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. 8, No. 3, April 1, 1978 25ยข
[Front Page:
HAIL THE 10th ANNIVERSARY OF THE GREAT AFRO-AMERICAN 1968 REBELLIONS TO AVENGE THE GOVERNMENT MURDER OF KING!;
Coal Strike: Great Event in the Growing Revolt of the Proletariat;
Inflation: Tool of the Rich to Shift the Burden of the Crisis onto the Working Masses;
Go All Out for the Internationalist Rally! Montreal, Canada April 30,1978Workers of the World, Unite!(See Centerfold)]
Table of Contents
Zionist Aggressors in Lebanon....................................... | 2 |
Panama Canal Treaty...................................................... | 2 |
Active Resistance to Fascism in Seattle......................... | 5 |
Active Resistance to Fascism in Newark....................... | 3 |
Albanian Press on Self-Sacrifice.................................. | 3 |
Farmers' Strike................................................................ | 3 |
Meany's Import Hysteria................................................ | 4 |
Fascists Love Rich.......................................................... | 4 |
Ethiopia-Somalia War..................................................... | 6 |
Eritrea............................................................................. | 6-7 |
Chile............................................................................... | 20 |
Angola .......................................................................... | 20 |
History of the Internationalists....................................... | 8-9 |
OL SUPPORTS TRIDENT SUB.................................... | 2 |
OL'S SEGREGATIONISM............................................ | 12 |
WHY DID THE "RCP, USA" SPLIT? -- Part I............ | 15 |
Coal Strike: Great Event in the Growing Revolt of the Proletariat
Inflation: Tool of the Rich to Shift the Burden of the Crisis onto the Working Masses
Israeli Zionists Occupy Southern Lebanon:
Death to the U.S. Imperialist-Backed Zionist Butchers!
Carter's Panama Canal Treaty Is a Tool of Imperialist Aggression
Bankruptcy of the "Three Worlds" Theory
OL Social-Chauvinists Support Trident Submarine
STUDENTS FOLLOW PATH OF ACTIVE RESISTANCE IN FASCIST COURT
Farmers Continue Strike Against Robbery by Monopoly Capital
Marxist-Leninists and Anti-Fascists Actively Resist the Fascist Anti-Busing Movement in Seattle
U.S. Imperialism's Sham "Neutrality" in the Ethiopia-Somalia War
Ethiopian Fascist Junta Prepares for "All Out Offensive" Against Eritrea
Cementing Solidarity Between the North American and Eritrean Peoples
CPC(M-L) Delegation Visits EPLF Liberated Areas in Eritrea
SUPPORT RADIO LIBERATION -- ERITREA
On the Fifteenth Anniversary of the Founding of the Internationalists
FOLLOW THE TEACHINGS OF MARX, ENGELS, LENIN, STALIN, MAO TSETUNG AND COMRADE ENVER HOXHA
PARTICIPATE ACTIVELY IN THE HISTORIC INTERNATIONALIST RALLY
Go All Out for the Internationalist Rally!
The Internationalist Rally - Montreal, April 30th!
In Defense of the Afro-American People's Movement
THE OL SOCIAL-CHAUVINISTS ARE OUT-AND-OUT SOCIALIST-SEGREGATIONISTS!
In View of the Maneuvers by Imperialism to Replace the Butcher Pinochet With the Christian Democrats
WHY FREI WOULD CONTINUE TO BRING DISASTER TO THE CHILEAN PEOPLE
On the 12th Anniversary of UNITA
Ten years ago, on April 4, 1968, the U.S. government, the government of the rich monopoly capitalists, brutally assassinated Martin Luther King, the Afro-American minister and civil rights leader.
The assassination of Martin Luther King was a vicious criminal attack by the reactionary monopoly capitalist state machine against the freedom struggle of the Afro-Americans. It is a great blood debt owed by the government to the Black people.
For the Black people, this cold-blooded murder was, in the words of Chairman Mao, "a profound lesson". It touched off a violent country-wide uprising of the Afro-American people sweeping at least 125 cities, "a storm such as has never taken place before in the history of that country (the United States)". (''Statement by Comrade Mao Tsetung, Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, in Support of the Afro-American Struggle against Violent Repression", April 16, 1968)
The great rebellion following the assassination of King marked the high tide of the glorious Afro-American struggle of the 1950's and 60's, an earth-shaking movement against racial discrimination and violent repression which mounted from boycotts and sit-ins to mass marches and demonstrations to the powerful violent rebellions of Harlem in 1964, Watts in '65, Detroit and Newark in '67, the national uprising of April 1968 and many, many others.
The April 1968 rebellion was directed squarely against the reactionary state of the monopoly capitalists. It thoroughly terrified the capitalists and greatly inspired the workers and oppressed masses throughout the U.S. with the spirit to fight the common enemy. It played a magnificent part in the wave of mass struggle by many different sections of the proletariat and people of the U.S., who rose in the 1960's to fight against the U.S. imperialist war of aggression against Viet Nam, Cambodia and Laos, against the decadent bourgeois educational system, against the exploitation of the workers, against the fascist prison system, against the colonial domination of Puerto Rico, against the violent repression of the Native Indian people, and on other fronts as well. The glorious April 1968 Afro-American rebellion made a significant contribution to the world proletarian revolution, undermining the global gendarme, U.S. imperialism, right in its heartland. The great events which followed the assassination of Martin Luther King will never be forgotten.
THE BLACK MASSES ARE THE REAL HEROES OF THE FREEDOM STRUGGLE
The Black masses were the real heroes of the Afro-American movement of the 60's. This was clearly shown by the events of April 1968. As word of the assassination of King spread across the country, the masses of Afro-Americans rose up in a violent rebellion in city after city against this brutal murder and attack on their struggle. Workers marched off their jobs and students out of their schools and colleges in protest. The Black masses took to the streets to battle the armed forces of the very state which had murdered King. The scope of the rebellion was something that had never been seen before in the U.S. It involved hundreds of thousands of Afro-Americans. It lasted between five and six days and developed in most major cities throughout the country, in many small cities and towns and on many college campuses. Pitched battles-took place between the masses of the people and the armed forces of the state. The rebellion actually had the U^S. in flames for almost a whole week, and large sections of major cities like Chicago and Washington were left in smoldering rubble. The commanding officer of the 11,000 Army troops and National Guard which occupied Baltimore confessed that his forces could do little more than make curfew violation arrests. Forty-three Afro-Americans heroically gave up their lives in the struggle and more than 20,000 were arrested. The government was forced to call out more than National Guardsmen and federal troops to occupy the cities. In addition to the actual rebellion, huge rallies, demonstrations and memorial services were held throughout the country. 15,000 participated in Boston; 5,000 in Philadelphia; 7,000 in San Francisco; 10,000 in New York; 25,000 in Newark; and 150,000 attended a memorial demonstration in Atlanta. More than 115,000 dockworkers and sailors along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts struck the day of King's funeral, closing the ports. As Chairman Mao said of this historic rebellion: "It shows that an extremely powerful revolutionary force is latent in the more than twenty million Afro-Americans".
It is the people, and the people alone, who are the motive force in the making of history. Today, as the monopoly bourgeoisie steps up its attacks on the Afro-Americans in order to take revenge for their struggles of the 60's and drive them back to the worst semi-slave Jim Crow segregation, the Black masses cannot rely on "Black faces in high places" in the capitalist government to liberate them. They can only rely on their own organized strength and fight in the spirit of the great rebellion of April 1968.
BANKRUPTCY OF THE PATH OF NON-VIOLENCE
Martin Luther King was an exponent of the path of non-violent passive resistance for the Afro-American struggle. "Nevertheless", Chairman Mao wrote, "the U.S. imperialists did not on this account show any tolerance towards him, but used counter-revolutionary violence and killed him in cold blood. This has taught the broad masses of black people in the United States a profound lesson."
By assassinating the leading exponent of non-violence, the bourgeois state demonstrated once again to the Black masses that it is thoroughly reactionary and has no "conscience" that can be appealed to in order to end racial discrimination and violent repression. Instead, it uses counter-revolutionary violence even against the exponents of non-violence, not to mention the great leaders who advocated active, armed resistance struggle like Malcolm X, assassinated by the U.S. imperialists in 1965. The only road for the Afro-Americans, therefore, is the road advocated by Malcolm, the road followed by the Black masses in the millions in their great rebellions of the 1960's, the path of active resistance to racist attacks, to racial discrimination and violent repression. This path inevitably requires the use of weapons as the struggle heats up and the counter-revolutionary, violent attacks of the capitalist state force the masses to reply with revolutionary violence.
The events of April 1968 show how thoroughly the Black masses opposed the line of non-violent passive resistance 10 years ago. Armed with rocks, bottles, clubs, fire-bombs and often rifles, the Black people in city after city fought tit-for-tat with the armed forces of the state. Students at several Black colleges fought armed battles with the police. Squadrons of Black opportunists, which were sent by the government to call on the masses to ''calm down" and "go home", had no success at all in putting out the fires of struggle. Mayor Lindsay of New York was chased out of Harlem when he went there to shed crocodile tears for the Blacks in hopes of quelling the uprising. So terrified was the state of the active resistance of the Afro-Americans that federal troops were quartered on the White House lawn and troops with machine guns guarded the Capitol building which houses Congress.
The great path of active resistance to racial discrimination and violent repression followed by the Black masses in April 1968 and in all the glorious rebellions of the 1960's is the only path to fight the racist attacks of the government and all reactionaries today.
IS THE ASSASSIN OF MARTIN LUTHER KING A FRIEND OF THE AFRO-AMERICAN PEOPLE?
It is an almost incredible outrage that the very government which assassinated King is being portrayed today as the "friend" of the Afro-Americans. All the claims that James Earl Ray "acted alone" or that the FBI and the Memphis police department were involved but not the government itself are mere fairy-tales which can only fool the naive and innocent. The fact is that King was assassinated by the reactionary state machine of the ruling monopoly, capitalist class. King, like Malcolm X and the hundreds of victims of state violence in the civil rights struggles and the rebellions, was murdered by a government headed by a "Democrat", Lyndon Johnson. When the masses are slaughtered under a Republican, as with the students murdered at Jackson State and Kent State in 1970 under Nixon, then that is admitted to be a government outrage. But the "Democrats" are the "friends"of the Afro-Americans, so when the same thing happens under a "Democrat", it is merely the the act of a "demented" individual....
The idea is promoted by the bourgeoisie and opportunists of all types that there are "two centers" in Washington, or "two aspects of the state" -- one democratic and the other fascist. The White House (so long as a "Democrat" is president) and Congress (so long as it has a "Democratic" majority) are alleged to by the "democratic", "pro-people" center or aspect of the state, while the Pentagon, the FBI, CIA, etc., are the fascist, anti-people center or aspect of the state. According to this "theory", the Black people should pin their hopes on the "good" government officials, the "Democrats", to defend them from the racial discrimination and violent repression, the brutal assassinations, which allegedly only originate from the bad Republicans, the FBI, CIA, local police, etc. But in fact the "Democrats" and Republicans are but two faces of the same terrorist government of big capital, the murderer of the Afro-Americans. The well-known nazi, J. Edgar Hoover, who masterminded the FBI's COINTELPRO (Counter-Intelligence Program) to eliminate Black leaders, served both Republican and "Democratic" administrations equally. The fact that the Afro-Americans were forced to wage such intense, self-sacrificing struggles as they did to win such minimal demands as the right to use public eating places, transportation, schools, drinking fountains, etc., and then saw their leaders gunned down in cold blood by the government, is itself a big exposure of the so-called "democracy" of the entire reactionary government of U.S. imperialism.
Just how "separate" are these two "centers" in Washington was demonstrated only eight months before King's assassination, when the "liberal" Johnson sent federal troops to Detroit to supplement the National Guard and police in putting down the great Detroit Rebellion with force. While using force against the rebellions, Johnson employed the dual tactic of political deception, setting up the Kerner Commission to "investigate" the rebellions. This commission made a frantic effort to cover up the real cause of the 1967 rebellions and recommended various deceptive schemes to intensify the oppression of the Afro-Americans by new methods. Just 35 days before King was assassinated the Kerner Commission report was released, hypocritically declaring: "Violence cannot build a better society". (Report of theNational Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, 1968, p. 2) And when the Afro-American masses rebelled on an unprecedented scale in protest of the King assassination, the same "Democratic" White House sent 75,000 federal troops and National Guard to suppress them.
The Kerner Commission report indicated that the monopoly capitalist class had decided to employ new methods of oppressing the Afro-Americans. Recognizing that direct, forcible repression of the Black liberation struggle by white city governments, National Guardsmen, federal troops and police forces with the collaboration of the old bourgeois stratum of Black "civil rights leaders" had failed to quell the struggle, the bourgeoisie increasingly developed a new stratum of Blacks who were hired or elected to posts in the reactionary state machine. From Andrew Young as UN ambassador to Coleman Young as mayor of Detroit to the growing number of Black policemen, the method of the capitalists is to bring a few Blacks into the repressive state apparatus so as to deceive the Black masses with some "Black faces in high places" while letting Afro-Americans do the job of suppressing the Black masses. And today it is this very stratum of Blacks who, while taking the largesse from the very government which murdered King, are the loudest in their praise of the government!
The reactionary state of the monopoly capitalists, which assassinated King and commits untold outrages against the Afro-Americans, is the enemy of the Black people, as it is the common enemy of all workers and oppressed masses in the United States as well as throughout the world.
*****
Ten years have passed since the assassination of Martin Luther King. The glorious uprising of April 1968, together with the entire wave of revolutionary Afro-American struggle of the 1950's and 60's, smashed up some of the most barbarous medieval forms of oppression of the Afro-Americans, taught the Black people their own great strength in struggle, allowed them to lift their heads with pride and dignity and prepared them to take their rightful, respected place in the forefront of the revolutionary struggle of the U.S. proletariat and oppressed people against the monopoly capitalist dictators. But despite their heroic struggles, today the basic conditions of enslavement which faced the Black masses in the 1960's have not disappeared; in fact, the oppression of the Afro-Americans has been intensified. For example, twice as many Blacks are unemployed today as ten years ago. The monopoly capitalists are plotting revenge against the Black people and are preparing to deprive them of the gains they won in the 1960 's and to drive them back to the worst semi-slave Jim Crow segregation. The government has organized the anti-busing movement to create a fascist mass movement to attack Afro-Americans generally and, in particular, to further segregate the schools. The government is floating nazi gangs to openly promote hysteria and violent attacks against the Black people. The bourgeois courts have issued the Bakke decision as a signal for increased attacks on the Afro-Americans to drive them out of the schools and places of employment they have entered as a result of the struggles of the 60's -- all under the hoax of a mythical "reverse discrimination" against whites. The attacks on the Afro-Americans and other oppressed nationalities are the cutting edge of growing fascism as the U.S. imperialists fascize the state and every aspect of life in the U.S. to make the people pay for the economic crisis and to prepare for a new world war to redivide the world with their social-imperialist rivals, the New Tsars of the Kremlin.
In these conditions, the glorious revolutionary traditions; of the Afro-American, people, such as the great national uprising of April 1968, must be kept alive and their example must be used to guide the revolutionary struggles of today. The enemies of the Afro-Americans must not be forgotten; blood debts must be paid in blood. In the 1960's the Afro-American struggle was part of a grand festival of struggle of the American masses against the reactionary monopoly bourgeoisie on all fronts. Today, in the 1970's, the workers' movement is on the rise, shown by the powerful strikes of the coal miners and other sections, as the proletarians of all nationalities fight more and more vigorously against the shifting of the burden of the economic crisis onto their backs. The Afro-American struggle is once again developing against the attacks of the state and the government-organized fascist anti-busing movement. Other sections of the people are astir. Today, as in the 60's, the task is to vigorously develop the struggle of the Afro-Americans and all other sections of the workers and oppressed masses into one powerful torrent of revolutionary mass struggle against the state of the ruling monopoly capitalist class, in order to defeat all its attacks on the people and overthrow it completely. Only such a course of struggle can defend and liberate the heroic Afro-American people. End.
After three and one-half months of heroic struggle, during which they closed down two-thirds of the country's coal production, threatened to close wide sections of the steel, auto and utilities industries and brushed aside the government's Taft-Hartley back-to-work injunction like a tiny twig, the fighting coal miners have declared a temporary truce in their great class battle with the coal monopolists and the government of the monopoly capitalist class.
Undefeated, unbroken, more trained, united and steeled in struggle than ever before, the miners returned to the mines determined to continue their struggle in different forms. The contract imposed on the miners by the capitalists and labor bureaucrats, while a step backwards from the 1974 contract, has actually settled nothing. It was only by virtue of superior economic power and with the help of the political deception of the UMW labor bureaucrats that the capitalists were able to compel the miners to ratify the contract. None of the basic issues of the strike are decisively resolved for either side; consequently, every contradiction which gave rise to this momentous struggle will now be reproduced on a still wider scaleand the miners' struggle will continue to surge forward.
The coal miners' strike, the longest coal strike in U.S. history, marked a tremendous step forward for the movement of the entire U.S. proletariat and working people against the monopoly capitalist dictators:
-- The miners' strike showed the great power of the workers' movement of the 1970's, and demonstrated this power in concrete action. The miners' struggle grabbed the capitalists by the throat: the coal companies suffered huge losses, and the steel, auto, utilities and other monopolies faced large-scale shutdowns. When the government ordered the miners back to work under the Taft-Hartley Act, and threatened to use the Army to suppress them, the miners heroically defied this fascist dictate and demolished the myth of the alleged "invincibility" of the capitalist state machine.
-- The miners' strike ripped the "pro-Labor" mask right off the Carter administration and the "Democratic" Party. "Mr. Human Rights" and "the party of the workers and the minorities" invoked the Taft-Hartley Act, obtained a back-to-work injunction and threatened mass arrests and use of the Army and other fascist measures. Behind all their deception stands the savage dictatorship of finance capital imposing fascism on the working masses.
-- The miners' strike set a glorious example for the struggle of all the workers and oppressed masses in the U.S. who are fighting against the shifting of the burden of the economic crisis onto their backs and against other attacks by their common enemy, Capital and its government. A tremendous wave of solidarity with the striking miners swept through the misses, giving rise to solidarity actions by other sections of the workers, notably the railroad workers and the auto workers, and also by the striking farmers. All the attempts of the monopoly capitalists to whip up an anti-miner hysteria among the people over "energy shortages" failed miserably.
--The miners' strike exposed the venality of the capitalist news media, which told every possible lie to serve its masters, one day screaming that the miners were creating "economic disaster", the next day covering up the deep-going effects of the strike in order to convince the miners that their struggle was futile.
-- The miners' strike starkly exposed the treachery of the labor bureaucrats of the United Mine Workers union, who actively conspired with the coal companies and the government to cram one sell-out agreement after another down the throats of the miners. This treachery was firmly resisted by the miners, as they exposed and defeated several attempts to sell them out.
-- The miners' strike exposed the great depth of the economic, energy and all-round crises of the monopoly capitalist system. The coal monopolists and the entire big bourgeoisie, represented by the government, is desperate to crush the miners' strike movement and force an enslaving, con tract on them, in order to intimidate the entire working class as well as to increase their exploitation of the miners and obtain increased production of coal for the U.S. imperialist war machine. This explains the determination of all the forces of Capital to impose a set-back contract onto the miners, forcing the miners to fight from a defensive position. But the miners' heroic efforts completely stymied the capitalists from achieving their goal of bringing the miners to their knees. This has thrown the bourgeoisie into a still -- greater predicament as it tries to escape from its great crisis at the expense of the masses.
TheWorkers' Advocate sends a vigorous red salute to the heroic coal miners, glorious fighting representatives of the modern U.S. proletariat, the most advanced, powerful and revolutionary class in U.S. society, and calls upon all the workers and oppressed masses to follow the inspiring example of the miners and step up their struggles against the common enemy. All glory to the fighting coal miners!
THE MINERS' HEROIC DEFIANCE OF THE GOVERNMENT AND ALL THE FORCES OF CAPITAL
The valiant struggle of the miners, reflecting the fighting spirit of the entire proletariat, dealt all of the miners' enemies a severe blow.
With their mass actions the miners closed not only the unionized mines but a large part of the non-unionized mines as well, reducing coal production by two- thirds, and made it impossible for the capitalists to transport much of the coal that 'did get mined, causing the big capitalists of the coal industry to suffer heavy losses. The miners defied the local and state police and National Guard and fought pitched battles with the police, using clubs, rocks, rifles and other weapons, to continue their mass picketing. When the UMW bureaucrats, in collaboration with the coal operators and the government, conspired to impose sell-out contracts onto the miners, the masses of miners exposed two sell-out pacts and chucked them into the garbage can. And when the government headed by Carter, representing not only the coal companies but the entire monopoly capitalist class, issued its tyrannical fascist Taft-Hartley back-to-work order, the miners heroically defied it and reduced it to an impotent threat.
These glorious acts of rebellion expressed the deep contempt felt by the miners and entire working class and laboring people for the capitalists, their flunkey government and the labor traitors. The miners demonstrated with concrete action that the reputedly "powerful" government of U.S. imperialism, with all its bloated military-police and bureaucratic apparatus and wind-bag politicians, is nothing but a giant with feet of clay, a paper tiger, when confronted by the power of the united workers. This defiance followed in the great rebellious tradition of the U.S. proletariat, in which the miners have always played a prominent part. The miners and the entire U.S. working class have a glorious history of defying and fighting both the capitalists and the armed forces of their state machine in defense of their basic interests. As one miner put it, "I've been a defier all my life. I've defied the coal operators and the union, and now I'm going to defy the President of the United States."
From the very beginning of the strike the miners kept up vigorous mass actions against the mining and transportation of scab coal. Employing the method of roving pickets, hundreds of miners would travel in caravans of up to 150 and more cars to close down and keep closed non-union mines. The miners called upon the non-union miners to join the strike, with success as large numbers voluntarily walked off the job and struck. Against the company agents and forces of the coal operators, the miners took action. As one miner declared: "We'll do whatever we can to stop non-union coal production. If it means taking a ball bat to their heads, we'll do that; if it means dumping the coal on the ground, we'll do that."
Frequently the miners fought pitched battles with the armed forces of the capitalist state sent by the coal operators to protect their "sacred" private property and "hallowed" profits. Local gun thugs and sheriff's deputies, riot-equipped state police backed up by helicopters, National Guard troops riding in armored personnel carriers - all were unable to smash the miners' flexible, hit-and-run mass actions. In one action late in February, 800-1000 miners held scabs captive at mines northwest of Birmingham, Alabama, and fought with rocks, fire-brands, small arms fire and dynamite against state police who came to rescue the scabs. Even while Carter was imposing the Taft-Hartley injunction, caravans of up to 500 miners roamed southern Pennsylvania closing scab mines and miners surrounded a coal train in southern Illinois, preventing it from bringing its coal to Terre Haute, Indiana. As John Hull, a miner killed by the capitalists in a gun battle on the picket line, declared: "The least we can do is stand up and fight."
The coal miners also waged a vigorous struggle against the reactionary sell-out contract proposals agreed to by the UMW bureaucrats, the BCOA and the government. When the February 6 tentative agreement was being considered by the UMW bargaining council, 200 militant miners stormed the meeting and sent the bureaucrats fleeing, forcing them to reject if. When the Pittsburgh and Midway agreement was reached, 140 miners picketed in protest. The miners' vote, by a two-thirds majority, to reject the February 24th sell-out proposal, accompanied by mass burnings of the proposed contract, delivered the bureaucrats and their masters a still-bigger kick in the teeth.
The coal miners' heroic defiance of and struggle against all the forces of Capital spearheaded by its reactionary government is a great and inspiring event in the growing revolt of the U.S. proletariat. It shows that this revolt is deepening and growing in strength day by day.
THE INSPIRING EXAMPLE OF THE MINERS' STRIKE AROUSED THE PROLETARIAT AND OTHER WORKING PEOPLE TO TAKE SOLIDARITY ACTIONS
The miners' vigorous strike also aroused the spirit of rebellion in the rest of the proletariat and other working people such as the farmers. It set in motion a wave of actions of solidarity against the common enemy.
In the coal fields, railroad workers frequently struck in solidarity with the miners, honoring the miners' roving picket lines and stopping trains on which the capitalists were trying to move scab coal. These actions were a major reason that very little of the coal mined in many areas by scab labor could be moved. Workers at scores of factories and other workplaces throughout the country took up collections for the miners and sent large quantities of food, money and clothing. An auto workers' caravan of 75 cars and vans brought food and $4000 from Detroit to West Virginia, where a joint rally was held of miners and auto workers. Under pressure of the rank and file workers, the top labor bureaucrats of the United Auto Workers, the United Steel Workers union and the AFL-CIC were forced to make contributions to the UMW as it faced the government's Taft-Hartley injunction. A great wave of unity in action is beginning to develop in the American proletariat in its class struggle against the bourgeoisie.
The farmers, who are also fighting the big monopolies and the government in their national strike, took solidarity action to support the miners. Caravans of food were Sent to the miners from farmers in West Virginia, Georgia, and Missouri. On March 6, 400 striking Missouri farmers brought food from farmers in over seven states to miners in Western Kentucky. A joint rally of 10,000 miners and farmers was held at which the miners and farmers proclaimed their mutual solidarity. These actions by the farmers are of great importance in the struggle of the working class against the monopoly capitalist dictators, as they indicate the growth of fighting unity between the workers and their principal ally against Capital, the small farmer, a unity of the laboring people against their common enemy, the rich and their government.
This wave of solidarity, of unity in action, of the proletariat itself and with its allies, is a harbinger of the emerging revolutionary torrent of all the oppressed sections of the population. It sounds a note of great danger for the exploiting minority, the big money-bags of monopoly capital.
CARTER GOVERNMENT BARES ITS FASCIST FANGS
The miners' strike stripped away the "pro-Labor", "human rights" halo of the Carter regime of the "Democratic" Party and revealed the savage dictatorship of big capital which lies underneath.
The government, the executive committee of the entire monopoly capitalist class, managed the negotiations between the BCOA and the UMW all along and cooked up one sell-out contract proposal after another to impose on the miners. Meanwhile, it kept up a constant stream of predictions of the economic disaster allegedly being caused by the miners (not by the capitalists, of course, who merely refused to grant the miners' just and modest demands). Constant threats to impose Taft-Hartley were issued while at lower levels the government sent its state police and National Guard to violently attack the miners.
But all these threats, demagogy and attacks failed, so the bourgeoisie was forced to issue the Taft-Hartley back-to-work order, threatening to bring all the force of the capitalist state machine, right up to and including the Army, to bear to break the strike. "Mr. Human Rights" Carter invoked the Taft-Hartley Act and obtained a federal court injunction banning the strike and threatening thousands of local union officials with fines and jail terms. The only reason the bourgeoisie did not make good on these threats was the massive defiance of the miners, which showed the futility of doing so.
The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 is a fascist strikebreaking labor law. It was imposed to suppress the great upsurge of the workers' and communist movements which followed World War II. It replaced the National Labor Relations Act, whose name it preserved for part of its provisions. The Taft-Hartley Act banned mass picketing, outlawed secondary boycotts, outlawed the closed shop, revived the use of anti-labor court injunctions on a big scale, allowed states to pass so-called "right-to-work laws", imposed anti-communist pledges, and loyalty oaths on union officials, provided for suppression of strikes that cause "national emergencies", and so forth. It is this last provision which was invoked by Carter. This provision permits issuing a direct government order, enforceable by federal troops, ordering the workers back to work in a strike which the President decides is threatening to become a "national emergency". Thus, whenever a strike of a crucial sector of the workers has disrupted capitalist production seriously, or threatens to, the government has the explicit "right" to break it with force, if it can.
According to capitalist law, you can strike as long as you want, you can even starve to death, but as soon as it affects the profits of the capitalists, you have to go back to work. This shows how all capitalist governments give themselves the right, with or without explicit permission in law, to suppress the workers' movement by force. The Taft-Hartley Act, allowing completely arbitrary suppression of strikes by the capitalists, is presently a vehicle by which the U.S. government does so.
The passage of the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947 marked a big step in the integration of the trade unions into the bourgeois state machine. Today every aspect of the life of the trade unions is regulated, restricted and controlled by the government through all sorts of laws, bureaucratic rules, red tape, "connections" of every kind, etc. The object of this integration is to contain the worker's struggle within bounds considered "safe" by the capitalists, that is, within the established channels of bourgeois trade union politics and away from the revolutionary path. These regulations accomplish this by imposing the labor bureaucrats onto the workers as their "leaders". The bureaucrats then praise the government to the skies and advocate collaboration with it and surrender to its anti-worker dictates, as in the case of the miners' strike. But it is one thing to pass laws and create a state-integrated labor bureaucracy to suppress the workers' struggle; as the miners' struggle shows, it is quite another thing to succeed in suppressing it.
The imposition of the Taft-Hartley injunction in one stroke revealed the falsity of the claims of Carter and the "Democratic" party to be the "pro-Labor" "party' of the workers and the minorities", the world-wide champions of "human rights" for the oppressed. These wind-bags were exposed as low-life strikebreakers, as fascist demagogues representing the savage, violent dictatorship of the big capitalists over the working people. The "human rights" preacher was even ready to starve the miners into submission by cutting off their food stamps, despite the fact that certain-bourgeois experts were of the opinion that a decision of the Colorado Supreme Court had made this illegal.
The elaborate deception of the working class, for which Carter was installed by the money-bags and their labor lieutenants, suffered a crushing blow. The "Democrats" were revealed as simply the other face of finance capital's dictatorship, no different in essence from the Republicans. Carter's image as "Mr. Human Rights" was stripped away in the eyes of the whole world. District 6 of the UMW issued a statement on March 14 bitterly denouncing Carter and the government for invoking the Taft-Hartley Act, saying: "We believe it's a disgrace for him to use this law and at the same time piously claim to the world that he and his administration believe in human rights". With the imposition of the Taft-Hartley injunction, the "liberal" Carter has again bared his fascist fangs.
Aware that the miners might (as they did) simply brush aside the Taft-Hartley injunction, the government had also planned for federal seizure of the mines if negotiations failed to end the strike. The UMW and other labor bureaucrats made a deal with the government that they would accept the breaking of the strike provided it was done under the deceptive cloak of federal seizure, which they alleged would mean a set-back for the coal companies (just how little the government was prepared to "set back" the coal companies could be already seen by the sell-out contract proposals of February 6 and 24, cooked up under government supervision). But federal seizure of the mines would only have made the government more deeply exposed as an instrument of Capital in the eyes of the workers. One miner accurately pointed out: "Government seizure is just Taft-Hartley with the flag wrapped around it."
The defiant struggle of the coal miners has ripped off the mask of the "pro-Labor" "Democrats" and "Mr. Human Rights", Jimmy Carter. This, too, is a big step forward for the proletarian struggle.
A CONTRACT WHICH SETTLES NOTHING
The titanic battle between the coal miners and the forces of Capital ended in a stalemate. The miners stymied the efforts of the coal operators and the government to crush their movement and force them back to work on their knees. But the contract signed, while eliminating some of the worst features proposed by the coal capitalists, remains a severe step backwards from the 1974 contract. The main demands of the miners, for the right to strike over local grievances, restoration and guarantee of health benefits, equalization of pensions, etc., remain unfulfilled or are mutilated, while backward steps are imposed on certain questions. One can judge the frenzy of the capitalists to shift the burden of the economic crisis onto the workers by the fact that the miners had to strike for 3 1/2 months to get the present contract.
A. The Right to Strike
The miners demanded the right to strike over local grievances between contracts. The courts read into the 1974 contract a ban on local strikes. When the official trade union channels are blocked on an issue either by the labor bureaucrats or by the direct state intervention, the miners have been forced to break with the union bureaucracy and wage wildcat strikes, carrying out over 5,000 strikes in the past three years. The miners' strike movement became a formidable weapon to oppose increasing exploitation and defend life and limb. To defend and expand this movement, the miners demanded that the right to strike over local grievances be written into the contract.
Ever since Miller abandoned this demand early in the negotiations, the miners were on the defensive against the attempts of the capitalists to write into the contract specific penalties for including firings and fines for individual strikers and the leaders in particular, who guide and organize the miners' resistance movement. The February 6th tentative agreement contained provisions for the fining and firing of wildcat strikers. The militant struggle of the miners forced the dropping of the fines, but the February 24th tentative agreement maintained language providing for the firing of anyone "actively involved in causing" a wildcat, language so broad as to allow the capitalists to fire nearly anyone. This provision, too, was forced out of the contract by the miners' determined struggle.
The March 15th final agreement drops the entire "labor stability" package of the BCOA, with its firings of wildcat leaders. The fact that such provisions are not written into the contract, which would allow them to be used summarily by the coal operators, is a definite victory for the miners. But the "complete withdrawal" of this provision advertised by the capitalists and the labor traitors is a fraud. In place of the previous anti-wildcat provision a "memorandum of agreement" is -attached to the contract. Here the capitalists and labor bureaucrats are truing to put something over on the miners by hiding its meaning. According to the New York Times, the most prominent newspaper of the bourgeoisie, this memorandum actually means that the union and the companies will be bound by an even more severe anti-strike plan handed down by the coal Arbitration Review Board in November. This plan permits the suspension and firing of strike leaders under even less conclusive evidence than was required by the rejected February 24th contract. But this "Catch-22" is being hidden by the labor traitors. And here again the labor traitors are promoting reliance on the government. The advantage, in their eyes, of this arrangement is that under it the bourgeois lawyers of the union bureaucracy could challenge it in federal court, while contract language against wildcats could not be so challenged. Thus, while such a procedure is perhaps a bit more cumbersome for the companies to wield in attacking the miners, again the labor traitors arc trying to deliver the miners into the tender mercies of the government, into the hands of the very courts against which the miners waged a militant nationwide wildcat strike in the summer of 1976 when the courts attempted to suppress the miners' strike struggles with court injunctions. However, the propaganda that the anti-wildcat provisions have been dropped from the contract may backfire on the labor traitors and the capitalists. If If the capitalists try to enforce them on a large scale, the miners will rebel with renewed fury.
On other matters in which the companies aimed at disciplining wildcat strikers, the "absenteeism" clause in the rejected February 24th pact, which would have allowed the firing of workers who accumulated more than five "unexcused absences" in 120 working days, that is, who participate in wildcat strikes or who even take time off to take care of personal business, was dropped. (This clause had originally been proposed by the labor traitors!) Also, the February 24th rejected contract had raised the work time required in one year to qualify for a year's service towards a pension from 1000 hours to 1,450 hours, an increase of almost 50 percent. This, too, was aimed at workers who participated in wildcat strikes. It was dropped from the final contract.
B. Health Care Benefits
On this crucial demand, the capitalists made an apparent concession while in fact mutilating the whole program. Last summer, claiming that the miners' wildcats had depleted the fund, the coal operators cut the miners' health benefits as a blackmail effort to smash the miners' strike movement and make the miners pay for health expenses. (In fact, one of the two funds had plenty of money in it, but the companies arbitrarily refused to transfer funds from it to the other.) The miners answered this attack with a militant national wildcat strike demanding full restoration and guarantee of health benefits and this became a major demand of the present contract strike.
The March 15th final agreement provided that the health benefits would be guaranteed -- but that, for the first time, the miners would have to pay for part of them, to the tune of deductibles of up to a total of $200 for doctors' fees and prescriptions per worker per year, a big savings for the companies. The benefits will no longer be managed by a joint union-company committee but will be turned over directly to a multitude of different commercial insurance companies, removing them still further from the control of the miners as a whole and making it more difficult, if not impossible, to negotiate common conditions for all. In addition, the elimination of the general health fund will wipe out an association of 50 medical clinics in the eastern mountains, which often provide the only medical care for miners in more than a 50-mile radius of their homes.
The labor traitors and the capitalists are trumpeting that the final agreement is a big advance over the previous February 24th pact, whose deductibles would have reached as high as $700, including also hospital payments. Every time a miner goes to the doctor he will be reminded of this fact. But even the guarantee of benefits and the reduction of the deductibles from $700 to $200 only came as a result of a fierce struggle against the capitalist and labor bureaucrats. The break-up of the Health Fund and the institution of deductibles is a step backwards from 1974. And once the deductibles are instituted, the capitalists will inevitably try to raise them. This will give rise to more fierce struggle in the coal fields.
C. Pensions
The 1974 contract aroused bitter anger among the miners by creating two pension systems, one by which the older workers who retired before 1974 receive over $200 a month less than those who retired since. While the rejected February 24th pact would have raised the older workers' pensions from $225 to $275 a month over the life of the contract, the new contract makes this raise immediately. Thus the two-level pension system is still in effect, with little change, and the older retirees are still way behind the younger. This provision infuriated miners of all ages.
D. Incentives
From the beginning of the negotiations, the BCOA sought to write production incentives into the contract in order to try to bribe miners to voluntarily speed up their labor, greatly increasing the risk of accidents. The miners militantly opposed this demand. The February 24th agreement had already dropped this demand of the capitalists, under the miners' pressure, but it has reappeared in the final contract. The final incentive clause allows the institution of such practices if the majority of a local union votes in favor of them, thus giving the capitalists a foot in the door on this vital question.
E. Wages
The claim that all the Miller-BCCA-Carter wage packages have been "generous" and that "wages are not an issue" is a fraud. In fact, every one of them, including the final contract, falls far short of protecting the workers from inflation, which everyone knows will run at least 30 percent over the next three years, not to mention taxes. And all three contain very serious wage-cutting provisions which partly negate the higher nominal wages, much as the addition of deductibles on health insurance.
The final contract contains a nominal wage increase of $2.40. The capitalists and labor traitors are calling this a raise over the February 24th agreement and are describing it as a "39 percent raise " over-all. This is a lie. The $2.40 amounts to only 31 percent over three years. The other eight percent allegedly comes from benefits. But benefits will actually be cut compared to 1974 due to the imposition of up to $200 per year in deductibles -- a wage cut of 10 cents an hour or 30 cents over three years, cutting the over-all wage package to only $2.10, or 26 percent, that is, less than 9 percent per year. This is still one percent below the present inflation rate as figured by the government's Consumer Price Index, which admittedly underestimates inflation. In addition, there is the matter of compensating for the increased Social Security taxes, higher tax rates due to higher tax brackets, etc. So this raise is not quite what it seems!
