The Workers' Advocate

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. 7, July 24, 1978 25¢

[Front page:

Carter Steps Up Campaign for Compulsory Wage-Price Controls;

POSTAL WORKERS FIGHT CARTER'S "VOLUNTARY" WAGE-PRICE CONTROLS;

Bakke Case: Organizing the Segregationist Movement Using the Bogey of "Reverse Discrimination";

Statement of the National Executive Committee of the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninist Against the Betrayal of the Chinese Revisionists:

DEFENSE OF THE GLORIOUS PEOPLE'S SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF ALBANIA IS THE SACRED DUTY OF THE INTERNATIONAL PROLETARIAT]

Table of Contents

Carter Steps Up Campaign for Compulsory Wage-Price Controls

POSTAL WORKERS FIGHT CARTER'S "VOLUNTARY" WAGE-PRICE CONTROLS

Bakke Case: Organizing the Segregationist Movement Using the Bogey of "Reverse Discrimination"

Statement of the National Executive Committee of the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninist Against the Betrayal of the Chinese Revisionists:

DEFENSE OF THE GLORIOUS PEOPLE'S SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF ALBANIA IS THE SACRED DUTY OF THE INTERNATIONAL PROLETARIAT

Announcement of the Albanian Telegraphic Agency

FURTHER BANKRUPTCY OF THE "THREE WORLDS" THEORY:

The Carter Administration Endorses the Theory of "Three Worlds"

"LABOR LAW REFORM ACT OF 1978": SUPPRESSION OF THE WORKERS' MOVEMENT BEHIND THE FRAUD OF REFORM

SPECTER OF COMMUNISM HAUNTS U.S. CONGRESS:

COUSML Attacked in the Senate for Resolutely Opposing the Fascist "Labor Law Reform Act of 1978"

"To Hell with the Fake 'Fight Against Inflation'! -- We Will Not Sacrifice for the Rich!"

8 Coal Miners Murdered Under Carter-Miller-BCOA Contract

DOWN WITH THE HOSPITAL'S FASCIST RULES AND REGULATIONS!

American Standard Workers Persist in Struggle for Higher Wages

22,000 Municipal Workers Strike in Philadelphia

Labor Traitors Pledge to Betray the Workers' Struggles for Higher Wages

Fight State-Organized Racist Attacks on the Black People in Crown Heights!

The Government is the Organizer of Nazi Gangs!

Mexican-Americans in Houston Rise in Rebellion

Editorial of Zeri i Popullit, Organ of the Central Committee of the Party of Labor of Albania

IMPERIALISTS, HANDS OFF VIET NAM!

U.S.-lsraeli Gangsters Talk of "Peace" While Committing Aggression Against the Arab Peoples

Historic Uprisings of the Iranian People Against the Fascist Shah

AGAINST U.S. IMPERIALISM AND INTERNAL REACTION

Statement of the National Executive Committee of the COUSML on the Death of Comrade David Benquis of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Chile

Statement of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Chile on the Death of Comrade David Benquis

Violence Against the Venezuelan People Exposes U.S. Imperialism's "Human Rights" Fraud

Turkish Students Denounce the May Day Massacre of the Fascist Dictatorship

ERITREA: GREAT STRIDES TOWARDS NATIONAL UNITY

Solidarity Message of the COUSML to the First Congress of the Association of Eritrean Students Held in the Liberated Areas of Eritrea-May 8-11, 1978

Students of Trinago Denounce Revisionist Havana Conference

WHY DID THE "RCP, USA" SPLIT?

In Defense of the Afro-American People's Movement

KNIGHTS OF THE NATIONAL OUESTION WORSHIPPING AT THE SHRINE OF NON-VIOLENCE

SUPPORT RADIO LIBERATION ERITREA

Carter Steps Up Campaign for Compulsory Wage-Price Controls

The Carter administration is waving the banner of a sham "fight against inflation" in order to enforce wage controls and cut the real wages of the workers. The government blames the workers for inflation and threatens them with dire consequences if they do not give up their struggle against capitalist exploitation. In order to shift the burden of the crisis onto the workers, the Carter administration is demanding that the workers limit themselves to a 5.1 to 5.6 per cent wage increase. Given the present annual rate of inflation of 11 per cent, the Carter administration is actually trying to impose sizeable wage-cuts of at least 5 per cent per year.

Carter's "voluntary" wage-control program is in big trouble. The workers are continuing to defy the capitalist money-bags, waging a vigorous strike movement. In order to suppress the workers' struggle against the capitalists, Carter is preparing to impose outright compulsory wage controls like those instituted by Nixon in 1971. Compulsory wage controls are a fascist decree by the bourgeois state to cut wages, thereby stepping up the exploitation of the workers and fattening the capitalists' profits. The capitalist state all along works hand-in-glove in service of the employers to suppress the workers' struggles. Wage controls, however, bring all the force of the repressive bourgeois state apparatus out into the open against the entire working class and face the workers with a single, standard wage-cut openly dictated by the government. Today the Carter administration, which hypocritically calls itself a "friend of labor", is attempting to arouse public opinion in support of such compulsory controls. It is blackmailing the people by claiming that if inflation is not halted by cutting workers' wages, a new "recession" will take place.

This plot is aimed at crushing the rising workers' movement. While the government spokesmen spout the rhetoric that "government", "business" and "labor" must sacrifice "equally", facts show that in every case this so-called "equal sacrifice" amounts to "restraining" wages while inflation continues unabated. "Government" is gaily "doing its part" in the "fight against inflation" by cutting the wages of the federal workers, "business" is viciously trying to cram down the throat of the workers, wage-cut contracts which fall far behind the rate of inflation and as for the workers, well, they are expected to "moderate" their wage demands, that is, lie down like meek little lambs and accept this colossal fleecing. "Equality of sacrifice" means nothing but a wage-cut for the workers.

The Carter administration's drive toward compulsory wage controls is its response to the deepening of the economic crisis, for which it can find no solution. The economic crisis in the U.S., as throughout the capitalist-revisionist world, is intensifying. U.S. industrial production is stagnating still more seriously than before and the capitalists are in what The New York Times calls a state of "high anxiety" over the economy. As a result, the Carter administration has had to revise the predictions made by Carter in his January budget message that the GNP would grow by 4.7 per cent this year (now set at 4.1 per cent) and that inflation would rise at a 6 per cent rate ( now predicted at 7.2 per cent).

The rich are shifting the burden of this crisis onto the working masses by means of unemployment, speed-up, wage-cuts or "restraint", cut-backs in social services and, increasingly since 1978 began, by inflation. Inflation is caused by monopoly capital and its government, which create massive budget deficits and speculate wildly in stocks and bonds, independent of actual production, thus inflating the currency while the big monopolies jack up their prices sky-high. The government's Consumer Price Index, which minimizes the rising cost of living by hiding the still faster rises in price of the basic necessities of life of the working people, rose at an 11.3 per cent annual rate for the March, April and May period. Energy prices, as well as the prices of other basic necessities, are soaring. Meat alone rose 41.1 per cent in price during that period, reflecting the yet steeper rise in the cost of the necessities of life for the working masses. New cars this year will be up by an average of $666. Wholesale prices have.risen at meteoric speeds, indicating still more rapid rises in consumer prices in the future. As a result of this sky-rocketing inflation, the workers' real wages are declining rapidly. For example, real purchasing power of non-farm workers declined at a 1.3 per cent annual rate in April-May alone.

This blatant robbery has aroused the anger of the workers, who are determined to struggle to raise their wages to counter the soaring prices. The workers' movement has been surging forward, with the great national strike of the coal miners as its high point. Contracts expire this year for postal workers, railroad workers and others while next year major sections of the industrial proletariat -- the truck drivers, rubber workers and auto workers -- face contract negotiations. The workers are determined to escalate their struggle. The postal workers are already demanding an eight per cent raise in the first year plus an increase in COLA to reach six per cent maximum annually. This is two and one-half times the 5.1-5.6 per cent "guideline" to which the Carter regime has demanded the working class "voluntarily" submit.

As a result of the workers' struggles, the "voluntary" program of wage controls, which Carter announced in his January State of the Union Message, is in big trouble. Recognizing this, the Carter administration has taken a number of steps to threaten the workers. Carter's press secretary, Powell, arrogantly declared May 8: "The simple fact is there are only two ways to go -- voluntary and wage and price controls". Carter has appointed Robert Strauss, Democratic Party wheeler and dealer, as his inflation trouble-shooter. Strauss and Barry Bosworth, Director of the government's Council on Wage and Price Stability, told Congress June 22 that unless inflation is brought under control this year, largely by controlling wages, a new "recession" would be almost certain in 1979. Bosworth recently singled out the postal workers for attack and abuse, declaring that they represent "the strongest case for restraint".

While blackmailing the workers with the threats of wage controls and "recession", the capitalists are focusing all the blame for raging inflation on the workers. Feigning impartiality, the capitalist spokesmen begin by blaming government, business and labor for inflation, under the hoax that all three are "equal" and each is a "factor" in causing inflation and so each must "sacrifice" equally. Government, so the story goes, must "clean up its backyard", business must "hold the line" on prices and executive salaries and labor is expected to "moderate" its wage demands. If this is done, then all will be sweetness and light in this paradise under the heel of the capitalist blood-suckers.

Speaking for "government", that is, for the bourgeois state power with its military and police apparatus and gigantic bureaucracy, Carter has declared that he is "doing his part". And what has he done ? He has cut the scheduled 7 per cent raise in the wages of federal workers down to 5.5 per cent in order to "break the wage-price spiral". In the face of an 11 per cent inflation rate this is actually a wage-cut. Now the administration is making preparations to delay for two years the raise in the federally enforced minimum wage, which is scheduled to go up from $2.65 to $2.90 on January 1. Thus the government "doing its part" means, pure and. simple, a wage- cut for the workers. This is a stark exposure of the fraud of the "anti-inflation" efforts of the government in its "own backyard". It also exposes the capitalist nature of the state which not only suppresses the struggles of the workers of all sectors with force and deception and taxes the masses of the population mercilessly, but heartlessly exploits 1.4 million federal workers directly! If the government really wants to "clean up its backyard" and "do its part" in the "fight against inflation", why doesn't it confiscate the wealth of the financial parasites of Wall Street? But of course, it cannot do this because it stands atop and serves a whole system totally controlled by the parasites of finance capital!

As for "business", that is, the capitalist moneybags themselves, Strauss and Bosworth declare that these worthies are "holding the line" quite nicely. For example, the two report, a growing number of business executives have responded to Carter's request to restrain their salary increases. How lovely! These bloated money-bags are only drawing a cool million a year in straight salary now and can easily convert future raises into fringe benefits. In addition, this action is utterly meaningless owing to the fact that the bulk, of the profits do not go to these front-men but to the big banks in interest payments and to the big financial speculators and coupon- clippers who collect the dividends from the stock. And of course, no one is proposing that the big banks and corporations "restrain" their profits! As for prices, Strauss and Bosworth claim that many businessmen are agreeing to "restrain" their price increases. Among these are GM, Chrysler and others. But the true nature of this "restraint" was soon revealed, GM announced price increases in its 1979 cars of 1.4 per cent and began a policy of instituting its price increases bit by bit over the year rather than all at once. The government, which is allegedly "fighting inflation", was so pleased it rushed to praise GM's increase as "responsible". Meanwhile, capitalists in other industries such as steel, hastened to raise their prices, meeting with general approval of and even praise by, the Carter administration. The Wall Street Journal even went so far as to issue a general call to the capitalists to raise their prices. Thus, the alleged salary and price "restraint" by the capitalists is a big fraud. And even if some companies were to hold down their price increases for the moment, this would only be for the purpose of creating public opinion against the workers to force them to accept wage-cuts. Then, once three-year contracts were signed, the capitalists would gaily raise their prices once again. Meanwhile, the capitalist employers are driving everywhere to cut wages, feverishly trying to impose what the bourgeois press calls "take- back" contracts.

As for labor, Bosworth declared May 23: "We've got to see evidence of some restraint on the labor side. A lot of businessmen recognize that they have got to break the pattern of raising their prices to cover costs, but labor doesn't acknowledge that it also has got to break the pattern of trying to catch up". The real target of Bosworth's attack is labor itself, the millions of modern proletarians, the working class, which, he admits, is vigorously fighting the capitalist exploiters. The workers, according to the "anti-inflation" dictate of the government, must give up their just struggles for higher wages and accept an actual wage cut under the Carter "guideline" of 5.1-5.6 per cent "raises" annually (that is, half the official inflation rate). Thus, suppression of the working-class movement is the real aim of the Carter administration's "anti-inflation" program.

To see what the government means by wage "restraint" one need merely look at its cut in the wage increase due the federal workers or its plan to delay the increase in the minimum wage for two years. Or take the case of the pulp and paper workers. On May 23 Bosworth called the demands of the pulp and paper workers for a 30 per cent raise over two years "out- sized and alarming". He said even the company offer of 18 per cent for the same period was "inflationary"!

The capitalists are counting on the alliance of the "Democratic" Carter administration and the sold- out top labor bureaucrats like George Meany of the AFL-CIO and Douglas Eraser of the UAW to compel the workers to accept wage-cuts, whether under "voluntary" or compulsory controls. The leadership of the AFL-CIO and the UAW have already pledged to reduce wage demands if the capitalists make a show of "restraining" prices. This spring eight AFL-CIO construction unions agreed to impose "anti-inflation" work rules designed to cut costs for the capitalists by 9 to 14 per cent at large construction sites in the South, an agreement arranged by the government and praised by Secretary of Labor Marshall as "a significant example of what can be achieved through labor-management cooperation to hold down rising costs".

Suppression of the workers' struggles for higher wages to combat inflation and soaring prices -- this is the substance of the program of the capitalist government of Carter to "fight inflation". The three "equal partners" are to play their "equal" roles: the government will "clean up its backyard" by -- cutting wages; business may "hold the line" in order to -- cut wages; as for the working class, it must "break the pattern of trying to catch up" by -- cutting wages. Such is the "equality" of the capitalist class and the working class under the capitalist system! How "equally" do all sides "sacrifice"!

But the workers will neither be fooled by this deception nor will they bow down before the dictates of the exploiters. As inflation steps up and the workers increase their resistance to capitalist exploitation, and as the capitalists prepare more and more openly for imposing compulsory wage controls, the workers must cast away all illusions that the Carter administration is a "friend of Labor", oppose the alliance of the Carter administration and the labor bureaucrats, step up their struggle against the capitalists and defy all the government's attacks on their struggles with vigorous mass struggle. End.

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POSTAL WORKERS FIGHT CARTER'S "VOLUNTARY" WAGE-PRICE CONTROLS

Today the 570,000 postal workers are engaged in a fierce struggle against the government and the sell-out contract agreement which the government and its flunkeys, the top union leaders, are trying to impose on the workers. On July 20th the postal workers' previous contracts expired and early on the 21st the government and the labor traitors announced agreement on a new set of contracts for the three unions involved. This agreement amounted to a betrayal of the just demands of the workers for an increase in real wages, for job security and lightened workloads. The wage "raise" in the new agreement, for example, at most 6.5 per cent per year in the face of an official inflation rate of around 11 per cent, amounts to a capitulation to the dictate of the Carter administration that the workers accept a big cut in their real wages in the name of "fighting inflation".

As soon as the agreement was signed, the postal workers took action against it. 4,000 workers at the Jersey City, New Jersey parcel post facility, the largest parcel posting center in the country, immediately walked out on a wildcat strike in protest, their pickets chanting: "Sell out! Sell out!" They remained on strike two days later, defying a threat by the Postal Service to fire them en masse as well as the attacks on their strike by the labor bureaucrats who refused to endorse it. Workers also struck at the large San Francisco Bulk and Foreign Mail Center in Richmond, California, from which all nonfirst-class mail for northern California, Hawaii, Arizona and Nevada is distributed. Postal Service officials complained that these strike actions would severely disrupt postal operations. The striking workers at Jersey City called on other postal workers to follow their example. Postal workers in other New York and New Jersey locals were considering striking as well. Postal workers all across the country are discussing the agreement and vigorously denouncing it, preparing for the ratification vote which will take place during the next three weeks. The contract struggle of the postal workers is not over but is still raging fiercely.

The postal workers, who are employed by the semi-governmental Postal Service, are waging their militant contract struggle directly against the state machine of the reactionary monopoly capitalist ruling class. Their strikes directly violate the "sacred" laws of the bourgeois state, which ban strikes by government employees. The Carter administration has singled out the postal workers for a special attack. The postal workers are the largest section of the proletariat whose union contracts are being negotiated this year. The Carter administration is out to smash the rising workers' movement and impose cuts in real wages on the workers through the administration's program of "voluntary" wage-price controls. The capitalists hope to further shift the burden of their severe and deepening economic crisis onto the workers. Claiming that the postal workers are "the strongest case for restraint" of wages, the bourgeoisie is trying to smash their struggle and enforce stepped-up exploitation on them through a wage-cut and measures to permit firing of more postal workers and increased labor for the rest. To enforce this robbery, the government has threatened to use the National Guard and Army reservists as scabs against a strike and to fire and jail strikers.

But the postal workers are in a militant mood and are determined to resist the attacks of the capitalists and their state machine, as well as the treachery of the labor traitors. They are not intimidated by the threats of federal troops, which even the government has had to admit would only bring "chaos" to the postal system, nor by the threats of firing. This year they began their struggle even before the contract had expired. On July 11th, postal workers set up "informational" picket lines in most major cities to publicize their demands, and the next day several thousand postal workers held a militant demonstration at the Postal Service offices in Washington, D.C. In these mass actions the workers denounced the government's attacks and expressed their determination to fight. Now, that fight has gone forward. A major strike by the postal workers would severely cripple capitalist industry and finance and would be a big blow to Carter's program of suppression of the workers' movement through "voluntary" wage-price controls. The entire working class is looking to the postal workers' struggle and warmly supports it.

THE POSTAL WORKERS ARE FIGHTING AGAINST STEPPED-UP EXPLOITATION BY THE GOVERNMENT

Under the pressure of the deep economic crisis which has the entire capitalist-revisionist world in its grip, the U.S. monopoly capitalists are feverishly shifting the burden of the crisis onto the working class. With this aim, the government of the rich monopoly capitalists is ruthlessly driving to step up the exploitation of the postal workers, and the postal workers are fighting against this increasing exploitation.

The key issues in the present contract struggle are wages, job security and a lightening of the workload. The postal workers demanded a wage raise of eight per cent in the first year of the contract plus an increased cost-of-living escalator which would add six per cent more to the raise at the present high rate of inflation. Such a raise is absolutely necessary due to the falling real wages of the postal workers, a consequence of their increased exploitation. Over the period of the last contract, from 1975 to this year, the wage increases of the postal workers only averaged 6.5 per cent per year, while in the same period the Consumer Price Index, which gives the government's minimized estimate of inflation, rose about 7 per cent per year. This means that the postal workers' real wages, measured in what they can buy and not merely by their name, have fallen at least 1. 5 per cent below what they were three years ago! But the Carter administration, that allegedly "Democratic" "friend of labor", ordered the postal workers to keep their raise below 5.5 per cent, while in its first contract proposal the Postal Service offered virtually no raise at all! To counter such blatant robbery is one of the aims of the postal workers' struggle. In addition to a wage raise, the workers demanded a two-year contract to replace the former three-year contract as a measure to give the workers a freer hand to fight the new attacks of the capitalists, such as increased inflation, as they come up.

The postal workers are also opposing the plans of the government to escalate their exploitation under various schemes for the elimination of workers, coupled with increased workloads for the remaining workers. Over the past two and one-half years, the government has reduced the workforce by 59,000 workers through attrition and by harassing workers until they quit or retire. Not satisfied with this massive elimination of jobs, which they have carried out even with a no layoff clause in the contracts, the Postal Service authorities proposed to eliminate the no lay-off clause altogether. The Postal Service also announced that it wants to extend the probation period of new employees from the current 90 days to 180 days, thus doubling the length of time during which a worker can under the contracts be arbitrarily fired on the slightest pretext, further reducing the workforce. The postal workers demanded that the no layoff clause remain in the contract.

As a result of the increasing amount of mail being sent each year and the reduction in the postal workforce, the burden of work on the postal workers has increased greatly. This increase in exploitation has been pushed still further by wider-scale introduction of automation and by reorganization of the mailing process. Many facilities have been consolidated and Area Mail Processing has been extended to increase worker productivity. Forced overtime work has been increased. Reflecting this increased exploitation, in 1977 alone worker productivity increased by 5.2 per cent, over two times the increase in the private sector of industry in the same year. The chart below illustrates the growing workload the postal workers have been subjected to.

*--- Letters Sorted Mechanically

**- (In Billions)

***1,000 pieces per worker/year

Another means which the government has been using to increase the productivity (and with it the exploitation) of the postal workers has been the introduction of a large number of "part-time-flexible" workers, who work irregular schedules of less than 40 hours a week. This category of workers is used to reduce the number of regular postal workers to a bare minimum while permitting still greater workloads to be imposed. To combat the productivity drive of the government, the postal workers demanded maintenance of the: no lay-off section of the contracts, that all postal installations be manned by full-time workers, that the classification of "part-time-flexibles" be eliminated, and that the amount of required overtime be reduced.

Clearly the demands of the postal workers are just demands and are absolutely necessary for them to fight the drive of the government of the rich to shift the burden of the economic crisis onto them.

THE NEW POSTAL AGREEMENT IS A BETRAYAL OF THE DEMANDS OF THE POSTAL WORKERS

The new agreement between the government and the top labor bureaucrats of the postal workers' unions is a big betrayal of the postal workers' struggle against stepped-up exploitation by the government. Following the fascist logic of the bourgeoisie that blames the workers' wage increases for the inflation caused solely by the rich and their government, the capitalist press widely hailed the pact as a victory for Carter's "fight against inflation". At the same time, the press tried to console the workers by assuring them that the pact protected their wages by keeping a cost-of-living allowance and defended their jobs by maintaining the no layoff clause. All these claims are big lies to cover up the fact that the agreement betrays outright the struggle of the postal service workers for higher real wages, job security and a lightening of the workload.

Wages: While the workers had demanded a total of 14 per cent per year, COLA included, over a two-year contract, the new agreement promises only a total of 19,5 per cent at most over three years. This breaks down to a piddling two per cent the first year, three per cent the second and five the third, plus a strictly limited cost-of-living allowance. This averages out to a maximum of a mere 6.5 per cent per year, only one per cent above Carter's "anti-inflation" guideline and almost five per cent below the annua1 rate of inflation. Thus, while the rate of inflation has greatly increased above what it was in the last contract period, the workers' wage raises have not. As a result, under this agreement the postal workers' wages would rapidly fall still further behind inflation; the real wages of the workers would decline at an accelerated rate.

Length of contract: The government and the labor traitors agreed to a three-year rather than a two- year contract, meaning that the workers' wages will fall behind inflation while the workers will be tied to a miserable wage scale for three long years.

Job Security and Workloads: The government and labor traitors are hailing as a great victory for the workers the maintenance of the no layoff clause, under which 59,000 jobs have been eliminated in two and one-half years! The Postal Service authorities are positively drooling over any chance to increase the rate of job elimination, but the maintenance of the no layoff clause marks no advance at all for the workers. Meanwhile, the capitalist press reports that management prerogatives such as mandatory overtime and others, under which jobs are eliminated and workloads increased, remain in effect despite the workers' demands that they be eliminated. Hence, the new agreement gives the postal workers no new protection against the disastrous rate of job elimination and increasing workloads that has been in effect under the old contracts. Some "victory"!

In addition, the press reports that the Postal Service imposed unspecified limitations on life and health insurance payments and benefits.

Thus the new contract agreement is a capitulation to the Carter administration's anti-working class program of "voluntary" wage controls and provides the postal workers with no new protection on the questions of job security and increasing workloads. It is a betrayal of the struggle of the postal workers.

CARTER'S "ANTI-INFLATION" PROGRAM HAS SINGLED OUT THE POSTAL WORKERS FOR SAVAGE ATTACK

Fearful of the postal workers' struggle, the government has made extensive plans to suppress it. Citing the just wage demands of the postal workers, who are merely trying to catch up with inflation, the Carter administration singled out the postal workers as a major target in its crusade "against inflation", blaming the postal workers for the inflation. Actually inflation is caused by the huge deficits of the capitalist government and the frenzied financial speculation of the big financiers; a rise in workers' wages has nothing to do with inflation but merely cuts the profits of the capitalists. But since, according to bourgeois logic, wage increases cause inflation, the postal workers' demand of a 14 per cent pay raise made them, in the words of Barry Bosworth, director of the Council on Wage and Price Stability of the Carter administration, "the strongest case for restraint". While those responsible for the current inflation rate of 11.3 per cent annually, the capitalists and their government, merrily fill their over stuffed pockets with loot plundered from the working masses, the government has arrogantly threatened that if the postal workers win a pay increase above the administration's guidelines of 5.5 per cent per year, then it will clamp down with mandatory wage controls to suppress the struggle of the entire working class for higher wages. This is the meaning of the recent statement by Bosworth that "if there's a big settlement, we'll have to seriously rethink the labor side of the program (the 'voluntary' wage-price controls program--ed.)."

Thus if the postal workers do not "voluntarily" accept a cut in their real wages of nearly five per cent per year at present inflation rates, then the government will send in National Guard and Army reservists to scab on their strike and will impose compulsory wage controls. Such is the lot of the workers under the "Democratic" Carter administration, which represents the rule of the monopoly capitalist class. The workers must meekly submit to the robbery of the capitalist vultures or else the "democratic" state will smash their strikes with troops. How pleasant are the "human rights" enjoyed by the workers under U.S. imperialism! The Carter administration is well aware that if the postal workers win their just demands, then this will be a big setback for its program of "voluntary" wage controls. The coal miners' struggle inspired the movement of the entire American proletariat against the capitalist exploiters. Now the postal workers are plunging into struggle, and the specter of the militant 1970 postal strike looms before the capitalists' eyes.

THE 1970 WILDCAT STRIKE SHOWS THAT THE POSTAL WORKERS HAVE A MILITANT HISTORY

Recent history shows that the postal workers do not take the attacks of the capitalist government lying down, hi March 1970, the postal workers conducted their first strike. This strike, which involved some 150-200,000 workers in 671 locations across the country, was the largest strike to that date of federal employees. It aimed at winning a significant increase in the paltry wages of the postal workers, who were then paid so little that in some areas seven per cent of the workforce was on welfare.

A new development in the history of the postal workers, the 1970 strike took the capitalists by surprise and crippled industrial enterprises and financial institutions. The strike began with a walkout by 36,000 letter carriers in New York City, who defied a federal court injunction. When it was plain that the court injunctions, fines and threats of jail would not stop the postal workers in New York and the other areas to which the strike had spread, president Nixon sent 27,500 Army reservists and National Guardsmen to New York to act as scabs. But this tactic failed to suppress the strike. It was only after the question of a pay raise was hurriedly brought before Congress and the union leaders promised to call a national strike should the settlement with the government be unsatisfactory, that the postal workers returned to their jobs. This significant struggle resulted in forcing the government to grant a definite wage increase to the workers.

In order to wage their 1970 strike, the postal workers also had to defeat the sabotage of the top trade union bureaucrats, who worked as agents of the capitalist government to do everything in their power to prevent the strike from occurring. At one union meeting after another, the militant workers totally ignored the impotent pleas of the union hacks and relied on their own efforts to get organized and strike. When one top bureaucrat flunkey of Nixon urged the strikers to go back to work simply on the basis of a promise by Nixon to look into their grievances, he was hung in effigy and the mere mention of Nixon's name drew prolonged boos.

THE POSTAL WORKERS' STRUGGLE IS A BIG TEST FOR CARTER'S "VOLUNTARY" WAGE- PRICE CONTROLS

The postal workers today face the necessity of waging a vigorous struggle directly against the bourgeois state, which is attacking them to increase their exploitation and to make them an example in its drive to shift the burden of the economic crisis of the capitalists onto the working masses. The postal workers' struggle is a big test for Carter's program of "voluntary" wage-price controls. The postal workers are facing tremendous pressure from the bourgeois state. Their struggle deserves the firm support of the entire working class and of all oppressed people. End.

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Bakke Case: Organizing the Segregationist Movement Using the Bogey of "Reverse Discrimination"

On June 28th, the Supreme Court passed judgement on the Bakke "reverse discrimination" case. The Court followed the position of the Carter Administration. The Court gave official sanction to the myth of "reverse discrimination", ruled that the prosperous white NASA engineer Alan Bakke was a victim of "reverse discrimination", held that discrimination against the Afro-American people and other oppressed nationalities was legal as long as it was not done too openly and "race and ethnic origin" were "only one factor" and passed a most ambiguous decision calculated to tie everything up in the law courts for years, in this way the Supreme Court intends to keep stirring up the racist agitation against "reverse discrimination" through numerous court cases, while simultaneously enmeshing the just resistance of the masses in an enfeebling net of courts, lawyers and legal quibbling backed up by the open terror of the police apparatus. U.S. imperialism not only oppresses, exploits and murders its victims, but it demands that they feel boundless gratitude to the monopoly capitalists for forging the chains that bind the victims. The U.S. ruling class wants the Afro-American people to honor the capitalist government for all this "reverse discrimination" in their favor, while they suffer from unemployment, impoverishment, segregation and the new wave of Jim Crow attacks. In the same way, the U.S. imperialists exploit their vast colonial (and neo-colonial) empire while hiring a whole strata of lackeys to sing songs about the bountiful U.S. "aid". And at home these same monopoly capitalists cut the wages of the working class, slaughter them daily with industrial "accidents" and throw them out onto the street, while moaning about the "power of big labor".

