Workers Vanguard No 742 - 22 September 2000

7/29/2019 Workers Vanguard No 742 - 22 September 2000

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soeNo. 742 .... 22 September 2000

Fuel Protests Rock EuropeThe following article was written forWorkers Vanguard by our comrades ofthe Spartacist League/Britain.

LONDON, September 17-A blockadeof oil refineries and depots by protestersbrought Britain to the brink of total shutdown in a matter of days and gave ventto the seething anger felt by millions ofpeople against Tony Blair's Labour government. The protests were called off asBlair moved army fuel tankers into position to break the blockade. Crucially aiding Blair in this was the LabouriteTrades Union Congress (TUC) bureaucracy which, meeting at its annual conference at the height of the protests, moveda resolution denouncing the blockadesas "a crude attempt to hold the countryto ransom." The protesters have giventhe government 60 days to meet theirdemand for lower fuel prices and, whilethe petrol tankers have started rollingagain, Labour's crisis is far from over.The effects of the blockade will be feltfor weeks, while the hatred toward thearrogant Blair government remains.Protests in Britain followed closelyon similar blockades by French truckersand farmers; protests have since eruptedthroughout Europe and continue to spreadfrom Ireland to Germany and Poland.These actions are hugely popular expressions of opposition to the social-democratic administrations of Blair, France'sJospin and Germany's SchrOder which, ascapitalist governments, seek to jack upthe bosses' bloated profits through devastating attacks on the livelihoods of theworking people, dismantling welfare programmes and grinding down the poor.Exorbitant taxes on items such as petroland diesel fuel are regressive taxes whichhit poor and working people hardest. In"rip-off Britain," fuel prices are higherthan anywhere else in Europe. Taxes andduties make up 76 per cent of the price ofunleaded petrol, which costs around 80pence a litre [$4.37 a gallon]. In the past18 months alone, the cost of petrol hasrisen by 18 pence a litre. The cost of public transport is astronomical, as is the costof running a car. In an industrial society,cars are not a lUXUry but are essential forvast numbers of workers to get to work.The blockades were initiated and ledby farmers organisations and road haulage compan ies- small and medium-sizedcapitalist companies, often employersin their own right-who are driven bythe need to compete with their rivalsin other countries, particularly withinthe European Union.The protests alsoenjoyed tacit support from the giant oilcorporations, at least at first. While theforces leading this revolt were for themost part petty-bourgeois, the issue at

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stake-cheaper fuel prices-is clearly inthe interests of the working class, as wasreflected in the overwhelming supportfor the protests among the population asa whole., The attitude of Marxists to such pettybourgeois mobilizations is based upon thetarget of the protests and the nature of thedemands raised: do they further the interests of the proletariat? In this case, the .protests were clearly aimed at the Blairgovernment and indeed the demand is onesupportable from a proletarian standpoint. Because of their position in societybetween the two classes with socialpower-the capitalists and the workingclass-groups like the farmers and hauliers will swing widely in their orientation,sometimes militantly protesting alongside the workers and sometimes becomingthe recruiting grounds for the fascists.

A revolutionary leadership of theworkers movement must seek to t ~ e thelead of protests such as these in order to

APdirect them clearly against the real culprit: capitalism and the Labour government which administers it. The fuel crisis is the most acute social crisis Britainhas seen since the great miners strike of1984-85. It has starkly illustrated thevenal nature not only of Labour but particularly of the trade-union bure.aucracy,which acted as Blair's partners in crimeand played a decisive role in saving thegovernment's hide.A tanker drivers strike would transform the protests into a mighty classstruggle against the Labour government.It could appeal to rail and all transportworkers to strike the railways and theprivati sed public transport system whichis equally hated. Such a mobilisation bythe union membership requires implacable opposition to the pro-capitalisttrade-union bureaucracy. While the oilblockade used militant tactics, and gentleman farmers were heard to repeat thefashionable phrase "direct action works,"

Truckers block road at German-Belgianborder, September 13. P r ~ t e s t s againsthigh fuel prices have paralyzed Britainand other European countries.the fundamental question is one of political programme and leadership. Forging arevolutionary proletarian party as the necessary instrument to lead the workingclass in struggle, committed to nothingless than victorious workers revolutionagainst the whole rotting capitalistsystem, is the urgent task posed. It is sucha party that we in the Spartacist League!Britain seek to. build.Tony Blair, having been chased aroundYorkshire by angry protesters, summonedoil bosses and police chiefs to DowningStreet, reportedly demanded they gettough with the protesters and declared onnational television that within 24 hoursthe oil tankers would be back on theroads. In order for Blair's boast tobecome a reality, unionised tanker drivershad to drive the tankers out and break theblockade which they had supported untilthen. Enter the trade-union bureaucrats,whose slavish loyalty to "their" antiworking-class Labour government andthe bourgeois order it upholds knows nobounds. Initially, many drivers refused tomove oil except for emergency supplies.But the bureaucracy of the Transport andGeneral Workers Union (TGWU) scandalously instructed their members tobring the oil out. A TGWU press releaseissued 12 September, the same day asBlair's ultimatum, said: "The Unionwhich represents tanker drivers urged itsmembers to continue working as long asit was safe to do so," adding "We urge theprotesters to remove the blockades andallow our members to resume deliveries."TGWU general secretary Bill Morrisegged on the cops, saying "I f they arebreaking the law, the protesters should bearrested" (Guardian, 13 September).According to a report in the SundayTelegraph (17 September): "While MrBlair pondered sending in the troops,[finance minister] Mr [Gordon] Browncontinued on page 11

"Marxist Politics orUnprincipled Combinationism?': .."


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LOS ANGELES, September 18-For thepast three days, a solid strike by 4,300 busdrivers and train operators has shut downthe Los Angeles Metropolitan TransitAuthority (MTA). The heavily black andLatino strikers are members of the UnitedTransportation Union (UTU). The unionhas refused to give in to the MTA's demand to switch 400 drivers to a four-dayworkweek, forcing them to be on the jobfor 13 hours a day at ten hour s' pay. Thiswould mean a pay cut of at least 15 percent for many drivers, and the increasedhours, stress and fatigue are a recipe forkilling both workers and riders.

clerks, who are also without a contract,are walking the UTU picket lines carrying handmade signs in solidarity with thestrike. Teamsters members are refusingto drive the extra buses set up by the suburban Metrolink light-rail system toshuttle passengers from Union Stationto other parts cif the city, stymying thebosses' strikebreaking scheme.All the MTA unions are targeted bya union-busting plan long pushed byRepublican mayor Richard Riordan,MTA chief Julian Burke and Democratson the MTA board like Zev Yaroslavsky tocreate "regional transportation zones"under so-called "local control." Theirmodel is the Foothill Transit zone, spunoff in 1987, which contracts out t o privatebus companies with low pay and few benefits. This was the core issue in an eightday ATU strike six years ago, but theunion tops caved in to MTA demands toallow privatization of bus lines through

While L.A. still relies heavily on cars,with the transit system expanding thepotential power of the transit workershas increased. On its first weekdaytoday, the strike has shut down servicefor 450,000 riders. Amalgamated TransitUnion (ATt]) mechanics and Transportation Communications International Union

Bourgeois "Democracy":Mask for Dictatorship of CapitalFrom the day the Bolshevik-led proletariat in Russia seized power in the October Revolution of 1917, social democratsinveighed against the proletarian dictatorship in the name of "democracy." Polemicizing against Social Democrats Karl Kautskyand Philipp Scheidemann, a leading member of the German imperialist government,

TROTSKY Bolshevik leader V.I. Lenin exposed the LENINhypocrisy of capitalist democracy as a coverfo r brutal exploitation and oppression. In smashing the rule of the capitalistsand landlords in Russia and establishing the rule ofworkers councils (soviets), proletarian democracy, the October Revolution served as a beacon to the working massesinternationally.

The Scheidemanns and Kautskys speak about "pure democracy" and "democracy" ingeneral for the purpose of deceiving the people and concealing from them the bourgeoischaracter of present-day democracy. Let the bourgeoisie continue to keep the entireapparatus of state power in their hands, let a handful of exploiters continue to use theformer, bourgeois, state machine! Elections held in such circumstances are laudedby the bourgeoisie, for very good reasons, as being "free," "equal," "democratic" and"universal." These words are designed to c o n c e ~ l the truth, to conceal the fact that themeans of pro