In fact, the package is 5 cents less than the previous package of $2.45. So how can the capitalists get away with calling it an increase over the February 24th pact at all? The answer is very revealing. The size of the raise alleged by the BCOA -- 25 cents per worker per hour over three years -- between this contract and the rejected February 24th pact is exactly the difference in the amount of a cut in the wage package that will be created by the reduction in maximum deductibles from $700 per worker per year to $200. Thus the cagey coal capitalists, knowing full well that the miserable health of the miners will cause them to spend their deductibles in full, has done his figuring on that assumption. Thus the BCOA's claim that the present contract represents a raise of 25 cents per hour over the last contract proposal is merely its open admission that the February 24th pact had contained a hidden cut of fully 25 cents per hour while the latest contract contains one of "only" 10 cents per hour! Moreover, COLA is removed once more, in order to give the appearance of a higher wage by increasing the base rate from $1.85 to $2.40. So there is no protection at all from an increase in the present ten percent annual inflation rate.
This is the wage "raise" which is so "generous" that it is "not an issue"! It does not cover the workers for inflation and higher taxes at all.
The new coal contract shows that, while a temporary truce has been signed between the miners and the capitalists, the struggle in the coal fields is bound to intensify in the coming period.
THE TREACHEROUS ROLE OF THE LABOR BUREAUCRATS
Throughout the strike the coal miners have had to fight not just against the coal capitalists and the capitalist government but also against the enemies in their own midst, the traitorous bureaucrats heading the UMW. These labor traitors have done the bidding of Capital in every conceivable way. They abandoned the main demands of the miners and at every turn conspired with the capitalists to impose sell-out contracts on the miners which are worse than the existing 1974 contract. A single word of exposure of these pacts from the labor traitors would have sent any one of them down the drain at a moment's notice. The labor traitors opposed the miners' mass resistance struggle and cravenly capitulated to the bourgeois state at every turn. When the Taft-Hartely injunction was imposed and Carter declared: "The law must be enforced", Miller echoed, "It is the law, and I will do what the court tells me to do."
The capitulation of the labor bureaucrats to Taft-Hartley and to the capitalists throughout the strike is based on their opposition to the struggle of the coal miners and their love of the capitalist order. They show this by attacking the miners' movement. Miller declared in an interview with the Louisville Courier-Journal February 9, 1978, "If we don't bring these work stoppages under control, there's not going to be anything for anybody to fight over. The union is going to be broken, I want the membership to understand that that is not a figure of speech." Here Miller raises the bogey which has been much-publicized by the capitalist news media and threatened by the government: that the UMW is so "weakened" by its "internal chaos" that it is in danger of breaking upand the miners will have no means of fighting the companies. This moaning simply reflects the fear of the labor bureaucrats (and the capitalists) at the upsurge of the rank-and-file workers, which is naturally accompanied by great turmoil, by the breaking of the restrictions imposed by the top labor bureaucrats as the workers kick aside whatever stands in their way. Far from a sign of weakness, this turmoil is a sign of the health of the workers' struggle, a precondition for the vigorous struggle the miners have been waging. The capitalists are fond of talking big about "trade union democracy". They use this talk as an excuse to smash unions, bring unions under government and court supervision, and intervene in the union politics and place "their men" in office, as the the government did with Miller in 1973. But when the workers put democracy in action, as in the miners' strike, and the capitalists needed the labor bureaucrats to ram a sell-out contract down the miners' throats, then the true colors of the capitalists came out and you found them whining that the top UMW bureaucrats did not have control of the situation and even moaning about the fact that the miners had the right to vote on the contract! The upsurge of the miners has terrified both the capitalists and their loyal servants, the labor bureaucrats.
Another example of such labor bureaucrats is Cecil Roberts, a leading candidate to replace Miller. Despite his "militant" reputation, his views on the burning questions facing the miners are a mere echo of Miller's. He told a mass meeting February 17: "When we sign this agreement (the February 24th tentative agreement, which Roberts knew was in the works which was later rejected 2-1 by the miners - - Ed.), we have to live under it. We can't have another three years of strikes like the last three." (Charleston Gazette, February 18, 1978) And he later stated: "It's all over if they don"t accept this (the February 24th agreement -- Ed.) The BCOA's going to fold and we'll have to negotiate individual contracts which would be all right for the working miners but the retired miners would be left out." (Charleston Gazette, March 1, 1978). Thus, in a few words, Roberts: 1. calls for acceptance of the February 24th sell-out, 2. calls for capitulation to Taft-Hartley ("all" would be "over" if the miners rejected the pact and faced Taft-Hartley), 3. creates hysteria over the allegedly impending break-up of the union, and 4. opposes the miners' strike movement. A very good echo of Miller, indeed!
The fact that these labor traitors are mere echoes of the capitalists reveals that they are agents of Capital in the working-class movement, whose job is to sabotage the movement from within, where, due to their "Labor" image, they can carry out anti-worker activities that would get an open capitalist hanged.
But the militant struggle of the miners also brought a further exposure of the treachery of the labor bureaucrats. Miller, formerly promoted by the capitalists as a "fighting" labor leader, has become totally exposed among the miners today. This exposure will lead to a still-higher level of struggle by the miners. The coal miners must rely on their own strength in order to continue the struggle against the capitalists and labor bureaucrats.
The miners' struggle has also exposed the top labor bureaucrats on a national scale. The AFL-CIO headed by Meany supported the imposition of Taft-Hartley at first (though it was later forced to give it verbal opposition because of the massive pro-miner sentiment of the workers). Douglas Fraser of the UAW declared that "the wildcats did get out of hand last year." But the labor bureaucrats, from Meany to Fraser to Miller, really went on a binge of promotion for federal seizure of the mines. Unable to get the miners to capitulate to the BCOA or the government's Taft-Hartley injunction, the bureaucrats called for the government to break the strike by federal seizure under the hoax that management of the mines by the capitalist government would bring the miners a "fair shake". What boot-lickers! First let the capitalist government break the strike, then the workers will get a "fair shake"! Even the much-ballyhooed contributions of a total of $4.5 million by the UAW, the USW and the AFL-CIO (given only to placate the workers and give the bureaucrats a "militant" image) were revealed never to have reached the rank-and-file miners. Instead, the money was withheld by the UMW bureaucrats in order to use economic pressure to get the miners to ratify the latest contract.
The treachery of the labor bureaucrats against the miners and the entire workers' movement knows no bounds. They are, indeed, as great Lenin taught, "better defenders of the bourgeoisie than the bourgeoisie themselves." This, too, was revealed by the coal miners' strike.
A BIG BLOW TO THE CAPITALISTS AMIDST THEIR DEEP CRISIS
The coal miners' strike hit the capitalists a heavy blow just as their economic j energy and all-round crises were deepening, causing them severe difficulties on all fronts. The miners' struggle grabbed the capitalists by the throat, threatening as it did the very heart of U.S. industrial production. The very intensity of the struggle, the determination of the capitalists not only not to give in on the miners' demands but to impose a contract worse than the 1974 contract, is itself an illustration of the depth of the capitalist crisis.
The monopoly capitalists are shifting the burden of their crisis onto the workers through speed-up, inflation, wage-cuts, unemployment, rising taxes, etc. The miners' strike movement is in the forefront of the growing revolt of the working class against being made to bear the burden of the crisis. The capitalists and their government need desperately to smash the miners' strike movement and fear that any concession to the miners will encourage other sections of the proletariat and people to rise in struggle.
The energy crisis, which is bound up with the war preparations of U.S. imperialism, is also extremely acute. The two superpowers, U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism, are preparing for a new war to re-divide the world between their aggressive blocs. The imperialists of all countries need this war to escape from their deep crisis by acquiring new slaves to exploit in the colonial and dependent countries. The U.S. imperialists have been importing huge amounts of foreign oil in recent years to control the world oil markets and reap maximum profits from oil production and distribution. The supply of overseas oil is threatened by the revolutionary struggles of the peoples of the oil-producing countries and is also vulnerable to military action in time of war. Therefore, the U.S. imperialists are stockpiling oil and stepping up development of other energy resources at home, notably coal, to prepare for war. Carter's energy program stresses almost doubling domestic coal production by 1985, so as to have a "reliable" source of energy in the U.S. on which to base production for war. This is why Secretary of Energy Schlesinger told the Detroit Economic Club, February 13, "There are no solutions except restoration of (coal) productivity." Pledging to do everything for the coal capitalists, Carter has promised to set up a "productivity commission" to study the coal industry, a commission whose role, in fact, would be to plot new ways of smashing the miners' struggle and increasing their exploitation.
But the coal miners' struggle is a powerful blow against increased exploitation and against war preparations. It has caused the capitalists to worry that coal may no longer be regarded as a "reliable" source of energy. The strike struggles of the miners have thus thrown a monkey-wrench into Carter's energy program and the war preparations of U.S. imperialism.
The strike has also disrupted the efforts of the capitalists to shift the burden of the economic crisis onto the working class as a whole through the so-called "anti-inflation" program announced by Carter in his January State of the Union message. Carter then outlined a program aimed at holding down the wages of the workers (allegedly the cause of inflation) industry by industry with "voluntary" wage controls in preparation for mandatory controls at a later date. But Carter's plans to launch a big propaganda campaign in favor of this anti-worker program were disrupted by the coal strike, which forced the government to turn all its attention to suppressing the coal miners. At the same time, the wage package in the new coal contract, meager and deceptive as it is, has smashed right through the 6.1 per cent per year limit Carter had declared that his "anti-inflation" program would impose on the entire working class, opening the way for other sections of the workers to also smash these repressive "guidelines".
Thus the miners' militant struggle has dealt a setback to the capitalists' efforts to shift the burden of their deep crisis onto the workers and prepare for war. This, too, was a victory for the entire working class and oppressed people.
ALL GLORY TO THE FIGHTING COAL MINERS!
The great struggle of the coal miners has won a solid place in the history of the U.S. proletariat. It shook the monopoly capitalist ruling class and the entire society. It showed the tremendous power of the workers' movement. It demonstrated, once again, that the working class is the grave-digger of capitalism. End.
A new outburst of inflation and soaring prices has been taking place in the U.S. this year. Price increases have once again reached the double-digit rate of 1974. The official government price index for urban consumers soared at a 9,6 per cent annual rate in January. The cost of all the necessities of life which the people must buy is soaring, while the real wages of the workers are actually being cut, falling further and further behind prices, as are the incomes of other sections of the people. In January alone, workers' spendable earnings, by government calculation, dropped a full three per cent. Blaming the workers for inflation, the capitalist government headed by Carter has hatched new schemes of wage controls to attack their struggle for higher wages and drive the workers' wages still lower in real terms.
The monopoly capitalist class is mercilessly sucking the blood of the working class and people. The monopoly capitalists are using the weapons of inflation and soaring prices to protect and increase their profits. to shift the burden of the deepening economic crisis onto the backs of the masses. Over-taxation is growing at an increasing rate, adding to this crushing burden on the people. The cost of living has become unbearable. While the big moneybags gorge themselves with wealth, the working class and entire people are suffering ever-intensified exploitation and impoverishment.
Finance capital and its tool, the government, through which it rules the U.S., are rapidly inflating the dollar. They are massively expanding the money supply by two methods: huge federal budget deficits (for war preparations and other reactionary activities of the state) and the issue of large quantities of parasitic stocks and bonds -- all in excess of the growth of actual production. The monopoly capitalist vultures then jack up prices at a tremendous rate and drive the people to the wall.
Against this barbaric plunder, the working class is rising up in a vigorous strike movement all across the U.S. From the coal miners to the iron ore miners to the longshoremen, the workers are fighting a determined battle against the employers. But the capitalists turn truth on its head and blame the workers' struggles for higher wages for "causing" inflation. They do daily propaganda that wage increases (which do not even keep up with prices) inevitably set off a "wage- price spiral" which allegedly pushes prices upwards. Under this hoax, the capitalists, the Carter administration and the scab union bosses have imposed so- called "voluntary" wage controls, openly admitted to be a step towards mandatory controls like those imposed by the Nixon administration to suppress the workers. Carter has been ready for months to launch a massive propaganda campaign in favor of his "anti-inflation" (read: anti-worker) program, but this wave of demagogy has been shelved until now by the attention the government has been forced to pay to attacking the coal miners' strike.
Against this barbaric plunder, the working class is rising up in a vigorous strike movement all across the U.S. From the coal miners to the iron ore miners to the longshoremen, the workers are fighting a determined battle against the employers. But the capitalists turn truth on its head and blame the workers' struggles for higher wages for "causing" inflation. They do daily propaganda that wage increases (which do not even keep up with prices) inevitably set off a "wage- price spiral" which allegedly pushes prices upwards. Under this hoax, the capitalists, the Carter administration and the scab union bosses have imposed so- called "voluntary" wage controls, openly admitted to be a step towards mandatory controls like those imposed by the Nixon administration to suppress the workers. Carter has been ready for months to launch a massive propaganda campaign in favor of his "anti-inflation" (read: anti-worker) program, but this wave of demagogy has been shelved until now by the attention the government has been forced to pay to attacking the coal miners' strike.
Blaming the workers for inflation and soaring prices is intended to sow confusion about who is the cause of this plague. Its purpose is to sabotage Hie workers' movement and permit the capitalists to increase their robbery without opposition. For the workers and oppressed masses to fight effectively against inflation and soaring prices, they must have a clear idea of their real cause and oppose the lying propaganda of the capitalists.
THE NEW OUTBURST OF INFLATION AND SOARING PRICES
After rising at a 10 per cent annual rate for the first half of last year, price increases dropped somewhat in the second half, but are now rising again at a near 10 per cent rate again. These figures are based on the government's Consumer Price Index which covers up the even more rapid increases on the cheapest, every-day necessities of life. Thus the Carter administration's insistence that the "underlying" rate of inflation is six per cent is a blatant lie. Meanwhile, wholesale food prices increased in February at their fastest rate in three years, a whopping 2.9 per cent in that month alone, a catastrophic 34.8 per cent annual rate. Increased social security taxes and higher rates of taxes for people entering higher brackets because of inflation-required raises are both adding radically to the increase in the cost of living. At the same time, Carter's energy program is causing taxes and the price of energy to sky-rocket. As prices soar, the currency is being inflated even more rapidly. Production is stagnating, yet the Carter administration has dropped its promise to balance the budget and has called for a $61 billion deficit this year, including a big increase in military spending to beef up NATO, requiring the issue of still more paper money.
Despite the powerful workers' strike movement of the past two years, the capitalists and their loyal agents, the big labor bureaucrats, have collaborated to restrict the wage raises won in union contracts. In the first nine months of last year, they totaled a meager 5.8 per cent annually. (This figure hides the far lower wages of the unorganized workers, who are the majority of the working class, not to mention the miserable situation of the 10 million unemployed workers who can barely exist.) According to the Census Bureau, between May of 1976 and May of 1977 prices rose at a rate equal to that of wages. Thus, even by the admittedly watered-down figures of the government, the workers have been unable to make up for their losses due to inflation. Yet Carter's new "anti-inflation program" is aimed at keeping the workers' wage raises below the average of the past two years -- 6.1 per cent -- ensuring that the workers do not catch up to inflation. Other laborers, such as small farmers, and the broadest masses of the people have also suffered severely from inflation and soaring prices, which invariably exceed rises in their incomes.
Contrary to the capitalists' propaganda, these figures illustrate the new outburst of inflation and show, that the worst is yet to come. They confirm what every worker knows: that his situation is growing more and more miserable, while the capitalists are rolling in money. Let us see how the plague of inflation and soaring prices increases the exploitation of the masses.
HOW INFLATION AND SOARING PRICES INCREASE THE EXPLOITATION OF THE WORKERS AND OPPRESSED MASSES
While the prices the monopoly capitalists extort on the market rise rapidly, the wages of the workers fall further and further behind. They do not automatically rise when the capitalists raise their prices. Because rising prices make the workers' cost of living soar, inflation causes the workers to suffer an actual wage cut. While the workers' nominal wages (measured in inflated dollars) stand still or rise only a small amount due to their struggles, the workers' real wages' or purchasing power (measured in what they can buy and not in inflated dollars) actually drops due to inflation. These falling wages mean higher profits for the employers. Thus inflation and soaring prices cause the workers to suffer greater and greater exploitation while they enrich the capitalists still more. This is how these evils shift the burden of the economic crisis onto the workers' backs. This means that the workers must fight. They must wage an extremely vigorous mass struggle against the employers if they are to successfully combat their falling real wages, the effect of inflation.
Speaking of such a situation of depreciated currency, Karl Marx sharply pointed out: "To say that in such a case the workman ought not to insist upon a proportionate rise of wages, is to say that he must be. content to be paid with names, instead of with things. All past history proves that whenever such a depreciation of money occurs, the capitalists are on the alert to seize this opportunity for defrauding the workman." (Wages, Price andProfit, Peking, 1965, pp. 65-66)
The capitalists freely admit that their intent in creating inflation is to drive down the real wages of the workers and increase their exploitation. The monopoly capitalist business journal Fortune wrote in 1974, the peak year for inflation: "Government spending and easier credit will work only if they raise prices faster than money wages and so restore profits -- in effect cutting realwages, or at least arresting their advance." (from a book review, February 1974)
The table printed below illustrates how inflation cuts the workers' real wages. From 1973to November 1977 the government's Consumer Price Index rose by 39.3 per cent while the average nominal wages of non-farm workers in the private sector (the, most organized section of the workers) rose by only 33.7 per cent, leaving these workers at least 5.6 per cent behind in terms of real wages. Government workers and farm workers who are not included in these figures fell still further behind.
CONSUMER PRICE INDEX AND WGAE INDEX 1973 - NOVEMBER 1977 (1)
Year | CPI | Pct. Change CPI | Wage | Pct. Change Wage |
1973 | 133.1 |
|
$145.43 |
|
1974 | 147.7 | +11.00% | $154,45 | + 6. 2% |
1975 | 161.2 | + 9.1% | $163.89 | + 6.1% |
1976 | 170.5 | +5.80% | $176.29 | + 7. 6% |
Nov. 1977 | 187.2 | +8.70% | $194.40 | +10.3% |
1973 to Nov. 1977 |
|
+39.3% |
|
+33. 7% |
These official figures minimize the losses of the workers due to inflation in another way. While the overall index rose by 39.3 per cent during that period, the prices of many absolute necessities which form a bigger part of the workers' budgets rose much more swiftly:
COMMODITY | PER CENT |
Natural gas | 95.5 |
Fuel oil and coal | 113.2 |
Gasoline | 60.7 |
Used cars | 48.8 |
Electricity | 53.0 |
Medical care | 61.9 |
Household furnishings and maintenance | 44.2 |
Fish | 61.2 |
Etc. (2) |
|
How inflation and price increases increase the exploitation of other toilers can be seen in figures recently issued by small farmers in Michigan. They state that they now receive $1.67 a bushel for corn, or $167 for the yield of 100 bushels they getfrom an average acre. But due to inflation their expenses have risen by 80 per cent since 1973, so that it now costs them $237 to produce this yield -- resulting in a loss of $70 per acre today. In Colorado, a recent Agriculture Department study shows, the average farmer netted $8,992 before taxes in 1976, but due to inflation this figure dropped by 8 per cent to about $8,000 last year.
What is lost by the working masses is won by a handful of capitalists, who grow fatter by the fast rise of prices. Between 1970 and 1977, corporate profits (of which the capitalists only report a fraction) rose by 73.5 per cent. In 1977, led by the auto companies, many U.S. monopolies announced that they realized still greater profits than in 1976.
Thus by inflating the currency and jacking up prices, the monopoly capitalists intensify the exploitation of the proletariat and plunder of all sections of the people. How do the big banks and government inflate the currency?
HOW FINANCE CAPITAL AND THE STATE INFLATE THE CURRENCY
Inflation and its result, soaring prices, are caused by the big monopolist banks and industries who in our era have combined into finance capital, and who wield the bourgeois state apparatus (government) as their obedient tool against the people.
Through the state and directly, finance capital puts into circulation paper dollars and other forms of paper money (checks, stocks, bonds, etc.) far in excess of the gold that would be needed to circulate the actual quantity of goods and services (commodities) produced and sold, i.e., far in excess of the growth of actual production. As a result, the currency is watered-down, depreciated, de-valued. Each dollar can buy less and less. For example, today's super-inflated dollar is worth 56 cents compared to the 1967 dollar and only 36 cents compared to the 1939 dollar, as a result of inflation.
Finance capital creates inflation through the state by massively issuing paper money in order to finance its enormous budget deficits. This paper money is not backed up by a corresponding increase in production, so these new dollars are inflated. This is called, in government jargon, "monetizing the deficit". To cover its deficits, the government borrows from the big commercial banks by selling Federal Reserve bonds to them. (This is called the "open market operations" of the Federal Reserve Board.) The banks pay for the bonds by crediting the government's checking account, allowing the government to make purchases with checks written against these accounts. But while the government now has the money it has borrowed from the banks, the banks have actually lost nothing because they have in their hands bonds worth the same amount, which they can trade just as if they were money. Thus the actual supply of paper money increases, without any corresponding increase in production. The result is inflation.
Marx described this sleight-of-hand as it was carried out by the Bank of England 100 years ago, when the practice had not yet reached the gigantic scale it has today in the era of finance capital: "The Bank of England began with lending its money to the government at 8 per cent; at the same time it was empowered by Parliament to coin money out of the same capital, by lending it again to the public in the form of bank-notes. It was allowed to use these notes for discounting bills, making advances on commodities, and for buying the precious metals it was not long ere this credit-money, made by the bank itself, became the coin in which the Bank of England made its loans to the State, and paid, on account of the State, the interest on the public debt. It was not enough that the bank gave with one hand and took back more with the other; it remained, even whilst receiving, the eternal creditor of the nation down to the last shilling advanced." Marx pointed out: "As with the stroke of an enchanter's wand, it (the public debt -- ed.) endows barren money with the power of breeding and thus turns it into capital, without the necessity of its exposing itself to the troubles and risks inseparable from its employment in industry or even in usury. The state-creditors actually give nothing away, for the sum lent is transformed into public bonds, easily negotiable, which go on functioning in their hands just as so much hard cash would." (Capital, Vol. I, pp. 754-55) In the same way today, the "enchanter's wand" of finance capital, acting through the government, massively creates paper money independently of production and inflates the currency. It is merely a more modern, subtle version of the old method of "cranking up the printing presses" to spew out "greenbacks", only in this case the big banks get to rake in interest on their state loans, to compensate them for all their "trouble".
The creation of inflation by this means today is roughly illustrated by the following table (3), which compares the growth of the issue of U.S. government securities to that of industrial production.
|
Pct. Change U.S. Govt. Sec. | Pct. Change Ind. Prod. |
1971 |
|
|
1972 | +6.8 | +7.9% |
1973 | +7.1 | +9.0% |
1974 | +3.6 | - .6% |
1975 | +11.9 | -5.6% |
1976 | +16.0 | +10.0% |
|
|
|
1971 to 1976 | +53.9 | +21.3% |
While industrial production does not create all the commodities brought to market, nevertheless the differences in rate of growth between the supply of federal government securities and it are of great significance. For example, while the issuing of federal government securities increased more than 50% from 1971 to 1976, industrial production merely rose by 21.3 per cent. This illustrates the ballooning; of the supply of actual paper money over and above the growth of real production, resulting in inflation.
Thus the government, through the financing of its deficits, creates inflation in collaboration with the big banks.
Finance capital creates inflation directly as well as through the government. It does this through speculation, financial swindling, also independent of actual production, and reapsfabulous profits by this means as well. Speculation in stocks, bonds and other negotiable paper securities is the means by which finance capital performs this sorcery. Securities of all sorts rise and fall in value and huge profits are made on their purchase and sale partly independently of the growth of actual production. They are traded as money and add to the money supply over and above the inflated dollars created in the transactions between the government and the banks. This is true of the bonds purchased by the banks from the federal government to finance its deficits. As Marx described, these bonds circulate as money. Their value rises and falls independently of production. The issuing and trading in stocks, too, creates paper acting as money (and big profits for finance capital) independent of the growth of production. The value of stocks also fluctuates in part independently of production -- it is partly speculative -- and stocks circulate in trading like so much money without regard to production.
The credit system is a necessary feature of capitalism from its beginning and does not itself create inflation. But in the era of finance capital the role of the banks changes; their capital mergeswith industrial capital and, from numerous small middlemen, they become a handful of monopolists who control the economic life of the entire country. Their speculations and swindlings, independent of production, are no longer a secondary feature of capitalism but mark its entire life. Lenin pointed out: "...The development of capitalism has arrived at a stage when, although commodity production still 'reigns' and continues to be regarded as the basis of economic life, it has in reality been undermined and the bulk of the profits go to the 'geniuses' of financial manipulation. At the basis of these manipulations and swindles lies socialized production; but the immense progress of mankind which achieved this socialization goes to benefit... the speculators."(Imperialism, theHighest Stage of Capitalism, Peking, 1970, pp. 26-7) Finance capital seizes upon one field after another until all decisive fields of the economy are in its hands. For example, finance capital seized on medical care and since World War H has transformed it from a field of scattered small enterprises typified by the family doctor into the vast, developed "health care industry" of today, which is tightly monopolized, extorts the highest prices and provides maximum profits for the banks and insurance companies through every sort of shady swindle and financial jugglery. The dominance of finance capital over every major sphere of economic life makes the extortion of profits by speculation and swindling independently of produc- the dominant system, resulting in inflation of the currency and soaring prices.
This process can be illustrated by the statistics on the issuing of securities since World War II. The extent to which it has grown in the period of rapid inflation, and a rough idea of the extent to which this growth has surpassed that of production, can be seen by the table below (4):
|
New securities issues (Gov't, corporate and other stocks and bonds | Industrial production (1967 = 0) |
1946 | $18,685 mill. |
|
1950 | 19,893 |
|
1960 | 27,541 | 89.2 |
1965 | 40,108 | 106.6 |
1970 | 88,666 | 117.8 |
1971 | 106,430 | 106.8 |
1972 | 95,408 | 115.2 |
1973 | 81,372 | 125.6 |
1974 | 101,196 | 124.8 |
1975 | 159,407 | 117.8 |
Thus, while industrial production only rose by about 11.2 per cent from 1965 to 1975 (or 23 per cent, to an index level of 129.6, by the following year, 1976), the issuing of new securities doubled between 1965 and 1970, and from 1970 to 1975 it doubled again. Comrade Lenin spoke of "the extraordinary high rate of profit obtained from the issue of securities, which is one of the principal functions of finance capital."(Imperialism, p. 63) The issuing of securities reflects the ballooning parasitic growth of finance capital, of speculation and swindling, and their inevitable partner, inflation.
Thus finance capital creates inflation directly by means of speculation and reaps ballooning profits independently of actual production. Working through the state and also on its own, it is finance capital, not the workers, which causes inflation.
HOW THE MONOPOLY CAPITALISTS RAISE THEIR PRICES
When the state and finance capital directly put into circulation inflated paper money, the monopoly capitalists strive to raise the prices of their commodities. By throttling their rivals, the dominant monopolists prevent the depreciated currency from cutting the value of their profits; not only that, but they use inflation to vastly increase their loot. The most powerful monopolies use their dominant position controlling the supply of commodities to the market to jack up prices at a sky-rocketing rate. Capitalism is in the stage of monopolistic capitalism; the rule of the monopolies, not of free competition, is the fact of economic life. The biggest banks and corporations brutally impose high monopoly prices on the rest of society,exploiting and plundering the working class andpeople and driving to the wall the small and medium-sized businesses and even some rival monopolies. Pricessoar on all the goods and services necessary to the people in their daily lives; the workers' pay checks become more and more worthless. For example, the huge increases in the prices of heating oil, natural gas and gasoline were imposed by the gouging oil monopolies with the aid of the government. Using their monopoly over the supply of energy, twice in the past four years the oil kings have created fake energy "shortages" and driven prices sky-high, forcing the whole of society to submit to their dictate and reaping windfall profits. The rapid rises in auto prices, food and medical care, etc, are likewise dictated by the vultures of monopoly capital.
A clear example of how the monopolies corner the market and jack up prices is the U.S.-Soviet wheat deal of 1973 and the speculation on commodities futures market in general. Control of grain supplies and the speculation on commodities futures such as wheat, soybeans, etc., on the Chicago commodities market results in fabulous profits for the biggest monopolies. In the fall of 1972 the Russian New Tsars, the U.S. government and the big U.S. grain monopolies transacted the notorious U.S.-Soviet wheat deal. As a result, wheat contracts on the commodities market soared from $1.40 a bushel in July 1972 to $6.50 a bushel in early 1974, while soybeans went from $4 to $12 a bushel in one year. From the summer of 1972 to the fall of 1973, the Commodities Reserve Bureau Price Index (the Dow Jones of the futures market) rose more than 130 per cent. One trader in the soybean pit reportedly made $13,000,000 in the 1971-3 soybean market. Harry Fortes, former vice-chairman of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, testified before a House of Representatives Sub-Committee:
"I am convinced there is a direct relationship between the futures trading and the unconscionable run-up in cash prices of food products that the American housewife buys for her table....We are all aware of the scarcity of food grains and the exacerbated futures and cash-price increases resulting from the Russian export deal. The run-up of July soybeans from $3.31 to $12.90 could not have occurred without the cooperation of a handful of commercial houses. It is my opinion that the last five or six dollars of the increase in July soybeans was the result of manipulative practices. It is significant that when the embargo was placed on exports the price of soybeans dropped to below seven dollars. This occurred despite the fact that there was no significant increase in the supply, because July soybeans were an 'old crop' already harvested....The only explanation for this phenomena is that the $12.90 price was artificially created by highly concentrated buying without regard for the actual value of soybeans..."
The U.S.-Soviet wheat deal illustrates how the monopolies ruthlessly drive up prices at the expense of the people. Not only did they jack up consumer prices, as described by Fortes, but the big grain monopolies carried out a colossal defrauding of the small producers, the smaller farmers. The grain monopolies received inside information through the government of the coming Soviet purchase and quietly bought up vast supplies of grain from the farmers at the low, pre-deal price. Once the crop was in the hands of the monopolies and the deal was announced, the price sky-rocketed. The next two years after the wheat deal saw some grain monopolies increase their profits by as much as 600 per cent over previous years.
Finance capital, not the workers, is the cause of soaring prices.
THE DEBTS CREATED BY FINANCE CAPITAL AND ITS STATE REQUIRE THE MASSES TO "PAY THE PIPER"
The enormous debts created by finance capital, both state debts and private stocks and bonds, require someone to pay the piper. They are claims on future production, a gigantic burden on the masses in the future as well as the present.
Stocks, for their part, are claims on the surplus-value which is expected to be exploited from the workers by the capitalists in future production. They are promises-to-pay some part of the profits to be sucked out of living labor.
At the same time, every dollar created by the government to finance its deficits becomes an addition to the national debt, which must be paid by the ever-increasing taxation extorted from the working masses. Today one-third of the workers' pay check is robbed by the government in taxes. Taxes are a major part, together with inflation and soaring prices, of the unbearable weight of the cost of living of the masses of the people in the U.S. today. Marx explains over-taxation as follows:
"As the national debt finds its support in the public revenue, which must cover the yearly payments for interest, etc., the modern system of taxation was the necessary complement of the system of national loans. The loans enabled the government to meet extraordinary expenses, without the tax-payers feeling it immediately, but they necessitate, as a consequence, increased taxes. On the other hand, the raising of taxation caused by the accumulation of debts contracted one after another, compels the government always to have recourse to new loans for new extraordinary expenses. Modern fiscality, whose pivot is formed by taxes on the most necessary means of subsistence (thereby increasing their price), thus contains within itself the germ of automatic progression. Over-taxation is not an incident, but rather a principle."
The real purpose of over-taxation, apart from filling the coffers of the rich, was pointed out by Marx in the same passage:
"In Holland, therefore, where this system was first 'inaugurated, the great patriot, DeWitt, has in his 'Maxims' extolled it as the best system for making the wage-laborer submissive, frugal, industrious, and overburdened with labor." (Capital, Vol. I, p.756)
Similarly, in the U.S. today, over-taxation has as its target the working class and aims at robbing it to the limit and smashing its revolutionary spirit.
MASSIVE BUDGET DEFICITS ARE NECESSITATED BY THE GOVERNMENT'S BLOODTHIRSTY PROGRAM OF REPRESSION AND PLUNDER OF THE WORLD'S PEOPLE
Much of inflation is aimed at covering the huge budget deficits of the monopoly capitalist state machine. These massive deficits are necessitated by the savage repression the U.S. imperialists employ against the revolutionary people of the world and by the violent rivalry among the imperialist wolves themselves for world domination. The capitalist state apparatus in the U.S. (the government with its armed forces, police, courts, prisons, talk-shop Congress and bloated bureaucracy) has been growing at a tremendous rate. The bulk of the federal budget goes to pay for military expenditures, transfer payments (welfare, etc.) and direct subsidies to the rich. The budget and its accompanying deficits expand with great speed. The table below (5) shows their expansion since World War II.
BUDGET OF THE U.S. GOVERNMENT
|
Outlay (Billions of $) | Deficit or Surplus (- or +) (Billions of $) |
1946 | 55,183 | - 5,856 |
1950 | 42,597 | - 3,112 |
1955 | 68,509 | - 3,041 |
1960 | 92,223 | +269 |
1965 | 118,430 | - 1,596 |
1970 | 196,588 | - 2,845 |
1971 | 211,425 | - 23,033 |
1972 | 232,021 | - 23,373 |
1973 | 247,134 | - 14,909 |
1974 | 271,067 | - 6,135 |
1975 | 326,092 | - 45,095 |
1976 | 365,643 | - 66,446 |
1977 | 401,902 | - 57,198 |
1978 | 462,234 | - 61,847* |
1979 | 500,174* | - 60,586* |
*Indicates that the figures are estimated.
The deficits for 1972-6, for example, were 4.2 times greater than those of the last five years of the 1960's. For next year the Carter administration proposes a budget which will carry a huge $60.6 billion deficit.
In pursuit of world domination and the highest possible profits, the U.S. monopoly bourgeoisie must continuously expand its military and police state apparatus. This has a three-fold aim: suppress the revolutionary struggles abroad which threaten its lucrative and expanding investments in the colonies, neo-colonies and other dependent countries; suppress the revolutionary struggle of the working class at home, which threatens its area of exploitation at its roots; and battle with its rivals, Soviet social-imperialism and the other imperialist powers, for world domination. Under pressure of the all-round crisis of the capitalist-revisionist world, this struggle among the imperialist wolves is heating up and leading towards a new world war to escape the crisis and re-divide the world among them. This is causing increased military spending in all the imperialist countries including the U.S. Two-thirds of all U.S. government purchases are military expenditures. U.S. military expenditures have risen at 5.3 times the rate of the Gross National Product from in the years from 1940 to 1970. The military expenditures for next year are predicted to rise by at least $10 billion over last year to finance beefing up the aggressive NATO bloc led by the U.S. The burden of this bloated military and police juggernaut is borne by the masses through inflation and taxes.
At the same time, since the 1960's transfer payments have become a major part of the federal. budget. Millions of workers, thrown out of work, are made destitute and are forced to rely for their existence on meager welfare payments. The capitalists portray these payments as "humanitarian" aid to the most impoverished masses. Actually, the government's motives are not the slightest bit humanitarian. These payments are really nothing but a concealed hand-out to the rich. The small sums of money given to the poor fly through their hands right into the hands of the supermarket monopolies, big landlords and other exploiters, resulting in big profits. The people are enmeshed in a mass of red tape, harassed and bullied by the government bureaucracy. Big deficits are required to cover this robbery of the masses as well. Adding insult to injury, the capitalists blame the welfare recipients for the tax robbery which the government carries out against the employed workers, whose tax payments finance this indirect subsidy of the rich.
Not only does the government budget "bless" the masses with "humanitarian" aid, but it provides billions in hand-outs to the construction capitalists to build monstrous buildings to house government operations at the federal, state and local level. These and other direct hand-outs to the rich also comprise a large part of the bloated federal budget, whose deficits are financed by inflation.
THE PROPAGANDA AND PLOTS OF THE MONOPOLY CAPITALISTS CAN NEVER HIDE THE REAL CULPRITS BEHIND INFLATION
Hence finance capital and its state, the creators of inflation and soaring prices, bring forth these evils to make the people pay for suppressing the world revolution, for their reactionary war preparations and for the great crisis of their exploitative system. As Comrade Lenin pointed out: "Finance capital, concentrated in a few hands and exercising a virtual monopoly., exacts enormous and ever-increasing profits from the floating of companies, issue of stock, state loans, etc., strengthens the domination of the financial oligarchy and levies tribute upon the whole of society for the benefit of monopolists."(Imperialism, p. 61)
To cover up its role, finance capital blames the workers for inflation and attacks the struggles for higher wages which they carry out in defense against the intensified exploitation resulting from higher prices. The capitalists' claim that higher wages cause prices to rise, resulting in a "wage-price spiral". Under this false banner, the capitalists suppress the workers in order to "fight inflation". It can easily be seen that this is a big lie. Prices often rise the most rapidly in industries which are notorious for paying the lowest wages, such as medical care (hospital workers) and food (farm workers). Wage increases in general have no direct connection to price increases; they can only cause the over-all rate of profit to fall.
When the workers raise their wages through struggle the capitalists arrogantly claim that this raise "exceeds the increase in labor productivity". In other words, the workers, whose labor is the source of all the new value created in industrial production, and not just of the increased rate of its creation, are accused of being paid for something they did not produce! And by Messrs. the Lazybones, the capitalists themselves, who do not do a lick of work and create nothing of a value whatsoever. What unmatched hypocrisy!
All the plots and propaganda of the capitalists and their state against the workers' struggles for higher wages are based on this "theory" of "wage-price spiral". When inflation began to gallop in the early 1970's, the Nixon administration imposed a wage freeze which in fact outlawed strikes'. Nixon also imposed the no-strike ENA agreement on the steelworkers. These attacks were "justified" by the theory of "wage-price spiral". But wage controls did not prevent prices from soaring upwards at an unprecedented rate. The labor bureaucrats told the workers that they were to blame for inflation and would have to "make sacrifices", allegedly to hold it down; under this hoax they collaborated with the government to impose the wage freeze.