The big fuss about "reverse discrimination" is nothing but a signal for organizing another segregationist movement. The U.S. government apparatus is beginning a new phase of its campaign to drive the Afro-American people and other oppressed nationalities out of various places of work, out of schools, and out of various spheres of life. The lawyers' briefs and Carter's smiles are being translated into the language of crude racial slur. This is part of the growing fascism in every aspect of American society. The cutting edge of the attempts of the ruling class to organize a fascist mass movement lies in attacks on the oppressed nationalities. The capitalists are fighting to force the working masses to bear the burden of the economic crisis, and they both attack the workers' movement as a whole and also single out many different sections of the workers and oppressed masses for particular oppression. As well, the capitalist ruling class is racist to the core and it is, seeking revenge for the glorious Afro-American revolutionary movements of the last two decades. The Carter administration was installed by the capitalists in order to lead this fascist offensive under a thin mask of political deception.

WHAT IS "REVERSE DISCRIMINATION"?

The whole concept of "reverse discrimination" is a big nazi lie. The Afro-American people do not receive "special privileges", but in fact are singled out for the most degrading oppression. The Afro-American people and other oppressed nationalities have shorter life-spans, higher unemployment, worse schools, are forced into the worst jobs, pay more in their ghettos for food, insurance and other necessities, etc. They are constantly subjected to police terror and their ghettos are virtually police camps. All the advances of the Afro-American people -- from the abolition of open chattel slavery to the break-up of some of the Jim Crow barriers in the '60's -- have come about only through the most intense revolutionary struggle against the handful of rich oppressors. Just for this reason, the Afro-American people constitute a gigantic revolutionary force, and the Afro-American people's movement is a powerful component part of the anti-fascist proletarian socialist revolution. Just for this reason, the Afro-American people's movement is supported by all those who are oppressed and downtrodden and first and foremost by the revolutionary proletarian movement, while it is hated and feared by all the rich and powerful aristocrats and exploiters, by the parasitic lords of industry and finance.

It is the government of the rich that stands behind and organizes the agitation against "reverse discrimination", as the Bakke decision itself shows. The goals of this racist agitation are as follows:

A. To drive the Afro-American people out of all the spheres of life and employment they have entered since the '60's back to the rigid Jim Crow system of segregation;

B. To scapegoat the Afro-American people for the crimes of the rich and the evils inherent in capitalism, such as unemployment, cut-backs in education, high taxes, social crime, etc.;

C. To do massive propaganda for the racist line that the Afro-Americans really are inferior; and

D. To develop a fascist mass movement that can then be used to fight revolution and attack every progressive movement of the people.

This is the way the campaign works: the open fascists denounce the Afro-Americans and other oppressed nationalities for "taking someone else's job" when they are employed, and they denounce them for being on "welfare" when they are unemployed. The racists pretend that racial discrimination is a thing of the "past", and on that basis they denounce placing any coercion on the employers (whether private or government) to hire Afro-Americans or other oppressed nationalities as "reverse discrimination" against whites or "overcompensation" on the part of guilt-ridden liberals in the government bureaucracy. This is turning truth on its head! The fact is that, left to their own "free will", the capitalists throw the Afro-Americans out of all but the worst jobs. Racial discrimination and semi-slavery is not a thing of the past, but an ugly crime of present-day capitalist society and a shameful exposure of the fascist reality behind the American style of "human rights" and "democracy". This is more than proved by the constant racial discrimination and harassment on the job or in the school faced by the oppressed nationalities even if they succeed in getting hired or enrolled. And the "anti-government" rhetoric of the racists is the biggest joke of all. The racist attacks and fascist gangs--from the fascist anti-busing movement to the nazi gangs--are all organized, protected and fostered by the government and the entire state apparatus, especially the courts, police, school boards, politicians, etc. The "reverse discrimination" movement has been fostered by the courts and the Carter administration, while thousands upon thousands of police have protected the Klan and the nazis from being torn limb from limb by indignant anti-fascist demonstrations in Chicago, Columbus, Detroit and elsewhere.

The racist "anti-reverse discrimination" movement demagogically pretends to be only concerned for justice for the most "qualified" applicants, which would allegedly be insured by allowing the employers and the school administrations to hire and enroll whites only. One such "anti-reverse discrimination" group in Seattle, for example, calls itself "MERIT". Some of the commentators on the Bakke case even worked themselves into a fright over the thought of these "unqualified" doctors which would result from taking in Black medical students with lower test scores than Bakke's, although strangely enough the same commentators were never worried at all about the "qualifications" of the much larger number of white students with lower test scores than Bakke's, nor of the "qualifications" of the pampered sons and daughters of the rich who buy their way into medical school with bribes from their families disguised as donations. The fact is, the capitalists do not hire on the basis of "qualifications", but on the basis of maximizing the competition in the working class, on the basis (for the higher positions) of favoritism and nepotism, on the basis of blatant discrimination, in short, on the basis of the capitalist class interests. And the capitalists are interested in profits, not "quality". Modern-day capitalism is a dying, decadent capitalism, and this reflects itself in the deterioration of everything, from commodities to education and intellectual life in general. The whole song-and-dance about "qualifications" is simply a thin cover for attacking the oppressed nationalities as allegedly inferior. After all, the fascists imply, since discrimination is a thing of the past, then why are the oppressed nationalities still excluded from various professions. The completely racist and fraudulent nature of this outcry is also seen by the fact that it is used to exclude the Afro-Americans and other oppressed nationalities from the schools, apprenticeship programs, on-the-job training, etc. Actually, the demagogy about "qualifications" is an old trick borrowed from the arsenal of the southern Jim Crow segregationists. In order to stop Afro- Americans from voting -- without of course racially discriminating, oh no, they wouldn't think of that -- they used to employ literacy tests and poll-taxes.

The government not only employs violent repression and open fascists to organize the racist movements. It also employs "liberals" or concealed fascists. The sweet-talking government liberals, with their pie-in-the-sky chatter about how "affirmative action" is designed to make up for "past" discrimination, are hiding the truth about the increasing segregation and the fascist movements organized by the government right in the present day. These "liberals" (including "three worlders" and others who are not at all adverse to posing as "socialists" or even "Marxist-Leninists") join with the open racists to prettify the U.S. ruling class and present racial discrimination as allegedly a thing of the "past". They are slaves to reformist legalist idiocy, servile souls who present the U.S. monopoly capitalist dictators as having "reformed" and "outlawed" racial discrimination with war criminal Johnson's "Civil Rights Bill" of 1964 or with various Supreme Court decisions, and they praise the government tactics of subverting the Afro-American people's movement from within by building up and relying on a strata of sold-out, state-financed traitors as a "concession" or even as "black political power". The role of the concealed fascists or liberals is to gain the masses' confidence by deception and teach them that the government, the mortal enemy of anything progressive and the general staff of-reaction, is really a great friend with a pro-people side. While the open racists lynch and humiliate the nationalities, the liberals appear on the scene to tell the people to "avoid extremes", "obey the law", "go through the proper channels" and rely on the courts, the fancy-Dan lawyers, and the moderation of the racist state itself.

THE BAKKE CASE

The Bakke case itself exposes the hypocrisy behind the "reverse discrimination" slogan. Here is Alan Bakke, earning $28,000 per year as an engineer for the war industry NASA, living in a house on land valued at approximately $110,090, complaining about how the oppressed nationalities are "discriminating" against him. What a farce! How strange that Bakke doesn't give up his job and connections and move into the ghetto, to share the "privileges" of the working masses....

Bakke's claim revolves around the fact that he had trouble gaining admittance to medical school. This was because he was 11 years older than the average medical student at the time of his applications. He was rejected by 12 schools, one of which did not admit any Afro-Americans at all. He filed suit that the Medical School at the University of California at Davis (UCDy "reverse discriminated" against him because it set aside a minimum of 16 places (out of 100) for students from the oppressed nationalities, and some of the students received lower grades or test scores than Bakke. True, some such students were admitted, but far more white students, 36 to be exact, were admitted with lower grade averages than Bakke. Bakke did not hold that admitting white students with lower grades "discriminated" against himself, but was outraged that a few students from the oppressed nationalities could get in while Bakke couldn't. Bakke didn't file suit against the various arbitrary restrictions of the UCD authorities, but instead entered into a tacit agreement with them. Some members of the UCD administration encouraged Bakke to file suit against UCD itself. At the same time the University of California administration presented an intentionally weak legal defense -- even the bourgeois media has commented on the UC's flimsy legal work -- in order to ensure the defeat in court of their own plan for admitting oppressed nationalities. Thus UCD was offering Bakke a chance at admission, provided he help them remove the Afro-Americans and other oppressed nationalities. Here again we clearly see that the various agencies of the state, like the UC administration, are not "friends of the minorities", nor are they "overcompensating" for past crimes, nor are they "guilt-ridden liberals", but instead they are two- faced racists seeking to increase segregation and to free themselves of any restrictions, however slight, on their fascist activities. Bakke was simply a pawn of the state, and it is quite revealing that in this test case the UC administration could not find anyone but a privileged professional lackey of imperialism and former officer in the war against Viet Nam to join in their conspiracy.

THE DECISION OF THE SUPREME COURT

The Supreme Court reached a decision declaring Bakke as America's first Supreme Court-certified, officially "reverse discriminated" against white. The Supreme Court ruled that "quotas" were no good, but that "race or ethnic origin" may be used as factors in employment or enrollment in universities, provided that it was "only one factor". Therefore the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Alan Bakke and both knocked down UCD's special admission program and directed that Alan Bakke be admitted to UCD, while simultaneously upholding a different program to establish "racial diversity" at Harvard College. Thus the Supreme Court followed very closely and put into practice the Carter administration's legal brief to the court that advocated "guidelines" and condemned "quotas". The Supreme Court went out of its way to avoid ruling on "affirmative action" in general and to maintain the contradictory position and non-sensical distinction of Carter's position. For this reason, the Bakke decision in itself was so contradictory and vague and so supplemented by various different "majority opinions" that it is generally conceded in the bourgeois media that it clarified nothing and will result in years of further lawsuits. Indeed, keeping the whole matter continuously before the courts is one of the main purposes of Carter's position. In this way, the minimum number of concessions is given to the oppressed nationalities, while the maximum publicity is created that the government is always in court allegedly on behalf of the oppressed nationalities and an "anti-government" facade is created for the "anti-reverse discrimination" movement. In brief, what the Bakke decision does, above all, is to give a clear signal from the Supreme Court to all levels of the state, to all capitalists, and to all bad elements and fascists, that the government has embarked on a new offensive against the Afro-American people and other oppressed nationalities and that a fascist and segregationist movement should be built around the "reverse discrimination" slogan. The Bakke decision both incites the open fascists while indicating the path of political deception for the liberals.

It is notable that the segregationist Bakke decision officially laid down a legal basis for racial discrimination. This decision, in the words of Justice Powell's majority opinion, held that bourgeois law only requires that the state show that racial discrimination or national oppression "is necessary to promote a substantial state interest... " As is well known, certain American racists including arch-imperialist chieftain Carter, hold that "ethnic purity" is a "substantial state interest", while not so long ago it was widely held by southern segregationists that preventing inter-marriage and having the front of buses reserved for whites were both "substantial, state interests". Strangely enough, precisely this part of the Bakke decision was paraded around as a "concession" to the oppressed nationalities. In the upside-down world of fascist sophistry and political deception, the Supreme Court first holds that attempts to fight racial discrimination are "reverse discrimination" and then rules that, after all, racial discrimination is acceptable to these refined gentlemen if only it is not too "explicit", uses "race or ethnic origin" as "only one factor", and serves "substantial state interests".

Anyone who studies the Supreme Court decision or the majority and minority opinions cannot fail to be struck by the completely arbitrary reasoning of the Justices, which is not even consistent with abstract, formal bourgeois logic. This is a general feature of the rulings of all present-day bourgeois courts. This allegedly august body, the Supreme Court, this allegedly neutral interpreter of the laws, in fact twists and turns the bourgeois laws, resorts to the most far-fetched speculations, and each justice reads whatever he wants into the laws. For this reason the bourgeois kangaroo courts serve as one of the most flexible and one of the most corrupt tools of capitalist dictatorship, able to rewrite and "re-interpret" the laws at a moment's notice according to the needs of the bourgeoisie in the class struggle against the toiling masses.

Thus the basic features of the Supreme Court decision are as follows:

A) The Supreme Court is giving the official seal of approval to the racist myth of "reverse discrimination" and is thus giving a signal to the entire ruling class to step up the attempt to organize a fascist movement to increase segregation under the banner of fighting "reverse discrimination". The Court is doing this along the basic lines of the Carter administration's program of "guidelines", but no "quotas".

B) In order to help create favorable conditions for the fascist movement, the Court wants to make the biggest possible noise about "reverse discrimination". It not only wants to certify Bakke as a poor discriminated-against underdog, but to have arguments about which programs are or are not "reverse discrimination" drag on for years as the courts rule now one way and now another.

C) The Supreme Court wants to present the state as the "friend" of the "minorities", at the same time as the state is organizing one racist and fascist movement after another. The Bakke decision to increase segregation is even presented as a "concession" to the Afro-American people.

D) The Court wishes to ensnare everyone in a web of court cases. The Court wants to have people look to the lawyers offices for their salvation. All the movements of the oppressed masses are to be smothered in legal opinions and lawyers' double-talk.

COMBAT THIS GROWING FASCISM!

The attacks on the Afro-American people and the other oppressed nationalities are also attacks on the entire working class. The proletariat rejects with contempt the racist bogey of "reverse discrimination" being propagated by the capitalist state, including the Carter administration and the Supreme Court. It is in the interests of the proletariat to support the integration of the oppressed nationalities into all spheres of industry and social life as a positive good that adds tremendous impetus to the workers' movement and is only the most elementary justice. The proletariat is at the center of the resistance of the growing fascism of the bourgeoisie and the capitalist state. In order to smash the growing fascism and carry out the proletarian revolution, the proletariat must lead the resistance to all the attacks of the bourgeoisie and merge all the revolutionary movements into one great storm of revolution. By vigorously fighting against the racial discrimination and violent repression of the Afro-American people and other oppressed nationalities, the proletariat develops a most powerful front of its struggle and adds an immense moral authority to its cause. The precious gains of the unprecedented Afro-American people's movements of the '60's were the experience and development of the revolutionary struggle and the great moral authority that this struggle gave to the revolutionary ranks. The movement of the oppressed nationalities retains its great power to once again rock U.S. imperialism to its very foundations. With the new fascist offensive and the racist attacks, the monopoly capitalist dictators are only lifting a rock to drop it on their own feet.

DENOUNCE THE RACIST BOGEY OF "REVERSE DISCRIMINATION"!

BLAME THE RICH FOR ALL THE CRIMES OF THE DYING CAPITALIST SYSTEM!

DOWN WITH RACIAL DISCRIMINATION AND VIOLENT REPRESSION!

ACTIVE RESISTANCE TO THE GROWING FASCISM OF THE MONOPOLY CAPITALIST DICTATORS! End.

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Statement of the National Executive Committee of the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninist Against the Betrayal of the Chinese Revisionists:

DEFENSE OF THE GLORIOUS PEOPLE'S SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF ALBANIA IS THE SACRED DUTY OF THE INTERNATIONAL PROLETARIAT

The Albanian Telegraphic Agency recently announced that "on July 7, 1978 in a note handed in to the embassy of the People's Socialist Republic of Albania in Peking, the government of the People's Republic of China announced its decision to immediately sever all aid and payment of civil and military credits to Albania, to leave a number of very important projects incompleted and to withdraw all Chinese specialists working in Albania. With this arbitrary and unilateral action, the Chinese government takes a conscious and premeditated step towards the deterioration of relations between the two countries and to damage the economy of Socialist Albania and its defense potential." The National Executive Committee of the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists received the news of this provocation of the Chinese government with great anger and contempt. In the name of the U.S. proletariat we resolutely condemn this brazen act of blackmail against Socialist Albania and we declare that we stand firmly on the side of the People's Socialist Republic of Albania.

U.S. imperialism, Soviet social-imperialism and all reaction harbor the greatest hatred and fear of Socialist Albania. Everyone knows that imperialism and revisionism have encircled tiny Albania with a ring of fire and that they hatch unceasing plots to undermine her independence and to liquidate socialism in Albania. This hostile act of the Chinese government against the People's Socialist Republic of Albania signifies that the Chinese revisionists have openly joined the imperialist-revisionist encirclement and conspiracies. It is a grave provocation to the world proletariat and revolutionary forces. But imperialism and revisionism beware, for as Comrade Enver Hoxha says "socialist Albania is a hard bone that'll stick in your throat and choke you!"

We consider the defense of the People's Socialist Republic of Albania to be the very touchstone of proletarian internationalism. Today Albania stands forth as the powerful fortress of socialism against the entire capitalist-revisionist world. The Albanian working class, cooperativist peasantry and people's intelligentsia, resolutely adhering to the socialist road, are constructing a complete socialist society and a happy life free of exploitation of man by man. hi this glorious land of the eagles the dictatorship of the proletariat has been established and stands firm as a rock. The People's Socialist Republic of Albania and the Party of Labor of Albania with Comrade Enver Hoxha at the head, unflinchingly defend the socialist fatherland, never allowing any encroachments on their sovereignty nor tolerating any interference in their internal affairs whatsoever. At the same time, Socialist Albania, the Party of Labor of Albania and Comrade Enver Hoxha give their full support to the Marxist-Leninists, to the proletariat and oppressed peoples of the world fighting for social and national liberation. In Tirana, the red banner of socialism, of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism is being held triumphantly aloft. All progressive mankind, the revolutionary people of the whole world see a true ally and their own future in the People's Socialist Republic of Albania.

The defense of socialism is the sacred internationalist duty of the international proletariat. We live in the era of the triumph of socialism when the socialist camp, consisting of the world proletarian socialist and national liberation movements, with socialism as the firm ally and base area, is engaged in a ruthless struggle against the camp of world capitalism and slavery led by U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism. The existence of the socialist system and the dictatorship of the proletariat is an irreplaceable factor for the development of the revolution and is the highest achievement of the proletariat. Proletarians everywhere regard Albania,a country where the working class has already triumphed over the bourgeoisie and the new socialist order is being built and the aspirations of the proletariat are being fulfilled, as their own socialist fatherland. The People's Socialist Republic of Albania is today the bastion of the world proletarian socialist revolution.

In a message of greetings to the Fifth Congress of the Party of Labor of Albania in 1966, Comrade Mao Tsetung wrote: "The glorious Albanian Party of Labor headed by Comrade Enver Hoxha is firmly holding aloft the revolutionary banner of Marxism-Leninism while encircled ring upon ring by the imperialists and the modern revisionists.

"Heroic people's Albania has become a beacon of socialism in Europe.

"The revisionist leading clique of the Soviet Union, the Tito clique of Yugoslavia and all the other cliques of renegades and scabs of various shades are mere dust heaps in comparison, while you, a lofty mountain, tower to the skies. They are flunkies and accomplices of imperialism before which they prostrate themselves, while you dare to fight imperialism and its lackeys, fight the world's tyrannical enemies."

"The truth of Marxism-Leninism is on our side. So is the international proletariat. So are the oppressed nations and peoples... We are invincible. The handful of pathetic creatures who oppose China and Albania are doomed to failure."

"Let the Parties and peoples of China and Albania unite, let the Marxist-Leninists of all countries unite, let the revolutionary people of the whole world unite and overthrow imperialism, modern revisionism and the reactionaries of every country! A new world without imperialism, without capitalism and without any system of exploitation is certain to be built."

This was the principled line of Comrade Mao Tsetung, unity of the socialist countries China and Albania and unity of the Marxist-Leninists of all countries and the revolutionary forces of the world against imperialism, revisionism and reaction. However, in the later years of Comrade Mao Tsetung's life and work, a new variety of Chinese revisionists viciously conspired against Comrade Mao Tsetung's proletarian internationalist line, against the Communist Party of China and the entire international Marxist-Leninist communist movement. After Comrade Mao Tsetung's tragic death in October of 1976, the Chinese revisionists staged a counter-revolutionary coup d'etat and seized the leadership of the Chinese Party and state. The Hua Kuo-feng Teng Hsiao-ping clique of usurpers have overthrown the Marxist-Leninist line of the Communist Party of China on every question and have reversed Comrade Mao Tsetung's assessment of Comrade Enver Hoxha, the Party of Labor of Albania and Socialist Albania as well.

The hostile acts of the Chinese government against the People's Socialist Republic of Albania are an inevitable consequence of the revisionist course of disaster the Chinese revisionists are pursuing. In attacking Albania the Teng Hsiao-pings and Hua Kuo-fengs are further exposing themselves as a bunch of counter-revolutionary renegades. Under the mantle of the anti-Leninist theory of "three worlds" the Chinese revisionists have flagrantly abandoned the principles of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism. They have reversed the correct verdicts of the Great Proletarian Cultural revolution and are feverishly working to restore capitalism in China. The Chinese Party and Government have withdrawn support for the Marxist-Leninist and revolutionary' forces of the world and have embarked on the path of collaboration with imperialism and revisionism of all hues. The friends of the Chinese revisionist? are not the revolutionaries but the imperialists and fascists. They have established a close friendship not only with the German revanchists, the Japanese militarists and other so-called "second world" imperialist powers but have "common interests" and want to sell out China to the U.S. imperialists as well. The new Chinese emperors find "a common destiny" with the tyrant Shah of Iran, with the fascist monarch of Spain and the butcher Mobutu of the Congo (K). Their "comrades" are not the genuine Marxist-Leninists but the gang of Titoite revisionist murderers and spies and a number of anti-communist sects of "three worlders" and provocateurs. Thus it surprises no one that Socialist Albania, a country which has never done harm to another people, the staunchest ally of the People's Republic of China in its struggle against imperialism and modern revisionism, is considered by the Chinese revisionist to be a sworn enemy.

The dirty methods of revisionist blackmail which the Chinese leaders have resorted to are the same methods and are of the same caliber as those of Khrushchov. It was Khrushchov himself who, after the death of Stalin, resorted to vicious political blackmail and bullying to impose the revisionist theses of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on the international communist movement. Any party or leader who dared to raise his voice against Khrushchov's revisionism was branded as "anti-Soviet", and "ultra-left Trotskyite" and a "traitor". When the Party of Labor of Albania headed by Comrade Enver Hoxha and the Communist Party of China headed by Comrade Mao Tsetung courageously refused to submit to Khrushchov's baton and held aloft the banner of Marxism-Leninism, the Khrushchovite revisionists resorted to economic and military pressures in an attempt to starve the Albanian and Chinese people into submission. Then it was the Soviet revisionists who ripped up aid agreements and withdrew credits and specialists to bring pressure against Socialist Albania. Now the Chinese revisionists are treading Khrushchov's same great-power chauvinist, revisionist course.

In recent years, the Chinese revisionists have cooked up their rotten theory of "three worlds" and in the most brutal manner have attempted to cram their anti-Leninist line down the throats of the Marxist-Leninist parties and split and dismantle the international Marxist-Leninist communist movement. The Chinese revisionists have shown that there is no limit to their gangster activities, no method of struggle too dirty that they won't reach for it in their struggle to impose their revisionist line on others. We can testify that the Chinese revisionists have criminally interfered within the revolutionary movement in the U.S. They have incited and propped up a sordid collection of revisionist and opportunist elements from the pro-social-imperialist Browderites of the Guardian to the pro-U.S. imperialist Browderites of the OL. As well, the Chinese opportunists have been the source of numerous slanders such as "ultra- left", "Trotskyite" and "anti-China" used to malign and isolate those who resolutely defend the purity of Marxism-Leninism. The brutal interference of the Chinese revisionists has followed a similar pattern in other countries and a number of the genuine Marxist-Leninist parties have condemned their criminal activities.

The Chinese government is now openly exerting economic and military pressure to bring the Albanian people to their knees and force the Party of Labor of Albania to abandon its correct Marxist-Leninist line. The brazen Khrushchovite methods of the Chinese revisionists are exposed for all to see.

It was not a coincidence that it was on July 7 that the Chinese government handed in the note to the Embassy of the People's Socialist Republic of Albania on the severance of Chinese economic and military aid to Albania. July 7 was the first anniversary of the editorial of the Organ of the Central Committee of the Party of Labor of Albania, Zeri i Popullit, entitled "The Theory and Practice of the Revolution". Elaborating the analysis of Comrade Enver Hoxha's historic Report to the Seventh Congress of the Party of Labor of Albania, this editorial thoroughly exposes the opportunist and anti-Leninist nature of the theory of "three worlds" and resolutely defends the Marxist - Leninist line of the international Marxist-Leninist communist movement. The Chinese revisionists have been completely unable to refute the scientific Marxist-Leninist arguments as they have been developed in "The Theory and Practice of the Revolution" editorial and elsewhere, exposing the theory of "three worlds" as both unsound in theory and disastrous in practice. The "three worlders" could only counter the truth of Marxism-Leninism with bluster, threats and abuse.

Now the Chinese revisionists have responded to the scientific arguments of the Party of Labor of Albania with economic and military blackmail and pressure, thus exposing the complete impotence of their ideological struggle against Marxism-Leninism. The hostile act of July 7 is clearly an arrogant declaration of the Chinese revisionists that they will not tolerate any opposition to their revisionist course and will openly attempt to blockade and crush any people and any party which refuses to submit to their dictate and courageously defends the purity of Marxism-Leninism.

Hoping to do harm to others, the Chinese revisionists have grossly miscalculated. Their savage conspiracy against Marxism-Leninism, against Socialist Albania and the Party of Labor of Albania with Comrade Enver Hoxha at the head, will be a debacle for the Chinese revisionists alone. The valiant Albanian people have never submitted to anyone, they have faced immense obstacles in the past and they have always come out victorious.

The Albanian people liberated their country from the Nazi-fascist yoke and have won tremendous victories in socialist revolution and socialist construction with the shedding of their own sweat and blood and by relying on their own efforts. Under the leadership of Comrade Enver Hoxha and the Party of Labor of Albania the Albanian people waged a titanic struggle against the Titoite revisionists and resolutely smashed the intrigues and conspiracies of the Titoite renegades who were in collaboration with the U.S. and other imperialists against people's Albania. It was Comrade Enver Hoxha and the Party of Labor of Albania who were the first to tear the mask off the Khrushchovite revisionists. With immense Marxist-Leninist courage the Party of Labor of Albania, though a small party and in spite of the most savage blackmail and pressure, has persisted in the struggle against the Soviet revisionists, dealing them heavy blows. And it was Comrade Enver Hoxha who raised his voice at the historic Seventh Congress of the Party of Labor of Albania and courageously called a halt to the treachery of the new opportunist trend based on the theory of "three worlds". In the struggle against the betrayal and conspiracies of these new opportunists the Albanian people, under the tested leadership of the Party of Labor of Albania with Comrade Enver Hoxha at the head, are bound to once again emerge triumphant.

Socialist Albania has demonstrated in the past as it is demonstrating today that it knows how to deal with its enemies, that it will never deviate from its correct Marxist-Leninist stand and will never abandon the struggle against imperialism and revisionism of all hues. Those who brutally attempt to suffocate the voice of Socialist Albania through pressure and blackmail are the ones headed for ignoble defeat.

The Chinese revisionists hope that by joining the imperialist-revisionist alliance against Socialist Albania they can overcome the greatest barrier in the way of their traitorous ambitions and Albania will be isolated. But their criminal plans are greatly mistaken. They fail to take into account that on the side of the People's Socialist Republic of Albania are the Marxist-Leninists, the international proletariat and the revolutionary people of the whole world. It is the Chinese revisionists who will receive universal condemnation for their blackmail and hostile acts against Socialist Albania.

RESOLUTELY CONDEMN THE HOSTILE ACTION OF THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT AGAINST THE PEOPLE'S SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF ALBANIA!

THE DEFENSE OF SOCIALISM IS THE SACRED DUTY OF THE INTERNATIONAL PROLETARIAT! End.

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Announcement of the Albanian Telegraphic Agency

The Albanian Telegraphic Agency is authorized to announce that on July 7, 1978 in a note handed in to the Embassy of the People's Socialist Republic of Albania in Peking, the government of the People's Republic of China announced its decision to immediately sever all aid and payment of civil and military credits to Albania, to leave a number of very important projects uncompleted and to withdraw all Chinese specialists working in Albania. With this arbitrary and unilateral action, the Chinese government takes a conscious and premeditated step towards the deterioration of relations between the two countries and to damage the economy of Socialist Albania and its defense potential. This hostile action fills the Albanian people with profound indignation and anger. This action will also be condemned by the fraternal Chinese people. The people of the People's Socialist Republic of Albania have nurtured pure feelings of love and respect for the Chinese people. They have courageously defended the People's Republic of China in the most difficult moments, as if it was their own flesh, and have sincerely fought for a true and internationalist friendship between the two countries. Thus, by violating with big state arrogance the agreements concluded officially between the two parties, violating every principle of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism, the Chinese government and its leaders consciously act to break and destroy this friendship. The severing of all aid and withdrawal of the specialists from Albania also reveals the hypocrisy of the Chinese leaders in the former stand towards Socialist Albania. It also reveals the character of the granting of this aid. To justify its anti-Albanian act and to hide the real reasons which led it to undertake such a perfidious action, which will most certainly be condemned by world public opinion, in its note the Chinese government presents invented arguments and accuses the Albanians of ingratitude. The Albanian Telegraphic Agency is informed that the government of the People's Socialist Republic of Albania will reply at the proper time to the Chinese note and acquaint world public opinion with documented facts so that the peoples can judge aid become convinced that the right lies on the side of Albania.

The breaking off of economic, civil and military aid by China for Albania and the withdrawal of Chinese specialists from Albania emanates from the adoption by the People's Republic of China of a big power course, in its deviation from the scientific theory of Marxism-Leninism, in its rapprochement and collaboration with imperialist and reactionary forces in the world, in the renunciation of aid and support for the revolutionary aid liberated forces in the international arena. The leadership of China conditions its economic collaboration with our country with acceptance by Albania and its submission to this anti-Marxist policy.

