from a deepening of the all-round economic, political and social crisis. This is no mere coincidence. The U.S. imperialists are trying desperately to save themselves from extinction and are forced to shift the entire burden of their crisis onto the backs of the working class and oppressed people. To accomplish this aim they use every means to intimidate and bully the people. The present "rise" and media promotion of the fascist KKK and the nazis, as well as the state-organized fascist anti-busing movement, attest to this.
The fascist "anti-terrorist" campaign is being geared up in a big way in the Federal Republic of Germany. Using as a pretext the kidnapping and death of Hans Schleyer (a West German industrialist, former SS member and former administrative chief at the headquarters of the Industrial Federation in Nazi-occupied Prague), the West German state has gone into a frenzy in its attacks on the people. Under the Hitlerite slogan "the fight against terrorism is the fight of civilization against barbarism trying to destroy all order", the West German bourgeoisie is trying to bring back the "order" of Nazi Germany, by proposing to press into law various fascist acts. These laws would ban the Communist Party of Germany (Marxist-Leninist), close down its publishing and printing houses, ban all legal revolutionary activity and propaganda and "purge" all revolutionaries from their jobs.
The German bourgeoisie has never given up its hopes of expansion. Written into the FRG constitution is the priority to reclaim what it considers "lost lands". In the military the maps show the "German homeland" of 1937. In the schools, the state refuses to teach children of the crimes of Hitler's Nazi regime. The newspapers continue to call Polish towns near Germany with German names. The western press is harping more and more about a "German-U.S. order in Europe". And the German monopoly bourgeoisie continues to spread its tentacles all through Asia, Africa and Latin America, in order to achieve their dreams, the present descendants of the Third Reich need a quiet home front. They must extinguish the revolution. Therefore they must hit at the heart of the German proletariat -- ban its vanguard party and arrest and fire the best sons and daughters of the German people, for their revolutionary activity.
But this despicable act has been met with great indignation by the masses of German workers, who see their future in the Communist Party of Germany (M-L) and the socialist revolution. Not lying down beneath the jackboot of German reaction, the masses are standing up and are ready to do battle. The Communist Party of Germany (M-L) declared at a rally organized to denounce these fascist measures: "No banning whatsoever will evict us from the enterprises, garrisons, schools or universities; no force in the world will hinder us on our road to lead the proletariat in the violent socialist revolution. "
In a corner, a meek voice protests to the German proletariat: "Remember", the supporters of the "Three Worlds" theory say, "the German state is anti-hegemonistic, democratic and a friend of the Third World". The present state of affairs in Germany points out the titter bankruptcy and revisionism of the theory of "Three Worlds". These "worthies" would have the German masses kneel down and submit to the blows of the German state for the sake of unity with it, in its alleged struggle against the two superpowers.
The anti-terrorist campaign being waged worldwide by the imperialists, testifies to their utter desperation, their decay and their fear of the struggling masses. Every day the imperialist system becomes weaker and weaker and is forced to lash at the peoples. But at the same time, the proletariat and its allies become more steeled in repulsing the attacks. Using demagogy and the stick will not cower the masses. The Workers' Advocate hails the fighting spirit of the American people, the German people led by the Communist Party of Germany (Marxist-Leninist), and all people fighting against the terrorism of the imperialist system.
Imperialism beware! -- the masses will make you pay for your ugly crimes one hundred times over. End.
The following is reprinted from the Nov. 17, 1977, Vol. 3, #2 issue of CCNY Student, newspaper of the CCNY (City College of New York) Student Movement, under the leadership of the COUSML.
The Board of Higher Education (BHE) is moving full steam ahead (though very, very quietly) with its plans to impose their reactionary "Two Year Skills Test" on the City University of New York (CUNY) students. Frightened by the students' universal opposition, they postponed it, while they cooked up new schemes to defuse the situation. First, they've come up with a new name -- the "Freshman Skills Assessment" tests. But only its name has changed. This is the same reactionary test that the CCNY Student Movement and the City College of New York (CCNY) students fought all last semester under the slogans -- "DOWN WITH THE TWO YEAR SKILLS TEST" and "OPPOSE THE FRAUD OF 'DECLINING STANDARDS' ". Whatever they're called, these tests in reading, writing and math, at still undetermined levels, are being given solely to throw thousands more students out of school. As the latest proposal from the BHE states: "Students who have not met the skills proficiency levels set after earning 61 credits will not be permitted to register for any senior college courses except that they may do remedial work as non-degree students." (Freshman Skills Assessment, A Proposal, Aug. 1977, pg. 10). Secondly, the BHE has decided that the test will be given only to new freshman upon entry to CUNY, thus hoping to prevent organized resistance to this latest attack. Third, the BHE is planning to implement very soon a "pilot assessment program" which would be "off the record", to test the waters of the students' opposition and to make sure that the standards set drive sufficient numbers from school. Finally, the BHE and the CUNY administrators are continuing with their vicious fraud that "declining academic standards" is the problem addressed with the "Skills Test" and not continuing to make the students pay for the economic crisis of the capitalist system.
Fellow students! Once again we are faced with the tasks of thoroughly denouncing this "Skills Test" attack and in particular exposing the bourgeoisie's "declining standards" lie. The BHE is continuing and deepening their attacks on our basic interests. We too must continue the movement started last semester to arm ourselves with analysis of the true nature of this test, arouse all the students to prepare for struggle against it and smash the vicious fraud of "declining standards".
For over a year the bourgeoisie has used the full force of their press, radio, T.V., publishing houses and local reactionary educational "authorities" to spew out lies about the "fast growing trend in American education: the minimum competency movement". (New York TimesNov. 6, 1977). There has been a constant barrage about how students today are "illiterate", "lazy and weak willed" up to the point where college "freshmen are illiterate on the third grade level" (NY Times). Further, they are claiming that the bourgeoisie and their state are "Oh, so concerned" with helping the students, "curbing dropout rates" and "improving" the rotten and decaying capitalist schools.
In the past year 27 states have implemented "minimum competency" tests for either grade school promotion and/or high school graduation. On October 25 of this year, this campaign got a big shot in the arm when the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, Joseph Califano, cited evidence of "declining academic achievement" and endorsed testing in basic skills, further revealing the fascist fangs of the "Democratic" Carter Administration. Like CUNY's "Skills Test", many universities are implementing such tests. All these forces endlessly mouth the deception that they have only the best interests of the students in mind, about "improving quality", "providing remedial education", etc., etc. But these fraudulent words fly in the face of the facts! The rich and their state, including the BHE, seek to cause maximum confusion with their "declining standards" fraud by portraying thecrisis in educationand their attacks as detached from the overall crisis of U.S. monopoly capitalism. To justify their attacks they claim that the people themselves and not the decaying capitalist educational system are responsible for the fact that 20 million Americans are illiterate. This is another part of the campaign of the rich to shift not only the burden, but also the blame for the crisis onto the people, in particular the most oppressed sections of the people -- the Afro-Americans, the national minorities, immigrants and foreign students.
But what are the facts! Everywhere across the nation education funds are being slashed and used to bail out the monopoly capitalist class from their crisis while the people are forced to pay. These measures are in no way intended to help the students. On the contrary, everyone knows that by leaving students back or denying them degrees or diplomas these tests will drive thousands of students to drop out altogether, allowing the state to further cut the education budgets. Furthermore, due to the economic crisis, unemployment even among college graduates is soaring and the capitalists have less need for skilled workers. So the students are simply tossed into the ranks of the unemployed to increase competition and drive down the wages of all workers. A large pool of unemployed youth is being created who can be forced into the U.S. imperialist army to serve as cannon fodder in the aggressive imperialist wars the bourgeoisie is planning as a "solution" to their crisis.
CUNY vice-chancellor Brenner is just lying when he says the "Skills Test" isn't designed to reduce enrollment but "To the contrary the whole purpose is to assure that students will be able to move on through the upper division without being crippledby the lack of basic skills". He can't deny that the "Skills Test" is part and parcel of the BHE's April 5, 1976 fascist Kibbee plan which has already forced 60,000 students out of CUNY, fired thousands of faculty and cut the budget by over $100 million. These funds cut from CUNY under the Emergency Finance Control Board's financial plan have gone directly into the pockets of the rich moneybags on Wall Street as skyrocketing debt service payments. Thus the profits of the rich are preserved intact while the students are made to bear the consequences -- all in the name of better education for all. Making the students pay and not "declining standards" is the real problem addressed by the "Skills Test".
With this reactionary "Skills Test" and "declining standards" fraud, the rich and their state have singled out for special attack the Afro-American, national minority, immigrant and foreign students. Racist attacks by the state are the cutting edge of growing fascism in the U.S. today and pave the way for further attacks on the entire working class and people. All of these "competency" attacks hit these sections of the students the hardest.
In a virtually all Black ghetto school district in Chicago, 52% of the students in the 8th grade were left back after such tests were given. School authorities there claimed to be seeking to "curb the dropout rate"! This is a vicious intensification of the racial discrimination and violent repression against the Afro-American people by the capitalist state that forces the black people into ghettos in the first place where the living conditions, including the schools, are severely oppressive. It is obvious that leaving back the students can have onlyoneeffect -- drasticallyincreasingthe dropout rate amongst the Black youth who already suffer from 40% unemployment.
In California, the state has directed that the high schools give competency tests in English only, while 17% of the students speak Spanish! CUNY's "Skills Test" is also a racist attack on the national minority, immigrant and foreign students. The BHE's proposal on the test devotes a special section to English as a Second Language (ESL) students. It directs that the tests in reading and writing be given in English, despite the thousands of ESL and foreign students at CUNY.
Not only are these students singled out for attack, but the bourgeoisie turns truth on its head by whipping up the racist lie that these students are to blame for the rotten educational system. The rich are attempting to blame the national minorities and immigrants for all the social and economic ills of monopoly capitalism. They do this to get the people to fight each other instead of uniting to fight the rich and to hide the fact that all the problems facing the people are the consequences of the man-eating capitalist system.
The BHE serves only the class interests of the rich with this latest attack on our basic interests. Last year thousands of students took up the slogan of the CCNY Student Movement,DOWN WITH THE TWO YEAR SKILLS TEST and many united to smash the lies of the BHE about "declining standards". We must continue to give a militant "NO" to all the "make the people pay" solutions of the rich to the economic crisis and fight them tooth and nail in defense of our basic interests. End.
The following is a leaflet issued by the Boston Branch of the COUSML on November 14, 1977.
In recent weeks in Boston, there has been an escalation of racist and fascist attacks against Afro-Americans and other national minorities. The most prominent of these have been reported in the capitalist news media. On Saturday, Nov. 5, an immigrant family from El Salvador was forced to move because of racist gang attacks on their home in Savin Hill, Dorchester. These attacks began on Oct. 29, were repeated Oct. 30, and intensified Friday, November 4, when four times during the night the family's apartment windows were shattered with rocks and bottles. On Friday, Nov. 11, a week later, a house belonging to a 3-year resident of Mather St., Dorchester, was also attacked by a racist gang armed with rocks, bottles and baseball bats. Thirty windows were smashed while the gang shouted nazi slogans.
These outrages have aroused the anger of the working class and all progressive people. However, the capitalist news media and police are busy in mystifying the nature of these attacks. They are promoting the view that these attacks just appeared from nowhere, that they are simply the work of "vandals" or the work of "just kids". At the same time, the police are promoted as the "friends" and "defenders" of the people. This completely mystifies the nature of these attacks, which is, that these are racist and fascist attacks directed against Blacks and other national minorities, and organized by the government itself, through the police, the capitalist news media and fascist gangs that they have spawned.
A close look at the recent events in the local area confirms this entirely. In particular they show three main ways in which the government is directly behind these attacks.
First, for the last two months, the capitalist news media and police have been working overtime to create an atmosphere of vicious racist hysteria -- an atmosphere in which various stories are concocted for the sole purpose of whipping up racist hysteria against Blacks and other national minorities. The government uses the Hitlerite method of concocting a big lie, that the Blacks and other national minorities are responsible for racism, and repeats this lie over and over again to mislead the people.
The first shot in this recent hysteria campaign was fired in the reporting of the fighting that broke out in Medford High in September. The press first spread the lie that the fight started because "a black youth pinched a white girl". This is akin to the fascist lies used by the KKK to "justify" the lynching of hundreds of black men whom they charged had "raped" white women. After this slander had already appeared in headlines across the city, the Boston Globe "changed" its story; the next story they came up with was that the fight started because a Black youth had called a white youth a "faggot". These stories have little difference and a great deal in common. In both cases the capitalist government promotes the vicious lie that it is the Afro-American people who are the cause of racist attacks, and in the first case, they promoted an outright nazi story right out of the propaganda arsenal of the fascist Klan.
On October 11, the press reported the police-initiated stories of how two men from Revere on their way back from a Neponset flea market got "lost" in the middle of Dorchester, stopped on Dudley St. for "directions", and were stabbed, one fatally. The police lost no time in announcing that the two assailants were national minority people. Weeks later, in an obscure corner of the editorial page in the Globe, it was reported that the initial story was a straightforward lie; in fact, the two Revere men were not lost, but were in the area for a definite reason, got into a fight and the stabbings followed. Once again, the government promoted that national minority people are interested in attacking "innocent" whites on the street for no reason other than that they are white.
On October 24, the Globe ran a prominent article entitled, "Last White Woman on Dorchester Block". It concerned a life-time resident of Julian St. in Roxbury who left the area because of numerous break- ins, robberies and a fire. It is common knowledge that in monopoly capitalist society, burglaries and fires occur in many neighborhoods in the large cities. This and other forms of social crime are directly caused by the monopoly capitalist system. However, the police and press again used this incident to repeat their lie. The police is quoted in the article, "It's a racial thing. She's the only white person in the entire area. They just don't want a white person there." This is a fascist lie. As anyone in the neighborhood will verify, there are white people living in the same block -- let alone the numerous white families living in "the entire area". But the truth does not serve the aims of creating racist hysteria. All these instances show the Hitlerite method used by the government, of concocting outright lies, not because they are ignorant, but for the sinister aim of creating large-scale racist hysteria against the national minority people in order to incite and organize actual physical attacks against them.
Second, there is the question of where the fascist gangs come from. Are they "just kids" as the police try to make it out to be? To say that they are "just kids" is a vicious slander against the youth, that according to the police, being ordinary youth is to be racist and fascist, shouting nazi slogans and organizing racist attacks against national minorities. This is also meant to cover up the role of the government itself as the organizer of racist attacks. These fascist gangs did not spring from nowhere -- they are organized fascist gangs which were deliberately brought into being by the government as part of the fascist anti-busing movement that it launched over the last several years. Despite the current deception of the government that the "anti-busing movement is dead", these recent attacks show that the real machinery of the fascist movement is still intact, ready to be mobilized to organize racist attacks, especially when the signal is given by the hysteria campaign organized by the government and press.
Third, the role of the police in these recent attacks fully confirms the government-organized nature of these attacks. For instance, in the case of the attack on the Savin Hill family, the police were called each time the racist attacks took place, so by Nov. 4, the police were well aware of the history of the attacks. And on the final night, when the four attacks occurred only one to two hours apart, whenever the police arrived, "the vandals had left the scene". After the second and third attacks that night between 12:05 and 1:15, the police were even given descriptions of the racist gang and their vehicle. But when the final attack took place at 3:00 a.m., which was the longest and most vicious, the police took one hour and 41 minutes to arrive! This again confirms what every national minority person knows from experience -- that the police are racist to the core, and have no interest in stopping racist attacks or catching the racists.
The police are part of the government apparatus, a government that serves the interests of a handful of rich parasites, the monopoly capitalist class. They have never been interested in defending the Blacks and other national minorities from racist attacks. In fact, the government is the organizer of racist attacks, and defends and protects the racists. The government has launched this new campaign of stepped-up racist attacks as part of its fascist campaign of singling out certain sections of the masses for particular attack, in order to divide the working class as a whole. This is because the monopoly capitalists are locked in the throes of the most severe crisis since the Great Depression. They seek to get out of this crisis by making the people pay for this economic crisis, and by preparing for imperialist war with their main imperialist rivals, the New Tsars of the Soviet Union. The workers and oppressed people have risen up in great struggles to resist being made to pay for the crisis. It is to suppress this growing resistance that the monopoly capitalists are imposing growing fascism, by viciously attacking the struggles of the working class, and trying to weaken and undermine the unity and strength of the working class by dividing the working class itself. The policy of singling out certain sections of the masses for particularly vicious attack, such as the escalation of racist hysteria and racist attacks on national minorities, is part of this growing fascism, and it is directed against the whole working class.
The Afro-American people, other national minorities and the whole working class must resist the increased fascist attacks of monopoly capital and its government. In this struggle, the masses cannot rely on the government -- its talkshop politicians, bureaucrats, police, courts, etc. --no matter how much they promote the fraud that they are "friends of the people". Three years of vicious attacks launched by the fascist anti-busing movement and the recent attacks once again confirm this truth. There is only one path before the Afro-American people, other national minorities and the entire working class against racist and fascist attacks -- this is the path of active resistance, meeting all attacks blow-for- blow, the path of struggle relying not on the government, but on the strength and unity of the masses themselves.
DOWN WITH THE RACIST HYSTERIA CAMPAIGN OF THE GOVERNMENT AND NEWS MEDIA!
DOWN WITH THE GOVERNMENT-ORGANIZED RACIST AND FASCIST ATTACKS!
FIGHT FASCISM THROUGH ACTIVE RESISTANCE!
On November 29th, the heroic Albanian people and revolutionary people throughout the world celebrated the 33rd anniversary of the liberation of Albania from the Nazi-fascist occupation. That date, 33 years ago, marks the complete victory of the centuries-long struggle of the Albanian people for national liberation and marks the triumph of the people's revolution in Albania. Today Albania is a genuinely socialist country.
The National Liberation War against the Italian and German invaders is a most brilliant page in the Albanian people's glorious history of struggle. The Albanian population of one million waged a fierce and bloody struggle against some 700,000 Italian and German fascist soldiers which trampled across their territory. The Albanian people sacrificed 28,000 martyrs and suffered severe losses at the hands of the fascists and, at the same time, inflicted heavy casualties onto the invaders. After five and one-half years of fierce battles, on November 29, 1944, the Albanian people wiped out the last of the German Nazis on Albanian territory, accomplished entirely through their own efforts and due to the correct Marxist-Leninist leadership of the Communist Party (now Party of Labor) of Albania. This was an important contribution to the world-wide anti-fascist war, to the world proletarian revolution and socialism.
To win victory in the war against the foreign occupiers it was also necessary for the Albanian people to wage relentless struggles against the internal enemies. The ruling landlords and capitalists played the part of willing tools of imperialism, collaborating with the fascist occupiers to suppress the people's uprising, acting both as tools of the fascist invaders as well as agents of the British and American conspiracies against Albania. Furthermore, even though the Albanian working class was very small, it was only the proletariat and its Marxist-Leninist vanguard, which was capable of leading the popular masses to victory in the National Liberation War. Because the proletariat and its glorious party, the Communist Party of Albania with Comrade Enver Hoxha at the head, correctly led the peasantry and other patriotic forces in bloody battles against the foreign occupiers and their local reactionary collaborators and did not share the leadership in the struggle with any other classes or parties, the triumph of the people's revolution was assured.
With the triumph of the National Liberation War, Albania entered a bright new era. People's power was established and the People's Republic of Albania was proclaimed, independent and totally free from foreign domination. The rule of the landlords and capitalists was shattered. Albania began its triumphant march along the path of social progress and socialism.
From the very first days of liberation the Albanian people have had to surmount enormous obstacles. Under the leadership of the Party of Labor, they have smashed all the attempts of imperialism, revisionism and reaction to liquidate the gains paid for in blood in the National Liberation War. The Albanian people foiled the conspiracies of the U.S. and British imperialists to replace the Nazi occupiers with their own domination. The Albanian people waged momentous struggles against the attempts of the Yugoslav Titoite revisionists to swallow up the People's Republic of Albania. And the Party of Labor of Albania has ruthlessly exposed the Titoite revisionist clique as agents of U.S. imperialism before the whole world.
Most gloriously, the People's Republic of Albania stood up against the great betrayal of the Soviet revisionists and smashed their schemes to liquidate socialism in Albania and turn it into a colony of Soviet social-imperialism, the drastic fate of the other European People's Democracies. From the very beginning of the Khrushchovite betrayal, Comrade Enver Hoxha and the PLA gloriously upheld the principles of Marxism-Leninism in the face of the revisionist onslaught and stood in the forefront of the great struggle to unmask and repudiate modern Soviet revisionism.
In the face of the savage capitalist-revisionist encirclement and blockade, the Albanian people, through their own efforts, have achieved great victories in socialist revolution and socialist construction. With a pick in one hand and a rifle in the other, the Albanian working class and cooperativist peasantry have transformed once backward Albania into an advanced and modern country in the process of the complete construction of socialism.
In Albania socialism is being built correctly. The class struggle against the internal and external enemies is waged sternly, without interruption and in all directions, safeguarding the freedom of Albania and ensuring against revisionist degeneration. The dictatorship of the proletariat is continually strengthened, not allowing its liberalization or bureaucratization, providing the widest possible democracy for the working people and ruthlessly crushing the class enemies, blocking the way towards capitalist restoration. The leading role of the Party of Labor of Albania, the instrument of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the guarantor of all the victories in the socialist revolution and socialist construction, is firmly upheld. With the adoption of the new constitution of the People's Socialist Republic of Albania last year, Marxism- Leninism has become the dominant ideology, not only in actuality but also by law.
Albania is the great beacon of socialism in the world. The path of social revolution that Albania is marching on is the path which the proletarians and oppressed peoples of all lands will follow. Socialist Albania is a powerful fortress against imperialism, social-imperialism, all reaction and revisionism and opportunism of all hues. Albania lends all her strength to aid the Marxist-Leninist Parties and people fighting for social and national liberation.
Today, the eyes of the proletariat and revolutionary peoples of the whole world are turned towards Enver Hoxha's Albania. This land of the eagles, though only a tiny country, is the liberated base area of the world proletarian revolution. Albania is the fatherland of the world proletariat because there the proletariat has political power, the socialist system has replaced the capitalist system and is being consolidated and, in Albania, the purity of Marxism- Leninism and proletarian internationalism are unflinchingly upheld.
In November one year ago, the Party of Labor of Albania held its historic 7th Congress. The decisions of this congress are of great significance for the advance of socialist revolution and socialist construction in Albania as well as for the communists and peoples the world over. Comrade Enver Hoxha'sReport Submitted to the Seventh Congress of the PLAis a Marxist-Leninist classic. TheReportstresses the need to wage the class struggle in all directions, ideological, political and economic, as the motive force for the advance of socialist revolution and the building of socialist society and the need for uninterrupted and thoroughgoing revolution under the conditions of socialism. It emphasizes the necessity of the leading role of the working class and the Marxist-Leninist party in the class struggle and revolution. Comrade Enver Hoxha clearly identifies modem revisionism, headed by the Soviet revisionists, as the main danger and enemy of the international communist movement. HisReporttestifies that the Party of Labor of Albania will continue to wage relentless struggle against revisionism, including Yugoslav revisionism, and opportunism of all hues irrespective of their source. Comrade Enver Hoxha'sReportoutlines the great tasks which face the Marxist-Leninist parties in their revolutionary struggles and calls for developing the concrete ties and collaboration between the genuine Marxist-Leninist parties of the world so as to better fight against the world bourgeoisie and modem revisionism.
At a time when the revisionists and opportunists of all stripes are creating maximum confusion, Comrade Enver Hoxha's Reporthas put forward the correct orientation and direction for the world's communists and peoples fighting for social and national liberation. This historicReport advances the important thesis that: "The world is at a stage when the cause of the revolution and national liberation of the peoples is not just an aspiration and a future prospect, but a problem taken up for solution." This Leninist assessment of the present situation strikes a heavy blow at the opportunists who are trying to wipe revolution off the agenda, replacing it with the most treacherous collaboration with imperialism. The Report to the 7th Congress of the PLA unmasks the opportunist theories of "Three Worlds", "non-alignment", etc., anti-Leninist theories which cover up and try to bloc the fierce struggle waged by the camp of socialism, the world proletariat and its natural allies against the camp of imperialism, led by the two superpowers. The Report stresses that the two superpowers, the U.S. and the Soviet Union, are, to the same extent and to the same decree, the main enemies of the world's people; that U.S. imperialism has not become a timid mouse as various opportunists are claiming and that Soviet social-imperialism is also a ferocious imperialist power. The Report exposes the grave danger of giving Up the struggle against the savage U.S.-led imperialism in the name of fighting the allegedly "more dangerous" Soviet social-imperialism. The Reportrejects the thesis that war can be put off by maintaining "the balance of force" between the superpowers and points out that the war can be prevented and the liberation of the peoples achieved only through revolutionary struggle against the two superpowers and their lackeys in every country, by fighting both the external and internal enemies and not by allying with them. As well, Comrade Enver Hoxha's historic Reportrefutes many of the other revisionist fallacies with which international opportunism is trying to disintegrate the international communist movement.
Comrade Enver Hoxha'sReport to the 7th Congressof the PLAis an important unifying factor for the international communist movement and is a great contribution to the defense of the purity of Marxism- Leninism and proletarian internationalism. Comrade Enver Hoxha is a great Marxist-Leninist, a continuer of the work of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao Tsetung, and stands today as the leader of the world's communists.
The Workers' Advocatehails the 33rd anniversary of the complete liberation of Albania and considers the defense of the People's Socialist Republic of Albania as the very touchstone of proletarian internationalism, exactly in the same way as was the defense of the Soviet Union in the time of Lenin and Stalin. We wish the Party of Labor of Albania, headed by Comrade Enver Hoxha, and the People's Socialist Republic of Albania new and greater successes in their triumphant advance.