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--Why I Broke from the YSAand Joined the SYCWe print below a letter to Young Spartacus by Lital S., a Spartacus Youth Clubmember in Los Angeles.When I began attending UCLA in thefall of 1998, my orientation sessionincluded only one black student out ofthree hundred. Such was the initial result

of the repeal of affirmative action, one ofthe last remaining gains of the CivilRights Movement. Having attended anurban Los Angeles high school whichmainly consisted of blacks and Latinos, Iwas disgusted that so many of those facesI had seen growing up were absent athigher education institutions such asUCLA. I began to attend protests organized by the Affirmative Action Coalition(AAC) which was my initiation into"family of the left" politics at UCLA. TheAAC was composed of various studentgroups whose aims were centered onpressuring the $300,000-a-year chancellor to stop purging UCLA ofminority students. One such protest consisted ofabout 300 students who took over Murphy Hall and demanded that the chancellor meet with us. The chancellor spewedplatitudes about fostering diversity in theUC system through funding groups ~ u c h as the African Student Union, while refusing to sign a written statement acknowledging the effects of dismantling affirmative action. Most of us left in tears,feeling closer to each other, yet not reallydiscussing why our politics were ineffective, why pressuring the chancellor wasbankrupt.We should have been defendingaffirmative action but also fighting foropen admissions, free tuition and for thecampuses to be run by those who workand study there!After these failed pressure protests, Ibegan to become active in the fight tofree death row political prisoner MumiaAbu-Jamal on campus. This fight ..tookthe shape of the Student Mobilization toFree Mumia Abu-Jamal, organized byStudents for Socialist Action (now calledYouth for Socialist Action). The coalitioncomprised members from various studentgroups as well as independents such asmyself. Everyone in the coalition agreedthat Mumia was innocent and that wasthe extent of political agreement. In all,it proved to be more a gathering of socialleftists who enjoyed artwork for Mumiabut who shied away from a seriousunderstanding of what Mumia' represented and how to fight black oppression in the United States. Our main focuswas to educate students on Mumia's casethrough forums, video showings ofA Case for Reasonable Doubt, andorganizing carpools for the April 24th[1999] "Millions for Mumia" protest inSan Francisco. Our forums were wellattended, and we organized about 30 students to go up to the Bay Area with usfor the protest. The flyers, pins, and banners all demanded that Mumia receive a"New Trial Now!"While I had very few illusions in thecapitalist courts, I believed that callingfor a new trial was the only "realistic"demand. When leafletting, I would appealto people that Mumia received an unfairtrial and so wherever one stood on the22 SEPTEMBER 2000

political spectrum they could logicallyunderstand the need for a new trial. Butcalling for a new trial does not exist as apolitically neutral demand. The demandstifles any real challenge to the stateapparatus, which imprisoned Mumia inthe first place, by placing faith in the capitalist courts as though we Can pressurethem to be fair. Within a few weeks afterwe returned back to UCLA, the coalitionpretty much disintegrated. Those whoremained were Youth for Socialist Action(YSA) members and a few others such asmyself who were not done with Mumia'scause just because the protest was over.The breakdown of the coalition was a further reiteration in my mind of the voidliberalism leaves. Because the mobilization was not organized around a greaterunderstanding of the racist nature of thiscapitalist state, it was easy for liberalsinvolved to flee his case and move on toother momentary interests.After going through two cycles of student activism I was thoroughly disillusioned with pressure politics. I was beginning to understand that many of thesestudent organizers were not interested infundamentally changing society becausethat would mean renouncing their opportunities to have successful professionalcareers. It was at that time that I began tolook seriously at Marxism and to understand that it is not students who possessthe social power to change society, but

the working class. I began to work withYouth for Socialist Action because I hadfriendly relations with many of theirmembers and because they posed as analternative. But what I observed YSAmeetings and forums, which I attendedregularly, was that the YSA was not interested in educating its members about revolutionary Marxism and how to apply it tothe world today. The organizers of theYSA did not want to challenge popularsentiments on campus for fear that theywould isolate themselves,so they capitulated to them instead. Such capitulationtook the form that I had witnessed withthe Mumia


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KEY DOCUMENT OF U.S. TROTSKYIST MOVEMENT

"Marxist Politics orUnprincipledCombination sm?"

Just- Out from Prometheus Research Library

Marxist Politics orprinCipled Comblnationlsm?Internal Problems of theWorkers Party

by Max Shachtmal1Reprinted from Internal Bulletin N o ~ 3,February 1936,

of he Workers Party of the United StatesWith Introduction and Appendices

The Prometheus Research. Library, archival andresearch facility of the Spartacist League/U.S., has justpublished tJ?e fifth in its Prometheus Research Seriesof historical bulletins reprinting key documents of theMarxist movement. PRS No. 5 reprints a document byMax Shachtman titled "Marxist Politics or UnprincipledCombinationism?" which was originally published in February 1936 in the Internal Bulleti nof the Workers Partyof the United States (WPUS), the American Trotskyistorganization at the time. Shachtman's document, writtenwhen he was a close collaQorator of Trotskyist leaderJames P. Cannon, is an excellent presentation of Leninist methods of internal party struggle, illuminatedthrough the political disputes which were then roiling theAmerican Trotskyist movement. PRS No.5 also includesan introduction by the PRL and a previously unavailableAl,lgust 1935 report by Cannon on the internal s i ~ u a t i o n in the WPUS as well as an objection to this report written by Albert Glotzer.

CLA apart. With no principled and programmatic issues in dispute, Trotsky intervened inthe spring of 1933 to put a stop to the polarization. Shachtman subsequently went overto collaboration with Cannon in pursuing theopportunities posed by the AWP and thegrowing SP left wing. But, as Shachtmanadmits toward the end of his document, thecore of his former faction, still animated bypersonal animosity to Cannon, continued toexist. The Abern clique was the Shachtman-ites ... without Shachtman. .While providing one of the only detailedaccounts by a participant of the internal facGet your copy now! Eighty-four pages, $6.00 (includespostage). Order from/pay to: Spartacist Publishing Co.,Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116.

The 1930s were a time of tumultuous social strugglesand political turmoil in the U.S. and internationally, posing opportunities for the building of a revolutionaryworkers party. The WPUS was formed in December1934 through a fusion of the Trotskyist CommunistLeague of America (CLA) and a leftward-moving centrist organization led by A. J. Muste called the AmericanWorkers Party (AWP). When Shachtman wrote his document, the Trotskyists were about to enter into the Socialist Party (SP) in order to win over its growing left wing.Shachtman's document deals with the internal politicalbattle within the CLA against those who obstructedfusion with the AW P and then went on within theWPUS to obstruct or oppose entry into the SP.This factional battle pitted a Leninist core aroundCannon and Shachtman against an ultraleft grouping ledby Hugo Oehler and a rightist clique grouped aroundMartin Abern, Jack Weber and Glotzer. The documentwas written after Oehler and;his supporters were expelled in late 1935 for repeated; flagrant violations of

party discipline. Shachtman aimed most of his fire at thepoisonous personalism which had led the Abern-WeberGlotzer group to obstruct the necessary fight againstOehler, noting that the basis of this group was "thatofan unprincipled personal combination, of a clique thatrefuses to live down ancient and completely outlivedpersonal and factional animosities."Shachtman had intimate personal knowledge of theorigins and methods of the Abern-Weber clique. In theearly CLA, Shachtman had been the leader of a group ofyoung cadre that included Abern, Glotzer and MauriceSpector. This group had counterposed itself to the older,more experienced worker militants around Cannon in avicious internal struggle which threatened to tear the4

tional struggles in the later CLA and the WPUS,Shachtman's document transcends the confines of theparticular controversies that occurred over 60 years ago.It is a manual of internal party struggle, as cogent andinstructive today as when it was written. Shachtman'sgoal, as he noted in introducing his document, was totrain the members of the Workers Party, particularly themany young members who had recently been recruited:

"The youth must be trained in the spirit of revolutionaryMarxism, of principled politics. Through its bloodstreammust run a powerful resistance to the poison of clique politics, of subjectivism, of personal combinationism, ofintrigue, of gossip. It must learn to cut through allsuperficialities and reach down to the essence of every problem.It must learn to think politically, to be guided exclusivelyby political considerations, to argue out problems withthemselves and with others on the basis of principles andto act always from motives of principle."Cannon's Tradition, Not Shachtman's

This document does not represent the political p o s f ~ tions or methodology attributable to the Jater politicalcurrent that bears Shachtman's name. Shachtmanismis correctly characterized by his renegacy-his flightfrom Trotskyism in 1 9 3 9 ~ 4 0 when on the eve of WorldWar IT, under the influence of the petty-bourgeois anti-

Left to right:Martin Abern,James Cannon,Max Shachtman.Shachtman'sdocument exposedand combattedAbern's-unprincipledcombination smagainst "Cannonregime" as obstacle toforging revolutionaryworkers party.

Communist hysteria which greeted the August 1939 HitlerStalin pact, he abandoned the program of unconditionalmilitary defense of the Soviet Union against imperialismand capitalist counterrevolution. In this, Shachtman tookhis lead from the bourgeois pedant and New York University professor James Burnham, a former leader of theAWP- who was won to revolutionary Trotskyism in thecourse of the fight in the WPUS. By 1939, Burnhamdenied the Trotskyist understanding that the SovietUnion remained a bureaucratically degenerated workersstate, i.e., one based on proletarian (collectivized) property forms despite the political counterrevolution in1924 which usurped political power from the workingclass. Shachtman claimed to be agnostic on the class

nature of the Soviet state. But he still united with Burnham. Shachtman thus repudiated the organizational principles he outlines in "Marxist Politics or UnprincipledCombinationism?" He reunited as well with his formerfactional partners in the Abern clique, who claimed todefend the USSR, opposing only Cannon's "organizational methods."The struggle against this petty-bourgeois opposition- the last faction fight waged by Trotsky before hisassassination in 1940-is documented in Trotsky's InDefense of Marxism and Cannon's The Struggle for aProletarian Party. In his October 1939 "Speech on theRussian Question," reprinted in the latter book, Cannondeclared:"The Russian question is no literary exercise to be takenup or cast aside according to the mood of the moment.The Russian question has been and remains the questionof the revolution. The Russian Bolsheviks on November7, 1917, once and for all, took the question of theworkers' revolution out of the realm of abstraction andgave it flesh and blood reality."