The Party of Labor of Albania and the Albanian government have made efforts to solve the disagreements which existed between our two Parties on a Marxist-Leninist road, but the Communist Party of China and its leaders have refused such a course. Actions like this, such as the severance of aid and the withdrawal of specialists and so on, which the Albanian people have experienced before with the Khrushchovite revisionists, will never have any success in Albania. The pressure, blackmail, no matter what shade, to bring our Party and people to their knees, have not had and will never have any success. They have been transformed into defeats for their authors. The pressure and blockades will never suffocate the voice of Socialist Albania, will never force the Albanian people to renounce its correct Marxist-Leninist stand and will never lead it away from the struggle against imperialism.and the revisionists of all shades. Under the tested leadership of the Party of Labor of Albania, with Comrade Enver Hoxha at the head, the Albanian people, now accustomed to imperialist and chauvinist methods which innumerable enemies have used against us, will face up to and overcome with success all obstacles, will win new victories constructing the new socialist society with its own forces. The Albanian people, under the leadership of its Party of Labor, will continue to fight on this course, and it is convinced that it will always enjoy the support of all the freedom- loving peoples and revolutionaries of the world. End.

(Broadcast by Radio Tirana, July 12,1978.)

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FURTHER BANKRUPTCY OF THE "THREE WORLDS" THEORY:

The Carter Administration Endorses the Theory of "Three Worlds"

"But the whole thing is crystal-clear. The immense strength of the opportunists and the chauvinists stems from their alliance with the bourgeoisie, with the governments and the General Staffs. This is often overlooked in Russia, where it is assumed the opportunists are a section of the socialist parties, that there always have been and will be two extreme wings within those parties, that 'extremes' should be avoided, etc., etc., -- and plenty of similar philistine copybook maxims." (V.I. Lenin, "The Collapse of the Second International")

After seizing Party and state power through a reactionary coup d'etat in October of 1976, the Chinese revisionists have set themselves the mission of restoring capitalism and selling out China to U.S.-led imperialism as well as pushing their own big-power chauvinism and opposing the revolutionary forces on a world scale. As a natural outcome of this course of disaster which the Chinese revisionists are pursuing, an unholy alliance is being consummated between the revisionist "three worlders" in Peking and the chieftains of U.S. imperialism.

This developing alliance is hardly a secret. The U.S. Mission in Peking is crowded with emissaries of U.S. imperialism. A growing number of State Department officials, military strategists, senators and congressmen, monopoly financiers and a broad assortment of U.S. reactionaries are receiving warm welcomes in Peking. Last month, auto magnate Henry Ford returned from China assured that the Chinese revisionists were not only interested in selling out China to the Japanese and European imperialists (China recently negotiated $20 billion worth of long-term contracts with Japan and similar contracts with the European Common Market) but are eager to open up China to the U.S. monopolies as well.

The Chinese press is filled with praise for the war-criminals and gangsters of U.S. imperialism. Arch-war-mongers and reactionaries such as James Schlesinger, Henry Jackson and Ronald Reagan, etc., are being described by the Chinese revisionists as so-called "anti-appeasement" forces and "realistic leaders". At the same time the U.S. bourgeois press is full of praise for the Chinese revisionists, constantly speculating on the possibilities the developing alliance between the U.S. imperialists and the Chinese revisionists will open up in the joint struggle against the Soviet social-imperialist rivals and against the proletariat and people of the world.

However, the counter-revolutionary collaboration between the U.S. imperialists and the Chinese revisionists is not only political, military, economic, etc., but it is ideological as well. In recent months the top leaders of U.S. imperialism have openly acclaimed the ideological line of the Chinese revisionists, the opportunist theory of "three worlds" and have given positive recognition to the international opportunist trend based on this anti-Leninist theory.

At the end of May, President Carter's National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski and a fleet of U.S. top officials held major discussions with Hua Kuo-feng, Teng Hsiao-ping and other Chinese leaders on "questions regarding the global situation", in Peking. Besides the usual chorus about the "mutual interests" and "common strategy" of the U.S. and China, it was reported that Mr. Brzezinski said that he was "deeply impressed" with the "presentations" of Teng Hsiao-ping and Hua Kuo-feng. The New York Times reported that the U.S. officials emerged from a two and one-half hour long discussion with Hua Kuo-feng acclaiming the "masterful analysis" of World affairs which Hua had presented to them. The people have not been let in on the deals which were cooked up in those secret meetings, but the "analysis of world affairs" of the Chinese revisionists, which so impressed the chieftains of U.S. imperialism's known to everyone. What Brzezinski and Co. were "deeply impressed" with, and what they acclaimed as a "masterful analysis", was nothing but Teng Hsiao-ping's revisionist theory of "three worlds".

It is not surprising that the U.S. National Security Advisor finds something "masterful" in the pseudo theory of "three worlds", in that the theory of "three worlds" is an opportunist theory particularly tailored to the global designs of U.S. imperialism. This theory systematically denies the revolution on a world scale. It defends U.S. imperialism's vast neo-colonial empire, portraying the aircraft-carrier states and fascist puppet governments of U.S. imperialism, such as that of Pinochet of Chile, of Mobutu of the Congo (K), etc., as "independent" "third world" states, thus declaring a halt to the liberation struggles of the oppressed nations of Asia, Africa and Latin America. The theory attempts to portray U.S. imperialism as no longer a ferocious aggressor and enemy of the world's people, but as a meek "declining" power that has become as timid as a mouse, while at the same time portraying Soviet social-imperialism as the real devils and the only enemy of the proletariat and oppressed people. The theory of "three worlds", in effect, calls on the people and states of the so-called " third world" to unite with the imperialist and colonialist "second world" to wage a joint struggle against Soviet social- imperialism. Of course, this "united front against hegemonism" is to be carried out under the U.S. nuclear umbrella and with the undivided leadership of U.S. imperialism.

According to the theory of "three worlds" every enslaving and aggressive measure of U.S. imperialism and its lackeys, their war preparations and sabre-rattling, the continued U.S. colonial control of the Panama Canal, the French-Belgian invasion of the Congo (K), all have become progressive measures as part of the common struggle against the Russian bears. Indeed, while the theory of "three worlds" is being hawked by its advocates as "Marxist-Leninist analysis", as "Chairman Mao's theory" and as a "great strategic concept of the world revolution", there could not be a more "masterful" theory to advance the enslaving interests of U.S.-led imperialism and all reaction.

Besides the National Security Advisor being "deeply impressed" with the "three worlds" theory, the chieftain of U.S. imperialism Carter himself has nodded his support to the new current of modern revisionism based on "three worlds". In his June 7 speech to the graduating class of the U.S. Naval Academy, Carter outlined the war-mongering aggressive designs of U.S. imperialism, its goals in rivalry with Soviet social-imperialism, etc. In the factors which are on the side of the U.S. imperialists, Carter mentioned "positive new forces in the world" among which he included the People's Republic of China. He also included the factor "that even Marxist-Leninist groups no longer look on the Soviet Union as a model".

Here, Carter was not invoking the name of the genuine Marxist-Leninists, who are the most implacable enemies of U.S. imperialism and who have consistently fought the Soviet modern revisionists as accomplices of imperialism that have turned the Soviet Union into an imperialist superpower in its own right. No, for the revolutionary Marxist-Leninists the imperialist bourgeoisie has only hatred and fear. Carter was here referring to the peculiar "three worlds" variety of "Marxist-Leninists" in which U.S. imperialism finds a friend and an ally.

He is talking about the social-chauvinist so-called "Marxist-Leninist groups" which are calling on the proletariat and the people of the world to abandon the struggle against the reactionary bourgeoisie and to support the war preparations of U.S.-led imperialism, to join the U.S. war chariot in the inter-imperialist slaughter which the two superpowers are preparing. Carter is praising the Pentagon-socialists of Michael Klonsky's October League who have turned the struggle against Khrushchovite revisionism into the social-chauvinism of "directing the main blow at the Soviet social-imperialists", who have taken to denouncing the U.S0 militarists for being soft on the Russians and not building enough B-l bombers, neutron bombs and Trident submarines for the slaughter of the people of the world. It is the "Marxist-Leninists" of the new current of modern revisionism based on "three worlds" which Carter is telling the graduating officers of the U.S. Naval Academy to recognize as an ally and a "positive new force in the world".

The praise of the U.S. officials of the theory of "three worlds" as "masterful analysis" and Carter's declarations in support of the "Marxist-Leninist groups (that) no longer look on the Soviet Union as a model" cast light on what is growing increasingly obvious with every passing day. The new current of modern revisionism centered in Peking and based on "three worlds" has been duly appreciated by the chieftains of U.S. imperialism -- the alliance between the revisionist "three worlders" and the U.S. imperialist state is being sealed.

The social-chauvinist line of the OL "three worlders" has been well documented. Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that the Klonskyites have responded to the recent praises of themselves by the Carter administration with yet a further declaration of revisionist class treason and a pledge of allegiance to the Carter government in particular.

The lead article of the July 17 issue of The Call was entitled "Growing Menace of Fascism-- Big Business Launches a New War Against the People". This article advances the classic revisionist thesis of "two power centers" in Washington. Portraying the "liberal" Carter administration as having come under attack from a new ultra-right coalition of "monopolists and other businessmen", The Call leaves no doubt in the readers mind that to defeat the "growing menace of fascism" it is necessary for the working class and people to come to the defense of the bullied-by-"big business" Carter regime. In the jargon of senile revisionist hacks, the OL scribblers write: "According to some Washington insiders, this reactionary campaign appears to be engineered by a newly formed coalition of monopolists and other businessmen. Its aim, in the words of some of its leaders, is to 'bring back big business to its rightful role in running the country". The Call explains that: "One target of this new coalition of monopolists seems to be President Carter's money-guzzling programs"... "Some powerful financial interests are critical of Carter for going too far in the past trend of making minimal concessions to labor and civil rights"... (they) "have opposed recent restrictions on big business (by Carter! --ed.) during the present crisis."

The mutual love between the "three worlders" and the reactionary chieftains of the U.S. monopoly capitalist state is becoming truly obscene! Great Lenin wrote the following concerning such unseemly relationships:

"Social chauvinism is a consummated opportunism. That is beyond doubt. The alliance with the bourgeoisie used to be ideological and secret. It" is now public and unseemly. Social-chauvinism draws it strength from nowhere else but this alliance with the bourgeoisie and the General Staffs." ("Opportunism, and the Collapse of the Second International") End.

[Cartoon.]

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"LABOR LAW REFORM ACT OF 1978": SUPPRESSION OF THE WORKERS' MOVEMENT BEHIND THE FRAUD OF REFORM

With considerable hoopla, the "Labor Law Reform Act of 1978" was debated in the Senate from May 16 to June 23, 1978. A number of senators staged a long-winded filibuster and prevented the bill from coming to a vote. It was sent back to the Senate Human Resources Committee for minor revisions to make it more acceptable to the capitalists. The top trade union officials, those loyal lap-dogs of the bourgeoisie, have been running around Congress like excited puppies clamoring for the passage of this Act. They claim it will result in the government apparatus being used to help the working class organize the unorganized into trade unions. This lying propaganda is an attempt to fool the working class and put it to sleep with sweet dreams about the "justice and equality" of the capitalist bloodsuckers and the "democracy" of the increasingly fascist U.S. government. However, the working class is not so easily deceived. The "Labor Law Reform Act of 1978" is in fact a fascist bill to strengthen the Taft-Hartley Act, smash strikes, further ban wildcat strikes and roving pickets, legalize labor spies and suppress the coal miners' movement -- all under the cover of granting the most pitiful minor "reforms", which are buried in tons of red tape and are scarcely, if at all, beneficial to the workers.

The Senate bill is very similar to the labor "reform" act that passed the House of Representatives on October 6,1977. This was just one month after the powerful two and one-half month summer wildcat strike of the coal miners and two months before the miners' heroic three and one-half month national contract strike began on December 6,1977. In a panic, the bourgeoisie rushed the bill through the House in only three days. It was obviously intended to be an attack on the coal miners, as a central feature of this "reform" is that it outlaws wildcat strikes and roving ("stranger") pickets -- some of the main weapons used by the coal miners (and increasingly larger sections of the proletariat) to defend themselves from the coal barons.

President Carter and other so-called "friends of labor" such as Senators Williams and Javits are sponsoring the "Labor Law Reform Act of 1978" ("LLRA-1978") in the Senate. They have the enthusiastic endorsement of top labor traitors like George Meany of the AFL-CIO and Doug Fraser of the UAW, who claim that the Act is "a great victory for American workers" and "a giant step towards justice and equity for the nation's working people". In fact, the "LLRA-1978" is a fascist attack on the working class. It has two main features: (A) It strengthens the fascist Taft-Hartley Act and introduces even more severe regulations against the workers' movement; (B) It grants a small number of minor "reforms", all of which are minor matters and are subject to innumerable exceptions, qualifications and interpretations by the government bureaucracy.

The "LLRA-1978" reveals that the monopoly capitalist state machine is far from being a neutral bystander and fair referee in the struggle between labor and capital. The laws, police, courts and prisons are tools of the monopoly capitalist dictators for suppressing the workers and masses of the people to the benefit of the rich.

The "pro-labor" Democratic Party is in open alliance with the capitalist trade union officials to pass another law suppressing the workers' movement. This is one more example of the bankruptcy of the alliance that carried on with such fanfare advocating the election of Carter in 1976 as the solution to all evils.

THE "LLRA-1978" IS AN OUTRIGHT ATTACK ON THE WORKERS' MOVEMENT, PARTICULARLY THE STRIKE WEAPON

The "LLRA-1978" outlaws wildcat strikes and roving pickets. In this way the Act seeks to smash all struggles of the workers that take place outside of the government-regulated legal trade unions. While the provision of the Act banning wildcats is to be used against the entire proletariat, it is specifically intended to suppress the coal miners' movement. The miners have been forced to resort to a tremendous number of wildcats since 1974 because the social-democrat Arnold Miller of the UMW collaborated with the capitalists and sold out the miner's right to strike over safety conditions and violations of the contract by the coal barons. The miners had no choice but to organize their wildcat strikes outside of the official union channels and away from the control of the top trade union bureaucrats. The recent three and one- half month titanic battle of the coal miners ended in a stalemate. Thus different forms of mass struggle including wildcats and roving pickets will continue to erupt.

By outlawing wildcats and roving pickets, the Act is intended to reinforce the hold of the union misleaders over the mass of workers and smash the miners' resistance to increased capitalist exploitation. Under the Act, an employer can get a judge to issue a restraining order, and thus fines and jail sentences, to those who are conducting a wildcat picket and also to those who refuse to cross such a picket line.

The wildcat strikes of the coal miners, auto, electrical and dock workers, the copper miners and bus drivers, etc., have put the capitalist exploiters into a cold sweat. They not only attempt to suppress strikes with scabs, troops and injunctions, but also employ a whole army of big-shot trade union hacks to sell out and undermine the workers' economic struggles from within. But despite all these vicious attacks the powerful workers' movement is surging forward, breaking through the entangling web of restrictive laws and pushing the trade union bureaucrats aside. The workers have adopted creative forms of struggle such as wildcats and roving pickets. Now the "LLRA-1978" bans these forms of struggle too. However, the workers' movement cannot be eliminated by declaring it "illegal". Where there is exploitation, the workers will surely resist it. Where this resistance is outlawed, it will surely emerge in more militant and powerful forms to shatter the chains holding it back.

Besides strengthening the laws against wildcats and in fact banning them, this new fascist "labor reform" also strengthens the restrictions on official strikes. The Act provides that the trade unions must pay back-pay and one-half to the scabs and gun thugs of the capitalists who are prevented by mass picketing from doing their dirty work. This provision is specifically applicable, according to Section 9 of the Senate version of the bill, against strikes for a first contract during an organizing drive.

Certain individuals (and a whole flock of opportunists masquerading as "Marxist-Leninists") do not believe that the "liberal" Democrats and trade union "leaders" could be so nasty as to agree to the "LLRA-1978" with such a provision in it, and be so downright dishonest as to not tell anybody about it. Such naivety is mistaken. Section 9 states: If "any person... has unlawfully interfered with, restrained or coerced employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed by Section 7" of the Taft-Hartley Act, this is an "unfair labor practice" and the NLRB may award the victim back pay and one-half.

This means back-pay and one-half to scabs because Section 7 guarantees that employees not only have the right to join a labor union but also have the right to refrain from joining a union and bargaining collectively. So if a scab wants to exercise his "right" to not join a union, but is "interfered with, restrained, or coerced" from doing so by the workers' picket line, then the union is guilty of an "unfair labor practice" and can be forced by a court order to pay the scab back-pay and one-half.

In the fascist Taft-Hartley Act, the capitalists say it is OK for the workers to go out on strike, as long as the scabs are allowed to cross a weak symbolic picket line, take away your job and keep production going. Mass picketing is illegal. The workers can strike as long as they want to, even starve, but the capitalists must not suffer any loss of production and the scabs must be allowed to work. The "LLRA- 1978" strengthens this provision against mass picketing by ordering the trade unions to pay back-pay and one-half to those who are prevented from scabbing by the militant actions of the workers. Obviously, this provision is a straightforward attack on the official trade unions and particularly on organizing drives to establish a union and its first contract.

As if this wasn't enough, the Act also gives the monopoly capitalists the right to send spies into union meetings during organizing drives. This is the so-called "equal access" provision. (Section 4, Senate Bill S2467) What a great "reform"! Under this utterly fascist provision the unions are required to allow the capitalists (or their representatives) to spew out their lies and slanders at union meetings under the hoax of allowing the workers to hear both sides of the argument. Not only that, but the employers can go to a union meeting, spy on the most militant workers and thus find some pretext for firing them and smashing the organizing drive. And everyone knows that the capitalist will also send the police after the leaders of the workers' struggle, once they discover their identity.

The "LLRA-1978" also contains provisions for enlarging and strengthening the national labor court, the National Labor Relations Board. For example, the size of the NLRB is expanded from five to seven members, to be able to handle labor law cases more quickly and efficiently. The labor traitors have hailed this as a most important reform because, they claim, the chief problem in organizing the unorganized is the delays caused by the capitalists and by the red tape of the bureaucracy. These labor traitors assure the workers that if only there are more NLRB members, then delays in elections, negotiations, etc., will be gotten rid of and the workers will be able to successfully carry through the organizing of the unorganized.

In fact, the expanding and strengthening of the NLRB bureaucracy will allow it to act more quickly in fining the unions under the provisions of the "Labor Law Reform Act of 1978" and in seeking injunctions. If the labor bureaucrats really wanted to stop delays, they would advocate the complete abolition of the NLRB and the Taft-Hartley Act, and would in the meantime prepare the workers to take matters into their own hands through well-timed strikes and other types of mass struggles.

These are some of the actual provisions of the Act. Workers who read the yellow journalism of the reactionary trade unions in order to keep track of the plots of the trade union hacks against the workers' movement, will notice that they are silent on the actual thrust of the "LLRA-1978". Instead of the truth, the UAW states that the Act is "reinforcement of legislation that has been on the books since 1935, the National Labor Relations Act... Essentially, it makes it easier and quicker for the government to conduct representation elections for workers who express an interest in unionizing, and strengthens the penalties against employers who violate the law while attempting to stave off collective bargaining. " ( UAW Washington Report, October 10,1977)

The truth is entirely different, the "LLRA-1978" cannot "reinforce" the NLRA-1935 (Wagner Act), because it no longer exists. It was replaced by the fascist Labor-Management Relations Act of 1947 (Taft-Hartley Act). For example, the provision in the "LLRA-1978" banning wildcats and roving pickets strengthens section 301 of the Taft-Hartley Act. The UAW big-shots do not want this truth to be known, because even these lackeys admit that "the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 and the Landrum-Griffin Act of 1959 are generally considered to favor management." (UAW Washington Report, October 10, 1977)

Nor does the "LLRA-1978" "essentially" force the U.S. government to take the side of the workers against the capitalists and assist in the organizing of trade unions. What ordinary proletarian can possibly believe in these fairy-tales about the government of the oil billionaires and other corporate tycoons? In fact, this Act will not help to organize unions. The provisions that allegedly do this are weak, watered-down and hemmed-in by numerous exceptions and qualifications, and subject to countless "interpretations" by the anti-working class government bureaucracy. The strike is the central issue in organizing the unorganized, and the "LLRA-1978" is yet another attack on this weapon of the workers.

There are many so-called concessions to the proletariat in the Act. The labor traitors are shouting the loudest about five of them: back pay and one- half for illegally fired union organizers; "equal access", prompt elections, debarment, and the "make whole remedy".

First, the future ineffectiveness of the provision for back-pay and one-half (double back-pay in the House passed version) for workers fired on account of union organizing activity may be judged by the present ineffectiveness of ordinary back-pay. Ask any capitalist for a raise in wages and he will moan and groan, claim dire poverty and give innumerable reasons why it is "impossible". But, begin an organizing drive against the same "pillar of the community" and he will throw thousands of dollars at lawyers, security guards, spies, scabs, judges and gun thugs to smash the attempt to form a union. It is extremely unlikely that a capitalist will be worried about the provision for back-pay and one-half any more than for the present ordinary back-pay.

Secondly, we have the "equal access" provision, which the labor misleaders state will allow workers to "have a fair chance to hear both union and management views before the NLRB election". (UAW Pamphlet on Labor Reform Act-1977) When an employer spouts his anti-labor venom at the workplace, the union at issue in the organizing drive has "equal access" to reply at the workplace. Of course, this cannot inconvenience the capitalist in any way and is also subject to approval of the NLRB and its whims. Actually, in individual cases such as J.P. Stevens, the courts have already granted more liberal access rules to labor unions than those in this provision.

The Act now rescinds these court rulings. And again it should be noted, this section of the Act also legalizes "equal access" of company spies to union meetings. The balance and fairness of the Democratic Party "friends of labor" and their "LLRA-1978" does not withstand close scrutiny.

Thirdly, "A key provision of the labor reform measure was the one which set specific time periods in which NLRB elections would be prompt and certain." (UAW Pamphlet on Labor Law Reform, 1977) These time periods range from 21-75 days after the union has filed a petition for an election with the NLRB. Considering the fact that 82 per cent of the 9,000 elections held in 1975 were held within a period of 12-45 days, this provision is of little significance.

Fourthly, another measure cooked up by the bourgeoisie to convince the workers to rely on the benevolence of the government is the debarment provision. Workers are supposed to forget about strikes and other types of mass resistance because the government will supposedly pressure the capitalist to negotiate an agreement. If a capitalist has government contracts, the Secretary of Labor may act, if requested by the NLRB, to debar a single plant or factory location of a corporation (not the whole corporation) from government contracts, if it has been shown that the capitalist at that location repeatedly has refused to bargain or committed other such unfair labor practices, if the "national interest" is not threatened, etc., for a maximum of three years, which of course the Secretary of Labor can revoke anytime.

For fairness of course, unions can also be debarred from government contracts, such as union-organized job training programs. And we are supposed to believe George Meany when he uses this as evidence that the "LLRA-1978" is a "reform" that helps workers secure "government protection of their human rights"?

Lastly we have the "make-whole remedy", that is, more quack medicine. We are led to believe by the shysters of labor that this provision will end delays in bargaining, but their reasoning is a little hard to swallow. The NLRB may (it is not required) force the capitalists to reimburse the workers for wages which were not raised due to a refusal of the employer to bargain. The workers would be reimbursed an amount equal to their present wages and benefits multiplied by the average percentage increase in major contract settlements for the quarter of the year in question. So, at the most, the capitalist wouldn't lose anything more than if he hadn't delayed the negotiations in the first place. The capitalist cannot be hurt for delaying, but he still could benefit in the likelihood that the NLRB does not apply the "make- whole remedy" to him. This provision will not eliminate delays. It is just more legalistic smoke to obscure the workers' need to wage militant mass struggles, and to promote instead reliance on NLRB aristocrats, trade union bureaucrats, and lawyers in general, to van the workers' battles for them. That is, it just one more attempt to mislead and liquidate workers' organizing drives.

So, as far as concessions to the working class, the "LLRA-1978" contains nothing but "smoke" and the only real "fire" in the bill is directed straight at the proletariat, not the bourgeoisie. Seeking to convince the workers otherwise, the entire kennel of top union hacks have used the Act to howl and bark at the capitalists, adopting fierce postures. But these dogs do not bite the hand that feeds them. Quite the opposite, they are sworn enemies of the proletariat.

The key issue in an organizing drive is not reimbursing fired workers, nor government-regulated prompt elections or "make-whole remedies". The key issue is the unity, militance and self-reliant organization of the workers themselves and their capability of launching a "work stoppage" (to use the language of senators, lawyers and labor traitors). The "LLRA- 1978" does not make any "provisions" for this, but in fact only provides additional ways to oppose the unity, militancy, self-reliant organization and capability to strike of the workers. The working class cannot sit back and look to the laws and courts of the enemy to assist them. To do so means sure liquidation of the workers' movement and defeat. This is the intent of the so-called concessions in the Act.

Any ordinary worker is very aware that the top trade union bureaucrats are liars and an anti-working class strata of society. Wealthy, corrupt and undemocratic, they are indistinguishable from the rich employers in innumerable ways. They collaborate with the capitalist enemy, sell out strikes, arrange for militant workers to be fired, etc. These paid agents of the bourgeoisie are now actually pushing for laws against the workers' movement and even against the unions themselves.

The campaign of the liberal Democrats and the reactionary union bureaucrats for passage of the "LLRA- 1978" is an example of the dual tactics of 1) force and violence, 2) political deception, used by the bourgeoisie to attack the workers. "Force and violence" are contained in the provisions banning wildcats, etc. As for political deception, the "Democrats" and the top labor hacks are hiding the anti-working class nature of the "LLRA-1978". Moreover, they are praising it to the skies as a law to establish "workplace democracy and justice".(UAW Washington Report, September 26,1977) For over one year and especially in the last several months, this lying propaganda against the proletariat has filled the trade union newspapers such as the AFL-CIO News and the UAW's Solidarity UAW President Doug Fraser stated that passage of the Act "is the number one priority of the UAW". "In this effort we are totally united with the rest of the labor movement." (UAW Washington Report, September 26,1977) The AFL-CIO Executive Council stated that "Labor Law Reform is a human rights issue, because it deals directly with protecting and promoting the human rights of American workers." (AFL-CIO News May 13,1978) President Carter said that the bill was "badly needed" and told George Meany "You will have a strong constant partner in the White House" in the "bitter battle" in the Senate over the "LLRA-1978". However, there is no "bitter battle" in the Senate over the "LLRA-1978". Rather a small skirmish has been staged between the "Republicans" who are against "big labor", and the "Democrats" who are against "big business", in actuality, the Republicans and Democrats are both political representatives of the monopoly capitalist billionaires, but use different types of lying demagogy and rhetoric to hide this fact. The only thing at issue in the friendly argument that has occurred in the Senate, is whether or not to attach even more fascist provisions to the Act, and if so, can it still be deceptively presented to the working class as a "concession". The majority of the Senate favors passage of the "LLRA-1978" because it is a weapon in the hands of the bourgeoisie to viciously attack the proletariat. But it would not be to the advantage of the capitalists to drop their disguises and expose themselves for what they really are. It is much more to their benefit to stage a fake "bitter battle" and present the illusion that the U.S. government is a democracy capable of responding to the workers' interests. This enables the agents of the bourgeoisie in the trade union movement to run a big propaganda campaign promoting the very same illusions about the supposed democracy of the U.S. government, that supposedly can be utilized in favor of the proletariat if only enough pressure is put on Congress through trade union lobbying, letter-writing appeals, committee hearings, and general begging of every description. The proletariat begging the bourgeoisie for political "reforms" -- this is bourgeois trade union politics. Political deception is a tactic used by the bourgeoisie to cause confusion and disunity in the proletariat and soften it up for attack.

The trade union reactionaries from the UAW to the major unions in the AFL-CIO have all been rejoicing at the great reforms of the Act, singing hymns to Carter, and swearing on a stack of bibles that this proposed legislation will make life sweetness and light for the workers. But a breach has finally occurred in the ranks of the labor aristocracy. In May, a UMW lobbyist stated "It's an attempt to destroy a 100-year-old tradition of honoring picket lines in the coalfields." "We want the whole thing dropped." Thus eight months after the bill passed the House of Representatives, the UMW has finally come out against the entire Act as a frontal assault on the miners1 (and all workers') right to strike. That is, for eight months the UMW bureaucrats did not oppose this outright attack on the coal miners. After the bill was passed4n the House, it was only the revolutionary Marxist-Leninists of COUSML who conducted a large-scale propaganda campaign clarifying the anti-working class and anti-coal miner nature of this "reform".

The fact that the UMW now opposes the "LLRA- 1978" shows that all of the social-democrats, revisionists, the followers of the "three worlds" theory and other opportunists are more right-wing than a section of the labor bureaucrats. AH of these opportunists support the "LLRA-1978" and their only criticism is that it isn't strong enough; that it doesn't have enough teeth. We will now see how the labor bureaucrats and other opportunists try to explain to the workers why they have been given this bill their fanatical praise.

MASS STRUGGLE IS THE ONLY WAY

The top labor bureaucrats want to hide the growing fascism of the Carter administration, such as the "LLRA-1978". They strive to create illusions about non-existent American "democracy" in order to confuse the proletariat and paralyze its resistance to the capitalist offensive. They are teaching the workers that the government will help them to organize the unorganized at precisely the moment when the capitalists are intent on smashing the workers' movement.

The deepening of the all-sided economic, political and social crisis of capitalism is leading to a massive upsurge of the working-class movement. The repression of the Carter administration will lead to drawing millions upon millions of more people into revolutionary struggle against the bourgeoisie. Against police- state laws like the "LLRA-1978" the workers have only one choice -- to defy them. The working class must break through the fascist restrictions of the bourgeois laws, of the trade union bureaucracy and the lying demagogy of the capitalist politicians and opportunists of all varieties, and wage mass resistance struggle to defend their basic interests. Only through mass struggle, by relying on their own strength, organization and militancy, can the workers' movement advance.