Today, as inflation and prices again spiral upwards, the capitalists are preparing a new round of wage controls. Carter's "anti-inflation" program is based on blaming the workers for inflation. It calls for industry-by-industry "voluntary" controls to hold raises to less than 6.1 per cent annually. The capitalists hope to cram low-wage settlements down the workers' throats this year, when the contracts of only a few major sections of the organized workers expire, so as to set a precedent for 1979, when major contract struggles loom in trucking, auto, rubber, etc. These "voluntary" controls are admittedly only a preparatory device for full wage controls at a later date.
At the same time, the bourgeoisie is carrying on other diversionary propaganda to hide the cause of inflation. Recently a big "debate" was staged between the Carter administration and Arthur Bums, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, over who is the real opponent of inflation and champion of "economic recovery" and Burns was replaced by Miller. Bums is a supporter of the monetarist school of economic theory, generally associated with the Republicans, while the Carter administration is generally described as "Keynesian pragmatist" in its monetary and fiscal policies, in the camp of the Democrats. In this phony "debate" each side declared that the other's policies were leading to inflation and recession. But all this self-serving propaganda was intended to hide the fact that the government and finance capital, not just one political party or the other, are the actual creators of inflation and soaring prices. The falsity of this "debate", was shown by the fact that Miller, Burns' replacement, appointed by Carter, is generally described as having the same monetarist philosophy as Burns.
The Keynesian school of Economic theory has become notorious for advocating big federal budget deficits to finance every sort of hand-out to the rich. Keynesianism hopes to save the capitalist system from collapse, but it only leads to further trouble. Obviously the big budget deficits advocated by Keynesianism lead directly to inflation. Thus Keynesianism is an easy target for the knights of the monetarist school, who want to blame inflation entirely on the federal budget and the inflationary growth of the money supply to "monetize" it. But the monetarists never say a word about the massive speculation which finance capital carries out on its own. And in fact, the monetarists are only for a balanced federal budget in words, while in practice they run up the biggest deficits of all. Nixon and Ford, both Republicans, ran up deficits unheard of in previous administrations. The monetarists only call for balancing the budget in order to raise the hypocritical banner of "thrift" under which they cut the wages of the government workers and cut back on social services while continuing to militarize the economy and carry out war preparations. Thus both "schools" of bourgeois economic theory hide the creators of inflation.
The real agreement of these two schools is that they support big capital and oppose the workers. This was displayed openly during the recent Burns-Carter "debate". Burns advocated, and Carter agreed, to propose to Congress a big tax cut for the capitalists ("sweetened" by a tiny "cut" for the people aimed at buying their votes for Democrats in next fall's congressional elections). And at the same time that Bums was advocating sharply restricting the pay increases of the federal government employees as a further "anti-inflation" step, the Carter administration was blaming the price increases in the steel industry, where the workers have been languishing under the no-strike ENA, on the wage "raises" of the steelworkers.
Quibble over details, but get together to throw dust in the eyes of the workers and rob them of their wages -- such is the essence of the Bums- Carter, monetarist-Keynesian, "debate" over inflation. In order to "justify" inflation and prevent wages from rising to combat price increases, the capitalists can only blame the workers for inflation and plot and carry out attacks against them. The capitalists' "fight against inflation" is in reality a fight against the workers. For their part, the workers can only rise in struggle against the capitalists.
FIGHT INFLATION AND SOARING PRICES WITH REVOLUTIONARY MASS STRUGGLE
While inflation and soaring prices shift the burden of the economic crisis and war preparations onto the masses and enrich the coffers of Capital, they also bring about the opposite of what the capitalists desire. The cut in purchasing power of the people caused by higher prices and over-taxation, the greater and greater burden placed on the masses, sharpens all the contradictions of capitalism to an extreme, and gives rise to a revolutionary upsurge of the workers' movement and of all the oppressed and exploited people against the robbery of finance capital and the government. This revolutionary upsurge is continuing and deepening today, involving millions of workers and oppressed masses. The vigorous strike movement of the workers, with the coal miners in the forefront, has already broken through Carter's 6.1 per cent wage guidelines and has thrown his whole so-called "anti-inflation program into a shambles.
Inflation and soaring prices are an inevitable outcome of the capitalist order, which is in the stage of monopolistic, moribund, dying capitalism, staggering under its general crisis and the torrent of the world revolution. In its death-throes, capitalism is lashing out at the workers and oppressed peoples, who have no choice but to rise up and fight. Only revolutionary struggle by the masses of workers and other sections of the people in the U.S. can combat inflation and soaring prices, can make the finance capitalists and the government pay for the crisis they are loading on the people. Only the proletarian revolution and the establishment of the socialist order under the dictatorship of the proletariat can eliminate financial swindling altogether. Lenin told the workers of the world in 1921, speaking of the inflation induced in the U.S. then by World War I: "The capitalists can do nothing about the gap between prices and wages, and the workers cannot live on their previous wages. The old methods are useless against this calamity. Nothing can be achieved by isolated strikes, the parliamentary struggle or the vote, because 'private property is sacred', and the capitalists have accumulated such debts that the whole world is in bondage to a handful of men. Meanwhile the workers' living conditions are becoming more and more unbearable. There is no other way out but to abolish the exploiters' 'private property'" ("Address to the 2nd Congress of the Communist International", Collected Works, Vol. 31,
FIGHT INFLATION AND SOARING PRICES WITH REVOLUTIONARY MASS STRUGGLE!
FOOTNOTES
(1) Figuresfor the CPI are obtained from the Chart-book on Prices, Wages and Productivity, December 1977, U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Washington, D.C., pages 40 and 41. Figures for 1975 through to November, 1977 are obtained from the Chartbookon Prices, Wages and Productivity, Dec. 1977, page 12.
(2) Figures for the price indexes of the various commodities are obtained from The ConsumerPrice Index, Dec. 1977, U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics.
(3) Figures for U.S. Government Securities are obtained from Treasury Bulletin, May 1977, Treasury Department, Office of the Secretary, page 1. The figures for Industrial Production from 1971 through 1974 are obtained from 1975 BusinessStatistics, the Biennial Supplement to the Surveyof Current Business, U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis, page 18. Figures for 1975 and 1976 are obtained from the Survey of Current Business, January 1978, U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis, page S-4.
(4) Figures for Industrial Production were obtained from the same sources as in footnote 3. Figures for New Securities from 1946 through 1972 are obtained from 1975 Business Statistics, the Biennial Supplement to the Survey of Current Business, U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis, page 103. Figures for 1973 through 1976 were not available on the same basis of computation and time-span because as of January 1973, federal government publications altered the way they calculated the totals, excluding all non-corporate securities. This data had to be reconstructed by adding: state and local securities (available from 1975 Business Statistics, page 104, and Survey of Current Business, April 1977, page 520) Short-term state and municipal securities are eliminated, to make figures consistent with the 1946-72 series; "Other", available from Bankingand Monetary Statistics, 1941-1970, p. 815. Federal government and government agency securities are only available on the basis of fiscal year, so they have been re-computed, giving half of each fiscal year to the corresponding calendar year. They are obtained from Treasury Bulletin, May 1977, Treasury Dept., Office of the Secretary, p. 1.
(5) The figures for the Budget Outlay and Budget Deficit or Surplus are obtained from The Budgetof the United States Government, Fiscal Year1979, Executive Office of the President, Office of Management and Budget, p. 488.
End.
The Israeli Zionists are carrying out a major offensive against Lebanon to wipe out the Palestinian liberation movement based there and to occupy Lebanon. The U.S. imperialist-backed Zionist offensive on Lebanon nears the magnitude of the four aggressive wars waged by Israel and U.S. imperialism since 1948 to annex Arab land to the artificial state of Israel. The Palestinian and Lebanese people have met the Israeli attackers with fierce resistance and are causing the Israeli Zionists and U.S. imperialists great alarm. The vigorous fight of the Palestinian liberation movement led by the Palestine Liberation Organization, which is determined to liberate all Palestine, is inflicting serious damage on the Israeli forces. Throughout the world the revolutionary proletariat and people are condemning this latest most brutal attack by the Israeli Zionists and U.S. imperialists on the Palestinian and Lebanese people.
U.S. imperialism through the Carter administration is making a pretense of balancing the Israeli's "right to security" with Lebanese interests. Under this hoax it has pushed through the UN a resolution for legitimizing the military occupation of Lebanon and suppressing the Palestinian liberation movement. The UN resolution will send 4,000 UN "peacekeeping" forces into Lebanon to take over indefinitely for the Israeli forces the task of wiping out the Palestinian liberation fighters.
The U.S. imperialists furnish Israel, outpost of U.S. imperialism in the Middle East, with the most advanced weapons so Israel can continue its aggressive action and occupation of Arab land to serve U.S. imperialism. At the same time, the Carter administration displays its "human rights" mask, calling for "peace" negotiations and UN resolutions to restore "peace" to aid it in carrying out plans to protect Zionist advances and disarm the Arab people.
On March 15, 20,000 Israeli Zionist troops invaded Lebanon, supported by naval attacks and heavy bombing raids, to destroy Palestinian refugee camps, PLO bases and strongholds and Lebanese cities and towns. The Zionist forces have exterminated at least 700 Lebanese and Palestinian people, killed 144 Palestinian and Lebanese fighters and uprooted 60,000 Palestinian people and 100,000 Lebanese from their homes in the south in their savage assault and occupation of southern Lebanon, 14 miles into the interior.
But the Israeli Zionists have lifted a big rock just to drop it on their own feet. The Arab forces, numbering 10,000 Palestinian and 1,500 Lebanese guerrilla fighters as well as the masses of people, are aiming heavy blows at the Zionists and are in a position to do great damage to Israeli forces. Although the port city of Tyre, which supplies the Palestinian forces with its necessities, and the surrounding Palestinian refugee camps have been particularly hard hit by Zionist land, air and naval forces, guerrilla fighters have engaged the Israelis in fierce battle in and around Tyre without let up for days. In towns, the people themselves forced the Israeli soldiers to wage house-to-house combat. Rockets blasted on northern Israel on March 19. The Israeli Zionists have suffered big losses and are bound to suffer increasingly more. As history has shown, when the people are united around a just cause, the billions of dollars of the imperialists and the most advanced weapons can only postpone for a while but not prevent the complete defeat of imperialism and all reaction. The Palestinian people have repeatedly shown that there is no way the U.S.- backed Israeli Zionists can extinguish their growing resistance movement, that there is no obstacle that can prevent them from striking at the Zionist state, and that with their firm unity around their just cause their forces will certainty smash the Israeli state and break U.S. imperialism's grip on the Middle East. In many West Bank towns youth and students and townspeople are supporting the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and the Lebanese people by waging their own protests against Israeli Zionist occupation. Arab nations are condemning the Israeli action and lending material support to the heroic Palestinian and Lebanese people.
On March 11, several daring guerrilla operations were staged by the PLO from across the Lebanese border, reaching into the heart of Israel. These actions were aimed at showing that the Palestinian people will continue their struggle until they have regained their national rights. The U.S. imperialists and the Zionists used these Palestinian attacks on Israel as a pretext for waging the massive invasion into Lebanon. They raised a demagogic campaign to slander the Palestinian armed actions for the liberation of Palestine as "terrorist" attacks. It is the persistent armed struggle against the Israeli state, shaking Israel to its foundations, that the U.S. imperialists and Israeli Zionists are expending every effort to smother under the guise of safeguarding Israeli "security". Since the 1973 Israeli war of aggression there have been 1,548 armed attacks against the state of Israel by Palestinian liberation fighters operating across the Lebanese border. Since the Lebanese civil war, the PLO has built up a network inside Israel and on the Israeli-occupied West Bank and on the Gaza Strip, as well as in Lebanon. This growing network that is pounding Israel from inside and out will lead to Israel's total destruction.
The Carter administration's UN resolution to send UN troops into Lebanon is a further attack on the Lebanese and Palestinian people in the guise of "restoring peace". Andrew Young, U.S. Ambassador to the UN, explained the object of the resolution: "The senseless violence against unarmed civilians, whether in the name of liberation or security, must be brought to an end". While sounding ever so "peace-loving", "denouncing" Israeli aggression and denouncing the Palestinian liberation movement, Young hasn't yet called for a resolution for international troops to occupy Israel and stop its aggressive advance! His words are sheer demagogy to conceal the true object of the resolution -- to secure by the UN forces the fruits of the military campaign waged by Israel against the Palestinian liberation movement. The Carter administration and Begin have no fundamental differences on the invasion and occupation of Lebanon. While Carter and Begin may have a slightly different view on how long the Israeli forces can withstand the Palestinian resistance and how soon the UN troops should take over, they share the same objective of securing more of the Middle East for U.S. imperialist and Israeli Zionist benefit.
As the barbaric U.S. imperialist-Israeli Zionist onslaught into Lebanon continues, Carter, Begin and Sadat are continuing their conspiracy to disarm the Arab people by promoting the "peace" negotiations as the solution to the problems in the Middle East. While the Arab people are supposed to be peaceful and cease their liberation struggle, Israel, with the military might provided it by the U.S., is to continue its assault on the PLO, expand its occupation of Arab territory, and carry out its heinous program of genocide against the Arab people. Carter, Begin and Sadat join forces to attack the Palestinian liberation movement and to support Israeli occupation of Arab land, and make acceptance of these the basis for the "peace" negotiations. Sadat, echoing the U.S. imperialist chieftain and his Israeli running dog, has even gone so far as to denounce the March 11 PLO attack on Israel as a terrorist attack -- thus justifying the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. All three servants of U.S. imperialism are raising a clamor for the "peace" negotiations to continue on the basis of no concessions and further aggression by Israel and suppression of the Palestinian liberation movement. It is no wonder that the U.S. imperialists' "peace" negotiations are failing miserably. The traitorous Sadat has become totally isolated from the Arab people. The March 11 PLO armed actions on Israel and the fierce resistance of the Palestinian and Lebanese people to the massive attack on Lebanon show that the Palestinian people will never be fooled by this U.S. imperialist "peace" negotiations scheme for capitulation and that the PLO forces are dedicated to continuing the struggle until victory has been won. End.
The Senate recently ratified the first part of Carter's new unequal Panama Canal treaty. This treaty is an instrument to preserve and extend U.S. colonialism and imperialist domination and control over Panama. It guarantees continued U.S. military occupation and deepens the indebtedness and dependence of Panama on U.S. imperialism. The lengthy Senate debates being carried on for and against ratification of the treaty is nothing more than a squabble among the representatives of U.S. of U.S. imperialism over how best to subjugate the Panamanian people and retain U.S. imperialism's control over the Panama Canal.
The new unequal Panama Canal treaty has three major provisions:
1. Panama will be given "general territorial sovereignty" over the Canal Zone when the new treaty becomes effective. What this amounts to is that a certain amount of U.S. personnel will be replaced by lower-paid Panamanians and some U.S. flags will be replaced by Panamanian ones. The over 30, 000 U.S. personnel and dependents including some 10,000 occupation troops will remain in place. The U.S. will continue to operate and control the Canal while the Panamanian government will only receive about a third of the Canal's revenues. The treaty calls for the U.S. occupation of the Canal Zone and control of the Canal to end by the year 2, 000. But the U.S. and Panama are not precluded from signing other agreements regarding the preservation of U.S. military bases in Panama after Dec. 1999,'and a look at history of how the U.S. government has lived up to its treaty obligations from the genocidal wars against the Native Americans to the war of aggression in Indochina shows just how worthless this promise of withdrawal is.
2. Even after the year 2,000, the U.S. is granted the "right" to intervene in Panama and re-occupy the Canal at will. U.S. imperialist chieftain, Carter, points out that the U.S. government "would not hesitate to deploy whatever armed forces are necessary to defend the Canal". As Cyrus Vance puts it, the treaties give the U.S. the right "to take any action we (the U.S. imperialists -- ed.) decide is necessary including the use of troops" to defend the "neutrality" of the Canal.The experience of the world's people, including the Panamanian. Chilean. Mexican, Dominican, Vietnamese, Korean. Congolese and other peoples shows that when the U.S. talks of "protecting and defending" the "neutrality or peace" of another country it is trying to justify U.S. military aggression against it in pursuit of its imperialist aims.
3. The treaty calls for the further penetration of U.S. finance capital into the Panamanian economy. Under the guise of several hundred million dollarsof "aids", the Panamanian economy will be further engulfed in U.S. imperialist dependence.
This treaty will not leave the Panamanian people one step closer to actual sovereignty over their own territory. Under Carter's new Canal treaty, the Panamanian people will be subject to a more refined and deceptive, but an even more ferocious political, economic and military enslavement.
Carter has congratulated the Senate on its ratification of the first part of the treaty for taking a "new and promising step" towards a better relationship with all of Latin America. Leading imperialist politicians such as Gerald Ford, Henry Kissinger and all the proponents of the treaty in the Senate who have lined up behind Carter are hailing the new unequal treaty as a testimony to the good intentions and benevolence of the U.S. government. They promote the treaty in the name of "human rights", "Panamanian sovereignty", "neutrality" and as a treaty which "properly responds to Panamanian aspirations". These supporters of the treaty know that Carter's new treaty will not in the slightest fulfill the Panamanian people's aspirations. On the contrary, they are eager to maintain and extend U.S. imperialism's grip on Panama, but these representatives of U.S. imperialism see the need to give this slavery a new face in hopes of pacifying the anti-U.S. imperialist struggles of the Panamanian people. Carter's treaty is a new treaty of enslavement, designed to change the appearance but not the essence of U.S. control of the Panama Canal, to replace some U.S. flags with Panamanian ones while holding onto the same colonial privileges. It is an unequal treaty designed to get rid of some of the most glaring aspects of U.S. colonialist rule in an attempt to subdue the resistance struggles of the Panamanian people while keeping U.S. imperialist domination intact. Far from "righting the wrongs of the past" as its supporters pretend. Carter's new treaty is nothing but another aggressive act of U.S. imperialism.
On the other hand, rabid jingoist politicians of the likes of Ronald Reagan, Robert Dole, Strom Thurmond and co. arc denouncing the treaty for "giving away" the Panama Canal which they claim to be "sovereign U.S. territory". According to their venomouslies, the U.S. imperialist slave-owners "bought and paid for" the Panama Canal, the land and people of Panama. These jingoist politicians attempt to portray the Panamanian people as an inferior people, incapable of operating the Canal, who have no right to sovereignty over their own territory. They are advocating colonialism pure and simple.
Thus, this "great debate" between the supporters and denouncers of Carter's treaty is nothing but a tiff between the proponents of old forms of exploitation and those who hope to pacify the mounting resistance movement of the Panamanian people and other Latin American people by giving U, S. imperialism and colonialism in Panama a face-lift. The outcome of this imperialist debate in the Senate, attesting to the Senate's rabid jingoism as representatives of the monopoly capitalist class, was the ratification of the first part of this treaty of enslavement with several amendments which assure that the U.S.' "right" to maintain military bases in Panama after 1999 is not impaired by the treaty and that the U.S. can, without even going through the motions of consulting Panama, send troops to suppress any resistance movement of the Panamanian people.
No people have ever won liberation from U.S. imperialist domination without a struggle, simply across a negotiating table. Nowhere is this truth more evident than in the Caribbean region, in Mexico, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and in Panama, where U.S. troops have countless times drowned the peoples' aspirations for freedom in blood. U.S. imperialism will never get out of Panama without being defeated in the battlefield.
Even the most rabid imperialist politicians recognize that the U.S. must resort to ever more deceptive tactics in order to hold onto its positions. The William Buckleys and the Pentagon generals admit to their fear that the Panamanian people will drive the U.S. occupiers out unless the U.S. colonial yoke is given a new, more deceptive face, and thus, have become big boosters of Carter's new treaty. Gerald Ford himself admits that to give up the illusion of de-colonization "would lead without question to guerrilla war" and "would turn all of South and Latin America against the United States".
Therefore, to suppress the Panamanian struggle for true liberation, Carter is resorting to the method of imperialist pacifism: a barbaric policy of aggression and intervention in the name of "fairness" and "peace"; neo-colonial slavery under the signboard of "cooperation", "neutrality" and "sovereignty". It is not a matter of choice for the U.S. imperialists to resort to this method, nor is it a result of Carter's "religious beliefs". Imperialist pacifism, hypocritical preachings about "human rights", a new deceptive mask, is part of the frantic maneuverings of the U.S. imperialists to overcome their great crisis and divert the revolutionary storms of the proletariat and oppressed people.
So the Carter administration is pursuing, behind the fraud of "human rights", an extremely savage, aggressive, imperialist policy. Recently, a State Department official arrogantly proclaimed that the So the Carter administration is pursuing, behind the fraud of "human rights", an extremely savage, aggressive, imperialist policy. Recently, a State Department official arrogantly proclaimed that the purpose of "retreat", as certain of their apologists claim, but to defend their positions and to further expand their domination over the people. Comrade Enver Hoxha pointed out in his Report to the 7th Congress of the Party of Labor of Albania:
"World capitalism, which is proceeding remorselessly towards crises and decline, just as Marx. Engels, Lenin and Stalin predicted with such genius, has now reached the stage of imperialism in decay. In order to survive, it h a s devised new forms f o r the exploitation of the masses, not just on a national scale, but also on a world scale, has contrived its last and most sophisticated means of plunder, neo-colonialism, has created financial links and economic and military alliances through which it intends to hold in complete or partial dependence many states belonging to what is called the 'second world', the 'third world', the 'non-aligned world', or the 'developing countries'."
However, the dual tactics of the reactionaries, their troops and weaponry and their "soft" methods of deception, will never be able to suppress the revolt of the oppressed peoples. In January, 1964, the Panamanian people waged a heroic and bloody fight against the U.S. occupiers. The U.S. imperialists savagely suppressed the anti-U.S. struggle, killing 21 patriotic students. It was at that time that the U.S. started the farce of re-negotiating the Canal treaty in an attempt to blunt the fighting will of the people. But the Panamanian people have kept up the fight. In January, in commemoration of the 1964 anti-U.S. struggle, meetings and demonstrations of thousands of people in Panama City and elsewhere were held, demanding full Panamanian sovereignty over the Canal Zone and the end of U.S. intervention. Signs were carried proclaiming that "The Struggle Is Not Finished, It Is Going On" and that "The Canal Zone Belongs to Panama". The imperialist press is expressing anxiety that Carter's new7 unequal treaty, will be rejected and condemned by the Panamanian people. The heroic Panamanian people will never tolerate U.S. imperialist slavery!
As for their part, the American working class and oppressed people have only the greatest contempt for the imperialist politicians and their jingoist propaganda campaign for the continued domination of Panama. The workers are well aware that the colonial privileges of U.S. imperialism are only one more shackle chaining them to capitalist slavery and oppression. The Panamanian people and the American people are exploited by the same monopoly capitalist corporations and oppressed by the same U.S. imperialist government and thus have common enemies.
U.S. IMPERIALISM, GET OUT OF PANAMA!
DOWN WITH CARTER'S NEW UNEQUAL TREATY! DOWN WITH THE OLD 1903 UNEQUAL TREATY!
THE PANAMANIAN PEOPLE WILL WIN!
DEATH TO U.S. IMPERIALISM! End.
The Klonskyite OL soeial-chauvinists have degenerated into a "left" cheering section for the Pentagon. They do not view the main division in the world as between the forces of socialism and freedom on the one hand and the forces of imperialism and slavery led by the two superpowers on the other. Instead, they regard the main division in the world as between U.S. imperialism and Soviet soeial-imperialism. They call this "realism". This is the new wisdom with which the theory of "three worlds" has replaced Marxism-Leninism. For them the height of "realism" is Klonsky's dictum that "As long as the two superpowers contend, one mast either defeat the other or be defeated by the other. " (Political Report, "Documents from the Founding Congress of the CP(M-L)", p. 44) Naturally, the social-chauvinists prefer that their own bourgeoisie, the U.S. imperialists, win, and they are very anxious to ensure that U.S. imperialism is equipped with all the most up- to-date barbaric instruments of mass slaughter. The Klonskyites have become frenzied creators of war hysteria and invasion psychosis, who try to turn the American proletariat into slaves cringing under the U.S. imperialist nuclear umbrella. They do not view the main division in the world as between the forces of socialism and freedom on the one hand and the forces of imperialism and slavery led by the two superpowers on the other. Instead, they regard the main division in the world as between U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism. They call this "realism". This is the new wisdom with which the theory of "three worlds" has replaced Marxism-Leninism. For them the height of "realism" is Klonsky's dictum that "As long as the two superpowers contend, one mast either defeat the other or be defeated by the other. " (Political Report, "Documents from the Founding Congress of the CP(M-L)", p. 44) Naturally, the social-chauvinists prefer that their own bourgeoisie, the U.S. imperialists, win, and they are very anxious to ensure that U.S. imperialism is equipped with all the most up- to-date barbaric instruments of mass slaughter. The Klonskyites have become frenzied creators of war hysteria and invasion psychosis, who try to turn the American proletariat into slaves cringing under the U.S. imperialist nuclear umbrella.
Already some time ago, in July 1977, The Call, organ of the OL "socialist" war-mongers, printed an editorial in favor of building more B-l bombers. Continuing along this blood-stained path, in its issue of March 27, 1978, The Call now comes out for the Trident submarine. The Call does this under the pretext of reviewing the book Submarine by Drew Middleton, military correspondent for The New YorkTimes . According to The Call, this book is "written from the standpoint of U.S. imperialism. " Naturally, that makes the book very "realistic". Sure enough, The Call chirps that "In terms of the imperialist military writers, Middleton is among the most realistic when it comes to examining the relative strength of the two superpowers, and his projections about the future war are fairly accurate." Why is The Call so happy with Middleton? Because he "is trying to warn his fellow imperialists that unless they move ahead with the development of the Trident... they are doomed to be defeated by the Soviet attack. " Middleton's warning to "his fellow imperialists" has not fallen on deaf ears. The Call illustrates its article with pictures of a Soviet nuclear submarine and of the U.S. Poseidon missile and concludes "Submarine is worth reading." End
The following is a leaflet issued by the New York Branch of the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists.
ESSEX STUDENTS CONVICTED FOR STANDING UP TO STATE-ORGANIZED FASCIST ATTACK!
From January 30 to February 10, 1978, three antifascist students from Essex County College continued to follow the path of active resistance to fascism in the bourgeois court. Through their relentless struggle, Rob Fallon, Lucho Garcia and Rodrigo Juarez totally exposed the courts and the ECC administration as all part of the same government of the rich to suppress and exploit the entire American working class and people. The trial of the three antifascists marked the latest form of attack, which began with a police raid organized by the ECC administration on October 28, 1976, against the "Don't Vote" meeting organized by the Newark Student Movement.
Throughout the course of the preparations by the state and the Essex County College Administration for this latest form of attack, various things were done to suppress the anti-fascist students. First, the ECC administration suspended the students and banned them from the campus to (1) keep the rest of the students from finding out about the October 28th attack and (2) to keep the. anti-fascist students from speaking to students who may have witnessed the events of October 28th, thus greatly hindering the three students in preparing a defense. This activity was sanctioned by the court Which upheld that the students had no right to seek out witnesses and that banning the students from campus was proper fascist behavior by the administration.
The court also tried again and again to saddle the students with a so-called "public defender" who would have the anti-fascist students "cop a plea" for a "lesser offense" using the threat of a long prison term. By this maneuver the court sought to (1) justify the police attack by having the students agree that they were guilty of a crime they didn't commit and (2) to cover up, the crimes of the ECC administration and the rest of of the fascist government. The court desperately tried to prevent the students from exposing their 'partners in crime' the ECC administration and the police.
The three students overcame these various bribes and threats and took the fascist bourgeois state head ' on. Once the trial began, the judge and the prosecutor sought in every way to keep the students from exposing the fascist nature of the ECC administration and the political nature of the attack of October 28th and the trial itself. On several occasions, the judge interrupted the proceedings in order to make lengthy arguments based on the technicalities of the bourgeois law as to why the students had no right to smash the lies of the administration and police, and show the anti-communist political nature of the state's attack on the students. When the students refuted these arguments, the judge then resorted to repeatedly telling the jury that politics was not the issue and that they should disregard the facts being revealed by the students. These antics totally revealed the fraud of "neutrality" of the judge, showing that the court was not interested in finding out the facts, but in convicting the students. Even the opening statements were censored by the judge when he saw that the students were exposing the whole fascist charade of the government. And when ex-college president, Jim Jones, was caught in an obvious lie under cross- examination, the judge simply did away with any illusions of a "fair trial", and ordered the jury removed so as to save Jones from further self-exposure.
Despite these methods of suppression the three anti-fascists succeeded in proving the following:
1. that the attack on the "Don't Vote" meeting of the NSM was nothing but an effort to prevent the communist politics of the COUSML from being put forth to the ECC student body, and that the trial was thus a political trial,
2. that the attack on October 28th was organized and led by the ECC administration and that it was the culmination of a series of attacks waged by the ECC administration to suppress the communists on campus,
3. the attack on October 28th was a full-scale police raid and the police were fully conscious of their mission to smash the meeting,
4. that the three anti-fascist students were perfectly justified to vigorously defend themselves against this attack.
Under the cross-examination by the three students, the administration and police were forced to reveal the anti-communist political nature of the attack. Jim Jones admitted that he himself tore down the NSM's banner in the second floor lounge on the day of the meeting, not because any rule was being broken, but because of the banner's 'partisan politics', which Jones said was not allowed at ECC. Two Newark police thugs who participated in the raid testified that upon their arrival at ECC, they were instructed by Herman Johnson, the Director of Campus Security, that a 'radical organization' was holding a meeting, and that Johnson was grabbed by the neck by these 'radicals', an outright lie by Johnson to agitate the fascist police.
Further self-exposure came from the testimony pried from Johnson and acting college president, John D'Esposito. Johnson blurted out that on October 28th, he held meetings with D'Esposito, Edison O. Jackson, and SGA hack Donald Tremain, where they discussed how to suppress the NSM's meeting. Johnson testified that it was Edison O. Jackson who instructed him during the course of the attack and that he was even talking to Washington on the phone when the Newark Police arrived. D'Esposito, for his part, wae forced to reveal the entire history of political suppression at ECC, from the constant harassment of Rodrigo Juarez by D'Esposito and Jones about posters, banners and pictures anywhere he saw them, regardless of whose they were, simply because they were, according to D'Esposito, of a 'socialist nature' and of a 'socialist type', and continuing through to Rodrigo Juarez being fired as a staff member for his communist views.
Mr. Jackson Brown, Director of Student Activities, despite numerous convenient 'memory lapses', revealed that he suppressed the right of the communists to express their views on the basis of "an unwritten policy of the. college". Herman Gunderson chirped that Jackson Brown often "just made up rules as he went along", a policy which Gunderson fully approved.
The nature of the police raid was also concretely established by the testimony of the administration and police themselves, as well as by defense witnesses. It was shown that the ECC police concocted a series of lies in a vain attempt to have the students removed from the meeting room such as; the students were "Illegally in the room", that another class was going to be held in the room, that a student had assaulted administrator Gary Smart, and even that the students might be vagrants. Police reports showed that while Gunderson was huddling with the top administrators, he had ordered his police 'not to let any of the students out of the room', so that they could muster their forces for an attack. Contrary to the lies of the police, the police's own testimony proved that a bare minimum of 10 police participated in the raid, and that actually the entire East District of the Newark police arrived at the college, surrounding it from all sides. Even the traffic police in the area entered the megastructure to participate in the raid, according to police testimony. The police revealed that when they entered the room they saw one of the students reading 'propaganda', showing that they knew very well that they were participating solely to suppress the communists.
All the facts clearly show who the real criminals are and that the students were justified in defending themselves. Why then has the state convicted the anti-fascists, threatening them with long jail sentences? The reason is that the state is terrified at the sight of the people taking the path of active resistance to its fascist attacks. The rich, the big capitalists, are deep in an all-round crisis. They arc attempting to make the people pay for this crisis. The working- class and other oppressed masses are resisting the attacks of the rich and their state. The path of active resistance shows the masses the way to fight the attacks of the rich and their state. The stand of the students shows that no amount of state-organized fascist attacks can stop the rising revolutionary tide of the working class and people. End.
The following is reprinted from the February 26, 1978 issue of Albanian Telegraphic Agency.
The Marxist-Leninist parties are developing, strengthening and scoring successes in the struggle for the cause of revolution and socialism, in the struggle against bourgeoisie, reaction and modern revisionism. Today, they are worthy heirs and followers of the best militant and revolutionary traditions of the proletariat of every country. It is precisely the intensification of the activity of these parties, the revolutionary organization of the proletariat and its vanguard which intimidates the capitalists, the revisionists and fascist reactionary cliques. Therefore, these counter-revolutionary and reactionary forces savagely attack the Marxist-Leninist communists, the patriots and genuine revolutionaries. Many outstanding fighters of the Marxist-Leninist movement have laid down their lives in the fierce struggle for the cause of the revolution and socialism. They have barbarously been murdered by the fascist criminals who rule in many countries, many others are still languishing in the dark prisons of reaction. Today, every Marxist-Leninist party has its heroes, who are honored and respected by the world proletariat, and who serve as a symbol of the communist resistance and heroism, as a clarion call in the struggle against the rotten bourgeois order. Such are the militants and the leaders of the Communist Party of Brazil, Comrades Pedro Pomar, Angelo Arroyo, Lincoln Oest, Carlos Daniel, Louis Guilhardini, Joao Batista Drumond; the leaders of the CP of Columbia (M-L), Pedro Leon Arboleda and Pedro Vasquez Rendon; the militant of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Chile Cilermo Arrevalos and many others, who laid down their lives in struggle against the local military dictatorships and reaction, being loyal to the end to the lofty Marxist-Leninist ideals. In Europe too, many fighters of the Marxist-Leninist movement have laid down their lives clashing with fascism arid, monopoly bourgeoisie, with the social-democrats and revisionism. Such are the militants of the CP of Spain (M-L), Jose Humberto Baena, Ramon Garcia Sanz and Jose Sanchez Bravo, who heroically fell being killed by the bullets of the forces of Franco dictatorship; the members of the Portuguese Communist Party (Reconstructed), Joaquim Leal, Eldomar Gorreio and Louis Augusto Caracol; the militant of the Communist Party of Germany (M-L), Gunter Ruthier, etc.
The Marxist-Leninist parties are proud of such militants and consider their deed as a precious example for the revolutionary education of the masses. The working class and the broad working masses see in the Marxist-Leninist martyrs, in their unbreakable determination and lofty communist consciousness the vitality and force of the Marxist- Leninist parties, and the correctness of their line. Therefore they are ever more courageously embracing the road of the revolution propagated by these parties and are constantly increasing the ranks of Marxist-Leninist forces. "With the murder of six comrades", the newspaper A Classe Operaria wrote in an article commemorating the deed of the six heroes of the party, "the dictatorship caused great damage to the revolutionary movement, it detached from its ranks bold and experienced fighters. But at the same timeit deepened the gap separating it from the people, and as a result of its barbarism, it paved the road to new fighters, who, inspired by the heroic stand of their communist leaders, decided to join the vanguard organization of the proletariat".
The Marxist-Leninists are not afraid of the struggle and sacrifices, on the contrary in struggle and revolution they are becoming stronger and more invincible. No kind of fascist violence, no terror and repression can break the force of Marxist-Leninist parties, can cut off their ties with the working class, the deep roots they have in their people. The Marxist-Leninist parties, their members and leading cadres, have been and will always be on the forefront of the struggle and efforts for the liberation of the peoples and the triumph of the ideals of communism, without sparing even their lives. And when a militant of these parties falls heroically while fighting to defend the people who gave birth to him, many other sons and daughters of his people, rise and hold aloft the banner of struggle against the monopoly bourgeoisie and reaction, against imperialism and social-imperialism, against modern revisionism for the triumph of Marxism-Leninism. The heroism and selflessness of the Marxist-Leninist martyrs raises higher the cause for which they fought and worked, turning them into radiant beacons of the struggle of the working masses for national and social liberation. As Comrade Enver Iloxha pointed out at the 7th Congress of the PLA, "Their unblemished image1and revolutionary life will live on in the hearts of all true patriots and communists as a lofty example, inspiration, a call to arms in the struggle against the bloodthirsty bourgeoisie and reaction".
Illuminated by the triumphant lessons of Marxism- Leninism, the Marxist-Leninist parties have been engaged today in a fierce revolutionary class struggle raising ever higher the banner of the comrades who have fallen heroically and determined to carry to victory the great cause for which they did not spare even their lives -- the revolution. End.
The strike by American farmers has entered its fourth month. This struggle is aimed at the rich and their government, who are the cause of all the small farmers' woes. It is an effort by the farmers to stem the losses they have suffered at the hands of the monopoly capitalist vultures and to save themselves from extinction. They are being driven one step closer to the auction block by the big food-producing barons, the grain speculators and food-wholesaling capitalists who get fat from the measly prices they pay the farmers for their crops and the high prices they charge the working class for food in the supermarket; by the banks who have dug their teeth deep into the farmers' flesh and have extorted $100 billion from them (total farm debt at present, an equivalent of $9,300 per farmer!); by the greedy tractor monopolists and fertilizer and seed conglomerates who reap huge profits from the farmers and have raised farm costs 1 percent in January alone; and by the federal government whose programs, such as the 1977 Agricultural Act, are designed to drive the small farmer under.
Capitalism in the U.S. is in its final stage, the stage of imperialism. It is a decaying, moribund system. Today it is beset with a deep economic crisis that Has extended and deepened into every sector of the economy, including agriculture. The monopoly capitalists are attempting to get out of their crisis by shifting its burden onto the working class and small farmers. They want to ensure maximum profits for themselves, to stuff their vaults with the dollars stolen from the sweat and toil of the workers and small farmers. But the farmers; like their comrades in the working class, have other ideas. They have organized to oppose the rich money-bags and their political lackeys, to stand up to the attacks launched against them and fight back tooth and nail.