In May 1940, Shachtman-Burnham-Abern split fromthe Trotskyist movement to form the Workers Party,which Burnham abandoned almost immediately tobecome an open bourgeois anti-Communist. Shachtman's Workers Party-not to be confused with the earlier WPUS-soon joined Burnham in proclaiming theSoviet Union a new form of class society. But they stillclaimed to be Trotskyist and even to support the FourthInternational until 1948. Under the impact of the renewedanti-Communist hysteria of the Cold War, the Shachtmanites moved rapidly to the right, ultimately liquidating into the Socialist Party-Social Democratic Federationin 1958. Backing the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cubaand the vicious, losing imperialist war against the Vietnamese social revolution, Shachtman ended his days inthe rig ht wing of the Democratic Party.Notwithstanding Shachtman's later evolution, thisdocument is a major contribution to the arsenal of thoseseeking to build an international vanguard party in theLeninist tradition. As the PRL's Introduction to PRS No.S states:"Unlike the Stalinists, we do not disappear people fromhistory and we do not denigrate the contributions made byrenegades when they were still guided by Marxism andwere active proponents of the workers' struggle againstcapitalism. Rather, we follow the example of Lenin, whocontinued to urge his followers to study. the early worksof Plekhanov despite his social-patriotism during WorldWar I and his opposition to the October Revolution. Inearlier years, it was Plekhanov who not only translatedMarx's works into Russian but actively recruited a newgeneration to Marxism; one of those was Lenin. Shachtman's document was written during the period when hecollaborated closely with Cannon and Trotsky, and itbelongs in our tradition."

It is not Shachtman the Trotskyist leader, but Shachtman the renegade who is today embraced by a host offake leftists who likewise repudiated Soviet-defensismand capitulated to their "own" bourgeoisie during theCold War IT offensive which culminated in the destruc-WORKERS VANGUARD


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tion of the Soviet Union in 1991-92. Thus "Marxist Politics or Unprincipled Combinationism?" does not appearat all in the lengthy tome of reprints of Shachtmanitearticles produced in Britain by Labourite social-patriotSean Matgamna, The Fate of the Russian Revolution:Lost Texts of Critical Marxism, Volume I (see "TheBankruptcy of 'New Class' Theories-Tony Cliff andMax Shachtman: Pro-Imperialist Accomplices of Counterrevolution," Spa rta cis t [English-language edition]No. 55, Autumn 1999). Nor does Shachtman's document get even a passing mention in Peter Drucker's1994 biography, Max Shachtman andHis Left.The Early American Trotskyist Movement

The American Trotskyist movement was born inOctober 1928, when Cannon, Shachtman and Abernwere expelled from the Workers (Communist) Party(CP) for Trotskyism. As a delegate to the Sixth Congress of the Communist International (CI) earlier thatyear, Cannon had received a partial copy of LeonTrotsky'S "Critique of the Draft Program of the Communist International," later published in The Third Interna-tional After Lenin. Thoroughly convinced by Trotsky'strenchant exposure of the Comintern's abandonment of arevolutionary perspective, Cannon returned home toorganize for the Trotskyist opposition. The CLA, whichbecame the u.s. section of the International Left Opposition (ILO), was founded in May 1929 by Cannon andsome 100 of his former factional supporters in the CP,most of whom had been expelled simply for questioningthe propriety of his expulsion.The ILO considered itself an expelled faction of theComin tern -figh ting to return the CI to the program andpractice that had animated it during its first four yearsof existence-until 1933. That year, Hitler's Nazis cameto power in Germany without organized resistance bythe powerful working class. The Social Democracy hadbeen a prop of the German capitalist order since WorldWar I. But the German Communist Party-which commanded the allegiance of millions of workers-alsoallowed Hitler to triumph, and no opposition was raisedwithin the Comintern to this disastrous course. At thatpoint, Trotsky called for new communist parties and anew, Fourth International. The ILO reconstituted itselfas the International Communist League (ICL).Under the blows of the Great Depression and Hitler'srise to power, a number of reformist and centrist currents were impelled to the left. The ICL sought to effecta regroupment of revolutionary forces, and the CLA'snegotiations with the AWP were part of this regroupment effort. A former pacifist and preacher, Muste hadbeen active in the labor movement since 1919, andhis Conference for Progressive Labor Action, whichbecame the AWP, had been the most visible force for"progressive," but generally pro-capitalist, trade-unionactivism. But at their convention in late i933, Muste'ssupporters declared the necessity of building a new revolutionary party, insisting:"The revolutionary struggle of the masses against the capitalist system which more and more depresses their standard of living, takes various forms .... The primary formis the economic struggles of the worker and farmer. Thestruggle is, however, inspired, coordinated, carried to itsgoal of taking power, by the revolutionary political party."In 1934, the AWP led the Toledo Auto-Lite strike andthe CLA led militant strikes for union recognition by theMinneapolis Teamsters. These two major union victories, along with the CP-Ied San Francisco general strike,laid the basis for the working-class upsurge that built theCIO later that decade. Unity negotiations between theAW P and CLA were propelled by these victories.The AWP had been moving to the'left, but it remainedan extremely h e t e r o g e n e ~ ) U s organization. As Cannondescribed it in his History ofAmerican Trotskyism, "Themembership of the AWP included everything from prole-

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II in T ~ ~ U n i o n RecOanition G.i~ : : : - ~ :-.:-_ 'Mhnt, MinnapoI;. I

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Basil Blackwell, Inc.Red Army commander Leon Trotsky addressesSoviet troops in 1920.tarian revolutionists to reactionary scoundrels and fakers." Besides contending with Oehler's ultrllleft opposition within the CLA, the CLA leadership had to politically isolate or at least neutralize the right wing of theAWP. As Cannon expiained, "Our political task was toprevent the Stalinists from swallowing up this movement, and to remove a centrist obstacle from our path byeffecting a unity with the proletarian activists and theserious people, isolating the frauds and fakers, and discarding the unassimilable elements."In Europe, left currents were emerging from withinthe reformist social-democratic parties. France was inthe throes of social crisis, with a combative proletariaton one side and a growing fascist movement on theother, and workers and youth began flocking into thesocial-democratic SFIO. In June 1934, Trotsky proposedthat the French ICL section, the Ligue Communiste,enter the SFIO in order to split away its left-wing currents and \vin them to Bolshevism. Trotsky's call forwhat became known as the "French turn" met internalopposition from various sectarian elements, most ofwhom ended up abandoning the ICL. It is not unusualfor a revolutionary party, in a period of sharp politicalturn, to generate internal conservative oppositions tonew tasks. In the U.S., Oehler opposed the applicationof this Leninist tactic of splits and fusions, arguing that itrepresented a liquidation of the vanguard party. Trotskyresponded to such arguments: ''The League is not yet aparty. It is an embryo, and an embryo needs coveringand nourishment in order to develop."The formative years of the International Left Opposition had been devoted to steeling the cadre of a p r o p a ~ ganda group on the basis of Bolshevik principles. Now itwas necessary, as Shachtrnan explained in his document,to seize on the outbreak of class struggle to presentthese "formerly elaborated principles to the masses inthe form of agitational, day-to-day slogans" and to gofrom there to building a party "which can discharge theresponsibilities incumbent upon an organization claiming to defend the daily as well as the historical interestsof the proletariat, which can actually set masses intomotion-in other words, a party of action."

1934: Trotskyist CLA press reported ToledoAuto-Lite strike led by A.J. Muste's AWP (left),Minneapolis Teamsters strike led by CLA. Laborvictories helped lay basis for fusion of CLA andAWP later that year.

Even before the fusion with the AWP, the CLA leadership had been probing the emerging left wing in theAmerican Socialist Party. The CLA's factional groupings had agreed to dissolve with the fusion, but in theWPUS the Oehlerites continued their agitation againstthe "French turn," labeling it as the ICL's "capitulation"to social democracy. Entry into the SP was not a feasible tactic for the Trotskyists so long as the right wingcontinued to control the SP organization in New York.However, Cannon and Shachtman insisted that theWPUS had to pay attention to developments there. Theygeared up for an all-out political fight to stop theOehlerites from paralyzing the party's activities.Meanwhile, the Abern-Weber clique began fillingMuste's ears with slanders about Cannon's "organizational methods," causing Muste to waver in the fightagainst Oehler. (Muste would eventually oppose the SPentry, leaving the Trotskyist movement to return to pacifist activism.) A worker who had come from the AWPdescribed his first experience of factional struggle andthe impact of Cannon's intervention at a June 1935WPUS plenum:"This Bolshevik method of a free, democratic, organizedfactional struggle to settle serious differences over program and policy was brand new to us ...."Jim's speeches gave us our first lesson in the ABCs ofprincipled Marxist politics as he fairly but mercilesslydissected the political position of each group in our bloc.We noticed at once that Jim didn't stoop to petty debater'spoints or misrepresent an opponent's position. He statedeach position fully and fairly and answered them squarelyin such a way as to obtain the maximum educationalvalue for the membership ...."For the first time it became apparent to us that eachmember of our bloc had different principles and motivesfor joining the bloc. Jim put the right name on i t -an