Monopoly capitalism is a man-eating system that exists by sucking the blood of the workers. But at the same time, it organizes the proletariat in large- scale production and impels it to struggle against the capitalist enemy. With the consolidation of the Marxist-Leninist Party, general staff of the proletariat, the workers' movement inevitably succeeds in overthrowing the bourgeoisie through revolutionary violence, ending capitalist exploitation and establishing socialism. End.

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SPECTER OF COMMUNISM HAUNTS U.S. CONGRESS:

COUSML Attacked in the Senate for Resolutely Opposing the Fascist "Labor Law Reform Act of 1978"

The actual measures of the "Labor Law Reform Act of 1978", as well as the illusions created about it, are an attack on the workers' movement. The only organized political force in the U.S. opposed to these attacks are the revolutionary Marxist-Leninists led by the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists. The monopoly capitalists pretend to be unconcerned about the revolutionary workers' movement and the genuine Marxist-Leninists, but this is not the case. Democratic Senator Daniel P. Moynihan (N. Y.) denounced COUSML in a long-winded tirade during the Senate floor discussion of the "Labor Law Reform Act of 1978" on May 17, 1978.

Moynihan, one will remember, was the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare in the Nixon administration who received much attention for stating that Nixon's policy toward the Afro-American people would be that of "benign neglect". This great "democrat" also gained notoriety for authoring the classic U.S. imperialist line that the UN suffered from a "tyranny of the majority". Moynihan likes to advertise himself as an extremely liberal and extremely eloquent "pro-labor" politician. But the facts show that the "pro-labor Democrats" are extreme reactionaries in alliance with the sold-out labor bureaucrats against the proletariat.

Moynihan stated in part: "I call attention to certain continuities in opposition to this legislation from the extreme left, from the totalitarian left. One can learn something of the true import of liberal legislation when one sees how it is feared and dreaded by the totalitarian, either of the left or, if there be any -- there are none in this chamber -- of the right."

"I take the liberty of reading a passage from a journal, The Workers' Advocate, which is the newspaper of the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists, published in Chicago. The headline: 'Combat the Growing Fascism of the Carter Administration. Down With the 'Labor Reform Act of 1977'." He then proceeded to read the first paragraph of the article and entered a large section of it into the Congressional Record for the education of the senators.

Reading between the lines, Moynihan is actually trying to convince any naive or particularly dull-witted senators that the "true import" of the "liberal" "Labor Law Reform Act" is that it is a fascist attack on the workers' movement. He is trying to convince the open "totalitarians of the right" of the importance of it being speedily passed into law.

In the same "oratory", Moynihan also railed against the revolutionary Marxist-Leninists of 1935 for denouncing the bourgeoisie "with such vehemence, with such disregard for truth, with such utter intention to destroy, and a desperate fearing of what might be constructed, as did the Communist Party of the United States." "Therefore, it does not surprise one that, in a kind of perverse apostolic succession, the Marxist-Leninists of this age... are just as much opposed to this bill as they were to the original bill of 1935."

Yes, the COUSML is the successor to the best traditions of the CPUSA before it degenerated into Khrushchovite revisionism and betrayed the proletariat. It was the CPUSA militants who were the core of and driving force behind the massive CIO organizing drives of the 1930's. It was the mass struggle of millions of workers, their sacrifice, violence and bloodshed, that led to organizing the unorganized, a giant step forward for the workers in the mass production industries and for the entire working class. Moynihan attempts to wipe out these facts of history and attribute these victories of the 1930's to the Wagner Act of 1935. This is a lie. And in painting the "Labor Law Reform Act of 1978" as a continuation of the Wagner Act, Moynihan is also lying, just like all the labor bureaucrats and other opportunists. The "Labor Law Reform Act of 1978" is a continuation of the fascist Taft-Hartley Act of 1947. The CPUSA led by Comrade William Z. Foster resolutely opposed the Taft-Hartley Act. And today it is the COUSML alone who upholds Marxism-Leninism and the revolutionary traditions of the U.S. communist movement, and stands in complete opposition to the "Labor Law Reform Act of 1978".

By all of these comments, Moynihan has betrayed his inner feelings of nervousness and fear about the prospects of the anti-fascist proletarian socialist revolution in the U.S. He has jumped out to warn the Senate that the "Labor Law Reform Act of 1978" must be passed. By implication he has warned them of the consequences of not suppressing the workers' movement, by emphasizing that the revolutionary Marxist-Leninists are deepening their influence in the workers ' movement, and that measures must be taken before it is too late and things get out of control. End.

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"To Hell with the Fake 'Fight Against Inflation'! -- We Will Not Sacrifice for the Rich!"

(The following leaflet was issued by the Providence Branch of the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists in the struggle of the workers for higher wages against increased exploitation by the Speidel Division of the Textron Corporation.)

Fellow Workers: Since the last leaflet was passed out exposing Speidel's crimes against the workers, Speidel has done nothing about our just demands for higher wages, for compensation for the plant move and for an end to all the harassment given us daily. Instead, they have given us nothing but empty words and stepped-up exploitation and fascism. The leaflet was based on thorough investigation of facts and explained the truth about Speidel's class attacks against all the workers. The only reply we received was a new "Bandwagon" and the "Piplication"--gossipy trash, good for nothing except to use as a dart-board.

The Speidel capitalists were shaken by this leaflet. Many workers were harassed simply for reading the leaflets and newspapers distributed by the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists, and others were accused of conspiring to write leaflets denouncing Speidel! What are they so ashamed about that the workers are not allowed to read about ? Have they been able to refute any of the facts? Have they answered our just demands? No!

The fact is, they have done nothing about the conditions which are causing us to rebel. They try to prettify life at Speidel as one big happy family. Petty harassment is increasing everywhere. For example, in Findings, 4th floor, at a meeting on May 25, the workers were threatened about eating on the job and getting up to get coffee, etc. This is a department where the majority of workers are on piecework, and there are no scheduled coffee breaks. The workers are already speeded up to their limit, and now they are being denied their customary personal time. Washing up "early", going to the restroom, eating, getting up, talking, etc., have been made grounds for a warning in many departments. Speidel is trying to sweep these things under the rug, they try to prevent us from reading about it, they tell us to mind our own business, don't talk about what goes on outside of your department, etc. Gentlemen, we won't keep our mouths shut about firings, wage cuts, and your evil schemes! Attacks on our class brothers and sisters are our business.

Speidel is even more afraid to answer our common demand for higher wages. Speidel tries to make a mystery of the rates of wages paid for different job classifications and for different lengths of employment. Are they afraid to put forth their wage scales in black and white for all to see what paltry wages they are paying? Are they afraid that workers with long years of employment will see how their earnings have deteriorated with respect to others? The fact that wages have decreased below the level of subsistence enables the capitalists to reduce their work force and force the remainder to work long hours of overtime. Far from being a path to higher wages, this only results in lower wages overall, and higher profits for the capitalists. Particularly at this time, overtime is being used as an excuse for not giving any raises at all.

The hated system of "merit increases" in no way even keeps up with the cost of living. Inflation is causing each paycheck we get to contain dollars which are worth less than before. The capitalist class uses inflation as a tool to shift the burden of the economic crisis onto the backs of the working masses. Inflation causes us to suffer an actual wage cut. Karl Marx pointed out, in this situation of rising prices that, "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."

For some time, the Carter administration and its chief banker G. William Miller, past chairman of Textron-Speidel, have been making a lot of noise about fighting inflation. What they are really talking about is freezing wages, for when we are paid less, the capitalists' profits rise. They have no interest in fighting inflation, only in placing the blame on the workers for causing inflation and thus to have an excuse to lower wages. For us at Speidel, what does this mean? It means that raises could be limited to about 5% this year, way below the prevailing rate of inflation and less than the paltry 7% which Speidel has given some workers for the last two years. At the same time as Speidel's profits are setting records, millions in stocks, to "fight inflation" through "voluntary restraint", by "spending less", "using consumer credit less", etc. As if we had any choice about spending less or going deep into debt to buy back the goods which we have labored to produce! The Carter administration hopes to set a pattern this year of voluntary wage limits to pave the way for the imposition of mandatory wage controls in the future.

Mr. Kennedy (Speidel capitalist) and Mr. Miller are calling on us to make sacrifices in the name of "fighting inflation". For whom are we to make these sacrifices ? For Speidel, so they can build a new plant and make more money while turning us into the street? For Textron, to buy up other companies such as the notorious Allied Chemical of Kepone fame? To finance the war preparations of the imperialists, who are leading the world into another war more terrible than the two previous ones? Bell Helicopter Division of Textron is one such merchant of arms, which made huge profits during the Viet Nam war selling gunships, and continues to sell over $1 billion of weaponry to the Shah of Iran. The recent disclosures of millions of dollars in bribes to sell them have only touched the the tip of an iceberg. The armaments trade is so profitable that a few million dollars to sweeten an arms deal is petty cash to the Textron capitalists. And for what are these helicopters being used? To massacre the workers and peasants of Iran, as they did during the recent uprisings against the Shah. To arm anti-popular cliques and governments, to use them as needed to suppress the peoples. The Textron capitalists who profit in such trade can hardly treat us any differently than our fellow toilers. For this we are being asked to sacrifice.

Since the last leaflet, workers have been standing up in greater numbers and refusing to be slaves to the bottomless pockets of Speidel-Textron. Not a day goes by without workers taking up grievances against Speidel's exploitation and unhealthy working conditions. Throughout Speidel, workers are spoiling for a fight. In this situation the bosses panic at any unrest--they are deathly afraid of the unity developing against increasing exploitation, the revolutionary situation developing amongst the proletariat in response to the deepening crisis of the world capitalist system. The workers are asking, how can we unite to resist the shifting of the burden of the economic crisis onto our backs? How can we unite to win complete victory and emancipation from wage slavery?

The recent three and one-half month strike of the courageous coal miners has given us an inspiring example of how to fight the enemy and taught us several lessons. First, it showed the great numbers and strength of our class, and its power in concrete action. The miners grabbed the capitalists by the throat, shutting down union and non-union mines, causing them huge losses. They broke through the "invincibility" of the coal monopolies and the fascist dictates of the capitalists' state machine, defying the Taft-Hartley injunction and the law of the rich that binds us. Secondly, it ripped the mask of deception off of the "pro-labor" Carter administration and its "human rights", as miners were threatened with mass arrests and shot down in cold blood. It taught us that we cannot rely on the machinery of the government to serve our interests. Thirdly, it exposes the treachery of the labor bureaucrats who conspire with the companies and the government to sell out the workers, and who have for years conspired to keep the majority of workers unorganized and disunited. In the face of this treachery, the solidarity of the working class and unity in action was demonstrated, as the railroad workers, auto workers and striking farmers came to their aid. The strike revealed the depth of crisis of the monopoly capitalist system, that such tremendous forces would be used by the desperate bourgeoisie to try and crush the miners, only to fail.

Finally, we learn from the fighting miners that active resistance is the only way! We must continue to wage active resistance to all the fascist harassment that we face and to all Speidel's attempts to saddle us with the burden of the economic crisis. In particular, we must persevere in our struggle for higher wages and denounce all the capitalists' schemes to make us sacrifice to "fight inflation". In order to advance our class struggle we need the leadership of a genuine Marxist-Leninist Communist Party, to lead us to victory. We must build our party in the course of actively resisting the capitalists' offensive, to be our guide and weld us into an invincible army of the proletariat. We will definitely make any sacrifice to build our party and advance our cause.

WE WILL NOT SACRIFICE FOR THE SAKE OF THE RICH! End.

[Cartoon: Cartoon expressing the Speidel workers' hatred of Speidel Division of Textron boss Kennedy and ex-Textron Chairman G. William Miller, presently Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.]

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8 Coal Miners Murdered Under Carter-Miller-BCOA Contract

Within a period of less than one month after the end of the coal miners' national strike last March the coal-mining capitalists murdered a total of eight mine workers. In two separate accidents, four coal miners, two supervisors, one federal mine inspector and an equipment repairman were killed, all as a result of the criminal neglect on the part of the coal monopolists for the safety of the workers.

On April 4, five miners were killed at a Pittston Coal Company mine in southwestern Virginia when the mineshaft they were working in punched into an old, abandoned works, releasing black damp. Black damp is a deadly mixture of oxygen-poor air. It quickly engulfed the miners and several collapsed. Several of the miners manged to crawl out of the mine but two others who rushed into the mine to save their fellow workers themselves suffocated from the black damp.

On April 13, a few miles away, three more miners were murdered by the capitalists when the roof of an Island Creek Coal Company mine (a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum) collapsed on them, killing them instantly.

All of these deaths are directly a result of the criminal neglect of the coal-mining capitalists for the safety of the workers. The state of the rich directly condones and encourages this neglect, playing the role of accomplice in murder. In the first accident, substandard ventilation meant that the deadly black damp was not circulated outside but instead engulfed the miners. Absence of telephone communication between inside and outside meant that the miners could not call outside for help. Finally, because the coal capitalists have repeatedly refused to supply miners with simple oxygen-generating devices to protect them from just such accidents, the miners collapsed from lack of air. Such devices have been available for years and are even required by law. They cost a mere $325 apiece. Yet citing "high expense", and with the permission of the government's Bureau of Mines, the coal capitalists have repeatedly put off supplying these devices to the miners. In fact, it took over an hour before the first supply of oxygen was brought to the Pittston mine -- by helicopter!

In the second accident, the cause of death was the failure of the coal capitalists to maintain proper roof support for the mines. Miners present said that inadequate inspection and maintenance of the mine during the strike and prior to reopening after the strike led to the roof fall. Instead, the company insisted on resuming production immediately following the contract strike. The mine roof, weakened during the long strike, finally collapsed, sending three miners to their deaths.

While the coal capitalists promote the hoax that they "can't afford" simple oxygen-generating devices (it is estimated that providing them would cost the mine owners only three cents per ton of coal mined in the next five years) and "can't afford" to maintain necessary roof support, they "can afford" to invest millions in devising new methods and machinery to mine coal and intensify the labor of the miners, increasing their already swollen profits. The reason safety is "too expensive" is the capitalist system of production for profit: safety devices yield no profit; a ton of coal with or without blood on it sells for the same price.

Scores of coal miners are murdered every year as a result of the criminal and deliberate neglect of the coal-mining capitalists, who refuse to install or issue available safety equipment or to implement safety procedure under the hoax that they can't afford it. If this is not premeditated murder, what is! Comrade Frederick Engels, who together with Karl Marx founded communism, long ago exposed industrial "accidents" for what they are under the capitalist system: "When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another, such injury that death results, we call the deed manslaughter; when the assailant knew in advance that the injury would be fatal, we call his deed murder. But when society (I mean of course, the ruling power of society... the bourgeoisie...) places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and unnatural death, one which is quite as much a death by violence as that by the sword or bullet; when it deprives thousands of the necessities of life, places them under conditions in which they cannot live -- forces them, through the strong arm of the law,' to remain in such conditions until that death ensues which is the inevitable consequence -- knows that these thousands of victims must perish, and yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual; disguised, malicious murder, murder against which none can defend himself, which does not seem what it is, because no man sees the murderer, because the. death of the victim seems a natural one, since the offense is more one of omission than that of commission. But murder it remains."

In their heroic national strike of last winter, one of the main issues on which the miners fought was the question of safety. The coal capitalists, with the full support of the capitalist government headed by the "Democratic" Carter administration, tried to impose sanctions against wildcat strikes, which the miners use to fight the attacks of the capitalists, often on questions of safety. In addition, the miners demanded that their health insurance, an absolute necessity in an industry as dangerous as coal mining, not be tampered with or undermined. Throughout the strike, the coal capitalists and the entire bourgeoisie, their corrupt news media and their repressive state machine headed by Carter raised a deafening cry that the coal miners' struggle and just demands were excessive, "extreme" and would lead to "chaos in the coal fields". The miners rebelled and fought heroically against the attacks of the capitalists, and the strike ended in a stalemate, a temporary truce, as each side prepared for future battles.

The murder of the eight mine workers by the coal capitalists shows that the very same issues, the very same bloodthirsty exploitation, against which the coal miners fought in their strike remains. It shows that the coal miners must wage a tooth-and-nail struggle against the capitalists and their state to defend their vital interests, their very life and limb. Events in the coal fields show that the battle has again broken out. The coal capitalists have slaughtered eight mine workers, while the miners' strike movement is again mounting. At another Pittston mine in southwestern Virginia, 1100 miners went on a wildcat strike when the company fired a miner for "excessive absenteeism". The coal miners have the sincere support of the entire working class and all progressive people as they fight their life-and-death struggle against the bloodthirsty capitalists and their state. End.

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DOWN WITH THE HOSPITAL'S FASCIST RULES AND REGULATIONS!

(The following leaflet was issued at a hospital in the struggle against the measures of the hospital administration to enforce increased exploitation on the workers.)

Fellow workers! Almost every new day at the hospital brings with it new oppressive rules and regulation. A growing army of bureaucrats rides on our backs devising new schemes to squeeze from us every last drop of sweat. Since last fall the hospital's sinister "cost containment committee" has instituted a regime of belt tightening -- not theirs, of course, but ours. Job vacancies left unfilled. Patient census kept up near capacity, increasing the workload on the already overburdened workers. Studies of workers' jobs by "troubleshooters" to make speedup more systematic. Erosion of wages due to inflation which far outstripped the recent meager "Cost of Living" raise. And a general deterioration in working conditions.

In recent weeks the campaign to enforce this stepped-up exploitation has reached absurd proportions with new policies, rules and forms following one another in rapid succession. Workers have been suspended for such things as swearing while coming out of the locker room, returning from lunch a few minutes late, and for making minor errors in work while under the pressure of speedup and short staffing. In the Patient Transportation Department the petty tyrant, a Mr. Sheldon, declared that the workers have "lost the respect of management" and "to win it back they must comply with such rules as: no sweaters may be worn with uniforms, shirts must be buttoned up to the second button, only certain kinds of belts and only white shoes are to be worn with uniforms, etc., etc., etc. " Some departments try to forbid workers from talking to each other in the halls. For all departments, checks are now issued after 2:00 p.m. on Fridays, and if an explanation is given at all, it is said that once an orderly left a patient waiting outside the bank while he went in and cashed his check ! Some of these rules and the so-called reasons behind them are just becoming ridiculous. The hospital's propaganda about our being one happy family dedicated to the well-being of the patients is being exposed for the deception that it actually is.

The real reason behind this increased regimentation is to enforce the speedup and stepped-up exploitation being imposed on the workers under the fraudulent cost containment drive. Some rules (like preventing the workers from going to the bank during the day) directly squeeze a few minutes more of labor from us with the aim that every worker will work at top speed every second of the day to produce even greater profit for the capitalists. As well, many rules work indirectly to intimidate the workers, to transform us into meek and obedient slaves. The capitalists declare that this is their institution, that they can make any rule they want and we had better obey it. The attitude of these self-righteous "noble-minded" capitalists and their lackeys is that we workers are no better than dogs and they intend to treat us like dogs!

The workers' answer to that is hell no! We defy them every day and must organize to defy them even better. When these arbitrary rules and regulations are announced, ridicule them for the fraud that they really are. Isolate and denounce supervisors and petty tyrants like Sheldon. Make them explain themselves for these rules. Unite as many workers as possible and organize mass defiance (like the refusal to buy white shoes or refusals to speed up that are taking place in some areas). Only by taking the path of self-reliance and mass struggle can the workers defend themselves against this brutal offensive by the hospital capitalists.

The cost containment campaign is a part of the entire program of the rich to make the people pay for the deepening capitalist economic crisis. The working class does not accept this program but has its own program to make the rich bear the burden of all the crises which they have created. It is a program of mass revolutionary struggle leading to the complete overthrow of the monopoly capitalist class and their evil system. This is the only way out of the crisis and the only way to be rid of the parasites who live off the sweat and blood of the working people.

FELLOW WORKERS!

DENOUNCE THE "COST CONTAINMENT" CAMPAIGN FOR THE VICIOUS ATTACK WHICH IT REALLY IS!

UNITE AND ACTIVELY RESIST THE SPEEDUP AND INTIMIDATION!

TO HELL WITH THE HOSPITAL'S FASCIST RULES AND REGULATIONS! End.

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American Standard Workers Persist in Struggle for Higher Wages

The workers at the American Standard Heat Transfer plant in Cheektowaga, N. Y., outside Buffalo, are entering their sixth week of a strike. Their basic demand is for higher wages. This demand has been a continuous one for the workers at American Standard, who have had to fight relentlessly to raise their wages to the current level just to keep up with inflation. This struggle of the American Standard workers for higher wages is a just struggle, part and parcel of the struggle of the entire working class to resist the shifting of the burden of the economic crisis onto its back.

The American Standard capitalists have grown rich and fat by parasitizing off the workers through a program of exploitation which has led to expansion by them all over the globe. In particular, they have systematically organized and modernized their production over the years, enabling them to build an empire which boasts of billion dollar sales ($1.8 billion in 1977). When the current economic crisis began in 1974, the American Standard capitalists were already in motion to protect their huge profits by making the workers bear the burden of the crisis. Locally, they allowed old plants to deteriorate, phasing out certain sections of production--such as the foundry on Rano Street and the stamping plant on Elmwood Avenue--in order to concentrate production on areas which "had the greatest growth prospects"--growth prospects for their profits, of course. And for the workers?--Over 1,400 of them were thrown out of their jobs, while those remaining struggled against intensification of their labor, fighting for seniority rights, insurance benefits, safe working conditions, and a decent wage. Today, many American Standard workers are forced to rely upon overtime and second jobs in order to maintain a decent standard of living for themselves and their families.

During the current crisis, part of the overall crisis of capitalism on a world scale, the big moneybags like the American Standard capitalists wallow in their wealth while the working class and oppressed people face intensified exploitation and impoverishment. Many workers, like the 1,400 from American Standard, have been thrown onto the streets by the capitalists, losing all means to a livelihood and swelling the already large ranks of the unemployed. Those workers who remain employed face extreme job insecurity and intensified exploitation. All the while, the real incomes of the workers are continually eaten away by inflation. In January alone, the workers real spendable earnings declined, according to government calculation, by a full 3%. By throwing millions of workers onto the streets without a means of livelihood, by increasing the exploitation of the employed workers, by raising the price on all the necessities of life (currently increasing at 10% annually) and, thus, by cutting the workers' real wages, the rich money-bags like the American Standard capitalists have continued to increase their profits during the current crisis.

The American working class has not laid down before these attacks of the capitalists. The workers have responded by developing a vigorous resistance movement, a movement to oppose the capitalists' attempts to make them bear the burden of the crisis. Over the past year and more, the workers have developed a powerful strike movement against increasing capitalist exploitation, including the national strikes of the coal miners, iron ore workers, longshoremen, aircraft workers, glass workers, and others. This strike movement has been vigorously developed by the workers in Buffalo, including the strikes of the Anaconda Shenango, National Fuel Gas, and J. H. Williams workers most recently. The current strike of the American Standard worker's is a part of this movement in which the opposition and protest of the working masses against capitalist exploitation is embodied.

In order to carry through their program of making the workers bear the burden of the crisis, the monopoly capitalist money-bags must suppress this powerful resistance movement of the workers. Suppressing the resistance movement is the mission of the government of the rich, headed up by the "great humanitarian" Carter. Carter has proposed a whole series of fascist measures which are designed to attack the working class and suppress its just struggles, including the "Labor Reform" Act, Welfare "Reform", and "Aliens" Bill. Recently, Carter has initiated a campaign to impose government wage controls in order to suppress the workers struggles for higher wages, calling for "voluntary wage constraints" as a preliminary step toward imposing full wage controls. Under the hoax of "curbing inflation", Carter is proposing that wage increases this year be held below the average increases of the past two years, that is below 6.1% annually. For American Standard workers, that would amount to a 45¢ increase this year--precisely what the company has offered. Of course, with the current rate of price increases on the basic necessities rising over 10% per year, this would actually mean a wage cut.

The U.S. working class has bitter experience with wage controls under the Nixon administration, when wage increases were "legally" limited to 5.5% per year, while prices soared. Despite the government's demagogy about "controlling prices" as well as wages, and whether wage controls are established under the name of "voluntary constraints", "parity", or "wage stabilization"--controls are imposed by the government to keep the workers' wages down in order to maintain and increase the profits of the capitalists. They are a tool for the suppression of the workers.

To prevent their further impoverishment by the capitalist money-bags, workers must reject the government's propaganda for wage controls. The theory that wage controls will "curb inflation" is a vicious hoax. The workers must reject the current government guidelines of limiting their wage increases to 6.1% annually and should settle for nothing less than wage increases which are acceptable to themselves. The workers must wage active mass struggles to obtain the highest wages they can and break through all the restrictions and "guidelines" imposed by the capitalists and their government to suppress their just struggles for higher wages. This is precisely the path upon which the working class is embarked, as the struggle of the American Standard workers shows. They unanimously rejected the company's offer of 45$ for the first year and they are determined to remain on strike to achieve a wage increase acceptable to themselves. Winning necessarily means intensifying their struggle against the capitalists. This is the correct path forward--for the American Standard workers--and for the whole working class.

VICTORY TO THE AMERICAN STANDARD WORKERS IN THEIR FIGHT FOR HIGHER WAGES!

THE STRUGGLE FOR HIGHER WAGES IS A JUST STRUGGLE!

DOWN WITH GOVERNMENT WAGE "GUIDELINES" AND WAGE CONTROLS!

( Reprinted from a leaflet issued by the Buffalo Workers' Revolutionary Committee of the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists, July 10, 1978.) End.

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22,000 Municipal Workers Strike in Philadelphia

On July 14, 1978, 22,000 municipal workers in Philadelphia went on strike to resist the attempts of the city government of fascist Mayor Frank Rizzo to shift the burden of the capitalist economic crisis onto their backs. The resistance struggle of the Philadelphia municipal workers is a fitting response to the vicious plan of the city government to lay off one-tenth of the entire city workforce of 35,000, and to force the workers to take a cut in their real wages. The Rizzo government's attacks result from the deep economic crisis of the monopoly capitalist system and reveal its utter decay and totally reactionary nature. The determined struggle of the Philadelphia municipal workers is part and parcel of the large strike movement of the workers in the U.S. who are increasingly taking the path of active resistance against the attacks of the capitalists and their government.

The strike, which includes social workers, maintenance workers, janitors, health service workers and sanitation men, began when the city government arrogantly refused to meet the just demands of the workers for a 9 per cent wage hike and a guarantee against layoffs. Besides the massive layoffs, the Rizzo government wanted the workers to accept an inadequate 6 per cent average wage increase for each of two years. In light of the current inflation rate of 11.3 per cent, this would result in a large decrease in the real wages of the workers. Angered at the insulting proposal of the capitalist government, the workers set up picket lines around City Hall and many other government buildings. Panicked by the revolt of the city workers, the Philadelphia government authorities hurriedly threw together a "secret" contingency plan to break the strike, including a scheme to fork over tax money extorted from the working masses to private garbage collection companies in order to use their workers as scabs against striking sanitation men. Obviously, the supposedly penniless government of the rich will spare no expense when it means enforcing their program to make the people pay for the capitalist economic crisis!

Currently, the capitalists are in the midst of their worst economic crisis since World War II. The severity of the crisis is manifested in the fact that it has spread into the governmental sector of the economy which has in the past been expanded as a means to overcome the inherent crises of the capitalist system. The crisis in the governmental sector takes the form of the numerous financial crises that have occurred in the state and city governments across the country. One of the "solutions" that the capitalists have to the financial crisis of the cities is to shift the burden of it onto the backs of the government workers through layoffs, holding down wages, etc.

At the same time, the capitalists must beef up their state machine (armed forces, courts, jails) in order to suppress the growing wave of resistance of the working class and people. According to the Philadelphia government authorities, it was their recent decision not to lay off any fascist police and also to grant them a pay raise of 9 per cent (the same increase that the municipal workers were denied) that necessitated their attempts to lay off 3,500 city workers. In some cities in the U.S., such as Detroit, the city government has been driven into bankruptcy because of its massive expenditures on the repressive police force. All over the country the government is in the process of expanding the already huge prison system in anticipation of growing rebellion from all sections of the people. And of course, the federal budget for military expenditures sets new records every year. The increasing expenditures to further develop the capitalists' apparatus of repression are an indication of the fear that the rich have of the growing mass movements of the working class, the Afro-American people and other oppressed nationalities and the youth and students and reveals the utterly reactionary nature of the monopoly capitalist system.

The strike of Philadelphia city workers indicates that the municipal workers will never accept the schemes of fascist Rizzo. All over the country government workers are increasingly standing up to the efforts being made to shift the burden of the crisis onto them, as the recent strikes of firemen in Louisville and sanitation men in New Orleans show. The government workers are bolstering the ranks of the entire American working class which is vigorously resisting the efforts of the rich parasites and their lackey government to make the working class and people pay for the capitalist crisis. End.

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Labor Traitors Pledge to Betray the Workers' Struggles for Higher Wages

Eager to support the attacks which the rich and their government are making on the workers in the name of "fighting inflation", the top labor bureaucrats who head the major unions are hastening to pledge their loyal support to their bourgeois masters, promising to do their level best to suppress their own workers in the name of "fighting inflation". In doing so, the labor traitors are revealing once again their true class role as agents of the bourgeoisie in the working-class movement.

On April 11, after announcing his intention to cut the wage increase of federal workers from 7 per cent down to 5.5 per cent, Carter said" "I am asking American workers to follow the example of Federal workers and accept a lower rate of increase ( of wages)." The hoax the government is promoting is that if the government and business (the state machine of the bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie itself) "do their part" in "restraining" inflation ( by cutting federal wages, holding off price increases until unions sign contracts at "moderate" wage rates), then the workers must give up their demands for higher wages or face compulsory wage controls, a new "recession", and such dire consequences.

