W(JRIlIRI ",1N'(J,1" 25¢No. 378 3 May 1985

On Anti-Soviet War Crusade

ea an au es•

aZIS

a threat to the Third Reich. And it wasthe Red Army that finally put an end toHitler's drive for world domination.

For Ronald Reagan, war is like aHollywood movie: the good guystriumph over evil, and it always has ahappy ending. With his "Star Wars"fantasies he thinks he can fight a nuclearwar and come out on top without asingle white middle-class Americangetting hurt. Reagan aims to reconquerthe world ... through nuclear apoca-lypse! And now Reagan's hurl. had.over his SS cemetery visit. That onlymakes him more dangerous. The lasttime he was in trouble was overLebanon, and he responded with theinvasion of Grenada. What will it he thistime'?

Reagan: "lch bin ein Bitburger"The Germany trip started out as some

mutual political backscratching be-tween two Cold War allies. ChancellorKohl had won Reagan's battle to get thefirst-strike Pershing 2 and cruise mis-siles stationed in West Europe. Reaganwould return the favor by putting in anappearance right before a key stateelection. But the whole scheme blew upin their faces, just like those Pershingsthat burned up on the launching padlast December. Now Bonn and Wash-ington are husy trying to pin the hlameon each other. The Germans are furiousat the White House claim they didn'tknow there we-re SSers buried atBitburg, As for hoycotting the concen-tration camps. the Nell' York Times ( IXApril) quotes an American official:"The President was not hot to go to acamp. You know, he is a cheerfulpolitician. He does not like to grovel in agrisly scene like Dachau."

Of course the Americans knew. TheWhite House advance men reportedlychecked to make sure that the 49 Waf-fen SS men buried in Bitburg hadn't

continued on page 9

dercrs and torturers, for Reagan & Co.they're all "freedom fighters" as long asthey hate the Russians. The Somozaistbutchers have proclaimed Washington'sMadame Nhu, Jeane Kirkpatrick, "OurLady of the Contras." In Kirkpatrick'sbook Hitler (like Sornoza) was just thekind of right-wing "authoritarian"who's preferable to "Communist totali-tarians." That's what the anti-Sovietwardrive means: learn to love the bomb,and learn to love the Nazis.

After all. the Nazi Fuhrer was thehiggest anti-Communist of his time.Hitler ranted in Mein KalllP(that "Thefight against Jewish world Bolsheviza-tion requires a clear attitude towardSoviet Russia. You cannot drive out theDevil with Beelzebub." Compare thiswith Reagan's proclamation to a con-vention of right-wing "born-again"Christians that the Soviet Union is an"evil empire" and "the focus of evil in themodern world." If anything, Reagan'scurrent ravings about Nicaragua as a"Communist-terrorist arsenal" that"threatens us all" make Hitler's tiradesagainst the Soviet Union in the firstcouple years of his "Operation Barba-rossa" look relatively sane. The veryexistence of the Soviet Union, born ofthe Bolshevik October Revolution, was

ossu Sygma owning/Newsweek

Warmonger Reagan goes to Bitburg to bury Red Army victory over Hitler and honor Nazi butchers of 20 millionRussians, 11 million Holocaust victims.

means sending in American troops.Five months after the re-election,

three months after the inauguration,America is not Reagan country. Secre-tary of State Shultz tries to resuscitatethe Vietnam War as a fight for "democ-racy," hut the American public stillremembers the 00,000 body bagsshipped hack from Indochina and two-thirds still consider America's losing wara "mistake." When Reagan alibied racistmassacre-in South Africa, for the firsttime since the early 1970s mass protestserupted on campuses across the countryprotesting U.S. support to the apartheidbutchers, But the biggest fiasco wascertainly Reagan's decision to honorNazi soldiers while turning a coldshoulder to the victims of Hitler'sHolocaust. This gesture managed tounite everyone from the Jewish popula-tion to the American Legion against theWhite House.

So why does Ronald Reagan persistin hard lining it for such obviouslyunpopular causes'? "Insensitivity"? Notat all. This anti-Communist crusader istrying to mobilize the West for waragainst the Soviet Union. No matterhow depraved they are, whether it's aVietnamese Hitler-lover like MarshalKy or dictator Sornoza's leftover mur-

From Hitler'sDe~th Camps

to ContraDeath Squads

APRIL 2X-The man's a 24 karat nut.In the wack o world of Ronald Reaganthe white-supremacist police state inSouth Africa is a democracy striving forracial equality, George Washington isdown in Nicaragua with CIA mercenary"freedom fighters" hattling "Sund ino-Communism," and America's dirty warin Vietnam was a "noble mission." Nowhe's off to lay a wreath at the graves ofNazi mass murderers. When Bonzo goesto Bitburg he'll embrace West Germanchancellor Helmut Kohl, hut he's reallyseek ing "reconciliation" with that fellowanti-Soviet madman with the funnymustache. For Ronald Reagan's anti-Communis! crusade is a continuation ofAdolf Hitler's war to root out the"Bolshevik menace." Hitler's ravings inhis bunker led to genocidal holocaustand a fiery "Twilight of the Gods" forthe German Reich. Reagan in the WhiteHouse dreams of thermonuclear Arma-geddon which threatens to hlow up theentire world.

The New Right saw November'slandslide re-election as a mandate to "letReagan he Reagan." So that's what theydid-and look at the results. Ln the lastweek, through five separate votes andrare late-night sessions of Congress onthe Nicaragua "contra" aid issue, thc'administration came out with handsempty. Even disguising logistical aid tothe Sornozaist terrorists as "aid tofamilies with dependent contras." theU.S. ruling class couldn't gct it togetherto support Reagan's terrorists. TheDemocrats were willing to "compro-mise" till the cows came home, hut theydidn't know what to be more afraid 01'-Reagan accusing them of "losing N ica-ragua to the Communists," or theAmerican puhlic which doesn't wantanother bloody Vietnam. Becauseeveryone knows that with losers like thecontras, aid to Reagan's "brothers"

SL Forum: Marxistsvs. FBI Re~ression

Proud to Be"Card-Carrying Communists"

Forums:

BERKELEY

Armageddon-it will not be because asmall group of Bolshevik propagandists'conspired' to make it happen. It willhappen because the conditions of dyingcapitalism will have made it a historicnecessity, consciously understood bylarge sectors of the population. We hadbetter be there when it does, providingas the Bolsheviks did in war-ravagedRussia in 1917 the critical element oforganized leadership. We are a veryprecious commodity in its infancy.Like the Bolshevik Party was forRussia, the SL may be America's lastbest hope.".

LOCAL OFFICER

SPARTACJST~LEAGUE/U.S. ~~

'?o face realit>: squarely; not to seek thelI~e of leastresistance, to callthings by theirrIghtnames; tQ speak the truth to the massesno.matterhow bitter it may be;not to fear 'obstacles; to be true in little things as in bigones; to base-one's program on the logic of 'the class struggle; to be bold when the hourfor action arrives-these are the rules 'atthe Fourth International."

-L. D. Trotsky, 1938

SAN FRANCISCO

FBI forced to admit: Marxists are not terrorists! Rachel Wolkenstein, SpartacistLeague General Counsel, will speak on the strategy behind the SL lawsuit.against the FBI's sinister attempt to brand Marxists, black and labor activistsand other political opponents as terrorists-the first successful legal challengeto the FBI Domestic Security/ Terrorism Guidelines.

I I

• For Class-Struggle, Anti-Sectarian Defense AgainstGovernment Repression-Fight the New McCarthylsml

• For Labor/Black Mobilization to Stop the Klan and Nazlsl• A Workers Party Has the Right to Organlzel• How to Defend Democratic, Civil and Labor Rights-

A Marxist VIew on Law, the State and Revolution

Speaker: Rachel Wolkenstein, Spartacist League General Counsel

Striking Civil Liberties Victory in Reagan's America

MARXISTS VS. FBI REPRESSION

Spenecist

real, measure of legal protection not.only to members of the SL, but to itsfriends, readers of its press, trade-unionsupporters and others.

Our decision to issue party member-ship cards resulte-d in part from this legalvictory-we are indeed what we say weare. As SL spokesman Wolkensteinnoted in conclusion: "When the workingclass and oppressed of this country are-ready to move, when the decaying,blundering, lying, incompetent rulingclass is challenged by massive struggleon behalf of a rational economy and anend to the constant threat of nuclear

mythology stole fire from the gods togive to mankind, thus inauguratinghuman civilization and the beginning ofhuman struggle for mastery over nature.She quoted the statement on the back,written by Leon Trotsky in 1939:

"To lace 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 mavbe; not to fear obstacles; to be true inlittle things as in big ones; to base one'sprogram on the logic of the classstruggle; to be bold when the hour foraction arrives-these are the rules of theFourth International."

These too are the rules of theSpartacist League. We have been forth-right in our political positions, includingespecially on the necessity to defend theSoviet Union against Reagan's wardrive, Wolkenstein noted. It is perhapsthis very openness which has been ourbest defense against the FBI's lyingcharges, and their attempts to smearus as some kind of conspiratorialputschists. ,

On 30 November 1.984, the FBIagreed to settle the lawsuit launchedagainst it by the SL by retracting theirlong-standing set-up "definition" of theSL as a conspiratorial grouping secretlyadvocating "violent overthrow of thegovernment," and substituting a state-ment defining the SL as what it is, aMarxist political organization with a20-year history in the U.S. Though weunderstand that the FBI and othergovernment secret police will certainlynot stop their harassment of the left andother perceived political opponents,particularly under the reactionary Rea-gan regime, nonetheless this settlement'helps every fighter for democratic rightsin this country. It provides a modest, but

Security /Terrorism Guidelines by hold-ing up the red SL party membershipcard and stating: "This is our way ofsaying we're proud of being 'card-carrying communists'."