unprincipled bloc."- Essay by Ted Grant in James P. Cannon .As We Knew Him (1976)The Oehlerites' position was rejected at a subsequentplenum in October. A few months later, the SP's rightwing split away, making a Trotskyist entry an immediatepossibility. "Marxist Politics or Unprincipled Combinationism?" was written on the eve of a March 1936WPUSconvention where the Cannon-Shachtman faction finallyobtained a decisive mandate in favor of the "French turn"as applied to the American SP. After an entry lasting lessthan two years, the Trotskyists had doubled in size, having acquired the majority of the SP youth and valuableaccretions of trade u n i o n i ~ t s in the maritime industry. Inhis History ofAmerican Trotskyism, Cannon noted howthe entry had dealt a death blow to the SP: "Since thenthe SP has progressively disintegrated until it has virtually lost any semblance of inilut:IlI;t: in any pariy of thelabor movement"The Socialist Workers Party was formed in January1938, and was the Trotskyist party in the U.S. untilthe early 1960s, when it departed from the Leninist program with its uncritical embrace of Castro in Cuba andblack nationalism in the U.S. This centrist degenerationculminated in full-blown reformism in 1965, when theSWP began pushing for a class-collaborationist "antiwar" strategy in the protests against the Vietnam War.The Revolutionary Tendency, precursor to the SpartacistLeague, arose in the SWP in opposition to the party'scentrist degeneration and was bureaucratically expelledby the SWP leadership in 1963.'Tamiment Conference OrganizersPromote "Death of Trotskyism"

For Marxists, historical evaluation is not a religious actdesigned to uphold the essential purity of our forebears.Rather it is an act of critical materialist investigationdesigned to aid us in the achievement of our goal: theestablishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat aroundthe world, the first step on the road to a classless,continued on page 6

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PRS...(continued from page 5)commmiist society. The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917,the defining event of the 20th century, is our essential reference point. Trotskyism was forged in the struggle todefend the gains of the October Revolution-both material and ideological-against the Stalinist usurpers whoultimately destroyed the world's first workers state. Writing of his struggle to forge the Fourth International,Trotsky noted:"For the sake of clarity I would put it this way. Had I notbeen present in 1917 in Petersburg, the October Revolution would still have taken place-on the condition thatLenin was present and in command ...

"Thus I cannot speak of the 'indispensability' of mywork, even about the period from 1917 to 1921. But nowmy work is 'indispensable' in the full sense of the word.There is no arrogance in this claim at all. The collapse ofthe two Internationals has posed a problem which none ofthe leaders of these Internationals is at all equipped tosolve. The vicissitudes of my personal fate have confronted me with this problem and armed me with important experience in dealing with it. There is now no oneexcept me to carry out the mission of arming a new generation with the revolutionary method over the heads of theleaders of the Second and Third International."-Trotsky's Diary in Exile (1935)A myriad of deserters from the Trotskyist move

ment-starting with Trotsky's great biographer, IsaacDeutscher-have sought to label the fight in exileto build an international organization based on the program and principles which animated the Russian Revolution as a quixotic and hopeless venture unworthy of aman of Trotsky'S intellectual stature. It is precisely therejection of Trotsky's fight to forge an instrument for the

proletarian seizure of power which unites the "historian"organizers of the three-day conference, "Explorations inthe History of U.S. Trotskyism," beginning September29 at New York University's Tamiment Library. Flyersfor the conference whine that Trotskyism has often beenseen "as sectarian and as idealizing the early Bolsheviktradition."Already in 1995 conference organizer Alan Waldproclaimed the "end" of American Trotskyism in thepages of Against the Current, a thesis he elaborated inTrotskyism in the United States (Humanities Press[1996]), co-authored with Paul Le Blanc, who is alsoco-organizer of the conference. Le Blanc similarlyinsists that "an attempt to build a revolutionary socialist .party equivalent to the organizations of the early U.S.Trotskyists will, in today's realities in the late 20thcentury United States, tend to result in the creation ofyet one more political sect" (Bulletin In Defense OfMarxism, May-June 1997). Featured speaker PeterDrucker infused his utterly superficial biography ofShachtman with similar views, arguing for the melding

of the Cannon and Shachtman "traditions."All three are supporters of the United Secretariat(USec) which was led, until his death in 1995, by ErnestMandel. Now Mandel's heirs, having capitulated toand increasingly embraced social-democratic antiCommunism during the anti-Soviet war drive of the1980s, plan to drop all mention of he Fourth International-or indeed the fight for proletarian revolutionfrom their statutes at their upcoming world congress.While Wald, Le Blanc and Drucker all claim to havediscovered "new" reasons to junk the old Trotskyism,the politics they argue are, in fact, at least a century old:either a warmed-over version of the Second International's "party of the whole class" or even harkingback to the eclectic political bloc that was the FirstInternational.Another central speaker will be Pierre Broue, whosemainmoth biography of Trotsky was tailored for theneo-Bukharinite intelligentsia which promoted procapitalist "market reforms" in Gorbachev's USSR in the1980s (see "Pierre Broue's Trotsky-Tailored for P e r e ~ stroika," Spartacist [English-language edition] No. 45-46, Winter 1990-91). Broue's Cahiers Leon Trotsky haslately made a campaign out of defending the oppositionled by Albert Goldman and Felix Morrow. which splitfrom the SWP in 1946. Goldman and Morrow arguedfor unity between the SWP and Shachtman's WorkersParty. They insisted that Cannon was wrong to projectthat revolutionary p o ~ s i b i l i t i e s would open up in Europeat the end of WW II, arguing instead that the Trotskyistsshould emphasize democratic demands.Proletarian revolution was in the air as WWII ended,not so much in France where the Resistance movementhaa poisoned the air with anti-German nationalism, but

Trotskyists foughtagainst capitalistcounterrevolution inUSSR and East Europe.Spartakist banner atJanuary 1990 EastBerlin demonstration:"For a Red Germany ofWorkers Councils in aSocialist Europe!"

in Italy and Greece. But the capitalists, under the coverof Allied imperialist occupation and with the crucialassistance of the Stalinists, succeeded in restabilizingthe tottering bourgeois order. (See the Introduction toPRS No.2, "Documents on the 'Proletarian MilitaryPolicy'," for more extensive treatment of this issue.) ForGoldman and Morrow, this was empirical confirmationof their anti-revolutionary perspectives. In jumping totheir defense, Broue reveals nothing so much as his propensity to reduce historical research to the worship ofthe accomplished fact.Broue complains that Cannon attacked Goldman andMorrow as "used up and demoralized militants." Butthis was manifestly the case. Morrow became an openanti-communist soon after leaving the SWP whileGoldman, after a brief sojourn in Shachtman's WP,rejoined the Socialist Party. And their supporter, Jan VanHeijenoort-a former secretary of Trotsky's who is aspecial favorite of Broue's-later collaborated with theFBI in order to remain in the U.S.The superficial quality of the historical research of

Prometheus Research SeriesNo.1: Guidelines on the OrganizationalStructure of Communist Parties, on theMethods and Content of Their WorkComplete and accurate English translation of 1921Com ntern Resolution from final German text. Includes,for the first time in English, the reports on and discussion of the Resolution at the Third Congress. Withintroduction by Prometheus Research Library staff.$6 (includes postage) 94 pagesNo.2: Documents on the. "Proletarian Military Policy"Includes rare materials from the Trotskyist movementin the U.S. and Europe during World War II, as well asan analytical introduction by the International ExecutiveCommittee of the International Communist League(Fourth Internat ionalist) . $9 (includes postage) 102 pages

No.3: In Memoriam, Richard S. Fraser:An Appreciation and Selectionof His WorkA memorial to comrade Richard S. Fraser (1913--1988),who pioneered th!'l Trotskyist understanding of blackoppression in the United States, fighting for the perspective of revolutionary integration.

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RTsKhIDNIJames P. Cannon with Red Army soldiers duringCommunist International's Sixth Congress, Moscow 1928. Cannon was won to Left Oppositionafter reading Trotsky's suppressed criticism ofdraft program of Stalinized CI.,such "Trotskyists" is the direct result of their rejectionof the Trotskyist purpose. Comparing the value and reliability of Cannon's recollections of the early AmericanCommunist Party to those of other founding memberswh9 had broken from Marxism, historian TheodoreDraper observed in his 1961 preface to Cannon's FirstTen .Years of American Communism: "For a long time, Iwondered why Jim Cannon's memory of events in theNineteen-Twenties was so superior to that of all the others ... Unlike other communist leaders of his generation, Jim Cannon wanted to remember. This portion ofhis life still lives for him because he has not killed itwithin himself."The publishing program and archival collections ofthe Prometheus Research Library exist because we inthe International Communist League seek to be theactive subject of Trotskyist history, not passive commentators. The majority of participants in the Tamimentconference are at best indifferent to our fight to forge aninstrument for the proletarian seizure of power. Nonetheless, our documentary collections are open to revisionist "Trotskyist historians," too. It was Stalinism thatbrought into the workers movement the pernicious ideathat you couldn't share the time of day, let alone an olddocument, with a political opponent.A representative of the PRL will be speaking at theconference. We believe the assiduous attempt to discover and document historical truth is in the interests ofthe proletarian revolution, and hence of all humanity.We will be speaking in the tradition of Cannon and inthe spirit of the Shachtman who collaborated with him inthe WPUS, the Shachtrnan who wrote in concluding hisdocument:"We have before us a truly breath-taking job: the buildingof a powerful Bolshevik party in the citadel of world reaction. But this party will never be built-or if it is built, itwill never stand up in a crisis-unless it has as its spinalcolumn a steel cadre: hard, tough, finn, flexible, tempered. The two are inseparable: a cadre without a party isa skeleton without flesh or muscle; a party without acadre is a mass of gelatine that anybody's finger can gothrough. And how else will the Bolshevik cadre be tempered unless, on every occasion, it has h a m m e ~ d into itmore and more of the wisdom we have tried to learn fromthe great teachers: a deep respect for principle and ahatred for cliquism and intrigue, an equally deep regardfor objective judgement of problems and a suspiciousintolerance of subjective and personal considerations, apolitical approach to all political problems and a politicalsolution for them. Now more than ever before are theseindispensable, for the revolutionists function today amida veritable sea of corruption and decay of the old movements, the poisonous fumes of which cannot but be felt inour own ranks unless we constantly counteract them.".