Collaborating wholeheartedly with this capitalist offensive, the labor bureaucrats rushed to support their masters. While George Meany made a big show of "rejecting" wage restraint, the AFL-CIO Executive Council immediately declared that it would reduce wage demands if industry lowers prices. On May 19, UAW president Douglas Fraser promised to reduce the UAW demands in next year's negotiations if the auto companies would freeze prices. Thus the labor traitors are openly declaring in advance that they will sabotage the workers' struggle for higher wages and other just demands in opposition to the increased capitalist exploitation resulting from inflation and other methods the monopoly capitalists are using to shift the burden of the economic crisis onto the workers' backs. The fact that the labor traitors set the condition that the capitalists must first freeze their prices is a meaningless pieces of demagogy meant to fool the workers: at most, certain capitalists may delay price increases until they get the workers to sign a "moderate" (i.e., sell-out) contract, then jack up prices sky-high all over again.

While Fraser chimed in that "We've had a price-wage spiral, not a wage-price spiral", in reality the pledges of the labor bureaucrats to behave if their masters do are merely an upside-down version of the same lying "wage-price spiral" theory the capitalists use to slander the struggles of the workers for higher wages. Rather than declaring that the workers' wages have nothing to do with inflation, Fraser and the labor traitors echo the capitalists' claim that they are a cause of inflation and pledge to hold them down in the name of "fighting inflation". In fact, for the working class, to fight inflation is to fight for higher, not lower wages and to resist and counter-attack all the attacks of the capitalists and make the capitalists pay for the economic crisis they have caused. But for the labor traitors, to "fight" inflation is to kneel and grovel before the capitalist bloodsuckers; in fact, to fight the workers in service of the capitalists.

The pledge of the labor traitors to aid their masters against the workers clearly reveals the reactionary alliance of the labor bureaucrats with the Carter administration. It shows that the workers have no one to rely on but themselves in waging their battles against the employers and their government. The fact that the labor traitors are openly pledging in advance to betray the struggle against the anti-worker, wage-control policies of the capitalist state shows that the workers must themselves get organized to fight with great vigor. End.

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Fight State-Organized Racist Attacks on the Black People in Crown Heights!

(The following leaflet was issued by the New York Branch of the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists)

In the past few weeks there have been a series of vicious racist attacks on the Black people in Crown Heights. These attacks were state-organized and were carried out either by the police themselves or by fascist gangs who were organized by the police. Racist and fascist attacks are part of the daily life of the Black people, and particularly of the Black youth, who are constantly harassed and beaten by the fascist police. Deep outrage at these cowardly attacks has become very widespread, and the Black people in Crown Heights are seriously looking into the causes of, as well as the solutions to, this urgent problem. At the same time, the capitalists through their media (press, TV, etc.) and through the various "committees" they have established, are mystifying both the question of who is to blame for the racist attacks, and the question of how to fight these attacks.

The bourgeoisie blames the people for the racist attacks; it propagates the view that "racial tensions emerge whenever different races are mingled together", the view that it is the people themselves who are the racists. This is altogether wrong. It is not the people, but the rich who are to blame for racist attacks. It is the rich bloodsuckers who are racist to the core and use their power to spread racist ideas everywhere. The state, which is the state of these few rich parasites, organizes fascist and racist attacks on the people, through its police and the fascist gangs. Life itself proves that the state of the rich is the organizer of the racist attacks. In Crown Heights it was the police which killed Arthur Miller and beat Charles King, and it was a fascist gang, working closely with the police, who beat the Afro-American youth Victor Rhodes. It is the police and the fascist gangs who daily harass the Black people, especially the Black youth. We say, "BLAME THE RICH AND NOT THE PEOPLE FOR RACIST ATTACKS!"

Why are the rich and their state organizing racist attacks? Today the capitalists are in a severe economic crisis and are trying to shift the effects of it onto the backs of the entire working class. Further, they are preparing for imperialist war as a way out of this crisis. In order to carry this out, the rich are fascizing the state in order to suppress the growing resistance of the working class. In its fascist offensive against the entire working class, the government singles out the Afro-Americans and other oppressed nationalities for particularly severe attack and blames them for the crimes of the rich such as unemployment and crime. Attacks on the Afro-American people are the cutting edge of the growing fascism of the government. An attack on the Afro-American people is an attack on the interests of the entire working class.

In the 1960's the Afro-American people showed their tremendous revolutionary potential, their daring spirit that "IT'S RIGHT TO REBEL AGAINST REACTIONARIES", a spirit which inspired the whole revolutionary movement in the U.S. as well as throughout the world. This spirit is very much alive in the Afro-American people today and was seen just last July when the working and oppressed masses in Crown Heights and New York City rose up in the Blackout Rebellions against their misery, poverty and unemployment. It is this spirit that the monopoly capitalist class is terrified of and wants to crush. The monopoly capitalist class is seeking revenge; it wants to drive the Black people back into the semi-slavery of the Jim Crow system.

At the same time that it organizes the racist attacks, the government of the rich wants to appear "concerned" about the racist attacks. Thus, Mayor Koch has set up a "Committee on Intergroup Relations" to "reduce racial, religious and ethnic tensions in the city", and the U.S. Department of Justice has asked the FBI to investigate the circumstances of Miller's death. Has the government of the rich, the government who is the organizer of the racist attacks, the government who murdered the Afro-American leaders such as Malcolm X, Fred Hampton, George Jackson -- has it become "sensible" and "concerned" about the plight of the Black people? No! The purpose of these moves by the state is to whitewash its role as the organizer of racist attacks. They will try to place the blame on "racial tensions", "one individual racist cop", or "temporary insanity", letting the rich and their state completely off the hook. Marxism-Leninism teaches and life itself confirms that the government wears two faces, one of the hangman, the other of the priest. Thus it organizes and carries out violent attacks on the Afro-American people, and when they are outraged and are organizing themselves to fight back, the same government then promotes capitulation and the death-end of reforms, "Black faces in high places", etc., in order to break the fighting spirit of the Black masses. The government is telling the people to place their hopes on the same government who organizes the racist attacks. It might even remove one or two cops in order to deceive the people and stop their struggle.

But this won't do! The great lesson of the heroic rebellions of the Afro-American people in the 1960's was that the Black people repudiated the path of capitulation to the state and followed the path of revolutionary struggle against the government, of active resistance to racial discrimination and violent repression, meeting the reactionary violence of the state of the rich with revolutionary violence, as advocated by the great Black liberation fighters, such as Malcolm X and others.

With these racist attacks the rich and their state are digging their own grave. The Afro-American people are summing up their experience in struggle against racial discrimination and violent repression. They are vigorously uniting in struggle, along with the entire working class, against the fascist offensive of the state. And this is the death knell of U.S. monopoly capitalism. End.

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The Government is the Organizer of Nazi Gangs!

In recent months in Chicago, the monopoly capitalists and their government have been vainly trying to promote a small, wretched handful of nazis. The latest publicity stunt occurred on July 9th, when 1500 police were mobilized to protect the nazi's march in Marquette Park from being smashed to pieces by the anti-fascist masses in the area. This stunt is part of the monopoly capitalists' nation-wide efforts to organize fascist gangs. All over the country, the capitalist government has been providing the fascist gangs with platforms to speak from and massive police protection to enable the cowardly fascist bands to openly mouth their racist and fascist views. Within the last year or so, the Ku Klux Klan has been mobilized by the government to hold rallies and demonstrations in Plains, Georgia, St. Louis, and in numerous other places. In Columbus, Ohio, they were invited by the government to speak from the steps of the Statehouse. Each of these efforts, however, ended up as a fiasco for the state-organized fascist gangs, as hundreds of anti-fascists soundly punished the fascists, in some instances forcing the Klansmen to flee for their lives. In Detroit and San Francisco the nazis have been set up in bookstores, under the protection of the state. But the staunchly anti-fascist masses gave the fascists their just reward. In Detroit the masses forced the bookstore to close, while in San Francisco, the anti-fascists burned the nazi bookstore to ashes. The particular group of nazis that staged the recent events in Chicago, was fresh from a state-organized publicity tour that included an appearance on a TV talk show. Again the response of the working masses was to attack the nazis every chance they could.

The events in Chicago demonstrate once again that it is the capitalists and their state machine that it is the capitalists and their state machine that are the organizers and protectors of the nazis, who would not last a day were it not for this fact. For over a year now, the capitalists and their government have been doing everything in their power to try and whip up some support among the masses in Chicago for the nazis. The capitalist TV, radio, and newspapers were filled with articles to support the efforts of the nazis to march in the Chicago suburb of Skokie. Using the "freedom of speech" hoax, the ACLU sent its scum lawyers to fight for the rights of the nazis to propagate racism and fascism. On June 12th, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the nazis could organize their rallies and demonstrations where and when they pleased. But all these efforts by the capitalists and their government to promote their fascist punks only won the bitter hatred of the masses. On June 24th, when the nazis tried to hold a demonstration, some 5000 anti-fascists demonstrated against the collaboration between the capitalist state and the nazis. The enraged anti-fascists hurled rocks and other objects at the nazis, and also at the hundreds of police on hand who protected the nazis and launched attacks against the progressive masses. After this incident the capitalist media resumed its promotional campaign for the nazis portraying them as "harmless" while branding the antifascist demonstrators as "criminals" who were the source of all the trouble and violence. On July 9th, when the nazis organized a march in Marquette Park, some 1500 uniformed fascists of the state were on hand to protect them once again. The police also organized some thugs to attack a counter-demonstration of Afro-American people. The events show that while the nazis have no support whatsoever among the people, they are backed to the hilt by the capitalist media and the police, courts and government bureaucrats of the fascist state machine.

For purposes of deception the government carried out its organizing campaign for the nazis under the banner of "freedom of speech". Using the medium of the ACLU "defenders of Constitutional rights", the state promoted the view that if the nazis weren't allowed to spew their racist and fascist garbage, then this would greatly jeopardize everyone's "right of free speech". This line was then upheld by the Supreme Court. In this way, the government tried to appear neutral, and not in support of the nazis.

But the facts show that either there is "free, speech" for the nazis to organize for fascism, and no rights for the anti-fascist masses to oppose this, or the antifascists organize against fascism and allow no "free speech" for the nazis. Freedom of speech is a class question; either there is "freedom of speech" for the fascists or for the anti-fascists. While feigning neutrality, the government has been doing everything in its power to allow the nazis to organize for fascism. At the same time, the government has been launching brutal physical attacks against the anti-fascists and arresting and jailing them in large numbers for their resolute opposition to the nazis. The capitalist government's organizing of the fascist gangs reveals that no matter how much yelling there is about "democracy" and "human rights", it is the state of the U.S. monopoly capitalist class that has inherited the entire racist and fascist arsenal of Hitler and Mussolini.

The organizing of fascist gangs is by no means the only example of the racist and fascist nature of the capitalist state. Everyday the Carter administration is developing fascism as a means to extricate his capitalist masters from the deep all-round crisis that they are currently in0 It was Carter himself who campaigned for "ethnic purity". Since then the government has devoted the maximum time and attention to developing the fascist "anti-busing" movement; and the "reverse discrimination" fraud has received the blessings of the Supreme Court. Also it is the Carter administration that has launched the "Aliens Bill" in order to further enforce the super-exploitation of immigrants, have massive round-ups and deportations of immigrants, and institute a South African style system of ID-cards. Thus it is clear that fascism is not the sole property of a handful of nazis, not some threat that may happen, but that it is the practical program of the Carter government. End.

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Mexican-Americans in Houston Rise in Rebellion

On May 5th and 6th, more than 2,000 Mexican-American youth and workers of Houston rose up in rebellion against violent police repression and to avenge the death of Jose Torres, a Mexican-American worker brutally murdered by the police.

The rebellion began when the police staged a reactionary attack upon a community festival. Using the well-worn flimsy excuse of "breaking up a fight over a young woman", the police violently attacked several youths and attempted to arrest them. Hundreds of people vigorously answered this racist and fascist attack with revolutionary violence. The police were denounced, surrounded, beaten and driven from the park under a shower of rocks and bottles. The Mexican-American youth immediately smashed, overturned and set ablaze two police cars.

In a panic, the city authorities called in 350 police reinforcements in an attempt to suppress the rebellion. But the masses would not be intimidated. They fought the police tit-for-tat. Taking up rocks, bottles, firebombs and guns, more than 2,000 people fought the police for many hours. The masses set up barricades at both ends of the park, so that it could be used as a staging area from which to launch attacks against the police. Four police were injured seriously enough to be sent to the hospital. No mercy was shown for two agents of the capitalist press, reporters for the lying TV news, who were dragged from their car, beaten and stabbed, then their car was smashed. The rebellion lasted late into the night as the police were unable to suppress the active resistance of the Mexican-American people.

The next evening, in a further provocation, the police sent special units of SWAT teams, trained paramilitary attack squads, into the Mexican-American community to randomly attack the masses of people. Again the people were not cowed. Hundreds filled the streets to fight these latest attacks and again met the reactionary violence of the police with revolutionary violence. This second night the rebellion continued on into the early hours of the morning.

During two nights of fighting, 49 people were arrested. Unable to suppress the masses of people through outright violent means, the government turned to political deception in hopes of dampening the fighting spirit of the Mexican-American people. Two federal "mediators" from the Community Relations Service of the Justice Department were called in from Dallas to try to convince the people that the government would solve their problems and that they should give up their struggle against police violence, but these efforts failed miserably.

During the rebellion, while resisting the reactionary attacks of the police, many youth openly spoke of avenging the police murder of Jose Torres. One year ago, the police arrested and brutally beat a 23 year old Mexican-American worker, Jose Torres. They threw him onto a bayou where he was later found dead. Months later, the six police who were brought to trial for the murder of Jose Torres received a mere hand-slapping: three were let off scot-free and three were convicted and fined $1 and given a sentence of one year's probation for "violating the human rights of their prisoner"! The case of Jose Torres shows the hand-in-glove activity of the police, who carry out the violent suppression of the Mexican- Americans, and the courts, which legalize it. This case exposes the true role of the monopoly capitalist state machine (police, courts, army, etc.) --the suppression of the masses by force of arms in order to protect the monopoly capitalist class from the revolt of the working people.

This latest police attack and the murder of Jose Torres are part of the systematic national oppression of the Mexican-American people. Racially discriminated against, violently suppressed by the police, their language and culture suppressed by the capitalists, the Mexican-Americans are driven into rat- trap housing, given the hardest and worst jobs, constantly face an extremely high rate of unemployment and have their children forced into the worst schools. The reactionary police think nothing of killing Mexican-American youth -- shooting them down in cold blood. President Carter, the chief political representative of the monopoly capitalists, has drafted a vicious attack against the workers, subjecting them to stepped-up mass round-ups and deportations as well as increased exploitation at the place of work. The reactionary U.S. bourgeois state regards all Spanish-speaking people as "aliens" and under this bill, will subject the Mexican-American people to still worse brutality and suppression.

The rebellion in Houston shows that the masses of Mexican-American people have a deep burning hatred for the reactionary violent attacks of the state and a vigorous fighting spirit to resist them. They are following the correct path of tit-for-tat resistance. Only if the proletariat and the people of the oppressed nationalities actively fight against the reactionary attacks of the state can they prepare themselves to play their powerful role in the anti-fascist proletarian socialist revolution of the American working class and people. End.

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Editorial of Zeri i Popullit, Organ of the Central Committee of the Party of Labor of Albania

IMPERIALISTS, HANDS OFF VIET NAM!

(The following is an editorial of Zeri i Popullit, Organ of the Central Committee of the Party of Labor of Albania, reprinted from the Albanian Telegraphic Agency, June 24,1978)

Three years ago the people of Viet Nam won their magnificent victory over the American imperialist aggressors and their lackeys. This victory opened the road to the lofty national aspirations of the whole people, both in the north and in the south. United Viet Nam began the work for the peaceful construction of the country.

The American imperialists did their utmost to block Viet Nam, to bring the country under their neocolonialist domination and to turn it into a base for launching aggression against the other peoples of Asia. The entire economic and political might of American imperialism was used to bring to their knees and subjugate the heroic Vietnamese people. More than six million Americans participated directly or indirectly in this unprecedented undertaking. The United States of America spent more than $145 billion, dispatched the most outstanding generals of the Pentagon, the most highly trained troops, the most modern weapons and the most lethal poisons. The American presidents, one after another--Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon and Johnson -- invented and utilized every sort of strategy and so-called "doctrine". They implemented the policies of so-called "Americanization", "Vietnamization", the "scorched earth" tactics and diplomatic threats. But all these failed.

Against the brutality, barbarism and diabolical maneuvers of American imperialism, the Vietnamese people pitted their ardent patriotism and an unwavering determination to fight with an iron will to win. The sacrifices made and the heroism of the Vietnamese people displayed in the war, imposed on them by the imperialists, are unprecedented. In order to win victory, Viet Nam sacrificed the lives of millions of its finest sons and daughters, merging all of its material and spiritual forces. The country was burned and seared by the iron and flames of bloody war. All these sacrifices and heroism, and the great and glorious contribution of the Vietnamese people to the struggle of all the other freedom-loving peoples who have risen against the aggressive policy of the imperialists, enjoy the admiration, honor, respect and sympathy of the peoples of the world. Whoever has no respect or gratitude for these sacrifices should be condemned.

Educated by their Party of Labor with Comrade Enver Hoxha at the head, the Albanian people have sincerely extended firm support for the struggle of the Vietnamese people against the American imperialists and its lackeys, have greeted wholeheartedly their heroic victories and have expressed unwavering conviction in the triumph of their just cause. Our people, like all the peoples of the world, who express their solidarity with the anti-imperialists and liberation struggle of the Vietnamese people, hope that they enjoy and consolidate the victories achieved through so much bloodshed and sacrifice, that they live free and build their own socialist homeland in peace.

The conflict and armed clashes on the Viet Nam-Cambodia border, instigated by foreigners, fighting which has resulted today in many victims, disrupted the peaceful construction work which was embarked upon in Indochina. With regret, the friends of the Vietnamese people, including the Albanian people, observe that instead of being resolved in the spirit of friendship, good understanding and mutual friendship, because of the foreign intervention, the disagreements between the Vietnamese and Cambodians have become even more complicated. The Party of Labor of Albania has clearly expressed its viewpoint and stand in regard to this conflict. In the editorial published on January 5th of this year (1) in Zeri i Popullit, concerning the events on the border between Viet Nam and Cambodia, it is stated that the Albanian people have always stood for the following: that between two neighboring countries and peoples who have fought together against imperialism and common enemies, every action which may jeopardize the lofty interests of the two nations, their revolution and their freedom must be stopped, and that they should solve their disagreements through friendly talks. It has always been and still is our belief that this can only be solved by joint efforts and goodwill. But instead of the situation being resolved, it has become more tense and is deteriorating continually because of the conspiracies and intrigues of the superpower.

Around Viet Nam an atmosphere is being built up which is not promising. The freedom-loving peoples of the world are worried about the latest events which have occurred, but are convinced that the Vietnamese people, who have brilliant fighting traditions and an invincible spirit, will face up to and overcome these very dangerous difficulties which have been created. To obstruct Viet Nam today from advancing on its course of independent development and peaceful construction violates and offends the consciousness of all the peoples, of all those who love and respect the freedom and independence of nations, the right of every country to decide its affairs itself.

Conflicting viewpoints in regard to solving problems now also exist between neighboring countries, but we are of the opinion that this should never be the cause of the creation and instigation of conflicts, because the just and correct road to solve disagreements is that of talks. To try to solve problems by imposing the views of one party through political and economic and other kinds of pressure is to be condemned. This is a practice which the peoples have long ago rejected. Viet Nam has its own political and ideological views. This is its affair. That doesn't change the right of the peoples of Viet Nam, the principle that every people have the right to decide themselves on every problem of the fate of the country without external interference. No one has the right to exercise pressure against or threaten it. Those who adopt such methods and refuse to sit down at the negotiation table to solve disagreements which can arise between neighboring countries are not in the right. They are the weaker side in the arguments. They are the culprits. Therefore, whoever thinks that he can impose his views and aims through pressure and blackmail must rest fully assured that the Vietnamese people will never accept this. Nor will any other free people approve it.

After the victory against American imperialism and the reunification of the country, a new period commenced for the Vietnamese people -- that of the efforts to heal the innumerable and extremely heavy scars of the war, the period of the reconstruction and the socialist transformation. No one has the right to intervene in its internal affairs, to obstruct the carrying out of these tasks in this difficult period. No one should interfere in the question about how Viet Nam solves its own problems, how it deals with questions over which it has sovereign rights. When external pressure is exerted against Viet Nam in an effort to dictate how it should act, about what it should do in its own country, everyone understands what is hidden behind such beautiful slogans and words as "we support the freedom and independence of the people", "we respect the right of nations too", "we give disinterested aid" -- which the imperialists use unsparingly all the time. Now the Vietnamese people are facing new great difficulties, but they have never been intimidated by or surrendered to difficulties and pressures. They have learned to resist them and overcome them resolutely, however great they may be and whatever the source of them. Now, as in the past, they enjoy the solidarity and sympathy of all the freedom-loving people and all the progressive forces. Those who stand loyal to proletarian internationalism consider it their duty to support and assist the Vietnamese people against the intrigues of great powers and all those who wittingly or unwittingly assist these intrigues.

(1) Reprinted in The Workers' Advocate, Vol. 8, No. 2, February 10,1978. End.

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U.S.-lsraeli Gangsters Talk of "Peace" While Committing Aggression Against the Arab Peoples

The U.S. imperialists have arranged for the Middle-East "peace" talks to resume in England July 18. While advertising their desire for "peace", the Israeli zionists come to these talks arrogantly proclaiming their right to subjugate the Arab people to their fascist military rule and demanding that the other Arab peoples compromise their principles of independence and sovereignty over their own territory. Carter calls this a "reasonable negotiating position"! The Israeli Zionists come to these "peace" talks with blood fresh on their hands from the slaughter of thousands of Lebanese and Palestinian people. Their acts of vicious aggression against the Lebanese, Palestinian and other Arab peoples continue daily based on the all-round support of U.S.. imperialist!. All this shows that the U.S. imperialists and the Israeli Zionists have no interest whatsoever in peace in the Middle East,but have cooked up the "peace" talks to deceive the Arab people into giving up their liberation struggle in order to smooth the way for further penetration of U.S. imperialism and Zionism into Arab territory.

The England "peace" talks between Israeli foreign minister Dayan and Egyptian foreign minister Kamel, supervised by the U.S. imperialist servant Vance, are to deal with the West Bank and the Gaza Strip regions of Palestine. The basis of the talks is agreement of the parties for the continued military presence of Israel on this territory, which was stolen by the Israeli zionists and U.S. imperialism from the Arab people by aggressive war in 1967.

The U.S.-Israeli proposal for the West Bank and the Gaza Strip area, cooked up by Carter and Begin, calls for "security and public order" in this region to be the "responsibility of Israeli authorities". While the Palestinians living there would be able to elect a few representatives to an "administrative council", the actual political power based on military control would remain in zionist hands. Further, the proposal would guarantee die Israelis the right to keep and expand their settlements, bases for Zionist aggression on the West Bank and in Gaza. The proposal would also give Israel the authority to prevent the Palestinian refugees, particularly the Palestine Liberation Organization, leading its people in their liberation struggle, from retuning to their homeland. Israel's proposal is a scheme to perpetuate Zionist military rule in this region while tying the hands of the people's liberation struggle.

Sadat of Egypt, groomed by U.S. imperialism to lead the Arab peoples down the disastrous path of capitulation, has recognized Israeli military presence on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as the foundation for the present talks. A week before the talks in England he pledged, "I am ready to meet any Israeli need for security -- either on the West Bank or in the Gaza Strip". On one side of the negotiating table is Dayan, declaring Israel will never give up its military occupation of Arab territory, and on the other is Kamel, compromising the Palestinian and other Arab peoples' national liberation struggles and inviting the Israeli zionists to further slaughter the Arab peoples by promising Israel military outposts on the West Bank and Gaza from which to launch further aggression.

There s nothing good in these "peace" talks for the Arab people. They have nothing to do with the interests of tie Palestinian people for freedom and the liberation of their homeland. Their purpose is to create tie illusion that the Arab people can rely on U.S. imperialism and Israeli Zionism to solve their problems. The aim is to liquidate the liberation struggles that the Palestinian and other Arab peoples are waging against Zionism and U.S. imperialism.

The experience of the last eight months since Sadat recognized Israel and entered into talks with the Zionists has shown that "negotiations" and compromises have not made the Zionists more reasonable. To the contrary, the Israeli Zionists have become more arrogant and more aggressive. In March they carried out a major offensive against Lebanon aimed at extinguishing the Palestinian liberation movement. The Zionists occupied 10 % of Lebanon, killing thousands of Lebanese and Palestinian people and uprooting thousands more from their homes. Zionist aggression against the Lebanese and Palestinian people living in Lebanon continues. On June 13, the Israeli Zionists turned over their military posts inside the Lebanese border, their tanks, artillery and other equipment to the fascist phalangist forces, long groomed by the Israeli Zionists, to do the dirty work of the Zionists of annihilating the Palestinian liberation movement based there and exterminating the Lebanese people. On June 10 the Zionists attacked the Lebanese village of Aqibiyeh and a Palestinian camp located in the village. Earlier this month Zionist jets buzzed over Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, to terrorize the people while thousands of Zionist troops were dispatched to the Lebanese border to back up a threat that Israel was ready to again invade Lebanon.

The Zionists have also stepped up their acts of aggression against the Palestinian people living in the Israeli occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. The Palestinians in these areas face daily fascist attacks by the Zionist military forces. This coincides with the Zionists' latest plans to establish 160,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank. This is to add to more than 100 such settlements on the West Bank and other occupied Arab territory which are aimed at the annihilation of the Palestinian people and to provide the Zionists with bases to launch further aggression against the other Arab peoples. These are the activities of the "peace-loving" Israeli Zionists who come to the "peace" talks openly declaring they will never give up their "right" to carry out activities such as these.

The existence of the U.S.-supported Israeli state is the cause of the lack of peace in the Middle East. As the hired assassins for U.S. imperialism, the Israeli fascists carry out aggressive expansionist activities for U.S. imperialism in its rivalry with Soviet social- imperialism for hegemony in the Middle East. During the last six years the U.S. imperialists have provided Israel with $7 billion in arms. In May, Carter reassured Israel that the U.S.'s commitment to "Israel's security remains permanent". This month, in Israel, Mondale pledged that the U.S. would "not fail to provide Israel with crucial military assistance." U.S. imperialism will never fail to provide its Zionist thugs with military aid so that the Israeli Zionists can carry out genocide and aggression against the Palestinian and other Arab peoples. Without this outpost for U.S. imperialism, the U.S. could never exercise its imperialist domination over the Middle East. Peace and liberation for the Arab peoples depends not on sitting down with the Israeli Zionists and U.S. imperialists to sham "negotiations" and compromises, but on smashing the Zionist state from which U.S. imperialism launches its aggression in the Middle East. The Palestinian and other Arab peoples have not been deceived by the U.S. imperialists' and Zionists' machinations. They are vigorously escalating their armed actions and massive demonstrations in Lebanon, on the West Bank and Gaza Strip and in the heart of Israel itself. These actions are aimed at defeating Zionism and U.S. imperialism in the Middle East. End.

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Historic Uprisings of the Iranian People Against the Fascist Shah

A historic struggle for freedom and true independence is sweeping across Iran. Over the last eight months hundreds of thousands of Iranian people have launched a nationwide struggle against the criminal rule of the Shah and U.S. imperialist domination. Each week brings news of a new uprising in the cities, universities and villages. A revolt in one city causes 10 more cities to rise in solidarity with it. The masses of people from every corner of Iran have raised the cries, "Down With the Shah!", "Down With the Fascist Regime!", "Down With Imperialism!". The revolts are a reflection of the irreconcilable contradictions between the regime of the Shah propped up by U.S. imperialism and the masses of the Iranian people. These uprisings have shaken the fascist regime of the Shah to its foundations and are but a herald of what is to come in the future.

Since the winter of 1977 there have been massive protests organized in more than 40 cities, townships and villages. These demonstrations have aimed their blows at all manifestations of oppression -- the ideological, political, social, economic and military institutions of the Shah. The masses have gutted and burned the offices of the Rastakhis Party (the Shah's party) in Tabriz; taken over the office of the Governor General in Khomain; broken to bits the statue of the Shah in the public square in Abudan; destroyed banks, closed factories, steel plants and oil refineries in numerous cities; leveled movie theaters in Tabriz; and waged tit-for-tat battles with army troops and police armed with tanks, cannons, machine guns,etc., throughout the country.

One of the sites of earlier demonstrations was in the provincial city of Qom. There the masses rose up to denounce the fascist police for breaking up a sit-in of students. The police attacked the demonstration, killing 50 and wounding 300. But this act of terror, rather than subduing the Iranian people, brought forth a torrent of protests. 40 days later the people of Tabriz marched through the streets denouncing the murders of the citizens of Qom and calling for the overthrow of the Shah and U.S. imperialism. (There is an Iranian tradition of commemorating the death of a loved one after 40 days of mourning. The masses have used this tradition as a form of political struggle against the Shah.) More than 70,000 participated in the Tabriz rebellion. For more than two days the heroic Tabrizi patriots fought the Shah's forces, battling the army and police. The demonstrators smashed up the Rastakhis Party headquarters and destroyed the Export Bank of Iran which is owned by the Shah's party. According to the Shah's press agency, 73 banks, nine movie houses and six cars belonging to government officials were also burned or damaged by the demonstrators. In Tabriz, on these two days alone, 800 of the best sons and daughters of the Iranian people fell fighting the fascists.

One significant development of the Tabriz uprising was the rebellion and resistance in the army and police forces, against the orders to fire on the protestors. The Shah was forced to bring a section of the army from Rezaiyeh to quell the fighting. After the news of the Tabriz uprising spread, rebellions occurred in more than 40 other areas.