The card includes date of member-ship, membership number, and is signedby a national and a local officer of theSpartacist League, she announced. Itcarries on the ba-ck a woodcut ofPrometheus, the Titan who in Greek

-James P. Cannon, "A Statement on the U.S. Entry into World War II"(22 December 1941)

The Trotskyists on World War IIIn December 1941 American Trotskyist

leader James P. Cannon, along with 17other defendants. was sentenced under theSmith Act to prison for revolutionaryagitation against the imperialist war.Regarding World War II. he declared:

We considered the war upon the part ofall the capitalist powers involved-Ger-many and France, Italy and Great Brit-

TROTSKY· ain-as an imperialist war.:., LENINThis characterization of the war does not

apply to the war of the Soviet Union against German imperialism. We make afundamental distinction between the Soviet Union and its "democratic" allies. Wedefend the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union is a workers' state, although degeneratedunder the totalitarian-political rule of the Kremlin bureaucracy. Only traitors candeny support to the Soviet workers' state in its war against fascist Germany. Todefend the Soviet Union, in spite of Stalin and against Stalin, is to defend thenationalized property established by the October Revolution. That is a progressivewar.

Noted civil rights lawyer ConradLynn and Spartaclst League GeneralCounsel Rachel Wolkensteln.

Tfle Spartacist League announced atits forum April 26 on "Marxists vs. FBIRepression" its revival of the working-class tradition of issuing numbered

. party membership cards. SL generalcounsel Rachel Wolkenstein concludedher presentation at Columbia Universi-ty on the Spartacist League's strikinglegal victory against the FBI Domestic

This forum commemorates Toni Randell (1943-1982), founding secretary of thePartisan Defense Committee, the class-struggle, anti-sectarian legal defenseorganization in accordance with the pOlitical views of the Spartacist League.

EDITOR-iN-CHIEF: Noah Wilner

EDITOR: Jan Norden

PRODUCTION MANAGER: NoaR Wilner

CIRCULATION MANAGER: Darlene Kamiura

EDITORIAL BOARD: Jon Brule, George Foster, Liz Gordon. James Robertson, Reuben Samuels,Joseph Seymour, Marjorie Stamberg (Closing editor for No. 378: Liz Gordon). -_ - -- --.- - - - -----

Workers Vanguard (USPS 098-770) published biweekly, except 2nd issue August and with 3-week interval December,by the Spartacist Publishing Co .• 41 Warren Street. New York, NY 10007. Telephone: 732-7862 (Editorial), 732-7861(Business). Address all correspondence to: Box 1377, GPO. New York, NY 10116. Domestic subscriptions: $5.00/24issues. Second-class postage paid at New York, NY. POSTMASTER: send address changes to Workers Vanguard.Box 1377. GPO. New York, NY 10116.Opinions expressed in signed articles or leiters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint.

Friday, May 10,7:30 p.m.The FirehouseFort Mason Center(Marina at Laguna)For more information: (415)863-6963

Saturday, May 11, 7:30 p.m.Boalt Hall, Room 110University of California

I

For more information: (415) 835-1535

No. 378 3 May 1985

2 WORKERS VANGUARD

German Trotskyists: For aSoviet Germanyin aUnited Socialist States of Europe!

May Day, 1945: Red Army liberates Berlin.

place for Kohl and Reagan to confirmtheir counterrevolutionary anti-Sovietalliance.

Friend or Foe?

It's obvious. The flagging victorymood of the Western allies comes fromthe feeling that they were on the wrongside in World War II. Perhaps, the U.S-.imperialists think today, they shouldhave grasped the extended hand ofAdmiral Karl Donitz in April 1945. Inhis May 1st "Order of the Day" to theGerman army, immediately after Hit-ler's suicide and Donitz' appointment asReich president by Goebbels, he stated:"We must fight on against the Englishand the Americans so long as theyprevent me from carrying on the waragainst Bolshevism." In a note on thesame day to the British commander.Field Marshal Montgomery, Donitzoffered to become an anti-Soviet allyand turn the fronts around. At that timeAmerican imperialism rejected theoffer. But Donitz' intention was notwithout its own realistic calculations.

The military advance of the SovietUnion in repulsing the German Wehr-macht (army) frightened the WesternAllies. Concerned that a German powervacuum would be filled by the Soviets.the British prime minister, WinstonChurchill, already in 1942 called on theWestern powers to "after the war put upa barrier against Communist barba-rism." The policies of the Western Allieswere to bleed the Soviet Union white.Despite continuous Soviet pressure. theU.S. and Britain delayed the SecondFront. promised to Stalin in 1942, untilmid-1944. Britain was considering aninvasion of the Balkans-that is, theareas which were already being occu-pied by the Red Army-instead ofNormandy. American military aid tothe Soviet Union began only slowly andnever filled more than 10 percent of theSoviet needs. The Western Allies'advance on Schleswig-Holstein in April1945 was justified explicitly with theintention of stopping the Red Army.

For the capitalist countries involved,the Second World War was withoutexception an imperialist war. For theproletariat of these countries, in thewords of Karl Liebknecht on the FirstWorld War, "the main enemy is athome." The workers of all countries hadone country to defend in this war: theSoviet Union..The Soviet Union carriedthe main burden of the war. Its victoryafter nearly four years of fascist inva-sion in Russia cost 20 million dead!Three million people died in the firstthree months alone.

The Stalinist policies contributed tothese devastating losses. Stalin trustedhis pact with Hitler and rejectedwarnings, both from the Red Orchestraspy network under Leopold Trepper inWest Europe and from Soviet spyRichard Sorge in Japan, that a Germanattack was imminent. The Red Armyhad been robbed of its most capable andexperienced officers by the Stalinistpurges. Thousands were murdered.among them Marshal Tukhachevsky, inorder to smother all remaining opposi-tion to bureaucratic rule. Even the mostimportant strategist of World War II.Zhukov, had been purged. only to bereinstated due to the lack of capableofficers.

And yet. despite Stalin's policies, theRussian workers threw back "OperationBarbarossa." Leningrad endured 900days of siege: more than HOO,OOO peoplefroze, starved or died in defense of thecity, but the Nazis could not take it. Itwas the determined will of the Sovietpeople in defending the homeland ofthe October Revolution which madesuch obstinate- and courageous strugglepossible. Inoneof the bloodiest battles,fighting house-to-house and factory-to-factory in Stalingrad, the Soviets finallytook the offensive and forced thesurrender of German General Paulus inFebruarv 1943. After the victory atKursk i~ July 1943, the Red Armystormed further westward. By the end of

continued on page JO

of the victims of fascism. What interestshim is strengthening the anti-SovietNATO war alliance. in which WestGermany is his most important partner.U.S. imperialism seeks to reconquerunchallenged world hegemony, which itgained after 1945 and whose loss wasmarked by the collapse of the BrettonWoods dollar-based monetary system in1971. And that means above all a fightagainst the 1945 ally, the Soviet Union.which Reagan today calls the "EvilEmpire." ".

On May 5. Reagan will.' visit theBitburg military cemetery, where fallensoldiers of the German Ardennesoffensive [Battle of the Bulge] are buriedalong with members of the SS murdergangs. Reagan wants to challenge thatsection of the American public whichdoes not share his enthusiasm for warand who still painfully remember themillions of victims murdered by theNazis. Reagan even tries to prettify theSS thugs buried in Bitburg as "victims ofNational Socialism." At the last minute,Reagan and Kohl are now trying tosmooth the waves with a visit to theBergcn-Belsen concentration camp. YetBitburg, amid the graves with the SSsymbols, is certainly an appropriate

Hitler reviewsGerman

troops whoseized

Warsaw inSeptember

1939. 600,000Red Army

soldiers diedliberating

Poland fromthe Nazis.

of the Nation" debate: "Our fatherland,the center of Europe, was divided. Forthe Germans of the DDR [GermanDemocratic Republic-East Germany]and for our Eastern European neigh-bors, May Sth became for an indetermi-nate time the day of the replacement ofone dictatorship with another" tDasParlatnent . 16 March).

The German bourgeoisie sees itselfasbearing a new/old mission. "to. liberatethe East from Communism." And theWest German army has chosen, of alldates, May Sth to demonstrate theirstriking power as the strongest NATOarmy in Europe with a "dynamic showof arms." The German proletariat mustrip power away from the capitalist classbefore German tanks (this time "Leop-'ards" instead of "Tigers") once againroll toward Moscow.

The hypocrisy of' the imperialistvictors and of defeated German imperi-alism over May Sth gives the lie to theiroccasional pose as "champions ofhuman rights.r Certainly "Star Wars"President Reagan doesn't want to hearabout U.S. responsibility in helpingNazi beasts like the Gestapo murderersBarbie and Mcngele escape after 1945.He's not in the least interested inthe fate

May Day in ,Berlin, 1945: Soldiers ofthe Red Army raise the red flag over theReichstag. On May Hth German FjeldMarshal Keitel signs the capitulation.The Nazi regime is finally smashed, andthe horrors of the "brown plague"brought to an end. The Soviet soldierswho opened the gates of the Auschwitzand Sachscnhausen concentrationcamps put a stop to the horrendousextermination program which hadmurdered six million Jews and fivemillion of other minorities and national-ities in the death camps.

The triumph of the fascist ideology ofthe German "master race" and l.ebens-raum ("living space") had led to geno-cide, carried out with German thor-(HIghness as far as the- dominion ofGerman imperialism reached. TheGerman working class suffered for morethan a decade under the fascist yoke:their organizations were crushed, theirleaders. if they didn't escape into exile.were murdered, imprisoned in theconcentration camps or killed, in thewar. With the military defeat of Germanimperialism a war ended. at least forEurope. in which. the imperialists'competition for world domination costmore than 50 million lives.

The taking of Berlin in May 1945 wasindisputably an act of liberation. Yetnone of the Soviet Union's erstwhileimperialist allies, much less the WestGerman successor state to the "ThirdReich," want to celebrate this 40thanniversary of victory. The mood of theWest German bourgeoisie was elo-quently expressed in the Spiegel coverstory. "Zusammenbruch" ("The Col-lapse"). But the defeated Germanimperialism of 1945 has long sinceraised its head with renewed sell- -confidence. Federal chancellor HelmutKohl expressed the newly strengthenednationalism in the parliamentary "State

Thefollowing article is adaptedfromSpartakist No. 54. AprilllJX5./Jllhlishedbv 0111' comrades of the Trot zkistischel.iga Deutschlands.

3 MAY 1985 3

Australian Union Stays OutFor Fired Worker-And Wins!