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Why I Joinedthe SYC ...(continued from page 3)been towards integration, black nationalism gaining sway only during extrememoments of defeat. Full social, economic, and political integration of blacksunder capitalism is not possible. The onlysolution is-the fight for revolutionary integrationism through socialist revolution.By giving political support to blacknationalism, Socialist Action denies thatthe black proletariat composes not only astrategic component, but also the mostclass-conscious and advanced section ofthe working class. Thus there is an inherent contradiction between membersof theYSA calling themselves Marxist and atthe same time thinking blacks somehowfit outside the equation, having a pathseparate from the rest of the workingclass. SA's support for black nationalism.represents not only a lack of faith in theblack working class being able to fight forsocialist revolution, but the entire workingclass as well.

After coming to such realizations abouttheir line on black nationalism, I began tounderstand why at YSA meetings I wassurrounded by so many petty-bourgeoisstudents who felt safe because their liberal politics were not being challenged.Many of these students believed that asocialist society was inevitable and somehow developing "gradually" out of capitalism. SA calls themselves Lenipists,which one would think would make themrealize that the capitalist state is in placeto keep the working class oppressed andthat only a socialist revolution can smashthe state and lay the basis for socia:iism.One only needs to read State and Revolu-tion to understand why "revolution alonecan 'abolish' the bourgeois state." To saythat socialism will develop gradually isanother way of saying, "I am a reformist."It is important to note that the firstpoint on the YSA's lO-point programstates that socialism is "the idea of a society that puts human needs before profits."And they say that unlike "the Stalinists(sic) countries Uke China and the formerUSSR which were neither democratic or(sic) socialist, we fight for s (sic) societythat is truly democratic ...." Without mentioning the word revolution, how are people to build such a society? Further, is itso simple to say that the former USSRand China were neither "democratic norsocialist," without mentioning that theUSSR was, and China continues to be, a

BERKELEYIntroduction to MarxismTuesdays, 7 p.m.Next Class: September 26U.C. Berkeley, 79 Dwinelle HallFor informatiori and readings:(510)839-0851

LOS ANGELESMeet the Marxists at UCLAMonday, October 2, 7 p.m.3517 Ackerman, UCLAFor information: (213) 380-8239

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For information and readings:(604) 687-0353VIs i t f i le le L Web Sl te l

WWW.ic . - f i .org22 SEPTEMBER 2000

workers state? The Russian Revolution inOctober 1917 was the first successfulworkers revolution that took Marxism outof the realm'of theory and into practice.It laid the basis for a planned economy,w i ~ h immense gains for the working classwhich remained after Stalin's usurpation of political power in 1923-24. Whatoccurred in 1991-92 was a social counterrevolution led by Yeltsin which resultedin the current economic misery Russiansare faced with today. China remains adeformed workers state with a plannedeconomy that is under constant threatof imperialist intervention and internalcounterrevolution. When SA disassociates themselves from workers statesthey do so because they do not want todefend states that are unpopular due toU.S. bourgeois propaganda about thesestates. Not militarily defending suchstates means supporting counterrevolution as SA did in Poland with Solidarnosc, in the USSR by hailing Yeltsin,and continuing today by calling for"class-struggle methods" against tradewith China. What needs to be fought foris workers political revolution to oust theStalinist bureaucrats and establish workers democracy. When a group like SAcalls itself Trotskyist yet does not callfor unconditional military defense ofthe deformed workers states of Vietnam,China and North Korea in their lO-pointprogram, it is lying. As Leol) Trotskywrote in In Defense of Marxism, "Theworkers' state must be taken as it hasemerged from the merciless laboratory ofhistory and not as it is imagined by a'socialist' professor, reflectively exploring his nose with his finger. It is the dutyof revolutionists to defend every conquestof the working class even though it maybe distorted by the pressure of hostileforces. Those who cannot defend oldpositions will never conquer new ones."Furthermore, if you are not activelydefending the gains of the past, you aresupporting defeats of the working class inthe future. Such was the realization I hadto make, that my problems with the YSAwere not just a difference of opinion or"ideas" but the difference between revolution and counterrevolution.It is important to note that SocialistAction attempts to pose as a defender ofone deformed workers state, Cuba. TheYSA's la-point program states that they"stand in solidarity with the people ofCuba and their onKoing revolution." Butit is not too difficult to support a workersstate whose hero, Che Guevara, hastoday become an immense commodityon college campuses and when popular

BOSTONFight for CommlinismSaturday, September 23, 1 p.m.The Greenhouse,Harvard Science CenterFor information and readings:(617) 666-9453

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bands like Rage Against the Machinedisplay the brave martyr on t-shirts. SA'sfake defense of Cuba boils down tocheerleading for the Stalinist bureaucracy. Castro, like all Stalinists, upholdsthe dogma of socialism in one country,meaning pursuit of "peaceful coexistence" with imperialism, as exemplifiedwhen Castro advised the NicaraguanSandinistas not to expropriate the capitalists. SA refuses to call Castro a Stalinist because if they did, their basis for"defense" would be gone.One must wonder how Socialist Actioncan claim solidarity with Cuba when theysupported counterrevolution in the Soviet

class program and mobilize behind thesocial power of the multiracial workingclass. When I turned away from the YSAI did so with the hopes of finding a program that was truly revolutionary, thatdid not capitulate to liberal consciousness. When I first read James Cannon'swritings in Nofebook of an Agitator onthe Sacco and Vanzetti case I noticeda disturbing similarity to where we aretoday with Mumia Abu-Jamal. Sacco andVanzetti were Italian anarchists who inMassachusetts in 1920 were falsely convicted of robbing and killing the paymaster and guard of a shoe company. Theirs.entence, which was based on their polit-

WV PhotosSan FranCiSCO, 24 April 1999: Spartacist League exposes nature of thecapitalist courts and raises call to free Mumia, while reformists push lie thatthe way to free Mumia is through a new trial.

Union which meant the drastic cutoff oftrade and crucial economic an


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leL Statement...(continuedfrom page 12)the lives of billions of working people inChina, across Asia and around the worldhang in the balance. We fight for theunconditional military defense ofth e Chinese workers state against renewed imperialist military machinations and economic encroachments. The gains of the1949 Chinese Revolution are threatenedby the Chinese Stalinists' market economic "reforms," but these attacks havealso engendered significant proletarianrevolt. A Trotskyist party is necessary tolead the "proletariat to victory through aworkers political revolution to preserveand extend the gains of the 1949 ChineseRevolution.The devastating and worldwide consequences of capitalist counterrevolutionalso destroy the anti-Marxist theories of"state capitalism" espoused by the lateTony Cliff's International Socialist Tendency and the crackpot and ever-shifting"theorists" of the League for a Revolutionary Communist International (LRCI,a/k/a Workers Power) and other renegades from Marxism (see "The B a n k ~ ruptcy of 'New Class ' Theories," Spartacist [English-language edition] No. 55,Autumn 1999). According to the Cliffites, the triumph of counterrevolution inthe former USSR was merely "a stepsideways" from one form of capitalismto another. Their rabid Cold War antiSovietism was expressed at the time:"Communism has collapsed .... It is afact that should have every socialistrejoicing" (Socialist Worker [Britain], 31August 1991).

workers state much like a labor bureaucracy sits atop a trade union"arose in theSoviet workers state under conditions ofeconomic backwardness and isolationdue to the failure to extend the revolutionto any of the advanced capitalist countries. The Stalinists claimed they weregoing to build "socialism in one country," an impossibility, as Leon Trotsky(and before him Marx and Engels)explained since socialism is necessarilyinternational in scope. "Socialism in onecountry" was a justification for sellingout revolutions internationally to appeaseworld imperialism. As Trotsky brilliantlyexplained in The Revolution Betrayed

Seattle WTO protestslast fall were politicallydominated by AFL-CIObureaucracy'schauvinism and antiCommunist Chinabashing, with signsreading: "People FirstNot China First." Whilefake lefts hailed "spiritof Seattle," Spartacistsdenounced circus ofpro-imperialistprotectionism.

jective revolutionists who solidarize withthe proletariat and genuinely seek theoverthrow of the bourgeoisie. In the latterCase, anarchism's appeal is a healthyrejection of the parliamentary r e f o r m i ~ m of the social democrats, the ex-Stalinistsand the fake leftists who prop up andmaintain the capitalist order. In fact, foropposing the reformist falsifiers of Marxism, Lenin himself was denounced as ananarchist. ,When the Bolshevik leaderarrived in Russia in April 1917 and calledfor a workers revolution to bring downthe capitalist Provisional Government,the Mensheviks denounced Lenin as"a candidate for .. the throne of Bakunin!"