Tehran was the scene of more mighty uprisings. On one occasion in May, thousands fought the Shah's troops for nine hours. The Shah was put into such a frenzy that he was forced to postpone his trip to Eastern Europe and personally "lead" his troops into battle against the masses. When the people attempted to take over the radio station in Tehran, the army opened fire, killing hundreds. Five days later the capital city was under a general strike, completely shutting down. In a vain attempt to end the disturbances, the Shah declared martial law and ordered the masses off the streets. The masses showed that no edict of the government would stop their determination and demonstrations erupted throughout the city.

The people of Iran are waging an uncompromising struggle for the overthrow of the Shah and U.S. imperialism. From the north in Tabriz to the capital city of Tehran down to Shiraz in the south, the revolutionary storm of the masses has left no part of the society's institutions untouched. So shaken by these revolts, the Shah replaced the head of SAVAK and his foreign minister has openly admitted the regime faces an unprecedented crisis.

Iranian students in the U.S. loyal to the interests of the Iranian people have organized wave upon wave of protest calling for the overthrow of the Shah and demanding an end to U.S. control of their country. Demonstrations have taken place from coast to coast. One of the largest occurred in Chicago. At this demonstration the police brutally attacked the Iranian students, taking 173 into custody. Eleven of the protestors were arrested and the others were turned over to the immigration service. At the immigration office, the bureaucrats thought they would intimidate the Iranian students with threats of deportation if they did not give their names and student status. The Iranian students would not be cowed by the U.S. state and refused to give the government any information. Instead they began shouting revolutionary slogans and declared a hunger strike. This staunch stand of not capitulating to the reactionary U.S. government is in the fine revolutionary tradition of the Iranian people. Finally after 24 hours the immigration service was forced to release them. After leaving the offices the Iranian students joined other demonstrators outside the building denouncing the role of the U.S. in oppressing the Iranian people.

The Iranian people live under the most brutal of conditions. The Shah has turned Iran into a nation of bayonets and restricted villages. His rule is in service to imperialism, especially U.S. imperialism, which dominates all aspects of life in the country -- the economy, politics, military, etc. Besides making huge profits from plundering the Iranian people's natural resources, especially the oil, the U.S. imperialists have made Iran a center for investment in factories for the assembly of various goods for export. Autos, tractors, electrical equipment, trucks, etc., are now being manufactured in Iran. The Soviet social-imperialists have extended their tentacles in Iran too. For the past two years they have been plundering the vast natural gas reserves in Iran and have made large investments in the production of steel.

Iran's military is totally controlled by and run in the service of U.S. imperialism. Today more than 30,000 U,S. military advisors give the orders to the 400,000-man Iranian army. The military budget for 1978-1979 will be $10 billion. Iran plans to purchase 390 F-16 and F-18 fighter planes at a cost of $3 billion. These weapons make Iran one of the most well-equipped armies in the world, to be used in the first place against the workers, peasants and patriotic forces in Iran.

While turning Iran into a haven of plunder for the U.S. and other imperialists, the Iranian government serves its masters faithfully in other ways as well. The regime of the Shah plays the role of gendarme and watchdog of U.S. imperialism in the Persian Gulf region. It has sent 20,000 soldiers to Oman to commit genocide against the Omani people, invading the Dhofar region and bringing Dhofar under its military control. The Shah also aids another of U.S. imperialism's outposts in this region, Israel. During the 1973 war, all of the Phantom jets of the Shah were placed at the disposal of Israel, and he made sure that the Zionist military machine kept running smoothly by providing to Israel free oil. Within OPEC this traitor to the world's people has been instrumental in sabotaging the struggle against the plunder of the oil resources of the oppressed peoples by the imperialist oil monopolies.

Because of the semi-feudal and semi-colonial nature of Iran, the masses of people live in dire poverty and want. In the cities more than 1.5 million workers do not have any living facilities. Those who are "lucky" enough to find them must pay exorbitant rents. Rents have increased 1,000 per cent in the last five years, so that the monthly cost of an unfurnished apartment without electricity or water in Tehran is about 1,200 toumas (approximately $180 a month) which is equal to the monthly wages of two workers. Inflation is rampant, rising 900 per cent in the last five years, while wages have stayed the same for the majority of workers and where they have increased it has only been by a mere three per cent.

In the countryside, the peasantry is living in the depths of misery. Over 30 per cent of the peasants have been thrown off the land. Those that remain suffer from the burden of high interest rates to the banks and high taxes to the government. The fact that Iran is an agricultural country and still is forced to import 70 per cent of its foodstuffs testifies to the extreme ruination of the peasantry.

Today the masses of people are awakening and rising in revolt. For the first time in twenty-five years they have their communist party, the Workers' and Peasants' Communist Party of Iran. Loyal to Marxism-Leninism and formed in the great struggle against revisionism and "three worlds-ism", this party reflects the voice of the Iranian masses. Going deep among the people, the Workers' and Peasants Communist Party of Iran, while young, already exerts a big influence on the political life of some of the cities. As well, the Party plays close attention to the needs of the peasantry and has infiltrated through the Shah's fascistic restricted villages and has influenced the people's movement in the countryside. The Iranian people -- the working class, the peasantry and other revolutionary strata, under the leadership of the Workers' and Peasants' Communist Party, will not cease their struggle until the fascist dependent regime of the Shah is overthrown. Then the masses will enjoy the fruits of their liberation under a people's democratic Iran.

DEATH TO THE SHAH!

DEATH TO U.S. IMPERIALISM!

LONG LIVE THE UNITY BETWEEN THE AMERICAN AND IRANIAN PEOPLE!

LONG LIVE THE WORKERS' AND PEASANTS' COMMUNIST PARTY OF IRAN! End.

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AGAINST U.S. IMPERIALISM AND INTERNAL REACTION

HAIL THE 12th ANNIVERSARY OF THE FOUNDING OF THE REVOLUTIONARY COMMUNIST PARTY OF CHILE

(The following article is reprinted from El Pueblo, Official Organ of the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Chile, January-February 1978, no. 94. Translated by The Workers' Advocate.)

On this month of February, the Chilean proletariat celebrates an event of great significance for the present and future of the revolutionary struggle of our people. This event we are hailing is the 12th anniversary of the founding of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Chile.

The result of a prolonged struggle of the true proletarian revolutionaries against the opportunists, a struggle which developed mainly inside the old and mis-named "Communist" Party, the "Spartacus" group was formed in 1963. This group brought the consistent Marxist-Leninists together, those which through an intense work of political 'and ideological clarification, of struggle against and criticism of Khrushchovite revisionism which was serving to strengthen the opportunist positions of the leading clique of the falsely called "C"P, created the necessary conditions to convene the founding congress of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Chile.

The First Congress of the revolutionary communists took place on the 13th, 14th and 15th of February, 1966, exactly twelve years ago. At this historic event, the program of the revolutionary communists for leading the people in the present stage of the Chilean revolution and the organizational norms were approved, and the first Central Committee was elected.

During these twelve years the Revolutionary Communist Party of Chile has worked with passion and revolutionary determination to serve wholeheartedly the cause of our people, to unite closely with the life and struggles of the workers and poor peasants, students and teachers, employees and "pobladores", to link the Marxist-Leninist theory to the concrete practice of the struggle of our people, to lead and constantly raise the level of the revolutionary struggle of the Chilean people with the perspective of the seizure of state power through arms and thus achieve their true liberation.

Important political events have shaken our country during these twelve years. Among these, the experience of revisionism which preceded the present fascist regime, constituted a test which helped to temper the proletarian character of our Party even more. Those were three years of deceit, in which it was attempted to make the people believe that steps were being taken towards socialism when, in reality, what create conditions for the development in Chile of a regime of state capitalism, dependent on Russian social-imperialism, similar to those existing in Eastern Europe and Cuba today. Corvalan's gang was capable enough to gather around itself, through demagogy and bribery, all the parties which form the so-called traditional left, and to drag them behind the objectives previously described. Naturally sectors from the base of these parties, many of their honest leaders, and especially the more advanced elements from the masses, soon began to understand the fraud and the real objectives which the leading clique of the false "C"P was taking them to.

Even though these sectors were not able to raise in a conscious and coherent fashion an alternative which was correct and contrary to the hegemonic position of revisionism in the "Popular Unity" Government, nevertheless we recognize the acute contradictions which brewed in its midst. These contradictions have made it possible for a situation of great discussion and true crisis to develop in the midst of these parties today, a crisis which in many cases has led important sectors of these parties to break definitively with the revisionist clique of Corvalan and its agents inside the other parties of the ex-"Popular Unity". This is the case of the sectors of MAPU, of the National Coordinator of Regionals of the Socialist Party and of others.

On the other hand, our Party --the RCP-- was the only one that raised a truly proletarian revolutionary alternative to combat imperialism and the national reactionaries, to mobilize the united people against the fascist threat which was brewing in those days and which unleashed itself in Pinochet's coup. The RCP was the only one that would not be deceived by the illusion of the "peaceful road" of the opportunists and which proposed an authentic path for the liberation and the construction of true socialism in Chile. Of course, we also made mistakes in the application of our correct line, mistakes that we have self-criticized on the appropriate occasion, which together with our still limited development, did not allow us to play the role of vanguard which belonged to us as the revolutionary party of the proletariat. Today, in the harsh conditions of fascist repression, we are making efforts to overcome our limitations.

Today, more than four years into the most bloodthirsty dictatorship that our people have been forced to suffer, the RCP continues to furnish proofs of courage and unreserved loyalty to, the revolutionary cause, serving wholeheartedly the interests of the proletariat and the people in the struggle to death against the fascist dictatorship, for the expulsion of yankee imperialism and the "criollo" ( domestic --ed.) reactionaries.

Our Party celebrates its twelve years of life while raising strongly politics of unity and struggle against fascism and imperialism, a line expressed in the politics of the People's Front, which is being taken up vigorously by the masses of workers and people. The committees of the People's Front which grow daily in the different sectors are a clear testimony to this.

Faced with the situation of today, the RCP has persevered in the correct proletarian revolutionary alternative, fighting against the line of gradualism, and capitulation which the forever-opportunist clique of Corvalan has tried to push in collusion with the professional demagogue and U.S. agent, Mister Frei. The RCP raises the banner of Active Resistance for the overthrow of the dictatorship and the establishment of a Democratic Government of Anti-Fascist Unity, a transitional government to pass to a truly People's Democratic regime with an immediate socialist perspective. To this end, our Party raises the necessity and legitimacy that the people take up arms in face of the fascist aggression, the only sure path to the smashing up of the armed pillar of fascism and imperialism, prop of all regimes of exploitation that have existed in our country.

With respect to its internationalist duties, too, as a vanguard detachment of the proletariat, our Party has made efforts to accomplish its tasks. In this way our Party has kept itself permanently side by side with the struggle of the international proletariat against imperialism and the bourgeoisie of every country, with the genuinely socialist countries, such as People's Socialist Albania, with the peoples that fight against imperialism, colonialism old and new, and for their liberation and socialism.

As one more anniversary of the founding of the RCP is being reached, we must speak to a grave and lesson-giving fact for the Marxist-Leninists and the peoples of the world. This fact is the counter-revolutionary coup d'etat carried out in People's China after the death of the correct and beloved leader, Comrade Mao Tsetung. This fact means that, unless a great movement of the genuine Chinese Marxist-Leninists and revolutionaries is able to rise up and overthrow the present ruling clique, the People's Republic of China will change its color, and will be transformed from a socialist country into a revisionist country.

A task of enormous transcendence for the defense of socialism and world revolution is the exposure of the leading gang in China headed by Teng Hsiao-ping, defending the immortal principles of Marxism-Leninism, defending the work and thought of Comrade Mao Tsetung which belongs to the international revolutionary proletariat and today is being distorted and held in contempt by Teng Hsiao-ping and his gang, defending proletarian internationalism and the unity of the genuine Marxist-Leninist Parties based on these principles and pushing forward the development of a great world-wide united front of the international proletariat and the peoples of the world against imperialism, especially against the two superpowers, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., against colonialism old and new, and against reaction in every country. In this way, the world proletarian socialist revolution and the movement for national liberation under the leadership of the proletariat and its vanguard party, the Marxist-Leninist party, advance.

For the strengthening of our Party... For the triumph of the anti-fascist and anti-imperialist struggle of the Chilean people... For the strengthening of the International Marxist-Leninist Movement... For the triumph of the world proletarian socialist revolution...

HAIL THE 12th ANNIVERSARY OF THE REVOLUTIONARY COMMUNIST PARTY OF CHILE!

LONG LIVE MARXISM-LENINISM-MAO TSETUNG THOUGHT!

LONG LIVE SOCIALISM, LONG LIVE COMMUNISM!

[Graphic: THE RESISTANCE WILL WIN!]

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Statement of the National Executive Committee of the COUSML on the Death of Comrade David Benquis of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Chile

With profound sadness, the National Executive Committee of the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists received the news of the death of Comrade David Benquis, founding member and leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Chile, who died of cancer in Paris, on May 29, 1978. Comrade Benquis was the beloved leader of the heroic Party of the Chilean proletariat. He was one of the pioneers, in Chile and in Latin America, of the struggle against revisionism. His name is irrevocably associated with the glorious role the Revolutionary Communist Party of Chile has played in the struggle of the international Marxist-Leninist communist movement against revisionism of all types, including the new international opportunist trend based on the "three worlds" theory, and with its persistent struggle under the most difficult of conditions, against the fascist rule of the lackeys of U.S. imperialism and against their revisionist collaborators. This immense loss to the Chilean Party is also a huge loss to the entire international Marxist-Leninist communist movement. We U.S. Marxist-Leninists, who have never ceased to be inspired by the example of the heroic Revolutionary Communist Party of Chile, pledge to carry out our internationalist duty to our Chilean comrades and the Chilean people, the revolutionary overthrow of U.S. imperialism. The National Executive Committee of the COUSML extends the deep condolences of all U.S. Marxist-Leninists to the Chilean Party upon the death of its beloved leader. We stand firmly at its side in the struggle against imperialism, revisionism and all reaction and for the victory of the revolution and socialism.

National Executive Committee

Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninist

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Statement of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Chile on the Death of Comrade David Benquis

On May 29, 1978, at 1:00 p.m. our dear Comrade David Benquis died in Paris. Comrade David Benquis was, in the hearts and minds of all its militants, the founder, organizer and great leader and guide of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Chile.

Comrade Benquis was one of the pioneers, in our country and in Latin America, of the struggle waged during the 1960's against revisionism in the communist parties.

In the building of the first Chilean Marxist-Leninist Party, the Revolutionary Communist Party, he gave not only his political foresight but also his tenacious work as an organizer and his warm influence as an educator of the revolutionary cadres.

The ideological firmness and clarity of our Party: its inalienable political independence in confronting, on the basis of Marxist-Leninist principles, complex problems and situations; its vitality to overcome the biggest attacks by its open and covert enemies are, fundamentally, the inheritance he bequeathed us.

Comrade Benquis carried out his work with modesty, the characteristic of all genuine revolutionaries which was one of his most pronounced virtues.

With the profound honesty which characterized him, expressed in the unity between his thought and action, he dedicated his entire life to the national and social liberation of his people whom he loved deeply and served with all his heart.

Until the time he was affected by cancer, the cruel disease which led to his death amidst terrible suffering lasting over two years, he stayed in Chile leading his Party and fighting against the fascist dictatorship. He transformed his own disease into an example for his comrades and his people. He also fought with this new and cruel enemy until the end of his days without abandoning his political responsibilities -- studying, counseling and discussing with his comrades and with the leaders of the fraternal parties the problems of the international communist movement and the struggle in our own country.

The loss to our Party is immense. The pain which we feel is very profound. But basing ourselves on precisely the model example of our dear comrade, we will know how to transform this pain into revolutionary strength and clarity until the final liberation of our people.

Central Committee Revolutionary Communist Party of Chile

May 29, 1978

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Violence Against the Venezuelan People Exposes U.S. Imperialism's "Human Rights" Fraud

(The following article is excerpted from an article carried in the Venezuelan weekly ¿Que Hacer?, March 22,1978. Translated by The Workers' Advocate.)

The militarized democracy, headed by Carlos Andres Perez, has come out in the last months, unleashing a violent offensive against the people. Six students have already been murdered this year. Meanwhile, a giant propaganda campaign has been launched to pretend and hide from the people that such happenings are the essence of the dictatorship of the rich.

With each passing day it becomes harder for the Venezuelan people and the peoples of the world to believe in the demagogical farce whose leading role is played by the present government, which today not only lauds itself as a defender of human rights but has gone to the extreme of criticizing military fascist dictatorships, such as those of Pinochet and Somoza, accusing them in the UN of violating human rights in their own countries and demanding that the UN set up a commission to confirm these denunciations. This activity does not surprise us, since given the utter isolation of these governments from the masses of the people and the political and economic crisis they are going through, it becomes absolutely necessary for the imperialists and their servants to present an alternative to the masses, a "democratic" model, in contraposition to the true people's revolutionary alternative.

It is thus heeding the calls of Carter and his human rights fraud that we find Mr. Carlos Andres Perez shouting the same slogans.

What has just been stated should serve to reflect on a reality which could not be more obvious. In Venezuela, human rights are violated in a cruel and cynical fashion, including even the most ridiculous farce.

THE EASTERN REGION: THE BETRAYING SILENCE

Since August of last year an alarming increase of the repressive action of the various police bodies and the bourgeois army has been witnessed in the eastern region of the country. This is not a casual or transitory phenomenon, but something which was emphasized recently by the president of the republic on January 26th. Carlos Andres Perez promised then that, through the application of the death penalty, he would turn over to his successor a "pacified" country, reaffirming thus his already stated intentions. His words were: "The perpetrators of the subversion will end up imprisoned or 'lamentably' killed in clashes with the Armed Forces... I guarantee completely that the subversive foci will be eliminated before the end of my presidential mandate."

This phenomenon, grave in itself, has been accompanied by a pretended silence on the part of the government, whose aim is to avoid its denunciation and the timely mobilization of the masses, so as to be able to arrest and torture innocent peasants as long as they wish, or as long as these people are able to physically tolerate it. Entire villages are razed to the ground in search of clues to "irregular" activities, the military aggression weighing heavily on the peasant population. The daughters of many peasants have been raped, which is a moral outrage against human dignity, while the disrespect for the life of the people has surpassed any limits as when ever a peasant has been detained he has been beaten and otherwise ill-treated in any number of ways. Simulated firing squad executions are held, putting in danger the lives of the detained and their families and in many cases actually killing them. The peasants of Anzoategui State have been facing since last year a very live and palpable expression of the repression in the country, especially those living in the villages of El Carito, El Cambural de Caigua, San Miguel, San Jose, Totumo and others.

All these villages are kept under military occupation by troops from the "Divisions General Pedro Zaraza" 2nd Infantry Batallion quartered in the city of Barcelona, which has established anti-guerilla camps in the towns of Onoto and El Carito and in the vicinities of Aragua de Barcelona and of Pariaguan. The aim of this has been to terrorize the rural laborers, to repress their families and to act in a direct way against the most elemental rights of citizens through torture and reactionary violence, accusing the peasant nuclei of being "guerrilla contacts".

The situation is identical for the peasant families of Araguita, El Hático, Las Minas de Naricual, Naricual, Portugal and others, where large numbers of rural laborers have been put under detention and have "disappeared".

The town of El Carito, as well as Qnoto, just a few hours from Barcelona, is under military occupation. Anti-guerilla camps operate in their vicinities and military checkpoints have been placed at the main entrances to these towns so as to keep track of all movement of persons and vehicles in the area. This poses a grave situation to those living in rural areas of Anzocttegui State.

Twenty kilometers from Zaraza, to be exact, on Kilometer 133 on the detour of Batey road, near the peasant settlement of Verdosal, in the Ribas District, the repressive forces created another anti-guerilla camp. The army and the National Guard dominate almost all regions of the State; everywhere groups of infantry soldiers and national guards are to be seen.

The murder of the students Alejandro Castillo and Antonio de Leon is set against this background. As they did not heed an alleged order to stop, given by civilian functionaries, they were shot in cold blood, also gravely wounding the driver of the vehicle they were in.

As part of what has been described above and in line with the threatening words of Carlos Andrds Perez that he will end all subversion in the country, they are making use of a military encirclement in the rural areas of the eastern region of the country, specifically in the roughly triangular area between Cumanacoa, Viento Fresco, El Carito and Zaraza. It is clear that the bourgeois government intends to turn these zones into centers for activities aimed at the imprisonment, torture and murder of anyone living within the mentioned area.

This military encirclement we are referring to, led by the "Operation Claw" Unified Command, is bringing hunger, terror and misery to the peasant villages.

This situation becomes worse, in view of the fact that peasants and their families have begun to leave their lands to go to the cities to escape the vandalous activities of the repressive forces, the same thing taking place with small and medium landowners. This makes it possible for the large-scale latifundists to take over these lands or to purchase them at a very low price. And as if this were not enough, the infantry corps and the National Guard have taken up the task of ruining the harvests and destroying the small land-holdings....

CARABOBO: THE POLITICS OF KIDNAPPING

The events of Valencia are a link in the repressive chain which the bourgeois government has developed throughout the country. In any given day a person is detained by the repressive forces, is manhandled, put into a vehicle and taken to areas far from the city where he is submitted to brutal sessions of torture.

These kidnappings began with the student Damir Drovinick, who was subjected to innumerable maltreatments, beatings and intense interrogations with the intention to obtain information about the Committees of People's Struggles in that zone. The mobilization of his family in an intense and desperate search in the places of "security" was in vain as none would give them any information. The complicity and the silence by the high-level chiefs of these organisms were the only answer from those who were well-informed about the fate of Damir Drovinick.

In this occasion the government, through the governor of the state of Carabobo, the engineer Lazaro Cariello Calli, declared that this was the situation of a "self-sequester"; that there was a movement which intended to create anguish in the population; and other versions that because of their absurdity were the laughing-stock for the people of Carabobo. However, it was enough to know a little of the desperation of the family and friends of the victim, and after to see the physical state of Drovinick as sufficient proofs to demonstrate that it is incredible that a person could cause himself such damage with the intentions of publishing them as the government would have us think.

Not much time had passed when a worker Oscar Henriquez was sequestered, against whom the same police procedure is used. The same fate awaited the student Remulo Solorzano, who was handcuffed and hung from a tree an entire night, accompanied by beatings, threats of death and simulations of a firing squad. …

It is worth noting that all the ones kidnapped. were threatened with having their families killed, if, after the tortures they would reveal what took place to the press and other organisms. It also becomes necessary to expose the fact that the ones kidnapped are permanently harassed and nearly all of them receive telephone calls in which their lives are threatened if they continue their denunciations. Frank Macias received a phone call in which he was told that someone "was closing in on the zone and this could cost him his life". The zone to which they refer is where the torture center operates and which necessarily needs some minimal equipment. The place, Macias thinks, is located near Tinaquillo, in the state of Cojedes....

The responsibility for these events do not fall just on these two individuals (two police officials --ed.), but also on Oscar Celli Gerbasi, Henry Ramos Allups who are members of the high leadership of "Acción Democratica" (Democratic Action) in the region. Responsibility also falls on the governor of the state, the engineer Lazaro Cariello Celli; on the Minister of Interior Relations who obstinately and abusingly negates the facts which he knows very well are true. It falls on the President of the Republic and on the forces of PTJ, DIM, DISIP, etc.

Nevertheless, the governor of the state of Carabobo himself, upon feeling the pressure of the people, promised demagogically to open an investigation on these events and to prevent them in the future. However, reality is another thing and the kidnappings continue. The governor must be well-informed of the plans and actions of that "squadron of death" which is the Unified Commando which he himself leads....

CARACAS: TWO STUDENTS MURDERED

The response by the fighting Venezuelan students was not long awaiting and throughout all the towns and cities the student movement gave exceeding proof of its indignation at the murder of the student Carlos Alberto Rivero Pacheco. The student actions extended far and wide in our country. The student action was directed at the bourgeois government and the reactionary parties. Several houses of Democratic Action and COPEI were burned and looted by the. popular masses who saw in these parties the ones responsible for the death of Rivero Pacheco.

The students weren't only protesting this event. They were at the same time demanding their own retributions, such as better equipping of appropriate locals, an end to all expulsions and, in synthesis, the right to an education.

Caracus was converted into the center of the repressive forces. But this did not frighten the student movement which did not cease to demonstrate its repudiation of the murdering government. In tens, the wounded were taken to hospitalization centers, hundreds of those arrested were taken to the dungeons of the Metropolitan Police and DISIP. High schools were seized and students beaten. In the Technical School of Campo Ilico, the student Hipolito Matute, 16, was gravely wounded after falling from a roof while running away from the bestial persecution of the Metropolitan Police. The police, instead of administering first aid, fell-upon him, beating him and leaving him lying on the ground bleeding. The following week, Hipolito Matute died in Perez de Leon Hospital. The same fate awaited the student Pablo Emigdio Perez Vivas who was cowardly murdered by a bullet through the back, a shot fired by a transit patrolman.

In both occasions, the police practically sequestered the bodies, maintained a strict vigilance on the students that attended the funerals, including leading the mobilization of civil functionaries to sow confusion. But the people who participated in both funerals unmasked in a timely fashion this deceitful and cynical activity by the government which, through its actions, won the repudiation of the demonstrators.

Beginning with the above-mentioned events the mobilization of the students increased to a national level, but the repression by the police forces also increased at a par. The University of Carabobo was seized by the National Guard who brutally attacked the university and high school students who had concentrated in the center of that university. …

In Caracas, the protest was extended into the suburbs, principally in 23 de Enero and Propatria where the struggle against the government forces (although unequal) signified an important advance for the popular movement which with dedication begins to repudiate the brutal activities of the bourgeois government. A few days later, the police forces lodged false accusations against the inhabitants of a sector who were searched and brutally beaten in various seizures carried out in the 1, 2, and 9 blocks and the assaults of some family homes and the Cultural Center "Clever Ledezma".

It becomes necessary to increase the mobilization of the people to win the liberty of all of those imprisoned and to cease the harassment of the great number of High school students who are victims of police persecution.

In light of all these events, we ask ourselves if the bourgeois government of Carlos Andres Perez will continue its campaign for the defense of human rights, because with each passing day it will become more difficult to hide to national and international public opinion the atrocities which, with his endorsement, are committed by the repressive forces of our country.

We also ask ourselves, where can the campaign for "democracy" which has been launched by the Democratic Action and COPEI parties go, because it is very clear that the democracy of which these gentlemen speak; evidently is democracy for the rich and dictatorship for the poor.

The people have to come out and respond bluntly to the fraud and murders by the government. Only the mobilization and the correct combination of all the forms of struggle will permit us to advance in the winning of small victories which will lead to our historical objective: the seizure of power for the people. End.

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Turkish Students Denounce the May Day Massacre of the Fascist Dictatorship

The following leaflet was issued by the Turkish Students' Association, GPO Box 2171, New York, N.Y., 30010.

LONG LIVE THE DAY OF UNITY AND STRUGGLE OF THE WORKING CLASS

THOSE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE MAY DAY MASSACRE IN ISTANBUL, TURKEY LAST YEAR ARE THE CIA, CONTRE-GUERILLA, TURKISH NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY (MIT), AND THE NAZI ORIENTED NATIONALIST MOVEMENT PARTY -- AND THEY SHALL PAY FOR THEIR CRIMES

WORKERS MUST TAKE OVER UNION LEADERSHIPS AND BRING TO JUSTICE THE UNION BOSSES WHO CREATED THE MEDIUM FOR THE MAY DAY MASSACRE

Friends:

In our country, the celebration of May Day as the day of solidarity and struggle of the working class has been outlawed by the ruling classes for years. It has been sanctioned instead as a spring holiday. However, the celebration of May Day has evolved through long struggles of the working class.

In the U.S., towards the end of the 19th century, the the workers, living and working under miserable conditions and forced to work 14 to 16 hours a day, began to consolidate and strengthen their resistance. Starting with strikes against wage reductions in 1874 which were brutally crushed by the ruling classes, and the coal miners' strike in Pennsylvania in which ten strike leaders were hanged, the resistance began to snowball after 1877, and on May 1st, 1886 a nation wide general strike was declared. The fundamental demand of the workers was the reduction of the working day to 8 hours. The general strike was broken after the bloody attacks of the bourgeoisie, and 4 leaders were executed.

However, this struggle spilled over the U.S. national boundaries and became the struggle of the world's working class. At the International Congress of the Working Class held in Paris between July 14-21, 1889, a classless society was declared as the ultimate purpose of the working class struggles, and May 1st was declared as the day of unity and struggle of the world proletariat.

In Turkey, in spite of all the attempts by the ruling classes to outlaw the celebration of May Day, the rising struggle of the people brought with it the consciousness of May Day. After the massive May Day celebrations of 1976 the fascist dictatorship took repressive actions in many provinces to prevent the celebration of this day. On May Day 1977, in a celebration in Istanbul attended by 400,000 people, the armed oppression tools of the fascist dictatorship opened fire on the crowd. The massacre left over 40 dead, hundreds mutilated, and hundreds more were randomly arrested and tortured.

This was neither the first nor the last of the attacks on the People's struggle by the fascist dictatorship. Just as during the open fascist era following March 12, 1971 coup, when the CIA, MIT, and the Nationalist Movement Party burned down the Cultural Palace in Istanbul and the ferry boat Marmara in order to put the blame on revolutionaries and thus "legalizing" the shooting, executing, and torturing of many people and repress the rising struggle of the masses through terror, the May Day massacre was also billed as the "shootout between two leftist factions". The medium for the massacre was set by the social-fascist union bosses who throughout the preparations for the parade went to extremes in warning against possible provocations by "Maoists". As described by some of the workers appointed as security by the Confederation of Revolutionary Workers' Unions (DISK): "... We were told repeatedly by Mehmet Erturk (one of the social-fascist union bosses of DISK) that provocations were only expected from 'Maoists', while nothing was said about what was to be done in the event of sabotage by CIA-MIT engineered terror". Thus, this medium in which everyone was geared to expect provocations from the "Maoists" created ideal conditions for the forces bent on sabotaging the May Day celebrations.