It is this fight for a decent living that brought the farmers to start their strike on December 14 of last year. Since that time many victories have been won nationwide and many more farmers have joined the struggle. Farmers have caused stock-yards, packing plants and warehouses to close down for a time. They have stopped the loading of grain barges in the state of Washington with the aid of the longshoremen. In South Carolina, through the repeated efforts of the farmers to stop food from reaching the market, the Farmers Market nearly ran out of vegetables. They have forced a capitalist newspaper to apologize for its slanders against striking farmers. They have meted out just punishment a number of times to the government's police forces, when they were in the way of the farmers' protests. And they have held rallies throughout the country and in Washington, D. C., denouncing the blood-sucking nature of the capitalists and the reactionary policies of the federal government toward the farmer.
The bourgeoisie claims that the farmers' strike would never get off the ground and would find no support among the working class. But the struggle is continuing and is making new allies. In March alone, two events show this to be the case. A joint demonstration of solidarity by the striking coal miners and striking farmers was held. Ten thousand miners and farmers, with farmers bringing food from Washington, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Oregon, Illinois, Michigan, Kentucky, Indiana, Missouri and Texas, held a rally in Central City, Ky. Farmers brought many truckloads of food to give to the striking miners. The significance of the rally was not just that the farmers brought food to the miners, but it was an expression of unity in action by the farmers and the miners in their common interests. The struggles of the miners and the farmers are both aimed at the capitalists and their government, who are their common enemies, and therefore their struggles deserve the support of one another. It is this growing trend of unity between the working class and its allies, the small farmers, and their persistent struggle in the face of the enemy's attacks that will ensure their success now and in the future.
The other event launched by the farmers was another large-scale demonstration in Washington, D.C. Thousands of farmers came into the capital to demand that the Carter administration cease its attacks on the farmers. According to one Senate aide, the previous farmer demonstration in Washington "scared the hell out of the Senate". The police, who were literally knocked to the way-side last time, thought they were prepared this time to protect the capitalist politicians from the farmers' wrath. But the farmers had other plans. Confident in their just cause and firm in their belief that, the government must be taught a lesson on the plight of the farmers, tv/o thousand chanting farmers marched from Capitol Hill to the Agriculture Department's main office. At that point fifty of the farmers forced their way through the building. Attempts by Agriculture officials and security officers to stop the tide of the farmers' protest proved futile. In fact the only thing they got for their efforts were minor injuries. One farmer was taken into custody, but the militant farmers forced the government to release him because, according to the deputy chief of the Federal Protective Service, "we made a deal to keep them (the farmers -- Ed.) from tearing the building down".
Once inside, the farmers demanded an immediate meeting with President Carter or Secretary Bergland. When that request was refused, they decided to occupy the Agricultural Department office for the night. The next day Bergland met with the farmers in what the bourgeois press described as an effort for the two sides to establish "common" grounds. What the meeting really did was re-establish that there are no common grounds between the chief spokesmen for the rich and the farmers. The spokesmen for the bourgeoisie made all sorts of claims of "understanding" and a "desire to help the farmer" to hide their real intentions. But this meeting, like all the rest the farmers attended, showed that when the farmers press for their demands to be met, the politicians come up empty-handed.
The present farmers' movement took shape on the basis of opposition to the Carter administration's 1977 farm bill. Farmers had nothing but disdain for the Nixon-Ford-Butz administration. It was under its rule that the farmers lost millions of dollars from the Soviet Wheat Deal swindle and through other policies. All through the presidential election campaign, Carter presented himself as the friend of the small farmer, a "farmer" himself who "understood" the problems farmers face. He even pledged: "We will make sure that our support prices are at least equal to the cost of production". But when he presented his 1977 farm bill, he sang a different tune. He claimed that "high" support prices were "inflationary", would stand in the way of a "balanced budget", would cause American farm products to become "non-competitive in international markets" and would drive the cost of food sky-high.
The Carter administration used all the demagogical tricks of the bourgeoisie. First the food-processors, wholesalers, etc., drive down the prices paid to farmers; then the tractor monopolists, seed conglomerates, etc., raise their prices to the maximum; also the banks raise their interest rates and get a stranglehold on the small farmer. This drives the small farmer into dire poverty, to the point of extinction. Then when the farmer resists these attacks and justly demands a decent living, the rich blame all the problems of high prices, of inflation, of balance of payments deficits on the small farmer. The money-bags heap abuse on him, hoping to split the Working class from him and blame the small farmer for all the problems that monopoly capitalism causes in agriculture.
The 1977 farm bill is designed to continue low prices for agricultural products and create still more misery for the small farmer. Its main features are "price-supports" and a government loan program on crops, both tied to a set-aside program for crop-land, and also a grain reserve program. The price-supports are supposed to "ensure" at profit. Today, for example, it costs the farmer anywhere from $3.00 to $4.00 to produce a bushel of wheat.
The loan program is also set up to allegedly "protect" the farmer from losses. Farmers who are part of this program agree to set aside their grain reserves and in return receive government loans on the value of the grain, plus, in most instances, storage costs and interest. In return they have to contract not to sell the grain until a set price is reached on the market or a fixed period of time elapses. If they do not sell the grain but exchange it for the government loans, the farmers receive $20-25 a bushel for wheat, again assuring huge losses. Because the $2.25 a bushel for wheat is such a low figure and guarantees a loss, small farmers are forced to sell their crops on the market in violation of the contract terms and are forced to repay interest and storage costs, bringing an additional hardship to them.
That is not all! To qualify for price-supports or the loan program the small farmer must "voluntarily" participate in a crop set-aside program. Presently this means that small farmers must set aside 20% of their wheat crop-land and 10% of their coarse grain crop-land in order to qualify for the program, thus depriving him of the possibility of making any money by cultivating this land.
The other main feature of the farm bill is a grain reserve program. This means the government will store surplus grain that the farmers grow, allegedly to protect consumers from high prices caused by shortages due to natural disasters, etc. But, in fact, such a surplus can easily be used by the government and grain monopolies to flood the market to further depress agricultural prices.
The 1977 farm bill serves the big bourgeoisie, not the farmers. For the food-processors, food-wholesalers and grain dealers, etc., it makes sure the agricultural goods they purchase from the small farmer remain at a low price. At a meeting with President Carter, a spokesman for the large agricultural monopolists clarified the essence of the least the cost of production for farmers. In the 1977 bill, price-supports for wheat are $2. 90 a bushel which is 75ยข a bushel more than the market price, but still falls far short of covering the cost of production, not to mention allowing the farmer any 1977 farm bill: "I came away satisfied that the President understands the problem and that he supports a free enterprise approach to solving it." The problem discussed was farm prices, the solution agreed to is clear: make the small farmer pay!
Because of the intense pressure put on the Congress and President, all sorts of new programs, new "emergency" farm bills are coming out of Congressional committees. These bills are, at best, designed to put the small farmer deeper into debt, that is, "help" him refinance his loans. At worst it is just cheap trickery, to put some of the capitalist politicians in the limelight as "supporters of the small farmers". These Senators and House members readily agree that their bills have no chance of passage whatsoever. In fact with the spate of bills "aiding" the farmer piling up, Senator Clark of Iowa was forced to admit that these bills do not aid the small farmer and are "a cruel hoax to farmers". Under the dictatorship of the monopoly bourgeoisie, Congress is just a talk shop to fool the masses. The real power lies in the immense military-bureaucratic state machine headed by Carter. This state is a state which serves the bourgeoisie by crushing the working masses, by assisting the big monopolies to suck the laboring peoples' blood. The 1977 farm bill and the experience of the farmers in their strike, with its vigorous struggle not only against the monopolies but also against the government, attest to this fact.
But while the Carter administration and Congress are cooking up more schemes to deflate the movement of the farmers, the farmers are taking matters into their own hands. They have pledged to cut the spring crop back 50 per cent. This action, along with the blockades of stockyards, packing plants and warehouses and the farmers' militant rallies has the rich and their government worried. By persisting in their struggle and relying on their own efforts the farmers will surely win victory. End.
At their mid-winter conclave in Florida, George Meany and the other trade union big-wigs of the AFL-CIO Executive Council launched a new campaign to "limit foreign imports", calling on the Carter administration to "protect American jobs". In fact, this big chauvinist campaign against "foreign imports' has nothing to do with protecting jobs; it has everything to do with opposing the workers' struggles for jobs and job security and against mass lay-offs and firings. It is just a continuation and escalation of the same old, rotten chauvinist politics of the labor aristocrats meant to chain the American workers to the war chariot of U.S. imperialism. The real significance of George Meany's new campaign against "foreign imports" amounts to this: in order to oppose becoming wretched slaves in U.S. imperialism's economic warfare against their foreign capitalist rivals and the people of the world, and cannon fodder in its military warfare, the U.S. proletariat must wage resolute struggle against the national chauvinist politics of the labor aristocracy.
With this big chauvinist campaign against foreign imports, the labor aristocrats are mystifying that it is the monopoly capitalist system in the U.S. and the current crisis of world capitalism which are the cause of mass lay-offs and firings. In the present crisis of world capitalism, commodities have been tremendously over-produced and cannot find a ready-made market. To preserve and increase their profits in this situation, the monopoly capitalists curtail production and strive to seize markets away from their rivals, both leading to mass lay-offs and firings. Marx and Engels explained in the Communist Manifesto: "And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand, by the enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones." On the one hand, since commodities have been overproduced and the employment of additional labor does not tend to increase profits, the monopoly capitalists curtail production and massive numbers of workers are laid off and fired. On the other hand, the monopoly capitalists escalate the struggle against their rivals for markets by cheapening of commodities (so as to under-sell their competitors); that is, by introducing new technology and making production more rational and efficient so as to make labor more productive, and therefore by laying off and firing even more workers while intensifying the exploitation of those who remain employed (through speed-up, forced over-time, wage cuts, etc.). This cheapening of the costs of production includes shutting down entire plants which are relatively obsolete (as in steel), and moving plants to areas where production will be cheaper because of tax breaks, lower labor costs, etc. (as with runaway shops such as Erie Scientific). But whatever the method, the result is the same: mass lay-offs and firings, and intensified exploitation and extreme job insecurity for the workers who remain employed. In short, it is by making the workers pay for the crisis that the monopoly capitalists protect and increase their profits and escalate the competition for markets with their rivals. Limiting foreign imports, in fact, can only assist the monopoly capitalists in increasing their profits by allowing them to raise the price of their commodities in the monopolized home market (because high tariffs and duties keep imports out), while simultaneously cheapening the cost of producing those same commodities; the result: the attainment of highest monopoly profit for the U.S. capitalists; and continued layoffs and mass firings of workers combined with an even higher cost of living. The labor aristocrats, by demagogically seizing upon one superficial aspect of the present crisis -- that foreign imports are entering the U.S. home market in increasing numbers -- and declaring that this is the cause of mass lay-offs and firings are mystifying everything. By keeping the truth from the workers that it is the monopoly capitalist system which is to blame for mass lay-offs and firings, they serve and protect their monopoly capitalist masters.
With their big chauvinist campaign against foreign imports, the labor aristocrats are trying to derail the struggle of the American workers which is hitting at its true target, the U.S. monopoly capitalists and their state, and rally the workers behind the flag of U.S. imperialism to fight its enemies: the foreign capitalists and the people of the world. As the crisis of imperialism deepens, and the peaceful methods of struggle to "destroy a mass of productive forces" and "seize new markets" prove less and less effective, and the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie grows more and more powerful, war offers the monopoly capitalists the only way out of the crisis. In this regard, the labor aristocrats are more "patriotic" and chauvinist, more enthusiastic about "defending the American way of life", more insistent that the workers sweat and die for U.S. imperialism than even the bourgeoisie itself.
At their mid-winter conclave, these chauvinists declared: "The U.S. is and must remain a major manufacturing nation, a great agricultural producer and a major maritime force. We cannot allow any one of these sectors to be destroyed by unfair trade competition. " The inevitable conclusion for the labor aristocrats, of course, is that American workers must rally behind U.S. imperialism "to destroy the industrial sectors" of other capitalist states. Today, this means to slave without resistance for U.S. imperialism in its economic warfare; tomorrow, it means to become cannon fodder in its military warfare. In short, the chauvinists like Meany deny that America is a class society, a society torn by class antagonisms and class struggles, in which the capitalists and workers face one another as oppressor and oppressed. But this is the fundamental contradiction in the U.S. and in every country of the world, uniting the international proletariat across all national boundaries in the common struggle of labor against capital. The only country to which the proletariat owes its allegiance and loyalty is that country where the proletariat has overthrown imperialism and established its dictatorship, as in Socialist Albania. Otherwise, "The working men have no country." (Communist Manifesto) The only A struggle in which the U.S. proletariat must exert and sacrifice itself is the struggle to overthrow U.S. imperialism; and in so doing, it must support that same struggle of the proletariat to overthrow its oppressors in every other country.
Today, right in the teeth of the chauvinist labor aristocrats, the proletariat of each country is developing this struggle, its own class program to solve the crisis of imperialism. Today, in the capitalist-revisionist world, the proletariat is developing a militant strike movement to oppose being made to pay for the crisis, which is a powerful vehicle in preparation for the socialist revolution. Today, the proletariat is building its Marxist-Leninist Communist Party to lead the revolutionary struggle against its "own" oppressor in each country, and-supporting the same revolutionary struggle of the proletariat in every other country. Today, the proletariat has raised the red banner of PROLETARIAN INTERNATIONALISM, the banner "WORKERS OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!", the banner of revolution to oppose imperialist war. It is beneath this banner that the proletariat is rallying its forces for the struggle against capital. The struggle to uphold proletarian internationalism and repudiate the chauvinist politics of the labor aristocrats and other opportunists is the lifeblood of the present workers' movement and the impending proletarian revolution.
WORKERS OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!
UPHOLD PROLETARIAN INTERNATIONALISM!
DOWN WITH NATIONAL CHAUVINISM AND MEANY'S FIGHT AGAINST FOREIGN IMPORTS! End.
REACTIONARY ELEMENTS FROM AMONG THE WORKERS ATTEMPTED ANOTHER FEEBLE ATTACK ON THE COMMUNISTS
On the morning of February 6, 1978, the company capitalists instigated four low-life elements from the ranks of the workers, lovers of the rich, to launch a fascist attack against comrades of the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists (COUSML). This was a vain attempt to drive off the communists and keep the workers from taking up revolutionary politics. Comrades were present at the plant gates distributing a special edition of The Workers' Advocate supporting the current strike of the coal miners and opposing the so-called "Labor Reform Act", which is aimed at attacking the trade union movement and suppressing the strike struggles of the workers. When the four fascist thugs surrounded the comrades and attacked them, the three comrades vigorously fought back against this attack, meeting reactionary violence with revolutionary violence and giving the fascists tit-for-tat. The comrades held their ground, and large numbers of workers started gathering, picking up copies of The Workers' Advocate and denouncing the attack by the thugs. Meeting stiff resistance from the communists and being isolated among the masses of democratic workers, the fascist trouble-makers backed, off and feebly told the communists to "get out of here". But the communists remained, holding discussion with the workers and denouncing the thugs as servants of the rich. These events expose the complete failure of the fascist attack and show that the company and its fascist pets will never succeed in suppressing the class struggle of the workers.
This attack has arisen in the conditions of the all-around intensification of the class struggle at the plant. The company capitalists are attacking the workers with a campaign of reactionary rules and regulations, with firings,, suspensions and all-round intimidation. Their aim is to beat the workers into submission and make them total slaves. The reason for these attacks is economic: the company is increasing the exploitation of the workers. Work is harder and faster than ever before. For example, the company sicks its reactionary foremen on the workers to punish them for "slow" production; they are now timing breaks down to the second!
Yet the company is not having its way. The workers are resisting these attacks. They are breaking with the company's reactionary rules and regulations, as Preacher Jones did when he refused to be kow-towed by Smitz and Quall and resisted their attack right in front of all the workers. The militant workers are giving fascist foremen their just reward. For example, one shop steward severely beat one of the company's lackeys, John Roach, after this foreman had continuously harassed him. The workers are openly defying the company supervision. One worker refused to be bullied when Smitz tried to force the worker to take a job lower than his seniority. Workers are writing grievances against the reactionary foremen for every attack, warning these people that they can't run roughshod over the workers. The situation is so hot for these foremen that the company has to switch them from one shift to another to save them from the wrath of the workers!
In this developing resistance movement the communists stand shoulder to shoulder with the workers and have their basic interests at heart. To advance the workers' resistance, the communists have provided revolutionary literature which speaks to conditions in the plant and clarifies problems facing the workers. At the present time, the communists are providing revolutionary political line to assist the workers in their struggle against the company's increased exploitation and reactionary rules and regulations in the two slogans: TO HELL WITH THE COMPANY'S REACTIONARY RULES AND REGULATIONS!, and MAKE THE COMPANY PAY FOR THE FIRING OF Preacher Jones!
The company is terrified by the developing resistance of the workers at the plant, who are becoming increasingly conscious of the class struggle and the reactionary nature of their class enemy. In desperation, the company has launched a campaign of intimidation to stamp out this resistance, and to try and isolate the workers from the communists. In this way they are trying to stop the workers from taking up the revolutionary theory to advance their resistance movement and organize for the proletarian revolution.
The fascist thugs from the plant are the agents of the company's campaign of intimidation and suppression. They spy on the workers and inform the capitalists about the activity of the militants. They spread gossip and slander against the workers who are resisting the company's attacks. They brown-nose the supervisors and are widely despised as the "foremen's pets". These fascists violently attack the communists and try to intimidate the workers into not reading the revolutionary literature and into not taking up the revolutionary politics of COUSML. While these fascists wear khaki uniforms and work at the plant, their love is not for the workers but for the rich. They are anti-worker elements right in the ranks of the workers. Their mission is to do the dirty work of the company to split, disrupt and suppress the developing resistance movement.
To advance the struggle against the rich, the workers must also wage struggle to isolate these lovers of the rich and to purge them from the ranks of the workers' movement. They must be exposed, ridiculed, and completely isolated so that they can no longer damage the workers' cause.
It has been suggested that to deal with these lovers of the rich we should call the police and have them arrested. But this will never solve the problem. In 1976 when these brown-nosers attacked comrades of the COUSML they were chased away. But this incident provided the excuse for the police to launch their own violent attack. It was a comrade of the COUSML who the police attacked, arrested and jailed for his just resistance, while the foremen's pets received the full support of the police. Life experience has shown that the government is nothing but an instrument of the rich, a machine of reactionary violence to suppress the workers' movement.
We are of the opinion that the workers can rely only on themselves, on their own strength and the revolutionary theory of Marxism-Leninism. The emancipation of the working class will come only through the efforts of the working class itself. Therefore, the workers must advance the resistance against increased capitalist exploitation, against the reactionary rules and regulations and to MAKE THE COMPANY PAY FOR THE FIRING OF Preacher Jones. They must make the struggle to isolate the lovers of the rich a conscious part of this resistance. And, in the course of the struggle they must build the leadership of the movement, the Marxist-Leninist communist party. We are confident that relying on their own efforts and persisting in these struggles that the cause of the workers is invincible.
TO HELL WITH THE COMPANY'S REACTIONARY RULES AND REGULATIONS --
MAKE THE COMPANY PAY FOR THE FIRING OF PREACHER Jones!
ISOLATE THE LOVERS OF THE RICH!
BUILD THE PARTY AS THE INSTRUMENT OF THE CLASS STRUGGLE! End
Led by the militants of the COUSML, a vigorous movement against the fascist anti-busing movement is taking place in Seattle. This anti-working class, state-organized racist movement of attack on the Afro-American people is being exposed for what it is. Active resistance to this fascist movement has been mobilized and ideological preparations are under way for renewed struggle. The monopoly capitalists are testing out new tactics to incite the fascist anti-busing movement in Seattle, Cleveland and elsewhere, but the revolutionary masses are getting organized.
Below is an article adopted from a leaflet by the Seattle Branch of the COUSML that exposes the "Seattle Plan" and mobilizes support for actual resistance in the course of defending the seven anti-fascists who are presently on trial for actively resisting the fascist movement.
ACTIVE RESISTANCE AGAINST STATE-ORGANIZED ATTACKS IN RAINIER VALLEY, January 26th
The government-organized "anti-busing" movement is part and parcel of the growing fascism in the U.S. The Carter administration is feverishly attacking the workers' movement through fascist legislation (Taft-Hartley injunctions, Labor Reform Act, Welfare Reform, "Aliens" Bill, etc.) and through violent repression (the cold-blooded murder of striking coal miners, imprisonment of militant workers, the failing of Marxist-Leninists, etc.). And the attacks on the Black people and other oppressed nationalities is the cutting edge of the attempt to organize fascist mass movements ("anti-busing", "reverse discrimination", anti-immigrant hysteria). Active resistance is the only path to defeat growing fascism. Already in Seattle, the fascist "anti-busing" movement has been dealt a serious set-back through the active resistance of progressive and revolutionary people.
The CIVIC ("Citizens for Voluntary Integration Committee" -- the fraudulent name concocted by a small gang of racist businessmen in Seattle for their "anti-busing" group) meeting in Rainier Valley on January 26th was a real eye-opener to large numbers of people. On January 26th, anti-fascist and anti-racist workers in Seattle waged a heroic resistance battle against a savage attack by the Seattle police. The police violently attacked the anti-fascists as one of them exposed the "anti-busing" meeting at a forum which was preparing conditions to attack the Black people and split the working class. In a 25 minute battle the anti-fascists fought heroically in self-defense, not once capitulating to the racist and fascist attack. Several police were severely punished before seven Afro-American, Filipino, Chinese and white workers were arrested.
The "anti-busing" movement was thoroughly denounced and exposed before the 250 people present, many of whom vigorously opposed the attack. The government-organized nature of this movement, which openly showed itself to be police-protected and police-organized, was demonstrated for all to see. The attempt of the capitalists to demoralize the antifascist masses and paint the "anti-busing" movement as "anti-racist" -- by organizing a successful meeting in a national minority area -- using the Filipino Community Center located in a largely Black community-- was utterly smashed. The fact that a Seattle police sergeant "chaired" the remainder of the meeting and scores of police stood guard for the racist CIVIC leaders and threatened any opposition with arrest "when order was restored" put to shame the feeble "anti-busing" leaders.
The militant struggle of the COUSML and the other anti-fascists won the warm support of the Seattle working class, of the Afro-American people and all progressive people, who vigorously discussed the anti-fascist struggle far and wide. This powerful blow at the government's efforts to organize a fascist "anti-busing" movement in Seattle threw the capitalists into a frenzy.
Despite the set-backs the "anti-busing" movement has received everywhere at the hands of the Black people and the progressive movement of all nationalities, the January 26th events show that the government of the rich is dead serious about organizing this movement of attack on the Afro-Americans and the entire working class. Only their tactics change. The essence of their schemes today remain the same. The rabid police attack in the Rainier Valley was the best proof possible that the real nature of the "anti-busing" movement is racist and fascist, and organized by the government.
THE TRIAL OF THE MARXIST-LENINISTS AND OTHER ANTI-FASCISTS
On April 3d, the Marxist-Leninists and other antifascists face the kangaroo capitalist courts in Seattle on bogus charges resulting from actively resisting the fascist police attack in Rainier Valley, January 26th. The fighting spirit and heroic deeds of the anti-fascists inspired the workers, youth, and oppressed people and gave concrete leadership to the fight against the fascist anti-busing movement. For this reason, the monopoly capitalist government is seeking revenge.
The anti-fascists have been charged with: "resist, delay, obstruct person known to be a police officer"; "assault with intent to cause bodily injury to. another person"; and "disorderly conduct". The police and courts are acting like the thief crying "Stop thief!", in laying these charges. The monopoly capitalists are trying desperately to silence opposition to their attempt to organize a fascist mass movement in Seattle.
But try as they might, these desperate attempts will come to no good end. The persecution of the Marxist-Leninist and anti-fascist fighters only steels the fighters more and makes them more determined. The flood of police lies and the CIVIC-police collusion in this persecution cannot change this fact in the slightest.
Comrade Enver Hoxha, great Marxist-Leninist and leader of Socialist Albania, recently pointed out:
"The present struggle of the world proletariat once more proves the fundamental thesis of Marxism-Leninism that the working class and its revolutionary struggle cannot be suppressed either with violence or with demagogy." The savage attacks of monopoly capital in the U.S. are increasing the indignation of the masses. A powerful upsurge in the workers' movement is unfolding; the small farmers are trying new strike tactics against mass ruin; and the Black people are continuing their struggle against racial discrimination and violent repression and for complete emancipation. A great ferment is sweeping American life.
In order to split the workers' movement and to specially attack the oppressed nationalities, the capitalists have continued organizing the state-organized anti-busing movement. This is why an especially vigorous fight must take place against the anti-busing movement. This is why sacrifices have to be made. The revolutionaries arc facing the capitalist courts because they dared to arouse the masses in the fight against growing fascism.
CAPITALISTS TEST NEW TACTICS TO ORGANIZE THE FASCIST ANTI-BUSING MOVEMENT
Seattle is a testing ground for the new tactics of the rich to incite and organize the fascist anti-busing movement. Under the banner of "local control", Moberly has come out with the Seattle Plan and has been praised nation-wide as a "humanitarian", "farsighted educator", etc. This is a sham. Mayor Royer, who was elected to office on his appeal to the "little people" and his promise to "maintain" Seattle as "the most livable city", has become nervous about Seattle being the testing ground for these new tactics, though he dare not oppose them. His statement that "desegregation will either destroy or unite the city" shows that the state is preparing to launch its attacks.
The recent school board decision to implement the Seattle Plan has followed a two-year barrage of propaganda "against forced busing" by the board itself and by superintendent David Moberly. the chief engineer of the racist and fascist anti-busing movement in Seattle. By raising a big hue and cry "against forced busing", by counter-posing school integration against "quality education" on different fronts (financial crisis, school closures, special education, transportation costs, etc. ), and by arbitrarily adopting the plan behind the backs of the people, the rich moneybags and their government spokesmen laid the groundwork for the emergence of the anti-busing movement in Seattle.
The rich and their agents (such as superintendent Moberly, and Dorse and Penberthy -- local leaders of anti-busing groups) are doing their level best to create public opinion against school integration, which for the working class and all laboring masses is a positive good that aids the development of a united struggle against the common enemy, the state, and is only the most elementary justice. The bourgeois press (P-I, Times) is filled with propaganda on how "disruptive" school integration is to the education of the youth. The capitalist government is singling out Black people and other oppressed nationalities for attack and blaming them for the crimes of the rich (in this case, cutbacks in the schools, school closures, and the crisis-riddled school system -- the image of the capitalist system itself).
It does not matter in the least that the organizers of the anti-busing movement are parading around as "anti-racist", "anti-government", "pro-voluntary". etc. They are consciously pursuing the goals of the government-organized anti-busing movement -- to segregate and attack the Afro-American people, to inculcate the most backward white chauvinism, and to weaken the resistance of the American working class and people to the fascist offensive of the capitalists. On a nationwide scale, this lias proven to be the case (Boston, Louisville, Chicago. Cleveland, etc.).
The adoption of the Seattle Plan at this time has given ample opportunity to the "anti-busers" to intensify the state-organized reactionary campaign. The spending of the levy funds for "desegregation or quality education" is a big issue; the final decision on school closures is to be decided on March 22; and the Jim Crow segregationist initiative of CIVIC against "forced busing" is to be floated March 19. The "anti-busing" movement completely relies on the state, and its tactics are in harmony with those of the state.
DUAL TACTICS OF THE FASCIST ANTI-BUSING MOVEMENT
In words, all the organizers of the "anti-busing" movement want "desegregation". But this is simply political deception. They have resorted to cunning dual tactics.
School superintendent Moberly is a polished government agent and is the chief inspiration of the fascist anti-busing movement in Seattle. Acclaimed as an "educator", he has a dark past, having worked for 8 years as a State Department agent of U.S. imperialist cultural aggression in Africa. After that, he served from 1965 to 1976 as superintendent of six school districts in the Midwest and played the role of troubleshooter, or as he puts it, "hatchet man". When he left his last job, the teachers were threatening to strike over the cuts he made in the school budget and programs. Moberly was sent to Seattle to organize the fascist anti-busing movement, as a fighter against "forced busing". While paying lip- service to desegregation, he established the voluntary Magnet Programs in order to "avoid court-ordered busing". Then, under the hoax of holding community discussions on how to avoid "forced busing", Moberly out of the blue presents a busing program with "fixed and limited options". In this way Moberly organized maximum opposition to his own plan for the sole purpose of inciting the anti-busing movement. Meanwhile, Moberly cuts the school budget, threatens to close down schools, denies handicapped children usable facilities, and then blames all this on "desegregation". He goes on a rampage against any opposition to the reactionary violent attacks of the police- protected anti-busing movement and glorifies the fascist movement all the while calling on the people to rely on the state in the face of state-organized attacks. This has been the role of the monopoly capitalist state's number one flunkey in organizing the fascist anti-busing movement in Seattle.
Anti-busing fascist and CIVIC leader Dorse feigns to be a big supporter of "freedom of choice". Dorse stated on January 26th that "freedom is what made this country great. " Now, just what is this flag-waving racist getting at?
Recently, Dorse explained himself: racial segregation is caused by "historical and parental choice." This is the racist "freedom of choice" and "open enrollment" schools in a nutshell -- "historical and parental choice". Dorse is espousing a criminal lie. It is not the white and Black working masses who are racist and the cause of racial segregation, as Dorse here claims. It is the capitalist system itself and the government of the rich that causes racial segregation and racial discrimination. Racist attacks are the product of the capitalist system and are organized by the state. From the time of the slave trade and slavery to the present, the capitalists have ruthlessly exploited the Black people to make huge profits from their labor and have used the most foul racist ideology to justify the maintenance of Black communities as pools of cheap labor. Afro-Americans are exploited as workers and because of their skin color. The capitalists still treat them as "untouchables".
The freedom of the capitalists to exploit the Black people and the workers of all nationalities, the freedom of the capitalist state to violently suppress the proletariat and people when they rise up in glorious rebellion against the savage wage-slavery of the moneybags, is what Dorse means when he says: "Freedom is what made this country great." He is pushing racist, anti-working class ideology in order to divide and confuse the working masses.
Shortly after the January 26th anti-fascist struggle in Rainier Valley, another anti-busing group was floated because CIVIC was exposed as police-protected and police-organized and was forced to pledge publicly that they would not take part in racist attacks, etc. The new group is called Stop Busing Now (SBN). Its leader is a monopoly capitalist by the name of Larry Penberthy. Their aim is to be more "rigorous" than CIVIC and to serve as the "active arm" of the first, but less active, anti-busing group -- American Constitutional Liberties Association. Penberthy's intentions were made clear in a letter to the Seattle Times in which he stated, " Feelings are already running high; resentment against the school board will surge when the fixed assignments are mailed out in April and the lull storm will be felt the first week in September... We pleaded with the board to pursue a peaceable approach another year. But they reached for the club." Penberthy and his little band of fanatics appear to be even more "anti-government","more militant" than CIVIC is, more determined racists and fascists. But there is really no difference between these two groups. SBN is doing propaganda for violent attacks on the Black people and progressive whites when school starts in September. CIVIC in the courts to defend school segregation; and through their initiative campaign for segregated schools, they hope to create public opinion against the democratic right of Black workers and other Afro-Americans to have their children attend integrated schools with the children of white workers and other laboring white people. Their immediate aims coincide and both are tools for violent attacks on the Black people and the anti-racists, as the police attack on the anti-fascist workers who boldly denounced the fascist anti-busing movement at the CIVIC meeting in Rainier Valley has demonstrated for all to see.
So it is clear that all the anti-busing leaders (Moberly, Dorse, Penberthy) are carrying out the policies of the monopoly capitalist class and its state to actually organize racist attacks with the aim of weakening the the resistance of all laboring people to the growing fascism of the bourgeoisie. It is also clear that the fight against state-organized racist attacks advances the struggle against the common enemy of all working people in Seattle and in the U.S., as a means to prepare for the anti-fascist socialist revolution.
THE SEATTLE PLAN
The Seattle Plan will bring limited school integration to the grade schools by means of busing children from 39 schools linked together in two's and three's and will will establish feeder patterns for middle, junior and high schools in a limited way as well. However, there should be no illusion that the government of the rich actually intends to integrate the schools. The monopoly capitalist state is totally racist at every level. The state has taken up the democratic demand for school integration in a distorted and mutilated way in an attempt to turn it into an instrument for deceiving and splitting the masses and suppressing the Black people. The actual aims of the government in adopting the Seattle Plan are to:
1. organize and incite a fascist "anti-busing" movement to segregate and attack the Black people;
2. attack a definite section of the people (in particular, the Black people) as part of its all-round attacks on the working class and people, to shift the burden of the capitalist economic crisis onto their backs;
3. present the racist anti-busing movement as "anti-government", which "opposes" the high-handedness and arbitrariness of the government dictators, who are universally discredited by the workers of all nationalities;
4. try to mobilize the white working people for the fascist anti-busing movement by heaping praise on it, through the press and government spokesmen;
5. blame the people, and not the state, for racial segregation and racist attacks;
6. counter-pose school integration against "quality education" as a way to scapegoat Black people for the decaying bourgeois educational system, by making it appear that the just demand for school integration is in conflict with the people' s struggle to upgrade education;
7. bring in the capitalist courts and legislature to stop successful busing for integration as the masses express enthusiasm for it;
8. promote busing as the main political issue in Seattle in the course of creating hysteria over "forced busing", in order to prepare conditions for the attacks of the anti-busing movement.
In the Seattle Plan itself, inconveniences and mutilations are very obvious, including unnecessarily long bus rides; segregated classrooms; and probably cuts in existing programs. In a few of the pairs and triads, the bus rides are very inconvenient. The anti-busers are exploiting this fact and have even gone so far as to make T-shirts with bus routes on them, which say: "The Government Has Not Said Education Is a Two- Hour Bus Ride", "Ban the Plan", and "Stop Forced Busing".
Furthermore, the government is counter-posing desegregation to education cut-backs. According to Moberly, the cuts in education are due to desegregation. Last month, Moberly, supposedly concerned about "academic excellence", recommended that "quality education" may be endangered for lack of funds due to the Seattle Plan. However, this is only a ruse to extort more tax money from the masses and incite the fascist anti-busing movement. Mr. Moberly denies that equality in education is the issue and that the masses support busing for integration because they support equality in education. Moberly is consciously mystifying the issue by blaming school closings, etc.. on busing. The cut-backs in education are part of the attacks of the rich to make the people pay for the economic crisis and nothing else.
What is particularly conspicuous in the Plan is that most of the paired schools in West Seattle and the North End are located where the anti-busing movement is the strongest and is in control, or partial control, of the PTSA's. This has been the case in other cities where the monopoly capitalists organized the fascist anti-busing movement, with the idea of establishing strongholds for racist attacks.
Segregated classrooms are on the agenda too. The experience with the Magnet Programs is that classrooms are for the most part segregated, as are special schools and alternative schools (such as Garfield Alternative, NOVA. etc.). For example, the Health Science Magnet at Garfield has 109 white students and 36 national minority students. The horizon Magnet at Fauntleroy has 46 national minority students and 21white students. When Moberly talks about "desegregation", this is what he means -- a tracking system, segregation inside the schools.
Thus, the only aim of the government, "liberals" and open reactionaries aside, is to organize a fascist movement. The only path for the masses is the path of the seven arrested anti-fascist workers, the path of active resistance to the growing fascism of the monopoly capitalist class.
ACTIVELY RESIST THE GOVERNMENT-ORGANIZED FASCIST ANTI-BUSING MOVEMENT!
ORGANIZE REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLE AGAINST RACIAL DISCRIMINATION AND RESIST THE ATTACKS OF THE GOVERNMENT End
Last month, on February 17 and 18, a high-level delegation of U.S. imperialist diplomats held discussions in Addis Ababa with the leaders of the Ethiopian fascist junta. This delegation was led by David Aaron, Carter's second-ranking advisor and personal envoy. The stated purpose of this visit is to improve the ties between the United States and the Ethiopian fascist junta. This visit is an important part of the efforts being made by the U.S. imperialists to expand and consolidate their influence in Ethiopia in order to step up contention with Soviet social-imperialism in the Horn of Africa and to make further use of the fascist Ethiopian regime as a weapon against the revolutionary struggles of the people of this region.
The visit of the Aaron delegation to Addis Ababa exposes all of the propaganda of the U.S. imperialists about their allegedly "neutral" policy in the Ethiopia- Somalia conflict. It shows that this policy of alleged "neutrality" has really been one of using the situation created by the war to increase U.S. imperialism's influence in both Ethiopia and Somalia.
In its propaganda organs, U.S. imperialism has been poor-mouthing the strength of U.S. influence in Ethiopia while outright covering up its growing ties with Somalia. By means of such propaganda, U.S. imperialism is attempting to create the illusion that only one superpower -- Soviet social-imperialism -- is responsible for the reactionary war between Ethiopia and Somalia and for supporting the fascist Ethiopian junta's suppression of the new democratic revolution of the Ethiopian people and the national liberation struggle of the Eritrean people.
The U.S. imperialists' cheering squad, the social-chauvinists of the October League, are aiding this lying propaganda campaign of U.S. imperialism. They claim that poor, weak U.S. imperialism has resigned itself to "appeasing" the Soviet social-imperialists in Ethiopia. They are covering for U.S. imperialism's active and on-going plotting and scheming to crush the Ethiopian revolution and the Eritrean national liberation struggle by blaming all the bloody crimes committed against the peoples there on the Soviet social-imperialists, while keeping mum about U.S. imperialism's involvement. The October League's protest against the Ethiopian fascist state only when the pro-Soviet social-imperialist faction of lackeys is in power shows that the social-chauvinists in fact do not oppose imperialist domination of a country, just social-imperialist domination.. In reality, the ruling factions of imperialist lackeys in these comprador countries come and go rapidly as the imperialists contend and collude, backing up the fascist states against the revolutionary struggles of the people. For example, with the Soviet social-imperialists' set-back in Somalia, U.S. imperialism moved in to consolidate its positions, and with the Ethiopian February coup, the social-imperialists are rapidly consolidating their positions there. It is to be an apologist for U.S. neo-colonialism to claim that the U.S. aggressors have resigned themselves to defeat at the hands of the Soviet Union irf"Ethiopia, folded their hands and gone away because their rival superpower won a tactical victory in their contention for domination. On the contrary, the U.S. imperialists are leaving no stone unturned to regain their positions and strengthen them even further, relying on the imperialist lackeys in Ethiopia.