Today, the proletariat has been hurledback, worldwide, and the U.S. imperialists, unhindered by Soviet military might,now ride roughshod over. the planet,sometimes using the United Nations as afig leaf, wrapping global military interventions in the cloak of "humanitarianism." Rival imperialisms, especially Germany and Japan, no longer constrained byCold War anti-Soviet unity, are pursuingapace their own appetites for control ofworld markets and concomitantly projecting their military power. These conflictingnational interests led to the breakup of theWTO talks in Seattle last year. Theseinterimperialist rivalries outline futurewars; with nuclear weapons, this threatens to extinguish life on the planet.

Neville ElderLondon, May Day: Labour government of Tony Blair unleashed ri ot police onprotesters who defaced symbols of British imperialism, arresting nearly 100.Drop the charges now!Thus the task of wresting power fromthe capitalist exploiters is more urgentnow than ever. Without revolutionarytheory there can be no revolutionarymovement. Today the basic premises ofauthentic Marxism must be motivatedagainst the false and prevalent misidentification of the collapse of Stalinismwith a failure of communism. Stalinistrule was not communism but its grotesque perversion. The Stalinist oureaucracy, a parasitic c a s t ~ resting atop the

(1936), the contradictions of Soviet society could not endure forever: "Will thebureaucrat devour the .workers' state, orwill the working class clean up thebureaucrat?" That contradiction wasresolved bitterly in the negative.Marxism VS. Anarchismand "Globalization"

People who call themselves "anarchist" run the gamut from right-wingpetty-bourgeois thugs who hate the w o r k ~ . ing class and attack communists to sub-

8

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(Sukhanov, The Russian Revolution,'1917: A Personal Record [1984]). (Bakunin was the anarchist leader in the FirstInternational.) As LeQin put it in Stateand Revolution: "The opportunists ofmodern S o c i a l - D e m o c r a c ~ accepted thebourgeois political forms of a parliamentary, democratic state as the limit whichcannot be overstepped; they broke theirforeheads praying before this idol,denouncing as Anarchism every attemptto destroy these forms."It is not surprising that there is something of a revival of anarchist beliefs, fertilized by the all-sided bourgeois triumphalism that "communism is dead." TheRussian Revolution redefined the leftinternationally and its final undoing ishaving a similar impact in reverse. Whenthe new workers state was in fact a beacon of liberation, and at the height of theinternational revolutionary upheavalsspurred by the Russian ReVOlution, thebest of the anarchist and syndicalist militants (e.g., James P. Cannon, VictorSerge, Alfred Rosmer) became dedicatedand disciplined fighters for the communism of Lenin and Trotsky. Before hislater break from Marxism, the anarchistSerge reviled the social democrats wholed the workers to the imperialist carnage of World War One and he traveledto Soviet Russia to support the new workers state. In the course of strugglesagainst counterrevolutionary revanchists (which some anarchists criminallysupported), Serge joined the BolshevikParty and wrote to his French anarchistfriends motivating communism againstanarchism:"What is the Communist Party in a time

of revolution? It is the revolutionary elite,powerfully organised, disciplined, obeying a consistent direction, marching to-

.cn.

wards a single clearly defined goal alongthe paths traced for it by a scientific doctrine. Being such a force, the party is theproduct of the necessity, that is the lawsof history itself. That revolutionary elitewhich in a time of violence remainsunorganized, undisciplined, without consistent direction and open to variable orcontradictory impulses, is heading forsuicide. No view at odds with this conclusion is possible."

-La Vie ouvriere, 21 March 1922;reprinted in The Serge-TrotskyPapers, Cotterill, ed. (1994)The diffuse popUlarity of "anarchism"among youth today is itself a reflection ofthe retrogression in political consciousness in the new political period whichbegan with the colossal defeat of capitalist counterrevolution in the USSR andEast Europe. At bottom, anarchism isa form of radical democratic idealismwhich appeals to the alleged innate goodness of even the most rapacious imperialists to serve humanity. The League of theJust (which changed its name to the Communist League around the time KarlMarx joined it in 1847) had as its mainslogan, "All men are brothers." Observing that there were some men whosebrother he was not and had no desire to

be, Marx convinced his comrades tochange the slogan to "Workers of allcountries, unite!"Historically, anarchism has provento be a class-collaborationist obstacle tothe liberation of the oppressed. Uniting with the counterrevolutionary Whitearmies, some anarchists hailed the Kronstadt uprising against the Russian Revolution, and Kronstadt remains an anticommunist touchstone for anarchiststoday. During the Spanish Civil War, anarchists became ministers in the popularfront government which


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of Democratic Socialism) argues that thework of the IMF and World Bank mustbecome more transparent and for a genuinely international United Nations. We'vecalled. these appeals for action on behalfof the workers and the oppressed by theirdirect imperialist overlords and oppressors "human rights imperialism." Notonly absurd, these appeals to imperialismto somehow become responsible andhumane are reactionary because they foster deadly illusions that the dictatorshipof the bourgeoisie in its "democratic"trappings can somehow be the agent forsocial change in the interests ofthe workers and the oppressed. This lie binds theexploited to their exploiters and charts adead-end road for social struggle.The notion that a "global" UnitedNations could act in the interests ofhumanity is a lie which masks the fundamental economic mechanisms of capitalist imperialism. Imperialism is not a policy based on "bad ideas"but is integral tothe workings of a system based on privateproperty, the extraction of profit and thenecessity for capitalism to conquer newmarkets. As Lenin explained regardingthe UN's predecessor, the League ofNations: "It became plain that the Leagueof Nations was non-existent, that the alliance of the capitalist powers is sheerfraud, and that in actual fact it is an alliance of r o b b e r ~ , each trying to snatchsomething from the others.... Privateproperty is robbery, and a state based onprivate property is a state of robbers, whoare fighting for a share of the spoils"("Speech to Chairmen of the ExecutiveCommittees," 15 October 1920).The UN's first intervention (1950-53)was a "police action" against the NorthKorean and Chinese deformed workersstates, slaughterin!S up to four mil lionKoreans. A decade later, the murderousmilitary interventien in the ex-BelgianCongo was led under UN auspices andincluded the killing of left-nationalistPatrice Lumumba.At the left end of the anarchist spectrum appears an article on the anarchist"A-Infos Web site" which stands outamong builders of the Prague demonstration for its sharp opposition to beggingthe class enemy to act morally and "cancel the Third World debt." They call tosmash the IMF and World Bank and propose: "Direct demands will be placed noton the appeasers and Co., but on workersorganizations and their reformist leaderships to scrap the IMF-World Bank and tocancel the trillion-dollar debt-NOW!"But the world won't be transformedthrough slogans raised at one big demo oreven one big strike, and the reformistleaderships they call on support capitalistimperialism. How then do we get fromcapitalism to socialism? That's the question to which anarchism has no res,ponse.Marxist theory and the model ofLenin's Bolsheviks leading the workingclass to state power in the October 1917Russian Revolution is the only revolutionary solution. The workers cannot takehold of the machinery of the capitaliststate and "reform" it in the interests of theoppressed .They must' fight for power,smashing the capitalist state and creatinga workers state-a dictatorship of theproletariat-which will put down thecounterrevolutionary resistance by theformer capitalist rulers. Lenin's ~ o l s h e -viks canceled the debt amassed bythe tsar and the Russian bourgeoisieby taking power and refusing to pay it.This was part of the Bolsheviks' revolutionary internationalist perspectiveagainst appeasement of imperialism, they

22 SEPTEMBER 2000

fought to extend the Russian October toworld socialist revolution. They understood that socialism could not be built inone country.Against the reactionary aspects ofthe idealism preached by traditionalanarchists like Proudhon and echoedtoday by petty-bourgeois "Greens" thatworkers should not aspire to wealth butlive a spartan communal existence, weMarxists fight for the elimination of scarcity, for a society where workers enjoythe fruits of their labor which today areexpropriated by the capitalists. Tellingworkers to "tighten their belts" is in factthe program of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank through starvation "austerity" policies inflicted on themasses of the "Third World." In the nameof "defending the environment," theGreen parties now in the governing coalitions in Germany and France are evenmore aggressive in imposing capitalist "austerity" than the social democrats. In the face of recent mass, protestsagainst extortionate fuel prices, theFrench Greens opposed the concession bythe Socialist prime minister to reduce thetax on fuel by 15 percent.In contrast to the anarchist/green impulse to hold b a ~ k technological advancement and drive down levels of consumption, we Marxists side with Big BillHaywood, a leader of the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World, alkJa the"Wobblies"). When reproached by a comrade for smoking a good cigar, he replied:"Nothing is too good for the proletariat!"Marxists recognize that the history ofhuman progress has been a struggle to

years ago, the child mortality rate in Iraqwas among the world's lowest and todayit is the highest; a population whose overwhelming majority was literate and hadaccess to medical care now is literallybeing starved to death by the ongoingUnited Nations blockade. S o ~ c a l l e d "leftists" who opposed the devastating air waragainst Iraq counterposed UN sanctionsas a "humanitarian" alternative. The ICLopposed sanctions as an act oj war whichhas killed more people than the bombs.The support of the fake left for the bloodycrimes of "human rights imperialism" isthe only explanation for the thunderingsilence on these questions in any officialpropaganda for "anti-globalization" protests in Seattle, Washington, D.C. andPrague. The French LCR openly calledfor an imperialist military intervention inKosovo under OSeE [Organization forSecurity and Cooperation in Europe] orUN control (Rouge, 1 April 1999). TheLRCI (Workers Power) openly campaigned for the defeat of Serbian forcesby the KLA tools of NATO imperialism,shared a platform in London with enthusiasts for NATO bombing and cheered thewithdrawal of Serbian troops, idioticallyproclaiming "in the aftermath of NATO'svictory in Kosova, a pre-revolutionary situation is maturing" (,'The Fight to Overthrow Milosevic in Serbia," 11 August1999 LRCI statement).In contrast, the ICL fought everywherefor military defense of Serbia againstU.S./UNINATO imperialism without giving a milligram of political support to theSerbian chauvinist Milosevic, jus t as earlier in the Gulf War we fought to mobilize