Cleveland Killer Cop Kills Again

SYDNEY~Australian shipyard work-ers won a victory for labour solidarityand against the Cold War Laborgovernment late last month when theysmashed a scabherding assault andcompelled the bosses to reinstate firediron worker Neil Florrimell. Florrirnell,a supporter of the Spartacist League ofAustralia and New Zealand (SLj ANZ),was sacked on March 15 for refusing towork with apprentices being used tobreak the strike of electricians at theCockatoo Island dockyards. But thistime the workers stuck together-andwon!

T'he electricians vowed they weren'treturning to work without Neil, andother unions were preparing to walk,too: the primarily naval shipyards thatservice the government's military ma-chine were poised on the brink of an all-out strike. On March 26, with over ahundred workers spilling out of thepacked courtroom, an arbitration com-mission ratified what the strikc and itsthreatened extension had won: it recom-mended Neil's reinstatement. The nextday Neil and the electrieians were backon the ferry, surrounded by jubilantworkmates who knew they'd al1 won avictory in this one.

It was a powerful example of what alittle class solidarity can achieve. Tradi-tional Laborite craft unionism dividesthe workers 15 different ways: theunions regularly break each other'sstrikes, grossly underpaid and mostlyunorganised apprentices are used as ascab labour force, picket lines are rarelyemployed at all. And it's all institution-alised through the state with the viciousstraitjacket of compulsory arbitration.

In the Sydney dockyards officials of

CLEVELAN D-The notorious kill-crazy Cleveland cop Joseph Paskvanhas struck again. This time his murdervictim was Marcos Luciano, Jr., a 22-year-old auto mechanic from the NearWest Side Puerto Rican community.Paskvan shot and killed Luciano AiJril10, firing three .357 bullets into hisupper arm, chest and thighs. This latestmurder in Paskvan's rampage hasoutraged wide segments of Cleveland'sblack, Hispanic and working-classwhite communities. And last weekLuciano's 20-year-old widow. Carolyn,vowed to a community meeting at theSpanish-American Committee office,"I'll fight the rest of my life to get thisman off the streets."

On April 15over 100 people gathered,including the parents of Michael Woods(the young black man murdered byPaskvan three years ago) and the entireLuciano family with his widow and twochildren, following Marcos Jr.'s burial,to protest outside the Cleveland JusticeCenter. One demonstrator carried asign, "KKK Rides Again! KlevelandKiller Kops are Getting Away WithMurder!" Spartacist protesters de-manded vengeance for Paskvan's mur-dered victims, jail the killer cop, and noreliance on the courts and civilianreview boards,

Marcos Luciano was shot downoutside of a friend's house on Wesf50thStreet. Earlier that evening, a womanliving in the house had been threatenedby a knife-wielding intruder, and Lucia-no had come over with a small pellet gunto defend her. Luciano was leaning onhis car when Paskvan, dressed in civilian

4

Florrimell's own union, the FederatedIronworkers Association, ordered theirmembers to work with the apprentices,of the striking electricians. But thebosses and their agents ran into the hardfist of the working class. Neil refused tobe a strikebreaker, appealed to theunions for solidarity and got thebacking of the workers in the yard.Within a few days over 40 workers fromthe four major unions at the shipyardsigned a statement demanding industri-al solidarity with Florrimell and theelectricians: "Strike action to defeat thiscompany attack needs to be extendednow, and right across the island if needb " .e.

By the time of the arbitration hearingthe bosses were already squealing abouthow the navy was being affected. FromBrisbane to Melbourne, watersideworkers had been hitting the bricks intheir own disputes. All hell was about tobreak loose. While the nervous Hawkegovernment dispatched two officialemissaries to the arbitration session.almost 100 electricians packed the courtto show their support for Florrimell.According to Neil, "Metal workersofficial Pat Johnson had to make thepoint to the court that every unionist onthe island stood by what I had done andif it didn't reinstate me there'd be bigindustrial trouble. So in some ways thecourt had no choice but to reinstate mein order to head off what could havebeen a big explosion on the island"(interview in Australasian Spartacistsupplement, 3 April).

It was not only a victory against theshipyard bosses but against the govern-ment as well. The bourgeois press wasalarmed by the workers' victory. giving

April 15: After funeral for MarcosLuciano, Jr., over 100 protestCleveland killer cop.

clothes, approached shouting, "Hold it.you young motherfucker!" and openedfire. A witness said he did not seeLuciano raise any weapon.

Paskvan has been the perpetrator of along string of murderous outrages. Inhis 12-year police career he has beeninvolved in at least nine shootings aridthree murders. This disgusting killer isknown in cop circles as "Orkin Manjoe" for his efforts to "exterminate""society's maggots" (Fraternal Order ofPolice newsletter The Communicator,September 1982). In March 1978 Pask-

wide coverage, in the Sydney, Brisbaneand national press, to ArbitrationCommissioner Ted Bennett's lamentthat the shipyard should be renamed"Cuckoo Island": "It was the first jail ofthe early colony. Not so today. It can beevacuated at a moment's notice at theblowing of a delegate's whistle" (TheAustralian. 17 April). Bob Hawke'sCold War Labor government haschained Australian workers with threeyears of union-busting. social spendingcuts and a vicious "Accord" or "socialcontract" between the trade-unionbureaucracy and the state that amountsto a no-strike pledge writ large. AtCockatoo Island some of the workers'growing rage at Labor's austeritypolicies was unleashed, and the bour-geoisie didn't' like it. because they'reworried that Hawke and the unionbureaucracy can't keep the workingclass in chains.

The bosses' hopes to return Aus-tralian workers to the penal colonythrough Hawke's brittle "class peace"can be smashed. The working class isincreasingly alienated from the social-democratic Labor government. AndHawke's role as Reagan's regionalenforcer is bitterly resented: followingU.S. retaliation against New Zealand'srefusal to dock U.S. nuclear ships. evenCold Warrior Hawke was forced toback down from his secret agreement toaid U.S. MX missile testing.

Meanwhile the trade-union andLabor "lefts" want to point the workersdown the poisonous path of protection-ism, such as the metal workers union'santi-Asian chauvinist "Australia on thcBrink" campaign to keep out Japanese,Korean and other imports. At bottom

van shot down Darrell Parks when the20-year-old allegedly resisted-arrest fordriving without a license. On ·23 July1982 he wantonly killed Michael Woodsas the young black man was drivingdowntown to get a birthday cake for hisone-year-old son. And this murderingscum even has the audacity to file suitagainst Lucius Woods, his victim'sfather, for defamation of character (see"Racist Cleveland Cops Sue TheirVictims," WV No. 374, 8 March)!

On April 19, chief police prosecutorPatrick Roache ruled that no criminalcharges would be pressed againstPaskvan. The next day police chiefWilliam T. Hanton said he agreed withthe cop report 100 percent. But Pask-van's revolting record in this polarizedand segregated city does seem to beprovoking some sections of the bour-geoisie to see their hired gun assomething of a liability. City council-man John Barnes has called for Paskvanto be assigned to a desk job and theCleveland Plain Dealer has launched acontemptible campaign to be sure hereceives psychiatric counseling.

Likewise, various liberals and refor-mists have put forward programs to"reform" the situation, from calling to"prosecute" Paskvan in the racistcourts, as the SWP does. to firing himfrom the police force (to clean out a few

, "rotten apples"), to raising the perennialcall for a civilian review board. Othersare saying that a black mayor is thesolution. But Cleveland already had ablack mayor, Carl Stokes, and it wasunder his administration that the copsset up black nationalist Ahmed Evans,

Australasian Spartacist"This one's for us." Neil Florrimelland electr.lcians celebrate victory.

all wings of the trade-union bureaucracyare politically bankrupt. They cannotfight the layoffs, social cuts and union-busting because they are wedded to thepro-capitalist leaders of the rulingLabor Party that administers capital-ism, desperately trying to shore upHawke's crumbling "Accord."

The shipyard workers won this battlebecause they relied on class solidarityand not the Labor government and itsstate arbitration. The Spartacists andsupporters like Neil Florrimell fight forsuch independent mobilisation of thepower of the labour movement. TheSLj ANZ stands for militant tactics likeindustrial unionism and picket lines thatno one crosses. Above all the fight toturn the unions into weapons of strugglemust be a political struggle to driveHawke and his Cold War Cl Avlovcrsout of the labour movement and exposethe bankrupt "lefts." While the entirefake-left backed Hawke, the SpartacistLeague said "hell no" to this front manfor Ronald Reagan, and stood intransi-gently against Hawke's virulent anti-Sovietism. It is only through such a'revolutionary program that rejects allforms of social-democratic I.aborismthat proletarian power-a workersrepublic of Australia in a socialistAsia-can be realised .•

leading to the so-called "Glenville riots"in 1968. City rulers, from Mayor GeorgeVoinovich to black Democrats likecity council president George Forbes.did everything they could to gut theproposed review board, which the copsthen got thrown out in court.Tn fact. nogovernment agency in racist capitalistAmerica will stop the killer cops withtheir itchy trigger fingers.

From California's Orange Countywhere the cops wantonly murdered five-year-old black child Patrick Mason inhis living room watching television, toNew York City where infirm blackgrandmother Eleanor Bumpurs wasblown away because she was behind inher rent, to Cleveland where MarcosLuciano was shot down in cold bloodwhile trying to protect a woman in herhome, cop terror is everywhere inReagan's America. The cops, courts andcapitalist politicians are enemies of thepoor, blacks, Hispanics. all workingpeople. Unions and minority organiza-tionsshould be mobilized to bring outthousands to answer the racist terror-ists. in and out of uniform, with masslabor jblack action.

Joseph Paskvan is a professionalracist killer who belongs behind bars forgood! As he stacks up his own privatebody count on the streets of Cleveland,Paskvan likes to boast of his more than100 firefights in.his prior training as aMarine in Vietnam. This was a causethat Ronald Reagan still holds dear. Butten years ago, the 'heroic Vietnameseswept the likes of Paskvan out of theircountry. It's going to take a socialistrevolution right here in the heartland ofU.S. imperialism to put racist maraud-ers like Paskvan out of action and get ridof the racist "law and order" theyenforce. Vengeance for Michael Woodsand Marcos Luciano, Jr.!.