U.S. imperialism has been the main prop of the Ethiopian feudal-bourgeois ruling classes since the 1953 U.S.-Ethiopia military agreement was signed. Since that time, U.S. imperialists have provided $350 million in arms to Ethiopia, mostly financed with credits. American finance capital has penetrated deeply into Ethiopia in the form of loans, "aid" and credits, and direct investments by big American monopolies. More than 3,000 American advisors were installed in Ethiopia to penetrate every level of the fascist state. U.S. imperialism has always considered Ethiopia the bastion of its neo-colonial expansion in Africa and its watchdog over the Red Sea, a sea crucial to both superpowers in their war preparations.
A commonly repeated lie by the U.S. imperialists is that relations with the Ethiopian fascists "cooled" following the fall of Selassie during the 1974 revolutionary upsurge of the people and the subsequent seizure of power by a junta of Selassie's colonels. In fact, since the fall of Selassie, U.S. imperialism has increased its support for the Ethiopian fascists. In 1976, for example, the U.S. imperialists supplied the Ethiopian fascist junta with a squadron of F-5E fighter-bombers to be used against the armed fighters of the. Ethiopian People' s Revolutionary Party and of the Eritrean People's Liberation Front, and as well, to strengthen the Ethiopian armed forces as a striking force against Soviet social-imperialism. U.S. imperialism continued direct military sales to the Ethiopian fascists until April 1977, when the junta terminated the U.S.-Ethiopia military assistance pact. Also in April 1977, the Ethiopian fascists expelled 324 American personnel from Ethiopia, but many more American "advisors" remained in Ethiopia than had left. Even at present, despite massive expansion by Soviet social-imperialism jn Ethiopia, U.S. imperialism is continuing to supply arms to Ethiopia through its outpost Israel. Just a month ago, on February 25, the U.S. sent the Ethiopian fascist Dergue a boat load of 23 trucks and trailers and a load of spare parts for jeeps and trucks. The U.S. imperialists are also continuing to pour their finance capital into Ethiopia. An example of this is the $10 million 'humanitarian aid" which the U.S. Congress approved for Ethiopia last year. The December 1977 issue of Forward! reported that the U.S. imperialists handed over $25 million to the fascist junta through the International Development Agency and that previous to that had handed over $32 million.
U.S. imperialism suffered a setback in its rivalry with Soviet social-imperialism on February 3, 1977, when a pro-Soviet social-imperialist coup was launched against the former head of the fascist junta, Bante. This pro-Soviet faction had been bolstered by growing links between the fascist junta and the Soviet social-imperialists, including the signing of a Soviet military agreement with the Soviet social-imperialists late in 1973. The pro-Soviet social-imperialist faction recruited Mengistu, who was prepared to align himself with any faction that wanted to grab powder, and liquidated several leading lights of the fascist junta linked with U.S. imperialism, including Bante.
Even this coup, however, did not and could not end U.S. influence and positions in the fascist Ethiopian state, built up through twenty years of neo-colonial domination of Ethiopia. The various coups and counter-coupsinside and outside the Dergue are carried out by different factions of!imperialist lackeys. They do not touch the nature of the fascist Ethiopian state which is a comprador state sold out to and dependent on world imperialism. Following the February coup, pro-U.S. forces and a faction of the fascist junta favoring "non-aligned" demagogy were rallied by Col. Atnafu Abate and the feudal aristocrat, Premier Michael Earu, in preparation for a counter-coup orchestrated by the U.S. imperialists. Under pressure of this imminent coup, the junta started to make every effort to win back the confidence of U.S. imperialism. Diplomatic traffic between Washington and Addis Ababa was stepped up and in November 1977, the former Ethiopian Defense Minister named ambassador to Washington for the junta, told Carter, "Relations between us have improved recently and we should develop them much further". A delegation of American congressmen visited Addis Ababa in November to bolster U.S. imperialism's lackeys and recommended increased links with the junta. It was precisely at this dangerous moment for Soviet social- imperialism and its lackeys that Col. Atnafu and other members of the pro-U.S. faction were rounded up and eliminated by Mengistu and the pro-Soviet faction. This purge by Mengistu was followed by the massive escalation of arms shipments to Ethiopia by Soviet social-imperialism and an increase in the dispatch of Cuban and East European troops to Ethiopia.
The purge of the junta by Mengistu hit U.S. imperialism hard, but it still has lackeys willing to align themselves with it, notably the "non-alignment" faction. Thus the visit of Carter's envoy to Addis Ababa is an attempt to consolidate its influence and extend it by means of bargains, blackmail, bribes and threats. It should be kept in mind that the various factions of imperialist lackeys sell themselves out to one or the other imperialist superpower with astounding rapidity. These changes in alliance reflect the contention of the two superpowers for domination. It can be seen that the U.S. imperialists are working day and night to regain their lost positions and to strengthen them still further, relying on the imperialist lackeys whom they have long cultivated.
Similarly, in Somalia, the U.S. imperialists have also been making every effort to increase their penetration and domination. In June of last year, Carter announced that U.S. imperialism will "aggressively challenge" Soviet social-imperialism in Somalia and this was followed by an offer of arms assistance to Somalia by the U.S. State Department. Huge bribes were handed over to the Somali regime through U.S. imperialism's servant, Saudi Arabia, and by other means. It was following this that Somalia sent troops into the Ogaden desert, using the hoax of supporting the Somali nationals who were suffering under barbaric oppression of the Ethiopian fascist and chauvinist regime. During the reactionary war between Ethiopia and Somalia, U.S. imperialism was careful not to get its hands dirty with direct and open military support for Somalia. Arms and other aid have been supplied to Somalia through Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt and Sudan. Saudi Arabia and Iran have been turned into regional powers through U.S. imperialism's arms sales, while. U.S. imperialism has increased its influence in Egypt and Sudan by replacing Soviet social-imperialism as the main arms suppliers to these countries (Egypt in 1975 and Sudan in 1977).
While making every effort to hold on to its influence in Ethiopia and expand it by every means, and while penetrating and expanding its influence in Somalia, U.S. imperialism has continued to assert its "neutrality". The U.S. imperialists have whipped up a great hysteria about the possibility of Soviet social-imperialism and its lackeys extending the war between Ethiopia and Somalia into Somalia. This hysteria was designed to prepare public opinion for further U.S. imperialist involvement in the reactionary war on the side of Somalia, both directly and through its regional alliance. As one U.S. bourgeois newspaper wrote: "If concerted regional resistance to an Ethiopian-Cuban- Soviet invasion (of Somalia) developed or could be encouraged. the United States might be justified in supporting it with military, technical and economic assistance: without such a regional base, there would be little hope for a successful American intervention, and less justification for it." U.S. Secretary of State Vance has openly declared that if Soviet social- imperialism and its lackeys extend the war into Somalia, then U.S. imperialism will enter the war directly. The threat of further U.S. support for Somalia in the reactionary war was used by Carter's diplomat, Aaron, as a powerful weapon to consolidate and expand U.S.influence. The U.S. is also using this threat to press the Ethiopian Derg to throw its military forces hard against the Eritrean national liberation fighters rather than endlessly sapping its strength in the war with Somalia. The ever-nearing victory of the Eritrean people for true independence from imperialism is a cause against which both superpowers are conspiring.
The U.S. imperialists have well publicized the filthy role of Soviet social-imperialism in instigating the war between Ethiopia and Somalia. The U.S. imperialist press has revealed that the Soviet social-imperialist war-mongers have shipped nearly $1 billion in arms to the Ethiopian fascists in recent months months. Thousands of Cuban and East European mercenaries have been dispatched to Ethiopia. Fueling the war in the Ogaden desert with massive supplies of arms to the Ethiopian fascists; arming the Ethiopian fascists for their war of genocide against the Eritrean patriots; and, assisting the Ethiopian fascists in their efforts to stamp out the new democratic revolution led by EPRP, are all monstrous crimes added to the criminal activity of Soviet social-imperialism in Angola and elsewhere in Africa. But U.S. imperialism's exposure of the Soviet social-imperialists, its slogans of "neutrality", "defending Somalia against aggression", maintaining the "balance", etc., are all to cover up the role of U.S. imperialism in the tragic war in the Ogaden desert and to cover up the counter-revolutionary collaboration between U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism against the struggles of the Eritrean and Ethiopian peoples.
The bloody conflict between Ethiopia and Somalia is a result of the struggle for hegemony by both the superpowers. Both superpowers use their trade in arms, their capital, intrigues and subversion to advance their hegemonic interests. They groom agents in every country. They pit one reactionary faction against another within each country. They stir up conflict s between one country and another, with an eye to using these conflicts to further penetrate and extend their influence and control. Both superpowers, individually and in collusion with one another, attempt to drown in blood every revolutionary struggle of the people, to liquidate all resistance to their domination and plunder of the peoples and their war-mongering policies. Together and individually they arm fascist regimes to savagely suppress the people and to provide one or the other superpower with a base for carrying out their global strategy of domination and counter-revolution.
In the Horn of Africa and elsewhere in the world, each superpower calls the other names while hiding its own crimes, but the people of the world have come to despise both of these great enemies of mankind. The fierce rivalry and counter-revolutionary collusion of the two superpowers have brought untold suffering and hardship to the people of the world and the Ethiopian and Somalian people have reaped a harvest of thousands of deaths, impoverishment and insecurity from the machinations of the superpowers in their region. The support of imperialism and social-imperialism for the Ethiopian fascists in its efforts to suppress the Eritrean people's struggle against national subjugation and for liberation and to hold back the new democratic revolution of the Ethiopian proletariat and peasantry has required Eritrean and Ethiopian liberation fighters and the peoples to make many heroic sacrifices in their struggle. Only a small handful of imperialists and social-imperialists profit from this rivalry and collusion of the superpowers, along with the reactionary bourgeoisie in each country who have tied themselves to the war chariots of one or another superpower and who zealously fight shoulder to shoulder with the superpowers against the proletarian revolution and its reserve, the national liberation movement.
At the center of the resolution of the situation in the Horn of Africa is the proletariat of the countries in this region. It has taken up as its mission leading the struggles of the peoples in these semi-feudal, semi-colonial countries against the foreign imperialists and against the local reactionaries, the struggles of the people for national liberation. By overthrowing the feudal-bourgeois ruling classes, the lackeys of the two superpowers in these countries and by resolutely resisting all imperialist intervention and aggression, the oppressed peoples end any possibility of the two superpowers and other imperialist powers using their countries as a base for their rivalry, for their preparations for war. In Ethiopia, great advances have been made in the new democratic revolution. Base areas have been established in the countryside and the armed agrarian revolution is forging ahead, while in the cities the people are arming themselves against the fascist terror. The Eritrean people are in the midst of a great upsurge in their national liberation struggle. Only a few centers remain to be cleared of Ethiopian fascist troops. The further development of these struggles and the struggles of the proletariat and people of other countries will prevent the superpowers from further embroiling the people of this region in their contention for world domination. End.
The following article is reprinted from Eritrea In Struggle, newsletter of the Association of Eritrean Students in North America (AESNA). It appeared in vol. II, No. 6, March 1978 issue.
The Ethiopian fascist junta is preparing for yet another large scale "all out offensive" in Eritrea to drown the Eritrean people in blood, this time with the support of thousands of Cuban combat troops, several Soviet war ships and large quantities of sophisticated Soviet weapons. Recently as world public opinion focused on the war in the Ogaden the junta has been busy preparing for a dangerous large scale war operation in Eritrea. Towards this end the junta has flown thousands of troops and large quantities of Soviet weapons into our country's capital, Asmara. The commercial planes of the Ethiopian Airlines were involved in the transporting operation. For this purpose the junta canceled all domestic and international flights of the airline.
More than 2,000 Cuban troops have also arrived in Asmara to actively take part in the junta's counterrevolutionary genocidal war against the Eritrean people. The junta's troops in Asmara are now demoralized and have lost the will to. fight and are deserting to the EPLF en masse; the Cuban troops have taken charge of all military directives, operating the sophisticated Soviet weapons, the tanks, heavy artillery and MIG fighters and are participating in combat.
Moreover, several Soviet war ships are directly participating in the junta's "all out offensive" in Eritrea. At the moment four Soviet war ships have taken up positions near Massawa and are constantly shelling the port city. It has also been reported that about 25 Soviet war ships have entered our country's territorial water, the Eritrean Red Sea, in direct intervention to crush our people's revolutionary struggle.
The present preparations of the fascist junta with the help of Cuban troops, Soviet warships and sophisticated Soviet weapons to commit mass genocide of the Eritrean people glaringly shows the extent of the junta's barbaric and rabidly fascistic designs in Eritrea. It shows the junta's frantic attempts to exterminate the Eritrean people and its extreme desperation in its war of aggression in Eritrea. It likewise exposes the role of the Soviet Union and Cuba in Eritrea, the extent of their intervention to extinguish the flames of the revolutionary armed national liberation struggle of the Eritrean people.
However, the aggressors' counter-revolutionary preparations will be shattered by our conscious fighting masses. Its several "all out offensives" miserably failed in the past; so will this one.
The naked aggression being committed by the Soviet war ships against our people will not save the junta from defeat in Eritrea, neither will the intervention of Cuban troops nor the sophisticated Soviet weapons. Our fighting masses and the resolute EPLF will smash the aggression being committed by the Soviet Union and Cuba against our revolution and as they have done in the past they will continue destroying and capturing the heaps of Soviet weapons.
We assure the Cuban troops that they will only find death and humiliation in Eritrea. Indeed, it won't be long before we count thousands of dead and captured Cuban troops in Eritrea.
The Eritrean people have a deep hatred of their enemies and they are resolved to wage a sustained life and death struggle: against them. They are prepared to pay whatever price for their freedom, independence and liberation! They are determined to smash all the counter-revolutionary machinations against their just and revolutionary struggle. The Eritrean people have long ago decided they want independence and liberation and to attain this they have chosen the road of revolutionary armed struggle. Their destiny is in their hands.
We call on all progressive and democratic forces to strongly condemn the fascist junta's "all out offensive" and war of genocide in Eritrea, the intervention of the Soviet Union and Cuba in Eritrea to extinguish the flames of the revolutionary struggle of the Eritrean people. End.
The Workers' Advocate hails the successful visit of the delegation of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) to the liberated areas of Eritrea. This visit is of historic importance not just for the Canadian proletariat, but for the proletariat of the entire North America. This visit reflects the close ties and friendship developing between the North American proletariat and the Eritrean national liberation movement, ties born and tempered in the struggle against the common enemy, world imperialism. The national liberation movement is a component part of the world proletarian socialist revolution.
A RED SALUTE TO THE ERITREAN PEOPLE'S LIBERATION FRONT!
A RED SALUTE TO THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF CANADA (MARXIST-LENINIST)!
LONG LIVE THE UNITY OF THE AMERICAN, CANADIAN AND ERITREAN PEOPLES, A UNITY IN STRUGGLE AGAINST THE COMMON ENEMY, U.S. IMPERIALISM, SOVIET SOCIAL-IMPERIALISM AND ALL REACTION!
The following is one of three reports by a one-man delegation of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) who visited the liberated areas of Eritrea at the invitation of the Eritrean People's Liberation Front. The Workers' Advocate is reprinting this report from People's Canada Daily News, Vol. 8, No. 50.
II.
After centuries of colonial domination by the Turks, Egyptians, Italians, British and Ethiopians, the Eritrean people are on the verge of completely liberating their country. The armed struggle which began in 1961, and which has made tremendous advances since the beginning of 1977, has now liberated 95 percent of the country. The Ethiopians now occupy only Asmara, Asab, Barentu, Adi Kieh and the port and naval base at Massawa (the rest of Massawa has been liberated).
The heroic victories won by the Eritrean people and their Eritrean People's Liberation Army have been against seemingly overwhelming odds. Facing the people of the small country of Eritrea who lacked a regular army was the Ethiopian army, one of the largest and best trained armies in Africa which was armed with tremendous supplies of the most sophisticated weapons of mass destruction which imperialism and reaction could supply. The Eritrean people were and are not only up against the fascist Ethiopian aggressors but also against a holy alliance of imperialism, social-imperialism and reaction, which is doing its best to support the Ethiopian fascists and crush the struggle of the Eritrean people led by the EPLF and their EPLA. For over two decades imperialism, led by U.S. imperialism was the primary supplier of arms to the reactionary Ethiopian regime which was colonizing Eritrea. While the Soviet social-imperialists gained the upper hand in its contention with U.S. imperialism to dominate Ethiopia in early 1977 and henceforth became the main supplier of arms to the Ethiopian fascists, the U.S. imperialists continued to pour their finance capital into Ethiopia to help bolster the reactionary regime and maintain their influence there. Also, while the U.S. imperialists ceased directly supplying arms (at least openly), their agents, the Israeli Zionists continued to supply arms. But the alliance of the imperialists and social-imperialists and reactionaries against the just revolutionary struggles does not end here. While in Eritrea, the CPC (M-L) delegation saw captured French amphibious armoured cars, NATO (Belgian made) automatic rifles which also fire grenades, and other weapons from East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Britain and other countries. Against the armed just struggle of the Eritrean people, the imperialists have not stopped at supplying the Ethiopian fascists. The CPC(M-L) comrade spoke with captured Ethiopian prisoners of war who had been trained by the Israeli Zionists and others who had been trained by Cubans. The POWs also spoke about Russian and Cuban military advisors and about Soviet tanks operated by South Yemenese. The CPC(M-L) delegation was in Dekemhare on one of the occasions when it was bombed by MIGs which are clearly not flown by Ethiopians, who could not have learned to fly them so quickly after they arrived in Ethiopia. The CPC (M-L) delegation also saw the Soviet navy destroyers and witnessed their daily shelling of Massawa and the surrounding area. Nothing provides a more concrete living refutation of the nonsense promoted by the theoreticians of ''three worlds" about the "third world" being a great revolutionary force in the struggle against the hegemony of the two super-powers than the revolutionary struggle of the Eritrean people against the Ethiopian fascists and the holy alliance of imperialism and reaction including Cubans and South Yemenese which is behind it.
Against seemingly overwhelming odds, the Eritrean people and the EPLA have won one victory after another, by relying on their own forces. After liberating much of the countryside, the EPLA began a concerted campaign in 1977 to liberate the cities. The small town of Karora was liberated on January 6, 1977. In April 1977, the EPLA liberated Nacfa, the capital city of Sahel province. Before the Ethiopian fascists were able to establish Afabet as the new capital city of Sahel province, the EPLA also liberated it, and thus, Sahel became the first Eritrean province to be entirely liberated. The unprecedented victories continued in the following months. On July 6, the EPLA launched simultaneous attacks against the Ethiopian occupiers in Keren, the second largest city in Eritrea and at Dekemhare, the important town located about thirty-five to forty kilometers south of Asmara. Dekemhare was liberated that same day after six hours of heavy fighting. Keren was liberated on July 8, on the third day of heavy fighting. The liberation of these two towns within a period of three days was a devastating defeat for the Ethiopian fascists. Keren was a heavily fortified city complete with a fortress on top of a hill in the center of the city and military camps on hills located at the outskirts of the city. The Ethiopians had a garrison of 4,000 to 4,500 troops stationed in Keren and considered it virtually invincible. It had taken the allies four and a half months to capture it from the Italians in the Second World War. Eighteen hundred Ethiopian troops were captured there, including a lieutenant colonel. A second lieutenant colonel who tried to escape with two armoured cars was pursued and killed. The liberation of Keren proved the invincibility of the EPLA. Daring its visit, the CPC(M-L) delegation had the opportunity to visit the fortifications in Keren, and to speak directly with the lieutenant colonel captured in the battle there. The lieutenant colonel said that he was now fully aware that the propaganda of the Dergue on Eritrea was all lies and he spoke of the need to educate the Ethiopian people about the real situation in Eritrea. In an interview with a journalist, he said that he had been amazed to see how the fighters of the EPLA had assaulted their positions and that what he had first thought must be drunkenness or insanity, he now realized was the heroism of determined revolutionary fighters.
In the weeks following the liberation of Dekemhare and Keren, the EPLA liberated the towns of Segeneiti and Digsa and fought what has been one of the most decisive battles of the war to date. This battle began on August 4, when the Ethiopian fascists launched a massive two-pronged counter-attack using 10,000 troops escorted bv fighter planes, tanks, armoured cars and heavy artillery with the objective of recapturing Dekemhare. The EPLA defeated one force within two days. The fighting on the other front was much heavier, but with the active support of the people's militia and the entire population, the EPLA was able to take the initiative, launching a devastating attack forcing the enemy to flee, leaving 1,200 dead behind and having suffered many more wounded. This fierce battle proved that the EPLA with the active the active support of the people's militia and the entire people was able to smash any force no matter how large and well-armed. It proved once again that it is people not weapons that are decisive in war. The successes of the EPLA continued throughout the rest of the year. On October 12, the EPLA annihilated an entire battalion which was trying to escort a convoy of 300 trucks heading for Asmara. Besides wiping out the battalion, the EPLA destroyed 260 trucks and captured the remaining forty. Between November 21 and December 1, the EPLA engaged and defeated the Ethiopian troops in a series of battles on the Asmara-Massawa highway during which 15,000 aggressor troops were deployed. The EPLA pursued the retreating Ethiopian forces, and on December 10, it smashed a force of between 5,000 and 8,000 aggressor troops in Dogali, just twelve kilometers from the important deep sea port of Massawa. In the battle at Dogali, the EPLA captured ten brand new Soviet T-54 tanks as well as destroying others and it gained control of the only water supply for Massawa. When travelling through this area, the delegation saw some of the tanks and armored cars which had been destroyed in this battle. The EPLA continued its advance and on December 12 it liberated the airport, fuel depot and most of the city of Massawa. In the fighting at Massawa, the EPLA captured ten more brand new Soviet tanks and destroyed others. The EPLA now has liberated all of Massawa except for the naval base and the port.
The beginning of 1978 saw the advances of the EPLA continue. In a three-and-a-half-day period beginning on January 24, the EPLA liberated the towns of Ghinda, Dongolo, Embatkala, Nefaset, Mai Habar and Seidici. With these victories, the EPLA gained complete control over the Asmara-Massawa and Massawa-Dekemhare highways and it captured the only two naval training centers for the Ethiopian military, which were located at Embatkala and Dongolo. With the liberation of Seidici, it tightened its encirclement of Asmara, moving within sixteen kilometers of the center of the city on the eastern front. On the night of January 27, when Seidici was liberated, the Ethiopian fascists and their Russian and Cuban military advisors once again underestimated the strength of the revolutionary forces.
While the EPLA had major forces committed to liberating towns on the Asmara-Massawa road, the Ethiopian fascists launched an attack with the objective of recapturing all of Massawa. But the EPLA was not caught unprepared. Steeled in the flames of people's war, the EPLA allowed the enemy to approach near their lines before opening fire. The Ethiopians were routed, hundreds of their troops were killed and four of their tanks destroyed before they retreated to the naval base and port where they were holed up.
The EPLA has now wiped out most of the Ethiopian regular army in Eritrea. More and more it is fighting the zematch. the supposedly "volunteer" peasants' militia which the Ethiopian fascist junta also cynically calls the "red army". But the crimes of the Ethiopian fascists against not only the Eritrean people but also against the Ethiopian people were fully revealed in discussions which the CPC(M-L) representative had with captured prisoners of the "volunteer" peasants' militia. During its visit, the CPC(M-L) delegation had the opportunity to speak with large numbers of captured prisoners of war, both those from the regular Ethiopian army and those from the peasants' militia. Most of the POWs from the regular army spoke about the propaganda in the mass media in Ethiopia that the Eritreans were fighting the Ethiopians so that they could sell their country for Arab petrodollars or that it was Arabs who were fighting in Eritrea. They also all explained that from their own experience in Eritrea and after the political education which they had received from the EPLF, they knew that these were lies and that it was the oppressed people in Eritrea who were waging a just struggle to liberate their country. However, discussions with the POWs from the peasants' militia almost all of whom come from poor peasant families of a minority nationality from the south of Ethiopia, and who were almost illiterate, revealed that they knew absolutely nothing about Eritrea before they came there. They didn't even know the lying fascist propaganda of the Dergue; they simply didn't know anything about Eritrea, including that they were going to be sent there. They had been told that after they received two months of training, they would return to their villages with their weapons, where they would act as a militia if the need arose. That the imperialists and Ethiopian fascists just used these poor peasants as cannon fodder was further proven by the fact that many of them were suffering from malnutrition when they were captured, a problem which the EPLF with its very limited resources is doing its best to eliminate. The humane treatment which the EPLF provides to the prisoners of war is in stark contrast to the barbarous crimes being committed daily by the Ethiopian fascists, imperialists and other reactionaries against the Eritrean people. The POWs are given food, clothing and medical treatment on a par with that given to the fighters of the EPLA. They are also given political education and taught to read and write in their own languages (which is only limited by the fact that the EPLF is not familiar with the languages of some of the Ethiopian minority nationalities). The EPLF has released some of the POWs after they have finished the political education program and have been taught how to read and write. The stand of the Ethiopian Dergue towards approximately 6,000 of its soldiers who have been captured by the EPLA further reveals its completely fascist nature -- it denies that there are any POWs.
The Eritrean revolution reveals another feature of imperialism and reaction, that is, that even on their deathbed the imperialists and reactionaries are capable of committing the most heinous crimes against the people. While the Ethiopian fascists, their imperialist masters and reactionary allies have suffered one defeat after another, they still are trying to hold on to the few places they control in Eritrea and to recapture liberated areas. The Ethiopians regularly bomb the liberated areas. The CPC(M-L) delegation visited Afabet the day after it was bombed and it was in Dekemhare during one of the numerous bombing raids against it. Soviet naval ships daily shell Massawa, doing no damage to the EPLA but destroying large portions of the city and forcing the entire civilian population to leave the city. The CPC(M-L) delegation saw the Russian ships and the extensive damage done to the city by them and by the planes which also regularly bomb there. The CPC(M-L) comrade saw shells exploding in the surrounding hills and heard shells exploding nearby. When the bombardment of Massawa and the surrounding area (the Soviet social-imperialists have shelled Dogali from their ships) began early in the morning, one of the EPLA fighters commented that this was breakfast time in Massawa. He also commented that the task of the revolutionary was to build the new as well as to destroy the old and that the Eritrean people would reconstruct a better Massawa in the future.
The Eritrean people have not been intimidated by these fascist crimes. Every attack only further heightens their resolve to rid their country of the fascist vermin and to build a new and independent society. The Eritrean people are solidly united under the leadership of the EPLF and with their steeled and conscious EPLA, are sure to defeat all the aggressors no matter how well armed. They are prepared to continue and they have proven their ability to successfully wage a protracted people's war to liberate their country. Their victory is certain!
The Association of Eritrean Students in North America (AESNA) and the Association of Eritrean Women in North America (AEWNA) have launched a joint fund-raising campaign to assist the establishment of a radio station in the liberated areas of Eritrea. The Workers' Advocate enthusiastically supports this campaign. The revolution in Eritrea is advancing from one important victory to the next, dealing heavy blows to U.S. imperialism, Soviet social-imperialism and all reaction. The Eritrean liberation forces led by the EPLF have driven the occupation troops of the fascist Ethiopian junta into a corner. The establishment of a radio station in the liberated areas of Eritrea will certainly hasten the inevitable victory of the Eritrean national liberation movement. Below is reprinted the call we recently received from our fraternal comrades of the AESNA.
TO ALL PROGRESSIVE AND DEMOCRATIC FORCES
The Association of Eritrean Students in North America (AESNA) and the Association of Eritrean Women in North America (AEWNA) together have launched a fund-raising campaign towards the establishment of a radio station in the liberated areas of Eritrea.
In Eritrea, the war of national liberation led by the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF) is surging forward. Ninety-five percent of the country, including major towns and cities have been liberated. The EPLF is scoring victory after victory -- decimating the fascist Ethiopian occupation troops and encircling them in the few remaining cities.
These new victories arc bringing forth new and greater tasks for the EPLF vanguard. In its self-reliant protracted struggle to transform and consolidate the vast liberated areas, the EPLF takes as its central task that of organizing, politicizing and arming the masses. Today, with the number of people in the liberated areas, in villages, towns and cities, in the millions, the EPLF is faced with the most urgent task of disseminating mass education on a large scale. To facilitate the acceleration of mass education, the EPLF considers it of prime importance to set up a radio station in the liberated areas.
Moreover, with the lightning advance of the EPLF, the Ethiopian occupationists, their imperialist masters, and other reactionary elements, are stepping up their slanderous campaign against the Eritrean people's just and revolutionary struggle and in particular against the EPLF revolutionary vanguard. Attempts to isolate the Eritrean struggle and the EPLF, through news blackout, lies, slanders and distortions by the imperialist press has to be combated. One of the fundamental ways is to establish a radio station in the liberated areas of Eritrea from where the EPLF can present the true voice of the Eritrean people and expose the distortions by imperialist and reactionary news media.
It is in light of these central tasks of our revolution, that we have decided to launch a fund-raising campaign to assist in the establishment of a radio station. Towards the establishment of the radio station in the liberated areas of Eritrea, we have projected to raise $50,000 within a period of 9 months (December 1977 - August 1978). Therefore we call upon all progressive, anti-imperialist and democratic organizations and individuals to support and assist us in any way they can (contributions, donations, etc.).
For more information and donations contact AESNA, [Address and phone number.] End.
15 years ago the Internationalists were founded on March 13, 1963, by Comrade Hardial Bains. This was a crucial turning point for the youth and student movement in North America. The founding of the Internationalists gave direction and orientation to the revolutionary mass movement, it ushered in a great period of struggle for revolution and against revisionism, it led in Canada to the founding first of a Marxist- Leninist youth and student movement in 1968 and then to the re-coristitution of the,Marxist-Leninist Party in 1970.
The Internationalists were what was new and growing and alive and therefore the Internationalists spread widely. They gave rise to Internationalists in other countries, eventually to the Communist Party of England (Marxist-Leninist), the Communist Party of Ireland (Marxist-Leninist) and the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists.
In the U.S. many sympathizers of the Internationalists existed. But the crucial turning point occurred at the Regina Conference (First Conference of North American Marxist-Leninists) in May, 1969. Here the American delegation, a small group of revolutionaries from the Cleveland Workers Action Committee, resolved to take up the decisive national tasks of the American revolution. They founded the first national center for the dissemination of Mao Tsetung Thought, the American Communist Workers' Movement (Marxist-Leninist). They sought to unite all those who proclaimed themselves Marxist-Leninists and opposed to revisionism into a single national Marxist-Leninist center. They spread rapidly and became the center for all Internationalists in the U.S. By taking up the decisive questions needed to advance the revolution as questions for solution, they earned the right to regard themselves as the Internationalists in the U.S. Today it is the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists that is the U.S. Internationalists. Only those revolutionary Marxist-Leninists, whether inside the COUSML or temporarily outside, who take up the present decisive tasks can regard themselves as truly worthy of the great title of Internationalists.
Why did it take so long for the banner of the Internationalists to be taken up in the U.S.? The opportunist leaders in the U.S. youth and student movement used national and social-chauvinism to prevent the mass of activists from learning from the advanced experience of the Internationalists. These opportunists, who later became the core of the neo-revisionists, were poly-centrists towards the revolutionary authority of Comrades Mao Tsetung and Enver Hoxha and downright chauvinists towards the Canadian revolutionaries. The present degeneration of the OL Klonskyites into out-and-out defenders of the imperialist fatherland and proponents of the B-l bomber and Trident submarine only reveals to all vrhat has always been the essence of the matter. Historical experience merits attention. It is impossible to achieve anything in North America while waging a war against the Internationalists, against the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) and the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists.
In this issue The Workers' Advocate is reprinting a number of articles from People's Canada Daily News to commemorate this happy occasion, the 15th anniversary of the growth and struggle of the Internationalists.
Comrade Hardial Bains, Chairman of our Party, founded the Internationalists fifteen years ago on March 13, 1963. The Internationalists created the conditions to found our Party on March 31, 1970. The Founding of the Internationalists was a big blow to revisionism and opportunism of all hues.
The Internationalists was a small group at the time of its founding, but within a matter of a few months, its membership enlarged into over one thousand and it wielded tremendous progressive influence on the University of British Columbia campus and in the city of Vancouver. Right from the beginning, the Internationalists faced two enemies: 1) enemies outside the Internationalists and 2) enemies within. The two enemies cocked their greatest guns on the cultural front, especially on the question of ideology and political line. But the Internationalists were led by the Marxist-Leninists and they faced the attacks of the enemy head-on.
The history of the Internationalists is a history of continued struggle against all forms of bourgeois ideology and political line. The history of the Internationalists is one of uninterrupted struggle for revolutionary principle and organization and firm opposition to all forms of bourgeois ideology. Right at the time of its founding, the Internationalists had to fight, on the one hand, the cultural aggression of the imperialists, and, on the other hand, the treachery of the revisionists and opportunists of all hues. The struggle centered on the questions relating to culture because it is precisely on these very questions the imperialists and revisionists were creating the maximum confusion. The question of motivation, aspiration and outlook was a fundamental question, and the decision on this question would determine the outcome of the struggle the Internationalists so courageously waged for fifteen years. Khrushchov revisionism carried propaganda for goulash communism while the imperialists paraded their consumer society and together they wrote of revolution and talked about coexistence, peace, world without wars, conflicts, etc., etc., ad nauseum. But the Internationalists smashed this imperialist and revisionist encirclement and repudiated the motivation and aspiration for goulash communism and consumerist society. At the center of all the imperialist and revisionist propaganda was the attack on Marxism-Leninism and on the aspirations of the international proletariat, and the Internationalists vigorously came forward to defend both the purity of Marxism-Leninism and the aspirations of the international proletariat. The imperialists and revisionists and opportunists of all hues used all sorts of tricks to peddle bourgeois culture which in essence meant reactionary politics, reactionary culture. The Internationalists smashed this erroneous thesis and vigorously put forward the revolutionary clarion call: Necessity for Change! Seek Truth to Serve the People! The struggle against bourgeois culture necessarily was a struggle for the purity of Marxism- Leninism and a struggle against all theories of bourgeois self. Comrade Hardial Bains led, on the level of theory as well as practice, this glorious struggle which hoisted for the revolutionary youth the banner of proletarian revolution. Literally thousands of youth rallied around the Internationalists over the period from 1962-63 when the Internationalists were founded, and to 1970 when the Party was founded. The correct analysis advanced by Comrade Bains won tremendous support and the Internationalists organized the historic Necessity for Change Conference in August of 1967 to which revolutionary people from many countries rallied. The trail blazed by the Internationalists led to the founding of the parties in several countries and today, these organizations and parties constitute a formidable force against revisionism and opportunism of all hues, as well as against the new international opportunist trend which is raising its ugly head under the anti-Leninist theory of "three worlds".
The history of the past fifteen years is the history of a trial of strength between the bourgeoisie of all shades and the proletariat on the question of party building and the proletarian revolution. The Internationalists faced these enemies and defeated them and won victory after victory. When the reactionaries tried to convert the internationalists into a "legal" society of the Students Council at UBC, the revolutionaries fought tooth and nail and defeated them. When the revisionists and anarcho-syndicalists (we called it the holy alliance of the "left") tried to convert the Internationalists into an anarchist, loose association, the revolutionaries fought them and established the Internationalists on the democratic centralist basis. When Castroism raised its head in the Internationalists, the revolutionaries defeated them as well and re-organized the Internationalists in May of 1968 in Montreal on the basis of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism. When the holy alliance of the "left" opposed the building of the Party by, on the one hand, floating bogus reactionary parties (e.g. "C"PL) or by outright opposition to the founding of the Party, on the social-and national-chauvinist slogan that first an independentist party has to be established (PWM), the Internationalists boldly pursued the line of building the political party of the proletariat based on Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism organized in a revolutionary style. Since the founding of the Party, the revisionists and opportunists have floated many sects and groups which are also building their "parties" as the last-ditch effort to smash the political party of the proletariat. The latest attempt is being peddled by the agents of capitalist-roaders in China who are hell-bent on floating their reactionary agent-provocateur sects in Canada. But the Internationalists and the Party defeated all these attempts. The central issue in all these struggles was whether to defend the purity of Marxism-Leninism and to establish the political party of the proletariat or to establish an opportunist sect and oppose Marxism-Leninism and espouse revisionism and opportunism of all hues. All the sects which have stood against the Party and the Internationalists over the past fifteen years have pursued a revisionist and an opportunist ideology and 5 political line. It is no wonder then that they insisted so much on having their own peculiar sect while they fell on their heads with the slightest heat of revolutionary class struggle. In spite of the tremendous support these sects receive from the official circles of the reactionary state and in spite of all the vile attacks of the reactionary state against the Internationalists and the Party, the revisionists and opportunist sects have always disintegrated and the Party has gloriously marched from one victory to the next. The revisionist, opportunist and anarchist sects are like sand dunes which scatter hither and thither during the revolutionary storm and reform during the revolutionary lull. Our historical experience of fifteen years has shown and the historical experience of the international proletariat has shown that the revisionists and opportunists of all hues have no future. They will last as long as the exploiting classes. This is why we resolutely struggle against imperialism as well as against revisionism and opportunism of all hues.
Only Marxism-Leninism provides life to the proletariat. Marxism-Leninism is an ever fresh ideology and it is daily enriched by the revolutionary class struggle of the proletariat. The founding of the Internationalists fifteen years ago was the beginning of the- great revolutionary movement in defense of the purity of Marxism-Leninism and against revisionism and opportunism of all hues. The Internationalists and the Party have won victories over the past fifteen years only because they-have fought without let-up in defense of the purity of Marxism-Leninism and against its corruption, vulgarization and emasculation by the'' revisionists and opportunists of all hues.
The purity of Marxism-Leninism can be defended only by a genuinely revolutionary party which fears no sacrifice and wages an uninterrupted struggle in defense of Marxist-Leninist ideology and political line in the course of revolutionary practice and in close connection with the proletariat. The highest form of struggle in defense of the purity of Marxism-Leninism is the overthrow of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie by revolutionary violence and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. There can be no lasting defense of Marxism-Leninism without the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie all over the world. The Internationalists and the Party have always upheld this as the guiding principle in all their work. We have taken up the question of proletarian revolution for solution. The founding of the Internationalists and the work carried out by the Internationalists were a small step but a step with a far-reaching long-term effect in solving the problem of proletarian revolution.