All these attempts by ruling classes to subvert and pacify the peoples' struggle have only succeeded in intensifying the resistance. And this resistance and the fury of the masses is taking on the character of a decisive struggle, even though during the reign of the fascist Nationalist Front Governments alone close to 400 patriots and revolutionaries v^ere murdered. The Nationalist Front Government was toppled in the face of the peoples' resistance.

Today, with the social-democratic Republican People's Party (RPP) forming the government through a coalition with 10 members of Parliament brought from the Justice Party (JP), and with the Democratic and Republican Reliance Parties (which represent the feudal landlords), the fascist attacks on the people are continuing. The forces which carried out the terror of March 12 open fascism and the May Day massacre are still operative. Fascism, which has been institutionalized with the State through the National Intelligence Agency, the Contre-guerilla Organization, and the Nationalist Movement Party, continues its attacks. This proves that the roots of fascism cannot be wiped out by a mere change of government. On March 16, the fascist attack on Istanbul University left 6 patriotic students dead, and hundreds wounded. Following this most recent massacre, hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets in marches to protest fascism. While the forces responsible for the attack are known by everyone, the government resists confronting the fascist dictatorship by ignoring these forces, and instead arresting the protest marchers. Prime Minister Ecevit, who during his campaign promised to expose the Contre-guerilla Organization, today denies its existence. Our people are not discussing whether such fascist institutions exist or not; they are demanding that they be liquidated and the individuals brought to justice. Struggle against fascism could only be pursued without compromising with the fascist dictatorship and by taking an active stance against such fascist institutions within the state apparatus as the MIT, Contre-guerilla and the Nationalist Movement Party. The only force to carry out such a struggle is the organized force of the masses. The initial hurdles in the path of this development are the articles in the Legal Code borrowed from Mussolini's fascist Italy.

Today, the economic actions taken by the government are the precautions required by the collaborationist monopoly bourgeoisie and the landlords to put the burden of the crisis which they find themselves in upon the shoulders of the toiling masses, hi submitting to the demands of the International Monetary Fund, the cost of living in Turkey has been raised 30-40 per cent, while new investment possibilities are being developed with German imperialists. Ecvit's politico-economic policy of establishing a balance between the two superpowers, U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism, opens the doors for Soviet penetration. This situation is seen as very favorable by those who want to use the RPP as a spring board in establishing their social-fascist dictatorship. These groups such as the Turkish "Communist" Party, are the fifth column of the Soviet social-imperialists in Turkey, and their main aim is to channel the rising struggle of the masses against the collaborationists and feudal landlords into material force for establishing their social-fascist dictatorship. While killing revolutionaries, they condemn the active struggle of the masses as "provocation". They are waiting for the Soviet credits, which bolster the fascist dictatorship, to create a power vacuum which they could snatch up. These socialists in words fascists in deeds are the elements which created the ripe medium for the May Day massacre in Istanbul.

Those responsible for the May Day massacre and all other fascist attacks, the CIA sponsored Turkish Intelligence Agency, Contre-guerilla and Nationalist Movement Party will be made to pay for their crimes, and our people, relying only on their own organized strength, will crush the fascist dictatorship and the collaborators of the two superpowers, and establish independent and democratic Turkey! End.

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ERITREA: GREAT STRIDES TOWARDS NATIONAL UNITY

(The following article is reprinted from Vanguard, Official Monthly Organ of the Eritrean People's Liberation Front, May 1978.)

GREAT STRIDES TOWARDS NATIONAL UNITY

"Genuine and principled national unity," "Establishment of a single national democratic front with the worker-peasant alliance at its core and uniting all patriotic forces" -- these are among the key slogans of all peoples waging national liberation struggles. In Eritrea, these slogans have been raised by the patriotic masses and liberation fighters with particular insistence and urgency.

The reason is not hard to find. The Eritrean people united behind the demand of national independence have hurled themselves into the greatest war in their militant history. They have inflicted heavy defeats on the Ethiopian occupiers and their backers and brought their liberation war close to victory. However, the existence of two fronts (the Eritrean People's Liberation Front and the Eritrean Liberation Front) and the contradiction between them has hampered the early achievement of the people's aspiration. Taking advantage of this situation, the Dergue is preparing for an all-out offensive to reverse the tide of the war, weaken and finally crush the Eritrean struggle.

TWO-LINE STRUGGLE

From the outset, there has been a two-line struggle in the Eritrean liberation movement on how to resolve the secondary contradiction between the EPLF and ELF. The reactionaries within the ELF have consistently sought to resolve this contradiction by force of arms. Towards this end, they declared a war of liquidation against the EPLF in February 1972 and plunged the Eritrean liberation movement into a criminal civil war. After the cessation of the civil war in November 1974, they turned to sabotage in an attempt to foil the military exploits of the Eritrean People's Liberation Army. They also resorted to widespread beating, imprisonment and assassination of members of the EPLF's mass organizations and people's militia.

The enemies of the Eritrean struggle have tirelessly fanned the fire lighted by the internal reactionaries, hoping that a second civil war might break out between the EPLF and ELF. The Dergue has expressed its readiness to negotiate with Eritrean "progressives" in an attempt to split and then crush the liberation movement. The Osman Saleh Sabbe clique of traitors and counter-revolutionaries (the so-called "People's Liberation Forces") has worked overtime to sharpen the secondary contradictions so as to gain recognition as an alternative "third force". In an effort to strengthen the reactionary forces -- including the Osman Sabbe clique -- and isolate, weaken and smash the EPLF, certain Arab countries have interfered wantonly in the internal affairs of the Eritrean struggle.

Emanating from its firm conviction that the unity of all patriotic and democratic forces is a strategic necessity for the victory of the national democratic revolution and taking into account the enemy's maneuvers, the EPLF has waged a consistent and protracted struggle to resolve secondary contradictions democratically and step by step achieve the establishment of a single national democratic front. During the period of the civil war, it raised the slogan, "All our guns against the common enemy, democratic solution to secondary contradictions" and took a defensive military position vis a vis the ELF. Throughout, it directed all its fire-power against the enemy and persisted in organizing, politicizing and arming the masses. It dealt a powerful rebuff to the enemy's attempt to split the Eritrean movement by openly declaring that it will negotiate with the Dergue only in the presence of the ELF. It consistently called for cooperation and joint work with the ELF on the basis of a commonly agreed upon minimum program. It carried out persistent agitation among the masses and the ELF fighters calling on them to actively struggle for genuine and principled national unity.

OCTOBER 20 AGREEMENT

The protracted struggle of the EPLF and the masses bore fruit on October 20, 1977. On that day, the ELF and EPLF signed an important agreement on national unity in which they outlined the general principles for the establishment of a single national democratic front in Eritrea. The October 20 agreement also calls for the formation of a joint political leadership and joint committees dealing with military, economic and social affairs, information and foreign relations to coordinate the work of the two fronts in the transition period. It charges the joint political leadership with the task of convening a unification congress after proper conditions have been created for its convocation and in accordance with procedure agreed upon by both organizations.

The October 20 agreement signed the death warrant on the Osman Sabbe clique when it refused to recognize it as a third force and called on its rank and file to join the ELF or EPLF.

On March 15, 1978, after six months of bitter struggle, the October 20 agreement took an important step forward with the signing by the EPLF and ELF of the "Document for the Practical Implementation of the October 20 Agreement". The March 15 document lays down the political principles that form the basis for the unity of the two organizations and detailed the practical steps that have to be taken to convert the October 20 agreement into reality.

The March 15 Document states that the EPLF and ELF agreed to abide by the following general political principles:

Oppose Ethiopian colonialism, world imperialism, Zionism and fight for the complete independence of Eritrea.

Oppose internal reaction -- i. e. all those who weaken the unity of the Eritrean people, exploit the masses and violate their rights by inflaming backward tribal, regional and religious sentiments.

Oppose all foreign interference that infringes upon the identity and unity of the Eritrean people.

Fight to consolidate the unity of the Eritrean people.

Consolidate relations with the progressive forces and liberation movements throughout the world.

The March 15 Document asserts that the joint political leadership will base its work on these general principles and implement the tasks agreed upon by both organizations.

On the basis of the March 15 Document, the leadership of the EPLF and ELF held an important meeting from April 20-24. In this meeting the joint political leadership made up of six members, three from each organization -- the Secretary General, Vice- Secretary General and Chairman of the Military Committee of the EPLF and the Chairman, Vice- Chairman and head of the military bureau of the ELF -- was formed. The committees dealing with the military, economic and social affairs, information and foreign relations were set up.

The October 20 agreement, the March 15 Document and the decisions of the April 20-24 meeting are of far-reaching significance. They will enable the Eritrean masses to unite all their resources, enhance their fighting spirit and capacity, and deal a crushing blow to their enemies. No wonder the masses received the news of the signing of the agreements with boundless joy and mammoth demonstrations of support.

Conversely, news of the agreements brought fear and dismay to the enemies of the Eritrean revolution. Not reconciled to their defeat, the Dergue and its backers, the internal reactionaries -- in particular the Osman Sabbe clique -- and their supporters are working feverishly to sabotage the October 20 agreement and obstruct the steady march towards principled national unity.

However, no matter what twists and turns lie ahead, the establishment of a single national democratic front in Eritrea -- which is the categorical demand of our heroic and patriotic masses -- is inevitable. End.

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Solidarity Message of the COUSML to the First Congress of the Association of Eritrean Students Held in the Liberated Areas of Eritrea-May 8-11, 1978

Comrades! Revolutionary greetings! This First Congress of the Association of Eritrean Students in the liberated areas of Eritrea comes at a time of colossal victories of the Eritrean people's struggle for national liberation and independence. The great mass movement of the Eritrean people against Ethiopian aggression and occupation of their country has surged to ever greater heights. The Eritrean student movement is part of the whole people's movement, and this Congress marks the achievements of the Eritrean people's struggle. Led by the Eritrean People's Liberation Front, the Eritrean people and their heroic fighters of the Liberation Army have liberated 95 per cent of the country. The Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists has closely followed and warmly supported your struggle for many years and, in the name of the American proletariat, hails your inspiring achievements!

It is when the reactionaries are on their deathbed that they are most treacherous and vicious. In response to the victories of the Eritrean people, world reaction has stepped up its attempt to subvert the Eritrean revolution and drown it in blood. The Soviet Union for over a year has been the main supplier of arms to the Ethiopian fascists. Over 3,500 Cuban puppet troops have been sent into Asmara to reinforce the defeated and demoralized Ethiopian aggressors. Soviet fighter planes drop napalm and cluster bombs on Eritrean cities and Soviet warships shell Massawa. The Soviet Union and Cuba are trying in vain to conceal their hideous crimes and pretend to seek a "peaceful political solution". They want the Eritrean people to drop their guns and sell out their aspirations for national independence and liberation. But the people's eyes are bright, and the Soviet Union is only succeeding in exposing its ugly features to Eritrea and the world, arousing the people everywhere against itself. The policy of the Soviet social-imperialists and their lackeys is a typically aggressive colonialist and neo-colonialist policy based on the power of capital and force of arms. Last August, the Association of Eritrean Students in North America sponsored a meeting in Washington to hail the 16th anniversary of the armed struggle for national liberation in Eritrea. At that meeting the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists in its solidarity message stated that "no matter if the enemy comes to Eritrea wearing a hammer and sickle on his chest -- but murder in his heart -- the Eritrean people will kill him just the same!" We are very pleased to see that you are doing just that.

The U.S. imperialists through their Israeli Zionist agents continue arms shipments to the Ethiopian fascists. Also, U.S. imperialism continues to pour finance capital into Ethiopia to bolster and influence the reactionary regime. The U.S. call for a "peaceful settlement", a "federal solution" for Eritrea supports the Soviet-Cuban aggression while attempting to preserve U.S. neo-colonial influence. For the same reason the U.S. bolsters the traitorous Sabbe clique to weaken the Eritrean revolution. Now, just as in the past, the consistent and unceasing struggle to expose the policy and foil the aggressive plans of imperialism, headed by U.S. imperialism, constitutes an essential condition for the defense of freedom, for the triumph of the revolution and the liberation of the peoples.

The Eritrean people, led by the Eritrean People's Liberation Front, will smash all the counter-revolutionary attacks and schemes against Eritrea's independence. The history of brilliant victories of the EPLF confirm the correctness of its line of self-reliance and the decisive role of politicizing, organizing and arming the masses of people. The National Democratic Program of the EPLF adopted at its First Congress clearly embodies the aspirations of the Eritrean people. The American proletariat is greatly heartened and inspired by your struggle, which is part and parcel of the world proletarian socialist revolution and materially as well as spiritually aids and supports our struggle to overthrow U.S. imperialism once and for all. Your revolutionary achievements confirm that revolution is the main trend in the world, that the people of a small nation can certainly defeat aggression by a big country, if only they dare to rise in struggle, dare to take up arms and grasp in their own hands the destiny of their own country. On this basis you have won victory after victory, and on this basis you will carry the revolution through to the end.

HAIL THE FIRST CONGRESS OF THE ASSOCIATION OF ERITREAN STUDENTS IN THE LIBERATED AREAS OF ERITREA!

LONG LIVE THE EPLF!

VICTORY TO THE ERITREAN REVOLUTION! End.

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Students of Trinago Denounce Revisionist Havana Conference

(The following article is from the Students Guild, the student organization at the University of the West Indies in Trinago (Trinidad and Tobago).)

Fellow Students,

A few years ago (1975/1976) we were dragged into the orbits of the International Union of Students (IUS). We were never properly informed about the role of IUS, where it takes its leadership from, or what are its real objectives. Today, the IUS and the World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY) have organized the 11th World Festival of Youth and Students to be held in Havana, Cuba (July/August). Both of these organizations (IUS and WFDY) take their organizational and ideological leadership from the U.S.S.R. The aims of the 11th World Festival of Youth are given as follows:

To deepen international detente and peaceful coexistence and make it irreversible extending it to the maximum.

To carry out joint activities among diverse political forces within the European youth movement in the struggle to strengthen peace, mutual understanding and cooperation among the peoples of the continent.

To give firm and determined support to the young People's Republic of Angola.

To strengthen the solidarity of the international democratic and progressive youth and students' movement with the Cuban revolution.

To demonstrate the firmest support for the peoples and the youth of the African countries.

As a summary of many of the booklets produced to advertise this festival, the essentials of the festival is this (1) It promotes the U.S.S.R. and Cuba as socialist countries (ii) It supports the expansionist activities of the U.S.S.R. and Cuba.

But brothers and sisters, is there a firm basis for support of the 11th festival of youth? Are Russia and Cuba really socialist countries? To clarify this issue it is necessary to describe or define what is socialism. Under socialism the ruling class is the working class. There is no unemployment and inflation since production is based more and more on meeting the needs of the society and production for profit is progressively restricted. What exists in Russia and Cuba tells a different story.

1-- RUSSIA

In Russia following the death of Stalin (1953) and the subsequent seizure of power by Khrushchov in 1956, the role of the working class as the rulers of the society has been wiped out. Additionally the emphasis has been placed on increasing productivity using capitalist indices (profits, etc.) to measure this. Further the technocrats and bureaucrats have taken over state rule. Thus the ruling class in Russia today is not the workers but the technocrats- - the bourgeois.

Moreover, since 1970 in Russia, gasoline prices have increased by 100 per cent, coffee prices have increased by 300 per cent and the price of cocoa and its by-products have also increased. Despite their claim that there is "no inflation" in Russia, the Soviet bosses have increased the prices of 90 per cent of the retail goods since 1970. The inflation is a reality.

This betrayal to the capitalist road by the Khrushchov and Kosygin clique has led to the export of capital by the ruling class in Russia for the purpose of making profits and in search of raw materials, markets and cheap labor. This is clearly revealed in the relations of the Soviet Union with other countries.

TRADE WITH CUBA

(Table to show the relationship between prices of sugar exports and tractor imports: ($U.S.))

(SOURCE: PEOPLE'S CANADA DAILY NEWS, VOL. 6, NO. 19, FEBRUARY 12, 1976)

Cuba, like any other exporter of raw materials is forced to export more sugar to purchase the equivalent units of imports (tractors, etc.). The trade relations between Cuba and the Soviet Union is reflective of trade relations between metropole and colony. The terms of trade are more advantageous to the Soviet Union. The result being that the Cuban workers are forced to labor more, and suffer at the hands of inequitable trade relations.

THE SOVIET UNION AND INDIA

The Soviet Union has loaned India capital to build steel plants, power stations, machinery, factories and oil refineries. The Soviet Union is also the largest supplier of arms to India. These arms are used to prop up the reactionary governments who attack the people especially communists and revolutionaries. Thus because of the debt payments which the capitalist Indian government has to meet and the possibility of cutbacks in its arms supply, India has become a puppet of Russia, answering to the call of their master.

THE SOVIET UNION AND COMECON COUNTRIES

The Soviet Union is determined to squeeze out super-profits from their COMECON "partners".

Thus it took advantage of the OPEC countries raising the oil price, and Soviet oil sold to the German Democratic Republic (G.D.R.) in 1974 jumped up by a 30 per cent price increase. In 1975 the price for Soviet oil exported to the COMECON countries increased by 85 per cent. In 1976 these prices went up another 10 per cent. "The spectre of an energy shortage is used by the Soviet social-imperialists just as it is by the U.S. imperialists... the Soviet Union is trying to extort even larger sums of capital from their Eastern European Vassals for the prospecting and the developing of new energy sources."

Furthermore the Soviet Union under the guise of the new "international" man is progressively imposing the Russian culture (especially language) on the different nationalities present. The Soviet Union determines the economic activities of the COMECON countries so much so, that agricultural production of COMECON countries is following the same direction as Russia. Because of the ruination of the countryside and the migration of more of the population to the cities "the Soviet Union, Poland, East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, etc., have witnessed continuous falls in agricultural and livestock production. Thus for instance, in 1977, the Soviet Union received 18.8 million tons of grain less than envisaged". Agricultural production fell by 5.5 per cent in Poland. Meat production in East Germany (1977) fell by 10 per cent and milk production by 6.3 per cent. It is no wonder then that the price of agricultural products keeps increasing constantly.

Based on these facts, we are forced to conclude that that the Soviet Union is today a capitalist country whose production is based on profit-making and the production of military equipment at the expense of food items, whose international relations are designed and aimed at world domination. Russia is not socialist. It is an imperialist power just like the U.S.A.

2 -- CUBA

Does the same conclusion hold for Cuba? In 1959 the people of Cuba led by Fidel Castro dealt a telling blow to U.S. imperialism when they seized power. It was a significant and glorious occasion! However, Castro's subsequent course of action raises many questions. What class is in control of the Cuban economy? What is the basis for production? How far has the principle of self-reliance been realized? Cuba today, still has a one-crop economy. In fact this has been intensified, so much so, that in order to reach the 1970 target of 10 million tons of sugar, 30 per cent of the income generated from sugar was ploughed back into capital investment, focusing on clearing new land, buying tractors, building new mills, railroads, ports, all for sugar cane production. "Other resources were thrown into sugar production.... Even housing was left standing half-built as the workers were snatched away to cut cane".

Much more than this, the Cuban economy is being run on the profitability criterion. Thus the society produces what is profitable not what is required. These figures on Cuban exports (in millions of U.S. dollars) also support this.

(SOURCE: UN STATISTICAL YEAR BOOK, 1974)

Is the substantive increase in mineral mining mainly nickel, reflective of the needs of the Cuban economy? The answer is obviously "No". Nickel production has been increased to meet the needs of the missile building program of the Soviet Union with a bourgeoisie ruling class. It is therefore not surprising that Castro has continually lent support to parties in Latin America that have betrayed the people's cause. This is most pointedly revealed in "The Bolivian Communist Party Replies to Fidel Castro". The principles by which the so-called Communist Party of Cuba operates are in opposition to the principles of the working class ideology of Marxism-Leninism. Cuba is NOT a socialist country.

This analysis based on the supportive facts and figures reveals that both Russia and Cuba are today capitalist countries spouting socialist phrases. Fellow students, based on principled opposition to imperialism of any kind we refuse to support any organization of Preparatory Committee which attempts to consciously mislead workers, students and youth into thinking that Russia and Cuba are socialist countries. The objective of the 11th World Festival of Youth and Students lacks a factual basis. The IUS and WFDY are supporting countries and promoting them as being socialist when in fact these countries are capitalist.

But what of the other broad objective of the festival -- to show solidarity for the foreign policy of the Soviet Union and Cuba? Can we in fact support this? To answer this question let us firstly analyze the nature of the Cuban/Russian foreign policy.

3-- EXPANSIONIST ACTIVITIES

With a view to achieving world domination the Soviet Union is expanding its borders. There is a massive export of capital in the form of "aids" to different countries. There is the ongoing search for new markets and raw materials and cheap labor. As part of this expansion Russia with its help of Cuban troops is carrying out military intervention in a number of countries. In Angola "there are now 25,000 Cuban troops compared with 15,000 at the end of Angola's 1975 civil war... 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". Cuban troops backed by Russian arms and advisors have intervened in the Angolan people's struggle for liberation and are backing the undemocratic minority regime of the MPLA. UNITA on the other hand has always taken a position opposed to imperialist intervention. As outlined in their Constitution.

"Article 6 -- On National Policy -- on the national level UNITA struggles for

(1) to establish in Angola a government of the African majority without outside interference.

(2) To free and develop all the productive forces of the country.

(3) To free all the political prisoners detained by the colonial regime.

(4) To recover total national independence"

Here we have a country that having successfully kicked out Portuguese colonial oppression, is now plagued by the presence of Russian and Cuban imperialist forces.

But that is not all. In Eritrea, basically the same picture emerges. For over twenty years the Eritrean people have waged armed struggle against the colonial and semi-feudal conditions, imposed on them by the Ethiopian government. Today, under the leadership of the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF) most of the country has been liberated. In the liberated areas profound changes are taking place in the medical field; the position of the youth is undergoing revolutionary transformation; there is an ongoing concerted effort to build an independent and self-reliant economy. Yet daily Cuban troops backed by Russian arms and advisors lend support to the military junta of Mengistu, dropping tons of bombs and napalm on villages in Eritrea. This fascist regime is also backed by U.S. imperialists. The position becomes clear, the Horn of Africa is of immense importance to the two superpowers fighting for world domination. "Both superpowers have ambitions to use Eritrea as a base for their aggressive and hegemonic ambitions in the region."

How could a socialist country stifle the liberation struggle of an oppressed people? This is further proof of our previous conclusion that Russia and Cuba are not in fact socialist countries. More examples come to mind. There is the continuous build up of Russian troops in Mozambique and other African territories. There is the incessant presence of Russian warships off the coast of Africa.

Given these glaring and blatant examples, how could we as Caribbean students support the MPLA government in Angola or the Mengistu military regime in Ethiopia; as encouraged by the International Union of Students (IUS) and the National Preparatory Committees? We shudder at the thought of supporting the oppression of people's war for liberation. We totally reject the objectives of the 11th World Festival of Youth and Students.

Russia and Cuba and their agents around the world are quick to suggest that their presence in Angola and Eritrea is an expression of "Proletarian Internationalism". However, their practice proves this to be incorrect. In fact Lenin in his article, "The Tasks of the Proletariat In Our Revolution" stated: "There is one, and only one, kind of real internationalism, and that is -- Working wholeheartedly for the development of the revolutionary struggle in one's own country, and supporting (by propaganda, sympathy and material aid) this struggle -- and only this line, in every country without exception".

Thus no provision is made for troops of Cuba and Russia fighting in another man's country. This aggressive policy of the Soviet Union and Cuba is very anti-Marxist-Leninist in practice.

Amid all this we also hear the National Preparatory Committee telling us that we should support detente and the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT). Detente supposedly is the relaxation of strained relations. However, at each round of table talks the U.S. imperialists and the Soviet social-imperialists decide to increase their military might. The economies of these two superpowers are disproportionately militarized. Behind their peace and disarmament talks they are feverishly preparing for world domination and world war. After 224 SALT meetings the aggressive expansionist activities of both U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. continues. The neutron bomb was being tested while one of the SALT meetings was in progress. The U.S.S.R. has increased production of ballistic missiles. With all this NPC is telling us to support detente and disarmament talks. Fellow students it is important that we see that by these talks the superpowers are fooling the world's people into believing that they are now peaceful powers. These talks are aimed at mentally disarming the peoples of the world. It is important for us to recognize that the leadership of the National Preparatory Committees, IUS, WFDY are consciously promoting the Soviet Union and Cuba as the solution to the problem of extermination of U.S. imperialism. These agents are committed to poisoning the minds of the youth and students in this country and the rest of the world. They are consciously resolved to train the youth and students to look towards the Soviet Union and Cuba for troops to fight for our liberation from U.S. imperialism. This was the same story that was fed to us in the colonial struggles to get rid of British control. So we kicked out the British and the Americans came in through the back door. Similarly in Cuba, the Cubans succeeded in kicking out the U.S. imperialists, but the Soviet Union came in to dominate that country. It follows therefore that we cannot rely on one superpower to kick out the next. Like the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) we raise the slogan -- "We shall be our own liberators". More importantly we should expose the leaders of the National Preparatory Committees for what they are -- conscious agents of Soviet social-imperialism.

Further it is important for us to understand that those individuals and groups, who, despite the facts and the actions of Russia and Cuba, remain silent on the question of Soviet social-imperialism or who are only interested in "stirring up debate" and not clarifying the issue, are also by their silence lending support to the actions of the Soviet Union and Cuba. These persons, including the leadership of the Publications Committee are guilty of allowing these erroneous notions about the present nature of Russia and Cuba to be continually propagated without exposing the truth to all students. This opportunist practice of knowing something and yet saying nothing must be stamped out since these practices make the masses of students remain unaware of the true nature of things.

Brothers and sisters, based on the Guild Council's position of opposing both the U.S. imperialists and the Soviet social-imperialists, and all other imperialist countries, we will not participate in any way in promoting Russia and Cuba as ideals to the St. Augustine students. It would be an act of betrayal to ask our people to go to such a festival. Based on this analysis pointing out the restoration of capitalism (State monopoly capitalism) in the Soviet Union and outlining the aggressive expansionist policies of Russia towards countries such as Angola and Eritrea, we will not be a party to any festival that seeks to win support for the suppression of the oppressed people fighting for liberation on the African continent or any other part of the world. It is with this perspective and overview and world outlook, that we call on all students to support the decision to dissociate ourselves from the groups whether international or local, which aim at encouraging other countries to fight our liberation struggles for us. Further, we call on all students to wage and intensify mass democratic anti-imperialist struggle in the class room 3, in your communities and among the people. Further, we vow to begin the process of forming a genuine world wide student organization, supporting the just and democratic interest of the world's people and opposed to all imperialism and domination.

DEATH TO U.S. AND SOVIET SOCIAL-IMPERIALISM!

DOWN WITH THE REACTIONARY 11TH WORLD FESTIVAL OF YOUTHS AND STUDENTS!!

DOWN WITH IUS, WFDY, NPC!

LET US WAGE RELENTLESS STRUGGLE AGAINST THE AGENTS OF IMPERIALISM! End.

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WHY DID THE "RCP, USA" SPLIT?

Part III

(Reprinted below is the table of contents and the third installment of the COUSML pamphlet "Why Did the 'RCP-USA' Split?" The pamphlet is available from the COUSML, P.O. Box 11942, Chicago, Illinois, 60611, for 50¢.)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION: WHY DID THE "RCP,USA" SPLIT? (Reprinted in the April 1, 1977 issue of The Workers' Advocate.)

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)

PART III

HOW THE "RCP" LAYS THE IDEOLOGICAL BASIS FOR OL SOCIAL-CHAUVINISM

Now let us go into the RCP lines that give the ideological grounds for social-chauvinism. And there area number of them.

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. By this means they are preparing the grounds for uniting in the future with the social-chauvinists under the hoax of allegedly uniting all who can be united against the main enemy. This is openly expressed by them in their attack on Comrade Stalin's wise teachings on the question of the."main blow" (See Revolution, Feb. 1977, "OL Bloodies Own Nose With Its 'Main Blow' "). You can find these teachings in, for example, Stalin's classic Marxist-Leninist work, The Foundations of Leninism. These teachings are the direct opposite of OL's social-chauvinist ravings about "directing the main blow at Soviet social-imperialism" and in fact show the necessity of directing the "main blow" at the OL social-chauvinists and all types of revisionism, social-democracy and opportunism. Comrade Stalin's teachings on directing the main blow at the opportunists are equivalent to Comrade Lenin's teachings that "The most dangerous of all in this respect are those who do not wish to understand that the fight against imperialism is a sham and a humbug unless it is inseparably bound up with the fight against opportunism." (Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, Ch. X). Comrade Stalin's teachings on the "main blow" are equivalent to Comrade Lenin's statement at the Second Congress of the Communist International that "Opportunism is our principal enemy...it has been shown in practice that the working-class activists who follow the opportunist trend are better defenders of the bourgeoisie than the bourgeoisie themselves. Without their leadership of the workers, the bourgeoisie could not remain in power." ("Report on the International Situation and the Fundamental Tasks of the Communist International", Collected Works, vol. 31, p. 231) The RCP opposes the struggle against opportunism and comes out in print against it, saying that it is the same as Wang Ming's ultra-left line in early 1930's and that it was responsible for Hitler's being able to seize power in Germany! The RCP opposes the struggle against opportunism on the grounds that revolutionaries should unite all who can be united, direct the main blow at the main enemy, and win over the middle elements. The RCP claims that if this is done, it is somehow in contradiction to Comrade Stalin's teachings. But no one knows how. The RCP has no conception of the necessity to fight opportunism in the course of fighting the main enemy and the RCP relies on an absurd quibble about the purely verbal contradiction between directing the "main blow" at the main enemy and directing the "main blow" at the opportunists. For those who reduce Marxism to a wretched set of "left"-sounding formulae and dogmas to cover their opportunism, this is indeed an insolvable contradiction. What the RCP really means is that instead of winning the people over to hit the main enemy, which means winning them away from the influence of revisionism and opportunism, in place of that RCP wants to win over the opportunists and unite with them with the hoax that opportunism is a middle phenomenon. In this way they want to direct the main blow at the Marxist-Leninists. This is fully verified by RCP's history, which is that right from the start the RU opportunistically united with one set of bad elements after another, whether it was the Guardian, the cultural nationalists, or any other bad element, in order to keep directing the main blow at the Marxist-Leninists. So that is the first point. The RCP is against the struggle against opportunism.