WORKERS VANGUARD

NYPD's Torture CitySo now it's torture, by the New York

City Police Department. Not just yourusual beatings, kicks in the teeth,shoving down stairs and' similar ap-proved interrogation procedures rou-tinely used by N'rC's.rfinest." Not eventhe old technique of putting a telephonebook on the suspect's head and thenslamming it with a baseball bat (doesn'tleave marks). No, today they're usingthe electric shock treatment, straight outof the CIA's Nicaraguan "contra" terrormanual. What's next, New-Yorkers areasking nervously, death squads?

Even the New York Times (25 April)worries that the cops are out of control:it used to be that cases of "spectacularpolice misconduct" were once or twice ayear: now "they seem to be occurringonce or twice a month," editorialized thehaughty voice of the bourgeois estab-lishment. Mayor Ed Koch and his blackfront-man police commissioner Ben-jamin Ward are feeling the heat: on'Wed nesday they transferred 50 cops outof the Queens "torture precinct." andtwo days later the entire NYI'D topbrass was hauled onto the carpet.

What's going on here is a wave ofracist police bonapart ism. The copshave slipped the leash and are runningwild in the streets and stationhouses.Supposedly, the SNAP ("Street Narcot-ics Apprehension Program") squad atthe 106th Precinct in Queens, which hasbeen systematically torturing blacksuspects with electric stun guns, wasnever "authorized." But Koch's killercops take their cue from H izzoner,who's been praising every act of racistcop brutality, coroner cover-up and

D.A. whitewash that comes down thepike.

On April 16, an IS-year-cld blackhigh school senior. Mark Davidson,who had no previous arrest record, washauled into the Ozone Park station-house on a drug bust. They threw himinto the soundproof interrogationchamber, his hands cuffed behind him,banged his head against the wall andpunched him in the eye. While anothercop held Davidson down, racist sickosergeant Richard Pike started in withthe stun gun, yelling, "This ain't TV,nigger. We're gonna be here all nightuntil you give us the money."

Davidson's screams of pain wereheard all over the station. Altogether.more than 49 wounds were burned intohis chest, stomach. buttocks and back.Pike threatened to use the gun, whichputs out a 5,000-volt charge from twometal prods, on the black youth'stesticles. Finally, the torturers extorteda "confession" from their victim. that hehad supposedly sold $ IO worth ofmarijuana to an undercover cop. (/\marked $10 bill never rnaterialized.) The

3 MAY 1985

racist cops no doubt carved anothernotch on their stun gun and figured thatwould be that.

But Mark Davidson and his familycourageously fought back. New Yorkerssaw the clean-cut young black man onTV, his body covered with burn marks.Soon other victims came forward withtales of torture at the 106th Precinct.Pike, known to his cop buddies as the"Prince of Pain," had threatened to kill

18-year-oldblack youth

Mark Davidsonwas tortured andburned by cops

with 5,OOO-voltstun gun.

a 17-year-old Hispanic youth. Anotherblack youth was stripped and zappedwith the high-voltage stun gun while thecops ordered beer and pizza. Over in thellOth Precinct. cops beat up twoKorean Americans while screamingracist epithets at them.

Queens district attorney JohnSantucci ordered Pike and his partnerJeffrey Gilbert arrested. At City Hall

Lord/Newsday

they talked of "rogue cops" and a "fewbad apples." Use of stun guns wasstrictly forbidden, claimed Commis-sioner Ward. Who is he kidding? Lastmonth Ward bought 50 "taser" gunswhich shoot darts attached to fine wiresthat emit 50,000 I'OIIS, causing severemuscular contractions and "temporari-ly" paralyzing the victims (if it doesn'tkill them). The tasers are for the evictionsquad boys and the other "EmergencyServices Units" (ESU) like the one thatmurdered black grandmother EleanorBumpurs in a Bronx housing project lastfall.

Koch WhitewashesGross the Ghoul

Meanwhile, back at Bellevue, aspecial counsel appointed by MayorKoch has declared New York Citycoroner Elliot Gross "not guilty" of"thecharges we investigated." This "blueribbon" panel produced a whitewash ofthe amply documented findings by NewYork Times reporter Philip Shenon thatGross regularly covered up for police

homicides. After city and state reportshad slammed the Medical Examiner'soffice for incompetence and misman-agement. the Liman report stated that in"leaving open the causes of deaths ofpeople in police custody." the coronerhad followed standard "practice" that"antedates Dr. Gross's tenure."

This is the same line taken by Bronxjudge Vitale in dropping a slap-on-the-wrist indictment against ESU cop

Stephen Sullivan, who was "followingdepartmental guidelines" in killingEleanor Bumpurs. The Gross defense isthe Sullivan defense is the Eichmanndefense: they were all "only followingorders." In the Ozone Park "tortureprecinct" scandal. D.A. Santucci iscomplaining about a "blue wall ofsilence." But as we noted last issue("Koch's D.A. Morgenthau: He's Gross,Too," WV No. 377. 19 April), "theMafia/ cop code of omena extends rightto the top." Covering up for.cop murderis just "standard operating procedure."

So the Koch/Morgenthau/Ward/Gross team are off and running for thisyear's mayoral election. A grinningGross announced he intends to stick it tothe Times. with a $5 million libel suit.On the torture scandal Koch claims "it isnot systemic": Ward says "I can't see apattern." But all you have to do is list therecent cases:

• On Deccmberv, Sharon Walker, aQueens motorist, was shot in the backand killed by off-duty'-NYPD sergeantRudolph Hays after a minor trafficcollision.

• On January 3, Darryl Dodson wasshot dead by Brooklyn cop JosephVacchio responding to a call about aman with a gun (Dodson was unarmed).

• On February 24, Paul Fava wasshot in the head while being searched byBronx policeman Mervin Yearwood onan elevated subway platform. Thealleged "crime" for which Fava wasexecuted is alternatively described as"turnstile jumping" or throwing light-bulbs onto the tracks.

• On March 15, 70-year-old Dr.Hyman Chernow was killed and 72-year-old Upper East Side doorman JackSitowitz was struck by a police cruisercareening down Park Avenue. The hit-and-run driver, boozed-up sergeantFrederick Sherman, and his two tight-lipped partners claimed their car hadbeen hit by a brick.

• On March 16, off-duty cop RussellBjune celebrated St. Patrick's Day byassaulting Patricia Toro who wascoming out of an abortion clinic,arresting her. and having her locked upin a jail cell overnight without medicalattention.

• On April 14. off-duty Brooklyn copPerry Novello lunged into a restaurantand tried to forcibly kidnap a waitress, aformer girlfriend, then beat the restau-rant owner onto the ground with hisgun, handcuffed and kicked him.

• On April 17, Mark Davidson wastortured in the 106th Precinct station.Since then four more victims have testi-fied to similar electric shock torture.

Not only is this pattern of copbrutality "systemic," it's the system-asystem of racist injustice directed in

. particular at blacks, Hispanics andother minorities. The purpose of thestun gun interrogations on the secondfloor of the f Oeth Precinct wasn't evenextracting "confessions" to crack downon drug dealing. What court is going tosend a kid to Rikers Island on a $ IO potbust? No, the "SNAP" squad was set upto terrorize blacks moving into theformerly lily-white Ozone Park enclave.This is a uniformed lynch mob carryingout the same racist terror as the gang ofethnic punks in Gravesend, Brooklynwho in 19X2 bludgeoned to death blacktransit worker Willie Turks for daring tobe out on the streets at night in that"whites only" enclave.

In NYC election year 19X5 thecapitalist politicians can't ignore thispoliee rampage: Koch is trying to get offthe hook by calling in Reagan's top copEdwin Meese for a federal whitewash.Yuppie challenger Carol Bellamy calledon Koch to appoint a special commis-sion to investigate the NYI'D. Blackmachine Democrat Herman Farrellcalled for a new civilian review board.They can appoint all the commissionsand review boards they want, but itwon't make a dent in police brutality orthe cops' connections with organizedcrime any more than Mayor JohnLindsay's Knapp Commission did 15years ago. Such "safety valves" todissipate mass outrage are just as mucha part of the system of racist capitalistinjustice as the D.A.'s office and the"blue wall of silence."

Columnist Sydney Schanberg sagelyexplains that the police do all this-beatings, torture, murder-becausethey are "alienated" and "misunder-stood by the 'civilian' community."That's why "they so often eventually feelthe need to band together into a self-protective, private society" (New YorkTimes, 27 April). All those pooralienated misunderstood cops bandedtogether on February 7 when 10.000 ofthem surrounded the Bronx courthousepacking their pieces and demanding thehead of D.A. Mario Merola for indict-ing the murderer of Eleanor Bumpurs.And this ominous pressure tacticworked.

Killer cop Sullivan walked. Gross theghoul is back on the job. The transitcops' "dirty dozen" who bludgeonedMichael Stewart to death are still goingafter "turnstile jumpers" and "graffitiartists" with their guns and nightsticksdrawn. The answer to the growingbonapartist threat is not more "empathywith cops," or appeals to the capitaliststate to "tighten the leash" on theirattack dogs. At a July 19X3 transitworkers demonstration demandingvengeance for Willie Turks, TWUmilitants called for "union defensesquads now!" Never was this call moreurgent than today.

We need to mobilize our own forcesto build a workers party, to organizepowerful labor/black action against theracist terrorists in and out of uniform, inthe fight for socialist revolution.•

Spartacist league/Spartacus Youth League

Public Offices-MARXIST LlTERATURE-

Bay AreaFri.: 5:00-8:00 p.m., Sat.: 3:00-6:00 p.rn.1634 Telegraph, 3rd Floor (near 17th Street)Oakland, California Phone: (415) 835-1535

ChicagoTues.: 5:00-9:00 p.m., Sat.:11:00 a.m.-2:00 p.rn.161 W. Harrison St., 10th Floor

'Chicago, Illinois Phone: (312) 663-0715

New York CityTues.: 6:00-9:00 p.m., Sat.:12:00-4:00 p.rn,41 Warren St. (one block belowChambers St. near Church St.)New York, N.Y. Phone~ (212) 267-1025

5

Finish the CiviI War!

IN THE

the exception of the Civil War and itsimmediate aftermath-race lines actual-ly hardened in the military.