HAIL THE 33RD ANNIVERSARY OF THE COMPLETE LIBERATION OF ALBANIA!
LONG LIVE THE PEOPLE'S SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF ALBANIA!
LONG LIVE THE PARTY OF LABOR OF ALBANIA WITH THE GREAT MARXIST-LENINIST COMRADE ENVER HOXHA AT THE HEAD!
GLORY TO MARXISM-LENINISM!End.
The following is excerpted from the speech of Comrade Mehmet Shehu, member of the political bureau of the Central Committee of the Party of Labor of Albania and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the People's Socialist Republic of Albania delivered at the reception given in Vlora on the occasion of November 28, the 65th anniversary of the proclamation of the independence and November 29, the 33rd anniversary of the liberation.
Comrades,
The current situations in the world are fraught with great social shakings, but with numerous dangers as well.
The present-day deep crisis that has gripped the world capitalist and revisionist system, and the great difficulties it has caused to this system have further sharpened all the contradictions of imperialism. The wave of indignation, protest and revolt of the working class and the working masses in the capitalist countries, against the attempts of the bourgeoisie to shift the burden of the crisis onto their backs and to preserve its profits intact, against the growing expensiveness and the constant worsening of the living conditions -- this revolutionary tide is on the rise and is inflicting instability and political crisis to the ruling circles of these countries.
Great demagogical clamor is being made everywhere about the "Helsinki spirit", which allegedly has led to the lowering of tension. Neither Helsinki nor Belgrade, neither the endless talks about the disarmament have brought about the slightest sign of the lowering of tension on the international arena. On the contrary, the situation is aggravating with every passing day.
The struggle of the oppressed peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America against imperialism and social-imperialism, against the remnants of colonialism and neo-colonialism as well as against the local reactionary forces -- the pro-imperialist bourgeoisie, landowners and the fascist dictatorial regimes, for national liberation and sovereignty, for the realization of the democratic transformations on a revolutionary road and for social progress is in the stage of its development and uninterrupted rise.
Though the great betrayal of the modern revisionists has caused colossal damage to the cause of the revolution, nevertheless, it has not been and will never be able to stop the inevitable-- the national-liberation of the peoples and the revolution.
In the face of the growing wave of the revolution, we notice that all the dark forces of the counter-revolution and regress, from imperialism and social-imperialism, reactionary and neo-fascist regimes, down to social-democracy and modern revisionists, trotskyites and anarchists, opportunists and renegades of all hues -- are rising in a desperate attempt to suffocate, put down and deviate it from the correct road and to prolong the life of the worn out and rotten capitalist system which is dying out. This is a life and death struggle between the two worlds, imperialism and reaction, on the one hand, and socialism and the peoples on the other hand.
The revisionist clique of Khrushchov and Brezhnev, which after the death of Stalin usurped the power, restored capitalism and transformed the Soviet Union into a social-imperialist superpower, continues to play a very dangerous role to undermining of the revolution. The source of all the evils in the international communist and workers movement is the ill-famed 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union: the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union and in many other countries which till then were socialist, the degeneration of the overwhelming majority of the former communist parties into revisionist ones, the creation of the most diversified revisionist currents, as is, among others, also the so-called "Eurocommunism", which represents the dirtiest scum of revisionism and which expresses the anti-Marxist and anti-proletarian ideas more shamelessly and openly than any other revisionist trends, draw their source there.
Yugoslav revisionism was the forerunner of the 20th Congress and was the first to establish its state power in its own country. For this, Tito rightfully boasts of being a father of modern revisionism. Therefore all the revisionists, wherever they are, render great honors and pompously welcome him, consider him as their savior and god. But the stand towards Yugoslav revisionism has been and remains a touchstone which distinguishes the genuine Marxist-Leninists from the revisionists. The Albanian people say: "Birds of a feather flock together". To have a common cause and reconcile ideologically with the Yugoslav leadership means not to be Marxist, but revisionist.
We see that in the revisionist and anti-Marxist jungle another theory emerged -- the theory of "Three Worlds", which is presented as a new theory,, but which in fact is very old. We find the ideological roots of this theory in Bernstein, Kautsky, Trotsky, Bukharin. The theory of "Three Worlds" constitutes a very great danger for the international communist and workers movement: it is the theory of the extinction of the revolution, the theory of unconditional capitulation before the bourgeoisie and the all-round alliance with U.S. imperialism, it is the theory of the strangling of the liberation struggle of the peoples.
In fact this notorious theory has replaced the slogan of Marx: " Proletarians of all countries, unite! " and Lenin's slogan "proletarians of all countries and oppressed peoples, unite!" with the counter-revolutionary slogan "Proletarians and peoples of all countries, bourgeois, reactionaries and fascists wherever you are, unite under the leadership of U.S. imperialism, against Soviet social-imperialism!" As it has openly appealed and is appealing to the "third world and the second world, unite with half of the first world, with U.S. imperialism, to fight against Soviet social-imperialism !" Today, one cannot find any slogan which is more reactionary.
The genuine communists, the proletarians and peoples are against the imperialist war. The historic task of the peoples, of the proletarians and communists is, as Lenin teaches us, to do the utmost to avoid the war between the imperialist powers, not making compromise with the native bourgeoisie, but rising against it, to impose on it the will of the people not to launch the imperialist war and if the war between the imperialist powers becomes inevitable and bursts out, then the duty of the communists, proletarians and peoples is not to fight for the "defense of the homeland", as the chieftains of the Second Internationale claimed and as the standard bearers of the theory of "three worlds" are preaching today, but to turn the imperialist war into a civil war, into revolution, with the final aim to overthrow the native bourgeoisie and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat. If you do not bear in mind and do not apply these instructions and teachings of Lenin, it means to be against Leninism, to be a warmonger, and at the same time a fire extinguisher of the revolution, servant bf the international bourgeoisie.
The advocates of the theory of "three worlds" are quickly exposing themselves with their pro-imperialist theory. All the peoples are understanding the real content of this theory. The peoples are seeing that the preachers of the theory of "three worlds" have become the most zealous advocates and the most ardent defenders of the interests of U.S. imperialism and the western reactionary bourgeoisie, of all the world reaction. No people can accept the alliance with the native reactionary bourgeoisie, as the supporters of the theory of "three worlds" claim, subdue voluntarily to the financial capital; no people of the so- called "third world" can accept the persistent demand of the supporters of this theory and strike an enslaving alliance with the colonialist bourgeoisie, which has suppressed and enslaved them till yesterday, and which in one thousand and one ways tries to introduce deeper and deeper its claws into the flesh of the peoples to suck their blood through new methods.
The theoreticians of "three worlds" proclaim that U.S. imperialism is in decline, is in retreat and in defense, while Soviet social-imperialism is thirsty for expansion and on the offensive, therefore, Soviet social-imperialism is more dangerous, while U.S. imperialism is less dangerous to the peoples. This is the same as to say that red wolf is more dangerous than black wolf! But the peoples are not so much ignorant as the theoreticians of "three worlds" think.
It is clear to everybody that Soviet social-imperialism is a sworn enemy of the revolution and peoples. And the one who lowers the vigilance towards the danger of Soviet social-imperialism and the one who does not fight against its enslaving plans, sooner or later, pays very dearly. To cherish today illusions towards Soviet social-imperialism, thinking that it may help the peoples and that it allegedly does not intend to hatch up plans for world domination, it means to be shortsighted.
But on the other hand, U.S. imperialism is not less dangerous. First of all, every imperialist country without exception, as long as it remains as such, has tendencies for reaction, violence, expansion, aggression. It is not in defense or retreat. But even then when imperialism is on the brink of the grave and has not died yet, its aggressive nature does not change and its danger is not liquidated.
Besides, it is not at all true that U.S. imperialism is in defense. It is in decay just as Soviet social- imperialism is, but not in defense or retreat; it is always aggressive and aggressor, oppressor and sanguinary, enslaving and bloodthirsty for its own people and the other peoples, savage international gendarme as Soviet social-imperialism too is.
Is not this U.S. imperialism which drenched in blood the people of Korea, following the Second World War? Is not this U.S. imperialism which drenched in blood Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, until it was finally driven away by the heroic peoples of these countries? Doesn't U.S. imperialism have a finger in the murder of 500 thousand Indonesian communists ? Is not U.S. imperialism the one that drenched in blood the Chilean people and brought to power the fascists in Chile ? Isn't it true that both Soviet Union and U.S. imperialism as well have introduced their hands deeply in the tragedy that is taking place at present between Somalia and Ethiopia? Isn't U.S. imperialism together with Soviet social-imperialism that instigated the grave situation in Cyprus and the terrible tragedy of the Arab-Israeli conflict? Isn't it true that everywhere where there are local wars, feuds between states on the problems of borders or other great questions, everywhere where there are fire explosions, not only Soviet social-imperialism, but U.S. imperialism as well are present and active? Isn't today U.S. imperialism the greatest exporter of capital and arms in the world? Does Uncle Sam maintain those hundreds of military bases from South Korea, Japan and Taiwan to the Franco Spain and many countries of the world, seas and oceans, for peaceful aims? Does U.S. imperialism carry out all these acts to defend itself and retreat?
No, U.S. imperialism carries out all its activity not with the aim of retreating but to strengthen its positions as a superpower and ruler of the world and to extend them further, as much as it can and wherever it can, to attack and grab the freedom of the peoples; while Soviet social-imperialism, as a new social-imperialism, has also appetite for expansion. Herein lies all the irreconcilable contradictions and the permanent rivalry between them, as two superpowers, which want to divide their spheres of influence in the world.
Both these superpowers (and not only one of them) are manipulating their plans in the Middle East to divide the Arab peoples, to sabotage the attainment of just peace in that area, to liquidate the rights of the heroic Palestinian people, to use this prosperous and very important region each for its own imperialist interests.
While Sadat-Begin talks were going on in Jerusalem, Carter was praying in the Presbyterian Church in America for the successful crowning of these talks. He did not do this to the good of the Arab peoples, but for the interests of U.S. imperialism, hoping to reach an agreement in those talks he had imposed: not in favor of the Arab peoples and the Palestinian people, but in favor of the U.S. gangster, which is the Israeli state; not to give up the Arab territories, but to deprive the much suffering and martyr Palestinian people of the right to live; to maintain the Arab peoples under the threat of the assassinating Israeli gangsters; to dominate over the inexhaustible oil riches in that region. Is this a defense? Is this a retreat?
No one astonishes that the advocates of "three worlds" with their "theoretical" acrobatic feats, dictated by selfish and conjunctural interests, may one day turn their face on the Soviet social-imperialists and flirt with them. Anyone who deviates from the principled policy and pursues an anti-Marxist policy, cannot fail to be a pragmatist and unprincipled, cannot fail to turn the face where the wind blows, according to the interest of the moment.
At these circumstances, the Party of Labor of Albania cannot keep silent and cannot fail to say the truth as it thinks it, because, then it would stop being a Marxist-Leninist Party. The pressures and blackmail of anyone, the curses full of hatred of various revisionists, cannot divert our Party from its revolutionary positions. Since the day it was founded, our party has never left the Marxist-Leninist trench. Others are those who have left that trench, but not the Party of Labor of Albania of Enver Hoxha. Therefore the people have dedicated the following song to the Party: "Our Party, may your fame rise, for thou did not move from your position." And our Party will never move from its position!
Neither have the enemies and difficulties intimidated us nor will they intimidate us. Our people have been accustomed to fighting in encirclement, to coping with it and smashing it with courage. A sound revolutionary situation exists with us. The inner unity of the Party round the Central Committee and Comrade Enver Hoxha, as well as the unity of the people round the Party has never been as strong as it is today. This steel-like unity is the guarantee for the consistent implementation of the line of the Party, for the construction of socialism, for the defense of the homeland, for the defense of Marxism-Leninism.
Relying on our own forces, we have achieved brilliant results in all the fields of life -- in the ideological sphere, in production, education, everywhere. Unemployment, price-rise, degeneration, poverty, ignorance are on the other side of our barricade, they have no room in Albania. They thrive in the capitalist and revisionist countries.
But the Party teaches us that we should not sleep on laurels, never fall in self-complacency, never lower the vigilance. The Third Plenum of the Central Committee of the Party, which was held recently, arrived at the conclusion that in the present-day conditions of the imperialist-revisionist encirclement of our country, when we are face to face with the ideological aggression of the bourgeoisie and modern revisionism of every hue, when we are working and living under the growing pressure of this ideology, the main danger for us is liberalism, without underrating the danger of bureaucratism. Therefore the duty for all of us is to live with these situations, to correctly evaluate them, the dangers and the tasks facing us and, all of us must fight as revolutionaries for the realization of the tasks laid down by the historic 7th Congress of the Party, frontally and consistently wage the class struggle against every alien manifestation of the bourgeois and revisionist ideology, particularly against the manifestation of liberalism.
In the new conditions, when other new important factors are being added to the imperialist-revisionist blockade against our country, our duty is that all of us rise on foot and, with the highest feeling of responsibility, realize all the targets of the state plan, all the tasks in the ideological, economic and military spheres. In steel-like party-people unity round the Central Committee and Comrade Enver Hoxha, we are stronger than any hostile force, than any obstacle and difficulty and we are ready to climb the mountain without being short of breath, without stopping halfway, but courageously advancing always forward and upward, to socialism and communism.
The bourgeoisie and revisionism can never perceive how a small people and a small country can live free and independent without relying economically and militarily on a big state. This is a psychology created by the bourgeoisie for centuries. But such a psychology is alien to Marxism-Leninism. This bourgeois and revisionist psychology makes many people of the capitalist and revisionist countries think that "wait a day when little Albania will turn her eyes for alms on Moscow or Washington or on any other capitol of a big country". No, gentlemen, you are mistaken! Socialist Albania will never deviate from its principled positions, it will never betray the Article 28 of its Constitution, its loyalty to Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, the road of socialism and communism. What it has created, has been always created with its sweat, with the sweat of its people. Little Albania will certainly build socialism self-reliantly and in a consistent revolutionary struggle against imperialism, with U.S. imperialism in the lead, against Soviet social-imperialism and modem revisionism of every hue and brand, together with all the proletarians and genuine communists of the world, together with all the peoples of the world.
We are on a correct road. Our perspectives are brilliant. We will work still more to transform into reality these perspectives and we will certainly make our homeland more powerful and more prosperous, and the November 28 and 29 festivals will find us every year happier and stronger.
Once more wishing you the November 28 and 29 festivals, I invite you, comrades to toast to:
Our heroic people!
Our glorious Party, which is courageously leading us on the road of socialism and communism!
The beloved leader of our Party and people, Comrade Enver Hoxha!
The glory of Marxism-Leninism! End
From a leaflet distributed at a hospital.
In recent months, the monopoly capitalist class through its bourgeois news media and various politicians has been creating hysteria over rising medical prices. This hysteria is aimed at mystifying the cause of the rapidly rising prices and preparing conditions for a vicious attack on hospital workers and patients. This is what is behind the deceptive propaganda barrage of the Carter administration, some hospital boards, various labor misleaders, and the capitalist news media on rising hospital prices. Health Education and Welfare Secretary Califano has declared that American hospitals are "wasteful" and in need of a "tough cost containment program". The capitalist propaganda falsely claims that hospital workers' wages and "excessive" demand by consumers are major factors causing hospital prices to rise. The president of our hospital says that rising wages have accounted for most of the increase in room rates (room rates have almost doubled in the last 2 years. Wages, on the other hand, have not even increased enough to keep up with the cost-of-living. In fact, as a percentage of the budget, wages have actually fallen.)
Investigation proves that it is the growth and domination of finance capital in the health field and government manipulation, not "spiraling" wages or "overuse" by patients, that has caused the sky-rocketing medical costs. Finance capital has a stranglehold on the health care field and is making fantastic profits off the blood and sweat of the patients and workers. The monopoly capitalists' state machine organizes this exploitation for finance capital. Ever since World War II, the American health care industry has been heavily subsidized by the government for the purpose of providing risk-free maximum profit avenues of investment for finance capital -- i.e. banks, insurance companies, etc. One of the most profitable areas 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. At our hospital construction and expansion has been going on at a furious rate with the building of a new wing as well as the new health sciences building going up, new tunnels, remodeling, etc., resulting in a long-term debt of $70 million for the fiscal 1976. These debts carry interest rates ranging from 5% to 9%, making them a real bonanza for finance capital.
In 1965, the government took advantage of the impoverishment of the masses who could not afford medical care to funnel huge sums of tax dollars, and also borrowed money, to finance capital through the Medicare and later Medicaid programs. Government health expenditures rose from $7 billion in 1965 to $41 billion in 1975. Blue Cross payments, reflecting this expansion, rose from $3 billion in 1965 to $26 billion in 1975. With the heavy government subsidy of health care, the finance capitalists achieved an explosive growth of profits, second only to that of their investments in energy resources.
However, the capitalists are now caught in an overproduction crisis (including 100,000 hospital beds which they built but can't fill). For example, our hospital had only an 86% occupancy rate on their beds for 1975. There's an entire floor in the new wing which hasn't even been opened, yet they're still proceeding with new construction. Unwilling to accept a loss inprofit, the capitalists turn to their state machine toshift the burden of the crisis onto the workers throughcut-backs in services, layoffs, speed-ups, and wagefreezes. For example, in March, Blue Cross, a big finance capitalist insurance co. called for laying off up to 20% of hospital workers, as a means of shifting the burden of the economic crisis onto the workers and patients. In May, Business Week magazine published an article titled "Hospitals Trim Off Their Staffing Fat". (Everyone knows hospitals are grossly understaffed already. The only thing they can "trim off" is flesh and blood, not fat.) This article revealed that the Hospital Productivity Center in Austin, Texas, which is funded by HEW is divising methods to combine jobs, reduce the number of employees by up to 20%, and to brainwash the hospital workers into passively accepting these attacks in the name of "efficiency" and "productivity". Thus, finance capital is calling for increasing the exploitation of hospitalworkers and using the monopoly capitalist state machine to actually organize it.
At our hospital, workers are already under attack,with further attacks being planned. A few examplesare:
-- Workload has increased in all departments. This comes up in several ways. Over the summer only a fraction of the usual vacation replacements were hired shifting the added work onto the remaining employees. Also, when the new wing and the institute opened, for the most part, it was staffed by workers taken from the other pavilions, increasing the workload on those remaining while adding new tasks onto those who transferred. Furthermore, workers are being constantly pressured and threatened into doing work outside their job category.
-- More and more workers are being pressured to float to other units, rotate shifts, work split shifts or be worked to the maximum in one area during a busy period and then when the work becomes slack, send those employees to another area which is in its busy period and work them to the maximum there. This reduces the need to staff all areas fully and steps up the rate of exploitation of the workers considerably.
-- There are increasing demands being made on the employees to work overtime and double shifts. This is more profitable for the hospital than hiring more employees, as the hospital has less benefits to pay with fewer employees.
-- The hospital capitalists are tremendously increasing the workload of some sections of workers in order to eliminate other sections, forcing job combinations on the workers, i.e. having Nurses Aides empty garbage cans to eliminate those from housekeeping, etc. The hospital has a plan to eliminate nursing assistants within the next two years. Already the number of Nurses Aides has gone down drastically through attrition. The hospital is implementing primary care by deceptively painting it in rosy colors -- saying that the "nurses will get closer to the patients" and "will be able to use their education" in order to fool the workers into accepting it. In other words, the RN's will be doing jobs which the aides are currently doing, along with what they are already responsible for -- passing pills, charting, treatments, etc. The plan to replace aides with RN's and LPN's is more profitable for the hospital capitalists, for the aides will not be replaced one for one by the nurses, but rather there will be less staff to do the work previously done by a larger staff -- burdening the nurses with even greater workloads.
-- A big increase in fascist rules and regulations. A number of new rules have come out such as write-ups and/or firings for such "offenses" as smoking in no-smoking areas, sleeping on the floor even when on break, eating food from extra trays sent up to the floors, not taking lunch and rest breaks together, mandatory I. D. badges at all times, etc. These rules will increase the overall repression within the hospital. As well, the hospital is providing itself with a convenient excuse for getting rid of a number of employees by using the rules selectively against any employees who are fighting against the increasing workload or fascist rules and regulations.
-- An end to cost-of-living increases for union level employees thanks to the collaboration of the labor aristocrats with the capitalists to further deteriorate the wages of lower level employees in the hospital.
-- The setting up of labor/management committees engineered by the union officials and the hospital to suppress the struggles of hospital employees by channeling rebellion into narrow trade union forms, by increasing the domination of the labor aristocracy over the workers and by promoting class collaboration as the answer to the problems.
-- The patients are also being made to pay for the capitalists' crisis. As the number of workers goes down and the workload goes up, the quality of care for the patients necessarily goes down. Meanwhile, the hospital viciously slanders the workers by blaming the deterioration of the quality of care on "lazy" and "uncaring" employees. This also shows that the hospital's standard propaganda that the workers should accept the attacks "for the good of the patients" is nothing but a foul lie.
The medical care crisis and its reflection at our hospital are part and parcel of the deepening all-sided economic crisis of the monopoly capitalist system. The rich are using their state machine to make the working class and people pay for the crisis and to prepare for imperialist war as a way out for the bourgeoisie. The working class is rising in struggle to resist these attacks, as can be seen by the increasing number of strikes, etc. The state organized attacks singling out hospital workers for particular sacrifice is bound to meet with fierce resistance.
Resistance to these attacks at our hospital is bound to continue and to develop even further. Workers atour hospital must consciously persist in wagingstruggle against the attacks by relying on our ownstrength and opposing the lackey mentality of thelabor aristocrats. Oppose the class collaborationist labor/management schemes of the hospital and labor aristocracy! Oppose increased workloads, fascist rules and regulations, decreasing wages and the phasing out of nursing assistants! Working and oppressed people must wage revolutionary class struggle to make the monopoly capitalists bear the burden of all the evils they have given birth to and overthrow the monopoly capitalist dictators. End.
The following article is reprinted from the November 22, 1977, Vol. 3, #6 issue of The Philadelphia Worker, newspaper of the Philadelphia Branch of COUSML.
As the 1977 school year began throughout the country, the question of fighting and completely smashing the government-organized racist and fascist anti-busing movement remains a burning practical problem to be taken up for solution by the proletariat and oppressed people in the U.S.
In the last few years, since the monopoly capitalist ruling class organized and incited an anti-busing movement on a wide scale to launch violent racist and fascist attacks on the Afro-American people, on their democratic right to attend integrated public schools, and on the unity of the American working class, the revolutionary and fighting American people, with the Afro-American people as the main force, have dealt the fascist anti-busing movement one set-back after another, put it on the skids in Boston and Louisville, and in general given it a good thrashing.
However, the reactionary ruling class, the big monopoly capitalists, have not laid down their butcher knives nor changed their behavior in any fundamental way as a result of the beating they have taken at the hands of the anti-fascist people. In a number of cities, most recently in Chicago, the bourgeois government is still trying to organize the anti-busing movement-- that is, still trying to incite a section of white workers and people, especially the sorely oppressed youth, to go against their proletarian class interests and become the hangmen and attackers of their most oppressed Black class brothers.
The American bourgeoisie's latest attempt to organize the anti-busing movement is part and parcel of their fascist offensive against the American working class and people which aims at driving the Black people back into semi-slavery and splitting the working class on a racist basis so as to shift the whole burden of the present capitalist economic crisis onto the people, defuse the mass revolutionary struggles of the proletariat, and secure a stable home base from which to wage aggressive imperialist war with its chief rival -- the New Tsars of Russian social-imperialism.
Here in Philadelphia, the rich moneybags and their government are working overtime on three basic fronts to prepare conditions for the wide-scale emergence of the anti-busing movement, while launching further attacks on the Afro-American people and on the working class. The three fronts are:
1. Through the fascist Rizzo government, the courts, the School Board and the entire state machine, the bourgeoisie is floating the so-called "voluntary desegregation" plan by means of so-called "magnet schools" with specialized curriculums. This "voluntary desegregation" plan is a straightforward plan for maintaining intact the highly segregated Philadelphia school system. In fact, this "integration" plan is so blatantly racist and segregationist that the bourgeois school authorities are at present planning to include a mere 600 students out of a total 266,000 in the entire school system. And this step is still only on the drawing board! So much for the "voluntary desegregation" of the government of the monopoly capitalist dictators.
As the various spokesmen of the Rizzo government and the School Board have carried out their propaganda campaign in favor of their "voluntary desegre- ular, during public hearings last year, Rizzo's mouthpieces ranted and raved trying to make the. issuq busing itself and to mystify the government-organized racist and fascist movement which seeks to carry out violent attacks on the Afro-American people. In actual fact, however, the government has never opposed "busing" as such, as it buses thousands of white students on a daily basis to the highly segregated Catholic school system in Philadelphia with money stolen from the working class as taxes. Thus the government of the big capitalists does not hesitate to use buses to maintain the segregation of the Black and white youth, but hypocritically opposes busing in support of the democratic right of the Afro-American people to attend integrated schools.
Through this "anti-busing" propaganda and by various other means, the government of the rich is the outright organizer of the fascist anti-busing movement.
That the government is organizing the anti-busing movement in Philadelphia can be further illustrated by the statements of the "democrat" Rizzo and the "republican" Foglietta during the last mayoral campaign. Both candidates of the capitalist political parties openly gave their support to those fascist antibusing groups in existence, Foglietta even calling for buses to be dumped in the river. Since Rizzo's second term in office began, he has "lived up" to his reactionary campaign promises by appointing two leaders of the racist anti-busing groups, Edward Jennings and William Yeats, to serve on the task force in charge of floating the "voluntary desegregation" fraud of the government.