The second point is that the RCP's line essentially is that you should count missiles to see if the superpowers are equal. The RCP says that today both superpowers are "to the same degree and the same extent the main enemies of the world's people". This is an absolutely correct formulation. But the RCP distorts the meaning of this correct formulation so that they can repudiate it tomorrow. Thus let us examine how they reach this conclusion. They reach it through elaborate comparisons of the political, economic and military strength of the two superpowers. They count the missiles, count the tons of steel produced, compare the Cruise missile to the Backfire bomber, compare the economies, etc., and then say that there is roughly a balance. They say that this occurred because yesterday Soviet social-imperialism was behind, but Soviet social-imperialism is rapidly gaining on U.S. imperialism, so today they are roughly equal. The implication is that tomorrow Soviet social-imperialism will be ahead. So they are creating conditions so that tomorrow they will be able to say that the October League is right, and we should direct the main blow at Soviet social-imperialism. This whole theory that you can tell the two superpowers are the main enemy by the counting of missiles is wrong. The two superpowers are both the main enemy of socialism, the world proletariat and the national liberation movement because they are both imperialist powers, imperialist powers which have divided the imperialist world into two large blocs. And it is this nature of imperialism which is why they are the main enemy, not the question of whether one has a few more missiles or a few less, a somewhat stronger economy or not, etc. By deriving the question of their "rough parity", as the RCP call it, from their respective military and economic strengths, the RCP is preparing to capitulate on this question.

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. (There are many references to this, for example, Lenin's Socialism and War, Chapter I has a section with that as the title, or again Lenin's "Collapse of the Second International", Collected Works, vol. 21, pp.219-221) Thus Marxism-Leninism teaches that to see the character of a war one should look at what politics led up to the war, what classes are waging the war. Lenin ridiculed "the theoretical premises in Kautsky's reasoning... that when war breaks out, all historically created political relations between nations and classes cease and that a totally new situation arises!" (Collected Works, vol. 21, p. 220). But this is just the way the RCP reasons. First there is peace, and then there is war and the whole situation changes. In this way the RCP creates conditions for capitulating to U.S. imperialism at the outbreak of a world war. In just the same way, with the exception of Lenin's Bolsheviks, all the official parties of the Second International became social-chauvinist, but they all said before the war all sorts of bold things about "war against war". The anarcho-syndicalists shouted about how they would have a general strike at the outbreak of World War I. They were all so very bold before World War I, but when the war came they voted for war credits. And this criminal collapse of the Second International was also not merely an overnight accident, but was the continuation and culmination of a long period of opportunist politics from before the outbreak of World War I. The social-chauvinism was prepared for by the long corrosion of opportunism inside the Second International. In just this way the RCP is announcing in advance that when the war actually comes, the situation changes -- and this means that RCP will then take the side of U.S. imperialism. This is the reason why the RCP continually stresses that the character of war can change overnight. The RCP says that the character of the inter-imperialist war will change immediately if, say, China is invaded (but they never say if Albania is invaded). They use World War II as an example. This whole theory is wrong. It is true that any world war has sharp zigs and zags, that tactics and various things can change suddenly, but these changes that take place allegedly overnight are prepared for, the possibility of them taking place is determined, by the whole previous development. The example of World War II goes against the RCP. The RCP says that the character of World War II changed when the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union. It is true that this changed the character of the war, but why? The RCP neglects the fact that throughout the entire period of the '30's the whole question of the antifascist united front was being developed, the whole question of fighting the capitalist offensive which was eventually concentrated for a time in the fascist countries. And the socialist country of that time, the base of world revolution, the great Soviet Union openly called for collective security before the war and tried to develop that method of utilizing the contradictions between the imperialist powers. When collective security didn't work, because the imperialists were dedicated to strangling the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union used other tactics. Furthermore, World War II started before Sept. 1, 1939, the date on which Nazi Germany attacked fascist Poland and the unjust inter-imperialist war between the Anglo-French imperialists and the fascist Axis began. The resistance of the Chinese, Ethiopian, Spanish and other peoples to fascist aggression was a just war from the very start. It was only because of this whole development leading up to World War H that the possibility existed that the character of the war could be changed overnight and the temporary Anglo-American-Soviet antifascist alliance could come into existence. But the RCP negates the whole history of the '30's, the history of the anti-fascist united front (the RCP is always embarrassed by the question of opposing fascism and by the Seventh World Congress of the Communist International), the history of collective security, the history of the start of just liberation wars of various people against the unjust imperialist wars of fascist aggression. Thus RCP gives the theory that anything can happen overnight, which is not true. And this is the same theory that the OL gives, but from the other direction, when the OL tries to sugar-coat its social- chauvinism and class treason by claiming that it is possible to faithfully serve U.S. imperialism as a class traitor before the threatened world war, while suddenly overnight becoming a great opponent of U.S. imperialism and partisan of civil war if the world war actually breaks out. This question should be taken quite seriously.

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. This concretely shows RCP's similarity to the New Left, the fact that RCP comes from the New Left and that neo-revisionism is just the adaptation of Marxism- Leninism to the most backward aspects of New Leftism. If you think back to the days of the '60's, you can recall how the New Left existed right in the middle of the revolutionary upsurge of the '60's. And exactly at that time the New Left denied that there was a revolutionary upsurge, that revolution was advancing. The New Left took up the Khrushchovite revisionist position that the material conditions were not ripe for revolution. The New Left leaders sat around, while tens of thousands of students were revolting, the Afro- Americans rising up and burning down various cities, the tanks rolling in Detroit and the National Guard marching into Detroit, Watts, Newark, etc. And the New Left sighed, "Where's the revolution? I can't see the revolution. Wow, the masses are really backward." The RCP does the same thing in the midst of the upsurge of the workers' movement in the '70's. As a matter of fact, as a side point, the RCP denies that revolution was taking place in the '60's, which further shows their origin in New Leftism. We will show this by a quotation from an article referred to earlier by another comrade, "Revolutionary Work in a Non-Revolutionary Situation". In an editor's note, Revolution says that this article consists of excerpts from a report to the RCP Central Committee and it is being published because of "the importance of the analysis". In this article, more properly titled by the other comrade as "Counter-revolutionary Work in a Revolutionary Situation", the RCP says: "This is a difficult period-- for the masses and for the Party. It is not a period like the '60's and early '70's, a period of high tide of struggle, mainly among non-proletarian forces and mainly based on expectations of some vague notion of 'radical change' (sometimes even posed as 'liberation' or 'revolution') which, ultimately, would leave the foundations of imperialism unaltered and which, therefore, proved in the end illusory." (Revolution, June 1977, page 3) The RCP is saying that the sentiment of the people rising up in revolutionary struggle was actually for some type of radical change which ultimately would leave the foundations of imperialism unaltered and which therefore would prove illusory. So using the fact that the fighters might not give clear formulations they deny the revolutionary character of the movement against the U.S. imperialist war of aggression in Viet Nam, of the Afro-American people's movement against racial discrimination and violent repression and of the youth and student movement.

The RCP's line that this is a "non-revolutionary situation" is absolutely identical to the line of the OL social-chauvinists that "a revolutionary situation does not presently exist in the U.S. and the consciousness of the broad masses does not yet center on the need for revolution and socialism... " (Documents from the Founding Congress of the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist), Klonsky's Political Report, p. 30) The purpose of this propaganda that it is not a revolutionary situation is to justify social-chauvinism. If there is no revolution, if revolution flies out the window, then all one can do is to decide to support one or the other imperialist power on the alleged basis of the victory of which one would aid the revolution most. This is for example what the RCP did with the example of the invasion of the Congo-K referred to earlier. They say it is only a question of the forces of the Soviet-backed invaders versus the U.S.-backed central government. They totally ignore the question of the revolutionary forces, of the Marxist Revolutionary Party of the Congo-K, of the forces fighting Mobutu arms in hand for liberation, which the RCP never mentions. So the RCP reduces it to the question of deciding which counter-revolutionary force they like best. And this force is labeled, by the social- chauvinists, "objectively" revolutionary. (Of course, RCP does not use this "objective" criterion when evaluating the mass movement of the '60's, which is denounced as not only not objectively revolutionary but as in the end illusory. Both the RCP and the OL reserve the criterion of "objectively" being revolutionary for imperialist lackeys and hangmen, while slandering the revolutionary mass movements of the oppressed masses because they do not have perfect consciousness and thus, by the way, also negating the fact that it is the Marxist-Leninist Party that brings consciousness to the masses.)

This question of denying revolution to justify social-chauvinism has a history. In World War I the social-chauvinists insisted that to say that there was a revolutionary situation was to be "ultra-left", to be an "anarchist", "Blanquist", etc. Nowadays, the social-chauvinists would say "dogmatic", "Trotskyite", "Lin Piaoist", "supporter of the gang of four" or "opponent of Teng Hsiao-ping". But back then it was "anarchist", "ultra-left" or "Blanquist". (By the way, these dreadful words were used despite the fact that the real anarchists overwhelmingly became social-chauvinists, or "anarcho-trenchists" as one disgusted anarchist put it.) It is very significant that prior to World War I, the entire Second International, including the social-chauvinist parties, all recognized the nature of the impending World War I and wrote various resolutions such as the Basle resolution which threatened the governments with revolution if war broke out. The entire Second International, including Kautsky, admitted that the impending inter-imperialist war would bring about the prospects of revolution and an analogy was made to the Paris Commune. So it was quite obvious that the Second International was referring to proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat. But when World War I broke out, the social-chauvinists ate their own words and said that revolution was premature. On this ground they aided "their own" bourgeoisies. The social-chauvinists used all kinds of sophistry. From the fact that you couldn't give a call to go to the barricades right at the beginning of the war, the moment it broke out, the social-chauvinists concluded that there was not a revolutionary situation which could be utilized to lead up to the barricades.

In order to say that this is a "non-revolutionary situation", the RCP denies the nature of this epoch and actually compares the present period with the pre-revolutionary period before the rise of imperialism. And when the RCP makes this comparison, it says that the conditions are similar with one exception, and that exception is that the present period is less revolutionary than the earlier one. The RCP says: "The similarity is in the objective development of things. Lenin showed how in the period really since the 1870's, with the development of this system into its highest stage, there was again a period of relatively peaceful development -- development of monopolies, the grabbing of colonies, etc. It was a period in which the struggle between classes was not eliminated, in fact it was sometimes sharp -- but nevertheless, it was another one of those non-revolutionary situations as opposed to a ripened situation, and one that was a protracted non-revolutionary situation, characterized by the growing strength of the monopolies and of the ruling classes in those countries.

"So the similarity lies in the question of the relatively protracted period of a non-revolutionary situation and a growing strength, relatively, of the ruling classes. However what is different between that period and this is that at that time the groups that belonged to the Second International, the Social-Democrats, in most cases...had established themselves as leaders of large unions, had won positions in Parliament and so on...

"The difference though, between that situation and ours today is that it has not been the case with the development of the struggle in the imperialist countries over the last period that the newly emerged Marxist-Leninist forces... are in the position where they have a large base in the working class, have developed leadership over a large section of it in the form of trade unions, have positions in parliament, what have you. " (Revolution, July 1977, p. 22, column 2) So according to the RCP the situation is less revolutionary now than before the rise of imperialism, and that is because the RCP doesn't have enough trade union positions or any seats in Congress. This also shows you what is on the mind of the neo-revisionists, where they are going, with their "revolutionary" "rank and file" and "class struggle" trade unionism. In this way the RCP completely denies the distinction between the pre-monopoly capitalist period and the present epoch of imperialism and proletarian revolution. (That is, aside from the fact that their descriptions of both periods are wrong.) The RCP does in fact deny that imperialism is the eve of the social-revolution of the proletariat. Yet, as Comrade Enver Hoxha has pointed out, "The fundamental features of our epoch, as the epoch of the transition from capitalism to socialism of the struggle of two opposing social systems, as the epoch of the proletarian and national-liberation revolutions, of the collapse of imperialism and the liquidation of the colonial system, as the epoch of the triumph of socialism and communism on a world scale, are becoming more pronounced and more clearly obvious each day". (Report at the 5th Congress of the Party of Labor of Albania, p. 5)

The fact is that the objective conditions for revolution are ripe. The revolutionary workers movement is rising, and the all-round crisis is driving millions upon millions of people into motion. The problem lies not in the objective conditions but in the subjective conditions, the degree of organization of the proletariat. We must build the Marxist-Leninist Party in the midst of the revolutionary mass movement in order that the proletariat will be able to merge all the revolutionary movements into one storm of anti-fascist proletarian socialist revolution and to seize the correct moment for overthrowing the old system and establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat.

There is one further aspect to the RCP's belief that this is a "non-revolutionary situation". Anyone who reads Revolution, if it is possible to read it, will find that they have many articles giving in detail the weapons used by the U.S. imperialists and Soviet social-imperialists and speculating on them and comparing them. They are thrilled by these things. This shows their world outlook, which is that weapons are all-important, the imperialists are powerful, but the masses are backward.

To be continued.

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In Defense of the Afro-American People's Movement

KNIGHTS OF THE NATIONAL OUESTION WORSHIPPING AT THE SHRINE OF NON-VIOLENCE

PART 3 OF THE SERIES "THE OL SOCIAL-CHAUVINISTS ARE OUT-AND-OUT SOCIALIST SEGREGATIONISTS"

The past year has seen the tenth anniversary of many of the glorious rebellions of the Afro-American people. First there was the tenth anniversary of the great Detroit and Newark rebellions of July 1967, and then this past April there was the anniversary of the powerful country-wide wave of rebellions to avenge the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. These revolutionary anniversaries were a source of great strength and inspiration for the oppressed masses and for the Marxist-Leninists and revolutionaries alike. But there were those who were silent at these events. They felt profoundly uneasy at the memory of the great Afro-American rebellions which shook U.S. imperialism to its very soul because they are engaged in an alliance with U.S. imperialism. These heartless reptiles are the "three worlders" led by the Klonskyite social-chauvinists. They celebrate not the revolutionary Afro-American people's movement, but instead commemorate the history of their trend, the history of sabotage and disruption of the revolutionary movements by the state and its agents. After complete silence on the rebellions, the Klonskyites ("Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist)") came out with their major article on page one. In blaring red capitals they announced "KING WAS PATHBREAKER FOR BLACK LIBERATION". (The Call, April 10, 1978) Thus the OL social-chauvinists again revealed their ugly features as socialist-segregationists opposed to the Afro-American people's movement under the cover of high-sounding allegedly "Marxist-Leninist" dogma on "The National Question", under cover of distortions of the Marxist-Leninist teachings on the right to self-determination. The OL class traitors were in fact preaching non-violence and opposition to revolution under cover of praising the pacifist misleader King.

REVISIONISM AND MARXISM-LENINISM ON THE 1968 REBELLIONS

The Afro-American people are faced with an oppression of unmatched ferocity. They are faced with two paths: fight or be a slave. These two paths are reflected inside the communist movement by the two trends: revolutionary Marxism-Leninism and counter-revolutionary modern revisionism. The revolutionary Marxist-Leninists are for fighting, for rebellion, for revolution, for developing the revolutionary mass movement to the utmost as a component part of the great proletarian revolution that will overthrow the man-eating capitalist system for good. The revisionists are for being docile slaves. They are opposed to starting to fight. Once the revolutionary mass movement breaks out, they are opposed to continuing it. When the revolutionary movement continues and grows in depth and power, the revisionists are opposed to carrying it through to the end in a successful revolution. And when the revolution wins victory, the revisionists work for restoration of the old order.

The 10th anniversary of the great Afro-American rebellions of 1968 to avenge the government murder of King was an important event on which everyone had their say. Let us see how the two paths, the two trends are reflected in the agitation on this event.

The Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists leads the camp of revolutionary Marxism-Leninism in the U.S. The COUSML followed the Leninist line of honoring the revolutionary traditions of the masses. The Workers' Advocate had earlier highlighted the great Detroit and Newark rebellions of 1967, and the COUSML had reprinted in commemoration cf these rebellions a popular but out-of-print poster showing the fighting masses burning down the Capitol building on the road to revolution while upholding Comrade Mao Tsetung's Statement of 1968 in support of the Afro-American people's struggle. For the April '68 rebellions, The Workers' Advocate carried major articles in two separate issues on this historic struggle, which was the widest in scope of all the great rebellions of the 1960's, engulfing over 125 cities and throwing the racist and imperialist state into total panic. Over 40 revolutionary fighters were martyred in this great rebellion. The Workers' Advocate drew out the lessons of this great revolt of the oppressed, not the least of which was that the assassination of King and the great rebellions proved the bankruptcy of nonviolence and "turning the other cheek" as advocated by such sell-outs as King. To avenge the government murder of one of their leaders, the Afro-American people had to trample on every principle that this misleader, M. L. King, stood for.

There was also the agitation of the modern Khrushchovite and Browderite revisionists of the revisionist party treacherously calling itself the "Communist" Party of the U.S.A. The "C'PUSA used the occasion of the 10th anniversary of King's foul murder to hail King's "principles" and to push their senile reformist politics. The April 4 issue of The Daily World carried and editorial entitled "Marching with Dr. Martin Luther King on April 8". This editorial calls for upholding "the principles at the heart of Martin Luther King's advocacy (which -- ed.) remain a vital legacy for the nation". This was to be accomplished by a "mass action in keeping with Dr. King's example". This "mass action" turned out to be a "Youth March for Jobs" organized by trade union hacks, various Christian organizations and the government itself to beg the Carter administration for the passage of more slave-labor "jobs" legislation and other "reforms". This editorial is no accident, but a faithful reflection of the revisionist position. Henry Winston, Chairman of the "C'PUSA, in his Strategy for a Black Agenda, lauds King to the sky as a "pre-eminent leader" of the "anti-monopoly strategy" and writes that King was "almost" a "Marxist-Leninist".

There are the two lines, the two roads: the road of revolution and Marxism-Leninism, and the road of slavery and revisionism. There is no third road. The agitation of the Klonskyite "three worlders" outdid the revisionists themselves in trumpeting the bankrupt road of King. This was striking proof that the "three worlders" are nothing but illegitimate offspring of the Khrushchovite revisionists. The Call blared forth that "KING WAS PATHBREAKER FOR BLACK LIBERATION". This article in the April 10th The Call salutes King as "the father of the Civil Rights movement" and praises King's tactics as "mass action" ("direct mass action" was King's name for the "militant" part of "non-violence"). According to The Call, "... King's stand with the masses in struggle was a good thing. It helped create the very conditions needed for a revolutionary movement to emerge and smash the racist system of Jim Crow". Thus The Call has even made Dr. King into a revolutionary, just as the revisionist Winston made him "almost" a "Marxist-Leninist". The article even swears to raise a new generation of leaders following the path of King. It ends with the vow: "Ten years after the death of Martin Luther King, new revolutionary leaders are rising to meet new tasks. No imperialist bullet can stop the fight for Black liberation."

Furthermore, The Daily World and The Call were united in opposing the Afro-American rebellions to avenge the murder of King. The Daily World ignores the subject of rebellion altogether, a subject so distasteful to good law-abiding citizens like the revisionists. The Call spends two sentences on rebellions taking place "in the first six months of 1968", without mentioning any connection to King's vile murder. The Call prefers to blab on for paragraph after paragraph about the two aspects, good and bad, of reforms granted by the government. These "reforms" are alleged to have "outlawed" segregation and to be "actually the first time in over a century that Afro-American's rights had been addressed". On the one hand, these partners in revisionist betrayal, the "C"PUSA and the "CP(M-L)", have placed on a pedestal this mild liberal misleader, social-democratic reformer and pacifist servant of the bourgeoisie within the Afro- American movement. They praise King as the great liberator of the Black people. And they fall in love with an allegedly "reformed" U.S. imperialism. And on the other hand they have written off the actual mass revolutionary struggles against the monopoly capitalist state, the path-breaking deeds of the revolutionary masses, such as the glorious nation-wide Afro-American rebellion of April 1968, deeds which could only take place against these so-called "fathers" and "path- breakers" of the movement.

Besides the Klonskyites themselves, all the "knights of the national question" and the sects of "three worlders" followed in the footsteps of their ideological leader, Mike Klonsky. With insignificant variations, they all without exception praised King. One or two, under the pressure of the revolutionary Marxist-Leninists, faintly praised the rebellions to set up a better cover for their praise of King. But others even found the TV film "King" more noteworthy than the revolutionary anniversary itself. What an inglorious exposure for all the Klonskyite socialist-segregationists and great authorities on "National Question"! They turn out to be indistinguishable from the "official" revisionists of the "C'PUSA in their attitude to King and the great rebellions!

KING'S ROLE IN HISTORY

Why are all the revisionists so fond of King? Let us briefly review his political stand and history.

King was a misleader of the Afro-American people's movement, a traitor to his own people. A leader is judged by his line, by what he leads people to do. King's politics and leadership can be summed up by his capitulationist doctrine of "passive non-violence". King studied Gandhi's writings and took a pilgrimage to India. He was an advocate of the Gandhian philosophy of "love" and "nonviolent resistance" with its tactics of "direct mass action". The two basic tenets of this reactionary dogma are: a) the oppressed peoples must never rise in revolt against their oppressors, for violence brings you down to the level of the oppressor; and b) the only salvation for the oppressed lies in the good conscience of their oppressors. As well, there is a third tenet: c) if someone should rise in rebellion, the police should be called on to suppress him.

In practical terms, King was an instrument of the counter-revolutionary dual tactics of the Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Unable to suppress the Afro -American people with brute force alone, the executive branch of the government resorted to massive deception and feigned support for the struggle. Comrade Mao Tsetung characterized this policy in his 1963 "Statement Supporting the Afro- Americans in their Just Struggle Against Racial Discrimination by U.S. Imperialism" as follows: "The Kennedy Administration is insidiously using dual tactics. On the one hand, it continues to connive at and take part in discrimination against Negroes and their persecution, and it even sends troops to suppress them. On the other hand, in the attempt to numb the fighting will of the black people and deceive the masses of the country, the Kennedy Administration is parading as an advocate of 'the defense of human rights' and 'the protection of the civil rights of Negroes', calling upon the black people to exercise 'restraint' and proposing the 'civil rights legislation' to Congress." Through a close alliance with the "responsible leaders" of the Black community, the bourgeoisie worked to keep the Afro-American struggle "under control". King, with his slave doctrine of "non-violence", was a particularly important fire-fighter of the Black rebellions.

King was fully conscious of his role. We can let King describe it for himself, in a speech approvingly quoted by the revisionist "C'PUSA paper The Worker in June 1957 and proudly reprinted by the revisionist scholar Philip Foner in his collection of speeches entitled The Voice of Black America. This speech comes comes from a "prayer pilgrimage" by King to Washington, D. C. Here King outlined his program for pacifying the Afro-American people and set forth the course from which he never wavered. On his hands and knees before the imperialist chieftain Eisenhower, King made the following plea:

"In this junction of our nation's history there is an urgent need for dedicated and courageous leadership. If we are to solve the problems ahead and make racial justice a reality, this leadership must be fourfold.

"First, there is need for a strong, aggressive leadership from the federal government....

"In the midst of these prevailing conditions, we come to Washington pleading with the President and the members of Congress to provide a strong, moral and courageous leadership for a situation that cannot permanently be evaded. We come humbly to say to the men in the forefront of our government that the civil-rights issue is... an eternal moral issue which may well determine the destiny of our nation in the ideological struggle with communism. The hour is late. The clock of destiny is ticking out. We must act now, before it is too late.

"A second area in which there is need for strong leadership is from the white Northern liberals....

"A third that we must look to for strong leadership is from the moderates of the white South.... God grant that the white moderates of the South will rise up courageously, without fear, and take up the leadership in this tense period of transition.

"I cannot close without stressing the urgent need for strong, courageous and intelligent leadership from the Negro community. We need leadership that is calm and yet positive. This is no day for the rabble-rouser.... There is no place for misguided emotionalism.... we must be sure that our hands are clean in the struggle... Let us never become bitter."

Thus King was attempting to break a path for a reactionary anti-communist alliance led by the federal government along with the "white northern liberals", the "southern white moderates" and the "intelligent" sold-out Black leaders such as himself. By "white northern liberals" and "southern white moderates" King was of course not referring to the millions of toiling masses among the whites who supported the just struggle of the Afro-American people, but to the reactionary monopoly capitalist politicians, the representatives of rich, racist exploiters, to the Kennedys in the North and the Lyndon Johnsons in the South. This alliance was to be directed against the revolt of the Black people. The only change in this alliance would be King's adding on to it in the late '60's, with the stirring of the workers' movement, of the labor traitors fighting against the revolutionary workers' movement from the vantage point of the capitalist trade union bureaucracy.

The great Afro-American revolutionary and martyr Malcolm X had great contempt for King and the other "official leaders" of the Black people. While The Call talks about King being "an eloquent, but down-to-earth speaker, who was able to arouse hundreds of thousands to stand up for their rights", Malcolm X had a different view of these "leaders' " role in history. Malcolm correctly said: "When these 'leaders' create programs, you get no action. The only time you see them is when the people are exploding. Then the leaders are shot into the situation and told to control things. You can't show me a leader who has set off an explosion." No, the Kings and other misleaders did not want to "arouse hundreds of thousands", but to channel the raging revolutionary mass movement into paths harmless to the exploiters and racists. Malcolm went on and said: "No, they come and contain the explosion. They say, 'Don't get rough, you know, do the smart thing'. This is their role -- they're there just to restrain you and me, to restrain the struggle, to keep it in a certain groove, and not let it get out of control. Whereas you and I don't want anybody to keep us from getting out of control. We want to get out of control. We want to smash anything that gets in our way that doesn't belong there. " (Malcolm X Speaks, p. 118)

King himself describes in his book Stride Toward Freedom how he constantly worked to pour cold water on the revolutionary masses and to stop them from taking up revolutionary violence against the counter-revolutionary violence of the racist oppressors. When the Afro-American masses were brutally attacked by police dogs and fire hoses during the Birmingham struggle in 1963, King counseled non-violence. When the four Black little girls were blown up by a bomb placed in a church by the racists in Birmingham that year, King counseled "restraint". King did not "arouse hundreds of thousands", or even or two dozen to strike back at the oppressors but instead worked as a road-block to the movement, as a pacifier of the masses who feared above all that the Afro-American people would fight tit-for-tat and give the racist oppressors a lesson that they would not soon forget. When the Afro-Americans of Los Angeles arose with rifles in hand and launched the powerful Watts Rebellion in 1965, King openly and shamelessly supported the savage military repression of the Blacks, stating: "It was necessary that as powerful a police force as possible be brought in to check them (the rebelling Black masses --ed.)" (The New York Times, August 16, 1965). When King went to Watts personally to advocate non-violence and compromise, he was jeered and hooted by the Black masses and chased out of the area.

King was assassinated in early April, 1968. This was a vile racist murder organized by the state machine. As Comrade Mao Tsetung pointed out in his famous statement of 1968: "Martin Luther King was an exponent of non-violence. Nevertheless, the U.S. imperialists did not on that account show any tolerance towards him, but used counter-revolutionary violence and killed him in cold blood, This taught the broad masses of the black people in the United States a, profound lesson. It has touched off a new storm in their struggle against violent repression sweeping well over a hundred cities in the United States, a storm such as never taken place before in the history of that country." In rising up in this unprecedented storm, the Afro-American people showed a correct and powerful revolutionary instinct. No people can retain their self-respect if they allow themselves to be massacred at will by the reactionaries o But in rebelling to avenge the murder of King, the Afro-American masses tore up every principle for which King lived and fought. The masses learned a "profound lesson" about the bankruptcy of King's road of "non-violence", "restraint" and "turning the other cheek", and they put this lesson into practice immediately, shaking U.S. imperialism to the core.

To this day, the April 1968 rebellions shine forth as a great inspiration for revolution and as the most crushing refutation of King's path of "non-violence" and collaboration with "liberals", "southern moderates" and U.S. imperialism in general. This is true to the extent that the revisionist worshippers of King would like to forget all about the very rebellions that avenged his death, just as King himself was against the Watts rebellion and the other glorious uprisings of the Afro-American people. The followers of King have sacrificed their own leader to the altar of "nonviolent" cooperation with the oppressors, so great is their love for U.S. imperialism. It is those who oppose King's path of betrayal and "non-violence" who have raised high the sacred memory of the April, 1968 rebellions.

Even from this brief history, it is clear why the revisionists and "three worlders" are so enthusiastic about King. Just like King, these revisionists "are shot into the situation, are told to "control things". Their role is "to restrain the struggle, to keep it in a certain groove, and not let it get out of control. " Just like King, these revisionists have made their alliance with the U.S. ruling class and state. The Klonskyite Pentagon-socialists have openly and proudly proclaimed their class treason with their theory of rallying behind U.S. imperialism to "strike the main blow at Soviet social-imperialism". No wonder these worthy gentlemen and state-certified "official communists" uphold King's legacy and study his tactics and methods. But the Marxist-Leninists and progressive masses too have learned "a profound lesson" from history. They know that the path of revisionism and collaboration with imperialism is the path of slavery and death. And they have applied this lesson in practice by launching a powerful movement against social-chauvinism and all revisionism and in support of revolution and the living truths of Marxism-Leninism. End.

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SUPPORT RADIO LIBERATION ERITREA

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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 are 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 combatted. 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 telephone number.] End.

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