From the time of their first arrival inthe New World as slaves in 1619,American blacks have been used to fightthe white man's wars-in fact, blackshave fought in every American warexcept the IX46 war with Mexico. Butthe idea of arming and training blacks tofight always sent shivers down the spinesof the slaveholders: "There must begreat caution used, lest our slaves whenarmed might become our masters."noted a group of colonial Carolinalandowners (see historian .lack D.l-oner's well-researched account, Blacksand the Military in American History[1974]). Hence the recruitment of blacksinto the army was always resisted, andwas done only when desperate manpow-er requirements left no alternative. Thusthe shortage of men during the Frenchand Indian wars of the 1750s led manytowns to overlook laws excluding blacksin order to fulfill their quotas, and blackslaves were promised freedom if theyserved. Blacks served in unsegregatedunits in this period and were paid thesame wages as whites, although slaveshad to surrender at least part of theirwages to their masters, and typically theblacks would be assigned non-combatroles such as laborer, scout and servant.

In the American War of Independ-. cnce, the Founding Fathers tried toavoid inducting blacks, although blacksoldiers had fought in such early hattlcsas Lexington and Concord in 1775. andthe famous black slave Crispus Attuckswas one of the five martyrs of the 1770Boston massacre. Foner reports that on9 July 1775 commander in chiefGeorgeWashington's headquarters issued or-ders to his officers not to recruit "anystroller, Negro. or vagabond," Washi ng-ton was himself a major slaveholder andthought blacks would make inferiorsoldiers. but events forced a reversal ofpolicy. Ironically it, was the cynicallyopportunist British monarch v whichfirst instituted the policy of offeringfreedom to black slaves who served ontheir side. As many slaves started'deserting their masters for the Britisharmy, and as manpower shortages grewin the Continental Army, the Americanswere soon forced to enlist free blacks,

U>

Ss:c.U>e::>'0a::'":0E::>(5o

Siavocracy vs. the Negro Soldier

From the beginning. the UnitedStates has always been a hard. mean,violently racist country, founded ongenocide and the slave trade, and a slaveeconomy. And so from colonial timcs tothe present, the sight of armed blacks inuniform. organized for war. has beenperceived as a dangerous threat to theracist status quo. whether it was planta-tion slavery or modern imperialism. Forthat reason the induction of blacks intothe military was always a desperate lastresort for the ruling class. to beundertaken only with the strictest racistprecautions. Indeed, from the late 1700sup till the end of World War II-with

ing off to war never saw combat, soafraid were their white masters of theexplosive combination of"Negroes withguns." (The play, at least, was lessstarry-eyed, reporting that the entire22lst Chemical Smoke GeneratingCompany was wiped out by the Ger-mans. But Hollywood wants its happyending.) For Black America, it wasMalcolm X, not Martin Luther King,who told it like it is:

"Prior to 19.W, our people were ina verymenial position or condition. Most ofus were waiters and porters and bell-hops and janitors and waitresses andthings of that sort. It was not until warwas declared with Gcrmanv. andAmerica became involved in a rnanpow-cr shortage in regards to her factoriesplus her army. that the black man in thiscountry was permitted to make a fewstrides forward. It was never out ofsome kind of moral enlightenment ormoral awareness on the part of lJnclcSam. lJnclc Sam onlv let the black mantake a step forward when he himself hadhis hack to the wall,"

, -Ma/m/1I1 X Speaks (1965)

As Leon Trotsky, founder of theSoviet Red Army and together with'Lenin leader of the 1917 BolshevikRevolution, wrote: "An army is always acopy of the society it serves-with thisdifference, that it gives social relations aconcentrated character, carrying boththeir positive and negative features to anextreme" (The History o]' the RussianRevolution [1930]). Certainly the blackexperience in the U.S. armed forces hasbeen a concentrated expression of thevirulent racism of American capitalistsociety.

A Soldier'sStory: Movietranscendsliberal messageof Capt.Davenport(left). At right,Sgt. Watersframes up C.J.

consumed by self-hatred born of racistoppression, determined to "improve"his race through his own personalprogram of "purification" in which heeliminated black soldiers he considered"inferior." "Them Nazis ain't all crazy-whole lotta people just can't fit intowhere things are goin'." he says at onepoint. After the sergeant frames up andjails his latest victim, the popular "c..I."Memphis-driving him to suicide-Peterson kills the sergeant one night toavenge "c..I."

Investigator Davenport finally cap-tures Peterson after a chase and con-fronts him: "Who gave you the right tojudge who is fit to be a Negro and who isnot?" Here is one of the central themesof the movie: justice is "working withinthe system," although the black captainis clearly torn by the situation. The case"solved," Davenport is leaving the basethe next day when he is given a ride byone of the less prejudiced white officers."I guess I'm going to haveto get used to

I, Negroes with bars on their shoulders,Captain," says the white officer. Daven-port replies, "Oh, you'll get used to it-you can bet your ass on that." And sothey ride off supposedly into a newdawn of black advancement andequality.

Playwright Charles Fuller and direc-tor Norman .Iewison have produced apowerful film. Its characters (except forDavenport) are not cardboard but fullof contradictions. From lynchings toblack self-hatred, A Soldier's Storyplumbs the most excruciating aspects ofraeial oppression in America. It is also amovie with a message, a clear liberalmessage which is not tacked on butintegral-every scene builds toward theclimax. And yet that message Jails flat.Blacks in audiences across the countrycheer Peterson's actions and find Dav-enport's moral lecture a letdown. Why?Because they already know the sequel toA Soldier's Story in real life, in theirlives.

They know it took "freedom rides,"mass action, deaths, just to integratedrinking fountains, lunch counters andschools. Even then blacks remained onthe bottom of American society, Northand South, and today the schools are assegregated as before. Many rememberthat most of those black troops march-

Black slave Crispus Attucks was oneof the five martyrs of 1770 Bostonmassacre.

PART ONE OF TWO

"They say this is a warFor Freedom Over There.Say, Mr. FDRHow 'bout some Freedom Here?"

-from "Ballad of Ned Turman".(1942)

A Soldier's Story is set in the DeepSouth. alan army camp for black troopsin World War II. And the signs ofvicious "Jim Crow" racial segregation

'are everywhere. There's no doubt whothe hero of the movie is supposed to be.As soon as handsome Captain RichardDavenport (Howard Rollins), a lawyerout of Howard University. steps off thebus. wearing his snappy army uniformand sunglasses "like MacArthur's," heevokes the polished, ebony middle-classblack hero Sidney Poitier used to play,ready to do gentlemanly battle with theevils of racism.

"Haven't you ever seen a coloredofficer before'!" a white drill instructorasks the gaping black GIs as Davenportis driven past. "No sir. Have you, sir'!"they answer in unison. The captain isassigned to an empty barracks since hisfellow white officers refuse to be housedwith him. Davenport's mission is toinvestigate th~ murder of black sergeantVernon Waters, and of course everyonesuspects the local Klan or racist whiteofficers at the base. "They ain't crazyabout us tan Yanks in this part of thecountry," Davenport's driver notes.

But the trail leads instead to a blackprivate, Melvin Peterson. While notpolitical with a capital P, he is cast inthis situation as a militant, a man whostands up for black rights. (Denzel!Washington, who plays Peterson, wasdeliberately chosen for his resemblanceto Malcolm X.) Themurdered SergeantWaters, a contradictory figure, was

6 WORKERS VANGUARD

:MEN OF COLOR, TO ARMSl NOW OR NEVERI

and then even slaves. Thus in this warfor the birth of American bourgeois"democracy." the emerging Americanruling class had to be compelled literallyat the point of British guns to offer a fewblacks their freedom in exchange formilitary service. Through the wholewar. about 5.000 blacks served in theContinental Army of JOO.OOO.

Alter the War of Independence. theconditions of blacks declined as theywere no longer needed for the army. Theslaveholders' fear or armed blacks washeightened by the greatest slave rebel-lion in modern times, Toussaint l.'Ou-vcrturc's triumphant victory against Na-poleon's army in Haiti in IX02. "Theexistence of a negro people in arms,"wrote Napoleon's foreign ministerla llcyra nd to a general in Washington,

"is a horrible spectacle for all whitenations" (quoted in David Nicholls,hom Dessalines to Duvalier: Race,Colour and National Independence inHaiti [1979J). Certainly it was a horrorto the white slaveholders of the U.S.-not until IX62. in the middle of the CivilWar. did Washington recognize theblack republic in the Caribbean. Mean-while the exclusion of blacks from themilitary tightened, except in the navy,where difficulties in recruiting sufficientnumbers' of white sailors forced therecruitment of blacks and strict segrega-tion was difficult to enforce.

In the War of IXI2. the Americanswere again forced to follow the Britishexample of offering slaves freedom inexchange for military service, and 600black troops fought for Andrew Jack-son at the famous Battle of NewOrleans. Alter the war. slaves seekingfreedom took refuge among the motleySeminole Indians in Florida. But inIXJO President Andrew Jackson-aSouthern cracker ahead of his racisttime-ordered their removal. In theSecond Seminole War ( [XJ5-42) Jack-son managed to recapture a number ofblacks for slavery, but the U.S. nevermanaged to impose a victory treaty onthe Seminoles.

Civil War: The SecondAmerican Revolution

The Ciyil War (IX61-65) was thefirst and only American war in whichblacks clearly had a stake. WhileLincoln considered it to be a war topreserve the Union, the "irrepressibleconflict" between Northern capitalismand Southern slavocracy quickly be-came apparent. As Karl Marx andFrederick Engels wrote at the verybeginning of the war:

"The present struggle between theSouth and North is... nothing hut ast ruuulc between two social svstcms,het\~~en the system of slavcrv and thesystem of treelabor. The strllggle hasbroken out because the two svstcms canIHl longer live peacefully sideby side onthe North American continent. It canoulv he ended hv the victorv of onesvstcrn or the ot her." .. -"The Civil War in the United

States." 7 November IK61

Many LJ nion commanders pressed forthe arming and training of blacks, fromprofessional soldiers like John C.Fremont to the abolitionists like Thom-as Wentworth Higginson (a friend ofJohn Brown) to the German-AmericanMarxists like Joseph Wedemeyer. Lin-coln and the War Department tried toresist the recruitment of blacks, and asFoncr notes. "blacks themselves initiat-ed much of the action that culminated inabolition and their admission into thearmed forces, Thousands of fugitiveslaves flooded the Union lines whereverfederal forces penetrated new areas ofthe South," Union commanders had todecide on the spot what to do with theflood of sympathetic black fugitives.and many Union officers, starting withGeneral Benjamin Butler in IX61, putthe blacks to work constructing Unionfortifications and performing otherservices. Finally in August IX62Secre-tary of War Stanton relented by offi-cially sanctioning the recruitment ofblacks.