On the state-wide basis, both the Pennsylvania legislature and the Shapp administration have come out against busing as a means of school integration. The legislature has passed anti-busing bills three times. Each time Shapp has vetoed these bills, he has explained that it is not because he opposes them in principle, but merely because he has a tactical difference with the legislature. That is, he has different ideas on how to attack the Afro-American people and split the working class.
Thus, through the "voluntary desegregation" fraud, open propaganda against busing, and fascist legislation, the government is preparing conditions for the anti-busing movement to emerge on a wide scale and carry out its attacks on the Black people and the whole working class.
2. During the present grave economic and financial crisis of the capitalist system, the school crisis has become particularly profound as has the whole crisis in the public sector. The finance and monopoly capitalists, headed in Philadelphia by the First Pennsylvania-Bunting group, have seized direct control over the School Board and have dictated massive cuts in school programs and lay-offs of school workers, and have set a 7% "no-growth" school budget. Of the several hundred or more laid-off blue collar school workers (final decisions have not yet been made), an important part have been the school bus drivers and mechanics, whose ranks have been cut so that service will also be cut, leaving buses in disrepair and unsafe. The monopoly capitalists are thus cutting the physical services needed for a city-wide busing plan while such a plan is still in the courts, showing they have against it.
The propaganda of the rich about the so-called "high cost" of school integration is.an underhanded way to blame the Afro-American people for the shifting of the crisis onto the workers in the event a tax increase is called for to "restore" needed services in order to implement a court-decreed busing plan.
3. The reactionary bourgeoisie is whipping up a racist and fascist mass movement against the democratic right of the Black people to live in integrated public housing. This supplements the Philadelphia Housing Authority's racist policy, making sure that there is as little integration of the public housing projects as possible. The fascist movement on the housing front is concentrated in South Philadelphia and organized into the so-called Whitman Defense League. The Whitman area has strong ties with the Rizzo government through a network of various bureaucrats who administer "public" programs funneled into the area by Rizzo.
This anti-Black, anti-working class movement thus provides ideological support and cannon fodder for the anti-busing movement by carrying out openly racist and fascist propaganda against the Black people. At present, the "Whitman Defense League" is openly calling for violent racist attacks on Black people in the event the proposed public housing is actually built and integrated. This type of fascist movement acts as a base for city-wide anti-busing fascists.
Thus, working directly through the government on three fronts, the bourgeoisie is preparing Philadelphia for the wide scale emergence of the anti- busing movement aimed at attacking the Afro-American people and the entire working class.
Why is this three-front program developing at just this time in Philadelphia ? It is precisely because the class struggles of the people are broadening and deepening and consciousness of revolutionary struggle is growing on the national and world scale that the bourgeoisie is launching an offensive to stop this struggle.
Here in Philadelphia, the strike movement of the proletariat is surging vigorously forward, workers are more and more defying the fascist injunctions of the state and taking up revolutionary violence against the counter-revolutionary violence of the state. The movement of the national minority people, in particular the Puerto Rican people, is advancing against police attacks and has the bourgeoisie in a panic. Thus the anti-busing movement is the "antidote" which the monopoly capitalists hope will kill the contagious revolutionary upsurge coursing through the body of capitalist society.
Thus the bourgeoisie is throwing down the challenge to the proletariat. Will we stand up and smash the fascist anti-busing movement and the whole fascist offensive, or will the Afro-American people be enslaved and the working class split in the midst of its developing revolutionary upsurge?
It is thus up to the working class and people to launch one struggle after another to smash the government's attempt to organize the racist and fascist anti-busing movement.
Only by militantly taking up this task can the working class become firmly united for all its mass struggles and for the proletarian revolution, which will smash the fascist American state once and for all and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat, under which real democracy will be upheld for the proletariat and oppressed people. End.
Beginning on October 1st, 50,000 dockworkers, members of the International Longshoremans' Association (ILA), waged a 63-day strike at 30 ports along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts from Maine to Texas. In this contract strike, the dockworkers have been struggling against the shipping monopolies who have been attempting to maximize their profits by: 1) decreasing the size of the dockworker labor force, 2) increasing the productivity of all dockworkers, 3) refusing to pay all dockworkers a Guaranteed Annual Income, which the dockworkers have demanded in the face of increasing job insecurity.
During the last 10 or more years the dockworkers in the U.S. have been under vicious attack by the shipping monopolists through extreme intensification of the dockers' labor and ever increasing job insecurity. In the past 10-15 years the shipping monopolists have introduced automated cargo handling -- the use of Containerized Ships, LASH SHIPS (mother ships carrying barges which hold up to 300 tons each), RO-RO SHIPS (ships equipped with ramps for tractor trailer trucks to be driven off and on). With automated cargo-handling, today it takes 14 men 11/2 days to unload a ship which it previously took 125 men two weeks to unload using traditional break-bulk cargo handling. Today 70% of all cargo arriving in the U.S. from foreign ports arrives in containers, etc. This has all meant that the productivity of each dockworker has greatly increased and in some ports the total number of workers has been cut by 50%, thus forcing thousands of dockworkers into the ranks of the unemployed. In addition to these ongoing vicious attacks, the shipping monopolists are demanding greater and greater productivity and smaller and smaller work gangs each time there is a new contract.
[Chart: CHANGE IN PRODUCTIVITY WHENCONTAINERS ARE USED]
The American dockworkers' struggle has also come under attack by the U.S. monopoly capitalist government. In 1975 the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) which administers "neutral -- blind Justice" and "arbitrates between the two conflicting parties: the corporations and labor" attacked the struggle of the dockworkers for job security when it struck down U.S. government agencies are nothing more than tools of the rich used for maximization of profit and attempted suppression of the workers' movement under the guise of neutrality.
In face of this increasing exploitation and ever-present job insecurity the dockworkers have waged the current strike and have demanded the following:
1) Guaranteed Annual Income (GAI) for all dockworkers,
2) guaranteed soundness of pension funds, health and welfare funds and vacation funds,
3) increasing job security for those dockworkers who continue to work (the number of workers per work-gang kept constant).
HOW THE ILA LABOR BUREAUCRATS HEADED BY TEDDY GLEASON HAVE OPPOSED THE STRUGGLE OF THE DOCKWORKERS AND HAVE AIDED THE SHIPPING CAPITALISTS BY ATTACKING THE DOCKWORKERS
In developing their strike struggle against the shipping capitalists the dockworkers have faced constant opposition from the International president of their union, Teddy Gleason. As soon as the national strike began, Gleason announced that the dockworkers would only have a "selective strike" against automated containerized ships. This put the dockworkers in the position of one worker competing against another, of one worker on strike -- the othernot,one port almost totally shut down (N.Y. -N.J. -- 75% of all cargo is in containers) competing against another port almost totally open (New Orleans has only 20% containerized cargo). Gleason called this "selective strike" under the guise that it was striking a blow against containerization -- "the main reason for the loss of dockworkers jobs". For sorrie ports where only a small fraction of the work is done on automated cargo ships, this has been no strike at all. In fact in ports where there is little containerization, the loss of jobs comes mainly from increasing the intensity of the dockworkers labor through the reduction of the size of the work-gangs. The real reason behind Gleason's "selective strike" is to allow the shipping monopolists to continue to ship perishable agricultural goods not transported on containerized ships, i. e. wheat grains, soybeans and corn; to generally weaken the dockworkers' bargaining position in ports with little container use; and to allow the shipping monopolists to prepare plans to automate those ports with little or no containerized cargo, thus increasing productivity per worker and drastically cutting the total workforce.
In the face of these ongoing attacks upon the dockworkers' struggle by the shipping monopolists and their government, along with the class collaboration and conciliation by the top labor bureaucrats within the ILA, the 50,000 dockworkers have had to wage a determined 63-day strike struggle to win the following concessions: wage increases of approximately 10%, which will barely keep them ahead of the soaring rate of inflation, and a Guaranteed Annual Income program (GAI) which varies from port to port (hailed by workers in some ports and denounced by others).
NEW ORLEANS DOCKWORKERS WAGE MASS STRUGGLE AGAINST SHIPPING MONOPOLISTS AND LABOR BUREAUCRATS HEADED BY GLEASON
As soon as the national strike began, the New Orleans dockworkers voted to begin a total cargo strike against all cargo ships at the Port of New Orleans. Following this vote, one local union official immediately denounced the mass struggle of the dockworkers, calling for a re-vote on the question of total cargo strike, and threatening the dockworkers by saying that Gleason might take over the union local if they continued their mass struggle. The next day, the same local union official continued to denounce the workers saying that they didn't understand the directions of the International Executive Board. On the mass picket lines, workers explained that there was no confusion of issues or directions when they voted for the total cargo strike. The dockers felt that the New Orleans Steamship Association (NOSSA) contract proposal would set them back 30 years and that Gleason's "selective strike" scheme would pit one worker against another. Within in a few days the local labor bureaucrats called a meeting for a re-vote on the question of total cargo strike, at which time they announced (without a vote being taken) that the total cargo strike was over and all dockers should return to work on the regular break-bulk cargo ships. Hundreds of dockers jumped to their feet and denounced this sabotage by the local officials. Under the protection of two police bodyguards, the local union officials quickly left the meeting. The very next day, other local union officials, under the protection of police from New Orleans and the Port Authority (Harbor Police), crossed the dockworkers picket lines in attempt to create a back-to-work movement. This strike-breaking effort by the local union officials was a complete failure when they were only able to mobilize 150 dockers out of a total of more than 3,000. Within a few days, the dockers agreed to have a revote on the question of total cargo strike only if voting machines were to be used and if retirees were not allowed to vote on the total strike issue. The vote was taken and the dockers continued to support the total cargo strike. Some workers proclaimed that the total cargo strike was to gain more bargaining power against the NOSSA and to show the NOSSA and the ILA leaders that the dockers would not work without a contract. Also at this time, the New Orleans dockworkers sent teams of dockworkers to many southern ports to discuss the use of the total cargo strike as a weapon against the attacks by the shipping monopolists and the class capitulation by top ILA labor bureaucrats.
By the fourteenth day of the total cargo strike, more than 50 ocean going vessels fully loaded were anchored in the Gulf of Mexico, 1,000 grain barges were backed up at the Port of New Orleans, and 1,200 more grain barges were on their way down the Mississippi River. Shipping and agriculture monopolists were in a panic. The National Wheat Growers Association, the American Soybean Growers Association and 100 U.S. Congressmen were asking President Carter to invoke a Taft-Hartley injunction against the striking dockworkers.
In previous years, the dockworkers had often been attacked by the monopoly capitalist government intervening into their strike struggles. Since 1948 the U.S. government has issued Taft-Hartley injunctions to suppress workers' strike struggles 30 times. 12 of these have been against Maritime strikes, including 9 issued against strikes by the ILA. Also, as earlier noted, in 1975 the NLRB attacked the dockworkers struggle for job security by outlawing the contract clause giving the dockworkers the right to load and unload all containerized cargo within a 50-mile radius of a port.
On the 16th day of the total cargo strike, a local union president and the International Executive Board headed by Gleason ordered the New Orleans dockworkers. to end their total cargo strike or face union trials, fines, suspensions, and expulsions from the union. Gleason also made it clear that he was preparing to take over the local union: and put it under the trusteeship of the International Executive Board. Under the extreme pressure of these threats, the New Orleans dockworkers ended the total cargo strike. Within ten days, Gleason carried out his earlier threat and put local 1419 under executive board trusteeship, thus trying to smash any. future opposition and mass struggle by the New Orleans dockers.
On December 1st when the dockworkers voted on the national contract the two largest locals in New Orleans (locals 1418 and 1419) defeated the contract by a vote of 628 to 485. Dockworkers denounced this contract saying that the GAI provisions were useless, that there were too many debits (exclusions) in it (just as in previous contracts) and that because of these debits only $5,000 in GAI payments had been paid out in the last 5 years in New Orleans. (Debits -- Exclusions are paid days deducted from the total days worked by a worker, i.e., vacations, holidays, sick days, etc., making it impossible for New Orleans dockers to collect GAI.)
In previous dockworkers' strikes, the national strike was not ended until all locals had agreed to the national and local contract but this year Gleason was determined to serve his monopoly capitalist masters and suppress the dockworkers' struggle. He ordered the New Orleans dockworkers back to work, saying that a "majority" of the New Orleans dockworkers had accepted the contract -- therefore the vote of the two largest locals in New Orleans was over-ruled.
The experiences of the New Orleans dockworkers in waging their 16-day total cargo strike against the attempts of the shipping monopolists to intensify their labor, to increase their productivity, and the struggles against the treachery and capitulation of the top labor bureaucrats within the ILA headed by Gleason are valuable lessons for all workers. Neither attempts at suppression by the capitalists, their government or the labor bureaucrats will be able to smash the growing resistance and mass struggle of the dockworkers and among the workers movement as a whole. End.
On October 17, the coal miners of Blue Diamond Coal Co. 's Justus mine at Stearns, Ky., who have been on strike for 17 months, waged militant battle in their struggle to organize themselves into the United Mine Workers union. The miners and their supporters heroically resisted an attack on their picket line by 80 heavily armed Ky. State Police, injuring a number of state troopers and severely damaging many police cars. Today the monopoly capitalists are trying to smash the coal miners' movement in order to shift the burden of the economic and energy crisis onto the workers and to make them pay with their sweat for the war preparations of U.S. imperialism under the signboard of Carter's energy program. The capitalists are maintaining an increasing number of unorganized mines and shifting production to them. But the long struggle of the Steams miners, and particularly their recent militant battle, shows that the struggle of the unorganized miners to organize themselves against the exploitation of the coal companies is growing stronger and more intense and this is strengthening the over-all movement of all the miners against the kings of coal.
This latest struggle began when Blue Diamond decided to try to work the mine with scabs. On October 12, for the first time in the strike, three scabs entered the mine, escorted by the Ky. State Police. Temporarily caught off guard, the miners allowed these scoundrels across their picket line without a fight. But by the end of the shift 100 miners gathered and launched a determined counter-attack, singling out the truck-full of scabs as they tried to sneak away. In revenge for this just struggle, the State Police spent the rest of the night wantonly roaming through Steams, snatching up miners from their homes and jailing them. In all, 16 miners were arrested, including some who were not even at the mine site. On October 13 and 14 again five cars of state troopers were on hand to see the scabs safely across the picket line.
Learning of Blue Diamond's plans to send 80 scabs across the picket line on Monday, October 17, the miners prepared for further defense of their strike. Despite the fact that almost 50 of the miners were already facing trials for breaking court orders against mass picketing and for wounding two of the company's gun thugs, and despite the continued threats of the judge that maximum sentences would be imposed for any violations of his orders and that he was even considering calling in the National Guard to suppress the strike -- despite these odds, 130 miners defiantly formed a mass picket at 6 AM to repel the scabs. Several dozen wives and supporters amassed in front yards a short distance from the picket line. As the day went by it became clear that it was not the scabs which Blue Diamond was going to hurl at the miners, but a massive force of 80 heavily armed Ky. State Police. For over eight hours the two sides faced each other. At 2 pm. the State Police suddenly began speeding toward the picket line in their cruisers in an obvious assault. The miners' wives realized what was going on, blocked the road to prevent any more police from getting by them and launched an inspired counter-attack on the police and their cruisers. The women took rocks, clubs and a hatchet and smashed windshields and windows, ripped off chrome and severely damaged 12 cruisers before the police could capture them.
At the picket line, the commander of the State Police approached the miners and announced they were all under arrest. But when he tried to enforce his order and grabbed one of the miners, a violent battle broke out. The miners threw rocks and bottles at the charging police. They wielded clubs and baseball bats to punish the police for their fascist attack. The battle raged for several minutes, extending from the picket line to the front yards of nearby houses. In one case, the police wantonly attacked the 61-year-old mother of a striking miner, dragging her from her porch through a ditch and across a gravel path. Her 15-year-old son, like a true son of the proletariat, dove right into the middle of the police to defend his mother and punish the police. Altogether, the miners inflicted injury on five state troopers, and twelve police cruisers were smashed. The police arrested a total of 108 miners and their supporters, so many that they had to be distributed between three jails in three counties.
With vengeance on their minds, the Blue Diamond coal capitalists have continued their assault on the strike. Lackeys of the company have carried out atrocious acts of terrorism against the miners and their families away from the picket line. The miners, in a difficult situation with their leaders in jail and 68 more under threat of instant imprisonment should they so much as violate a traffic law, are under constant surveillance by the police. Every day, some 15 or so scabs cross the picket line with State Police escort. The company claims these scabs are cleaning up the mine and getting ready to run coal. Mine Enforcement Safety Act officials have been notified of these plans and are preparing to inspect the mine and give their blessing to reopening the mine with scab labor.
Despite these tremendous odds, the miners remain determined. The capitalists have been moaning in their newspapers that instead of breaking the will of the miners as they had hoped, this struggle has in fact stiffened the miners' defiant spirit and made them more determined to carry the struggle through to the end. Since the battle, increasing numbers of miners and other workers have come to the support of the Stearns miners. Organized miners from other areas have sent delegations to Stearns to learn from the struggle and pledge support. Steams miners support committees have been established and rallies held in several cities outside east Kentucky. Recently a mass picket of 200 organized miners marched on the Justus mine and closed it down, sending the scabs scurrying, as part of the campaign to shut the non-union mines during the national coal strike. The Steams miners are getting prepared for further battles, to further resist the reactionary violence of the state with mass struggle.
These latest incidents at Steams thoroughly expose the true role of the capitalists' state machine -- its government at all levels. Right from the beginning of the strike the capitalists have tried to promote the lie that the government is "neutral" in the strike and is only involved to keep the "peace". In order to hoodwink the miners, the bourgeois news media even claimed that, after the police had protected the scabs and arrested 16 miners on October 12, these poor oppressed policemen were protesting against being armed guards for the scabs! The circuit court judge even claimed that the main thing he was interested in was trying to prevent someone from losing his life! The events of October 17 have exploded this myth of "neutrality" and keeping the "peace". The same police who claim they don't like protecting scabs not only continued to escort scabs on the 13th and 14th of October, but launched a massive violent attack on the miners and supporters on the 17th, injuring and arresting many miners and their supporters. And today these same police continue to escort the scabs across the picket line and have the miners under constant surveillance. As for the judge, his method of "preventing a killing" is to jail as many miners as possible and place the threat of imprisonment over scores of other miners! After October 17, 79 miners were sentenced to six months in jail. Of these, 11 were jailed right away and 68 more were released on $1000 "good behavior" bonds. These bonds stipulate that if the miners break any law or any present or future injunction they will lose the money and immediately go to jail. Besides these charges, 31 miners still await trial for the wounding of the two Blue Diamond gun thugs; 34 women still face trial for their just destruction of the police cruisers; and another five miners, two of whom are still in the hospital, face charges of breaking the court's injunction. These activities of the state in the Steams miners' strike leave no room for illusions about the government. It is not "neutral" between the classes but is an instrument of the capitalists, a machine of reactionary violence to attack the working class and to defend the rule of the rich.
But the Steams miners have not been intimidated by these latest in a long series of attacks. For 17 months, since July 17, 1976, the miners have carried on their strike for safe working conditions, a UMWA contract and in defense of their Organization. They have repeatedly fought off every attack on their picket line, have time and time again defied orders of the capitalist courts and have waged armed struggle against Blue Diamond's army of gun thugs. The Steams miners remain confident of (eventual victory; They are preparing to make any sacrifice to further defend their strike and bring Blue Diamond to its knees. After the October 17 fascist police assault, one of the miners' wives expressed!the determination and fighting spirit of the miners, saying: "We'd give our lives now to get this union in."
In Eastern Kentucky, where 75 per cent of the coal is mined in non-union mines, the class struggle of the miners is extremely sharp. At Brookside in 1974, and now at Stearns, the question of organizing the unorganized miners has been taken up squarely by the miners. The miners are determined to persist in their struggle until victory. End.
Last November 6, Jurquet's opportunist group ("Humanite Rouge") held a meeting at the Mutualite in Paris. Some militants from our Party went to the door of the Mutualite to distribute our newspaper ElPueblo, the Chilean Anti-Fascist News Agency (ANCHA) and the book: Chile: An Attempt at HistoricCompromise by our comrade Jorge Palacios. A group of killers who were part of the security service at the meeting violently assaulted our comrades, comrades from the Communist Party of Spain (Marxist-Leninist) and French Marxist-Leninist comrades who were disseminating material from the International Communist Movement. The "Humanite Rouge" opportunists tried through the use of force, using the same methods as the revisionists and the fascists, to stop us from disseminating pur material, in which we analyze the Chilean experience and we resolutely attack the Pinochet fascist military junta.
This is not an isolated event, neither is it the first time that we have been assaulted by these opportunists. Already on last March 19, when "Humanite Rouge" held a meeting in the same Mutualite, on the occasion of the Anniversary of the Paris Commune, our Party comrades who had set up a table to disseminate our material were expelled from the place, and had to limit themselves to the street in order to distribute the material. (On November 6, they went even further than this, attacking us so that we could not even be on the street)! At the beginning of this year, these same opportunists prohibited the sale of our newspaper El Pueblo in their bookshop, for having published the "Joint Statement of the Marxist-Leninist Parties of Latin America!" signed in Tirana.
TO WHAT CAN WE ATTRIBUTE THIS HYSTERICAL ATTITUDE OF THE "HUMANITE ROUGE" OPPORTUNISTS AGAINST OUR PARTY?
In the first place, to the fact that our Party firmly fights against the Pinochet dictatorship although he is considered by these renegades as the leader of a country of the so-called "third world, motive force of history".
Our Party, in its positions as well as in its practice, has all along been fighting against this "new" theory of the division of the world in three, refusing to curb the class struggle in our country. Our position on the question of the dictatorship is very clear: We support whatever helps us isolate, weaken, destroy and overthrow the tyranny and we fight againsteverything and everyone which contributes to strengthening it, consolidating it and giving it prestige. We believe that one should boycott the dictatorship on all fronts. The opportunists from Jurquet's group oppose this position and they do not support the struggle of the Chilean people, do not fight the Pinochet dictatorship and they have reached the point of attacking our militants to try to stop the solidarity with our struggle.
Another reason for which these opportunists do not support the struggle of our people is because it is also directed against Yankee imperialism, number one enemy of our people. Since Mr. Jurquet only speaks against Russian social-imperialism and not only does not fight Yankee imperialism, but he considers it as an ally in "the struggle against the most dangerous superpower", of course he does not support our struggle.
This attitude is typical of the opportunists who put forward the nefarious theory of the "three worlds", since they believe that it is not necessary to fight against the regimes in the countries of the "third world", that one should not isolate them, boycott them, condemn them, but that one should support them and unite with them as some of them in fact do.
The aggression of the opportunists against our comrades only shows their weakness, desperation and growing isolation. What is certain is that these hardened opportunists, by assaulting our comrades, will not stop the solidarity with the struggle of the Chilean people.
The opportunists like Jurquet will end -- where they are already heading -- in the garbage can of history, and they will be buried together with the bourgeoisie and revisionism, together with their masters whose faithful lackeys they are.
International Commission of the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Chile
November, 1977 End.
The following article is reprinted from the October 1977 issue of A.N.CH.A., produced by the External Section of the People's Front of Chile.
For quite a while, the reformist sectors who surfaced during the government of Popular Unity, supported by the sectors that present themselves as "ultra-revolutionaries", have been putting forward the nefarious theory of the "lesser evil". This opportunist theory is concretized today in the maneuvers aimed at perpetuating fascism, aimed at the continuation of "pinochetism" without Pinochet.
In seeing this, many may think that they are slanders invented and launched fortuitously against sectors which call themselves anti-fascist and who say they fight for the overthrow of the fascist military junta. But, the objective reality and the facts show that the opposite is the case.
To begin with we will point out that these sectors have denied and obscured the struggles of the Resistance and of the Chilean people against their oppressors. They have said that it does not exist and they have only raised the atrocities committed by fascism, promoting compassion for the Chilean people instead of fighting solidarity. Basing themselves on this, they have elaborated all their strategy in order to once again place themselves at the tail end of the bourgeoisie. The same bourgeoisie sold out to imperialism which supported with all its might the fascist military and the coup d'etat.
Their present position towards the U.S. government is also the result of this stand. The reformists placed all their hopes in Carter, hoping that Carter, by coming out as the defender of human rights and as a result of his criticisms of the tyrant Pinochet, would promote the exchange of the dictatorship and implant in its stead an out-and-out supporter of U.S. imperialism: Frei.
Today, after over one year with the Carter government and in spite of all the expressions of "good faith" on the part of the imperialists towards Pinochet, the illusions of the reformists and their allies carry on.
This is why they persist in their desire of making believe that a dictatorial civil-military regime, with all its inherent restrictions is better or would be better than the present dictatorship. It is to this position, promoted by the pro-yankee sections of the Christian Democrats and other reactionaries, that the reformist sectors of the Chilean "left" want to adhere and which in their practice they promote. It is to this position that they want to lead the people and the anti-fascists, to attempt to change one fascist regime for another one which is the same but has a "democratic" mask.
We say categorically that we are against the fascist regime and any other which imperialism tries to impose. We fight for a genuine democratic government of anti-fascist unity and we fight for the real liberation of our people.
The genuine anti-fascists cannot fight to return to the past, neither can they fight to change the wagon of fascism.
But, we are also clear that, if as a result of the inter-bourgeois contradictions and the need of the reactionaries to attempt to stop the people's struggle, imperialism and the reaction decide to bring about an "exchange" and thus permit certain liberties which are presently prohibited, but maintaining all the while the oppression, the imperialist plunder, poverty, etc., it is necessary to take advantage of such a situation. Faced with such a situation, the genuine antifascists should adopt adequate tactics and continue the struggle to smash fascism once and for all. For no reason whatsoever can one focus the present struggle in order to change the face of fascism, but it must be led towards the destruction of the very roots of fascism.