LONG LIVE THE HEROIC REVOLUTIONARY WORK OF THE INTERNATIONALISTS!
HAIL THE FIFTEENTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FOUNDING OF THE INTERNATIONALISTS!
Excerpts from the Speech by Comrade Hardial Bains at the Rally to Hail the Fifteenth Anniversary of the Founding of the Internationalists Toronto, March 12, 1978
It is extremely exciting and historic to be celebrating the founding of the Internationalists after fifteen years. Fifteen years ago in Canada, as well as in the U.S. and on the world scale, the imperialists and reactionaries had written off Marxism-Leninism forever. The imperialists and reactionaries were carrying out maximum propaganda that the ideology and social system of Marxism-Leninism is no good for "civilized society" --although in fact, this couldn't be further from the truth, because Marxism-Leninism is the ideology and social system of the most and really civilized society. (Applause)
The imperialists and reactionaries have the habit of writing off Marxism-Leninism and revolution. They do it every day. In the morning you can see them announcing that the revolutionaries are finished. But, by mid-day, they issue a statement that the revolutionaries are still with us; and not only are they still with us, but they are here with much greater fervor, with much greater commitment, intensity, and with much greater spirit of self-sacrifice.
When the Internationalists were founded fifteen years ago, the imperialists and reactionaries were in euphoria. This euphoria was based on the treacheries and betrayal of Khrushchoyite revisionism. This euphoria was based on the slogans of goulash communism, on the slogans of "peaceful competition" and "peaceful coexistence" with imperialism -- the slogans of "peaceful and parliamentary road to socialism" -- the slogans of the Khrushchovite revisionists. All of this created a sense of confidence in the minds of the imperialists and reactionaries that communism as a world system was gone forever. The imperialists and reactionaries were expecting the rise of China's Khrushchov. They openly declared that Khrushchov-like individuals would emerge in China. Thus, they suggested that the politics of imperialist aggression against socialist countries should be used in a flexible manner --for the best way to disrupt socialism is by infiltration, by subversion from within.
We are passing through a period today when, again, the imperialists and reactionaries are in a euphoric state. Imperialists and reactionaries of the world are extremely pleased with themselves. They are pleased that the proletariat in China has suffered a temporary set-back. As in 1963, now in 1978 too, they are trying to write off Marxism-Leninism and they are trying to write off communism.
The situation for us in 1963 was, of course, qualitatively different than today. In 1963, we were still plagued by those who on the one hand claimed to be Marxist-1 Leninist, but at the same time they were telling everyone that if you present Marxism-Leninism and communism in the working class movement then you will isolate yourself from the working class movement. Thus, under the hoax of being flexible and tactical, the revisionists and opportunists of all hues were revising all the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism, and pushing a line of class collaboration and liquidation of the class struggle. There was no genuinely revolutionary Marxist-Leninist party or group then to defend the purity of Marxism-Leninism and to uphold proletarian internationalism. The Internationalists were the first group founded in Canada since the betrayal of the international communist and workers' movement by Khrushchov which was led by Marxist-Leninists and who were the mortal enemies of revisionism and opportunism of all hues.
At that time, for us to visualize, to imagine that we would have to take up the historic task of reorganizing the communist party, establishing CPC(M-L), was really impossible. We could not visualize then, how we would have to oppose one revisionist clique after another, coming to this point in 1977-1978 when the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) stands as a glorious contingent of the International Marxist-Leninist Communist Movement. But we stood steadfast against all revisionist and opportunist betrayal and gloriously created the conditions for building the Party based on Marxism-Leninism in spite of the objections and opposition from various "Marxist-Leninists" who had declared that the building of the Party would be a "mistake", or those who, under the reactionary slogan "all nationalism is reactionary" , attempted to disrupt the building of the Party.
During the past fifteen years, many so-called revolutionaries and Marxist-Leninists" have come into being and passed away. When we are celebrating the 15th anniversary of the Internationalists, we could also celebrate the demise of all kinds of sham Marxists over the years. We cannot be too unhappy about their demise. Their demise shows that it doesn't matter what kind of reactionary bluster the revisionists and opportunists advance, or how much they present themselves to be revolutionaries -- these elements are bound to disappear from the face of the earth. It is no accident that every few years, the revisionists and opportunists have to change their tactics. They present the same bankrupt line of class collaboration and liquidation of the class struggle to the masses, but they try to present it in new garb.
In the 1960's, the slogan was that we have to have a "new ideology". The slogan was that the theory of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin was no longer applicable in its original form. The slogan was advanced that we do not want the dictatorship of the proletariat led by a genuine Marxist-Leninist party, but we want to have dictatorship of all sorts of "democratic" individuals. The Khrushchovite revisionists openly took up the reactionary task of attacking Marxism-Leninism under the hoax of attacking the "excesses' committed under Stalin or under the pretext of opposing the "cult of the individual", etc. In attacking Stalin, they were attacking Marx, Engels and Lenin and the entire international workers' and communist movement. In the 1960's, with the happenings in Czechoslovakia, the revisionists were floating all kinds of euphoria that you can have a sort of "democracy under socialism" or "socialism under democracy". If in the 1960's, the opportunists dished out x-number of theories, in the 1970's, the revisionists are not sitting idly by. They have not accepted their defeats, although certain of their ringleaders have been defeated. Certain cliques have been wiped out, but new ringleaders have come into being and new cliques are being formed.
Today, we have to fight with the same vigor, and with the same commitment as we did in the 1960's, and on a correct basis. It is the proletariat which has to make a decision today. It is in the hands of the proletariat to decide whether they want to live like slaves, whether they want to be the instruments of the preservation of the old reactionary system, or whether they want to be free in the true sense of the word. And this decision is directly linked with the decision whether to be Marxist-Leninist or to follow some shade of bourgeois ideology. The proletariat is at the center of our present epoch and the decision has already been made to move the society from capitalism to socialism. The revisionists and opportunists of all hues attempt to oppose this and repeatedly create harmful reformist illusions in the revolutionary movement. It is necessary to repeatedly oppose the harmful reformist illusions and uphold the revolutionary principles and persist in educating the class in the lofty ideals of socialism and communism.
A large amount of propaganda is carried out that it is not wise to be an orthodox Marxist-Leninist. Some people are suggesting, for example, that it is wise to be 60 percent Marxist-Leninist and 40 percent something else. But there is no such thing as unorthodox Marxism. There is no such thing as 60%-40% and so on. We know that today Teng Hsiao-ping and the right opportunists are advancing the thesis that a man can be a donkey at the same time. This is called "dialectics". As far as we are concerned, there is no such thing.
There is one Marxism-Leninism. It is pure. Its' principles are valid, and it does not need its opposite for its existence. The enemies of Marxism-Leninism always try to revise these principles, and to take the revolutionary content out of these principles. For that reason, we have to carry out a continuous struggle against the emasculators of Marxism-Leninism, against those who revise Marxism-Leninism. But this is not to say that Marxism-Leninism has revisionism within it. Those people who are suggesting that Marxism-Leninism and revisionism could coexist in "two-line struggle" are opposed to Marxism-Leninism, and to militant dialectical and historical materialism. They are conjuring up these ideas to falsify the reality of the class struggle and the dictatorship of the proletariat.
As far as the dictatorship of a class is concerned, there are no two ways about it. In the bourgeois society where the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie prevails, it is the sentiment, aspiration, outlook and will of the reactionaries which is imposed on the masses of the people. It is under that will that dictatorship is exercized over the proletariat. There is no such thing that in this will, outlook and aspiration of imperialism and reactionaries, there is a "human side" and a "fascist side". As far as we are concerned, there is only one side and that is the class interest of the bourgeoisie. And to suggest otherwise is to cause maximum confusion. The same is true of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The proletariat cannot be a magnanimous class as far as its relationship to the exploiting classes is concerned. It cannot for a minute lose its vigilance against its enemies; it cannot itself start carrying out propaganda that1 there are some reactionaries who can be re-educated, or that the dictatorship of the proletariat can be established without revolutionary violence or that the exploiting classes will be eliminated without force and peacefully. If the proletariat is to fulfill its historic mission it must, as a first condition, always be against the interests of the bourgeoisie and always defend its own class interests. In defending its own class interests, the proletariat defends the class interests of everyone who is oppressed. In defending its own class interests, the proletariat defends the interests of the entire humanity.
The proletariat is a special class, a special product of the filial stage of class society, of capitalist society. Its very emancipation requires that all exploiting classes are overthrown. It lies in the fact that mankind after many, many centuries of class oppression must reach the stage of classless society, a communist society.
This new society cannot be established by being liberal with our own enemies. In this respect the question of ideology, political line, the question of a Marxist-Leninist party is fundamental. Anyone who for a minute revises the principles of Marxism-Leninism, anyone who takes an ad-hoc attitude towards the education of the proletariat, towards the building of the Party, towards the proletarianization of the Party, will never fulfill the class aims of the proletariat.
Fifteen years after the founding of the Internationalists we are in tie forefront of struggle against imperialism and revisionism. How did this come about? The comrades and friends here tonight have seen the exhibition downstairs of the early years of the Internationalists, the historic Necessity for Change Conference, as well as other documents which come from that period. If you look at these documents, starting from 1963, you could say that they look very impure. But what look impure has at its center the revolutionary movement of the proletariat for emancipation. The guiding principle, the force, the motivation and the outlook it the center was one of proletarian revolution which is in stern opposition to all sorts of bourgeois aid petty-bourgeois trends. The history of the Internationalists from 1963 to 19C8 is the history of opposing all alien class influence and the history of defending Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism. It is no wonder that the reorganization of tb Internationalists in 1968 on the basis of Marxism-Leninism was the beginning of the wide-scale dissemination of Marxism-Leninism and a period of gigantic struggle against revisionism and opportunism of all hues and the end of struggle against various opportunist elements within the Internationalists who were opposing the organization taking up a clear lass stand and who were opposed to the building of the vanguard of the proletariat on the theoretical basis of Marxism-Leninism. This history of five years shows that neither did we isolate ourselves from the revolutionary movement of the proletariat for emancipation nor did we give up the task of building tie revolutionary vanguard of the proletariat. Those who say that the Internationalists were a "loose" organization and were not really revolutionary at the beginning are deliberately trying to belittle the significance of this historic event -- the beginning of the Marxist-Leninist communist movement in Canada. For them the real day-to-day struggles the Internationalists waged against imperialism and all forms of bourgeois ideology and against revisionism and opportunism of all hues by paying attention to actually building the movement in the real world are irrelevant, while they look at some formulations which obviously were wrong (but then these formulations did not reflect the essence of the movement) to turn truth on its head. Such windbags cannot explain why if the Internationalists had such "wrong" formulations, they steadily marched on from victory to victory, while those with "correct" formulations are nowhere to be seen. This shows that they have ulterior motives against the Marxist-Leninist communist movement. They wish to use abstraction in order to disrupt the forward surging of the Marxist-Leninist communist movement.
When we were building the discussion group, there was this "labor leader" and his cronies who used to come to our meetings, and every time they came they marched in and said "we want dictatorship of the proletariat". This had sort of become a joke amongst the Internationalists, so that when they marched in right away we would say. "Yes. we want dictatorship of the proletariat. Now let's get on with our business." And what became of those who wanted the "dictatorship of the proletariat" so badly? They became drug addicts. The leader of this outfit is a great admirer of Teng Hsiao-ping, a great admirer of Tito, who wrote anti-communist. anti-China, anti- Soviet books., and one of his followers is on the Labor Relations Board of the province of British Columbia.
How come those who were advocating dictatorship of the proletariat in the 1960's have joined the Labor Relations Board, while on the other hand those people who merely wanted to have a discussion group, to demolish some of the obscurantist theoretical and philosophical concepts which the university professors were promoting, have become the leaders of the communist party?
The test of the cake is in the eating, in the sense that if we have nothing to show in concrete practical terms, if we do not test our ideas on the basis of this world, the this-sidedness of life, then it doesn't matter how many schemes we conjure up. They may look very nice on paper, but in actual life they have no relevance whatsoever.
These individuals in the 1960's wanted to stop the actual practical movement, under the pretext that they knew everything, or that they have to know everything before they could carry out any practical activity against the common enemy. But, in actual fact, they were divorced from the revolutionary movement of the proletariat for emancipation and thus their activity and mission did not have proletarian revolution on the agenda. They could not analyze the concrete conditions of this country, they could not see where the spontaneous movement was at, and they could not analyze what concretely should be done in this country as the decisive situation to move the situation forward.
The merit of the Internationalists lies in the fact that on the one hand our movement has always been loyal to the theory of Marxism-Leninism. We have never looked at Marxism-Leninism from the point of view of providing ourselves with some kind of god. We use it as a guide to action.
So, the basic theory of Marxism-Leninism has enlightened our way. Marxism-Leninism provides life to us. We are always loyal to Marxism-Leninism. We study Marxist-Leninist classics to make sure that our grasp of Marxism-Leninism is correct and we are not making the same mistakes of repeating some principles on a dogmatic basis, but are using Marxism-Leninism as a guide to action.
Further, the merit of the Internationalists lies in the fact that they were loyal to the aspirations of the proletariat. Whether it was a matter of organizing in Canada, or Ireland, or a question of organizing in the classes, without exploitation of man by man.
We made our concrete analysis of concrete conditions (and 1 use these words because all the opportunists are always very much interested in concrete analysis of concrete conditions). It was our analysis that in the 1900's the most pernicious aggression against the masses of the people was organized on the cultural front. Many people later wrote essays and said of us that we did not believe in the economic determinism of classes. In the 1980's we pointed out that the masses of the people, especially the youth, youth in Canada and in other countries, faced cultural aggression on the part of the imperialists and reactionaries. At that time, the crucial thing was to carry out vigorous opposition to that cultural aggression.
The struggle against cultural aggression was a straightforward struggle for correct outlook, aspirations and motives: Where do we stand in the class struggle with imperialism? On the side of the proletariat and people, or on the side of imperialism, making apologies for imperialism, etc.?
All the slogans which you see downstairs which come from the early period of the Internationalists, like "Down with Bourgeois Hangups", "Down with Bourgeois Individualism", "Smash the Triple I of Impotence, Ignorance and Imperialism", and so on were strong weapons in the hands of the revolutionary movement to wipe out imperialist and reactionary influence in the revolutionary movement and to clear the way for the growth and development of the revolutionary movement. Without clearing the way for the development of the revolutionary movement, we would have no organization whatsoever.
Lately there have been some books written as well, saying that the Internationalists believed in self-salvation through the purification of the self. Whenever they hear a slogan against self they become very indignant. How can you be against self? Those whose main interest is capitalist profit, those who are the narrowest possible people, cannot see beyond their cold cash interest. When self is attacked, they come forward with various theories. If they are not able to oppose this attack on self directly, then they push all kinds of theories to purify self.
As far as our attack on self was concerned, we were quite clearly, deliberately, consciously and with a plan, opposed only to bourgeois self. The other self was just fine for us, because by opposing bourgeois self, we defended the aspirations of the proletariat. If we do not oppose bourgeois self - if we compromise, collaborate with, and submit ourselves to the bourgeois self, then you could not see the proletarian self, you could not see the Marxist-Leninists with the outlook of the proletariat for emancipation, for liberation.
Various people have been saying that this is metaphysics, that this is psychologism, etc. We are not afraid of being accused of following metaphysics, of psychologism because our accusers who are sons and daughters of religious people are trying to scare some people with words. They are sophists and rhetoricians. They are not interested in any way to oppose the enemies of the revolutionary proletariat and its vanguard but, on the contrary, their mission is to find some fault with the Marxist-Leninists and cause maximum ideological and political confusion. For them all these attacks on self are metaphysics and psychologism because it hits at the very issue, at the very soul of these opportunists because they want to preserve bourgeois-self. They are motivated to carryout their activities for the same reason as the bourgeoisie. So they call our opposition to their bourgeois self "metaphysics" and "psychologism".
During the period when the Internationalists and the Party were going through the period of elimination of bourgeois elements from the basic organizations and consolidating the basic organizations, we had very sharp struggle over the question of the mass democratic method. What is the mass democratic method? Like we are together here, on the basis of the masses we decide what is in the interests of the proletariat and oppose the interests of the bourgeoisie. That is, in concrete terms it means that if somebody within our ranks' gives a revisionist and opportunist line, he is going to have everyone else down his neck. These people whom we threw out of our organization, especially those in Montreal, those English-speaking individuals living in Montreal as "revolutionaries" -- their terror of mass democracy was such that even in their own organization which they established, some loose association, they said "we do not want to have the mass democratic method like the Internationalists".
Why don't they want to have the mass democratic method like the Internationalists? The reason why they don't want to have the mass democratic method like the Internationalists is that they want to conceal their real interests and they can do so in organizations which are loose and where bourgeois political line can have sway without opposition.
Mass democracy is one of the forms of struggle used against all bourgeois degeneration and against bourgeois elements who have wormed their way into the Party. In a basic organization, you sit down and look at your comrades and you say: "If you are a comrade, you'd better behave like a comrade; if you call yourself a Marxist-Leninist, you'd better follow the line of Marxism-Leninism".
It is this aspect of the struggle of the Internationalists which eliminated all kinds of vacillating elements and which led to the creation of the conditions for the founding of the Party. Of course, this organizational principle was acquired right at the beginning. In October 1966, we had adopted two principles in terms of inner-Party organization. We said that you must participate in arriving at decisions in the basic organization, and you must implement the decisions once they are made. To this day, you can say that these are the golden rules which differentiate the genuine Marxist-Leninists from1 the sham. Why should someone not participate in arriving at decisions? Why wouldn't someone exercise this right in the basic organization? They wouldn't exercise it because it is against their interests. It is convenient to be quiet and say nothing when it does not serve your interests. Some of our comrades are confused on this. They say that these people who don't speak out are confused and that we should be lenient with them and so on. Of course, one should persuade and be lenient. But leniency does not mean that we lose vigilance and allow those elements (a very small minority) who are consciously or unconsciously attempting to disrupt to be given free rein. What we advocated was that in our basic organization our comrades can fully participate in arriving at decisions and implement these decisions with the revolutionary spirit of practicing criticism and self-criticism, persuading and educating those who have made serious mistakes, and purging our organizations of those elements who have become either diehard anti-Party elements or have simply degenerated and are no longer revolutionary. But the point is that a communist, a Marxist-Leninist in a basic organization, if he does not want to degenerate, and is firmly opposed to the loss of the communist quality of his Party, then he must actively defend the Marxist-Leninist positions on a daily basis. And all those who don't want to defend these positions will of course be detached and passive about the affairs of the Party.
This factor was crucial in the development of the Internationalists. Underneath the central thing in the whole movement, in mass democracy, is not paying lip service to some "democracy" that everyone can speak; that everyone can have their views. The central issue is that you have every right to defend Marxism-Leninism and to oppose imperialism and revisionism, but you have no right whatsoever to uphold imperialism and uphold revisionism.
Is it too much to ask that those people who claim to be Marxist-Leninists should actually uphold Marxism-Leninism and oppose its enemies in practice? We have been told by the opportunists that the method of purifying our ranks is that we should sit together and hold hands, and then I look at you and I say: "Hey you are about 5 per cent opportunist. Get rid of it before someone sees it". And the other one says: "Yes, I am an opportunist on this front, and you are opportunists on that front, so let us together sort each other out."
If you have a collection of crabs in a basket, crawling all over one another, with all their limbs entangled with one another, this is not going to make a frisky mole out of them. They still remain crabs incapable of any kind of motion. The opportunist organizations are like sand dunes. When a storm comes, the sand is blown about and when the storm finishes the sand settles down again in the form of dunes. When the storm is over, you see the opportunist organizations in one kind of dune; when the storm comes and spreads them all over the place, they take up another kind of shape. They are sand dunes incapable of any kind of cohesion, incapable of any kind of motion, and they cannot perform any kind of task which they set for themselves. For an actual living example of this, you can look at the organization in Montreal which has been "in struggle" since 1972. If you ask them "Who are you 'in struggle with?" they will tell you that they are in struggle with one another. When they get together in the form of their national conferences, you can see how accurate the image of them is, as sand dunes or crabs in a basket.
As far as the Marxist-Leninist style of work is concerned, the central thing in its actual concrete practice is loyalty to Marxism and serving the interests of the masses of the people. On the one hand we are followers of Marxism-Leninism, and on the other hand our gods are the masses of the proletarians. Of course the reactionaries chide us by saying that if you are so much for the masses of the people, why don't the masses of the people support you? But, the issue is why do they raise this question that the Marxist-Leninists have no support? Before I comment on that, I would like to bring out another point, which is that if the masses do not like the Marxist-Leninists, why are the reactionaries, the imperialists, so concerned about us, so hysterical? Because they are so obsessed with us, it is quite possible that we have some support. They have to give us that much. But in that "some support", they know that there is a dream of a new world; there is a seed of a communist society. It is that "some support" that they want to nip in the bud; they want to crush these organizations so that the ideals of the Marxist-Leninists, the ideals of the communists do not become the ideals of the revolutionary proletariat, the ideals of the revolutionary masses.
We are definitely concerned about mass support, but not at the cost of our principles. We want mass support, but by having the masses following our principles. Of course you must have heard of the big hysteria spread all over Canada by the opportunists and revisionists of all hues that CPC(M-L) wants to take over everywhere and to establish hegemony. Why is there all this screaming that the Marxist-Leninists want hegemony?
In this world, there are only two ideologies: one is Marxist-Leninist and the other is bourgeois, opportunist, religious, every shade of slave ideology, feudal ideology.
The central thing in all these ideologies is that they are not the ideologies of emancipation or liberation, of science and progress. They are not the ideologies which serve the interests of progressive humanity.
The question then arises why anyone should want to take up the old ideologies. Why should they not take up scientific, Marxist-Leninist ideology? And when some people come forward, on the basis of our work as well as on the basis of their own life experience, and when they espouse Marxism-Leninism, and they no longer want to be deceived by the opportunists, naturally the opportunists are hysterical, in a panic. They say that if the trend continues, what is going to happen to them? Now, if their ideologies are so solid, why should they be so afraid? The panic hits those ideologies which are not solid.
There are only two ideologies: the ideology of genuine patriotism and genuine nationalism, the ideology of the vast majority of the people in the country who are the laboring masses, the producers who shed their blood and sweat to produce the wealth of society. This is the ideology of the proletariat opposing every force that perpetuates exploitation, backwardness and slavery. This is the ideology of liberation, and the Internationalists were the standard bearers of this ideology. CPC(M-L) is the standard bearer of this ideology. This is the ideology of Marxism-Leninism. It doesn't matter what these people say. After all, the issue is going to be settled on the basis of on which side you stood. The other ideology is the ideology of exploiters and their sellout lackeys; the ideology of fawning on imperialists; the ideology of opposing any progress. It is this ideology that we are opposed to. Thus, the question of hegemony is the question of which ideology will have sway over the revolutionary proletariat --the ideology of the proletariat or the ideology of the bourgeoisie. The ideology of CPC(M-L) or the ideology of revisionists and opportunist traitors. Of course, the revisionists and opportunist traitors are extremely concerned about the hegemony of CPC(M-L) over the revolutionary movement because they are the social prop of imperialism and they strive to preserve the hegemony of imperialism. They are such ''revolutionaries" that for them the central issue is one of opposing the hegemony of CPC(M-L) and not one of opposing imperialism and revisionism and opportunism of all hues.
The Internationalists were the first organization in Canada which were most patriotic and which had the best interests of the proletariat and people in mind. These are the two reasons: loyalty to Marxism-Leninism, absolute firm patriotism and absolute and firm support and upholding of the class interests of the proletariat, which ensured that the Internationalists, far from disappearing, became a national Marxist-Leninist Communist Movement within a matter of five years.
* * * *
The revolutionary youth, the Marxist-Leninist youth waged a vigorous struggle to have their genuine Marxist-Leninist party. During this period it is absolutely necessary that our Party is consolidated. Our Party has to be more red than before; it has to be more self-sacrificing; it has to be more committed to Marxism-Leninism than ever before, and its tactics; it must never leave the masses aside and blow its own bugle away from the class interests of the masses. In other words, we must proletarianize the Party, improve both its proletarian composition and its proletarian revolutionary spirit.
The important thing is to realize, and to realize firmly -- it will not do to realize in a loose, vague sort of manner -- we must realize firmly that we are the only genuine oppositional trend. With us, the Canadian proletariat and people have a future. With us, the Canadian proletariat and people have a combatant organization which will fight for its interests and smash the fascist cliques and the gangsters which the imperialists and reactionaries are grooming, which they are planning to use against us. Many comrades don't realize this arid as a result they make serious mistakes. An oppositional trend must have, as first principle, in the first place, the ideology, motivation, outlook, aspirations which go against the interests of the enemy on a day-to-day basis; minute by minute, second by second, as the heart beats and the lungs breathe. Everything we do must be opposed to the interest of the class enemy.
If we do not do so, if at every practical step we get confused as to what is the Marxist-Leninist line, what is the Marxist-Leninist ideology, political line and so on, then we will not make much headway.
Lenin said many times, Stalin said many times, that the proletariat gravitates towards socialism. Inherently. And the proletariat has this inherent nature because it has its slave-masters, the capitalists, right beside it, because capitalist exploitation exists. Because of all the crimes which the state commits against the proletariat, the proletariat cannot, even for a minute, let that inherent nature, that gravitation toward socialism, go away. That is, it cannot let go of the aspirations for liberation; the desire for a society in which it no longer faces these chronic problems of unemployment, inflation, a society where it has job security in the real sense; where it is master of the means of production, the master of its wealth, its land, its nation, its politics, its culture. Everything in the society has to exist for the proletariat and the proletariat has to capture it through revolutionary violence, revolution which causes terror in the hearts of the enemy.
It is this outlook and line which we must take to the masses, and it is on that basis which we must build the unity of the class, on which we must build the action of the class against the enemy. The organization of the masses, the participation in many mass fronts does not mean that we go against Marxist-Leninist principles, that we do not build the Party. On the contrary, it means that we must resolutely defend Marxist-Leninist principles, that we must vigorously defend, build the Party and eliminate from our ranks all elements who are trying to disintegrate the Party.
Fifteen years after the founding of the Internationalists, the message is the same: build the party of the proletariat; build it in a revolutionary style; build it in the style that does not create any illusions about the state of the bourgeoisie, the state of the capitalists, that does not create any illusions about short-term victory, that docs not deceive the masses of the people with empty promises. The question of liberation is dependent on the masses themselves. It is up to the masses to liberate themselves.
Our era is the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution. It is the era of transition from capitalism to socialism and in this era the forces of revolution are in fierce struggle with the forces of reaction. Revolution is the main trend in the world today. The imperialists and social-imperialists and reactionaries of the world led by the two superpowers are hatching one conspiracy and plan in order to drown in blood the proletarian revolution. They are contending for world hegemony and preparing for war and they are fascizing their states and shifting the burden of the crisis onto the backs of the laboring masses. The only way out of the crisis for the people is proletarian revolution and the international proletariat led by its genuine Marxist-Leninist parties have taken up this question for solution. Our Party has taken up the problem for solution. The founding of the Internationalists was a giant step forward in the revolutionary movement of the proletariat for emancipation.
LONG LIVE THE INTERNATIONALISTS!
GLORY TO MARXISM-LENINISM!
UPHOLD PROLETARIAN INTERNATIONALISM! End.
MONTREAL, APRIL 30TH
[Poster with graphics]
JOIN ONE OF THE PREPARATORY COMMITTEES IN YOUR AREA TO ORGANIZE THE FIRST INTERNATIONALIST RALLY OF MARXIST-LENINIST COMMUNIST PARTIES EVER HELD IN NORTH AMERICA
11:00 AM | Revolutionary songs of the international proletariat |
11:15 AM | Welcoming address to the fraternal Marxist-Leninist Communist Parties by Comrade Hardial Bains, Chairman of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) |
12:30 PM | Showing of film depicting scenes from the Seventh Congress of the Party of Labour of Albania |
12:50 PM | Presentation of telegramme hailing the great Marxist-Leninist, Comrade Enver Hoxha |
1:05 PM | Presentation of telegramme hailing the great Marxist-Leninist Party of the international proletariat -- the Party of Labour of Albania |
1:20 PM | Singing of the Song of the Seventh Congress of the PL A in Albanian |
1:30 PM | Singing of the Song of the Third Congress of CPC(M-L) |
1:40 PM | Introduction of Representatives of the fraternal Marxist-Leninist Communist Parties |
3:00 PM | Internationalist Feast in honour of the fraternal Marxist-Leninist Communist Parties |
4:00 PM | Speeches by representatives of the fraternal Marxist-Leninist Communist Parties |
9:00 PM | Revolutionary Cultural Programme |
11:00 PM | Closing Speech by Comrade Hardial Bains, Chairman of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) |
All interested in participating in the First Internationalist Rally of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Parties and in assisting in organizing should visit or write to:
PREPARATORY COMMITTEE FOR THE FIRST INTERNATIONALIST RALLY OF THE MARXIST-LENINIST COMMUNIST PARTIES 814A Ontario Street East, Montreal, Quebec; Telephone: 524-6991
ADMISSION: By donation -- all who cannot afford are also welcome to attend
ALL FRIENDS OF THE INTERNATIONAL MARXIST-LENINIST COMMUNIST MOVEMENT ARE WARMLY INVITED TO ATTEND
WORKERS OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!
Call from the National Executive Committee of the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists to All Marxist-Leninists and Revolutionaries in the U.S.
A great wind of revolution is sweeping the world. The proletariat is smashing up the old world of capitalism and slavery and building the new world of socialism and freedom.
Guided by the brilliant Marxist-Leninist ideas set forth by Comrade Enver Hoxha at the Seventh Congress of the Party of Labor of Albania, the International Marxist-Leninist Communist Movement is vigorously leading the world revolution. The Marxist-Leninist parties and organizations are strengthening themselves. They are defeating the pernicious trends of Khruschovite revisionism, its off-spring "three worlds-ism" and opportunism of all types and leading the workers and oppressed people in resolute struggle against the class enemy. Revolution is not just a distant prospect but a problem taken up for solution. The glorious banner of proletarian internationalism, of the Internationale, the banner of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Chairman Mao and Comrade Enver Hoxha, is being held high aloft!
The banner raised at the Seventh Congress of the Party of Labor of Albania is also being held aloft in North America. A grand Internationalist Rally, sponsored by the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist), will be held in Montreal April 30th. Our glorious fraternal Party, the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist), headed by Comrade Hardial Bains, is an invincible bearer of the banner of revolutionary Marxism-Leninism in North America. The Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) is leading the Canadian proletariat and people in their revolutionary struggle against U.S. imperialism and the Canadian monopoly capitalist class. It is staunchly opposing the revisionists and opportunists of all hues.
In the United States a tremendous upsurge of the workers' movement is underway, emphasizing sharply the need for revolutionary leadership. A great movement is surging forward against social-chauvinism and all forms of revisionism and opportunism, against all those who reconcile with the bloodstained flag of U.S. imperialism and with other reactionaries, against those who openly cheer on the U.S. imperialists to build more B-l bombers and Trident submarines and against those who covertly give the same treacherous line. Led by the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists, this struggle is inexorably leading to the defeat of social-chauvinism and to the creation of Marxist-Leninist unity and the re-establishment of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party to lead the revolutionary struggle.
The Internationalist Rally in Montreal April 30th will be a great rally of proletarian internationalism, of opposition to social-chauvinism. It will be an important contribution to the unity of the International Marxist-Leninist Communist Movement and to the struggle against revisionism and opportunism. The Internationalist Rally will be a particularly significant contribution to the Marxist-Leninist movement in North America, announcing to the whole world that the proletariat of this continent is not reconciled to being slaves, split by revisionism and its various currents, but is uniting under the glorious banner of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism. The Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists hails the courageous work of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) in organizing this historic rally. The Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists, as the nucleus of the Marxist-Leninist Party of the U.S. proletariat, will speak at the rally on the behalf of the American proletariat. The unity of all revolutionary Marxist-Leninists in the U.S., a unity forged in the living struggle against social-chauvinism and opportunism, is only a matter of time.
The Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists calls upon all revolutionary Marxist-Leninists, classconscious workers, all friends of the International Marxist-Leninist Communist Movement in the United States, to actively participate in the first Internationalist Rally of the Marxist-Leninist parties ever held in North America. The genuine Marxist-Leninists in the U.S. should do their part and go all out to prepare for this historic rally and participate in it and contribute to its success. They should take an active part in the preparations, participate in the preparatory committees which are being organized across the U.S., hold meetings, carry out propaganda for the Marxist-Leninist political line and against social-chauvinism and opportunism, organize study sessions on the burning questions of the Marxist-Leninist movement and take the Marxist-Leninist line widely among the masses of workers and oppressed people.
GO ALL OUT TO ORGANIZE THE INTERNATIONALIST RALLY!
LONG LIVE PROLETARIAN INTERNATIONALISM!
WORKERS OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE! End.
Below is the article from the March 3, 1978, issue of People's Canada Daily News, Organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist), announcing the Internationalist Rally.
The Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) is organizing the first Internationalist Rally in Montreal on April 30, 1978. Our fraternal Marxist- Leninist parties are invited to attend.
The holding of the Internationalist Rally is an historic event in the life of the proletariat in Canada. This event signifies the developing unity of the International Marxist-Leninist Communist Movement and the maturing of the struggle against revisionism and opportunism of all hues. The Internationalist Rally will mark the further development of bilateral and multilateral discussions which are taking place between fraternal parties which assists the unity of the International Marxist-Leninist Communist Movement.
The Internationalists were organized in Montreal in May of 1968 on the basis of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism. This was the first time in Canada, since the revisionist betrayal of the Communist Party in the early fifties, that the Marxist-Leninists took up the task of dissemination of works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao Tse-tung on a large scale and started the revolutionary revolutionary movement against imperialism and revisionism and against all forms of bourgeois ideology. The Internationalists were founded in March 1963, but it was only in 1968, when the Internationalists had defeated all kinds of revisionist and opportunist trends which had emerged within them, that they earnestly took up the task of re-establishing the Communist Party on the basis of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism. The re-organization of the Internationalists in 1968 also signaled the development of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Movement in Canada on the national basis. It was the first time in the history of Canada that a Marxist-Leninist communist movement surged forward from coast to coast and the conditions were created which led to the founding of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) in March 1970.
The international proletariat today is split into various sections by various forms of bourgeois ideology. It is the split of the international proletariat which favors the continuation of imperialism and revisionism and opportunism of all hues on the world scale. The material conditions are ripe for revolution but the subjective conditions are lagging behind and the split in the proletariat is the reflection of the deep and generalized confusion the bourgeoisie has created in the international proletariat. This confusion and the split can be ended only by the building of a genuine Marxist-Leninist party. The rise of the International Marxist-Leninist Communist Movement since the Seventh Congress of the Party of Labor of Albania is a gigantic step forward in eliminating bourgeois confusion and ending splits in the proletariat. The Internationalist rallies held since the Seventh Congress have tremendously contributed to the elimination of confusion and the ending of the splits in the proletariat. It is a long-term struggle but a bold step has been taken by the genuine Marxist-Leninist parties to eliminate confusion and end the splits in the proletariat as part of the revolutionary class struggle against imperialism and all reaction.
Modern revisionism and all its variants and all forms of bourgeois ideology are the cause of splits in the international proletariat. The working-class and communist movement was split by the Khrushchovite revisionists after they seized control of the Party and state in the Soviet Union and adopted the revisionist line at the twentieth congress of the CPSU(B). Even though the Khrushchovite revisionists paid lip-service to the unity of the international working-class and communist movement, they feverishly carried out splits and disruption in the movement. They participated in the historic decisions of the twelve ruling parties in 1957 and the Moscow declaration of the eighty-one parties, but this participation was merely for the purposes of organizing splits and disruptions in the international working-class and communist movement. It was the glorious work of the genuine Marxist-Leninist parties of China and Albania headed by the great Marxist-Leninists, Mao Tsetung and Enver Hoxha, which postponed the splits for several years but the Khrushchovite revisionists carried on their reckless traitorous path leading to the open split in the working class and communist movement. Since the time of this split the genuine Marxist-Leninist parties have been working vigorously to re-establish the unity of the international working-class and communist movement on the basis of firmly opposing revisionism and opportunism of all hues and on the basis of defending the purity of Marxism-Leninism and upholding proletarian internationalism. This struggle for unity of the international working-class and communist movement has been courageously led by the genuinely Marxist-Leninist parties for over two decades and today this struggle is irresistibly surging forward with Comrade Enver Hoxha at the head.
The latest splitters of the international working class and communist movement are the proponents of the new international opportunist trend based on the anti-Leninist theory of "three worlds". The antics these opportunists are basically no different than those of the Khrushchovite revisionists. These opportunists hatched their peculiar anti-Leninist theory of "three worlds" and tried to shove it down the throats of the international working-class and communist movement through the most vile intrigue and conspiracy. They simply declared this anti- Leninist theory to the world and pontificated that everyone must build their strategies on it without any consultation whatsoever with the fraternal Marxist-Leninist parties and with the ulterior motive of revising the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism. They started grooming opportunists of all hues and other agents-provocateurs and started issuing statements that these counter-revolutionaries were actually "revolutionaries". Through this method they began floating their henchmen and interfered in the internal affairs of many Marxist-Leninist parties. They gave themselves the reactionary right to interfere and hegemonize everywhere and they used the great revolutionary prestige of China and Mao Tsetung in order to launch this vicious attack on the international working-class and communist movement. But the genuine Marxist-Leninist parties are not cowed down by the reactionary bluster and intrigues of the revisionists and opportunists of all hues. The genuine Marxist-Leninist parties stood up to these splitters as well and started a big campaign against these splitters as well.