3 MAY 1985

Port Hudson,Louisiana,

27 May 1863:The first majorCivil War battle

in whichblack troops

took part.

Lincoln, recognizing the reality of thesituation. issued the EmancipationProclamation on I January IX6J. andafter that black recruitment began inearnest. Ex-slave and black revolution-ary Frederick Douglass issued a historicappeal in March IX6J, "Men of Color.To Arms!" arguing that "liberty won bywhite men would lose half its luster." lna famous speech. Douglass argued forblack enlistment not only because thelogic of the war, must lead to theabolition of slavery, but also becauseblacks fighting for their own freedomwould transform the black soul itself:

"Once let the black man get upon hisperson the brass letters U,S.: let him getan engle on his button. and a musket onhis shoulder. and bullets in his pocket.and there is no power on the earth orunder the earth which can dcnv that hehas earned the right of citizenship in theUnited States."

-"Address for the Promotionof Colored Enlistments."6 Julv IK6J (nil' tu; andWridllgs 0/ Fredcricl:[)ollg/a,\,\. Vol. J [19S11l

The close to 200,OPO black troops whoserved in the Union Army (about 10percent of the Union Army was black inIX65) and JO,OOO in the navy (one-quarter of the total navy enlistments)provided the critical fighting spirit tobring Union victory. For instance, thefamous 54th Massachusetts Regimentof black freedmen led by the whiteabolitionist. Colonel Robert Gould

)I1':S OJ" ou.un: .\11 It,..· '';''(1",1'> 1"'

8

and oppressed nations of the tsaristempire. out of the blood and destruc-tion of World War I there emerged thefirst victorious proletarian revolution.V. I. Lenin sought through the Commu-nist International (Comintern) to im-part to the young Communist partiesthat emerged in solidarity with theOctober Revolution the indispensablelessons of that revolution, especially theneed to rally the specially oppressed tothe banner of the proletariat. It wascentrally the experience of the RussianRevolution that compelled would-beAmerican revolutionists to turn to theunfinished tasks of the Civil War re-garding black emancipation.

And so in 1920 at the Second Con-gress of the Com intern. at Lenin's re-quest the American Communist JohnReed gave a report on the black ques-tion in the U.S. in which he explainedhow the experience of blacks helpedthem to resist the postwar racist tide:

"The first awakening of the Negroestook place after the Spanish-AmericanWar. in which the black troops hadfought with extraordinary courage andfrom which thcv returned With thefeeling that as men they were equal tothe white troops .... With the beginningof the European war half a millionNegroes who hadjoined the U.S. Armywere sent to France. where they werebilleted with French troop detachmentsand suddenly made the discovery thatthcv were treated as equals SOCially andin cvcrv other respect. The AmericanGeneral Stall approached the FrenchHigh Command and asked them toforbid Negroes to visit places used bywhites and to treat them as second-classpeople. Arter the war the Negroes.many of whom had received medals for

[TO BE CONTINUED]

WORKERS VANGUARD

bravery from the English and Frenchgovernments. returned to their South-ern villages where they were subjectedto lvnch law because thcv dared to weartheir uniforms and theirdecorations onthe street. ..."The first of these [racist] outbreakstook place in Washington. where civilservants from the administration re-turning from the war found their jobsoccupied by Negroes. The civil servantswere in the main Southerners, I heyorganized a night attack on the Negrodistrict in order to terrorize the Negroesinto giving up their jobs. To everybody'samazement the Negroes came on to thestreets Iullv armed. A fight developedand the Negroes fought so well that forcvcrv dead Negro there were three deadwhites .... In all these fights the Negroesshowed for the first time in history thatthev arc armed and splendidly organ-iled and arc not at all afraid of thewhites."

-John Reed. report on theNegro Question. 25 .luly 1920(reprinted in itT No. J4X.17 February 19X4)

The Communists. said Reed. shouldintervene in the black movement "toexpose the lie of bourgeois equality andemphasize the necessity of the socialrevolution which will not only liberateall workers from servitude but is also theonly way to free the enslaved Negropeople:" Tofinish the Civil War requiresa third. proletarian. American revolu-tion, led by a multiracial communistparty.

'"Cll>Eo:t:Oico.~

Z

February1919:

Returningsoldiersof the

black 369thInfantry

Regimentwearing the

Croix deGuerre.

"Major General Chamberlain. Inspec-tor General. United States Army. cameto Fort Des Moines and in the presenceof the 1.200 men announced. '1I' youknow anything, about the matter you'dbetter start talking now because there ISgoing to be a big hanging'; this beforethe General Court-martial membershad been appointed to try the case!Thirteen soldiers were hanged and alarge number [42] were sent to prisonfor life."

-Motley. 77w Invisible Solelie/'This was the largest murder trial in

U.S. history, and the one-day proceed-ing by an all-white military tribunal canonly be called a legal lynching. It was asignal of what was in store for blacks inAmerican "democracy" after the war.Indeed. hundreds were lynched duringand after the war. many of them stillwearing their army uniforms. Thedefeat of the postwar strike wave of1919-20 encouraged the growth of theKu Klux Klan in the 1920s. and thedream of "freedom" for blacks quicklyturned into a nightmare of race-terror.

If black soldiers returned from WorldWar I to the lynch mobs. race riots andmass unemployment. this was due in nosmall part to the political immaturity ofthe American working class and thedomination of the reactionary JimCrow AFL in the organized labor move-ment (except for the heroic IWW). Butin Russia. where the workers had arevolutionary leadership. a Bolshevikparty that could link their aspirations tothe emancipation of the colored peoples

to meet with them outside the require-ments of military service. We must notcommend too highly these troopsparticularly in front of white Ameri-cans. Make a point of keeping the nativecantonment from spoiling the Negro.White Americans become vcrv incensedat anv particular expression 0'1' intimacybetween white women and black men."

-quoted in Mary Penick Motley.cd .. The Invisible Soldier( 1975)

Nevertheless. of the four all-blackregiments attached to the French army(the 369th. 370th. 371st and 372nd).three received the Croix de Guerremedal from France, In contrast. theU.S. Army's fear of black leadership washighlighted in May 1917 when the armyforced Colonel Charles Young. the onlyblack West Point graduate on active

. duty, to retire for "medical reasons."Young would have been in line tobecome a general and hence possiblycommand white troops; he protested byriding on horseback from his home inOhio to Washington. D.C. to prove hisfitness. but it was no use. Young didmanage to establish a training school forblack officers at Fort Huachuca, Arizo-na. and one of the first black officers tograduate from that school. ColonelHoward D0110van Queen. years laterdescribed the most infamous racistincident of the war:

"In August 1917. a race riot between thewhite citizens of Houston. Texas. andthe 24th Infantry Regiment. a RegularArmy rcgirncnt.voccurrcd. It was theresult of insults and abuse heaped uponthe members of the 24th by the whitecitizcnrv, Two Negroes and seventeenwhites' were killed in the ensuingbattle....

Library of CongressIn Spanish-American War of 1898,black soldiers were used to seizeCuba.over. It was a betrayal-for the entry ofAmerican imperialism into the worldbattle for booty only led to an intensifi-cation of racial and class oppression athome. Under President Wilson segrega-tion became government policy. espe-cially in Washington. D.C.. where"colored" rest rooms were established ingovernment office buildings and blackswere systematically removed fromfederal employment.

As usual. the government was re-luctant to use blacks in any combatrole-the four experienced. regular all-black army regiments were never al-lowed to do any fighting throughout thewar. But once again the need formanpower forced a reversal of policy,and blacks were inducted into new unitsto do some fighting. Eventually the rateof black draftees accepted was higherthan the white acceptance rate, as whitesfound more ways to get deferments fromthe all-white draft boards. But of the380.000 blacks drafted. only 42.000 weregiven a combat role. in the all-black92nd and 93rd Divisions in France.Over one-third of American forces inEurope were black. but they wereconcentrated disproportionately in non-combat menial assignments.

Needless to say. there were very fewblack officers, and the (frequentlySouthern) white officers assigned toblack units often treated their rankswith racist contempt. Even in France.where there was no native policy ofsegregation and black soldiers weremore readily accepted as equals by theFrench soldiers: the U.S. Army tried toexport Jim Crow to make it clear thatblacks must know "their place" after thewar. A secret order from GeneralPershing's headquarters to the Frenchmilitary liaison on 7 August 1918 madethis clear:

"We must prevent the rise of anypronounced degree of intimac¥ betweenFrench officers and black officers. Wemav be courteous and amiable with thelasi but we cannot deal with them on thesame plane as white American officerswithout deeply wounding the latter. Wemust not cat with them. must not shakehands with them. seck to talk to them or

the Civil War and black liberation. andso it is no coincidence that many blackshave been lynched in their armyuniforms.

Ironically. the four regular blackregiments were used after the Civil Warto crush the other colored peoples ofeven lower social status than theblacks-the Indians. The black "BuffaloSoldiers" won many medals in theIndian Wars of 1869-1890. and wereagain used in the Spanish-AmericanWar of 1898. in the fight to seize Cubafor the U.S. ruling class. After acampaign around the slogan "Noofficers, no fight" resulted in therecruitment of 100 black officers. blacksjoined in the creation of volunteeroutfits in addition to the four regularblack regiments. But as the U.S. turnedto crushing an anti-imperialist guerrillamovement in the Philippines. a splitdeveloped in the black community asmany felt sympathy for "another peopleof color." Many black soldiers actuallydeserted in the Philippines-the mostfamous was David Fagan of the 24thInfantry, who accepted a commission inthe Philippines guerrilla forces ofEmilio Aguinaldo.