Those who pursue the exchange are the imperialists and the reactionaries who thus attempt to perpetuate their domination, fearing that the popular struggle will overthrow the dictatorship. This is the reason they are trying to find a "way out".
The old and manhandled theory of the "lesser evil" is one of the many snares that the bourgeoisie has always used to achieve its aims.
Our people will not let themselves be fooled because they have already learned the lesson and they will not place themselves at the tail end of a sector of the bourgeoisie to say that the other is better, just as we also do not want to change one imperialism for another. We are fighting for a genuine national independence.
The people and the people alone will liberate themselves.
NO TO FASCISM!
NO TO THE ANTI-PEOPLE MANEUVERS! NO TO THE THEORY OF THE "LESSER EVIL"!
YES TO THE UNITY OF ALL GENUINELY ANTI-FASCIST SECTORS!
YES TO THE STRUGGLE TO OVERTHROW THE DICTATORSHIP AND SMASH FASCISM!
FIGHTING WE WILL WIN! End.
The Workers' Advocate hails the 8th Congress of Eritreans for Liberation in North America. We enthusiastically greet the formation of Association of Eritrean Students in North America and the Association of Eritrean Women in North America which took place at the congress. A strong unity exists between the Eritrean and American people which is based on the struggle against the same enemies, U.S. imperialism and all reaction. We are sure that the warm relations which have always existed between the EFLNA and the COUSML in the past will further develop with the founding of the new organizations. We reprint below a report on the 8th Congress of the EFLNA from the October 1977 issue of the Newsletter of Association of Eritrean Students in North America.
The 8th general congress of Eritreans for Liberation in North America was held from August 15-20, 1977 in Washington, D. C. It was a successful congress in which an atmosphere of extraordinary enthusiasm, jubilation, unity and the spirit of struggle prevailed throughout. About 700 member and nonmember Eritreans residing all over the U.S. and Canada participated in the congress. A representative of the EPLF also attended the congress.
The presence of the EPLF's representative generated even more enthusiasm and revolutionary spirit. Amidst a great ovation the comrade representative presented the EPLF's important message to the congress -- inspiring and arousing our members' deepest love for the EPLF revolutionary vanguard. The comrade's speech was time and again interrupted with stormy applause and cheers. Prolonged shouting of the slogans "Long Live EPLF!", "Victory to the Masses!" and "Destroy the Enemy with his own Guns and Bullets!", and standing ovations for the EPLF vanguard, the heroic Eritrean People's Liberation Army (EPLA), our valiant masses and all struggling peoples of the world was prevalent all the way.
The EPLF in its message presented a succinct report on the magnificent achievements it has made in all of its revolutionary endeavors. It paid special attention to: the work in the mobilization, organization and arming of the masses; the painstaking efforts being made to be self-reliant in food requirements and other necessities, to consolidate and reconstruct the liberated areas; the stunning military victories being won by the resolute EPLA and the relentless struggle being waged to form the national united front. In making a profound scientific analysis of the situation in the Horn of Africa, the EPLF firmly reiterated that it will foil any machination against the Eritrean people's just struggle and that it is determined to raise high the banner of national liberation until final victory.
The EPLF's inspirational message was well received and gained our congress' profound admiration. It further strengthened the unity of our organization around the EPLF. In addition to the EPLF's message our sisterly mass organizations of patriotic Eritreans in Europe and the Middle East -- the Eritreans for Liberation in Europe (now the Association of Eritrean Workers in Europe and the Association of Eritrean Students in Europe), the Association of Eritrean Women in Beirut, the Association of Eritrean Workers in Kuwait, the Association of Eritrean Workers in Libya and the Association of Eritrean Students in Libya -- also sent warm solidarity messages, adding still more to the enthusiasm of our congress.
The congress' deliberations centered around the political paper on the significance of the EPLF's 1st congress, the EPLF's important message, the penetrating reports presented by the Central Committee of EFLNA, all the chapters and the various committees. On the basis of the reports vigorous discussions ensued. The international situation, the situation in the Eritrean struggle and the Horn of Africa, the situation in EFLNA were taken up for thorough and broad discussion.
The congress passed a number of resolutions of great importance on the international, national and organizational questions.
In dealing with the international situation, the congress affirmed that the struggle between the forces of national liberation, people's democracy and socialism on the one hand and imperialism, colonialism and all reaction on the other has sharpened in favor of the revolutionary forces. The congress noted that imperialism is, in frantic moves, designing counterrevolutionary plots to crush the people's struggles; hence the congress called upon the revolutionary forces to step up their struggle and frustrate the imperialist counter-revolutionary schemes. The congress resolved to give its unwavering support to the national liberation struggles of the peoples of Zimbabwe, Azania, Namibia, Palestine, Oman, Sahara, East Timor, Philippines, Puerto Rico; the people's struggles in Africa, Asia and Latin America against imperialism and their lackeys; the working class struggle in the capitalist countries and, in particular, the struggle of the U.S. working class and the oppressed nationalities against monopoly capital.
Noting that imperialism after its complete defeat in Southeast Asia has placed its focus on the Middle East, the Horn of Africa and Southern Africa, the congress strongly condemned it for its counter-revolutionary designs and activities to crush the national liberation movements in these regions.
On the situation in the Horn of Africa, the congress after a thorough discussion noted that the region has become a hot bed where the forces of revolution and forces of reaction are locked in a fierce class struggle. U.S. imperialism is frantically maneuvering to liquidate the national liberation movements and to secure its economic and military interests in this strategic region. It is backing the Ethiopian fascist junta and the counter-revolutionary gang of feudalists and aristocrats, the Ethiopian Democratic Union, while at the same time designing a neo-colonial solution for the Eritrean question by supporting the reactionary elements within the Eritrean Liberation Movement, the Sabbe clique in particular.
The Soviet Union and Cuba are providing all-round political, military, economic and diplomatic support to the Ethiopian fascist junta while at the same time slanderously attacking the national struggle of the Eritrean people and progressive Ethiopian organizations. In light of this the 8th congress resolved to condemn the Soviet Union's all out support and arming of the fascist junta to crush the Eritrean people's just and revolutionary struggle and to suppress the struggle of the Ethiopian masses. It likewise denounced Cuba's training of the fascist junta's troops and its concerted propaganda campaign against the Eritrean revolution and the Ethiopian people's struggle.
The congress thoroughly discussed the situation in Ethiopia. It condemned the fascist junta in the strongest terms: for its ties with imperialism and Zionism, for its colonialist and genocidal policy in Eritrea; its violation of the democratic rights of, and its reign of terror on, the Ethiopian people and its fascistic witch hunt of their progressive organizations. The congress expressed its unflinching support of the struggle of the Ethiopian masses and their progressive organizations against the fascist junta and its backers. The congress voiced its support of the democratic and progressive movements of the oppressed nationalities and condemned the counter-revolutionary activities of the feudalists and other reactionaries.
After a detailed study of the present situation in the Eritrean struggle, the 8th congress affirmed that our people's revolutionary struggle is in a favorable position. The liberation forces have seized the initiative and the enemy is in complete disarray. The occupationist troops are being annihilated in the big towns, the liberated areas have been extensively enlarged and consolidated. Ethiopian colonialism is fast crumbling and our people's struggle is on the verge of complete victory. Within the Eritrean liberation movement the reactionary elements are exposed and isolated and the hegemony of the revolutionary forces is ensured.
The congress hailed the EPLF as the vanguard of the Eritrean revolution for its correct and revolutionary political line, its efforts in mobilizing, organizing and arming the masses, its courageous implementation of the correct revolutionary principle of self-reliance in all fields of revolutionary activity, and its resolute struggle to form the national united front.
The 8th congress hailed the EPLA for the unprecedented victories it is winning in accordance with the correct strategy of people's war.
The congress hailed the 1st congress of the EPLF as a great political victory for the EPLF in particular and the Eritrean revolution in general. The 8th congress unanimously accepted the revolutionary national democratic program adopted by the EPLF congress as well as the resolutions it passed and the calls it made, convinced that they truly represent the basic aspirations and fulfill the demands of the Eritrean masses and accelerate and guarantee the victory of the Eritrean revolution. The congress pledged to resolutely struggle towards the implementation of the national democratic program and the resolutions of the EPLF congress.
In regard to the situation within the Eritrean Liberation Front, the 8th congress condemned the ELF's slanderous campaign against the EPLF vanguard, denounced the resolutions obstructive to national unity passed at the 3rd regular meeting of the ELF's Revolutionary Council (R.C.), and expressed resolute support of the democratic movement of the rank and file ELF fighters.
On the question of national unity, the congress, declaring principled national unity is in the interest of the Eritrean masses and ensures the victory of the revolution, called for the formation of the national united front as the only correct road to the realization of national unity. It unanimously accepted the minimum program for the formation of the united front adopted by the 1st congress of the EPLF, praised the efforts of the Eritrean masses to bring about national unity, supported the dialogue on national unity between the EPLF vanguard and the ELF and called for its continuation. On the other hand, it denounced the ELF's anti-national unity activities and vehemently condemned the counter-revolutionary pro -imperialist Sabbe clique.
The 8th congress discussed in detail EFLNA's role and tasks in the Eritrean struggle in relation tothose of all the EPLF's mass organizations inside and' outside our country. In order to defeat the Ethiopian occupationists, frustrate all machinations against our struggle and smash the internal reactionaries the congress recognized the necessity of solidifying the strength and unity of the revolutionary and patriotic forces around the EPLF. The congress noted that the EPLF's mass organizations of workers, peasants, women, students and youth have grown tremendously and are playing a remarkable role in the revolution. On this basis the congress resolved to reorganize EFLNA's organizational structure; and in place of EFLNA, two mass organizations, the Association of Eritrean Students in North America (AESNA) and the Association of Eritrean Women in North America (AEWNA) have been established. The new organizational structure will enable Eritrean patriots resident in North America to play a more active role in the Eritrean people's struggle. The new organizational structure will definitely enable AESNA and AEWNA to unite more closely with the EPLF's mass organizations.
In assessing the situation in EFLNA the congress noted that great strides have been made politically and organizationally. As was reflected in the congress the level of political consciousness of members has heightened andthe spirit of struggle prevails. Expressing the satisfaction with the achievements made, the congress called for raising the struggle to a higher level. It recommended that more effort need to be exerted to deepen our political education, mobilize non-member Eritreans and strengthen our ties with progressive anti-imperialist organizations in North America.
EFLNA's 8th congress was a triumphant congress. It further steeled the unity of our organization. The 8th congress reflected EFLNA's maturity in political struggle. Members expressed their determination to continue the struggle on a higher level and to work harder to shoulder their responsibilities.
The successful conclusion of EFLNA's 8th congress, the spirit of joy and determination that was the order of the congress, the important resolutions passed are reflections of the high revolutionary tide of our people's struggle under the correct leadership of the EPLF. The successful conclusion of the congress is a reflection of the granite unity of the revolutionary and patriotic forces at home and abroad around the EPLF; of the active organized participation of the Eritrean masses in the struggle for national salvation and liberation. End.
SPEECH BY THE REPRESENTATIVE OF THE CENTRAL ORGANIZATION OF U.S. MARXIST-LENINISTS TO THE CLOSING RALLY OF THE FIFTH CONSULTATIVE CONFERENCE OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF CANADA (MARXIST-LENINIST), NOVEMBER 13, MONTREAL, CANADA
Comrades and friends,
For many years now, the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) and the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists have fought shoulder to shoulder on the same front against imperialism, revisionism and opportunism of all hues. This is a fighting unity, a unity based upon Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism. For this reason, we are deeply inspired by the work of the Party and we rejoice at the Party's victories. For this reason, we are deeply honored to participate in the 5th Consultative Conference of CPC(M-L).
Today, sharp struggle is taking place between Marxism-Leninism and international opportunism. It is now one year since Comrade Enver Hoxha's historic Report to the 7th Congress of the Party of Labor of Albania. This Report is a touchstone for the Marxist-Leninists; it is a watershed dividing Marxism-Leninism and international opportunism. Today, one year after Comrade Enver Hoxha's historic Report, Marxism-Leninism is winning new victories, while international opportunism is in crisis. In the United States, it is the social-chauvinists, headed by the organization called October League, who form a contingent of international opportunism. The leaders of social-chauvinism in the U.S. are these same elements who have been fighting tooth and nail against Marxism-Leninism for the past decade. The self-styled chairman of social-chauvinism in the United States gained his notoriety in the 1960's as the New Leftist who presided over the liquidation of SDS, the principal organization of the student movement at that time. In the 1960's, the Marxist-Leninists in the U.S. fought against New Leftism, the negative line in the youth and student movement, which drew its inspiration from the anarchist, anti-communist theories of Tito. Subsequently, the leaders of this negative line, adapted Marxism-Leninism to New Leftism, giving birth to neo-revisionism. At the time when, due to the work of the Marxist-Leninist communists in disseminating Mao Tsetung Thought, Mao Tsetung Thought had won high prestige among the revolutionary activists in the U.S., neo-revisionism jumped out with a host of opportunist slogans to oppose in practice building the party of the proletariat on the basis of Marxism-Leninism. For a long time, the Marxist-Leninist movement in the U.S. suffered from neo-revisionism. Today, neo-revisionism has descended into open social-chauvinism. This emergence of open social-chauvinism marks the beginning of the bankruptcy of neo-revisionism in the U.S.
The social-chauvinists in the U.S. are engaged in factionalizing the Marxist-Leninists in the revolutionary movement. On the basis of their opportunist interpretations of Marxism-Leninism, and their thesis that there are many Marxism-Leninisms, they floated their many opportunist sects in order to oppose the building of the Party. They have carried this to the point of advocating the formation of many partiesin the U.S., for the sole purpose of opposing the establishment of the party of the proletariat on the basis of Marxism-Leninism. On this basis they have floated a loose Browderite educational association, imbued with the features of social-chauvinism, thoroughly rotten and opportunist in character. As well, for some time, the opportunists and social-chauvinists have been engaged in splitting the revolutionary demonstrations, and are today preparing to attempt to split the mass organizations as well. All this activity is aimed at paralyzing the Marxist-Leninist Communist Movement, blocking the building of the party of the proletariat, and paralyzing the general revolutionary movement. These activities will get them nowhere.
Comrades, on March 13, at the Closing Rally of the Third Congress of CPC(M-L), we declared that social-chauvinism would never be allowed to hold sway in the United States. In August, at the First National Canadian Youth Festival, we reported that there was a great movement in the U.S. to denounce social-chauvinism, unite the Marxist-Leninists, and to build the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party, for the repudiation of revisionism and opportunism. Today, one year after Comrade Enver Hoxha made his historic Report to the Seventh Congress of the Party of Labor of Albania, this movement is rapidly developing and gaining in momentum. During the past ten days, hundreds upon hundreds of revolutionary activists have participated in meetings in various cities in the United States to uphold Leninism and the path of the Great October Socialist Revolution and to vigorously denounce the "Three Worlds" theory. This manifests the development of this movement. It is this movement against social-chauvinism and revisionism which is developing and flourishing and has a bright future, while social-chauvinism is in crisis, and has only a past of ignoble defeats.
Comrades and friends, I'd like to speak briefly to the current activities of international opportunism. Having raised the banner of revolt against Marxism- Leninism, international opportunism is indulging itself in an orgy of resurrecting everything discredited and dead. From the dung-heap of history, modern revisionist theories of Browder, of Tito, of Khrushchov and of Togliatti are piece by piece dug up and circulated as "new" theories, corresponding to "new" historical conditions. Strung together with eclecticism and justified through outright sophistry, these form the theory of "Three Worlds". The life experience of the socialist countries, the international proletariat and the national liberation strugglesshows the "Three Worlds" theory is a counter-revolutionary and pro-imperialist theory. Under the banner of the "Three Worlds" theory, international opportunism is attacking socialism and the unity of the international proletariat. They're negating the proletarian revolutionary struggles and the national liberation struggles. But the unity of the international proletariat and the existence of socialism are not determined by the whim of various opportunists. The unity of the international proletariat takes concentrated form in the unity of the International Communist Movement. This unity which is steadily developing in the course of the struggle against imperialism and international opportunism, is unity based on Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism. This is a fighting unity which no opportunist can wipe out of existence with a flourish of his pen. Socialism is the highest achievement of the international proletariat. To the class conscious workers of all countries, the socialist countries such as the People's Socialist Republic of Albania, represent their loftiest aspirations and their future.
The Great October Socialist Revolution sixty years ago brought socialism onto the face of the earth. Since that time, despite the rise to power of Khrushchovite revisionism and the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union and most of the people's democracies, there have always been socialist countries, there has always been socialism on the face of the earth. The whims of the social-chauvinists and of international opportunism cannot cause socialism to disappear from the face of the earth.
Today, international opportunism is trying to reverse the verdict against the Titoite revisionists, to rehabilitate Tito in order to sabotage the world revolution. These efforts by international opportunism are a matter of grave concern for all Marxist-Leninists, class conscious workers and progressive people. The attitude of the Marxist-Leninists to wards the rehabilitation of the Titoite revisionist clique was summed up years ago by Comrade Enver Hoxha, who said: "only the grave can cure a hunchback".
Long ago, the Titoite revisionist clique capitulated to U.S. and British imperialism, betrayed the people of Yugoslavia to imperialism, became a center for imperialist subversion and intrigue against the socialist countries and against the national liberation movement. Long ago, the International Communist Movement, led by Comrade Stalin, and later by Chairman Mao Tsetung and Comrade Enver Hoxha, unmasked and isolated the Tito clique and its revisionist theories, resolutely expelled it from its ranks, and sternly rebuffed the efforts of the Khrushchovite revisionists to rehabilitate Tito. To rehabilitate Tito is to attack the great work and teachings of Comrades Stalin, Mao Tsetung and Enver Hoxha. To rehabilitate Tito is to embrace revisionism and to open the door to opportunism of all hues. It is to embrace U.S. imperialism, for to open the door to throughout the world.
Comrades and friends, the counter-revolutionary and anti-communist theses of "Three Worlds" or of aiming the main blow against the New Tsars of the Soviet Union, are being paraded by the social-chauvinists in the U.S. under the banner of proletarian internationalism. By this they would seek to drag the glorious banner of proletarian internationalism into the mud. But this mud lands only on themselves. By that thorough capitulation to U.S. imperialism, the OL social-chauvinists pit themselves against the glorious revolutionary heritage of the proletariat and people in the U.S.
In the 1960's, the youth and students in the U.S., together with the people of the world, rose up in large-scale struggle against the U.S. imperialist war of aggression in Indochina. This is the revolutionary heritage of the proletariat and people in the U.S. And this is the path to which the proletariat and people in the U.S. will adhere and they will not march under the yellow banner of social-chauvinism. The proletariat is the gravedigger of capitalism and it will be the honor of the proletariat in the U.S. to bury U.S. imperialism once and for all time.
Comrades and friends, we are living in exciting times. We are living in a time of vigorous struggle against revisionism of all hues, a time of the reconstruction and consolidation of the communist parties in many countries, a time of revolutionary upsurge. Today, we are witnessing the preparation of big battles against imperialism and international reaction, battles which are certain to bring victories to the peoples and defeat to the imperialists and reactionaries. We salute the Party of Labor of Albania and Comrade Enver Hoxha, who stand in the forefront of the struggles of the international proletariat and the world's people. We salute the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist), which fights without let-up against revisionism and opportunism, which works unceasingly for the social revolution and which bases itself upon Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism. We salute the fighting Marxist-Leninist communist parties and organizations of all countries, who take this path.
Comrades and friends:
LONG LIVE THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF CANADA (MARXIST-LENINIST)!
LONG LIVE THE MILITANT UNITY BETWEEN THE CPC(M-L) AND THE COUSML!
GLORY TO MARXISM-LENINISM AND PROLETARIAN INTERNATIONALISM! End
-Part Two-
In part one of this article, published in the Nov. 1st issue of The Workers' Advocate, we denounced OL's flimsy fraud that Chairman Mao supported the theory of "Three Worlds". (The October League now pretends to be the "Communist Party (M-L)". In order to mask their social-chauvinism, their rabid propaganda in favor of allying with U.S. imperialism in order to "strike the main blow at Soviet social-imperialism", their support for the B-l bomber, the OL social- chauvinists have taken to throwing mud at the name of Chairman Mao. They are trying to turn him into a Titoite revisionist, to slander his close comrades-in-arms Comrades Stalin and Enver Hoxha and to wipe out his immortal teachings. We pointed out that this was just a desperate gamble on the part of the OL leaders to shore up the sagging fortunes of their Browderite revisionism. The OL is like a drowning man grasping at a straw, and they are frantically using political blackmail in order to bludgeon the American Marxist-Leninists into capitulation to U.S. imperialism.
Since then, the OL has continued to degenerate. The November 21, 1977 issue of The Call has a major article entitled "People's Daily Editorial on Theory of Three Worlds, 'A MAJOR CONTRIBUTION TO MARXISM' In fact, this article in The Call is a major contribution to the exposure of social-chauvinism. In this article the OL puffs itself up with pride and arrogance because.. .finally, over a year after Chairman Mao's death, a few sentences torn out of context from an alleged conversation with an unidentified person have been published in which the terms "first world", "second world" and "third world" occur. The OL is delirious with joy. The Call, however, doesn't have the faintest idea that its very joy exposes the flimsy fraud that the theory of "Three Worlds" belongs to Chairman Mao. How is it that this "great strategic concept of world revolution" is not emblazoned in all Chairman Mao's major works? Why, the fact that the "three worlders" are forced to resort to a few sentences tom out of context highlights the fact that this theory of "Three Worlds" is totally absent from all of Chairman Mao's work and is in antagonistic contradiction with all the teachings of Comrade Mao Tsetung! You can judge the desperation of the social-chauvinists, their fear of being left high and dry with their desperate gamble, by their joy over such trivia.
THE SOCIAL-CHAUVINISTS ADMIT THAT ALL THEIR PREVIOUS "EVIDENCE" WAS A PATENT FORGERY
The Call states the following: "This section (the first section of the article in 'People's Daily' published on November 1, 1977 -- ed.)...also for the first time, quotes Chairman Mao directly on the thesis (the theory of "three worlds" -- ed.)" (underlining added). Thus The Call openly admits that prior to November 1, 1977, Chairman Mao was never quoted "directly" on the theory of "Three Worlds" anywhere! And for once the OL social-chauvinists are telling the truth, or at least part of it! And with this truth they prove that they are patent liars and political blackmailers.
In OL's journal Class Struggle, Winter, 1976-77, #6, pp. 44-5, Dan Burstein, the editor of The Call, says that "Chairman Mao's views on the third world, although not publicly articulated outside of China until the 1970s, were developed consistently throughout his work in the period since World War II.
"In 1946, for example, Mao held his famous interview with Anna Louise Strong in which he pointed out: 'The United States and the Soviet Union are separated by a vast zone which includes many capitalist, colonial and semi-colonial countries in Europe, Asia and Africa.' " But now The Call has admitted that Chairman Mao was not "directly" quoted on the theory of "Three Worlds" until Nov. 1, 1977. Then what is the above quotation from Burstein? Burstein claimed it was an "example" of Chairman Mao developing consistently the theory of "Three Worlds". But The Call has now called its own editor a liar. In fact, the above quotation had nothing to do with the "Three Worlds". Chairman Mao's works since World War II the crucial ones having been published and circulated, have nothing to do with "Three Worlds". The Call is obliquely admitting the truth of what we maintained all along: that Burstein is confusing Chairman Mao with Tito, who developed the theory of "non-bloc", "red imperialism", and the "non-aligned movement" since World War II. As for the intermediate zone, this is just the orthodox Marxist-Leninist analysis of the international communist movement.
Then again, in an editorial on May 9, 1977, TheCall says: "Most significantly, they (the article in Vol. 5 of the Selected Works of Mao Tsetung -- ed.) include Chairman Mao's teachings on... (a list follows -- ed.)... and the concept of three worlds which is being used today to guide the world-wide struggle against the two superpowers." This too was a lie, just as we proved in Part I of "Flimsy Fraud, Desperate Gamble". The Call now admits that there was no "direct" quote on "three worlds" in Vol. 5.
In the September 12th issue of The Call, a centerfold article quotes the fifth volume in order to exhibit an "early version" of the "three worlds" theory. This too was just a lie, just as we proved in Part I.
SHAMELESS METHODS OF POLEMICS
But, it will be said, what about the alleged new quotations from Chairman Mao published on November 1, 1977? These quotations are just tiny fragments tom from informal talks with unknown "leaders of third world countries". There is no context. For a number of years the theory of "Three Worlds" has been hotly debated. For example, over four years ago the anti-revisionists in Brazil, united in the Communist Party of Brazil, publicly denounced the theory of "three worlds". No Congress of the Communist Party of China while Chairman Mao was alive ever endorsed this theory. Suddenly, after Chairman Mao dies, the social-chauvinists begin a big chorus that this is Chairman Mao's theory --but fail to give any "direct" quotations until over one year after his death. Such quotations or articles would have made a big sensation -- why did it take a year to find them? The answer is obvious. Anyone at all familiar with the nature of polemics will simply shake his or her head and chuckle over quotations being pulled out a year after someone's death to negate his whole life's teachings. What brazen hustlers!
As a matter of fact, these alleged quotations prove nothing. Right from the very start of our polemics against "three worlds" we pointed out that "It is not the term in itself that is the issue. Terms such as 'Third World', 'Second World', 'non-aligned world' or 'developing countries', etc., can indicate certain secondary features of the world... But these terms all cover up the fundamental questions of world politics. They cannot be the basis for the strategy of the world revolution. Thus the issue being raised by the OL is the question of the 'Three Worlds' theory as a worked-out conception of strategy of international and national politics" (The Workers' Advocate, March 10, 1977, p. 6). The question isn't the terms in themselves, but the strategy of world revolution. The OL is descending to the level of those religious freaks who "prove" that Chairman Mao was a god-fearing man by quoting "The Foolish Old Man Who Removed the Mountains".