Der SpiegelRoma (Gypsy) children in Slovakia. Capitalist counterrevolution hasunleashed pogromist terror against oppressed minorities and i m ~ i g r a n t s . master the forces of nature. The development of agriculture and domestication ofanimals was. a-successful incursion intothe "natural ecology" of the planet whichcreated a social surplus, opening a wayforward from the brief and brutal strugglef9r daily survival in early human society.To extend to the impoverished masses ofthe "Third World" all the things Westernpetty-bourgeois leftists take for grantedelectricity, schools, clean drinking wateron tap, medicine, public transport, computers-will require a huge leap in industrial and technological capacity. That leaprequires a victorious international revolution led by a conscious revolutionary vanguard to render the working class conscious of its mission and to break it fromthe grip of capitalism's reformist andpseudo-revolutionary lackeys.

It is precisely the loyal service of bourgeois-nationalist "Greens" to the rulingclass that leads them to ignore the greatest ecological disasters on the planet.Thus Joschka Fischer, the "Green" for-eign minister for the Fourth Reich, vociferously backed bombing Serbia. The Balkans are now riddled with depleteduranium shells; the poisoned water anddestruction of modem industrial andsocial infrastructure mean the true deathtoll of the Balkans War will be tallied foryears to come. With "Greens" like this,who needs Dr. Strangelove, I. G. Farben

the proletariat for the defeat ofimperialism and forthrightly championed thedefense of Iraq (see April 1999 ICL declaration on the Balkans War in Spar-tacist). Revolutionary internationalistsstruggle for the defeat of their "own"bourgeoisie and the defense of the victims of imperialist war. The orgy ofsocial-chauvinism of ostensible leftists isa direct reflection of their support to theEuropean governments prosecuting theBalkans War. Two years earlier, the British SWP [Cliffite Socialist Workers

I S P A R T A C J S T I ~ . . . . . . , . . . eNQLlatImmOM ......

V. Deni and M. ChremnykhSoviet cartoon after Bolshevik Revolution shows Lenin sweeping awaykings, priests, capitalists.Party] campaigned for and declared itself"over the moon" for the election of TonyBlair, who was the biggest NATO hawkin Europe. While posturing to the left inthe Balkans War against the craven "poorlittle Kosovo" crowd, the SWP gave theirgame away in their fulsome support to"New" Labour's Tony Benn, whose oppositiori to the war was steeped in "LittleEngland" chauvinist anti-Americanism.To argue that the war should be rundirectly by Europe's imperialist pigsrather than Americans is hardly an antiwar movement!At the right end of this nationalistspectrum are the fascists. Last year, German Nazis marched against the BalkansWar with slogans like "No German bloodfor foreign interests!" The nationalistanti-Americanism which the Europeananti-"globalization" movement deeplyimbibes shades over to outright fascism.Czech fascist organizations plan to stagea provocation for their genocidal program in Prague on September 23.In the crucible of the first major war inEurope in 50 years, the fake ''Trotskyists''proved themselves to be decompositionproducts of the "death of communism."Today they jockey for position to wrestcontrol of the. "anti-globalization movement." Only a fool could trust that groupswhich helped bring the present European capitalist governments to power cannow fight these governments, their banksand institutions in the interests of theoppressed. Far from a Marxist alternativeto anarchism, the pseudo-Trotskyists areactive opponents of revolutionary Marxism embodied in the program and practices of the ICL.'The Material, Basisfor Opportunism andNational Chauvinism

Bourgeois ideology-e.g., nationalism, patriotism, racism and religionpenetrates the working class centrallythrough the agency of the "labor lieutenants of the capitalist class," the parasiticcontinued on page 10

[ S P A R T A C J S T I ~ . . . . . . . . .H ....... IImOfII AUfUIIII . . . .

The StoIlnlOl 1'hennl dor, . . . . LoftO_nInd the Rild Army .~ 1 h ~ ~ : : ~ R " " F ~ ~ . , . . . MIh . . . . . . . . . .00cupaI0n of KoIovofAll U.SJUN/NATO F .... Out 01 . . . . Belbno Nowl .. ...... -.,...,... ..... - . . . . . . . . ~ L M g u e Doloot ImporiOiIom Th IO .W_ ROVOlutlon_-_01

and Dow Chemical Company?Likewise, the 1991 Gulf War againstIraq has destroyed one of the mostadvanced societies in the region. Ten

No. 54, Spring 1998, $2 (48 pages) No. 55, Autumn 1999, $1.50 (56 pages)Make checks payable/mall toSpartacist Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116

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leL Statement..(continued from page 9)trade-union bureaucracies based on aprivileged upper stratum of the workingclass. I f not replaced by revolutionaryleadership, these reformists render theworking class all but defenseless againstcapitalist attacks and allow the organizations of the proletariat to be destroyed orrendered impotent by tying the unionsincreasingly to the capitalist state. In his1916 work, Imperialism, the HighestStage ofCapitalism, Lenin explained:

"The receipt of high monopoly profits bythe capitalists in one of the branches ofindustry, in one of the numerous coun- ,tries, etc., makes it economically possible for them to bribe certain sections ofthe workers, and for a time a fairly considerable minority of them, and winthem to the side of the bourgeoisie of agiven industry or a given nation againstall the others. The intensification ofantagonisms between imperialist nationsfor the division of the world increasesthis urge. And so there is created a bondbetween imperialism and opportunism ...The most dangerous of all in this respectare those (like the Menshevik,Martov)who do not wish to understand that thefight against imperialism is a sham andhumbug unless it is inseparably boundup with the fight against opportunism."

WV PhotoICL called for military defense of Serbia against U.S./NATO imperialismduring 1999 Balkans War.

ments involving reformist workers partiesand bourgeois parties) dangerously lullthe workers with parliamentary illusionsthat the social democrats, whose own policies pave the road for the fascists, will"ban" the fascists. Such bans historicallyserve only to refurbish the image of thevery bourgeoisie which resorts to fascismwhen its rule is threatened. Historicallysuch bans against "extremists" have beenused against.the left, not the right. In Germany in the immediate postwar period, asmall neo-Nazi party was banned in 1952to cosmetically touch up the "democratic"credentials of the heirs of the Third Reichrebuilding capitalist Germany underAmerican imperialist auspices. The realpurpose was to "justify" a constitutionalban of the German Communist Party in1956. We demand: Full citizenship rightsfor all inuiugrants! 'No reliance on thebourgeois state! For labor/minority mobilizations to stop the fascists!

The national chauvinism and cravencapitulation of the organizers of a movement against "globalization" are abundantly evident. Thus trade-union organizers of the Seattle protest againstthe WTO united with far-right anticommunist forces denouncing "slave

AFL-CIA's "leadership" as a model forthe European workers to emulate (seeProposta No. 27, January 2000)!Before Prague, the British SWPlabored mightily to promote a Labouritetrade-union demonstration in defense ofsaving British jobs at the Rover car plant.This demonstration was a sea of UnionJacks and virulent anti-German chauvinism pitting British workers against Germans and tying the former to the Britishruling class. Slogans like "Britain wontwo world wars, let's win the third" givea flavor of the poison. After Rover, the

ReutersSouth Korean workers protest against austerity measures dictated by U.S.dominated IMF. Only international workers revolution can put an end toimperialist explOitation and oppress ion. .labor" in the Chinese and Vietnamesedeformed workers states. Chinese steelwas dumped in the harbor and signs proclaimed, "People First Not China First."Ilhistrating why Trotsky described theAmerican labor bureaucracy as WallStreet's ideal tool for imperialist domination of Latin America, American tradeunion tops campaigned to ban. exicantruck drivers from work in the U.S. Notfor nothing, the AFL-CIO is popularlyknown throughout Latin America asthe "AFL-CIA." Incredibly, the ItalianRifondazione Comunista and the pseudoTrotskyist Proposta grouping uphold the

SWP buried itself in campaigning forKen Livingstone for mayor of London,a Labourite politician who was a vociferous proponent of imperialist terroragainst Serbia and unbridled police forceat home. When anarchist protesters irreverently defaced the symbols of Britishimperialism in a May Day protest in London, the SWP stayed away (bar a tokenpresence), for fear of embarrassing theircandidate for London mayor, "Red" KenLivingstone. Livingstone endorsed policerepression of the May Day protesters,several of whom still languish in jail orface prosecution.