Modern revisionism with Khrushchovite revisionism at the center is the main danger to the international working-class and communist movement. There are several variants of this revisionism and the anti-Leninist theory of "three worlds" is one of its variants. The unity of the International Marxist-Leninist Communist Movement can be established only by firmly opposing modern revisionism and all its currents and offshoots and by opposing opportunism of all hues. The Internationalist Rally is being organized to oppose modern revisionism and opportunism of all hues and to contribute to the building of Modern revisionism with Khrushchovite revisionism at the center is the main danger to the international working-class and communist movement. There are several variants of this revisionism and the anti-Leninist theory of "three worlds" is one of its variants. The unity of the International Marxist- Leninist Communist Movement can be established only by firmly opposing modern revisionism and all its currents and offshoots and by opposing opportunism of all hues. The Internationalist Rally is being organized to oppose modern revisionism and opportunism of all hues and to contribute to the building of unity of the International Marxist-Leninist Movement which is surging forward today. We have invited our fraternal Marxist-Leninist parties for the purposes of exchanging views, with them and to provide them with an international platform through which they can put forward their Marxist-Leninist positions to the international proletariat.
LONG LIVE THE UNITY OF THE INTERNATIONAL MARXIST-LENINIST COMMUNIST MOVEMENT!
LONG LIVE MARXISM-LENINISM AND PROLETARIAN INTERNATIONALISM! End.
ON THE CURRENT WORLD SITUATION AND THE STRUGGLE OF MARXISM-LENINISM VERSUS INTERNATIONAL OPPORTUNISM
MARCH 3 Lessons from the Struggle Against Modem Revisionism, Part I: The Defense of Marxism-Leninism Is a Question of Principle -- (Suggested Reading: Enver Hoxha, Report to the 7th Congress of the Party of Labor of Albania, Chapter 6 and the Speech of Comrade Enver Hoxha Delivered at the Meeting of 81 Communist and Workers' Parties in Moscow, November 16, 1960)
MARCH 10 Lessons from the Struggle Against Modern Revisionism, Part II: On the True Unity of the International Communist Movement -- (Suggested Reading: Volume XIX)
MARCH 17 On the Opportunist ''Three Worlds Theory" -- A Theory of the Dying Out of the Class Struggle, Part I: Imperialism and the Task of the Revolutionary Proletariat -- (Suggested Reading: "The Theory and Practice of the Revolution")
MARCH 31 On the Opportunist "Three Worlds" Theory", Part II: What Path for the Oppressed Nations?-- (Suggested Reading: "The Theory and Practice of the Revolution")
APRIL 7 Problems of War and Peace -- (Suggested Reading: Lenin, "Socialism and War", "Questions of War and Peace in the Report of Comrade Enver Hoxha to the 7th Congress of the Party of Labor of Albania")
APRIL 14 Social-chauvinism or Proletarian Internationalism-- (Suggested Reading: Enver Hoxha, Report to the 7th Congress of the Party of Labor of Albania, Chapter 5)
ROOM Room 212 BUILDING Finley Student Center, South Campus, CCNY ADDRESS 132nd Street and Convent Avenue (take #1, IRT train to 137th St., walk south to 135th, east uphill to Convent Ave. and south to 132nd St.) TIME 7:00 PM Sponsored by: Sunrise Books, COUSML and CCNY Student Movement For further information, write: COUSML, Box 3232, New York, NY. 10001 Or Visit: Sunrise Books, 2283 Seventh Avenue, (near 135th St.) Open daily from llam-7pm Tel.: 212/xxx-xxxx
CENTRAL ORGANIZATION OF U.S. MARXIST-LENINISTS -- BOSTON BRANCH ANNOUNCES A SERIES OF DISCUSSIONS: IN DEFENSE OF THE PURITY OF MARXISM-LENINISM
Today there is a very lively situation in the U.S. Marxist-Leninist movement. All fundamental questions of Marxism-Leninism are being passionately debated, investigated and fought over by the masses of activists. Experience is being summed up. In a sense, a situation exists today very much like that of the period of the great debates against Khrushchovite revisionism in the early sixties.
At the center of this lively situation is the great movement developing in the U.S. to denounce social- chauvinism, unite the Marxist-Leninists and reconstitute the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party. There has emerged in the U.S. today a trend of open social-chauvinism which has joined hands with the American monopoly capitalist class and is urging the American working class to "direct the main blow against Soviet social-imperialism". This battle between proletarian internationalism and social-chauvinism is part of a great struggle that has emerged internationally between Marxism-Leninism and a new international opportunist trend based on the anti-Leninist "theory of three worlds".
In the face of this attack against Marxism-Leninism and the revolution, what stand must the Marxist-Leninists take? The COUSML - Boston Branch - is organizing this series of discussions to provide a forum for the clarification of the Marxist-Leninist line on the burning questions in the international communist movement today. All Marxist-Leninists, progressive and democratic people are encouraged to participate.
1. SOME MAJOR HISTORICAL LESSONS FROM THE STRUGGLE AGAINST KHRUSHCHOVITE REVISIONISM -- Saturday, February 11, 1978
2. AGAINST THE SOCIAL-CHAUVINIST THEORY OF "DIRECTING THE MAIN BLOW AGAINST SOVIET SOCIAL-IMPERIALISM" -- Saturday, February 25,1978
3.ON WAR AND REVOLUTION -- Saturday, March 3, 1978
4. AGAINST THE ANTI-LENINIST "THEORY OF THREE WORLDS" Saturday, March 18, 1978
5. ON THE MARXIST-LENINIST THEORY OF THE NEW-DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION -- Saturday, March 25, 1978
6. CLOSELY FOLLOW COMRADE ENVER HOXHA, LEADER OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNIST MOVEMENT -- Saturday, April 1, 1978
7. U.S. MARXIST-LENINISTS, UNITE! DENOUNCE SOCIAL-CHAUVINISM! BUILD THE PARTY THROUGH THE REPUDIATION OF REVISIONISM AND OPPORTUNISM! -- Saturday, April 8, 1978
ALL MEETINGS WILL BE HELD AT 7:30 p.m. in the LIBRARY. CAMBRIDGE Y.W.C.A.. 7 Temple St, Cambridge. For further information: Write: COUSML-Boston Box 8934 Boston, Ma. 02114 or Visit: W.Z. Foster Bookstore 91 River Street Cambridge, Ma. 02139
On the crucial question of the Afro-American struggle for liberation, the opportunists have created a disgusting spectacle. The social-chauvinist leaders of the "CP(ML)", formerly the October League, have openly declared their allegiance to world imperialism, U.S. imperialism in particular, in its struggle against the world proletariat and the oppressed peoples and nations. The OL leaders have called on the U.S. proletariat to aim its "main blow" at the Soviet Union, to abandon the proletarian revolution and side with the U.S. superpower in the slaughter of the world's people in the threatened inter-imperialist war with the Soviet superpower. Under the signboard of the anti-Leninist theory of "three worlds", the Klonskyites apologize for U.S. imperialism's vast neo-colonial empire and call on the oppressed nations and peoples to abandon the anti-imperialist struggle. They consider the puppets of U.S. imperialism and even direct U.S. occupation, such as in their support for the new unequal Panama Canal treaty, as factors for "defense" against the alleged "main danger", Soviet social-imperialism. At the very same time, these social-chauvinists brazenly present, as their only excuse for existence, their so-called "position on the national question". From the outset they have built up their reactionary sect on the basis of opposing the "chauvinism" of the Marxist-Leninists, by blurring the struggle between Marxism-Leninism and revisionism and opportunism, and splitting and sabotaging the revolutionary movement under the guise of an alleged defense of the principles of Marxism on the national question., What a despicable farce!
The support of the social-chauvinists for U.S. plunder and aggression abroad, their backing of the aggressive NATO alliance, their love for the Shah of Iran, their demand for the building of more B-l bombers and so on, can in no way be separated from their support for the home rule of U.S. imperialism. Open social-chauvinism is consummated opportunism, an ugly and open alliance between opportunism and the savage rule of monopoly capital and, more exactly, with its state power. This alliance is directed against the majority of the proletariat and against the Afro-American people as well.
The last two decades have fully illustrated the enormous revolutionary force latent in the Afro-American people's struggle for freedom and complete emancipation. The glorious struggles of the Black people have shaken U.S. monopoly capitalism to its very foundations. The proletarian movement for socialism and the national revolutionary movements of the oppressed peoples are the two great revolutionary currents of our epoch and the merging of the Afro-American movement for emancipation and the revolutionary workers' movement will bring about the total demise of the criminal rule of the U.S. monopoly capitalist class. Therefore, if the proletarian revolution in the U.S. is to be victorious, the Afro- American struggle must be defended and must be guided by the most thoroughly revolutionary theory, Marxism-Leninism. This means that the various opportunist theses to attack and divert this movement onto the path of liquidation must be fought tooth and nail.
Modern revisionism is an imperialist ideology which is thoroughly national chauvinist and racist to the core. The neo-revisionist leaders of the OL want to bury the Afro-American struggle for good and are floating a revisionist line. These social-chauvinists have a worked-out and definite program for the liquidation of the Afro-American movement:
a) They systematically and consciously denigrate and downplay the Afro-American struggle against racial discrimination and violent repression, criminally counter-posing this struggle to the Marxist-Leninist principle of the right of nations to self-determination and to socialism. In this way they demand the liquidation of the Afro-American struggle and attempt to turn both the glorious cause of the complete emancipation of the Black people and that of socialism into lifeless phrases;
b) They promote dangerous illusions about, and capitulation to, the state in particular. They maintain the revisionist fallacy that the monopoly capitalist state has "two aspects" and thus can be allied with and relied on as an instrument for the liberation of the Black people. Thus an uncompromising attitude towards, and revolutionary violent struggle against, the state is both unnecessary and undesirable;
c) They deny the particular national oppression of the Black people by way of nefarious theses such as counter-posing the question of racial discrimination to national oppression. In this way they deny the revolutionary nature of the Afro-American movement, its class character, that the target of the Afro-American struggle is the monopoly capitalist system and that this struggle is a component of the proletarian revolution;
d) They turn the whole question of the liberation of the Black people and the unity of the proletariat into a moral issue--not a question of revolutionary struggle against the monopoly capitalist enemy, but one of convincing the white workers to recognize their special responsibilities, etc., ad nauseam.
On the Afro-American people's struggle, as on every other question, the OL social-chauvinists have taken the side of the state and are boosters of the monopoly capitalists' systematic racial discrimination and violent repression practiced against the Black people. They are socialists only in words and racists and fascists in deeds. They are outright socialist-segregationists.
SEGREGATIONISM UNDER THE MANTLE OF "FIGHTING REVISIONISM"
It is a striking fact that the propaganda in the pages of The Call and Class Struggle merges with that of the most rabid reactionary bourgeoisie, including with that of the most rabid segregationists. The social-chauvinists are completely tied up in imperialist politics, as reflected in the notorious principle of the new international opportunist trend -- "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". According to this sick logic, the most anti-communist, fascist elements, from Ronald Reagan and Henry Jackson to Margaret Thatcher, the monarcho-fascist King of Spain and the Shah of Iran, must all have a "progressive aspect" because why else are they "vilified" as reactionaries by the Soviet revisionists? In the same way, the Klonskyites "fight revisionism" and find common ground with the segregationists. They portray the liberals and revisionists as "integrationists" and then fill their press with denunciations of integration. This should not be passed over lightly. To be against integration, the breaking down of the monopoly capitalists' system of strict segregation of U.S. society, is to be a segregationist. It means joining with monopoly capitalist reaction.
The OL leaders hide their segregationism by denouncing the liberals for "integrationism". The social-chauvinists are quite embarassed by their close political affinity with the liberals. So they try to distinguish themselves from these cronies of theirs by denouncing the liberals for promoting "liberal faith in integration" and "integrationist schemes". However, this just further exposes the Klonskyites' faith in the liberals and reveals the segregationism of the OL.
The liberals which the Klonskyites are referring to, the Kennedy's, etc. , are political representatives of the big bourgeoisie which dominate the Congress, the local administrations of the big cities, and even presently the White House. These so-called liberals are disguised fascists and give lip-service to integration only to paralyze and block any real struggle against racial discrimination and violent repression and to actually further segregate the society. Nevertheless the OL leaders believe in the deception of the liberals- according to their logic it would follow that the Black people are driven into the ghettos. etc., against the will of the government, i.e., the liberals --leading to the conclusion that pushing segregation is the way to fight the liberals and their "integrationist schemes"!
The Klonskyites' great "criticism" of the revisionists on the national question amounts to the same thing. For sake of demagogy the revisionist party is forced to say that it is "against racism", "for integration" and so on and so forth. However, no one but the Grand Dragon of the Klan, or some similar animal, would rage against the revisionists, not for their sabotage of the struggle against racial discrimination and violent repression, but for their verbal opposition to segregation. Yet this is exactly what the Klonskyites do. In the October 10, 1977 issue of The Call, for instance, the revisionists are denounced for calling for "'assimilation' and 'integration' under capitalism":
"Jackson (a revisionist leader -- ed.) concludes, 'Therefore, we are in our personal attitudes and our personal assessments integrationsts, assimilationists....
"Jackson even goes so far down the reformist road as to suggest 'intermarriage' as a solution for eliminating differences between the oppressed and oppressor nations". This is extremely revealing, not of the notorious reformist bankruptcy of the revisionists, but of the fact that the OL leaders are denouncing integration and even raising the lynch-mob bogey of "intermarriage" under the hoax of opposing revisionism. The proletarians of all nationalities have a burning hatred for the racial segregation of the society which the monopoly capitalist dictatorship enforces, but the Klonskyites attribute this real mass hatred which the workers have to a concoction of the leaders of the revisionist party. They scold, in the jargon of the crudest racial slur, that "All this longing for 'togetherness' by Jackson is very touching..." (cited above)
What does it mean for the OL leaders to rave against the liberal "integrationsts" and the "integrationism of the CPUSA" (1) for "preach(ing) 'peaceful integration' under the present system" (2) and for "calling for 'assimilation' and 'integration' under capitalism"? (3) It means to tell the masses to abandon the struggle today in the real world and to wait for socialism or maybe communism to arrive in the future. Under the pretext of exposing the inevitability of crimes under imperialism, the OL leaders are trying to reconcile the masses to these crimes, to dampen the outrage of the masses. The Klonskyites rave against "integration under capitalism" because they are boosters of "segregation under capitalism". The question of "peaceful" is just a red herring to confuse the issue since the OL and the revisionists are united on the question of "peaceful". How would OL's logic apply to the working class movement for example. The workers' fight for higher wages all the time but "high wages under capitalism" for the mass of workers is, of course, impossible. Thus, should the Marxist-Leninists denounce the workers' economic struggles as "revisionist" on the grounds they demand "higher wages under the present system"? These socialist-segregationists are stooping to the meanest sophistry in their enthusiasm to prop up the medieval Jim Crow system.
The OL leaders have adopted the slogans of thestate-organized fascist anti-busing movement as their own, including the fascist demagogy against so-called "forced busing". They even attempt to glorify the segregated ghetto schools, virtual police dungeons where the Black youth are held to be bombarded with the imperialists' racist slave culture, as institutions for preserving the national culture of the Black people! According to The Call: "The view that integration under capitalism is the solution will only weaken the real struggle for self-determination. Where national oppression exists, national culture and national unity must also be protected. This is the basis upon which many minority communities have opposed forced busing." (4) Louise Day Hicks herself could not have put forward a better argument for her so-called "neighborhood school system", a school system which "protects" "national culture and national unity", i.e., segregated schools.
The same article continues: "They (the liberals -- ed.) have continually added fuel to the racist fire by saying that only by rubbing elbows with white kids can Black and other minority kids learn. Their whole integrationist scheme is based upon white supremacist assumptions about education." One might wonder what this vile racist rot about "rubbing elbows" is doing in an allegedly 'socialist" newspaper. It appears that these self-styled "communists' have joined the Wallaceite fascists in their campaign against the "liberal race mixers". The government itself cannot openly declare support of racism and segregation but must promote it surreptitiously and through its various agents. Even Carter was forced to apologize for his statement on protecting "ethnic purity" in relation to the schools, which is every bit equal to the Klonskyite demand for protection of "national unity". The opportunists are pushing Wallaceite segregationism under the banner of the "right to self-determination", "Marxism-Leninism" and even mainly "fighting revisionism".
THE STRUGGLE AGAINST RACIAL DISCRIMINATION AND VIOLENT REPRESSION IS INSEPARABLY "LINKED" TO THE STRUGGLE FOR THE COMPLETE EMANCIPATION OF THE BLACK PEOPLE
Klonsky boasts that his social-chauvinist trend has clearly demarcated itself from every other trend on the issue of the national question. This rotten trend has indeed distinguished itself, with its most consistent opposition to the Afro-American movement for complete emancipation, to the revolutionary national and class struggles of the proletariat and oppressed peoples. The Klonskyites have brutally distorted the Marxist-Leninist principle of the right of nations to self-determination. They have placed their distortion on an altar and use it to grovel in front of the bourgeois state and as a club to denigrate and smash up the Afro-American struggle. The basic neo-revisionist thesis is opposition to the struggle against racial discrimination and violent repression under the hoax that "integration is revisionist". According to the OL "theoreticians":
"While the fight for democratic rights is for equality and democratization of society in general, the right of self-determination is the crowning point of that struggle.... Whereas the struggle for democratic rights is basically a fight for reforms, the struggle for self-determination is one that cannot be won without the revolutionary winning of state power.... We link this struggle in much the same way that the economic struggle of the workers must be linked to the fight for socialism." (5) and further:
"The logic of the revisionist position is that Black liberation depends on waging a fight against 'racial discrimination' in the superstructure.... This position. in essence, rejects revolution and substitutes gradual reforms within the imperialist system." (6)
From this one hundred percent theoretical gibberish, the gist of this "dialectical" confusion is clear enough: prettification of U.S. monopoly capitalist rule and all-round liquidation of the Afro-American struggle.
The opportunists of all hues have developed an entire system for diverting and paralyzing each of the revolutionary mass movements under the guise of raising so-called "higher demands". According to the neo-revisionism dogma, the differentiation between a reformist and a revolutionary position is whether or not the actual issues on which various class struggles are fought are in some way "linked" to "higher demands and objectives". This is a favorite neo-revisionist prescription for sapping the strength of the revolutionary movements. The social- chauvinists lecture the Black people to not rise in struggle against their oppressors. Why should you struggle for "democratic rights" --which, according to the Klonskyite boosters of American "democracy", are only a matter of "gradual reforms" achievable "within the imperialist system" --when there are "higher objectives" and "crowning points" to prostrate yourself before. From this standpoint these socialist-segregationists land themselves in the absurd position of renouncing the struggle against "racial discrimination" (they put this term in quotation marks to make it seem ironic and maybe only a figment of the "integrationists'" imagination) as "in essence, rejecting revolution" and the basis of the "revisionist position".
It is quite instructive that the OL scribblers have "linked" their recipe for the liquidation of the Afro-American movement to their anarcho-syndicalist schemes for paralyzing the working-class movement as well: "Whereas the struggle for democratic rights is basically a fight for reforms, the struggle for self-determination is one that cannot be won without the revolutionary winning of state power.... We link this struggle in much the same way that the economic struggle of the workers must be linked to the fight for socialism." Thus, according to this formula, the proletarian struggle on the economic front is not a constant struggle between labor and capital, a component of the "fight for socialism", absolutely mandatory at all times. To the contrary, the neo-revisionists are carrying out a great deal of disruptive activity to sabotage the economic struggle of the proletariat, to restrict it, put rules on it and even to outlaw it altogether for the class-conscious workers in the name of opposing "reformism" and "economism", under the guise of raising "higher demands" and the "fight for socialism". This disruptive demagogy is particularly criminal at the present time as the big bourgeoisie is attempting to extricate itself from the deep economic crisis of monopoly capitalism by expending every effort to shift the entire burden of the crisis onto the shoulders of the working masses.
The Marxist-Leninist position contends that the Afro-American struggle against racial discrimination as well as the economic struggle of the workers are already part of the struggle against the monopoly capitalist class enemy and that these struggles do not have to be "linked" to anything. Every current of opposition must be merged into one mighty torrent of revolutionary struggle. It is the task of the proletarian revolutionaries to advance the revolutionary mass movements, to strive to push forward the struggles of the proletariat and the oppressed people on all fronts and "levels" against the main enemy. It is the job of reactionary sophists to demoralize the revolutionary movements, to denigrate them on the grounds that the outrages of monopoly capitalist reaction, which have aroused the masses in struggle, are not important, that the masses are making sacrifices over trivialities and not engaging in the "real struggle". What further delineates revolutionary practice in these struggles, no matter whether for so-called "higher demands" or "lower" ones, is whether or not they are utilized to win the masses to the Marxist- Leninist political line, to train the proletariat and oppressed people for the proletarian revolution, for the violent overthrow of the existing order. It is on these points that the OL social-chauvinists fall flat on their yellow backsides into the reformist camp.
MONOPOLY CAPITALISM HAS NO "ROOM" FOR THE EMANCIPATION OF THE BLACK PEOPLE
The OL neo-revisionist "theoreticians" have for a long time been creating a big stink over the "achievability" and "unachievability" of various demands of democracy. On the one hand, the Klonskyite windbags bluster the most outrageous apologetics for monopoly capitalism; that democratic rights for the Black people and the end of "racial discrimination in the superstructure" is a non-revolutionary "reform" because it is part of democratization of society in general", allegedly achievable "within the imperialist system". On the other hand, they shout from the rooftops their balderdash that the demand for the right to self-determination is the only revolutionary one because allegedly it is the only one which cannot be won without the "revolutionary winning of state power". This entire song and dance over the question of whether this or that democratic demand is achievable under monopoly capitalism is one hundred percent theoretical gibberish. Both the elimination of racial discrimination and violent repression as well as the right of a nation to self-determination are part of "democratization of society in general", no more, and no less. It is imperialist economism and sinister demagogy to raise the fraud of "achievability" to negate the important democratic tasks of the revolution. Lenin teaches that: "...in general any major democratic transformations... are 'unachievable' without a series of revolutions and are unstable without socialism. Kievsky has wholly and completely failed to understand the relation of imperialism to democracy." (7) To denigrate the significance of the democratic tasks of the proletarian revolution on the basis of their "achievability" is to curb the revolution itself and deny the reactionary nature of monopoly capitalism and prettify the growing fascization of world imperialism.
It should be noted that the OL leaders have definite objectives in pushing the straightforward fraud of the alleged unachievability of the right to self-determination under imperialism. Especially since World War II, the U.S. imperialists have built up a vast neo-colonial empire based on formally "politically independent" neo-colonies that are bound with a thousand strings to the U.S. imperialist yoke. The fetishism of the social-chauvinists on the right to political independence is part of their denial of the national liberation movements and their glorification of the formally independent neo-colonies, "third world countries" such as Pinochet's Chile, Iran, the Philippines, etc. This is not separate from the Klonskyites' attempt to wipe out the Afro-American struggle against racial discrimination and violent repression in the name of the right to formal independence.
The social-chauvinists' prettification of the barbaric home rule of U.S. imperialism is particularly significant.
According to the great Lenin:
"The Negroes were the last to be freed from slavery, and they still bear, more than anyone else, the cruel marks of slavery -- even in advanced countries -- for capitalism has no 'room' for other than legal emancipation, and even the latter it curtails in every possible way.
"... Furthermore, everyone knows that the position of the Negroes in America in general is one unworthy of a civilized country -- capitalism cannot give either complete emancipation or even complete equality....
"Shame on America for the plight of the Negroes!" (8)
Lenin's analysis is the only communist line and has been completely confirmed by events. Monopoly capitalism cannot grant "democracy" to the Black people who must wage titanic struggles against the medieval barbarism of the monopoly capitalist state to achieve the most limited sort of "rights". Almost anywhere outside of the Black ghettos is "off-limits" for the Black people after sundown, the ghettos themselves are virtual police camps where the youth of the Afro-American people are attacked and gunned down like animals and the most simple demands, such as the use of a public water fountain, have only been won through the shedding of blood and fierce struggle.
Monopoly capitalism means reaction all along the line and U.S. imperialism is the most savage, blood-soaked power known to the history of mankind. Capitalism rose and throve on the enslavement of the Black people and today practices a system of the most barbaric, medieval oppression of the Afro- American people. Blacks are maintained as a super-exploited section of the population, subject to the most inhuman discrimination and violent repression. At the present, the monopoly capitalists are seeking revenge for the losses suffered from the great Afro- American struggles of the 60's. They are stepping up their attacks on the Black people and the other oppressed nationalities as the cutting edge of the growing fascization of society.
What is the conclusion to be drawn from the fact that for the more than 20 million Afro-Americans -- over 90 per cent of whom are modern proletarians, who are a doubly and triply oppressed section with an extremely glorious tradition of struggle against colonialism, slavery and monopoly capitalism -- there is no "room" for equality or emancipation under capitalism? The only conclusion can be that the movement against racial discrimination and violent repression is in fact a revolutionary movement, a great motive force and lever for the overthrow of U.S. monopoly capitalism. The very prospects for the emancipation of the Black people and the liberation of the entire proletariat, in effect, depends on the development of this struggle. A revolutionary position is not determined by any sectarian formulation, but is one which actually pushes forward the struggle of the Black people against oppression by monopoly capitalism and its state power.
IMPERIALIST ECONOMISM IN CRUDE FORM
Only the worst phrase-mongering traitorsof the Klonsky type could declare that "the logic of the revisionist position is that Black liberation depends on a fight against 'racial discrimination' in the superstructure". This is imperialist economism in crude form, liquidation of the struggle for democracy as a necessary component of the proletarian socialist revolution. It is liquidation both from the extreme right and "left" positions.
From the extreme right, the Klonskyites tell the Afro-American people to leave the struggle to the monopoly capitalist liberals, who they criminally portray as being for "integration" and "civil rights", and to "government policies" which they allege to be the "only concrete measure" (9) to "protect" the national minorities. Often times their agitation sounds like an advertisement from the federal Equal Employment Opportunities Commission which they assert to be "one of the few government agencies that poor and minority people have been able to use to get some of their democratic rights". (10) (It should be pointed out that this was written back when Nixon was still in office and The Call was still warning of the danger of a "fascist tide". Since that time Carter has been put in office and The Call has given up on the "fascist tide" and has taken to cheering on allegedly "democratic" U.S. imperialism in its rivalry with the so- called "main danger", the allegedly fascist, as compared to the U.S., Soviet social-imperialism. Presumably now there may no longer be only "a few government agencies", but possibly several dozen have opened which the social-chauvinists will claim the oppressed people are "able to use to get some of their democratic rights".)
The OL's fanatical apologetics for the savage rule of U.S. monopoly capitalism go to the extent of hailing the U.S. state as "the world's foremost bourgeois democracy". (11) It is from this prettification of monopoly capitalism that the struggle against racial discrimination is denounced as non-revolutionary and thrown out the window as an issue of little interest to the socialist proletariat.
And from the "left" the Klonskyites arrogantly proclaim the struggle against the national oppression of the Black people as useless reformism -- that the fierce struggle against the state suppression of the Black people, the fight against monopoly capitalism can lead nowhere.
The 1960's witnessed the great rebellion of the Afro-American people which smashed up a few of the most blatant aspects of the Jim Crow system. The Black people did not win their liberation through this struggle despite its great intensity and strength. In fact, the Afro-American movement has been set back in the face of the reactionary alliance between the state, the sold-out upper stratum within the Black community and the influence of revisionism, pacifism, terrorism, anarchism, cultural nationalism and opportunism of every hue within the revolutionary ranks. As a result, the Black people today face a grave situation.
The Marxist-Leninists conclude from this experience that the Afro-American struggle for freedom must intensify, that it must become more conscious, and that the struggle will inevitably meet disaster if it is not led by the proletariat, by the theory of Marxism-Leninism and by the Marxist-Leninist party. The conclusions of the opportunists, on the other hand, are quite different. According to the Klonskyites, the struggle "failed" because the glorious struggles against racial discrimination and violent repression "mean nothing":
"Even the victories that were won in desegregation, and legal reforms produced no improvement in the conditions of the masses of poor and working Blacks. In the 15-year period between 1949 and 1964, the median annual income for non-white families increased from $1650 to $3800. The median for whites increased from $3200 to more than $6800 during the same period. The disparity between white and nonwhite annual income in 1949 had been less than $1600. By 1964, the gap was more than $3000.
"These experiences cast doubt on the whole program for peaceful integration. ...
'"Black Power'... summed up the main lesson learned by the masses during the civil rights phase of the movement ; legal rights mean nothing without political power to enforce them."(12) (It should be noted that the socialist-segregationists have a series of code words such as ''peaceful integration" and "legal rights" which they use as ironic euphemisms for the struggle against racial discrimination, to portray the struggle as petty and "reformist".)
Thus, the Klonskyites lecture the masses on how ridiculous the brave fighters were to shed their blood in the struggle to smash up the Jim Crow system. What else can it mean to declare that "the victories in desegregation... produced no improvement in the conditions of the masses"? It is irrelevant to the OL leaders if the "white only" signs are put back on the restaurant entrances, bus stations and drinking fountains and if the Black people must suffer every sort of medieval humiliation. (In their vulgar attempt to equate the concept of "conditions" with that of income levels and to prove that the struggle against racial discrimination doesn't effect wage rates, the OL "theoreticians" have taken to statistics juggling. According to their own figures, the nominal income of the Blacks actually increased percent- wise more rapidly than those of the whites, while less rapidly in absolute terms. However, the use of an overall average statistic in this way is an attempt to hide what is taking place in the economy, the effects of the upsurge of the Afro-American movement, the mass ruin of the Black farmers and the influx of Blacks into modern industry, etc. --all to demonstrate what a good life the Black people have under the Jim Crow system.) To preach to the proletariat not to concern itself with conditions on the front of democracy on the grounds that it will not raise wages is the line of the casehardened labor aristocrats of the George Meany stripe.
Equally devastating is the truly brilliant formulation that "legal rights mean nothing without political power to enforce them". This absurdity, repeated over and over again, is all the more revealing in that it is printed in the pages of The Call. The agitation in this newspaper has never gone beyond the most timid legalist politics of the ACLU liberals, and any ordinary person reading it would be convinced that the very fate of the OL's "revolution" rested in the hands of the judges and juries of an endless series of court proceedings. One might ask these charlatans why they bother to campaign to free Gary Tyler, for example, which according to their perverted logic, is nothing but a "legal right which means nothing without political power". Maybe it is because they have a deal in the case for a soft job or even a seat in the Lousiana legislature which they are keeping on the quiet. This demagogical ranting about so-called "political power" is truly on a par with the mad ravings of the trotskyites who denounce every and all things which are revolutionary and progressive on the grounds that they are not for "direct socialism" and "soviet power".
THE SOCIAL-CHAUVINISTS ARE PAST MASTERS AT PUSHING CAPITULATION
The question of a revolutionary, irreconcilable attitude towards the monopoly capitalist state is of decisive significance for determining genuine Marxist-Leninists from sham ones and real upholders of the Afro-American struggle from real traitors to the Black people. Social-chauvinism means not just going over to the side of imperialism in general, but defense of "one's own" bourgeois state power in particular. Nowhere is this more clearly illustrated than in the actual agitation of the Klonskyites in the Afro-American movement. Hand in hand with all of their so-called "principles" and "positions" comes the most craven capitulation to, and illusion-mongering about, the state machine of the monopoly capitalist enemy.
The struggle against the fascist anti-busing movement has provided a real test for the various theories in practice. The COUSMI analyzed the anti-busing movement as a dangerous, anti-working class, fascist movement of attack on the Afro-American people. This fascist movement has been organized by the monopoly capitalist state, both through the open racists as well as through the "liberal" politicians, courts, etc., which are concocting busing programs in such a way as to stir up maximum opposition and then ordering the masses to "obey the law" in the face of racist attacks on the Black people, thus also helping organize the fascist movement. While supporting any integration that may result from the various busing programs, the COUSML has exposed the state as the organizer of the fascist anti-busing movement and has worked to lead the masses in active resistance to racist and fascist attacks, facing the wrath of the state and the arrest of several comrades. This work has resulted in real victories for the progressive forces and real set-backs to the fascist anti-busing movement in Louisville, Seattle and other places.
The opportunists did not do so well. One group joined with the fascist anti-busing movement and others made a few bold declarations and then disappeared from the scene. While in Boston, the OL leaders were terrified in the face of a real fascist movement and did not know what to do. First they denounced the government for "weakening the real struggle" with its "integrationist schemes". (13) But when they found that their "real struggle for self-determination" (which in the situation in Boston they concluded meant protecting the "national unity" of the segregated schools) was getting them nowhere, they called in the federal troops! (13) They denounced the very government which was organizing the racist attacks for not calling out more police and federal troops, the very same goons which were suppressing the Black community and the anti-fascists from hitting back against the racist and fascist attacks.
Sherman Miller of the OL Central Committee explained the logic of this as follows; "What do you do when a fascist lynch mob is attacking the Blacks? Do you promote armed self-defense as the basic strategic line, while at the same time tactically taking advantage of contradictions in the enemy camp by demanding that the police break up the fascist gangs and provide effective legal protection?" (emphasis as in original) (14) Miller's explanation provides rich lessons in the "strategy and tactics" of the neo-revisionists. "Strategically" you talk "militant" in order to throw sand in the eyes of the masses while you pursue your "tactics" of collaboration with the state machine. The opportunists are great protagonists of "armed struggle", boasting about the "armies" they are going to build and the heroic deeds they are going to perform -- in the future. However, in the present they are pacifist liberals, resorting to the classic revisionist trick of allegedly "taking advantage of contradictions in the enemy camp" in order to call in the police and create illusions about the racist and fascist state providing "effective legal protection" for the Black people. Revolutionary methods of struggle against the fascist anti-busing movement, whether armed or unarmed, are those which actually mobilize the masses to wage active resistance to state-organized racist attacks. But to "promote armed self- defense as the basic strategic line" is to promote no resistance whatsoever and to push capitulation in the face of racist attacks. To call for more police at the very time when The Call itself pointed out that "the role of the cops has been mainly to suppress the efforts of the Black community to defend itself and to occupy the community" (15), whether they are called in "tactically" or otherwise, is to go over to the side of the enemy.
In their agitation on the Bakke decision, the OL leaders let the cat out of the bag, exposing the real life content behind all their bluster. According to The Call:
"The fight against the Bakke decision is part and parcel of the struggles for Afro-American self-determination, Chicano regional autonomy in the Southwest and Puerto Rican independence, as well as for the full democratic rights of all national minorities. Unless these rights can be won through revolutionary struggle for socialism, all of the lesser reforms will only be grabbed back in the periods of crisis, as we are witnessing today.
"In the meantime, this long history of national oppression under capitalism makes policies of affirmative action and compensative programs necessary. Rather than being 'racism in reverse', these programs are the only concrete measure that can preserve at least the minimal gains of minorities and women through hundreds of years of oppression and discrimination." (16)
This is a real gem which anyone with the slightest confusion about where these characters stand in the world should examine closely. Previously it was widely held among progressive people that the U.S. monopoly capitalist state is racist to the core and the primary instrument of the cruel national oppression of the Black people. But according to this, the "hundreds of years" and "long history of national oppression" are part of past history and now the issue is "compensative programs" to make up for past injustice. But that is not all, the state has become the number one instrument for the liberation of the Black people as "these programs (of the U.S. government!) are the only concrete measure that can preserve at least the minimal gains of minorities and women".
This is the actual line of the social-chauvinists, a line indistinguishable from that of the President's Civil Rights Commission except for the paragraph of trotskyite phrase-mongering with which they introduce the question. The OL windbags explain that "The fight against the Bakke decision is part and parcel of the struggles for Afro-American self-determination, Chicano regional autonomy in the Southwest and Puerto Rican independence, as well as for full democratic rights of all national minorities". Then, after "linking" the struggle to "higher demands", they further wash their hands of any trace of "reformism" by denouncing lesser reforms" as not worthwhile because they "will only be grabbed back in periods of crisis". Not only that, but these "higher demands", Puerto Rican independence, etc., can only "be won through revolutionary struggle for socialism". Just let someone try to beat that for a "left" position!
But then comes the inevitable catch, where they sneak in their reformist drivel that reads like it was lifted from the article "Affirmative Action: Road to Genuine Equality" by the revisionist jackal, Henry Winston, national chairman of the revisionist party. (17) The Klonskyites write: "In the meantime" (it is not quite clear what time span they are referring to here; either between now and the time that socialism falls from heaven, or between now and the time the OL leaders repent for their treachery and decide to take up "the revolutionary struggle for socialism", at any rate, at the present) "the only concrete measures" to protect the Black people are the "policies" and "programs" of the U.S. government! This is not a question of the merits and demerits of "affirmative action", but a fundamental question of which path for the liberation of the Black people, through government policies and reliance on the state, or through revolutionary struggle and the proletarian revolution.
Thus, the Klonskyites have adopted the Khrushchovite revisionist theory of the state having "two aspects", that the police and military forces, various government agencies, policies and programs can act as instruments for the emancipation of the oppressed masses. This revisionist theory of the "two aspects" of the state led to the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of communists and revolutionary workers and peasants in Indonesia, Chile and elsewhere. And now, the social-chauvinists are peddling this same capitulationist line in an attempt to extinguish the flames of revolutionary struggle in the U.S.
THE LINE OF THE SOCIAL-CHAUVINISTS IS THE LINE OF THE STATE
The opportunist champions of the "National Question" pretend that their "positions" truly uphold the revolutionary work of the Third International and the best traditions of the Communist Party when it was still a Marxist-Leninist party. But this is not where their "positions" come from because the Communist International and its American Section, the then-revolutionary CPUSA, stood for the social revolution. The social-chauvinists are right-wing dogmatists and believe that the repudiation of modern revisionism hangs on a formulation and is not a question of social practice. They believe, for instance, that one can side with one's "own" bourgeoisie in an inter-imperialist war and remain "Marxist-Leninist" as long as you swear in your documents to such and such formulations, from one to ten. On the question of the Afro- American struggle these opportunists are parroting the line of the Gus Hall revisionists, all the while pretending to be the keeper of the archives of the Marxist-Leninist traditions. However, to just say that the neo-revisionist line parallels that of the revisionists is not enough. The revisionist leaders do not arrive at their positions independently, but if you examine their development, the revisionist lines shift to correspond with what the monopoly capitalist state is promoting at the time. So, too, with the Klonskyite "position".