In fact, one's chuckles over OL's methods will simply turn to Homeric laughter when one notices that OL is relying on quotations with a "leader of a third world country". Please tell us, which leader? As is well-known, all Marxists holding state power are compelled to hold diplomatic discussions with all sorts of people holding state power, including the most unpleasant task of talking to blood-stained reactionaries masquerading as "Third World" anti-imperialist heroes. But up till now these talks were never taken as the source of "great strategic concepts for world revolution". Customarily "great strategic concepts of world revolution" are given at Party Congresses, in major articles, and in public calls.
A TYPICAL METHOD OF REVISIONISTS
What OL is doing is taking a few alleged sentences produced out of thin air to negate Chairman Mao's whole life and teachings. Marxism-Leninism is alleged to have been overthrown by changed conditions in 1974. Why read On New Democracy, when it is allegedly out-dated, replaced by these new quotations ? Why read Vols. I-IV of Chairman Mao's SelectedWorks, works checked and revised by Chairman Mao himself, when one can simply listen to the chatter of those "in the know", those who have an "inside source", those who will not hesitate to distort facts in order to serve their ends?
The same method is always used by the revisionists and even the capitalists themselves to distort a revolutionary leader's teachings after his death. The social-chauvinists in World War I extensively "quoted" Marx and Engels to justify taking sides in an inter-imperialist war. They "quoted" and became like acrobats in their "dialectics" in order to give up Marxism while preserving a pseudo-Marxist coloring to fool the masses. The German social-chauvinists, for example, quoted Marx and Engels' (condemnation of Russian Tsarism. They quoted Engels about a possible war between Germany and Russia in the 1890's to hide the fact that all Marxists had agreed in 1912 in the Basle Resolution that the coming war was an inter-imperialist war, that no one had dared to even suggest using Engels' correct remarks about the situation in the 1890's and the danger of Russian Tsarism to negate the inter-imperialist character of World War I.
A particularly glaring example of this method of perversion of Marxism achieved a certain importance in the history of Marxism. In Engels' famous 1895 introduction to Marx's The Class Struggles in France.1848 - 1850, Engels discussed the tactics for the German Social-Democratic Party in a particular historical period. He stressed the role of careful preparatory work including parliamentary work and legal work in leading up to the successful violent revolution. When this introduction was published in 1895, both in book form and in Die Neue Zeit, theoretical journal of the German Social-Democratic Party, certain deletions and changes were made. Everything relating to peaceful and legal tactics was left in, everything relating to the violent revolution taken out. Engels was then presented as a believer in "legality at all costs". Engels was incensed and protested, but to no avail. A correct edition of his introduction was not published until 1930, 35 years later, in an edition printed in the Soviet Union, then the land of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
What the revisionists and deviators from Marxism wanted was that the working class should replace the theory of Marxism with the theory of peaceful transition. For example, the Socialist Labor Party (SLP) in the U.S. published a pamphlet in 1923 with Engels' introduction retitled as "Peaceful Revolution Vs. Violence: Can Socialism be achieved peacefully?" Their version had a preface by one SLP hack and an appendix reprinting Daniel DeLeon himself. The pamphlet claimed that "Engels shows that it is the capitalist reaction that wants rebellious workers to play the role of cannon fodder and that such a role must be rejected." The preface indignantly denounced opposition to this as "the teaching of a Bakunin" (anarchism) and denounced Leninism as "anarcho-communism". After all, didn't Engels say in his introduction: " Does the reader now understand why the powers that be positively want us to go where the guns shoot and the sabres flash? Why they accuse us today of cowardice, because we do not betake ourselves without more ado into the street, where we are certain of defeat in advance? Why they so earnestly implore us to play for once the part of cannon fodder?" But you may object, Marx and Engels called for violent revolution in The CommunistManifesto? Yes, but conditions had changed, the SLP said. Didn't Engels himself say in the introduction: "...the old tactics must be revised."Didn't he list the disadvantages that changes in conditions had brought to barricade fighting?
Of course, Engels' words were being distorted. For example, a whole paragraph beginning "Does that mean that in the future street fighting will no longer play any role ? Certainly not. " had been deleted. His words warning the socialists "not to fritter away this daily increasing shock force in vanguard skirmishes, but to keep it intact until the decisive day" were deleted. But this was not known until 35 years later. But the real Marxists did not abandon revolution for 35 years. They upheld the great banner of Marx and Engels and contemptuously cast aside the revisionist distortions of Engels' introduction. Marxism is the sharp weapon which explodes all flimsy frauds.
UPHOLD THE GREAT LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF COMRADE MAO TSETUNG
The social-chauvinist "three worlders" were Chairman Mao's bitterest enemies while he lived and they haven't changed now that he is dead. Do you want to see what these social-chauvinists are, how thin is the flimsy fraud of "orthodoxy" with which they are trying to cover themselves ? Both in OL's article and in the current issue of Class Struggle, #8, the OL picks up the modem revisionist, Togliattist banner of "poly-centrism". They denounce the idea of a "center" in the world revolutionary movement in the most disgraceful, demagogical language, designed to appeal to anti-communist sentiments among the backward elements of the activists. Tell us, dear social-chauvinist gamblers, if there is no "center" in international communism, then why are you printing alleged quotations from Chairman Mao? Was not Chairman Mao a "center" while he lived? Were not Comrades Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin "centers" of the world revolutionary movement ? Is not Comrade Enver Hoxha the leader of the international communist movement today ? You are quoting Chairman Mao not from respect for Marxism-Leninism, but only for the purposes of political blackmail, to hide your ugly chauvinism behind the great respect the revolutionary masses quite correctly hold for Chairman Mao. What a disgusting spectacle!
We call on all American Marxist-Leninists to uphold the life and teachings of the great Marxist-Leninist and leader of the international communist movement, Mao Tsetung. To uphold Chairman Mao's teachings means to wage a most determined and stem fight against the slanderers of Comrade Mao Tsetung, against the opportunist "three worlders" and poly- centrists who are throwing mud at his name. We must uphold the banner of Comrade Enver Hoxha, Chairman Mao's close comrade-in-arms who is continuing his work. Today to uphold Mao Tsetung Thought means to raise up the great banner of Marxism- Leninism in struggle against the social-chauvinist "dialecticians" of the "three worlds" and against all revisionism and opportunism. End.
Delegations of the Communist Party of Germany (M-L), the Communist Party of Spain (M-L), the Communist Party of Greece (M-L), the Communist Party of Italy (M-L) and the Portuguese Communist Party (Reconstructed) have had fraternal meetings to deal with questions of mutual interest and exchange experience on the class struggle in various countries, as well as to discuss fundamental questions of the Marxist-Leninist strategy and tactics.
Our Parties are of the opinion that the sharpening of the class struggle in our countries, the development of the situation in Europe, and the development of the world situation, require the strengthening of the unity and cooperation among the communist parties. To respond to this need, our Parties have begun these joint meetings, in which they have discussed the most important current questions of the Marxist-Leninist strategy and tactics. These meetings have been held in an atmosphere of profound fraternal and militant unity. The participating Parties have decided to sum up the essential outcome in the following joint statement, in order to strengthen the common struggle of the working class and the masses of the peoples of our countries as well as to make their contribution to the unity of the world communist movement on the basis of the principles of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism.
1. ON THE SITUATION IN OUR COUNTRIES
The struggle of the Parties and the working class in our countries has many common aspects. The yoke of capitalist slavery weighs heavily on the proletariat of our countries. For the working class and the masses of the people, who have risen in struggle, there is but one road to liberate themselves from exploitation and oppression, the road of the violent overthrow of capitalism through the revolution, the road of the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat and socialism.
At present the struggle of the working class and the working people is directed, first and foremost, against the consequences of the deep crisis which has gripped our countries and the whole capitalist-revisionist world system. Millions of working people of our countries are unemployed. Millions of workers have abandoned their countries in search of jobs and minimum living conditions, have emigrated to foreign soil, where as emigrant workers they are subject to special exploitation and oppression by the capitalists. On the other hand, hundreds of thousands of them have now been forced to return to their own countries, where they fill the ranks of the unemployed. The youth and women are subjected to special oppression and exploitation. Unemployment among the youth is increasing. In the enterprises the capitalists are intensifying the exploitation and imposing monstrously high rates of work. As a result the number of fatal accidents at work is increasing and the maiming of the workers and occupational diseases are increasing. The fall in real wages, the increase in prices, inflation and increasing taxes are causing the ever greater deterioration of the economic situation of the working people of our countries. The working class and the masses of the people in our countries are fighting with more and more determination against the efforts of the bourgeoisie and the bourgeois governments that are trying to load the burden of the crisis onto the backs of working people.
The working class and the masses of the people in our countries who have suffered greatly under the fascist terror are still struggling today, against fascism and social-fascism. In Spain the fascist dictatorship is decked out today in monarchic and parliamentary robes, striving, in this way, to get out of the profound crisis it is in, to cope with the revolutionary movement of the masses with the fraud of a false "democracy" and to facilitate its complete integration into NATO and the European Common Market (EEC). In East Germany the social-fascist dictatorship of the new revisionist bourgeoisie is reigning. In Greece and Portugal, the fascist dictatorships were overthrown or replaced as a result of various factors, including the heroic struggle of the peoples of the respective countries. Despite this, the fascist forces, incited by imperialism and the big bourgeoisie, are active and threatening in both these countries. In Italy and West Germany, the monopoly bourgeoisie are hastening the fascization of the state apparatus in all fields and, at the same time inciting the development of fascist organizations and their paramilitary terrorist gangs. The bourgeoisie is trying to suppress the struggles of the working class and the masses of the people, their strikes and demonstrations, by means of the increasing repression exercised by the state, through the expansion of the police and army apparatus, and the fascist and social-fascist terror.
The peoples of our countries, who have suffered the consequences of two world wars prepared and unleashed by the imperialists, like all the peoples of the world, are faced with the growing danger of a new imperialist world war. While officially there is talk about peace, "detente" and disarmament, in order to deceive the peoples, in reality the armaments race and the preparations for war are being incessantly stepped up. War expenditure, particularly that of the two superpowers (the United States and the Soviet Union) as well as of all the other imperialist states, is continually increasing. Ever larger sectors of production are being directed towards military purposes. The working class and the masses of the people are becoming more and more aware of the need for resolute struggle against the policy of war of imperialism, and especially against the two superpowers.
2. THE CHARACTER AND ESSENTIAL CONTRADICTIONS OF OUR EPOCH
The epoch in which we are living is the epoch of imperialism and the proletarian revolution and the existing situation in the world is a result of the development and sharpening of the fundamental contradictions of this epoch, which were analyzed by Lenin and Stalin. These contradictions are developing on the basis of the contradictions which pervade the whole historical epoch of capitalism, that is, the contradiction between the social character of production and the private capitalist character of appropriation:
-- the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie,
-- the contradiction between the socialist system and the capitalist system,
-- the contradiction between the oppressed peoples and nations on the one hand and imperialism on the other,
-- the contradictions among imperialist states and financial groups.
These contradictions and the struggles deriving from them are linked with one another and interact reciprocally. None of these contradictions can be wiped out or denied.
In analyzing the development of these contradictions, it is necessary to keep in mind also the specific features of the present day world. Thus, the revisionist countries are part of the capitalist system, because in them socialism and dictatorship of the proletariat have long since been replaced, capitalism has been completely restored, and the new bourgeoisie has established its own social-fascist dictatorship. Today, all the imperialist powers, and in particular the two superpowers, are actively opposing the oppressed peoples and nations. Among the inter-imperialist contradictions, today the contradiction between U.S. imperialism and its allies on the one hand, and social-imperialism and its allies on the other hand, has emerged as the principal contradiction.
The two imperialist superpowers, U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism, constitute the biggest international exploiters and oppressors, the greatest enemies of the freedom and independence of the nations, the revolution and socialism. While they collaborate in struggle against the peoples and the revolution, they are competing for world hegemony. Today the main danger of new imperialist wars, and especially of a new imperialist world war, results from their rivalry in the struggle for world hegemony.
Each of the two superpowers is trying to win the trust of the peoples through deception and the use of demagogy, trying for its own aggressive aims, to profit from the just struggles being waged by the peoples against the other superpower. Thus, U.S. imperialism presents itself before the peoples as a protector power in the face of the expansionist pretensions of Soviet social-imperialism, while Soviet social-imperialism uses the slogan of anti-imperialist struggle in a demagogic way to put the just struggles of the peoples against U.S. imperialism under its influence and control. However, the peoples who are fighting for their liberation from the yoke of imperialism and do not want to exchange one slavery with another, cannot rely on one superpower to fight the other. The two imperialist superpowers, represent, in the same extent and to the same degree, the main enemy of the international proletariat, the socialist countries, and the oppressed peoples. Today it is essential to direct the main fire of the international united front against the two superpowers, against imperialism, capitalism, reaction and revisionism.
However, the two superpowers are not the only enemies of the international proletariat, the socialist countries and the oppressed peoples. The other imperialist and capitalist powers are also their enemies. The reactionary capitalist character of these countries has not altered in the least, their practice of exploiting and oppressing the peoples has not altered in the least, and their hostility to socialism and communism has not altered in the least. In the struggle for the triumph of the revolution and socialism it is necessary to take advantage of the contradictions between capitalist and imperialist states on the one hand, and the two superpowers on the other.
But here we are speaking of contradictions within the ranks of the enemies of the revolution and socialism, because these capitalist and imperialist states are not allies of the peoples in struggle against the superpowers. In reality, despite the more or less abrasive contradictions that exist between them and the superpowers, these capitalist and imperialist states are integrated to this or that degree and in this or that form into the systems of military alliances and blocs of the superpowers.
The struggle against the two superpowers demands a life and death struggle against the aggressive military blocs, against NATO, which is under the direction of U.S. imperialism, as well as against the Warsaw Treaty, directed by the Soviet social-imperialists, NATO and the Warsaw Treaty, and all the bourgeois and revisionist armies which have been incorporated into each of these blocs, represent the biggest armed forces to attack the revolution and socialism, and the freedom and independence of the peoples and nations. The two military blocs constitute the main implements in the hands of the two superpowers to prepare and launch imperialist wars.
In Europe, the two imperialist superpowers and their aggressive military blocs are confronting each other. In this strategic area, the two superpowers are relentlessly increasing the number of their troops and the annihilating capacity of their weapons. Western Europe is hitched to the war chariot of NATO, which has eliminated or restricted the independence of those countries. The Warsaw Treaty is keeping the countries of Eastern Europe under military occupation and strangling the aspirations of their peoples for independence.
Likewise it is necessary to fight against both the EEC and COMECON. The monopoly bourgeoisie of the countries of Western Europe claims that the EEC is a means to increase the joint prosperity of the West European peoples and for the independence of Western Europe in face of the superpowers. In reality, the European Common Market is an instrument of the monopolies to suppress and exploit the peoples of Western Europe and the other peoples of Latin America, Asia and Africa. Although U.S. imperialism is not formally a member of the EEC, it plays a dominant role in it. It is a dangerous illusion, if not a fraud to claim that the European Common Market represents a force against the two superpowers or serves the interests of the peoples. The European Common Market is a tool of the West European imperialists and U.S. imperialism to suppress and exploit the peoples, to oppose the revolution and socialism.
Contrary to what the new bourgeoisie in the revisionist countries claims today COMECON does not serve the "socialist integration" nor does it assist the prosperity of the peoples of the east. Just as capitalism has been completely restored in the revisionist countries, the laws of jungle, characteristic of imperialism, predominate in the relations between the COMECON countries. Thus, COMECON is, first of all, a tool of social-imperialism to plunder and enslave the other member countries, a tool of the Soviet social-imperialists to secure maximum profits and for expansion within its own spheres of influence. Like the European Common Market, COMECON is directed against the freedom and independence of the peoples, against the revolution and socialism. The forces of the revolution and socialism are becoming stronger in the struggle against the camp of the counter-revolution comprised of imperialism, with the two superpowers at the head, capitalism, reaction and revisionism.
The existence of the socialist countries, which consistently carry on the Marxist-Leninist line and resolutely uphold proletarian internationalism has very great importance for the international proletariat and the revolutionary movement throughout the world. The contradiction between socialist countries and imperialism is a class contradiction.
The fundamental character of this contradiction is based on the fact that the countries of the dictatorship of the proletariat and those where the bourgeois dictatorship prevails, are irreconcilably opposed to one another. For the international proletariat and the peoples who are fighting, the socialist countries provide a shining example and are important fortresses in the struggle against imperialism, capitalism, reaction and revisionism.
At present, we are witnesses of a period in which important revolutionary struggles are going on, which prove once again that the international proletariat represents the decisive and leading force in the struggle for freedom and independence, against fascism and the imperialist war, and for the revolution and socialism. Likewise the proletariat is showing that it is the only consistently revolutionary class today. Because of its class situation and class interests, the proletariat is the genuine protagonist of the socialist revolution and the ideals of communism. It is only the proletariat, headed by the Marxist-Leninist party, which can lead and carry the revolutionary struggles through to victory.
The wide-ranging struggle of oppressed peoples against imperialism and internal reaction, and especially against the two superpowers, has assumed major proportions. The national liberation and anti-imperialist movement of the oppressed peoples continues to strike telling blows at imperialism and represents the biggest strategic reserve of the proletarian revolution in our epoch. Under the leadership of the working class and its communist party, the revolution for national liberation will march triumphantly forward towards socialism, in the process of uninterrupted revolution.
The increased severity of all the fundamental contradictions of our epoch at this moment constitutes a characteristic symptom of the collapse of the imperialist world system of the general crisis of capitalism which is growing deeper day by day. The world situation today is complicated, but in general it is favorable for the struggle of the proletariat and the oppressed peoples. Imperialism, with U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism at the head, is tight in the grip of a deep crisis. At the same time, the world front of the working class, the socialist countries, and the oppressed peoples and nations, under the leadership of the international proletariat headed by the Marxist-Leninist parties, against imperialism, and especially against the two superpowers, against capitalism, reaction and revisionism, is developing and growing stronger. All the continents are seething because of the upsurge of the revolutionary movement which is undermining the very foundations of the old world of oppression and exploitation. The revolution and socialism are on the agenda throughout the world.
3) OUR TASKS IN THE CLASS STRUGGLE
The present situation in our countries proves the greatest clarity that capitalism cannot alter and replace the laws which determine its development. The struggle of the monopoly groups for maximum profits, anarchy and the absence of planning of production are essential features of the capitalist mode of production, which is based on the exploitation of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie. In the present deep crisis of "overproduction" the contradiction between social production and capitalist private appropriation is expressing itself with its full force. The deep crisis which is accelerating the relative and absolute impoverishment of the proletariat, as well as the progressive ruin of small farmers and other small producers, is accompanied with the mass destruction of social wealth. In capitalism the relations of production, long ago turned irreparably, into shackles for the productive forces.
Imperialism is sharpening all the contradictions of capitalism to the maximum. Imperialism is parasitic capitalism in decay, the highest and last stage of capitalism.
From the economic viewpoint, and consequently, from the political viewpoint, the monopoly bourgeoisie is the most powerful section of the bourgeoisie. The domination of a small group of monopolies, which concentrate the biggest part of the economic power, in their hands and to which the apparatus of the bourgeois state is absolutely subject, is totally reactionary. Crises, fascism and predatory wars accompany imperialism, just as the shadow accompanies the body.
Bearing these facts in mind it is not possible to have common interests between the proletariat and the monopoly bourgeoisie in our countries. Such common interests do not exist, either with regard to the struggle for national independence against the two superpowers, or with regard to the threat of a new imperialist world war. On the contrary, the situation in our countries is characterized by the fact that the contradiction between the proletariat and the working masses on the one hand, and the monopoly bourgeoisie on the other, is rapidly becoming more acute.
Our Marxist-Leninist Parties are unanimously of the opinion that, as vanguard revolutionary parties of the proletariat, it is their duty to resolutely combat the propaganda of revisionists and opportunists of all hues, who, under any pretext, call on the proletariat and the popular masses to give up the struggle in defense of their interests and seek reconciliation with the bourgeoisie. On the contrary, we communists must, strengthen our stand at the head of the struggles of the proletariat, farm workers, poor peasants, the worker and student youth. In this context, our Parties defend the Leninist thesis that the working masses of the countryside, especially the farm workers, the semi-proletarians of the countryside and the poor peasants, constitute the main ally of the proletariat in the struggle for the revolution and socialism. The struggles of the popular masses of our countries are taking place with an ever greater awareness that the domination of the bourgeoisie must be overthrown and that the system of the exploitation of man by man must be ended.
Our Parties support and lead the struggle of the working class and the working masses against unemployment and inflation, against the reduction of wages and super-exploitation, against the attempts of the bourgeoisie to shift the burden of the crisis onto the backs of working people. In these struggles our Parties are tempering the revolutionary unity of the working class and all the working people. By combatting all forms of the ideology which preaches class conciliation, our Parties help in the promotion and the development of the consciousness of the working people that their interests are of such a character as to be incompatible with those of the bourgeoisie, as well as the absolute necessity for the social revolution, in order to make a radical improvement in their situation.
In the struggle against fascism and social-fascism, against the reactionary violence of the governments and the apparatus of bourgeois states, against the terror of the fascist gangs, our Parties resolutely encourage the anti-fascist struggles of the masses of the people and the creation of broad fronts of the anti-fascist struggle of the masses. During these struggles it is essential to expose the true role of revisionism and social-democracy, which are trying systematically to disarm the people's forces, thus opening the way to fascism. It is essential to resolutely combat the stand of some opportunists who demand that the struggle against the fascist forces should be abandoned, on the pretext that in the struggle against Soviet social-fascism these forces would allegedly be on the side of the people.
Our Parties stress the necessity of responding to the reactionary and fascist violence of the bourgeoisie, with the revolutionary violence of the masses. While leading the struggles against reaction and fascism, our Parties are working tirelessly to make the masses aware that capitalism, above all finance capitalism, is the source of fascism, and consequently, that fascism and social-fascism cannot be rooted out once and for all except by overthrowing capitalism.
Our Parties are mobilizing the working class and the masses of the people in a broad front against the imperialist policy of war, especially against that of the two superpowers. It is our duty to raise the consciousness of the working class and the masses of the people in everything which has to do with the danger of a new imperialist world war and to smash any illusion about "detente" and so-called disarmament, propagated by the bourgeoisie and revisionism. The consistent struggle against imperialism, especially against the two superpowers, constitutes the only possible way to prevent a new imperialist world war. In every country the triumph of the revolution and socialism constitutes the greatest contribution to the struggle against those who are to blame for imperialist wars. Imperialism means war, and the elimination of any war will be possible only through the overthrow of imperialism throughout the world.
While fighting imperialism's policy of war it is necessary to fight determinedly against the standpoints of opportunists who, under the pretext of the danger of war, propagate capitulation to imperialism and reconciliation with it, or trumpet the social-chauvinist propaganda according to which if war unleashes, it would be necessary to rank on the side of one of the superpowers or on the side of the local bourgeoisie. Fighting against these revisionist and social-chauvinist concepts, the communists must strengthen the conviction of the masses in the revolutionary perspective, according to which either the revolution will prevent war or the war will lead to the revolution.
The communists must mobilize the masses against the main instigators of war, that is, against the two superpowers, against the aggressive military blocs as well as against the war preparations of the monopoly bourgeoisie and the reactionary governments of every country. We, communists have the duty to fight so that the workers of all countries, the working masses and the oppressed peoples, rise in solidarity, in struggle against the instigators of imperialist wars, with the aim of overthrowing them.
While fighting against the threat of imperialist war, we communists have the duty to prepare the working class and the other masses of the people in every country in case the outbreak of a new imperialist war cannot be avoided. In such a situation the working class and masses of the people of every country must oppose the reactionary imperialist war with just revolutionary struggle with the aim of overthrowing those who cause the war and the ruling classes, to ensure the triumph of the revolution and socialism and to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Our Parties are developing all these struggles with the aim of creating the necessary conditions for the triumph of the revolution and socialism in our countries, that is, for the violent overthrow of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and capitalism, for the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the construction of socialism and the continuation of the revolution until the classless society, communism, is achieved. This is the historic mission of the proletariat long since pointed out by Marx and Engels, and the entire struggle of our parties serves the realization of this mission.
4) THE COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY ROLE OF MODERN REVISIONISM
Our Parties consider that now the force which is trying to prevent the proletariat from carrying out its great historic mission, is in the first place, modem revisionism. Today as yesterday, social-democracy is making every effort to lead the proletariat into the positions of class collaboration, but it is modern revisionism, and above all, Khrushchovite revisionism, which, after completely betraying Marxism-Leninism and the cause of communism, constitutes the main enemy in the ranks of the working class. The revisionist parties are a result of the degeneration of former revolutionary communist parties, they try to deceive the working people by disguising their betrayal of working class interests and Marxism-Leninism, continue to use the label of communists, whereas in reality have taken the road of counter-revolution. The revisionist parties have placed themselves in the service of capitalism and oppose the revolution, socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat. They deny the need for violent revolution and, indeed, some of them do not even formally defend the dictatorship of the proletariat. In order to hinder the proletariat from following the road of violent revolution, they trumpet the so-called peaceful road of transition from capitalism to socialism. In compliance with the circumstances, they go so far as to support even the most reactionary measures of the bourgeoisie and make compromises with U.S. imperialism. Step by step they are following the path opened by the old social-democrats after their betrayal of Marxism, a betrayal.which led only to the splitting and disarming of the working class in the face of the bourgeoisie and fascism, and this allowed fascism to attain state power. While serving the bourgeoisie of their own countries, at the same time the revisionist parties are also serving the interests of Russian social-imperialism, directly or indirectly.