In France, Jose Bove leads masses inprotest against McDonald's and the incursions ofAmerican fast food on the Frenchpalate. Our interest is organizing the horribly underpaid workforces in these fastfood chains, whatever their national ownership or "cuisine." Moreover, if culturalor culinary preferences are synonymouswith "imperialism," then by the dim lightsof Bove we better worry about the Italians, because people love pizza and it isnow marketed everywhere from the Aleutian Islands to the Amazon. Or was it"imperialism" when a particularGermandevice, namely the printing press, conquered the world and made mass literacypossible?!More seriously, the national chauvinism and opportunism of the labor topsand fake left poison class consciousnessand solidarity among workers by fomenting religious, national and ethnic divisions. In recent years this has reached afever pitch in an anti-immigrant frenzy.This threatens the unity and integrity ofthe proletariat as a class to resist attacks, by the capitalists and their state. Asnoted in the ICL Declaration of Principles (Spartacist [English-language edition] No. 54, Spring 1998):"Modern capitalism, i.e., imperialism,reaching into all areas of the planet, inthe course of the class struggle and aseconomic need demands, brings into theproletariat at its bottom new sources ofcheaper labor, principally immigrantsfrom poorer and less-developed regionsof the world-workers with few' rightswho are deemed more disposable intimes of economic contraction. Thuscapitalism in ongoing fashion createsdifferent strata among the workers, whilesimultaneously amalgamating the work-ers of different lands." .In the Schengen agreement, Europeanpowers closed their b o r d ~ r s to immigrants, many of whom fled the c o u n t e r ~ revolutionary destruction of East Europe.The racist anti-immigrant policies oftoday's ruling social democrats echo "theboat is full" demagogy of the Nazis andindeed fuel fascist terror. Meanwhile, thesocial-democratic popular-front governments across Europe (coalition govern-

The Party Is the Instrument forSocialist RevolutionThe Leninist party is the instrumentfor bringing revolutionary consciousnessto the proletariat, for organizing proletarian struggles and guiding them to victorious consolidation in a socialist revolution. A revolutionary party must fightevery instance of social injustice and allmanifestations of oppression. Central toour task is combatting every instance ofwomen's oppression and "all the oldcrap" which has come back with religious obscurantism, attacks on abortionrights and anti-gay bigotry. Welding theaudacity of the youth to the social power

of the proletariat is crucial to the fightfor a new socialist society.Our aim is a revolutionary leadershipwhose cadre must be tested and trainedin the class struggle. The road forward isfor the presently small forces adhering tothe program of Lenin and Trotsky toforge parties with the experience, revolutionary will and authority among themasses to lead successful proletarian revolutions. Nothing less than a reforgedTrotskyist Fourth International will suffice for the task of leading the workersand oppressed to the victory of worldsocialism. We have no illusions that thiswill be an easy road, and we recognizethat the possession of the technology ofnuclear holocaust by an irrational andgenocidal ruling class foreshortens thepossibilities: there is not a lot of time.We are guided by the program andpractices of authentic communism. AsTrotsky wrote. in " The Death Agony ofCapitalism and the Tasks of the FourthInternational" (1938):"To face reality squarely; not to seek theline of least resistance; to call things bytheir right names; to speak the truth tothe masses, no matter how bitter it maybe; not to fear obstacles; to be true in little things as in big ones; to base one'sprogram on the logic of the class struggle; to be bold when the hour for actionarrives-these are the rules of the FourthInternational."

Join the International CommunistLeague!.

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Fuel Protests...(continued from page 1)was attempting a different plan to breakthe dispute-by using the trade unions."It goes on: "At the TUC in Glasgow theday before, he had met Bill Morris, theleader of the Transport Union, whosemembers include many tanker drivers.He convinced him of the need to end thecrisis." [Deputy Prime Minister] JohnPrescott warned Blair that sending introops would backfire and would wreck"delicate n ~ g o t i a t i o n s taking place thatnight between trades union leaders andtanker drivers." Thus, the trade-unionbureaucracy was pivotal to the Labourgove'!lment in defusing the crisis.Break with Labour!

The depth of the crisis triggered by theoil protests provoked the governmentinto a response which illuminates theworkings of the capitalist state and thesinister forces that are arrayed againstthe working class and its allies in timesof social crisis. The police presence atrefineries was reinforced, use of troops .was prepared and in Essex, tankers leaving a depot had a cop riding shotgun.Behind the veneer of parliamentarydemocracy lurks the reality of the repressive British state. The capitalist state, asLenin explained, consists of special bodies of armed men-the cops and thearmy-who are committed to the defenceof private property. The capitalist statecannot be reformed; the power of the capitalist class must be broken and replacedby a workers state. The Privy Council,presided over by the Queen, met toaccord "exceptional powers" to the government to assume control of fuel distribution, including the use of military facilities, for the purposes of breaking the oilblockade. This "private" council of theQueen is composed of current and pastministers and includes Labour "left" TonyBenn. We say: Abolish the monarchy!The farmers and small haulage firmsleading this protest openly espousenational chauvinism, reflecting their economic interests. This was expressed adnauseam by Brynle Williams, a prominent spokesman for the farmers' blockadein Cheshire, who said: "We don't like theidea of Irish drivers coming over herewith their cheap'diesel then working twoor three days and bringing over theircheap meat, robbing us of a living"(Guardian, 12 September). The interestof the working class in contrast liessquarely with the workers of other countries. As protests engulfed France, Britainand Belgium, there was a burning needfor proletarian international solidarity insharp opposition to the anti-French chauvinism promoted also by Blair & Co. Theproletarian internationalism seen.duringthe 1984-85 miners strike, when workersfrom France and other' countries raisedmoney for their British comrades and

L.A. Transit...(continued from page 2)cost of living combined with a shorterworkweek at no loss in pay to spread theavailable work around. Such demandspoint to a struggle against the entire capitalist profit system. As revolutionaryleader Leon Trotsky wrote in the Transitional Program (1938): "If capitalism isincapable of satisfying the demands inevitably arising from the calamities generated by itself, then let it perish. 'Real izability' or 'unrealizability' is in the giveninstance a .question of the relationship offorces, which can be decided only by thestruggle. By means of this struggle, nomatter what its immediate practical successes may be, the workers will bestcome to understand the necessity of liquidating capital ist slavery."But the labor bureaucrats are loyal tothe capitalist system, expressed politically through their support to the Democratic Party. Striking workers told WVthat the best time to strike would have22 SEPTEMBER 2000

French miners sang the "Internationale" .with British miners, is an example of thekind of international class solidaritywhich is needed. We fight to mobiliseworkers in opposition to every manifestation of national chauvinism andracism and for full citizenship rights forimmigrants.ICL sections in Britain and Francegave no support whatsoever to Blair'sLabour and Jospin's Socialist-led popular front. This is in stark contrast to fake"socialists" in both countries who helpedelect the Blair and Jospin governmentsand are beholden to them. Jospin's bourgeois Green coalition partners, in acting as the most hardline opponents oflower petrol taxes, underlined the antiworking-class character of Green environmentalism. Today, a class-struggle

racy to this government. Blair actuallymore resembles Pinochet's fan MargaretThatcher during the yearlong minersstrike and the later poll tax upheaval thanAllende.The reformist left demonstrated theirloyalty to Labourism in the course of theprotests. The Communist Party's Morn-ing Star (13 September) opposed the protests and urged Blair: "The governmentshould take all lawful steps necessarywithout the use of police violence-toensure free movement of oil and petrol."The Socialist Workers Party supportedthe protests, headlining "Bitterness Explodes in Blair's Face," while neglectingto mention that they were "over themoon" when Labour was elected in 1997.And despite some whining about the evilswrought by the Blair government, the

Sturrock/NetworkPicketing strikers battle scabs and cops during 1984-85 British miners strike.fight would galvanise opposition to theseanti-working-class, racist governments.The Labour Party is a bourgeois workers party-revolutionaries seek to splitthe working -class base from the procapitalist tops and win it to the need fora revolutionary programme and party.From the strikebreaking Labour governments of the 1970s to knifing the heroicminers strike, the Labour Party and theTUC tops are the strategic obstacle to thefight for working-class rule.TUC general secretary John Monksoutrageously compared the fuel proteststo the CIA-backed truck drivers mobilisations against the Allende regime in Chilein 1973. Those mobilisations were part ofan imperialist "destabilisation" campaignagainst the popular-front Allende government which culminated in the bloodymilitary coup by General Pinochet andwere fundamentally aimed at crushingthe Chilean wprking class in the midstof a prerevolutionary situation. To drawan analogy with popular mobilisationsagainst a Labour-administered capitalistgovernment in Britain today is a measureof the utter fealty of the labour bureauc-

been in the buildup to the DemocraticNational Convention in L.A. in July. Butwhen Democratic governor Gray Davisordered a 60-day "cooling off' period sothat nothing would interfere with AlGore's nomination, the transit union tops'bowed to the strikebreaking edict. UTUInternational president Charles Littlebragged that his was the first major unionto endorse Gore.Instead of fighting the MTA's antiunion privatization plans, the uniontops look