The rise of American imperialismabroad in the Spanish-American Warwas of course directly linked to thetriumph of racist reaction at home. Theracist tide was reflected in a monumen-tal racist frame-up of black soldiers ofthe 25th Infantry stationed at FortBrown. Texas. The men had suffered thetypical racial abuse by the white citizensof nearby Brownsville. and when ashooting occurred in the town in August1906 in which one white man was killedand a cop injured. 170 black soldierswere immediately charged with murdereven though their white officers provedthe men had been asleep in theirquarters at the time of the shooting. TheWar Department immediately sidedwith the townspeople. and without atrial, President Theodore Rooseveltsigned an executive order drumming all170 men out of the army with dishonor-able discharges.

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World War I: The Main EnemyWas at Home

BlackSoldiers...(continued from page 7)

The entry of the U.S. into WorldWar I in 1917. allegedly to "make theworld safe for democracy." at firstraised false hopes among the blackcommunity that by fighting in that warperhaps a little "democracy" might begranted to blacks at home. Despite someopposition from black leaders like A.Philip Randolph and Chandler Owen.the predominant black view as ex-pressed by W.E.B. Du Bois was that anAllied victory would bring the Negro"the right to vote and the right to workand the right to live without insult." DuBois urged blacks to "close ranks"behind the war effort and defer all"special grievances" until the war was

Reagan...(continued/rom page 1)

participated in a 1944 mass execution ofat least 86 American prisoners of war atMalmedy, Belgium (carried out by the55 First Panzer Division). They ignoredthe fact that the men of the SS SecondPanzer carried out a massacre of 642civilians at the French village ofOradour-sur-Glane that same year. Andit certainly didn't bother them that thissame unit, also known as "Das Reich"division, spearheaded Hitler's attack onSrnolensk , Kiev and Kharkov in theSoviet Union. According to the NewYork Times (n April), "In September1941. some of its members assisted anextermination squad in the killing 01'920Jews ncar Minsk:"

From the beginning Reagan's visitwas intended to be a vehicle to demon-strate the unity of the Western imperial-ist NATO alliance. Like John Kenne-dy's 196:1 visit to West Berlin where helooked over the Wall and proclaimed,"Ich bin ein Berliner" (I am a Berliner),it is to be a platform for anti-Sovietpropaganda. The whole purpose of thetrip is to draw attention away from the40th anniversary of the World War IIAllies' victory in Europe (V-E Day) onMay X. All the talk of "reconciliation"between former enemies is supposed tobury the fact that it was the Sovietpeoples who bore the brunt of WorldWar II and the Soviet army whichbrought down the Hitler tyranny. That'swhy Reagan also boycotted celebrationsof the meeting of Soviet and Americantroops on the Elbe.

Bonn feels betrayed by its Americanally. What's the fuss about. they ask,didn't we just divvy upthe Hitlcrite warcriminals? The Americans built theirwhole space program with Nazi scien-tists, and helped set up West Germany'sarmy and secret police with Hitler'sformer officers. Speaking before WestGermany's current version of theReichstag, Christian Democratic chan-cellor Kohl pointedly reminded hisSocial Democratic critics that noneother than Kurt Schumacher. thevirulently anti-Communist SPD leaderafter the war; was a prime mover in thepolicy of rehabilitating members of theWallen SS. Meanwhile, anti-Semiticarticles in the sensationalist Germanpress claim that the outcry in the U.S. isthe product of a Jewish conspiracy:"Reagan's Visit: The Power ofthe Jews"headlined the mass circulation Quickmagazine.

In the U.S. a tiny gang of fascistpunks, the SS Action Squad, spoke onthe steps of Dearborn City Hall inMichigan celebrating Hitler's birthdayand praising Reagan's trip. But they'reabout the only ones. The Americanpeople may not like "reds," but onething they really hate is Nazis. WorldWar II was an imperialist war, but thegeneration of Americans that foughtthat war believed they were fighting theheinous, barbarous crimes of the fas-cists. Hundreds of thousands of Arncri-

Wohl/Sygma

Reagan's "brother" at work: contraslits throat of Sandinista supporter.

3 MAY 1985

cans are refugees or children of refugeesfrom Nazi terror and genocide. While ahandful Of Nazi scum in the U.S. willcrawl out of the gutters to shout "SiegHeil!" to Reagan's homage to theWaffen SS at Bitburg-and morenativist fascists may be emboldened-America, including the hard-core racistReaganites, is up in arms over Reagan'svisit on the 40th anniversary of V-EDay.

Reagan is in trouble over this one,and his aides have been madly scram-bling around in an effort at "damagecontrol." National Security AdviserMcFarlane tried to order Kohl to calloil the cemetery visit. (The White Housesometimes forgets the distinction be-tween powerful imperialist allies and itsCentral American puppets.) They evenhad the chutzpah to ask hunter of Naziwar criminals Simon Wiesenthal tocome along for the ride, no doubtrecalling his recent signature on a full-page ad calling on Congress to fund theNicaraguan contras. But Wiesenthaltold them to forget it. Even U.S.Holocaust Commission chairman ElieWiesel. who accepted a medal fromReagan, turned them down. At theWhite House awards ceremony, Wieselimplored Reagan, "Your place is withthe victims of the SS." But he is wrong.Reagan belongs at Bitburg.

It's certainly fitting that Reagan andKohl proclaim the "reconciliation" ofGerman and American imperialism inan anti-Soviet crusade over the grave-stones of the SS killers. But theAmerican people hate Nazis, andReagan may not like the reaction whenthousands of anti-fascists and Holo-caust survivors in concentration campattire show up at Bergen-Belsen torepudiate these genocidal Cold Warri-ors. For our part. we stand with theleftists who reportedly passed out aleaflet on the anniversary of the libera-tion of Daehau thanking Soviet soldiersfor freeing the victims of Nazi terror andfor smashing the heinous H itlcritedictatorship.

Nicaragua: Reagan's Vietnam?

Reagan pulled out all the stops to gethis Nicaraguan "contra aid" bill passedby Congress. "Few votes will ever be soimportant to the survival of democracyin Latin America and the Caribbea;.Few votes will ever be as important tothe national security of the UnitedStates," he proclaimed bombastically inhis weekly radio show (Nev.' YorkTimes, 21 April). He even accused theDemocrats directly of "surrender toCommunism." But the USA today isn'tthe same as in the McCarthyite witch-hunts. It wasn't the $14 million that wasat stake, everyone agreed: it was a "newGulf of Tonkin resolution," promising"another Vietnam" in Central America.And after the l.l.S.' fiasco in its lastcolonial war, the bourgeoisie is leeryabout getting dragged down to defeatagain.

Ten years after the last U.S. helicop-ter took off from the Saigon embassy,America is still obsessed with Vietnam.Currently, every TV network, everymajor newspaper is doing a retrospec-tive, trying to find out "what wentwrong'!" Most of it is arrogant garbage,trying to put a brave face on defeat.Others recognize that the "Vietnamsyndrome" continues to check theappetites of Washington. The Nell' YorkTimes (2X April) editorialized that:

"To thecry of ' No More Victnarns.' theUnited States has tied itself into knotsover Nicaragua. The President wants avirtual declaration of war against theSandinistas-no more piecemeal hu-miliations by Soviet proxies. Congress,in a stunning demurral. says no morepiecemeal investments of prestige in awar we're unwilling to send Americanboys to finish."

Richard Nixon writes a book titled NoMore Vietnams: the same cry is utteredby the liberals, rad-libs and reformistswho lament this debacle for Washing-ton. But we Marxists, Trotskyists, say"Vietnam was a victory-Two, three,many defeats for U.S. imperialism!"

er piegel

Reagan and Kohl-new anti-Sovietaxis.

The day after his defeat in Congress,Secretary of State Shultz lashed out inan anti-Communist diatribe on "TheMeaning of Vietnam." "South Vietnamwas not a Jeffersonian democracy withfull civil liberties" (!), he admitted.Hardly-not with Hitler-loving dicta-tors like Marshal Ky in power, politicaldissidents thrown into "tiger cages,"suspected Viet Cong assassinated by theCIA's Phoenix Program, entire villagescarpetbombed by B-52s. (For thatmatter, "Jeffersonian democracy"meant chattel slavery for blacks.) Butstill, the U.S. was supposedly engaged ina "noble cause" in bringing "democra-cy" and "economic progress" to Asia.Back in the days of naked colonialism, itused to be called the "white man'sburden," bringing "civilization" to"savages."

The problem in Vietnam, said Shultz.was not that the U.S. went in but that it

Losersscramble to

board last flightout of Da Nang,

April 1975.

got out. And today? "Our goals inCentral America are like those we had inVietnam," he declared. The Reaganiteswant to avenge U.S. imperialism'shumiliation in Indochina with the bloodof Nicaragua. Vietnam was the first-evermilitary defeat for Yankee imperialism,and it's precisely the fear of anotherlosing war that has stayed their handfrom Angola to Afghanistan. TheReagan gang wants to disappear thisreality, blaming it all on the liberalmedia's "stab in the back," just likeHitler blamed the Social Democrats forGermany's loss in World War I. Butmore enlightened sectors of the Ameri-can ruling class, including much of thePentagon, know different.

It's not that the Democrats love theSandinistas. Far from it. The "compro-mise" contra aid bill failed by only twovotes, and the Washington Post (26April) noted in a headline, "CongressExpected to Back Some Form of Aid to'Contras'." The Democrats steadilyvoted for the CIA's "covert war" on theSandinistas up until a year ago when themining of Nicaraguan harbors made itimpossible to keep up any semblance of"plausible deniability" of U.S. involve-ment. They called for economic strangu-lation of Nicaragua through a tradeembargo-which Reagan is taking them

up on. But they know that the contrasare militarily as useless without the10Ist Airborne as Hitler's East Europe-an Einsatzkommandos were without theWehrmacht (army) behind them. Andthey're afraid that direct U.S. militaryintervention would lead to explosionsthroughout Latin America and at home.