At present, modern revisionism is split into various trends in rivalry with one another. One of these trends is also"Eurocommunism". In essence, its revisionist theses aim at the liquidation of the struggle for national and social liberation, the struggle for the revolution, socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is the main objective of all revisionist trends. The struggle against Titoite revisionism also, is absolutely indispensable. Basing themselves on the thesis of a so-called "non-alignment", the Titoite revisionists are trying to liquidate the struggle of the oppressed peoples for national liberation, and this constitutes support for the two superpowers and the other imperialist powers. At the same time, the Titoites are trying to hinder the proletariat from fighting for socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat, in opposition to which they advocate the capitalist model of their "workers' self-administration".
In the countries where the modern revisionists are in power, they employ the great slogan of the dictatorship of the proletariat to deceive the working class and the working people of these countries, concealing the fact that capitalism has long been restored there, and that in those countries a social-fascist dictatorship in the service of the new bourgeoisie has been established. In some revisionist countries, the new bourgeoisie continue demagogically to describe what is nothing but a social-fascist dictatorship, as the dictatorship of the proletariat. In other countries, such as in the Soviet Union, they use such nomenclature as the state of the entire people" to conceal the class character of the social-fascist dictatorship. Relying on this demagogy, they are trying to hinder the working class and the working masses of these countries from recommencing the fight for the socialist revolution and the re-establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Because of this, it is essential not only to wage a large-scale ideological and political struggle against modern revisionism, but also to promote the class struggle in all fields, in order to expose modern revisionism in the eyes of the broad masses that it has betrayed. It is essential that modern revisionism in the mass movement is isolated through the struggle of the Marxist-Leninists who are working tirelessly with the aim of attracting the masses to the revolutionary line. We Marxist-Leninists must wage a resolute struggle against all trends of modern revisionism in defense of Marxism-Leninism.
5) THE NEW INTERNATIONAL OPPORTUNIST CURRENT AND THE "THEORY OF THREE WORLDS"
Our Parties see with deep concern the present-day efforts to develop a new international opportunist current against the Marxist-Leninist movement on an international scale, a current which has as its aim ,the utter falsification of the principles of Marxism- Leninism and proletarian internationalism and the splitting of the ranks of the communist movement.
This new international opportunist current pretends that it is fighting modern revisionism in a particularly consistent way. But in reality it is in complete accord with the ideology of modern revisionism on all the fundamental issues on which Marxism-Leninism has been betrayed; in reality this current denigrates Marxism-Leninism and serves the bourgeoisie and imperialism. The new opportunists make use, in demagogic way, of the existing danger of a new world war, but not with the aim of mobilizing the popular masses to combat this danger, but with the aim of strengthening NATO and the EEC, with the aim of supporting the war preparations of U.S. imperialism and its allies.
This international opportunist trend recognizes social-imperialism as the only major enemy. But the great clamor of these modern opportunists against social-imperialism and against revisionism has nothing at all to do with the revolutionary interests of the proletariat and the popular masses. This opportunist trend is using the necessary and correct slogan of the struggle against Soviet social-imperialism to call on the proletariat and the working masses to put an end to the struggle against U.S. imperialism and any other imperialism, against the reactionary bourgeoisie and the reactionaries of all tendencies, to unite with the most savage forces of the counter-revolution, under the pretext of fighting in unity with them against Soviet social-imperialism. This new international opportunist trend describes the correct actions of the masses against NATO, against the U.S. domination, and against the local bourgeoisie as social-fascist maneuvers and tries to present the reactionary bourgeoisie as an ally of the proletariat. The new opportunists preach the subjugation of the interests of the proletariat to the interests of the bourgeoisie, allegedly for the sake of national defense.
In this way, the new international opportunist trend is directly playing the game of the Russian social-imperialists. The propaganda which advocates the military strengthening and arming of U.S. imperialism, NATO, as well as other imperialist states, the propaganda which advocates the need for alliance, or the establishment, at present, of an armistice with its own imperialist bourgeoisie in the western imperialist states, facilitates the maneuvers of social-imperialism, which is interested in camouflaging its rivalry with the other superpower with its clamor about the anti-imperialist struggle; with its demagogy, this propaganda drives the working masses, who aspire to socialism, into the arms of revisionism. This policy, through which it is claimed that, Soviet social-imperialism is being isolated, is, in fact a particularly effective means to strengthen both social-imperialism itself, and its agents in the western countries, and facilitates the preparation of the ground for the realization of its aggressive plans.
The new international opportunist trend is opposed, both in theory and in fact to the class struggle of the proletariat, the struggle for the revolution, socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat, opposed to Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism.
The theoretical basis of this new international opportunist trend presents this theory as the fundamental strategy of the international communist movement. Our Parties declare categorically that the "theory of three worlds" can never constitute the strategic basis of the world communist movement, that this theory is not a Marxist-Leninist theory, but a revision and complete falsification of Marxism-Leninism. The strategy which derives. from this theory is not a Marxist-Leninist strategy, but a counter-revolutionary strategy directed against the interests of the proletariat and the oppressed peoples, against the revolution and socialism.
The so-called "theory of three worlds" is in complete opposition to the teachings of Lenin and Stalin as to the character of our epoch, which is the epoch of imperialism and the proletarian revolution, and to the analysis that Lenin and Stalin made to its fundamental contradictions.
Thus, the "theory of three worlds" negates the fundamental contradiction of our epoch, that between socialism and capitalism. The socialist countries do not exist in the scheme of the "three worlds". In this scheme, the socialist countries are ranked along with the fascist regimes, such as of Brazil, Chile, or that of the Shah of Iran, which comprise part of the so- called "third world". In this theory, the importance of socialist countries for the international proletariat and the world communist movement is completely negated. Despite this, for the world communistmovement and the international proletariat the existence of socialist countries constitutes their greatest historic victory. And even though, due to the betrayal of the modern revisionists, the socialist camp does not exist today, as it emerged after the Second World War, this does not alter this fact. Even if little Socialist Albania were the only socialist country in the world, it would be of very great importance for the international proletariat and the world communist movement in general, because the dictatorship of the proletariat has been established in that country, socialism has been transformed into a reality, and the oppression and exploitation of the working class have been liquidated. Therefore, even if, in fact, it were the only socialist country in the world, Albania would represent the aspirations, hopes and aims of the international proletariat and would be a bastion of the world revolution confronting imperialism and the old world of oppression and exploitation. Any theory which denies the importance of socialist countries is anti-Leninist. In the socialist countries this theory weakens the struggle in defense of the dictatorship of the proletariat; and in the capitalist countries it is directed against the struggle of the proletariat for the socialist revolution by trying to shut off its perspectives.
"The theory of three worlds" negates the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. At the same time, it negates the great historic mission of the proletariat and its leading role in the struggle for the revolution and socialism. "The theory of three worlds" is opposed to the struggle for the socialist revolution in the capitalist countries, the main protagonist of which is the proletariat. This theory negates the leading role of the proletariat in the struggle for national liberation. However the leading role of the proletariat in this struggle, which it realizes through its communist party, is the essential condition which guarantees that this struggle will develop on a consistent anti-imperialist course and that the national liberation revolution will lead triumphantly to socialism in the process of the uninterrupted revolution.According to the "theory of three worlds", the proletariat of the capitalist countries of the so-called "secondworld" ought to enter into alliance with its own reactionary bourgeoisie, which oppresses and exploits it and the proletariat of the dependent countries ought to cease the struggle against internal reaction and allow the bourgeoisie to lead the struggle for national liberation. "The theory of three worlds" completely negates the fundamental principle of Marxism, according to which the class struggle is the motor of history. It is a revisionist theory of class conciliation and class collaboration.
"The theory of three worlds" considers the so- called "third world" as the main force of the revolution. In reality, the dependent countries of the so- called "third world" are under the domination of regimes, the bulk of which are not only reactionary, anti-democratic and anti-communist, but, moreover, are completely linked with imperialism. Such lackeys of imperialism do not, in any way, represent a force against imperialism. On the contrary it is necessary that the revolutionary peoples overthrow these regimes through struggle, in order to liberate themselves from imperialism.
Without doubt it is the duty of the proletariat of the capitalist countries to condemn and fight the policy of aggression and blackmail of imperialism and social- imperialism against the governments of dependent countries. But the real place of the proletariat is in no way shoulder to shoulder with the governments, the oligarchy, the comprador bourgeoisie, but shoulder to shoulder with the proletariat, the masses of the people and the genuine anti-imperialist forces of these countries.
"The theory of three worlds" completely falsifies the inter-imperialist contradictions which exist in the world today, as well as the stand of Marxism- Leninism towards these contradictions. "The theory of three worlds" claims that inter-imperialist contradictions, which are contradictions between the enemies of the revolution and socialism, the contradictions between the imperialists of the so-called "second world" and the two superpowers, are contradictions between the enemies and friends of the people, and this is how it presents them. In this way it tries to present all the imperialist and capitalist states of the so-called "second world" as allies of the international proletariat and the oppressed peoples. In reality, these imperialist and capitalist states are integrated into the systems of the alliances and blocs of the two superpowers and the monopoly bourgeoisie of those countries has betrayed the national interests.
In practice, the new international opportunist trend has now changed its thesis on the so-called "first world"; this trend claims that U.S. imperialism is in decline and decay and that for this reason Soviet social-imperialism, in fact, constitutes the only enemy of the peoples. This trend considers U.S. imperialism an ally of a special category. In conformity with this, the defenders of the "theory of three worlds" preach more or less openly the strengthening of NATO, the European Common Market, the U.S. presence in Europe, etc. All this brings out the antagonistic contradiction that exists between the "theory of three worlds" and Marxism- Leninism in regard to the question of how the inter-imperialist contradictions should be exploited. The defenders of the "theory of three worlds" aim at the strengthening of U.S. imperialism and the imperialists of the so-called "second world" with the intention of uniting with them against Russian social-imperialism; on the other hand, the Marxist-Leninists take advantage of the inter-imperialist contradictions, in conformity with the teachings of Lenin and Stalin, to weaken imperialism in general and create revolutionary situations.
"The theory of three worlds" strengthens the enemies of the revolution and socialism, supports the war preparations of U.S. imperialism and its imperialist allies and is aimed against the struggle of the proletariat in the capitalist countries for the socialist revolution, as well as against the struggle of the oppressed peoples for national liberation. For all these reasons, our Parties express the need for a resolute struggle against the "theory of three worlds" and against the new international opportunist trend.
6) PROLETARIAN INTERNATIONALISM AND THE UNITY OF THE MARXIST-LENINIST MOVEMENT
Our Parties stress the need to defend proletarian internationalism against modern revisionism and social-chauvinism. Lenin educated the international proletariat by insisting that: "there is one, and only one, kind of real internationalism, and that is -- working whole-heartedly for the development of the revolutionary movement and the revolutionary struggle in one's own country, and supporting (by propaganda, sympathy, and material aid) this struggle, this, and only this, line, in every country without exception. "
This is how our Parties understand militant proletarian internationalism today.
The implementation of proletarian internationalism requires that the unity and cooperation between the Marxist-Leninist parties must be deepened and strengthened. In each country there is and can be only one communist party which holds aloft the banner of Marxism-Leninism. Therefore, the struggle for the unity of the world Marxist-Leninist movement means, above all, the consolidation and strengthening of fraternal relations between the genuine communist parties.
It is a fact that there are people who are following in practice a policy directed against the unity of the communist movement. With the aim of imposing the "theory of three worlds" and other opportunist concepts, efforts are being made to exert pressure on various sister parties, to split them and create factions in their ranks. In a series of countries, groups of opportunists and provocateurs are supported against the existing communist parties and the creation of such groups is encouraged. On the other hand, in practice, relations are severed with the sister parties for the sole reason that they do not accept this opportunist line, at a time when the above-mentioned groups of opportunists and provocateurs, which are completely isolated from the masses, are described as "communist parties", for the sole reason that they mechanically repeat the opportunist stands. Such an entirely unprincipled policy, is sabotage of the unity of the world communist movement and an attempt to split it.
In the struggle for the strengthening and deepening of the unity and cooperation of the Marxist-Leninist parties, it is necessary to profit from all the opportunities which present themselves to establish bilateral and multi-lateral contacts, to coordinate the common struggle in ever more effective forms, as well as to adopt joint statements.
In this context, our parties welcome the joint statement of the Marxist-Leninist parties of Latin America, as an important success in this struggle. At the same time and in the same direction, we underline the great importance of the international rallies which have been held during the current year in Rome, Ludvigshafen, Athens and Lisbon.
Our Parties have the same opinion that the defense of and solidarity with the People's Socialist Republic of Albania, today, the only socialist country in Europe, is a primary duty of proletarian internationalism. The dictatorship of the proletariat is growing steadily stronger and socialism is being built in the People's Socialist Republic of Albania, under the leadership of the glorious Party of Labor of Albania with Comrade Enver Hoxha at the head, and in the difficult conditions of the capitalist-revisionist encirclement. Our Parties hold that the report delivered by Comrade Enver Hoxha at the 7th Congress of the Party of Labor of Albania constitutes a document of great importance for the strategy and tactics of the world communist movement, as well as a brilliant weapon for the revolutionary understanding of the class struggle on an international scale at the present time. The Party of Labor of Albania and Comrade Enver Hoxha provide a brilliant example of the Marxist-Leninist determination and revolutionary courage that fills our parties with enthusiasm and we, once again hail the determined and courageous stand adopted by the Party of Labor of Albania in its protracted and courageous struggle against all forms of opportunism and revisionism.
On the first anniversary of the death of Comrade Mao Tsetung our Parties render homage to his memory and insist that his death has represented a great loss for the glorious Communist Party of China and for the entire world communist movement. Comrade Mao Tsetung, great leader of the people and of the Communist Party of China, has been equally a great leader of the world proletariat. Our Parties consider that it is a duty of all the Marxist-Leninists to resolutely defend the revolutionary teachings of Comrade Mao Tsetung -- in particular those relating to the struggle against modern revisionism, to the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and the struggle against the opportunists of all hues -- in the face of all those who hypocritically use his name to twist his teachings and to insidiously attack them.
The world communist movement will develop and become stronger despite the difficulties, because it gains strength from the invincible theory of Marxism-Leninism and from the great tempests of the class struggle. The resolute militant alliance of the international proletariat, socialist countries and oppressed peoples, will, undoubtedly deal ever heavier blows to imperialism, headed by the two superpowers, capitalism, reaction and revisionism. The revolutionary struggle, guided on the basis of the teachings of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism, will overthrow imperialism in every country and will put an end to the capitalist society of exploitation and oppression. The socialist revolution will triumph the world over.
LONG LIVE MARXISM-LENINISM!
LONG LIVE PROLETARIAN INTERNATIONALISM!
PROLETARIANS OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!
The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Germany (Marxist-Leninist)
The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Spain (Marxist-Leninist)
The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Greece (Marxist-Leninist)
The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Italy (Marxist- Leninist)
The Central Committee of the Portuguese Communist Party (Reconstructed) End.
[Photos: Photos show meetings, rallies and demonstrations organized by (from left to right) the Communist Party of Germany(M-L), the Communist Party of Italy( M-L), the Communist Party of Greece(M-L), the Communist Party of Spain(M-L) and the Portuguese Communist Party(R)]
This year is the 60th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution. The Great October Socialist Revolution marked the establishment of the first viable dictatorship of the proletariat. It marked the arrival of the era of proletarian revolution. It opened the path for liberation of all oppressed mankind and spread great Leninism around the world.
Enthusiastic rallies and meetings all across the country celebrated the 60th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution.
In New York City, the Sunrise Books Collective and the COUSML co-sponsored a militant meeting. 200 people attended in a high spirit of excitement. Below we reproduce the important speech of the comrade from the Sunrise Books Collective, a speech which upheld Leninism in the course of struggle against opportunism.
Speech by Sunrise Books Collective at New York Rally
In 1848 Karl Marx wrote: "A spectre is haunting Europe -- the spectre of Communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre". 130 years later, the theory of Marx and Engels, further broadened by the contributions of Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Hoxha, has sunk deep roots round the world. And as its influence has grown, the attacks on it by the international bourgeoisie have intensified. Tonight we are here to wage an important polemic, to reaffirm the significance of the October Revolution, the nature of this epoch and the consequent analysis of the international situation, to defend Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought in the face of an old attack -- that it is outdated -- which comes veiled in a new form, the "Theory of the Three Worlds".
"Imperialism is the eve of the socialist revolution" stated Comrade Lenin in 1917.
The October Revolution in 1917 ushered in a new epoch in the history of mankind. Comrade Stalin said: "The October Revolution has ushered in a new era, the era of proletarian revolutions in the countries of imperialism." It was the October Revolution, establishing the first socialist state in history, which took the theoretical question of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, and made it a practical reality. The U.S.S.R. stood as a living answer to the questions of which path for the international proletariat and the oppressed masses.
At the center of this epoch -- the transition from capitalism to socialism -- stands the proletariat, the class whose consistent, revolutionary strength gives focus and direction to the aspirations of all oppressed peoples. The proletariat is the motive force for the further development of human society, that force which can finally put an end to the exploitation of man by man.
Communists are proletarian internationalists who under stand that every particular, local or national struggle must be looked at in the context of the world situation. Struggling in the heart of the most powerful imperialist country in the history of the world, U.S. Marxist-Leninists, revolutionaries and progressive people must correctly understand the international situation, in order to direct our work in building a new Anti-Revisionist Communist Party, to lead the working class and its allies to establish the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
As with all questions, we must look at the international situation and the strategy for world-wide revolution from the class criterion. Lenin and Stalin laid out the four basic contradictions in the world in the epoch of proletarian revolution as:
-- the contradiction between the socialist world and the imperialist world;
-- the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie in capitalist countries;
-- the contradiction between imperialism and the oppressed peoples and nations;
-- the contradiction between imperialist powers.
These four contradictions, reaffirmed by Chairman Mao and Comrade Enver Hoxha, speak to:
1. the two fundamentally different social systems: the exploitation of the many by the few, giving way to the end of all exploitation of man by man. A capitalism in decay, which struggles to maximize profits in a world where it is increasingly unable to provide the basic necessities of life to the masses of people, and which simultaneously wages a desperate struggle to hold back history, daily attacking the whole concept of socialism.
Socialism, representing the aspirations of the international proletariat and the oppressed masses, on the rise, growing strong in its fierce struggle with moribund capitalism, confident of final victory;
2. the ever-strengthening struggles of the proletariat -- demonstrations, strikes, protests in the U.S., Japan, Europe and throughout the capitalist world are increasing; while new Marxist-Leninist parties are forming out of the struggle against modern revisionism;
3. the struggles of peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America -- the struggle for liberation from imperialism and domestic fascism in places like southern Africa, the Middle East, Chile, Colombia and Indonesia;
4. the contention and collusion between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., and their allies such as France, Japan, Britain, Poland in the struggles for markets and hegemony.
Taken all together, the recognition of these four contradictions are the basis of a correct Marxist- Leninist strategy for world revolution.
The "theory of Three Worlds", the supposedly new strategy for world-wide revolution, is opportunist precisely because it hides the class contradictions existing in the real world. A wholly integrated theory, it relies on distortion of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought to serve the forces of reaction and betray the revolution.
According to the "theory of Three Worlds", new, fundamental changes in the world situation have made the Marxist-Leninist analysis of the four basic contradictions outdated. These alleged new conditions are the "disappearance" of the "socialist camp", and the "disintegration of the western imperialist bloc". Let us examine these vanishing acts more closely.
In 1921 Lenin said:
"...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. "
and in 1919 Stalin declared:
"The world has definitely and irrevocably split into two camps: the camp of imperialism and the camp of socialism. "
The essence of the question of two camps is that there are two world social systems existing -- capitalism and socialism. That there are two paths offered to mankind. Since the October Revolution, the question of "which path" has been a concrete, practical one to be dealt with on the immediate agenda. To raise that the disintegration of the "socialist camp" of 13 countries, existing shortly after World War II, led to the division of the world into three parts, and eliminated socialism as one of the fundamental parts of this new world, is to state that there is no longer a clear direction for the working and oppressed masses, aside from participation in a broad united front against the two superpowers. A front whose sole goal, with the elimination of socialism, must be the establishment of domestic capitalism. Such a contention denies, as Enver Hoxha declared:
"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."
The existence of the socialist world, which is the essence of "camp", is not merely a quantitative question. It has both a practical'and theoretical aspect. The practical aspect is the undeniable fact that the socialist countries, and the actual revolutionary leadership and support they offer do exist objectively. Following the degeneration of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the Party of Labor of Albania (PLA) took up the mantle of leadership of the International Communist Movement in the struggle against modern revisionism. The U.S. anti-revisionist communist movement, as well as the new Marxist-Leninist parties around the world, developed under their acknowledged leadership.
The theoretical aspect speaks to the historical fact with broader significance than the existence of a number of socialist countries. It says, as Chairman Mao states, that the
"contradiction between the socialist camp and the imperialist camp is a contradiction between two fundamentally different social systems, socialism and capitalism".
This means that even if all the socialist countries should become revisionist, the question of which way for the proletariat and the oppressed masses, the nature of this epoch -- the irreconcilable struggle between socialism and capitalism -- has been irrevocably answered by the October Revolution.
According to the "theory of Three Worlds", the other key factor in the alleged realignment of the international relations is the "disintegrating of the Western imperialist bloc".
The deepening contradictions among the Western imperialist powers, along with the emergence of the Soviet Union as a social-imperialist superpower lead the "Three Worlds" theorists to the erroneous conclusion that there is no longer a single imperialist world. Once again, we have a distortion of the essence of imperialism, as we did on that of socialism. As the Chinese put it in 1963:
"There now exist two essentially different world economic systems, the socialist system and the ; capitalist system, and two mutually antagonistic world camps, the socialist camp and the imperialist camp, in the course of events the strength of socialism has surpassed that of imperialism. Undoubtedly, the strength of the socialist countries, combined with that of the revolutionary people of all countries, of the national-liberation movement and of the peace movement, greatly surpasses the strength of the imperialists and their lackeys. In other words, in the world balance of forces as a whole, the superiority belongs to socialism and the revolutionary people, and not to imperialism; it belongs to the forces defending world peace, and not to the imperialist forces of war. As we Chinese Communists put it, 'The East wind prevails over the West wind.' It is utterly wrong not to take into account this tremendous change in the world balance of forces after World War II. However, this change has not done away with the various inherent contradictions in the capitalist world, has not altered the jungle law of survival in capitalist society, and does not preclude the possibility of the imperialist countries splitting into blocs and engaging in all kinds of conflicts in the pursuit of their own interests.
"How can it be said that the distinction between the two social systems of capitalism and socialism will automatically vanish as a result of the change in the world balance of forces?
"How can it be said that the various inherent contradictions of the capitalist world will automatically disappear as a result of this change in the world balance of forces?
"How can it be said that the ruling forces in the capitalist countries will voluntarily quit the stage of history as a result of this change in the world balance of forces?" ("More on the Differences Between Comrade Togliatti and Us", WhencetheDifferences?, pp. 185-186)
The contradictions between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., as well as those between the U.S. and France, Japan and Germany, the German Democratic Republic and the U.S.S.R., are those among imperialist countries and monopoly capitalist groups. All these countries have fundamental unity around the line of bourgeois dictatorship and capitalist exploitation and therefore must exhibit this:
"essential feature of imperialism... the rivalry between several Great Powers in the striving for hegemony, i.e. for the conquest of territory, not so much directly for themselves as to weaken the adversary and undermine his hegemony." (Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, p. 109)
And the PLA says that:
"In the stage of imperialism, as a result of the unequal development of various capitalist countries, the inter-imperialist contradictions exist and become constantly deeper -- inter-imperialist alliances, blocs and groupings are created and broken up according to the circumstances and conjunctures. " ("Theory and Practice of the Revolution", p. 22)
Through a sleight of hand, the "theory of Three Worlds" raises the irreconcilable contradictions in the enemy's camp, which in essence are the very basis of imperialist unity, to the center of the strategy for world revolution. According to this theory the contradictions of the lesser imperialisms with super-power domination makes the former an ally of the Third World struggle against imperialism. But, as the old saying goes "facts are stubborn things". Let's examine some.
France, the "ally" of the African masses sent troops to Zaire and Chad this year to back up the regimes there. According to the New York Times (7/20/77) :
"The President (Giscard d'Estaing) stated recently that France went to the aid of the pro-Western Government in Zaire only because the Carter Administration was prevented from giving help by Congressional opposition. Subsequently, Mr. Giscard d'Estaing has suggested that Europe might be better qualified than the American Administration to guarantee the security of independent black African states against aggression and subversion.
"He has called for a security pact between black Africa and Europe that would reduce the danger of a superpower confrontation and help dissuade African nations from embarking on an economically ruinous armaments race."
Two weeks later the French further elaborated their policy around the view that African states were looking for a "third way" between capitalism and socialism, and that France and the West had to provide this alternative. (New York Times, 8/1/77)
Can Britain, with $5.2 billion invested in the South African economy (NYT 10/26/77), be the ally of the masses 6f Azania in their struggle to overthrow that economy? From the NYT 11/1/77 dateline United Nations:
"The U.S., Britain and France used their vetoes in the Security Council today to block three African sponsored resolutions that would have imposed stringent economic penalties on South Africa because of its repressive racial practices against blacks.
"Canada and West Germany voted with them in a display of unity in opposing the three proposals: a ban on foreign investments and credits for South Africa, a prohibition on arms sales and revocation of licenses to manufacture weapons as well as an end of cooperation in nuclear development, and a move toward punitive measures."