The OL social-chauvinists are peddling a reactionary line fitted to the great-nation chauvinism of the U.S. imperialist bourgeoisie. The big "debate" concocted by the opportunists over whether the "narrow nationalism of the Blacks or the "white chauvinism" of the white workers presents "the main danger" is a is a ruse to take the monopoly capitalist ruling circles off the hook. It is a cover to hide the fact that the "narrow nationalism" of the OL leaders is not that of the very weak, politically and economically, Black propertied classes. To the contrary, it is the reactionary nationalism of the U.S. imperialists, financed by the likes of the Ford Foundation and pushed by the state machine at all levels.
In the early days of the civil rights movement, the state not only attacked the anti-racist struggle with police dogs and fire hoses but also used deception and tried to lead this movement, feigning support for civil rights in order to deep the struggle in bounds, etc. By 1964-5, the restrictions of legalism and nonviolence were being shattered and the great Afro- American rebellions started to sweep the country. The state shifted its tactics accordingly. The political police sponsored the cultural nationalists with their slogan of "Black Power". The term "Black power", in itself, could be used to mean different things but it was pushed by the police as a definite capitulationist line in an attempt to stop the struggle within the movement between passive non-violence and active revolutionary struggle and to keep the advanced section away from Marxism-Leninism, to split the mass movements and divert the Afro-American struggle into dead-end "alternative power" schemes. These politics were financially backed by such institutions as the Ford Foundation and its "community control" programs. Also, in 1968, the President's Kerner Commission on Civil Disorders released its report, pointing out that the old bought-off stratum within the Afro-American community had lost its influence over the masses of Black people and called for the creation of a new stratum of privileged Blacks with its own niche within the state.
These concepts were taken up from top to bottom by the revisionists and, later, by the Klonskyites as well. The OL leaders are simply lying when they try to portray the revisionist line as one of "peaceful integration" and so on. The revisionists talked a great deal about integration and civil rights in the early sixties when they were following the line of their mentor, the arch-imperialist J.F. Kennedy. But by the late sixties, the line of the state had shifted and so had that of the revisionists. In the "New Program of the Communist Party U.S.A." of 1970, the concept of integration is not to be found. Instead, they promote such concepts as: "Black people must strive to secure community forms of control"; "Black control over Black communities in the South"; "the right to develop self-government"; and "achievement of political power by Black people". The revisionists do not even raise the question of the desegregation of the schools in their program, but are very excited about "community control". These concepts characterize the line of the revisionist party over the last decade and have been adopted by the social-chauvinists as well and are written into, for example, the October League's 3rd Congress resolutions:
'"Black Power' expressed the growing consciousness of Afro-Americans that they are an oppressed nation whose road to equality lies through self-government and that they should be the controlling forces of their major concentration--in the urban ghettoes of the North, as well as the Black Belt area of the South. (18)
Thus the Klonskyites are simply mimicking the line which the revisionists adopted in the late sixties to sabotage the Afro-American movement's great upsurge. (Recently the revisionists have again started to shift their line to suit the interests of imperialism and social-imperialism.)
The Klonskyites contend that the Afro-American struggle against racial discrimination and violent repression and for the overthrow of monopoly capital and the smashing of its state power and thus for complete emancipation, should be abandoned. Instead, the Black people should work for the socialist-segregationists' glorified schemes for the Bantustanization of the Afro-Americans inside isolated ghettos and for the "goal of autonomous political power" (ibid.) and thus strive for a segregated niche within the existing state. Among the Afro-Americans, these politics have the most currency within that sector with the closest ties to the state, elected officials and others inside the government apparatus, with positions in poverty and other programs, in the universities, etc. In effect, the much touted "position on the national question" of the OL chieftains is nothing but the line of the state disguised under high faluting "Marxist" phraseology.
FOOTNOTES
1. The Call, July 1975, in the review of Haywood's "Toward a Revolutionary Position on the Negro Question", under subhead "Revisionists Preach Integration", p. 15
2. The Call, April 11, 1977, "New Draft Program Welcomed", p. 6
3. The Call, October 10, 1977, "Behind CP's Attack on Nationalism", p. 11
4. The Call, November 1974
5. The Call, January, 1975, "The Right to Self- Determination Is Our Revolutionary Policy"
6. Resolution of the 3rd National Congress of the October League (Marxist-Leninist), "The Struggle for Black Liberation and Socialist Revolution", p. 62
7. V.I. Lenin, "A Caricature of Marxism and Imperialist Economism", Collected Works, Vol. 23, p. 54
8. V.I. Lenin, "Russians and Negroes", Collected Works, Vol. 18. pp. 53-54
9. The Call, October 24, 1977, "Bakke -- Legacy of National Oppression", p. 10
10. The Call, December, 1973, "Nixon Administration Beheads Equal Opportunities Commission", p. 5
11. "The Struggle to Free Gary Tyler", p. 6
12. Resolution of the 3rd National Congress of the October League (Marxist-Leninist), pp. 46-47
13. The Call, November, 1974
14. Class Struggle, No. 4-5, 1976, p. 10
15. The Call, November 1974
16. The Call, October 24, 1977, "Bakke -- Legacy of National Oppression", p. 10
17. Political Affairs, February 1978
18. Resolution of the 3rd National Congress of the October League (Marxist-Leninist), p. 47 End.
[Cartoon]
We are serializing the pamphlet "Why Did the 'RCP, USA' Split?' The complete pamphlet is available from the COUSML, P.O. Box 11942, Ft. Dearborn Station, Chicago, IL 60611, for 50 cents.
Table of Contents INTRODUCTION: WHY DID THE "RCP, USA" SPLIT?
SPEECH ON THE "RCP, USA"
I. In Practice the "RCP" Ends Up Giving the Same Political Line As the OL Social-Chauvinists: Iran, "Zaire", Ethiopia, Fascist Anti-Busing Movement
II. How the "RCP" Lays the Ideological Basis for OL Social-Chauvinism
"The first point which should be taken very seriously is that the RCP is against the struggle against opportunism, even in theory as well as in practice."
"The second point is that the RCP's line essentially is that you should count missiles to see if the superpowers are equal."
"The third point is that RCP denies the basic Marxist-Leninist teachings on war, namely, that war is the continuation of politics by other, i.e. violent, means."
"The fourth point is that the RCP is doing a tremendous amount of ideological work on the theme that we are not presently in a revolutionary situation."
"The fifth point is that the RCP claims that we are living in a classical bourgeois democracy and denies the question of fascization."
"The sixth point is the RCP's support of the 'theory of three worlds'."
"The seventh point is the RCP has actually come out to directly cover for OL's lines and to deny that OL gives various social-chauvinist positions."
"The eighth point is RCP's method in giving ideological grounds for social-chauvinism. Their method is to use the line that 'everything is so complex, wow' and anyone who clarifies something must be a 'dogmatist'."
"The ninth point is that the RCP is opposed to revolutionary authority."
APPENDIX: ACTION GROUPS AND SIDE-LINE PAMPHLETEERS (Excerpts from a speech on organizational questions)
INTRODUCTION: WHY DID THE "RCP,USA" SPLIT?
Today the central, pivotal issue in the U.S. Marxist-Leninist movement is the question of how to fight social-chauvinism. There are two paths being put before the American proletariat: to prepare for revolution as a contingent of the forces of the world proletarian socialist revolution,, or to join the U.S. imperialist war front, be part of the forces of world reaction, and cower as slavish cannon-fodder under under the U.S. imperialist nuclear umbrella. The October League Klonskyites, now absurdly masquerading as the ''Communist (read: Chauvinist) Party (Marxist-Leninist)", have come out into the open as raving defenders of the U.S. imperialist fatherland. Their doctrine of "directing the main blow against the Soviet social-imperialists" is an open declaration of class treason, it is a pledge to the U.S. imperialists that the Klonskyites will be loyal soldiers for imperialism and fascism against the world revolution, it is a Klonskyite loyalty oath for the threatened inter-imperialist third world war, it is a program for splitting the proletariat and diverting it from revolution with lurid horror stories about the foreign threat. The anti-Leninist theory of "three worlds" is the theoretical basis of the national and social superpower chauvinism of the Klonskyite thesis of "directing the main blow" at the foreign threat. The theory of "three worlds" is an attempt to negate Marxism-Leninism as allegedly "outdated" by new developments, it is an open banner of replacing living, revolutionary Marxism-Leninism with dead modern revisionism. It is no accident that internationally the "three worlders" are reversing the verdict on the Titoite revisionists and trying to smuggle into the ranks of the people all the poisonous Khrushchovite, Browderite and Euro-communist revisionist theories, such as that revolution does not apply to "advanced" capitalist society. The theory of "three worlds" prettifies the entire world system of imperialism and slavery and is especially adapted to the defense of U.S. imperialism, as it openly supports the vast U.S. colonial and neo-colonial empire, as well as U.S. domination of Western Europe and Japan, presenting U.S. colonialism, domination and hegemony as alleged "guarantees" of independence and "protection" against Soviet social-imperialism.
The U.S. Marxist-Leninist movement is split into two camps. There is the camp of those who wish to and actually do fight social-chauvinism and who work towards the re-constitution of the Marxist-Leninist Party. This camp is led by the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists. And there is the camp of the social-chauvinists, the Camp of the anti-Marxists hiding under the banner of sham Marxism-Leninism and "three worlds-ism" in order to deceive the proletariat and people. This camp is led by the Klonskyites, the new Browderites. The formerly hidden social-chauvinism of the opportunists has jumped out into the open in the open social-chauvinist treason of the Klonskyite camp. Everyone and every organization is being tested in the great struggle against the revisionist treachery and social-chauvinism of the Klonskyite "three worlders". This struggle has surged forward in the past year and one half since the COUSML issued its calls "Mao Tsetung Thought or Social-Chauvinism, A Comment on the October League's Call for 'Unity of the Marxist-Leninists' " on Sept. 1, 1976 and "U.S. Marxist-Leninists, Unite in Struggle Against Social-Chauvinism! Proletarian Revolution in the U.S. Is Our Sacred Internationalist Duty!" on March 10, 1977. This struggle is part of fierce struggle inside the international communist movement against international revisionism and opportunism. It is Comrade Enver Hoxha who, in the difficult period following the death of the great helmsman Chairman Mao Tsetung, took up the task of leadership of the international communist movement with his historic Report to the Seventh Congress of the Party of Labor of Albania. Comrade Hoxha's Report has been a great rallying point for the struggle against modem revisionism and "three worlds-ism". Since then work has gone forward with a swing. A whole series of internationalist rallies and joint statements of Marxist-Leninist parties in Europe and Latin America has marked a new upsurge and a new unity in the international Marxist-Leninist communist movement. The editorial "The Theory and Practice of the Revolution" of Zeri i Popullit, organ of the Central Committee of the Party of Labor of Albania, has further exposed the anti-Leninist and counter-revolutionary nature of the theory of "three worlds". The true Marxist-Leninist parties the world over are gloriously marching forward. They are defying the doom and gloom of the bourgeoisie and the bourgeois echo, the opportunists, and are teaching the proletariat to organize itself to lead the struggle to build a new world, to smash the old to build the new. In the present struggle, international communism :s re- invigorating itself, purging itself of a number of internal enemies and conciliators of revisionism, and preparing itself and the proletariat for the glorious task of leading a new wave of revolutions in the present storm-and-stress period.
As the struggle against revisionism, social-chauvinism and "three worlds-ism" sharpened both domestically and internationally, in early 1978 the "RCP, USA" split. The turmoil in the RCP continues and deepens, but already the basic significance of the split is clear. What had happened is that for a long time the RCP has tried to stop the struggle between Marxism-Leninism and opportunism. It provides a "criticism" of the Klonskyites combined with the position that the struggle against revisionism is not really very central. On one hand, the RCP has tried to give itself the appearance of fighting the Klonskyites and of opposing, on some grounds or other, the social-chauvinist thesis of "directing the main blow at the Soviet social-imperialists". On this grounds it even tried to claim that it was leading the struggle against social-chauvinism. But on the other hand the RCP in fact supported the main social-chauvinist theses, such as the theory of "three worlds". The RCP tried to stop the struggle against social-chauvinism, to downplay its importance, to prevent it from growing either in depth or breadth. The RCP lias taken up the corrupt spirit of compromising on principles -- and it is no big secret that the RCP position that the theory of "three worlds" is "part of", rather than the whole, strategy for world revolution and, is perhaps just a "tactic", is in fact simply a rotten compromise between the two diametrically opposed positions of "three worlds-ism" and Marxism-Leninism. The RCP has even gone so far as to circulate slanders against the consistent anti-social-chauvinists as "dogmatists", thus echoing the slimy attacks of the Klonskyites on the Marxist-Leninists as "Trotskyites", "metaphysicians" and "dogmatists". The RCP refuses to recognize the revolutionary authority of the international communist movement and of Comrade Enver Hoxha, close comrade-in-arms of Comrade Mao Tsetung and leader of the international communist movement.
In brief, RCP has served the role of providing a more militant cover for "three worlds-ism" and social-chauvinism in the U.S. Marxist-Leninist movement than the raving Klonskyite defenders of the superpower fatherland. Open social-chauvinism in the Klonskyite form is too disgusting. A "militant" organization of "fighters" is needed by the opportunists, an organization that will have mare left-sounding slogans, while keeping the activists from looking into and repudiating revisionism. That is the significance of the path of compromise and conciliation with revisionism and "three worlds-ism". As Comrade Lenin pointed out in mid-1915 in the struggle against the Klonskyites of World War I, "It was, therefore, a profound historical truth that the opportunist 'Monitor' pointed out in the conservative Preussische Jarbucher when he said it would be bad for the opportunists (i.e. the bourgeoisie) if present-day Social-Democracy ('Monitor' is referring to the social-chauvinist German Social- Democratic Party of the Second International -- ed.) were to swing to the right -- because in that case the workers would desert it. The opportunists (and the bourgeoisie) need the party as it is today, a party combining the Right and the Left wings and officially represented by Kautsky, who will be able to reconcile everything in the world by means of smooth, "thoroughly Marxist' phrases. In word, socialism and the revolutionary spirit for the people, the masses, the workers; indeed, Sudekumism, (i.e. Klonskyism, defense of the imperialist fatherland -- ed.) adhering to the bourgeoisie in any grave crisis." (Collected Works, Vol. 21, "The Collapse of the Second International", p. 249)
The split in the RCP is a sign of the bankruptcy of this policy of attempting to Steer a "third road", to apply the policy of the "golden mean" in the struggle between social-chauvinism and Marxism-Leninism, between imperialism and socialism. There can be no middle ground on the questions of principle, on defense of the purity of Marxism-Leninism, on resolute opposition to revisionism, three worlds-ism", social-chauvinism and opportunism of all types. As Comrade Enver Hoxha teaches, "Revisionism is synonymous with splits, lack of unity, chauvinism and anarchy". (Report to the Seventh Congress of the Party of Labor of Albania, Ch. VI, p. 218) There are only two stable positions. Either for the imperialist bourgeoisie, for a social- chauvinist capitulation to the imperialist butchers hidden under "dialectical" turns of speech. Or for the proletariat, for Marxism-Leninism, for the development of the movement of the class-conscious proletariat, which gathers around itself all the oppressed and exploited masses, for revolution. There is no "third road" in between. The RCP fancied itself the "independent" Marxist-Leninists, with their "criticisms" of both the world of Marxism-Leninism, of Comrade Stalin, of the Communist International, and in private of Comrade Enver Hoxha, and their "criticism" of the world of imperialism and slavery, of Klonsxyism and the social-chauvinists. The RCP was not and is not against "three worlds", but for a different kind of "three worlds" than that of the Klonskyites, for a "three worlds" cleaned up and prettified in order to stop the struggle of Marxism-Leninism against "three worlds-ism". Thus the RCP thought itself independent of either Marxism-Leninism or revisionism and superior to both. On this basis, the RCP wanted to compromise with opportunism and they regard it as a mere "middle" phenomena which should be united with. The RCP sought to conciliate international opportunism, but international opportunism split the RCP anyway. The split in the RCP proves that the petty-bourgeois dream of "independence" from the struggle between Marxism-Leninism and social- chauvinism is just an illusion. Once more it has been proved that at the crucial moment one flimsy open social-chauvinist and revisionist is more powerful than one hundred mealy-mouthed conciliators and Kautskyites. This is because the open social-chauvinists have the direct backing of the bourgeoisie and the militarists as well as that of international opportunism. Today international opportunism and its bourgeois masters are starting to pull in their promissory notes, and the conciliators who have lived off their tolerance are in complete disarray. The only power capable of withstanding the bourgeoisie and international opportunism and revisionism is the proletariat and the Marxist- Leninist Party.
Naturally, true to the RCP's role as a damper on and disorganizer of the struggle against revisionism and opportunism, both sides of the RCP split are still trying to divert attention from the fundamental issues of the struggle against social-chauvinism. The split has not changed the fundamental position of the RCP on this question. The RCP conducted its split on every other possible pretext. It is very significant that in the January issue of RCP's organ Revolution, the RCP denounces the new filthy Klonskyite call for "unity" (with the war-mongering bourgeoisie) by calling the OL every name in the book -- except social-chauvinist. The RCP raises all sorts of issues, big or small, somewhat relevant or totally irrelevant, but neglects to deal with the fundamental social chauvinist thesis of "directing the main blow at Soviet social-imperialism" and of course does not deal with the anti-Leninist theory of "three worlds", which it shares with OL. This article refers to an earlier article in the May 1977 issue of Revolution entitled "Has Two Aspects" and "OL's Draft 'Program': Trite And Wrong". That article too denounced OL for everything under the sun except social-chauvinism and steers clear of denouncing the "main blow against Soviet social-imperialism". The article denounces directing the "main blow" against this and that and even manages to negate the Marxist-Leninist teachings on fighting revisionism and on the direction of the main blow, but fails to denounce the crucial counter-revolutionary thesis of "directing the main blow" at the foreign threat.
The RCP split also shows that the neo-revisionist style and method of Party-building cannot construct an organization capable of fighting social-chauvinism. The emergence of open social-chauvinism in the form of the Klonskyite thesis of "directing the main blow at Soviet social-imperialism" is not an accident. It is the inevitable result and culmination of the long corrosion of opportunism inside the Marxist-Leninist movement. The "New Left" leaders of the negative line inside the youth and student movement of the 60's carried over their opportunism and revisionism into the Marxist-Leninist movement in the form of neo-revisionism, the adaptation of "New Leftism" to an outward show of Marxist-Leninist formulae. The main neo-revisionist organizations were the Revolutionary Union (now the "RCP, USA") and the October League (with the "Communist" League, now "CLP, USNA", representing neo-revisionism from the "left"). The neo-revisionists waged war on the Party concept and negated the Party by counter-posing building the Party to building the mass movement. They denied the struggle against revisionism and opportunism under the pseudo-theory that the "ultra-left was the main danger" and they promoted their fanatical ultra-right dogmatism under the pretext of struggle against "left dogmatism". They had a flabby conciliatory attitude to the state machine and to fascism and never understood the relation of democracy to revolution, oscillating between liberalism and imperialist economism, In their hands Marxism-Leninism was turned into a set of dry scholastic formulae and cut-and-dried schemes and they hid their revisionism under the idealist anti-revisionist method of making the repudiation of revisionism hang on some pet phrases or sectarian formulations. They were always social-chauvinist to the core.
The struggle against social-chauvinism does not just lie in the repudiation of a phrase here or a formulation there. It is a struggle for a revolutionary style and method of work, a struggle to reconstitute the Party, a struggle to re-enunciate the revolutionary principles of Marxism-Leninism on the whole range of questions of revolution, it is a struggle to organize the proletariat. Neo-revisionism is going bankrupt. First the Klonskyite ravings in support of U.S. imperialism and now the RCP split and RCP's inability to fight social-chauvinism are vivid exposures of neo-rcvisionism, symptoms of its bankruptcy. Today the struggle against social-chauvinism is pushing the neo-revisionist poison out of the ranks of the Marxist-Leninists. A great movement forward is developing. It is a new movement for the unity of all revolutionary Marxist-Leninists, a unity sabotaged for so long by neorevisionism. It is a movement to sum up the rich historical lessons of the revolutionary struggles of the 60's and 70's. It is a movement to come under the revolutionary authority of the international communist movement, of Marxism-Leninism, and of Comrade Enver Hoxha. It is a great historical movement for revolution and against revisionism.
The split in the RCP has set the short-sighted OL social-chauvinists to gloating. They are trying to demoralize the revolutionary Marxists. But the Klonskyites are only whistling in the wind. Actually the split in the RCP is simply a symptom of the sharpening of the struggle against social-chauvinism, a struggle that is leading to the political isolation of the Klonskyites and to the revolutionary unity of the proletariat. Some other organizations have also split or arc in the process of doing so. Most likely, the RCP split ushers in a period of turmoil and realignment and more splits, both in the RCP and elsewhere, will follow. The year 1977 was marked by the existence of a whole group of organizations, sects and others who tried to conciliate the struggle between Marxism-Leninism and opportunism. All sorts of dubious elements tried to save the basic essence of Klonskyism by throwing stones at Klonsky himself and promoting "Klonskyism without Klonsky". There were the theses of "three worlds but not Klonsky's three worlds", "main blow but not Klonsky's main blow, "opportunism and revisionism but not Klonsky's opportunism and revisionism". 1978 is already marked by the beginning of the disintegration of this sham opposition to social-chauvinism. A new fresh wind is blowing, scattering the chaff before it. It is a time to emancipate the mind and make a radical rupture with the heavy weight of the dead traditions and errors of the past. The two poles are clearer. Either Klonskyism and revisionism on one pole. Or Marxism-Leninism and opposition to all forms of revisionism and opportunism on the other. Revolution itself diagnosed part of the fatal illness corroding the entire RCP from within when it wrote in January 1978 that "Those who would like to embrace only one aspect of the CP(ML)'s revisionism will find that it comes in a package -- if you take one bite you will be forced to swallow and choke on all of it". The sharper,the struggle, the more radical the rupture with the past. As our gallant fraternal comrades of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) declared in their historic Third Congress in 1977, the Congress of the victory of Marxism in Canada," "No antagonism, no progress!" The collapse of the illusions of "independent" Marxism-Leninism, of "golden mean" Marxism-Leninism, can only clear the way forward to the re-constitution of the genuine Marxist-Leninist Party of the American proletariat, a Party that is being reborn in the midst of fierce class struggle against both the monopoly capitalist enemy and the opportunist and social-chauvinist class traitors.
******
In the rest of this pamphlet we reproduce a speech delivered at an internal conference of the COUSML in the latter half of 1977. The speech dealt with the role of the RCP in the U.S. Marxist-Leninist movement. The speech has been edited for publication and the section on the fascist anti-busing movement has been added. The speech shows:
a) RCP's role as a damper on and disorganizer of the struggle against social-chauvinism,
b) How the RCP, for all the big theatrical show of fuss and squabble between the RCP and OL, ends up in basically the same position as the OL on a num ber of important issues. All the sound and fury of mock combat ended up signifying nothing. On one political issue after another the RCP and the OL ended up hard-pressed to explain their differences,
c) How the RCP lays the ideological basis for social-chauvinism.
The speech predicts: "By vigorously advancing the struggle against social-chauvinism on an objective basis, the Marxist-Leninists will force the sham groups to find themselves sitting on the sharp edge of a razor blade".
The pamphlet ends with a short excerpt from another comrade's speech at the same conference that exposes the neo-revisionist method of organization: namely action-groups and side-line pamphleteering. This excerpt too has been edited for pamphlet publication. (to be continued) End.
The following article is from a summary of a discussion meeting held by the Latin American Progressive Study Group.
... Who is this Mr. Frei and these stalwarts of "democracy" who can make these statements without suffering any consequences on the part of the fascist Junta? They are the authors of the nefarious Gun Control Act -- the law which opened the doors to fascism. They are those who ordered the massacre of the copper miners in 1956, the same ex-President Frei who ordered the massacre at Puerto Montt, the butchery and repression at San Miguel and Puente Alto. This is the man who today presents himself as the greatest anti-fascist fighter. This same criminal supported the coup d'etat against Salvador Allende and organized the right-wing demonstrations against the people. He allied himself to the fascist gangs organized by Patria y Libertad and immediately after the coup d'etat, appeared on television to tell the people that this "effort" on the part of the Armed Forces was necessary in order "to get the country out of chaos".
This is the man who became president of Chile in 1964 thanks to the massive financing by the CIA, his party being practically a creature of this agency. He was financed by U.S. imperialism for the purpose of implementing the so-called "Alliance for Progress" to help the penetration of U.S. capital into the Chilean economy. Frei, this hardened bourgeois, who trembles at the mention of the people's mass Resistance, is today claiming that he has changed and holds the "only solution" for the Chilean people. Let us stop for a moment here to look a little more closely at the kind of man Frei is. In particular let us look at some aspects of his Presidency, between 1964 and 1970. Essentially we will note the following feature of this man, namely, that he is a thorough lackey of U.S. imperialism and that he is thoroughly anti-people.
During the Kennedy administration Chile was chosen as a test country for the so-called "Alliance for Progress". Through this policy, that is the "Alliance for Progress", the U.S. government had two main objectives: firstly, to promote the development of dependent capitalism in Latin America by putting under the control of U.S. capital the most profitable sectors of the manufacturing industry; and secondly, on the basis of this capitalist development subordinated to foreign monopoly capital, to enlarge the local markets for the sale of machinery, technology, raw materials, etc. Politically the aim was to use the reforms necessary for capitalist development, some of which went against the interests of the landed oligarchy and national monopolies, to develop, through an intense propaganda campaign, a populist movement which would act as a fire extinguisher against any revolutionary opposition or the exacerbation of nationalist anti-imperialist tendencies.
This policy of the U.S. "Democrats" basically served the interests of that sector of U.S. monopoly capitalists concentrated in industries such as electronics, petrochemicals, etc., as well as those of big commercial firms. These monopolies were interested in investing in an expanded Latin American market, as well as selling their products from the U.S. on the basis of a developing capitalism in Latin America.
In short, the "Alliance for Progress" promoted U.S. investment in the most profitable developing industries. On this basis U.S. monopolists were to profit doubly from the process of industrialization in Latin America. First by increasing their exports of machinery, luxury products, raw materials, etc., and secondly by directly investing in those developing industries. On the other hand the traditional imperialist monopolies, concentrated mainly in the extraction of raw materials, in the dependent countries, were not too happy with the industrial development of these countries because this brought together with it demands of higher wages in the enterprises where they had investments, and also the tendency to nationalize these enterprises to use them for the industrial development of the country. This is why in general they opposed any more liberal policy which would allow the workers to demand higher incomes and also allow any capitalist development in the dependent countries. That is why their favorite political allies are the landed oligarchy and the national monopolies, who slow down capitalist development by opposing it and who tend to make less concessions to the workers and to practice a harsher repression. So, just to reiterate one important point, let me say that the reforms favored by Kennedy and the "Alliance for Progress" and later implemented by Frei in Chile were a reflection of contradictions among imperialist monopoly groups and had nothing to do with serving the interests of the masses of workers and peasants in Chile or the rest of Latin America.
Having ascertained that it was impossible to rely on the traditional parties of the oligarchic and monopolist right, because of their extremely backward character opposed to any reforms, the Kennedy administration started looking for the support of other, more dynamic classes and other political forces as an instrument for its plans. Thus, already in 1961 it started to explore the possibility of relying on the Christian Democratic Party to implement this new policy. The next year it had definitely decided in favor of this Party.
In the light of facts regarding the aids and loans extended by international credit organizations, and of secret facts disclosed in part by the U.S. Senate Report on the CIA intervention in Chile, it is clear that the Christian Democratic Party is practically a creature of the CIA and of the U.S. government. And this despite its militants from among the ranks of the people, deceived through a multi-million dollar propaganda campaign.
The U.S. support to the Christian Democratic Party consists of two fundamental aspects: one, the open economic "aid" from credit organizations under U.S. control; and two, the secret support from the CIA and through it, from multinational enterprises. The CIA aid starts in 1962 with 230,000 dollars to "build" the Christian Democratic Party. Thus in the municipal elections of April 1963 this party becomes the most influential in Chile, with 22. 7% of the votes. Previously, the Falange Nacional, the party that gives birth to the CD Party' and its main leaders, had polled only 3.9% of the votes in 1949 and 2. 8% in 1953. Later the Christian Democrats received 3 million dollars for Frei's presidential campaign of 1964.
Obviously all these expenditures were not for the love of "democracy". Frei had to "pay" for them by favoring the U.S. monopolies and their penetration of the Chilean economy, and in general by implementing the reforms advocated by the policy of "Alliance for Progress". Thus Frei acting completely according to the will of the foreign investors, particularly those represented by the U, S. "democratic" administration, opened the doors wide for the penetration of their capital into the most profitable industries in Chile. But Frei paid for the "generous" U.S. aid to his candidacy and his government not only by facilitating the penetration of U.S. capital into the Chilean economy and by faithfully applying the policies of the "Alliance for Progress", but also by allowing the U.S. monopolies to engage in an unprecedented intensification of their profits in Chile.
So to summarize what I have just said, there is mainly one main point, namely, that Frei is a thorough lackey of U.S. imperialism.
During Frei's government the class struggle intensified despite the fact that the political objective of the "Alliance for Progress" in Chile was to create a populist movement behind Frei to divert the masses from taking a revolutionary road. And as the class struggle intensified, the electoral influence of the CD diminished, despite the millions of dollars invested by them for propaganda purposes. Thus, in spite of the permanent help of the labor bureaucrats of the false "Communist" Party to put a break to the people's struggles, there were more than 2,000 conflicts in 1967, with more than 2 million days of strikes. In 1968 and 1969 the class struggle intensified even further. In the three months between August and October of 1969 more than 7,000 workers in the countryside participated in legal strikes and more than 26,000 in so-called "illegal" strikes. The militancy of the masses finally forced the CD government to abandon its demagogic mask and to use violent repression. Among the various forms of repression there were two massacres, one against the copper miners of "El Salvador" and another one against homeless people that had occupied vacant plots of land, killing eight of them and burning the homes they had built, their furniture included.
End.
COMMUNIQUE N. 5/78
FOR DISTRIBUTION TO THE PRESS.
DATE: MARCH 13, 1978.
SUBJECT: ON THIS TWELFTH ANNIVERSARY OF U. N. I. T. A. WHAT ARE THE PROSPECTS OF THE WAR IN ANGOLA?
On March 13, 1966 - exactly 12 years ago - UNITA was born in the small village of MWANGAI in the Moxico province.
Today, as we celebrate this twelfth anniversary of out Party - the Party of the peasants, the poor and the oppressed masses of Angola - we must, first of, pay our tribute to the memory of the thousands of our heroic compatriots who gave their lives so that the Angolan people may one day be free. Next, we review the general situation present in Angola and the overall prospects of our struggle.
UNITA was born because the Angolan people, in their national liberation struggle, needed a correct orientation and appropriate methods of combat; they needed an adequate organization with a truly enlightened revolutionary African leadership that could identify itself completely with these vast popular masses of the oppressed. Thus, contrary to the thesis of the other Angolan liberation movements which preferred to operate from foreign countries, UNITA established itself permanently on the Angolan soil, with all its leadership, cadres and armed forces to battle successfully against the Portuguese colonial rule, thus destroying the myth of the indispensability of external bases.
This symbiosis and permanent physical contact of the leaders of UNITA with the masses inside Angola has permitted the Party to make a correct appreciation of the conditions of the struggle and to enjoy an exceptionally strong popular support. The leaders and the cadres of UNITA have endured together with the people all sufferings - hunger, cold, death and the incessant enemy attacks. But they learned with and at the same time illuminated the masses. The people were an integral part of UNITA's revolutionary process, and the Party's democratic bases consolidated and became manifest in all decision making through the congresses, the annual conferences, the extraordinary meetings, the electoral processes, organizational structures, whether at local or national levels.
That is why UNITA, more than any of the other liberation movements, achieved spectacular victories throughout its nine years of war against the Portuguese colonialism, as later on acknowledged by Portuguese army officials themselves at the end of their colonial rule. That is also why, defeated the Portuguese colonial rule, UNITA's popularity became very obvious in the entire country; polls taken by neutral observers in 1975 had indicated that UNITA had more popular support (percentage-wise) than the other two liberation movements put together.
Having the political situation changed in the aftermath of the April 24, 1974 Revolution in Portugal, UNITA, in the most legitimate interest of the people undertook vigorously the initiative for the dialogue and reconciliation of the three Angolan liberation movements with the purpose of enabling them to negotiate with Portugal the terms of the final phase of the decolonization of Angola. These efforts were of Mombassa (Kenya) and Alvor (Portugal) in January 1975. The Alvor conference had set November 11, 1975 the date for Angola's independence and it had also established that the power would be transferred to an elected government composed of the three liberation movements.
The civil war broke out in March 1975; UNITA, in its interest to safeguard the democratic Alvor Agreement and restore peace to the country, undertook tireless efforts to implement a cease-fire between the two warring parties (MPLA and FNLA); the efforts culminated in the realization of the Nakuru (Kenya) peace conference in June 1975.
Betrayed successively the accords of Mombassa, Alvor and Nakuru by MPLA in complicity with the Portuguese government, both acting as cannon fodder to the Soviet expansionist enterprise and Cuban neocolonialism, Angola fell under a new foreign oppressive rule.
Thus in February 1976, UNITA, with its people and armed forces, regained the countryside and resumed the armed struggle; untold pains and sacrifices are continuously being endured as the price required for the liberty and dignity of our people.
An undemocratic minority regime of the MPLA has been installed in Luanda and maintained in place by a Cuban expeditionary force of 25, 000 men equipped and financed by the Soviet Union.
Concentration camps have been set up throughout the country to humiliate, torture and massacre our people.
In pursuance of MPLA's objectives of banning the Church for the sake of its ideology in Angola (as clearly spelled out by Agostinho Neto in his May 21, 1977 speech broadcast over the Luanda Radio), the Church in Angola has now come under increasing attack; Church leaders are persecuted and humiliated; many of them have found only one alternative: to join the UNITA ranks and fight for their liberty and freed freedom.
There is death, spiritual and material misery throughout Angola, a reality more cruel than previously under the Portuguese colonial rule, and all engendered by the oppressive occupation of the country by the Soviet Union and Cuba.
The discontent is widespread and not confined to UNITA-affiliated populations. In a letter dated December 17, 1977, recovered by UNITA combatants in Huambo, an MPLA militant warns a comrade of his in Covilha (Portugal) in the following terms:
"...About your intention to come to Huambo, I must advise you not to do so, for the UNITA puppets are a permanent nuisance around here. People are dying; still this week a mine blew up the entire front wall of the building headquartering the (provincial) office of the Ministry of Public Works; a Portuguese medical doctor was killed. We also fear the spread of cholera which is plaguing the Luacano (Moxico Province) region where the Congolese (Zairean-Katangese) are dying to the hundreds... and the train can't get there...To make matters worse around here in the country, just look at what they did at the Portela Airport to an Angolan Minister! I have enclosed the newspaper article in the JORNAL DE ANGOLA so you can see it for yourself. Even when Fidel Castro came over here (in the Spring of 1977), the Cubans were empowered to disarm the FAPLA ( MPLA Angolan troops) and the CPPA (MPLA Angolan police) in Benguela and Lobito; on his arrival in Benguela. the late Minister Saydi Mingas was stopped and searched too by a Cuban soldier, which created quite a scandal. I don't understand the world... They now speak of the reopening of the Queve River bridge by January 1978 which might facilitate passage to Luanda; well, we'll just see if there'll be that luck..."
Incidents of fire exchange between MPLA and Cuban soldiers are common.
Mutinies among the Cuban soldiers themselves are now taking place more frequently in Angola. Most Cuban soldier s are quite aware of the fact that they have been driven to play a reactionary role against the Angolan people. They find no trace of other foreign presence in Angola but theirs. The Neto-Castro-Breznev propaganda about "South African and Zairean aggression" can never hold water, since the Cubans - like everybody else - inside Angola know fully well that the war is between UNITA (Angolan resistance) and the Cubans (the foreign occupant).
The escalated Soviet/Cuban involvement in Angola is a direct conequence of the intensification and generalization of UNITA's armed resistance. There are now 25, 000 Cuban troops compared with 15,000 at the end of Angola's 1975 civil war. Mercenaries from other nationalities are also being recruited to reinforce the worn-out Cuban. The Soviets and Cubans have taken up most key positions in the MPLA Luanda regime - in the Armed Forces, in the Police, in the National Security, in the Economy, etc. Russia is now spending U.S. $2.5 million per day to support the war, compared with about U.S. $1.0 million during the 1975 civil war.
The Soviet/Cuban war efforts may double or even triple in the months ahead. Such escalated aggression nay of course protract the agony of our people and delay our victory; but the final triumph of our just struggle is inevitable and undeniable.
On the other hand, the leaders of the Luanda regime, weak and unpopular at home, have been embarking on seeking for outside scapegoats to their domestic crisis. Thus Agostinho Neto utilizes Angola's access ways to the sea to engage in acts of politico-diplomatic blackmail against neighboring African State, under the cover of "reconciliation", "cooperation", etc. However, it is obvious that the opening or closing of vital routes like the Benguela Railway is solely determined by UNITA, and this is as dictated by the strategy and objectives of our national liberation struggle; it completely escapes Neto's will.
Since UNITA does not depend on external bases of support, it becomes a futile exercise to try to undermine our position by manipulating with neighboring countries. True cooperation, peace and stability among the countries of this region will only be possible after the victory of the Angolan people over foreign oppression and tyrannical minority rules. This process of the triumph of democracy in Angola and stability for the region must necessarily reckon with the victory of UNITA.
We are undertaking a wide-scale armed struggle against Soviet imperialism and Cuban neo-colonialism so that we may live in peace, dignity and freedom. It concerns all freedom and peace loving peoples of the world. We appreciate the increasing moral support we are enjoying especially among African peoples who are taking conscience of the danger that poses the Soviet expansionist enterprise.
The road ahead may be quite tortuous, painful and long. We appeal to all friendly peoples to help us spare our people prolonged sufferings and needless sacrifices where reason and comprehension of man should prevail.
THE POLITICAL THE POLITICAL BUREAU OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF UNITA, ANGOLA.
Transmitted by signed
Jeremias K. Chitunda SECRETARY OF INFORMATION