The Spartacist League has declaredfor several years, "Defense of Cuba/USSR Begins in Central America!" Thereformists spread the Big Lie that thisdemand was a Reaganite provocation,and built a popular-front "anti-intervention" movement under the aegisof the Democrats. Last spring, summerand fall they went all out to "defeatReagan" and "vote for peace inNovcmber't-s-i.e., for loser DemocratMondale, who called for a full-fledgednaval "quarantine" of Sandinista Nica-ragua, an unambiguous act of war! Andon the "contra aid" fight, the Washing-Ion Post underlined, "During Congres-sional Debates, Virtually No OneDefended Nicaragua's SandinistaGovernment."

In seeking a bloc with the liberalDemocrats, the popular-frontists harkback to the days of "the good war,"World War II, when Roosevelt, Stalinand Churchill were allies. WWII ispresented as a "war for democracy" anda "war against fascism." but as soon asGermany and Japan were defeated, thecolonies were reoccupied and thefascists were cleaned up and put back inpower as "freedom-loving democrats"in the war against "Soviet totalitarian-ism." If you support the war, yousupport the victory of "your" side. Thevictory of U.S. imperialism led straightto the Cold War, Korea, Vietnam andnow Central America. Hitler is gone ...and now you have Reagan, whothreatens to plunge the nlanet intobarbarism in order to restore the"American century."

In World War II, the Trotskyistsdefended the Soviet Union from imperi-alist attack, but opposed the inter-imperialist slaughter which laid waste tomost of Europe and much of Asia, justas Lenin and the Bolsheviks called for

revolutionary defeatism on all sides inthe First World War. The DemocraticParty, the party of World Wars I and II,of Yankee intervention at the Bay ofPigs, Santo Domingo and Vietnam, willhardly stop U.S. intervention in CentralAmerica. Voting hund reds of millionsto CIA puppet Duarte in EI Salvador,they are up to their necks in it. And soare the fake-leftists who support them.

In 1945, Nazi fascism was not rootedout but replaced by another form ofbourgeois rule. Those Nazis who could,fled to South America or made them-selves useful to the Americans, or tookup their places again in West Germany.The torture techniques of the deathcamps were taken over by the CIA andtransmitted to Latin American deathsquads, from Argentina to El Salvador.Only where capitalism has been over-thrown, from East Berlin to Hanoi, havethe war criminals been brought tojustice. The degeneration of capitalismin . the epoch of imperialist decay isreflected in the leadership it throws up.The American bourgeoisie wantedRonald Reagan, and it got the Nazis inthe bargain. From South Africa toGermany to Central America and theUnited States, the scourge of fascismwill only be wiped out through interna-tional socialist revolution.•

9

SPARTACIST LEAGUE/ U.S. LOCAL DIRECTORY

Stalingrad, August 1942-January 1943: Hardest fought battle in WW II.Workers' Russia shattered Hitler's dreams of conquest.

The "right conclusion," say the Stalin-ists, is to resuscitate the old wartimealliance. But even if there were a chancefor a Gorbachev-Reagan pact. it would

German imperialism by demanding thatKohl visit Auschwitz [in Poland] onMay 8th. They pose as peace wardens.hut the Green-supported "peace" move-ment in the DDR. and their belovedSolidarnosc, aim at the economic,political and military disarming of theworkers states in the face of imperial-ism. On May 4, "Greens." "Autono-mists." Maoists and pseudo-Trotskyistswill demonstrate against the Reagan vis-it and the imperialist world economicsummit in Bonn-an anti-Americanand anti-Soviet demonstration of thenew German nationalism. An effectiveprotest against the imperialist rohberswould have to be based on defense of theDDR. Poland. the Soviet Union andother workers states. with the perspec-tive of class war against one's "own"bourgeoisie.

Among the belligerent powers ofWorld War II only the Soviet Uniontoday sees a reason to celehrate thedestruction of the criminal Hitler regimeon May Sth. Reagan and Kohl wouldlike everyone to forget the horrors of theNazi regime, because the imperialistenemies of old are now NATO alliescarrying out the program of AdmiralDonitz. DDR leader Erich Honeckerrecently remarked:

"We will not forget the victims 01Hitler's barbarism and the victims 01theDresden bombing tcrror. ... i\ll in all.you can't say that the right conclusionshavc been drawn Irorn World War II.No: even the Star Wars architccts ortheir planners would survive a warunleashed with atomic weapons."

no more protect the Soviet Unionagainst imperialist attack than didStalin's pact with Hitler. A proletarianpolitical revolution is needed to oust thesellout bureaucracy in the degenerated/deformed workers states. Not detenteillusions but international socialistrevolution will defend the remaininggains of the Octoher Revolution.

Germany was divided as the result ofthe defeat of German imperialism in thelast world war. Talk of reunificationwithout overthrowing resurgent Ger-man capitalism in the West is a call forcounterrevolution in the East anda new world war-this time a nuclearholocaust for all humanity. Toachieve a progressive solution to theGerman question. a revolutionary-internationalist. authentically commu-nist party must he built which energeti-cally opposes the "left" nationalism ofthe "peace" movement as well as openright-wing revanchism. The Trotzkis-tische Liga Deutscht'ands seeks to huildsuch a party, fighting for revolutionaryreunification of Germany as part of aSocialist United States of Europe. Thered flag which was unfurled over theBrandenburg Gate on 1 May 1945 mustfly over all of Europe, as a signal forworld revolution. for a socialist future inwhieh genocide and war are banished

. forever. That is our goal..

c:s:

'"I

Firebombingof Dresden(right) and

atom-bombingof Hiroshima

and Nagasakiwere

monstrouswar crimes

whose intentwas to

intimidateSoviet Union.

states. by undermining them economi-cally through internal counterrevolu-tion, like the Lutheran church-dominated "peace" movement in EastGermany or the (now prostrate) yellow"union" Solidarnosc in Poland.

The "left" nationalism of the SPD is atrap for the German working class.Evervone knows that the CDU /CSU(Christian Democrats) are riddled withformer Nazis. while Social Democracypretends to he the party of clean hands.SPD chairman Willy Brandt presentshimself. a one-time anti-fascist fighter.as the most effective figure to reconcilethe German workers with their "own"hourgeoisie. Oskar Lafontaine, success-ful SPD "peace" candidate in the Saar.expresses this clearly: more autonomyinside NATO. no MX missiles, and apowerful arsenal for the. Bundeswehr.The SPD hoasts that it is the real partyof Ostpolitik ("Eastern policies") forGerman imperialism. Quite right. Itstradition as a reformist workers partygives it the chance to act in the EastGerman workers state as a pro-imperialist alternative to Stalinism.disguised as a true, national "force forpeace."

West Germany's left trails in the wakeof Social Democracy. The Greens maketheir contribution to whitewashing

is escalating into bitter trade wars,and differences between the NATObrothers-in-arms have increased-c-dif-fcrences centering on the question ofhow the Soviet Union should bedestroyed. The basis for "Europacifisrn"is the fear or' Europe being turned intoan atomic battlefield. In West Germany.the Social Democrats. once a kept partyof the CIA, have switched masters hackto German imperialism. The SPD'sroad isn't that of open revanchism,whose pro-war course would only leadWest Germany to defeat and atomiccatastrophe. Social Democracy wantsto win back German imperialist domi-nance over Eastern Europe. to destroythe East German and Polish workers

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stroke of a pen. The "Foreign ArmiesEast" secret service under Wehrmachtgeneral Gehlen was absorbed by theCIA to continue its spying and sahotageagainst the Soviet Union. The Gehlenorganization was taken over in 1955 asWest Germany's secret police. Togetherwith Adenauer's secret service coordina-tor Globke, sentenced in the DDR tolife imprisonment as one of the organ-izers of the genocide against Jews.Gehlen created the Federal Officefor the Protection of the Constitution( Verfassungsschutz).

The constitution for which the men intrenchcoats do their spying and persecu-tion asserts the claim of the FederalRepublic [West Germany] to he thesuccessor state to Hitler's Third Reich.within the German borders of/C)] 7 (thusincluding much of present-day Polandand parts of the USSR). So whenBonn's state secretary for "Inner-German Affairs." Ottfried Henning,claims "East Prussia belongs to Ger-many" he is only stating openly what hasimplicitly been official policy all along.In June Chancellor Kohl is to speak at arevanchist Silesian "exiles" conventionunder the slogan: "Silesia remains ourfuture in a Europe of free peoples." TheJanuary issue of their newspaper paint-ed out this vision of the future:

"The armed forces of the GermanFederal Republic had marched throughthc Warsaw Pact area without comingupon rcsistancc to speak of. and nowstood on thc Soviet border. ... The factof German reunification had come-s-without war!"

Leaders of Polish Solidarnosc, wholook to the Frankfurt hankers for theirsalvation. seem to forget that the Ger-man imperialists are not exactly gener-ous with their Lebensraum,

Forty years after the end of the war,U.S. imperialism is only first amongequals. Interimperialist competition

SPD Nationalism: Rollback in"Peace" Costume

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West German Imperialism:Hitler's Heirs

In the Soviet occupation zone, whichlater became the DDR, resurgent Na-zism was deprived of any social hasethrough the destruction of capitalism,and more than 350 Nazi mass murdererswere sentenced to death or life imprison-ment. In contrast, the Nuremburg Trialsof 1945-46 and other Allied war crimestrials only served as an alibi. ProminentNazis like the hanker Hermann JosefAbs were soon pulling the strings again.Abs, an influential board member of theDeutsche Bank under Hitler who wassentenced in absentia to 15 years hardlahor by Yugoslavia, became chairmanof the board and headed the Recon-struction Cred it Agency! Hitler's warindustry chief. Friedrich Flick. who hadmade gigantic profits from the slavelabor of 40,000 foreign forced-laborersand concentration camp victims, wasreleased from jail in 1950 and soonbecame known as Bonn's "uncrownedfinance minister." Flick Jr. deals withBonn governments and the Bundestag[West German parliament] as branchesof his industrial empire: representativesof the Christian Democrats, SocialDemocrats and Free Democrats all snapto attention in return for cold cash.

American imperialism had nothingagainst the reinstatement of "former"Nazis in key positions in politics and theeconomy. Only a strong German capi-talism could be of usc against the SovietUnion. In the United States itself. theCIA falsified 1'100 files and gave .Nazispecialists "laundered" do