It is the struggle against revolution which always demonstrates the unity of this supposedly "disintegrating Western bloc".
But what is the role of the revolutionary forces inside the imperialist countries? The Three Worlds theorists say revolution is only occurring in the Third World, in those places where "armed" struggle is being waged -- i.e. the national liberation movements. By looking at armed struggle as the only form of politics, the Three Worlds theorists ignore the formation of new Marxist-Leninist parties, the rising tide of strikes, demonstrations and protests led by the proletariat and its allies throughout the advanced capitalist world, which are manifestations of and further preparation for socialist revolution. Consequently, the "theory of Three Worlds" has no role for the proletariat in the "Second", or "First" Worlds, except as partners with their own bourgeoisie in the fight to "defend" their national sovereignty which is allegedly threatened" by the Soviet Union. A contention which conveniently ignores the direct threat to national sovereignty posed by the thousands of U.S. troops already stationed throughout Western Europe.
Wherever implemented, the "theory of Three Worlds" inevitably leads to social-chauvinism and sabotages the struggle to destroy the imperialist world. The U.S. proletariat is left to support our monopolist bourgeoisie as it strives to tighten its hold throughout Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe, as it prepares for world war to gain new markets, pull itself out of its domestic economic crisis and stifle revolution. The very logic of their theory will lead the "theory of Three Worlds" proponents to mobilize the U.S. proletariat to support an increased Defense budget, the B-l bomber, the neutron bomb, and the Strengthening of NATO, historically an instrument of U.S. and European imperialist aggression (e.g. only through NATO support was Portugal able to wage a 15-year war to hold its colonies of Mozambique, Angola and Guinea-Bissau).
The correct Marxist-Leninist position, as laid out by Enver Hoxha at the PLA's 7th Party Congress (p. 186) is that all imperialisms are dangerous to the world's peoples, and that in particular, the two superpowers "pose the same danger" and "are the main and greatest enemies of the peoples. That is why, one must never rely on one imperialism to fight or escape from the other." To raise up the danger of the U.S. S. R. and belittle U.S. imperialism will inevitably lead to a lowering of vigilance, and the implementation of social-chauvinism -- the policy of working class unity with its own bourgeoisie in pursuit of imperialist exploitation.
As the contradictions between the superpowers intensify, the preparation for world war quickens -- a war which only revolution can prevent. But the "theory of Three Worlds" takes revolution away from the proletariat and oppressed masses and leaves them only with the choice of which side to choose in an imperialist war. The Marxist-Leninist position, carried out by the Bolshevik Party in World War I and still correct today, is to turn the imperialist war into a revolutionary civil war to defeat your own bourgeoisie, not to capitulate to it as the "theory of Three Worlds" dictates.
Inter-imperialist contradictions should be used to the extent that they further the revolution, but not as a substitute for the revolution.
DISTORTION OF THE CONTRADICTION BETWEEN IMPERIALISM AND THE OPPRESSED PEOPLES AND NATIONS
The October Revolution took the contradiction between imperialism and the oppressed nations and peoples, and made the latter a reserve of the proletarian revolution. Stalin said that:
"Leninism has proved, and the imperialist war and the revolution in Russia have confirmed, that the national question can be solved only in connection with and on the basis of the proletarian revolution, and that the road to victory of the revolution in the West lies through the revolutionary alliance with the liberation movement of the colonies and dependent countries against imperialism. The national question is a part of the general question of the proletarian revolution, a part of the question of the dictatorship of the proletariat." (Foundations ofLeninism, p. 73)
In On New Democracy Chairman Mao states that:
"In this era, any revolution in a colony or semi-colony that is directed against imperialism... i s no longer part of the old bourgeois, or capitalist world revolution, but is part of the new world revolution, the proletarian-socialist world revolution. Such revolutionary colonies and semi-colonies can no longer be regarded as allies of the counter-revolutionary front of world capitalism; they have become the allies of the revolutionary front of world socialism."
Finally, in assessing support of national liberation movements, Stalin cautions:
"This does not mean, of course, that the proletariat must support every national movement, everywhere and always, in every individual concrete case. It means that support must be given to such national movements as tend to weaken, to overthrow imperialism, and not to strengthen and preserve it. (Foundations of Leninism, p. 74)
The above quotes directly contradict the "theory of Three Worlds" which raises to the absolute the revolutionary character of countries in the Third World, based solely on the low level of development of their productive forces, and their oppression by imperialism. According to the "theory of Three Worlds", it is no longer the struggle of the proletariat, but that of the Third World "countries" which is a "revolutionary motive force propelling the wheel of world history".
The failure to use the class criterion, the substitution of the proletariat's ally for the proletariat itself, the liquidation of the role of the proletariat in advanced and developing capitalist countries are a complete abandonment of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought. The "theory of Three Worlds" makes no concrete class analysis of the countries in the Third World. It indiscriminately lumps socialist countries with developing capitalist ones: Albania and China are equated with South Korea, Iran, Zaire, Saudi Arabia, Brazil. The question of what class controls the state is never addressed. Supposedly (hopefully?) all these countries have fundamental contradictions with imperialism. So, in pursuit of the truth, let us return to the facts.
1. The fascist Shah of Iran, favored of the U.S. bourgeoisie, is part of the anti-superpower front of the Third World. Iran is a member of OPEC, an organization whose creation reflected the intensifying struggle of the masses in those Middle East countries against oppression and for national liberation. In order to maintain power in those countries, these feudal lords and new bourgeois elements had to give the illusion of a struggle against imperialism for control of the country's natural resources. But what has become of the wealth garnered by the OPEC countries ? The masses of people have no say concerning its distribution or re-investment. This summer OPEC decided not to raise the price of oil, because to do so might deepen the economic crisis in Western capitalist countries (the U.S. in particular), where the OPEC countries have re-invested much of their wealth. But according to the "theory of Three Worlds" these countries are part of the United Front against the Superpowers.
2. The U.S. uses King Faisal of Saudi Arabia as a power broker in the Middle East. According to the NYT (10/23/77), despite the U.S. close relations with its enemy, Israel,:
"The starting point for the Saudi foreign policy has been close ties to the United States. Not only is Saudi Arabia dependent on the United States for technological and managerial expertise for its economy, but it relies on the United States for the military help to protect its oil fields and to insure stability in the nearby regions."
These close ties evidence Faisal's unities with imperialism, although when it enters the scene under a socialist guise he will try to block it -- witness Saudi aid to the feudal Ethiopian Democratic Union (EDU) in Ethiopia, and to Somalia in order to eliminate Soviet influence. The NYT article goes on to state: "The Saudis have pledged a billion dollars to black Africa, clearly an effort to support non-radical regimes there, and they have been active all along the Persian Gulf to limit the chances for leftist movements. " It should be clear to any honest student of the situation that King Faisal's principal contradiction is not with Soviet social-imperialism, but with the revolutionary struggle of the masses.
In "A Proposal Concerning the General Line of the International Communist Movement", Chairman Mao describes the correct Marxist-Leninist position to be taken by the proletariat from oppressed nations when participating in a:
"broad united front against imperialism and its lackeys. In order to consolidate and expand this united front it is necessary that the proletarian party should maintain its ideological, political and organizational independence and insist on the leadership of the revolution... As the internal social contradictions and the international class struggle sharpen, the bourgeoisie, and particularly the big bourgeoisie, in some newly independent countries increasingly tend to become retainers of imperialism and to pursue anti-popular, anti-Communist and counterrevolutionary policies. It is necessary for the proletarian party resolutely to oppose these reactionary policies." (pp. 15-17)
By abandoning the class analysis and raising the Soviet Union as the most dangerous superpower, the "theory of Three Worlds" places the reactionary regimes of these countries (whose contradictions with the Soviet Union are reflections of inter-imperialist contradictions) as part of that united front which is the "revolutionary motive force propelling the wheel of world history".
3. In South Korea where it is normal for women factory workers to work 70 hours a week for $17 gross (NYT 8/8/77), mounting labor unrest is met by political repression and imprisonment without trial. Yet the Japanese ambassador to the U.S. declared last Saturday that: "both in Korea and in Southeast Asia a continued American presence and commitment were vital to the maintenance of peace". The "American presence" he refers to are the thousands of U.S. troops which prop up the fascist South Korean regime and the "peace" he talks of maintaining is the consolidation of capitalism in that region. Yet the "theory of Three Worlds" says that both Japan, as a Second World country and South Korea, as a Third World country, have their real unity around getting the U.S. and U.S. S. R. out of their area.
By focusing primarily on the Soviet Union, the "theory of Three Worlds" minimizes the concrete presence and control exerted by the U.S. throughout the world, and negates the need for the peoples of these countries to fight the U.S., as well as all other imperialist countries.
4. Fidel Castro, pimping off the revolutionary struggle of the Cuban masses which led to the overthrow of Batista in 1959, is a stalking horse for social-imperialism. As a Soviet satellite, Cuba provides the "revolutionary" legitimacy and/or mercenary shock troops (as in Angola) to facilitate Soviet penetration into an area. In the Caribbean and Latin America, Cuba plays a particularly destructive role in the revolutionary struggle of the masses towards socialism. For example, take Jamaica, where Prime Minister Michael Manley used Castro's visit to legitimize himself as a "social-democrat", whose repressive government supposedly functions in the interests of the Jamaican masses. Two weeks later in a speech to his parliamentary body Manley told U.S. corporations not to fear nationalization and that he welcomes imperialist investment. In reality there is no contradiction here. A class analysis helps us see through the socialist labels and shows us that Castro, Manley and the U.S. propagate the same line -- capitalist exploitation.
But without this class analysis, we are reduced to metaphysically fitting Cuba into some world. Possibly in the same 'Twilight Zone' where the settler- states of Israel, Azania and Zimbabwe are floating free. The "theory of Three Worlds" abstracts us from reality, leaving revolutionary forces with no objective basis to analyze and develop the political line, organization and deployment of forces which comprise a Marxist-Leninist strategy for world revolution.
In the Foundations of Leninism, Stalin states that proletarian revolution will break out "where the chain of imperialism is weakest". In polemicizing against the view propagated prior to and disproven by the October Revolution, viz., that proletarian revolution could only break out in advanced capitalist countries, Stalin says:
"Where will the chain break in the near future? Again, where it is weakest. It is not precluded that the chain may break, say, in India. Why? Because that country has a young, militant, revolutionary proletariat, which has such an ally as the national liberation movement -- an undoubtedly powerful and undoubtedly important ally. Because there the revolution is confronted by such a well-known foe as foreign imperialism, which has no moral credit and is deservedly hated by all the oppressed and ex plotted masses of India.
"It is also quite possible that the chain will break in Germany. Why? Because the factors which are operating say, in India are beginning to operate in Germany as well; but of course, the enormous difference in the level of development between India and Germany cannot but stamp its imprint on the progress and outcome of a revolution in Germany. "
The "theory of Three Worlds" flip-flops from the earlier view of proletarian revolution only in the advanced countries, to the view that revolution (solely bourgeois democratic) can occur only in the lesser- capitalistically developed countries, the so-called Third World. Lacking a class analysis, the unity of the Third World is based on the low level of development of their productive forces. The question of the nature of our epoch, the struggle for the hegemony of the proletarian line, for proletarian leadership in the national liberation struggles is completely liquidated. By eliminating the subjective factor, the struggle to develop the proletariat's class consciousness of its historic role, the "theory of Three Worlds" undialectically separates the subjective from the objective factors for revolution.
In the "Proposal Concerning the General Line... ", Chairman Mao states in regards to the four basic contradictions in the contemporary world that:
"These contradictions and the struggles to which they give rise are interrelated and influence each other. Nobody can obliterate any of these fundamental contradictions or subjectively substitute one for all the rest. " (p. 6)
The "theory of Three Worlds" does precisely what the Chairman warned against. It liquidates the contradictions between the socialist world and the imperialist world and between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat in the capitalist countries. It minimizes and distorts the contradiction between imperialism and the oppressed nations and leaves the inter-imperialist contradictions the centerpiece of the strategy for world revolution. The PLA states: "contradictions of this kind (inter-imperialist) must in no way be identified with the struggles of the working masses and the peoples against imperialism". In every possible way, the "theory of Three Worlds" opposes Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought, and as the PLA sums up:
"The attempts to analyze situations allegedly in a new way differently from Lenin and Stalin, to change the strategy which the Marxist-Leninist Communist movement has always upheld, lead in devious anti-Marxist ways, to abandoning the fight against imperialism and revisionism. Loyalty to Marxism-Leninism, to the revolutionaries of the Marxist-Leninist movement, struggle against all opportunist deviations which the modem revisionists of all hues are spreading, the revolutionary mobilization of the working class and the peoples against the bourgeoisie and imperialism, serious preparation for the revolution, are the only correct road, the only road leading to victory."
The situation shows that the revolutionary struggles of the proletariat and the oppressed masses led by the new Communist Parties are intensifying. To counter this revolutionary upsurge and irreversible historical trend, the bourgeoisie, is increasing its preparation for world war and the institution of domestic fascism. The bourgeoisie wants to mobilize the proletariat under the slogan of "National Defense". Its agents inside the Communist Movement will propagate the same nationally chauvinist line under a socialist signboard. The duty of Marxist-Leninists is to give correct leadership internationally, and in the particular it has become our responsibility to study the polemics now being waged around the international situation and the correct Marxist-Leninist strategy for world revolution. We must not come to this polemic subjectively, obstructed from study of this question by any attempts of the opportunists and revisionists.
This is not a question pro or anti- China or Albania, not a question of going with the 800 million or going with the 3 million. It is a question of the defense of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought which is being particularly attacked in opposition to the correct view on the international situation and the strategy for world revolution.
As Marxist-Leninists inside the United States our central task is to build a new Anti-Revisionist Communist Party. Our goal is socialist revolution -- to lead the working class and its allies to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat. This epoch is that of the proletariat and the oppressed masses. As Chairman Mao has summed up:
"The danger of a new world war still exists, and the people of all countries must get prepared. But revolution is the main trend in the world today. "
WORKERS OF ALL COUNTRIES UNITE!
WORKERS AND OPPRESSED PEOPLES AND NATIONS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!
THE SOCIALIST WORLD LIVES!
THE FUTURE IS BRIGHT!
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Enver Hoxha, "Report Submitted to the 7th Congress of the Party of Labor of Albania"
2. PLA (Radio Tirana 10/16/77) "The Correct Definition of the Epoch Can Be Made Only on the Basis of the Marxist-Leninist Analysis of its Main Contradictions"
3. PLA (Zeri i Popullit) "The Theory and Practice of Revolution"
4. Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism
5. Lenin, "Ninth All Russia Congress of Soviets", Collected Works, Vol.33, p. 150
6. Chairman Mao, "A Proposal Concerning the General Line of the International Communist Movement"
7. Chairman Mao, "New Democracy"
8. Chairman Mao, "People of the World, Unite and Defeat the U.S. Aggressors and All Their Running Dogs" 5/20/70
9. Communist Party of China,, "More on the Differences Between Comrade Togliatti and Us", Whence the Differences
10. Stalin, The Foundations of Leninism, "The Historical Roots of Leninism", "Theory", "The National Question"
11. Stalin, Problems of Leninism, "Strategy and Tactics"
12. Stalin, "Two Camps", Collected Works, vol. 4 End.
[Photo: Above: An enthusiastic meeting is held in New York City to celebrate the 60th Anniversary of the GreatOctober Socialist Revolution, co-sponsored by Sunrise Books Collective and the New York Branch of the COUSML, Nov. 5, 1977.]
[Photo: Above: The Buffalo Branch of the COUSML held a militant rally to celebrate the 60th Anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution, Nov. 6, 1977.]
TAKE UP EVERY RACIST AND FASCIST ATTACK! HIT BACK TIT FOR TAT!
The Workers' Advocatehas received with great enthusiasm the special issue of the 21st of August of Workers' Weekly, the newsweekly of the Communist Party of England (Marxist-Leninist), which is devoted to recent great battles fought by the British people against fascism. Led in active resistance by the party of the proletariat, CPE(M-L), the British working people in their thousands gave the National Front nazis and their police protectors a good thrashing. This is an historic struggle. We hail the work of our fraternal comrades of the Communist Party of England (Marxist-Leninist) who are putting into practice the only correct line of active struggle against the fascism of monopoly capital.
AN HISTORIC STRUGGLE, A REVOLUTIONARY TURNING POINT Workers Weekly Editorial
This issue of Workers' Weekly is a special issue devoted to the great anti-fascist struggles waged in London and Birmingham on August 13th and 15th. The purpose of this issue is to salute these tremendous struggles, to sum them up, and to popularize their experience, which is of profound importance to the socialist revolution in Britain. The two demonstrations in Ladywood and Lewisham mark a decisive turning point in the present-day anti-fascist movement in Britain. They are a major step forward in the development of revolutionary resistance of the people to imperialism, racism and capitalist exploitation, and a telling blow to all forms of opportunism.
The significance of these battles lies in a number of features. In the first place the party of the proletariat, the Communist Party of England (Marxist-Leninist) played a leading role in both. The Party comrades went among the masses to do propaganda that the nazis have no right to organize, to organize the people and lead their attacks firmly against the enemy. Many comrades sacrificed their safety and freedom to inspire the people, and uphold the Party's line. Ever since its inception the Communist Party of England (Marxist-Leninist) has fought for the platform of no mercy for the fascists, and militantly popularized it. At Lewisham and Ladywood broad masses of people decisively took up this platform as their own, and implemented it in the streets, showing that the people have now come forward to implement the slogan -- of stopping the fascists organizing, and this is now an actual force in the country. This mass movement of the people has defeated once and for all the opportunist lie that the National Front should be defeated by appealing to the state, and confirms that it is the people who are the decisive force in history.
Contrary to the propaganda of the bourgeoisie, the struggles were marked by their mass character. The Hitlerite National Front had marched arrogantly into Lewisham boasting of it as a "stronghold", where they had won some votes in elections. In fact a small gang of the nazi thugs found themselves totally isolated, surrounded by the militant thousands of working and oppressed people of all nationalities. The Hitlerites were totally unable to march just as they pleased, and were only saved from massacre by their police guard of 4,000.
The unfolding of the struggle showed ever more clearly that the nazis and the police are equally part of the repressive state machine of the monopoly capitalist ruling class, in attacking the nazis, the masses were forced to defend themselves against the police charges and launched one counter-attack after another back against them. While the police were decked out with the latest trappings of repression, "riot shields", etc., it was they who were cowering and routed. The people, on the other hand, showed boundless courage. For decades the working people have been oppressed and harrassed by the police, especially the national minority youth in recent years. Workers' Weekly hails the just vengeance of the people against the police.
The demonstrations showed the weakness of the bourgeoisie in their attempt to step up fascist rule. Confident that they could float their nazi party, and "handle" any violence that might arise, the bourgeoisie were thrown into utter confusion. Now they are engaged in a debate on what step to take next, to increase repression, or deception of the people, or both. Through their press they are desperately pushing the utmost pessimism that they feel about the demonstrations, and are trying to create hysteria against such militant struggles which spell their doom.
In this issue Workers' Weekly also salutes the 10th anniversary of the Necessity for Change Conference, held in London from August 1st - 14th, 1967. It was at this historic Conference that the decisions were taken that led to the founding of the Communist Party of England (Marxist-Leninist), and the Marxist-Leninist Center was re-established in Britain. The Conference dispelled the gloom and pessimism that then predominated on the re-building of the Communist Party, and set about the task of rousing the working people of Britain for proletarian socialist revolution. Ten years have seen the party built and the working masses enter on a new stage of struggle against the forces of reaction of which the recent upsurge against fascism is a new high and a historic turning point. End.
[Photo: Photograph shows the vast numbers of working people of all nationalities, in particular the youth, waiting to physically stop the nazis from marching through Lewisham. The anti-fascists outnumbered the nazis by at least 5 to 1, showing the deep hatred that the British working class has towards the attempts to rebuild the nazi movement and thereby prop up the monopoly capitalist system in the country.]
[Photo: Party comrades lead the hundreds of antifascists into Lewisham to join another section of the anti-fascist forces. The Party comrades had been leading attempts to block the nazi march along much of its route and had only been eventually driven back by repeated charges from police and their cars. Prior to this, the Party had led a militant contingent through the police lines into the fascists just after they had left New Cross, inflicting a number of the thugs with serious injuries, and further destroying their march.]
On the evening of Saturday, August 13th, an atmosphere of militant celebration reigned in the South London borough of Lewisham. All along the streets, from New Cross almost up to Catford, groups of working people stood outside houses, shops, cinemas and pubs joyfully discussing the day's events -- the successful demonstration against the march of the nazi National Front, and the militant resistance of the demonstrators to the fascist state forces. Working people of all nationalities pointed out how the nazis and police continuously harass them in their communities, launching especially vicious attacks against the national minorities. Now, they said, people are on the move to resist these attacks and wipe out the nazimovement. One West Indian woman said, "You should have seen our kids attacking the police vans -- we are all proud of them", and many young people, hearing that Lewisham police station was under siege by the anti-fascists, marched down to give their assistance to the fighters. At the side of the road the remains of a police motorbike smoldered, while several vans used by the Special Patrol Group goons to make their attacks and arrest people, stood shattered with all their windows broken in. Far from the gloom and despair promoted by the bourgeois press, the mood was one of jubilation coupled with determination to carry on the struggle.
The Hitlerite National Front had organized its march on the basis of the most racist, anti-people platform, in support of its police allies' suppression of the national minority people and workers in Lewisham. In particular it was in support of their arbitrary arrest of 24black youth earlier this year. They were using the occasion to push statistics cooked up by the police over three years ago to "justify" their racist attacks. These are supposed to "prove" that the majority of crime is committed by immigrant youth. But the people, who are daily harrassed and provoked by the police and the fascists, know who the real criminals and gangsters are. Steeled by their hatred of oppression and determined to resist, they prepared themselves to stop the nazi march. Going deep among the local people in the weeks before, comrades of the Communist Party of England (Marxist- Leninist) explained the need for active opposition to fascism, and led the militant sentiment of the people to engage in all-out struggle. Meeting the true needs of the oppressed masses, the line of active opposition in the face of nazi and government organized attacks won tremendous support. Far from being a demonstration that was "nothing to do with the people of Lewisham", as the bourgeois press tried to make out, they turned out in their thousands to join it and link up with anti-fascists from all over the country. The people of Lewisham were the staunch basis of the struggle.
Right from the beginning of the afternoon the antifascist struggle was under way. When the Hitlerites assembled one demonstration was already marching through the town, while thousands of other anti-fascists had arrived at New Cross to try to prevent them leaving the area at all. As the mounted police made to open a way through for the fascists, the entire contingent of police and nazis were met with a massive hail of missiles. Under this barrage the mounted police were forced to withdraw, and columns of foot police tried to force their way through, attacking and arresting anti-fascists. As the fascist march entered New Cross Road this cordon was broken by waves of the progressive forces, who cut a section of it off, and set about meting out heavy punishment, attacking individual nazis and wiping out numbers of their banners, flags and racist slogans. Throughout this attack, which seriously demoralized the nazis, supporters of CPE (M-L) played a militant role. The next sortie against the fascists was led by the Party as the march passed the foot of Tanners Hill, a number of comrades breaking through the police cordon and dealing further heavy blows to the marchers, fighting on until two comrades were brutally arrested.
Showing great flexibility and initiative, with the communistsplaying a leading role, hundreds of the anti-fascists made their way to outflank the march, meeting up with it head on in Brookmill Road. At this point the masses withstood a full on charge by police and forced police vehicles out of the street, threatening them with revolutionary violence. The nazis were now unable to pass along their planned route and were shepherded off by the state goons to a secret location. Subsequently it emerged that after passing down some side streets they had held a rapid "meeting" there before being removed in police vehicles and dispersed by train. At this stage the antifascists again reformed into a march under the leadership of Party comrades, and strode down into the center of Lewisham to join up with the main body of demonstrators there. They shouted the slogans "Death to fascism", "Death to the Hitlerite National Front", and "Smash the National Front", and called the workers and youth, office workers, professional workers and people from many walks of life on the thousands of people lining the streets to join in and fight. Comrades went in among the people, giving them leaflets and winning them over for the active struggle.
From this point the entire center of Lewisham was occupied by upwards of 8,000 anti-fascist demonstrators, broad masses of British and national minority workers and youth, office workers, professional workers and people from many walks of life. Despite disruptions caused by certain self-appointed "leaders" who gave now one direction, now another, the people organized to seize control of all the entrances to the town center to ensure that no way could be open to the nazis. On each front they were forced to fight back against police charges, made on horseback, with truncheons and with the "riot-shields". Time and time again the fascist police massed together and charged, smashing shop windows in their frenzy, and trying to push the people through them. Many of the demonstrators pointed out how it was a lesson in the nature of state fascism, and denounced the police as the same as the National Front. Each attempt of the police to force a bus or van through the crowd was met with a hail of bricks and bottles, and one busload of police was forced to turn back with cracked windows and a slashed tire. Further up towards Lewisham police station, police vehicles were seriously wrecked including one Special Patrol Group van, whose driver was mercilessly beaten. Two motorcycles were fired at the roadside. Each police charge was followed by a regrouping of the masses, whose militant spirit was raised and strengthened in the struggle. One contingent laid siege to the police station, demanding the release of all those unjustly arrested, and putting an effective end to Lewisham as the operations center for the police attacks. By this time small groups of police were cowering on the pavements, hiding behind their shields. On every front of battle the communists and Party supporters fought in the front lines and worked among the people to organize and lead them, several more being arrested as they fought. By the end of the day 4,000 of the state forces had been unable to ensure a route for the Hitlerite march, and unable to arrest more than 200 or so demonstrators. Far from achieving their wild dream of maintaining "law and order", the police more and more exposed themselves as criminals and thugs, and provided the masses with a profound education in the class nature of the state.
The demonstration at Lewisham marked a great upsurge in the anti-fascist movement of the working masses, and dealt a telling blow against the chieftains of opportunism who preach the road of "peaceful opposition", and try to hold back from the open battle. The demonstration was characterized by the militant spirit of the masses, their revolutionary initiative and staying power in struggle. At the same time wherever the communists went and organized in the midst of the people the level and force of their struggle was raised and consolidated, and the people took up the slogans that represent their aspirations in smashing nazism. They showed fear neither of the fascists nor of the state forces who stood between them and the nazis. Steeled in struggle, and coming under the leadership of the Party, the anti-fascist struggle will go from strength to strength. The spirit of Lewisham will point the way forward. End.
1977 has been a year of escalating working class struggles against all the economic and political attacks of the monopoly bourgeoisie and the Labor Government. More and more workers are entering into acute class struggle in defense of their living standards and against intensified exploitation. They are in upsurge against racist attacks, and attacks on their legal and political rights, such as the right to organize to serve their true class interests. The growing anti-fascist movement and the struggle at Grunwick's are both fine examples of this trend. Both are increasingly bringing workers into head-on conflict with the bourgeois state and its machinery of physical and legal repression. The unflinching courage of countless working and progressive people in this struggle is sowing confusion and dismay in the ranks of the capitalist class, who are now wildly debating how to strengthen their position and consolidate their dictatorship over the masses of the people.
In particular a debate has broken out about how best to strengthen their fascist police force, and open fears are being voiced that it is becoming "demoralized". Immediately after the battle at Lewisham the leading bourgeois politicians were queueing up on television and in the press to express their support for the police, to congratulate them on their vicious handling of the fight and commiserate them on their injuries. Typical among these was the Police Federation "advisor", MP Eldon Griffiths, who said that the main task of the courts after Lewisham was to deal severely with those who attack the police. "They", he said, "must be taught an unforgettable lesson -- that neither strong political convictions nor being a member of a minority group gives any man the right to assault the upholders of the law". He went on to point out that the police are nationally 10-15,000 under established, and called for priority in strengthening them "as a social service". In short he expressed the fear of the bourgeoisie that people will fight for what is just, and not lie down and accept the repression of the police, the National Front, etc., without a squeak.
For their part the spokesmen of the police explained that things were not really out of hand in Lewisham or Ladywood, that they had under-estimated the "violence" a little, and that they would do better next time. But even in the pages of the bourgeois press individual police expressed their hysterical fear at the wrath of the people roused to anger. One said "There were scuffles everywhere. Bottles and bricks were falling like rain, and constables were being knocked down all around me". The Guardian admitted that the police were not at all in control in Lewisham High Street, and another paper revealed that at Ladywood the number of police required to deal with only 500 demonstrators was so large that only 8 were left to guard the police station.
The simple facts of the situation show that the police forces are no match for the militant and united people.When they go to suppress a just demonstration of the people, they are armed to the teeth. They have helmets, truncheons and heavy boots. They are now issued with "riot shields". They are backed up with a huge array of vans, cars and ambulances that they use to drive through the crowds, as well as mounted police. In addition they are specially trained to deal with demonstrations. The masses, on the other hand are as yet relatively much less well armed and trained, but they fight with a militant spirit in a just cause, and innumerable instances show that they can successfully oppose the police fascists.
-- At the big Grunwick demonstration mounted police found that workers simply refused to give way as they charged them, and were forced to withdraw or risk being thrown off their horses. 6,000 police were only able to exercise control through the medium of the Labor traitors, the sell-out TUC hacks who called for peace!
-- On one of the Grunwick pickets militant communists stood in their ranks with the strikers singing such fighting songs as "We're not afraid of your prisons", and successfully resisted police attempts to silence and arrest them. Police agents in the ranks of the pickets were daily exposed and sent running for shelter to their uniformed cronies.
-- At Lewisham over 4,000 police were only able to make 212 arrests, and marginally more policemen than demonstrators were injured. Police were afraid to break their ranks to make arrests, and after repeated charges in the main road were becoming visibly exhausted. Weighed down by their riot shields, they used them more to hide behind than to attack.
-- In Ladywood 21 police vehicles were seriously damaged, some with their drivers in them, and in Lewisham several vans were put out of action and one police cycle put to flames.
-- Five times as many police were injured at Ladywood as demonstrators were arrested, and of these 33 were hospitalized.
--Wherever the police at Lewisham tried to bully the people and order them around, they were met with vigorous denunciation for their fascist crimes. One group of police were unable even to get one militant young woman to cross a road and break ranks with the demonstrators.
Life proves that, while there is no end to the viciousness and reaction of the state forces, compared to the unity of the working people they are very weak. It was only when they had got demonstrators into the "safety" of their headquarters that they tried to take a cowardly vengeance of beatings and racist abuse. Even there they found themselves under siege. The police are used to operating through terror tactics against youth and workers, attacking them in the streets and raiding their homes on "legal" pretexts. They are used to working under cover of darkness in league with their nazi friends, and seeking the protection of the courts. They are used to covering their ugly features with the cloak of respectability, the "neutral bobby" of ruling class mythology. But in the heat of fierce class struggles these shams and ruses are exposed, and the police subjected to the just anger of the people. It is just this that the bourgeoisie most fear when they prate about "demoralization".
In fact the "demoralization" of the police is just fine for the people and a mark of the growing vigor of their struggles. It is no easy thing for the bourgeoisie to fill their 15,000 police vacancies in these conditions. The failure of the vastly expensive campaign to recruit black policemen in London is vivid testimony to this fact. It is the bounden duty of the working class to weaken the state forces of the monopoly capitalists as part and parcel of its revolutionary struggle against them, to undermine and demoralize them at every chance. This is precisely because the increasing fascism of the bourgeoisie is no sign of their strength or vigor. On the contrary, it is the sign of their mortal decay, the preparation for their deathbed struggle. End.
The following is reprinted from the Sept. 19, 1977, Vol. 4, No. 58 issue of Workers' Weekly, newsweekly of the Communist Party of England (Marxist- Leninist).
The National Executive of the Communist Party of England (Marxist-Leninist) has launched the slogan: "Take up Every Racist and Fascist Attack! Hit Back Tit for Tat!" to serve the present stage of the struggle against fascism in this country. On a massive scale throughout the country the program of fighting back against Government and nazi organized racist attacks has been taken up. There are increasing examples of heroic resistance throughout the country to the attacks of the fascists. The consciousness of the reactionary class nature of the National Front and National Party is developing steadily. This consciousness, combined with the development of active resistance, is the basis for further escalation of the struggle against fascism. It is becoming more and more necessary for people to go on the offensive against the nazi movement. The slogan "Take up Every Racist and Fascist Attack! Hit Back Tit for Tat!" is a just program to unite the masses of people in a new offensive against the fascist movement. This program provides the basis for the development of revolutionary terror to stop the fascists from intimidating the people and building their reactionary movement. Approximately 7 or 8 years ago the monopoly capitalist class consciously decided to develop open fascism as one of the main means of suppressing the working people of this country. They were forced to do this because of the increasing economic struggles of the people and the growth of revolutionary consciousness consequent on the re-establishment of the Marxist- Leninist movement in this country.
Fascism is always the ultimate program of the monopoly capitalists. It is the basic program, whereas liberal democracy is an alternate and temporary program during periods of relative low level of revolutionary struggle by the people. In this sense the development of nazism has always been the program of the monopoly capitalist class. But 7-8 years ago it was taken up in a more developed and consistent form.
Right from the beginning of this program of the monopoly capitalist class, two lines contended for influence among the people as to what attitude to take to the development of fascism. The line of the genuine Marxist-Leninists was that it should be liquidated and every tendency leading to its development resolutely opposed. The line of various opportunists was that it was not a problem and could be tolerated; in fact the opportunists supported many of the ideas of the fascists. The Internationalists, forerunner of CPE(M-L), waged resolute struggle against fascist ideology in the face of considerable opposition both from the Right and the so-called "Left". At this time the bourgeoisie promoted fascist theoreticians such as Eysenck, who were constantly put on TV, in the newspapers, and promoted in university courses, in order to propagate racist and fascist theories. Right from the beginning this program was combined with increased fascist attacks by the state on democratic political activity and the actual construction of open nazi organizations, such as the National Front and its forerunners. The Internationalists pointed out the comprehensive nature of this program and called for unity in action against its entirety. The Internationalists put forward the slogan: "NO FREE SPEECH FOR FASCISTS!" The Internationalists criticized and exposed fascist ideology, opposed the opportunists' program of either supporting fascist ideology or regarding fascist ideology as just another tendency (i. e. not being totally anti-people). The Internationalists siezed every opportunity to attack, physically or otherwise, open fascists in order to unite people to do this. For example, Eysenck was attacked for his reactionary theories and ultimately was physically attacked and thrown off the stage at a public meeting in LSE in 1973 by students and progressives led by CPE(M-L).
At Red Lion Square in 1974, when the National Front marched, a supporter of CPE(M-L) was the only person to break through the police cordon to attack the National Front. He cudgelled the leader of the NF demonstration with a heavy wooden flagpole -- concussing him for a short period. This heroic act was part of the entire program of the Party at the time and represented the line that the National Front had to be wiped out, with no question of democracy or coexistence. Red Lion Square was also significant because it combined the growing militancy of particularly the youth and students to attack the fascists, with the temporary hegemony of the opportunists who managed to divert it into ineffective activity.
In 1974 two comrades from CPE(M-L), one of them comrade Paul Rowe, attacked and beat up Martin Webster on an NF demonstration in Leicester. For this revolutionary example Paul Rowe was given ten months in jail.
Last year, after the first openly declared murder of a national minority youth by fascists, the Party put forward the slogan "Fight back against Government and nazi organized racist attacks". Under the leadership of the Party, organizations of national minorities established defense groups, particularly the Indian Defense Committee and the West Indian Defense Committee. These organizations united people to implement the slogan. The comprehensive activity of the Party and its struggle against the opportunists with their line of passive resistance and relying on the state has led to a situation where it is practically universally accepted that wherever fascists appear it is necessary to attack them physically by any means possible. By this program the pride of the working class has been raised and the national minority workers have stood up defiantly. Less and less are the people frightened by the fascists, more and more people are enthusiastic and certain of victory. More and more people regard resisting attacks of fascists as necessary work in order to eventually liquidate them entirely. Some people are saying, including some "Marxist-Leninists", that even now fascism is a "diversion". They are saying that the economic struggle is the only struggle of significance. This is a complete betrayal of the people and a deviation from Marxism-Leninism. Marxism-Leninism holds that it is necessary to fight the monopoly capitalists on EVERY front. It upholds that the attacks on the working people are comprehensive, and that the various fronts are part of one whole. The Marxist-Leninists and all revolutionaries must organize and lead economic resistance, must organize and lead struggles against fascist and reactionary ideology, and must organize and lead the struggle against fascism. Any attempt to lead these struggles in themselves will lead to liquidation of everything and to betrayal of the revolutionary movement.
Some other people, including "Marxist-Leninists", are saying that "We (or they in particular!) are too weak to take on the fascists". This is erroneous and reveals the treachery of these people. We Marxist-Leninists are strong enough to unite and lead the people in the struggle against fascism. These "Marxist-Leninists" who remain in small factions and refuse to unite for this purpose, following a sectarian line under the hoax of waiting for "absolute unity", are on the sidelines and will never solve the problems of the revolutionary movement in this country.
The main spearhead of the struggle against fascism is against the open nazi movement. The situation is that the open nazi movement is the product of the monopoly capitalist class and is backed and supported by it. Ultimately the monopoly capitalists plan that it should replace the state itself. The state protects the nazis and implements their program (in slightly modified form).
The slogan "Take up Every Racist and Fascist Attack! Hit Back Tit for Tat!" is a slogan to unite the people in the practical and theoretical struggle against the fascism of the nazis and Government. We call on everyone to take up the slogan as a practical program, to propagate the basic theory that underlies it and to advance the revolutionary movement.
TAKE UP EVERY RACIST AND FASCIST ATTACK! HIT BACK TIT FOR TAT! End.
[Photo: After the anti-fascists blocked the entire of Lewisham High Street, photograph shows police driving a coach into the barricades to test the strength and militancy of the people! They soon found out! As all their windows were quickly broken by marbles and stones, its tires slashed and the anti-fascists closed their ranks to ensure it could not move forward at all. The coach quickly reversed with the police in a panic!]
[Photo: Anti-fascists broke through as the National Front nazis entered the school in Boulton Road. Photo shows them pulling out the nazis to give them just punishment for their anti-people crimes]
The following editorial was carried in the August 17, 1977 issue of Red Patriot, the newsweekly of the Communist Party of Ireland (Marxist-Leninist). The Communist Party of Ireland ( Marxist-Leninist) is leading the struggle of the Irish people against British imperialist domination and for social revolution. This editorial of Red Patriot denouncing the anti- Leninist theory of "Three Worlds" is an important blow to international opportunism. We hail this work of our fraternal Irish comrades.
The theory of the world being divided into three worlds, the first world -- the two superpowers, U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism, the second world -- the "lesser" imperialist powers, i.e. the European imperialist powers, etc., and the third world -- Africa, Asia and Latin America -- is a theory not consistent with Marxism- Leninism but is in line with opportunism.
Red Patriot hails the Report of the Central Committee to the National (Internal) Conference of Party Activists in which the Central Committee issued a clear-cut denunciation of the theory of the three worlds and the associated line of advocating support for the EEC as part of the struggle against the two superpowers.
The theory of three worlds is a very pernicious theory aiming its attack at the proletarian socialist revolution in all countries. Its introduction into the world at this time of intensified revolutionary struggles by proletarians all over the world, a time of severe economic crisis in the imperialist system and imperialist war preparations is nothing short of an attempt to lull the world proletariat into classcollaboration, reactionary national alliances with their own bourgeoisie and the desertion of proletarian revolution under the threat of impending imperialist war.
This is in precisely the same mold as the line of the Second International in the course of the first inter-imperialist world war, which advocated unity of the workers with their own bourgeoisie, and thus opposed the line of revolutionary civil war at home, instead advocating that the workers of Europe should go out to murder their class brothers of other countries.
According to the theory of the three worlds, the basic division in the world is not between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, a division that splits the world into two opposing camps -- the camp of the proletariat of all countries in the world headed by the Socialist proletariat and the camp of the bourgeoisie of all imperialist, revisionist, social-imperialist, "first", "second" or "third" world countries and their revisionist and opportunist fellow travelers.
According to the theory of three worlds the world is divided between the "underdeveloped countries" and the "developed" countries, between the two superpowers alone, and the colonially oppressed countries.
This theory one-sidedly singles out the two imperialist chieftains -- U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism -- and makes them out to be the only enemy, negating all the other imperialist powers and negating the bourgeoisie of each country (whether in America, Europe, Africa or Asia). The two superpowers are then held to be enemies purely because of their hegemonic and oppressive activities. The conclusion of this point of view is that if the two superpowers were not such bullies, they would be acceptable to the people of the world. This departs from the needs of the class struggle throughout the world, that the proletariat in each country can only be emancipated by defeating its own bourgeoisie, any invading bourgeoisie and participate in the worldwide struggle for the complete defeat of the bourgeois system.
The effect of the opportunist line is to promote the national struggles for independence and liberation being waged by nationally oppressed people as being separate from and above the class struggle of the proletariat in these countries, which is against wage slavery and capital.
The theory promotes the falsification of "economic independence" separate from "political independence" claiming that the people of colonial countries which are now neo-colonial, have won "political independence", but have yet to achieve "economic independence" which must be approached gradually. This is nothing but an attempt to encourage people in nationally oppressed countries to give up proletarian socialist revolution and to place their faith in their own "national" bourgeoisie. We hear this nonsense from the Irish bourgeoisie who claim that Ireland achieved political independence in 1922 and is now developing economic independence. This mischievous theory applies to Ireland shows its bankruptcy.
The 1920 Government of Ireland Act was not an act of political independence, but the signing of an alliance against the Irish workers and small farmers by the British imperialists and the Irish bourgeoisie. These two signed the alliance to replace British imperialism's exploitation of Ireland through a colonial legislature with a new neo-colonial "Irish" legislature.
Thus in return for making a truce with the British bourgeoisie against the Irish workers and small farmers, the Irish bourgeoisie were allowed to become the ruling class and run the British imperialist exploitation of Ireland themselves. This was how they got their own lust for profit and power satisfied. This was not political independence. Neither has the last fifty years of continual sell-out of Ireland to the British and other foreign imperialists by the treacherous bourgeoisie been the development of economic independence.
The same holds true for the peoples of African and Asian countries who suffer the double bondage of the reactionary rule of their native bourgeoisie, and the imperialist subjugation of other powers. This is not "halfway to liberation" by any means. Just because it is true that British imperialism and other such powers replaced their direct colonial rule with neo-colonial rule in many of their colonies because of the revolutionary opposition of the people, this does not turn the betrayal of the native bourgeoisie of these countries and their direct alliance with imperialism into an "act in the path of liberation" as the advocates of the three worlds theory would lead us to believe.
The opportunist theory of three worlds further tries to take revolution off the agenda of the proletariats of the European countries, of the so-called "second world". This is an added treachery. According to this reactionary theory the bourgeoisie of the second world is "not so bad" as the two superpowers and so the proletariat of Europe should unite with their own bourgeoisie against the two superpowers. The advocates of this bourgeois-revisionist theory have developed their rhetoric further to say that even in the case of the two superpowers, one is worse than the other and they are treacherously suggesting that the people of the world can unite with U.S. imperialism against the Soviet social-imperialists. In the so-called "Second World" -- as in all other countries of the world under the control of the bourgeoisie -- the proletariat must develop its class struggle to oppose its own bourgeoisie. This is the most vital way to advance the proletarian revolution and to weaken the international alliance of imperialist powers and their entire system. But according to some neo-revisionists who uphold this reactionary logic, the struggle in such established monopoly capitalist countries as Britain, is primarily for national independence from the two superpowers. This can only create the ground for a reactionary alliance with sections of the bourgeoisie against big power bullying. As many bourgeois parties put "opposition to multi-nationals and big-power hegemony" on their agendas, including both the British and Irish Labour parties, the Fianna Fail party and others, it is clear that nothing revolutionary can come out of this.
Another pernicious feature of the three worlds theory is to divide the proletariat of Europe and the advanced countries from the peoples struggling for national independence and liberation in Africa, Asia and Latin America. By presenting these struggles as separate, the theory makes a serious attack on proletarian internationalism and the class solidarity of the people of the world.
The three worlds theory is a complete departure from Lenin's thesis on imperialism. Lenin pointed out that in the era of imperialism, the national liberation movements of the peoples colonized by the capitalist powers are nothing short of being part of the proletarian socialist revolution. This is a fundamental truth of the present era. The struggles for national independence and complete liberation being waged by nationally oppressed peoples are part of the world proletarian socialist revolution:
a) Their success means a weakening of the imperialist system.
b) Their target of attack is precisely the imperialist capital that exploits the workers in the home country as well.
c) The bourgeoisie in these countries have without exception formed such strong economic links with foreign imperialism that their economic well-being is dependent on continued imperialist domination of their countries (as Stalin predicted).
d) They have thus entered into a political alliance against their own people and with the imperialists.
e) The national independence struggles of the peoples must also therefore defeat these reactionary native bourgeoisie in order to win national emancipation.
f) The people of the nationally oppressed countries do not desire capitalism under a native flag, but they in the main desire a complete end to exploitation. In other words, the main content of the national struggle in this era is that of opposition to monopoly capitalism.
g) Only the working class as a class provides the necessary backbone arid leading force in the national liberation struggles of today in order to carry out the tasks of national emancipation without compromise to foreign imperialism.
The pernicious theory of three worlds is against those facts and suggests that all the people of the so-called third world desire is an end to superpower bullying and that they can be content to ally with their own bourgeoisie in order to achieve this. In other words, the people of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, do not desire proletarian revolution according to these opportunists!
Meanwhile for the proletariat of Europe, the specter of an inter-imperialist world war fought out over their countries is raised by these opportunists, not as a serious possibility that the imperialists may well engage in to try to dampen the economic crisis and prevent the revolution, but is raised as a threat to try to intimidate the European proletariat. According to this view, the proletarians of Europe should remove revolution from their agenda and base their strategy and tactics on the "avoidance of war" which is a sell-out of the class struggle.
Red Patriot condemns this pernicious three worlds theory. It is the clear truth of the Irish revolution today that only the path of class struggle led by the working class against British imperialism and the Irish monopoly capitalist class can solve the remaining questions of national independence and reunification and establish socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat -- the deep desire of all workers and small farmers of Ireland.
End.
On November 15, 1977, more than 8,000 Iranians resident in the U.S. staged a militant and forceful demonstration against the regime of the Shah of Iran on the occasion of the visit of the Shah to Washington, D. C. to hold talks with U.S. imperialist chieftain Jimmy Carter.
The demonstrators gathered at the White House, where the Shah was officially welcomed by President Carter. Pitched battles were waged with the fascist U.S. police forces throughout the day and into the night.
Before the demonstration, the U.S. authorities had already indicated that they planned to forcibly suppress the demonstration of seething hatred of the Iranian people for the barbaric regime of the Shah. First, a carefully engineered demonstration in support of the Shah was staged under the protective custody of the U.S. police. Second, huge numbers of police were on hand to launch attacks against the demonstration as soon as the police were able to stage some provocation.
In the pitched battles which raged brutal fascist terror was used by the police who charged the people participating in the demonstration, arresting ten and injuring many more, breaking one man's neck. Once the police attacked, the people fought back sending eighteen police to the hospital. In their desperation to protect the Shah and his imperialist masters from the wrath of the people, the police used so much tear gas that the tear gas enveloped the Shah, U.S. imperialist chieftain Carter and the other "dignitaries" at the front of the White House.
Being propped up by the fascist forces of the U.S. imperialists is nothing new for the Shah of Iran who was installed by a U.S. backed coup d'etat in 1952. In order to maintain his barbaric feudal regime, the Shah has ruled through a reign of terror and has 100,000 political prisoners in jail. His regime has meant poverty and misery for the Iranian people. In all of this he has had the complete backing of the U. S0 imperialists who have armed him to carry out his barbaric rule and plundered the vast oil wealth of Iran.
Over the past four years, the U.S. imperialists have sold $10 billion worth of arms to the Shah of Iran. One of the main reasons for the Shah's current trip to the U.S. is to negotiate the purchase of 140 F-16 fighter planes worth $2 billion and another seven planes equipped with air-borne radar equipment worth a total of $1.2 billion. These weapons are used by the Shah to maintain himself in power and suppress the struggle of the Iranian people.
The support given to the Shah of Iran and his barbaric feudal regime gives lie to Carter's demagogy about "human rights". The "human rights" fraud which Carter has launched is nothing but a fraud to give a "human face" to U.S. imperialism. Carter's continuing support for the Shah of Iran shows that the most savage and medieval barbarism can be excluded from being opposed by Carter for "infringing on human rights" so long as this barbarism is carried out on behalf of U.S. imperialism.
Even as the pitched battles between the fascist police and the progressive Iranians were beginning, Carter was delivering a speech about the good relations between the U.S. imperialists and the Iranian feudalists. But the militant and forceful demonstration waged by the 8,000 Iranians shows that the days of the reactionary regimes such as that of the Shah of Iran are numbered. Neither their own feudal barbarism nor the fascist barbarism of their superpower patrons can save them. End.
[Photo: Militant Iranian Students demonstrate against visit of fascist Shah of Iran to Washington, D. C., November 15th.]
The National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) is waging the Angolan people's second anti-colonial war. This is a war of national liberation against the Soviet-Cuban-MPLA neo-colonial regime in Luanda. As Portuguese colonialism collapsed, the Soviet social-imperialists poured in arms and support to one liberation group to use against the others. In this way the New Tsars subverted the first anti-colonial war of the Angolan people against U.S.-backed Portuguese colonialism, incited a bloody civil war and rigged up their neo-colonial regime. Almost all the African countries eventually recognized the neo-colonial government in Luanda. Recently we have received articles from Afro- American activist and friend of the Angolan people Malik Chaka via Florence Tate. We extend our thanks to them. These reports show that UNITA is breaking through its diplomatic isolation.
The reports point out that Dr. Jonas Savimbi, President of UNITA, led a delegation that included Foreign Secretary Jorge Sangumba, Lt. Col. Antonio Vakulakuta, Military Commander of the Southern Front bordering Namibia, Information Secretary Jeremias Chitunda, and other ranking UNITA officials in a three-week diplomatic offensive.
The delegation was received by six African heads of states. The delegation went to seven North, West and Central African countries. Four other African states had extended invitations, but were turned down because of the press of time.
The ending of UNITA's diplomatic isolation hinged on UNITA's successful leadership of the national liberation war. UNITA's successful guerrilla war, which now covers ten of Angola's sixteen provinces, has surged forward. It has successfully paralyzed the economy of the neo-colonial regime and tied down an estimated thirty thousand troops backed by twenty thousand Cuban soldiers.
The UNITA diplomatic drive has greatly embarrassed the Soviet-Cuban-MPLA regime. With the exception of Senegal, all of the countries visited by the delegation have recognized the neo-colonial Luanda government. In one West African country, which has extensive commercial relations with the neo-colonial regime, a MPLA-Soviet-Cuban government delegation was attending a conference of the International Labor Organization. When they learned of the presence of the UNITA delegation in the country, they walked out of a reception.
Dr. Savimbi is reported to have commented on the possibility of ending the fighting as follows: "We will talk as Africans and brothers when the Cubans leave. Until then, we will fight and fight and fight!" End.